thinking men that the time for intelligent coöperation between the nations is not far away, and that if four great nations the United States, Japan, Great Britain, and Germany - should unite in affirming the integrity and perpetual neutrality of any part of the world, their example would be followed gladly by all the others.

There is a peculiarly American opportunity lying before us in our relations with the Philippine Islands. We wish neither to retain them in permanent subjection, nor to surrender them to foreign control. It is practical to neutralize them, and by so doing re

move the possible misunderstanding with which our presence there is regarded. For ourselves neutralization leads to a decrease in our armaments, and the direction of our resources to far more reasonable ends. To others it would offer an example of relief from the menace of militarism, and point the way to new opportunities for friendly coöperation in the avoidance of war. Who knows but that South America would follow the Republic of the North and, by proposing neutralization throughout her diverse states, lead the nations yet nearer to the distant goal of universal peace?

I

IN a car of the Naples express a mining expert was diving into a bag for papers. The strong sunlight showed the fine wrinkles on his brown face and the shabbiness of his short, rough beard. A newspaper cutting slipped from his fingers; he picked it up, thinking, 'How the dickens did that get in here?' It was from a colonial print of three years back; and he sat staring, as if in that forlorn slip of yellow paper he had encountered some ghost from his past.

These were the words he read: 'We hope that the set-back to civilization, the check to commerce and development, in this promising centre of our colony may be but temporary; and that capital may again come to the rescue. Where one man was successful, others should surely not fail? We are con

vinced that it only needs ' And the last words: 'For what can be sadder than to see the forest spreading its lengthening shadows, like symbols of defeat, over the untenanted dwellings of men; and, where was once the merry chatter of human voices, to pass by in the silence-'

On an afternoon, thirteen years before, he had been in the city of London, at one of those emporiums where mining experts perch before fresh flights, like sea-gulls on some favorite rock.

A clerk said to him, 'Mr. Scorrier, they are asking for you on the telephone - Mr. Hemmings of the New Colliery Company.'

Scorrier took up the wire. 'Is that you, Mr. Scorrier? you are very well, sir; I am mings I am coming round.'

-

I hope

Hem

In ten minutes he appeared, Christopher Hemmings, secretary of the New Colliery Company, known in the city-behind his back-as 'downby-the-starn' Hemmings. He grasped Scorrier's hand- the gesture was deferential, yet distinguished. Too handsome, too capable, too important, his figure, the cut of his iron-gray beard, and his intrusively fine eyes conveyed the courteous invitation to inspect their infallibilities. He stood, like a city 'Atlas,' with his legs apart, his coat-tails gathered in his hands, a whole globe of financial matters deftly balanced on his nose. 'Look at me!' he seemed to say; 'it's heavy, but how easily I carry it! Not the man to let it down, sir!'

'I hope I see you well, Mr. Scorrier,' he began; 'I have come round about our mine. There is a question of a fresh field being opened up-between ourselves, not before it's wanted. I find it difficult to get my Board to take a comprehensive view. In short, the question is: Are you prepared to go out for us, and report on it? The fees will be all right.' His left eye closed. "Things have been very er dicky; we are going to change our superintendent. I have got little Pippin - you know little Pippin?'

Scorrier murmured, with a feeling of vague resentment, 'Oh! yes. He's not a mining man!'

Hemmings replied, 'We think that he will do.'

'Do you?' thought Scorrier. "That's good of you!'

He had not altogether shaken off a worship he had had for Pippin; 'King' Pippin he was always called, when they had been boys at the Camborne Grammar School. 'King' Pippin! the boy with the bright color, very bright hair, bright sable elusive eyes, broad shoulders, little stoop in the neck, and a way of moving it quickly like a bird; the

boy who was always at the top of everything, and held his head as if looking for something further to be the top of.

He remembered how one day 'King' Pippin had said to him in his soft way, 'Young Scorrie, I'll do your sums for you'; and in answer to his dubious 'Is that all right?' had replied, 'Of course I don't want you to get behind that beast Blake, he's not a Cornishman' (the beast Blake was an Irishman not yet twelve). He remembered, too, an occasion when 'King' Pippin with two other boys fought six louts and got a licking, and how Pippin sat for half an hour afterwards, all bloody, his head in his hands, rocking to and fro, and weeping tears of mortification; and how the next day he had sneaked off by himself, and, attacking the same gang, got frightfully mauled a second time.

Thinking of these things he answered curtly, 'When shall I start?'

'Down-by-the-starn' Hemmings replied with a sort of fearful sprightliness, 'There's a good fellow! I will send instructions; so glad to see you well.' Conferring on Scorrier a look, -fine to the verge of vulgarity, -he withdrew.

Scorrier remained seated, heavy with insignificance and vague oppression, as if he had drunk a tumbler of sweet port.

A week later, in company with Pippin, he was on board a liner.

The 'King' Pippin of his school days was now a man of forty-four. He awakened in Scorrier the uncertain wonder with which we look backward at our own uncomplicated teens. Staggering up and down the decks in the long Atlantic roll, he would steal a look at his companion, as if he thereby expected to find out something about himself. Pippin had still 'King' Pippin's bright, fine hair, and dazzling streaks in his short beard; he had still

a bright color and suave voice, and what there were of wrinkles suggested only subtleties of humor and ironic sympathy. From the first, and apparently without negotiation, he had his seat at the captain's table, to which on the second day Scorrier too found himself translated, and had to sit, as he expressed it ruefully, among the bigwigs.'

During the voyage only one incident impressed itself on Scorrier's memory, and that for a disconcerting reason. In the forecastle was the usual complement of emigrants. One evening, leaning across the rail to watch them, he felt a touch on his arm and, looking round, saw Pippin's face and beard quivering in the lamplight.

'Poor people!' he said.

The idea flashed on Scorrier that he was like some fine wire instrument, that records sounds.

'Suppose he were to snap!' he thought. Impelled to justify this fancy, he blurted out, 'You're a nervous chap. The way you look at those poor devils!'

Pippin hustled him along the deck. 'Come, come, you took me off my guard,' he murmured, with a gentle, sly smile; 'that's not fair.'

He found it a continual source of wonder that Pippin, at his age, should cut himself adrift from the associations and security of London life, to begin a new career in a new country with dubious prospect of success.

'I always heard he was doing well all round,' he thought. "Thinks he'll better himself, perhaps. He's a true Cornishman.'

The morning of arrival at the mines was gray and cheerless; a cloud of smoke, beaten down by drizzle, clung above the forest; the wooden houses straggled dismally in the unkempt semblance of a street, against a background of woods - endless, silent

woods. An air of blank discouragement brooded over everything; cranes jutted idly over empty trucks; the long jetty oozed black slime; miners with listless faces stood in the rain; dogs fought under their very legs. On the way to the hotel they met no one busy or serene except a Chinee who was polishing a dish-cover.

The late superintendent, a cowed man, regaled them at lunch with his forebodings; his attitude toward the situation was like the food, which was greasy, sad, and uninspiring. Alone together once more, the two newcomers eyed each other sadly.

'Oh, dear!' sighed Pippin. 'We must change all this, Scorrier; it will never do to go back beaten. I shall not go back beaten; if I do you'll have to carry me on my shield'; and, slyly, 'Too heavy, eh? Poor fellow!' Then for a long time he was silent, moving his lips as if adding up the cost. Suddenly he sighed, and grasping Scorrier's arm, said, 'Dull, are n't I? What will you do? Put me in your report, "New Superintendenta sad, dull dog - not a word to throw at a cat!" And as if the new task were too much for him, he sank back in thought. The last words he said to Scorrier that night were, 'Very silent here. It's hard to believe one's here for life. I feel I am. Must n't be a coward, though!' And brushing his forehead, as though to clear from it a cobweb of faint thoughts, he hurried off.

Scorrier stayed on the veranda, smoking. The rain had ceased, a few stars were burning dimly; even above the squalor of the township the scent of the forests, the interminable forests, brooded. There sprang into his mind the memory of a picture from one of his children's fairy-books- the picture of a little bearded man on tiptoe, with poised head and a great sword, slashing at the castle of a giant. It re

minded him of Pippin. And suddenly, even to Scorrier, whose existence was one long encounter with strange places, the unseen presence of those woods, their heavy, healthy scent, the little sounds, like squeaks from tiny toys, issuing out of the gloomy silence, seemed intolerable, to be shunned from the mere instinct of self-preservation. He thought of the evening he had spent in the bosom of 'down-bythe-starn' Hemmings's family, when receiving his last instructions - the security of that suburban villa, its discouraging gentility; the superior acidity of the Misses Hemmings; the noble names of large contractors, of company promoters, of a peer, dragged with the lightness of gun-carriages across the conversation; the autocracy of Hemmings, rasped up, here and there, by some domestic contradiction. It was all so nice and safe as if the whole thing had been fastened to an anchor sunk beneath the pink cabbages of the drawing-room carpet!

Hemmings, seeing him off the premises, had said with secrecy, Little Pippin will have a good thing. We shall make his salary -pounds. He'll be a great man-quite a king. Ha-ha!'

Scorrier shook the ashes from his pipe. 'Salary!' he thought, straining his ears; 'I would n't take the place for five thousand pounds a year. And yet it's a fine country'; and with ironic violence he repeated, 'a dashed fine country!'

Ten days later, having finished his report on the new mine, he stood on the jetty waiting to go aboard the steamer for home.

'God bless you!' said Pippin. "Tell them they need n't be afraid; and sometimes when you're at home think of me, eh?'

Scorrier, scrambling on board, had a confused memory of tears in his eyes, and a convulsive hand-shake.

II

It was eight years before the wheels of life carried Scorrier back to that disenchanted spot, and this time not on the business of the New Colliery Company. He went for another company with a mine some thirty miles away. Before starting, however, he visited Hemmings. The secretary was surrounded by pigeon-holes, and finer than ever; Scorrier blinked in the full radiance of his courtesy. A little man with eyebrows full of questions, and a grizzled beard, was seated in an armchair by the fire.

'You know Mr. Booker,' said Hemmings, one of my directors. This is Mr. Scorrier, sir, who went out for us.'

These sentences were murmured in a way suggestive of their uncommon value. The director uncrossed his legs, and bowed. Scorrier also bowed, and Hemmings, leaning back, slowly developed the full resources of his waist

coat.

'So you are going out again, Scorrier, for the other side? I tell Mr. Scorrier, sir, that he is going out for the enemy. Don't find them a mine as good as you found us, there's a good man.'

The little director asked explosively, 'See our last dividend? Twenty per cent; eh, what?'

Hemmings moved a finger, as if reproving his director. 'I will not disguise from you,' he murmured, 'that there is friction between us and - the enemy; you know our position too well - just a little too well, eh? "A nod's as good as a wink.”

His diplomatic eyes flattered Scorrier, who passed a hand over his brow, and said, 'Of course.'

'Pippin does n't hit it off with them. Between ourselves, he's a leetle too big for his boots. You know what it is when a man in his position gets a sudden rise!'

Scorrier caught himself searching on the floor for a sight of Hemmings's boots; he raised his eyes guiltily.

The secretary continued, 'We don't hear from him quite as often as we should like, in fact.'

To his own surprise, Scorrier murmured, 'It's a silent place!'

The secretary smiled.

'Very good! Mr. Scorrier says, sir, it's a silent place; ha-ha! I call that very good!' But suddenly a secret irritation seemed to bubble in him; he burst forth almost violently, 'He's no business to let it affect him; now, has he? I put it to you, Mr. Scorrier, I put it to you, sir!'

But Scorrier made no reply, and soon after took his leave. He had been asked to convey a friendly hint to Pippin that more frequent letters would be welcomed. Standing in the shadow of the Royal Exchange, waiting to thread his way across, he thought, 'So you must have noise, must you - you've got some here, and to spare.'

On his arrival in the New World he wired to Pippin, asking if he might stay with him on the way up country, and received the answer, 'Be sure and come.'

A week later he arrived (there was now a railway) and found Pippin waiting for him in a phaeton. Scorrier would not have known the place again; there was a glitter over everything, as if some one had touched it with a wand. The tracks had given place to roads, running firm, straight, and black between the trees under brilliant sunshine; the wooden houses were all painted; out in the gleaming harbor amongst the green of islands lay three steamers, each with a fleet of busy boats; and here and there a tiny yacht floated like a sea-bird on the water.

Pippin drove his long-tailed horses furiously; his eyes brimmed with a subtle kindness, as if according Scor

an

rier a continual welcome. During the two days of his stay Scorrier never lost that sense of glamour. He had every opportunity for observing the grip Pippin had over everything. The wooden doors and walls of his bungalow kept out no sounds. He listened to interviews between his host and all kinds and conditions of men. The voices of the visitors would rise at first gry, discontented, matter-of-fact, with nasal twangs, and guttural drawls; then would come the soft patter of the superintendent's feet crossing and recrossing the room. Then a pause, the sound of hard breathing, and quick questions the visitor's voice again, again the patter, and Pippin's ingratiating but decisive murmurs. Presently out would come the visitor with an expression on his face which Scorrier soon began to know by heart, a kind of pleased, puzzled, helpless look, which seemed to say, 'I've been done, I know; I'll give it to myself when I'm round the corner.'

Pippin was full of wistful questions about 'home.' He wanted talk of music, pictures, plays; of how London looked, what new streets there were; and, above all, whether Scorrier had been lately in the West Country. He talked of getting leave next winter, asked whether Scorrier thought they would put up with him at home'; then, with the agitation which had alarmed Scorrier before, he added, 'Ah! but I'm not fit for home, now. One gets spoiled; it's big and silent here. What should I go back to? I don't seem to realize.'

Scorrier thought of Hemmings. "T is a bit cramped there, certainly,' he muttered.

Pippin went on as if divining his thoughts. 'I suppose our friend Hemmings would call me foolish; he's above the little weaknesses of imagination, eh? Yes; it's silent here. Sometimes