of those who despoil even the tombs of the dead in the name of science. How should I know whether you would keep that which you found when you thought no one watched?”
“Uncle Harvey,” Rosalie interrupted, “this man is a liar. He says he is a follower of Hanuman, but we have seen the sign of Siva on him, and know him for a Dakait—one whose trade and religion is murder and robbery. His talk of recovering the god for his temple is a lie. He would sell it, if he could get it; maybe to the priests of the temple from which it was stolen, but certainly he would sell it.”
She turned to the pinioned Indian and hurled a torrent of fluent, though none too polite, Hindustani at him. “Dishonorable son of a shameless mother,” she exclaimed, “confess that you came not to return Hanuman to his home, but to steal him for yourself. I know your kind. You are a brother to the weasel and blood-brother to the snake. In the night you creep into the houses of honest men and they die and you possess their goods. Say, is it not for the honor of Kali, goddess of thieves, that you have done this thing?”
The man stared at her in pop-eyed astonishment. That a fair-haired young lady of the Occident should speak idiomatic Hindustani, even to a liberal use of the intimate insults without which no unfriendly conversation is complete in that tongue, astonished him almost as much as the girl’s deft handling of her kris had done a few minutes before.
“It is true,” he acknowledged, with a fatalistic writhing of his shoulders. “Of what avail to lie to one who possesses the beauty of the moonflower and the wisdom of the serpent? It is even as you have said.”
Rosalie preened herself like a satisfied bird. “You do well to call me moonflower, who was known by that name for many years,” she announced.
“Uncle Harvey,” she resumed her rather shaky English as she addressed the Professor, though she was perfectly aware he spoke Hindustani as well as she did, “I think they will make no mistake when they hang this fellow. He is one dam’ bad egg.”
ADVENTURE, by Clark Ashton Smith
Let us leave the hateful town
With its stale, forgotten lies;
Far beneath renewing skies,
Where the piny slope goes down,
All with April love and laughter—
None to leer and none to frown—
We shall pass and follow after
Shattered lace of waters spun
On a steep and stony loom
Down the depths of laurel-gloom.
Finding there a world re-made
In the fern-embowered shade,
Weaving bright oblivion
Still from frailest blossom-trove,
We shall mix our wilding love
With the woodland and the sun.
*****
Let us loiter, hand in hand,
Hearing but the heart’s command,
Half our steps by kisses stayed,
Prove the spring-enchanted glade;
Breast to breast and limb to limb,
Seize our happiness and bind it—
Lose the pulse of time and find it,
Free as vagrant seraphim.
Ever leave regret and rue
To the dutiful and jealous
Fools that are not near to tell us
All the things we should not do.
*****
Though the bedded ferns be broken,
And dishevelled blossoms lie
On the rumpled moss for token
Of the day’s mad errantry—
Still the tacit pines will keep
Darkly in their sighing sleep
All the sweet and perilous story;
And the oaks and willows hoary
For unheeding ears will tell
Only things ineffable;
And the later eyes that look
On the pool-delaying brook,
Shall not see within its glass
Two that came to kiss and pass.
DOUBLE-SHUFFLE, by Edwin Baird
Sammy the tramp owned a discontent—a perplexing, irritating discontent. At a sloppy table in his favorite Chicago saloon he sat and scowled and essayed self-analysis. But it was no use. His distemper eluded diagnosis.
He lowered his head, glared sullenly at his glass, and in a low voice swore so vividly that his pot-companion, sitting opposite, was moved to a pipe of tobacco and compassionate utterance.
“Why, Sammy,” he asked with brotherly concern, “what’s bitin’ you, pal? I declare, you’re a cross between a mildewed squash and G. Bernard Shaw eatin’ pickles and lemons. Come, why so pensive—”
“Aw, freeze up,” growled Sammy, “and have another drink,” he added penitently.
He motioned to the bartender and from a pocket of his patched and grimy trousers plucked a wad of ragged money the size of his wrist. This occasioned no riot. Since it was on dit in lower Clark Street circles that an uncompromising switch-engine had recently sent Sammy to a St. Louis hospital, that a compromising claim agent had given him three hundred dollars, and that about one hundred and fifty dollars of this sum yet remained with him, the barroom foregathering evinced no surprise at the plethoric display.
But a trembling, whisky-crazed wretch, who had just entered, noticed, and his watery eyes glistened with a feverish anticipation. With timorous humility he sidled to the table, sat down, and looked meekly, pleadingly at the wealthy one.
Silently Sammy pushed back his chair and rose. Irately he pointed to the door.
“Get out o’ here!” he roared. “You and your greasy leer. Get out, you—you—rat! Quick, or I’ll bounce this booze-jug off your knob.”
He seized the bottle from the returning bartender. The intruder hastily departed, upsetting two or three chairs en route. Sox surveyed his comrade in meek wonder.
“Sammy,” he began timidly after the excitement had subsided, “what—”
“I’ll
