over he followed Whiting to the door, mopping his brow with his handkerchief, "And the man whom I put in your place," Whiting was adding decisively, "will have sense enough, I hope, to let the rest of the force know it when he fires a reporter. Good night."

As for Tulin, he was busy at that moment writing a scathing article for the Observer on the unscrupulous and sensational methods of a certain contemporary.

E. Lyttleton Fox.

ECHOES.

A blast of thunder broke above the world
And all the mountains huge and hoar
Reverberant grandeur down their valleys rolled
In answering roar on roar.

A red star shone upon the midnight main;
And in the hollow of the flood

Out of the dark its image forth again

Flashed like a drop of blood.

The breath of violets, blown by wandering airs,
Came soft across the waving lea;

And all my heart, stormed by a thousand cares
Laughed with the thought of thee.

W. B. Hooker.

HIS WIFE'S SISTER.

PRESIDENT LANE stood immobile within the nickeled

grating and looked calmly at the drawn, anxious faces outside. As some familiar figure crowded to the teller's window and clutched eagerly at the bills which were thrust out, Lane would even venture, "Ah ha, Thomas, going to play the races?" or "Hello, Roy, not leaving town, I hope.” But the pleasantries fell hollow on the swaying throng of depositors that crowded the bank and reached half way down the block.

Inside, all was quiet, save for the clinking of the coin machines, the confused scraping of feet on the mosaic floor, and the ruffling of the bills as they were deftly counted out. Lips were drawn too tight for words, hearts were beating too high. There was a common, numbing fear, "the man in front will take the last dollar." And all the while, the suave teller was shoving from the window an endless procession of crisp, rustling currency. "Slowly, slowly," he would say, "there are four hours yet."

Outside the doors, the crowd surged with impatience. The goal was unsighted and too remote to inspire awe. There was the hoarse murmur of a swaying mob, pierced by the occasional cry of a thread-bare shop-woman and the answering curses of the men. Threats were tossed about, mingling with the sharp, quick orders of the police.

"What started it?" asked a tall, well-groomed woman, who swept along the edge of the crowd with a swish of her silken skirt.

"God knows, but I want my money," wailed a young girl defiantly.

The woman without hesitation began to thread the resisting crowd, securing a path, when otherwise impossible, with an imperious "I must see the President."

Lane saw her as she entered, and a slight tremor passed over him. He was rather in awe of that handsome sister

in-law, for all that she had been a member of his household since his marriage. He eyed the crowd uneasily while the office boy was showing her into the President's room. Then he whispered to the bustling cashier, "I'll be back soon, Chambers," and hurried into his office.

She was a regal creature, was Miss Lyra Birdsell. Thirty years, rich in human experience, had dealt kindly with her. They had perfected the tones of her low, sympathetic voice, and given soul to her winning smile, and added a marvelous depth of feeling to those dark, eloquent eyes. There was something in those eyes which one who saw them never forgot, and still less understood. Sometimes Saidie, Lane's colored waitress, would quail under them and whisper "witches, witches," and Col. Gunton, a friend of the family, who had studied hypnotism under Faria, the Brahmin, would frown and look away, saying to himself, "There are some things a man may not think of and live." Sometimes there was in those eyes a liquid tenderness that melted the soul they looked on, like a melody of infinite pathos; oftener, the sweet melancholy was lightened into the deep blue of a blithesome sky, and once, when John Lane had gazed earnestly into them, he had started in affright as the pupils dilated and the inner blackness was filled with a myriad little, writhing serpents. Then he had rushed from her, whispering fiercely, "No, no, I do not love her, I will not. I love only my wife,-Frances." The incident was ignored, the stream of everyday life flowed over it, but there was a lurking sense of evil, and John Lane felt the reminding touch of the hand of Fate.

Miss Birdsell was standing by his desk chair when Lane entered, and her look of pity changed his stoicism into a choking, resentful grief.

"Sit here, John," she said. "We have just heard of the 'run.' Frances is almost prostrated, but she is brave. I am so sorry. Is there nothing we can do?"

After a moment of weakness, Lane was himself again, the cold, courteous President of the strongest bank in J-———.

"I fear not, Lyra," he answered wearily. "It is very bad. The senseless creditors will not listen to reason. If you can comfort Frances a little, that is the best. I shall hardly be home for dinner. There will be meetings where I must be represented."

He rose, strode around the room a few times, and then sank moodily onto a couch.

Miss Birdsell was very quiet. With her woman-instinct, she knew the tumult in his heart, and she did well to maintain her own composure. Softly she drew a chair opposite Lane, who was staring vacantly at the wall, and took from her bodice a roll of bills.

"It's my fifty thousand," she whispered, "from the 'Merchants.' I thought it might save you."

"It would,—if it were a million," he replied. But a grim smile of gratitude softened the lines of his stern face as he continued, "Keep it for Frances and-yourself. Heaven knows, I thank you though."

He leaned back and looked at the blank wall with halfclosed, wandering eyes while Lyra rose and stood watching him. The tense silence was broken only by the discordant hum from without and the ticking of her chatelaine watch. The banker's gaze wandered from the wall and fixed on her eyes as they played to and fro with a peculiar, nervous gleam. They would glow a dull red, then fade into a pale gray, and Lane's own eyelids would droop a little closer. He seemed drowsy, almost asleep.

Sudden as lightning from a peaceful sky, he felt a wild, infinite, overwhelming sense of something he knew not what. He started up. Lyra was confronting him like a tigress gathered for a spring. Her eyes glared a white heat. Without words he understood. There was a soaring, exulting silence that turned to an exquisite agony.

She cried, "John, what do you say?"

He only shuddered.

"It must be," she continued. "I will go home for my rings and be back in an hour. We can take the 'twelve o'clock' for-oh-Montreal-anywhere!"

He made no answer.

test, leaves no doubt.

The affinity of souls brooks no pro

She started for the door.

"Wait," he ordered, "we must seal the bond."

"No, no," she cried, "I could not face Frances. Wait." As he heard the name, a wave of remorse swept his face, but it was swallowed in a mad tide of passion, and he drew her closer in a burning, blasting kiss. Then she left him.

Lane tried to compose himself. Futile. Futile. His brain was a swirling chaos, his heart a runaway horse, his blood liquid fire. Furiously he paced the room, whispering in a hoarse monotone, "Thank God there are no children."

The office boy entered. "Mr. Chambers wants to know if you will see him at once."

"Yes, yes," he almost shouted, "presently, presently—in a moment."

The moment lengthened to five minutes when the telephone bell tinkled "four," and after an instant's hesitation he grasped the receiver.

It was his wife. She spoke slowly, sadly. "Lyra has just returned, with an attack of her heart trouble. Don't worry for me John, but I'm afraid she is dead. Still I am brave, dear, and we have each other to

The receiver dropped from his nerveless hand, and he fell into a chair, his lips drawn tight, his dry, bloodshot eyes staring frightfully. In a delirium of agony he cursed God. "Oh," he shrieked, "I have given my soul for a woman, and you, God, have robbed me."

He rushed out, with a strength new-born of mania, his hair dishevelled, his mouth working horribly in a paroxysm

of pain.

The awe-stricken crowd parted before him. trouble," was the murmur.

lance.

"Broken with The cashier rang for an ambu

No one hindering, Lane sprang out into the street. He saw the black pall settling over the horde of grinning skeletons, and from wall to wall he heard reverberating in an awful monotone, "And-he-went-out-and-it-wasnight."

Bradley A. Welch.