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To Him Who Waits

Short Stories

"Fox-in-the-Morning"

A Bird of Bagdad

A Blackjack Bargainer

A Call Loan

A Chaparral Christmas Gift

A Chaparral Prince

A Comedy in Rubber

A Cosmopolite in a Cafe

A Departmental Case

A Dinner at--------*

A Double-Dyed Deceiver

A Fog in Santone

A Harlem Tragedy

A Lickpenny Lover

A Little Local Colour

A Little Talk about Mobs

A Madison Square Arabian Night

A Matter of Mean Elevation

A Midsummer Knight's Dream

A Midsummer Masquerade

A Municipal Report

A Newspaper Story

A Night in New Arabia

A Philistine in Bohemia

A Poor Rule

A Ramble in Aphasia

A Retrieved Reformation

A Ruler of Men

A Sacrifice Hit

A Service of Love

A Snapshot at the President

A Strange Story

A Technical Error

A Tempered Wind

According to Their Lights

After Twenty Years

An Adjustment of Nature

An Afternoon Miracle

An Apology

An Unfinished Christmas Story

An Unfinished Story

Aristocracy Versus Hash

Art and the Bronco

At Arms With Morpheus

Babes in the Jungle

Best-Seller

Between Rounds

Bexar Scrip No. 2692

Blind Man's Holiday

Brickdust Row

Buried Treasure

By Courier

Calloway's Code

Caught

Cherchez La Femme

Christmas by Injunction

Compliments of the Season

Confessions of a Humorist

Conscience in Art

Cupid a La Carte

Cupid's Exile Number Two

Dickey

Dougherty's Eye-Opener

Elsie in New York

Extradited from Bohemia

Fickle Fortune or How Gladys Hustled

Friends in San Rosario

From Each According to His Ability

From the Cabby's Seat

Georgia's Ruling

Girl

He Also Serves

Hearts and Crosses

Hearts and Hands

Helping the Other Fellow

Holding Up a Train

Hostages to Momus

Hygeia at the Solito

Innocents of Broadway

Jeff Peters as a Personal Magnet

Jimmy Hayes and Muriel

Law and Order

Let Me Feel Your Pulse

Little Speck in Garnered Fruit

Lord Oakhurst's Curse

Lost on Dress Parade

Madame Bo-Peep, of the Ranches

Makes the Whole World Kin

Mammon and the Archer

Man About Town

Masters of Arts

Memoirs of a Yellow Dog

Modern Rural Sports

Money Maze

Nemesis and the Candy Man

New York by Camp Fire Light

Next to Reading Matter

No Story

October and June

On Behalf of the Management

One Dollar's Worth

One Thousand Dollars

Out of Nazareth

Past One at Rooney's

Phoebe

Proof of the Pudding

Psyche and the Pskyscraper

Queries and Answers

Roads of Destiny

Roses, Ruses and Romance

Rouge et Noir

Round the Circle

Rus in Urbe

Schools and Schools

Seats of the Haughty

Shearing the Wolf

Ships

Shoes

Sisters of the Golden Circle

Smith

Sociology in Serge and Straw

Sound and Fury

Springtime a La Carte

Squaring the Circle

Strictly Business

Strictly Business

Suite Homes and Their Romance

Telemachus, Friend

The Admiral

The Adventures of Shamrock Jolnes

The Assessor of Success

The Atavism of John Tom Little Bear

The Badge of Policeman O'Roon

The Brief Debut of Tildy

The Buyer From Cactus City

The Caballero's Way

The Cactus

The Caliph and the Cad

The Caliph, Cupid and the Clock

The Call of the Tame

The Chair of Philanthromathematics

The Champion of the Weather

The Church with an Overshot-Wheel

The City of Dreadful Night

The Clarion Call

The Coming-Out of Maggie

The Complete Life of John Hopkins

The Cop and the Anthem

The Count and the Wedding Guest

The Country of Elusion

The Day Resurgent

The Day We Celebrate

The Defeat of the City

The Detective Detector

The Diamond of Kali

The Discounters of Money

The Dog and the Playlet

The Door of Unrest

The Dream

The Duel

The Duplicity of Hargraves

The Easter of the Soul

The Emancipation of Billy

The Enchanted Kiss

The Enchanted Profile

The Ethics of Pig

The Exact Science of Matrimony

The Ferry of Unfulfilment

The Fifth Wheel

The Flag Paramount

The Fool-Killer

The Foreign Policy of Company 99

The Fourth in Salvador

The Friendly Call

The Furnished Room

The Gift of the Magi

The Girl and the Graft

The Girl and the Habit

The Gold That Glittered

The Greater Coney

The Green Door

The Guardian of the Accolade

The Guilty Party - An East Side Tragedy

The Halberdier of the Little Rheinschloss

The Hand that Riles the World

The Handbook of Hymen

The Harbinger

The Head-Hunter

The Hiding of Black Bill

The Higher Abdication

The Higher Pragmatism

The Hypotheses of Failure

The Indian Summer of Dry Valley Johnson

The Lady Higher Up

The Last Leaf

The Last of the Troubadours

The Lonesome Road

The Lost Blend

The Lotus And The Bottle

The Love-Philtre of Ikey Schoenstein

The Making of a New Yorker

The Man Higher Up

The Marionettes

The Marquis and Miss Sally

The Marry Month of May

The Memento

The Missing Chord

The Moment of Victory

The Octopus Marooned

The Passing of Black Eagle

The Pendulum

The Phonograph and the Graft

The Pimienta Pancakes

The Plutonian Fire

The Poet and the Peasant

The Pride of the Cities

The Princess and the Puma

The Prisoner of Zembla

The Proem

The Purple Dress

The Ransom of Mack

The Ransom of Red Chief

The Rathskeller and the Rose

The Red Roses of Tonia

The Reformation of Calliope

The Remnants of the Code

The Renaissance at Charleroi

The Roads We Take

The Robe of Peace

The Romance of a Busy Broker

The Rose of Dixie

The Rubaiyat of a Scotch Highball

The Rubber Plant's Story

The Shamrock and the Palm

The Shocks of Doom

The Skylight Room

The Sleuths

The Snow Man

The Social Triangle

The Song and the Sergeant

The Sparrows in Madison Square

The Sphinx Apple

The Tale of a Tainted Tenner

The Theory and the Hound

The Thing's the Play

The Third Ingredient

The Trimmed Lamp

The Unknown Quantity

The Unprofitable Servant

The Venturers

The Vitagraphoscope

The Voice of the City

The Whirligig of Life

The World and the Door

Thimble, Thimble

Tictocq

To Him Who Waits

Tobin's Palm

Tommy's Burglar

Tracked to Doom

Transformation of Martin Burney

Transients in Arcadia

Two Recalls

Two Renegades

Two Thanksgiving Day Gentlemen

Ulysses and the Dogman

Vanity and Some Sables

What You Want

While the Auto Waits

Whistling Dick's Christmas Stocking

Witches' Loaves







The Hermit of the Hudson was hustling about his cave with unusual
animation.

The cave was on or in the top of a little spur of the Catskills that
had strayed down to the river's edge, and, not having a ferry ticket,
had to stop there. The bijou mountains were densely wooded and were
infested by ferocious squirrels and woodpeckers that forever menaced
the summer transients. Like a badly sewn strip of white braid, a
macadamized road ran between the green skirt of the hills and the
foamy lace of the river's edge. A dim path wound from the comfortable
road up a rocky height to the hermit's cave. One mile upstream was
the Viewpoint Inn, to which summer folk from the city came; leaving
cool, electric-fanned apartments that they might be driven about in
burning sunshine, shrieking, in gasoline launches, by spindle-legged
Modreds bearing the blankest of shields.

Train your lorgnette upon the hermit and let your eye receive the
personal touch that shall endear you to the hero.

A man of forty, judging him fairly, with long hair curling at the
ends, dramatic eyes, and a forked brown beard like those that were
imposed upon the West some years ago by self-appointed "divine
healers" who succeeded the grasshopper crop. His outward vesture
appeared to be kind of gunny-sacking cut and made into a garment that
would have made the fortune of a London tailor. His long, well-shaped
fingers, delicate nose, and poise of manner raised him high above the
class of hermits who fear water and bury money in oyster-cans in their
caves in spots indicated by rude crosses chipped in the stone wall
above.

The hermit's home was not altogether a cave. The cave was an addition
to the hermitage, which was a rude hut made of poles daubed with clay
and covered with the best quality of rust-proof zinc roofing.

In the house proper there were stone slabs for seats, a rustic
bookcase made of unplaned poplar planks, and a table formed of a
wooden slab laid across two upright pieces of granite--something
between the furniture of a Druid temple and that of a Broadway
beefsteak dungeon. Hung against the walls were skins of wild animals
purchased in the vicinity of Eighth Street and University Place, New
York.

The rear of the cabin merged into the cave. There the hermit cooked
his meals on a rude stone hearth. With infinite patience and an old
axe he had chopped natural shelves in the rocky walls. On them stood
his stores of flour, bacon, lard, talcum-powder, kerosene, baking-
powder, soda-mint tablets, pepper, salt, and Olivo-Cremo Emulsion for
chaps and roughness of the hands and face.

The hermit had hermited there for ten years. He was an asset of the
Viewpoint Inn. To its guests he was second in interest only to the
Mysterious Echo in the Haunted Glen. And the Lover's Leap beat him
only a few inches, flat-footed. He was known far (but not very wide,
on account of the topography) as a. scholar of brilliant intellect
who had forsworn the world because he had been jilted in a love
affair. Every Saturday night the Viewpoint Inn sent to him
surreptitiously a basket of provisions. He never left the immediate
outskirts of his hermitage. Guests of the inn who visited him said
his store of knowledge, wit, and scintillating philosophy were simply
wonderful, you know.

That summer the Viewpoint Inn was crowded with guests. So, on
Saturday nights, there were extra cans of tomatoes, and sirloin steak,
instead of "rounds," in the hermit's basket.

Now you have the material allegations in the case. So, make way for
Romance.

Evidently the hermit expected a visitor. He carefully combed his long
hair and parted his apostolic beard. When the ninety-eight-cent
alarm-clock on a stone shelf announced the hour of five he picked up
his gunny-sacking skirts, brushed them carefully, gathered an oaken
staff, and strolled slowly into the thick woods that surrounded the
hermitage.

He had not long to wait. Up the faint pathway, slippery with its
carpet of pine-needles, toiled Beatrix, youngest and fairest of the
famous Trenholme sisters. She was all in blue from hat to canvas
pumps, varying in tint from the shade of the tinkle of a bluebell at
daybreak on a spring Saturday to the deep hue of a Monday morning at
nine when the washer-woman has failed to show up.

Beatrix dug her cerulean parasol deep into the pine-needles and
sighed. The hermit, on the q. t., removed a grass burr from the
ankle of one sandalled foot with the big toe of his other one.

She blued--and almost starched and ironed him--with her cobalt eyes.

"It must be so nice," she said in little, tremulous gasps, "to be a
hermit, and have ladies climb mountains to talk to you."

The hermit folded his arms and leaned against a tree. Beatrix, with a
sigh, settled down upon the mat of pine-needles like a bluebird upon
her nest. The hermit followed suit; drawing his feet rather awkwardly
under his gunny-sacking.

"It must be nice to be a mountain," said he, with ponderous lightness,
"and have angels in blue climb up you instead of flying over you."

"Mamma had neuralgia," said Beatrix, "and went to bed, or I couldn't
have come. It's dreadfully hot at that horrid old inn. But we hadn't
the money to go anywhere else this summer."

"Last night," said the hermit, "I climbed to the top of that big rock
above us. I could see the lights of the inn and hear a strain or two
of the music when the wind was right. I imagined you moving
gracefully in the arms of others to the dreamy music of the waltz amid
the fragrance of flowers. Think how lonely I must have been!"

The youngest, handsomest, and poorest of the famous Trenholme sisters
sighed.

"You haven't quite hit it," she said, plaintively. "I was moving
gracefully at the arms of another. Mamma had one of her periodical
attacks of rheumatism in both elbows and shoulders, and I had to rub
them for an hour with that horrid old liniment. I hope you didn't
think that smelled like flowers. You know, there were some West Point
boys and a yachtload of young men from the city at last evening's
weekly dance. I've known mamma to sit by an open window for three
hours with one-half of her registering 85 degrees and the other half
frostbitten, and never sneeze once. But just let a bunch of
ineligibles come around where I am, and she'll begin to swell at the
knuckles and shriek with pain. And I have to take her to her room and
rub her arms. To see mamma dressed you'd be surprised to know the
number of square inches of surface there are to her arms. I think it
must be delightful to be a hermit. That--cassock-- gabardine, isn't
it?--that you wear is so becoming. Do you make it--or them--of course
you must have changes- yourself? And what a blessed relief it must be
to wear sandals instead of shoes! Think how we must suffer--no matter
how small I buy my shoes they always pinch my toes. Oh, why can't
there be lady hermits, too!"

The beautifulest and most adolescent Trenholme sister extended two
slender blue ankles that ended in two enormous blue-silk bows that
almost concealed two fairy Oxfords, also of one of the forty-seven
shades of blue. The hermit, as if impelled by a kind of reflex-
telepathic action, drew his bare toes farther beneath his gunny-
sacking.

"I have heard about the romance of your life," said Miss Trenholme,
softly. "They have it printed on the back of the menu card at the
inn. Was she very beautiful and charming?"

"On the bills of fare!" muttered the hermit; "but what do I care for
the world's babble? Yes, she was of the highest and grandest type.
Then," he continued, "then I thought the world could never contain
another equal to her. So I forsook it and repaired to this mountain
fastness to spend the remainder of my life alone--to devote and
dedicate my remaining years to her memory."

"It's grand," said Miss Trenholme, "absolutely grand. I think a
hermit's life is the ideal one. No bill-collectors calling, no
dressing for dinner--how I'd like to be one! But there's no such luck
for me. If I don't marry this season I honestly believe mamma will
force me into settlement work or trimming hats. It isn't because I'm
getting old or ugly; but we haven't enough money left to butt in at
any of the swell places any more. And I don't want to marry--unless
it's somebody I like. That's why I'd like to be a hermit. Hermits
don't ever marry, do they ?"

"Hundreds of 'em," said the hermit, "when they've found the right
one."

"But they're hermits," said the youngest and beautifulest, "because
they've lost the right one, aren't they?"

"Because they think they have," answered the recluse, fatuously.
"Wisdom comes to one in a mountain cave as well as to one in the world
of 'swells,' as I believe they are called in the argot."

"When one of the 'swells' brings it to them," said Miss Trenholme.
"And my folks are swells. That's the trouble. But there are so many
swells at the seashore in the summer-time that we hardly amount to
more than ripples. So we've had to put all our money into river and
harbor appropriations. We were all girls, you know. There were four
of us. I'm the only surviving one. The others have been married off.
All to money. Mamma is so proud of my sisters. They send her the
loveliest pen-wipers and art calendars every Christmas. I'm the only
one on the market now. I'm forbidden to look at any one who hasn't
money."

"But--" began the hermit.

"But, oh," said the beautifulest "of course hermits have great pots of
gold and doubloons buried somewhere near three great oak-trees. They
all have."

"I have not," said the hermit, regretfully.

"I'm so sorry," said Miss Trenholme. "I always thought they had. I
think I must go now."

Oh, beyond question, she was the beautifulest.

"Fair lady--" began the hermit.

"I am Beatrix Trenholme--some call me Trix," she said. "You must come
to the inn to see me."

"I haven't been a stone's--throw from my cave in ten years," said the
hermit.

"You must come to see me there," she repeated. "Any evening except
Thursday."

The hermit smiled weakly.

"Good-bye," she said, gathering the folds of her pale-blue skirt. "I
shall expect you. But not on Thursday evening, remember."

What an interest it would give to the future menu cards of the
Viewpoint Inn to have these printed lines added to them: "Only once
during the more than ten years of his lonely existence did the
mountain hermit leave his famous cave. That was when he was
irresistibly drawn to the inn by the fascinations of Miss Beatrix
Trenholme, youngest and most beautiful of the celebrated Trenholme
sisters, whose brilliant marriage to--"

Aye, to whom?

The hermit walked back to the hermitage. At the door stood Bob
Binkley, his old friend and companion of the days before he had
renounced the world--Bob, himself, arrayed like the orchids of the
greenhouse in the summer man's polychromatic garb--Bob, the
millionaire, with his fat, firm, smooth, shrewd face, his diamond
rings, sparkling fob-chain, and pleated bosom. He was two years older
than the hermit, and looked five years younger.

"You're Hamp Ellison, in spite of those whiskers and that going-away
bathrobe," he shouted. "I read about you on the bill of fare at the
inn. They've run your biography in between the cheese and 'Not
Responsible for Coats and Umbrellas.' What 'd you do it for, Hamp?
And ten years, too--geewhilikins!"

"You're just the same," said the hermit. "Come in and sit down. Sit
on that limestone rock over there; it's softer than the granite."

"I can't understand it, old man," said Binkley. "I can see how you
could give up a woman for ten years, but not ten years for a woman.
Of course I know why you did it. Everybody does. Edith Carr. She
jilted four or five besides you. But you were the only one who took
to a hole in the ground. The others had recourse to whiskey, the
Klondike, politics, and that similia similibus cure. But, say--Hamp,
Edith Carr was just about the finest woman in the world--high-toned
and proud and noble, and playing her ideals to win at all kinds of
odds. She certainly was a crackerjack."

"After I renounced the world," said the hermit, "I never heard of her
again."

"She married me," said Binkley.

The hermit leaned against the wooden walls of his ante-cave and
wriggled his toes.

"I know how you feel about it," said Binkley. "What else could she
do? There were her four sisters and her mother and old man Carr--you
remember how he put all the money he had into dirigible balloons?
Well, everything was coming down and nothing going up with 'em, as
you might say. Well, I know Edith as well as you do--although I
married her. I was worth a million then, but I've run it up since to
between five and six. It wasn't me she wanted as much as--well, it
was about like this. She had that bunch on her hands, and they had to
be taken care of. Edith married me two months after you did the
ground-squirrel act. I thought she liked me, too, at the time."

"And now?" inquired the recluse.

"We're better friends than ever now. She got a divorce from me two
years ago. Just incompatibility. I didn't put in any defence. Well,
well, well, Hamp, this is certainly a funny dugout you've built here.
But you always were a hero of fiction. Seems like you'd have been the
very one to strike Edith's fancy. Maybe you did--but it's the bank -
roll that catches 'em, my boy--your caves and whiskers won't do it.
Honestly, Hamp, don't you think you've been a darned fool?"

The hermit smiled behind his tangled beard. He was and always had
been so superior to the crude and mercenary Binkley that even his
vulgarities could not anger him. Moreover, his studies and
meditations in his retreat had raised him far above the little
vanities of the world. His little mountain-side had been almost an
Olympus, over the edge of which he saw, smiling, the bolts hurled in
the valleys of man below. Had his ten years of renunciation, of
thought, of devotion to an ideal, of living scorn of a sordid world,
been in vain? Up from the world had come to him the youngest and
beautifulest--fairer than Edith--one and three-seventh times lovelier
than the seven-years-served Rachel. So the hermit smiled in his
beard.

When Binkley had relieved the hermitage from the blot of his presence
and the first faint star showed above the pines, the hermit got the
can of baking-powder from his cupboard. He still smiled behind his
beard.

There was a slight rustle in the doorway. There stood Edith Carr,
with all the added beauty and stateliness and noble bearing that ten
years had brought her.

She was never one to chatter. She looked at the hermit with her
large, thinking, dark eyes. The hermit stood still, surprised into a
pose as motionless as her own. Only his subconscious sense of the
fitness of things caused him to turn the baking-powder can slowly in
his hands until its red label was hidden against his bosom.

"I am stopping at the inn," said Edith, in low but clear tones. "I
heard of you there. I told myself that I must see you. I want to ask
your forgiveness. I sold my happiness for money. There were others
to be provided for--but that does not excuse me. I just wanted to see
you and ask your forgiveness. You have lived here ten years, they
tell me, cherishing my memory! I was blind, Hampton. I could not see
then that all the money in the world cannot weigh in the scales
against a faithful heart. If--but it is too late now, of course."

Her assertion was a question clothed as best it could be in a loving
woman's pride. But through the thin disguise the hermit saw easily
that his lady had come back to him--if he chose. He had won a golden
crown--if it pleased him to take it. The reward of his decade of
faithfulness was ready for his hand--if he desired to stretch it
forth.


For the space of one minute the old enchantment shone upon him with a
reflected radiance. And then by turns he felt the manly sensations of
indignation at having been discarded, and of repugnance at having
been--as it were--sought again. And last of all--how strange that it
should have come at last!--the pale-blue vision of the beautifulest of
the Trenholme sisters illuminated his mind's eye and left him without
a waver.

"It is too late," he said, in deep tones, pressing the baking-powder
can against his heart.

Once she turned after she had gone slowly twenty yards down the path.
The hermit had begun to twist the lid off his can, but he hid it again
under his sacking robe. He could see her great eyes shining sadly
through the twilight; but he stood inflexible in the doorway of his
shack and made no sign.


Just as the moon rose on Thursday evening the hermit was seized by the
world-madness.

Up from the inn, fainter than the horns of elf-land, came now and then
a few bars of music played by the casino band. The Hudson was
broadened by the night into an illimitable sea--those lights, dimly
seen on its opposite shore, were not beacons for prosaic trolley-
lines, but low-set stars millions of miles away. The waters in front
of the inn were gay with fireflies--or were they motor-boats, smelling
of gasoline and oil? Once the hermit had known these things and had
sported with Amaryllis in the shade of the red-and-white-striped
awnings. But for ten years he had turned a heedless ear to these far-
off echoes of a frivolous world. But to-night there was something
wrong.

The casino band was playing a waltz--a waltz. What a fool he had been
to tear deliberately ten years of his life from the calendar of
existence for one who had given him up for the false joys that wealth-
-"tum ti tum ti tum ti"--how did that waltz go? But those years had
not been sacrificed--had they not brought him the star and pearl of
all the world, the youngest and beautifulest of--
"But do not come on Thursday evening," she had insisted. Perhaps by
now she would be moving slowly and gracefully to the strains of that
waltz, held closely by West-Pointers or city commuters, while he, who
had read in her eyes things that had recompensed him for ten lost
years of life, moped like some wild animal in its mountain den. Why
should--"

"Damn it," said the hermit, suddenly, "I'll do it!"

He threw down his Marcus Aurelius and threw off his gunny-sack toga.
he dragged a dust-covered trunk from a corner of the cave, and with
difficulty wrenched open its lid.

Candles he had in plenty, and the cave was soon aglow. Clothes--ten
years old in cut--scissors, razors, hats, shoes, all his discarded
attire and belongings, were dragged ruthlessly from their renunciatory
rest and strewn about in painful disorder.

A pair of scissors soon reduced his beard sufficiently for the dulled
razors to perform approximately their office. Cutting his own hair
was beyond the hermit's skill. So he only combed and brushed it
backward as smoothly as he could. Charity forbids us to consider the
heartburnings and exertions of one so long removed from haberdashery
and society.

At the last the hermit went to an inner corner of his cave and began
to dig in the soft earth with a long iron spoon. Out of the cavity he
thus made he drew a tin can, and out of the can three thousand dollars
in bills, tightly rolled and wrapped in oiled silk. He was a real
hermit, as this may assure you.

You may take a brief look at him as he hastens down the little
mountain-side. A long, wrinkled black frock-coat reached to his
calves. White duck trousers, unacquainted with the tailor's goose, a
pink shirt, white standing collar with brilliant blue butterfly tie,
and buttoned congress gaiters. But think, sir and madam--ten years!
>From beneath a narrow-brimmed straw hat with a striped band flowed his
hair. Seeing him, with all your shrewdness you could not have guessed
him. You would have said that he played Hamlet--or the tuba--or
pinochle--you would never have laid your hand on your heart and said:
"He is a hermit who lived ten years in a cave for love of one lady--to
win another."

The dancing pavilion extended above the waters of the river. Gay
lanterns and frosted electric globes shed a soft glamour within it. A
hundred ladies and gentlemen from the inn and summer cottages flitted
in and about it. To the left of the dusty roadway down which the
hermit had tramped were the inn and grill-room. Something seemed to
be on there, too. The windows were brilliantly lighted, and music was
playing--music different from the two-steps and waltzes of the casino
band.

A negro man wearing a white jacket came through the iron gate, with
its immense granite posts and wrought-iron lamp-holders.

"What is going on here to-night?" asked the hermit.

"Well, sah," said the servitor, "dey is having de reg'lar Thursday-
evenin' dance in de casino. And in de grill-room dere's a beefsteak
dinner, sah."

The hermit glanced up at the inn on the hillside whence burst suddenly
a triumphant strain of splendid harmony.

"And up there," said he, "they are playing Mendelssohn--what is going
on up there?"

"Up in de inn," said the dusky one, "dey is a weddin' goin' on. Mr.
Binkley, a mighty rich man, am marryin' Miss Trenholme, sah--de young
lady who am quite de belle of de place, sah."




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