Chapter XXII · A BOOK OF VERSES.

Miss Breen waited a considerable time before she spoke. Nash was so engrossed with his own thoughts that he did not wonder at it.

“Why would Mr. Hooker change the specifications?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I can’t understand what motive might prompt such a thing,” Nash admitted.

“You are in full authority here, aren’t you?” Miss Breen inquired.

Nash nodded. “Absolutely.”

“And this Mr. Hooker always brought you the orders from Los Angeles?”

“Yes. He was acting as a sort of secretary to Sigsbee.”

“This Mr. Sigsbee is one of the aqueduct board,” Miss Breen said. “He also interested himself in Camp Forty-seven. I was given particular orders to watch the work on this camp. I believe he was suspected of crooked dealing.”

“I know he was,” Nash admitted. “It was being carried on while I was under Hooker. I discovered the payroll padding. When I threatened to disclose matters, Sigsbee asked me to call at his Los Angeles office.”

“What happened there?”

“I was given full charge of the camp.”

“And also the full responsibility,” Miss Breen added suddenly. “If anything went wrong, you would be held to account.”

Nash admitted the truth of her statement.

“Didn’t it appear to you that Mr. Sigsbee’s offer at that time was rather—unusual?”

“Yes. I had expected to be discharged. But Sigsbee seemed to be so anxious for me to accept—so sorry that the crooked work had been unearthed. He declared that from then on Camp Forty-seven was to be the model for all others on the construction right of way. He wanted me to run it on that basis, and promised that he would stand by me to the last.”

Miss Breen listened, her face very grave. Finally she said:

“Did you know that Sigsbee was interested in a steel company?”

“I recall now that he mentioned something of the sort,” Nash answered, a sudden suspicion entering his mind.

“I was in Los Angeles day before yesterday,” Miss Breen said. “It was then I notified the authorities. Yesterday I learned that Sigsbee had left for San Francisco, and intended taking a trip to Honolulu. I wondered at the time—now I have ceased to.”

“What do you mean?” Nash demanded, startled by her tone.

“Just this.” Miss Breen spoke rapidly, and with confidence. Apparently she had a more intimate knowledge of Sigsbee than Nash first imagined. The few remarks Nash had dropped had helped to cement together her story. “Camp Forty-seven has long been under suspicion. Sigsbee must have been alarmed—and the first thing he sought to do was to throw all the blame upon another’s shoulders. You happened into the game at an inopportune moment. He closed your mouth by putting you in charge here. Then, to help matters along, he arranged these false specifications, which you blindly followed. He knew discovery was certain, and planned for it. It has happened. Sigsbee is cleared of all blame. Everything will be shifted upon your shoulders, Mr. Nash. The false specifications are missing—the real ones are here. Sigsbee will swear, and Hooker will undoubtedly back him up, that these correct ones were the only ones sent. They’ve dropped you into a cage, and you have sprung the trap.”

Before she had half finished, Nash understood the situation. It came to him swiftly, brutally. Sigsbee’s fawning and Hooker’s honeyed words had been the strings with which he had been led into the trap.

“You’re right, Miss Breen,” he said finally. “I’m caught—and all but helpless. I have not one thing to prove that I——”

The girl interrupted with a cry. “Oh, why, why didn’t I wait until I knew for sure!” she stammered. “I took everything for granted. I thought you guilty. Oh, you can’t remain here, Mr. Nash. I am to blame for it all. You cannot stay here.”

“But wouldn’t it be an admission of guilt to run away?” he asked. “Of course it would. And I don’t intend to do so.”

“Oh, but what chance have you against Sigsbee and his political influence?” she cried.

“I’ll make a chance,” he answered firmly. “I’m innocent. I’ve tried to do what was right. Things can’t be as black as they look.”

Miss Breen walked up and down the floor for an interval; then she stopped.

“There’s one way out of this affair,” she ventured, “and just one.”

Nash nodded. “You mean—we’ve go to get those false specifications! Isn’t that it?”

“Yes. We’ve got to get them. But that does not mean,” she said, changing her tone, “that you are to stay here. You get away before morning. I will try to find Hooker and the papers. Once I have them I will let you know. Then you can return.”

Nash shook his head gravely. “Impossible!”

“Oh, why do you act so foolish?” she demanded. “It may be months before we can locate those specifications. Meanwhile they will hurry the trial, and you’ll be sentenced.”

“I am innocent. What have I to fear?”

“It is the innocent man who always suffers,” she answered bitterly.

“This isn’t New York, Miss Breen,” Nash replied. “They do things differently out here. I’m not afraid.”

Miss Breen sank helplessly to a chair. “Why do you always prate about the East and the West?” she exclaimed. “A crooked job is a crooked job, whether it is staged in Los Angeles or New York. Sigsbee is a shrewd man, and he has laid a shrewd trap. Yet you’re willing to bow submissively, and——” She stopped suddenly.

During her speech her eyes had been upon the crudely built bookcase. Abruptly she drew nearer, forgetting apparently to continue what she had started. Her arm shot out, and she plucked, from the row of other books, the dainty, leather-bound copy of Kipling’s “Barrack-room Ballads”—the book given to Nash by the tramp in Central Park.

She opened it and rapidly thumbed the pages, stopping at the one across which was written a name.

“Where—where did you get this book?” Miss Breen demanded, her voice sounding husky.

Nash smiled. “Why, that book of poems? A panhandler gave it to me one day in Los Angeles,” he replied. “Said he had found it on a bench.”

“In—in Central Park?”

“Yes.”

Her face was curiously white and drawn now. Nash took a step nearer.

“Why are you so interested?” he asked.

“This book—belonged to my brother,” she wavered. “I gave it to him—it was the last thing I——”

“Your brother?” Nash was dumfounded. Many times since the first discovery of the name written in the little book he had turned to it curiously; pondered over it, wondered how and in what way Walter Trask’s volume had crossed the width of the continent to find a lodging place on a bench in Los Angeles. “Walter Trask—is your brother?” he said slowly.

Miss Breen nodded. Her eyes were clouded with tears.

“But the name—how——” began Nash, puzzled.

“My name is Ethel Trask,” she replied. “Because I was—was in this business. I used the other—Miss Breen. I had meant to tell you before.”

“But your brother, Miss Breen—I mean, Miss Trask,” Nash questioned anxiously. “Was he an engineer on the New York Aqueduct?”

“Yes. He worked there—until his death.”

Nash caught his breath—but so light was the act that the girl did not appear to notice.

“Dead?” he asked. “Walter Trask—dead?”

Miss Trask nodded. Nash stood looking down at her, preparing himself for the final question:

“How did he meet his death?”

“He was killed in a brawl.” Miss Trask spoke slowly, painfully, as if the recollection was a bitter one. “One of the other engineers—shot him.”

TO BE CONTINUED.

COVERING A YAWNING MOUTH.

A well-bred man puts his hand over his mouth when he yawns, but not one well-bred man in ten thousand knows why. The reason is this:

Four or five hundred years ago there was a superstition common in Europe that the devil was always lying in wait to enter a man’s body and take possession of him.

Satan generally went in by the mouth, but when he had waited a reasonable time and the man did not open his mouth, the devil made him yawn, and when his mouth was open, jumped down his throat.

So many cases of this kind occurred that the people learned to make the sign of the cross over their mouths whenever they yawned, in order to scare away the devil.

The peasantry in Italy and Spain still adhere to this method, but most other people have dispensed with the cross sign, and keep out the devil by simply placing the hand before the lips. It is a most remarkable survival of a practice after the significance has perished.

A YOUNG FINANCIER.

A certain man, in order to impress business methods on his son early in life, told the youngster that if he would see that the gas bill was paid before a certain day each quarter, he could have the discount for himself.

The boy took very kindly to the idea, and captured the discount every time the bill came in. To his father’s surprise, however, the gas bill began to increase at a remarkable rate. He found one night that his son was burning gas all over the top of the house from ten o’clock until six o’clock the next morning. The youngster had become a Napoleon of finance, and had discovered the fact that the bigger the bill the bigger the discount.

LAST WHITE RHINOCEROS.

A wonderous brute, which only within the present century emerged from the realm of myth into that of scientific knowledge, has within the present year passed into the realm of history. Reports from South Africa declare that the last white rhinoceros has been killed, and that its skeleton, hide, and horn are now being shipped to England to enrich the Natural History Museum. Thus the largest of modern quadrupeds, excepting the elephant, becomes extinct, along with the beautiful quagga, the dodo, the great auk, and other noteworthy members of the animal kingdom which have vanished from the world before the rapacity of man.

HOW A RUBBER FOREST LOOKS.

According to recent accounts of the reckless manner in which forests of rubber trees are destroyed, India rubber will soon be much more scarce and costly than it now is, and when that happens it is probable that some one will invent a substitute. At present, however, it is interesting to know what a recent traveler says of the India-rubber forests of Nicaragua:

“A forest of them may be detected without the eyes of an expert, for they are scarred and dying from the wounds of the machete, the big knife used by the natives. The ordinary specimen of Nicaragua is from fifty to one hundred feet high, and about two feet in diameter.

“The bark is white, and the leaves are oval, with a slight inclination downward. The cuts are made about two feet apart, and usually extend from the ground to the first branch, channels being scored in the sides to lead the juice into a bag. The average yield of a tree is from five to seven gallons of milky fluid.

“This is mixed with the juice of the ‘wisth,’ which hastens congelation. After this operation the crude rubber is baled up and shipped north, to be refined and further prepared for commerce. Another tree, very similar to the rubber, and often mistaken for it, is the cow tree. This yields a liquid very much like milk in taste and appearance.”