and was still familiarly called by his associates, belonged to that type of boy who could have easily stood at the head of his class but preferred to devote his time to base-ball and the extermination of all the rabbits and trout in the neighboring territory. Again, when graduation day came at the end of his college career he was content to be the lowest of his class to receive a degree and bore no malice to the young man who delivered the valedictory address, although Tommy, as well as the professors, knew that it was he who should have had that privilege. It was at Class-Day that he received his reward, for the college student regards laziness as no sin and hates a "grind." And so when Tommy came on the platform that day to close his college life with a few jocular remarks about the president and the professors of his Alma Mater he received such an ovation as the campus had never known before. It was that kind of an ovation that lasts a very long time, and begins with hand-clapping and ends with the men standing on their chairs and cheering and throwing hats high in the air, and the old ladies who have sons of their own and the young ladies who have brothers and sweethearts alternately waving their handkerchiefs aloft and drying their eyes. There were even gray-haired professors that day who were afterward accused of having joined in a college yell. For four years Tommy Carter had stood for all that was honest and clean in sport and out of it. On the field he was all grit and fight, but when the game was over there seemed to be nothing left but a woman's heart and a hand that was forever being held out to someone. Whatever the stress and however heavy the weather, the sun, at least for Tommy, was always shining. He joked about the bad coffee at breakfast, and in the classroom a problem in trigonometry was not without its element of humor, and at night he turned low the wick of his midnight oil and went about from room to room, staying just long enough to smoke a pipe, tell a few stories, and thoroughly corrupt any idea of serious study. The Cinderella Club held their Christmas Eve dinner at a rather elaborate shooting-box several miles from the town. The event was so well known that no other memher would have visited the club-house that night even had he felt inclined to do so, and so the five men always had the whole place to themselves, and used it entirely as they saw fit. Of course the dinner itself was the chief event. The table was spread in the hall, which formed the body of the house, and the steward always arranged that the feast should be worthy of the occasion. The menu never varied-there was a special lot of oysters from Massachusetts and a crate of terrapin from Maryland, while the clear soup and the roast pig were of home production. And then to top off with there was a blazing pudding carried in by the chief steward, who proudly held himself responsible for its being. As an accompaniment to all this, there were special vintages of wines carefully sought out by four of the members during the year and subscribed to the feast as personal offerings. The fifth member was Tommy, and to him was allowed the honor of supplying the punch a most wonderful concoction of his own brew and a fitting climax to a feast worthy of the club and the Yuletide season, when all else must give way to good cheer. After the dinner was over and the room had become sufficiently dense with grayblue tobacco smoke and the servants had been dismissed, each member made a little speech in which was combined all the humor he had accumulated during the past year and each ended with a toast, usually of an intimate and sentimental quality. This function over, the members adjourned to the end of the room, where a curtain was withdrawn, disclosing a miniature Christmas tree laden with more or less humorous gifts from each of the members to the four others, and in addition there were real gifts for the wives at home which came in sealed packages and which were carried home unbroken. The tree was the last of the formalities, and this once ended, the old friends sat about the fireplace and told stories or followed Tommy Carter to the piano and joined in the choruses of their college life or listened to him sing the comic songs of the present day. And so for a few hours the men of business forgot their cares and responsibilities and for the nonce became boys again. But as the town clock struck midnight the sleighs were ordered (for this was one of those happy towns where they always have a white Christmas) and the five friends said their good-nights and started for their homes. That the members had never failed to bring their reunion to a happy close at twelve o'clock was their proudest boast and was the tradition which had given the club its present name. The meeting just ended had been voted by all to have been the most entirely successful celebration the club had ever known. The spirit of good-fellowship and loyalty had seemed just a little more evident than ever before and merriment ran high from the very first of the dinner until Tommy had finished his last song and closed down the piano on the stroke of midnight. Always the chief merrymaker and the real life of the meetings, he had on this occasion far outshone any of his previous efforts. His speech, which was always the last because it was sure to be the best, was full of the wit and anecdote and gentle satire which had made him famous at college and had given him his present unique position as an after-dinner speaker, and when he came to his toast, which was to the ladies, he turned from humor to a certain sweet pathos-a gentle appreciation of the wives at home who had in their hearts a blind confidence in the significance of Christmas Day, and who were even then decorating the trees and making such preparations that their sleeping children should awake on the morrow and learn to look upon it as the one day of all the year. And after dinner was over it was Tommy who told the best of the stories and led the choruses and sang the latest songs in his own inimitable way. One of the members, the President of the bank in which Tommy was employed, believed that he, at least, could account for the great exuberance of his receiving teller. The bank happened to be one of those institutions which pay moderate salaries and give large Christmas presents to their employees. The past year had been one of unusual prosperity, and the directors had decided to give the employees a whole year's salary as a gift instead of the twenty-five or fifty per cent. which had always been the custom. And so just before the dinner had been served the President had called Tommy aside and had presented him with an envelope containing four crisp one thousand dollar notes, which in itself seemed to the President to supply ample excuse for Carter's excess of high spirits. On his return home Tommy had told his young wife of the unexpectedly large gift from the bank directors, and then after a brief description of the events of the annual banquet had gone to bed, apparently as happy and content as he had ever been in his life. The next morning after breakfast the Carters exchanged their Christmas gifts, and among the rest Tommy gave his wife two of the four thousand-dollar notes and asked her to deposit them to her own account and to spend it when and how she saw fit. They had no children of their own. but Mrs. Carter always dressed a tree for some of the poorer children in the neighborhood and Tommy acted as master of ceremonies at the distribution of the candy and toys. This he, did as usual, but when once his duty had been performed he complained of not feeling well and protested that the noisy excitement of the children annoyed him. He put on his hat and overcoat, and having kissed his wife, told her that he was going out for a long walk in the cool air. Mrs. Carter could not understand why her husband did not come back to lunch, and after waiting for his return until late in the afternoon she sent for one of his men friends who had been with him the night previous and told him of her husband's unaccountable disappearance. The clubs and every resort where Tommy was known were searched, but no trace of him could be found. That night there was a meeting of the Cinderella Club at his home, and Mrs. Carter took the place of her husband. Women who are brought up in ease and comparative luxury and who always have had everything done for them all their lives have occasionally a way of rising to a crisis in a way that surprises and dumfounds men who have been trained to take the initiative. That is the kind of woman Mrs. Carter proved herself to be, and she rose to the crisis of her life with all the strength that often lies so long dormant in the fibre of a fine woman. It was the wife who arranged the conduct of the search for her husband; it was she who requested that an immediate investigation be made of his affairs at the bank, and it was she who demanded that the police confine their operations to the limits of the town in which he had lived. Under ordinary circumstances, she argued that he would not have left the city without telling her, and if he had met with foul play the act must have occurred in his own town. If, on the other hand, he had voluntarily left his home, then it was not for her to ask to have him brought back. That he was laboring under any delusion or that his mind was in any way affected was not for a moment considered, by either his wife or his friends. He had not led the life of the man who becomes insane and the idea of suicide would be the last to have occurred to him. Tommy Carter had disappeared from his home and apparently from the face of the earth just as completely as if he had died and been buried. The police could find no clue and his friends and family no possible reason for his absence. His books at the bank were in perfect order and his home life was without a flaw. If he had not made a great deal of money in his short. business career, it had been largely due to the fact that he found so much happiness and contentment in life without riches. His loss in a social way, at least, was of much import in his own town, for he was a man who was beloved by everyone who knew him, and there were very few, rich or poor, who did not know him. There were many theories advanced and denied and refuted, and several times there came reports of his having been seen in different cities in the East, but the rumors were never authenticated and Mrs. Carter always refused to have them investigated. If she had a theory herself it is quite certain she had never told anyone-not even her husband's best friends, who had proved her best friends, too, and who had watched over her with the care of a father for his own child. Carter's place at the bank had been temporarily taken by another and the honorary positions he held in the city life had gradually become filled. But everyone knew that there was one place that was not filled and never would be, and that was Tommy's place in his own home. They called her "the Widow" now, and even although she never spoke of Tommy they knew that every night and every morning she hoped and longed and prayed that he would come back and with a word explain it all away and begin life over again, not a better life, but just the same old life he had broken off that Christmas morning. And so the weeks and months passed on, and there came another Christmas Eve and the Cinderella Club met once more at the The men were sipping their coffee and "We have all done our best," began the bank president, "to carry off this annual dinner with the good-will and the fun which have always added so much to the previous efforts of our little club. And, as we all know deep down in our hearts, we have signally failed, and we have failed through no fault of our own. No dinner without Tommy Carter could be quite the same as one with him. Were we at all certain that he is no longer among the living I am quite sure that the one toast of the evening would be to his memory. But we are not sure that he is dead. I, at least, wish I were sure of it. I have tried very hard to imagine circumstances which would make the desertion of his wife and his friends possible, even excusable, and I have failed. But my lost love and admiration for the man, and I am sure I speak for all of you, has but been added to my devotion and love for the Widow.' There is no act of kindness and sympathy of which the old friends of her husband could be capable which she has not proved to be her rightful inheritance. As we have missed him tonight, so has she suffered every day and every night, and so my toast is to the best of women-'the Widow.'" The men pushed back their chairs and 'rising lifted their glasses, and as they did so the door was pushed wide open and Tommy Carter shuffled in. For a moment he stopped to close the door against the piercing wind and the flying snow of the storm. Then he walked over to the fireplace and stood there shivering in the light of the burning logs. There seemed to be little left of the Tommy Carter they had known of old. His ragged clothes hung limply on the shrunken figure, and in place of the clean-shaven smiling face there was a rough, uncouth beard, and his skin was parched and tightly drawn. The four men resumed their seats and watched the miserable figure at the fireplace gradually thaw out and return to a semblance of the living. With a shambling gait, Tommy approached the table and dropped into the vacant chair. One of the men shoved a bottle of whiskey in front of him and he poured out half a tumbler of the liquor and partly raised it to his parched ips. Some of the old light came into his eyes as he looked into the tumbler and his features broke into the ghastly semblance of a smile. Then he nodded his head, and putting the glass on the table, he glanced furtively at the faces of the four men about him. "I guess I won't drink that yet," he whispered. "Carter," said the bank president, we were just about to drink the health of one who in the time of unusual adversity has proved herself a very remarkable woman. I mean your wife." Carter nodded and pushed the glass of whiskey a little farther from him. For a few moments there was silence, which was finally broken by the president. "Have you anything to tell us, Carter?" "I know what you mean," said Tommy; you mean has the prisoner anything to say before you pass sentence. I understand. I'm the prisoner, and you are the judge and jury. Well, that's why I'm here. I've given myself up and I want to tell my story; but don't make any mistake-it's not a defence." Carter, with his elbows resting heavily on the table, began to talk in a whisper, but as he continued his voice gained in volume and power, and as the huskiness disappeared there came back the old tones in the voice his friends had loved so well. "A year ago to-night," he began, "I drove home from here in one of your sleighs, and when the owner got out at his place the coachman took me to my cottage around the corner. I don't know why, but for the first time in my life I resented the use of another man's horse and I resented his fine house. My own little place seemed absurdly small and inadequate, and after my wife had gone to bed I sat alone smoking and hating everything about me. I hated the things actually in the room, and I hated even the vacant spaces because I wanted to fill them with things I couldn't afford to buy. I hated the poor growing plants I had bought for my wife for Christmas and I could have wrung the neck of the canary who kept singing cheerfully although he was in a cage. For five hours I had been making you all happy; for five hours I had been master, and I imagined I knew the thought that had been in every one of your minds that night. You all wondered that in my life I had not taken advantage of the brains that God had given me instead of being left behind by every fool that wanted to pass me. There was never a man who all through his life has had greater success predicted for him than I have had, and there is no one who has failed so absolutely. You know how it was at school, and you know how it was at college, and you know, God help me, how it has been since then. It was I who was to have the success; and yet when the race began it was I who stood by and watched you all pass me one by one and leave me far behind. Away from my own home I had known success—when I lived in the outside world I had been somebodyat least so it seemed to me that night—and I decided that I would go away into a world that knew my worth and where I should get my deserts. The love of my wife and my friends had left me, and in its place had come a great longing to play a big part in the big world. Before I went to bed I |