husbands without question since the wedding day, the habit is fixed. They had no fear that one woman could cause a revolution in the matrimonial life of the community. Mary Hope was not exactly a woman, anyhow. She was a kind of freak, from which they would be delivered at the end of the season. The whole thing was a joke. Even the guests of the hotel tittered over it when Miss Hope's back was turned. That is to say, they tittered most of the time.

Still, there was a ripple of excitement when a strange guest arrived on Friday, the fourteenth, at the hotel. He was neither a drummer nor a gentleman. He kept to his room, and had the nose-pointing expression of a bird-dog that has at last flushed a covey.

The covey was somewhere on the mountain above the hotel. The window of his room on the first floor commanded a view of the ravine which only began to smoke when all the world dissolved in the blue haze of twilight.

The

The night came on, starlit, serene. village of Arden gradually faded, yet not quite, for the lights burned down there in many windows. This was unusual. The people were especially primitive in their bedtime habits. As a rule, the whole town was in darkness by nine o'clock.

The explanation was that on this dreadful Friday night Arden passed quietly and mysteriously into a state of transient widowhood. Not a man in it came home to his supper. For the first time in their married life, Mrs. Beasley sat beside her front window waiting for Oliver while the coffee-pot simmered then cooled on the back of the stove. Mary Agnew rocked her little Berryman to sleep with tears in her eyes. for the elder Berryman, whom she had not seen since she refused to speak to him at the breakfast-table. Even Sally Bowman waited in vain for her faithful Thomas, who was the one meek husband to be found in the village.

Ten o'clock came and passed. All the guests at the hotel had retired except four who sat around the table upon the veranda playing bridge. Mary Hope was one of these. Having done all she could, she was ready to take some diversion. She played for "blood" when she played cards at all, and she was absorbed in the game.

The widows had also retired by this time, but not to sleep. Each lay with eyes widened in the darkness, thinking according to

her nature upon the absence of her husband. Mrs. Beasley was sure something had happened to Oliver. He was a man of methodical habits, very fat, and a good sleeper. Mary Agnew was reasonably sure of what had happened to her Berryman. She expected to hear his staggering feet upon the door-step every moment. Sally Bowman could not account for Thomas's deflection, but she was determined to make him pay for it.

Suddenly the air was rent by an unearthly unanimous yell, accompanied with a terrific. rumbling. Dogs barked, geese cackled, roosters crowed. Far down in the town young children awakened out of their innocent bread-and-milk slumbers and added their wails to the general confusion. It was as if nature had had a fit in the dark.

The bridge-players leaped to their feet, scattering cards in all directions. They beheld a strange procession thundering down the mountain trail toward the hotel: a hundred men, some riding double, all reeling and whooping.

The procession halted. Mary stood alone, her companions having fled. There was a crash of glass behind her as some one leaped upon the veranda. The next instant she beheld the strange guest dragged forth. Before she had time to scream, if she could have screamed, she saw him flung upon the back of the plunging bay stallion behind Logan Hawk, and she heard the command laughingly given him, "Hold tight, you, or you'll be trampled to death!"

Hawk guided his plunging steed down into the town. They disappeared in a whirlwind of dust. But Mary could still hear the gibes flung from before and behind. at the revenue officer. She stood transfixed with horror. She had been guilty of sending to Atlanta for this man. Now she supposed he would be lynched. Over and above her terror she felt the pang of the mirthless smile with which Logan had saluted her as he passed.

The remainder of the night was spent in tears by the women of Arden. They understood that this midnight orgy was the defiance offered in advance by the men in case they carried out their threat to serve no more in obedience until the still was destroyed. They were conscience-stricken. The first thing a faithful wife does when her husband transgresses outrageously is to search herself for an excuse for him. They searched themselves; they remembered how

for weeks they had entertained strange gods. They resolved to cast out Mary Hope. She might be a good woman, but she was misguided, never having been married. You cannot know the devious, ruthless nature of a man unless you are married. They began to pity their husbands, driven to drink and desperation by their unkindness, their strange insubordination. They were astonished that they ever could have been induced to contemplate such dangerous measures. The only way to manage a man at all was as you manage any other defective creature, by kindness and cajolery. They returned sobbing to their "sphere," each one resolved to do better, to be more patient and long-suffering.

The sacrificial instinct is too highly developed in all good women. It is a form of cowardice into which they escape from lack of strength. They surrender righteousness for the sake of peace, and call it wifely piety. This is why it is foolish ever to believe women will have their "rights." It is their nature to yield them. About the only thing in the world which they will not surrender is their virtue. And you can get that by marrying them. A man can force his wife to outrage every instinct of righteousness she possesses, without disturbing her conscience.

Miss Hope was not without the wisdom of defeat. She perceived that her plans had miscarried, that the women of Arden did not have sufficient influence over their mankind to force a reform, that Hawk held the situation in his hand, and that the pressure of public sentiment was for him rather than against him.

On Saturday morning she forced herself to go down into the village. She met a company of tragically submissive women in Beasley's store. Mrs. Beasley was behind. the counter, waiting on customers. Oliver was not well enough to be out, she explained, looking accusatively at Miss Hope. "Berryman ain't well neither. He can't lift his head off the pillow this morning, Mary Agnew added, in aggrieved tones.

"Look here, Miss Hope," exclaimed Sally Bowman, her double chin trembling with emotion, her face settled in a mighty resolve.

"Yes, Mrs. Bowman?" answered Mary. "The Women's Welfare League is dissolved! I reckon you've done the best you knowed, but you don't know nothing about

men, and we're ashamed of ourselves, following after you. My Thomas never was drunk before in his life, and this morning he's that upset from the liquor he took last night that he can't take nothing but milk, and he can't hold that! It all come from us tryin' to be something unnatural and unbecoming wives and mothers," she concluded in a shriek of grief and rage.

"You'll have to get a man of your own before you understand some things," explained Mrs. Beasley.

"We ain't saying the men in this valley are all they ought to be, you understand, but it's no use nagging 'em into being worse than they have been," Sally put in.

"There's nothing will save 'em but for Logan Hawk to git religion or marry a wife that can persuade him!" Mrs. Agnew moaned.

"Persuade!" exclaimed Mary, losing her patience. "He ought to be prosecuted!"

"They say Logan didn't kill the revenue officer, after all; sent him back to Atlanta same way he sent the hotel manager back to Vermont two years ago, kivered with tar and chicken feathers," Sally volunteered.

"If you could just get hold of Logan, Miss Hope, you could do a sight more than setting God-fearing wives agin their husbands." Mrs. Beasley whispered this suggestion over the counter so significantly that Mary blushed red with fury as she replied, "Thank you, I shall leave for Silver City this evening on the express!"

She returned to the hotel and busied herself packing. She was angry and she was mortified. She brushed the tears away only to feel them rise faster. All the time she was pursuing a train of thought quite contrary to her will. She was thinking of Logan Hawk. She perceived that in spite of her disappointment and disgust, she did not wish to leave Arden.

Late in the afternoon she made a toilet, choosing the muslin flowered over with roses instead of the traveling-suit she should have put on. She regarded herself with amazement in the mirror, but received much satisfaction from the image she beheld there. She had known from the first what she meant to do, still she was filled with wonder and some trepidation as she started out.

To operate a wildcat still three men are required two to do the actual work and one to watch. And while the average life

longer than three months, Logan Hawk had maintained his for several, owing to the fact that he had no one to fear except revenue officers, and so far these had feared him more than he did them. The pass Thermopyla was not more impregnable than the place he had chosen, at the head of a ravine that slit two of the tallest hills and issued from a cave at the top.

Behind a clump of laurel halfway up the ravine, and some distance from it, a longlegged mountaineer, clad in khaki overalls the color of the yellow earth, crouched, Winchester in hand, ready to fire his gun at the approach of any suspicious-looking person. This was the signal agreed upon. If a bear had passed this man he would not have shot at it. But if the most innocent-looking, rabbit-hunting youth had appeared upon that hillside he would have discharged the gun at once, and taken to his heels by a circular route that led to the cave.

On this Saturday afternoon Logan sat alone in the gray gloom of his still upon an upturned keg, his Winchester beside him, the stock resting upon the littered earth, the polished barrel leaning against the stone wall. He showed the effects of his leadership. He had not shaved, his eyes were bloodshot. He wore no collar. His clothes were smeared with "mash" and sawdust; his shoes were muddy, and he was in a bad temper. He did not know, he would not say why even to himself, but he had been in a rage for two months. Nothing he did, however devilish, afforded any relief to some inner pressure. After last night's business he had expected to feel better. But as a matter of fact, he had never before experienced this profound sense of hopelessness and depression. He looked about him, boldly hating every object in sight. He wondered what would happen, how he should feel if he quit the business. There was no doubt but that making whiskey in

a wildcat still was straining upon a man's nerves. Still, it was profitable, and had in it that element of defiance which suited his present mood. And after all, it was comparatively safe. Two years had passed now since even the signal had been fired to warn him of danger, and the last time it proved a false alarm.

He lifted a gourd of water to his lips. The report of a rifle rent the air and reverberated from hill to hill. Logan dropped the gourd, leaped forward, seized his Winchester, cocked it, dropped upon one knee at the low entrance of the passage. In the twinkling of an eye his whole nature had undergone a change. He was the aboriginal caveman, ready to defy his enemy, civilization. Nothing is more certain than that any man or woman who entered the pas

sage of the cave then would have have met instant death.

The minutes passed. Not a sound, not the cracking of a twig, broke the tense silence, only the bubbling of the beer in the boiling still and the soft murmur of the water that dripped from the spring in the rocks. At last the sweat broke out upon his face, stood in glistening beads upon his forehead. A dangerous animal can wait indefinitely for the approach of his enemy, because he is able to relax and adjust himself naturally to the situation, but a mere man can never long hold his nerve to the killing point. Murder, even in self-defense, is an instantaneous emotion in him.

As the minutes lapsed into a quarter of an hour, Logan slowly straightened himself. He peered around the ledge of rock that concealed the cave from the passage, and saw nothing but the narrow broken sides of it and the dim light which came through the thick growth of laurels at the entrance. He began to creep noiselessly forward, one hand upon the barrel of his rifle, the other with the forefinger on the trigger. In this manner he came to the entrance and paused again, peering this way and that through the laurels. The sun was hanging a huge red disk above the opposite hills, mottling him with the shadows of a thousand leaves.

Suddenly he straightened up, drew a long breath, and groaned. His expression relaxed and assumed the awful relief of one who by a miracle has escaped committing the most frightful of all crimes.

Not ten feet away he beheld a woman, wearing a long blue cloak over her light dress, seated upon a stone. Her hat lay upon the grass. Between the fingers of the hand that lay in her lap she was idly turning a spray of purple ironweed flowers. The sun shone redly upon the coils of her bright hair. She was gazing down in the valley with the air of an Olympian goddess who had spent the day helping Jove with his thunderbolt and was now resting from her becoming labors. He recognized Mary Hope, and he could not have told whether he was more furious or horrified at the sight of her.

In the first place, how did she come to be there and what did she want? Should he reveal himself? He concluded that if he waited long enough she would go away. Then suddenly he was overwhelmed with the fear that she would go. A dark flush mantled his face. Never before had he seen a woman who excited in him such a fury of

antagonism. Alas! never before had he known one who could all unconsciously set the blood in his veins to such agonizing music. Still, he was resolved to get the better of his mere pulses. He would stay where he was.

All this time his eyes covered her, searched her. Since he was safe by the strength of this last resolve, he was willing to confess the wonder and majesty of her presence. Here sat a woman who might have been a vestal virgin to the sun in the temple of the hills. She might have read oracles by the flight of eagles, with that sublime, far-reaching gaze that she now bent upon the puerile life in the valley below. A gentle wind lifted some loose strands of her bright hair. Logan watched the waving gold mist they made about her head.

"Damn it!" he growled, as his mind reverted to the recent confusion in the valley, "why can't she remain true to the curls on the back of her neck!"

He was startled to see her take up her hat and rise to her feet. Was she going? Well, he was glad of it. That was what he wanted her to do.

No! it was not what he wanted; she should not leave without some explanation of why she came. His very life might be at stake. He made a dozen excusesdenied the one truth-as he parted the branches of laurel and stepped forth.

Mary turned her head, looked at him over her shoulder, and smiled.

When a woman smiles in a certain manner, however unconsciously, she becomes the enigma to man.

Logan addressed himself to this enigma without the ceremony of a salutation. "What are you doing here?" he demanded.

"I am about to leave," she replied, unruffled by his obvious excitement. "What did you come for?" "To see you."

"Where?"

"In there." She turned and waved her hand toward the dark opening in the rocks. "How did you know I was there?" "Everybody in Arden knows.'

"Why didn't you come on in? Were you afraid?"

"No, not afraid." She could not explain to him what she could not explain to herself, why she had come. She knew only that she had come, and that she had meant to enter the still. She had scarcely noticed the rifle. She was very far from realizing that her life was in danger-a thing she