ope of a rocky ravine in the Far West. Alone in a foul den of the
underworld she held at bay a dozen villainous Asiatics. Down the fire
escape of a great New York hotel she made a perilous way. From the
shrouds of a tossing ship she was about to plunge to a watery release
from the persecutor who was almost upon her. Upon the roof of the Fifth
Avenue mansion of her scoundrelly guardian in the great city of New
York she was gaining the friendly projection of a cornice from which she
could leap and again escape death--even a fate worse than death, for the
girl was pursued from all sorts of base motives. This time, friendless
and alone in profligate New York, she would leap from the cornice to
the branches of the great eucalyptus tree that grew hard by. Unnerving
performances like these were a constant inspiration to Merton Gill.
He knew that he was not yet fit to act in such scenes--to appear
opportunely in the last reel of each installment and save Hortense for
the next one. But he was confident a day would come.

On the same wall he faced also a series of photographs of himself.
These were stills to be one day shown to a director who would thereupon
perceive his screen merits. There was Merton in the natty belted coat,
with his hair slicked back in the approved mode and a smile upon his
face; a happy, careless college youth. There was Merton in tennis
flannels, his hair nicely disarranged, jauntily holding a borrowed
racquet. Here he was in a trench coat and the cap of a lieutenant, grim
of face, the jaw set, holding a revolver upon someone unpictured; there
in a wide-collared sport shirt lolling negligently upon a bench after a
hard game of polo or something. Again he appeared in evening dress, two
straightened fingers resting against his left temple. Underneath this
was written in a running, angular, distinguished hand, "Very truly
yours, Clifford Armytage." This, and prints of it similarly inscribed,
would one day go to unknown admirers who besought him for likenesses of
himself.

But Merton lost no time in scanning these pictorial triumphs. He was
turning the pages of the magazines he had brought, his first hasty
search being for new photographs of his heroine. He was quickly
rewarded. Silver Screenings proffered some fresh views of Beulah Baxter,
not in dangerous moments, but revealing certain quieter aspects of her
wondrous life. In her kitchen, apron clad, she stirred something. In her
lofty music room she was se