ughter,
to hail a suburban trolley upon which they both returned to the home
nest, where the little girl would again languish at the gate, a prey to
any designing city man who might pass.

She seemed so defenceless in her wild-rose beauty, her longing for
pretty clothes and city ways, and yet so capably pro by this opportune
father who appeared to foresee the moment of her flights.

He learned without a tremor that among the triumphs of his inventive
genius had been a machine for making ten--dollar bills, at which the New
York capitalist had exclaimed that the state right for Iowa alone would
bring one hundred thousand dollars. Even more remunerative, it would
seem, had been his other patent--the folding boomerang. The manager of
the largest boomerang factory in Australia stood ready to purchase this
device for ten million dollars. And there was a final view of the little
home after prosperity had come to its inmates so long threatened with
ruin. A sign over the door read "Ye Olde Fashioned Gifte Shoppe," and
under it, flaunted to the wayside, was the severely simple trade-device
of a high boot.

These things he now knew were to be expected among the deft infamies
of a Buckeye comedy. But the present piece held in store for him a
complication that, despite his already rich experience of Buckeye
methods, caused him distressing periods of heat and cold while he
watched its incredible unfolding. Early in the piece, indeed, he had
begun to suspect in the luring of his little sister a grotesque parallel
to the bold advances made him by the New York society girl. He at once
feared some such interpretation when he saw himself coy and embarrassed
before her down-right attack, and he was certain this was intended when
he beheld himself embraced by this reckless young woman who behaved in
the manner of male screen idols during the last dozen feet of the last
reel. But how could he have suspected the lengths to which a perverted
spirit of satire would lead the Buckeye director?

For now he staggered through the blinding snow, a bundle clasped to his
breast. He fell, half fainting, at the door of the old home. He groped
for the knob and staggered in to kneel at his mother's feet. And she
sternly repulsed him, a finger pointing to the still open door.

Unbelievably the screen made her say, "He wears no ring. Back to the
snow with 'em both! Throw 'em Way Down East!"

And Baird had said the bundle would contain one of his patent