ld intercede with you to make you merciful of heart
toward them, to spare them and not to tell the law what they had so
sinsomely planned to do I said I would do this, for mine own sake as
well as for theirs, and that I knew I could wake you to pity. But I said
it would perchancely soften your heart toward them, if all should work
harder to atone themselfs for the sin they had beplotted. Wherefore,
howadji, they would consent to sleep no more; but they ran henceforthly
and at once to the mine. They have been onto the job ever since. And,
howadji, they are jobbing harder than ever I have seen men bejob
themselfs. Am I forgiven, howadji?" he finished timidly.

"Forgiven!" yelled Kirby, when he could speak. "Why, you eternal little
liar, you're a genius! My hat is off to you! This ought to be worth a
fifty-mejidie bonus. And--"

"Instead of the bonus, howadji," ventured Najib, scared at his own
audacity, yet seeking to take full advantage of this moment of
expansiveness, "could I have this pleasing book as a baksheesh gift?"

"Take it!" vouchsafed Kirby. "The thing gives me bad dreams. Take it!"

"May the houris make soft your bed in the Paradise of the Prophet!"
jabbered Najib, in a frenzy of gratitude, as he hugged the treasured
gift to his breast. "And--and, howadji, there be more pictures I did not
show. They will be of a nice convenience, if ever again it be needsome
to make a new law for the mine."

"But--"

"Oh, happy and pretty decent hour!" chortled the little man, petting his
beloved volume as if it were a loved child and executing a shuffling and
improvised step-dance of unalloyed rapture. "This book has been
donationed to me because I was brave enough to request for it while yet
your heart was warm at me, howadji. It is even as your sainted feringhee
proverb says: 'Never put off till to-morrow the--the--man who may be
done, to-day!'"

THE ELEPHANT REMEMBERS

By EDISON MARSHALL

From _Everybody's Magazine_

An elephant is old on the day he is born, say the natives of Burma, and
no white man is ever quite sure just what they mean. Perhaps they refer
to his pink, old-gentleman's skin and his droll, fumbling, old-man ways
and his squeaking treble voice. And maybe they mean he is born with a
wisdom such as usually belongs only to age. And it is true that if any
animal in the world has had a chance to acquire knowledge it is the
elephant, for his breed are the oldest residents of this old world.