e cloth. We learn that Miss Stowe knows the
gentleman whose name was given as bridegroom but very slightly, having
met him but once, as we are now reliably informed. In fact, nothing
could be farther from her thoughts than marriage with the gentleman in
question, he being considerably her junior in years. The cruelty of the
hoax thus perpetrated is increased by the fact that for the past several
days Miss Stowe has been confined to the bed of illness, suffering from
a sudden and violent attack of fever, which illness has naturally been
enhanced by the embarrassing position in which she has been placed
through the act of an anonymous practical joker. Such jokes are entirely
out of place and cannot be too strongly reprehended. In correcting this
falsehood the _Daily Republican_ wishes to state that the perpetrator of
the same is deserving of severe----"

Here the fragment was torn across.

To the tale there is no moral unless it be an indirect moral to be
derived from contemplation of a strange contradiction in our modern
life, to wit: That practical burglary is by law sternly discouraged and
practical joking is not.

CHAPTER VIII

HOODWINKED

Spy stories rather went out of fashion when the armistice was signed.
But this one could not have been told before now, because it happened
after the armies had quit fighting and while the Peace Conference was
busily engaged in belying its first name. Also, in a strict manner of
speaking, it is not a spy story at all.

So far as our purposes are concerned, it began to happen on an afternoon
at the end of the month of March of this present year, when J. J.
Mullinix, of the Secret Service, called on Miss Mildred Smith, the
well-known interior decorator, in her studio apartments on the top floor
of one of the best-looking apartment houses in town. For Mullinix there
was a short delay downstairs because the doorman, sharp on the lookout
to bar pestersome intruders who might annoy the tenants, could not at
first make up his mind about Mullinix. In this building there was a rule
against solicitors, canvassers, collectors, pedlar men and beggar men;
also one against babies, but none against dogs--excepting dogs above a
certain specified size, which--without further description--should
identify our building as one standing in what is miscalled the exclusive
residential belt of Manhattan Island.

The doorman could not make up his mind offhand whether Mullinix was to
be class