ay to yet more atrocious performing dogs.

"How many offers of marriage will the young lady in the box have?"
The dog stopped sagely at 'none,' and then pulled out a card that said
eight. Wild shouts of glee by the audience. "The fools," I muttered.

After a little I glanced over. Mrs. Dallas was talking to McKnight, but
She was looking straight at me. She was flushed, but more calm than I,
and she did not bow. I fumbled for my hat, but the next moment I saw
that they were going, and I sat still. When McKnight came back he was
triumphant.

"I've made an engagement for you," he said. "Mrs. Dallas asked me to
bring you to dinner to-night, and I said I knew you would fall all over
yourself to go. You are requested to bring along the broken arm, and any
other souvenirs of the wreck that you may possess."

"I'll do nothing of the sort," I declared, struggling against my
inclination. "I can't even tie my necktie, and I have to have my food
cut for me."

"Oh, that's all right," he said easily. "I'll send Stogie over to fix
you up, and Mrs. Dal knows all about the arm. I told her."

(Stogie is his Japanese factotum, so called because he is lean, a
yellowish brown in color, and because he claims to have been shipped
into this country in a box.)

The Cinematograph was finishing the program. The house was dark and the
music had stopped, as it does in the circus just before somebody risks
his neck at so much a neck in the Dip of Death, or the hundred-foot
dive. Then, with a sort of shock, I saw on the white curtain the
announcement:

THE NEXT PICTURE

IS THE DOOMED WASHINGTON FLIER, TAKEN A SHORT DISTANCE FROM THE SCENE OF
THE WRECK ON THE FATAL MORNING OF SEPTEMBER TENTH. TWO MILES FARTHER ON
IT MET WITH ALMOST COMPLETE ANNIHILATION.

I confess to a return of some of the sickening sensations of the wreck;
people around me were leaning forward with tense faces. Then the letters
were gone, and I saw a long level stretch of track, even the broken
stone between the ties standing out distinctly. Far off under a cloud
of smoke a small object was rushing toward us and growing larger as it
came.

Now it was on us, a mammoth in size, with huge drivers and a colossal
tender. The engine leaped aside, as if just in time to save us from
destruction, with a glimpse of a stooping fireman and a grimy engineer.
The long train of sleepers followed. From a forward vestibule a porter
in a white coat waved his ha