"Good for you, Downey. Let me see, how long have you worked for us?"

"Twenty-three years next January, sir."

"Floor salesman all the while?"

"Since 1900. Before that I was a wrapper."

"How many men have been promoted over your head?"

"Three."

"Four," Wilbram corrected. "First was Miggins."

"I don't count him, sir. Him and I started together."

"Miggins was a failure. Then Farisell; now in prison. Next, McCardy;
he ran off to Simonds & Co. the minute they crooked a finger at him.
Last, young Prescott, who is now to come up here with his father.
Could you run the department if you had it?"

"Between you and I," replied Jacob Downey, sick, dizzy, trembling, "I
been running the department these fifteen years."

"How'd you like to run it from now as manager? When I find a man with
convictions and courage I advance him. The man who stands up is the
man to sit down. That's evolution. If you could stand up to a big
butcher like Myers and talk Dutch to him the way you did, I guess we
need you at a desk. What do you say?"

A desk! A chance to rest his feet! Jacob Downey stiffened.

"Mr. Wilbram, I--I got to tell the truth. I never said those things to
Myers. I just walked out."

"But you said them. You acknowledge it."

"I said 'em, yes--after I got home. To the family I said 'em. When I
was in the meat shop I only thought 'em."

"So Myers has told me," said Jove, smiling. "Downey, my man, you've
got more than moral courage. You've got common sense to go with it.
Tell young Prescott to give you his keys."

THE MARRIAGE IN KAIRWAN

By WILBUR DANIEL STEELE

From _Harper's_

Kairwan the Holy lay asleep, pent in its thick walls. The moon had
sunk at midnight, but the chill light seemed scarcely to have
diminished; only the limewashed city had become a marble city, and all
the towers turned fabulous in the fierce, dry, needle rain of the
stars that burn over the desert of mid-Tunisia.

In the street Bab Djedid the nailed boots of the watch passed from
west to east. When their thin racket had turned out and died in the
dust of the market, Habib ben Habib emerged from the shadow of a door
arch and, putting a foot on the tiled ledge of Bou-Kedj's fry shop,
swung up by cranny and gutter till he stood on the plain of the
housetops.

Now he looked about him, for on this dim tableland he walked with his
life in his hands. He looked to the west, toward the gate, to the
south, to the northeast through