his ingenious
researches in Vandalic. After that trip to the Certosa he discontinued
all Lombard studies, and, it is said, actually withdrew from publication
a scathing article in which the West Germanic contingent were handled
according to their deserts. She has a vague and not wholly comfortable
feeling of having counted for something as a deterrent, and she has been
heard to hint that his strange distaste for his favourite Lombard
investigations, is due to a deep and intimates cause--an unfortunate
affair of the heart associated with that historic region.

THEIR CROSS

How their cross reached Fourth Avenue one may only surmise, but there
surely was knavery at some point of its transit. It was too splendid in
its enamelling, too subtle in the chiselling of its gilded silver to have
slipped into the byways of the antiquary's trade with the consent of the
Tuscan bishop who controlled or should have controlled its sale. For the
matter of that, it still contained one of St. Lucy's knuckles, which in
case of a regular transaction would have been transferred to a less
precious reliquary. No, there must have been a pilfering sacristan, or
worse, a faithless priest, to explain its translation from the Chianti
hills to Novelli's shop in Fourth Avenue.

Once there it was certain that one day or another John Baxter must find
it. How he became infected with the collector's greed and acquired the
occult knowledge that feeds that malady it would take too long to tell.
Yet it may be said that the yearning amateur was about the only potent
ingredient in the mild composite that was John Baxter. His eyes, skin,
hair, and raiment had never seemed of any particular colour, nor did he
as a whole seem of any especial size. His parents, who were neither rich
nor poor, cultured nor the contrary, had sent him to an indifferent
school and college. In the latter he had joined a middling chapter of a
poorish fraternity, and, was graduated with a rank that was neither high
nor low. During those four easy going years he had played halfhearted
baseball and football, and had all but made the "Literary Monthly."

On entering the world, as the phrase goes, he came into possession of a
small patrimony and accepted a minor editorial position on a feeble
religious monthly. For the ensuing fifteen years John Baxter overtly read
manuscripts, composed headlines for edifying extracts, even wrote
didactic little articles on his own account. Secretl