t back."

Before I could speak, she asked hurriedly, "How often do you come to
Chicago?"

I took that to be a sort of command that I was to wait, and though
longing to have it settled then and there, I braked myself up and
answered her question. Now I see what a duffer I was--Madge told
me afterward that she asked only because she was so frightened and
confused that she felt she must stop my speaking for a moment.

I did my best till I heard the whistle the locomotive gives as it
runs into yard limits, and then rose. "Good-by, Miss Cullen," I said,
properly enough, though no death-bed farewell was ever more gloomily
spoken; and she responded, "Good-by, Mr. Gordon," with equal
propriety.

I held her hand, hating to let her go, and the first thing I knew, I
blurted out, "I wish I had the brass of Lord Ralles!"

"I don't," she laughed, "because, if you had, I shouldn't be willing
to let you--"

And what she was going to say, and why she didn't say it, is the
concern of no one but Mr. and Mrs. Richard Gordon.

THE RISEN DEAD

BY MAX PEMBERTON

CHAPTER I

The sun was setting on the second day of June, in the year 1701, when
Pietro Falier, the Captain of the Police of Venice, quitted his office
in the Piazzetta of St. Mark and set out, alone, for the Palace of
Fra Giovanni, the Capuchin friar, who lived over on the Island of the
Guidecca.

"I shall return in an hour," he said to his subordinate as he stepped
into the black gondola which every Venetian knew so well. "If any has
need of me, I am at the house of Fra Giovanni."

The subordinate saluted, and returned slowly toward the ducal palace.
He was thinking that his Captain went over-much just then to the house
of that strange friar who had come to Venice so mysteriously, and so
mysteriously had won the favor of the republic.

"Saint John!" he muttered to himself, "that we should dance attendance
on a shaven crown--we, who were the masters of the city a year ago!
What is the Captain thinking of? Are we all women, then, or have
women plucked our brains that it should be Fra Giovanni this and Fra
Giovanni that, and your tongue snapped off if you so much as put a
question. To the devil with all friars, say I."

The good fellow stopped a moment in his walk to lay the flat of his
sword across the shoulders of a mountebank, who had dared to remain
seated at the door of his booth while so great a person passed. Then
he returned to his office, and