exhausted.

"But what I would like to know," remarked the head of the house, "where,
oh where is Aunt Mary?"

It was a messenger-boy who brought the answer--a telegram dated Niagara
Falls, current date and reading:

"Stopped over here. Isn't the view from Goat Island wonderful? Leave
for Chicago on the first train. Meet me."

There was a sudden painful silence.

"Does anybody know how many trains there are from Niagara Falls?"
inquired Mrs. Carey, speaking to the company generally. She didn't dare
to address her husband.

"Just about as many as there are from New York," replied Haines, with a
woebegone look. "But--"

"Don't finish it," returned Carey, "I am not going to ask you to try
again, and I am not going to do so myself. Aunt Mary can leave her money
to anybody she pleases. If I had another night like this the executors
would be compelled to mail me my cheque to an asylum."

And the next evening Aunt Mary, unattended, reached her nephew's house
without any trouble at all. She didn't disinherit him; in fact, she felt
so sorry because of his troubles that she bought Mrs. Carey a complete
spring outfit regardless of cost.

It's a good thing to have an Aunt Mary, even if she is indefinite in her
telegrams.

IX

THE VENGEANCE OF THE WOLF

A Drama in Wales

By J. AQUILA KEMPSTER

IN THE great stone hall of Llangarth, Daurn-ap-Tavis, the old Welsh Wolf
lay dying. Outside was the night and a sullen gale whose winds came
moaning down the hills and clung about the house with little bodeful
whispers that grew to long-drawn eerie wails, while pettish rain-squalls
spent their spite in futile gusts on door and casement.

And through the night from time to time a horseman came, spurring hard
and spitting out strange Welsh oaths at the winds that harried him. Five
had passed the door since sun-down, four worthy sons and a nephew of the
Wolf. They stood now booted and spurred about the old man's couch, a
rough-looking crew with the mud caking them from head to foot, while the
leaping flames from the log fire flung their shadows black and distorted
far up among the rafters.

They hung around him sullenly, but as he looked them up and down the
sick man's eyes took on a new keenness and a low, throaty laugh that was
half a growl escaped him.

"Well, Cedric, man, what devil's game have you been playing of late?
and, Tad, you black rascal--ah, 'twas a pity you were born to Gruffydd
instead of