lopes while he waited. Meanwhile he
bought new and better clothing and seemed to have no difficulty in
impressing those whom he met with the fact that he was a gentleman. Two
years from the time of his examination he was appointed to a lucrative
position under the Government, and as he seated himself at the desk in
his office, could have been heard to remark: "Now John Rowland, your
future is your own. You have merely suffered in the past from a mistaken
estimate of the importance of women and whisky."

But he was wrong, for in six months he received a letter which, in part,
read as follows:

"Do not think me indifferent or ungrateful. I have watched from a
distance while you made your wonderful fight for your old standards.
You have won, and I am glad and I congratulate you. But Myra will
not let me rest. She asks for you continually and cries at times. I
can bear it no longer. Will you not come and see Myra?"

And the man went to see--Myra.

THE PIRATES

PROLOGUE

Two young men met in front of the post-office of a small country town.
They were of about the same age--eighteen--each was well dressed,
comely, and apparently of good family; and each had an expression of
face that would commend him to strangers, save that one of them, the
larger of the two, had what is called a "bad eye"--that is, an eye
showing just a little too much white above the iris. In the other's eye
white predominated below the iris. The former is usually the index of
violent though restrained temper; the latter of an intuitive, psychic
disposition, with very little self-control. The difference in character
so indicated may lead one person to the Presidency, another to the
gallows. And--though no such results are promised--with similar
divergence of path, of pain and pleasure, of punishment and reward, is
this story concerned.

The two boys were schoolmates and friends, with never a quarrel since
they had known each other; they had graduated together from the high
school, but neither had been valedictorian. They later had sought the
competitive examination given by the congressman of the district for an
appointment to the Naval Academy, and had won out over all, but so close
together that the congressman had decreed another test.

They had taken it, and since then had waited for the letter that named
the winner; hence the daily visits to the post-office, ending in this
one, when the larger boy, about to go up