se, that I was looking for Nancy Turner in order to learn about some
of the newest dance steps.

* * * * *

AND now you know the story of my life, of hers, and of your own, he said
with a sigh. Strange that I should have asked your name. And stranger
still that you came here as if led by the hand of Fate. But now that we
have discovered that we are half brothers I hope you will come often to
chat with me, here in this house where we were both born. I will tell
you more about our beautiful mother, of her fame when she danced at the
opera, of the days long ago when she and my father and I lived here so
happily, of the tragedy--but no--let us forget the past. She
forgave--therefore our friendship must be without shadow from the
start.

THE PAWN-SHOP KEEPER

I am an old man and life has long since lost the glamor it once
held for me. The thrills of youth are no more, novelty is a forgotten
word, and things that once would have made my heart leap now leave me
cold. Old age indeed is in itself a punishment for the follies of youth
and sad is it to await alone the coming of death without some loved face
near. For one by one the friends of bygone days have dropped by the
roadside and I have been left alone to follow my weary way. Happy they
who die while still young and do not know the solitude of a lonely old
man.

Day after day, as I sit behind my counter, or warm my old hands
by the cheerful blaze of the fire, do customers come to me to buy
something or perhaps to sell some loved relic in order that they may
live.

ALL of them faces strange and new. They look at me as if to say Why this
one dried leaf of another year left on this tree? Aye, and why am I
left--Why among these young, green leaves am I the only withered one?
Why were no companions left to cheer me?

But these are questions I can not answer, for I know not the ways
of God.

As I sit here musing over the past, faces I have known come back
to me and I love to wonder what fate held in store for them, as
advancing, the filmy mists of their futures were slowly lifted until the
last veil was drawn back and the story of their lives was told.

The snow is falling and covering in white the grim rows of houses
opposite my little shop, the streets are deserted save by a few hurrying
pedestrians and some merry school children going down to the frozen
river for an hour's skating before dusk--

AND I am here befor