e had not waited for her. How foolish he had been.

It was a quarter of an hour before he found a cab, and the theatre
was dark and empty when he got back to it. He knocked at the stage
door, and the night watchman opened it.

"My wife?" he cried. "There's no one here now, sir," the man answered
respectfully, for he knew that a new star had risen that night.

The conjurer leant against the doorpost faintly.

"Take me up to the dressing-rooms," he said. "I want to see whether
she has been, there while I was away."

The watchman led the way along the dark passages. "I shouldn't worry
if I were you, sir," he said. "She can't have gone far." He did not
know anything about it, but he wanted to be sympathetic.

"God knows," the conjurer muttered, "I can't understand this at all."

In the dressing-room Molly's clothes still lay neatly folded as she
had left them when they went on the stage that night, and when he saw
them his last hope left the conjurer, and a strange thought came into
his mind.

"I should like to go down on the stage," he said, "and see if there
is anything to tell me of her."

The night watchman looked at the conjurer as if he thought he was
mad, but he followed him down to the stage in silence. When he was
there the conjurer leaned forward suddenly, and his face was filled
with a wistful eagerness.

"Molly!" he called, "Molly!"

But the empty theatre gave him nothing but echoes in reply.

The Poet's Allegory

I

The boy came into the town at six o'clock in the morning, but the
baker at the corner of the first street was up, as is the way of
bakers, and when he saw the boy passing, he hailed him with a jolly
shout.

"Hullo, boy! What are you after?"

"I'm going about my business," the boy said pertly.

"And what might that be, young fellow?"

"I might be a good tinker, and worship god Pan, or I might grind
scissors as sharp as the noses of bakers. But, as a matter of fact,
I'm a piper, not a rat-catcher, you understand, but just a simple
singer of sad songs, and a mad singer of merry ones."

"Oh," said the baker dully, for he had hoped the boy was in search of
work. "Then I suppose you have a message."

"I sing songs," the boy said emphatically. "I don't run errands
for anyone save it be for the fairies."

"Well, then, you have come to tell us that we are bad, that our lives
are corrupt and our homes sordid. Nowadays there's money in that if