I. TWO THOUSAND DOLLARS’ REWARD

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      Her eyes were like the sky on a summer night, a color to be dreamed of but never reproduced. From the golden hair to the delicate hands which cupped her chin a flower-like loveliness kept her aloof from her surroundings, like a rare pearl set in base metal. Her companion, young and darkly handsome, crumpled in a hand, scarcely less white than hers, the check which the waiter had left. In the mean time he gazed with some concern at his companion. Her lips stirred; she sighed.

      “Two dollars for ham,” she murmured. “Can you beat it, Freddie?”

      “He sort of sagged when we slipped him the order,” answered the dark and distinguished youth. “I guess the hens are only making one-night stands in this country.”

      “They’ve got an audience, anyway,” she returned, “and that’s more than we could draw!”

      She opened her purse and passed two bills to him under the table.

      “Why the camouflage?” he asked, as he took the money.

      “Freddie,” she said, “run your glass eye over the men in this joint. If they see you pay for the eats with my money, they’d take you for a skirt in disguise.”

      A light twinkled for an instant far back in her eyes.

      “Take me for a skirt?” said Frederick Montgomery, in his most austere manner. “Say, cutie, lay off on the rough stuff and get human. The trouble with you, La Belle Geraldine, is that you forget your real name is Annie Kerrigan.”

      Her lazy smile caressed him.

      “Freddie,” she purred, “you do your dignity bit, the way Charlie Chaplin would do Hamlet.”

      Mr. Montgomery scowled upon her, but the dollar bills in the palm of his hand changed the trend of his thoughts at once.

      “Think of it, Jerry,” he groaned, “if we hadn’t listened to that piker Delaney, we’d be doing small big-time over the R. and W.!”

      “Take it easy, deary,” answered La Belle Geraldine, “I’ve still got a hundred iron men; but that isn’t enough to take both of us to civilization.”

      Montgomery cleared his throat, frowned, and raised his head like a patriot making a death-speech in the third act.

      “Geraldine,” he said solemnly, “it ain’t right for me to sponge on you now. You take the money. It’ll get you back to Broadway. As for me—I—I—can go to work in one of the mines with these ruffians!”

      La Belle Geraldine chuckled.

      “You couldn’t do it without make-up, Freddie. And besides, think of spoiling those hands with a pick-handle!”

      Mr. Montgomery regarded his tender palms with a rather sad complacency.

      “There’s no other way out, Jerry. Besides, I can, I can—”

      His voice trailed away drearily, and La Belle Geraldine regarded him with the familiar twinkle far back in her eyes.

      “You’re a born hero, Freddie—on the stage. But we’re minus electric lights out here, and the play’s no good.”

      “We’re minus everything,” declared Freddie with heat, overlooking the latter part of her speech. “This joint hasn’t even got a newspaper in it, unless you call this rag one!”

      He pulled out a crumpled paper, a single sheet poorly printed on both sides. Geraldine took it and regarded it with languid interest.

      “The funny thing,” she muttered, as she read, “is that I sort of like this rube gang out here, Freddie.”

      “Like them?” snorted her companion, as he shook down his cuffs and tightened his necktie. “Say, Jerry, you’re talking in your sleep. Wake up and get next to yourself! Pipe the guy in the corner piling fried potatoes on his knife with a chunk of bread.”

      She turned her head.

      “Kind of neat action, all right,” she said critically. “That takes real courage, Freddie. If his hand slipped, he’d cut his throat. Don’t be so sore on them. As parlor snakes, they aren’t in your class, but don’t spend all your time looking at the stage set. Watch the show and forget the background, Freddie. These boys may eat with knives and get a little too familiar with their revolvers, but they strike me as being a hundred percent men.”

      “You always were a nut, Jerry,” yawned Montgomery. “For my part, give me the still small voice, but not the wilderness. I can see all the rough