for. He went on, slipped through the Turkish lines at night, and made his way to the Russian headquarters. He found Gourko hard pressed, but holding his own. He stayed on in the trenches till he had satisfied himself and Forbes had a soldier's eye for a battle or a siege that the strength of the Turkish attack had spent itself; then he set his face once more northward.

The rumor of his going had spread, and near Tirnova, where the Czar had his headquarters, Forbes was stopped and taken into the imperial presence. "They tell me," said the Czar, "that you have been to Shipka and bring news of Gourko." "Yes, your Majesty." "But I have sent within the last four days seven aides-de-camp, not one of whom has got through," and the Czar proceeded to put questions which showed him skeptical about this present performance. Forbes soon convinced him. He drew a plan of the pass, and of Gourko's defenses; described exactly the distribution of his forces, gave a minute account of the Turkish assaults and of the whole military situation as he had left it, with the assurance that, in his judgment, the pass could not be forced. The Czar detained him some hours under examination, thanked him, complimented him on his daring and skill, and let him go.

Crossing the Danube at Rustchuk, he rode

on to Bukharest, the first point from which a long telegram to London could be surely despatched, nearly one hundred miles distant from Tirnova. He arrived at eight o'clock in the evening. He had been three days and nights either in the saddle or in the Shipka trenches under fire, without sleep, often without food. "I was dead tired," said Forbes, from whose lips I had this story. "Not a word of my despatch was written, and I had news for which I knew the world was waiting-news on which the fate of an empire and the fortunes of half Europe depended. And it was as much as I could do to keep my eyes open, or sit up in the chair into which I had dropped." "What did you do?" "I told the waiter," answered Forbes, "to bring me a pint of dry champagne, unopened. I took the cork out, put the neck of the bottle into my mouth, drank it with all the fizz, sat up, and wrote the four columns you read next morning in the 'Daily News."" As a piece of literature the four columns were of a high order. As a piece of news they were one of the greatest "beats" ever known. Taken together, and with all that history of those three days, they would entitle Forbes, even had he never done anything else, to that place at the very head of his profession to which he had many other titles scarcely less valid.

SOME

W

THEN BAXTER WILHITE won the long jump on the athletic field at the State University he was thinking about Kate McLean. Just before starting on the run he had torn a dark red cap from his head and thrown it down. That was absentmindedness, but it piqued Kate because she had bought that cap for him and embroidered a highly original swirl of fraternity colors on it. It was just like Baxter to throw it right down in the dirt at the critical moment.

So that was the end of his hopes for a drive with her before he went home to Fort Wayne and she returned to Princeton for the summer. She was a lively creature with sparkling black eyes, a nose turned up a trifle saucily, and a tender mouth. She had gone to her room in the dumps after that long jump, and he sat for two hours in the parlor of her boardinghouse trying in vain to get a sight of her. Then, train-time coming, he went to Fort Wayne, sorrowful, puzzled, and absent-minded as ever. Just as he entered his father's house he remembered the cap.

He stopped and stared at a tree with his tongue in his cheek, then smote his thigh.

I

The elder Wilhite manufactured famous cook-stoves and ranges. Baxter, having given his mother a bear-like hug, and illuminated her day with his smile, strode into the factory office and lighted that up also.

"I tell you, Samson," his father was saying, "Buck Brothers are outdoing us in the southern part of the State. Now this lively firm in Princeton is making that another center. And there they go, sweeping us out with their old lead ranges."

Samson swore under his breath, looking over an order. It was at this moment that a thought sprang up in Baxter's revery. "If that's all," said he, mildly. When his big voice became mild it held a charm. "What do you know about it?" sniffed Samson.

"If you don't mind," said Baxter, nonchalantly, "I'll spend the summer winning back that trade. Princeton, you said?"

"If you can win New Albany and Princeton, you have the wedge well in," said old Wilhite, looking with pessimistic interest on Baxter. "How would you do it, now?"

"Give me the biggest spring wagon you can

'Are you going out traipsing, in spite of my wish?" asked Mrs. McLean.

"You have on your gayest hat yourself, mother," called Kate, mischievously.

at her stepdaughter's snub nose. Then she moved majestically away.

"I have no sympathy with it!" she ejaculated.

If the truth be told, the only relish Baxter had found in that method of pushing his father's business was the relish of approaching Princeton. It was this that made him sweep everything before him in New Albany. It was this that animated him as he swung across the State in a spring wagon with the range up behind and Tarsus beside him. Yet there was an element of the lark in this unique employment, storming villages, capturing whole populations by the gentle art of the oven.

But his methods had aroused emulation in his rivals. They, too, had begun to bake biscuits. There had been exciting races for certain towns, bitter defeats, hair-breadth victories. And now at last the representatives of Wilhite and Samson, and those of Buck Brothers, had descended on Princeton, as birds of prey on a barnyard. The sample ranges had come booming in from country roads, mud flying, whips cracking.

Along the east side of the square came Kate, Frances on one arm and Belle on the other. It was a jolly afternoon with the sun shining, a season of the pleasant bustling of commonplaces. The The streets were full of wagons and buggies. The grass in the courthouse yard was green.

There was a

"Kate McLean, where are you going?" Kate suddenly laughed, long and hilariously. silence. "Kate McLean !" came up the icy syllables. "Oh, the big competition in stoves has arrived at Princeton," said the girl with prim solemnity.

"In what?" inquired Mrs. McLean. "Didn't you know about it?" the girl's voice was flowing upward. "Two range factories. Frances and Belle say," her smiling face appeared over the banisters, "that they bake biscuits and give them away." "Kate!"

"Buttered," said Kate.

Round Mr. Tindall's tin and stove shop at the square's southeast corner a crowd with tickled expressions of countenance craned their necks. Down on Broadway, two blocks distant, another crowd, equally tickled, jostled round the pregnant oven of Buck Brothers. Toward Tindall's came the three girls, like bright feathered creatures let out of an aviary, and little was Kate McLean dreaming what eye was about to meet hers.

"Now ladies and gentlemen," cried a clear and commanding voice at the door of Tindall's

66

Tarsus, give the lady a little more butter there. I see by the little girl's face, madam, that she likes it. It's almost as light and dainty as you are, little girl, I'll give you my word, but not quite. Don't crowd, gentlemen."

"Oh!" Kate McLean had said, and the ejaculation was long and mysterious. Yonder on the crossing she stopped.

"Come on," cried Frances, laughing and pulling at her sleeve. "I'm not afraid. Belle,

he's beautiful. I'm going to push right up there, girls, and get one of those biscuits." "Oh, no!" cried Kate, crimsoning and drawing back. She could see his face over the crowd. He had never looked handsomer, never more amiably smiling, never with more of that dark red in his olive cheeks. And he seemed to be dressed for some afternoon fraternity function. Tarsus, a natty negro of the sleeping-car-porter type, was serving hot biscuits. with manners that would have adorned a French court.

"Why, Kate McLean, you're bashful!" taunted Belle.

"Lead on!" cried Kate, with sudden theatrics, her pretty lips set and her nose in theair. In this order the three, links in a bright chain, went through the crowd: Frances's red shirt waist breaking the way, with farmers and farmers' wives, townspeople and their families, titillated of palate, falling back before her; Belle, a veil flying loose from her sailor hat, clinging to Frances's hand in front and Kate's behind; and Miss McLean, dressed in a bright blue waist and blue hat slanting up to a bunch of high violets, bringing up a half reluctant rear, mischief in her black eyes.

"Ladies and gentlemen, the mechanism of this range is so simple that a little dot of a girl could manage it." Baxter was fond of little girls. "Touch the knob, so, and the patent opening descends. The draft enters here, so strong that a candle's flame is at once extinguished. Place your left hand here," he turned his face toward the crowd, "and you find that the damper-hm-the damper-"

The red in his cheeks deepened, and he halted. Not two yards away from him were the mischievous lips, the black eyes, the high violets. A gentle flood of pink, like a sunset in miniature, flowed softly over her face; she looked interested in his stove. Frances was nibbling a biscuit; Belle was gazing rapt at Baxter Wilhite and his college clothes.

"Ah-hm-I was saying something about the damper," said he.

And Kate, without warning, laughed in the midst of that semi-stillness which his pause had occasioned; a soft, irrepressible, contagious and musical laughter. He lifted his hat and came forward, smiling and confused. The three girls and Baxter were the center of an admiring throng, who looked on with sedative approval, as they had looked at the biscuits. Tarsus was tossing in another panful and the range was roaring.

"Miss McLean," said Baxter, holding out his hand, "I am flattered to amuse you."