The ears flapped twice, and their owner came to a full stop. Then he turned around leisurely, recognized me and remarked, as he held out his hand:

"Bright day."

I acknowledged the rich vein of humor underlying his statement, whereupon he continued:

"I had a presentiment that you were in the neighborhood. In fact, I've been looking for you lately, and, fortunately, have the manuscript with me.

He drew from his breast-pocket a dozen closely written sheets; then noting the expression of dismay which I could not conceal, inquired:

66

Why, what's the matter? Early cucumbers? Lobster and champagne?'

"You are

"Great Scott!" I exclaimed. the last person in the world-” "Oh, I understand. But this is a story, you see. I've never published a story, and the editors won't have it. I've tried it on a dozen of 'em. 'Stick to your statistics,' some of 'em say, while the others implore me with tears in their eyes not to lose my grip on that philosophical method of treating weighty questions, which has made me so deservedly famous. I am grateful for the interest they manifest in my welfare, but I have written a story and it must be published. Take it with my blessing, and may heaven reward you.'

There was no help for it. I took the manuscript and here it is, with such additions as will, I trust, establish the identity of the real author and relieve me of a responsibility which I naturally do not covet:

THE QUICK OR THE SLOW?

A STUDY.

BY B-LL N-E,

With apologies to Amelie Rives. The skirt of the sky had been badly hemmed, and its tattered edges draped unevenly the feet and ankle hills in the direction of the coming dawn. The snow-clad peaks to the right and left showed dimly through the dirling sheets of sleet dashed against their sides, for there was a blizzard asweep, and it shook the office of the Weekly Avalanche to its foundations.

It was five o'clock of a February morning, and the Weekly Avalanche had gone to press. The edition of three hundred and nineteen -not including the exchanges-was being slowly ground out by weird, uncanny Bolter who turned the machine with one hand while with the other he fed it with blank sheets of paper. Bolter was not an attractive person. Early in his career he had been blown up in a mine, and his subsequent experiences with

grizzlies, Indians and other devastators of physical beauty, had left him so hideous that whole galleys of type had been known to pi at his unexpected approach. But Bolter could set type sixteen hours a day, and run the job press the other eight. He could read proof at an unheard-of rate of speed, and collect cash subscriptions in localities whence no other man could hope to escape with his life. Bolter was ugly, but Bolter was not slow.

Moses turned from the window with a sigh. The scurrying blasts still threatened to annihilate the valuable plant of the Weekly Avalanche, but they were as the zephyrs of May compared to the blizzard raging in the soul of Moses. Moses was editor of the Weekly Avalanche. Ah, but there was more than this, clutching with leaden, icy fingers the tense chords of his being. He loved, passionately, hopelessly, despairingly! With long, nervous strides he reached his case and took reverently from a drawer a composing stick. It was nearly new and brightly polished. He raised it to his parched lips like one in a trance, then started much as he had done when Sanguinary Joe of the Gulch had pressed a cold tube of steel against his temple in mute support of his demand for a retraction of the statement that he had fired twice to kill the parson. A faint perfume derived from contact with Rosamond's beautiful fingers still clung to the bit of polished iron. For a moment Moses was in ecstasy. He kissed the enchanted metal a hundred times. He pressed it convulsively to his heart. He drew ragged uneven breaths. What more could he do? Nothing. He might tremble intoxicated a whole day from the effect of a casual touch of her finger tips, and that was all. She was beyond, above him, immeasurably. With an agonized gasp of despair he threw himself across the imposing stone, pressed his fevered cheek against its cold, smooth surface. and yearned for death.

A

He was awakened some hours later by a section of the blizzard which was passing in under the door and wafting itself through the blown-up swirls of Moses' whiskers. polar chill was in the room. The fire had gone out, the press was silent, and Bolter and the entire edition of the Weekly Avalanche had disappeared.

"He is carrying the route up the gulch, but I think he might have filled up the stove before he went,' grumbled Moses as he rubbed his stiffened knees.

The enchanted composing stick made sacred to him by the touch of Rosamond Stacy's fingers still lay on the imposing stone where he had dropped it. Moses seized and pressed it to his lips. It froze there, and when torn violently away, took with it large sections of editorial cuticle.

"Emblem of my shattered hopes!" Moses shrieked in pain and desperation. "You mock with icy touch alike the chaste caress and burning passion that consumes me!And yet she seemed not unkind."

He stuffed a file of the Weekly Avalanche under the door and built a fire. Then he scraped a peep-hole through the frost which hung upon the window panes in strange devices, and looked out. The blizzard was terrific. It was impossible to see a hundred feet into the the midst of scurrying, swirling snow and dirt.

"Heaven preserve Bolter," Moses said to himself with a shudder. "It was madness to leave the office in such a storm. And Rosamond! Rosamond!"

Moses paled at the thought of Rosamond out in the blinding snow and deadly cold. She was indefatigable. Nothing less than the exertion of physical force, he knew, could prevent her departure from Muggins' combination hotel and general store where she boarded, punctually at half past eight, for her school a mile down the gulch. Moses glanced at his Waterbury, which, providentially, was running. It indicated ten minutes past nine! The office of the Weekly Avalanche was midway between Muggins' outfit and the school-house. Perhaps Rosamond was within a few yards of its door at that moment dying from cold and despair! He threw open the door, and with the roaring rush of snow came a faint cry. It was a woman's voice and the tone he knew well. Hatless and coatless he dashed out into the storm and quickly returned burdened with the beautiful, inanimate form of Rosamond Stacy.

Rosamond had been widowed twice, through the gentle offices of Sanguinary Joe of the gulch. and the shrewd Bolter had mentally catalogued her as "no chicken." But to the mind of Moses, who was comparatively a newcomer from still less enlightened regions, she was a divinity whom gods might adore while men worshiped at a distance.

When the widow discovered that Moses, having deposited her respectfully in a large chair near the now red-hot stove, had, to all appearances, permanently removed his arm from her waist, she came to and proceeded to turn on the full strength of the batteries which had been harrowing the soul of the editor of the Weekly Avalanche ever since her first visit, made for the ostensible purpose of "learning to set type."

"You hero!" she began ecstatically, clasping her hands and bathing him in a melting glance. "My preserver! How can I ever reward you?"

Moses' heart leaped into his throat.

said, abashed and trembling. "You are quite welcome."

"But think. You risked your life for mine. I should have perished!"

She drew off her gloves and came toward him.

See

"Feel my hands--how cold they are. how I tremble. I am so frightened yet. I feel as though I should fall if I took another step." Moses took the hands offered him and trembled so violently that the floor shook and the stove rattled. The widow saw that under present circumstances the fainting expedient would be disastrous. So she resumed her seat, and arranging her skirts so as to reveal a number of inches of trim ankle, again addressed the palpitating editor:

"See, the snow is packed around the tops of my boots. It will melt and my feet will be wet. I shall catch cold and die, and you will not have saved my life after all."

Moses turned his head discreetly. "They are so hard to unbutton," resumed the widow. "Would n't you kindly—"

"Certainly," said Moses, blushing. "I'll go over to my case and set up Muggins' “ad" while you are drying your feet. Or, I'll go out doors if you prefer."

Moses was in a condition bordering on insanity. How beautiful she was!—And now he had offended her. When he offered to go out into the storm while she dried her lovely feet she stamped them sharply on the floor. Perhaps his offer reminded her of his presumption in remaining in the office at all when she was compelled by the violence of the storm to invade it with her sweet presence. No, she would not exact that of him surely. So he turned to his case, and proceeded to set up Muggins' "ad."

From time to time he cast timid glances at the widow. She seemed pensive and sad. What a halo of perfection there was about her! Lived the man who would yet bask in its radiance? The very notion of the thing made him giddy, and reduced Muggins' "ad" to pi. Patiently he went over his work again, but a new disaster overtook the startling announcement that Muggins' flour was down to seven dollars a barrel. A soft hand stretched out from behind him was laid lightly on the back of his own. Rosamond's breath warmed the nape of his neck and his knees shook again.

66

Come," said the widow, "give me my lesson. Where is my stick."

Moses produced the stick, and the widow stood up beside him at the case.

"Are you sure I hold it right?" she asked. "It does n't seem to me that I hold it as you do."

"Oh, yes, you hold it all right, except that you spread your fingers too much. Hold

The widow spread her fingers more than ever, and glanced at her instructor with a pout.

"How clumsy I am! I can't seem to place my fingers properly however much I try."

And still the editor of the Weekly Avalanche could n't take a hint. Finally, holding both hands well up over the case, the widow said, as though by inspiration:

"Won't you fix my fingers for me, please? Then I'll be sure to keep them right afterwards. No, you can't do it with that hand;" as Moses made an awkward attempt to reach the widow's fingers with the hand farthest from her--"take your other-around behind me." And she leaned lightly against his waistcoat by way of making the hint more palpable.

It being impossible for Moses to get between the widow and the imposing stone to her other side, the thing in all its enormity was forced upon him. Most circumspectly he put his arm behind her, and had barely touched the fingers which held the stick when she gave a little sigh and fell on his breast in a heap.

Moses was panic-stricken. She had fainted from the effects of her exposure to the storm! Hastily propping her against a corner of the, imposing stone, he ran for a dipper of water and dashed a full pint of the icy fluid in the widow's face. It brought her to. Moses' divinity rose in mighty wrath, nearly annihilated him with a glance, then betook herself to her chair by the stove and deliberately turned her back on the editor of the Weekly Avalanche.

"I held her in my arms too long. I should have dropped her at once. She is offended."

The editor returned hopelessly to his announcement regarding Muggins' flour.

Presently he ventured a timid glance in her direction. The widow was regarding him with a reproachful look which Moses interpreted with an accuracy peculiar to himself.

"She wishes to be alone. Very likely she desires to dry her collar which is quite wet. I will go out for a walk."

So he donned cap, overcoat and gloves, and with true delicacy committed himself silently to the tender mercies of the blizzard. An hour later he returned half blinded and frozen. As he was about to knock at the door to prepare the widow for his approach, he noticed fresh tracks in the snow on the topmost step.

"They are Bolter's," he said to himself. "Number sixteens. Left foot toes out, right foot toes in. That's Bolter ever since the grizzly twisted him. Tracks are not five minutes old, either. Rosamond has never seen him; I hope she won't be frightened."

The glowing stove had melted the frost from the window. Moses glanced within.

"Yes, it's Bolter. He's got my stick in his hand and is setting up Muggins' 'ad.'Rosamond is looking at him.-Why, he's grinning at her!-She has gone to his side, fascinated as a bird by a horrible, venemous serpent.-Thunder and lightning! Her hand is on his shoulder!-Muggins' ad is pi again. -What! His arm about her waist!-Hold! -Help!-Mur-"

Moses' tongue clove to the roof of his mouth and his knees knocked together helplessly. Bolter had not been slow. When the widow's head touched his shoulder he kissed her on the mouth with a smack that shook the window.

And Rosamond?

Rosamond reciprocated promptly and with earnestness.