cinder stream from under him for ten hours a day for the rest of his life than visit his native sod for five minutes.
When Mrs. Mitchell heard her husband's voice in the next room, she hurried out to fortify him.
Bessie also heard the voice and hurried to the bathroom to remove traces of tears; for tears were not powerful arguments with her father. Smiles went farther and faster. Kisses were the deciding artillery.
Father and mother, advancing cautiously upon daughter's position, found it unoccupied. But the papers were strewn about. Mitchell picked up the one which lay in the chair. His glance was entirely casual, but suddenly his blue eye started and then blazed.
"The hell!" he ejaculated, and read eagerly down the column.
"Well, I be damned!" was his next contribution to the silence.
Mrs. Mitchell stared at her husband in amazement. Then, seizing her reading glass, for a reading glass was so much better form than spectacles, she glanced over her husband's shoulder, read the headline and a few words following.
"The deceitfulness of that child!" she ejaculated, an expression of indignant amazement on her face, while the hand with the reading glass dropped to her hip, and her eyes were turned upon her husband.
"I always knew that boy's good-heartedness would get him into trouble some day," the good woman averred after a moment.
"Well," rejoined her husband, in tones sharp with emphasis, "I'd back up on a freight clear round the world to get him out. Our trip to Europe is off. We go west on nine to-night."
Mr. Mitchell started for the telephone, and Mrs. Mitchell's eye followed him approvingly, a look of sym-
