danger weighed him down.

Clayton was waiting for the approach of the wife of that mysterious
musical director whom he had never seen.

A fortunate sort of lingua Franca had been patched up between the
unsuspicious Clayton and the dark-eyed duenna. A few words of
German, a little scattered French, and a bit of gibberish English
enabled the two to hold occasional brief and amiable intercourse.

"What language does she really speak?" often cried the baffled
Clayton to the mocking Irma.

"Only pure Czech, my comrade," laughed the diva. "And I will teach
you the softest language of Love myself when we wander back into
the blue Bohemian mountains to proud old Georgsburg. My father was
a Magyar, my mother," she softly said, "a Czech princess."

While Clayton moved around, cautiously exhibiting himself as agreed
upon, his mind was agitated with a hundred unknown fears. He knew
not the designs of his panther-footed enemies.

To his astonishment, Robert Wade was absent the whole last business
day of the year from the Western Trading Company's offices, and
this, too, when every pen was busied up to five o'clock.

And, the momentous election was to occur in the morning!

He had lingered with his own annual summary until three o'clock,
when the dejected face of Somers, the head accountant, had appeared