now. Ah, sweetheart, you've waited long, but you shall feast
now!" He was caressing something long and lithe and glittering
beneath his blanket.

In a masked dance it is easy to give a death-blow between the
shoulders. Two crowds meet and laugh and shout and mingle almost
inextricably, and if a shriek of pain should arise, it is not
noticed in the din, and when they part, if one should stagger and
fall bleeding to the ground, can any one tell who has given the
blow? There is nothing but an unknown stiletto on the ground,
the crowd has dispersed, and masks tell no tales anyway. There
is murder, but by whom? for what? Quien sabe?

And that is how it happened on Carnival night, in the last mad
moments of Rex's reign, a broken-hearted mother sat gazing
wide-eyed and mute at a horrible something that lay across the
bed. Outside the long sweet march music of many bands floated in
as if in mockery, and the flash of rockets and Bengal lights
illumined the dead, white face of the girl troubadour.




LITTLE MISS SOPHIE

When Miss Sophie knew consciousness again, the long, faint,
swelling notes of the organ were dying away in distant echoes
through the great arches of the silent church, and she was alone,
crouching in a little, forsaken black heap at the altar of the
Virgin. The twinkling tapers shone pityingly upon her, the