THE WILL AND THE WHY.

Cromwell Argus, Volume LVIII, Issue 3018, 6 June 1927, Page 2

THE WILL AND THE WHY.

CAB Rights Reserved.)

By BERNARD CAPES, Author of "The Secret in the Hill," "A Rogue's Tragedy," "The Green Parrots," "The Lake of Wine," "A Jay of Italy," &c, &c.

PART 5. The girl was silent for awhile. "Was it for this," she said suddenly, "that you got rid of the other — to secure a spy and instrument of your own ?" He rose, in seeming very much offended. "That is enough," he said. "I am answered. It is evident you do not know my wife." "I know you," she answered; "and i know that, whatever her nature, and whatever her will, she .will come in the end to do yours." ™ "And what,, is that ?" he asked ironically. "Something c 'evil," she retorted. "I don't know what; but there is a purpose behind this." "Bad human nature," he said, "bad, bad ! It is the common way, however. Once convicted is always labelled. You think me incapable of a natural kindness. Very well, poor woman, she shall not come." "You know quite well that she will," answered the girl—"that it is you that, decides, not I. Why affect the farce ? We shall be two wretched women in sympathy over our bondage, at least. Poor woman ! Were you quite deaf. Mr. Redding, to what was said about you, and your treatment of her, out there in the country?" 7" He made an. ineffable benedictory motion with his plump white hands. "All men have their enemies.," he said, "and I forgive'mine. It is settled, then, and t thank you sincerely for your hospitable acceptance of my proposal. "- v All once she sprang away - from him, and .went■ again to and fro, to and fro, with wild hurried footsteps. He saw spine passion. rising in her beydnd her control, and waited quietly for the storm to break and pass. * It came at length in a flash and cry. "She shall not. come —do you J hear ? I say she shall not come \" He stood' perfectly unmoved, smiling upon her. Her face was quite white; she stamped her foot, the wilful child in her predominating over all the tragedy. .. *'l will endure'this torture no longer," she cried. "Why have I submitted to it at' all, when a word could release me ? I will speak and end it—be~free, though I have to beg my bread. Do' you understand ? I throw off your wicked hold on me— I have made .up my mind, and nothing shall change it. I will go to Catty, and ask her to reverse our positions and let me be her companion. I will do anything, go anywhere to escape from thisi hideous thraldom!" * "Even to gaol, no doubt'!" The cold scorn of the woods smote like'a frost, the passion on her lips. ohe strove to speak again, shivered, and stood dumb and staring. Then he came upon her with force, seized her hand in his, and let her feel its strength, daring her to rebel with the demon in his eyes. "Who has been instigating you to this ?" he said in a low voice of fury. "Do you hear ? Answer me, you vixen." She sank away from him, down to the floor, while he still gripped her wrist. . [£.£ '-,' ,' ''Answer me," he repeated. "Have yon been scheming to outwit me—to league yourself with another behind my back ?" She, crouched,; as, if she really thought'that in the tense rage of his mood, he was going to strike her. His fingers crushed into her hand. "Will you speak?" he said. "Is it that man—that/ Le Strang ? Have you seen him again ?" "I have not seen him," she answered," desperate in her fear ; "but I will. I will go to him and abase myself, and own all and make restitution." He gave a veritable snarl, and flung her hand from his so violently that she uttered a cry of pain. The pity of the sound seemed -to waken in him some remorse. He stood breathing heavily a minute, and passed his fingers once or twice across his forehead.- ■ j ', < i "You angered me," he said presently. / "Did I hurt ybu ? There, I artt sorry. But you talk like a child. Do you think for a' moment that restitution is so simple a matter ? Can you" dream for a moment of my acquiescing in an act which might spell our utter ruin, yours and mine ? But even if you were to do as you say,, what proof, , my girl, but your own wild word, /seeing that I hold the card of all cards in my hand ? Believe me or not as you will, this procrastination of yours, in the full knowledge of the right, has made you my criminal confederate.:" Crouching on the floor, heir hands clasped together, her shoulders" humped, she listened to him in an awful fear. "Granting, in the last resource," he went on, "thg.t my exposure were possible, do you suppose I should be content to suft>ter, and allow you, who had compa/ssed my destruction, to escape ? No,; we stand or fall together, my Your repentance comes too late, I think, if you would be wise, your unalterable determination must re-<ix»nsider itself. The alternative—a gainful one even to consider—is jusi; the law courts, disgrace, a sell, and a plank bed, in exchange f for all this luxury and high estates Can you face it?" She had sunk; prone, and lay with her face buried in her hands. The attitude revealed the shapely lines of her form, and fthe man's eyes roved pleasurably ovier the beauty his &fift had to speak. He

dwelt a minute or two on the vision of the soft heaping shoulders, on the music of the low convulsive sobs. "Come," he said, presently, in a very gentle, very wooing voice; "you have made a good fight, but the issue lies • beyond the strength of those tender hands. Let it remain with me to whom in this matter you belong, child. Rest on that assurance, and think of it no more. You can only torture yourself by thinking. Say to yourself. 'The burden is his, the evil, the responsibility. I yield it to him to answer for the wrong, to protect and exonerate me. For myself, I have tried my best and failed.' His voice sank to a musical silence. Minutes had passed before she stirred, and put back her tumbled hair, and rose to her feet, a figure of such hopeless misery that it moved even him to regard it. But his emotions always touched material sensation too close to be of lasting value. "Will you go now ?" she said. "I cannot face it—and I belong to you —and I will ask Mrs. Redding to come and stay with me." "For your good, and hers," he said. "Good-bye." He knew that he had reached the psychologic moment, and, in that assurance, turned and softly left the room. CHAPTER XII.—MISS PRINGLE HAS A VISITOR. Miss Pringle as very miserable with a cold, Her face, ordinarily of a lachrymose cast, exhibited now such an excess of the melting-mood as to suggest the possibility of its running away altogether. She coughed and sniffed and gurgled and cleared her throat and blew her nose, and was, in general run-downedness, if one may use the expression, not unlike a guttering tallow candle in need of snuffing. Something of this, no doubt, was due to the soft sentiments awakened by a perusal of, a sixpenny novelette, which lay at that moment face-downwards in her lap; but chagrin over the physical woefulness of her state, as representing generally her moral ineffectiveness in life, contributed largely to the result. She was loveless and forlorn, she felt, and that for the sole simple reason that she lacked the one recommendation which of all recommendations was without a shadow of credit to its possessor—the recommendation of Unflanked by that, the loveliest qualities counted for' nothingwere made, indeed, the frequent text for secret . mockery and laughter. Archness, for instance—how for giveable a coquetry in the well-favoured; but, were she to attempt it, what unkind comments ! And yet it sprang from the same vivacious impulse in all; only the vehicle excused or condemned it—the vehicle, which, in a world of reasoning people, ought not to be considered of the slightest importance. It was very unfair. She lit the gas—for it was evening, and stirred the cup of hot cocoa which stood by her side. Miss Pringle dropped her hands, with the sixpenny novelette in them, to her lap once more. "Oh, I am not pretty ! I know it," she wept; "but I have heart, and I am distinguished looking. It is to be feared that her state of mind was due, at least in part, to the persistent neglect of a certain cavalier, whose self-invitation to her maiden bower had as yet borne no fruit. She hoped, quite truthfully and honestly, nothing whatever from his redemption of his promise, save a little surcease of her loneliness, a little share in the friendly confidences of a man. The sex was so alien to her as a rule that the condescension would have seemed to her like a respite from that eternal enforced estimate of herself as a sort of spinster leper. She had dreamed, in her little mincing, twittering way, of a friendship of real regard developing from that first impression of a manly, masterful individuality, which could be as strong to understand and sympathise as it was reassuring to look upon. But her dreams, it seemed, were doomed to no rapturous awakening. He did not come—he had forgotten her. And, behold ! in the very thought he was there. Drawn-faced, agitated, hurried ; breathing quickly like a man hardpressed. She almost upset the cocoa as she rose trembling to greet him. Mr. Le Strang ! What is it ? What is the matter ?" "The boy !" he gasped—"the child ! You must come with me !" In all her distress and confusion the peremptoriness of the demand found a feminine thrill in her heart. "He cannot breathe," he said—"he is choking. He has been hoarse and ill of late—my landlady is out—everybody is out —you must come and help me—tell me what to do—while the servant goes for the doctor." "Oh, dear, dear !" cried Miss Pringle, wringing her hands. "I will come—l don't know what to do —it sounds like croup—you must give him iodine—l mean ipecacuanha—and put him in a bath of hot water. My hat—where is my hat ?" He seized her arm. "How can I send for ipecacuanha till you come ? There's not a second to waste." "My hat," she repeated, in the last state of agitation. "Bother your hat !" he said, and he fairly carried her off. She felt almost out of her senses. To be running, bare-headed, loosely beshawled, beside a man, also hatless, in the open street. It was more, she thought, like a "Bacchanalian orgy" than the behaviour of Christian people in a Christian land. She forgot her cold, her depression, the little exilaration, a thrill as of selfabandonment shot a tingle through her veins. Had he not come to her in his need ? That was sore enough, it was patent. The little fellow was already near his last gasp. Le Strang drove the servant out for ipecacuanha and the doctor, while Miss Pringle, wet eyed and quaking, dived into unfamiliar basements for hot water. How she procured it, delivered it, waited shivering on dark landings for the invitation into a male sanctum which never came, greeted the grave doc-

tor when he came, the concerned and panting landlady when she came; finally found herself alone in a little parlour, expecting the call or message which was not vouchsafed—all this remained, and was to remain in her mind, a mere chaos of distracted impressions. But, as she sat, hearing, in fact or fancy, soft creakings overhead, low voices and little stifled cries, a wild impulse came suddenly upon her to leave the house, to return hurriedly to her own lodgings, and thence, hastily attired, take train for Westminster. She could do it. and be back within the hour. Whence the impulse came, or why, she "could not have said. Only it seemed right to her that Ruby ought somehow to know, ought somehow to be present at this crisis of a tragedy for which in a measure she was responsible. She felt, in a vague wild way, that Ruby had only to come and say that all should be right, ; and all would be right—that, in any case, were this opportunity to be lost to the girl for vindicating her womanliness before the man who had had apparent reason for questioning it, she Catty, would be accountable for the wrong. She felt herself,: good unselfish soul, the appointed medium of a reconciliation. What, if through her instrumentality an explanation should be brought about, and all put right again ? In the excitement of the inspiration she arose, listened fearfully for a minute, and then, walking on-tip-toe, left the room and the house. CHAPTER XIII.-RECONCILIATION The little servant, of all work, snuffling on the landing, found an opportunity to whisper to her mistress as she issued -from the sickroom; the landlady, no less affected, carried the message in. He came at once. His face was white and full of grief; but the lines of sorrow in it were disciplined to a sternness which forbade all sympathy and quieted all demonstration. "Where ?" he asked. "In your own sitting-room, Mr. Le Strang," sobbed the landlady; "but I'm sure, under the circumstances He silenced her with a gesture, and went downstairs—opened the door of his room with a steady hand, and, entering, closed it deliberately behind him and turned to face her. She was standing near the empty grate, nervously fingering the pieces of a little stoneware child's puzzle which lay on the table beside her. He went and took them from under her jewelled hand, arranged them in their tiny box on the mantelpiece, Confronted her once, more at a yard's distance. "You will pardon me," he said. "It was the last thing he played with." - She was in evening dress, soft and glittering, and a costly cloak was knotted loosely about her throat. From the diamond i« her beautiful hair to the little buckle on her slippered foot, she was a vision, she exhaled an atmosphere, of fragrant wealth —an anomaly, in that mean apartment. Only the tragedy of her eyes contradicted all that happy display. They were turned on Le Strang with an intense apprehension, an intense appeal in them; and a line, as of physical pain, was drawn between. The hurt of his act, which had been a cruel one, might have accounted for that; but she spoke without resentment, and in great agitation:— "Miss Pringle came to fetch me—she thought I ought to know, and I was grateful to her. I was just going in to dinner when —Mr. Le Strang —Oh, I hope he is better—has passed the worst ?" "Yes, he has passed the worst—he is dead." "Oh, no, no!", He bent his eyes upon the agonised young face. "Why should you be distressed ?" he said. "Wasn't it the end that you yourself considered the happiest for us all ?" She drooped her head, unable to look at him. "You spoke," said he sternly, "the natural thought of the pampered race to which you belong. The little life stood tipon your conscience, perhaps; it marred the perfection of your comfort, like the bark of a dog breaking through your sleep. And, because it interfered with your serenity of mind and conscience, it was to be happier out of the way—happier for itself and for me—for me." She sank into a chair, and leaning her elbows on the table, buried her face in her hands. "Maybe for itself," he went on, "the little soul is best away—fast asleep and at rest—never in all time to feel the disillusionment of knowledge, or the weariness that comes with years. He was in my arms when he died. That, God save him, was the right parting—a little thing, like a child going to school, cheered with love and reassurance on his way.. I had learned to love him —I shall feel his loss—without hyperbole I may say it, and say it in the full knowledge that a few days, a week or two, will cure my pain. Death severs all ties, and this was slight. Even now I can admit that Fate has been kind to him." He paused, took a single step nearer her, and continued, in a low tense voice : "But Fate is blinder than men, Miss Vanborough, and, if she works relentlessly, works without spite or calculation. Bear,that in mind; and bear in mind, if you will, the trust which I accepted from my dead friend, this dead child's father. It began at one grave-side,' it will not end, at the other. It comprises the vindication of a right—which, if admitted, God- knows, in time, might (I am a rough nurse) have saved him—it comprises, I say, the vindication of a right, and the punishment of a wrong. You will understand that, if you please, very distinctly." She had lifted her face, and was staring straight before her, convulsively knotting and unknotting her fingers. "Yes," she whispered. The utter misery of her attitude and expression could not but stir the deep emotions of him; but when

he became conscious of that softening, half-sensuous mood in himself, he repressed it sternly. "I make no threats," he went on. "I claim no knowledge but the conclusions natural to a reasoning mind. If they are wrong, I must seek in other directions for a solution to the problem which you were rash, or unfortunate, enough to put to me." She turned towards him an instant, and her lips formed the words, "What problem ?" "Is it necessary to ask ?" he said; "or to recall a comparison between my first and second visits to you ? If it is, I am already wrong, it may be, in my estimate of the nature of the influence which came between." Her head was bent low again, and she breathed like one in agony. And then of a sudden she was on her feet, appealing to him with wild eyes and imploring hands. "Follow up your conclusions—kill me with your hate and scorn —I will thank you, before I die, upon my knees." Her cloak burst its fastenings and slipped from her to the floor, where it lay, a silken foam, about her feet. All the tender youth of her, white neck and soft young arms, were revealed to move the man of human pity in him. And j something more—this helpless beauty/ at his mercymost loveable for'%ll her" sinning. He set his teeth. "But' she is a sinner," he told himself; and all at once his heart was turned to. deep compassion, and he stood amazed like one who wakes from dreams of death and terror to hear the birds singing. "Poor child !" he murmured, half involuntarily. .": She sank down upon that silken ruin, and broke into heartrending tears. ■ He stood a little, regarding her, his pulses beating heavily. A moment ago he had not foreseen, had not dreamt of such an .end as this. It had come upon him swiftly, suddenly, like a thief in the night, and he was robbed before he knew himself awake. Presently he moved and touched her shoulder; the contact made him gasp, as though he had burnt his hand. "I told you once," he said, "that for the sake of an impulsive offer, I would be, if you wished it, your friend. Do you wish it ?" Striving to still her tears, she shook her head. "Think again," he said, very softly. "You may "be in need of one." Once more the desperate negative. "Still very young ?" he said gently. "It was not so many days ago." "It was centuries, I think," she said, .low and broken. "And you are my enemy." "Enemies," he said, "are often made by misunderstanding. A first confidence is half the way to friendship. Give me yours, if you will." "No, no," she answered, "I cannot—it's impossible." "Not to save me this pain of being forced to act the traitor to one I want to help ?" ■< _,. , "It is no treachery," she said; "and nohody can help me. I have made my own bed, and I must lie on it." "Supposing," he said. "I were to be the traitor, not to you, but to my trust —to promise here and now to desist from my pursuit ?" For an instant, as she looked up at him, a wild unreasoning gladness lit her eyes; but in its very birth it was gone. She faced him then with a steady gaze. "Would that make things better by adding to my self-contempt tbe know--ledge that, for a worthless creature's sake, you could be moved to forego your purpose—that I had succeeded in making you something smaller than yourself ? Oh, no, no ! Leave me my belief in you at least. Be strong and will be just, I know, however much you punish me." Strange words from such a child. His blood seemed racing in his veins. He made a desperate clutch at his reason—sought to steady himself, like a drunken man. "How can I strike effectively," he said, "with you between us ? You urge me on and tie my hands at once. I cannot see my enemy for your face. Stand aside, and let me know him, and him me." "He holds me," she whispered. "When he falls I fall with him." Her voice choked; she shivered, and was suddenly lifting up to him poor supplicating hands. "Oh, don't send me to prison !" she cried, like a veritable child. The agonised appeal was wrung from her irresistibly. It caught among the very fibres of hie soul. The emotion of the piteo«s scene upstairs returned fast upon him, heating his blood to madness. He sank to his knees beside her, and seized her hands in his. "Listen to me," he said, with a thick, rapid utterance, "give yourself away from him and to me—make your cause mine and mine yours." She struggled, striving, with a looto of terror, to withdraw her hands from his grasp. "You must not," she said: "let me go, for pity's sake. It can never be —never, never." But still he held her. "Listen once more," he said, "only for a little. Poor sinning, mistaken child. I read into your heart—l read its fear and miseries, as plainly as I read the story of the wrong which, heaven granting, shall be amended in a little. Yield, and no harm shall come to you." Her eyes ran down with piteous tears; but she had ceased struggling, feeling the uselessness of it. "You kill me with shame," she said —"always to be the sport of men's exactions !" "What exaction here?" he asked. "You will be bad, if I will be bad," she said. "Bad !" he exclaimed. "0, you bribe me !" she said, "at the price of yourself. What can that be worth, at what value do you hold it, when the very terms you offer for its possession are faithlessness to your trust ?" He gazed intently into her eyes. "Be sure of that," he "be-

fore you state it so confidently. I j know tbe nature of my trust, Ruby, | better than you might dream. It I was founded on a love to which, in the name of the dead, I can ask, without faltering, this last expression. Let it be as I wish, and the dead —on my soul I say it —will rest in peace.". But she only shook her head with a woeful sigh. "Whatever you know," she said, "you cannot know me better than I know myself—a thing for no good man to desire. Leave me the memory of a kindness unspoiled by any such condition. Do not betray your trust, even so little or so far, but pursue your purpose to the end. It will be a mercy to me—o, it will, it will ! For you to withdraw now, on whatever pretext, would be to condemn me to a worse fate. Mr. Le Strang, do not hold me—O, have mercy !" He had none. "If all this were swept away," he said, "and we knelt clean man to maid, would you give yourself to me ?" She did not answer. He stole an arm about her, and drew her helpless to him. For one moment, with wet checks and closed eyes, she surrendered herself to that ecstasy of rest and protection; then, with a long moving sigh, he put her gently from him, and rose to his feet; and she sank prone upon the floor, hiding her face from him. "So soft, so sweet, so beautiful," he said—"how strangely passion is born ! I never meant to say this thing—a minute ago no thought of it was in my mind. And now—why an inspiration, child, has transformed me. All day, and all night most of all, a figure will walk in my brain, charming its dark places. We shall become intimate in that tender comradeship; you will learn to speak your heart to me, for all your tragic reticence at this pass. Already, such strangers as we were a moment ago, a confidence is ,born between us. That contact made it. Would you ever part with it to another ? I know better. See, I am so sure that I ask you this." He sank, on one knee by her side again, and, putting his hand on her arm, spoke low. , "In Long Wyecombe there is an old pensioner on your bounty, a man disabled in your step-father's service. He fears—or his daughter fears for him and for herself—that were he by any chance to recover, or partially to recover his faculties, your grant to him would cease. Maybe he has been encouraged in that belief. I hope it is an unfounded one. I ask you to write to me to-morrow, saying in so many words that it is an unfounded one. Trust to me for a reason and a purpose in this. I want no answer from you now." For one moment, most, exquisite to him, his hand lingered on that soft contact, and then he rose to his feet once more, resolute in self-control. "Child," he said., "I might have forced you further, but I was strong. Thank both our' fates for that —remember it, when your terror of yourself becomes perhaps greater than you can bear. Now I must leave you, and you are free to go, untied and uncoerced. If you want me, you shall come to me of your own will; you shall not plead that I compelled you. I shall be waiting herewaiting and expecting you—ready to take the burden from your sinking hands. 'Still very young'.—God of mercy, so she is—so she is !" He looked one moment down on her, with an expression in which passion and compassion, triumph and surrender were curiously blended, then bent and half-lifted, half helpher to her feet. Her lips were swollen, her eyes near closed with weeping, the chain about her neck had burst its catch and hung down loose. He fastened it in place; he lifted her cloak and set it about her shoulders; masterful possession was in all his acts and inferences; and yet he did not possess her, and yet she had no thought but to yield to him. If at that moment he had offered to comb her hair and wash her face, I think she would have submitted without a protest. But he never kissed her once; and perhaps, like a child, she felt herself rebuked in that omission. And, when she was ready, he took her round to Miss Pringle's, without a word exchanged between, and left her there. CHAPTER XIV.—THE CAT AND TWO MICE. For one moment, during his lastrelated interview with Ruby, Luke Redding had feared that the girl had in actual fact put herself into communication with Le Strang. That fear laid, and the possibility of its recurrence barred, as he thought, for ever, he gave himself no more concern about the man. His experience, both private and professional, argued against any further interference from that quarter. Empty threats were the common resource of the disappointed cadger, and he could afford, with a full confidence, to laugh at these. The one victim secured to him in her inseverable toils, his position was simply unassailable. For the rest, his business now lay in gradually, and with infinite finesse and subtlety, so removing those toils, strand by strand, and replacing them by others less galling and more seductive, as to charm the eased soul into reconciliation with its bondage. He mever had a doubt as to his capacity for this task. An abnormal egotism is one characteristic of luna-, cy; and what, after all, is a soul possessed by evil but the soul of a lunatic ? It has lost its dual personality, which is the safeguard of humankind. Luke loved himself so entirely that even his own worst acts appeared to himself most lovably forgivable. He could not believe in others remaining long adamant to the charms which were so patent to Luke Redding. It was in truth a very execrable business about which he now went so smoothly and self-complacently; and yet he seemed to have no more conscience over it than a cat has in playing with a mouse. His own

claws, his"teetfiTW« dam*%r ?ffS the exquisitely engrossing tilings to him, and the' movements of bis victim were to be regarded in ne other light than as provocation to those deadly graces to display themselves. He was so. sure of himself that he would not hurry the denouement; so absoi'bed in himself that he never gave a thought to the possible dog round the corner. More, his selfconfidence making him vainglorious, he even assayed the difficult game of playing with two mice at once, and thereby, illustrating the ancient proverb, invited his own bankruptcy. For the cat was never yet stroked that could do that successfully. It was on one of his periodic visits to Long Wyecombe that he began to "extend his sphere of playfulness" thus perilously. After his custom, he had come home from business to dinner, but not, after his custom, to render that meal a trial and humiliation to his life's partner. Yet he was not so short-sighted as ,to arouse any suspicion by a premature unbending. The apparent spontaneity of that, when it came, had been carefully approached by him. Mrs. Redding was many years older than her husband—a sufficiency, but not many enough, to justify his constant insult to her discretion as lacking the parental quality which ought to characterise it. For he was wont to tell her that she was old enough to be his mother, which was untrue; and silly enough to be his wife, which was incontrovertible. She was certainly not wise, and had the additional disadvantages of being unattractive in appearance, and of having lost, through him, her moderate fortune; therefore, her raison d'etre had ceased to be apparent. And yet she persisted in existing, and very healthily on. the whole. She was one of those women who can survive the worst treatment and on next to notbimg. Her appetite was always a negligible quantity; she lived at the vanishing point. Born to strict maidenhood, her form remained true to the canons ©f that prejudice which her inclinations—her mistaken inclinations —had in a rash moment repudiated. She was so spare that when she sat down her eyebrows sat up. No woman, on the face of her, to take or keep a voluptuary's fancy—and that was her fault; but it is hard to have to reject romance because there may be self-interest at the bottom of it. And she had paid for her fault, and was still to pay, poor foolish vestal. The two, husband and wife, sat facing one another across the dinnertable in the dull old room of the dull old house in the dull old High Street. The meal was over, the servants withdrawn, and the lawyer, one hand to his hip, the other poising a glass, sipped at his wine reflectively. Now and again he would .shoot a swift disliking glance at the thin sallow face opposite. It was like seeking for his mood the venom most apt to stimulate it ; and presently he began : "I have been waiting f for you to speak, Monica, but your confounded reticence is always, it seems, to remain unconquerable." (To be Continued.)