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ilized country. Submarine telephone plants are installed upon 38 lightships off the Atlantic and Pacific Coasts of the United States, those in the Pacific being Umatilla reef, San Francisco, Blunt's reef. Relief Ship No. 76, and Columbia River. Eight lightships on the Great Lakes are so provided.

Professor McAdie proposes that wireless telegraph and submarine telephone outfits be placed in conjunction at every point where fog signals are now established, especially at dangerous headlands and at the entrance of harbors. He recommends providing vessels with the same. It is a lamentable fact that at the present writing not a single vessel in the Pacific

is

equipped with a submarine telephone, although they are common in vessels sailing other seas.

While the submarine telephone and wireless telegraph combined give a ship's distance and bearing from the station, her position may be accurately plotted on a chart if signals are heard simultaneously from two stations, by describing arcs from each station with radii equal to the distance from each. The intersection of these arcs is the ship's exact position.

Thousands of lives and millions of dollars worth of property are imperiled annually by fog at sea. A reliable system of protection is what the maritime munity has been seeking for generations.

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THE LAST STAND

BY AGNES LOUISE PROVOST

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lower Fallsburg baked in it. Upper Fallsburg grew hourly more quiet with the calm of pleasant leisure at the week's end; lower Fallsburg was already beginning to swarm with the Saturday night crowd. Street corners

were grouped with idle men and boys from the mills, and buggies and carryalls were bringing their quota from the outlying districts.

Sheriff Tom Rawlins, taking a cut through lower Fallsburg with Bergen, his new deputy, volunteered the opinion that a universal "pay-day" is a pernicious institution.

"By sun-down fifty per cent of this crowd will be doing their best to get drunk and showing up their dispositions. If I had the running of this earth, I'd cut Saturday night out of the schedule. It's a bad thing for too many men to have their pockets full of money at the same time, and when you add all day Sunday to sober up in, it's a pretty good receipt for trouble."

He dropped his voice slightly as he passed an idling group of men. One of them called to him familiarly. His name was Farley, and he was a yard foreman in one of the mills.

"Evenin', Sheriff. How is it the county ain't givin' Mr. Hansee a pink tea today? He's leavin' us for the penitentiary, ain't he?"

"He's left," said the sheriff briefly, for Hansee was a tender spot with him. The men turned into a corner saloon. Rawlins went on with his deputy, but not too soon to hear an unpleasant laugh as the door swung in.

"In my part of the country," the voice boasted to Farley, "when one man murders

another we hang him. We don't let him off with two years' free board."

The Sheriff's brows flickered in a momentary frown. Farley's satellite had described the situation with unpleasant accuracy. curacy. The reigning party in Sinclair County had been in power for seven good years of fatness, and the wheels of government were getting clogged. Hansee, an offensive politician of the lower sort, had shot another man in a quarrel, and after a dragging trial had been sentenced to an absurd two years in the State Prison, and a fine which his friends had paid for him. The opposition papers had made much capital out of the lightness of the sentence, and the fact that it was not the first of its kind did not make it sound any prettier.

As they came to the railroad tracks, Sheriff Rawlins turned and looked back at the narrow streets with their lounging men and boys, and the yellow glow of late sunshine on them. He knew the possibilities for mischief that lay there. The track was the social divider of Fallsburg. North of it lay upper Fallsburg, with its prosperous business streets, its white court house and jail giving on the public square, and its decorous residential section, with a century or so of history back of each substantial home. South of the track lay lower Fallsburg, clustering around the mills and the railroad. The "black belt" was there, a straggling section along the river, and in the heart of it lay a human cess-pool where the refuse of both races sent up the reek of its uncleanness to heaven. "Hell's Kitchen," they called it, a nest which generated vice and bred putridity, and filled each night with hideousness. Social Fallsburg was too far off to hear it. Official Fallsburg was dull of hearing, for the Kitchen polled several hundred purchasable votes, and could be colonized for as many more. The prevailing color of the Kitchen was black, some white men-of a kind-foregathered

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in its numerous saloons because they were wider open than others, and now and then white women of the same kind-disappeared in its depths and came out worse than before.

"I'd like to clean out that hole," Sheriff Rawlins said meditatively. "One good job like that and I'd go out of office satisfiedprovided they wouldn't have me back. Howdy, Uncle Joe! Seems to me you look younger than usual."

"Uncle" Joe Babcock stopped at the corner and snickered in senile appreciation. He was an old man, but he could earn a man's wages yet, and was enormously proud of it.

"Howdy, Sheriff! Younger? I've jest been paid off. Ain't that enough to make a man look young?"

He wagged his head and chuckled contentedly as he trudged along. He loved that week's pay.

Just around the corner a loosely built negro was leaning idly, and his stupid face lightened into furtive interest at the sound of voices. He was shiftless and lazy, but he wanted money. It was Saturday night; he must have whisky; his fingers itched for the touch of dice. Uncle Joe Babcock had just been paid off. No formulated plan of action yet stirred the sluggish mind, but he wanted the things that Uncle Joe's money could buy, and a little greedy flame flickered up in his eyes as he listened.

The negro watched the Sheriff and his deputy go their way. Then he moved out and slouched indifferently up the street, keeping his eye on Uncle Joe Babcock, half a block ahead. The old man was in a hurry. Because it was nearer, he frequently went home by way of the Kitchen, and-in daylight-took a short cut through one of its twisting alleys. He was not afraid.

No one heard the sounds of it, but a lit tle later the old man staggered out into the open street on a swaying run. He had struggled, and the ugly marks of it were branded on him. As he reached safety he swung about dizzily and fell.

Men were coming down the streetwhite men. They ran to him, and he looked up and whispered it:

"It was Jim Turford. He robbed me. I guess he's done for me."

The law found Jim Turford before he had left the Kitchen's dark limits, and rushed him to the county jail for safekeeping. The story of it leaped from mouth to mouth, and lost no detail as it went. Uncle Joe Babcock had been murdered, and a "nigger" had done it.

For several hours Fallsburg thought it over, and meanwhile the saloon doors swung frequently. Sheriff Rawlins' prophecy had already come true.

Night crept in and darkened the shaded streets, lights blinked here and there, and curious, loud-voiced groups gathered in front of the county jail, on the east side of the public square, but only a pale light or two showed that there was any life behind the high-barred windows. Gradually the groups congested there, talking idly, violent but aimless. The fire in them was smouldering, waiting for something to blow it into flame. It came.

Down in the Kitchen the scared blacks lay quiet, but about eleven o'clock a group of white men from the mills started back to lower Fallsburg across the tracks, and a negro, coming drunk and reckless from the Kitchen's limits, reeled against one of them and cursed him obscenely.

Straight from a heavy shoulder the answer crashed into the cursing mouth, and half an hour later a panting, sobered fugitive cowered in one of the darkest alleys of the black belt, listening to the sound of retreating voices, while the men who had pursued him, foiled of their quarry and augmented to a crowd, turned to sate their wrath elsewhere. A "nigger" had murdered Uncle Joe Babcock that very day, and they would drag him out to retribution. The law was weak, but this time they would be the law. Drunk with anger, they turned toward the county jail, and as they marched, men joined them by twos and threes, by dozens pouring out from saloons and stores, and the mob roar surged ahead of them,

Sheriff Rawlins heard them coming. Once before he had heard that inhuman bellow, swelling from a murmur to the maddened roar which can come from men's throats when the lust of blood is on them. Official Fallsburg heard it also, and stirred uneasily, but official Fallsburg lay low. Election was only a few months off, and it would not be good policy to

meddle. Were not Sheriff Rawlins and Warden Cale there to look after the prisoner?

Beyond a doubt, Sheriff Rawlins was there, and would stay there. Just now he was standing on the jail steps, eyes cool, watching the faces crowding beneath him in the half-lit summer darkness, right hand resting negligently on his hip, but ready to jump back to his revolver at the instant of warning. Warden Harvey Gale was inside, stern of demeanor, but feeling a bit hollow with nervous excitement. Warden Cale meant well, but the Sheriff judged him to be not quite of the fibre that awes a mob.

The crowd pressed around the jail steps, loud mouthed, threatening, halfuneasy, just a little below the level of the Sheriff's shoulders. Both sides of the track were represented there, but lower Fallsburg predominated, for lower Fallsburg had just been paid off, and was reckless with liquor. Some one threw a stone at one of the jail windows, and a clatter of glass followed. Sheriff Rawlins' eyes hovered steadily over the spot from which the missile had come.

"Well, boys, what is it?" "We want that nigger?"

"I can't give him to you. You know that."

"A-a-a-a-a-a-h!" It was a rasping note of revilement. Some one thrust out a menacing fist.

"He killed Uncle Joe Babcock, an old man that never done no harm to nobody! This ain't goin' to be no two-year-and-Godbless-you sentence! We're goin' to see justice done in this county for oncet."

"You certainly are!" The Sheriff sent it back at him promptly, and a few laughed. "I expect to hang that nigger myself in six weeks."

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dozen pressing behind him.

Sheriff Rawlins' right hand went to his hip pocket, slid swiftly forth and leveled a revolver at the pushing ones in front, and they melted back before it. His voice carried to the far limits of the crowd.

Before you try any nonsense, remember one thing. When you break down that door, you will find me just on the other side of it, waiting for you."

He stepped back, still facing them. The door opened cautiously to admit him, and closed swiftly in the face of the crowd.

Now that he no longer stood there with implacable eye and leveled weapon, their fear of him vanished, and they swarmed up the steps with newly inflated courage and beat on the door. Some one called for a log to force it, but no one moved to get one. Was not Sheriff Rawlins just on the other side-waiting?

They swayed and murmured, filling the night with idle talk of vengeance, and scores of the curious and excited joined them, until from the long, shady yard of the jail they ran over and filled the public square, half boastful, half afraid, violent of speech and purpose, but not realizing their own strength nor daring to use it. Inside, three men armed with authority. and a little more held them back with a barred door between.

"Harvey!" The Sheriff turned to Warden Cale. "You better guard the back. They might sneak up behind and make trouble. "Billy"-to his deputy-"you go up and take a look out, and see what they're doing. If you want help, yell for it, and if you hear me shout, come quick."

They went, leaving Sheriff Rawlins alone by the big door. He heard one of the prisoners in the upper tier call out to Bergen for the news, the criminal and the law being on easy social terms in Sinclair County. There were about a score of prisoners in the jail, and all of them awake and restless, for even in jail news flies quickly. A negro had been rushed in at nightfall, and now the muffled clamor of a mob beat through the walls. The same uneasiness possessed them all, the fear lest men in their madness might fire the jail and sacrifice them to reach the negro. Two of them started to argue it out noisily across their cells, and Sheriff Rawlins went down the corridor and looked them

over, and made a brief speech. After that they quieted down and listened in sullen apprehension to the sounds outside.

Bergen came down and reported increased activity on the part of the besiegers. He could not distinguish a great deal, but a crowd had set off in the direction of the tracks, and others seemed to be dragging materials for a bonfire. Two five gallon cans stood within the circle of a street light. That meant kerosene.

"M'm." Sheriff Rawlins grunted a brief comment. "So they think they're going to burn him right under our noses? Well, they'll have to catch him first."

The new deputy ventured a suggestion. The flame of battle was in him.

"Suppose I sneak out and see what can be done at close range? I can dodge over and stir up the police department, or maybe we can get out the militia."

"No use." The Sheriff was decided. "The police department, Billy, is meant for times of peace, and our militia is an institution used chiefly for parades. They may be useful in some places, but not in Sinclair County. We're too damned afraid of alienating votes. You couldn't get the police out to-night with a corkscrew. When it's all over, they'll wake up and send the whole force. I know 'em."

A burst of angry yells beat in upon them. A new frenzy was sweeping the crowd. The Sheriff listened, his head cocked toward the door.

"If they keep on like that they'll be in here before morning. This isn't the strongest jail in the United States. If they do" he thought it over for a moment, and a gleam of inspiration flickered somewhat grimly in his half closed eyes. It seemed to please him. "If they do, Billy, I think we can match 'em. See here."

Sheriff Rawlins gave the rest of his instructions in a law-toned rumble, and the deputy nodded, growing more excited with each sentence. He was visibly awed by the magnificence of the scheme.

"Don't let anybody see you," the Sheriff concluded. "Shut down the lid and put it in front of Turford's cell. No, he can't reach it. I put irons on him."

Deputy Bergen was off on a run, and the Sheriff sat down and waited patiently. It was past midnight; the minutes crept on to one o'clock, and beyond. The clock

in the corridor struck two, and at a sudden turmoil from the outside he ran up to a darkened window and peered out.

Starry darkness was there, warm and humid-hurrying, delirious crowds of men, and over to the south, just beyond the tracks, a deepening, pulsating red glow.

Outside, the warm night had stirred its own unrest in the blood of idle men. In the middle of the square the fagots were piled in readiness around an iron lamppost, and the five-gallon cans of kerosene stood near, but still they delayed their attack on the jail door, remembering Sheriff Rawlins, just on the other side. A group of them went around to the back of the jail to smoke him out, piled a little bonfire. and struck a match, but the voice of Warden Cale dropped down to them from above. Warden Cale had found his nerve.

"Better not. I'm here with six shots and a good aim, and ammunition handy."

They dodged like frightened shadows from the aim of the unseen weapon, and the dropped match spluttered a moment in the cool grass, and went into blackness.

The men whom Bergen had seen starting for the tracks were absent a long time. They sent back a messenger shouting exultant news, at first unintelligible, but as he ran, the red glow began to reflect its first faint tinge in the sky, and then leaped into a flickering furnace. They had fired the Kitchen.

The crowd howled. That was the noise that Sheriff Rawlins had heard. Like liberated waters they streamed off toward the glow in the South, drained rapidly out of the square and the jail yard, and left only trampled grass and piled fagots to show that they had been there.

The glow in the southern sky grew to a passionate flare, now pulsating hotly, now peering red-eyed through a haze of brown smoke. The Kitchen was burning. Spark fountains leaped up from it and died in the night. The gong of a fire engine sounded from upper Fallsburg, but just over the tracks the crowd met it, pressed around it with jeers and derisive laughter, and defied the driver to run them down.

He parleyed with them faintly, and in the end left them masters, with the hot glow still beating in waves against the Southern sky. In his heart he was with

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