The Argosy, December 1905 — page 175: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

ON THE WAVE OF SUCCESS. “Tl give him another chance,” he decided, and an hour later shouted at the door for Billy to bring him a pitcher of cold water. He felt rather mean as he scurried across the room again and got into bed, as though he had already retired for the night. He knew that the widow and the younger children were abed, and be- lieved Billy to be the only one up. He heard the boy come blundering up the stair with the water, and finally the door, which he had left on the latch, was pushed open. “ Bring it here, Billy,” he said from the bed, and in the darkness Billy came across the room and deposited the itecher upon the stand at the head of an’s bed. “ Any—anythin’ more ter-night, Mr. Crompton?” he asked quaveringly. “No, Billy. I hope to go right to sleep. Good-night!” 153 The boy was already approaching the door. At the table he hesitated for half a second—just long enough to satisfy Dan that it was a hesitation. Then he went out and shut the door softly. Dan waited until he heard the boy go down the stairs and a little later leave the house. 7 “ By Gad, he took it!” the signalman whispered to himself. Dan then got softly out of bed, groped his way to the table by the door, and felt all over the cloth which covered it. The key was gone. Wrought up to a fever pitch of in- terest, Crompton forgot his weakness and prepared to follow the boy. What- ever Billy knew of the mystery of his uncle’s death was on the verge of being explained, and the signalman told him- self that he could not miss the dénoue- ment. (To be continued.) ON THE WAVE OF SUCCESS. By CASPER CARSON. An honest toiler’s elaborate scheme to make a fortune and how he overreached himself in the — very hour of triumph. was the old story: Two loving hearts kept asunder by the cruel mandate of a stern papa, who required more tangible qualifications in a prospective son-in-law than a dower of devotion and a wealth of soaring ambitions. In other words, old Barnabas Burlin- game, head of a trust company or so, and dictator in the affairs of several railroads, did not consider Seth Thur- low, penniless newspaper man, a suitable match for his daughter, and with rather brutal directness of language had just informed the sighing swain to that effect. It had all come about down at Surf- side, the fashionable summer resort where the Burlingames maintained a marble palace under the unpretentious title of a “cottage,” and where, also, Thurlow was sojourning in order to re- count the doings of society folk for the Daily Planet. And now old B. B., as his associates nicknamed the magnate, had crashed down his heavy heel upon love’s young dream, shattering all its anticipations and dispelling its bright illusions. Can one imagine anything more pa- thetic ? True, there had been one ray of hope left in the pervading gloom, but it was so small as scarcely to be discerned by the naked eye. Thurlow had been guilty in his time of some tentative efforts at fiction, and Bb. B., with malevolent purpose, used these to rub salt into the gaping wounds. “Tl be fair with you, young man,” he had said, chuckling sarcastically, “and I'll give you the same chance that the father did in that fool story of yours, ‘The Duke’s Ducats, which Florence gave me to read the other day. Show me one hundred thousand dollars to NOOKS CONMUC CO!