The Argosy, Volume XLIV — page 122: what you’re looking at

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

118 ~wered Teresa, inaking a great effort to" speak in her natural tone. “Is it so very late?” “ Ah, yes; much too late for you to take that lonely walk through the hills. You must never do so again, little daughter. Weren't vou frightened? ” THE ARGOSY. “Frightened? I?” ‘Teresa laughed, kissed the madre’s forehead, and hur- ried to her room. Had she stayed with the madre an- other moment she would have told in spite of herself, and that was not to be thought of. (To be continued.) THE FATAL PHOTO. - BY W. BERT FOSTER. The strange doings of a picture that seemed to be of no one and to belong nowhere. ‘T’ was really the first and only time I ever did such a thing, and that the consequences should have been so fatal seemed, to me, a punishment far ex- ceeding the enormity of the crime. I went behind the scenes with Jack- son at the Frivolity Theater because he had some business to transact with the manager of the show running there at the time—I don’t even know the name of the production—and that was the beginning of the whole unpleasant affair. | That was a musty, dark, rather dirty corridor from the stage entrance to the stage itself. I stood about half way down, and opposite a low door marked “Manager,” through which Jackson had disappeared, and looking stageward the place seemed like a tunnel. The show was in progress, so there was a light at the further end. Suddenly, out of this light a figure appeared, which, when it came close, re- solved itself into a smutty faced boy <moking a cigarette. He walked up to me and placed a square envelope in my astonished grasp. “ She says dat’s de on’y one she's got here,” said the boy hoarsely, “an’ dat <he’ll see ver after de show at de same table.” At the instant a bell rang insistently, and the youth with the cigarette turned to run. I had evidently been taken for a waiting “Johnny” and was vastly amused. “Hi,” I called after the retreatin call-boy, “ what shall I do with this?” “Wear it next ver heart for all I C. OUgle care!” came back the answer, and the voung saucebox disappeared as though through a trap. Well, I told Jackson when he ap- peared, and we laughed over it. The envclope, enclosing a card which I knew must be a photograph, was thrust into my pocket, and I did not think of it again until we sat over the black coffee at Vicar’s several hours later. “Let’s see Tottie Coughdrop’s phiz, Joe,” said Jackson with his usual inele- gance. That is Jackson’s only fault. He is the skeleton in my bachelor closet. When Aunt Maria or any of my other out-of-town relatives and friends ap- pear, | make Jackson go to his sister’s until they have gone. | They consider it bad enough for me to live in town and in bachelor quarters, as it is. If they knew that my chum was the business manager of a theatri- cal paper, and that he hobnobbed with burlesque queens, and comediennes, and leading ladies, and other feminine members of the profession, who are all considered beyond the pale in Hotch- kisville, Vermont, I should lose every atom and shred of reputation remain- ing to me. And Jackson will talk slang and “shop ” until the simplest old ladv in the world—even Aunt Maria—would know that he was not a class leader, to say the least. { fished out the envelope and tossed it across the table. I hadn’t curiosity enough about the thing to look at it invself. (COL ElOOO COL