"I wonder if I'd have been equal to that, myself, if I'd been born a nigger dog with an ingrained distrust of the white man?" he questioned. "Gad! it comes near being the real thing, Johnson!" The secretary looked at the slipper lying at his feet: "I wonder where he found that, now?" I was wondering the same thing, and so was Alicia. "Let's show Beautiful Dog the Chinese politeness of being decent enough not to accept his gift when he's decent enough to offer it," she suggested. "Yes, throw it into the shrubbery and let him find it. That may raise white people somewhat in his estimation," I added, hastily. Instantly Mr. Jelnik picked it up and tossed it among the bushes. His action seemed the merest polite compliance with my request, and he barely glanced at the object he cast away. Yet it was really worth a second glance. Chewed, frayed, and torn, it had once been of finest red Morocco leather; and it was such a flat and heelless slipper as no native Hyndsville foot had ever worn. It was The Jinnee's slipper. CHAPTER XIV THE TALISMAN Mrs. Cheshire Scarboro was far from the fool her cousin Sophronisba had credited her with being. She had sufficient cleverness to understand that Hyndsville wasn't big enough to hold two factions. For a faction was forming with Hynds House as its storm-center, and it was one which threatened Mrs. Scarboro's hitherto unquestioned sovereignty. Jimmy Scarboro himself, a most personable youth, was one of the ringleaders of revolt. A weaker woman would have kept up the fight. Mrs. Scarboro understood that to spend one's powers trying to hold an untenable position is a proof not of valor but of stupidity. She quietly declared a truce, sending out, in the form of an invitation to one of her sacred card-parties, tentative notice that she would consider joining forces. We recognized the olive-branch, seriously extended. The next move was ours. "There's a time to fight, and a time to leave off fighting," Alicia decided. "Here's where we disarm. When these people come from under the shade of the dear old family tree, they're quite human. We have got to let them give themselves the opportunity to discover that we're human, too." It wasn't necessary to explain things to The Author, because a portion of his brain is purely and cattily feminine. That's why he is a genius. No man is a genius whose brain isn't bisexual. "I shall have to lay aside a cherished prejudice and lend this lady the light of my countenance, although I loathe card-parties. I abhor cards, outside of draw-poker on shipboard, with a crook of sorts sitting in to lend the game a fillip. Despite the fact that poor Mrs. Scarboro couldn't lay hands on a decent crook to save her life, I think I shall go, and thereby acquire merit," he concluded, with the air of a martyr. I looked at him gratefully.