AT CLOSE RANGE BOOKS BY F. HOPKINSON SMITH PUBLISHED BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS At Close Range Ill., 12mo, $1.50 Colonel Carter's Christmas Ill., 12mo, $1.50 The Under Dog Ill., 12mo, $1.50 The Fortunes of Oliver Horn Ill., 12mo, $1.50 [Illustration: "You're 'it.' I'll git the trunk at Kalamazoo."] AT CLOSE RANGE BY F. HOPKINSON SMITH ILLUSTRATED CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS NEW YORK::::::::::::::::::1905 COPYRIGHT, 1905, BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS Published, March, 1905 TROW DIRECTORY PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY NEW YORK _To my Readers_: On my writing-table lies a magnifying-glass the size of an old watch crystal, which helps me to understand the mechanism of many interesting things. With it I decipher at close range such finger-work as the cutting of intaglios, the brush-marks on miniatures, or perhaps the intricate fusings of metals in the sword-guard of a Samurai. At the same close range I try to search the secret places of the many minds and hearts which in my nomadic life cross my path. In these magnifyings and probings the unexpected is ofttimes revealed: tenderness hiding behind suspected cruelty; refinement under assumed coarseness; the joy of giving forcing its way through thick crusts of pretended avarice. The results confirm my theory, that at the bottom of every heart-crucible choked with life's cinders there can almost always be found a drop of gold. F. H. S. 150 E. 34th Street, New York. CONTENTS PAGE _A Night Out_ 3 _An Extra Blanket_ 39 _A Medal of Honor_ 67 _The Rajah of Bungpore_ 93 _The Soldo of the Castellani_ 121 _A Point of Honor_ 147 _Simple Folk_ 177 "_Old Sunshine_" 207 _A Pot of Jam_ 239 ILLUSTRATIONS "_You're 'it.' I'll get the trunk at Kalamazoo_" _Frontispiece_ FACING PAGE _Heads and arms and legs made the passage of the aisles difficult_ 8 _Some young men ... and four or five chorus girls_ 52 _The room became crowded with Sam's customers_ 70 _At his feet knelt two Hindu merchants displaying their wares_ 112 (Courtesy of Collier's Weekly.) _Over the white snow seaward_ 180 (Courtesy of Collier's Weekly.) A NIGHT OUT Thoreau once spent the whole livelong night in the hush of the wilderness; sitting alone, listening to its sounds--the fall of a nut, the hoot of a distant owl, the ceaseless song of the frogs.