“And you may believe it or not--I would not, on the oath of a chaplain if I had not seen it with my own eyes,” ran Captain Nelson's subsequent narrative to Our Square, “but I saw the tears on those twin gray rocks that serve MacLachan for cheeks. So I drifted down to leeward and gathered my coat and gave three waiters a quarter each for not staring and came away to tell you. And you'll forgive me for waking the two of you up, and it gone eight bells--I mean midnight--but that was Mac's last word as I left, that I was to tell you. He said you'd be glad.” Glad we were, and all Our Square joined in the gladness, for it was a changed and softened MacLachan that came back to us, sober and strangely, gently awkward, the next day after a night spent with “my family.” “Ye'll not see me drink-taken again,” he promised the Little Red Doctor. That good word went swiftly. Consequently it was the greater shock when, on the very next Thursday afternoon, several of us who had run into the Bonnie Lassie's studio for tea and the weekly inspection of ourselves as mirrored in her work, heard in the familiar rumbling baritone from the open park space:-- “Horror and fright were in his face, The neighbors thought he was running a race, He clung to a lamp-post to stay his pace, But the leg broke away and kept up the chase, Ri-tu, di-nu, di-nu--di--na--day! Ri-tu, di-nu, di-nay!” “My God!” cried the Little Red Doctor in consternation. “Mac's off again.” He jumped up, but the Bonnie Lassie was quicker. “Let me get him,” she said, and ran from the room. Almost at once she was back, her face quivering. “Come and look!” she bade us. We crowded the front windows. On a bench in Our Square slouched a thin, hard, angular figure, terminating in a thin, hard, angular face, at the moment wide open and pouring forth unabashed melody for the apparent benefit of a much befrilled vehicle, which was being propelled back and forth by a thin, long leg. MacLachan was entertaining his granddaughter. THE GREAT 'PEACEMAKER A Story of Neutrality in Our Square ONE of the notable sporting events of Our Square is the nightly chess duel at Thomsen's Elite Restaurant. Many a beer, not a few dinners, and once even a bottle of real champagne won and lost, have marked the enthusiasm and partisanship of the backers. Personally I prefer David's cavalry dash as exemplified in long-range handling of doubled rooks, but there are plenty who swear and bet by the sapper-and-miner doggedness of Jonathan's pawn manipulations. The contestants have been known as David and Jonathan to Our Square for ten years, except for the late, melancholy months following the combat which broke off all relations and left the corner table at Thomsen's Square vacant. Since then the light-minded--such as Cyrus the Gaunt--have called them David and Goliath.