I don't know yet how he came by it, but there on the kitchen table lay the skull of Andrew Blake. When I took it, against his protest, and turned it over, I found what Joshua had meant--a hole as clean and round as a gimlet-bore in the bulge at the back of the head. And when, remembering the faint, chambered impact I had felt in shaking the unknown treasure on the beach, I peeped in through the round hole, I made out the shape of a leaden slug nested loosely between two points of bone behind the nose--a bullet, I should say, from an old, single-ball dueling pistol--such a pistol as Joshua Blake had played with in the shadow of apple-trees on that distant afternoon, and carried in his pocket, no doubt, to the warm-lit gaiety of Alma Beedie's birthday party.... FOOTNOTE: [16] Copyright, 1919, by The Pictorial Review Company. Copyright, 1921, by Wilbur Daniel Steele. THE THREE TELEGRAMS[17] #By# ETHEL STORM From _The Ladies' Home Journal_ For two years Claire René's days had been very much alike. It was a dull routine, full of heavy tasks, in the tiny crumbling house, in the shrunken garden patch, and grand'mère--there was always grand'mère to care for. Often in the afternoon Claire René wandered in the forest for an hour. She was used to the silence of the tall trees; the silence in the house frightened her. All the people in her land were gone away; the great noise beyond had taken them. Sometimes the noise had stopped, but the silence in the house, the silence in the garden, and the silence of grand'mère never stopped. It was hard for Claire René to understand. There was no one left in her land except grand'mère and Jacques. Jacques lived in the forest and cut wood; in the summer time he shot birds, in the winter time rabbits; Jacques was a very old man. Claire René thought about a great many things when she walked in the forest in the afternoons. She wondered how old she was. She knew that she had been seven years old when her three brothers went away a long time before. She would like to have another birthday, some day, but not until Clément and Fernand and Alphonse came home again. Then they would laugh as they used to laugh on her birthdays, and catch her up in their big, strong arms, and kiss her and call her "Dear little sister." Clément was the biggest and strongest of all; sometimes he would run off with her on his back into the forest, and the others would follow running and calling; and then at the end of the chase the three brothers would make a throne of their brown, firm hands and carry Claire René back to the door of the tiny house, where grand'mère would be waiting and scolding and smiling and ruddy of cheek. Grand'mère never scolded any more; she never smiled, and her cheeks were like dried figs.