Frank H. Spearman

“ As they walked toward the club house the moon was peering over the pines. The porches rang with the confusion of gaiety. Everything brought back the first night he had ridden into this fairyland.
"I wonder if every poor devil is given an hour in paradise in order to make hell more realistic," he said grimly.
"I don't know. I'm not a philosopher—only a woman."
They were at the porch steps. A caddie handed Jim a telegram. Blanche would have passed on, but, putting his hand under her arm, he walked up with her. ”

“ What would these men and women say if they knew, as I know, that the cowardly cook who stole the boat while the engineer and the boy slept on the ledge also stole that pistol?" he cried, pointing to the one by Byrnham's plate. "The man who left his companions in the gorge to starve—and that you are that cook?"
Byrnham sprang to his feet, and reached for his pistol. Then he drew back his hand with an oath, for Macalester was quicker than he. "You're drunk, man," he said.
"You know me, do you?" cried Jim. "Yes, I'm the boy—I am Mac. Dead men do tell tales sometimes, Baxter—coward! thief! ”

“ Young women well up in diplomacy, and girls but peeping from their shells, strolled arm in arm across the lawn.
The scarlet coats of the men and the white of the women's skirts dashed the foreground sharply with color; laughter lightened the heavy gloom of the pines, and from under the oaks music came like incense. Dancers already wove changing silhouettes against the canvas walls of the pavilion.
They were so many. To watch the young people disappearing around shadowy corners wakened envy ”

“ It was Saturday night on the golf links at Glen Ellyn.
"Very, very attractive. I feared last night it could not possibly stand the test of sunrise. Daylight is such a cruel test," sighed Mrs. Van Der Hyde. "Does General Florence spend much time here, Bob?"
"He's been here 'most all the time since Blanche Bryson began playing."
"Isn't that Blanche over there now?" asked Mrs. Van Der Hyde, as she raised her lorgnette. "Yes; who's that with her?"
"That's Garrett Byrnham, the English crack. Say, auntie, he's a marvel; you should see him drive," young Capelle went on enthusiastically. ”

“ How the duffer of the Glen Ellyn golf links surprised the hero of the Grand Cañon and blocked the veteran of La Salle Street.
I. WHEN they drove up past the lodge the rambling gables of the long club house hung somber and heavy among the pines on the slope of the hill; but the scene was a pretty one, for behind it the moon was rising full and into a cloudless sky. From the window openings light shot in bright patches across the broad verandas; the blaze and the shadow revealed, partly by suggestion, the lively groups through which slender, white capped maids picked their way. ”

“ You an Englishman?" he stormed in fury. "You an engineer? You are an Australian convict. Show them your brand!
"Take up your gun, you brute. If there's no law here for vermin like you, come into the open and take the law of the Grand Cañon on the thief and the cannibal!" he cried, pushing Baxter's weapon towards him. The women screamed as the adventurer seized it, and Capelle sprang in front of his friend.
"Let him come. Don't hold him; that's what he wants. Get back, will you?" cried Jim, starting around the table. ”

“ As the courses were served, each table seemed jollier than the others; by the time the coffee was brought on men loved their worst enemies and women their best friends.
"Did you know, general," Mrs. Van Der Hyde said, "that Mr. Byrnham has been a great wanderer as well as a great student of golf? Yes, he's had the most remarkable adventures—and many of them in the West. I understand that he is really the only white man who has ever gotten through the Grand Cañon of the Colorado. ”

“ Her growing admiration for Byrnham disquieted General Florence.
"Jim, I've got to be on La Salle Street most of the time for the next few weeks," he said to his nephew one night, "and I just wish you'd use your kind offices while you're out here to keep that squirt Byrnham away from Blanche Bryson. We're not exactly engaged, you know, but we expect to be—see? I can't run a campaign in grangers and watch things here at the same time. Just see they don't sell me out, Jim, will you?" ”

“ General Florence found himself next Mrs. Van Der Hyde; Jim was opposite, under the wing of Gertrude Servallis. Byrnham sat at Bob's right, and next him Miss Bryson glowed in her simple youth and her really adorable organdie.
"I'm ever so glad to see you back, Mr. Macalester," she exclaimed. "Do you know, there's something I've been wanting ever so long to ask you, and now I can't recall what it is. Isn't that stupid?" But Miss Bryson drawled the word "stupid" so deliciously that a man must have been crabbed indeed to dispute her. Laughing, she told Mr. ”

“ The river's full of wells. Wells in a river? Most certainly; curious sort of holes scooped out of the rock bottom by the screw of the whirlpools. Odd, isn't it? Twenty feet deep. Gives one a fair idea of the absolutely terrific force of the water—the current, don't you know. ”