6 7 SERIAL v STORY {THE MAKER! OF MOONS: X X •> T X 112 Illustrations by J. J. Sheridan | | (Copyright, G. I*. Putnam's Sons.) CHAPTER I. Concerning Yue-Laou and the Xin 1 know nothing more than you shall know. I am miserably anxious to clear the matter up. Perhaps what I write niajr save the United States govern ment money and lives, perhaps it may arouse the scientific world to action; at any rate it will put an end to the terrible suspense of two people. Cer tainty is better than suspense. If the government dares to disre gard the warning and refuses to send a thoroughly equipped expedition at once, the people of the state may take swift vengeance on the whole regions and ieave a blackened, devastated waste where to-day forest and flower ing meadow land border the lake in the Cardinal Woods. You already know part of the story; the New York papers have been full of alleged details. This much is true: Harris caught the "Shiner," red handed, or rather yellow handed, for his pockets and boots and dirty fists were stuffed with lumps of gold. I say gold advisedly. You may call it what you please. You also know how Harris was—but unless I begin at the beginning of my own experiences you will be none the wiser after all. On the 3d of August of this present year I was standing in Tiffany's chat ting with George Godfrey of the de signing department. On the glass coun ter between us lay a coiled serpent, an exquisite specimen of chiseled gold. "No," replied Godfrey to my ques tion, "it isn't my work; I wish it was. Why, man, it's a masterpiece!" "Whose?" I asked. "Now. I should be very glad to know also." said Godfrey. "We bought it from an old jay who says he lives in the country somewhere about the Cardinal Woods. That's near Starlit lake, I believe—" "Lake of the Stars?" I suggested. "Some call it Starlit lake—it's all the same. Well, my rustic Reuben .'says that he represents the sculptor of this snake for all practical and busi ness purposes. He got his price, too. We hope he'll bring us something more. Wo have sold this already to the Metropolitan museum." i was loaning idly on the glass case, watching the keen eyes of the artist in precious metals as he stooped over the gold serpent. "A masterpiece!" he muUered to himself, fondling the glittering coil; "look at the texture! whew!" Hut I was not looking at the serpent. Something was moving— crawling out of Godfrey's coat pocket —the pocket nearest me—Something soft and yellow with crab-like legs all covered with coarse yellow hair. "What in heaven's name," said I. "have you got in your pocket? It's crawling out —it's trying to creep up your coat. Godfrey!" He turned quickly and dragged the creature out with his left hand. I shrank back as he hold the re pulsive object dangling before me, and he laughed and placed it on the coun ter. "Did you over see anything like that?" he demanded. "No," said I, truthfully, "and I hope I never shall again. What is it?" "I don't know. Ask them at the Natural History museum—they can't toll you. The Smithsonian is all at sea, too. It is, 1 believe, the connect ing link between a sea-urchin, a spider and the devil, it looks venomous, but I can't find either fangs or mouth. Is it blind? These things may be eyes, hut I hey look as if they were painted. A Japanese sculptor might have pro duced such an impossible beast, but it is hard to believe that. God did. It kioks unfinished, too. l have a mad Idea that this creature is only one of the parts of some larger and more grotesque organism—it looks so lone ly, so hopelessly dependent, so cursed ly unfinished. I'm going to use it as a model. If I don't. out-Japanese the Japs my name isn't Godfrey." The creature was moving slowly across the glass case towards me. I drew back. "Godfrey," I said, "I would execute a man who executed any such work as you propose. What do you want to perpetuate such a reptile for? I can stand the Japanese grotesque, but I can't stand that—spider—" "It's a crab." "Crab or spider or blind-worm— ugh! What do you want to do it for? it's a nightmare--It's unclean!" I hated the thing. It was the first living creature that I had ever hated. For some time I had noticed a damp, acrid odor in the air, and Godfrey said ft came from (he reptile. "Then kill it and bury it," I said; "and, by tl»e \yay, where did it come from "I don't know that, either," laughed Godfrey; "I found it clinging lo th« box that this gold serpent was brought In. I suppose my old Keuben is re sponsible." "If the Cardinal Woods are the lurk ing places for things like this," said I, "I am sorry that I am going to the Cardinal Woods." "Are you?" asked Godfrey; "for the shooting?" "Yes, with Harris and Pierpont. Why don't you kill that creature?" "Go off on your shooting trip and let me alone," laughed Godfrey. I shuddered at the "crab" and bade Godfrey good-by until December. That night Pierpont, Harris and I sat chatting in the smoking car of the Quebec express when the long train pulled out of the Grand Central de pot. Old David had gone forward with the dogs; poor things, they hated to ride in the baggage car, but the Que bec & Northern road provides no sportsmen's cars, and David and the three Gordon setters were in for an uncomfortable night. Except for Pierpont, Harris and my self the car was empty. Barris, trim, stout, ruddy and bronzed, sat drum ming on the window-ledge, pulling a short fragrant pipe. His gun-case lay beside him on the floor. "When I have white hair and years of discretion," said Pierpont, languid ly. "I'll not flirt, with pretty serving maids; will you, Roy?" "No," said I, looking at Harris. "You mean the maid with the cap in the Pullman car?" said Pierpont. "Yes," said Pierpont. I smiled, for I had seen it also. Harris twisted, his crisp gray mus tache and yawned. "You children had better be tod dling off to bed," he said. "That lady's maid is a member of the secret ser vice." "Oh," said Pierpont, "one o" your colleagues?" "You might present us, you know," I said; "the journey is monotonous." B] /^_ "Except for Pierpont, Barris and Myself, the Car Was Empty." Harris had drawn a telegram from his pocket, and as he sat turning it over and over between his fingers he smiled. After a moment or two he handed it to Pierpont, who read it with slightly raised eyebrows. "It's rot—l suppose it's cipher," he said; " I see it's signed by Gen. Drum mond—" "Drummond, chief of the govern ment secret service," said Harris. "Something interesting?" I inquired, lighting a cigarette. "Something so interesting," replied Harris, "that I'm going to look into it myself—" "And break up our shooting trio —" "No. Do you want lo hear about it? Do you, Hilly Pierpont?" "Yes," replied that immaculate young man. Harris rubbed the amber mouth piece of his pipe on his handkerchief, cleared the stem with a bit of wire, puffed once or twice, and leaned back in his chair. "Pierpont," he said, "do you re member that evening at the United States club when Gen. Miles, Gen. Drummond and i were examining that gold nugget that Capt. Mali ad had? You examined it also, I believe." "I did," said Pierpont. "Was it gold?" asked Harris, drum ming on the window. "It was," replied Pierpont. "I saw it, too," said I; "of course it was gold." "Prof. La Grange saw it also," said Harris; "he said it was gold." After a silence Pierpont asked what tests had been made. "The usual tests," replied Harris. "The United States mint is satisfied that it is gold, so is every jeweler who has seen it. Hut it is not gold—and yet—it is gold." Pierpont and I exchanged glances. "Now," said I, "for Harris' usual coup de theatre; what was the- nug get?" "Practically it was pure gold; but," said Harris, enjoying the situation in tensely, "really it was not gold. Pier pont. what is gold?" "Gokl'« an element, a metal—" CAMERON COUNTY PRESS, THURSDAY, JANUARY 28, 1909 "Wrong! Billy Pierpont," naid Bar ris, coolly. "Gold was an element wheu I went to school," said I. "It has not been an element for two weeks," said Harris; "and, except Gen. Drummond, Prof. La Grange and my self, you two youngsters are the only people except one in the world who know it—or have known it." "Do you mean to say that gold is a composite metal?" said Pierpont, slowly. "I do. La Grange has made it. He produced a scale of pure gold day be fore yesterday. That nugget was man ufactured gold." Could Barris be joking? Was this a colossal hoax? 1 looked at Pierpont. Ho muttered something about that set tling the silver question, and turned bis bead to liarris, but there was that in liarris' face which forbade jesting, and Pierpont and I sat silently ponder ing. "Don't ask me how it's made," said Harris, quietly; "I don't know. But I do know that somewhere in the re gion of the Cardinal Woods there is a gang of people who do know how gold is made, and who make it. You under stand the danger this is to every civi lized nation. It's got to be stopped, of course. Drummond and I have de cided that I am the man to stop it. Wherever and whoever those people are—these gold-makers—they must be caught, every one of them —caught or shot." "Or shot," repeated Pierpont, who was owner of the Cross-Cut gold mine and found his income too small; "Prof. La Grange will of course be prudent— science need not know things that would upset the world!" "Little Willy," said Harris, laughing, "your income is safe." "I suppose," said I, "some flaw in the nugget gave Prof. La Grange the tip." "Exactly. He cut the flaw out be fore sending the nugget to be tested. He worked on the flaw and separated gold into its three elements." "He is a great man," said Pierpont, "but he will be the greatest man in the world if he can keep his discovery to himself." "Who?" said Harris. "Prof. La Grange." "Prof. La Grange was shot through the heart two hours ago," replied Har ris, slowly. (TO BE CONTINUED.) WORKER MUST LOVE VOCATION. First Requisite for the Attainment of Success in Any Line. A prime qualification for success in any art, trade or profession is the love of it, though love alone will by no means bring success in it. The love must be reciprocal; that is, the voca tion must desire its follower, for rea sons which must remain as much a mystery to him as to any of his wit nesses. "She was love-worthy," says Heine, in treating of a more passional case, "and he loved her; but he was not love-worthy, and she loved him not." The fond youth, university-bred or self-made, may have ever so great a desire for journalism, but journal ism will have no desire for him, un less he has the peculiar charm for it which commands affection in all cases. He can only prove the fact by trying and by longing to try with a longing that excludes the hope of every other reward beside the favor of the art he wishes to espouse. Itiches, fame, power may be in the event, but they are not to be in the quest. The wish to succeed in it for its own sake must be his first motive, and the sense of success in it must be left to add them selves, without his striving for them. So far as he strives for them, they will alloy and dilute his journalistic suc cess.—W . D. Howells, in Harper's Magazine. I look upon the simple and childish virtues of veracity and honesty as the root of all that is sublime in char acter.—Carlyle. ASSISTS AT A B When Pa told us that he had lo cated a place where we could get all the wild African buffalo that we wanted, I thought of the pictures I had seen of the killing of buffalos in Amer ica, where all the buffalo hunter had to do was to ride a horse after a herd of the animals, that couldn't run faster than a yoke of oxen, pick out a big bull and ride long side of him and fire bullets into his vital parts at about ten feet range, until his liver was filled full of holes, and he had tho nose bleed, and when he fell down from loss of blood, dismount and skin him for a lap robe. The American buf falo would always run away and the hunter could kill him if he had cart ridges enough, and never be in any more danger than a farmer milking a cow. I thought we would have about the same kind of experience with African buffalo, only we intended to lasso them, and bring them to camp alive for the show business, but instead of the African buffalo running away from you, he runs at you on sight, and tries to gouge out your inside works with his horns, and paws you with his hoofs, and when he gets you down he kneels down on you, and runs horns all through your system, and rolls over on your body like a setter dog rolling on an old dead fish. The African buffalo has a grouch, as though he bad indigestion, from eat ing cactus thorns, and when he sees a man his eyes blaze with fire, and he gets as crazy as an anarchist, and seems" to combine in his makeup the habits of the hyena, the tiger, the man-eating shark and the Texas rat tle-snake. I wouldn't want such an animal for r Pa Had to Put His Foot on Their Necks and Acknowledge Himself TheiF King and Protector. a pet, but Pa said the way to get buf falo was togo after them, and never let up until you had them under your control. So we started out under Pa's lead to capture African buffalo, and while the returns are not all in of the dead and wounded, we know that our expedition is pretty near used up. The African buffalos live in a marsh, where the grass and cane grow high above them, and the only way you can tell where they are is to watch the birds flying around and alighting on the backs of the animals to eat wood ticks and gnats. The marsh is so ♦hick with weeds that a man cannot go into it, so we planned tb start the airship on the windward side of the marsh, after lining up the whole force of helpers, negroes and white men, and building a corral of timber on the lee side of the marsh. Pa and the cowboy and I went in the airship, with these honk-honk horns they have on automobiles, and these megaphones that are used at football games, and Pa had a bunch of Roman candles to scare the buffalos. When the fence was done, which 50 men had worked on for a week, it run in the shape of a triangle, or a fish net, with a big corral at the middle. Mr. Hagenbach sent up a rocket to COULDN'T FOOL HIM Once a denizen of the up-state re gions, where whiskers grow in plenty and umbrellas bulge at will, decided to visit New York. But he decid ed to visit the bewildering metrop olis quite as a man of the world—not to be taken in by the wicked men, who, as he understood, made a busi ness of deceiving the guileless up statflr. Hence he arrived at the Grand Central looking very, very wise, and notify Pa that he was ready to have him scare the buffalos out of the marsh and down the fence into the corral. Pa had the gas bag all full, a mile across the marsh, tied to a tree with a slip noose, so when we all got set he could pull a string and untie the slip noose. Well, everything worked bully, and when Pa tied her loose we went up into the air about 50 feet, and Pa steered the thing up and down the marsh like a pointer dog ranging a field for chickens. It was the greatest sight I ever witnessed, seeing more than 200 buf falo heads raise up out of the tall grass and watch the airship, looking as savage as lions eating raw meat. First they never moved at all, but we began to blow the honk horns, and then we yelled through the mega phones to "get out of there, you sawed off short horns," and then they began to move away from the airship across the marsh, and we followed until they began to get into a herd, nearly on the other side of the marsh, but they only walked fast, splashing through the mud. When we got almost across the marsh Pa said now was the time to fire the Roman candles, so we each lit our candle, and the fire and smoke and the fire balls fairly scorched the hair of the buffalos in the rear of the herd, and in a jiffy the whole herd stampeded out of the marsh right to ward the fence, bellowing in African language, scared half to death, the first instance on record that an Af rican buffalo was afraid of anything on earth. We followed them until they got to the fence, but only about 100 got ieto the corral, the others going around the fence and chasing the keepers Into the jungle and hooking the negroes in the pants, and some of the negroes are running yet, and will no doubt come out at Cairo, Egypt. Mr. Hagenbach and the white men got up