Picture-Play Weekly (Apr-Oct 1915)

4 PICTURE-PLAY WEEKLY brary, when he had listened through to tlie end of the adventurer's explanation of the business on which he had called. "I refuse to be a party to your plan to further a South American revolution, for our own profit. I might gain further concessions for the Isthmian line, of which I am president, from the man you would place in power, than I now hold from President Garcia, but he has always treated me fairly, and I will do nothing to depose him. I repeat — your proposal is unscrupulous. And I must ask you to leave my house, and never to enter it again." With the jaunty assertion that he meant to go through with the scheme alone, to cover his chagrin at the other's indignant refusal of his offer to share in it, Graham took his departure. Meanwliile, the blow liad fallen for Royal Macklin. He had been tried, back at West Point, by court-martial, with the result that he had been given his dishonorable discharge and twelve hours to leave the academy. What might have amounted to a brilliant military career lay in ruins at his feet. He had thrown it there himself. He had nothing but his own foolishness to blame, he admitted, for the fact that he was a failure at the very outset of his life. And now what was he going to do? Royal asked himself that question on the morning following his dismissal from the Point, as he sat in th.e hotel room he had engaged in the near-by town. His eyes dropped to the newspaper in his hand, and he read again a certain item in it. It stated that General Laguerre, an adventurer with a company of soldiers of fortune recruited from a half dozen nations at his back, was then in Anduras, on the coast of South America, seeking action of the red-blooded sort in that revolution-infested territory. There was a knock at the door of Royal's room just then. The Hardgrave butler entered, and ])resented him w'ith a note. It was from Beatrice's father, who had read of the young man's discharge from the school, and written to inform him that he must consider his engagement to the girl at an end. Inside the folded sheet of note paper was his ring. Royal did not believe that Beatrice had sent it back to him of her own volition, but that it was only in obedience to her father's orders that she had ever removed it from her finger. He penned her a line, asking her to meet him at the tree where they had plighted their troth on the day before, to say good-by, and intrusted the missive to the waiting manservant. And then, clipping the item from the newspaper and placing it carefully in his cardcase, he rose, with his shoulders determinedly squared, to call up a steamship line on the phone and engage a passage for South America. At the hour he had named for the tryst. Royal found Beatrice waiting for him beside the tree trunk that bore their initials within the heart he had cut in the bark. "I am going away to try to amount to something, after all," he told her. "I'm not entitled to it, with the way I've gone back on my promise to you to behave like a man, instead of a headstrong, silly schoolboy, I know. But, Beatrice, can you tell me that I'll find you waiting, when I've made good?" She came into his arms, and lifted her face to his. "You'll always find me waiting, Royal." she said, her simple trust in bim shining in her eyes. He bent his head to kiss lier lips, tlien checked himself, and straightened. "No," he said through his shut teeth. "I'll wait until I've won the right."' And so he left her. Finding General Laguerre. after he had been in South America for a week, Royal discovered to be no easy task. President Garcia, of the republic of Anduras, had been deposed. He had taken flight from the capital city of Tegucigalpa with a few hundred of his soldiers who had remained loyal to him. lea\ ing the field in possession of the usurper, Alvarez, his soldiers, and those wiio had deserted from Garcia's army to go under the revolutionist's banner. "Get a horse and ride inland, toward the east, for a hundred miles." was the tip Royal finally received from an American sewing-machine agent named Aiken, with whom he had scraped up an acquaintance at the end of his first six days in Anduras. "A little bird whispered to me that Laguerre is planning to join forces with Garcia, who is iv. hiding at that point. Don't say I told You were told that another infringement of the rules would mean your dismissal from West Point," the officer, who interrupted the fight under the ehns on the parade ground, told Royal Macklin. "Go to your room — I'm going to report this to the board at once."