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' <:jaa:^f,wtfei:sit£'. â- ^iiH^jM^^mi. :.AK»«>'*IWfc.«"« ^ i H a. W i.^.-' -Tt^'j. . The Green Seal By CHAKLBS EDMONDS WALK Author of "The Silver Blade," "The Paternoster Ruby," " "The Time Lock," etc. ir CnAl>TKRlV.â€" (ContVi). i "Enough of this. We are getting morbid and it's all beside the point anyway. What information did your Aunt I.,oi.s give you?" "None. Since that dny I have beg- ged and implored her to, but the very thought of it seem.'< so terrible to her that I grew afraid to insist. What- ever horrors may remain unrevealed to me, it is perhaps best that I know nothing of them." "Much trouble that might have been averted," I commented, "has been caused by u misguided policy of silence. Nothing your aunt might tell you could be worse than this v.ruel, unrelieved half-knowledge." "But what's the use, Mr. Ferris? A fact like this can't be relieved. Aunt Lois proposed that we go away some- where where we were unknown; but I refu.sed. I couldn't agree to such a faint-hearted course. After looking at the matter from every conceivable angle I determined to fight it out right here. You can't alter the truth by trying to run away from it" "And you did exactly right," 1 sincerely assured her. A silent pause fell. We were busy with out thoughts. By and by I said: "How did Hardwick learn about your father?" She shook her head. "I can't im- agine. It's something Aunt Lois and I supposed was secret between us, and " our habits of life have grown out of an elaborate process of trying to for- fret." The detail somehow clung to me, demanding consideration; but it prompted no definite, comprehensible ' conclusion. "It's strange," I said at last, "that he should have known it all. Besides, what difference could it have made for him ? It's not a notorious fact, and you are guiltless." ~' Another silent pause ensued, dur- ing which she seemed to be revolving iomething in her mind. She looked at ne presently. "I've speculated about it a good ipal, of course," she said, "but to no purpose." After another moment of consideration she pursued with a de- liberate air: "Within the last few weeks some- thing has happened that may or may not throw some light on the subject, though I must confess that I can't see how. I hate to trouble you with private affairs, but I have been just wild to ask â€" " | "Huh!" I grunted inelegantly. "This is no time for nice observances (if propriety and decorum. If I _^lhought you'd withhold anything now PS raise Old Ned, and he's been dead an age of blue mAons. So you'd bet- ter be candid with me.". j She flashed a bright smile at me nnd got up from her chair. ' "I'll take you at your word," said she. "The ciueerest thing that ever happened to a girl has happened to' me only recjntly. I'll tell you about It when I get some letters and a tele- gram from my desk. It will take l)ut a minute." ' I returned to my chair and waited while she went to fetch them. | 'chapter V. I Miss Fox was absent only a few (seconds, and when she reappeared L observed that she lai<i aside her notc-| book and all the. pencils except one that was thrust through the heavy, bronze coil of her hair. | That pencil must have been a badge other profession; I never knew her to use that particular one, and I can not remember ever to have seen her without it. After the first day! she began to affect a plainer cos- tume than the one I had first seen herl in: a plain, dark tailor-made skirt and white shirt waists with high collars, nnd no jewelry at all, not even a ring; but no amount of bullying or coaxing could persuade her hair to refrain from coquetting. It was constantly falling into curls and ring- lets and waves, each blessed one pos- lessing its own peculiar allurement; and at some angle or other the sharp- ened pencil invariably was thrust through it. I have said that her hair was brown, and that it was bronze; the truth of 'the matter is that it was of many shades. Here there was a shining lock, as golden ai* ripe wheat, trying to lose itself In another that was darker than a hazel-nut. And there were other locks that were like bur- nished copper, or were frankly red, and as she moved her head one might catch all the gradations of light and dark and all the nuances of shading that blended these different hues into one. It was, I know, the most beauti- j ful hair in the world. ' As I remarked before, I observed | that she had laid aside her notebook I and pencils. She was now carrying severjil letters, and I recognized a yellow Western Union enveloHf. She moved quickly and gracefully to her , former place, and laid the envelopes j in a certain order upon the desk in | front of her. I "It is a strange story I have to toll, Mr. Ferris," she began with an apologetic smile. "If you have no , other interest in listening, I believe j its strangeness alone will pay you for | the few minutes you are kind enough to give me." "Of cour.se I'm interested," I said shortly. "I'm as curious as the dickens." "Very well. I hope what I have to relate will supply you with some clue â€" but, no, it's absurd to expect any- thing of the kind." She selected the first one of the envelopes and continued: "Here is a mighty queer letter for any girl to get; it came to me the sec- ond day of last December â€" more than four months ago. It speaks for it- self, except that it is the first intima- tion I ever had that any such person existed. You see," she sadly added, | "how little I know about my past, j And what little I do know is hardly , of a nature to encourage me to try I to learn more." j She handed me the envelope across . the desk, bidding me read its con- tents. ! I noted, first of all, that it bore an ' outlandish foreign stamp, for which ! the postmark, after I had made it out, '. accounted. The letter had been mail- [ ed ot Colombo, Ceylon, and was ad- 1 dressed to Miss Fox, in , a rickettyl hand that was suggestive of unfamil- i iarity with the pen. I took out the 1 enclosure and with some difficulty de- , ciphered the letter. It was not, to â-  describe it charitably, an epistolary ' model; its grammar and orthography alike left much to be desired, and it will be unnecessary to transcribe it here. | After apologizing in an awkword ] manner for addressing a young lody ' who was a stranger to the writer, ! the latter then said he was on a steamship en route from Singopore i to Gibraltar, a long journey which 'â-  afforded him his first opportunity in i many years to write at length. It I would seem that in his case the art ' of letter-writing was an operation re- j quiring time, patience, and persever- 1 ance. He hoped to have the letter j finished by the time the ship touched ; at Colombo. i Then the writer's purpose was re- ! vcaled in a declaration that if Lois Fox was the young lady he had nu- merous reasons for suspectin,: her to be, it would be to her great advant- age to communicate with him at once. It had been only during the preceding month (November), that he had heaVd ' of her existence together with suf- 1 ficient of her history to prom|t him I to write at all, and if she proved to! be the right person the matter was of j enough importance for him to make i the long journey to Los Angeles ex- ! preasly to see her. " He gave an address in London | where a letter to him would be held , pending his arrival there. After an attempt to allay whatever i doubts and misgivings his strange let- ' ter may have excited, he assured her , she need have no hesitation about re- ' plying, as he was a man of sixty-odd, i nnd though unmarried it was because he had always been too considerate ! of womankind ever to ask one to share his rough mode of life and ad- ; venturesome career. "But," he added, [ "don't get the idee theres enny [ brokin hortes laying round, because Ide run from a Woman quickeren i would from a Oattlin Gun which last , i no somcthin about. I cant say the same of wimmin." The name signed to this curious epistle was "James Strang." Despite its illiterate composition, ] there was a certain unmistakable ring ' of sincerity about it, a rough sort of | courtesy, that prompted me to say:! "You answered it, of course?" \ "('ertainly," Miss Fox returned. ' "Aside from its promise of benefit to me, it excited my curiosity. I never i heard of anybody by the name of [ Strang; and as for Singapore, Cey- lon nnd the rest, why_, I have no nsso- ' riotions whatever with such out-of S-<(*!«<«l«»»-' \\V ;N\\N<s»>S»iSS^SSi«!iiS'SSS I Spread the Bread with 'Crown Hiaud' Com Syrup nnd the tliildn-n's craving for sweets will be completely satiKlicd. llroad and 'Crown linind' form n iK-rfivlIy biiliiiicH-d foo<l â€" rich in llie cloiucnts that go to bniUl up sturdy, lic'iiUhy children. Edwardsburg 'Crown Brand' Com Syrup ,U so economicnl and so good, tlint it is little wonder that millions of pounds are cateu every year in the lioiucH of Canada. 'Crown Brand' â€" the children's favorite â€" is eriKtlljf goo<I for all cooking purposes and cii'ndy making. â- â- /./A y WHITE" i% a pure whiUCorn Syruh, uot no pronouuifd ill flavor ai 'Crown Hrana'. i'ou may fve/er it. A8K voun QNOcrn IN z.b, io and ao lb. tins The Canada Starch Co. Limited, Montrgal IM*nul*cturef> ol tha Irnnuut Edwaidtburc Brandt 20' Ec; =:â-  :'^y^'aa>;^''^-.^y-,v^.>i:^':s^grs^ the-way places. I have spent one va- cation at San Diego and one in San Francisco, beside.; having made sev- eral trips to nearby towns; otherwise my whole horizon is bounded by Los Angeles. Any woman placed as I am would have answered that letter, Mr. Ferris, and been on needles and pins till she got another." "You seem tb have gotten several" â€" for she was holding out another en- velope. "Did anything come of it ""III "Well, no," she said slowly. "That's another queer thing about it; the epi- sode has not ended yet; or, rather, it came to an abrupt end without getting anywhere. But read the rest of these a.stonishing letters and you will know all that I know." The second letter was postmarked at London, and had followed Miss F'ox's reply to the writer's first com- munication. It was no more definite in imparting information than the other had been, except that it reiter- ated the former assurances that if Miss Fox were the right person, some great advantage would accrue to her through the writer's instrumentality. As to the nature of the advantage no hint was given. The reason ad- vanced for reticence was a plausible one, namely: after a fuller investiga- tion Miss Fox might prove not to be the person whom the writer was seek- ing, in which event he did not want to excite hopes and then be obliged to disappoint them. The missive then categorically laid down a number of questions, all of which, with one important exception, related to her infancy, a period of which she possessed only the haziest and most inconclusive sort of knowl- edge. Whether effected intentionally or otherwise, a peculiarity of these in- terrogations was to be found in the circumstance that they betrayed no- thing which our own limited conver- sance with the facts enabled us to consider as being of especial sig- nificance â€" excepting, as already point- ed out, they were confined to a period when she was scarcely more than a baby. The point of this conclusion was: If Miss Fox was the girl James Strang suspected her to be, she had dropped out of his life some time during her infancy, and he had heard of her again, in a manner not stated, only last November. There was one other thought which the character and tone of these let- ters prompted in my mind, but which I did not voice to Miss Fox. If the writer believed her to be Steve Wil- Icts's daughtei; â€" so the reflection shaped itself â€" was his reluctance to be more communicative prompted by an inherent sense of delicacy in an otherwise rough nature, an instinctive desire not to wound or offend, or had he at some time in the past been an associate of Willets's â€" a "pal" in the fugitive bandit's earlier criminal escapades â€" and was his secretiveness to be attributed only to selfish motives of shielding himself? There was no apparent way of determining. Among the questions the exception referre<l to in a previous paragraph seemed to me to be one which should determine the ({uestion of identity de- finitely. "Why, bless you!" I exclaimed when it fell under my eye. "This ought to settle it. Listen." And I read aloud from the second letter, disregarding the spelling: "'Have you anywhere on your body a crazy-looking design tat- tooed?'" I looked sharply at her, with kindling excitement. "Have you?" I asked. My bluntness, I realized too late, was embarassing to her, altogether too personal; but for the moment de- vouring curiosity blunted my gentle- manly instincts â€" to my discredit, be it confassed, when compared with the unpolished Mr. Strang s natural for- bearance and restraint. I was unpar- donably rude. When I noted a wave of color mounting to Miss Fox's cheeks, I found myself exceeding un- comfortable. I began an awkward apolojty, add- ing: "You need not answer, of course. I can only plead that this muddle makes me forget myself. You are not moved from your balance, though; I don't see how you take it so calmly." She smiled forgiveness â€" indeed, showed a disposition to ignore my awkwai'Vlness and to discuss the mat- ter frankly. Laying a hand upon her bosom, she replied to my question: "I have such a mark â€" right here. But it is not a tattoo-mark; it is too irregular and purposeless in design to be that. Resides, Aunt Lois has as- sured me that it is a birthmark." "Well," I commented at length, "it is at least a curious coincidence that such a thing exists. It sounds like the identifying mole on the stolen heiress of good old orthodox melo- drama. How did you reply to that question?" "I described it to Mr. Strang much as I have lo you." There were only two more letters: a second written from London, de- ploring the fact that Miss Fox could give no more definite information about herself, but adding the encour- aging statement that the little given almost satisfied Strang that she was the person he suspected her to be. It concluded by saying that the writer would sail for New York ns soon as certain business was disposed of, and that she would without fail again hear from him when he arrived in that city. 'fhe Inst letter was written at New York, and merely mentioned his safe arrival and the train he was to take for the West. The telegram, which had been sent from Denver, read: "Arrive Los An- geles Saturday afternoon. It bore the fhite of April 17th. "Why," observed I, "that was only last Thursday! Did he show up Sat- urdoy ? " "hfo. He has not showed up at all, and I don't know what to thinlc. There has been nothing since the telegram," (To be continued.) , GERMANY TO BLAME. Learned Bavarian Places Responsi- bility for Wac Dr. Gruber, one of Barvaria's most learned professors, has been lecturing on "War, Peace and Biology," and comes to some remarkable con- clusions. "This war, he declares, was inevi- table and unavoidable. It might have been postponed, but it had to come sooner or later. It is idle to debate who is most to blame for the out- break of hostilities. As a matter of fact, Germany was to blame, says the professor; not blame-worthy in any moral sense. Germany is to blame be- cause she had sta'etched and used her power to its utmost, because in 4 years it had increased in population from 40 to 68 millions. The war was, therefore, a biological necessity. The war says the professor, has be- come a battle of ideas, caused by varying conceptions of human devel- opment and of human freedom. In conclusion. Professor Gruber mentioned certain "biological de- mands" for the future. One of these must be a strengthening of the na- tion by a large increase of the popu- lation, and to such an extent that Ger- many will be rendered invulnerable. If the population of the Empire grows at the rate of the first five years of this century it will have reached 250,- 000,000 in the year 2,000. The World's Finest Tea Tea out-fivals and out'sells aJl others, solely through its delicious flavour and down-right all-round goodness. THE CANADIAN GOVERNMENT OFFERS SUGGESTIONS FOR FRUIT PRESERVING. In an advice circulated throughout Canada, the Fruit Branch Dept. at Ottawa suggests as being best for preserving purposes, certain brands of peaches: St. Johns, Elbertas, Craw- fords and Smocks, and for plums Bradshaws, Gages, Lombards, Reine Claude. The advice is timely and to it may be added that many of the most suc- cessful makers of preserves have for years insisted on securing from their grocers the St. Lawrence Extra Gran- ulated Sugar (Pure Cane). It is well known that the slightest organic impurity in sugar will start fermentation in the jam, and St. Law- rence Sugar which tests over 90% pure has never failed the housewife. Grocers everywhere can fill orders for this sugar. The best way to buy it is in the original refinery sealed packages 2 or 5 lbs. cartons, 10, 20, 25, and 100 lbs. bags. Up to the Wrong Ears. Knicker â€" Is Jones up to his ears in debt? Bocker â€" Worse; it has come to other people's ears, too. The best way to get along with some people is to get along without them. Identifying Dead Soldiers. Each of the armies in this great war, says the Christian Herald, has a system that enables it to identify the dead. The Russian soldier wears a numbered badge; the French soldier has an identification card stitched into his tunic; the German soldier has a little metal disk that bears his name; the British soldier has an alu- minum disk, with identification marks and church affiliations; the Japanese soldier has three di-sks, all alike, one round his neck, another in his belt, and another in his boot; and the Aus- trian soldier has a gun-metiil badge, with hs name on a tiny parchment leaf within. The Turk is the oniy-Sol- dier so lightly valued that jho carries no badge. Identification is evidently regarded as unnecessary in his case. Protect the Skunk. The skunk stands among the most important animals that choose for their diet insects harmful to the farm- er. It is the best-known enemy of army worm, including the common army worm, the wheat head army worm and the fall army worm, all of which are destructive to small grains, corn ^ and grasses, and cause heavy losses ' I every year to farmers, according to the United States department of agri- culture's biologrist. Two kinds of tobacco worms, which also attack tomato and potato plants are eaten by the skunk in large num- bers. These worms change their diet from tobacco to tomatoes with such '' adaptability that they have spread over wide areas in the United States. The skunk's eagerness for the worm is such that he will dig them out f rom j , the ground in great numbers in the late summer and destroy them. The white grub is also dug for by the skunk and consumed by him, and the strawberry growers generally re- gard this animal with favor, even though in its eager search for the grubs it may uproot the plant or eat a few berries. The skunk also eats many mature May beetles and June bugs which hatch from the white grubs. Skunks also destroy the hop grub, grasshoppers, cut-worms, crickets, sphinx m6th8, sweet potato beetles, Colorado potato bbeetles, field mice and rats. The animal is especially useful in destroying the rats and mice that commonly infest farm buildings. If a skunk takes up his residence near premises where these rats are abundant, it will remain there if not disturbed until practically all of the rodents are destroyed. So useful an animal should be fully protected. With insects increasing with wonderful rapidity, the farmer and gardener is put to great expense and labor in fighting them, and any animal that will help the cultivators of the soil to fight their insect battles should bo encouraged and protected. Many farmers are shortsighted enough to kill every skunk they can find, to obtain for the skin a price that seems high, but is , nothing as compared with the good it does. Protect Stock From Flies. Relief from attack; by flies may b« brought to live stock on the farm by the use of sprays. The following spray is suggested by P. L. Washburn, entomologist of the Minnesota college of agriculture. Three parts of fish oil and one part kerosene. The spraying is best done with a knapsack sprayer, and it takes only two or three minutes to spray a steer or horse. The spray appears to keep off all flies for two days. The Split Log Drag. ... _ The split log drag has contributed more toward the economic mainten- ance of public highways than any, implement of modern usage. It does not require special acts of the legis- lature, bond issues or expensive educa- tional campaigns to make it avail- able as usually proceeds construction work. A drag can be built or pur- chased for $20 and easily operated by anyone who can drive a team. Pruning Dont's. Don't prune with an ax. Don't cut off the lower limbs. Don't cut off the short spurs. Don't leave stubs. Don't use dull tools. Canada's ^3*^" fatntite Suia^ since the dAys H rioneep '^i^ "'"W "^•liS^i. e£eX^: - ^ANADA'S pioneer ^^ sugar reHner wa» John Redpath, who. in 1854 produced "Ye Olde Sugar Loafe" â€" the first sugar "made in Canada". Redpath Sugar has been growing better and more popular ever since. When there seemed no further 'room for improvement in the sugar itself, we made a decided advance by intro* ducing the ff kfOitS li SecJed Cartons. These completed a series of indiviJual packagesâ€" 2 and 5 lb. Cartons and 10, 20, 50 and 100 lb. Cloth Bagsâ€" which protedt the sugar from Refinery to Pantry, and ensure your getting th« gemtine , Get Canada's favorite Sugar in Original Packages. CANADA SUGAR RERNINO CO., UMffED. MONTREAL. 130