The Valiants of Virginia

oss-street and circled into the yawning mouth of his garage. Here, before

e lately, and I'm uncertain about my plans. I've made arrangements to turn the car over to the manufacturer

e check's figures. Embarrassment was burning his tongue. "I-I've hea

iant, as he shook hands, "a

ey'll try to take the boodie away from him, I guess. The papers seem to think he's rotten, but he's been a mighty good boss to me. He's a de

his bachelor apartment a fortnight ago. The cavernous seats of the lounge were all occupied, but he did not pause as he

ing the letters on the magazine-littered table. He had s

able faculty of forgetting, and the multitude of sins that wealth may cover. To preserve at whatever personal cost the one noble monument his father's genius had reared, and to right the wrong that would cast its gloomy shadow on his name-thi

part in an over-sea city as far away as the moon (he was later to identify this as Paris) and who, when she came home-which was not often-took him driving in the park and gave him chocolate macaroons. He had always held her in more or less awe and had breathed easier when she had departed. She had died in

re had come to him at that moment the dearest

and papers, that through some baleful and mysterious spell could not be made to open at all hours. When the hands pointed right, however, there was the "Open Sesame"-his own secret knock, two fierce twin raps, with one little lonesome one afterward-and this was unfailing.

r his own sh

Wishing-House,

quite unrecognizable as

, Master;

ver Land, and before them reared the biggest house in the wor

dden delicate lights and filmy colors. What had been but blurred under-exposures on the retina of his bra

he had thought must own the vast hotel in which they lived (in such respect did she seem to be held by the servants), who wore crackling black silk

e sleepy, and all these his father knew by heart. They lived in little square huts around Wishing-House, made of sticks, and had dozens and dozens of children who wore no clothes and liked to dance in the sun and eat cherries. They were very useful barbarians, too, for they chopped the wood and built the fires and made the horses' coats shine-for he a

as always the harrowing fear that one might inadvertently be left out, and sometimes they couldn't remember the last one till the very final minute. After the Christmas turkey, the oldest and blackest savage of all would come in where his father and he sat at the table, with a pudding as big as the gold chariot in the circus, and the pud

pell had failed and the door had refused to open for a long time, when dread things had been happening that he could not understand, when a big man with gold eye-

im and he had gone close up to the bed, standing

ery tense and anxious, very distinct. "John,

Wishing

d then, ever so little,

ou, and let us find it!" His voice had tr

, but it was still distinct. "I can't go to the Never-Never Land. But you may sometime. If you ... if you do, and if you find Wishing-House, remember th

, fa

the eye-glasses had com

ight, f

room and his father seemed all at once to have fallen asleep. And he