That Mysterious Major... ETHEL A. SOUTHAM CHAPTER II.—(Continued.) Great was his disappointment, how ever, as he laid the book on the table and opened it at the page at which it had begun to open naturally, to find that, instead of the stranger's eyes being riveted, as everybody's always were, to the bottom of the leaf, where the names of Lady Howard and Miss Jtrelyn Luttrell boldly confronted the reader, with the full address appended, they Instantly wandered off to a few lines above, where, in easily decipher able letters, was written "Gilbert Falk land.” “Thank you; that will do." He closed the book and pushed it aside. “I am very sorry to trouble you, sir, but"—and the waiter placed an ink stand and pens at his elbow—"per haps you’d kindly add your name." “My name? Oh—yes—very well.” He was staring somewhat abstract edly through the window; but at the request he took up a quill, dipped it Into the Ink, and was Just beginning the line with a rather awkward-look ing “S,” when he suddenly paused, hesitated a second, and, drawing hur riedly through the capital, finally wrote "Major Brown. I^ondon," in clear, legible characters. A few minutes later Major Brown, as he designated himself, rose ab ruptly from his chair, and, with his hands in his pockets, was crossing the room toward the door, when a glimpse of a dainty lace handkerchief lying half concealed beneath the folds of a tablecloth attracted his notice. He stooped to get it, and, glancing at the monogram and crest embroidered in one corner, was about to hand it to one of the waiters to deliver it to its rightful owner, when a faint smile for the moment dispelled the frown which had gathered upon his forehead, and, without a word, he quietly placed it in the Inside pocket of his coat. “My dear fellow, you are a fool!" he murmured to himself. “Fancy throw her pause in some amazement, to be hold the wearer of the light shootlng sult, who had apparently been as deeply engrossed in the contents of the "Royal George’’ post-bag as herself, advancing toward her. "But Is not this for you? You must have overlooked It, I fancy,” Evelyn glanced quickly at the en velope which he was offering to her, directed Indisputably to herself, and then, looking up. found herself encoup tered by the very sanye pair of gray eyes which she remembered meeting for the first time in the table d'hote room the night before. "Thank you—It Is for me,” she an swered. with u vague sense of wonder. "I cannot think how I missed It.” "Oh, easily, I should imagine," was the prompt reply. "Among so many, it is no difficult matter to miss one. Still, as this has come to light, had you not better see if there are any more?" "Perhaps I had,” answered Evelyn, wrinkling up her forehead perplex edly. She was turning to the table once more, when a hand was laid with a somewhat familiar gesture upon her arm and a voice said: “Good morning. Miss Eve. Her lady ship has sent me to find you. What are you doing here?” “Only trying to sort these letters Have you been for yours yet?” "No; I prefer my breakfast first. Letters are not always calculated to improve one's appetite. But come— Lady Howard wants to know what your opinion Is of the weather. She thinks It is too hot for that drive which we were talking about.” "Very well, I am coming; but-" She hesitated a second, and then glanced quickly towurd Major Brown. "Thank you very much,” and, with a graceful little inclination of her head, she turned to follow Gilbert Falkland. “BUT, IS NOT THIS FOR YOU?" Ing away such an opportunity! This at least will be an excuse for one word with the curly headed divinity!” CHAPTER III. The sun was streaming with all the persistence of a hot July morning sun through the interstices of Venetian blinds Into a large private sitting room on the ground floor of the "Royal George" as Evelyn Luttrell. looking delightfully cool In a pink cotton gown, put In her head at the open window and surveyed the scene In astonish ment. "Nobody down? Are we really the first, after nil?" she exclaimed ad vancing to the middle of the room and glancing quickly from the tattle to the flock ou the chimney-piece. "Well, Haiti bo. |t Is of no use walling We may aa well go and see If (here art am letters for us thia morning." As she spoke she opened the d»*»f and passed out Into the tun!, softly a r pc ted corridor, which seemed after Ike keat and glare of the heark, where rutihv wae MMUrweaef ill. however Neither her men not her aunt a same met her evre span cay uf the eavetope* and she had larked away aad was about l« MM Ik*' kai I W • t • I" arrested her foot steps "t keg your pwrd>.a' The words. gpoh*a la slug whirl v reartestM luaee aad a*«umpaht*d by a •light hut meat chivalrous bow made who had stood watching the proceed ings with a distinct shadow of annoy ance upon his face. "Who on earth is that fellow, Miss Luttrell?" was the immediate inquiry. Evelyn ga*ed down thoughtfully at the address upon her letter. "Emo answers Who?1 It is a ques tion I myself was Just going to ask you. All that 1 know of him U that he was having his dinner alone late last evening when I went to get Sambo a hone, and that he handed me this a moment ago." And yet you were thanking him as if he had done you the greatest service upon earth!" .aid Falkland, accom panying hla remark with a steady, pen etrating look into Miss l.utfiell * face. ‘ What do yon mean” A faint Hush deepened the color In Evelyn's cheek* I thanked him. ul i**ir*i> Whuevei the malt la, he tn certainly a gentle man." oh, >es most probably! rejoined Falkland ironically | know ih< ■tamp of fellow etactlv They alway baum pt.n -» of this kind * A i.ithcr tndlgn.cn' little smile crossed Evelyn's face. liictte fellows" be proceeded 'are the greatest humbugs imaginable A hey do the polite to the ladies ail i ad the you will bate nothing auri to say u< that irrepr*M>kii< inditldual “ ’ Vo i ce* to sat to him' What It l an mean *** asks4 Kirlfi rauiag has brows in astonishment. "I do not sup. pose that J shall ever speak to him again." "Do you imagine that fellow did not know' whom he was addressing this morning Certainly he did! 'Luttrell' is by no means a common name, and directly be saw 'Miss Luttrell' posted in the visitors’ book he guessed no doubt who you were and asked some one to point you out to him. Conse quently he has taken the first oppor tunity of beginning an acquaintance, which 1 dare say he intends to follow up as speedily as possible. Ah, Lady Howard"—here he threw open the door of the room which Evelyn had for saken a few minutes before—“1 have found your niece and brought her back to you. Here she is.” “And, by way of improving the occa sion, he has been offering me a little of his valuable advice,” announced Evelyn, going up to Lady Howard and bending down to kiss her as she sat at the head of the breakfast table, still a handsome, good-looking woman. In spite of the lines of care across her forehead and the silvery threadB of hair distinctly visible beneath the soft folds of her widow’s cap. “I was only cautioning your niece against a fellow whom I noticed play ing rather high in the billiard room last night, and with whom she had the ill-luck to have occasion to speak this morning,” protested Falkland, strolling up to the window and gazing out with all the air of a man who was at home in her ladyship's private sit ting room. "To speak? My dear Eve, what have you been doing?" asked l^ady Howard in alarm. "Nothing, Aunt Lydia,” answered Miss Luttrell, with a decided little shake of her head. "Do not agitate yourself, please! It Is only Mr. Falk land who Is piling up the agony now. This poor Innocent man who has such wicked designs on us only handed me this letter”—throwing down the hap less-looking note upon the table— "that is all.” "And, as an old friend, knowing what thorough-paced scoundrels habit ually frequent places of this descrip tion, 1 have advised her to avoid him for the future." "Exactly,” agreed her ladyship "One cannot be too careful or exclu sive at a hotel where one encounters the same person day after day. Who is this man that spoke to you, Eve?” "Oh, ask Mr. Falkland,” answered Evelyn in a deprecating tone. "He evidently knows more about him than I do, if he had the benefit of his soci ety in the billiard room last evening, and perhaps—who knows?—joined him in some of his high play.” Falkland accepted the little taunt with an air of praiseworthy compla cency, and turned calmly to Lady Howard. “Well, I believe he goes by the ele gant name of ’Brown.’ That is vague enough, you would think; but his ad dress of London only—Brown of Lon don—is vaguer still.” “Yes, indeed; anybody would have difficulty in tracing him. But that re minds me. As you came in, I was Just reading in the paper that-. I)o sit down, though, Mr. Falkland, and have some breakfast.” "Oh. no. thank you! I have just told Henry to have some ready for me in the coffee room; so I will not keep you from your3. But you were say ing-” "Only that they fancy they have at last founu a clue to the whereabouts of that man who committed those fear fill forgeries about twelve months ago. ’ added Lady Howard, pouring out the coffee and passing a cup across to Evelyn. “You remember the Beau champ case, which made such a com motion at the time?" (To Be Continued.) FOOD IS BETTER THAN TONICS DeMlltittfMl KiicrKiM |)o Not Kfqulr« the Stimulation of Drugs. A professor in one of the many med ical colleges of this city holds that there is no need of buying and swal lowing advertised tonics, because they accomplish no more than a Judiciously selected diet will. The professor says that spinach is richer in iron, which is the basis of most tonics, than even ihe yolk of an egg. while the latter con tains more than beef. The ordinary dish of spinach and poached egg is a tonic as potent as one in which iron forme a part, without the harmful ef fect of other Ingredients that enter Into the medical compound. Plants Im bibe Iron, and It is through them that we should absorb it into our system That mineral is present largely lu ap ples, lentils, strawberries, white beans, peas, potatoes and most of the red fiuits and vegetables. Stewed Ida k i ut rants If taken daily lu their season will litre anaemia that has heron* chronic. It Is the experience of mar iners that while line Juice Is a pallia tive of scurvy potatoes at* a spe> in Nansen in hU voyage lu the Pram, bad no occasion to resort to ihe medi cine cheat The concentrated form of | all ihe fruit* and vegetable* that his meU were a- cu* noted to cat In No: way I *as worth a shipload of «|iug* It t* l the Aral tn»'an*e on re. ord of tb* ** ■ cap* of Arvll. exporters conAne.l „a 1 shipboard from th* ravages of scurvy I and It tat due entirely to the tout- ef - feet of th* food supplied X IsStsI XX tee- X* slkse. There ta a vat lx At-mptx** whi h : |ittr U it it I wire exhibition every i evening It* *.»** h's perforates,e at j rtiust th* mm tim* each evening and he genernliy has null* x . rutl out to MM h '■*> It*1 > ..I. ic .s.». t* t, I Street every uveaia* e-out t in walk lag «• k t« cyr4..k wire lie has d >ne ) the trdeh Afty times ut mure and seems ; p ffe- ! i Ut home oU the blgh Wire TALM AGE'S SERMON. THE QUEENS OF HOME. LAST SUNDAY'S SUBJECT. From I hr Ten. Sol. Song. 0: 8. a* Fol low*: “There Are Three Score Queen*" —Many Sympathies Stirred anti Mem ories Recalled. (Copyright 1S99 by Louis Klopsch.) So Solomon, by one stroke, set forth the imperial character of a true Chris tian woman. She is not a slave, not a hireling, not a subordinate, but a queen. In a former sermon I showed you that crown and courtly attendants, and imperial wardrobe were not nec essary to make a queen; but that grates of the heart and life will give coronation to any woman. I showed you at some length that woman's posi tion was higher In the world than man’s, and that although she had often been denied the right of suffrage, she always did vote and always would vote by her Influence, and that her chief desire ought to be that she should have grace rightly to rule In the do minion which she has already won. I began an enumeration of some of her rights, and now 1 resume the sub ject. In the first place, woman has the special and the superlative right of blessing and comforting the sick. What land, what street, what house, has not felt the smitings of disease? Tens of thousands of Bick-beds! What shall we do with them? Shall man, with his rough hand and clumsy foot, go stumbling around the sick-room, trying to soothe the distracted nerves and alleviate the pains of the dls tresaed patient? The young man at college may scofT at the Idea of being under maternal influences, but at the first blast of typhoid fever on his cheek he says, “Where Is mother?” Walter Scott wrote partly in satire and partly In compliment: O woman, in our hours of ease. Uncertain, coy and hard to please; When pain and anguish wring the brow, A ministering angel thou. I think the most pathetic passage in all the Bible Is the description of the lad who went out to the harvest field of Shunem and got sunstruck—press ing his hands on his temples and cry ing out: “Oh, my head! my head!” And they said: “Carry him to his mother.” And then the record is: “He sat on her knees till noon, and then died.” It Is an awful thing to be ill away from home In a strange hotel, once in a while men coming In to look at you, holding their hand over their mouth for fear they will catch the contagton. How roughly they turn you in bed. How loudly they talk. How you long for the ministries of home. I know one such who went away from one of the brightest of homes, for several weeks’ business absence at the West. A telegram came at midnight that he was on his death-bed far away from home. By express train the wife and daughters went westward; but they went too late, lie feared not to die, but he was in an agony to live until his family got there. He tried to bribe the doctor to make him live a little while longer. He said: “I am willing to die, but not alone!” But the pulses fluttered, the eyes closed and the heart stopped. The express trains met in the midnight; wife and daughters go ing westward—lifeless remains of hus band and father coming eastward. Oh, it was a sad, pitiful, overwhelming spectacle! When we are sick, we want to be sick at home. When the time comes for us to die, we want to die at nome. In our Civil War, men cast the can non, men fashioned the musketry, men cried to the hosts, ‘Forward, march!” men hurled their battalions on the sharp edges of the enemy, crying, "Charge! charge!” but woman scraped the lint, woman administered the cor dials, woman watched by the dying couch, woman wrote the last message to the home circle, woman wept at the solitary burial, attended by herself and four men with a spade. We greeted the generals home with brass bauds and triumphal arches and wild huzzas; but the story la too good to be written anywhere, save in the chronicles of heaven, of Mrs. Brady, who came down among the sick in the swamps of the Chlckahomiuy; of Annie Ituss, in the cooper-shop hospital; of Margaret j Breckinridge, who came to men who had been for weeks with their wounds undressed -some of them frozen to the ground, and when she turned them over, those that had an arm left, waved it and filled the air with their “hur- i rah!"—of Mrs. Ilodge. who tame from , Chicago, with blankets and with |>il- I lows, until the men shouted, “Three ■ cheers for the Christian Commission' * (loti bless the woman at home;” then sitting down to take the last message. I “Tell my wife not to fret alnmt me, but to meet me In heaven; tell her to train p the boys whom we have loved so well; tell her we shall meet again In the good laud, tell her to bear my lo»« like the Christian wife of a Chris tian soldier” and of Mrs. Hhsltog, Into whose face the convalescent uil tiler looked and said "Your grapes and cologne cured me ' And «o It wavs also through all of our war with Mpaln | • wtittleu heroic on the Reid braving death aad wound* to reach the fa*l*i. • hing !• • ■ ii West Indian hospitals or on the troop ships, or in ear smitten how* tamp* Men did their noth with shot and shell shd carbine and u«wtt»*r, wu»,*n i'i4 their work with nocks and altppevs and bandage* and warns drinks and Me rip lure teats and gentle stroking* uf the hot temple* and durtN of tail land where they never nave any pain Men hnelt down over the wounded and said, "tin which side did yon hghi*'' Wom en hnelt down over the wounded and said Where are you hurt* What ike I thing tii I make fur you to eg! * W kat makes you cry?” Tonight while wo men are sound asleep In our bed3, there will be a light In yonder loft; there will be groaning down the dark alley; there will be cries of distress in that eeilar. Men will sleep, and women will watch. Again: woman has a special right to take care of the poor. There are hundreds and thousands of them all over the land. There is a kind of work that men cannot do for the poor. Here comes a group of little barefoot children to the door of the Dorcas So ciety. They need to be clothed and provided for. Which of these directors of banks would know how many yards it would take to make that little girl a dress? Which of these masculine hands could tit a hat to that little girl's head? Which of the wise men would know how to tie on that new pair of shoes? Man sometimes gives his char ity in a rough way, and It falls like the fruit of a tree in the Hast, which fruit comes down so heavily that It breaks the skull of the man who is trying to gather it. Hut woman glides so softly into the house of destitution, and finds out all the sorrows of the place, and puts so quietly the donation on the table, that all the family come out on the front steps as she departs, expecting that from under her shawl she will thrust out two wings and go right up toward heaven, from whence she seems to have come down. O, Christian young woman! If you would make yourself happy, and win the blessing of Christ, go out among the destitute. A loaf of bread or a bundle of socks may make a homely load to carry, but the angels of God will come out to watch, and the Lord Almighty will give his messenger hosts a cnarge, saying, “Lopk after that woman; canopy ber with your wings, and shelter her from ail harm;” and while you are seated in the house of destitution and suffering, the little ones around the room will whisper, "Who Is she?” “Ain't she beautiful!” and if you will listen right sharply, you will hear dripping down through the leaky roof, and rolling over the rotten stairs, the angel chant that shook Bethlehem: “Glory to God in the highest, und on earth peace, good-will to men.” • • • Again, I have to tell you that It Is a woman's specific right to comfort un der the stress of dire disaster. She is called the weaker vessel; but all pro fane as well as sacred history attests that when the crisis comes she Is bet ter prepared than man to meet the emergency. How often have you seen a woman who seemed to be a disciple of frivolity and indolence, who, un der one stroke of calamity, changed to a heroine? Oh, what a great mistake those business men make who never tell their business troubles to their wives! There comes some great loss to their store, or their companions in business play them a sad trick, and they carry the burden all alone. He Is asked in the household again and again: "What is the matter?” But he believes it a sort of Christian duty to keep all that trouble within his own soul. Oh. sir! your first duty was to tell your wife all about it. She, per haps,might not have disentangled your finances, or extended your credit, but she would have helped you to bear misfortune. You have no right to carry on one shoulder that which is Intended for two. Business men know what I mean. There came a crisis in your affairs. You struggled bravely and long; but after a while there came a day when you said: "Here I shall have to stop,” and you called in your partners, and you called in the most prominent men in your employ, and you said: “We have got to stop.” You left the store suddenly. You could hardly make up your mind to pass through the street and over on the ferry-boat. You felt everybody would be looking at you, and blaming you, and denouncing you. You hast ened home. You toid your wife all about the affair. What did she say? Hid she play tho butterfly? Did she talk about the silks and the ribbons and the fashions? No. She came up to the emergency. She quailed not under the stroke. She ofTered to go out of the comfortable house into a smaller one. and wear the old cloak another winter. She was the one who understood your affairs without blam ing you. You looked upon what you thought was a thin, weak wom-tu'-s arm holding you up; but while you looked at that arm there tame into the feeble muscles of it the strength of the eternal God. No chiding; no fretting; no telling you about the beautiful house of her father, from which you brought her ten. twenty, or thirty years ago. You said; "Well, this Is the happiest day of my life. I am glad I have got from under my burden. My wife don't care I don't care." At the moment you were ex hausted God sent yt»u a Ib-borah to meet the host of Auialekltea and scat ter them like chaff over the plain There are sometimes women who alt reading sentimental novela, and who wish that they had some grand held tn whtih to display their Christian powers What grand and glorious thing* they could do If they oniy had an opportunity! My sister, you need not wait for any such tint# A crisis will rotate In your affairs. There will be a Thermopylae in your own house hold where tlal will tell you to stand There are e ores and hundred# of ho>weholda today where as much brav ery and courage are demanded of wom en as was exhibited hy (trace thirling or Marie Antoinette, or Joan ad Are. A«atn, I remark It la womaa'e right bring to a* the kingdom of heaven It ta easier fc»r a •-•man to he a Chris tian than for a ntaa Why? Y«s nay the Is weaker No tier heart t« mure leepotMlve to the pleadings of divine hive She ha la