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the object in terms that would have embarrassed any living man. Then he turned to Bill and made a very low bow. "It came ashore before you," he said. "And we are most grateful!"

Bill opened his eyes wide with horror. He sought to express his agony in words, but no sound came from between his black, swollen lips. A sudden shriek would perhaps have saved him, and Bill tried hard to make a sound in his throat. But his horror lay too heavily upon him. He made a wild, horrid gesture with his right arm and collapsed in a heap upon the sand.

Three months later Bill was taken off by a trading-sloop. He blabbered idiotically about the right of a head to decent burial and made uncomplimentary allusions to the wearing of teeth. He evidently sought to stir up anger against the cannibals, but the traders ignored his insinuations, since he was obviously mad and since the cannibals had worshiped him and given him the run of the island. The memory of Van Wyck's encrimsoned head had addled his wits.

A Brief Weird Story Is

"Perhaps you have been in Vienna?"

"Yes," I said slowly. "Yes, I have been in Vienna."

For a moment there was silence in the car. I took another good look at the man who had chosen to sit beside me rather than to take one of the many empty seats. He wore a well-trimmed Vandyke beard, which was as black as the long wavy hair on his uncovered head. His nose was sharply aquiline. His eyes were hidden by very large, black glasses, attached to a a somewhat blacker cord of an expensive make. He wore a long black cape, buttoned tightly about the neck, where a black silk muffler stuck out. His left hand rested on the gold top of a very fine walking-stick which I would have given much to possess; the tapering fingers of his right were engaged in tapping a cigarette on the sill of the open window.

"Then you have seen the famous Hapsburg Palace?"

"Oh! yes," said I. "That is what most Americans go to Vienna for."

"Yes, I suppose it is so. That and beer—very fine beer in Vienna. You have tasted it, of course? And eaten bologna, I'll wager."

"Both." I laughed.

"You liked the palace?"

"Very much. A sumptuous place. I just read somewhere that part of it was recently destroyed by fire."

"An unfortunate occurrence."

"Very. It is really a magnificent structure."

"And did you promenade in the park?"