Today's Stichomancy for Tom Cruise

latter announced, at the eleventh hour and much to his friend's surprise, that, damn it, he would as soon join him as do anything else; on which they proceeded together, strolling in a state of detachment practically luxurious for them to the Boulevard Malesherbes, a couple engaged that day with the sharp spell of Paris as confessedly, it might have been seen, as any couple among the daily thousands so compromised. They walked, wandered, wondered and, a little, lost themselves; Strether hadn't had for years so rich a consciousness of time--a bag of gold into which he constantly dipped for a handful. It was present to him that when the little business with Mr. Bilham should be over he would

mysterious allusions to danger, which sounded absurd yet were disturbing; with dark and warning sentences that sounded like disguised menaces.

Mr. Travers had a heavy and rather long chin which he shaved. His eyes were blue, a chill, naive blue. He faced Lingard untouched by travel, without a mark of weariness or exposure, with the air of having been born invulnerable. He had a full, pale face; and his complexion was perfectly colourless, yet amazingly fresh, as if he had been reared in the shade.

He thought:

"I must put an end to this preposterous hectoring. I won't be

The Rescue

The letter must have had an origin and a motive. That the latter was of the smallest magnitude com- patible with its existence at all, Boldwood, of course, did not know. And such an explanation did not strike him as a possibility even. It is foreign to a mystified condition of mind to realize of the mystifier that the processes of approving a course suggested by circumstance, and of striking out a course from inner impulse, would look the same in the result. The vast difference between starting a train of events, and direct- ing into a particular groove a series already started, is

Far From the Madding Crowd

"Cerizet said the right thing," thought la Peyrade,--"a pompous imbecile!"

The blow struck at Thuillier's candidacy was mortal, but Minard did not profit by it. While the pair were contending for votes, a government man, an aide-de-camp to the king, arrived with his hands full of tobacco licenses and other electoral small change, and, like the third thief, he slipped between the two who were thumping each other, and carried off the booty.

It is needless to say that Brigitte did not get her farm in Beauce. That was only a mirage, by help of which Thuillier was enticed out of Paris long enough for la Peyrade to deal his blow,--a service rendered