Page:Lippincotts Monthly Magazine-40.djvu/303

Rh ing sun. Paul Tangen, airily and daintily clad, was sauntering down Broadway, smoking a cigarette. He was in good spirits, because he had recently discovered a new novelist who pleased him and a new brand of cigarettes which did not give him a headache. In that concentrated bit of New York between Union and Madison Squares there were crowds of people and traffic, as usual, in spite of the heat. Paul felt exhilarated at the sight of it, and allowed himself to be carried along by the current. He found himself presently standing in a dense throng of people before a druggist's window, and he obeyed the general impulse in craning his neck to see what was going on inside.

"What is it?" he asked his neighbor in the crowd.

"Nothing but a sunstroke," was the reply.

"A sunstroke!"

Paul began to feel vaguely uneasy, and elbowed his way to the front. Then, as some one moved aside, he caught a glimpse of a large blonde head, with closed eyes, upon the marble floor. With a cry he sprang forward and flung himself upon his brother's breast.

"Narve, my brother!—oh, my brother!" he wailed, piteously.

Narve half opened his eyes. There was a strange, remote look in them, then a fleeting gleam as of joy.

"I took care of—the little one—father," he murmured, in Norwegian,—"took—care—of—the little one."

A convulsive shiver shook his great frame. The doctor who had come with the ambulance stooped and listened to his heart-beat.

"Nothing to be done," he said: "he is dead."