The Springdale news., 1915-08-13
PAGE EIGHT
CHAPT FER X.
Iost-The piamond From the sky!


 n the sky? Torn from the fair A throat of Vivian Marston, it
 lies ill q mail box, with ne light to gleam upon it and be reflected back intensified With letters and packages and newspapers folded tight lies the diamond from the sky without 8 stamp to make it mail of any class.
 Then comes the busy mail collector, with his mail collecting car There is some excitement at the Randolph man sion close by. Police whistles are blowing and a laundering fight is going on on the sidewalk.
 But Bob Adams is one of Uncle Sam's mail men. Way for the |. s. mail. which has no time to stop for police, police whistles or shindies on the street. But 1t attracts his atten- tion, as do some hurrying pasSersby, and he opens the mail box and me chanically drags it's contents into the open maw of the drawstring regula- tion canvas mail bag. Into the sack while Bob Adams, mail man. looks with averted head toward the elegant scrap SoeS lHe Hidii HUH boA tlo, anu with 1t goes the diamond from the sky.
 Bob Adams gets back from his col lection route to the postotfice an hour later His work Is through, and he stops in to see his friend. the sergeant at police headquarters, to learn what the row was all about that caused such a commotion and evidently put q crimp in the swell ball given by that grande dame of Richmond. Mrs Burton Ran dolph.
 Meanwhile on the sorting tables at the postoffice the local collections are being dumped from the mail bags. The clerk looses the drawstrings and holds the bags up from their bottom corners and shakes out the mail with delft and practieed rapidity. On the floor the emptied mail bags pile. They see hard service, and some are rent and frayed.
 The inspector comes on his rounds and goes oyer the empties. marking briskly with a large piece of chalk Repair" on those that need mending and renovation.
 Out to the loading platform go for the time being the condemned mail bags. and there all night they lay in the are light, with only the eye of the night watchman upon them occasion ally.
 Dawn breaks at d small way station forty miles from Richmond Here the freight train halts for orders, and here Arthur. so cramped and sore that ev cry fiber of his being aches. erawls from his perilous perch and creeps from under the car into the dusky day light Cheked with dust, marked and matted with grease and dirt dishev eled and pitiful in what WAS his mas culine fnery of the night before, Ar thur limps to q small pool of water between the tracks and is not too dainty to throw himself down beside 1t and suck up it's refreshing coolness to his cracked lips and parched and feverish throat
 The trainmen are busy with their own concerns at water tank and tele graph station far up the track and on the other side of the train Across from him is freight. going out on q branch line. The open door of a freight car seems to call him to it's shelter ing haven of escape. Arthur darts across the track, realizing what a ridic- ulous figure he must seem in his stain ed and disheveled dress suit a mark ed and battered silk hat still clamped tightly on his head
 The outgoing freight is gaining mo mentum as Arthur filings himself half