New Britain herald., 1927-01-05

| happily ever after. Oh, it was like a fairy story to Mollie Elwell, sit ting in the racing taXicab with q happy smile trembling on her lips Life had been so dark of late and now the clouds had lifted and the glorious sunshine of happiness was bathing her ill it's warm beneficence.
 She did not know that she had suddenly exchanged positions with q mother in Newark, New Jersey, and that the discovery that Jim Elwell was alive had brought with it the news that John Powell was dead
 Nor did she know what the little woman in Newark and the girl named Helen Craig knew. She did not know that the young soldier who had been ticketcd as John Powell lay on a cot in the Long Island hos pital looking on a world with dumb. ly staring eyes, unspeaking, unthink- ing, unmoving-a living dead man.
 Old Lady Destiny was still pulling ', the strings. And the lady at times has quite a perverse way about her. i Sometimes she pulls them one way, sometimes another. She is not one 10 gamble on with safety; she doesn't always run true to form.
 
 Leaving Prof and Mollie Elwell in their taxi rushing to catch the I Twentieth Century to New York, we move back a little distance in the story to piece together some of its | broken threads. It becomes neces- sary to introduce one Mike Henne- gan, eN-soldier of Uncle Sam's army in France....
 Mike, be it whispered, was Irish, and he looked the part. He was born that way, too, and the event was an 1 important one in the region of Shamrock Corners, taking place on the first day in April of 1893, in the ! back end of Finnegan's Flat, which | looked down into Pokerdice Alley. l It is related of Mike by some of ; his humorous and unyeracious com- rades in arms that just a week after 1 that April Fool day when he came into the world his mother took him out on the back porch to give him a | look at the scenery stretching way across the roof-tops toward Brook lyn Bridge.
 But Mike. so the story goes, fool ed her. He looked down instead.
 "sufferin' cats, Ma" he yipped. | indicating the scene below. Take a slant down in the alley. The gangs all there and they're shootin' craps. l Slip up two bits and I'll go down an make a cleanup. I'll buy you new washtub and the old man new l growlcr."
 From all of which it may be gathered that Mike had weakness for rolling the bones. Which was true. But on the day We are intro- duced to Mike he met an old friend, and this contrived to piece together one of the broken threads. The friend was a nurse named Nellie 1 Downing. who had administered to q shell shocked youth in France. , CHAPTER NXIV
 Mike Hennegan one morning was wandering through City Hall Park, ] New York. When he drew close to , the old fountain he stopped. The old dried-up fountain which was still ! running dry, for the big stone image of Bolivar Brutus, which someone l with a fine and sardonic sense of 1 humor later christeued Civic Virtue, | had not yet been erected.
 Mike stopped, however, not to ad- mire the fountain but because he ] had seen something else. It came tripping toward him from across | the park and it wore a uniform. Not | the uniform of q soldier, for Mike hardly would have looked at that, but a nurse.
 And a remarkably pretty nurse, [ too, with a very petite figure. Had she been of the heavy tank pattern | Mike would have looked the other way. But Mike liked them young and slim and he had an eye for a high-arched instep and slender ankle.
 The little nurse seemed to know Eim, for she rushed right over with the glad hand and welcoming smile.
 Why, Mike Hennegan." she ex- claimed joyfully. T certainly am glad 10 see you again! And you're yaPoking so healthy and good," ~ She added that when he had left had her worried. You didn't look very pert What are you doing now