HARPER'S
MONTHLY MAGAZINE
AUGUST
The Sword of Ahab
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MISS CLEVELAND looked back half reluctantly on Boylston Street as Rankyn led her up the Museum steps. The tulips in the Triangle shone brighter even than the sunlight. Down at the Institute a group of youngsters sat basking; some had books under their arms. Four women and a man stood in front of Trinity and studied the façade in absorbed indifference to the passers-by. All five carried bundles. A great many other people seemed waiting for something. The Library doors were releasing lines of women, who smiled when they looked up at Heaven's lovely face, as if to see their images in the mirror of her eyes. Some of the women were not quite young, but when Day stirred them with his touch, a strange beauty, a glorified youth, possessed them, every one. The trolley-cars moved inoffensively, eating up, like amiable one-eyed ogres, the gathering crowds at the mouths of streets. Cool flashes of muslin caught Miss Cleveland's eye. Out-of-doors it was a true god's day. The Museum would be stifling.
"Only a quarter-hour," pleaded Rankyn. "It is at the very left of the entrance, and we will see nothing else."
" Can we spare a quarter-hour of such a day?" Miss Cleveland objected weakly. "Can't we come when it rains, to see an old sword with a gold hilt and an ivory ball in the handle?"
"No," said Rankyn.
There was a flash or two from the step below him. Miss Cleveland was not accustomed to the language of command. But Rankyn stood uncompromising, too serious to smile, and she felt embarrassingly sure she was on the verge of some discourtesy. She was ten years beyond the age when one chooses to be impolite to an agreeable bachelor.
"Since you wish it so much," Miss Cleveland answered, "of course!" And they went in, past the skull-capped old man who took Rankyn's stick and gave him a brass check for it.
"This is a sword of Phœnicia, you see," explained Rankyn.
Miss Cleveland moved around to the other side of the case and read the label by the hilt on the backing of mirror-glass:
Loaned by William Colchester Rankyn,
Esquire.
"By you!" Miss Cleveland's fingers took hold upon the metal binding of the case.
"I found it on the shores of the Levant last autumn," said Rankyn,—"really found it on a sea-beach, and got it away after many risks."
"You thief!" Miss Cleveland laughed a soft denial of her wrath.
"No thief," said Rankyn; "it was my own sword, you see!"
His sudden vigor startled her, and when she looked up quickly from the sword to his face, she was amazed to
Copyright, 1904, by Harper and Brothers. All rights reserved
