ICKERY ANN

One–ery, two–ery, Ickery Ann,
Fillacy, fallacy, Nicholas John,
Quever, quaver, English knaver,
Stringelum, strangelum—buck!

These words, half a dozen times repeated in a shrill, high–pitched voice, pierced in through the window to Isabel Bassett's ears. She sat in her little second–story room with her hat still on, tired and hot as she had come from work, leaning back in her chair watching the last beams of the sunset flicker through the dusty shutters.

"One–ery, two–ery"—the mysterious voice was beginning again. She leaned forward and tried to open the slats to see into the street.

"Yer not countin' fair," said another voice.

The shrill first voice replied in a tone of injured dignity: "Lira Green, you know I allers count fair!"

"Well, I've been 'it' every time to–night!"

"That's yer luck," the accused returned.

"I ain't ter blame. No one can't do nothin' 'gainst luck."

Lina Green did not appear to be comforted. "Well," she said, "I'm goin' home."

"That's luck, too!" piped out the other girl. "Good luck."

There was a chorus of malicious laughter.

Isabel Bassett opened the shutters and thrust out her head. A group of children stood on the edge of the pavement. They were grimy with dirt and heat. The small shrill–voiced girl who had caused the dispute balanced herself on the curbstone. Even the four or five inches which she gained by this did not raise her to the height of the other children.

"You'd better all go home," she said. "It's supper–time."

Her word appeared to be law, for after a little lingering they went away. She still stood, her hands behind her, balancing backward and forward on the narrow ledge. She wore no hat over her rumpled black hair; on both shoes there were but three buttons, and her ragged brown dress hung limp about her. Suddenly she swung herself around and looked straight up at Isabel Bassett.

"It's pretty warm," said Isabel, smiling down.

"It's hot!" said the child, and she walked away down the street without another word.

Isabel drew herself back, laughing, into the little room. She put her hat and gloves away and said to herself, "Well, I must get supper." She spread a large napkin on one corner of the table, put on it some bread, a small pitcher of milk, and some sugar and butter in the quaint Japanese dishes girls affect. Then she tied on an apron and sat in the window to pick over a box of berries. It was not a pleasant street she looked out upon. The houses, of wood or cream–colored brick, were crowded together. The sidewalks were in a state of semi–decay. There was an unkept look about the fences and the squares of ground that the inhabitants referred to as their "front yards." It was wonderful to see how few grown–up people there were on the street. It was the thoroughfare of the children. It was given up to "tag" and "hide–and–seek" and "ransy-tansy-tea," as other streets were given up to men, vehicles and business.

Isabel Bassett, whose home until the last year had been in one of the quaintest and loveliest of Michigan villages, had not rented this small, close room in this hot, uninteresting Chicago street because she found it agreeable. It suited nothing but her salary. But she had little time to take note of her surroundings. She arose at six, prepared her breakfast on a tiny oil stove, put the room in order, and, after a three–mile street–car ride, reached the office where she was employed. There all morning her nimble fingers took down in shorthand the business letters dictated by the managing partner of the firm, and all afternoon she spent in transcribing the same by the aid of a type–writing machine. At noon she had an hour in which to get her dinner. This consisted of soup, a small steak or fish, with the extras that go with such dishes, and a cup of tea or coffee. She ate it at a restaurant in the next block. By seven in the evening she was home again.

She prepared and ate every evening, as on this, a lonesome supper, then sewed until nine o'clock. This hour usually found her letting down the narrow folding–bed in which she slept.

But to–night the heavy, heated air so oppressed her, and homesickness so weighed upon her that she slipped downstairs and out to the gate in search of fresh air and thoughts. The sky was filled with drifting clouds. In the higher heavens stars glistened, but the white banks of clouds hung low and the air was heavy and warm, with a promise of rain. Noxious odors arose from the unclean street and the choked–up sewers, to Isabel's disgusted nostrils.

"If I were at home," thought the lonely girl, "I should smell mignonette and roses on such a night as this." The tears came to her eyes. She gazed down the street without seeing it. Her fancy was far away at play in a garden where all the flowers of our Northern climate bloomed together in fragrant beauty. Beyond was a stretch of meadows beautiful in the varying colors of clover or timothy grass or "red top." Suddenly through the mist that blurred her sight she saw a little figure with its arms folded behind it, marching along with dignified decision, its head bowed as if in deepest thought.

"Why," cried Isabel aloud, "it's that little Ickery Ann girl! What are you doing here alone at this time of night, child?"

"Same's you!"

"But," continued Isabel, "you are outside your yard and walking alone in the street."

The child's resentful pertness disappeared at the kindly manner of the other. "Well," she whispered, coming closer and looking up through the pickets, "they's been bu'glars 'roun' here last two ' three nights, an' I wanter see em.

"Burglars, you mean?"

"Yup; bu'glars."

"Well," said Isabel, "what do you want to see them for?"

"I wanter catch 'em!"

"Why, you silly child, you couldn't catch a burglar."

"Mebbe you think I can't run. Just watch out!" She sped like a sprite down the walk. Isabel could see her little form as it dashed past the street lamps. She flashed up to the gate again and went on talking without loss of breath. "Now!" she said, triumphantly.

"My dear little girl," protested Isabel, "you don't understand what it is to catch a burglar."

"I'd hang to 'im like a cat," she broke in.

"They go armed and shoot at the least thing, and they are great, strong men," said Isabel, amused.

"I'd claw 'em!" The child made two wicked–looking little claws out of her hands and worked them viciously at Isabel.

"I call you the little Ickery Ann girl," said Isabel. "What is your name?"

"I don't like ter tell."

"Why not?"

"It's horrid!"

"My name is Isabel Bassett."

"Well," (hesitatingly) "mine—is—Capitola Marks."

"Why, that's a pretty name. Don't you like it?"

"Naw!"

"Then I'll call you Ickery Ann."

The little brown girl laughed. "I don't care," she said.

"Do you live near here, Ickery Ann?"

"Yup."

"With your mother?"

"Well—almost."

"Almost with your mother, Ickery Ann?"

"With my step–ma. Dad's gone."

"To heaven?"

"Naw! Ter S'luce."

"To St. Louis?"

"Yup. Runned away. Step-ma was so cross. I kinder stay on."

"Poor child!" sighed Isabel.

Ickery Ann's hard little eyes blinked curiously in the pause; she cast about to hide their sudden misty softness. "Whew! see the clouds!" she said, looking up.

"They are grand," said Isabel, "but you ought to see them as they are in the country — miles and miles of them, bowling and chasing each other along. Here everything is smoky, and you only see a little strip. Then in the country there is a beautiful wind blowing over the meadows and the woods—and flowers, you know, all kinds—and birds."

"What made you leave all that, Miss?"

"Call me Miss Bell. Why, I wanted to take care of myself. The other children are old enough now to do my work at home, and I came here to earn my own living."

"Do you like it?" the little girl inquired.

Isabel shook her head. "I don't know any one here, you see."

"'Cept me."

"Of course—and I don't know you very well."

"I'm goin' ter come an' see you. I like you!"

"Do you, my dear?" laughed Isabel. "Well, come and see me, then. As we are both rather lonesome, let us kiss each other good–night. Now run home."

The girl ran swiftly from sight, and Isabel went to her bed in the "front alcove room."

After this, the girl from Michigan could not call herself friendless. Almost every evening saw the sharp, dark little face smiling across the table at her while she sewed, and after a time Ickery Ann seemed to take upon herself the charge of the place. Isabel intrusted to her the key of her room, and when she came home at night the oil–stove was burning and the tea nearly ready. If it rained during the day she found Ickery Ann with waterproof and rubbers lurking in a doorway near the street–car track. The grateful child cleaned her boots at night and carried her washing to and from the laundry. There seemed to be no home requirements upon Ickery Ann's time. She had her breakfast in the morning, and was turned loose upon society at large till bedtime. If she chose to be at any of the other meals, well and good; if she didn't, nobody minded.

Ickery Ann wore the fewest possible articles of clothing, and they were never overclean. In this, however, Isabel's dainty example worked a change. One of the luxuries of Isabel's room was a bath with its unconsumable jet of clear water. At the close of the hot afternoons Ickery Ann used to fill the tub and frolic in it like a young porpoise, and by the time of Isabel's return would come out, glistening, from her straight black hair to the tips of her little bare toes. With Isabel's help, too, she made some simple untrimmed underclothing for herself. "I guess I can make you that little present in return for all you do for me," Isabel told her. She also bestowed upon her gingham for two dresses, which she taught her to make. These garments she washed in the bath–tub when necessary, and ironed by the aid of Isabel's oil–stove.

The mysterious step–mother Isabel never saw, and Ickery Ann did not seem to care to speak of her life at home. "I sleep in a closet," she said once, "an' I got ter climb over the footboard ter git in bed. But I make up the bed every day now an' sweep out every spickety–speck of dust under it."

"I hope you don't shut the door when you go to bed," said Isabel.

"There ain't no door—nothin' but some nails an' a shelf," said Ickery Ann.

This companionship had gone on for almost two months when Isabel came home from work one night with a piece of news. Ickery Ann, as usual, was bustling about. On the table was laid out bread and cheese and cucumbers. The tiny kettle boiled till its copper sides shook. The fragrance of tea filled the air. Ickery Ann had done her black hair up in a very peaked coil, which made her look like a wicked little fairy godmother. She stood waiting with a roguish expectation on her face, but Isabel swept in, and taking no notice of the hair, cried out merrily:

"Ickery Ann, what do you think?"

"I dun know."

"I'm going home!"

"Oh!"

"There isn't much doing now at the office, and Mr. Harrigan said if I was going to take a vacation I might as well do it now. First he said one week, and then he said two. Then he said was I going home, and I said I didn't know as I could, the car–fare was so much, and he said to–morrow he'd take me to his brother who is something or other on the railroad, and he'd write me a pass so I could get home without paying anything—oh, Ickery!"

Ickery Ann was sobbing with her head so buried between her knees that only the pointed coil stuck out.

In a moment Isabel came to her side. "How selfish of me," she cried, "to think only of myself!"

"I'm selfisher nur you, sobbed Ickery, "or I'd be glad ter have you go."

"Poor Ickery Ann!" said Isabel. And then she sat bolt upright and thought so hard that Ickery Ann gave up crying and sat bolt upright also, watching her. "Wait here," said Isabel at last.

She walked out of the room and was gone a quarter of an hour. What she did was this: She knocked at the house of Ickery Ann's step–mother. A tall, sharp–featured woman opened the door. "Are you the mother of Capitola Marks?" asked Isabel with a very polite bow.

"I am her step–mother."

"I am Isabel Bassett, with whom she stays so much now, you know." Isabel waited for a reply, but there was none. The woman blocked the doorway. Isabel looked up at her. "I'm going home for a two weeks' vacation at Niles, Michigan, on a farm. I want to know if you would care if Ick–if Capitola went home with me for those two weeks, if I'd take good care of her and bring her back all right?"

"Who's to pay her way?"

"Well," said Isabel, "the gentleman I work for gets me a pass, and I think that should I tell him the circumstances he would have it made out for two. I shan't speak to Capitola till I find out."

"She ain't nothin' fit to go in," objected the woman in a yielding voice.

"Why, I can fix her up a hat and dress out of some of mine, if you don't mind. If you would just buy her a pair of shoes we should manage it nicely."

"She's very imperdent to me," said Mrs. Marks, reflectively. "I can't do nothin' with her. I jist let her take her way. It takes all my time to earn enough to keep myself clothed and the roof over our heads. But I'll get the shoes. Mebbe she'll use a little more common decency toward me when she gets back."

"Thank you," cried Isabel. "You needn't go to another bit of trouble. I'll send you word if I get the pass. I promise to take good care of Capitola."

"Humph!" said Capitola's step–mother, and closed the door. Isabel rushed back to the room to the distracted Ickery Ann. "Now, we will have our supper," she cried, "and you must help me rip my old brown cashmere dress. I am going to make it over for—luck."

The next morning she pleaded Ickery Ann's cause with Mr. Harrigan. The story interested him, and that night Isabel went home with a railroad pass which read: "Pass Miss Isabel Bassett and one to Niles, Michigan, and return."

Two days later the two girls were on a train rushing eastward. Capitola was stupefied. She looked out of the window in open–mouthed wonder. A three hours' run brought them across the high trestle–work and into the pretty town of Niles. When they alighted a white–haired, pleasant–faced old man came up and kissed Isabel and lifted her and Ickery Ann into a light wagon. Then they were driven over a quiet road under the radiant blue of a September sky. From beneath her trim turban Ickery Ann's excited black eyes darted their glances from object to object. Isabel's father sat sideways on the front seat so that he might look at her.

"You're looking a little pale, Bella," he said. "I'm afraid we did wrong to let ye go."

"Oh, father," laughed she, "I always did despise girls who hung around home just because they were girls."

"Hi, you!" cried Mr. Bassett, turning his broad smile to the little girl. "What do you think of all this? What's your name?"

"I call her Ickery Ann for a pet name, father," Isabel replied for her.

"Ickery Ann, eh? Well, Miss Ickery Ann, we'll show you a thing or two before you go home. We've got the finest lot of chickens in this part of the State."

"Live ones?" asked Ickery Ann, opening her lips at last.

"Of course, live ones!"

"I never saw live ones, sir."

"Great Scott!" exclaimed Isabel's father. In the west, toward which they were now journeying, the blue of the sky began to blaze into amber and rose. The colors glowed in belts of brightness like the brilliant bands on a Roman ribbon. All about stretched the fragrant meadows, on the hills that bound them stood the trees in quiet relief. By the road–way journeyed those two royal friends, the aster and golden–rod, clothed in the colors of kings.

"It's all `common' here, ain't it?" inquired Ickery Ann, looking at the grass which edged each side of the road.

"Common?" repeated Mr. Bassett.

"Yes," continued Ickery Ann, "an' I don't see no signs tellin' us to keep offen the grass." Mr. Bassett looked at her in astonishment. Isabel laughed.

"She thinks this is a park," she explained. "She has never been in the country before. She never saw flowers or grass in Chicago except in Lincoln Park."

Mr. Bassett looked at Ickery again. "The poor little thing!" he said.

"No, Ickery," said Isabel, "no one will tell you to keep off the grass here. You can play on it as much as you please, and pick all the flowers."

Ickery looked up as if she scarcely believed her. But if there were flowers in the meadows, what were they to the flowers in the garden, where they stood in rank and file, companies and regiments of them! And what a wonder was the wide country–house, with its long French windows, its porches and its lattices! Never had Ickery Ann eaten a supper so delightful. A whip–poor–will called to them from the woods while they sat at table. Ickery Ann couldn't decide which was best — the jelly-cake or the whip–poor–will.

"Now," said Ickery, after they had finished the supper, "where are them chickens?"

"Bless your soul," said Mr. Bassett, "they're in bed three hours ago!"

Ickery Ann said quaintly that she didn't know chickens had beds, and all the Bassett family smiled, and Father Bassett told about the poles and how the chickens roosted upon them.

"Oh," said Ickery Ann, "then they're all roosters at night!" and at this the Bassetts laughed again. There was no shyness in Ickery's nature, and she and the whole household were well acquainted before bedtime. Mrs. Bassett was younger than her husband, and seemed to poor little Ickery Ann's heathen heart the very kindest person she had ever seen. She had unpacked Isabel's trunk, and whisked Tommy to bed, and mended Maggie's torn apron, and found a currant tart for Ickery while the other girls had done up the supper things.

The next morning Ickery saw the sun rise. She gave up trying to count the bird songs. She fed the chickens for Mr. Bassett and flung the meal in showers at them with her little brown hands.

"How many are there?" she cried.

One–ery, two–ery, Ickery Ann,
Fillacy, fallacy, Nicholas John,
Quever, quaver, English knaver,
Stringelum, strangelum—buck!

"You're `buck'," she said to the golden pheasant rooster, who, offended by the intelligence, stalked out of the yard.

And oh, the delights of the milking time! "I thought," said Ickery Ann, "that the milk came in cans from the milk–man."

Again Mr. Bassett said: "Great Scott!"

Then the hunts in the hay–loft for eggs! The burrowing in the hay to play at being "bear!" The revelation, when the next night came, of a lighted pumpkin, and the delicious dirtiness of digging up the potatoes, and the joy of climbing for apples to cat!

But into this crude little heart, hardened by neglect, the beauty of nature sent a joy deeper than any of these. For the first time she looked upon the unbroken sky at night— the whole mystic vault gleaming with stars. She looked long and breathed deep. "It must be God's making," she said. That was the first time she had ever thought of God. When she walked under the coloring maples, the voices of the woods about her, the rustle of leaves, the chirp of birds, the gurgle of the stream, her sorrow at all she had missed, her joy at all she had found, seemed too great to bear, and the tears fell through the fingers that she clasped over her eyes.

The morning they left Ickery Ann stole quietly to Mrs. Bassett's side. "I hope, ma'am," she whispered, "you don't think I'm imperdent. My step–ma allers said I 'us imperdent."

Mrs. Bassett threw her motherly arms around the little figure and gave it a hug that took its breath away. "There now," she said as she kissed her, "that's to show you that I think you're a true little heart, and I hope you will grow to be a very useful woman."

Ickery Ann reached her home in Chicago the night of that day inspired with a new purpose which her untidy surroundings and her step–mother's sarcasm could not damp, though the foul smells and smoke–begrimed houses, the discolored sky and the barren streets filled her with disgust and longing.

"If it wasn't fer all yer ma taught me 'bout bein' good I'd just be imperdent t' every un," she confessed to Isabel. "If I clean up the house step–ma says I'm puttin' on airs, an' when I try ter answer as nice as I know how, she says I'm gettin' wings. If 'twasn't fer thinkin' of yer ma, I'd a–fixed her."

All through the long winter the little girl was patient in her purpose and grew in good ways. Save for an hour every evening which she spent in studying with Isabel's help, the girls saw but little of each other. "'Tain't right for me to be 'way from home 's much 's I used to be. I'm tryin' to make it cheerfuller, " she said.

Isabel did the best she could to help her soften the nature of the hard woman, who was Ickery Ann's only relation. They tried, too, to beautify the dingy rooms, and Isabel divided the box of bitter–sweet and pine that came from home on Christmas week, and they trimmed the walls. Mrs. Marks would not hear of Ickery Ann's attending school — perhaps she really had not the money to buy books and dress her properly — so Isabel taught her how to make braided rugs out of rags, and to "piece" bedquilts, and make dainty covers for the marred furniture out of all sorts of odds and ends.

One evening Ickery Ann did not come for her usual hour of study, and after waiting till nearly nine o'clock Isabel went in search of her. She found her sitting by the bed on which Mrs. Marks lay in a high fever. "I was afraid to leave her," said Ickery Ann. "That's why I didn't come."

Isabel looked at the unconscious woman. "I'm going for a doctor," she said, and she found one and returned with him.

In the dreadful days that followed Ickery Ann never left her step–mother's bedside. Whatever they needed from the outside Isabel brought. But for her Ickery Ann must have gone hungry, for the little money they found in the sick woman's purse was soon exhausted. Some consciousness of the little girl's devotion seemed to creep over the sick woman's clouded brain. "She's good to me," she said to Isabel. "She's real good to me." She grew weaker and weaker as the days went by. At last one morning when the dim April dawn was stealing in through the window she laid her hand on Ickery's and shut her eyes on the world in which she had seen little happiness and done little good.

"And now I don't know where I'll go," said Ickery dismally the next day.

"Well," said Isabel, "I'll write a letter home to father and see what he advises, and in the meantime where should you go but right over to our own little room?" But though Ickery had always been glad to be there before, she did not seem happy now, but crouched near the little stove, or lay on the bed in a troubled doze. Isabel watched her. Ickery Ann did not complain, she only seemed anxious to be let alone. Nevertheless on the fourth day Isabel called the doctor.

"Of course," said he, "I knew you would come." He growled worse than ever when he saw Ickery. "She's been keeping up on nervous excitement," he said. "Why didn't she tell she was sick?" The next day she was so bad that Isabel could not leave her, and the day after that she neither knew the doctor nor her friend. She babbled of the country, but now and then her mind strayed back to the city streets and the children she had played with.

"Here," she cried to Isabel, holding up one finger, "you tell time by the clocks. In the country where I was, we told it by the flowers. When they shut their eyes 'twas time to go to supper. Do you know how to make baskets out of burrs? I'll show you some day. And I can make wreaths from oak–leaves, too."

The next morning the doctor said: "She's going very fast. I'm afraid I can do nothing more for her. The poison of that wretched place where she lived has been working in her system too long."

"Why," Isabel cried, "I never dreamed she was in danger. It can't be possible, doctor! She's such a sturdy little thing."

When he came again, a couple of hours later, Ickery Ann was sitting up in bed laughing and talking. Isabel had her arms about her trying to quiet her.

"I'll bring the water for you, Mrs. Bassett," she was saying. "Do let me get it; it's such fun to hear the chain creak. I'll water Brindle, too, if you say so. Eating clover all day must make her dry. I like to eat clover myself. Hi! children! get out of the street! Don't you see that truck coming? Now stand in a row, and I'll see who's `it.' `One–ery, two–ery, Ickery Ann'—don't change places, Lina Green—'fillacy, fallacy, Nicholas John, Quever, quaver, English knaver'—I know I'll count myself out—' Stringelum—strangelum' —the voice sank so low that only Isabel's listening ear could hear—then in a whisper—" `Buck!'—I'm–I'm–out!" The little head dropped against Isabel's shoulder, and the doctor said, "She is dead."

"I'll take her back to the country," sobbed Isabel. "She shall be among the places she loved so." And on the hillside where the flowers grew and the birds sang, and the wind brought the voice of the stream, sleeps Ickery Ann.

The Genius

Her face was small and white, her eyes mottled, and her hair as straight as hair could be and about the color of—well, of hay. Her nose was delicate and rather long, her teeth even and small, and her thin, over–red lips reached well around her face. She looked knowing and yet timid, and she wore a frock of dismal green and preposterous little bronze boots with very high heels. When she first walked in chapel at Miss Gunther's school the girls stared at her in amazement. She looked so uncanny, that though they were friendly girls with the disposition to make a new pupil feel at home, they shrank from this little creature as from something alien.

She was not particularly devotional at chapel, and seemed in some doubt about the fashion of morning prayers. She did not bow her head at the gloria, and sat in her seat while the others kneeled.

"Did you hear her name?" asked Nina Van Ness at the noon recess, when the girls sat together in the lunch room. "It is even more impossible than her hair."

"What is it?" cried the others.

"She is named after the town where she was born. Elgin Babcock—that's her name. Elgin! I call it cruelty to children to inflict such a name on a helpless infant. It ought to be punishable by law."

"Why does a girl with a chalky complexion wear a gown the color of stewed spinach?" asked Hedwig Holstetter, the beautiful German from Milwaukee.

"Spinach isn't stewed, it's boiled," protested Florence Hereford.

"Well, it's detestable, anyway," said Hedwig.

Just then the girl of whom they were talking entered the room with Miss Arthur, the teacher of English. Miss Arthur wore a look which indicated that she was about to present the newcomer. The girls arose.

"Miss Babcock comes from a beautiful village down in the State," Miss Arthur said. "And she is likely to find Chicago skies very smoky and our streets very dirty unless you try to make her forget about these things."

The girls bowed as their names were mentioned, but said nothing, though Hedwig made an indistinct murmur in her throat. It was not their way to be stupid, but something about this curious little creature embarrassed them, and they found no fit words of greeting. A wave of scarlet swept over the stranger's face, her thin lips quivered, and then she held out her hand to first one and then another, saying:

"I–I hope you'll like m–me. I–I'm not so bad as I look. L–l–like caviare!"

The words came out explosively, and made the girls gape in astonishment. Then, divining that they were making the acquaintance of a humorist, they broke into a good–natured laugh and warmed to her at once.

"We'll try to make you so jolly here that you'll never think of getting homesick," cried Nina in her cordial fashion. She had a high–bred face and a beautiful smile, and the new girl stared at her as if fascinated.

"W-well," she replied, "I'm n–n–n–not likely to get exactly h–h–homesick, because I carelessly lost my home about four y–y–years ago."

"Miss Babcock is an orphan," explained Miss Arthur sotto voce.

"I–I–I have been living with certain avuncular paraphernalia b–b–belonging to the family."

"I beg your pardon?" said Hedwig, politely.

"Living w–w–with my uncles, you know. There are th–th–three of them, and, not being idealists, they didn't l–l–like anything so perfect as my ig–ig–ignorance. So they sent me here to effect a sort of com–com–compromise with Minerva, as it were."

Miss Arthur indicated that she wished to present Miss Babcock to other of her school–mates, so the girl made a jerky little bow and walked away.

"She's a genius!" cried Hedwig. "It's the first one we've had in the school since Gertrude Waterhouse Smith!"

"And you know we decided we never wanted another!"

"Oh, you always have to pay for luxuries," said Hedwig soothingly. "It gives a certain distinction to a school to have a genius in it, and absolves the rest of us from any effort. We can act merely as a picturesque background. Geniuses need a background above all things."

"It will be hard to provide any background that will harmonize with that—that poster," said Florence Hereford.

"That's it!" cried Bet Ringwalt. "With that remarkable hair parted in the middle and combed down over her ears, and that white face and those blood–red lips, she looks more like a poster than anything I ever saw out of print."

Nina knitted her brows. She saw the tide going against the new girl, and she knew very well that to a greater or less extent the verdict of the girls concerning Elgin Babcock on this first day would decide her status in the school for the period of her stay.

"She's not a poster," she pronounced emphatically. "Hedwig's right. She's a genius. I've heard of those who couldn't tell a hawk from a handsaw when the wind was north–north–west. But to–day it is southerly. She's a genius—and she has come in the nick of time."

So she and Hedwig saw to it that the soubriquet was fixed, and before night a certain distinction had begun to attach itself to the girl with hay–colored hair.

It was the custom at Miss Gunther's school for two girls to occupy a sleeping–room together, but when Elgin entered, which was in the middle of a term, there was a complement of pupils, and no girl lacking a room–mate and no room lacking occupants. Two guest chambers, large, magnificent and remote, occupied the front of the story devoted to sleeping apartments, and Elgin was temporarily lodged in one of these, where Hedwig reported her as looking quite forlorn and whiter–faced than ever.

"H–h–haven't you got a r–r–rat hole somewhere that I can c–c–crawl into?" the genius asked pathetically of Miss Arthur. "Really, I feel like a dried–up n–n–nut in a fine shell. It's h–h–having a bad mor–moral effect on me, hu–hu–humiliating me like that."

Miss Arthur looked mildly shocked. She did not think it fitting for a girl who attended Miss Gunther's school to admit that anything could have a bad moral effect upon her. During recreation hours Elgin went on a tour of exploration, and found a little room opening off the landing of a stairway which had once been used as a place of storage for books, but had degenerated into a lumber room for old examination papers. It was almost in the shape of a triangle, the roof presenting the sloping side, and was lighted by a ridiculous window which followed the contour of the room.

"H–h–here's my r–r–rat hole!" announced Elgin, and though the teachers protested that it was not large enough, and that she would be lonely there, she insisted and had her way. The odd cubiculum had never been properly finished, and the principal, Miss Ferguson, gave Elgin permission to suggest the colors in which it should be calcimined and painted.

"She'll do something astonishing with that room," prophesied Nina. As there was a great rivalry in rooms and their decorations, this was interesting; and Elgin was so secretive that no one could get a peep at the place.

"When are we to be allowed to visit your quarters," Florence Hereford asked, politely.

"Th–they're not qu–qu–quarters," said Elgin, solemnly, turning a sidelong glance on Miss Hereford. "Th–they are eighths."

The second Saturday after Elgin's entrance to the school every one was invited to the triangular room. The exact minute of the expected arrival and departure was written on each card, this being a necessity, owing to the fact that when the capacity of the room was stretched to its utmost it would accommodate no more than five persons. These invitations created much amusement, and when the day arrived no one went to town, though it was the habit of the young ladies to do their shopping and sight–seeing on Saturday afternoon.

The room made a tremendous hit. None of the divan–decorated, pillow–littered, picture–hung, photograph–arrayed apartments in that school had ever created such a sensation as this. The woodwork was coal–black and the walls a brilliant yellow; on the divan—which, of course, was the bed in disguise — was spread a Paisley shawl with a black center and a marvelous yellow border; all of the pillows were covered with Paisley in many shades and patterns. At the three–cornered window hung a curtain of yellow silk with a black dragon embroidered in one corner, and on the sill loomed a star–shaped flower of brilliant red. There was only one ornament in the room, and no pictures. This ornament was a hideous mask made of black Alaskan slate by the devil–haunted Thinglets. It leered down from the yellow wall with unutterable grotesqueness upon the Genius and her guests. Two little ebonized chairs and a writing–desk completed the furniture of the room. There was no tea–table, and instead of the usual beverage, Miss Babcock passed around a jar of yellow pottery decorated with green lizards and containing a Mexican confection of sugared orange peel.

But the Genius herself was the most curious thing in the room. Excitement had blanched her face till she looked like Pierrot; her thin, red lips seemed to extend over a greater territory than usual. In her hay–colored hair was one of the star–shaped red flowers, and she wore a full white skirt and waist, pointed yellow Turkish slippers and long black gloves. She moved like a marionette worked by an unskilled hand, and discharged her hospitable nonsense at the heads of her guests in so catapultic a fashion that they left breathless but enthusiastic. The social event of the year was undeniably the room–warming of the Genius, and it was settled that she had fully won the right to enjoy her nickname and to be pointed out as one of the personages of the school.

A week later, however, Elgin made a more genuine sensation than that which could be caused by the furnishing of a room or the contriving of a costume. The members of the Debating Society were convinced that she would be a valuable addition to their number, and she was invited to join. True, she had not as yet shown much aptitude for her lessons, but this was set down to the fact that she was new to the ways of the school and the teachers, and it was the universal opinion that she would put up a clever argument in debate. At first she refused with emphasis, but she was finally induced to yield, and even to make her maiden effort at the first meeting which she attended. The subject to be discussed was, "Is not Lord Alfred Tennyson a greater poet than Robert Browning?"

Elgin chose the affirmative side, and the hall was crowded to hear the debate. It was in the evening, and by the soft–shaded lights the girls looked as tender and fair as early roses—all save the Genius, who was white, with over–bright eyes. She opened her argument in a low voice, and her stammer at first rendered her almost unintelligible. But even this unintelligibility was better than that which followed. So poorly were her arguments produced, so inconclusive, wandering and inefficient was all she said that the girls actually suffered from commiseration, and a sigh of relief was heard when she took her seat.

Nina Van Ness was her opponent, and she was skilled in quiet debate. She was well prepared, and produced her facts without brilliant effect, but in a convincing manner. She seemed unwilling to do her best, lest she should be too severe upon her adversary, yet when she finished the girls could not withhold a burst of applause.

"Will the advocate for the affirmative use her privilege and respond?" asked the chair–woman.

A look of perfect torpidity had settled upon the pallid face of the little Genius. Now she arose and stalked to the platform with the muscular action of a manikin.

"M–M–Miss Chairman, "said she, "M–M–Miss Chairman and l–ladies, the argument for the n–n–negative, to which you h–have so patiently -–l–listened, only goes to p–p–prove the im–im–immortality of the soul, of which the Canadians are m–m–most unjustly deprived."

She gained her seat amidst the amazed silence; then there was a rustling; then a slow and bewildered wave of laughter, and finally hysterical merriment, as the full irrelevance of the preposterous remark dawned upon them.

"Did she sham failure just to make an opportunity for that nonsense?" asked Hedwig wiping the tears of laughter from her blue eyes. It seemed not improbable, but the Genius was not at hand to tell them, for she had slipped out in the confusion.

And so, by the way, had Nina Van Ness. She had seen Elgin gliding from the room with a look upon her face which prompted her to follow, and when the Genius flung herself upon the Paisley divan in a passion of tears, Nina's soft and comforting arms were about her, and the hay–colored head was drawn close to her bosom. It was a long time before the weeping girl could make herself articulate, but at length she sat up, looked at Nina with her mottled eyes, and in the tone of one enfranchising her soul from some bondage she made a dramatic confession.

"I'm not a genius!" she burst out with even more than her usual explosiveness. "I've got to tell you—I've got to own up. I'm not a genius at all! I'm just a gro–gro–grotesque. Oh, but that isn't the worst! I don't even st–st–stammer as much as you think. I've got in the way of it now, and it's hard to stop, but I never stammered b–b–before I came here. I just happened to that first day, when I was introduced to you girls, because I was so fr–frightened, and so ashamed of be–being a grotesque and of wearing that awful dress, and when I saw it made a sort of hit, and heard you wh–whispering about me I thought the only way to make you take any n–notice of me was to be as ab–absurd as I c–c–could !"

"How queer," murmured Nina. "I only half understand."

"Oh, but you must understand, be–because if you don't, no one will. You are the v–very kindest, and I hate w–w–worst of all to deceive you."

"Why did no one take any notice of you at home?"

"There wasn't any b–body there, except my un–uncles. M–mother died four years ago, and I don't even rem–member how my father looked. W – when mother died Uncle K–K–Kenneth Babcock took me in. He and Uncle Samuel and Uncle Thomas raise flowers and plants and live in a house b–beside the conservatories. Th–they n–never liked me from the first. I know they tried to, but they just c–c–couldn't. I looked so, and I said s–such dreadful things. I tried to stop saying the dreadful things, but they just p–p–popped right out, b–b–because things that didn't seem funny to other folks seemed so f–f–funny to me! Then Uncle Kenneth got worn out with me, I s–suppose, and he took some of the money belonging to me and sent me h–here."

"Poor dear," murmured Nina. "Indeed, I begin to understand."

"I wasn't really p–prepared to come here, but Miss Ferguson talked with me, and if you just talk w–with me you m–might think I kn–know something. So, as it was the middle of the t–t–term, she let me in without examining me, and the t–t–truth is I don't know what you are t–talking about in class at all. I just r–root around like a b–b–blind pig in the mud. I didn't know what to make of you a–all, that first day I came; you were so pretty—all you g–g–girls, and so smart, and had such jolly rooms and such n–nice clothes! And I heard what you s–said about my looking like a p–poster and a genius, and s–so I just ma–made a monkey of myself from v–v–v–vanity. And now I've fallen down in the debate, and I haven't had a lesson since I came, and so I may as well give up and g–g–go home! And that's what—"

"Go home to the avuncular paraphernalia? Well, indeed, you'll do nothing of the sort. You just leave this whole matter to me. You take off your clothes and go to bed, and don't you worry. In the morning you get up and be your own natural self, whatever that is, and don't you think another thought to–night!"

"It's no use," moaned the desolate little Genius, shaking her hay–colored hair about her thin shoulders. "Look at this preposterous room! Think of the absurd thing I said to–night!"

"'Think, oh, think of the Prince of Wales!'" quoted Nina. "Indeed the room is an artistic triumph. You could make your fortune as a decorator if you wanted to, I do believe. And where did you get that fearful mask—that Alaskan thing?"

"Oh, Uncle Samuel g–got it at Seattle once, and b–brought it home to me. And I only h–had mother's old Paisley shawls to fix up with!"

"As for what you said to-night in the hall, it was the funniest thing ever heard there, and the way you turned the day was great! How did you think of it?"

"That's it," groaned Elgin. "I d–d–don't think! These things p–p–pop out as I told you!"

The next morning, after a night of sodden sleep, the little Genius arose, weak in body but determined in mind, and made her toilet preparatory to descending to the breakfast room. She felt that the day would be an eventful one for her, but she had no idea of what course these events were to take. She was a half minute late, and her face flushed nervously as she entered the room in her sad green gown and made her way toward her place. But she was greeted by a cheer—actually a cheer—and stood still in amazement trying to make out the meaning of it.

"W–w–what—" she began.

"It's because you're not a genius," cried Hedwig. "We're so glad, you know—so awfully glad! Nina told us. And now we won't have to live up to you; but we shall like you a great deal better. You are now the Common Person. Girls, three cheers for the Common Person!"

They gave it with an exhilarating quantity of noise, and little by little the pain melted out of the white face of the girl with the hay–colored hair as she perceived here an emphatic offer of good will. The tears of gratitude crept to her mottled eyes, and she dashed them away with one little hand. "But I'm not so m–m–measly c–c–common after all!" she said.

Grizel Cochrane's Ride

In the midsummer of 1685, the hearts of the people of old Edinburgh were filled with trouble and excitement. King Charles the Second of England was dead, and his brother, the Duke of York, reigned in his stead to the dissatisfaction of a great number of the people.

The hopes of this class lay with the young Duke of Monmouth, the ambitious and disinherited son of Charles the Second, who, on account of the King's displeasure, had been living for some time at foreign courts. On hearing of the accession of his uncle, the Duke of York, to the throne, Monmouth yielded to the plans of the English and Scottish lords who favored his own pretensions, and prepared to invade England with a small but enthusiastic force of men.

The Duke of Argyle, the noblest lord of Scotland, who also was an exile, undertook to conduct the invasion at the north, while Monmouth should enter England at the west, gather the yeomanry about him and form a triumphant conjunction with Argyle in London, and force the "usurper," as they called King James the Second, from his throne.

Both landings were duly made. The power of Monmouth's name and rank rallied to his banner at first a large number of adherents; but their defeat at Sedgemoor put an end to his invasion. And the Duke of Argyle, a few days after his landing in Scotland, was met by a superior force of the King's troops. Retreating into a morass, his soldiers were scattered and dispersed. Many of his officers deserted him in a panic of fear. The brave old nobleman himself was taken prisoner, and beheaded at Edinburgh, while all the people secretly mourned. He died without betraying his friends, though the relentless King of England threatened to compel him to do so by the torture of the thumbscrew and the rack.

Many of his officers and followers underwent the same fate; and among those imprisoned to await execution was a certain nobleman, Sir John Cochrane, who had been made famous by other political intrigues. His friends used all the influence that their high position accorded them to procure his pardon, but without success; and the unfortunate baronet, a moody and impulsive man by nature, felt that there was no escape from the terrible destiny, and prepared to meet it in a manner worthy of a follower of the brave old duke. But he had one friend on whose help he had not counted.

In an upper chamber of an irregular, many–storied mansion far down the Canongate, Grizel Cochrane, the imprisoned man's daughter, sat through the dread hours waiting to learn her father's sentence. There was too little doubt as to what it would be. The King and his generals meant to make merciless examples of the leaders of the rebellion. Even the royal blood that flowed in the veins of Monmouth had not saved his head from the block. This proud prince, fleeing from the defeat of Sedgemoor, had been found hiding in a ditch, covered over with the ferns that flourished at the bottom. Grizel wept as she thought of the young duke's horrible fate. She remembered when she had last seen him about the court at Holland, where she had shared her father's exile. Gay, generous and handsome, he seemed a creature born to live and rule. What a contrast was the abject, weeping coward covered with mud and slime, who had been carried in triumph to the grim Tower of London to meet his doom! The girl had been taught to believe in Monmouth's rights, and she walked the floor trembling with shame and impatience as she thought of his bitter defeat. She walked to the little dormer window and leaned out to look at the gray castle, far up the street, with its dull and lichen–covered walls. She knew that her father looked down from the barred windows of one of the upper apartments accorded to prisoners of state. She wondered if a thought of his little daughter crept in his mind amid his ruined hopes. The grim castle frowning at her from its rocky height filled her with dread; and shuddering, she turned from it toward the street below to let her eyes follow the passers–by. They whispered together as they passed the house, and when now and then some person caught a glimpse of her face in the ivy–sheltered window, she only met a look of commiseration. No one offered her a happy greeting.

"They all think him doomed," she cried to herself. "No one hath the grace to feign hope." Bitter tears filled her eyes, until suddenly through the mist she was conscious that some one below was lifting a plumed hat to her. It was a stately gentleman with a girdled vest and gorgeous coat and jeweled sword–hilt.

"Mistress Cochrane," said he, in that hushed voice we use when we wish to direct a remark to one person which no one else shall overhear, "I have that to tell thee which is most important."

"Is it secret?" asked Grizel, in the same guarded tone that he had used.

"Yes," he replied, without looking up, and continuing slowly in his walk, as if he had merely exchanged a morning salutation.

"Then," she returned, hastily, "I will tell mother; and we will meet thee in the twilight at the side door under the balcony." She continued to look from the window, and the mall sauntered on as if he had no care in the world but to keep the scarlet heels of his shoes from the dust. After a time Grizel arose, changed her loose robe for a more ceremonious dress, bound her brown braids into a prim gilded net, and descended into the drawing–room.

Her mother sat in mournful state at the end of the lofty apartment. About her were two ladies and several gentlemen, all conversing in low tones such as they might use, Grizel thought to herself, if her father were dead in the house. They all stopped. talking as she entered, and looked at her in surprise. In those days it was thought very improper and forward for a young girl to enter a drawing–room uninvited, if guests were present. Grizel's eyes fell before the embarrassing scrutiny, and she dropped a timid courtesy, lifting her green silken skirts daintily, like a high–born little maiden, as she was. Lady Cochrane made a dignified apology to her guests and then turned to Grizel.

"Well, my daughter?" she said, questioningly.

"I pray thy pardon, mother," said Grizel, in a trembling voice, speaking low, that only her mother might hear; "but within a few moments Sir Thomas Hanford will be secretly below the balcony with news for us."

The lady half rose from her seat, trembling.

"Is he commissioned by the governor?" she asked.

"I can not tell," said the little girl; but here her voice broke, and regardless of the strangers, she flung herself into her mother's lap, weeping: "I am sure it is bad news of father!" Lady Cochrane wound her arm about her daughter's waist, and, with a gesture of apology, led her from the room. Half an hour later she re–entered it hurriedly, followed by Grizel, who sank unnoticed in the deep embrasure of a window, and shivered there behind the heavy folds of the velvet hangings.

"I have just received terrible intelligence, my friends," announced Lady Cochrane, standing, tall and pale, in the midst of her guests. "The governor has been informally notified that the next post from London will bring Sir John's sentence. He is to be hanged at the Cross." There was a perfect silence in the dim room ; then one of the ladies broke into loud sobbing, and a gentleman led Lady Cochrane to a chair, while the others talked apart in earnest whispers.

"Who brought the information?" asked one of the gentlemen at length. "Is there not hope that it is a false report?"

"I am not at liberty," said Lady Cochrane, "to tell who brought me this terrible news; but it was a friend of the governor, from whom I would not have expected a service. Oh, is it too late," she cried, rising from her chair and pacing the room, "to make another attempt at intercession? Surely something can be done!"

The gentleman who had stood by her chair—a gray–haired, sober–visaged man—returned answer:

"Do not count on any remedy now, dear Lady Cochrane. I know this new King. He will be relentless toward any one who has questioned his right to reign. Besides, the post has already left London several days, and will doubtless be here by to–morrow noon."

"I am sure," said a gentleman who had not yet spoken, "that if we had a few days more he might be saved. They say King James will do anything for money, and the wars have emptied his treasury. Might we not delay the post?" he suggested in a low voice.

"No," said the gray–headed gentleman; "that is utterly impossible."

Grizel shivering behind the curtain, listened with eager ears. Then she saw her mother throw herself into the arms of one of the ladies and break into ungoverned sobs. The poor girl could stand no more, but glided from the room unnoticed and crept up to her dark chamber, where she sat, repeating aimlessly to herself the words that by chance had fixed themselves strongest in her memory: "Delay the post—delay the post!"

The moon arose and shone in through the panes, making a wavering mosaic on the floor as it glimmered through the wind–blown ivy at the window. Like a flash, a definite resolution sprang into Grizel's mind. If by delaying the post time for intercession with the King could be gained and her father's life so saved, then the post must be delayed! But how? She had heard the gentleman say that it would be impossible. She knew that the postboy went heavily armed to guard against the highwaymen who frequented the roads in search of plunder. This made her think of the wild stories of masked men who sprung from secluded places upon the postboys, and carried off the letters and money with which they were intrusted.

Suddenly she bounded from her seat, stood still a moment with her hands pressed to her head, ran from her room, and up the stairs which led to the servants' sleeping apartments. She listened at a door, and then, satisfied that the room was empty, entered, and went straight to the oaken wardrobe. By the light of the moon she selected a jacket and a pair of trousers. She looked about her for a hat, and found one hanging on a peg near the window; then she searched for some time before she found a pair of boots. They were worn and coated with mud.

"They are all the better," she said to herself, and hurried on tiptoe down the corridor. She went next to the anteroom of her father's chamber. It was full of fond associations, and the hot tears sprung into her eyes as she looked about it. She took up a brace of pistols, examined them awkwardly, her hands trembling under their weight as she found at once to her delight and her terror that they were loaded. Then she hurried with them to her room.

Half an hour later the butler saw a figure which he took to be that of Allen, the stable–boy, creeping down the back stairs, boots in hand.

"Whaur noo, me laddie?" he asked. "It's gey late for ye to gang oot the nicht."

"I hae forgot to bar the stable door," replied Grizel in a low and trembling voice, imitating as well as she could the broad dialect of the boy.

"Hech!" said the butler. "I ne'er hear ye mak sae little hammer in a' yer days."

She fled on. The great kitchen was deserted. She gathered up all the keys from their pegs by the door, let herself quietly out, and sped across the yard to the stable. With trembling hands she fitted first one key and then another to the door until she found the right one. Once inside the stable, she stood irresolute. She patted Bay Bess, her own little pony.

"Thou wouldst never do, Bess," she said. "Thou art such a lazy little creature." The round, fat carriage–horses stood there. "You are just holiday horses, too," said Grizel to them, "and would be winded after an hour of the work I want you for to–night." But in the shadow of the high stall stood Black Ronald, Sir John Cochrane's great, dark battle–horse, that riderless, covered with dust and foam, had dashed down the Canongate after the terrible rout of Argyle in the bogs of Leven–side, while all the people stood and stared at the familiar steed carrying, as he did, the first silent message of disaster. Him Grizel unfastened and led out.

"Thou art a true hero," she said, rubbing his nose with the experienced touch of a horsewoman; "and I'll give thee a chance to–night to show that thou art as loyal as ever." Her hands were cold with excitement, but she managed to buckle the saddle and bridle upon him, while the huge animal stood in restless expectancy, anxious to be gone. She drew on the boots without any trouble, and slipped the pistols into the holsters.

"I believe thou knowest what I would have of thee," said Grizel as she led the horse out into the yard and on toward the gateway. Frightened as he half–circled about her in his impatience, she undid the fastening of the great gates, but her strength was not sufficient to swing them open.

"Ronald," she said in despair, "I cannot open the gates!" Ronald turned his head about and looked at her with his beautiful eyes. He seemed to be trying to say, "I can."

"All right," said Grizel, as if he had spoken. She mounted the black steed, laughed nervously as she climbed into the saddle. "Now," she said, "go on!" The horse made a dash at the gates, burst them open, and leaped out into the road. He curveted about for a moment, his hoofs striking fire from the cobblestones. Then Grizel turned his head down the Canongate, away from the castle. She knew the point at which she intended to leave the city, and toward that point she headed Black Ronald. The horse seemed to know he was doing his old master a service, as he took his monstrous strides forward. Only once did Grizel look backward, and then a little shudder, half terror, half remorse, struck her, for she saw her home ablaze with light, and heard cries of excitement borne faintly to her on the rushing night wind. They had discovered her flight. Once she thought she heard hoof–beats behind her, but she knew she could not be overtaken.

Through the streets, now narrow, now broad, now straight, now crooked, dashed Black Ronald and his mistress. Once he nearly ran down a drowsy watchman who stood nodding at a sharp corner, but horse and rider were three hundred yards away before the frightened guardian regained his composure and sprang his discordant rattle.

Now the houses grew fewer, and presently the battlements of the town wall loomed up ahead, and Grizel's heart sank, for there were lights in the road. She heard shouts, and knew she was to be challenged. She firmly set her teeth, said a little prayer, and leaned far forward upon Black Ronald's neck. The horse gave a snort of defiance, shied violently away from a soldier who stood by the way, and then went through the gateway like a shot. Grizel clung tightly to her saddle–bow, and urged her steed on. On, on they went down the firm roadway lined on both sides by rows of mighty oaks—on, on, out into the country–side, where the sweet odor of the heather arose gracious and fragrant to the trembling girl. There was little chance of her taking a wrong path. The road over which the post–boy came was the King's highway, always kept in a state of repair.

She was too excited to form a definite plan, and her only clear idea was to meet the post–boy before daylight, for she knew it would not be safe to trust too much to her disguise. Now and then a feeling of terror flashed over her, and she turned sick with dread; but her firm purpose upheld her.

It was almost four in the morning, and the wind was blowing chill from the sea, when she entered the rolling woodlands about the Tweed. She was shivering with the cold, and was so tired that she with difficulty kept her place in the saddle.

"We cannot hold out much longer, Ronald," she said; "and if we fail, we can never hold up our heads again." Ronald, the sure–footed, stumbled and nearly fell. "It is no use," sighed Grizel; "we must rest." She dismounted, but it was some moments before her tired limbs could obey her will. Beside the roadway was a ditch filled with running water, and Grizel managed to lead Ronald down the incline to its brink, and let him drink. She scooped up a little in her hand and moistened her tongue; then, realizing that Ronald must not be allowed to stand still, she with great difficulty mounted upon his back again, and, heartsick, fearful, yet not daring to turn back, coaxed him gently forward.

The moon had set long before this, and in the misty east the sky began to blanch with the first gleam of morning. Suddenly, around the curve of the road where it leaves the banks of the Tweed, came a dark object. Grizel's heart leaped wildly. Thirty seconds later she saw that it was indeed a horseman. He broke into a song:

"The Lord o' Argyle cam' wi' plumes and wi' spears,
And Monmouth he landed wi' gay cavaliers!
The pibroch has caa'd every tartan thegither,
B' thoosans their footsteps a' pressin' the heather; Th' North and the Sooth sent their bravest ones
out, But a joust wi' Kirke's Lambs put them all to the rout."

By this time the horseman was so close that Grizel could distinguish objects hanging upon the horse in front of the rider. They were the mail–bags! For the first time she realized her weakness, and saw how unlikely it was that she would be able to cope with an armed man. The blood rushed to her head, and a courage that was the inspiration of the moment took possession of her. She struck Black Ronald a lash with her whip.

"Go!" she said to him shrilly, while her heartbeats hammered in her ears, "Go!"

The astonished and excited horse leaped down the road. As she met the postboy, she drew Black Ronald, with a strength that was born of the danger, back upon his haunches. His huge body blocked the way.

"Dismount!" she cried to the other rider. Her voice was hoarse from fright, and sounded strangely in her own ears. But a wild courage nerved her, and the hand that drew and held the pistol was as firm as a man's. Black Ronald was rearing wildly, and in grasping the reins tighter, her other hand mechanically altered its position about the pistol.

She had not meant to fire, she had only thought to aim and threaten; but suddenly there was a flash of light in the gray atmosphere, a dull reverberation, and to the girl's horrified amazement she saw the horse in front of her stagger and fall heavily to the ground. The rider, thrown from his saddle, was pinned to the earth by his horse and stunned by the fall. Dizzy with pain and confused by the rapidity of the assault, he made no effort to draw his weapon.

The mail–bags had swung by their own momentum quite clear of the horse in its fall, and now lay loosely over its back joined by the heavy strap.

It was a painful task for the exhausted girl to dismount, but she did so, and, lifting the cumbersome leathern bags, she threw them over Black Ronald's neck. It was yet more painful to her tender heart to leave the poor fellow she had injured, lying in so pitiable a condition, but her father's life was in danger, and that, to her, was of more moment than the postboy's hurts.

"Heaven forgive me," she said, bending over him. "I pray this may not be his death!" She clambered over the fallen horse and mounted Ronald, who was calm again. Then she turned his head toward Edinboro' Town and hurriedly urged him forward. But as she sped away from the scene of the encounter, she kept looking back, with an awe–struck face, to the fallen postboy. In the excitement of the meeting and in her one great resolve to obtain her father's death–warrant, she had lost all thought of the risks she ran or of the injuries she might inflict; and it was with unspeakable relief, therefore, that she at last saw the postboy struggle to his feet and stand gazing after her. "Thank heaven, he is not killed!" she exclaimed again and again, as she now joyfully pressed Ronald into a gallop. Throughout the homeward journey, Grizel made it a point to urge him to greater speed when nearing a farmhouse, so that there would be less risk of discovery. Once or twice she was accosted by laborers in the field, and once by the driver of a cart, but their remarks were lost upon the wind as the faithful Ronald thundered on. She did not feel the need of sleep, for she had forgotten it in all her excitement, but she was greatly exhausted and suffering from the effects of her rough ride.

Soon the smoke in the distance showed Grizel that her native town lay an hour's journey ahead. She set her teeth and said an encouraging word to the horse. He seemed to understand, for he redoubled his energies. Now the roofs became visible, and now, grim and sullen, the turrets of the castle loomed up. Grizel felt a great lump in her throat as she thought of her father in his lonely despair.

She turned Ronald from the road again and cut through a clump of elms. She came out in a few minutes and rode more slowly toward a smaller gate than the one by which she had left the city. A stout soldier looked at her carelessly and then turned to his tankard of ale, after he had noticed the mail–bags. Grizel turned into a crooked, narrow street lined on each side with topping, frowning buildings. She drew rein before a humble house, and slipped wearily from her saddle and knocked at the door. An old woman opened the heavy oaken door and Grizel fell into her arms.

"The bags—the mail," she gasped, and fainted. When she recovered consciousness, she found herself on a low, rough bed. The old woman was bending over her.

"Losh keep me!" said the dame. "I did na ken ye! Ma puir bairnie! Hoo cam ye by these?" and she pointed to the clothes of Allen.

"The bags?" said Grizel, sitting bolt upright—

"Are under the hearth," said the old woman.

"And Ronald?" continued Grizel.

"Is in the byre wi' the coos," said the other, with a knowing leer. "Not a soul kens it. Ne'er a body saw ye come."

Breathlessly Grizel explained all to her old nurse, and then sprung off the bed. At her request the old dame locked the door and brought her the bags. By the aid of a sharp knife the pair slashed open the leathern covering, and the inclosed packets fell upon the floor. With trembling hands Grizel fumbled them all over, tossing one after another impatiently aside as she read the addresses. At last she came upon a large one addressed to the governor. With beating heart she hesitated a moment, and then tore the packet open with shaking fingers. She easily read the bold handwriting. Suddenly everything swam before her, and again she nearly fell into her companion's arms.

It was too true. What she read was a formal warrant of the King, signed by his majesty, and stamped and sealed with red wax. It ordered the governor to hang Sir John Cochrane of Ochiltree at the Cross in Edinburgh at ten o'clock in the morning on the third day of the following week. She clutched the paper and hid it in her dress.

The disposition of the rest of the mail was soon decided upon. The old lady's son Jock—a wild fellow—was to put the sacks on the back of a donkey and turn it loose outside the gates at his earliest opportunity. And then Grizel, clad in some rough garments the old lady procured, slipped out of the house, and painfully made her way toward the Canongate.

It was four o'clock in the afternoon when she reached her home. The porter at the gate could scarcely be made to understand that the uncouth figure before him was his young mistress. But a moment later her mother was embracing her with tears of joy.

All the male friends of Sir John were hastily summoned, and Grizel related her adventure and displayed the death–warrant of her father. The hated document was consigned to the flames, a consultation was held, and that night three of the gentlemen left for London.

The next day the donkey and the mail–sacks were found by a sentry, and some little excitement was occasioned; but when the postboy came in later and related how he had been attacked by six stalwart robbers, and how he had slain two of them, and was then overpowered and forced to surrender the bags, all wonderment was set at rest.

The Cochrane family passed a week of great anxiety, but when it was ended, the three friends returned from London with joyful news. The King had listened to their petition, and had ordered the removal of Sir John to the Tower of London until his case could be reconsidered. So to London Sir John went; and after a time the payment of five thousand pounds to some of the King's advisers secured an absolute pardon. His lands, which had been confiscated, were restored to him; and on his arrival at his Scottish home he was warmly welcomed by a great concourse of his friends. He thanked them in a speech, taking care, however, not to tell who was so greatly instrumental in making his liberation possible. But we may be sure that he was secretly proud of the pluck and devotion of his daughter Grizel.

Bertha's Début

The theater was crowded from the topmost gallery to the orchestra chairs. Out at the entrance was the legend "Standing room only." Warmth and music and perfume floated out to the loungers in the vestibule. People chatted in the dim light and commented upon the new mural decorations, or wondered who the people in the boxes could be. Presently the orchestra finished the overture. The "gods" in the gallery grew impatient and began to call for the curtain to rise. Better–bred people wondered what could be the matter, and read the cast, and all the advertisements, and then read the cast again. There were on the list names of men and women famous in their profession; and, indeed, every name on it except one was known to the impatient audience. This was a very short name half–way down the cast, and it stood opposite the character Richard, Duke of York. "Joe Wade," they read — "Master Joe Wade," with the thought, "Now, where did he come from?" and then they fell to studying the curtain, and the orchestra began the bars which served as a prelude to the opening of the play.

At this time, behind the scenes everything was in a state of systematic bustle. Each man or woman had something to do, and was at work. The only calm figure on the busy scene was that of Walsh, the stage–manager — a middle–aged man with iron–gray hair and mustache. His face wore a serious look, heightened by the furrows about the mouth. He sent directions and commands flying to unseen stage hands in the mysterious region below the floor, or in the dimly lighted space above. "Take that 'fly' out of the way!" he shouted to one; "Hoist up the moon about two feet. Bring an extra 'tormentor' 'down left'! Get out of the way, Pie!"—this last to a sharp–featured lad of sixteen who acted as call–boy. "Is everything ready for the first act?" "Yes," came the answer. "All right!" said Walsh ; "clear the stage." And there was a scurrying of feet as all the stage–hands left the set–scene and huddled in the wings to watch the opening action, or went off about their other duties. One man, watching through a peep–hole in the curtain, saw the signal from the leader of the orchestra, and communicated it to the curtain–man by two sharp strokes on a gong, and sprang off the stage as the curtain with a steady crackle rolled itself in ponderous folds into the upper region. Kings, queens and lords moved about through the mimic tragedy. Pie, the call–boy, hurried to and fro in a state of distraction. The men would stop to talk and the women to put the finishing touches to their "make–up," and they all seemed to object to being ordered about by a boy with freckles; but it was the business of Pie to have every one in readiness to step upon the stage at the proper moment. The great tragedian was in excellent mood, and he limped and frowned through the part of Richard the Third (for it was Shakespeare's tragedy of that name they were representing) in a truly blood–curdling manner. He was as wicked and cruel as any one could wish, and the people applauded him to the echo. In the midst of this highly successful act, Pie happened to go to the dressing–room which was assigned to the two little princes who had come there to be smothered. The Prince of Wales was there, in an elegant velvet suit and in a state of despair. He was the son of an actor, and had been on the stage ever since he could tell taffy from peanuts. Even earlier, in fact, for he had been carried on in his long clothes and had then caused every woman in the theater to exclaim, "How lovely!" This small gentleman was in a rage truly princely.

"That little dunce, Joe Wade, hasn't turned up," he said. "Now, what am I to do? I can't go on and speak his lines and mine, too, and I suppose the audience won't be satisfied with only one prince."

Pie rushed to Mr. Walsh. "Duke of York isn't here, sir," he cried.

"Not here!" said the stage–manager, in a tone of dismay. "Let us see — that is Wade, isn't it?"

"Yes, sir."

"I wonder what can be the matter with him. He rehearsed this morning letter perfect. Hasn't any word come from his mother?"

"I'll see, sir," said Pie, as he dashed off to ascertain. The stage–manager stepped quickly to the dressing–room of the tragedian, where, in a brief absence from the stage, the cruel Richard was eating a sandwich with evident relish.

"The boy who rehearsed the younger prince hasn't showed up yet," said Walsh.

"Oh, come now," said the malignant Gloster. "That's too bad. He was a bright lad, 'so young and yet so subtle.'"

"Can't we cut the Duke of York scene?" suggested the stage–manager.

"No, sir," retorted the other. "Not a line shall be cut out. Isn't there any one else?"

"I can't think of any one else who can do the part," said the stage–manager.

"I should think you would have an understudy all coached ready for an emergency like this," said the actor with considerable spirit. "To cut that scene will be to spoil the act, and then we'll catch it from the critics in the morning."

"Well, it's all we can do to run a theater, let alone a foundling's home, " retorted Walsh.

Pie rushed up in his usual state of breathlessness. "There's word come, sir, from Wade."

"Well, what is it?"

"It's his sister, sir. She says he's broke his leg."

"Here's a pretty mess!" Walsh stamped out to investigate. He found standing in the wings a very chilly little girl, who began talking fast as he came up.

"You're Mr. Walsh, aren't you? Joey's broken his leg. He fell down the back stairs just as he was starting to come here. He tried to come even after that, sir, and wanted to make mamma think he could limp all the better on 'count of it. But 'twas no use. He just couldn't." Bertha flung out her hands in her earnestness; then clasped them again. "And he cried so hard. He said the piece would all be spoiled. That it was just no good at all if the princes weren't smothered in the tower, and—and what are you going to do, sir?"

"Do?" said Mr. Walsh. "I'm in a fix."

"I suppose not another person knows the words to say," said Bertha; the tears dried up in her eyes and they shone with excitement.

"No," confessed Mr. Walsh, "not a soul."

"You don't think—" the little girl stopped and trembled, with her cheeks as red as live coals. "Joey'll just go crazy if all the people see his name on the bill, and know it was he that spoiled the play." She choked down a sob. "I couldn't help it, sir; I really couldn't. I've got to do something. I shall have to play the part myself." She looked like a little general about to storm a fort.

"Why—have you ever played it?"

"Lots of times; at home with Joey."

"But wouldn't you be frightened at all the people when you went on the stage?" The stage-manager had a gleam of hope in his eye.

"I don't think I should. It would be easier than going home and telling Joey the play was spoiled. I wouldn't look at them. I'd just act. He says to me, `How fares our loving brother?' and I say `Well, my dread Lord; so must I call you now.' "

"Bless me!" said Walsh, half to himself. "She knows the lines."

"Oh, yes, sir. I know all the words 'way down to 'I shall not sleep in quiet at the Tower.' Then I mock King Richard when he walks so." She drew up her arms, made an imaginary hump and limped along, scowling. "Then I make a face at him behind his back and tell him, 'I'm afraid of my uncle Clarence's angry ghost.'"

"Capital!" said the stage–manager. "I'll take the risk. I'm afraid there's no time to lose. Here!"—he held out his hand. She took it, and trotted along, stumbling over the shawl that was falling from her shoulders. He led her to the dressing–room of one of the ladies, to which he presently brought the Duke of York's costume. He explained the emergency, and the good–natured actress aided Bertha to put on the little prince's dress. The next half–hour passed like a dream.

"Mamma and Joey didn't know I was going to act," she explained to the actress. "I'm afraid they'll think something dreadful has happened to me when they find I don't come home, but I knew they'd think I couldn't, if I told them. Aren't these clothes a fine fit? We're exactly the same size, Joey and me. You see it wasn't only that Joey couldn't bear to break his promise, but then,"—frowning a little and looking very serious—"we couldn't afford to lose the money, either. We'll need it more than ever, now that Joey's leg is broken." She sighed, and the tears welled up in her eyes. The lady put her arm around her and drew her close.

"Try hard not to be frightened," said she. "Don't think about the crowd in front at all."

"No," broke in Bertha, "I'll just think of Joey."

"And when you stand still," said the actress, "stand perfectly still. Don't move your hands or feet unless you have reason to. Be sure and look straight at the person you are talking to, and when you speak, hold up your chin a little so the sound will go out into the house. It will be easier to speak in a high tone." She showed her how, gave a few finishing touches to her hair—for they found it prettier than the wig—and almost before Bertha knew it, she was on the stage.

In the meantime, His Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales, had been in a sad way. "I hate to act with a girl," he said, and kicked about his histrionic legs. "She's a greeny, too, and probably doesn't know her lines. She's sure to spoil my part. I had counted on making a great hit, but she doesn't know anything about the proper `business' of the part. These wretched 'amachures' never do." But the talented young man was compelled to bow his head to fate and go on the stage at the proper cue.

Bertha's head swam a little, and the words the others were speaking sounded far off. She glanced at the audience. It seemed to rise from her feet, up, up to the very ceiling. Then it seemed to swell into one immense face with myriad eyes all looking at her. For one terrible moment she was tempted to cover her face with her hands and rush from the stage. Then she remembered Joey at home crying with pain and disappointment, and she was recalled to her senses by the well–remembered words: "How fares our loving brother?" She tried to speak as if she always had been a prince and was quite used to talking in such high–sounding language. She tried to hate the wicked Richard, as she had heard her mother tell Joey to do, and to speak as fiercely and saucily as she could to him. She pulled at his garments and mimicked his gait, and screwed up her face in imitation of his, and tried to speak with great politeness to the royal prince; and in her heart all the time whispered "Joey! Joey!" The house became quieter as she went on; the child was so intent upon her work. She never faltered till the last word was spoken, but when she was safe in the wings again, she began to feel faint and weak. The speeches on the stage were lost in a burst of applause that swelled and swelled until it grew quite deafening.

"What is it?" she said, very much frightened, turning to the Prince of Wales.

The stage–manager came up.

"Well, well," he said, smiling for once that evening, "I believe you'll have to go back."

"And do it all over again?" said Bertha aghast. She feared that she had made some dreadful mistake.

"No, no; go on and bow to the audience and come right back again."

"I'll lead her on," said the Prince of Wales.

"No," said Walsh, "she'd better go alone."

"Are they pleased, sir?" asked Bertha as the applause still continued.

"Well, what a little greenhorn!" ejaculated the prince. The actress who had dressed her gently pushed her on the stage again. "I'm just cheating," she thought to herself, "they think it's Joey."

"Bow to them, my dear," said the great tragedian in an undertone. A little girl about her own age leaned far out of the nearest box and smiled at her, and flung something that fell just at Bertha's feet. It was a bunch of beautiful pink roses. Somebody picked them up and handed them to her. The audience applauded more loudly than ever. The child looked so pretty and small and shy. "These flowers are for Joey," said Bertha's guilty little heart. She formed a sudden resolution. She walked straight down to the footlights holding the beautiful roses in her hand. The people were quiet, instantly, wondering what could be coming now. She held up her chin as the actress had told her to do, and spoke high. "Please," she said, "please, you mustn't think I'm Joey. He's broken his leg and could not come. I'm only Bertha." Then she grew terrified at the sound of her voice, speaking alone in that great place to so many people, and burying her face in the roses, ran from the stage in a tumult of alarm and tears.

When Bertha was dressed in her own clothes again and ready to go home, Richard the Third came to her, all dressed in his ermine as he was, and took her in his arms and kissed her. It was something to remember all her life, if only Bertha had known it. Then he hurried back to his duty, leaving something in her hand that Bertha was then too excited to examine, but which she held.

"I think my carriage has come," said the actress who played the part of Lady Anne; "I'd better send the child home in it."

"You must play Joey's part till he is well again," said the stage–manager. Bertha nodded.

They asked her where she lived, told the driver, and Bertha was put in among the warm cushions of the carriage and whirled over the streets toward her home. She sat quite on the edge of the seat in her trepidation, and held both hands close shut, one around the roses and the other around the great man's gift. She was afraid the driver would make a mistake in the house, but he found the right one, and when she was lifted out she flew up the steps like a bird. The door was open and mamma was standing on the threshold, looking very pale and anxious.

"Oh, Bertha, where have you been?" But the little daughter's bright face stopped her with the sentence half spoken.

"Is Joey asleep?" whispered Bertha; and as the mother shook her head, the little girl could contain herself no longer. "Joey! Joey!" she cried, springing into the room, "I played it. I said all your words, and they thought I was you. But I told them I wasn't: And a little girl gave me the flowers, and Richard the Third gave me"—she opened her hand and looked at the contents. It was a twenty–dollar gold–piece. It might have been a penny for all Bertha cared. "King Richard is real nice off the stage, isn't he, Joey? Oh, mamma! I hope you weren't very frightened."

"Bertha," said Joey, "you're a brick!"

"Oh, I'm so glad you think so!" she said. Two little tears started in her eyes. "Mamma, I'm so tired. Won't you put me to bed?"

The Shut–ins

The wind was trying to shake the brown leaves from the oak tree, but they seemed to cling as fast as little boys to a teeter–tawter, and would not let go. Some of them had been reduced to mere skeletons by this usage, but still they kicked and wriggled, and clung hold. When the wind was doing this he was also trying to find a crevice in a large window which looked upon the oak tree. There was a wide expanse of it, partially curtained with gay brocades and brightened by two living things — a flower and a girl. The flower was a purple primrose, and the girl was Thisbe Ticknor. The flower stood up straight and bloomed with its head toward the sunlight, but the little girl—well, the little girl for over two years had never moved from the broad pillowed sofa except when she was carried to the yet softer bed in the adjoining room. She tried to laugh at the plucky leaves, but there are backaches so hard that the funniest things in the world cannot make one forget them. Up the path leading to the house Thisbe could see approaching a very determined–looking old lady carefully carrying a glass jar in her hand. "O, mercy!" sighed Thisbe. "It's Miss Lockhart. It must be herb tea or pulverized burdock. If I'm going to die anyway I don't see why I can't have jam."

In a minute more Thisbe's mamma was ushering in the old lady. She was the chipperest little mamma that ever lived and made Thisbe think of a snow–bird—except that she always wore bright colors so as to look gay for her little daughter—but even she looked downcast now.

"Miss Lockhart has brought you a preparation she thinks will be cooling to your back, my dear." She drew a chair for the visitor and left her with Thisbe.

"Yes," said Miss Lockhart, "every time my spine gets paralyzed this cures me right up.

"Do you have paralysis?" asked Thisbe, in surprise.

"Often," returned Miss Lockhart with satisfaction. "I think it's the long potatoes."

"The long potatoes!" echoed Thisbe.

"That's it, I'm sure. I never had the paralysis till one year when the potatoes grew long, and I've had it off and on ever since."

Not altogether understanding the nature of so peculiar a disease Thisbe, made a polite effort to change the conversation. "The wind is very high to–day," she said.

"Oh! that's the railroads," said Miss Lockhart with conviction.

Thisbe gasped. "What, ma'am?" she said.

"So many trains coming in with a rush raises the wind, you know," said the old lady.

Thisbe tried to preserve her dignity and swallowed a giggle. At this moment mamma came back with the clean jar. "Thank you very much," she said.

"I was just going over to the east end," remarked the visitor, "to see if that little boy Pinney Jones wasn't dead."

"Some little friend of yours?" asked mamma, sympathetically.

"Well, no," returned Miss Lockhart. "I can't say he is a friend, but I've been there to try to cheer him up now and then. I always did think the folks were taking the wrong course with his disease, and if he's dead I'm going to speak right out and tell them so."

"What is the matter with him?" asked Thisbe.

"Same trouble as yours, Thisbe, as I do believe! I saw from the first there wasn't a hope for him."

"Was his trouble falling from an apple tree?" asked the little girl, laughing in spite of herself. "Because that's how I hurt my back."

"Well, no. His trouble's in his ankles. I always thought it was the diphtheria settled there. His ankle–bones are turning to stone."

"Oh!" Thisbe laughed and sighed at the same time. "Will he never be able to walk?"

"Not a step," said Miss Lockhart triumphantly.

Mamma had to turn her head away from her little daughter to hide a sad look that would come. "Couldn't we send him something, Mrs. Mamma?" presently asked Thisbe. "You'd just as lief carry something, wouldn't you, Miss Lockhart? Here, he can have my primrose. How old is he?"

"Well, I should say that he was a year younger than you, Thisbe. But he's like you — being sick so long makes him dull–like."

"Pooh! if he's only thirteen," with that contempt which a girl always feels for a boy younger than herself, "he'll like one of those Punch and Judy sets. Get mine, please, Mrs. Mamma."

Mrs. Ticknor followed these suggestions while Miss Lockhart talked on concerning a kind of headache she had and which she thought came from having striped paper on walls.

"Well, good–by," said Thisbe, as the old lady left the room; "I hope you'll find the little boy better." Then quite tired out she again watched the vexed little oak leaves till she fell asleep.

Two days after her mother brought her a large envelope. It was addressed in red ink and bore three stamps put on at various angles to each other. When she opened it there fell out several highly–colored advertising cards and a very small folded sheet of paper. The cards bore pictures of everything from rosebuds to steam–engines, and the note said this: October 15, 1884.

THISBE TICKNOR: I never heard of You before You sent me the Punch and Judy Box and the Flower. I could not find out whether You were very sick or not. Miss Lockhart thought at first that You might get well in a week or two, but before she left she said You would never step again—that was one sure thing. Very likely she told You I was dying, but I'm not. Hope You are the same. My name is Eugene Jones, but they call me Pinney. We live a block from the cemetery, which Miss Lockhart says makes it real convenient. I suppose I shall never walk again, but I feel pretty good on the whole. I am getting up a collection of Tin–Tags and I will send You all the advertisement cards I can get if You will send me all the Tin–Tags You can get. You can answer this letter if You want to. I never had so much fun with anything as with the Punch and Judy. Excuse mistakes.

PINNEY JONES.

This was how it began—the Society of the Shut–Ins.

Thisbe was always full of fancies, and while she lay day in, day out, unable to move, she had plenty of chance for planning. She was a girl who had read a good many books and who thought some very deep and tender thoughts. It was not strange that this odd letter and the cards brightened her up and inspired her with an idea.

"Mrs. Mamma," she said, "do you think there are many people around here who have to stay in the house, all the time?"

"Sick people, do you mean, Thisbe?"

"Yes, people who have to lie still and can do nothing but get peevish and tired the way I do."

"Well," said mamma, laughing, "I should think there might be several."

"Well," said Thisbe, with decision, "I'm going to give them something to do."

"That's good," said mamma, "what is it?"

"Wait," Thisbe said mysteriously, "I haven't formulated my ideas yet."

"Goodness!" said mamma.

"I shall begin by writing a letter," said Thisbe. Mamma propped her up, swung around the writing arm of the sofa, and the little girl penned this letter: October 17, 1884.

FRIEND PINNEY: I was glad to get your letter and it has given me an idea. It came from your suggestion that we should write to each other and exchange things. I am sure you and I cannot be the only people in town who are unable to go out doors, and have hard work to pass the time; so if we could do something to amuse one another it would help keep us from getting dull and be a very good thing. I thought you might be able to tell me of some one else, and we might write to him or her (do you like grammar, Pinney?) and ask him or her what he or she thinks about it. (We might get up a new grammar with a lot of new and easy pronouns in it, and nothing but regular verbs. Or we might invent a new language altogether.) Write me what you think of my idea of a Society. We could call it the "Society of the Shut–Ins," because you see it will be composed of people who are always shut in. I shouldn't wonder if Jake, the man who does our chores, could get you some Tin–Tags, but I'm in such a hurry to get this off that I won't wait to see him. Enclosed you will find one of those curious five–cent pieces which the Government called in because they hadn't the word "cents" on them. Hoping you will like my plan and that we both may be able to get some fun out of it and do some good too, I remain

Yours Respectfully, THISBE R. TICKNOR.

When Thisbe had finished, she ran her fingers through her short crop of curly auburn hair. "My, Mrs. Mamma!" she cried, with a bright spot on each cheek, "the hours are just playing tag with one another to–day."

Three or four days of gray October passed without bringing Thisbe word from her correspondent. At last came a glorious morning when the whole air was filled with gold and purple lights. The red on the maple leaves seemed burnished into living fire. Thisbe lay looking out of her window. The tears were in her eyes. Some girls were running by on their way to school. They waved their hands to her and called out, "Halloo, Thisbe!" She tried to answer, but her bravery seemed all gone and she covered her face with her cold fingers and cried. "Oh, dear God!" she sobbed, "I don't suppose anybody but you can know how awfully hard this is for a girl like me. Couldn't you put some thought into my heart to teach me how to be happy?"

She heard her father coming, and brushed away her tears and looked up as brightly as she could when he entered. "Well, little girl," he said, "you're getting a large correspondence. I've got two letters for you and a box."

Thisbe's voice couldn't be trusted yet, so she took the letters and the box silently, with a smile. Being a girl, she opened the box first; it was neatly wrapped in coarse brown paper and tied with a string, and smelt strongly of oakum. Thisbe undid several layers of paper, and opening a pasteboard box discovered within a carved wooden fan, such as expert whittlers cut out of a pine stick. It was about two–thirds the size of an ordinary fan and after the manner of its kind was always spread open, not being made to shut. A casual glance showed that it had not been made by a very deft knife–man, but yet it was quite a triumph of the whittler's skill, being decorated here and there with sundry slashes and holes meant to represent the conventional figures of an unknown school of art. The various blades were laced with a bit of narrow blue ribbon a little the worse for wear, but which still added to its prettiness.

"Well, I declare, Thisbe," her father exclaimed, "who could have sent you that?"

Thisbe looked at it from every point of view. "Somebody that can whittle, that's sure—but who it is, papa, I've no more idea than you."

"Open your letters," he suggested.

"Well!" she exclaimed, "this one is written in tar ink," and she smelled the envelope. Her father cut it open for her and she read aloud to him this note:

October 21, 1884.

DEAR LITTLE MISS: I have noed yr. Father these good Many Years and kepped my Nest–Egg layed away in hs. Bank ever since I had One. If you want to noe Who I am he can tell You all about me. Pinney Jones sent Me a letter with Bugs in it. They was dead and dried. He wanted to noe if I wd. jine yr. sarsity and wittle some gimcraks for You. I never had no girls and Boys, not been Married and living with my Sister who is an Old Maid too. But I allus did like Them and perfurctly willin' to whittle any-thing You and Pinney wants. I send You a fan and Pinney a ball and chain. If you send enny excahnge I wd. take my pick of readin yarns. I don't go much on writin but I am a grate hand to read. I remane

Yr. Humble Serv.

BENJ. CHRISTY.

"Well!" said Thisbe again, holding the letter up to her nose, quite fascinated with the smell of the tar, "this is a queer letter for me to get. Do you know him, papa?"

"Yes, I've known Ben Christy a great many years. He has had business with the bank ever since I've been there. It must be three or four years now since he was hurt and had to leave the boat. He grows worse constantly, I hear, and now is hardly able to leave his bed."

"Poor old man!" said Thisbe.

"He isn't very old," said her father. "I don't think he is any older than I am. "

"Well, you know you are getting a little gray," said Thisbe, mischievously. Papa, however, seemed not to have heard the last remark. "I think you would better open your next letter," he said. This is what Thisbe found in it: October 21, 1884.

THISBE R. TICKNOR: I think Your idea about the Society is just gay. We might have a regular President, and Treasurer and everything. You could be the President and I could be the Treasurer, and I know a man who will be a member. I have wrote him a note telling him, and I hope he will like it for he can Whittle just beautiful. He lives in a house just like a ship. I was there with Pa before I got sick. The man's name is Benjamin Christy. He and my Pa has sailed together lots of times. When he found he could not sail any more he thought he would make his house look as much like a Ship as he could, so he has his bed fixed out from the side of the wall like a Bunk and won't have nothing in the middle of the floor. He keeps the deck clear, as he calls it, with all the chairs up against the wall in a Row. At the foot of the bed he has a binnacle and compass with a lantern burning all night long just as when he was on the ship. When he was well enough to walk around he used to look at the Compass twenty times a day to see what his bearings was. He has a three–cornered awning hung out of the window that he pretends is a sail and which he hauls up and down with a small Rope from his bed to the window sash. He has a weather–vane out in the yard where he can see it, and keep track of how the wind blows. When you come to see him he says, "What cheer, my hearties?" He asks you to go "aft" and get him a drink of water, and when I tried to make the compass point South he told me to "Belay there." But though he is queer he is nice and likes boys. He got hurt looking after a Boy. You see there was a boy with his Pa and Ma lived in a lighthouse and the boy was left alone one day when his folks went to town in the lighthouse boat. While they was gone a Storm came up and they didn't darst go back. They didn't think nothing would happen to him, and they knew he had sense to tend to lighting up, but Ben Christy he was in port there and he said he saw a light swinging down low and he thought something was up. He got men to get out the life–boat and went with them. Well, sir, that lighthouse went all to pieces, and if Ben Christy had got out to it half an hour later they would have had to ask of the waves where that boy was. They had a terrible rough time getting back, but nothing really happened till they got to the Break–water. It was fearful dark and the waves ran mountains high and somehow the boat was steered smack into the break–water. It was almost smashed to pieces. If the break–water had not been covered with people Ben Christy and the other fellows would have perished. They was all helped up, Ben last, and as the man ahead of Ben reached the top a big stone fell off the break-water and hit Ben Christy in the chest. Two men jumped in after him and they thought he was killed. But he wasn't that kind of a Man. He was taken to the hospital and got well enough to move around some. His chest, you see, was all shoved up against his lungs and his lungs all pushed up and lots of his ribs broken, so he could not sail any more, and had to come home to live with his Sister. I haven't got anything to send you this time, but I am going to cut you a ring out of a button. Hoping to hear from you soon I remain

PINNEY JONES.

"I didn't know poor Ben had such a history," said papa.

"He's a real hero," said Thisbe. She thought a moment, looking dreamily out of the window at the sere oak leaves. "Pinney makes some slips in his grammar, but he writes a nice letter, don't he, papa?" Mr. Ticknor did not reply.

"Don't think, papa," protested Thisbe after she had waited a long time. "Talk, please."

"It is necessary to think, daughter, before you can talk," remarked papa, smiling.

Thisbe shook her curly head. "You may have to, papa, but I talk first and think afterward." Thisbe peeped up at her father slyly—he was musing. "Papa, you are doing it again," she cried, reproachfully.

"Well," he said at length, "I am trying to think of members for your Society. I have thought of two."

"Who?"

"Helena Cary and Mr. Harrow."

Thisbe grew pale.

"Papa! we couldn't!"

Papa leaned an arm upon her sofa. His kind eyes wore a serious expression. "My dear," he said softly, "your life and the lives of these two cheerful friends whom misfortune has drawn to you are of necessity limited to a very small field of usefulness. But there are some things which you may do. You can give an example of patience and courage and cheerfulness, and to these two persons I have mentioned. Don't you think this will be better than simply trying to amuse yourselves?"

"Papa, but"—Thisbe quailed again—"Mr. Harrow!"

"Write a short note now," Mr. Ticknor said, regardless of the protest, "and I'll leave it as I go along. Write just the same sort of a note you would to any sick person."

Thisbe opened the little portfolio which always lay near at hand and wrote: October 22, 1884. MR. RICHARD HARROW:

DEAR SIR: I am the daughter of John Ticknor. I think you may have heard of me, because I am obliged like you to stay always in the house and some one may have told you about it. I write to know if you would like to join a society called the "Shut–Ins," composed at present of a little boy named Pinney or rather Eugene Jones, a brave sailor called Benjamin Christy, and myself. We are all invalids like yourself and our object is to write letters to one another, exchange books, tell stories and make little gifts and try in such ways to have the days pass more pleasantly and seem not so long. Of course a gentleman who has traveled so much as you have could tell us some delightful stories and we would try to repay you in some way. I send with this little note—which I hope you will be kind enough to answer—a few pears which were sent me from California.

Very Respectfully, THISBE R. TICKNOR.

"Now," said her father when he had read it, "write another for Miss Cary."

Thisbe looked at him appealingly, but he only smiled, so she took up her pen and bravely began another note. It opened:

MISS CARY: You do not know me, but since we are both girls, and both unfortunate, I am sure you will not mind receiving this note from me.

Then she laid the simple plan before her in much the same language she had used with Mr. Richard Harrow.

Papa took her letters and kissed her good–by and left her. She felt dazed at what she had done and wrote Pinney and Benjamin Christy all about it, and asked them to send letters also. Then she wondered what the result would be till she actually got frightened with herself and curled her head down under the blankets to escape the outcome. Now the chief reason of all this alarm was—but we will follow Thisbe's note to Mr. Harrow.

---

Into a large library, where the sunlight was excluded and the dust gathered, Thisbe's little note bearing the address of "Mr. Richard Harrow" found its way. That gentleman sat warming himself over a cheerless register.

"Won't you have a fire in the grate, sir?" asked Selah, the most noiseless and withered of housekeepers.

"The crackling would set me wild! After such a night as I've had, how can you mention such a thing! I can't drink that coffee, Selah! I ought not to take anything but hot water anyway. What have you in your hand?"

"A note Mr. Ticknor just left."

"John Ticknor? He didn't ask how I was, of course? He didn't offer to come in?"

"He did ask after you, sir. He left this basket, too, with his daughter's compliments."

"His daughter!" growled the old man, raising his head from the invalid chair in which he lay half–reclined. "Did you take it, Selah, woman? Haven't I told you I wouldn't have any more dauby puddings and sticky jellies?"

"Yes, and many a good neighbor has been sent away with such words that they never came back again," muttered Selah.

"And rightly enough! buzzards! buzzards! They flock where they smell trouble. Did they ever come here when I was well?"

"They knew you weren't sociable, sir, but when you were sick and needed them—"

"I need them! What could I need them for? I had servants enough to wait on me, and enough to eat, goodness knows! Did they suppose I was short of victuals?"

Old Selah lost all patience. "You know, sir, what their motives were. There's no use in talking about it." She laid the note and the basket by his side and left the room.

Half the morning passed before Richard Harrow opened the letter. He moved irritably up and down the darkened room with his uncertain step or sat brooding and dozing. Once he accidentally hit the latch of the window blinds in passing, and the shutter swung back of its own weight, letting in the golden sunlight, the purple shadows, the glow of the scarlet foliage and the intense sky. He threw his hand over his eyes with a cry of pain, and closed the shutter to resume his weary march.

Richard Harrow was acknowledged the richest man in the village. His house was the largest and finest that many of the people thereabouts had ever seen, and represented to them the greatest possible magnificence. It stood in the midst of a grove which sloped at the rear to a willow–fringed stream. His nature, naturally cold, shy and proud, had been made, by certain misfortunes and a lingering illness, to become hard and suspicious, and quick to think evil of every one. He had grown terrible to his servants, with the exception of Selah, who had no fear of him and whom he dare not abuse. He kept a book in which he wrote descriptions of all the different pains he felt. On this morning he made the following entry:

"Extremely prostrated by excitement produced by interference of John Ticknor, the banker. Head feels as if floating and seems to fill half of room. Feet cold and hands clammy. Appear to be swelling into enormous size whenever I close my eyes. Have made up my mind to discharge Selah."

This last clause finished three out of every ten entries and had done so for the last five years. Selah had seen it there many a time herself. Little cared she. It was no great favor to be allowed to live in that barred and bolted mansion; to tiptoe through its rooms, and wait upon its master. Yet a certain sense of loyalty held her to her post. She knew she was the only living soul who now felt for this wrecked, selfish man any interest or kindness. So the thankless, solitary years had gone by and the two grew old together, while to the school children hurrying timidly by the dark house it seemed as if Selah were the wicked witch of fairy tales; and the owner grew to be little more than a myth, for only now and then in a summer twilight was his wasted figure seen creeping down his grim poplar–lined walks.

Thisbe's note lay on the untidy desk. Perhaps Mr. Harrow became more comfortable after a time and was looking about for something to arouse a desirable feeling of misery. Perhaps he wanted to know the exact extent of the insult which had been offered. At any rate he picked up, opened and read the pleasant letter. He read it twice—the last time from sheer astonishment.

"The impudent little minx!" he snarled, while the blood rushed to his cheeks. "Is this the way children are brought up nowadays? I should think John Ticknor would be ashamed to permit"— He raised the note to catch the perfume that floated from it. It was heliotrope. Richard Harrow remembered a country garden bordered with those shy blossoms, and a little child who used to pin them on his coat in the summer mornings, saying, "I brung you a posy, papa."

He dropped the paper and walked back to the register. He almost laughed; the whole thing was so absurd. A child write to him, Richard Harrow! Wanted to be told stories! Send him a basket of—what was it, anyway? He got up in a fume to see. He lifted the napkin. There in a bed of scarlet maple leaves lay three pears, mellow, golden, odorous. He had been living on oatmeal mush and prepared beef for three months. He would have nothing else brought into the room. The scent of the fruit arose fresh and luscious. He took one of the pears out and ate it, and as the delicious juice trickled over his hot palate he read Thisbe's letter again.

"She must be a queer child," he thought. "She didn't say how old she was. Children usually tell that the first thing." The last time he had had a letter from a little child was when he was in the war; it ran thus:

"Dere Papa, I am six years old to–day. Can't you send me a flag for a present? Mamma sends love and I send kisses. I have a gun and can sing Tramp, Tramp."

Twenty years ago! The dear little writer never had a seventh birthday! He walked to the cabinet, unlocked it and took out a picture. It was a round–faced, rosy girl with eyes like the ones looking at the picture.

Old Selah entered. "I have brought your beef tea, sir." She set the bowl on the dusty desk.

"Selah," he said, in such a strange tone that she started, "I believe I'll have a glass of fresh milk to–day and an egg."

Selah came near spilling the tea as she walked out of the room with it. Surely, she thought, Mr. Harrow was drawing near his end.

"So John Ticknor's child never leaves the house?" said the man in the dark library to himself. "Such magnificent weather, too," then added fretfully, from force of habit, "for any one who can stand so much light. Let's see. It must be nutting time—if I can recollect! How quick we used to fill up our basket! What a herd there was of us!"

When Selah came in she found him standing in the full sunlight at the window, with the shutters thrown wide. She set the luncheon on the broad sill. All the way downstairs she shook her head. "He can't last long," she muttered.

A little negro boy, chubby as a cherub, was going past with a basket of groceries. Mr. Harrow nodded to him and tapped on the window. He felt he would like to have some one smile at him. The boy lifted his great eyes, saw the pale, tall man in the "haunted room," and shrank and ran as if he had seen a ghost. Two hours before Richard Harrow would not have acknowledged that he could have experienced any slight that could hurt him. But now he raised his hand to his eyes to press back the hot moisture.

"The very children hate me," he said. And yet—here was a little girl asking him to be her friend! His glance crept the length of the dull room where so many solitary years had been passed. The dust showed in the strip of flashing sunlight! A thought that perhaps recovery might not be impossible if he could get out into the fresh air came to him. The possibility of getting well had been a thing he would not allow any one to mention.

A little girl asked him to tell her stories! He read the letter again. How her hand had trembled! Perhaps she suffered a great deal.

The next morning Richard Harrow awoke with a sense of some happiness. He felt as if something delightful was going to happen.

Something happened, anyway.

Selah came with a letter and a box.

"These were brought by a boy, Selah's voice trembled. She had dreamed three times the night before of a white horse. That was a sign of death in the house.

"Thank you," said Mr. Harrow. Selah rushed from the room to hide her terror. It was the first time her master had ever used that expression of common gratitude to her.

Meantime Mr. Harrow, with an expression of curiosity on his face, opened the letter:

MR. RICHARD HARROW: Thisbe Ticknor who is an awful smart girl wrote me that she had asked You to join our Society. I have just got her letter and write in haste so a Boy who is here can take this note. Of course I have often heard of you and seen your House. I should think if you were well enough you would have a good Place to swim at the back. Thisbe says you have been sick years and years. That is pretty bad. I shall never get well again Myself, but I mean to have all the fun I can. Ma thinks you won't like them, but I send You a lot of dried butterflies I caught before I got sick. If you should have any Tin–Tags I would like some for my collection.

Yours truly, PINNEY JONES.

(My right name is Eugene.)

Richard Harrow's lips worked curiously as he opened the pasteboard box. Inside was a ragged array of moths, millers and butterflies, with pins jabbed through their brittle bodies. The man looked at them a long time as if they were a very serious matter indeed.

"So these are the last treasures of this sort the little chap will ever gather!" he exclaimed. He rang the bell for Selah.

"Do you know what Tin–Tags are?" asked Mr. Harrow.

"Never heard of them, sir."

"Go ask George if he knows."

Selah came back in a moment, grinning: "They are the little stamped pieces of tin that come off chewing tobacco, sir. There are a great many different sorts."

"Well," Mr. Harrow said haughtily, annoyed lest the old woman should ask what he wanted with them, "tell George and the gardener to save all they get and bring them to me. I have a use for them."

That afternoon Selah was intrusted with a mission. Thisbe lying where she could watch the darting sparks of the hickory fire saw her bowed figure entering the yard. "That must surely be my fairy godmother," laughed the girl to herself. Presently the old woman was shown in. She came close to Thisbe and bowed with courtesy.

"Mr. Harrow's compliments, Miss, and he begs you will excuse his delay in answering your note."

"Stay and warm yourself," cried Thisbe, but the old woman had taken herself out of the bright room. It was a portfolio of beautiful drawings that Thisbe opened, and in the corner was a note:

DEAR MISS THISBE: I have been trying to remember some of the interesting things which befell me when I was younger and in far lands. I am unaccustomed to writing these last few years, but think I may be able to send you the history of some adventure which will amuse you. The two friends you mentioned, the boy and the sailor, have both written me. I shall feel gratified to join your Society, and hope I may be permitted to contribute in any and every way to whatever scheme may be devised.

Cordially, RICHARD HARROW.

"O, Mrs. Mamma!" cried Thisbe, "I feel as if I had seen a dead man come to life." If she could have seen that the note was written in a sitting–room, long disused, which had a wide fireplace with a child's portrait above it, and if she could have known that the black–bound diary of symptoms lay forgotten amidst the rubbish that Selah was cleaning out of the dusty library, she would have felt sure that it was a resurrection.

To Helena Cary, surrounded with a graceless, ill–natured household, the little Society brought a lesser alleviation, but for her as for the rest the letters and gifts could not be other than a most helpful diversion.

None of the "Shut–Ins" have met. It is not improbable that Mr. Harrow may develop into an out–door visiting member, but at present they all remain "Shut–Ins."

From Thisbe's ingenuous, busy brain spring the most original schemes for amusement. The happy old sailor, Benjamin Christy, has a fund of fact and fiction to draw on. Pinney furnishes ideas and gifts ridiculous enough to make even the gloomiest hypochondriac laugh; and from Mr. Harrow's pen come wonderful romances, and his library supplies an inexhaustible variety of books. Sympathy and cheerfulness grow daily in the breast of each. Three new members have been added, one in a distant town.

"Almost enough fun," Pinney says, "to make one thankful to be sick."

The Message of the Lilies

Stel was born in the station–house, and grew up there. The station–house is the very center and pulse of Grey Fox, and Grey Fox is the center and pulse of a certain county in a certain State not necessary to mention, lying west of the Missouri and east of nowhere in particular.

There is a grain elevator at Grey Fox. It looms beside the railroad track and is painted dark red, the same as the station–house, as the railroad station is called. There is a store where almost anything can be purchased, except, as it sometimes seems, the particular thing you want, and in the rear of the store is the postoffice, next to the butter counter.

A blacksmith, Sam Hillary, keeps a shop next door. Miss Hillary, his sister, makes dresses and bonnets and canes chairs, in her one–story frame house a block up the street; and the Rev. Mr. George Turbush lives next door to the meeting–house, just beyond.

That is Grey Fox—at least, that is all of Grey Fox that the casual traveler would see, if by any chance a casual traveler should ever pass that way.

As a matter of fact, Grey Fox reaches twenty miles in each direction. Farmers with wheat and other produce to sell know it for their shipping point. Persons so restless as to desire communication with the rest of the world by means of the United States mail service, are compelled to visit it. Those inclined to listen to the gospel as preached by the Rev. Mr. George Turbush pay it occasional calls, and housekeepers desiring prunes, bacon, canned tomatoes or calico, patronize Tim Arundel's general store. The Wickers, of whom Stel was one, lived over the station in a few low rooms which surprised the visitor with their comfort. The hemp carpets on the floors had faded till they were almost pleasant to look at; the railroad supplied plenty of coal for the iron stoves; plants grew well in the south windows, and the kitchen was always immaculately clean.

William Wicker, the head of the household, and Stel's father, was ticket–seller, telegrapher, express and freight agent and baggage–master; and did not find his duties onerous. In fact, not being an aspiring or a nervous man, he was well content to go downstairs to his place of business, to mount stairs after work, thus finding himself by his own hearthstone, and to look pensively out over a level and monotonous country at the distant sky.

To be sure, the sky was sometimes violent, and presented itself in startling changes which would have been more or less offensive to people so inured to uniformity, had they paid much attention to it. But their eyes were fixed upon things nearer earth, and few of them observed the sunsets of scandalous splendor which were flaunted in their eyes, or observed those riotous dawns with which June ushered in her triumphant days, or the intemperate beauty of certain autumn afternoons, when all the distance palpitated with purple and the sky glowed with unbelievable blue, and at sunset dipped into a horizon of molten gold.

Those who did observe these things kept quiet about them for reasons. Stel kept quiet about them, although she saw them from the low windows of the station–house. She kept quiet about a number of things—about the letter she had written her Aunt Frances, for example. It had not been a particularly agreeable letter. Indeed, it had had a distinct tone of anger and impertinence in it.

"Dear Aunt Frances," it had said; "I suppose you have forgotten that I am alive. You must, however, have heard of my existence. My name — to save you the trouble of looking at the bottom of this page — is Estelle Frances Wicker, and I live at Grey Fox, over a station–house in the middle of nowhere. I write to you because I must write to some one, and I am not acquainted with any one else. I am not acquainted with you, if the truth must be told. It is different here at home, where I know every one, but no one knows me.

"The only girl here is Georgiana Turbush, the daughter of the minister. She is a sneaking kind of a girl, and jealous of everything I do. She teaches in the Sunday–school and gets up all the sociables and oyster suppers and necktie parties. She has told a lot of lies about me.

"There are girls out in the country, but they never come to see me. They come in to spend the day with Georgiana sometimes, but they know better than to bother me, I suppose. I'm sure I don't want them. Mother and I keep to ourselves a good deal. Mother has not been very well. Father says she does not take exercise enough, but she is on her feet all day long. I do not see what more could be expected. She says there is no use in going out, because there is no place to go to.

"I seldom go out myself. I will not be seen walking over to the postoffice when the mail comes in, the way Georgiana Turbush does, with men hanging around, smoking and watching out for a chance to make remarks.

"You will hardly believe it, but this is one of the first letters I have ever sent. Not but that I have written plenty of them. I do it for practice. I have been to school every year since I was five. I am sixteen now. I am going to keep right on going to school. I want to learn what I can out here. I have some books to read. The school–teacher we had four years ago sends them to me and I send them back to him when I have read them. He is principal of a school in Kansas City now.

"We have a woman teacher here at present. She is not much on arithmetic, and I can beat her there any day. But at history she is first–rate, and so she is at writing. She says I write a good hand, and I hope you think so, too. My compositions have always been the best in the school, though Georgiana's are more poetical and flowery. Mine are better punctuated than hers, and more grammatical.

"The school has twenty–five pupils now, which is more than it ever had before. There are some big boys, but Georgiana and I are the biggest girls. She would stop going to school if I would, for she does not like it very well. But I keep on, just to plague her. At least, that is one of the reasons. She would cut off her right hand rather than give up before I did.

"I have written you a good many letters and torn them up, but I am going to send this one, just to get an answer. I have only had three letters of my own. Father gets a good many, but I will not go to the postoffice for them, as I told you.

"The spring is backward and bad for the corn. Mother sends you her love, and says she hopes you have not forgotten her, though she is buried alive out here in this desert. I know you must be busy, and it is not likely you will care to answer my letter at all, but if you should, you would find me, your obliged niece,

"Estelle Frances Wicker."

In a few days an answer came, written in an irregular, fine hand, which Stel had some difficulty in deciphering. It said :

MY DEAR ESTELLE—MY DEAR CHILD: It gave me great pleasure to be remembered by you, and I want, above all things, to have you visit me, and that immediately. Please beg your father and mother to give their permission, and assure them that I will give you the best of care. Your uncle's connection with the road makes it easy for me to send you the transportation, which I enclose.

I know a young girl is likely to want new clothes when she leaves home for a visit, but recollect how much better our shops must be than yours, and kindly delay your purchases. Moreover, the present time is so exceedingly convenient for me that unless you have excel-lent reasons for delay I pray you to make haste.

With love to your mother and kind remembrances to your father, I am your loving aunt,

FRANCES COLEMAN.

Could a letter change the whole face of the world? That night the sunset was tender with lilacs and greens, delicate and illusive as a sad song, but to Stel the earth seemed compounded of scarlet and gold. She packed a little old haircloth trunk with the clothes Miss Hillary had made, and she called on Georgiana Turbush, just to let her know a thing or two.

But when Georgiana cried, "I'm so glad you can go! Won't it be glo–ri–ous?" and kissed her, Stel wished she had called with another motive.

The next afternoon she left the little station–house on the "overland flyer," for the first time in her life, and by the morning of the second day her aunt met her in the great clanging iron depot at Chicago.

All the way up Stel had been feeling a trifle belligerent. She had an idea her aunt might try to "put on airs" with her, because she was a country girl, and she had clearly made up her mind what she would do in such a case. She didn't intend to be "put upon," indeed, she didn't!

But who would ever have supposed that anybody would come to meet Stel Wicker, from the station-house at Grey Fox, as that beautiful woman came to meet her? Stel was folded in an embrace, soft lips rested upon her own, a tender perfume floated to her from furs and velvet—it was as if some gracious queen had lovingly condescended to one of low estate.

That was the thought that went through Stel's mind—for Stel had a mind with a lot of curious and picturesque phraseology tucked away in it, which she had got from books in her lonely reading. Of course, the next thing Stel was conscious of was an overwhelming feeling of shyness. But a moment later, when she sat beside her aunt in the carriage, even this vanished.

"I'm so glad you got up in time for Easter," said her aunt, in a rich voice which seemed to warm Stel through and through. "I shall find the day all the happier. I like some unexpected pleasure on Easter, just as I do on Christmas Day."

Easter? Stel hardly knew what it was. It was not the custom of the Rev. Mr. Turbush to make much of this holy day, and the devotion of his sermon to the subject was all the notice he took of it. Among the many bewildering things which happened in the next few days, nothing was more bewildering than this constant reference to Easter.

Aunt Frances was busy sending off gifts, with which Stel helped her. She was at the florist's, looking at lilies in pots; ordering one to be sent to a friend at the hospital, one to a "shut–in," an old acquaintance who never left her chamber, one to an old spinster cousin, another to a wild young bachelor who was a distant relation.

"Dick is a dear fellow at heart!" cried Aunt Frances. "I always remember him on holidays. The lily will carry its message, perhaps. Who can tell? It is beautiful enough, certainly."

"Its message?" repeated Stel. She did not follow in spirit all her aunt said. This rapid shifting from subject to subject, in which her aunt and her friends seemed so at home, was sadly confusing to Stel, who was used to hearing one subject exhausted before another was begun.

"Its blessed Easter message, dear child—its message of hope and regeneration and joy."

"I'm afraid," said Stel, blushing deeply, "that I don't quite understand."

Aunt Frances was sending off some delicate, illuminated Easter cards, but now she turned from her desk to look at Stel curiously.

"Estelle, my dear, what do you mean? Surely, you have had religious training?"

"Oh, yes, aunt!"

"And you understand the meaning of Easter?"

"I know it is the day on which Christ arose from the dead."

"Well, then you feel, do you not, that since this is the day that brought more joy to man than any other day of all days, it should be set apart for praise and beauty and happiness? See, dear child, it comes in the spring—in the spring, which is a perpetual miracle, and returns each year, a living symbol, to show us how life comes out of death, how innocence can grow out of sin, how joy can come after sorrow. The day for me is one of perfect beauty. I wonder that all the world does not sing. It means hope.

"In all of life," she went on, "there is nothing so necessary to the spirit as hope. The man who loses it is worse than dead—nay, he is dead, without the peace of the grave. I speak passionately, Estelle, for once I lost hope. I was young, fresh from college, and enamored with the acquisition of knowledge. I thought I knew a great deal about the old philosophies, and I tried to believe that in them I found all that a person of intelligence and honor and courage could require.

"I set my face firmly to the future, fancied myself a stoic, and determined to live a life of stern virtue and to defy destiny. My dear, I was miserable."

Estelle said nothing, and her aunt proceeded : "I believed only in those things which I saw demonstrated. I fancied myself very learned and astute. I almost died with loneliness. It seemed as if there was nothing to bind me to those about me. I expected no future, was dissatisfied with my present, and had only memories of the past, which I put aside as foolish and sentimental and superstitious. But one day, in spite of myself, all of my hope came back to me. I beheld in the philosophy of our blessed Lord the one great thing the world needed—love!

"I saw," she spoke more slowly, "that all the benevolence of civilization was the outcome of it. I knew that the liberty of women was the result of it—that because they were the spiritual equals of men they had attained to equal liberty, in spite of man's superior physical strength. I saw that love was the one thing that could unite me to those about me, and reconcile all the differences and bridge over all the gaps. I saw, indeed, that it was all that kept many men and women from despair, from madness and suicide in an age in which the struggle is so bitter. But, there, there, dear child, forgive me! I have talked like a preacher. Only now you know what Easter means to me."

Estelle was looking down at the tips of her pretty new shoes. "It has never meant much of anything to me," she said, and there was a tinge of resentment in her tone.

The rest of the week passed very happily. Estelle wandered about the library, looking over the books; walked through the delightful rooms, which seemed to her luxurious, although in reality they displayed more taste than wealth. She met some girls of her own age, who were exceedingly gracious, and who appeared to be entirely unconscious of her shyness and that peculiar country quality which Estelle felt convinced must be noticeable in her.

Each day she attended church with her aunt, and the solemn Lenten services enthralled her. The great Passion was for the first time made a living thing to her. She beheld it with awed and fascinated eyes. She was under the spell of the greatcst drama in the world.

Sunday morning dawned with sunshine and gentle wind—wind soft as velvet, tinctured with perfume, full of soft buffetings. The willows and alders had flung out yellowish green leaflets.

Estelle heard the soft lapping of the lake against the great sea–wall. She looked from her window over an expanse of purple water tipped with diamonds. Never had she seen Lake Michigan before in its perfect splendor. The sky above arched to meet it, deeply and marvelously blue. But there was a perfume in the room which did not come from out–of–doors. Estelle looked about her. By her dressing–table—one stately stalk on each side—stood two perfect lilies.

Estelle, who had done few spontaneous things in her life, threw herself upon her knees by them to inhale their fragrance. In one of the stiff green leaves a note was caught. It read: "May you find the message of the lilies." Again Estelle did a thing which was spontaneous. She raised her aunt's note to her lips.

It was a pleasure, really a most delightful pleasure, to discover that the dark gown which she had brought with her from home, and which she had expected to wear, was replaced with a lovely dove–colored little frock which she had never seen before. It seemed to suit the morning, and when it was on, nothing was more fitting than to take a white rose from its vase and place it among her braids.

In the dining–room, where Estelle's uncle and aunt awaited her, there were banks of flowers upon the table, lilies in the wide window, roses on the mantel and bunches of forget–me–nots laid at each place. Her aunt met her with affectionate words. The breakfast was a happy one, and they all made merry over the homely symbols of the day that were embodied in the little meal.

But Estelle's great hour came at the morning service. What words were these that the boys sang? What perfect forgiveness was this that was promised, even for those who had sinned to the uttermost?

Deep, deep voice of the organ, angel–sweet voices of children, while lilies with hearts of gold, what message is this you bring to–day to a foolish girl with an obstinate pride and a suspicious heart? Can it be that all her selfish, egotistical days and months and years can be forgiven? Can she outlive the influence of those foolish, miserable, cross–grained days? What place had they in a world so full of beauty and joy, so redeemed from its miseries and its sins by the Great Sacrifice?

How ignorant, how coarse, how hateful had been those other days! Ah, to leave them far behind! To be one of those who stood for beauty—whether to make a groined roof such as that arching above her, or sounds from an organ such as that thrilling her being, or to repeat words of love and hope such as those the boys were singing now and had been singing during Lent, or even to grow flowers such as those the perfect loveliness of which spoke to her now, making her hate all in herself that was vain and mean.

"Christ is risen! Christ is risen!"

A great white fact, which, like the sun in heaven, lighted up the dark places of the world!

"O ye stars of heaven, bless ye the Lord; praise him and magnify him forever!

"O ye showers and dew, bless ye the Lord; praise him and magnify him forever!

"O ye winds of God, bless ye the Lord; praise him and magnify him forever!

"O ye fire and heat, bless ye the Lord; ye nights and days, ye lightnings and clouds, ye mountains and hills, all ye green things upon the earth, praise him and magnify him forever!

"O ye holy and humble men of heart, bless ye the Lord ; praise him and magnify him forever!

"For the Lord is gracious; his mercy is everlasting, and his truth endureth from generation to generation."

As Estelle went home the glad waves leaped to the top of the gray sea–wall and fell in a million sparkling diamond drops upon the fresh sward. She watched it in silence. Her aunt sat beside her, smiling, and looking now and then into the heart of a lily in her hand.

"Did you read its message, dear?" she asked.

Estelle blushed shyly. "I think so," she said. "I think I understand."

That afternoon she wrote a letter home to her mother. It was a tender letter, and it seemed to her mother, as she read it, to show that her little girl understood, as she had never dreamed that she did, all the hardships and deprivations of the lonely life she had so long led.

"I shall be back home with you by and by," the letter said, "and then I shall be a much better daughter than I have been. I love you, mother dear, though I have been so careless about telling you of it."

These words fell into the gray life of the disappointed woman as starlight falls in a dungeon.

But Estelle also wrote to Georgiana Turbush:

DEAR GEORGIANA: I shall not tell you of my visit till I reach home. I miss you very much, and want you to miss me a little also. When I come back I am going to help you with the sociables and things. I shall know how better, now that I have seen how much kindness does and how delightful it is possible to make life if you only know how. Please forgive me for being cross. You were always better than I, and I knew it. Now I am not ashamed to say so.

"What are you writing?" her aunt asked, in passing, touching Estelle's braids lightly with her hand. For answer the girl held the note up to her. Her aunt returned it with a kiss.

"You understand the message of the lilies quite well," she said, lovingly.

The McCulloughs of the Bluff

For the McCulloughs the long, severe winter of 1880 was particularly depressing, as Pa McCullough was then at the worst of his "coal crankiness." He was an amiable man with red hair and a genius for chess–playing, whose family loved him dearly, though bound to confess that he was not a good provider; and had it not been for the coal discoveries near Ponca there would have been no happier family in the country.

These discoveries were made at Great Bend, where the McCulloughs lived, on a bluff above the Big Muddy, at the foot of which certain sulphur–charged layers of lignite unhappily appeared. Pa McCullough became drunk on dreams of prosperity, and sent East for experts, who came and tested the stuff in a stove. It smelled to heaven and made just enough fire to spoil the corn bread which Ma McCullough was then baking.

"It may be," said the experts, looking as expert as possible, "that this slight outbreak of lignite may indicate the proximity of a more combustible material, free from sulphuric sediment, within the heart of the bluffs. It might pay you, Mr. McCullough, to mine your bluffs."

This piece of amiability was the undoing of the McCullough family. From that day they went without the necessaries of life that shafts might be sunk in the potato patch; they shivered for the lack of clothes that the back yard might be blown up, and at length actually saw the house crack and settle because of the tunneling underneath it—a domestic disaster which did not particularly arrest the attention of Pa McCullough.

He, poor man, grew more abstracted every day, and spent most of his time in the shafts, working like a fiend; or in a fit of discouragement he would lie on the sofa with broken springs, back of the wood stove, and stare at a cardboard manikin which sawed wood on the stovepipe.

Hugh, Myrtle and the two little boys, Ernest and Tuppin—such a restless family!—must have revolted against pa's immolation of them had they not made up for their sufferings by jollity. There was a banjo in the house, and as every McCullough could sing as naturally as breathe, the old bluff used to ring with melody. Ma McCullough liked the fun as well as any one, and had a big, beautiful contralto that would break your heart in a negro melody such as the McCulloughs were given to singing.

They all danced, too, and though ma would utter many warnings about shaking the roof down over their heads—it being so insecure since the tunneling—yet, if the jig was not gay enough, ma had to join in it herself, showing, as she did so, a perfectly bewitching foot, which even her old shoes could not altogether disguise.

"Your grandfather, my dears," she used to say to the children, "had the finest shaped leg in the province of Ulster, and in black velvet smalls he was one of the finest gentlemen you would care to see. When I was a little girl I used to unwind his stock for him, and cross my heart! if I didn't use to run around the blessed man twelve times and a half before it was done, and him standing all the time, like a May–pole in a field, for me to do it."

Ht may have been from Grandfather O'Connor that all the McCulloughs inherited their remarkable agility; at any rate, it was well known that nobody in that part of the country could compare with them in running, skating, dancing, throwing of quoits or leaping. Myrtle, of course, discreetly concealed her abilities, as became a maiden, excepting in dancing and skating. It must not be thought strange that in their poverty the McCulloughs were all the possessors of skates, for they were people who managed to have those things which were necessary to their happiness. Wearing patched clothes did not worry them, and they did not look upon whole shoes as essentials; but when the broad Missouri showed a glare of ice it was necessary for the McCulloughs to have skates.

Every one of the McCulloughs, except pa, had bright blue eyes and long, black lashes, and brows that almost met above their straight noses. Their hair curled softly and was black as a crow's wing, and their bodies, erect, slender and firm, seemed calculated to endure almost any fatigue.

Some said that they were not industrious, but the word industry seems not quite the right one to use in connection with this family, which, though capable of fierce spurts of work, had moments—and these were always arriving at the most unexpected and inopportune times—when the pursuit of the joy of life was all there seemed to be for them. At such times they gave themselves up to a festival of mirth, and it is probable that all of them, save pa, thanked God every night for being alive. The McCulloughs forgot many things, but never their prayers, and in fact they showed such hearty and happy devotion that many of their more serious–minded neighbors looked at them in disapproval. They couldn't quite understand why the McCulloughs took their religion so naturally and without any accompaniments of depression or spleen.

As the cruel winter went on, however, even the cheerful faith of the McCulloughs was tried. They didn't like to admit it, but they felt the lack of hearty food, and if it hadn't been for Hugh's rifle, they would have been more inconvenienced than they were.

Myrtle kept on with her studies, hoping there would be a vacancy some day in some school near home, which she would be asked to fill. She watched the bitter days go by without unnecessary fretting, and rose rather late in the morning because she went to bed late at night. Indeed, when the McCulloughs got around their fire, talking, singing or story–telling, the night might slip away like a thief, and no one be any the wiser.

In spite of all this good nature, things began to grow desperate. There came a morning when Myrtle forgot to twist up her hair after braiding it, but with the massive plaits falling down her back sat dejectedly by the fire.

"If there was anything to do 'round here I'd be doing it," Hugh said, as he had said fifty times before. "Of course, I might go off and try my fortune somewhere else, but the truth is, Myrt, I'm afraid to leave you and ma. Suppose pa should get worse about the coal! Oh, if only something would wipe those lignite beds out of existence! Then pa might come to be as well as ever. But the question is, Myrt, how are we to take care of the family?—for we've got to do it somehow!"

Myrtle was as dejected as only a high–spirited person could be. Her imagination, usually Hope's faithful handmaiden, was now running numbly after Despair. The sky without was low and gray. The wind got a fierce sweep up there on the bluffs, which stood out on one of the largest bends along the whole Missouri.

It seemed as if the gales and the sullen waters fumed at this obstacle in their path, while Hugh and Myrtle sat down together that morning to face the problem of existence. Pa had gone to the village for dynamite bombs for blasting, and the little boys were at school, and ma was in the kitchen making bread.

"Look at this room!" cried Myrtle at last. "Did you ever see such a place for sheltering humans?" Hugh's eyes followed the dramatic gesture of her arm. The room was peculiar. The plastering was so cracked that it had fallen in many places. Yet some of Frederick Remington's Western sketches were pasted over the places of ruin, and a picture of Angelica Kauffmann and The Muse, in a tarnished frame, hung above Myrtle's desk.

Two bricks supplied the place of one of the legs of the stove. The old oak table in front of the fire was surrounded by a number of chairs in a greater or less state of dilapidation. The broken–backed sofa was behind the stove, and the big wood–box at its foot. Ma's embroidery frame hung on the wall with Hugh's rifle and Myrtle's guitar and the fainily skates. "Well, I say," said Hugh, who had never before looked at the place with such observing eyes, "it is a queer hole, isn't it? I can't tell for the life of me whether it seems more like the retreat of decayed gentlefolk or the home of confirmed cranks!"

Just then there was a knock at the door, and Hugh opened it to Donald Bain, the sheriff of Yankton County, in South Dakota, across the river.

"Ha!" cried Hugh, the glow coming back to his face, "come in, you minion of the law! Come in, you constable, you gendarme, you cop! How're the heathen at the north? How are the folk in Dakota?"

The sheriff was a big fellow with a wilderness of black beard and hair, and eyes as soft as those of an ox. His coonskin coat reaching to his heels, and his cap and gloves of the same material, gave him the appearance of an interesting savage. He divested himself slowly of his wraps, and shook hands respectfully with Myrtle.

"I'm thinkin' they'll all be well," he said, replying to Hugh's question. "But chilly. Folk are chilly thereabout, Hugh, my boy."

"Chilly! I'll challenge them to be any chillier than we are, Bain; and the worst of it is that our hearts are getting cold, too. Yes, by Jove, they are!"

"That'll no go doon with me, Hugh, man. The heart of a McCullough of the bluff does not grow cold—till the beat has gane oot o' it; but what's the matter, eh?"

"Matter? Why, no clothes, no food, no prospects, no work, no books, no anything but 'wind and weather!' Isn't it so, Myrt? Nothing but 'wind and weather!'"

"'Poor Tom's a–cold,'" said Myrtle, with a mock shiver. Her fit of despondency had vanished.

"It grinds me sore," said Bain, holding his feet to the fire, "to have you folk wantin' work when it's in my power to gie it to ye, if you only belonged to my"—

"Clan," put in Myrtle.

"To my State. Now you reached your majority last month, Hugh, as you told me, and if you were in my county I'd make you deputy. Hinman died last week, and I've his place to fill, and you're the lad with the brawn and the grit for it. As for your sister,"—his voice took on a tone of greater consideration—,"as for her, if she were in Yankton County I could get her a school up Adelia way. I have friends there who could manage it for me; and they need her up there!"

"You would send her as a Roman priestess to the northern hordes, I suppose," suggested Hugh.

"Precisely, man! Precisely! A Roman priestess to the northern hordes."

They all laughed at this so much that ma heard them, and came in with a loaf of hot bread under her arm and a cup of molasses in her hand. As she greeted her guest she cut big slices of the soft loaf, and distributed plates around the table.

"Here's a welcome warm and sweet for you," she said. "Draw up, Donald Bain, and eat such fare as we have."

"Any fare would have a good taste that you gave, madam," said the gallant Scotchman, placing a chair for her, "and I'll eat it with a grand appetite if you'll eat with us."

So they all drew up their chairs, and as they dipped the hot bread in the molasses, they told their stories and cracked their jokes. But while this lightened the hours of the day, it didn't make the prospects of the McCulloughs any brighter.

"If you were only on the other side of the Big Muddy, Hugh, man," said the sheriff, in parting, "I'd straighten things out for ye! And remember, if things come to the worst, I've a shack that's no so bad, where you and all your kin are welcome."

"Oh, go along, Bain!" cried Hugh, furious with himself for the tears that came over their barriers, "get along home with you! I know that! We all know that! But that isn't what we want!"

After this the sheriff of Yankton County came often to see the McCulloughs. He brought some fine cocks for the little boys to put in their poultry–yard, got the poems of Clarence Mangan and Allan Cunningham for Myrtle, made Hugh a present of "Treasure Island," kept ma supplied with Ceylon tea, and would, perhaps, have brought pa some dynamite bombs—pa's favorite luxuy—had it not been that he could not approve the "coal crankiness."

However, at the first of April, the young sheriff was forced to discontinue his visits. The ice was breaking up on the river. There was nothing for him to do but wait till the chinook winds and the abundant sunshine had done their perfect work.

Never was such a breaking up as that of the Missouri in 1881. The river widened into an inland sea, and submerged the richest farms in Dakota. The great ice–gorge reached for seventy–five miles up stream, solid to the sandy bed of the river, and rose twenty feet above its usual surface.

The water, thus obstructed, rushed upon the country, carried away every building on Green Island, took the church of the Santee agency down the river, its bell ringing all the way, and put Vermilion under fifteen feet of water. The community became suddenly aquatic.

Hugh McCullough was up to his eyes in exploits, and his blood was running faster than it had ever run before. He rescued men from floating trees, took a whole family off the roof of a nearly submerged building, and enjoyed himself better than ever before in his life. Every one he rescued he took to the house on the bluffs, where ma had, most fortunately, a bag of corn–meal and a keg of pork, saved against a rainy day.

Meanwhile, events were on the heels of the McCulloughs—and events, as Hugh had many times complained, were among the many things of which they stood in need.

One night Pa McCullough stood at the foot of the bluff, or as near the foot of it as the hurrying waters would permit, and by the light of a wild moon watched the frenzied water forcing its way past the ice–gorge, and taking with it, inch by inch, the fatal coal–beds. By his side, with her arms around him, was Myrtle, indefinably anxious. The picture before them was a terrible one, yet in the midst of all the tumult pa seemed quieter than he had for months.

It seemed as if the roar grew louder every moment; it sounded subterranean. Myrtle tried to think that her senses were becoming confused, but such consolatory thoughts were banished by Hugh, who came leaping down the bluff, white–faced.

"The river's at its old tricks!" he yelled. "She's making a new channel, and she's making it at the base of the bend!"

"Get mother," cried Myrtle, realizing in a second all this might mean. "Get the boys! Let us go together!"

But more words were impossible. A deafening roar, a wrenching as if the earth were being torn apart by the elements, and the Missouri had made an island of the Great Bend. The determined waters had tunneled a place for themselves, and rushed through, sweeping along the solid earth, which collapsed and became part of the debris.

Hugh and Myrtle dragged their half-conscious father up the bluff and made for the house. Its weak walls had fallen, but the inmates stood safe, and the ground round about was firm and at a secure distance from the cavernous path of the wild river.

"The house is gone!" yelled Ernest, as if that fact were not quite obvious.

"And the coal's gone," shouted Myrtle. "Hooray!"

"And the farm's gone!" shrieked Tuppin, who stood clutching his favorite cock under his arm.

"And the river," concluded ma, "is still going!"

Well, they got through the night not so badly, what with big fires and the wildness of the scene around them, and the comforting reflection that thus far no lives had been lost.

In the morning the McCulloughs roasted potatoes in the coals, and fed their guests, who were presently taken off in boats, but the McCulloughs stayed where they were. Their friends urged them to leave, but Hugh had a bee in his bonnet, and would not go.

"We shall see what we shall see," he said, kissing his mother. So they utilized one of pa's old coal chambers for a residence, and put up the remnants of their stove there, and made themselves as comfortable as they could.

The Missouri flowed along its new bed, while the ice melted with much groaning. Where the old bed had been were wide bottom lands, still submerged, of course, where, in course of time, the aspen and willow would grow.

At the earliest possible moment Sheriff Donald Bain came rowing across this lowland, and Hugh and Myrtle rushed down to the jagged and wave–eaten foot of the bluff to help him land.

"Well," he said, as he shook them both by the hand, "I was trying to devise some way of making you Dakotans, but Providence has taken it out of my hands. Do you realize that your territory is forever severed from Nebraska?"

"We realize," responded Hugh, "that we belong to the northern hordes."

"I came over to tell you that you're to be my deputy as soon as the law can make you such."

"All right," said Hugh. "What next?"

"Get oot your boat and put part of the family in. I'll take the ladies, and you look after the others. You are to come to my shack till your own house is ready."

"Done! We've nothing to carry, so there'll be no time wasted. My boat is in slivers, but you take ma and Myrtle, and in an hour we'll knock a raft together and be with you."

"Isn't this wonderful?" said Myrtle to the sheriff, as Hugh went plunging up the bank after his mother. "To think we are going to be free from coal, and to have work and be respectable citizens! I do hope we'll enjoy it!"

"Enjoy it! Why not?"

"Oh, I don't know! We've been irresponsible so long! I suppose you can get a school for me."

"Why, yes," he said, slowly, "if you really think you want it, I believe I could get it for you, Miss Myrtle."

"Of course I want it," cried the girl, shaking back her wayward curls. "Hugh can't take care of the family alone."

"Oh," said Donald, growing quite red, "I didn't say that I wanted him to do it alone."

But just then ma appeared at the top of the bluff. "Hulloa," she called to the sheriff, "what are you doing on my principality!"

"Come to ask for your abdication," shouted back Donald. "Wait a moment and I'll assist you down," which he did, gently, and placed her in the boat. Myrtle leaped lightly in without assistance.

As the sheriff seated himself and rowed off across the muddy waters, he could see the two little boys tossing boards over the edge of the bluff to Hugh, who stood below. Pa Mc-Cullough waved a saw and hammer at them in farewell.

"We'll have a raft in an hour," he shouted.

Tarts

Tarts was the absurd name of the superfluous boy. He had another name—which would hardly be worth mentioning if it were not to reassure those who doubted the fact. The other name was Abraham Lincoln Shrouds. Tarts was a detached protoplasm. In other words, he was an atom which had become separated from its kind.

The way it happened is a common way—out West. His father and mother started from the East to go West. That is, they started from Iowa in a covered wagon to move into North Dakota. They had no fixed destination, but that made the undertaking all the more interesting. Indeed, the hegira seemed almost like an heroic adventure to them.

Tarts' father and mother had never stayed fixed. A few years before they had come up from Missouri—this time also in a covered wagon—and had settled on some picturesque bluffs on the Big Muddy. They had a theory that they might raise sweet potatoes and peanuts in that sandy soil.

But for some reason the peanuts would not properly mature, and the potatoes had a greenish tinge and were as watery as summer squash.

Therefore these products did not market well, and the Shroudses often went hungry—not frantically hungry, but just common hungry.

Mrs. Shrouds had the imagination of the family. Her father, who lived in the Ozark Mountains, had once written a poem on liberty. It was she who proposed another move. She said they might go to North Dakota. She didn't suggest anything more definite than that, but she had heard that that part of the land was a fertile one.

So the raw-boned horses were hitched to the wagon and the small cooking-stove was set in; there were rolls of blankets for use at night, and there was a scanty supply of provisions. There was no money. But then the Shroudses did not attach too much importance to trifles.

All went well enough till Pa Shrouds fell sick with the chills. Not to go into mournful particulars, he died, and some charitable persons saw him buried in a little village cemetery. Some one with sense suggested that Mrs. Shrouds should have the weary horses shot, and stay in the town to find work. It was hinted that she could easily support herself and Tarts. She did not seem to think so, for the morning after this proposition the covered wagon was missing. Mrs. Shrouds had moved on with Tarts—only he wasn't called Tarts then.

In course of time North Dakota was reached. Mrs. Shrouds had the sense of an Arab, and could find paths anywhere. But, like another wanderer, she looked only across the borderland of her long–sought place, and then closed her eyes on earthly things. It was curious, and might be worth a story in itself; only it is necessary to go on with Tarts, because he was the one who really lived and did things.

Briefly, Mrs. Shrouds went out this way: One of the tired horses lay down and refused to get up. Mrs. Shrouds sat by his head, looking at him for a long, long time. The month was October, and the nights were cold; so Tarts, being chilled to the bone, spoke to her at length.

"If them horses can't go," said he, "s'pose we walk on to where there's something to build a fire with. If we go to that there windbreak we'll find some twigs."

Mrs. Shrouds made no reply. She looked up and smiled in a silly way. Tarts was moved to help her into the wagon and cover her up. He lay down beside her and they slept. Neither of them had had anything to eat that day.

The next morning, when Tarts awoke to the knowledge of things, he sent out a great cry—such a cry as those give who see the world grow black. For he was alone in the world, and up and down all the ways of the earth there was none to call him brother.

There are Samaritans almost everywhere, and one presently came along and saw Tarts. She was on horseback, and sat on her saddle like a man. A white sombrero crowned her pretty red hair. She rode a gray mare, and she apparently enjoyed being alive. She had not counted on meeting anything horrible, but when she did she met it like a soldier. She put Tarts behind her on the mare, rode back to town, sent the coroner to see to the—to the Horrible—and took Tarts to her home.

That was the hour in which he was rechristened. The bread was rising in the pans, and there wasn't a slice to eat in the house. Neither was there anything else except tarts. There was a whole plateful of those, filled with glowing currant jelly. The Samaritan, whose name was Maribel Clark, made some coffee for her guest and set the tarts before him. There were twelve of them. He ate them all. Maribel Clark sat and watched him do it.

"What is your name?" she asked when he had finished.

"Abraham Lincoln Shrouds," he answered.

Maribel Clark shuddered. "It sounds like death," she thought to herself. Aloud she said pleasantly: "But that is so long! I think I shall call you Tarts. Tarts is quite jolly. And now I think you'd better go to bed."

So she put him in the whitest bed he had ever seen, and when he woke up it was to–morrow, and the many places which had known poor Maria Shrouds would know her no more forever.

For several days Tarts lay around the stove with the cat. The cat had rubbed up against him the moment he came in the house, and soon learned to lie curled in his arms on the settle. When tears fell from Tarts' eyes on her gray fur she patiently licked the place into smoothness again, and indicated her understanding of the situation by curling up closer than ever in Tarts' arms.

"The cat and Tarts have eyes of the same color," Maribel Clark observed, on the third evening, to her husband. Her husband was a very young man to be married and own a hundred and sixty acres of wheat land—not to mention two cows, four horses and a number of pigs—but people have to begin young out West because there is so much to do, and one lifetime is such a bit of a time in which to do it.

"Yes," he said, answering his wife, "they are both as yellow as glass."

Oddly enough, considering the fact of the yellow eyes, Tarts' hair was almost coal–black, and his skin was very dark. His nose turned up, his heavy dark eyebrows met in the middle and curved far over his eyes toward his cheeks. He was a funny–looking boy; indeed, it seemed, as one looked at him, as if he had once been handsome, but had somehow become a caricature of himself.

"I suppose," said Mrs. Clark, under her breath, "that we ought to be finding some place for him to stay."

"There's no hurry," said Jack Clark, rather gruffly, as he turned up the light and began to read. Mrs. Clark smiled to herself and said nothing more.

The Clarks had both been "raised" up at Jamestown, and had been to the high school together, and married as soon as they got their diplomas—at least, they married within a month of commencement day—and had taken up life together in an orthodox way. It was a mile and a half from them to anybody, and there were only the animals for company.

The trees were just set out, and no good as companions; the creek was half a mile away, and so there was hardly a thing to break the noisy silence of those wind–swept steppes. All of which went to make up the second reason why Jack Clark said, "There's no hurry," when his wife spoke about sending Tarts away. The first reason—but any one who looked at the amiable young faces of the Clarks would have no trouble in guessing why the boy who had met the Horrible alone was not turned away from their fireside.

In a week Tarts was properly clothed, and the signs of rough living had begun to leave him. Then the Clarks sent him two miles away to school. He walked there every morning, with his dinner done up in a little basket, and he came home in the early falling of the twilight and helped Maribel shut in the chickens and look after the kindling and set the table for supper.

At first his hands were awkward, as if he had not been in the habit of using them. But after a time he could make excavations in the apples and fill them with sugar and cinnamon, and take the jackets off boiled potatoes and hash meat for mince pies. Maribel told him stories, and laughed a good deal while she talked with him. It did seem for a while as if she could never get him to echo that laugh, but just when she was despairing she heard him laughing at the cat, who had just jumped through a hole in the back of the wicker rocking–chair and landed in the work–basket.

She was so startled—Mrs. Clark, not the cat—at hearing this natural outward sound of merriment that she dropped a squash on the floor, where it broke conveniently in half, thus saving her the trouble of using the axe on it. "He actually laughed," she cried to her husband when he came in. Tarts was out getting the kindling.

"Did he, indeed?" responded Jack. "One of those jokes I made last week must have reached him."

It is no more than fair to the cat to admit that she had her share in educating Tarts, although he was twelve and over, and she was only going on four. It was the habit of the cat to arise when either the mistress or the master of the house entered, after being away for a time, and rub up against them by way of greeting. Tarts had not been used to such amenities, but as the cat persistently lived up to her code of etiquette, it began to dawn on Tarts that something in the way of courtesy was due to the fellow–creatures with whom he was associated.

That was how it came about that one evening, as Maribel Clark sat before the fire, Tarts came and stood beside her and laid his arm on the back of her chair. Mrs. Clark moved one arm slowly and slid it about him in the most matter–of–fact way possible, and getting up presently, kissed him just as if she were in the habit of doing it. That completed the taming of Tarts, so to speak.

After that he was as much a part of the family as the cat, which is saying no small thing. But he was also paid the respect which is due to a boy—and that is a yet bigger thing. Mrs. Clark had a way of remarking:

"Naturally, a person like you would not do such and such a thing!" And then Tarts, who had been thinking of doing that very thing, would put it away out of his thought and forget that he could ever have dreamed of it.

Tarts knew a good many things. He knew, for example, how snakes shuffle off their dry old skins in proper season and come out in gleaming coats, bright as jewels, and it sometimes seemed to him, when he thought of it, that he had been a dusty, ragged looking snake when he came to that house, and that little by little he was dropping his time-worn coat and coming out in a new skin. This simile might not have seemed pleasant to some persons, but ten to one those persons would not be so well acquainted with snakes as Tarts was.

He knew that snakes were not so black as they were painted, and that when the proper person approached them they could be lifted and petted. Tarts was one of these proper persons, for reasons which no man can know. Only it comes to some who live much among wild things to know certain foolish secrets, yet not to know why they know them.

Tarts had, indeed, forms of wisdom. Perhaps it would be more correct to say that he had instincts. It happened in the course of time that this instinct–wisdom served the Clarks well.

It was in the year 1896; the date has not been mentioned before, because this started out to be only a brief memoir of an unknown person; but from here on it is history, and so dates count. In November of 1896, a fortnight before Thanksgiving Day—though the Governor already had his proclamation out—something curious happened. The Clarks did not notice it. But the cat and Tarts were uncomfortable.

They both sniffed the air and they took deep breaths. They acted as if something was the matter with their lungs. They both kept running to the window. The cat sat on the sill, and Tarts stood beside her. It was Saturday, so Tarts had no school. About eleven o'clock they both got so restless that they walked the floor. Just then Mr. Clark came in from the barn.

"It's getting very cold," he said, "and there's something curious about the feel of the air."

Maribel Clark was cutting out a green flannel dress for Sundays, with the aid of a patented pattern, and did not pay any attention to the remark. Besides, her mouth was full of pins, and she could not have answered without taking them all out. Jack Clark walked to the window, and Tarts and the cat went, too, as they had gone many times before that morning.

"Look, look!" cried Jack, sharply.

A gray curtain, reaching from heaven to earth—yes, hanging straight from the opaque heavens to the brown steppes—moved majestically forward, as fast as horse could run.

Maribel saw it, too. She will never forget it—no one who saw it will ever forget it. Many next day could not remember, because they were beyond mortal recollections. But those who saw and lived will never forget.

"The cattle are in the shed," cried Jack. "I must get them into the barn!"

"No, no! No, no!" cried Maribel, fiercely, and she took hold of his arm. But he was a humane man, and a frugal one, and he went out to save his cattle for their own sakes and his.

A minute later the gray curtain reached the house and all the world was as opaque as lead, as cold as the chambers of the unlighted sea, and filled with a great noise.

Now, the barn was two hundred feet from the house. How can a man find his way through opacity, through cold like the floors of ocean, through noises that call to him everywhere and lead him nowhere?

North Dakota has its tales and traditions—not of the sort the early Eastern colonies had, or of the sort the dwellers upon the Ohio had, or yet of the sort the settlers of Florida or Texas had. But they are terrible traditions, just the same, and Maribel Clark knew all about them. She knew what a blizzard meant. So she stood for a moment frozen with despair, and all the simple story of her life's romance went before her, as things will in fatal moments, and she wondered how best to fight for the man out there in that storm of ice.

But it was Tarts who thought, or who knew. It seems almost an exaggeration to say that Tarts thought. He had a warm coat, and a cap which came down over his ears, and he put them on. He tied one of Maribel's old shawls about his neck and the lower part of his face. He put some old blankets about his feet and tied them there with strings, and he did it all so fast that Maribel watched him in amaze. She had not known he could move like that.

Then he took the clothes–line from the cupboard and tied it about his waist, and other ropes used for other things, and straps, such as he could find, and he gave them all to her. Then he took from its plaee a shrill whistle which Maribel kept to summon her husband from the field, and which Tarts had experimented with for fun. He put this in his pocket.

Now, the door–knob of the outside kitchen door had been loose for days, and Jack Clark had remarked at least twice in each twenty–four hours that he ought to mend it. Tarts jerked the knob from its place, undid the rope about his waist, inserted it through the hole, opened the door to draw the end through, letting in the whirlwind for a moment, then retied the rope and stood ready.

"When I jerk the rope," said he, "you pull!"

"Yes," said Maribel Clark. She stood at orders. The door opened again—the gray whirlwind surged in. Then Tarts was gone, and there was only the cat, with dilated eyes under the stove, and Maribel, holding the rope and letting it out as the boy went toward the barn. In spite of the heavy noise she heard the shrill call of the whistle—heard it again and again, persistently, frantically, making its staccato heard above the roar.

The clothes–line was a long one, but it was not long enough, and when she spliced it she had to open the door to make the knot on the other side. But she had wrapped herself up at the beginning of her work, and put on sheepskin gloves and tied her head so that only her eyes were visible. Yet, even so, the cold so reached through clothes and flesh, so sank into the bone and into the marrow of the bone, that it seemed as if she could never close the door. Had the wind been blowing against it, she never could have closed it, probably. But the wind was at the side of the house and struck the door only obliquely.

How long a time passed? How long was it that the whistle shrilled, that the rope was pulled steadily outward? She did not know. By and by she no longer heard the whistle. By and by no more demand was made upon the rope. Still there was no signal for her to draw it in. Still she waited, and the time passed—passed like a monotonous procession from which she could not escape.

Then at length—after the terror of that invisible procession of minutes had come to seem unbearable—there came a tug at the rope. Think, out of the cold chambers of death there came a human sign!

So Maribel stood up to her task, as a man stands to his gun when the heads of the enemy show above his stronghold, and pulled—as became her, being a true woman and no faint–heart.

She had to open the door twice, for knots in the rope, and both times the storm came in till the house was like a grave, but she pulled and pulled, and at last there was an end to it, and at that end was a boy, tied fast; and of course she had to open the door to him, for he could not come through a knob–hole any more than a knot of rope, and holding fast to him was a man, who had come out of death into life.

The rest doesn't especially matter. Any one can guess what happened next—how they all struggled back together to sanity and warmth and hope, although they had the blizzard upon them for hours. It was two weeks, in fact; before the roads were opened to town or the trains got up from the junction on the Great Northern. When they did, they came between walls of snow which were twelve feet high in some places. Then Dakota added to her traditions, and around firesides tales were told which made women weep and men grow stern. Some of them are much too sad for the telling, and some make the heart beat because they concern heroes—like Tarts.

After that, even the cat must have known that Tarts would stay where he was as long as he had need to do so. And that was the beginning of the evolution of the protoplasm, which fate—blindly or intelligently, who shall say—had detached from its kind.

Jock the Chipmunk

"Dance, little Chipmunk, dance!" cried Colonel Davy Crockett, drawing his bow over his violin. "Now I'll set those feet agoing! Now I'll make 'em twinkle! Go it, Chipmunk! This is the tune we'll all dance to when Santa Anna goes marching home again. Jig it for Texas, boy! Put in your best licks now, my lad!"

The men, lying around on the floor of the old mission of the Alamo, in San Antonio, could hardly see the boyish figure for the gathering dusk, as Jock ran lightly forward, and bowed, with outspread arms. It was no common dance that he meant to dance. All about him were men worn out with a week's hard fighting. For the garrison of the Alamo was leagured by the Mexicans, and for days had resisted the attack of many times their number. Jock was a Texan, every tense inch of him, and when be danced in the dusk to the music of Colonel Davy Crockett's bow, he danced for Texas as heartily as any hero of them all had fought for her.

He spat on his hands as he had seen the Spanish boys do, touched the ground lightly with his fingers, and then, straightening his slim body and tossing back his black curls, he began. His feet, clad in the pretty shoes his father had brought him from New Orleans, beat merrily on the floor; now he clacked his heels together saucily; now slapped his hands upon his hips; pirouetted with an invisible partner, and, flinging his arms above his head, wound up with body alift on tiptoe; then, saluting his audience, ran swiftly back into the shadow by the wall, where his mother rested on her cot.

The stern–featured men roared out their applause, and shouted and laughed, as men will do when they are weary of despair; and called, "Long live Colonel Chipmunk." It was a terrible kind of gayety, and it made Jock's heart ache, for he knew the men, and he guessed, though he was only a little boy, what their fate was to be.

Jock knew, too, what all the trouble was about. He was quite aware that Texas was fighting for her independence, and could have told you, had you been ignorant, how she was one of the provinces of Mexico and united with Coahuila in territorial government. He would have asserted very proudly that he was a Texan, and that he wished to have nothing to do with the people of Coahuila, who were Mexicans. To be a Mexican was to Jock the most despicable thing in the world. Had not the Mexicans forbidden the settlement of more American colonies in Texas? Had they not closed all save one of the seaports of that territory, and refused to allow her the number of representatives to which she was entitled at the provincial capital?

Jock himself was very well acquainted with Mr. Stephen F. Austin, who had been sent, with others, as a delegate to the City of Mexico, bearing a petition praying that Texas be given her rights. Mr. Austin had been thrown into prison by Santa Anna, the President of the Mexican Republic, and kept there for two long years. Jock's father was a lieu-tenant in the militia, and Jock had heard all about the manner in which Santa Anna had reduced the militia of Texas to one for every five hundred inhabitants, intending thus to weaken the Texans beyond all hope of revolt.

It had been almost two years since the first armed quarrel had taken place between the Texans and the Mexicans, and in those two years the Texans had learned to refer to themselves with pride as rebels against the Mexican Republic. Jock had been present when Mr. Austin spoke for liberty and issued a circular, which concluded with these brave words, which Jock often repeated, to the amusement of the garrison: "War is our only resource. There is no other remedy. We must defend our rights, ourselves, and our country, by force of arms."

Every citizen of Texas was called upon to decide whether he would submit to Mexico and tyranny. "If he will not, let him give his answer by the mouth of his rifle," said Sam Houston, who had come down from Tennessee to cast in his lot with the Texans.

It was Sam Houston who converted the committees of safety into an army which had sucessfully defended a number of the towns, fought to a victory the battle of Concepcion, and wrenched San Antonio and its mission fortress, the Alamo, from the Mexicans. Mr. Austin had gone to Washington to ask recognition for Texas from the United States, and all patriotic Texans who were not in the field, had met at San Felipe to listen to the declaration of independence which the fifty–five delegates of Texas had signed in the presence of the people. Some money had been obtained to feed the army of volunteers, and Mr. Austin had left all his fortune to be spent for Texan independence, if need be.

But meantime, up from Mexico, across six hundred miles of desert, Santa Anna had come marching with his troops. The bitter "northers" blew upon them who were used to only warm winds; they slept on snow– covered ground, fed on one meal a day, saw the horses die by the hundred, left their wives and children dying by the roadside, but marched on still, following the banners of the proud Mexican, the President and Dictator of Mexico, the commander–in–chief of her armies, and "the Napoleon of the West," as he chose to call himself.

One chilly February day in 1836 the advance guard of Santa Anna's men appeared before San Antonio.

It happened that Jock was at home, though how it should so have happened his mother could not guess. For Jock was the son of a Texan, and he could no more stay indoors than Colonel Davy Crockett could have gone into the woods without "Betsy," his beloved rifle. Jock was usually out exploring the ways and byways round about San Antonio. He loved to play around the old irrigating ditches, which, in the times when the Franciscan friars lived at the Mission, had watered the rich valleys where the maize grew. They had plowed those fields a hundred years before Jock's time. The fields were rank now with grass and mesquite bushes, and the ditches were choked—everything which had been beautiful or useful was falling into ruin.

It all came, as Jock knew very well, from the cruelty of Santa Anna, who thought he was king of all the western world, and who sold the land of the Texans for two cents an acre to Mexican impressarios, that he might rout the Americans, and refused to protect the good friars from the Comanches and Apaches, so that they had been forced to leave their missions and fields, and fly to Mexico, where Santa Anna had no objection to having them cultivate and civilize as best they might.

The city of San Antonio was much fallen, too, from its former grandeur. Jock and his father, as they walked the streets together, often stopped to look up at the churches the Franciscans had built ; with their beautiful carved doors and mullioned windows, all falling into sad ruin. Indeed, so miserable had the city become that Jock and his father found it much pleasanter to leave the streets, with their many vacant and desolate houses, and stroll out in the noble pecan groves, or sit where the San Pedro creek ran sweetly into the green and singing waters of the San Antonio.

But neither in the city nor out of it was one safe from the molestation of the Indians, whom the Mexicans encouraged to annoy and insult the Americans. They carried things with a very high hand in those days, did the Comanches, and used to grin and twirl their knives while they made white men hold their horses for them to dismount, or white women serve them with food, and wait upon them as if they had been their squaws. But best of all they loved to tease the white people by stealing their children and holding them till they were ransomed with a fine horse or a barrel of whisky.

But to return to the day when Santa Anna entered San Antonio. He had not been expected at all. All the garrison had been at a dance the night before. The men were scattered over the city. But as the sentinels from the top of the Alamo perceived the approach of the Mexicans, and gave the alarm, ringing the deep–mouthed old convent bell, the militiamen took to horse and galloped wildly out of the town toward the mission — fortress. Jock's father, pale but quiet, rushed into the house, gathered a few valuables, and throwing his wife and Jock upon the horse behind him, joined in the rout.

As the men came riding from every part of the city, taking the road which led to the Alamo, Jock heard them shouting to one another, but his head was hidden on his mother's shoulder, as she held him close, and he could not tell what they said. A herd of cattle was being driven along, too, and the men cut at the poor brutes with their whips, frightening them into speed. The "norther" was growing worse each moment, and the flakes of sleety snow blinded the riders.

As they reached the Alamo, the doors of the wall opened and they all rode in. The place was full of din. Men were shouting out orders. Cannon were being cleaned and loaded. A number of Mexican women were weeping noisily, like children. Jock and his mother flew out of the way to escape the rushing of these frantic men, and found refuge in one of the little rooms of the hospital building.

There was some straw there on a cot, and Jock's mother lay down there, holding her little son tight in her arms. But he was too excited to lie still, and wriggled out of her clasp, and, by degrees, out of the room. He wanted to explore this strange place. He had seen it often, of course, from the outside. He had even been with his father, the lieutenant, when the garrison was drilled in the old convent yard. But he was not acquainted with its nooks and crannies.

There was the great mission church, shaped like a cross, and fronting the sunset, with the river and the town. The roof had been torn away from the nave of the church, but parts of it were covered, and one strong place, behind arches, was used as a powder magazine, as Jock found out later. Great doors of carved oak guarded the front of the church. The convent and hospital buildings, the convent yard, the plaza in front, the prison and barracks, and the stockade of cedar logs, were all surrounded by a wall higher than the head even of Colonel Davy Crockett with his coonskin cap on. On this wall were the cannon. Jock counted them. There were fourteen.

Darkness fell before Jock had finished his explorations. Then the men ate around fires built in the convent yard, and afterward Jock lay down beside his mother in the little hospital room and slept till the sound of the firing of rifles awoke him.

The battle had begun.

The Texans were nearly all of them sharp–shooters, and they were instructed by Colonel Travis, who commanded them, not to waste one shot, but to wait till they were sure of their aim, and pick off a Mexican with each fire. The Mexicans fought hotly, fired at random, and fell by the dozen.

And it was on that day that Jock did something for Texas. It happened in this fashion: Jock, running here and there, with eyes, ears and mouth open, stopped to listen to a conversation between two of the men. One was the commander of the garrison, Colonel William Travis. His young face looked worn and white; no hat covered his red hair; and as he talked, deep lines came into his face. He was speaking to him of the coon–skin cap.

"Do you know how many bushels of corn we have in this place, Colonel?"

"I'm strapped if I do!" responded Colonel Crockett. "How many bushels of corn have we got, Colonel Travis?"

"We have three, sir."

They were ominous words. Colonel Davy looked along the muzzle of his "Betsy" pensively.

"I'd rather stand out there on the wall and let the devils shoot me than die here like a starved rat. Colonel, come on, let's get out of here where we can fight, and have the thing over in a jiffy."

The blood surged up into the pale face of the young commander.

"I am not here to waste life," he responded, gravely, "but to use it for Texas, Colonel Crockett."

The two looked at each other again in silence.

"I'd rather fight it out there in the open, man to man—"

"What are you talking about, sir? Man to man! Are you not aware that we are one hundred and forty–five and they several thousands? I don't wish to slaughter my friends!"

"Oh, well, it's all one! A few days more or less, Colonel Travis."

But I expect reinforcements. I am expecting them every hour. Only this morning I have sent dispatches."

"Grant that they may come!" ejaculated Colonel Davy.

Jock heard it all. Everything that was said or done during those days was branded on his brain and could never be forgotten. Only three bushels of corn! This was indeed terrible. He guessed that these few bushels of corn had been found quite by accident. This gave him an idea. There were many store–rooms and outbuildings about the Alamo, and into these Jock began to pry. He looked in dusty bins, forced open reluctant doors, and crept into cellars. For a long time he encountered nothing but emptiness. But groping through one cellar, he found a wooden door, which, when opened, revealed to his touch the crisp flakes of ground corn. Jock ran to the front with his tidings. He had meant to bear it to the commander, but encountering Colonel Crockett first, he shouted out the news to him.

The woodsman ran to learn the truth of these tidings, and finding them as reported, came back with Jock perched on one shoulder, and "Betsy," the beloved rifle, over the other.

"Colonel Travis," said he, "here's a member of the garrison who deserves as high a title as we can give him. You see this little creature, do you; this pretty little animal which has got into this trap? A pretty skin, eh? Too pretty to lose, I'm thinking! Do you know what this prying little animal has done? Can you guess what this chipmunk has found? He has found corn, sir! Corn! Bushels and bushels of it, sir! And I dub him Colonel Chipmunk! I salute him, sir!"

He set Jock down and solemnly saluted him. Colonel Travis wrung his hand.

"To have found that corn is worth the life of many men, Colonel Chipmunk," said the commander, feelingly. "You have done a great service to–day. I shall let your father know—yes, and your mother, for she's as good a Texan and as brave a one as any of us all."

Long days of fighting followed—terrible days, over which the shadow of death always hung. A small reinforcement came, so that the garrison numbered now a hundred and eighty–eight. A few of the men fell sick. One of the leaders, Colonel Bowie, lay ill unto death, but where he could see the fighting and direct and encourage when such direction or encouragement were needed. To him Jock often listened, while he told great stories of hunting, and fighting, and adventures by land and sea.

When the darkness began to fall, and both Mexicans and Texans, worn out with their day's miserable work, rested by common consent, Colonel Crockett would play for Jock to dance.

"It seems too bad to make the poor child dance amid all these dreadful scenes," said Jock's mother.

"Dreadful scenes?" repeated Jock's father. "You are not to look at them that way, my dear. It is much better to die for liberty than to live slaves to tyranny. This is no idle speech. It is true. Jock was born a Texan. If he can lift the spirits of those who are fighting for him and for tens of thousands such as he, then let him dance, I say. Let him do his share."

"That's so, sir," said Jock, respectfully. "I'll do my share. I found the corn, you know. Colonel Travis said that was a great service. And I'll dance, and sing, too, if they want me to."

The days went on; no reinforcements! No news!

"Men," said Colonel Travis, one morning, standing before them with a white face, "I have deceived you, for I have myself been deceived. No reinforcements have come. The Mexicans are wearing us out. Resistance is almost at an end. Here, with my sword upon this earthen floor I draw a line. Those who cross it to stand here with me, stay here to die like soldiers and like patriots. Those who feel their duty to their families greater than their duty to their country have still a chance to leave this fated place. Who stands with me?"

A young Scotchman, leaped across the line with a shout. The young men followed him like sheep.

"Move my bed over there," called Colonel Bowie from his cot. "I'll die with you anyway; that's all I'm fit for, I reckon."

They lifted his bed and the beds of the other sick men over the line.

"May I go?" called Jock to his friend, Colonel Crockett.

"Well, I'd like to see you stay behind! Ain't you the saviour of the garrison? Up, Colonel Chipmunk, on my shoulder! Yell for Texas!"

The men sent up a hoarse shout. It signified their willingness to die. They stood there together, farmers and gentlemen, woodsmen and scholars, adventurers and pioneer statesmen—men of many sorts and conditions. Only one, weeping and bowed with grief, turned and left them, creeping out by the old aqueduct, and so to liberty. Every other man stood by his commander, who, raising his sword in the air, seemed to swear them to a silent oath of fealty; then, bowing his head in silent prayer for a moment, left them to walk alone in the convent yard.

In the gray morning of March 6th word was brought that Santa Anna, reinforced by many troops, was to begin a final assault. The Alamo was doomed. The men in it knew that as well at dawn as they did two hours later. No one was depressed. A spirit of something akin to bravery pervaded the place. To die like heroes is not terrible for true men. Colonel Bowie groaned and fumed on the couch from which he could not rise.

"I wish I could stand to my guns," he said over and over. "I say, Crockett, I reckon you ain't any strength to spare this morning, have you? If you could divide up with me, and let me get off this bed for an hour or two—"

But Colonel Davy could only wring his companion's hand. Jock's mother had formed the Mexican women under her and was busy carrying water in tubs to the church, and placing around the tubs every cup she could find, that the fighters might be able easily to slake their thirst. She made bandages ready and other appliances for dressing wounds. Jock helped her cheerfully.

The sun was just lifting its golden head above the gray horizon, flooding the world with a tender light, when the black flag was flung from the Mexican headquarters, and the bugles sounded the Spanish air of Duguelo. The Texans knew those fatal notes. They meant no quarter. With scaling ladders, crowbars and axes, with rifles and knives and pistols, the Mexican troops rushed forward. They were met with a deadly fire from artillery and rifles, and were hurled back from three sides of the wall. A second time they came on, and a second time were hurled back. But a third time they came over the wall like sheep. The guns of the Texans were turned upon themselves, and Colonel Bowie died fighting on his bed, with the long knife which he had invented and which bore his name. Davy Crockett fell with his "Betsy" in his hand, and his curious cap rested beside him where he lay. Those loyal gentlemen, Travis and Bonham, fell in the convent–room. Hn the church, the Texan heroes fell back to back, fighting their foes.

No one flinched. It was a heroic hour. The Texans knew their death would be avenged—that by their blood Texas would be cemented in unity—that they were sowing with their bodies the seeds of a revolution which would blossom into liberty.

Jock was with his mother. The Mexicans spared them both gun and knife, and a Mexican officer who knew them conducted them to a place of safety. In the days that followed Jock quite ceased to look upon the fall of the Alamo as a terrible thing. Indeed, in one sense it had never seemed terrible to him. It inspired him, as it has since inspired many a thousand Texan boys, with a love of country and a passion for liberty which nothing could ever quench.

And it was he who had inscribed upon the monument raised long after to the men of the fortress–mission: "Thermopylae had its messenger of defeat—the Alamo had none!"

How Christmas Came to the Santa Maria Flats

There were twenty–six flat children, and none of them had ever been flat children until that year. Previously they had all been home children, and as such had, of course, had beautiful Christmases, in which their relations with Santa Claus had been of the most intimate and personal nature.

Now, owing to their residence in the Santa Maria flats, and the Lease, all was changed. The Lease was a strange forbiddance, a ukase issued by a tyrant, which took from children their natural liberties and rights.

Though, to be sure—as every one of the flat children knew—they were in the greatest kind of luck to be allowed to live at all, and especially were they fortunate past the lot of children to be permitted to live in a flat. There were many flats in the great city, so polished and carved and burnished and be–lackeyed, that children were not allowed to enter within the portals save on visits of ceremony in charge of parents or governesses. And in one flat, where Cecil do Koven le Baron was born—just by accident and without intending any harm—he was evicted, along with his parents, by the time he reached the age where he seemed likely to be graduated from the go–cart. And yet that flat had not nearly so imposing a name as the Santa Maria.

The twenty–six children of the Santa Maria flats belonged to twenty families. All of these twenty families were peculiar, as you might learn any day by interviewing the families concerning one another. But they bore with each other's peculiarities quite cheerfully and spoke in the hall when they met. Sometimes this tolerance would even extend to conversation about the janitor, a thin creature who did the work of five men. The ladies complained that he never smiled.

"I wouldn't so much mind the hot water pipes leaking now and then," the ladies would remark in the vestibule, rustling their skirts to show that they wore silk petticoats, "if only the janitor would smile. But he looks like a cemetery."

"I know it," would be the response. "I told Mr. Wilberforce last night if he would only get a cheerful janitor I wouldn't mind our having rubber instead of Axminster on the stairs."

"You know we were promised Axminster when we moved in," would be the plaintive response. The ladies would stand together for a moment wrapped in gloomy reflection, and then part.

The kitchen and nurse maids felt on the subject, too.

"If Carl Carlsen would only smile," they used to exclaim in sibilant whispers as they passed on the way to the laundry. "If he'd come in an' joke while we wus washin'!"

Only Kara Johnson never said anything on the subject because she knew why Carlsen didn't smile, and was sorry for it, and would have made it all right—if it hadn't been for Lars Larsen.

Dear, dear, but this is a digression from the subject of the Lease. That terrible document was held over the heads of the children as the Herodian pronunciamento concerning small boys was over the heads of the Israelites.

It was in the Lease not to run—not to jump —not to yell! It was in the Lease not to sing in the halls, not to call from story to story, not to slide down the banisters! And there were blocks of banisters so smooth and wide and beautiful that the attraction between them and the seats of the little boys' trousers was like the attraction of a magnet for a nail. Yet not a leg, crooked or straight, fat or thin, was ever to be thrown over these polished surfaces!

It was in the Lease, too, that no peddler or agent, or suspicious stranger was to enter the Santa Maria, neither by the front door nor the back. The janitor stood in his uniform at the rear, and the lackey in his uniform at the front, to prevent any such intrusion upon the privacy of the aristocratic Santa Marias. The lackey, who politely directed people, and summoned elevators, and whistled up tubes and rang bells, thus conducting the complex social life of those favored apartments, was not one to make a mistake, and admit any person not calculated to ornament the front parlors of the flatters.

It was this that worried the children.

For how could such a dear, disorderly, democratic rascal as the children's saint ever hope to gain past that exclusive entrance and get up to the rooms of the flat children?

"You can see for yourself," said Ernest, who lived on the first floor, to Roderick, who lived on the fourth, "that if Santa Claus can't get up the front stairs, and can't get up the back stairs, that all he can do is to come down the chimney. And he can't come down the chimney—at least, he can't get out of the fire–place."

"Why not?" asked Roderick, who was busy with an "all–day sucker" and not inclined to take a gloomy view of anything.

"Goosey!" cried Ernest, in great disdain, "I'll show you!" and he led Roderick, with his sucker, right into the best parlor, where the fireplace was, and showed him an awful thing.

Of course, to the ordinary observer, there was nothing awful about the fireplace. Everything in the way of bric–a–brac possessed by the Santa Maria flatters was artistic. It may have been in the Lease that only people with esthetic tastes were to be admitted to the apartments. However that may be, the fire-place, with its vases and pictures and trinkets, was something quite wonderful. Indian incense burned in a mysterious little dish, pictures of purple ladies were hung in odd corners, calendars in letters nobody could read, served to decorate, if not to educate, and glass vases of strange colors and extraordinary shapes stood about filled with roses. None of these things were awful. At least no one would have dared say they were. But what was awful was the formation of the grate.

It was not a hospitable place with andirons, where noble logs of wood could be laid for the burning, nor did it have a generous iron basket where honest anthracite could glow away into the nights. Not a bit of it. It held a vertical plate of stuff that looked like dirty cotton wool, on which a thin blue flame leaped when the gas was turned on and ignited.

"You can see for yourself!" said Ernest tragically.

Roderick could see for himself. There was an inch–wide opening down which the Friend of the Children could squeeze himself, and, as everybody knows, he needs a good deal of room now, for he has grown portly with age, and his pack every year becomes bigger, owing to the ever–increasing number of girls and boys he has to supply.

"Gimini!" said Roderick, and dropped his all–day sucker on the old Bokara rug that Ernest's mamma had bought the week before at a fashionable furnishing shop, and which had given the sore throat to all the family, owing to some cunning little germs that had come over with the rug to see what American throats were like.

Oh, me, yes! but Roderick could see! Anybody could see! And a boy could see better than anybody.

"Let's go see the Telephone Boy," said Roderick. This seemed the wisest thing to do. When in doubt, all the children went to the Telephone Boy, who was the most fascinating person, with knowledge of the most wonderful kind and of a nature to throw that of Mrs. Scheherazade quite, quite in the shade—which, considering how long that loquacious lady had been a Shade, is perhaps not surprising.

The Telephone Boy knew the answers to all the conundrums in the world, and a way out of nearly all troubles such as are likely to overtake girls and boys. But now he had no suggestions to offer and could speak no comfortable words.

"He can't git inter de frunt, an' he can't git inter de back, an' he can't come down no chimney in dis here house, an' I tell yer dose," he said, and shut his mouth grimly, while cold apprehension crept around Ernest's heart and took the sweetness out of Roderick's sucker.

Nevertheless, hope springs eternal, and the boys each and individually asked their fathers—tremendously wise and good men—if they thought there was any hope that Santa Claus could get in the Santa Maria flats, and each of the fathers looked up from his paper and said he'd be blessed if he did!

And the words sunk deep and deep and drew the tears when the doors were closed and the soft black was all about and nobody could laugh because a boy was found crying! The girls cried, too—for the awful news was whistled up tubes and whistled down tubes, till all the twenty–six flat children knew about it. The next day it was talked over in the brick court, where the children used to go to shout and race. But on this day there was neither shouting nor racing. There was, instead, a shaking of heads, a surreptitious dropping of tears, a guessing and protesting and lamenting. All the flat mothers congratulated themselves on the fact that their children were becoming so quiet and orderly, and wondered what could have come over them when they noted that they neglected to run after the patrol wagon as it whizzed round the block.

It was decided, after a solemn talk, that every child should go to its own fireplace and investigate. In the event of any fireplace being found with an opening big enough to admit Santa Claus, a note could be left directing him along the halls to the other apartments. A spirit of universal brotherhood had taken possession of the Santa Maria flatters. Misery bound them together. But the investigation proved to be disheartening. The cruel asbestos grates were everywhere. Hope lay strangled!

As time went on, melancholy settled upon the flat children. The parents noted it, and wondered if there could be sewer gas in the apartments. One over-anxious mother called in a physician, who gave the poor little child some medicine which made it quite ill. No one suspected the truth, though the children were often heard to say that it was evident that there was to be no Christmas for them! But then, what more natural for a child to say, thus hoping to win protestations—so the mothers reasoned, and let the remark pass.

The day before Christmas was gray and dismal. There was no wind—indeed, there was a sort of tightness in the air, as if the supply of freshness had given out. People had headaches—even the Telephone Boy was cross—and none of the spirit of the time appeared to enliven the flat children. There appeared to be no stir—no mystery. No whisperings went on in the corners,—or at least, so it seemed to the sad babies of the Santa Maria.

"It's as plain as a monkey on a hand organ," said the Telephone Boy to the attendants at his salon in the basement, "that there ain't to be no Christmas for we—no, not for we!"

Had not Dorothy produced, at this juncture, from the folds of her fluffy silken skirts several substantial sticks of gum, there is no saying to what depths of discouragement the flat children would have fallen !

About six o'clock it seemed as if the people would smother for lack of air! It was very peculiar. Even the janitor noticed it. He spoke about it to Kara at the head of the back stairs, and she held her hand so as to let him see the new silver ring on her fourth finger, and he let go the rope of the elevator on which he was standing and dropped to the bottom of the shaft, so that Kara sent up a wild hallo of alarm. But the janitor emerged as melancholy and unruffled as ever, only looking at his watch to see if it had been stopped by the concussion.

The Telephone Boy, who usually got a bit of something not sent down to him from one of the tables, owing to the fact that he never ate any meal save breakfast at home, was quite forgotten on this day, and dined off two russet apples, and drew up his belt to stop the ache—for the Telephone Boy was growing very fast indeed, in spite of his poverty, and couldn't seem to stop growing somehow, though he said to himself every day that it was perfectly brutal of him to keep on that way when his mother had so many mouths to feed.

Well, well, the tightness of the air got worse. Every one was cross at dinner and complained of feeling tired afterward, and of wanting to go to bed. For all of that it was not to get to sleep, and the children tossed and tumbled for a long time before they put their little hands in the big, soft shadowy clasp of the Sandman, and trooped away after him to the happy town of sleep.

It seemed to the flat children that they had been asleep but a few moments when there came a terrible burst of wind that shook even that great house to its foundations. Actually, as they sat up in bed and called to their parents or their nurses, their voices seemed smothered with roar. Could it be that the wind was a great wild beast with a hundred tongues which licked at the roof of the building? And how many voices must it have to bellow as it did?

Sounds of falling glass, of breaking shutters, of crashing chimneys greeted their ears—not that they knew what all these sounds meant. They only knew that it seemed as if the end of the world had come. Ernest, miserable as he was, wondered if the Telephone Boy had gotten safely home, or if he were alone in the draughty room in the basement; and Roderick hugged his big brother, who slept with him, and said, "Now I lay me" three times running, as fast as ever his tongue would say it.

After a terrible time the wind settled down into a steady howl like a hungry wolf, and the children went to sleep, worn out with fright and conscious that the bedclothes could not keep out the cold.

Dawn came. The children awoke, shivering. They sat up in bed and looked about them—yes, they did, the whole twenty–six of them in their different apartments and their different homes.

And what do you suppose they saw—what do you suppose the twenty–six flat children saw as they looked about them?

Why, stockings, stuffed full, and trees hung full, and boxes packed full! Yes, they did! It was Christmas morning, and the bells were ringing, and all the little flat children were laughing, for Santa Claus had come! He had really come! In the wind and wild weather, while the tongues of the wind licked hungrily at the roof, while the wind howled like a hungry wolf, he had crept in somehow and laughing, no doubt, and chuckling, without question, he had filled the stockings and the trees and the boxes! Dear me, dear me, but it was a happy time! It makes me out of breath to think what a happy time it was, and how surprised the flat children were, and how they wondered how it could ever have happened.

But they found out, of course! It happened in the simplest way! Every skylight in the place was blown off and away, and that was how the wind howled so, and how the bedclothes would not keep the children warm, and how Santa Claus got in. The wind cork–screwed down into these holes, and the reckless children with their drums and dolls, their guns and toy dishes, danced around in the maelstrom and sang:

"Here's where Santa Claus came!
This is how he got in
We should count it a sin
Yes, count it a shame,
If it hurt when he fell on the floor."

Roderick's sister, who was clever for a child of her age, and who had read Monte Cristo ten times, though she was only eleven, wrote this poem, which every one thought very fine.

And of course all the parents thought and said that Santa must have jumped down the skylights. By noon there were other skylights put in, and not a sign left of the way he made his entrance—not that the way mattered a bit, no, not a bit.

Perhaps you think—the Telephone Boy didn't get anything! Maybe you imagine that Santa didn't get down that far. But you are mistaken. The shaft below one of the skylights went away to the bottom of the building, and it stands to reason that the old fellow must have fallen way through. At any rate there was a copy of "Torn Sawyer," and a whole plum pudding, and a number of other things, more useful but not so interesting, found down in the chilly basement room. There were, indeed.

In closing it is only proper to mention that Kara Johnson crocheted a white silk four–in–hand necktie for Carl Carlsen, the janitor—and the janitor smiled!

Christmas at Goldberg

Christmas at Goldberg

It was the year of the black plague. It had passed through Asia, and desolated southern Europe. It had seized upon Germany, and it was no longer possible to bury the dead.

The Emperor, anxious to abate the horror which the feeble science of the age could not master, issued an edict. Every house visited by the plague was to keep its door fast. On no account was any member of that house to venture into the open. Having given this notable illustration of his royal profundity, the Emperor waited for the plague to abate.

There were not many folk in Goldberg. Only enough to cultivate the farms, which stretched out to reach the farms of the next hamlet. But it was a proud community in its little way. No vassals were its people, even in this age of vassals. They were free–holders, with tidy homes to bear proof of their industry, and sons and daughters as stalwart as any in Germany. There was Edward, who was in the army, and who had not visited home for two years—a perfect young giant, with an arm like a gladiator—one of a band of giants selected from out all the empire for their strength of limb, their breadth of chest and their yellow locks. Katherine, back in Goldberg, dreamed every night of that free stride of his, and his blue eyes—blue like the sky above the mountains. Some of these dreams were not sleeping dreams. Katherine did not always sleep well, for, if she fell asleep, she was apt to start suddenly into trembling wakefulness, thinking she had heard Edward call her and point with reproachful finger to his wounds. What mattered it if there were no war? Her fears were not allayed. There might be war enough to kill a thousand men before the news would reach Goldberg. As to the reproachful look that Edward wore in these visions, that was accounted for by the fact that when he left, Katherine had been cold. It was such a shame to kiss a young man before all the maidens of the village! So she turned away to chat with the rest, and ask Gretchen about her new silver necklace, while Edward went off with a pain in his heart, and Katherine only kept back her sobs till she reached home.

One night when she lay watching the moon on the bare floor, making a melancholy mottling as it shone through the bare trees by the window, she was suddenly conscious of a frightful heat. She seemed to be wrapped in fire. Her head felt as if it might burst into flame. Then a coldness like death took possession of her. Her limbs stretched out rigidly, and a lump of ice lay on her heart. She tried to call, but could not, and she sank back inert, filled with a nameless disgust. In the morning when the good mother called her, she got no answer. She went to the little bare room. The linen curtains still obscured the light. The homespun clothes and the wooden shoes lay on the chair, undisturbed. The mother went to the bed. Then she called on the saints in tones of mortal anguish. On breast and lips were the signs of the black death. But by night the mother no longer mourned. For she, too, after brief spasms of torment, was at rest.

The magistrate published from house to house the edict of the king. Then one by one the doors of Goldberg closed, till the streets were deserted. Neither day nor night saw the people out of doors, no sexton per-\formed his sad duties, no dead cart patrolled the town. There was nothing but silence.

Weeks went by. At times the horror seemed to lessen, then to grow. A gray sky hung continually over the town. The very spruce trees seemed to droop under some mysterious blight. The air was heavy and vitiated. Nature had become deadly. Things which had previously been life–giving, became poisonous.

Even at the house of the magistrate there was nothing but closed shutters. The door of the church alone stood open, and through that nothing passed but the winter winds and the pale old priest, crossing himself as he went.

Wolf, who was only twelve, was the first to awaken of the living, one morning. Several had opened their eyes on paradise since nightfall, and it was they who really lived, while those who thought they lived had but a death in life. For some in those little cabins were mad with horror, and others had turned blasphemous, and cursed God, and others shrieked out in frightful agony, and others wept for their desolated hearths. Wolf awoke early, although he had been up very late. Last night his mother had died. He had dragged her into the back room with the others. For the father lay dead there, too, and the two sisters and the baby. Then Wolf covered them all up so they might not get cold, and he took one candle, which was all there was left, and put it at their heads. But for some reason it hardly burned, but sputtered as if wicked elves were in it. Wolf did not cry, although he remembered perfectly all that had happened. When the father and the baby died that first day he had cried horribly. Now he did not want to. Instead he lit a fire and cowered over it, looking over his shoulder all the while to see that no bad spirits caught him in the back. He was not afraid they would meet him face to face, for bad spirits cannot stand the look of a child's eye, as every one knows. He did not want to go out of the house. There were none of the boys playing now on the stone walk. Nothing was as it had been before. It was best just to sit there by the fire. One need not think much while that delicious warmth stole up over the limbs and over the brain and into the very heart. How different the room looked from the way it used to do when the sisters sat at their wheels and the mother kept the hearth brushed! The bowls were all dirty, too, and the cots tumbled as they had never been before. But while the fire burned like that, nothing mattered. So dimmer and dimmer grew the pain, the fear, the thoughts.

Wolf slept, while out in the back room the candle sputtered out for want of good air to feed it.

The house was bitter cold when Wolf awoke. The ashes lay in a pile. It was night and yet not dark. The little boy sat up and looked around. Something seemed different. In a moment he saw what it was. The wind had torn open one of the shutters. Wolf had not heard the wind howl like that since the last winter. He got up to stagger toward the window. Then he was conscious that his head no longer seemed so drawn and strange. He could think clearly of where he was, and where the rest were. He cared a great deal more than he had in the morning. Indeed, his heart seemed breaking! Not a soul—not one in the big world to comfort him! No one he could speak to! And the mother never again to put her hand on his hair! The father never more to teach him to string his bow. How silent the room was! The spinning wheels looked as if they were made of stone, and would never go again. It was more than one could stand! He rushed to the window, threw back the casement ! He cared not for law then. He would go mad if he kept in that lonely place.

Ah, the sweet stars! Like gold! And the cold, clear wind! There was life in it! And yet how dreadful that stillness. To cry out, to break that dead nothingness became a necessity. Yet what could he do? If it was found that his window was open he would be punished by the magistrate, who was never very good to boys at any time.

And yet—why it was—it was surely Christmas! He remembered now. The day before his mother died she had said:

"This will be a Christmas the like of which was never seen. May the good Christ take pity!"

Christmas! He had been so happy the Christmas before, and they had all sung, "Oh! Star that shone o'er the manger."

The memory of that day was the last burden he could stand. Fear of the magistrate gave way—everything gave way before the one wild desire for communion. Over the snow–clad hills, on the keen wind rang that song, in full, boyish falsetto:

"Oh! Star that shone o'er the manger, shine still in the heavenly blue!"

It rang out like a trumpet at first, then it mellowed into a hymn, and from out of the star–lit gloom came other voices, raising the same song, swelling, dying with the wind, yet gathering moment by moment, till it became a chorus of power. It might have been the silence speaking. For still no people were seen, but Wolf, watching the dark blots that he knew were houses, saw lights glimmering and knew the casements were open.

And still the wind blew, and the snow hardened till the spruces glittered under the stars. And Wolf, who could not bear that the dear ones should have no Christmas—they who had always been so fond of the day—went to the back room and opened it that they might know how beautiful the night was.

Then morning broke, and with it the strange intelligence that those who had been sick were well. It spread as fast as only good tidings can, and when fearfully the people ventured out they found the sky shining blue above them and the trees standing up bravely to face the wind.

And the magistrate came from his home, not dressed in his embroidered gown, but in a long black dress like a monk, and rang the bell that brought the people to the church, on the floor of which the snow lay drifted, and the pale priest read the service for the dead while the congregation wept.

But the madness was gone. The blasphemers blasphemed no more. And the dead were buried on the hillside under one great white cross. Nature was once more lovely. The doors and shutters were no longer sealed and the foresters drove by with their loads.

And the magistrate, "who had never liked boys," said to Wolf: "Thou shalt be my son if thou wilt. For I have none now excepting those who lie under the snow. For I had said to myself, I will curse God and die, when I heard thy voice, like one from heaven, and I prayed for pardon. Come, and I will give thee a new mother, who shall fold thee to her breast, and put thee in the empty little chair by the chimney. And when thou art grown thou shalt have that which I would have given to my own flesh. Come."

And he embraced him, weeping. Then they went together through the white fields to the house where the magistrate lived, and as they approached Wolf saw a face at the window watching for him. It was the good frau. And for the first time since his mother died, he wept, and with the tears that fell from his eyes, there fell from his heart a dreadful burden that was worse than death to bear, and though he mourned, he no more felt fear or hate.

The Dead Letter

Very dark days came to Bertha Heuson — dark days will come now and then, even when one is very young. Bertha Heuson was not quite eleven. Her trouble began one day in November. Bertha always remembered how those sharp raindrops cut her as she walked to school that morning, and how brown the Common looked, with its wind–stricken grass and its desolate pools of water.

She carried her luncheon in a little box, not intending to go home at noontime through the bitter rain; and she was just untying the strings that held the cover on, when a boy burst into the class–room where the girls sat cosily about, eating and chatting. He was pale, and his teeth chattered with cold and excitement.

"Bertha! Bertha Heuson!" he cried. "Your pa's been killed. At the depot 'twas. He's dead already, an' your ma wants you!"

"Hush! hush!" whispered the awed girls to him.

"Well!" said the boy, sullenly, "I was sent to tell 'er, an' she might 's well know it now.

Bertha remembered afterwards that she tied the string back on the box, and made a neat bow of it, and that she put on all her things carefully before she went out in the storm. She did not go back to school again. After the sad days which followed, her mother, who had always been ailing, fell ill. The servant they had was sent away because they were not able to keep her, and Bertha did her best with the work. He had been a doctor—Bertha's father—in a little town where there were few to be ill at any time and where the fees were not large. The modest home where they lived was only half paid for. There was nothing laid by for this "rainy day" which had come upon them so unexpectedly. But there was a bit of a pension that the father had received for serving in the army, and this his disheartened wife and brave little daughter tried to live upon.

"You just shut your eyes and try to play we're rich, and let me manage, Mammakins," Bertha used to say. "I'll buy all the things, and take great pains to have them cheap. 'Spose we have lots of soup. I've always heard that soup was cheap, and it's easy to make." Mamma laughed; but it was hard enough to be cheerful, for there was no time for much else besides work. Baking, ironing, sweeping, bed–making, dish–washing, take a deal of time, especially when one is not yet eleven. She tried to study a little evenings, and she did make headway in her reading; but the arithmetic seemed very dull, and the grammar and geography were harder than ever before, which is saying a good deal.

But things went on after a fashion till the spring came. Bertha was getting happy in spite of herself. The sun shone so brightly, her mother was getting better, the trees were Putting forth their leaves, and—well, in the springtime it is hard enough not to be happy. But one day there came a notice that the mortgage on the little place was soon to fall due. Bertha's mother seemed to have forgotten all about it, and she looked dazed and scared after she had read the letter, which she handed over to Bertha as if she some way expected her to straighten matters out.

"Well," said Bertha. "I never knew about this."

"I'm sure I had forgotten about it," said Bertha's mother; and she buried her face in her hands and sobbed.

"It seems as if we might have been preparing for it some way," said Bertha, vaguely.

"What a child you are, Bertha!" her mother returned peevishly. "What could we have done?"

"I suppose we will be turned out of the house if we don't pay it."

Her mother fell to crying harder than before. "We'll have to go to the poorhouse, for all I see," she said.

"Well," returned Bertha, indignantly, "I don't see it; I can't imagine myself in the poorhouse. Really, I'd just starve first. But then there are ever so many good people in the world, and I'm sure some one will help us out."

"Oh, you're nothing but a baby, Bertha," said her mother, "and you're so impractical;" which was rather a funny thing for Bertha's mother to say, because she was a babyish little woman herself, who had never done anything but just love people. Bertha combed her mother's hair till she fell asleep, and then she sat down by the window, where the fresh, bitter scent of the new–blown willows came, and thought.

"The only person I know of that could be expected to help us," said she to herself, "is Cousin Ben Armstrong. Mamma says he's no blood relation, but he always called me cousin, and he's awful rich and owns two carriage factories. If he would just lend us the money I think I might pay it up sometime. Why, only last week I got twenty–five cents for darning a lot of stockings for Mrs. Bridgman. She says she can't bear to darn. Any Way, I'm going to write and see what Cousin Ben Armstrong says."

And so, as her mother still slept, the little daughter sat right down and wrote: Haversham, Ohio, February 20, 1886.

DEAR COUSIN BEN ARMSTRONG: I suppose it is very easy for gentlemen to forget little girls, especially those who are not related to them. But you used to be kind to me, and so perhaps you remember me. I think we are apt to remember people we have been kind to quite as much as those who have been kind, don't you? I am Doctor Heuson's daughter Bertha; and I suppose you have heard that he is dead—my dear papa. That happened last fall; and since then mamma has always been sick, and I have been taking care of her and doing all the work. We have lived on the pension papa got—you see we don't need very much to eat, and I pick up lots of loose wood in the clearing, and clothes last if one is careful. I think we should have got along some way if it had not been for the mortgage. We did not know about it—that is, I did not know, and mamma had forgotten. You see she is only a poor little mamma and not used to business, and she is afraid of strangers; and then she is apt to have a backache. It could not be expected that she would remember about a mortgage.

If we lose our home I don't know what we will do. I'm afraid it might kill mamma. Of course it won't matter so much about me, for I guess I can stand almost anything. The mortgage will be due in sixty days, and it is for $500. I can't begin to tell you how we both love our little home. It seems as if it was all there was left of papa—he made it all, you know, and was so proud of it!

I don't know any one else in the world to ask to lend me the money. If you could do it, I would try to work at something and pay you up. Maybe I could pay a little every Year; and if I live long enough I would get it all done. I hope you will help us for papa's sake. I know $500 is a terrible sum, but I am an honest girl, and I will truly pay you back. Your little cousin,

BERTHA HEUSON.

At the left–hand corner, after the signature, she put, "To Mr. Ben Armstrong, from Bertha Heuson, Haversham, Ohio," which gave the whole a business-–ike look, she said to herself. She did not wish her mamma to know of it, and she tried hard to think of Cousin Ben's address, but was not certain if she had it correctly. It was Beardstown—she knew the name of the place, but for her life she could not remember the State. At last she concluded that it was in New York, and so addressed the envelope. Then she mailed it, and never told her mother a word about it. The days came and went. The little mother spent most of the time in crying or pleating muslin ruffles on a knife. She didn't seem to have the heart for any other employment.

"We may have to go without bread, but we'll never go without fresh ruffles for the necks of our dresses while you live, will we?" Bertha used to say laughingly. Still the days passed.

"The time will soon be up," Bertha would whisper to herself, "and then if the money is not paid we must go, and where? Oh, papa, papa, where will we go? Why will no one help your little daughter?"

---

Down at Washington, in the Dead Letter Department, a busy clerk, hurrying through letter after letter, came upon one addressed to "Mr. Ben Armstrong, Beardstown, New York." The envelope bore several official stamps, one of which stated that there was no such postoffice in the State of New York. The clerk tore open the letter, and glancing his eye down in search of a possible address, it was caught by a word and coaxed some way to read all the letter, written in the prim school–girl hand. He sat for a moment, though he was busy, with the letter in his hand; then he laid it aside by itself, and winked hard to make himself think there was not a tear in his eye.

At last a day came when Bertha gave up hope.

"People have hard hearts," she cried fiercely to herself. "One might as well be a cannibal as anything else. We are all heathens, I think. I'm sure the best thing mamma and I can do is to die—if we only knew how."

The spring sun was setting when she walked down the quiet road that led to Main street and on to the postoffice. Her clean gingham dress swished softly about her as she walked, and she fell to listening to it in an idle way. She had thought and feared and hoped till she could do so no more.

"I don't think I'm living," she sighed; "I'm just staying alive, like a caterpillar or any other stupid thing." A group of men stood about the door of the postoffice. "There goes poor Heuson's girl," she heard one say.

"Oh, yes," thought she, "it's very easy to pity me; but we might starve and not one of you would ever know it!" She made herself very tall as she walked up to the little "delivery window." Her voice was quite crushing as she said to the clerk: "I don't suppose there are any letters for me."

"Well, now," returned the clerk with a grin, "what if there should be, eh?"

"Then," said Bertha, trying to continue her distant tone and keep the glad tremble out, "then I would like them."

"It ain't 'them,' it's 'it,' " the clerk rejoined smartly, and handed her a large corn–colored envelope. It looked odd. It wasn't at all Bertha's idea of the letter Cousin Ben Armstrong would write. It was addressed to her, however, and in the corner was printed "Official Business—Postal Service of the U. S. Dead Letter Department." She found a quiet nook in the room and opened the envelope. First she was astonished to discover her letter to Cousin Ben, and an official explanation of its non–delivery. Then she opened a sheet of note paper and read: Washington, D. C., April 2, 1886.

MISS BERTHA HEUSON: The enclosed explanation will tell why your letter was not delivered. Your note has been read by nearly every one in the Postoffce Department and by several in other departments of the government.

I send you in the name of the clerks of this department a check for $500, with which we hope you will be able to pay off your mortgage.

Respectfully, M. MCCORMICK.

She didn't understand it all at the first reading, nor the second. But that night, after she had tucked her mother in bed, wound up the clock, and locked the doors, she knelt down by her own little cot with the precious check clasped in her hand, and cried, "I must be forgiven, dear God. Hearts are not so hard after all."

The Wooing of Fan Tod

Fan Tod, the daintiest damsel that ever left a Japanese curio–shop for an artist's studio, was in a terrible fright.

She had been left dangling through the thumb–hole of a palette, and try hard as she might she could get neither one way nor the other. She had certain friends whom she might have called to help her, but she was a vain little thing and could not bear to be seen in such a shocking position. She really thought she would die of the cramps, and was making up her mind to think over all the bad things she had done in the course of her life, when Erastus, the manikin, came out from behind an easel.

Erastus seemed a trifle tired, having posed all day as a dying gladiator, and he stretched himself out upon a rug before the grate to ease his weary limbs. He had just fallen into a gentle doze, when he was aroused by a sigh of anguish, which Fan Tod could no longer repress. Being naturally a nervous manikin, not to say a kind–hearted one, he sprang to his feet and looked wildly about him for the source of this startling sound. Now, Fan Tod seemed to Erastus the loveliest creature he had ever seen, and he could have gazed into her dark almond eyes, or lain at her tiny feet forever, had fate permitted. But instead he led a fevered and unhappy life. He would sometimes be obliged to pose all the morning as Mercury with one leg raised very high in the air and arms outstretched, and just as he was on the point of fainting from exhaustion he would be dressed up and made to stand all afternoon as Napoleon crossing the Alps, and perhaps be obliged to end the trying day by figuring as a diver in the act of taking a "header." But whatever he was made to do he dreamed always of the beautiful Fan Tod, with her coral lips and her raven hair. So when he found that the curdling sigh came from this high–bred and hitherto happy lady he rushed madly to where she dangled, feet downward, and after a few fruitless leaps into the air he was able to seize the tips of her rosy toes.

"My dearest Fan Tod," he gasped, tugging wildly at her, till her arms flew straight up into the air and were in great danger of being broken off at the joints, "you shall be saved!" And saved she was, though sadly ruffled both in skirts and temper. Fan Tod had always treated Erastus quite coldly, not because she did not care for him, but because she had been taught that this was the proper thing to do. So now she drew herself up and put on such a grand air when she thanked him that poor Erastus felt as if he had done her an injury instead of a favor. This conduct on the part of Fan Tod was viewed with fierce delight by the octopus. Erastus held him in such contempt that he referred to him merely as a devil fish, which dwelt upon the crimson Jap lantern. His huge eyes almost started out of his head with rapture at seeing the devoted Erastus so snubbed.

"Ha! ha!" he chuckled deep in his throat. That base, wooden manikin shall never have my pearl, Fan Tod!" What then was his dismay at seeing Fan Tod suddenly break into the most friendly smile, and smoothing down her skirts, say, coyly:

"Really, Mr. Erastus, you are very good indeed. I did think I was about to die (two Japanese tears came into her eyes) and my sawdust ran cold with fear. I am afraid you must have thought me unthankful at first, but really—"

Erastus, almost bursting with happiness, said that he could never think her ungrateful, that he had done nothing; and he was about to add that he hoped he would be able to help her out of many troubles, but it occurred to him that this was not quite what he intended to say, and he blushed red with shame at the mistake he had so nearly made. Fan Tod, being a lady of quality, knew how to be very polite when she wished, and she said in a kind voice:

"I hear you have had your picture taken as the dying gladiator. I should be greatly pleased to look at it."

The octopus felt his jelly beginning to quiver with rage. His feelers itched to clutch the manikin in their embrace. As for Erastus, he made at least a dozen of his best bows, and taking the sweet Fan Tod by the hand led her with many smiles to a large easel in the corner. He spread out his hands toward the canvas resting upon it. "Behold," he said. Fan Tod gave a scream of rapture and clasped her hands. "Oh, Mr. Erastus," she said, "how perfectly perfect! I should have known it was you anywhere."

"Would you, now?" said Erastus, highly flattered, "but of course you know I am naturally of a more cheerful temper than I seem to be in the picture."

The octopus sneered so that he nearly blew the light out in his lantern.

"It looks quite as much like the stork on the fan," he said to himself. "I thought Fan Tod had more sense. Any one can see that the manikin is nothing but a blockhead, and if it is a figure my lady fair is after, why doesn't she look at me?"

Just here Erastus turned such an admiring glance on Fan Tod that she grew coy again, and bidding him a hasty good night went to dream over his words in the shade of some towering pampas grass. The blissful manikin seemed to tread on air, and it was some time before he could quiet his beating heart or bring himself to retire to slumber. But at last, knowing that sleep would bring him dreams of Fan Tod, he stretched himself once more upon the rug, after covering himself with a paint rag, and fell into a deep sleep. The octopus, seeing this, felt that if he was ever to tell Fan Tod of his love he must do so now. He startled her from her maiden dreams by calling to her hoarsely. Fan Tod whirled about like a little teetotum, with her hands over her ears, she was so frightened.

"Don't be scared, beautiful Miss Fan Tod, " the octopus said with a leer that was meant to be tender; "I will not harm you."

"What have you to say to me?" asked Fan Tod, when she could speak.

"I have a great deal to say to you," replied the octopus in a benevolent tone, thinking what an honor she must feel it to be addressed by a gentleman so high up in the world. "I have loved you, Fan Tod, for many weary weeks. Be mine, and I will raise you to my level. A fire burns within me."

"Yes, I know," said Fan Tod ; "it's the candle."

"Do you mock me?" shrieked the octopus, shaking his feelers at her. "It's that upstart manikin that has taught you to scorn a gentleman of your own nation, proud Fan Tod. But he shall repent it. I will fall on him where he lies and burn his wooden frame into a cinder.

"Oh, no, no, Mr. Octopus!" shrieked Fan Tod, falling upon her knees. "Spare him! Spare him! and I will be yours!" Her cry awoke Erastus, but only in time for him to hear the last four words.

"She is false, " he said, "and I am doomed." A chill spread itself through every grain of his body. He remembered that he had seen a pail of water standing in the far corner of the studio. His mind was filled with deadly resolve.

"Farewell, Fan Tod," he whispered to himself, and walked heroically to where the fateful pail stood in the shadow of a screen. A moment later Ile had climbed up its dizzy side, and poised himself upon the edge. Then, with a cry of anguish, he threw himself into the cruel deep. Fan Tod heard the sickening splash and guessed the truth. She ran, pale and trembling, and climbed—she never knew how—to the top of the pail and leaned over, clinging to the handle for support. The unhappy Erastus had just come to the surface for the second time. Fan Tod grasped him with mad strength. She caught him by the arm, then, losing her balance, fell heavily to the floor with the insensible Erastus. The octopus, in a fever of horror, envy and love swung about till he set himself on fire, and with his feelers writhing, was destroyed in a puff of smoke and flame.

Meanwhile Fan Tod, bruised and trembling, dragged Erastus to the fire, where she bathed his swelling joints in spirits of turpentine until he was so far recovered that he could smile upon her and whisper her name. He sank at last into a quiet sleep, and Fan Tod sat by his side all night, wrapping him in warm paint rags and watching him with tender anxiety. Erastus was allowed to rest all the next day, and in the evening he and Fan Tod were married with great ceremony by the crane on the Japanese fan. A new lantern shed a soft light over their happiness, and from its sides smiled a beautiful company of ladies of quality from Yeddo, who looked with envy on the blushing Fan Tod.

A Breezy Reunion

The Winds had gathered on the eve after the equinox for their yearly celebration. They were a large family, and quite filled the great rooms of their father's house—a troop of noisy, restless children, full of wild pranks and romping mischief. There were the three great boys—Blizzard, Typhoon and Cyclone—and three wild girls—Sirocco, Simoon and Tornado—not to mention the little ones, Gust and Squall, and their shy cousin, Zephyr. Fierce father Boreas Wind, shook his old sides with mirth at their frolics, and gentle mother Wind laughed like the trees on a summer morning. The children danced over the crystal floors, or hid from each other behind the frost curtains that hung at the doors. They ran races through the halls and over the porticoes, which were hung with gay breezes and festoons of hail–drops; or had leaping matches to see which could most nearly touch the stalactites which glittered on the ceiling. The whole house was lighted with the aurora borealis, amid whose shifting lights and shadows they chased each other.

"O!" called little Gust, as she danced down the room in a blue shaft of light, "I don't believe even a moonbeam could catch me."

"I can, though," shouted Blizzard, making a rush at her; "and, as for moonbeams, I never saw one yet I couldn't catch if I tried, and make it run home so fast it would wish it had never bcen born." He caught Gust by the arms and danced her over the glassy floor so hard that her cousin Zephyr begged him to stop.

"What a rude boy you are, Blizzard!" she said, with tears in her blue eyes. "You ought to remember that Gust is only a little thing!"

"Bah," cried Blizzard, "you couldn't shake a raindrop off a rose, Zephyr."

"No," said Zephyr, patting the violets that trimmed her dress. "I wouldn't if I could help it."

Mother Wind smiled at her. "Come here, my dear," she said, and she took her on her lap and stroked her golden hair. "Dear aunt, you are so lovely!" whispered Zephyr. "Your cheeks are like peach–blossoms."

"It's many a peach–blossom I've opened, my dear."

"And your hair," said Zephyr, "is as white as the snow."

"I would rather you had said it was as white as the cotton, for if there is anything I do love to see it is the cotton when I have helped to burst the pod."

At this moment dinner was announced by Cold Blast, the old servant, a man of such brusque manners that even the young Winds stood in fear of him and walked by him very properly into the dining–room, though Simoon could not resist waving her sandal–wood fan under his nose as she passed, the perfume of which always made Cold Blast deathly sick. The table shone with porphyry and crystal and in the center stood a huge chalcedony dish filled with snow–balls and icicles, wreathed about with mistletoe. This is the menu to which the hungry Winds sat down:

MENU.

Little–Neck Calms on Shell.

Gulf Stream Soup.

Boiled French Sleet—42°.

Minced Icicles.     Sliced Snow–Crusts.

Thermometers.     Barometers.

Baked Hail—12° Below.     Baked Snow.

Snowbreads.     Congealed Sauce.

Rime Fritters.

Hoar Frost au Fahrenheit.     Manitoba Fries.

Mercury (boiling points).

Signal Service Salad.     Feathery Snowflakes.

Water à la Hudson Bay

Shiver du Freeze.     Humid Glacier.

All Hail.

Beside each plate lay a bunch of beautiful "red snow," the flower which grows in the white fields of Greenland.

"This is something quite new," said Tornado, as she put her spray in her dark hair. "I'm sure I never thought mamma would get anything else but that everlasting holly."

"We had arbutus one year," Simoon said, with her low laugh. "It did well enough for Zephyr and Gust, but to think of my wearing arbutus was really absurd."

"You hate flowers anyway," said little Gust. "You wither every one you breathe upon." And sure enough the little blossom drooped lifeless on Simoon's bosom.

"It is not my fault," replied Simoon, with a light flashing from her wonderful eyes. "My ways are not your ways. I was made for work that you know nothing about." The table was just being cleared of the soup–plates, and the family leaned back in their chairs, so Simoon rose from her seat, a swarthy, sullen girl dressed in saffron silk. She pulled the faded flower from her dress and flung it on the floor.

Then she sang a wild song:

Ai, ai, ai!
The paths of the desert I know, I know, As none other can.
The sun and the sand I know,
And the slow caravan.
Ai, ai, ai!
The camel tugs at the ropes, I know,
And the jackals cry.
The man has no hopes, I know,
He has seen the sky!
Ai, ai, ai!
The lion is blind with sand I know—
And the vulture sweeps.
At distant Ispahan, I know,
A woman weeps.
Ai, ai, ai!

Typhoon, who was Simoon's twin brother, looked at her proudly, and said, after the others had praised her effort:

"I think, my dear sister, that you and I are more alike than any of the rest of the family."

"But Typhoon's work has been peculiar, and different from the rest," remarked Father Boreas Wind. "There was nothing that he seemed really fitted for except navigation, and I flatter myself I have given him a thorough education in it."

"I am very grateful, I'm sure," Typhoon replied modestly, "but I wish I might get out of those Asiatic seas. I know them by heart now. I have always had a fancy for Massachusetts Bay and the rest of the New England coast."

Father Wind shook his head. "Squall can attend to that nicely," he said.

"Poor Squall," said his mother, "he seems such a baby to me yet."

Here Gust broke in with, "O, mamma! Squall is blowing on my thermometers and making them so cold and hard I can't eat them."

"I wouldn't be a cry–baby," said Squall, who was nothing if not one himself. "You always were a hateful thing, Gust."

Gust did not seem to be a particularly ill–natured child for a Wind, as she said:

"I don't mean to be, honestly, Squall, but I do like a good frolic." Her eyes twinkled roguishly, and as the course was being cleared away she repeated these lines in a mischievous voice:

Up and down the dusty village street I dance,
And the children are a-running for their hats!
All among the boys and girls at play I prance,
And the children are a-running for their hats!
Now I blow and bluster at the blacksmith's flame,
And the sparks are a-flying up the flue!
Now I tease and hurry up the smith's dour dame,
And the sparks are a–flying up the flue!
Now I turn the silver poplar pale with fright,
And the leaves are a–raining to the ground!
Now I put the pretty puffins of the cottonwood to flight,
And the leaves are a–raining to the ground!

Father Wind leaned over to pat his saucy little daughter on the head. "You'll never be the girl your sister Simoon is," he said, "but you're no disgrace to your family, Gust."

"I'd like to take Gust up to Manitoba with me this winter," remarked Blizzard, "and give her a chance to form her manners a little."

Sirocco shivered. "You would turn the child into an iceberg, Blizzard," she laughed.

"I'm sure I never met such a cold, formal fellow as you are growing. You become worse every year."

Blizzard had eyes the color of the northern lights when they burn blue on an iceberg. They twinkled now with humor. "So they tell me, everywhere," he said.

"Blizzard knows how to hold his own," remarked Mother Wind with one of her kind glances.

"I've determined to hold my own in one matter at least," returned Blizzard, as he brushed a crumb off his snow–white garments, "and it is in a matter that so powerful a family as we should be much ashamed to have neglected so long."

"Blizzard," cried Cyclone, shaking his burly head, "if it is anything that touches the honor of this family let us hear it. I am ready to avenge all insults."

"That is exactly what we are called upon to do," Blizzard returned, "and that we may more fully understand our task I have drawn up the following." He arose and read what follows from a sheet of ice bearing the Wind monogram:

WHEREAS, For many years poets, elocutionists and others have, through ignorance or malice, written or pronounced the name of this family as if it rhymed with "mind," therefore be it

Resolved, That in the future whenever such persons shall be guilty of this offense they shall be visited by such retribution as Father Wind shall decide upon.

Cyclone brought his fist down so hard upon the table that it shattered a crystal glass. "It shall be done," he said. He looked so huge and terrible that he quite frightened the gentle Zephyr who sat beside him. She laid her little hand on his arm. "I am sure, Cyclone," she protested in her pleasant voice, "no one, has more cause to complain than I have. I really suppose I've suffered more from bad poetry than any of you. At last I determined to write some verses myself. I thought I would send them to Uncle Kasmin just to let him know what sort of a girl I was. He hasn't seen me since I was a baby."

"What are your verses about, child? Let us hear them," said Father Wind.

"I think," said Zephyr timidly, "I could sing them if I had the harp." So Scud, the brisk young valet of Father Wind, was instructed to bring the Aeolian harp from the room where the Wind instruments were kept. He flew from the room—for he always flew at a command from the Winds—and in a moment he returned with the great harp, which gave forth beautiful sounds as he carried it into the room.

The dessert was being brought to the table, and while the swift, silent servants glided about, the golden–haired Zephyr stood beside the harp and in a voice as tender as a bird's, sang these words:

I rise at dawn with eager zest,
To buffet rosy sails at sea;
Then haste for land, to be a guest,
At clover banquets with the bee.
I shake the lily–studded stream,
And pelt the merry flowers with rain;
Among the daisies rest and dream—
Then jump me up and play again.
The laughing perfumes race with me,
All in and out beneath the shade,
And where the poppy perfumes be,
My lovely lily hangs her head.
I puff the down from thistle pods
To make a bed for cousin Lark,
And steal the wealth from goldenrods
To pay my passage through the dark.
I know what all the night birds say,
And how the children fall asleep;
I know the stars and milky way,
And what the deep calls to the deep.

Tornado bent forward in her chair, and kissed Zephyr warmly, saying: "You are a good, lovely child, cousin Zephyr."

"I wish you would send that song to your Aunt Chinook," said Mother Wind encouragingly. "I'm sure she would enjoy it."

"Give us a song, Tornado," suggested Father Wind, but the willful girl shook her head, and in spite of all their urging she only turned to Cyclone and said with a smile:

"Cyclone, here, has a ringing song you will all like. I'm sure you are tired of my voice." And so at last Cyclone arose with a rush of air and sang the following:

One must have room for the dancing,
Though he has to clear a space.
Even the cities must be swept out
To give a dancer place.
Lift the rivers out of their beds—
(Rivers get in the path!)
Let the forests and fields beware
A reckless dancer's wrath!
The prairies are not wide enough—
Salute the corners and chassez.
The plains, they coop a dancer up—
Swing partners, waltz—and away!

"Well, well, well," said Father Boreas Wind, "how Cyclone does remind me of myself in my younger days! He is just about the age I was when I started on a tour through South America. It was at that time that I met with my wonderful experience in the Andes—

All the other Winds looked at each other in dismay, for this was a very long and sleepy story, which they had heard on every equinoctial celebration from their infancy. They had just given themselves up to politely hiding their misery when Cold Blast rushed in at the door and announced with great excitement the arrival of a messenger from the Signal Service office.

"Bring him in," cried Father Wind, and all the family arose from their places with anxiety to hear what word the messenger had brought.

What was their astonishment when he entered to see him whirling about and about in the most distracted manner. "What in the name of Aeolus," cried Typhoon, "is this?"

"Mercy on us," said Squall, "I believe it's Weather Vane! What in the world is the matter with you, Vane?"

"The poor child doesn't know which way to turn," said Mother Wind, compassionately. "There are so many of us here." Blizzard seized the Weather Vane by the shoulders and held him fast, and the breathless messenger handed a sealed packet to Father Boreas.

"I'm afraid our party is going to be broken up," remarked the latter as he tore open the packet. "Just as I thought!" he exclaimed when he had examined it, and he read the following:

Signal Service Office, Washington, D. C. — TO THE WINDS, AEOLIAN CAVE: Tornado to Western Kansas; Cyclone, Northern Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia; Blizzard, 12 degrees below, Manitoba; Squall, the Atlantic seaboard; Gust and Zephyr for the Lower Lake region.

OLD PROBABILITIES.

The company prepared to disperse with the dispatch of the Winds. They kissed Mother Wind hastily and were gone, leaving Simoon, Sirocco and Typhoon to a more leisurely leave–taking.

"Well," sighed Mother Wind, regretfully, "we may as well go to sleep. Cold Blast see that the house is closed up. It seems to me, father, that our poor children are being terribly overworked lately. I do hope we will have a new signal service officer soon," and with an arm around Sirocco the beautiful old Mother Wind rustled out of the room, leaving Father Wind in the deserted banquet hall singing, "Cease Rude Boreas" to his own accompaniment on the harp. As for the twins, Simoon and Typhoon, they danced about the portico in the moonlight, and sang strange songs together.

As they danced the night deepened and the moon sank. Then the aurora within the palace turned crimson, and all the walls glowed as if they had been builded of rubies. Amid this roseate splendor such of the Winds as were left at home went to their beds and their dreams.

Tommy, the Beach Cat

Tommy, the beach cat, sat watching a rat, and Barbara sat watching Tommy. Barbara was very tired, and Tommy sat so long that as Barbara watched him she found herself nodding, and the lids kept dropping over her round, blue eyes.

Barbara had named Tommy "the beach cat" herself, because he had been found wandering on the beach. They were always together, upstairs and down, and half a dozen times a day they were given their milk together. The house was very still on this particular day, for mamma and the rest had gone upstairs and forgotten Barbara, who sat alone in the kitchen in her little red chair. Tommy, the beach cat, sat quietly and stiffly beside her, and both of them were quite startled when a rat suddenly whisked into the room. It was a very small rat indeed, and it would have given a peck of cheese to have been able to get out of that room without being noticed. But that was absurd to hope for, for very little escaped those two friends, Barbara and Tommy, the beach cat. There was a brisk exchange of challenges between the scared rat and the cat, whose whiskers were twitching with enjoyment, but after a few seconds of brilliant racing and darting they both sat so still that Barbara was on the very verge of rolling out of her chair on the floor, when the rat made a dart.

Tommy bolted after. The rat vanished through a hole. Barbara feared Tommy would follow and be lost to her, perhaps forever, so she gave a rush for Tommy and caught him by the tail just as he reached the hole. To the surprise of Barbara, this hole opened wide enough to let both her and the beach cat through, and the first thing she knew, after being dragged through a very dark and dusty place, was when she found herself in a neat but curious little room which she had never seen before.

"My dear friend," said Tommy, the beach cat, with great politeness, gravely taking Barbara by the hand. "I wish you to stay with me for a long time and lead a cat and dog life. For a long time I have been able to lead a boy and girl life through your kindness, and now I wish you to see what our life is like."

"But," said Barbara, "I have always heard that a cat and dog life was very unpleasant."

"No, indeed," Tommy replied, smiling in a lofty manner, "but you shall see for yourself. Say no more." Barbara said no more, but sunk on a soft rug that lay near, to try and decide how it was that so sudden a change had come over Tommy, and why it was that he was able to talk—a thing which he had never done before.

"I have long wanted to tell you, Barbara, that I am a cat of high descent," went on Tommy, stroking his whiskers in a slow and elegant manner. "On one side I am descended from Puss in Boots, who, you will remember, was so intimately associated with the proud Marquis of Carrabas; on the other side was the cat of old Dame Trot—one of the most famous cats of history. That cat which helped Whittington, Lord Mayor of London, to his fortunes was also an ancestor of mine."

"Dear, dear," cried Barbara. "I hope you'll excuse me for taking hold of your tail in that rude way."

"Don't mention it," Tommy said, with a wave of his paws. "I wouldn't think of laying anything like that up against a friend."

"Did you ever know the cat o' nine tails?" asked Barbara.

Tommy rubbed his paws in great amusement.

"That, my dear Barbara," said he, "is quite a different breed of cats!"

Just then the door was flung open and a host of cats and dogs rushed in.

"Why," cried Tommy, cheerfully, "it's fairly raining cats and dogs. Take rugs, friends, and sit down!"

But his visitors were in a great state of excitement and would pay no attention to him.

"It's awful!" cried one cat, with flashing green eyes.

Another cat arched her back and hissed with rage, and it took three of her friends to quiet her again.

"What is the matter?" said Tommy. "Don't you see there is a lady present? You should be polite."

"Haven't you heard?" all of his friends said together. "Why, a new law has been passed forbidding cats to look at kings!"

A yowl of rage went up from all the cats. Tommy tore a clawful of his maltese fur from above his ear.

"What a catastrophe!" he cried.

Barbara ran to him and threw her arms around his neck.

"It is a right we have never before been denied," sighed he.

"Yes," remarked a dirty little spitz, "even a cat could look at a king."

"But now," added a stylish black–and–tan, "they are to be blindfolded whenever a king passes."

"And the king passes to–morrow!" chorused the cats.

There was a perfect silence in the room for several minutes; then Tommy, the beach cat, said:

"Barbara, do you happen to have a black ribbon in your pocket?"

Barbara fumbled in the pocket of her little plain dress for some time, and at last found one, which, at a motion from Tommy, she tied around his neck, in the place of the pink one he had been wearing.

"But come," said Tommy, drying his eyes on the corner of Barbara's apron, "let us be as merry as we can. Friends, you shall stay to supper, and then we will take a walk in the graveyard."

Supper was laid by some neat little cats with white caps above their pink ears and white aprons protecting their yellow fur. Beautiful stripes ran from their ears to their tails, and Barbara couldn't help noticing that these were matched a great deal better than the plaids in her dress were.

"These cats must have a good dressmaker," said she to herself.

"Allow me," said Tommy, and he offered his arm to Barbara, and led her to the head of the table.

"Cats sup early," remarked a pert spaniel, but two of his friends seized him instantly and put him out of the door.

Tommy started to say "dog gone," but he crammed his napkin into his mouth to check himself. The covers were now removed from the dishes, and Barbara was amazed to see that they held nothing but hot soap.

"Why, do cats eat hot soap?" she cried, with a wry face.

All the cats fell to laughing as if they would die.

"People have been asking that for the last one hundred and fifty years," a huge black cat replied, "and we have never told them yet, and we never will."

All the cats looked surprised at his rudeness, and the beach cat said: "Sir, this lady is my friend." So the black cat begged her pardon and told the waiter cats to serve her with a bowl of milk and some crackers.

As soon as dinner was finished the table was cleared, while Barbara played cat's–cradle with a beautiful little white puss with pink eyes and a fur as soft as silk. Every little while this pussy would get up and shake hands with Barbara, bowing very low as he did so, and then he would take his seat again and go on playing their game.

At last the cats and dogs were ready to take a walk to the cemetery, and Barbara and Tommy led the company. Barbara was very, very small for a girl and Tommy very large for a cat, so, as they walked together, they were nearly the same height.

"I always take a walk in the cemetery when I can," remarked Tommy; "it soothes me so."

"Rubs your fur the right way, so to speak," broke in the black cat.

When they got to the cemetery Barbara saw that it was very full. The headstones stretched in long rows down the yard.

"All killed by care," said Tommy, pensively. "Care is fatal to cats."

"And have none died from anything else?" the little girl asked, sadly.

"Well," said Tommy, "I hope you won't feel hurt if I tell you that boys and girls are responsible for a good many of their deaths."

"You don't mean that the tin cans we tie to their tails hurt them, do you?" Barbara asked, blushing very red.

"No, not that. Worse than that. They never take a swing on a summer afternoon that they don't let the old cat die. I have seen six or eight little children do it one after another, and I have sat weeping to think how many of my dear friends were perishing."

"But," said Barbara, getting closer to the beach cat, "I don't see how that could hurt your friends. We don't mean anything, you know."

"The only thing about it is that it is necessary to kill each of us nine times before we really stay dead. Otherwise this graveyard would be overflowing."

"What do you do the first eight times you are killed?" inquired the little daughter, stopping to pull up her stocking.

"We fall into a state of catalepsy and are laid on a catafalque for nine days. At the end of that time we feel as well as ever. But each life is a little better than the last, and at the close of the ninth we go where all cats go. The cats that scratch and caterwaul and commit all those crimes in the category of cat crimes are in only the first or second stage of life."

Barbara yawned as wide as her mouth would let her.

"I think I had better be going back to my mamma's home," she said. "She might be getting lonesome."

"I should like you to stay, and have a sail on our catamaran," said the beach cat, politely.

"I should be very glad to," Barbara replied, "but I think there is hardly time."

"Or perhaps you would like to see us rake chestnuts out of the fire."

"You are very kind," said the daughter, with a bow, "but I must go back to the nursery,"

So they walked back through a lovely forest of catnip, which was all in bloom and filled the air with delightful perfume. Barbara said good–bye to all the cats and dogs, and invited them to spend a day with her in boy and girl land. Just then she felt a dreadful pain in the head. She screamed at the top of her voice and then she heard mamma saying:

"Why, this poor child has been dozing and has fallen right out of her chair on the floor! Poor little thing! Let mamma rock you to sleep again:

Bylow, bylow, winsome maiden,
Shut your eyes.
On the day world, sorrow laden,
Close them, sweet,
Go to dreamland, bylow, bylow,
In this wise.
There no grief or pain or sorrow
Shall you meet."
And Other Girls and Boys, 1899,

XML: ep.nov.ia.xml