THE SPEAKER

n
teaching public speaking the final purpose must be to train the
will. Without this faculty in control all else comes to nothing.
Exercises may be given for articulation, but without a determined
purpose to speak distinctly little good will result. The teacher may
spend himself in an effort to inspire and enthuse the student, but
this is futile unless the student comes to a resolution to attain
those excellencies of which the teacher has spoken. That a student
may become self-reliant is the chief business of the teacher. To
suggest such vital things in a way that the student will feel
impelled to work them out for himself, this is the art in all
teaching. To tell a student all there is to know about a subject, or
to present what is said in such a way that the student thinks there
is nothing more to be said, is to dwarf and stultify the mind. The
inclination of most students is to depend upon the teacher with a
helplessness that is as enervating as it is pitiable. Too many
teachers, flattered by this attitude or possessed of a sentimental
sympathy, encourage it. Thought, discretion, and courage are
required to put a student on his own resources and compel him to
stay there until he has acquired self-mastery.

Public speaking cannot be exchanged for so much time or money. It
cannot be bought or sold; it comes, if it comes at all, as the
result of a wisely-directed determination. The teacher’s part is to
exalt, enthuse, stimulate. He must criticise, certainly, but this is
generally overdone. Like some teachers of English who can never
overlook a misplaced comma, whose idea of English seems to be to
spell and to punctuate correctly, there are teachers of public

[Pg 2]
speaking whose critical eye never sees farther than gesture,
articulation, and emphasis. With this attitude toward their work,
they become fault-finders rather than teachers. They nag, harrass,
and suppress. The business of the teacher is to make the student see
visions of beauty, truth and love, to open up to him these mighty
fields that he may go in and possess them. To implant a yearning, an
unquenchable, all-consuming desire to comprehend and to express the
emotions of which his teacher enables him to get glimpses.

Exercises? Yes, all the student can stand without becoming a drone.
Criticism? Yes, but no quibbling, no nagging. Criticism is something
more than fault-finding. The teacher exalts his profession, ennobles
his art, and begets consideration for himself when he maintains the
highest standards for himself and for his students.

Learning to speak well is, like forming character, a matter of
self-discipline and self-culture. A good voice is a good habit;
distinct articulation is a good habit; graceful and effective
gestures are a good habit. Like all good habits, these are formed by
a constant exercise of the will. The teacher’s part is to get the
students to hear his own voice, to observe his own gestures, and
listen to his own articulation. These things cannot be accomplished
over night, and if attempted all at once may make the student too
self-conscious; certainly this condition will result if his faults
are continually insisted upon. The teacher’s great opportunity is to
enable the student to know himself, and to see that he is determined
to develop his best self.

Sincerity in art! One sometimes doubts whether it exists. Take the
special field of art with which the readers of this magazine are
especially concerned. How many depend upon tricks to get their
effects! How many struggle mightily to gain a laugh or “a hand,”
neglecting the theme, the message, the

[Pg 3]
spirit of that which they
are professing to interpret. If that which we read is worth while,
if it has anything vital in it, the effect will be stronger if the
skill and personality of the speaker are kept in the background, and
the audience is brought face to face with the spirit of that which
has been embodied in the lines. As some readers go through their
lines they seem to be saying, Listen to my voice, observe my
graceful gestures; isn’t this a pretty gown I have? I’ll win you
with my smile. Most audiences are good-natured, and enjoy to the
full such small vanities; moreover, we all like to see winning
smiles, beautiful gowns, and graceful gestures; but it is a pitiable
misnomer to call such exhibitions reading. But the more subtle forms
of insincerity in this art are even more prevalent. To exaggerate
some form of emphasis, to exaggerate a gesture or facial expression,
to wrest a passage from its meaning, these, and many other devices
for forcing immediate approval from an audience, are grossly
insincere. There is still a broader plan on which our sincerity must
be judged. To present this effectively I quote at length from Bliss
Carmen’s recent book, “The Poetry of Life.” The essay sets a high
standard, but by no other can enduring work be done. The fact that a
reader has many engagements, or that a teacher has many pupils is no
assurance of sincerity or the high grade of his work. “Munsey’s
Magazine” has a larger circulation than “The Atlantic Monthly”; the
one, “hack stuff,” to be suffered only a few minutes while waiting
for a train; the other is literature. But, to quote from Bliss
Carmen. He is discussing the poetry of life, but the same general
principles apply to all art:

“As for sincerity, the poetry of life need not always be solemn, any
more than life itself need not always be sober. It may be gay,
witty, humorous, satirical, disbelieving, farcical, even broad and
reckless, since life is all these; but it must never be insincere.
Insincerity, which is not always one of the greatest

[Pg 4]
sins of the
moral universe, becomes in the world of art an offence of the first
magnitude. Insincerity in life may be mean, despicable, and indicate
a petty nature; but in art insincerity is death. A strong man may
lie upon occasion, and make restitution and be forgiven, but for the
artist who lies there is hardly any reparation possible, and his
forgiveness is much more difficult. Art, being the embodiment of the
artist’s ideal, is truly the corporeal substance of his spiritual
self; and that there should be any falsehood in it, any deliberate
failure to present him faithfully, it is as monstrous and unnatural
as it would be for a man to disavow his own flesh and bones. Here we
are every one of us going through life committed and attached to our
bodies; for all that we do we are held responsible; if we misbehave,
the world will take it out of our hide. But here is our friend, the
artist, committing his spiritual energy to his art, to an embodiment
outside himself, and escaping down a by-path from all the
consequences—what shall be said of him? The insincere artist is as
much beyond the pale of human sympathy as the murderer. Morally he
is a felon.

“There is no excuse for him, either. There was no call for him to
make a liar of himself, other than the most sordid of reasons, the
little gain, the jingling reward of gold. For no man would ever be
insincere in his art, except for pay, except to cater to some other
taste than his own, and to win approval and favor by sycophancy. If
he were assured of his competency in the world, and placed beyond
the reach of necessitous want, how would it ever occur to him to
create an insincere art? Art is so simple, so spontaneous, so
dependent on the disingenuous emotion, that it can never be
insincere, unless violence is done to all laws of nature and of
spirit. Since art arises from the sacramental blending of the inward
spirit with the outward form, any touch of insincerity in it assumes
the nature of a horrible crime, a pitiable revolt against the order
and eternity of the universe.

“It is not necessary, as I say, for art to be solemn and wholly
serious-minded in order to be sincere. Comedy is quite sincere. Yet
it is easy to usurp her name and play the fool for pennies, with
never a ray of appreciation of her true character. Sincerity, then,
is not the least averse to fun; it only requires that the fun shall
be genuine and come from the heart, as it requires that every note
of whatever sort shall be genuine and spring from the real
personality of the writer.”

On Time

BY JOHN MILTON.

The Knight in the Wood

BY E. LEICESTER WARREN.

(Lord de Tabley.)

“A Little Feminine Casabianca”[A]

BY GEORGE MADDEN MARTIN.

(Arranged by Maude Herndon and Grace Kellam.)

he
Primer Class according to the degree of its precocity was
divided in three sections. Emmy Lou belonged to the third section.
It was the last section, and she was the last one in it, though she
had no idea what a section meant nor why she was in it; and Emmy Lou
went on wondering what it was all about, which never would have been
the case had there been a mother among the elders of the house, for
mothers have a way of understanding these things. But to Emmy Lou
“mother” had come to mean but a memory which faded as it came, a
vague consciousness of encircling arms, of a brooding tender face,
of yearning eyes; and it was only because they told her that Emmy
Lou remembered how mother had gone away South, one winter, to get
well. That they afterward told her it was heaven, in nowise confused
Emmy Lou, because, for aught she knew, South and heaven and much
else might be included in these points of the compass. Ever since
then Emmy Lou had lived with three aunties and an uncle; and papa
had been coming a hundred miles once a month to see her.

But somehow the Primer year wore away; and the close of the first
week of Emmy Lou’s second year at a certain large public school
found her round, chubby self, like a pink-cheeked period, ending the
long line of intermingled little boys and girls making what was
known, twenty-five years ago, as the First Reader Class.

Her heart grew still within her at the slow, awful enunciation of
the Large Lady in black bombazine who reigned over the department of
the First Reader, pointing her morals with a heavy forefinger,
before which Emmy Lou’s eyes lowered with every aspect of conscious
guilt. Nor did Emmy Lou dream that the Large Lady, whose black
bombazine was the visible sign of a loss by death that had made it
necessary for her to enter the school-room to earn a living, was
finding the duties incident to the First Reader almost as strange
and perplexing as Emmy Lou herself.

Emmy Lou from the first day found herself descending steadily to the
foot of the class; and there she remained until the awful day, at
the close of the first week, when the Large Lady, realizing perhaps
that she could no longer ignore such adherence to that lowly
position, made discovery that while to Emmy Lou “d-o-g” might spell
“dog” and “f-r-o-g” might spell “frog,” Emmy Lou could not find
either on a printed page, and further, could not tell wherein they
differed when found for her; that, also, Emmy Lou made her figure 8’s
by adding one uncertain little o to the top of another uncertain
little o; and that while Emmy Lou might copy, in smeary columns,
certain cabalistic signs off the blackboard, she could not point
them off in tens, hundreds, thousands, or read their numerical
values, to save her little life. The Large Lady, sorely perplexed
within herself as to the proper course to be pursued, in the sight
of the fifty-nine other First Readers pointed a condemning
forefinger at the miserable little object standing in front of her
platform; and said, “You will stay after school, Emma Louise, that I
may examine further into your qualifications for this grade.”

Now Emmy Lou had no idea what it meant—”examine further into your
qualifications for this grade.” It might be the form of punishment
in vogue for the chastisement of the members of the First Reader.
But “stay after school” she did understand, and her heart sank, and
her little breast heaved.

It was past the noon recess. At last the bell for dismissal had
rung. The Large Lady, arms folded across her bombazine bosom, had
faced the class, and with awesome solemnity had already enunciated,
“Attention,” and sixty little people had sat up straight, when the
door opened, and a teacher from the floor above came in.

At her whispered confidence, the Large Lady left the room hastily,

[Pg 9]
while the strange teacher with a hurried “one-two-three, march out
quietly, children,” turned, and followed her. And Emmy Lou, left
sitting at her desk, saw through gathering tears the line of First
Readers wind around the room and file out the door, the sound of
their departing footsteps along the bare corridors and down the
echoing stairway coming back like a knell to her sinking heart. Then
class after class from above marched past the door and on its
clattering way, while voices from outside, shrill with the joy of
the release, came up through the open windows in talk, in laughter,
together with the patter of feet on the bricks. Then as these
familiar sounds grew fewer, fainter, farther away, some belated
footsteps went echoing through the building, a door slammed
somewhere—then—silence.

Emmy Lou waited. She wondered how long it would be. There was
watermelon at home for dinner; she had seen it borne in, a great,
striped promise of ripe juicy lusciousness, on the marketman’s
shoulder before she came to school. And here a tear, long gathering,
splashed down the pink cheek.

Still that awesome personage presiding over the fortunes of the
First Reader failed to return. Perhaps this was “the examination
into—into—” Emmy Lou could not remember what—to be left in this
big, bare room with the flies droning and humming in lazy circles up
near the ceiling. The forsaken desks, with a forgotten book or slate
left here and there upon them, the pegs around the wall empty of
hats and bonnets, the unoccupied chair upon the platform—Emmy Lou
gazed at these with a sinking sensation of desolation, while tear
followed tear down her chubby face. And listening to the flies and
the silence, Emmy Lou began to long for even the Bombazine Presence,
and dropping her quivering countenance upon her arms folded upon the
desk she sobbed aloud. But the time was long, and the day was warm,
and the sobs grew slower, and the breath began to come in
long-drawn, quivering sighs, and the next Emmy Lou knew she was
sitting upright, trembling in every limb, and some one coming up the
stairs—she could hear the slow, heavy footfalls, and a moment after
she saw the Man, the Recess Man, the low, black-bearded,
black-browed, scowling Man, with the broom across his shoulder,
reach the hallway, and make toward the open doorway of the First
Reader room. Emmy Lou held her breath, stiffened her little body,
and—waited. But the Man pausing to light his pipe, Emmy Lou, in
the sudden

[Pg 10]
respite thus afforded slid in a trembling heap beneath
the desk, and on hands and knees went crawling across the floor. And
as Uncle Michael came in, a moment after, broom, pan, and
feather-duster in hand, the last fluttering edge of a little pink
dress was disappearing into the depths of the big, empty coal-box,
and its sloping lid was lowering upon a flaxen head and cowering
little figure crouched within. Uncle Michael having put the room to
rights, sweeping and dusting, with many a rheumatic groan in
accompaniment, closed the windows, and going out, drew the door
after him, and, as was his custom, locked it.

Meanwhile, at Emmy Lou’s home the elders wondered. But Emmy Lou did
not come. And by half-past two Aunt Louise, the youngest auntie,
started out to find her. But after searching the neighborhood in
vain, returned home in despair. Then Aunt Cordelia sent the house
boy down-town for Uncle Charlie. Just as Uncle Charlie arrived—and
it was past five o’clock by then—some of the children of the
neighborhood, having found a small boy living some squares off who
confessed to being in the First Reader with Emmy Lou, arrived also,
with the small boy in tow.

“She didn’t know ‘dog’ from ‘frog’ when she saw ’em,” stated the
small boy, with derision of superior ability, “an’ teacher, she told
her to stay after school. She was settin’ there in her desk when
school let out, Emmy Lou was.”

But a big girl of the neighborhood objected. “Her teacher went home
the minute school was out,” she declared. “Isn’t the new lady,
Mrs. Samuels, your teacher?” “Well, her daughter, Lettie, she’s in my
room, and she was sick, and her mother came up to our room and took
her home. Our teacher she went down and dismissed the First
Readers.”

“I don’t care if she did,” retorted the small boy. “I reckon I saw
Emmy Lou settin’ there when we come away.”

The three aunts grew pale and tearful, and wrung their hands in
despair. The small boy from the First Reader, legs apart, hands in
knickerbocker pockets, gazed at the crowd of irresolute elders with
scornful wonder. “What you wanter do is find Uncle Michael; he keeps
the keys. He went past my house a while ago, going home. He lives in
Rose Lane Alley. ‘Taint much outer my way, I’ll take you there.” And
meekly they followed in his footsteps.

It was dark when a motley throng of uncles, aunties, visiting

[Pg 11]
lady, neighbors and children went climbing the cavernous, echoing stairway
of the dark school building behind the toiling figure of the
skeptical Uncle Michael, lantern in hand.

“Ain’t I swept over every inch of this here schoolhouse myself and
carried the trash outten a dust-pan?” grumbled Uncle Michael, with
what inference nobody just then stopped to inquire. Then with the
air of a mistreated, aggrieved person who feels himself a victim, he
paused before a certain door on the second floor, and fitted a key
in its lock. “Here it is then, No. 9, to satisfy the lady,” and he
flung open the door. The light of Uncle Michael’s lantern fell full
upon the wide-eyed, terror-smitten person of Emmy Lou, in her desk,
awaiting, her miserable little heart knew not what horror.

“She—she told me to stay,” sobbed Emmy Lou in Aunt Cordelia’s arms,
“and I stayed; and the Man came, and I hid in the coal-box!”

What He Got Out of It

BY S. E. KISER.

(From the Chicago Record-Herald.)

The Play’s the Thing[B]

BY GEORGE MADDEN MARTIN.

(Arranged by Maude Herndon and Grace Kellam.)

t
was the day of the exhibition. Miss Carrie, teacher of the Third
Reader Class, talked in deep tones—gestures meant sweeps and
circles. Since the coming of Miss Carrie, the Third Reader Class
lived, as it were, in the public eye, for on Fridays books were put
away and the attention given to recitations and company. No other
class had these recitations, and the Third Reader was envied. Its
members were pointed out and gazed upon, until one realized one was
standing in the garish light of fame. The other readers, it seemed,
longed for fame and craved publicity, and so it came about that the
school was to have an exhibition with Miss Carrie’s genius to plan
and engineer the whole. For general material Miss Carrie drew from
the whole school, but the play was for her own class alone.

And this was the day of the exhibition.

Hattie and Sadie and Emmy Lou stood at the gate of the school. They
had spent the morning in rehearsing. At noon they had been sent home
with instructions to return at half-past two. The exhibition would
begin at three.

“Of course,” Miss Carrie had said, “you will not fail to be on
time.” And Miss Carrie had used her deepest tones.

It was not two o’clock, and the three stood at the gate, the first
to return. They were in the same piece. It was “The Play.” In a play
one did more than suit the part.

In the play Hattie and Sadie and Emmy Lou found themselves the
orphaned children of a soldier who had failed to return from the
war. It was a very sad piece. Sadie had to weep, and more than once
Emmy Lou had found tears in her eyes, watching her.

Miss Carrie said Sadie showed histrionic talent. Emmy Lou asked
Hattie about it, who said it meant tears, and Emmy Lou remembered
then how tears came naturally to Sadie.

When Aunt Cordelia heard they must dress to suit the part she came
to see Miss Carrie, and so did the mamma of Sadie and the mamma of
Hattie.

“Dress them in a kind of mild mourning,” Miss Carrie explained, “not
too deep, or it will seem too real, and, as three little sisters,
suppose we dress them alike.”

And now Hattie and Sadie and Emmy Lou stood at the gate ready for
the play. Stiffly immaculate white dresses with beltings of black
sashes, flared jauntily out above spotless white stockings and sober
little slippers, while black-bound Leghorn hats shaded three anxious
little countenances. By the exact center, each held a little
handkerchief, black-bordered.

Hattie and Sadie and Emmy Lou wore each an anxious seriousness of
countenance, but it was a variant seriousness; for as the hour
approached, the solemn importance of the occasion was stealing
brain-ward, and Emmy Lou even began to feel glad she was a part of
The Exhibition, for to have been left out would have been worse even
than the moment of mounting the platform.

“My grown-up brother’s coming,” said Hattie, “an’ my mamma an’
gran’ma an’ the rest.”

“My Aunt Cordelia has invited the visiting lady next door,” said
Emmy Lou.

But it was Sadie’s hour. “Our minister’s coming,” said Sadie.

Emmy Lou’s part was to weep when Sadie wept, and to point a chubby
forefinger skyward when Hattie mentioned the departure from earth of
the soldier parent, and to lower that forefinger footward at Sadie’s
tearful allusion to an untimely grave.

Emmy Lou had but one utterance, and it was brief. She was to advance
one foot, stretch forth a hand and say, in the character of orphan
for whom no asylum was offered, “We know not where we go.” All day,
Emmy Lou had been saying it at intervals of half minutes, for fear
she might forget.

Meanwhile, it yet lacking a moment or so of two o’clock, the
orphaned heroes continued to linger at the gate, awaiting the hour.

“Listen,” said Hattie, “I hear music.”

There was a church across the street. It was a large church with
high steps and a pillared portico, and its doors were open.

“It’s a band, and marching,” said Hattie.

The orphaned children hurried to the curb. A procession was turning
the corner and coming toward them. On either sidewalk crowds of men
and boys accompanied it.

“It’s a funeral,” said Sadie.

Hattie turned with a face of conviction. “I know. It’s that big
general’s funeral; they’re bringing him home to bury him with the
soldiers.”

“We’ll never see a thing for the crowd,” despaired Sadie.

Emmy Lou was gazing. “They’ve got plumes in their hats,” she said.

“Let’s go over on the church steps and see it go by,” said Hattie,
“it’s early.”

The orphaned children hurried across the street. They climbed the
steps. At the top they turned. There were plumes and more, there
were flags and swords, and a band led. But at the church, with
unexpected abruptness, the band halted, turned; it fell apart, and
the procession came through; it came right on through and up the
steps, a line of uniforms and swords on either side from curb to
pillar, and halted.

Aghast, between two glittering files, the orphaned children shrank
into the shadow behind a pillar, while upstreamed from the carriages
below an unending line—bare-headed men and ladies bearing flowers.
Behind, below, about, closing in on every side, crowded people, a
sea of people.

The orphaned children found themselves swept from their hiding by
the crowd and unwillingly jostled forward into prominence.

A frowning man, with a sword in his hand, seemed to be threatening
everybody; his face was red and his voice was big, and he glittered
with many buttons. All at once he caught sight of the orphaned
children and threatened them vehemently.

“Here,” said the frowning man, “right in here,” and he placed them
in line. The orphaned children were appalled, and even in the face
of the man cried out in protest. But the man of the sword did not
hear, for the reason that he did not listen. Instead he was
addressing a large and stout lady immediately behind them.

“Separated from the family in the confusion, the grandchildren
evidently—just see them in, please.”

And suddenly the orphaned children found themselves a part

[Pg 15]
of the procession as grandchildren. The nature of a procession is to
proceed. And the grandchildren proceeded with it. They could not
help themselves. There was no time for protest, for, pushed by the
crowd, which closed and swayed above their heads, and piloted by the
stout lady close behind, they were swept into the church and up the
aisle, and when they came again to themselves were in the inner
corner of a pew near the front.

The church was decked with flags. So was the Third Reader room. It
was hung with flags for The Exhibition.

Hattie in the corner nudged Sadie. Sadie urged Emmy Lou, who, next
to the stout lady, touched her timidly. “We have to get out; we’ve
got to say our parts.”

“Not now,” said the lady, reassuringly; “the program is at the
cemetery.”

Emmy Lou did not understand, and she tried to tell the lady.

“S-h-,” said the person, engaged with the spectacle and the crowd;
“sh-h-” Abashed, Emmy Lou sat, sh-h-ed.

Hattie arose. It was terrible to rise in church, and at a funeral,
and the church was filled, the aisles were crowded, but Hattie rose.
Hattie was a St. George, and a Dragon stood between her and The
Exhibition. She pushed by Sadie, and past Emmy Lou. Hattie was slim
as she was strenuous, but not even so slim a little girl as Hattie
could push by the stout lady, for she filled the space.

At Hattie’s touch she turned. Although she looked good-natured, the
size and ponderance of the lady were intimidating. She stared at
Hattie; people were looking; it was in church; Hattie’s face was
red.

“You can’t get to the family,” said the lady; “you couldn’t move in
the crowd. Besides I promised to see to you. Now be quiet,” she
added crossly, when Hattie would have spoken. She turned away.
Hattie crept back vanquished by this Dragon.

“So suitably dressed,” the stout lady was saying to a lady beyond;
“grandchildren, you know. Even their little handkerchiefs have black
borders.” The service began, and there fell on the unwilling
grandchildren the submission of awe. The stout lady cried, she also
punched Emmy Lou with her elbow whenever that little person moved,
but finally she found courage to turn her head so she could see
Sadie. Sadie was weeping into her black-bordered handkerchief, nor were

[Pg 16]
they tears of histrionic talent. They were real tears. People
all about were looking at her sympathetically. Such grief in a
grandchild was very moving. It may have been minutes; it seemed to
Emmy Lou hours, before there came a general uprising. Hattie stood
up. So did Sadie and Emmy Lou. Their skirts no longer stood out
jauntily; they were quite crushed and subdued. There was a wild,
hunted look in Hattie’s eyes. “Watch the chance!” she whispered,
“and run.”

But it did not come. As the pews emptied, the stout lady passed Emmy
Lou on, addressing some one beyond. “Hold to this one,” she said,
“and I’ll take the other two, or they’ll get tramped in the crowd.”

Slowly the crowd moved, and being a part of it, however unwillingly,
Emmy Lou moved, too, out of the church and down the steps. Then came
the crashing of the band and the roll of the carriages, and she
found herself in the front row on the curb.

The man with the brandishing sword was threatening violently. “One
more carriage is here for the family,” called the man with the
sword. His glance in search for the family suddenly fell on Emmy
Lou. She felt it fall.

The problem solved itself for the man with the sword, and his brow
cleared.

“Grandchildren next,” roared the threatening man. “Keep an eye on
them—separated from the family,” he was explaining, and in spite of
their protests, a moment later the three little girls were lifted
into the carriage, and as the door banged, their carriage moved with
the rest up the street.

“Now,” said Hattie, and Hattie sprang to the farther door. It would
not open. Through the carriage windows the school, with its arched
doorways and windows, gazed frowningly, reproachfully. A gentleman
entered the gate and went in the doorway.

“It’s our minister,” said Sadie, weeping afresh. Then Hattie wept
and so did Emmy Lou. What would The Exhibition do without them?

Late that afternoon a carriage stopped at a corner upon which a
school building stood. Since his charges were infantile affairs, the
colored gentleman on the box thought to expedite matters and drop
them at the corner nearest their homes. Descending, he flung open
the door, and three little girls crept forth, three crushed little
girls, three limp little

[Pg 17]
girls, three little girls in a mild kind
of mourning. They came forth timidly. They looked around. They hoped
they might reach their homes unobserved.

There was a crowd up the street. A gathering of people—many people.
It seemed to be at Emmy Lou’s gate. Hattie and Sadie lived farther
on.

“It must be a fire,” said Hattie.

But it wasn’t. It was The Exhibition, the Principal, and Miss
Carrie, and teachers and pupils, and mammas and aunties and Uncle
Charlie.

“An’ grand’ma,” said Hattie. “And the visiting lady,” said Emmy Lou.
“And our minister,” said Sadie.

The gathering of many people caught sight of them presently, and
came to meet them, three little girls in mild mourning.

The parents and guardians led them home.

Emmy Lou was tired. At supper she nodded and mild mourning and all,
suddenly she collapsed and fell asleep, her head against her chair.

Uncle Charlie woke her. He stood her up on the chair, and held out
his arms. “Come,” he said, “Come, suit the action to the word.”

Emmy Lou woke suddenly, the words smiting her ears with ominous
import. She thought the hour had come; it was The Exhibition. She
stood stiffly, she advanced a cautious foot, her chubby hand
described a careful half circle. Emmy Lou spoke her part.

“We know not where we go.”

The Dancing School and Dicky[C]

BY JOSEPHINE DODGE DASKAM.

(Arranged by Maude Herndon and Grace Kellam.)

[From “The Little God and Dicky.”]

here
are you going?” said somebody, as he slunk out toward the
hat-rack.

“Oh, out.”

“Well, see that you don’t stay long. Remember what it is this
afternoon.”

He turned like a stag at bay.

“What is it this afternoon?” he demanded viciously.

“You know very well.”

“What?“

“See that you’re here, that’s all. You’ve got to get dressed.”

“I will not go to that old dancing school again, and I tell you that
I won’t, and I won’t. And I won’t!”

“Now, Dick, don’t begin that all over again. It’s so silly of you.
You’ve got to go.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s the thing to do.”

“Why?”

“Because you must learn to dance.”

“Why?”

“Every nice boy learns.”

“Why?”

“That will do, Richard. Go and find your pumps. Now, get right up
from the floor, and if you scratch the Morris chair I shall speak to
your father. Ain’t you ashamed of yourself? Get right up—you must
expect to be hurt, if you pull so. Come, Richard! Now, stop
crying—a great boy like you! I am sorry I hurt your elbow, but you
know very well you aren’t crying for that at all. Come along!”

His sister flitted by the door, her accordeon-plaited skirt held
carefully from the floor, her hair in two glistening, blue-knotted
pigtails.

“Hurry up, Dick, or we’ll be late,” she called back sweetly.

“Oh, you shut up, will you!” he snarled.

She looked meek, and listened to his deprivation of dessert for the
rest of the week with an air of love for the sinner and hatred for
the sin that deceived even her older sister who was dressing her.

A desperately patient monologue from the next room indicated the
course of events there.

“Your necktie is on the bed. No, I don’t know where the blue one
is—it doesn’t matter; that it just as good. Yes, it is. No, you
cannot. You will have to wear one. Because no one ever goes without.
I don’t know why.

“Many a boy would be thankful and glad to have silk stockings.
Nonsense, your legs are warm enough. I don’t believe you. Now,
Richard, how perfectly ridiculous! There is no left or right to
stockings. You have no time to change. Shoes are a different thing.
Well, hurry up, then. Because they are made so, I suppose. I don’t
know why.

“Brush it more on that side—no, you can’t go to the barbers. You
went last week. It looks perfectly well. I cut it? Why, I don’t know
how to trim hair. Anyway, there isn’t time now. It will have to do.
Stop your scowling for goodness’ sake, Dick. Have you a
handkerchief? It makes no difference, you must carry one. You
ought to want to use it. Well, you should. Yes, they always do,
whether they have colds or not. I don’t know why.

“Your Golden Text! The idea! No, you cannot. You can learn that
Sunday before church. This is not the time to learn Golden Texts. I
never saw such a child. Now take your pumps and find the plush bag.
Why not? Put them

[Pg 20]
right with Ruth’s. That’s what the bag was made
for. Well, how do you want to carry them? Why, I never heard of
anything so silly! You will knot the strings. I don’t care if they
do carry skates that way—skates are not slippers. You’d lose them.
Very well, then, only hurry up. I should think you’d be ashamed to
have them dangling around your neck that way. Because people never
do carry them so. I don’t know why.

“Now, here’s your coat. Well, I can’t help it, you have no time to
hunt for them. Put your hands in your pockets—it’s not far. And
mind, don’t run for Ruth every time. You don’t take any pains with
her, and you hustle her about, Miss Dorothy says. Take another
little girl. Yes, you must. I shall speak to your father if you
answer me in that way, Richard. Men don’t dance with their sisters.
Because they don’t. I don’t know why.”

He slammed the door till the piazza shook, and strode along beside
his scandalized sister, the pumps flopping noisily on his shoulders.
She tripped along contentedly—she liked to go. The personality
capable of extracting pleasure from the hour before them baffled his
comprehension, and he scowled fiercely at her, rubbing his silk
stockings together at every step, to enjoy the strange smooth
sensation thus produced. This gave him a bow-legged gait that
distressed his sister beyond words.

“I think you might stop. Everybody’s looking at you! Please stop,
Dick Pendleton; you’re a mean old thing. I should think you’d be
ashamed to carry your slippers that way. If you jump in that wet
place and spatter me I shall tell papa—you will care, when I tell
him just the same! You’re just as bad as you can be. I shan’t speak
with you to-day!”

She pursed up her lips and maintained a determined silence. He
rubbed his legs together with renewed emphasis. Acquaintances met
them and passed, unconscious of anything but the sweet picture of a
sister and a brother and a plush bag going dutifully and daintily to
dancing school.

He jumped over the threshold of the long room and aimed his cap at
the head of a boy he knew, who was standing on one foot to put on a
slipper. This destroyed his friend’s balance, and a cheerful scuffle
followed. Life assumed a more hopeful aspect.

A shrill whistle called them out in two crowded bunches to the
polished floor.

Hoping against hope, he had clung to the beautiful thought that Miss
Dorothy would be sick, that she had missed her train—but no! There
she was, with her shiny high-heeled slippers, her pink skirt that
puffed out like a fan, and her silver whistle on a chain. The little
clicking castanets that rang out so sharply were in her hand beyond
a doubt.

“Ready, children! Spread out. Take your lines. First position. Now!”

The large man at the piano, who always looked half asleep, thundered
out the first bars of the latest waltz, and the business began.

Their eyes were fixed solemnly on Miss Dorothy’s pointed shoes. They
slipped and slid and crossed their legs and arched their pudgy
insteps; the boys breathed hard over their gleaming collars. On the
right side of the hall thirty hands held out their diminutive skirts
at an alluring angle. On the left, neat black legs pattered
diligently through mystic evolutions.

The chords rolled out slower, with dramatic pauses between; sharp
clicks of the castanets rang through the hall; a line of toes rose
gradually towards the horizontal, whirled more or less steadily
about, crossed behind, bent low, bowed, and with a flutter of skirts
resumed the first position.

A little breeze of laughing admiration circled the row of mothers
and aunts.

“Isn’t that too cunning! Just like a little ballet! Aren’t they
graceful, really, now!”

“One, two, three! One, two three! Slide, slide, cross; one,
two, three!”

There are those who find pleasure in the aimless intricacies of the
dance; self-respecting men even have been known voluntarily to
frequent assemblies devoted to this nerve-racking attitudinizing
futility. Among such, however, you shall seek in vain in future
years for Richard Carr Pendleton.

“One, two, three! Reverse, two, three!”

The whistle shrilled.

“Ready for the two-step, children?”

A mild tolerance grew on him. If dancing must be, better

[Pg 22]
the two-step than anything else. It is not an alluring dance, your
two-step; it does not require temperament. Any one with a firm
intention of keeping the time and a strong arm can drag a girl
through it very acceptably.

Dicky skirted the row of mothers and aunts cautiously.

“Oh, look! Did you ever see anything so sweet?” said somebody.
Involuntarily he turned. There in a corner, all by herself, a little
girl was gravely performing a dance. He stared at her curiously.

She was ethereally slender, brown-eyed, brown-haired, brown-skinned.
A little fluffy white dress spread fan-shaped over her knees; her
ankles were bird-like. Her eyes were serious, her hair hung loose.
She swayed lightly; one little gloved hand held out her skirt, the
other marked the time. Her performance was an apotheosis of the
two-step; that metronomic dance would not have recognized itself
under her treatment.

Dicky admired. But the admiration of his sex is notoriously fatal to
the art that attracts it. He advanced and bowed jerkily, grasped one
of the loops of her sash in the back, stamped gently a moment to get
the time, and the artist sank into the partner, the pirouette grew
coarse to sympathize with clay.

“Don’t they do it well, though! See those little things near the
door!” he caught as they went by, and his heart swelled with pride.

“What’s your name?” he asked abruptly after the dance.

“Thithelia,” she lisped. She was very shy.

“Mine’s Richard Carr Pendleton. My father’s a lawyer. What’s yours?”

“I—I don’t know!”

“Pooh!” he said, grandly; “I guess you know. Don’t you, really?”

She shook her head. Suddenly a light dawned in her eyes.

“Maybe I know,” she murmured. “I gueth I know. He—he’th a really
thtate!”

“A really state? That isn’t anything—nothing at all. A really
state?” He frowned at her. Her lip quivered. She turned and ran
away.

“Here, come back!” he called; but she was gone.

“That will do for to-day,” said Miss Dorothy, presently, and they
surged into the dressing-rooms, to be buttoned up and pulled out of
draughts and trundled home.

She was swathed carefully in a wadded silk jacket, and then
enveloped in a hooded cloak; she looked like an angelic brownie.
Dicky ran to her as a woman led her out to a coupé at the curb, and
tugged at the ribbon of her cloak.

“Where do you live? Say, where do you?” he demanded.

“I—I don’t know.” The woman laughed.

“Why, yes, you do, Cissy. Tell him directly, now.”

She put one tiny finger in her mouth.

“I—I gueth I live on Chethnut Thtreet,” he called as the door
slammed and shut her in.

His sister amicably offered him half the plush bag to carry, and
opened a running criticism of the afternoon.

“Did you ever see anybody act like that Fannie Leach? She’s awfully
rough. Miss Dorothy spoke to her twice—wasn’t that dreadful? What
made you dance all the time with Cissy Weston? She’s an awful
baby—a regular fraid-cat! We girls tease her just as easy—do you
like her?”

“She’s the prettiest one there!”

“Why, Dick Pendleton, she is not! She’s so little—she’s not half so
pretty as Agnes, or—or lots of the girls. She’s such a baby. She
puts her finger in her mouth if anybody says anything at all. If you
ask her a single thing she does like this: ‘I don’t know, I don’t
know!'”

He smiled scornfully. Did he not know how she did it?

“And she can’t talk plain! She lisps—truly she does!”

Was ever a girl so thick-headed as that sister of his!

“She puts her finger in her mouth! She can’t talk plain!” Alas, my
sisters, it was Helen’s finger that toppled over Troy, and Diane de
Poitiers stammered!

For two long months the little girl led him along the primrose way.
The poor fellow thought it was the main road; he had yet to learn it
was but a by-path. But the Little God was not through with him. That
very night he reached the top of the wave.

He came down to breakfast rapt and quiet. He salted his oatmeal by
mistake, and never knew the difference. His sister laughed
derisively, and explained his folly to him as he swallowed the last
spoonful, but he only smiled kindly at her. After his egg he spoke.

“I dreamed that it was dancing school. And I went. And I was the
only fellow there. And what do you think? All the little girls were
Cecilia!“

They gasped.

“You don’t suppose he’ll be a poet, do you? Or a genius, or
anything?” his mother inquired anxiously.

“No!” his father returned. “I should say he was more likely to be a
Mormon!”

“A Model Story in the Kindergarten”[D]

BY JOSEPHINE DODGE DASKAM.

(Arranged by Maude Herndon and Grace Kellam.)

t
was evident that something was wrong that morning with the
children of the kindergarten. Two perplexed teachers were quieting
the latest outbreak and marshaling a wavering line of very little
people when the youngest assistant appeared on the scene.

“Miss Hunt wants to know why you’re so late with them,” she
inquired. “She hopes nothing’s wrong. Mr. R. B. M. Smith is here
to-day to visit the primary schools and kindergartens, and—”

“Oh, goodness,” exclaimed a teacher, abruptly, ceasing her attempted
consolation of Marantha Judd. “I can’t bear that woman! She’s
always read Stanley Hall’s last article that proves that what he
said before was wrong! Come along, Marantha, don’t be a foolish
little girl any longer. We shall be late for the morning exercise.”

Upstairs a large circle was forming under the critical scrutiny of a
short, stout woman with crinkly, gray hair. This was Mr. R. B. M. Smith,
who, when the opening exercises were finished, signified her
willingness to relate to the children a model story, calling the
teacher’s attention in advance to the almost incredible certainty
that would characterize the children’s anticipation of the events
judiciously and psychologically selected.

The arm-chairs shortly to contain so much accurate anticipation were
at last arranged and the children sat decorously attentive, their
faces turned curiously toward the strange lady with the fascinating
plumes in her bonnet.

“Nothing like animals to bring out the protective instinct—feebler
dependent on the stronger,” she said rapidly to the teachers, and
then addressed the objects of these theories.

“Now, children, I’m going to tell you a nice story—you all like
stories, I’m sure.”

At just this moment little Richard Willetts sneezed loudly and
unexpectedly to all, himself included, with the result that his
ever-ready suspicion fixed upon his neighbor, Andrew Halloran, as
the direct cause of the convulsion. Andrew’s well-meant efforts to
detach from Richard’s vest the pocket-handkerchief securely fastened
thereto by a large black safety-pin strengthened the latter’s
conviction of intended assault and battery, and he squirmed out of
the circle and made a dash for the hall—the first stage in an
evident homeward expedition.

This broke in upon the story, and even when it got under way again
there was an atmosphere of excitement quite unexplained by the tale
itself.

“Yesterday, children, as I came out of my yard, what do you think
I saw?” The elaborately concealed surprise in store was so obvious
that Marantha rose to the occasion and suggested:

“An el’phunt?”

“Why, no! Why should I see an elephant in my yard? It wasn’t
nearly so big as that—it was a little thing!”

“A fish?” ventured Eddy Brown, whose eye fell upon the aquarium in
the corner. The raconteuse smiled patiently.

“Why, no! How could a fish, a live fish, get in my front yard?”

“A dead fish?” persisted Eddy, who was never known to relinquish
voluntarily an idea.

“It was a little kitten,” said the story-teller, decidedly. “A
little white kitten. She was standing right near a great big puddle
of water. And what else do you think I saw?”

“Another kitten?” suggested Marantha, conservatively.

“No, a big Newfoundland dog. He saw the little kitten near the
water. Now cats don’t like the water, do they? They don’t like a wet
place. What do they like?”

“Mice,” said Joseph Zukoffsky, abruptly.

“Well, yes, they do; but there were no mice in my yard. I’m sure you
know what I mean. If they don’t like water, what do they like?”

“Milk!”

“They like a dry place,” said Mrs. R. B. M. Smith.

“Now what do you suppose the dog did?”

It may be that successive failures had disheartened the listeners;
it may be that the very range presented alive to the dog and them
for choice dazzled their imaginations. At any rate, they made no
answer.

“Nobody knows what the dog did?” repeated the story-teller,
encouragingly. “What would you do if you saw a little white kitten
like that?”

Again a silence. Then Philip remarked gloomily, “I’d pull its tail.”

“And what do the rest of you think?” inquired Mrs. R. B. M. Smith,
pathetically. “I hope you are not so cruel as that little boy.”

But fully half the children had seen the youngest assistant giggle
at “that little boy’s” answer, and with one accord came the quick
response, “I’d pull it too.”

Fishin’?

(From the New Orleans Times-Democrat.)

“Ardelia in Arcady”[E]

(Arranged by Maude Herndon and Grace Kellam.)

hen
first the young lady from the College Settlement dragged
Ardelia from her degradation, she was sitting on a dirty pavement
and throwing assorted refuse at an unconscious policeman.

“Come here, little girl,” said the young lady, invitingly. “Wouldn’t
you like to come with me and have a nice, cool bath?”

“Naw,” said Ardelia, in tones rivaling the bath in coolness.

“You wouldn’t? Well, wouldn’t you like some bread and butter and
jam?”

“Wha’s jam?”

“Why, it’s—er—marmalade. All sweet, you know.”

“Naw!”

“I thought you might like to go on a picnic,” said the young lady,
helplessly. “I thought all little girls liked—”

“Picnic? When?” cried Ardelia, moved instantly to interest. “I’m
goin’! Is it the Dago picnic?”

The young lady shuddered, and seizing the hand which she imagined to
have had the least to do with the refuse, she led Ardelia away—the
first stage of her journey to Arcady.

Later arrayed in starched and creaking garments which had been made
for a slightly smaller child, Ardelia was transported to the
station, and for the first time introduced to a railroad car. She
sat stiffly on the red plush seat while the young lady talked
reassuringly of daisies and cows and green grass. As Ardelia had
never seen any of these things, it is hardly surprising that she was
somewhat unenthusiastic.

“You can roll in the daisies, my dear, and pick all you want—all!”
she urged eagerly.

“Aw right,” she answered, guardedly.

The swelteringly hot day, and the rapid unaccustomed motion combined
to afflict her with a strange internal anticipation of future woe.
Once last summer, when she ate the liquid dregs of the ice-cream
man’s great tin, and fell asleep in the room where her mother was
frying onions, she had experienced this same foreboding, and the
climax of that dreadful day lingered yet in her memory.

At last they stopped. The young lady seized her hand, and led her
through the narrow aisle, down the steep steps, across the little
country station platform, and Ardelia was in Arcady.

A bare-legged boy in blue overalls and a wide straw hat then drove
them many miles along a hot, dusty road, that wound endlessly
through the parched country fields. Finally they turned into a
driveway, and drew up before a gray wooden house. A spare, dark-eyed
woman in a checked apron advanced to meet them.

“Terrible hot to-day, ain’t it?” she sighed. “I’m real glad to see
you, Miss Forsythe. Won’t you cool off a little before you go on?
This is the little girl, I s’pose. I guess it’s pretty cool to what
she’s accustomed to, ain’t it, Delia?”

“No, I thank you, Mrs. Slater. I’ll go right on to the house. Now,
Ardelia, here you are in the country. I’m staying with my friend in
a big white house about a quarter of a mile farther on. You can’t
see it from here, but if you want anything you can just walk over.
Day after to-morrow is the picnic I told you of. You’ll see me then,
anyway. Now run right out in the grass and pick all the daisies you
want. Don’t be afraid; no one will drive you off this grass!”

The force of this was lost on Ardelia, who had never been driven off
any grass whatever, but she gathered that she was expected to walk
out into the thick rank growth of the unmowed side yard, and strode
downward obediently.

“Now pick them! Pick the daisies!” cried Miss Forsythe, excitedly.
“I want to see you.”

Ardelia looked blank.

“Huh?” she said.

“Gather them. Get a bunch. Oh, you poor child! Mrs. Slater,

[Pg 29]
she doesn’t know how!” Miss Forsythe was deeply moved and illustrated by
picking imaginary daisies on the porch. Ardelia’s quick eye followed
her gestures, and stooping, she scooped the heads from three daisies
and started back with them. Miss Forsythe gasped.

“No, no, dear! Pull them up! Take the stem, too,” she explained.
“Pick the whole flower.”

Ardelia bent over again, tugged at a thick-stemmed clover, brought
it up by the roots, and laid it awkwardly on the young lady’s lap.

“Thank you, dear,” she said, politely, “but I meant them for you. I
meant you to have a bunch. Don’t you want them?”

“Naw,” said Ardelia, decidedly.

Miss Forsythe’s eyes brightened suddenly.

“I know what you want,” she cried, “you’re thirsty! Mrs. Slater,
won’t you get us some of your good, creamy milk? Don’t you want a
drink, Ardelia?”

Ardelia nodded. When Mrs. Slater appeared with the foaming yellow
glasses she wound her nervous little hands about the stem of the
goblet and drank a deep draught.

“There!” cried the young lady. “Now, how do you like real milk,
Ardelia? I declare you look like another child already! You can have
all you want every day—why, what’s the matter?”

For Ardelia was growing ghastly pale before them; her eyes turned
inward, her lips tightened. A blinding horror surged from her toes
upward, and the memory of the liquid ice-cream and the frying onions
faded before the awful reality of her present agony.

Later, as she lay limp and white on the slippery haircloth sofa in
Mrs. Slater’s musty parlor she heard them discussing her situation.

“There was a lot of Fresh-Air children over at Mis’ Simms’s,” her
hostess explained, “and they ‘most all of ’em said the milk was too
strong—did you ever! Two or three of ’em was sick, like this one,
but they got to love it in a little while. She will, too.”

Ardelia shook her head feebly. In a few minutes she was asleep. When
she awoke all was dusk and shadow. She felt scared and lonely. Now
that her stomach was filled and her nerves refreshed by her long
sleep, she was in a condition to realize that aside from all bodily
discomfort

[Pg 30]
she was sad—very sad. A new, unknown depression weighed
her down. It grew steadily, something was happening, something
constant and mournful—what? Suddenly she knew. It was a steady,
recurrent noise, a buzzing, monotonous click. Now it rose, now it
fell, accentuating the silence dense about it.

“Zig-a-zig! Zig-a-zig!” then a rest.

“Zig-a-zig! Ziz-a-zig-a-zig!”

“Wha’s ‘at?” she said.

“That? Oh, those are katydids. I s’pose you never heard ’em, that’s
a fact. Kind o’ cozy, I think. Don’t you like ’em?”

“Naw.”

Another long silence intervened. Mr. Slater snored, William smoked,
and the monotonous clamor was uninterrupted.

“Zig-a-zig! Zig-zig! Zig-a-zig-a-zig!”

Slowly, against the background of this machine-like clicking, there
grew other sounds, weird, unhappy, far away.

“Wheep, wheep, wheep!”

This was a high, thin crying.

“Burrom! Burrom! Brown!”

This was low and resonant and solemn. Ardelia scowled.

“Wha’s ‘at?” she asked again.

“That’s the frogs. Bull-frogs and peepers. Never heard them, either,
did ye? Well, that’s what they are.”

William took his pipe out of his mouth.

“Come here, sissy, ‘n I’ll tell y’ a story,” he said, lazily.

Ardelia obeyed, and glancing timorously at the shadows, slipped
around to his side.

“Onc’t they was an’ ol’ feller comin’ ‘long crosslots, late at
night, an’ he come to a pond, an’ he kinder stopped up an’ says to
himself, ‘Wonder how deep the ol’ pond is, anyhow?’ He was just a
leetle—well, he’d had a drop too much, y’ see—”

“Had a what?” interrupted Ardelia.

“He was sort o’ rollin’ ’round—he didn’t know just what he was
doin’—”

“Oh! Jagged!” said Ardelia, comprehendingly.

“I guess so. An’ he heard a voice singin’ out, ‘Knee deep! Knee
deep! Knee deep.'”

William gave a startling imitation of the peepers; his voice was a
high, shrill wail.

“‘Oh, well,’ s’ he, ”f it’s just knee deep, I’ll wade through,’ an’
he starts in.

“Just then he hears a big feller singin’ out, ‘Better go rrround!
Better gorrround! Better gorrround!’

“‘Lord,’ says he, ‘is it s’ deep ‘s that? Well, I’ll go round then.’
‘N’ off he starts to walk around.

“‘Knee deep! Knee deep! Knee deep!’ says the peepers.

“An’ there it was. Soon’s he’d start to do one thing they’d tell him
another. Make up his mind he couldn’t, so he stands there still,
they do say, askin’ ’em every night which he better do.”

“Stands where?”

“Oh, I d’ know. Out in the swamp, mebbe.”

Again he smoked. Time passed by.

Suddenly Mr. Slater coughed and arose. “Well, guess I’ll be gettin’
to bed,” he said. “Come on, boys. Hello, little girl! Come to visit
us, hey? Mind you don’t pick poison vine.”

Mrs. Slater led Ardelia upstairs into a little hot room, and told
her to get into bed quick, for the lamp drew the mosquitoes.

Ardelia kicked off her shoes and approached the bed distrustfully.
It sank down with her weight and smelled hot and queer. Rolling off
she stretched herself on the floor, and lay there disconsolately. At
home the hurdy-gurdy was playing, the women were gossiping on every
step, the lights were everywhere—the blessed fearless gas
lights—and the little girls were dancing in the breeze that drew in
from East River.

In the morning Miss Forsythe came over to inquire after her charge’s
health, accompanied by another young lady.

“Why, Ethel, she isn’t barefoot!” she cried. “Come here, Ardelia,
and take off your shoes and stockings directly. Shoes and stockings
in the country! Now, you’ll know what comfort is.”

To patter about bare-legged on the clear, safe pavement, was one
thing; to venture unprotected into that waving, tripping tangle was
another. Ardelia stepped cautiously upon the short grass near the
house, and with jaw set felt her

[Pg 32]
way into the higher growth. Suddenly she stopped; she shrieked:

“Oh, gee! Oh, gee!”

“What is it, Ardelia; what is it? A snake?” Mrs. Slater rushed out,
seized Ardelia, half rigid with fear, and carried her to the porch.
They elicited from her as she sat with feet tucked under her that
something had rustled by her “down at the bottom”—that it was
slippery, that she had stepped on it, and wanted to go home.

“Toad,” explained Mrs. Slater, briefly. “Only a little hop-toad,
Delia, that wouldn’t harm a baby, let alone a big girl nine years
old, like you.”

“She’s a queer child,” Mrs. Slater confided to the young ladies.
“Not a drop of anything will she drink but cold tea. It don’t seem
reasonable to give it to her all day, and I won’t do it, so she has
to wait till meals. She makes a face if I say milk, and the water
tastes slippery, she says, and salty-like. She won’t touch it. I
tell her it’s good well-water, but she just shakes her head. She’s
stubborn ‘s a bronze mule, that child. Just mopes around. ‘S morning
she asked me when did the parades go by. I told her there wa’n’t
any, but the circus, an’ that had been already. I tried to cheer her
up, sort of, with that Fresh-Air picnic of yours to-morrow, Miss
Forsythe, an s’she, ‘Oh, the Dago picnic,’ s’she, ‘will they have
Tong’s band?'”

“She don’t seem to take any int’rest in th’ farm, like those
Fresh-Air children, either. I showed her the hens an’ the eggs, an’
she said it was a lie about the hens layin’ ’em. ‘What d’ you take
me for?’ s’she. The idea! Then Henry milked the cow, to show
her—she wouldn’t believe that, either—and with the milk streamin’
down before her, what do you s’pose she said? ‘You put it in!’
s’she. I never should a’ believed that, Miss Forsythe, if I hadn’t
heard it.”

“Oh, she’ll get over it; just wait a few days. Good-bye, Ardelia.
Eat a good supper.”

But this Ardelia did not do. Mr. Slater ate in voracious silence.
William never spoke, and Mrs. Slater filled their plates without
comment. Ardelia had never in her life eaten in silence. Through the
open door the buzz of the katydids was beginning tentatively. In the
intervals of William’s gulps a faint bass note warned them from the
swamp.

“Better gorrround! Better gorrround!”

Ardelia’s nerves strained and snapped. Her eyes grew wild.

“Fer Gawd’s sake, talk!” she cried, sharply. “Are youse dumbies?”

The morning dawned fresh and fair; the homely barnyard noises
brought a smile to Miss Forsythe’s sympathetic face, as she waited
for Ardelia to join her in a drive to the station. But Ardelia did
not smile.

At the station Miss Forsythe shook her limp little hand.

“Good-bye, dear. I’ll bring the other little children back with me.
You’ll enjoy that. Good-bye.”

“I’m comin’, too,” said Ardelia.

“Why—no, dear—you wait for us. You’d only turn around and come
right back, you know.”

“Come, back nothin’. I’m goin’ home.”

“Why—why, Ardelia! Don’t you really like it?”

“Naw, it’s too hot.”

Miss Forsythe stared.

“But Ardelia, you don’t want to go back to that horribly smelly
street? Not truly?”

“Betcher life I do!”

“It’s so lonely and quiet,” pleaded the young lady. Ardelia
shuddered. Again she seemed to hear that fiendish, mournful wailing:

“Knee deep! Knee deep! Knee deep!”

They rode in silence. But the jar and jolt of the engine made music
in Ardelia’s ears; the familiar jargon of the newsboy:

“N’ Yawk evening paypers! Woyld! Joynal!” was a breath from home to
her little cockney heart.

They pushed through the great station, they climbed the steps of the
elevated track, they jingled on a cross-town car. And at a familiar
corner Ardelia slipped loose her hand, uttered a grunt of joy, and
Miss Forsythe looked after her in vain. She was gone.

But late in the evening, when the great city turned out to breathe,
and sat with opened shirt and loosened bodice on the dirty steps;
when the hurdy-gurdy executed brassy scales and the lights flared in
endless sparkling rows; when the trolley gongs at the corner pierced
the air, and feet tapped cheerfully down the cool stone steps of the
beer-shop,

[Pg 34]
Ardelia, bare-footed and abandoned, nibbling at a
section of bologna sausage, cake-walked insolently with a band of
little girls behind a severe policeman, mocking his stolid gait, to
the delight of Old Dutchy, who beamed approvingly at her prancing.

“Ja, ja, you trow out your feet good. Some day we pay to see you,
no? You like to get back already!”

“Ja, danky slum, Dutchy,” she said airily, as she sank upon her cool
step, stretched her toes and sighed:

“Gee! N’ Yawk’s the place!”

Meriel

BY MARGARET HOUSTON.

(From Ainslee’s Magazine.)

The Old Man and “Shep”

(A true story.)

BY JOHN G. SCORER.

t
was on the morning of the second day of the new year. The mercury
hovered a few degrees above zero. The winds that swept down from the
North were keen and biting, and the mist-like snow fell fitfully. An
old man, his once tall form bent by the burdens and sorrows of sixty
odd years, his step slow and shuffling, his clothes unkempt and
tattered, his long beard flowing down upon his breast, his eye still
bright and in his face lingering traces of refinement, made his way
along the deserted street. He was accompanied by a dog, whose long,
shaggy hair indicated a blooded ancestry. So emaciated was his form
that even through his shaggy coat could be seen the outline of his
bony frame.

The two, master and dog, hobbled into the city’s out-door relief
department. The dog at once curled himself up on a rug near a
radiator and was soon asleep, dreaming, perchance, of other and more
prosperous days, with “a virtuous kennel and plenty of food.” The
old man stood for a time warming his benumbed fingers at the
radiator. Presently one of the clerks approached and asked him who
he was and what he wanted.

“I am John Owens,” he replied; “and I want to go to the infirmary. I
am ill, homeless and penniless.”

“All right, my man,” said the clerk, and at once wrote out a permit.

The old man took the permit, read it over carefully, and said: “It
says nothing about the dog. I want one for the dog, too.”

“We can’t give you one for the dog; we have no place out there for
him. You’ll have to leave him behind.”

“Leave my dog behind? No, sir,” said the old fellow, straightening
up his bent form. “He’s the only friend I have in this world. Why
old ‘Shep’ has been my only friend for the last eight years. I had
money, friends and influence when he was a pup, and he had a better
bed and better food then

[Pg 36]
than I have had for many a year. I had my
carriages once, and a man to drive them, too. I know it sounds
strange, now. Sometimes it seems like a dream. But never mind. When
I woke up from that dream I had only my wife Martha, my son George,
and ‘Shep.’ Every one else turned from me.

“My wife was a good, brave soul, but our reverses broke her down,
and on one spring day we laid her away beneath the daisies and the
myrtle. Soon after that my son George was taken from me by that
stern monster, death, leaving me alone—alone, with no friend but
‘Shep.’

“Where do I sleep? Why, my boy, anywhere. You don’t know how many
warm stairways there are. ‘Shep’ and I do, though, and we curl up
together in them when the officer on the beat isn’t looking. Yes,
poor fellow, he’s lame; had his leg broken. He got that trying to
keep me out of the way of a coal wagon two years ago, when I slipped
on the icy street.

“Here’s your permit, mister. I won’t go out there unless ‘Shep’ goes
with me. He can’t? Well, good-bye, good-bye, sir. Come on, ‘Shep.’
You can’t stay there all day. Just as much obliged,” and the two
passed out into the cold again.

Who Knows

The Negro

BY BOOKER T. WASHINGTON.

ne-third
of the population of the South is of the negro race. No
enterprise seeking the material, civil, or moral welfare of this
section can disregard this element of our population and reach the
highest success. I but convey to you, Mr. President and directors,
the sentiment of the masses of my race when I say that in no way
have the value and manhood of the American negro been more fittingly
and generously recognized than by the managers of this magnificent
Exposition at every stage of its progress. It is a recognition that
will do more to cement the friendship of the two races than any
occurrence since the dawn of our freedom.

Not only this, but the opportunity here afforded will awaken among
us a new era of industrial progress. Ignorant and inexperienced, it
is not strange that in the first years of our new life we began at
the top instead of at the bottom; that a seat in Congress or a State
legislature was more sought than real estate or industrial skill;
that the political convention or stump speaking had more attractions
than starting a dairy farm or truck garden.

A ship lost at sea for many days suddenly sighted a friendly vessel.
From the mast of the unfortunate vessel was seen a signal, “Water,
water; we die of thirst!” The answer from the friendly vessel at
once came back, “Cast down your bucket where you are.” A second time
the signal, “Water, water; send us water!” ran up from the
distressed vessel, and was answered, “Cast down your bucket where
you are.” And a third and fourth signal for water was answered,
“Cast down your bucket where you are.” The captain of the distressed
vessel at last, heeding the injunction, cast down his bucket, and it
came up full of fresh, sparkling water from the mouth of the Amazon
River. To those of my race who depend on bettering their condition
in

[Pg 38]
a foreign land or who underestimate the importance of cultivating
friendly relations with the Southern white man, who is their
next-door neighbor, I would say: “Cast down your bucket where you
are.” Cast it down in making friends in every manly way of the
people of all races by whom we are surrounded.

Cast it down in agriculture, mechanics, in commerce, in domestic
service, and in the professions. And in this connection it is well
to bear in mind that whatever other sins the South may be called to
bear, when it comes to business, pure and simple, it is in the South
that the negro is given a man’s chance in the commercial world, and
in nothing is this Exposition more eloquent than in emphasizing this
chance. Our greatest danger is that in the great leap from slavery
to freedom we may overlook the fact that the masses of us are to
live by the productions of our hands, and fail to keep in mind that
we shall prosper in proportion as we learn to dignify and glorify
common labor and put brains and skill into the common occupations of
life; shall prosper in proportion as we learn to draw the line
between the superficial and the substantial, the ornamental gewgaws
of life and the useful. No race can prosper till it learns that
there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem. It
is at the bottom of life we must begin, and not at the top. Nor
should we permit our grievances to overshadow our opportunities.

To those of the white race who look to the incoming of those of
foreign birth and strange tongues and habits for the prosperity of
the South, were I permitted I would repeat what I say to my own
race, “Cast down your bucket where you are.” Cast it down among the
eight millions of negroes whose habits you know, whose fidelity and
love you have tested in days when to have proved treacherous meant
the ruin of your firesides. Cast down your bucket among these people
who have, without strikes and labor wars, tilled your fields,
cleared your forests, builded your railroads and cities, and brought
forth treasure from the bowels of the earth, and helped make
possible this magnificent representation of the progress of the
South. Casting down your buckets among my people, helping and
encouraging them as you are doing on these grounds, and to education
of head, hand, and heart, you will find that they will buy your
surplus land, make blossom the waste places in your fields, and run
your factories.

[Pg 39]
While doing this you can be sure in the future as
in the past, that you and your families will be surrounded by the
most patient, faithful, law-abiding and unresentful people that the
world has seen. As we have proved our loyalty to you in the past, in
nursing your children, watching by the sick-bed of your mothers and
fathers, and often following them with tear-dimmed eyes to the
graves, so in the future, in our humble way, we shall stand by you
with a devotion that no foreigner can approach, ready to lay down
our lives, if need be, in defence of yours, interlacing our
industrial, commercial, civil and religious life with yours in a way
that shall make the interests of both races one. In all things that
are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as
the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.

There is no defence or security for any of us except in the highest
intelligence and development of all. If anywhere there are efforts
tending to curtail the fullest growth of the negro, let these
efforts be turned into stimulating, encouraging, and making him the
most useful and intelligent citizen. Efforts or means so invested
will pay a thousand per cent. interest. These efforts will be twice
blessed—”blessing him that gives and him that takes.”

Nearly sixteen millions of hands will aid you in pulling the load
upward, or they will pull against you the load downward. We shall
constitute one-third and more of the ignorance and crime of the
South, or one-third of its intelligence and progress; we shall
contribute one-third to the business and industrial prosperity of
the South, or we shall prove a veritable body of death, stagnating,
repressing, retarding every effort to advance the body politic.

The wisest among my race understand that the agitation of questions
of social equality is the extremest folly, and that progress in the
enjoyment of all the privileges that will come to us must be the
result of severe and constant struggle rather than of artificial
forcing. No race that has anything to contribute to the markets of
the world is long in any degree ostracized. It is important and
right that all privileges of the law be ours, but it is vastly more
important that we be prepared for the exercise of these privileges.
The opportunity to earn a dollar in a factory just now is worth
infinitely more than the opportunity to spend a dollar in an
opera-house.

Here bending, as it were, over the altar that represents the
struggles

[Pg 40]
of your race and mine, both starting practically
empty-handed three decades ago, I pledge that in your effort to work
out the great and intricate problem which God has laid at the doors
of the South, you shall have at all times the patient, sympathetic
help of my race; only let this be constantly in mind, that, while
from representations in these buildings of the product of field, of
forest, of mine, of factory, letters and art, much good will come,
yet far above and beyond material benefits will be that higher good,
that, let us pray God, will come, in a blotting out of sectional
differences and racial animosities and suspicions, in a
determination to administer absolute justice, in a willing obedience
among all classes to the mandates of the law. This, this, coupled
with our material prosperity, will bring into our beloved South a
new heaven and a new earth.

The Guillotine

BY VICTOR HUGO.

entlemen
of the jury, if there is a culprit here, it is not my
son,—it is I!—I, who for these twenty-five years have opposed
capital punishment,—have contended for the inviolability of human
life,—have committed this crime for which my son is now arraigned.
Here I denounce my self, Mr. Advocate-General! I have committed it
under all aggravated circumstances; deliberately, repeatedly,
tenaciously. Yes, this old and absurd lex taliones—this law of
blood for blood—I have combated all my life—all my life, gentlemen
of the jury! And, while I have breath, I will continue to combat it,
by all my efforts as a writer, by all my words and all my votes as a
legislator! I declare it before the crucifix; before that Victim of
the penalty of death,

[Pg 41]
who sees and hears us; before that gibbet, in
which, two thousand years ago, for the eternal instruction of the
generations, the human law nailed the divine!

In all that my son has written on the subject of capital punishment
and for writing and publishing which he is now on trial—in all that
he has written, he has merely proclaimed the sentiments with which,
from his infancy, I have inspired him. Gentlemen jurors, the right
to criticise a law, and to criticise it severely—especially a penal
law—is placed beside the duty of amelioration, like the torch
beside the work under the artisan’s hand. The right of the
journalist is as sacred, as necessary, as imprescriptible, as the
right of the legislator.

What are the circumstances? A man, a convict, a sentenced wretch, is
dragged, on a certain morning, to one of our public squares. There
he finds the scaffold! He shudders, he struggles, he refuses to die.
He is young yet—only twenty-nine. Ah! I know what you will
say,—”He is a murderer!” But hear me. Two officers seize him. His
hands, his feet are tied. He throws off the two officers. A
frightful struggle ensues. His feet, bound as they are, become
entangled in the ladder. He uses the scaffold against the scaffold!
The struggle is prolonged. Horror seizes the crowd! The
officers,—sweat and shame on their brows,—pale, panting,
terrified, despairing,—despairing with I know not what horrible
despair,—shrinking under that public reprobation which ought to
have visited the penalty, and spared the passive treatment, the
executioner,—the officers strive savagely. The victim clings to the
scaffold and shrieks for pardon. His clothes are torn,—his
shoulders bloody,—still he resists. At length, after three-quarters
of an hour of this monstrous effort, of this spectacle without a
name, of this agony,—agony for all, be it understood,—agony for
the assembled spectators as well as for the condemned man,—after
this age of anguish, gentlemen of the jury, they take back the poor
wretch to his prison.

The People breathe again. The People, naturally merciful, hope that
the man will be spared. But no,—the guillotine, though vanquished,
remains standing. There it frowns all day, in the midst of a
sickened population. And at night the officers, re-enforced, drag
forth the wretch again, so bound that he is but an inert
weight,—they drag him forth, haggard, bloody, weeping, pleading,
howling for life,—calling upon God, calling upon his father and
mother,—for like a

[Pg 42]
very child had this man become in the prospect
of death,—they drag him forth to execution. He is hoisted on the
scaffold and his head falls! And then through every conscience runs
a shudder. Never had legal murder appeared with an aspect so
indecent, so abominable. All feel jointly implicated in the deed. It
is at this very moment that from a young man’s breast escapes a cry,
wrung from his very heart,—a cry of pity and anguish,—a cry of
horror,—a cry of humanity. And this cry you would punish! And in
the face of the appalling facts which I have narrated, you would say
to the guillotine, “Thou art right!” and to Pity, saintly Pity,
“Thou art wrong!” Gentlemen of the jury, it cannot be! Gentlemen, I
have finished.

Robespierre’s Last Speech

BY MAXIMILIAN MARIE ISIDORE DE ROBESPIERRE.

he
enemies of the Republic call me tyrant! Were I such, they would
grovel at my feet. I should gorge them with gold, I should grant
them immunity for their crimes, and they would be grateful. Were I
such, the kings we have vanquished, far from denouncing Robespierre,
would lend me their guilty support; there would be a covenant
between them and me. Tyranny must have tools. But the enemies of
tyranny,—whither does their path tend? To the tomb, and to
immortality! What tyrant is my protector? To what faction do I
belong? Yourselves! What faction since the beginning of the
Revolution, has crushed and annihilated so many detected traitors?
You, the people, our principles, are that faction—a faction to
which I am devoted, and against which all the scoundrelism of the
day is banded!

The confirmation of the Republic has been my object; and I

[Pg 43]
know
that the Republic can be established only on the eternal basis of
morality. Against me, and against those who hold kindred principles,
the league is formed. My life? Oh! my life I abandon without a
regret. I have seen the past; and I foresee the future. What friend
of this country would wish to survive the moment when he could no
longer serve it,—when he could no longer defend innocence against
oppression? Wherefore should I continue in an order of things where
intrigue eternally triumphs over truth; where justice is mocked;
where passions the most abject, or fears the most absurd, over-ride
the sacred interests of humanity? In witnessing the multitude of
vices which the torrent of the Revolution has rolled in turbid
communion with its civic virtues, I confess that I have sometimes
feared that I should be sullied, in the eyes of posterity, by the
impure neighborhood of unprincipled men, who had thrust themselves
into association with the sincere friends of humanity; and I rejoice
that these conspirators against my country have now, by their
reckless rage, traced deep the line of demarcation between
themselves and all true men.

Question history, and learn how all the defenders of liberty, in all
times, have been overwhelmed by calumny. But their traducers died
also. The good and the bad disappear alike from the earth; but in
very different conditions. O Frenchmen! O my countrymen! Let not
your enemies, with their desolating doctrines, degrade your souls
and enervate your virtues! No, Chaumette, no! Death is not “an
eternal sleep”! Citizens, efface from the tomb that motto, graven by
sacrilegious hands, which spreads over all nature a funereal crape,
takes from suppressed innocence its support, and affronts the
beneficent dispensation of death! Inscribe rather thereon these
words: “Death is the commencement of immortality!” I leave to the
oppressors of the People a terrible testament, which I proclaim with
the independence befitting one whose career is so nearly ended; it
is the awful truth,—”Thou shalt die!”

Secession

BY ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS.

r. President:
This step of secession, once taken, can never be
recalled, and all the baleful and withering consequences that must
follow will rest on the convention for all coming time. When we and
our posterity shall see our lovely South desolated by the demon of
war, which this act of yours will inevitably invite and call forth;
when our green fields of waving harvest shall be trodden down by the
murderous soldiery and fiery car sweeping over our land; our temples
of justice laid in ashes; all the horrors and desolation of war upon
us; who but this convention will be held responsible for it? And who
but him who shall have given his vote for this unwise and ill-timed
measure, as I honestly think and believe, shall be held to strict
account for this suicidal act by the present generation, and
probably cursed and execrated by posterity for all coming time, for
the wide and desolating ruin that will inevitably follow this act
you now propose to perpetrate? Pause, I entreat you, and consider
for a moment what reasons you can give that will even satisfy
yourselves in calmer moments—what reasons you can give to your
fellow-sufferers in the calamity that it will bring upon us. What
reasons can you give to the nations of the earth to justify it? They
will be calm and deliberate judges in the case; and what cause or
one overt act can you name or point, on which to rest the plea of
justification? What right has the North assailed? What interest of
the South has been invaded? What justice has been denied? And what
claim founded in justice and right has been withheld? Can either of
you to-day name one governmental act of wrong, deliberately and
purposely done by the government of Washington, of which the South
has a right to complain? I challenge the answer. While, on the other
hand, let me show the facts (and believe me, gentlemen, I am not
here, the advocate of the North; but I am here the friend, the firm
friend, and lover

[Pg 45]
of the South and her institutions, and for this
reason I speak thus plainly and faithfully, for yours, mine, and
every other man’s interest, the words of truth and soberness), of
which I wish you to judge, and I will only state facts which are
clear and undeniable, and which now stand as records authentic in
the history of our country. When we of the South demanded the
slave-trade, or the importation of Africans for the cultivation of
our lands, did they not yield the right for twenty years? When we
asked a three-fifths representation in Congress for our slaves, was
it not granted? When we asked and demanded the return of any
fugitive from justice, or the recovery of those persons owing labor
or allegiance, was it not incorporated in the Constitution, and
again ratified and strengthened by the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850?
But do you reply that in many instances they have violated this
compact and have not been faithful to their engagements? As
individuals and local communities they may have done so; but not by
the sanction of government; for that has always been true to
Southern interests. Again, gentlemen, look at another act; when we
have asked that more territory should be added, that we might spread
the institution of slavery, have they not yielded to our demands in
giving us Louisiana, Florida and Texas, out of which four States
have been carved, and ample territory for four more to be added in
due time, if you, by this unwise and impolitic act, do not destroy
this hope, and perhaps by it lose all, and have your last slave
wrenched from you by stern military rule, as South American and
Mexican were; or by the vindictive decree of a universal
emancipation which may reasonably be expected to follow.

But, again, gentlemen, what have we to gain by this proposed change
of our relation to the general government? We have always had the
control of it, and can yet, if we remain in it, and are as united as
we have been. We have had a majority of the Presidents chosen from
the South, as well as the control and management of most of those
chosen from the North. We have had sixty years of Southern
Presidents to their twenty-four, thus controlling the executive
department. So, of the judges of the Supreme Court, we have had
eighteen from the South and but eleven from the North, although
nearly four-fifths of the judicial business has arisen in the free
States, yet a majority of the court has always been from the South.
This we have acquired so as to guard

[Pg 46]
against any interpretation of
the Constitution unfavorable to us. In like manner we have been
equally watchful to guard our interests in the legislative branch of
government. In choosing the presiding presidents (pro tem.) of the
Senate, we have had twenty-four to their eleven. Speakers of the
House we have had twenty-three, and they twelve. While the majority
of the representatives, from their greater population, have always
been from the North, yet we have so generally secured the Speaker,
because he, to a great extent, shapes and controls the legislation
of the country. Nor have we had less control in every other
department of the general government. Attorney-generals we have had
fourteen, while the North have had but five. Foreign ministers we
have had eighty-six, and they but fifty-four. While three-fourths of
the business which demands diplomatic agents abroad is clearly from
the free States, from their greater commercial interest, yet we have
had the principal embassies, so as to secure the world-markets for
our cotton, tobacco and sugar on the best possible terms. We have
had a vast majority of the higher offices of both army and navy,
while a larger proportion of the soldiers and sailors were drawn
from the North. Equally so of clerks, auditors and comptrollers
filling the executive department; the records show, for the last
fifty years, that of the three thousand thus employed, we have had
more than two-thirds of the same, while we have but one-third of the
white population of the Republic.

Again, look at another item, and one, be assured, in which we have a
great and vital interest; it is that of revenue, or means of
supporting government. From official documents we learn that a
fraction over three-fourths of the revenue collected for the support
of the government has uniformly been raised from the North.

Pause now while you can, gentlemen, and contemplate carefully and
candidly these important items. Look at another necessary branch of
government, and learn from stern statistical facts how matters stand
in that department. I mean the mail and post-office privileges that
we now enjoy under the general government as it has been for years
past. The expense for the transportation of the mail in the free
States was, by the report of the Postmaster-General for the year
1860, a little over $13,000,000, while the income was $19,000,000.
But in the slave States the transportation of the mail was
$14,716,000, while the revenue from the same was

[Pg 47]
$8,001,026,
leaving a deficit of $6,704,974 to be supplied by the North for our
accommodation, and without it we must have been entirely cut off
from this most essential branch of government.

Leaving out of view, for the present, the countless millions of
dollars you must expend in a war with the North; with tens of
thousands of your sons and brothers slain in battle and offered up
as sacrifices upon the altar of your ambition—and for what, we ask
again? Is it for the overthrow of the American Government,
established by our common ancestry, cemented and built up by their
sweat and blood, and founded on the broad principles of right,
justice and humanity? And as such, I must declare here, as I have
often done before, and which has been repeated by the greatest and
wisest of statesmen and patriots, in this and other lands, that it
is the best and freest government—the most equal in its rights, the
most just in its decisions, the most lenient in its measures, and
the most aspiring in its principles, to elevate the race of men,
that the sun of heaven ever shone upon. Now, for you to attempt to
overthrow such a government as this, under which we have lived for
more than three-quarters of a century—in which we have gained our
wealth, our standing as a nation, our domestic safety, while the
elements of peril are around us, with peace and tranquillity
accompanied with unbounded prosperity and rights unassailed—is the
height of madness, folly, and wickedness, to which I neither lend my
sanction nor my vote.

Birds

The Death of Hypatia

BY CHARLES KINGSLEY.

es,
come…. The Galilean…. If he conquers strong men, can the
weak maid resist him? Come soon … this afternoon…. My heart is
breaking fast.”

“At the eighth hour this afternoon?” asked Raphael.

“Yes…. At noon I lecture … take my farewell, rather, forever, of
the schools…. Gods! What have I to say?… And tell me about Him
of Nazareth. Farewell!”

“Farewell, beloved lady! At the ninth hour you shall hear of Him of
Nazareth.”

As Raphael went down the steps into the street, a young man sprang
from behind one of the pillars and seized his arm.

“Aha! my young Coryphæus of pious plunderers! What do you want with
me?”

Philammon, for it was he, looked at him an instant, and recognized
him.

“Save her! for the love of God, save her!”

“Whom?”

“Hypatia!”

“How long has her salvation been important to you, my good friend?”

“For God’s sake,” said Philammon, “go back and warn her! She will
hear you—you are rich—you used to be her friend—I know you—I
have heard of you…. Oh, if you ever cared for her—if you ever
felt for her a thousandth part of what I feel—go in and warn her
not to stir from home!”

“Of what is she to be warned?”

“Of a plot—I know that there is a plot—against her among the monks
and parabolani. As I lay in bed this morning in Arsenius’ room they
thought I was asleep—”

“Arsenius? Has that venerable fanatic, then, gone the way of all
monastic flesh, and turned persecutor?”

“God forbid! I heard him beseeching Peter, the reader, to refrain
from something, I cannot tell what; but I caught her name…. I
heard Peter say, ‘She that hindereth will hinder till she be taken
out of the way.’ And when he went out in the passage I heard him say
to another, ‘That thou doest, do quickly!'”

“These are slender grounds, my friend.”

“Ah, you do not know of what these men are capable.”

“Do I not?”

“I know the hatred which they bear her, the crimes which they
attribute to her. Her house would have been attacked last night had
it not been for Cyril…. And I knew Peter’s tone. He spoke too
gently and softly not to mean something devilish. I watched all the
morning for an opportunity of escape, and here I am! Will you take
my message, or see her—”

“What?”

“God only knows, and the devil whom they worship instead of God.”

Raphael hurried back into the house. “Could he see Hypatia?” She had
shut herself up in her private room, strictly commanding that no
visitor should be admitted…. “Where was Theon, then?” He had gone
out by the canal gate half an hour before, and he hastily wrote on
his tablet:

“Do not despise the young monk’s warning. I believe him to speak the
truth. As you love yourself and your father, Hypatia, stir not out
to-day.”

He bribed the maid to take the message up-stairs; and passed his
time in the hall in warning the servants. But they would not believe
him. It was true the shops were shut in some quarters, and the
Museum gardens empty; people were a little frightened after
yesterday. But Cyril, they had heard for certain, had threatened
excommunication only last night to any Christian who broke the
peace; and there had not been a monk to be seen in the streets the
whole morning. And as for any harm happening to their
mistress—impossible! “The very wild beasts would not tear her,”
said the huge negro porter, “if she were thrown into the
amphitheater.”

Whereat the maid boxed his ears for talking of such a thing: and
then, by way of mending it, declared that she knew for certain that
her mistress could turn aside the lightning and call legions of
spirits to fight for her with a nod…. What was to be done with
such idolaters. And yet who could help liking them the better for
it?

At last the answer came down, in the old, graceful, studied,
self-conscious handwriting:

“I dread nothing. They will not dare. Did they dare now, they would
have dared long ago. As for that youth—to obey or to believe his
word, even to seem aware of his existence, were shame to me
henceforth. Because he is insolent enough to warn me, therefore I
will go. Fear not for me. You would not wish me, for the first time
in my life, to fear for myself. I must follow my destiny. I must
speak the words which I have to speak. Above all, I must let no
Christian say that the philosopher dared less than the fanatic. If
my gods are gods, then will they protect me; and if not, let your
God prove His rule as seems to Him good.”

Raphael tore the letter to fragments…. The guards, at least, were
not gone mad like the rest of the world. It wanted half an hour of
the time for her lecture. In the interval he might summon force
enough to crush all Alexandria.

[Pg 51]
And turning suddenly, he darted out
of the room and out of the house.

“Stay here and stop her! Make a last appeal,” cried he to Philammon,
with a gesture of grief. “Drag the horses’ heads down, if you can! I
will be back in ten minutes.” And he ran off for the nearest gate of
the Museum gardens.

On the other side of the gardens lay the courtyard of the palace.
There were gates in plenty communicating between them. If he could
but see Orestes, even alarm the guard in time!…

And he hurried through the walks and alcoves, now deserted by the
fearful citizens, to the nearest gate. It was fast and barricaded
firmly on the outside.

Terrified, he ran on to the next; it was barred also. He saw the
reason in a moment, and maddened as he saw it. The guards, careless
about the Museum, or reasonably fearing no danger from the
Alexandrian populace to the glory and wonder of their city, or
perhaps wishing wisely enough to concentrate their forces in the
narrowest space, had contented themselves with cutting off all
communication with the gardens. At all events, the doors leading
from the Museum itself might be open. He knew them, every one. He
found an entrance, hurried through well-known corridors to a postern
through which he and Orestes had lounged a hundred times. It was
fast. He beat upon it; but no one answered. He rushed on and tried
another. No one answered there. Another—still silence and
despair!… He rushed up-stairs, hoping that from a window above he
might be able to call the guard. The prudent soldiers had locked and
barricaded the entrances to the upper floors of the whole right
wing, lest the palace court should be commanded from thence. Whither
now? Back—and whither then? And his breath failed him, his throat
was parched, his face burned as with the simoon wind, his legs were
trembling under him. His presence of mind, usually so perfect,
failed him utterly. He was baffled, netted. His brain, for the first
time in his life, began to reel. He could recollect nothing but that
something dreadful was to happen—and that he had to prevent it, and
could not…. Where was he now? In a little by-chamber. What was
that roar below?… A sea of weltering heads, thousands on thousands
down into the very beach; and from their innumerable throats one
mighty war-cry—”God, and the Mother of God!” Cyril’s hounds were
loose….

[Pg 52]
He reeled from the window, and darted frantically away
again … whither, he knew not, and never knew until his dying day.

Philammon saw Raphael rush across the streets into the Museum
gardens. His last words had been a command to stay where he was, and
the boy obeyed him, quietly ensconced himself behind a buttress, and
sat coiled up on the pavement ready for a desperate spring.

There Philammmon waited a full half-hour. It seemed to him hours,
day, years. And yet Raphael did not return; and yet no guards
appeared.

What meant that black knot of men some two hundred yards off,
hanging about the mouth of the side street, just opposite the door
which led to her lecture-room? He moved to watch them; they had
vanished. He lay down again and waited…. There they were again. It
was a suspicious post. That street ran along the back of the
Cæsareum, a favorite haunt of monks, communicating by innumerable
entries and back buildings with the great church itself…. He knew
that something terrible was at hand. More than once he looked out
from his hiding place—the knot of men were still there; … it
seemed to have increased, to draw nearer. If they found him, what
would they not suspect? What did he care? He would die for her if it
came to that—not that it would come to that; but still he must
speak to her—he must warn her.

At last, a curricle, glittering with silver, rattled round the
corner and stopped opposite him. She must be coming now. The crowd
had vanished. Perhaps it was, after all, a fancy of his own. No;
there they were, peeping round the corner, close to the
lecture-room—the hell-hounds! A slave brought out an embroidered
cushion, and then Hypatia herself came forth, looking more glorious
than ever; her lips set in a sad, firm smile; her eyes uplifted,
inquiring, eager, and yet gentle, dimmed by some great inward awe,
as if her soul were far away aloft, and face to face with God.

In a moment he sprang up to her, caught her robe convulsively, threw
himself on his knees before her.

“Stop! Stay! You are going to destruction!”

Calmly she looked down upon him.

“Accomplice of witches! Would you make of Theon’s daughter a traitor
like yourself?”

He sprang up, stepped back, and stood stupefied with shame and
despair….

She believed him guilty then!… It was the will of God!

The plumes of the horses were waving far down the street before he
recovered himself, and rushed after her, shouting he knew not what.

It was too late! A dark wave of men rushed from the ambuscade,
surged up round the car, … swept forward…. She had disappeared,
and, as Philammon followed breathless, the horses galloped past him
madly homeward with the empty carriage.

Whither were they dragging her? To the Cæsareum, the church of God
Himself? Impossible! Why thither of all places of the earth? Why did
the mob, increasing momentarily by hundreds, pour down upon the
beach, and return brandishing flints, shells, fragments of pottery?

She was upon the church steps before he caught them up, invisible
among the crowd; but he could track her by the fragments of her
dress.

Where were her gay pupils now? Alas! they had barricaded themselves
shamefully in the Museum at the first rush which swept her from the
door of the lecture-room. Cowards! He would save her.

And he struggled in vain to pierce the dense mass of parabolani and
monks, who, mingled with the fish-wives and dock workers, leaped and
yelled around their victim. But what he could not do another and a
weaker did—even the little porter. Furiously—no one knew how or
whence—he burst up, as if from the ground in the thickest of the
crowd, with knife, teeth and nails, like a venomous wild-cat,
tearing his way toward his idol. Alas! he was torn down himself,
rolled over the steps, and lay there half dead in an agony of
weeping, as Philammon sprang up past him into the church.

Yes! On into the church itself! Into the cool, dim shadow, with its
fretted pillars, and lowering domes, and candles, and incense, and
blazing altar, and great pictures looking down from the walls
athwart the gorgeous gloom. And right in front, above the altar, the
colossal Christ, watching unmoved from off the wall, his right hand
raised to give a blessing—or a curse!

On, up the nave, fresh shreds of her dress strewing the holy

[Pg 54]
pavement—up the chancel steps themselves—up to the altar—right
underneath the great, still Christ; and there even those hell-hounds
paused….

She shook herself free from her tormentors, and, springing back,
rose for one moment to her full height, naked, snow-white against
the dusky mass around—shame and indignation in those wide, clear
eyes, but not a stain of fear. With one hand she clasped her golden
locks around her, the other long, white arm was stretched upward
toward the great, still Christ, appealing—and who dare say, in
vain?—from man to God. Her lips were opened to speak; but the words
that should have come from them reached God’s ear alone; for in an
instant Peter struck her down, the dark mass closed over her again,
… and then wail on wail, long, wild, ear-piercing, rang along the
vaulted roofs, and thrilled like the trumpet of avenging angels
through Philammon’s ears.

Crushed against a pillar, unable to move in the dense mass, he
pressed his hands over his ears. He could not shut out those
shrieks! When would they end? What in the name of the God of mercy
were they doing? Tearing her piecemeal? Yes, and worse than that.
And still the shrieks rang on, and still the great Christ looked
down on Philammon with that calm, intolerable eye, and would not
turn away. And over his head was written in the rainbow, “I am the
same, yesterday, to-day, and forever!” The same as he was in Judæa
of old, Philammon? Then what are these, and in whose temple? And he
covered his face with his hands and longed to die.

It was over. The shrieks had died away into moans; the moans to
silence.

“Death Stands Above Me.”

The Tournament

BY SIR WALTER SCOTT.

(Arranged by Maude Herndon.)

he
sound of the trumpets soon recalled those spectators who had
already begun to leave the field; and proclamation was made that
Prince John, suddenly called by high and peremptory public duties,
held himself obliged to discontinue the entertainments of the
morrow’s festival. Nevertheless, that, unwilling so many good yeomen
should depart without a trial of skill, he was pleased to appoint
them, before leaving the ground, to execute the competition of
archery intended for the morrow. To the best archer a prize was to
be awarded, being a bugle-horn, mounted with silver, and a silken
baldric richly ornamented with a medallion of St. Hubert, the patron
of sylvan sport.

More than thirty yeomen at first presented themselves as
competitors, but when the archers understood with whom they were to
be matched, upwards to twenty withdrew themselves from the contest,
unwilling to encounter the dishonor of almost certain defeat.

The diminished list of competitors for sylvan fame still amounted to
eight. Prince John stepped from his royal seat to view the persons
of these chosen yeomen. He looked for the object of his resentment,
whom he observed standing on the same spot, and with the same
composed countenance which he had exhibited upon the preceding day.

“Fellow,” said Prince John, “I guessed by thy insolent babble thou
wert no true lover of the long-bow, and I see thou darest not
adventure thy skill among such merry-men as stand yonder.”

“Under favor, sir,” replied the yeomen, “I have another reason for
refraining to shoot, besides the fearing discomfiture and disgrace.”

“And what is thy other reason?” said Prince John.

“Because I know not if these yeomen and I are used to shoot at the
same marks; and because, moreover, I know not how your Grace might
relish the winning of a third prize by one who has unwillingly
fallen under your displeasure.”

“What is thy name, yeoman?”

“Locksley,” answered the yeoman.

“Then Locksley,” said Prince John, “thou shalt shoot in thy turn,
when these yeomen have displayed their skill. If thou carriest the
prize, I will add to it twenty nobles; but if thou losest it, thou
shalt be stript of thy Lincoln green, and scourged out of the lists
with bowstrings, for a wordy and insolent braggart, and if thou
refusest my fair proffer, the Provost of the lists shall cut thy
bowstring, break thy bow and arrows, and expel thee from the
presence as a faint-hearted craven.”

“This is no fair chance you put on me, proud Prince, to compel me to
peril myself against the best archers of Leicester and
Staffordshire, under the penalty of infamy if they should overshoot
me. Nevertheless, I will obey your pleasure.”

A target was placed at the upper end of the southern avenue which
led to the lists. The contending archers took their station in turn,
at the bottom of the southern access; the distance between that
station and the mark allowing full distance for what was called a
shot at rovers. The archers, having previously determined by lot
their order of precedence, were to shoot each three shafts in
succession.

One by one the archers, stepping forward, delivered their shafts
yeomanlike and bravely. Of twenty-four arrows, shot in succession,
ten were fixed in the target, and the others ranged so near it,
that, considering the distance of the mark, it was accounted good
archery. Of the ten shafts which hit the target, two within the
inner ring were shot by Hubert.

“Now, Locksley,” said Prince John, “wilt thou try conclusions with
Hubert, or wilt thou yield up bow, baldric, and quiver, to the
Provost of the sports?”

“Sith it be no better, I am content to try my fortune; on condition
that when I have shot two shafts at yonder mark of Hubert’s, he
shall be bound to shoot one at that which I propose.”

“That is but fair,” answered Prince John, “and it shall not be
refused thee. If thou beat this braggart, Hubert, I will fill the
bugle with silver pennies for thee.”

The former target was now removed, and a fresh one of the same size
placed in its room. Hubert took his aim with great deliberation,
long measuring the distance with his eye, while he held in his hand
his bended bow, with the arrow placed on the string. At length he
made a step forward, and raising the bow at the full stretch of his
left arm, till the centre or grasping place was nigh level with his
face, he drew his bow-string to his ear. The arrow whistled through
the air, and lighted within the inner ring of the target, but not
exactly in the centre.

“You have not allowed for the wind, Hubert, or that had been a
better shot.”

So saying, Locksley stept to the appointed station, and shot his
arrow as carelessly in appearance as if he had not even looked at
the mark. He was speaking almost at the instant that the shaft left
the bow-string, yet it alighted in the target two inches nearer to
the white spot which marked the centre, than that of Hubert.

“By the light of heaven!” said Prince John to Hubert, “and thou
suffer that runagate knave to overcome thee, thou art worthy of the
gallows!”

“Shoot, knave, and shoot thy best, or it shall be the worse for
thee!”

Thus exhorted, Hubert resumed his place, and not neglecting the
caution which he had received from his adversary, he made the
necessary allowance for a very light air of wind, which had just
arisen, and shot so successfully that his arrow alighted in the very
centre of the target.

“A Hubert! a Hubert!” shouted the populace, more interested in a
known person than in a stranger.

“Thou canst not mend that shot, Locksley,” said the Prince with an
insulting smile.

“I will notch his shaft for him, however,” replied Locksley.

And letting fly his arrow with a little more precaution than before,
it lighted right upon that of his competitor, which it split to
shivers. “This must be the devil, and no man of flesh and blood,”
whispered the yeomen to each other; “such archery was never seen
since a bow was first bent in Britain.”

“And now,” said Locksley, “I will crave your Grace’s permission to
plant such a mark as is used in the North Country; and welcome every
brave yeoman who shall try a shot at it to win a smile from the
bonny lass he loves best.”

He then turned to leave the lists, but returned almost instantly
with a willow wand about six feet in length, perfectly straight, and
rather thicker than a man’s thumb. He began to peel this with great
composure, observing at the same time that to ask a good woodsman to
shoot at a target so broad as had hitherto been used, was to put
shame upon his skill. “A child of seven years old might hit yonder
target with a headless shaft, but,” added he, walking deliberately
to the other end of the lists, and, sticking the willow wand upright
in the ground, “he that hits that rod five-score yards, I call him
an archer fit to bear both bow and quiver before a king, and it were
the stout King Richard himself.”

“My grandsire,” said Hubert, “drew a good bow at the battle of
Hastings, and never shot at such a mark in his life—and neither
will I. I might as well shoot at the edge of our parson’s whittle,
or at a wheat straw, or at a sunbeam, as at a twinkling white streak
which I can hardly see.”

“Cowardly dog!” said Prince John. “Sirrah Locksley, do thou shoot;
but, if thou hittest such a mark, I will say thou art the first man
ever did so. Howe’er it be, thou shalt not crow over us with a mere
show of superior skill.”

“I will do my best, no man can do more.”

So saying, he again bent his bow, but on the present occasion looked
with attention to his weapon, and changed the string, which he
thought was no longer truly round, having been a little frayed by
the two former shots. He then took his aim with some deliberation,
and the multitude awaited the event in breathless silence. The
archer vindicated their opinion of his skill; his arrow split the
willow rod against which it was aimed. A jubilee of acclamations
followed; and even Prince John, in admiration of Locksley’s skill,
lost for an instant his dislike to his person. “These twenty
nobles,” he said, “which, with the bugle, thou hast fairly won, are
thine own; we will make them fifty, if thou wilt take livery and
service with us as a yeoman of our body guard, and be near to our
person. For never

[Pg 59]
did so strong a hand bend a bow, or so true an
eye direct a shaft.”

“Pardon me, noble Prince,” said Locksley, “but I have vowed, that if
ever I take service, it should be with your royal brother, King
Richard. These twenty nobles I leave to Hubert, who has this day
drawn as brave a bow as his grandsire did at Hastings. Had his
modesty not refused the trial, he would have hit the wand as well as
I.”

Hubert shook his head as he received with reluctance the bounty of
the stranger; and Locksley, anxious to escape further observation,
mixed with the crowd, and was seen no more.

A Plea for the Old Year[F]

BY LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON.

Fagin’s Last Day

(From Oliver Twist.)

BY CHARLES DICKENS.

e
sat down on a stone bench opposite the door, which served for a
seat and bedstead, and casting his bloodshot eyes upon the ground,
tried to collect his thoughts. After a while he began to remember a
few disjointed fragments of what the judge had said, though it had
seemed to him, at the time, that he could not hear a word. These
gradually fell into their proper places, and by degrees suggested
more; so that in a little time he had the whole almost as it was
delivered. To be hanged by the neck till he was dead—that was the
end—to be hanged by the neck till he was dead!

As it came on very dark, he began to think of all the men he had
known who had died upon the scaffold, some of them through his
means. They rose up in such quick succession that he could hardly
count them. He had seen some of them die—and had joked, too,
because they died with prayers upon their lips. With what a rattling
noise the drop went down, and how suddenly they changed, from strong
and vigorous men to dangling heaps of clothes!

Some of them might have inhabited that very cell—sat upon that very
spot. It was very dark; why didn’t they bring a light? The cell had
been built for many years. Scores of men must have passed their last
hours there. It was like sitting in a vault strewn with dead
bodies—the cap, the noose, the pinioned arms, the faces that he
knew, even beneath that hideous veil. Light, light!

At length, when his hands were raw with beating against the heavy
door and walls, two men appeared—one bearing a

[Pg 61]
candle, which he
thrust into an iron candlestick fixed against the wall; the other
dragging in a mattress on which to pass the night, for the prisoner
was to be left alone no more.

Then came night—dark, dismal, silent night. Other watchers are glad
to hear the church clock strike, for they tell of life and coming
day. To the Jew they brought despair. The boom of every iron bell
came laden with the one, deep, hollow sound—death! What availed the
noise and bustle of cheerful morning which penetrated even there to
him? It was another form of knell, with mockery added to the
warning.

The day passed off. Day? There was no day. It was gone as soon as
come; and night came on again—night so long, and yet so short; long
in its dreadful silence, and short in its fleeting hours. At one
time he raved and blasphemed, and at another howled and tore his
hair. Venerable men of his own persuasion had come to pray beside
him, but he had driven them away with curses. They renewed their
charitable efforts, and he beat them off.

Saturday night. He had only one night more to live. And as he
thought of this the day broke—Sunday.

It was not until the night of this last awful day that a withering
sense of his helpless, desperate state came in its full intensity
upon his blighted soul; not that he had ever held any defined or
positive hope of mercy, but that he had never been able to consider
more than the dim probability of dying so soon. He had spoken little
to either two men, who relieved each other in their attendance upon
him; and they, for their parts, made no effort to rouse his
attention. He had sat there awake, but dreaming. Now, he started up
every minute, and with gasping mouth and burning skin, hurried to
and fro in such a paroxysm of fear and wrath that even they—used to
such sights—recoiled from him with horror. He grew so terrible, at
last, in all the tortures of his evil conscience, that one man could
not bear to sit there, eyeing him alone, and so the two kept watch
together.

He cowed down upon his stone bed, and thought of the past. He had
been wounded with some missiles from the crowd on the day of his
capture, and his head was bandaged with a linen cloth. His red hair
hung down upon his bloodless face; his beard was torn, and twisted
into knots; his

[Pg 62]
eyes shone with a terrible light; his unwashed
flesh crackled with the fever that burnt him up. Eight—nine—ten.
If it was not a trick to frighten him, and those were the real hours
treading on each other’s heels, where would he be, when they came
round again? Eleven! Another struck, before the voice of the
previous hour had ceased to vibrate. At eight he would be the only
mourner in his own funeral train; at eleven—

Those dreadful walls of Newgate, which have hidden so much misery
and such unspeakable anguish, not only from the eyes, but, too often
and too long, from the thoughts of men, never held so dread a
spectacle as that. The few who lingered as they passed, and wondered
what the man was doing who was to be hung to-morrow, would have
slept but ill that night if they could have seen him.

From early in the evening until nearly midnight, little groups of
two and three presented themselves at the lodge-gate and inquired,
with anxious faces, whether any reprieve had been received. These
being answered in the negative, communicated the welcome
intelligence to clusters in the street, who pointed out to one
another the door from which he must come out, and showed where the
scaffold would be built, and walking with unwilling steps away,
turned back to conjure up the scene. By degrees they fell off, one
by one; and, for an hour in the dead of night, the street was left
to solitude and darkness.

The space before the prison was cleared, and a few strong barriers,
painted black, had been already thrown across the road to break the
pressure of the expected crowd, when Mr. Brownlow and Oliver
appeared at the wicket, and presented an order of admission to the
prisoner, signed by one of the sheriffs. They were immediately
admitted into the lodge.

The condemned criminal was seated on his bed, rocking himself from
side to side, with a countenance more like that of a snared beast
than the face of a man. His mind was evidently wandering to his old
life, for he continued to mutter, without appearing conscious of
their presence otherwise than as a part of his vision.

“Good boy, Charley—well done,” he mumbled; “Oliver, too, ha! ha!
ha! Oliver, too—quite the gentleman now—quite the—take that boy
away to bed!”

The jailer took the disengaged hand of Oliver, and whispering him
not to be alarmed, looked on without speaking.

“Take him away to bed!” cried the Jew. “Do you hear me, some of you?
He has been the—the—somehow the cause of all this. It’s worth the
money to bring him up to it—Bolter’s throat, Bill; never mind the
girl—Bolter’s throat, as deep as you can cut. Saw his head off!”

“Fagin,” said the jailer.

“That’s me!” cried the Jew, falling instantly into the attitude of
listening he had assumed upon his trial. “An old man, my lord; a
very old, old man!”

“Here,” said the turnkey, laying his hand upon his breast to keep
him down—”here’s somebody wants to see you—to ask you some
questions, I suppose. Fagin, Fagin! Are you a man?”

“I shan’t be one long,” replied the Jew, looking up with a face
retaining no human expression but rage and terror. “Strike them all
dead! what right have they to butcher me?”

As he spoke he caught sight of Oliver and Mr. Brownlow. Shrinking to
the farthest corner of the seat he demanded to know what they wanted
there.

“Steady,” said the turnkey, still holding him down.

“Now, sir, tell him what you want—quick, if you please, for he
grows worse as the time gets on.”

“You have some papers,” said Mr. Brownlow, advancing, “which were
placed in your hands for better security by a man called Monks.”

“It’s all a lie together,” replied the Jew. “I haven’t one—not
one.”

“For the love of God,” said Mr. Brownlow, solemnly, “do not say that
now, upon the very verge of death, but tell me where they are. You
know that Sikes is dead, that Monks has confessed, that there is no
hope of any further gain. Where are those papers?”

“Oliver,” cried the Jew, beckoning to him. “Here, here! Let me
whisper to you.”

“I am not afraid,” said Oliver, in a low voice, as he relinquished
Mr. Brownlow’s hand.

“The papers,” said the Jew, drawing him towards him, “are in a
canvas bag, in a hole a little way up the chimney in the top front
room. I want to talk to you, my dear; I want to talk to you.”

“Yes, yes,” returned Oliver. “Let me say a prayer. Do! Let me say
one prayer—say only one, upon your knees with me, and we will talk
till morning.”

“Outside, outside,” replied the Jew, pushing the boy before him
towards the door, and looking vacantly over his head. “Say I’ve gone
to sleep—they’ll believe you. You can get me out, if you take me
so. Now then, now then!”

“Oh! God forgive this wretched man!” cried the boy, with a burst of
tears.

“That’s right, that’s right,” said the Jew; “that’ll help us on.
This door first. If I shake and tremble as we pass the gallows,
don’t you mind, but hurry on. Now, now, now!”

“Have you nothing else to ask him, sir?” inquired the turnkey.

“No other question,” replied Mr. Brownlow. “If I hoped we could
recall him to a sense of his position—”

“Nothing will do that, sir,” replied the man, shaking his head. “You
had better leave him.”

The door of the cell opened, and the attendants returned.

“Press on, press on,” cried the Jew. “Softly, but not so slow.
Faster, faster!”

The men laid hands upon him, and disengaging Oliver from his grasp,
held him back. He struggled with the power of desperation for an
instant, and then sent up cry upon cry that penetrated even those
massive walls, and rang in their ears until they reached the open
yard.

A Caution to Poets.

Apollo Belvedere[G]

A Christmas Episode of the Plantation.

BY RUTH McENERY STUART.

e
was a little yellow man, with a quizzical face and sloping
shoulders, and when he gave his full name, with somewhat of a
flourish, as if it might hold compensations for physical
shortcomings, one could hardly help smiling. And yet there was a
pathos in the caricature that dissipated the smile half-way.

“Yas, I’m named ‘Pollo Belvedere, an’ my marster gi’e me dat
intitlemint on account o’ my shape,” he would say, with a strut, as
if he were bantered. As Apollo would have told you himself, the fact
that he had never married was not because he couldn’t get anybody to
have him, but simply that he hadn’t himself been suited.

Lily Washington was a beauty in her own right, and she was the belle
of the plantation. She was an emotional creature, with a caustic
tongue on occasion, and when it pleased her mood to look over her
shoulder at one of her numerous admirers and to wither him with a
look or a word, she did not hesitate to do it. For instance, when
Apollo first asked her to marry him—it had been his habit to
propose to her every day or so for a year or two past—she glanced
at him askance from head to foot, and then she said: “Why, yas. Dat
is, I s’pose, of co’se, you’s de sample. I’d order a full-size by
you in a minute.” This was cruel, and seeing the pathetic

[Pg 66]
look come
into his face, she instantly repented of it, and walked home from
church with him, dismissing a handsome black fellow, and saying only
kind things to Apollo all the way.

Of course no one took Apollo seriously as Lily’s suitor, much less
the chocolate maid herself. But there were other lovers. Indeed,
there were all the others, for that matter, but in point of
eligibility the number to be seriously regarded was reduced to about
two. These were Pete Peters, a handsome griff, with just enough
Indian blood to give him an air of distinction, and a French-talking
mulatto, who had come up from New Orleans to repair the machinery in
the sugar-house, and who was buying land in the vicinity, and drove
his own sulky. Pete was less prosperous than he, but, although he
worked his land on shares, he owned two mules and a saddle horse,
and would be allowed to enter on a purchase of land whenever he
should choose to do so. Although Pete and the New Orleans fellow,
whose name was also Peter, but who was called Pierre, met constantly
in a friendly enough way, they did not love each other. They both
loved Lily too much for that. But they laughed good-naturedly
together at Apollo and his “case,” which they inquired after
politely, as if it were a member of his family.

“Well, ‘Pollo, how’s yo’ case on Miss Lily comin’ on?” either one
would say, with a wink at the other, and Apollo would artlessly
report the state of the heavens with relation to his particular
star, as when he once replied to this identical question:

“Well, Miss Lily was mighty obstropulous ‘istiddy, but she is mo’
cancelized dis mornin’.”

It was Pete who had asked the question, and he laughed aloud at the
answer. “Mo’ cancelized dis mornin’, is she?” he replied. “How do
you know she is?”

“‘Caze she lemme tote her hoe all de way up f’rom de field,”
answered the ingenuous Apollo.

“She did, did she? An’ who was walkin’ by her side all dat time, I
like to know?”

Apollo winced a little at this, but he answered, bravely, “I don’t
kyah ef Pier was walkin’ wid her; I was totin’ her hoe, all de
samee.”

The Christmas-eve dance in the sugar-house had been for years an
annual function on the plantation. At this, since her debut, at
fourteen, three Christmases before, Lily had held

[Pg 67]
undisputed sway,
and all her former belles amiably accepted their places as lesser
lights.

Lily was perfectly ravishing in her splendor at the dance this year.
The white Swiss frock she wore was high in the neck, but her brown
shoulders and arms shone through the thin fabric with fine effect.
About her slim waist she tied a narrow ribbon of blue, and she
carried a pink feather fan, and the wreath about her forehead was of
lilies-of-the-valley. She had done a day’s scouring for them, and
they had come out of the summer hat of one of the white ladies on
the coast. This insured their quality, and no doubt contributed
somewhat to the quiet serenity with which she bore herself as, with
her little head held like that of the Venus of Milo, she danced down
the center of the room, holding her flounces in either hand, and
kicking the floor until she kicked both her slippers to pieces, when
she finished the figure in her stocking feet.

She had a relay of slippers ready, and there was a scramble as to
who should put them on; but she settled that question by making
‘Pollo rise, with his fiddle in his arms, and lend her his chair for
a minute while she pulled them on herself. Then she let Pete and
Pierre each have one of the discarded slippers as a trophy. Lily had
always danced out several pairs of slippers at the Christmas dance,
but she never achieved her stocking feet in the first round until
now, and she was in high glee over it. If she had been admired
before, she was looked upon as a raving, tearing, beauty to-night,
and so she was. Fortunately ‘Pollo had his fiddling to do, and this
saved him from any conspicuous folly. But he kept his eyes on her,
and when she grew too ravishingly lovely to his fond vision, and he
couldn’t stand it a minute longer in silence, he turned to the man
next him, who played the bones, and remarked, “Ef—ef anybody but
Gord A’mighty had a-made anything as purty as Miss Lily, dey’d ‘a’
stinted it somewhar,” and, watching every turn, he lent his bow to
her varying moods while she tired out one dancer after another. It
was the New Orleans fellow who first lost his head utterly. He had
danced with her but three times, but, while she took another’s hand
and whizzed through the figures, he scarcely took his eyes from her,
and when, at about midnight, he succeeded in getting her apart for a
promenade, he poured forth his soul to her in the picturesque
English of the quadroon quarter of New Orleans. “An’ now, to proof
to you my lorv,

[Pg 68]
Ma’m’selle Leelee”—he gesticulated vigorously as
he spoke—”I am geeving you wan beau-u-tiful Christmas present—I am
goin’ to geev you—w’at you t’ink? My borgee!” With this he turned
dramatically and faced her. They were standing now under the shed
outside the door in the moonlight, and, although they did not see
him, Apollo stood within hearing, behind a pile of molasses barrels,
where he had come “to cool off.”

Lily had several times been “buggy-ridin'” with Pierre in this same
“borgee,” and it was a very magnificent affair in her eyes. When he
told her that it was to be hers she gasped. Such presents were
unknown on the plantation. But Lily was a “mannerly” member of good
society, if her circle was small, and she was not to be taken back
by any compliment a man should pay her. She simply fanned herself, a
little flurriedly perhaps, with her feather fan, as she said: “You
sho’ must be jokin’, Mr. Pier. You cert’n’y must.” But Mr. Pierre
was not joking. He was never more in earnest in his life, and he
told her so, and there is no telling what else he would have told
her but for the fact that Mr. Pete Peters happened to come out to
the shed to cool off about this time, and as he almost brushed her
shoulder, it was as little as Lily could do to address a remark to
him, and then, of course, he stopped and chatted awhile; and, after
what appeared a reasonable interval, long enough for it not to seem
that she was too much elated over it, she remarked, “An’, by-de-way,
Mr. Peters, I must tell you what a lovely Christmas gif’ I have just
received by de hand of Mr. Pier. He has jest presented me with his
yaller-wheeled buggy, an’ I sho’ is proud of it.” Then, turning to
Pierre, she added, “You sho’ is a mighty generous gen’leman,
Mr. Pier—you cert’n’y is.”

Peters give Lily one startled look, but he instantly realized, from
her ingenuous manner, that there was nothing back of the gift of the
buggy—that is, it had been, so far as she was concerned, simply a
Christmas present. Pierre had not offered himself with the gift. And
if this were so, well—he reckoned he could match him.

He reached forward and took Lily’s fan from her hand. He hastened to
do this to keep Pierre from taking it. Then, while he fanned her, he
said, “Is dat so, Miss Lily, dat Mr. Pier is give you a buggy? Dat
sholy is a fine Christmas gif’—it sho’ is. An’ sense you fin’
yo’se’f possessed of a buggy, I trust you will allow me de pleasure
of presentin’ you wid a

[Pg 69]
horse to drive in de buggy.” He made a
graceful bow as he spoke, a bow that would have done credit to the
man from New Orleans. It was so well done, indeed, that Lily
unconsciously bowed in return, as she said, with a look that savored
a little of roguishness: “Oh, hursh, Mr. Peters! You des a-guyin’
me—dat what you doin’.”

“Guyin’ nothin’,” said Peters, grinning broadly as he noted the
expression of Pierre’s face. “Ef you’ll jes do me de honor to accep’
of my horse, Miss Lily, I’ll be de proudest gen’leman on dis
plantation.”

At this she chuckled, and took her fan in her own hand. And then she
turned to Pierre.

“You sho’ has set de style o’ mighty expensive Christmas gif’s on
dis plantation, Mr. Pier—you cert’n’y has. An’ I wants to thank you
bofe mos’ kindly—I cert’n’y does.”

Having heard this much, ‘Pollo thought it time to come from his
hiding, and he strolled leisurely out in the other direction first,
but soon returned this way. And then he stopped, and, reaching over,
took the feather fan—and for a few moments he had his innings. Then
some one else came along and the conversation became impersonal, and
one by one they all dropped off—all except ‘Pollo. When the rest
had gone, he and Lily found seats on the cane carrier, and they
talked a while, and when a little later supper was announced, it was
the proud fiddler who took her in, while Pierre and Peters stood off
and politely glared at each other; and after a while Pierre must
have said something, for Peters suddenly sprang at him and tumbled
him out the door and rolled him over in the dirt, and they had to be
separated. But presently they laughed and shook hands, and Pierre
offered Pete a cigarette, and Pete took it, and gave Pierre a
light—and it was all over.

It was next day—Christmas morning—and the young people were
standing about in groups under the China-trees in the campus, when
Apollo joined them, looking unusually chipper and beaming. He was
dressed in his best—Prince Albert, beaver, and all—and he sported
a bright silk handkerchief tied loosely about his neck.

He was altogether a delightful figure, absolutely content with
himself, and apparently at peace with the world. No sooner had he
joined the crowd than the fellows began chaffing him, as usual, and
presently some one mentioned Lily’s name and spoke of her presents.
The two men who had broken

[Pg 70]
the record for generosity in the history
of plantation lovers were looked upon as nabobs by those of lesser
means. Of course everybody knew the city fellow had started it, and
they were glad that Peters had come to time and saved the dignity of
the place; indeed, he was about the only one on the plantation who
could have done it.

As they stood talking it over, the two heroes had nothing to say, of
course, and ‘Pollo began rolling a cigarette—an art he had learned
from the man from New Orleans.

Finally, he remarked, “Yas, Miss Lily got sev’al mighty nice
presents last night.”

At this Pierre turned, laughing, and said, “I s’pose you geeve ‘er
somet’ing, too, eh?”

“Pity you hadn’t a-give her dat silk hank’cher. Hit ‘d become her a
heap better’n it becomes you,” Peters said, laughing.

“Yas, I reckon it would,” said ‘Pollo; “but de fact is she gi’ me
dis hank’cher—an’ of co’se I accepted it.”

“But why ain’t you tellin’ us what you give her?” insisted Peters.

‘Pollo put the cigarette to his lips, deliberately lit it, puffed
several times, and then, removing it in a leisurely way, he drawled:

“Well, de fact is, I heerd Mr. Pier here give her a buggy,
an’—Mr. Peters, he up an’ handed over a horse,—an’ so, quick as I got a
chance, I des balanced my ekalub’ium an’ went an’ set down beside
her an’ ast her ef she wouldn’t do me the honor to accep’ of a
driver, an’—an’ she say yas.

“You know I’m a coachman by trade.

“An dat’s huccome I to say she got sev’al presents las’ night.”

And he took another puff of his cigarette.

An Invalid in Lodgings

BY J. M. BARRIE.

ntil
my system collapsed, my landlady only spoke of me as her
parlor. At intervals I had communicated with her through the medium
of Sarah Ann, the servant, and, as her rent was due on Wednesday,
could I pay my bill now? Except for these monetary transactions, my
landlady and I were total strangers, and, though I sometimes fell
over her children in the lobby, that led to no intimacy. Even Sarah
Ann never opened her mouth to me. She brought in my tea, and left me
to discover that it was there. My first day in lodgings I said
“Good-morning” to Sarah Ann, and she replied, “Eh?” “Good-morning,”
I repeated, to which she answered contemptuously, “Oh, ay.” For six
months I was simply the parlor; but then I fell ill, and at once
became an interesting person.

Sarah Ann found me shivering on the sofa one hot day a week or more
ago, beneath my rug, two coats, and some other articles. My landlady
sent up some beef-tea, in which she has a faith that is pathetic,
and then, to complete the cure, she appeared in person. She has
proved a nice, motherly old lady, but not cheerful company.

“Where do you feel it worst, sir?” she asked.

I said it was bad all over, but worst in my head.

“On your brow?”

“No; on the back of my head.”

“It feels like a lump of lead?”

“No; like a furnace.”

“That’s just what I feared,” she said. “It began so with him.”

“With whom?”

“My husband. He came in one day, five years ago, complaining of his
head, and in three days he was a corpse.”

“What?”

“Don’t be afraid, sir. Maybe it isn’t the same thing.”

“Of course it isn’t. Your husband, according to the story you told
me when I took these rooms, died of fever.”

“Yes, but the fever began just in this way. It carried him off

[Pg 72]
in
no time. You had better see a doctor, sir. Doctor was no use in my
husband’s case, but it is satisfaction to have him.”

Here Sarah Ann, who had been listening with mouth and eyes open,
suddenly burst into tears, and was led out of the room, exclaiming,
“Him such a quiet gentleman, and he never flung nothing at me.”

Though I knew that I had only caught a nasty cold, a conviction in
which the doctor confirmed me, my landlady stood out for its being
just such another case as her husband’s, and regaled me for hours
with reminiscences of his rapid decline. If I was a little better
one day, alas! he had been a little better the day before he died;
and if I answered her peevishly, she told Sarah Ann that my voice
was going. She brought the beef-tea up with her own hands, her
countenance saying that I might as well have it, though it could not
save me. Sometimes I pushed it away untasted (how I loathe beef-tea
now!), when she whispered something to Sarah Ann that sent that
tender-hearted maid howling once more from the room.

“He’s supped it all,” Sarah Ann said one day, brightening.

“That’s a worse sign,” said her mistress, “than if he hadn’t took
none.”

I lay on a sofa, pulled close to the fire, and when the doctor came,
my landlady was always at his heels, Sarah Ann’s dismal face showing
at the door. The doctor is a personal friend of my own, and each day
he said I was improving a little.

“Ah, doctor!” my landlady said, reprovingly.

“He does it for the best,” she exclaimed to me, “but I don’t hold
with doctors as deceive their patients. Why don’t he speak out the
truth like a man? My husband were told the worst, and so he had time
to reconcile himself.”

On one of these occasions I summoned up sufficient energy to send
her out of the room; but that only made matters worse.

“Poor gentleman!” I heard her say to Sarah Ann; “he is very violent
to-day. I saw he were worse the moment I clapped eyes on him. Sarah
Ann, I shouldn’t wonder though we had to hold him down yet.”

About an hour afterwards she came in to ask me if I “had come more
round to myself,” and when I merely turned round

[Pg 73]
on the sofa for
reply, she said, in a loud whisper to Sarah Ann, that I “were as
quiet as a lamb now.” Then she stroked me and went away.

So attentive was my landlady that she was a ministering angel. Yet I
lay on that sofa plotting how to get her out of the room. The plan
that seemed the simplest was to pretend sleep, but it was not easily
carried out. Not getting any answer from me, she would approach on
tiptoe and lean over the sofa, listening to hear me breathe.
Convinced that I was still living, she and Sarah Ann began a
conversation in whispers, of which I or the deceased husband was the
subject. The husband had slept a good deal, too, and it wasn’t a
healthy sign.

“It isn’t a good sign,” whispered my landlady, “though them as know
no better might think it is. It shows he’s getting weaker. When they
takes to sleeping in the day-time, it’s only because they don’t have
the strength to keep awake.”

“Oh, missus!” Sarah Ann would say.

“Better face facts, Sarah Ann,” replied my landlady.

In the end I had generally to sit up and confess that I heard what
they were saying. My landlady evidently thought this another bad
sign.

I discovered that my landlady held receptions in another room, where
visitors came who referred to me as her “trial.” When she thought me
distinctly worse, she put on her bonnet and went out to disseminate
the sad news. It was on one of these occasions that Sarah Ann, who
had been left in charge of the children, came to me with a serious
request.

“Them children,” she said, “want awful to see you, and I sort of
promised to bring ’em in, if so you didn’t mind.”

“But, Sarah Ann, they have seen me often, and, though I’m a good
deal better, I don’t feel equal to speaking to them.”

Sarah Ann smiled pityingly when I said I felt better, but she
assured me the children only wanted to look at me. I refused her
petition, but, on my ultimatum being announced to them, they set up
such a roar that, to quiet them, I called them in.

They came one at a time. Sophia, the eldest, came first. She looked
at me very solemnly, and then said bravely that If I liked she would
kiss me. As she had a piece of flannel tied round her face, and was
swollen in the left cheek, I declined this honor, and she went off
much relieved. Next came

[Pg 74]
Tommy, who sent up a shriek as his eyes
fell on me, and had to be carried off by Sarah Ann. Johnny was
bolder and franker, but addressed all his remarks to Sarah Ann.
First, he wanted to know if he could touch me, and, being told he
could, he felt my face all over. Then, he wanted to see the
“spouter.” The “spouter” was a spray through which Sarah Ann blew
coolness on my head, and Johnny had heard of it with interest. He
refused to leave the room until he had been permitted to saturate me
and my cushion.

I am so much better now that even my landlady knows I am not dying.
I suppose she is glad that it is so, but at the same time she
resents it. There is an impression in the house that I am a fraud.
They call me by my name as yet, but soon again I shall be the
parlor.

The Stirrup-Cup

BY SIDNEY LANIER.

Das Krist Kindel.[H]

BY JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY.

Hiram Foster’s Thanksgiving Turkey

BY S. E. KISER.

The Winning of Lorna Doone

(From Lorna Doone.)

BY R. D. BLACKMORE.

hen
I came to myself again, my hands were full of young grass and
mold, and a little girl, kneeling at my side, was rubbing my
forehead tenderly with a dock-leaf and a handkerchief.

“Oh, I am so glad!” she whispered, softly, as I opened my eyes and
looked at her; “now you will try to be better, won’t you?”

I had never heard so sweet a sound as came from between her bright
red lips, while there she knelt and gazed at me; neither had I ever
seen anything so beautiful as the large, dark eyes intent upon me,
full of pity and wonder. And then, my nature being slow, and
perhaps, for that matter, heavy, I wandered with my hazy eyes down
the black shower of her hair, as to my jaded gaze it seemed. Perhaps
she liked my countenance, and indeed I know she did, because she
said so afterward; although at that time she was too young to know
what made her take to me.

Thereupon I sat upright, with my little trident still in one hand,
and was much afraid to speak to her, being conscious of my country
brogue, lest she should cease to like me. But she clapped her hands,
and made a trifling dance around my back, and came to me on the
other side, as if I were a great play thing.

“What is your name?” she said, as if she had every right to

[Pg 80]
ask me;
“and how did you come here, and what are these wet things in this
great bag?”

“You had better let them alone,” I said; “they are loaches for my
mother. But I will give you some, if you like.”

“Dear me, how much you think of them! Why, they are only fish. But
how your feet are bleeding! Oh, I must tie them up for you. And no
shoes nor stockings! Is your mother very poor, poor boy?”

“No,” I said, being vexed at this; “we are rich enough to buy all
this great meadow, if we chose; and here my shoes and stockings be.”

“Why, they are quite as wet as your feet; and I cannot bear to see
your feet. Oh, please to let me bandage them; I will do it very
softly.”

“Oh, I don’t think much of that,” I replied; “I shall put some goose
grease to them. But how you are looking at me! I never saw one like
you before. My name is John Ridd. What is your name?”

“Lorna Doone,” she answered, in a low voice, as if afraid of it, and
hanging her head so that I could see only her forehead and
eyelashes; “if you please, my name is Lorna Doone, and I thought you
must have known it.”

Young and harmless as she was, her name alone made guilt of her.
Nevertheless, I could not help looking at her tenderly, and the more
when her blushes turned into tears, and her tears to long, low sobs.

“Don’t cry,” I said, “whatever you do. I am sure you have never done
any harm. I will give you all my fish, Lorna, and catch some more
for mother; only don’t be angry with me.”

She flung her soft arms up in the passion of her tears, and looked
at me so piteously that what did I do but kiss her. It seemed to be
a very odd thing, when I came to think of it, because I hated
kissing so, as all honest boys must do. But she touched my heart
with a sudden delight.

She gave me no encouragement, as my mother in her place would have
done; nay, she even wiped her lips (which methought was rather rude
of her), and drew away, and smoothed her dress, as if I had used a
freedom.

I, for my part, being vexed at her behavior to me, took up all my
things to go, and made a fuss about it, to let her know I was going.
But she did not call me back at all, as I had made sure she would
do; moreover, I knew that to try the

[Pg 81]
descent was almost certain
death to me, and it looked as dark as pitch; and so at the mouth I
turned round again, and came back to her, and said, “Lorna.”

“Oh, I thought you were gone,” she answered; “why did you ever come
here? Do you know what they would do to us if they found you here
with me?”

“Beat us, I dare say, very hard, or me at least. They could never
beat you.”

“No. They would kill us both outright, and bury us here by the
water; and the water often tells me that I must come to that.”

“But what should they kill me for?”

“Because you have found the way up here, and they could never
believe it. Now, please to go; oh please go. They will kill us both
in a moment. Yes, I like you very much”—for I was teasing her to
say it—”very much indeed, and I will call you John Ridd, if you
like; only please to go, John. And when your feet are well, you
know, you can come and tell me how they are.”

“But I tell you, Lorna, I like you very much indeed, nearly as much
as Annie, and a great deal more than Lizzie. And I never saw any one
like you; and I must come back again to-morrow, and so must you, to
see me; and I will bring you such lots of things—there are apples
still, and a thrush that I caught, with only one leg broken, and our
dog has just had puppies—”

“Oh dear! they won’t let me have a dog. There is not a dog in the
valley. They say that they are such noisy things—”

“Only put your hands in mine—what little things they are,
Lorna!—and I will bring you the loveliest dog; I will show you just
how long he is.”

“Hush!” A shout came down the valley, and all my heart was
trembling, like water after sunset, and Lorna’s face was altered
from pleasant play to terror. She shrunk to me, and looked up at me,
with such a power of weakness, that I at once made up my mind to
save her or die with her. A tingle went through all my bones, and I
only longed for my carbine. The little girl took courage from me,
and put her cheek quite close to mine.

“Come with me down the water-fall. I can carry you easily, and
mother will take care of you.”

“No, no,” she cried, as I took her up; “I will tell you what to

[Pg 82]
do. They are only looking for me. You see that hole, that hole there?”

“Yes, I see it; but they will see me crossing the grass to get
there.”

“Look, look!” She could hardly speak. “There is a way out from the
top of it; they would kill me if I told it. Oh, here they come; I
can see them.” Then she began to sob aloud, being so young and
unready. But I drew her behind the withy-bushes, and close down to
the water, where it was quiet and shelving deep, ere it came to the
lip of the chasm. Here they could not see either of us from the
upper valley.

Crouching in that hollow nest, as children get together in ever so
little compass, I saw a dozen fierce men come down on the other side
of the water, not bearing any fire-arms, but looking lax and jovial,
as if they were come from riding and a dinner taken hungrily.
“Queen, queen!” they were shouting, here and there, and now and
then; “where the pest is our little queen gone?”

“They always call me ‘queen,’ and I am to be queen by-and-by,” Lorna
whispered to me, with her soft cheek on my rough one, and her little
heart beating against me; “oh, they are crossing by the timber
there, and then they are sure to see us.”

“Stop,” said I; “now I see what to do. I must get into the water,
and you must go to sleep.”

“To be sure, yes; away in the meadow there. But how bitter cold it
will be for you!”

She saw in a moment the way to do it sooner than I could tell her;
and there was no time to lose.

“Now, mind you, never come again,” she whispered over her shoulder,
as she crept away with a childish twist, hiding her white front from
me; “only I shall come sometimes—oh, here they are, Madonna!”

Daring scarce to peep, I crept into the water, and lay down bodily
in it, with my head between two blocks of stone, and some flood
drift combing over me. I knew that for her sake I was bound to be
brave and hide myself. She was lying beneath a rock, thirty or forty
yards from me, feigning to be fast asleep, with her dress spread
beautifully, and her hair drawn over her.

Presently one of the great, rough men came round a corner upon her;
and there he stopped and gazed a while at her fairness

[Pg 83]
and her
innocence. Then he caught her up in his arms, and kissed her so that
I heard him; and if I had only brought my gun, I would have tried to
shoot him.

“Here our queen is! Here’s the queen; here’s the captain’s
daughter!” he shouted to his comrades; “fast asleep, and hearty! Now
I have first claim to her; and no one else shall touch the child.
Back to the bottle, all of you!”

He set her dainty little form upon his great, square shoulder, and
her narrow feet in one broad hand; and so in triumph marched away.

II.

My heart was in my mouth, as they say, when I stood in the shade of
Lorna’s window, and whispered her name gently. But, though the
window was not very close, I might have whispered long enough before
she would have answered me, frightened as she was, no doubt, by many
a rude overture. And I durst not speak aloud, because I saw another
watchman posted on the western cliff, and commanding all the valley.
And now this man espied me against the wall of the house, and
advanced against the brink and challenged me.

“Who are you, there? Answer! One, two, three; and I fire at thee.”

The nozzle of his gun was pointed full upon me, as I could see, with
the moonlight striking on the barrel; he was not more than fifty
yards off, and now he began to reckon. Being almost desperate about
it, I began to whistle, wondering how far I should get before I lost
my windpipe; and, as luck would have it, my lips fell into that
strange tune I had practiced

[Pg 84]
last,—the one I heard from Charlie
Doone. My mouth would scarcely frame the notes, being parched with
terror; but, to my surprise, the man fell back, dropped his gun and
saluted. Oh, sweetest of all sweet melodies!

That tune was Carver Doone’s passport (as I heard long afterward),
which Charleworth Doone had imitated, for decoy of Lorna. The
sentinel took me for that vile Carver, who was like enough to be
prowling there, for private talk with Lorna, but not very likely to
shout forth his name, if it might be avoided. The watchman,
perceiving the danger, perhaps, of intruding on Carver’s privacy,
not only retired along the cliff, but withdrew himself to good
distance.

Meanwhile he had done me the kindest service; for Lorna came to the
window at once to see what the cause of the shout was, and drew back
the curtain timidly. Then she opened the rough lattice; and then she
watched the cliff and trees; and then she sighed very sadly.

“Oh, Lorna, don’t you know me?” I whispered from the side, being
afraid of startling her by appearing over suddenly.

Quick though she was of thought, she knew me not from my whisper,
and was shutting the window hastily, when I caught it back and
showed myself.

“John!” she cried, yet with sense enough not to speak aloud; “oh,
you must be mad, John!”

“As mad as a March hare,” said I, “without any news of my darling.
You knew I would come—of course you did.”

“Well, I thought, perhaps—you know; now, John, you need not eat my
hand. Do you see, they have put iron bars across?”

“To be sure. Do you think I should be contented even with this
lovely hand, but for these vile iron bars? I will have them out
before I go. Now, darling, for one moment—just the other hand, for
a change, you know.”

So I got the other, but was not honest; for I kept them both, and
felt their delicate beauty trembling as I laid them to my heart.

“Oh, John, you will make me cry directly”—she had been crying long
ago—”if you go on in that way. You know we can never have one
another; every one is against it. Why should I make you miserable?
Try not to think of me any more.”

“And will you try the same of me, Lorna?”

“Oh yes, John; if you agree to it. At least I will try to try it.”

“Then you won’t try anything of the sort,” I cried, with great
enthusiasm, for her tone was so nice and melancholy; “the only thing
we will try to try is to belong to one another. And if we do our
best, Lorna, God alone can prevent us.”

She crossed herself with one hand drawn free, as I spoke so boldly;
and something swelled in her little throat, and prevented her from
answering.

“Now tell me,” I said; “what means all this? Why are you so pent up
here? Why have you given me no token? Has your grandfather turned
against you? Are you in any danger?”

“My poor grandfather is very ill. I fear that he will not live long.
The Counselor and his son are now masters of the valley; and I dare
not venture forth for fear of anything they might do to me. When I
went forth to signal for you, Carver tried to seize me; but I was
too quick for him. Little Gwenny is not allowed to leave the valley
now, so that I could send no message. I have been so wretched, dear,
lest you should think me false to you. The tyrants now make sure of
me. You must watch this house both night and day, if you wish to
save me. There is nothing they would shrink from, if my poor
grandfather—oh, I cannot bear to think of myself, when I ought to
think of him only; dying without a son to tend him or a daughter to
shed a tear.”

“But surely he has sons enough; and a deal too many,” I was going to
say, but stopped myself in time. “Why do none of them come to him?”

“I know not. I cannot tell. He is a very strange old man, and few
have ever loved him. He was black with wrath at the Counselor this
afternoon—but I must not keep you here—you are much too brave,
John; and I am too selfish; there, what was that shadow?”

“Nothing more than a bat, darling, come to look for his sweetheart.
I will not stay long; you tremble so; and yet for that very reason
how can I leave you, Lorna?”

“You must—you must,” she answered; “I shall die if they hurt you. I
hear the old nurse moving. Grandfather is sure to send for me. Keep
back from the window.”

However, it was only Gwenny Carfax, Lorna’s little handmaid; my
darling brought her to the window and presented her to me, almost
laughing through her grief.

“Oh, I am so glad, John; Gwenny, I am so glad you came. I have
wanted long to introduce you to my ‘young man,’ as you call him. It
is rather dark, but you can see him. I wish you to know him again,
Gwenny.”

“Whoy!” cried Gwenny, with great amazement, standing on tiptoe to
look out, and staring as if she were weighing me; “he be bigger nor
any Doone! I shall knoo thee again, young man; no fear of that,” she
answered, nodding with an air of patronage. “Now, missis, gae on
coortin’, and I will gae outside and watch for ‘ee.” Though
expressed not over-delicately, this proposal arose, no doubt, from
Gwenny’s sense of delicacy; and I was very thankful to her for
taking her departure.

“She is the best little thing in the world,” said Lorna, softly,
laughing, “and the queerest, and the truest. Nothing will bribe her
against me. If she seems to be on the other side, never, never doubt
her. Now, no more of your ‘coortin’,’ John. I love you far too well
for that. Yes, yes, ever so much! If you will take a mean advantage
of me—as much as ever you like to imagine; and then you may double
it after that. Only go, do go, good John; kind, dear, darling John;
if you love me, go.”

“How can I go without settling anything?” I asked, very sensibly.
“How shall I know of your danger now? Hit upon something; you are so
quick. Anything you can think of; and then I will go, and not
frighten you.”

“I have been thinking long of something,” Lorna answered, rapidly,
with that peculiar clearness of voice which made every syllable ring
like music of a several note. “You see that tree with the seven
rooks’ nests, bright against the cliffs there? Can you count them
from above, do you think? From a place where you would be safe,
dear?”

“No doubt I can; or, if I cannot, it will not take me long to find a
spot whence I can do it.”

“Gwenny can climb like any cat. She has been up there in the summer
watching the young birds day by day, and daring the boys to touch
them. There are neither birds nor eggs there now, of course, and
nothing doing. If you see but six rooks’ nests, I am in peril, and
want you. If you see but five, I am carried off by Carver.”

“Good God!” said I, at the mere idea, in a tone which frightened
Lorna.

“Fear not, John,” she whispered, sadly, and my blood grew

[Pg 87]
cold at
it; “I have means to stop him, or at least to save myself. If you
can come within one day of that man’s getting hold of me, you will
find me quite unharmed. After that you will find me, dead or alive,
according to circumstances, but in no case such that you need blush
to look at me.”

I only said, “God bless you, darling!” and she said the same to me,
in a very low, sad voice. And then I stole below Carver’s house in
the shadow from the eastern cliff; and, knowing enough of the
village now to satisfy all necessity, betook myself to my well-known
track in returning from the valley.

III.

It was not likely that the outlaws would attack our premises until
some time after the moon was risen, because it would be too
dangerous to cross the flooded valleys in the darkness of the night.
And, but for this consideration, I must have striven harder against
the stealthy approach of slumber. But even so, it was very foolish
to abandon watch, especially in such as I, who sleep like any
dormouse. Moreover, I had chosen the very worst place in the world
for such employment, with a goodly chance of awaking in a bed of
solid fire.

And so it might have been—nay, it must have been—but for Lorna’s
vigilance. Her light hand upon my arm awoke me, not too readily,
and, leaping up, I seized my club, and prepared to knock down
somebody.

“Who’s that?” I cried. “Stand back, I say, and let me have a fair
chance at you.”

“Are you going to knock me down, dear John?” replied the voice I
love so well. “I am sure I should never get up again, after one blow
from you, John.”

“My darling, is it you?” I cried; “and breaking all your orders?

[Pg 88]
Come back into the house at once; and nothing on your head, dear.”

“How could I sleep, while at any moment you might be killed beneath
my window? And now is the time of real danger, for men can see to
travel.”

I saw at once the truth of this. The moon was high and clearly
lighting all the watered valleys. To sleep any longer might be
death, not only to myself, but all.

“The man on guard at the back of the house is fast asleep,” she
continued; “Gwenny, who let me out, and came with me, has heard him
snoring for two hours. I think the women ought to be the watch,
because they have had no traveling. Where do you suppose little
Gwenny is?”

“Surely not gone to Glen Doone?” I was not sure, however, for I
could believe almost anything of the Cornish maiden’s hardihood.

“No,” replied Lorna, “although she wanted even to do that. But, of
course, I would not hear of it, on account of the swollen waters.
But she is perched in yonder tree, which commands the Barrow Valley.
She says that they are almost sure to cross the streamlet there.”

“What a shame,” I cried, “that the men should sleep and the maidens
be the soldiers! I will sit in that tree myself, and send little
Gwenny back to you. Go to bed, my best and dearest; I will take good
care not to sleep again.”

Before I had been long on duty, making the round of the ricks and
the stables, and hailing Gwenny now and then from the bottom of her
tree, a short, wide figure stole toward me, in and out the shadows,
and I saw that it was no other than the little maid herself, and
that she bore some tidings.

“Ten on ’em crossed the water down yonder,” said Gwenny, putting her
hand to her mouth, and seeming to regard it as good news rather than
otherwise; “be arl craping up by the hedgerow now. I could shutt
dree on ’em from the bar of the gate, if so be I had your goon,
young man.”

“There is no time to lose, Gwenny. Run to the house and fetch Master
Stickles, and all the men while I stay here and watch the
rick-yard.”

The robbers rode into our yard as coolly as if they had been
invited, having lifted the gate from the hinges first, on account of
its being fastened. Then they actually opened our stable doors, and
turned our honest horses out, and put their own rogues in place of
them. At this my breath was quite

[Pg 89]
taken away, for we think so much
of our horses. By this time I could see our troopers waiting in the
shadow of the house round the corner from where the Doones were, and
expecting the order to fire; but Jeremy Stickles very wisely kept
them in readiness until the enemy should advance upon them.

“Two of you lazy fellows go,”—it was the deep voice of Carver
Doone, “and make us a light to cut their throats by. Only one thing,
once again. If any man touches Lorna, I will stab him where he
stands. She belongs to me. There are two other young damsels here,
whom you may take away if you please. And the mother, I hear, is
still comely. Now for our rights. We have borne too long the
insolence of these yokels. Kill every man and every child, and burn
this cursed place down.”

Presently two young men came toward me, bearing brands of resined
hemp, kindled from Carver’s lamp. The foremost of them set his torch
to the rick within a yard of me, the smoke concealing me from him. I
struck him with a backhanded blow on the elbow as he bent it, and I
heard the bone of his arm break as clearly as ever I heard a twig
snap. With a roar of pain, he fell on the ground, and his torch
dropped there and singed him. The other man stood amazed at this,
not having yet gained sight of me, till I caught his fire-brand from
his hand, and struck it into his countenance. With that he leaped at
me, but I caught him in a manner learned from early wrestling, and
snapped his collar bone, as I laid him upon the top of his comrade.

This little success so encouraged me that I was half inclined to
advance and challenge Carver Doone to meet me; but I bore in mind
that he would be apt to shoot me without ceremony; and what is the
utmost of human strength against the power of powder? Moreover, I
remembered my promise to sweet Lorna; and who would be left to
defend her, if the rogues got rid of me?

While I was hesitating thus, a blaze of fire lit up the house, and
brown smoke hung around it. Six of our men had let go at the Doones,
by Jeremy Stickles’s order, as the villains came swaggering down in
the moonlight ready for rape or murder. Two of them fell, and the
rest hung back, to think at their leisure what this was. They were
not used to this sort of thing; it was neither just nor courteous.

Being unable any longer to contain myself, as I thought of

[Pg 90]
Lorna’s
excitement at all this noise of firing, I ran across the yard,
expecting whether they would shoot at me. However, no one shot at
me; and I went up to Carver Doone, whom I knew by his size in the
moonlight, and I took him by the beard and said, “Do you call
yourself a man?”

For a moment he was so astonished that he could not answer. None had
ever dared, I suppose, to look at him in that way. And then he tried
a pistol at me; but I was too quick for him.

“Now, Carver, take warning,” I said to him, very soberly; “you have
shown yourself a fool by your contempt of me. I may not be your
match in craft, but I am in manhood. You are a despicable villain.
Lie low in your native muck.”

And with that word I laid him flat upon his back in our straw-yard
by the trick of the inner heel, which he could not have resisted
unless he were a wrestler. Seeing him down, the others ran, though
one of them made a shot at me, and some of them got their horses
before our men came up, and some went away without them. And among
these last was Captain Carver, who arose while I was feeling myself
(for I had a little wound), and strode away with a train of curses
enough to poison the light of the moon.

IV.

Everything was settled smoothly and without any fear or fuss that
Lorna might find end of troubles, and myself of eager waiting, with
the help of Parson Bowden, and the good wishes of two counties. We
heard that people meant to come for more than thirty miles around,
upon excuse of seeing my stature and Lorna’s beauty; but in good
truth, out of sheer curiosity and the love of meddling.

Dear mother arranged all the ins and outs of the way in which it was
to be done; and Annie and Lizzie made such a sweeping of dresses
that I scarcely knew where to place my feet, and longed for a staff
to put by their gowns. Then Lorna

[Pg 91]
came out of a pew half-way, in a
manner which quite astonished me, and took my left hand in her
right, and I prayed God that it were done with.

My darling looked so glorious that I was afraid of glancing at her,
yet took in all her beauty. I was afraid to look at her, except when
each of us said, “I will,” and then each dwelt upon the other.

It is impossible for any who have not loved as I have to conceive my
joy and pride when, after ring and all was done, and the parson had
blessed us, Lorna turned to look at me with her glances of subtle
fun subdued by this great act.

Her eyes, which none on earth may ever equal or compare with, told
me such a depth of comfort, yet awaiting further commune, that I was
almost amazed, thoroughly as I knew them. Darling eyes, the sweetest
eyes, the loveliest, the most loving eyes—the sound of a shot rang
through the church, and those eyes were filled with death.

Lorna fell across my knees when I was going to kiss her, a flood of
blood came out upon the yellow wood of the altar steps, and at my
feet lay Lorna, trying to tell me some last message out of her
faithful eyes. I lifted her up, and petted her, and coaxed her, but
it was no good; the only sign of life remaining was a spot of bright
red blood.

She sighed a long sigh on my breast, for her last farewell to life,
and then she grew so cold, and cold, that I asked the time of the
year.

Of course I knew who had done it. There was but one man in the
world, or, at any rate, in our part of it, who would have done such
a thing—such a thing. I use no harsher word about it, while I
leaped upon our best horse, with bridle, but no saddle, and set the
head of Kickums toward the course now pointed out to me. Who showed
me the course I cannot tell. I only knew that I took it. And the men
fell back before me.

Weapon of no sort had I. Unarmed, and wondering at my strange attire
(with a bridal vest wrought by our Annie, and red with the blood of
the bride), I went forth just to find out this—whether in this
world there be or be not God of justice.

With my vicious horse at a furious speed, I came upon Black Barrow
Down, directed by some shout of men, which seemed to me but a
whisper. And there, about a furlong before me, rode a man on a great
black horse, and I knew that the man was Carver Doone.

“Your life, or mine,” I said to myself; “as the will of God may be.
But we two live not upon this earth one more hour together.”

I knew the strength of this great man; and I knew that he was armed
with a gun—if he had time to load again, after shooting my
Lorna—or at any rate with pistols, and a horseman’s sword, as well.
Nevertheless, I had no more doubt of killing the man before me than
a cook has of spitting a headless fowl.

Sometimes seeing no ground beneath me, and sometimes heeding every
leaf, and the crossing of the grass-blades, I followed over the long
moor, reckless whether seen or not. But only once the other man
turned and looked back again, and then I was beside a rock, with a
reedy swamp behind me.

Although he was so far before me, and riding as hard as ride he
might, I saw that he had something on the horse in front of him,
something which needed care, and stopped him from looking backward.
In the whirling of my wits I fancied first that this was Lorna;
until the scene I had been through fell across my hot brain and
heart, like the drop at the close of a tragedy. Rushing there
through crag and quag at utmost speed of a maddened horse, as of
another’s fate, calmly (as on canvas laid), the brutal deed, the
piteous anguish, and the cold despair.

The man turned up the gully leading from the moor to Cloven Rocks.
But, as Carver entered it, he turned round and beheld me not a
hundred yards behind; and I saw that he was bearing his child,
little Ensie, before him. Ensie also descried me, and stretched his
hands and cried to me; for the face of his father frightened him.

Carver Doone, with a vile oath, thrust spurs into his flagging
horse, and laid one hand on a pistol stock, whence I knew that his
slung carbine has received no bullet since the one that had pierced
Lorna. And a cry of triumph rose from the black depths of my heart.
What cared I for pistols? I had no spurs, neither was my horse one
to need the rowel; I rather held him in than urged him, for he was
fresh as ever; and I knew that the black steed in front, if he
breasted the steep ascent, where the track divided, must be in our
reach at once.

His rider knew this, and, having no room in the rocky channel to
turn and fire, drew rein at the crossways sharply, and plunged into
the black ravine leading to the Wizard’s Slough.

[Pg 93]
“Is it so?” I said
to myself, with brain and head cold as iron; “though the foul fiend
come from the slough to save thee, thou shalt carve it, Carver.”

I followed my enemy carefully, steadily, even leisurely—for I had
him as in a pitfall, whence no escape might be. He thought that I
feared to approach him, for he knew not where he was; and his low,
disdainful laugh came back.

“Laugh he who wins,” thought I.

A gnarled and half-starved oak, as stubborn as my own resolve, and
smitten by some storm of old, hung from the crag above me. Rising
from my horse’s back, although I had no stirrups, I caught a limb,
and tore it (like a mere wheat-awn) from the socket. Men show the
rent even now with wonder—none with more wonder than myself.

Carver Doone turned the corner suddenly on the black and bottomless
bog; with a start of fear he reigned back his horse, and I thought
he would have turned upon me. Upon this he made up his mind; and,
wheeling, fired, and then rode at me.

His bullet struck me somewhere, but I took no heed of that. Fearing
only his escape, I laid my horse across the way, and with the limb
of the oak struck full on the forehead his charging steed. Ere the
slash of the sword came nigh me, man and horse rolled over, and
well-nigh bore my own horse down with the power of their onset.

Carver Doone was somewhat stunned, and could not arise for a moment.
Meanwhile I leaped on the ground and waited, smoothing my hair back
and baring my arm as though in the ring for wrestling. Then the
little boy ran to me, clasped my leg, and looked up at me; and the
terror in his eyes made me almost fear myself.

“Ensie, dear,” I said, quite gently, grieving that he should see his
wicked father killed, “run up yonder round the corner, and try to
find a pretty bunch of bluebells for the lady.” The child obeyed me,
hanging back, and looking back, and then laughing, while I prepared
for business. There and then I might have killed my enemy with a
single blow while he lay unconscious, but it would have been foul
play.

With a sudden and black scowl, the Carver gathered his mighty limbs
and arose, and looked round for his weapons; but I had put them well
away. Then he came to me and gazed, being wont to frighten thus
young men.

“I would not harm you, lad,” he said, with a lofty style of
sneering. “I have punished you enough, for most of your
impertinence.

[Pg 94]
For the rest I forgive you, because you have been good
and gracious to my little son. Go and be contented.”

For answer I smote him on the cheek, lightly, and not to hurt him,
but to make his blood leap up. I would not sully my tongue by
speaking to a man like this.

I think he felt that his time was come; I think that he knew from my
knotted muscles and the firm arch of my breast, and the way in which
I stood, but most of all from my stern blue eyes, that he had found
his master. At any rate a paleness came, an ashy paleness on his
cheeks, and the vast calves of his legs bowed in as if he was out of
training.

Seeing this, villain as he was, I offered him first chance. I
stretched forth my left hand, as I do to a weaker antagonist, and I
let him have the hug of me. But in this I was too generous; having
forgotten my pistol-wound, and the cracking of one of my short lower
ribs. Carver Doone caught me round the waist with such a grip as
never yet had been laid upon me.

I heard my rib go; I grasped his arm, and tore the muscle out of it
(as the string comes out of an orange); then I took him by the
throat, which is not allowed in wrestling, but he had snatched at
mine; and now was no time of dalliance. In vain he tugged and
strained, and writhed, and dashed his bleeding fist into my face,
and flung himself on me with gnashing jaws. Beneath the iron of my
strength—for God that day was with me—I had him helpless in two
minutes, and his fiery eyes lolled out.

“I will not harm thee any more,” I cried, so far as I could for
panting, the work being very furious. “Carver Doone, thou art
beaten; own it, and thank God for it; and go thy way, and repent
thyself.”

It was all too late. Even if he had yielded in his ravening
frenzy—for his beard was like a mad dog’s jowl—even if he would
have owned that for the first time in his life he had found his
master, it was all too late.

The black bog had him by the feet; the sucking of the ground drew
him on, like the thirsty lips of death. In our fury we had heeded
neither wet nor dry; nor thought of earth beneath us. I myself might
scarcely leap, with the last spring of o’erlabored legs, from the
ingulfing grave of slime. He fell back, with his swarthy breast,
like a hummock of bog-oak, standing out the quagmire; and then he
tossed his arms

[Pg 95]
to heaven, and they were black to the elbow, and
the glare of his eyes was ghastly. I could only gaze and pant, for
my strength was no more than an infant’s, from the fury and the
horror. Scarcely could I turn away, while, joint by joint, he sunk
from sight.

When the little boy came back with the bluebells, which he had
managed to find, the only sign of his father left was a dark brown
bubble upon a new-formed patch of blackness. But to the center of
its pulpy gorge the greedy slough was heaving, and sullenly grinding
its weltering jaws among the flags and sedges.

With pain and ache, both of mind and body, and shame at my own fury,
I heavily mounted my horse again, and looked down at the innocent
Ensie. Would this playful loving child grow up like his cruel
father, and end a godless life of hatred with a death of violence?
He lifted his noble forehead toward me, as if to answer, “Nay, I
will not”; but the words he spoke were these:

“Don”—for he never could say “John”—”oh Don, I am so glad that
nasty, naughty man is gone away. Take me home, Don. Take me home.”

It hurt me more than I can tell, even through all other grief, to
take into my arms the child of the man just slain by me. But I could
not leave him there till some one else might fetch him, on account
of the cruel slough, and the ravens which had come hovering over the
dead horse; neither could I, with my wound, tie him on my horse and
walk.

For now I had spent a great deal of blood, and was rather faint and
weary. And it was luck for me that Kickums had lost spirit like his
master, and went home as mildly as a lamb. For, when we came toward
the farm, I seemed to be riding in a dream almost; and the voices of
both men and women (who had hurried forth upon my track), as they
met me, seemed to wander from a distant, muffling cloud. Only the
thought of Lorna’s death, like a heavy knell, was tolling in the
belfry of my brain.

When we came to the stable door I rather fell from my horse than got
off; and John Fry, with a look of wonder, took Kickum’s head and led
him in. Into the old farmhouse I tottered, like a weanling child,
with mother, in her common clothes, helping me along, yet fearing,
except by stealth, to look at me.

“I have killed him,” was all I said, “even as he killed Lorna.

[Pg 96]
Now
let me see my wife, mother. She belongs to me none the less, though
dead.”

“You cannot see her now, dear John,” said Ruth Huckaback, coming
forward, since no one else had the courage.

“Annie is with her now, John.”

“What has that to do with it? Let me see my dead and pray to die.”

All the women fell away and whispered, and looked at me with side
glances, and some sobbing, for my face was hard as flint. Ruth alone
stood by me, and dropped her eyes and trembled. Then one little hand
of hers stole into my great shaking palm, and the other was laid on
my tattered coat; yet with her clothes she shunned my blood, while
she whispered gently:

“John, she is not dead. She may even be your living one yet—your
wife, your home, and your happiness. But you must not see her now.”

Now, whether it was the light and brightness of my Lorna’s nature,
or the freedom from anxiety, but anyhow, one thing is certain; sure
as the stars of hope above us, Lorna recovered long ere I did.

The Sky

TABLE OF CONTENTS

No. 1

No. 2

No. 3

No. 4

No. 5

Published by PEARSON BROTHERS

29 S. Seventh St., Philadelphia