THE BEACON PRIZE MEDALS

And Other Stories

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ALBERT BIGELOW PAINE

ABOUT THIS EBOOK

THE BEACON PRIZE MEDALS

AND OTHER STORIES

By

Albert Bigelow Paine

(1861–1937)

Albert Bigelow Paine was an American author and biographer best known for his work with Mark Twain. He wrote in several genres, including fiction, humor, and verse, for children and adults. His most notable work was a three-volume biography of Mark Twain.

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This collection of short stories written for young teens centers on a theme of courage and heroism. The young heroes of these stories sometimes display physical bravery, but most often, they have moral courage – they make the difficult choice to “do the right thing.” Touches of fantasy and generous helpings of humor keep the tone light-hearted, rather than moralistic.

The Beacon Prize Medals was first published in 1899.

This ebook was created by E.C.M. for MobileRead.com, July 2016, and may be freely distributed for non-commercial purposes.

This book is in the public domain in countries where copyright is “Life+70” or less, and in the USA.

Text was obtained from hathitrust.org (scan of the first edition from the Baker & Taylor Company.)

OCR errors were corrected; punctuation, italics and diacritics formatted. Story titles are cross-linked to Table of Contents.

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CONTENTS

THE BEACON PRIZE MEDALS

Titlepage

About This Ebook

THE STORIES:

The Beacon Prize Medals

Out with the Tide

Polly – A Confession

Cinderella

Like Pharaoh’s Hosts

A School Examination

An Afternoon Enchantment

In Camping Days

The Island of Fancy

Up the Long Hill

In Time of Danger

At the Inlet

A Day’s Outing

Locked In

Down Hill Against Time

Two Valentines

In the Path of the Cyclone

Ted and Tilly

A Magic Pool

An Easter Temptation

A Punctured Tire

Hiding Easter Eggs

Two May Baskets

A Problem Solved

Christmas Eve at the Gulch

THE BEACON PRIZE MEDALS

It is not so hard to be a hero in the front of battle as in the daily round of living. These are stories of boys and girls who have found it not unworthy to be brave in a humble way, and many of whom have fought out their battles alone.

THE BEACON

PRIZE MEDALS

A Story for Young Authors

The weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas were for the Virden High School literary class of unusual interest. Members of the history class, the Latin class, and of other classes were talking of the coming holidays, of presents being prepared in secret, and of visits to be exchanged. These things were as nothing to the literary class, or at least they were secondary to an event which, to them, seemed of far greater importance as being planned for their special and particular honor.

It was the Beacon prize award. The Beacon was the Virden morning paper, and its editor was progressive, literary, and generous. He had announced early in November that on the last Friday of the term ending just before the holidays he would award to members of the High School literary class two gold medals, one for the best original poem, and one for the best story. The announcement had set the class in a flutter of excitement and made them the envy of the school. Guesses were made at once as to who would be the winners, and opinions differed considerably. The literary class was not a large one, but it was considered the most brilliant the Virden school had ever known. There were at least three girls in it who had written poems which were believed to be good enough to print, while stories, anecdotes, and descriptive articles that held the whole school spellbound for one Friday afternoon in each month had been written by most of the class.

Esther Brooks and Alice Vail were believed to write the best poetry, and Clara Nelson, Charlie Good, and Fred Moxton the best stories. There were more girls in this class than boys, as is nearly always the case.

Esther Brooks and Fred Moxton lived side by side and had grown up together. They studied together a great deal and were almost like brother and sister. Sometimes they were called sweethearts, but as they were quite frank with each other and often quarrelled over their favorite authors I hardly think the term was a correct one. Their mothers and grandmothers had been schoolmates before them.

“It’s too bad, Esther,” said Fred, as they walked home from school together just after the announcement of the Beacon prize. It’s just too bad you couldn’t have saved your poem on ‘Mountains Dim’ for this. You’ll never write a better one. Your comparison of the mountains that nobody has ever reached the top of to ambitions that are just as far out of reach was splendid.

“Oh, mountains dim amid the mist!

From many a barren plain

We view your heights of amethyst

And look and long in vain.

“You’ll never beat that if you live to be a hundred. What I don’t see is how you get the rhymes. Do you think ’em out or do they just happen so? I can write prose pretty well, but I never could write two lines of poetry. Tell me, honor bright, do you think up rhymes and then make sense to fit ’em, or do you make the rhymes fit the sense? I don’t see how anybody could do that, only just by accident:

“Oh, mountains dim——”

“Do stop, Fred; you’re just making fun!” Esther pretended to be displeased, but she was blushing with pleasure, too. “It isn’t hard to write verses, and the rhymes seem to come of themselves. I can’t tell you just how I do it – it isn’t hard, though.”

“Inspiration,” suggested Fred.

“N-no, I don’t claim to be inspired, of course!”

“Well, you were when you wrote ‘Mountains Dim,’ and I’ll bet you don’t get up another as good for the Beacon medal. You’ll have to work, though, for Alice Vail is going to write a Christmas poem, and they always take well.”

“Oh, pshaw! Fred. I can write a better poem than ‘Mountains Dim.’ You’d better be thinking about your own mountains dim and write a story that will land you on top of them,” and, reaching her home just then, Esther turned into the gate, and, leaning on it for a moment, laughed teasingly.

Fred paused outside and assumed a theatrical pose.

“Once upon a time,” he began, “there was a mountain that stretched far up into the clouds. It used to be in Greece, and was known as Parnassus. But lately it has been moved to Virden and called Poetry Hill. Upon the top of it has been set a beacon, and from this beacon is now suspended a prize of gold. It does not seem far off, and the way looks inviting. A certain maid named Esther has once ascended easily and returned alive. But each time a new path must be chosen, and I warn thee that there are dark and thorny paths, fierce demons and pitfalls. Beware, O Esther, daughter of the Muses, beware and be watchful lest thou fall by the wayside and Alice, the strong and swift, overtake and pass thee!”

“Why, that sounds like a book,” laughed the girl. “If you do as well as that you may scale Prose Hill yourself, but look out for the two strong demons, Charlie and Clara, who lie in wait.” Then, still laughing, she ran into the house, while Fred, flushed and also laughing, stepped briskly to the next gate.

When Esther told Fred that making verses was not hard, and that she could write a better poem than “Mountains Dim,” she had spoken quite honestly. It had really seemed to her at the moment that she could do so. Many an older author flushed with the ease and success of one composition has assured himself that he can repeat the performance as often as he wishes. Almost as many have found that when the actual trial came it brought disappointment, sorrow of spirit and even failure.

It brought all of these things to Esther. She began that very evening to plan for her work, but her thoughts went wool gathering. Floating ideas passed like motes in the sunlight, and as impossible to capture. Now and then something presented itself that seemed possible, but in each case it was put aside as being old, worn threadbare by others. It must be something uncommon. Alice Vail was going to write of Christmas – that was an old subject, but Alice was original, and would do it well. Even “Mountains Dim” has been a well-worn subject, she thought, however much Fred admired it. She must find something new, or at least something that would sound new in the telling. Fred’s banter about dark paths, demons and pitfalls began to trouble her.

She gave it up at last and went to bed. There was plenty of time, and something would come. When it did the writing would be easy. She had written “Mountains Dim” in one afternoon. She went to sleep after tossing a long time, and in her dreams she wrote a great poem on autumn. She thought she was in a fair valley, and the red and gold of the foliage rose about her. Then it all came to her in rhymes that fell into place as easily as if she were reading them from a book. It was an old subject, but she was telling it in new words.

“Oh,” she cried in her sleep, “it is beautiful; it will lead me straight to the golden prize on Poetry Hill. I must show it to Fred!” Then she found herself half awake, repeating one of the lines. But when she had fully wakened it was gone. No effort to coax it back would recall even a single word. She slept once more, and again the dream came. She knew now that she was asleep and dreaming, and she said to herself that she would remember this time when she woke. Then she woke, and it was morning. She sprang from her bed to fix on paper the words that still clung to her memory. She could not find pencil and paper right away, and when she did so not a trace of the lines remained in her memory.

She was rather pale and silent at breakfast, but the family was used to their poet, as they called her, and did not vex her with questions. At school she went through her recitations mechanically. She thought she would tell Fred on the way home that night, but was afraid he would laugh at her. Fred, however, was full of his story, and told her the plot, under pledge of secrecy. It seemed very good.

Then in her sleep the dream came again. She was in the same ruddy valley, and the lines and rhymes flowed from her tongue. But with morning they had vanished as before. The words written on the blackboard of night could not be read in the white light of morning. She was in despair.

As the days passed Esther grew so pale and seemed so worried that her parents could not refrain from asking her if she were ill.

“I am trying to write my poem,” she said, irritably, “Don’t worry me. I am worried enough with it now.”

And indeed the girl was. The dream did not come every night, but when it failed she was in greater despair than ever, for fear that it would return no more. Other nights it came again and again. She had pencil and paper by her bed, and kept the gas burning low. Sometimes the demon that pursued her allowed her to spring from the bed with almost the entire poem on her tongue, but the instant she seized the pencil and was wide awake he would snatch the last vestige of it from her grasp. It seemed to her at last that a real demon, along a path as black as midnight, was luring her with a false beacon. A hundred times she was tempted to tell Fred of her plight, and thus obtain sympathy and advice, but she feared his teasing.

“He will say ‘I told you so!’” she thought, “and laugh at my dreams. I won’t tell him a word.”

“Let me see your poem, Esther,” said her father one morning. “It is costing you a great deal of effort, I fear.”

“I haven’t it in shape yet, Papa,” she said, almost ready to cry, “and I don’t know as I ever will have!”

He saw that she was troubled and did not question her. The days were flying fast now and the last week of the term was at hand. There were examinations, too, which made life an added burden to the girl.

One day at noon she ran up to the garret to find an old book of reference. Her mother had remembered it as being in a trunk of school books that former generations had used and thrown aside. Hunting over them for what she wanted, Esther came upon a queer volume, so worn and soiled that she could not decipher the name on the cover. She opened it, and on the title page was her grandmother’s maiden name, with a date fifty years old. She turned the leaves curiously, with no recollection of having ever seen the book before. It was a Smith’s “Fourth Reader.” She did not even know that such a reader had ever been published. Suddenly she paused and grew as white as death. On one of the yellowed and stained pages there was a poem. Her eyes had caught the title, “Autumn,” and swept like a flash over the first two lines:

Behold! The flame of autumn fills

The valley, and assails the hills.

There were twenty-four lines of it in all. Without moving, scarcely breathing, the girl read it to the end. It was the great poem of her dream!

With the old reader still clutched tightly in her hand, Esther left the attic, walking as one in a trance. She knew that she was awake truly this time, but it was all so impossible that the reality seemed as much a dream as her dreams had seemed real.

She went to her own room and locked the door. Then she opened the book and once more read the poem beginning:

Behold! The flame of autumn fills

The valley, and assails the hills.

How many times in her dream she had seemed to stand in that gorgeous valley and beginning with these lines had repeated the whole in the belief that it would win for her the golden medal which Fred had gaily pictured as being suspended from the Beacon on Poetry Hill. How many times she had wakened to find the words slipping away from her as water slips through one’s fingers, leaving scarcely a trace behind. Now here they were, every one – they could not escape her again.

Then, with this thought, came another. The poem was not hers, after all. She had been in such a whirl that she had not realized this before. Some nameless poet had penned it. Fifty years ago it had been buried in this old school reader and forgotten. She could not use it even though the lines had come to her in a dream, and she knew certainly that she had never seen them or even heard of the old Smith’s Reader. Then she rose and walking the floor tried to think. How had she known the poem? She had a marvelous memory, but try as she would she could recall no trace of the lines beyond the dreams that had tortured her with them almost to illness. She could not even remember them now without referring to the book.

Esther was not superstitious, and unlike many young girls she had never attached much importance to dreams. She believed they were simply the brain in unconscious action. She could understand that her brain might compose verses in sleep – one of Coleridge’s greatest poems had been thus written – but how could it bring to her verses that it had not composed, and of which it had no previous knowledge?

The girl was getting into deep water. She had heard of the soul travelling when the body slept. Could it be that her soul had found this old reader and brought her the poem while she slept? And if so, for what purpose? She had heard, too, of how, by reincarnation, the souls of those dead may sometimes return to live in other bodies. Could it be that the author of this old poem was living again in her, and had remembered the forgotten stanzas in sleep, so that they might once more be given to the world? This was a startling thought. Her cheeks grew hot and feverish and her hands were trembling. If this were so, it would be right for her to use it! The more she thought of this the more certain she became of it. She was fanciful and imaginative. The thought pleased and gratified her. She would copy the poem at once and read it to her mother. If her mother had never heard it, it would prove to Esther that she herself could never have known of it either, for her grandmother had died so long ago that the girl had no memory of her. It would prove to her that the spirit of the old poet had returned to her to give once more to the world the poems long since buried and forgotten. Perhaps there were many others. Perhaps “Mountains Dim” had been one of them, too! It had seemed at the time almost as if it were the work of another – it had been done so easily. She was seized with a great elation. She would be famous! In her former life had she been man or woman? What had been her name? Whatever it was, it had been forgotten – forgotten as completely as her work. Nobody would remember and recognize now her poems of fifty years ago. They would be all new again and in this new day they would win for her an immortality of fame!

With her senses in a mad whirl she sat down at once and copied out the lines neatly. Then she rushed down to where lunch was waiting. Her father had eaten and was already on the point of leaving.

“Wait!” she cried, “I want you to hear a poem.”

“You’ll be late for school, Esther,” said her mother.

“No, no, I don’t want any lunch. Listen! You, too, Mamma!”

She read the poem from beginning to end in a voice of suppressed excitement. When she had finished her father kissed her fondly.

“I think it even better than ‘Mountains Dim,’” he said proudly.

“Esther got her talent from her Grandmother Chalmers,” said her mother. “I never knew her to write, but she was always repeating poetry. I took after my father, and he never cared for such things. Of course I like to hear it sometimes when its good, but I never could remember it as Mother could.”

“Did you ever hear her repeat this – I mean any poem like this?” asked Esther, burning scarlet with confusion and eagerness.

Her father was already gone, and her mother did not notice anything peculiar in the question.

“La, child, I don’t know. She knew so much poetry. I don’t remember any of it now except

Tell me not in mournful numbers

Life is but an empty dream.

and I only recollect that because she said it over just before she died – almost her last words they were. You don’t remember Mother, of course. You were not quite three when she died, but she used to rock you and sing to you, and you used to rock and sing, too, even then. I can’t realize that you’ve grown so big and go to the high school and write poetry. It seems only yesterday since you were a baby trying to toddle along ahead of me carrying a little blue parasol that you called your ‘blue umbellow.’”

Esther went over and kissed her mother on both cheeks. Then she hurried away to school with a mingling of strange emotions in her heart.

There were but three days now until the end of the term. They were trying days to Esther. The nights were trying too. The old dream came no more, but others vexed her almost to despair. Sometimes she thought she was reading her poem before the school. In the midst of it the scholars began shouting and jeering at her, and the editor of the Beacon looked at her accusingly.

She woke trembling. Then she slept again and the dream changed or continued. She was standing before the school with the old Smith’s Reader and pointing to the stained page. “There it is,” she was saying. “I wrote it and put it there fifty years ago. It is mine, every word.” Then it seemed to her that it was not a book she was holding at all but a gravestone. The scholars were no longer about her and the schoolroom was growing dark. She woke gasping for breath.

“I will tell Fred tomorrow,” she thought. “I will show him the book and tell him everything.”

But when morning came and she met Fred at school she could not do it. He had finished his story and felt confident of success. He was teasing and flippant, and she feared he would jeer at her belief in the reincarnation of the old poet and state bluntly that she had no right to use the poem. He would say that she had seen it somewhere before and forgotten it, and this she knew could not be the case. Still she was tempted to tell him more than once, and each time the fear that he would insist on her giving up the poem became greater. She could not give it up now. There was not time to write another even if it were possible to find a suitable theme, and besides this poem was her own. Her soul had saved it for her out of the past. She had believed this entirely in the beginning. She made herself believe it now.

And so the last day of the term came. Examinations were ended and Esther, in spite of her troubled mind, had done well.

“Esther is a smart girl,” said her mother. “She can do most everything. She takes after me in her examinations. I always stood well in examinations. I never was much on poetry though. She takes after Grandmother Chalmers in that. I wish Mother was here today to hear Esther’s piece on autumn,” and the good lady sighed and finished dressing for the eventful afternoon.

The day was fine for the season and the Virden High School was crowded. On an elevated platform at one end of the room a stage had been arranged and a one-act play opened the entertainment. It was well given and uproariously applauded. Then came the stories and poems for the Beacon competition. Fred Moxton was the first name on the list. He was in a seat with Esther and when he rose to go forward the school cheered. Fred was a great favorite, and his story was sure to be good.

He read with the easy confidence that never failed him, and when he finished the school cheered again. The story had been good; a little crude perhaps in places, but interesting and told with spirit and directness.

“You will surely get the prize,” whispered Esther, as he returned to his seat beside her.

“Of course,” he answered, smiling; “I expect to.”

But he was not so sure of it when the others read. Charlie Good’s story set the audience in a roar with its humor, while Clara Nelson’s brought the tears with its pathos, Then Alice Vail read her poem. It was a Christmas poem and it was tender and sweet. It was followed by quiet applause which seemed to embarrass the slender girl.

“Now, let me see yours and I’ll tell you whether you are going to get it or not,” whispered Fred to Esther, who was clutching her manuscript very tightly and looked pale and anxious.

“No, no, wait!” she answered. “I shall be called directly. There is only one more poem and then mine – I am last.”

“But the next one won’t be anything. Let me see yours now.”

Esther did not give it to him, and they listened while a pretty, round-faced girl read a merry little stanza that was written with no expectancy of winning the prize, but for the pure pleasure of the performance.

Then the principal came forward.

“Miss Esther Brooks,” he announced. “Poem entitled ‘Autumn.’”

Esther rose from her seat and stepped hurriedly up the aisle to the stage. She was prettily dressed and a murmur followed her from the audience. Like Fred she was a favorite and was believed to possess unusual talent.

She heard the murmur, and as she turned saw the gay, waiting crowd at her feet. Then she trembled, remembering how, in her dream, they had shouted and jeered at her. But in an instant the memory had faded, and with it the faces before her. In the place of them lay a fair valley rich with the hues of autumn.

Hills rose on either side, and the splendid foliage of fall lay about her like living fire. It was the valley of the dream!

No need to look at the little roll in her hand. She did not even know that she held it. The lines came to her tongue as they had come each time before when, in her dreams, she had stood amid the glory of the dying year. Those who listened to her said afterward that she seemed looking beyond the things of earth and telling what she saw, as with the voice of an angel. When she had finished she seemed dazed for a moment. The house was as still as death. Then, as if remembering, she stepped hurriedly from the platform, and there broke about her a wave of applause.

Esther’s seat was near the platform, and as she slipped into it Fred, who was waiting, seized the little roll in her hand.

“It was great!” he said. “Beautiful. Let me read it!”

Mechanically she yielded the manuscript. Then, as the applause renewed and was continued, she rose very pale, and bowed to those about her. As she sank again into her seat, Fred thrust the poem back into her hand.

“That isn’t your poem!” he whispered. “It’s the same title, but you got hold of the wrong manuscript.”

Then, half laughing at the girl’s blank expression, “Look for yourself. It’s a poem that you must have copied off sometime to keep. I’ve got it in my grandmother’s old ‘Smith’s Reader’ at home. A good thing you knew yours by heart.”

The white face before him became like death.

The boy was startled into speaking aloud.

“Esther,” he said, “you’re sick.”

The girl did not answer. Her body wavered an instant, and then she sank forward on the desk unconscious.

In a moment all was confusion. Everyone seemed to know that Esther Brooks had fainted, and crowded about to aid in her recovery. Fred stood upon the seat and called to them to keep back. Then her parents pushed their way through, and, with Fred’s assistance, carried her to an open window. Carriages were offered by different ones, and when she had partially recovered she was hastened home and a doctor summoned.

“She has had great mental strain lately,” he said.

“Yes,” said her mother. “She was trying so hard with her poem. She takes after her Grandmother Chalmers in her poetry and after me in her examinations. The two together, I s’pose, were too much for her. She must have written her poem all over two or three times, for she read us one that wasn’t like the one she recited.”

“That accounts for it,” said the doctor wisely. “She worked too hard. That and the excitement this afternoon brought on this attack. She must be very quiet now for a week – not disturbed in any way. She may have some fever, but I do not think there will be danger if she is quiet.”

“Her Grandmother Chalmers couldn’t stand excitement, either,” said her mother.

Many people called during the evening to inquire about Esther, and the editor of the Beacon was particularly anxious, for he wanted a copy of the poem for the next morning’s paper. Her mother could find none, and Esther must not be disturbed. The Beacon next morning contained the following:

THE BEACON PRIZES.

The Beacon Gold Medal Prize Competition at the Virden High School yesterday resulted in the following decisions being handed in by the Committee on Awards:

Best poem, “Autumn,” by Esther Brooks.

Best story, “A Punctured Tire,” by Charles Good.

Where all do so well decision is difficult, and, while we are sure the worthy committee selected justly, we are still proud to congratulate those whose work, though less fortunate, is yet worthy of the highest praise.

It was intended by the Beacon to print all the poems and stories in full in this issue, but the sudden illness of Miss Brooks has made this impossible, as her poem was mislaid and lost in the confusion that followed her attack, and no copy of it has been found at her home. She cannot be disturbed at present, but it is believed that she will be able in a day or two to attend to the matter, and the Beacon has decided to wait and print all together on Christmas Day. Upon the same day a special committee will call at the homes of Miss Brooks and Mr. Good and duly present the two beautiful gold medals which the Beacon takes pleasure in awarding for such distinguished literary merit.

At a late hour last night Miss Brooks was resting easily, and it is believed that she will be quite herself in a few days.

In spite of what the doctor had said, Esther was able to read this notice herself sitting up in bed next morning.

Then she looked out of the window, where the December sun was shining, and tried to understand it all. She had copied a poem out of an old book to read as her own. She had believed it to be the poem of her dream, written by herself in some former existence. She had recited a poem from the High School platform when the walls and faces had melted away and the splendor of autumn rose about her. She had recited the poem of her dream, but it was not the poem she had copied from the old reader. She remembered Fred saying this and speaking of the copied poem just before she fainted. She had barely escaped disgrace, but how? Why had the poem in the old book been familiar? What was the poem she had recited? No line of it came to her now. It was her dream poem, and just as far away. How nearly she had been to disgrace and lifelong regret! She had made herself believe in a wild delusion and yielded to temptation. What an escape! What an escape! But had she escaped? Was not this poem another’s, too?

“Oh!” she said, “I believe I am going crazy,” and she dropped back on her pillow in tears.

Her mother came in just then with an old lady.

“Are you asleep, Esther?” she asked, very softly.

“Oh, no, Mother, I was just sitting up.”

“Well, here’s Fred’s Grandmother Moxton to see you. She came last night to spend Christmas with Fred’s folks. She and your Grandmother Chalmers used to go to school together fifty years ago. (Esther takes after her Grandmother Chalmers, especially in poetry.) And don’t talk too much, dear; you know what the doctor said. Of course, he says you’re a good deal better, but you mustn’t overdo.”

Mrs. Brooks hurried out to attend to house hold duties and left the pleasant little old lady with Esther.

She sat by the bed and took the girl’s hand. “Your grandmother and I were great friends,” she began.

“Yes,” said Esther, “I’ve often heard Mamma say so.”

“We sat together,” continued the old lady, “and were in the same classes. I never saw anybody so fond of poetry as Lizzie was. We read out of ‘Smith’s Reader,’ an’ it had nice pieces in it. Lizzie knew them all. There was one on autumn that she thought was the grandest piece ever written. I remember the first two lines now:

Behold! The flame of autumn fills

The valley, and assails the hills.

The slender hand in Grandmother Moxton’s started, but the old lady did not notice it.

“Lizzie liked it so well that she spoke it once at an entertainment. An’ once she wrote a poem on autumn herself. It wasn’t anything like that, but even better, I thought. She never told anybody but me that it was hers, and she never had it printed. I used to have a copy of it, but it’s lost, an’ I can’t remember any of it now. It’s so long ago, an’ people didn’t care so much for such things then. I s’pose you must have taken your gift after her, an’ Fred tells me that your poem yesterday was on autumn, too. It’s curious about such things. Some we inherit an’ some we get from impressions in childhood. I think yours come from both, for I remember the last time I was here, just before Lizzie died, thirteen years ago, you used to sit in the big rocker, just as she did, an’ sing songs and poems that she sang, an’ I remember that you knew the one about the flame of autumn all through, an’ I don’t know but the one that she wrote, too. You don’t remember it now, of course, an’ your mother never cared for such things, but I shouldn’t wonder if it had all made an impression, should you?”

There was no reply at first. Esther lay with closed eyes and seemed asleep. The old lady was about to rise and steal out when the girl spoke. Her voice was very low and faltering.

“Such things do make impressions,” she said. “I am sure of it. I didn’t know before, but I do now.”

Esther’s mother entered just then with a note.

“This just came, Esther,” she said. “It’s for you. It is open, but I didn’t read it.”

Esther took the envelope, and drawing forth the sheet found a typewritten page inside of it. The note was from a friend who was studying shorthand, and ran as follows:

Dear Esther –

I took down your beautiful poem yesterday for practice. I enclose my copy, so you can see whether I made any errors. I think I have it all right, but I want to be certain.

So glad to hear that you are better this morning. When you feel able look over the poem and sign it and send it back, for I want an autograph copy. Lovingly,

Estelle.

The note dropped on the counterpane, and the girl’s trembling hands unfolded the typewritten sheet. It contained a brief poem, and as she read she knew that this at last was indeed the poem of her dream. Her mother and the old lady were speaking of other matters. When she had finished reading she sat for a moment looking straight ahead of her. Then she handed the poem to Fred’s Grandmother Moxton.

“Was that my Grandmother Chalmers’ poem on autumn?” she asked quietly.

“La!” said Mrs. Brooks, “I didn’t know Mother ever wrote a poem.”

The old lady took it and adjusted her glasses. Then she read it all through, very slowly.

“Why, no,” she said, as she finished. “It sounds some like it in places. I don’t know but some of it is a good deal the same, mebbe a line or two here and there. I can’t quite remember, but it isn’t the same poem, an’ it doesn’t seem quite as good, either, some way. Who wrote it, Esther?”

The girl had dropped back on the pillows. She began to laugh and cry hysterically.

“I don’t know,” she sobbed. “I don’t know. I don’t know anything any more! Oh, Mamma, I’m going crazy, I really am!”

Her mother was frightened.

“Child, child, what is the matter?” she pleaded, hurrying to the bed.

But Esther all at once became calm and sat up straight.

“Mamma,” she said, “I want you to send for the editor of the Beacon at once. I have something to tell him. I must tell him right away – today – now!”

“Why, yes, Esther, of course, but—”

“Don’t oppose me, Mamma. Send for him l Send for him! And when he comes I must see him alone!”

Esther was an only child; besides, she was ill. The editor of the Beacon came – came quickly and anxiously, for he wanted a copy of the poem. He found Esther dressed and in the parlor to receive him. He was delighted.

“This is a happy surprise,” he said, taking her hand, “and you have a copy of your poem for me, I’m sure!”

“I – yes –  – that is – I have something to tell you.”

A little brokenly at first, but gaining strength and courage as she proceeded, Esther told him everything. Told him how she had been thinking intently upon a subject for a poem just before retiring and what she had dreamed. How the dream had come again and again, and how she had found in the old reader what she had recognized, or thought she recognized, as the poem of her dream. How she had been tempted and made herself believe that in some former existence she had really written the poem. How, when she had stood on the school platform to recite the lines, her dream came back and she recited without knowing what she said. How Fred had recognized the old poem in her hand, and how faintness overcame her when he told her that she had recited, not this, but another. How Fred’s grandmother, who had just left, had told her of her Grandmother Chalmers and her authorship of still another poem of the same title, and how as a baby Esther’s own tongue had stumbled through the lines. Finally she told him how, in the midst of all this, had come the note from Estelle with the typewritten copy of the real poem of her dreams.

“Tell me,” she said at last, “is the poem I recited mine? Can I claim it? Am I entitled to the prize?”

The Beacon man had listened with great attention. He was a student of mental phenomena, and had written much on the subject of his paper. He was profoundly interested. It is doubtful if he heard Esther’s question at the end of her story.

“Wonderful!” he exclaimed; “wonderful! The mind in its search for food returns in sleep even to the verge of life. Passes beyond the horizon of memory. Words and phrases are forgotten, but the poetic impression remains, and upon this it constructs an edifice of its own. Wonderful! wonderful! You must allow me to make an article of it, Miss Esther, for the Psychic Magazine.”

“But,” said Esther, who had been trying to follow him, “is the poem mine? Are you sure I can claim it as mine?”

“Oh, certainly, certainly! It is clear to me as day. The mind builds upon its earliest foundations. We do this unconsciously, even in our waking moments. The poem is yours assuredly. Sleeping or waking the lines are yours, and as to the inspiration, Why, my dear young lady, there have been three hundred thousand poems on autumn! You recognized the poem in the old book through unconscious memory. I am only sorry that we have not your grandmother’s, too, so I could trace the impression and influence exactly. Send me a copy of yours by tomorrow without fail. Monday, you know, is Christmas. We want to print it then.”

When the Beacon editor had gone Mrs. Brooks hurried in with great curiosity. Then Esther told her of the interview and all he had said. She listened with many exclamations of surprise.

“I always said you got your poetry from Grandmother Chalmers,” she said at last, “but I never thought you got it in that way.”

“It came near resulting in tragedy for me, Mamma. Oh, Mamma, suppose I had read the poem from the old reader! I should have died of shame! And, Mamma, I am going to tell Alice Vail and Fred and the rest of them all about it.”

And Esther did tell them, for on Christmas Day the whole High School Literary Class formed the special prize committee appointed by the editor of the Beacon. And before Esther would take the gold medal they brought her she made them listen to what she called her confession.

“And I think Alice is entitled to the medal,” she said when she had finished and all had expressed their wonder.

But Alice herself arose and pinned it on Esther’s bosom, and Fred Moxton arose, too, and with a great flourish pinned the other medal on Charlie Good’s coat. Then turning to Esther he said gaily:

“You see, Esther, I didn’t get to the top of my ‘mountain dim,’ while you found the path up yours with your eyes shut.”

“Don’t jest any more, Fred,” was the answer, “the dark path, and the pitfall and the demons you joked about are real. I have seen them all and they make me shudder, even now.”

“Come,” said Mrs. Brooks, “we’ll all go out to dinner and see if that isn’t real, too. I wish Mother Chalmers could be here today. Esther takes after her in poetry.”

“I should think she did,” said Fred Moxton.

Then everybody laughed, but Esther hardly knew whether to laugh or cry.

—

OUT WITH THE TIDE

CHAPTER I.

The First Patient.

“Oh, Charlie, come to the window, quick!”

“What is it, Elsie? I’m awfully interested in this case in the Lancet, and don’t want to leave it unless it’s something worth seeing.”

“It’s a dog, Charlie. A poor dog with a broken leg, and he can’t get up the hill.”

The words “broken leg” had caught the boy at once. He rose and hurried over to where his little cousin, “Gold Elsie” as they called her, was looking out the window on the steep bit of hill below. What he saw brought an exclamation to his lips. A burly teamster with a heavy load was just disappearing over the top of the hill, and half way up was a wretched dog trying to follow. By some means his master’s cart or another vehicle had caught one of his hind legs and almost severed it. The driver, probably considering the dog of no further value, gave it merely a backward glance as he passed out of sight, while the poor brute, faint and exhausted, still followed the direction despairingly with his gaze, and made a feeble effort to push on.

“Oh, what a shame!” cried the little girl, tears springing to her eyes, and shaking her fist at the brutal master. “Let’s get the poor dog, Charlie. Oh, Charlie, will you?”

The boy seized his hat and was hurrying through the hall.

“Why, of course, Elsie!” he called back, and the little girl, after flying about a moment to find something to put on her head, hastened after him. She felt deeply for all abused and suffering creatures, and her cousin, Charlie Blake, who was studying surgery under his father, was equally sympathetic, besides being professionally interested in broken limbs. He was seventeen, and hoped to enter a college of surgery in the fall.

As the poor dog saw the boy and girl approaching he paused and whined pitifully. He looked at them with appealing eyes as they drew nearer and as Charlie lifted him in his arms licked his hand.

“See, Charlie! See how grateful he is!” said Elsie, the tears trickling down her cheeks.

Charlie bore the dog into his father’s back office and laid him on the operating table. The animal was thoroughly exhausted by this time, and made no effort of any sort. The leg was hanging by a strip of skin, and the boy’s knowledge told him at once that it could not be saved. In addition to his sympathy, he was eager to try his hand and skill on this unfortunate, and became very professional and businesslike at once. He ordered Elsie to bring a pan of water and bandages, and set to work himself laying out proper instruments. His father had taken his mother out for the afternoon, but he knew where to find such things as he needed.

When Elsie returned, he began bathing the shattered limb. But the poor fellow shrank and whined at every touch and the little girl could not bear it.

“Oh, Charlie, can’t you give him something? Chloroform or something, as Uncle Frank does when he operates on people?”

The boy hesitated. He did not believe his father would care and he knew where the chloroform bottle was kept, but he feared his own knowledge. He knew that the effect of the drug on animals is somewhat different from that upon human beings. He was very anxious to succeed, and he had a boyish feeling that if he gave an overdose and his patient died he would be in disgrace at the outset of his career. Nevertheless, when the sufferer moaned and twitched again at his touch he took down the bottle from his father’s drug cabinet, and, making a cone of paper, he pushed a piece of soft cloth soaked with chloroform into the smaller end. Then holding the dog’s slender head – he was a mixed-breed deerhound – the boy pushed the cone over his nose.

There was a sharp sniff and backward jerk, and the paper fell on the floor. Charlie’s patient did not understand this benefit and the odor was strange and distasteful.

“You will have to help me, Elsie,” he said. The little girl approached timidly. She stood in great awe of her big cousin’s knowledge, and was eager to assist, but she could not help being the least bit afraid. Charlie tore off the small end of the cone a little to let air through, and handed it to her.

“I will hold him,” he said, “and you must keep the cone in place. He won’t struggle long.”

The patient had once more dropped back, and lay with closed eyes.

“Oh, Charlie, he’s dying!” exclaimed Elsie in a terrified whisper.

“No, he isn’t. Now put the cone on!”

He had seized the dog firmly by the head and shoulders, and Elsie’s trembling hand slipped the appliance into place. The animal sniffed and struggled a moment, but he could not avail against the boy’s strong grasp. The struggles grew weaker, and presently the sound of heavy, regular breathing was heard. Charlie relaxed his hold and lifted the dog’s fore-paw. It dropped limply.

“Take off the cone, Elsie,” he whispered. They spoke in subdued voices, though there was no need of it.

“Stand right there with it,” continued Charlie, “and if he shows signs of waking we’ll put it on again. Let me have it a second.”

He dropped a little of the fresh liquid in on the cloth and handed it back. Then he set to work rapidly. Dust and cinders were ground into the poor mangled flesh, and the work of cleansing was tedious. The little girl looked away. Now and then, at his bidding, she slipped the cone into place for a moment. They spoke only in whispers, and both began to feel a grave importance in the occasion and deep anxiety for their patient. The insensible creature stretched before them was no longer a battered and worthless animal, but a breathing life which they were trying to save.

Charlie worked as rapidly and deftly as his experience justified, but it was an hour perhaps before the stump of limb that remained was neatly bandaged and the patient ready to be restored to consciousness. As the boy made the last bind and fastened it his hands trembled. He was very proud of his first operation and eager for its success.

“Open the window, Elsie, wide!” he commanded. “Let in all the fresh air now we can get.” Then, hastily trimming away threads and loose ends, he hurried to the cabinet for restoratives. He seized a bottle of aromatic spirits of ammonia and returned to his patient. He had been so excited and interested in the conclusion of the operation that he had not noticed for some moments how feeble had become the sound of his patient’s breathing. As he bent over the table now he could distinguish no sound or sign of life whatever. The boy turned pale and sick with fear. To him it was not a crippled and deserted dog, better dead than living, but his first patient that in the midst of an operation he had allowed to die under his hands from chloroform. For a moment his faculties were paralyzed and he lost his head. Elsie was struggling with the window latch.

“Open it! Open it quick, Elsie, he’s—” Then he hesitated. He would not at once confess what he considered his negligence and disgrace. The next instant he thought he had better tell Elsie at once and bind her to secrecy. Then they could bury the body in the garden before the folks returned and nobody would be the wiser. But this did not seem to him quite honorable and his better nature declared against it. Perhaps, after all, his patient was not really dead. He would make a desperate effort to recall life.

All of this had whirled through his brain in the instant that Elsie was pushing up the window. A breath of warm spring air rushed in and filled his lungs. With it came self-control. He held the aromatic spirits to the creature’s nostrils and placed his ear to its breast. There was a feeble and irregular pulsation – the pulsation of waning life.

With the belief that all was over came a sudden revulsion of feeling that made all the anxiety and nervous tension of the last hour seem absurd.

“It’s no use, Elsie,” he said, half laughing and half ready to cry; “our dog’s dead.”

CHAPTER II.

The Course of Events.

But Charlie was mistaken. The sound of a deep, gasping breath caused him to turn eagerly to his patient. There was another deep breath, and another. Elsie danced up and down and clapped her hands.

“Oh, Charlie, he’s going to live! He’s going to live!” she kept repeating.

The boy did not express his joy so eagerly, but his face was aglow with pride. He lifted the dog’s head and pressed the aromatic spirits to his nose. In a few moments the patient sniffed it away, while his eyes turned from one to the other of his attendants. Then he wagged his tail feebly. At this Elsie had another attack of dancing and joy. Charlie became quite professional again.

“Watch him,” he said, “and see that he doesn’t try to get down while I make a bed for him in the woodhouse.”

As Charlie started for the door the dog followed him sorrowfully with his eyes.

“He doesn’t want you to go,” said Elsie. “Speak to him, Charlie. Oh, say, Charlie, what shall we call him? Let’s name him!”

“Call him Sorrow,” answered the boy, laughing. “He’ll see enough of it.”

“No,” said Elsie, “that isn’t a nice name. Besides, it’s too long, anyway.”

“Call him Grief, then; that’s short enough.” At the word grief the animal pricked up his ears and wagged his tail. Perhaps it was something like his old name.

“Why, Charlie, I do believe that was his real name!” said Elsie.

“Anyway, it is now,” replied the boy, and Grief he became from that moment.

When Surgeon Blake returned that evening he was made acquainted with all the details of the case. He was a tender – hearted man and looked at Grief and patted him on the head as he lay in a big box of hay which Charlie had provided. Charlie used all the professional terms in describing the operation, and his father listened and nodded approval.

“If I could only go to a surgical college this fall,” sighed the boy in conclusion.

Dr. Blake sighed, too. He was a country surgeon, and his practice was not extensive. He had been always too generous and easy-going to charge large fees or to collect closely those he did charge. He had been able to provide for his dead brother’s child, little Elsie, and he owned their little home in the outskirts of a small village near the Atlantic seashore, but his bank account never seemed to grow. He had faith in his son’s ability and had prepared him with great care for a college term. He believed Charlie to be already better equipped with knowledge than many graduated practitioners. With college training he would make his mark.

“I’m afraid, my boy,” he said, after looking at him a moment, “I’m afraid we can’t do it this fall – unless—” He paused and seemed reflecting.

“Unless what, Father?”

The father looked at the son a moment and then said, slowly:

“Unless I go to war.”

“To war! Oh, Father, is it – have they – ?”

“I heard some news as I came through the village,” continued the doctor. “Congress and the Senate have agreed upon a resolution that I believe means war, perhaps very soon. The war ships will be ordered to Havana likely within a week. There will be many new cruisers pressed into the service, of course, and plenty of work for surgeons. Through your Uncle Charles, in Washington, I feel pretty sure that I could get an appointment on one of the new ships that would pay better than my practice seems to here. I have been thinking of it ever since this war excitement began, but I did not wish to speak of it before. Your mother and Elsie could go to your Uncle Charles’ home in the West. You could enter college in the fall.”

While his father was speaking the boy had grown very grave. He hesitated now before replying. Then he said:

“You are not going to war on my account, Father, and if you go I shall not go to college. I shall go with you as your assistant. I can learn more there than in any college. You have said yourself that all I need is practice.”

Dr. Blake looked at his son fondly.

“No, no, Charlie!” he said; “we can’t both go. There is danger in war – even to non-combatants, such as we would be, and we cannot take the risk of leaving your mother and Elsie quite alone in the world. Besides, you need some school training, too.”

“I can take that afterward, and I would rather go with you than to all the colleges in the world.”

The father laughed.

“Well, well,” he said; “nothing is sure yet; perhaps there will be no war, and even if there is, I may not go.”

Elsie and Mrs. Blake came in at that moment. Elsie ran to the doctor and kissed him. She had heard the last sentence.

“I should think not, Uncle Frank!” she cried, excitedly. “Aunt Sarah has just been telling me that we are to have a war, and that you are thinking of sending us away and going on one of those terrible battleships that shoot a million shots a minute, or, something like that, and I’ve come right in to tell you that you can’t go a step. Not a step!” and the little golden head was tipped from side to side with great decision, while all the others laughed.

“Pshaw, Puss!” said Charlie. “You must not think because you are afraid of cannon balls that everybody else is. I’m going, too, as father’s assistant.”

“You’re going to do nothing of the kind. We’re all going to stay right here, and you can practice on Grief, and I’ll help you!”

“I hope you don’t want me to cut off poor Grief’s other legs, do you?” laughed the boy. “Instead of that, I’ll try my hand at making him a new one.”

They all laughed at this, but Charlie did in fact undertake this task at once. Grief was so bright the next morning that he wanted to get up and hobble around. His doctor said no, however, and put some slats over his box to keep him in. His loss being a hind leg taken off below the joint, he might have learned to get about quite well on three legs, in time, but Charlie, who was ingenious in many ways, made a careful model of the remaining foot from well seasoned hickory, and a skilful arrangement of leather and straps for fastening it to the stump. To the bottom of the new foot he tacked pieces of car rubber rounded in the shape of Grief’s toes, and when at last all was done and Grief, whose recovery was like magic for quickness, was allowed to take walks abroad, it was with the aid of a false limb.

He made such a funny figure at first and handled his new leg so absurdly that the whole family screamed with laughter. Then he seemed abashed, and Elsie declared that it was a shame to make sport of his misfortune, at which statement Grief wagged his tail and tried to jump about, and was funnier than ever. Little by little he grew accustomed to his new condition, and his thumping step across the porch grew quicker each day, until he could really run quite decently, and as the new leg was painted neatly he made a very good appearance indeed, and did not at all mind the merriment he sometimes caused.

Meantime the war news became more stirring each day. Admiral Sampson’s fleet was ordered to Havana, and Matanzas and other fortifications were bombarded. Auxiliary cruisers were being purchased right and left. Dr. Blake, in spite of the protest of all the family, had put in an application for service and was expecting his appointment daily. Elsie and her aunt were preparing to go West, and for the present Charlie was to go with them. The boy had pleaded hard to accompany his father, but to no purpose. He had a small sailboat named the Fleetwing, rather old but still considered seaworthy, in the little inlet that made up from the ocean, and though earlier than usual for sailing, he sometimes took Elsie and Grief out for a sail, as they were now so soon to leave the beautiful shore for a long time.

Then almost immediately came the assurance from Washington that Dr. Blake’s appointment was only a matter of a few days, and the others made ready to start West. Charlie had arranged to leave his boat with a neighbor, and on the evening before their departure he called Elsie and Grief for a farewell sail.

It was the last evening in April – beautiful and clear – with the sea like a table that rounded against the distant sky. Grief seemed to feel the solemnity of the occasion and sat in the bow, looking out over the water and wagging his tail when one of the others spoke to him. He had become very affectionate and faithful, and the cousins were much attached to their first patient. Little they knew where or how soon they would meet their second.

The tide was running out, but there was a steady breeze inshore, and Charlie let the boat swing well out to sea. The boy and girl were both good sailors. More than once they had sailed out to where only the village church spire rose above the water behind them. It was to be their last sail, and they meant to make it worth while. As the sun behind them sank lower and lower they turned to look at it.

“It may be a long time before we will see that old sun go down behind Eastfield again,” said the boy, solemnly.

Elsie did not reply at first. She was thinking.

“Oh, Charlie!” she exclaimed at last, the tears springing to her eyes, “do you suppose Uncle Frank will be killed?”

“Nonsense! This war won’t amount to anything. I only wish I were going along. I tell you, Elsie, suppose we saw a battleship coming along out here! I’d hail her and ask to be taken aboard. Then I’d apply for a job as assistant surgeon and you could be a nurse.”

“What would Grief be?”

“Oh, Grief would be what Grief always is – just trouble. He’d stump around in the way and get stepped on, and the first shot that was fired would probably take off his other three legs.” Perhaps Grief understood this, for he looked around at the speakers reproachfully. The boy meanwhile had turned his gaze to the northwest, and when he spoke again seemed a trifle anxious.

“I think we’d better be going in,” he said slowly. “There’s a nasty looking little cloud over yonder that looks as if it might have wind in it, and I wouldn’t care for an off-shore wind with the tide going out.”

Elsie assented, and Charlie started to put the boat about. As the broad sail swung to the other side the boy, with his hand on the tiller, felt that something was wrong. It seemed to drag under his hand, and he felt a cold chill run over him as he thought that possibly their rudder might fail and leave them helpless against wind and tide. He leaned over the stern of the boat, but could see no break above the water. He said nothing to Elsie and moved the tiller back and forth gently to see if the boat still obeyed. It appeared to do so, and he felt easier. He concluded that the rudder must have become worm-eaten during the winter and had now split and was perhaps about to go to pieces. He handled it very gingerly, and gradually the boat swung around and ran swiftly before the wind for shore. Neither Elsie nor Grief had seen that there was anything wrong, and both were looking away toward the little village of Eastfield in silence.

They had continued for perhaps half a mile in this manner when all at once the sail began to flap and then hung idly against the mast. The breeze from the sea had died. At this the girl turned to her companion. He was looking anxiously at the cloud in the northwest that was growing larger and darker every moment. She followed the direction of his eyes and her own face became anxious. “Do you think there is any danger, Charlie?”

“There isn’t any if—” He did not finish the sentence, but looked across the sea to where a ruffle of water told of an approaching breeze. It came on swiftly and presently smacked cool against their faces. The sail filled and the boat sped away on an angle.

“The wind has changed,” said Charlie. “We’ll have to tack to get in. We can do it if—” He paused again. He had been about to say, “if our rudder holds,” but he did not wish to frighten Elsie.

The breeze had now freshened, and the dark cloud was almost directly over them. They ran a long tack to the north, and then the boy knew that they must turn. He pushed the tiller gently. It seemed to obey. He pushed steadily across, and the boat answered to it. In another moment they would be running on the other tack. Perhaps the rudder was all right and it had been only his imagination after all. But suddenly the wind gave a short, sharp twist that caught the little boat and whirled it about like a top. Something cracked beneath Charlie’s hand, and before he had realized what had happened the little craft had righted and was speeding before the gale. The boy rushed instantly to drop the sail.

“Elsie!” he shouted, “our rudder’s broke! We’re going out to sea and can’t help ourselves!”

The girl turned her white face toward him without replying. She realized instantly what had happened and their utter helplessness.

“Oh!” she cried at last. “Uncle Frank! Aunt Sarah!” Then she buried her face in her hands. She was a brave little girl, but wind and night were upon them, and rudderless they were speeding out to a darkening and trackless sea.

In a moment Charlie had attended to the sail and was by her side. Grief realized that something was wrong, for he gave a low growl. Then he stumped back to the cousins and put his fore paw coaxingly on Elsie’s arm.

“Poor Grief – poor old Grief,” she said, looking up.

And thus sitting, side by side, the three looked away to their home that was disappearing beyond the rising waves.

CHAPTER III.

Adrift in the Night.

Charlie had dropped the sail immediately and there was nothing further that he could do. By running his hand down into the water at the stern of the boat he could feel that the rudder, as he suspected, had split in the narrow part. There was no possible way of repairing it. They must take their chances of being picked up or run down in the night by some passing craft.

The cloud and squall had passed and the sea was not high. There was no immediate danger of capsizing, but the breeze still came from the shore and the tide was carrying them further and further from land. The lights of Eastfield had disappeared; there was nothing about them but sea and gathering darkness. There was a little cubbyhole of a cabin on the boat and Charlie coaxed Elsie to go down into it. The girl was shivering with cold and misery, but she could not bear the thought of leaving the deck, where she could at least see what dangers surrounded them. She finally went below, however, and Grief, who growled uneasily now and then, sat close beside her with his head on her lap.

Charlie came down, too, and searched through a small locker. Presently he gave an exclamation of satisfaction, and Elsie heard him strike a match. Then she saw him light a piece of candle and place it on the edge of one of the bunks. The next moment he held up a bicycle lamp.

“Look, Elsie!” he cried quite cheerfully, “here’s an old lamp I used in here last year and it has oil in it. I’ll fasten it to the mast so any boat that comes along can see it and not run us down. Don’t cry, Elsie, we’re certain to be picked up. I wouldn’t at all mind going to sea in this old boat if I only had some way to steer it.”

The light and Charlie’s tone were cheering. The little girl dried her eyes and watched him as he cleaned the lamp and arranged to tie it to the masthead.

“Do you really think, Charlie, that someone will see it?” she said.

“Of course they will. There are boats and vessels passing here all the time. They couldn’t help—” then he paused. He remembered suddenly that very few American vessels were out now for fear of capture by Spanish cruisers and privateers, several of which had been reported off the coast lately.

He worked away busily at the lamp and did not finish the sentence. Elsie did not remember, and her faith in her cousin was unbounded. Her fear was passing away, and her greatest regret now was that her aunt and uncle would believe them drowned. As for Grief, the light and the changed tone of the voices had quite restored his good spirits and he hobbled about the little cubbyhole, in which there was hardly room for him to wag his tail, that pounded first against one bunk and then the other and once really made Elsie laugh out. Then she hushed instantly, for a laugh sounded queerly there in that little cabin surrounded on every side by the ocean and darkness.

Presently Charlie took the lamp and a stout string and went on deck. Elsie and Grief remained huddled below. After what seemed a very long time, the boy put his face in and called: “Come on deck a minute and see what a fine signal we’ve got. If there’s a vessel comes within five miles of us they could see that.”

Elsie crept out, followed closely by Grief. The little lamp did show bravely at the masthead, and threw a half circle of light on the dark billowy waste about them. Beyond the circle all was blackness. It was very chilly on deck and they all went below. Charlie insisted on Elsie lying down in one of the bunks. For himself, he went back on deck every other minute and strained his eyes into the night with the hope, which grew ever fainter, of discovering the lights of some passing steamer or schooner. He said to himself that unless another squall came on they would do very well if – if they only had food and water. When he remembered that they had neither and that they might drift this way for days without being rescued he had a sick feeling at his heart. He was neither hungry nor thirsty as yet, and he had not mentioned these things to Elsie, who had forgotten bodily needs in the first grief and shock of their helplessness. Just then he felt something against his leg that caused him to start. He looked down and saw Grief, who had come up on deck behind him. As he regarded the animal a thought came to him that made him shudder. He had heard of starving sailors becoming cannibals, and he had heard of tribes of Indians who consider dog meat a luxury. But he grew sick as he remembered these things. Grief looked up in his face and whined. The boy spoke to him cheerfully, and the dog wagged his tail and barked.

They went below together and Charlie uttered a low exclamation of surprise and satisfaction as he saw that Elsie was asleep. She would sleep till morning, no doubt, so he blew out the piece of candle to save it. Then he went on deck again. And so through all the night the boy and the dog kept up their watch. Charlie walked up and down and clapped his arms about him to keep warm, Grief following close behind. When it became too chilly they went below for a few moments. Elsie slept soundly, and for this at least the boy was thankful.

When the first gray streak of dawn came into the east, Charlie lowered the bicycle lamp and put it out. There would not be oil enough as it was for another night and they must make it go as far as possible. The sky was quite clear again and the sea as calm as could be expected at the season. But the air was very cold on the water and the boy was shaking as with ague. He began to feel the need of food and warm drink. He consoled himself with the thought that it would be warm and fine when the sun came out, and then he remembered that it was Sunday and the first of May. He did not know as he stood there that the cannon were booming out victory in far away Manila and that the beautiful Maine was being avenged on that sweet Sabbath morning. He might have given three cheers had he known it, cold and wretched though he was.

The boy could only guess at their location. He judged that they might be anywhere from twenty-five to fifty miles off shore and that they were now simply drifting, without making much progress in any direction. The sun came out at last at a point somewhat different from his expectations, but he was glad to see it wherever it appeared. Elsie was still asleep.

As Charlie stood watching the sun rise he suddenly felt his heart leap and then stand still. Low down on the horizon, directly across the face of the sun, he saw what he believed was a dark object. His eyes were somewhat dazzled by the light, but when he rubbed them and looked again he was sure. Over against the sunrise were the masts and black smoke of a steamer. He wanted to shout, but he knew it would be useless. The vessel was still many miles away, and there was no certainty as to its direction. His first movement must be to fly a signal, and, without delay, he fixed his white handkerchief to the masthead. Then, constantly watching the stranger, it seemed to him that it gradually drew closer. By and by he was sure of it. The hull was well up now on the horizon and it seemed to be coming almost bow on. He could restrain himself no longer.

“Elsie! Elsie!” he cried, bursting into the little cabin, “we’re saved!”

The little girl bounded up in an instant and did not remember at first where she was.

“A vessel’s coming!” cried Charlie. “We’re saved!”

Then she remembered and hastened on deck. The big black hull was in full view now, and coming almost directly toward them. As yet, however, the little boat did not appear to have been seen. Elsie drew out her handkerchief and waved it, while both gave a loud cheer and Grief barked.

As the steamer came nearer, it was seen that she would pass within perhaps half a mile of the boat.

“Oh, Charlie, they surely will see us, won’t they?” said Elsie anxiously.

“Of course – they can’t help it. They will even hear us.”

Then both together called very loud, but the distance was still too great. Steadily the big black hull came on, and now it showed to them a broadside view. It was passing them, and they must make themselves heard or seen without delay. They gave another mighty shout together, and another. Then they uttered a cry of joy, for two sailors were seen at the side of the vessel and after a moment two more. The boy and girl waved and called again frantically. Then presently they saw a boat being lowered. Charlie turned to his cousin and kissed her.

“Oh, Elsie!” he cried, “we’re saved now, I know.” Grief danced about and barked wildly. The boy patted his head and danced with him.

“Charlie, Charlie!” exclaimed Elsie, who was eagerly watching the ship, “what flag is that they are flying?”

The boy turned. A banner was being run up and rippled out against the sunrise. He watched it steadily for a moment, and then his eyes rested on the dark-faced sailors who were now pulling toward them with a steady stroke.

“What flag is it, Charlie?” repeated Elsie; “don’t you know?”

“Yes,” he said slowly, “I know that flag. It is the flag of Spain!”

CHAPTER IV.

Prisoners.

Little Elsie Blake turned a white face to her cousin.

“The flag of Spain!” she echoed.

“Yes, and she carries guns. She is either a cruiser or a privateer.”

“Oh, Charlie, what are we to do now?”

The boat that had been lowered was drawing very near by this time, and Grief, who had been watching it, began to bark furiously. The boy lowered his voice as he replied:

“We must make the best of it, Elsie. Anything is better than starving in an open boat, as we might have done. Let them see that we are delighted and thankful to be picked up, as, of course, we are, and don’t for an instant seem to be frightened or uneasy. Here they come. Both together now, bid them good-morning.”

“Good-morning!” called the cousins, joining their voices cheerily, while Grief once more barked a vigorous welcome.

The sailors replied something in a strange tongue and drew up by the side of the little boat. Charlie extended his hand cordially and the boatswain took it. His dark and rather surly countenance softened somewhat under the boy’s smile, and he intently regarded little Elsie’s bright face surrounded with golden hair. The other sailors turned curiously from one to the other and commented in their own tongue. Then they looked at Grief, and presently one of them discovered and pointed out the dog’s wooden hind leg. At this they set up a roar of laughter, in which the cousins joined, while Grief danced about, barking excitedly and causing all to laugh still more. Then the boatswain drew forth a stout rope and threw one end of it to Charlie, who passed it about the mast of the Fleetwing. The other end was made fast to the Spanish boat and the sailors bent to their oars, heading for their ship with the Fleetwing in tow. Now and then the sailors called back to them, but they could not understand the words, and believed they were talking to Grief, who seemed to understand and replied noisily. Now and then they caught the word “Americanos.” This they knew meant Americans and referred to them.

“Do you suppose they will murder us, Charlie?” whispered Elsie.

“Oh, no, of course not,” was the reassuring reply. “People don’t do such things now.”

But as he spoke he remembered the terrible usage of the Cubans and the destruction of our beautiful Maine. He shuddered in spite of himself. He reflected, however, that if they bore themselves fearlessly and made a good impression on the ship’s officers they were less likely to suffer, and he must not for a moment let Elsie’s spirits droop.

“They may keep us prisoner a good while,” he went on, “and we may see some pretty exciting times, and have to work. Perhaps you will be a nurse, after all. Could you stand it to nurse Spaniards, Elsie?”

“I – I – oh, yes, Charlie, I suppose so, if they were suffering and needed me. You know Uncle Frank said that in the army the dead and disabled are no longer our enemies.”

They had reached the ship’s side by this time and looked up at the row of heads bent over the railing. That the sailors were not in uniform convinced the boy that their captor was not a regular cruiser. He now noticed one man in uniform, however, who seemed to be an officer from his dress, and on his cap, in gold letters, was the word “Ovideo,” evidently the ship’s name. He regarded the strangers intently a moment and then called out in fairly good English:

“Good-morning! You are early birds!”

“And it was the early birds that got caught this time,” was Charlie’s gay reply.

The officer laughed and translated to the others, upon which they all laughed very loudly, as if it was a very great joke indeed. Then a ship’s ladder was lowered and they went aboard, Charlie carrying Grief under his arm.

As they landed on deck the crew gathered around them, some looking at the boy, many at Gold Elsie, and others at Grief, who hobbled and danced about on his wooden leg and kept them in a continual roar.

“Grief will keep them in good humor if nothing else will,” thought Charlie, “and as long as they laugh they will hardly murder us.”

The officer now came forward and shook hands with both the cousins.

“Ah,” he said, “it is that you will be our first prize. Not so large in the vessel, but,” turning gallantly to Elsie, “it is that it should contain a rare treasure of gold and jewels.”

He was not an old man, and was rather handsome, but very dark. As he spoke he lifted a strand of Elsie’s shining hair, and the girl instinctively shrank away from him. Charlie took a quick step forward.

“You must not do that!” he said, sharply.

The Spaniard regarded him quizzically.

“It is that she will be your sweetheart,” he said, with half a sneer.

“No, she is my cousin. We have been brought up as brother and sister.”

The sneer died away.

“Ah! And you will protect her. That is of a pleasure to know. It will be that you wish food. Come.”

He waved his hand toward the gangway and the cousins descended, followed by Grief. From his hasty glance about the deck Charlie had come to the conclusion that the vessel was a privateer. She appeared to be an ordinary merchant steamer, with two smokestacks and two modern guns of good caliber, mounted fore and aft. Below they found a comfortable cabin and a snug dining-room. Seated at the table were two other men in uniform. They rose and saluted as their conductor entered and the cousins concluded from this that he was the captain. His name, as they quickly learned, was Carletto, and his subordinates, Esetval and Garcia. Neither of these spoke English, but at a word from their commander they showed extreme deference to their prisoners. A servant brought two more plates, and the cousins were soon eating a warm breakfast that was no less enjoyed because some of the dishes were peppery and strange. As for Grief, he danced about and was fed by first one and then another of the officers, who laughed and commented excitedly in Spanish over his wooden limb.

At the Spanish captain’s request, Charlie gave him a brief account of their accident, which Captain Carletto translated rapidly to the others. They regarded the cousins intently, and especially Elsie, whose cheeks were now aglow with warmth and excitement.

“And do your people expect to conquer in this war?” asked the captain as Charlie concluded.

The boy hesitated. He wanted to say, “We know we will,” but replied courteously instead: “Every nation must expect its own armies to win, but we know the Spanish fight bravely.”

And this reply being translated to the others, seemed to please them very much.

Then, as Grief once more capered about, the captain inquired concerning his false limb. Upon learning that Charlie had made it, he became greatly interested, and when he learned that he had also performed the amputation and was a student of surgery he translated excitedly to the others. Then there was some very rapid conversation between the officers, and presently Captain Carletto turned to the boy, saying, in his peculiar and precise English:

“It is our pleasure and honor that you will become our surgeon. We have no one of sufficient skill, and it is that we may be in need of such ferry soon.”

Charlie felt his pulse quicken. In spite of the fact that it was an enemy’s ship, and he was a prisoner and far from anxious parents, he could not help feeling a glow of pride at being suddenly appointed ship’s surgeon, with a prospect of active service. He looked hastily at Elsie, who was regarding him anxiously. Then he turned to the Captain.

“And it is my pleasure and honor to accept,” he said as calmly as he could. “You have saved our lives, and I will do what I can to save the lives of your men if they need it.”

Just then Grief put his paws up on Charlie’s knee and looked him in the face, wagging his tail. The boy patted him on the head affectionately, as he thought that after all it was Grief and his poor crippled leg that had done as much for them as anybody. Then once more he turned to Captain Carletto.

“My cousin Elsie has spoken of being a nurse,” he said. “I ask that she be appointed as such under my direction.” Charlie had been thinking rapidly, and he remembered that the office of nurse is respected and honored by all nations.

Captain Carletto looked admiringly at the girl and spoke to the others. Then all regarded her as the Captain replied in English:

“The señorita does us far too great an honor, and my men declare that they will, for the sake of her care, be wounded in the first engagement.”

Elsie blushed with embarrassment and then grew pale. The sudden responsibility terrified her.

“Oh!” she trembled, “I’m afraid I don’t know how to be a nurse.”

“She is an excellent nurse,” interrupted Charlie. “She had the care of this fellow—” (pointing to Grief), “and brought him through in a week.”

“Ah!” exclaimed Captain Carletto. “It is that her touch will be magic. I will myself be facing those Yankee bullets for that delight.” Captain Carletto was about to continue when a sailor appeared in the door and said something rapidly, at which all hastily rose. As they hurried out the captain turned to his prisoners, who had also arisen.

“It is a sail!” he said quickly. “It is that we will perhaps need your services sooner than we expected!”

CHAPTER V.

The Ways of War.

As Captain Carletto followed his officers up the gangway Elsie turned to her cousin. Her face had grown rather white.

“I am afraid,” she said, simply. “There will be a battle and men will be shot and killed. Oh, Charlie, I can never stand it,” and the little girl put her hands over her eyes.

“We must, Elsie. Don’t let them see that we are afraid. Perhaps it’s one of our own war ships. If it is, they will capture this old boat and set us free. That is,” he added to himself, “if they don’t sink us the first shot.”

Elsie brightened at the prospects of its being an American warship.

“Let’s go on deck and see,” she said, taking Charlie’s hand.

Grief preceded them up the gangway and began to bark furiously at the bustle and excitement on deck. Men were hurrying in every direction, some at one thing and some at another. A number were grouped about the gun forward, evidently making it ready for immediate use. The captain stood on the lookout forward, looking away to the southeast through a large glass. The cousins followed the direction with their eyes and made out a white sail well down on the horizon. After watching for some time the boy decided that it was a four-masted schooner rigged vessel, but he could not be sure. Presently the captain came down and joined his prisoners. He seemed in a very good humor.

“If it is that it shall prove to be one of your countrymen,” he began in his precise manner, “it shall possess us of a ferry good prize. It is running to port, but we shall of a certainty over take it. Our vessel is of great swiftness.”

The boy, with his gaze steadily on the distant ship, did not reply. He wondered if the Ovideo had been seen and recognized as being in pursuit. He noticed with a sinking heart that what Captain Carletto had said about the steamer’s speed was true. She seemed to fairly cleave the water, and the distance between the two vessels was lessening as by magic. The schooner, for such she now proved to be, was soon well up on the horizon, and it did not seem to Charlie that she was making an effort to escape. Perhaps she had been on a long voyage and did not even know that war had begun. As they drew nearer she seemed to be moving along serenely in the pleasant sunshine without a thought of danger. Any hope of rescue that may have been in the boy’s mind was dispelled. The helpless schooner would fall an easy prey to the armed Spaniard. They would presently be within gunshot, and then, if she did not heave to, the big gun forward would send death and destruction into her defenseless hull.

Even as Charlie reflected Captain Carletto gave an order in Spanish and a moment later the deck beneath their feet shook with a crashing roar so terrible that the boy jumped in spite of himself and Elsie seized his arm with a loud scream. As for Grief, he evidently believed himself shot, for he tumbled over backward and lay howling and pawing the air with three feet, while his wooden leg stood straight up in a most ridiculous manner.

To the sailors this seemed very funny, and one of them ran towards him shuffling his feet heavily along the deck. At this Grief suddenly concluded that he was still alive, and whirling to his feet disappeared down the gangway, half falling and half running, to the great delight of the crew.

But Charlie did not laugh. With his arm about Elsie he watched the shot as it struck the water well toward the schooner and somewhat in advance of it. The men at the gun were preparing to fire another shot and the boy started to take Elsie below. But as he reached the gangway he heard an exclamation of disgust from Captain Carletto, and turning quickly saw that the pursued vessel was hoisting its flag. His heart gave a bound of pleasure. It was the banner of England that fluttered to the breeze.

“Oh,” he whispered to Elsie, “there’ll be no bloodshed this time. It is an English schooner, and they daren’t touch her. I thought it was queer she didn’t try to get away.”

Elsie did not understand at first, but when she did she said eagerly:

“Oh, can’t they take us off of here so we can go home?”

Charlie looked grave.

“I am afraid we are prisoners of war, Elsie, and Captain Carletto may not want to give us up. But I will ask him to let you go – perhaps he will do that.”

“No, no! not without you. I won’t leave you here alone with these horrid Spaniards.”

The captain approached just then, and Charlie said earnestly:

“Captain Carletto, you have been very kind to us, even though you are our enemy. Won’t you be still more kind and send my cousin home to our people by that English vessel?”

The scowl of disappointment died out of the Spaniard’s face as he regarded Elsie. Then he shook his head.

“No, no,” he said smiling, “I cannot, because I am disappointed in my second prize, surrender, therefore, the riches of my first. It is that I believe my gallant crew will arise in a mutiny if I yield to the Briton our little nurse.”

“And I don’t want to go without Charlie, either,” said Elsie with some spirit. “You ought to let us both go – and Grief, too,” she added, as the dog at that moment stole up the gangway and stood looking about anxiously, ready to dodge back at the first sound of guns.

But Captain Carletto only laughed and twisted his moustache as they stood watching the schooner that was once more drawing away from them. The Ovideo gradually shifted her course more to the southeast, and the schooner was soon hull down on the western horizon. Then the cousins went to the rail and, leaning over, watched her as long as there was a speck against the sky.

“She will be in the land of the free tomorrow,” sighed Charlie at length. “Oh, Charlie, why didn’t we ask Captain Carletto to at least let us send a letter to Uncle Frank and Aunt Sarah, so that they might know we were alive?”

The boy started.

“That’s so,” he said. “I didn’t think of that. I don’t suppose he’d have let us, though. Anyway, it’s too late now.”

The rest of the day passed quietly. The cousins were in full health and the weather was fine. In spite of their position they could not feel depressed. The crew treated them with great deference and they dined at the captain’s table. Grief entirely recovered his spirits and was very happy romping with the sailors, with whom he soon made friends. The vessel had been a passenger steamer and at night the cousins were assigned to a pretty suite of staterooms. Grief slept on a rug by Charlie’s bed, and the boy slumbered as soundly as if he were safe in his old Eastfield home.

And so ten uneventful days passed. The cousins soon grew to feel at home on the Spanish vessel, and Grief was quite in his glory. Captain Carletto, who prided himself on his English, was fond of talking to his prisoners, but as the days went by and brought him no prizes he grew gloomy and less talkative. The sea seemed to be stripped of vessels, and, though they cruised in every direction, they sighted nothing except a French steamer that one rainy morning ran by them, calling through a megaphone as it passed the news of the great battle in Manila Bay and the glorious victory of Commodore Dewey. Then Captain Carletto and his fellow officers were plunged into the very depths of savage gloom and talked fiercely in Spanish, while the crew scowled at the American cousins, and one of them kicked poor Grief, who was so astonished that he forgot to howl. Of course Charlie and Elsie were secretly delighted, and in their little staterooms that night gave three silent cheers.

Although pursuing steadily no given direction, the Ovideo had been gradually working its way south, and Charlie concluded that this was on account of their coal supply, which they hoped to replenish at some French or Spanish port in the West Indies. The captain was now morose and uncommunicative. He rarely spoke to the cousins and paced the deck or the cabin below nearly all day. Charlie suspected that they were getting near the American squadron, and that there was constant risk of capture for the Ovideo. He told these suspicions to Elsie, and though they endeavored to appear unconcerned their hearts grew buoyant with hope.

CHAPTER VI.

Under Fire.

The cousins’ hopes were not unmixed with dread. A meeting with an American cruiser would mean battle and bloodshed. Charlie on his own account looked forward to this with keen anticipation. He had all the love of excitement and battle that warms the bosom of every healthy boy and, besides this, in his capacity as ship’s surgeon he was eager to demonstrate his skill. But on Elsie’s account he was anxious. The little girl was filled with horror at the thought of battle, and had no wish to fill her new position as nurse. So day by day they watched the sea that seemed to grow always a deeper blue until Charlie said he believed somebody had lost a cargo of indigo in those waters. The weather, too, was becoming tropical, and it was evident that they were far to the south. The lack of prizes and the news of the Manila disaster had made Captain Carletto so glum and savage looking that neither Charlie nor Elsie wished to ask him any questions. They could therefore only watch and wait.

It was on the morning of May 21, when they had been just three weeks on the Ovideo, that the spell was at last broken. Charlie was awakened at daybreak by the dog Grief, who was barking furiously at his bedside. Springing up hastily, and listening, he heard the sound of hasty movements on the deck above and sharp orders. Throwing on his clothes, he ran to Elsie’s door and knocked.

“Elsie! Elsie!” he called, “something’s up! You’d better dress right away. I’m going on deck.”

“Oh, Charlie, is it a battle?” came the anxious reply.

“I don’t know. I’ll go up and be right down and tell you. Here, you Grief, stay here. You’ll have a fit if a gun goes off.” Perhaps Grief understood, for he hobbled over to one corner, and did not attempt to follow. The boy hastened up the gangway, and in another moment was in a whirl of excitement. The engines of the privateer were sending her through the water like a whirlwind, while two miles astern, clearly outlined against the morning sky, and in hot pursuit, there was another great vessel – a ship of war, flying the American flag.

Charlie’s heart gave a great bound. At last there was to be action. That the Ovideo was trying to escape showed that her captain knew their pursuer to be a superior vessel. That she was clearing for action showed that she did not intend to surrender without a struggle. The vessels were close enough now for battle, but both had thus far withheld their fire. The boy could not tell whether his country’s vessel was gaining on them or not. He concluded that daylight must have found the two vessels about the same distance apart which they had since maintained. The race would be a close one unless one or the other was disabled by a shot. Captain Carletto, to whom anything seemed better than inaction, was almost in a good humor, and giving orders in an eager, quick voice.

“Ah!” he said, as his eye fell on Charlie, “it is that we shall perhaps need you after all. It is of a good ship that you countrymen are possessed, but we have one of greater speed. She does not fire, for she thinks to capture us alive. Ha! ha! we but linger to display to her our excellence of guns. It is that my men have need of action and practice – ah! and the taste of blood.”

Charlie bowed as he answered:

“I suppose I need those things, too, Señor, but my cousin dreads them. It will be unpleasant for her.”

“Si – si – the señorita – go below and assure her that she shall be protected.”

But at that moment Elsie appeared at the top of the stairway. Her cheeks were flushed with the excitement of hasty dressing, and her loose hair rippled out in the fresh morning breeze. Without speaking Charlie stepped forward and pointed away to where the black smoke and starry banner streamed bravely against the sky. The girl gave a faint cry of joy and alarm. Almost at the same instant there was a puff of smoke from the pursuing vessel, succeeded by a roar that seemed to follow the shot which screamed across their bows. Charlie caught Elsie’s arm.

“Go downstairs!” he cried. “You must not——” But the rest of the sentence was lost in the frightful roar of the Spanish gun that now belched forth reply. Elsie shrank back, but did not falter.

“No, no, I want to stay,” she pleaded. “I am not much afraid, and I would die downstairs alone.” But at that instant a second shot from the American came crashing into the stern of the Ovideo. Dust and splinters flew in every direction, and a Spanish sailor was hurled almost at Elsie’s feet. He groaned, and Elsie saw that his face was covered with blood. She screamed, and Captain Carletto approached hastily.

“It is that you shall both go below,” he commanded. “We have a need of your services there.”

Charlie took Elsie’s arm and they descended together. The boy hurried his cousin to their staterooms, where Grief, who had heard the shots, was howling dismally. As Elsie came in he ran to her and tried to lick her face.

“Oh, Grief,” she cried, “we are of no account. All we can do is to make a fuss and wait to be killed.”

“There will be plenty to do presently,” said Charlie. “As fast as I get the wounded dressed you must take care of them. Don’t mind the noise and the groans. You are a nurse now, and this is war.”

A deafening roar from above emphasized Charlie’s statement. The boy felt his blood tingle and dance with the fever of battle, and he longed to rush on deck, where he could be in its midst. But with it all came likewise the joy of his profession and the enthusiasm of action. Some sailors were bringing the wounded man down stairs, and Charlie turned to follow them to a deck far below the water-line that had been arranged for his use.

“Come, Elsie,” he said, “your department is below, too, and it is very dangerous here.”

Elsie and Grief both followed him, and none too soon, for a moment later a solid shot came crashing through the little cabin they had just deserted.

Grief, with a wild howl, tumbled after the sailors down the dark stairway, and the boy and girl wasted no time in following. It was getting too hot to be cooped up in a cabin that was above the water-line, where the danger was almost as great as on the upper deck, and yet where nothing could be seen. Down two flights more was the surgeon’s room, and also the ship’s hospital. This lower deck was well lighted by electricity, and everything was clean and ship-shape. Elsie went into the hospital room forward, while the others carried the injured man into the surgeon’s room aft. One of the sailors remained to assist Charlie, and the others hurried on deck.

The roar of guns was now almost continuous, but the sound was considerably deadened to those below. Grief crouched close to Elsie, looking up at her now and then and whining. Charlie in his room was very busy. The man’s face had been lacerated by a splinter that had stunned him and left a painful and an ugly wound. The boy had scarcely dressed this patient’s injuries when two more were brought down. One had been struck in the shoulder and the other in the breast, both by pieces of the same shell. Charlie saw instantly that the latter was dying. A moment later Captain Carletto himself followed, with his wrist bandaged.

“It is that those devils of Yankees can shoot!” he said grimly, holding out his arm.

Charlie stripped off the bandage, and found that the blood was flowing rapidly. He hastily twisted a tourniquet above the wound, and washing away the blood, wrapped the wrist in bandages soaked with witch hazel. The captain then hurried away, and the boy turned to his other patients. One of them was already dead. The other he worked at busily, assisted by the Spanish sailor who had been assigned to him on account of being able to speak a little English. Charlie’s second patient was far more seriously wounded than the first. His shoulder was crushed, and the young surgeon could not tell how bad his injuries really were. He feared that an amputation would be necessary, and he wished that Elsie, who was so quick and intuitive, could be there to assist him. Once he even went to the room forward to call her. She could not hear his approach for the roar of guns, and did not see him. She was sitting by the couch of the first patient, fanning him as quietly as if she were in some quiet and safe hospital on shore. Charlie turned back without calling her. He found a fourth patient awaiting him – the big, swarthy fellow that had once kicked Grief – his leg shot off at the knee.

“H’m!” thought Charlie. “He won’t kick any more dogs with that leg.” Then all at once the boy began to tremble with a fear that he would not be able to perform his duty well. He had wanted action and practice, but he had not counted on so many at once nor upon such difficult cases. He had read, of course, of the terrible mangling of battle, but this brought him face to face with the fact.

“If only Father were here,” he thought. Suddenly he noticed that the roar of guns overhead had ceased. What was it? Were the guns silenced? Were they conquered? Were they sinking? His assistant stopped and listened, too. Then there was a sound of footsteps on the stair, and sailors came down, bringing still another patient. Charlie’s assistant spoke to them excitedly in Spanish. Then they all marched heavily and gloomily up the gangway, leaving Charlie alone with his patients and the dead man. Something had happened – he knew not what. All firing had ceased. What should he do? He ran to the forward room.

“Elsie! Elsie!” he called. “The firing has stopped. Run up and see what has happened. I must stay with these poor fellows as long as I can!”

CHAPTER VII.

An Unexpected Captor.

Elsie Blake looked at her cousin for a moment hesitatingly. Then she grew very pale.

“Oh, no, Charlie,” she shuddered, “I can’t go up there where they have been fighting – I can’t bear it!”

“But you must, Elsie; the ship may be going down and you would be drowned here like a rat in a trap.”

“No, no, I’m not afraid down here. I will stay with you. I will not leave you here alone. If the ship sinks we will be together when it goes down, and Grief, too.” Then suddenly she paused; Grief was nowhere to be seen. But a moment before he had been sitting by the wounded Spaniard’s cot. Now his post was vacant and the cousins saw instead their patient, who had recovered consciousness, making a frantic effort to gain his feet. He was waving his arms wildly and began speaking rapid words in Spanish, which they could not understand.

“He is delirious,” said Charlie. “We must not let him get up!”

They hurried to the wounded man and tried to calm him, but he struggled wildly to leave his couch, pointing first at the deck and then at the door, and talking excitedly meanwhile. It was all that both Charlie and Elsie could do to hold him back by main strength. In the excitement of the struggle they forgot their fears. The Spaniard seemed to grow more violent every moment and the boy and girl saw that they could not hold him any longer.

“Let go, Elsie, and get out of the way!” cried Charlie. “We can’t hold him and he will hurt you!”

They stepped back. The sailor sprang to his feet and bounded out of the doorway toward the stairs. As he did so Charlie suddenly seized Elsie by the arm.

“Look!” he cried, pointing at the deck.

The girl stared where he pointed.

“What is it? Where? I don’t see anything.”

“The angle! Don’t you see? The ship’s listed. She’s sinking, sure!”

Then Elsie saw what Charlie meant. The floor beneath their feet had settled on the port side, and it was not from the motion of the sea. They had not noticed it before, but both realized now that this was, perhaps, what their patient had seen and feared. Grief, too, must have known the danger by instinct, and fled. Charlie drew his cousin hastily toward the door.

“Come. There is not a second to lose! We will send help to those men if we can, but we cannot help them by ourselves.”

They rushed to the narrow stairway and up it like squirrels. Then Charlie, who was ahead, stopped. The door that led to the deck above was closed and fast. The flying Spaniard had slammed it in his excitement, and the latch on the outside had sprung into place.

The boy threw his weight against the door, but it refused to yield. Then he kicked it frantically, but with no effect. Again and again he flung himself against the stout oaken panels. Then he turned to Elsie, who stood on the step below, waiting in misery and despair.

“It’s no use, Elsie,” he said, “we’re locked in, and must go down with the ship.”

“Let’s say our prayers, Charlie.”

The boy turned and put his arm around the little figure that he could scarcely see in the dim light.

“I wish Father and Mother might know,” he said, his voice breaking a little. “I wish they might know just how we died and that we were together, and – I wish—” He paused, for just then the vessel lurched heavily and they could scarcely keep their place on the narrow stair. The little girl clung to the manly figure beside her.

“Oh, Charlie, you have always been so good to me!”

The boy’s face was very close to hers. “I have always loved you so, Elsie,” he answered. Beyond the closed door there came the sound of quick voices – voices that spoke the English tongue, and mingled with them the barking of a dog.

“Grief!” shouted the prisoners. “It’s Grief!”

“And there are men with him!” cried Charlie. “This way! Help! Quick!” But almost before the words had left his mouth the door was flung back and the boy and girl sprang forward and were gathered into strong arms and heard a deep familiar voice say:

“Charlie and Elsie! The Lord be praised!”

Then there were cries of amazement.

“Father!”

“Uncle Frank!”

“Yes, and thanks to Grief, just in time. Come quickly, we have no time to explain now.”

He drew them toward the next stairway, when Charlie hesitated.

“Wait,” he said, “there are wounded sailors below.”

“The men will bring them.”

The sailors that had accompanied Dr. Blake darted down the stairway, and when the others reached the deck were bringing the wounded Spaniards close behind. Grief, who had preceded them, was leaping on the children’s shoulders and barking like mad. With but one glance at the stained and battered decks the cousins followed Dr. Blake over the ship’s side into the waiting boat below. The wounded men were hastily lowered into another boat, and the American sailors bent to their oars. They were scarcely clear of the gallant Ovideo when she listed so far to port that the waves washed over her after-deck.

“She will be gone in five minutes more,” said Dr. Blake, solemnly.

Until then no one had spoken in either boat, but now Elsie turned eagerly.

“Oh, Uncle Frank, it was your ship that we fought with, and now we’re your prisoners!” Then she flung her arms around him and sobbed, as if she were sorry, though her heart was bursting with happiness. Dr. Blake held her close and slipped an arm about Charlie’s shoulders, too.

“Whatever you are you owe it to Grief!” he said, with deep emotion. “We had no one seriously wounded on our vessel, and I came aboard with our men to help take off our prisoners and see to the injured. We saw that the ship was sinking, and were just about to leave the ship, not knowing that there were men below, when I heard a bark and looked around. It was Grief, and he came tearing up to me and began pulling at my clothes. I knew him at once, and suspected instantly that you were on the vessel. We followed him, and he led us straight to where you were fastened in. I never can tell you how I felt, Charlie, when I saw that door and heard your voice call.”

The doctor paused, and Grief, as if he understood, gave a loud bark.

“You saved a poor dog’s life once, children, and today he has saved yours. You can tell me all about your adventures when we reach the ship. See, there is the last of your prison house!”

All eyes were turned toward the sinking vessel. She had been gradually settling lower and lower to port, and now, when her buoyancy was finally conquered by the inrush of water, she slipped gently from view, leaving scarcely a wake behind.

Elsie’s eyes were streaming with tears.

“That beautiful ship!” she said. “Oh, it’s too bad!”

“The ways of war,” replied her uncle gravely.

The men now bent to their oars and they soon reached the beautiful new cruiser Princeton. Captain Carletto and the Spanish crew had been already transferred. When the Spanish captain saw Elsie he bowed very grandly. Then he turned to where the sailors were bringing the wounded Spaniards on board.

“It is that the Yankees have something of mercy, as well as skill in shooting,” he said thoughtfully.

By and by, when Charlie and his father had attended to the injured, the cousins told of their adventures to an audience composed of the officers and almost the entire crew, who gathered on deck to listen. Then there were three cheers and three times three for the victory and the rescue, with the loudest cheers of all for the hero, Grief, and Grief joined frantically in every cheer.

The next morning the Princeton ran into Key West, and Aunt Sarah was telegraphed the news of her loved ones’ safety. Elsie was put in charge of a party who were going North and would take her to Aunt Sarah’s new home with them in the West.

Dr. Blake urged Charlie to go also, but the boy begged so hard that he was allowed to return to the Princeton as his father’s assistant. When Elsie stepped on the train he kissed her fondly.

“Please, oh, please, don’t get shot, Charlie,” she pleaded.

“I won’t get shot, Elsie, for your sake,” he whispered.

The little girl hid her face, and when the train started and he had to hurry off, she kissed him so loudly that everybody on the train heard it and smiled.

As for Grief, the crew of the Princeton vowed they would not part with him for all the prize money of the war. They said that any dog was a mascot on a ship, and that a wooden-legged one would be such a mascot and bring the ship such good luck as had never been heard of before.

And this was so, perhaps, for during all the engagements of Santiago, the Princeton, though always at the front, received not a single scratch. And so it happened that while Charlie saw whatever there was of our sea war with Spain, he acquired in it little surgical experience until the final destruction of Cervera’s squadron, when our surgeons combined with those of Spain in the relief of our fallen enemies. Then, presently, war was over and the family gathered once more at the old Eastfield home.

Grief is there, too, though the men of the Princeton parted from him almost in tears. He is a great comfort to Elsie, who is lonely sometimes, and Charlie, who is away attending a college of surgery, always mentions him in his letters to her. These are her dearest treasures – the letters – and Grief knows perfectly well who they are from. He wags his tail and now and then barks softly while they are being read. Then when they are finished he barks very loudly indeed and leaps about as wildly and almost as well as if he had four good legs of his own to leap on instead of just three of that kind and one brand new wooden one which Charlie made and at holiday time brought home to him for a Christmas present.

—

POLLY  – A CONFESSION

It was Washington’s Birthday, and three friends were celebrating it by dining together in an uptown restaurant. The conversation had been of Washington’s boyhood and the cherry tree confession, and from that had drifted to the subject of truth in general.

“Truth,” said one, “is like diamonds. Prized by all and possessed by few.”

“First-water diamonds and truth, you mean,” said the second. “Almost anyone may have inferior gems, and truth of about the same quality. It is so easy to step aside the least bit to make a good story, or to make things appear well for the teller, or to get rid of something unpleasant.”

“And yet,” said the third, “how much easier it would be in the long run to stick to exact facts! Were even a hundred people each to tell the truth of an occurrence their statements would match perfectly. Where statements are made carelessly you will rarely find two that make even a respectable fit, and doubt and dishonor are cast upon all.”

The speaker paused. “It is the truth that means confession that is hard,” he added. “Confession of an error or of wrong accusation. In a child such truth is heroic, divine. I am going to tell you a story of such a confession; one that, unlike Washington, I did not make.”

“I was brought up on a farm,” he continued, “and my people were only in moderate circumstances. My mother had always made my clothes, but when I was thirteen years old my father bought me an overcoat at the village store. It was dark blue and had an inside pocket, of which I was very proud. On the morning when I first wore it to school I took an apple, as I was in the habit of doing, usually putting it in my dinner pail to eat at the noon hour. Most of the children lived some distance from the schoolhouse, and it was a custom and delight for them to carry their dinners.

“When noon came I went to my little pail, but there was no apple. Somebody, I declared, must have taken it. Among the scholars there was a large homely girl named Polly. Her parents were poor. I know now that she was fine and noble, but her face and manner were against her and she had few friends. I told my sister and some of my playmates that Polly must have taken it. They believed me and shunned her and whispered about it together.

“That night as I was running home I felt a lump in the inner pocket of my new overcoat. It was my apple.

“My sister was far behind me. She did not know of the discovery, and I was ashamed to confess it. I tried shyly to eat the apple, but it choked me. I felt like the criminal that I was. I knew that I could never confess my error to the boys. And yet how easy it would have been to do it! How easy!”

The speaker paused and looked down into his plate. His hand trembled a little. Even the passing of thirty years had not made confession so easy today.

“That night my sister told at home of Polly’s sin. My mother must have doubted,for she came to me after I was in bed and mentioned the matter gently and asked me if I was sure I had not eaten the apple. And I, poor little wretch that I was, still held to the contrary and to Polly’s guilt. That night I missed saying my prayers for the first time. I remember I lay awake thinking of a picture in a book we had. It was a picture of people bound for the place of future punishment, and down in one corner of it they were being pushed over a precipice into a mass of red flames below.”

Once more the speaker paused, but no word was spoken by the others.

“The next day at school,” he continued, and it seemed hard for him to speak the words, “Polly came to me crying. Someone had told her of my accusation.‘You did not say I stole your apple,’ she pleaded, ‘did you?’ I shook like a leaf. I suppose the good and bad were struggling together within me. But the bad had gone too far to turn back now. ‘Yes, I did say so,’ I answered, and wondered why Heaven did not strike me dead. Polly, ran away, crying.

“Time passed, and as the matter was forgotten by the others. I gradually recovered something like peace of mind and tried to ease my conscience in various ways. But one day in the early spring a little crowd of us at the noon hour, were daring each other to try the ice that still covered a creek which ran just below the school. I was foolhardy and rather small and light for my years. I stepped out on the ice and ventured several feet from the shore. The others called me back, but that only made me more venturesome. Suddenly the ice gave way and cracked, and I was struggling in the deadly cold water. I screamed wildly and most of the scholars ran away. But Polly,who was taller and stronger and braver than the rest, waded out to me through the broken ice and dragged me to the shore. I was unconscious from fright and cold and strangulation, and should have died if she had not come to me as she did. They said that she carried me up the hill to the schoolhouse and then ran all the way to my home to tell my parents.

“I was in bed for several days with cold and fever. They told me that one night when I was delirious I called constantly for Polly, and repeated over and over, ‘You didn’t do it, Polly; it was all a lie!’ They had forgotten about the apple and thought I was only raving, but I had not forgotten, and when I came to myself I knew what I was going to do. I was going to Polly and confess and beg her forgiveness. Then I learned that Polly was sick, too. When I heard of that I could not stay in bed. I was weak and dizzy, but I made myself get up. I slipped out of the house and ran and staggered across the fields to the poor cabin where Polly lived.

“Her mother met me at the door and seemed surprised to see me. She said I must not be out so soon after being sick. I cried out that I wanted to see Polly. Then she told me that Polly was worse and would not know me, I staggered home dazed and wretched.

“But I could not stay there. That night, in spite of the fact that my eyes burned and my head throbbed, I crawled across the fields again to Polly’s house. I told them that I must see her. Her mother let me in. There were two beds in the room and Polly was in one of them. She was moaning and tossing and talking in fever. I imagined that she was accusing me.

“‘Polly – oh, Polly!’ I said, but she did not know me. They made me go home at last and I cannot remember when I reached there.

“My fever had come back harder than at first and I was in a stupor for days. When I returned to consciousness I asked for Polly.”

The speaker paused. He was pale and his face looked old. Then he steadied his voice and continued:

“She had been buried for three days.”

Again he paused. Neither of the others spoke.

“It is a terrible story,” he said, at last. “But I wish that every child in the world might know it.” Then, turning to the man at his left, “You are a writer – tell it to them.”

And I have done my best to obey.

—

CINDERELLA

“So you are going to play Cinderella, are you, Puss?” said the tall young man, as he pinched Blanche Forrester’s rosy cheek and passed into the hall. “Well, you want to be certain you find a glass slipper,” he added as he slipped on his overcoat. “There are several of them, you know.”

The young girl tossed her head. “I wish brother Jack wouldn’t always be pinching my cheek,” she said angrily to her mother. “He treats me like a little girl of eight, when I’m nearly fourteen, and he feels awfully smart since he’s going to college next year.”

“There’s one glass slipper that’s called ‘good temper,’” Jack laughed back at her as he went out. “I’d try to find that one if I were you. It’s pure crystal and but few wear it.”

The girl made a face toward the closed door. and twitched irritably the skein of tinsel she was unfastening. The middle-aged lady by her paid no heed. Her daughter Blanche was the only girl, and had been petted and spoiled by them all. Jack, who spoiled her as much as the rest, loved to tease her now and then, and perhaps was the only one who had begun to see that his little sister was in a fair way to become selfish and dissatisfied through over-indulgence. And yet she was so pretty and petite that one could hardly help petting and teasing her. The Forresters were very wealthy, too, and living in a large city made it easy to gratify every wish of an only sister and daughter.

His latest whim had been to plan and arrange an entertainment for charity. It was to be Cinderella, with herself in the leading part. The ballroom of a great hotel had been secured for the performance, and little Miss Blanche had enlisted her friends and their mothers until the undertaking had become one of rather grand proportions. I am afraid Blanche gave far less thought to the object of the entertainment than she did to the fact that she was its star and patroness. I feel sure she was more anxious about the approval of her audience than the amount of profit to be derived for the poor. I should not forget, of course, that Blanche was only a little girl.

“We must have one good dancer,” she said after Jack had gone. “One really professional, Mamma. The girls will do well enough at the drills and simple things, but we must have one to dance alone that can do fancy steps, and that can keep the audience amused between the acts if necessary. We mustn’t let them get uneasy, you know.” Miss Blanche spoke with a knowledge and precision that seemed mature for one of her years. “I might have told Jack to go to the Comique,” she added, “if he hadn’t made me forget it. He’s so provoking! I’ll tell him tonight. They’ll be sure to have someone that they can send us or tell us about.”

She did tell Jack when he came home, and Jack went dutifully to the manager of the Comique, who referred him to an address where he would find just what he wanted. It was quite late when he returned, but Blanche was busy with a lot of little attendants that were to be in her train when she had become a princess, and ran to meet him.

“Yes, I found you a dancer,” he said, “but, Puss, she’s a poor, pale little thing, and lives with a big, red-faced woman that I don’t believe treats her well.”

“She’ll let her come, won’t she?” said Blanche anxiously.

“Of course, she’ll let her come. She will make her come if necessary. I believe the little girl earns a living for both of them. It’s a shame, Blanche. She isn’t as old as you are, and I’ll bet on it. If the society knew of it they’d put a stop to it, and take her away from that old woman. She isn’t her mother, I know that.”

“Did the manager say she could dance?”

“Like a fairy.”

“Well, don’t you tell the society, as you call it, till after our performance.”

The young man pinched the little girl’s cheek and sighed. He had been so accommodating that she let the annoyance pass.

Little Miss Blanche need not have been anxious as to the size or enjoyment of her audience. The parlors of the great hotel were crowded, and the applause came thick and fast. All that wealth could do had been done to make the production a success, and the tiny people, with Blanche as the star, acquitted themselves like born fairies. The pale little dancer, Elise, carried the house by storm. Blanche herself was almost envious of the little girl until she heard the big woman, who came with Elise, and sat in her dressing-room and read a cheap novel during the performance, speak roughly to her. Then Blanche’s true goodness, that had been partly overwhelmed and lost beneath the lavish attentions of those who loved her, came to the surface.

“It’s a shame!” she thought. “Just as Jack said. The society ought to do something.” She was glad, though, that the society would do nothing until their entertainment and need of the little dancer were over.

There are other powers, however, that do not wait on the convenience even of one so peerless as little Miss Blanche.

Just at the end of the last act the dancer, Elise, was to appear at the back of the stage, high above the others on a floating cloud, and dance amid a shower of lights and flowers as the curtain fell. This feature had been planned by Blanche herself, and she waited for it anxiously. It came at last. The swell of music and voices  – the blaze of light – Blanche herself as the royal Princess, with her retinue, and the floating fairy in the distance behind. The audience broke into a mighty roar of applause. The curtain began to descend slowly, and Blanche, now in the height of her glory, felt a great wave of triumph sweep over her.

At that instant there came a cracking, tearing sound and a startled cry, followed by a heavy fall. The curtain dropped hastily and did not rise again and again, as had been planned. Few, if any, of the audience had noticed anything wrong, and the applause became almost a tumult. But Blanche Forrester gave no heed to it. She was bending over a limp little heap of crumpled tinsel and bruised life and giving orders in her mature, imperious manner. The hastily constructed mechanism had given way at the last moment. The little dancer had fallen and was insensible. The big, red-faced woman was making a pretence of grief, which was mingled with vulgar abuse of everybody, and to which nobody paid the least attention. Somebody asked the woman where the child was to be taken to. Blanche Forrester answered:

“She is to be placed in my carriage and taken to my home at once.”

The Princess had spoken and must be obeyed. It was a pathetic sight to see the group of tiny, glittering attendants escorting silently the little dancer, as she was borne to the Forrester carriage in the strong arms of Brother Jack, who, feeling that there was something wrong, had hurried behind the scenes.

Many weeks later, when Elise was at last allowed to sit up and the doctor had said that she would get well, but that she must not dance for a year, Brother Jack came into the room where she was sitting with Blanche.

“They tell me you are getting well,” he said cheerily.

The little dancer nodded and smiled.

“She will never be well enough to leave me,” said Blanche decidedly. “That is,” she added, “not until she marries somebody,” and then they all laughed.

Brother Jack pinched his little sister’s cheek smartly.

“You have found the glass slipper, all right, Puss,” he said, kissing her. “I don’t know just which one it is, but it is pure crystal and it fits you perfectly. I shouldn’t wonder if you had found a pair.”

—

LIKE PHARAOH’S HOSTS

Where the city of Topeka, Kansas, stands to day, there was a trading post forty years ago, and the country roundabout was but sparsely settled. The winter had been unusually long and hard, and many of the farmers found their stock of groceries and other provisions running low long before the roads became passable for teams. Trips to the post were made on foot and horseback, and, by a few who lived along the Kaw River and were fortunate enough to own them, on skates.

Among these were Robert Channing, a boy of sixteen, and a sister Eliza, a healthy, red-cheeked girl two years younger. The Channings had moved to Kansas from Western New York the summer before, and “Bob” and “’Liza” had brought their skates along as a matter of course. A little before Christmas they had made the trip together to the post, dragging a hand-sled between them, and returning with a few Christmas trifles the post afforded and such necessaries as were running low at that time. A severe storm set in the next day and continued for more than a week. Then came a week of intense cold, followed by rain and a general breaking up, which made the roads worse than ever before. The river, however, still remained frozen over and the ice was considered safe, though somewhat mushy in places along the edge. It was just at this time that the Channings found themselves entirely out of coffee and very low on bacon, with no other meat whatever. Bob and ’Liza were eager to make the fifteen mile trip again and immediately began cleaning and sharpening their skates for that purpose. But Mr. Channing shook his head.

“I don’t like to have you do it,” he said anxiously.

“Why, Father, the river’s safe. Just a little wet, that’s all,” replied Bob gaily.

“I think the river’s all right myself after the hard freeze we had. It wasn’t that I was thinking of.”

“What then! Not robbers, I hope?”

“No, not human robbers, but worse, perhaps. This hard winter has been felt by beasts as well as men. And beasts come to men when they’re hungry. I thought I heard a wolf howl this morning across the prairie. I’m not sure, but it makes me uneasy to have you go.”

“Oh, pshaw; I’m not afraid of a cowardly wolf!” said Bob rather grandly. “Are you, ’Liza?”

Eliza was not to be outdone. “No; of course not,” she assented. “They couldn’t catch us anyway, and you can take Father’s pistol.”

Mr. Channing went outside and looked out over the prairie, listening. There was no sound but the cawing of some hungry crows, and the cup of coffee which he had missed that morning weakened his resolve. Mrs. Channing, who was a hardy New England woman, did not encourage his misgivings. Half an hour later he saw his two fresh-cheeked children skate away with a swinging stride, the little hand-sled bobbing along behind.

It was a pleasant thaw morning, and though there were pools of water on the ice in places the skating was not bad. Once or twice the skaters thought they felt the frozen surface give beneath them, and concluded that perhaps after all there would not be many more days of safety. They reached the post, however, without accident, except that one of ’Liza’s skate-straps broke and had to be repaired, which caused some little delay. They ate lunch at the store, and after loading the sled started back about three o’clock.

They felt almost immediately that the warm day had told on the already softening ice. Every few strokes there was a cracking beneath their feet and an almost imperceptible swaying movement of the frozen mass.

“You had better skate on ahead, ’Liza,” said Bob at last. “There is too much weight with both of us and the sled. I can drag it all right, and I’ll let you take it awhile later.”

This arrangement was made with good results, and for several miles they progressed with little cause for alarm. Then suddenly there came something which made Bob’s heart jump. It was no movement or sound from the ice. From the bank above and not so far behind came a short bark, then a prolonged howl, followed by another and another. They were still four miles from home. The January sky had clouded thickly and it was growing dusk on the river. He had said that he was not afraid of wolves, but there was something in this dismal chorus and gathering night that made him bound forward and overtake his sister.

“The wolves!” he gasped. “A pack of them!”

The girl seized the rope without a word, and in spite of the cracking and swaying ice they leaned forward together at the top of their speed.

But they were not swift enough. They could tell by the voices that the wolves had descended to the river and realized that they were gaining. Bob drew his father’s revolver and fired two shots over his shoulder. This checked the howling for a brief moment and they believed the pursuers had hesitated. Perhaps in this way he could keep them back long enough. He had four more shots and they were still more than three miles from home. Suddenly ’Liza stumbled and gave a low cry. Her strap had broken again and her skate hung uselessly on her foot.

“Oh, Bob! we’re lost!” she cried, speaking now for the first time.

The boy whipped out his knife and cut the strings that held the bundles on the hand sled.

“Get on!” he commanded, as he thrust the packages aside.

The girl obeyed, and in another moment they were speeding away again, though less rapidly than before.

The girl on the sled looked back up the river, where she could see a dark mass in the dimming light.

“Give me the pistol, Bob!” she called.

He reached it back to her, and when the dark mass drew nearer she fired into it. There was a yelp, and a brief pause. Then the pack moved forward again, howling now and then in concert. When they reached the packages they paused again and seemed to be fighting. This gave the fugitives a little better start, and ’Liza felt encouraged. Then the dark mass came rushing on again and her heart sank. She had three more shots in the revolver, and when the band was a few yards behind she fired one of them and a little later the second. Just before she fired the third she felt the ice beneath the sled crack and give alarmingly. She realized that they were on a riffle, where the ice was always thinner than elsewhere, owing to the swiftness of the water, and she breathed easier as they passed beyond it. Then, for the wolves were close upon them, she fired the third shot, and the fierce howl that followed told that it had gone home. There was a chorus of yelps and snarls – they were fighting over the wounded animal. And then – the girl could scarcely believe her eyes, for the dark howling mass suddenly disappeared, and she saw the splash which told that the thin ice on the riffle had broken through. “Bob! Bob!” she called, “they’re drowning!”

“What! What did you say?” came the panting reply.

“They’re drowning, I tell you! We’re saved!”

The sled slackened and the boy tottered. He was at the point of exhaustion.

“Drowning!” he gasped.

It was true. The weight of the struggling mass had been too much for the weakened ice, and the swift water beneath had swept the hungry creatures to death. One managed to struggle out and disappeared over the bank.

“Oh, Bob! It’s like Pharaoh’s hosts!” cried ’Liza, hysterically. “We’re delivered from the Egyptians!”

They were, indeed. Bob listened a moment, then he said:

“Let’s go up on the other bank, and go back and see if we can find any of the things.” Eliza hesitated at first, but presently her courage returned. The wolves were gone, and when they passed the break in the ice there was no sign of anything but the swift water. A few hundred yards further back they found everything but the meat. That the wolves had devoured. They gathered up the bundles and returned to the sled. Then Bob hastily repaired the broken skate strap, and a half hour later they reached home in safety.

When Mr. Channing heard the story he was filled with remorse and thankfulness.

“It was my weakness,” he said, “to let you go, but, as Eliza says, God took care of you and delivered you as he did the children of Israel.”

Bob sat rubbing his arms and looking into the fire.

“It was a pretty close call for the children,” he said, thoughtfully.

—

A SCHOOL EXAMINATION

Bessie Meade and Bob Swinton lived side by side and nearly always started for school so near the same moment that Bob got to Bessie’s gate just in time to meet her coming out and take her books. This made some of the other scholars laugh and call Bob her beau, but as Bessie was very plump and pretty Bob was not ashamed to be called that, though it did plague both of them some at first. It is not pleasant even for grown-up people to be made fun of right out on the street that way, and Bob and Bessie were only about twelve years old, so when the other scholars would call out:

“Oh, there’s Bob and Bessie – they’re beaus!” Bob would walk right ahead without looking at them or at Bessie either, and Bessie would walk that way too, and neither would say a word.

But when they got inside the schoolroom Bob would put Bessie’s books down on her desk and Bessie would look up at him and grin shyly, and this always, for some reason, made Bob happy all the rest of the day. Then Bob would go to his own desk, which, being over as far as possible on the boys’ side, and Bessie over as far as possible on the girls’ side, made them really only a step apart. Sometimes, even during study hours, they would look shyly across at each other, and once or twice, perhaps, Bob had written on a slip of paper some little question that could just as well have waited for recess and been asked before the whole school. These slips had been passed across when the teacher was looking in another direction, and Bessie herself had pretended not to see them at first, but when Bob looked away she had clutched them eagerly and read them, and they were now stored in the little note-paper box at home that had a pink Cupid on the cover and held within all her very dearest treasures.

It seems strange after all this to add that Bob and Bessie were rivals, but such was the case. They were the most advanced pupils in their room, and it was a constant struggle between them which should be oftenest and longest at the head of their classes. Whatever either might be at other times they were fierce opponents the moment class was called, and each year as the term advanced the other scholars were divided into two parties, one of which believed Bob would carry off the honors of the examination, while the other stood firmly by Bessie. This year there was to be a prize for the scholar maintaining the highest average per cent, and as examination approached the spirit of rivalry became so strong that Bob and Bessie found it hard to forget it even after school hours. They did forget it, though, and on two different Saturdays in May they went out bicycling with some of the other scholars, and not a word of prizes or examinations was mentioned all day.

But the week before examination they were studying very hard. Bob had no time to pass slips of paper across to Bessie, and perhaps even had he done so she might really not have seen them, for every minute her little brown head was buried in her books, filling itself with rules and principles and hard answers. Bob was studying equally hard, and he had one bad habit; when very deeply interested he whispered the words of his lesson earnestly, and sometimes he whispered them so loud that Bessie sitting across the aisle could hear them. It bothered her, and she wished he wouldn’t do it. She had told him about it more than once, but Bob would forget. She was almost tempted to change her seat – but she didn’t.

On the morning of examination all books were put away. The questions to be answered were written on a large blackboard, where all could see, and a certain length of time was allowed for each branch of study before the questions were erased and another set written in their place. Bessie had made Bob promise that he would think to himself, and he was keeping his promise very well. He did not need to think aloud, in fact, for most of the questions he could answer without really thinking at all, and wrote out his replies in a round boyish hand on the sheet of paper before him. Bessie was not quite so quick, but she was just as accurate and felt as she put paper after paper aside that 100 per cent would be marked on each. She had but one fear. She had hard work to remember names and dates and she dreaded the examination in history.

She knew that Bob was perfect in history, but then he was not so good in spelling and would probably miss at least one word, which would count off two and one half per cent, as there were forty words. She could not afford to miss any of the history questions, as there were only twenty of them, and they counted five per cent each. History came last and spelling just before it. The words to be spelled were given out orally, and Bessie once noticed Bob scratching his head and heard him talking to himself very earnestly. She caught enough to make her almost sure he had misspelled the word. If she could only get safely through history now she believed she was certain to win the prize. “Poor Bob!” she thought, but then the prize was a beautiful set of books, and she did want them so badly.

She watched anxiously while the history questions were being put on the board. Her heart grew lighter as each was written and she felt that she could answer it correctly. She had studied so hard – she surely would be able to answer them all. She began writing very fast. Bob was writing, too. History was easy for him, and he was not afraid now. But the terrible spelling exercise had told upon his nerves and caused him to forget his promise about thinking aloud. He was reading the history questions in a loud whisper and answering them in the same way. Bessie was so interested that she did not hear him at first, and it is possible that she would not have heard him at all only the last question on the board was one that caused her to hesitate. It was a general’s name, and she knew it perfectly, but for the instant it had slipped her mind. It would surely come to her in a moment.

It would come to her presently – it was coming now – it began with S – S – S – and just then, right across the aisle she heard, without listening, Bob Swinton repeat, in a loud whisper, “Who led the Americans at the Battle of Bennington?” and then, without a moment’s hesitation, just when she herself would have thought of it in another second, he added, “General Stark.”

Why, yes, of course, she knew it was General Stark, and he had taken the words right out of her mouth. She wrote the name with a little flourish, and then, before she had time to think it over, the papers were taken up, and the examination was ended.

But when she pondered it over that night she tossed about in her bed and could not sleep. Perhaps she would not have thought of the name after all. Bob had no right to study aloud that way, though, and she believed the name was on her tongue when he spoke it. Sometimes she was sure of it, and then the next minute she did not believe she would have thought of it in time if Bob had kept still.

The next morning Bob, as usual, met her at the gate. It was the last day of school and the examination reports would be made at once. Bob, who was glad that school was out, was inclined to be merry, but Bessie hardly replied. The boy believed she was worrying about the prize, and made up his mind that if he got it he would give it to her any way.

When school was called the scholars hastened to their seats, and became instantly silent and all attention. The schoolmaster arose.

“I have passed on the examination papers,” he said, “and I find that the prize goes to Miss Bessie Meade, who maintained 100 per cent throughout. Next to her is Master Robert Swinton, who also maintained 100 throughout, except in spelling. In this study his per cent is ninety-seven and a half, he having missed one word.”

As the master paused there was a loud cheering and a clapping of hands. When that ended he took from his desk a neat box, and, looking at Bessie, said:

“This is the prize offered – a set of Longfellow’s works. You have earned them fairly, Bessie; come forward and claim them.”

The little girl rose slowly and took one step forward. Then she paused and leaned on her desk. Bob and others who were watching her saw that she was as pale as death. The teacher saw it, too, and thought it was because of the excitement.

“Come forward, Bessie,” he repeated; “the books are yours.”

The little girl gasped, as if something were sticking in her throat.

“No,” she said, “the books are not mine. I did not know the answer to the last history question. I thought I knew it and that I was just going to say it when I heard Bob Swinton say it, and I don’t know now whether – whether I – could – could have said it or not. I don’t want  – I can’t take the prize.”

She dropped back into her seat and buried her face in her arms, sobbing. Poor Bob, across the aisle, wondered why people could not die or fall through the earth when they were so miserable as he was.

“I won’t have it – I don’t want the prize anyway,” he began to say hotly, when the master interrupted him. The master’s voice was husky, and he paused now and then between the words.

“By Bessie’s own statement,” he said, after a moment’s reflection, “the prize goes to Robert instead of to herself. I know that Robert would willingly surrender it to her again, and I am sure that in future he will try very hard to study his lessons silently. He has therefore earned a double benefit. As for Bessie, her noble heroism must be its own great reward.”

But Bessie earned another reward, for Bob simply made her take the books, and then, a month later, there came to her one day by express a beautiful gold and jewelled badge. It came from a great paper in the city, whose editor, through her teacher, had learned of her noble deed. Upon it was engraved her full name and underneath were the words:

“A tribute to true heroism.”

—

AN AFTERNOON ENCHANTMENT

Maid Esther lived in a beautiful house on a beautiful street in a great city. She had an older brother who loved her, and a younger sister whom she loved. She had a father and mother who indulged their children, and she wore beautiful clothes and ate bonbons every day. In fact she had everything she wished for, except one, and that one, because she could not have it, became more precious in her eyes than any of the beautiful things she already possessed. She knew that in time she would have this wish granted also, but she could not wait. No one could grant it now, and no money could buy what she desired. Time alone could make her happy, for her longing – the one desire of her heart – was to be grown and a lady.

She used to imagine how beautiful she would look in rich dresses that swept the floor in a long train, and how grand it would be to order the carriage whenever she wished, and drive down the beautiful street with the coachman and footman on the seat above, and people turning to gaze at her as she passed. She dreamed of attending splendid balls and of having gentlemen crowding about her for dances, ready to fight a duel for a flower. She had pictured in her mind exactly how she would look. She had also pictured how brother Tom would stand off and admire her, and how sister Tessie would look up at her as a queen.

And so she thought and pictured and dreamed. And then she sighed and thought of the long years of waiting, and even when brother Torn took her out in his sailboat and let her steer, she could not altogether forget the longing in her heart. It was a sweet, warm day in spring, and the water was blue and calm. All the world was fresh and wonderful in its new dress of olive green, but Maid Esther saw nothing but the vision of her own loveliness as it would be at the end of the long years to come. By and by when they had returned home she threw herself into a large arm-chair, and sitting alone, looked out of the window, where there was a blooming shrub, and some birds singing, which she scarcely heard.

But after a while one of the birds hopped down on the window-sill and began a different song from any she had ever known. She listened in spite of herself while it sang and sang. She forgot everything else, even her one great desire, listening to the song. At last she remembered Tom and Tessie, and thought she would slip softly out and tell them of the wonderful bird. But as she rose the songster flew away, and then all at once she felt that in some way she was changed. Her eyes were on a level several inches higher than they had ever been before, and when she looked down she saw that her dress touched the floor. Then she knew that the strange singing bird had been a fairy that had sung away the years. The desire of her heart was granted.

There was no mirror in the room and she hastened toward her own apartment. As she stepped outside a tall gentleman with a beard stopped her. She was about to become indignant, and then she saw it was Brother Tom, only she hardly knew him with a beard, and he had grown so much older in other ways.

“You will have to hurry,” he said. “We dine at the Howlands’, you know, at seven, and there is nothing so inexcusable as to be late at a dinner party.”

“Oh, Tom,” she found herself saying, “you do provoke me so. It’s always hurry, hurry. Dress for this and dress for that! I do hope Tessie will have to go less when she is grown.”

“You forget. Tessie is going with us and went to dress long ago. Here she is now.”

Maid Esther looked up and stared. Before her was a slender girl of perhaps nineteen, in evening dress and as beautiful as a princess.

“Tessie!” was all she could say.

“Yes, I’m all ready, and you’ll have to hurry, sister. Nanette is waiting to dress you, and your new gown came home an hour ago. It’s a perfect dream.”

Ah, the new gown! This, at least, was worth while.

“Yes, yes, Tessie,” she said, “I’m going. You and Tom will be the death of me yet with your terrifying promptness. I never seem to have time for anything except to get ready to be dragged out somewhere.”

“That’s because you spend so much time dreaming about things you can’t have. I remember when you were perfectly wild to be a woman with dresses and places to go. What is it this time, sis? A coronet?”

She was hurrying away when she thought of something and turned.

“Have Papa and Mamma come home yet?” she asked.

Tessie and Tom looked at each other. Then the brother came up to her gently.

“You have been asleep, Esther, and dreaming,” he said softly. “Father is home, but Mother, you know, died more than a year ago.” Then she remembered, but she could not speak for the sudden return of sorrow. She had loved her mother dearly, and as she slipped up to her room the tears streamed from her eyes. She passed her father in the hall. His hair had whitened and his face was careworn. He stooped and kissed her.

“Don’t cry,” he said. “I want you to look beautiful tonight. It is late, too.”

Everybody the same. Was there no time even for mourning? Must it be forever dress and hurry and go? She began to hate the new gown upstairs, and when she reached the dainty boudoir where Nanette was waiting, she wished only to fling herself upon a couch and weep.

Then she remembered that she had not seen herself, as yet, since she became a woman. She hurried to the mirror and looked in. She gave a little cry of disappointment. She was not the rare queen that she had dreamed of being. Not so tall nor so beautiful. Her face was beginning to look careworn too and discontented, she thought, even at twenty-one.

“They are killing me,” she cried. “This life of continual dress and go is making me old and haggard before my time. Oh, if I were only a girl again!” Then she remembered how she had sat in the big chair and listened to the bird that had sung the years away and granted the wish of her heart.

“Oh, if the bird would only sing them back!” she cried – “if it would only sing them back!”

Then she suddenly forgot that Nanette was waiting to dress her and flew down to the room where she had sat in the big chair and listened to the bird. And when she got there it was just sunset and once more the bird was singing on the sill. Once more she forgot all else in the world listening to its song, until, at last, the bright sunlight slipped from the window pane and the bird fled with it. Just then she heard Brother Tom’s voice calling.

“Come to dinner, Esther,” he cried gaily. “Tessie and I are waiting on you.” There was something in his voice that made her spring to her feet and rush to him. Then she gave a cry of joy, for he was not the bearded Tom, but the old Tom who had taken her sailing, and Tessie  – once more her little sister. For with the renewed singing of the wonderful bird the years had rolled backward and her second wish had been granted even as the first.

“Oh, Tom,” she cried, “I am so glad we are young – so glad! Where are Father and Mother?”

“They are waiting on us in the dining-room,” answered Torn. “But I thought you wanted to be grown up, sis?”

“I did, Tom, but I’ve changed my mind. I’m perfectly happy as I am.”

And as Maid Esther entered the brilliant dining-room there was just the least glisten of tears in her bright eyes.

—

IN CAMPING DAYS

The high school history class had gone into camp for a week before school began. There were eight of them in all – three girls and four boys, besides Miss Lovell, their teacher and chaperon – and they had two large tents pitched on the banks of the Delaware, far up toward the head waters, where the woods were as wild and dense as when George Washington was said to have surveyed the country, more than a hundred years ago.

They were a happy lot, ranging in ages from sixteen to eighteen, and this was the end of their vacation. They were enjoying it to the full, therefore, and the woods from early morning until far into the night echoed with their shouts and laughter. They had all brought their wheels and rode over every morning for milk and butter to the nearest farmhouse, which lay four miles distant on the only road where wheels could be used with safety. After this they fished, and boated in their two portable canvas canoes, and hunted, too, for there was considerable small game, and the boys had each brought guns which the girls were learning to use.

One of the girls, Hester Halsey, became really skilful in handling the handsome rifle which Clarence Cofield had brought along, and declared more than once that she was going out someday alone and show them what she could bring in. The others chaffed her a great deal, and told her that if she saw a squirrel or a pheasant, she would be too tender-hearted to shoot at it.

“Perhaps I would,” she admitted. “It always seems to me a pity to kill them, but I will go for big game. You know the hired man up at Bink’s said yesterday that there were still ‘b’ars’ in these woods, and ‘painters,’ as he called them. Maybe I’ll meet a ‘b’ar’ or a ‘painter.’”

“And if you did you’d come in ahead of him.” said little Johnnie Martin, while all joined in the laugh that followed.

“Maybe not,” said Lucille Barnes. “You remember the young lady

who smiled as she rode on a tiger,

but when the tiger came back he was wearing the smile, and the young lady – well, you all know the sad story.”

“I hope you won’t leave my gun behind you,” laughed Clarence Cofield. “Forget the Maine for a minute, if you meet a ‘b’ar’ or ‘painter,’ and remember the gun.”

It was after supper, and they were lying about the big campfire in front of the two tents. The wooded hills about them were black with night, and some of the girls, looking behind them, shivered.

“I don’t believe there are any big animals in these woods now,” said slender Nettie Foster, timidly. “That fellow was just trying to frighten us.”

“Neither big animals nor big fish,” said Clarence Cofield. “We haven’t caught a fish since we came three days ago that is more than ten inches long by actual measurement. I’m not going over to Bink’s tomorrow morning. I’m going to get up before daylight and try to catch some of those big bass I’ve heard about.”

“And I,” said Hester Halsey, “am going to get up early, too, and take Clarence’s rifle and bring in some game for breakfast. I won’t go before daylight, but I’ll start in time to be back for breakfast, and the rest of you can ride over to Bink’s for the milk.”

“Hi! hi!” said Bob Williams, “A nice, juicy bear steak will taste good. I speak for first choice!”

“I speak for the skin,” said Less Brown.

“The skin!” exclaimed Lucille Barnes.

“She’ll keep that herself, as a trophy of the chase.”

“Unless she gives it to Clarence,” put in Ned Vaughn.

“It would be great for Clarence to have in his room when he goes to college.”

At this there was a great laugh all around, and Hester blushed furiously.

“Never mind what becomes of it,” she said, poking at the fire to hide her confusion. “Wait and see.”

“Yes! First catch your bear,” piped up little Johnnie Martin, and then, as it was getting late, the young ladies and gentlemen retired to their respective tents, and presently the sounds of mirth that echoed back and forth from the lighted canvas died gradually away, the lights went out and the tired and happy party slept the sweet sleep of health and youth.

When the boys’ tent awoke next morning they found that Clarence, true to his word, had taken his bass rod and gone.

“Clarence’ll get big bass if anybody can,” said Ned Vaughn, looking out. “Hello! There goes Hester with the gun. Remember the gun, Hester, and bring back the skin for Clarence!” he shouted after her.

Other heads came out from both tents, and laughter and teasing followed her, all of which she ignored with calm dignity and presently disappeared amid the undergrowth of the forest.

“Don’t go far, don’t shoot yourself and don’t get lost,” was the last call of little Johnnie Martins as she vanished.

“That’s sensible, at any rate,” thought Hester. “I’ll keep near the river bank, so I’ll be certain to get back.” Then, with her gun thrown carelessly across her shoulder, as Clarence carried it, she stepped lightly through the fresh, dewy woods, looking in her short skirt and tall, thick cycle boots like a sweet, modern Diana of sixteen.

Clarence meanwhile had already met with some sport. He had waded down stream in the early morning until he reached a swift riffle, where it seemed to him that bass might be found. At his first cast he had felt a strong tug and his rod bent furiously. Then the tension slackened, and he uttered an exclamation of disgust.

“Lost him!” he said aloud. “But I’ll get him yet. He’s a big one!”

He cast again and again, but perhaps the hook had pricked the big fellow, for he did not take hold. There was no lack of sport, however, and Clarence soon had a number of handsome fish swinging from the stout string at his waist. He looked at them admiringly.

“These are better than we’ve been catching,” he muttered, “but I want that big fellow. I’ll bet he was a five-pounder.”

He waded on lower down the riffle, casting as he went. It was a long, rapid stretch of water and seemed full of good fish. Now and then he could see little droves of bass running ahead of him as he went forward. At the lower end the water was deeper and formed a sort of whirlpool. The boy’s eye glistened.

“The place of all places for a big bass,” he whispered to himself, “and the very time, too.”

The sun was just rising and sparkling through the tree tops on the dancing water. He made a long, careful cast right into the center of the whirling water, and then suddenly caught his breath, for there came a tug that nearly jerked the rod from his grasp. He saw the dark silk line cutting the water from right to left; then there was a fierce swish, and an instant later the hooked monster shot straight into the air, shaking himself fiercely in an effort to loosen the fatal barb. The boy’s heart sank.

“Great whales!” he exclaimed, “I’ll never land a fish like that with this line. I’ve only got twenty-five yards and it’s a year old. I’ll lose him sure.”

The fish was going straight down stream and Clarence was letting out line and following as fast as he could walk through the swift water and slippery stones. All at once he found himself in water to his shoulders, and was obliged to hold his reel above his head to handle it.

“This was fishing with a vengeance,” he thought. “I’ll be swimming next,” and in reality this prophecy came true presently, for the water deepened to his chin and a moment later his feet failed to touch bottom.

He kept himself afloat with one hand and held on to the rod with the other, the big fish dragging him.

“If he turns back I’ll never be able to reel in, and I’ll lose him!” he groaned. “I’d give twenty dollars to land that fish!”

Just then the fish did turn and the boy made a frantic endeavor to keep afloat with his feet, reeling meanwhile with his hands. Finding he could not do this, he let the reel go and followed the line to the tip of the pole, pulling it back hand over hand. In this way he could keep up a motion that answered for swimming and hold his head above water. But in his haste the line in some manner became wound about one of his wrists, and when all at once the fish turned from him he felt the cord cut into his flesh and found himself as fast at his end of the line as the big bass was at the other.

“Well, I’ve heard fish stories,” he muttered, “but I never heard of the fish catching the fisherman before. This one will do it sure, if the line holds, and I guess it will by the way it feels.”

They were out in a wide stretch of deep water now and Clarence’s captor was headed for the shore, where there were some broad flat rocks, that sloped to the water’s edge.

“He’s picking out a good place to land me!” thought the boy. “He can haul me out on that big rock in great style after he gets me well tired out.”

The thought of the fish landing him made him smile grimly in spite of the discomfort of his wrist and the danger of his position, for he was becoming worn and breathless with the struggle and from swimming in his clothes. But his smile died away as quickly as it came, for as the dark rocks drew nearer, he saw in the shadow of an overhanging bough, watching him eagerly and swinging its tail silently from side to side, a great gray panther.

The boy felt himself grow suddenly colder than even the water about him, and he made an involuntary movement in the opposite direction. But the last year’s line held, and fish and current were both carrying him toward the big rocks. In fact, he saw now that the current swept around under the rocks that lay like a flat table on the surface of the stream. He knew at once that the big fish was seeking this place as a retreat and that he would be thrown directly at the waiting panther’s feet. He had no means of defense and his strength was already exhausted. He saw the gray beast, almost the color of the rocks, crouch like a huge cat, waiting. The current and tugging line were dragging him forward now so swiftly that in an instant more he would be flung against the rocky shelf, and then –

He closed his eyes and tried to utter a word of prayer for strength. But almost instantly he opened them again for, right in his face, it seemed, there came the sharp crack of a rifle, followed by a snarling cry. He was against the rock, and just in front of him, whirling around and around, so close that its long gray tail struck him full in the face, was the dying panther.

“Oh, Clarence!” cried an eager voice, “don’t let him get away! Don’t let him get into the river!”

Clinging to the rock Clarence turned. Coming hastily out of the bushes, her face flushed with excitement and gun in hand, was Hester Halsey. He stared at her an instant and then smiled feebly.

“No, Hester,” he said, “he won’t get in. He’s done for, and so am I and the fish. Come, please, and get us out.”

The panther gave a final quiver and lay still. The blood streamed from behind his left foreleg. Hester ran forward and, seizing Clarence’s hand, pulled with all her might as he struggled out of the water. He gained the flat shelf, and sank down for a moment utterly exhausted. Then he said meekly: “There’s a fish, Hester, on one end of that line and a pole on the other. I’m about half way between ’em.” The girl went to the edge of the rock, and drawing in one strand of the line presently brought up the rod uninjured. Then she ran back and unwound the silk from Clarence’s wrist.

“Now,” she said, “you’re all straight. Take the rod, and if your fish hasn’t got away you can land him here in good style.”

Clarence was regaining his strength like magic. He seized the rod eagerly. Then he hesitated.

“I ought to let you do it, Hester,” he said meekly. “You’ve earned it.”

“No, no. Quick, now, he may get away.”

A turn of the reel showed the boy that the big bass had not escaped or fouled the line among the rocks below. He reeled steadily, and the old monster, tired and drowned out, was soon struggling feebly at the edge of the rock. Clarence had no landing-net and he was afraid to lift out the fish with his weakened line. Hester, comprehending this instantly, knelt down and, seizing the snell close to the big fellow’s mouth, landed him with a steady swing safely on the rock, where he lay flopping sluggishly by the dead panther. He had swallowed the hook so far that there had been no chance of his escape except by breaking the line. The boy had never seen so large a bass in his life.

“It weighs seven pounds if it weighs an ounce,” he said in an awestruck voice. “And that panther! How in the world did you ever do it, Hester?”

“Oh, easy enough. I wasn’t more than twenty feet away when I saw him. He was looking at you so hard that he didn’t hear me, I suppose. I remembered the gun, you see, and what you said once about shooting behind the foreleg. I couldn’t miss at that distance.”

“Lucky for me you didn’t,” said Clarence. “I thought I was a goner that time, sure enough. What do you suppose they’ll say in camp?”

“Let’s go and see.”

Folding his rod and stringing the big fish with those which were still hanging at his waist, the boy seized one of the dead panther’s forefeet and the girl the other, and dragging him between them over the leaves and through the thick bushes they marched triumphantly toward the camp, more than a mile away. When they drew near they heard their companions calling them to breakfast.

“Let’s go in as if it were just a matter of course,” said Hester. “Don’t say a word, and see what they will say first.”

So they marched into camp, dragging the dead panther between them and with the great fish dangling at Clarence’s waist. When they stepped out of the woods in plain sight there was at first a moment of profound silence, followed by a wild shout and a general rush for them. Then came a hundred questions all at once, which at first remained unanswered. At last Clarence said:

“No, we didn’t kill the b’ar – the painter, I mean. Hester killed it. And Hester caught the fish, and me and the pole, and everything else.”

Hester protested.

“Oh, no, Clarence, I didn’t either! You caught the fish yourself.”

But Clarence insisted that Hester had done everything he said, and then he went on and told just how she did it, with the boys asking questions every other sentence and the girls crying, “Oh, Hester, how could you? Weren’t you frightened to death?”

“Of course she wasn’t,” teased Ned Vaughn, “when it was to save Clarence. And I’ll bet Clarence gets the panther’s skin, too.”

At this suggestion the girls were indignant, while Hester only blushed.

“I told you you’d come in ahead of the painter!” piped little Johnnie Martin.

Then they had breakfast, while the adventure had to be all told over and over again. After breakfast the skin of the panther and that of the big bass were both duly and carefully taken care of. Both trophies have gone to a taxidermist now for mounting, and it is whispered among the High School history class that the big bass will decorate the wall of Hester’s room and that the panther will go with Clarence to college.

—

THE ISLAND OF FANCY

This is not a fairy story – at least I do not think it is, though Nellie Manly declares positively that it can be nothing else, and even her brother Jack is more than half convinced of it.

It is a summer story, and it all happened on one very hot day in July, just two days after a big storm at sea, which, instead of making the air on shore cooler, as it should have done, seemed to make it more fiercely torrid than ever. The sun blazed down on the slate roof of the cottage where Jack and Nellie Manly, with their parents, were spending the summer, and even under the trees on the front lawn there seemed to be little comfort. The blue water of the Atlantic that rippled in the sunlight not more than a quarter of a mile distant seemed the only refreshing feature of the scene. A peculiar haze lay upon the water out toward the horizon, and an occasional sail drifted into it like a dim phantom and disappeared.

“I’ll tell you, Nell,” said Jack, rising lazily a last; “we’ll take a sail. There’s sure to be a breath on the water, and those boats out there seem to be moving pretty well. We’ll sail out into the dim and purple dreamland on the far horizon’s rim.”

“Oh, Jack, that sounds like poetry, only you should have made ‘dim’ rhyme with ‘rim’ some way. Can’t you do it yet?”

“Why, yes,” said Jack; “that’s easy. I’ll do it this way:

“We will drift away to dreamland

Through the purple mists and dim,

To the sunlit Isle of Fancy

On the far horizon’s rim.”

Nellie regarded her brother with silent admiration. He was nearly eighteen, and had not long before written a poem which a paper in the city had printed. He was a good sailor, too, and Nellie, who was sixteen and had never dared to show him any of the things which she had tried to write, was willing to follow Jack to the “Isle of Fancy,” or to any other far country toward which he chose to trim his sail.

They kept their boat in a narrow inlet not far away, and in a very little time they were in reality drifting out toward the “purple mists and dim,” wherein a fair undiscovered shore might easily lie hid. There was breeze enough on the water to keep them going pretty well, though now and then the sail flapped about the mast while they lay becalmed. The air from the cool water was pleasant, and, shaded by a big umbrella, they did not suffer from the rays of the beating sun. By and by, Jack said they were entering the magic haze, and, turning to look back, they found that this was true, for it seemed to be closing in behind them and shutting out the land.

“How romantic this is,” said Nellie. “Your lines fit it exactly, Jack. We can find our way out of it again when we want to, can’t we?”

“Why, yes, we could, I suppose, with our compass; but it would be nicer, I think, to sail on these quiet waters forever. I am sure we should reach the fair Island of Fancy at last and dream there like the lotus-eaters in the light of eternal afternoon.”

Nellie listened drowsily as she looked out to sea with half-closed eyes. But by and by she opened them very wide and sat up straight.

“Oh,” she cried, “there it is, now!”

“What? There is what, now?” asked Jack, who had been more than half asleep.

“Why, the Island of Fancy, Jack; look there, just ahead!”

Her brother looked a moment and then laughed a little.

“That’s a sure enough island of fancy, Nell; it’s a little cloud lying right on the water. We’ll sail straight into it.”

But as they drew close Jack looked puzzled.

“It is an island, Nell, as sure as the world,” he said, presently. “A little circular sand island. I don’t understand it at all. I’ve sailed all about here for the last three years, and I never ran upon it before. I knew the water was pretty shallow, of course, but I didn’t know that land came to the surface anywhere, even in low tide.”

They were very close to the tiny island now, and Jack ran their little craft on the sloping beach. Then they disembarked, and, dropping their anchor, strolled about wonderingly.

The spot of sand was almost oval in form, and contained perhaps an acre. It was only a foot or more above the sea at the highest point. Curious shells were scattered about, such as neither of the voyagers had ever seen before.

“It is really the Isle of Fancy, Nell, and these shells are the poems scattered along its shores,” said Jack, presently. Then, suddenly, with an air that seemed to Nell very grand and serious, he lifted his arm dramatically, exclaiming: “By the divine right of discovery I now take possession of the ‘Island of Fancy,’ and all poems scattered along its shores are mine. I will gather them all, and the ear of the world shall hearken to their eternal music.”

“Oh, Jack, mayn’t I have a few of them? I’d so love to write, too, if I could, and I have, just once or twice – that is – I—” Nellie blushed and hesitated on the brink of confession. Jack, carried away with his own rhapsody, did not fully comprehend.

“All my gold will I give to thee,” he continued, solemnly, “but these murmuring sea voices, that whisper their siren songs, ask me not for them. For these are mine, all mine, and the world shall beg for them and march grandly to their harmonies.”

“That is a bold claim,” said a quiet voice just behind them. “It is only a youth in his teens that would make such a boast as that.”

The boy wheeled and the girl gave a little scream. Near them on the sand stood a remarkable figure. It was a man much bowed with time, but with a face that was filled with a strange fire of youth and intelligence. His white hair hung down on his shoulders. His dress was a mingling of sailor’s and landsman’s garb. Beyond him on the other shore of the little island was a queer sailing craft, in which he had evidently but just arrived.

“I – I beg your pardon, sir,” said Jack, recovering himself. “I did not know that anyone was near.”

“On the Island of Fancy the most unexpected guest may arrive,” said the old man. “They offer themselves at our doors. We may receive them or we may turn them away.”

There was something about the quiet voice and manner of the old man that was strangely winning. The brother and sister drew nearer.

“Tell me,” said Jack, “where did this island come from? I have never found it before, and I have sailed a great deal in these waters.”

“Ah!” said the old man, “who may say where we shall find the shores of Fancy? Sometimes they are very near to us. Sometimes we sail many days and seek for them vainly. Let us only rest on that fair beach when and wherever we may find it, gathering of its treasures without question and without greed.”

The three seated themselves on the shore and looked out into the purple haze that shut them in.

“I don’t think I really meant what you heard me say just now,” said Jack, reddening a little. “It was more than half mockery, and I did not think anyone was listening but Nell, here.”

“Mockery is not for the Isle of Fancy. That land may be approached only in reverence and humility. We do not conquer it with clever dash and bravado, but with fasting and prayer. There are many who appear to the world as princes of that island who have never even landed on its shores. Because one may turn a pretty phrase and another string rhymes easily, it does not follow that they have conquered. They are but pretenders to the throne.”

The brother and sister listened in silence as the strange old man talked on.

“It is a marvelous country,” he continued. “Sometimes a pebble picked carelessly from its strand may grow and develop, under skilful touch, until it has become a beautiful diamond. Sometimes the jewel that seems so rare when gathered dwindles in our hands until it is worthless and of interest to no one.”

To the young listeners the old man’s words seemed rare wisdom. They forgot time and space, and when at last the rising tide swept up to their feet they did not realize at first where they were. Then all at once Jack gave a start.

“Our boat!” he cried. “It is gone!”

They hastened to where their little craft had been anchored, and looked in every direction. There was no sign of her. The rising tide had lifted the anchor and borne her away into the haze. The breeze was freshening, too, and there was a feeling of storm in the air.

“There have been many castaways on the Island of Fancy,” said the old man gently, “and fortunate are they who have the good boat Common Sense to bear them ashore. Come.”

They followed him to his curious craft on the other side of the bar, and, sure enough, the words “Common Sense” were painted on her side. Her anchor was a large stone, which the old man had thoughtfully dropped high up on the sand. Even so, the waves had almost reached it, and the entire island would soon be covered by the rising tide.

The haze had changed to a mist and it was beginning to be squally when the strange, rudely built Common Sense, with her burden of three, set out for shore. She ran low in the water and the spray dashed constantly in their faces.

“The return from the Island of Fancy is not always a pleasant voyage,” said the old man, as a dash of water wet them to the skin. Then they could not talk any more, for the increasing gale and flying spray blinded them.

They swept into the inlet at last in a driving rain. Jack leaped ashore and dragged Nellie after him. She slipped and fell. The boy helped her, half laughing, to her feet. Then he turned, intending to invite their rescuer to their home. He looked through the blinding rain and fog upon the tossing waters of the inlet, straining his eyes in every direction, but the old man and the strange craft Common Sense had disappeared.

The next morning was cool and fair. Bright and early jack was out on the shore. The first thing that met his gaze, riding gaily at anchor in the inlet, was his own sailboat. He could hardly believe his eyes at first. Then he rushed into the house to tell Nellie, who had already just one opinion about the whole matter. But when their father came down and had heard the story from beginning to end, he tried to explain it all reasonably, as he said.

He said that the little sand island with its peculiar shells had been thrown up from the bottom of the sea by the force of the recent great storm and tide. That their rescuer must have been an old hermit he had once heard of who lived somewhere far down the shore. That when Nellie had fallen down, and while Jack had been helping her up, the old fellow had run his boat for shelter behind the big warehouse that was built out on the inlet only a few yards away. That Jack’s boat had been carried in by the tide, which always swept strongly into the inlet.

But all of this did not satisfy Nellie, and, as I said in the beginning, even Jack is only half persuaded. Nellie vows that the old man was a fairy or a magician, she does not know which, but that, in any case, it was all magic from beginning to end. She is more than ever convinced of it now, for she and Jack have sailed and sailed in every direction, and they have never again found the little shell-strewn Island of Fancy.

—

UP THE LONG HILL

It was on the night of June 30, and all the afternoon the armies encamped about Santiago had been getting into position for the next day’s battle. Now at midnight matters were still in confusion, and while thousands of the worn-out men had dropped down for a few hours’ sleep and forgetfulness, those in command gave no thought to rest. The soldiers, who had faith in their officers, could shut their eyes in the belief that whatever came in the morning they were prepared for it, but the officers, who knew how poor and few were the preparations, how slight their knowledge of the country they were to fight over and how difficult it was to get messages now to each other in different parts of the field, only sat wakeful, thinking and planning, or pacing up and down in the misty moonlight muttering.

Near El Poso Hill, where General Sumner’s army was encamped, a commanding officer was striding back and forth in the dark shadow of overhanging trees. Now and then he would pause and pull at his mustache so fiercely that it seemed as if he must tear it out by the roots. Then he would walk again while he clinched his hands and his flesh prickled with impatience. Presently he saw a slight figure in the moonlight a few steps away. The officer stopped in his tracks and looked at the soldier, who did not see him in the shadow. Then he called softly:

“Come here, Bob!”

The soldier started slightly, then approached and saluted.

“I was looking for you, Colonel,” he said in a half whisper.

“What did you want, Bob?”

“Nothing, Colonel – that is – I didn’t know but you might want something.”

The officer laid his hand familiarly on the young soldier’s arm.

“You’re a good fellow, Bob; the only man in the regiment who thought of that, and I do want something very badly, but I’m afraid you cannot give it to me.”

The boy – for he was no more – straightened up and said, rather proudly:

“If it’s something to be done, and any man in the regiment can do it, I can.”

“I believe that. You are quick and brave and young. By the way, how old are you, Bob?”

The boy hesitated.

“I – I enlisted as eighteen,” he answered slowly.

“But that was a mistake?”

“Well, I’m in my eighteenth year – I’ll be eighteen in September.”

The Colonel laughed softly.

“It’s all right, Bob. You’re as good as many a man twice your age. You’ve got people, haven’t you?”

“Only a sister, and she’s married. What was it you wanted, Colonel?”

“I’ll tell you, Bob. Over to the right of here General Chaffee is camped. I don’t know how far from us, but perhaps three or four miles. I don’t know how the trail is between, but there’s a long hill through a thick woods and it’s probably infested with the enemy – scouting parties and the like. In the hurry and confusion of starting yesterday I failed to say some things to General Chaffee that he ought to know – some things that may save many lives. What I want is somebody to take a message to him tonight. Frankly, I do not believe anybody can get over the trail alive.”

The Colonel spoke to the boy gently and as an equal. Bob felt this and his blood quickened with pride.

“I can do it if anybody can,” he said warmly. “I will try it.”

The Colonel looked at him a moment in silence.

“You will have to travel fast,” he said, “and a horse makes a lot of noise. You are certain to be fired on.”

“I know it, and I expect to be. If I just had a wheel [bicycle], now—”

“That’s so! You might make it on a wheel. And we’ve got one in camp, too. Brown, the newspaper man, has it. Come to my tent, Bob; there’ll be a long hill to climb, but you can try it, and God bless you!”

It was less than twenty minutes later that a slender figure crept out of the camp, pushing a wheel. As he passed the pickets they regarded him with sleepy surprise and curiosity. With one whom he knew, Bob exchanged a word or two, and left a brief message to be delivered in case – in case he did not deliver the Colonel’s message to General Chaffee. A few yards further on he came out into the narrow trail, and mounting silently glided down the hillside, steering carefully, very carefully, for the path was mottled with light and shadow, and an accident to the wheel would mean failure.

It was a gradual descent, and the going was fairly good. Now and then a stick cracked under him, but there was no other sound. When at last he reached the bottom he found a little stream and a rough foot bridge, across which he pushed his wheel, resting and listening a moment on the other side before starting up the long untried hill beyond. The foliage seemed heavier ahead, and the way was almost entirely in darkness, with the moonlight only in the tree tops. He mounted and pedalled steadily into the blackness, increasing his speed as he realized that the trail seemed to improve.

Bob was an excellent rider. He had made more than one century in his time, and had a track record at school. The wheel was a good one – suitable for hard going.

“If I don’t get a puncture I ought to be there inside of an hour,” he thought, “even going up hill. The Colonel said three or four miles, though, of course, that is a good deal guess work. I don’t believe there are any Spaniards out tonight. They’re all in their trenches, waiting for tomorrow.”

Just here the hill became steeper and Bob devoted all his energies to pushing himself forward. As he did so his fore wheel struck a round stone and started it to rolling. Bob heard it bounce over to the side of the path and down what seemed to be a rather steep incline, making a good deal of noise among the bushes. He heard that, and a second later he heard something else, for just then, from the direction the bounding stone had taken, came the sharp command:

“Halt!”

It was the boy’s first instinct to obey, for he was a soldier and the command was given in English. But an instant later he was straining every nerve and muscle to increase his speed up the long hill.

Behind him he heard a rustling in the bushes and then Spanish voices in the open path. The sleeping enemy, doubtless wakened by the loosened stone, had uttered the one English word they knew, and, finding it without effect, had started in pursuit.

Bob realized at once that his pursuers were on foot and that on level ground he could easily distance them. But going up hill on a wheel is different. If the hill became steep and rough they could easily overtake him. He bent over the handlebars and tugged forward while he tried to see the ground in front of him. All at once he came out into a patch of moonlight, and at the same instant there were two shots from behind, one upon the other. Then two more followed, and two more. Bob heard the bullets whistle about him, one of them close to his face.

“If they puncture my back tire, I’m gone,” he muttered. “I’d just about as soon they’d hit me. I’d rather they hit me if it wasn’t so’s to stop me,” he added, on reflection.

But though his pursuers were only a few yards behind, they did not fire again right away. Perhaps they did not wish to waste their ammunition in the dark, and Bob rode so silently that they could not locate him by sound. The boy could hear them puffing as they ran, and the sound of their rapid» steps. The hill was not steep, but it seemed endless.

“If I could only strike a level stretch,” he thought, “I could run away from them in a minute.” But all he struck was another patch of moonlight, and then once more the bullets whistled about him.

They came more thickly this time, and all at once Bob felt what seemed like a sudden blow on his left arm near the shoulder. It dropped helplessly to his side, and the wheel went unsteadily for a moment. Then he seized the center of the handlebar with his right hand, and as he did so the path appeared to grow less steep, or at least easier to climb.

“They’ve punctured me,” he thought, grimly, “but I believe I’ll beat them yet.”

The level stretch was not long, but he gained on his pursuers, who were becoming exhausted. Then, once more the hill began, and it seemed to Bob, who was bleeding and growing weaker, that it was steeper than ever.

“I’ll have to fight them,” he thought. “I believe there are only two of them. I will run into the side of the road, and when they come up, I can do for one, anyway. Then I’ll have a fair chance with the other.”

But still he pushed on further. He would stop only as a last resort. To fight meant probable injury, such as would make it impossible to continue. As it was, he could still go. If he only could get to the top of the long hill.

Bob believed that General Chaffee was encamped just beyond this hill, at the foot of El Caney. If he could only get started down he could go as long as he retained consciousness. That might not be very long now, for he felt the blood flowing rapidly from his wounded arm. A little prayer that his mother had taught him long ago came to him and he repeated it. Then the hill seemed to grow easier, but he feared it was only because he was losing strength and going slower. He could hear his pursuers very close to him now. He bent every nerve for a final effort. His arm began to pain him, but perhaps it helped him to fiercer endeavor.

The way became suddenly steeper than ever and his wheel wavered from side to side. He could not go on – he could not – he must stop and fight! He would die fighting – he could not deliver the message, but he would fight – with his right arm he would fight to the last. He gave one final strain on the pedals, and then suddenly he felt himself glide forward in the darkness and a cool rush of air on his damp brow. The steep place had been the brow of the hill. He had passed it and was on level ground! He bent forward with new life and energy.

A moment later his pursuers realized what had happened, for he heard them begin to shout and fire into the darkness. Their bullets went wild now, and the boy, regardless [heedless] of everything except speed, raced on against the ebbing tide of consciousness that was flowing out with his blood. If he could only hold on till he reached the picket line of General Chaffee’s camp! If he could keep up till then they would know that he brought a message. He was going downhill now, and on this side there were more patches of moonlight. He could see very well.

Then he began to have spells of faintness, when the trail seemed to waver and the wheel ran among the brush at the side. Presently he felt the back wheel bumping on the ground. It was punctured.

“I can go on anyway, now,” he thought, “for I am going downhill.”

Only the going was harder and less certain, and the trail wavered more and more. Now the patches of moonlight rushed together, and the trees overhead bent down and ran with him as if alive. The terrible faintness came then, and just ahead there rose another long hill – so long that it touched the sky – while light and shadow danced and raced and rushed along together.

“Halt!”

The command came out of the blackness full in his face. He reeled from his seat, and his right hand sought his revolver. Then he staggered forward and plunged head first into the leaves and bushes and lay still.

Amid the roar of guns and groans of anguish, Bob returned to consciousness. He was in a tent, and wounded men were on both sides of him. He went to move his left arm, and remembered. A man passed just then with bottles in his hand. He saw the question in Bob’s eyes.

“Yes,” he said, “you made it all right. You tumbled right into our lines. The General got the message. He is giving some of it to the Spanish over yonder now. They are fighting hard, but we’ll whip ’em. These are some of our wounded.”

A smile flickered around Bob’s mouth.

“It was a long hill,” he said, faintly. “I thought I’d never get to the top of it.”

Other wounded men were brought in, and the man with bottles hurried on. By and by he came back to where Bob was lying.

The boy appeared to be sleeping. The smile had lingered about his lips.

The man with bottles looked at him closer and laid his hand on his pale forehead. Then he beckoned to two men with a stretcher.

“Poor fellow!” he said, “he’s climbed the long hill.”

—

IN TIME OF DANGER

Once upon a time – and it was not so long ago, either – there was a boy named Clyde Morris who was spending a month on his uncle’s farm in the country. He was a city boy, and his cousin, Edith, who was several years younger, and had been brought up on her father’s farm, looked up to him and went over the fields with him very proudly.

Clyde lacked two or three years of being old enough to enlist and go to Cuba with the Rough Riders, but he was quite as warlike as if he had been older, and almost every day when he was out walking with Edith he told her of how anxious he was to go to war and how bravely he would fight if he ever got a chance. As for Edith, she listened, and was sorry that she was not a boy so that she could be brave and warlike, too, and when Clyde told her how he would dash into the midst of danger with a revolver in one hand and a drawn sword in the other, cutting down Spaniards right and left, she sighed, while her heart beat faster at the gallant picture.

They were walking across the grove pasture one afternoon in July, and Clyde was talking as usual while Edith listened. The news from Cuba of a hard battle had reached them that morning, and Clyde was excited and talking very fast.

“I wish I’d been there,” he said, throwing his shoulders back and emphasizing each word with his head. “I just wish I’d been there! It takes somebody to ride ahead and charge to make those Spaniards run. It’s no way to stand off and shoot at long range. But it’s just my luck! There won’t be any war by the time I can go! If I’d been there with a company, I’d have said. ‘Now, boys, we’ll – ’”

Clyde paused as he noticed Edith looking about rather anxiously.

“What are you looking for?” he asked – “Spaniards?”

Edith laughed.

“Oh, no! Not so bad as that. But there used to be a cross bull over in that next field and once he broke the wire fence down and got in here. I thought maybe he might be in that little grove there.”

Clyde looked sharply toward the grove and then laughed, too, very loudly.

“Why,” he said, “what if he was? A bull can’t hurt you if you know how to handle him. It isn’t like an army shooting at you. There is only one bull and you can wait and when he comes close enough throw a handful of dirt in his eyes. He can’t see a wink then and you can get out of his way as easy as anything. But it’s different in battle. There they are all shooting at you at once, and if you stand still and wait for them they can hit you easier than if you’re moving. That’s what I’d do – I’d move! I’d say, ‘Now, boys, we’ll give it to ’em!’ and then we’d charge right in where the bullets were flying as thick as bumble bees!”

“Oh, Clyde, suppose one should hit you!”

“Pshaw! They’re not half as apt to as where you stand still. Even if I did get hit in the arm I wouldn’t stop. I’d keep right on, with my sword in the other hand, and I’d rush right into the woods and bushes where the cowards were hid, and I’d wave my sword and shout: ‘Surrender or die!’”

At this exciting point Clyde wheeled in the direction of the grove to wave an imaginary sword in the face of an imaginary enemy. As he did so the arm which was supposed to be unwounded, and which was high in the air, suddenly dropped to his side, and, turning a white face to his companion, he screamed:

“He’s coming! He’s coming! Run, Edith, run!”

The girl looked quickly toward the grove and saw a red creature, with short horns and tossing head, coming hastily toward them. For an instant she, too, was startled. Then she turned to speak to the brave soldier beside her, but found him already several yards distant, going with great speed toward the nearest point of a wire division fence.

“Clyde!” she called, as loudly as she could. “Oh, Clyde, stop!”

But Clyde either did not hear or for some reason was unable to obey, for he seemed to go even faster than ever, and really made time that would have lowered the interscholastic record had anybody been there to keep an official score. The animal, too, with hardly a glance at Edith, increased its speed and headed straight for the flying warrior, the girl following both as fast as her feet would carry her.

But she was no match for them. Before she was half way to the fence Clyde had reached it, and, finding this trocha too high to leap and too close to get through, he had wheeled and was sprinting down its length, looking wildly for a possible point of escape. The red chaser wheeled, too, and was gaining on its prey. Clyde realized this as he turned and fairly laid himself out in a last desperate effort. He was throwing dirt now, sure enough, but he was throwing it with his feet and not waiting for his enemy to get any closer. All at once Edith saw her cousin leap high into the air, slap his hands wildly about his face, while he screamed in a way that curdled her blood. She had been almost laughing up to this time, but now she, too, grew quite white and redoubled her speed. She saw Clyde jerk off his hat and strike wildly with it as he ran. Then she saw his pursuer halt suddenly, and with a fierce snort plunge its nose into a bunch of bushes. She realized now what had happened. Running through the taller grass near the fence the boy had stumbled into a bumble bees’ nest! For a moment Edith hesitated. Then seeing Clyde, blinded and confused by the fierce assault of his new enemy, running first one way and then the other, she hurried to him and began whipping off with her sun-bonnet the few tormentors that still followed him. They were all gone presently, and Clyde stared about wildly until his eyes fell on his old enemy, who was now going rapidly in another direction. He seized his cousin by the arm.

“Come, quick, Edith,” he said, eagerly, “before he turns this way again!”

“Oh, Clyde,” was the half laughing and half tearful answer; “that isn’t the bull at all! That is our young heifer, Bess, and the poor thing is stung by those horrid bees! She was only trying to play with you. She always does that, but she wouldn’t hurt a baby! Oh, poor Bess!”

Clyde started to say something, then he hesitated, and his face began to grow red all over – redder even than the swollen place with a white spot in the middle of it where one of the bees had stung him. He had been moving all right, but the enemy had hit him, nevertheless. The sting hurt, too, but the sting of his pride was a hundred times worse.

“I – I was taken by sur – surprise—” he started to say sheepishly, then stopped.

“And ran into ambush, too,” added Edith, slyly. “They’re awful, those bumble bees – worse than Spaniards, a good deal. I know! Come, let’s go to the house and put some soda on that sting right away.”

They started, but after a few steps Clyde stopped and looked at Edith anxiously.

“I don’t mind the sting,” he said very meekly, “nor about the bees; but if – if you won’t tell about – about the heifer, I’ll send you five pounds of candy as soon as I get back to the city.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t tell, anyway,” said Edith. “Of course you didn’t know Bess, and it was so sudden. I was frightened myself for a minute.”

But Clyde sent the candy the day he got back to town, and Edith kept his secret faithfully. He doesn’t boast of his bravery now, however, and he told me the whole story himself, not long ago. It was too good, he said, to keep, for which reason he has given me permission to tell it, also.

—

—

AT THE INLET

It was a warm, sultry morning in August and the tide was running down. The night had been so warm that almost since daybreak people had been scattered along the beach seeking a breath of fresh salt air. Now, at ten o’clock, the little summer resort on the Jersey coast was yielding up its guests to the sport and caprice of old ocean. Young and old, arrayed gaily in bathing costume, clung to the ropes, rested on the sand or plunged back into the fresh, invigorating brine, to be hurled by the incoming billow, shrieking with delight, high on the sloping beach.

Among the bathers there was a crowd of boys and girls, who, during the winter, had been schoolmates, and were now spending a two weeks’ vacation together, camping in two large tents a little distance up the beach. They delighted in the surf, and each day when the ride was running out they sported in it for an hour or more, until they all were burned or browned and some even blistered by the fierce sun. Most of them could swim, and two of the boys, “Jack” Carter and “Phil” Morris, were regarded as experts.

They swam out far beyond the life lines, to the terror of the girls and the envy of the other boys, and performed many tricks in diving that the others did not even attempt. Jack was the more daring of the two, and usually led the way, Phil following close behind, though with some caution. Many of the things he did not care to do, but with the others looking on he could not well refuse.

Today they had both outdone themselves. The cold stimulant of the brine after the stifling night had sent their blood dancing to their brains and made them fearless and tireless. They swam so far out to sea that some of the grown-ups watching them shook their heads and scolded uneasily. But presently turning they came in hand over hand and were tossed by a billow far up on the beach, panting, laughing, and exhausted. There they lay for a time in the sun with the others gathered about them, talking and chaffing each other as young folks will. Presently Jack sprang to his feet.

“I say, folks,” he said, “I’m rested now; let’s take a run down to the inlet.”

The inlet was an arm of the sea that ran far into the shore. It was about a quarter of a mile distant, and as the merry bathers scampered down the sand each strove to be the first on the little dock at its month where boats sometimes landed. Jack and Phil were ahead, as usual, and as they waited for the others to come up they noticed that the tide was still running out very swiftly.

“I dare you to swim across, Phil,” said Jack, as they looked down at the racing water.

The inlet was not wide, but it was deep and strong. The current swept far out to sea on a falling tide, and it was said to be dangerous even for powerful swimmers.

“I don’t believe we could do it, Jack,” said Phil, hesitatingly. “We’re tired now, and if we didn’t get across the tide would carry us out to sea. Of course we might work out of the channel and get back, but it would be hard pulling.”

“Oh, pshaw! you’re afraid. I’m going anyway, whether you do or not.”

But by this time the others had come up and were protesting loudly against the attempt, the girls especially.

“Don’t you do it, Jack! You’ll be drowned,” said Nell Weston, the oldest girl in the party.

“Phil, don’t you try it, even if Jack does.”

“No, Phil, don’t try it,” chorused the others; “and, Jack, don’t you, either. It doesn’t make any difference how well you can swim; you might get caught, and Phil, anyway.”

Phil winced. They did not believe he was as good a swimmer as Jack, and this made it all the harder for him to refuse. On the other hand, it made Jack still more eager for the attempt.

“Come on! Follow your leader; don’t be an old granny!” he called, as with a leap into the air he dived head first into the whirling current.

Phil made a motion as if to follow, then hesitated, turning pale. It was hard for him not to do it. It would establish Jack’s reputation as the best swimmer, and, though the girls had opposed the undertaking, they would be all the prouder of Jack when he came safely to shore.

“Don’t go. Don’t do it, Phil!” they were calling to him, but as Jack rose to the surface and struck out boldly, the boy could see that they were watching with admiration. Once more he was on the point of plunging, and once more the whirling flood made him hesitate. He loved life, and in this attempt there was danger. He was restrained by a wise prudence, which for the moment seemed to him base cowardice.

He could not turn his face to the others for shame, but with them stood watching the swimming boy silently.

Suddenly he uttered a low exclamation, which was echoed by his companions. More than two thirds the distance across Jack had struck the swiftest part of the channel and was about to be carried below the last point where he could land. There would be no turning back, and the swimmer was making a frantic effort to reach the shore before he should be swept beyond it. They saw him struggle and swim as only Jack could swim, and then – perhaps it was because of the long race that tired him – they saw his strokes grow weaker and weaker and then cease altogether, while the swirling green water caught him like a bit of driftwood and swept him out where there were no shores save those that lay behind.

It all happened more quickly than I have told it. The girls watching gave a wild scream and then another, as right from their midst a second figure leaped into the rushing water. It was Phil Morris. He did not hesitate now and he did not attempt to reach the other point. He headed straight for the sea, and, being comparatively fresh, it seemed to them that he swam with incredible swiftness. They could see Jack still floating helplessly, making no effort, and going rapidly out with the tide. They watched Phil as he gained and at last overtook him. They grew pale and silent with fear, for they did not believe that anyone could battle with that fierce current. Two girls left the crowd and ran calling up the beach toward the other bathers. The rest watched Phil and Jack tossed by the billows and now side by side, Phil striving to work his way little by little out of the swift channel and dragging Jack after him.

They were far out to sea by this time, so far that every other moment they were hidden from view by the billows that rose between. So far that it seemed to the watchers as if Phil also had given up and was drifting helplessly. But they saw at last that he was working to the left, getting out of the strong current. Then they knew that he was taking it coolly and steadily, and when at length they saw that he had turned and was heading for the beach they gave a great cheer.

Slowly, very slowly, but surely and steadily, the boys came in. Jack wholly exhausted, but conscious, and clinging to Phil’s shoulder, and Phil swimming low and with long, even strokes, riding over one billow only to climb the next that rose before him. As they drew nearer the little group ran down the sand and waited for them breathlessly. The bathers from above were also coming in a great crowd by this time. There was no life-saving station at this point, but there were men among them who were brave and strong and eager to save.

Only they came too late. Phil had already done battle with the ocean and won. As the bathers reached the shore, the sea, as if realizing its defeat, lifted up a great wave like a mighty living creature, that caught both boys, and bearing them far up the shore, flung them angrily on it, and ran back growling and frothing to its lair.

The crowd gathered hastily about them. Phil was panting and weak, and Jack was half unconscious. When presently he was able to speak he reached over and got hold of Phil’s hand and said weakly:

“You’re the best swimmer on the coast, Phil, and I’ll back you against any of them.”

“Oh, pshaw, Jack! you’d have made it all right, alone, if you hadn’t got used up first by that current.”

And the girls said, as girls always do: “Oh, Jack, we knew you couldn’t get across. We told you not to try it.”

And Jack never did try it again.

—

A DAY’S OUTING

“I’ve just got forty-six cents,” said Milly, counting the final six pennies slowly; “and I can save twenty-five cents next week, and I suppose I can squeeze out twenty-nine the week after, though I’ll have to walk home to get the extra four cents. I can save five cents that way, and that’ll make out the dollar, and one cent over for chewing gum.”

Jim held up two silver quarters. “I have just fifty,” he said with some satisfaction ; “and I’ll have a dollar, too, by that time. Two dollars will pay our fare both ways, and buy our dinners, besides paying for the rent of our bathing suits, and leave enough to buy ice cream and soda on the boat. Gee! won’t it be great, though?” and the boy rose and danced about and laughed and licked out his tongue in his anticipated joy.

The girl laughed, too. The two were brother and sister, and both worked in one of the big department stores down town. Their wages were small, and the amount paid each week into the family purse and their car fare left very little for any other purpose – so little, in fact, that one day at the seashore resort not far away, at an expense of one dollar each, was the single recreation they had planned and saved for since spring. They had begun by hoarding a few cents each week and buying small articles of clothing with whatever remained. Now they were fairly well provided with summer wear and could add more liberally to their hoard. In two weeks the hottest part of August would come, and it was then that they would go. It was Sunday today, and they had been counting their savings as they had done many times before.

Presently Milly went to the front window and looked out. They lived in a flat in one of the close tenement districts of New York, on upper Third Avenue. The street was far below, and it looked hot and sizzling on the pavement. It was hot in the rooms, too, and the girl drew back with a sigh.

“I’m going down to see Nettie,” she said. “I know she must feel this hot weather. They are going to let her sit up today for the first time.”

“Are they? Why, then, may be she’ll be well enough to go to the beach with us in two weeks.”

“Oh, yes, Jim; I’ll tell her about it!” exclaimed Milly – then she paused. “I don’t believe I will, either,” she said, slowly. “She hasn’t been at work for so long, and her folks have spent so much for the doctor and medicine I know they couldn’t spare the money.”

Jim reflected a moment, then looked out of the window absently, and said: “That’s so,” as Milly disappeared.

Nettie Klein, who lived on the floor below, was a pretty girl, a year older than Milly, a year younger than Jim, and had worked in the same store for more than a year. Then, one day in the spring, when she was walking home to save car fare, she had been overtaken by a hard shower and was ill for more than a week. She had been too anxious to get back to the store, perhaps, for after a few days’ work she was obliged to give up and go to bed again, and the relapse became a low, lingering fever. Now, a shadow of herself, she was almost ready to take up life once more, though very feebly and discouraged by long idleness. A day at the shore would do her a world of good, of course, but, as Milly had said, there was little thought of it now, for the Kleins had already run a month behind with their rent in order to pay the doctor.

Jim thought about these things after Milly had gone, and when she returned he asked after Nettie anxiously. He was glad to hear that she was getting along, and that the doctor said she would be out again in a week or two if she was careful. Then he put on his new shoes and hat and necktie and walked over to Central Park, while Milly helped his mother with the dinner. He sat down on one of the benches in the shade and watched the squirrels, and made up his mind that as soon as Nettie could walk out he and Milly would come with her to the Park. Then he went home to dinner, and after dinner he came back to the seat with Milly, and they both decided that next Sunday they would spend the afternoon in the Park and bring Nettie with them.

But the next Sunday it rained all day. Milly and Jim went down to see her in the afternoon, and told her how they had planned to take her that day to the Park. And Nettie seemed pleased, and said perhaps she could go to the Park with them by next Sunday, and that she wanted to be well enough to go back to work on the first of September. Then Jim looked at Milly and grew red, and Milly started to say something about next Sunday and hesitated and changed the subject. They left soon afterward, and when they got upstairs to their own flat, looked at each other sheepishly.

“We’ll have to tell her, now, about going out to the seashore,” said Milly; “she expects us to go to the Park with her next Sunday.”

“Mebbe it’ll rain again,” said Jim.

“Mebbe it will,” said Milly, “but then we can’t go to the shore either.”

“That’s so,” said Jim, but he offered no further way out.

The week slipped away rapidly. It rained a good deal, and Jim’s half prophecy seemed in a fair way to be fulfilled, but Saturday morning it turned out bright and clear, and the papers said that the weather was settled, The day for their outing would almost certainly be fine, but all pleasure in the prospect had gone for Milly and Jim. Nettie was expecting them to take her to the Park, and they could not bear to disappoint her, and then tell her of the beautiful day they were to spend at the beach. They said very little about it to each other, but on Saturday evening they were silent and gloomy.

After supper they went down and sat on the steps to get a little air. It was very hot, and many people were on the pavement. For a while they looked at the lighted windows and the passing crowds dismally.

“How’s Nettie?” asked Jim at last.

“She’s getting along real well,” said Milly, and then, “Oh, Jim, what are we going to do about tomorrow?”

Jim shook his head.

“Suppose we put off our trip till next Sunday,” he said, “and go to the Park tomorrow with Nettie, as she expects.”

“Yes, we might do that,” said Milly dubiously. She looked away, so her brother could not see her face. “Jim,” she said very slowly.

“What?” said Jim.

“Why,” said Milly, “you know it costs twenty-five cents for the fare.”

Jim nodded.

“And twenty-five cents more for dinner and twenty-five for a bathing suit.”

“Yes, that leaves twenty-five cents apiece for a dish of ice cream on the boat going and coming, and one glass of soda.”

The girl sighed. Ice cream and a glass of soda was a treat which these children looked forward to as children of well-to-do parents look forward to the grandest feast. It was to be a feast, one which they enjoyed at rare intervals.

Milly had planned that she would have vanilla going and Neapolitan with her soda coming home. There was less of the Neapolitan, but it had more flavors, and the soda would be chocolate, and help fill up.

“Jim,” she continued, her voice getting husky and breaking a little, “couldn’t we do without the ice cream and – and soda this time and take – and take Nettie along? She couldn’t bathe yet, you know, and fifty cents would pay her fare and dinner – and we – mebbe we can save up some more and have ice cream at home in a week or two. I know Nettie’d like to go, and it would do her a lot of good. What do you think, Jim?”

The boy had turned while Milly was speaking and was looking straight at her when she paused.

“I’ll tell you what I think, Mil’,” he said, and perhaps his voice broke the least bit, too, “I think you’re the best sister that any boy ever had! That’s what I think, and I’ve been thinking for a week just what you’ve been saying, but I kept still, for I was afraid you wouldn’t like it. Of course we’ll take Net! Come on, we’ll go right now and tell her!”

It is wonderful how little, sometimes, it takes to make people happy. Milly and Jim were so happy that night they could scarcely go to bed at all, and Nettie was so happy that, being still weak with illness, she cried when they told her that she was to go. And when they were steaming down the beautiful bay next morning I do not believe there were ever three happier children in the whole world than Nettie and Milly and Jim.

—

LOCKED IN

A Mild Practical Joke

and What Came of It

How many children have played at locking each other out or in and laughed and shouted and beat against the door to open it! It is rather a rude play at best and a mild form of practical joke. No practical joke is safe, and though a locking out seems likely to cause damage only to the door, it ended much more seriously than that in a case I knew of not very long ago.

It was at a little house party in the country, and there were a number of merry young folks present. Broad green lawns made the place inviting by day, and long verandas and airy rooms rendered the evenings delightful. Often after dinner the young people danced to the music of a piano or joined in singing popular songs of the day. Sometimes, though most of them were well along in their teens, they romped through the rooms shouting and laughing like little folks. They were a happy lot and it did me good to watch them.

One of the girls, Helen Clark, seemed the life of the whole party. She was about sixteen and with a face that laughed in every muscle. Her hair was sunny and her figure slender and full of lithe grace. She could run like a deer and darted away from a pursuer with such ease and swiftness that I always wanted to rechristen her Sunbeam. Sport that for others seemed rude never seemed so for her. No matter what she did she did it gracefully and with little disturbance.

One night when they had danced and sung until nearly ten o’clock they started in for a farewell romp. I do not think it was any game that they were playing, but merely chasing each other about the rooms in the buoyant happiness of their youth. Helen, as usual, led the chase, and flitted here and there, eluding her pursuers like a will o’ the wisp. Finally, when too hotly pursued by a large boy who stumbled clumsily over the chairs and hassocks, she whisked through a small door and, closing it swiftly behind her, locked it just as the big boy fell shouting against it. Then the crowd gathered round and laughed and called to her and pummelled on the door, and presently tied it fast from their side, too, so that the girl was a prisoner. Then they told her what they had done and threatened gaily to keep her there all night, to which she laughingly replied that she would sleep on her bicycle if they did. You see, the room was a sort of storeroom, and all the wheels were kept in there side by side against a window, which was the only opening besides the door. By and by the young folks whispered a word to each other and went back to the piano and began singing. This was to let Helen know that she was abandoned to her fate and that she must plead for liberty. But Helen beyond the door merrily joined in the song, at which they all laughed and went back in a body to ask her if she would do certain foolish things, which I have now forgotten, if they would let her out. She refused with mock indignation, and the captors went back to the piano. This time Helen did not join in the song and they sang several pieces in succession.

At last they went back to the door to parley with their prisoner again. They called to her, but could get no answer. They called again and again, and threatened her with dire vengeance, but there was no sound from within.

“She’s doing that to frighten us,” said the big boy who had pursued her.

“Perhaps she’s asleep,” said another; “our music put her to sleep.”

“Untie the door,” whispered a third; “I’ll bet she’s unlocked it from her side, and we’ll burst in on her like a cyclone.”

They untied the door, but when they tried it softly they found it still locked from within.

“I know,” whispered a tall boy of perhaps seventeen; “there’s a window around on the other side. It’s up a good ways from the ground, and I don’t believe it’s fastened. I can climb up to it and get in.”

“Look out for the bicycles! They’re all stacked together by the window!” cautioned a girl as he disappeared.

The tall boy ran around the house and we waited to hear the sound of the window being raised and the startled scream that would follow. We did not hear the sound of the window, but quickly there came a shout and then another. It was not Helen’s voice, but the tall boy’s, and we rushed out in a body, white and terrified. As we turned the corner we heard the boy’s voice call again.

“Come quick!” he said. “Helen’s hurt! Somebody run for a doctor! Look out; you’ll fall in!”

We halted just in time. At our feet was a yawning black hole – the open doors of a deep cellar. From this came the boy’s excited voice, and faint moans which we knew to be Helen’s. In an instant we realized what had happened. The poor girl had climbed over the bicycles and out the window to escape. In the darkness she had been unable to see the open cellar just beneath the window, and had forgotten that it was there. She had fallen fully ten feet to the stone steps and floor below. The tall boy, turning the corner, had heard her moans and groped his way to where she was lying half unconscious. Then he had screamed for assistance.

We bore the bruised and broken body to her bed, and a doctor came as soon as swift horses could bring him. You may guess what a voice of gratitude went up when he told us that she was not fatally injured, and that in time she would regain health and strength. This she did, but it was a weary waiting while broken bones mended and strained muscles knit up their shattered strength. She had faithful and loving care and bore all her suffering with the sunny good nature that was always hers. She is quite herself again now, but neither she nor any one of that party will ever take part in a locking in or out again.

—

DOWN HILL

AGAINST TIME

It was after supper at Henley’s Crossing, and Fred Martin, the night operator, picked his way cautiously down the steep hill to the little station building, a half mile below. The hill was slippery with snow and ice that had thawed somewhat during the day and was now freezing and glistening in the crisp January moonlight.

“If I’d thought of it I might have coasted down,” he said to himself. “A pretty swift coast as the hill is now, but I’ve done it a lot of times and enjoyed it, too.” He was half on the point of turning back for his big racing sled which he had built a few years ago, when a boy, and when his parents had first followed with the railroad to this far Western country. On second thought, however, he remembered that the night express was due in thirty minutes, and that he had some reports to make up and mail which could not well be delayed. A second and still newer railroad had crossed a little below the station, and while not as yet in regular operation, it had made of Henley’s Crossing the one stopping place for the through express between the two rather pretentious little cities fifty miles on either side. Fred was rather proud of this, and believed, with many others, that the Crossing was destined to be a town of size. He was, therefore, very anxious to do nothing that would prevent his holding a position that he felt would improve with the fortunes of the community. He stepped briskly forward as he reached a point where the hill was not so steep, whistling and looking down into the moonlit valley. He could see the white roadbed of the new track and the dismantled camp where the construction gang had stayed so long. His father, who was a civil engineer, was in charge of this force that had now moved fifty miles further up, leaving behind some half a dozen worthless fellows who had proven unmanageable and a detriment to the others. These had hung about Henley’s, and the Martins had fed them more than once out of pity. They had rigged up a shelter in the deserted camp.

While Fred Martin was hurrying down the slippery hill, his mother and his sister Bess – four years younger than himself, and a rather slender girl of fourteen – were putting away the supper things and preparing for a quiet evening.

“Oh, there! Fred forgot to bring in the wood!” said Mrs. Martin. “I meant to have reminded him of it just before he started, too.”

“Never mind, Mother, I can bring an armful or two for tonight,” answered Bess, looking for her mittens and throwing a cape about her shoulders. “Fred will fill up the box in the morning.” A moment later she was running across the moonlit yard to the low shed where the winter’s wood was kept dry and nicely piled in old New England fashion. Bess had been born in New England, and brought up a good deal on the old Puritan plan. She was not afraid of work, nor of much else that was in the line of duty. The woodshed was dark and still, but she entered without hesitation. She could not help starting, however, when just as she picked up the first stick and laid it across her arm she heard a voice only a few feet away. She held her breath and listened. She was relieved to realize that the owner of it was not in the shed, but behind it, and that the sound came through the cracks between the boards. Then another voice spoke, and she realized further that those outside were two of the discharged hands whom they had given food to at supper time. They had paused here to eat it, and from their conversation it was evident they had not heard the girl’s entrance. Bess’ blood grew cold as she listened.

“Bob’s dead sure he’s got the track fixed all serene, is he?” said the first speaker.

“You bet. All the spikes out on the lower side. The minute that old locomotive hits the curve down she goes and the rest on top of her. Then the fun’ll begin. The boys are below now all ready, and we’d better cut across through the woods and get there, too.”

“We want to strike the express and mail first,” said the other, rising. “Let Red and Lanky go through the passengers. Pity old Martin couldn’t be on that train. Joe wanted to do for the boy, but I said it was too risky beforehand, and we won’t have time afterward. We can’t get to the caves any too quick then, and a handcar ain’t the swiftest thing in the world on an upgrade.” They passed out of hearing still talking, and the girl was almost in a stupor. They were going to wreck and rob the express, on the curve below the hill, and then seize the section handcar over on the new road and hurry off to the mountains, where there was safe hiding in the caves. Bess dropped the stick of wood and staggered to the house.

Suddenly, as she reached the door, a new strength seized her. She burst into the house and in a few sentences poured out to her mother what she knew.

“I must save them!” she cried wildly. “I must get to the station and warn them before they pass!”

Mrs. Martin looked hastily at the clock. The train was due in five minutes.

“You can’t do it, Bess,” she groaned.

“I must! I must!” The girl was rushing away when suddenly she paused. “Fred’s sled!” she shouted, and a second later was rushing away to the woodshed, where it hung.

“Bess! Bess!” screamed her mother. “You will kill yourself! That hill is dangerous, even for Fred!”

“I’m not afraid! I coasted it once!” The slim figure flew through the gate and threw herself face down on the long, rakish sled. She darted away, and the words of her mother calling her to come back were whirled aside by the keen January air and lost.

Bess understood coasting and, as she said, had coasted this long, steep bill before. But as she felt the sled under her shoot forward and then plunge faster every second down the steep incline, she realized that she had not attempted it as it was now. The cold air struck her in the face and took away her breath, her eyes filled and blinded, and she became filled with a dread that she would be unable to steer, and be thrown into the deep ditch that ran on either side. Then her vision cleared again, and the wild rush of air became exhilarating. The little station building was beyond the track. The train paused only a few seconds. Unless she crossed the track ahead of it she would be unable to warn them. Even if she reached the train before it started she would be on the wrong side of it and unable to make them understand in time.

“If only they will be once behind time,” she moaned. “Dear God, let them be behind time!” Halfway down the hill became less steep, but it continued almost to the track and the impetus gained would carry her across with a rush to the little levelled station yard. Then came the horrible thought that if the train and herself reached the crossing together she would dash into it and be crushed beneath the wheels. Even at that instant came the deep whistle of the express, on time and a half mile away. For a single second she was tempted to turn the flying sled aside and save herself. Then she flung this thought away and forgot everything else in the one wild purpose of reaching the station and Fred in time.

She had reached the lower half of the hill now, but the sled was still shooting forward like a bullet. Then from the corner of her eye she caught the streaming headlight of the locomotive and heard the clicking sound that told her it had reached the switch lock. She could not do it. Oh, she could not do it; but she did not hesitate.

“God make me go faster!” she prayed over and over. “Faster! faster! God make me go faster!”

She tried to kick behind with her foot to increase the speed. She could not look, but she knew that the engine was even with the platform. The track was but a few feet away. The seconds seemed like hours. A terrible roar was in her ears. She gave one wild look at the great demon that was upon her and closed her eyes, to shut out the approaching death.

Fred Martin was finishing his reports as he heard the express whistle.

“Right on time!” he said, glancing up at the clock. “Old No. 2 gets there all right.”

He rose, and, slipping on his heavy coat, stepped out on the frosty platform watching the oncoming train as it roared up, panting and fretting to be on its way.

“Hi, Martin! How’s the coasting around here?” called the expressman, as Fred handed him up his envelopes.

“Good. I’m going to try it myself tomorrow. I was just thinking tonight——”

But Fred never finished what he was about to say, for just then a wild, tattered figure staggered up and seized him by the arm.

“Don’t let them go! Oh, Fred, don’t let them go! They will be wrecked and robbed!”

Close behind her was the engineer, who had seen the flying sled that his engine had caught and hurled aside.

“Who is it? What is it?” he asked, anxiously.

“It is my sister, Bess. Something is wrong. Hold the train.”

The young man carried his sister into the little office. She had fainted, but struggled back to consciousness.

All the trainmen had collected by this time, and she told them the story brokenly as she regained her strength. She assured the engineer that she was not hurt, but only scratched and shaken up a little. She was almost across when the cowcatcher had struck the sled and flung her into a clump of frozen weeds.

The train officers hastily formed, and, with a number of passengers, who were armed, disappeared down the track.

Twenty minutes later they returned with the entire band of would-be train wreckers, whom they had surrounded and captured by a flank movement. Then the track was repaired, the prisoners put aboard and the night express moved on.

Two weeks later there came a letter from the railroad president’s office to Bess Martin. It contained a substantial check and a pass over the railroad for life.

Fred Martin can have his place so long as Bess recommends him; at least, so the road officials say.

—

TWO VALENTINES

“I tell you, Dick, this is a good one and just hits the mark exactly, verses and all. Listen!”

Dick was stirring the fire and throwing in a stick of wood.

“Wait a minute, Joe,” he said. Then shutting the stove door and pulling the draught open. “Now.”

He threw himself into a rocking-chair by the table, and the boy on the other side, holding up a flaming picture, began to read.

THE COQUETTE.

“You think yourself a gay coquette

To win each heart you try;

A crooked stick at last you’ll get,

Or else a maid you’ll die.

For though you’ll make your silly boasts

And show the hearts you’ve caught,

They’ll all belong to shallow dudes.

Whose brains were reckoned naught.”

“That’s good. That’s first rate. Let’s see it again,” exclaimed Dick, reaching across the table.

The valentine was handed across. It was an absurd picture of a simpering maiden carrying a string of large red hearts on one finger and wearing one – the latest conquest, of course – at her throat. Dick looked at it enviously.

“Mine isn’t as good as that,” he said. “I’ve got to cut off the verse. It don’t fit.”

“No,” said Joe, “you couldn’t send that even if they did treat us as mean as dirt. The picture is all right, though, and that fellow looks like Canly, too.”

The second valentine in question was another absurd girl in street costume making eyes at an over-barbered and large-plaided gentleman in the distance, and was labelled “The Giddy Girl and the Masher.”

“Won’t Nell be wild when she sees that?” said Dick, with evil triumph in his eyes.

“Bess, too,” asserted Joe. “Do you s’pose they’ll know who sent them?”

“They’ll have a pretty good idea, and I don’t care if they do!”

“I don’t either,” echoed Joe. But both boys took care to print the names rudely on the cheap yellow envelopes, for their handwriting was too well known.

Dick Travis, Joe King, Nell Cassidy, and Bessie Brown had been schoolmates and good friends a long time. They were all about the same age, not far on either side of sixteen, and they lived in a country town where the weekly prayer meeting and Sunday evening services are faithfully attended by the “girls,” and where the “boys” are always at hand, for the benediction, at least, and to “see the girls home.” It had become such a regular thing for Dick and Joe to be in waiting at the door for Nell and Bess that the usual formula of “Can I see you home to night?” had long since been dropped entirely, and each boy merely stepped out of the line that always formed and stood waiting in the outer dark to offer his arm, which was to be accepted as a matter of course.

There was a shock in readiness for them, therefore, when on the Wednesday evening before Valentine’s Day, the two boys, who waited in the line outside, saw Nell and Bess step out and take the arms of two smoothly dressed young strangers who had also accompanied them to church the previous Sunday evening. The boys were humiliated and eager for revenge. Valentine’s Day was close at hand, and the shop windows were filled with vulgar and cruel pictures, from which next day they selected the two that were to wipe out their bitter wrong.

Meanwhile Nell and Bess were perhaps not altogether to blame. The city boys, who were quite amused by country ways and attracted by the bright-faced girls, had accompanied them to church on Sunday, and the same evening had engaged their company home from Wednesday night prayer meeting.

On the way home, however, as their escorts spoke merrily of the two boys who had been “turned down,” as they called it, the girls did feel rather guilty, but “Mr.” Gregg and “Mr.” Canly were so entertaining that they forgot to be very sorry for Joe and Dick, just then, and perhaps did not yet realize the full measure of their cruelty. Then the subject of valentines came up and their “company” assured them, banteringly, that they certainly would get valentines, and from their manner both Nell and Bess believed that “present company” would be the senders and that they were to expect something very nice. It is possible that “Messrs.” Canly and Gregg really meant to do something of the sort at the time, but when next day they got word from home that they were to be there without fail for a Saint Valentine’s party on the following evening, they started by the first train and thought no more of Nell and Bess until several days after. Then it was too late.

Somehow, Dick and Joe, after they had mailed their valentines, did not feel as happy as they had hoped to, either. They had had so many nice times with the girls, and now, of course, it was all over. When they met them at school next day they were surprised to notice that the girls did not seem offended or indignant, but rather timid and anxious. Then the boys felt pretty mean, though they did not confess it even to each other. They learned, too, that the city chaps had gone home, and when they met the girls face to face at the second recess they did not look up.

The two boys were seat-mates, as were also Bess and Nell. When they returned to their desk they found a note folded in Dick’s reader. It was addressed to them both and in the stiff little formality of the third person which was considered highly proper as being authorized by the “Complete Letter Writer.”

“Miss Nellie Cassidy

and Miss Bessie Brown

present compliments to Mr. J. King and Mr. Richard Travis, and request their company at Miss Nellie’s house this evening to talk about something that must be explained.

“HAWFIELD,

Feb. 14, 18——.”

The boys looked at each other and turned pale. They were invited down there to explain and apologize. Perhaps Mr. Brown and Mr. Cassidy would be on hand to assist in the matter. They stole glances across at the girls, but both of them were buried in their books. They must go, of course. It was a long, miserable afternoon.

When they knocked timidly at the Cassidy door that night and were admitted they were immensely relieved to find the girls there alone. There was a chilling cloud of embarrassment over all of them, and when Nell at last undertook to say something it was with great effort.

“I – Bess, that is, Bess and me,” she began, “wanted to tell you that – that our company was  – was engaged for Wednesday night, and that’s what made – that’s what made it that way, and – and just look at this!” She blushed like fire and drew out one of the wretched yellow envelopes and handed it to Dick, who took it, as pale as death, trying to say something, he knew not what, while at the same moment Bess brought forth another of the saffron-hued weapons and thrust it into Joe’s trembling hands. As she did so she burst into tears.

“That is what they sent us,” she sobbed. “I suppose they thought it smart and that we didn’t know any better. They talked about us getting valentines, and that is what they sent!”

The boys shot a lightning glance at each other. Bess had said “they.” It was not etiquette to use the third person except on paper. Like a flash the truth dawned upon them.

“It was a mean trick!” blurted out Joe, “and a shame!”

“It was that!” chimed in Dick, and both boys spoke from the bottom of their hearts. If they were tempted to confess further they restrained themselves.

“Do you think we ought to tell the Barlows, where they visited?” asked Bess.

“Not for the world!” said Joe. “The more you say about a thing like that the worse it is!”

“That’s so,” assented Dick.

And perhaps that is the reason they did not confess fully to Bess and Nell until the day of their double wedding, more than six years later.

—

IN THE PATH

OF THE CYCLONE

“Be sure and see that Wag doesn’t follow us. He’s a perfect nuisance!”

“That’s so; we don’t want him along. Here, you, Wag, you get out of here.”

The boy made a pretence of seizing a missile from the ground and flinging it at the offending Wag, whose name had come from his violent manner of expressing joy with his tail. The dog fled wildly under the porch and the brother and sister, leaning on their wheels, laughed loudly.

“Poor Wag!” said the girl, relentingly. “It’s a shame, Harry, for us to abuse him that way, when he’s always so happy at the least thing.”

“Oh! well, I know, Maude, but we just can’t be bothered with him. He’s always running back and forth in front of us and quarrelling with other dogs that run out and chase us. Besides, we have no more lunch than we need, and Wag will stand around when we eat it and keep his tail going at such a rate that he’ll get half we’ve got.”

“Yes, I know he’s a perfect nuisance,” repeated the girl; “but the poor fellow enjoys it so. Don’t you dare follow us, you scamp!” she added, pretending to speak very sternly.

Wag, who was at that moment watching them through the lattice beneath the porch, was almost tempted to rush out and bark and caper and thrash his tail nearly off at the tone of this command, but he restrained himself, and presently he saw the brother and sister ride off together down the drive and turn in the direction of Randall’s Run, where they had planned to spend the day fishing.

Maude and Harry Leslie were twins and, as is often the case, inseparable companions. Their home lay a few miles out of a little Western city and their parents were well-to-do. During pleasant weather they often spent an entire Saturday on their wheels. They were both fond of fishing, and the morning was still and beautiful. Their rods were strapped to Harry’s wheel, and each carried a small box of lunch. They were sixteen, in full health and spirits and very happy.

As they rounded a sharp turn in the road the boy glanced back. Then he uttered an exclamation and began to laugh.

“What is it?” asked Maude.

“Oh, nothing! only just as I looked around I saw that wretch Wag dodge into the weeds a little ways behind us. He’s following, and when we get far enough so we can’t drive him back you’ll see – he’ll come bounding out in front of us as if his finding us in this part of the country was the most unexpected thing in the world. I know that scamp.” And Harry was right, for a mile further on there was a sudden clatter in the bushes by the roadside and Wag tumbled out right before them with an assumed air of mingled astonishment and joy that made the two merry bicyclers scream with laughter.

They pretended to scold and shame him for his conduct, but the wise and irrepressible Wag knew very well that there was forgiveness in their voices, if not in their words, and his tail expressed supreme happiness. Then he dashed on ahead, and presently came tearing back again, only to repeat the performance over and over, with the occasional variation of starting up a bird or a rabbit, at either of which he became quite frantic with excitement as long as he could keep within barking distance of the game. He was only a joyous-hearted dog, of no special breed, and yellow as to color. He had come to the Leslies as a stray puppy, which they had cared for, not having the heart to send it away.

It was ten o’clock when the brother and sister entered the narrow strip of woods that lay along Randall’s Run. It had grown quite warm, and after their ride the quiet shade and sparkling water were refreshing. It was a perfect day for sport, and their luck was unusually good. At noontime, when the morning fishing was pretty well over, Harry built a little fire and cooked one or two fish for Wag, who enjoyed them very well without pepper and salt. The brother and sister ate their lunch, too, and threw a crust now and then to Wag, for which he expressed thanks in the usual manner. As the afternoon wore away the fish once more began biting well and the time flew rapidly. It grew warmer, too, and seemed unusually still.

“How very close and hot it is getting!” exclaimed Maude at last, “or is it only because we are so busy? I feel as if I could hardly breathe. And just see Wag! Something must be after him!”

The brother turned and saw the dog bounding wildly toward them from the direction of the road with an expression in his face that was one of alarm. He ran straight to Harry, who had risen from the bank, and seizing his trousers leg, pulled violently in the direction of the wheels.

“What do you want, Wag? What is the matter with you?” asked Harry, laughing. “Oh, you want to go home, do you?” he continued as the dog continued to pull him toward his bicycle. “Well, we’re going. Come, Maude. Wag says it’s time to go to supper.”

The girl rose reluctantly. A fish had been at her bait twice and each time had escaped. Harry started to lift out the string of perch and pickerel which lay near them in the water. At this Wag became frantic. He barked furiously and ran half way to the road and back again, pulling fiercely at their clothes.

“Go with him to the road, Harry,” said the girl presently. “Perhaps there’s something wrong there.”

“Oh, pshaw! It’s just his foolishness.” But the boy nevertheless followed the dog, who bounded ahead. Maude meanwhile was folding up her rod and preparing to start for home. Suddenly there was a crashing in the brush and Harry came rushing back, his face as white as paper.

“Maude, Maude!” he shouted. “There’s a cyclone coming straight in this direction and not more than a mile away. Drop everything and come!”

There was no time for question. The twins seized their wheels and hurried to the road. Straight across the prairie, at right angles with the road, there was moving toward them a towering black column that rose from the earth to a cloud above that was as black as midnight! Their only hope was to ride out of its path before it reached them. Harry had said “not more than a mile away,” but the distance had been probably much greater. Now, however, it was even less than that, and there was a humming sound in the air that was rapidly becoming a mighty and terrifying roar. The air burned like the breath of an oven.

The boy and girl sprang to their wheels without an instant’s delay and fled away in the direction of home, which lay across the path of the storm. Wag kept ahead of them for some distance and then abreast, running like mad. Every other second the riders turned their heads toward the approaching tower of darkness, which it seemed they could never pass. It was like racing with the moon that keeps abreast of the flying train. Like it and yet unlike, for the black, whirling death seemed to widen as it approached and night came down on the world. The roar was now so loud as to be almost deafening.

The riders bent forward over their handlebars and raced as they had never raced before. They were evenly matched, for Maude, though a girl, was a thorough athlete. Wag had gradually dropped behind in this fearful struggle. All at once it grew so black about them that they could not see the road or each other. Then, as if seized by mighty hands, they were lifted from the ground and flung aside like toys. Dust, dirt, leaves, and branches showered about them, and they were whirled over and over in helpless confusion. Suddenly they were left lying, dazed and stunned, in a heap of débris. The roar grew less terrifying and the sky lightened. The cyclone had passed!

Harry was first to recover his voice.

“Maude!” he called, “are you hurt?”

The girl half rose, resting on her hand.

“Oh, Harry, I don’t know!” she answered. “I am so whirled and blown to pieces I can’t tell.”

The boy staggered over to her and helped her to her feet. She seemed unhurt and shook the dirt from her clothes. All about them was confusion, and behind them lay waste and ruin. They had been in the outer edge of the storm.

“What an escape!” said Harry, solemnly looking at the tangled and splintered woods. “And see, Maude, there comes Wag!”

Sure enough, from a drift of wreckage a little way behind crawled the noble Wag. He dragged one leg on the ground and seemed in distress, but when Harry ran toward him and spoke to him he swung his tail about bravely and uttered a feeble bark.

“Wag, Wag, you dear old fellow, you saved our lives,” said the boy, gathering him in his arms. “His leg is broken!” he announced to Maude, who had hurried toward them.

They caressed the poor dog, who, in spite of his suffering, licked their hands and made an effort every other moment to be true to his name. Looking about, presently they found their wheels close together and not greatly injured. Maude rode hers to the next house and came back later with a light wagon, into which were loaded both wheels and Wag. The twins climbed in also and drove home through the dusk. The news of the cyclone had preceded them, and they met a number of people hurrying to the scene. Their parents were wild with anxiety until they came marching in, carrying Wag. There was great rejoicing, and for Wag a mighty triumph. Mr. Leslie, who knew something of surgery, set the poor fellow’s leg. After which he was given a delicious supper and a luxurious bed in the sitting-room.

The next morning brought the news that, so far as known, no lives had been lost in the cyclone, which fortunately had swept over a sparsely settled strip of country, but everywhere in its track lay fences, timber, orchards and out-buildings in hopeless wreck. Harry and Maude rode over on their wheels, and it was with great difficulty that they could reach the spot where they had fished the day before. Trees were twisted and tangled and the path was lost. When at last they had climbed and crawled to the place they found their string of fish in the water, as lively and fresh as ever, but there was no trace of their rods. The path of the storm was less than half a mile wide, and they had raced on their wheels little more than a quarter. It had taken them perhaps less than a minute to cover that distance, but to both it had seemed an eternity. They could think and talk of nothing but their narrow escape and the intelligence and nobleness of Wag.

As for Wag, he was quite himself again in an incredibly short space of time, and now goes with them everywhere. In fact, he owns the place, so to speak, and barks and dances and swings his tail in any room of the house, from kitchen to parlor.

—

TED AND TILLY

It was not a pleasant part of the city at its best, but Ted, who boarded and could choose for himself, lived with the people in the front flat that faced south, and so, living on the top floor, as he did, there was sunshine in his room nearly all day. Tilly, who lived with her mother, was on the same floor, but as her mother earned very little they had the rear flat, which was over the alley, facing north, and cost a dollar less in the month. This was not pleasant for Tilly, who was a cripple and had to sit in a chair all day long, so Ted, who sold papers and was gone from morning till night, had made her, from the very first of their acquaintance almost, come into his room during the day, where she could get the sun and look down on the street, which was five stories below.

He nearly always found time about noon to bring her up a paper, too, and sometimes he would see a lot of books offered for three cents each, and then he often bought one for her, though he had to economize on something else to do it; and once when he became extravagant and bought a book that cost ten cents – a beautiful, large book, with a colored picture in front  – he did without coffee at noontime for five days to even up the expense. Tilly had scolded him for that book, but then her little thin hands had trembled when she turned the leaves, too, and Ted did not mind the scolding, for he knew by that how happy it had made her.

She was alone nearly all day, for the man with whom Ted boarded drove a coal wagon, and the woman went out to do family washing. And so her books and papers were her only company, and her mother, who made vests in the dim shop around the corner and was gone from morning until night, blessed Ted daily for his kindness. She had taught her little crippled daughter to read, and before the father died she had been able to buy a few books, but her earnings now were barely enough for their rent and food, and Tilly being nearly fourteen, the little books of her childhood did not interest her any more.

Ted was older, he thought. He didn’t know exactly how old he was, as he seemed to have passed from hand to hand in his early youth, and somewhere the record had been lost. He said himself that every hand had given him a “t’ump” and passed him on to the next. One day, however, he had announced that he was his “own boss,” and the same afternoon had crossed the street and taken board with the McCords, where he still lived. That had been two years before. Ted believed he was about sixteen. His ambition was a news-stand with a little cubby-house at the end, wherein he would keep not only papers, but magazines, and perhaps city guides and maps.

It was a bright April day, and he had been out since long before daylight with the early editions. The morning sale was pretty well over and the first afternoon extras were not quite ready. He had a few papers left, and he strolled leisurely through the park for a chance customer. When he reached the other side he had still one copy, and glancing up at the clock in the tall tower opposite found that he would have time to take it over to Tilly before he could get any extras. It was some distance, but Ted knew one or two short cuts, and by running he could be back in a jiffy. As he fought his way through a crowd and out into a broad street that lay between him and the McCord tenement he came near being run over by a fire-engine that dashed along at that moment. Fires were too common in that neighborhood to attract much attention, and Ted thought nothing of it until he turned into the side street where, four flights up, Tilly was waiting for him.

Then Ted saw the engine had reached this place ahead of him and that others were there, while still others were coming from all directions. A cloud of smoke filled the street from side to side, and a row of policemen were keeping the people back so that the firemen could work without interference. The boy could not tell what house was on fire, but he was filled with a wild dread that drove him through the line of policemen, dodging under their arms and bounding into the dark cloud. A moment later he saw the smoke pouring out of the hallway and first floor windows of his own dwelling place.

He was stopped at the door by a fireman.

“Lemme go!” screamed Ted; “there’s a girl up there! Hall room – top floor!”

“No, there ain’t,” shouted the fireman. “Everybody had time to get out. The house is empty.”

“But I tell you you’re wrong! She’s a lame girl, and all alone on the top floor. She couldn’t get out!”

The fireman looked at the boy an instant and saw that he was in earnest.

“It’s too late, my lad,” he said. “The stairs are burning. The street’s the only way, and I’m afraid it’s too late for that, too, unless she can jump!”

“She can’t jump; she’s a cripple, I tell you, and can’t move. Let me go! You sha’n’t hold me,” and with a fierce wrench Ted tore himself free and bounded up the smoke-hidden stairway.

Straight up into the blinding blackness and cloud of sparks the boy plunged, holding his breath and shielding his face with the folded paper which he still carried. At the top of the first landing he was met by a rush of flame, for it was here the fire had broken out and was hottest. The floor was burning, but he noticed that it still held, and without hesitation he dashed over it to the foot of the second stairway. Here he was staggered by a whirl of flame that singed his eyebrows and seared his cheek. He fought it off with the paper in his hand, which he now saw was burning. He could not see the stairway, but he felt it beneath his feet, and half crazed with pain and horror he sped on straight up through that furnace of withering death.

He could not have been more than a few seconds gaining the top, but it seemed to him an eternity. The clothes upon him were scorching and his flesh was shrivelling. As he reached the second landing he seemed to lose consciousness for a moment, and held on fiercely to the railing to keep from falling backward into the fire. Then new strength came and he rushed madly to the third stairway. This was just beginning to burn, but was thick with black smoke, and the heat from below was frightful. As he gained the top he knew that unless he could fill his lungs with air he must suffocate in a few seconds more. A hall window opened over the alley, and flinging it up a few inches he pushed out his head. The smoke rushed out, too, but he got one whiff of fresh air and strength. Then he staggered up the fourth and last stairway, where there was no fire as yet, but only the choking blackness.

He saw that his door – the door of the little hall room in front – was closed. He burst it open, then quickly closed it again. There was less smoke in there, and, sitting by the window, her head bowed forward and praying, was Tilly. She heard him enter and looked up.

“Ted!” she cried joyfully. “Oh, Ted!” Then her face filled with a wild fear.

“Oh, why did you come?” she wailed. “Now we must both die!”

The boy tried to speak, but found that he could not. The smoke and fire had grappled his throat too fiercely. His plan had been to carry Tilly to the roof, and thence to the next house, which was near the same height, but when he had seized her in his arms and reached the door the smoke and heat hurled him backward. He threw the door shut once more, and bore her back to the window. Then he looked down into the street, and gave a hoarse cry as the fresh air filled his lungs. Scaling ladders were being put up, and the fireman he had seen below was but a few feet beneath the window.

“I can’t get any higher,” he called. “You must hand her down to me.”

Ted groaned. The distance was considerable and Tilly was entirely helpless. He did not believe it could be done, but he seized her in his arms once more and lifted her over the sill. The fireman reached up, but there were three feet or more between his hands and the helpless and fainting girl.

“Drop her!” he called. “It’s the only chance!”

For a moment Ted hesitated. Then he closed his eyes and let go his hold. When he looked a second later the fireman was clutching Tilly tightly with one arm and steadying himself with the other.

“You will have to jump!” he shouted. “They are bringing the life nets!”

As Ted watched him descend he heard the flames roaring in the hall outside. There was no other escape. Then he noticed that his hands were blackened and charred, and when he touched his face the flesh broke.

“What’s the good o’ jumpin’?” he thought. “I’m cooked anyway.” But as they drew away the ladder and spread the net below he rose on the sill, and, closing his eyes, leaped.

When next he opened them he was in a large light room, and there were rows of beds on either side of him. There was a chair by his bed and somebody was sitting in it and reading. It was Tilly, and Ted noticed that the paper she held was blackened and charred.

“Tilly,” he said, feebly, and there was a sharp pain in his throat, “I come over to bring you a paper.”

The girl started.

“Yes, Ted,” she whispered. “I know – and  – and you are going to live – and I got the paper, Ted. This is it. I took it out of your hand when you carried me. I shall always keep it. Oh, Ted!” and the little girl began to cry.

In the night extras there was a full account of the fire and Ted’s bravery. There were pictures, too, of himself and Tilly and the brave fireman. Also one of Tilly’s mother, who had known nothing of the fire until it was over.

Then, the next day, the papers started subscriptions for the “gallant newsboy,” as they called him, and there was rivalry between them as to who should obtain the most. I will not tell you just how much they got, but it was more than enough to replace the McCord’s furniture and to start the news-stand when Ted got well. Also to provide skilled treatment for Tilly, who became so strong within a year that she now sits in a big chair in the little cubby-box, and sells papers and magazines for Ted, while her mother keeps house for them all in a front flat on the south side, where the sun shines in nearly all day.

—

A MAGIC POOL

In India, the Hindoo fakir, or yogi, will sometimes sit for hours staring into a bowl of clear water. It is said that he sees in its depths events which are taking place in distant parts of the world. It is also said that through magic he can cause another to behold these things. This has been disputed. It has also been accounted for as being due to hypnotism and in various other ways. I cannot say what is truth in the matter.

My story, however, lies nearer home and I can speak more certainly of what occurred. It is of a young girl named Nesla, who lived on the edge of a forest not far from a very large city, and of a pool of clear water that had been left by the rain under a wide-spreading tree in the hollow of a dark mossy stone.

Nesla’s parents were well-to-do farmers. Being an only child she had been indulged somewhat, and from reading a great many stories had grown romantic. She was tired of her country home and longed for the whirl and excitement of the city, which she regarded as pleasure. Often she would wander with her book into the forest back of her home, and there in the shade she would read and dream.

On one of these days – it was in the summer and very beautiful – Nesla wandered with her book further into the woods than usual. The book contained a story of fashionable life in the metropolis, and as Nesla read the cleverly told tale she sighed, and, closing the book, regarded the beautiful forest about her with a look of displeasure and regret.

“I’m sick of these old woods!” she exclaimed, “where there’s never any life but the birds that screech all day long, and the squirrels and rabbits that hop about and stare at me so foolishly!” Then noticing a tree much larger than any she had seen in the forest before, she approached it and presently came to the dark mossy stone with its pool of clear water.

She was surprised to find the little pool there and dipped her fingers into it to make sure that it was really water. Then resting on her folded arms she looked into it intently, thinking.

By and by, as she looked, she saw a bright object glimmering in the water. She thought it was a spot of sunlight at first, but as she looked it became a vista, then houses appeared, and soon it became a wide city street with gaily dressed people moving to and fro and rolling carriages. Then the forest and the twittering birds seemed to slip away, and Nesla found herself so near to her vision that she could hear the voices of the people and understand their words.

Right before her was an open carriage. It was driven by a very grand coachman, who sat by the side of a very grand footman, and drawn by a span of beautiful bays. In this carriage sat a handsomely dressed lady and a girl of about Nesla’s own age. Nesla’s heart beat quickly.

“Oh,” she thought, “how happy she must be!” but just then the girl spoke to her mother, and Nesla, listening eagerly, heard her say:

“It’s just too bad, Mamma, to make me come out in this hot old carriage today. You know how I dislike calling, and I have set my heart on going to the country today, too.”

“But, Constance, you cannot always do as you like. You know the Estens asked me particularly to bring you to see them, and they are very wealthy. When you come out in society they can be of great service to you.”

“Oh, Mamma, I wish I never had to hear that word society again. I don’t want to come out. People in society do nothing but dress and go, and fret from morning till night. When I am grown I mean to go away into the beautiful country, where there are green trees and singing birds and sweet meadows, and I will stay there forever.”

Nesla could not hear any more, for the carriage passed out of sight, but the girl’s words had made her wonder.

“She must have a very unhappy disposition,” she thought, “to speak like that when she has so much. I am sure I would gladly change places with her.”

Just then another beautiful carriage rolled into view, in which sat a girl somewhat older, alone. She was leaning forward and speaking to the coachman.

“You must hurry,” Nesla heard her say. “I shall be late now, I am sure.” Then she leaned back in the cushions and Nesla heard her talking to herself crossly.

“These early luncheons are a perfect nuisance,” she was saying. “One has to rush and hurry to get ready, and then they drag along and leave no time for shopping before dinner. If one only didn’t have to dress for dinner, or could only go to bed and rest afterward! But there’s that reception tonight at Van Loo’s, and then the opera and the supper at Cary’s – oh, dear, I know if we were just back on the dear old farm once more I’d look fresher and be a thousand times happier!”

Then her carriage, like the other, passed from view, and left Nesla reflecting on her words. “It doesn’t say anything like that in the books,” she thought. “They always seem to have time in the books for everything and to enjoy it all.”

A third beautiful carriage was now right before Nesla. There was quite a family in this carriage, and they all seemed very happy.

“Ah!” thought Nesla. “These are the storybook people.”

“Oh, Robert,” one of the ladies was saying to a handsome, middle-aged man, “how delightful it will be! I can hardly wait until we start.”

“I can’t, either,” exclaimed a young girl. “Just think of being able to spend one whole summer in a big old farmhouse, where we can do just as we like, and not have to dress and go, or receive company. Oh, Papa, can’t we stay right there always?”

“I am afraid not, dear; but we will stay as long as possible, and will try and get a breath of the good green woods and fields that will last us and keep us content until we can go again next summer.”

Nesla hardly had time to reflect on this before another carriage appeared. In this sat a handsome boy of perhaps eighteen, and a girl whom Nesla took to be his sister. She looked like him, only she was so pale and fragile.

“We will get away now just as quickly as we can,” the boy was saying. “You will be able to travel in a week, and then for green fields and running brooks. They will build you up and make you strong and well again. This rush and turmoil and noise is enough to kill a well person.”

The girl smiled eagerly.

“Oh, yes, Tom,” she said, “and we will go out into the woods where there are ferns and mosses and wild flowers, and we will listen to the birds and watch the rabbits and the squirrels and make ourselves believe that we never have to go back to the city again.”

As they passed from view Nesla heaved a long sigh. Then as she waited for another carriage to appear the beautiful street seemed to grow dimmer and fade away. Soon it was only a bright spot again; then that, too, disappeared, and Nesla was once more looking into the little clear pool on the mossy stone. She rubbed her eyes and looked about her. The sun was getting low, for its light was coming in under the branches of the trees and all the birds were singing to it their farewell chorus. A squirrel overhead was chattering and throwing down nuts. A rabbit not far away was sitting up and staring at her wonderingly. She turned and looked into the pool once more, but it had grown dark. Then all at once she ran swiftly in the direction of her home, like a fairy flitting through the sunlit woods.

She did not notice at first that she had left her book behind her, and when she remembered did not go back for it. When she reached her home her mother was standing in the doorway.

“Oh, Mother,” cried Nesla, “how beautiful the world is, everywhere!”

Once afterward she sought for the magic pool, but the dark, mossy stone and the wide spreading, tree were nowhere to be found.

—

AN EASTER TEMPTATION

“I am going to give you the money, Nell, and let you buy it yourself,” said Mrs. Thorne rather wearily. “What with company yesterday, and getting your dress ready today, and Flaxie cross and half sick with a cold, I simply haven’t the courage to go to the milliner’s with you.”

The little girl looked up brightly. She was barely thirteen, and the thought of going all alone to Miss Prim’s for her new Easter finery was rather pleasant to her.

“Oh, Mamma, you don’t need to go! I’m sure you don’t! I can pick out just what I want, and if you don’t like it when it comes home we can change it, you know. I might go down right away and see what Miss Prim has. May I, Mamma?” and the little girl rose eagerly.

“Why, yes, Nell, I suppose so. You can tell Miss Prim that you want to see what she has and the prices, and that you will be in tomorrow to take one. Don’t go over two dollars and a half, Nellie. That is all I can afford this time. That ought to buy really a very nice hat for a little girl. Not too much trimming, remember. I don’t believe in so much show for Easter as some folks make. Good-by, dear; be home early.”

Nellie had been hastily putting on her things as her mother talked, and was out the door almost before she had finished. She tried to walk at first, but her feet kept going faster and faster, until she was fairly in a run, before she was halfway to Miss Prim’s little shop, which was quite in the center of the village.

At Miss Prim’s she was all upset. There were so many hats, and most of them so pretty and becoming, that she could not choose. She had almost decided upon a dainty little Leghorn, trimmed with violets and daisies, when her eye caught a hat in another case that made her forget all the others. It was richer and more profusely trimmed. When Miss Prim placed it beside the others, they looked cheap and scanty.

“Oh, Miss Prim, how much is it?” she asked, breathlessly.

“I have been asking four dollars for it, but it is so near Easter now you may have it cheaper. You may have it for three and a half.”

The girl’s face fell. It was a dollar more than she could pay.

“I am afraid it is more than Mamma can afford this year,” she said, regretfully. All the way home she thought of that beautiful hat. She walked rather slowly now, thinking and thinking very hard. She knew it would be useless to ask her mother to buy the more expensive hat. Mrs. Thorne was kind, almost indulgent with her children, but she was firm in what she told them. Nellie did not enter the house as gaily as she had left it, and her mother thought her tired.

“You have been finding it hard to choose, Nell,” she said, smiling. “Tell me about it.”

“Yes, Mamma, there were so many. I picked a Leghorn straw, trimmed with violets and daisies. It is two and a half. Miss Prim had another a good deal like it, only lots finer and more trimming, for three and a half that had been four dollars.”

“The cheaper one will do very well this year, I’m sure,” said her mother gently. “We have had a good deal of expense, you know.”

The little girl was very quiet that evening and went to bed early. Far in the night she woke with a start. She had been dreaming of the two hats and Miss Prim. In her dream she had said to Miss Prim, “I cannot buy it, because I have only two dollars and a half,” and Miss Prim had said, “Why, yes, you have, Nellie; you have a gold dollar put away in a drawer at home.” It was this that had made her jump and wake up, for she did have a gold dollar that her uncle, Henry Thorne, had given her once when she was a baby, and it was put away in a drawer, just as Miss Prim had said. She had not thought of this before, and it was of no use to think of it now, for though she had never been told not to spend the dollar, it was only because her mother believed she would never even dream of doing so.

But Nellie did dream of it, over and over, and each time she woke with a start and lay awake a long time. She was pale and silent next morning, and when she set out for Miss Prim’s the money that her mother had given her she carried in her little purse, while deep down in her pocket was Uncle Henry Thorne’s gold dollar. She had not fully decided yet that she was going to spend it, but she felt for it where she kept it in a little ring box under her clothes the first thing when she got up, and the little ring box had been pushed back under her clothes empty when she came down to breakfast.

Miss Prim was unusually pleasant that morning. She brought both hats out to the light for Nellie to see, and said there was more than a dollar’s difference in the two, and Nellie could see that herself. But Miss Prim looked a little surprised when she saw the gold dollar.

“Why,” she said, “I haven’t seen one for a long time. I’ll keep it, I guess, for a little niece of mine.” Then she wrapped up the hat for Nellie, talking pleasantly.

When Nellie started with her purchase there was a feeling of triumph in possessing it that wore off as she walked along. She did not feel at all happy in the way she had expected. She remembered now for the first time that her mother would no doubt wonder at the cheapness of the hat and speak of it in a way that would make her silence equal to a falsehood. She had never told her mother an untruth. Then she remembered how happily she had tripped away to Miss Prim’s yesterday. It did not seem to her that she could be the same little girl.

But Mrs. Thorne said less than Nellie had expected. She was tired and only kissed her pretty daughter.

“Why, Nell,” she smiled, “I don’t see what you would want of more trimming than that. I think a good deal less would have answered. It’s rather old for you now, but will be nice with a little alteration for next year.”

With a sigh of relief Nellie took her purchase to her room. That night she dreamed again. Over and over she thought Miss Prim’s niece had come to see her and brought the gold dollar. Her mother had seen it and said, “Why, that is Nellie’s gold dollar that her uncle Henry Thorne gave her.” And then the little girl had said, “No, it isn’t; it’s mine that my Aunt Hester Prim sent me on Easter.”

When she was dressed in her pretty new gown and ready to go to church next morning she certainly looked very sweet, though she was so pale that her mother said, “I’m afraid you are not well, Nellie. The excitement has been too much for you. Easter isn’t only for pretty things, my dear.”

Flaxie’s cold was no better, and Mrs. Thorne did not go to church. By and by she prepared dinner, thinking Nellie would be home presently and be hungry. Somewhat before she expected her the door suddenly flew open and the little girl burst into the room. The new hat she flung on the table, and rushing to her mother she burst into a torrent of tears and sobs.

“Oh, Mamma! Mamma!” she wailed. “I deceived you. It is the one that cost a dollar more, and I spent the gold dollar that Uncle Henry Thorne gave me when I was little!”

Mrs. Thorne looked grave.

“Tell me all about it, dear,” she said gently.

And Nellie told her everything, dreams and all.

“And then the sermon was about the Resurrection,” she concluded tearfully, “and the preacher said that even our new dresses and our new hats were – were symbols of – of a new life, and should be worn without vanity and with – with purity of heart.” Then she threw herself once more into her mother’s arms and cried as if her own childish heart were breaking.

Mrs. Thorne went herself to Miss Prim’s the next day. The little milliner had not parted with the gold dollar, and when she heard the story of it she exchanged it willingly and said she would exchange the hat too. At first Mrs. Thorne thought it best not to do this, but after reflecting a few moments decided that it would be too severe on Nellie to make her wear so long the hat she now hated, and when she left took the pretty little Leghorn that Nellie had first chosen. Nellie herself returned a little later with the other, and Miss Prim kissed her and gave her some lemon drops, and told her that she had proven herself a sweet and worthy child. And Nellie may have cried the least bit, but she was very happy.

—

A  PUNCTURED TIRE

Bess Coleman and her brother Clarence were not on the best of terms that morning. There had been a difference of opinion the evening before as to the route they should take for their Saturday’s wheeling, and while Clarence, at his father’s suggestion, had finally given in, he had not done so with the best grace.

The boy wanted to take the route by the North Shore, where a number of sailboats were kept by fellows he knew, and the sister had stood out for the old Mills road, along which lived a girl that had been in her class the year before and was now an invalid. A heavy rain during the night did not help matters, and when Clarence at breakfast made one more stand for the beach route, because, he said, it would be less apt to be muddy, and was assured by his father that the Mills road, being a turnpike in fine condition, would probably be the better of the two, he felt more than ever aggrieved and imposed upon.

He could not refrain from pointing out each bit of mud as they went along and wilfully rode through most of them, while Bess picked her way and kept her wheel and temper both in fairly good condition. She was only human, however, and as they proceeded, and Clarence became more and more aggravating, she replied with some sharpness at last, and a downright quarrel ensued. Then Clarence rode off in a fury a long way ahead, leaving poor Bess to come as she might. He did not intend to desert her, of course. He was sixteen and her bodyguard and protector on all occasions of this kind, but really, matters had gone so far today that he felt she needed a little taste of being alone to reflect on how self-sacrificing and good to her he usually was.

He slackened his speed somewhat when he came to a turn in the road and Bess could not see him, and pedalled along leisurely, reflecting that the valley road below the old dam would certainly be muddy, and that this would be his chance to say, “I told you so,” when his sister came along. The road dipped sharply into this valley, where once there had been a settlement of mill hands, but where now there were small farms and a little village of a dozen or so inhabitants. The old dam above still held and had become a resort for fishermen, though it was believed by many to be unsafe, and complaint from the villagers had resulted in an order for an inspection, that was soon to be made. The boy remembered these things as he rode along, and was thinking how a break would mean a flood like that of Johnstown, on a small scale. He was pleased to see that the rain had been much heavier here and that the road was really getting quite sticky in places as he approached the valley. He thought he had better let Bess catch up and show it to her. He turned his wheel in toward the hedge, however, as he did not care to get unnecessarily muddy unless she was there to witness the performance.

Then something happened. He felt his back wheel flatten and drag, and knew that he had a puncture. To avoid the mud he had run on a hedge thorn, and must dismount and repair his tire. With an angry exclamation he sprang from his wheel and dragged it up on the grass, and glared back to where Bess would soon appear. “I wonder what she’ll say, now!” he exclaimed furiously. He was not worse or more vindictive than most boys, but he felt that he was injured and badly treated. Then he tore open his repair bag for his pump. Now came the last straw. His pump was not there. He had used it the evening before, and in the heat of argument had forgotten to replace it. He stood helplessly for a moment, then threw the things back into the bag and mounted hastily.

“I’ll never ask her for her pump,” he thought. “I’ll ride with a flat tire first!” But he made wretched progress, and presently he heard the light click of a chain that told of his sister’s approach.

“Why, Clarence,” she said, pleasantly, as she came up, “your back tire is punctured. Didn’t you know it?”

“What do you take me for?” he growled. “Don’t you suppose I know anything?”

The girl dismounted. She had entirely recovered her temper.

“Let’s stop and repair it,” she said. “I’m tired and feel like resting a bit, anyway.” She was opening her repair kit as she spoke. Like a flash it had come to her that Clarence had left his pump where she had seen it lying the night before. “Never mind opening your tool bag,” she continued, “I have all the things.”

The girl’s gentle manner and the subtle delicacy of her proffered assistance were more than her brother’s ill-humor could withstand. After all, Bess was his only sister, and he loved her, and she was pretty. These things all count in the long run. He was silent at first, but he accepted her kit and pump. He repaired the puncture; then, as he bent over and began pumping, he burst out laughing. In a moment the girl’s arms were about his neck.

“You behave yourself,” he said, pretending to struggle. “You knew very well I had left my pump at home. I wouldn’t be so deceitful.”

Then they both laughed again, while Clarence finished, and replaced her kit. As he did so there came something that made him pause. It was a sound such as he had never heard before – a breaking, ripping sound, followed by a roar as of a huge boiling caldron. For a moment the two stared at each other, then suddenly it came to them.

“The dam!” they exclaimed together. “The dam’s gone out!”

Instantly they were on their wheels and rushing to the valley. It was only a step to the open, where they could see. A quarter of a mile up the hollow a mass of logs, timbers, and water was bearing down on the little village, a roaring, grinding wall of destruction. A dozen people were running about frantically, some making straight for the high ground, others turning back into their houses to save family or some poor treasure. The girl looked only at the village. The boy’s eye swept the little valley from end to end. A hundred yards below the village, where the narrow stream widened, there was a small landing and two rude skiffs.

“The boats! The boats!” he shouted.

They were descending the first slope now and turned their wheels into the little meadow that lay between them and the landing. As they drew nearer they could see that the oars were in one of the boats and that a man from the village was running swiftly with another pair.

“The water will spread some before it gets here!” shouted Clarence, as they sped along. “We must get to that other boat and try to save somebody!”

The distance was very short, but it seemed long. The boy leaped from his wheel while they were still on comparatively high ground, and the girl followed suit. Then they ran down the slope and leaped into the big, clumsy boat that contained the oars. It was tied to a ring, and Clarence cut the rope with his knife just as the advance rush of water reached the village, and, checked a little by the houses, spread and divided and poured on, carrying a strange drift of life and property. A moment later the boat was lifted and borne upward by the flood.

The boy and girl were both skilled oarsmen. They lived near the Sound and had followed in the wake of many a steamer. They knew just what to do, and they did it instantly. Each held an oar, and with a strong pull together they sent the boat out of the central current, where there was immediate danger from the heavy drift that followed close on the first swell. The tide was swift here, too, but they could look about them.

They saw people clinging to logs and boards, and one pair of small hands that were flung upward and grasped nothing. The little hands disappeared, but a moment later came up again, and the boy and girl were sweeping along above them. Clarence bent over the side, while Bess steadied the boat. It was a little girl, and when she was dragged into the boat she seemed lifeless. The man in the other boat was busy, too. On they went with the flood, that widened more and more with the valley and became less swift. They picked up a woman, who was clinging to a board, and a little further down a man, who gave a cry when he saw the little girl, who was breathing now and returning to consciousness. Others drifted in to shore and reached high ground.

They were more than a mile below the village when they finally pulled to the bank and tied the boat. The man they had saved carried the little girl in his arms and showered blessings on them. Her mother and one other, a child, were the only ones missing when the flood had passed and the villagers had returned to their ruined homes. These two were found that night, far below. As for Clarence and Bess, they were heroes. There was nearly a whole page about the disaster in the papers next day, with their pictures at the head.

They found their wheels where they had left them, and uninjured, though they had been covered by the outer edges of the flood. They did not continue their journey that day, and as they rode homeward through the spring afternoon the girl said thoughtfully: “Oh, Clarence, how fortunate that your tire was punctured just there! We might have been too far beyond to help otherwise.”

She did not say, “How glad I am that we came the Old Mills road,” though she might have done so. But she knew that Clarence was glad now, too.

—

HIDING EASTER EGGS

In some portions of the Middle West it was the custom twenty years ago for farm boys to begin several weeks before Easter and take from the hens’ nests one or two eggs each day without the knowledge of their parents. These eggs were hidden in a safe place in the haymow, and on Easter morning after breakfast the boys of each neighborhood gathered together with their booty and there was a grand egg roast and feast in the woods. Fathers, remembering their own boyhood, often condoned the practice, and mothers, too, sometimes, but in the case of Jerry Brown’s parents, who had come not long before from a frugal district in New Hampshire, there had been a strict order issued against anything of the sort.

Jerry had a number of friends who were “hiding eggs,” and who told him each day at school just how many they had. They told him, also, of the great joy that attended the secret gathering and feast in the woods on Easter forenoon, and every night when Jerry collected the beautiful fresh eggs from the mangers and barrels and dark corners of the barn he was tempted sorely. They had a great many chickens – more than anyone in the neighborhood – and one or two eggs each day for a few days would never be missed. All the boys did it, and nobody except his own parents considered it any harm. This thought came every night with egg hunting time, and each day as the hens laid more freely and Easter drew nearer his resistance grew less and less.

One evening – it was the Monday before Easter – he found, far down under the barn eaves, just above the stable, a new nest. There was one fresh, warm egg in it, and after a moment’s hesitation he left it there. By Sunday morning there would be five more. Six eggs would be enough for his part of the feast. It did not seem so bad just to leave the eggs there. His parents had told him not to hide eggs, but they had said nothing about leaving them in the nest. He made himself believe that this was not the same and that he was really obeying orders. Jerry was only a boy of thirteen, remember, and no worse perhaps than most boys of his age, or than some very much older.

He was not quite so sure of his position as days passed. He thought about it a great deal, and many times was on the point of bringing the eggs to the house in the evening with the others. Each time, however, he remembered that he had told the boys at school that he would join them on Easter morning with six eggs. This had seemed a small number to the most of them, some of whom had as many as twenty, but they were glad he was going and told over and over what a good time they always had. But on Saturday there was no school and Jerry had all day to think about it. He had a book to read, but somehow he couldn’t get interested. So he went to the corn-crib and shelled enough corn to last the chickens through the coming week. This was his regular Saturday’s job, and perhaps there is no other occupation that leaves the mind so free for reflection as shelling corn. Jerry shelled and thought and shelled. His father returned from town during the afternoon and brought with him a bulky package. It was a new suit of clothes which Jerry had wished for very much. Then Jerry thought and shelled harder than ever, and by and by, when he had finished and gathered the eggs, he found it almost impossible to leave the six that were hidden in the haymow far down under the eaves. He left them, however, and went in to supper. Then he found that his mother had scrambled some eggs with bits of ham in them, his favorite dish.

“Eggs are high,” she said, “and farmers can hardly afford to eat them, but Jerry’s been working this afternoon, and he’s fond of them. I’ll make some custard for you tomorrow, Jerry, for Easter.”

“Jerry is a good boy,” said his father.

Now Jerry doted on custard, and the appreciation of his parents, coupled with his favorite dishes, affected his conscience sorely. He went to bed early after supper, but he could not sleep. He dropped into a troubled doze now and then, but always woke with a start. By and by he heard his parents breathing heavily in the next room, and knew they were asleep. Then he rose softly and drew on his clothes. It was a cloudy, dark night, but he knew he could find his way. He would slip out through the back door of the kitchen to the barn, and he would put those eggs with the others in the pantry. Then perhaps he could sleep. He was not afraid, and as he stepped out into the moist spring night he began to feel better.

He entered the barn from the front. Then he crept up the ladder to the mow and over the hillocks of hay down under the eaves. He had barely taken up the eggs, three in each hand, and was going to turn back with them, when suddenly his heart stood still. Just below him in the stable were voices of men entering.

“We’ll have to get in through the parlor window,” said one. “The blind is off there. We may have to wake the old man up to make him find the money for us, but if he makes any fuss hit him with the billy.”

“You’re sure he’s got the money, are you?”

“I saw him get it today in town. Sold his wheat and got six hundred in cash.”

“An’ there ain’t nobody else there?”

“Nobody but a boy we can knock in the head if he wakes up.”

Jerry felt the cold sweat pouring off of him. They were planning to rob his father and perhaps murder them all. He must get out at once and give the warning. Then the thought came to him that his father would want to know what he was doing in the barn at that hour. He would have to confess about the eggs. These things flashed through his mind in a second’s time, and in another he had thought of a dozen stories to account for his being in the barn. Then he thought it would be better to slip out and back to the house and not rouse his father until he heard the men at the parlor window. He began to wriggle softly from under the eaves, but it seemed to him that the dry hay made a frightful noise. He felt sure the men below must hear him, and he expected them every moment to announce his discovery. He still heard their voices talking, but he did not listen. He had heard enough. His only thought now was to get out safely and into his own room.

At last he stepped out into the open part of the mow. He listened an instant, then softly crept to the back window. He dared not descend the ladder by which he had come. The window was open and only a few feet from the moist ground. When he reached it he sat down on the hay, with his feet hanging out, and pushed himself into the darkness with his hands. He fell in a heap, but was on his feet in an instant and running toward the house. He reached the kitchen, and, closing the door, bolted it. Then he went straight to his father’s room and shook the sleeper.

“Father! Father!” he called, softly; “there are some men in the stable who are going to rob the house. They are coming to the parlor window! I was in the haymow, where I had been hiding Easter eggs and heard them.” Then he broke out crying, for after all, as I said before, he was only a boy of thirteen.

Jerry’s father leaped out of bed instantly, and, throwing on some clothes, seized an army musket which stood in the corner. He had borne the musket through the war and was not greatly frightened at the thought of two cowardly burglars. Jerry’s mother, who was a heavy sleeper, had not awakened. Followed by Jerry, Mr. Brown went into the parlor and softly raised the window. Then he sat down in a chair, resting the musket on the sill. Jerry, still sobbing with remorse and fear, crept to his side. The father reached out and took the boy’s hand.

“That’s all right, Jerry,” he said. “I was a boy once. You can have all the eggs tomorrow you want.”

Presently they heard the gate-latch lift softly and dimly saw two figures approaching the house. It was very dark within and the men outside could not see that the window was open.

“Stop right where you are!” said Jerry’s father calmly, when they were within a few feet of the musket. “You are covered and the first man that moves dies!”

There was a curse from one of the men and both stopped.

“Throw up your hands!” commanded Jerry’s father, and two pairs of hands were seen to rise in the darkness.

“Now, Jerry,” said Mr. Brown, “take this musket. It’s cocked, and if either of them makes a move, kill him.”

Jerry had handled that musket before and knew how to use it. He took it now, and his father opened the door and stepped out into the yard. In a moment he had cut a long piece from the clothes-line.

“Now, gentlemen,” he said, “you will bring your hands down behind you. While I am tying this scamp, Jerry, keep the other one covered, and if he moves, shoot.”

Twenty minutes later Jerry’s father had the burglars in the wagon and on his way to jail. Mrs. Brown slept through it all and knew nothing of it until the next morning. After breakfast Jerry set out with a light heart and a full dozen beautiful eggs for the Easter gathering in the woods. His mother called him a hero, but Jerry was never quite sure of it.

—

TWO MAY BASKETS

This is not an exciting story. It is only a true history of something that happened to four happy-hearted schoolmates so long ago that they don’t mind its being told now.

I wonder if boys still hang May baskets. They did then, and it was a pretty custom. If the custom is kept up today I suppose the baskets are very fine and costly, like everything else, but in those days we made our own baskets and filled them with flowers of our own gathering. Sometimes we may have slipped in a little present, too, but its value was only because of its associations, though I am sure that was a good deal to the one who received it, while the joy of creeping stealthily through the warm spring dusk to hang the festooned token on a little sweetheart’s door knob clings to me through all the years.

Clara Liffey and Hattie Nelson were seat-mates at school and nearly always good friends. Always, I believe, except one time, and they didn’t move their seats even then. I do not know what they disagreed about – I don’t think they remember now themselves, but it was because of this difference that I am writing a story today.

Joe Harris and Jim Preston were also seat-mates over on the boys’ side of the house, and I can’t remember that they ever quarrelled at all, but then boys are different. I don’t mean that they are any better than girls – nor as good – but then a boys’ quarrel usually means a fight and is not begun lightly.

As I have said, neither Clara nor Hattie moved her seat during the time of their estrangement and if anything they loved each other better that week than ever before, but they “did not speak,” and they sat one on either end of the bench and looked steadily into their books. Joe and Jim knew about it and pretended to treat the matter very gravely. The four were school sweethearts, though I believe there was never at that time any very strict or lasting arrangement as to which belonged to which, and wherever they went, all went together

It was the last week in April when the two girls were at odds, and the day of May baskets was approaching. Every year each had received one from either Joe or Jim, who prepared them with great care and hung them with great secrecy. The baskets were usually exactly alike. This year, however, the mischievous lads told each girl solemnly that she had been very badly treated by her former friend and that as a punishment no May basket could be expected by the offender. The boys knew perfectly well that there would be a “make up” and a love feast between the girls in a few days, and they were only having their little joke out of it, as boys will.

But to Clara and Hattie it was all very serious. When Clara thought of Hattie rising early in the morning and running to the door knob, only to find it empty, she became wretched. When Hattie pictured Clara doing this she lost sleep. Each knew that their quarrel was no quarrel at all and each was too proud to own it and ask forgiveness. The little green baskets had become very precious to them and something to look forward to. That either was to be deprived of this token laid a burden of sorrow and remorse upon the other. This feeling grew as the days passed. On the last night of April they were sorely tempted to fall, weeping, into each other’s arms. They lived side by side, and it was not until they reached Clara’s gate and she had turned in that Hattie knew whether she was going in with her to have it all out or not. When she arrived at her own room she burst into tears.

She was rather silent during supper and went to her room soon after. Her father rallied her.

“Well, Puss, who hangs your basket tonight  – Jim or Joe?”

She tried to laugh, but did not reply in words.

“I am afraid Hattie is not very well,” said her mother, after she had gone. “She has been quiet and puny looking for nearly a week. I hope she isn’t studying too hard.”

Hattie was studying very hard. She had gone upstairs on purpose to study – not her books, but a more difficult problem. She did not retire, and sat looking out of her window that commanded the street. There were a number of trees in the front yard, and she could not see the walk leading to the gate, but it was very quiet, and after a while she heard the gate click softly and a stealthy footstep below. Her basket was in its place. Then she heard the footsteps once more, and the soft click, and she knew that the coast was clear.

The house was still. She rose, and, stepping out into the hall, crept down the stairs, and, turning the key silently, unlocked the front door. There, in the warm night, hung a large, fragrant offering, cool and fresh and damp. She put her face down to it and drew in the perfume an instant; then, lifting it from the knob, slipped noiselessly down the walk. The distance to Clara’s was not far, and the walk was shadowed by trees, so that there was scarcely any chance of her being seen. Half way, however, she heard an approaching step and drew back hastily behind a tree. When the light footfall had passed she hurried on. It was all quiet in the Liffey yard, and she hung the basket on Clara’s door and withdrew safely, though her heart was pounding at a tremendous rate. On her return she thought she heard a light footstep again, but when she listened all was silent.

As she once more reached her own door her heart gave a great bound. There hanging on the knob in the dark was another large, fragrant basket like the first! At first she was unable to comprehend. Then it came to her that Jim and Joe had each prepared a basket and had given them both to her. It was one of the boys, no doubt, that had passed her in the dark. She felt a great joy now in what she had done. She left the basket on the knob and stole up to her room. She did not fall asleep right away, but when she did at last she slept until the sunlight fell across her bed. Then she dressed hastily and ran down for the basket.

“You’re up pretty late, Sis, for May Day,” laughed her father, who passed her in the hall. “That basket’ll get wilted waiting for you.”

She carried it in and placed it on the breakfast table, after freshening up the flowers. Underneath the violets scattered on top she had found a little blue penwiper. She wondered what Clara had found in the other basket.

It was the custom to take May baskets to school. When the girls met at their desks that morning there was still some embarrassment between them, and a trace of moisture, I believe, in their eyes, but all coldness had vanished. Hattie set down her basket and took out the little blue penwiper. Then Clara set down her basket and drew from it a little yellow penwiper. They longed to compare them and to show their baskets to each other, but they could not quite do it – not yet.

Presently Jim and Joe came in and hurried over, each with a broad grin on his face, but when they saw the blue penwiper on Hattie’s side of the desk and the yellow penwiper on Clara’s they looked puzzled. They jumped to the conclusion that the girls were good friends once more.

“Oh,” said Jim, at last, “you traded, didn’t you? I told Joe that the yellow one was best for Clara, because she is dark, and the blue one for you, because you’re light, but Joe said – Joe said—”

But what Joe said did not matter, for what Jim said had caused the two girls at first to stare at each other and then to fall laughing and crying into each other’s arms. The boys stared, too, for a moment, and then wanted to know what it all meant. But Hattie and Clara answered through smiles and tears that it was a secret – a very great secret which they would never tell to anybody.

And though Jim and Joe begged all through the term they did not tell them. And they never did tell them, until as much as six years later, when one day they answered another question that meant another day of flowers and gifts and happiness. Then Hattie told Joe and Clara told Jim how on that long ago night they had hung their baskets each on the other’s door. The boys’ deception, they declared, had been a mean joke to play on two girls, but they now forgave them.

And on their wedding morning, which was also the 1st of May, each girl found upon her door a large May basket. And underneath the violets on top of Hattie’s lay a yellow penwiper. And underneath the violets on top of Clara’s lay a blue one. And so each at last came into her own.

—

A PROBLEM SOLVED

Tom Henderson and his sister Josie were seated one on either side of the kitchen table with the lamp between them. Josie was bending over her slate figuring busily, while Tom, to whom mathematics was always a sore trial, was staring first at the lamp, then at his open arithmetic beside him, and finally at his slate, on which there were a lot of useless figures that nobody could explain, and a sketch of Josie that, though somewhat crude, anybody would have recognized. He added a touch to it here and there as the patter of Josie’s pencil continued, and he sat waiting the result.

“I’ve got it, Tom,” she said at last, looking up triumphantly. “It’s one of the hardest and longest examples in the book, I believe, and I thought I would have to give it up.”

“What a hand you are at figures, Jos,” said the boy humbly. “I couldn’t have worked that sum out in a hundred years. How did you do it?”

So then she explained. She was a bright girl of fifteen, two years younger than her brother, but figures were her strong point. She had helped him with his problems ever since they had started to the country school together ten years before, when they both used one little slate and Tom could not even add two and two and be sure of putting the correct answer below the line. Now she stood at the head of the class in mathematics, and Tom, who was perfect in reading and early history, was struggling along, and trying with her help to keep up. It hurt his pride to fall behind Josie and boys of his own age, and it would have hurt Josie still more, for she had abiding faith in her tall brother, who could sing and draw, and knew all the Roman kings off by heart. The boy listened now, and worked through the intricate puzzle under her direction until he understood and fixed it in his memory, where, he said, once there, it would never get away. Then they went to bed, for it was getting late, and the Hendersons, being farmers, were early risers. As Josie, a few moments later, lay looking out at the stars, she had forgotten all about the hard example and was thinking of a pretty new dress which her mother had promised her if she kept up her good percentage in her classes. She was so sure of herself in arithmetic that she did not need to worry over her “sums” after she had once mastered them, while the new dress was something still to look forward to. Tom, in the next room, however, was going over the solution mentally and fixing it safely in his mind. When he had done this twice he began to find that the figures mingled and ran together, and mixed up with the dates of the first and second Punic wars, and then he dreamed that he was an artist in a big city and painting pictures like those in an old book which his parents had brought from the East, and was on a shelf down stairs.

It was cold and crisp the next morning when the brother and sister started on the half mile walk to the white frame school house, where many as good an education had been begun as in some of the most stately academies of the land.

“Have you got your example in your mind, Jos?” asked the boy, as they ran along briskly together.

The girl laughed. “Oh, that’s all right. I can do it over any time,” she said gaily.

They were a handsome, buoyant pair, so the young schoolmaster thought as they entered, and he wondered if Tom realized what a good looking sister he had, and what a smart one. Tom realized it more than the schoolmaster knew, and his appreciation of her he was soon to show.

The class in higher arithmetic was the second to be called, and, after a few preliminary questions, the half dozen young ladies and gentle men that formed this advanced body were sent to the blackboards that were ranged on both sides of the room. Problems were given out, and from one to five minutes, in accordance with their difficulty, were allowed for each. Most of the class had little trouble in reaching the correct results in the time given, and Tom, thanks to his wonderful memory and artistic skill, usually came through smiling with a blackboard exhibit that was a pleasure to behold.

At last came the hard problem of the day (the hard one of the book, Josie had said, and Josie knew). Five minutes were allowed for this example, and most of the class made a hopeless attempt to do something that might at least show a partial understanding of the proposition. One young man of twenty, who had started to school late in life and was trying by diligence to make up, had mastered the task the night before, after many hours of toil, and now proceeded to place it on the board in an uncondensed and laborious manner. Tom, as usual, outlined the method and result in beautiful form and stood biting his chalk and listening to the quick tapping of Josie’s chalk on the board opposite. Suddenly the tapping ceased, and Tom turned, expecting to see his sister also facing the teacher and waiting for time to be called.

He was surprised, therefore, to see her still turned to the board, eraser in hand and hurriedly running over the figures she had made. He could see that the side of her face was unusually pink and he knew that something was wrong. He glanced up at the clock. Only one minute more, and the seconds were flying. Tom glanced at his own clean analysis. If Josie would only look around! But that she would never do.

Poor Josie! Her assurance of skill had been better than her memory. In one little place she had added where she should have subtracted. It was such a little thing, but, oh! what a difference it made. Like lightning she ran over her figures again and again, and in her nervous haste she could not see the error. She looked wildly at the clock. But a half minute was left and she could not, oh! she could not, find her mistake.

Torn saw that despairing look. He turned to his own handsome figures and laid his hand on the eraser that lay on the little shelf beneath. A moment he hesitated, then he swept it twice across all his beautiful work. A second later he heard the mad patter of Josie’s chalk again, and turned to look just as the young master’s voice called reluctantly:

“Time’s up!”

With one final stroke of her chalk Josie Henderson wheeled, facing him, flushed and triumphant.

“I find there are but two who have the correct result,” said the master gently. “They are Richard Birdsall and Josie Henderson.”

A great wave of joy swept over Tom. Josie had found her mistake just in time.

That was five years ago. Tom Henderson is a magazine illustrator today in a great Eastern city. The schoolmaster is there, too; he is principal in a school that is beginning to be known for its thoroughness, and Miss Josie Henderson is his first assistant.

—

CHRISTMAS EVE

AT THE GULCH

I.

The mines had been shut down for six weeks, and money in the camp was scarce. Bad weather had set in early, and the continued rain found its way through the roof of many a cabin. There was beginning to be sickness.

In the cabin of Sandy Carson there was a little girl – the only little girl in the camp – very ill. A cold at first, then a fever, had come, and day after day, little sunny-haired Nellie Carson, whom the miners had loved and petted and spoiled since the first day of her arrival, steadily grew worse and wasted until the whole camp spoke in whispers, even up at the Red Light, where they were gambling.

Sandy Carson and his wife, with their one child, had arrived at the camp late in the fall, with barely enough money to pay the teamster who brought them, and there had been little mining weather since. As stated at the beginning, money in the camp was scarce, but it was, perhaps, more so in the Carson cabin than under any other roof in The Gulch. This fact had made no difference to Dr. Dick, who worked a claim in pleasant weather and practised medicine between times. He remained with the Carsons day and night, almost, and the miners knew that he would save Nellie if human skill could avail.

They were as anxious as he to do what they could for the child, and had ordered expensive luxuries by the stage, that came down twice a week from Green Valley, and once, by Dr. Dick’s advice, they had summoned a great physician from the city, who had charged them one hundred dollars only to tell them that Dr. Dick was doing all that anybody living could do, and that the fever must run its course.

To Dr. Dick, who now hung over the little sufferer’s bed and watched the fluttering breath, and felt the little hot wasted hand, it seemed that its course was about run. The parents, exhausted with watching, were in the next room asleep. His patient had been delirious at times, and as he leaned over her she began muttering. “Is it Christmas yet, Mamma?” she whispered. “You said I could have a doll when Christmas came, and I want it so bad, Mamma; isn’t it Christmas yet?”

Dr. Dick lifted up his head and stared about helplessly. It was Christmas Eve. He had scarcely thought of it himself until now, but the sick child in her delirium had somehow remembered, and through the burning tide of fever had held fast to a promise of weeks before. The tide was running out now; its force was nearly spent. By morning he believed the moment would come that was to decide between life and death. If only the doll could be there to lay in her hand when consciousness came there was just a chance, a bare chance, that the decision might be – life.

“Isn’t it Christmas yet, Mamma?” she repeated. “Isn’t it Christmas yet?”

When Mrs. Carson awoke Dr. Dick told her.

“Have you the doll?” he asked anxiously.

Tears sprang to the poor woman’s eyes.

“I have never bought it. I have promised it to her for a year. I told her that when Christmas came she should surely have it. Then we moved here, and then Nellie was taken ill, and I did not remember, and oh, Dr. Dick, we have scarcely money for food!”

Half an hour later Dr. Dick went over to the Red Light Hotel for supper. Lounging about the office was the usual crowd. Every other occupation ceased when the doctor entered.

“How is she? How is she tonight, Doc?” they asked in a subdued chorus.

It was raining outside and the newcomer walked over to the fire.

“There’ll be a change by morning or before. I can’t tell you till then.” He paused and, turning suddenly, added, “Boys, is there anybody here that will ride over to Green Valley tonight?”

There was a moment of silence. Green Valley, the nearest town of any size, was a good twenty miles away and the roads were believed to be impassable. The stage had missed two trips. Creeks were swollen and the mud in places would be to the horses’ knees. A gang of outlaws infested one part of the road and the stage had been fired on. Presently one of the men spoke.

“Any of us would go,” he said, “but I don’t believe there’s a horse in the camp that would carry a grown man there and back tonight, and the Kid here wouldn’t care to risk it, I reckon.”

“Let the Kid talk for himself,” answered a brisk voice, and a boyish figure stepped out facing Dr. Dick. “What’s wanted at Green Valley?”

The doctor looked at his questioner. The boy could not be more than seventeen, and was slight for his age. He was supposed to be a runaway and had drifted into camp one day from nobody knew where. Since then he had been mining and gambling and appeared to be an expert at both. He gave his name as Ellis, but the men had christened him the Kid, and when little Nell came he had for some reason become her slave. Since her illness he had gambled very little. During the last few days none at all.

“Well,” said Dr. Dick slowly, as he looked at the slender figure, “perhaps it is nothing that will do any good, but tomorrow will be Christmas and the little girl has been promised a doll, and remembers it somehow, even in her fever. She is talking and raving about it, and when the change comes, if she is conscious, any disappointment would be bad, of course, and I thought maybe if we had the doll – a big doll – to put right before her – that – perhaps—”

The boy wheeled, facing the listening men.

“Who’s got a horse?” he demanded. “Get me a good horse and I’ll be out of here in three minutes.”

“I have! I have – take mine!” came from different parts of the room.

“I’ve got the best horse in camp,” said a heavy shouldered man named Slag. “I’ll have her here by the time you’re ready,” and he disappeared without waiting for reply.

“The Kid will need money – chip in, boys,” said another, holding out his hat.

The coins rattled into it while the boy was making his only preparation for the ride – drawing on an oiled coat called a “slicker,” loaned him by one of the men. When the hat, heavy with silver, was handed to him he passed it over to Dr. Dick.

“Give that to her folks,” he said. “They need it. I’ll pay for the doll myself.” And without stopping for reply or comment he hurried out to where Slag was waiting with a large, handsome mare that was tossing her head and stamping in the falling rain.

“She’ll take you there and back if any horse can tonight,” said Slag.

The miners crowded out to see him off. It was already dark and the rain was falling heavily.

“Hold her upstream, Kid, when you ford,” called one. “Never let her head get downstream.”

“You’d better lead her when you get to Long Cliff,” said another. “The road must be cut out bad there. She might go over.”

“Nance knows every foot o’ the way,” said Slag. “He don’t need to lead her none.”

“Take my gun, Kid,” said a big-bearded fellow called Whiskers, holding up an immense revolver.

“Too heavy. Got one, thank you. Good-by, boys. I’ll be back by daylight if I come at all,” and with a signal to the restless mare the boy bounded away into the night and rain. The men, listening in silence, heard the splash of the mare’s feet until he reached the woods.

“That Kid’s a brick,” said Whiskers, “but I wish he’d taken my gun.”

“The less he has to carry the better,” said Dr. Dick. “He’s light and got a good horse. It’s a fearful ride, but he may make it.”

They entered, and the doctor, after a hasty supper, returned to the Carson cabin.

II.

The last clerk in the big general store at Green Valley was just getting ready to close for the night. It was past eleven, and the final straggling Christmas Eve customers were gone. He stood in the door for a moment looking out into the darkness and rain and muttering to himself.

“I hate these kind of Christmases,” he grumbled. “I don’t mind if it’s cold, but this rain, rain, rain, and mud and slop all over everything, knocks trade silly, and I’ll bet there ain’t twenty couples over yonder at the dance.” The sound of music came across through the rain, and the blurred lights showed where the society of Green Valley was making merry on Christmas Eve.

He was about to turn back to make the final preparations for closing when another sound came to him from far down the street. It was the splash of horse’s hoofs.

“Hello!” he exclaimed; “somebody coming in late to the dance, I reckon,” but the horseman was turning directly toward the store, and presently dismounted where the light shone out into the falling rain. He flung the reins over a hitching post, as he called out to the staring clerk:

“Get out the biggest and finest doll you’ve got, quick!”

The clerk, hastening to obey, still stared at the figure that now entered.

He saw that it was a boy or a small man, but that was all he could tell. The Kid was a mass of mud from head to foot, and he staggered a little as he walked.

“I rode over from The Gulch since seven,” he said, as he noticed the clerk’s curiosity. “It’s not very fast ridin’, but the roads are pretty soft and I s’pose I’m some muddy!”

“From The Gulch! Muddy!” The clerk put down the box in his hands and looked at the boy in amazement.

“Yes; and I’ve got to get back by daylight with that doll. Hurry up with it. The biggest and highest priced you got. It’s fer a little girl that’s about to die, and Dr. Dick thinks it may save her if we get it there in time. You can tie it up good, and fasten it to me under the slicker.”

The astonished clerk hurriedly opened two or three paper boxes containing waxen-faced dolls. The largest box held a fully dressed doll, with eyes that opened and closed.

“I’ll take this one,” said the Kid. “Put it up in thick paper and use a lot of big, strong string.”

“That doll is $15,” said the clerk, hesitating.

“If it cost $5O I want it,” answered the Kid sharply, “and I want it in a hurry.”

He reached one muddy hand under the oil coat as he spoke, and drew from beneath it a little sack.

“Help yourself out of that,” he said, dropping it on the counter.

The clerk did up the doll in a stout package. The Kid opened the slicker.

“Tie it around me, high up as you can; more to the right.”

“Why, you’re only a boy,” exclaimed the clerk, getting now close to the Kid’s face.

“Yes; that’s why I came. A man would have been too heavy for the mare to carry over the roads.”

“Are the creeks up high? Did you have to swim, I mean?”

“Three times. They’ll be higher still going back.”

“Dark, ain’t it? Could you see any at all?”

“Just the tree tops a little, but the mare knows the road.”

“Do you think you’ll get back all right?”

“I’ve got to. Say, run that string up over my shoulder. There, that’ll stay, I guess. Now, take out your money and tie that sack to my belt. That’ll do; good night.”

“Wait a minute,” called the clerk. “Here, take this to the little girl as a merry Christmas from me.”

He went to a show-case and took out a beautiful shiny breastpin and a pair of earrings, all on a card together.

“I can slip these in the package all right,” he said. “I saved what they cost by not going to a dance tonight, and maybe they’ll help some, too.”

“Oh, sure!” said the Kid, “girls always like jewelry. Thank you.”

He hurried out to where the big mare was standing in the rain, staring into the lighted store.

“We’ve got to try it again, Nance, old girl,” he said. “We had a hard pull coming over and it’ll be worse going back, but we’ve got to get there. Nellie Carson’s got to have this doll and jewelry tomorrow morning. She’ll die if she don’t get it, Nance, and we’re not going to let Nellie die if we can help it.”

The noble mare, who was a mass of mud like himself, whinnied a little and seemed to understand. A moment later he was dashing back down the street into the blackness that lay between him and the little girl, who was battling with death in Sandy Carson’s cabin.

As he sped along he could see her round, sunny face as she had looked before her illness, and he could see beside it another face – the face of another Nellie – his little sister back in the East, whom he had not seen for two years. He had idolized her, but he remembered bitterly how even his love for her had not been strong enough to keep him out of bad company, and how when his father had reproved him he had fled from his home in anger and never returned. He had spent a year at another camp before coming to The Gulch. He had learned to gamble and had always been lucky, but the memory of little sister Nellie had never dimmed. It was for this reason that Nellie Carson had become his pet, and because of this that during her illness he had led a better life. He could not bear the thought of her dying, and he shuddered to think that even if he reached The Gulch safely he might not be in time. He urged the mare forward.

There was a fairly good stretch of road for some distance out of Green Valley and they were making good headway. Then they entered the heavy woods and the road became slippery. He was obliged to go slower here and let the mare pick her way. A mile further on there was a swift stream that they had forded with difficulty. He knew that it was still rising, and he was anxious to get there as soon as possible. The darkness in the woods was intense and he was compelled to trust to the mare entirely. The faithful animal kept steadily on, now on one side of the road, now on the other, seeming to know by instinct the safest path.

He could hear the stream roaring before they got to it.

“It will be a tough pull, Nance,” he reflected, “but we’ve got to make it.”

He could not tell, in the darkness, when they had reached the brink, until he felt the mare plunge forward and the water rise about his legs.

“Head up stream, Nance! Head up stream, old girl!”

He felt her struggling powerfully under him, but he could have no means of knowing when they were near the other bank. Suddenly it seemed to him that they had drifted down below the open road, and thick woods were on both sides. If they were between the steep banks they were lost. He leaned forward, striving to pierce a little way into the blackness. All at once he felt a branch sweep across his face. They were in the woods! At the same instant the mare stopped swimming. She had given up the struggle! but no, for he felt her plunging and battling for a foothold on solid ground. They had reached the other bank, and she was climbing where it was steep and slippery. He gave her free rein, and all at once he found himself saying a prayer.

“God help me to reach The Gulch!” he whispered. “God help me to reach Nellie in time!”

He clung to the struggling mare’s mane, and after what seemed an eternity to the boy he felt that they had reached the level ground. Then he knew, from the branches against his face, that they were in the woods, and a little later that they were back in the road.

“Good Nance!” he said, patting her neck; “good, beautiful Nance!”

There was better going here again and for another five miles they did very well. Then they forded the second stream, which was not so swift. Just beyond was a stretch of hilly, rough road, and it was here that the Green Valley stage had been fired upon. He had not feared a hold-up, for he thought highwaymen would hardly expect prey on such a night. The hills were slippery and the mare toiled slowly from side to side among the boulders. As they reached the upper plain and a more level stretch of road she settled once more into the swinging gallop with which she had covered each bit of decent going. He noticed that the rain had well nigh ceased and that there seemed to be a breaking in the sky. Perhaps it would be clear and sunny for Christmas. For a moment he forgot that darkness and danger shut him in, when suddenly the mare gave a snort and plunged so quickly to one side that the Kid was almost unseated. Then his heart stood still, for he heard men’s muffled voices, and then a sharp, quick call of

“Halt!”

The Kid imagined he saw the outlines of a man at Nance’s head.

“Let go of that! you scoundrel!” he screamed, and drove his heels against the mare’s sides. There was a smothered curse as Nance tore her head free and dashed forward. The Kid saw the dark outline go down as he passed and then he heard horses’ hoofs behind him, in pursuit.

The light in the sky was getting somewhat stronger and the rain had almost entirely ceased. They were on high, open ground. The boy felt that they could see his form against the horizon.

“Good Nance, beautiful Nance,” he whispered, and repeated again and again the low signal that urged her forward. “We must beat these cutthroats; we must get to The Gulch with Nellie’s doll. You can do it, Nance! You can do it! God will help you to do it, Nance! O God, if you will help Nance to beat these cutthroats I will never touch another card. Only help Nance to get me there in time with Nellie’s doll!”

He repeated this prayer over and over, and he believed they were slowly leaving their pursuers. It was no more than a mile now to the third and last ford. If he could beat them there he did not believe they would dare to cross.

“We are going to do it, Nance!” he murmured, and then suddenly from behind came two sharp reports on the night. The Kid fell his right shoulder shrink with a fierce pain for a moment and grew numb.

“Nance! O Nance, they have shot me!” he moaned. “The cowards have shot me!”

The mare had bounded forward at the shots and was now running wildly. “Keep it up, Nance – keep it up. I’ll hang on if I can. O God, help me to hang on!”

He wound his hands to the saddle with the bridle rein, and pulled the end through tight with his teeth. Then he leaned forward and closed his eyes, for he was growing faint. Presently he felt the mare’s fore feet plunge downward, and a moment later the cold water was once more about his legs. They had reached the last ford.

“Head up stream, Nance, head up stream, old girl,” he muttered faintly, and then the night and the roar of water, and the sound of distant hoofs whirled and mingled and blended into blackness and silence.

III.

The Carson cabin was a few hundred yards from the Red Light, on the Green Valley road. A group of men were gathered about its humble door, waiting. waiting for dawn, waiting for the word that came now and then from the little fever-wasted girl within, waiting for the splash of hoofs that would announce the Kid’s return. They had been there since three o’clock. The rain had ceased and the sky was almost clear. They talked little and in whispers, and when Dr. Dick came out and spoke to them they hung upon his words. It was after five o’clock now and the world was getting gray. Some of the men arose at times, and walked as far as the edge of the woods to listen. They returned silently, and then others would go and also return.

“He ought to be comin’ by now,” said Slag, who had scarcely spoken before. “It’s a mighty bad road, but Nance could get over it by this time ef – ef the cricks wa’n’t too high so’s they  – so’s they couldn’t get across, though, o’ course, they’d try it. That Kid an’ Nance ’ud try anything.”

This was the first suggestion that anyone had made aloud that perhaps the Kid might not return, and it cast an added gloom over the silent group. Dr. Dick came to the door just then. He stood outside, listening anxiously.

“She is between life and death,” he whispered. “She is likely to wake any moment now. If only the boy would come!” Then he went back and there was another time of silence and hungry waiting. By and by the door opened more quickly than usual and he stepped out again.

“She is waking,” he whispered. “If the boy doesn’t come now it will be too late.”

He peered down the dim road, listening intently. The morning was very still, and the least sound could be heard. All at once from the edge of the woods there came a call. It was from two men who had walked down the road to listen.

“He’s coming!” they called. “We can hear the hoofs!”

The men leaped to their feet and listened. Far down the road, somewhere in the woods, they could hear the sound, too. Slag ran a few steps forward.

“That’s Nance!” he exclaimed, under his breath, “I know her gait!”

They saw the two men returning on the run, and then out of the woods behind them came the horse. She passed them and came straight to Slag, who had stepped forward to meet her. She was a mass of mud, and upon her back there hung another mud covered object that made no movement or sound.

“Kid! Kid!” said Whiskers, shaking him, “are you asleep? Did you bring the doll?”

There was no answer. Then they saw that his hands were bound, to the saddle.

In a second they had lifted him down and stripped off the slicker. They saw the package containing the doll, and cutting it from him handed it to Dr. Dick, who turned hastily with it into the cabin, and a moment later returned.

“The boy is hurt,” he said, briefly. “There was blood on the package!”

He kneeled down in the dim light and laid his ear to the Kid’s heart.

“Carry him over to the Red Light!” he commanded. “Hurry!”

Whiskers lifted the slender form in his arms and bore it as he would an infant.

*  *  *  *

Three hours later the sweet Christmas sunlight was shining into the upper south room of the Red Light where the Kid was lying. Dr. Dick was bending over him, and a silent group was gathered in the hallway, peering through the open door. The boy, opening his eyes, did not realize at first where he was. Then he said faintly:

“Did I make it in time, Doc? Was the doll all right, and – and will she – will she get well?”

“Yes, my boy, you saved her. She will get well. And you will get well, too, Kid, God bless you!”

And there was not one of the silent listening group outside but repeated fervently, “God bless him! God bless the Kid!”

THE END.