"That's what I don't know!" called Langshaw with a wave of the hand as Wickersham passed by. Yet, even as he spoke he felt he did know -- his mind was joyously, adventurously made up to have "the nerve"; he had a right, for once in the twelve years of his married life, to buy himself a Christmas present that he really wanted, in distinction to the gift that family affection prompted, and held dear as such, but which had no relation to his needs or desires. Children and friends were provided for; his wife's winter suit -- a present by her transforming imagination -- already in the house; the Christmas turkey for the janitor of the children's school subscribed to -- sometimes he had wished himself the janitor! -- and all the small demands that drain the purse at the festal season carefully counted up and allowed for. There was no lien on this unexpected sum just received. The reel and the line, and the flies and such, would have to wait until another time, to be sure; but no one could realize what it would be to him to come home and find that blessed rod there. He had a wild impulse to go in and buy it that moment, but such haste seemed too slighting to the dignity of that occasion, which should allow the sweets of anticipation -- though no one knew better than he the danger of delay where money was concerned: it melted like snow in the pocket. Extra funds always seemed to bring an extra demand.

The last time there was ten dollars to spare there had been a letter from Langshaw's mother, saying that his sister Ella, whose husband was unfortunately out of a position, had developed flat-foot; and a pair of suitable shoes, costing nine-fifty, had been prescribed by the physician. Was it possible for her dear boy to send the money? Ella was so depressed.

The ten dollars had, of course, gone to Ella. Both Langshaw and his wife had an unsympathetic feeling that if they developed flat-foot now they would have to go without appropriate shoes.

"You look quite gay!" said his wife as she greeted him on his return, her pretty oval face, with its large dark eyes and dark curly locks, held up to be kissed. "Has anything nice happened?"

"You look gay, too!" he evaded laughingly, as his arms lingered round her. Clytie was always a satisfactory person for a wife. "What's this pink stuff on your hair -- popcorn?"

"Oh, goodness! Baby has been so bad, she has been throwing it round everywhere," she answered, running ahead of him upstairs to a room that presented a scene of brilliant disorder.

On the bed was a large box of tinselled Christmas-tree decorations and another of pink-and-white popcorn -- the flotsam and jetsam of which strewed the counterpane and the floor to its farthest corners, mingled with scraps of glittering paper, an acreage of which surrounded a table in the centre of the room that was adorned with mucilage pot and scissors. A large feathered hat, a blue silk dress, and a flowered skirt were on the rug, near which a very plump child of three, with straggling yellow hair, was trying to get a piece of gilt paper off her shoe. She looked up with roguish blue eyes to say rapidly:

"Fardie doesn't know what baby goin' agive 'm for Kissemus!"

"Hello! This looks like the real thing," said Langshaw, stepping over the débris; "but what are all these clothes on the floor for?"

"Oh, Mary was dressing up and just dropped those things when she went to the village with Viney, though I called her twice to come back and pick them up," said the mother, sweeping the garments out of the way. "It's so tiresome of her! Oh, I know you stand up for everything Mary does, Joe Langshaw; but she is the hardest child to manage!"

Her tone insensibly conveyed a pride in the difficulty of dealing with her elder daughter, aged six.

"But did you ever see anything like Baby? She can keep a secret as well as any one! It does look Christmasy, though -- doesn't it? Of course all the work of the tree at the mission comes on me as usual. The children, with the two Wickersham girls, were helping me until they got tired. Why don't you come and kiss father, Baby? She is going to sweep up the floor with her little broom so that father will give her five cents."

"I don't want to fweep 'e floor!" said the child, snapping her blue eyes.

"She shall get her little broom and Fardie will help her," said Langshaw, catching the child up in his arms and holding the round little form closely to him before putting her down carefully on her stubby feet.

Later, when the game of clearing up was over and the nickel clutched in Baby's fat palm, he turned to his wife with a half-frown:

"Don't you think you are making the children rather mercenary, Clytie? They seem to want to be paid for everything they do. I'm just about drained out of change!"

"Oh, at Christmas!" said the wife expressively.

"Well, I hope nobody is going to spend any money on me; the only presents I want are those you make for me," said Langshaw warningly. He gave the same warning each year, undeterred by the nature of the articles produced. His last year's "Christmas" from Clytie had been a pair of diaphanous blue China-silk pyjamas that were abnormally large in chest and sleeves -- as for one of giant proportions -- and correspondingly contracted in the legs, owing to her cutting out the tops first and having to get the other necessary adjuncts out of the scant remainder of the material. "You hear me, Clytie?"

"Yes, I hear," returned Clytie in a bored tone.

"Do you know -- " Langshaw hesitated, a boyish smile overspreading his countenance. "I was looking at that trout-rod in Burchell's window to-day. I don't suppose you remember my speaking of it, but I've had my eye on it for a long time." He paused, expectant of encouraging interest.

"Oh, have you, dear?" said Clytie absently. The room was gradually, under her fingers, resuming its normal appearance. She turned suddenly with a vividly animated expression.

"I must tell you that you're going to get a great surprise tonight -- it isn't a Christmas present, but it's something that you'll like even better, I know. It's about something that George has been doing. You'll never guess what it is!"

"Is that so?" said Langshaw absently in his turn. He had a momentary sense of being set back in his impulse to confidences that was not, after all, untinged with pleasure. His delightful secret was still his own, unmarred by unresponsive criticism. "By the way, Clytie, I don't like the way George has been behaving lately. He hasn't shown me his report from school in months; whenever I ask him for it he has some excuse. Hello! Is that little Mary crying?"

"I wonder what on earth has happened now!" exclaimed the mother, rushing from the room, to return the next instant, pulling after her a red-cloaked and red-hatted little girl who sought to hide behind her.

"Well, what do you think she's done?" Clytie's tone was withering as she haled forth the shrinking culprit, her small hands over her eyes. "She lost her purse with the dollar she had saved up for your Christmas present -- lost the money for dear father's present; and all because she took it with her to buy a five-cent pencil -- a green pencil with purple glass in the end of it; to buy something for herself before Christmas!" Clytie paused tragically. "Of course, if she hadn't taken her money out to spend it on herself she wouldn't have lost it!"

"I don't care!" burst out the culprit, her big dark eyes, just like her mother's, flashing from under her brown curls, and her red lips set defiantly. "It was my own money, anyhow, if I did lose it. I earned it all myself. It wasn't yours!"

"Oh! Oh! Oh!" interposed the father in gentle reproof. "Little girls mustn't talk like that to dear mother. Come, get up here on father's knee -- so." He took off the red cap, tucked the brown curly head in the bend of his arm, his chin resting on the top of it as he went on, with the child's small hands clutching at his. "Mary must always do what mother says; but, so far as this money is concerned, you can make me something that I would like far better than anything you could buy. Why don't you make me another pincushion, for instance? The one you gave me last year is quite worn out."

"A pink one?" asked Mary faintly.

"Yes. What's the matter now?" The child had suddenly wriggled to a kneeling posture in his hold and had her little strangling arms round his neck in a tempest of sobs.

"I don't want to give you a pi-ink pincushion -- I don't want to! I want my dollar! I want my dollar -- to spend! I want -- Father, I want my dollar -- my do-o-ol-lar! I want my -- "

"What did I tell you, Mary Langshaw?" cried Clytie. She appealed to her husband. "It's just the way I knew she'd act. Now I suppose you'll have to give it to her. Mary, be still a moment -- her head is so hot!"

"There, there!" said Langshaw soothingly. "She shall have her money this minute."

"Of course she doesn't deserve it," said Clytie, but with a tone of relief in her voice that seemed oddly greater than the occasion warranted. Mary had wound herself round him passionately; her sobs were dying away happily in long, deep breaths at intervals. Baby, being undressed on her mother's lap, was laughing over some pieces of gilt paper. In the heart of this domesticity it was as if the father and mother were embarked with this little company on a full and swelling river of love, of which they felt the exquisite soothing ripples.

Langshaw put his hand into his pocket.

"No, I can't give you the dollar this minute, little girl; father has only a ten-dollar bill. I'll get it changed right after dinner. Isn't dinner 'most ready, Clytie?"

"We'll go down just as soon as I get Baby in bed," said the mother peacefully. "I don't see why George isn't here. Goodness! There he is now," she added as a tremendous slam of the front door announced the fact. The next moment a small boy, roguishly blue-eyed and yellow-haired like Baby, with an extremely dirty face and a gray sweater half covered with mud, hurled himself into the room, surreptitiously tickling one of Baby's bare feet and pulling Mary's curls on his way to greet his father.

"What have you been doing to get so dirty?"

"Playing cops and robbers," said the boy, serenely. His dimples appeared suddenly; his eyes lit up. "Say, mother" -- he turned to her irresolutely -- "shall I tell father now?"

"Not until after dinner," returned the mother inexorably. "Go and make yourself clean!"

"May I put on my white silk tie?" George's white tie was the banner of festivity.

"Yes."

"You rouse my curiosity. This seems to be a great occasion," said Langshaw.

"Oh, it is!" agreed the mother happily. She murmured in his ear as they went downstairs: "I hope you'll show that you're pleased, dear. You know sometimes when you really are pleased you don't show it at once -- and George has been trying so hard. If you'll only show that you're pleased -- "

"Yes -- all right!" returned the husband a little impatiently. Clytie had a sensitive consideration for her son's feelings which struck him at times as exaggerated. He thought of the delightful secret back in his own mind; there was no reason for talking any more about the rod until he bought it; he would manage to replace the dollar abstracted from the reserve fund.

If he gave absent answers during the meal Clytie seemed to be preoccupied also. Little Mary, who sat by him, tucked her hand into his as she prattled.

"Now, George!" said his mother at last suddenly when the rice pudding had been finished. George rose, clean and red-cheeked, looking more than ever like a large edition of Baby, in spite of his jacket and knickerbockers, as he stepped over to his father with a new dignity and handed him a folded sheet of paper.

"What's this?" asked Langshaw genially opening it. He read aloud the words within, written laboriously in a round, boyish hand:

To George Brander Langshaw, from father. You Oh me five dolars.

Reseived paiment.

"Hello! Hello! What does this mean?" asked Langshaw slowly, with an unpleasant startled sensation that any such sum in connection with George was out of all reason.

"It means a bill for you from me!" announced George. His cheeks grew redder, his blue eyes looked squarely at his father. "It's for this!" He pulled from his pocket a school report card divided into tiny ruled squares, filled with figures for half its length, and flung it down proudly on the table before his parent.

"It's the Deportment -- since September. You said when Miss Skinner sent that last note home about me that if I could get a hundred in Deportment for every month up to Christmas you'd be willing to pay me five dollars. You can see there for yourself, father, the three one hundreds -- no, not that line -- that's only fifty-five for spelling; nobody ever knows their spelling! Here is the place to look -- in the Deportment column. I've tried awful hard to be good, father, to surprise you."

"The way that child has tried!" burst forth Clytie, her dark eyes drowned in sparkles. "And they're so unfair at school -- giving you a mark if you squeak your chair, or speak, or look at anybody; as if any child could be expected to sit like a stone all the time! I'm sure I love to hear children laughing -- and you know yourself how hard it is for George to be quiet! We had a little talk about it together, he and I; and now you see! It's been such work keeping his card from you each month when you asked for it. One day he thought he had a bad mark and he couldn't eat any dinner -- you thought he was ill; but he went to Miss Skinner the next day and she took it off because he had been trying so hard to be good. Joe, why don't you speak?"

"George, I'm proud of you!" said Langshaw simply. There was a slight huskiness in his voice; the round face and guileless blue eyes of his little boy, who had tried "awful hard to be good," seemed to have acquired a new dignity. The father saw in him the grown-up son who could be depended upon to look after his mother if need were. Langshaw held out his hand as man to man; the two pairs of eyes met squarely. "Nothing you could have done would have pleased me more than this, George. I value it more than any Christmas present I could have."

"Mother said you'd like it," said the beaming George, ducking his head suddenly and kicking out his legs from behind.

"And you'll pay the five dollars?" supplemented Clytie anxiously.

"Surely!" said Langshaw. The glances of the parents met in one of the highest pleasures that life affords: the approval together of the good action of their dear child. "George can go out and get this ten-dollar bill changed."

"If you can't spare it, father -- " suggested the boy with some new sense of manliness, hanging back.

"I'm glad to be able to spare it," said the father soberly. "It's a good deal of money," he added. "I suppose, of course, you'll put it in the bank, George?"

"Now you mustn't ask what he's going to do with it," said Clytie.

"Oh, isn't it much!" cried little Mary.

"Dear me, there's the doorbell," said Clytie. "Who can it be at this hour? Run, George, and see!"

"It's a letter for you, mother," announced George, reappearing. "There's a man in the hall, waiting for an answer."

"It looks like a bill," said Clytie nervously, tearing open the envelope; "but I don't owe any bill. Why, it's two and a quarter, from the tailor, for fixing over my old suit last fall! I'm positive I paid it weeks ago. There's some mistake."

"He says he's been here three times, but you were out."

"Have you any money for it, Clytie?" asked her husband.

Clytie looked as if a thunderbolt had struck her.

"Yes, I have; but -- oh, I don't want to take it for that! I need every penny I've got."

"Well, there's no need of feeling so badly about it," said Langshaw resignedly.

"Give the ten-dollar bill to the man, George, and see if he can change it." He couldn't resist a slight masculine touch of severity at her incapacity. "I wish you'd tend to these things at the time, Clytie, or let me know about them." He took the money when George returned. "Here's your dollar now, Mary -- don't lose it again! -- and your five, George. You might as well take another dollar yourself, Clytie, for extras."

He pocketed the remainder of the change carelessly. After his first pang at the encroachment on the reserve fund the rod had sunk so far out of sight that it was almost as if it had never been. He had, of course, known all along that he would not buy it. Even the sting of the "Amount due" quickly evaporated.

Little Mary gave a jump that bumped her brown curly head against him.

"You don't know what I'm going to give you for Christmas!" she cried joyously.



II


Langshaw was one of those men who have an inherited capacity for enjoying Christmas. He lent it his attention with zest, choosing the turkey himself with critical care as he went through the big market in town, from whence he brought also wreaths and branches of holly that seemed to have larger and redder berries than could be bought in the village. On Christmas Eve he put up the greens that decorated the parlour and dining-room -- a ceremony that required large preparations with a step-ladder, a hammer, tacks, and string, the removal of his coat, and a lighted pipe in one corner of his mouth; and which proceeded with such painstaking slowness on account of his coming down from the ladder every other moment to view the artistic effect of the arrangements, that it was only by sticking the last branches up any old way at Clytie's wild appeal that he ever got it finished at all.

Then he helped her fill the stockings, his own fingers carefully giving the crowning effect of orange and cornucopia in each one, and arranging the large packages below, after tiptoeing down the stairs with them so as not to wake the officially sleeping children, who were patently stark awake, thrashing or coughing in their little beds. The sturdy George had never been known to sleep on Christmas Eve, always coming down the next day esthetically pale and with abnormally large eyes, to the feast of rapture.

On this Saturday -- Christmas Eve's eve -- when Langshaw finally reached home, laden with all the "last things" and the impossible packages of tortuous shapes left by fond relatives at his office for the children -- one pocket of his overcoat weighted with the love-box of really good candy for Clytie -- it was evident as soon as he opened the hall door that something unusual was going on upstairs. Wild shrieks of "It's father! It's father!" rent the air.

"It's father!"

"Fardie! Fardie, don't come up!"

"Father, don't come up!"

"Father, it's your present!"

There was hasty scurrying of feet, racing to and fro, and further shrieks. Langshaw waited, smiling.

It was evidently a "boughten" gift, then; the last had been a water pitcher, much needed in the household. He braced himself fondly for immense enthusiasm over this.

An expression of intense excitement was visible on each face when finally he was allowed to enter the upper room. Mary and Baby rushed at him to clasp his leg, while his wife leaned over to kiss him as he whispered:

"I brought out a lot of truck; it's all in the closet in the hall."

George, standing with his hands in his pockets, proclaimed loudly, with sparkling eyes:

"You nearly saw your present! It's from mother and us. Come here, Baby, and pull brother's leg. Say, father, do you like cut glass?"

"O-oh!" came in ecstatic chorus from the other two, as at a delightful joke.

"It's a secret!" announced Baby, her yellow hair falling over one round, blue eye.

"I believe it's a pony," said the father. "I'm sure I heard a pony up here!"

Shouts of renewed joy greeted the jest.

All the next day, Christmas Eve itself, whenever two or three of the family were gathered together there were secret whisperings, more scurryings, and frenzied warnings for the father not to come into the room. In spite of himself, Langshaw began to get a little curious as to the tobacco jar or the fire shovel, or whatever should be his portion. He not only felt resigned to not having the trout-rod, but a sort of wonder also rose in him that he had been bewitched -- even momentarily -- into thinking he could have it. What did it matter anyway?

"It's worth it, old girl, isn't it?" he said cryptically as he and Clytie met once unexpectedly in the hall, and he put his arm round her.

"Yes!" answered his wife, her dark eyes lustrous. Sometimes she didn't look much older than little Mary. "One thing, though, I must say: I do hope, dear, that -- the children have been thinking so much of our present to you and saving up so for it -- I do hope, Joe, that if you are pleased you'll show it. So far as I'm concerned, it doesn't matter; but sometimes -- when, of course, I know how pleased you really are -- you don't show it at once to others. That's why I hope you'll show it to-morrow if -- "

"Great Scott! Clytie, let up on it! What do you want me to do -- jump up and down and make a fool of myself?" asked her husband scornfully. "You leave me alone!"

It was Langshaw's firm rule, vainly protested even by his wife, that the household should have breakfast on Christmas Day before tackling the stockings -- a hurried mockery of a meal, to be sure, yet to his masculine idea a reenforcement of food for the infant stomach before the long, hurtling joy of the day. The stockings and the piles under them were taken in order, according to age -- the youngest first and the others waiting in rapt interest and admiration until their turn arrived -- a pretty ceremony.

In the delicious revelry of Baby's joy, as her trembling, fat little fingers pulled forth dolls and their like, all else was forgotten until it was Mary's turn, and then George's, and then the mother's. And then, when he had forgotten all about it: "Now father!" There was seemingly a breathless moment while all eyes turned to him.

"It's father's turn now; father's going to have his presents. Father, sit down here on the sofa -- it's your turn now."

There were only a blue cornucopia and an orange and a bottle of olives in his stocking, a Christmas card from his sister Ella, a necktie from grandmamma, and nothing, as his quick eye had noted, under it on the floor; but now George importantly stooped down, drew a narrow package from under the sofa and laid it beside his father, pulling off the paper. Inside was a slim, longish, gray linen bag. Langshaw studied it for a moment before opening it.

"Well, I'll be jiggered!" he breathed, with a strange glance round at the waiting group and an odd, crooked smile. "I'll be jiggered!"

There in its neatly grooved sections lay the rod, ready to be put together -- not a rod, but, as his eye almost unbelievingly reassured him, the rod -- the ticket of the shop adorning it -- in all its beauty of golden shellac and delicate tip. His fingers touched the pieces reverently.

"Well, will you look at that! How did you ever think of getting it?"

"How did I think of it? Because you talked about it all the time," said his wife scornfully, with her arms round his neck from behind, while the children flung themselves upon him. "Oh, I know you thought you didn't; but you did just the same. George heard you, too. We got Mr. Wickersham to pick it out. He said it was the one you wanted. And the reel -- you haven't noticed that box there -- the reel is the right kind, he says; and the line is silk -- the best. There's the book of flies too -- six. Baby's crazy over them! Mr. Wickersham said it was all just what you ought to have. We've been saving up for the longest time; but we had to wait, you see, for George's deportment before the things could be bought. If it isn't right -- "

"Right? Say, this is the finest present I ever had!" said Langshaw with glittering eyes and that little crooked smile. "It just beats everything!"

He rose, scattering his adoring family, and, walking to the window, threw it open to the frosty December air and called across to a neighbour standing on the walk.

"Want to come over here, Hendon? Got something to show you. Will you look at this! Present from my wife and the kids -- been saving up for it. It's a peach, I'll tell you that! I'm going to take George off fishing this spring -- What? Well, come over later, when you've got time to take a good look at it."

"Do you like it, father?" came from three different voices at once.

"Do I like it? You can just bet I do," said Langshaw emphatically. He bent and kissed the three upturned faces, and leaned toward his wife afterward to press her sweet waiting lips with his; but his eyes, as if drawn by a magnet, were only on the rod -- not the mere bundle of sticks he might have bought, but transformed into one blossoming with love.

"And do you know, we hardly saw a thing of him all day!" Clytie proudly recounted afterward to her sister. "My dear, he would hardly take time to eat his dinner or speak to any one; he was out in the back yard with Henry Wickersham and Mr. Hendon until dark, flapping that rod in circles -- the silliest thing! He nearly sent a hook into George's eye once. George acted as bewitched as he did. Joe kept telling every single person who came along that it was 'a present from his wife and the kids.' He certainly showed that he was pleased."

"It's been a pretty nice day, hasn't it?" Langshaw said to his wife that Christmas night when the children were at last in bed. "Best Christmas I ever had! To think of you and the kids doing all this for me."

His hand rested lovingly on the rod, now once again swathed in the gray linen bag. He would have been the last to realize that, in his humble way, he typified a diviner Fatherhood to the little family who trusted in his care for them -- for all things came of him, and of his own had they given him.

<eob>

My Robin

By

Frances Hodgson Burnett



My Robin

There came to me among the letters I received last spring one which touched me very closely. It was a letter full of delightful things but the delightful thing which so reached my soul was a question. The writer had been reading "The Secret Garden" and her question was this: "Did you own the original of the robin? He could not have been a mere creature of fantasy. I feel sure you owned him." I was thrilled to the centre of my being. Here was some one who plainly had been intimate with robins -- English robins. I wrote and explained as far as one could in a letter what I am now going to relate in detail.

I did not own the robin -- he owned me -- or perhaps we owned each other. He was an English robin and he was a PERSON -- not a mere bird. An English robin differs greatly from the American one. He is much smaller and quite differently shaped. His body is daintily round and plump, his legs are delicately slender. He is a graceful little patrician with an astonishing allurement of bearing. His eye is large and dark and dewy; he wears a tight little red satin waistcoat on his full round breast and every tilt of his head, every flirt of his wing is instinct with dramatic significance. He is fascinatingly conceited -- he burns with curiosity -- he is determined to engage in social relations at almost any cost and his raging jealousy of attention paid to less worthy objects than himself drives him at times to efforts to charm and distract which are irresistible. An intimacy with a robin -- an English robin -- is a liberal education.

This particular one I knew in my rose-garden in Kent. I feel sure he was born there and for a summer at least believed it to be the world. It was a lovesome, mystic place, shut in partly by old red brick walls against which fruit trees were trained and partly by a laurel hedge with a wood behind it. It was my habit to sit and write there under an aged writhen tree, gray with lichen and festooned with roses. The soft silence of it -- the remote aloofness -- were the most perfect ever dreamed of. But let me not be led astray by the garden. I must be firm and confine myself to the Robin. The garden shall be another story. There were so many people in this garden -- people with feathers, or fur -- who, because I sat so quietly, did not mind me in the least, that it was not a surprising thing when I looked up one summer morning to see a small bird hopping about the grass a yard or so away from me. The surprise was not that he was there but that he STAYED there -- or rather he continued to hop -- with short reflective-looking hops and that while hopping he looked at me -- not in a furtive flighty way but rather as a person might tentatively regard a very new acquaintance. The absolute truth of the matter I had reason to believe later was that he did not know I was a person. I may have been the first of my species he had seen in this rose-garden world of his and he thought I was only another kind of robin. I was too -- though that was a secret of mine and nobody but myself knew it. Because of this fact I had the power of holding myself STILL -- quite STILL and filling myself with softly alluring tenderness of the tenderest when any little wild thing came near me. "What do you do to make him come to you like that?" some one asked me a month or so later. "What do you DO?" "I don't know what I do exactly," I said. "Except that I hold myself very still and feel like a robin."

You can only do that with a tiny wild thing by being so tender of him -- of his little timidities and feelings -- so adoringly anxious not to startle him or suggest by any movement the possibility of your being a creature who COULD HURT -- that your very yearning to understand his tiny hopes and fears and desires makes you for the time cease to be quite a mere human thing and gives you another and more exquisite sense which speaks for you without speech.

As I sat and watched him I held myself softly still and felt just that. I did not know he was a robin. The truth was that he was too young at that time to look like one, but I did not know that either. He was plainly not a thrush, or a linnet or a sparrow or a starling or a blackbird. He was a little indeterminate-colored bird and he had no red on his breast. And as I sat and gazed at him he gazed at me as one quite without prejudice unless it might be with the slightest tinge of favor -- and hopped -- and hopped -- and hopped.

That was the thrill and wonder of it. No bird, however evident his acknowledgement of my harmlessness, had ever hopped and REMAINED. Many had perched for a moment in the grass or on a nearby bough, had trilled or chirped or secured a scurrying gold and green beetle and flown away. But none had stayed to inquire -- to reflect -- even to seem -- if one dared be so bold as to hope such a thing -- to make mysterious, almost occult advances towards intimacy. Also I had never before heard of such a thing happening to any one howsoever bird loving. Birds are creatures who must be wooed and it must be delicate and careful wooing which allures them into friendship.

I held my soft stillness. Would he stay? Could it be that the last hop was nearer? Yes, it was. The moment was a breathless one. Dare one believe that the next was nearer still -- and the next -- and the next -- and that the two yards of distance had become scarcely one -- and that within that radius he was soberly hopping round my very feet with his quite unafraid eye full upon me. This was what was happening. It may not seem exciting but it was. That a little wild thing should come to one unasked was of a thrillingness touched with awe.

Without stirring a muscle I began to make low, soft, little sounds to him -- very low and very caressing indeed -- softer than one makes to a baby. I wanted to weave a spell -- to establish mental communication -- to make Magic. And as I uttered the tiny sounds he hopped nearer and nearer.

"Oh! to think that you will come as near as that!" I whispered to him. "You KNOW. You know that nothing in the world would make me put out my hand or startle you in the least tiniest way. You know it because you are a real person as well as a lovely -- lovely little bird thing. You know it because you are a soul."

Because of this first morning I knew -- years later -- that this was what Mistress Mary thought when she bent down in the Long Walk and "tried to make robin sounds."

I said it all in a whisper and I think the words must have sounded like robin sounds because he listened with interest and at last -- miracle of miracles as it seemed to me -- he actually fluttered up on to a small shrub not two yards away from my knee and sat there as one who was pleased with the topic of conversation.

I did not move of course, I sat still and waited his pleasure. Not for mines of rubies would I have lifted a finger.

I think he stayed near me altogether about half an hour. Then he disappeared. Where or even exactly when I did not know. One moment he was hopping among some of the rose bushes and then he was gone.

This, in fact, was his little mysterious way from first to last. Through all the months of our delicious intimacy he never let me know where he lived. I knew it was in the rose-garden -- but that was all. His extraordinary freedom from timorousness was something to think over. After reflecting upon him a good deal I thought I had reached an explanation. He had been born in the rose-garden and being of a home-loving nature he had declined to follow the rest of his family when they had made their first flight over the wall into the rose-walk or over the laurel hedge into the pheasant cover behind. He had stayed in the rose world and then had felt lonely. Without father or mother or sisters or brothers desolateness of spirit fell upon him. He saw a creature -- I insist on believing that he thought it another order of robin -- and approached to see what it would say.

Its whole bearing was confidence inspiring. It made softly alluring -- if unexplainable -- sounds. He felt its friendliness and affection. It was curious to look at and far too large for any ordinary nest. It plainly could not fly. But there was not a shadow of inimical sentiment in it. Instinct told him that. It admired him, it wanted him to remain near, there was a certain comfort in its caressing atmosphere. He liked it and felt less desolate. He would return to it again.

The next day summer rains kept me in the house. The next I went to the rose-garden in the morning and sat down under my tree to work. I had not been there half an hour when I felt I must lift my eyes and look. A little indeterminate-colored bird was hopping quietly about in the grass -- quite aware of me as his dew-bright eye manifested. He had come again -- of intention -- because we were mates.

It was the beginning of an intimacy not to be described unless one filled a small volume. From that moment we never doubted each other for one second. He knew and I knew. Each morning when I came into the rose-garden he came to call on me and discover things he wanted to know concerning robins of my size and unusual physical conformation. He did not understand but he was attracted by me. Each day I held myself still and tried to make robin sounds expressive of adoring tenderness and he came each day a little nearer. At last arrived a day when as I softly left my seat and moved about the garden he actually quietly hopped after me.

I wish I could remember exactly what length of time elapsed before I knew he was really a robin. An ornithologist would doubtless know but I do not. But one morning I was bending over a bed of Laurette Messimy roses and I became aware that he had arrived in his usual mysterious way without warning. He was standing in the grass and when I turned my eyes upon him I only just saved myself from starting -- which would have meant disaster. I saw upon his breast the first dawning of a flush of color -- more tawny than actual red at that stage -- but it hinted at revelations.

"Further subterfuge is useless," I said to him. "You are betrayed. You are a robin."

And he did not attempt to deny it either then or at any future time. In less than two weeks he revealed a tight, glossy little bright red satin waistcoat and with it a certain youthful maturity such as one beholds in the wearer of a first dress suit. His movements were more brisk and certain. He began to make little flights and little sounds though for some time he made no attempt to sing. Instead of appearing suddenly in the grass at my feet, a heavenly little rush of wings would bring him to a bough over my head or a twig quite near me where he would tilt daintily, taking his silent but quite responsive part in the conversations which always took place between us. It was I who talked -- telling him how I loved him -- how satin red his waistcoat was -- how large and bright his eyes -- how delicate and elegant his slender legs. I flattered him a great deal. He adored flattery and I am sure he loved me most when I told him that it was impossible to say anything which could flatter him. It gave him confidence in my good taste.

One morning -- a heavenly sunny one -- I was conversing with him by the Laurette Messimys again and he was evidently much pleased with the things I said. Perhaps he liked my hat which was a large white one with a wreath of roses round its crown. I saw him look at it and I gently hinted that I had worn it in the hope that he would approve. I had broken off a handful of coral pink Laurettes and was arranging them idly when -- he spread his wings in a sudden upward flight -- a tiny swift flight which ended -- among the roses on my hat -- the very hat on my head.

Did I make myself still then? Did I stir by a single hairbreadth? Who does not know? I scarcely let myself breathe. I could not believe that such a thing of pure joy could be true.

But in a minute I realized that he at least was not afraid to move. He was perfectly at home. He hopped about the brim and examined the roses with delicate pecks. That I was under the hat apparently only gave him confidence. He knew me as well as that. He stayed until he had learned all he wished to know about garden hats and then he lightly flew away.

From that time each day drew us closer to each other. He began to perch on twigs only a few inches from my face and listen while I whispered to him -- yes, he LISTENED and made answer with chirps. Nothing else would describe it. As I wrote he would alight on my manuscript paper and try to read. Sometimes I thought he was a little offended because he found my handwriting so bad that he could not understand it. He would take crumbs out of my hand, he would alight on my chair or my shoulder. The instant I opened the little door in the leaf-covered garden wall I would be greeted by the darling little rush of wings and he was beside me. And he always came from nowhere and disappeared into space.

That, through the whole summer -- was his rarest fascination. Perhaps he was not a real robin. Perhaps he was a fairy. Who knows? Among the many house parties staying with me he was a subject of thrilled interest. People knew of him who had not seen him and it became a custom with callers to say: "May we go into the rose-garden and see The Robin?" One of my American guests said he was uncanny and called him "The Goblin Robin." No one had ever seen a thing so curiously human -- so much more than mere bird.

When I took callers to the rose-garden he was exquisitely polite. He always came when I stood under my tree and called -- but he never at such times MET me with his rush to the little door. He would perch near me and talk but there was a difference. Certain exquisite intimate charms he kept for me alone.

I wondered when he would begin to sing. One morning the sun being strong enough to pierce through the leaves of my tree I had a large Japanese tent umbrella arranged so that it shaded my table as I wrote. Suddenly I heard a robin song which sounded as if it were being trilled from some tree at a little distance from where I sat. It was so pretty that I leaned forward to see exactly where the singer perched. I made a delicious discovery. He was not on a tree at all. He was perched upon the very end of one of the bamboo ribs of my big flowery umbrella. He was my own Robin and there he sat singing to me his first tiny song -- showing me that he had found out how to do it.

The effect of singing at a distance was produced by the curious fact that he was singing WITH HIS BILL CLOSED, his darling scarlet throat puffed out and tremulous with the captive trills.

Perhaps a robin's first song is always of this order. I do not know. I only know that this was his "earlier manner." My enraptured delight I expressed to him in my most eloquent phrases. I praised him -- I flattered him. I made him believe that no robin had really ever sung before. He was much pleased and flew down on to the table to hear all about it and incite me to further effort.

In a few days he had learned to sing perfectly, not with the low distant-sounding note but with open beak and clear brilliant little roulades and trills. He grew prouder and prouder. When he saw I was busy he would tilt on a nearby bough and call me with flirtatious, provocative outbreaking of song. He knew that it was impossible for any one to resist him -- any one in the world. Of course I would get up and stand beneath his tree with my face upturned and tell him that his charm, his beauty, his fascination and my love were beyond the power of words to express. He knew that would happen and revelled in it. His tiny airs and graces, his devices to attract and absorb attention was unending. He invented new ones every day and each was more enslaving than the last.

Could it be that he was guilty -- when he met other robins -- of boasting of his conquest of me and of my utter subjugation? I cannot believe it possible. Also I never saw other robins accost him or linger in their passage through the rose-garden to exchange civilities. And yet a very strange thing occurred on one occasion. I was sitting at my table expecting him and heard a familiar chirp. When I looked up he was atilt upon the branch of an apple tree near by. I greeted him with little whistles and twitters thinking of course that he would fly down to me for our usual conversation. But though he chirped a reply and put his head on one side engagingly he did not move from his bough.

"What is the matter with you?" I said. "Come down -- come down, little brother!"

But he did not come. He only sidled and twittered and stayed where he was. This was so extraordinary that I got up and went to him. As I looked a curious doubt came upon me. He looked like Tweetie -- (which had become his baptismal name) he tilted his head and flirted and twittered after the manner of Tweetie -- but -- could it be that he was NOT what he pretended to be? Could he be a stranger bird? That seemed out of the question as no stranger bird would have comported himself with such familiarity. No stranger surely would have come so near and addressed me with such intimate twitterings and well-known airs and graces. I was mystified beyond measure. I exerted all my powers to lure him from his branch but descend from it he would not. He listened and smiled and flirted his tail but he stayed where he was.

"Listen," I said at last. "I don't believe in you. There is a mystery here. You pretend you know me and yet you act as if you were afraid of me -- just like a common bird who is made of nothing but feathers. I don't believe you are Tweetie at all. You are an Impostor!"

Believable or not, just at that moment when I stood there under the bough arguing, reproaching and beguiling by turns and puzzled beyond measure -- out of the Nowhere darted a little scarlet flame of frenzy -- Tweetie himself -- with his feathers ruffled and on fire with fury. The robin on the branch actually WAS an Impostor and Tweetie had discovered him red-breasted if not red-handed with crime. Oh! the sight it was to behold him in his tiny Berseker rage at his impudent rival. He flew at him, he beat him, he smacked him, he pecked him, he shrieked bad language at him, he drove him from the branch -- from the tree, from one tree after another as the little traitor tried to take refuge -- he drove him from the rose-garden -- over the laurel hedge and into the pheasant cover in the wood. Perhaps he killed him and left him slain in the bracken. I could not see. But having beaten him once and forever he came back to me, panting -- all fluffed up -- and with blood thirst only just dying in his eye. He came down on to my table -- out of breath as he agitatedly rearranged his untidy feathers -- and indignant -- almost unreconcilable because I had been such an undiscriminating and feeble-minded imbecile as to be for one moment deceived.

His righteous wrath was awful to behold. I was so frightened that I felt quite pale. With those wiles of the serpent which every noble woman finds herself forced to employ at times I endeavored to pacify him.

"Of course I did not really believe he was You," I said tremulously. "He was your inferior in every respect. His waistcoat was not nearly so beautiful as yours. His eyes were not so soul compelling. His legs were not nearly so elegant and slender. And there was an expression about his beak which I distrusted from the first. You HEARD me tell him he was an Impostor."

He began to listen -- he became calmer -- he relented. He kindly ate a crumb out of my hand.

We began mutually to understand the infamy of the situation. The Impostor had been secretly watching us. He had envied us our happiness. Into his degenerate mind had stolen the darkling and criminal thought that he -- Audacious Scoundrel -- might impose upon me by pretending he was not merely "a robin" but "The Robin" -- Tweetie himself and that he might supplant him in my affections. But he had been confounded and cast into outer darkness and again we were One.

I will not attempt to deceive. He was jealous beyond bounds. It was necessary for me to be most discreet in my demeanor towards the head gardener with whom I was obliged to consult frequently. When he came into the rose-garden for orders Tweetie at once appeared.

He followed us, hopping in the grass or from rose bush to rose bush. No word of ours escaped him. If our conversation on the enthralling subjects of fertilizers and aphides seemed in its earnest absorption to verge upon the emotional and tender he interfered at once. He commanded my attention. He perched on nearby boughs and endeavored to distract me. He fluttered about and called me with chirps. His last resource was always to fly to the topmost twig of an apple tree and begin to sing his most brilliant song in his most thrilling tone and with an affected manner. Naturally we were obliged to listen and talk about him. Even old Barton's weather-beaten apple face would wrinkle into smiles.

"He's doin' that to make us look at him," he would say. "That's what he's doin' it for. He can't abide not to be noticed."

But it was not only his vanity which drew him to me. He loved me. The low song trilled in his little pulsating scarlet throat was mine. He sang it only to me -- and he would never sing it when any one else was there to hear. When we were quite alone with only roses and bees and sunshine and silence about us, when he swung on some spray quite close to me and I stood and talked to him in whispers -- then he would answer me -- each time I paused -- with the little "far away" sounding trills -- the sweetest, most wonderful little sounds in the world. A clever person who knew more of the habits of birds than I did told me a most curious thing.

"That is his little mating song," he said. "You have inspired a hopeless passion in a robin."

Perhaps so. He thought the rose-garden was the world and it seemed to me he never went out of it during the summer months. At whatsoever hour I appeared and called him he came out of bushes but from a different point each time. In late autumn however, one afternoon I SAW him fly to me from over a wall dividing the enclosed garden from the open ones. I thought he looked guilty and fluttered when he alighted near me. I think he did not want me to know.

"You have been making the acquaintance of a young lady robin," I said to him. "Perhaps you are already engaged to her for the next season."

He tried to persuade me that it was not true but I felt he was not entirely frank.

After that it was plain that he had discovered that the rose-garden was not ALL the world. He knew about the other side of the wall. But it did not absorb him altogether. He was seldom absent when I came and he never failed to answer my call. I talked to him often about the young lady robin but though he showed a gentlemanly reticence on the subject I knew quite well he loved me best. He loved my robin sounds, he loved my whispers, his dewy dark eyes looked into mine as if he knew we two understood strange tender things others did not.

I was only a mere tenant of the beautiful place I had had for nine years and that winter the owner sold the estate. In December I was to go to Montreux for a couple of months; in March I was to return to Maytham and close it before leaving it finally. Until I left for Switzerland I saw my robin every day. Before I went away I called him to me and told him where I was going.

He was such a little thing. Two or three months might seem a lifetime to him. He might not remember me so long. I was not a real robin. I was only a human being. I said a great many things to him -- wondering if he would even be in the garden when I came back. I went away wondering.

When I returned from the world of winter sports, of mountain snows, of tobogganing and skis I felt as if I had been absent a long time. There had been snow even in Kent and the park and gardens were white. I arrived in the evening. The next morning I threw on my red frieze garden cloak and went down the flagged terrace and the Long Walk through the walled gardens to the beloved place where the rose bushes stood dark and slender and leafless among the whiteness. I went to my own tree and stood under it and called.

"Are you gone," I said in my heart; "are you gone, little Soul? Shall I never see you again?"

After the call I waited -- and I had never waited before. The roses were gone and he was not in the rose-world. I called again. The call was sometimes a soft whistle as near a robin sound as I could make it -- sometimes it was a chirp -- sometimes it was a quick clear repetition of "Sweet! Sweet! Sweetie" -- which I fancied he liked best. I made one after the other -- and then -- something scarlet flashed across the lawn, across the rose-walk -- over the wall and he was there. He had not forgotten, it had not been too long, he alighted on the snowy brown grass at my feet.

Then I knew he was a little Soul and not only a bird and the real parting which must come in a few weeks' time loomed up before me a strange tragic thing.

* * *

I do not often allow myself to think of it. It was too final. And there was nothing to be done. I was going thousands of miles across the sea. A little warm thing of scarlet and brown feathers and pulsating trilling throat lives such a brief life. The little soul in its black dew-drop eye -- one knows nothing about it. For myself I sometimes believe strange things. We two were something weirdly near to each other.

At the end I went down to the bare world of roses one soft damp day and stood under the tree and called him for the last time. He did not keep me waiting and he flew to a twig very near my face. I could not write all I said to him. I tried with all my heart to explain and he answered me -- between his listenings -- with the "far away" love note. I talked to him as if he knew all I knew. He put his head on one side and listened so intently that I felt that he understood. I told him that I must go away and that we should not see each other again and I told him why.

"But you must not think when I do not come back it is because I have forgotten you," I said. "Never since I was born have I loved anything as I have loved you -- except my two babies. Never shall I love anything so much again so long as I am in the world. You are a little Soul and I am a little Soul and we shall love each other forever and ever. We won't say Good-bye. We have been too near to each other -- nearer than human beings are. I love you and love you and love you -- little Soul."

Then I went out of the rose-garden. I shall never go into it again.

<eob>

Six Little Bunkers At Mammy June's

By

Laura Lee Hope



Chapter I

An Eskimo Igloo


"How could William get the croup that way?" Violet asked with much emphasis.

Of course, Vi was always asking questions -- so many questions, indeed, that it was often impossible for her elders to answer them all; and certainly Rose and Russ Bunker, who were putting together a "cut-up" puzzle on the table, could not be bothered by Vi's insistence.

"I don't see how he could have got the croup that way," repeated the smaller girl. There were six of the little Bunkers, and Vi and Laddie were twins. She said to Laddie, who was looking on at the puzzle making: "Do you know how William did it, Laddie?"

Laddie, whose real name wasn't "Laddie" at all, but Fillmore Bunker, shook his head decidedly.

"I don't know," he told his twin sister. "Not unless it is a riddle: 'How did William get the croup?'"

"He hasn't got the croup," put in Rose, for just a moment giving the twins her attention.

"Why -- ee!" cried Vi. "Aunt Jo said he had!"

"She didn't," returned Rose rather shortly and not at all politely.

"She did so!" rejoined Vi instantly, for although she and Rose loved each other very much they were not always in agreement. Vi's gray eyes snapped she was so vexed. "Aunt Jo said that a window got broke in -- in the neu-ral-gi-a and William had to drive a long way yesterday and the wind blew on him and he got the croup."

"Was that the way of it?" said Laddie, thoughtfully. "Wait a minute, Vi. I've most got it --  -- "

"You're not going to have the croup!" declared his twin. "You never had it! But I have had the croup, and I didn't catch it the way William did."

"No-o," admitted Laddie. "But -- but I'm catching a new riddle if you'd only wait a minute for me to get it straight."

"Pooh!" said Vi. "Who cares anything about your old riddle? Br-r-r! it's cold in this room. Maybe we'll all get the croup if we can't have a better fire."

"It isn't the croup you mean, Vi," put in Rose again, but without stopping to explain to her smaller sister where and how she was wrong about William's illness.

"Say, Russ, why don't the steampipes hum any more?" broke in the voice of Margy, the next to the very littlest Bunker, who was playing with that latter very important person at one of the great windows overlooking the street.

Russ chuckled. He had just put the very last crooked piece of the puzzle into place.

"You don't expect to see humming birds in winter, do you, Margy?" he asked.

"Just the same, winter is the time for steampipes to hum," said Rose, shivering a little. "Oh! See! It's beginning to snow!"

"So 'tis," cried Russ, who was the oldest of the six. "Supposing it should be a blizzard, Rose Bunker?"

"S'posing it should!" repeated his sister, quite as much excited as Russ was at such a prospect.

"Buzzards fly and eat dead things. We saw 'em in Texas at Cowboy Jack's," announced Laddie, forgetting his riddle-making for the moment.

"That is right, Laddie," agreed Rose kindly. "But we're not talking about buzzards, but about blizzards. Blizzards are big snowstorms -- bigger than you ever remember, I guess."

"Oh!" said Laddie doubtfully. "Were we talking about -- about blizzards?"

"No, we weren't!" exclaimed Vi, almost stamping her foot. "We were talking about William's croup --  -- "

"He hasn't got the croup, I tell you, Vi," Rose said wearily.

"He has. Aunt Jo --  -- "

"In the first place," interrupted Rose quite decidedly, "only children have croup. It isn't a grown-up disease."

This announcement silenced even Violet for the moment. She stared at her older sister, round-eyed.

"Do -- do diseases have to grow up, too?" she finally gasped.

"Oh, dear me, Vi Bunker!" exclaimed Rose, "I wish you didn't ask so many questions."

"Why not?" promptly inquired the smaller girl.

"We-ell, it's so hard to answer them," Rose frankly admitted. "Diseases don't grow up, I guess, but folks grow up and leave diseases like croup, and measles, and chicken-pox, behind them."

"And cut fingers and bumps?" asked Laddie, who had almost forgotten the riddle about William's croup that he was striving to make.

But Vi did not forget the croup. One could trust Vi never to forget anything about which she once set out to gather information.

"But how did William catch the croup through a broken window in the neu-ral-gi-a?" she demanded. "When I had croup I got my feet wet first."

"He hasn't got the croup!" Rose cried again, while Russ began to laugh heartily.

"Oh, Vi!" Russ said, "you got it twisted. William caught cold driving Aunt Jo's coupé with the window broken in it. He's got neuralgia from that."

"And isn't there any croup about it?" Laddie demanded rather sadly. "Then I'll have to start making my riddle all over again."

"Will that be awful hard to do, Laddie?" asked his twin. "Why! making riddles must be worse than having neu-ral-gi-a -- or croup."

"Well, it's harder," sighed her brother. "It's easy to catch -- Oh! Oh! Russ! Rose! I got it!"

"You haven't neuralgia, like poor William," announced Rose with confidence.

"Listen!" announced the glowing Laddie. "What is it that's so easy to catch but nobody runs after?"

"Huh! is that a riddle?" asked Russ.

"Course it's a riddle."

"A wubber ball," guessed Mun Bun, coming from the window against the panes of which the snow was now beating rapidly.

"No," Laddie said.

"A coupé!" exclaimed Violet.

"Huh! No!" said her twin in disdain.

Margy asked if he meant a kittie. She had been chasing one all over the house that morning while Russ and Rose had been to market with their aunt, and she did not think a kitten easy to catch at all.

"'Tisn't anything with a tail or claws," crowed the delighted Laddie.

"I bet it's that neuralgia William's got," laughed Russ.

"No-o. It isn't just that," his smaller brother said.

"And you'd better not say 'bet,' Russ Bunker," advised Rose wisely. "You know Aunt Jo says that's not nice."

"You just said it," Russ rejoined, grinning. "Twice."

"Oh, I never did!" cried his sister.

"Didn't you just say I'd 'better not say bet?'" demanded Russ. "Well, then count 'em! 'Bet' out of 'better' is one, and 'bet' makes two --  -- "

"I never said it the way you did," began Rose, quite put out, when Laddie began to clamor:

"Tell me my riddle! You can't -- none of you. 'What is it that's so easy to catch but nobody runs after?'"

"I don't know, Laddie," said Rose.

"I give it up," said Russ.

"Do you all give it up?" cried Laddie, almost dancing in his glee.

"What is it?" asked Vi.

"Why, the thing that's so easy to catch but nobody runs after, is a cold!" announced her twin very proudly.

"And I'm so-o cold," announced Mun Bun, hanging to Rose's skirt while the older ones laughed with Laddie. "Don't Aunt Jo ever have it warm in her house -- like it is at home?"

"Of course she does, Mun Bun," said Rose, quickly hugging the little fellow. "But poor William is sick and nobody knows how to tend to the heating plant as well as he does. And so -- Why, Russ, Mun Bun is cold! His hands are like ice."

"And so are my hands!" cried Margy, running hastily from the window. "We've been trying to catch the snowflakes through the windowpane."

"No wonder your hands are cold," said Rose admonishingly.

Russ began to cast about in his ingenious mind for some means of getting the younger children's attention off the discomfort of a room the temperature of which was down to sixty. In one corner were two stacks of sectional bookcases which Aunt Jo had just bought, but which had no books in them and no glass fronts. Russ considered them for a moment, and then looked all about the room.

"I tell you what," he said, slowly. "You know when they took us to the Sportsman's Show last week at Mechanic's Hall? Don't you remember about that Eskimo igloo that they had built of ice in the middle of the skating pond? Let's build an igloo like that, and get into it and keep warm."

"O-oo!" gasped Vi, "how can you do that?"

"Where will you get any ice?" Laddie demanded.

"Goodness! it's cold enough in here without bringing in ice," announced Rose with confidence.

"We won't build the igloo of ice blocks," said Russ quite calmly. "But we'll make believe it is ice."

"I'd rather do that," Laddie agreed. "For make-believe ice can't be so wet and cold as real ice, can it?"

"What you going to make your make-believe ice out of, Russ?" demanded Vi, the exceedingly practical.

Russ at once set them all to work, clearing the middle of the room and bringing up hassocks and small benches and some other articles that could be used in the construction of the indoor igloo. He brought the sections of the new bookcase, one piece at a time.

Russ really exhibited some skill in building up the walls of the hut in the middle of the floor. When it was completed it was rather a tight fit for all six of the little Bunkers to squeeze inside, but they did it. And the activities of building the igloo had warmed even Mun Bun.

"You know," said Rose thoughtfully, "Eskimos live in these igloos and eat blubber, and don't go out at all while it is snowing, same as it does now."

"Why don't they go out?" asked Vi.

"Because it is cold," said Russ.

"And why do they eat blubber?"

"Because they are hungry," said Rose.

"What's blubber, anyway?" asked the inquisitive one. "Is it like candy?"

"It's more like candles," answered Russ, laughing.

Just then Laddie kicked excitedly.

"I bet I can make another riddle!" he cried.

"Now, you see, Russ Bunker?" Rose admonished. "Laddie has got that word, too."

"Hey, stop kicking, Laddie!" cried Russ.

But in his excitement the boy twin had put his foot right through the wall of the igloo! At least, he had kicked one of the boxes out of place and the whole structure began to wobble.

"Oh! Oh! Oh!" shrieked Vi. "It's falling."

"Get Mun Bun out," gasped Rose, thinking first of all of the littlest Bunker.

But just then the heaped up boxes came down with a crash and the six little Bunkers were buried under the ruins of their "igloo."



Chapter II

The Snowman


A corner of one of the overturned bookcase sections struck Russ Bunker's head with considerable force -- actually cutting the skin and bringing blood. Big as he was, the oldest Bunker yelled loudly.

Then, of course, everybody yelled. Quite a panic followed. When Aunt Jo and Mother Bunker came running to the front room where all this had taken place the Eskimo igloo looked very much like a pile of boxes with a young earthquake at work beneath it!

"For the good land's sake!" gasped Aunt Jo, who usually was very particular about her speech, but who on this occasion was startled into an exclamation. "What is happening?"

"Get off my head, Vi!" wailed Laddie, from somewhere under the tottering pile. "It's not to sit on."

"Oh! Oh!" cried Rose. "Russ is all bloody! Oh, dear!"

"I'm not cold any more," cried Mun Bun. "Let me out! I'll be good!"

But Russ Bunker was neither crying nor struggling. He was a good deal of a man, for a nine-and-a-half-year-old boy. Being the oldest of the six little Bunkers there were certain duties which fell to his lot, and he understood that one of them was to keep cool when anything happened to excite or frighten his brothers and sisters.

The whack he had got on the head, and even the trickle of blood down his face, did not cause Russ to lose his head. No, indeed. He, and the other little Bunkers, had been in innumerable scrapes before, and the wreck of the Eskimo igloo was nothing provided Aunt Jo did not make a lot out of it. It just crossed Russ' mind that he ought to have asked his aunt before he used the sectional bookcases for building-blocks.

Naturally of an inventive turn of mind, Russ was constantly building new things -- make-believe houses, engines, automobiles, steamboats, and the like -- usually with a merry whistle on his lips, too. He was a cheerful boy and almost always considered the safety and pleasure of his brothers and sisters first.

In companionship with Rose, who was a year younger, the boy cared for the other four little Bunkers so successfully that Mother Bunker and Daddy Bunker were seldom troubled in their minds regarding any of the children. Rose was a particularly helpful little girl, and assisted Mother Bunker a good deal. She was a real little housewife.

Vi and Laddie, the twins, were both very active children -- active with their tongues as well as their bodies. Violet's inquisitiveness knew no bounds. She wanted to know about every little thing that happened about her. Daddy Bunker said he was sure she must ask questions in her sleep. Laddie was an inveterate riddle-asker. He learned every riddle he heard; and he tried to make up riddles about everything that happened. Sometimes he was successful, and sometimes he was not. But he always tried again, having a persevering temperament.

The smallest Bunkers -- Margy, whose real name was Margaret, and Mun Bun, whose real name was Monroe Ford -- were quite as anxious to get out from under the heap of boxes as the others. Mother Bunker and Aunt Jo ran to their assistance, and soon the six were on their feet to be hugged and scolded a little by both their mother and aunt.

"But they do get into such mischief all the time," sighed Mother Bunker. "I shall be glad when Daddy gets back and decides what to do for the winter. I don't know whether we shall go right back to Pineville or not."

For it was in Pineville, Pennsylvania, that we first met the six little Bunkers and in the first volume of this series went with them on a nice vacation to Mother Bunker's mother. The book telling of this is called "Six Little Bunkers at Grandma Bell's."

After that lovely visit in Maine the six little Bunkers had gone to stay for a time with each of the following very delightful relatives and friends: To Aunt Jo's in Boston, where they were now for a second visit over the Thanksgiving holidays; to Cousin Tom's; to Grandpa Ford's; to Uncle Fred's; to Captain Ben's; and last of all to Cowboy Jack's.

In that last book, "Six Little Bunkers at Cowboy Jack's," they had enjoyed themselves so much that they were always talking about it. And now, as Vi managed to crawl out from under the wreck of the Eskimo igloo, she announced:

"That iggilyoo isn't half as nice to live in as Chief Black Bear's wigwam was at Cowboy Jack's. You 'member that wigwam, Russ?"

"I remember it, all right," said Russ, rather ruefully touching the cut above his temple and bringing away his finger again to look at the blood upon it. "Say, is it going to keep right on bleeding, Mother?"

"Not for long," declared Mother Bunker. "But I think you were rightly punished, Russ. Suppose the corner of the section had cut Mun Bun's head?"

"I should have been awful sorry," admitted Russ. "I guess I didn't think much, Mother. I was only trying to amuse 'em 'cause they were cold."

"It is cold in here, Amy. Don't scold the boy. See! The storm is getting worse. I don't know what we shall do about the fire. Parker and Annie don't seem to know what to do about the heater and I'm sure I don't. Oh, dear!"

"B-r-rrr!" shivered Mother Bunker. "I am not fond of your New England winters, Jo. I hope we shall go South --  -- "

"Oh, Mother!" cried Rose excitedly. "Shall we really go down South with Daddy? Won't that be glorious?"

"I guess it's warm down there," said Laddie. "Or maybe the steampipes hum."

"Do the steampipes hum down South?" asked Violet.

While the four older children were exceedingly interested in this new proposal for excitement and adventure, Margy and Mun Bun had returned to the great window that overlooked the street and the front steps. They flattened their noses against the cold pane and stared down into the driving snow. Within this short time, since the storm had begun, everything was white and the few people passing in the street were like snowmen, for the white flakes stuck to their coats and other wraps.

"Oh, see that man!" Margy cried to Mun Bun. "He almost fell down."

"He's not a man," said her little brother with confidence. "He's a boy."

"Oh! He's a black boy -- a colored boy. That's right, so he is."

The figure in the snow stumbled along the sidewalk, clinging to the iron railings. When he reached the steps of Aunt Jo's house he slipped down upon the second step and seemed unable to get up again. His body sagged against the iron railing post, and soon the snow began to heap on him and about him.

"Oh!" gasped Margy. "He is a reg'lar snowman."

"He's a black snowman," said Mun Bun. "It must be freezing cold out there, Margy."

"Of course it is. He'll turn into a nicicle if he stays there on the steps," declared the little girl, with some anxiety.

"And he hasn't a coat and scarf like you and me," Mun Bun said. "Maybe he hasn't any Grandma Bell to knit scarfs for him."

"I believe we ought to help him, Mun Bun," said Margy, decidedly. "We have plenty of coats."

"And scarfs," agreed Mun Bun. "Let's."

So they immediately left the room quite unnoticed by the older people in it. This is a remarkable fact. Whenever Margy and Mun Bun had mischief in mind they never asked Mother about it. Now, why was that, do you suppose?

The two little ones went swiftly downstairs into the front hall. Both had coats and caps and scarfs hung on pegs in a little dressing-room near the big door. They knew that they should not touch the outer garments belonging to the older children; but they got their own wraps.

"Maybe he's too big for them," murmured Margy. "But I guess he can squeeze into the coats -- into one of them, anyway."

"Course he can," said Mun Bun. "Mine's a nawful warm coat. And that black snowman isn't much bigger than I am, Margy."

"I don't know," said his sister slowly, for she was a little wiser than Mun Bun about most things. "Open the door."

Mun Bun could do that. This was the inside door, and they stepped into the vestibule. Pressing his face close to the glass of one of the outer doors, Mun Bun stared down at the "black snowman" on the step.

"He's going to sleep in the snow," said the little boy. "I guess we've got to wake him up, Margy."

He pounded on the glass with his fat fist. He knocked several times before the figure below even moved. Then the colored boy, who was not more than seventeen or eighteen, turned his head and looked up over his shoulder at the faces of the two children in the vestibule.

He was covered with snow. His face, though moderately black as a usual thing, was now gray with the cold. His black eyes, even, seemed faded. He was scantily clad, and his whole body was trembling with the cold.

"Come up here!" cried Mun Bun, beckoning to the strange boy. "Come up here!"

The boy in the snow seemed scarcely to understand. Or else he was so cold and exhausted that he could not immediately get up from the step on which he was sitting.



Chapter III

Uncle Sam's Nephew


The fluffy, sticky snowflakes gathered very fast upon the colored boy's clothing. As Mun Bun had first announced, he looked like a snowman, only his face was grayish-black.

He was slim, and when he finally stood up at the bottom of the house steps, he seemed to waver just like a slim reed in the fierce wind that drove the snowflakes against him. He hesitated, too. It seemed that he scarcely knew whether it was best to mount the steps to Aunt Jo's front door or not.

"Come up here!" cried Mun Bun again, and continued to beckon to him through the glass of the outer door.

Margy held up her coat and cap, and beckoned to the boy also. He looked much puzzled as he slowly climbed the steps. His lips moved and the children knew he asked:

"What yo' want of me, child'en?"

Mun Bun tugged at the outer door eagerly, and finally it flew open. He shouted in the face of the driving snow:

"Come in here, snowman. Come in here!"

"I ain't no snowman," drawled the colored boy. "But I sure is as cold as a snowman could possibly be."

"It's warmer inside here than it is out there," Margy said. "Although we're not any too warm. Our steampipes don't hum. But you come in."

"Yes," said Mun Bun, grabbing at the colored boy's cold, wet hand. "You come in here. We have some coats and things you can put on so you won't be cold."

"Ma goodness!" murmured the boy, staring at the garments the children held out to him.

"You can wear 'em," said Margy. "We have more."

"You put on my coat," urged Mun Bun. "It's a boy's coat. You won't want Margy's, for she's a girl."

"Ma goodness!" ejaculated the colored boy again, "what yo' child'en s'pose I do wid dem t'ings? 'Less I puts 'em up de spout?"

The two children hadn't the first idea as to what he meant by putting the clothing up the spout. But the colored boy meant that he might pawn them and get some money. He did not offer to take the coats and other things that Margy and Mun Bun tried to put into his hands.

Just at this moment Mother Bunker and Aunt Jo, followed by Russ and Rose, appeared on the stairs. They had missed the two little folks and, as Aunt Jo had said, wrinkling her very pretty nose, that she could "just smell mischief," they had all come downstairs to see what the matter was.

The colored boy spied them. He had evidently been ill used by somebody, for he was very much frightened. He thrust the coats back at the children and turned to get out of the vestibule.

But the door had been sucked to by the wind and it was hard to open again. It was really quite wonderful that Mun Bun had been able to get it open when he and Margy had called the strange colored boy in.

"Don't go!" cried Margy.

"Take my coat, please," urged Mun Bun. "I know it will keep you warm."

And all the time the colored boy was tugging at the handle of the outer door and fairly panting, he was so anxious to get out. Mother Bunker was the first to reach the door into the vestibule, and she opened it instantly.

"Wait!" she commanded the strange boy. "What do you want? What are you doing here?"

But by this time the young fellow had jerked open the outer door, and now he darted out and almost dived down the snowy steps.

"Oh, Mother!" cried Mun Bun, "he's forgot his coat and cap and scarf. I wanted him to wear mine because he was so cold and snowed on."

"And he could have had mine, too," declared Margy quite as earnestly.

"What do these tots mean?" gasped Aunt Jo, holding up both hands.

But Mother Bunker, who understood her little Bunkers very well indeed, in a flash knew all about it. She cried:

"The poor boy! Bring him back! He did look cold and wet."

"Oh, he's just a tramp," objected Aunt Jo.

"He's poor, Josephine, and unfortunate," answered Mother Bunker, as though that settled all question as to what they should do about the colored boy.

Russ Bunker had already got his cap and mackinaw. He darted out of the house, down the steps, and followed the shuffling figure of the colored boy, now all but hidden by the fast-driving snow. How it did snow, to be sure!

"Say! Wait a minute!" Russ called, and caught the strange youth by the elbow.

"What yo' want, little boy?" demanded the other. "I ain't done nothin' to them child'en. No, I ain't. Dey called me up to dat do' or I wouldn't have been there."

"I know that," said Russ, urgently detaining him. "But come back. My mother wants to speak to you, and I guess my Aunt Jo'll treat you nice, too. You're cold and hungry, aren't you?"

"Sure is," groaned the boy.

"Then they will give you something to eat and let you get warm. You'd better come," added Russ very sensibly, "for it looks as if it would be a big storm."

"Sure do," agreed the colored boy again. "Ah don' like dis snow. Don't have nothin' like dis down whar I come f'om. No, suh."

"Now, come on," said Russ eagerly. "My mother's waiting for us."

The negro lad hesitated no longer. Even Russ saw how weary and weak he was as he stumbled on beside him. His shoes were broken, his trousers were very ragged, and his coat that he had buttoned up closely was threadbare. His cap was just the wreck of a cap!

"Yo' sure she ain't goin' to send for no policeman, little boy?" queried the stranger. "I wasn't goin' to take them clo'es. No, suh!"

"She understands," said Russ confidently, and holding to the boy's ragged sleeve led him up the steps of Aunt Jo's pretty house.

Russ saw Mr. North, the nice old gentleman who lived over the way, staring out of his window at this surprising fact: Aunt Jo allowing a beggar to enter at her front door! Still, Mr. North, as well as the rest of the neighbors, had decided before this that almost anything astonishing could happen while the six little Bunkers were visiting their Aunt Jo in Boston's Back Bay district.

"Here he is, Mother," said Russ, entering the hall with the colored boy.

The other children had come downstairs now and all understood just what Margy and Mun Bun had tried to do for the stranger. Mother Bunker smiled kindly upon the wretched lad, even if Aunt Jo did look on a little doubtfully from the background.

"We understand all about it, boy," Mother Bunker said. "The little folks only wanted to help you; and so do we. Do you live in Boston?"

"Me, Ma'am? No, Ma'am! I lives a long way souf of dis place. Dat I do!"

"And have you no friends here?"

"Friends? Whar'd I get friends?" he demanded, complainingly. "Dey ain't no friends for boys like me up Norf yere."

"Oh! What a story!" exclaimed Aunt Jo. "I know people must be just as kind in Boston as they are in the South."

"Mebbe dey is, lady," said the colored boy, looking somewhat frightened because of Aunt Jo's vigorous speech. "Mebbe dey is; but dey hides it better yere. If yo' beg a mess of vittles in dis town dey puts yo' in jail. Down Souf dey axes you is you hongry? Ya-as'm!"

At that Aunt Jo began to bustle about to the great delight of the children. She called down to Parker, the cook, and asked her to put out a nice meal on the end of the kitchen table and to make coffee. And then she said she would go up to the attic where, in a press in which she kept garments belonging to a church society, there were some warm clothes that might fit the colored boy.

Rose and Vi went with Aunt Jo to help, or to look on; but Margy and the three boys stayed with their mother to hear more that the visitor might say.

"My name's Sam," he replied to Mother Bunker's question. "Dat is, it's the name I goes by, for my hones'-to-goodness name is right silly. But I had an Uncle Sam, and I considers I has got a right to be named after him. So I is."

"Does your Uncle Sam wear a tall hat and red-and-white striped pants with straps under the bootsoles and stars on his vest?" asked Laddie, with great interest and eagerness.

"I dunno, little fellow," said Sam. "I ain't never seen my Uncle Sam, but I heard my mammy talk about him."

Russ and his mother were much amused at Laddie's question. Russ said:

"That Uncle Sam you are talking about, Laddie, is a white man. He couldn't be this Sam's uncle."

"Why not?" demanded Laddie, with quite as much curiosity as his twin sister might have shown.

"Very true, why not?" repeated Mrs. Bunker, with some gravity. "You are wrong, Russ. Our Uncle Sam is just as much this Sam's uncle as he is ours. Now go down to the kitchen, Sam. I hear Parker calling for you. Eat your fill. And wait down there, for we shall want to see you again."



Chapter IV

Daddy's News


Aunt Jo found the garments she meant to give to Sam, the strange colored boy, and she and Rose and Vi came downstairs with them to the room in which the children had been playing at first. Russ and Laddie had set up the sectional bookcase once more and the room looked less like the wreck of an auction room, Mother Bunker said.

She had returned with Margie and the boys. They thought it better -- at least, the adults did -- to leave Sam in the kitchen with Parker and Annie, the maid.

"But I hate to see that boy go away from here in this storm," said kind-hearted Aunt Jo. "Perhaps what he says about us Boston people in comparison with those where he comes from, is true. The police do arrest people for begging."

"Well, we have tramps at Pineville," Mother Bunker observed. "But the constable doesn't often arrest any. Not if they behave themselves. But a city is different. And this boy did not know how to ask for help, of course. Don't you think you can be of help to him, Jo?"

"I'll see," said Aunt Jo. "Wait until he has had a chance to eat what Parker has fixed for him."

Just then Annie, the parlormaid, tapped on the door.

"Please'm," she said to Aunt Jo, "that colored boy is goin' down in the cellar to fix the furnace."

"To fix the furnace?" cried Aunt Jo.

"Yes'm. He says he has taken care of a furnace before. He's been up North here for 'most two years. But he lost his job last month and couldn't find another."

"The poor boy," murmured Mother Bunker.

"Yes'm," said Annie. "And when he heard that the house was cold because me nor Parker didn't know what to do about the furnace, and the fire was most out, he said he'd fix it. So he's down there now with Parker and Alexis."

"Did Alexis come home?" cried Russ, who was very fond, as were all the Bunker children, of Aunt Jo's great Dane. "Can't we go down and see Alexis?"

"And see Sam again," said Margy. "Me and Mun Bun found him, you know."

It seemed to the little girl as though the colored boy had been quite taken away from her and from Mun Bun. They had what Mother Bunker laughingly called "prior rights" in Sam.

"Well, if he is a handy boy like that," said Aunt Jo, referring to the colored boy, "and can fix the furnace, we shall just have to keep him until William is well again. Has he finished his dinner, Annie?"

"Not yet, Ma'am. And indeed he was hungry. He ate like a wolf. But when he heard about us all being beat by that furnace, down he went. There! He's shaking the grate now. You can hear him. He said the ashes had to be taken out from under the grate or the fire never would burn. Yes'm."

"Well, then," said Mother Bunker, "you children will have to wait to see Sam -- and Alexis -- until he has finished eating."

"Annie," said Aunt Jo quickly, before the girl could go, "how does Alexis act toward this boy?"

"Oh, Ma'am! Alexis just snuffed of him, and then put his head in his lap. Alexis says he's all right. And for a black person," added the parlormaid, "I do think the boy's all right, Ma'am."

She went out and Aunt Jo and Mother Bunker laughed. The youngsters were suddenly excited at that moment by the stopping of a taxicab at the door. Vi had spied it from the window, for hard as it snowed she could see that.

"Here's Daddy! Here's Daddy!" she cried, dancing up and down.

Mun Bun and Margy joined in the dance, while the other three children entered upon a whirlwind rush down the stairway to meet Mr. Bunker at the front entrance.

He came in, covered with snow, and with his traveling bag. The children's charge upon him would surely have overturned anybody but Daddy Bunker.

"I scarcely dare come home at all," he shouted up the stairway to his wife and Aunt Jo, "because of these young Indians. You would think they were after my very life, if you didn't know that it was my pockets they want to search."

He shook off the clinging snow and the clinging children until he had removed his overcoat. Russ grabbed up the bag, and Rose and Laddie each captured an arm and were fairly carried upstairs by Mr. Bunker. He landed breathless and laughing with them in the middle of the big room which Aunt Jo had given up to the six little Bunkers as their playroom while they visited here in her Back Bay home.

"What is the news, Charles?" asked Mother Bunker, almost as eagerly as the children themselves might have asked the question.

"I've got to see Armatage personally -- that is all there is about it, and Frank Armatage cannot come North."

"Then you are going?" said his wife, and the children almost held their several breaths to catch Daddy Bunker's reply.

Their father looked around upon the eager little faces. Then he glanced at his wife and smiled.

"What do you think?" he asked. "Had I better say before so many little pop-eyed, curious folk? I -- don't -- know --  -- "

"Oh, Daddy!" gasped Rose.

"We want to go with you," breathed Russ.

"I want to go!" cried Vi. "Where is it?"

"If Vi goes, can't I go too?" Margy pleaded.

"I'm not going to stay here, Daddy, if the rest go," declared Laddie.

But Mun Bun just walked gravely over to his father and put up both his arms.

"Mun Bun go with Daddy," he said confidently.

"The blessed baby!" cried Aunt Jo.

"It doesn't look much as though they appreciated your hospitality, Josephine," said Daddy Bunker to his sister, smiling over the top of Mun Bun's head as he held the little fellow.

"Oh!" cried Rose instantly, "we have had an awfully nice time here. We always do have nice times here. But we want to go with Daddy, and so does Mother."

"Two words for yourself and one for me, Rose," laughed her mother. "But if it is going to take some time, Charles, I think we would all like to go along."

"I had Mr. Armatage on the long distance telephone," said Daddy Bunker, smiling. "He was in Savannah. His plantation is some distance from that city. And he has invited us all to spend the Christmas holidays with him at his country home. What do you think of that?"

It was pretty hard for Mother Bunker to say what she thought of it because of the gleeful shouts of the children. It did not much matter to Russ, and Rose, and Violet, and Laddie, and Margy, and Mun Bun where they went with Daddy Bunker. It was just the idea of going to some new place and to have new adventures.

"Well," said the gentleman finally, "the boat sails day after to-morrow. Believing that you would approve, Amy, and knowing Jo couldn't go, I have already secured reservations for us eight Bunkers -- two big staterooms. The boat is the Kammerboy, of the Blue Pennant Line."

The six little Bunkers were so delighted by this news and the prospect of a boat journey into warmer waters than those that ebb and flow about Boston, that they almost forgot the colored boy whose entry into the house had been brought about by Margy and Mun Bun.

But the latter, sitting in Daddy's lap, a little later began to prattle about his "black snowman," and so the story of Sam came out.

By that time the steampipes were humming and the whole house was warm and cozy again.

"And we can thank Sam for that, Charles," said Mother Bunker. "William is ill, and you would have had to go down and fight that furnace if this boy had not come along and proved himself so handy."

"Maybe we'd all better go down and thank him," said Rose soberly.

Daddy Bunker laughed. "I guess you want to get better acquainted with this wonderful Sam," he said. "A right nice boy, is he, Mother Bunker?"

"He seems to be," agreed Mother Bunker. "And he certainly needed friends. I think Jo will keep him for a while. At least, as long as William is laid up."

A little later the children all trooped down to the big kitchen. The good-natured cook did not mind their presence. And Alexis, the great Dane, showed plainly that he was delighted to see his young playfellows. Alexis was a very intelligent dog and it was no wonder that the servants and Aunt Jo considered that anybody of whom the dog approved must be "all right." Alexis had approved of Sam.

Sam had recovered from his weariness, and, no longer hungry and his next few meals in prospect, his spirits had rebounded from their low ebb to cheerfulness. The kindness shown him, and the praise the women had heaped upon him because of his mastery of the difficult furnace, delighted Sam.

"I'm sure obliged to you child'en for as'in' me into this yere house," he said, grinning at Margy and Mun Bun. "Dis is sure just as fine folks as we have down Souf. Dey done fed de hongry an' clothed de naked. An' mighty good clo'es, too."

He had on the suit Aunt Jo had found for him and almost new shoes, while an overcoat and a hat which he was to wear when he went out hung behind the cellar door. There was a small room off the kitchen in which Sam was to sleep. To the colored boy's mind he was "right good fixed."

"Let me have dat mouf organ, little boy," said Sam, observing Laddie's harmonica. "I show yo' sumpin'. Now, cl'ar de way. I's goin' to work de mouf organ and dance fo' yo'."

The women stopped in their work to watch him, as well as the children. Sam slid out into the middle of the floor, began to jerk a tune out of the harmonica, and commenced a slow dance -- a sort of double shuffle.

But he soon pivoted and slid much faster, all in time with the sounds he drew from the harmonica. Annie and Parker applauded his unexpected steps, and the children began to shriek in delight.

"Now we has it!" exclaimed Sam, removing the instrument from between his lips, and panting from his exertions. "Now we skates down de floor. Now, turn again and back-along. I's a-comin', child'en -- I's a-comin'. See me dance Jim Crow! Here I comes and dere I goes! Now, de pigeon-wing --  -- "

He cut a most surprising figure, both hands flapping in the air and his slim body bent and twisted at a curious angle. With a resounding slap of the sole of his shoe on the floor he brought the dance to an end and fell panting into his chair.

"You're some dancer, Sam," cried the eager Annie. "Ain't he, Parker?"

"What do you call that figure?" demanded Parker. "A pigeon-wing?"

"Dat's what it is," breathed Sam, smiling widely. "My own particular invention, dat is. Nobody can't do dat like I can. No, suh!"

Just then their Mother called the six little Bunkers upstairs, and they had to leave the kitchen. But they would all have liked to see Sam cut that pigeon-wing again.



Chapter V

Off For Summer Seas


How busy the six little Bunkers were on the next day you can easily imagine. Such a packing of bags and steamer trunks! Though of course Mother Bunker did most of that, although Rose helped some. And such a running about the bedrooms and upper halls of Aunt Jo's house asking if this thing shouldn't be put in, or that thing shouldn't be left out!

The little people could think of more articles that might be needed down South than ten grown-ups could imagine! Laddie was sure they would need their bathing suits that they had had at Captain Ben's. Mun Bun, who had been playing with Margy in the yard making big snowballs, came in to ask his mother if they couldn't take just one of the biggest snowballs with them in one of the trunks, because Sam, the colored boy, said there wouldn't be any snow down South.

"But, my dear!" exclaimed Mother Bunker, laughing, "we are going down South just to escape the snow and the cold. Why carry it with us?"

"But maybe the little boys and girls down there will want to see some real snow," said Mun Bun, who could almost always find an answer for any question like this.

"Then they will have to come up North to see it," declared his mother decidedly. "We cannot take snow along on the boat, that is sure."

Violet found at least a hundred brand new questions to ask about the preparations for the trip. Mother Bunker finally called her a "chatterbox" and begged her to stop.

"How do you suppose I can attend to a dozen different things at once, Violet, and answer your questions, too?"

"Never mind the things, Mother," Vi replied. "Just tell me --  -- "

"Not another question!" exclaimed Mother Bunker. "Stop it!"

And then she put out her hand for something to put in the trunk she was packing, and actually squealed when her hand unexpectedly met Alexis's cold, damp nose.

"Goodness me!" cried Mother Bunker. "That dog is a nuisance. That is the third time, at least, that I have tried to pack his nose in this trunk. Every time I reach out for something he thinks I want to pet him."

This delighted Margy and Mun Bun very much. The idea of packing the great Dane in a steamer trunk was really quite ridiculous. Violet did not venture any more questions immediately however; but Laddie suddenly broke out with a new riddle.

"Oh, Mother! Mother!" he cried. "Do you know the difference between a dog and an elephant?"

"I should hope so!" Mother Bunker said, chuckling. "But I suppose you want me to give the riddle up so that you can have the pleasure of telling me what the difference is between Alexis and an elephant."

"Not just Alexis; any dog," urged Laddie. "And, of course, it would be real polite of you if you said you didn't know," added the little boy.

"Very well; what is the difference between an elephant and a dog, Laddie?"

"Why," cried Laddie very eagerly, "an elephant owns a trunk of his very own; and a dog only wants to get into a trunk. There now!"

"But all dogs don't want to get into trunks," objected Vi. "Do they? Do they, now, Mother?"

"I am afraid Laddie's riddle is not as good as some he makes up," said Mother Bunker. "For you know, dogs have trunks as well as elephants."

Her eyes twinkled as she said it, for she knew she was going to puzzle her little brood. At once they all broke out with questions and exclamations. How could that be? They had seen, as Vi said, "oceans of dogs" and none of them had had a nose long enough to be called a trunk, like the elephants they had seen at the circus.

"Mother is just puzzling us," Laddie said. "How can a dog have a trunk when his nose is short and blunt? At least, most dogs' noses are short and blunt."

"Each dog has a trunk nevertheless," declared Mother Bunker, laughing. "And so have you, and so have I."

"I have a suitcase," announced Mun Bun gravely. "I don't have a trunk."

Mother Bunker swept Mun Bun into her arms then and kissed his chubby neck.

"Of course you have a trunk, honey-boy," she cried. "All your little body between your shoulders and your legs is your trunk. So you all have trunks, and so do the dogs."

The children laughed delightedly at this, but Laddie suddenly stopped laughing.

"Why!" he cried out in great glee, "then the elephant, Mother, has two trunks. I guess I can make a good riddle out of that, can't I?"

Russ and Rose took Alexis downstairs after that so that he would not be in the way. They wanted to see Sam again, anyway. And they asked him to dance for them.

"I'm going to learn how to cut that pigeon wing," Russ declared. "You do it again, please, Sam. I ought to be able to learn it if I see you do it often enough."

However, Russ did not succeed in this ambition. There really was not time for him to learn the trick, for the next morning, very early, the Bunker family started for the boat. The snowstorm had long since ceased, and the streets had been cleaned. William had recovered from his attack of neuralgia and drove them in the big closed car to the dock where the Kammerboy lay.

IT WAS A GREAT WHITE STEAMER WITH THREE SMOKESTACKS. Six Little Bunkers at Mammy Junes. Page 46

It was a great white steamer with three smoke stacks and a wireless mast. There was so much to see when they first went aboard that the six little Bunkers could not possibly observe everything with only two eyes apiece! They wanted to be down in the saloon and in the staterooms that Daddy Bunker had engaged and out on the deck all at the same time. And how were they to do that?

Russ and Rose, however, were allowed to go out on deck and watch the ship get out of the dock and steam down the harbor. But Mother Bunker at first kept the four smaller children close to her side.

"I never knew Boston was so big," said Rose, as they looked back at the smoky city. "I guess Aunt Jo never showed us all of it, did she, Russ?"

"I don't suppose if we lived there a whole year we should be able to see it all," declared her brother wisely. "Maybe we could see it better from an airplane. I'd like to go up in an airplane."

"No, no! Don't do that, Russ! Maybe the engine would get stalled like the motor-car engine does, and then you couldn't get down," said Rose, very much worried by this thought.

"Well, we could see the city better."

"We can see it pretty well from here," said Rose. "And see the islands. There is a lighthouse, Russ. Would you like to live in a lighthouse?"

"Yes, I would, for a while," agreed her brother. "But I'd rather be right on this boat, sailing out into the ocean. Just think, Rose! We've never been away out at sea before."

"There was lots of ocean at Captain Ben's," said the girl. "I suppose the ocean is all the same everywhere. Just water. I hope it stays flat."

"Stays flat?" repeated Russ, opening his eyes very wide.

"Yes," said Rose gravely. "I don't like water when it's bumpy. It makes me feel funny in my stomach when it's that way."

"Oh! It won't be rough," said Russ, with much assurance. "I heard Daddy say we were going to sail into summer seas. And that must be warm and pleasant water. Don't you think so?"

Rose was looking over the rail now. She pointed.

"That doesn't look as though the water was warm," she cried. "See the lumps of ice, Russ? It must be ice water. Where do you suppose the summer seas are?"

"We are going to them," declared her brother with confidence. "Daddy said so. He said we would go out to a place he called the Gulf Stream and that the water would be warm there and the air would be warmer, too."

"What do you think of that?" gasped Rose. "A stream in an ocean? I guess he was joking."

"Oh, no, he wasn't. He said it real serious. He told Aunt Jo about it."

"But how can a stream -- that means a river -- be running in the ocean? There wouldn't be any banks!" declared the doubtful Rose.

"Let's go and ask him about it," suggested Russ. "And we'll want to keep on the lookout for that Gulf Stream too. I wouldn't want to go past it without seeing it."

They were just about to hunt for Daddy Bunker in the crowd on deck when Laddie came running to them. He was very much excited and he could hardly speak when he reached his older brother and sister.

"Oh! Oh! Oh!" gasped the smaller boy.

"What is the matter, Laddie?" demanded Russ.

"If it is another riddle, Laddie, take your time. We'll stop and listen to it."

"It isn't a riddle -- Yes, it is, too! I guess it's a sort of riddle, anyway," said Laddie. "Have you seen him?"

"That sounds like a riddle," said Rose. "And of course we haven't seen him. What is the answer?"

"Who is it that you are asking your riddle about?" demanded Russ.

"Mun Bun," declared Laddie, breathing very hard, for he had run all the way from the stateroom.

"Mun Bun isn't a riddle," said his sister. "He can't be."

"Well, he's lost," declared Laddie. "We can't find him. He was there one minute, and just the next he was gone. And Mother can't find him, and Vi's gone to hunt for Daddy, and -- and -- anyhow, Mun Bun has lost himself and we don't any of us know what has become of him."



Chapter VI

The Sea-Eagle


Mun Bun was not a very disobedient little boy; but as Daddy Bunker said, he had a better "forgetery" than he had memory. Mun Bun quite forgot that Mother Bunker had told him not to leave the bigger stateroom where she was setting things to rights in her usual careful way. For, as they were to be several days on the steamship, she must have a place for things and everything in its place, or she could not comfortably take care of Daddy and six children.

Then, Mun Bun was so quick! Just as Laddie said: one minute he was there, and the next minute he wasn't. He seemed to glide right out of sight. Cowboy Jack had called Mun Bun a blob of quicksilver; and you know you cannot put your finger on a blob of quicksilver, it runs so fast.

That is what Mun Bun had done. Mother Bunker's back was turned; Russ and Rose were on deck; the other three children, the twins and Margy, were busy prying into every corner of the stateroom to "see what it was meant for," when Mun Bun just stepped out.

How long he had been gone when their mother discovered the little boy's absence, of course she did not know. She sent Laddie and Vi flying for help -- the one for Russ and Rose and the other for their father. She dared not leave the staterooms herself for fear Mun Bun would reappear and be frightened if he did not find her.

She called loudly for him, without getting any answer. Other passengers began to take an interest in the loss of the little boy. Stewards began to hurry about, looking for a lost boy in the most unlikely places. Some of these cubbyholes were so tiny that a canary bird could scarcely have hidden in them, while other places where the stewards looked would have hidden a giant.

When Mr. Bunker appeared in haste from the smoking cabin, having been found by Vi, Mrs. Bunker fairly cast herself into his arms.

"Oh, Charles!" she cried. "He's fallen overboard!"

"You would never think of such a thing, Amy," returned her husband, "if the ship wasn't entirely surrounded by water."

"How can you joke, Charles?" she cried.

"I don't joke. Do you know how high the bulwarks are? A little boy like Mun Bun could not have fallen overboard. He could not climb the bulwarks."

"I never thought of that," agreed Mother Bunker more cheerfully.

"He might have fallen into one of the holds; but I don't believe he has done even that. And there are so many officers and men going up and down the ladders that I believe he has not even gone off this deck. For somebody would be sure to see him."

"Of course he didn't go ashore again?" suggested Rose, who with the other children had returned to the staterooms.

"Oh, no. We had started -- were well down the harbor in fact -- before he disappeared."

"Mun Bun is a reg'lar riddle," said Laddie. "He runs away and we can't find him; and we hunt for him and there he ain't. Then he comes back by himself -- sometimes."

"Is that a riddle?" asked his twin scornfully.

"We-ell, maybe it will be when I get it fixed right."

"I don't think much of it," declared Violet. "And I want to find Mun Bun."

"Don't you other children get lost on this big ship," said Mother Bunker. "Don't go off this floor."

"You mean deck, don't you, Mother?" asked Russ politely. "Floors are decks on board ship. Daddy said so."

"You'd better go and look for him, Russ; and you, too, Rose," the anxious woman said, as Daddy Bunker strode away. "But you other three stay right here by me. I thought that traveling on the train with you children was sometimes trying; but living on shipboard is going to be worse."

"Yes, Mother," said Rose gravely. "There are so many more places for Mun Bun to hide in aboard this ship. Come, Russ."

The two older Bunker children did not know where to look for their little brother. But Russ had an idea. He usually did have pretty bright ideas, and Rose admitted this fact.

"You know we got up early this morning," Russ said to his sister, "and we have been awful busy. And here it is noontime. Mun Bun doesn't usually have a nap until after lunch, but I guess he's gone somewhere and hidden away and gone to sleep. And when Mun Bun's asleep it is awful hard to wake him. You know that, Rose Bunker."

"Yes, I know it," admitted Rose. "But where could he have gone?"

Russ thought over that question pretty hard. Daddy Bunker would have said that the little lost boy's older brother was trying to put himself in Mun Bun's place and thinking Mun Bun's thoughts.

Now, if Mun Bun had been very sleepy and had crept away to take a nap, as he often did after lunch when they were at home, without saying anything to Mother Bunker about it, where would he have gone to take that nap on this steamboat?

Mun Bun was a bold little boy. He was seldom afraid of anything or anybody. Had he not instantly made friends with Sam, the strange colored boy, at Aunt Jo's house? So Russ knew he would not be afraid to run right out on the deck among the other passengers.

"But that would not be a nice place to go for a nap," said Russ aloud.

"What wouldn't?" asked Rose, quite surprised by her brother's sudden speech.

"Out here on the deck. No, he didn't come out here at all," said Russ, with confidence.

Russ was an ingenious boy, as we have seen. Once having got the right idea in his head he proceeded to think it out.

"Come on back, Rose," he said suddenly, seizing his sister's hand.

"What for?"

"To find Mun Bun."

"But he isn't with Mother!"

"I bet -- No, I don't mean that word," said Russ. "I mean I think he is with Mother, only she doesn't know it."

"Why, Russ Bunker, that sounds awfully silly!"

But she followed after him in much haste. They came running to the two staterooms which Daddy Bunker had engaged. Mother and the other children were the center of a group of sympathetic people in the corridor.

"Oh! did you find him?" Rose cried.

"Of course not," said Vi. "Where should we find him?"

"Here," announced Russ, pushing through the crowd.

"Of course he isn't here, Russ," said Vi. "Can't you count us? Mun Bun is not here."

"Well, let me see," said the boy, and he pushed into the bigger stateroom where his mother had been working when Mun Bun disappeared. Then he opened the door between that room and the other room. It was all quiet in there. He glanced into the two berths. There was nobody in either of them.

"You are mistaken, Russ," whispered Rose, looking in at the door he had left open. "He can't be here. Daddy has just come and says the captain has promised to have the ship searched."

But without making any reply Russ Bunker went down on his knees, looked under the lower berth, and then stretched an arm under and grabbed something with his hand.

A sleepy squeal came from under the berth. Russ, laughing, dragged at the chubby ankle his hand had grasped. Mun Bun's cross, sleepy voice was raised in protest:

"Don't you! Don't you! Let me be!"

Mother and Daddy Bunker came running.

"That blessed baby!" cried his mother.

"That pestiferous youngster!" exclaimed his father.

But he smiled happily, too, when Mun Bun was completely drawn out from under the berth by Russ and was in his mother's arms again. She sat down and rocked him to and fro while he "came awake" and looked around at the others.

"You have begun well," said Daddy Bunker gravely. "Stirring up the whole ship's company before we are out of sight of land! I must hurry and tell the captain to call off his sea-dogs. The lost is found."

"What are sea-dogs?" demanded Vi. "Do they have dogs at sea to hunt for lost children -- dogs like Alexis?"

Nobody answered that question, but Rose and Russ, trotting along the deck beside their father, were more fortunate in getting their questions answered.

"Are we really going to sail out of sight of land, Daddy?" asked Rose.

"We certainly are," said Mr. Bunker.

"But there is a lot of land," said the girl, pointing. "We can't lose all that, can we?"

"That is just what we are going to do. You watch. By and by the land will be only a line on the horizon, and then it will fade out of sight entirely."

So Russ and Rose remained on deck to watch the land disappear. Rose expected it to go something like a "fade-out" on the moving picture screen. The disappearance of the land proved to be a very long matter, however, and the two children went below for lunch when the first call came.

The purser had arranged for the Bunker family at a side table where they could be as retired as though they were at home. There were not many other children aboard, and the purser liked children anyway. So between his good offices and that of the colored stewards, the Bunkers were well provided for.

Even the captain -- a big, bold-looking man with a gray mustache and lots of glittering buttons on his blue coat -- stopped at the Bunker table to ask about Mun Bun.

"So that is the fellow I was going to put about my ship for and go back to Boston to see if he had been left on the dock!" he said very gruffly, but smiling with his eyes at Mun Bun, who smiled back. "He looks like too big a boy to make such a disturbance on a man's ship."

"Oh, I don't think, Captain Briggs, he will do it again," said Mother Bunker.

"I dess wanted to sleep," murmured Mun Bun, holding up his spoon.

"Next time you want your watch below," said Captain Briggs, shaking his head, "you report to me first. Do you hear?"

"Yes, Ma'am," said Mun Bun, quite sure that he had said the right thing although they all laughed at him.

Mother Bunker kept the little fellow close to her thereafter; but Vi and Laddie followed the two older children out on deck. There was a comfortably filled passenger list on the Kammerboy; but the wind was rather heavy that afternoon and many of them remained in the cabins. But the four children had a great game of hide and seek all over the forward deck.

Finally Daddy Bunker appeared from aft to make sure that none of the quartette was lost. He took Laddie and Vi below with him after a time and the two older children were left alone. They found seats in the lee of what the ship's men called "the house" and sat down to rest and talk. But every now and then one of them jumped up to look astern to see if the land had disappeared, as Daddy Bunker said it would.

"It's a long time going," said Rose.

"Well, there is a lot of it to go. Don't you remember," said Russ, "how big the North American continent is in the geography?"

"Oh! Is that it?" cried Rose.

"Yes. We've got to lose the whole top part of North America," her confident brother declared.

There was some sort of officer (he had brass buttons and wore a cap, so Russ and Rose knew he must be an officer) pacing the deck, back and forth, not far from their chairs. Every time he came near he threw a pleasant word to the brother and sister. Russ and Rose began to ask him questions and sometimes trotted beside him as he paced his lookout watch. Violet would have delighted in this man, for he seemed to know almost everything about ships and the sea and was perfectly willing to answer questions.

Rose asked him if, after they had lost the land, they would find the Gulf Stream that Daddy Bunker had told them about.

"Pretty soon thereafter, little lady," said the man.

"And -- and does it have banks?" pursued Rose.

"Does what have banks?" the man asked, in surprise. "The Gulf Stream?"

"Yes, sir."

"No," chuckled the sailor. "It's not like a river -- not just like one."

"Then how do you know when you come to the Gulf Stream?" demanded Russ. "I should think you'd sail over it without knowing."

But the sailor told them that the stream, or current, was very broad, that the water was much warmer than the surrounding ocean, and that the Gulf Stream was even a different color from the colder ocean.

"Oh, we won't miss it," declared the man, shaking his head.

Just then Rose saw something out over the ocean, sailing low and making a great flapping of black wings. She pointed eagerly:

"There's a buzzard, Russ -- like those we saw in Texas."

"Oh, no, little lady, that isn't a buzzard," said the sailor.

"It must be a gull. There were lots of them back in the harbor, you know, Rose," her brother rejoined.

"And it's not a gull," said the man, squinting his eyes to look at the distant bird. "It's too big. I declare! I think that's an eagle."

"Oh! An eagle like those on top of the flagstaffs?" cried Russ.

"And on the gold pieces?" added Rose, for she had a gold piece that had been given her on her last birthday.

"No, not that kind of eagle," said the man. "But he's related. Yes, sir; it's a sea-eagle; some call 'em, I guess rightly, ospreys. They're fishers, but they can't roost on the sea. That one's a long way off shore. Something is the matter with him."

"Do you suppose he's hungry?" asked Rose doubtfully.

"I shouldn't wonder if hunger drove him out here so far from land," said the sailor, smiling. "But he's been hurt. You can see how his left wing droops. Yes, something has happened to that bird."

The bird beat his way heavily toward the ship. First it rose a little way in the air, and then it slid down as though almost helpless, beating its good wing prodigiously to keep from falling into the water.

"He's making bad weather of it," said the sailor. "Poor chap. If he comes aboard --  -- "

"Oh! we'll feed him and mend his wing," cried Rose. "He's just like -- Why, Russ Bunker! that poor bird is just what Aunt Jo called poor Sam, a tramp. That is what he is."

"A sea-going tramp, I guess," said the sailor, laughing.

But he watched the coming sea bird quite as interestedly as did the two children. The creature seemed to have selected the steamship as its objective point, and it beat its good wing furiously so as to get into the course of the Kammerboy.

"Can we have the bird if it gets aboard, Mr. Officer?" asked Russ eagerly.

"If I can catch it without killing it -- for they are very fierce birds -- it shall be yours," promised the man.

At once, therefore, the eagerness and interest of Russ and Rose Bunker were vastly increased. They clung to the rail and watched the approaching bird with anxious eyes. It was coming head on toward the bow of the ship. Would the Kammerboy get past so swiftly that the sea-eagle could not reach it?

The uncertainty of this, and the evident effort of the great bird to fly a little farther, greatly excited the two older of the six little Bunkers.



Chapter VII

A Signal Of Distress


The steamship was pursuing her course so swiftly, but so easily, that Russ and Rose Bunker scarcely realized that the chances of the big bird's landing on the craft were very slim. The children raced along the deck toward the bows, believing that the big bird would alight there. Their friend, the lookout officer, however, remained at his post.

The big wings of the great sea-eagle beat the air heavily. They were covered with almost black feathers above while the feathers on the under side of the wings were pearl-gray, a contrast that Rose said was "awfully pretty."

"I don't see anything pretty about that poor, struggling bird," said Russ shortly. "He's hurt bad. I hope he gets here all right, but -- Oh! There he goes!"

It was a fact that the big bird almost fell into the sea, being weakened. The bow of the Kammerboy swept past the struggling creature. Russ and Rose lifted a joined complaint:

"Oh, he's drowned! He drowned!"

It was true that the bird was not a water-fowl and, as the officer had told the children, could not "roost" on the sea. It was not web-footed, so could not swim. And with an injured wing it was wonderful that it had kept up as long as it had, for it was now far, far from the shore.

But the bird had wonderful courage. Although plunged into the water and suffering one wave to break and pour over him, the great bird sprang into the air once more. He would not give up the fight! Russ and Rose saw the flashing eyes, the hooked beak parted, and every other evidence of the creature's putting forth a last remaining effort to reach a secure resting place for his feet.

And he made it! He beat his powerful wings for the last time and shot up over the rail of the steamship. The children shouted with delight. Other passengers had been attracted to the place. The officer who had made himself the friend of Russ and Rose was prepared for the bird's coming inboard. He ran with a piece of strong netting in his hands, and as the bird came thumping down on the deck, the man cast this net about the creature.

Then what a flapping and croaking and struggling there was! A sailor ran forward with a boat-stretcher and wanted to hit the bird; but Russ and Rose screamed, and the officer sent the man away.

"We're not going to kill the bird. These little folks want it alive," said the officer. "And so we are going to make a prisoner of it and mend that wing if we can."

"Aye, aye, Quartermaster," said the sailor who had tried to interfere.

"See if you can find a big poultry cage," said the officer. "We had live turkeys aboard for the Thanksgiving run, and what would hold a turkey ought to hold a sea-eagle. Lively now!"

"Aye, aye, sir," said the man, and hurried away.

While they waited for the cage the quartermaster warned the two Bunker children to remain well back from the struggling bird, for it might get away.

"He is certainly a strong bird," said one of the other passengers, looking on, too, from a safe distance. "Don't you think he'd better be killed, Officer?"

"Oh, no! Oh, no!" chorused Russ and Rose.

"Of course not. You're one of those folks, sir, that would kill an American eagle, too -- the bird that is supposed to represent the best fighting spirit of this country. No, sir! this bird is going to have his chance. If we can heal his wounds, we will set him free again -- hey, little folks?"

"Of course we will," said Russ stoutly.

"Yes, sir! we'll set him free," agreed Rose. "But when you do it I am going down to the stateroom. I think he is pretty savage."

It was quite true. The injured bird was savage. But when Daddy Bunker heard about the capture and saw the sea-eagle in its cage, he pointed out the fact that there was good reason for the bird to be savage if it had a broken wing.

"You would be cross if you had a broken arm, Russ," Daddy Bunker said soberly, "So come away and let the poor bird alone for a while. Maybe it will eat and drink if it is not watched so closely."

It was found that a bullet had passed through the fleshy part of the great bird's wing. The quartermaster declared that, without much doubt, the bird had been shot at from a small boat and by some idle and thoughtless "sportsman."

"It is wrong," Daddy Bunker said, "to call such people 'sportsmen.' There is no real sport in shooting at and laming an inoffensive creature, one that cannot be made use of for food. That excuse does not hold in this case."

"True word, sir," said the quartermaster. "It was a wicked trick, I'll say. But I think the bird will recover very shortly. Perhaps the little folks can see the bird released before we get to Charleston."

"Not me!" cried Rose again. "I am going right downstairs when you open that cage and set him free. He has got such a wicked eye."

And truly, interested as she was in the poor bird, Rose Bunker did not often go near him during the time he was in captivity. She found other things to interest her about the swiftly sailing Kammerboy.

So did all the other Bunkers. For what interested the six little Bunkers was sure to interest Daddy and Mother Bunker. It just had to. As Mother Bunker observed, Mun Bun was not the only one of her flock over whom she must keep pretty close watch.

They were really well behaved children; but mischief seemed to crop up so very easily in their lives. Daddy said that any Bunker could get into more adventures nailed into a wooden cage no bigger than the turkey crate the great sea-eagle was housed in than other children could find in a ten acre lot!

Living at sea on this great steamship was a good deal like living in a hotel. And the little Bunkers had lived in hotels, and liked the fun of it. Traveling by water was even more fun than traveling on a train. The Kammerboy was a fine big ship and there was so much to see and to learn that was new and surprising that that first night none of them really wanted to go to bed.

Although even that was a new experience. The staterooms were different from the berths in a sleeping car. Laddie thought they ought all to be tied into their berths so, if the ship rolled, they would not fall out.

"For I don't like falling out of bed," he said. "I always bump myself."

The steamship did not roll that night, however. At least if it did the little Bunkers did not know it. They slept soundly and were up bright and early in the morning and were all dressed and out on deck in the sunshine long before the first breakfast call came.

They made a call on the captive sea-eagle before breakfast and he seemed to be recovering, for he snapped his beak viciously when they drew near and spread his wings as far as the cage would allow.

"I don't think he's very nice," said Rose. "He doesn't seem to know we were kind to him."

"What are you going to do with him, Rose?" asked Vi.

"Let him go when his wing is well."

"But I guess he doesn't know that," said Laddie. "If he did he'd feel better about it."

"He bites," said Mun Bun reflectively. "I'd rather have Alexis. Alexis doesn't bite."

"Alexis would bite if he thought anybody was going to hurt him," said Russ. "But we can't make this eagle understand."

"Why not?" immediately demanded Vi.

"Because we can't talk bird-talk," replied Rose, giggling.

"When I go to school I'll learn bird-talk," announced Mun Bun. "And I'll learn to talk dog-talk and cat-talk, too. Then they'll all know what I mean."

"That is a splendid idea, dear," Rose said warmly. "You do just that."

"S'posing they don't teach those languages where you go to school, Mun Bun?" suggested Laddie gravely. "I guess they don't in all schools. They don't in the Pineville school, do they, Russ?"

"I'll ask Mother to send me to a school where they do," declared Mun Bun before Russ could reply. "I don't need to learn to talk our kind of talk. I know that already. But birds and dogs and cats are different."

"You talk pretty good, I guess, Mun Bun," said Russ. Mun Bun was quite proud of this. He did not know that he often said "t" for "c" and "w" for "r." "But you will be a long time learning to speak so that this bird could understand."

"Well, I shall try," the littlest Bunker declared confidently.

Anyhow, it was decided that the sea-eagle would have to be released before Mun Bun learned to talk the eagle language. The quartermaster who was Russ and Rose's particular friend, came along with some raw meat scraps for the big bird; but the children had to go to breakfast before the bird gobbled these up. He was very shy.

Later in the forenoon Russ and Rose were walking along the deck near a little house amidships and they heard a funny crackling sound -- a crackling and snapping like a fresh wood fire. They stopped and looked all around.

"I don't see any smoke," said Russ. "But there's a fire somewhere."

"What is that mast with the wires up there for, Russ?" asked his sister, looking upward.

"Oh! Daddy told me that was the wireless mast," Russ exclaimed.

"But that can't be," said Rose warmly. "It has wires hitched to it; so it can't be wireless."

"You know, Rose, they talk from ship to ship, and to the shore, by wireless."

"What does that mean?" returned the girl. "A telegraph?"

"That's it!" cried Russ. "And I guess that is what the crackling is. Listen!"

"Isn't it a fire, then, that we hear?" for the crackling sound continued.

"That's the electric spark," said her brother eagerly. "That is what it must be. Let's peep into this room, Rose. It is where the telegraph machine is."

There was a window near by, but as they approached it the two children found a door in the wireless house, too, and that door was open. A man in his shirt-sleeves and with a green shade over his eyes and something that looked like a rubber cap strapped to his head was sitting on a bench in front of some strange looking machinery.

He was writing on a pad and the crackling sound came from an electric spark that flickered back and forth in the machine before him. Russ and Rose gazed in, wide-eyed.

At length the crackling stopped and the spark went out with a sputter. The man stopped writing and wheeled about in his seat. He saw them looking in at the doorway.

"Hullo!" he exclaimed. "If here aren't two of the little Bunkers. Do you want to send a message by wireless?"

"Thank you," said Rose promptly. "I think it would be nice to send word to Aunt Jo that we are all right and that the ship is all right and that we caught an eagle."

"It costs money to send messages," said the wiser Russ.

"Oh! Does it?" asked his sister.

"I am afraid it does," replied the operator, laughing. "You had better ask Mr. Bunker about sending a message to your aunt, after all. Some messages we do not charge for. But the rules demand that all private messages must be paid for in advance."

"Well, then, I guess we'd better write a letter to Aunt Jo," said Rose, who was practical, after all. "That won't cost anything but a two cent stamp."

"Oh, my!" laughed Russ. "Going to mail it in the ocean?"

"We'll mail it when we get to Charleston," said Rose cheerfully. "I guess Aunt Jo won't mind."

Just at this moment there seemed to be some excitement on the deck up forward. Two officers who stood on what the children had learned was called the quarter were talking excitedly to one of the lookout men. They were pointing ahead, and one of the officers put a double-barreled glass to his eyes and stared ahead.

The operator came to the doorway of his cabin and looked forward, too. He could see over the bulwarks and marked what had caused the excitement.

"Ah-ha!" he said. "Come up here, little folks, and you can see it too."

Russ and Rose were quite excited. They stepped up into the doorway beside the wireless operator. They both saw at once the two-masted vessel that was rolling sluggishly in the sea. Her rail seemed almost level with the water and from one of the masts several flags were strung.

"What is it?" cried Russ. "That ship looks as though it was going down."

"I guess you've hit it right. She does look so," said the operator. "She has sprung a leak, sure enough. And she's set distress signals."

"Those flags?" asked Russ. "Do those flags say she is sinking?"

"Those flags ask for help. That schooner doesn't carry a wireless outfit as this vessel does. Few small vessels do. I guess we will have to help her out," said the wireless operator.



Chapter VIII

A Great Deal Of Excitement


Russ and Rose Bunker were very much excited by the discovery of the schooner in distress. They were actually afraid that the vessel was going to sink in the ocean right before their eyes!

But the wireless operator reassured them. He said it probably would not sink at all. He seemed to have learned at first glance a lot about that schooner.

"It's lumber laden, from some Maine port. Probably going to Baltimore, or some port down that way. They have jettisoned her deck load, and now she'll just float soggily. But her sails will never carry her to port."

Russ eagerly asked what "jettisoned" meant, and the man explained that the crew had pushed overboard all the deckload of lumber. The hold was filled with the same kind of cargo, and of course lumber would not really sink. But the dirty, torn sails which the children saw did not promise to hold wind enough to propel the water-logged craft.

"She's got to have help," said the wireless operator, and Russ and Rose realized that the Kammerboy was slowing down.

"Are we going to stop?" asked Rose. "Will they take the men off that ship into our small boats? Oh, it's a regular shipwreck, Russ!"

"Not much it isn't, little girl," said the operator. "And this steamer can't stop to do much in the way of rescue. The crew wouldn't want to leave that schooner in good weather, anyway."

"What shall we do, then?" Rose asked again.

Just then their friend, the quartermaster, hurried up with a written paper which he handed to the operator.

"Get that out, Sparks," he said, and the operator turned swiftly to his instrument and fitted on his cap and "earlaps" again. At least, Rose said they were "earlaps."

"Can't we help that schooner?" asked Russ of the quartermaster.

"They don't need us to help them. Only to send a message," was the reply, as the wireless spark began to crackle again. "We are telling the Government about her plight and a revenue cutter will be sent out to tow the schooner into some near port. She has drifted a good way off shore, but the weather is settled and there is nothing to fear."

In a few moments the operator had sent the message and got a reply.

"Right out of the air," breathed Rose wonderingly. "I think that is very funny, Russ. If that mast isn't exactly wireless, it is almost wireless. Anyway, the wires aren't long enough to take much of a message, I should think."

This was a mystery that Russ could not expound, so they went to hunt up Daddy Bunker for further information regarding the wonder of the wireless service. The other four little Bunkers were already greatly interested in the deeply rolling lumber schooner.

After more signals with flags had been exchanged between the steamship the children were on and the schooner, the former picked up speed again. Soon the masts of the schooner were almost out of sight; but the little Bunkers continued to discuss the strange incident.

"I wish we could have put out boats and saved them," said Rose. "Like a regular wreck, I mean."

"The crew of the schooner would be castaways, then," Russ mused. "I like to read stories about castaways."

"Robinson Crusoe had goats," remarked Laddie. "I like goats."

"You wouldn't like goats if they butted you, would you?" asked Vi.

"All goats don't butt," said her twin with assurance.

"Have those men got goats on that wabbly schooner?" Margy demanded. "I didn't see any."

"Of course they haven't," Rose replied.

"Then how could they be castaways?" put in Vi promptly. "If castaways have goats --  -- "

"Oh! you don't understand," declared Russ. "They only get the goats after they get to the desert islands. That is what Laddie means."

"Of course," agreed Laddie.

"Do they eat 'em?" Margy asked.

"Only if they need to," Russ told her, with superior wisdom. "Of course, they most always make pets of them."

"Oh!"

"I guess," said Russ, becoming reflective, "that we might play at castaway."

"When we get ashore, do you mean, Russ?" Vi asked.

"Right here."

"No," said Vi. "We'd get our feet wet. We can't play on the ocean, can we?"

"We can play on this deck. The officers won't mind. Now all of you come up on to this life raft. We'll play you are floating around on the sea waiting for somebody to come along in a boat and rescue you."

"Who is going to be the rescuer?" Vi asked.

"I am."

"Are you sure you can rescue us, Russ?" she demanded. "Where's your boat?"

Russ pointed to a long lifeboat covered with canvas which lay some distance from the life-raft. "That will be my boat," he said eagerly. "Rose, you must be in command of the raft. Of course, you have been drifting about a long time and you are all hungry and thirsty."

"Mun Bun wants bwead and milk," put in the littlest Bunker, on hearing this.

"Well," said Laddie soberly, "you've got to want it a lot before you get rescued, Mun Bun. Castaways have to drink the ocean and eat their shoes before anybody rescues them."

At this Mun Bun set up a wail. It seemed that his shoes were brand new and he was very proud of them. He would not consider eating them for a moment!

"Never mind," said Rose, hugging him. "If you get so very hungry before Russ rescues us, you can chew on your belt. That is what Laddie means."

Mun Bun observed his belt with round eyes. It seemed to him, and he confessed it to Rose, that he would have to be awfully hungry to chew that belt. The others entered into the spirit of the play and when Vi chanced to step off the raft her twin and Margy seized her and screamed.

"You'll be drowned, Vi Bunker!" said Margy.

"You'll more than get your feet wet if you don't stay on the raft," her twin scolded. "And, then, maybe there are sharks."

"Sharks?" put in Margy.

"Yes, big sharks."

"What do they do?" asked Margy, who had not heard so much about this castaway play as the older children.

"Big fish," said Laddie promptly.

"I like fish," Margy announced. "You know, Grandma Bell had goldfish. They were pretty."

"And I like fish to eat," said Vi. "Are sharks good to eat?"

"Maybe they will eat you," warned Laddie, who had entered into the play with all his thought and interest.

"Oh, Laddie Bunker! They wouldn't," cried Vi.

"Well, they might. Anyway, you've got to be afraid of the sharks and not step off the raft."

Meanwhile Russ had gone over to the lifeboat. He had not asked even his friend, the quartermaster, if he could play in that boat. But he saw no reason why he could not, as nobody seemed to be using it.

The canvas cover was tied down with many strings; but the knots slipped very easily and the boy pulled out three of the knots and then laid back a corner of the canvas. It was dark inside the boat, and before Russ crept into it as he intended, he bent over the gunwale and peered in.

Suddenly he gasped, and pulled his head back. He was startled, but Russ Bunker was a courageous boy. He had seen something -- or he thought he had seen something -- squirming in the brown darkness inside the boat.

He waited a little, and then put his head under the canvas and took a long look. Was there something or somebody there? Russ was determined to find out!



Chapter IX

Russ's Secret


Russ Bunker looked very funny -- Rose said he did -- when he suddenly came back to the raft. Vi and Margy shouted to him that he would be drowned; and Laddie said something more about sharks. But their older brother paid little attention to them.

He had tied the cover down over the lifeboat again and he would not look toward it, not even when Rose asked him what the matter was and if he was going to leave all five of the castaways on the raft to starve and be thirsty until luncheon time.

"I guess this isn't a very good place to play castaway, after all," said Russ gravely. "And, anyway," he added, with sudden animation, "there's the man with the gong. We'll have to run down and get cleaned up before we go to the table."

"Dear me!" complained Laddie, "we never can have any fun. We always have to stop and eat or go to bed, or something. Even on this ship we have to."

Laddie thought that the most important thing in the world was play. Rose watched Russ with a puzzled look. She felt that something had happened that her brother did not want to talk about. Russ had a secret.

The latter did not even look again at the lifeboat as the little party passed it on the way to the staterooms. But Russ Bunker's mind was fixed upon that boat and what he had seen in it, just the same. He really could not decide what to do. He was very much puzzled.

Even his mother and father noticed that Russ was rather silent at the lunch table; but he said he was all right. He had something to think about, he told them. Daddy and Mother Bunker looked at each other and smiled. Russ had a way of thinking over things before he put his small troubles before them, and they suspected that nothing much was the matter.

But Rose whispered to her brother before they left the table.

"I think that isn't very polite, Russ Bunker."

Russ looked startled.

"What isn't polite?" he asked almost angrily.

"I saw you do that," she said, in the same admonishing way.

"Do what?" he demanded boldly.

"Put those rolls and the apple in your pocket. You wouldn't do that at home."

"Well, we're not at home, are we?" he said. "You just keep still, Rose Bunker."

Russ ran away directly after he had been excused from the table and they did not find him again for quite a while. He appeared with his usual cheerful whistle on his lips and made up a fine game of hide and seek on the afterdeck. But it was noticeable, if anybody had thought to notice it at all, that Russ kept them all from going near the lifeboat and the raft, and he would not hear to their playing castaway at all.

"Why not?" asked Vi.

"Oh, that's too old," Russ declared. "We can play that at any time. Let's go and listen to the wireless spark. When we get to that plantation where we are going maybe I can set up a wireless mast and we will send messages."

"To Grandma Bell? And to Aunt Jo?" asked Vi.

"Oh!" cried Laddie, "let's send one to Cowboy Jack. I know he'd be glad to hear from us."

So Russ turned the interest of his brothers and sisters away from the castaway play. All but Rose. She wondered just what it was that was troubling Russ and what the lifeboat had to do with it.

But there were so many new things to be interested in aboard the steamship that even Rose forgot to be puzzled after a while. Their friend, the quartermaster, took them all over the ship. They saw the engines working, and peered down into the stoke hole which was very hot and where the firemen worked in their undershirts and trousers and a great clanging of shovels and furnace doors was going on.

"I guess the steampipes always hum on this boat," remarked Laddie. "It is not like it was at Aunt Jo's before that Sam boy came to make the furnace go."

Whether the steampipes hummed or not, the children found that it was quite balmy on the boat. Although a strong breeze almost always blew, it was a warm one. They had long since entered into the Gulf Stream and the warm current seemed to warm the air more and more as the Kammerboy sailed southward.

It was only two hours after passing the schooner that was in distress when they "spoke," as the quartermaster called it, the revenue cutter which had been sent to help the disabled vessel, steaming swiftly toward the point of the compass where the schooner was wallowing. Mr. Sparks, as the wireless operator was called, had exchanged messages with the Government vessel and he told the little Bunkers that the lumber schooner would be towed into Hampton Roads, from which the cutter had come.

All this time Russ Bunker stayed away from the covered boat on the hurricane deck. Daddy Bunker, as well as Rose, began to wonder at the boy's odd behavior. When dinner time came, Mr. Bunker watched his oldest son sharply.

"Can I go out on deck again for a while?" asked Russ politely, as he moved back his chair at the end of the meal.

"I don't see why you can't. And Rose too," said their mother. "It is not yet dark. But you other children must come with me."

They had all played so hard that it was no cross for the little ones to prepare for bed. Mun Bun and Margy were already nodding.

When Rose looked about for Russ, he had disappeared again. So had Daddy. They had both slipped out of the saloon cabin without a word.

Russ was hurrying along the runway between the house and the bulwarks, and going forward, when Daddy Bunker came around a corner suddenly and confronted him. Russ was so startled that he almost cried out.

"Let's see what you have in your pockets, Russ," said Mr. Bunker seriously, yet with twinkling eyes. "I noticed that you feared there was going to be a famine aboard this steamer, and that you believe in preparing for it. Let me see the contents of your pockets."

"Oh, Father!" gasped Russ.

"Aren't afraid, are you, Russ?" asked Daddy Bunker. "If you weren't afraid to take the food you needn't be afraid to show it."

"It -- it was all mine," said Russ, stammeringly. "I only took what was passed to me."

"I know it," said Daddy. "That is one reason why I want to know the rights of this mystery. I can't have my son starving himself for the sake of feeding a sea-eagle."

"Oh! It isn't the eagle, Daddy."

"What is it, then?"

"It -- it isn't an it at all!" exclaimed Russ Bunker and he was so very much worried that he was almost in tears.

"What do you mean?" asked his father.

"I -- I can't tell you," Russ faltered. "It isn't about me at all. It's somebody else, and I oughtn't to tell you, Daddy."



Chapter X

Charleston And The Fleet


A boy hates to tell on another person if he is the right kind of boy. And Russ was the right kind of boy.

Daddy Bunker knew this; so he did not scold. He just said quietly:

"Very well, my boy. If you are mixed up in something of which you cannot tell your father, but which you are sure is all right, then go ahead. I am always ready to advise and help you, but if you are sure you do not need my advice, go ahead."

He turned quietly away. But these words and his cheerful acceptance of Russ' way of thinking rather startled the boy, used as he was to Daddy Bunker's ways. He called after him:

"Daddy! I don't know whether I am right or wrong. Only -- only I know somebody that needs this bread and meat because he is hungry. He's real hungry. Can't I give it to him?"

"I think that hunger should be appeased first. Go ahead," said Mr. Bunker, but still quite seriously. "Then if you feel that you can come and tell me about it, all right."

At that Russ hurried away, much relieved. Rose came into sight and would have run after him, but Daddy Bunker stopped her.

"Don't chase him now. He has something particular to do, Rose."

"I think that's real mean!" exclaimed Rose. "He's hiding something from me!"

"My!" said Daddy, "do you think your brother should tell you everything he knows or does?"

"Why not?" retorted Rose. "I'm sure, Daddy, he is welcome to know everything I know."

"Are you sure? Moreover, perhaps he does not care to know all your secrets," said Mr. Bunker.

"Anyhow, you must learn, Rose, that other people have a right to their own private mysteries; you must not be inquisitive. Russ has got something on his mind, it is true; but without doubt we shall all know what it is by and by."

"Well!" exclaimed Rose, with almost a gasp. She could not quite understand her father's reasoning.

Russ Bunker appeared after a while, looking still very grave indeed for a boy of his age. Daddy kept from saying or doing anything to suggest that he was curious; but Rose found it hard not to tease her brother to explain his taking food from the table and hiding it in his pockets.

"Of course he can't eat it," she whispered to herself. "And he doesn't give it to the eagle. Who ever heard of an eagle eating pound cake with raisins and citron in it? And I saw Russ take a piece of that.

"But he didn't eat much himself. I wonder if he is sick and is hiding it from Mother and Daddy?"

She watched her brother very closely. After a time he seemed more cheerful, and they ran races on the open deck. They knew many of the passengers by this time to speak to. And there were some few other children of about their own ages, too. They talked with these other boys and girls, found out where they lived when they were at home, and learned where they were going to, when they left the Kammerboy at Charleston or Savannah.

Just the same Rose knew that her brother was disturbed in his mind. Daddy Bunker's words to her had been sufficient, and Rose said nothing. But she began to believe that she should sympathize with Russ instead of being vexed with him. He did look so serious when he was not talking.

The evening wore on. The moon rose and silvered the almost pond-like sea through which the Kammerboy steamed. Even the children were impressed by the beauty of the seascape. Far, far away against the rising moon appeared a fairylike ship sailing across its face, each spar and mast pricked out as black as jet.

"Just like those silhouettes Aunt Jo cut out for us," declared Rose. "Did you ever see anything so cute?"

Russ didn't have much to say about it. He was very grave again. Bedtime came, and the brother and sister went below. The little folks, Margy and Mun Bun, were in the first stateroom with Mother. Already the twins were fast asleep in the second stateroom. Rose was going to sleep with Vi in the lower berth and Russ was to crawl in beside Laddie in the upper.

But Russ did not seem in a hurry to undress and go to bed. Mother brushed Rose's hair for her and the girl got ready for bed in the larger stateroom. When she went into the other room there was Russ sitting on the stool with only his jacket off.

"Why, Russ Bunker! aren't you going to bed to-night?" demanded Rose.

"I suppose so," admitted Russ.

"Well, you'd better hurry. I want you to put out the light. How do you suppose we can sleep?"

Russ reached up and snapped out the electric bulb as Rose threw aside her bath-gown and hopped into bed beside her sister.

"You can't see to undress in the dark, Russ," scolded Rose.

Russ did not say a word. He got up and walked into his mother's and father's stateroom, and greatly to his sister's vexation he closed the door between the two rooms.

Daddy Bunker had just come in.

"Why, Russ," said he, "haven't you gone to bed yet?"

"No, sir," said Russ. "And I guess I can't. I've got to talk to you first. I guess I can't go to sleep till I've told you something."

Daddy smiled at Mother Bunker but nodded to Russ.

"All right," he said. "We will go out on deck again and take a turn up and down and you shall tell me all about it."

Mother made no objection, although the hour was getting late, and she smiled, too, when she saw Russ slip into his jacket again and follow his father out of the stateroom. On the deck Russ burst out with:

"I promised I wouldn't tell anybody. But when I gave him his supper I told him I'd just have to tell my father, I was afraid; and he said he didn't have any father and he didn't know whether fathers wouldn't 'snitch,' and I said my father wouldn't."

"I see," said Mr. Bunker gravely. "You recommended me as being a safe person to trust a secret with. I am glad you did so."

"Yes, sir. For you see he's got to be fed until we get to Charleston."

"Do you mind telling me who this new friend of yours is, and where he is, and why he must be fed?"

"He's a sailor boy. He belongs on a destroyer and got left at Boston when his ship started for Charleston two days ago."

"He is in the Navy?" exclaimed Mr. Bunker, in surprise.

"Yes, sir. And he spent all his money and did not know how to get down there where the fleet will be in winter quarters, he says, unless he went secretly on one of these steamers."

"He is stealing his passage, then?" asked Daddy Bunker.

"I suppose he is, Daddy," said Russ, ruefully enough. "He is in a boat, all covered up with canvas. Up there on the deck. I can show you. I found him quite by myself, and I was sorry for him, 'specially when he said he didn't have anything to eat. And he said, would I keep still about it? And at first I said I would."

"I see," said Daddy Bunker, smiling. "Then you thought that you ought not to keep the secret from me?"

"That's it, Daddy."

"Quite right," rejoined Mr. Bunker encouragingly. "It is not good policy to keep secrets from your mother and father. What do you want to do about it now?"

"Why -- why, I want you to tell me," confessed Russ. "I got him some food."

"I see you did," returned his father, smiling. "At your own cost, Russ."

"We-ell, yes, I could have eaten more if I hadn't taken what I did for the sailor boy."

"We'll have to see about that --  -- "

"I don't mind -- much. I'm not very hungry," said Russ hurriedly. "It wasn't that made me tell you."

"I know it wasn't, Russ," said Daddy Bunker, with a pride that the little boy did not understand, and he dropped an approving hand upon Russ' shoulder. "Now, I will tell you what we will do. This sailor boy shall have his chance to rejoin his ship without getting into any more trouble than is necessary. He is probably very young and foolish."

"He isn't very old, I guess," said Russ. "He has been in the Navy only a little while, and it was his first 'shore leave,' he called it, in Boston. He had some cousins there. They begged him to stay longer than he should have. And so he got left."

"I'll fix it if I can," promised Daddy Bunker. "Of course, the first thing to do is to pay his fare and then he can come out of the lifeboat and have his proper meals. I will see the purser, and the captain if it is necessary, and you go to bed, Russ."

"That will be nice!" cried the boy, greatly relieved. "Of course I ought to have told you right at first. You always do know how to straighten things out, Daddy!"

"That is what fathers and mothers are for," replied Mr. Bunker. "Go down and go to sleep, Son, and I will do my best for this young deserter."

When Mr. Bunker entered the stateroom an hour later Mother Bunker wanted to know all about it, of course. And if Russ had known just what they both said of him he would certainly have been proud.

"He's a manly boy," said Daddy Bunker in conclusion. "I am glad he is our son."

The trouble about it all was, in Rose's opinion, that she never quite understood it. If Russ had done anything to be punished for, he certainly didn't seem to mind the punishment! And Daddy and Mother seemed to have a little secret between them, as well as Russ.

"I don't like secrets," she complained the next day, on thinking it all over.

"Oh, I do!" cried Laddie. "'Specially now that Christmas is coming."

But Rose knew this was not a Christmas secret. She wondered where the nice, pleasant-faced sailor boy came from who seemed to know Russ and Daddy Bunker so well. She had not seen him before. And that was another mystery that nobody seemed willing to explain to her.

They all had so many good times on the Kammerboy, however, that Rose really could not be vexed for long. It proved, as had been announced in Boston, that the ship sailed into summer seas. There was scarcely a cloud in sight for the entire voyage, and certainly the steamship did not roll.

At length, late one afternoon, the children were taken up on the hurricane deck to see the islands of Charleston Harbor ahead. Many warships, and of all sizes, lay in the roadstead, but they did not see much of these vessels save their lights that evening.

The Kammerboy was docked to discharge freight and some of her passengers. Daddy Bunker arranged for the boy lost from the destroyer to be put aboard his ship. Russ hoped that he would not be punished very sorely for being left behind.



Chapter XI

The Meiggs Plantation


The Bunker children watched the lights of the fleet until quite late in the evening and thought the sight very pretty indeed. They would have liked to have gone aboard at least one of the Government vessels preferably, of course, the one to which their sailor friend belonged, but there was no opportunity for such a visit. For early the next morning the Kammerboy steamed out of the harbor of Charleston again on the last lap of her voyage to Savannah.

"You can't do it, Russ -- ever!" declared Rose, with confidence.

"Well," said the oldest of the six little Bunkers, puffing very much, "I can try, can't I? I do wish I could cut that pigeon wing just as Sam did it."

They were on the sunshiny deck of the Kammerboy, which was plowing now toward the headlands near Savannah Harbor. But the little folks had been seeing the blue line of the shore ever since leaving Charleston, so they were not much interested in it. As Laddie said, they knew it was there, and that was enough.

"We know the continent of North America didn't get lost while we were out there in the Gulf Stream," said the boy twin, with satisfaction. "So it doesn't matter what part of it we hit -- it will be land!"

"If we hit it most any old place," said Vi, "we would be shipwrecked and be castaways like the game we started to play that time and Russ wouldn't let us finish. I wonder why?"

She had ended with a question. But Laddie could not answer it. He was watching Russ trying to do that funny dance.

"Uncle Sam's nephew could do it fine," Laddie said to Russ. "But you don't get the same twist to it."

"Me do it! Me do it!" cried Mun Bun excitedly, and he began to try to dance as Russ had. He looked so cunning jumping about and twisting his chubby little body that they all shouted with laughter. But Mun Bun thought they were admiring his dancing.

"Me did it like Sam," he declared, stopping to rest.

"You do it fine, Mun Bun," Russ said.

It was a fact, however, that none of them could cut that pigeon wing as Sam, the colored boy, had cut it in Aunt Jo's kitchen in Boston.

Now that they were nearing the end of the voyage there were many things besides pigeon wings to interest the little Bunkers. In the first place the big sea-eagle had to be released from the turkey coop. The quartermaster called him Red Eye. And truly his eye was very red and angry all the time. And he clashed his great beak whenever anybody came near him.

"I guess you couldn't tame him in a hundred years," Russ said thoughtfully. "He can't be tamed. That is why we have an eagle for a symbol, I guess. We can't be tamed."

It was decided to let Red Eye out of the cage when the ship entered Savannah Harbor.

"He's come a long way with us. He has come away down here to Georgia," said Rose thoughtfully. "If he lives in Maine, do you s'pose he will ever find his way back?"

"If he doesn't, what matter? It's a fine country," said the quartermaster.

"But he will want to see his relations," said the little girl. "Maybe he's got a wife and children. He will be dreadfully lonesome away down here."

"Maybe you had better take him back with you on the Kammerboy," said Russ thoughtfully, to the quartermaster.

But the officer could not do that. There had been some objection made already to the big sea-eagle caged on deck. Besides, the bird's wing was better, and if he was kept much longer confined, the quartermaster said, he might forget how to fly!

So they all gathered around (but at a good distance from the cage you may be sure), and the eagle was released. He had to be poked out of the cage, for it seemed as though he could scarcely believe that the door was open and he was free.

He stalked out upon the deck, his great claws rattling on the planks. He turned his head from side to side, and then opened his beak and, so Vi said, he hissed at them!

"At any rate," admitted Russ afterward, "he did make a funny noise."

"He was clearing his throat," said Laddie, with scorn of his twin. "How could an eagle hiss? He isn't a goose."

Laddie knew all about geese, for Grandma Bell had geese. But he did not know all about eagles, that was sure! Whether Red Eye hissed, or growled, or whatever he did in his throat, he certainly showed little friendliness. He raised his wings and flapped them "to see if they worked right." Then he uttered a decided croak and jumped a little way off the deck.

Evidently this decided him that he was really free and that his great wings would bear him. He leaped into the air again, spreading his wings, and wheeled to go over the stern of the steamship. The spread of his wings when he flapped them was greater than most of the onlookers had supposed.

"Oh! Oh! Look out, Laddie!" shouted Rose.

Her warning came too late. The end of the great pinion swept Laddie off his feet! He went rolling across the deck, screaming lustily.

"Oh! I'm going overboard! Daddy!" he cried.

But it was Russ who grabbed him and stood him on his feet again.

"You're not going overboard at all," said the older brother. "You couldn't. You'd have to climb over the rail to do it."

"We-ell!" breathed Laddie. "It's a wonder he didn't take me right with him!"

Then he, like everybody else, became interested in the passage of the great bird as it mounted skyward. It went up in a long slant at first, and then began to spiral upward, right toward the sun, and presently was out of sight.

"It can look the sun straight in the face," said Daddy Bunker. "Which is something we cannot do."

"No wonder its eye is red, then," said Rose.

"I guess it's sunburnt," said Margy. "I got sunburnt at Captain Ben's."

That night they docked at Savannah and went to a hotel in two taxicabs, for one would not hold all the Bunkers and their baggage too. The hotel was a nice one, and Rose thought the negro waiters and chambermaids very attentive and very pleasant people.

"They are the smilingest people I ever saw," she confessed to Mother Bunker. "I guess they are thinking of funny things all the time."

"Perhaps," granted her mother. "But they are trained to politeness. And you children must be just as polite."

They all tried to be polite, and Russ grew quite friendly with one of the bellboys who brought them ice water. He asked that boy if he knew how to cut the pigeon wing, and the boy grinned very broadly.

"I sure does!" he declared. "But if the boss heard of me doin' it around dishyer hotel, he'd bounce me."

"Are you made of rubber?" asked Vi, who was standing by.

"What's dat?" he demanded, rolling his eyes. "Is I made of rubber? Course I isn't. I's made of flesh and blood and bones, same as you is, little Miss. Only I isn't w'ite like you is."

"But you said the man would bounce you. Rubber balls bounce," explained Vi.

At that the bellboy went away laughing very heartily, but Vi could not understand why. And, of course, as usual, nobody could explain it to Vi's satisfaction.

"I know a riddle!" cried Laddie, after a moment. "What looks like a boy, but bounces like a rubber ball? Why! A bellboy!"

And he was highly delighted at this and went around telling everybody his new riddle.

In the morning Mr. Frane Armatage appeared at the hotel and was shown up to the Bunker rooms. Mr. Armatage, as the little Bunkers knew, was an old school friend of Daddy Bunker's; but one whom he had not seen for a long time.

"Why," said Mr. Armatage, who was a slender man with graying hair and a darker mustache, "Charley was only a boy when I last saw him." He was a very jovial man, and red-faced. Rose thought him handsome, and told Mother Bunker so. "No, Charley was only a sapling then. And look at him now!"

"And look at the sprouts that have sprung from that sapling," laughed Daddy Bunker, with a sweeping gesture towards the six little Bunkers.

"Was he only as big as I am?" Russ asked.

"Well, no, come to think of it; he was some bigger than you. We were graduating from college when we parted. But it seems a long time ago, doesn't it, Charley?"

Daddy Bunker agreed to that. Then he and Mr. Armatage talked business for a while. The owner of the Meiggs Plantation wished to get more land and hire more hands for the next year, and through Mr. Bunker he expected to obtain capital for this. Aside from business the two old friends desired very much to renew their boyhood acquaintance and have their wives and children become acquainted.

"I've got half as many young ones as you have, Charley," said Mr. Armatage. "You've beat me a hundred per cent. I wonder if we keep on growing if the ratio will remain the same?"

Russ knew what "ratio" meant, and he asked: "How can it keep that way if we grow to be seven little Bunkers? You can't have three and a half little Armatages, you know."

"That's a smart boy!" exclaimed the tall man, smiling. "He can see through a millstone just as quick as any boy I know. We'll hope that there will be no half-portions of Armatages. I want all my children to have the usual number of limbs and body."

"If you have little girls, and one was only half a little girl," said Rose, "she would be worse off than a mermaid, wouldn't she?"

"She certainly would," agreed the planter.

"Why?" demanded Vi, who did not understand.

"Because half of her would be a fish," said Russ, laughing. "And you would have to have all your house under water, Mr. Armatage, or the mermaid could not get up and down stairs."

"I declare, Charley!" exclaimed the visitor, "these young ones of yours are certainly blessed with great imaginations. I don't believe our children ever thought of such things."

The next day the party went out to the Meiggs Plantation. It was a two-hours' ride on a branch railroad and a shorter and swifter ride in an automobile over the "jounciest" road the children had ever ridden on, for part of the way led through a swamp and logs were laid down side by side to keep the road, as Mr. Armatage laughingly said, from sinking quite out of sight.

But the land on which the Armatage home stood was high and dry. It was a beautiful grassy knoll, acres in extent, and shaded by wide-armed trees which had scarcely lost any leaves it seemed to the little Bunkers, though this was winter. On the wide, white-pillared veranda a very handsome lady and two little girls and a little boy stood to receive the party.

The children did not come forward to greet the visitors, or even their father, until the latter spoke to them. Mr. and Mrs. Bunker were quite sure by the actions of Phillis and Alice and Frane, Junior, that they were not granted the freedom of speech and action that their little ones enjoyed. Mother Bunker pitied those children from the start!

THE SIX LITTLE BUNKERS WERE AMAZED AT THE NUMBER OF COLORED CHILDREN. Six Little Bunkers at Mammy Junes. Page 115

But what amazed the six little Bunkers more than anything else was the number of colored children hanging about the veranda to see the newcomers. Rose confided to Russ that she thought there must be a colored school near by and all the children were out for recess.

And there were so many house-servants that smiling black and brown faces appeared everywhere.

"I guess," said Rose to her mother, "that there must be an awful lot of work to do in this big house. It's lots bigger than Aunt Jo's or Grandma Bell's. It's like a castle, and all these servants are like retainers. I read about retainers in a story. Only these retainers aren't dressed in uniforms."



Chapter XII

Mammy June


From the very beginning, although they said nothing about it even to each other, the six little Bunkers found the three little Armatages "funny." "Funny" is a word that may mean much or little, and often the very opposite of humorous. In this case the visitors from the North did not understand Phillis and Alice and Frane, Junior. They were not like any boys and girls whom the Bunkers had ever known before.

Phillis was twelve -- quite a "grown up young lady" she seemed to consider herself. Yet she broke out now and then in wild, tomboyish activities, racing with Russ and Frane, Junior, climbing fences and trees, and riding horses bareback in the home lot. It seemed as though Phil, as they called her, "held in" just as long as she could, trying to put on the airs of grown-ups, and then just had to break out.

"If you tell mother I did this I'll wish a ha'nt after you!" she would say to her brother, who was the age of Vi and Laddie, and her sister Alice, who was two years younger than herself, but no bigger than Rose. Alice had a very low, sweet, contralto voice, like Mrs. Armatage, and a very demure manner. Rose became friendly with Alice almost at once.

And the way they treated the colored children of their own age and older was just as strange as anything else about the three Armatages. They petted and quarreled with them; they expected all kinds of service from them; and they were on their part, constantly doing things for the children of "the quarters" and giving them presents. Wherever the white children went about the plantation there was sure to be a crowd of colored boys and girls tagging them.

After the first day Mother Bunker was reassured that nothing could happen to her brood, because there were so many of the colored men about the grounds to look after them. As in the house, a black or brown face, broadly a-smile, was likely to appear almost anywhere.

The quarters, as the cabins occupied by the colored people were called, were not far from the house, but not in sight of it. Even the kitchen was in a separate house, back of the big house. After bedtime there was not a servant left in the big house unless somebody was sick.

"Mammy used to live here," Mrs. Armatage explained, in her languid voice, "while the children were small. I couldn't have got along without mammy. She was my mammy too. But she's too old to be of much use now, and Frane has pensioned her. She has her own little house and plot of ground and if her boy -- her youngest boy -- had stayed with her, mammy would get along all right. She worries about that boy."

The Bunker children did not understand much about this until, on the second day after their arrival, Phillis said:

"I'm going down to see mammy. Want to come?"

"Is -- isn't your mammy here at home?" asked Vi. "Dora Blunt calls her mother 'mammy'; but we don't."

"I've got a mother and a mammy too," explained the oldest Armatage girl. "You-all come on and see her. She'll be glad to see you folks from the North. She will ask you if you've seen her Ebenezer, for he went up North. We used to all call him 'Sneezer,' and it made him awfully mad."

"Didn't he have any better name?" asked Russ.

"His full name is Ebenezer Caliper Spotiswood Meiggs. Of course, their name isn't really Meiggs, like the plantation; but the darkies often take the names of the places where they were born. Sneezer was a real nice boy."

"He isn't dead, is he?" asked Russ.

"Reckon not," said Phillis. "But Mammy June is awful' worried about him. She hasn't heard from him now for more than a year. So she doesn't know what to think."

"But she has got other folks, hasn't she?" Rose asked.

"You'd think so! Grandchildren by the score," replied the older Armatage girl, laughing. "Sneezer had lots of older brothers and sisters, and they most all have married and live about here and have big families. The grandchildren are running in and out of mammy's cabin all the time. I have to chase 'em out with a broom sometimes when I go down there. And they eat her pretty near up alive!"

Even the smaller Bunkers knew that this was a figure of speech. The grandchildren did not actually eat Mammy June, although they might clean her cupboard as bare as that of Old Mother Hubbard.

They followed a winding, grass-grown cart path for nearly half a mile before coming to Mammy June's house. The way was sloping to the border of a "branch" or small stream -- a very pretty brook indeed that burbled over stones in some places and then had long stretches of quiet pools where Frane, Junior, told Russ and Laddie that there were many fish -- "big fellows."

"I'll get a string and a bent pin and fish for them," said Laddie confidently. "I fished that way in the brook at Pineville."

"Huh!" said Frane Armatage, Junior, in scorn. "One of these fish here would swallow your pin and line and haul you in."

"Oh!" gasped Vi, with big eyes. "What for?"

"No, the fish wouldn't!" declared Laddie promptly.

"Yes, it would. And swallow you, too."

"No, the fish wouldn't," repeated Laddie, "for I'd let go just as soon as it began to tug."

"Smartie!" said Phillis to her brother. "You can't fool these Bunker boys. Let Laddie alone."

Of course the troop of white children, walking down the cart path to Mammy June's, was followed by a troop of colored children. The latter sang and romped and chased about the bordering woods like puppies out for a rample. Sometimes they danced.

"Can you cut a pigeon wing?" Russ asked one of the older lads. "I want to learn to do that."

"No, I can't do that. Not good. We've got some dancers over at the quarters that does it right well," was the reply.

"You ought to've seen Sneezer do it!" cried another of the colored children. "Sneezer could do it fine. Couldn't he, Miss Phil?"

"Sneezer was a great dancer," admitted the oldest Armatage girl. "Come on, now, Bunkers, and see Mammy June. Keep away from this cabin," she added to the colored children, "or I'll call a ha'nt out of the swamp to chase you."

"I wonder what those 'ha'nts' are, Russ," whispered Rose to her brother. "Do they have feathers? Or don't they fly? They must run pretty fast, for Phil is always saying she will make one chase folks."

"I asked Daddy. There isn't any such thing. It's like we say 'ghosts.'"

"Oh! At Hallowe'en? When we dress up in sheets and things?"

"Yes. Maybe these colored children believe in ghosts. But of course we don't!"

"No-o," said Rose thoughtfully. "Just the same I wouldn't like to think of ha'nts if I was alone in the woods at night. Would you, Russ?"

Russ dodged that question. He said:

"I don't mean to be alone in the woods around here at night. And neither do you, Rose Bunker."

Of course neither of them had the least idea what was going to happen to them before they started North from the Meiggs Plantation.

Mammy June's cabin was of white-washed logs, with vines climbing about the door that were leafless now but very thrifty looking. There were fig trees that made a background and a windbreak for the little house, and a huge magnolia tree stood not far from the cabin. The front door opened upon a roofed porch, and an old colored woman of ample size, in a starched and flowered gingham dress and with a white turban on her head, was rocking in a big arm chair on this porch when the children appeared.

"Lawsy me!" she exclaimed, smiling broadly to show firm white teeth in spite of her age. "Is this yere a celebration or is it a parade? Miss Philly, you got a smooch on dat waist, and your skirt is hiked up behind. I declar' I believe you've lost a button."

"Why, so I have, Mammy June," answered Phillis. "And more than one. Nobody has time to keep buttons sewed on up at the house, now that you're not there."

"Shiftless, no-count critters, dem gals up dere. Sho, honey! who is all dese lil' white children?"

"Bunkers," explained Frane, Junior.

"What's dem?" asked Mammy June, apparently puzzled. "Is dey to play with, or is dey to eat? Bunkers! Lawsy!"

Rose giggled delightedly.

"They are to play with," laughed Alice suddenly. "That is what they are for, Mammy June."

"You see you play pretty with them, then," said the old woman, shaking her head and speaking admonishingly.

Rose and Russ Bunker at least began to understand that this pleasant old colored woman had had the chief care of the three young Armatages while they were little. Perhaps she had trained them quite as much as their mother and father. And they seemed to love Mammy June accordingly.

That the old woman loved little folks and knew how to make friends with them was soon apparent. She had Mun Bun and Margy both together in her ample lap while Laddie and Vi leaned against her and listened to the tale she was telling the little folks.

Phillis and Alice meanwhile showed Rose the interior of the cabin and all its comforts and wonders. Meanwhile Frane, Junior, took Russ down to the stream with some of the colored children to show him some of the big fish he had threatened Laddie with. Here it was that Russ Bunker engaged in his first adventure at the Meiggs Plantation.



Chapter XIII

The Catfish


"If Sneezer was here," said Frane, Junior, "he'd show you more fish than I can. Sneezer used to just smell 'em out. But come on. I know where some of the big ones stay."

"I don't want to dive in after them," declared Russ Bunker, laughing. "The way you promised Laddie. And I haven't any hook and line at all."

"We won't go fishing. Not really. Mostly the darkies fish. We don't bother to. They bring us plenty to eat when we want them at the house."

"You -- you don't do much of anything, do you?" asked Russ doubtfully. "Not for yourselves, I mean."

"Don't have to," returned Frane, Junior. "The darkies do it all for us. But Phil and Alice and I have to do our own studying."

Russ saw that he was in fun, but he was curious enough to ask the smaller boy:

"Do you and the girls go to school?"

"School comes to us. There is a teacher comes here. Lives at the house. But it's vacation time now till after New Year's. I hope she never comes back!"

"Oh, is she mean to you?"

"Course she is," declared Frane, Junior. "She makes us study. I hate to."

"Well, sometimes I don't like what they make us learn in school," admitted Russ slowly. "But I guess it's good for us."

"How do you know, it is?" demanded the other. "I don't feel any better after I study. I only get the headache."

Russ could not find an immediate answer for this statement. Besides, there was something right in front of him then that aroused his interest. It was a big log spanning the stream, with a shaky railing nailed to it, made of a long pole attached to several uprights.

"That is the funniest bridge I ever saw," he declared. "Will it hold you?"

"Look at that log. It would hold a hundred elephants," declared Frane, Junior, who was inclined to exaggerate a good deal at times.

"Not all at once!" cried Russ.

"Yes, sir. If you could get 'em on it," said Frane. "But I don't s'pose the railing would stand it."

When the boys went out on the bridge and Russ considered the railing he was very sure that this last statement of his little friend was true, whether any others were or not. The railing "wabbled" very much, and Russ refrained from leaning against it.

"Now, you folks keep back!" whispered Frane shrilly to the colored children who had followed them. "I want to show him the big fellow that sleeps down here."

Somewhere he had picked up a piece of bark more than a foot long, which was rolled into a cylinder. He lay down on the log near the middle of the brook and began to look down into the brown and rather cloudy water through this odd spyglass.

"What can you see through that thing?" asked Russ.

"Sh! Wait. Don't let 'em hear you," warned Frane, Junior. Then he added: "Get down here 'side o' me. When I spot him I'll let you squint through this too."

Russ understood now that his companion was trying to see one of the fish that lived in the stream -- perhaps the "big fellow" Frane had spoken of. Russ grew quite excited and he took off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves. He knelt down beside Frane, and finally lay right down on his stomach and likewise peered over the side of the log.

The log-bridge had been made quite flat on its upper surface with a broadaxe, and all the bark had long since worn off. It was all of thirty feet long, but it was just as firm as the arch of a stone bridge.

"There!" whispered Frane. "I saw a flicker then. Yep! He's there! Right below the edge of that stone!"

"I don't see anything but water. I can't even see the bottom," observed Russ, in a low voice, too.

"Don't you see him below the stone?"

"I don't even see the stone," complained Russ.

"Hush! He'll hear you. I see his tail wiggle. He's a big cat."

"Now, don't tell me there's a cat in this brook!" said Russ Bunker, shortly. "I know there isn't anything of the kind. Cats hate water."

He had already learned that Frane, Junior, was apt to exaggerate. Russ thought the Armatage boy was letting his fancy run wild at this present moment.

"It is a cat," murmured Frane. "I can see his whiskers moving. Yep, a big fellow! Want to see?" and he took his eye away from the bark cylinder.

"Can you see his teeth and his claws and his fur and his tail?" demanded Russ scornfully, and without offering to take the cylinder. He did not intend to be fooled so easily.

"What are you talking about?" hissed Frane. "And speak quietly. You'll drive him away."

"Cats aren't so easily scared," said Russ. "You have to peg stones at 'em to drive 'em away."

"Huh!" sniffed Frane. "Funny cats up North. I don't believe you have any up there."

"You're right we don't," agreed Russ, and now he laughed again. "Not any cats that swim. Cats hate the water --  -- "

"Aw, shucks! I'm not talking about cats!" exclaimed Frane. "I'm talking about catfish."

"Oh!" ejaculated the Northern boy.

"You know a catfish, don't you? It has feelers that we call whiskers. Awful nice eating, for they only have a backbone."

"Oh!" murmured Russ again. "I guess I didn't understand. Let me see the fish, will you, please?"

"You can look," said Frane passing him the cylinder of bark. "But maybe we have scared him off, talking so much."

The big catfish, however, had not been scared away. After a few moments, and with Frane's aid, Russ Bunker got the wooden spyglass focused on the proper point. He saw the imbedded rock Frane had spoken of. Then he saw the fish basking in the water below the rock's edge.

It was almost two feet long, with a big head and goggle eyes, and the "whiskers" Frane had spoken of wriggled back and forth in the slow current. Russ grew excited.

"Why!" he whispered to Frane, "I could grab it, if I tried. It is just like what we call bullheads up in Pineville. I've caught 'em in our pond. You can hardly get 'em off the hook without getting stung by 'em."

"Catfish don't sting you. But you have to knock 'em in the head when you land them, so as to make 'em behave. I've seen the boys do it."

"I'm going to make a grab for that fellow," declared Russ.

"I reckon you'd miss him. You couldn't hold him, anyway," said Frane doubtfully.

"I could so."

"No, you couldn't. He's too big. They never catch catfish that way."

"I know I never caught a bullhead that way," admitted Russ. "But one never lay so still for me. And right under this log! Here! You take the spyglass."

"You'd better take care," advised the Southern boy.

But Russ felt very daring. It seemed that the fish lay only a few inches under the surface of the brown water. If he could grasp the fish and throw it ashore, how the other children would all shout! Perhaps Russ Bunker wanted to "show off" a little. Anyway, he determined to make the attempt to land the big catfish with his hands.

"You can't do it," warned Frane, Junior, creeping back a way so as to give Russ more room.

"Don't say that till you see," returned the boy from the North. "Now, look! I know just where he lies. Look!"

Russ had rolled his shirtsleeve up to his shoulder. He balanced himself on the log, his head and shoulders overhanging the brown water. Suddenly he made a dive with his right hand. Even his head touched the water, he dipped so deep, and his cap went floating away.

And, wonderful to relate, his hand did seize upon the catfish. Perhaps the fish had been asleep down there by the edge of the imbedded stone. At any rate it was not quick enough to escape Russ Bunker's darting hand.

"I got it!" yelled Russ, in delight.

He tried to seize fast hold upon the body of the catfish, but the fish shot forward with a wriggle that slapped its tail against Russ's hand. Russ plunged forward, trying to hold it.

"I -- guess -- he's -- a -- butter -- fish!" he gasped. "He's so slippery --  -- "

And then, losing his balance on the log, Russ Bunker fell right into the deep pool with splash enough to frighten all the fishes for yards around!



Chapter XIV

Mammy June Helps


Of course, Russ Bunker should not have done it. He was always ready to try new things and wasn't much afraid of anything that turned up. But trying to catch a big catfish with his hands was ridiculous.

Perhaps he realized this when he fell off the log into the stream; but it was too late then to know how foolish it was.

The chorus of screams from the children on the bank was the first announcement that Mammy June had of the mischief that was afoot. The colored children shouted and Frane, Junior, ran right off the log and came screaming to the cabin:

"He's gone down! He's gone down!"

"What is the matter with you, Frane?" demanded the old woman, coming heavily down off the porch. "Who's gone down? Wha's he gone down to?"

"Russ has gone down," announced Frane. "He's gone down after the catfish."

"Lawsy me!" exclaimed Mammy June. "Is that li'le boy got into the branch?"

Rose and Vi and Laddie and Margy and Mun Bun, as well as the two Armatage girls, all came running, too. For the first minute none of them understood what had happened to Russ.

But when they reached the bank of the stream they saw something splashing in the middle of the pool under the bridge. They couldn't see Russ, but they knew that something was struggling there.

"Is that a fish?" demanded Laddie. "It must be a whale."

"Oh!" shrieked Rose. "It's Russ! He'll be drowned!"

"Don't let him get wet, Rose," cried Margy. "Mother won't want him to get his clothes wet."

But if there was any part of Russ Bunker that was not wet when he managed to get on his feet and his head and shoulders appeared above the water, Rose couldn't imagine what part it could be. He was just the wettest boy she had ever seen.

Russ had got a footing finally upon the stone beside which the big catfish had lain. The water was too deep all around him for him to wade out. The bottom of the pool was so deep that it was over the boy's head. He had to stand on the rock and gasp for breath for he had swallowed a good deal of water, having gone down with his mouth open.

"What did I tell you?" demanded Frane, Junior, from the bank. "You couldn't catch that cat."

"I know it!" jerked out Russ. "I know it now."

"Lawsy me!" ejaculated Mammy June. "Is that the way you ketches catfish up Norf?"

The other little Bunkers did not understand this. Vi wanted to know at once if Russ had a kitty in the water with him. But nobody paid any attention to her questions.

"Here, you 'Lias and Henery!" commanded Mammy June to two of the older colored boys. "What you standin' there idle for? Go out on that bridge and haul that poor chile ashore. What a state he is in, to be sure!"

It did not take long to help Russ up on to the log again. The water just poured off him; but it was not very cold and his teeth didn't chatter -- much. Mammy June showed anxiety, however.

"You come right into de house, honey," she said to Russ. "Now, little Miss," she added to Rose, "yo' mustn't scold him now. Wait till we wring his clothes out and get him dry. Yo' 'Lias, bring some dry bresh and some good sticks. We'll want a hot fire."

Mammy June had no stove in her cabin, but a broad and smoke-blackened open fireplace. There was a small fire in it, over which her teakettle hung. In five minutes the negro boys made a roaring blaze. Then the old woman drove them all out of the cabin save Russ, whom she helped off with his wet clothes, rubbed dry with a big towel, and to whom she gave a shirt and trousers to put on while she wrung out his clothing and hung it all about the fire to dry.

"That shirt and them pants," she said, "b'longs to my Sneezer -- my Ebenezer. If he was here this wouldn't have happened to yo', honey. He wouldn't have let no w'ite boy fall into that branch -- no, sir. But these no-'count other young ones didn't know 'nough to tell yo' that that ain't the way to catch catfish."

"I found out myself," admitted Russ rather ruefully.

Rose came to the door and begged to know if Russ was all right.

"He's going to be just as soon as I get him made a hot drink," declared Mammy June.

"Has he got all over being drowned?" Margy demanded.

And even Mun Bun was a good deal troubled because Russ had got so wet. "If you had any candy in your pocket, Russ," the little boy said, "it must be all soft now. It won't be good to eat."

"I didn't have any candy, Mun Bun," Russ told him. Russ was feeling a whole lot better now. Mammy June gave him a nice hot, sweet drink. He didn't mind if it was a little "stingy" too.

"Yo' all come in yere -- yo' little w'ite folks," said Mammy June, "and we'll make some 'lasses taffy. I got plenty sorgum 'lasses. We can make it w'ile this catfish boy is getting dry."

She continued to call Russ "the catfish boy" and chuckled over his adventure. But she warned him, when his clothing was dry, that he must be more careful when he was playing about the water.

"An' yo' got to tell yo' mudder and daddy about it," she instructed Russ. "Don't never hide nothin' from 'em."

"Oh, we don't!" Rose broke in. "We always tell Mother and Daddy everything."

"That's what I tell my Philly and Ally and Frane, Junior. Always must tell they parents."

"And get scolded for it," said Phillis rather crossly.

"Well, then," said Mammy June cheerfully, "you mustn't do things to get scolded for. So I tell all these grandchildren of mine. Scat, you children!" for she saw several of the smaller colored boys and girls trying to steal in at the cabin door. "Ain't room for you in here noways. Yo' shall have yo' share of the 'lasses candy when it's done."

That "taffy pull" was a famous one. The six little Bunkers thought they had never eaten such nice molasses candy as Mammy June made. Phillis Armatage made believe that she did a lot to help for she buttered the pans. But it was Mammy June who really did it all.

"I think," confessed Rose to Alice, "that it is awfully nice to have both a mammy and a mother, as you girls have. Of course, a mammy can't be just what Mother Bunker is to us; but Mammy June is nice."

"She's lots better to us than our mother, in some ways," said Alice bluntly. "Mother doesn't want us to play noisy in the house. She has headaches and stays on the couch a lot. We have to step soft and can't talk loud. But Mammy June never has the fidgets."

"What's 'fidgets'?" asked Rose, quite shocked by the way Alice spoke of her mother.

"What ladies have," explained Alice. "Don't your mother have 'em?"

"I guess not. I never heard about them," Rose answered. "Then if your mother is sick, I don't suppose she can help it. It is lucky you have got a mammy."

That first afternoon ("evening" all these Southern folks called it) at Mammy June's was a very pleasant experience. Russ did not mind his ducking -- much. He only grinned a little when Mammy June called him "the catfish boy."

"Serves me good and right," he confessed to Rose. "I ought not to have gone into that brook without a bathing suit. And, anyway, I guess a boy can't catch fish of any kind with his hands."

Mun Bun and Margy and the smaller colored children managed to spread the molasses taffy over face and hands to a greater or less degree; but they enjoyed the taffy pull as much as the older children did. Finally, after Mammy June had washed his face and hands, Mun Bun climbed up into her comfortable lap and went fast asleep.

The old woman, who loved children so dearly and was so kind to them, looked at one of her older grandsons, Elias, and ordered him to "get de boxwagon to take dis bressed baby home in."

A soapbox on a plank between two pairs of wheels being produced and the box made comfortable with a quilt and a pillow belonging to Mammy June, Mun Bun was laid, still fast asleep, in this vehicle, and Russ started to drag his little brother home.

"Yo' 'Lias!" exclaimed Mammy June, from the doorway of her cabin, "whar's yo' manners? Don't you let that w'ite visitor boy drag that boxwagon. You get busy, 'Lias."

Russ and the other Bunker children were not used to being waited on at every step and turn. But they became better used to it as the time passed. The white folks on the Meiggs Plantation seemed to expect all this aid from the colored folks, and the latter seemed willing and eager to attend.

Russ was not scolded for his involuntary plunge into the branch. In fact his father laughed immensely at the tale. But Mother Bunker had to be assured that the stream was neither deep nor boisterous before she could laugh much.

The children had all had a lovely afternoon at Mammy June's and after that day they found most of their enjoyment in running down to her cabin and playing there. This delight was shared by the Armatages too. And the latter's father and mother seemed perfectly content if the children were in mammy's care.

The days passed all too swiftly. Everybody, darkies and all, were on tiptoe about the coming festival of Christmas and New Year's. The six little Bunkers learned that these holidays were celebrated in different style on this Georgia plantation from what they were in the North.



Chapter XV

When Christmas Is Fourth Of July


Mun Bun and Margy were too little always to accompany the older children on their rambles; but the two smallest Bunkers could be trusted to invent plays of their own when they might be left out of the older one's parties. They had long since learned not to feel slighted if Mother Bunker decided that they were to stay near her.

There was sufficient mystery and expectation regarding the coming holiday celebrations at the Meiggs Plantation to excite the little folks in any case. There was to be no Christmas tree such as the Bunkers had had the previous Christmas in the North. Both Mun Bun and Margy could remember that tree very clearly.

But there was quite as much hiding of funny shaped packages until the gift day should arrive, and the house was being decorated, inside and out, for the coming celebration. Mun Bun and Margy watched the servants hanging Christmas greens and mistletoe, although, unlike the older little Bunkers, they could not go into the swamps with the men to gather these greens.

"We just ought to have a Christmas tree of our own," Margy said to Mun Bun. "I know where we can get a tree, and we'll beg some wreaths and trimming from that nice colored man there."

"We can't," said Mun Bun, somewhat despondently. "We isn't got a house to put the tree in. And we had the Christmas tree last time in the house."

"I've found a house," whispered Margy. "But don't you tell anybody."

"Not even tell Muvver?" asked Mun Bun, looking almost scared. Yet the idea of a secret delighted him too.

"Not till we get it all done. Then we will show her how fine it is," said Margy.

"Where is your house?" asked Mun Bun.

"You come along and I'll show you. I found it all by myself."

She led Mun Bun by the hand out behind the big house and toward the quarters. In a sheltered place, behind a hedge, was a little house, sure enough. And it was not so very little after all, for when they went into it they could both stand upright.

"There isn't any window," said Mun Bun. "This isn't a regular house."

"Of course, it's a house," Margy declared. "It's got a doorway, and --  -- "

"It hasn't got any door, just the same," said Mun Bun, who might have liked the house better if he had found it himself.

"We don't need a door. We want it open so the big folks can see our tree when we get it trimmed."

"Where is the tree?" demanded the still doubtful little boy.

"Now, Mun Bun!" exclaimed Margy, "do you want to play at fixing this Christmas tree, or don't you?"

"Oh, yes," said Mun Bun, who did not really want to be left out of any fun, even if he did not think of it first himself. "Show me the tree, Margy."

"Of course I will," said his sister. "You must help me get it and carry it in here."

"Come on," urged the little boy. "Let's."

So then Margy showed him where the tree she had found stood in a green tub outside the door of a small house that was almost all glass. The lower panes of glass in this house were whitewashed, so the children could not see what was in it; but this tree with its thick, glossy leaves seemed to have been left out for anybody to take who wanted it.

They had to tug pretty hard to get the tree out of the tub. As Margy said, they didn't want the tub anyway, for it would take up too much room. And they were not strong enough to move it.

But they got the tree uprooted, and then were able to carry it to the little house that Margy had selected as their own private dwelling for the play celebration.

By dragging the tree inside, roots first, they managed to get it in without breaking off any of the glossy leaves. They stood it upright and made it steady by placing some bricks that they found about the roots. Its top reached the roof of the little house.

They begged some broken wreaths and chains of evergreen and even a spray of mistletoe with berries on it. The workmen were very kind to the smallest Bunkers. Mun Bun grew quite as excited and enthusiastic as Margy. They worked hard to trim that tree.

"But it hasn't any lights," said Mun Bun sadly. "And that other Christmas tree had lights."

You see, he remembered very clearly about that. And when Mun Bun played he always wanted the play to be as real as possible.

"We'll get candles," declared Margy. "I saw candles in the kitchen house where that nice cook lives. Let's go and ask her."

But just as they were going to squeeze out of the low door of the little house they heard a great shouting and calling, and then suddenly the snapping of explosive crackers -- fire crackers -- began!

"Oh!" gasped Mun Bun. "Who's shootin'?"

"It's firecrackers. You know, we've had 'em before. And they are in a barrel," said Margy breathlessly.

Through the doorway of the little house in which they had set up the "Christmas tree" the two saw their brothers and sisters, the Armatage children, and a lot of the little negroes dancing about a barrel a little way down the hill. Margy was right. Into that barrel somebody had thrown a lighted bunch of firecrackers -- about the safest way in which those noisy and delightful "snappers" can be exploded.

And what a noise they made! Mun Bun and Margy almost forgot their own play for the moment as they struggled to see which should first go out of the door of the little house. Getting in each other's way, they were delayed and before they could get out a great dog came bounding toward them.

"Oh! Oh! Oh!" squealed Margy, and shrank back, leaving to Mun Bun the opportunity of getting out if he wanted to.

"I'm not afraid of that dog," said Mun Bun. But, just the same, he did not go out when he might have done so. "He isn't as big as Aunt Jo's Alexis, is he, Margy?"

"But we aren't acquainted with him like we were with Alexis," whispered the little girl.

She knew his name was Bobo. But always before when she had seen him the great hound, with his flappy ears and wide mouth, had been chained.

"Do -- do you suppose he'll want to bite us?" quavered Mun Bun, admitting now that he was afraid of the dog. "And what does he want here in our house, Margy?"

Margy suddenly remembered that when she had seen Bobo before he had been chained right at this little house. Maybe it was his house, although it was bigger than any doghouse she had ever seen before.

"We don't want him in here," cried Mun Bun. "There isn't any room for him." Then he cried to the big hound: "Go 'way! You'll spoil our Christmas tree."

The big hound came nearer, but more quietly. His eyes were red, and he sniffed enquiringly at the doorway while the children crowded back against the tree. Perhaps he was the very kindest dog in the world; but to Mun Bun and Margy he appeared to be dreadfully savage!

"Go 'way!" they shouted in chorus. And Mun Bun added again: "We don't want him in here, do we, Margy?"

The dog seemed determined to thrust himself into the house. Perhaps Bobo felt about Mun Bun and Margy as they did about him -- that they had no right there, and he wanted them to get out. And when he put his great head and shoulders into the doorway the little Bunkers began to shriek at the top of their voices.

Even the snapping firecrackers could not drown their voices now. Russ and Rose heard the cries coming from the doghouse, and they knew Mun Bun and Margy were in trouble. They saw Bobo, who had been with them to the swamp, seemingly stuck half way in the doorway of his kennel, and Russ cried:

"I guess that's where they are. Hear 'em, Rose? Come on, save Mun Bun and Margy."

"I'm afraid of that hound," replied Rose, but she followed her brother just the same.

Russ shouted to the dog. The hound backed out and looked around at Russ Bunker. But his red eyes did not scare the boy.

"We're coming, Mun Bun!" Russ shouted. "We're coming, Margy!"

The two little ones appeared at the door of the kennel. They were not crying much, but they had tight hold of each other's hands.

"Russ! Rose!" cried Margy. "Take us out."

"What are you doing in that dog's kennel?" demanded Rose.

"Playing Christmas," said Margy, with quivering voice.

"I guess it isn't Christmas," said Mun Bun doubtfully. "I guess it's Fourth of July. Isn't it, Russ? They don't have shooters only on the Fourth of July."

"They do down here," said Russ, reaching the kennel and looking in while Bobo stood by as though he still wondered why Mun Bun and Margy had tried to turn him out of his house.

Just then one of the colored men, who was a gardener, came along and stooped to look into the kennel too.

"For de lan's sake!" he cried, "what you childern doin' in dat dog kennel?"

"We -- we were playing Christmas tree," said Margy, grabbing hold of Rose's hand.

"For de lan's sake!" repeated the man, showing the whites of his eyes in a most astonishing way. "What dat in dere?"

"That's our Christmas tree," said Mun Bun, very bravely now.

"For de lan's sake!" ejaculated the man for a third time. "What Mistah Armatage gwine to say now? Dat's his bestest rubber plant what he tol' me to take partic'lar care of. What will you lil' w'ite childern be up to next, I'm a-wondering?"



Chapter XVI

A Letter And A Big Light


"Why, Mun Bun!" murmured Russ.

"Why, Margy Bunker!" exclaimed Rose.

Mun Bun was staring with all his eyes (and he had two very bright ones) at the rubber plant. He did not consider the mischief he had done. He was as curious as Vi could possibly have been about an entirely different thing.

"If that's a rubber plant, Russ," he demanded, "where's the rubbers? I don't see any overshoes on it. What part of it is rubber?"

At that the black man threw back his head and laughed loudly. The children all watched his open mouth and rolling eyes and flashing teeth and finally they broke into laughter too. They could not help it.

"But," said Russ, after they had stopped laughing, "I am afraid Mr. Armatage will be angry with us."

"I dunno -- I dunno, chile," said the negro, shaking his head. "He sure is partic'lar 'bout dat rubber plant. But mebbe I can repot it and fix it up all right. It's only just been uprooted, and I was gwine to change de dirt in dat tub, anyway."

"Oh! Do you think you can do it and save Mun Bun and Margy from getting a scolding?" Rose cried.

"We'll see, lil' Miss. Shouldn't wonder," and the gardener went to work at once.

Meanwhile Bobo sat on his haunches and mournfully looked at what was going on. His red eyes had a very sad expression and his drooping ears made him look, so Rose said, more mournful still.

"He looks as if he'd just come from a funeral," she said to Russ.

"What's that?" demanded Margy promptly.

But Rose and Russ dodged that question. In fact they did not know how to explain just what a funeral was. But in watching the gardener replace the rubber plant in the green tub, surrounded with fresh earth from the green house, the little ones forgot everything else, even Bobo.

Bobo, just as soon as he could, went into his house and smelled all around and finally lay down, his muzzle sticking out of the door.

"He looks unhappy," Rose said. "I guess he thought he wasn't going to have any home at all when he saw you two in there with the rubber plant."

"It was a good Christmas tree," was Margy's only reply to this.

"But we didn't get the candles to light it up," Mun Bun rejoined, walking away hand in hand with Russ. "So how could it be a Christmas tree if there weren't any candles?"

As Christmas Day grew closer there was less work done and more play engaged in by everybody on the plantation. Christmas Eve there was a beautiful display of fireworks on the front lawn of the big house, and everybody from the quarters came to see it, as well as the white folks. Even Mammy June came up from her cabin by the stream, walking with difficulty, for she was lame, and sat in state on the porch "with de w'ite folks" to see the fireworks.

The old woman had taken a strong liking to the six little Bunkers and she made as much of them as she did of the three little Armatages. But the latter were not jealous at all. Phillis and Alice and Frane, Junior, were likewise delighted with the children from the North.

Christmas Day dawned brilliantly, and although there was what Mr. Armatage called "a tang" in the air it was so warm that it was hard for the Bunker children to realize that this was the day that they expected up North to be "white."

"A 'white Christmas' doesn't mean anything down here in Georgia," said Daddy Bunker. "Though once in a while they have a little snow here. But they never speak of it -- not the natives. It is a sort of scandal in the family," and he laughed, looking at Mother Bunker, who understood him if the children did not.

But white or green, that Christmas Day was a delightful one. Even without a gaudily lighted and trimmed tree, the Bunkers were pleased in every way. Their presents were stacked with those belonging to the Armatage children under the chimneypiece in the big front parlor, and Mr. Armatage himself made the presentations.

There were presents from "all over" for the six little Bunkers; for no matter how far they were away from their many relatives and friends, the six were fondly remembered. Even Cowboy Jack sent gifts from Texas!

With the presents from Aunt Jo came a letter particularly addressed to the children. Russ read it aloud to them all. It gave news of William's neuralgia (Vi still insisted on calling it "croup") and about Annie and Parker. Even the Great Dane, Alexis, was mentioned. But the most important thing spoken of in the letter to the children's minds was the fact that Aunt Jo said she meant to keep Sam, the colored boy Mun Bun and Margy had introduced into her Back Bay home, all winter.

"The boy is really a treasure," said Aunt Jo. "He can do something besides dance -- although he does plenty of that in the kitchen to the delight of Parker, Annie and William. He has been taught to work, and is really a very good houseboy. And he looks well in his uniform."

"I'd like to see him in a uniform," said Laddie. "Is he a soldier, or a policeman?"

"He's a 'buttons,'" replied Mother Bunker, laughing. "Aunt Jo has always wanted to have a boy in buttons to answer the door and clean the knives."

"I'd rather see him dance again," said Russ, and he slyly tried to cut that pigeon wing once more. But he made a dismal failure of it.

There was dancing in plenty at the negro quarters that Christmas evening. All the white folks went down from the big house to watch the proceedings. And again Mammy June was there.

There had been a great feast for the hands, but although one grinning negro boy confessed to Russ that he was "full o' tuck," he still could dance. This boy was applauded vigorously by his mates, and one of them called out:

"'Lias! show dese w'ite folks how to cut dat pigeon wing. Go on, boy!"

"Lawsy me!" exclaimed Mammy June, "don't none of you know how to do dat like my Sneezer. If he was here he'd show 'em. Just you dance plain, honey. Double shuffle's as much as you can do."

So her grandson, 'Lias, did not try any fancy steps. Privately, however, and much to Rose's amusement, Russ Bunker often tried to copy Sam's pigeon-wing step.

"If we ever go to Aunt Jo's again -- and of course we shall -- I am going to get Sam to show me how to do it. I'll get it perfect some time," sighed the oldest Bunker boy.

Vi, looking on at one of her brother's attempts, asked:

"Doesn't it hurt the pigeon to cut its wing?"

But that was a silly question, and they all laughed at her. Laddie grew suddenly excited.

"Oh! I know a new riddle!" he cried. "It's a good riddle!"

"What is it?" asked his twin sister.

"It isn't a good riddle just because you made it up, Laddie," said Rose.

"It would be a good one no matter who made it up," answered Laddie decidedly. "You let me tell it. I know it's good."

"What is it, Laddie?" Russ Bunker asked.

"Here is the riddle," said Laddie eagerly. "What sort of wing has no feathers on it? And the answer is, of course, 'A pigeon wing.' There! Isn't that a fine riddle?"

"Pooh!" said Vi. "I don't think so."

"Some pigeons' wings have feathers," said Rose.

"Hoh!" cried Laddie, somewhat disturbed. "That one Russ was trying to make doesn't have any feathers on it."

"That's only one kind, and it isn't really a pigeon's wing, you know."

Laddie stared at his sister, Rose, with much doubt. "You're always disappointing me, Rose," he murmured.

"But Rose is right, Laddie," said Russ. "And there are other wings that have no feathers."

"What wings?" grumbled Laddie.

"I know!" cried Vi suddenly. "Airplane wings! They haven't any feathers."

"But they are no more like real wings," complained Rose, "than Russ's dancing step."

"No," said the oldest Bunker boy. "I mean bat's wings. Don't you remember that bat we caught that time? Its wings didn't have feathers at all. It was covered with fur."

"Oh, well," sighed Laddie. "Then my riddle isn't any good."

"Not much, I am afraid," said Russ kindly but firmly.

However, Laddie and the other little Bunkers did not have many disappointing things happen to them on this lovely Christmas Day. Mr. and Mrs. Armatage tried in every way to make the stay of their guests at the Meiggs Plantation as pleasant as possible.

After the celebration at the quarters the white folks came home, and there at the big house a fine party was soon under way. People had come in their cars from far and near and the house was brilliantly lighted on the first two floors.

The children were allowed to look on at this grown folks' party for a little while, then they had to go to bed. Phillis and Alice and Frane, Junior, seemed to consider it very hard that they were not allowed to stay downstairs; but the little Bunkers were used to having their own good times and did not expect to enter into the amusements of their elders.

"Let's sit on the top step of these stairs," said Phillis to Rose and Alice, "and we can see through the balustrades. There's Mrs. Campron! She's got a lovely dress on, and diamonds."

Rose remained with the two Armatage girls for a little while and Russ saw to it that the little folks went to bed. Then he came out into the hall again to see what the girls were doing. Before he could ask them he chanced to look out of the back window at the end of the long hall.

"Oh!" cried Russ Bunker. "What is that?"

"What's what?" demanded Phillis. "What do you see?"

"Is it a shooting star?" went on Russ. "See that light! I believe it must be a fire."

The girls came running to join him then, more interested in what Russ saw than they were in what was going on at the party below.



Chapter XVII

Mammy June In Peril


From the big house on the Meiggs Plantation, standing on a knoll -- which means a small hill, -- one could see for a long distance all about, in spite of the shade trees, and especially when looking from the third floor windows. Russ Bunker was looking right out over the quarters where the hands lived, and could see far down the slope of the land and to the forest beyond the cultivated fields.

It was a lovely starlit night, but of course the stars did not reveal everything. The strong red light that sprang up beyond the cabins where the colored people lived, revealed a great deal, however.

"It's a house afire!" declared Phillis Armatage.

"Where can there be a house in that direction?" Rose Bunker asked. "Isn't that fire beyond the cabins, Russ?"

Russ suddenly sprang to action. He wheeled from the window and ran along the hall to the stairway.

"Russ! Russ! Where are you going?" demanded his sister.

"Tell Daddy and Mr. Armatage. I know what house is afire. It's Mammy June's cabin!" shouted Russ.

He had previously located the direction of the old woman's cabin by the stream, and Russ was sure that he was right now. He left the girls screaming after him; he had no time to tell them how he was so sure of his statement.

Down the two flights of stairs he plunged until he landed with a bang on the hall rug at the foot of the lower flight. He almost fell against Mr. Armatage himself when he landed. And Daddy Bunker was not far away.

"Well, well, young man, what's this?" demanded Mr. Armatage, for a moment quite as stern with Russ as he was with his own children.

Daddy, too, looked upon Russ with amazement. "Why, Russ," he said, "what does this mean? What are you doing down here?"

"There's a fire!" gasped out Russ, his breath almost gone. "There's a fire!"

"Upstairs?" demanded Mr. Armatage, whirling toward the stairway.

"Oh, no, sir! No, sir!" cried Russ, stopping him. "It's down the hill. I saw it from the window."

"The quarters?" demanded the planter.

"No, sir. It looks like Mammy June's. It's a great red flame shooting right up about where her cabin is."

"And the old woman has gone home. She's lame. Like enough she won't get out in time -- if it is her shack. Come on, boys!" The planter's shout rang through the lower rooms and startled both the guests and the servants. "There's a fire down by the branch. May be a cabin and somebody in it. Come on in your cars and follow me. Get all the buckets you can find."

He dashed out of the house, hatless as he was, shouting to the colored folks who were gathered outside watching the dancing through the long windows. Daddy Bunker followed right behind him. And what do you suppose Russ did? Why, he could have touched Daddy Bunker's coat-tails he kept so close to him! Nobody forbade him, so Russ went too.

Mr. Armatage and Mr. Bunker got into one of the first cars to start, and Russ, with a water pail in each hand, got in too. There was a great noise of shouting and the starting of the motor-cars. Men ran hither and thither, and all the time the light of the fire down by the stream increased.

When they were under way, Mr. Armatage's car leading, they found many of the plantation hands running down the grassy road in advance. The cars passed these men, Mr. Armatage shouting orders as the car flew by. In two minutes they came to the clearing in which Mammy June's cabin stood. One end of the little house was all ablaze.

"The poor soul hasn't got out," cried Mr. Armatage, and with Mr. Bunker he charged for the door, burst it in, and dashed into the smoke which filled the interior.

Russ thought that Daddy Bunker was very brave indeed to do this. It looked to the boy as though both men would be burned by the raging fire. But he was brave himself. He fought back his tears and ran to the stream to fill with water both the pails he carried.

When he came staggering back with the filled pails, the water slopping over his shoes, the first of the hands arrived. One man grabbed Russ's pails and threw the water upon the burning logs. Such a small amount of water only made the flames hiss and the logs steam. But soon other filled pails were brought. More of the cars with guests from the party arrived, and a chain of men to the stream was formed.

Almost at once Mr. Armatage and Daddy Bunker fought their way out of the burning cabin through the smoke, and they bore between them the screaming old woman. Mammy June was badly frightened.

"You're all right now, Mammy," declared Mr. Armatage, when he and Mr. Bunker put her into the tonneau of the car. "Here, boy!" he added to Russ, "you stay with her."

"I got to lose all! I got to lose ma home!" wailed Mammy June. "If my Ebenezer had been yere, dat chimbley wouldn't have cotched fire."

"Can't be helped now," said Daddy Bunker soothingly. "We'll try to save your home, Mammy."

But although their intentions were of the best, this could not be done. The cabin -- as dry as a stack of straw -- could not be saved. The pails were passed from hand to hand as rapidly as possible, but the fire had gained such headway that it was impossible to quench it until the cabin was in complete ruins.

"You be mighty glad, Mammy June," said Mr. Armatage, finally giving up the unequal battle, "that you are saved yourself. And you wouldn't have been if this little Bunker hadn't seen the fire when he did."

"Bless him!" groaned the old woman, hugging Russ to her side in the car. "If my Ebenezer had been home it wouldn't never have happened, Mistah Armatage."

She harped upon this belief incessantly as they finally drove back to the big house. The fright and exposure quite turned Mammy June's brain for the time. She was somewhat delirious.

"S'pose my Ebenezer come home and find de cabin in ruins. He mebbe will think Mammy June burned up, and go right off again. And he might come any time!"

The old woman talked of this even after they put her to bed and a doctor who chanced to be at Mrs. Armatage's party had attended her. The fire, and her bodily illness, had prostrated the old woman.

The end of that Christmas party was not as pleasant as the beginning. It was long after midnight before even the children were in their beds and composed for sleep. The party broke up at an earlier hour than might have been expected.

Rose slept in the room with Phillis and Alice Armatage. Just as she was dropping to sleep and after her companions were already in dreamland Rose saw the door of the room pushed open. The moon had risen, and Rose recognized Russ's tousled head poked in the open door.

"What do you want?" she demanded in a whisper. "Oh, Russ! there isn't another fire, is there?"

"No! Hush! I just thought of something."

"What is it?" asked Rose in the same low tone that Russ used.

"We can do something for Mammy June."

"We can't cure her rheumatism, Russ," said Rose. "Even the doctor can't do that in a hurry. He said so."

"No. She's worrying about her boy. That boy with the funny name. Sneezer."

"Yes, I know," said Rose.

"She is afraid he will come back and find the cabin burned and go away again without her knowing it," said Russ gravely, tiptoeing to his sister's bedside.

"Yes. Mother says it's real pitiful the way she takes on," sighed the little girl.

"Well, Rose, you and I can help about that," said Russ confidently.

"How can we?" she asked, in surprise.

"We can write a sign and stick it up on a pole down there by the burned cabin. We'll make a sign saying that Mammy June is up here at the big house and for Sneezer to come and see her."

"Oh, goody!" cried Rose, but still under her breath. "That's a fine idea, Russ."

"Don't say anything about it to anybody," warned her brother, eager to make a secret of the plan that had popped into his head. "We'll write that sign early in the morning and go down there and stick it up. Want to?"

"Of course I do," said Rose, with a glad little jump in her bed. "I think you're just the smartest boy, Russ, to think of it. I won't say a word about it, not even to Philly and Alice."

With this plan dancing in her head Rose soon fell asleep while Russ stole back to the room where he slept with the smaller boys. After that the big house on the Meiggs Plantation became quiet for the rest of the long night.



Chapter XVIII

The Twins In Trouble


Laddie and Vi Bunker felt as though they had been cheated. They had not been allowed to go to the fire, "when Mammy June's cabin had been burned all up," Vi declared. They had only seen the fire from an upper window of the big Armatage house.

"But it wasn't burned up, Vi," her twin insisted. "It was burned down."

"Russ said it was burned up when he came back from the fire -- so now," Violet declared somewhat warmly.

"How can a house burn up? It just fell all to pieces into the cellar."

"There wasn't any cellar to Mammy June's house," Vi observed.

"Well, it fell down; so of course, it burned down."

"The flames went up," repeated Vi, quite as determinedly. "And the wood went with 'em -- with the flames and smoke. So the cabin burned up."

What might have been the result of this discussion it would be hard to say had not the twins both felt so keenly their disappointment. Russ had gone to the fire and brought Mammy June out of the cabin and brought her up here to the big house! To tell the truth, Russ was so excited when he got back that in telling of the adventure he gave the younger children to understand that he had done it all himself. Daddy Bunker and Mr. Armatage did not appear much in his story.

"Russ is always doing the big things," sighed Laddie. "It's just like a riddle --  -- "

"What is?" almost snapped Vi, for she was just as disappointed as her twin brother.

"Why, Russ getting the best of everything. Why is it?" muttered Laddie, kicking a pebble before him in the path.

"If that's a riddle, I can't answer it," said Vi.

"It isn't any worse to ask riddles than it is to ask questions -- so now."

The twins were not always in accord, of course; but they were seldom so near to a quarrel as upon this morning. Perhaps, for one thing, the day before, they had rather over-done and possibly had over-eaten. They were on the verge of doing something that the Bunker children seldom did -- quarreling. Fortunately something suddenly attracted Laddie's attention and he stopped kicking the pebble and pointed down the yard in front of them.

"Oh, Vi! See that cunning thing! What is it?"

Something flashed across a green patch of grass away down by the road. It was red, had small, sharp-pointed ears and nose and a bushy tail. This tail waved quite importantly as the small animal ran.

"Come on!" cried Vi, taking the lead at once. She often did so, for Laddie was slower than she. "Come on! Let's get it, Laddie."

Laddie, nothing loath, ran after his twin sister. They raced down the hill and came to the little gully into which the animal with the bushy tail had disappeared. The end of that gully was the open mouth of a culvert under the road.

"Did he go in there?" Laddie demanded. "Did he go into that hole, Vi?"

"He must have," declared Violet. "It must be his home. It's a burrow."

"But he wasn't a bunny. Bunnies have burrows," objected Laddie.

"I guess other animals can have burrows, too," said his twin. "And he was lots prettier than a rabbit."

"He was that," admitted the excited Laddie. "It wasn't a rabbit, of course. Rabbits aren't red."

"Let's find the other end of the hole," Vi said eagerly. "We'll stop both ends up and then -- and then --  -- "

"Well, what then?" her twin demanded.

"Why, we can catch him then," said Vi, rather feebly. "That is, we can if he wants to come out."

"I suppose we can. If he doesn't take too long. Let's," said Laddie, and he ran across the road and looked to see if there was another opening to the culvert.

But as it chanced, this was an old and unused drain, and the farther mouth of it was stopped up. This made the hole a very nice den for the little animal the Bunker twins had seen go into it. But neither Laddie nor Vi had any idea as to what the creature was.

"I'm going to get a stick and poke him out," announced Laddie.

"You can't poke him out when there is no other hole over there," rejoined Vi very sensibly.

"I'll poke him till he comes out then," said Laddie, looking all about but not starting to find a stick.

To tell the truth he was at the end of his resources. He did not know how to get at the little red animal.

"Anyway," he said at last, "maybe he didn't run in here after all."

"He did so, Laddie Bunker!" cried Violet. "I saw him."

This seemed final. Laddie looked all around again, quite puzzled as to what to do next. There was no backing out of a thing when once it was begun -- not with Vi Bunker! She always insisted upon going on to the end, no matter what that end might be.

"Well," her twin said at last, "I s'pose I'll have to go in after him."

"How can you?" asked Vi promptly, but excitedly, too.

"I can crawl into that hole --  -- "

"Isn't it too small?"

"Well, I'm not so big," replied Laddie. "I guess I can do it. I'm going to try."

He knelt down before the round mouth of the culvert. It was a piece of drainpipe with a rough rim at the edge of the hole. Laddie poked his head into the hole.

"It's as dark as the inside of your pocket, Vi Bunker," he said, in a muffled voice.

"Shall I run get a candle?" asked his sister.

"No," sighed Laddie; and even his sigh sounded funny from inside the pipe. "If you do they'll want to know what you want it for. And if we are going to catch this -- this whatever-it-is, we want to catch it all by ourselves. Wait."

Vi granted that request. She waited, watching Laddie's plump little body wriggling farther and farther into the culvert. His jacket caught several times on the rough rim of the opening. But he persevered.

"Oh!" ejaculated Laddie at last, and his voice seemed a murmur from a great way off.

"I guess you better come back, Laddie," said Vi, getting anxious.

Laddie, if the truth were known, thought so too. For just then he had sighted in the dark two fiery points, like flashing bits of glass or mica. He knew what they were; they were the eyes of the little red animal he had chased into this hole. And Laddie thought that when eyes flashed so brilliantly, their owner must be angry.

"He's going to jump at me!" breathed the little boy to himself.

He began to back out hastily. The bottom of his jacket caught on the rim of the pipe. He was stuck there!

"Pull! Pull me out, Vi Bunker!" he shouted.

But his voice was so muffled that his sister could not understand what he said. It looked as though Laddie was unable to get back the way he had come. And he certainly dared not go on ahead.

For now, to increase his fears, he saw other points of light in the darkness -- all in pairs, the eyes of several smaller animals, he was sure! He had self-control enough to count them and found that there were five pairs of eyes altogether.

What should he do about it? Struggle as he might he could not back any farther. And no manner of wriggling was likely to get him out of the hole the way he had come in.



Chapter XIX

In Mammy June's Room


Russ and Rose had both got up very early the day after Christmas, for their minds were filled with the idea of helping Mammy June. The poor old woman's anxiety should be relieved, and the two oldest of the Bunker children were determined that they would relieve it regarding her son, "Sneezer," if that were possible.

So Russ found some cardboard boxes that had held certain of their Christmas presents, and he tore these apart and they wrote carefully a message to the old woman's absent son on both faces of these cards. At least, Russ wrote them, for by now he had learned at school to write a very good hand. Rose was not so sure -- especially about her "q's" and capital "S's." Anybody who could read handwriting at all, however, could have read those signs that Russ Bunker wrote.

"It doesn't seem like Christmas time at all," Rose said, as the two ran down the lane right after breakfast toward the branch and the burned cabin. "See the leaves and grass! And there's a flower!"

It was only a weed, but it was a pretty one and Rose gathered it -- of course for Mother Bunker. When they came in sight of Mammy June's cabin it was a sad looking place indeed. The little Bunkers had had several nice visits to the old woman's cabin, and they were really very sorry that it had burned down.

The disaster was complete. The log walls were tumbled in heaps and were all charred. The interior of the hut was little but ashes.

"Oh!" cried Rose. "If that Sneezer Meiggs did come home and see all this, he might go away again, just as his mother says. It would be too dreadful, Russ. I am so glad you invented this idea of putting up signs for him."

In fact, Russ was quite proud of his original thought himself. He was naturally of an inventive turn of mind and this was not the first novel thought he had expressed. He and Rose stuck up the cards on poles that they found near by, and they had so many of them that they quite surrounded the ashes of the old hut.

"He can't help seeing them if he comes here," said Rose, as they departed from the spot. "But do you s'pose he'll ever want to come back to the place where everybody called him 'Sneezer'?"

"He ought to want to come back to see Mammy June," declared Russ warmly. "I think she is just fine."

"So do I," admitted Rose reflectively. "But I wouldn't want to be called by such a name as Sneezer."

It was when they got back to the big house and around to its front that the two oldest little Bunkers became aware that something was happening down by the road. They saw Vi hopping up and down in a funny fashion, and she was screaming.

"Now, what do you suppose is the matter with her?" demanded Rose.

"Don't know. But it's something, sure enough!" rejoined Russ, and he started on a run for the spot where Violet was jumping up and down and screaming.

As Russ and Rose started down the hill the three Armatage children came out of the front door of the big house and ran after them, screaming as well. Then appeared a host of small colored folk -- Russ and Rose never could imagine where they all came from. They seemed to spring right up out of the ground when anything exciting happened.

All this troop came streaming down the hill, and very quickly Vi found herself surrounded. Russ demanded:

"What's the matter with you? Has something bitten you?"

"They are biting Laddie!" wailed the twin sister.

"How silly!" exclaimed Phillis Armatage. "Laddie isn't here."

"Yes, he is, so now!" cried Vi.

"Oh! Oh!" screamed Alice. "I see his legs!"

At that they all saw his legs -- at least, as much of them as were poked out of the mouth of the drainpipe. And they certainly were kicking vigorously. But the children outside made so much noise that the voice of the boy inside the pipe could not be heard.

"Oh! Oh!" declared Vi, jumping up and down again. "It is biting him."

"What is biting him? Mosquitoes?" demanded Russ, as much puzzled as anybody.

"The red thing! With the pointed ears! And a big tail!" cried Vi in gasps.

"What can she mean?" demanded Rose.

PHILLY GRABBED LADDIE'S ANKLE AND STARTED TO PULL HIM OUT. Six Little Bunkers at Mammy Junes. Page 187

But Philly Armatage suspected the reason for Vi's fear at once. She grabbed hold of Laddie's ankles and started to draw him out of the pipe.

"You'd better come out!" she cried. "That old fox will bite your nose off."

"A fox!" cried Russ, in wonder and alarm. "Does a fox live in that hole?"

"And she's got puppies. We saw 'em playing out here one day. Father is only waiting for a chance to smoke 'em out. They are terrible. They eat hens and other poultry."

Russ was vastly interested, as well as troubled by Laddie's fix. For the smaller boy was really wedged by his rolled-up jacket tight into the mouth of the culvert. His muffled cries became more imploring, and the other children really feared that the mother fox, fearing for her young, might have attacked the boy.

"I tell you he must be got out!" shouted Russ.

"How you going to do it?" Philly demanded. Then she called to Laddie: "Push in farther, Laddie! Then maybe you can back out all right."

But Laddie Bunker was so much afraid of the foxes by now (he still saw their luminous eyes before him) that he dared not squirm any deeper into the pipe. What would have happened to him finally -- whether or not the old fox might not have attacked him -- will never be known, for Russ Bunker took desperate means to release his brother.

Russ ran to a pile of cobblestones beside the road, seized a big one, and staggered back with it in both hands. With the stone he pounded the rim of the pipe so hard that it broke in pieces.

"Ow! Ow!" cried the muffled voice of Laddie Bunker. "You are breaking my legs. Don't pound me so!"

"Wriggle out! Hurry up! What's holding you?" demanded Russ, half angrily because he was so excited.

The smaller boy began to move backward now, the rough rim of the pipe no longer holding his jacket. Slowly he pushed out. When he appeared, his face very red and tear-streaked, Russ and Phillis pulled him to his feet.

"Where's the fox?" demanded Vi, still very much excited.

"Is that a fox?" demanded Laddie, panting.

"Yes," said Phillis Armatage.

"That fox has got five pairs of eyes, then," grumbled Laddie.

"She's got four pups," cried Frane, Junior. "I'm going to run and tell father," and he ran away up the hill.

"Come on!" cried Russ, immediately in action again. "Let's stop up the hole. Then the foxes can't get out until Mr. Armatage comes."

They did that -- at least, Russ and Vi and the colored boys did. Rose dusted Laddie off and wiped his face. He soon became more cheerful.

"Well," he said, with a long breath, "they didn't bite me after all; but I thought they would. And their eyes shone dreadfully."

"What made them shine?" demanded Vi, her usual curiosity aroused.

"Because they were mad," said her twin promptly. "That old mother fox didn't want me in there."

The adventure was happily ended; that is, for Laddie and Vi. Not so for the foxes. For Mr. Armatage and the gardener came with shovel and club and they dug down to the foxes' den. But the children had not done their work of closing the entrance well, and just as Mr. Armatage broke through into her den, Mrs. Fox and her puppies scurried out and away into the pine woods. But she had to look for a new home, for her old one was completely broken up.

After this the little Bunkers and the Armatage children trooped up to the house and went to the room where Mammy June had been put to bed. The doctor had already been to see her this morning.

The old colored woman was propped up with pillows and she wore the usual turban on her head. She smiled delightedly when she saw the white children and hailed them as gayly as though she were not in pain.

"Lawsy me, childern!" cried Mammy June. "Has you come to see how I is? I sure has got good friends, I sure has! An' if Ebenezer Caliper Spotiswood Meiggs was back home yere where he b'longs, there wouldn't be a happier ol' woman in all Georgia -- no, sir!

"For Mistah Armatage say he's gwine have me another house built before spring. And it'll be a lot mo' fixy than my ol' house -- yes, sir! Wait till my Sneezer comes home and sees it -- Tut, tut! He ain't mebbe comin' home no mo'!"

"Oh, yes, he will, Mammy June," Philly said comfortingly.

"Don't know. These boys ups and goes away from their mammies and ain't never seen nor heard of again."

"But Sneezer loved you too well to stay away always," Alice Armatage said.

"And when these Bunkers go back North," put in Frane, Junior, "they are going to look for Sneezer everywhere."

"You reckon you'll find him?" asked Mammy June of Rose.

"I hope so," said the oldest Bunker girl.

"Of course we will," agreed Russ stoutly. "And Daddy Bunker will look out for him too. He said so."

According to Russ's mind, that Daddy Bunker had promised to help find the lost boy seemed conclusive that Sneezer must be found. He and Rose began eagerly to tell Mammy June what they had already done to make it positive that Ebenezer Caliper Spotiswood Meiggs would not come back to the burned cabin some day and go away, thinking that his old mother was no longer alive.

"You blessed childern!" exclaimed Mammy June. "And has you fixed it dat way for me? But -- but -- you says you writ dem letters to Sneezer?"

"Yes," said Rose happily. "Yes, we did, Mammy June. And stuck them up on poles all about the burned house."

"I don't know! I don't know!" sighed the old woman. "I reckon dat won't be much use."

"Why not?" demanded Russ anxiously. "If he comes back he'll see and read 'em."

"No. No, sir! He may see 'em," said Mammy June, shaking her head on the pillow. "But he won't read 'em."

"Why won't he?" Russ demanded in some heat. "I wrote them just as plain as plain!"

"But," said Mammy June, still sadly, "you see, my Sneezer never learnt to read hand-writin'!"



Chapter XX

Goosey-Goosey-Gander


The Bunker children, especially Russ and Rose, felt truly anxious because of Mammy June's unhappiness about her absent son. The boy they all called Sneezer should have been home now when his mother was crippled with rheumatism and had lost her home and all her little possessions.

She worried audibly and continually about Sneezer. Russ and Rose took counsel together more than once. They had hoped that their signs put up at the site of the burned cabin would have satisfied Mammy June that her son would come up to the big house whenever, or if ever, he returned to his old home. Now the Bunker children were not so sure.

When Russ and Rose told Philly Armatage what they had done she said:

"Mebbe he'll think the writing is just to keep ha'nts away. He can't read writing. He always worked in the fields or up here at the house. Those signs aren't any good -- just as Mammy June says."

This opinion caused Russ and Rose additional anxiety. They did not know what to do about it. Even the boy's inventive mind was at fault in the emergency.

While the older Bunker brother and sister were troubled in this way and Laddie and Vi were recovering from their adventure with the red fox, Margy and Mun Bun were, as usual, having their own pleasures and difficulties. The littlest Bunker was a born explorer. Daddy Bunker said so. And Margy was quite as active as the little fellow.

Hand in hand they wandered all about the big house and out-of-doors as well. There was always supposed to be somebody to watch them, especially if they went near the barns or paddocks where the horses and mules were. But sometimes the little folks slipped away from even Mother Bunker's observation.

The gardener often talked to the littlest Bunkers, and he saw, too, that they did no more mischief around the greenhouse. When he saw them that afternoon trotting down the hill toward the poultry houses he failed to follow them. He had his work to do, of course, and it did not enter his head that Mun Bun and Margy could get into much trouble with the poultry.

Margy and Mun Bun were delighted with the "chickens" as they called most of the fowl the Armatages kept. But there were many different kinds -- not alone of hens and roosters; for there were peafowl, and guineas, and ducks, and turkeys. And in addition there was a flock of gray geese.

"Those are gooseys," Margy announced, pointing through the slats of the low fence which shut in the geese and their strip of the branch, or brook, and the grass plot which the geese had all to themselves.

"Goosey, goosey gander!" chanted Mun Bun, clinging to the top rail of the fence and looking through the slats. "Which is ganders and which is gooseys, Margy?"

As though in answer to his query one of the big birds, with a horny crown on its head, stuck out its neck and ran at the little boy looking through the fence. The bird hissed in a most hateful manner too.

"Oh, look out, Mun Bun!" cried his sister. "I guess that's a gander."

But Mun Bun, with a fence between him and the big bird, was as usual very brave.

"I don't have to look out, Margy Bunker," he declared proudly. "I am already out -- so he can't get me. Anyway if he came after us I wouldn't let him bite you."

"I guess he would like to bite us," said the little girl, keeping well away from the fence herself.

"That's 'cause he must be hungry," said Mun Bun with confidence. "You see, he hasn't got anything but grass to eat. I guess they forgot to feed him and it makes him mad."

"That is too bad. He is a real pretty bird," agreed Margy. "Wonder if we could feed him?"

"We can ask that nice cook for bwead," said Mun Bun doubtfully.

"They don't feed gooseys bread, I guess," objected the little girl.

"What do they feed 'em?"

"I guess corn -- or oats."

"Let's go and get some," said Mun Bun promptly, and he backed away from the fence, still keeping his gaze fixed on the threatening gander.

They both knew where the feed was kept, for they had watched the colored man feed the stock. So they went across to the stables. And nobody saw them enter the feed room.

As usual it did not trouble Margy and Mun Bun that they had not asked permission to feed the geese. What they had not been literally forbidden to do the little folks considered all right. It was true that they were great ones for exploring and experimenting. That is how they managed to get into so much mischief.

In this matter, however, it did not seem as though Margy and Mun Bun could really get into much trouble. They got a little dish and filled it with corn and trotted back to the goose pen. This time the gander did not charge Mun Bun. But the whole flock was down the slope by the water and the little folks had to walk that way along the edge of the fenced lot.

They came to a place where a panel of the fence was crooked. It had been broken, in fact, and it was much easier to push it aside than not. Why! when Mun Bun leaned against it the strip of fence fell right over on to the grass of the goose yard.

"Now see what you've done, Mun Bun!" exclaimed Margy.

"Why -- oh -- I didn't mean to," sputtered Mun Bun.

"What do you s'pose Mr. Armatage will say?"

"He won't say anything," said Mun Bun briskly. "For he won't see it. And now, Margy, we can throw the corn to those gooseys and ganders much better. See!"

He grabbed a handful of shelled corn out of the dish and scattered it as far as he could toward the flock. At once the gray birds became interested. They stretched their long necks and the big gander uttered a questioning "honk!"

"It's corn -- it's real corn!" cried Mun Bun. "Don't be afraid, goosey-goosey-gander," and he shouted with laughter.

Margy threw a handful of corn too. At once the geese drew nearer. When they reached the first kernels they began grabbing them up with that strange shoveling motion with their bills that all geese and ducks make. The children watched them with delight.

But as the geese waddled nearer the old gander began to wiggle his head from side to side and to hiss softly. Margy and Mun Bun looked at each other, and both drew back.

"I don't like that one much," said Margy. "Do you, Mun Bun?"

"I don't like him at all," confessed the little fellow. "I guess we'd better go back. Maybe Mother will be wanting us."

Margy turned as quickly as he did. She had not thrown out all the corn, but as she turned away a few kernels scattered from the dish. Instantly the gander saw this. With a long hiss he started after the two children, and many of his flock kept right behind their leader.

"Oh! Come quick, Mun Bun!" gasped Margy.

Mun Bun seized her hand. As they ran up the slope the corn scattered from the dish. This was enough to keep the flock following. But the big gander did not chase the little boy and girl because of the scattered corn. He was really angry!

The chubby legs of Mun Bun and Margy looked good to that old gander. He ran hissing after them and began to flap his wings. One stroke of one of those wings would knock down either of the children.



Chapter XXI

Rose Has An Idea


It was just like a nightmare, and both Margy and Mun Bun knew what nightmares were. Those are dreams that, when you are "sleeping them," you get chased by something and your feet seem to stick in the mud so that you can't run. It is a very frightful sort of dream. And this adventure the little ones had got into was surely a frightful peril.

The hissing gander, his neck outstretched and his bill wide open, followed the two children with every evidence of wishing to strike them. His flapping wings were as powerful, it seemed, as those of the big sea-eagle that had been caught aboard ship coming down from Boston, and Mun Bun and Margy remembered that creature very vividly.

Others of the flock of geese came on, too. As long as the grains of corn kept dropping from Margy's dish, the ravenous geese would follow, even if they were not savage, as their leader was.

The chubby legs of the two children hardly kept them ahead of the gander's bill. They shrieked at the top of their voices. But for once none of the innumerable colored folks was in sight. Even their friend, the gardener, had disappeared since Mun Bun and Margy had come down to the goose pen.

"Help! Help us!" cried Margy, looking to the world in general to assist.

"Muvver! Muvver!" cried Mun Bun, who held an unshaken belief that Mother Bunker must be always at hand and able to rescue him from any trouble.

Mun Bun thought he felt the cold, hard bill of the gander at his bare legs. He ran so hard that he lost his breath, somewhere. He couldn't even pant, and as for calling out for help again, that was impossible!

Margy dragged him on a few steps, for she was quite strong for a little girl. But she knew that she was overtaken. There was no help for it. The goosey-goosey-gander was going to eat them up!

But if no human being heard the two children in their distress, there was a creature that did. Bobo, the big old hound, who was only chained to his house at night or when Mr. Armatage did not want him following the mules about the plantation, came out of his kennel and stared down the hill. He observed the running and screaming children, and he likewise saw the gander who was his old enemy. They had had many a tilt before, for the gander believed that everything that came near his flock meant mischief.

Bobo's red eyes expanded and the ruff on the back of his neck began to rise. He uttered a low, reverberating bark. It was almost a growl and it sounded threatening. He dashed down the hill with great leaps.

Mun Bun finally pitched over on his face, dragging Margy with him. Margy's corn went spinning about her and the geese fairly scrambled over the two crying children to get at the corn. Perhaps this helped Mun Bun and his sister some, although they did not think so at the moment. At least, while his family scrambled for the grains of corn the gander could not get at the brother and sister to strike them.

And then great Bobo appeared. He bounded into the middle of the flock and knocked them every-which-way with his great paws. He thrust his muzzle under the hissing gander and sent him over on his back, where he lay and flapped his webbed feet ridiculously. And he did not hiss any more. He "honked" for help.

Mun Bun and Margy scarcely knew that they were saved until Bobo thrust his cold, wet muzzle into first one face and then the other of the two little Bunkers. They had become so used to Aunt Jo's great Dane doing that that Bobo's affectionate act did not alarm them.

"The goosey-goosey-gander's gone, Margy!" stammered Mun Bun. "I told you I wouldn't let him bite you."

Whether his sister was much impressed by this statement or not, is not known. However that might be, she fondled Bobo and got upon her feet as quickly as Mun Bun arose.

"Isn't he a good old dog?" cooed Margy.

"He's pretty good I think. But -- but let's come away from that goosey-goosey-gander."

Bobo gave a jump and a bark at the gander, and the latter, which had now climbed to its webbed feet, scurried away, the flock following him. It was then, while the two children were fondling Bobo, who liked to have his long ears pulled by a gentle hand, that Russ and Rose Bunker came upon the scene.

Russ and Rose had been down to the burned cabin and had brought away all their letters to Sneezer Meiggs. If the colored boy had never learned to read writing, there was no use in leaving the notices there. So Russ had said, and Rose agreed with him.

"Oh, my dears!" Rose cried out when she saw the little ones so mussed up and with tear-stained faces, "what has happened to you?"

"Don't be afraid of Bobo," said Russ, running too. "He won't hurt you."

"He hurted the goosey-goosey-gander," declared Mun Bun confidently. "He dug his head under the goosey-goosey-gander and flunged him right over on his back."

"But he wouldn't hurt you," declared Rose.

"No," explained Margy. "Bobo came to help us when the gander wanted to bite our legs. At any rate he wanted to bite Mun Bun's legs."

"'Twas your legs he was after, Margy," declared the little fellow, flushing. "I wouldn't let the goosey-goosey-gander bite mine."

"Anyhow," said Margy, "he chased us. And all his hens came too. And Bobo saw him and he came down and drove them off. See! That gander is hissing at us now."

"Bobo is a brave dog," cried Rose, patting the hound.

"He is pretty good, I think," declared Mun Bun. "But next time I go down to that goose place I am going to have a big stick."

"The next time," advised Russ, "don't you go there at all unless Daddy Bunker is with you. I'd be afraid of that old gander myself."

"Oh, would you?" cried the little boy, greatly relieved. "We-ell, I was a teeny bit scared myself."

The children -- all nine of them -- spent much of their time in Mammy June's room. The old colored woman had ways of keeping them interested and quiet that Mrs. Armatage proclaimed she could not understand. Mother Bunker understood the charm Mammy worked far better.

Mammy June loved children, high and low, rich and poor, good and bad, just so they were children. Therefore, Mammy June could manage them. Russ and Rose, finding themselves mistaken in their first attempt to relieve the old woman's anxiety about her son, wondered in private what they could do to let the absent Sneezer know where his mother was, and how much she wanted to see him.

Russ and Rose Bunker were quite used to thinking things out for themselves. Of course, there were times when Russ had to go to Daddy Bunker for help and his sister had to confess to Mother Bunker that she did not know what to do. For instance, that adventure of Russ's with the sailor-boy aboard the steamship.

But this matter of helping Mammy June's son to find his mother, if by chance he came back to the site of the burned cabin, was solely their own affair, and Russ and Rose realized the fact.

"We ought to be able to do something about it ourselves," declared Russ to his sister. "I'm going to ask Mammy June again if she is sure Sneezer can't read a word of writing."

This he did. Mammy June shook her head somewhat sadly.

"Dat boy always have to wo'k," she said. "When first he went away he sent me back money by mail. The man he wo'ked for sent it. Then Sneezer losed his job. But he never learnt to read hand-writin'. Much as he could do to spell out the big print on the front of the newspapers. That's surely so!"

Rose suddenly thought of something -- and perhaps it was not a foolish idea at that.

"Oh, Mammy!" she cried, "can your boy read newspaper print?"

"Sure can. De big print. What yo' call de haidlines in big print. Sure can."

"Oh!" murmured Rose, and she dragged Russ away to confer with him in secret.



Chapter XXII

The Strange Cry


Rose Bunker's idea was too good to tell in general. Some ideas are too good to keep; but Russ and Rose decided that this one was not in that class. They determined to tell nobody -- not even Mammy June or Daddy or Mother Bunker -- about what they proposed to do to help the old colored woman.

They had tried once, and failed. And Philly and Alice and Frane, Junior, had laughed at them. Now they proposed to do what Rose had thought of, and keep it secret from everybody.

"Of course," Rose said, "nothing may come of it."

"But that won't be your fault, Rose," said her brother. "It is a perfectly scrumptious idea."

"Do you think so?" asked Rose, much pleased by this frank praise.

"Sure I do. And we'll do it to-night. Then the Armatages won't know and -- and laugh at us."

For they had found Philly and Alice and Frane, Junior, rather trying. Not having their childish imaginations so well developed as the six little Bunkers had, the children of the plantation were altogether too matter-of-fact. Many childish plays that the Bunkers enjoyed did not appeal to their little hosts at all.

For instance, when Russ invented some brand new and charming, simple play for all to join in, Philly and Alice and Frane just drifted away and would have nothing to do with it. They were too polite to criticize; but Russ knew that the Armatage children felt themselves "too grown up" to be interested in the building of a steamboat or the driving of an imaginary motor-car.

His little brothers and sisters, however, were constantly teasing Russ to make something new. They enjoyed traveling in reality so much, did the six little Bunkers, that, as Daddy laughingly said, traveling in a wheelbarrow would have amused them.

So this day when Russ made a whole freight train with empty chicken coops, with a caboose at the end and a big engine in front, only Frane took an interest in it aside from the Bunkers themselves. And perhaps his interest was, only held because Russ agreed to make him the engineer while Laddie was fireman.

As for Russ himself, he was the conductor at the end of the long train. He had to explain very plainly that of course a freight train had a conductor. Every train had to have a "skipper" just like a boat. A railroad man had explained all that to Russ Bunker when the family was on its way to Cowboy Jack's early in the autumn.

"And you-all," said Russ, copying Frane's speech, speaking to the little ones and Rose, "must stay back here with me and be brakemen. When we need the handbrakes, I'll tell you, and you run forward over the coops -- I mean the cars -- and set the brakes."

"But suppose we get flung off?" asked Vi.

"That you must not do," said her older brother sternly. "If the train is going fast you might get a broken leg. Or if it is going around a curve it would be worse. You must be careful."

"I think this is a dangerous play," said Vi hopefully. There was nobody really more daring than Vi.

The two Armatage girls tried to coax Rose away from the "train"; but Rose liked to play with her brothers and sisters, and she knew that Mother Bunker expected her to. So she excused herself to Philly and Alice.

Unfortunately they took some offense at this. That evening after supper Rose found herself ignored by Phillis and Alice Armatage. At another time this ungenerous act might have hurt the oldest Bunker girl. But she and Russ had their secret plans to carry through, and Rose was glad to get away with her brother in a room where nobody would disturb them.

Again Russ had broken up pasteboard boxes, and he had pen and ink. To make new signs all in "big print" to stick up at the site of Mammy June's burned cabin was more of a task than merely writing them. This was Rose's bright idea. Russ did not deny her powers of invention.

They printed four good signs. Oh, the letters were large and black!

"They ought to be," Russ said. "We've used 'most half a bottle of ink."

"Don't let's tell Philly or any of them," said Rose. "They laugh at so many things we do."

"All right," agreed Russ, although he was less sensitive about being laughed at than his sister.

But this habit the young Armatages had of laughing at what the little Bunkers did caused all the trouble on this night. And it was a night that all of the children and most of the grown folks, too, would be likely to remember.

The Armatage children knew a great deal more about the plantation and the country surrounding it than the Bunkers did. That was only natural. Philly or Alice or Frane, Junior, would not have started off secretly, as Russ and Rose Bunker did, after nine o'clock at night to go down to the place where old Mammy June's cabin had been burned.

To tell the truth, the Armatage children had associated so much with the colored folks about the plantation that they were inclined to believe that there might be such things as "ha'nts." The little Bunkers had heard of "ghosts"; but they looked on such things as being like fairies -- something to half-believe in, and shiver about, all the time knowing that they were not real.

So Russ and Rose had no actual fear of haunts when they started down the cart-path toward the wide brook where Russ had had his first adventure catching the big fish.

The colored folks were all at home in their quarters; and although it was a starlight night they were having no celebration. Everything about the plantation seemed particularly quiet. And no sounds at first came to the ears of the brother and sister from the forest.

As they approached the place for which they aimed however there came suddenly a mournful screech from the woods -- a sound that seemed to linger longer in their hearing than any strange noise Russ and Rose had ever heard. The brother and sister stopped, frightened indeed, and clung to each other.

"Oh! What's that?" murmured Rose.

"It -- it's maybe an owl," returned Russ, trying to think of the most harmless creature that made a noise at night.

"I never heard an owl howl like that," whispered his sister.

"Aw, Rose! owls don't howl. It's wolves that howl -- or coyotes such as we saw at Cowboy Jack's. Don't you remember the coyote caught in the trap that you thought was a dog?"

Rose's mind would not be drawn from the thing in question. She said, quite as fearfully:

"Maybe this is a wolf, Russ."

"Of course not," declared the boy trying to speak bravely. "There aren't any wolves in this part of the country. I asked Frane, Junior."

But there was evidently a savage creature here that Russ Bunker had known nothing about, for now it cried out again! Its long, quavering note echoed through the woods and made the boy and girl stand again and shiver.

"I -- I guess it isn't any animal after all," said Rose suddenly, and speaking with some relief. "That's a woman. Of course it is. But she must be lost, or something bad has happened to her. Oh, Russ!" she added, suddenly seizing her brother once more. "I know what it must be. And they are almost always ladies, so Phillis says."

"What's that?" demanded Russ, puzzled.

"It's a ha'nt! It's a lady ha'nt! I do believe it must be!"

"Aw, Rose, what you talking about?" demanded her brother, yet secretly quite as much troubled by the strange, eerie sound as she was. "You know that haunts are only make-believe."

"We-ell!" sighed Rose, "maybe that's only a make-believe sound we hear. But -- but I don't like it. There!"

For a third time the screech was repeated. It seemed nearer. Russ could not be confident that it was "make-believe." The strange sound seemed very real indeed.



Chapter XXIII

A Four-Legged Ghost


"I don't like that noise a bit," whispered Rose, standing close to her brother. "It -- it makes me all shivery."

"But, if it is only just a woman calling --  -- "

"There must be something awful the matter with her, if she has to scream like that," declared Rose.

As they did not hear the noise again for a little while, both of them plucked up courage, and they went on to the burned cabin. The sticks they had set up were still standing. Russ fastened each of the four pasteboard "letters" to a stick at the four corners of Mammy June's ruined house.

There was light enough from the stars for the two children to see quite plainly what they were about. Rose, however, was looking all about them while Russ did the work of setting up the printed signs for Sneezer Meiggs to see if he came home unexpectedly.

"What do you expect to see, Rose?" demanded her brother loftily.

"I don't know. Philly says ha'nts are all in white."

"I don't see anything very white around here," rejoined Russ.

"But there are so many colored folks, perhaps some of the ha'nts might be black," suggested Rose. "Then we wouldn't see them very well in the shadows."

"I don't believe --  -- " began Russ.

The strange shriek was again heard. Russ stopped in his speech. Rose uttered a sharp cry. The screech -- and it did sound like a woman's voice, the voice of a woman in fearful pain or fright -- seemed very near them.

"It's right over there in that patch of woods," said Russ. "I guess she is lost -- or something."

"Do you believe it is only a lady and not a ha'nt, Russ?" demanded his sister.

"Of course it isn't a ha'nt! Such things can't be! And if it was a ghost, a ghost is nothing but air, and how could air have such a voice as that?"

This reasoning seemed to close the argument. Rose felt that her brother must be right. Besides, Russ went right on talking, and talking very bravely.

"I think we ought to see what the matter is with her, Rose. She is in trouble -- maybe she is lost and scared."

"So am I scared," murmured Rose.

"But think how much more you would be scared," her brother said seriously, "if you were in those woods alone and didn't know that there was anybody else near."

"I wouldn't make so much fuss about it," muttered Rose, for she suspected the thought in Russ Bunker's mind and she was really too scared to approve of it at once.

"We've got to find her," said the boy impressively.

"Now, Russ!" almost wailed Rose, "you wouldn't go into those woods? Aren't you scared?"

"Of course I'm scared," said Russ. "Who wouldn't be? But just because I am scared I know the woman must be even more scared. She's got to be taken out of the woods and shown where the big house is. Or, if she is a colored lady, we'll take her to the quarters."

"I -- I wish Daddy was here," ventured Rose.

"But he isn't here," said Russ, with some vexation. "So we've got to find the woman by ourselves."

"Oh, dear!" murmured Rose.

But she would not let Russ go alone into the patch of forest behind the site of Mammy June's burned cabin; nor did she feel like remaining alone in the clearing. Russ picked up a good sized stick and started toward the woods.

"Let's shout when we get to the edge," whispered Rose.

They did so; but, really, their voices sounded very faint indeed. No reply came. It was several minutes after, and Russ and Rose were quite a distance into the woods and following what seemed to be a half-grown-over path, before the "woman" screamed again.

"Goodness! How hateful that sounds!" cried Rose.

"I guess she is more scared than we are," ventured Russ. "What do you think?"

"I think I'd like to be back at the house," answered Rose.

But Russ would not agree with her. As he went on he grew more confident. They did not see even a rabbit. And Russ and Rose knew that rabbits were often out at night.

If they had but known it, the awful screech that so disturbed them, disturbed the rabbits and the other small fry of the woods much more. At the sound of that terrible hunger-cry all the rabbits, and hares, and birds that nested on the ground or in trees, trembled.

But Russ seemed to grow braver by the minute. And Rose of course could not fail to be inspired by his show of courage. They walked along the path hand in hand, and although they did not speak much for the next few moments, when they did speak it was quite cheerfully.

"I wish she would yell again," said Russ at last. "For we must be getting near to where she was."

"We-ell, if she isn't a ghost --  -- "

Just then the silence of the wood was broken again by the cry. The boy and the girl halted involuntarily. No matter how brave Russ might appear to be, there was a tone to that scream that made shivers go up and down his back.

"Oh, Russ!" cried Rose.

"Oh, Rose!" stammered her brother.

The scream came from so near that it seemed worse than before. And now Russ was shaken in his proclaimed opinion. It did not seem that any woman, no matter how great her distress might be, could make such a terrible sound.

"I guess we'd better go back," confessed Russ after a minute.

Rose was eager to do so. They turned and, hand in hand, began to run. And in their haste they somehow missed the path they had been following. Or else, it had not been a path at all.

At least, after running so far that they should have reached the burned cabin they came out into quite a different clearing! They both knew that they had missed the way, for in this clearing stood a little cabin with a pitched roof that neither of the Bunker children had ever seen before. Nor was the wide brook in sight.

"I guess we've got turned around," Russ said, trying to hide his disappointment and fear from his sister. "We've got to go back, Rose."

"Do you know which is back?" she asked.

"We've got to hunt for that old path."

"Don't you leave me, Russ Bunker!" cried Rose, as her brother started away.

And just then both of them saw the tawny, long tailed, slinking beast in the edge of the thicket.

"Oh! It's a bear!" shrieked Rose.

"Bears don't look like that," gasped Russ, staring at the great, glowing eyes of the animal. "It looks more like a cat."

"There never was a cat as big as that, Russ Bunker, and you know it!"

"Come on, Rose," said her brother promptly. "We'll go into that house and shut the door. It can't get us then, whatever it is."

In a moment the two children had dashed into the cabin and pulled to the swinging door. The door had a lock on the outside, and when Russ banged the door shut he heard the lock snap.

"Now it can't get at us!" cried Russ with some satisfaction. "We're safe."

"But -- but I don't like this old house, Russ Bunker," complained Rose. "There is no window."

"All the better," was the brave reply. "That cat can't get at us."

Then the screech sounded again and the boy and girl clung together while the sound echoed through the lonesome timber.

"It's that thing that makes the noise," whispered Rose. "Oh, Russ! if Daddy Bunker doesn't come after us, maybe it will tear the house down."

"It can't," declared Russ.

"How do you know it can't?"

"Why, cats -- even big ones -- don't tear houses to pieces, Rose. You know they don't! We'll be safe as long as we stay in this place."

"But how long shall we have to stay here?"

"Until that thing goes away," said Russ confidently.

"And maybe it won't go away at all. We'll have to stay here till the folks come to find us, Russ. I -- I want -- my mo-mother!"

"Now, Rose Bunker, don't be a baby!" said her brother. "That thing can't get at us in here --  -- "

Just then something thumped heavily on the roof of the hut. Russ could not say another word. They heard the great claws of the big cat scratching at the roof boards.

Rose screamed again and this time her brother's voice joined with hers in a hopeless cry for help.



Chapter XXIV

An Exciting Time


Russ and Rose Bunker had slipped out of the house on the hill without saying a word to anybody as to where they were going. Since coming to the Meiggs Plantation there had been a certain amount of laxness in regard to what the children did. They had a freedom that Mother Bunker never allowed when they were at home.

Because the Armatage children went and came as they wished, the little Bunkers began to do likewise. The house was so big, too, that the children might be playing a long way from the room in which their mother and father and Mr. Frane Armatage and his wife sat.

The servants who were supposed to keep some watch upon the children were now all in the quarters. Servants in the South seldom sleep in "the big house." And perhaps Mother Bunker forgot this fact.

At any rate, when she came to look for her brood late in the evening she found the four little ones fast asleep in their beds, as she had expected them to be. But Rose was not with Phillis and Alice Armatage, and Russ's bed was likewise empty.

"Where are those children?" Mother Bunker demanded of Daddy, when she had run downstairs again. "Do you know? They should be in bed."

"They were in the library earlier in the evening," Mrs. Armatage said. "I think they were writing again."

"Writing?" repeated Mother Bunker. "Making more of those signs to set up at the burned house?"

Mr. Armatage chuckled. "Those won't do much good. Sneezer never could read writing."

"Let us ask Mammy. Rose and Russ may be with her," suggested Mrs. Armatage.

Upstairs went the two ladies and into Mammy June's room. There was a night light burning there, but nobody was with the old woman.

"Lawsy me!" exclaimed the old nurse when Mrs. Bunker asked her. "I ain't seen them childern since I had my supper. No'm. They ain't been here."

The house was searched from cellar to garret by the two gentlemen. Meanwhile the anxious mother and her hostess went to the library. Russ had left there some spoiled sheets of cardboard with some of the letters printed on them. It was easy to see the attempt he and Rose had made to print plainly a notice to Sneezer, Mammy June's absent son, telling him that his mother was at the big house.

"The dear things!" said Mrs. Armatage. "Your boy and girl are very kind, Mrs. Bunker. They want to relieve Mammy's trouble."

"They have gone down there to-night to stick up those signs!" cried Mrs. Bunker, inspired by a new thought.

"Well, I reckon nothing will hurt 'em," said her friend soothingly. "I'll tell Mr. Armatage and he will go down there and get them."

This idea impressed both the men when they came back from their unsuccessful search of the house.

The two men walked briskly along the trail to the burned cabin. The stars gave them light enough to see all about the clearing when they arrived. Not a sign of Russ or Rose did they find.

"Do you suppose they went home some other way?" asked Daddy Bunker.

"I don't know. I hope they haven't wandered into the thicket."

As Mr. Armatage spoke both men heard the terrible scream that had first startled Russ and Rose. Mr. Bunker fairly jumped.

"That can't be the children!" he ejaculated.

The way his companion looked at him told the children's father a good deal. Mr. Bunker seized Mr. Armatage's arm.

"Tell me! What is it?" he asked.

"Something that hasn't been heard around here for years," said the planter, his voice trembling a little. "It's the cry of a panther."

Mr. Bunker, although he was practically a city man, had hunted a good deal and had been in the wilder parts of the country very often. He knew how terribly dangerous a panther might be on occasion; but he likewise knew that ordinarily they would not attack human beings. Two little children lost in the woods in which a panther was roaming up and down was, however, a fearful thing.

"Get a gun and the hands!" exclaimed Mr. Bunker. "If Russ and Rose have mistaken the way home, and are in that timber, they may be in peril."

Mr. Armatage started off on a run for the quarters. He knew that some of his hands had guns, and the quarters were nearer than the big house.

Daddy Bunker, although he was unarmed, started directly into the woods, trying to mark his course by the repeated screams of the hungry panther. He might have been lost himself, for there was not much light to mark the way; but Daddy Bunker could judge the situation of the screaming panther much better than Russ and Rose had been able to.

He hurried on, gripping a good-sized club that he had found. But, of course, he knew better than to attack a panther with a club. He might throw the stick at the animal, however, and frighten it away.

Russ and Rose had gone a long way into the thicket. The panther did not scream often. So Daddy Bunker did not make much progress in the right direction. By and by he had to stop and wait for help, or for the panther to scream again.

He heard finally many voices at the edge of the thicket. Then he began to see the blaze of torches. A party of colored people -- men and boys -- with torches and guns, followed Mr. Armatage.

In addition, all the hunting dogs on the plantation were scouring the timber. Bobo, the big hound, was at the head of this pack. He struck the scent of the panther at last, and his long and mournful howl was almost as awe-inspiring as the cry of the panther.

"Come on, Bunker!" shouted Mr. Armatage, when the party had overtaken the Northern man. "The dogs are the best leaders. Bobo has got a scent for any kind of trail. Come on!"

The negroes shouted and swung their torches. Perhaps they made so much noise and had so many lights because they somewhat feared the "ha'nts" that many of them talked about and believed in.

But the two white men were not thinking of ghosts. They feared what might have happened to the two children if they had met the panther.

Just at this time, too, Russ and Rose were not thinking of ghosts. The panther was not at all ghostly. He had four great paws, each armed with claws that seemed quite capable of tearing to pieces the roof boards of the cabin the children had taken refuge in.

"He'll get to us! He will! He will!" Rose cried over and over.

"No, he won't," said her brother, but his voice trembled. "I -- I don't see how he can."

"Let's run out again while he's on the roof, and run home," said Rose.

"We don't know the way home," objected her brother.

"We can find it. I don't want to be shut up here with that cat."

"It's not so bad. He hasn't got in yet."

But Rose ran to the door, and then she made another discovery that added to her fright. The door could not be opened! The spring lock on the outside had snapped and there was no way of springing the bolt from inside the shack.

"Now see what we've done!" she wailed. "Russ Bunker! we are shut into the place, and can't get out, and that thing will come down and claw us all to pieces."

With this Rose cast herself upon the ground and could not be comforted. In fact, at the moment, Russ could not think of a word to say that would comfort his sister. He was just as much frightened as Rose was.



Chapter XXV

That Pigeon Wing


Greatly as the two little Bunkers were alarmed, and as much as their father and Mr. Armatage worried about their safety, they really were not so very badly off. Not only were the roof boards of the hut in which Russ and Rose had taken refuge sound, but soon the panther stopped clawing at the boards.

It heard the crowd of men coming and the baying of the hounds. It stood up, stretched its neck as it listened, snarled a defiance at Bobo and his mates, and then leaped into the nearest tree and so away, from tree to tree, into the deeper fastnesses of the wood.

The dogs might follow the scent of the panther on the ground to the clearing where the hut stood; but beyond that place they could not follow, for the wary cat had left no trail upon the ground.

At first, when the dogs came baying to the spot, Russ and Rose were even more frightened than before. The dogs' voices sounded very savage. But soon Bobo smelled the children out and leaped, whining, against the door of the cabin. He was doing that when Daddy Bunker and Mr. Armatage and the negroes reached the clearing.

"The creature is in that hut," said Daddy Bunker.

"Not much!" returned his friend. "Bobo would not make those sounds if it was a panther. Mr. Panther has beat it through the trees. It is something else in the charcoal burner's hut. Come on!"

He strode over to the door, snapped back the lock, and threw the door open. The torchlight flooded the interior of the place and revealed Russ and Rose Bunker, still fearful, clinging to each other as they crouched in a corner of the hut.

"Well!" exclaimed Daddy Bunker. "Of all the children that ever were born, you two manage to get into the greatest adventures! What are you doing here?"

"A big cat chased us in here, Daddy," said Russ.

"And he tried to get at us through the roof," added Rose.

Daddy Bunker and Mr. Armatage looked at each other pretty seriously.

"We didn't get here a minute too soon," said the planter.

"I believe you," returned Mr. Bunker gravely. "This might have been a very serious affair."

But in the morning, after Russ and Rose were refreshed by sleep and had told the particulars of their adventure at the breakfast table, the youngsters really took pride in what had happened to them. The smaller children looked upon Russ and Rose as being very wonderful.

"What would you have done, Russ, if that big cat had got into the house with you and Rose?" Vi asked.

"But he didn't," was the boy's reply.

"Well, if he had what would you have done?"

But that proved to be another question that Vi Bunker never got answered. This was so often the case!

"So you thought it was a ghost at first, and then it turned out to be a big cat," Laddie said to Rose. "I think I could make up a riddle about that."

"All right," said Rose, with a sigh. "You can make up all the riddles you want to about it. Making a riddle about a panther is lots better than being chased by one."

Laddie, however, did not make the riddle. In fact he forgot all about it in the excitement of what directly followed the rescue of Russ and Rose from the wild animal. Mr. Bunker felt so happy about the recovery of the two children that he determined to do something nice for the colored people who had so enthusiastically aided in hunting for Russ and Rose.

"Let 'em have another big dance and dinner, such as they had Christmas eve," Mr. Bunker suggested to the planter. "I'll pay the bill."

"Just as you say, Charley," agreed Mr. Armatage. "That will please 'em all about as much as anything you could think of. I'll get some kind of music for them to dance by, and we'll all go down and watch 'em. Your young ones certainly do like dancing."

This was true. And especially was Russ Bunker anxious to learn to dance as some of the colored boys did. He was constantly practising the funny pigeon wing that he had seen Sam do in Aunt Jo's kitchen, in Boston. But the white boy could not get it just right.

"Never mind, Russ," Laddie said approvingly, "you do it better and better all the time. I guess you can do it by and by -- three or four years from now, maybe." But three or four years seemed a long time to Russ.

When they went down to the quarters the evening of the party Russ determined to try to dance as well as Frane, Junior, and the negro boys.

Mammy June was much better now, and she was up and about. To please her Mr. Armatage had a phaeton brought around and the old nurse was driven to the scene of the celebration. Mun Bun and Margy rode in the phaeton with Mammy June and were very proud of this particular honor.

The old nurse was loved by everybody on the plantation, both white and black. Mother Bunker said that Mammy held "quite a levee" at the quarters, sitting in state in her phaeton where she could see all that went on.

The dinner was what the negroes called a barbecue. The six little Bunkers had never seen such a feast before, for this that their father gave them was even more elaborate than the dinner the planter had given his hands at Christmas.

There was a great fire in a pit, and over this fire a whole pig was roasted on a spit, and poultry, and 'possums that the boys had killed, and rabbits. There were sweet potatoes, of course. How the little Northerners liked them! The white children had a table to themselves and ate as heartily as their colored friends.

Then a place was cleared for the dancing. Mammy June's phaeton was drawn to the edge of this dance floor. The music struck up, and there was a general rush for partners.

After a while the dancers got more excited, and many of them danced alone, "showing off," Frane, Junior, said. They did have the funniest steps! Russ Bunker was highly delighted with this kind of dancing.

"Now let me! Let me dance!" he cried, starting out from his seat near Mammy June. "A boy showed me in Boston how to cut a pigeon wing. I guess I can do it now."

"You can't cut no pigeon wing, w'ite boy," said 'Lias, Mammy's grandson.

"I can try," said Russ bravely, and he danced with much vigor for several minutes.

"Oh, my, he done cut Sneezer's pigeon wing!" cried one of the darkies presently.

"What's dat? Cut Sneezer's pigeon wing?" cried Mammy June, sitting up to watch Russ more closely.

"Dat's jest what he's doin'."

Russ continued to dance, and did his best to imitate the colored boy at Aunt Jo's house. He was hard at it when Mammy June, with her eyes almost popping out of her head, cried:

"For de lan's sake, boy, come here! I want to ask you sumpin."

Russ was in the midst of cutting the pigeon wing again, and this time he was fortunate enough to imitate Sam in almost every particular. Then he stopped and walked over to the old colored woman's side.

"How come you try to do it that way, Russ Bunker?" asked Mammy June as Russ approached the phaeton. "I ain't never seen you do that before. Who showed you?"

"Sam. The boy in Boston. He said he was called after his Uncle Sam. He came from down South here, you know, Mammy."

"Was he a cullud boy?" demanded the old woman earnestly.

"Of course he was. Or he couldn't dance this way," and Russ tried to cut the pigeon wing again.

"Wait! Wait!" gasped the old woman. "Tell me mo' about that boy who showed you. You ain't got it right. But dat's the way my Sneezer done it. Only he knows just how."

"Why, Mammy June!" cried Rose, "you don't suppose that Sam can dance just like your Sneezer?"

The old nurse was wiping the tears from her cheeks. Her voice was much choked with emotion as well. Mrs. Bunker came over to see what the matter was.

"Yo' please tell me, Ma'am, all about dat boy dese children say was in Boston? Please, Ma'am! Ain't nobody know how to dance dat way but Sneezer. And he didn't like his name, Ebenezer Caliper Spotiswood Meiggs. No'm, he didn't like it at all, 'cause we-all shortened it to Sneezer.

"He had an Uncle Sam, too. My brudder. Lives in Birmingham. Sneezer always said he wisht he'd been born wid a name like Uncle Sam."

"Perhaps it is the same boy," Mother Bunker said kindly. "Tell me just how Ebenezer looks, Mammy June. Then I can be sure."

From the way Mammy described her youngest son, even the children recognized him as Sam the chore boy at Aunt Jo's in Boston. Mun Bun and Margy, when the matter was quite settled that Sam was Sneezer, began to take great pride in the fact that it was their bright eyes that had first spied the colored boy walking in the snow and had been the first to invite him into Aunt Jo's house.

"He will be there when we go to Boston again, Mammy June," Rose said, warmly. "And Daddy and Mother will send him home to you. I guess he'll be glad to come. Only, maybe you'd better stop calling him Sneezer. He likes Sam best."

"Sure enough, honey," cried Mammy June, "I'll call him anything he likes 'long as he comes home and stays home with me. Yes, indeedy! I'd call him Julius Cesar Mark Antony Meiggs, if he wants I should."

"But maybe," said Russ thoughtfully, "he wouldn't like that name any better than the other. I know I shouldn't."

In a short time it was a settled matter that Mammy June's lost boy would return. For she could tell Mrs. Bunker so many things about the absent one that there was not a shadow of a doubt that the Sam working for Aunt Jo would prove to be Mammy June's boy.

The holidays on the Meiggs Plantation ended, therefore, all the more pleasantly because of this discovery. The plantation was a fine place to be on, so the six little Bunkers thought. But when Daddy Bunker announced that his business with his old friend, the planter, was satisfactorily completed, the children were not sorry to think of returning North.

"This doesn't seem like winter at all down here," said Russ. "We want to slide downhill, and roll snowballs, and make snowmen."

"And it is nice to go sleigh riding," Rose added. "They never can do that on the Meiggs Plantation."

"But you can make riddles here," put in Laddie.

Vi might have added that she could ask questions anywhere!

As for Margy and Mun Bun, they were contented to go anywhere that Mother Bunker and Daddy went. Something exciting was always happening to all of the six little Bunkers. But we will let you guess, with Russ and Rose and Vi and Laddie and Margy and Mun Bun, where the next exciting adventures of the half dozen youngsters from Pineville will take place.

Then came the time to leave the plantation. The children had many little keepsakes to take home with them and they promised to send other keepsakes to the Armatage children as soon as they got back to Pineville.

"It's been just the nicest outing that ever could be!" said Rose, when the good-byes were being spoken. "I'm sure I'll never forget this lovely place."

"I's coming back some day if they want me," put in Mun Bun quickly. And at this everybody smiled.

Then all climbed into the automobile which was to take them to the railroad station. There was a honk of the horn, and amid the waving of hands and a hearty cheer, the six little Bunkers and their parents started on their journey for home.

<eob>

Crowded Out O' Crofield

Or

The Boy Who Made His Way

By

William O. Stoddard



Chapter I.

The Blacksmith's Boy.

"I'm going to the city!"

He stood in the wide door of the blacksmith-shop, with his hands in his pockets, looking down the street, toward the rickety old bridge over the Cocahutchie. He was a sandy-haired, freckled-faced boy, and if he was really only about fifteen, he was tall for his age. Across the top of the door, over his head, stretched a cracked and faded sign, with a horseshoe painted on one end and a hammer on the other, and the name "John Ogden," almost faded out, between them.

The blacksmith-shop was a great, rusty, grimy clutter of work-benches, vises, tools, iron in bars and rods, and all sorts of old iron scraps and things that looked as if they needed making over.

The forge was in the middle, on one side, and near it was hitched a horse, pawing the ground with a hoof that bore a new shoe. On the anvil was a brilliant, yellow-red loop of iron, that was not quite yet a new shoe, and it was sending out bright sparks as a hammer fell upon it -- "thud, thud, thud," and a clatter. Over the anvil leaned a tall, muscular, dark-haired, grimy man. His face wore a disturbed and anxious look, and it was covered with charcoal dust. There was altogether too much charcoal along the high bridge of his Roman nose and over his jutting eyebrows.

The boy in the door also had some charcoal on his cheeks and forehead, but none upon his nose. His nose was not precisely like the blacksmith's. It was high and Roman half-way down, but just there was a little dent, and the rest of the nose was straight. His complexion, excepting the freckles and charcoal, was chiefly sunburn, down to the neckband of his blue checked shirt. He was a tough, wiry-looking boy, and there was a kind of smiling, self-confident expression in his blue-gray eyes and around his firm mouth.

"I'm going to the city!" he said, again, in a low but positive voice. "I'll get there, somehow."

Just then a short, thick-set man came hurrying past him into the shop. He was probably the whitest man going into that or any other shop, and he spoke out at once, very fast, but with a voice that sounded as if it came through a bag of meal.

"Ogden," said he, "got him shod? If you have, I'll take him. What do you say about that trade?"

"I don't want any more room than there is here," said the blacksmith, "and I don't care to move my shop."

"There's nigh onto two acres, mebbe more, all along the creek from below the mill to Deacon Hawkins's line, below the bridge," wheezed the mealy, floury, dusty man, rapidly. "I'll get two hundred for it some day, ground or no ground. Best place for a shop."

"This lot suits me," said the smith, hammering away. "'Twouldn't pay me to move -- not in these times."

The miller had more to say, while he unhitched his horse, but he led him out without getting any more favorable reply about the trade.

"Come and blow, Jack," said the smith, and the boy in the door turned promptly to take the handle of the bellows.

The little heap of charcoal and coke in the forge brightened and sent up fiery tongues, as the great leathern lungs wheezed and sighed, and Jack himself began to puff.

"I've got to have a bigger man than you are, for a blower and striker," said the smith. "He's coming Monday morning. It's time you were doing something, Jack."

"Why, father," said Jack, as he ceased pulling on the bellows, and the shoe came out of the fire, "I've been doing something ever since I was twelve. Been working here since May, and lots o' times before that. Learned the trade, too."

"You can make a nail, but you can't make a shoe," said his father, as he sizzed the bit of bent iron in the water-tub and then threw it on the ground. "Seven. That's all the shoes I'll make this morning, and there are seven of you at home. Your mother can't spare Molly, but you'll have to do something. It is Saturday, and you can go fishing, after dinner, if you'd like to. There's nothin' to ketch 'round here, either. Worst times there ever were in Crofield."

There was gloom as well as charcoal on the face of the blacksmith, but Jack's expression was only respectfully serious as he walked away, without speaking, and again stood in the door for a moment.

"I could catch something in the city. I know I could," he said, to himself. "How on earth shall I get there?"

The bridge, at the lower end of the sloping side-street on which the shop stood, was long and high. It was made to fit the road and was a number of sizes too large for the stream of water rippling under it. The side-street climbed about twenty rods the other way into what was evidently the Main Street of Crofield. There was a tavern on one corner, and across the street from that there was a drug store and in it was the post-office. On the two opposite corners were shops, and all along Main Street were all sorts of business establishments, sandwiched in among the dwellings.

It was not yet noon, but Crofield had a sleepy look, as if all its work for the whole week were done. Even the horses of the farmers' teams, hitched in front of the stores, looked sleepy. Jack Ogden took his longest look, this time, at a neat, white-painted frame-house across the way.

"Seems to me there isn't nearly so much room in it as there used to be," he said to himself. "It's just packed and crowded. I'm going!"

He turned and walked on up toward Main Street, as if that were the best thing he could do till dinner time. Not many minutes later, a girl plainly but neatly dressed came slowly along in front of the village green, away up Main Street. She was tall and slender, and her hair and eyes were as dark as those of John Ogden, the blacksmith. Her nose was like his, too, except that it was finer and not so high, and she wore very much the same anxious, discontented look upon her face. She was walking slowly, because she saw, coming toward her, a portly lady, with hair so flaxy that no gray would show in it. She was elegantly dressed. She stopped and smiled and looked very condescending.

"Good-morning, Mary Ogden," she said.

"Good-morning, Miss Glidden," said Mary, the anxious look in her eyes changing to a gleam that made them seem very wide awake.

"It's a fine morning, Mary Ogden, but so very warm. Is your mother well?"

"Very well, thank you," said Mary.

"And is your aunt well -- and your father, and all the children? I'm so glad they are well. Elder Holloway's to be here to-morrow. Hope you'll all come. I shall be there myself. You've had my class a number of times. Much obliged to you. I'll be there to-morrow. You must hear the Elder. He's to inspect the Sunday-school."

"Your class, Miss Glidden?" began Mary; and her face suggested that somebody was blowing upon a kind of fire inside her cheeks, and that they would be very red in a minute.

"Yes; don't fail to be there to-morrow, Mary. The choir'll be full, of course. I shall be there myself."

"I hope you will, Miss Glidden -- "

The portly lady saw something up the street at that moment.

"Oh my! What is it? Dear me! It's coming! Run! We'll all be killed! Oh my!"

She had turned quite around, while she was speaking, and was once more looking up the street; but the dark-haired girl had neither flinched nor wavered. She had only sent a curious, inquiring glance in the direction of the shouts and the rattle and the cloud of dust that were coming swiftly toward them.

"A runaway team," she said, quietly. "Nobody's in the wagon."

"Dear me!" exclaimed Miss Glidden; but Mary began to move away, looking not at her but at the runaway, and she did not hear the rest. "Mary Ogden's too uppish. -- Somebody'll be killed, I know they will! -- She's got to be taken down. -- There they come! -- Dressed too well for a blacksmith's daughter. Doesn't know her place. -- Oh dear! I'm so frightened!"

Perhaps she had been wise in getting behind the nearest tree. It was a young maple, two inches through, lately set out, but it might have stopped a pair of very small horses. Those in the road were large -- almost too large to run well. They were well-matched grays, and they came thundering along in a way that was really fine to behold; heads down, necks arched, nostrils wide, reins flying, the wagon behind them banging and swerving -- no wonder everybody stood still and, except Mary Ogden, shouted, "Stop 'em!" One young fellow, across the street, stood still only until the runaways were all but close by him. Then he darted out into the street, not ahead of them but behind them. No man on earth could have stopped those horses by standing in front of them. They could have charged through a regiment. Their heavy, furious gallop was fast, too, and the boy who was now following them, must have been as light of foot as a young deer.

"Hurrah! Hurrah! Go it, Jack! Catch 'em! Bully for you!" arose from a score of people along the sidewalk, as he bounded forward.

"It's Jack! Oh dear me! But it's just like him! There! He's in!" exclaimed Mary Ogden, her dark eyes dancing proudly.

"Why, it's that good-for-nothing brother of Mary Ogden. He's the blacksmith's boy. I'm afraid he will be hurt," remarked Miss Glidden, kindly and benevolently; but all the rest shouted "Hurrah!" again.

Fierce was the strain upon the young runner, for a moment, and then his hands were on the back-board of the bouncing wagon. A tug, a spring, a swerve of the wagon, and Jack Ogden was in it, and in a second more the loosely flying reins were in his hands.

The strong arms of his father, were they twice as strong, could not at once have pulled in those horses, and one man on the sidewalk seemed to be entirely correct when he said, "He's a plucky little fellow, but he can't do a thing, now he's there."

The Runaway.

His sister was trembling all over, but she was repeating: "He did it splendidly! He can do anything!"

Jack, in the wagon, was thinking only: "I know 'em. They're old Hammond's team. They'll try to go home to the mill. They'll smash everything, if I don't look out!"

It is something, even to a greatly frightened horse, to feel a hand on the rein. The team intended to turn out of Main Street, at the corner, and they made the turn, but they did not crash the wagon to pieces against the corner post, because of the desperate guiding that was done by Jack. The wagon swung around without upsetting. It tilted fearfully, and the nigh wheel was in the air for a moment, until Jack's weight helped bring it down again. There was a short, sharp scream across the street, when the wagon swung and the wheel went up.

Down the slope toward the bridge thundered the galloping team, and the blacksmith ran out of his shop to see it pass.

"Turn them into the creek, Jack!" he shouted, but there was no time for any answer.

"They'd smash through the bridge," thought Jack. "I know what I'm about."

There were wheel-marks down from the street, at the left of the bridge, where many a team had descended to drink the water of the Cocahutchie, but it required all Jack's strength on one rein to make his runaways take that direction. They had thought of going toward the mill, but they knew the watering-place.

Not many rods below the bridge stood a clump of half a dozen gigantic trees, remnants of the old forest which had been replaced by the streets of Crofield and the farms around it. Jack's pull on the left rein was obeyed only too well, and it looked, for some seconds, as if the plunging beasts were about to wind up their maddened dash by a wreck among those gnarled trunks and projecting roots. Jack drew his breath hard, and there was almost a chill at his young heart, but he held hard and said nothing.

Forward -- one plunge more -- hard on the right rein -- 

"That was close!" he said. "If we didn't go right between the big maple and the cherry! Now I've got 'em!"

Splash, crash, rattle! Spattering and plunging, but cooling fast, the gray team galloped along the shallow bed of the Cocahutchie.

"I wish the old swimming-hole was deeper," said Jack, "but the water's very low. Whoa, boys! Whoa, there! Almost up to the hub -- over the hub! Whoa, now!"

And the gray team ceased its plunging and stood still in water three feet deep.

"I mustn't let 'em drink too much," said Jack; "but a little won't hurt 'em."

The horses were trembling all over, but one after the other they put their noses into the water, and then raised their heads to prick their ears back and forth and look round.

"Don't bring 'em ashore till they're quiet, Jack," called out the deep, ringing voice of his father from the bank.

There he stood, and other men were coming on the run. The tall blacksmith's black eyes were flashing with pride over the daring feat his son had performed.

"I daren't tell him, though," he said to himself. "He's set up enough a'ready. He thinks he can do 'most anything."

"Jack," wheezed a mealy voice at his side, "that's my team -- "

"I know it," said Jack. "They 're all right now. Pretty close shave through the trees, that was!"

"I owe ye fifty dollars for a-savin' them and the wagin," said the miller. "It's wuth it, and I'll pay it; but I've got to owe it to ye, jest now. Times are awful hard in Crofield. If I'd ha' lost them hosses and that wagin -- "

He stopped short, as if he could not exactly say how disastrous it would have been for him.

There was a running fire of praise and of questions poured at Jack, by the gathering knot of people on the shore, and it was several minutes before his father spoke again.

"They're cool now," he said. "Turn 'em, Jack, and walk 'em out by the bridge, and up to the mill. Then come home to dinner."

Jack pretended not to see quite a different kind of group gathered under the clump of tall trees. Not a voice had come to him from that group of lookers-on, and yet the fact that they were there made him tingle all over.

Two large, freckle-faced, sandy-haired women were hugging each other, and wiping their eyes; and a very small girl was tugging at their dresses and crying, while a pair of girls of from twelve to fourteen, close by them, seemed very much inclined to dance. Two small boys, who at first belonged to the party, had quickly rolled up their trousers and waded out as far as they could into the Cocahutchie. Just in front of the group, under the trees, stood Mary Ogden, straight as an arrow, her dark eyes flashing and her cheeks glowing while she looked silently at the boy on the wagon in the stream, until she saw him wheel the grays. Even then she did not say anything, but turned and walked away. It was as if she had so much to say that she felt she could not say it.

"Aunt Melinda! Mother!" said one of the girls, "Jack isn't hurt a mite. They'd all ha' been drowned, though, if there was water enough."

"Hush, Bessie," said one of the large women, and the other at once echoed, "Hush, Bessie."

They were very nearly alike, these women, and they both had long straight noses, such as Jack's would have been, if half-way down it had not been Roman, like his father's.

"Mary Ann," said the first woman, "we mustn't say too much to him about it. He can only just be held in, now."

"Hush, Melinda," said Jack's mother. "I thought I'd seen the last of him when the gray critters came a-powderin' down the road past the house" -- and then she wiped her eyes again, and so did Aunt Melinda, and they both stooped down at the same moment, saying, "Jack's safe, Sally," and picked up the small girl, who was crying, and kissed her.

The gray team was surrendered to its owner as soon as it reached the road at the foot of the bridge, and again Jack was loudly praised by the miller. The rest of the Ogden family seemed to be disposed to keep away, but the tall blacksmith himself was there.

"Jack," said he, as they turned away homeward, "you can go fishing this afternoon, just as I said. I was thinking of your doing something else afterward, but you've done about enough for one day."

He had more to say, concerning what would have happened to the miller's horses, and the number of pieces the wagon would have been knocked into, but for the manner in which the whole team had been saved.

When they reached the house the front door was open, but nobody was to be seen. Bob and Jim, the two small boys, had not yet returned from seeing the gray span taken to the mill, and the women and girls had gone through to the kitchen.

"Jack," said his father, as they went in, "old Hammond'll owe you that fifty dollars long enough. He never really pays anything."

"Course he doesn't -- not if he can help it," said Jack. "I worked for him three months, and you know we had to take it out in feed. I learned the mill trade, though, and that was something."

Just then he was suddenly embarrassed. Mrs. Ogden had gone through the house and out at the back door, and Aunt Melinda had followed her, and so had the girls. Molly had suddenly gone up-stairs to her own room. Aunt Melinda had taken everything off the kitchen stove and put everything back again, and here now was Mrs. Ogden back again, hugging her son.

"Jack," she said, "don't you ever, ever, do such a thing again. You might ha' been knocked into slivers!"

Molly had gone up the back stairs only to come down the front way, and she was now a little behind them.

"Mother!" she exclaimed, as if her pent-up admiration for her brother was exploding, "you ought to have seen him jump in, and you ought to have seen that wagon go around the corner!"

"Jack," broke in the half-choked voice of Aunt Melinda from the kitchen doorway, "come and eat something. I felt as if I knew you were killed, sure. If you haven't earned your dinner, nobody has."

"Why, I know how to drive," said Jack. "I wasn't afraid of 'em after I got hold of the reins."

He seemed even in a hurry to get through his dinner, and some minutes later he was out in the garden, digging for bait. The rest of the family remained at the table longer than usual, especially Bob and Jim; but, for some reason known to herself, Mary did not say a word about her meeting with Miss Glidden. Perhaps the miller's gray team had run away with all her interest in that, but she did not even tell how carefully Miss Glidden had inquired after the family.

"There goes Jack," she said at last, and they all turned to look.

He did not say anything as he passed the kitchen door, but he had his long cane fishing-pole over his shoulder. It had a line wound around it, ready for use. He went out of the gate and down the road toward the bridge, and gave only a glance across at the shop.

"I didn't get many worms," he said to himself, at the bridge, "but I can dig some more if the fish bite. Sometimes they do, and sometimes they don't."

Over the bridge he went, and up a wagon track on the opposite bank, but he paused for one moment, in the very middle of the bridge, to look up stream.

"There's just enough water to run the mill," he said. "There isn't any coming over the dam. The pond's even full, though, and it may be a good day for fish. I wish I was in the city!"



Chapter II.

The Fish Were There.

Saturday afternoon was before Jack Ogden, when he came out at the water's edge, near the dam, across from the mill. That was there, big and red and rusty-looking; and the dam was there; and above them was the mill-pond, spreading out over a number of acres, and ornamented with stumps, old logs, pond-lilies, and weeds. It was a fairly good pond, the best that Cocahutchie Creek could do for Crofield, but Jack's face fell a little as he looked at it.

"There are more fellows than fish here," he said to himself, with an air of disgust.

There was a boy at the end of the dam near him, and a boy in the middle of it, and two boys at the flume, near the mill. There were three punts out on the water, and one of them had in it a man and two boys, while the second boat held but one man, and the third contained four. A big stump near the north shore supported a boy, and the old snag jutting out from the south shore held a boy and a man.

There they all were, sitting perfectly still, until, one after another, each rod and line came up to have its hook and bait examined, to see whether or not there had really been a bite.

"I'm fairly crowded out," remarked Jack. "Those fellows have all the good places. I'll have to go somewhere else; where'll I go?"

He studied that problem for a full minute, while every fisherman there turned to look at him, and then turned back to watch his line.

"I guess I'll try down stream," said Jack. "Nobody ever caught anything down there, and nobody ever goes there, but I s'pose I might as well try it, just for once."

He turned away along the track over which he had come. He did not pause at the road and bridge, but went on down the further bank of the Cocahutchie. It was a pretty stream of water, and it spread out wide and shallow, and rippled merrily among stones and bowlders and clumps of willow and alder for nearly half a mile. Gradually, then, it grew narrower, quieter, deeper, and wore a sleepy look which made it seem more in keeping with quiet old Crofield.

"The hay's about ready to cut," said Jack, as he plodded along the path, near the water's edge, through a thriving meadow of clover and timothy. "There's always plenty of work in haying time. Hullo! What grasshoppers! Jingo!"

As he made the last exclamation, he clapped his hand upon his trousers pocket.

"If I didn't forget to go in and get my sinker! Never did such a thing before in all my life. What's the use of trying to fish without a sinker?"

The luck seemed to be going directly against him. Even the Cocahutchie, at his left, had dwindled to a mere crack between bushes and high grass, as if to show that it had no room to let for fish to live in -- that is, for fish accustomed to having plenty of room, such as they could find when living in a mill-pond, lined around the edges with boys and fish-poles.

"That's a whopper!" suddenly exclaimed Jack, with a quick snatch at something that alighted upon his left arm. "I've caught him! Grasshoppers are the best kind of bait, too. I'll try him on, sinker or no sinker. Hope there are some fish, down here."

The line he unwound from his rod was somewhat coarse, but it was strong, and so was his hook, as if the fishing around Crofield called for stout tackle as well as for a large number of sportsmen. The big, long-limbed, green-coated jumper was placed in position on the hook, and then, with several more grumbling regrets over the absence of any sinker, Jack searched along the bank for a place whence he could throw his bait into the water.

"This'll do," he said, at last, and the breeze helped him to swing out his line until the grasshopper at the end of it dropped lightly and naturally into a dark little eddy, almost across that narrow ribbon of the Cocahutchie.

Splash -- tug -- splash again -- 

"Jingo! What's that? I declare -- if he isn't pulling! He'll break the line -- no, he won't. See that pole bend! Steady -- here he comes. Hurrah!"

Out he came, indeed, for the rude, strong tackle held, even against the game struggling of that vigorous trout. There he lay now, on the grass, with Jack Ogden bending over him in a fever of exultation and amazement.

"I never could have caught him with a worm and a sinker," he said, aloud. "This is the way to catch 'em. Isn't he a big fellow! I'll try some more grasshoppers."

There was not likely to be another two-pound brook-trout very near the hole out of which that one had been pulled. There would not have been any at all, perhaps, but for the prevailing superstition that there were no fish there. Everybody knew that there were bullheads, suckers, perch, and "pumpkin-seeds" in the mill-pond, and eels, with now and then a pickerel, but the trout were a profound secret. It was easy to catch another big grasshopper, but the young sportsman knew very well that he knew nothing at all of that kind of fishing. He had made his first cast perfectly, because it was about the only way in which it could have been made, and now he was so very nervous and excited and cautious that he did very well again, aided as before by the breeze. Not in the same place, but at a little distance down, and close to where Jack captured his second bait, there was a crook in the Cocahutchie, with a steep, overhanging, bushy bank. Into the glassy shadow under that bank the sinkerless line carried and dropped its little green prisoner, and there was a hungry fellow in there, waiting for foolish grasshoppers in the meadow to spring too far and come down upon the water instead of upon the grass. As the grasshopper alighted on the water, there was a rush, a plunge, a strong hard pull, and then Jack Ogden said to himself:

"I've heard how they do it. They wait and tire 'em out. I won't be in too much of a hurry. He'll get away if I am."

That is probably what the fish would have done, for he was a fish with what army men call "tactics." He was able to pull very hard, and he was also wise enough to rush in under the bank and to sulkily stay there.

"Feels as if I'd hooked a snag," said Jack. "May be I've lost the fish and he's hitched me into a 'cod-lamper' eel of some kind. Steady -- no, I mustn't pull harder than the fish."

He was breathless, but not with any exertion that he was making. His hat fell off upon the grass, as he leaned forward through the alder bushes, and his sandy hair was tangled for a moment in some stubby twigs. He loosened his head, still holding firmly his bent and straining rod. One step farther, a slip of his left foot, an unsuccessful grasp at a bush, and then Jack went over and down into a pool deeper than he had thought the Cocahutchie afforded so near Crofield.

There was a very fine splash, as the grasshopper fly-fisherman went under, and there was a coughing and spluttering a moment afterward, when his eager, excited, anxious face came up again. He could swim extremely well, and he was not thinking of his ducking -- only of his game.

"I hope I haven't lost him!" he exclaimed, as he tried to pull upon the line.

It did not tug at all, just then, for the fish on the hook had been rudely startled out from under the bank and was on his way up the Cocahutchie, with the hook in his mouth.

"There' he is! I've got him yet! Glad I can swim -- " cried Jack; and it did seem as if he and this fish were very well matched, except that Jack had to give one of his hands to the rod while his captive could use every fin.

Down stream floated Jack, passing the rod back through his hands until he could grasp the line, and all the while the fish was darting madly about to get away.

"There, I've touched bottom. Now for him! Here he comes. I'll draw him ashore easy -- that's it! Hurrah! biggest fish ever was caught in the Cocahutchie!"

That might or might not be so, but Jack Ogden had a three-pound trout, flopping angrily upon the grass at his feet.

"I know how to do it now," he almost shouted. "I can catch 'em! I won't let anybody else know how it's done, either."

He had learned something, no doubt, but he had not learned how to make a large fish out of a small one. All the rest of that afternoon he caught grasshoppers and cast them daintily into what seemed to be good places, but he did not have another occasion to tumble in. When at last he was tired out and decided to go home, he had a dozen more of trout, not one of them weighing over six ounces, with a pair of very good yellow perch, one very large perch, a sucker, and three bullheads, that bit when his bait happened to sink to the bottom without any lead to help it. Take it all in all, it was a great string of fish to be caught on a Saturday afternoon, when all that the Crofield sportsmen around the mill-pond could show was six bullheads, a dozen small perch, a lot of "pumpkin-seeds" not much larger than dollars, five small eels, and a very vicious snapping-turtle.

Jack stood for a moment looking down at the results of his experiment in fly-fishing. He felt, really, as if he could not more than half believe it.

"Fishing doesn't pay," he said. "It doesn't pay cash, any way. There isn't anything around Crofield that does pay. Well, it must be time for me to go home."



Chapter III.

I Am Only A Girl.

Jack was dry enough, but anybody could see that he had had a ducking, when he marched down the main street. He was carrying his prizes in two strings, one in each hand, and he was looking and feeling taller than he ever felt before. It was just the right hour to meet people, and he had to answer curious questions from some women, and from twice as many men, and from three times as many boys, all the way from above the green, where he came out into the street, down to the front of the Washington Hotel.

"Yes; I caught 'em all in the Cocahutchie."

He had had to say that any number of times, and he had also explained, apparently without trying to conceal anything:

"I had to swim for 'em. Caught 'em all under water. Those big speckled fellows are trout. They pulled me clean under. All that kind of fish live under water." And he told half a dozen inquiring boys: "I've found the best fish-hole you ever saw. Deep water all 'round it. I'm going there again." And then every one asked: "Take me with you, Jack?"

He had to come to a halt at the tavern, for every man in the arm-chairs on the piazza brought his feet down from the railing.

"Hold on! I want to look at those fish!" shouted old Livermore, the landlord. "Where'd you catch 'em?"

"Down the Cocahutchie," said Jack once more. "I caught 'em under water."

"Those are just what I'm looking for," replied Livermore, rubbing his sides, while nearly a dozen men crowded around to admire, and to guess at the weights.

"Traout's a-sellin' at a dollar a paound, over to Mertonville," squealed old Deacon Hawkins; "and traout o' that size is wuth more'n small traout. Don't ye let old Livermore cheat ye, Jack."

"I won't cheat him, Deacon," said the big landlord. "I don't want any thing but the trout. There's a Sunday crowd coming over from Mertonville, to-morrer, to hear Elder Holloway. I'll give ye two dollars, Jack."

"That's enough for one fish," said Jack. "Don't you want the big one? I had to dive for him. He'll weigh more'n three pounds."

"No, he won't!" said the landlord, becoming more and more eager. "Say three dollars for the lot."

"I daon't know but what I want some o' them traout myself," began Deacon Hawkins, peering more closely at the largest prize. "It's hard times, -- and a dollar a paound. I've got some folks comin' and Elder Holloway's to be at my haouse. I don't know but I oughter -- "

"I'll take 'em, Jack," interrupted the landlord, testily. "I spoke first. Three pounds, and two is five pounds, and -- "

"I'll give another dollar for the small traout," exclaimed Deacon Hawkins. "He can't have 'em all."

The landlord might have hesitated even then, but the excitement was catching, and Squire Jones was actually, but slowly, taking out his pocket-book.

"Five! There's your five, Jack. The big fish are mine. Take your money. Fetch 'em in," broke out old Livermore.

"There's my dollar, -- and there's my traout, -- " squealed the deacon.

"I was just a-goin' to saay -- " at that moment growled the deep, heavy bass voice of Squire Jones.

"Too late," said the landlord. "He's taken my money. Come in, Jack. Come in and get yours, Deacon," and Jack walked on into the Washington House with six dollars in his hand, just as a boy he knew stuck his head under Squire Jones's arm and shouted:

"Jack! -- Jack! Why didn't yer put 'em up at auction?"

It took but a minute to get rid of the very fine fish he had sold, and then the uncommonly successful angler made his way out of the Washington Hotel through the side door.

"I don't intend to answer any more questions," he said to himself; "and all that crowd is out there yet."

There was another reason that he did not give, for his perch, good as they were, and the wide-mouthed sucker, and the great, clumsy bullheads, looked mean and common, now that their elegant companions were gone. He felt almost ashamed of them until just as he reached the back yard of his own home.

A tall, grimy man, with his head under the pump, was vigorously scrubbing charcoal and iron dust from his face and hands and hair. "Jack," he shouted, "where'd you get that string o' fish? Best I've seen round here for ever so long."

Another voice came from the kitchen door, and in half a second it seemed to belong to a chorus of voices.

"Why, Jack Ogden! What a string of fish!"

"I caught 'em 'way down the Cocahutchie, Mother," said Jack. "I caught 'em all under water. Had to go right in after some of 'em."

"I should say you did," growled his father, almost jocosely, and then he and Mrs. Ogden and Aunt Melinda and the children crowded around to examine the fish, on the pump platform.

"Jack must do something better'n that," said his father, rubbing his face hard with the kitchen towel; "but he's had the best kind o' luck this time."

"He caught a team of runaway horses this morning, too," said Mary, looking proudly at the fish. "I wish I could do something worth talking about, but I'm only a girl."

Jack's clothes had not suffered much from their ducking, mainly because the checked shirt and linen trousers, of which his suit consisted, had been frequently soaked before. His straw hat was dry, for it had been lying on the grass when he went into the water, and so were his shoes and stockings, which had been under the bed in his bedroom, waiting for Sunday.

It was not until the family was gathered at the table that Jack came out with the whole tremendous story of his afternoon's sport, and of its cash results.

"Now I've learned all about fly-fishing," he said, with confidence, "I can catch fish anywhere. I sha'n't have to go to fish out of that old mill-pond again."

"Six dollars!" exclaimed his mother, from behind the tea-pot. "What awful extravagance there is in this wicked world! But what'll you do with six dollars?"

"It's high time he began to earn something," said the tall blacksmith, gloomily. "It's hard times in Crofield. There's almost nothing for him to do here."

"That's why I'm going somewhere else," said Jack, with a sudden burst of energy, and showing a very red face. "Now I've got some money to pay my way, I'm going to New York."

"No, you're not," said his father, and then there was a silence for a moment.

"What on earth could you do in New York?" said his mother, staring at him as if he had said something dreadful. She was not a small woman, but she had an air of trying to be larger, and her face quickly began to recover its ordinary smile of self-confident hope, so much like that of Jack. She added, before anybody else could speak: "There are thousands and thousands of folks there already. Well -- I suppose you could get along there, if they can."

"It's too full," said her husband. "It's fuller'n Crofield. He couldn't do anything in a city. Besides, it isn't any use; he couldn't get there, or anywhere near there, on six dollars."

"If he only could go somewhere, and do something, and be somebody," said Mary, staring hard at her plate.

She had echoed Jack's thought, perfectly. "That's you, Molly," he said, "and I'm going to do it, too."

"You're going to work a-haying, all next week, I guess," said his father, "if there's anybody wants ye. All the money you earn you can give to your mother. You ain't going a-fishing again, right away. Nobody ever caught the same fish twice."

Slowly, glumly, but promptly, Jack handed over his two greenbacks to his mother, but he only remarked:

"If I work for anybody 'round here, they'll want me to take my pay in hay. They won't pay cash."

"Hay's just as good," said his father; and then he changed the subject and told his wife how the miller had again urged him to trade for the strip of land along the creek, above and below the bridge. "It comes right up to the line of my lot," he said, "and to Hawkins's fence. The whole of it isn't worth as much as mine is, but I don't see what he wants to trade for."

She agreed with him, and so did Aunt Melinda; but Jack and Mary finished their suppers and went out to the front door. She stood still for a moment, with her hands clasped behind her, looking across the street, as if she were reading the sign on the shop. The discontented, despondent expression on her face made her more and more like a very young and pretty copy of her father.

"I don't care, Molly," said Jack. "If they take away every cent I get, I'm going to the city, some time."

"I'd go, too, if I were a boy," she said. "I've got to stay at home and wash dishes and sweep. You can go right out and make your fortune. I've read of lots of boys that went away from home and worked their way up. Some of 'em got to be Presidents."

"Some girls amount to something, too," said Jack. "You've been through the Academy. I had to stop, when I was twelve, and go to work in a store. Been in every store in Crofield. They didn't pay me a cent in cash, but I learned the grocery business, and the dry-goods business, and all about crockery. That was something. I could keep a store. Some of the stores in New York 'd hold all the stores in Crofield."

"Some of 'em are owned and run by women, too," said Mary; "but there's no use of my thinking of any such thing."

Before he could tell her what he thought about it, her mother called her in, and then he, too, stood still and seemed to study the sign over the door of the blacksmith-shop.

"I'll do it!" he exclaimed at last, shaking his fist at the sign. "It isn't the end of July yet, and I'm going to get to the city before Christmas; you see 'f I don't."

After Mary Ogden left him and went in, Jack walked down to the bridge. It seemed as if the Cocahutchie had a special attraction for him, now that he knew what might be in it.

There were three boys leaning over the rail on the lower side of the bridge, and four on the upper side, and all were fishing. Jack did not know, and they did not tell him, that all their hooks were baited with "flies" of one kind or another instead of worms. Two had grasshoppers, and one had a big bumblebee, and they were after such trout as Jack Ogden had caught and been paid so much money for. One told another that Jack had five dollars apiece for those fish, and that even the bullheads were so heavy it tired him to carry them home.

Jack did not go upon the bridge. He strolled down along the water's edge.

Along the Water's Edge.

"It's all sand and gravel," he said; "but I'd hate to leave it."

It was curious, but not until that very moment had he been at all aware of any real affection for Crofield. He was only dimly aware of it then, and he forgot it all to answer a hail from two men under the clump of giant trees which had so nearly wrecked the miller's wagon.

The men had been looking up at the trees, and Jack heard part of what they said about them, as he came near. They had called him to talk about his trout-fishing, but they had aroused his curiosity upon another subject.

"Mr. Bannerman," he said, as soon as he had an opportunity between "fish" questions, "did you say you'd give a hundred dollars for those trees, just as they stand? What are they good for?"

"Jack," exclaimed the sharp-looking man he spoke to, "don't you tell anybody I said that. You won't, will you? Come, now, didn't I treat you well while you were in my shop?"

"Yes, you did," said Jack, "but you kept me there only four months. What are those trees good for? You don't use anything but pine."

"Why, Jack," said Bannerman, "it isn't for carpenter work. Three of 'em are curly maples, and that one there's the straightest-grained, biggest, cleanest old cherry! They're for j'iner-work, Jack. But you said you wouldn't tell?"

"I won't tell," said Jack. "Old Hammond owns 'em. I stayed in your shop just long enough to learn the carpenter's trade. I didn't learn j'iner-work. Don't you want me again?"

"Not just now, Jack; but Sam and I've got a bargain coming with Hammond, and he owes us some, now, and you mustn't put in and spile the trade for us. I'll do ye a good turn, some day. Don't you tell."

Jack promised again and the carpenters walked away, leaving him looking up at the trees and thinking how it would seem to see them topple over and come crashing down into the Cocahutchie, to be made up into chairs and tables. Just as long as he could remember anything he had seen the old trees standing guard there, summer and winter, leafy or bare, and they were like old friends to him.

"I'll go home," he said, at last. "There hasn't been a house built in Crofield for years and years. It isn't any kind of place for carpentering, or for anything else that I know how to do."

Then he took a long, silent, thoughtful look up stream, and another down stream, and instead of the gravel and bushes and grass, in one direction, and the rickety bridge and the slippery dam and the dingy old red mill, in the other direction, he seemed to see a vision of great buildings and streets and crowds of busy men, while the swishing ripple of the Cocahutchie changed into the rush and roar of the great city he was setting his heart upon. He gave it up for that evening, and went home and went to bed, but even then it seemed to him as if he were about to let go of something and take hold of something else.

"I've done that often enough," he said to himself. "I'll have to leave the blacksmith's trade now, but I'm kind o' glad I learned it. I'm glad I didn't have my shoes on when I went into the water, though. Soaking isn't good for that kind of shoes. Don't I know? I've worked in every shoe-shop in Crofield, some. Didn't get any pay, except in shoes; but then I learned the trade, and that's something. I never had an opportunity to stay long in any one place, but I could stay in the city."

Then another kind of dreaming set in, and the next thing he knew it was Sunday morning, with a promise of a sunny, sultry, sleepy kind of day.

It was not easy for the Ogden family to shut out all talk about fishing, while they were eating Jack's fish for breakfast, but they avoided the subject until Jack went to dress. Jack was quite another boy by the time he was ready for church. He was skillful with the shoe-brush, and from his shoes upward he was a surprise.

"You do look well," said Mary, as he and she were on their way to church. "But how you did look when you came home last night!"

There was little opportunity for conversation, for the walk before the Ogden family from their gate to the church-door was not long.

The little processions toward the village green did not divide fairly after reaching there that morning. The larger part of each aimed itself at the middle of the green, although the building there was no larger than either of the two that stood at its right and left.

"Everybody's coming to hear Elder Holloway," said Jack. "They say it takes a fellow a good while to learn how to preach."

Mrs. Ogden and Aunt Melinda led their part of the procession, and Jack and his father followed them in. There were ten Ogdens, and the family pew held six. Just as they were going in, some one asked Mary to go into the choir. Little Sally nestled in her mother's lap; Bob and Jim were small and thin and only counted for one; Bessie and Sue went in, and so did their father, and then Jack remarked:

"I'm crowded out, father. I'll find a place, somewhere."

"There isn't any," said the blacksmith. "Every place is full."

He shook his head until the points of his Sunday collar scratched him, but off went Jack, and that was the last that was seen of him until they were all at home again.

Mary Ogden had her reasons for not expecting to sing in the choir that day, but she went when sent for. The gallery was what Jack called a "coop," and would hold just eighteen persons, squeezed in. Usually it was only half full, but on a great day, what was called the "old choir" was sure to turn out. There were no girls nor boys in the "old choir." There had been three seats yet to fill when Mary was sent for, but Miss Glidden and Miss Roberts and her elder sister from Mertonville came in just then. So, when Mary reached the gallery, Miss Glidden leaned over, smiled, and said very benevolently:

"You will not be needed to-day, Mary Ogden. The choir is filled."

The organ began to play at that moment, somewhat as if it had lost its temper. Mr. Simmons, the choir-leader (whenever he could get there), flushed and seemed about to say something. He was the one who had sent for Mary, and it was said that he had been heard to say that it would be good to have "some music, outside of the organ." Before he could speak, however, Mary was downstairs again. Seats were offered her in several of the back pews, and she took one under the gallery. She might as well have had a sounding-board behind her, arranged so as to send her voice right at the pulpit. Perhaps her temper was a little aroused, and she did not know how very full her voice was when she began the first hymn. All were singing, and they could hear the organ and the choir, but through, over, and above them all sounded the clear, ringing notes of Mary Ogden's soprano. Elder Holloway, sitting in the pulpit, put up a hand to one ear, as half-deaf men do, and sat up straight, looking as if he was hearing some good news. He said afterward that it helped him preach; but then Mary did not know it. When all the services were over, she slipped out into the vestibule to wait for the rest. She stood there when Miss Glidden came downstairs. The portly lady was trying her best to smile and look sweet.

"Splendid sermon, Mary Ogden," said she. "I hope you'll profit by it. I sha'n't ask you to take my class this afternoon. Elder Holloway's going to inspect the school. I'll be glad to have you present, though, as one of my best scholars."

Mary went home as quickly as she could, and the first remark she made was to Aunt Melinda.

"Her class!" she said. "Why she hasn't been there in six weeks. She had only four in it when she left, and there's a dozen now."

The Ogden procession homeward had been longer than when it went to church. Jack understood the matter the moment he came into the dining-room, for both extra leaves had been put into the extension-table.

"There's company," he said aloud. "You couldn't stretch that table any farther, unless you stretched the room."

"Jack," said his mother, "you must come afterward. You can help Mary wait on the table."

Jack was as hungry as a young pickerel, but there was no help for it, and he tried to reply cheerfully:

"I'm getting used to being crowded out. I can stand it."

"Where'd you sit in church?" asked his mother.

"Out on the stoop," said Jack, "but I didn't go till after I'd sat in five pews inside."

"Sorry you missed the sermon," said his mother. "It was about Jerusalem."

"I heard him," said Jack; "you could hear him halfway across the green. It kept me thinking about the city, all the while. I'm going, somehow."

Just then the talk was interrupted by the others, who came in from the parlor.

"I declare, Ogden," said the editor, "we shall quite fill your table. I'm glad I came, though. I'll print a full report of it all in the Mertonville Eagle."

"That's Murdoch, the editor," said Jack to himself. "That's his paper. Ours was a Standard, -- but it's bu'sted."

"There's no room for a newspaper in Crofield," said the blacksmith. "They tried one, and it lasted six months, and my son worked on it all the time it ran."

Mr. Murdoch turned and looked inquisitively at Jack through a huge pair of tortoise-shell-rimmed glasses.

"That's so," said Jack; "I learned to set type and helped edit the paper. Molly and I did all the clipping and most of the writing, one week."

"Did you?" said the editor emphatically. "Then you did well. I remember there was one strong number."

"Molly," said Jack, as soon as they were out in the kitchen, "there's five besides our family. They won't leave a thing for us."

"There's hardly enough for them, even," said Mary. "What'll we do?"

"We can cook!" said Jack, with energy. "We'll cook while they're eating. You know how, and so do I."

"You can wait on table as well as I can," said Mary.

There was something cronyish and also self-helpful, in the way Jack and Molly boiled eggs and toasted bread and fried bacon and made coffee, and took swift turns at eating and at waiting on the table.

The editor of the Eagle heard the whole of the trout item, and about the runaway, and told Jack to send him the next big trout he caught.

There was another item of news that was soon to be ready for Mr. Murdoch. Jack was conscious of a restless, excited state of mind, and Mary said things that made him worse.

"You want to get somewhere else as badly as I do," he remarked, just as they came back from taking in the pies to the dinner-table.

"I feel, sometimes, as if I could fly!" exclaimed Mary. Jack walked out through the hall to the front door, and stood there thinking, with a hard-boiled egg in one hand and a piece of toast in the other.

The street he looked into was silent and deserted, from the bridge to the hotel corner. He looked down to the creek, for a moment, and then he looked the other way.

"I believe Molly could do 'most anything I could do," he said to himself; "unless it was catching a runaway team. She couldn't ha' caught that wagon. Hullo, what's that? Jingo! The hotel cook must have made a regular bonfire to fry my trout!"

He wheeled as he spoke, and dashed back through the house, shouting:

"Father, the Washington Hotel's on fire! -- over the kitchen!"

"Ladder, Jack. Rope. Bucket," cried the tall blacksmith, coolly rising from the table, and following. As for the rest, beginning with the editor of the Eagle, it was almost as if they had been told that they were themselves on fire. Even Aunt Melinda exclaimed: "He ought to have told us more about it! Where is it? How'd it ever catch? Oh, dear me! It's the oldest part of the hotel. It's as dry as a bone, and it'll burn like tinder!"

Everybody else was saying something as all jumped and ran, but Jack and his father were silent. Ladder, rope, water-pails, were caught up, as if they were going to work in the shop, but the moment they were in the street again it seemed as if John Ogden's lungs must be as deep as the bellows of his forge.

"Fire! Fire! Fire!" His full, resonant voice sent out the sudden warning.

Fighting the Fire.

"Fire! Fire! Fire!" shouted Jack, and every child of the Ogden family, except Mary, echoed with such voice as belonged to each.

Through the wide gate of the hotel barn-yard dashed the blacksmith and his son, with their ladder, at the moment when Mrs. Livermore came out at the kitchen door, wiping a plate. All the other inmates of the hotel were gathered around the long table in the dining-hall, and they were too busy with pie and different kinds of pudding, to notice anything outdoors.

"Where is the fire, Mr. Ogden?" she said, in a fatigued tone.

"The fire's on your roof, close to the chimney," said the blacksmith. "May be we can put it out, if we're quick about it. Call everybody to hand up water."

Up went a pair of hands, and out came a great scream. Another shrill scream and another, followed in quick succession, and the plate she had held, fell and was shivered into fragments on the stone door-step.

"Foi-re! Foi-re! Foi-re-re-re!" yelled the hotel cook. "The house is a-bur-rnin'! Wa-ter! Waw-aw-ter!"

The doors to passage-ways of the hotel were open, and in a second more her cry was taken up by voices that sent the substance of it ringing through the dining-hall.

Plates fell from the hands of waiters, coffee-cups were upset, chairs were overturned, all manner of voices caught up the alarm.

It would have been a very serious matter but for the promptness of Jack Ogden and his very cool father. The ladder was planted and climbed, there was a quick dash along the low but high-ridged roof of the kitchen addition of the hotel, -- the rope was put around Jack's waist, and then he was able safely to use both hands in pouring water from the pails around the foot of the chimney. Other feet came fast to the foot of the ladder. More went tramping into the rooms under the roof. The pumps in the kitchen and in the barn-yard were worked with frantic energy; pail after pail was carried upstairs and up the ladder; water was thrown in all directions; nothing was left undone that could be done, and a great many things were done that seemed hardly possible.

"Hot work, Jack," said his father. "It's a-gaining on us. Glad they'd all about got through dinner, -- though Livermore tells me he's insured."

"I can stand it," said Jack. "They have steam fire-engines in the city, though. Oh, but wouldn't I like to see one at work, once. I'd like to be a fireman!"

"That's about what you are, just now," said his father, and then he turned toward the ladder and shouted:

"Hurry up that water! Quick, now! Bring an axe! I want to smash the roof in. Bear it, Jack. We've got to beat this fire."

The main building of the Washington Hotel was long, rather than high, with an open veranda along Main Street. The third story was mainly steep roof and dormer-windows, and the kitchen addition had only a story and a half. It was an easy building to get into or out of. Very quickly, after the cry of "Fire!" was heard, the only people in it, upstairs, were such of the guests as had the pluck to go and pack their trunks. The lower floor was very well crowded, and it was almost a relief to the men actually at work as firemen that so many other men kept well back because they were in their "Sunday-go-to-meeting" clothes.

Everybody was inclined to praise Jack Ogden and his father, who were making so brave a fight on the roof within only a few feet of the smoke and blaze. It was heroic to look a burning house straight in the face and conquer it. During fully half an hour there seemed to be doubt about the victory, but the pails of water came up rapidly, a line of men and boys along the roof conveyed them to the hands of Jack, and the fire had a damp time of it, with no wind to help. The blacksmith had chopped a hole in the roof, and Tom and Sam Bannerman, the carpenters, were already calculating what they would charge old Livermore to put the addition in order again.

"There, Jack," said his father, at last, "we can quit, now. The fire's under. Somebody else can take a turn. It's the hottest kind of work. Come along. We've done our share, and a little more, too."

Jack had just swallowed a puff of smoke, but as soon as he could stop coughing, he said:

"I've had enough. I'm coming."

Other people seemed to agree with them; but there would have been less said about it if little Joe Hawkins had not called out:

"Three cheers for the Ogdens!"

The cheers were given as the two volunteer firemen came down the ladder, but there were no speeches made in reply. Jack hurried back home at once, but his father had to stop and talk with the Bannermans and old Hammond, the miller.

"Jack," said his mother, looking at him, proudly, from head to foot, "you're always doing something or other. We were looking at you, all the while."

"He hasn't hurt his Sunday clothes a bit," said Aunt Melinda, but there was quite a crowd around the gate, and she did not hug him.

He was a little damp, his face was smoky, his shirt-collar was wilted, and his shoes would require a little work, but otherwise he was none the worse.

Jack went into the house, saying that he must brush his clothes; but, really it was because he wished to get away. He did not care to talk to anybody.

"I never felt so, in all my life, as I did when sitting on that roof, fighting that fire," he said aloud, as he went upstairs; and he did not know, even then, how excited he had been, silent and cool as he had seemed. In that short time, he had dreamed of more cities than he was ever likely to see, and of doing more great things than he could ever possibly do, and when he came down the ladder he felt older than when he went up. He had no idea that much the same thoughts had come to Mary, nor did he know how fully she believed that he could do anything, and that she was as capable as he.

"Father's splendid, too," she said, "but then he never had any chance, here, and Mother didn't either. Jack ought to have a chance."



Chapter IV.

Captain Mary.

Mr. Murdoch had stood on the main street corner; taking notes for the Eagle, but now he came back to say the fire was out and it was nearly time for Sunday-school.

It seemed strange to have Sunday-school just after a fire, but the Ogden family and its visitors at once made ready.

It was a quarterly meeting, with general exercises and singing, and a review of the quarter's lessons. The church was full by the hour for opening, and the school had a very prosperous look. Elder Holloway and Mr. Murdoch and two other important men sat in the pulpit, and Joab Spokes, the superintendent, stood in front of them to conduct the exercises. The elder seemed to be glancing benevolently around the room, through his spectacles, but there were some things there which could be seen without glasses, and he must have seen those also.

Miss Glidden looked particularly well and very stately, as she sat in the pew in front of her class (if it were hers), with Mary Ogden. Her first words, on coming in to take command, had been:

"Mary, dear, don't go. I really wish you to stay. You may be of assistance."

Mary flushed a little, but she said nothing in reply. She remained, and she certainly did assist, for the girls looked at her almost all the while, and Miss Glidden had no trouble whatever, and nothing to do but to look pleased and beaming and dignified. The elder, it was noticed, seemed to feel special interest in the part taken in the exercises by the class with two teachers, one for show and one for work. He even seemed to see something comical in the situation, and there was positive admiration in a remark he made to Mr. Murdoch:

"She's a true teacher. There's really only one teacher to that class. She must have been born with a knack for it!"

Elder Holloway, with all his years and experience, had not understood the case of Miss Glidden's class more perfectly than had one young observer at the other end of the church. Jack Ogden could not see so well as those great men in the pulpit, but then he could hear much and surmise the rest.

"All those girls will stand by Molly!" he said to himself. "I hope it won't be long before school's dismissed," he added.

He had reasons for this hope. He was a little late through lingering to take a curious look at what was left of the fire. The street had a littered look. The barns and stables were wide open, and deserted, for the horses had been led to places of safety. There seemed to be an impression that the hotel was half destroyed; but the damage had not been very great.

A faint, thin film of blue was eddying along the ridgepole of the kitchen addition. Jack noticed it, but did not know what it meant. A more practiced observer would have known that, hidden from sight, buried in the punk of the dry-rotted timber, was a vicious spark of fire, stealthily eating its way through the punk of the resinous pine.

Jack paid little attention to the tiny smoke-wreath, but he was compelled to pay some attention to the weather. It had been hot from sunrise until noon, and the air had grown heavier since.

"I know what that haze means," said Jack to himself, as he looked toward the Cocahutchie. "There's a thunderstorm coming by and by, and nobody knows just when. I'll be on the lookout for it."

For this reason he was glad that he was compelled to find a seat not far from the door of the church. Twice he went out to look at the sky, and the second time he saw banks of lead-colored clouds forming on the northwestern horizon. Returning he said to several of the boys near the vestibule:

"You've just time to get home, if you don't want a ducking."

Each boy passed along the warning; and when the school stood up to sing the last hymn, even the girls and the older people knew of the coming storm. There was a brief silence before the first note of the organ, and through that silence nearly everybody could catch the shrill squeak in which little Joe Hawkins tried to speak very low and secretly.

"Deakin Cobb, we want to git aout! We've just time to git home if we don't want a duckin'."

The hymn started raggedly and in a wrong pitch; and just then the great room grew suddenly darker, and there was a low rumble of thunder.

"Mary Ogden!" exclaimed Miss Glidden, "what are you doing? They can't go yet!"

Mary was singing as loudly and correctly as usual, but she was out in the aisle, and the girls of that class were promptly obeying the motion of hand and head with which she summoned them to walk out of the church.

Elder Holloway may have been only keeping time when he nodded his head, but he was looking at Miss Glidden's class.

So was Miss Glidden, in a bewildered way, as if she, like little Bo-peep, were losing her sheep. Mary was following a strong and sudden impulse. Nevertheless, by the time that class was out of its pews the next caught the idea, and believed it a prudent thing to do. They followed in good order, singing as they went.

"The girls out first, -- then the boys," said Elder Holloway, between two stanzas. "One class at a time. No hurry."

Darker grew the air. Jack, out in front of the church, was watching the blackest cloud he had ever seen, as it came sweeping across the sky.

The people walked out calmly enough, but all stopped singing at the door and ran their best.

"Run, Molly! Run for home!" shouted Jack, seeing Mary coming. "It's going to be an awful storm."

"Run for Home."

Inside the church there was much hesitation, for a moment; but Miss Glidden followed her class without delay, and all the rest followed as fast as they could, and were out in half the usual time. Joe Hawkins heard Jack's words to Molly.

"Run, boys," he echoed. "Cut for home! There's a fearful storm coming!"

He was right. Great drops were already falling now and then, and there was promise of a torrent to follow.

"I don't want to spoil these clothes," said Jack, uneasily. "I need these to wear in the city. The storm isn't here yet, though. I'll wait a minute." He was holding his hat on and looking up at the steeple when he said that. It was a very old, wooden steeple, tall, slender, and somewhat rheumatic, and he knew there must be more wind up so high than there was nearer the ground. "It's swinging!" he said suddenly. "I can see it bend! Glad they're all getting out. There come Elder Holloway and Mr. Murdoch. See the elder run! I hope he won't try to get to Hawkins's. He'd better run for our house."

That was precisely the counsel given the good man by the editor, and the elder said:

"I'd like to go there. I'd like to see that clever girl again. Come, Murdoch; no time to lose!"

The blast was now coming lower, and the gloom was deepening.

Flash -- rattle -- boom -- crash! came a glitter of lightning and a great peal of thunder.

"Here it is!" cried Jack. "If it isn't a dry blast!"

It was something like the first hot breath of a hurricane. To and fro swung the tottering old steeple for a moment, and then there was another crash -- a loud, grinding, splintering, roaring crash -- as the spire reeled heavily down, lengthwise, through the shattered roof of the meeting-house! Except for Mary Ogden's cleverness, the ruins might have fallen upon the crowded Sunday-school. Jack turned and ran for home. He was a good runner, but he only just escaped the deluge following that thunderbolt.

Jack turned upon reaching the house, and as he looked back he uttered a loud exclamation, and out from the house rushed all the people who were gathered there.

"Jingo!" Jack shouted. "The old hotel's gone, sure, this time!"

The burrowing spark had smoldered slowly along, until it felt the first fanning of the rising gale. In another minute it flared as if under a blowpipe, and soon a fierce sheet of flame came bursting through the roof.

Down poured the rain; but the hottest of that blaze was roofed over, and the fire had its own way with the empty addition.

"We couldn't help if we should try," exclaimed Mr. Ogden.

"I'll put on my old clothes, any way," said Jack. "Nobody knows what's coming."

"I will, too," said his father.

Jack paused a moment, and said, from the foot of the stairs:

"The steeple's down, -- right through the meeting-house. It has smashed the whole church!"

The sight of the fire had made him withhold that news for a minute; but now, for another minute, the fire was almost forgotten.

Elder Holloway began to say something in praise of Mary Ogden about her leading out the class, but she darted away.

"Let me get by, Jack," she said. "Let me pass, please. They all would have been killed if they had waited! But I was thinking only of my class and the rain."

She ran up-stairs and Jack followed. Then the elder made a number of improving remarks about discipline and presence of mind, and the natural fitness of some people for doing the right thing in an emergency. He might have said more, but all were drawn to the windows to watch the strife between the fire and the rain.

The fierce wind drove the smoke through the building, compelling the landlord and his wife to escape as best they could, and, for the time being, the victory seemed to be with the fire.

"Seems to me," said the blacksmith, somberly, "as if Crofield was going to pieces. This is the worst storm we ever had. The meeting-house is gone, and the hotel's going!"

Mary, at her window, was looking out in silence, but her face was bright rather than gloomy. Even if she was "only a girl," she had found an opportunity for once, and she had not proved unequal to it.



Chapter V.

Jack Ogden's Ride.

Jack needed only a few minutes to put on the suit he had worn when fishing.

"There, now," he said; "if there's going to be a big flood in the creek I'm going down to see it, rain or no rain. There's no telling how high it'll rise if this pour keeps on long enough. It rattles on the roof like buckshot!"

"That's the end of the old tavern," said Jack to Mary, as he stood in the front room looking out.

He was barefooted, and had come so silently that she was startled.

"Jack!" she exclaimed, turning around, "they might have all been killed when the steeple came down. I heard what Joe Hawkins said, and I led out the class."

"Good for Joe!" said Jack. "We need a new meeting-house, any way. I heard the elder say so. Less steeple, next time, and more church!"

"I'd like to see a real big church," said Mary, -- "a city church."

"You'd like to go to the city as much as I would," said Jack.

"Yes, I would," she replied emphatically. "Just you get there and I'll come afterward, if I can. I've been studying twice as hard since I left the academy, but I don't know why."

"I know it," said Jack; "but I've had no time for books."

"Jack! Molly!" the voice of Aunt Melinda came up the stairway. "Are you ever coming down-stairs?"

"What will the elder say to my coming down barefoot?" said Jack; "but I don't want shoes if I'm going out into the mud."

"He won't care at such a time as this," said Mary. "Let's go."

It was not yet supper-time, but it was almost dark enough to light the lamps. Jack felt better satisfied about his appearance when he found how dark and shadowy the parlor was; and he felt still better when he saw his father dressed as if he were going over to work at the forge, all but the leather apron.

The elder did not seem disturbed. He and Mr. Murdoch were talking about all sorts of great disasters, and Mary did not know just when she was drawn into the talk, or how she came to acknowledge having read about so many different things all over the world.

"Jack," whispered his mother, at last, "you'll have to go to the barn and gather eggs, or we sha'n't have enough for supper."

"I'll bring the eggs if I don't get drowned before I get back," said Jack; and he found a basket and an umbrella and set out.

He took advantage of a little lull in the rain, and ran to the barn-yard gate.

"Hullo!" he exclaimed. "Now I'll have to wade. Why it's nearly a foot deep! There'll be the biggest kind of a freshet in the Cocahutchie. Isn't this jolly?"

The rain pattered on the roof as if it had been the head of a drum. If the house was gloomy, the old barn was darker and gloomier. Jack turned over a half-bushel measure and sat down on it.

"I want to think," he said. "I want to get out of this. Seems to me I never felt it so before. I'd as lief live in this barn as stay in Crofield."

He suddenly sprang up and shook off his blues, exclaiming: "I'll go and see the freshet, anyhow!"

He carried the eggs into the house.

All the time he had been gone, Elder Holloway had been asking Mary very particularly about the Crofield Academy.

"I don't wonder she says what she does about the trustees," remarked Aunt Melinda. "She took the primary room twice, for 'most a month each time, when the teacher was sick, and all the thanks she had was that they didn't like it when they found it out."

The gutter in front of the house had now become a small torrent.

"All the other gutters are just like that," said Jack. "So are the brooks all over the country, and it all runs into the Cocahutchie!"

"Father," said Jack, after supper, "I'm going down to the creek."

"I wish you would," said his father. "Come back and tell us how it's looking."

"Could a freshet here do any damage?" asked Mr. Murdoch.

"There's a big dam up at Four Corners," said the blacksmith. "If anything should happen there, we'd have trouble here, and you'd have it in Mertonville, too."

Jack heard that as he was going out of the door. He carried an umbrella; but the first thing he noticed was that the force of the rain seemed to have slackened as soon as he was out of doors. It was now more like mist or a warm sleet, as if Crofield were drifting through a cloud.

"The Washington House needs all the rain it can get," said Jack, as he went along; "but half the roof is caved in. I'm glad Livermore's insured."

When Jack reached the creek he felt his heart fairly jump with excitement. The Cocahutchie was no longer a thin ribbon rippling along in a wide stretch of sand and gravel. It was a turbid, swollen, roaring flood, already filling all the space under its bridge; and the clump of old trees was in the water instead of on dry land.

"Hurrah!" shouted Jack. "As high as that already, and the worst is to come!"

He could not see the dam at first, but the gusts of wind were making openings in the mist, and he soon caught glimpses of a great sheet of foaming brown water.

"I'll go and take a look at the dam," he said; and he ran to the mill.

"It's just level with the dam," he said, after one swift glance. "I never thought of that. I must go and tell old Hammond what's coming."

The miller's house was not far away, and he and his family were at supper when there came a bang at the door. Then it opened and Mrs. Hammond exclaimed:

"Why, John Ogden!"

"I'm out o' breath," said Jack excitedly. "You tell him that the water's 'most up to the lower floor of the mill. If he's got anything there that'd be hurt by getting wet -- "

"Goodness, yes!" shouted the miller, getting up from the table, "enough to ruin me. There are sacks of flour, meal, grain, -- all sorts of stuff. It must all go up to the second floor. I'll call all the hands."

"But," said his wife, "it's Sunday!"

"Can't help it!" he exclaimed; "the Cocahutchie's coming right up into the mill. Jack, tell every man you see that I want him!"

Off went Jack homeward, but he spoke to half a dozen men on the way. He did not run, but he went quickly enough; and when he reached the house there was something waiting for him.

It was a horse with a blanket strapped on instead of a saddle; and by it stood his father, and near him stood his mother and Aunt Melinda and Mary, bareheaded, for it was not raining, now.

"Mount, Jack," said the blacksmith quietly. "I've seen the creek. It's only four and a half miles to the Four Corners. Ride fast. See how that dam looks and come back and tell me. Mr. Murdoch will have his buggy ready to start when you get back. See how many logs there are in the saw-mill boom."

"Oh, Jack!" exclaimed Mary, in a low suppressed voice. "I wish that I were you! It's a great day for you!"

He had sprung to the saddle while his father was speaking, and he felt it was out of his power to utter a word in reply. He did not need to speak to the horse, for the moment Mr. Ogden released the bit there was a quick bound forward.

"This horse is ready to go," said Jack to himself, as he felt that motion. "I've seen her before. I wonder what's made her so excited?"

There was no need for wonder. The trim, light-limbed sorrel mare he was riding had been kept in the hotel stables until that day. She had been taken out to a neighboring stable, at the morning alarm of fire, and when the blacksmith went to borrow her he found her laboring under a strong impression that things in Crofield were going wrong. She was therefore inclined to go fast, and all that Jack had to do was to hold her in. The blacksmith's son was at home in the saddle. It was not yet dark, and he knew the road to the Four Corners. It was a muddy road, and there was a little stream of water along each side of it. Spattered and splashed from head to foot were rider and horse, but the miles vanished rapidly and the Four Corners was reached.

A smaller village than Crofield, further up among the hills, it had a higher dam, a three times larger pond, a bigger grist-mill, and a large saw-mill. That was because there were forests of timbers among the yet higher hills beyond, and Mr. Ogden had been thinking seriously about the logs from those forests.

"I know what father means," said Jack aloud, as he galloped into the village.

There were hardly any people stirring about its one long street; but there was a reason for that and Jack found out what it was when he pulled up near the mill.

"Everybody has come to watch the dam," he exclaimed. "No use asking about the logs, though; there they are."

The crowd was evidently excited, and the air was filled with shouts and answers.

"The boom got unhitched and swung round 'cross the dam," said one eager speaker; "and there's all the logs, now, -- hundreds on 'em, -- just a-pilin' up and a-heapin' up on the dam; and when that breaks, the dam'll go, mill and all, bridge and all, and the valley below'll be flooded!"

The moon was up, and the clouds which had hidden it were breaking away as Jack looked at the threatening spectacle before him.

The sorrel mare was tugging hard at the rein and pawing the mud under her feet, while Jack listened to the talk.

"Stand it? No!" he heard a man say. "That dam wasn't built to stand any such crowdin' as that. Hark!"

A groaning, straining, cracking sound came from the barrier behind which the foaming flood was widening and deepening the pond.

"There it goes! It's breaking!"

Jack wheeled the sorrel, as a dull, thunderous report was answered by a great cry from the crowd; and then he dashed away down the homeward road.

"I must get to Crofield before the water does," he said. "Glad the creek's so crooked; it has twice as far to travel as I have."

Not quite, considering how a flood will sweep over a bend instead of following it. Still, Jack and the sorrel had the start, and nearly all the way it was a downhill road.

The Crofield people gathered fast, after the sky cleared, for a rumor went around that there was something wrong with the dam, and that a man had gone to the Four Comers to warn the people there.

All the men that could crowd into the mill had helped Mr. Hammond get his grain up into the second story, but the water was a hand-breadth deep on the lower floor by the time it was done.

There came a moment when all was silent except the roar of the water, and through that silence the thud of hoofs was heard coming down from Main Street. Then a shrill, excited voice shouted:

"All of you get off that bridge! The Four Corners dam's gone. The boom's broken, and the logs are coming!"

There was a tumult of questioning, as men gathered around the sorrel, and there was a swift clearing of people from the bridge.

"Why, it's shaking now!" said the blacksmith to Mr. Murdoch. "It'll go down with the first log that strikes it. You drive your best home to Mertonville and warn them. You may be just in time."

Away went the editor, carrying with him an extraordinary treasure of news for the next number of his journal. Jack dismounted, and her owner took the sorrel to her stable; she was very muddy but none the worse for the service she had rendered.

The crowd stood waiting for what was sure to come. Miller Hammond was anxiously watching his threatened and already damaged property. Jack came and stood beside him.

"Mr. Hammond," he said, "all the gravel that you were going to sell to father is lying under water."

"More than two acres of it," said the miller. "The water'll run off, though. I'll tell you what I'll do, Jack. I'll sell it for two hundred dollars, considering the flood."

"If father'll take it, will you count in the fifty you said you owed me?" inquired Jack.

The miller made a wry face for a moment, but then responded, smiling:

"Well! After what you've done to-night, too: saved all there was on the first floor, -- yes, I will. Tell him I'll do it."

They all turned suddenly toward the dam. A high ridge of water was sweeping down across the pond. It carried a crest of foam, logs, planks, and rubbish, shining white in the moonlight, and it rolled on toward the mill and the dam as if it had an errand.

Crash -- roar -- crash -- and a plunging sound, -- and it seemed as if the Crofield dam had vanished. But it had not. Only a section of its top work, in the middle, had been knocked away by the rushing stroke of those logs.

A frightened shout went up from the spectators, and it had hardly died away before there followed another splintering crash.

"The bridge!" shouted Jack.

The frail supports of the bridge, brittle with age and weather, already straining hard against the furious water, needed only the battering of the first heavy logs from the boom, and down they went.

"Gone!" exclaimed Mr. Ogden. "The hotel's gone, and the meeting-house, and the dam, and the bridge. There won't be anything left of Crofield, at this rate."

"I'm going to get out of it," said Jack.

"I'll never refuse you again," replied his father, with energy. "You may get out any way you can, and take your chances anywhere you please. I won't stand in your way."

The roar of the surging Cocahutchie was the only sound heard for a full minute, and then the miller spoke.

"The mill's safe," he said, with a very long breath of relief; "the breaking of that hole in the dam let the water and logs through, and the pond isn't rising. Hurrah!"

There was a very faint and scattering cheer, and Jack Ogden did not join in it. He had turned suddenly and walked away homeward, along the narrow strip of land that remained between the wide, swollen Cocahutchie and the fence.

At the end of the fence, where he came into his own street, away above where the head of the bridge had been, there was a large gathering. That around the mill had been nearly all of men and boys. Here were women and girls, and the smaller boys, whose mothers and aunts held them and kept them from going nearer the water. Jack found it of no use to say, "Oh, mother, I'm too muddy!" She didn't care how muddy he was, and Aunt Melinda cared even less, apparently. Bessie and Sue had evidently been crying; but Mary had not; and it was her hand on Jack's arm that led him away, up the street, toward their gate.

"Oh, Jack!" she exclaimed, "I'm so proud! Did you ride fast? I'm glad I can ride! I could have done it, too. It was splendid!"

"Molly," said Jack, "I don't mind telling you. The sorrel mare galloped all the way, going and coming, up hill and down; and Molly, I kept wishing and thinking every jump she gave, -- wishing I was galloping to New York, instead of to the Four Corners!

"Molly," he added quickly, "father gives it up and says I may go!"



Chapter VI.

Out Into The World.

Monday morning came, bright and sunshiny; and it hardly reached Crofield before the people began to get up and look about them.

Jack went down to the river and did not get back very soon. His mind was full of something besides the flood, and he did not linger long at the mill.

But he looked long and hard at all the pieces of land below the mill, down to Deacon Hawkins's line. He knew where that was, although the fence was gone.

"The freshet didn't wash away a foot of it," he said. "I'll tell father what Mr. Hammond said about selling it."

A pair of well-dressed men drove down from Main Street in a buggy and halted near him.

"Brady," said one of these men, "the engineer is right. We can't change the railroad line. We can say to the Crofield people that if they'll give us the right of way through the village we'll build them a new bridge. They'll do it. Right here's the spot for the station."

"Exactly," said the other man, "and the less we say about it the better. Keep mum."

"That's just what I'll do, too," said Jack to himself, as they drove away. "I don't know what they mean, but it'll come out some day."

Jack went home at once, and found the family at breakfast. After breakfast his father went to the shop, and Jack followed him to speak about the land purchase.

When Jack explained the miller's offer, Mr. Ogden went with him to see Mr. Hammond. After a short interview, Mr. Ogden and Jack secured the land in settlement of the amount already promised Jack, and of an old debt owed by the miller to the blacksmith, and also in consideration of their consenting to a previous sale of the trees for cash to the Bannermans, who had made their offer that morning. Mr. Hammond seemed very glad to make the sale upon these terms, as he was in need of ready money.

When Jack returned to his father's shop, he remembered the men he had seen at the river, and he told his father what they had said.

"Station? -- right of way?" exclaimed Mr. Ogden. "That's the new railroad through Mertonville. They'll use up that land, and we won't get a cent. Well, it didn't cost anything. I'd about given up collecting that bill."

Later that day, Jack came in to dinner with a smile on his face. It was the old smile, too; a smile of good-humored self-confidence, which flickered over his lips from side to side, and twisted them, and shut his mouth tight. Just as he was about to speak, his father took a long, neatly folded paper out of his coat pocket and laid it on the table.

"Look at that, Jack," he said; "and show it to your mother."

"Warranty deed!" exclaimed Jack, reading the print on the outside. "Father! you didn't turn it over to me, did you? Mother, it's to John Ogden, Jr.!"

"Oh, John -- " she began and stopped.

"Why, my dear," laughed the blacksmith, cheerfully, "it's his gravel, not mine. I'll hold it for him, for a while, but it is Jack's whenever I chose to record that deed."

"I'm afraid I couldn't farm it there," said Jack; and then the smile on his face flickered fast. "But I knew Father wanted that land."

"It isn't worth much, but it's a beginning," said Mary. "I'd like to own something or other, or to go somewhere."

"Well, Molly," answered Jack, smiling, "you can go to Mertonville. Livermore says there's a team here, horses and open carriage. It came over on Friday. The driver has cleared out, and somebody must take them home, and he wants me to drive over. Can't I take Molly, Mother?"

"You'd have to walk back," said his father, "but that's nothing much. It's less than nine miles -- "

"Father," said Jack, "you said, last night, I needn't come back to Crofield, right away. And Mertonville's nine miles nearer the city -- "

"And a good many times nine miles yet to go," exclaimed the blacksmith; but then he added, smiling: "Go ahead, Jack. I do believe that if any boy can get there, you can."

"I'll do it somehow," said Jack, with a determined nod.

"Of course you will," said Mary.

Jack felt as if circumstances were changing pretty fast, so far as he was concerned; and so did Mary, for she had about given up all hope of seeing her friends in Mertonville.

"We'll get you ready, right away," said Aunt Melinda. "You can give Jack your traveling bag, -- he won't mind the key's being lost, -- and I'll let you take my trunk, and we'll fit you out so you can enjoy it."

"Jack," said his father, "tell Livermore you can go, and then I want to see you at the shop."

Jack was so glad he could hardly speak; for he felt it was the first step. But a part of his feeling was that he had never before loved Crofield and all the people in it, especially his own family, so much as at that minute.

He went over to the ruined hotel, where he found the landlord at work saving all sorts of things and seeming to feel reasonably cheerful over his misfortunes.

"Jack," he said, as soon as he was told that Jack was ready to go, "you and Molly will have company. Miss Glidden sent to know how she could best get over to Mertonville, and I said she could go with you. There's a visitor, too, who must go back with her.

"I'll take 'em," said Jack.

Upon going to the shop he found his father shoeing a horse. The blacksmith beckoned his son to the further end of the shop. He heard about Miss Glidden, and listened in silence to several hopeful things Jack had to say about what he meant to do sooner or later.

He listened in silence.

"Well," he said, at last, "I was right not to let you go before, and I've doubts about it now, but something must be done. I'm making less and less, and not much of it's cash, and it costs more to live, and they're all growing up. I don't want you to make me any promises. They are broken too easily. You needn't form good resolutions. They won't hold water. There's one thing I want you to do, though. Your mother and I have brought you up as straight as a string, and you know what's right and what's wrong."

"That's true," said Jack.

"Well, then, don't you promise nor form any resolutions, but if you're tempted to do wrong, or to be a fool in any kind of way, just don't do it that's all."

"I won't, Father," said Jack earnestly.

"There," said his father, "I feel better satisfied than I should feel if you'd promised a hundred things. It's a great deal better not to do anything that you know to be wrong or foolish."

"I think so," said Jack, "and I won't."

"Go home now and get ready," said his father; "and I'll see you off."

"This is very sudden, Jack,", said his mother, with much feeling, when he made his appearance.

"Why, Mother," said Jack, "Molly'll be back soon, and the city isn't so far away after all."

Jack felt as if he had only about enough head left to change his clothes and drive the team.

"It's just as Mother says," he thought; "I've been wishing and hoping for it, but it's come very suddenly."

His black traveling-bag was quickly ready. He had closed it and was walking to the door when his mother came in.

"Jack," she said, "you'll send me a postal card every day or two?"

"Of course I will," said he bravely.

"And I know you'll be back in a few weeks, at most," she went on; "but I feel as sad as if you were really going away from home. Why, you're almost a child! You can't really be going away!"

That was where the talk stopped for a while, except some last words that Jack could never forget. Then she dried her eyes, and he dried his, and they went down-stairs together. It was hard to say good-by to all the family, and he was glad his father was not there. He got away from them as soon as he could, and went over to the stables after his team. It was a bay team, with a fine harness, and the open carriage was almost new.

"Stylish!" said Jack. "I'll take Molly on the front seat with me, -- no, the trunk, -- and Miss Glidden's trunk, -- well, I'll get 'em all in somehow!"

When he drove up in front of the house his father was there to put the baggage in and to help Mary into the carriage and to shake hands with Jack.

The blacksmith's grimy face looked less gloomy for a moment.

"Jack," he said, "good-by. May be you'll really get to the city after all."

"I think I shall," said Jack, with an effort to speak calmly.

"Well," said the blacksmith, slowly, "I hope you will, somehow; but don't you forget that there's another city."

Jack knew what he meant. They shook hands, and in another moment the bays were trotting briskly on their way to Miss Glidden's. Her house was one of the finest in Crofield, with lawn and shrubbery. Mary Ogden had never been inside of it, but she had heard that it was beautifully furnished. There was Miss Glidden and her friend on the piazza, and out at the sidewalk, by the gate, was a pile of baggage, at the sight of which Jack exclaimed:

"Trunks! They're young houses! How'll I get 'em all in? I can strap and rope one on the back of the carriage, but then -- !"

Miss Glidden frowned at first, when the carriage pulled up, but she came out to the gate, smiling, and so did the other lady.

"Why, Mary Ogden, my dear," she said, "Mrs. Potter and I did not know you were going with us. It's quite a surprise."

"So it is to Jack and me," replied Mary quietly. "We were very glad to have you come, though, if we can find room for your trunks."

"I can manage 'em," said Jack. "Miss Glidden, you and Mrs. Potter get in, and Pat and I'll pack the trunks on somehow."

Pat was the man who had brought out the luggage, and he was waiting to help. He was needed. It was a very full carriage when he and Jack finished their work. There was room made for the passengers by putting Mary's small trunk down in front, so that Jack's feet sprawled over it from the nook where he sat.

"I can manage the team," Jack said to himself. "They won't run away with this load."

Mary sat behind him, the other two on the back seat, and all the rest of the carriage was trunks; not to speak of what Jack called a "young house," moored behind.

It all helped Jack to recover his usual composure, nevertheless, and he drove out of Crofield, on the Mertonville road, confidently.

"We shall discern traces of the devastation occasioned by the recent inundation, as we progress," remarked Mrs. Potter.

Jack replied: "Oh, no! The creek takes a great swoop, below Crofield, and the road's a short cut. There'll be some mud, though."

He was right and wrong. There was mud that forced the heavily laden carriage to travel slowly, here and there, but there was nothing seen of the Cocahutchie for several miles.

"Hullo!" exclaimed Jack suddenly. "It looks like a kind of lake. It doesn't come up over the road, though. I wonder what dam has given out now!"

There was the road, safe enough, but all the country to the right of it seemed to have been turned into water. On rolled the carriage, the horses now and then allowing signs of fear and distrust, and the two older passengers expressing ten times as much.

"Now, Molly," said Jack, at last, "there's a bridge across the creek, a little ahead of this. I'd forgotten about that. Hope it's there yet."

"Oh, dear me!" exclaimed Miss Glidden.

"Don't prognosticate disaster," said Mrs. Potter earnestly; and it occurred to Jack that he had heard more long words during that drive than any one boy could hope to remember.

"Hurrah!" he shouted, a few minutes later. "Link's bridge is there! There's water on both sides of the road, though."

It was an old bridge, like that at Crofield, and it was narrow, and it trembled and shook while the snorting bays pranced and shied their frightened way across it. They went down the slope on the other side with a dash that would have been a bolt if Jack had not been ready for them. Jack was holding them with a hard pull upon the reins, but he was also looking up the Cocahutchie.

"I see what's the matter," he said. "The logs got stuck in a narrow place, and made a dam of their own, and set the water back over the flat. The freshet hasn't reached Mertonville yet. Jingo!"

Bang, crack, crash! -- came a sharp sound behind him.

"The bridge is down!" he shouted. "We were only just in time. Some of the logs have been carried down, and one of them knocked it endwise."

That was precisely the truth of the matter; and away went the bays, as if they meant to race with the freshet to see which would first arrive in Mertonville.

"I'm on my way to the city, any how," thought Jack, with deep satisfaction.



Chapter VII.

Mary And The Eagle.

The bay team traveled well, but it was late in the afternoon when Jack drove into the town. Having been in Mertonville before, Jack knew where to take Miss Glidden and Mrs. Potter.

Mertonville was a thriving place, calling itself a town, and ambitious of some day becoming a city.

Not long after entering the village, Miss Glidden touched Jack's arm.

"Stop, please!" exclaimed Miss Glidden. "There are our friends. The very people we're going to see. Mrs. Edwards and the Judge, and all!"

The party on foot had also halted, and were waiting to greet the visitors. After welcomes had been exchanged, Mrs. Edwards, a tall, dignified lady, with gray hair, turned to Mary and offered her hand.

"I'm delighted to see you, Miss Ogden," she exclaimed, "and your brother John. I've heard so much about you both, from Elder Holloway and the Murdochs. They are expecting you."

"We're going to the Murdochs'," said Mary, a little embarrassed by the warmth of the greeting.

"You will come to see me before you go home?" said Mrs. Edwards. "I don't wonder Miss Glidden is so fond of you and so proud of you. Make her come, Miss Glidden."

"I should be very happy," said Miss Glidden benevolently, "but Mary has so many friends."

"Oh, she'll come," said the Judge himself, very heartily. "If she doesn't, I'll come after her."

"Shall I drive to your house now, Judge Edwards?" Jack said at last.

The party separated, and Jack started the bay team again.

The house of Judge Edwards was only a short distance farther, and that of Mrs. Potter was just beyond.

"Mary Ogden," said Miss Glidden in parting, "you must surely accept Mrs. Edwards's invitation. She is the kindest of women."

"Yes, Miss Glidden," said Mary, demurely.

Jack broke in: "Of course you will. You'll have a real good time, too."

"And you'll come and see me?" said Mrs. Potter, and Mary promised. Then Jack and the Judge's coachman lowered to the sidewalk Miss Glidden's enormous trunk.

As Mrs. Potter alighted, a few minutes later, she declared to Mary:

"I'm confident, my dear, that you will experience enthusiastic hospitality."

"What shall I do?" asked Mary, as they drove away. "Miss Glidden didn't mean what she said. She is not fond of me."

"The Judge meant it," said Jack. "They liked you. None of them pressed me to come visiting, I noticed. I'll leave you at Murdoch's and take the team to the stable, and then go to the office of the Eagle and see the editor."

But when they reached the Murdochs', good Mrs. Murdoch came to the door. She kissed Mary, and then said:

"I'm so glad to see you! So glad you've come! Poor Mr. Murdoch -- "

"Jack's going to the office to see him," said Mary.

"He needn't go there," said the editor's wife; "Mr. Murdoch is ill at home. The storm and the excitement and the exposure have broken him down. Come right in, dear. Come back, Jack, as soon as you have taken care of the horses."

"It's a pity," said Jack as he drove away. "The Eagle will have a hard time of it without any editor."

He was still considering that matter when he reached the livery-stable, but he was abruptly aroused from his thoughts by the owner of the team, who cried excitedly:

"Hurrah! Here's my team! I say, young man, how did you cross Link's bridge? A man on horseback just came here and told us it was down. I was afraid I'd lost my team for a week."

"Well, here they are," said Jack, smiling. "They're both good swimmers, and as for the carriage, it floated like a boat."

"Oh, it did?" laughed the stable-keeper, as he examined his property. "Livermore sent you with them, I suppose. I was losing five dollars a day by not having those horses here. What's your name? Do you live in Crofield?"

"Jack Ogden."

"Oh! you're the blacksmith's son. Old Murdoch told me about you. My name's Prodger. I know your father, and I've known him twenty years. How did you get over the creek -- tell me about it?"

Jack told him, and Mr. Prodger drew a long breath at the end of the story.

"You didn't know the risk you were running," he said; "but you did first-rate, and if I needed another driver I'd be glad to hire you. What did Livermore say I was to pay you?"

"He didn't say," said Jack. "I wasn't thinking about being paid."

"So much the better. I think the more of you, my boy. But it was plucky to drive that team over Link's bridge just before it went down. I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll pay you what they'll earn me to-night -- it will be about three dollars -- and we'll call it square. How will that do?"

"It's more than I've earned," said Jack, gratefully.

"I'm satisfied, if you are," said Mr. Prodger as Jack jumped down. "Come and see me again if you're to be in town. You're fond of horses and have a knack with them."

"Three dollars!" said Jack, after the money had been paid him, and he was on his way back to the Murdochs'. "Mother let me have the six dollars they gave me for the fish. And this makes nine dollars. Why, it will take me the rest of the way to the city -- but I wouldn't have a cent when I got there."

When he reached the editor's house, Jack noticed that the house was on the same square with the block of wooden buildings containing the Eagle office, and that the editor could go to his work through his own garden, if he chose, instead of around by the street. He was again welcomed by Mrs. Murdoch, and then led at once into Mr. Murdoch's room, where the editor was in bed, groaning and complaining in a way that indicated much distress.

"I'm very sorry you're sick, Mr. Murdoch," said Jack.

"Thank you, Jack. It's just my luck. It's the very worst time for me to be on the sick-list. Nobody to get out the Eagle. Lost my 'devil' to-day, too!"

"Lost your 'devil'?" exclaimed Jack.

"Yes," said Mr. Murdoch in despair. "No 'devil'! No editor! Nobody but a wooden foreman and a pair of lead-headed type-stickers. The man that does the mailing has more than he can do, too. There won't be any Eagle this week, and perhaps none next week. Plenty of 'copy' nearly ready, too. It's too bad!"

"There won't be any Eagle this week."

"You needn't feel so discouraged," said Jack, deeply touched by the distress of the groaning editor. "Molly and I know what to do. She can manage the copy, just as she did for the Standard once. So can I. We'll go right to work."

"Oh, yes, I'd forgotten," said Mr. Murdoch. "You've worked a while at printing. I'm willing you should see what you can do. I'd like to speak to Mary. I'm sorry to say that you'll have to sleep in the office, Jack, for we've only one spare room in this nutshell of a house."

"I don't mind that," said Jack.

"I hope I'll be out in a day or so," added the editor. "But, Jack, the press is run by a pony steam-engine, and that foreman couldn't run it to save his life," he added hopelessly.

"Why, it's nothing to do," exclaimed Jack. "I've helped run an engine for a steam thrashing-machine. Don't you be worried about the engine."

Mr. Murdoch was able to be up a little while in the evening, and Mary came in to see him. From what he said to her, it seemed as if there was really very little to do in editing the remainder of the next number of the Eagle.

"I'm so glad you're here," said Mrs. Murdoch, when Mary came out to supper. "I never read a newspaper myself, and I don't know the first thing about putting one together. It's too bad that you should be bothered with it though."

"Why, Mrs. Murdoch," exclaimed Mary, laughing, "I shall be delighted. I'd rather do it than not."

The truth was that it was not easy for either Mary or her brother to be very sorry that Mr. Murdoch was not able to work. They did not feel anxious about him, for his wife had told them it was not a serious attack, and they enjoyed the prospect of editing the newspaper.

After supper Jack and Mary went through the garden to the Eagle office. The pony-engine was in a sort of woodshed, the press was in the "kitchen," as Mary called it, and the front room of the little old dwelling-house was the business office. The editor's office and the type-setting room were up-stairs.

Jack took a look at the engine.

"Any one could run that," he said. "I know just how to set it going. Come on, Molly. This is going to be great fun."

The editor's room was only large enough for a table and a chair and a few heaps of exchange newspapers. The table was littered and piled with scraps of writing and printing.

"See!" exclaimed Jack, picking up a sheet of paper. "The last thing Mr. Murdoch did was to finish an account of his visit to Crofield, and the flood. We'll put that in first thing to-morrow. It's easy to edit a newspaper. Where are the scissors?"

"We needn't bother to write new editorials," said Mary. "Here are all these papers full of them."

"Of course," said Jack. "But we must pick out good ones."

Their tastes differed somewhat, and Mary condemned a number of articles that seemed to Jack excellent. However, she selected a story and some poems and a bright letter from Europe, and Jack found an account of an exciting horse-race, a horrible railway accident, a base-ball match, a fight with Indians, an explosion of dynamite, and several long strips of jokes and conundrums.

"These are splendid editorials!" said Mary, looking up from her reading. "We can cut them down to fit the Eagle, and nobody will suspect that Mr. Murdoch has been away."

"Oh, they'll do," said Jack. "They're all lively. Mr. Murdoch is sure to be satisfied. I don't think he can write better editorials himself."

The young editors were much excited over their work, and soon became so absorbed in their duties that it was ten o'clock before they knew it.

"Now, Molly," said Jack, "we'll go to the house and tell him it's all right. We'll set the Eagle a-going in the morning. I knew we could edit it."

Mary had very little to say; her fingers ached from plying the scissors, her eyes burned from reading so much and so fast, and her head was in a whirl.

At the house they met Mrs. Murdoch.

"Oh, my dear children!" exclaimed she to Mary, "Mr. Murdoch is delirious. The doctor's been here, and says he won't be able to think of work -- not for days and days. Can you, -- can you run the Eagle? You won't let it stop."

"No, indeed!" said Mary. "There's plenty of 'copy' ready, and Jack can run the engine."

"I'm so glad," said Mrs. Murdoch. "I'd never dare to clip anything. I might make serious mistakes. He's so careful not to attack anything nor to offend anybody. All sorts of people take the Eagle, and Mr. Murdoch says he has to steer clear of almost everything."

"We won't write anything," said Jack; "we'll just select the best there is and put it right in. Those city editors on the big papers know what to write."

The editor's wife was convinced; and, after Mary had gone to her room, Jack returned to a room prepared for him in the Eagle office.

"I sha'n't wear my Sunday clothes to-morrow," said Jack; "I'll put on a hickory shirt and old trousers; then I'll be ready to work."

The last thing he remembered saying to himself was:

"Well, I'm nine miles nearer to New York."


Morning came, and Jack was busy before breakfast, but he went to the house early.

"I must be there when the 'hands' come," he said to Mrs. Murdoch. "Molly ought to be in the office, too -- "

"I've told Mr. Murdoch," she said, "but he has a severe headache. He can't bear to talk."

"He needn't talk if he doesn't feel able," replied Jack. "The Eagle will come out all right!"

Mary could hardly wait to finish her cup of coffee, but she tried hard to appear calm. She was ready as soon as Jack, but she did not have quite so much confidence in her ability to do whatever might be necessary.

There was to be some press-work done that forenoon, and the pony-engine had steam up when the foreman and the two type-setters reached the office.

"Good-morning, Mr. Black," said Jack, as he came into the engine-room. "It's all right. I'm Jack Ogden, a friend of Mr. Murdoch's. The new editor's upstairs. There's some copy ready. Mr. Murdoch will not be at the office for a week."

"Bless me!" said Mr. Black. "I reckoned that we'd have to strike work. What we need most is a 'devil' -- "

"I can be 'devil,'" said Jack. "I used to run the Standard."

"Boys," said the foreman, without the change of a muscle in his pasty-looking face, "Murdoch's hired a proxy. I'll go up for copy."

He stumped upstairs to what he called the "sanctum." The door stood open. Mr. Black's eyes blinked rapidly when he saw Mary at the editor's table; but he did not utter a word.

"Good-morning, Mr. Black," said Mary, holding out Mr. Murdoch's manuscript and a number of printed clippings. She rapidly told him what they were, and how each of them was to be printed. Mr. Black heard her to the end, and then he said:

"Good-morning, ma'am. Is your name Murdoch, ma'am?"

"No, sir. Miss Ogden," said Mary. "But no one need be told that Mr. Murdoch is not here. I do not care to see anybody, unless it's necessary."

"Yes, ma'am," said Mr. Black. "We'll go right along, ma'am. We're glad the Eagle is to come out on time, ma'am."

He was very respectful, as if the idea of having a young girl as editor awed him; and he backed out of the office, with both hands full of copy, to stump down-stairs and tell his two journeymen:

"It's all right, boys. Bless me! I never saw the like before."

He explained the state of affairs, and each in turn soon managed to make an errand up-stairs, and then to come down again almost as awed as Mr. Black had been.

"She's a driver," said the foreman. "She was made for a boss. She has it in her eye."

Even Jack, when he was sent up after copy, was a little astonished.

"That's the way father looks," he thought, "whenever he begins to lose his temper. The men mind him then, too; but he has to be waked up first. I know how she feels. She's bound the Eagle shall come out on time!"

Even Jack did not appreciate how responsibility was waking up Mary Ogden, or how much older she felt than when she left Crofield; but he had an idea that she was taller, and that her eyes had become darker.

Mr. Bones, the man of all work in the front office below, was of the opinion that she was very tall, and that her eyes were very black, and that he did not care to go up-stairs again; for he had blundered into the sanctum, supposing that Mr. Murdoch was there, and remarking as he came:

"Sa-ay, that there underdone gawk that helps edit the Inquirer, he was jist in, lookin' for -- yes, ma'am! Beg pardon, ma'am! I'm only Bones -- "

"What did the gentleman want, Mr. Bones?" asked Mary, with much dignity. "Mr. Murdoch is at home. He is ill. Is it anything I can attend to?"

"Oh, no, ma'am; nothing, ma'am. He's a blower. We don't mind him, ma'am. I'll go down right away, ma'am. I'll see Mr. Black, ma'am. Thank you, ma'am."

He withdrew with many bows; and while down-stairs he saw Jack, and he not only saw, but felt, that something very new and queer had happened to the Mertonville Eagle.

Both Mary and Jack were aware that there was a rival newspaper, but it had not occurred to them that they were at all interested in the Inquirer, or in its editors, beyond the fact that both papers were published on Thursdays, and that the Eagle was the larger.

The printers worked fast that day, as if something spurred them on, and Mr. Black was almost bright when he reported to Mary how much they had done during the day.

"The new boy's the best 'devil' we ever had, ma'am," said he. "Please say to Mr. Murdoch we'd better keep him."

"Thank you, Mr. Black," said she. "I hope Mr. Murdoch will soon be well."

He stumped away, and it seemed to her as if her dignity barely lasted until she and Jack found themselves in Mr. Murdoch's garden, on their way home. It broke completely down as they were going between the sweet-corn and the tomatoes, and there they both stopped and laughed heartily.

"But, Molly," Jack exclaimed, when he recovered his breath, "we'll have to print the liveliest kind of an Eagle, or the Inquirer will get ahead of us. I'm going out, after supper, all over town, to pick up news. If I can only find some boys I know here, they could tell me a lot of good items. The boys know more of what's going on than anybody."

"I'd like to go with you," said Mary. "Stir around and find out all you can."

"I know what to do," said Jack, with energy, and if he had really undertaken to do all he proceeded to tell her, it would have kept him out all night.



Chapter VIII.

Caught For A Burglar.

Supper was ready when Jack and Mary went into the house, and Mrs. Murdoch was eager that they should eat at once. She seemed very placidly to take it for granted that things were going properly in the Eagle office. Her husband had been ill before, and the paper had somehow lived along, and she was not the kind of woman to fret about it.

"He's been worrying," she said to Mary, "principally about town news. He's afraid the Inquirer 'll get ahead of you. It might be good to see him."

"I'll see him," said Mary.

"Mary! Mary!" came faintly in reply to her kindly greeting. "Local items, Mary. Society Notes -- the flood -- logs -- bridges -- dams -- fires. Brief Mention. Town Improvement Society -- the Sociable -- anything!"

"Jack will be out after news as soon as he eats his supper," said Mary. "He'll find all there is to find. The printers did a splendid day's work."

"The doctor says not to tell me about anything," said the sick man, despondently. "You'll fill the paper somehow. Do the best you can, till I get well."

She did not linger, for Mrs. Murdoch was already pulling her sleeve. The three were soon seated at the table, and hardly was a cup of tea poured before Mrs. Murdoch remarked:

"Mary," she said, "Miss Glidden called here to-day, with Mrs. Judge Edwards, in her carriage. They were sorry to find you out. So did Mrs. Mason, and so did Mrs. Lansing, and Mrs. Potter. They wanted you to go riding, and there's a lawn-tennis party coming. I told them all that Mr. Murdoch was sick, and you were editing the Eagle, and Jack was, too. Miss Glidden's very fond of you, you know. So is Mrs. Potter. Her husband wishes he knew what to send Jack for saving his wife from being drowned."

This was delivered steadily but not rapidly, and Mary needed only to say she would have been glad to see them all.

"I didn't save anybody," said Jack. "If the logs had hit the bridge while we were on it, nothing could have saved us."

Mary was particularly glad that none of her new friends were coming in to spend the evening, for she felt she had done enough for one day. Mrs. Murdoch, however, told her of a "Union Church Sociable," to be held at the house of Mrs. Edwards, the next Thursday evening, and said she had promised to bring Miss Ogden. Of course Mary said she would go, but Jack declined.

After supper, Jack was eager to set out upon his hunt after news-items.

"I mustn't let a soul know what I'm doing," he said to Mary. "We'll see whether I can't find out as much as the Inquirer's man can."

He hurried away from the house, but soon ceased to walk fast and began to peer sharply about.

"There's a new building going up," he said, as he turned a corner; "I'll find out about it."

So he did, but it was only "by the way"; he really had a plan, and the next step took him to Mr. Prodger's livery-stable.

"Well, Ogden," said Prodger, when he came in. "That bay team has earned eight dollars and fifty cents to-day. I'm glad you brought them over. How long are you going to be in town?"

"I can't tell," said Jack. "I'm staying at Murdoch's."

"The editor's? He's a good fellow, but the Eagle is slow. All dry fodder. No vinegar. No pickles. He needs waking up. Tell him about Link's bridge!"

That was a good beginning, and Jack soon knew just how high the water had risen in the creek at Mertonville; how high it had ever risen before; how many logs had been saved; how near Sam Hutchins and three other men came to being carried over the dam; and what people talked about doing to prevent another flood, and other matters of interest. Then he went among the stable-men, who had been driving all day, and they gave him a number of items. Jack relied mainly upon his memory, but he soon gathered such a budget of facts that he had to go to the public reading-room and work a while with pencil and paper, for fear of forgetting his treasures.

Out he went again, and it was curious how he managed to slip in among knots of idlers, and set them to talking, and make them tell all they knew.

"I'm getting the news," he said to himself; "only there isn't much worth the time." After a few moments he exclaimed, "This is the darkest, meanest part of all Mertonville!"

It was the oldest part of the village, near the canal and the railway station, and many of the houses were dilapidated. Jack was thinking that Mary might write something about improving such a neglected, squalid quarter, when he heard a shriek from the door of a house near by.

"Robbers! -- thieves! -- fire! -- murder! -- rob-bers! -- villains!"

It was the voice of a woman, and had a crack in it that made it sound as if two voices were trying to choke each other.

"Robbers!" shouted Jack springing forward, just as two very short men dashed through the gate and disappeared in the darkness.

If they were robbers they were likely to get away, for they ran well.

Jack Ogden did not run very far. He heard other footsteps. There were people coming from the opposite direction, but he paid no attention to them, until just as he was passing the gate.

Then he felt a hand on his left shoulder, and another hand on his right shoulder, and suddenly he found himself lying flat on his back upon the sidewalk.

"Hold him, boys!"

"We've got him!"

"Hold him down!"

"Tie him! We needn't gag him. Tie him tight! We've got him!"

There were no less than four men, and two held his legs, while the other two pinioned his arms, all the while threatening him with terrible things if he resisted.

It was in vain to struggle, and every time he tried to speak they silenced him. Besides, he was too much astonished to talk easily, and all the while an unceasing torrent of abuse was poured upon him, over the gate, by the voice that had given the alarm.

"We've got him, Mrs. McNamara! He can't get away this time. The young villain!"

"They were goin' to brek into me house, indade," said Mrs. McNamara. "The murdherin' vagabones!"

"What'll we do with him now, boys?" asked one of his captors. "I don't know where to take him -- do you, Deacon Abrams?"

"What's your name, you young thief?" sternly demanded another.

Jack had begun to think. One of his first thoughts was that a gang of desperate robbers had seized him. The next idea was, that he never met four more stupid-looking men in Mertonville, nor anywhere else. He resolved that he would not tell his name, to have it printed in the Inquirer, and so made no answer.

"That's the way of thim," said Mrs. McNamara. "He's game, and he won't pache. The joodge'll have to mak him spake. Ye'd betther lock him up, and kape him till day."

"That's it, Deacon Abrams."

"That's just it," said the man spoken to. "We can lock him up in the back room of my house, while we go and find the constable."

Away they went, guarding their prisoner on the way as if they were afraid of him.

They soon came to the dwelling of Deacon Abrams.

It was hard for Jack Ogden, but he bore it like a young Mohawk Indian. It would have been harder if it had not been so late, and if more of the household had been there to see him. As it was, doors opened, candles flared, old voices and young voices asked questions, a baby cried, and then Jack heard a very sharp voice.

"Sakes alive, Deacon! You can't have that ruffian here! We shall all be murdered!"

"Only till I go and find the constable, Jerusha," said the deacon, pleadingly. "We'll lock him in the back room, and Barney and Pettigrew'll stand guard at the gate, with clubs, while Smith and I are gone."

There was another protest, and two more children began to cry, but Jack was led on into his prison-cell.

It was a comfortable room, containing a bed and a chair. There was real ingenuity in the way they secured Jack Ogden. They backed a chair against a bedpost and made him sit down, and then they tied the chair, and the wicked young robber in it, to the post.

"There!" said Deacon Abrams. "He can't get away now!" and in a moment more Jack heard the key turn in the lock, and he was left in the dark, alone and bound, -- a prisoner under a charge of burglary.

"I never thought of this thing happening to me," he said to himself, gritting his teeth and squirming on his chair. "It's pretty hard. May be I can get away, though. They thought they pulled the ropes tight, but then -- "

The hempen fetters really hurt him a little, but it was partly because of the chair.

"May be I can kick it out from under me," he said to himself, "and loosen the ropes."

Out it came, after a tug, and then Jack could stand up.

"I might climb on the bed, now the ropes are loose," he said, "and lift the loops over the post. Then I could crawl out of 'em."

He was excited, and worked quickly. In a moment he was standing in the middle of the room, with only his hands tied behind him.

"I can cut that cord," he thought, "if I can find a nail in the wall."

He easily found several, and one of them had a rough edge on the head of it, and after a few minutes of hard sawing, the cord was severed.

"It's easy to saw twine," said he. "Now for the next thing."

He went to the window and looked out into the darkness.

"I'm over the roof of the kitchen," he said, "and that tree's close to it."

Up went the window -- slowly, carefully, noiselessly -- and out crept Jack upon that roof. It was steep, but he stole along the ridge. Now he could reach the tree.

"It's an apple-tree," he said. "I can reach that longest branch, and swing off, and go down it hand over hand."

At an ordinary time, few boys would have thought it could be done, and Jack had to gather all his courage to make the attempt; but he slid down and reached for that small, frail limb, from his perilous perch in the gutter of the roof.

"Now!" said Jack to himself.

Off he went with a quick grasp, and then another lower along the branch, before it had time to break, but his third grip was on a larger limb, below, and he believed he was safe.

"I must be quick!" he said. "Somebody is striking a light in that room!"

Hand over hand for a moment, and then he was astride of a limb. Soon he was going down the trunk; and then the window (which he had closed behind him) went up, and he heard Deacon Abrams exclaiming:

"He couldn't have got out this way, could he? Stop thief! Stop thief!"

"Let 'em chase!" muttered Jack, as his feet reached the ground. "This is the liveliest kind of news-item!"

Jack vaulted over the nearest fence, ran across a garden, climbed over another fence, ran through a lot, and came out into a street on the other side of the square.

"I've got a good start, now," he thought, "but I'll keep right on. They don't expect me at Murdoch's to-night. If I can only get to the Eagle office! Nobody'll hunt for me there!"

He heard the sound of feet, at that moment, around the next corner. Open went the nearest gate, and in went Jack, and before long he was scaling more fences.

"It's just like playing 'Hare-and-Hounds,'" remarked Jack, as he once more came out into a street. "Now for the Eagle, and it won't do to run. I'm safe."

He heard some running and shouting after that, however, and he did not really feel secure until he was on his bed, with the doors below locked and barred.

"Now they can hunt all night!" he said to himself, laughing. "I've made plenty of news for Mary."

So she thought next morning; and the last "news-item" brought out the color in her cheeks and the brightness in her eyes.

"I'll write it out," she said, "just as if you were the real robber, and we'll print it!"

"Of course," said Jack; "but I'd better keep shady for a day or so. I wish I was on my way to New York!"

"Seems to me as if you were," said Mary. "They won't come here after you. The paper's nearly full, now, and it'll be out to-morrow!"

Mr. Murdoch would have been gratified to see how Mary and Jack worked that day. Even Mr. Black and the type-setters worked with energy, and so did Mr. Bones, and there was no longer any doubt that the Eagle would be printed on time. Mr. Murdoch felt better the moment he was told by Mary, at tea-time, that she had found editing no trouble at all. He was glad, he said, that all had been so quiet, and that nobody had called at the editor's office, and that people did not know he was sick. As to that, however, Mr. Bones had not told Mary how much he and Mr. Black had done to protect her from intrusion. They had been like a pair of watch-dogs, and it was hardly possible for any outsider to pass them. As for Jack, he was not seen outside of the Eagle all that day.

"If any of Deacon Abram's posse should come in," he remarked to Mary, "they wouldn't know me with all the ink that's on my face."

"Mother would have to look twice," laughed Mary. "Don't I wish I knew what people will think of the paper!"

She did not find out at once, even on Thursday. Jack had the engine going on time, and as fast as papers were printed, the distribution of them followed. It was a very creditable Eagle, but Mary blushed when she read in print the account Mr. Murdoch had written of the doings in Crofield.

"They'll think Jack's a hero," she said, "and what will they think of me? -- and what will Miss Glidden say? But then he has complimented her."

Jack, too, was much pleased to read the vivid accounts she had written of the capture and escape of the daring young burglar who had broken into the house of Mrs. McNamara, and of the falling of Link's bridge. Neither of them, however, had an idea of how some articles in the paper would affect other people. Before noon, there was such a rush for Eagles, at the front office, that Mr. Black got out another ream of paper to print a second edition, and Mr. Bones had almost to fight to keep the excited crowd from going up-stairs to see for themselves whether the editor was there. Before night, poor Mrs. Murdoch went to the door thirty times to say to eager inquirers that Mr. Murdoch was in bed, and that Dr. Follet had forbidden him to see anybody, or to talk one word, or to get himself excited.

"What's the matter with the people?" she said wearily. "Can it be possible that anything's the matter with the Eagle? Mary Ogden said she'd taken the very best editorials from the city papers."

The Inquirer was nowhere that Thursday, and the excitement over the Eagle increased all the afternoon.

Just out.

"It's all right, Mrs. Murdoch," said Jack, at supper. "Bones says he has sold more than two hundred extra copies."

"I'm glad of that," she said, "and I'll tell Mr. Murdoch; but he mustn't read it."

When she did so, he smiled faintly and with an effort feebly responded:

"Thank Mary for me. I suppose they wanted to read about the flood."

Mr. Bones had not seen fit to report to Mary that a baker's dozen of old subscribers had ordered their paper stopped; nor that one angry man with a big club in his hand had inquired for the editor; nor that Deacon Abrams, and the Town Constable, and three other men, and a lawyer had called to see the editor about the robbery at Mrs. McNamara's; nor that the same worthy woman, with her arms akimbo and her bonnet falling back, had fiercely demanded of him:

"Fwhat for did yez print all that about me howlin'? Wudn't ony woman spake, was she bein' robbed and murdhered?"

Bones had pacified Mrs. McNamara only by sitting still and hearing her out, and he would not for anything have mentioned it to Miss Ogden. She therefore had only good news to tell at the house, and Mrs. Murdoch's replies related chiefly to the Union Church Sociable at Judge Edwards's.

"Mr. Murdoch is quiet," she said, "and he may sleep all the time we're gone."

"I'll be on hand to look out for him," said Jack, "I'm not going anywhere."

That reassured them as to leaving home, and Mrs. Murdoch and Mary departed without anxiety; but they had hardly entered the Edwards's house before they found that many other people were very much less placid.

The first person to come forward, after Mrs. Edwards had welcomed them, was Miss Glidden.

"Oh, Mary Ogden!" she exclaimed, very sweetly and benevolently. "My dear! Why did you say so much about me in the Eagle?"

"That was Mr. Murdoch's work," said Mary. "I had nothing to do with it."

"And that robbery and escape was really shocking."

"Exactly!" They heard a sharp, decided voice near them, and it came from a thin little man in a white cravat. "You are right, Elder Holloway! When a leading journal like the Eagle finds it needful to denounce so sternly the state of the public streets in Mertonville, it is time for the people to act. We ministers must hold a council right away."

Mary remembered a political editorial she had taken from a New York paper, and had cut down to fit the Eagle; but its effect was something unexpected.

A deeper voice on her left spoke next.

"There was serious talk among the hotel-men and innkeepers of mobbing the Eagle office to-day!"

"That," thought Mary, "must be the high-license editorial from that Philadelphia weekly."

"We must act, Judge Edwards!" exclaimed another voice. "Nobody knows Murdoch's politics, but his denunciation of the prevailing corruption is terrible. There's a storm rising. The Republican Committee has called a special meeting to consider the matter, and we Democrats must do the same. The Eagle is right about it, too; but it was a daring step for him to take."

"That's the editorial from the Chicago daily," thought Mary; "the last part was from that Boston paper! Oh, dear me! What have I done?"

She had to ask herself that question a dozen times that evening, and she wished Jack had been there to hear what was said.

The sociable went gayly on, nevertheless, and all the while Jack sat in Mrs. Murdoch's dining-room, his face fairly glowing red with the interest he took in something spread out upon the table before him. It was a large map of New York city that he had found in the Eagle office and brought to the house.



Chapter IX.

Nearer The City.

Mary Ogden would have withdrawn into some quiet corner, at the sociable, if it had not been for Elder Holloway and Miss Glidden, who seemed determined to prevent her from being overlooked. All those who had called upon Mrs. Murdoch knew that Mary had had something to do with that extraordinary number of the Eagle, and they told others, but Mrs. Murdoch escaped all discussion about the Eagle by saying she had not read it, and referring every one to Miss Ogden.

Mary was glad when the evening was over. After hearing the comments of the public, there was something about their way of editing the paper that seemed almost dishonest.

Jack was still up when she came home.

"I've used my time better than if I'd gone to the party," he said. "I've studied the map of New York. I'd know just how to go around, if I was there. I am going to study it all the time I'm here."

Mr. Murdoch was better. He had had a comfortable night, and felt able to think of business again.

"Now, my dear," he said to his wife, "I'm ready to take a look at the Eagle. I am glad it was a good number."

"They talked about it all last evening at the sociable," she answered, as she handed him a copy.

He was even cheerful, when he began; and he studied the paper as Jack had studied the map. It was a long time before he said a word.

"My account of the flood is really capital," he said, at last, "and all that about Crofield matters. The report of things in Mertonville is good; that about the logs, the dam, the burglary -- a very extraordinary occurrence, by the way -- it's a blessing they didn't kill Mrs. McNamara. The story is good; funny-column good. But -- oh, gracious! Oh, Mary Ogden! Oh my stars! What's this?"

He had begun on the editorials, and he groaned and rolled about while he was reading them.

"They'll mob the Eagle!" he said at last. "I must get up! Oh, but this is dreadful! She's pitched into everything there is! I must get up at once!"

Those editorials were a strong tonic, or else Mr. Murdoch's illness was over. He dressed himself, and walked out into the kitchen. His wife had not heard him say he would get up, but she seemed almost to have expected it.

"It's the way you always do," she said. "I'm never much scared about you. You'll never die till your time comes. I think Mary is over at the office."

"I'm going there, now," he said, excitedly. "If this work goes on, I shall have the whole town about my ears."

He was right. Mary had been at her table promptly that morning to make a beginning on the next number; Jack was down in the engine-room; Mr. Black was busy, and Mr. Bones was out, when a party of very red-faced men filed in, went through the front office, and climbed the stairs.

"We'll show him!" said one.

"It'll be a lesson he won't forget!" remarked another, fiercely.

"He'll take it back, or there will be broken bones!" added another; and these spoke for the rest. They had sticks, and they tramped heavily as they marched to the "sanctum." The foremost opened the door, without knocking, and his voice was deep, threatening, and husky as he began:

"Now, Mr. Editor -- "

"I'm the editor, sir. What do you wish of me?"

"I'm the Editor, sir."

Mary Ogden stood before him, looking him straight in the face without a quiver.

He was a big man; but, oddly enough, it occurred to him that Mary seemed larger than he was.

"Bob!" exclaimed a harsh whisper behind him, "howld yer tongue! it's only a gir-rl! Don't ye say a har-rd word to the loikes o' her!"

Other whispers and growls came from the hall, but the big man stood like a stone post for several seconds.

"You're the editor?" he gasped. "Is old Murdoch dead, -- or has he run away?"

"He's at home, and ill," said Mary. "What is your errand?"

"I keep a decent hotel, sir, -- ma'am -- madam -- I do, -- we all do, -- it's the Eagle, you know, -- and there's no kind of disorder, -- and there was never any complaint in Mertonville -- "

"Howld on, Bob!" exclaimed the prompter behind him. "You're no good at all; coom along, b'ys. Be civil, -- Mike Flaherty will never have it said he brought a shillalah to argy wid a colleen. I'm aff!"

Away he went, stick and all, and the other five followed promptly, leaving Mary Ogden standing still in amazement. She was trying to collect her thoughts when Mr. Black marched in from the other room, followed by the two typesetters; and Mr. Bones tumbled up-stairs, out of breath.

Mary had hardly any explanation to make about what Mr. Bones frantically described as "the riot," and she was inclined to laugh at it. Just then Mr. Murdoch himself came to the door.

Jack stopped the engine, exclaiming, "Mr. Murdoch! you here?"

"What is it? What is it?" he exclaimed. "I saw them go out. Did they break anything?"

"Miss Ogden scared 'em off in no time," said Mr. Black.

Mary resigned the editorial chair to Mr. Murdoch. Bones brought in two office chairs; Mr. Black appeared with a very high stool that usually stood before one of his typecases; Mary preferred one of the office chairs, and there she sat a long time, replying to Mr. Murdoch's questions and remarks. She had plenty to tell, after all she had heard at the sociable, and Mr. Murdoch groaned at times, but still he thanked her for her efforts. Meanwhile Mr. Black went to the engine-room with an errand for Jack that sent him over to the other side of the village. Jack looked in the little cracked mirror in the front room as he went out.

"Ink enough; they'll never know me," said Jack. "I'm safe enough. Besides, Mrs. McNamara wasn't robbed at all. She was yelling because she thought robbers were coming."

He loitered along on his way back, with his eyes open and his ears ready to catch any bit of stray news, and paused a moment to peer into a small shoe-shop.

It was only a momentary glance, but a hammer ceased tapping upon a lapstone, and a tall man straightened up suddenly and very straight, as he untied his leather apron.

"That's the fellow!" he exclaimed under his breath, but Jack heard him.

"He knew me! He knew me! I can't stay in Mertonville!" thought Jack. "There'll be trouble now."

He started at a run, but it was so early that he attracted little attention.

His return to the Eagle office was so quick that Mr. Black opened his eyes in surprise.

"I've got to see Mr. Murdoch," Jack said hurriedly, and up-stairs he darted, to break right in upon the conference between the editors.

Jack told his story, and Mr. Murdoch felt it was only another blow added to the many already fallen upon him and his Eagle. "Perhaps you will be better satisfied to leave town," said Mr. Murdoch, uneasily.

"I've enough money to take me to the city, and I'll go. I'm off for New York!" said Jack, eagerly.

"New York?" exclaimed Mr. Murdoch. "That's the thing! Go to the house and get ready. I'll buy you a ticket to Albany, and you can go down on the night boat. They're taking passengers for half a dollar. You mustn't be caught! No doubt they are hunting for you now."

Mr. Murdoch was right. At that very moment the cobbler was in the grocery kept by Deacon Abrams, shouting, "We've got him again, Deacon! He's in town. He works in a paint shop -- had paint on his face. Or else he's a blacksmith, or he works in coal, or something black -- or dusty. We can run him down now."

While they went for the two others who knew Jack's face, he was putting on his Sunday clothes and packing up. When he came down, there was no ink upon his face, his collar was clean, his hair was brushed, and he was a complete surprise to Mr. Black and the rest.

"I can get a new boy," said Mr. Murdoch, as if he were beginning to recover his spirits; "and I can run the engine myself now I'm well. I can say in the next Eagle that you are gone to the city, and that will help me out of my troubles."

Neither Jack nor Mary quite understood what he meant, and, in fact, they were not thinking about him just then. Mr. Murdoch had said that there was only time to catch the express-train, and they were saying good-by. Mary was crying for the moment, and Jack was telling her what to write to his mother and father and those at home in Crofield.

"It's so sudden, Jack!" said Mary. "But I'm glad you're going. I wish I could go, too."

"I wish you could," said Jack, heartily; "but I'll write. I'll tell you everything. Good-by, Mr. Murdoch's waiting. Good-by!"

The Eagle editor was indeed waiting, and he was very uneasy. "What a calamity it would be," he thought, "to have my own 'devil' arrested for burglary. The Inquirer would enjoy that! It isn't Jack's fault, but I can't bear everything!"

Meanwhile Mary sat at the table and pretended to look among the papers for a new story, but really she was trying to keep from crying over Jack's departure. Mr. Murdoch and Jack had gone to the station.

There was cunning in the plans of the pursuers of Mrs. McNamara's burglar this time. Three of them, each aided by several eager volunteers, dashed around Mertonville, searching every shop in which any sort of face-blacking might be used, and Deacon Abrams himself went to the station with a justice of the peace, a notary-public, a constable, and the man that kept the village pound.

"He won't get by me," said the deacon wisely, as Mr. Murdoch and a neatly dressed young gentleman passed him, arm in arm.

"Good morning, Mr. Murdoch. The Eagle's improving. You did me justice. We're after that same villain now. We'll get him this time, too."

"Deacon," said the editor, gripping Jack's arm hard, "I'll mention your courage and public spirit again. Tie him tighter next time."

"We will," said the deacon; "and I've got some new subscribers for you, and a column advertisement."

Mr. Murdoch hurried to the ticket-window, and Jack patiently looked away from Deacon Abrams all the while.

"There," said Mr. Murdoch, "jump right in. Keep your satchel with you. I'm going back to the office."

"There," said Mr. Murdoch, "jump right in."

"Good-by," said Jack, pocketing his ticket and entering the car.

He took a seat by the open window, just as the train started.

"Jack's gone, Mary," exclaimed Mr. Murdoch, under his breath, as he re-entered the Eagle office. "Have those men been here again?"

"No," said Mary. "But the chairmen of the two central committees have both been here. Elder Holloway said they would. They will call again."

"What did you say?" the editor asked.

"Why," replied Mary, "I told them you were just getting well."

"So I am," said Mr. Murdoch. "There's a great demand for that number of the Eagle. Forty-six old subscribers have stopped their papers, but a hundred and twenty-seven new ones have come in. I can't guess where this will end. Are you going to the house?"

"I think I'd better," said Mary. "If there's anything more I can do -- "

"No, no, no! Don't spoil your visit," said he, hastily. "You've had work enough. Now you must be free to rest a little, and meet your friends."

He would not say he was afraid to have her in the Eagle office, to stir up storms for him. But Mary made no objection -- she was very willing to give up the work.

Mr. Murdoch came home in a more hopeful state of mind, but soon went to his room and lay down.

"My dear," he said to his wife, "the paper's going right along; but I'm too much exhausted to see anybody. Tell 'em all I'm not well."

Mary was uneasy about Jack, but she need not have worried. The moment the train was in motion, he forgot even Deacon Abrams and Mrs. McNamara in the grand thought that he was actually on his way to the city.

"This train's an express train," he said to himself. "Doesn't she go! I said I'd get there some day, and now I'm really going! Hurrah for New York! It's good I learned something about the streets -- I'll know what to do when I get there."

He had nine dollars in his pocket for capital, but he knew more or less of several businesses and trades.

In the seat in front of him were two gentlemen, who must have been railway men, he thought, from what they said, and it occurred to Jack that he would like to learn how to build a railway.

The train stopped at last, after a long journey, and a well-dressed man got in, came straight to Jack's seat, took the hitherto empty half of it, and began to talk with the men in front as if he had come on board for the purpose. At first Jack paid little attention, but soon they began to mention places he knew.

"So far, so good," remarked the man at his side; "but we're going to have trouble in getting the right of way through Crofield. We'll have to pay a big price for that hotel if we can't use the street."

"I think not," said Jack, with a smile. "There isn't much hotel left in Crofield, now. It was burned down last Sunday."

"What?" exclaimed one of the gentlemen in front. "Are you from Crofield?"

"I live there," said Jack. "Your engineer was there about the time of the fire. The old bridge is down. I heard him say that your line would cross just below it."

The three gentlemen were all attention, and the one who had not before spoken said:

"I know. Through the old Hammond property."

"It used to belong to Mr. Hammond," replied Jack, "but it belongs to my father now."

"Can you give me a list of the other owners of property?" asked the railway man with some interest.

"I can tell you who owns every acre around Crofield, boundary lines and all," answered Jack. "I was born there. You don't know about the people, though. They'll do almost anything to have the road there. My father will help all he can. He says the place is dead now."

"What's his name?" asked the first speaker, with a notebook and a pencil in his hand.

"His is John Ogden. Mine's Jack Ogden. My father knows every man in the county," replied Jack.

"Ogden," said the gentleman in the forward seat, next the window. "My name's Magruder; we three are directors in the new road. I'm a director in this road. Are you to stay in Albany?"

"I go by the night boat to New York," said Jack, almost proudly.

"Can you stay over a day? We'll entertain you at the Delavan House if you'll give us some information."

"Certainly; I'll be glad to," said Jack; and so when the train stopped at Albany, Jack was talking familiarly enough with the three railway directors.


Mary Ogden had a very clear idea that Mr. Murdoch preferred to make up the next paper without any help from her, and even Mrs. Murdoch was almost glad to know that her young friend was to spend the next week with Mrs. Edwards.

One peculiar occurrence of that day had not been reported at the Eagle office, and it had consequences. The Committee of Six, who had visited the sanctum so threateningly, went away beaten, but recounted their experience. They did so in the office of the Mertonville Hotel, and Mike Flaherty had more than a little to say about "that gurril," and about "the black eyes of her," and the plucky way in which she had faced them.

One little old gentleman whose eyes were still bright, in spite of his gray hair, stood in the door and listened, with his hand behind his ear.

"Gentlemen," exclaimed this little old man, turning to the men behind him. "Did you hear 'em? I guess I know what we ought to do. Come on into Crozier's with me -- all of you. We must give her a testimonial for her pluck."

"Crozier's?" asked a portly, well-dressed man. "Nothing there but dry-goods."

"Come, Jeroliman. You're a banker and you're needed. I dare you to come!" said the little old man, jokingly, leading the way.

Seven of them reached the dress-goods counter of the largest store in Mertonville, and here the little old gentleman bought black silk for a dress.

"You brought your friends, I see, General Smith," said the merchant, laughing. "One of your jokes, eh?"

"No joke at all, Crozier; a testimonial of esteem," -- and three gentlemen helped one another to tell the story.

"I'll make a good reduction, for my share," exclaimed the merchant, as he added up the figures of the bill. "Will that do, General?"

"I'll join in," promptly interposed Mr. Jeroliman, the banker, laughing. "I won't take a dare from General Smith. Come, boys."

They were old enough boys, but they all "chipped in," and General Smith's dare did not cost him much, after all.

Mary Ogden had the map of New York out upon the table that evening, and was examining it, when there came a ring at the door-bell.

"It's a boy from Crozier's with a package," said Mrs. Murdoch; "and Mary, it's for you!"

"For me?" said Mary, in blank astonishment.

It was indeed addressed to her, and contained a short note:


"The girl who was not afraid of six angry men is requested to accept this silk dress, with the compliments of her admiring friends,

"Seven Old Men Of Mertonville."


"Oh, but, Mrs. Murdoch," said Mary, in confusion, "I don't know what to say or do. It's very kind of them! -- but ought I to take it?"

This testimonial pleased Mr. Murdoch even more than it pleased Mary. He insisted Mary should keep it, and she at last consented.

But not even the new dress made Mary forget to wonder how Jack was faring.


The lightning express made short work of the trip to Albany, and Jack was glad of it, for he had not had any dinner. His new acquaintances invited him to accompany them to the Delavan House.

As they left the station, Mr. Magruder took from his pocket a small pamphlet.

"Humph!" he said. "Guide-book to the New York City and Hudson River. I had forgotten that I had it. Don't you want it, Ogden? It'll be something to read on the boat."

"Won't you keep it?" asked Jack, hesitating.

"Oh, no," said Mr. Magruder. "I was going to throw it away."

So Jack put the book into his pocket. It was a short walk to the Delavan House, but it was through more bustle and business, considering how quiet everybody was, Jack thought, than he ever saw before. He went with the rest to the hotel office, and heard Mr. Magruder give directions about Jack's room and bill.

"He's going to pay for me for one day," Jack said to himself, "and until the evening boat goes to-morrow."

"Ogden," said Mr. Magruder, "I can't ask you to dine with us. It's a private party -- have your dinner, and then wait for me here."

"All right," said Jack, and then he stood still and tried to think what to do.

"I must go to my room, now, and leave my satchel there," he said to himself. "I don't want anybody to know I never was in a big hotel before."

He managed to get to his room without making a single blunder, but the moment he closed the door he felt awed and put down.

"It's the finest room I was ever in in all my life!" he exclaimed. "They must have made a mistake. Perhaps I'll have a bedroom like this in my own house some day."

Jack made himself look as neat as if he had come out of a bandbox, before he went down-stairs.

The dining-room was easily found, and he was shown to a seat at one of the tables, and a bill of fare was handed him; but that was only one more puzzle.

"I don't know what some of these are," he said to himself. "I'll try things I couldn't get in Crofield. I'll begin on those clams with little necks."

So the waiter set before him a plate of six raw clams.

That was a good beginning; for every one of them seemed to speak to him of the salt ocean.

After that he went farther down the bill of fare and selected such dishes as, he said, "nobody ever saw in Crofield."

It was a grand dinner, and Jack was almost afraid he had been too long over it.

He went out to the office and looked around, and asked the clerk if Mr. Magruder had been inquiring for him.

"Not yet, Mr. Ogden," said the clerk. "He is not yet through dinner. Did you find your room all right?"

"All right," said Jack. "I'll sit down and wait for Mr. Magruder."

It was an hour before the railway gentlemen returned. There were twice as many of them now, however, and Mr. Magruder remarked:

"Come, Ogden, we won't detain you long. After that you can do what you like. Thank you very much, too."

Jack followed them into a private sitting-room, which seemed to him so richly furnished that he really wished it had been plainer; but he found the men very straightforward about their business.

They all sat down around the table in the middle of the room.

"We'll finish Ogden first, and let him go," said Mr. Magruder, laughing. "Ogden, here's a map of Crofield and all the country from there to Mertonville. I want to ask some questions."

He knew what to ask, too; but Jack's first remark was not an answer.

"Your map's all wrong," said he. "There isn't sand and gravel in that hill across the Cocahutchie, beyond the bridge."

"Your map's all wrong," said Jack.

"What is there, then?" asked a gentleman, who seemed to be one of the civil engineers, pettishly. "I say it's earth and gravel, mainly."

"Clear granite," said Jack. "Go down stream a little and you'll see."

"All right," exclaimed Mr. Magruder; "it will be costly cutting it, but we shall want the stone. Go ahead now. You're just the man we needed."

Jack thought so before they got through, for he had to tell all there was to tell about the country, away down to Link's bridge.

"Look here," said one of them, quizzically. "Ogden, have you lived all your life in every house in Crofield and in Mertonville and everywhere? You know even the melon-patches and hen-roosts!"

"Well, I know some of 'em," said Jack, coloring and trying to join in the general laugh. "I wouldn't talk so much, but Mr. Magruder asked me to stay over and tell what you didn't know."

Then the laughter broke out again, and it was not at Jack's expense.

They had learned all they expected from him, however, and Mr. Magruder thanked him very heartily.

"I hope you'll have a good time to-morrow," he said. "Look at the city. I'll see that you have a ticket ready for the boat."

"I didn't expect -- " began Jack.

"Nonsense, Ogden," said Mr. Magruder. "We owe you a great deal, my boy. I wouldn't have missed knowing about that granite ledge. It's worth something to us. The ticket will be handed you by the clerk. Good-evening, Jack Ogden. I hope I'll see you again, some day."

"I hope so," said Jack. "Good-evening, sir. Good-evening, gentlemen."

Out he walked, and as the door closed behind him the engineer remarked:

"He ought to be a railway contractor. Brightest young fellow I've seen in a long time."

Jack felt strange. The old, grown-up feeling seemed to have been questioned out of him, by those keen, peremptory, clear-headed business men, and he appeared to himself to be a very small, green, poor, uneducated boy, who hardly knew where he was going next, or what he was going to do when he got there. "I don't know about that either," he said to himself, when he reached the office. "I know I'm going to bed, next, and I believe that I'll go to sleep when I get there!"

Weary, very weary, and almost blue, in spite of everything, was Jack Ogden that night, when he crept into bed.

"'Tisn't like that old cot in the Eagle office," he thought. "I'm glad it isn't to be paid for out of my nine dollars."

Jack was tired all over, and in a few minutes he was sound asleep.

He had gone to bed quite early, and he awoke with the first sunshine that came pouring into his room.

"It isn't time to get up," he said. "It'll be ever so long before breakfast, but I can't stay here in bed."

As he put on his coat something swung against his side, and he said:

"There! I'd forgotten that pamphlet. I'll see what's in it."

The excitement of getting to the Delavan House, and the dinner and the talk afterward, had driven the pamphlet out of his mind until then, but he opened it eagerly.

"Good!" he said, as he turned the leaves. "Maps and pictures, all the way down. Everything about the Hudson. Pictures of all the places worth seeing in New York. Tells all about them. Where to go when you get there. Just what I wanted!"

Down he sat, and he came near forgetting his breakfast, so intensely was he absorbed by that guide-book. He shut it up, at last, however, remarking: "I'll have breakfast, and then I'll go out and see Albany. It's all I've got to do till the boat leaves this evening. First city I ever saw." He ate with all the more satisfaction because he knew that he was not eating up any part of his nine dollars, and it did not seem like so much money as it would have seemed in Crofield. He was in no haste, for he had no idea where to go, and did not mean to tell anybody how ignorant he was. He walked out of the Delavan House, and strolled away to the right. Even the poorer buildings were far better than anything in Crofield or Mertonville, and he soon had a bit of a surprise. He reached a corner where a very broad street opened, at the right, and went up a steep hill. It was not a very long street, and it ended at the crest of the hill, where there were some trees, and above them towered what seemed to be a magnificent palace of a building.

"I'll go and see that," said Jack. "I'll know what it is when I see the sign, -- or I'll ask somebody."

His interest in that piece of architecture grew as he walked on up the hill; and he was a little warm and out of breath when he reached the street corner, at the top. Upon the corner, with his hands folded behind him and his hat pushed back on his head, stood a well-dressed man, somewhat above middle height, heavily built and portly, who seemed to be gazing at the same object.

"Mister," said Jack, "will you please tell me what that building is?"

"Certainly," replied the gentleman, turning to him with a bow and a smile. "That's the New York State Miracle; one of the wonders of the world."

"The State Miracle?" said Jack.

"What's your name?" asked the gentleman, with another bow and smile.

"Ogden -- Jack Ogden."

"Yes, Jack Ogden; thank you. My name's 'Guvner.' That's a miracle. It can never be finished. There's magic in it. Do you know what that is?"

"That's one of the things I don't know, Mr. Guvner," said Jack.

"I don't know what it is either," smiled Mr. Guvner. "When they built it they put in twenty tons of pure, solid gold, my lad. Didn't you ever hear of it? Where do you live when you're at home?"

"My home's in Crofield," said Jack, not aware of a group of gentlemen and ladies who were standing still, a few yards away, looking at them. "I'm on my way to New York, but I wanted to see Albany."

Mr. Guvner put a large hand on his shoulder, and smiled in his face.

"Jack, my son," he said, "go up and look all over the State Miracle. Many other States have other similar miracles. Don't stay in it too long, though."

"Is it unhealthy?" asked Jack, with a smile.

The portly gentleman was smiling also.

"No, no; not unhealthy, my boy; but they persuade some men to stay there a long time, and they're never the same men again. Come out as soon as you've had a good view of it."

"I'll take a look at it any way," said Jack, turning away. "Thank you, Mr. Guvner. I'll see the Miracle."

He had gone but a few paces, and the others were stepping forward, when he was called by Mr. Guvner.

"Jack, come back a moment!"

"What is it, Mr. Guvner?" asked Jack.

"I'm almost sorry you're going to the city. It's as bad as the Capitol itself. You'll never be the same man again. Don't get to be the wrong kind of man."

"I'll remember, Mr. Guvner," said Jack, and he walked away again; but as he did so he heard a lady laughing, and a solemn-faced gentlemen saying:

"Good morning, Gov-er-nor. A very fine morning?"

"I declare!" exclaimed Jack, with almost a shiver. "I've been talking with the Governor of the State himself, and I'm going to see the Capitol. I couldn't have done that in Crofield. And I'll be in New York City to-morrow!"



Chapter X.

The State-House And The Steamboat.

Mary Ogden had three dresses, one quite pretty, but none were of silk. Aunt Melinda was always telling Mary what she ought not to wear at her age, and with hair and eyes as dark as hers. Mary felt very proud, therefore, when she saw on the table in her room the parcel containing the black silk and trimmings.

"It must have been expensive," she said, and she unfolded it as if afraid it would break.

"What will mother say?" she thought. "And Aunt Melinda! I'm too young for it -- I know I am!"

The whole Murdoch family arose early, and the editor, after looking at the black silk, said that he felt pretty well.

"So you ought," said his wife. "You had more new subscribers yesterday than you ever had before in your life in any one day."

"That makes me think," said Mr. Murdoch. "I owe Mary Ogden five dollars -- there it is -- for getting out that number of the Eagle."

"Oh, no!" exclaimed Mary. "I did that, and Jack did it, only because -- "

He put the bank-note into her hand.

"I'd rather you'd take it," he said. "You'll never be a good editor till you learn to work on a business basis."

As he insisted, she put the bill into her pocket-book, thanking him gratefully.

"I had two dollars when I came," she thought, "and I haven't spent a cent; but I may need something. Besides, I'll have to pay for making up my new dress."

But she was wrong. Mrs. Murdoch went out to see a neighbor after breakfast, and before noon it was certain that if seven old men of Mertonville had paid for the silk, at least seven elderly women could be found who were very willing to make it up.

About that time Jack was walking up to the door of the Senate Chamber, in the Capitol, at Albany, after having astonished himself by long walks and gazings through the halls and side passages.

"It's true enough," he said to himself. "The Governor's right. No fellow could go through this and come out just as he came in."

He understood about the "twenty tons of pure gold" in the building, but nevertheless he could not keep from looking all around after signs of it.

"There's plenty of gilding," he said, "but it's very thin. It's all finished, too. I don't see what more they could do, now the roof's on and it's all painted. He must have been joking when he said that."

Jack roamed all over the Capitol, for the Legislature was not in session, and the building was open to sight-seers. There were many of them, and from visitors, workmen, and some boys whom he met, Jack managed to find out many interesting things.

The Assembly Chamber seemed to him a truly wonderful room, and upon the floor were several groups of people admiring it.

He saw one visitor seat himself in the Speaker's chair. "There's room in that chair for two or three small men," said Jack; "I'll try it by and by."

So he did.

"The Speaker was a boy once, too, and so was the Governor," he said to himself aloud.

"Yes, my boy," said a lady, who was near enough to hear him; "so they were. So were all the presidents, and some went barefoot and lived in log-cabins."

"Well, I've often gone barefoot," said Jack, laughing.

"Many boys go barefoot, but they can't all become governors," she said, pleasantly.

She looked at Jack for a moment, and then said with a smile, "You look like a bright young man, though. Do you suppose you could ever be Governor?"

"Perhaps I could," he said. "It can't be harder to learn than any other business."

The lady laughed, and her friends laughed, and Jack arose from the Speaker's chair and walked away.

He had seen enough of that vast State House. It wearied him, there was so much of it, and it was so fine.

"To build this house cost twenty tons of gold!" he said, as he went out through the lofty doorway. "I wish I had some of it. I've kept my nine dollars yet, anyway. The Governor's right. I don't know what he meant, but I'll never be just the same fellow again."

It was so. But it was not merely seeing the Capitol that had changed him. He was changing from a boy who had never seen anything outside of Crofield and Mertonville, into a boy who was walking right out into the world to learn what is in it.

"I'll go to the hotel and write to father and mother," he said; "and I have something to tell them."

It was the first real letter he had ever written, and it seemed a great thing to do -- ten times more important than writing a composition, and almost equal to editing the Eagle.

"I'll just put in everything," he thought, "just as it came along, and they'll know what I've been doing."

It took a long time to write the letter, but it was done at last, and when he put down his pen he exclaimed:

"Hard work always makes me hungry! I wonder if it isn't dinner-time? They said it was always dinner-time here after twelve o'clock. I'll go see." It was long after twelve when he went down to the office to stamp and mail his letter.

"Mr. Ogden," said the clerk, giving Jack an envelope, "here's a note from Mr. Magruder. He left -- "

"Ogden," said a deep, full voice just behind him, "didn't you stay there too long? I am told you sat in the Speaker's chair."

Jack wheeled about, blushing crimson. The Governor was not standing still, but was walking steadily through the office, surrounded by a group of dignified men. It was necessary to walk with them in order to reply to the question, and Jack did so.

"I sat there half a minute," he answered. "I hope it didn't hurt me."

"I'm glad you got out so soon, Jack," replied the Governor approvingly.

"But I heard also that you think of learning the Governor business," went on the great man. "Now, don't you do it. It is not large pay, and you'd be out of work most of the time. Be a blacksmith, or a carpenter, or a tailor, or a printer."

"Well, Governor," said Jack, "I was brought up a blacksmith; and I've worked at carpentering, and printing too; and I've edited a newspaper; but -- "

There he was cut short by the laughter from those dignified men.

"Good-bye, Jack," said the Governor, shaking hands with him. "I hope you'll have a good time in the city. You'll be sent back to the Capitol some day, perhaps."

Jack returned to the clerk's counter to mail his letter, and found that gentleman looking at him as if he wondered what sort of a boy he might be.

The hotel clerk looked at Jack.

"That young fellow knows all the politicians," said the clerk to one of the hotel proprietors. "He can't be so countrified as he looks."

After dinner, Jack returned to his room for a long look at the guide-book. He went through it rapidly to the last leaf, and then threw it down, remarking:

"I never was so tired! I'll take a walk around and see Albany a little more; and I'll not be sorry when the boat goes. I'd like to see Mary and the rest for an hour or two. I think they'd like to see me coming in, too."

Jack sauntered on through street after street, getting a clearer idea of what a city was.

He walked so far that he had some difficulty in returning to the hotel, but finally he found it without asking directions.

Soon after, Jack brought down his satchel, said good-bye to the very polite clerk, and walked out.

He had learned the way to the steamboat-wharf; and he had already taken one brief look at the river and the railway bridge.

"There's the 'Columbia,'" he said, aloud, as he turned a street corner and came in sight of her. "What a boat! Why, if her nose was at the Main Street corner, by the Washington Hotel, her rudder would be half-way across the Cocahutchie!"

He walked the wharf, staring at her from end to end, before he went on board. He had put Mr. Magruder's note into his pocket without reading it.

"I won't open it here," he had said then. "There's nothing in it but a ticket."

He found, however, that he must show the ticket at the gangway, and so he opened the envelope.

"Three tickets?" he said. "And two are in one piece. This one is for a stateroom. That's the bunk I'm to sleep in. Hulloo! Supper ticket! I have supper on board the steamer, do I? Well, I'm not sorry. I'll have to hurry, too. It's about time for her to start."

Jack went on board, and soon was hunting for his stateroom, almost bewildered by the rushing crowd in the great saloon.

He had his key, and knew the number, but it seemed that there were about a thousand of the little doors.

"One hundred and seventy-six is mine," he said; "and I'm going to put away my satchel and go on deck and see the river. Here it is at last. Why, it's a kind of little bedroom! It's as good as a floating hotel. Now I'm all right."

Suddenly he was aware, with a great thrill of pleasure, that the Columbia was in motion. He left his satchel in a corner, locked the door of the stateroom behind him, and set out to find his way to the deck. He went down-stairs and up-stairs, ran against people, and was run against by them; and it occurred to him that all the passengers were hunting for something they could not find.

"Looking for staterooms, I guess," he remarked aloud; but he himself should not have been staring behind him, for at that moment he felt the whack of a collision, and a pair of heavy arms grasped him.

"What you looks vor yourself, poy? You knocks my breath out! You find somebody you looks vor -- eh?"

The tremendous man who held him was not tall, but very heavy, and had a broad face and long black beard and shaggy gray eyebrows.

"Beg pardon!" exclaimed Jack, with a glance at a lady holding one of the man's long arms, and at two other ladies following them.

"You vas got your stateroom?" asked his round-faced captor good-humoredly.

"Oh, yes!" said Jack. "I've got one."

"You haf luck. Dell you vot, poy, it ees a beeg schvindle. Dey say 'passage feefty cent,' und you comes aboard, und you find it is choost so. Dot's von passage. Den it ees von dollar more to go in to supper, und von dollar to eat some tings, und von dollar to come out of supper, und some more dollars to go to sleep, und maybe dey sharges you more dollars to vake up in de morning. Dot is not all. Dey haf no more shtateroom left, und ve all got to zeet up all night. Eh? How you like dot, poy?"

Jack replied as politely as he knew how:

"Oh, you will find a stateroom. They can't be full."

"Dey ees full. Dey ees more as full. Dere vill be no room to sleep on de floor, und ve haf to shtand oop all night. How you likes dot, eh?"

The ladies looked genuinely distressed, and said a number of things to each other in some tongue that Jack did not understand. He had been proud enough of his stateroom up to that moment, but he felt his heart melting. Besides, he had intended to sit up a long while to see the river.

"I can fix it," he suddenly exclaimed. "Let the ladies take my stateroom. It's big enough."

"Poy!" said the German solemnly, "dot is vot you run into my arms for. My name is Guilderaufenberg. Dis lady ees Mrs. Guilderaufenberg. Dis ees Mees Hildebrand. She's Mees Poogmistchgski, and she is a Bolish lady vis my wife."

Jack caught all the names but the last, but he was not half sure about that. He bowed to each.

"Come with me; I'll show you the room," he said. "Then I'm going out on deck."

"Ve comes," said the wide German; and the three ladies all tried to express their thanks at the same time, as Jack led the way. Jack was proud of his success in actually finding his own door again.

"I puts um all een," said Mr. Guilderaufenberg; "den I valks mit you on deck. Dose vommens belifs you vas a fine poy. So you vas, ven I dells de troof."

They all talked a great deal, and Jack managed to reduce the Polish lady's name to Miss "Podgoomski," but he felt uneasily that he had left out a part of it. Mrs. Guilderaufenberg and the others were loaded up with more parcels and baggage than Jack had ever seen three women carry.

"Dey dakes care of dot shtateroom," said his friend. "Ve goes on deck. I bitty anypoddy vot dries to get dot shtateroom avay from Mrs. Guilderaufenberg and Mees Hildebrand and Mees Pod --  -- ski;" but again Jack had failed to hear that Polish lady's name.



Chapter XI.

Down The Hudson.

Jack already felt well acquainted with Mr. Guilderaufenberg.

The broad and bearded German knew all about steamboats, and found his way out upon the forward deck without any difficulty. Jack had lost his way entirely in his first hunting for that spot, and he was glad to find himself under the awning and gazing down the river.

"Ve only shtays here a leetle vile," said his friend. "Den ve goes and takes de ladies down to eat some supper. Vas you hongry?"

Jack was not really hungry for anything but the Hudson, but he said he would gladly join the supper-party.

"I never saw the Hudson before," he said. "I'd rather sit up than not."

"I seet up all de vay to New York and not care," said his friend. "I seet up a great deal. My vife, dot ees Mrs. Guilderaufenberg, she keep a beeg boarding-house in Vashington. Dot ees de ceety to lif in! Vas you ever in Vashington? No?"

"Never was anywhere," said Jack. "Never was in New York -- "

"Yon nefer vas dere? Den you petter goes mit me und Mrs. Guilderaufenberg. Dot ees goot. So! You nefer vas in Vashington. You nefer vas in New York. So! Den you nefer vas in Lonton? I vas dere. You lose youself in Lonton so easy. I lose myself twice vile I vas dere."

"You weren't lost long, I know," said Jack, laughing at the droll shake of the German's head.

"No, I vas find. I vas shoost going to advertise myself ven I finds a street I remember. Den I gets to my hotel. You nefer vas dere? Und you nefer vas in Vashington. You come some day. Dot ees de ceety, mit de Capitol und de great men! Und you vas nefer in Paris, nor in Berlin, nor in Vienna, nor in Amsterdam? No? I haf all of dem seen, und dose oder cities. I dravel, but dere ees doo much boleece, so I comes to dis country, vere dere ees few boleece."

Jack was startled for a moment. The bland, good-humored face of his German acquaintance had suddenly changed. His white teeth showed through his mushtaches, and his beard seemed to wave and curl as he spoke of the police. For one moment Jack thought of Deacon Abram and Mrs. McNamara, of the dark room and the ropes and the window.

"He may not have done anything," he said to himself, aloud, "any more than I did; and they were after me."

"Dot ees not so!" Mr. Guilderaufenberg growled. "I dell dem de troof too mosh. Den I vas a volf, a vild peest, dot mus' be hoonted, und dey hoonted me; put I got avay. I vas in St. Beetersburg, vonce, vile dey hoont somevere else. Den I vas in Constantinople, mit de Turks -- "

Jack's brain was in a whirl. He had read about all of those cities, and here was a man who had really been in them. It was even more wonderful than talking with the Governor or looking at the Hudson.

But in a moment his new friend's face assumed a quieter expression.

"Come along," he said. "De ladies ees ready by dees time. Ve goes. Den I dells you some dings you nefer hear."

He seemed to know all about the Columbia, for he led Jack straight to the stateroom door, through all the crowds of passengers.

"I might not have found it in less than an hour," said Jack to himself. "They're waiting for us. I can't talk with them much."

But he found out that Mrs. Guilderaufenberg spoke English with but little accent, Miss Hildebrand only knocked over a letter here and there, and the Polish lady's fluent English astonished him so much that he complimented her upon it.

"Dot ees so," remarked Mr. Guilderaufenberg. "She talks dem all so vell dey say she vas born dere. Dell you vat, my poy, ven you talks Bolish or Russian, den you vas exercise your tongue so you shpeaks all de oder lankwitches easy."

The ladies were in good humor, and disposed to laugh at anything, especially after they reached the supper-room; and Mrs. Guilderaufenberg at once took a strong interest in Jack because he had never been anywhere.

For convenience, perhaps, the ladies frequently spoke to one another in German, but Jack, without understanding a word of it, listened earnestly to what they were saying.

They often, however, talked in English, and to him, and he learned that they had been making a summer-vacation trip through Canada, and were now on their way home. It was evident that Mr. Guilderaufenberg was a man who did not lack money, and that none of the others were poor. Besides hearing them, Jack was busy in looking around the long, glittering supper-room of the Columbia, noticing how many different kinds of people there were in it. They seemed to be of all nations, ages, colors, and kinds, and Jack would not have missed the sight for anything.

"I'm beginning to see the world," he said to himself, and then he had to reply to Mrs. Guilderaufenberg for about the twentieth time:

"Oh, not at all. You're welcome to the stateroom. I'd rather sit up and look at the river than go to bed."

"Den, Mr. Ogden," she said, "you comes to Vashington, and you comes to my house. I can den repay your kindness. You vill see senators, congressmen, generals, fine men -- great men, in Vashington."

After supper the party found seats under the awning forward, and for a while Jack's eyes were so busy with the beauties of the Hudson that his ears heard little.

The moonlight was very bright and clear, and showed the shores plainly. Jack found his memory of the guidebook was excellent. The villages and towns along the shores were so many collections of twinkling, changing glimmers, and between them lay long reaches of moonshine and shadow.

"I'd like to write home about it," thought Jack, "but I couldn't begin to tell 'em how it looks."

Jack was not sorry when the three ladies said good-night. He had never before been so long upon his careful good behavior in one evening, and it made him feel constrained, till he almost wished he was back in Crofield.

"Mr. Guilderaufenberg," he said as soon as they were alone, "this is the first big river I ever saw."

"So?" said the German. "Den I beats you. I see goot many rifers, ven I drafels. Dell you vat, poy; verefer dere vas big rifers, anyvere, dere vas mosh fighting. Some leetle rifer do choost as vell, sometimes, but de beeg rifers vas alvays battlefields."

"Not the Hudson?" said Jack inquiringly.

"You ees American poy," said the German; "you should know de heestory of your country. Up to Vest Point, de Hudson vas full of fights. All along shore, too. I vas on de Mississippi, and it is fights all de vay down to his mout'. So mit some oder American rifers, but de vorst of all is the Potomac, by Vashington. Eet ees not so fine as de Hudson, but eet is battle-grounds all along shore. I vas on de Danube, and eet ees vorse for fights dan de Potomac. I see so many oder rifers, all ofer, eferyvere, but de fighting rifer of de vorld is de Rhine. It is so fine as de Hudson, and eet ees even better looking by day. -- Ve gets into de Caatskeel Mountains now. Look at dem by dis moonlight, and you ees like on de Rhine. You see de Rhine some day, and ven you comes to Vashington you see de Potomac."

On, on, steamed the Columbia, with what almost seemed a slow motion, it was so ponderous, dignified, and stately, while the moonlit heights and hollows rolled by on either hand. On, at the same time, went Mr. Guilderaufenberg with his stories of rivers and cities and countries that he had seen, and of battles fought along rivers and across them. Then, suddenly, the gruff voice grew deep and savage, like the growl of an angry bear, and he exclaimed:

"I haf seen some men, too, of de kind I run avay from -- "

"Policemen?" said Jack.

"Yah; dat is de name I gif dem," growled the angry German. "De Tsar of Russia, I vas see him, and he vas noding but a chief of boleece. De old Kaiser of Germany, he vas a goot man, but he vas too mosh chief of boleece. So vas de Emperor of Austria; I vas see him. So vas de Sultan of Turkey, but he vas more a humpug dan anyting else. Dere ees leetle boleece in Turkey. I see de Emperor Napoleon before he toomble down. He vas noding but a boleeceman. I vas so vild glad ven he comes down. De leetle kings, I care not so mosh for. You comes to Vashington, and I show you some leetle kings -- " and Mr. Guilderaufenberg grew good-humored and began to laugh.

"What kind of kings?" asked Jack.

"Leetle congressman dot is choost come de first time, und leetle beeg man choost put into office. Dey got ofer it bretty soon, und de fun is gone."

There was a long silence after that. The broad German sat in an arm-chair, and pretty soon he slipped forward a little with his knees very near the network below the rail of the Columbia. Then Jack heard a snore, and knew that his traveler friend was sound asleep.

His traveler friend was sound asleep.

"I wish I had a chair to sleep on, instead of this campstool," thought Jack. "I'll have a look all around the boat and come back."

It took a long while to see the boat, and the first thing he discovered was that a great many people had failed to secure staterooms or berths. They sat in chairs, and they lounged on sofas, and they were curled up on the floor; for the Columbia had received a flood of tourists who were going home, and a large part of the passengers of another boat that had been detained on account of an accident at Albany; so the steamer was decidedly overcrowded.

"There are more people aboard," thought Jack, "than would make two such villages as Crofield, unless you should count in the farms and farmers. I'm glad I came, if it's only to know what a steamboat is. I haven't spent a cent of my nine dollars yet, either."

Here and there he wandered, until he came out at the stern, and had a look at the foaming wake of the boat, and at the river and the heights behind, and at the grand spectacle of another great steamboat, full of lights, on her way up the river. He had seen any number of smaller boats, and of white-sailed sloops and schooners, and now, along the eastern bank, he heard and saw the whizzing rush of several railway trains.

"I'd rather be here," he thought. "The people there can't see half so much as I can."

Not one of them, moreover, had been traveling all over the world with Mr. Guilderaufenberg, and hearing and about kings and their "police."

Getting back to his old place was easier, now that he began to understand the plan of the Columbia; but, when Jack returned, his camp-stool was gone, and he had to sit down on the bare deck or to stand up. He did both, by turns, and he was beginning to feel very weary of sight-seeing, and to wish that he were sound asleep, or that to-morrow had come.

"It's a warm night," he said to himself, "and it isn't so very dark, even now the moon has gone down. Why -- it's getting lighter! Is it morning? Can we be so near the city as that?"

There was a growing rose-tint upon a few clouds in the western sky, as the sun began to look at them from below the range of heights, eastward, but the sun had not yet risen.

Jack was all but breathless. He walked as far forward as he could go, and forgot all about being sleepy or tired.

"There," he said, after a little, "those must be the Palisades."

Out came his guide-book, and he tried to fit names to the places along shore.

"More sailing-vessels," he said, "and there goes another train. We must be almost there."

He was right, and he was all one tingle of excitement as the Columbia swept steadily on down the widening river.

There came a pressure of a hand upon his shoulder.

"Goot-morning, my poy. De city ees coming. How you feels?"

"First-rate," said Jack. "It won't be long, now, will it?"

"You wait a leetle. I sleep some. It vas a goot varm night. De varmest night I efer had vas in Egypt, and de coldest vas in Moscow. De shtove it went out, and ve vas cold, I dell you, dill dot shtove vas kindle up again! Dere vas dwenty-two peoples in dot room, and dot safe us. Ye keep von another varm. Dot ees de trouble mit Russia. De finest vedder in all the vorlt is een America, -- and dere ees more vedder of all kinds."

On, on, and now Jack's blood tingled more sharply, to his very fingers and toes, for they swept beyond Spuyten Duyvil Creek, which his friend pointed out, and the city began to make its appearance.

"It's on both sides," said Jack. "No, that's New Jersey" -- and he read the names on that side from his guidebook.

Masts, wharves, buildings, and beyond them spires, and -- and Jack grew dizzy trying to think of that endless wilderness of streets and houses. He heard what Mr. Guilderaufenberg said about the islands in the harbor, the forts, the ferries, and yet he did not hear it plainly, because it was too much to take in all at once.

"Now I brings de ladies," said Mr. Guilderaufenberg, "an' ve eats breakfast, ven ve all gets to de Hotel Dantzic. Come!"

Jack took one long, sweeping look at the city, so grand and so beautiful under the newly risen sun, and followed.


At that same hour a dark-haired girl sat by an open window in the village of Mertonville. She had arisen and dressed herself, early as it was, and she held in her hand a postal-card, which had arrived for her from Albany the night before.

"By this time," she said, "Jack is in the city. Oh, how I wish I were with him!"

She was silent after that, but she had hardly said it before one of two small boys, who had been pounding one another with pillows in a very small bedroom in Crofield, suddenly threw his pillow at the other, and exclaimed:

"I s'pose Jack's there by this time, Jimmy!"



Chapter XII.

In A New World.

Jack Ogden stood like a boy in a dream, as the "Columbia" swept gracefully into her dock and was made fast. Her swing about was helped by the outgoing tide, that foamed and swirled around the projecting piers.

A hurrying crowd of people was thronging out of the "Columbia," but Jack's German friend did not join them.

"De ceety vill not roon avay," he said, calmly. "You comes mit me."

They went to the cabin for the ladies, and Jack noticed how much baggage the rest were carrying. He took a satchel from Miss Hildebrand, and then the Polish lady, with a grateful smile, allowed him to take another.

"Dose crowds ees gone," remarked Mr. Guilderaufenberg. "Ve haf our chances now."

Afterward, Jack had a confused memory of walking over a wide gang-plank that led into a babel. Miss Hildebrand held him by his left arm while the two other ladies went with Mr. Guilderaufenberg. They came out into a street, between two files of men who shook their whips, shouted, and pointed at a line of carriages. Miss Hildebrand told Jack that they could reach their hotel sooner by the elevated railway.

"He look pale," she thought, considerately. "He did not sleep all night. He never before travel on a steamboat!"

Jack meanwhile had a new sensation.

"This is the city!" he was saying to himself. "I'm really here. There are no crowds, because it's Sunday, -- but then!"

After walking a few minutes they came to a corner, where Mr. Guilderaufenberg turned and said to Jack:

"Dees ees Proadvay. Dere ees no oder street in de vorlt dat ees so long. Look dees vay und den look dat vay! So! Eh? Dot ees Proadvay. Dere ees no oder city in de vorlt vere a beeg street keep Soonday!"

It was indeed a wonderful street to the boy from Crofield, and he felt the wonder of it; and he felt the wonder of the Sunday quiet and of the closed places of business.

On Broadway, at last!

"There's a policeman," he remarked to Mr. Guilderaufenberg.

"So!" said the German, smiling; "but he ees a beople's boleeceman. Eef he vas a king's boleeceman, I vas not here. I roon avay, or I vas lock up. Jack, ven you haf dodge some king's boleecemen, like me, you vish you vas American, choost like me now, und vas safe!"

"I believe I should," said Jack, politely; but his head was not still for an instant. His eyes and his thoughts were busily at work. He had expected to see tall and splendid buildings, and had even dreamed of them. How he had longed and hoped and planned to get to this very place! He had seen pictures of the city, but the reality was nevertheless a delightful surprise.

Miss Hildebrand pointed out Trinity Church, and afterward St. Paul's.

"Maybe I'll go to one of those big churches, to-day," said Jack.

"Oh, no," said Miss Hildebrand. "You find plenty churches up-town. Not come back so far."

"I shall know where these are, any way," Jack replied.

After a short walk they came to City Hall Square.

"There!" Jack exclaimed. "I know this place! It's just like the pictures in my guide-book. There's the Post-office, the City Hall, -- everything!"

"Come," said Mr. Guilderaufenberg, beginning to cross the street. "Ve must go ofer und take de elevated railvay."

"Come along, Meester Jack Ogden," added Mrs. Guilderaufenberg.

"There are enough people here now," said Jack, as they walked along -- "Sunday or no Sunday!"

"Of course," said Miss Hildebrand, pointing with a hand that lifted a small satchel. "That's the elevated railway station over there, across both streets. There, too, is where you go to the suspension bridge to Brooklyn, over the East River. You see, when we go by. You see to-morrow. Not much, now. I am so hungry!"

"I want to see everything," said Jack; "but I'm hungry, too. Why, we're going upstairs!"

In a minute more Jack was sitting by an open window of an elevated railway car. This was another entirely new experience, and Jack found it hard to rid himself of the notion that possibly the whole long-legged railway might tumble down or the train suddenly shoot off from the track and drop into the street.

"Dees ees bretty moch American," said Mr. Guilderaufenberg, as Jack stared out at the third-story windows of the buildings. "You nefer vas here before? So! Den you nefer feels again choost like now. You ees fery moch a poy. I dell you, dere is not soch railvays in Europe; I vonce feel like you now. Dot vas ven I first come here. It vas not Soonday; it vas a day for de flags. I dell you vat it ees: ven dot American feels goot, he hang out hees flag. Shtars und shtripes -- I like dot flag! I look at some boleece, und den I like dot flag again, for dey vas not hoont, hoont, hoont, for poor Fritz von Guilderaufenberg, for dot he talk too moch!"

"It's pretty quiet all along. All the stores seem to be closed," said Jack, looking down at the street below.

"Eet ees so shtill!" remarked Mr. Guilderaufenberg. "I drafel de vorlt ofer und I find not dees Soonday. In Europe, it vas not dere to keep. I dell you, ven dere ees no more Soonday, den dere ees no more America! So! Choost you remember dot, my poy, from a man dot vas hoonted all ofer Europe!"

Jack was quite ready to believe Mr. Guilderaufenberg. He had been used to even greater quiet, in Crofield, for after all there seemed to be a great deal going on.

The train they were in made frequent stops, and it did not seem long to Jack before Mrs. Guilderaufenberg and the other ladies got up and began to gather their parcels and satchels. Jack was ready when his friends led the way to the door.

"I'll be glad to get off," he thought. "I am afraid Aunt Melinda would say I was traveling on Sunday."

The conductor threw open the car door and shouted, and Mr. Guilderaufenberg hurried forward exclaiming: "Come! Dees ees our station!"

Jack had taken even more than his share of the luggage; and now his arm was once more grasped by Miss Hildebrand.

"I'll take good care of her," he said to himself, as she pushed along out of the cars. "All I need to do is to follow the rest."

He did not understand what she said to the others in German, but it was: "I'll bring Mr. Ogden. He will know how to look out for himself, very soon."

She meant to see him safely to the Hotel Dantzic, that morning; and the next thing Jack knew he was going down a long flight of stairs, to the sidewalk, while Miss Hildebrand was explaining that part of the city they were in. Even while she was talking, and while he was looking in all directions, she wheeled him suddenly to the left, and they came to a halt.

"Hotel Dantzic," read Jack aloud, from the sign. "It's a tall building; but it's very thin."

The ladies went into the waiting-room, while Jack followed Mr. Guilderaufenberg into the office. The German was welcomed by the proprietor as if he were an old acquaintance.

A moment afterward, Mr. Guilderaufenberg turned away from the desk and said to Jack:

"My poy, I haf a room for you. Eet ees high oop, but eet ees goot; und you bays only feefty cent a day. You bay for von veek, now. You puys vot you eats vere you blease in de ceety."

The three dollars and a half paid for the first week made the first break in Jack's capital of nine dollars.

"Any way," he thought, when he paid it, "I have found a place to sleep in. Money'll go fast in the city, and I must look out. I'll put my baggage in my room and then come down to breakfast."

"You breakfast mit us dees time," said Mr. Guilderaufenberg, kindly. "Den you not see us more, maybe, till you comes to Vashington."

Jack got his key and the number of his room and was making his way to the foot of a stairway when a very polite man said to him:

"This way, sir. This way to the elevator. Seventh floor, sir."

Jack had heard and read of elevators, but it was startling to ride in one for the first time. It was all but full when he got in, and after it started, his first thought was:

"How it's loaded! What if the rope should break!"

It stopped to let a man out, and started and stopped again and again, but it seemed only a few long, breathless moments before the man in charge of it said; "Seventh, sir!"

The moment Jack was in his room he exclaimed:

"Isn't this grand, though? It's only about twice as big as that stateroom on the steamboat. I can feel at home here."

It was a pleasant little room, and Jack began at once to make ready for breakfast.

He was brushing his hair when he went to the window, and as he looked out he actually dropped the brush in his surprise.

"Where's my guide-book?" he said. "I know where I am, though. That must be the East River. Away off there is Long Island. Looks as if it was all city. Maybe that is Brooklyn, -- I don't know. Isn't this a high house? I can look down on all the other roofs. Jingo!"

He hurried through his toilet, meanwhile taking swift glances out of the window. When he went out to the elevator, he said to himself:

"I'll go down by the stairs some day, just to see how it seems. A storm would whistle like anything, round the top of this building!"

When he got down, Mr. Guilderaufenberg was waiting for him, and the party of ladies went in to breakfast, in a restaurant which occupied nearly all of the lower floor of the hotel.

"I understand," said Jack, good-humoredly, in reply to an explanation from Miss Hildebrand. "You pay for just what you order, and no more, and they charge high for everything but bread. I'm beginning to learn something of city ways."

During all that morning, anybody who knew Jack Ogden would have had to look at him twice, he had been so quiet and sedate; but the old, self-confident look gradually returned during breakfast.

"Ve see you again at supper," said Mr. Guilderaufenberg, as they arose. "Den ve goes to Vashington. You valks out und looks about. You easy finds your vay back. Goot-bye till den."

Jack shook hands with his friends, and walked out into the street.

"Well, here I am!" he thought. "This is the city. I'm all alone in it, too, and I must find my own way. I can do it, though. I'm glad it's Sunday, so that I needn't go straight to work."


At that moment, the nine o'clock bells were ringing in two wooden steeples in the village of Crofield; but the bell of the third steeple was silent, down among the splinters of what had been the pulpit of its own meeting-house. The village was very still, but there was something peculiar in the quiet in the Ogden homestead. Even the children went about as if they missed something or were listening for somebody they expected.

There were nine o'clock bells, also, in Mertonville, and there was a ring at the door-bell of the house of Mr. Murdoch, the editor.

"Why, Elder Holloway!" exclaimed Mrs. Murdoch, when she opened the door. "Please to walk in."

"Thank you, Mrs. Murdoch, but I can't," he said, speaking as if hurried, "Please tell Miss Ogden there's a class of sixteen girls in our Sunday school, and the teacher's gone; and I've taken the liberty of promising for her that she'll take charge of it."

"I'll call her," said Mrs. Murdoch.

"No, no," replied the elder. "Just tell her it's a nice class, and that the girls expect her to come, and we'll be ever go much obliged to her. Good-morning!" -- and he was gone.

"Oh, Mrs. Murdoch!" exclaimed Mary, when the elder's message was given. "I can't! I don't know them! I suppose I ought; but I'd have said no, if I had seen him."

The elder had thought of that, perhaps, and had provided against any refusal by retreating. As he went away he said to himself:

"She can do it, I know; if she does, it'll help me carry out my plan."

He looked, just then, as if it were a very good plan, but he did not reveal it.

Mary Ogden persuaded Mrs. Murdoch to take her to another church that morning, so that she need not meet any of her new class.

"I hope Jack will go to church in the city," she said; and her mother said the same thing to Aunt Melinda over in Crofield.

Jack could not have given any reason why his feet turned westward, but he went slowly along for several blocks, while he stared at the rows of buildings, at the sidewalks, at the pavements, and at everything else, great and small. He was actually leaving the world in which he had been brought up -- the Crofield world -- and taking a first stroll around in a world of quite another sort. He met some people on the streets, but not many.

"They're all getting ready for church," he thought, and his next thought was expressed aloud.

"Whew! what street's this, I wonder?"

He had passed row after row of fine buildings, but suddenly he had turned into a wide avenue which seemed a street of palaces. Forward he went, faster and faster, staring eagerly at one after another of those elegant mansions of stone, of marble, or of brick.

"See here, Johnny," he suddenly heard in a sharp voice close to him, "what number do you want?"

"Hallo," said Jack, halting and turning. "What street's this?"

He was looking up into the good-natured face of a tall man in a neat blue uniform.

"What are you looking for?" began the policeman again. But, without waiting for Jack's answer, he went on, "Oh, I see! You're a greeny lookin' at Fifth Avenue. Mind where you're going, or you'll run into somebody!"

"Is this Fifth Avenue?" Jack asked. "I wish I knew who owned these houses."

"You do, do you?" laughed the man in blue. "Well, I can tell you some of them. That house belongs to -- " and the policeman went on giving name after name, and pointing out the finest houses.

Some of the names were familiar to Jack. He had read about these men in newspapers, and it was pleasant to see where they lived.

"See that house?" asked the policeman, pointing at one of the finest residences. "Well, the man that owns it came to New York as poor as you, maybe poorer. Not quite so green, of course! But you'll soon get over that. See that big house yonder, on the corner? Well, the cash for that was gathered by a chap who began as a deck-hand. Most of the big guns came up from nearly nothing. Now you walk along and look out; but mind you don't run over anybody."

"Much obliged," said Jack, and as he walked on, he kept his eyes open, but his thoughts were busy with what the policeman had told him.

That was the very idea he had while he was in Crofield. That was what had made him long to break away from the village and find his way to the city. His imagination had busied itself with stories of poor boys, -- as poor and green as he, scores of them, -- born and brought up in country homes, who, refusing to stay at home and be nobodies, had become successful men. All the great buildings he saw seemed to tell the same story. Still he did say to himself once:

"Some of their fathers must have been rich enough to give them a good start. Some were born rich, too. I don't care for that, though. I don't know as I want so big a house. I am going to get along somehow. My chances are as good as some of these fellows had."

Just then he came to a halt, for right ahead of him were open grounds, and beyond were grass and trees. To the right and left were buildings.

"I know what this is!" exclaimed Jack. "It must be Central Park. Some day I'm going there, all over it. But I'll turn around now, and find a place to go to church. I've passed a dozen churches on the way."



Chapter XIII.

A Wonderful Sunday.

When Jack turned away from the entrance to Central Park, he found much of the Sunday quiet gone. It was nearly half-past ten o'clock; the sidewalks were covered with people, and the street resounded with the rattle of carriage-wheels.

There was some uneasiness in the mind of the boy from Crofield. The policeman had impressed upon Jack the idea that he was not at home in the city, and that he did not seem at home there. He did not know one church from another, and part of his uneasiness was about how city people managed their churches. Perhaps they sold tickets, he thought; or perhaps you paid at the door; or possibly it didn't cost anything, as in Crofield.

"How would he get in?"

"I'll ask," he decided, as he paused in front of what seemed to him a very imposing church. He stood still, for a moment, as the steady procession passed him, part of it going by, but much of it turning into the church.

"Mister -- ," he said bashfully to four well-dressed men in quick succession; but not one of them paused to answer him. Two did not so much as look at him, and the glances given him by the other two made his cheeks burn -- he hardly knew why.

"There's a man I'll try," thought Jack. "I'm getting mad!" The man of whom Jack spoke came up the street. He seemed an unlikely subject. He was so straight he almost leaned backward; he was rather slender than thin; and was uncommonly well dressed. In fact, Jack said to himself: "He looks as if he had bought the meeting-house, and was not pleased with his bargain."

Proud, even haughty, as was the manner of the stranger, Jack stepped boldly forward and again said:

"Mister?"

"Well, my boy, what is it?"

The response came with a halt and almost a bow.

"If a fellow wished to go to this church, how would he get in?" asked Jack.

"Do you live in the city?" There was a frown of stern inquiry on the broad forehead; but the head was bending farther forward.

"No," said Jack, "I live in Crofield."

"Where's that?"

"Away up on the Cocahutchie River. I came here early this morning."

"What's your name?"

"John Ogden."

"Come with me, John Ogden. You may have a seat in my pew. Come."

Into the church and up the middle aisle Jack followed his leader, with a sense of awe almost stifling him; then, too, he felt drowned in the thunderous flood of music from the organ. He saw the man stop, open a pew-door, step back, smile and bow, and then wait until the boy from Crofield had passed in and taken his seat.

"He's a gentleman," thought Jack, hardly aware that he himself had bowed low as he went in, and that a smile of grim approval had followed him.

In the pew behind them sat another man, as haughty looking, but just now wearing the same kind of smile as he leaned forward and asked in an audible whisper:

"General, who's your friend?"

"Mr. John Ogden, of Crofield, away up on the Cookyhutchie River. I netted him at the door," was the reply, in the same tone.

"Good catch?" asked the other.

"Just as good as I was, Judge, forty years ago. I'll tell you how that was some day."

"Decidedly raw material, I should say."

"Well, so was I. I was no more knowing than he is. I remember what it is to be far away from home."

The hoarse, subdued whispers ceased; the two gentle men looked grim and severe again. Then there was a grand burst of music from the organ, the vast congregation stood up, and Jack rose with them.

He felt solemn enough, there was no doubt of that; but what he said to himself unconsciously took this shape:

"Jingo! If this isn't the greatest going to church I ever did! Hear that voice! The organ too -- what music! Don't I wish Molly was here! I wish all the family were here."

The service went on and Jack listened attentively, in spite of a strong tendency in his eyes to wander among the pillars to the galleries, up into the lofty vault above him, or around among the pews full of people. He knew it was a good sermon and that the music was good, singing and all -- especially when the congregation joined in "Old Hundred" and another old hymn that he knew. Still he had an increasing sense of being a very small fellow in a very large place. When he raised his head, after the benediction, he saw the owner of the pew turn toward him, bow low, and hold out his hand. Jack shook hands, of course.

"Good-morning, Mr. Ogden," said the gentleman gravely, with almost a frown on his face, but very politely, and then he turned and walked out of the pew. Jack also bowed as he shook hands, and said, "Good-morning. Thank you, sir. I hope you enjoyed the sermon."

"General," said the gentleman in the pew behind them, "pretty good for raw material. Keep an eye on him."

"No, I won't," said the general. "I've spoiled four or five in that very way."

"Well, I believe you're right," said the judge, after a moment. "It's best for that kind of boy to fight his own battles. I had to."

"So did I," said the general, "and I was well pounded for a while."

Jack did not hear all of the conversation, but he had a clear idea that they were talking about him; and as he walked slowly out of the church, packed in among the crowd in the aisle, he had a very rosy face indeed.

Jack had in mind a thought that had often come to him in the church at Crofield, near the end of the sermon: -- he was conscious that it was dinner-time.

Of course he thought, with a little homesickness, of the home dinner-table.

"I wish I could sit right down with them," he thought, "and tell them what Sunday is in the city. Then my dinner wouldn't cost me a cent there, either. No matter, I'm here, and now I can begin to make more money right away. I have five dollars and fifty cents left anyway."

Then he thought of the bill of fare at the Hotel Dantzic, and many of the prices on it, and remembered Mr. Guilderaufenberg's instructions about going to some cheaper place for his meals.

"I didn't tell him that I had only nine dollars," he said to himself, "but I'll follow his advice. He's a traveler."

Jack had been too proud to explain how little money he had, but his German friend had really done well by him in making him take the little room at the top of the Hotel Dantzic. He had said to his wife:

"Dot poy! Vell, I see him again some day. He got a place to shleep, anyhow, vile he looks around und see de ceety. No oder poy I efer meets know at de same time so moch and so leetle."

With every step from the church door Jack felt hungrier, but he did not turn his steps toward the Hotel Dantzic. He walked on down to the lower part of the city, on the lookout for hotels and restaurants. It was not long before he came to a hotel, and then he passed another and another; and he passed a number of places where the signs told him of dinners to be had within, but all looked too fine.

"They're for rich people," he said, shaking his head, "like the people in that church. What stacks of money they must have? That organ maybe cost more than all the meeting-houses in Crofield!"

After going a little farther Jack exclaimed;

"I don't care! I've just got to eat!"

He was getting farther and farther from the Hotel Dantzic, and suddenly his eyes were caught by a very taking sign, at the top of some neat steps leading down into a basement:

"Dinner. Roast Beef. Twenty-Five Cents."

"That'll do." said Jack eagerly. "I can stand that. Roost beef alone is forty cents at the Dantzic."

Down he went and found himself in a wide comfortable room, containing two long dining tables, and a number of small oblong tables, and some round tables, all as neat as wax. It was a very pleasant place, and a great many other hungry people were there already.

Jack sat down at one of the small tables, and a waiter came to him at once.

"Dinner sir? Yessir. Roast beef, sir? Yessir. Vegetables? Potatoes? Lima-beans? Sweet corn?"

"Yes, please," said Jack. "Beef, potatoes, beans, and corn?" and the waiter was gone.

It seemed to be a long time before the beef and vegetables came, but they were not long in disappearing after they were on the table.

The waiter had other people to serve, but he was an attentive fellow.

"Pie sir?" he said, naming five kinds without a pause.

"Custard-pie," said Jack.

"Coffee, sir? Yessir," and he darted away again.

"This beats the Hotel Dantzic all to pieces," remarked Jack, as he went on with his pie and coffee; but the waiter was scribbling something upon a slip of paper, and when it was done he put it down by Jack's plate.

"Jingo!" said Jack in a horrified tone, a moment later. "What's this? 'Roast beef, 25; potatoes, 10; Lima-beans, 10; corn, 10; bread, 5; coffee, 10; pie, 10: $0.80.' Eighty cents! Jingo! How like smoke it does cost to live in New York! This can't be one of the cheap places Mr. Guilderaufenberg meant."

Jack felt much chagrined, but he finished his pie and coffee bravely. "It's a sell," he said, " -- but then it was a good dinner!"

He went to the cashier with an effort to act as if it was an old story to him. He gave the cashier a dollar, received his change, and turned away, as the man behind the counter remarked to a friend at his elbow:

"I knew it. He had the cash. His face was all right."

"Clothes will fool anybody," said the other man.

Jack heard it, and he looked at the men sitting at the tables.

"They're all wearing Sunday clothes," he thought, "but some are no better than mine. But there's a difference. I've noticed it all along."

So had others, for Jack had not seen one in that restaurant who had on at all such a suit of clothes as had been made for him by the Crofield tailor.

"Four dollars and seventy cents left," said Jack thoughtfully, as he went up into the street; and then he turned to go down-town without any reason for choosing that direction.

An hour later, Mr. Gilderaufenberg and his wife and their friends were standing near the front door of the Hotel Dantzic, talking with the proprietor. Around them lay their baggage, and in front of the door was a carriage. Evidently they were going away earlier than they had intended.

"Dot poy!" exclaimed the broad and bearded German. "He find us not here ven he come. You pe goot to dot poy, Mr. Keifelheimer."

"So!" said the hotel proprietor, and at once three other voices chimed in with good-bye messages to Jack Ogden. Mr. Keifelheimer responded:

"I see to him. He will come to Vashington to see you. So!"

Then they entered the carriage, and away they went.


After walking for a few blocks, Jack found that he did not know exactly where he was. But suddenly he exclaimed:

"Why, if there isn't City Hall Square! I've come all the way down Broadway."

He had stared at building after building for a time without thinking much about them, and then he had begun to read the signs.

"I'll come down this way again to-morrow," he said. "It's good there are so many places to work in. I wish I knew exactly what I would like to do, and which of them it is best to go to. I know! I can do as I did in Crofield. I can try one for a while, and then, if I don't like it, I can try another. It is lucky that I know how to do 'most anything."

The confident smile had come back. He had entirely recovered from the shock of his eighty-cent expenditure. He had not met many people, all the way down, and the stores were shut; but for that very reason he had bad more time to study the signs.

"Very nearly every kind of business is done on Broadway," he said, "except groceries and hardware, -- but they sell more clothing than anything else. I'll look round everywhere before I settle down; but I must look out not to spend too much money till I begin to make some."

"It's not far now," he said, a little while after, "to the lower end of the city and to the Battery. I'll take a look at the Battery before I go back to the Hotel Dantzic."

Taller and more majestic grew the buildings as he went on, but he was not now so dazed and confused as he had been in the morning.

"Here is Trinity Church, again," he said. "I remember about that. And that's Wall Street. I'll see that as I come back; but now I'll go right along and see the Battery. Of course there isn't any battery there, but Mr. Guilderaufenberg said that from it I could see the fort on Governor's Island."

Jack did not see much of the Battery, for he followed the left-hand sidewalk at the Bowling Green, where Broadway turns into Whitehall Street. He had so long been staring at great buildings whose very height made him dizzy, that he was glad to see beside them some which looked small and old.

"I'll find my way without asking," he remarked to himself. "I'm pretty near the end now. There are some gates, and one of them is open. I'll walk right in behind that carriage. That must be the gate to the Battery."

The place he was really looking for was at some distance to the right, and the carriage he was following so confidently, had a very different destination.

The wide gateway was guarded by watchful men, not to mention two policemen, and they would have caught and stopped any boy who had knowingly tried to do what Jack did so innocently. Their backs must have been turned, for the carriage passed in, and so did Jack, without any one's trying to stop him. He was as bold as a lion about it, because he did not know any better. A number of people were at the same time crowding through a narrower gateway at one side, and they may have distracted the attention of the gatemen.

"I'd just as lief go in at the wagon-gate," said Jack, and he did not notice that each one stopped and paid something before going through. Jack went on behind the carriage. The carriage crossed what seemed to Jack a kind of bridge housed over. Nobody but a boy straight from Crofield could have gone so far as that without suspecting something; but the carriage stopped behind a line of other vehicles, and Jack walked unconcernedly past them.

"Jingo!" he suddenly exclaimed. "What's this? I do believe the end of this street is moving!"

He bounded forward, much startled by a thing so strange and unaccountable, and in a moment more he was looking out upon a great expanse of water, dotted here and there with canal-boats, ships, and steamers.

"Mister," he asked excitedly of a little man leaning against a post, "what's this?"

"Have ye missed your way and got onto the wrong ferry-boat?" replied the little man gleefully. "I did it once myself. All right, my boy. You've got to go to Staten Island this time. Take it coolly."

"Ferry-boat?" said Jack. "Staten Island? I thought it was the end of the street, going into the Battery!"

"Oh, you're a greenhorn!" laughed the little man "Well, it won't hurt ye; only there's no boat back from the island, on Sunday, till after supper. I'll tell ye all about it. Where'd you come from?"

"From Crofield," said Jack, "and I got here only this morning."

The little man eyed him half-suspiciously for a moment, and then led him to the rail of the boat.

"Look back there," he said. "Yonder's the Battery. You ought to have kept on. It's too much for me how you ever got aboard of this 'ere boat without knowing it!" And he went on with a long string of explanations, of which Jack understood about half, with the help of what he recalled from his guide-book. All the while, however, they were having a sail across the beautiful bay, and little by little Jack made up his mind not to care.

"I've made a mistake and slipped right out of the city," he said to himself, "about as soon as I got in! But maybe I can slip back again this evening."

"About the greenest bumpkin I've seen for an age," thought the little man, as he stood and looked at Jack. "It'll take all sorts of blunders to teach him. He is younger than he looks, too. Anyway, this sail won't hurt him a bit."

That was precisely Jack's conclusion long before the swift voyage ended and he walked off the ferry-boat upon the solid ground of Staten Island.



Chapter XIV.

Friends And Enemies.

When Jack Ogden left the Staten Island ferry-boat, he felt somewhat as if he had made an unexpected voyage to China, and perhaps might never return to his own country. It was late in the afternoon, and he had been told by the little man that the ferry-boat would wait an hour and a half before the return voyage.

"I won't lose sight of her," said Jack, thoughtfully. "No running around for me this time!"

He did not move about at all. He sat upon an old box, in front of a closed grocery store, near the ferry-house, deciding to watch and wait until the boat started.

"Dullest time I ever had!" he thought; "and it will cost me six cents to get back. You have to pay something everywhere you go. I wish that boat was ready to go now."

It was not ready, and it seemed as if it never would be; meanwhile the Crofield boy sat there on the box and studied the ferry-boat business. He had learned something of it from his guide-book, but he understood it all before the gates opened.

He had not learned much concerning any part of Staten Island, beyond what he already knew from the map; but shortly after he had paid his fare, he began to learn something about the bay and the lower end of New York.

"I'm glad to be on board again," he said, as he walked through the long cabin to the open deck forward. In a few minutes more he drew a long breath and exclaimed:

"She's starting!  I know I'm on the right boat, too. But I'm hungry and I wish I had something to eat."

There was nothing to be had on board the boat, but, although hungry, Jack could see enough to keep him from thinking about it.

"It's all city; and all wharves and houses and steeples, -- every way you look," he said. "I'm glad to have seen it from the outside, after all."

Jack stared, but did not say a word to anybody until the ferry-boat ran into its dock.

"If I only had a piece of pie and a cup of coffee!" Jack was thinking, as he walked along by the wharves, ashore. Then he caught sight of the smallest restaurant he had ever seen. It was a hand-cart with an awning over it, standing on a corner. A placard hanging from the awning read:

"Clams, one cent apiece; coffee, five cents a cup."

"That's plain enough!" exclaimed Jack. "She can't put on a cent more for anything."

A stout, black-eyed woman stood behind a kind of table, at the end of the cart; and on the table there were bottles of vinegar and pepper-sauce, some crackers, and a big tin coffee-heater.

Coffee and clams.

"Clams?" she repeated. "Half-dozen, on the shell? Coffee? All right."

"That's all I want, thank you," said Jack, and she at once filled a cup from the coffee-urn and began to open shellfish for him.

"These are the smallest clams I ever saw," thought Jack; "but they're good."

They seemed better and better as he went on eating; and the woman willingly supplied them. He drank his coffee and ate crackers freely, and he was just thinking that it was time for him to stop when the black-eyed woman remarked, with an air of pride,

"Nice and fresh, ain't they? You seem to like them, -- thirteen's a dozen; seventeen cents."

"Have I swallowed a dozen already?" said Jack, looking at the pile of shells. "Yes, ma'am, they're tiptop!"

After paying for his supper, there were only some coppers left, besides four one-dollar bills, in his pocket-book.

"Which way's the Battery, ma'am?" Jack asked, as she began to open clams for another customer.

"Back there a way. Keep straight on till you see it," she answered; adding kindly, "It's like a little park; I didn't know you were from the country."

"Pretty good supper, after all," he said. "Cheap, too; but my money's leaking away! Well, it isn't dark yet. I must see all I can before I go to the hotel."

He followed the woman's directions, and he was glad he had done so. He had studied his guide-book faithfully as to all that end of New York, and in spite of his recent blunder did not now need to ask anybody which was the starting place of the elevated railways and which was Castle Garden, where the immigrants were landed. There were little groups of these foreigners scattered over the great open space before him.

"They've come from all over the world," he said, looking at group after group. "Some of those men will have a harder time than I have had trying to get started in New York."

It occurred to him, nevertheless, that he was a long way from Crofield, and that he was not yet at all at home in the city.

"I know some things that they don't know, anyway -- if I am green!" he was thinking. "I'll cut across and take a nearer look at Castle Garden -- "

"Stop there! Stop, you fellow in the light hat! Hold on!" Jack heard some one cry out, as he started to cross the turfed inclosures.

"What do you want of me?" Jack asked, as he turned around.

"Don't you see the sign there, 'Keep off the grass'? Look! You're on the grass now! Come off! Anyway, I'll fine you fifty cents!"

Jack looked as the man pointed, and saw a little board on a short post; and there was the sign, in plain letters; and here before him was a tall, thin, sharp-eyed, lantern-jawed young man, looking him fiercely in the face and holding out his hand.

"Fifty cents! Quick, now, -- or go with me to the police station."

Jack was a little bewildered for a moment. He felt like a cat in a very strange garret. His first thought of the police made him remember part of what Mr. Guilderaufenberg had told him about keeping away from them; but he remembered only the wrong part, and his hand went unwillingly into his pocket.

"Right off, now! No skulking!" exclaimed the sharp eyed man.

"I haven't fifty cents in change," said Jack, dolefully, taking a dollar bill from his pocket-book.

"Hand me that, then. I'll go and get it changed;" and the man reached out a claw-like hand and took the bill from Jack's fingers, without waiting for his consent. "I'll be right back. You stand right there where you are till I come -- "

"Hold on!" shouted Jack. "I didn't say you could. Give me back that bill!"

"You wait. I'll bring your change as soon as I can get it," called the sharp-eyed man, as he darted away; but Jack's hesitation was over in about ten seconds.

"I'll follow him, anyhow!" he exclaimed; and he did so at a run.

"Halt!" -- it was a man in a neat gray uniform and gilt buttons who spoke this time; and Jack halted just as the fleeing man vanished into a crowd on one of the broad walks.

"He's got my dollar!"

"Tell me what it is, quick!" said the policeman, with a sudden expression of interest.

Jack almost spluttered as he related how the fellow had collected the fine; but the man in gray only shook his head.

"I thought I saw him putting up something," he said. "It's well he didn't get your pocket-book, too! He won't show himself here again to-night. He's safe by this time."

"Do you know him?" asked Jack, greatly excited; but more than a little in dread of the helmet-hat, buttons, and club.

"Know him? 'Jimmy the Sneak?' Of course I do. He's only about two weeks out of Sing Sing. It won't be long before he's back there again. When did you come to town? What's your name? Where'd you come from? Where are you staying? Do you know anybody in town?"

He had a pencil and a little blank-book, and he rapidly wrote out Jack's answers.

"You'll get your eyes open pretty fast, at this rate," he said. "That's all I want of you, now. If I lay a hand on Jimmy, I'll know where to find you. You'd better go home. If any other thief asks you for fifty cents, you call for the nearest policeman. That's what we're here for."

"A whole dollar gone, and nothing to show for it!" groaned Jack, as he walked away. "Only three dollars and a few cents left! I'll walk all the way up to the Hotel Dantzic, instead of paying five cents for a car ride. I'll have to save money now."

He felt more kindly toward all the policemen he met, and he was glad there were so many of them.

"The police at Central Park," he remarked to himself, "and that fellow at the Battery, were all in gray, and the street police wear blue; but they're a good-looking set of men. I hope they will nab Jimmy the Sneak and get back my dollar for me."

The farther he went, however, the clearer became his conviction that dollars paid to thieves seldom come back; and that an evening walk of more than three miles over the stone sidewalks of New York is a long stroll for a very tired and somewhat homesick country boy. He cared less and less, all the way, how strangely and how splendidly the gas-lights and the electric lights lit up the tall buildings.

"One light's white," he said, "and the other's yellowish, and that's about all there is of it. Well, I'm not quite so green, for I know more than I did this morning!"

It was late for him when he reached the hotel, but it seemed to be early enough for everybody else. Many people were coming and going, and among them all he did not see a face that he knew or cared for. The tired-out, homesick feeling grew upon him, and he walked very dolefully to the elevator. Up it went in a minute, and when he reached his room he threw his hat upon the table, and sat down to think over the long and eventful day.

Jack is homesick.

"This is the toughest day's work I ever did! I'd like to see the folks in Crofield and tell 'em about it, though," he said.

He went to bed, intending to consider his plans for Monday, but he made one mistake. He happened to close his eyes.

The next thing he knew, there was a ray of warm sunshine striking his face from the open window, for he had slept soundly, and it was nearly seven o'clock on Monday morning.

Jack looked around his room, and then sprang out of bed.

"Hurrah for New York!" he said, cheerfully. "I know what to do now. I'm glad I'm here! I'll write a letter home, first thing, and then I'll pitch in and go to work!"

He felt better. All the hopes he had cherished so long began to stir within him. He brushed his clothes thoroughly, and put on his best necktie; and then he walked out of that room with hardly a doubt that all the business in the great city was ready and waiting for him to come and take part in it. He went down the elevator, after a glance at the stairway and a shake of his head.

"Stairs are too slow," he thought. "I'll try them some time when I am not so busy."

As he stepped out upon the lower floor he met Mr. Keifelheimer, the proprietor.

"You come in to preakfast mit me," he said. "I promise Mr. Guilderaufenberg and de ladies, too, I keep an eye on you. Some letters in de box for you. You get dem ven you come out. Come mit me."

Jack was very glad to hear of his friends, what had become of them, and what they had said about him, and of course he was quite ready for breakfast. Mr. Keifelheimer talked, while they were eating, in the most friendly and protecting way. Jack felt that he could speak freely; and so he told the whole story of his adventures on Sunday, -- Staten Island, Jimmy the Sneak, and all. Mr. Keifelheimer listened with deep interest, making appreciative remarks every now and then; but he seemed to be most deeply touched by the account of the eighty-cent dinner.

"Dot vas too much!" he said, at last. "It vas a schvindle! Dose Broadvay restaurants rob a man efery time. Now, I only charge you feefty-five cents for all dis beautiful breakfast; and you haf had de finest beefsteak and two cups of splendid coffee. So, you make money ven you eat mit me!"

Jack could but admit that the Hotel Dantzic price was lower than the other; but he paid it with an uneasy feeling that while he must have misunderstood Mr. Keifelheimer's invitation it was impossible to say so.

"Get dose letter," said the kindly and thoughtful proprietor. "Den you write in de office. It is better dan go avay up to your room."

Jack thanked him and went for his mail, full of wonder as to how any letters could have come to him.

"A whole handful!" he said, in yet greater wonder, when the clerk handed them out. "Who could have known I was here? Nine, -- ten, -- eleven, -- twelve. A dozen!"

One after another Jack found the envelops full of nicely printed cards and circulars, telling him how and where to find different kinds of goods.

"That makes eight," he said; "and every one a sell. But, -- jingo!"

It was a blue envelope, and when he opened it his fingers came upon a dollar bill.

"Mr. Guilderaufenberg's a trump!" he exclaimed; and he added, gratefully, "I'd only about two dollars and a half left. He's only written three lines."

They were kindly words, however, ending with:


I have not tell the ladies; but you should be pay for the stateroom.

I hope you have a good time.

F. Von Guilderaufenberg.


The next envelope was white and square; and when it came open Jack found another dollar bill.

"She's a real good woman!" he said, when he read his name and these words:


I say nothing to anybody; but you should have pay for your stateroom. You was so kind. In haste,

Gertrude Von Guilderaufenberg.


"I'll go and see them some day," said Jack.

He had opened the eleventh envelope, which was square and pink, and out came another dollar bill. Jack read his own name again, followed by:


We go this minute. I have not told them. You should have pay for your stateroom. Thanks. You was so kind.

Marie Hildebrand.


"Now, if she isn't one of the most thoughtful women in the world!" said Jack; "and what's this?"

Square, gray, with an ornamental seal, was the twelfth envelope, and out of it came a fourth dollar bill, and this note:


For the stateroom. I have told not the others. With thanks of

Doliska Pod --  -- Ski.


It was a fine, small, pointed, and wandering handwriting, and Jack in vain strove to make out the letters in the middle of the Polish lady's name.

"I don't care!" he said. "She's kind, too. So are all the rest of them; and Mr. Guilderaufenberg's one of the best fellows I ever met. Now I've got over six dollars, and I can make some more right away."

He pocketed his money, and felt more confident than ever; and he walked out of the Hotel Dantzic just as his father, at home in Crofield, was reading to Mrs. Ogden and Aunt Melinda and the children the letter he had written in Albany, on Saturday.

They all had their comments to make, but at the end of it the tall blacksmith said to his wife:

"There's one thing certain, Mary. I won't let go of any of that land till after they've run the railway through it."

"Land?" said Aunt Melinda. "Why, it's nothing but gravel. They can't do anything with it."

"It joins mine," said Mr. Ogden; "and I own more than an acre behind the shop. We'll see whether the railroad will make any difference. Well, the boy's reached the city long before this!"

There was silence for a moment after that, and then Mr. Ogden went over to the shop. He was not very cheerful, for he began to feel that Jack was really gone from home.

In Mertonville, Mary Ogden was helping Mrs. Murdoch in her housework, and seemed to be disposed to look out of the window, rather than to talk.

"Now, Mary," said the editor's wife, "you needn't look so peaked, and feel so blue about the way you got along with that class of girls -- "

"Girls?" said Mary. "Why, Mrs. Murdoch! Only half of them were younger than I; they said there would be only sixteen, and there were twenty-one. Some of the scholars were twice as old as I am, and one had gray hair and wore spectacles!"

"I don't care," said Mrs. Murdoch, "the Elder said you did well. Now, dear, dress yourself, and be ready for Mrs. Edwards; she's coming after you, and I hope you'll enjoy your visit. Come in and see me as often as you can and tell me the news."

Mary finished the dishes and went upstairs, saying, "And they want me to take that class again next Sunday!"



Chapter XV.

No Boy Wanted.

After leaving the Hotel Dantzic, with his unexpected supply of money, Jack walked smilingly down toward the business part of the city. For a while he only studied signs and looked into great show-windows; and he became more and more confident as he thought how many different ways there were for a really smart boy to make a fortune in New York. He decided to try one way at just about nine o'clock.

"The city's a busy place!" thought Jack, as he walked along. "Some difference between the way they rush along on Monday and the way they loitered all day Sunday!"

He even walked faster because the stream of men carried him along. It made him think of the Cocahutchie.

"I'll try one of these big clothing places," he said, about nine o'clock. "I'll see what wages they're giving. I know something about tailoring."

He paused in front of a wide and showy-looking store on Broadway. He drew a long breath and went in. The moment he entered he was confronted by a very fat, smiling gentleman, who bowed and asked:

"What can we do for you, sir?"

"I'd like to know if you want a boy," said Jack, "and what wages you're giving. I know -- "

"After a place? Oh, yes. That's the man you ought to see," said the jocose floor-walker, pointing to a spruce salesman behind a counter, and winking at him from behind Jack.

The business of the day had hardly begun, and the idle salesman saw the wink. Jack walked up to him and repeated his inquiry.

"Want a place, eh? Where are you from? Been long in the business?"

Jack told him about Crofield, and about the "merchant tailors" there, and gave a number of particulars before the very dignified and sober-faced salesman's love of fun was satisfied; and then the salesman said:

"I can't say. You'd better talk with that man yonder."

There was another wink, and Jack went to "that man," to answer another string of questions, some of which related to his family, and the Sunday-school he attended; and then he was sent on to another man, and another, and to as many more, until at last he heard a gruff voice behind him asking, "What does that fellow want? Send him to me!"

Jack turned toward the voice, and saw a glass "coop," as he called it, all glass panes up to above his head, excepting one wide, semicircular opening in the middle. The clerk to whom Jack was talking at that moment suddenly became very sober.

"Head of the house!" he exclaimed to himself. "Whew! I didn't know he'd come;" Then he said to Jack: "The head partner is at the cashier's desk. Speak to him."

Jack stepped forward, his cheeks burning with the sudden perception that he had been ridiculed. He saw a sharp-eyed lady counting money, just inside the little window, but she moved away, and Jack was confronted by a very stern, white-whiskered gentleman.

"What do you want?" the man asked.

"I'd like to know if you'll hire another boy, and what you're paying?" said Jack, bravely.

"No; I don't want any boy," replied the man in the coop, savagely. "You get right out."

"Tell you what you do want," said Jack, for his temper was rising fast, "you'd better get a politer set of clerks!"

"I will, if there is any more of this nonsense," said the head of the house, sharply. "Now, that's enough. No more impertinence."

Jack was all but choking with mortification, and he wheeled and marched out of the store.

"I wasn't afraid of him," he thought, "and I ought to have spoken to him first thing. I might have known better than to have asked those fellows. I sha'n't be green enough to do that again. I'll ask the head man next time."

That was what he tried to do in six clothing-stores, one after another; but in each case he made a failure. In two of them, they said the managing partner was out; and then, when he tried to find out whether they wanted a boy, the man he asked became angry and showed him the door. In three more, he was at first treated politely, and then informed that they already had hundreds of applications. To enter the sixth store was an effort, but he went in.

"One of the firm? Yes, sir," said the floor-walker. "There he is."

Only a few feet from him stood a man so like the one whose face had glowered at him through that cashier's window in the first store that Jack hesitated a moment, but the clerk spoke out:

"Wishes to speak to you, Mr. Hubbard."

"This way, my boy. What is it?"

Jack was surprised by the full, mellow, benevolent voice that came from under the white moustaches.

"Do you want to hire a boy, sir?" he inquired.

"I do not, my son. Where are you from?" asked Mr. Hubbard, with a kindlier expression than before.

Jack told him, and answered two or three other questions.

"From up in the country, eh?" he said. "Have you money enough to get home again?"

"I could get home," stammered Jack, "but there isn't any chance for a boy up in Crofield."

"Ten chances there for every one there is in the city, my boy," said Mr. Hubbard. "One hundred boys here for every place that's vacant. You go home. Dig potatoes. Make hay. Drive cows. Feed pigs. Do anything honest, but get out of New York. It's one great pauper-house, now, with men and boys who can't find anything to do."

"Thank you, sir," said Jack, with a tightening around his heart. "But I'll find something. You see if I don't -- "

"Take my advice, and go home!" replied Mr. Hubbard, kindly. "Good-morning."

"Good-morning," said Jack, and while going out of that store he had the vividest recollections of all the country around Crofield.

"I'll keep on trying, anyway," he said. "There's a place for me somewhere. I'll try some other trade. I'll do anything."

So he did, until one man said to him:

"Everybody is at luncheon just now. Begin again by and by; but I'm afraid you'll find there are no stores needing boys."

"I need some dinner myself," thought Jack. "I feel faint. Mister," he added aloud, "I must buy some luncheon, too. Where's a good place?"

He was directed to a restaurant, and he seated himself at a table and ordered roast beef in a sort of desperation.

"I don't care what it costs!" he said. "I've got some money yet."

Beef, potatoes, bread and butter, all of the best, came, and were eaten with excellent appetite.

Jack was half afraid of the consequences when the waiter put a bright red check down beside his plate.

"Thirty cents?" exclaimed he joyfully, picking it up. "Why, that's the cheapest dinner I've had in New York."

"All right, sir. Come again, sir," said the waiter, smiling; and then Jack sat still for a moment.

"Six dollars, and, more too," he said to himself; "and my room's paid for besides. I can go right on looking up a place, for days and days, if I'm careful about my money. I mustn't be discouraged."

He certainly felt more courageous, now that he had eaten dinner, and he at once resumed his hunt for a place; but there was very little left of his smile. He went into store after store with almost the same result in each, until one good-humored gentleman remarked to him:

"My boy, why don't you go to a Mercantile Agency?"

"What's that?" asked Jack, and the man explained what it was.

"I'll go to one right away," Jack said hopefully.

"That's the address of a safe place," said the gentleman writing a few words. "Look out for sharpers, though. Plenty of such people in that business. I wish you good luck."

Before long Jack Ogden stood before the desk of the "Mercantile Agency" to which he had been directed, answering questions and registering his name. He had paid a fee of one dollar, and had made the office-clerk laugh by his confidence.

"You seem to think you can take hold of nearly anything," he said. "Well, your chance is as good as anybody's. Some men prefer boys from the country, even if they can't give references."

"When do you think you can get me a place?" asked Jack.

"Can't tell. We've only between four hundred and five hundred on the books now; and sometimes we get two or three dozen fixed in a day."

"Five hundred!" exclaimed Jack, with a clouding face. "Why, it may be a month before my turn comes!"

"A month?" said the clerk. "Well, I hope not much longer, but it may be. I wouldn't like to promise you anything so soon as that."

Jack went out of that place with yet another idea concerning "business in the city," but he again began to make inquiries for himself. It was the weariest kind of work, and at last he was heartily sick of it.

"I've done enough for one day," he said to himself. "I've been into I don't know how many stores. I know more about it than I did this morning."

There was no doubt of that. Jack had been getting wiser all the while; and he did not even look so rural as when he set out. He was really beginning to get into city ways, and he was thinking hard and fast.

The first thing he did, after reaching the Hotel Dantzic, was to go up to his room. He felt as if he would like to talk with his sister Mary, and so he sat down and wrote her a long letter.

He told her about his trip, all through, and about his German friends, and his Sunday; but it was anything but easy to write about Monday's experiences. He did it after a fashion, but he wrote much more cheerfully than he felt.

Then he went down to the supper-room for some tea. It seemed to him that he had ordered almost nothing, but it cost him twenty-five cents.

It would have done him good if he could have known how Mary's thoughts were at that same hour turning to him.

At home, Jack's father and Mr. Magruder were talking about Jack's land, arranging about the right of way and what it was worth, while he sat in his little room in the Hotel Dantzic, thinking over his long, weary day of snubs, blunders, insults and disappointments.

"Hunting for a place in the city is just the meanest kind of work," he said at last. "Well, I'll go to bed, and try it again to-morrow."

That was what he did; but Tuesday's work was "meaner" than Monday's. There did not seem to be even so much as a variation. It was all one dull, monotonous, miserable hunt for something he could not find. It was just so on Wednesday, and all the while, as he said, "Money will just melt away; and somehow you can't help it."

When he counted up, on Wednesday evening, however, he still had four dollars and one cent; and he had found a place where they sold bread and milk, or bread and coffee, for ten cents.

"I can get along on that," he said; "and it's only thirty-cents a day, if I eat three times. I wish I'd known about it when I first came here. I'm learning something new all the time."

Thursday morning came, and with it a long, gossipy letter from Mary, and an envelope from Crofield, containing a letter from his mother and a message from his father written by her, saying how he had talked a little -- only a little -- with Mr. Magruder. There was a postscript from Aunt Melinda, and a separate sheet written by his younger sisters, with scrawly postscripts from the little boys to tell Jack how the workmen had dug down and found the old church bell, and that there was a crack in it, and the clapper was broken off.

Jack felt queer over those letters.

"I won't answer them right away," he said. "Not till I get into some business. I'll go farther down town today, and try there."


At ten o'clock that morning, a solemn party of seven men met in the back room of the Mertonville Bank.

"Gentlemen of the Board of Trustees, please come to order. I suppose we all agree? We need a teacher of experience. The academy's not doing well. The lady principal can't do everything. She must have a good assistant."

"Who's your candidate, Squire Crowninshield?" asked Judge Edwards. "I'm trustee as Judge of the County Court. I've had thirty-one applications for my vote."

"I've had more than that," said the Squire good humoredly. "I won't name my choice till after the first ballot. I want to know who are the other candidates first."

"So do I," said Judge Edwards. "I won't name mine at once, either. Who is yours, Elder Holloway?"

"We'd better have a nominating ballot," remarked the Elder, handing a folded slip of paper to Mr. Murdoch, the editor of the Eagle. "Who is yours, Mr. Jeroliman?"

"I haven't any candidate," replied the bank-president, with a worried look. "I won't name any, but I'll put a ballot in."

"Try that, then," said General Smith, who was standing instead of sitting down at the long table. "Just a suggestion."

Every trustee had something to say as to how he had been besieged by applicants, until the seventh, who remarked:

"I've just returned from Europe, gentlemen. I'll vote for the candidate having the most votes on this ballot. I don't care who wins."

"I agree to that," quickly responded General Smith, handing him a folded paper. "Put it in, Dr. Dillingham. It's better that none of us should do any log-rolling or try to influence others. I'll adopt your idea."

"I won't then," said Squire Crowninshield, pleasantly but very positively. "Murdoch, what's the name of that young woman who edited the Eagle for a week?"

"Miss Mary Ogden," said the editor, with a slight smile.

"A clever girl," said the Squire, as he wrote on a paper, folded it, and threw it into a hat in the middle of the table. He had not heard Judge Edwards's whispered exclamation:

"That reminds me! I promised my wife that I'd mention Mary for the place; but then there wasn't the ghost of a chance!"

In went all the papers, and the hat was turned over.

"Now, gentlemen," said General Smith, "before the ballots are opened and counted, I wish to ask: Is this vote to be considered regular and formal? Shall we stand by the result?"

"Certainly, certainly," said the trustees in chorus.

"Count the ballots!" said the Elder.

The hat was lifted and the count began.

"One, two, three, four, five, six, seven -- for Mary Ogden," said Elder Holloway calmly.

"I declare!" said General Smith. "Unanimous? Why, gentlemen, we were agreed! There really was no difference of opinion whatever."

"I'm glad she is such a favorite," said Judge Edwards; "but we can't raise the salary on that account. It'll have to remain at forty dollars a month."

"I'm glad she's got it!" said Mr. Murdoch. "And a unanimous vote is a high testimonial!"

And so Mary was elected.

Each of them had other business to attend to, and it was not until Judge Edwards went home, at noon, that the news was known to Mary, for the Judge carried the pleasant tidings to Mary Ogden at the dinner-table.

"Oh, Judge Edwards!" exclaimed Mary, turning pale. "I? At my age -- to be assistant principal of the academy?"

"There's only the Primary Department to teach," said the Judge encouragingly. "Not half so hard as that big, overgrown Sunday-school class. Only it never had a good teacher yet, and you'll have hard work to get it into order."

"What will they say in Crofield!" said Mary uneasily. "They'll say I'm not fit for it."

"I'm sure Miss Glidden will not," said Mrs. Edwards, proudly. "I'm glad it was unanimous. It shows what they all thought of you."

Perhaps it did; but perhaps it was as well for Mary Ogden's temper that she could not hear all that was said when the other trustees went home to announce their action.

It was a great hour for Mary, but her brother Jack was at that same time beginning to think that New York City was united against him, -- a million and a half to one.

He had been fairly turned out of the last store he had entered.



Chapter XVI.

Jack's Famine.

At Crofield, the morning mail brought a letter from Mary, telling of her election.

There was not so very much comment, but Mrs. Ogden cried a little, and said:

"I feel as if we were beginning to lose the children."

"I must go to work," said the tall blacksmith after a time; "but I don't feel like it. So Mary's to teach, is she? She seems very young. I wish I knew about Jack."

Meanwhile, poor Jack was half hopelessly inquiring, of man after man, whether or not another boy was wanted in his store. It was only one long, flat, monotony of "No, sir," and at last he once more turned his weary footsteps up-town, and hardly had he done so before he waked up a little and stood still, and looked around him.

"Hullo!" he exclaimed, "I never was here before. This must be Chatham Square and the Bowery. I've read about them in the guide-book. I can go home this way. It's not much like Broadway."

So he thought, as he went along. And it did not at all resemble Broadway. It seemed to swarm with people; they appeared to be attending to their own business, and they were all behaving very well, so far as Jack could see.

"Never saw such a jam," said Jack, as he pushed into a small throng on a street corner, trying to get through; but at the word "jam" something came down upon the top of his hat and forced it forward over his eyes.

Up went both of his hands, instinctively, and at that moment each arm was at once caught and held up for a second or two. It was all done in a flash. Jack knew that some boisterous fellow had jammed his hat over his eyes, and that others had hustled him a little; but he had not been hurt, and he did not feel like quarreling, just then. He pushed along through the throng, and was getting out to where the crowd was thinner, when he suddenly felt a chill and a weak feeling at his heart. He had thrust his hand into his pocket.

"My pocket-book!" he said, faintly. "It's gone! Where could I have lost it? I haven't taken it out anywhere. And there was more than three dollars in it I'd saved to pay for my room!"

He leaned heavily against a lamp-post for a moment, and all the bright ideas he had ever had about the city became very dim and far away. He put up one hand before his eyes, and at that moment his arm was firmly grasped.

"Here, boy! What's the matter?"

He looked up, and saw a blue uniform and a hand with a club in it, but he could not say a word in reply.

"You seem all right. Are you sick?"

"I've lost my pocket-book," said Jack. "Every cent I had except some change."

"I've lost my pocket-book."

"That's bad," and the keen-eyed officer understood the matter at a glance, for he added:

"You were caught in a crowd, and had your pocket picked? I can't do anything for you, my boy. It's gone, and that's all there is of it. Never push into crowds if you've any money about you. You'd better go home now."

"Only sixty-five cents left," Jack said, as he walked away, "for this evening, and Saturday, and Sunday, and for all next week, till I get something to do and am paid for doing it!"

He had eaten ten cents' worth of bread and milk at noon; but he was a strong and healthy boy and he was again hungry. Counting his change made him hungrier, and he thought longingly of the brilliant supper-room at the Hotel Dantzic.

"That won't do," he thought. "I must keep away from Keifelheimer and his restaurant. There, now, that's something like."

It was a small stand, close by a dark-looking cellar way. Half was covered with apples, candy, peanuts, bananas, oranges, and cocoa-nuts. The other half was a pay-counter, a newspaper stand, and an eating-house. Jack's interest centered on a basket, marked, "Ham Sanwiges Five Cents."

"I can afford a sandwich," he said, "and I've got to eat something!"

At the moment when he leaned over and picked up a sandwich, a small old woman, behind the counter, reached out her hand toward him; and another small old woman stretched her hand out to a boy who was testing the oranges; and a third small old woman sang out very shrilly:

"Here's your sanwiges! Ham sanwiges! Only five cents! Benannies! Oranges! Sanwiges!"

Jack put five cents into the woman's hand, and he was surprised to find how much good bread and boiled ham he had bought.

"It's all the supper I'll have," he said, as he walked away. "I could eat a loaf of bread and a whole ham, it seems to me!"

All the way to the Hotel Dantzic he studied over the loss of his pocket-book.

"The policeman was right," he said to himself, at last. "I didn't know when they took it, but it must have been when my hat was jammed down."

When Jack met Mr. Keifelheimer in the hotel office, he asked him what he thought about it. An expression of strong indignation, if not of horror, crossed the face of the hotel proprietor.

"Dey get you pocket-book?" he exclaimed. "You vas rob choost de same vay I vas; but mine vas a votch und shain. It vas two year ago, und I nefer get him back. Your friend, Mr. Guilderaufenberg, he vas rob dot vay, vonce, but den he vas ashleep in a railvay car und not know ven it vas done!"

Jack was glad of so much sympathy, but just then business called Mr. Keifelheimer away.

"I won't go upstairs," thought Jack. "I'll sit in the reading-room."

No letters were awaiting him, but there were plenty of newspapers, and nearly a score of men were reading or talking. Jack did not really care to read, nor to talk, nor even to listen; but two gentlemen near him were discussing a subject that reminded him of the farms around Crofield.

"Yes," he heard one of them say, "we must buy every potato we can secure. At the rate they're spoiling now, the price will be doubled before December."

"Curious, how little the market knows about it yet," said the other, and they continued discussing letters and reports about potatoes, from place after place, and State after State, and all the while Jack listened, glad to be reminded of Crofield.

"It was just so with our potatoes at home," he said to himself. "Some farmers didn't get back what they planted."

This talk helped him to forget his pocket-book for a while; then, after trying to read the newspapers, he went to bed.

A very tired boy can always sleep. Jack Ogden awoke, on Saturday morning, with a clear idea that sleep was all he had had for supper, -- excepting one ham sandwich.

"It's not enough," he said, as he dressed himself. "I must make some money. Oh, my pocket-book! And I shall have to pay for my room, Monday."

He slipped out of the Hotel Dantzic very quietly, and he had a fine sunshiny walk of two and a half miles to the down-town restaurant where he ate his ten cents' worth of bread and milk.

"It's enough for a while," he said, "but it doesn't last. If I was at home, now, I'd have more bread and another bowl of milk. I'll come here again, at noon, if I don't find a place somewhere."

Blue, blue, blue, was that Saturday for poor Jack Ogden! All the forenoon he stood up manfully to hear the "No, we don't want a boy," and he met that same answer, expressed in almost identical words, everywhere.

When he came out from his luncheon of bread and milk, he began to find that many places closed at twelve or one o'clock; that even more were to close at three, and that on Saturday all men were either tired and cross or in a hurry. Jack's courage failed him until he could hardly look a man in the face and ask him a question. One whole week had gone since Jack reached the city, and it seemed about a year. Here he was, without any way of making money, and almost without a hope of finding any way.

"I'll go to the hotel," he said, at about four o'clock. "I'll go up the Bowery way. It won't pay anybody to pick my pocket this time!"

He had a reason for going up the Bowery. It was no shorter than the other way. The real explanation was in his pocket.

"Forty cents left!" he said. "I'll eat one sandwich for supper, and I'll buy three more to eat in my room to-morrow."

He reached the stand kept by the three small old women, and found each in turn calling out, "Here you are! Sanwiges! -- " and all the rest of their list of commodities.

"Four," said Jack. "Put up three of 'em in a paper, please. I'll eat one."

It was good. In fact, it was too good, and Jack wished it was ten times as large; but the last morsel of it vanished speedily and after looking with longing eyes at the others, he shut his teeth firmly.

"I won't eat another!" he said to himself. "I'll starve it out till Monday, anyway!"

It took all the courage Jack had to carry those three sandwiches to the Hotel Dantzic and to put them away, untouched, in his traveling-bag. After a while he went down to the reading-room and read; but he went to bed thinking of the excellent meals he had eaten at the Albany hotel on his way to New York.


Mary Ogden's second Sunday in Mertonville was a peculiar trial to her, for several young ladies who expected to be in the Academy next term, came and added themselves to that remarkable Sunday-school class. So did some friends of the younger Academy girls; and the class had to be divided, to the disappointment of those excluded.

"Mary Ogden didn't need to improve," said Elder Holloway to the Superintendent, "but she is doing better than ever!"

How Jack did long to see Mary, or some of the family in Crofield, and Crofield itself! As soon as he was dressed he opened the bag and took out one of his sandwiches and looked at it.

"Why, they're smaller than I thought they were!" he said ruefully; "but I can't expect too much for five cents! I've just twenty cents left. That sandwich tastes good if it is small!"

So soon was it all gone that Jack found his breakfast very unsatisfactory.

"I don't feel like going to church," he said, "but I might as well. I can't sit cooped up here all day. I'll go into the first church I come to, as soon as it's time."

He did not care where he went when he left the hotel, and perhaps it did not really make much difference, considering how he felt; but he found a church and went in. A young man showed him to a seat under the gallery. Not until the minister in the pulpit came forward to give out a hymn, did Jack notice anything peculiar, but the first sonorous, rolling cadences of that hymn startled the boy from Crofield.

"Whew!" he said to himself. "It's Dutch or something. I can't understand a word of it! I'll stay, though, now I'm here."

German hymns, and German prayers, and a tolerably long sermon in German, left Jack Ogden free to think of all sorts of things, and his spirits went down, down, down, as he recalled all the famines of which he had heard or read and all the delicacies invented to tempt the appetite. He sat very still, however, until the last hymn was sung, and then he walked slowly back to the Hotel Dantzic.

"I don't care to see Mr. Keifelheimer," he thought. "He'll ask me to come and eat at a big Sunday dinner, -- and to pay for it. I'll dodge him."

He watched at the front door of the hotel for fully three minutes, until he was sure that the hall was empty. Then he slipped into the reading-room and through that into the rear passageway leading to the elevator; but he did not feel safe until on his way to his room.

"One sandwich for dinner," he groaned, as he opened his bag. "I never knew what real hunger was till I came to the city! Maybe it won't last long, though. I'm not the first fellow who's had a hard time before he made a start."

Jack thought that both the bread and the ham were cut too thin, and that the sandwich did not last long enough.

"I'll keep my last twenty cents, though," thought Jack, and he tried to be satisfied.

Before that afternoon was over, the guide-book had been again read through, and a long home letter was written.

"I'll mail it," he said, "as soon as I get some money for stamps. I haven't said a word to them about famine. It must be time to eat that third sandwich; and then I'll go out and take a walk."

The sandwich was somewhat dry, but every crumb of it seemed to be valuable. After eating it, Jack once more walked over and looked at the fine houses on Fifth Avenue; but now it seemed to the hungry lad an utter absurdity to think of ever owning one of them. He stared and wondered and walked, however, and returned to the hotel tired out.


On Monday morning, the Ogden family were at breakfast, when a neat looking farm-wagon stopped before the door. The driver sprang to the ground, carefully helped out a young woman, and then lifted down a trunk. Just as the trunk came down upon the ground there was a loud cry in the open doorway.

"Mother! Molly's come home!" and out sprang little Bob.

"Mercy on us!" Mrs. Ogden exclaimed, and the whole family were on their feet.

Mary met her father as she was coming in. Then, picking up little Sally and kissing her, she said:

"There was a way for me to come over, this morning. I've brought my books home, to study till term begins. Oh, mother, I'm so glad to get back!"

The blacksmith went out to thank the farmer who had brought her; but the rest went into the house to get Mary some breakfast and to look at her and to hear her story.

Mrs. Ogden said several times:

"I do wish Jack was here, too!"

That very moment her son was leaving the Hotel Dantzic behind him, with two and a half miles to walk before getting his breakfast -- a bowl of bread and milk.



Chapter XVII.

Jack-At-All-Trades.

Jack Ogden, that Monday morning, had an idea that New York was a very long city.

He had eaten nothing since Saturday noon, excepting the sandwiches, and he felt that he should not be good for much until after he had had breakfast. His mind was full of unpleasant memories of the stores and offices he had entered during his last week's hunt, and he did not relish renewing it.

"I must go ahead though," he thought. "Something must be done, or I'll starve."

Every moment Jack felt better, and he arose from the table a little more like himself.

"Ten cents left," he said, as he went out into the street. "That'll buy me one more bowl of bread and milk. What shall I do then?"

"Ten cents left."

It was a serious question, and demanded attention. It was still very early for the city, but stores were beginning to open, and groups of men were hurrying along the sidewalks on their way to business. Jack went on, thinking and thinking, and a fit of depression was upon him when he entered a street turning out from Broadway. He had not tried this street before. It was not wide, and it was beginning to look busy. At the end of two blocks, Jack uttered an exclamation:

"That's queer!" he said. "They all sell coffee, tea, groceries, and that sort of thing. Big stores, too. I'll try here."

His heart sank a little, as he paused in front of a very bustling establishment, bearing every appearance of prosperity. Some men were bringing out tea-chests and bags of coffee to pile around the doorway, as if to ask passers-by to walk in and buy some. The show-windows were already filled with samples of sugar, coffee, and a dozen other kinds of goods. Just beyond one window Jack could see the first of a row of three huge coffee-grinders painted red, and back of the other window was more machinery.

"I'll go in, anyway," he said, setting his teeth. "Only ten cents left!"

That small coin, because it was all alone in his pocket, drove him into the door. Two thirds down the broad store there stood a black-eyed, wiry, busy-looking man, giving various directions to the clerks and other men. Jack thought, "He's the 'boss.' He looks as if he'd say no, right away."

Although Jack's heart was beating fast, he walked boldly up to this man:

"Mister," he said, "do you want to hire another boy?"

"You are the hundred and eleventh boy who has asked that same question within a week. No," responded the black-eyed man, sharply but good naturedly.

"Gifford," came at that moment from a very cheerful voice over Jack's left shoulder, "I've cleaned out that lot of potatoes. Sold two thousand barrels on my way down, at a dollar and a half a barrel."

Jack remembered that some uncommonly heavy footsteps had followed him when he came in, and found that he had to look upward to see the face of the speaker, who was unusually tall. The man leaned forward, too, so that Jack's face was almost under his.

Mr. Gifford's answer had disappointed Jack and irritated him.

"You did well!" said Mr. Gifford.

Before he had time to think Jack said:

"A dollar and a half? Well, if you knew anything about potatoes, you wouldn't have let them go for a dollar and a half a barrel!"

"What do you know about potatoes?" growled the tall man, leaning an inch lower, and frowning at Jack's interruption.

"More than you or Mr. Gifford seems to," said Jack desperately. "The crop's going to be short. I know how it is up our way."

"Tell us what you know!" said the tall man sharply; and Mr. Gifford drew nearer with an expression of keen interest upon his face.

"They're all poor," said Jack, and then he remembered and repeated, better than he could have done if he had made ready beforehand, all he had heard the two men say in the Hotel Dantzic reading-room, and all he had heard in Crofield and Mertonville. He had heard the two men call each other by name, and he ended with:

"Didn't you sell your lot to Murphy & Scales? They're buying everywhere."

"That's just what I did," said the tall man. "I wish I hadn't; I'll go right out and buy!" and away he went.

"Buy some on my account," said Mr. Gifford, as the other man left the store. "See here, my boy, I don't want to hire anybody. But you seem to know about potatoes. Probably you're just from a farm. What else do you know? What can you do?"

"A good many things," said Jack, and to his own astonishment he spoke out clearly and confidently.

"Oh, you can?" laughed Mr. Gifford. "Well, I don't need you, but I need an engineer. I wish you knew enough to run a small steam-engine."

"Why, I can run a steam-engine," said Jack. "That's nothing. May I see it?"

Mr. Gifford pointed at some machinery behind the counter, near where he stood, and at the apparatus in the show-window.

"It's a little one that runs the coffee-mills and the printing-press," he said. "You can't do anything with it until a machinist mends it -- it's all out of order, I'm told."

"Perhaps I can," said Jack. "A boy who's learned the blacksmith's trade ought to be able to put it to rights."

Without another word, Jack went to work.

"Nothing wrong here, Mr. Gifford," he said in a minute. "Where are the screw-driver, and the monkey-wrench, and an oil-can?"

"Well, well!" exclaimed Mr. Gifford, as he sent a man for the tools. "Do you think you can do it?"

Jack said nothing aloud, but he told himself:

"Why, it's a smaller size but like the one in the Eagle office. They get out of order easily, but then it's easy to regulate them."

"You do know something," said Mr. Gifford, laughing, a few minutes later, when Jack said to him:

"She'll do now."

"She won't do very well," added Mr. Gifford, shaking his head. "That engine never was exactly the thing. It lacks power."

"It may be the pulley-belt's too loose," said Jack, after studying the mechanism for a moment.

"I'll send for a man to fix it, then."

"No, you needn't," said Jack. "I can tighten it so she'll run all the machinery you have. May I have an awl?"

"Of course," said Mr. Gifford. "Put it to rights. There's plenty of coffee waiting to be ground."

Jack went to work at the loose belt.

"He's a bright fellow," said Mr. Gifford to his head-clerk. "If we wanted another boy -- but we don't."

"Too many now," was the short, decisive reply.

It was not long before the machinery began to move.

"Good!" said Mr. Gifford. "I almost wish I had something more for you to do, but I really haven't. If you could run that good-for-nothing old printing-press -- "

"Printing-press?" exclaimed Jack.

"Over in the other window," said Mr. Gifford. "We thought of printing all our own circulars, cards, and paper bags. But it's a failure, unless we should hire a regular printer. We shall have to, I suppose. If you were a printer, now."

"I've worked at a press," said Jack. "I'm something of a printer. I'm sure I can do that work. It's like a press I used to run when I worked in that business."

Jack at once went to the show-window.

"An 'Alligator' press," he said, "like the one in the Standard office. It ought to be oiled, though. It needs adjusting, too. No wonder it would not work. I can make it go."

The business of the store was beginning. Steam was up in the engine, and the coffee-mills were grinding merrily. Mr. Gifford and all his clerks were busied with other matters, and Jack was left to tinker away at the Alligator press. "She's ready to run. I'll start her," he said at last.

He took an impression of the form of type that was in the press and read it.

"I see," he said. "They print that on their paper bags for an advertisement. I'll show it to Mr. Gifford. There are plenty of blank ones lying around here, all ready to print."

He walked up to the desk and handed in the proof, asking:

"Is that all right?"

"No," said Mr. Gifford. "We let our stock of bags run down because the name of the firm was changed. I want to add several things. I'll send for somebody to have the proof corrections made."

"You needn't," said Jack. "Tell me what you want. Any boy who's ever worked in a newspaper office can do a little thing like that."

"How do you come to know so much about machinery?" asked Mr. Gifford, trying not to laugh.

"Oh," said Jack, "I was brought up a blacksmith, but I've worked at other trades, and it was easy enough to adjust those things."

"That's what you've been up to is it?" said Mr. Gifford. "I saw you hammering and filing, and I wondered what you'd accomplished. I want the new paper bags to be," -- and he told Jack what changes were required, and added:

"Then, of course, I shall need some circulars -- three kinds -- and some cards."

"That press will run over a thousand an hour when it's geared right. You'll see," said Jack, positively.

"Well, here's a true Jack-at-all-trades!" exclaimed Mr. Gifford, opening his eyes. "I begin to wish we had a place for you!"

It was nearly noon before Jack had another sample of printing ready to show. There was a good supply of type, to be sure, but he was not much of a printer, and type-setting did not come easily to him. He worked almost desperately, however, and meanwhile his brains were as busy as the coffee-mills. He succeeded finally, and it was time, for a salesman was just reporting:

"Mr. Gifford, we're out of paper bags."

"We must have some right away," said Mr. Gifford. "I wish that youngster really knew how to print them. He's tinkering at it over there."

"Is that right?" asked Jack only a second later, holding out a printed bag.

"Why, yes, that's the thing. Go ahead," said the surprised coffee-dealer. "I thought you'd failed this time."

"I'll run off a lot," said Jack, "and then I'll go out and get something to eat."

"No, you won't," said Mr. Gifford promptly. "No going out, during business hours, in this house. I'll have a luncheon brought to you. I'll try you to-day, anyhow."

Back went Jack without another word, but he thought silently, "That saves me ten cents."

The Alligator press was started, and Jack fed it with the blank paper bags the salesmen needed, and he began to feel happy. He was even happier when his luncheon was brought; for the firm of Gifford & Company saw that their employees fared well.

"I declare!" said Jack to himself, "it's the first full meal I've had since last week Wednesday! I was starved."

On went the press, and the young pressman sat doggedly at his task; but he was all the while watching things in the store and hearing whatever there was to hear.

"I know their prices pretty well," he thought. "Most of the things are marked -- ever so much lower than Crofield prices, too."

He had piles of printed bags of different sizes ready for use, now lying around him.

"Time to get at some of those circulars," he was saying, as he arose from his seat at the press and stepped out behind the counter.

"Five pounds of coffee," said a lady, before the counter, in a tone of vexation. "I've waited long enough. Mocha and Java, mixed."

"Thirty-five cents," said Jack.

"Quick, then," said she, and he darted away to fill her order.

"Three and a half pounds of powdered sugar," said another lady, as he passed her.

"Yes, ma'am," said Jack.

"How much is this soap?" asked a stout old woman, and Jack remembered that price too.

He was not at all aware that anybody was watching him; but he was just telling another customer about tea and baking-soda when he felt a hand upon his shoulder.

"See here," demanded Mr. Gifford, "what are you doing behind the counter?"

"I was afraid they'd get tired of waiting and go somewhere else," said Jack. "I know something about waiting on customers. Yes, ma'am, that's a fine tea. Forty-eight cents. Half pound? Yes ma'am. In a jiffy, Mr. Gifford; -- there are bags enough for to-day."

"I think you may stay," said the head of the house. "I didn't need another boy; but I begin to think I do need a blacksmith, a carpenter, a printer, and a good sharp salesman." As he was turning away he added, "It's surprising how quickly he has picked up our prices."

Jack's fingers were trembling nervously, but his face brightened as he did up that package.

Mr. Gifford waited while the Crofield boy answered yet another customer and sold some coffee, and told Jack to go right on.

"Come to the desk," he then said. "I don't even know your name. Come."

Very hot and yet a little shaky was Jack as he followed; but Mr. Gifford was not a verbose man.

"Mr. Jones," he said to the head clerk, "please take down his name; -- what is it?"

"John Ogden, sir," and after other questions and answers, Mr. Gifford said:

"Find a cheaper boarding-place. You can get good board for five dollars a week. Your pay is only ten dollars a week to begin, and you must live on that. We'll see that you earn it, too. You can begin printing circulars and cards."

Jack went, and Mr. Gifford added:

"Why, Mr. Jones, he's saved sending for three different workmen since he came in. He'll make a good salesman, too. He's a boy -- but he isn't only a boy. I'll keep him."

Jack went to the press as if in a dream.

"A place!" he said to himself. "Well, yes. I've got a place. Good wages, too; but I suppose they won't pay until Saturday night. How am I to keep going until then? I have to pay my bill at the Hotel Dantzic, too -- now I've begun on a new week. I'll go without my supper, and buy a sandwich in the morning, and then -- I'll get along somehow."

He worked all that afternoon with an uneasy feeling that he was being watched. The paper bags were finished, a fair supply of them; and then the type for the circular needed only a few changes, and he began on that. Each new job made him remember things he had learned in the Standard office, or had gathered from Mr. Black, the wooden foreman of the Eagle. It was just as well, however, that things needed only fixing up and not setting anew, for that might have been a little beyond him. As it was, he overcame all difficulties, besides leaving the press three times to act as salesman.

Gifford & Co. kept open to accommodate customers who purchased goods on their way home; and it was after nearly all other business houses, excepting such as theirs, were closed, that the very tall man leaned in at the door and then came striding down the store to the desk.

"Gifford," he said, "that clerk of yours was right. There's almost a panic in potatoes. I've got five thousand barrels for you, and five thousand for myself, at a dollar and sixty, and the price just jumped. They will bring two dollars. If they do, we'll make two thousand apiece."

"I'm glad you did so well," said Mr. Gifford dryly, "but don't say much to him about it. Let him alone -- "

"Well, yes; -- but I want to do something for him. Give him this ten dollar bill from me."

"Very well," said Mr. Gifford, "you owe the profit to him. I'll take care of my side of the matter. Ogden, come here a moment!"

Jack stopped the press and came to the desk. The money was handed to him.

"It's just a bit of luck," said the tall man; "but your information was valuable to me."

"Thank you," said Jack, after he had in vain refused the money.

"You've done enough," said Mr. Gifford; "this will do for your first day. Eight o'clock in the morning, remember. Good-night!"

"I'm glad I belong here," Jack said to himself. "If I'd had my pick of the city I would have chosen this very store. Ten dollars! I can pay Mr. Keifelheimer now, and I sha'n't have to starve to death."

Jack felt so prosperous that he walked only to the nearest station of the elevated railway, and cheerfully paid five cents for a ride up-town.

When the Hotel Dantzic was reached, it seemed a much more cheerful and home-like building than it had appeared when he left it in the morning; and Jack had now no notion of dodging Mr. Keifelheimer. There he stood on the doorstep, looking stern and dignified. He was almost too polite when Jack said:

"Good-evening, Mr. Keifelheimer."

"Goot-efening," he replied, with a bow. "I hope you gets along vell mit your beezness?"

"Pretty well," said Jack cheerfully.

"Vere vas you feexed?" asked Mr. Keifelheimer, doubtfully.

Jack held out one of the business cards of Gifford & Company, and replied:

"That's where I am. I guess I'll pay for my room here till the end of this week, and then I'll find a place farther down town."

"I vas so sorry dey peek your pocket," said Mr. Keifelheimer, looking at the card. "Tell you vat, Mr. Ogden, you take supper mit me. It cost you not'ing. I haf to talk some mit you."

Jack dines with Mr. Keifelheimer.

"All right," said Jack. "I'll pay up at the desk, and then I'll get ready for dinner."

When he came down Mr. Keifelheimer was waiting for him, very smiling, but not nearly so polite and dignified. Hardly were they seated at the supper-table, before the proprietor coughed twice affectedly, and then remarked:

"You not leaf de Hotel Dantzic, Mr. Ogden. I use up pounds and boxes of tea und sugar und coffee, und all dose sometings dey sell at Gifford und Company's. You get me de best prices mit dem, und you safe me a great heap of money. I get schwindled, schwindled, all de times! You vas keep your room, und you pays for vat you eats. De room is a goot room, but it shall cost you not vun cent. So? If I find you safe me money, I go on mit you."

"I'll do my best," said Jack. "Let me know what you're paying now."

"Ve go all ofer de leest after ve eat someting," said Mr. Keifelheimer. "Mr. Guilderaufenberg say goot deal about you. So did de ladies. I vas sorry dot dey peek your pocket."

Probably he had now forgotten just what he had thought of saying to Jack in case the boy had not been able to pay for his room, and had been out of employment; but Jack was enjoying a fine illustration of that wise proverb which says: "Nothing succeeds like success."



Chapter XVIII.

The Drummer Boy.

The Ogden family had said very little, outside of their own house, about the news of Mary's success in Mertonville, but on that Monday morning Miss Glidden received no less than four letters, and each of them congratulated her over the election of her dear young friend, and commented on how glad she must be. "Well," she said to herself, "of course I'm glad. And I did all I could for her. She owes it all to me. I'll go and see her."

Mary Ogden had so much talking to do and so many questions to answer, at the breakfast table, that her cup of coffee was cold before she could drink it, and then she and her mother and her aunt went into the parlor to continue their talk.

John Ogden himself waited there a long time before going over to the shop. His helper had the forge ready, and the tall blacksmith at once put a rod of iron into the fire and began to blow the bellows. The rod was at white heat and was out on the anvil in no time, and the hammer began to ring upon it to flatten it out when John heard somebody speak to him:

"Mr. Ogden, what are you making? I've been watching you -- and I can't imagine!"

"Well, Deacon Hawkins," said the blacksmith, "you'll have to tell. The fact is I was thinking -- well -- my daughter has just come home."

"I'm glad to hear it and to hear of her success," answered the Deacon. "Miss Glidden told us. If you're not busy, I wish you'd put a shoe on my mare's off hind foot."

The blacksmith then went to work in earnest: and meanwhile Mary, at the house, was receiving the congratulations of her friends. "Why, Mary Ogden, my dear! Are you here?" exclaimed Miss Glidden. "I'm so glad! I'm sure I did all I could for you." "My dear Mary!" exclaimed another. And Mary shook hands heartily with both her callers, and expressed her gratitude to Miss Glidden.

It was a day of triumph for Mary, and it must have been for Miss Glidden, for she seemed to be continually persuading herself that much of the credit of Mary's advancement was hers. The neighbors came and went, and more than one of Mary's old school-fellows said to her: "I'm glad you are so fortunate. I wish I could find something to do." When the visitors were gone and Mary tried to help with the housework, her mother said positively, "Now, Molly, don't touch a thing; you go upstairs to your books, and don't think of anything else; I'm afraid you won't have half time enough, even then."

Her aunt gave the same advice, and Mary was grateful, being unusually eager to begin her studies; and even little Sally was compelled to keep out of Mary's room.

During the latter part of that Monday afternoon John Ogden had an important conference with Mr. Magruder, the railway director; and the blacksmith came home, at night, in a thoughtful state of mind.


His son Jack, at about the same time sat in his room, at the Hotel Dantzic, in the far-away city he had struggled so hard to reach; and he, too, was in a thoughtful mood.

"I'll write and tell the family at home, and Mary," he said after a while. "I wonder whether every fellow who makes a start in New York has to almost starve at the beginning!"

He was tired enough to sleep well when bed-time came; but, nevertheless, he was downstairs Tuesday morning long before Mr. Keifelheimer's hour for appearing. Hotel-men who have to sit up late often rise late also.

"For this once," said Jack, "I'll have a prime Dantzic Hotel breakfast. After this week, my room won't cost me anything, and I can begin to lay up money. I won't ride down town, though; except in the very worst kind of winter weather."

It delighted him to walk down that morning, and to know just where he was going and what work he had before him.

"I'm sure," he thought, "that I know every building, big and little, all the way along. I've been ordered out of most of these stores. But I've found the place that I was looking for, at last."

The porters of Gifford & Company had the store open when Jack got there, and Mr. Gifford was just coming in.

"Ogden," he said, in his usual peremptory way, "put that press-work on the paper-bags right through, to-day."

"One moment, please, Mr. Gifford," said Jack.

"I've hardly a moment to spare," answered Mr. Gifford. "What is it?"

"A customer," said Jack; "the Hotel Dantzic. I can find more of the same kind, perhaps."

"Tell me," was the answer, with a look of greater interest, but also a look of incredulity.

Jack told him, shortly, the substance of his talk with Mr. Keifelheimer, and Mr. Gifford listened attentively.

"His steward and buyers have been robbing him, have they?" he remarked. "Well, he's right about it. No doubt we can save him from ten to twenty per cent. It's a good idea. I'll go up and see him, by and by. Now hurry with your printing!"

Jack turned to the waiting "Alligator," and Mr. Gifford went on to his desk.

"Jones," he said, to his head clerk, "Ogden has drummed us a good hotel customer," and then he told Mr. Jones about it.

"Mr. Gifford," said Mr. Jones, shrewdly, "can we afford to keep a sharp salesman and drummer behind that little printing-press?"

"Of course not," said Mr. Gifford. "Not after a week or so. But we must wait and see how he wears. He's very young, and a stranger."

"Young fellows soon grow," said Mr. Jones. "He'll grow. He'll pick up everything that comes along. I believe you'll find him a valuable salesman."

"Very likely," said Mr. Gifford, "but I sha'n't tell him so. He has plenty of confidence as it is."

"It's not impudence," said Mr. Jones. "If he hadn't been pushing -- well, he wouldn't have found this place with us. It's energy."

"Yes," said Mr. Gifford; "if it was impudence we should waste no time with him. If there is anything I despise out and out, it's what is often called cheek."

Next, he hated laziness, or anything resembling it, and Jack sat behind the Alligator that day, working hard himself and taking note of how Mr. Gifford kept his employees busy.

"No wonder he didn't need another boy," he thought. "He gets all the work possible out of every one he employs. That's why he's so successful."

It was a long, dull, hot day. The luncheon came at noon; and the customers came all the time, but Jack was forbidden to meddle with them until his printing was done.

"Mr. Gifford's eyes are everywhere," said he, "but I hope he hasn't seen anything out of the way in me. There are bags enough to last a month -- yes, two months. I'll begin on the circulars and cards to-morrow. I'm glad it's six o'clock."

Mr. Gifford was standing near the door, giving orders to the porters, and as the Alligator stopped, Jack said to him: "I think I will go visiting among the other hotels, this evening."

"Very well," said Mr. Gifford quietly. "I saw Mr. Keifelheimer to-day, and made arrangements with him. If you're going out to the hotels in our interest, buy another hat, put on a stand-up collar with a new necktie; the rest of your clothing is well enough. Don't try to look dandyish, though."

"Of course not," said Jack, smiling; "but I was thinking about making some improvements in my suit."

He made several purchases on his way up town, and put each article on as he bought it. The last "improvement" was a neat straw hat, from a lot that were selling cheaply, and he looked into a long looking glass to see what the effect was.

Jack buys a new hat.

"There!" he exclaimed. "There's very little of the 'green' left. It's not altogether the hat and the collar, either. Nor the necktie. Maybe some of it was starved out!"

He was a different looking boy, at all events, and the cashier at the desk of the Hotel Dantzic looked twice at him when he came in, and Mr. Keifelheimer remarked:

"Dot vas a smart boy! His boss vas here, und I haf safe money. Mr. Guilderaufenberg vas right about dot boy."

Jack was eager to begin his "drumming," but he ate a hearty supper before he went out.

"I must learn something about hotels," he remarked thoughtfully. "I'll take a look at some of them."

The Hotel Dantzic was not small, but it was small compared to some of the larger hotels that Jack was now to investigate. He walked into the first one he found, and he looked about it, and then he walked out, and went into another and looked that over, and then he thought he would try another. He strolled around through the halls, and offices, and reading-rooms, and all the public places; but the more he saw, the more he wondered what good it would do him to study them.

It was about eight o'clock in the evening when he stood in front of the office of the great Equatorial Hotel, feeling very keenly that he was still only a country boy, with very little knowledge of the men and things he saw around him.

A broad, heavy hand came down upon his shoulder, and a voice he had heard before asked, heartily:

"John Ogden? You here? Didn't I tell you not to stay too long in the city?"

"Yes, you did, Governor," said Jack, turning quickly. "But I had to stay here. I've gone into the wholesale and retail grocery business."

Jack already knew that the Governor could laugh merrily, and that any other men who might happen to be standing by were more than likely to join with him in his mirth, but the color came at once to his cheeks when the Governor began to smile.

"In the grocery business?" laughed the Governor. "Do you supply the Equatorial?"

"No, not yet; but I'd like to," said Jack. "I think our house could give them what they need."

"Let me have your card then," said one of the gentlemen who had joined in the Governor's merriment; "for the Governor has no time to spare -- "

Jack handed him the card of Gifford & Company.

"Take it, Boulder, take it," said the Governor. "Mr. Ogden and I are old acquaintances."

"He's a protégé of yours, eh?" said Boulder. "Well, I mean business. Write your own name there, Mr. Ogden. I'll send our buyer down there, to-morrow, and we'll see what can be done. Shall we go in, Governor?"

Jack understood, at once, that Mr. Boulder was one of the proprietors of the Equatorial Hotel.

"I'm called for, Jack," said the Governor. "You will be in the city awhile, will you not? Well, don't stay here too long. I came here once, when I was about your age. I staid a year, and then I went away. A year in the city will be of great benefit to you, I hope. Good-bye."

"Good-bye, Governor," said Jack, seriously. "We'll do the right thing by Mr. Boulder;" and there was another laugh as Jack shook hands with the Governor, and then with the very dignified manager of the Equatorial Hotel.

"That will do, for one evening," thought Jack, as the distinguished party of gentlemen walked away. "I'd better go right home and go to bed. The Governor's a brick anyhow!"

Back he went to the Hotel Dantzic, and he was soon asleep.

The Alligator press in Gifford & Company's was opening and shutting its black jaws regularly over the sheets of paper it was turning into circulars, about the middle of Wednesday forenoon, when a dapper gentleman with a rather prominent scarf-pin walked briskly into the store and up to the desk.

"Mr. Gifford?" he asked.

"Yes, sir."

"I'm Mr. Barnes," said the dapper man. "General buyer for the Equatorial Hotel. Your Mr. Ogden was up with us, last night, to see some of his friends, and I've come down to look at your price-list, and so forth."

"Oh!" quietly remarked Mr. Gifford, "our Mr. Ogden. Oh, quite right! I think we can satisfy you. We'll do our best, certainly. Mr. Jones, please confer with Mr. Barnes -- I'll be back in a minute."

Up toward the door walked Mr. Gifford, but not too fast. He stood still when he arrived at the Alligator press.

"Ogden," he said, "you can leave that work. I've another printing hand coming."

Jack's heart beat quickly, for a moment. What, -- could he be discharged so suddenly? He was dismayed. But Mr. Gifford went on:

"Wash your hands, Ogden, and stand behind the counter there. I'll see you again, by and by. The buyer is here from the Equatorial."

"I promised them you'd give them all they wanted, and as good prices as could be had anywhere," said Jack, with a great sense of relief, and recovering his courage.

"We will," said Mr. Gifford, as he turned away, and he did not think he must explain to Jack that it would not do for Mr. Barnes to find Gifford & Company's salesman, "Mr. Ogden," running an Alligator press.

Mr. Barnes was in the store for some time, but Jack was not called up to talk with him. Mr. Gifford was the right man for that part of the affair, and in the course of his conversation with Mr. Barnes he learned further particulars concerning the intimacy between "your Mr. Ogden" and the Governor, with the addition that "Mr. Boulder thinks well of Mr. Ogden too."

Jack waited upon customers as they came, and he did well, for "a new hand."  But he felt very ignorant of both articles and prices, and the first thing he said, when Mr. Gifford again came near him, was:

"Mr. Gifford, I ought to know more than I do about the stock and prices."

"Of course you ought," said Mr. Gifford. "I don't care to have you try any more 'drumming' till you do. You must stay a few months behind the counter and learn all you can. You must dress neatly, too. I wonder you've looked as well as you have. We'll make your salary fifteen dollars a week. You'll need more money as a salesman."

Jack flushed with pleasure, but a customer was at hand, and the interruption prevented him from making an answer.

"Jones," remarked Mr. Gifford to his head clerk, "Ogden is going to become a fine salesman!"

"I thought so," said Jones.

They both were confirmed in this opinion, about three weeks later. Jack was two hours behind time, one morning; but when he did come, he brought with him Mr. Guilderaufenberg of Washington, with reference to a whole winter's supplies for a "peeg poarding-house," and two United States Army contractors. Jack had convinced these gentlemen that they were paying too much for several articles that could be found on the list of Gifford & Company in better quality and at cheaper rates.

"Meester Giffort," said the German gentleman, "I haf drafel de vorlt over, und I haf nefer met a better boy dan dot Jack Ogden. He knows not mooch yet, alretty, but den he ees a very goot boy."

"We like him," said Mr. Gifford, smiling.

"So do I, und so does Mrs. Guilderaufenberg, und Miss Hildebrand, und Miss Podgr-ms-chski," said the German. "Some day you lets him visit us in Vashington? So?"

"I don't know. Perhaps I will," said Mr. Gifford; but he afterward remarked grimly to Mr. Jones: "If I should, and he should meet the President, Ogden would never let him go until he bought some of our tea and coffee!"

That day was a notable one in both Crofield and Mertonville. Jack's first long letter, telling that he was in the grocery business, had been almost a damper to the Ogden family. They had kept alive a small hope that he would come back soon, until Aunt Melinda opened an envelope that morning and held up samples of paper bags, cards, and circulars of Gifford & Company, while Mrs. Ogden read the letter that came with them. Bob and Jim claimed the bags next, while Susie and Bessie read the circulars, and the tall blacksmith himself straightened up as if he had suddenly grown prouder.

"Mary!" he exclaimed. "Jack always said he'd get to the city. And he's there -- and earning his living!"

"Yes, but -- Father," she said, with a small shake in her voice, "I -- wish he was back again. There'd be almost room for him to work in Crofield, now."

"Maybe so, maybe so," he replied. "There'll be crowds of people coming in when they begin work on the new rail way and the bridge. I signed the deeds yesterday for all the land they're buying of Jack and me. I won't tell him about it quite yet, though. I don't wish to unsettle his mind. Let him stay where he is."

"This will be a trying day for Mary," said Aunt Melinda, thoughtfully. "The Academy will open at nine o'clock. Just think of what that child has to go through! There'll be a crowd there, too, -- oh, dear me!"


Mary Ogden sat upon the stage, by previous orders from the Academy principals, awaiting the opening exercises; but the principals themselves had not yet arrived. She looked rather pale, and she was intently watching the nickel-plated gong on the table and the hands of the clock which hung upon the opposite wall.

"Perhaps the principals are here," Mary thought as the clock hands crept along. "But they said to strike the bell at nine, precisely, and if they're not here I must do it!"

At the second of time, up stood Mary and the gong sounded sharply.

That was for "Silence!" and it was very silent, all over the hall, and all the scholars looked at Mary and waited.

"Clang," went the gong again, and every boy and girl arose, as if they had been trained to it.

Poor Mary was thinking, "I hope nobody sees how scared I am!" but the Academy term was well opened, and Dr. Dillingham was speaking, when the Reverend Lysander Pettigrew and Mrs. Henderson, the tardy principals, came hurrying in to explain that an accident had delayed them.



Chapter XIX.

Complete Success.

Two years passed. There was a great change in the outward aspect of Crofield. The new bridge over the Cocahutchie was of iron, resting on stone piers, and the village street crossed it. The railroad bridge was just below, but was covered in with a shed, so that the trains might not frighten horses. The mill was still in its place, but the dam was two feet higher and the pond was wider. Between the mill and the bridge was a large building of brick and stone that looked like a factory. Between the street and the railway, the space was filled by the station-house and freight depot, which extended to Main Street; and there were more railway buildings on the other side of the Cocahutchie. Just below the railroad and along the bank of the creek, the ground was covered by wooden buildings, and there was a strong smell of leather and tan-bark. Of course, the old Washington Hotel was gone; but across the street, on the corner to the left, there was a great brick building, four stories high, with "Washington Hotel" painted across the front of it. The stores in that building were just finished. Looking up Main Street, or looking down, it did not seem the same village. The new church in the middle of the green was built of stone; and both of the other churches were rapidly being demolished, as if new ones also were to take their places.

It was plain, at a glance, that if this improvement was general, the village must be extending its bounds rapidly, for there never had been too much room in it, for even the old buildings with which Jack had been familiar.

Jack Ogden had not been in Crofield while all this work was going on. His first week with Gifford & Company seemed the most exciting week that he had ever known, and the second was no less busy and interesting. He did not go to the German church the second Sunday, but later he did somehow drift into another place of worship where the sermon was preached in Welsh.

"Well!" said Jack, when he came out, at the close of the service, "I think I'll go back to the church I went to first. I don't look so green now as I did then, but I'm sure the General will remember me."

He carried out this determination the next Sunday. The sexton gave him a seat, and he took it, remarking to himself:

"A fellow feels more at home in a place where he's been before. There's the General! I wish I was in his pew. I'll speak to him when he comes out."

The great man appeared, in due season, and as he passed down the aisle he came to a boy who was just leaving a pew. With a smile on his face, the boy held out his hand and bowed.

"Good-morning," said the General, shaking hands promptly and bowing graciously in return. Then he added, "I hope you'll come here every Sunday."

Jack speaks to the General.

That was all, but Jack received at least a bow, every Sunday, for four weeks. On the Monday after the fourth Sunday, the door of Gifford & Company's store was shadowed by the entrance of a very proud-looking man who stalked straight on to the desk, where he was greeted cordially by Mr. Gifford, for he seemed to be an old friend.

"You have a boy here named John Ogden?" asked the General.

"Yes, General," said Mr. Gifford. "A fine young fellow."

"Is he doing well?" asked the General.

"We've no fault to find with him," was the answer. "Do you care to see him? He's out on business, just now."

"No, I don't care to see him," said the General. "Tell him, please, that I called. I feel interested in his progress, that's all. Good-morning, Mr. Gifford."

The head of the firm bowed the general out, and came back to say to Mr. Jones: "That youngster beats me! He can pick up a millionaire, or a governor, as easily as he can measure a pound of coffee."

"Some might think him rather bold," said Jones, "but I don't. He is absorbed in his work, and he puts it through. He's the kind of boy we want, no doubt of that."

"See what he's up to, this morning!" said Mr. Gifford. "It's all right. He asked leave, and I told him he might go."

Jack had missed seeing the General because he did not know enough of the grocery business. He had said to Mr. Gifford:

"I think, Mr. Gifford, I ought to know more about this business from its very beginnings. If you'll let me, I'd like to see where we get supplies."

That meant a toilsome round among the great sugar refineries, on the Long Island side of the East River; and then another among the tea and coffee merchants and brokers, away down town, looking at samples of all sorts and finding out how cargoes were unloaded from ships and were bought and sold among the dealers. He brought to the store, that afternoon, before six o'clock, about forty samples of all kinds of grocery goods, all labeled with prices and places, and he was going on to talk about them when Mr. Gifford stopped him.

"There, Ogden," he said. "I know all about these myself, -- but where did you find that coffee? I want some. And this tea? -- It is two cents lower than I'm paying. Jones, he's found just the tea you and I were talking of -- " and so he went on carefully examining the other samples, and out of them all there were seven different articles that Gifford & Company bought largely next day.

"Jones," said Mr. Gifford, when he came back from buying them, "they had our card in each place, and told me, 'Your Mr. Ogden was in here yesterday. We took him for a boy at first.' -- I'm beginning to think there are some things that only that kind of boy can do. I'll just let him go ahead in his own way."


Mary had told Jack all about her daily experiences in her letters to him, and he said to himself more than once:

"Dudley Edwards must be a tip-top fellow. It's good of him to drive Mary over to Crofield and back every Saturday. And they have had such good sleighing all winter. I wish I could try some of it."

There was no going to Crofield for him. When Thanksgiving Day came, he could not afford it, and before the Christmas holidays Mr. Gifford told him:

"We can't spare you at Christmas, Ogden. It's the busiest time for us in the whole year."

Mr. Gifford was an exacting master, and he kept Jack at it all through the following spring and summer. Mary had a good rest during the hot weather, but Jack did not. One thing that seemed strange to her was that so many of the Crofield ladies called to see her, and that Miss Glidden was more and more inclined to suggest that Mary's election had been mainly due to her own influence in Mertonville.

On the other hand, it seemed to Jack that summer, as if everybody he knew was out of the city. Business kept pressing him harder and harder, and all the plans he made to get a leave of absence for that second year's Thanksgiving Day failed to work successfully.

The Christmas holidays came again, but throughout the week, Gifford & Company's store kept open until eight o'clock, every evening, with Jack Ogden behind the counter. He got so tired that he hardly cared about it when they raised his salary to twenty-five dollars a week, just after Mr. Gifford saw him come down town with another coffee and tea dealer, whose store was in the same street.

"We mustn't let him leave us, Jones," Mr. Gifford had said to his head clerk. "I am going to send him to Washington next week."

Not many days later, Mrs. Guilderaufenberg in her home at Washington was told by her maid servant that, "There's a strange b'y below, ma'am, who sez he's a-wantin' to spake wid yez."

Down went the landlady into the parlor, and then up went her hands.

"Oh, Mr. Jackogden! How glad I am to see you! You haf come! I gif you the best stateroom in my house."

"I believe I'm here," said Jack, shaking hands heartily. "How is Mr. Guilderaufenberg and how is Miss -- "

"Oh, Miss Hildebrand," she said, "she will be so glad, and so will Mrs. Smith. She avay with her husband. He is a Congressman from far vest. You will call to see her."

"Mrs. Smith?" exclaimed Jack, but in another second he understood it, and asked after his old friend with the unpronounceable name as well as after Miss Hildebrand.

"She has a name, now, that I can speak! I'm glad Smith isn't a Polish name," he said to himself.

"Oh, Mr. Jackogden!" exclaimed Mrs. Guilderaufenberg, a moment later. "How haf you learned to speak German? She will be so astonish!"

That was one use he had made of his evenings, and he had improved by speaking to all the Germans he had met down town; and his German was a great delight to Mr. Guilderaufenberg, and to Miss Hildebrand, and to Mrs. Smith (formerly Miss Pod --  -- ski) when he called to see them.

"So!" said Mr. Guilderaufenberg, "you takes my advice and you comes. Dis ees de ceety! Ve shows you eet all ofer. All de beeg buildings and all de beeg men. You shtay mit Mrs. Guilderaufenberg and me till you sees all Vashington."

Jack did so, but he had business errands also, and he somehow managed to accomplish his commissions so that Mr. Gifford was quite satisfied when he returned to New York.

"I haven't sold so many goods," said Jack, "but then I've seen the city of Washington, and I've shaken hands with the President and with Senators and Congressmen. Mr. Gifford, how soon can I make a visit to Crofield?"

"We'll arrange that as soon as warm weather comes," said his employer. "Make it your summer vacation."

Jack had to be satisfied. He knew that more was going on in the old village than had been told him in any of his letters from home. His father was a man who dreaded to write letters, and Mary and the rest of them were either too busy, or else did not know just what news would be most interesting to Jack.

"I'm going to see Crofield!" said he, a hundred times, after the days began to grow longer. "I want to see the trees and the grass and I want to see corn growing and wheat harvesting. I'd even like to be stung by a bumblebee!"

He became so eager about it, at last, that he went home by rail all the way, in a night train, and he arrived at Crofield, over the new railroad, just as the sun was rising, one bright June morning.

"Goodness!" he exclaimed, as he walked out of the station. "It's not the same village! I won't go over to the house and wake the family until I've looked around."

From where he stood, he gazed at the new hotel, and took a long look up and down Main Street. Then he walked eagerly down toward the bridge.

"Hullo!" he said in amazement. "Our house isn't there! Why, what is the meaning of this? I knew that the shop had been moved up to the back lot. They're building houses along the road across the Cocahutchie! Why haven't they written and told me of all this?"

He saw the bridge, the factory, the tannery, and many other buildings, but he did not see the familiar old blacksmith shop on the back lot.

"I don't know where we live nor where to find my home!" he said, almost dejectedly. "They know I'm coming, though, and they must have meant to surprise me. Mary's at home, too, for her vacation."

He walked up Main Street, leaving his baggage at the station. New -- new -- new, -- all the buildings for several blocks, and then he came to houses that were just as they used to be. One pretty white house stood back among some trees, on a corner, and, as Jack walked nearer, a tall man in the door of it stepped quickly out to the gate. He seemed to be trying to say something, but all he did, for a moment, was to beckon with his hand.

Jack returns home.

"Father!" shouted Jack, as he sprang forward.

"Jack, my son, how are you?"

"Is this our house?" asked Jack.

"Yes, this is our house. They're all getting up early, too, because you're coming. There are some things I want to talk about, though, before they know you're actually here. Walk along with me a little way."

On, back, down Main Street, walked Jack with his father, until they came to what was now labeled Bridge Street. When Jack lived in Crofield the road had no name.

"See that store on the corner?" asked Mr. Ogden. "It's a fine-looking store, isn't it?"

"Very," said Jack.

"Well, now," said his father, "I'm going to run that store, and I do wish you were to be in it with me."

"There will be none too much room in it for Bob and Jim," said Jack. "They're growing up, you know!"

"You listen to me," continued the tall blacksmith, trying to be calm. "The railway company paid me quite a snug sum of money for what they needed of your land and mine. Mr. Magruder did it for you. I bought with the money thirty acres of land, just across the Cocahutchie, to the left of the bridge. Half of it was yours to begin with, and now I've traded you the other half. Don't speak. Listen to me. Most of it was rocky, but the railway company opened a quarry on it, getting out their stone, and it's paying handsomely. Livermore has built that hotel block. I put in the stone and our old house lot, and I own the corner store, except that Livermore can use the upper stories for his hotel. The factory company traded me ten shares of their stock for part of your land on which they built. I traded that stock for ten acres of rocky land along the road, across the Cocahutchie, up by the mill. That makes forty acres there."

"Father!" exclaimed Jack. "All it cost me was catching a runaway team, and your bill against the miller! Crofield is better than the grocery business in New York!"

"Listen!" said his father, smiling. "The tannery company traded me a lot of their stock for the rest of my back lot and for the rest of your gravel, and they tore down the blacksmith shop, and I traded their stock and some other things for the house where we live. I made your part good to you, with the land across the creek, and that's where the new village of Crofield is to be."

"I didn't see a cent of money in any of those trades, but I've a thousand dollars laid up, and I'm only working in the railroad shop now, but I'm going into the hardware business. I wish you'd come back and come in with me. There's the store -- rent free. We can sell plenty of tools, now that Crofield is booming!"

"I've saved up seven hundred and fifty dollars," said Jack, "from my salary and commissions. I'll put that in. Gifford & Company'll send you things cheap. But, Father, -- I belong in the city. I've seen hundreds of boys there who didn't belong there, but I do. Let's go back to the house. Bob and Jim -- "

"Well, maybe you're right," said his father, slowly. "Come, let us go home. Your mother has hardly been able to wait to see you."

When they came in sight of the house, the stoop and the front gate were thronged with home-folk, but Jack could not see clearly for a moment. The sunshine, or something else, got into his eyes. Then there were pairs of arms, large and small, embracing him, and, -- well, it was a happy time, and Mary was there and his mother, and the family were all together once more.

"How you have grown!" said his aunt. "How you have grown!"

"I do wish you'd come home to stay!" exclaimed his mother.

"Perhaps he will," said his father, and Mary had hardly said a word till then, but now it seemed to burst out in spite of her.

"Oh Jack!" she said. "If I could go back with you, when you go! I could live with a sister of Mrs. Edwards. She's invited me to live with her for a whole year. And I could finish my education, and be really fit to teach. I've saved some money."

"Mary!" answered Jack, "I can pay all the other expenses. Do come!"

"Yes, you'd better go, Jack," said his father, thoughtfully. "I am sure that you are a city boy."

That was a great vacation, but no trout were now to be caught in the Cocahutchie. The new store on the corner was to be opened in the autumn, and Jack insisted upon having it painted a bright red about the windows. There were visits to Mertonville, and there were endless talks about what Jack's land was going to be worth, some day. But the days flew by, and soon his time was up and he had to go back to the city. He and Mary went together, and they went down the Hudson River in the steamer "Columbia."

Mr. Dudley Edwards, of Mertonville, went at the same time to attend to some law business, he said, in New York.

Jack told Mr. Gifford all about the Crofield town-lots, and his employer answered:

"That is the thing for you, Ogden; you'll have some capital, when you come of age, and then we can take you in as a junior partner. You belong in the city. I couldn't take you in any sooner, you know. We don't want a boy."

"That's just what you told me," said Jack roguishly, "the first time I came into this store; but you took me then. Well, I shall always do my best."

<eob>

A Wonderful Night

By

James H. Snowden



I. An Age of Wonders

We live in an age of wonders. Great discoveries and startling events crowd upon us so fast that we have scarcely recovered from the bewildering effects of one before another comes, and we are thus kept in a constant whirl of excitement. The heavens are full of shooting stars, and while watching one we are distracted by another. So frequent is this experience that our nerves almost refuse to respond to the shock of a new sensation. We are no longer surprised at surprises. The marvelous has become the commonplace, and the unexpected is what we now expect.

Yet we are not to suppose that our age is the only one that has had its wonders. Other times had theirs also, only these old-time wonders have become familiar to us and ceased to be wonderful; but in their day they were marvelous, and some of them equalled if they did not surpass any wonders we have witnessed. The Great War was the most cataclysmic eruption that has ever convulsed the world, but it was not more revolutionary and sensational in the twentieth century than the French Revolution was in the eighteenth and the Reformation was in the sixteenth century. The discovery of America in the fifteenth century created immense excitement and was relatively a more colossal and startling occurrence than anything that has happened since.

The telescope and the Copernican theory were as great achievements in their day as the spectroscope and the nebular hypothesis are in our day. The most useful inventions and the most marvelous products of the human brain are not the railway and telegraph after all. The art of printing, which infinitely multiplies thought and sows it in the very air and every morning photographs the world anew, is a more useful invention and in its day was a great wonder. Still farther back, hidden in the mists of antiquity, lies the invention of the alphabet that is even more useful and marvelous. It is when we get back to the oldest tools, the hammer and plough and loom, that we come to inventions of the greatest fundamental utility, and we could better afford to give up all our modern magic machines than to part with these.

The oldest literature is ever the ripest, richest and best, and Homer and Shakespeare overtop all our modern writers as the Alps overshadow the hills lying around their feet. What modern preacher can compare in eloquence and power with Paul and Isaiah? Nature is ever full of new wonders, and yet the grass was as green and the mountains as grand and the golden nets and silver fringes of the clouds were as resplendent in the days of Abraham as they are to-day. We are the heirs of the ages, but wonder and wisdom were not born with us, and with us they will not die.

Where must we go to find the greatest wonder? Not to the scientist's discoveries and the inventor's cunning devices: the greatest marvel is not material but spiritual; and to find it we must not look into the present or future, but go back to the first Christmas morning. On that morning the Judean shepherds had a story to tell which all they that heard it wondered at and which is still the wonder and song of the world. The birth of Jesus is absolutely the greatest event of all time. Whatever view is taken of him he has become the Master of the world. Christ has created Christendom, silently lifting its moral level as mountains are heaved up against the sky from beneath. The coming of such a unique and powerful personality into the world is an infinitely greater wonder than the discovery of a new continent or the blazing out of a new star in the sky.



II. Preparation for the Event


Near events may have remote causes. The river that sweeps by us cannot be explained without going far back to hidden springs in distant hills. The huge wave that breaks upon the ocean shore may have had its origin in a submarine upheaval five thousand miles away.

A wide circle of causes converged towards this birth; all the spokes of the ancient world ran into this hub. When Abraham started west as an emigrant out of Babylonia, "not knowing whither he went," he was unconsciously traveling towards Bethlehem. Jewish history for centuries headed towards this culmination; this was the matchless blossom that bloomed out of all that growth from Abraham to Joseph and Mary. Priest and prophet, tabernacle and temple, gorgeous ritual and streaming altar, sacrifice and psalm, kingdom and captivity, triumph and tragedy were all so many roots to this tree. These were the education and discipline of the chosen people, preparing them as soil out of which the Messiah could spring. The great ideas of the unity and sovereignty, spirituality and righteousness of God, the sinfulness of sin and the need of an atonement were in flaming picture language emblazoned before the people and burnt into their conscience. Christ could do nothing until these ideas were rooted in the world.

Pagan achievements, also, "the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome," were roots to this same tree of preparation for the coming of Christ, though they knew it not. Greece with all the glories of its philosophy and art showed that the world never could be saved by its own wisdom; and all the laws and legions of Rome were equally impotent to lift it out of the ditch of sin. Neither a brilliant brain nor a mailed fist can save a lost world. Yet both Greece and Rome made positive contributions to the preparation for Christ. Greece fashioned a marvelous instrument for propagating the gospel in its highly flexible and expressive language, and Rome reduced the world to order and hushed it into peace and thus turned it into a vast amphitheater in which the gospel could be heard. Greece also contributed philosophy that threw light on the gospel, and Rome gave it a rich inheritance of law.

God thus set this event in a mighty framework of preparation. He got the world ready for Christ before he brought Christ to the world. He was in no haste and took plenty of time before he struck the great hour. The harvest must lie out in the showers and sunshine for weeks and months before it can ripen into golden wheat, and the meteor must shoot through millions of invisible miles for one brief flash of splendor. The centuries seemed slow-footed during that long and dreary stretch from Abraham to Mary, "but when the fulness of time was come, God sent forth his Son."



III. A Wonderful Fulfillment of Prophecy


This birth was a wonderful fulfillment of prophecy. The Jews had cherished the hope of the promised Messiah for thousands of years. Through all their national vicissitudes, enslavement in Egypt, wanderings in, the wilderness, establishment and growth in the promised land, internal division and external captivity in Babylon, restoration, and final subjection to the Romans, this hope burned on the horizon of their future as a fixed star. It was this that ever led them on and held them together and made it impossible to break or subdue their spirit. This was the dawn that filled all their dark and bitter days with the rosy glow of hope.

Yet the Messiah came not, and as the centuries slowly rolled along they must have grown weary and at times have doubted. Sceptics scoffed, "Where is the sign of his coming?" But the great heart of the nation remained true to its trust, while prophets caught glimpses of the coming glory and white-headed, trembling old saints prayed that they might live a little longer and not die before he came. Perhaps this hope was never at a lower ebb than when the Roman power was ruthlessly grinding the nation down into the dust. But suddenly at this darkest hour a blinding light burnt through the floor of heaven and shepherds ran about announcing that the Messiah was born! Who can imagine the surprise, the wonder, the overwhelming amazement this news created? How many were eager to go to Bethlehem and see this thing which had come to pass! And when it was found to be true, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy and old men blessed God and said, "Lord, now lettest thou thy servants depart in peace."

Yet why should they have wondered at God's faithfulness in keeping his promise, as though he could ever have forgotten it or failed to bring it to pass? Why should we ever wonder at the faithfulness of God? Doubtless in some degree because of our human infirmity. Our sense of unity with God and trust in him have been weakened by sin until we are ready to doubt him as though he were one of ourselves. His promises also are so far-reaching and great, splendid and blessed, they so far surpass our thoughts of wisdom and mercy, that, even though they have been repeated to us until we are familiar with them, when they are fulfilled we wonder at the faithfulness that will bring so great things to pass.



IV. An Historical Event


The story starts with the place and time of the Saviour's birth. Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, in the days of Herod the king. There are many myths and legends floating through the world that are often beautiful and useful, but they hang like gorgeous clouds in the air and are ever changing their shape and place. They are growths of the imagination and lack historic roots and reality. They are chary of names and dates and hide their origin in far-away mists. However powerfully and pathetically they may reflect the needs and hopes of the human heart, they are unsubstantial as dreams and afford no foundation on which to build our faith. Heathen religions are generally woven of this legendary stuff. The Greek and Roman divinities were all mythical. But the scientific spirit has swept these imaginary deities out of our sky and rendered belief in them impossible. Our religion must be rooted in reality and cannot live in clouds, however beautifully they may be colored. We refuse hospitality to anything but fact. Give us names and dates, is our demand.

The Bible responds to this requirement. Christianity is an historical religion. The gospel narrative begins with no such indefinite statement as "Once upon a time," but it starts in Bethlehem of Judea. The town is there and we can stand on the very spot where Jesus was born. The narrative places the time of his birth, in the days of Herod the king. History knows Herod; there is nothing mythical about this monster of iniquity. These statements are facts that no keenest critic or scholarly unbeliever can plausibly dispute. So the gospel sets its record in the rigid frame of history; it roots its origin down in the rocky ledge of Judea. Christ was not born in a dream, but in Bethlehem. We are not, then, building our faith on a myth, but on immovable matters of fact. This thing was not done in a corner, but in the broad day, and it is not afraid of the geographer's map and the historian's pen. The Christmas story is not another beautiful legend in the world's gallery of myths, but is sober and solid reality; its story is history. Our religion is truth, and we will worship at no other altar.



V. Simplicity of the Narrative


Though surcharged with such tremendous meaning, carrying a heavier burden of news than was ever before committed to human language, yet the simplicity with which the story is told is one of the literary marvels of the gospels. This event has inspired poets and painters and has been embroidered and illuminated with an immense amount of ornamentation. Genius has poured its splendors upon it and tried to give us some worthy conception of the scene. But the evangelists had no such purpose or thought, and their story is told with that charming artlessness that is perfect art. They were not men of genius, but plain men, mostly tax collectors and fishermen untrained in the schools, with no thought of skill or literary art. Yet all the stylists and artists of the world stand in wonder before their unconscious effort and supreme achievement. No attempt at rhetoric disfigures their record, not a word is written for effect, but the simple facts are allowed to tell their own eloquent and marvelous tale. The inspired writers mixed no imagination with their verities, for they had no other thought than to tell the plain truth; and this gives us confidence in the trustworthiness of their narrative. These men did not follow cunningly devised fables when they made known unto us the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, for they were eye-witnesses of his glory.



VI. The Town of Bethlehem


The land of Palestine is divided from north to south by a central range of mountains which runs up through this narrow strip of country like a spinal column. About five miles south of Jerusalem a ridge or spur shoots off from the central range towards the east. On the terminal bluff of this ridge lies the town of Bethlehem. On the west it is shut in by the plateau, and on the east the ridge breaks steeply down into the plain. Vineyards cover the hillsides with green and purple, and wheatfields wave in the valleys. In the distant east, across the Dead Sea, the mountains of Moab are penciled in dark blue against the sky.

At the present time the town has eight thousand inhabitants. Its flat-roofed houses are well built and its narrow streets are clean. It is a busy place, its chief industry being the manufacture of souvenirs of olive wood which are sold throughout the Christian world. Its principal church is the Church of the Nativity, which is built over a cave that is one of the most sacred and memorable spots on the globe. It is believed that this cave is the place where Christ was born, and a silver star inlaid in the stone floor is intended to mark the exact spot. It was then used as the stable of the adjoining inn, and in its stone manger the infant Jesus may have been laid.

At the time of this event Bethlehem was a mere village of a few hundred people. It might have been thought that Jerusalem, the historic metropolis and proud capital of the country, the chosen city of God and seat of the temple and center of worship, a city beautiful for situation, magnificent in its architecture, sacred in its associations and world-wide and splendid in its fame, should have been honored with this supreme event in the history of the Jews. But an ancient prophet, while noting its comparative insignificance, had yet put his finger on this tiny point on the map and pronounced upon it a blessing that caused it to blaze out like a star amidst its rural hills. "But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting." And so proud Jerusalem was passed by, and this supreme honor was bestowed upon the humble village.

Great men, as a rule, are not born in cities. They come up out of obscure villages and hidden nooks and corners. They originate closer to nature than city-born men and seem to spring from the very soil. The most noted birthplace in Scotland is that of Burns: it is a humble cottage with a thatched roof and a stable in one end of it. The most celebrated birthplace in England is that of Shakespeare, and again it is a plain cottage in a country village. Lincoln was born in a log hut in the wilds of Kentucky, Mohammed was the son of a camel driver, and Confucius the son of a soldier. The city must go to the country for its masters, and the world draws its best blood and brains from the farm. It was in accordance with this principle that the Saviour of the world should be born, not in a city and palace, but in a country village, and that his first bed should be, not a downy couch, but a slab of stone.



VII. The Wonderful Night Draws Near


"Now it came to pass in those days, there went out a decree from Cesar Augustus, that all the world should be enrolled." This is the point at which the orderly and scholarly Luke opens his account of the birth of our Lord. It seems like going a long way off from and around to the end in view. But there are no isolated facts and forces in the world and all things work together. When we see providence start in we never can tell where it is going to come out. If God is about to bless us, he may start the chain of causation that shall at length reach us in some far-off place or land; or if he is about to save a soul in China he may start with one of us in the contribution we make to foreign missions. Cesar Augustus, master of the world, from time to time ordered a census to be taken of the empire that he might know its resources and reap from it a richer harvest of taxes. It was probably between the months of December and March, B.C. 5-4, that such a census was being taken in the province of Syria.

In accordance with ancient Jewish usage, all citizens repaired to the tribe and village from which they were descended, and were there enrolled. In the town of Nazareth in the north lived Joseph, a village carpenter, and Mary, his espoused wife, who though a virgin was great with child, having been overshadowed by the Holy Spirit and the mystery having been revealed to her and her betrothed husband. They were both descended from the royal line of David, and therefore to Bethlehem they must go. With us such a journey of eighty miles would mean no more than stepping on a railway car at nine o'clock in the morning and stepping off at noon. But with them it meant a toilsome journey on foot of several days. Slowly they wended their way southward, led on by the irresistible hand of Cesar, far away on his throne. The ancient Hebrew prophecy of Micah and the imperial decree of Cesar thus marvelously fitted into each other and worked together. Mary must have known of this prophecy, and we know not with what a sense of mystery and fear and joy she drew near to the predicted place where the Messiah was to be born.

Bethlehem sits like a crown on its rocky ridge. At length its walls and towers loomed in the distance, and then presently up the steep road climbed the carpenter and his espoused wife and passed through the gate into the village. When they came to the inn, it was already crowded with visitors, driven thither by the decree of Cesar that had set all Palestine in commotion. In connection with the inn, generally the central space of its four-square inclosure, but probably in this case a cave in the limestone rock, was a stable, or place for the camels and horses and cattle of the guests. Among these oriental people it was (and is) no uncommon thing for travelers, when the chambers of the inn were fully occupied, to make a bed of straw and spend the night in this place. In this stable, possibly the very cave where now stands the Church of the Nativity, Mary and Joseph found lodgings for the night. It was not a mark of degradation or social inferiority for them to do this, though it was an indication of their meager means, as wealthy visitors would doubtless have found better accommodations.



VIII. The Birth


In that cave Mary brought forth her first-born son; and as there appears to have been no woman's hand there to minister to her, she herself wrapped the new-born babe in swaddling clothes; and as there was no other cradle or bed to receive it, she laid the child in the trough from which the camels were fed. This is all we know of what took place on that memorable night from which the history of the Christian world is now dated. The apocryphal gospels, legends that afterwards grew up, fill the chamber with supernal light so that visitors had to shade their eyes from the splendor of the child; and the painters portray the holy child and mother with halos of glory around their heads. But this is all imagination and myth. Jesus was born as other human beings are born, and looked just like a human child. No one seeing him could have guessed that a unique birth had ruptured the continuity of nature and brought a divine Man into the world. There was no glory streaming from his person, and no spectacular display of pageantry and pomp such as attended the birth of a Cesar. The Son of Man did not come with observation, but stole into the world silently and unseen. If we could have gazed upon the Christ-child as it lay in its manger, we would have been disappointed and thought that nothing extraordinary had happened. But a great event rarely seems great at the time; long centuries may elapse before it looms into view and is seen in its central place as the axis of history. Outward size and circumstance do not measure inward power and possibility. God brought only a child into the world that night, but in that Child were sheathed omnipotent wisdom and mercy and might to save the world.



IX. No Room in the Inn


"There was no room for them in the inn." And so Jesus came into a world where there was no room for him in the habitations of men. After all this preparation through which the centuries grew into readiness for his coming, after all these types and prophecies, sacrifices and symbols, after all this weary waiting and passionate hope and all these golden dreams, when the promised One came there was no room for him and he was not wanted! "He came unto his own, and his own received him not." Was there ever a greater and sadder anticlimax and a more cruel disappointment? Let us admit that there may have been no fault in this matter, no lack of hospitality in the keeper or the guests of the inn, as the village was overcrowded, and the fact that these late arrivals were compelled to put up with a place out in the enclosure, possibly a cave, where the animals were kept, was no intended incivility or uncommon hardship. Nevertheless, whatever may have been the reason, the fact was that there was no room for Jesus in that inn the first night he spent in this world, and this fact was sadly prophetic of his reception in the world he came to save.

There were few places where he did find welcome: generally there was no room for him even in places where he had the most reason and right to expect it. And if it was no lack of hospitality that kept him out of this inn, it certainly was the lack of this grace and the positive presence of hostility that in after life excluded him from many places where he wanted to be.

Jesus was not wanted in his own country: Herod tried to leave no room for him there. He was not wanted in his own town: his neighbors tried to hurl him down a cliff to his death. He was not wanted in his own church: its ministers and doctors of divinity fell upon him in malignant fury and at last crucified him. Even his own family found it hard to make room for him in their inner circle. Small room was there in this evil world for this pure and lowly spirit. Then why did he come to it? Because he so loved it that he gave himself for it. Small room do we still leave for Jesus as we crowd him out of our hearts and lives and out of our social order and civilization with our selfishness and sin. Is it a discouraging fact that there is so little room for Christ in the world? Then let us note the fact that there is more room for him to-day than ever before, and this room is ever widening.

How much that inn missed by not having room for this mother and her babe! Its finest apartment lost a glory that fell upon the manger out of which the cattle were fed. How much shall we miss if we do not have room for Christ? There is one world where there is room for Jesus and where he is wanted: heaven. And all who are like him shall find room with him in its many mansions.



X. Angel Ministry


Jerusalem and Rome knew nothing of this event. The High Priest offered the evening sacrifice unaware that it was rendered obsolete by the coming of the true Sacrifice, and Cesar slept that night without a dream that a Rival had been born who would uproot his empire and erect a worldwide kingdom. Earth was unconscious of this birth, but heaven knew it. There was holy ecstacy in all the shining ranks above, and "angels seem, as birds new-come in spring, to have flown hither and thither, in songful mood, dipping their white wings into our atmosphere, just touching the earth or glancing along its surface, as sea birds skim the surface of the sea."

Around all the events of the birth and ministry of Christ there are the flutter and flash of angel wings, and this story would lose much of its music and charm if it were stripped of its angel ministration. The Bible is full of angels. They appear to Zacharias the mother of John the Baptist, and they find Mary the virgin mother, as a beam of morning light finds a white-leafed flower, and reveal the mystery that has come upon her. No sooner is the infant Jesus laid in his manger than the door of heaven opens and there comes trooping forth a radiant throng, filling the midnight sky with splendor and proclaiming to earth the glad tidings. Angels ministered to Jesus in the wilderness and strengthened him in the garden. More than twelve legions of angels waited to do his bidding when he was arrested. Angels rolled away the stone from his tomb and sat by the empty grave, announcing his resurrection as they had announced his birth; and as they thronged the skies at his coming, so they hovered in the air at his going; and when he comes again he shall come in his glory with all the holy angels with him.

These angels are still in the world as the ministers of God, though invisible to mortal eyes. We see the firefly only through the little luminous section of its flight, but it still flies on after it ceases to be visible. So we see these angels only through that shining section of their path in which they waited on Jesus; but they are still flying through the world as invisible spirits. The angels of little ones are always before the face of their Father in heaven, and as they bore the spirit of Lazarus to Abraham's bosom, so they still may bear departing spirits up the shining stairway of the stars to the eternal home. We know not in what wide ways they minister to us; how there is a rush of angel wings to the cradle of every new-born babe; how they constantly pitch their tents around us in the viewless fields of air; and how often they bear us up lest we dash our feet against a stone.

How little we know of the world in which we live! We weigh its rocks and grind them up and melt them in our crucibles; we fling our nets through all space and catch the stars; and when we can find nothing more to measure and analyze we think we have found and explained all. But the finest and best things cannot be grasped by these coarse processes. Sunbeams cannot be weighed on hay-scales, and gorgeously-colored bits of cloud cannot be caught in a crucible. We can weigh the new-born baby, but not the mother's love for her child. A telescope cannot see an angel, though millions of them may be flying across its field of vision. There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy. In our blind materialism we need to have our eyes opened that we may know that this universe, which often seems so empty and dark to us, is a blazing sea of spiritual splendor in which burning suns float as black specks and which is thronged with troops of angels that do the will of God and wait on us.



XI. Angels and Shepherds


The Christ-child was born, and now the problem was to get the wonderful news out into the world. There were no newspapers to announce it in startling headlines and cry it out upon the morning air, and, if there had been, their reporters would not have been keen enough to discover it and probably would have had no interest in it. God used other means. An angel came from heaven to proclaim the great event to earth. Where shall he begin, what human ears shall first have the privilege of hearing the glad tidings? Let the angel go to Jerusalem, we would have said, and call upon the High Priest and first take him into his confidence, and then let him go to the Temple and stand amidst the splendors of that holy sanctuary and announce to the assembled priests and scribes that prophecy had been fulfilled and their long-expected Messiah had come. Shall not some respect be paid to official places and persons? Has not God ordained priests and presbyters through whom he dispenses his grace and administers his kingdom?

Yet history witnesses that at times few men stand in God's way more than ecclesiastics. They are rarely the men that earliest hear a new message: God must usually tell it to some one else first. One of the most startling things in the Bible is the fact that the announcement of the birth of Christ was made, not to priests, but to shepherds, and the gospel was first preached, not in a church, but in a pasture field where there were more sheep than men to hear.

What a rebuke is this to our ecclesiastical pretension and pride! God can easily dispense with us, and may pass us by to speak to some humbler soul. The great people up in the Temple have no monopoly of his grace, and it may break out in some wholly unexpected place. The gospel is no respecter of places and persons. It may be preached in a costly church or stately cathedral, but it is equally at home in a country school house, or in a wooden tabernacle, or in a sheep pasture. In simplicity and catholicity it is adapted to all classes and conditions of life. It has the same message for priest and people, prince and peasant, scholar and shepherd, and all receive from it an equal welcome and blessing.



XII. The Concert in a Sheep Pasture


In the night of the Nativity the shepherds were in the field keeping watch over their flocks, for those faithfully engaged in the lowliest duties may receive a splendid visitation from heaven. The night did not seem different from other nights. The skies were as serene and the stars burned as calm as in all the past. The shepherds were as unconscious of any coming wonder as the sleeping sheep that lay like drifted snow on the ridges. Yet the heavens were strained tense with expectation and were on the point of being shattered into song. Flocks of angels were flying downward from the stars, and as their white wings struck earth's atmosphere they kindled it into radiance with heavenly glory, and from the gallery of the skies they chanted their song, accompanied with all the golden harps and deep-toned organ pipes of the celestial choir. Never before or since was such a concert heard in this world, and yet only shepherds and sheep were present to hear it. The encircling hills were the grand amphitheater in which it was rendered, the grassy slopes were the only seats, and there were no tickets of admission, but, like the gospel itself, it was given without money and without price. Musical artists are often sensitive and critical and exclusive people, chary of a free exercise of their gifts and particular as to their audience, but angels will sing for anybody.

The simple-minded shepherds were sore afraid at this outburst of heavenly music, as wiser people would have been. An angel voice sang the solo:

Be not afraid; for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which shall be to all the people: for there is born to you this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, and lying in a manger.

"Be not afraid!" Sin has wrought such disorder in this world that the thought of spirit visitors frightens us and heaven itself must not come too near. There are great reasons for fear in this darkened world, but the coming of Jesus into it is not one of them. His only mission is to release us from the bondage and bitterness of sin and let us out into the glorious liberty and joy of the sons of God. And Christ has in a marvelous degree cast fear out of the world and poured joy through all its channels, as the sun disperses the night and spills its splendor over hills and vales.

The good tidings announced the birth of a Saviour, and this is the best news this sin-stricken world can hear, for sin is the root of all our fear and misery. Back of every bitter tear lies a guilty thought or deed. This connection is often visible upon the surface and stabs us in the face, and then it may lie hidden under many generations, but it is always there. Sin is the disease that poisons all our blood and blights our physical and moral and spiritual health and happiness. Cut this ugly tree up by the roots and all its scarlet fruits and poisonous leaves will wither; cure this disease and our human world will be transformed into a new Paradise of God. A Saviour is the supreme need of the world, and his birth was news good enough to bring singing angels to earth and fill all the centuries with song.

Definite directions were given for finding the new-born Saviour in the city of David, wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in the manger. The angelic message was not simply a song in the air, a halo of celestial light, a splendid but fading vision, but it bound itself down to definite places and circumstances and left something solid. Again we note that this thing, was not done in a corner and is not afraid of facts. Jesus was a true human child and took upon him our form down to his infant clothes. The Christ is a great wonder in his divine personality, ever transcending our utmost comprehension, but we can understand his swaddling bands. Christianity is not all mystery, but it also comes down close around us and embodies itself in many plain facts and duties. "Ye shall find the babe." The shepherds were not left to wander around in uncertainty, but sent direct to the place. Christ is not hidden from us, clear directions point out the place where he is, and every soul that seeks him shall find him.

The angel solo broke out into a heavenly chorus which gave a broad interpretation of the meaning of the birth of Christ:

Glory to God in the highest, And on earth peace among men in whom he is well pleased.

This chorus first ascribes glory to God, for all things good and beautiful come from him and express his glory, as all rays of daylight shoot from the sun and are its splintered splendor. The gift of Christ manifests the glory of God in that it displays the divine wisdom in devising the plan of salvation, the divine power in executing it, and the divine love as its mighty motive. The glory of God, that streams through the heavens as through a dome of many-colored glass, is concentrated and burns with the interest brightness in the person of his Son.

The chorus next pronounces peace upon men. Divine glory and human good will are related as cause and effect. When men get right with God they at once get right with one another, as the center of a circle, when truly located, pulls every point on the circumference into its proper place in the curve; but when men are at variance with God they are at enmity among themselves. Divine glory is the sun shining in the heavens; human good will is a garden and orchard all abloom with flowers and laden with fruit. As the glory of the sun is transformed into rosy buds and sweet fruit, so is the glory of God transformed into human good will. The glory of God and the peace of men are never in antagonism, but are always complementary and harmonious, they are the two sides of the same gospel, two parts of the same song. They cannot be separated and must go together; in glorifying God we make peace among men, and in making peace among men we glorify God.



XIII. The First Visitors to Bethlehem


The angels' song died away in the solemn silence, and the shepherds were left alone. It was a critical hour with them. Would they follow this vision and turn it into victory, or would they let it vanish with the last echo of the song and relapse into the old dull routine? No, they did not let it pass, and life was never the same to them again. "Let us now go," they said, "even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us." They translated vision into action and presently were climbing the rocky slope to Bethlehem. Had these shepherds not followed up the message their knowledge of their Messiah would have immediately been cut short. We hear divine messages and see heavenly visions enough, but too often we let them fade into forgetfulness and pass into nothingness. A message does us no good until it becomes action, the grandest vision that ever swept through our brain or illuminated our sky leaves no vestige of worth unless it is turned into conduct and character. "Let us now go and see this thing." We do not know Christ until we see him as our Saviour. Seeing is believing, this is the simplicity of faith, and when we see Christ through the direct vision and personal experience of faith and obedience we are transfigured into his likeness.

"And they came with haste, and found both Mary and Joseph, and the babe lying in the manger." Were they disappointed at the humble mother, wife of a workingman, and at the manger cradle? These did not match the desire and expectation of the Jews. They had long cherished the passionate hope of an earthly prince who would come wearing purple robes and marshaling armies to trample hated oppressors under feet and make Jerusalem the mistress of the world. They would have said that the Christ should be born in a palace and laid on softest down and covered with silken robes. What a surprise was this manger to their thoughts and shock to their feelings. Were ever deep-seated, long-cherished hopes treated with more cruel irony? But God's ways are not as our ways. Christ was brought into the world at the very point where he could get the deepest strongest hold upon it and most powerfully swing it starward from the dust. He was born among neither the very rich nor the very poor, but in the great middle class at the center of gravity of humanity, by lifting which he would lift the world. Had he come as a pampered child of wealth he would never have got hold of the great heart of humanity; but he came as one of the people, knitting himself into humble relations, growing up among plain folk of the countryside and toiling as a common workingman. And so when he began to preach the common people heard him gladly.

Promise was exactly matched by fulfillment. "Ye shall find a babe," was the promise of the angel, and now the record reads, "And they found the babe." When did God ever lead us to expect anything and then disappoint us? He gave us thirst that urges us to find water, and matching this need he has created bubbling springs and sparkling streams. He gave us hunger that seeks bread, and it finds fields of golden grain and orchards of rosy fruit. He gave us minds that seek truth, and they find it; he gave us a craving for love, and heart matches heart. He set eternity in our hearts and gave us deep instincts that reach after the Infinite, hearts that cry, "Shew, us the Father and it sufficeth us." Shall all lower needs be satisfied and this supreme search and cry of the soul be disappointed and mocked? "And they found the babe," is the answer to this need and promise. God sends us with all our deep needs and mysterious longings to that cradle in Bethlehem, where they will be exactly and fully matched and satisfied. He that hath seen this Child hath seen the Father.

The shepherds, having seen for themselves, immediately began to make known abroad the saying which was told them concerning the Child. The gospel is a social and expansive blessing and cannot be shut up in the individual heart. We are saved to serve, we are told the good news that we may tell it to others, we get it that we may give it. And the more we give it the more we get it, for this bread multiplies in our own hands as we share it with others, as did the loaves beside the Galilean sea. Great souls have ever grown rich by the lavish prodigality with which they bestowed their gifts on others, and because Jesus gave himself God hath highly exalted him.

First angels and then shepherds: how startling the contrast. Jesus has deep affinities with both: on his divine side he is related to heaven, and on his human side he is related to earth. And the first men he drew to his side were shepherds, representatives of the common people. He did not come as a member of any special class, especially of the upper class. No one can ever save the world by winning over the rich and the great. Society cannot be lifted from the top. Whoever would raise the level of society must get his lever under its foundation stones. Taking hold of the carved cornice will tear the roof off and lift it away from the building, but raising the lowest stone will also push up the spire's gilded point. He who elevates the peasant will also in time elevate the prince. Jesus did not begin with Cesar, but with shepherds, and then in three hundred years a Christian Cesar sat on the throne.

The gospel still works from beneath; going down into the slums of Christian cities; working among the poor and degraded of heathen lands; and seeking the lowest tribes of men from whom have been defaced almost the last vestige of humanity and restoring them to the image of God. Christ is saving the world as a whole. He is not slicing the loaf of society horizontally, cutting off the upper crust, but he is slicing it vertically from top to bottom.

How wonderful is the simplicity and beauty of this gospel that shepherds are drawn by it. It takes some brain to read Plato. Shepherds would not get much out of Sir Isaac Newton, or a child out of Shakespeare, or a sorrowing heart out of Emerson. But every one can get milk and honey for his soul out of the gospel of Jesus. His wonderful words of life have the same sweetness and saving power for shepherd and scholar, peasant and prince. However lowly and unlettered one may be there is wide room for him around the manger of this Child.



XIV. The Star and the Wise Men


The birth of Jesus created a new center for the world and set heaven and earth revolving around his cradle. All things began to gravitate towards him as by a new and more powerful attraction. Angels sang, shepherds wondered, a new star glittered upon the blazing curtain of the night, and wise men came from afar to worship him. These wise men were Persian priests, scholars, scientists, astrologers, students of the stars. Rumors of a coming King or Saviour were widespread in the ancient world and doubtless had reached these worshipers of the sun to whom the stars were embodiments of deity. A new star in their sky, whatever it may have been, would instantly attract their attention and receive from them a religious interpretation. The celestial messenger was a fulfillment of their hope and a guide to their feet. They were obedient to the heavenly vision, and across long burning stretches of desert sand they came and appeared in Jerusalem with their inquiry concerning the new-born King of the Jews.

They were therefore broad-minded men whose horizon was wider than their own deserts, or they never would have overleaped their national piety and patriotism and prejudice into search and reverence for a Jewish king. But something told them that the new King, though born a Jew, was of universal interest and was more than human; they forefelt his divinity. Therefore they were come to the King, not to gratify their curiosity, not to speculate and debate and frame a new creed, but to worship him. There was no war between the science and the theology of these wise men. Their science did not kill their religion, and their religion did not strangle their science. The stars, according to their simple-minded way of thinking, did not crowd God out of his universe. Knowledge and reverence made one music in their minds as both science and faith grew from more to more.

A religion that could not stand the most searching and pitiless light of scholarship could not live. Science kills pagan faiths as with a stroke of lightning. But the gospel lives, because wise men go to Bethlehem and find there, not fiction, but fact. It welcomes and inspires the profoundest science and philosophy. God in his Word is not afraid of God in his works. The tallest intellects in all these centuries have bowed at the side of this manger.



XV. A Frightened King


The inquiry of the wise men startled Jerusalem and frightened Herod. The proud metropolis had not yet heard the news. The immortal honor of having given birth to the Christ had been denied to her haughty brow and had become humble Bethlehem's imperishable crown. The very name of king gave Herod a terrible shock. He was a usurper steeped in crime and was ever trembling on his throne. No hunted, white-faced, Russian Czar ever feared nihilist's bomb more than he feared rebellion's revolt and assassin's knife. Rebel after rebel he had crushed into spattered brains and blood, and here was rumor of another Rival born under the shadow of his throne. Herod was troubled and his terror sent a strange wave and shudder of fear through the city. So the same gospel that made angels sing and wise men worship and started good news out over the world, created consternation and trouble up in Herod's palace and in his city. Christ came to give peace and joy, but his gospel is a sword to some. The good man's presence is always the bad man's condemnation and stirs hatred in his heart. Every good influence that falls upon us, according as we use it, brings either more joy or trouble, and the gospel itself is either a savor of life unto life, or of death unto death.



XVI. An Impotent Destroyer


Herod took swift and thorough measures, as he thought, to crush his new rival. He called the priests into his counsel and demanded to know where the Christ should be born. Too often has the priest been subject to the beck and call of the king. Bad men will use the church for their own evil purposes when they can, and will then grow condescending and complaisant towards the minister and liberal in their gifts. We must be ready to receive and help any man, but we must beware of men that push their way into the church for sinister ends. The church is no man's tool, and when it is thus prostituted its power and glory are gone.

The priests knew their Bibles and, in answer to Herod's question, put their finger on the very text and town. They knew where Christ was to be born, but they did not know Christ when he was born. We may have an exhaustive knowledge of the letter of the Bible and yet not know its spirit; we may know many things about Christ and yet not know Christ.

Herod, having gained knowledge of Christ, immediately turned it against Christ. He sent searchers after the child, falsely and wickedly pretending that he also wanted to come and worship him. There is no truth, or means of good, or gift of God so holy and blessed that men will not turn it to evil ends. Afterward Herod, in blind but impotent rage, sent soldiers and thrust a sword through every cradle in Bethlehem; but the Child, sheathed in omnipotence, had escaped, and Herod could sooner have crushed the earth flat than have hurt a hair of his head.

Herod was the forerunner of a long line of enemies who have endeavored to kill this Child. Pagan Rome poured the fires of ten dreadful persecutions on the heads of his followers, but they could not extinguish his name in fire and blood. Often have the fires of martyrdom been kindled around his disciples, but they have stood faithful to him. Skeptical scholarship has tried to reduce his gospel to a fable and even to resolve Jesus himself into a myth, but as soon could it dissolve the rocky ledge of Bethlehem into vapor and cloud. And did not Voltaire prophecy in 1760 that ere the end of the eighteenth century Christianity would disappear from the earth? Many are the authors and books that have thought to make an end of Jesus, but he still lives the same yesterday and to-day. And does not unbelief and unfaithfulness in our hearts also try to strangle this Child? Every evil thought we cherish and every evil deed we do are so many swords we thrust into his cradle. Herod has a long and numerous progeny, and we may find them close to our own door and even in our own hearts.

The star appears to have been invisible to the wise men while they were in Jerusalem -- in that guilty city, which in its pride thought it had a monopoly of divine favor, the stars of faith were eclipsed by a worldly spirit -- but when they emerged from the city the star once more led them on and stood over where the young Child was. God has put many stars in our sky to lead us on to Christ. The stars themselves are as vocal with divine messages as though every one of them were a golden bell hung in the dome of the night to ring out some good news from God. The Bible is a great constellation in which every promise and precept is a star, and all its stars stand over Christ. All the Christian centuries are starred with events and achievements that point to Christ as King.



XVII. Splendid Gifts


"And they came into the house and saw the young child with Mary his mother; and they fell down and worshipped him; and opening their treasures they offered unto him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh." Is there anything more beautiful in the Bible, or in all literature? The imagination of painter or poet may well kindle at the scene. There are the wondering mother, the worshiping wise men bowing down, the shining fragrant gifts, and in the midst, as the center and glory of it all, the young Child. This Child, which even in its infancy subordinates mother and wise men and gold to itself, is indeed a King. Worship is the expression of reverence, and reverence is the root of all worth and divineness in life. The human soul is a poor and pitiful fragment until it is completed and crowned with worship, a lost child until it finds its Father. The wise men found a King to worship; they were not following a false guide across weary wastes into nothingness. Our instinct of worship is not false, but is true and is matched with its appropriate satisfaction. Christ completes our human childhood with divine Fatherhood. He that hath seen him hath seen the father.

These Persian scholars were forerunners of other wise men going to Bethlehem. Through all the Christian centuries men of genius have been laying their most precious gifts at the feet of Christ. Columbus had no sooner set foot on a new shore than he named it San Salvador, Holy Saviour; and thus he laid his great discovery, America, at the feet of Jesus. Leonardo da Vinci swept the golden goblets from the table of his "Last Supper" because he feared their splendor would distract attention from and dim the glory of the Master himself. The hand that rounded St. Peter's dome reared it in adoration to Christ, and Raphael in painting the Transfiguration laid his masterpiece at the feet of this Child. Mozart there laid his symphonies, and Beethoven the works of his colossal genius. Shakespeare, "with the best brain in six thousand years," who has poured the many-colored splendors of his imagination over all our life, wrote in his will: "I commend my soul into the hands of God my Creator, hoping and assuredly believing, through the only merits of Jesus Christ my Saviour, to be made partaker of life everlasting." Tennyson begins his In Memoriam, in the judgment of many the superbest literary blossom of the nineteenth century, with the invocation, "Strong Son of God, immortal Love."

Though Jesus wrote no book himself and never wrote any recorded thing except a few words in the sand which some passing breeze or foot quickly obliterated, yet out of him have grown vast forests of literature. It would tear great gaps in the shelves of any library and leave the remaining volumes spotted with blank spaces if all the books about him and references to him were removed. A thousand books have been written about Lincoln and eighty thousand about Napoleon, but if all the books that were ever written about Lincoln and Washington and Napoleon and Cesar were piled up in one heap it would look small beside the mountain of books that have been written about Jesus Christ. Not only have the writers written about him above every other figure in history, but in like degree the artists have painted him and the musicians have sung about him. He is the most fertile theme of all literature and art, and the gifts that genius have heaped about his feet are an incomparable testimony to the adoration that is paid to him.

About the first use to which any notable invention is put is to spread the gospel of Jesus. The very first book printed on a printing press was the Bible, and this wonderful and perhaps greatest human invention has been busier printing this book than any other to this day and multiplies its copies by the hundred million over the world. The newspaper is a mighty means of spreading his principles. The railway and steamship carry his gospel, and the airship gives wings to the same good news. Telegraph and telephone flash it, and wireless waves set the ether over whole continents and oceans aquiver with the messages of Jesus Christ. The sewing machine sews for him, the typewriter writes for him, and even battle ships and bayonets may fight for him. Sooner or later every inventor must lay his magic machine at his feet. For him the statesman legislates, the scientist investigates, the author writes, the artist paints and the singer sings. In an increasing degree Jesus is drawing all men into his service, and they are laying their treasures at his feet. The gold of the wise men was only the first gleam of the shining heaps of wealth that his followers are now piling on the altar of his service. This process will go on until the whole world will lie at his feet.

Every generation sends a more numerous company to Bethlehem. With every century worshipers arrive from more distant lands. From every quarter of the circumference of the globe paths now run to the manger of this Child, worn deep by millions of feet. The nations are beginning to come. By and by these converging paths will be crowded and all the ends of the earth shall bring their gold and shall worship at his feet.

What is the explanation of the mighty, worldwide, attractive power of this Child? There is only one adequate explanation: "He shall save his people from their sins." The world is tired of men who come to save it with programmes only an inch long; who have nothing better to propose than longer laws and cleaner sanitation; who, unmindful of the experiment in Eden, would have us believe that if we were only placed in a pleasant garden where we had plenty to eat and little to do we would all be good. The weary world wants one who can go to the root of its unrest, and it is finding out that this can be done by him who is mighty to save people from their sins. All who put their trust in him are blessed with purity and peace. In this great world, lost in sin and beaten upon by infinite mystery, there is only one voice that comes like music across our life with power to cleanse and comfort us; and this is the Voice whose infant cry was first heard in Bethlehem. Let us now go even unto Bethlehem while the song is in the air and see this Child and worship at his feet.



XVIII. Was a Child the Best Christmas Gift to the World?


When we come to think of it, does not a child seem an insignificant and disappointing gift for God to make to the world? After so long preparation and so great promises and hopes, would we not have expected some greater and more wonderful gift? But a child is so common; millions are born every month; there is nothing unique and wonderful about a child. Why did God not rather give some invention or discovery or piece of knowledge that would revolutionize and bless the world? Would he not have done enormously more for mankind if in the first century of our era he had given them the printing press, or the steam engine, or the electric light? May there not yet be waiting for us some invention or knowledge that will work wonders beyond anything we have dreamed and shower material comforts on the world?

This thought grows out of our blind materialism which leads us to think that matter is the master of mind, circumstance more important than character and the things of the body than the things of the spirit. But material improvements do not necessarily improve men. The locomotive has little relation to character. It picks a man up at one point and drops him at another the same man he was. If he is selfish and wicked at the beginning of the journey, he is just as selfish and wicked at its end. It is a simple fact that all our material progress works little improvement in morals. At the hour Christ was born Rome had an amazing material civilization, blazing with splendor, but all the more rapidly was it rotting at the core.

But a child has in it the possibility of growth and of imparting regenerating ideas and a new life to the world. Sir Isaac Newton did not give any money or material gift to the world, but he gave it scientific ideas and a scientific spirit, and in giving it this he raised the intellectual level of the world and gave it the power of making millions of money. Shakespeare gave the world no new machine, but he opened the eyes of men to see heavenly visions and thus enriched them with treasures above all the gold of the world. Martin Luther invented no steam engine or sewing machine, but he taught men the rights of conscience and created our modern liberties. No material thing, however powerful and splendid, can make a better world: this work calls for better men. Therefore when God brings into the world a child endowed with superior intellectual and moral power, though his gift is only a babe and seems insignificant and hardly worth counting among so many, yet he has sent one of the greatest gifts of which his omnipotence is capable. An old German schoolmaster always took his hat off to each new boy that came into his school, never knowing what elements of genius might have been mixed in his newly molded brain. When Erasmus came out of that school his prophetic instinct was justified. Never despise a child, for in it sleeps some of the omnipotence and worth of God.

But the Child which God gave the world as its Christmas gift was no merely human child however richly endowed. This Child was human and was born in time, but he was also divine and came forth from eternity. The possibilities that were sleeping in this Child were foreseen by the prophet Isaiah in the names that were prophetically given him, every name being a window through which we can look in upon his personality and power, every title being one of his crowns: "His name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace." All these powers and possibilities are incarnated in this Child, and he is working them out in a redeemed world. God made no mistake, then, he gave us no small and common gift, but he did his best and gave the world the greatest possible Christmas Gift when this Child was born. All the grass in the world came from one seed, all the roses from one root, and all the redeemed that shall at last populate heaven and fill it with praise throughout eternity shall be saved by the grace and clad in the beauty of this Child.



XIX. A World Without Christmas


What would be the effect of blotting Christmas out of the calendar of the world? Imagination would have to explore wide and deep in order to trace all the consequences. The gladdest holiday of the year would fade into a common day. The weeks that precede it would lose all their interest of preparation and expectation and would sink into dull days. The stores would not blossom out into brilliant bazars, cunning fingers would not be busy in secret, there would be no making and buying and hiding gifts, and there would be nothing waiting to be disclosed on Christmas morning! The morning of this day would dawn gray and bleak just like any other morning, and no red letter would distinguish it on the calendar of the year. There would be no glad greetings with the first streak of light, no rush for gifts and joyous surprises, no home gatherings, no neighborhood festivities, no benefactions to the poor. The tide of life would not on this day rise higher and run fuller and take on richer colors and sparkle with brighter joy, but it would remain at the old level and creep along in the same dull sluggish way.

Deeper losses would result from blotting this day from the calendar. There would be no story to tell of that wondrous birth that took place on the first Christmas morning and fixed the date from which all other events are dated. To blot Christmas out of the world we would have to blot nineteen Christian centuries from the history of the world; in truth, we would have to go farther back and dig up the roots of Hebrew history running through twenty centuries. We would have to go through the world and destroy every church and Christian institution: nearly every hospital would go down under this fell decree, and most of our schools and colleges. Our Bibles would all have to be burned, and our literature would be perforated and ripped to pieces. Furthermore, we would need to pull out of human character and life all the strands of purity and peace, of faith and love and hope, that have been woven into the hearts and lives of men by the hand of Christ. We would have to stop all our preaching and praying and hush every Christian hymn and song. We would have no word of salvation from sin, no comfort in trouble, and no hope as we look out into the beyond. The world would lose its Light and be wrapped in night.

Do we want such a world? Can we believe that God would make such a world and leave us as "infants crying in the night, infants crying for the light, and with no language but a cry"?



XX. Has the Christmas Song Survived the World War?


But has not the Christmas star already been extinguished in such a night? Has the angels' song survived the World War? Have not its notes of glory to God in the highest and peace among men been utterly drowned and lost in the rattle of machine rifles and the mighty explosions of monster guns that shook Europe and reverberated around the world? Was not this war the flat denial and total annihilation of the message and spirit of Jesus, entirely silencing the angels' song that gladdened the earth at his birth? Can it even be heard after many months when angry voices and the crash of falling wreckage still disturb the world? These ominous questions are causing anxiety to many Christian souls and may well give us pause.

But the gentlest forces are ever the mightiest and last the longest. The sunlight is swallowed up in the storm and the very sun itself seems blotted from the heavens, but presently the blackness breaks, the clouds roll away, and the sun again smiles upon the scene, as, indeed, it had never ceased to smile. The song of the birds is hushed in the crash of thunder and the rush and roar of wind and rain, but after the storm passes their dulcet voices again sing out with fresh gladness in their song. A hammer can pound ice to powder, but every particle is still unconquered ice, and only the gentle kiss of the sun can subdue and melt it into sweet water. High explosives and poisonous gas can devastate the earth, but only the balmy breath of the springtime can clothe it in verdure and cause it to burst into bud and bloom.

The war has indeed enwrapped and in a degree wrecked the world, and the voices of peace were little heard in the storm. But now that the guns are silenced and the clouds are rolling away peace is again surging up in the heart of humanity as a passion and is at the work of clearing away the wreckage and of rebuilding the new and better world that all men hope is to emerge out of the ruins of the old. Alexander and Cesar and Napoleon and the Kaiser -- mark the anticlimax! -- are gone, their swords are rust, their dreams are dust, but Jesus Christ remains the same yesterday, to-day and forever. His penetrating and persistent voice was not really silenced even during the confusion of the war, rather was he then speaking in the thunderous tones of judgment; and now the Christmas angels are being heard again as birds are heard after the storm. The hand of Christ has been shaping the course of the world, even when convulsed in war, and is now remolding its plastic elements into form. He has not been dethroned and discrowned in this world-cataclysm in which so many thrones and crowns have come tumbling down, but is still the Prince of Peace. The Man of Nazareth is speaking with a majestic voice to-day to all these nations and asserting the waste and wickedness of war and the brotherhood of man as they were never asserted before, and urging them to build a league of peace that may be the greatest outcome and blessing of the war. A new world may arise out of the ruins of the old that will be worth all the blood it cost and may be the prelude of the fulfillment of all the dreams of prophets and poets of a Parliament of Man under the rule of which "the kindly earth shall slumber, lapt in universal law." Then shall the angels' Christmas song break from the gallery of the skies and fill all the world with its notes, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among men in whom he is well pleased."



XXI. The Light of the World


Jesus was born into a dark world. Politically it was bound. Despotism constricted and strangled it at the top, and at the bottom its millions were shackled slaves. Intellectually it was decadent. Philosophy had stopped and stagnated in Athens, and no fresh current of thought was irrigating the world, no new light was breaking upon the human mind. Religiously its pagan faiths were outworn and dying or dead. Judaism itself had gone to seed and was only a dry husk. Morally the world was terribly corrupt, from its lowest slums up to the palaces of the rich where sensuality ran riot. As a consequence of these conditions, pessimism spread a dark pall over the world. Men everywhere were in despair. They entertained the darkest and bitterest views of life. Nothing seemed to them worth while. The world was all a muddle, and the human heart cried out that life

Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Into this dark world Jesus was born. He was only a babe, a single speck in the vast mass of humanity, but this Babe was luminous and shone with heavenly light. A star shed its radiance over his cradle -- symbol and prophecy of his mission. As he grew in years he grew in luminosity until he lighted up Palestine and shot some rays across the borders of that little land into the great world. Death could not quench his growing light, but he rose to heaven, as the sun rises to its zenith, whence his light now falls in increasing splendor over all the world.

This Light has been shining nineteen hundred years and it has made a wide and deep impression on the darkness. Open the map of the world, and its bright spaces correspond with and are largely caused by the shining of this Light. The teachings and spirit and power and personality of Jesus are illuminating the world. Political despotism and slavery cannot live under the light of his gospel of brotherhood and are fleeing from his presence. Intellectual light is flooding all Christian lands: has it not been touched by his torch? Moral darkness is being penetrated and dissipated by the purity and peace of Christ. Pessimism meets its match and victor in his mighty jubilant optimism. He clears the world of the muddle of its confusion and turns it into our Father's house. He lifts life up and makes it worth while in its great and grand meaning.

As from the uplifted hand of the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor there shoots a sheaf of electric light that illuminates all the bay, so from the pierced hand of Christ there shines a blaze of light that penetrates and scatters the darkness of the world. We live in this Light. This is the meaning and true blessing of Christmas time. This is the real joy that breaks over the world on Christmas morning. All our gifts derive their significance from this Gift; all our joys are scintillations of this Light.


O thou Light of the world! In thy Light help us to see light. May sin not wrap us in darkness, may not a worldly life breed in us a spirit of bitterness and despair. Shine upon us with the light of thy truth and thy love. Light up the world for us so that we shall see it as our Father's house. May thy presence put a deeper, richer, gladder meaning into all our life and pour a new splendor over all the world. And may nations come to thy Light and kings to the brightness of thy rising.

<eob>

Red Rooney

By

R.M. Ballantyne



Chapter One.

The Last Of The Crew.

Lost And Found.

There is a particular spot in those wild regions which lie somewhere near the northern parts of Baffin's Bay, where Nature seems to have set up her workshop for the manufacture of icebergs, where Polar bears, in company with seals and Greenland whales, are wont to gambol, and where the family of Jack Frost may be said to have taken permanent possession of the land.

One winter day, in the early part of the eighteenth century, a solitary man might have been seen in that neighbourhood, travelling on foot over the frozen sea in a staggering, stumbling, hurried manner, as if his powers, though not his will, were exhausted.

The man's hairy garb of grey sealskin might have suggested that he was a denizen of those northern wilds, had not the colour of his face, his brown locks, and his bushy beard, betokened him a native of a very different region.

Although possessing a broad and stalwart frame, his movements indicated, as we have said, excessive weakness. A morsel of ice in his path, that would have been no impediment even to a child, caused him to stumble. Recovering himself, with an evidently painful effort, he continued to advance with quick, yet wavering steps. There was, however, a strange mixture of determination with his feebleness. Energy and despair seemed to be conjoined in his look and action -- and no wonder, for Red Rooney, although brave and resolute by nature, was alone in that Arctic wilderness, and reduced to nearly the last extremity by fatigue and famine. For some days -- how many he scarcely remembered -- he had maintained life by chewing a bit of raw sealskin as he travelled over the frozen waste; but this source of strength had at last been consumed, and he was now sinking from absolute want.

The indomitable spirit of the man, however, kept his weakened body moving, even after the mind had begun to sink into that dreamy, lethargic state which is said to indicate the immediate approach of death, and there was still a red spot in each of his pale and hollow cheeks, as well as an eager gleam of hope in his sunken eyes; for the purpose that Red Rooney had in view was to reach the land.

It was indeed a miserably faint hope that urged the poor fellow on, for the desolate shore of Western Greenland offered little better prospect of shelter than did the ice-clad sea; but, as in the case of the drowning man, he clutched at this miserable straw of hope, and held on for life. There was the bare possibility that some of the migratory Eskimos might be there, or, if not, that some scraps of their food -- some bits of refuse, even a few bones -- might be found. Death, he felt, was quickly closing with him on the sea. The great enemy might, perhaps, be fought with and kept at bay for a time if he could only reach the land.

Encouraging himself with such thoughts, he pushed on, but again stumbled and fell -- this time at full length. He lay quiet for a few seconds. It was so inexpressibly sweet to rest, and feel the worn-out senses floating away, as it were, into dreamland! But the strong will burst the tightening bands of death, and, rising once more, with the exclamation, "God help me!" he resumed his weary march.

All around him the great ocean was covered with its coat of solid, unbroken ice; for although winter was past, and the sun of early spring was at the time gleaming on bergs that raised their battlements and pinnacles into a bright blue sky, the hoary king of the far north refused as yet to resign his sceptre and submit to the interregnum of the genial sun.

A large hummock or ridge of ice lay in front of the man, blocking his view of the horizon in that direction. It had probably been heaved up by one of the convulsions of the previous autumn, and was broken into a chaotic mass. Here he stopped and looked up, with a sigh. But the sinking of the heart was momentary. Deep snow had so filled up the crevices of the shattered blocks that it was possible to advance slowly by winding in and out among them. As the ascent grew steeper the forlorn man dropped on all-fours and crawled upwards until he reached the top.

The view that burst upon him would have roused enthusiasm if his situation had been less critical. Even as it was, an exclamation of surprise broke from him, for there, not five miles distant, was the coast of Greenland; desolate, indeed, and ice-bound -- he had expected that -- but inexpressibly grand even in its desolation. A mighty tongue of a great glacier protruded itself into the frozen sea. The tip of this tongue had been broken off, and the edge presented a gigantic wall of crystal several hundred feet high, on which the sun glittered in blinding rays.

This tongue -- a mere offshoot of the great glacier itself -- filled a valley full ten miles in length, measuring from its tip in the ocean to its root on the mountain brow, where the snow-line was seen to cut sharply against the sky.

For some minutes Red Rooney sat on one of the ice-blocks, gazing with intense eagerness along the shore, in the hope of discerning smoke or some other evidence of man's presence. But nothing met his disappointed gaze save the same uniform, interminable waste of white and grey, with here and there a few dark frowning patches where the cliffs were too precipitous to sustain the snow.

Another despairing sigh rose to the man's lips, but these refused to give it passage. With stern resolve he arose and stumbled hurriedly forward. The strain, however, proved too great. On reaching the level ice on the other side of the ridge he fell, apparently for the last time, and lay perfectly still. Ah! how many must have fallen thus, to rise no more, since men first began to search out the secrets of that grand mysterious region!

But Red Rooney was not doomed to be among those who have perished there. Not far from the spot where he fell, one of the short but muscular and hairy-robed denizens of that country was busily engaged in removing the skin from a Polar bear which he had just succeeded in spearing, after a combat which very nearly cost him his life. During the heat of the battle the brave little man's foot had slipped, and the desperately wounded monster, making a rush at the moment, overturned him into a crevice between two ice-blocks, fortunately the impetus of the rush caused the animal to shoot into another crevice beyond, and the man, proving more active than the bear, sprang out of his hole in time to meet his foe with a spear-thrust so deadly that it killed him on the spot. Immediately he began to skin the animal, intending to go home with the skin, and return with a team of dogs for the meat and the carcass of a recently-caught seal.

Meanwhile, having removed and packed up the bear-skin, he swung it on his broad shoulders, and made for the shore as fast as his short legs would carry him. On the way he came to the spot where the fallen traveller lay.

His first act was to open his eyes to the uttermost, and, considering the small, twinkling appearance of those eyes just a minute before, the change was marvellous.

"Hoi!" then burst from him with tremendous emphasis, after which he dropped his bundle, turned poor Rooney over on his back, and looked at his face with an expression of awe.

"Dead!" said the Eskimo, under his breath -- in his own tongue, of course, not in English, of which, we need scarcely add, he knew nothing.

After feeling the man's breast, under his coat, for a few seconds, he murmured the word "Kablunet" (foreigner), and shook his head mournfully.

It was not so much grief for the man's fate that agitated this child of the northern wilderness, as regret at his own bad fortune. Marvellous were the reports which from the south of Greenland had reached him, in his far northern home, of the strange Kablunets or foreigners who had arrived there to trade with the Eskimos -- men who, so the reports went, wore smooth coats without hair, little round things on their heads instead of hoods, and flapping things on their legs instead of sealskin boots -- men who had come in monster kayaks (canoes), as big as icebergs; men who seemed to possess everything, had the power to do anything, and feared nothing. No fabrications in the Arabian Nights, or Gulliver, or Baron Munchausen, ever transcended the stories about those Kablunets which had reached this broad, short, sturdy Eskimo -- stories which no doubt began in the south of Greenland with a substratum of truth, but which, in travelling several hundreds of miles northward, had grown, as a snowball might have grown if rolled the same distance over the Arctic wastes; with this difference -- that whereas the snowball would have retained its original shape, though not its size, the tales lost not only their pristine form and size, but became so amazingly distorted that the original reporters would probably have failed to recognise them. And now, at last, here was actually a Kablunet -- a real foreigner in the body; but not alive! It was extremely disappointing!

Our sturdy Eskimo, however, was not a good judge of Kablunet vitality. He was yet rubbing the man's broad chest, with a sort of pathetic pity, when a flutter of the heart startled him. He rubbed with more vigour. He became excited, and, seizing Red Rooney by the arms, shook him with considerable violence, the result being that the foreigner opened his eyes and looked at him inquiringly.

"Hallo, my lad," said Rooney, in a faint voice; "not quite so hard. I'm all right. Just help me up, like a good fellow."

He spoke in English, which was, of course, a waste of breath in the circumstances. In proof of his being "all right," he fell back again, and fainted away.

The Eskimo leaped up. He was one of those energetic beings who seem to know in all emergencies what is best to be done, and do it promptly. Unrolling the bear-skin, which yet retained a little of its first owner's warmth, he wrapped the Kablunet in it from head to foot, leaving an opening in front of his mouth for breathing purposes. With his knife -- a stone one -- he cut off a little lump of blubber from the seal, and placed that in the opening, so that the stranger might eat on reviving, if so inclined, or let it alone, if so disposed. Then, turning his face towards the land, he scurried away over the ice like a hunted partridge, or a hairy ball driven before an Arctic breeze.

He made such good use of his short legs that in less than an hour he reached a little hut, which seemed to nestle under the wing of a great cliff in order to avoid destruction by the glittering walls of an impending glacier. The hut had no proper doorway, but a tunnel-shaped entrance, about three feet high and several feet long. Falling on his knees, the Eskimo crept into the tunnel and disappeared. Gaining the inner end of it, he stood up and glared, speechless, at his astonished wife.

She had cause for surprise, for never since their wedding-day had Nuna beheld such an expression on the fat face of her amiable husband.

"Okiok," she said, "have you seen an evil spirit?"

"No," he replied.

"Why, then, do you glare?"

Of course Nuna spoke in choice Eskimo, which we render into English with as much fidelity to the native idiom as seems consistent with the agreeable narration of our tale.

"Hoi!" exclaimed Okiok, in reply to her question, but without ceasing to glare and breathe hard.

"Has my husband become a walrus, that he can only shout and snort?" inquired Nuna, with the slightest possible twinkle in her eyes, as she raised herself out of the lamp-smoke, and laid down the stick with which she had been stirring the contents of a stone pot.

Instead of answering the question, Okiok turned to two chubby and staring youths, of about fifteen and sixteen respectively, who were mending spears, and said sharply, "Norrak, Ermigit, go, harness the dogs."

Norrak rose with a bound, and dived into the tunnel. Ermigit, although willing enough, was not quite so sharp. As he crawled into the tunnel and was disappearing, his father sent his foot in the same direction, and, having thus intimated the necessity for urgent haste, he turned again to his wife with a somewhat softened expression.

"Give me food, Nuna. Little food has passed into me since yesterday at sunrise. I starve. When I have eaten, you shall hear words that will make you dream for a moon. I have seen," -- he became solemn at this point, and lowered his voice to a whisper as he advanced his head and glared again -- "I have seen a -- a -- Kablunet!"

He drew back and gazed at his wife as connoisseurs are wont to do when examining a picture. And truly Nuna's countenance was a picture-round, fat, comely, oily, also open-mouthed and eyed, with unbounded astonishment depicted thereon; for she thoroughly believed her husband, knowing that he was upright and never told lies.

Her mental condition did not, however, interfere with her duties. A wooden slab or plate, laden with a mess of broiled meat, soon smoked before her lord. He quickly seated himself on a raised platform, and had done some justice to it before Nuna recovered the use of her tongue.

"A Kablunet!" she exclaimed, almost solemnly. "Is he dead?"

Okiok paused, with a lump of blubber in his fingers close to his mouth.

"No; he is alive. At least he was alive when I left him. If he has not died since, he is alive still."

Having uttered this truism, he thrust the blubber well home, and continued his meal.

Nuna's curiosity, having been aroused, was not easily allayed. She sat down beside her spouse, and plied him with numerous questions, to which Okiok gave her brief and very tantalising replies until he was gorged, when, throwing down the platter, he turned abruptly to his wife, and said impressively -- 

"Open your ears, Nuna. Okiok is no longer what he was. He has been born only to-day. He has at last seen with his two eyes -- a Kablunet!"

He paused to restrain his excitement. His wife clasped her hands and looked at him excitedly, waiting for more.

"This Kablunet," he continued, "is very white, and not so ruddy as we have been told they are. His hair is brown, and twists in little circles. He wears it on the top of his head, and on the bottom of his head also -- all round. He is not small or short. No; he is long and broad, -- but he is thin, very thin, like the young ice at the beginning of winter. His eyes are the colour of the summer sky. His nose is like the eagle's beak, but not so long. His mouth -- I know not what his mouth is like; it is hid in a nest of hair. His words I understand not. They seem to me nonsense, but his voice is soft and deep."

"And his dress -- how does he dress?" asked Nuna, with natural feminine curiosity.

"Like ourselves," replied Okiok, with a touch of disappointment in his tone. "The men who said the Kablunets wear strange things on their heads and long flapping things on their legs told lies."

"Why did you not bring him here?" asked Nuna, after a few moments' meditation on these marvels.

"Because he is too heavy to lift, and too weak to walk. He has been starving. I wrapped him in the skin of a bear, and left him with a piece of blubber at his nose. When he wakes up he will smell; then he will eat. Perhaps he will live; perhaps he will die. Who can tell? I go to fetch him."

As the Eskimo spoke, the yelping of dogs outside told that his sons had obeyed his commands, and got ready the sledge. Without another word he crept out of the hut and jumped on the sledge, which was covered with two or three warm bearskins. Ermigit restrained the dogs, of which there were about eight, each fastened to the vehicle by a single line. Norrak handed his father the short-handled but heavy, long-lashed whip.

Okiok looked at Norrak as he grasped the instrument of punishment.

"Jump on," he said.

Norrak did so with evident good-will. The whip flashed in the air with a serpentine swing, and went off like a pistol. The dogs yelled in alarm, and, springing away at full speed, were soon lost among the hummocks of the Arctic sea.



Chapter Two.

Describes A Rescue And A Happy Family.

While the Eskimos were thus rushing to his rescue, poor Red Rooney --  whose shipmates, we may explain at once, had thus contracted his Christian name of Reginald -- began to recover from his swoon, and to wonder in a listless fashion where he was. Feeling comparatively comfortable in his bear-skin, he did not at first care to press the inquiry; but, as Okiok had anticipated, the peculiar smell near his nose tended to arouse him. Drawing his hand gently up, he touched the object in front of his mouth. It felt very like blubber, with which substance he was familiar. Extending his tongue, he found that it also tasted like blubber. To a starving man this was enough. He pulled the end of the raw morsel into his mouth and began to chew.

Ah, reader, turn not up your refined nose! When you have been for several months on short allowance, when you have scraped every shred of meat off the very last bones of your provisions, and sucked out the last drop of marrow, and then roasted and eaten your spare boots, you may perhaps be in a position to estimate and enjoy a morsel of raw blubber.

Regardless of time, place, and circumstance, our poor wanderer continued to chew until in his great weakness he fell into a sort of half slumber, and dreamed -- dreamed of feasting on viands more delightful than the waking imagination of man has ever conceived.

From this state of bliss he was rudely awakened by a roughish poke in the back. The poke was accompanied by a snuffing sound which caused the blood of the poor man to curdle. Could it be a bear?

He was not left long in doubt. After giving him another poke on the shoulder, the creature walked round him, snuffing as it went, and, on reaching the air-hole already referred to, thrust its snout in and snorted. Rooney turned his face aside to avoid the blast, but otherwise lay quite still, knowing well that whatever animal his visitor might be, his only hope lay in absolute inaction. Venturing in a few seconds to turn his face round and peep through the opening, he found that the animal was in very deed a large white bear, which, having found and abstracted the remains of the blubber he had been chewing, was at that moment licking its lips after swallowing it. Of course, finding the morsel satisfactory, the bear returned to the hole for more.

It is easier to conceive than to describe the poor man's feelings at that moment, therefore we leave the reader to conceive them. The natural and desperate tendency to spring up and defend himself had to be combated by the certain knowledge that, encased as he was, he could not spring up, and had nothing wherewith to defend himself except his fingers, which were no match for the claws of a Polar bear.

The blood which a moment before had begun apparently to curdle, now seemed turned into liquid fire; and when the snout again entered and touched his own, he could contain himself no longer, but gave vent to a yell, which caused the startled bear to draw sharply back in alarm. Probably it had never heard a yell through the medium of its nose before, and every one must know how strong is the influence of a new sensation. For some minutes the monster stood in silent contemplation of the mysterious hole. Rooney of course lay perfectly still. The success of his involuntary explosion encouraged hope.

What the bear might have done next we cannot tell, for at that moment a shout was heard. It was followed by what seemed a succession of pistol shots and the howling of dogs. It was the arrival of Okiok on the scene with his sledge and team.

Never was an arrival more opportune. The bear looked round with a distinct expression of indignation on his countenance. Possibly the voice of Okiok was familiar to him. It may be that relations or friends of that bear had mysteriously disappeared after the sounding of that voice. Perhaps the animal in whose skin Rooney was encased had been a brother. At all events, the increasing hullabaloo of the approaching Eskimo had the effect of intimidating the animal, for it retired quickly, though with evident sulkiness, from the scene.

A few seconds more, and Okiok dashed up, leaped from his vehicle, left the panting team to the control of Norrak, and ran eagerly to the prostrate figure. Unwrapping the head so as to set it free, the Eskimo saw with intense satisfaction that the Kablunet was still alive. He called at once to Norrak, who fetched from the sledge a platter made of a seal's shoulder-blade, on which was a mass of cooked food. This he presented to the starving man, who, with a look of intense gratitude, but with no words, eagerly ate it up. The Eskimo and his son meanwhile stood looking at him with an expression of mingled interest, awe, and surprise on their round faces.

When the meal was ended, Red Rooney, heaving a deep sigh of satisfaction, said, "Thank God, and thank you, my friends!"

There was reason for the increase of surprise with which this was received by the two natives, for this time the foreigner spoke to them in their own language.

"Is the Kablunet a messenger from heaven," asked Okiok, with increased solemnity, "that he speaks with the tongue of the Innuit?"

"No, my friend," replied Rooney, with a faint smile; "I bring no message either from heaven or anywhere else. I'm only a wrecked seaman. But, after a fashion, you are messengers from heaven to me, and the message you bring is that I'm not to die just yet. If it had not been for you, my friends, it strikes me I should have been dead by this time. As to my speaking your lingo, it's no mystery. I've learned it by livin' a long time wi' the traders in the south of Greenland, and I suppose I've got a sort o' talent that way; d'ye see?"

Red Rooney delivered these remarks fluently in a curious sort of Eskimo language; but we have rendered it into that kind of English which the wrecked seaman was in the habit of using -- chiefly because by so doing we shall give the reader a more correct idea of the character of the man.

"We are very glad to see you," returned Okiok. "We have heard of you for many moons. We have wished for you very hard. Now you have come, we will treat you well."

"Are your huts far off?" asked the seaman anxiously.

"Not far. They are close to the ice-mountain -- on the land."

"Take me to them, then, like a good fellow, for I'm dead-beat, and stand much in need of rest."

The poor man was so helpless that he could not walk to the sledge when they unrolled him. It seemed as if his power of will and energy had collapsed at the very moment of his rescue. Up to that time the fear of death had urged him on, but now, feeling that he was, comparatively speaking, safe, he gave way to the languor which had so long oppressed him, and thus, the impulse of the will being removed, he suddenly became as helpless as an infant.

Seeing his condition, the father and son lifted him on the sledge, wrapped him in skins, and drove back to the huts at full speed.

Nuna was awaiting them outside, with eager eyes and beating heart, for the discovery of a real live Kablunet was to her an object of as solemn and anxious curiosity as the finding of a veritable living ghost might be to a civilised man. But Nuna was not alone. There were two other members of the household present, who had been absent when Okiok first arrived, and whom we will now introduce to the reader.

One was Nuna's only daughter, an exceedingly pretty girl -- according to Eskimo notions of female beauty. She was seventeen years of age, black-eyed, healthily-complexioned, round-faced, sweet-expressioned, comfortably stout, and unusually graceful -- for an Eskimo. Among her other charms, modesty and good-nature shone conspicuous. She was in all respects a superior counterpart of her mother, and her name was Nunaga. Nuna was small, Nunaga was smaller. Nuna was comparatively young, Nunaga was necessarily younger. The former was kind, the latter was kinder. The mother was graceful and pretty, the daughter was more graceful and prettier. Nuna wore her hair gathered on the top of her head into a high top-knot, Nunaga wore a higher top-knot. In regard to costume, Nuna wore sealskin boots the whole length of her legs -- which were not long -- and a frock or skirt reaching nearly to her knees, with a short tail in front and a long tail behind; Nunaga, being similarly clothed, had a shorter tail in front and a longer tail behind.

It may be interesting to note here that Eskimos are sometimes named because of qualities possessed, or appearance, or peculiar circumstances connected with them. The word Nuna signifies "land" in Eskimo. We cannot tell why this particular lady was named Land, unless it were that she was born on the land, and not on the ice; or perhaps because she was so nice that when any man came into her company he might have thought that he had reached the land of his hopes, and was disposed to settle down there and remain. Certainly many of the Eskimo young men seemed to be of that mind until Okiok carried her off in triumph. And let us tell you, reader, that a good and pretty woman is as much esteemed among the Eskimos as among ourselves. We do not say that she is better treated; neither do we hint that she is sometimes treated worse.

The Eskimo word Nunaga signifies "my land," and was bestowed by Okiok on his eldest-born in a flood of tenderness at her birth.

Apologising for this philological digression, we proceed. Besides Nuna and Nunaga there was a baby boy -- a fat, oily, contented boy -- without a name at that time, and without a particle of clothing of any sort, his proper condition of heat being maintained when out of doors chiefly by being carried between his mother's dress and her shoulders; also by being stuffed to repletion with blubber.

The whole family cried out vigorously with delight, in various keys, when the team came yelping home with the Kablunet. Even the baby gave a joyous crow -- in Eskimo.

But the exclamations were changed to pity when the Kablunet was assisted to rise, and staggered feebly towards the hut, even when supported by Okiok and his sons. The sailor was not ignorant of Eskimo ways. His residence in South Greenland had taught him many things. He dropped, therefore, quite naturally -- indeed gladly -- on his hands and knees on coming to the mouth of the tunnel, and crept slowly into the hut, followed by the whole family, except Ermigit, who was left to unfasten the dogs.

The weather at the time was by no means cold, for spring was rapidly advancing; nevertheless, to one who had been so reduced in strength, the warmth of the Eskimo hut was inexpressibly grateful. With a great sigh of relief the rescued man flung himself on the raised part of the floor on which Eskimos are wont to sit and sleep.

"Thank God, and again I thank you, my friends!" he said, repeating the phrase which he had already used, for the sudden change from despair to hope, from all but death to restored life, had filled his heart with gratitude.

"You are weary?" said Okiok.

"Ay, ay -- very weary; well-nigh to death," he replied.

"Will the Kablunet sleep?" asked Nuna, pointing to a couch of skins close behind the seaman.

Rooney looked round.

"Thankee; yes, I will."

He crept to the couch, and dropped upon it, with his head resting on an eider-down pillow. Like a tired infant, his eyes closed, and he was asleep almost instantaneously.

Seeing this, the Eskimos began to move about with care, and to speak in whispers, though it was needless caution, for in his condition the man would probably have continued to sleep through the wildest thunderstorm. Even when baby, tumbling headlong off the elevated floor, narrowly missed spiking himself on a walrus spear, and set up a yell that might have startled the stone deaf, the wearied Kablunet did not move. Okiok did, however. He moved smartly towards the infant, caught him by the throat, and almost strangled him in a fierce attempt to keep him quiet.

"Stupid tumbler!" he growled -- referring to the child's general and awkward habit of falling -- "Can't you shut your mouth?"

Curious similarity between the thoughts and words of civilised and savage man in similar circumstances! And it is interesting to note the truth of what the song says: -- 

"We little know what great things from little things may rise."

From that slight incident the Eskimo child derived his future name of "Tumbler"! We forget what the precise Eskimo term is, but the English equivalent will do as well.

When supper-time arrived that night, Okiok and Nuna consulted as to whether they should waken their guest, or let him lie still -- for, from the instant he lay down, he had remained without the slightest motion, save the slow, regular heaving of his broad chest.

"Let him sleep. He is tired," said Okiok.

"But he must be hungry, and he is weak," said Nuna.

"He can feed when he wakens," returned the man, admiring his guest as a collector might admire a foreign curiosity which he had just found.

"Kablunets sleep sounder than Eskimos," remarked the woman.

"Stupid one! Your head is thick, like the skull of the walrus," said the man. "Don't you see that it is because he is worn-out?"

Eskimos are singularly simple and straightforward in their speech. They express their opinions with the utmost candour, and without the slightest intention of hurting each other's feelings. Nuna took no offence at her husband's plain speaking, but continued to gaze with a gratified expression at the stranger.

And sooth to say Reginald Rooney was a pleasant object for contemplation, as well as a striking contrast to the men with whom Nuna had been hitherto associated. His brow was broad; the nose, which had been compared to the eagle's beak, was in reality a fine aquiline; the mouth, although partially concealed by a brown drooping moustache, was well formed, large, and firm; the beard bushy, and the hair voluminous as well as curly. Altogether, this poor castaway was as fine a specimen of a British tar as one could wish to see, despite his wasted condition and his un-British garb.

It was finally decided to leave him undisturbed, and the Eskimo family took care while supping to eat their food in comparative silence. Usually the evening meal was a noisy, hilarious festival, at which Okiok and Norrak and Ermigit were wont to relate the various incidents of the day's hunt, with more or less of exaggeration, not unmingled with fun, and only a little of that shameless boasting which is too strong a characteristic of the North American Indian. The women of the household were excellent listeners; also splendid laughers, and Tumbler was unrivalled in the matter of crowing, so that noise as well as feasting was usually the order of the night. But on this great occasion that was all changed. The feasting was done in dead silence; and another very striking peculiarity of the occasion was that, while the six pairs of jaws kept moving with unflagging pertinacity, the twelve wide-open eyes kept glaring with unwinking intensity at the sleeping man.

Indeed this unwavering glare continued long after supper was over, for each member of the family lay down to rest with his or her face towards the stranger, and kept up the glare until irresistible Nature closed the lids and thus put out the eyes, like the stars of morning, one by one; perhaps it would be more strictly correct to say two by two.

Okiok and his wife were the last to succumb. Long after the others were buried in slumber, these two sat up by the lamp-light, solacing themselves with little scraps and tit-bits of walrus during the intervals of whispered conversation.

"What shall we do with him?" asked Okiok, after a brief silence.

"Keep him," replied Nuna, with decision.

"But we cannot force him to stay."

"He cannot travel alone," said Nuna, "and we will not help him to go."

"We are not the only Innuits in all the land. Others will help him if we refuse."

This was so obvious that the woman could not reply, but gazed for some time in perplexity at the lamp-smoke. And really there was much inspiration to be derived from the lamp-smoke, for the wick being a mass of moss steeped in an open cup of seal-oil, the smoke of it rose in varied convolutions that afforded almost as much scope for suggestive contemplation as our familiar coal-fires.

Suddenly the little woman glanced at her slumbering household, cast a meaning look at her husband, and laughed -- silently of course.

"Has Nuna become a fool that she laughs at nothing?" demanded Okiok simply.

Instead of replying to the well-meant though impolite question, Nuna laughed again, and looked into the dark corner where the pretty little round face of Nunaga was dimly visible, with the eyes shut, and the little mouth wide-open.

"We will marry him to Nunaga," she said, suddenly becoming grave.

"Pooh!" exclaimed Okiok -- or some expression equivalent to that -- "Marry Nunaga to a Kablunet? Never! Do you not know that Angut wants her?"

It was evident from the look of surprise with which Nuna received this piece of information that she was not aware of Angut's aspirations, and it was equally evident from the perplexed expression that followed that her hastily-conceived little matrimonial speculation had been knocked on the head.

After this their thoughts either strayed into other channels, or became too deep for utterance, for they conversed no more, but soon joined the rest of the family in the realms of oblivion.



Chapter Three.

Our Hero And His Friends Become Familiar.

It was a fine balmy brilliant morning when Red Rooney awoke from the most refreshing sleep he had enjoyed for many a day, gazed thoughtfully up at the blackened roof of the Eskimo hut, and wondered where he was.

There was nothing that met his eyes to recall his scattered senses, for all the members of the family had gone out to their various avocations, and one of them having thrust a sealskin into the hole in the wall which served for a window the sun found admittance only through crevices, and but faintly illumined the interior.

The poor man felt intensely weak, yet delightfully restful -- so much so that mere curiosity seemed to have died within him, and he was content to lie still and think of whatever his wayward mind chose to fasten on, or not to think at all, if his mind saw fit to adopt that course in its vagaries. In short, he felt as if he had no more control over his thoughts than a man in a dream, and was quite satisfied that it should be so.

As his eyes became accustomed to the dim light, however, he began slowly to perceive that the walls around him were made of rough unhewn stone, that the rafters were of drift timber, and the roof of moss, or something like it; but the whole was so thickly coated with soot as to present a uniform appearance of blackness. He also saw, from the position in which he lay, a stone vessel, like a primitive classical lamp, with a wick projecting from its lip, but no flame. Several skulls of large animals lay on the floor within the range of his vision, and some sealskin and other garments hung on pegs of bone driven into the wall. Just opposite to him was the entrance to the tunnel, which formed the passage or corridor of the mansion, and within it gleamed a subdued light which entered from the outer end.

Rooney knew that he saw these things, and took note of them, yet if you had asked him what he had seen it is probable that he would have been unable to tell -- so near had he approached to the confines of that land from which no traveller returns.

Heaving a deep sigh, the man uttered the words, "Thank God!" for the third time within the last four-and-twenty hours. It was an appropriate prelude to his sinking into that mysterious region of oblivion in which the mind of worn-out man finds rest, and out of which it can be so familiarly yet mysteriously summoned -- sometimes by his own pre-determination, but more frequently by a fellow-mortal.

He had not lain long thus when the tunnel was suddenly darkened by an advancing body, which proved to be the mistress of the mansion.

Nuna, on thrusting her head into the interior, looked inquiringly up before venturing to rise. After a good stare at the slumbering Kablunet, she went cautiously towards the window and removed the obstruction. A flood of light was let in, which illumined, but did not awaken, the sleeper.

Cautiously and on tip-toe the considerate little woman went about her household duties, but with her eyes fixed, as if in fascination, on her interesting guest.

It is at all times an awkward as well as a dangerous mode of proceeding, to walk in one direction and look in another. In crossing the hut, Nuna fell over a walrus skull, upset the lamp, and sent several other articles of furniture against the opposite wall with a startling crash. The poor creature did not rise. She was too much overwhelmed with shame. She merely turned her head as she lay, and cast a horrified gaze at the sleeper.

To her great joy she saw that Red Rooney had not been disturbed. He slept through it all with the placidity of an infant. Much relieved, the little woman got up, and moved about more freely. She replenished the lamp with oil, and kindled it. Then she proceeded to roast and fry and grill bear ribs, seal chops, and walrus steaks with a dexterity that was quite marvellous, considering the rude culinary implements with which she had to deal. In a short time breakfast was prepared, and Nuna went out to announce the fact. Slowly and with the utmost caution each member of the family crept in, and, before rising, cast the same admiring, inquiring, partially awe-stricken gaze at the unconscious Kablunet. Okiok, Nunaga, Norrak, Ermigit, and Tumbler all filed in, and sat down in solemn silence.

Okiok took Tumbler on his knee, so as to be ready to throttle him on the shortest notice if he should venture to cry, or even crow.

But as the best of human arrangements often fail through unforeseen circumstances, so the quietude was broken a second time that morning unexpectedly. One of the hungry dogs outside, rendered desperate by the delicious fumes that issued from the hut, took heart, dashed in, caught up a mass of blubber, and attempted to make off. A walrus rib, however, from Norrak's unerring hand, caught him on the haunch as he entered the tunnel, and caused him to utter such a piercing howl that Red Rooney not only awoke, but sat bolt upright, and gazed at the horrified Eskimos inquiringly.

Evidently the seaman was touched with a sense of the ludicrous, for he merely smiled and lay down again. But he did not try to sleep. Having been by that time thoroughly refreshed, he began to sniff the scent of savoury food as the war-horse is said to scent the battle from afar --  that is, with an intense longing to "go at it." Okiok, guessing the state of his feelings, brought him a walrus rib.

Red Rooney accepted it, and began to eat at once without the use of knife or fork.

"Thankee, friend. It's the same I'll do for yourself if you ever come to starvation point when I've got a crust to spare."

Charmed beyond measure at hearing their native tongue from the mouth of a foreigner, the stare of the whole party became more intense, and for a few moments they actually ceased to chew -- a sure sign that they were, so to speak, transfixed with interest.

"My man," said Rooney, after a few minutes' intense application to the rib, "what is your name?"

"Okiok," replied the Eskimo.

"Okiok," muttered the seaman to himself in English; "why, that's the Eskimo word for winter." Then, after a few minutes' further attention to the rib, "Why did they name you after the cold season o' the year?"

"I know not," said Okiok. "When my father named me I was very small, and could not ask his reason. He never told any one. Before I was old enough to ask, a bear killed him. My mother thought it was because the winter when I was born was very cold and long."

Again the hungry man applied himself to the rib, and nothing more was said till it was finished. Feeling still somewhat fatigued, Rooney settled himself among his furs in a more upright position, and gave his attention to the natives, who instantly removed their eyes from him, and resumed eating with a will. Of course they could not restrain furtive glances, but they had ceased to stare.

In a few minutes Okiok paused, and in turn became the questioner.

"No Kablunet ever came here before," he said. "We are glad to see you; but why do you come, and why alone, and why starving?"

"Not very easy to answer these questions off-hand to the likes of you," said Rooney. "However, I'll try. You've heard of the settlements -- the traders -- no doubt, in the far-off land over there?"

Rooney pointed to the southward, the direction of which he knew from the position of the sun and the time of day, which latter he guessed roughly.

The Eskimo nodded. From the special character of the nod it was evident that he meant it to express intelligence. And it did!

"Well," continued Rooney, "you may have heard that big, big -- tremendous big -- kayaks, or rather oomiaks, have come to that country, an' landed men and women, who have built houses -- igloos -- and have settled there to trade?"

At this his host nodded with such decision, and so frequently, as to show that he not only knew of the Kablunet settlements, but was deeply interested in them, and would be glad to know something more.

"Well, then," continued the sailor, "I came out from a great and rich country, called England, in one o' these big tradin' canoes, which was wrecked close to the settlements, and there I stayed with my mates, waiting for another big kayak to come an' take us off; but no kayak came for two winters -- so that's the way I came to understand an' speak the Eskimo -- "

At this point, as if it could endure the stranger's voice no longer, Tumbler set up a sudden and tremendous howl. He was instantly seized, half strangled, metaphorically sat upon, and reduced to sobbing silence, when the sailor resumed his narrative.

"All that time I was workin' off and on for the -- "

He stopped abruptly, not having any words in the native language by which to name the Moravian Missionaries. The Eskimos waited with eager looks for the next word.

"Well, well," resumed Rooney, with a pathetic smile, "it is a pity the whole world don't speak one language. I was workin' for, for -- these Kablunets who have come to Greenland, (that's the name we've given to your country, you must know) -- who have come to Greenland, not to trade, but to teach men about God -- about Torngarsuk, the Good Spirit -- who made all the world, and men, and beasts."

At this point the interest of Okiok became, if possible, more intense.

"Do the Kablunets know God, the Good Spirit? Have they seen him?" he asked.

"They haven't exactly seen Him," replied the sailor; "but they have got a book, a writing, which tells about Him, and they know something of His nature and His wishes."

Of course this reference to a book and a writing -- which Rooney had learned to speak of from the Moravians -- was quite incomprehensible to the Eskimo. He understood enough of what was said, however, to see the drift of his visitor's meaning.

"Huk!" he exclaimed, with a look of satisfaction; "Angut will be glad to hear this."

"Who is Angut?" asked the sailor.

The whole party looked peculiarly solemn at this question.

"Angut is a great angekok," answered Okiok, in a low voice.

"Oh! he is one of your wise men, is he?" returned Rooney, with an involuntary shrug of his shoulders, for he had heard and seen enough during his residence at the settlements to convince him that the angekoks, or sorcerers, or wise men of the Eskimos, were mostly a set of clever charlatans, like the medicine-men of the North American Indians, who practised on the credulity and superstition of their fellow-men in order to gain their own ends. Some of these angekoks, no doubt, were partly self-deceivers, believing to some extent the deceptions which they practised, and desiring more or less the welfare of their dupes; but others were thorough, as well as clever, rogues, whose sole object was self-interest.

"Well, then," continued Rooney, "after I'd been two winters with these Kablunets, another big kayak came to the settlement, not to trade, nor to teach about God, but to go as far as they could into the ice, and try to discover new lands."

"Poor men!" remarked Okiok pitifully; "had they no lands of their own?"

"O, yes; they had lands at home," replied the sailor, laughing.

"Huk!" exclaimed several of the natives, glancing at each other with quite a pleased expression. It was evident that they were relieved as well as glad to find that their visitor could laugh, for his worn and woe-begone expression, which was just beginning to disappear under the influence of rest and food, had induced the belief that he could only go the length of smiling.

"Yes," continued the sailor; "they had lands, more or less -- some of them, at least -- and some of them had money; but you must know, Okiok, that however much a Kablunet may have, he always wants more."

"Is he never content?" asked the Eskimo.

"Never; at least not often."

"Wonderful!" exclaimed Okiok; "when I am stuffed with seal-blubber as full as I can hold, I want nothing more."

Again the sailor laughed, and there was something so hearty and jovial in the sound that it became infectious, and the natives joined him, though quite ignorant of the exciting cause. Even Tumbler took advantage of the occasion to give vent to another howl, which, having something of the risible in it, was tolerated. When silence was restored, the visitor resumed -- 

"I joined these searchers, as they wanted an interpreter, and we came away north here. Nothing particular happened at first. We had a deal of squeezing an' bumping in the ice of course, but got little damage, till about six days back I think, or thereabouts, when we got a nip that seemed to me to cut the bottom clean out o' the big kayak, for when the ice eased off again it went straight to the bottom. We had only time to throw some provisions on the ice and jump out before it went down. As our provisions were not sufficient to last more than a few days, I was sent off with some men over the floe to hunt for seals. We only saw one, asleep near its hole. Bein' afraid that the sailors might waken it, I told them to wait, and I would go after it alone. They agreed, but I failed. The seal was lively. He saw me before I got near enough, and dived into his hole. On returnin' to where I had left the men I found a great split in the ice, which cut me off from them. The space widened. I had no small kayak to take me across. It was too cold to swim. The floe on which my comrades stood was driftin', along wi' the big floe, where the rest of them were. The ice on which I stood was fast. A breeze was blowin' at the time, which soon carried the pack away. In an hour they were out of sight, and I saw them no more. I knew that it was land-ice on which I stood, and also that the coast could not be far off; but the hummocks and the snow-drift prevented me from seein' far in any direction. I knew also that death would be my portion if I remained where I was, so I set off straight for land as fast as I could go. How long I've been on the way I can't tell, for I don't feel quite sure, and latterly my brain has got into a confused state. I had a small piece of seal meat in my pouch when I started. When it was done I cut a strip off my sealskin coat an' sucked that. It just kept body and soul together. At last I saw the land, but fell, and should have died there if the Good Spirit had not sent you to save me, Okiok -- so give us a shake of your hand, old boy!"

To this narrative the natives listened with breathless attention, but at the conclusion Okiok looked at the extended hand in surprise, not knowing what was expected of him. Seeing this, Rooney leaned forward, grasped the man's right hand, shook it warmly, patted it on the back, then, raising it to his lips, kissed it.

Stupid indeed would the man have been, and unusually savage, who could have failed to understand that friendship and good-will lay in these actions. But Okiok was not stupid. On the contrary, he was brightly intelligent, and, being somewhat humorous in addition, he seized Rooney's hand instantly after, and repeated the operation, with a broad smile on his beaming face. Then, turning suddenly to Tumbler, he grasped and shook that naked infant's hand, as it sat on the floor in a pool of oil from a lamp which it had overturned.

An explosion of laughter from everybody showed that the little joke was appreciated; but Okiok became suddenly grave, and sobered his family instantly, as he turned to Rooney and said -- 

"I wish that Angut had been there. He would have saved your big oomiak and all the men."

"Indeed. Is he then such a powerful angekok?"

"Yes; very, very powerful. There never was an angekok like him."

"I suppose not," returned Rooney, with a feeling of doubt, which, however, he took care to hide. "What like is this great wise man -- very big, I suppose?"

"No, he is not big, but he is not small. He is middling, and very strong, like the bear; very active and supple, like the seal or the white fox; and very swift, like the deer -- and very different from other angekoks."

"He must be a fine man," said the sailor, becoming interested in this angekok; "tell me wherein he differs from others."

"He is not only strong and wise, but he is good; and he cares nothing for our customs, or for the ways of other angekoks. He says that they are all lies and nonsense. Yes, he even says that he is not an angekok at all; but we know better, for he is. Everybody can see that he is. He knows everything; he can do anything. Do I not speak what is true?"

He turned to his wife and daughter as he spoke. Thus appealed to, Nuna said it was all true, and Nunaga said it was all very true, and blushed -- and, really, for an Eskimo, she looked quite pretty.

Don't laugh, good reader, at the idea of an Eskimo blushing. Depend upon it, that that is one of those touches of nature which prove the kinship of the world everywhere.

While they were talking a step was heard outside, and the Eskimos looked intelligently at each other. They knew that the comer must be a friend, because, had he been a stranger, the dogs would have given notice of his approach. Besides, these animals were heard fawning round him as he spoke to them.

"Ujarak!" exclaimed Okiok, in a low voice.

"Is Ujarak a friend?" asked the sailor.

"He is an angekok," said the Eskimo evasively -- "a great angekok, but not so great as Angut."

Another moment, and a man was seen to creep into the tunnel. Standing up when inside, he proved to be a tall, powerful Eskimo, with a not unhandsome but stern countenance, which was somewhat marred by a deep scar over the left eye.



Chapter Four.

Okiok Becomes Simple But Deep, And The Wizard Tries To Make Capital Out Of Events.

Of course Ujarak, wise man though he was esteemed to be, could not help being struck dumb by the unexpected sight of the gaunt foreigner. Indeed, having so long held supposed intercourse with familiar spirits, it is not improbable that he imagined that one of them had at last come, without waiting for a summons, to punish him because of his deceptive practices, for he turned pale -- or rather faintly green -- and breathed hard.

Perceiving his state, it suddenly occurred to the sailor to say -- "Don't be afraid. I won't hurt you." He inadvertently said it in English, however, so that Ujarak was none the wiser.

"Who is he?" demanded the angekok -- perhaps it were more correct to call him wizard.

Okiok, expecting Rooney to reply, looked at him, but a spirit of silence seemed to have come over the stranger, for he made no reply, but shut his eyes, as if he had dropped asleep.

"He is a Kablunet," said Okiok.

"I could see that, even if I had not the double sight of the angekok," replied the other, with a touch of sarcasm, for Eskimos, although by no means addicted to quarrelling, are very fond of satire. They are also prone to go straight to the point in conversation, and although fond of similes and figurative language, they seldom indulge in bombast.

With much solemnity Okiok rejoined that he had no doubt of Ujarak's being aware that the man was a Kablunet.

"And I am glad you have come," he added, "for of course you can also tell me where the Kablunet has come from, and whither he is going?"

The angekok glanced at his host quickly, for he knew -- at least he strongly suspected -- that he was one of that uncomfortable class of sceptics who refuse to swallow without question all that self-constituted "wise men" choose to tell them. Okiok was gazing at him, however, with an air of the most infantine simplicity and deference.

"I cannot tell you that," replied the wizard, "because I have not consulted my torngak about him."

It must be explained here that each angekok has a private spirit, or familiar, whose business it is to enlighten him on all points, and conduct him on his occasional visits to the land of spirits. This familiar is styled his "torngak."

"Did your torngak tell you that he was a Kablunet?" asked Okiok simply --  so simply that there was no room for Ujarak to take offence.

"No; my eyes told me that."

"I did not know that you had ever seen a Kablunet," returned the other, with a look of surprise.

"Nor have I. But have I not often heard them described by the men of the south? and has not my torngak showed them to me in dreams?"

The wizard said this somewhat tartly, and Okiok, feeling that he had gone far enough, turned away his sharp little eyes, and gazed at the lamp-smoke with an air of profound humility.

"You have got seal-flesh?" said Ujarak, glad to change the subject.

"Yes; I killed it yesterday. You are hungry? Nuna will give you some."

"No; I am not hungry. Nevertheless I will eat. It is good to eat at all times."

"Except when we are stuffed quite full," murmured Okiok, casting at Nunaga a sly glance, which threw that Eskimo maiden into what strongly resembled a suppressed giggle. It was catching, for her brothers Norrak and Ermigit were thrown into a similar condition, and even the baby crowed out of sympathy. Indeed Red Rooney himself, who only simulated sleep, found it difficult to restrain his feelings, for he began to understand Okiok's character, and to perceive that he was more than a match for the wizard with all his wisdom.

Whatever Ujarak may have felt, he revealed nothing, for he possessed that well-known quality of the Eskimo -- the power to restrain and conceal his feelings -- in a high degree. With a quiet patronising smile, he bent down in quite a lover-like way, and asked Nunaga if the seal-flesh was good.

"Yes, it is good; very good," answered the maiden, looking modestly down, and toying with the end of her tail. You see she had no scent-bottle or fan to toy with. To be sure she had gloves -- thick sealskin mittens -- but these were not available at the moment.

"I knew you had a seal," said the angekok, pausing between bites, after the edge of his appetite had been taken off; "my torngak told me you had found one at last."

"Did he tell you that I had also found a bear?" asked Okiok, with deeper simplicity than ever.

The wizard, without raising his head, and stuffing his mouth full to prevent the power of speech, glanced keenly about the floor. Observing the fresh skin in a corner, and one or two ribs, he bolted the bite, and said -- 

"O yes. My torngak is kind; he tells me many things without being asked. He said to me two days ago, 'Okiok is a clever man. Though all the people are starving just now, he has killed a seal and a bear.'"

"Can torngaks make mistakes?" asked Okiok, with a puzzled look. "It was yesterday that I killed the seal and the bear."

"Torngaks never make mistakes," was the wizard's prompt and solemn reply; "but they see and know the future as well as the past, and they sometimes speak of both as the present."

"How puzzling!" returned the other meekly. "He meant you, then, to understand that I was going to kill a seal and a bear. Glad am I that I am not an angekok, for it would be very difficult work for a stupid man, -- enough almost to kill him!"

"You are right. It is difficult and hard work. So you see the torngak told me go feast with Okiok, and at his bidding of course I have come, on purpose to do so."

"That's a lie. You came to see my Nunaga, and you hope to get her; but you never will!" said Okiok. He said it only to himself, however, being far too polite to say it to his guest, to whom he replied deferentially -- 

"If they are starving at your village, why did you not bring your mother and your father? They would have been welcome, for a seal and a bear would be enough to stuff us all quite full, and leave something to send to the rest."

For some minutes the wizard did not reply. Perhaps he was meditating, perchance inventing.

"I brought no one," he said at last, "because I want you and your family to return with me to the village. You know it is only two days distant, and we can take the seal and the bear with us. We are going to have a great feast and games."

"Did you not say the people were starving?" asked Okiok, with a look of gentle surprise.

"They were starving," returned Ujarak quickly; "but two walruses and four seals were brought in yesterday and my torngak has told me that he will point out where many more are to be found if I consult him on the night of the feast. Will you come back with me?"

Okiok glanced at the Kablunet.

"I cannot leave my guest," he said.

"True, but we can take him with us."

"Impossible. Do you not see he is only bones in a bag of skin? He must rest and feed."

"That will be no difficulty," returned the wizard, "for the feast is not to be held for twice seven days. By that time the Kablunet will be well, and getting strong. Of course he must rest and be well stuffed just now. So I will go back, and say that you are coming, and tell them also what you have found -- a Kablunet. Huk!"

"Yes; and he speaks our language," said Okiok.

"That was not our language which he spoke when I came in."

"No; yet he speaks it."

"I should like to hear him speak."

"You must not wake him," said Okiok, with an assumed look of horror. "He would be sure to kill you with a look or a breath if you did. See; he moves!"

Rooney certainly did move at the moment, for the conversation had tickled him a good deal, and the last remark was almost too much for him. Not wishing, however, to let the angekok go without some conversation, he conveniently awoke, yawned, and stretched himself. In the act he displayed an amount of bone and sinew, if not flesh, which made a very favourable impression on the Eskimos, for physical strength and capacity is always, and naturally, rated highly among savages.

Our shipwrecked hero had now heard and seen enough to understand something of the character of the men with whom he had to deal. He went therefore direct to the point, without introduction or ceremony, by asking the angekok who he was and where he came from. After catechising him closely, he then sought to establish a kind of superiority over him by voluntarily relating his own story, as we have already given it, and thus preventing his being questioned in return by the wizard.

"Now," said Red Rooney in conclusion, "when you go home to your village, tell the people that the Kablunet, having been nearly starved, must have some days to get well. He will stay with his friend Okiok, and rest till he is strong. Then he will go to your village with his friends, and join in the feast and games."

There was a quiet matter-of-course tone of command about the seaman, which completely overawed the poor angekok, inducing him to submit at once to the implied superiority, though hitherto accustomed to carry matters with a high hand among his compatriots. His self-esteem, however, was somewhat compensated by the fact that he should be the bearer of such wonderful news to his people, and by the consideration that he could say his torngak had told him of the arrival of the Kablunet -- an assertion which they would believe all the more readily that he had left home with some mysterious statements that something wonderful was likely to be discovered. In truth, this astute wizard never failed to leave some such prediction behind him every time he quitted home, so as to prepare the people for whatever might occur; and, should nothing occur, he could generally manage to colour some event or incident with sufficient importance to make it fulfil the prediction, at least in some degree.

When at last he rose to depart, Ujarak turned to Nunaga. As her father had rightly guessed, the wizard, who was quite a young man, had come there on matrimonial views intent; and he was not the man to leave the main purpose of his journey unattempted.

"Nunaga," he said, in a comparatively low yet sufficiently audible voice, "my sledge is large. It is too large for one -- "

He was interrupted suddenly at this point by Rooney, who saw at once what was coming.

"Okiok," he said, "I want Nunaga to mend and patch my torn garments for the next few days. Her mother has enough to do with cooking and looking after the house. Can you spare her for that work?"

Yes, Okiok could spare her; and was very glad to do all that he could to accommodate the foreigner.

"Will Ujarak carry a message from the Kablunet to his village?" asked Rooney, turning to the wizard.

"He will," replied the latter somewhat sulkily.

"Does he know the angekok named Angut?"

It is doubtful whether anger or surprise was most strongly expressed in the countenance of the Eskimo as he replied sternly, "Yes."

"Then tell him that the Kablunet will stay in his hut when he visits your village."

Having delivered this message, he turned his face to the wall, and, without awaiting a reply, coolly went to sleep, or appeared to do so, while Ujarak went off, with a storm of very mingled feelings harrowing his savage breast.

When he was gone Red Rooney raised himself on one elbow, and looked over his shoulder at Okiok with a broad grin. Okiok, who felt grave enough at the moment, and somewhat perplexed, opened his eyes gradually, and reciprocated the smile with interest. By degrees he closed the eyes, and allowed the smile to develop into a high falsetto chuckle which convulsed his broad hairy shoulders for full five minutes.

From that hour Okiok and the Kablunet were united! They understood each other. The chords of sympathetic humour had vibrated within them in harmony. They were thenceforward en rapport, and felt towards each other like brothers, or rather like father and son, for Okiok was forty-five years of age at least, while Rooney was not yet thirty.

"He's a very bad man, is he not?" asked the seaman, when the heaving of the shoulders had subsided.

"Ho! yes. Bad, bad! very bad! He lies, and steals, and cheats, and talks nonsense, and wants Nunaga for a wife."

"And you don't want him for a son?"

"No!" -- very decidedly.

Rooney laughed, and, turning away with a wink and a nod, lay down to sleep -- this time in earnest. Okiok responded with a falsetto chuckle, after which he proceeded to solace himself with a mass of half-cooked blubber. Observing that Tumbler was regarding him with longing looks, he good-naturedly cut off part of the savoury morsel, and handed it to the child. It is well-known that the force of example is strong --  stronger than that of precept. In a few minutes the entire family set to work again on the viands with as much gusto as though they had eaten little or nothing for a week.

Leaving them thus pleasantly and profitably occupied, let us follow Ujarak to his village.

Every man and woman of superior intelligence in this world has probably one blind worshipper, if not more -- some weak brother who admires, believes in, perhaps envies, but always bows to the demigod. Such a worshipper had Ujarak in Ippegoo, a tall young man, of weak physical frame, and still weaker mental capacity.

Ippegoo was not malevolent, like his master, but he was sufficiently wicked to laugh at his evil doings, and to assist him in his various plans, in the implicit belief that he was aiding a great and wise man. He did so all the more readily that he himself aimed at the high and dignified office of an angekok, an aspiration which had at first been planted in him, and afterwards been carefully encouraged by his deceiver, because it made his dupe, if possible, a blinder and more willing tool.

"Ippegoo," said Ujarak, on drawing near to the outskirts of his village, and coming unexpectedly on his satellite, who was in the act of dragging home a seal which he had just killed, "I meet you in the nick of time --  but that is no wonder, for did not my torngak tell me he would cause you to meet me near the village? I want your assistance just now."

"I am glad, then, that we have met," said Ippegoo, with a cringing motion not unlike a bow -- though of the ceremonial bow the Eskimos have no knowledge.

"Yes, strange things have happened," continued the angekok, rolling his eyes impressively. "Did I not tell you before I started to visit Okiok that strange things would happen?"

Ippegoo, who had a good deal of straightforward simplicity in his nature, looked puzzled, and tried hard to recollect what Ujarak had told him.

"You will never make an angekok," said Ujarak, with a look of displeasure, "if you do not rouse up your memory more. Do you not remember when I whispered to you in a dream last night that strange things were going to happen?"

"O ye-e-es, -- in a dream; yes, I remember now," returned the satellite in some confusion, yet with a good deal of faith, for he was a heavy feeder, and subject to nightmares, so that it was not difficult to imagine the "whisper" which had been suggested to him.

"Yes, you remember now, stupid walrus! Well, then, what was the strange thing like?" Ujarak looked awfully solemn while he put this question.

"What was it like?" repeated the poor youth with hesitation, and an uneasy glance at the sky, as if for inspiration. "What -- was -- it -- oh, I remember; it was big -- big; very big -- so high," (holding his hand up about seven feet from the ice).

"No, Ippegoo, not so big. He was about my size. Don't you remember? and he was pale, with hair twisted into little rings all over his head, and -- "

"Yes, yes; and a nose as long as my leg," interrupted the eager pupil.

"Not at all, stupid puffin! A nose no longer than your own, and much better-shaped."

The angekok said this so sternly that the too willing Ippegoo collapsed, and looked, as he felt, superlatively humble.

"Now go," resumed Ujarak, with an unrelaxed brow; "go tell your story to the people assembled in the big hut. They feast there to-night, I know. Tell them what your dream has revealed. Tell them how I spoke to you before I left the village -- but don't be too particular in your description. Let that be -- like your own mind -- confused, and then it will be true to nature. Tell them also that you expect me soon, but say not that you have met me to-day, for that might displease my torngak, whom I go to consult."

Without giving his pupil time to reply, the wizard strode off, and disappeared among the ice hummocks, as a bad actor might strut behind the side scenes.

Deeply impressed with the solemnity of the whole affair, and with the importance of his mission, the young Eskimo went off to the village, dragging his seal behind him, and wondering what new discovery had been made by his mysterious patron.

That something of unusual import had occurred he never doubted, for although he had often seen Ujarak, with unbounded admiration, wriggle out of unfulfilled prophecy like an eel, he had never seen him give way to demonstrations such as we have described without something real and surprising turning up ere long.

Strong in this faith, he ran into the large hut where a considerable party of his tribe were feasting on a recently captured walrus, and told them that something tremendous, something marrow-thrilling, had occurred to the great angekok Ujarak, who, before leaving the village, had told him that he was going off to find a -- a -- something -- he knew not exactly what -- with rings of hair all over its body, pale as the ice-floe, more wonderful than the streaming lights -- incomprehensible! -- immense!

At this point he glared, and became dumb. Not knowing well what to say next, he judiciously remained silent, then sat down and gasped, while the united company exclaimed "Huk!" with unusual emphasis.

The consultation which Ujarak had with his torngak was somewhat peculiar. It consisted chiefly in a wild run at full speed out upon the floes. Having pretty well exhausted himself by this device, and brought on profuse perspiration, he turned homewards. Drawing near to the village, he flung back his hood, ran his fingers through his long black hair until it was wildly dishevelled, then, springing suddenly into the midst of the festive party, he overturned feasters right and left, as he made his way to the part of the edifice furthest from the door.

A close observer might have noted, however, that there was method in his madness, for he overturned only women and children, and kept carefully clear of men -- at least of such men as he knew would resent his roughness.

Wheeling suddenly round, and facing the solemnised assembly, he addressed it, as if with difficulty, in a low-toned, awesome voice.



Chapter Five.

Plots And Counter-Plots Already.

It is not necessary, neither would it be profitable, to give in full detail what Ujarak said to the gaping crowd. Enough to know that, like other statesmen, he made the most of his subject, and fully impressed his audience with the belief that this first of Kablunets who had ever visited these ice-bound regions had been mysteriously, yet irresistibly, drawn there through his, Ujarak's, influence, with the assistance of his torngak or familiar spirit.

One man there was in that assembly, however, who seemed to be not very deeply touched by the wizard's eloquence. Yet he did not express unbelief by his looks, but received all that was said with profound gravity. This was Angut, the reputed angekok, to whom reference has been made in a previous chapter.

Although a thorough Eskimo in dress and in cast of feature, there was a refinement, a gravity, a kindliness, and a something quite indescribable about this man, which marked him out as an exceptional character among his fellows. As we have said elsewhere, he was not unusually large, though he was unusually strong, for his power lay rather in a well-knit and splendidly proportioned than a bulky frame. Ujarak was taller and broader, yet did not possess half his muscular strength. Ujarak knew this, and had hitherto avoided coming into collision with him. But there was also a moral strength and enthusiasm in Angut, which placed him on a platform high above not only Ujarak, but all the other men of his time and country. In short, he was one of those far-seeing and thoughtful characters, who exist in all countries, in all ranks and conditions of life, civilised and savage, and who are sometimes styled "Nature's gentlemen."

Despite his surroundings, temptations, examples, trials, and worries, Angut was at all times unvaryingly urbane, kind, sedate, equable, obliging, honest, and self-sacrificing. It mattered not that other men spoke freely -- sometimes even a little boastfully -- of their exploits. Angut never did so of his, although no other man could hold a candle --  perhaps we should say a lamp -- to him in the matter of daring. It signified not that Eskimos in general were in the habit of treating friendless widows and orphans ill, even robbing as well as neglecting them, Angut always treated well those with whom he had to do. Other men might neglect people in distress, but he helped and defended them; and it was a matter of absolute indifference to him what "people" thought of his conduct. There is a modified "Mrs Grundy" even in Eskimo land, but Angut despised her. Indeed she was the only creature or thing in his limited world that this good man did despise. He puzzled his countrymen very much, for they could not understand him. Other men they could put to shame, or laugh out of their ideas and plans, or frighten into submission -- at least into conformity. Not so Angut. He was immovable, like an ancient iceberg; proof against threats, wheedling, cajoling, terrifying, sarcasm -- proof against everything but kindness. He could not stand before that. He went down before it as bergs go down before the summer sun.

Angut was shrewd also and profound of thought, insomuch that, mentally, he stood high above his kinsfolk. He seemed to see through his fellows as if their bosoms and brains had been made of glass, and all their thoughts visible. Ujarak knew this also, and did not like it. But no one suffered because of Angut's superior penetration, for he was too amiable to hurt the feelings of a mosquito.

After all that we have said, the reader will perhaps be prepared to expect that Angut never opened his mouth save to drop words of love and wisdom. Not so. Angut was modest to excess. He doubted his own wisdom; he suspected his own feelings; he felt a strong tendency to defer to the opinion of others, and was prone rather to listen than to speak. He was fond of a joke too, but seldom perpetrated one, and was seldom severe.

While Ujarak was speaking, Angut listened with that look of unmoved gravity with which he always met a new thing or idea, and which effectually concealed his real feelings, though the concealment was unintentional. But when at last the wizard came to the most distasteful part of his discourse, namely the message from Reginald Rooney, that, on the occasion of his visit to the camp, he would take up his abode with Angut, that hero's countenance lighted up with surprise, not unmingled with pleasure.

"Is Ujarak sure that the Kablunet said this?" asked Angut.

"Quite sure," replied the wizard.

"Huk!" exclaimed Angut, by which exclamation you may be sure that he meant to express much satisfaction.

"But," continued the wizard, "the Kablunet is ill. He is thin; he is weak. He wants rest. I have consulted with my torngak, who tells me he will get better soon if we do not trouble him."

At this point Ujarak glanced at Angut, but that worthy's countenance had resumed its look of impenetrable gravity.

"We must not worry him or go near him for some days," continued the wizard. "We must let him alone. And this will not try our patience, for my torngak tells me that seals have come. Yesterday I went to the house of the great Fury under the sea, and wrestled with her; and my torngak and I overcame her, and set many of the seals and other animals free."

"Huk!" exclaimed the assembly, in gratified surprise.

Lest the reader should feel some surprise also, we may as well explain what the Greenlanders believed in former times. They held, (perhaps they still hold), that there were two great spirits -- the one was good, named Torngarsuk; the other was bad, and a female -- a Fury -- without a name. This malevolent woman was supposed to live in a great house under the ocean, in which by the power of her spells she enthralled and imprisoned many of the sea monsters and birds, thus causing scarcity of food among the Eskimos. The angekoks claimed to have the power of remedying this state of things by paying a visit to the abode of the Fury.

When an angekok has sufficient courage to undertake this journey, his torngak, after giving him minute instructions how to act, conducts him under the earth or sea, passing on the way through the kingdom of those good souls who spend their lives in felicity and ease. Soon they come to a frightful vacuity -- a sort of vasty deep -- over which is suspended a narrow wheel, which whirls round with great rapidity. This awful abyss is bridged by a rope, and guarded by seal sentinels. Taking the angekok by the hand, his torngak leads him on the rope over the chasm and past the sentinels into the palace of the Fury.

No sooner does the wicked creature spy the unwelcome visitors than, trembling and foaming with rage, she immediately sets on fire the wing of a sea-fowl, with the stench of which she hopes to suffocate angekok and torngak together, and make both of them captives. The heroes, however, are prepared for this. They seize the Fury before she has succeeded in setting fire to the wing, pull her down, and strip her of those amulets by the occult powers of which she has enslaved the inhabitants of ocean. Thus the spell is broken, for the time at least, and the creatures, being set free, ascend to their proper abodes at the surface of the sea!

After this explanation the reader will easily understand the flutter of excitement that passed through the assembly, for, although feasting at that moment on a walrus, they had suffered much during the latter part of that winter from the scarcity of animals of all kinds.

But Angut did not flutter. That peculiar man was an incorrigible sceptic. He merely smiled, and, chucking a rotund little boy beside him under the chin, said, "What think ye of that, my little ball of fat?" or some Eskimo equivalent for that question. Our intelligent wizard had not, however, ventured on these statements without some ground to go on. The fact is, that, being a close observer and good judge of the weather, he had perceived a change of some sort coming on. While on his way to the hut of Okiok he had also observed that a few seals were playing about on the margin of some ice-floes, and from other symptoms, recognisable only by angekoks, he had come to the conclusion that it would be safe as well as wise at that time to prophesy a period of plenty.

"Now I would advise," he said, in concluding his discourse, "that we should send off a hunting party to the south, for I can tell you that seals will be found there -- if the young men do not put off time on the way."

This last proviso was a judicious back-door of escape. Slight delays, he knew, were almost inevitable, so that, if the hunt should prove a failure, he would have little difficulty in accounting for it, and saving his credit. The most of his credulous and simple-minded hearers did not reflect on the significance of the back-door remark, but Angut did, and grinned a peculiar grin at the little fat boy, whom he chucked a second time under the chin. Ujarak noted the grin, and did not like it.

Among the people there who gave strongest expression to their joy at the prospect of the good living in store for them, were several young and middle-aged females who sat in a corner grouped together, and conveyed their approval of what was said to each other by sundry smirks and smiles and nods of the head, which went far to prove that they constituted a little coterie or clique.

One of these was the wife of Simek, the best hunter of the tribe. Her name was Pussimek. She was round and short, comely and young, and given to giggling. She had a baby -- a female baby -- named after her, but more briefly, Pussi, which resembled her in all respects except size. Beside her sat the mother of Ippegoo. We know not her maiden name, but as her dead husband had been called by the same name as the son, we will style her Mrs Ippegoo. There was also the mother of Arbalik, a youth who was celebrated as a wonderful killer of birds on the wing -- a sort of Eskimo Robin Hood -- with the small spear or dart. The mother of Arbalik was elderly, and stern -- for an Eskimo. She was sister to the great hunter Simek. Kannoa, a very old dried-up but lively woman with sparkling black eyes, also formed one of the group.

"Won't we be happy!" whispered Pussimek, when Ujarak spoke in glowing terms of the abundance that was in prospect. She followed up the whisper by hugging the baby.

"Yes, a good time is coming," said the mother of Ippegoo, with a pleasant nod. "We will keep the cooking-lamps blazing night and -- "

"And stuff," rejoined Pussimek, with a giggle, "till we can hold no more."

"Do you want to grow fatter?" asked the mother of Arbalik in a sharp tone, which drew forth a smothered laugh all round, for Pussimek had reached that condition of embonpoint which rendered an increase undesirable.

"I would not object to be fatter," replied the wife of Simek, with perfect good-humour, for Eskimos, as a rule, do not take offence easily.

"Stuff, stuff," murmured Kannoa, nodding her old head contemplatively; "that's what I'm fond of; stuff -- stuff -- stuff."

"All your stuffing will never make you fat," said the stern and rather cynical mother of Arbalik.

She paid no attention to Kannoa's reply -- which, to do her justice, was very mild -- for, at the moment, Arbalik himself rose to address the assembly. He was a fine specimen of an Eskimo -- a good-looking young savage; slim and wiry, with a nose not too flat, and only a little turned up; a mouth that was well shaped and pleasant to look at, though very large, and absolutely cavernous when in the act of yawning; and his eyes looked sharp and eager, as if always on the outlook for some passing bird, with a view to transfixion.

"The words of Ujarak are wise," he said. "I was down at the high bluffs yesterday, and saw that what he says is true, for many seals are coming up already, and birds too. Let us go out to the hunt."

"We would like much to see this wonderful Kablunet," remarked the jovial big hunter Simek, with a bland look at the company, "but Ujarak knows best. If the Kablunet needs rest, he must have it. If he needs sleep, he must have it. If he wants food, he must have it. By all means let him have it. We will not disturb him. What the torngak of Ujarak advises we will do."

Several of the other leading men also spoke on this occasion -- some inclining to accept the wizard's advice; others, who were intolerably anxious to see the Kablunet, rather inclining to the opinion that they should remain where they were till he recovered strength enough to be able to pay his contemplated visit.

Ippegoo spoke last. Indeed, it was not usual for him to raise his voice in council, but as he had been the first to carry the important news, and was known to be an ardent admirer and pupil of Ujarak, he felt that he was bound to back his patron; and his arguments, though not cogent, prevailed.

"Let us not doubt the wisdom of the angekok," he said. "His torngak speaks. It is our business to obey. We have starved much for some moons; let us now feast, and grow fat and strong."

"Huk!" exclaimed the auditors, who had been touched on their weakest point.

"But Angut has not yet uttered his mind," said the jovial Simek, turning with a bland expression to the man in question; "he is an angekok, though he will not admit it. Has not his familiar spirit said anything to him?"

Angut looked gravely at the speaker for a moment or two, and shook his head. Dead silence prevailed. Then in a voice that was unusually soft and deep he said: "I am no angekok. No torngak ever speaks to me. The winds that whistle round the icebergs and rush among the hummocks on the frozen sea speak to me sometimes; the crashing ice-cliffs that thunder down the glens speak to me; the noisy rivulets, the rising sun and moon and winking stars all speak to me, though it is difficult to understand what they say; but no familiar spirit ever speaks to me."

The man said this quietly, and in a tone of regret, but without the slightest intention of expressing poetical ideas, or laying claim to originality of thought. Yet his distinct denial of being an angekok or wise man, and his sentiments regarding the voices of Nature, only confirmed his countrymen in their belief that he was the greatest angekok they had ever seen or heard of.

"But surely," urged Simek, "if so many spirits speak to you, they must tell you something?"

"They tell me much," replied Angut in a contemplative tone, "but nothing about hunting."

"Have you no opinion, then, on that subject?"

"Yes, I have an opinion, and it is strong. Let all the hunters go south after seals without delay; but I will not go. I shall go among the icebergs -- alone."

"He will go to hold converse with his numerous torngaks," whispered old Kannoa to Pussimek.

"He will go to visit Okiok, and see the Kablunet, and court Nunaga," thought the jealous and suspicious Ujarak.

And Ujarak was right; yet he dared not follow, for he feared the grave, thoughtful man, in spite of his determination to regard and treat him with lofty disdain.

Utterly ignorant of the wizard's feelings towards him -- for he was slow to observe or believe in ill-will towards himself when he felt none to any one else -- Angut set off alone next morning in the direction that led to the great glacier, while his countrymen harnessed their dogs, loaded their sledges with lines and weapons, and went away southward on a hunting expedition. Wishing the latter all success, we will follow the fortunes of Angut, the eccentric angekok.

Had you and I, reader, been obliged to follow him in the body, we should soon have been left far behind; fortunately, spirit is more powerful and fleet than matter!

Without rest or halt, the stalwart Eskimo journeyed over the ice until he reached the residence of Okiok.

The dogs knew his step well, and gave no noisy sign of his approach, though they rose to welcome him with wagging tails, and rubbed their noses against his fur coat as he patted their heads.

Creeping into the hut, he presented himself unexpectedly. Okiok bade him silent welcome, with a broad grin of satisfaction. Nunaga did the same, with a pleased smile and a decided blush. The other inmates of the hut showed similar friendship, and Tumbler, trying to look up, fell over into an oil-puddle, with a loud crow of joy. They all then gazed suddenly and simultaneously, with mysterious meaning, at Red Rooney, who lay coiled up, and apparently sound asleep, in the innermost corner.

Angut also gazed with intense interest, though nothing of the sleeping man was visible save the point of his nose and a mass of curling brown hair protruding from his deerskin coverings.

Seating himself quietly between Nunaga and Nuna, and taking the oily Tumbler on his knee, the visitor entered into a low-toned conversation respecting this great event of their lives -- the arrival of a real live Kablunet! They also talked of Kablunets in general, and their reported ways and manners. It is to be noted here that they did not talk in whispers. Okiok and Nuna had indeed begun the conversation thus, but had been immediately checked by Angut, whose intelligence had long ago taught him that no sound is so apt to awaken a sleeper as the hiss of a whisper; and that a steady, low-toned hum of conversation is more fitted to deepen than interrupt slumber.

"Is he very thin?" asked Angut, who had been somewhat impressed by Ujarak's description of the stranger, and his evident desire that no one should go near him.

"He is not fat," answered Okiok, "but he has not been starving long; sleeping and stuffing will soon make him strong. Don't you think so, Norrak? You saw him at his worst, when we found him on the ice."

Thus appealed to, Okiok's eldest son laid down the piece of blubber with which he had been engaged, nodded his head several times, and said, "Yes, he will be able to run, and jump soon."

"And he speaks our language well," said Okiok, with a look of great interest.

"I know it," returned his friend; "Ujarak told us about that. It is because of that, that I have come at once to see him." Nunaga winced here, for she had timidly hoped that Angut had come to see her! "I would not," continued the visitor, "that Ujarak should be the first to speak to him, for he will poison his ears."

"Yes, Ujarak is a dreadful liar," said Okiok solemnly, but without the slightest touch of ill feeling.

"An awful liar," remarked Nuna softly.

Nunaga smiled, as though acquiescing in the sentiment, but said nothing.

Just as they gave utterance to this decided opinion as to the character of the wizard, Red Rooney turned round, stretched himself, yawned, and sat up.



Chapter Six.

Angut And Rooney Hold Converse On Many Things.

At first Rooney did not observe that there was a visitor in the hut, but, when his eyes alighted on him, he rose at once, for he felt that he was in the presence of a man possessed of intelligence vastly superior to that of the ordinary natives. It was not so much that Angut's presence was commanding or noble, as that his grave expression, broad forehead, and earnest gaze suggested the idea of a man of profound thought.

The angekok who had been so graphically described to him by Okiok at once recurred to Rooney's mind. Turning to his host, he said, with a bland expression -- 

"I suppose this is your friend Angut, the angekok?"

"Yes," replied Okiok.

While the mysterious foreigner was speaking, Angut gazed at him with looks and feelings of awe, but when he stepped forward, and frankly held out his hand, the Eskimo looked puzzled. A whispered word from his host, however, sufficed to explain. Falling in at once with the idea, he grasped the offered hand, and gave it a squeeze of good-will that almost caused the seaman to wince.

"I am glad to meet you," said Rooney.

"I am more than glad," exclaimed the Eskimo with enthusiasm; "I have not language to tell of what is in my mind. I have heard of Kablunets, dreamed of them, thought of them. Now my longings are gratified -- I behold one! I have been told that Kablunets know nearly everything; I know next to nothing. We will talk much. It seems to me as if I had been born only to-day. Come; let us begin!"

"My friend, you expect too much," replied Rooney, with a laugh, as he sat down to devote himself to the bear-steak which Nunaga had placed before him. "I am but an average sort of sailor, and can't boast of very much education, though I have a smattering; but we have men in my country who do seem to know 'most everything -- wise men they are. We call them philosophers; you call 'em angekoks. Here, won't you go in for a steak or a rib? If you were as hungry as I am, you'd be only too glad and thankful to have the chance."

Angut accepted a rib, evidently under the impression that the Kablunet would think it impolite were he to refuse. He began to eat, however, in a languid manner, being far too deeply engaged with mental food just then to care for grosser forms of nourishment.

"Tell me," said the Eskimo, who was impatient to begin his catechising, "do your countrymen all dress like this?" He touched the sealskin coat worn by the sailor.

"O no," said Rooney, laughing; "I only dress this way because I am in Eskimo land, and it is well suited to the country; but the men in my land -- Ireland we call it -- dress in all sorts of fine cloth, made from the hair of small animals -- Why, what do you stare at, Angut? Oh, I see -- my knife! I forgot that you are not used to such things, though you have knives -- stone ones, at least. This one, you see, is made of steel, or iron -- the stuff, you know, that the southern Eskimos bring sometimes to barter with you northern men for the horns of the narwhal an' other things."

"Yes, I have seen iron, but never had any," said Angut, with a little sigh; "they bring very little of it here. The Innuits of the South catch nearly the whole of it on its journey north, and they keep it."

"Greedy fellows!" said Rooney. "Well, this knife is called a clasp-knife, because it shuts and opens, as you see, and it has three blades -- a big one for cuttin' up your victuals with, as you see me doin'; and two little ones for parin' your nails and pickin' your teeth, an' mendin' pens an' pencils -- though of course you don't know what that means. Then here, you see, there are two little things stuck into the handle. One is called tweezers, an' is of no earthly use that I know of except to pull the hairs out o' your nose, which no man in his senses ever wants to do; and the other thing is, I suppose, for borin' small holes in things -- it's almost as useless. This thing on the back is for pickin' stones out of horses' hoofs -- but I forgot you never saw horses or hoofs! Well, no matter; it's for pickin' things out of things, when -- when you want to pick 'em out! But below this is an uncommon useful thing -- a screw -- a thing for drawin' corks out of bottles -- there, again, I'm forgettin'. You never saw corks or bottles. Happy people --  as the people who don't drink spirits would call you -- and, to say truth, I think they are right. Indeed, I've been one of them myself ever since I came to this region. Give us another steak, Nunaga, my dear -- no, not a bear one; I like the walrus better. It's like yourself -- tender."

The fair Nunaga fell into a tremendous giggle at this joke, for although our hero's Eskimo was not very perfect, he possessed all an Irishman's capacity for making his meaning understood, more or less; and truly it was a sight to behold the varied expressions of face -- the childlike surprise, admiration, curiosity, and something approaching to awe -- with which those unsophisticated natives received the explanation of the different parts of that clasp-knife!

"But what did we begin our talk about?" he continued, as he tackled the walrus. "O yes; it was about our garments. Well, besides using different kinds of cloths, our coats are of many different shapes: we have short coats called jackets, and long coats, and coats with tails behind -- "

"Do your men wear tails behind?" asked Angut, in surprise.

"Yes; two tails," replied Rooney, "and two buttons above them."

"Strange," remarked Angut; "it is only our women who have tails; and they have only one tail each, with one button in front -- not behind -- to fasten the end of the tail to when on a journey."

"Women with tails look very well," remarked Okiok, "especially when they swing them about in a neat way that I know well but cannot describe. But men with tails must look very funny."

Here Mrs Okiok ventured to ask how the Kablunet women dressed.

"Well, it's not easy to describe that to folk who have never seen them," said the sailor, with a slight grin. "In the first place, they don't wear boots the whole length of their legs like you, Nuna."

"Surely, then," remarked the hostess, "their legs must be cold?"

"By no means, for they cover 'em well up with loose flapping garments, extending from the waist all the way down to the feet. Then they don't wear hoods like you, but stick queer things on their heads, of all shapes and sizes -- sometimes of no shape at all and very small size --  which they cover over with feathers, an' flowers, an' fluttering things of all colours, besides lots of other gimcracks."

How Rooney rendered "gimcracks" into Eskimo we are not prepared to say, but the whole description sent Nunaga and her mother into fits of giggling, for those simple-minded creatures of the icy north -- unlike sedate Europeans -- are easily made to laugh.

At this point Angut struck in again, for he felt that the conversation was becoming frivolous.

"Tell me, Kablunet," he began; but Rooney interrupted him.

"Don't call me Kablunet. Call me Red Rooney. It will be more friendly-like, and will remind me of my poor shipmates."

"Then tell me, Ridroonee," said Angut, "is it true what I have heard, that your countrymen can make marks on flat white stuff, like the thin skin of the duck, which will tell men far away what they are thinking about?"

"Ay, that's true enough," replied the sailor, with an easy smile of patronage; "we call it writing."

A look of grave perplexity rested on the visage of the Eskimo.

"It's quite easy when you understand it, and know how to do it," continued Rooney; "nothing easier."

A humorous look chased away the Eskimo's perplexity as he replied -- 

"Everything is easy when you understand it."

"Ha! you have me there, Angut," laughed the sailor; "you're a 'cute fellow, as the Yankees say. But come, I'll try to show you how easy it is. See here." He pulled a small note-book from his pocket, and drew thereon the picture of a walrus. "Now, you understand that, don't you?"

"Yes; we draw like that, and understand each other."

"Well, then, we put down for that w-a-l-r-u-s; and there you have it --  walrus; nothing simpler!"

The perplexed look returned, and Angut said -- 

"That is not very easy to understand. Yet I see something -- always the same marks for the same beast; other marks for other beasts?"

"Just so. You've hit it!" exclaimed Rooney, quite pleased with the intelligence of his pupil.

"But how if it is not a beast?" asked the Eskimo. "How if you cannot see him at all, yet want to tell of him in -- in -- what did you say --  writing? I want to send marks to my mother to say that I have talked with my torngak. How do you mark torngak? I never saw him. No man ever saw a torngak. And how do you make marks for cold, for wind, for all our thoughts, and for the light?"

It was now Red Rooney's turn to look perplexed. He knew that writing was easy enough to him who understands it, and he felt that there must be some method of explaining the matter, but how to go about the explanation to one so utterly ignorant did not at once occur to him. We have seen, however, that Rooney was a resolute man, not to be easily baffled. After a few moments' thought he said -- 

"Look here now, Angut. Your people can count?"

"Yes; they can go up to twenty. I can go a little further, but most of the Innuits get confused in mind beyond twenty, because they have only ten fingers and ten toes to look at."

"Well now," continued Rooney, holding up his left hand, with the fingers extended, "that's five."

Yes, Angut understood that well.

"Well, then," resumed Rooney, jotting down the figure 5, "there you have it -- five. Any boy at school could tell you what that is."

The Eskimo pondered deeply and stared. The other Eskimos did the same.

"But what," asked Okiok, "if a boy should say that it was six, and not five?"

"Why, then we'd whack him, and he'd never say that again."

There was an explosion of laughter at this, for Eskimos are tender and indulgent to their children, and seldom or never whack them.

It would be tedious to go further into this subject, or to describe the ingenious methods by which the seaman sought to break up the fallow ground of Angut's eminently receptive mind. Suffice it to say that Rooney made the discovery that the possession of knowledge is one thing, and the power to communicate it another and a very different thing. Angut also came to the conclusion that, ignorant as he had thought himself to be, his first talk with the Kablunet had proved him to be immeasurably more ignorant than he had supposed.

The sailor marked the depression which was caused by this piece of knowledge, and set himself good-naturedly to counteract the evil by displaying his watch, at sight of which there was a wild exclamation of surprise and delight from all except Angut, who, however deep his feelings might be, always kept them bridled. The expansion of his nostrils and glitter of his eyes, however, told their tale, though no exclamation passed his lips.

Once or twice, when Rooney attempted to explain the use of the instrument, the inquisitive man was almost irresistibly led to put some leading questions as to the nature of Time; but whenever he observed this tendency, the sailor, thinking that he had given him quite enough of philosophy for one evening, adroitly turned him off the scent by drawing particular attention to some other portion of the timepiece.

The watch and the knife, to which they reverted later on, kept the lecturer and audience going till late in the evening, by which time our sailor had completely won the hearts of the Eskimos, and they had all become again so hungry that Okiok gave a hint to his wife to stir up the lamp and prepare supper. Then, with a sigh of relief, they all allowed their strained minds to relax, and the conversation took a more general turn. It is but fair to add that, as the sailor had won the hearts of the natives, so his heart had been effectually enthralled by them. For Angut, in particular, Rooney felt that powerful attraction which is the result of similar tastes, mutual sympathies, and diversity of character. Rooney had a strong tendency to explain and teach; Angut a stronger tendency to listen and learn. The former was impulsive and hasty; the latter meditative and patient. Rooney was humorously disposed and jovial, while his Eskimo friend, though by no means devoid of humour, was naturally grave and sedate. Thus their dispositions formed a pleasing contrast, and their tastes an agreeable harmony.

"What did you say was the name of your country?" asked Angut, during a brief pause in the consumption of the meal.

"England," said Rooney.

"That was not the name you told me before."

"True; I suppose I said Ireland before, but the fact is, I can scarcely claim it as my own, for you see my father was Irish and my mother was Scotch. I was born in Wales, an' I've lived a good bit o' my life in England. So you see I can't claim to be anything in particular."

As this was utterly incomprehensible to the Eskimo, he resumed his bit of blubber without saying a word. After a brief silence, he looked at the Kablunet again, and said -- 

"Have they houses in your land?"

"Houses? O yes; plenty of 'em -- made of stone."

"Like the summer-houses of the Innuit, I suppose?" said Angut. "Are they as big?"

Rooney laughed at this, and said, Yes; they were much bigger -- as big as the cliffs alongside.

"Huk!" exclaimed the Eskimos in various tones. Okiok's tone, indeed, was one of doubt; but Angut did not doubt his new friend for a moment, though his credulity was severely tested when the seaman told him that one of the villages of his countrymen covered a space as big as they could see -- away to the very horizon, and beyond it.

"But, Angut," said Rooney, growing somewhat weary at last, "you've asked me many questions; will you answer a few now?"

"I will answer."

"I have heard it said," began the sailor, "that Angut is a wise man -- an angekok -- among his people, but that he denies the fact. Why does he deny it?"

The Eskimo exchanged solemn glances with his host, then looked round the circle, and said that some things could not be explained easily. He would think first, and afterwards he would talk.

"That is well said," returned Rooney. "'Think well before you speak' is a saying among my own people."

He remained silent for a few moments after that, and observed that Okiok made a signal to his two boys. They rose immediately, and left the hut.

"Now," said Okiok, "Angut may speak. There are none but safe tongues here. My boys are good, but their tongues wag too freely."

"Yes, they wag too freely," echoed Mrs Okiok, with a nod.

Thus freed from the danger of being misreported, Angut turned to the seaman, and said -- 

"I deny that I am an angekok, because angekoks are deceivers. They deceive foolish men and women. Some of them are wicked, and only people-deceivers. They do not believe what they teach. Some of them are self-deceivers. They are good enough men, and believe what they teach, though it is false. These men puzzle me. I cannot understand them."

The Eskimo became meditative at this point, as if his mind were running on the abstract idea of self-delusion. Indeed he said as much. Rooney admitted that it was somewhat puzzling.

"I suppose," resumed the Eskimo, "that Kablunets never deceive themselves or others; they are too wise. Is it so?"

"Well, now you put the question," said Rooney, "I rather fear that some of us do, occasionally; an' there's not a few who have a decided tendency to deceive others. And so that is the reason you won't be an angekok, is it? Well, it does you credit. But what sort o' things do they believe, in these northern regions, that you can't go in with? Much the same, I fancy, that the southern Eskimos believe?"

"I know not what the southern Eskimos believe, for I have met them seldom. But our angekoks believe in torngaks, familiar spirits, which they say meet and talk with them. There is no torngak. It is a lie."

"But you believe in one great and good Spirit, don't you?" asked the seaman, with a serious look.

"Yes; I believe in One," returned the Eskimo in a low voice, "One who made me, and all things, and who must be good."

"There are people in my land who deny that there is One, because they never saw, or felt, or heard Him -- so they say they cannot know," said Rooney. Angut looked surprised.

"They must be fools," he said. "I see a sledge, and I know that some man made it -- for who ever heard of a sledge making itself? I see a world, and I know that the Great Spirit made it, because a world cannot make itself. The greatest Spirit must be One, because two greatests are impossible, and He is good -- because good is better than evil, and the Greatest includes the Best."

The seaman stared, as well he might, while the Eskimo spoke these words, gazing dreamily at the lamp-flame, as if he were communing with his own spirit rather than with his companion. Evidently Okiok had a glimmering of what he meant, for he looked pleased as well as solemn.

It might be tedious to continue the conversation. Leaving them therefore to their profound discussions, we will turn to another and very different social group.



Chapter Seven.

Treats Of Cross-Purposes And Difficulties.

Partially concealed in a cavern at the base of a stupendous, almost perpendicular, cliff, stood the wizard Ujarak and his pupil Ippegoo. The former silently watched the latter as he fitted a slender spear, or rather giant arrow, to a short handle, and prepared to discharge it at a flock of sea-birds which were flying about in front of them within what we would call easy gunshot.

The handle referred to acted as a short lever, by means of which the spear could be launched not only with more precision but with much greater force than if thrown simply by hand like a javelin.

"There, dart it now!" cried Ujarak, as a bird swept close to the cave's mouth. "Boh! you are too slow. Here is another; quick! dart!"

Ippegoo let fly hastily, and missed.

"Poo! you are of no more use than the rotten ice of spring. There; try again," said Ujarak, pointing to a flock of birds which came sweeping towards them.

The crestfallen youth fitted another spear to the handle -- for he carried several -- and launched it in desperation into the middle of the flock. It ruffled the wings of one bird, and sent it screaming up the cliffs, but brought down none.

"Boo!" exclaimed the wizard, varying the expression of his contempt. "It is well that your mother has only a small family."

Ippegoo was accustomed to severe backhanders from his patron; he was not offended, but smiled in a pathetic manner as he went out in silence to pick up his weapons.

Just as he was returning, Arbalik, nephew to the jovial Simek, appeared upon the scene, and joined them. The wizard appeared to be slightly annoyed, but had completely dissembled his feelings when the young man walked up.

"Have the hunters found no seals?" asked Ujarak.

"Yes, plenty," answered Arbalik cheerily, for he had a good deal of his old uncle's spirit in him, "but you know variety is agreeable. Birds are good at a feast. They enable you to go on eating when you can hold no more seal or walrus blubber."

"That is true," returned the wizard, with a grave nod of appreciation. "Show Ippegoo how to dart the spear. He is yet a baby!"

Arbalik laughed lightly as he let fly a spear with a jaunty, almost careless, air, and transfixed a bird on the wing.

"Well done!" cried the wizard, with a burst of genuine admiration; "your wife will never know hunger."

"Not after I get her," returned the youth, with a laugh, as he flung another spear, and transfixed a second bird.

Ippegoo looked on with slightly envious but not malevolent feelings, for he was a harmless lad.

"Try again," cried Arbalik, turning to him with a broad grin, as he offered him one of his own spears.

Ippegoo took the weapon, launched it, and, to his own great surprise and delight, sent it straight through the heart of a bird, which fell like a stone.

A shout of pleasure burst from Arbalik, who was far too good a shot to entertain mean feelings of jealousy at the success of others.

"It is the luck of the spear," said Ujarak, "not the skill of the hunter."

This would have been an unkind cut to ordinary mortals, but it fell as harmless on Ippegoo as water on the back of the eider-duck. A snub from the wizard he took almost as a compliment, and the mere success of his shot afforded him unbounded pleasure.

The good-natured Arbalik offered him another spear, but Ujarak interposed.

"No; Ippegoo must come with me," he said. "I have work for him to do. One who would be an angekok must leave bird-spearing to boys." Then turning to Arbalik -- "Did you not say that the hunters have found plenty of game?"

"Yes, plenty."

"I told you so," said the wizard, using a phrase not unfamiliar to civilised ears. "Remain here, and spear plenty of birds; or go where you will."

Having thus graciously given the youth free permission to do as he pleased -- which Arbalik received with inward scorn, though outward respect -- he left the cave, followed meekly by his satellite.

After walking in silence till well out of earshot of the expert young hunter, the wizard said in solemn tones -- 

"Ippegoo, I have work of more importance for you to do than spearing birds -- work that requires the wisdom of a young angekok."

All Ujarak's backhanders vanished before this confidential remark, and the poor tool began to feel as if he were growing taller and broader even as he walked.

"You know the hut of Okiok?" continued the wizard.

"Yes; under the ice-topped cliff."

"Well, Angut is there. I hate Angut!"

"So do I," said Ippegoo, with emphasis quite equal to that of his master.

"And Nunaga is there," continued Ujarak. "I -- I love Nunaga!"

"So do I," exclaimed Ippegoo fervently, but seeing by the wizard's majestic frown that he had been precipitate, he took refuge in the hasty explanation -- "Of course I mean that -- that -- I love her because you love her. I do not love her for herself. If you did not love her, I would hate her. To me she is not of so much value as the snout of a seal."

The wizard seemed pacified, for his frown relaxed, and after a few moments' thought he went on savagely -- 

"Angut also loves Nunaga."

"The madman! the insolent! the fool!" exclaimed Ippegoo; "what can he expect but death?"

"Nothing else, and nothing less," growled the wizard, clenching his teeth -- "if he gets her! But he shall never get her! I will stop that; and that is why I ask you to listen -- for you must be ready to act, and in haste."

As Ippegoo began to entertain uncomfortable suspicions that the wizard was about to use him as an instrument of vengeance, he made no response whatever to the last remark.

"Now," continued his master, "you will go to the hut of Okiok. Enter it hurriedly, and say to Nunaga that her father's grandmother, Kannoa, is ill -- ill in her mind -- and will not rest till she comes to see her. Take a small sledge that will only hold her and yourself; and if Okiok or Angut offer to go with you, say that old Kannoa wants to see the girl alone, that there is a spell upon her, that she is bewitched, and will see no one else. They will trust you, for they know that your mind is weak and your heart good."

"If my mind is weak," said Ippegoo somewhat sadly, "how can I ever become an angekok?"

With much affectation of confidence, the wizard replied that there were two kinds of men who were fit to be angekoks -- men with weak minds and warm hearts, or men with strong minds and cold hearts.

"And have you the strong mind?" asked Ippegoo.

"Yes, of course, very strong -- and also the cold heart," replied Ujarak.

"But how can that be," returned the pupil, with a puzzled look, "when your heart is warmed by Nunaga?"

"Because -- because," rejoined the wizard slowly, with some hesitation and a look of profound wisdom, "because men of strong mind do not love as other men. They are quite different -- so different that you cannot understand them."

Ippegoo felt the reproof, and was silent.

"So, when you have got Nunaga on the sledge," resumed Ujarak, "you will drive her towards the village; but you will turn off at the Cliff of Seals, and drive at full speed to the spot where I speared the white bear last moon. You know it?"

"Yes; near Walrus Bay?"

"Just so. There you will find me with two sledges. On one I will drive Nunaga away to the far-south, where the Innuit who have much iron dwell. On the other you will follow. We will live there for ever. They will be glad to receive us."

"But -- but -- " said Ippegoo hesitatingly, and with some anxiety, for he did not like to differ on any point from his master -- "I cannot leave my -- my mother!"

"Why not?"

"I suppose it is because I love her. You know you told me that the weak minds have warm hearts -- and my mind must be very, very weak indeed, for my heart is very warm -- quite hot -- for my mother."

The wizard perceived that incipient rebellion was in the air, so, like a wise man, a true angekok, he trimmed his sails accordingly.

"Bring your mother with you," he said abruptly.

"But she won't come."

"Command her to come."

"Command my mother!" exclaimed Ippegoo, in amazement.

Again the wizard was obliged to have recourse to his wisdom in order to subdue this weak mind.

"Yes, of course," he replied; "tell your mother that your torngak -- no, you haven't got one yet -- that Ujarak's torngak -- told him in a vision that a visit to the lands of the far-south would do her good, would remove the pains that sometimes stiffen her joints, and the cough that has troubled her so much. So you will incline her to obey. Go, tell her to prepare for a journey; but say nothing more, except that I will call for her soon, and take her on my sledge. Away!"

The peremptory tone of the last word decided the poor youth's wavering mind. Without a word more he ran to the place where his dogs were fastened, harnessed them to his sledge, and was soon driving furiously back to the Eskimo village over the frozen sea, while the wizard returned to the place where the hunters of his tribe were still busy hauling in the carcases of seals and other game, which they had succeeded in killing in considerable numbers.

Approaching one of the band of hunters, which was headed by the jovial Simek, and had halted for the purpose of refreshment, Ujarak accosted them with -- 

"Have the young men become impatient women, that they cannot wait to have their food cooked?"

"Ha! ha!" laughed Simek, holding up a strip of raw and bloody seal's flesh, with which he had already besmeared the region of his mouth and nose; "Yes, we have become like women; we know what is good for us, and take it when we need it, not caring much about the cooking. My young men are hungry. Must they wait till the lamps are lighted before they eat? Come, Ujarak, join us. Even an angekok may find a bit of good fat seal worth swallowing. Did you not set them free? You deserve a bit!"

There was a spice of chaff as well as jollity in the big Eskimo's tone and manner; but he was such a gushing fellow, and withal so powerful, that the wizard deemed it wise not to take offence.

"It is not long since I fed," he replied, with a grim smile; "I have other work on hand just now."

"I also have work -- plenty of it; and I work best when stuffed full."

So saying, Simek put a full stop, as it were, to the sentence with a mass of blubber, while the wizard went off, as he said, to consult his torngak as to state affairs of importance.

Meanwhile Ippegoo went careering over the ice, plying his long-lashed whip with the energy of a man who had pressing business on hand.

Arrived at the village, he sought his mother's hut. Kunelik, as his mother was named, was seated therein, not exactly darning his socks, but engaged in the Eskimo equivalent -- mending his waterproof boots. These were made of undressed sealskin, with soles of walrus hide; and the pleasant-faced little woman was stitching together the sides of a rent in the upper leather, using a fine sharp fish-bone as a needle and a delicate shred of sinew as a thread, when her son entered.

"Mother," he said in a somewhat excited tone, as he sat down beside his maternal parent, "I go to the hut of Okiok."

Kunelik bestowed an inquiring glance upon her boy.

"Ippe," she said, (for Eskimos sometimes use endearing abbreviations), "has Nunaga turned you upside down?"

The lad protested fervently that his head was yet in its proper position. "But," he added, "the mother of Oki -- no, the grandmother of Okiok -- is sick -- very sick -- and I am to go and fetch the mother of -- no, I mean the daughter of -- of Okiok, to see her, because -- because -- "

"Take time, Ippe," interrupted Kunelik; "I see that your head is down, and your boots are in the air."

Again Ippegoo protested earnestly that he was in the reverse position, and that Nunaga was no more to him than the snout of a seal; but he protested in vain, for his pleasant little mother believed that she understood the language of symptoms, and nodded her disbelief smilingly.

"But why do you say that Kannoa is very ill, Ippe?" she asked; "I have just come from her hut where she was seemingly quite well. Moreover, she has agreed to sup this very night with the mother of Arbalik, and she could not do that if she was ill, for that means much stuffing, because the mother of Arbalik has plenty of food and cooks it very fast."

"Oh, but it is not Kannoa's body that is ill," said Ippegoo quickly; "it is her mind that is ill -- very ill; and nothing will make it better but a sight of Nunaga. It was Ujarak that told me so; and you know, mother, that whatever he says must be true somehow, whether it be true or not."

"Ujarak is a fool," said Kunelik quietly; "and you are another, my son."

We must again remind the reader here that the Eskimos are a simple as well as straightforward folk. They say what they mean and mean what they say, without the smallest intention of hurting each other's feelings.

"And, mother," continued the son, scarce noticing her remark, "I want you to prepare for a journey."

Kunelik looked surprised.

"Where to, my son?"

"It matters not just now. You shall know in time. Will you get ready?"

"No, my son, I won't."

"But Ujarak says you are to get ready."

"Still, my son, I won't."

"Mother!" exclaimed Ippegoo, with that look and tone which usually follows the saying of something very wicked; but the pleasant little woman went on with her work with an air of such calm good-natured resolution that her son felt helpless.

"Then, mother, I know not what to do."

"What did he tell you to do?" asked Kunelik abruptly.

The youth gave as much of his conversation with the wizard as sufficed to utterly perplex his mother's mind without enlightening it much. When he had finished, or rather had come to an abrupt stop, she looked at him calmly, and said -- 

"My son, whatever he told you to do, go and do it. Leave the rest to me."

From infancy Ippegoo had rejoiced in his wise little mother's decisions. To be saved the trouble of thinking; to have a straight and simple course clearly pointed out to him, so that he should have nothing to do but shut his eyes and walk therein -- or, if need be, run -- was the height of Ippegoo's ambition -- next to solid feeding. But be not hard on him, good reader. Remember that he was an ignorant savage, and that you could not expect him to be as absolutely and entirely free from this low type of spirit as civilised people are!

Without another word, therefore, the youth leaped on to his sledge, cracked his whip, and set off on his delicate mission. Poor lad! disappointment was in store for him. But compensation was in store also.

While he was galloping along under the ice-cliffs on the east side of a great berg, not far from the end of his journey, Okiok, with his wife and daughter on a sledge, chanced to be galloping with equal speed in the opposite direction on the west side of the same berg. It was a mighty berg -- an ice-mountain of nearly half a mile in length -- so that no sound of cracking lash or yelping dogs passed from the one party to the other. Thus when Ippegoo arrived at his destination he found his fair bird flown. But he found a much more interesting personage in the Kablunet, who had been left under the care of Angut and Ermigit. This great sight effectually banished disappointment and every other feeling from his breast.

He first caught a glimpse of the wonderful man when half-way through the tunnel-lobby, and the sight rooted him to the spot, for Red Rooney had just finished making a full-dress suit of clothes for little Tumbler, and was in the act of fitting them on when the young Eskimo arrived.

That day Ermigit had managed to spear a huge raven. Rooney, being something of a naturalist, had skinned it, and it was while little Tumbler was gazing at him in open-eyed admiration that the thought struck him -- Tumbler being very small and the raven very large.

"Come," said he, seizing the child -- with whom he was by that time on the most intimate terms of affection -- "Come, I'll dress you up."

Tumbler was naked at the moment, and willingly consented. A few stitches with needle and thread, which the sailor always carried in his pocket, soon converted the wings of the bird into sleeves, a button at the chest formed the skin into a rude cut-away coat, the head, with the beak in front, formed a convenient cap, and the tail hung most naturally down behind. A better full-dress coat was never more quickly manufactured.

Ermigit went into convulsions of laughter over it, and the sailor, charmed with his work, kept up a running commentary in mingled English and Eskimo.

"Splendid!" he cried; "the best slop-shop in Portsmouth couldn't match it! Cap and coat all in one! The fit perfect -- and what a magnificent tail!"

At this point Ermigit caught sight of the gaping and glaring Ippegoo in the passage. With a bound he fell upon him, caught him by the hair, and dragged him in.

Of course there followed a deal of questioning, which the hapless youth tried to answer; but the fascination of the Kablunet was too much for him. He could do nothing but give random replies and stare; seeing which, Rooney suggested that the best way to revive him would be to give him something to eat.



Chapter Eight.

Mrs. Okiok's Little Evening Party.

In Eskimo land, as in England, power and industry result in the elevation and enrichment of individuals, though they have not yet resulted there, as here, in vast accumulations of wealth, or in class distinctions. The elevating tendency of superior power and practice is seen in the fact that while some hunters are nearly always pretty well off -- "well-to-do," as we would express it -- others are often in a state of poverty and semi-starvation. A few of them possess two establishments, and some even go the length of possessing two wives. It is but just to add, however, that these last are rare. Most Eskimo men deem one wife quite as much as they can manage to feed.

Our friend Okiok was what we may style one of the aristocracy of the land. He did not, indeed, derive his position from inheritance, but from the circumstance of his being a successful hunter, a splendid canoe-man, and a tremendous fighter.

When it is added that his fights were often single-handed against the Polar bear, it may be understood that both his activity and courage were great. He was not an angekok, for, like his friend Angut, he did not believe in wizards; nevertheless he was very truly an angekok, in the sense of being an uncommonly wise man, and his countrymen, recognising the fact, paid him suitable respect.

Okiok possessed a town and a country mansion. That is to say, besides the solitary residence already mentioned, close to the great glacier, he owned the largest hut in the Eskimo village. It was indeed quite a palatial residence, capable of holding several families, and having several holes in it -- or windows -- which were glazed, if we may say so, with the scraped intestines of animals.

It was to this residence that Okiok drove on the afternoon of the day that he missed Ippegoo's visit.

On finding that most of the men had gone southward to hunt, he resolved to follow them, for his purpose was to consult about the Kablunet, who had so recently fallen like a meteor from the sky into their midst.

"But you will stop here, Nuna, with Nunaga, and tell the women all about the Kablunet, while I go south alone. Make a feast; you have plenty to give them. Here, help me to carry the things inside."

Okiok had brought quite a sledge-load of provisions with him, for it had been his intention to give a feast to as many of the community as could be got inside his hut. The carrying in of the supplies, therefore, involving as it did creeping on hands and knees through a low tunnel with each article, was not a trifling duty.

"Now," said he, when at last ready to start, "be sure that you ask the liars and the stupid ones to the feast, as well as the wise; and make them sit near you, for if these don't hear all about it from your own mouth they will be sure to carry away nonsense, and spread it. Don't give them the chance to invent."

While her husband was rattling away south over the hummocky sea in his empty sledge, Nuna lighted her lamps, opened her stores, and began to cook.

"Go now, Nunaga," she said, "and tell the women who are to feed with us to-night."

"Who shall I invite, mother?" asked pretty little Nunaga, preparing to set forth on her mission.

"Invite old Kannoa, of course. She is good."

"Yes, mother, and she is also griggy."

We may remark in passing that it is impossible to convey the exact meaning of the Eskimo word which we have rendered "griggy." Enough to say, once for all, that in difficult words and phrases we give as nearly as possible our English equivalents.

"And Kunelik," said Nuna, continuing to enumerate her guests; "I like the mother of Ippegoo. She is a pleasant little woman."

"But father said we were to ask liars," remarked Nunaga, with a sweet look.

"I'm coming to them, child," said Mrs Okiok, with a touch of petulance -- the result of a gulp of lamp-smoke; "yes, you may ask Pussimek also. The wife of Simek is always full of wise talk, and her baby does not squall, which is lucky, for she cannot be forced to leave Pussi behind."

"But name the liars and stupid ones, mother," urged Nunaga, who, being a dutiful child, and anxious to carry out her father's wishes to the letter, stuck to her point.

"Tell Issek, then, the mother of Arbalik, to come," returned Nuna, making a wry face. "If she is not stupid, she is wicked enough, and dreadful at lies. And the sisters Kabelaw and Sigokow; they are the worst liars in all the village, besides being stupider than puffins. There, that will be enough for our first feed. When these have stuffed, we can have more. Too many at once makes much cooking and little talk. Go, my child."

An hour later, and the gossips of the Eskimo village were assembled round Mrs Okiok's hospitable lamp -- she had no "board," -- the raised floor at the further end of the hut serving both for seat and table in the daytime and for bed at night. Of course they were all bursting with curiosity, and eager to talk.

But food at first claimed too much attention to permit of free conversation. Yet it must not be supposed that the company was gluttonous or greedy. Whatever Eskimos may feel at a feast, it is a point of etiquette that guests should not appear anxious about what is set before them. Indeed, they require a little pressing on the part of the host at first, but they always contrive to make amends for such self-restraint before the feast is over.

And it was by no means a simple feast to which that party sat down. There were dried herrings and dried seal's flesh, and the same boiled; also boiled auks, dried salmon, dried reindeer venison, and a much-esteemed dish consisting of half raw and slightly putrid seal's flesh, called mikiak -- something similar in these respects to our own game. But the principal dish was part of a whale's tail in a high or gamey condition. Besides these delicacies, there was a pudding, or dessert, of preserved crowberries, mixed with "chyle" from the maw of the reindeer, with train oil for sauce.

Gradually, as appetite was satisfied, tongues were loosened, and information about the wonderful foreigner, which had been fragmentary at first, flowed in a copious stream. Then commentary and question began in right earnest.

"Have some more mikiak?" said Mrs Okiok to Pussimek.

"No," replied Mrs P, with a sigh.

These northern Eskimos did not, at least at the time of which we write, say "thank you" -- not that there was any want of good feeling or civility among them, but simply because it was not customary to do so.

Mrs Okiok then offered some more of the delicacy mentioned to the mother of Ippegoo.

"No," said Kunelik, leaning back with a contented air against the wall; "I am pleasantly stuffed already."

"But tell me," cried Issek, the stern mother of Arbalik, "what does the Kablunet say the people eat in his own land?"

"They eat no whales," said Nuna; "they have no whales."

"No whales!" exclaimed Pussimek, with a 'huk' of surprise!

"No; no whales," said Nuna -- "and no bears," she added impressively. "Ridroonee, (that's his name), says they eat a thing called bread, which grows out of the ground like grass."

"Eat grass!" exclaimed the mother of Arbalik.

"So he says, and also beasts that have horns -- "

"Reindeer?" suggested Kunelik.

"No; the horns are short, with only one point to each; and the beasts are much heavier than reindeer. They have also great beasts, with no name in our language -- hurses or hosses he calls them, -- but they don't eat these; they make them haul sledges on little round things called weels -- "

"I know," cried Sigokow; "they must be big dogs!"

"Huk!" exclaimed old Kannoa, who confined her observations chiefly to that monosyllable and a quiet chuckle.

"No," returned Nuna, becoming a little impatient under these frequent interruptions; "they are not dogs at all, but hurses -- hosses -- with hard feet like stones, and iron boots on them."

A general exclamation of incredulous surprise broke forth at this point, and the mother of Arbalik silently came to the conclusion that Nuna had at last joined the liars of the community, and was making the most of her opportunities, and coming out strong.

"Let there be no talk, and I will speak," said Nuna somewhat indignantly; "if you interrupt me again, I will send you all away to your huts!"

This threat produced silence, and a sniff from Arbalik's mother. Mrs Okiok went on: -- 

"The land, Ridroonee says, is very rich. They have all that they wish --  and more!" ("Huk!" from the company) -- "except a great many people, called poo-oor, who have not all that they wish -- and who sometimes want a little more." (A groan of remonstrative pity from the audience.) "But they have not many seals, and they never eat them."

"Poo! I would not care to live there," said Pussimek.

"And no walruses at all," added Mrs Okiok.

"Boo! a miserable country!" exclaimed Ippegoo's mother.

"Then they have villages -- so big! -- oh!" Nuna paused from incapacity to describe, for Eskimos, being unable to comprehend large numbers, are often obliged to have recourse to illustration. "Listen," continued Nuna, holding up a finger; "if all the whales we catch in a year were to be cooked, they would not feed the people of their largest village for one day!"

The mother of Arbalik now felt that she had sufficient ground for the belief that Mrs Okiok was utterly demoralised and lost, in the matter of veracity. Mrs Okiok, looking at her, perceived this in her countenance, and dropped that subject with a soft smile of conscious innocence.

Thereupon curiosity broke forth again with redoubled violence.

"But what is the Kablunet like?" cried Kabelaw, as eagerly as if it were the first time of asking.

"I have told you six times," replied Nuna.

"Tell her again," cried the mother of Arbalik, with a sniff; "she's so used to lies that she finds it hard to take in the truth."

There was a sort of double hit intended here, which immensely tickled the Eskimos, who laughed heartily, for they are fond of a touch of sarcastic humour.

"Yes, tell her again," they cried unanimously -- "for," added Pussimek, "we're not tired of it yet. Are we, Pussi?"

The query was addressed to her stark naked baby, which broke from a tremendous stare into a benignant laugh, that had the effect of shutting up its eyes at the same time that it opened its little mouth.

It must be remarked here that although we have called Pussi a baby, she was not exactly an infant. She could walk, and understand, and even talk. She did not, however, (desirable child!) use her tongue freely. In fact, Eskimo children seldom do so in the company of their elders. They are prone to listen, and gaze, and swallow, (mentally), and to reply only when questioned. But they seem to consider themselves free to laugh at will -- hence Pussi's explosion.

"Well, then," continued Mrs Okiok good-naturedly, "I will tell you again. The Kablunet is a fine man. He must be very much finer when he is fat, for he is broad and tall, and looks strong; but he is thin just now -- oh, so thin! -- as thin almost as Ippegoo!"

Ippegoo's mother took this in good part, as, indeed, it was intended.

"But that will soon mend with stuffing," continued Nuna. "And his hair is brown -- not black -- and is in little rings; and there is nearly as much below his nose as above it, so that his mouth can only be seen when open. He carries needles and soft sinews, too, in his bag; but his needles are not fish-bones -- they are iron; and the sinews are not like our sinews. They are -- I know not what! He has a round thing also, made of white iron, in his pocket, and it is alive. He says, 'No, it is a dead thing,' but he lies, for one day when he was out I heard it speaking to itself in a low soft little voice, but I was afraid to touch it for fear it should bite."

("Lies again!" muttered Issek, the mother of Arbalik, to herself.)

"He says that it tells him about time," continued Nuna; "but how can it tell him about anything if it is dead? Alive and dead at the same time!"

"Impossible!" cried Pussimek.

"Ridiculous!" cried every one else.

"Huk!" ejaculated old Kannoa, wrinkling up her mild face and exposing her toothless gums in a stupendous chuckle.

"Yes, impossible! But I think he does not tell many lies," said Nuna apologetically. "I think he only does it a little. Then he goes on his knees every night before lying down, and every morning when he rises, and speaks to himself."

"Why?" cried every one in blazing astonishment.

"I know not," replied Nuna, "and he does not tell."

"He must be a fool," suggested Kunelik.

"I suppose so," returned Nuna, "yet he does not look like a fool."

At this point the description of Rooney's person and characteristics was interrupted by a tremendous splash. It was poor Pussi, who, having grown wearied of the conversation, had slipped from her mother's side, and while wandering in the background had tumbled into the oil-tub, from which she quickly emerged gasping, gazing, and glittering.

A mild remonstrance, with a good wipe down, soon put her to rights, and Nuna was about to resume her discourse, when the sound of rushing footsteps outside arrested her. Next moment a wild scrambling was heard in the tunnel -- as of a giant rat in a hurry -- and Ippegoo tumbled into the hut in a state of wild excitement, which irresistibly affected the women.

"What has happened?" demanded Nuna.

"Mother," gasped the youth, turning to the natural repository of all his cares and troubles, "he is coming!"

"Who is coming, my son?" asked Kunelik, in a quiet, soothing tone, for the pleasant little woman, unlike most of the others, was not easily thrown into a state of agitation.

"The Kablunet," cried Ippegoo.

"Where, when, who, how, which, what?" burst simultaneously from the gaping crowd.

But for some minutes the evidently exhausted youth could not answer. He could only glare and pant. By degrees, however, and with much patience, his mother extracted his news from him, piecemeal, to the following effect.

After having sat and gazed in mute surprise at the Kablunet for a considerable time, as already mentioned, and having devoured a good meal at the same time, Ippegoo had been closely questioned by Angut as to the reason of his unexpected visit. He had done his best to conceal matters, with which Angut, he said, had nothing to do; but somehow that wonderfully wise man had seen, as it were, into his brain, and at once became suspicious. Then he looked so fierce, and demanded the truth so sternly, that he, (Ippegoo), had fled in terror from the hut of Okiok, and did not stop till he had reached the top of a hummock, where he paused to recover breath. Looking back, he saw that Angut had already harnessed the dogs to his sledge, and was packing the Kablunet upon it -- "All lies," interrupted Arbalik's mother, Issek, at this point. "If this is true, how comes it that Ippegoo is here first? No doubt the legs of the simple one are the best part of him, but every one knows that they could not beat the dogs of Angut."

"Issek is wise," said Kunelik pleasantly, "almost too wise! -- but no doubt the simple one can explain."

"Speak, my son."

"Yes, mother, I can explain. You must know that Angut was in such a fierce hurry that he made his whip crack like the splitting of an iceberg, and the dogs gave such a yell and bound that they dashed the sledge against a hummock, and broke some part of it. What part of it I did not stop to see. Only I saw that they had to unload, and the Kablunet helped to mend it. Then I turned and ran. So I am here first."

There was a huk of approval at this explanation, which was given in a slightly exulting tone, and with a glance of mild defiance at Arbalik's mother.

But Issek was not a woman to be put down easily by a simpleton. She at once returned to the charge.

"No doubt Ippegoo is right," she said, with forced calmness, "but he has talked of a message to Okiok. I dare say the wife of Okiok would like to hear what that message is."

"Huk! That is true," said Nuna quickly.

"And," continued Issek, "Ippegoo speaks of the suspicions of Angut. What does he suspect? We would all like to know that."

"Huk! huk! That is also true," exclaimed every one.

"My son," whispered Kunelik, "silence is the only hope of a fool. Speak not at all."

Ippegoo was so accustomed to render blind and willing obedience to his mother that he instantly brought his teeth together with a snap, and thereafter not one word, good, bad, or indifferent, was to be extracted from the simple one.

From what he had revealed, however, it was evident that a speedy visit from the wonderful foreigner was to be looked for. The little party therefore broke up in much excitement, each member of it going off in bursting importance to spread the news in her particular circle, with exaggerations suitable to her special nature and disposition.

While they are thus engaged, we will return to the object of all their interest.

When Ippegoo fled from Angut, as already told, the latter worthy turned quickly to Rooney, and said -- 

"There is danger somewhere -- I know not where or what; but I must leave you. Ermigit will take good care of Ridroonee till I come again."

"Nay, if there is danger anywhere I will share it," returned Rooney, rising and stretching himself; "I am already twice the man I was with all this resting and feeding."

The Eskimo looked at the sailor doubtfully for a moment; but when action was necessary, he was a man of few words. Merely uttering the word "Come," he went out and harnessed his dog-team in a few minutes. Then, after wrapping the Kablunet carefully up in furs, he leaped on the fore-part of the sledge, cracked his whip, and went off at full speed.

"What is the danger that threatens, think you?" asked Rooney; "you must have some notion about it."

"I know not, but I guess," answered Angut, with a sternness that surprised his companion. "Ippegoo is a poor tool in the hands of a bad man. He comes from Ujarak, and he asks too earnestly for Nunaga. Ujarak is fond of Nunaga."

Rooney looked pointedly and gravely at Angut. That Eskimo returned the look even more pointedly and with deeper gravity. Then what we may term a grave smile flitted across the features of the Eskimo. A similar smile enlivened the features of the seaman. He spoke no word, but from that moment Rooney knew that Angut was also fond of Nunaga; and he made up his mind to aid him to the utmost of his capacity both in love and war -- for sympathy is not confined to races, creeds, or classes, but gloriously permeates the whole human family.

It was at this point that the crash described by Ippegoo occurred. Fortunately no damage was done to the occupants of the sledge, though the vehicle itself had suffered fractures which it took them several hours to repair.

Having finished the repairs, they set off again at greater speed than ever in the direction of the Eskimo village, accompanied by Ermigit and Tumbler, who, not caring to be left behind, had followed on a smaller sledge, and overtaken them.



Chapter Nine.

Shows That The Wise Are A Match For The Wicked, And Exhibits Tumbler And Pussi In Danger.

When Red Rooney and his friend reached the village, and found that most of the men had gone south to hunt, and that Nunaga was living in peace with her mother in her father's town mansion, their fears were greatly relieved, although Angut was still rendered somewhat anxious by the suspicion that mischief of some sort was brewing. Being resolved if possible to discover and counteract it, he told Rooney that he meant to continue his journey southward, and join the hunters.

"Good. I will rest here till you return," said the seaman, "for I feel that I'm not strong enough yet for much exertion."

"But Ridroonee promised to dwell with me," returned Angut, somewhat anxiously.

"So I did, and so I will, friend, when you come back. At present you tell me your hut is closed because you have no wife -- no kinswoman."

"That is true," returned the Eskimo; "my mother is dead; my father was killed; I have no brothers, no sisters. But when I am at home old Kannoa cooks for me. She is a good woman, and can make us comfortable."

"Just so, Angut. I'll be content to have the old woman for a nurse as long as I need one. Good luck to you; and, I say, keep a sharp look-out on Ujarak. He's not to be trusted, if I am any judge of men's faces."

Angut said no word in reply, but he smiled a grim smile as he turned and went his way.

Being much fatigued with his recent exertions, Red Rooney turned into Okiok's hut, to the great sorrow of the women and children, who had gathered from all parts of the village to gaze at and admire him.

"He is real -- and alive!" remarked Kunelik in a low voice.

"And Nuna is not a liar," said the mother of Arbalik.

"Yes; he is tall," said one.

"And broad," observed another.

"But very thin," said Pussimek.

"No matter; he can stuff," said Kabelaw, with a nod to her sister Sigokow, who was remarkably stout, and doubtless understood the virtue of the process.

While this commentary was going on, the object of it was making himself comfortable on a couch of skins which Nuna had spread for him on the raised floor at the upper end of her hut. In a few minutes the wearied man was sound asleep, as was indicated by his nose.

No sooner did Mrs Okiok note the peculiar sound than she went out and said to her assembled friends -- "Now you may come in; but -- forget not --  no word is to be spoken. Use your eyes and bite your tongues. The one who speaks shall be put out."

Under these conditions the multitude filed into the mansion, where they sat down in rows to gaze their fill in profound silence; and there they sat for more than an hour, rapt in contemplation of the wonderful sight.

"He snorts," was on the lips of Pussimek, but a warning glance from Nuna checked the sentence in the bud.

"He dreams!" had almost slipped from the lips of Kunelik, but she caught it in time.

Certainly these primitive people availed themselves of the permission to use their eyes; nay, more, they also used their eyebrows -- and indeed their entire faces, for, the lips being sealed, they not only drank in Rooney, so to speak, with their eyes, but tried to comment upon him with the same organs.

Finding them very imperfect in this respect, they ventured to use their lips without sound -- to speak, as it were, in dumb show -- and the contortions of visage thus produced were indescribable.

This state of things was at its height when Rooney chanced to awake. As he lay with his face to the foe, the tableau vivant met his gaze the instant he opened his eyes. Rooney was quick-witted, and had great power of self-command. He reclosed the eyes at once, and then, through the merest chink between the lids, continued to watch the scene. But the wink had been observed. It caused an abrupt stoppage of the pantomime, and an intense glare of expectancy.

This was too much for Rooney. He threw up his arms, and gave way to a violent explosion of loud and hearty laughter.

If a bomb-shell had burst among the spectators, it could scarcely have caused greater consternation. A panic ensued. Incontinently the mother of Ippegoo plunged head first into the tunnel. The mother of Arbalik followed, overtook her friend, tried to pass, and stuck fast. The others, dashing in, sought to force them through, but only rammed them tighter. Seeing that egress was impossible, those in rear crouched against the furthest wall and turned looks of horror on the Kablunet, who they thought had suddenly gone mad. But observing that Nuna and her daughter did not share their alarm, they soon recovered, and when Rooney at last sat up and began to look grave, they evidently felt somewhat ashamed of themselves. Pussimek at last seized the mother of Ippegoo by the legs, and with a strong pull extracted her from the tunnel. Issek, being thus set free, quickly made her exit. The rest followed by degrees, until Rooney was left with Nuna and her daughter.

"Your friends have had a fright," remarked the sailor.

"They are easily frightened. Are you hungry?"

"Yes; I feel as if I could eat a white bear raw."

"So I expected," returned the little woman, with a laugh, as she placed a platter of broiled meat before her guest, who at once set to work.

Let us now return to Ippegoo. Having borrowed a sledge, he had driven off to the appointed place of rendezvous, before the arrival of Rooney and Angut, as fast as the team could take him. Arrived there, he found Ujarak awaiting him.

"You have failed," said the wizard gravely.

"Yes, because Nunaga had left with her father and mother, and is now in the village. So is the Kablunet."

Whatever Ujarak might have felt, he took good care that his countenance should not betray him. Indeed this capacity to conceal his feelings under a calm exterior constituted a large element of the power which he had obtained over his fellows. Without deigning a reply of any kind to his humble and humbled follower, he stepped quietly into the sledge, and drove away to the southward, intending to rejoin the hunters.

Arrived at the ground, he set off on foot over the ice until he found a seal's breathing-hole. Here he arranged his spears, erected a screen of snow-blocks, and sat down to watch.

"Ippegoo," he said, at last breaking silence, "we must not be beaten."

"No, that must not be," replied his pupil firmly.

"This time we have failed," continued the wizard, "because I did not think that Okiok would leave his guest."

"I thought," said Ippegoo, somewhat timidly, "that your torngak told you everything."

"You are a fool, Ippegoo."

"I know it, master; but can you not make me more wise by teaching me?"

"Some people are hard to teach," said Ujarak.

"That is also true," returned the youth mournfully. "I know that you can never make me an angekok. Perhaps it would be better not to try."

"No. You are mistaken," said the wizard in a more cheerful tone, for he felt that he had gone too far. "You will make a good enough angekok in time, if you will only attend to what I say, and be obedient. Come, I will explain to you. Torngaks, you must understand, do not always tell all that they know. Sometimes they leave the angekok dark, for a purpose that is best known to themselves. But they always tell enough for the guidance of a wise man -- "

"But -- but -- I am not a wise man, you know," Ippegoo ventured to remark.

"True; but when I have made you an angekok then you will become a wise man -- don't you see?"

As the word angekok signifies "wise man," Ippegoo would have been a fool indeed had he failed to see the truism. The sight raised his spirits, and made him look hopeful.

"Well, then, stupid one, speak not, but listen. As I have before told you, I love Nunaga and Nunaga loves me -- "

"I -- I thought she loved Angut," said Ippegoo.

"O idiot," exclaimed the wizard; "did I not tell you that you cannot understand? The loves of angekoks are not as the loves of ordinary men. Sometimes one's torngak makes the girl seem uncertain which man she likes best -- "

"Ye-yes; but in this case there seems no uncertainty, for she and Angut -- "

"Silence! you worse than baby walrus!"

Ippegoo shut his mouth, and humbly drooped his eyelids.

After a few minutes, Ujarak, having swallowed his wrath, continued in a calm tone -- 

"This time we have failed. Next time we will be sure to succeed, and -- "

"I suppose your torngak told -- "

"Silence! weak-minded puffin!" thundered the wizard, to the great astonishment of a seal which came up at that moment to breathe, and prudently retired in time to save its life.

Once again the angekok with a mighty effort restrained his wrath, and after a time resumed -- 

"Now, Ippegoo, we dare not venture again to try till after the feast, for the suspicion which you have roused in Angut by the foolish wagging of your tongue must be allowed to die out. But in the meantime -- though you cannot, must not, speak -- you can listen, and you can get your mother to listen, and, when you hear anything that you think I ought to know, you will tell me."

"But if," said the pupil timidly, "I should only find out things that your torngak has already told you, what -- "

He stopped short, for Ujarak, springing up, walked smartly away, leaving his follower behind to finish the question, and gather up the spears.

"Yes; he is right. I am a fool," murmured Ippegoo. "Yet his conduct does seem strange. But he is an angekok. That must be the reason."

Consoling himself with this reflection, the puzzled youth, putting the spears and hunting tackle on his shoulders, followed after his irate master towards the bay where the other hunters were encamped.

We turn now to two other actors in our tale, who, although not very important characters, deserve passing notice.

When Nuna's youngest son, little Tumbler, was brought to the Eskimo village, he made his appearance in the new black dress suit with which Rooney had clothed him -- much to the surprise and delight of the whole community. Not long after arriving, he waddled away through the village in search of some piece of amusing mischief to do. On his ramble he fell in with a companion of about his own size, whose costume was that of a woman in miniature -- namely, a short coat with a fully developed tail, which trailed on the ground with the approved fashionable swing. This was none other than Pussi, the little daughter of Simek, the great hunter. Now it chanced that there was a mutual liking -- a strong bond of sympathy -- between Tumbler and Pussi, which induced them always to play together when possible.

No sooner, therefore, did Tumbler catch sight of his friend than he ran after her, grasped her greasy little hand, and waddled away to do, in company with her, what mischief might chance to be possible at the time.

Immediately behind the village there stood a small iceberg, which had grounded there some years before, and was so little reduced in size or shape by the action of each brief summer's sun that it had become to the people almost as familiar a landmark as the solid rocks. In this berg there was a beautiful sea-green cavern whose depths had never yet been fathomed. It was supposed to be haunted, and was therefore visited only by the more daring and courageous among the children of the tribe. Tumbler and Pussi were unquestionably the most daring among these --  partly owing to native bravery in both, and partly to profound ignorance and inexperience of danger.

"Let's go to ze g'een cave," suggested Tumbler.

Pussi returned that most familiar of replies -- a nod.

We cannot, of course, convey the slightest idea of the infantine Eskimo lisp. As before said, we must be content with the nearest English equivalent.

The green cave was not more than half a mile distant from the village. To reach it the children had to get upon the sea-ice, and this involved crossing what has been termed the ice-foot -- namely, that belt of broken up and shattered ice caused by the daily tides -- at the point where the grounded ice meets that which is afloat. It is a chaotic belt, varying in character and width according to position and depth of water, and always more or less dangerous to the tender limbs of childhood.

Encountering thus an opportunity for mischievous daring at the very beginning of their ramble, our jovial hero and heroine proceeded to cross, with all the breathless, silent, and awesome delight that surrounds half-suspected wickedness -- for they were quite old enough to know that they were on forbidden ground.

"Come, you's not frighted?" said Tumbler, holding out his hand, as he stood on the top of a block, encouraging his companion to advance.

"No -- not fri -- frighted -- but -- "

She caught the extended hand, slipped her little foot, and slid violently downward, dragging the boy along with her.

Scrambling to their feet, Pussi looked inclined to whimper, but as Tumbler laughed heartily, she thought better of it, and joined him.

Few of the riven masses by which they were surrounded were much above five or six feet thick; but as the children were short of stature, the place seemed to the poor creatures an illimitable world of icy confusion, and many were the slips, glissades, and semi-falls which they experienced before reaching the other side. Reach it they did, however, in a very panting and dishevelled condition, and it said much for Red Rooney's tailoring capacity that the black dress coat was not riven to pieces in the process.

"Look; help me. Shove me here," said Tumbler, as he laid hold of a block which formed the last difficulty.

Pussi helped and shoved to the best of her small ability, so that Tumbler soon found himself on a ledge which communicated with the sea-ice. Seizing Pussi by her top-knot of hair, he hauled while she scrambled, until he caught a hand, then an arm, then her tail, finally one of her legs, and at last deposited her, flushed and panting, at his side. After a few minutes' rest they began to run -- perhaps it were more correct to say waddle -- in the direction of "ze g'een cave."

Now it chanced that the said cave was haunted at that time, not by torngaks or other ghosts, but by two men, one of whom at least was filled with an evil spirit.

Ujarak, having ascertained that Okiok had joined the hunting party, and that the Kablunet had reached the village, resolved to make a daring attempt to carry off the fair Nunaga from the very midst of her female friends, and for this purpose sought and found his dupe Ippegoo, whom he sent off to the green cave to await his arrival.

"We must not go together," he said, "for we might be suspected; but you will go off to hunt seals to the south, and I will go out on the floes to consult my torngak."

"But, master, if I go to the south after seals, how can we ever meet at the green cave?"

"O stupid one! Do you not understand that you are only to pretend to go south? When you are well out of sight, then turn north, and make for the berg. You will find me there."

Without further remark the stupid one went off, and in process of time the master and pupil met at the appointed rendezvous.

The entrance to the cavern was light, owing to the transparency of the ice, and farther in it assumed that lovely bluish-green colour from which it derived its name; but the profound depths, which had never yet been fathomed, were as black as ebony -- forming a splendid background, against which the icicles and crystal edges of the entrance were beautifully and sharply defined.

Retiring sufficiently far within this natural grotto to be safe from observation in the event of any one chancing to pass by, the wizard looked earnestly into the anxious countenance of the young man.

"Ippegoo," he said, with an air of unwonted solemnity, for, having made up his mind to a desperate venture, the wizard wished to subdue his tool entirely as well as promptly to his will; "Ippegoo, my torngak says the thing must be done to-night, if it is to be done at all. Putting off, he says, will perhaps produce failure."

"'Perhaps'!" echoed the youth, with that perplexed look which so frequently crossed his features when the wizard's words puzzled him. "I thought that torngaks knew everything, and never needed to say 'perhaps.'"

"You think too much," said Ujarak testily.

"Was it not yesterday," returned the pupil humbly, "that you told me to think well before speaking?"

"True, O simple one! but there are times to think and times not to think. Your misfortune is that you always do both at the wrong time, and never do either at the right time."

"I wish," returned Ippegoo, with a sigh, "that it were always the time not to think. How much pleasanter it would be!"

"Well, it is time to listen just now," said the wizard, "so give me your attention. I shall this night harness my dogs, and carry off Nunaga by force. And you must harness your dogs in another sledge, and follow me."

"But -- but -- my mother!" murmured the youth.

"Must be left behind," said the wizard, with tremendous decision and a dark frown; but he had under-estimated his tool, who replied with decision quite equal to his own -- 

"That must not be."

Although taken much by surprise, Ujarak managed to dissemble.

"Well, then," he said, "you must carry her away by force."

"That is impossible," returned Ippegoo, with a faint smile and shake of the head.

For the first time in his life the wizard lost all patience with his poor worshipper, and was on the point of giving way to wrath, when the sound of approaching footsteps outside the cave arrested him. Not caring to be interrupted at that moment, and without waiting to see who approached, Ujarak suddenly gave vent to a fearful intermittent yell, which was well understood by all Eskimos to be the laughter of a torngak or fiend, and, therefore, calculated to scare away any one who approached.

In the present instance it did so most effectually, for poor little Pussi and Tumbler were already rather awed by the grandeur and mysterious appearance of the sea-green cave. Turning instantly, they fled -- or toddled -- on the wings of terror, and with so little regard to personal safety, that Pussi found herself suddenly on the edge of an ice-cliff, without the power to stop. Tumbler, however, had himself more under command. He pulled up in time, and caught hold of his companion by the tail, but she, being already on a steep gradient, dragged her champion on, and it is certain that both would have gone over the ice precipice and been killed, if Tumbler had not got both heels against an opportune lump of ice. Holding on to the tail with heroic resolution, while Pussi was already swinging in mid-air, the poor boy opened wide his eyes and mouth, and gave vent to a series of yells so tremendous that the hearts of Ujarak and Ippegoo leaped into their throats, as they rushed out of the cavern and hastened to the rescue.

But another ear had been assailed by those cries. Just as Ippegoo -- who was fleeter than his master -- caught Tumbler with one hand, and Pussi's tail with the other, and lifted both children out of danger, Reginald Rooney, who chanced to be wandering in the vicinity, appeared, in a state of great anxiety, on the scene.

"Glad am I you were in time, Ippegoo," said the seaman, shouldering the little girl, while the young Eskimo put the boy on his back, "but I thought that you and Ujarak were away south with the hunters. What has brought you back so soon? Nothing wrong, I trust?"

"No; all goes well," returned Ippegoo, as they went towards the village. "We have only come back to -- to -- "

"To make preparation for the feast when they return," said the wizard, coming quickly to the rescue of his unready follower.

"Then they will be back immediately, I suppose?" said Rooney, looking pointedly at the wizard.

"Yes, immediately," answered Ujarak, without appearing to observe the pointed look, "unless something happens to detain them."

Suspecting that there was something behind this reply, the sailor said no more. Ujarak, feeling that he was suspected, and that his plan, therefore, must be given up for the time being, determined to set himself to work to allay suspicion by making himself generally useful, and giving himself up entirely to the festivities that were about to take place on the return of the men from their successful hunt.



Chapter Ten.

Red Rooney Becomes A Spectacle And Then A President.

Late on the evening of the following day the fur-clad hunters arrived at their village with shouts of rejoicing -- hairy and happy -- for they brought with them many a carcass of walrus and seal wherewith to replenish their wardrobes and larders, and banish hunger and care from their dwellings for a considerable time to come.

Be not too ready, most refined reader, to condemn those people for their somewhat gross and low ideas of enjoyment. Remember that they were "to the manner born." Consider, also, that "things are not what they seem," and that the difference between you and savages is, in some very important respects at least, not so great as would at first sight appear. You rejoice in literature, music, fine art, etcetera; but how about one or two o'clock? Would these afford you much satisfaction at such a time?

"Bah!" you exclaim, "what a question! The animal wants must of course be supplied." True, most refined one, but a hunk of bread and a plate of soup would fully suffice for animal needs. Would your refined pleasures have as keen a relish for you if you had only to look forward to bread and water between six and nine? Answer, ye sportsmen, how would you get through your day's work if there were not a glorious dinner at the end of it? Speak, ye ballroom frequenters, how would you skip, even with the light of brilliant eyes to encourage you, if there were not what you call a jolly good supper somewhere in the background? Be honest, all of you, and confess -- what you tacitly and obviously admit by your actions every day -- that our mere animal wants are of vast importance, and that in our ministering to these the only difference between ourselves and the Eskimos is, a somewhat greater variety of viands, a little less of toil in obtaining them, a little more of refinement and cleanliness in the consumption of them, and, perchance, a little less of appetite.

We feel impelled thus to claim for our northern brothers some forbearance and a little genuine sympathy, because we have to record that their first act on arriving was to fly to the cooking-lamps, and commence a feast which extended far into the night, and finally terminated in lethargic repose.

But this was not the feast to which we have more than once referred. It was merely a mild preliminary whet. The hunters were hungry and tired after their recent exertions, as might have been expected, and went in for refreshment with a will. They did not, however, forget the Kablunet. Eager expectation was on tip-toe, and even hunger was forgotten for a short time in the desire to see the foreigner; but Okiok had made up his mind to give them only one glimpse -- a sort of moral appetiser -- and reserve the full display of his lion until the following day. Just before arriving at the village, therefore, he called a halt, and explained to the hunters that the Kablunet had been very much wearied by his recent journey, that he would not permit him to be disturbed that night; but as he was to dwell with Angut, and was at that time in his, (Okiok's), hut, they would have an opportunity of seeing him during his brief passage from the one hut to the other. They were, however, to be very careful not to crowd upon him or question him, and not to speak at all -- in short, only to look!

This having been settled and agreed to, Okiok pushed on alone in advance, to prevent Rooney from showing himself too soon.

Arriving at his town residence, the Eskimo found his guest asleep, as usual, for the poor seaman found that alternate food and repose were the best means for the recovery of lost vigour.

Nuna was quietly cooking the seaman's next meal, and Nunaga was mending one of his garments, when Okiok entered. Both held up a warning finger when he appeared.

"Where is Tumbler?" he asked softly, looking round.

"Gone to the hut of Pussimek to play with Pussi," replied the wife; "we could not keep him quiet, so we -- "

She stopped and looked solemn, for Rooney moved. The talking had roused him. Sitting up, he looked gravely first at Nunaga, then at her mother, then at her father, after which he smiled mildly and yawned.

"So you've got back, Okiok?"

"Yes, Ridroonee. And all the hunters are coming, with plenty to eat --  great plenty!"

The women's eyes seemed to sparkle at these words, but they said nothing.

"That's a good job, old boy," said the seaman, rising. "I think I'll go out and meet them. It will be dark in a short time."

Here Okiok interposed with an earnest petition that he would not go out to the people that night, explaining that if he were to sit with them during supper none except the gluttons would be able to eat. The rest would only wonder and stare.

Of course our seaman was amenable to reason.

"But," he said, with a humorous glance, "would it not be good for them --  especially for the gluttons -- to be prevented from eating too much?"

It was evident from the blank look of his visage that Okiok did not understand his guest. The idea of an Eskimo eating too much had never before entered his imagination.

"How can a man eat too much?" he asked. "Until a man is quite full he is not satisfied. When he is quite full, he wants no more; he can hold no more!"

"That says a good deal for Eskimo digestion," thought our hero, but as he knew no native word for digestion, he only laughed and expressed his readiness to act as his host wished.

Just then the noise of cracking whips and yelping dogs was heard outside.

"Remain here," said Okiok; "I will come again."

Not long after the hospitable man's exit all the noise ceased, but the seaman could hear murmuring voices and stealthy footsteps gathering round the hut. In a few minutes Okiok returned.

"Angut is now ready," he said, "to receive you. The people will look at you as you pass, but they will not disturb you."

"I'm ready to go -- though sorry to leave Nuna and Nunaga," said the gallant Rooney, rising.

The sounds outside and Okiok's words had prepared him for some display of curiosity, but he was quite taken aback by the sight that met his eyes on emerging from the tunnel, for there, in absolute silence, with wide expectant eyes and mouths a-gape, stood every man, woman, and child capable of motion in the Eskimo village!

They did not stand in a confused group, but in two long lines, with a space of four or five feet between, thus forming a living lane, extending from the door of Okiok's hut to that of Angut, which stood not far distant.

At first our seaman felt an almost irresistible inclination to burst into a hearty fit of laughter, there seemed something so absurdly solemn in this cumulative stare, but good feeling fortunately checked him; yet he walked with his host along the lane with such a genuine expression of glee and good-will on his manly face that a softly uttered but universal and emphatic "Huk!" assured him he had made a good first impression.

When he had entered the abode of Angut a deep sigh of relief escaped from the multitude, and they made up for their enforced silence by breaking into a gush of noisy conversation.

In his new abode Red Rooney found Angut and old Kannoa, with a blazing lamp and steaming stove-kettle, ready to receive him.

Few were the words of welcome uttered by Angut, for Eskimos are not addicted to ceremonial; nevertheless, with the promptitude of one ever ready to learn, he seized his visitor's hand, and shook it heartily in the manner which Rooney had taught him -- with the slight mistake that he shook it from side to side instead of up and down. At the same time he pointed to a deerskin seat on the raised floor of the hut, where Kannoa had already placed a stone dish of smoking viands.

The smile which had overspread Rooney's face at the handshaking faded away as he laid his hand on the old woman's shoulder, and, stooping down, gazed at her with an expression of great tenderness.

Ah! Rooney, what is there in that old wrinkled visage, so scarred by the rude assaults of Time, yet with such a strong touch of pathos in the expression, that causes thy broad bosom to swell and thine eagle eyes to moisten? Does it remind thee of something very different, yet wonderfully like, in the old country?

Rooney never distinctly told what it was, but as he had left a much --  loved grandmother at home, we may be permitted to guess. From that hour he took a tender interest in that little old woman, and somehow -- from the expression of his eye, perhaps, or the touch of his strong hand -- the old creature seemed to know it, and chuckled, in her own peculiar style, immensely. For old Kannoa had not been overburdened with demonstrative affection by the members of her tribe, some of whom had even called her an old witch -- a name which had sent a thrill of great terror through her trembling old heart, for the doom of witches in Eskimo land in those days was very terrible.

Next day, being that of the great feast, the entire village bestirred itself with the first light of morning. Men and women put on their best garments, the lamps were kindled, the cooking-kettles put on, and preparations generally commenced on a grand scale.

Awaking and stretching himself, with his arms above his head and his mouth open, young Ermigit yawned vociferously.

"Hah! how strong I feel," he said, "a white bear would be but a baby in my hands!"

Going through a similar stretch-yawny process, his brother Norrak said that he felt as if he had strength to turn a walrus inside out.

"Come, boys, turn yourselves out o' the house, and help to cut up the meat. It is not wise to boast in the morning," said Okiok.

"True, father," returned Norrak quietly, "but if we don't boast in the morning, the men do it so much all the rest of the day that we'll have no chance."

"These two will be a match for you in talk before long," remarked Nuna, after her sons had left.

"Ay, and also in body," returned the father, who was rather proud of his well-grown boys. "Huk! what is Tumbler putting on?" he asked in astonishment.

"The dress that the Kablunet made for him," said Nunaga, with a merry laugh. "Doesn't it fit well? My only fear is that if Arbalik sees him, he will pierce him with a dart before discovering his mistake."

"What are you going to begin the day with?" asked Nuna, as she stirred her kettle.

"With a feed," replied Okiok, glancing slyly at his better half.

"As if I didn't know that!" returned the wife. "When did Okiok ever do anything before having his morning feed?"

"When he was starving," retorted the husband promptly.

This pleasantry was received with a giggle by the women.

"Well, father, and what comes after the morning feed?" asked Nunaga.

"Kick-ball," answered Okiok.

"That is a hard game," said the wife; "it makes even the young men blow like walruses."

"Ay, and eat like whales," added the husband.

"And sleep like seals," remarked Nunaga.

"And snore like -- like Okioks," said Nuna.

This was a hard hit, being founded on some degree of truth, and set Okiok off in a roar of laughter.

Becoming suddenly serious, he asked if anything had been seen the day before of Ujarak the angekok.

"Yes, he was in the village in the evening," replied Nuna as she arranged the food on platters. "He and Ippegoo were found in the green cave yesterday by the Kablunet. He was out about the ice-heaps, and came on them just as Tumbler saved Pussi, and Ippegoo saved them both."

"Tumbler saved Pussi!" exclaimed the Eskimo, looking first at his daughter and then at his wife.

"Yes; Pussi was tumbling over an ice-cliff," said Nunaga, "and Tumbler held on to her."

"By the tail," said Nuna. "So Ippegoo rushed out of the cave, and saved them both. Ujarak would have been too late. It seems strange to me that his torngak did not warn him in time."

"Torngaks must be very hard-hearted," said Okiok, with a look and tone of contempt that he did not care to conceal. "But what were they doing in the cave?"

"Who knows?" replied Nuna. "These two are always plotting. Ridroonee says they looked as if worried at having been discovered. Come, fall-to. You must be strong to-day if you would play kick-ball well."

Okiok glanced with a look of care upon his brow at Nunaga, shook his head gravely once or twice in silence, and began breakfast.

After the meal was over he sallied forth to join in the sports, which were soon to begin. Going first to the hut of Angut, he found the most of his countrymen and women surrounding Red Rooney, who, having finished breakfast, was seated on a sledge conversing with Angut and Simek, and others of the chief men of the tribe. All the rest were gazing and listening with greedy eyes and ears.

"Hi! Okiok," exclaimed the sailor heartily, as he rose and held out his hand, which his former host shook heartily, to the great surprise and delight of the crowd; "have you joined the gluttons, that you take so long to your morning feed? or have you slept longer than usual, to make you a better match for the young men?"

"No; I was in dreamland," answered the Eskimo, with profound gravity, which his countrymen knew quite well was pretended; "and I met a torngak there, who told me that the Kablunet needed much sleep as well as food, and must not be roused by me, although other fools might disturb him."

"How kind of the torngak!" returned Rooney. "But he was not polite, for if he spoke to you of 'other' fools, he must have thought of you as one fool. Was he your own torngak?"

"No; I have no torngak. He was my grandmother's. And he told me that the Kablunet was a great angekok, and would have a torngak of his own soon. Moreover, he said the games must begin at once -- so come along, Ippegoo."

As he spoke, Okiok caught the slender youth in his powerful arms, laid him gently on his back, flung some snow in his face, and then ran away.

Ippegoo, entering at once into the spirit of the fun, arose and gave chase. Excelling in speed as much as his opponent did in strength, the youth soon overtook him, managed to trip him up, and fell on the top of him. He was wildly cheered by the delighted crowd, and tried to punish Okiok; but his efforts were not very successful, for that worthy put both his mittened hands over his head, and, curling himself up like a hedgehog, lay invulnerable on the ice. Poor Ippegoo had not strength either to uncoil, or lift, or even move his foe, and failed to find a crevice in his hairy dress into which he might stuff snow.

After a few minutes Okiok straightened himself out, jumped up, and scurried off again over the ice, in the direction of the berg of the green cave, followed by the entire village.

It was on a level field of ice close to the berg referred to that the game of kick-ball was to be played. As Rooney was not yet strong enough to engage in rough play, a pile of deerskins was placed on a point of the berg, slightly higher than the heads of the people, and he was requested to mount thereon. There, as on a throne, he presided over the games, and became the gazing-stock of the tribe during the intervals of play. But these intervals were not numerous or prolonged, for most of the players were powerful men and boys, so thoroughly inured, by the nature of their lives, to hardship and vigorous action in every possible position of body that their muscles were always in the condition of those of a well-trained athlete. Even Ippegoo, with all his natural defects of mind and body, was by no means contemptible as a player, in those games, especially, which required agility and powers of endurance.

First they had a game of hand-ball. It was very simple. The players, who were not selected, but entered the lists at their own pleasure, divided themselves into two parties, which stood a little apart from each other. Then an ordinary hand-ball was tossed into the air by Okiok, who led one of the parties. Simek, the mighty hunter, led the other. These men, although approaching middle age, were still at the height of their strength and activity, and therefore fitting leaders of the younger men in this as well as the more serious affairs of life.

It seemed to Rooney at first as if Okiok and his band were bent on having all the fun to themselves, for they began to toss the ball to each other, without any regard to their opponents. But suddenly Simek and some of his best men made a rush into the midst of the other party with shouts and amazing bounds. Their object was to catch or wrest the ball from Okiok's party, and throw it into the midst of their own friends, who would then begin to amuse themselves with it until their opponents succeeded in wresting it from them.

Of course this led to scenes of violent action and wild but good-humoured excitement. Wrestling and grasping each other were forbidden in this game, but hustling, tripping up, pushing, and charging were allowed, so that the victory did not always incline either to the strong or the agile. And the difficulty of taking the ball from either party was much greater than one might suppose.

For full half an hour they played with the utmost energy, insomuch that they had to pause for a few seconds to recover breath. Then, with one accord, eyes were turned to the president, to see how he took it.

Delight filled every bosom, for they saw that he was powerfully sympathetic. Indeed Rooney had become so excited as well as interested in the game, that it was all he could do to restrain himself from leaping into the midst of the struggling mass and taking a part. He greeted the pause and the inquiring gaze with a true British cheer, which additionally charmed as well as surprised the natives. But their period of rest was brief.

Simek had the ball at the time. He suddenly sent it with a wild "Huk! hoo-o-o!" whirling into the air. The Kablunet was instantly forgotten. The ball came straight down towards a clumsy young man, who extended his hands, claw-like, to receive it. At that moment lppegoo launched himself like a thunderbolt into the small of the clumsy youth's back, and sent him sprawling on the snow amid shouts of laughter, while Norrak leaped neatly in, and, catching the ball as it rebounded, sent it up again on the same side. As it went up straight and came down perpendicularly, there was a concentric rush from all sides. Ujarak chanced to be the buffer who received the shock, and his big body was well able to sustain it. At the same moment he deftly caught the ball.

"Ho! his torngak helps him!" shouted Okiok ironically.

"So he does," cried the wizard, with a scoffing laugh, as he hurled the ball aloft; "why does not your torngak help you?"

There was a loud titter at this, but the laugh was turned in favour of the other side when Ermigit caught the ball, and sent it over to the Okiok band, while their leader echoed the words, "So he does," and spun the ball from him with such force that it flew over all heads, and chanced to alight in the lap of Red Rooney. It could not have landed better, for that worthy returned it as a point-blank shot which took full effect on the unexpectant nose of Ermigit.

The spirited lad was equal to the occasion. Although water rose unbidden to his eyes, he caught the ball, and with a shout of laughter flung it into the midst of his own side. Thus the play went on fast and furious, until both sides were gasping. Then with one consent they stopped for a more prolonged rest -- for there was no winning or losing at this game. Their only aim was to see which side could get hold of the ball oftenest and keep it longest until all were exhausted.

But the fun did not cease although the game did, for another and quieter game of strength was instituted. The whole party drew closer round their president, and many of them mounted to points of vantage on the berg, on the sides of which groups of the women and children had already taken up positions.

It may be remarked here that the snow-covered ice on which the game of ball had been played was like a sheet of white marble, but not so hard, for a heavy stamp with a heel could produce an indentation, though no mark was left by the ordinary pressure of a foot.

The competitors in the game of strength, or rather, of endurance, were only two in number. One was Okiok's eldest son, Norrak, the other the clumsy young man to whom reference has been already made. The former, although the smaller and much the younger of the two, was remarkably strong for his age.

These two engaged in a singular style of boxing, in which, strange to say, the combatants did not face each other, nor did they guard or jump about. Stripped to the waist, like real heroes of the ring, they walked up to each other, and the clumsy youth turned his naked back to Norrak, who doubled his fist, and gave him a sounding thump thereon. Then Norrak wheeled about and submitted to a blow, which was delivered with such good-will that he almost tumbled forward. Again he turned about, and the clumsy one presented his back a second time; and thus they continued to pommel each other's backs until they began to pant vehemently. At last Norrak hit his adversary such a whack on the right shoulder that he absolutely spun him round, and caused him to roll over on his back, amid the plaudits of the assembly.

The clumsy one rose with a somewhat confused look, but was not allowed to continue the battle. There was no such thing as fighting it out "to the bitter end" among these hilarious Eskimos. In fact, they were playing, not fighting.

At this point Simek approached Rooney with a smiling countenance, and said -- 

"There is another game of strength which we sometimes play, and it is the custom to appoint a man to choose the players. Will the Kablunet act this part to-day?"

Of course our seaman was quite ready to comply. After a few moments' consideration, he looked round, with a spice of mischief in his heart, but a smile on his countenance, and said -- 

"What could be more agreeable than to see the striving of two such good friends as Angut my host and Ujarak the angekok?"

There was a sudden silence and opening of eyes at this, for every one was well aware that a latent feeling of enmity existed between these two, and their personal strength and courage being equally well-known, no one up to that time had ventured to pit these two against each other. There was no help for it now, however. They were bound in honour, as well as by the laws of the community, to enter into conflict. Indeed they showed no inclination to avoid the trial, for Angut at once stepped quietly into the space in front of the president, and began to strip off his upper garments, while Ujarak leaped forward with something of a bounce, and did the same.

They were splendid specimens of physical manhood, both of them, for their well-trained muscles lay bulging on their limbs in a way that would have gladdened the sculptors of Hercules to behold. But there was a vast difference in the aspect of the two men. Both were about equal in height and breadth of shoulder, but Angut was much the slimmer and more elegant about the waist, as well as considerably lighter than his adversary. It was in the bearing of Angut, however, that the chief difference lay. There was a refinement of physiognomy and a grace of motion about him of which the other was utterly destitute; and it was plain that while the wizard was burning to come off victorious, the other was only willing, in a good-humoured way, to comply with the demands of custom. There was neither daring, defiance, contempt, nor fear in his countenance, which wore its wonted aspect of thoughtful serenity.

After this description of the champions, we feel almost unwilling to disappoint the reader by saying that the game or trial was the reverse of martial or noble. Sitting down on the hard snow, they linked their legs and arms together in a most indescribable manner, and strove to out-pull each other. There was, indeed, much more of the comic than the grand in this display, yet, as the struggle went on, a feeling of breathless interest arose, for it was not often that two such stalwart frames were seen in what appeared to be a mortal effort. The great muscles seemed to leap up from arm and thigh, as each made sudden and desperate efforts -- right and left -- sometimes pulling and sometimes pushing back, in order to throw each other off guard, while perspiration burst forth and stood in beads upon their foreheads.

At last Ujarak thrust his opponent back to the utmost extent of his long arms, and, with a sudden pull, raised him almost to his feet.

There was a gasp of excitement, almost of regret, among the onlookers, for Angut was a decided favourite.

But the pull was not quite powerful enough. Angut began to sink back to his old position. He seemed to feel that now or never was his chance. Taking advantage of his descending weight, he added to it a wrench which seemed to sink his ten fingers into the flesh of Ujarak's shoulders; a momentary check threw the latter off his guard, and next instant Angut not only pulled him over, but hurled him over his own head, and rolled him like a porpoise on the snow!

A mighty shout hailed the victory as the wizard arose and retired crestfallen from the scene, while the victor gravely resumed his coat and mingled with the crowd.

Ujarak chanced, in retiring, to pass close to Okiok. Although naturally amiable, that worthy, feeling certain that the wizard was playing a double part, and was actuated by sinister motives in some of his recent proceedings, could not resist the temptation to whisper -- 

"Was your torngak asleep, that he failed to help you just now?"

The whisper was overheard by some of the women near, who could not suppress a subdued laugh.

The wizard, who was not at that moment in a condition to take a jest with equanimity, turned a fierce look upon Okiok.

"I challenge you," he said, "to a singing combat."

"With all my heart," replied Okiok; "when shall it be?"

"To-morrow," said the wizard sternly.

"To-morrow let it be," returned Okiok, with the cool indifference of an Arctic hunter, to the immense delight of the women and others who heard the challenge, and anticipated rare sport from the impending duel.



Chapter Eleven.

The Hairy Ones Feast And Are Happy.

Lest the reader should anticipate, from the conclusion of the last chapter, that we are about to describe a scene of bloodshed and savagery, we may as well explain in passing that the custom of duelling, as practised among some tribes of the Eskimos, is entirely intellectual, and well worthy of recommendation to those civilised nations which still cling fondly and foolishly to the rapier and pistol.

If an Eskimo of the region about which we write thinks himself aggrieved by another, he challenges him to a singing and dancing combat. The idea of taking their revenge, or "satisfying their honour," by risking their lives and proving their courage in mortal combat, does not seem to have occurred to them -- probably because the act would be without significance among men whose whole existence is passed in the daily risk of life and limb and proof of courage.

Certainly the singing combat has this advantage, that intellect triumphs over mere brute force, and the physically weak may prove to be more than a match for the strong.

But as this duel was postponed to the following day, for the very good reason that a hearty supper and night of social enjoyment had first to be disposed of, we will turn again to the players on the ice-floe.

"Come, Angut," said Rooney, descending from his throne or presidential chair, and taking the arm of his host; "I'm getting cold sitting up there. Let us have a walk together, and explain to me the meaning of this challenge."

They went off in the direction of the sea-green cave, while Simek organised a game of kick-ball.

"Okiok tells me," continued Rooney, "that there is to be no fighting or bloodshed in the matter. How is that?"

Angut expounded, as we have already explained, and then asked -- 

"Have they no singing combats in your land?"

"Well, not exactly; at least not for the purpose of settling quarrels."

"How, then, are quarrels settled?"

"By law, sometimes, and often by sword -- you would call it spear -- and pistol. A pistol is a thing that spouts fire and kills. Nations occasionally settle their quarrels in the same way, and call it war."

Angut looked puzzled -- as well he might!

"When two men quarrel, can killing do any good?" he asked.

"I fear not," answered the seaman, "for the mere gratification of revenge is not good. But they do not always kill. They sometimes only wound slightly, and then they say that honour is satisfied, and they become friends."

"But -- but," said the still puzzled Eskimo, "a wound cannot prove which quarreller is right. Is it the one who wounds that is thought right?"

"No."

"Is it then the wounded one?"

"O no. It is neither. The fact is, the proving of who is right and who is wrong has nothing to do with the matter. All they want is to prove that they are both very brave. Often, when one is slightly wounded -- no matter which -- they say they are satisfied."

"With what are they satisfied?"

"That's more than I can tell, Angut. But it is only a class of men called gentlemen who settle their quarrels thus. Common fellows like me are supposed to have no honour worth fighting about!"

The Eskimo looked at his companion, supposing that he might be jesting, but seeing that he was quite grave and earnest, he rejoined in an undertone -- 

"Then my thoughts have been wrong."

"In what respect, Angut?"

"It has often come into my mind that the greatest fools in the world were to be found among the Innuit; but there must be greater fools in the lands you tell of."

As he spoke the sound of child-voices arrested them, and one was heard to utter the name of Nunaga. The two men paused to listen. They were close to the entrance to the ice-cave, which was on the side of the berg opposite to the spot where the games were being held, and the voices were recognised as those of Pussi and Tumbler. With the indomitable perseverance that was natural to him, the latter had made a second attempt to lead Pussi to the cave, and had been successful.

"What is he goin' to do?" asked Pussi, in a voice of alarm.

"Goin' to run away vid sister Nunaga," replied Tumbler. "I heard Ippegoo say dat to his mudder. Ujarak is goin' to take her away, an' nebber, nebber come back no more."

There was silence after this, silence so dead and prolonged that the listeners began to wonder. It was suddenly broken. Evidently the horrified Pussi had been gathering up her utmost energies, for there burst from the sea-green depths of the cave a roar of dismay so stupendous that Angut and our seaman ran hastily forward, under the impression that some accident had occurred; but the children were sitting there all safe -- Tumbler gazing in surprise at his companion, whose eyes were tight shut and her mouth wide-open.

The truth is that Pussi loved and was beloved by Nunaga, and the boy's information had told upon her much more powerfully than he had expected. Of course Tumbler was closely questioned by Angut, but beyond the scrap of information he had already given nothing more was to be gathered from him. The two friends were therefore obliged to rest content with the little they had learned, which was enough to put them on their guard.

Ere long the sinking of the sun put an end to the games, but not before the whole community had kick-balled themselves into a state of utter incapacity for anything but feeding.

To this process they now devoted themselves heart and soul, by the light of the cooking-lamps, within the shelter of their huts. The feast was indeed a grand one. Not only had they superabundance of the dishes which we have described in a previous chapter, but several others of a nature so savoury as to be almost overpowering to the poor man who was the honoured guest of the evening. But Red Rooney laid strong constraint on himself, and stood it bravely.

There was something grandly picturesque and Rembrandtish in the whole scene, for the smoke of the lamps, combined with the deep shadows of the rotund and hairy figures, formed a background out of which the animated oily faces shone with ruddy and glittering effect.

At first, of course, little sound was heard save the working of their jaws; but as nature began to feel more than adequately supplied, soft sighs began to be interpolated and murmuring conversation intervened. Then some of the more moderate began to dally with tit-bits, and the buzz of conversation swelled.

At this point Rooney took Tumbler on his knee, and began to tempt him with savoury morsels. It is only just to the child, (who still wore his raven coat), to say that he yielded readily to persuasion. Rooney also amused and somewhat scandalised his friends by insisting on old Kannoa sitting beside him.

"Ho! Ujarak," at last shouted the jovial Simek, who was one of those genial, uproarious, loud-laughing spirits, that can keep the fun of a social assembly going by the mere force and enthusiasm of his animal spirits; "come, tell us about that wonderful bear you had such a fight with last moon, you remember?"

"Remember!" exclaimed the wizard, with a pleased look, for there was nothing he liked better than to be called on to relate his adventures --  and it must be added that there was nothing he found easier, for, when his genuine adventures were not sufficiently telling, he could without difficulty expand, exaggerate, modify, or even invent, so as to fit them for the ears of a fastidious company.

"Remember!" he repeated in a loud voice, which attracted all eyes, and produced a sudden silence; "of course I remember. The difficulty with me is to forget -- and I would that I could forget -- for the adventure was ho-r-r-r-ible!"

A low murmur of curiosity, hope, and joyful expectation, amounting to what we might style applause, broke from the company as the wizard dwelt on the last word.

You see, Eskimos love excitement fully as much as other people, and as they have no spirituous drinks wherewith to render their festivities unnaturally hilarious, they are obliged to have recourse to exciting tales, comic songs, games, and other reasonable modes of creating that rapid flow of blood, which is sometimes styled the "feast of reason and the flow of soul." Simek's soul flowed chiefly from his eyes and from his smiling lips in the form of hearty laughter and encouragement to others -- for in truth he was an unselfish man, preferring rather to draw out his friends than to be drawn out by them.

"Tell us all about it, then, Ujarak," he cried. "Come, we are ready. Our ears are open -- yes; they are very wide open!"

There was a slight titter at this sly reference to the magnitude of the lies that would have to be taken in, but Ujarak's vanity rendered him invulnerable to such light shafts. After glaring round with impressive solemnity, so as to deepen the silence and intensify the expectation, he began: -- 

"It was about the time when the ravens lay their eggs and the small birds appear. My torngak had told me to go out on the ice, far over the sea in a certain direction where I should find a great berg with many white peaks mounting up to the very sky. There, he said, I should find what I was to do. It was blowing hard at the time; also snowing and freezing. I did not wish to go, but an angekok must go forward and fear nothing when his torngak points the way. Therefore I went."

"Took no food? no sleigh? no dogs?" asked Okiok in surprise.

"No. When it is a man's duty to obey, he must not think of small things. It is the business of a wise man to do or to die."

There was such an air of stern grandeur about Ujarak as he gave utterance to this high-flown sentiment, that a murmur of approval burst from his believers, who formed decidedly the greater part of the revellers, and Okiok hid his diminished head in the breast of his coat to conceal his laughter.

"I had no food with me -- only my walrus spear and line," continued the wizard. "Many times I was swept off my feet by the violence of the gale, and once I was carried with such force towards a mass of upheaved ice that I expected to be dashed against it and killed, but just as this was about to happen the -- "

"Torngak helped -- eh?" interrupted Okiok, with a simple look.

"No; torngaks never help while we are above ground. They only advise, and leave it to the angekok's wisdom and courage to do the rest," retorted the wizard, who, although roused to wrath by these interruptions of Okiok, felt that his character would be damaged if he allowed the slightest appearance of it to escape him.

"When, as I said, I was about to be hurled against the berg of ice, the wind seemed to bear me up. No doubt it was a long hollow at the foot of the ice that sent the wind upwards, but my mind was quick. Instead of resisting the impulse, I made a bound, and went up into the air and over the berg. It was a very low one," added the wizard, as a reply to some exclamations of extreme surprise -- not unmingled with doubt -- from some of his audience.

"After that," continued Ujarak, "the air cleared a little, and I could see a short way around me, as I scudded on. Small bergs were on every side of me. There were many white foxes crouching in the lee of these for shelter. Among them I noticed some white bears. Becoming tired of thus scudding before the wind, I made a dash to one side, to get under the shelter of a small berg and take rest. Through the driving snow I could see the figure of a man crouching there before me. I ran to him, and grasped his coat to check my speed. He stood up -- oh, so high! It was not a man," (the wizard deepened his voice, and slowed here) -- "it --  was -- a -- white -- bear!"

Huks and groans burst at this point from the audience, who were covered with the perspiration of anxiety, which would have been cold if the place had not been so warm.

"I turned and ran," continued the angekok; "the bear followed. We came to a small hummock of ice. I doubled round it. The bear went past --  like one of Arbalik's arrows -- sitting on its haunches, and trying to stop itself in vain, for the wind carried it on like an oomiak with the sail spread. When the bear stopped, it turned back, and soon came up with me, for I had doubled, and was by that time running nearly against the wind. Then my courage rose! I resolved to face the monster with my walrus spear. It was a desperate venture, but it was my duty. Just then the snow partly ceased, and I could see a berg with sloping sides. 'Perhaps I may find a point of vantage there that I have not on the flat ice,' I thought, and away I ran for the sloping berg. It was rugged and broken. Among its masses I managed to dodge the bear till I got to the top. Here I resolved to stand and meet my foe, but as I stood I saw that the other side of the berg had been partly melted by the sun. It was a clear steep slope from the top to the bottom. The bear was scrambling up, foaming in its fury, with its eyes glaring like living lamps, and its red mouth a-gape. Another thought came to me -- I have been quick of thought from my birth! Just as the bear was rising to the attack, I sat down on the slope, and flew rather than slid to the bottom. It was an awful plunge! I almost shut my eyes in horror -- but --  but -- kept them open. At the bottom there was a curve like a frozen wave. I left the top of this curve and finished the descent in the air. The crash at the end was awful, but I survived it. There was no time for thought. I looked back. The bear, as I expected, had watched me in amazement, and was preparing to follow -- for bears, you know, fear nothing. It sat down at the top of the slope, and stuck its claws well into the ice in front of it. I ran back to the foot of the slope to meet it. Its claws lost hold, and it came down thundering, like a huge round stone from a mountain side. I stood, and, measuring exactly its line of descent, stuck the butt of my spear into the ice with the point sloping upwards. Then I retired to see the end, for I did not dare to stand near to it. It happened as I had wished: the bear came straight on my spear. The point went in at the breast-bone, and came out at the small of the back; but the bear was not checked. It went on, taking the spear along with it, and sending out streams of blood like the spouts of a dying whale. When at last it ceased to roll, it lay stretched out upon the ice -- dead!"

The wizard paused, and looked round. There was a deep-drawn sigh, as if the audience had been relieved from a severe strain of attention. And so they had; and the wizard accepted that involuntary sigh as an evidence of the success of his effort to amuse.

"How big was that bear?" asked Ippegoo, gazing on his master with a look of envious admiration.

"How big?" repeated Ujarak; "oh, as big -- far bigger than -- than -- the --  biggest bear I have ever seen."

"Oh, then it was an invisible bear, was it?" asked Okiok in surprise.

"How? What do you mean?" demanded the wizard, with an air of what was meant for grave contempt.

"If it was bigger than the biggest bear you have ever seen," replied Okiok, with a stupid look; "then you could not have seen it, because, you know, it could not well be bigger than itself."

"Huk! that's true," exclaimed one, while others laughed heartily, for Eskimos dearly love a little banter.

"Boh! ba! boo!" exclaimed Simek, after a sudden guffaw; "that's not equal to what I did to the walrus. Did I ever tell it you, friends? --  but never mind whether I did or not. I'll tell it to our guest the Kablunet now."

The jovial hunter was moved to this voluntary and abrupt offer of a story by his desire to prevent anything like angry feeling arising between Okiok and the wizard. Of course the company, as well as Rooney, greeted the proposal with pleasure, for although Simek did not often tell of his own exploits, and made no pretension to be a graphic story-teller, they all knew that whatever he undertook he did passably well, while his irrepressible good-humour and hilarity threw a sort of halo round all that he said.

"Well, my friends, it was a terrible business!"

Simek paused, and looked round on the company with a solemn stare, which produced a smothered laugh -- in some cases a little shriek of delight --  for every one, except the wizard himself, recognised in the look and manner an imitation of Ujarak.

"A dreadful business," continued Simek; "but I got over it, as you shall hear. I too have a torngak. You need not laugh, my friends. It is true. He is only a little one, however -- about so high, (holding up his thumb), and he never visits me except at night. One night he came to me, as I was lying on my back, gazing through a hole in the roof at our departed friends dancing in the sky. He sat down on the bridge of my nose, and looked at me. I looked at him. Then he changed his position, sat down on my chin, and looked at me over my nose. Then he spoke.

"'Do you know White-bear Bay?' he asked.

"'Know it?' said I -- 'do I know my own mother?'

"'What answer is that?' he said in surprise.

"Then I remembered that torngaks -- especially little ones -- don't understand jokes, nothing but simple speech; so I laughed.

"'Don't laugh,' he said, 'your breath is strong.' And that was true; besides, I had a bad cold at the time, so I advised him to get off my chin, for if I happened to cough he might fall in and be swallowed before I could prevent it.

"'Tell me,' said he, with a frown, 'do you know White-bear Bay?'

"'Yes!' said I, in a shout that made him stagger.

"'Go there,' said he, 'and you shall see a great walrus, as big as one of the boats of the women. Kill it.'

"The cold getting bad at that moment, I gave a tremendous sneeze, which blew my torngak away -- "

A shriek of delight, especially from the children, interrupted Simek at this point. Little Tumbler, who still sat on Rooney's knee, was the last to recover gravity, and little Pussi, who still nestled beside Nunaga, nearly rolled on the floor from sympathy.

Before the story could be resumed, one of the women announced that a favourite dish which had been for some time preparing was ready. The desire for that dish proving stronger than the desire for the story, the company, including Simek, set to work on it with as much gusto as if they had eaten nothing for hours past!



Chapter Twelve.

Combines Story-Telling (In Both Senses) With Fasting, Fun, And More Serious Matters.

The favourite dish having been disposed of, Simek continued his story.

"Well," said he, "after my little torngak had been blown away, I waited a short time, hoping that he would come back, but he did not; so I got up, took a spear in my hand, and went off to White-bear Bay, determined to see if the little spirit had spoken the truth. Sure enough, when I got to the bay, there was the walrus sitting beside its hole, and looking about in all directions as if it were expecting me. It was a giant walrus," said Simek, lowering his remarkably deep voice to a sort of thunderous grumble that filled the hearts of his auditors with awe in spite of themselves, "a -- most -- awful walrus! It was bigger," -- here he looked pointedly at Okiok -- "than -- than the very biggest walrus I have ever seen! I have not much courage, friends, but I went forward, and threw my spear at it." (The listeners gasped.) "It missed!" (They groaned.) "Then I turned, and, being filled with fear, I ran. Did you ever see me run?"

"Yes, yes," from the eager company.

"No, my friends, you never saw me run! Anything you ever saw me do was mere walking -- creeping -- standing still, compared with what I did then on that occasion. You know I run fast?" ("Yes, yes.") "But that big walrus ran faster. It overtook me; it overturned me; it swallowed me!"

Here Simek paused, as if to observe how many of them swallowed that. And, after all, the appeal to their credulity was not as much overstrained as the civilised reader may fancy, for in their superstitious beliefs Eskimos held that there was one point in the training of a superior class of angekoks which necessitated the swallowing of the neophyte by a bear and his returning to his friends alive and well after the operation! Besides, Simek had such an honest, truthful expression of countenance and tone of voice, that he could almost make people believe anything he chose to assert. Some there were among his hearers who understood the man well, and guessed what was coming; others there were who, having begun by thinking him in jest, now grew serious, under the impression that he was in earnest; but by far the greater number believed every word he said. All, however, remained in expectant silence while he gravely went on: -- 

"My friends, you will not doubt me when I say that it was very hot inside of that walrus. I stripped myself, but was still too hot. Then I sat down on one of his ribs to think. Suddenly it occurred to me to draw my knife and cut myself out. To my dismay, I found that my knife had been lost in the struggle when I was swallowed. I was in despair, for you all know, my friends, how impossible it is to cut up a walrus, either from out or inside, without a knife. In my agony I seized the monster's heart, and tried to tear it; but it was too hard-hearted for that. The effort only made the creature tremble and jump, which I found inconvenient. I also knew from the curious muffled sound outside that it was roaring. I sat down again on a rib to consider. If I had been a real angekok, my torngak no doubt would have helped me at that time -- but he did not."

"How could you have a torngak at all if you are not a real angekok?" demanded the wizard, in a tone that savoured of contempt.

"You shall hear. Patience!" returned Simek quietly, and then went on: -- 

"I had not sat long when I knew by the motions of the beast that he was travelling over the ice -- no doubt making for his water-hole. 'If he gets into the sea,' I thought, 'it will be the end of me.' I knew, of course, that he could not breathe under water, and that he could hold his breath so long that before he came up again for fresh air I should be suffocated. My feelings became dreadful. I hope, my friends, that you will never be in a situation like it. In my despair I rushed about from the head to the tail. I must have hurt him dreadfully in doing so -- at least I thought so, from the way he jumped about. Once or twice I was tossed from side to side as if he was rolling over. You know I am a man of tender heart. My wife says that, so it must be true; but my heart was hardened by that time; I cared not. I cared for nothing!

"Suddenly I saw a small sinew, in the form of a loop, close to the creature's tail. As a last hope, without knowing why, I seized it and tugged. The tail, to my surprise, came slightly inwards. I tugged again. It came further in. A new thought came to me suddenly. This was curious, for, you know, that never since I was a little child have my thoughts been quick, and very seldom new. But somehow the thought came -- without the aid of my torngak too! I tugged away at that tail with all my might. It came further and further in each tug. At last I got it in as far as the stomach. I was perspiring all over. Suddenly I felt a terrific heave. I guessed what that was. The walrus was sick, and was trying to vomit his own tail! It was awful! Each heave brought me nearer to the mouth. But now the difficulty of moving the mass that I had managed to get inside had become so great that I felt the thing to be quite beyond my power, and that I must leave the rest to nature. Still, however, I continued the tugging, in order to keep up the sickness -- also to keep me employed, for whenever I paused to recover breath I was forced to resume work to prevent my fainting away altogether, being so terrified at the mere thought of my situation. To be inside a walrus is bad enough, but to be inside of a sick walrus! -- my friends, I cannot describe it.

"Suddenly there was a heave that almost rent the ribs of the creature apart. Like an arrow from a bow, I was shot out upon the ice, and with a clap like thunder that walrus turned inside out! And then," said Simek, with glaring solemnity, "I awoke -- for it was all a dream!"

There was a gasp and cheer of delight at this, mingled with prolonged laughter, for now the most obtuse even among the children understood that Simek had been indulging in a tale of the imagination, while those whose wits were sharper saw and enjoyed the sly hits which had been launched at Ujarak throughout. Indeed the wizard himself condescended to smile at the conclusion, for the tale being a dream, removed from it the only objectionable part in his estimation, namely, that any torngak, great or small, would condescend to have intercourse with one who was not an angekok.

"Now," cried Okiok, starting up, "bring more meat; we are hungry again."

"Huk! huk!" exclaimed the assenting company.

"And when we are stuffed," continued Okiok, "we will be glad to hear what the Kablunet has to tell about his own land."

The approval of this suggestion was so decided and hearty, that Red Rooney felt it to be his duty to gratify his hospitable friends to the utmost of his power. Accordingly he prepared himself while they were engaged with the second edition of supper. The task, however, proved to be surrounded with difficulties much greater than he had expected. Deeming it not only wise, but polite, to begin with something complimentary, he said: -- 

"My friends, the Innuits are a great people. They work hard; they are strong and brave, and have powerful wills."

As these were facts which every one admitted, and Rooney uttered them with considerable emphasis and animation; the statement of them was received with nods, and huks, and other marks of approval.

"The Innuits are also hospitable," he continued. "A Kablunet came to them starving, dying. The Great Spirit who made us all, and without whose permission nothing at all can happen, sent Okiok to help him. Okiok is kind; so is his wife; also his daughter. They took the poor Kablunet to their house. They fed -- they stuffed -- him. Now he is getting strong, and will soon be able to join in kick-ball, and pull-over, and he may perhaps, before long, teach your great angekok Ujarak some things that he does not yet know!"

As this was said with a motion in one eye which strongly resembled a wink, the audience burst into mingled applause and laughter. To some, the idea of their wise man being taught anything by a poor benighted Kablunet was ridiculous. To others, the hope of seeing the wizard's pride humbled was what is slangily termed "nuts." Ujarak himself took the remark in good part, in consequence of the word "great" having been prefixed to his title.

"But," continued the seaman, with much earnestness, "having said that I am grateful, I will not say more about the Innuit just now. I will only tell you, in few words, some things about my own country which will interest you. I have been asked if we have big villages. Yes, my friends, we have very big villages -- so big that I fear you will find it difficult to understand what I say."

"The Innuit have big understandings," said Simek, with a bland smile, describing a great circle with his outspread arms; "do not fear to try them."

"Well, one village we have," resumed Rooney, "is as broad as from here to the house of Okiok under the great cliff, and it is equally long."

The "huks" and "hois!" with which this was received proved that, big as their understandings were, the Eskimos were not prepared to take in so vast an idea.

"Moreover," said the seaman, "because there is not enough of space, the houses are built on the top of each other -- one -- two -- three -- four -- even five and six -- one standing on the other."

As each number was named, the eyes of the assembly opened wider with surprise, until they could open no further.

"Men, women, and children live in these houses; and if you were to spread them all over the ice here, away as far as you can see in every direction, you would not be able to see the ice at all for the houses."

"What a liar!" murmured the mother of Arbalik to the mother of Ippegoo.

"Dreadful!" responded the latter.

"Moreover," continued Rooney, "these people can put their words and thoughts down on a substance called paper and send them to each other, so that men and women who may be hundreds of miles away can talk with each other and understand what they say and think, though they cannot hear or see each other, and though their words and thoughts take days and moons to travel."

The breathless Eskimos glanced at each other, and tried to open their eyes wider, but, having already reached the utmost limit, they failed. Unfortunately at that moment our hero was so tickled by the appearance of the faces around him, that he smiled. In a moment the eyes collapsed and the mouths opened.

"Ha! ha-a-a!" roared Simek, rubbing his hands; "the Kablunet is trying to beat my walrus."

"And he has succeeded," cried Angut, who felt it his duty to stand up for the credit of his guest, though he greatly wished that he had on this occasion confined himself to sober truth.

A beaming expression forthwith took the place of surprise on every face, as it suddenly dawned upon the company that Ridroonee was to be classed with the funny dogs whose chief delight it is to recount fairy tales and other exaggerated stories, with a view to make the men shout, the women laugh, and the children squeak with amusement.

"Go on," they cried; "tell us more."

Rooney at once perceived his mistake, and the misfortune that had befallen him. His character for veracity was shaken. He felt that it would be better to say no more, to leave what he had said to be regarded as a fairy tale, and to confine himself entirely to simple matters, such as an Eskimo might credit. He looked at his friend Angut. Angut returned the look with profound gravity, almost sorrow. Evidently his faith in the Kablunet was severely shaken. "I'll try them once more," thought Rooney. "It won't do to have a vast range of subjects tabooed just because they won't believe. Come, I'll try again."

Putting on a look of intense earnestness, which was meant to carry irresistible conviction, he continued -- 

"We have kayaks -- oomiaks -- in my country, which are big enough to carry three or four times as many people as you have in this village."

Another roar of laughter greeted this statement.

"Isn't he a good liar?" whispered Arbalik's mother.

"And so grave about it too," replied Kunelik.

Red Rooney stopped.

The mother of Ippegoo, fearing he had divined her thoughts, was overwhelmed, and tried to hide her blushing face behind Issek.

"They don't believe me," said the seaman in a low voice to Okiok.

"Of course they don't. You might as well tell us that the world is round, when we see that it is flat!"

Rooney sighed. He felt depressed. The impossibility of his ever getting these people to understand or believe many things was forced upon him. The undisguised assurance that they looked upon him as the best liar they had ever met with was unsatisfactory.

"Besides all this, my friends," he cried, with a feeling and air of reckless gaiety, "we have grand feasts, just as you have, and games too, and dances, and songs -- "

"Songs!" shouted Simek, with an excited look; "have you songs? can you sing?"

"Well, after a fashion I can," returned Rooney, with a modest look, "though I don't pretend to be much of a dab at it. Are you fond o' singin'?"

"Fond!" echoed Simek, with a gaze of enthusiasm, "I love it! I love it nearly as much as I love Pussimek; better, far, than I love blubber! Ho! sing to us, Ridroonee."

"With all my heart," said Rooney, starting off with all his lung-power, which was by no means slight.

"Rule Britannia," rendered in good time, with tremendous energy, and all the additional flourishes possible, nearly drove the audience wild with delight. They had never heard anything like it before.

"That beats you, Okiok," said Simek.

"That is true," replied Okiok humbly.

"What! does he sing?" asked Rooney.

"Yes; he is our maker of songs, and sings a little."

"Then he must sing to me," cried the sailor. "In my land the man who sings last has the right to say who shall sing next. I demand a song from Okiok."

As the company approved highly of the demand, and Okiok was quite willing, there was neither difficulty nor delay. The good-natured man began at once, with an air of humorous modesty, if we may say so.

Eskimos, as a rule, are not highly poetical in their sentiments, and their versification has not usually the grace of rhyme to render it agreeable, but Okiok was an exception to the rule, in that he could compose verses in rhyme, and was much esteemed because of this power. In a tuneful and moderate voice he sang. Of course, being rendered into English, his song necessarily loses much of its humour, but that, as every linguist knows, is unavoidable. It was Red Rooney who translated it, which will account for the slightly Hibernian tone throughout. I fear also that Rooney must have translated rather freely, but of course at this late period of the world's history it is impossible to ascertain anything certain on the point. We therefore give the song for what it is worth.

Okiok's Song.

I.

A seal once rowled upon the sea Beneath the shining sun, Said I, "My friend, this very day Your rowlin' days are done." "No, no," said he, "that must not be," (And splashed the snowy foam), "Beneath the wave there wait for me A wife and six at home."

II.

"A lie!" said I, "so you shall die!" I launched my whistling spear; Right up his nose the weapon goes, And out behind his ear. He looked reproachful; then he sank; My heart was very sore, For down, and down, and down he went. I never saw him more.

III.

Then straight from out the sea arose A female seal and six; "O kill us now, and let our blood With that of father's mix. We cannot hunt; we dare not beg; To steal we will not try; There's nothing now that we can do But blubber, burst, and die."

IV.

They seized my kayak by the point, They pulled me o'er the sea, They led me to an island lone, And thus they spoke to me: "Bad man, are there not bachelors Both old and young to spare, Whom you might kill, and eat your fill, For all the world would care?"

V.

"Why stain your weapon with the blood Of one whose very life Was spent in trying to provide For little ones and wife?" They paused and wept, and raised a howl. (The youngest only squealed). It stirred the marrow in my bones, My very conscience reeled.

VI.

I fell at once upon my knees, I begged them to forgive; I said I'd stay and fish for them As long as I should live. "And marry me," the widow cried; "I'd rather not," said I "But that's a point we'd better leave To talk of by and by."

VII.

I dwelt upon that island lone For many a wretched year, Serving that mother seal and six With kayak, line, and spear. And strange to say, the little ones No bigger ever grew; But, strangest sight of all, they changed From grey to brilliant blue.

VII.

"O set me free! O set me free!" I cried in my despair, For by enchantments unexplained They held and kept me there. "I will. But promise first," she said, "You'll never more transfix The father of a family, With little children six."

IX.

"I promise!" Scarce the words had fled, When, far upon the sea, Careering gaily homeward went My good kayak and me. A mist rolled off my wond'ring eyes, I heard my Nuna scream --  Like Simek with his walrus big, I'd only had a dream!

The reception that this peculiar song met with was compound, though enthusiastic. As we have said, Okiok was an original genius among his people, who had never before heard the jingle of rhymes until he invented and introduced them. Besides being struck by the novelty of his verses, which greatly charmed them, they seemed to be much impressed with the wickedness of killing the father of a family; and some of the Eskimo widows then present experienced, probably for the first time in their lives, a touch of sympathy with widowed seals who happened to have large families to provide for.

But there was one member of the company whose thoughts and feelings were very differently affected by the song of this national poet -- this Eskimo Burns or Byron -- namely the wizard Ujarak. In a moment of reckless anger he had challenged Okiok to combat, and, knowing that they would be called on to enter the arena and measure, not swords, but intellects, on the morrow, he felt ill at ease, for he could not hope to come off victorious. If it had been the ordinary battle of wits in blank verse, he might have had some chance he thought, but with this new and telling jingle at the end of alternate lines, he knew that he must of a surety fail. This was extremely galling, because, by the union of smartness, shrewd common sense, and at times judicious silence, he had managed up to that time to maintain his supremacy among his fellows. But on this unlucky day he had been physically overcome by his rival Angut, and now there was the prospect of being intellectually beaten by Okiok.

"Strange!" thought the wizard; "I wonder if it was my intention to run away with Nunaga that brought this disgrace upon me."

"It was," said a voice very close to him.

The wizard looked round quickly, but no one seemed to be thinking of him.

It was the voice of Conscience. Ujarak felt uneasy, and stifled it at once. Everybody can do that without much difficulty, as the reader knows, though nobody has ever yet succeeded in killing Conscience outright. He then set himself to devise some plan for escaping from this duel. His imagination was fertile. While the revellers continued to amuse themselves with food, and song, and story, the wizard took to thinking.

No one thought his conduct strange, or sought to disturb him, for angekoks belong to a privileged class. But think as hard and as profoundly as he could, no way of escape presented itself until the evening was far advanced, and then, without an appreciable effort of thought, a door seemed to fly open, and that door was -- Ippegoo.

"Yes," thought the wizard; "that will do. Nothing could be better. I'll make him an angekok."

It may be needful to explain here that the creation of an angekok is a serious matter. It involves much ceremonial action on the part of him who operates, and preparation on the part of him who is operated on. Moreover, it is an important matter. When once it has been decided on, nothing can be allowed to interfere with it. All other things -- save the unavoidable and urgent -- must give way before it.

He would announce it that very night. He would boldly omit some of the preliminary ceremonial. The morrow would be a day of preparation. Next day would be the day of the ceremony of induction. After that it would be necessary for him to accompany the new-made wizard on his first journey to the realm of spirits. Thus the singing duel would have to be delayed. Ultimately he would manage to carry off Nunaga to the land of the southern Eskimo; thus he would be able to escape the ordeal altogether, and to laugh at Okiok and his jingling rhymes.

When he stood up and made the announcement, declaring that his torngak had told him that another angekok must be created, though who that other one was had not yet been revealed to him, there was a slight feeling of disappointment, for Eskimos dearly love a musical combat; but when he pointed out that after the ceremonies were over, the singing duel might then come off, the people became reconciled to the delay. Being by that time exhausted in body and mind, they soon after retired to rest.

Ere long oblivion brooded over the late hilarious crew, who lay down like bundles of hair in their festal garments, and the northern lights threw a flickering radiance over a scene of profound quietude and peace.



Chapter Thirteen.

Mischief Hatching.

At early dawn next morning Ippegoo was awakened from a most refreshing slumber by a gentle shake of the shoulder.

"Oh! not yet, mother," groaned the youth in the drowsiest of accents; "I've only just begun to sleep."

He turned slowly on the other side, and tried to continue his repose, but another shake disturbed him, and a deep voice said, "Awake; arise, sleepy one."

"Mother," he murmured, still half asleep, "you have got the throat s-sickness v-v-very bad," (referring to what we would style a cold).

A grim smile played for a moment on the visage of the wizard, as he gave the youth a most unmotherly shake, and said, "Yes, my son, I am very sick, and want you to cure me."

Ippegoo was wide awake in a moment. Rising with a somewhat abashed look, he followed his evil genius out of the hut, where, in another compartment, his mother lay, open-mouthed, singing a song of welcome to the dawning day through her nose.

Ujarak led the youth to the berg with the sea-green cave. Stopping at the entrance, he turned a stern look on his pupil, and pointing to the cavern, uttered the single word -- "Follow."

As Ippegoo gazed into the sea-green depths of the place -- which darkened into absolute blackness, with ghostly projections from the sides, and dim icicles pendent from the invisible roof, he felt a suspicion that the cave might be the vestibule to that dread world of the departed which he had often heard his master describe.

"You're not going far, I hope," he said anxiously; "remember I am not yet an angekok."

"True; but you are yet a fool," returned the wizard contemptuously. "Do you suppose I would lead you to certain death for no good end? No; but I will make you an angekok to-night, and after that we may explore the wonders of the spirit-world together. I have brought you here to speak about that, for the ears of some people are very quick. We shall be safe here. You have been long enough a fool. The time has arrived when you must join the ranks of the wise men. Come."

Again he pointed to the cave, and led the way into its dim sea-green interior.

Some men seek eagerly after honours which they cannot win; others have honours which they do not desire thrust upon them. Ippegoo was of the latter class. He followed humbly, and rather closely, for the bare idea of being alone in such a place terrified him. Although pronounced a fool, the poor fellow was wise enough to perceive that he was utterly unfitted, physically as well as mentally, for the high honour to which Ujarak destined him; but he was so thoroughly under the power of his influence that he felt resistance or refusal to be impossible. He advanced, therefore, with a heavy heart. Everything around was fitted to chill his ambition, even if he had possessed any, and to arouse the terrors of his weak and superstitious mind.

When they had walked over the icy floor of the cave until the entrance behind them seemed no larger than a bright star, the wizard stopped abruptly. Ippegoo stumbled up against him with a gasp of alarm. The light was so feeble that surrounding objects were barely visible. Great blocks and spires and angular fragments of ice projected into observation out of profound obscurity. Overhead mighty and grotesque forms, attached to the invisible roof, seemed like creatures floating in the air, to which an imagination much less active than that of Ippegoo might easily have given grinning mouths and glaring eyes; and the atmosphere of the place was so intensely cold that even Eskimo garments could not prevent a shudder.

The wizard turned on his victim a solemn gaze. As he stood facing the entrance of the cavern, there was just light enough to render his teeth and the whites of his eyes visible, though the rest of his features were shadowy.

"Ippegoo," he said in a low voice, "the time has come -- "

At that moment a tremendous crash drowned his voice, and seemed to rend the cavern in twain. The reverberating echoes had not ceased when a clap as of the loudest thunder seemed to burst their ears. It was followed for a few seconds by a pattering shower, as of giant hail, and Ippegoo's very marrow quailed.

It was only a crack in the berg, followed by the dislodgement of a great mass, which fell from the roof to the floor below -- fortunately at some distance from the spot on which the Eskimos stood.

"Bergs sometimes rend and fall asunder," gasped the trembling youth.

Ujarak's voice was unwontedly solemn as he replied -- 

"Not in the spring-time, foolish one. Fear not, but listen. To-night you must be prepared to go through the customs that will admit you to the ranks of the wise men."

"Don't you think," interposed the youth, with a shiver, "that it would be better to try it on some one else -- on Angut, or Okiok, or even Norrak? Norrak is a fine boy, well-grown and strong, as well as clever, and I am such a fool, you know."

"You have said truth, Ippegoo. But all that will be changed to-morrow. Once an angekok, your foolishness will depart, and wisdom will come."

The poor youth was much cheered by this, because, although he felt utterly unfit for the grave and responsible character, he had enough of faith in his teacher to believe that the needed change would take place, -- and change, he was well aware, could achieve wonders. Did he not see it when the change from summer to winter drove nearly all the birds away, converted the liquid sea into a solid plain, and turned the bright day into dismal night? and did he not feel it when the returning summer changed all that again, sent the sparkling waves for his light kayak to dance upon, and the glorious sunshine to call back the feathered tribes, to open the lovely flowers, to melt the hard ice, and gladden all the land? Yes, he knew well what "change" meant, though it never occurred to him to connect all this with a Creator who changes not. In this respect he resembled his master.

"Besides," continued the wizard in a more confidential tone, which invariably had the effect of drawing the poor youth's heart towards him, "I cannot make whom I will an angekok. It is my torngak who settles that; I have only to obey. Now, what I want you to do is to become very solemn in your manner and speech from this moment till the deed is finished. Will you remember?"

Ippegoo hesitated a moment. He felt just then so unusually solemn that he had difficulty in conceiving it possible to become more so, but remembering the change that was about to take place, he said brightly, "Yes, I'll remember."

"You see," continued his instructor, "we must get people to suppose that you are troubled by a spirit of some sort -- "

"Oh! only to suppose it," cried Ippegoo hopefully. "Then I'm not really to be troubled with a spirit?"

"Of course you are, foolish man. But don't you understand people must see that you are, else how are they to know it?"

Ippegoo thought that if he was really to be troubled in that way, the only difficulty would be to prevent people from knowing it, but observing that his master was getting angry, he wisely held his tongue, and listened with earnest attention while Ujarak related the details of the ordeal through which he was about to pass.

At the time this conversation was being held in the sea-green cave, Okiok, rising from his lair with a prodigious yawn, said to his wife -- 

"Nuna, I go to see Kunelik."

"And what may ye-a-o-u -- -my husband want with the mother of Ippegoo?" asked Nuna sleepily, but without moving.

"I want to ye-a-o-u -- -ask about her son."

"Ye-a-a-o-o-u!" exclaimed Nuna, turning on her other side; "go, then," and she collapsed.

Seeing that his wife was unfit just then to enter into conversation, Okiok got up, accomplished what little toilet he deemed necessary in half a minute, and took his way to the hut of Ippegoo's mother.

It is not usual in Eskimo land to indulge in ceremonious salutation. Okiok was naturally a straightforward and brusque man. It will not therefore surprise any one to be told that he began his interview with -- 

"Kunelik, your son Ippegoo is a lanky fool!"

"He is," assented Kunelik, with quiet good-humour.

"He has given himself," continued Okiok, "spirit and body, to that villain Ujarak."

"He has," assented Kunelik again.

"Where is he now?"

"I do not know."

"But me knows," said a small sweet little child-voice from the midst of a bundle of furs.

It was the voice of Pussi. That Eskimo atom had been so overcome with sleep at the breaking up of the festivities of the previous night that she was unable to distinguish between those whom she loved and those for whom she cared not. In these circumstances, she had seized the first motherly tail that came within her reach, and followed it home. It chanced to belong to Kunelik, so she dropped down and slept beside her.

"You know, my dear little seal?" said Okiok in surprise.

"Yes, me knows. When I was 'sleep, a big man comes an' stump on my toes -- not much, only a leetle. Dat wokes me, an' I see Ujiyak. He shooks Ip'goo an' bose hoed out degidder."

Okiok looked at Kunelik, Kunelik looked at Okiok, and both gravely shook their heads.

Before they could resume the conversation, Ippegoo's voice was heard outside asking if his mother was in.

"Go," said Kunelik; "though he is a fool, he is wise enough to hold his tongue when any one but me is near."

Okiok took the hint, rose at once, and went out, passing the youth as he entered, and being much struck with the lugubrious solemnity of his visage.

"Mother," said Ippegoo, sitting down on a skin beside the pleasant little woman, "it comes."

"What comes, my son?"

"I know not."

"If you know not, how do you know that it comes?" asked Kunelik, who was slightly alarmed by the wild manner and unusual, almost dreadful, gravity of her boy.

"It is useless to ask me, mother. I do not understand. My mind cannot take it in, but -- but -- it comes."

"Yes; when is it coming?" asked Kunelik, who knew well how to humour him.

"How can I tell? I -- I think it has come now," said the youth, growing paler, or rather greener; "I think I feel it in my breast. Ujarak said the torngak would come to-day, and to-night I am to be -- changed!"

"Oho!" exclaimed Kunelik, with a slight touch of asperity, "it's a torngak that is to come, is it? and Ujarak says so? Don't you know, Ippe, that Ujarak is an idiot!"

"Mother!" exclaimed the youth remonstratively, "Ujarak an idiot? Impossible! He is to make me an angekok to-night."

"You, Ippe! You are not more fit for an angekok than I am for a seal-hunter."

"Yes, true; but I am to be -- changed!" returned the youth, with a bright look; then remembering that his role was solemnity, he dropped the corners of his mouth, elongated his visage, turned up his eyes, and groaned.

"Have you the stomach twist, my boy?" asked his mother tenderly.

"No; but I suppose I -- I -- am changing."

"No, you are not, Ippe. I have seen many angekoks made. There will be no change till you have gone through the customs, so make your mind easy, and have something to eat."

The youth, having had no breakfast, was ravenously hungry, and as the process of feeding would not necessarily interfere with solemnity, he agreed to the proposal with his accustomed look of satisfaction -- which, however, he suddenly nipped in the bud. Then, setting-to with an expression that might have indicated the woes of a lifetime, he made a hearty breakfast.

Thereafter he kept moving about the village all day in absolute silence, and with a profound gloom on his face, by which the risibility of some was tickled, while not a few were more or less awe-stricken.

It soon began to be rumoured that Ippegoo was the angekok-elect. In the afternoon Ujarak returned from a visit, as he said, to the nether world, and with his brother wizards -- for there were several in the tribe --  confirmed the rumour.

As evening approached, Rooney entered Okiok's hut. No one was at home except Nuna and Tumbler. The latter was playing, as usual, with his little friend Pussi. The goodwife was busy over the cooking-lamp.

"Where is your husband, Nuna?" asked the sailor, sitting down on a walrus skull.

"Out after seals."

"And Nunaga?"

"Visiting the mother of Arbalik."

The seaman looked thoughtfully at the lamp-smoke for a few moments.

"She is a hard woman, that mother of Arbalik," he said.

"Issek is not so hard as she looks," returned Mrs Okiok; "her voice is rough, but her heart is soft."

"I'm glad to hear you speak well of her," said Rooney, "for I don't like to think ill of any one if I can help it; but sometimes I can't help it. Now, there's your angekok Ujarak: I cannot think well of him. Have you a good word to say in his favour?"

"No, not one. He is bad through and through -- from the skin to the bone. I know him well," said Nuna, with a flourish of her cooking-stick that almost overturned the lamp.

"But you may be mistaken," remarked Rooney, smiling. "You are mistaken even in the matter of his body, to say nothing of his spirit."

"How so?" asked Nuna quickly.

"You said he is bad through and through. From skin to bone is not through and through. To be quite correct, you must go from skin to marrow."

Nuna acknowledged this by violently plunging her cooking-stick into the pot.

"Well now, Nuna," continued Rooney, in a confidential tone, "tell me -- "

At that moment he was interrupted by the entrance of the master of the mansion, who quietly sat down on another skull close to his friend.

"I was just going to ask your wife, Okiok, what she and you think of this business of making an angekok of poor Ippegoo," said Rooney.

"We think it is like a seal with its tail where its head should be, its skin in its stomach, and all its bones outside; all nonsense --  foolishness," answered Okiok, with more of indignation in his look and tone than he was wont to display.

"Then you don't believe in angekoks?" asked Rooney.

"No," replied the Eskimo earnestly; "I don't. I think they are clever scoundrels -- clever fools. And more, I don't believe in torngaks or any other spirits."

"In that you are wrong," said Rooney. "There is one great and good Spirit, who made and rules the universe."

"I'm not sure of that," returned the Eskimo, with a somewhat dogged and perplexed look, that showed the subject was not quite new to him. "I never saw, or heard, or tasted, or smelt, or felt a spirit. How can I know anything about it?"

"Do you believe in your own spirit, Okiok?"

"Yes, I must. I cannot help it. I am like other men. When a man dies there is something gone out of him. It must be his spirit."

"Then you believe in other men's spirits as well as your own spirit," said Rooney, "though you have never seen, heard, tasted, smelt, or felt them?"

For a moment the Eskimo was puzzled. Then suddenly his countenance brightened.

"But I have felt my own," he cried. "I have felt it moving within me, so that it made me act. My legs and arms and brain would not go into action if they were dead, if the spirit had gone out of them."

"In the very same way," replied the seaman, "you may feel the Great Spirit, for your own spirit could not go into action so as to cause your body to act unless a greater Spirit had given it life. So also we may feel or understand the Great Spirit when we look at the growing flowers, and hear the moving winds, and behold the shining stars, and feel the beating of our own hearts. I'm not much of a wise man, an angekok --  which they would call scholar in my country -- but I know enough to believe that it is only 'the fool who has said in his heart, There is no Great Spirit.'"

"There is something in what you say," returned the Eskimo, as the lines of unusually intense thought wrinkled his brow; "but for all that you say, I think there are no torngaks, and that Ujarak is a liar as well as a fool."

"I agree with you, Okiok, because I think you have good reason for your disbelief. In the first place, it is well-known that Ujarak is a liar, but that is not enough, for liar though he be, he sometimes tells the truth. Then, in the second place, he is an ass -- hum! I forgot -- you don't know what an ass is; well, it don't matter, for, in the third place, he never gave any proof to anybody of what he and his torngak are said to have seen and done, and, strongest reason of all, this familiar spirit of his acts unwisely -- for what could be more foolish than to choose out of all the tribe a poor half-witted creature like Ippegoo for the next angekok?"

A gleaming glance of intelligent humour lighted up Okiok's face as he said -- 

"Ujarak is wiser than his torngak in that. He wants to make use of the poor lad for his own wicked ends. I know not what these are -- but I have my suspicions."

"So have I," broke in Nuna at this point, giving her pot a rap with the cooking-stick by way of emphasis.

Rooney laughed.

"You think he must be watched, and his mischief prevented?" he said.

"That's what I think," said Okiok firmly.

"Tell me, what are the ceremonies to be gone through by that poor unwilling Ippegoo, before he can be changed into a wise man?"

"Oh, he has much to do," returned Okiok, with his eyes on the lamp-flame and his head a little on one side, as if he were thinking. "But I am puzzled. Ujarak is cunning, though he is not wise; and I am quite sure he has some secret reason for hurrying on this business. He is changing the customs, and that is never done for nothing."

"What customs has he changed?" asked Rooney.

"The customs for the young angekok before he gets a torngak," replied the Eskimo.

Okiok's further elucidation of this point was so complex that we prefer to give the reader our own explanation.

Before assuming the office of an angekok or diviner, an Eskimo must procure one of the spirits of the elements for his own particular familiar spirit or torngak. These spirits would appear to be somewhat coquettish and difficult to win, and marvellous tales are related of the manner in which they are wooed. The aspirant must retire for a time to a desert place, where, entirely cut off from the society of his fellows, he may give himself up to fasting and profound meditation. He also prays to Torngarsuk to give him a torngak. This Torngarsuk is the chief of the good spirits, and dwells in a pleasant abode under the earth or sea. He is not, however, supposed to be God, who is named Pirksoma, i.e. "He that is above," and about whom most Eskimos profess to know nothing. As might be expected, the weakness of body and agitation of mind resulting from such exercises carried on in solitude throw into disorder the imaginative faculty of the would-be diviner, so that wonderful figures of men and monsters swim before his mental vision, which tend to throw his body into convulsions -- all the more that he labours to cherish and increase such symptoms.

How far the aspirants themselves believe in these delusions it is impossible to tell; but the fact that, after their utmost efforts, some of them fail to achieve the coveted office, leads one to think that some of them are too honest, or too strong-minded, to be led by them. Others, however, being either weak or double-minded, are successful. They assert that, on Torngarsuk appearing in answer to their earnest petition, they shriek aloud, and die from fear. At the end of three days they come to life again, and receive a torngak, who takes them forthwith on a journey to heaven and hell, after which they return home full-fledged angekoks, prepared to bless their fellows, and guide them with their counsels.

"Now, you must know," said Okiok, after explaining all this, "what puzzles me is, that Ujarak intends to alter the customs at the beginning of the affair. Ippegoo is to be made an angekok to-night, and to be let off all the fasting and hard thinking and fits. If I believed in these things at all, I should think him only a half-made angekok. As it is, I don't care a puff of wind what they make of poor Ippegoo -- so long as they don't kill him; but I'm uneasy because I'm afraid the rascal Ujarak has some bad end in view in all this."

"I'm quite sure of it," muttered Nuna, making a stab with her stick at the contents of her pot, as if Ujarak's heart were inside.

At that moment Nunaga entered, looking radiant, in all the glory of a new under-garment of eider-duck pelts and a new sealskin upper coat with an extra long tail.

"Have you seen Angut lately?" asked Rooney of the young girl.

"Yes," she replied, with a modest smile that displayed her brilliant teeth; "he is in his own hut."

"I will go and talk with him on this matter, Okiok," said the seaman. "Meanwhile, do you say nothing about it to any one."



Chapter Fourteen.

Solemn And Mysterious Doings Are Brought To A Violent Close.

Angut was seated at the further end of his abode when his friend entered, apparently absorbed in contemplation of that remarkable specimen of Eskimo longevity, the grandmother of Okiok.

"I have often wondered," said Angut, as the seaman sat down beside him, "at the contentment and good-humour and cheerfulness, sometimes running into fun, of that poor old woman Kannoa."

"Speak lower," said Rooney in a soft voice; "she will hear you."

"If she does, she will hear no evil. But she is nearly deaf, and takes no notice."

"It may be so; poor thing!" returned the sailor in a tender tone, as he looked at the shrivelled-up old creature, who was moving actively round the never-idle lamp, and bending with inquiring interest over the earthen pot, which seemed to engross her entire being. "But why do you wonder?"

"I wonder because she has so little to make her contented, and so much to ruin her good-humour and cheerfulness, and to stop her fun. Her life is a hard one. She has few relations to care for her. She is very old, and must soon grow feeble, and then -- "

"And then?" said Rooney, as the other paused.

"Then she knows not what follows death -- who does know? -- and she does not believe in the nonsense that our people invent. It is a great mystery."

The Eskimo said the last words in a low voice and with a wistful gaze, as if he were rather communing with himself than conversing with his friend. Rooney felt perplexed. The thoughts of Angut were often too profound for him. Not knowing what to say, he changed the subject by mentioning the object of his visit.

At once Angut turned, and gave undivided attention to the subject, while the seaman described his recent conversation with Okiok. As he concluded, a peculiar look flitted across Angut's countenance.

"I guess his reason," he said.

"Yes; what may it be, think you?"

"He fears to meet Okiok in a singing duel."

Rooney laughed. "Well, you know best," he said; "I daresay you are right. Okiok is a sharp fellow, and Ujarak is but a blundering booby after -- "

A low chuckle in the region of the lamp attracted their attention at this point. They looked quickly at Kannoa, but that ancient's face was absolutely owlish in its gravity, and her little black eyes peered into her pot with a look of intense inquiry that was almost philosophic. Resuming their belief that she was as deaf as a post, or an iceberg, Rooney and Angut proceeded to discuss Ujarak and his probable plans without any regard to her. After having talked the matter over for some time, Angut shook his head, and said that Ujarak must be closely watched.

"More than that," said Rooney, with decision; "he must be stultified."

The seaman's rendering of the word "stultified" into Eskimo was curious, and cannot easily be explained, but it was well understood by Angut, and apparently by Kannoa, for another chuckle came just then from the culinary department. Again the two men glanced at the old woman inquiringly, and again were they baffled by that look of owlish intensity at the stewing meat.

"She hears," whispered Rooney.

"Impossible," replied Angut; "a dead seal is not much deafer."

Continuing the conversation, the seaman explained how he thought it possible to stultify the wizard, by discrediting him in the eyes of his own people -- by foiling him with his own weapons, -- and himself undertook to accomplish the task of stultification.

He was in the act of concluding his explanation when another chuckle burst upon them from the region of the lamp. This time there was no attempt at concealment, for there stood old Kannoa, partly enveloped in savoury steam, her head thrown back, and her mouth wide-open.

With a laugh Rooney leaped up, and caught her by the arm.

"You've heard what I've been saying, mother?"

"Ye-yes. I've heard," she replied, trying to smother the laughter.

"Now, look here. You must promise me not to tell anybody," said the seaman earnestly, almost sternly.

"Oh, I not tell," returned the old woman; "I love not Ujarak."

"Ah! just so; then you're pretty safe not to tell," said Rooney.

"No fear of Kannoa," remarked Angut, with a pleasant nod; "she never tells anything to anybody."

Satisfied, apparently, with this assurance, the seaman took the old woman into his counsels, congratulating himself not a little on having found an ally in the very hut in which it had been arranged that the mysterious performance was to take place. Shortly after that Angut left.

"Now, Kannoa," said Rooney, after some preliminary talk, "you remember the big white bear that Angut killed two moons ago?"

"Remember it? Ay," said Kannoa, licking her lips; "it was the fattest and best bear I ever chewed. Huk! it was good!"

"Well, where is that bear's skin?"

The old dame pointed to a corner of the hut where the skin lay. Rooney went and picked it up, and laid it at the upper end of the hut farthest from the door.

"Now, mother," said he; "you'll not touch that skin. Let it lie there, and let no one touch it till I come again. You understand?"

"Yes," answered Kannoa, with a look so intensely knowing that it made the seaman laugh.

"But tell me," said the old woman, becoming suddenly grave, and laying her thin scraggy hand on the man's arm; "why do you call me mother?"

"Oh, it's just a way we have in my country when -- when we feel kindly to an old woman. And I do feel kindly to you, Kannoa," he added, with sudden warmth and energy of look and tone, "because you are so like my own grandmother -- only she was younger than you, and much better-looking."

Rooney meant no rudeness by the last remark, but, having observed the straightforward simplicity of his new friends in saying exactly what they meant, he willingly adopted their style.

Kannoa seemed much pleased with the explanation.

"It is strange," she said pathetically, "that I should find you so very like my husband."

"Indeed!" returned the seaman, who did not feel flattered by the compliment; "is it long since he died?"

"O yes; long, long -- very long," she answered, with a sigh. "Moons, moons, moons without number have passed since that day. He was as young as you when he was killed, but a far finer man. His face did not look dirty like yours -- all over with hair. It was smooth and fat, and round and oily. His cheeks were plump, and they would shine when the sun was up. He was also bigger than you -- higher and wider. Huk! he was grand!"

Although Rooney felt inclined to laugh as he listened to this description, he restrained himself when he observed the tears gathering in the old eyes. Observing and appreciating the look of sympathy, she tightened her clutch on the seaman's arm and said, looking wistfully up in his face -- 

"Has Ridroonee ever felt something in here," -- she laid a hand on her withered bosom -- "as if it broke in two, and then went dead for evermore? That is what I felt the day they brought my man home; he was so kind. Like my son Okiok, and Angut."

As the seaman looked down at the pitiful old soul that had thus broken the floodgates of a long silence, and was pouring out her confidences to him, he felt an unusual lump in his throat. Under a sudden impulse, he stooped and kissed the wrinkled brow, and then, turning abruptly, left the hut.

It was well he did so, for by that time it was nearly dark, and Kannoa had yet to arrange the place for the expected meeting.

As the time drew near, the night seemed to sympathise with the occasion, for the sky became overcast with clouds, which obliterated the stars, and rendered it intensely dark.

The chief performer in the approaching ceremony was in a fearful state of mind. He would have done or given anything to escape being made a wise man. But Ujarak was inexorable. Poor Ippegoo sought comfort from his mother, and, to say truth, Kunelik did her best for him, but she could not resist the decrees of Fate -- i.e. of the wizard.

"Be a man, my son, and all will go well," she said, as he sat beside her in her hut, with his chin on his breast and his thin hands clasped.

"O mother, I am such a fool! He might let me off. I'll be disgraced forever."

"Not you, Ippe; you're not half such a fool as he is. Just go boldly, and do your best. Look as fierce and wild as you can, and make awful faces. There's nothing like frightening people! Howl as much as possible, and gasp sometimes. I have seen a good deal done in that way. I only wish they would try to make an angekok of me. I would astonish them."

The plucky little woman had to stop here for a moment to chuckle at her own conceit, but her poor son did not respond. He had got far beyond the point where a perception of the ludicrous is possible.

"But it is time to go now, my son. Don't forget your drum and the face-making. You know what you've got to do?"

"Yes, yes, I know," said Ippegoo, looking anxiously over his shoulder, as if he half expected to see a torngak already approaching him; "I know only too well what I've got to do. Ujarak has been stuffing it into me the whole day till my brain feels ready to burst."

The bitter tone in which the poor youth pronounced his master's name suggested to his mother that it would not require much more to make the worm turn upon its tormentor. But the time had arrived to send him off, so she was obliged to bring her questions and advices to an abrupt close.

As Ippegoo walked towards the dreaded hut, he was conscious of many glaring eyes and whispered words around him. This happily had the effect of stirring up his pride, and made him resolve to strive to do his part creditably.

At the door of the hut two dark figures glided swiftly in before him. One he could perceive was Angut; the other he thought looked very like the Kablunet "Ridroonee." The thought gave him some comfort -- not much, indeed, but anything that distracted his mind for an instant from the business in hand afforded him comfort.

He now braced himself desperately to the work. Seizing the drum which he had been told not to forget, he struck it several times, and began to twist his body about violently. There was just light enough to show to onlookers that the poor youth was whirling himself round in contortions of the most surprising kind. This he did for the purpose of working himself up to the proper pitch of enthusiasm.

There seems little doubt that the mere exertion of great muscular effort, coupled with a resolute wish and intention to succeed in some object, has a powerful tendency to brace the energies of the human mind. Ippegoo had not contorted himself and beaten his drum for many minutes when his feeling of warmth and physical power began to increase. The feeling seemed to break on his mind as a revelation.

"Ho!" he thought, "here it comes; it comes at last! Ujarak told the truth -- I am becoming one of the wise men."

So delighted was the poor fellow with the idea, and with the strong hope created thereby, that his blood began to course more rapidly and his heart to beat high. Under the impulse, he gave vent to a yell that drew a nod of gratified approval from his mother, and quite astonished those who knew him best. Redoubling his twistings and drummings, he soon wore himself out, and ere long fell down in a state of temporary exhaustion.

Having thus, according to instruction, worked himself up to the proper pitch of enthusiasm, Ippegoo lay still and panted. Ujarak then, coming forward, led him into Angut's hut, which was lighted as usual with several cooking-lamps. The people flocked in after them till it was nearly full; but spaces in the centre and upper end were kept comparatively free. Near the lamp the Kablunet was seen seated, observing the proceedings with much gravity; Okiok sat near him.

When all were seated, the wizard led his pupil into the centre space, and, making him sit down, bent him forward until his head was between his legs. He fastened it in that position, and then tied his hands behind his back. All the lights were now extinguished, for no one is allowed to witness the interview of the unfinished angekok with the torngak, nor to move a finger for fear of disturbing him.

The room being now in the state which is described as darkness just visible, Ippegoo began to sing a song, in which all joined. Presently he took to groaning by way of variety; then he puffed and gasped, and in a quavering voice entreated his torngak to come. Spirits, however, like human creatures, are not always open to entreaty. At all events, Ippegoo's torngak refused to appear.

In such circumstances it is usual for an aspirant to writhe about until he brings on a sort of fit, during the continuance of which his soul goes off to fetch the obstinate torngak. After a short time he returns with him, laughing loudly for joy, while a rustling noise, resembling the wings of birds as they swoop about the roof, is heard.

But Ippegoo was not a sufficiently wise man to get through this part of the programme. True, he wrought himself into a wonderful state of excitement, and then humbly lay down on his side to have a fit. But the fit would not come. He tried his best to have it. He wished with all his heart for it, but all his efforts were vain.

"O why won't you come to me, torngak?" demanded the poor youth, with a pitiful whine.

"Because you are wise enough already," said a low voice, which startled the audience very much, and sent a thrill of alarm, not unmingled with surprise, to the hearts of Ippegoo and his master.

The voice seemed to come from the outside of the hut.

"Ask him to come inside and speak to us," whispered Ujarak, who was a good deal more surprised even than his pupil at this unexpected turn of affairs.

"Won't you come in, torngak?" said Ippegoo timidly. "It is very cold outside. You will be more comfortable inside, and we shall hear you better. I suppose you can come as easily through the wall as by -- "

"Stop your stupid tongue!" growled Ujarak.

At that moment a deep unearthly voice was heard inside the hut. Every one trembled, and there ensued a silence so oppressive as to suggest the idea that all present were holding their breath, and afraid to move even by a hair's-breadth.

Suddenly there was a faint murmur, for at the upper end of the hut a dark form was seen slowly to arise. It must be remembered that there was barely light enough to render darkness visible. No features could be distinguished on this apparition, but it gradually assumed the form of a gigantic bear, rising nearly to the roof, and with its great forelegs extended, as if it were brooding over the assembly. Every one remained perfectly still, as if spell-bound.

Only one of the audience was sceptical. Being himself a master of deception, Ujarak suspected some trick, and slowly approached the giant bear with the intention of testing its reality -- in some trepidation, however, for he was naturally superstitious. When he had drawn near enough to touch it, he received a tremendous blow on the forehead, which laid him flat on his back in a partially stunned condition, with his head in Pussimek's lap. That amiable woman considerately allowed it to remain there, and as the wizard felt mentally confused he did not care to change his position.

Presently a low musical voice broke upon the assembly. We need scarcely say that it was that of our hero, Red Rooney, but so changed in character and tone as to be quite unrecognisable by the company, most of whom, indeed, were not yet very familiar with it. Even his more intimate friends, Angut and the Okiok family, were startled by it. In fact, the seaman, besides being something of a mimic, possessed a metallic bass voice of profound depth, which, like most bass voices, was capable of mounting into the higher latitudes of tone by means of a falsetto. He utilised his gifts on the present occasion.

"Ippegoo," he said solemnly and very slowly, "I am not your torngak. I am an angekok, and as I chanced to be passing by your hut in my wanderings, I stopped to hear. I have heard enough to be able to tell you that you shall never be an angekok. Nor shall you ever have a torngak. You do not need one. You are wise enough already, much wiser than your master, who is no better than a miserable puffin. Is it not the duty of one who would be an angekok to go away and live alone for many days fasting, and praying, and meditating? Has not Ujarak advised you to change the ancient customs? Pooh! he is a fool. You cannot succeed now. All the spirits of water, earth, and air have been insulted. This assembly must break up. You must leave off trying. You may all be thankful that the ice does not burst up and crush you; that the sky does not fall upon you; that the great sea does not roll its maddest waves over you. Up, all of you -- Begone!"

Rooney finished off with a roar so deep and fearsome that the very rafters trembled. A pile of wood, stones, and earthenware, previously prepared for the purpose, was tipped over, and fell with a most awful crash. At the same moment the seaman culminated in a falsetto shriek that might have shamed a steam whistle.

It was enough. Had the tunnel entrance of the hut been long and strong, suffocation to many must have been the result, for they went into it pell-mell, rolling rather than running. Fortunately, it was short and weak. Ujarak and Simek, sticking in it, burst it up, and swept it away, thus clearing the passage for the rest. The last to disappear was Kunelik, whose tail flapped on the door-post like a small pistol-shot as she doubled round it and scrambled out, leaving Rooney, Angut, Kannoa, and Ippegoo to enjoy the situation.



Chapter Fifteen.

A Great Singing Duel Interrupted By A Catastrophe.

When the lamps were rekindled by Kannoa, it was discovered that the old lady's nostrils were twitching and her throat contracting in a remarkable manner, with smothered laughter. Very different was the condition of Ippegoo, who still lay bound in the middle of the room. Fear and surprise in equal proportions seemed to have taken possession of him. Rooney, having dropped the bear-skin, approached him, while Angut stood beside the lamp looking on with a sort of serious smile.

"Now, Ippegoo," said the sailor, stooping and cutting his bonds, "I set you free. It is to be hoped also that I have freed you from superstition."

"But where is the bear-angekok?" asked the bewildered youth.

"I am the bear-angekok."

"Impossible!" cried Ippegoo.

To this Rooney replied by going back to his bear-skin, spreading it over himself, getting on a stool so as to tower upwards, spreading out his long arms, and saying in his deepest bass tones -- 

"Now, Ippegoo, do you believe me?"

A gleam of intelligence flashed on the youth's countenance, and at that moment he became more of a wise man than he had ever before been in his life, for he not only had his eyes opened as to the ease with which some people can be deceived, but had his confidence in the infallibility of his old tyrant completely shaken. He reasoned somewhat thus -- 

"If Ujarak's torngak was good and true, it would have told him of the deceit about to be practised on him, and would not have allowed him to submit to disgrace. If it did not care, it was a bad spirit. If it did not know, it was no better than a man, and not worth having -- so I don't want to have one, and am very glad I have escaped so well."

The poor fellow shrank from adding, "Ujarak must be a deceiver;" but he began to think that Red Rooney might not have been far wrong after all when he called him a fool.

Ippegoo was now warned that he must keep carefully out of the wizard's way, and tell no one of the deceit that had been practised. He promised most faithfully to tell no one, and then went straight home and told his mother all about it -- for it never for a moment occurred to the poor fellow to imagine that he was meant to conceal it from his mother!

Fortunately Kunelik was a wise little woman. She knew how to keep her own counsel, and did not even by nod or look insinuate to any one that she was in possession of a secret.

"Now, then, Angut, what is the next thing to be done?" asked Rooney, after Ippegoo had left.

"Make Ujarak fight his duel," said Angut.

"What! the singing duel with Okiok?"

"Yes. The people have set their hearts on the thing, and Ujarak will try to escape. He will perhaps say that his torngak has told him to go hunting to-morrow. But our customs require him to keep his word. My fear is that he will sneak off in the night. He is a sly fox."

"I will stop that," said Rooney.

"How?"

"You shall see. Come with me to the hut of Ujarak."

On reaching the hut, they found its owner, as had been expected, sharpening his spears, and making other arrangements for a hunting expedition.

"When do you start?" asked Rooney.

"Immediately," replied the wizard.

"Of course after the duel," remarked Angut quietly.

The wizard seemed annoyed.

"It is unfortunate," he said, with a vexed look. "My torngak has told me of a place where a great number of seals have come. They may leave soon, and it would be such a pity to lose them."

"That is true," said Angut; "but of course you cannot break our customs. It would ruin your character."

"Of course, of course I will not break the custom," returned Ujarak quickly; "unless, indeed, my torngak orders me to go. But that is not likely."

"I want to ask you," said Rooney, sitting down, "about that trip you had last year to the land of the departed. They tell me you had a hard time of it, Ujarak, and barely escaped with your life."

The sly seaman had spread a net with which the wizard could at all times be easily caught. He had turned him on to a tune at which he was always willing to work with the persistency of an organ-grinder. The wizard went on hour after hour with unwearied zeal in his narrations, being incited thereto by a judicious question now and then from the seaman, when he betrayed any symptom of flagging. At last Angut, who had often heard it before, could stand it no longer, and rose to depart. Having already picked up the Kablunet's mode of salutation, he held out his hand, and said "Goo'-nite."

"Good-night, friend," returned Rooney, grasping the proffered hand. "I can't leave till I've heard the end of this most interesting story, so I'll just sleep in Ujarak's hut, if he will allow me, and thus avoid disturbing you by coming in late. Good-night."

"Goo'-nite," responded Angut, and vanished from the scene.

The wizard heaved a sigh. He perceived that his little plan of gliding away in the hours of darkness was knocked on the head, so, like a true philosopher, he resigned himself to the inevitable, and consoled himself by plunging into intricacies of fabulous adventure with a fertility of imagination which surprised even himself -- so powerful is the influence of a sympathetic listener.

When Ujarak at last discovered that his guest had fallen into a profound slumber, he brought his amazing narrative to an abrupt close, and, wrapping himself in a reindeer-skin, resigned himself to that repose which was so much needed to fit him for the combat of the approaching day.

It was a brilliant sunny morning when Red Rooney awoke from a startling dream, in which he had been wrestling with monstrous creatures in the depths of ocean as well as in the bowels of the earth.

The wizard was still locked in apparently dreamless slumber. Unwilling to disturb him, the seaman glided quietly out, and clambered to the top of a cliff, whence a magnificent sea-view was revealed to his wondering gaze.

There are times when the atmosphere of this earth seems to be rarefied and freshened with celestial zephyrs, which not only half intoxicate the spirit, but intensify the powers of hearing and vision, so that gentle sounds which are very far off come floating to us, and mingle softly with those that are near at hand, while objects are seen at such immense distances that one feels as if the world itself had suddenly grown larger. To these influences were added on this occasion a sea which absolutely glittered with the icy gems that decked her calm and waveless bosom. It was not only that millions of white and glittering peaks, with facets and edges gleaming like diamonds, rose into the blue sky, but here and there open lanes of water, and elsewhere lakes and little ponds upon the melting ice caught the full orb of the rising sun, and sent its reflection into the man's eyes with dazzling refulgence, while the ripple or rush of ice-born water-falls and the plaintive cries of wild-fowl gave variety and animation to the scene. In a mind less religiously disposed than that of our seaman, the sights and sounds would have irresistibly aroused grateful thoughts to our Creator. On Rooney the effect was almost overpowering, yet, strange to say, it drew no word of thanksgiving from his lips. Clasping his hands and shutting his eyes, he muttered with bowed head the words, "God, be merciful to me a sinner!"

Perhaps the recognition of the Father's great goodness and condescension, coupled with his own absolute unworthiness, and the impulse which called those words forth, was nearly the highest act of worship which the sailor could have offered.

Far below, under the sheltering cliff, the huts of the Eskimo village could be seen like little black specks dotting the still snow-covered land; and the voices of children could be heard in faint but merry shouts and peals of laughter, as their owners, like still smaller specks, romped about. One of those specks Rooney recognised, from its intense blackness, to be his friend Tumbler, and a smaller and lighter speck he guessed to be Pussi, from the circumstance of its persistently following and keeping close to the raven-clad hero.

The pleased look with which Rooney at first regarded the children slowly passed away, and was replaced by one of profound sadness; for how could he escape dejection when he thought of a sweet Irish wife and little ones, with a dear old grandmother, whom he had left in the old country, and who must long before that time have given him up as dead?

His melancholy thoughts were dissipated by a sudden increase in the shouting of the little ones. On regarding them attentively, he observed that they scattered themselves in the direction of the several huts, and disappeared therein.

Well did Rooney know that the movement meant breakfast, and having a personal interest in that game, he left his perch and the glorious view, and hastened down.

After breakfast the entire community went with one consent to witness the singing combat. It was to take place on the ice near the scene of the recent kick-ball game, close to the berg of the sea-green cave. The people were much elated, for these savages were probably as much influenced by brilliant spring weather as civilised folk are, though not given to descant so much on their feelings. They were also in that cheerful frame of mind which results from what they correctly referred to as being stuffed; besides, much fun was expected from the contest. Lest our readers should anticipate similar delight, we must repeat that Eskimos are a simple folk, and easily pleased.

"Won't it be a tussle?" remarked Issek, who marched in the centre of a group of women.

"It will, for Ujarak is tough. He is like a walrus," responded an admirer of the wizard.

"Poo!" exclaimed the mother of Ippegoo contemptuously; "he can indeed roar like the walrus, but he can do nothing else."

"Yes; and his strength goes for nothing," cried a sympathiser, "for it is his brain, not his body, that has got to work."

"We shall see," said Kabelaw, whose sister remarked -- "if we are not blind."

This mild observation was meant for a touch of pleasantry. Little touches of pleasantry often passed between these "lying sisters," as they were called, and they not infrequently culminated in touches of temper, which must have been the reverse of pleasant to either.

Arrived at the arena, a ring was formed, and the wisdom as well as amiability of these poor people was shown by their putting the children in front, the little women in the second row, the tall women in the third, and the men behind.

In a few minutes Ujarak bounded into the centre of the circle, with a small drum or tambourine in one hand, which he beat vigorously with the other. Okiok followed more sedately, armed with a similar musical instrument, and retired to one side of the arena, for the wizard, perhaps because he was the challenger, had the right to begin.

A good authority on the Eskimo tongue says: "The language is not easily translatable, the brevity and force of a single sentence requiring to be rendered in many words of another tongue." The same authority also informs us that angekoks "speak in a metaphorical style sometimes, in order to exhibit their assumed superiority in learning and penetration." It will not be expected, therefore, that our translation should convey more than a general idea of the combat.

Ujarak's first act, after bounding into the ring and drumming, was to glare at his adversary. Okiok returned the glare with interest, and, being liberal, threw a sneer of contempt into the bargain. Ujarak then glared round at the audience, and began his song, which consisted merely of short periods, without rhyme or measure, but with a sort of rhythmic musical cadence. He commenced with the chorus -- "Amna ajah ajah hey!" which was vociferously repeated by his supporters among the audience.

What these words, mean -- whether they represent our "fal lal la" or "runity iddity" -- we have not been able to ascertain, but they came in at irregular intervals, greatly to the satisfaction of the audience, thus: -- 

"Amna ajah ajah hey! There was once a man -- a man (So it is said, but we are not sure), A puffin perhaps he was -- or a stupid spirit Made in the likeness of a man; Amna ajah ajah hey!"

Here the wizard not only accompanied the chorus with the drum, but with a species of dance, which, being a clumsy man, he performed in an extremely elephantine manner. After a few moments he went on: -- 

"This man -- this puffin -- was a liar: A liar, because he was a teller of lies. Did he not one time say that seals had come, And that birds were in the air? And when we went to look, no seals or birds were there. Amna ajah ajah Hey!"

The extreme vigour with which the last word was uttered resulted from the wizard having tripped in his dance, and come down heavily on the ice, to the immense delight of his opponents and the children. But Ujarak rose, and quelling the laugh with a look of dignity, continued: -- 

"Worse than a liar was this foolish puffin. He hunted badly. When he flung the spear The seals would laugh before they went away. Sometimes he missed, sometimes he tipped the nose, Sometimes hit the wrong animal, And sometimes touched the tail. Amna ajah ajah hey!"

This verse was a hit, for Okiok was known to be but an indifferent marksman with the throwing-spear; yet such was his industry and his ability to approach very near to his prey, that he was the reverse of a bad hunter. But men in all lands are prone to shut their eyes to the good, and to open them very wide to the evil, that may be said of an adversary. Consequently at this point the chorus was given with great vigour by the wizard faction, and the wizard himself, having worked himself into a breathless condition by the mental effort and the furious dance, deemed it a fitting occasion to take his first rest.

The custom in those duels is for each combatant to devote a quarter of an hour or so to the attack, and then make way for his opponent, who at once steps forward and begins his counter-attack. After a short time he in like manner gives way, and his foe returns. Thus they proceed until one is exhausted or overwhelmed; and he who has the last word gains the victory, after which the dispute is held as settled, and they frequently become better friends than before.

There was something in the expression of Okiok as he stepped sedately into the ring which gladdened his friends and distressed his opponents. Unlike the wizard, he was well formed, and all his movements were comparatively elegant, so that in his case the conventional bit of dance at the end of periods was pleasant to the eye, while his peculiar advantage of rhyming power rendered his performance grateful to the ear. After a little drumming he began: -- 

"Why must I step within this ring, To jump and dance, and drum and sing? You all know well that Okiok Was never made an angekok. Amna ajah ajah hey!"

"Amna ajah ajah hey!" yelled the hunter's admirers, with enthusiasm.

"But Ujarak's the man of skill, To kick or wrestle, sing or kill; He bids me meet him here to-day. Poor Okiok! he must obey. My Torngak, come here, I say! Thus loud I cried the other day --  'You always come to Ujarak; Thou come to me, my Torngak!' But he was deaf, and would not hear, Although I roared it in his ear. At last he said, 'No, Okiok, For you are not an angekok!' Amna ajah ajah hey!"

Here the hunter, after a neat pirouette and tickling of the drum, changed his tone to a soft insinuating whine:

"'Tis true I'm not an angekok; I'm only hunter Okiok. But Torngak, dear Torngak, Don't go away. O do come back! If you'll be mine, and stick to me For evermore, I'll stick to thee. And every single thing I do I'll come and ask advice from you; Consult you morning, noon, and night; Consult you when I hunt or fight; Consult you when I sing and roar; Consult you when I sleep and snore; Consult you more than Ujarak --  My Tor -- Tor -- Tor -- Tor -- Torngak!"

A roar of laughter and a stupendous "Amna ajah ajah hey!" greeted this flight, while Okiok gravely touched his drum, and performed a few more of his graceful evolutions.

"'No, no,' he said; 'I'll never make So gross and stupid a mistake. One man there is who tried to do it --  He thinks the spirits never knew it --  He tried to make an angekok-stew Out of a lad named Ippegoo!'"

Here another yell of delight was followed by the chorus, and Okiok was about to resume, when a terrific rending sound seemed to paralyse every one. Well did they know that sound. It was the rending of the solid ice on which they stood. The advancing spring had so far weakened it that a huge cake had broken off from the land-ice, and was now detached. A shriek from some of the women drew attention to the fact that the disruption of the mass had so disturbed the equilibrium of the neighbouring berg that it was slowly toppling to its fall. A universal stampede instantly took place, for the danger of being crushed by its falling cliffs and pinnacles was very great. Everything but personal safety was forgotten in the panic that ensued. Red Rooney was almost swept off his legs in the rush. Women and children were overturned, but fortunately not hurt. A very few minutes sufficed to take them all clear of danger; but the succeeding crashes produced such an inconceivable roar that the terrified villagers ran on until close to the place where the ice had cracked off, and where a lane of water about three feet wide presented itself.

Over this went men, women, and children at a flying leap -- all except poor little Pussi. That fat little thing would have been left behind had not the mere force of the rush carried her on in a half running, half rolling way. Being unable to manage the jump, she went in with a plunge, and disappeared.

A wild scream from the nearest female caused every one to stop and run back.

"Pussi!" exclaimed Nunaga, pointing wildly to the water.

"Where -- where did she go in?" cried Rooney.

"She must have gone under the ice!" gasped the poor girl.

As she spoke a bubble of air rose to the surface. Next moment the seaman cleft the cold black water and disappeared.

Then with a thrill of alarm the Eskimos observed that the great ice-cake which had broken off was being driven shoreward by the rising tide, and that the lane of water was rapidly closing.

But they were not kept long in suspense. Another moment, and Rooney appeared with little Pussi in his arms. They were instantly seized by Okiok and Angut, and dragged violently out -- not much too soon, for only a few seconds after they were rescued the ice closed with a grinding crash, that served to increase the fervency of the "Thank God!" with which the seaman hailed their deliverance.

The child was not quite insensible, though nearly so. Rooney seized her in his arms, and ran as fast as he could towards the village, whither the fleet-footed Ippegoo had already been sent to prepare skins and warm food for the reception of rescued and rescuer.



Chapter Sixteen.

The Rebellion Of The Worm And The Fall Of The Wizard.

The event which had so suddenly interrupted the singing duel was a matter of secret satisfaction to Ujarak, for he felt that he was no match for Okiok, and although he had intended to fight the battle out to the best of his ability, he knew that his ultimate defeat was so probable that its abrupt termination before that event was a piece of great good-fortune.

Still, his position was unsatisfactory, for, in addition to the fact that his credit as a genuine angekok had been sadly shaken because of Ippegoo's failure, he was well aware that the combat which had been interrupted was only postponed. What was to be done in the circumstances became, therefore, the urgent question of the hour. In great perplexity he sought out his poor victim Ippegoo -- with something of the feeling, no doubt, that induces a drowning man to clutch at a straw -- and silently walked with him to a secluded spot near the neighbouring cliffs.

"Ippegoo," he said, turning round abruptly; "it is certain that you will never be an angekok."

"I don't want to be one," returned the simpleton quietly.

The wizard looked at him in surprise.

"What do you mean?" he asked sharply.

"I mean that if the torngak you were going to get for me is no better than your own, he is a fool, and I would rather not have him."

This unexpected rebellion of the worm which he had so often twisted round his finger was too much for Ujarak in his then irascible condition. He flew into a violent rage, grasped the handle of his knife, and glared fiercely at his pupil.

Ippegoo returned the look with a quiet smile.

This was perplexing. There are few things more trying to passionate men than uncertainty as to how their bursts of anger will be received. As a rule such men are merely actors. No doubt their rage may be genuine, but the manner in which they will display their anger depends very much on who are their witnesses, and what their opponents. Rage which fumes at some trifling insult, and tears off the coat, resolved on fighting, when a timid wife seeks to soothe, is likely to assume a very different appearance and follow some other course of action when a prize-fighter pulls the nose, and invites it to "do its worst."

If Ippegoo had winced, or stood on the defensive, or stepped back, or shown the slightest sign of fear, it is probable that the strong and lawless man would have stabbed him to the heart in the first impulse of his anger, for the poor youth was well acquainted with all his secrets and most of his bad intentions. But the motionless figure and the smiling face not only surprised -- it alarmed -- Ujarak. It seemed so unnatural. What powers of sudden onslaught might not lie hidden within that calm exterior? what dynamitic capacities of swift explosion might not underlie that fearless expression?

"Ippegoo," he said, stifling his anger with a painful effort, "are you going to turn against your best friend?"

"My mother is my best friend," answered the youth stoutly.

"You are right; I made a mistake."

"Why does your torngak let you make so many mistakes?"

Again a rush of anger prompted the wizard to sacrifice his quondam pupil, and once more the youth's imperturbable coolness overawed him. Bad as he was, Ujarak could not kill a smiling victim.

"Ippegoo," said the wizard, suddenly changing his tone, and becoming intensely earnest, "I see what is the matter. Angut and the Kablunet have bewitched you. But now, I tell my torngak to enter into your heart, and unbewitch you. Now, do you not feel that he has done it?"

The youth, still smiling, shook his head.

"I knew it," continued the wizard, purposely misunderstanding the sign. "You are all right again. Once more I lay my commands on you. Listen. I want you to go at once and tell Nunaga that Angut wants to see her alone."

"Who?" asked Ippegoo in surprise.

"Angut."

"What! your rival?"

"Yes; my rival. My torngak tells me that Angut wants to meet her --  alone, mind -- out on the floes at Puffin Island this afternoon."

"Are -- are you sure your torngak has made no mistake?" asked the youth, with something of his old hesitancy.

"Quite sure," replied Ujarak sternly. "Now, will you give her my message?"

"Angut's message, you mean."

"Yes, yes; I mean Angut's message," said the wizard impatiently. "You'll be sure to do what I tell you, won't you?"

"Quite sure," replied Ippegoo, the smile again overspreading his visage as he turned and quitted the spot.

Half an hour later he entered Okiok's hut in quest of Nunaga, but only her mother was there. She told him that the girl had gone off with a sledge along the coast to Moss Bay to fetch a load of moss to stuff between the logs of the hut where they required repairing, and that she had taken Kabelaw as well as Tumbler and Pussi with her.

"That's good," said Ippegoo, "then she can't and won't go to Puffin Island. I said I would tell her that Angut wants to meet her there alone."

"Who told you to tell her that?" asked Nuna.

"A fool," answered Ippegoo, promptly.

"He must indeed have been a fool," returned Nuna, "for Angut has just been helping Nunaga to harness the dogs, and he is now with my husband in his own hut."

This information caused the messenger to shut his eyes, open his mouth, and laugh silently, with evident enjoyment.

"I intended to deliver my message," he said, on recovering composure, "for I promised to do so; and I also meant to tell Nunaga that the message was a big lie."

At this amazing depth of slyness on his part, Ippegoo fell into another hearty though inaudible laugh, after which he went off to communicate his news to Okiok and Angut, but these worthies having gone out to visit some snares and traps, no one knew whither, he was obliged to seek counsel of Simek.

On hearing of the plot that seemed to be hatching, that jovial hunter at once ordered his sledge to be got ready, and started off, with two stalwart sons and his nephew Arbalik, for Moss Bay, to warn Nunaga of her enemy's intentions, and to fetch her home. But alas! for even the best laid of human plans.

It so happened that one of the Eskimo youths, who was rather inclined to tease Nunaga, had set a snow-trap for Arctic foxes about two miles from the village. As the spot was not much out of the way, the girl resolved to turn aside and visit the trap, take out the fox, if one chanced to be caught, and in any case set the trap off, or put a bit of stick into it by way of fun. The spot chanced to be only a short distance beyond the place where the wizard had met Ippegoo, but the sea-shore there was so covered with hummocks of ice that Nunaga had approached without being observed by either the wizard or the pupil. It was not more than a few minutes after Ippegoo had left on his errand to herself that she came suddenly in sight of Ujarak. He was seated, as if in contemplation, on a rock at the base of the cliff.

Suspecting no evil, Nunaga stopped her team of dogs. It was her father's best team, consisting of the swiftest and most enduring animals in the village. The wizard observed this as he rose up and approached, rejoicing to think that Fortune had favoured him. And truly Fortune -- or rather, God -- was indeed favouring the wicked man at that time, though not in the way that he imagined.

In a few moments Ujarak's plans were laid. The opportunity was too good to be lost.

"Where goes Nunaga to-day?" he asked quietly, on reaching the sledge.

"To Moss Bay," answered Nunaga.

"Has Nunaga forgotten the road?" asked Ujarak, with a slight look of surprise. "This is not the way to Moss Bay."

"It is not far out of the way," said Kabelaw, who was the more self-assertive of the two lying sisters; "we go to visit a trap, and have no time to waste with you."

As she spoke she seized the heavy Eskimo whip out of Nunaga's hand, and brought it smartly down on the backs of the whole team, which started off with a yelp, and also with a bound that well-nigh left Tumbler and Pussi behind. But she was not quick enough for Ujarak, who exclaimed with a laugh, as he leaped on to the sledge and assumed the place of driver -- 

"I too am fond of trapping, and will go with you."

He took the whip from Kabelaw, and guided the team.

A few minutes, at the speed they were going, brought them close to a point or cape which, in the form of a frowning cliff two or three hundred feet high, jutted out into the sea. To round this, and place the great cape between them and the village, was Ujarak's aim. The ice was comparatively smooth and unbroken close to the land.

"See!" exclaimed Nunaga, pointing towards the bushes on shore; "the trap is there. That is the place."

Ujarak paid no heed to her. The die was cast. He had taken the first step, and must now go through with it at all hazards. Plying the cruel whip, so as to make the dogs run at their utmost speed, he drove on until the other side of the cape was gained. Then he relaxed the speed a little, for he knew that no shriek, however loud, could penetrate the cliffs that lay between him and the Eskimo village.

Taking up a walrus-line with a running noose on it that lay on the sledge beside him, the wizard turned, dropped the noose suddenly over Kabelaw, and drew it tight, so as to pin her arms to her sides. Almost before she could realise what had occurred, he took a quick turn of the same line round Nunaga, drew the girls together, and fastened them to the sledge. They knew now full well, but too late, that Ujarak meant mischief. Screaming at the utmost pitch of their voices, they struggled to free themselves, but were too well secured for that.

The wizard now glanced at the children. For a few moments he was perplexed. They could be of no use on a long journey, and might be troublesome -- besides, they would have to be fed. There was one sure and easy method of getting rid of them. He grasped his knife-handle.

The women observed the movement, and became instantly silent with horror.

But the bold free air of Tumbler and the soft innocent look of Pussi were too much for the wizard. He abandoned the half-formed thought, and, turning to the women, said in a low, stern voice -- 

"If you cry or struggle again, these shall die."

This was enough. The poor creatures remained perfectly silent and still after that, while the wizard guided the dogs out upon the floes on a totally different route from that which led to Moss Bay.

Coming to a place where the ice had been cut up into many tracks by the Eskimos' sledges during the winter work of traffic to and from the hunting-grounds, Ujarak availed himself of the opportunity to lose, as it were, his own track among the others, so that, in the sure event of pursuit, the pursuers might be effectually baffled. The only point he had to consider after that was the necessity of diverging from the track with such care that the point of divergence should be impossible to find.

In this he was again favoured by circumstances. Having driven at full speed straight out from the land in a westerly direction, he came to a place where the ice had been considerably broken up, so that the old tracks ended abruptly in many places where lanes of water had opened up. A sharp frost had set these lanes and open spaces fast again, and the new ice was just strong enough to bear a sledge. There was some risk in venturing on it, but what of that? Nothing bold can be successfully carried out in this world without more or less of risk! At a spot where the confusion of tracks was very great, he turned at a sharp angle, got upon a sheet of new ice, and went off at greater speed than ever towards the far-south.

His aim was to travel some hundreds of miles, till he reached the Kablunet settlements on the south-western shores of Greenland, in regard to which, various and strange reports had reached the northern Eskimos from time to time. He said nothing, however, to his captives, but after driving some twenty miles or so -- which he did in a couple of hours -- he cast off their bonds, and bade them make themselves comfortable. The poor creatures were only too glad to avail themselves of the permission, for, although spring had set in, and the cold was not very severe, their constrained position had benumbed their limbs.

Tumbler and Pussi, after gazing for a considerable time at each other in a state of blank amazement at the whole proceedings, had finally dropped off to sleep on a pile of deerskins. Nunaga and Kabelaw, wrapping themselves in two of these, leaned against each other and conversed in low whispers.

And now the wizard began in good earnest a journey, which was destined to lead him, in more ways than one, far beyond the point at which he originally aimed.

He plied the whip with vigour, for well did he know that it was a race for life. If any of the men of his tribe should overtake him, he felt assured that death would be his portion.

The dogs, as we have said, were splendid animals. There were ten of them, resembling wolves both in size and appearance, each being fastened to the sledge by a single independent line. The vehicle itself was Okiok's hunting-sledge, having spears, bow and arrows, lines, bladders, etcetera, attached to it, so that, although there were no provisions on it except one small seal, which its owner had probably thought was not worth removing, the wizard knew that he possessed all the requisites for procuring a supply. The women, being also well aware of this, were filled with anxiety, for their one hope of rescue lay in their friends discovering their flight and engaging in instant and hot pursuit.

Never since the commencement of his career had Ujarak displayed such anxiety to increase the distance between himself and his tribe. Never since that long-lashed, short-handled, heavy whip was made, had it given forth such a rapid series of pistol-like reports, and never since they were pups had those ten lanky wolfish dogs stretched out their long legs and scampered over the Arctic sea as they did on that occasion. The old ice was still sufficiently firm and smooth to afford a good road, and the new ice was fortunately strong enough to bear, for the pace was tremendous. With "the world before him where to choose," and death, as he imagined, on the track behind, the wizard's spirit had risen to the point of "neck or nothing." Mile after mile was passed at highest speed and in perfect silence, except when broken by the crack of whip and yelp of dogs. Occasional roughnesses in the way were crashed over. Small obstructions were taken in flying leaps, which rendered it necessary for the poor women to cling to each other, to the sledge, and to the children, to prevent their being hurled off. Once or twice a hummock which it seemed possible to leap turned out to be too high, and obliged the driver to turn aside with such violence that the sledge went for a few seconds on one runner, and all but turned over. This at last induced some degree of caution, for to break the vehicle at the beginning of the journey would have been almost certainly fatal to the enterprise.

And oh! how earnestly Nunaga longed for a spill! In her despair, poor thing, it did not occur to her that at such a pace an upset might break the necks of the whole party.

Towards sunset they rounded a high cape, beyond which was a deep and wide bay. On this the sun shone apparently on what appeared to be open water. For one moment a look of alarm flitted over the wizard's face, as he glanced quickly shoreward to see whether the ground-ice was passable; but it was only for a moment, for immediately he perceived that the light had dazzled and deceived him. It was not water, but new ice -- smooth and refulgent as a mirror. The fringe of old ice on shore was disrupted and impassable. There was therefore only one course open to him.

Knitting his brows and clenching his teeth, Ujarak resolved to take it at all hazards. Bringing the cruel lash to bear with extreme violence, he sent the dogs howling out upon the glassy surface. At first they slipped and sprawled a good deal, but soon gathered themselves well together. They were accustomed to such work, and the friction of the sledge being reduced, they skimmed along with ease.

Although strong enough to bear, the ice undulated terribly as they swept over it, and sent forth rending sounds, which cannot be conceived by those whose experience of young ice has been derived chiefly from lakelets and ponds. Dogs in such circumstances are apt to become terrified and to stop, in which case immersion is almost certain. But Ujarak gave his team no time to think. With lash and voice he urged them on until they were nearly frantic. The undulations became greater as they advanced, and the rending sounds continuous. Still the wizard plied his whip and shouted. Indeed it was his only chance. At the other side of the bay the old ice still adhered to the shore. If that could be reached, they would be safe. Eagerly the women strained their eyes, and even stretched out their hands as if to grasp the shore, for the fear of instant death had banished all other thoughts. A few minutes more, and Ujarak, standing up in his eagerness, flourishing the great whip, and shouting at the pitch of his voice, drove the yelling dogs off the crackling sheet of ice to a place of safety on the solid floe.

It did not require the wizard's altered tone to inform the sagacious animals that the danger was past. Down they flopped at once to rest, panting vehemently, and with tongues out; but they were not permitted to rest long, Ujarak's fear of pursuit was so great. Even while securing on the sledge the articles that had been disarranged, he could not help casting frequent suspicious glances in the direction from which they had come, for guilt is ever ready to anticipate retribution even when it is far distant. As soon as the fastenings were arranged he prepared to continue the flight.

"Where do you take us to?" asked Kabelaw, in a tone of humility which was very foreign to her nature.

"You shall know that in time," was the stern reply.

Nunaga was too much frightened to speak, but little Tumbler was not.

"Bad -- bad man!" he exclaimed, with a fierce look that caused the wizard for a moment to smile grimly.

Little Pussi was so horrified at the reckless presumption of the remark, that she hid her face in Nunaga's lap and did not venture to look up for some time.

Getting on the sledge without another word, the wizard gave a hint to the dogs which was so unmistakable that they sprang up and resumed their journey at full gallop. Slowly the sun went down, and sea and berg and snow-clad cliff grew grey in the light of departing day. Still the panting team sped on over the frozen sea. Soon it became too dark to travel with safety. The pace was slackened. The run became a canter, then a trot, and then a walk. At last the driver stopped, jumped off the sledge, and ordered the women to get out the seal and feed the dogs. He also gave them permission to help themselves, but as there was no lamp or fire, it was evident that he meant them to eat their supper raw.

Leaving them while thus engaged, he walked away out of sight.

"I won't have raw seal," said Tumbler, in that tone of petulant resolve which tells of spoilt-childism.

"An' me won't too," said Pussi, profiting by example.

"But there's nothing else," said Nunaga, gently.

"Yes, there is. I have got some cold seal in my boots -- from this morning's breakfast," said Kabelaw, extracting a goodly-sized morsel; "I never go on a journey, however short, without a bit of cooked meat."

Lest the reader should be perplexed here, we may explain that some Eskimo ladies often make the wide tops of their long sealskin boots do duty for pockets.

The party was still engaged in discussing the delicacy referred to, and commenting in pitiable tones on their situation, when Ujarak returned, bade them resume their places, jumped on the sledge, and continued to advance. In half an hour the moon rose in a clear sky. The stars shone brightly, and to add to the beauty of the scene, the aurora borealis played and shot about vividly overhead, enabling them to resume a rapid gallop.

It was not till the night was far advanced, and his dogs were nearly worn-out, and full sixty miles lay between him and his native village, that Ujarak felt himself to be comparatively safe, and halted for a prolonged rest.

Without a word, he made for himself a shelter with a bear-skin under a low bush, devoured a lump of raw seal's flesh, and then went to sleep, leaving the women to look after themselves, the dogs, and the children, as best they might. Fortunately, they were well able to do so, and, being very weary, were not long in doing it. While they went about the work, however, they could not help remarking the unusually morose and surly manner of their master, and expressed the opinion that he was already troubled with that mental complaint to which we give the name of remorse.

And they were right. Bad as the wizard was, he had hitherto kept within the bounds of Eskimo propriety; but now at last he had overstepped those bounds and become a criminal -- an outlaw. By one hasty act he had cut, for ever, the cords which had united him to his kindred.



Chapter Seventeen.

Tells Of Despair And A Wild Pursuit.

On discovering that Nunaga and the children were not at Moss Bay, and that there were no fresh sledge tracks in that region to tell of their whereabouts, Simek drove back to the village at a wild scamper, in a state of mind very much the reverse of jovial. His hope was that the girl might have been to some other locality, and had perhaps returned during his absence; but the first glance at Nuna put that hope to flight, for the poor woman was in a state of terrible anxiety.

Cheery little Kunelik and her mild son did their best to comfort her, but without success, for she knew well the determined character of the man who had probably carried off her children.

"Has she not come back?" demanded Simek, appearing, like an infuriated Polar bear, at the inside opening of the passage to Okiok's mansion.

"No," gasped Nuna.

Simek said no more, but backed out faster than he had come in. Ippegoo followed him.

"Run, Ippe; tell all the men to get all their sledges and dogs ready, and come here to me."

Ippegoo ran off at once, while the energetic hunter rearranged the fastenings of his own sledge and team as if for a long journey.

He was thus engaged when Okiok and Angut were seen approaching the village at an easy trot. Evidently they knew nothing of what had occurred. Simek ran out to meet them. A few words sufficed to explain. The news seemed to stun both men at first, but the after-effect on each was wonderfully different. The blood rushed to Okiok's face like a torrent. He clenched his hands and teeth, glared and stamped, and went on like one deranged -- as indeed for the moment he was. Angut, on the other hand, was perfectly self-possessed and subdued, but his heaving chest, quivering nostrils, compressed lips, and frowning brows told that a volcano of emotion raged within.

Turning suddenly to Okiok, he seized him by both arms as if his hands were vices.

"Listen," he said, with a sort of subdued intensity, that had the effect of quieting his friend; "get out your sledge and dogs."

"All are ready," interposed Simek, eagerly.

Angut waited for no more, but, leaving his friends, ran off at full speed towards the village. Okiok and Simek leaped on their respective sledges and followed.

On arriving, it was found that most of the active men of the tribe were already assembled, with dogs harnessed, provisions and hunting-gear strapped down, and all ready for a journey of any length.

To these Angut gave directions in a tone and manner that deeply impressed his friends. Not that he was loud or eager or violent; on the contrary, he was unusually calm, but deadly pale, and with an air of tremendous resolution about him that made the men listen intently and obey with promptitude. In a very few minutes he had sent off one and another in almost every direction, with instructions where to go, what to do, and how and when to return, in the event of failure. Then he leaped on his own sledge, and turned to Red Rooney, who was standing by.

"Ridroonee," he said, in a somewhat sad tone, "I go to find Nunaga. If I succeed not, you will see me no more."

He held out his hand to take farewell in the Kablunet's fashion.

"What say you?" exclaimed Rooney, taken by surprise, "Nonsense! see you no -- Pooh! -- hold on a bit."

He ran into his friend's hut, and quickly returned with his bear-skin sleeping-bag and a small wallet which contained his little all.

"Now then," he cried, jumping on the sledge, "away you go as soon as you like. I'm with 'ee, lad."

Angut shook his head.

"But the Kablunet is not yet strong enough to travel," said the Eskimo, doubtfully.

"The Kablunet is strong enough to pitch you over his head; and he'll do it too, if you don't drive on."

With another doubtful look and shake of the head, Angut seized his whip. The dogs, knowing the signal well, sprang up. At that moment Angut observed the little eyes of Kannoa peering at him wistfully.

"Come," he said, holding out a hand.

The old woman's visage beamed with joy, as she seized the hand, and scrambled on the sledge. Then the lash came round with the wonted crack. The dogs winced, but did not suffer, for Angut was merciful to his beasts, and away they went at full speed -- Okiok having dashed off in similar fashion with his two sons and Simek in another direction a few minutes before them.

North, south, east, and west, on land and sea, did those Eskimos search for tracks of the fugitives; but the whole immediate neighbourhood was so cut up in all directions by the daily out-going and in-coming of their own hunters, that the discovering of a special track was not easy -- indeed, almost impossible. All day they sped over the ice and snow in widening circles. When night came, they waited till the moon arose, and then continued the search. It was not till the forenoon of the following day that the unsuccessful searchers began to drop in one by one, worn-out and disheartened.

Nuna and the other women had breakfast ready for them. Little was said, for the women were depressed, and the men, after eating, immediately sought much-needed repose. It was nearly evening before Okiok and his sons returned.

"No sign anywhere," he said in reply to his poor wife's mute inquiry. "Ippegoo," he added, turning to the youth, whose woe-begone expression at another time would have been ludicrous, "I will sleep for some time. Let the dogs be well fed all round, and be ready to start with me when the moon rises."

Without another word, he stretched himself on the floor, pillowed his head on a deerskin, and went to sleep almost on the instant.

Meanwhile Angut had driven straight to Moss Bay. His search was not one of a wild haphazard nature. Despite the agitation of his breast, his mind was clear and his head cool. Judging that Nunaga must at least have started for her intended destination, whatever might afterwards have induced her to change her mind, he drove slowly along, observing with a lynx eye everything that looked in the slightest degree like a divergence from the route. The consequence was, that on reaching the place where the divergence had actually taken place, he pulled up, and got off the sledge to examine.

"You're right," remarked Rooney, who accompanied his friend, while old Kannoa remained with the dogs. "It's easy to see that a sledge has turned off here."

"Quite easy," responded the Eskimo, with suppressed eagerness; "we will follow."

Running back, they turned the dogs into the fresh track, and soon came to the place where Ujarak had joined the women. Angut pointed to the footprints with a gleam of unusual ferocity in his eyes. For some time they could easily follow the track, and went along at a rapid pace; but when it led them to the point where it joined other tracks, the difficulty of following became great. Of course Angut at once understood the object of this ruse, and became more attentive to every mark that seemed in the remotest degree to indicate another divergence, but failed to hit upon the spot, and finally came to a halt when far out on the floes where drift had obliterated the old sledge-marks, and a recent track could not have escaped notice. Then he made a wide circular sweep, which was meant to cut across all the tracks that radiated from the village.

In this manoeuvre he was more successful.

Towards evening he came upon a recent track which led straight to the southward.

"Got him at last!" exclaimed Rooney, with a shout of excitement and satisfaction.

"I think so," said Angut, as he went down on his knees and carefully examined the marks on the floe. His opinion was clearly shown by his starting up suddenly, jumping on the sledge again, flourishing his whip savagely, and setting off at a pace that obliged Rooney to seize the lashings with both hands and hold on tight. Old Kannoa did the same, and stuck to the sledge like a limpet, with her chin resting on her knees and her sharp little eyes gazing anxiously ahead.

Soon they came to the rough ground that had tried the quality of the wizard's sledge, and the vehicle bumped over the ice at such a rate that the poor old woman was almost pitched out.

"Hallo! hold on!" cried Rooney, as they went over a hummock with a crash that made Kannoa gasp, "you'll kill the poor thing if you -- "

He stopped short, for another crash almost tumbled himself over the stern of the vehicle.

Angut was roused to desperation. He scarcely knew what he was doing, as he lashed the yelping team furiously, hoping that when he should pass the cape ahead of him he would come in sight of the fugitives.

"Here, catch hold of me, old woman," cried Rooney, putting an arm round the poor creature's waist; "sit on my legs. They'll act something like a buffer to your old bones."

Kannoa gave a sort of lively chuckle at the novelty of the situation, let go her hold of the sledge, and made a sudden plunge at Rooney, grasping him tight round the neck with both arms. She was little more than a baby in the seaman's huge grasp, nevertheless, having only one arm to spare, and with a sledge that not only bumped, but swung about like a wild thing, he found her quite as much as he could manage.

The night had fairly set in when the cape was rounded, so that nothing could be distinguished, not even the track they had been following -- and travelling became dangerous.

"No use to push on, Angut," remarked Rooney, as his friend pulled up; "we must have patience."

"Yes; the moon will be up soon," returned his friend; "we will now rest and feed."

The resting meant sitting there in the dark on the side of the sleigh, and the feeding consisted in devouring a lump of seal's flesh raw. Although not very palatable, this was eminently profitable food, as Angut well knew. As for Rooney, he had learned by that time to eat whatever came in his way with thankfulness -- when hungry, and not to eat at all when otherwise.

The moon rose at last, and revealed the sheet of glassy ice which had previously disconcerted Ujarak. Angut also beheld it with much concern, and went on foot to examine it. He returned with an anxious look.

"They have crossed," he said moodily, "but the ice has cracked much, and my sledge is, I fear, heavier than theirs."

"We can walk, you know, and so lighten it," said Rooney.

"No; it is only by a dash at full speed that we can do it. Will my friend run the risk?"

"He would not be your friend if he were not willing," returned the seaman gravely; "but what about Kannoa? It's not fair to risk her life."

"We cannot leave her behind," said Angut, with a perplexed glance at the cowering figure on the sledge. "She could not return to the village on foot. That would be greater risk to her than going on with us."

At this point the old woman looked up with a sort of pleasant grin, and croaked -- 

"Kannoa is not heavy. Take her with you. She is quite willing to live or die with Angut and Ridroonee."

With a slight smile the Eskimo resumed his place and whip. Rooney patted Kannoa on the head as he sat down beside her, and called her a "brave old girl."

Another moment, and the dogs were out on the glassy plain, galloping as well as they could, and yelping as much from fear of the rending and bending ice as the cracking whip.

They had not advanced twenty yards when one of the sledge-runners broke through. This brought them to a sudden halt. Next moment the sledge went down, and Angut found himself struggling with the dogs in the sea. Fortunately Rooney, being near the back part of the sledge, was able to roll off in a sort of back-somersault before the vehicle was quite submerged. Even in the act he did not forget Kannoa. He made a blind grasp at her in passing, but found her not, for that remarkable woman, at the first alarm, and being well aware of what was coming, had sprawled off at the rear, and was already on the ice in safety.

The two now set to work to rescue Angut and the dogs. The former had cut the latter free from the sledge, so that it was not difficult to haul them out along with their master. For it must be remembered that, although the thin ice had failed to bear the sledge, it was sufficiently strong to support the individuals singly.

To get the sledge out of the water was, however, a matter of much greater difficulty, but they accomplished it in the course of an hour or so. The process of doing this helped to dry Angut's garments, which was fortunate. It was also fortunate that the sharp spring frost, which had set fast the space of open water, had by that time given way, so that there was no fear of evil consequences from the ducking either to dogs or man.

But now came the serious question, What was to be done?

"It is of no use trying it again," said Angut, in a frame of mind amounting almost to despair.

"Could we not send Kannoa back with the sledge, and you and I make sail after them on foot?" asked Rooney.

Angut shook his head despondingly.

"Of no use," he said; "they have the best dogs in our village. As well might a rabbit pursue a deer. No; there is but one course. The land-ice is impassable, but the floes out on the sea seem still to be fast. If they break up while we are on them we shall be lost. Will Ridroonee agree to take old Kannoa back to her friends, and I will go forward with the sledge alone?"

"What say you, Kannoa?" asked Rooney, turning to the old woman with a half-humorous look.

"Kannoa says she will live or die with Angut and Ridroonee," she replied firmly.

"You're a trump!" exclaimed the seaman in English. Then, turning to the Eskimo -- 

"You see, Angut, it's impossible to get rid of us, so up anchor, my boy, and off we go seaward. The truth is, I ought to feel more in my element when we get out to sea."

Seeing that they were resolved, Angut made no further objection, but, directing the dogs' heads away from the land, flourished his long whip over them, and set off at as break-neck a pace as before over the seaward ice-floes.



Chapter Eighteen.

A Terrible Encounter, Disastrous Results, And Singular Termination.

Let us return now to the wizard and his captives.

After travelling for several days at the utmost possible speed, the guilty man began to feel at ease as regarded pursuit, and commenced to advance at a more reasonable rate, giving the poor dogs time for sufficient rest, and going out once or twice on the floes to procure fresh supplies of seal-flesh for himself and his party.

The thaw which had by that time set steadily in had not broken up the old ice to the southward, so that no more thin ice or open water was met with. But although he had thus begun to take things more easily, Ujarak did not by any means waste time. The wretched man was very morose, even savage, insomuch that he would scarcely reply to the questions which were timidly put to him at times by the women. It was evident that he repented of his hasty flight, and no doubt was rendered desperate by the reflection that the matter was by that time past remedy.

One morning, on rounding one of those bluff precipitous capes which jut out from the western coast of Greenland into Baffin's Bay, they came unexpectedly in sight of a band of Eskimos who were travelling northwards.

Ujarak pulled up at once, and for some moments seemed uncertain what to do. He had not yet been observed, so that there was a possibility of turning aside, if he were so disposed, and hiding among the rugged masses of ice which lined the bottom of the cliffs. Before he could make up his mind, however, on the subject, a loud shout from the Eskimos showed that he had been observed.

Turning sharply, and with a savage scowl, to the women, he said in a low voice -- 

"If you say that I have run away with you, I will kill you and the children."

A smile of contempt flickered on the face of Kabelaw at the moment. Observing it, the wizard added -- 

"There will be no escape for you. Your death will be certain, for even if these people were to kill me, and carry you back to the village, my torngak would follow you and kill you."

He said no more, for he knew well that he had said enough.

At first sight of the Eskimo band, Kabelaw's heart had leaped for joy, because she at once made up her mind to explain how matters stood, and claim protection, which she had no doubt they would grant. But some Eskimos, not less than many civilised people, are deeply imbued with superstition, and the bare idea of an invisible torngak pursuing her to the death -- in the possibility of which she and Nunaga more or less believed -- was too much for her. In fear and trembling she made up her mind to be silent, and submit to her fate. It need scarcely be added, so did her more timid companion.

"Where do you come from?" asked the leader of the party when they met.

"From the far-away there," replied the wily wizard, pointing northward. "I do not ask where you come from."

"Why not?" demanded the leader, in some surprise.

"Because I know already," answered Ujarak, "that you come from the far-away there," pointing southward; "and I know that, because I am an angekok. You have come from a spot near to the land where the Kablunets have settled, and you are bringing iron and other things to exchange with my kinsmen for horns of the narwhal and tusks of the walrus."

Knowing as he did from rumour that Eskimos from the Moravian settlements were in the habit of travelling northward for the purposes of barter, (though they had not up to that time travelled so far north as his own tribe), and observing bundles of hoop-iron on the sledges, it did not require much penetration on the part of a quick mind like that of Ujarak to guess whence the strangers had come, and what their object was. Nevertheless, the leader and most of the party who had circled round the wizard and his sledge, opened their eyes in amazement at this smart statement of their affairs.

"My brother must indeed be a great angekok, for he seems to know all things. But we did not come from near the land where the Kablunets have built their huts. We have come from it," said the matter-of-fact leader.

"Did I not say that?" returned Ujarak promptly.

"No; you said near it -- whereas we came from it, from inside of itself."

"Inside of itself must be very near it, surely!" retorted the wizard, with a grave look of appeal to those around him.

A laugh and nod of approval was the reply, for Eskimos appreciate even the small end of a joke, however poor, and often allow it to sway their judgment more powerfully than the best of reasoning -- in which characteristic do they not strongly resemble some people who ought to know better? The matter-of-fact leader smiled grimly, and made no further objection to the wizard's claim to correct intelligence.

"Now," continued Ujarak, for he felt the importance of at once taking and keeping the upper hand, "my tribe is not far from here; but they are going away on a hunting expedition, so you must lose no time, else they will be gone before you arrive. They want iron very much. They have horns and tusks in plenty. They will be glad to see you. My torngak told me you were coming, so I came out a long way to meet you. I brought my wives and children with me, because I want to visit the Kablunets, and inquire about their new religion."

He paused for a moment or two, to let his tissue of lies have full effect, but the very matter-of-fact leader took advantage of the pause to ask how it was that if he, Ujarak, had been told by his torngak of the coming of the trading party, he had failed to tell his tribe not to go on a hunting expedition, but to await their arrival.

"Ha! ho!" exclaimed several of the Eskimos, turning a sharp gaze upon the wizard, as much as to say, "There's a puzzler for you, angekok!"

But Ujarak, although pulled up for a moment, was not to be overturned easily. "Torngaks," he said, "do not always reveal all they know at once. If they did, angekoks would only have to listen to all they had to tell on every subject, and there would be an end of it; they would have no occasion to use their judgments at all. No; the torngaks tell what they choose by degrees. Mine told me to leave my tribe, and visit the Kablunets. On the way he told me more, but not all."

This explanation seemed quite satisfactory to some, but not to all of them. Seeing this, the wizard hastened to turn their minds from the subject by asking how far it was to the land of the Kablunets.

"Four suns' journey," replied the leader.

"It is the same to the village of my kindred," exclaimed Ujarak, getting quickly on his sledge. "I must hasten on, and so must you. Time must not be wasted."

With a flourish of his whip, he started his team at full speed, scattering the Eskimos right and left, and scouring over the ice like the wind.

For a moment or two the leader of the band thought of pursuit, but seeing at a glance that none of his teams were equal to that of Ujarak, and feeling, perhaps, that it might be dangerous to pursue an angekok, he gave up the idea, and resumed his northward route.

For two days more the wizard continued his journey, encamping each night at sunset, eating his supper apart, making his bed of bearskins in the lee of a shrub or under the shelter of an overhanging cliff, and leaving his captives to make themselves comfortable as best they could on the sledge. This they did without difficulty, all of them being well accustomed to rough it, and having plenty of bear and deerskins to keep them warm. The dogs also contributed to this end by crowding round the party, with deep humility of expression, as close as they were allowed to come.

At the end of these two days an incident occurred which totally changed the aspect of affairs.

On the morning of the third day they started with the dawn, and drove steadily southward for a couple of hours. They had just traversed a small bay, and were close to the high cape which formed its southern extremity, when one of the bars of the sledge broke, rendering a halt necessary. Breaking the gloomy silence which he had so long maintained, the wizard spoke:

"Go," he said, "cook some food under the cliffs there. I will mend the sledge."

The women replied, not by words, but by the more emphatic method of at once obeying the order. Kabelaw seized and shouldered a large piece of raw seal's flesh. Nunaga took up little Pussi with one hand, and the materials for producing fire with the other, and followed her companion. Tumbler brought up the rear, staggering under the weight of the cooking-lamp.

They had only a couple of hundred yards to go. In a few minutes Kabelaw was busy under the cliffs producing fire, in the usual Eskimo fashion with two pieces of dry wood, while her friend set up the lamp and sliced the meat. The children, inheriting as they did the sterling helpful propensities of their parents, went actively about, interfering with everything, in their earnest endeavours to assist.

"Isn't he strange?" remarked Kabelaw, glancing in the direction of Ujarak, as she diligently twirled the fire-stick between her palms; "so different from what he was."

"I think," said Nunaga, pouring oil into the lamp, "that he is sorry for what he has done."

"No; him not sorry," said Tumbler, as he assisted Pussi to rise, for she had tripped and fallen; "him not sorry -- him sulky."

Kabelaw took no notice of this juvenile observation, but, blowing the spark which she had at last evoked into a flame, expressed some doubt as to Ujarak's repentance, and said she had never seen him in a state of sorry-tude before. Whereupon Tumbler pertly rejoined that he had often seen him in a state of sulky-tude!

The damage to the sledge was slight. It was soon repaired, and the wizard brought it round with him to the spot where breakfast was being got ready.

This was the first time he had eaten with them since the flight began. His manner, however, was not much changed. He was still silent and gloomy, though once or twice he condescended to make a remark or two about the weather.

When a man talks upon the weather, the ice is fairly broken -- even in Arctic regions -- and from that well-nigh universal starting-point Ujarak went on to make a few more remarks. He did so very sternly, however, as though to protest against the idea that he was softening to the smallest extent.

"Nunaga," he said, holding up a finger, "in two suns, or less, we shall arrive at the land where the Kablunets have built houses and settled down."

We may explain that the wizard here referred to the Moravians, who had about that time sent out their first mission to Greenland. Of course he knew nothing of the object those self-sacrificing men had in view in thus establishing themselves in Greenland, only vague rumours having at that time reached his distant tribe. All he knew was that they were Kablunets, or foreigners, and that they had something mysterious to tell about the God of the Kablunets.

Nunaga received Ujarak's information in silence, and waited for more.

"And now," he continued, "I want you to say when you arrive there that you are my wife."

"But I am not your wife," returned Nunaga gently, yet firmly.

The wizard frowned, then he glared fiercely, then he looked sad, then there settled on his visage a sulky look which gradually faded away, leaving nothing but a simple blank behind. After that he opened his lips, and was about to speak, when Nunaga opened her pretty eyes to their widest, also her pretty mouth, and gave vent to a tremendous shriek, which, reverberating among the cliffs, caused all the creatures around her, canine and human, to leap electrically to their feet.

To account for this we must take the reader round to the other side of the cliff, at the foot of which the party sat enjoying their breakfast.

There, all ignorant of the human beings so near at hand, sauntered an enormous Polar bear. It seated itself presently on its haunches, and swayed itself gently to and fro, with its head on one side, as if admiring the Arctic scenery. There was not much more than a space of five hundred yards between the parties, but owing to the great promontory which formed an effectual screen between them, and the fact that the light air blew from the land to the sea, neither bear nor dogs had scented each other.

It seemed as if Bruin had only just got out of bed, for his little eyes blinked sleepily, his motions were exceedingly slow, and his yawns were frequent as well as remonstrative in tone. Doubtless bears, like men, dislike early rising!

Having gazed at the scenery long enough, and shaken off its lethargy to some extent, the bear began probably to think of food. Then it arose, sauntered round the promontory, and presented itself to the more than astonished gaze of Nunaga, who was the only one that chanced to sit facing in its direction.

The resulting shriek and its consequences seemed to have a petrifying effect on the animal, for it stood stock still for some moments, and simply gazed. This condition of things was instantly changed by three of the dogs breaking their traces, and rushing wildly at the animal. With two nimble pats of its great paws it sent two of the dogs into the air, almost killing them, while the third it dismissed, yelling hideously, with a bad tear in its flank.

Quick as thought, Ujarak set the other dogs free, and the whole pack ran open-mouthed at their natural foe, but another dog being promptly sent away howling, the rest were cowed, and confined themselves to barking furiously round their powerful foe.

Apparently this was an old bear, confident perhaps in its strength, and used, it might be, to dog-assaults, for it paid no further attention to its canine opponents, but advanced with a very threatening aspect towards the sledge.

It is pretty well-known that two Eskimo men of average strength and courage are more than a snatch for the Polar bear, if armed with spears. The mode of attack is simple. The two men separate. The one who arranges to be the slayer of the animal advances on its left side; the other on its right. Thus the victim's attention is distracted; it becomes undecided which foe to attack first. The hunter on the right settles the question by running in, and giving him a prick with the spear. Turning in fury on this man, the bear exposes its left side to the full force of a deadly thrust of the spear, which usually reaches the heart, and finishes it. The chances, however, are very much in favour of the bear when the man is alone. Hence, single hunters are not fond of attacking a Polar bear, except when unusually strong and courageous, as well as confident of their dexterity.

Now it happened that Ujarak, although strong and courageous enough, was not over-confident of his dexterity. With a tried comrade, he would readily have faced any bear in the Arctic regions, but on this occasion he felt he had to depend entirely on himself.

Seizing a spear quickly, he looked at the approaching animal, and glanced uneasily at Nunaga.

"If I am killed," he said, "you will have to defend the children."

There was a tone of pathos in the voice, which showed that no touch of selfish fear influenced the man.

Hitherto the women and children had stood absolutely horror-struck and helpless, but the vigorous nature of Kabelaw came to her aid.

"We will help you," she suddenly cried, catching up two spears, and thrusting one into the hands of Nunaga; "two women may perhaps be equal to one man."

The wizard smiled grimly in spite of circumstances at this heroic action, but there was no time for reply, as the bear was already close to them.

Poor, timid Nunaga, trembling from skin to marrow, had just courage enough to grasp her spear and follow Kabelaw. The latter understood well how to act. She had often seen her own kinsmen do the work that was required of her. As for the two little ones, they continued throughout to stand limp and motionless, with eyes and mouths wide-open.

Of course Kabelaw ran to the right, and Ujarak to the left of the foe. Advancing, as in duty bound, a step or two ahead of her male friend, the former proceeded to prick the bear; but when the monster rose on his hind legs, and towered to a height of eight feet, if not more, her heart failed her. Nevertheless, she made a gallant thrust, which might have at least incommoded the animal had not the spear received a blow which not only sent it spinning out of the woman's hand, but hurled poor Kabelaw herself on the ice, a small lump of which cut open her temple, and rendered her for the moment insensible. At the same instant the wizard took prompt advantage of his opportunity, and delivered what should have been the death-wound. But the very energy of the man foiled him, for the spear entered too near the shoulder, and stuck upon the bone.

The fall of Kabelaw had the peculiar effect of producing a gush of desperation in the tender heart of Nunaga, which amounted, almost, to courage. With a lively shriek she shut her eyes, rushed in on the bear, and gave it a dab in the side, which actually sent her weapon into the flesh about an inch deep, and there it stuck fast.

Feeling this new sting, the bear turned on her with a gasp of rage. She looked up. The great paws were extended over her head. The dreadful jaws were open. Letting go her weapon, Nunaga cast up her arms, shut her eyes again, and sank shuddering on the ice. Down came the bear, but at that critical moment an irresistible force effected what the united party had failed to accomplish. The butt of Nunaga's spear chanced to enter a crack in the ice, where it stuck fast, and the weight of the descending animal sent the point through flesh, ribs, and heart, and out at his backbone. The spear broke of course, but in breaking it turned the monster on one side, and saved the poor girl from being smothered. At the same moment Ujarak had made another desperate thrust, which, unlike the former, entered deep, but being misdirected, did not touch a vital part. In the violence of his effort the man fell, and the dying bear rolled upon him, rendering him also insensible.

When poor little Nunaga, recovering from her state of semi-consciousness, opened her eyes, and sat up, her first impression was that the bear, the wizard, and Kabelaw lay around her dead.

Bad as the state of matters was, however, it was not quite so bad as that. The poor girl's first act was to burst into a hysterical fit of laughter -- so wonderfully constituted are some female minds -- and she followed that up with an equally hysterical fit of weeping. But to do her justice, the fits did not last above half a minute. Then she suddenly stopped, dried her eyes, jumped up, and, pursing her lips and knitting her brows, ran to her friend, whom she found just returning to a state of consciousness.

"What has happened?" asked Kabelaw, in a dazed manner, as she looked at the blood which flowed from her wound.

Nunaga did not answer, but ran to the bear, which was quite dead, and began to drag it off Ujarak. With great difficulty, and by first hauling at its neck and then at its tail, she managed to move it just enough to set the man's head and chest free. The wizard, thus partially relieved, soon began to show signs of returning life. In a few minutes he was able to sit up and drag his right leg from under the bear, but he was much exhausted, and only got it free after great exertion.

"Are you hurt?" asked Nunaga, in a tone of commiseration.

"Not much, I think. I -- I am not sure. I feel as if I had been much shaken, and my leg is painful. I hope," he added, feeling the limb with both hands, "that it is not -- "

He finished the sentence with a deep groan. But it was not a groan of pain so much as of despair, for his leg, he found, was broken just above the ankle.

It may perhaps require a little thought on the part of those who dwell in civilised lands to understand fully all that this implied to the Eskimo. If it did not absolutely mean death by exposure and starvation, it at all events meant life under extremely uncomfortable conditions of helplessness and pain; it meant being completely at the mercy of two women whom he had grievously wronged; and it meant that, at the best, he could not avoid ultimately falling into the hands of his angry and outraged kinsmen. All this the wizard perceived at a glance -- hence his groan.

Now it may not be out of place to remark here that the qualities of mercy, pity, forgiveness, etcetera, are not by any means confined to the people of Christian lands. We believe that, as our Saviour "died for the sins of the whole world," so the Spirit of Jesus is to be found working righteousness among individuals of even the worst and most savage nations of the earth. The extreme helplessness and pain to which her enemy was reduced, instead of gratifying revenge in Nunaga, aroused in her gentle breast feelings of the tenderest pity; and she not only showed her sympathy in her looks and tones, but by her actions, for she at once set to work to bind up the broken limb to the best of her ability.

In this operation she was gleefully assisted by little Tumbler and Pussi, who, having recovered from their horror when the bear fell dead, seemed to think that all succeeding acts were part of a play got up for their special amusement.

When the surgical work was done, Nunaga again turned her attention to Kabelaw. She had indeed felt a little surprised that her friend seemed to take no interest in the work in which she was engaged, and was still more surprised when, on going up to her, she found her sitting in the same position in which she had left her, and wearing the same stupid half-stunned look on her face. A few words sufficed to reveal the truth, and, to Nunaga's consternation, she found that her friend was suffering from what is known among the civilised as concussion of the brain.

When the full significance of her condition at last forced itself upon the poor girl, when she came to see clearly that she was, as it were, cast away in the Arctic wilderness, with the whole care of a helpless man and woman and two equally helpless children, besides a sledge and team of dogs, devolving on her she proved herself to be a true heroine by rising nobly to the occasion.

Her first act was to return, with characteristic humility, and ask Ujarak what she must do.

"You must take the dogs and sledge and the children," he answered in a low voice, "and save yourselves."

"What! and leave you here?"

"Yes; I am bad. It is well that I should die."

"But Kabelaw?" said the girl, with a glance at her friend. "She has got the head-sickness and cannot help herself."

"Leave her to die also," said the wizard carelessly; "she is not worth much."

"Never!" cried Nunaga, with emphasis. "I will save her, I will save you all. Did you not tell me that the village of the Kablunets is only two suns from here?"

"That is so, Nunaga."

"Can you creep to the sledge?" asked the girl quickly.

"I think I can."

"Try, then."

The wizard tried, and found that he could creep on his hands and one knee, dragging the wounded limb on the ice. It gave him excruciating pain, but he was too much of a man to mind that. In a few minutes he was lying at full length on the sledge.

"Now, Tumbler and Pussi," said Nunaga, "cover him well up with skins, while I go and fetch Kabelaw, but don't touch his leg."

She found that Kabelaw could walk slowly, with support, and after much exertion succeeded in getting her also laid out upon the sledge alongside of the wizard. Then Nunaga tied them both firmly down with long walrus-lines. She also attached the children to the sledge with lines round their waists, to prevent their being jolted off. Having thus made things secure, and having cut off some choice portions of the bear for food, she harnessed the dogs, grasped the whip, mounted to the driver's place, brought the heavy lash down with wonderful effect on the backs of the whole team, and set off at full gallop towards the land where Kablunets were said to dwell.

Fortunately, the ice was smooth most of the way, for jolting was not only injurious to poor Kabelaw, but gave the wizard great additional pain. It also had the effect of bumping Tumbler and Pussi against each other, and sometimes strained their lashings almost to the breaking point.

At night Nunaga selected as comfortable a spot as she could find under the shelter of the Greenland cliffs, and there -- after detaching the children, re-dressing Ujarak's leg, arranging the couch of the semi-conscious Kabelaw, and feeding the hungry dogs -- she set up her lamp, and cooked savoury seal and bear cutlets for the whole party. And, not withstanding the prejudices with which fastidious people may receive the information, it is an unquestionable fact that the frying of seal and bear cutlets sends a most delicious influence up the nose, though perhaps it may require intense hunger and an Eskimo's digestion to enable one to appreciate to the full the value of such food.

These labours ended, Nunaga put the little ones to bed, made the wizard and Kabelaw as comfortable as possible for the night, fastened up the dogs, and, spreading her own couch in the most convenient spot beside them, commenced her well-earned night's repose. The first night her bed was a flat rock; the second, a patch of sand; but on both occasions the cheery little woman softened the place with a thick bear-skin, and, curling up, covered herself with the soft skin of a reindeer.

And what were the thoughts of the wicked Ujarak as he lay there, helpless and suffering, silently watching Nunaga? We can tell, for he afterwards made a partial confession of them.

"She is very pretty," he thought, "and very kind. I always knew that, but now I see that she is much more. She is forgiving. I took her from her home by force, and would have made her my wife against her will -- yet she is good to me. I have been harsh, unkind, cruel, sulky to her ever since we left home -- yet she is good to me. I have torn her from all those whom she loves, with the intention that she should never see them again -- yet she is good to me. She might have left me to die, and might easily have gone home by herself, and it would have served me right, but -- but she is good to me. I am not a man. I am a beast -- a bear -- a fox -- a walrus -- "

As the wizard thought thus, a couple of tears overflowed their boundaries, and rolled down the hitherto untried channel of his cheeks.

Do you think, reader, that this line of thought and emotion, even in a savage, was unnatural? Is not the same principle set forth in Scripture in reference to far higher things? Need we remind you that it is "the goodness of God which leadeth thee, (or any one else), to repentance?"

As it is in the spiritual world, so is it in the natural. At the time of which we write the same grand principle was powerfully at work in Nature. "Thick-ribbed ice," which the united forces of humanity could not have disrupted, was being silently yet rapidly dissolved by the genial influence of the sun, insomuch that on the evening of the day after Nunaga had been compelled by circumstances to assume command of the expedition, several sheets of open water appeared where ice had been expected, and the anxious charioteer was more than once obliged to risk the lives of the whole party by driving out to sea on the floes -- that being better than the alternative of remaining where they were, to die of starvation.

But by that time they were not far distant from the Kablunet settlements.



Chapter Nineteen.

Spring Returns -- Kayak Evolutions -- Angut Is Puzzled.

Why some people should wink and blink as well as smirk when they are comfortable is a question which might possibly be answered by cats if they could speak, but which we do not profess to understand. Nevertheless we are bound to record the fact that on the very day when Nunaga and her invalids drew near to the first Moravian settlements in Greenland, Ippegoo slowly mounted a hillside which overlooked the icy sea, flung himself down on a moss-clad bank, and began to wink and blink and smirk in a way that surpassed the most comfortable cat that ever revelled on rug or slumbered in sunshine.

Ippegoo was supremely happy, and his felicity, like that of most simple folk, reposed on a simple basis. It was merely this -- that Spring had returned to the Arctic regions.

Spring! Ha! who among the dwellers in our favoured land has the faintest idea of -- of -- pooh! -- words are wanting. The British poets, alive and dead, have sung of Spring, and doubtless have fancied that they understood it. They had no more idea of what they were singing about than -- than the man in the moon, if we may venture to use a rather hackneyed comparison. Listen, reader, humbly, as becometh the ignorant.

Imagine yourself an Eskimo. Don't overdo it. You need not in imagination adopt the hairy garments, or smear yourself with oil, or eat raw blubber. For our purpose it will suffice to transport yourself into the Arctic regions, and invest yourself with the average intelligence of an ordinary human being who has not been debased by the artificial evils that surround modern civilisation, or demoralised by strong drink. In this condition of happy simplicity you draw near to the end of an Arctic winter.

During eight months or so you have been more or less shrivelled-up, petrified, mummified, by frost of the most intense and well-nigh intolerable description. Your whole body has frequently been pierced by winds, the constituents of which seemed to be needles and fire. Shelter has been one of your chief subjects of meditation every day -- ofttimes all day; unwillingness to quit that shelter and eagerness to return to it being your dominant characteristic. Darkness palpable has been around you for many weeks, followed by a twilight of gloom so prolonged that you feel as if light were a long-past memory. Your eyes have become so accustomed to ice and snow that white, or rather whitey-grey, has long since usurped and exclusively held the place of colour in your imagination, so that even black -- a black cliff or a black rock cropping up out of the snow -- becomes a mitigated joy. Your ears have been so attuned to the howling blast with interludes of dead calm and variations of rending icebergs and bellowing walrus accompaniments, that melodious harmonies have fled affrighted from your brain. As for your nose -- esprit de marrow fat, extract of singed hide, essence of lamp-smoke, eau de cuisine, and de-oxygenised atmosphere of snow-hut, have often inclined you to dash into the open air, regardless of frost and snow, for purposes of revivification. Imagine all these things intensified to the uttermost, and prolonged to nigh the limits of endurance, so that genial ideas and softening influences seem to have become things of the long-forgotten past, and then try to imagine a change, compared to which all the transformation scenes of all the pantomimes that ever blazed are as a tomtit's chirp to a lion's roar, or a -- a -- Words fail again! No matter.

But don't give in yet. Try, now, to imagine this sudden transformation wrought, perhaps, in a few days to the slow music of southern zephyrs, bearing on their wings light, and heat, and sunshine. Your ear is surprised -- absolutely startled -- by the sound of trickling water. Old memories that you thought were dead come back in the trumpet of the wild-goose, the whistling wing of the duck, the plaintive cry of the plover. Your nose -- ah! your nose cocks up and snuffs a smell -- pardon! --  a scent. It is the scent of the great orb on which you stand, saturated at last with life-giving water, and beginning to vivify all the green things that have so long been hidden in her capacious bosom.

But it is to your eye, perhaps, that the strongest appeal is made, for while you throw off one by one the garments which have protected you for so many months, and open up body and soul to the loved, long-absent, influences of warmth, and sound, and odour, your eye drinks up the mighty draughts of light -- light not only blazing in the blue above, but reflected from the blue below -- for the solid ice-fields are now split into fragments; the swell of old Ocean sends a musical ripple to the shore; great icebergs are being shed from their parent glaciers, and are seen floating away in solemn procession to the south, lifting their pinnacles towards their grandparent clouds, until finally reduced to the melting mood, and merged in their great-grandparent the sea. Imagine such visions and sensations coming suddenly, almost as a surprise, at the end of the stern Arctic winter, and then, perchance, you will have some idea of the bounding joy that fills the soul on the advent of Spring, inducing it to feel, if not to say, "Let every thing that hath breath praise the Lord."

This is Spring! The Eskimos understand it, and so do the dwellers in Rupert's Land; perchance, also, the poor exiles of Siberia -- but the poets -- pooh!

Far down below the perch occupied by Ippegoo lay a little sandy bay, around which were scattered a number of Eskimo huts -- rude and temporary buildings, meant to afford shelter for a time and then be forsaken. This was the bay which Angut, Okiok, Simek, Red Rooney, and the others had reached in their pursuit of the wizard when the ice broke up and effectually stopped them.

As it was utterly impossible to advance farther with dog and sledge, they were compelled to restrain their impatience as best they could, and await open water, when they might resume their journey in kayaks. Meanwhile, as there was a lead of open water to the northward as far as they could see, the youth Arbalik had been despatched with a small sledge and four of the strongest dogs along the strip of land-ice, or "ice-foot," which clung to the shore. His mission was to reach the village, and fetch Nuna, Pussimek, Kunelik, Sigokow, and his own mother, in one of the oomiaks or women's boats when open water should permit.

It was while our Eskimos were thus idly waiting for their wives, that the before-mentioned southern Eskimos arrived, and met them with every demonstration of friendliness and good-will.

These men, who had been forced to make a long, difficult detour inland after the ice gave way, were not a little pleased to find that the ice-foot to the northward was still practicable, and that the Eskimo village was so near. Of course they told of their meeting with Ujarak's sledge, which rendered inaction on the part of the pursuers still more unbearable. But they were all men who could accept the inevitable with a good grace, and as they knew it was impossible to advance without kayaks and oomiaks, they awaited the return of Arbalik as patiently as possible. Meanwhile they made themselves agreeable to the new arrivals, whose hearts they gladdened by telling them that their friends in the north had plenty of narwhal horns and bones and walrus tusks and sinews to exchange for their wood and iron.

But to return to Ippegoo on his distant and elevated outlook.

While he gazed at the busy groups below, our weak-minded youth observed two of the party step into kayaks which lay on the beach, push off into the bay, and commence what may be styled "kayak exercise." As Ippegoo greatly enjoyed witnessing such exercises, he threw off his lethargy, and, leaping up, quickly descended to the shore. The kayaks were old ones which had been found by the party on arriving at the deserted village. They had probably been left as useless by previous visitors, but Okiok's boys, Norrak and Ermigit, being energetic and ingenious fellows, had set to work with fish-bone-needles and sinew-threads, and repaired them with sealskin patches. They were now about to test their workmanship and practise their drill.

"Do they leak?" shouted Okiok, as the lads pushed off.

"Not more than I can soak up," replied Norrak, looking back with a laugh.

"Only a little," cried Ermigit, "and hoh! the water is still very cold."

"Paddle hard, and you'll soon warm it," cried Rooney.

When they had got fairly off, a spirit of emulation seized the brothers, and, without a direct challenge, they paddled side by side, gradually increasing their efforts, until they were putting forth their utmost exertions, and going through the water at racing speed.

"Well done, Norrak!" shouted the father, in rising excitement.

"Not so fast, Ermigit; not so fast," roared Simek.

Heedless of the advice, the brothers pushed on until they were brought up by the pack-ice at the mouth of the bay. Here they turned as quickly as possible, and raced back with such equal speed that they came in close together -- so close that it was impossible for those on shore to judge which was winning as they approached.

As in all similar cases -- whether on the Thames or on the Greenland seas -- excitement became intense as the competitors neared the goal. They were still a hundred yards or so from land, when Ermigit missed a stroke of his paddle. The consequence was that the kayak overturned, and Ermigit disappeared.

A kayak, as is generally known, is a very long and narrow canoe, made of a light wooden frame, and covered all over with sealskin with the exception of a single hole, in what may be called the deck, which is just big enough to admit one man. This hole is surrounded by a strip of wood, which prevents water washing into the canoe, and serves as a ledge over which the Eskimo fastens his sealskin coat. As canoe and coat are waterproof, the paddler is kept dry, even in rough weather, and these cockle-shell craft will ride on a sea that would swamp an open boat. But the kayak is easily overturned, and if the paddler is not expert in the use of his paddle, he runs a chance of being drowned, for it is not easy to disengage himself from his craft. Constant practice, however, makes most natives as expert and fearless as tight-rope dancers, and quite as safe.

No sooner, therefore, did Ermigit find himself in the water, head downwards, than, with a rapid and peculiar action of the paddle, he sent himself quite round and up on the other side into the right position --  dripping, however, like a seal emerging from the sea. He lost the race, as a matter of course. Norrak, after touching the beach, returned to Ermigit, laughing at his mishap.

"You laugh," said his brother somewhat sharply, "but you cannot do that as quickly as I did it."

Without a word of reply, Norrak threw himself on one side, vanished in the water, and came up on the other side in a decidedly shorter time.

"Well done!" cried Ermigit, who was, in truth, a good-natured fellow; "come, let us practise."

"Agreed," responded Norrak; and both brothers pushed a little nearer to land, so that their father and the others might observe and criticise their evolutions. As the exercises which they went through are practised by Eskimos in order to fit them to cope with the accidents and emergencies of actual life, we will briefly describe them.

First Norrak leaned over on one side, of course carrying the kayak with him, until his body lay on the water, in which position he maintained himself and prevented a total overset by manipulating his paddle, and then, with a downward dash of the blade and a vigorous jerk of his body, he regained his position, amid expressions of approval from the shore. Having performed the same feat on the other side, he nodded to Ermigit, and said -- 

"Now you go to work."

Ermigit went to work so well, that even a critical judge could not have pronounced him better or worse than his brother. After that they both repeated the complete overturn and recovery already described. In this effort, however, the lads had the free use of their paddles; but as in actual service the paddle may easily get entangled with straps and fishing cordage, a special exercise is arranged to prepare the hunter against such misfortunes.

Accordingly Norrak pushed one blade of his paddle among the straps and cordage, overset the kayak, and worked himself up again with a quick motion of the other blade. Of course this was not done either easily or quickly. Nevertheless, it was accomplished by both lads to the entire satisfaction of their critics.

Next, they performed the same feat of upsetting and recovering position with the paddle held fast behind their backs, and then with it held across the nape of the neck -- and in several other positions, all of which represented cases of possible entanglement.

Sometimes, however, the paddle may be lost in an upset. This is the most serious misfortune that can befall a hunter. To prepare for it, therefore, the Eskimo boys and youths have a special drill, which Norrak now proceeded to go through. Overturning his kayak as before, he purposely let go the oar in the act, so that it floated on the water, and then, while thus inverted, he made an upward grasp, caught the paddle, pulled it down, and with it recovered his position. There would have been great danger in this if he had been alone, for in the event of his failing to catch the paddle he would probably have been drowned, but with Ermigit at hand to help, there was no danger.

Other exercises there are which the sons of Okiok were not able to practise at that time because of the weather being unsuitable. One of these consists in threading their way among sunken rocks and dashing surges; another, in breasting the billows of a tempest. It must not be supposed that all Eskimos become efficient in rough work of this kind. Many do become exceedingly expert, others moderately so; but some there are who, although very fair seal-hunters, never become experts in the management of the kayak, and who, in cases of great difficulty, are apt to be lost during the seasons of seal-fishing.

Now, it chanced while the youths were thus training themselves for future work, that a solitary seal put up its head, as if to have a look at the state of things in general above water. It also chanced that the Eskimos were to leeward of him, and a blaze of sunshine was at their backs, so that the seal when looking towards its human foes had its eyes dazzled. Ermigit had no weapons at the time, but by good-fortune a harpoon, line, and bladder were attached to Norrak's vessel.

As the cat pounces on the unwary mouse, so Norrak, crouching low, dipped his paddle twice with noiseless vigour, and shot his craft like an arrow towards the seal. It happened to be a stupid attarsoak, and it raised its bullet head with a look that said plainly, "What, in all the ocean, is that queer thing in the sunshine?"

Half a minute brought that queer thing in the sunshine within ten yards of him. Norrak grasped the light harpoon, and sent it whistling to its mark. Truer than the needle to the pole the weapon went, carrying its line with it, and sank deep into the shoulder of the seal.

Ermigit, meanwhile, had made for the shore, got a lance thrown to him by the excited Okiok, received an encouraging nod from Rooney with an English recommendation to "go it," and was off again to render aid. And not a moment too soon did that aid come, for, contrary to usual experience, that seal -- instead of diving, and giving them an hour's hot pursuit -- made a furious assault on Norrak. Probably the spear had touched it in a tender spot. At all events the creature's ire was roused to such an extent that when it reached him it seized the kayak and tore a large hole in it. Down went the bow, as a matter of course, and up went the stern. Norrak hastily disengaged himself, so as to be ready to spring clear of the sinking wreck, and was on the point of jumping out when his brother's kayak shot past him, and Ermigit sent a spear deep into the vitals of the seal -- so deep, indeed, that it turned over and died without a groan.

By that time Norrak was in the water, but he made a vigorous grasp at his brother's kayak with one hand, while with the other he clutched the line of the harpoon -- for well did he know that dead seals sink, and that if it went down it would perhaps carry the bladder along with it, and so be lost.

"Give me the line, brother," said Ermigit, extending a hand.

"No. I can hold it. You make for shore -- quick." Ermigit plied his paddle with a will, and in a few minutes reached the shore with Norrak, bladder, line, and seal like a huge tail behind him.

Need we say that they were received by their friends, as well as by the strange Eskimos, with enthusiasm? We think not. Neither is it necessary to comment on the enjoyment they found that night in a supper of fresh meat, and in fighting the battle, as well as a good many other battles, over again. But in the midst of it all there was a cloud on the brows of Angut, Simek, and Okiok, for their anxiety about the fate of Nunaga, Pussi, and Tumbler was intense.

Angut was particularly restless during the night, and got up several times to take a look at the weather, as Rooney expressed it.

On one of these occasions he found the Kablunet standing by the shore of the calm sea.

"I don't like the look o' things," said Rooney, giving a sailor-like glance at the horizon and the sky. "It seems to me as if we were goin' to have dirty weather."

Instead of replying to this remark, the Eskimo looked earnestly at his friend, and asked -- 

"Can Ridroonee tell me why the Great Spirit allows men to do evil?"

"No, Angut, no. That is beyond my knowledge. Indeed I remember puttin' the same question, or somethin' like it, to a learned man in my country, and he said it is beyond the knowledge of the wisest men that have ever lived -- so it's no wonder that it's beyond you and me."

"But the Great Spirit is good," said Angut, rather as if he were soliloquising than addressing his friend.

"Yes; He is good -- must be good," returned the sailor; "it cannot be otherwise."

"Then why does evil exist?" asked Angut quickly. "Why did He make evil? You have told me He made everything."

"So He did, but evil is not a thing. It is a state of being, so to speak."

"It is a great mystery," said Angut.

"It would be a greater mystery," returned the seaman, "if the Great Spirit was not mysterious."

"He has allowed Ujarak to carry off Nunaga, though she loves not Ujarak, and Ujarak does not love her, else he could not have treated her so badly. Why did the Great Spirit allow that?" demanded the Eskimo, with some bitterness of tone.

"I know not, Angut, yet I know it is for good, because the Great Spirit is our Great Father, and if human fathers know how to treat their children well, does the Great Father of all not know?"

The Eskimo gravely bowed his head in assent to this proposition, and the seaman continued -- 

"I have spoken to you more than once, Angut, about the men in our land called surgeons -- that you call knife-men, -- how they will cut and carve your body, and tie you down sometimes, and give you terrible and prolonged suffering for the purpose of curing you and relieving your pain."

"True," replied Angut, who at once saw the drift of his friend's remark; "but then you know that the knife-man's object is good. It is to cure, to relieve."

"But suppose," argued Rooney, "that you did not know that his object was good -- that you looked on him as a cruel, bloody, heartless monster, who cared not for your cries of pain -- would your ignorance change his character?"

"No, no; he would remain good, whatever you might think," said Angut quickly; "I see. I see. I will try to think as you think -- the Great Father is good, must be good. And He will prove it some day. Don't you think so, Ridroonee?"

"Ay, truly, I think so; I am sure of it. But listen! Do you not hear sounds?"

They both listened intently, and gazed towards the northern headland of the bay, which at the time was bathed in brilliant moonlight. Presently two black specks, one larger than the other, were seen to round the point, and the chattering of women's voices was heard.

It was Arbalik in a kayak, preceding an oomiak propelled by several women. In her impatience to join her lord, Madame Okiok had insisted on a forced march. A few minutes more, and the women landed amid noisy demonstrations of satisfaction. Ere long the united party were busy round the unfailing lamps, enjoying social intercourse over an intermediate meal which, as it came between supper and breakfast, has not yet obtained a name.



Chapter Twenty.

The Chase Continued And Disastrously Interrupted.

The day following that on which the wives of Simek and Okiok, and the mothers of Arbalik and Ippegoo with the spinster Sigokow arrived, the southern Eskimos resumed their route northward, and the pursuers continued their journey to the south -- the former in their sledges over the still unmelted ice-foot along the shore; the latter, in kayaks, by a lead of open water, which extended as far as the eye could reach.

Angut, Okiok, and Simek led the way in kayaks, the kayak damaged by the seal having been repaired. The other men were forced to embark in the women's boat. Eskimo men deem this an undignified position, and will not usually condescend to work in oomiaks, which are invariably paddled by the women, but Rooney, being influenced by no such feelings, quietly took the steering paddle, and ultimately shamed Arbalik and Ippegoo as well as the sons of Okiok into lending a hand.

During the first part of the voyage all went well, but next day the lead of open water was found to trend off the land, and run out into the pack, where numerous great glaciers were seen -- some aground, others surging slowly southward with the Polar current.

"I don't like the look of it," remarked Angut, when the other leaders of the party ranged alongside of him for a brief consultation.

"Neither do I," said Simek. "The season is far advanced, and if there should be a general break-up of the ice while we are out among the floes, we should be lost."

"But it is impossible for us to travel by land," said Okiok. "No man knows the land here. The sea runs so far in that we might spend many moons in going round the bays without advancing far on our journey."

"So there is nothing left for us but to go on by water," said Angut, with decision. "Nunaga must be rescued."

"And so must Tumbler," said Okiok.

"And so must Pussi," said Simek.

"What are you fellows consulting about?" shouted Red Rooney, coming up at that moment with the others in the oomiak.

"We are talking of the danger of the ice breaking up," answered Angut. "But there is no other way to travel than by the open lead, so we have decided to go on."

"Of course you have," returned Rooney; "what else can we do? We must risk something to save Nunaga, Pussi, and Tumbler, to say nothing of Kabelaw. Get along, my hearties!"

How Rooney translated the last phrase into Eskimo is a point on which we can throw no light, -- but no matter.

In a short time the party reached the neighbourhood of one of the largest bergs, one of those gigantic masses of ice which resemble moderately-sized mountains, the peaks of which rose several hundred feet above the sea-level, while its base was more than a mile in diameter. There were little valleys extending into its interior, through which flowed rivulets, whose winding courses were broken here and there by cascades. In short, the berg resembled a veritable island made of white sugar, the glittering sun-lit slopes of which contrasted finely with its green-grey shadows and the dark-blue depths of its wide rifts and profound caverns.

The lead or lane of water ran to within fifty yards of this ice-island, so that Rooney had a splendid view of it, and, being of a romantic turn of mind, amused himself as the oomiak glided past by peopling the white cliffs and valleys with snow-white inhabitants. While he was thus employed, there occurred a sudden crashing and rending in the surrounding pack which filled him with consternation. It produced indeed the same effect on the Eskimos, as well it might, for the very catastrophe which they all dreaded was now taking place.

A slight swell on the sea appeared to be the originating cause, but, whatever it was, the whole surface was soon broken up, and the disintegrated masses began to grind against each other in confusion. At the same time the lead which the voyagers had been following grew narrower, and that so rapidly, that they had barely time to jump upon a mass of ice when the opening closed and crushed the oomiak and Okiok's kayak to pieces.

Angut and Simek had time to lift their kayaks on to the ice, but that, as it turned out, was of no advantage.

"Make for the berg," shouted Angut to the women, at the same time seizing the hand of Kunelik, who chanced to be nearest to him, and assisting her to leap from one heaving mass to another. Rooney performed the same act of gallantry for old Kannoa, who, to his surprise, went over the ice like an antique squirrel. Okiok took his own wife in hand. As for Pussimek, she did not wait for assistance, but being of a lively and active, as well as a stout and cheery disposition, she set off at a pace which caused her tail to fly straight out behind her, and made it difficult for Simek to keep up with her. Ippegoo and Arbalik, with the sons of Okiok, tried their best to save the two kayaks, for well they knew the danger of being left on the ice without the means of escaping; but the suddenness of the disruption, the width of the various channels they had to leap, and the instability of the masses, compelled them, after much delay, to drop their burdens and save themselves. They only managed to reach the berg with extreme difficulty.

"Thank God, all safe! -- but we have had a close shave," exclaimed Rooney, as he held out his hand to assist Ippegoo, who was the last of the party to clamber up the rugged side of the berg from the broken floe-pieces which were grinding against it.

"I wish we could say with truth 'All safe,'" was Okiok's gloomy response, as he surveyed the ice-laden sea; "we have escaped being crushed or drowned, but only to be starved to death."

"A living man may hope," returned Angut gravely.

"Ay, and where there is life," added Rooney, "there ought to be thankfulness."

"I would be more thankful," said Ippegoo, with a woe-begone expression, "if we had saved even a spear; but what can we do without food or weapons?"

"Do? my son," said Kunelik; "can we not at least keep up heart? Who ever heard of any good coming of groaning and looking miserable?"

"Right you are, old girl," cried Rooney, giving the mother of Ippegoo a hearty pat on the shoulder. "There is no use in despairing at the very beginning of our troubles; besides, is there not the Great Spirit who takes care of us, although we cannot see or hear Him? I believe in God, my friends, and I'll ask Him to help us now."

So saying, to the surprise of the Eskimos, the seaman uncovered his head, and looking upwards, uttered a few words of earnest prayer in the name of Jesus.

At first the unsophisticated natives looked about as if they expected some visible and immediate answer to the petition, but Rooney explained that the Great Spirit did not always answer at once or in the way that man might expect.

"God works by means of us and through us," he said. "We have committed the care of ourselves to Him. What we have now to do is to go to work, and do the best we can, and see what things He will throw in our way, or enable us to do, in answer to our prayer. Now, the first thing that occurs to me is to get away from where we stand, because that overhanging cliff beside us may fall at any moment and crush us. Next, we should go and search out some safe cavern in which we may spend the night, for we sha'n't be able to find such a place easily in the dark, and though it will be but a cold shelter, still, cold shelter is better than none -- so come along."

These remarks of the sailor, though so familiar -- perhaps commonplace -- to us, seemed so just and full of wisdom to the unsophisticated natives, and were uttered in such an off-hand cheery tone, that a powerful effect was created, and the whole party at once followed the seaman, who, by this display of coolness, firmness, and trustfulness in a higher power, established a complete ascendancy over his friends. From that time they regarded him as their leader, even although in regard to the details of Eskimo life he was of course immeasurably their inferior.

They soon found a small cave, not far from the spot where they had landed -- if we may use that expression -- and there made preparation to spend the night, which by that time was drawing on.

Although their craft had been thus suddenly destroyed and lost, they were not left absolutely destitute, for each one, with that prompt mental activity which is usually found in people whose lives are passed in the midst of danger, had seized the bear-skin, deerskin, or fur bag on which he or she happened to be sitting, and had flung it on to the floes before leaping thereon; and Ippegoo, with that regard for internal sustenance which was one of his chief characteristics, had grasped a huge lump of seal's flesh, and carried it along with him. Thus the whole party possessed bedding, and food for at least one meal.

Of course the meal was eaten not only cold but raw. In the circumstances, however, they were only too thankful, to care much about the style of it. Before it was finished daylight fled, the stars came out, and the aurora borealis was shooting brilliantly athwart the sky. Gradually the various members of the party spread their skins on the most level spot discoverable, and, with lumps of ice covered with bits of hide for pillows, went to sleep with what resembled free-and-easy indifference.

Two of the party, however, could not thus easily drop into happy oblivion. Red Rooney felt ill at ease. His knowledge of those Arctic seas had taught him that their position was most critical, and that escape would be almost miraculous, for they were eight or ten miles at least off the land, on a perishable iceberg, with an ice-encumbered sea around, and no means of going afloat, even if the water had been free. A feeling of gloom which he had not felt before, and which he could not banish, rendered sleep impossible; he therefore rose, and sauntered out of the cave.

Outside he found Angut, standing motionless near the edge of an ice-cliff, gazing up into the glorious constellations overhead.

"I can't sleep, Angut," said the seaman; "I suppose you are much in the same way?"

"I do not know. I did not try," returned the Eskimo in a low voice; "I wish to think, not to sleep. Why cannot the Kablunet sleep?"

"Well, it's hard to tell. I suppose thinking too much has something to do with it. The fact is, Angut, that we've got into what I call a fix, and I can't for the life of me see how we are to get out of it. Indeed I greatly fear that we shall never get out of it."

"If the Great Spirit wills that our end should be now," said Angut, "is the Kablunet afraid to die?"

The question puzzled Rooney not a little.

"Well," he replied, "I can't say that I'm afraid, but -- but -- I don't exactly want to die just yet, you see. The fact is, my friend, that I've got a wife and children and a dear old grandmother at home, and I don't quite relish the idea of never seein' them again."

"Have you not told me," said Angut, with a look of solemn surprise, "that all who love the Great Spirit shall meet again up there?" He pointed to the sky as he spoke.

"Ay, truly, I said that, and I believe that. But a man sometimes wants to see his wife and children again in this life -- and, to my thinkin', that's not likely with me, as things go at present. Have you much hope that we shall escape?"

"Yes, I have hope," answered the Eskimo, with a touch of enthusiasm in his tone. "I know not why. I know not how. Perhaps the Great Spirit who made me put it into me. I cannot tell. All around and within me is beyond my understanding -- but -- the Great Spirit is all-wise, all-powerful, and -- good. Did you not say so?"

"Yes, I said so; and that's a trustworthy foundation, anyhow," returned the sailor meditatively; "wise, powerful, and good -- a safe anchorage. But now, tell me, what chances, think you, have we of deliverance?"

"I can think of only one," said Angut. "If the pack sets fast again, we may walk over it to the land. Once there, we could manage to live --  though not to continue our pursuit of Ujarak. That is at an end."

In spite of himself, the poor fellow said the last words in a tone which showed how deeply he was affected by the destruction of his hope to rescue Nunaga.

"Now my friend seems to me inconsistent," said Rooney. "He trusts the Great Spirit for deliverance from danger. Is, then, the rescue of Nunaga too hard for Him?"

"I know not," returned Angut, who was, how ever, cheered a little by his friend's tone and manner. "Everything is mystery. I look up, I look around, I look within; all is dark, mysterious. Only on this is my mind clear -- the Great Spirit is good. He cannot be otherwise. I will trust Him. One day, perhaps, He will explain all. What I understood not as a little boy, I understand now as a man. Why should there not be more light when I am an older man? If things go on in the mind as they have been going ever since I can remember, perfect light may perhaps come at last."

"You don't think like most of your countrymen," said Rooney, regarding the grave earnest face of his friend with increased interest.

There was a touch of sadness in the tone of the Eskimo as he replied -- 

"No; I sometimes wonder -- for their minds seem to remain in the childish condition; though Okiok and Simek do seem at times as if they were struggling into more light. I often wonder that they think so little, and think so foolishly; but I do not speak much about it; it only makes them fear that I am growing mad."

"I have never asked you, Angut -- do your tribes in the north here hold the same wild notions about the earth and heavens as the southern Eskimos do?"

"I believe they do," replied Angut; "but I know not all they think in the south. In this land they think," -- here a smile of good-natured pity flickered for a moment on the man's face -- "that the earth rests on pillars, which are now mouldering away by age, so that they frequently crack. These pillars would have fallen long ago if they had not been kept in repair by the angekoks, who try to prove the truth of what they say by bringing home bits of them -- rotten pieces of wood. And the strange thing is, that the people believe them!"

"Why don't you believe them, Angut?"

"I know not why."

"And what do your kinsmen think about heaven?" asked Rooney.

"They think it is supported on the peak of a lofty mountain in the north, on which it revolves. The stars are supposed to be ancient Greenlanders, or animals which have managed in some mysterious way to mount up there, and who shine with varied brightness, according to the nature of their food. The streaming lights of winter are the souls of the dead dancing and playing ball in the sky."

"These are strange ideas," observed Rooney; "what have you to say about them?"

"I think they are childish thoughts," replied the Eskimo.

"What, then, are your thoughts about these stars and streaming lights?" persisted the seaman, who was anxious to understand more of the mind of his philosophical companion.

"I know not what I think. When I try to think on these things my mind gets confused. Only this am I sure of -- that they are, they must be, the wonderful works of the Good Spirit."

"But how do you know that?" asked Rooney.

Angut looked at his questioner very earnestly for a few moments.

"How does Ridroonee know that he is alive?" he asked abruptly.

"Oh, as to that, you know, everything tells me that I am alive. I look around, and I see. I listen, and I hear. I think, and I understand --  leastwise to some extent, -- and I feel in mind and heart."

"Now will I answer," said Angut. "Everything tells me that the Great Spirit is good, and the Maker of all things. I look, and I see Him in the things that exist. I listen, and I hear Him in the whispering wind, in the running water, in the voice of man and beast. I think, and I understand Him to some extent, and I feel Him both in mind and heart."

"I believe you are right, Angut, and your words bring strongly to my remembrance many of the words of the Great Spirit that my mother used to teach me when I was a little boy."

From this point in the conversation Angut became the questioner, being anxious to know all that the Kablunet had to tell about the mysterious Book, of which he had spoken to him more than once, and the teachings of his mother.

It was long past midnight when the descending moon warned them to turn their steps towards the ice-cave where they had left their slumbering companions.

"The frost is sharp to-night," remarked Rooney as they were about to enter.

Angut turned round, and cast a parting glance on sea and sky.

"If it holds on like this," continued the sailor, "the ice will be firm enough to carry us to land in the morning."

"It will not hold on like this," said Angut. "The Innuit are very ignorant, but they know many things about the weather, for they are always watching it. To-morrow will be warm. We cannot escape. It will be safest and wisest to remain where we are."

"Remaining means starving," said the sailor in a desponding tone.

"It may be so; we cannot tell," returned the Eskimo.

With these uncomfortable reflections, the two men entered the cavern quietly, so as not to disturb their comrades. Spreading their bearskins on the ice-floor, they laid heads on ice-pillows, and soon fell into that dreamless, restful slumber which is the usual accompaniment of youth, health, and vigour.



Chapter Twenty One.

Shows A Gloomy Prospect -- Starvation Threatened, And Wonderfully Averted.

Angut was a true prophet. When Rooney awoke next morning, his ears told him that the rushing of ice-cold rivulets through ice-valleys, and the roar of ice-born cataracts had increased considerably during the hours of darkness.

The warmth which caused this did not, indeed, at first strike him, for the air of the cavern and the character of his bed had chilled him so much that he was shivering with cold. On glancing at his still sleeping comrades in misfortune, he observed that these tough creatures slept with the peaceful aspect of infants, whom, being both fat and rotund, they resembled in nearly everything except size.

Rising and going quietly out, he beat his arms vigorously across his chest until circulation was fully restored. Then he mounted a neighbouring ice-ledge, and saw at a glance that their case had become desperate.

"Angut was right," he murmured bitterly, and then stood for a long time contemplating the scene in silence.

Considered apart from their circumstances, the scene was indeed glorious. Not only had the warmth of the air begun to swell the rivulets which leaped and brawled down the pale-green slopes around him, but the pack had opened out, so as to completely change the aspect of the sea. Instead of being clothed with ice, showing only a lane of water here and there, it was now an open sea crowded with innumerable ice-islets of every fantastic shape and size.

It added something to the bitterness of the poor man's feelings that this state of things would, he knew, have been the very best for their escape in kayaks and oomiaks, for a profound calm prevailed, and the sea, where clear of ice, glittered in the rising sun like a shield of polished gold.

He was roused from his meditations by the sound of footsteps behind him. Turning quickly, he beheld Ippegoo holding his jaws with both hands and with an expression of unutterable woe on his face.

"Halo, Ippe, what's wrong with you?"

A groan was the reply, and Rooney, although somewhat anxious, found it difficult to restrain a laugh.

"I've got -- oh! oh! oh! oh! -- a mad tooth," gasped the poor youth.

"A mad tooth! Poor fellow! -- we call that toothache where I come from."

"What care I whether you call it mad tooth or tootik?" cried Ippegoo petulantly. "It is horrible! dreadful! awful! -- like fire and fury in the heart."

The sufferer used one or two more Eskimo expressions, suggestive of excruciating agony, which are not translatable into English.

"If I only had a pair of pincers, but -- look, Ippe, look," said Rooney, pointing to the sea, in the hope of distracting his mind from present pain by referring to threatening danger; "look -- our kayaks being lost, we have no hope of escaping, so we must starve."

His little device, well-meant though it was, failed. A groan and glance of indifference was the Eskimo's reply, for starvation and danger were familiar and prospective evils, whereas toothache was a present horror.

We fear it must be told of Ippegoo that he was not celebrated for endurance of pain, and that, being fond of sympathy, he was apt to give full vent to his feelings -- the result, perhaps, of having an over-indulgent mother. Toothache -- one of the diseases to which Greenlanders are peculiarly liable -- invariably drew forth Ippegoo's tenderest feelings for himself, accompanied by touching lamentations.

"Come, Ippe, be more of a man. Even your mother would scold you for groaning like that."

"But it is so shriekingly bad!" returned the afflicted youth, with increasing petulance.

"Of course it is. I know that; poor fellow! But come, I will try to cure you," said Rooney, who, under the impression that violent physical exertion coupled with distraction of mind would produce good effect, had suddenly conceived a simple ruse. "Do you see yon jutting ice-cliff that runs down to a point near the edge of the berg?"

"Yes, I see," whimpered Ippegoo.

"Well, it will require you to run at your top speed to get there while you count fifteen twenties. Now, if you run there within that time -- at your very top speed, mind -- " Rooney paused, and looked serious.

"Yes; well?" said Ippegoo, whose curiosity had already begun to check the groans.

"If you run there," continued the seaman, with a look and tone of deep solemnity, "at the very toppest speed that you can do, and look round that ice-point, you will see -- "

"What?" gasped Ippegoo excitedly -- for he was easily excited.

"Something," returned Rooney mysteriously. "I cannot tell exactly what you will see, because I am not an angekok, and have no torngak to tell me; but I am quite sure that you will see something! Only, the benefit of seeing it will depend on your running as fast as you can. Now, are you ready?"

"Yes, quite ready," exclaimed the youth, tightening his girdle of sealskin eagerly.

"Well then -- away!" shouted Rooney.

Off went Ippegoo at a pace which was obviously the best that he was capable of putting forth. Rooney counted as he ran, and in a much shorter time than had been specified he reached the point, for the level track, or what we may style sea-shore, of the berg was not a bad race-course. Suddenly, however, he came to an abrupt halt, and threw up his arms as if in amazement. Then he turned round and ran back at a pace that was even greater than he had achieved on the outward run. Rooney was himself greatly surprised at this, for, as the youth drew nearer, the expression of his face showed that he had indeed seen "something" which had not been in the seaman's calculations. He spluttered and gasped as he came near, in his effort to speak.

"What is it? -- take time, lad," said Rooney quietly.

"A b-bear! a bear!" cried Ippegoo.

"What! did it run at you?" asked Rooney, becoming slightly excited in his turn, and keeping his eye on the ice-point.

"N-no; no. It was sitting on -- on its tail -- l-looking at the -- the s-sea."

"And we've no weapon bigger than an Eskimo knife," exclaimed the sailor, with a frown of discontent -- "not even a bit of stick to tie the knife to. What a chance lost! He would have kept us in food for some weeks. Well, well, this is bad luck. Come, Ippe, we'll go back to the cave, and consult about this."

On returning to the cheerless retreat, they found the rest of the party just awakening. The men were yawning and rubbing their eyes, while the women, with characteristic activity and self-denial, were gathering together the few scraps of food that remained from the previous night's supper.

"There is a bear just round the point -- so Ippe says -- what's to be done?" asked Rooney on entering.

Up jumped the four men and two boys as if they had been made of indiarubber.

"Attack it," cried Arbalik.

"Kill it," exclaimed Norrak.

"And eat it," said Ermigit.

"What will you attack it with?" asked Simek in a slightly contemptuous tone -- "with your fingernails? If so, you had better send Sigokow to do battle, for she could beat the three of you."

The youths stood abashed.

"We have no spears," said Simek, "and knives are useless. Bad luck follows us."

"It is my opinion," said Okiok, "that whatever we do, or try to do, we had better eat something before doing it. Bring the victuals, Nuna."

"Okiok is right," said Angut; "and Arbalik had better go out and watch while we consult, so as to give us timely warning if the bear comes this way."

Without a word, Arbalik caught up a piece of blubber, and went out of the cave to enjoy his frugal breakfast while acting sentinel. The others, sitting down on their respective bearskins, ate and consulted hastily. The consultation was of little use, for they were utterly helpless, and the breakfast was not much more profitable, for there was far too little of it. Still, as Rooney truly remarked when the last morsel was consumed, it was better than nothing.

"Well now, my friends," said Angut at last, "since our food is done, and all our talk has come to nothing, I propose that we go out in a body to see this bear. As we cannot kill him, we must get rid of him by driving him away, for if we let him remain on the berg, he will come upon us when we are asleep, perhaps, and kill us."

"Yes, that is best," said Okiok. "If we separate, so as to distract him, and then make a united rush from all points, shrieking, that will drive him into the sea."

"Let us put Ippe in front," suggested Simek, with a twinkling eye; "he yells better than any of us."

"'Specially when he's got the toothache," added Rooney.

The object of this touch of pleasantry smiled in a good-humouredly imbecile manner. It was clear that his malady had been cured, at least for the time.

"But we must be very cautious," remarked Rooney, becoming serious, as they rose to proceed on their adventure. "It would not do to let any of our party get hurt. To my thinking, the women should take to the ice-cliffs before we begin, and get upon pinnacles, up which the bear could not climb."

While he was speaking, Arbalik came running in with the information that the bear was approaching.

"Has it seen you?" asked Angut, as they all ran out.

"I think not. From the way it walks, I think it has no suspicion of any one being on the berg."

In a few seconds they reached the point of the promontory or cliff in which their cave lay, and each member of the party peeped round with excessive caution, and there, sure enough, they beheld a white Polar bear of truly formidable size. But it had changed its course after Arbalik saw it, for by that time it had turned up one of the ice-valleys before-mentioned and begun to ascend into the interior of the berg. The slow, heavy gait of the unwieldy animal suggested to Rooney the idea that an active man could easily get out of its way, but the cat-like activity with which it bounded over one or two rivulets that came in its way quickly dissipated that idea.

"The farther he goes up that valley," whispered Simek, "the more trouble we shall have in driving him into the sea."

"He does not seem to know his own mind," remarked Okiok, as the bear again changed his course, and entered one of the small gorges that opened into the larger valley.

"He knows it well enough," said Ermigit. "Don't you see he is making for the ice-top, where these gulls are sitting? The fool expects to catch them asleep."

Ermigit seemed to have guessed rightly, for after clambering up the ice-gorge referred to until he gained a high ledge or plateau, he began regularly to stalk the birds with the sly patience of a cat.

There was much in the bear's favour, for the recent fall of a pinnacle had covered the ledge with shattered blocks of all shapes and sizes, in the shelter of which it could creep towards its prey. Our Eskimos watched the proceeding open-mouthed, with profound interest. To within twenty yards or so of its game did that white-robed Arctic hunter approach. Then it crouched for a rush at the unconscious birds, for no other lump of ice lay between them and their foe.

The charge was vigorously made, almost too vigorously, for when the birds flew lightly off the ledge, and descended to a narrower one a little farther down, it was all the bear could do to check itself on the very edge of the precipice. If it had gone over, the consequences would have been dire, for the precipice was, not sheer, but still a very steep slope of ice, several hundred feet deep, which terminated in those rugged masses on the berg-shore that had fallen from the cliffs above. There was only one break in the vast slope, namely, the narrow ledge half-way down on which the birds had taken refuge.

Going to the extreme edge of the precipice, the bear sat down on his haunches, and hungrily contemplated the birds, which were now beyond his reach, twittering noisily as if to tantalise him.

"I would that I had a spear," growled Okiok.

"I would venture at him even with a big stick," said Simek.

"My friends," said Rooney, with sudden animation, "listen to me. If you will promise me to keep very quiet, and not to follow me whatever may happen, I will show you how Kablunets overcome difficulties."

Of course the Eskimos were ready to make any promises that might be required of them, and looked at their friend with surprise as he threw off his sealskin coat and tightened the belt round his waist. But they were still more surprised, when, without another word, he set off, in only shirt and trousers, to climb the valley of ice, and make for the spot where the bear sat in melancholy meditation.

While ascending, Rooney took care to avail himself of the rugged nature of the ice, so as to conceal himself entirely from the bear -- though this was scarcely needful, for the animal's back was turned towards the Kablunet, and his whole attention was concentrated on the gulls. As Rooney wore Eskimo boots -- the soles of which are soft, -- he made little or no noise in walking, and thus managed to gain the platform unperceived by the bear, though visible all the time to the Eskimos, to whom he looked little bigger than a crow on the height. Their delight, however, began to be tempered with anxiety when they saw the reckless man creep to within twenty yards of the monster, making use of the ice-blocks as it had done before him.

The intentions of the Kablunet were incomprehensible to his friends. Could it be that, ignorant of the strength of the beast and its tenacity of life, the foolish man hoped to stab it to death with a small knife? Impossible! And yet he was evidently preparing for action of some sort.

But Red Rooney was not quite so foolish as they supposed him to be. Having gained the nearest possible point to his victim, he made a sudden and tremendous rush at it. He knew that life and death were in the balance at any rate; but he also knew that to remain inactive on that iceberg would remove life out of the balance altogether. He therefore threw all his energy of soul and body into that rush, and launched himself against the broad back of the bear. It was an awful shock. Rooney was swift as well as heavy, so that his weight, multiplied into his velocity, sufficed to dislodge the wonder-stricken animal. One wild spasmodic effort it made to recover itself, and in doing so gave Rooney what may be called a backhander on the head, that sent him reeling on the ice.

Curiously enough, it was this that saved the daring man, for if he had not received that blow, the impetus of his attack would have certainly sent himself as well as the bear over the cliff.

As it was, the monster went over headlong, with a sort of compound shriek and howl that made the very ice-cliffs ring. Then, down he went -- not head or feet first, or sideways, or any way, but every way by turns, and no way long. Indeed, he spun and, as it were, spurted down that mighty face of ice. Each instant intensified the velocity; each whirl increased the complex nature of the force. The ledge half-way down, from which the affrighted gulls fled shrieking, did not even check the descent, but with bursting violence shunted the victim out into space, through which he hurled till re-met by the terrific slope farther down, which let him glissade like a shooting star into indescribable ruin!

Enough of that bear was left, however, to render it worth while picking up the fragments. Shouting with laughter and yelling with glee, the Eskimos made for the spot where the mangled carcass lay. Soon after they were joined by the hero of the day.

"Food enough now for a moon, or more," said Rooney, as he came up.

"Yes; and no need to beat the meat to make it tender," responded Okiok, lifting and letting fall one of the limp legs of the creature, whose every bone seemed to have been smashed to pieces in the tremendous descent.

It was no doubt a considerable reduction of their satisfaction at supper that evening that they had to eat their bear-chops raw, not having the means of making fire; but they were not disposed to find fault with their good-fortune on that account. If they had only possessed two small pieces of wood with which to create the necessary friction, they could easily have made a lamp out of one of the bear's shoulder-blades, and found oil enough in his own fat, while a tag of sealskin, or some other portion of clothing might have supplied a wick; but not a scrap of wood was to be obtained on that verdureless island. Okiok did indeed suggest that Norrak and Ippegoo, being both possessed of hard and prominent noses, might rub these organs together till they caught fire; but Norrak turned up his nose at the suggestion, and Ippegoo shook his head doubtfully.

In the circumstances, therefore, they obtained light at least for the purposes of vision by commencing supper long before sunset, and most of them continued it long after dark. Thus the second night was passed on the berg.

On the third day, the weather being still warm and calm, Angut, Simek, Okiok, and Rooney ascended, after their bear-breakfast, to the break-neck height from which that breakfast had been precipitated, for the purpose of taking a meteorological observation.

"It is quite plain to me," said Rooney -- who, being in some sort at sea, was, as it were, more at home than his companions -- "it is quite plain to me that we have got fairly into the great Polar current, and are travelling in a sou'-sou'-west direction down Davis Straits."

No doubt Rooney gave "sou'-sou'-west" in some sort of Eskimo jargon with which we are not acquainted. His lingual powers were indeed marvellous, and when simple words failed him he took refuge in compound phraseology.

"But," asked Okiok, "how can you tell that we are going south? The mist is thick; we cannot see land."

"Do you not see the small pieces of ice?" replied Rooney, pointing to the sea.

"Yes," said the Eskimo; "they are going north faster than we are; that is all."

"Why do they go north faster than we do?" asked Rooney.

"That I know not."

"I will tell you, Okiok. It is because there is a surface current here flowing northward, and the small pieces of ice go with it because they are not deep. But this berg is very deep. There is far more of it below water than what we see above. Its bottom goes deep down into the under-current which flows south, and so it is being carried south -- not north at all, -- against the variable surface-currents, and it would go even against the wind if there was any. Do you understand?"

"Huk!" exclaimed the Eskimo, though he still looked perplexed.

"I have seen these bergs breaking from the great land-ice since I was a little boy," said Angut, with earnest gravity, "and I have seen them float away and away till they vanished in the far-off. Can Ridroonee tell where they go to?"

"Truly I can. They are carried by currents out into the great sea -- we call it the Atlantic, -- and there they melt and disappear."

"Then shall we disappear with this berg, if we don't escape from it?" said Okiok, with a look so serious that it was almost humorous.

"That is the pleasant prospect in store for us, as you say," returned Rooney; "but cheer up, lad. We intend to escape from it; so don't let your heart sink, else your body won't be able to swim."

On the strength of this consolatory remark, the four men returned to the cave to recruit their energies and hopes on a fresh supply of the raw bear.



Chapter Twenty Two.

A Brief But Singular Voyage Winds Up With A Great Surprise.

The calm which had fortunately prevailed since Angut and his friends found refuge on the iceberg was not destined to continue.

A smart breeze at last sprang up from the northward, which soon freshened into a gale, accompanied with heavy showers of snow, driving the party into the cave, where the cold was so severe that they were forced to take refuge in its deepest recesses, and to sit wrapped in their bearskins, and huddled together for warmth, as monkeys are sometimes seen on a cold day in a menagerie.

Being from the north, the wind not only intensified the cold, and brought back for a time all the worst conditions of winter, but assisted the great ocean current to carry the berg southward at a high rate of speed. Their progress, however, was not very apparent to the eyes of our voyagers, because all the surrounding bergs travelled in the same direction and at nearly the same speed. The blinding snow effectually hid the land from their view, and the only point of which they were quite sure was that their berg must be the nearest to the Greenland coast because all the others lay on their right hand.

Towards noon of the following day it was observed that the pack-ice thickened around them, and was seen in large fields here and there, through some of which the great berg ploughed its way with resistless momentum. Before the afternoon the pack had closed entirely around them, as if it had been one mass of solid, rugged ice -- not a drop of water being visible. Even through this mass the berg ploughed its way slowly, but with great noise.

"There is something very awful to me in the sight of such tremendous force," said Red Rooney to Angut, as they stood contemplating the havoc their strange ship was making.

"Does it not make you think," returned the Eskimo, "how powerful must be the Great Spirit who made all things, when a little part of His work is so tremendous?"

Rooney did not reply, for at that moment the berg grounded, with a shock that sent all its spires and pinnacles tumbling. Fortunately, the Eskimos were near their cavern, into which they rushed, and escaped the terrible shower. But the cave could no longer be regarded as a place of safety. It did indeed shelter them from the immediate shower of masses, even the smaller of which were heavy enough to have killed a walrus; but at that advanced period of spring the bergs were becoming, so to speak, rotten, and liable at any moment to fall to pieces and float away in the form of pack-ice. If such an event had occurred when our Eskimos were in the cave, the destruction of all would of course have been inevitable.

"We dare not remain here," said Angut, when the icy shower had ceased.

"No; we must take to the floes," said Simek.

"Another shake like that," remarked Okiok, "might bring the whole berg down on our heads."

"Let us go, then, at once," said Rooney; "the sky clears a little, so we'll know how to steer."

No one replied, for all were already engaged with the utmost activity making bundles of their bear-skins and as much of the bear-meat as the men could carry -- each of the women taking a smaller piece, according to her strength or her prudence. The sailor followed their example in silence, and in a very few minutes they issued from the cavern, and made for the shore of the berg.

Some difficulty was experienced in scrambling over the chaotic masses which had been thrown up in front of them by the ploughing process before referred to. When they stood fairly on the floes, however, they found that, although very rough, these were sufficiently level to admit of slow travelling. They were in the act of arranging the order of march, when the berg slid off into deep water, and, wheeling round as if annoyed at the slight detention, rejoined its stately comrades in their solemn procession to their doom in more southerly seas.

"Just in time," said Rooney, as they watched the berg floating slowly away, nodding its shattered head as if bidding them farewell. "Now then, ho! for the Greenland shore! Come, old Kannoa, I'll take you under my special care."

He took the old woman's bundle from her as he spoke, and, putting his left hand under her right arm, began to help her over the frozen sea.

But poor old thing though she certainly was, that antiquated creature became a griggy old thing immediately, and was so tickled with the idea of the stoutest and handsomest man of the party devoting himself entirely to her, when all the younger women were allowed to look after themselves, that she could scarcely walk during the first few minutes for laughing. But it must be said in justification of the Eskimo men, that their young women were quite capable of looking after themselves, and would, indeed, have been incommoded as well as surprised by offers of assistance.

Rooney had spoken cheerily, though his feelings were anything but cheerful, for he knew well the extreme danger of their position, but he felt it a duty to do his best to encourage his friends. The Eskimos were equally well, if not better, aware of their danger, and took to the floes with resolute purpose and in profound silence -- for true men in such circumstances are not garrulous.

A gleam of sunshine from a rift in the dark clouds seemed sent as a heavenly messenger to guide them. By it the Eskimos as well as the sailor were enabled to judge of the position of land, and to steer, accordingly, in what western hunters would call "a bee-line." The great danger, of course, lay in the risk of the pack breaking up before they could reach the shore. There was also the possibility of the pack being a limited strip of floe-ice unconnected with the shore, which, if it had been so, would have decided their fate. In these circumstances they all pushed on at their best speed. At first the women seemed to get along as well as the men, but after a while the former showed evident symptoms of exhaustion, and towards dusk old Kannoa, despite Rooney's powerful aid, fairly broke down and refused to walk another step. The seaman overcame the difficulty by raising her in his arms and carrying her. As he had not at that time quite recovered his full strength, and was himself pretty well fatigued, he was constrained to think pretty steadily of the old woman's resemblance to his grandmother to enable him to hold out!

After another mile or so the mother of Arbalik succumbed, whereupon her son put his arm round her waist and helped her on. Then the pleasant little mother of Ippegoo broke down with a pitiful wail; but her son was unable to help her, for he was already undulating about like a piece of tape, as if he had no backbone to speak of. Okiok therefore came to her aid. As for the hardy spinster Sikogow, she seemed inexhaustible, and scorned assistance. Nuna was also vigorous, but her sons Norrak and Ermigit, being amiable, came on each side of her, and took her in tow before the breaking-down point was reached.

Thus they continued to advance until the darkness became so profound as to render further travelling impossible. The danger of delay they knew was extreme, but men must perforce bow to the inevitable. To advance without light over rugged ice, in which were cracks and fissures and hummocks innumerable, being out of the question, Rooney called a halt.

"Rest and food, friends," he said, "are essential to life."

"Huk!" was the brief reply.

Without wasting breath on another word, they untied their bundles, spread their bearskins in the lee of a hummock, fed hastily but heartily, rolled themselves in their simple bedding, and went to sleep.

During the night there occurred one of those sudden changes which are common in Arctic lands at that season of the year. Snow ceased to fall, the sky cleared, and the temperature rose until the air became quite balmy. The ice of the floes eased off, narrow openings grew into lanes and leads and wide pools, until water predominated, and the ice finally resolved itself into innumerable islets. When Rooney was at last awakened by a blaze of sunshine in his face, he found that the party occupied a small cake of ice in the midst of a grand crystal archipelago. Not a zephyr ruffled the sea, and the hills of Greenland were visible, not more than six or eight miles distant, on their left hand. What particular part of Greenland it was, of course they had no means of knowing.

The sight was indeed such as might have filled human hearts with admiration and joy, but neither joy nor admiration touched the hearts of Red Rooney and his companions. So far from land, on a bit of ice scarce large enough to sustain them, and melting rapidly away, exposed to the vicissitudes of a changeful and stormy climate, without the means of escape -- the case seemed very desperate.

"The Great Spirit has forsaken us," said Angut gloomily, as he surveyed the scene.

"That He has not," returned the sailor, "whatever may befall."

An exclamation from Arbalik drew attention to a particular part of the horizon.

"A flat island," said Okiok, after a long earnest gaze; "but we cannot reach it," he added in a low voice.

"You know not," said Angut. "The current sets that way, I think."

"A few minutes will show," said Rooney.

With almost trembling eagerness they watched the islet, and, as Rooney had said, it soon became evident that the current was indeed carrying their ice-raft slowly towards the spot.

"We can scarcely expect to drift right on to it," said Rooney, "and it is apparently our last chance, so we shall have to take to the water when near it. Can we all swim -- eh?"

To this question some answered Yes and some No, while others shook their heads as if uncertain on the point. But the seaman was wrong. Straight as an arrow to a bull's eye the raft went at that islet and struck on its upper end with such force as to send a tongue of ice high on the shore, so that the whole party actually landed dryshod. Even old Kannoa got on shore without assistance.

The joy of the party at this piece of unlooked-for good-fortune was unbounded, although, after all, the improvement in their circumstances did not seem to be great, for the islet was not more than a hundred yards in diameter, and appeared to be quite barren, with only a clump of willows in its centre. Still, their recent danger had been so imminent that the spot seemed quite a secure refuge by contrast.

The men of the party, after landing, were only just beginning to comment on their prospects, when they saw the willows in the centre of the islet part asunder, and a man of strange aspect and costume stood before them.

The stranger who had burst thus unexpectedly upon them like a visitant from another world, bereaving them for a few minutes of speech and motion, was evidently not a native of the land. His pale and somewhat melancholy face, as well as parts of his costume, betokened him one who had come from civilised lands; and Rooney's first thought was that he must be a shipwrecked sailor like himself; but a second glance caused him to reject the idea. The calm dignity of his carriage, the intellectuality of his expression, and, withal, the look of gentle humility in his manner, were not the usual characteristics of seamen in those days. He also looked very haggard and worn, as if from severe fatigue or illness.

A slight smile played for a moment on his lips as he observed the blank amazement which his appearance had produced. Hastening forward he held out his hand to Rooney whom he at once recognised as a man of civilised lands.

"Let me congratulate you, friends, on your escape, for I can see that you must have been in great jeopardy from which the Lord has delivered you."

The stranger spoke in the Danish language, which was of course utterly incomprehensible to the natives. Not so, however, to Red Rooney, who in his seafaring life had frequently visited Copenhagen, Bergen, and Christiania, and other Scandinavian ports, and had learned to speak Danish at least fluently, if not very correctly. He at once replied, at the same time returning the warm grasp of the stranger's hand -- 

"We have indeed just escaped from great danger, through the mercy of God. But who are you, and how come you to be in such a lonely place, and, if I do not greatly mistake, in a starving condition?"

"I am a missionary to the Eskimos," replied the stranger, "and have been forced to take refuge here by stress of weather. But I am not absolutely alone, as you seem to think. There are five natives with me, and we have an oomiak up there in the bushes. They are now asleep under it. For five days we have been detained here almost without food, by the recent storm and the pack-ice. Now, thanks to my Father in heaven, we shall be able to launch our little boat, and get away. In fact, being the first of my party to awake this morning, I rose very quietly so as not to disturb the poor people, who stand much in need of rest, and I had come to look at the state of the ice when I unexpectedly discovered you on the shore."

"Stay now, sir; not another word till you have broken your fast," said Rooney, with kindly violence, as he hastily cut a large slice from his piece of bear's meat. "Sit down on that stone, and eat it at once. A fasting man should not talk."

"But my companions need food to the full as much as I do," objected the missionary.

"Do as I bid ye, sir," returned Rooney, with decision. "You say they are asleep. Well, sleep is as needful as food and sleeping men cannot eat. When you have eaten we will go up and awake and feed them."

Thus urged, the poor man began to eat the raw meat with as much relish as if it had been the finest venison cooked to a turn. Before commencing, however, he clasped his hands, closed his eyes, and audibly thanked God for the supply.

While he was thus engaged Red Rooney did not speak, but sat looking at his new friend with profound interest. Perchance his interest would have deepened had he known that the man was none other than the famous Norwegian clergyman Hans Egede, the originator of the Danish mission to Greenland, who founded the colony of Godhaab in the year 1721, about twelve years before the commencement of the missions of the Moravian Brethren to that land.

The surprise which our voyagers had received by the unexpected appearance of the missionary was, however, as nothing, compared with the surprise that was yet in store for them on that eventful day.



Chapter Twenty Three.

Describes A Most Amazing Surprise, And Treats Of Hans Egede.

When the starving missionary had taken the edge off his appetite, he closed the clasp-knife with which he had been eating.

"Now, my friend," he said, looking at Rooney, "I have eaten quite enough to do me good in my present condition, -- perhaps more than enough. You know it is not safe for starving men to eat heartily. Besides, I am anxious to give some food to the poor fellows who are with me. One of them has met with a severe accident and is dying I fear. He does not belong to my party, I found him on the mainland and brought him here just before the storm burst on us, intending to take him on to Godhaab. He stands more in need of food than sleep, I think."

"Come, then, we will go to him at once," said Rooney, tying up the remains of Egede's breakfast. "How did he come by his accident?" continued the sailor, as the party walked up towards the bushes.

"The girl who takes care of him -- his daughter, I think -- says he was injured by a bear."

"If it is a case of broken bones, perhaps I may be of use to him," said Rooney, "for I've had some experience in that way."

Egede shook his head, "I fear it is too late," he replied. "Besides, his mind seems to give him more trouble even than his wasted frame. He has come, he says, from the far north, and would certainly have perished after his accident if it had not been for the care and kindness of the women who are with him -- especially the younger woman. See, there she comes. Her father must have awakened, for she rests near him at night and never leaves him in the morning till he wakes up."

The missionary was startled at that moment by a loud shout from his companion. Next instant Angut rushed past him, and, catching the girl in his arms, gave her a most fervent and lover-like embrace, to which she seemed in no ways averse.

It soon became obvious to the missionary that a most unexpected and pleasant meeting of friends was taking place; but the surprise expressed on his grave visage had barely given place to a benignant smile of sympathy, when a female shriek was heard, and Sigokow was seen running towards her sister Kabelaw. These two did not leap into each other's arms. The feelings of Eskimo females do not usually find vent in that way; but they waltzed round each other, and grinned, and smoothed each other's hair, and when Kabelaw observed that her sister had a huge black eye and a yet unhealed cut across the bridge of her rather flat nose, she clapped her hands, and went into fits of laughter, which helped her somewhat to relieve her feelings.

The surprise and pleasure of this meeting was still at its height when two shrill cries were heard. These were instantly followed by the bursting of Pussi and Tumbler on the scene, the former of whom rushed into the ready arms of Pussimek, while the latter plunged into the bosom of Nuna. Ippegoo, unable to contain himself for joy, began an impromptu and original waltz round his own mother.

Of course it was some time before the party calmed down sufficiently to give or receive explanations. When this state, however, was arrived at, a feeling of sadness was cast over, them all by the re-announcement of the fact that Ujarak was certainly dying. He had been carried out of the hole in the snow in which Egede and his party had taken refuge from the storm, and laid on a dry spot among the bushes where he could enjoy the sunshine, so that he became visible to his former friends the instant they entered the cleared space where he lay.

Any feelings of revenge that may have lingered in the breast of Angut were dissipated like a summer cloud when he saw the thin worn frame, and the pale haggard countenance, of the poor wizard. He went forward at once, and, kneeling beside him, took hold of one of his hands.

"You -- you -- forgive me, I see?" said Ujarak, anxiously.

"Yes, I forgive you," replied Angut, with fervour, for his heart was touched at the sight of the once strong and self-reliant man, who in so short a time had been reduced to such utter helplessness.

"I am glad -- glad," continued Ujarak, "that you have come before I die. I thank God for sending you. I have prayed for this."

"You thank God! you have prayed!" exclaimed Angut in surprise. "Is it the Kablunets' God you thank and pray to?"

"Yes; Jesus -- not only the Kablunets' God, but the God and Saviour of the Innuit also -- the Saviour of the whole world. I have found Him -- or rather, He has found me, the wicked angekok, since I came here."

The dying man turned a grateful look on Egede as he spoke.

"It is true," said the missionary, coming forward. "I believe that God, who brings about all good things, sent me here, and sent this man here, so that we should meet for the purpose of bringing about his salvation. The Almighty is confined to no such plans, yet it pleases Him to work by means, and often with poor tools."

Egede spoke now in the language of the Eskimos, having long before that time learned to speak it sufficiently well to be understood.

"Angut," said Ujarak, after a few moments, "listen to me. I cannot live long. Before I go, let me tell you that Nunaga is good -- good -- good! She is true to you, and she has been very, very good to me. She forgives me, though I meant to take her from you and from her home for ever. But for her, I should have been left to die on the ice. She must have had the Spirit of Jesus in her before she heard His name. Take care of her, Angut. She will serve you well. Listen to her, and she will teach you to be wise -- "

He ceased abruptly. The energy with which he spoke proved to be the last flare of the mysterious lamp of life. Next moment only the worn-out tenement of the angekok lay before his people, for his spirit had "returned to God who gave it."

The joy which had been so suddenly created by this unexpected union of friends and kindred was damped, not only by the sad though happy death of the wizard, but by the recurrence of the storm which had already proved almost fatal to them all. The recent clearing up of the weather was only a lull in the gale. Soon the sky overclouded again, snow began to fall so thickly that they could not see more than a few yards in any direction, and the wind drove them back into the hole or cave in the snow out of which the short-lived sunshine had drawn them.

The body of Ujarak was buried under a heap of stones, for they had no implements with which to dig a grave. Then Okiok and his party hastily constructed a rude snow-hut to protect them from the storm. Here for two more days and nights they were imprisoned, and much of that time they passed in listening to the pleasant discourse of Hans Egede, as he told the northern natives the wonderful story of redemption through Jesus Christ, or recounted some of his own difficulties in getting out to Greenland.

Few missionaries, we should imagine, have experienced or overcome greater difficulties in getting to their field of labour than this same earnest Norwegian, Hans Egede, though doubtless many may have equalled him in their experience of dangers and difficulties after the fight began.

Even after having made up his mind to go to Greenland out of pure desire for the salvation of souls -- for his knowledge of that inhospitable land precluded the possibility of his having been tempted to go to it from any other motive -- he had to spend over ten years of his life in overcoming objections and obstructions to his starting.

At first his friends gave him credit for being mad, for people are somewhat slow to believe in disinterested self-sacrifice; and the idea of a clergyman with a comfortable living in Norway, who had, besides, a wife and four small children, voluntarily resolving to go to a region in which men could be barely said to live, merely for the purpose of preaching Christ to uncivilised savages, seemed to them absurd. They little knew the power of the missionary spirit, or rather, the power of the Holy Spirit, by which some great men are actuated! But, after all, if in the world's experience many men are found ready to take their lives in their hands, and cheerfully go to the coldest, hottest, and wildest regions of earth at the call of duty, or "glory," or gold, is it strange that some men should be found willing to do the same thing for the love of God and the souls of men?

Be this as it may, it is certain that the soul of good Hans Egede became inflamed with a burning desire to go as a missionary to Greenland, and from the time that the desire arose, he never ceased to pray and strive towards the accomplishment of his purpose. His thoughts were first turned in that direction by reading of Christian men from his own country, who, centuries before, had gone to Greenland, established colonies, been decimated by sickness, and then almost exterminated by the natives -- at least so it was thought, but all knowledge of them had long been lost. A friend in Bergen who had made several voyages to Greenland aroused Egede's pity for his lost countrymen, some of whom, it was supposed, had sunk back into paganism for want of teachers. His thoughts and his desires grew, and the first difficulty presented itself in the form of a doubt as to whether it was allowable to forsake his congregation. Besides, several near relations as well as wife and children were dependent on him for sustenance, which increased the initial difficulty.

But "where there's a will there's a way" is a proverb, the truth of which Hans Egede very soon began to exemplify. Not least among this good man's difficulties seemed to be his modesty, for he was troubled with "extreme diffidence and the fear of being charged with presumption."

At last, in the year 1710, he determined to make a humble proposal to Bishop Randulph of Bergen, and to Bishop Krog of Drontheim, entreating them to support at court his plans for the conversion of the Greenlanders. Both bishops replied favourably; but when his friends saw that he was in earnest, they set up vehement opposition to what they styled his preposterous enterprise. Even his wife and family were at first among his foes, so that the poor man was greatly perplexed, and well-nigh gave up in despair. Happily, his wife at the time became involved in a series of troubles and persecutions, which so affected her that she left the enemy, and ever afterwards supported her husband loyally, heart and soul.

That Egede regarded his wife's opposition as more formidable than that of all the rest of his kith and kin put together, may be gathered from the fact that he says, on her coming over, that his "joy was complete," and that he "believed every obstacle to have been vanquished." In the strength of these feelings he immediately drew up a memorial to the worthy College of Missions, and again entreated the help of the bishops of Bergen and Drontheim. But bishops then, as now, were not to be unduly hurried. They recommended patience till more favourable and peaceful times!

Thus Egede's plans were postponed from year to year, for peaceful times seemed very far off. Moreover, he was assailed with all kinds of reproaches and misunderstandings as to motives, so that in the year 1715 he thought it necessary to draw up a vindication of his conduct entitled, "A Scriptural and Rational Solution and Explanation of the Difficulties and Objections raised against the Design of converting the Heathen Greenlanders."

Then people tried to divert Egede from his purpose by picturing to him the dangers of his enterprise; the miseries he must endure; the cruelty of endangering the lives of his wife and children; and lastly, by pointing out the madness of relinquishing a certain for an uncertain livelihood. They even went so far as to insinuate that, under a cloak of religious motive, he wished to "aggrandise his reputation;" but Egede was heroically firm -- some folk would say obstinate.

Wearied with delays, and having reason to believe that his memorial was not properly supported, he resolved at last to go himself to the fountain-head. Resigning his office in 1718, he went to Bergen, from which port there had been in time past considerable trade with Greenland. Here he received little or no encouragement, but the sudden death at this time of King Charles the Twelfth, giving hopes of the speedy restoration of peace, Egede thought it advisable to go to Copenhagen and personally present his memorial to the College of Missions. He did so, and received the encouraging answer that the King would "consider his matter."

Kings have a wonderful capacity for taking time to "consider matters" --  sometimes to the extent of passing out of time altogether, and leaving the consideration to successors. But the King on this occasion was true to his word. He gave Egede a private audience, and in 1719 sent orders to the magistrates of Bergen to collect all the opinions and information that could be gathered in regard to the trade with Greenland and the propriety of establishing a colony there, with a statement of the privileges that might be desired by adventurers wishing to settle in the new land. But, alas! no adventurers wished to settle there; the royal efforts failed, and poor Egede was left to fall back on his own exertions and private enterprise.

For another year this indefatigable man vainly importuned the King and the College of Missions. At last he prevailed on a number of sympathisers to hold a conference. These, under his persuasive powers, subscribed forty pounds a-piece towards a mission fund. Egede set a good example by giving sixty pounds. Then, by begging from the bishop and people of Bergen, he raised the fund to about two thousand pounds. With this sum he bought a ship, and called it the Hope. Two other vessels were chartered and freighted -- one for the whale fishery, the other to take home news of the colony. The King, although unable to start the enterprise, appointed Egede missionary to the colony with a salary of sixty pounds a year, besides a present of a hundred pounds for immediate expenses, and finally, on the 12th May 1721, the indomitable Hans, with his heroic wife and four children, set sail for "Greenland's icy mountains," after an unprecedented ten years' conflict.

Dangers and partial disasters greeted them on their arrival, in July, at Baal's River, latitude 64 degrees, where they established the colony of Godhaab.

It would require a volume to tell of Hans Egede's difficulties, doings, and sufferings in the new land. Suffice it to say that they were tremendous, and that he acted as the pioneer to the interesting missions of the Moravian Brethren to the same neighbourhood.

Hans Egede had been several years at his post when the meeting already described took place between him and the northern Eskimos.



Chapter Twenty Four.

Escape From Present Danger, And A Curious Instance Of The Effects Of Gin.

Although Nunaga, Kabelaw, and the children were now happily re-united to friends and kindred, their dangers were by no means over, for a wide space of ice-blocked sea separated the small island from the shores of Greenland, and their supply of meat was not sufficient, even with economy, to maintain the whole party for more than a couple of days.

In these circumstances they were much comforted, after the storm had blown itself out, to find that the pack had been considerably loosened, and that several lanes of open water extended through it in the direction of the shore.

"There is a temporary settlement of natives not far from here, on the mainland," said Egede, when he and some of the men were assembled on the beach discussing their plans. "Although not very friendly, they would nevertheless help us, I think, in this hour of need. They have been demoralised by traders, and drawn away from the mission at Godhaab. But how we are to get to the mainland it is difficult to see, unless God mercifully clears away the ice."

"Why don't you ask your God to clear it away?" demanded Simek. "Have you not told us that He answers prayer offered in the name of Jesus?"

Egede looked at his questioner in some surprise, mingled with pleasure, for his experience had taught him that too many of the natives either assented without thought to whatever he said, or listened with absolute indifference, if not aversion -- especially when he attempted to bring truth home, or apply it personally.

"I am glad you ask the question, Simek," he replied, "because it gives me the opportunity of telling you that I have asked God, in the name of Jesus, to bring us out of our present trouble, and also of explaining that I never pray without adding the words 'if it be Thy will' -- for God does not always answer prayer exactly in accordance with our request, but according to His own wisdom; so that, if He were hereafter to say, 'Now, is not that better than you asked?' we would be obliged to reply, 'Yes, Lord, it is better.'"

As the expression on Simek's face showed that he was not quite convinced, Egede added -- 

"Listen, Simek. I and my people were starving here. I prayed to God, in Jesus' name, to send us deliverance. Did He not answer my prayer by sending you and your party with food!"

"True," assented Simek.

"Listen again, Simek. Were you not in great danger when your oomiak and kayaks were crushed in the ice?"

"Yes."

"Were you not in very great danger when you were imprisoned on the iceberg -- in danger of starvation, in danger of being crushed by its disruption?"

"Yes."

"Well, now, if you had believed in the great and good Spirit at that time, what would you have asked Him to do for you?"

"I would have asked Him to clear the sea of ice," replied the Eskimo promptly, "and send us kayaks and oomiaks to take us on shore."

"And if He had answered you according to your prayer, you would have said, no doubt, 'That is well.'"

"Yes," answered Simek emphatically, and with a smile.

"But suppose," continued Egede, "that God had answered you by delivering you in another way -- by keeping you on the berg; by making that berg, as it were, into a great oomiak, and causing it to voyage as no oomiak ever voyaged -- causing it to plough through pack-ice as no ship made by man ever ploughed; to go straight to an island to which no human power could have brought you; and to have done it all in time to save your own dear Pussi and all the rest of us from starvation -- would you not have said that God had answered your prayer in a way that was far better?"

While the missionary was speaking, profound gravity took the place of the puzzled expression on the countenance of Simek and of the others who were listening, for their intelligence was quite quick enough to perceive the drift of his argument before it was finished.

"But," said Simek earnestly, "I did not pray for this, yet I got it."

"True, the Good Spirit guided you, even though you did not pray," returned Egede. "Is not this a proof of His love? If He is so good to thankless and careless children, what sure ground have we for trusting that He will be good to those who love Him! What our Great Father wants is that we should love and trust Him."

There was one man of the group whose lips were parted, and whose eyes seemed to glitter as he listened. This was Angut. Much and deeply had that intelligent Eskimo thought about the Great Spirit and the mysteries around and within himself, but never till that moment did the curtain seem to rise so decidedly from before his spiritual vision. Egede observed the keen gaze, though he judged it wise to take no notice of it at the time, but he did not fail to pray mentally that the good seed might take root.

The attention of the party was called off the subject of discourse just then by a further movement of the pack-ice.

"See, the lanes of open water widen," exclaimed Okiok eagerly, pointing seaward.

"Perhaps," said Egede, "God intends to deliver us."

"Have you prayed to be delivered?" asked Angut quickly.

"Yes, I have."

"Suppose," continued the inquisitive Eskimo, "that God does not deliver you, but leaves you here to die. Would that be answering your prayer?"

"Yes; for instead of granting my request in the way I wished, namely, that I might be permitted to live and preach about the Great Spirit to your countrymen for many years, He would have answered my prayer for deliverance by taking me away from all evil, to be with Jesus, which is far better."

To the surprise of the missionary, a look of disappointment settled on the face of Angut.

"What ails you?" he asked.

"From what you say," returned the Eskimo, somewhat coldly, "I see that, with you, whatever happens is best; nothing can be wrong. There is something which tells me here," -- he placed his hand on his breast -- "that that is not true."

"You misunderstand me, friend," said Egede; "I did not say that nothing can be wrong. What I do say is that whatever God does is and must be right. But God has given to man a free will, and with his free will man does wrong. It is just to save man from this wrong-doing that Jesus came to earth."

"Free will?" murmured the Eskimo, with a recurrence of the perplexed look. And well might that look recur, for his untrained yet philosophical mind had been brought for the first time face to face with the great insoluble problem of the ages.

"Yes," said Egede, "you have got hold of a thought which no man has ever yet been able to fathom. Free will is a great mystery, nevertheless every child knows that it is a great fact."

From this point Angut seemed to commune only with his own spirit, for he put no more questions. At the same time the opening up of the pack rendered the less philosophical among the Eskimos anxious to make some practical efforts for their deliverance.

At Rooney's suggestion it was arranged that the boldest of the men should take the missionary's boat -- a very small one that could not carry above a third of the party, -- and examine the leads of open water, until they should ascertain whether they seemed safe or practicable; then return at once, and, if the report should be favourable, begin by taking off the women and children. This plan was carried out. A favourable report was brought back, the women were immediately embarked, and before evening closed the whole party was landed on the mainland in safety.

Being too late to proceed further that day, the Eskimos ran up a rude shelter of stones, moss, and sticks, the women being accommodated under the upturned boat. Next day they found that the pack had continued to ease off during the night, so that there was a lead of open water between it and the shore.

"You have been praying during the night," said Okiok to Egede in an abrupt manner, almost as if he were accusing him of taking an unfair advantage of circumstances.

"Truly I have," answered the missionary, with an amused look, "but I did not presume to ask the Great Spirit to help us in this particular way. I left that to His wisdom and love. I have been taught to trust Him."

"And if you had not got an answer at all," returned Okiok, wrinkling his brows in perplexity, "you would still have said that all was right?"

"Just so. If I get an answer it is well. If I get no answer it is still well, for then I know that He sees delay to be best for me and I feel sure that the answer will come at last, in the right way, and in good time, for in the Book of the Great Spirit I am told that 'all things work together for good to them that love God.'"

"What!" exclaimed Angut, who had listened to the conversation with intense interest; "would it be good for you if I killed you?"

"Of course it would, if God allowed it. Thousands of men and women in time past have chosen to be killed rather than offend God by sinning."

"This is very strange teaching," said Angut, glancing at his friend Okiok.

"It is the teaching of Jesus, the Son of God. I am only His servant," said the missionary, "and I hope to tell you much more that will seem very strange before long; but at present we must arrange what is now to be done, for it is the duty of all men to take advantage of opportunities as they are presented to them."

The truth of this was so obvious that the Eskimos at once dropped into the region of the practical by advising that the women should all get into the boat and advance by water, while the men should walk by the shore.

This being agreed to, the boat was launched. Although not an Eskimo oomiak, the little craft, which was made of wood, and resembled a punt, was propelled by oomiak paddles, so that Madame Okiok, who was appointed steerswoman, felt herself quite at home when seated in her place. Sigokow, being a powerful creature, physically as well as mentally, was put in charge of the bow-paddle. The other women were ranged along the sides, each with a paddle except old Kannoa who was allowed to sit in the bottom of the craft as a passenger, and guardian of Pussi and Tumbler.

As these last were prone to jump about under violent impulses of joyous hilarity, and had an irresistible desire to lean over the sides for the purpose of dipping their hands in the sea, the duty of the old woman, although connected with children's play, was by no mean's child's play.

Three miles an hour being the average speed at which the boat went, the walkers easily kept up with it. Only once did a difficulty occur when they came to a narrow bay which, although not more than a mile or so across from point to point, ran so far inland that the walkers could not have gone round it without great loss of time.

"We must be ferried across here," said Egede; "but as it is past noon, I think we had better call a halt, and dine before making the traverse."

"That is my opinion, too, sir," said Rooney, throwing down the bundle he had been carrying.

As the invitation to feed seldom comes amiss to a healthy Eskimo, Egede's proposal was at once agreed to, and in a few minutes they were all busily engaged.

It was a pretty spot, that on which they dined. Bushes just beginning to bud surrounded them; brilliant sunshine drew forth delicious scents from the long, long frozen earth and the reviving herbage on which they sat. It also drew forth gushing rivulets from the patches of snow and heavy drifts, which here and there by their depth and solidity seemed to bid defiance to the sweet influences of spring. The ice-laden sea sent gentle wavelets to the pebbly shore. A group of large willows formed a background to their lordly hall, and behind them, in receding and grand perspective, uprose the great shoulders of Greenland's mountains.

On all those natural objects of interest and beauty, however, the travellers did not at first bestow more than a passing glance. They were too much engrossed with "metal more attractive," in the shape of bear blubber; but when appetite began to fail conversation began to flow. At that point it occurred to Pussi and Tumbler that they would go and have some fun.

Child-nature is much the same all the world over and curiously enough, it bears strong resemblance to adult nature. Having fed to satiety, these chips of Simek and Okiok lifted up their eyes, and beheld the surrounding shrubs. At once the idea arose -- "Let us explore." The very same impulse that sent Mungo Park and Livingstone to Africa; Ross, Parry, Franklin, Kane, and all the rest of them toward the Pole, led our little hero and heroine into that thicket, and curiosity urged them to explore as far as possible. They did so, and, as a natural consequence, lost themselves. But what cared they for that? With youth, and health, and strength, they were as easy in their minds as Lieutenant Greely was with sextant, chart, and compass. As to food, were they not already victualled for, not a three years', but a three hours', expedition?

And their parents were not disturbed on their account. Eskimo fathers and mothers are not, as a rule, nervous or anxious about their offspring.

In a remarkably short space of time Pussi and Tumbler, walking hand in hand, put more than a mile of "bush" between them and their feeding-place.

"Oh! wha's dat?" exclaimed Pussi, stopping short, and gazing into the thicket in front of her.

We pause to remind the reader that our little ones lisped in Eskimo, and that, in order to delineate faithfully, our only resource is to translate into lisping English.

"It's a man," exclaimed Tumbler.

"I tink him's a funny man," murmured the little girl, as the man approached.

Pussi was right. But it was not his dress, so much as his gait and expression, that were funny. For the stranger was obviously an Eskimo, being flat and fat-visaged, black-and-straight haired, and seal-skinnily clad.

The singular point about him was his walk. To all appearance it was a recently acquired power, for the man frowned almost fiercely at the ground as he advanced, and took each step with an amount of forethought and deliberation which to the children seemed quite unaccountable. Nay, after having taken a step, he would seem suddenly to repent, and draw back, putting a foot behind him again, or even to one side or the other -- anywhere, in short, rather than in front. Coming up to the children at last by this painful process, he became suddenly aware of their presence, and opened his eyes to an extent that could only be accounted for on the wild supposition that he had never seen a child in all his life before.

Having stared for a minute or so with all the intensity of the most solemn surprise, he blinked like a sleepy owl, his mouth expanded, and his whole countenance beamed with good-will; but suddenly he changed back, as if by magic, to the solemn-surprise condition.

This was too much for the children, who simultaneously burst into a hilarious fit of laughter.

The fit seemed catching, for the man joined them with a loud roar of delight, swaying to and fro with closed eyes as he did so.

The roar brought up Red Rooney, who had followed the children's steps and happened to be close to them at the time of the explosion. He looked at the man for a moment, and then his muttered remark, "Drunk as a fiddler!" cleared up the mystery.

When the man opened his eyes, having finished his laugh, and beheld a tall Kablunet gazing sternly at him, all the fire of his ancestors blazed up in his breast, and came out at his eyes. Drawing his knife, he sprang at our seaman with the murderous weapon uplifted.

Rooney caught his wrist, put a foot behind his leg, gave him a sort of twirl, and laid him flat on his back. The fall caused the knife to spin into the air, and the poor Eskimo found himself at the mercy of the Kablunet.

Instead of taking the man's life, Rooney bade him sit up. The man did so with a solemn look, not unmixed with perplexity.

There is a phase of that terrible vice drunkenness which is comic, and it is not of the slightest use to ignore that fact. There were probably few men who detested strong drink and grieved over its dire effects more than Red Rooney. He had been led, at a time when total abstinence was almost unknown, to hate the very name of drink and to become a total abstainer. Yet he could not for the life of him resist a hearty laugh when the befuddled Eskimo blinked up in his face with an imbecile smile, and said -- "Wh-whash 'e matter, y-you st-stupid ole' K-K-Kablunet?"

The difficulty and faulty nature of his pronunciation was such that slipshod English serves admirably to indicate his state of mind, although neither English nor Eskimo, Arabic nor Hebrew, will suffice to describe in adequate terms the tremendous solemnity of his gaze after the imbecile smile had passed away.

"You disreputable old seal," said Rooney, "where did you get the drink?"

Words are wanting to express the dignified look of injured innocence with which the man replied -- "I -- I've had no d-drink. Nosh a d-drop!"

"Yes, truly you are a man and a brother," muttered Rooney, as he noted this "touch of nature," and felt that he was in the company of "kin." "What's your name, you walrus?"

"K-Kazho," answered the man indignantly.

"What!"

"K-Ka-zho," he repeated, with emphasis.

"I suppose you mean Kajo, you unnatural jellyfish."

Kajo did not condescend to say what he meant, but continued to eye the Kablunet with lofty disdain, though the effect of his expression was marred by his attention being distracted by Pussi and Tumbler, whose faces were fiery red, owing to fits of suppressed laughter.

"Get up now, you old rascal," said Rooney. "Come along with me, and I'll show you to my friends."

At first the Eskimo showed a disposition to resist, but when the powerful seaman lifted him up by the neck of his coat, as if he had been a little dog, and set him on his legs, he thought better of it, smiled benignly, and moved on.

Hans Egede at once recognised this fellow as one of the most troublesome of his flock.

"I have done my best to keep strong drink from that man," he explained to Rooney, "but, as you must be aware from your long residence among them, the traders will supply the poor creatures with rum, and Kajo's naturally sanguine temperament is unable to withstand its influence. Over and over again he has promised me -- with tears of, I believe, true repentance in his eyes -- to give it up; but as surely as the traders offer it to him, and prevail on him to take one drop, so surely does he give way to a regular debauch."

While he spoke to Rooney in the Danish tongue, the subject of conversation stood with bowed head, conscience-smitten, before him, for, although he did not understand the language, he guessed correctly that the talk was about his own misdeeds.

"Come with me," said the missionary, taking the poor man by the arm, leading him aside to some distance, and evidently entering into serious remonstrance -- while Kajo, as evidently, commenced energetic protestations.

On returning, Egede said that the Eskimo told him his tribe had moved along the coast to a better hunting-ground, and were at that moment located in an old deserted village, just beyond the point for which they were making, on the other side of the bay. He therefore advised that they should start off at once, so as to reach the camp early in the evening.

"Kajo tells me," added Egede, "that his kayak lies hid in the bushes at no great distance; so he can go with us. He is not too drunk, I think, to manage his light craft."

But Egede was wrong, for even while he was speaking Kajo had slipped quietly behind a bush. There, after a cautious look round to see that no one observed him, he drew a curious little flat earthenware bottle from some place of concealment about his dress, applied it to his lips, and took what Rooney would have styled "a long, hearty pull."

That draught was the turning-point. The comic and humorous were put to flight, and nothing but fierce, furious savagery remained behind. Many men in their cups become lachrymose, others silly, and some combative. The fiery liquor had the latter effect on Kajo. Issuing from his place of retirement with a fiendish yell and glaring eyes, he made an insane attack on Angut. That Eskimo, having no desire to hurt the man, merely stepped lightly out of his way and let him pass. Fortunately his knife had been left on the ground where Rooney first met him, for he stumbled and fell upon Kabelaw, into whom he would certainly have plunged the weapon had it still been in his hand.

Jumping up, he looked round with the glaring eyes of a tiger, while his fingers clutched nervously at the place where he was wont to carry the lost knife.

Seeing his condition, Arbalik sprang towards him, but, stooping quickly, Kajo darted out of his way. At the same moment he snatched up a knife that had been left lying on the ground. The first effect of the last draught seemed for the time to have increased the man's powers of action, for, rushing round the circle, he came suddenly upon poor old Kannoa, who chanced to be seated a little apart from the others. Seizing her thin hair, Kajo brandished the knife in front of her throat, and, glaring at the men, gave vent to a wild laugh of triumph.

It was evident that he was for the time quite mad and unaccountable for his actions -- though by no means unaccountable for taking the accursed drink that reduced him to that state of temporary insanity. Red Rooney, aghast with horror at the impending fate of the dear old remembrancer of his grandmother, sprang forward with the agility of a wild cat, but his energy, intensified though it was by rage, could not have prevented the catastrophe if Ippegoo had not come to the rescue.

Yes, that mild youth was the instrument chosen to avert the blow. He chanced to be standing beside a mass of turf which Okiok had cut from the ground for the purpose of making a dry seat for Nuna. Seizing this, Ippegoo hurled it at the head of the drunken Eskimo. Never before did the feeble youth make such a good shot. Full on the flat face of the drunkard it went, like the wad of a siege-gun, scattering earth and debris all round -- and down went the Eskimo. Unable to check himself, down also went Rooney on the top of him.

Next moment the luckless Kajo was secured with a piece of walrus-line, and flung on one side, while the indignant party held a noisy consultation as to what was to be done with him.



Chapter Twenty Five.

The Eskimo Encampment -- A Murder And Its Consequences.

With Hans Egede, Red Rooney, and Angut as chief councillors, it may be easily understood that the punishment awarded to Kajo was not severe. He was merely condemned, in the meantime, to be taken to his own people as a prisoner, and then let go free with a rebuke.

"But how are we to carry him there?" asked Egede. "He cannot walk, and we must not delay."

"That's true," said Rooney; "and it will never do to burden the women's boat with him. It is too full already."

"Did he not say that he had his kayak with him?" asked Angut.

"He did," cried Okiok, with the sudden animation of one who has conceived an idea. "Run, Arbalik, Ippegoo, Ermigit, Norrak, and seek for the kayak."

The youths named ran off to obey, with the alacrity of well-trained children, and in half an hour returned in triumph with the kayak on their shoulders. Meanwhile Kajo had recovered slightly, and was allowed to sit up, though his hands were still bound.

"Now we'll try him. Launch the boat, boys," said Okiok, "and be ready to paddle."

The young men did as they were bid, and Okiok, unloosening Kajo's bonds, asked him if he could manage his kayak.

"O-of -- c-course I can," replied the man, somewhat indignantly.

"Come, then, embark an' do it," returned Okiok, seizing his arm, and giving it a squeeze to convince him that he was in the hands of a strong man.

Kajo staggered towards his little vessel, and, lifting it with difficulty, went down to the beach. He would certainly have fallen and damaged it if Okiok had not stood on one side and Angut on the other to prevent a fall. When the kayak was launched, he attempted to step into the little oval opening in it, but with so little success that Okiok, losing patience, lifted, him in, and crammed him down. Then he sent him afloat with a vigorous push.

Feeling all right, with the familiar paddle in his hands, Kajo tried to rouse himself, bethought him of flight, gave a hiccoughing cheer, and went skimming away like a sword-fish.

"After him now, boys, and keep alongside," cried Okiok.

Responsive to the order, the boat shot after the kayak, but they had barely got under weigh when Kajo made a false stroke with the paddle, lost his balance, and disappeared.

"I expected that," remarked Okiok, with a laugh.

"But the poor man will drown," said Egede anxiously; "he is too drunk to recover himself."

This was obvious, for the overturned craft seemed to quiver like a dying whale, while its owner made wild but fruitless efforts to recover his proper position; and it is certain that the poor man would then and there have paid the penalty of his intemperance with his life, if the boat had not ranged alongside, and rescued him.

"So then," said Angut to Egede, as they were bringing Kajo ashore, "this is the effect of the mad waters that I have often heard of, but never seen till now."

"Yes, Angut, you see the effect of them -- at least on one man; but their effects vary according to the nature of those who drink. Some men they make violent, like Kajo; others become silly; while not a few become heavy, stupid, and brutal. In my country most if not all of the murders that take place are committed under the influence of strong drink. The Red Indians, who dwell far to the south-west of your lands, call strong drink 'fire-water.' Your own name 'mad waters' is better, I think."

Kajo was led forward at this moment, looking very much dejected, and greatly sobered. He made no further attempt to resist, but, as a precaution, his hands were again tied, and then he was left to dry in the sun, and to his meditations, while the party made the traverse of the bay.

This was accomplished in three trips. As the last party was about to start, Okiok and Kajo alone remained on the shore.

"You had better think twice," said Rooney, as he was about to push off the boat. "He may give you some trouble."

"Fear not," returned Okiok, with a grin, in which there were mingled fun and contempt. "I have thought twice -- three -- four -- ten times," and he extended the fingers of both hands.

"Very good; we'll keep an eye on you," said Rooney, with a laugh.

"He runs no risk," remarked Egede, taking up one of the paddles to share in the work. "His plan is one which Eskimos frequently adopt when one of their kayaks has been destroyed by rocks or walruses."

The plan referred to consisted in making the man whose kayak has been lost lie out on what may be called the deck of a friend's kayak. The well-known little craft named the "Rob Roy Canoe" bears much resemblance to the Eskimo kayak -- the chief difference being that the former is made of thin, light wood, the latter of a light framework covered with sealskin. Both are long and narrow; decked entirely over, with the exception of a hole in the centre; can hold only one person, and are propelled with one double paddle having a blade at each end. The only way, therefore, of helping a friend in distress with such craft is to lay him out flat at full length on the deck, and require him to keep perfectly still while you paddle to a place of safety.

Okiok intended to take the helpless drunkard across the bay in this fashion, but for the sake of safety, resolved to do it in an unfriendly manner.

When the boat had shot away, he pushed the kayak into the water until it was afloat in the fore-part, arranged the spears which formed its armament, made fast the various lines, and laid the paddle across the opening. Then he went up to Kajo, who had been watching his movements with much curiosity, not quite unmingled with discomfort.

"Go," he said, pointing to the kayak, "and lay yourself out in front, on your face."

Kajo looked earnestly at the speaker. There was much less of the heroic in his gaze by that time, and therefore more of manly determination; but Okiok said "go" again. And Kajo went.

When he was laid flat on his face in front of the opening, with his feet on either side, and his head towards the bow, Okiok proceeded to tie him down there.

"You need not fear," he said; "I will not move." Okiok did not cease his work, but he said -- 

"I will make sure that you do not move. Any man with the sense of a puffin might be trusted to lie still for his own sake, but I have learned this day that a man full of mad water is a fool -- not to be trusted at all."

Having expressed himself thus, and finished the lashing, he got softly into his place, pushed off, and paddled gently over the sea.

He had not advanced far when Kajo, feeling uncomfortable, tried slightly to alter his position, whereupon Okiok took up a spear that lay handy, and gave him a slight prick by way of reminding him of his duty. The rest of the voyage was accomplished in peace and safety.

In the evening the party arrived at the temporary abode of the tribe to which Kajo belonged. By that time the Eskimo was thoroughly sober, but the same could not be said of all his people -- of whom there were upwards of a hundred men, besides women and children. It was found that a chance trader to Godhaab had brought a considerable quantity of rum, and the families of which we now speak had secured several kegs.

All of these Eskimos were well acquainted with Egede, and a few of them were friendly towards him; but many were the reverse. There was great excitement among them at the time the party arrived -- excitement that could scarcely be accounted for either by the rum or by the unexpected arrival.

Egede soon found out what it was. A terrible murder had been committed the night before by one of the Eskimos, who was considered not only the best hunter of the band to which he belonged, but one of the best husbands and fathers. His name was Mangek. He was one of those who had been well disposed towards the missionary, and in regard to whom much hope had been entertained. But he had been treated to rum by the traders, and having conceived an ardent desire for more, had managed to obtain a keg of the mad water. Although kind and amiable by nature, his temperament was sanguine and his nerves sensitively strung. A very little of the rum excited him to extravagant exuberance of spirit, and a large dose made him temporarily insane.

It was during one of these fits of insanity that Mangek had on the previous night struck his wife, when she was trying to soothe him. The blow would not in itself have killed her, but as she fell her head struck on a stone, her skull was fractured, and she died in a few minutes.

Indifferent to -- indeed, ignorant of -- what he had done, the Eskimo sat beside the corpse all that night drinking. No one dared to go near him, until he fell back helplessly drunk. Then they removed the body of his wife.

It was bad enough to see this hitherto respected man mad with drink, but it was ten times worse to see him next day mad with horror at what he had done. For it was not merely that his wife was dead, but that, although he had loved that wife with all his heart and soul, he had killed her with his own hand. The wretched man had rushed about the place shrieking all the morning, sometimes with horror and sometimes with fury, until he was physically exhausted. Every one had kept carefully out of his way. When our travellers arrived he was lying in his hut groaning heavily; but no one knew what state he was in, for they still feared to disturb him.

No such fear affected Hans Egede. Knowing that he could point to the only remedy for sin and broken hearts, he went straight into the poor man's hut. Shortly afterwards the groaning ceased, and the natives listened with awe to what they knew was the voice of prayer. As they could not, however, distinguish the words, they gradually drew off, and circled round the strangers who had so unexpectedly arrived.

Great was their surprise when they found that their comrade Kajo had been brought home as a prisoner; and still greater was their surprise when they found that a bottle of rum which had been stolen from one of their hunters, and carried off the day before, was found on the person of Kajo -- for Kajo had been, like Mangek, a respectable man up to that date, and no one believed it possible that he would condescend to steal.

One of those who was himself under the influence of rum at the time looked sternly at Kajo, and began to abuse him as a hypocrite and deceiver.

"Now, look here," cried Red Rooney, stepping forward; "listen to me."

Having regard to his commanding look and tone, the natives considered him the leader of the party, and listened with respect.

"What right have you," he continued, turning sharply on the last speaker, "to look with contempt on Kajo? You have been drinking mad water yourself. I smell it in your breath. If you were to take a little more, you would be quite ready to commit murder."

"No, I would not," replied the Eskimo stoutly.

"Yes, you would," said the sailor, still more stoutly. "Even my good-natured friend Okiok here would be ready to murder his wife Nuna if he was full of mad water."

This unexpected statement took our kindly Eskimo so much by surprise that for a moment or two he could not speak. Then he thundered forth -- 

"Never! What! kill Nuna? If I was stuffed with mad water from the toes to the eyelids, I could not kill Nuna."

At that moment an aged Eskimo pressed to the front. Tears were on his wrinkled cheeks, as he said, in a quavering voice -- 

"Yes, you could, my son. The wife of Mangek was my dear child. No man ever loved his wife better than Mangek loved my child. He would have killed himself sooner than he would have killed her. But Mangek did not kill her. It was the mad water that killed her. He did not know what the mad water would do when he drank it. How could he? It is the first time he has drunk it; he will never drink it again. But that will not bring back my child."

The old man tried to say more, but his lip trembled and his voice failed. His head drooped, and, turning abruptly round, he mingled with the crowd.

It was evident that the people were deeply moved by this speech. Probably they had never before given the mad water much of their thoughts, but now, after what had been said, and especially after the awful event of the previous night, opinion on the subject was beginning to form.

Red Rooney noted the fact, and was quick to take advantage of the opportunity.

"My friends," he said, and the natives listened all the more eagerly that he spoke their language so well, "when a cruel enemy comes to your shore, and begins to kill, how do you act?"

"We drive him into the sea; kill -- destroy him," shouted the men promptly.

"Is not mad water a cruel enemy? Has he not already begun his deadly work? Has he not killed one of your best women, and broken the heart of one of your best men?"

"Huk! huk! Yes, that is true."

"Then who will fight him?" shouted Rooney.

There was a chorus of "I wills," and many of the men, running up to their huts, returned, some with bottles, and some with kegs. Foremost among them was the old father of the murdered woman. He stumbled, fell, and his keg rolled to Rooney's feet.

Catching it up, the sailor raised it high above his head and dashed it to splinters on the stones. With a shout of enthusiasm the Eskimos followed his example with bottle and keg, and in another moment quite a cataract of the vile spirit was flowing into the sea.

"That is well done," said Hans Egede, coming up at the moment. "You know how to take the tide at the flood, Rooney."

"Nay, sir," returned the sailor; "God brought about all the circumstances that raised the tide, and gave me power to see and act when the tide was up. I claim to be naught but an instrument."

"I will not quarrel with you on that point," rejoined Egede; "nevertheless, as an instrument, you did it well, and for that I thank God who has granted to you what I have prayed and toiled for, without success, for many a day. It is another illustration of prayer being answered in a different and better way from what I had asked or expected."

In this strange manner was originated, on the spur of the moment, an effectual and comprehensive total abstinence movement. We are bound of course to recognise the fact that it began in impulse, and was continued from necessity -- no more drink being obtainable there at that time. Still, Egede and Rooney, as well as the better-disposed among the Eskimos, rejoiced in the event, for it was an unquestionable blessing so far as it went.

As the Eskimos had settled down on that spot for some weeks for the purpose of hunting -- which was their only method of procuring the necessaries of life, -- and as there was no pressing necessity for the missionary or his friends proceeding just then to Godhaab, it was resolved that they should all make a short stay at the place, to assist the Eskimos in their work, as well as to recruit the health and strength of those who had been enfeebled by recent hardship and starvation.



Chapter Twenty Six.

Tells Of Men Whose Actions End In Smoke, And Of Others Whose Plots End In Deeds Of Darkness.

This is a world of surprises. However long we may live, and however much we may learn, the possibility of being surprised remains with us, and our capacity for blazing astonishment is as great as when first, with staggering gait, we escaped from the nursery into space and stood irresolute, with the world before us where to choose.

These thoughts arise from the remembrance of Okiok as he stood one morning open-mouthed, open-eyed, open-souled, and, figuratively, petrified, gazing at something over a ledge of rock.

What that something was we must learn from Okiok himself, after he had cautiously retired from the scene, and run breathlessly back towards the Eskimo village, where the first man he met was Red Rooney.

"I -- I've seen it," gasped the Eskimo, gripping the seaman's arm convulsively.

"Seen what?"

"Seen a man -- on fire; and he seems not to mind it!"

"On fire! A man! Surely not. You must be mistaken."

"No, I am quite sure," returned Okiok, with intense earnestness. "I saw him with my two eyes, and smoke was coming out of him."

Rooney half-suspected what the Eskimo had seen, but there was just enough of uncertainty to induce him to say, "Come, take me to him."

"Is the man alone?" he asked, as they hurried along.

"No; Ippegoo is with him, staring at him." They soon reached the ledge of rock where Okiok had seen the "something," and, looking cautiously over it, Rooney beheld his friend Kajo smoking a long clay pipe such as Dutchmen are supposed to love. Ippegoo was watching him in a state of ecstatic absorption.

Rooney drew back and indulged in a fit of stifled laughter for a minute, but his companion was too much surprised even to smile.

"Is he doing that curious thing," asked Okiok in a low voice, "which you once told me about -- smookin' tibooko?"

"Yes; that's it," replied Rooney with a broad grin, "only you had better say 'smokin' tobacco' next time."

"'Smokkin' tibucco,'" repeated the Eskimo; "well, that is funny. But why does he spit it out? Does he not like it?"

"Of course he likes it. At least I suppose he does, by the expression of his face."

There could be little doubt that Rooney was right. Kajo had evidently got over the preliminary stages of incapacity and repugnance long ago, and had acquired the power of enjoying that mild and partial stupefaction -- sometimes called "soothing influence" -- which tobacco smoke affords. His eyes blinked happily, like those of a cat in the sunshine; his thickish lips protruded poutingly as they gripped the stem; and the smoke was expelled slowly at each puff, as if he grudged losing a single whiff of the full flavour.

Scarcely less interesting was the entranced gaze of Ippegoo. Self-oblivion had been effectively achieved in that youth. A compound of feelings -- interest, surprise, philosophical inquiry, eager expectancy, and mild alarm -- played hide-and-seek with each other in his bosom, and kept him observant and still.

"Why," asked Okiok, after gazing in silent admiration for a few minutes over the ledge, "why does he not swallow it, if he likes it, and keep it down?"

"It's hard to say," answered Rooney. "Perhaps he'd blow up or catch fire if he were to try. It might be dangerous!"

"See," exclaimed Okiok, in an eager whisper; "he is going to let Ippegoo taste it."

Rooney looked on with increased interest, for at that moment Kajo, having had enough, offered the pipe to his friend, who accepted it with the air of a man who half expected it to bite and put the end in his mouth with diffidence. He was not successful with the first draw, for instead of taking the smoke merely into his mouth he drew it straight down his throat, and spent nearly five minutes thereafter in violent coughing with tears running down his cheeks.

Kajo spent the same period in laughing, and then gravely and carefully explained how the thing should be done.

Ippegoo was an apt scholar. Almost immediately he learned to puff, and in a very short time was rolling thick white clouds from him like a turret-gun in action. Evidently he was proud of his rapid attainments.

"Humph! That won't last long," murmured Rooney to his companion.

"Isn't it good?" said Kajo to Ippegoo.

"Ye-es. O yes. It's good; a-at least, I suppose it is," replied the youth, with modesty.

A peculiar tinge of pallor overspread his face at that moment.

"What's wrong, Ippegoo?"

"I -- I -- feel f-funny."

"Never mind that," said Kajo. "It's always the way at first. When I first tried it I -- "

He was cut short by Ippegoo suddenly rising, dropping the pipe, clapping one hand on his breast, the other on his mouth, and rushing into the bushes where he disappeared like one of his own puffs of smoke. At the same moment Rooney and Okiok appeared on the scene, laughing heartily.

"You rascal!" said Rooney to Kajo, on recovering his gravity; "you have learned to drink, and you have learned to smoke, and, not satisfied with that extent of depravity, you try to teach Ippegoo. You pitiful creature! Are you not ashamed of yourself?"

Kajo looked sheepish, and admitted that he had some sensations of that sort, but wasn't sure.

"Tell me," continued the seaman sternly, "before you tasted strong drink or tobacco, did you want them?"

"No," replied Kajo.

"Are you in better health now that you've got them?"

"I -- I feel the better for them," replied Kajo.

"I did not ask what you feel," returned Rooney. "Are you better now than you were before? That's the question."

But Rooney never got a satisfactory answer to that question, and Kajo continued to drink and smoke until, happily for himself, he had to quit the settlements and proceed to the lands of thick-ribbed ice, where nothing stronger than train oil and lamp-smoke were procurable.

As for poor Ippegoo, he did not show himself to his friends during the remainder of that day. Being half an idiot, no one could prevail on him thereafter to touch another pipe.

Now, while the Eskimos and our friends were engaged in hunting, and holding an unwonted amount both of religious and philosophical intercourse, a band of desperadoes was descending the valleys of the interior of Greenland, with a view to plunder the Eskimos of the coast.

Hitherto we have written about comparatively well-behaved and genial natives, but it must not be supposed that there were no villains of an out-and-out character among those denizens of the north. It is true there were not many -- for the sparseness of the population, the superabundance of game on land and sea, as well as the wealth of unoccupied hunting-grounds, and the rigour of the climate, rendered robbery and war quite unnecessary, as well as disagreeable. Still, there were a few spirits of evil even there, to whom a quiet life seemed an abomination, and for whom the violent acquisition of other men's goods possessed a charm far transcending the practice of the peaceful industries of life.

The band referred to was not remarkably strong in numbers -- about thirty or so; but these were sturdy and daring villains, led by a chief who must have had some of the old Norse blood in his veins, he was so tall, fair of complexion, and strong.

Descending first on the little settlement of Godhaab at night, this robber band found that a Dutch trading-vessel had just arrived, the crew of which, added to the settlers attracted from their hunting-grounds to the village, formed a force which they dared not venture to attack openly. Grimlek, the robber chief, therefore resolved to wait for a better opportunity. Meanwhile, passing himself and band off as hunters, he purchased a few things from the traders and then proceeded along the coast, intending to hunt, as well as to wait till the vessel should depart.

While the robbers were thus engaged, they came unexpectedly on another trading-ship -- a Dutchman -- part of the crew of which had landed for some purpose or other in their boat. On seeing the Eskimos, the Dutchmen got quickly into their boat, and pushed off; but the robbers made signs of peace to them, and, carrying their bows, arrows, and spears up to the woods, left them there, returning to the shore as if unarmed, though in reality they had retained their knives. Again they made signs, as if they wished to trade with the Dutchmen.

Deceived by appearances, the sailors once more drew in to the shore. While they were approaching, Grimlek called his men round him and gave a few hasty directions. When the sailors had landed, the Eskimos mingled with them, and began to offer sealskins for trade -- each selecting a particular man with whom to transact business. At a given signal they drew their knives from under their coats, and each robber stabbed his man to the heart. The men left in the ship, seeing what had occurred, and that it was too late to attempt rescue, instantly filled her sails, and went off to sea.

The villains having thus easily slain their victims, carried off the booty found in the boat, and hid it in the bushes, to be taken away at a convenient opportunity.

But this deed of darkness was not done unwitnessed. Early in the morning of that day, various hunting parties had dispersed in different directions -- some to the hills, others to the sea. Among the latter was an oomiak full of women who went along-shore to fish, and with whom were old Kannoa, Nunaga, and others. They went in a northerly direction. Rooney, Angut, and Okiok proceeded along the coast to the southward.

The direction taken by these last brought them near to the spot where the Dutch sailors had landed, at the critical moment when the robbers were mingling with their unsuspecting victims.

Although only three to thirty, it is certain that our heroes would have sprung to the aid of the sailors if they had suspected what was about to happen, but the deed was done so promptly that there was no time for action. Fortunately Rooney and his companions had not shown themselves. They were therefore able to draw back into the shelter of the bushes, where they held a hasty council of war.

"We must run back to camp," said Rooney, "tell what we have seen, and return with a band of men to punish the murderers."

"Agreed," said Okiok; "but how are we to do it? The shore is open. We cannot take a step that way without being seen, and chased. We might outrun them, though I don't feel quite as supple as I used to; but we should barely arrive before them in time to warn the camp, and should then be almost unfit to fight."

To this Angut replied that they could go inland over the hills, and so come down on the camp in rear. It might not, he thought, add much to the distance. This plan was quickly adopted and put in practice.

But there are few things more deceptive than formation and distance in mountain lands. What seemed to the trio easy, proved to be tremendously difficult; and the distance they had to travel in order to avoid precipices and surmount ridges, gradually increased to many miles, so that it was late, and twilight was deepening into night, before they reached the camp.

Meanwhile the robbers were not idle. Although ignorant of the fact that their bloody work had been observed, they were not long ignorant of the near neighbourhood of the Eskimo camp. Early in the morning they had sent two of their swiftest young men to spy out the land ahead. These had discovered the camp, entered it, professing to be wandering hunters, and had then returned to their friends with the news that many of the men had gone away hunting, and would probably remain out all night; also that an oomiak full of women had gone off to the southward to fish.

The runners, happening to descend to the coast on the opposite side of a ridge from Rooney and his companions, just missed meeting them, and returned to their comrades shortly after the massacre. Grimlek knew that whatever course he should pursue must be prompt and decisive. He at once divided his men into two bands, one of which he sent to pursue and capture the women who had gone to fish; with the other, which he led in person, he resolved either to storm the camp or take it by surprise, as circumstances might point out.

By the straight way of the shore the distance was not great. In fact, the camp might have been seen from the spot where the massacre had been perpetrated, but for a high promontory which concealed it. On rounding this promontory, the party detailed to pursue the women glided into the bushes and disappeared. Grimlek, with the remaining men, advanced straight and openly towards the camp. He saw, however, on drawing near, that the number of men in it were more than a match for his small party, and therefore approached with friendly demonstrations.

They were hospitably received by Hans Egede.

"My friends," he said, "you have arrived just as we are assembling to talk about the things that concern our souls, the future life, and the Good Spirit. Will you and your men sit down and listen?"

For a few moments Grimlek did not reply. Then he said, "You are not an Eskimo?"

"No, I am a Kablunet," replied Egede; "I have been sent to tell the Eskimos about the true God."

Again the robber chief was silent. Then he said that he would consult with his men, and retired with them a short distance to do so.

"Nothing better could have happened," he said in a low tone. "The Kablunet is going to talk to them about his God. All we have to do is to mingle with them. Let each of you choose his man and sit down beside him. When I give the signal, strike at once, and let no second blow be needed."

A murmur of assent was all that the band returned to this speech, and Grimlek, returning to the missionary, said that he and his men were ready to hear.

In a few minutes each of the assassins was seated on the ground beside his chosen victim.



Chapter Twenty Seven.

A Strange Meeting Strangely Interrupted.

The meeting which had been thus strangely invaded was no ordinary prayer or missionary meeting. It had been assembled by Egede for the express purpose of affording some unbelievers among the Eskimos an opportunity of stating their difficulties and objections in regard to the new religion.

Interesting though its proceedings were, as showing the similarity of the workings of the civilised and savage minds, we cannot afford space to enter much into detail, yet some account of the matter seems necessary in order to show what it was that induced the robber chief to delay, though not to alter, his fell purpose.

After prayer offered by the missionary, that the Holy Spirit might descend on and bless the discussion, a hymn was sung. It had been translated into Eskimo, and taught to his converts by Egede. Then the missionary made a brief but complete statement of the leading facts of the good news of salvation to sinful man in Jesus Christ, -- this, not only to clear the way for what was to come, but for the purpose of teaching the newcomers, so as to render them somewhat intelligent listeners.

Then an old grey-haired man arose.

"I do not object to the new religion," he said, "but I am puzzled. You tell me that God is everywhere and knows everything; why, then, did he not go to our first mother, Eve, and warn her of her danger when the Evil One tempted her in the form of a serpent?"

"My friend, the question you ask cannot be fully answered," said Egede. "I can explain, however, that our first parents were put into the world to be tried or tested in that way. To have warned Eve would have rendered the test useless. Enough for us to know that she was told what to do. Her duty was to obey. But let me ask you a question: is not sin -- is not murder -- hateful?"

Grimlek imagined that Egede looked him straight in the face as he asked the question, and felt uneasy, but was by no means softened.

"Yes," answered the old man; "murder -- sin -- is hateful."

"Yet it certainly exists," continued Egede; "you cannot help believing that?"

"Yes, I must admit that."

"Then why did God permit sin?"

Of course the old man could not reply, and the missionary pointed out that some things were incomprehensible, and that that was one of them.

"But," he continued, "that is no reason why we should not talk of things that are comprehensible. Let us turn to these."

At this point a middle-aged man with a burly frame and resolute expression started up, and said in an excited yet somewhat reckless manner -- 

"I don't believe a word that you say. Everything exists as it was from the beginning until now, and will continue the same to the end."

"Who told you that?" asked Egede, in a prompt yet quiet manner.

The man was silenced. He resumed his seat without answering.

"You have talked of the 'end,' my friend," continued the missionary, in the same quiet tone. "When is the end? and what will come after it? I wait for enlightenment."

Still the man remained dumb. He had evidently exhausted himself in one grand explosion, and was unable for more. There was a disposition to quiet laughter on the part of the audience, but the missionary checked this by pointing to another man in the crowd and remarking -- 

"I think, friend, that you have something to say."

Thus invited, the man spoke at once, and with unexpected vigour. He was a stupid-looking, heavy-faced man, but when roused, as he then was, his face lighted up amazingly.

"We do not understand you," he said sternly. "Show us the God you describe; then we will believe in Him and obey Him. You make Him too high and incomprehensible. How can we know Him? Will He trouble Himself about the like of us? Some of us have prayed to Him when we were faint and hungry, but we got no answer. What you say of Him cannot be true, or, if you know Him better than we do, why don't you pray for us and procure for us plenty of food, good health, and a dry house? That is all we want. As for our souls, they are healthy enough already. You are of a different race from us. People in your country may have diseased souls. Very likely they have. From the specimens we have seen of them we are quite ready to believe that. For them a doctor of souls may be necessary. Your heaven and your spiritual joys may be good enough for you, but they would be very dull for us. We must have seals, and fishes, and birds. Our souls can no more live without these than our bodies. You say we shall not find any of these in your heaven; well then, we do not want to go there; we will leave it to you and to the worthless part of our own countrymen, but as for us, we prefer to go to Torngarsuk, where we shall find more than we require of all things, and enjoy them without trouble."

With an energetic "humph!" or some such exclamation, this self-satisfied philosopher sat down, and many of his countrymen expressed their sympathy with his views by a decided "Huk!" but others remained silent and puzzled.

And well they might, for in these few sentences the Eskimo had opened up a number of the problems on which man, both civilised and savage, has been exercising his brain unsuccessfully from the days of Adam and Eve until now. No wonder that poor Hans Egede paused thoughtfully -- and no doubt prayerfully -- for a few minutes ere he ventured a reply. He was about to open his lips, when, to his astonishment, a tall strong man who had been sitting near the outside circle of the audience close to the robber chief Grimlek started to his feet, and, in a tone that had in it more of a demand than a request, asked permission to speak.

It was our friend Angut.

Before listening to his remarks, however, it behoves us to account for his sudden appearance.

Having been led, as we have said, far out of their way by the detour they were compelled to take, Red Rooney and his friends did not reach the camp till some time after the meeting above described had begun. As it was growing dusk at the time, they easily approached without being observed -- all the more that during the whole time of the meeting men and women kept coming and going, according as they felt more or less interested in the proceedings.

Great was the surprise of the three friends on arriving to find the band of robbers sitting peacefully among the audience; but still greater would have been their surprise had they known the murderous purpose these had in view. Rooney, however, having had knowledge of men in many savage lands, half guessed the true state of matters, and, touching his two friends on the shoulders, beckoned to them to withdraw.

"Things look peaceful," he whispered when beyond the circle, "but there is no peace in the hearts of cold-blooded murderers. What they have done they will do again. 'Quick' is the word. Let us gather a dozen strong young men."

They had no difficulty in doing this. From among the youths who were indifferent to the proceedings at the meeting they soon gathered twelve of the strongest.

"Now, lads," said Rooney, after having briefly told them of the recent massacre, "fifteen of these murderers are seated in that meeting. You cannot fail to know them from our own people, for they are all strangers. Let each one here creep into the meeting with a short spear, choose his man, sit down beside him, and be ready when the signal is given by Angut or me. But do not kill. You are young and strong. Throw each man on his back, but do not kill unless he seems likely to get the better of you. Hold them down, and wait for orders."

No more was said. Rooney felt that delay might be fatal. With the promptitude of men accustomed to be led, the youths crept into the circle of listeners, and seated themselves as desired. Rooney and Okiok selected their men, like the rest. Angut chanced to place himself beside Grimlek.

The chief cast a quick, suspicious glance on him as he sat down, but as Angut immediately became intent on the discussion that was going on, and as the robber himself had become interested in spite of himself, the suspicion was allayed as quickly as roused.

These quiet proceedings took place just before the heavy-faced Eskimo began the speech which we have detailed. Notwithstanding the serious --  it might be bloody -- work which was presently to engage all his physical energies, the spirit of Angut was deeply stirred by the string of objections which the man had flung out so easily. Most of the points touched on had often engaged his thoughtful mind, and he felt -- as many reasoning men have felt before and since -- how easy it is for a fool to state a string of objections in a few minutes, which it might take a learned man several hours fully to answer and refute.

Oppressed, and, as it were, boiling over, with this feeling, Angut, as we have said, started to his feet, to the no small alarm of the guilty man at his side. But the chief's fears were dissipated when Angut spoke.

"Foolish fellow!" he said, turning with a blazing gaze to the heavy-faced man. "You talk like a child of what you do not understand. You ask to see God, else you won't believe. You believe in your life, don't you? Yet you have never seen it. You stab a bear, and let its life out. You know when the life is there. You have let it out. You know when it is gone. But you have not seen it. Then why do you believe in it? You do not see a sound, yet you believe in it. Do not lift your stupid face; I know what you would say: you hear the sound, therefore it exists. A deaf man does not hear the sound. Does it therefore not exist? That which produces the sound is there, though the deaf man neither sees nor hears, nor feels nor tastes, nor smells it. My friend, the man of God, says he thinks the cause of sound is motion in the air passing from particle to particle, till the last particle next my ear is moved, and then -- I hear. Is there, then, no motion in the air to cause sound because the deaf man does not hear?

"O stupid-face! You say that God does not answer prayer, because you have asked and have not received. What would you think of your little boy if he should say, 'I asked a dead poisonous fish from my father the other day, and he did not give it to me; therefore my father never gives me what I want.' Would that be true? Every morning you awake hungry, and you wish for food; then you get up, and you find it. Is not your wish a silent prayer? And is it not answered every day? Who sends the seals, and fishes, and birds, even when we do not ask with our lips? Did these animals make themselves? Stupid-face! you say your soul is healthy. Sometimes you are angry, sometimes discontented, sometimes jealous, sometimes greedy. Is an angry, discontented, jealous, greedy soul healthy? You know it is not. It is diseased, and the disease of the soul is sin. This disease takes the bad forms I have mentioned, and many other bad forms -- one of which is murder."

Angut emphasised the last word and paused, but did not look at the robber beside him, for he knew that the arrow would reach its mark. Then he resumed -- 

"The Kablunet has brought to us the better knowledge of God. He tells us that God's great purpose from the beginning of time has been to cure our soul-disease. We deserve punishment for our sins: God sent His Son and Equal, Jesus Christ, to bear our sins. We need deliverance from the power of sin: God sent His Equal -- the Spirit of Jesus -- to cure us. I believe it. I have felt that Great Spirit in my breast long before I saw the Kablunets, and have asked the Great Spirit to send more light. He has answered my prayer. I have more light, and am satisfied."

Again Angut paused, while the Eskimos gazed at him in breathless interest, and a strange thrill -- almost of expectation -- passed through the assembly, while he continued in a low and solemn tone -- 

"Jesus," he said, "saves from all sin. But," -- he turned his eyes here full on Grimlek -- "He does not save in sin. Murder -- foul and wicked murder -- has been done!"

Grimlek grew pale, but did not otherwise betray himself. Reference to murder was no uncommon thing among his countrymen. He did not yet feel sure that Angut referred to the deed which he had so recently perpetrated.

"This day," continued Angut, "I saw a band of Kablunet sailors -- "

He got no further than that, for Grimlek attempted to spring up. The heavy hand of Angut, however, crushed him back instantly, and a spear-point touched his throat.

"Down with the villains!" shouted Rooney, laying the grasp of a vice on the neck of the man next to him, and hurling him to the ground.

In the twinkling of an eye the fifteen robbers were lying flat on their backs, with fingers grasping their throats, knees compressing their stomachs, and spear-points at their hearts; but no blood was shed. One or two of the fiercest, indeed, struggled at first, but without avail --  for the intended victim of each robber was handy and ready to lend assistance at the capture, as if in righteous retribution.

It was of course a startling incident to those who were not in the secret. Every man sprang up and drew his knife, not knowing where a foe might appear, but Rooney's strong voice quieted them.

"We're all safe enough, Mr Egede," he cried, as he bound Grimlek's hands behind him with a cord. The Eskimos quickly performed the same office for their respective prisoners, and then, setting them up in a row, proceeded to talk over the massacre, and to discuss in their presence the best method of getting rid of the murderers.

"I propose," said Okiok, whose naturally kind heart had been deeply stirred by the cowardly massacre which he had witnessed, "I propose that we should drown them."

"No; drowning is far too good. Let us spear them," said Kajo, who had become sober by that time.

"That would not hurt them," cried a fierce Eskimo, smiting his knee with his clenched fist. "We must cut off their ears and noses, poke out their eyes, and then roast them alive -- "

"Hush! hush!" cried Egede, stepping forward; "we must do nothing of the kind. We must not act like devils. Have we not been talking of the mercy of the Great Spirit? Let us be just, but let us temper justice with mercy. Angut has not yet spoken; let us hear what he will propose."

Considering the energy with which he had denounced the murders, and the vigour with which he had captured Grimlek, Angut's proposal was somewhat surprising.

"Kablunet," he said, turning to the missionary, "have you not told me that in your Book of God it is written that men should do to other men what they wish other men to do to them?"

"Truly, that is so," answered Egede.

"If I were very wicked," continued Angut, "and had done many evil deeds, I should like to be forgiven and set free; therefore, let us forgive these men, and set them free."

We know not with what feelings the robbers listened to the inhuman proposals that were at first made as to their fate, but certain it is that after Angut had spoken there was a visible improvement in the expression of their faces.

Considerable astonishment and dissatisfaction were expressed by the majority of the Eskimos. Even Egede, much though he delighted in the spirit which dictated it, could not quite see his way to so simple and direct an application of the golden rule in the case of men who had so recently been caught red-handed in a cold-blooded murder. While he was still hesitating as to his reply to this humane proposal, an event occurred which rendered all their discussion unnecessary.

We have said that fifteen robbers had been captured; but there were sixteen who had entered the camp and joined the meeting. One of these had, without particular motive, seated himself on the outskirt of the circle under the shadow of a bush, which shadow had grown darker as the twilight deepened. Thus it came to pass that he had been overlooked, and, when the melee took place, he quietly retreated into the brush-wood. He was a brave man, however, although a robber, and scorned to forsake his comrades in their distress. While the discussion above described was going on, he crept stealthily towards the place where the captives had been ranged.

This he did the more easily that they sat on the summit of a bank or mound which sloped behind them into the bushes. Thus he was able to pass in a serpentine fashion behind them all without being seen, and, as he did so, to cut the bonds of each. Their knives had been removed, else, being desperate villains, they might now have attacked their captors. As it was, when the cords of all had been cut, they rose up with a mingled yell of laughter and triumph and dashed into the bushes.

The hunters were not slow to follow, with brandished knives and spears, but their chief called them back with a Stentorian roar, for well he knew that his men might as well try to follow up a troop of squirrels as pursue a band of reckless men in the rapidly increasing darkness, and that there was nearly as much likelihood of their stabbing each other by mistake in the dark, as of killing or catching their foes.

When the hunters had again re-assembled in front of their chief man's house, they found new cause of anxiety which effectually put to flight their annoyance at having been outwitted by the robbers.

This was the fact that, although night was coming on, the oomiak with the women had not returned.



Chapter Twenty Eight.

A Capture, Flight, Surprise, And Rescue.

If true love is, according to the proverb, more distinctly proved to be true by the extreme roughness of its course, then must the truth of the love of Angut and Nunaga be held as proved beyond all question, for its course was a very cataract from beginning to end.

Poor Nunaga, in the trusting simplicity of her nature, was strong in the belief that, having been found and saved by Angut, there was no further cause for anxiety. With an easy mind, therefore, she set herself to the present duty of spearing cat fish with a prong.

It was fine healthy work, giving strength to the muscles, grace and activity to the frame, at the same time that it stimulated the appetite which the catfish were soon to appease.

"It grows late," said Pussimek, "and will be dark before we get back to camp."

"Never mind; who cares?" said the independent Sigokow, who was fond of "sport."

"But the men will be angry," suggested the mother of Ippegoo.

"Let them be angry -- bo-o-o!" returned the reckless Kabelaw.

"Nunaga," said Nuna, looking eagerly over the side, "there goes another -- a big one; poke it."

Nunaga poked it, but missed, and only brought up a small flat-fish, speared by accident.

Old Kannoa, who also gazed into the clear depths, was here observed to smile benignantly, and wave one of her skinny arms, while with the other she pointed downwards.

The sisters Kabelaw and Sigokow, each wielding a pronged stick, responded to the signal, and were gazing down into the sea with uplifted weapons when Pussimek uttered an exclamation of surprise and pointed to the shore, where, on a bush, a small piece of what resembled scarlet ribbon or a strip of cloth was seen waving in the wind.

"A beast!" exclaimed Pussimek, who had never before seen or heard of scarlet ribbon.

"Saw you ever a beast so very red?" said the wife of Okiok doubtfully.

"It is no beast," remarked the mother of Ippegoo; "it is only a bit of sealskin dyed red."

"No sealskin ever fluttered like that," said the mother of Arbalik sternly. "It is something new and beautiful that some one has lost. We are lucky. Let us go and take it."

No one objecting to this, the oomiak was paddled towards the land. Nunaga observed that the sisters Kabelaw and Sigokow were each eager to spring ashore before the other and snatch the prize. Having a spice of mischievous fun in her she resolved to be beforehand, and, being active as a kitten, while the sisters were only what we may style lumberingly vigorous, she succeeded.

Before the boat quite touched the gravel, she had sprung on shore, and flew towards the coveted streamer. The sisters did not attempt to follow. Knowing that it would be useless, they sat still and the other women laughed.

At the success of his little device the robber-lieutenant of Grimlek chuckled quietly, as he crouched behind that bush. When Nunaga laid her hand on the gaudy bait he sprang up, grasped her round the waist, and bore her off into the bushes. At the same moment the rest of the band made a rush at the oomiak. With a yell in unison, the women shoved off -- only just in time, for the leading robber dashed into the sea nearly up to the neck, and his outstretched hand was within a foot of the gunwale when he received a smart rap over the knuckles from Sigokow. Another moment, and the oomiak was beyond his reach.

Alas for old Kannoa! She had been seated on the gunwale of the craft, and the vigorous push that set the others free had toppled her over backwards into the sea. As this happened in shallow water, the poor old creature had no difficulty in creeping on to the beach. The incident would have tried the nerves of most old ladies, but Kannoa had no nerves; and in regard to being wet -- well, she was naturally tough and accustomed to rough it.

The disappointed robber observed her, of course, on wading back to land, but passed her with contemptuous indifference, as if she had been merely an over-grown crab or lobster. But Kannoa determined not to be left to die on the shore. She rose, squeezed the water out of her garments and followed the robber, whom she soon found in the bushes with his companions eagerly discussing their future plans. Nunaga was seated on the ground with her face bowed on her knees. Kannoa went and sat down beside her, patted her on the shoulder and began to comfort her.

"We must not stay here," said the leader of the band, merely casting a look of indifference at the old creature. "The women who have escaped will tell the men, and in a very short time we shall have them howling on our track."

"Let us wait and fight them," said one of the men, fiercely.

"It would be great glory for a small band to fight a big one, no doubt," returned the leader in a sarcastic tone; "but it would be greater glory for one man to do that alone -- so you had better stay here and fight them yourself."

A short laugh greeted this remark.

"It will be very dark to-night," said another man.

"Yes; too dark for our foes to follow us, but not too dark for us to advance steadily, though slowly, into the mountains," returned the leader. "When there, we shall be safe. Come, we will start at once."

"But what are we to do with the old woman?" asked one. "She cannot walk."

"Leave her," said another.

"No; she will bring evil on us if we leave her," cried the fierce man. "I am sure she is a witch. We must carry her with us, and when we come to a convenient cliff, toss her into the sea."

In pursuance of this plan, the fierce robber tied the old woman up in a bear-skin -- made a bundle of her, in fact -- and swung her on his back. Fortunately, being rather deaf, Kannoa had not heard what was in store for her; and as the position she occupied on the fierce man's broad back was not uncomfortable, all things considered, she submitted with characteristic patience. Poor, horrified Nunaga thought it best to let her companion remain in ignorance of what was proposed, and cast about in her mind the possibility of making her escape, and carrying the news of her danger to the camp. If she could only get there and see Angut, she was sure that all would go well, for Angut, she felt, could put everything right -- somehow.

In a short time the robbers were far away from the scene of their consultation; and the darkness of the night, as predicted, became so intense that it was quite impossible to advance further over the rough ground without the risk of broken limbs, if not worse. A halt was therefore called for rest, food, and consultation.

The spot on which they stood was the top of a little mound, with thick shrubs on the land side, which clothed a steep, almost precipitous descent. Just within these shrubs, as it were under the brow of the hill, Nunaga observed a small natural rut or hollow. The other, or sea, side of the mound, was quite free from underwood, and also very steep. On the top there was a low ledge of rock, on which the fierce robber laid his bundle down, while the others stood round and began to discuss their circumstances. The leader, who had taken charge of Nunaga, and held one of her hands during the journey, set the girl close in front of him, to prevent the possibility of her attempting to escape, for he had noted her activity and strength, and knew how easily she might elude him if once free in the dark woods.

Although these woods were as black as Erebus, there was light enough to enable them to distinguish the glimmer of the sea not far off, and a tremendous cliff rising in solemn grandeur above it.

"Yonder is a good place to throw your witch over," remarked the leader carelessly.

The fierce robber looked at the place.

"Yes," he said, "that might do; and the way to it is open enough to be crossed, even at night, without much trouble."

At that moment a bright idea suddenly struck Nunaga.

Have you ever noticed, reader, how invariably "bright ideas" deal sudden blows? This one struck Nunaga, as the saying goes, "all of a heap."

She happened to observe that the leader of the band was standing with his heels close against the ledge of rock already mentioned. In an instant she plunged at the robber's chest like a female thunderbolt. Having no room to stagger back, of course the man was tripped up by the ledge, and, tumbling headlong over it, went down the steep slope on the other side with an indignant roar.

The rest of the robbers were taken by surprise, and so immensely tickled with the humour of the thing that they burst into hearty laughter as they watched the frantic efforts of their chief to arrest his career.

All at the same instant, however, seemed to recover their presence of mind, for they looked round simultaneously with sudden gravity -- and found that Nunaga was gone!

With a wild shout, they sprang after her -- down the slope, crashing through the underwood, scattering right and left, and, in more than one instance, tumbling head over heels. They were quickly joined by their now furious leader; but they crashed, and tumbled, and searched in vain. Nunaga had vanished as completely and almost as mysteriously as if she had been a spirit.

The explanation is simple. She had merely dropped into the rut or hollow under the brow of the hill; and there she lay, covered with grasses and branches, listening to the growlings of indignation and astonishment expressed by the men when they re-assembled on the top of the mound to bewail their bad fortune.

"We've got the old witch, anyhow," growled the fierce robber, with a scowl at the bundle which was lying perfectly still.

"Away, men," cried their leader, "and search the other side of the mound. The young witch may have doubled on us like a rabbit, while we were seeking towards the hills."

Obedient to the command, they all dispersed again -- this time towards the sea.

What Nunaga's thought was at the time we cannot tell, but there is reason to believe it must have been equivalent to "Now or never," for she leaped out of her place of concealment and made for the hills at the top of her speed. Truth requires us to add that she was not much better on her legs than were the men, for darkness, haste, and rugged ground are a trying combination. But there is this to be said for the girl: being small, she fell lightly; being rotund, she fell softly; being india-rubbery, she rebounded; and, being young, she took it easily. In a very short time she felt quite safe from pursuit.

Then she addressed herself diligently to find out the direction of the Eskimo camp, being filled with desperate anxiety for her old friend Kannoa. Strong, almost, as a young Greenland fawn, and gifted, apparently, with some of that animal's power to find its way through the woods, she was not long of hitting the right direction, and gaining the coast, along which she ran at her utmost speed.

On arriving -- breathless and thoroughly exhausted -- she found to her dismay that Angut, Simek, Rooney, and Okiok had left. The news of her capture had already been brought in by the women with the oomiak, and these men, with as many others as could be spared, had started off instantly to the rescue.

"But they are not long gone," said Nunaga's mother, by way of comforting her child.

"What matters that?" cried Nunaga in despair; "dear old Kannoa will be lost, for they know nothing of her danger."

While the poor girl spoke, her brother Ermigit began to prepare himself hastily for action.

"Fear not, sister," he said; "I will run to the great cliff, for I know it well. They left me to help to guard the camp, but are there not enough to guard it without me?"

With these words, the youth caught up a spear, and darted out of the hut.

Well was it for old Kannoa that night that Ermigit was, when roused, one of the fleetest runners of his tribe. Down to the shore he sprang --  partly tumbled -- and then sped along like the Arctic wind, which, we may remark, is fully as swift as more southerly breezes. The beach near the sea was mostly smooth, so that the absence of light was not a serious drawback. In a remarkably short space of time the lad overtook the rescue party, not far beyond the spot where the women had been surprised and Nunaga captured. Great was their satisfaction on hearing of the girl's safe return.

"It's a pity you didn't arrive half an hour sooner, however," said Rooney, "for poor Angut has gone off with a party towards the hills, in a state of wild despair, to carry on the search in that direction. But you look anxious, boy; what more have you to tell?"

In a few rapidly-spoken words Ermigit told of Kannoa's danger. Instant action was of course taken. One of the natives, who was well acquainted with the whole land, and knew the mound where the robbers had halted, was despatched with a strong party to search in that direction, while Rooney, Okiok, and the rest set off at a sharp run in the direction of the great cliff which they soon reached, panting like race-horses.

Scrambling to the top, they found no one there. By that time the short night of spring had passed, and the faint light of the coming day enabled them to make an investigation of the ground, which tended to prove that no one had been there recently.

"We can do nothing now but wait," said Red Rooney, as he sat on a projecting cliff, wiping the perspiration from his brow.

"But we might send some of the young men to look round, and bring us word if they see any of the robbers," said Simek.

"If we do that," replied Okiok, "they will get wind of us, and clear off. Then they would kill my great-mother before casting her away."

"That's true, Okiok. We must keep quiet," said Rooney. "Besides, they are pretty sure to bring her to the cliff, for that is a favourite mode among you of getting rid of witches."

"But what if they don't come here?" asked Ippegoo.

"Then we must hope that they have slept on the mound," returned Okiok; "and Angut will be sure to find them, and kill them all in their sleep."

"Too good to hope for," murmured Arbalik.

"We must hide, if we don't want to be seen," suggested Simek.

Feeling the propriety of this suggestion, the whole party went into a cave which they found close at hand and sat down to wait as patiently as might be. Rooney was the last to enter. Before doing so he crept on hands and knees to the extreme edge of the cliff and looked down. Nothing was visible, however; only a black, unfathomable abyss. But he could hear the sullen roar of ocean as the waves rushed in and out of the rocky caverns far below. Drawing back with a shudder, a feeling of mingled horror, rage, and tender pity oppressed him as he thought of Kannoa's poor old bones being shattered on the rocks, or swallowed by the waves at the foot of the cliff, while behind and through Kannoa there rose up the vision of that grandmother in the old country, whose image seemed to have acquired a fixed habit of beckoning him to come home, with a remonstrative shake of the head and a kindly smile.

They had not long to wait. They had been seated about ten minutes in the cavern when the man who had been left outside to watch came gliding in on tip-toe, stepping high, and with a blazing look about the eyes.

"They come," he said in a hoarse whisper.

"Who come, you walrus?" whispered Okiok.

"The man with the witch."

On hearing this, Rooney, Okiok, and Simek went to the entrance of the cave, followed by the rest, who, however, were instructed to keep under cover till required, if no more than three or four men should arrive.

A few seconds later, and the robber chief appeared on the flat space in front of them. He was closely followed by a squat comrade and the fierce man with the bundle on his back. As they passed the cave, the bundle gave a pitiful wail.

This was enough. With a silent rush, like three bull-dogs, our heroes shot forth. Rooney, having forgotten his weapon, used his fist instead, planted his knuckles on the bridge of the leader's nose, and ruined it, as a bridge, for evermore. The robber went down, turned a complete back-somersault, regained his feet, and fled. Okiok seized the fierce man by the throat almost before he was aware of the attack, causing him to drop his bundle which Rooney was just in time to catch and carry into the cave. There he set it down tenderly, cut the fastenings of the skin, and freed the poor old woman's head.

It was a beautiful sight to see the livid hue and gaze of horror change into a flush of loving benignity when Kannoa observed who it was that kneeled beside her.

"Poor old woman!" shouted Rooney in her ear. "Are you much hurt?"

"No; not hurt at all; only squeezed too much. But I'm afraid for Nunaga. I think she got away, but I was bundled, when I last heard her voice."

"Fear no more, then, for Nunaga is safe," said Rooney; but at that moment all the men rushed from the cave, and he heard sounds outside which induced him to follow them and leave the old woman to look after herself.

On issuing from the cave, he saw that the fierce robber was the only one captured, and that he was on the point of receiving summary justice, for Simek and Okiok had hold of his arms, while Arbalik and Ippegoo held his legs and bore him to the edge of the cliff.

"Now then!" cried Simek.

"Stop, stop!" shouted Rooney.

"One -- two -- heave!" cried Okiok.

And they did heave -- vigorously and together, so that the fierce man went out from their grasp like a huge stone from a Roman catapult. There was a hideous yell, and, after a brief but suggestive pause, an awful splash!

They did not wait to ascertain whether that fierce man managed to swim ashore -- but certain it is that no one answering to his description has attempted to hurl a witch from those cliffs from that day to this.



Chapter Twenty Nine.

Conclusion.

Need we enlarge on the despair of Angut being turned into joy on his return, when he found Nunaga and Kannoa safe and sound? We think not.

A few days thereafter our adventurers arrived at the settlement of the Kablunets; and these northern Eskimos soon forgot their rough experiences under the influence of the kind, hospitable reception they met with from the Moravian Brethren.

The joy of the brethren at welcoming Hans Egede, too, was very great, for they had heard of his recent expedition, and had begun to fear that he was lost. Not the less welcome was he that he came accompanied by a band of Eskimos who seemed not only willing to listen to the Gospel but more than usually able to understand it. The interest of these devoted men was specially roused by Angut, whom they at once recognised as of greatly superior mental power to his companions.

"I cannot help thinking," said Egede, in commenting on his character to one of the brethren, "that he must be a descendant of those Norse settlers who inhabited this part of Greenland long, long ago, who, we think, were massacred by the natives, and the remains of whose buildings are still to be seen."

"It may be so," returned the brother; "your Viking countrymen were vastly superior in brain-power to the Eskimos. We are glad and thankful that our Father has sent Angut to us, for it is not improbable that he may one day become an evangelist to his brethren in the far north."

But of all those who were assembled at the station at that time, Red Rooney was the man who rejoiced most, for there he found an English vessel on the eve of starting for the "old country," the captain of which was not only willing but glad to get such an able seaman to strengthen his crew.

"Angut," said Rooney, as they walked one evening by the margin of the sea, "it grieves me to the heart to leave you; but the best of friends must part. Even for your sake, much though I love you, I cannot remain here, now that I have got the chance of returning to my dear wife and bairns and my native land."

"But we shall meet again," replied Angut earnestly. "Does not your great Book teach that the Father of all is bringing all people to Himself in Jesus Christ? In the spirit-land Angut and Nunaga, Okiok, Nuna, Simek, and all the Innuit friends, when washed in the blood of Jesus, will again see the face of Ridroonee, and rejoice."

This was the first time that Angut had distinctly declared his faith, and it afforded matter for profound satisfaction to Rooney, who grasped and warmly shook his friend's hand.

"Right -- right you are, Angut," he said; "I do believe that we shall meet again in the Fatherland, and that hope takes away much o' the sadness of parting. But you have not yet told me about the wedding. Have you arranged it with the Brethren?"

"Yes; it is fixed for the day beyond to-morrow."

"Good; an' the next day we sail -- so, my friend, I'll have the satisfaction of dancing at your wedding before I go."

"I know not as to dancing," said Angut, with a grave smile, "but we are to have kick-ball, and a feast."

"I'm game for both, or any other sort o' fun you like," returned the seaman heartily.

While they were speaking they observed a youth running towards them in great haste, and in a state of violent excitement. A whale, he said, had stranded itself in a shallow bay not far off, and he was running to let the people of the settlement know the good news.

The commotion occasioned by this event is indescribable. Every man and boy who could handle a kayak took to the water with harpoon and lance. Ippegoo, Arbalik, Okiok, Simek, Norrak, and Ermigit were among them, in borrowed kayaks, and mad as the maddest with glee. Even Kajo joined them. He was as drunk as the proverbial fiddler, having obtained rum from the sailors, and much more solemn than an owl.

While these hastened to the conflict, the women and children who could run or walk proceeded by land to view the battle.

And it was indeed a grand fight! The unlucky monster had got thoroughly embayed, and was evidently in a state of consternation, for in its efforts to regain deep water it rushed hither and thither, thrusting its blunt snout continually on some shoal, and wriggling off again with difficulty and enormous splutter. The shouts of men, shrieks of women, and yells of children co-mingled in stupendous discord.

Simek, the mighty hunter, was first to launch his harpoon. It went deep and was well aimed. Blood dyed the sea at once, and the efforts of the whale to escape were redoubled. There was also danger in this attack, for no one could tell, each time the creature got into water deep enough to float in, to what point of the shore its next rush would be.

"Look out!" cried Rooney in alarm, for, being close to Arbalik in a kayak, he saw that the whale was coming straight at them. It ran on a shoal when close to them, doubled round in terror and whirled its great tail aloft.

Right over Arbalik's head the fan-like mass quivered for one moment. The youth did not give it a chance. Over he went and shot down into the water like an eel, just as the tail came down like a thunder-clap on his kayak, and reduced it to a jumble of its shattered elements, while Rooney paddled out of danger. Arbalik swam ashore, and landed just in time to see the whale rise out of the water, lifting Ippegoo in his kayak on its shoulders. The electrified youth uttered a shriek of horror in which the tone of surprise was discernible, slid off, kayak and all, into the sea -- and was none the worse!

By this time some dozens of harpoons had been fixed in the body of the whale, and the number of bladders attached to them interfered slightly with its movements, but did not render an approach to it by any means safer. At last Simek, losing patience, made a bold rush in his kayak, and drove his lance deep into the huge creature's side. The act was greeted with a cheer -- or something like one, -- which was repeated when Red Rooney followed suit successfully. Okiok and his two sons were not slow to repeat the process. Other Eskimos rushed in, hovered round, and acted their part, so that finally the whale was killed and hauled nearly out of the water by the united exertion of the entire population of the land.

Then succeeded the distribution of the prize.

Eskimos have peculiar and not unreasonable laws on such matters. If two hunters strike a seal at the same time, they divide it. The same holds in regard to wild-fowl or deer. If a dead seal is found with a harpoon sticking in it, the finder keeps the seal, but restores the harpoon to the owner. The harpooner of a walrus claims the head and tail, while any one may take away as much as he can carry of the carcass. But when a whale is captured, the harpooners have no special advantage. There is such a superabundance of wealth that all -- even spectators -- may cut and come again as often and as long as they please.

When, therefore, the whale whose capture we have described was dead, hundreds of men and boys mounted at once, knife in hand, on the carcass, and the scene of blood and confusion that ensued baffles description.

"Won't we stuff to-night!" remarked Kabelaw to her sister, as they went home bending under a weight of blubber.

"Ay -- and to-morrow," replied Sigokow.

"And some days beyond to-morrow," observed old Kannoa, who staggered after them under a lighter load of the spoil.

But it was not the Eskimos alone who derived benefit from this unexpected prize. The captain of the English ship also got some barrels of oil and a large quantity of whalebone to fill up his cargo, and the bright shawls and real iron knives that were given in exchange soon graced the shoulders of the native women and the belts of the men.

It was indeed a time of immense jubilation -- for every one was gratified more or less -- from the chief of the Moravian Brethren down to Tumbler and Pussi, who absolutely wallowed in fun and unctuous food, while Angut and Nunaga were of course supremely happy.

The wedding ceremony, performed by Hans Egede, we need hardly say, was simple, and the festivities which followed were not complex. The game at kick-ball which preceded the wedding was admittedly one of the best that had ever been played at that station, partly, no doubt, because the captain and crew of the English ship, headed by Red Rooney, took part in it.

Strange to say, the only man who seemed to be at all cast down on that occasion was Ippegoo. He was found by his mother in the evening in a retired spot by the sea, sitting on the rocks with a very disconsolate countenance.

"My son, what is the matter?"

"Mother, my heart is heavy. I cannot forget Ujarak."

"But he treated you ill, my son."

"Sometimes -- not always. Often he was kind -- and -- and I loved him. I cannot help it."

"Grieve not, Ippe," rejoined pleasant little Kunelik. "Do we not know now that we shall meet him again in the great Fatherland?"

The poor youth was comforted. He dried his eyes, and went home with his mother. Yet he did not cease to mourn for his departed wizard friend.

We will not harrow the reader's feelings by describing the leave-taking of the Eskimos from their friend the Kablunet. After he was gone those men of the North remained a considerable time at the settlement, listening to the missionaries as they revealed the love of God to man in Jesus Christ.

What resulted from this of course we cannot tell, but of this we are certain -- that their "labour was not in vain in the Lord." When the time comes for the Creator to reveal His plans to man, surely it will be found that no word spoken, no cup of water given, by these Danish and Moravian Christians, shall lose its appropriate reward.

When at last the northern men and their families stood on the sea-shore, with their kayaks, oomiaks and families ready, Angut stood forth, and, grasping Hans Egede by the hand, said earnestly -- 

"Brother, farewell till we meet again. I go now to carry the Good News to my kindred who dwell where the ice-mountains cover the land and sea."

 --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  -- 

But what of the Kablunet? Shall we permit him to slip quietly through our fingers, and disappear? Nay, verily.

He reached England. He crossed over to Ireland. There, in a well-remembered cottage-home, he found a blooming "widow," who discovered to her inexpressible joy that she was still a wife! He found six children, who had grown so tremendously out of all remembrance that their faces seemed like a faint but familiar dream, which had to be dreamed over again a good deal and studied much, before the attainment by the seaman of a satisfactory state of mind. And, last, he found a little old woman with wrinkled brow and toothless gums, who looked at and listened to him with benignant wonder, and whose visage reminded him powerfully of another little old woman who dwelt in the land of ice and snow where he used to be known as the Kablunet.

This Kablunet -- alias Ridroonee, -- now regretfully makes his bow and exit from our little stage as RED ROONEY, THE LAST OF THE CREW.

<eob>

In The Heart Of The Rockies: A Story Of Adventure In Colorado

By

G. A. Henty



Chapter I

Tom's Choice


"I can be of no use here, Carry. What am I good for? Why, I could not earn money enough to pay for my own food, even if we knew anyone who would help me to get a clerkship. I am too young for it yet. I would rather go before the mast than take a place in a shop. I am too young even to enlist. I know just about as much as other boys at school, and I certainly have no talent anyway, as far as I can see at present. I can sail a boat, and I won the swimming prize a month ago, and the sergeant who gives us lessons in single-stick and boxing says that he considers me his best pupil with the gloves, but all these things put together would not bring me in sixpence a week. I don't want to go away, and nothing would induce me to do so if I could be of the slightest use to you here. But can I be of any use? What is there for me to look forward to if I stay? I am sure that you would be always worrying over me if I did get some sort of situation that you would know father and mother would not have liked to see me in, and would seem to offer no chance for the future, whereas if I went out there it would not matter what I did, and anything I earned I could send home to you."

The speaker was a lad of sixteen. He and his sister, who was two years his senior, were both dressed in deep mourning, and were sitting on a bench near Southsea Castle looking across to Spithead, and the Isle of Wight stretching away behind. They had three days before followed their mother to the grave, and laid her beside their father, a lieutenant of the navy, who had died two years before. This was the first time they had left the house, where remained their four sisters -- Janet, who came between Carry and Tom; Blanche, who was fourteen; Lucie, twelve; and Harriet, eight. Tom had proposed the walk.

"Come out for some fresh air, Carry," he had said. "You have been shut up for a month. Let us two go together;" and Carry had understood that he wanted a talk alone with her. There was need, indeed, that they should look the future in the face. Since Lieutenant Wade's death their means had been very straitened. Their mother had received a small pension as his widow, and on this, eked out by drafts reluctantly drawn upon the thousand pounds she had brought him on her marriage, which had been left untouched during his lifetime, they had lived since his death. Two hundred pounds had been drawn from their little capital, and the balance was all that now remained. It had long been arranged that Carry and Janet should go out as governesses as soon as they each reached the age of eighteen, but it was now clear that Carry must remain at home in charge of the young ones.

That morning the two girls had had a talk together, and had settled that, as Janet was too young to take even the humblest place as a governess, they would endeavour to open a little school, and so, for the present at any rate, keep the home together. Carry could give music lessons, for she was already an excellent pianist, having been well taught by her mother, who was an accomplished performer, and Janet was sufficiently advanced to teach young girls. She had communicated their decision to Tom, who had heartily agreed with it.

"The rent is only twenty pounds a year," he said, "and, as you say, the eight hundred pounds bring in thirty-two pounds a year, which will pay the rent and leave something over. If you don't get many pupils at first it will help, and you can draw a little from the capital till the school gets big enough to pay all your expenses. It is horrible to me that I don't seem to be able to help, but at any rate I don't intend to remain a drag upon you. If mother had only allowed me to go to sea after father's death I should be off your hands now, and I might even have been able to help a little. As it is, what is there for me to do here?" And then he pointed out how hopeless the prospect seemed at Portsmouth.

Carry was silent for a minute or two when he ceased speaking, and sat looking out over the sea.

"Certainly, we should not wish you to go into a shop, Tom, and what you say about going into an office is also right enough. We have no sort of interest, and the sort of clerkship you would be likely to get here would not lead to anything. I know what you are thinking about -- that letter of Uncle Harry's; but you know that mother could not bear the thought of it, and it would be dreadful for us if you were to go away."

"I would not think of going, Carry, if I could see any chance of helping you here, and I don't want to go as I did when the letter first came. It seems such a cowardly thing to run away and leave all the burden upon your shoulders, yours and Janet's, though I know it will be principally on yours; but what else is there to do? It was not for my own sake that I wanted before to go, but I did not see what there was for me to do here even when I grew up. Still, as mother said it would break her heart if I went away, of course there was an end of it for the time, though I have always thought it would be something to fall back upon if, when I got to eighteen or nineteen, nothing else turned up, which seemed to me very likely would be the case. Certainly, if it came to a choice between that and enlisting, I should choose that: and now it seems to me the only thing to be done."

"It is such a long way off, Tom," the girl said in a tone of deep pain; "and you know when people get away so far they seem to forget those at home and give up writing. We had not heard from uncle for ten years when that letter came."

"There would be no fear of my forgetting you, Carry. I would write to you whenever I got a chance."

"But even going out there does not seem to lead to anything, Tom. Uncle has been away twenty-five years, and he does not seem to have made any money at all."

"Oh, but then he owned in his letter, Carry, that it was principally his own fault. He said he had made a good sum several times at mining, and chucked it away; but that next time he strikes a good thing he was determined to keep what he made and to come home to live upon it. I sha'n't chuck it away if I make it, but shall send every penny home that I can spare."

"But uncle will not expect you, Tom, mother refused so positively to let you go. Perhaps he has gone away from the part of the country he wrote from, and you may not be able to find him."

"I shall be able to find him," Tom said confidently. "When that letter went, I sent one of my own to him, and said that though mother would not hear of my going now, I might come out to him when I got older if I could get nothing to do here, and asked him to send me a few words directed to the post-office telling me how I might find him. He wrote back saying that if I called at the Empire Saloon at a small town called Denver, in Colorado, I should be likely to hear whereabouts he was, and that he would sometimes send a line there with instructions if he should be long away."

"I see you have set your mind on going, Tom," Carry said sadly.

"No, I have not set my mind on it, Carry. I am perfectly ready to stop here if you can see any way for me to earn money, but I cannot stop here idle, eating and drinking, while you girls are working for us all."

"If you were but three or four years older, Tom, I should not so much mind, and though it would be a terrible blow to part with you, I do not see that you could do anything better; but you are only sixteen."

"Yes, but I am strong and big for my age; I am quite as strong as a good many men. Of course I don't mean the boatmen and the dockyard maties, but men who don't do hard work. Anyhow, there are lots of men who go out to America who are no stronger than I am, and of course I shall get stronger every month. I can walk thirty miles a day easy, and I have never had a day's illness."

"It is not your strength, Tom; I shall have no fears about your breaking down; on the contrary, I should say that a life such as uncle wrote about, must be wonderfully healthy. But you seem so young to make such a long journey, and you may have to travel about in such rough places and among such rough men before you can find Uncle Harry."

"I expect that I shall get on a great deal easier than a man would," Tom said confidently. "Fellows might play tricks with a grown-up fellow who they see is a stranger and not up to things, and might get into quarrels with him, but no one is likely to interfere with a boy. No, I don't think that there is anything in that, Carry, -- the only real difficulty is in going away so far from you, and perhaps being away for a long time."

"Well, Tom," the girl said after another pause, "it seems very terrible, but I own that I can see nothing better for you. There is no way that you can earn money here, and I am sure we would rather think of you as mining and hunting with uncle, than as sitting as a sort of boy-clerk in some dark little office in London or Portsmouth. It is no worse than going to sea anyhow, and after all you may, as uncle says, hit on a rich mine and come back with a fortune. Let us be going home. I can hardly bear to think of it now, but I will tell Janet, and will talk about it again this evening after the little ones have gone to bed."

Tom had the good sense to avoid any expression of satisfaction. He gave Carry's hand a silent squeeze, and as they walked across the common talked over their plans for setting to work to get pupils, and said no word that would give her a hint of the excitement he felt at the thought of the life of adventure in a wild country that lay before him. He had in his blood a large share of the restless spirit of enterprise that has been the main factor in making the Anglo-Saxons the dominant race of the world. His father and his grandfather had both been officers in the royal navy, and a great-uncle had commanded a merchantman that traded in the Eastern seas, and had never come back from one of its voyages; there had been little doubt that all on board had been massacred and the ship burned by Malay pirates. His Uncle Harry had gone away when little more than a boy to seek a fortune in America, and had, a few years after his landing there, crossed the plains with one of the first parties that started out at news of the discovery of gold in California.

Tom himself had longed above all things to be a sailor. His father had not sufficient interest to get him into the royal navy, but had intended to obtain for him a berth as apprentice in the merchant service; but his sudden death had cut that project short, and his mother, who had always been opposed to it, would not hear of his going to sea. But the life that now seemed open to him was in the boy's eyes even preferable to that he had longed for. The excitement of voyages to India or China and back was as nothing to that of a gold-seeker and hunter in the West, where there were bears and Indians and all sorts of adventures to be encountered. He soon calmed down, however, on reaching home. The empty chair, the black dresses and pale faces of the girls, brought back in its full force the sense of loss.

In a short time he went up to his room, and sat there thinking it all over again, and asking himself whether it was fair of him to leave his sisters, and whether he was not acting selfishly in thus choosing his own life. He had gone over this ground again and again in the last few days, and he now came to the same conclusion, namely, that he could do no better for the girls by stopping at home, and that he had not decided upon accepting his uncle's invitation because the life was just what he would have chosen, but because he could see nothing that offered equal chances of his being able permanently to aid them at home.

When he came downstairs again Carry said:

"The others have gone out, Tom; you had better go round and see some of your school-fellows. You look fagged and worn out. You cannot help me here, and I shall go about my work more cheerfully if I know that you are out and about."

Tom nodded, put on his cap and went out; but he felt far too restless to follow her advice and call on some of his friends, so he walked across the common and lay down on the beach and went all over it again, until at last he went off to sleep, and did not wake up until, glancing at his watch, he found that it was time to return to tea. He felt fresher and better for his rest, for indeed he had slept but little for the past fortnight, and Carry nodded approvingly as she saw that his eyes were brighter, and the lines of fatigue and sleeplessness less strongly marked on his face.

Two hours later, when the younger girls had gone to bed, Carry said: "Now we will have a family council. I have told Janet about our talk, Tom, and she is altogether on your side, and only regrets that she is not a boy and able to go out with you. We need not go over the ground again, we are quite agreed with you that there seems no prospect here of your obtaining work such as we should like to see you at, or that would lead to anything. There are only two things open to you, the one is to go to sea, the other to go out to Uncle Harry. You are old to go as an apprentice, but not too old, and that plan could be carried out; still, we both think that the other is better. You would be almost as much separated from us if you went to sea as you would be if you went out to America. But before you quite decide I will read uncle's letter, which I have found this afternoon among some other papers."

She took out the letter and opened it.

"'My dear Jack, -- I am afraid it is a very long time since I wrote last; I don't like to think how long. I have been intending to do so a score of times, but you know I always hated writing, and I have been waiting to tell you that I had hit upon something good at last. Even now I can only tell you that I have been knocking about and getting older, but so far I cannot say I have been getting richer. As I told you when I wrote last I have several times made good hauls and struck it rich, but somehow the money has always slipped through my fingers. Sometimes I have put it into things that looked well enough but turned out worthless; sometimes I have chucked it away in the fool's manner men do here. I have just come back from a prospecting tour in the country of the Utes, where I found two or three things that seemed good; one of them first-rate, the best thing, I think, I have seen since I came out here.

"'Unfortunately I cannot do anything with them at present, for the Utes are getting troublesome, and it would be as much as one's life is worth to go back there with a small party; so that matter must rest for a bit, and I must look out in another quarter until the Utes settle down again. I am going to join a hunting party that starts for the mountains next week. I have done pretty nearly as much hunting as mining since I came out, and though there is no big pile to be made at it, it is a pretty certain living. How are you all getting on? I hope some day to drop in on your quiet quarters at Southsea with some big bags of gold-dust, and to end my days in a nook by your fireside; which I know you will give me, old fellow, with or without the gold bags. '"

"'I suppose your boy is thirteen or fourteen years old by this time. That is too young for him to come out here, but if in two or three years you don't see any opening for him at home, send him out to me, and I will make a man of him; and even if he does not make a fortune in gold-seeking, there are plenty of things a young fellow can turn his hand to in this country with a good certainty of making his way, if he is but steady. You may think that my example is not likely to be of much benefit to him, but I should do for an object lesson, and seriously, would do my very best to set him in a straight path. Anyhow, three or four years' knocking about with me would enable him to cut his eye-teeth, and hold his own in the world. At the end of that time he could look round and see what line he would take up, and I need not say that I would help him to the utmost of my power, and though I have not done any good for myself I might do good for him.

"'In the first place, I know pretty well every one in Colorado, Montana, and Idaho; in the next place, in my wanderings I have come across a score of bits of land in out-of-the-way places where a young fellow could set up a ranche and breed cattle and horses and make a good thing of it; or if he has a turn for mechanics, I could show him places where he could set up saw-mills for lumber, with water-power all the year round, and with markets not far away. Of course, he is too young yet, but unless he is going to walk in your steps and turn sailor he might do worse than come out to me in three or four years' time. Rough as the life is, it is a man's life, and a week of it is worth more than a year's quill-driving in an office. It is a pity your family have run to girls, for if one boy had made up his mind for the sea you might have spared me another.'

"That is all. You know mother sent an answer saying that dear father had gone, and that she should never be able to let you go so far away and take up such a rough and dangerous life. However, Tom, as you wrote to uncle, her refusal would not matter, and by his sending you instructions how to find him, it is evident that he will not be surprised at your turning up. In the first place, are you sure that you would prefer this to the sea?"

"Quite sure, Carry; I should like it much better. But the principal thing is that I may soon be able to help you from there, while it would be years before I should get pay enough at sea to enable me to do so."

"Then that is settled, Tom. And now, I suppose," and her voice quivered a little, "you will want to be off as soon as you can?"

"I think so," Tom replied. "If I am to go, it seems to me the sooner I go the better; there is nothing that I can do here, and we shall all be restless and unsettled until I am off."

Carry nodded. "I think you are right, Tom; we shall never be able to settle to our work here when we are thinking of your going away. The first thing to do will be to draw some money from the bank. There will be your outfit to get and your passage to pay to America, and a supply of money to take you out West, and keep you until you join uncle."

"That is what I hate," Tom said gloomily. "It seems beastly that when I want to help you I must begin by taking some of your money."

"That can't be helped," Carry said cheerfully. "One must not grudge a sprat to catch a whale, and besides it would cost ever so much more if we had to apprentice you to the sea, and get your outfit. You will not want many clothes now. You have enough for the voyage and journey, and I should think it would be much better for you to get what you want out there, when you will have uncle to advise what is necessary. I should really think some flannel shirts and a rough suit for the voyage will be the principal things."

"I should think so, certainly," Tom agreed. "The less baggage one travels with the better, for when I leave the railway I shall only want what I can carry with me or pack on horses. Anything else would only be a nuisance. As to a rough suit for the voyage, the clothes I had before I put these on" (and he glanced at his black suit) "will do capitally. Of course I shall go steerage. I can get out for four or five pounds that way, and I shall be quite as well off as I should be as an apprentice. I know I must have some money, but I won't take more than is absolutely necessary. I am all right as far as I can see for everything, except three or four flannel shirts. I don't see that another thing will be required except a small trunk to hold them and the clothes I have on, which I don't suppose I shall ever wear again, and a few other things. You know I would only allow you to have this one black suit made. I was thinking of this, and it would have been throwing away money to have got more. Of course, I don't know what I shall want out there. I know it is a long way to travel by rail, and I may have to keep myself for a month before I find uncle. I should think five-and-twenty pounds when I land would be enough for everything."

"I shall draw fifty pounds," Carry said positively. "As you say, your outfit will really cost nothing; ten pounds will pay for your journey to Liverpool and your passage; that will leave you forty pounds in your pocket when you land. That is the very least you could do with, for you may find you will have to buy a horse, and though I believe they are very cheap out there, I suppose you could not get one under ten pounds; and then there would be the saddle and bridle and food for the journey, and all sorts of things. I don't think forty pounds will be enough."

"I won't have a penny more, anyhow," Tom said. "If I find a horse too expensive I can tramp on foot."

"And you must be sure not to get robbed," Janet said, breaking in for the first time. "Just fancy your finding yourself without money in such a place as that. I will make you a belt to wear under your things, with pockets for the money."

"I hope I should not be such a fool as that, Janet, but anyhow I will be as careful as I can. I shall be very glad of the belt. One does not know what the fellows might be up to, and I would certainly rather not have my money loose in my pocket; but even if I were robbed I don't think it would be as desperate as you think. I expect a boy could always find something to do to earn his living, and I should try and work my way along somehow, but as that would not be pleasant at all I shall take good care of my money, you may be sure."

For an hour they sat talking, and before the council broke up it was agreed that they should look in the newspaper in the morning for a list of vessels sailing for America, and should at once write and take a passage.

There was no time lost. Carry felt that it would be best for them all that the parting should be got over as soon as possible. Letters were written the next morning to two steamship companies and to the owners of two sailing vessels asking the prices of steerage passages, agreeing that if there was not much difference it would be better to save perhaps a fortnight by taking the passage in a steamship.

The replies showed that the difference was indeed trifling, and a week after their receipt Tom Wade started from Portsmouth to Liverpool. Even at the last moment he was half-inclined to change his plans, it seemed so hard to leave his sisters alone; but Carry and Janet had both convinced themselves that his scheme was the best, and would not hear of his wavering now. They kept up a show of good spirits until the last, talked confidently of the success of their own plans, and how they should set about carrying them out as soon as they were free to act. The younger girls, although implored by the elders not to give way to their grief at the departure of their brother, were in a state of constant tearfulness, and were in consequence frequently got rid of by being sent on errands. Tom, too, took them out for hours every day, and by telling them stories of the wild animals he should hunt, and the Indians he should see, and of the stores of gold he should find hidden, generally brought them home in a more cheerful state of mind.

At last the parting was over, and after making heroic efforts to be cheerful to the end, Tom waved a last adieu with his handkerchief to the five weeping figures on the platform, and then threw himself back in his seat and gave free vent to his own feelings. Two girls sitting beside him sniggered at the sight of the strong-built young fellow giving way to tears, but a motherly-looking woman opposite presently put her hand on his knee.

"Don't be ashamed of crying, my lad," she said. "I have got a son years older than you, and we always have a good cry together every time he starts on a long voyage. Are you going far? I suppose those are your sisters? I see you are all in black. Lost someone dear to you, no doubt? It comes to us all, my boy, sooner or later."

"I am going to America," Tom replied, "and may not be back for years. Yes, those are my sisters, and what upsets me most is that I have to leave them all alone, for we have lost both our parents."

"Dear, dear, that is sad indeed! No wonder you are all upset. Well, well, America is not so very far away -- only a ten days' voyage by steamer, they tell me, and my boy is away in a sailing ship. He is in China, I reckon, now; he sailed five months ago, and did not expect to be home under a year. I worry about him sometimes, but I know it is of no use doing that. The last thing he said when I bade good-bye to him was, 'Keep up your spirits, mother'; and I try to do so."

The old lady went on talking about her son, and Tom, listening to her kindly attempts to draw him out of his own troubles, grew interested, and by the time they reached Winchester, where she left the train, he had shaken off his first depression. It was a long journey with several changes, and he did not arrive in Liverpool until six o'clock in the evening, having been nearly twelve hours on the road. Carry's last injunction had been, "Take a cab when you get to Liverpool, Tom, and drive straight down to the docks. Liverpool is a large place, and you might get directed wrong. I shall be more comfortable if I know that, at any rate, you will go straight on board."

Tom had thought it an unnecessary expense, but as he saw that Carry would be more comfortable about him if he followed her advice, he promised to do so, and was not sorry for it as he drove through the streets; for, in spite of cutting down everything that seemed unnecessary for the voyage and subsequent journey, the portmanteau was too heavy to carry far with comfort, and although prepared to rough it to any extent when he had once left England, he felt that he should not like to make his way along the crowded streets with his trunk on his shoulder.

The cabman had no difficulty in finding the Parthia, which was still in the basin. Tom was, however, only just in time to get on board, for the men were already throwing off the warps, and ten minutes later she passed out through the dock-gates, and soon anchored in the middle of the river. Tom had been on board too many ships at Portsmouth to feel any of that bewilderment common to emigrants starting on their first voyage. He saw that at present everyone was too busy to attend to him, and so he put his portmanteau down by the bulwark forward, and leaning on the rail watched the process of warping the ship out of the docks. There were a good many steerage passengers forward, but at present the after-part of the ship was entirely deserted, as the cabin passengers would not come on board until either late at night or early next morning. When the anchor had been let drop he took up his trunk and asked a sailor where he ought to go to.

"Show me your ticket. Ah! single man's quarters, right forward."

There he met a steward, who, after looking at his ticket, said: "You will see the bunks down there, and can take any one that is unoccupied. I should advise you to put your trunk into it, and keep the lid shut. People come and go in the morning, and you might find that your things had gone too. It would be just as well for you to keep it locked through the voyage. I see that you have got a cord round it. Keep it corded; the more things there are to unfasten to get at the contents the less chance there is of anyone attempting it."

The place was crowded with berths, mere shallow trays, each containing a straw mattress and pillow and two coloured blankets. They were in three tiers, one above the other, and were arranged in lines three deep, with a narrow passage between. He saw by the number into which bags and packets had been thrown that the upper berths were the favourites, but he concluded that the lower tiers were preferable. "It will be frightfully hot and stuffy here," he said to himself, "and I should say the lower berths will be cooler than the upper." He therefore placed his trunk in one of those next to the central passage and near the door, and then went up on deck.

The Parthia was a Cunarder, and although not equal in size to the great ships of the present day, was a very fine vessel. The fare had been somewhat higher than that for which he could have had a passage in a sailing ship, but in addition to his saving time, there was the advantage that on board the steamers, passengers were not obliged to provide their own bedding, as they had to do in sailing vessels, and also the food was cooked for them in the ship's galleys.

The first meal was served soon after the anchor dropped, and consisted of a bowl of cocoa and a large piece of bread. Half an hour later a tender came alongside with the last batch of steerage passengers, and Tom was interested in watching the various groups as they came on board -- men, women, and children.

"Well," he said to himself, "I do think I am better fitted to make my way out there than most of these people are, for they look as helpless and confused as a flock of sheep. I pity those women with children. It will be pretty crowded in our quarters, but there is a chance of getting a fair night's sleep, while in a place crowded with babies and children it would be awful."

Being a kind-hearted lad he at once set to work to help as far as he could, volunteering to carry children down below, and to help with boxes and bundles.

In many cases his assistance was thankfully accepted, but in some it was sharply refused, the people's manner clearly showing their suspicions of his motive. He was not surprised at this after all the warnings Carry had given him against putting any confidence in strangers, but was satisfied, after an hour's hard work, that he had rendered things somewhat easier for many a worried and anxious woman. It was getting dusk even on deck by the time he had finished.

"Thank you, lad," a man, who went up the companion ladder with him, said as they stepped on to the deck. "You have done my missis a good turn by taking care of those three young ones while we straightened up a bit, and I saw you helping others too. You are the right sort, I can see. There ain't many young chaps as puts themselves out of the way to do a bit of kindness like that. My name is Bill Brown; what is yours?"

"Tom Wade. I had nothing to do, and was glad to be of a little help. People who have never been on board ship before naturally feel confused in such a crowd."

"Have you been to sea?"

"Not on a voyage, but I have lived at Portsmouth and have often been on board troopships and men-of-war, so it does not seem so strange to me."

"Are you by yourself, or have you friends with you?"

"I am alone," Tom replied. "I am going out to join an uncle in the States."

"I have been across before," the man said. "I am a carpenter, and have worked out there six months, and came home six weeks back to fetch the others over. I have got a place, where I was working before, to go to as soon as I land. It makes a lot of difference to a man."

"It does indeed," Tom agreed. "I know if I were going out without any fixed object beyond taking the first work that came to hand, I should not feel so easy and comfortable about it as I do now."

"I have got two or three of my mates on board who are going out on my report of the place, and three families from my wife's village. She and the youngsters have been staying with her old folk while I was away. So we are a biggish party, and if you want anything done on the voyage you have only got to say the word to me."



Chapter II

Finding Friends


The weather was fine, and Tom Wade found the voyage more pleasant than he had expected. The port-holes were kept open all the way, and the crowded quarters were less uncomfortable than would have been the case had they encountered rough weather. There were some very rough spirits among the party forward, but the great majority were quiet men, and after the first night all talking and larking were sternly repressed after the lights were out. The food was abundant, and although some grumbled at the meat there was no real cause of complaint. A rope across the deck divided the steerage passengers from those aft, and as there were not much more than one-half the emigrants aboard that the Parthia could carry, there was plenty of room on deck.

But few of the passengers suffered from sea-sickness, and the women sat and chatted and sewed in little groups while the children played about, and the men walked up and down or gathered forward and smoked, while a few who had provided themselves with newspapers or books sat in quiet corners and read. Tom was one of these, for he had picked up a few books on the United States at second-hand bookstalls at Portsmouth, and this prevented him from finding the voyage monotonous. When indisposed to read he chatted with Brown the carpenter and his mates, and sometimes getting a party of children round him and telling them stories gathered from the books now standing on the shelves in his room at Southsea. He was glad, however, when the voyage was over; not because he was tired of it, but because he was longing to be on his way west. Before leaving the ship he took a very hearty farewell of his companions on the voyage, and on landing was detained but a few minutes at the custom-house, and then entering an omnibus that was in waiting at the gate, was driven straight to the station of one of the western lines of railway.

From the information he had got up before sailing he had learnt that there were several of these, but that there was very little difference either in their speed or rates of fare, and that their through-rates to Denver were practically the same. He had therefore fixed on the Chicago and Little Rock line, not because its advantages were greater, but in order to be able to go straight from the steamer to the station without having to make up his mind between the competing lines. He found on arrival that the emigrant trains ran to Omaha, where all the lines met, and that beyond that he must proceed by the regular trains. An emigrant train was to leave that evening at six o'clock.

"The train will be made up about four," a good-natured official said to him, "and you had best be here by that time so as to get a corner seat, for I can tell you that makes all the difference on a journey like this. If you like to take your ticket at once you can register that trunk of yours straight on to Denver, and then you won't have any more trouble about it."

"Of course we stop to take our meals on the way?"

"Yes; but if you take my advice you will do as most of them do, get a big basket and lay in a stock of bread and cooked meat, cheese, and anything you fancy, then you will only have to go out and get a cup of tea at the stopping-places. It comes a good bit cheaper, and you get done before those who take their meals, and can slip back into the cars again quick and keep your corner seat. There ain't much ceremony in emigrant trains, and it is first come first served."

"How long shall we be in getting to Denver?"

"It will be fully a week, but there ain't any saying to a day. The emigrant trains just jog along as they can between the freight trains and the fast ones, and get shunted off a bit to let the expresses pass them."

Thanking the official for his advice, Tom took his ticket, registered his trunk, and then went out and strolled about the streets of New York until three o'clock. He took the advice as to provisions, and getting a small hamper laid in a stock of food sufficient for three or four days. The platform from which the train was to start was already occupied by a considerable number of emigrants, but when the train came up he was able to secure a corner seat. The cars were all packed with their full complement of passengers. They were open from end to end, with a passage down the middle. Other cars were added as the train filled up, but not until all the places were already occupied. The majority of the passengers were men, but there were a considerable number of women, and still more children; and Tom congratulated himself on learning from the conversation of those around him that a good many were not going beyond Chicago, and that almost all would leave the train at stations between that place and Omaha.

The journey to Chicago was the most unpleasant experience Tom had ever gone through. The heat, the dust, and the close confinement seemed to tell on the tempers of everyone. The children fidgeted perpetually, the little ones and the babies cried, the women scolded, and the men grumbled and occasionally quarrelled. It was even worse at night than during the day; the children indeed were quieter, for they lay on the floor of the passage and slept in comparative comfort, but for the men and women there was no change of position, no possibility of rest. The backs of the seats were low, and except for the fortunate ones by the windows there was no rest for the head; but all took uneasy naps with their chins leaning forward on their chest, or sometimes with their heads resting on their neighbour's shoulder. Tom did not retain his corner seat, but resigned it a few hours after starting to a weary woman with a baby in her arms who sat next to him. He himself, strong as he was, felt utterly worn out by the fatigue and sleeplessness.

Beyond Chicago there was somewhat more room, and it was possible to make a change of position. Beyond Omaha it was much better; the train was considerably faster and the number of passengers comparatively few. He now generally got a seat to himself and could put his feet up. The people were also, for the most part, acquainted with the country, and he was able to learn a good deal from their conversation. There were but few women or children among them, for except near the stations of the railway, settlements were very rare; and the men were for the most part either miners, ranchemen, or mechanics, going to the rising town of Denver, or bound on the long journey across the plains to Utah or California. It was on the eighth day after starting that Denver was reached.

Before leaving the ship Tom had put on his working clothes and a flannel shirt, and had disposed of his black suit, for a small sum, to a fellow-passenger who intended to remain at New York. This had somewhat lightened his portmanteau, but he was glad when he found that there were vehicles at the station to convey passengers up the hill to Denver, which was some three miles away, and many hundred feet above it. He was too tired to set about finding the Empire Saloon, but put up at the hotel at which the omnibus stopped, took a bath and a hearty meal, and then went straight to bed.

After breakfast the next morning he at once set out. He had no difficulty in finding the whereabouts of the Empire Saloon, which he learned from the clerk of the hotel was a small place frequented almost entirely by miners. Its appearance was not prepossessing. It had been built in the earliest days of Denver, and was a rough erection. The saloon was low, its bare rafters were darkly coloured by smoke, a number of small tables stood on the sanded floor, and across the farther end of the room ran a bar. On shelves behind this stood a number of black bottles, and a man in his shirt sleeves was engaged in washing up glasses. Two or three rough-looking men in coloured flannel shirts, with the bottoms of their trousers tucked into high boots, were seated at the tables smoking and drinking.

"I am expecting a letter for me here," Tom said to the man behind the bar. "My name is Wade."

"The boss is out now," the man said. "He will be here in an hour or so. If there is anything for you he will know about it."

"Thank you. I will come again in an hour," Tom replied. The man nodded shortly, and went on with his work. When Tom returned, the bar-tender said to a man who was sitting at one of the tables talking to the miners, "This is the chap I told you of as was here about the letter."

"Sit right down," the man said to Tom, "I will talk with you presently;" and he continued his conversation in a low tone with the miners. It was nearly half an hour before he concluded it. Then he rose, walked across the room to Tom, and held out his hand.

"Shake, young fellow," he said; "that is, if you are the chap Straight Harry told me might turn up here some day."

"I expect I am the fellow," Tom said with a smile. "My uncle's name is Harry Wade."

"Yes, that is his name; although he is always called Straight Harry. Yes, I have got a letter for you. Come along with me." He led the way into a small room behind the saloon, that served at once as his bed-room and office, and motioned to Tom to sit down on the only chair; then going to a cupboard he took out a tin canister, and opening it shook out half a dozen letters on to the table.

"That is yourn," he said, picking one out.

It was directed to Tom, and contained but a few lines. "If you come I have gone west. Pete Hoskings will tell you all he knows about me and put you on the line. Your affectionate uncle."

"Are you Mr. Hoskings?" he asked the landlord.

"I am Pete Hoskings," the man said. "There ain't been no Mister to my name as ever I can remember."

"My uncle tells me that you will be able to direct me to him, and will put me on the line."

"It would take a darn sight cuter fellow than I am to direct you to him at present," the man said with a laugh. "Straight Harry went away from here three months ago, and he might be just anywhere now. He may be grubbing away in a mine, he may be hunting and trapping, or he may have been wiped out by the Indians. I know where he intended to go, at least in a general sort of way. He did tell me he meant to stay about there, and it may be he has done so. He said if he moved away and got a chance he would send me word; but as there ain't nairy a post-office within about five hundred miles of where he is, his only chance of sending a letter would be by a hunter who chanced to be going down to the settlements, and who, like enough, would put it into his hunting-shirt and never give it another thought. So whether he has stayed there or not is more nor I can say."

"And where is there?" Tom asked. "It is among the hills to the west of the Colorado River, which ain't much, seeing as the Colorado is about two thousand miles long. However, I can put you closer than that, for he showed me on a map the bit of country he intended to work. He said he would be back here in six months from the time he started; and that if you turned up here I was either to tell you the best way of getting there, or to keep you here until he came back. Well, I may say at once that there ain't no best way; there is only one way, and that is to get on a pony and ride there, and a mighty bad way it is. The only thing for you to do is to keep on west along the caravan tract. You have to cross the Green River, -- that is the name of the Colorado on its upper course. Fort Bridger is the place for you to start from, but you have got to wait there until you sight some one or other bound south; for as to going by yourself, it would be a sight better to save yourself all trouble by putting that Colt hanging there to your head, and pulling the trigger. It is a bad country, and it is full of bad Indians, and there ain't many, even of the oldest hands, who care to risk their lives by going where Straight Harry has gone.

"I did all I could to keep him from it; but he is just as obstinate as a mule when he has made up his mind to a thing. I know him well, for we worked as mates for over a year down on the Yuba in California. We made a good pile, and as I had got a wife and wanted to settle I came back east. This place had a couple of dozen houses then; but I saw it was likely to boom, so I settled down and set up this saloon and sent for my wife to come west to me. If she had lived I should have been in a sight bigger place by this time; but she died six months after she got here, and then I did not care a continental one way or the other; and I like better to stop here, where I meet my old mates and can do as I like, than to run a big hotel. It ain't much to look at, but it suits me, and I am content to know that I could buy up the biggest place here if I had a fancy to. I don't take much money now, but I did when the place was young; and I bought a few lots of land, and you may bet they have turned out worth having. Well, don't you act rashly in this business. Another three months your uncle will turn up, if he is alive; and if he don't turn up at all I dare say I can put you into a soft thing. If you go on it is about ten to one you get scalped before you find him. Where are you staying?"

"At the Grand. The omnibus stopped there last night."

"Well, you stay there for a week and think it over. You have got to learn about the country west of the Colorado. You had best come here to do that. You might stay a month at the Grand and not find a soul who could tell you anything worth knowing, but there ain't a day when you couldn't meet men here who have either been there themselves or have heard tell of it from men who have."

"Are the natives friendly now?" Tom asked. "In a letter he wrote two years ago to us, my uncle said that he should put off going to a part of the country he wanted to prospect until the Indians were quiet."

"The darned critters are never either friendly or quiet. A red-skin is pizen, take him when you will. The only difference is, that sometimes they go on the war-path and sometimes they don't; but you may bet that they are always ready to take a white man's scalp if they get a chance."

"Well, I am very much obliged to you for your advice, which I will certainly take; that is, I will not decide for a few days, and will come in here and talk to the miners and learn what I can about it."

"You can hear at once," the landlord said. He stepped back into the saloon, and said to the two men with whom he had been talking: "Boys, this young chap is a Britisher, and he has come out all the way to join Straight Harry, who is an uncle of his. Straight Harry is with Ben Gulston and Sam Hicks, and they are prospecting somewhere west of the Colorado. He wants to join them. Now, what do you reckon his chances would be of finding them out and dropping in on their campfire?"

The men looked at Tom with open eyes.

"Waal," one of them drawled, "I should reckon you would have just about the same chance of getting to the North Pole if you started off on foot, as you would of getting to Straight Harry with your hair on."

Tom laughed. "That is not cheering," he said.

"It ain't. I don't say as an old hand on the plains might not manage it. He would know the sort of place Harry and his mates would be likely to be prospecting, he would know the ways of the red-skins and how to travel among them without ever leaving a trail or making a smoke, but even for him it would be risky work, and not many fellows would care to take the chances even if they knew the country well. But for a tenderfoot to start out on such a job would be downright foolishness. There are about six points wanted in a man for such a journey. He has got to be as hard and tough as leather, to be able to go for days without food or drink, to know the country well, to sleep when he does sleep with his ears open, to be up to every red skin trick, to be able to shoot straight enough to hit a man plumb centre at three hundred yards at least, and to hit a dollar at twenty yards sartin with his six-shooter. If you feel as you have got all them qualifications you can start off as soon as you like, and the chances aren't more'n twenty to one agin your finding him."

"I haven't anyone of them," Tom said.

"Waal, it is something if you know that, young chap. It is not every tenderfoot who would own up as much. You stick to it that you don't know anything, and at the same time do your best to learn something, and you will do in time. You look a clean-built young chap, and you could not have a better teacher than Straight Harry. What he don't know, whether it is about prospecting for gold or hunting for beasts, ain't worth knowing, you bet. What is your name, mate?"

"Tom Wade."

"Waal, let us drink. It ain't like you, Pete, to keep a stranger dry as long as you have been doing."

"He ain't up to our customs yet," the landlord said, as he moved off towards the bar.

"It is a custom everywhere," the miner said reprovingly, "for folks to stand drink to a stranger; and good Bourbon hurts no man."

The landlord placed a bottle and four glasses on the counter. Each of the miners filled his glass for himself, and the bottle was then handed to Tom, who followed their example, as did Hoskings.

"Here is luck to you," the miner said, as he lifted his glass. Three glasses were set down empty, but Tom had to stop half-way with his to cough violently.

"It is strong stuff," he said apologetically, "and I never drank spirits without water before. I had a glass of grog-and-water on board a ship sometimes, but it has always been at least two parts of water to one of spirits."

"We mostly drink our liquor straight out here," the miner said. "But I am not saying it is the best way, especially for one who ain't used to it, but you have got to learn to do it if you are going to live long in this country."

"Standing drinks round is a custom here," Pete Hoskings explained, seeing that Tom looked a little puzzled, "and there ain't no worse insult than to refuse to drink with a man. There have been scores of men shot, ay, and hundreds, for doing so. I don't say that you may not put water in, but if you refuse to drink you had best do it with your hand on the butt of your gun, for you will want to get it out quick, I can tell you."

"There is one advantage in such a custom anyhow," Tom said, "it will keep anyone who does not want to drink from entering a saloon at all."

"That is so, lad," Pete Hoskings said heartily. "I keep a saloon, and have made money by it, but for all that I say to every young fellow who hopes to make his way some time, keep out of them altogether. In country places you must go to a saloon to get a square meal, but everyone drinks tea or coffee with their food, and there is no call to stay in the place a minute after you have finished. Calling for drinks round has been the ruin of many a good man; one calls first, then another calls, and no one likes to stand out of it, and though you may only have gone in for one glass, you may find you will have to drink a dozen before you get out."

"Why, you are a downright temperance preacher, Pete," one of the miners laughed.

"I don't preach to a seasoned old hoss like you, Jerry. I keep my preaching for those who may benefit by it, such as the youngster here; but I say to him and to those like him, you keep out of saloons. If you don't do that, you will find yourself no forwarder when you are fifty than you are now, while there are plenty of openings all over the country for any bright young fellow who will keep away from liquor."

"Thank you," Tom said warmly; "I will follow your advice, which will be easy enough. Beyond a glass of beer with my dinner and a tot of grog, perhaps once in three months when I have gone on board a ship, and did not like to say no, I have never touched it, and have no wish to do so."

"Stick to that, lad; stick to that. You will find many temptations, but you set your face hard against them, and except when you come upon a hard man bent on kicking up a muss, you will find folks will think none the worse of you when you say to them straight, 'I am much obliged to you all the same, but I never touch liquor.'"

Tom remained four days at the hotel, spending a good deal of his time at the saloon, where he met many miners, all of whom endorsed what the first he had spoken to had said respecting the country, and the impossibility of anyone but an old hand among the mountains making his way there.

On the fourth evening he said to Pete Hoskings: "I see that your advice was good, and that it would be madness for me to attempt to go by myself, but I don't see why I should not ride to Fort Bridger; not of course by myself, but with one of the caravans going west. It would be a great deal better for me to do that and to learn something of the plains and camping than to stay here for perhaps three months. At Fort Bridger I shall be able to learn more about the country, and might join some hunting party and gain experience that way. I might find other prospectors going up among the hills, and even if it were not near where my uncle is to be found, I should gain by learning something, and should not be quite a greenhorn when I join him."

"Well, that is sensible enough," Pete Hoskings said, "and I don't know as I can say anything against it. You certainly would not be doing any good for yourself here, and I don't say that either an hotel or a saloon is the best place for you. I will think it over, and will let you know when you come round in the morning; maybe I can put you a little in the way of carrying it out."

The next morning when Tom went to the saloon, Jerry Curtis, one of the miners he had first met there, was sitting chatting with Pete Hoskings.

"I had Jerry in my thoughts when I spoke to you last night, Tom," the latter said. "I knew he was just starting west again, and thought I would put the matter to him. He says he has no objection to your travelling with him as far as Fort Bridger, where maybe he will make a stay himself. There ain't no one as knows the plains much better than he does, and he can put you up to more in the course of a month than you would learn in a year just travelling with a caravan with farmers bound west."

"I should be very much obliged indeed," Tom said delightedly. "It would be awfully good of you, Jerry, and I won't be more trouble than I can help."

"I don't reckon you will be any trouble at all," the miner said. "I was never set much on travelling alone as some men are. I ain't much of a talker, but I ain't fond of going two or three months without opening my mouth except to put food and drink into it. So if you think you will like it I shall be glad enough to take you. I know Straight Harry well, and I can see you are teachable, and not set upon your own opinions as many young fellows I have met out here are, but ready to allow that there are some things as men who have been at them all their lives may know a little more about than they do. So you may take it that it is a bargain. Now, what have you got in the way of outfit?"

"I have not got anything beyond flannel shirts, and rough clothes like these."

"They are good enough as far as they go. Two flannel shirts, one on and one off, is enough for any man. Two or three pairs of thick stockings. Them as is very particular can carry an extra pair of breeches in case of getting caught in a storm, though for myself I think it is just as well to let your things dry on you. You want a pair of high boots, a buffalo robe, and a couple of blankets, one with a hole cut in the middle to put your head through; that does as a cloak, and is like what the Mexicans call a poncho. You don't want a coat or waistcoat; there ain't no good in them. All you want to carry you can put in your saddle-bag. Get a pair of the best blankets you can find. I will go with you and choose them for you. You want a thing that will keep you warm when you sleep, and shoot off the rain in bad weather. Common blankets are no better than a sponge.

"Then, of course, you must have a six-shooter and a rifle. No man in his senses would start across the plains without them. It is true there ain't much fear of red-skins between here and Bridger, but there is never any saying when the varmint may be about. Can you shoot?"

"No; I never fired off a rifle or a pistol in my life."

"Well, you had better take a good stock of powder and ball, and you can practise a bit as you go along. A man ain't any use out on these plains if he cannot shoot. I have got a pony; but you must buy one, and a saddle, and fixings. We will buy another between us to carry our swag. But you need not trouble about the things, I will get all that fixed."

"Thank you very much. How much do you suppose it will all come to?"

"Never you mind what it comes to," Pete Hoskings said roughly. "I told your uncle that if you turned up I would see you through. What you have got to get I shall pay for, and when Straight Harry turns up we shall square it. If he don't turn up at all, there is no harm done. This is my business, and you have got nothing to do with it."

Tom saw that he should offend Hoskings if he made any demur, and the kind offer was really a relief to him. He had thirty pounds still in his belt, but he had made a mental calculation of the cost of the things Jerry had considered essential, and found that the cost of a horse and saddle, of half another horse, of the rifle, six-shooter ammunition, blankets, boots, and provisions for the journey, must certainly amount up to more than that sum, and would leave him without any funds to live on till he met his uncle.

He was so anxious to proceed that he would have made no excuse, although he saw that he might find himself in a very difficult position. Pete's insistence, therefore, on taking all expenses upon himself, was a considerable relief to him; for although determined to go, he had had an uneasy consciousness that it was a foolish step. He therefore expressed his warm thanks.

"There, that is enough said about it," the latter growled out. "The money is nothing to me one way or the other, and it would be hard if I couldn't do this little thing for my old mate's nephew. When are you thinking of making a start, Jerry?"

"The sooner the better. I have been four months here already and have not struck a vein, that is, not one really worth working, and the sooner I make a fresh start the better. To-day is Wednesday. There will be plenty of time to get all the things to-day and to-morrow, and we will start at daylight on Friday. You may as well come with me, Tom, and learn something about the prices of things. There are some Indians camped three miles away. We will walk over there first and pick up a couple of ponies. I know they have got a troop of them, that is what they come here to sell. They only arrived yesterday, so we shall have the pick of them."

Before starting there was a short conversation between Jerry and the landlord, and then the former put on his broad-brimmed hat.

"Have you seen any red-skins yet?"

"I saw a few at some of the stations the train stopped at between this and Omaha."

"Those fellows are mostly Indians who have been turned out of their tribes for theft or drunkenness, and they hang about the stations to sell moccasins and other things their squaws make, to fresh arrivals.

"The fellows you are going to see are Navahoes, though not good specimens of the tribe, or they would not be down here to sell ponies. Still, they are a very different sort from those you have seen."

An hour's walking took them to a valley, in which the Indians were encamped. There were eight wigwams. Some women paused in their work and looked round at the newcomers. Their dogs ran up barking furiously, but were driven back by a volley of stones thrown by three or four boys, with so good an aim that they went off with sharp yelps. Jerry strolled along without paying any attention to the dogs or boys towards a party of men seated round a fire. One of them rose as they approached.

"My white brothers are welcome," he said courteously. "There is room by the fire for them," and he motioned to them to sit down by his side. A pipe, composed of a long flat wooden stem studded with brass nails, with a bowl cut out of red pipe-stone, was now handed round, each taking a short puff.

"Does my brother speak the language of the Navahoes?" the chief asked in that tongue.

"I can get along with it," Jerry said, "as I can with most of your Indian dialects."

"It is good," the chief said. "My brother is wise; he must have wandered much."

"I have been a goodish bit among your hills, chief. Have you come from far?"

"The moon was full when we left our village."

"Ah, then you have been a fortnight on the road. Well, chief, I have come here to trade. I want to buy a couple of ponies."

The chief said a word or two to a boy standing near, and he with four or five others at once started up the valley, and in a few minutes returned with a drove of Indian ponies.

"They are not a bad lot," Jerry said to Tom.

"They don't look much, Jerry."

"Indian ponies never look much, but one of those ponies would gallop an eastern-bred horse to a stand-still."

Jerry got up and inspected some of the horses closely, and presently picked out two of them; at a word from the chief two of the lads jumped on their backs and rode off on them at full speed, and then wheeling round returned to the spot from where they started.

"My white brother is a judge of horses," the chief said; "he has picked out the best of the lot."

"There are three or four others quite as good," Jerry said carelessly. "Now, chief, how many blankets, how much powder and lead, and what else do you want for those two horses?"

The chief stated his demands, to which Jerry replied: "You said just now, chief, that I was a wise man; but it seems that you must regard me as a fool."

For half an hour an animated argument went on. Two or three times Jerry got up, and they started as if to quit the village, but each time the chief called them back. So animated were their gestures and talk that Tom had serious fears that they were coming to blows, but their voices soon fell and the talk became amicable again. At last Jerry turned to Tom.

"The bargain is struck," he said; "but he has got the best of me, and has charged an outrageous sum for them," Then, in his own language, he said to the chief:

"At noon to-morrow you will send the ponies down to the town. I will meet them at the big rock, half a mile this side of it, with the trade goods."

"They shall be there," the chief said, "though I am almost giving them to you."

As they walked away, Tom said:

"So you have paid more than you expected, Jerry?"

"No, I have got them a bargain; only it would never have done to let the chief know I thought so, or the horses would not have turned up to-morrow. I expect they have all been stolen from some other tribe. The two I have got are first-rate animals, and the goods will come to about fourteen pounds. I shall ride one of them myself, and put our swag on my own pony. That has been a very good stroke of business; they would never have sold them at that price if they had been honestly come by."



Chapter III

On The Plains


The purchase of a buffalo robe, blankets, boots, and a Colt's revolver occupied but a short time, but the rifle was a much more difficult matter.

"You can always rely upon a Colt," the miner said, "but rifles are different things; and as your life may often depend upon your shooting-iron carrying straight, you have got to be mighty careful about it. A gun that has got the name of being a good weapon will fetch four times as much as a new one."

Denver was but a small place; there was no regular gunsmith's shop, but rifles and pistols were sold at almost every store in the town. In this quest Jerry was assisted by Pete Hoskings, who knew of several men who would be ready to dispose of their rifles. Some of these weapons were taken out into the country and tried at marks by the two men. They made what seemed to Tom wonderful shooting, but did not satisfy Hoskings.

"I should like the youngster to have a first-rate piece," he said, "and I mean to get him one if I can. There are two of these would do if we can't get a better, but if there is a first-rate one to be had in this township I will have it." Suddenly he exclaimed, "I must have gone off my head, and be going downright foolish! Why, I know the very weapon. You remember Billy the scout?"

"In course I do, everyone knew him. I heard he had gone down just before I got back here."

"That is so, Jerry. You know he had a bit of a place up in the hills, four or five miles from here, where he lived with that Indian wife of his when he was not away. I went out to see him a day or two afore he died. I asked him if there was anything I could do for him. He said no, his squaw would get on well enough there. She had been alone most of her time, and would wrestle on just as well when he had gone under. He had a big garden-patch which she cultivated, and brought the things down into the town here. They always fetch a good price. Why more people don't grow them I can't make out; it would pay better than gold-seeking, you bet. He had a few hundred dollars laid by, and he said they might come in handy to her if she fell sick, or if things went hard in winter. Well, you remember his gun?"

"In course -- his gun was nigh as well known as Billy himself. He used to call it Plumb-centre. You don't mean to say she hasn't sold it?"

"She hasn't; at least I should have been sure to hear if she had. I know several of the boys who went to the funeral wanted to buy it, and offered her long prices for it too; but she wouldn't trade. I will ride over there this evening and see what I can do about it. She will sell to me if she sells to anyone, for she knows I was a great chum of Billy's, and I have done her a few good turns. She broke her leg some years back when he was away, and luckily enough I chanced to ride over there the next day. Being alone and without anyone to help, she would have got on badly. I sent a surgeon up to her, and got a redskin woman to go up to nurse her. I don't wonder she did not like to sell Billy's piece, seeing he was so famous with it, and I feel sure money would not do it; but perhaps I can talk her into it."

The next morning the articles agreed upon as the price of the horses were packed on Jerry's pony, and they went out to the meeting-place.

"It is twenty minutes early," Jerry said, as Tom consulted his watch, "and the red-skins won't be here till it is just twelve o'clock. A red-skin is never five minutes before or five minutes after the time he has named for a meeting. It may have been set six months before, and at a place a thousand miles away, but just at the hour, neither before nor after, he will be there. A white man will keep the appointment; but like enough he will be there the night before, will make his camp, sleep, and cook a meal or two, but he does not look for the red-skin till exactly the hour named, whether it is sunrise or sunset or noon. Red-skins ain't got many virtues, -- least there ain't many of them has, though I have known some you could trust all round as ready as any white man, -- but for keeping an appintment they licks creation."

A few minutes before twelve o'clock three Indians were seen coming down the valley on horseback. They were riding at a leisurely pace, and it was exactly the hour when they drew rein in front of Tom and his companion. Jerry had already unloaded his pony and had laid out the contents of the pack. First he proceeded to examine the two ponies, to make sure that they were the same he had chosen.

"That is all right," he said; "they would hardly have tried to cheat us over that -- they would know that it would not pay with me. There, chief, is your exchange. You will see that the blankets are of good quality. There is the keg of powder, the bar of lead, ten plugs of tobacco, the cloth for the squaws, and all the other things agreed on."

The chief examined them carefully, and nodded his satisfaction. "If all the pale-faces dealt as fairly with the red man as you have done there would not be so much trouble between them," he said.

"That is right enough, chief; it can't be gainsaid that a great many, ay, I might say the most part, of the traders are rogues. But they would cheat us just the same as they would you, and often do take us in. I have had worthless goods passed off on me many a time; and I don't blame you a bit if you put a bullet into the skull of a rogue who has cheated you, for I should be mightily inclined to do the same myself."

No more words were wasted; the lads who had ridden the ponies down made up the goods in great bundles and went up the valley with their chief, while Jerry and Tom took the plaited leather lariats which were round the ponies' necks and returned to Denver. A saddle of Mexican pattern, with high peak and cantle, massive wooden framework, huge straps and heavy stirrups, was next bought. Jerry folded a horse-rug and tried it in different positions on the horse's back until the saddle fitted well upon it.

"That is the thing that you have got to be most particular about, Tom. If the saddle does not sit right the horse gets galled, and when a horse once gets galled he ain't of much use till he is well again, though the Indians ride them when they are in a terrible state; but then they have got so many horses that, unless they are specially good, they don't hold them of any account. You see the saddle is so high that there is good space between it and the backbone, and the pressure comes fair on the ribs, so the ponies don't get galled if the blankets are folded properly. The Indians do not use saddles, but ride either on a pad or just a folded blanket, and their ponies are always getting galled."

"The saddle is tremendously heavy."

"It is heavy, but a few pounds don't make much difference to the horse one way or the other, so that he is carrying it comfortably. The saddles would be no good if they were not made strong, for a horse may put his foot in a hole and come down head over heels, or may tumble down a precipice, and the saddle would be smashed up if it were not pretty near as strong as cast-iron. Out on the plains a man thinks as much of his saddle as he does of his horse, and more. If his horse dies he will put the saddle on his head and carry it for days rather than part with it, for he knows he won't be long before he gets a horse again. He can buy one for a few charges of powder and ball from the first friendly Indians he comes across, or he may get one given to him if he has nothing to exchange for it, or if he comes across a herd of wild horses he can crease one."

"What is creasing a horse?" Tom asked.

"Well, it is a thing that wants a steady hand, for you have got to hit him just on the right spot -- an inch higher, you will miss him; half an inch lower, you will kill him. You have got to put a bullet through his neck two or three inches behind the ears and just above the spine. Of course if you hit the spine you kill him, and he is no good except to give you a meal or two if you are hard-up for food; but if the ball goes through the muscles of the neck, just above the spine, the shock knocks him over as surely as if you had hit him in the heart. It stuns him, and you have only got to run up and put your lariat round his neck, and be ready to mount him as soon as he rises, which he will do in two or three minutes, and he will be none the worse for the shock; in fact you will be able to break him in more easily than if you had caught him by the rope."

Jerry then adjusted his own saddle to the other Indian horse.

"Can you ride?" he asked.

"No, I have never had any chance of learning at home."

"Well, you had better have a lesson at once. This is a good way for a beginner;" and he took a blanket, and having rolled it up tightly, strapped it over the peak of the saddle and down the flaps.

"There," he said. "You get your knees against that, and what with the high peak and the high cantle you can hardly be chucked out anyhow, that is, if the horse does not buck; but I will try him as to that before you mount. We will lead them out beyond the town, we don't want to make a circus of ourselves in the streets; besides, if you get chucked, you will fall softer there than you would on the road. But first of all we will give them a feed of corn. You see they are skeary of us at present. Indian horses are always afraid of white men at first, just as white men's horses are afraid of Indians. A feed of corn will go a long way towards making us good friends, for you may be sure they have never had a feed in their lives beyond what they could pick up for themselves."

The horses snuffed the corn with some apprehension when it was held out towards them, backing away from the sieves with their ears laid back; but seeing that no harm came to them they presently investigated the food more closely, and at last took a mouthful, after which they proceeded to eat greedily, their new masters patting their necks and talking to them while they did so. Then their saddles and bridles were put on, and they were led out of the stable and along the streets. At first they were very fidgety and wild at the unaccustomed sights and sounds, but their fear gradually subsided, and by the time they were well in the country they went along quietly enough.

"Now you hold my horse, Tom, and I will try yours."

Jerry mounted and galloped away; in ten minutes he returned.

"He will do," he said as he dismounted. "He is fresh yet and wants training. I don't suppose he has been ridden half a dozen times, but with patience and training he will turn out a first-rate beast. I could see they were both fast when those boys rode them. I don't wonder the chief asked what, for an Indian pony, was a mighty long price, though it was cheap enough for such good animals. He must have two or three uncommon good ones at home or he would never have parted with them, for when an Indian gets hold of an extra good pony no price will tempt him to sell it, for a man's life on the plains often depends on the speed and stay of his horse. Now, I will take a gallop on my own, and when I come back you can mount and we will ride on quietly together.

"There is not much difference between them," he said on his return. "Yours is a bit faster. Pete told me to get you the best horse I could find, and I fixed upon yours, directly my eye fell upon him, as being the pick of the drove. But this is a good one too, and will suit me as well as yours, for he is rather heavier, and will carry me better than yours would do on a long journey. Now climb up into your saddle."

Jerry laughed at the difficulty Tom had in lifting his leg over the high cantle. "You will have to practise presently putting your hands on the saddle and vaulting into it. Half a minute in mounting may make all the difference between getting away and being rubbed out. When you see the red-skins coming yelling down on you fifty yards away, and your horse is jumping about as scared as you are, it is not an easy matter to get on to its back if you have got to put your foot in the stirrup first. You have got to learn to chuck yourself straight into your seat whether you are standing still or both on the run. There, how do you feel now?"

"I feel regularly wedged into the saddle."

"That is right. I will take up the stirrups a hole, then you will get your knees firmer against the blanket. It is better to learn to ride without it, even if you do get chucked off a few times, but as we start to-morrow you have no time for that. In a few days, when you get at home in the saddle, we will take off the blanket, and you have got to learn to hold on by your knees and by the balance of your body. Now we will be moving on."

As soon as the reins were slackened the horses started together at an easy canter.

"That is their pace," Jerry said. "Except on a very long journey, when he has got squaws and baggage with him, a red-skin never goes at a walk, and the horses will keep on at this lope for hours. That is right. Don't sit so stiffly; you want your legs to be stiff and keeping a steady grip, but from your hips you want to be as slack as possible, just giving to the horse's action, the same way you give on board ship when vessels are rolling. That is better. Ah! here comes Pete. I took this way because I knew it was the line he would come back by -- and, by gosh, he has got the rifle, sure enough!"

Pete had seen them, and was waving the gun over his head.

"I've got it," he said as he reined up his horse when he met them. "It was a stiff job, for she did not like to part with it. I had to talk to her a long time. I put it to her that when she died the gun would have to go to someone, and I wanted it for a nephew of Straight Harry, whom she knew well enough; that it was for a young fellow who was safe to turn out a great hunter and Indian fighter like her husband, and that he would be sure to do credit to Plumb-centre, and make the gun as famous in his hands as it had been in her husband's. That fetched her. She said I had been kind to her, and though she could not have parted with the gun for money, she would do it, partly to please me, and partly because she knew that Straight Harry had been a friend of her husband's, and had fought by his side, and that the young brave I spoke of, would be likely to do credit to Plumb-centre. Her husband, she said, would be glad to know that it was in such good hands. So she handed it over to me. She would not hear of taking money for it; indeed, I did not press it, knowing that she would feel that it was almost a part of her husband; but I will make it up to her in other ways. There, Tom; there is as good a shooting-iron as there is in all the territories."

"Thank you very much indeed, Pete. I shall value it immensely, and I only hope that some day I shall be able to do credit to it, as the poor woman said."

There was nothing particular in the appearance of the rifle. It was a plainly-finished piece, with a small bore and heavy metal.

"It don't look much," Jerry said, "but it is a daisy, you bet."

"We will try a shot with it, Jerry. She gave me the bag of bullets and a box of patches and his powder-horn with it. We will see what it will do in our hands, we are both pretty good shots."

He loaded the rifle carefully.

"You see that bit of black rock cropping out of the hill-side. I guess it is about two hundred and fifty yards away, and is about the size a red-skin's head would be if he were crawling through the grass towards us. Will you shoot first or shall I?"

"Fire away, Pete."

Hoskings took a steady aim and fired.

"You have hit it," Jerry exclaimed. "Just grazed it at the top."

They walked across to the rock; there was a chip just on the top.

"It was a good shot, Pete; especially considering how you are out of practice. If it had been a red-skin it would have stunned him sure, for I doubt whether it is not too high by a quarter of an inch or so, to have finished him altogether."

"It would have cut his top-knot off, Jerry, and that is all. I doubt whether it would have even touched his skin."

They returned to the spot where Pete had fired, and Jerry threw himself down on the grass and levelled his rifle.

"That is not fair, Jerry," Pete protested.

"It would not be fair if I was shooting against you, but we are only trying the rifle, and if that rock were a red-skin you may be sure that I should be lying down."

He fired: and on going to the stone again they found that the bullet had struck it fair, within an inch of its central point.

"That is something like a rifle," Jerry said delighted. "Now, Tom, you shall have a shot."

As they walked to the shooting-point, Jerry showed the lad how to hold the rifle, instructed him as to the backsight, and showed him how to get the foresight exactly on the nick of the backsight. "You must just see the bead as if it were resting in the nick, and the object you aim at must just show above the top point of the bead." He showed him how to load, and then told him to lie down, as he had done, on his chest, and to steady the rifle with the left arm, the elbow being on the ground. "You must be quite comfortable," he said; "it is of no use trying to shoot if you are in a cramped position. Now, take a steady aim, and the moment you have got the two sights in a line on the rock, press the trigger steadily. Press pretty hard; it is only a pull of about two pounds, but it is wonderful how stiff a trigger feels the first time you pull at it. You need not be at all afraid of the kick. If you press the butt tightly against your shoulder you will hardly feel it, for there is plenty of weight in the barr'l, and it carries but a small charge of powder. You won't want to shoot at anything much beyond this range, but sometimes you may have to try at four or five hundred yards when you are in want of a dinner. In that case you can put in a charge and a half of powder. Now, are you comfortable? You need not grip so hard with your left hand, the gun only wants to rest between your thumb and fingers. That is better. Now take a steady aim, and the moment you have got it press the trigger. Well done! that is a good shot for a first. You hit the dust an inch or two to the right of the stone. If it had been a red-skin you would have hit him in the shoulder. You will do, lad, and by the time we get to Fort Bridger I guess you will bring down a stag as clean as nine out of ten hunters."

"Don't get into the way of waiting too long before you fire, Tom," Pete Hoskings said. "Better to try to shoot too quick to begin with than to be too long about it. When you have made up your mind that you are going to shoot, get your bead on your mark and fire at once. You may want to hit a red-skin's head as he looks out from behind a tree, and to do that you must fire the instant you see him or he will be in again. One of the best shots I ever saw never used to raise his gun to his shoulder at all. He just dropped his piece into the hollow of his left hand, and would fire as he touched it. He did not seem to take any aim at all, but his bullet was sartin to hit the thing he wanted to, even if it were no bigger than an orange. He could not tell himself how he did it. 'I seen the thing and I fired, Pete,' he would say; 'the gun seems to point right of its own accord, I have not anything to say to it.' You see, shooting is a matter of eye. Some men may shoot all their lives, and they will never be more than just respectable, while others shoot well the first time that a gun is put in their hands. Want of nerve is what spoils half men's shooting; that and taking too long an aim. Well, it is time for us to be mounting and getting back. I have got to see that the dinner is all ready. I never can trust that black scoundrel, Sam, to do things right while I am away."

The preparations for the journey were completed by the evening.

"Now mind, Tom," Pete Hoskings said the last thing before going to bed, "if you don't find your uncle, or if you hear that he has got wiped out, be sure you come right back here. Whether you are cut out for a hunter or not, it will do you a world of good to stick to the life until you get four or five years older and settle as to how you like to fix yourself, for there ain't no better training than a few years out on the plains, no matter what you do afterwards. I will find a good chum for you, and see you through it, both for the sake of my old mate, Straight Harry, and because I have taken a liking to you myself."

"Why do you call my uncle Straight Harry?" Tom asked, after thanking Pete for his promise. "Is he so very upright?"

"No, lad, no; it ain't nothing to do with that. There are plenty more erect men than him about. He is about the size of Jerry, though, maybe a bit taller. No; he got to be called Straight Harry because he was a square man, a chap everyone could trust. If he said he would do a thing he would do it; there weren't no occasion for any papers to bind him. When he said a thing you could bet on it. You could buy a mine on his word: if he said it was good you need not bother to take a journey to look at it, you knew it was right there, and weren't a put-up job. Once when we were working down on the Yuba we got to a place where there were a fault in the rock, and the lode had slipped right away from us. Everyone in camp knew that we had been doing well, and we had only got to pile up a few pieces of rock at the bottom, and no one who would have seen it would have known that the lode was gone. That is what most chaps would have done, and a third chap who was working with us was all for doing it. Anyone would have given us five hundred ounces for it. Well, I didn't say nothing, it was what pretty nigh anyone on the mines would have done if he had the chance, but Harry turned on our partner like a mountain lion. 'You are a mean skunk, New Jersey' says he. 'Do you think that I would be one to rob a man only because he would be fool enough to take a place without looking at it? We've worked to the edge of the claim both ways, and I don't reckon there is a dollar's worth of gold left in it, now that it has pettered out at the bottom, and if there was I would not work another day with a man who proposed to get up a swindle.' So as soon as he got up to the surface he told everyone that the lode had gone out and that the claim weren't worth a red cent. He and New Jersey had a big fight with fists that evening. The other was bigger than Harry, and stronger, but he were no hand with his pistol, and Harry is a dead shot; so he told New Jersey he would fight him English fashion, and Harry gave him the biggest licking I ever saw a man have. I felt pretty mean myself, you bet, for having thought of planting the thing off; but as I hadn't spoken, Harry knew nothing about it. If he had, I doubt if he would ever have given me his hand again. Yes, sir, he is a straight man all round, and there is no man better liked than Harry. Why, there are a score of men in this town who know him as I do, and, if he came to them and said, 'I have struck it rich, I will go halves with you if you will plank down twenty thousand dollars to open her up,' they would pay down the cash without another word; and, I tell you, there ain't ten men west of the Missouri of whom as much could be said."

The next morning at daybreak Jerry and Tom started. They rode due north, skirting the foot of the hills, till they reached the emigrant route, for the railway had not been carried farther than Wabash, from which point it ran south to Denver. It was a journey of some five hundred miles to Fort Bridger, and they took a month to accomplish it, sometimes following the ordinary line of travel, sometimes branching off more to the north, where game was still abundant.

"That is Fort Bridger, Tom. It ain't much of a place to look at; but is, like all these forts, just a strong palisading, with a clump of wooden huts for the men in the middle. Well, the first stage of your journey is over, and you know a little more now than when you left Denver; but though I have taught you a good bit, you will want another year's practice with that shooting-iron afore you're a downright good shot; but you have come on well, and the way you brought down that stag on a run yesterday was uncommon good. You have made the most of your opportunities, and have got a steady hand and a good eye. You are all right on your horse now, and can be trusted to keep your seat if you have a pack of red-skins at your heels. You have learnt to make a camp, and to sleep comfortable on the ground; you can frizzle a bit of deer-flesh over the fire, and can bake bread as well as a good many. Six months of it and you will be a good plain's-man. I wish we had had a shot at buffalo. They are getting scarcer than they were, and do not like crossing the trail. We ain't likely to see many of them west of the Colorado; the ground gets too hilly for them, and there are too many bad lands."

"What are bad lands, Jerry?"

"They are just lands where Nature, when she made them, had got plenty of rock left, but mighty little soil or grass seed. There are bad lands all over the country, but nowhere so bad as the tract on both sides of the Green and Colorado rivers. You may ride fifty miles any way over bare rock without seeing a blade of grass unless you get down into some of the valleys, and you may die of thirst with water under your feet."

"How do you mean, Jerry?"

"The rivers there don't act like the rivers in other parts. Instead of working round the foot of the hills they just go through them. You ride along on what seems to be a plain, and you come suddenly to a crack that ain't perhaps twenty or thirty feet across, and you look down, if you have got head enough to do it, and there, two thousand feet or more below you, you see a river foaming among rocks. It ain't one river or it ain't another river as does it; every little stream from the hills cuts itself its canyon and makes its way along till it meets two or three others, then they go on together, cutting deeper and deeper until they run into one of the arms of the Green River or the Colorado or the Grand.

"The Green and the Colorado are all the same river, only the upper part is called the Green. For about a thousand miles it runs through great canyons. No one has ever gone down them, and I don't suppose anyone ever will; and people don't know what is the course of the river from the time it begins this game till it comes out a big river on the southern plains. You see, the lands are so bad there is no travelling across them, and the rapids are so terrible that there is no going down them. Even the Indians never go near the canyons if they can help it. I believe they think the whole thing is the work of an evil spirit."

"But you said some of the valleys had grass?"

"Yes; I have gone down one or two myself from the mountains of Utah, where the stream, instead of cutting a canyon for itself, has behaved for a bit in the ordinary way and made a valley. Wonderfully good places they were -- plenty of grass, plenty of water, and no end of game. I have spent some months among them, and got a wonderful lot of skins, beavers principally of course, but half a dozen mountain lions and two grizzlies. I did not bring home their skins, you bet. They were too heavy, and I should not have troubled them if they had not troubled me. There was good fish, too, in the streams, and I never had a better time. The red-skins happened to be friendly, and I was with a hunter who had a red-skin wife and a dozen ponies. If it hadn't been for that I should soon have had to quit, for it ain't no good hunting if you can't carry away the skins. As it was I made a good job of it, for I got nigh a thousand dollars for my skins at Utah.

"Well, here we are at the fort. I guess we may as well make our camp outside. If you go in you have got to picket your horse here and put your baggage there and come in at gun-fire, and all sorts of things that troubles a man who is accustomed to act as he likes."

The horses were soon picketed. "I will go in first and see who is here, Tom. There are usually a lot of loafing Indians about these forts, and though it is safe enough to leave our traps, out on the plain, it will not do here. We must stay with them, or at any rate keep them in sight; besides, these two horses would be a temptation to any redskin who happened to want an animal."

"I will wait willingly, Jerry; I should know nobody inside the fort if I went in. I will see to making a fire and boiling the kettle, and I will have supper ready at seven o'clock."

"I shall be sure to be back by that time; like enough I sha'n't be a quarter of an hour away."

It was but half an hour, indeed, before Tom saw him returning, accompanied by a tall red-skin.

"This is a friend of mine, Tom. He was a chief of the Senecas, but his tribe are nearly wiped out, and he has been all his life a hunter, and there are few of us who have been much out on the plains who don't know him. Chief, this is Straight Harry's nephew I was telling you of, who has come out here to join his uncle. Sit down, we have got some deer-flesh. Tom here knocked one over on the run at two hundred and fifty yards by as good a shot as you want to see; while it is cooking we can smoke a pipe and have a chat."

The chief gravely seated himself by the fire.

"What have you been doing since I last saw you up near the Yellowstone?"

"Leaping Horse has been hunting," the Indian said quietly, with a wave of his hand, denoting that he had been over a wide expanse of country.

"I guessed so," Jerry put in.

"And fighting with 'Rappahoes and Navahoes."

"Then you've been north and south?"

The Indian nodded. "Much trouble with both; they wanted our scalps. But four of the 'Rappahoe lodges are without a master, and there are five Navahoe widows."

"Then you were not alone?"

"Garrison was with me among the 'Rappahoes; and the Shoshone hunter, Wind-that-blows, was with me when the Navahoes came on our trail."

"They had better have left you alone, chief. Do you know the Ute country?"

"The Leaping Horse has been there. The Utes are dogs."

"They are troublesome varmint, like most of the others," Jerry agreed. "I was telling you Straight Harry is up in their country somewhere. Tom here is anxious to join him, but of course that can't be. You have not heard anything of him, I suppose?"

"The Leaping Horse was with him a week ago."

"You were, chief! Why did you not tell me so when I was saying we did not know where he was?"

"My white brother did not ask," the chief said quietly.

"That is true enough, chief, but you might have told me without asking."

The Indian made no reply, but continued to smoke his hatchet pipe tranquilly, as if the remark betrayed such ignorance of Indian manners that it was not worth replying to.

Tom took up the conversation now.

"Was it far from here that you saw him?"

"Five days' journey, if travel quick."

"Was he hunting?" Jerry asked.

"Hunting, and looking for gold."

"Who had he with him?"

"Two white men. One was Ben Gulston. Leaping Horse had met him in Idaho. The other was called Sam, a big man with a red beard."

"Yes, Sam Hicks; he only came back from California a few months back, so you would not be likely to have met him before. Were they going to remain where you left them?"

The Indian shook his head. "They were going farther north."

"Farther north!" Jerry repeated. "Don't you mean farther south?"

"Leaping Horse is not mistaken, he knows his right hand from his left."

"Of course, of course, chief," the miner said apologetically; "I only thought that it was a slip of the tongue. Then if they were going farther north they must have come back in this direction."

"They were on the banks of the Big Wind River when Leaping Horse met them."

"Jerusalem!" the miner exclaimed. "What on airth are they doing there? Why, we thought they had gone down to the west of the Colorado. I told you so, chief, when I talked to you about it; and instead of that, here they are up in the country of the 'Rappahoes and Shoshones."

"They went south," the Indian said quietly, "and had trouble with the Utes and had to come back again, then they went north."

"Ah, that accounts for it. I wonder Harry didn't send word to Pete Hoskings that he had gone up to the Big Wind River. I ain't heard of there being any gold in that region, though some think that coming down through the big hills from Yellowstone Valley on the northwest, metal might be struck."

"Going to look for gold a little," the chief said, "hunt much; not stay there very long, mean to go down south again after a bit. Leaping Horse go with them."

"Oh, I see. The Utes had come upon them, and they knew that if they stopped there they would lose their scalps sooner or later, so they came up here and made north for a bit to hunt and fossick about in the hills, and then go back when the Utes had quieted down."

The chief nodded.

"Well, well, that alters the affair altogether. Whereabouts did you leave them?"

"Near the Buffalo Lake."

"Don't know it. Where does it lie?"

"On a stream that runs into the river from the west, from a valley running up near Frémont's Buttes. They were going up so as to follow the Rivière de Noir, and then either strike up across the hills to the Upper Yellowstone, or go out west and come down over the Grosventre range on to the Wyoming range, and then down through Thompson's Pass, or else skirt the foot-hills on to the Green River."

"Waal, chief, I reckon that among all those hills and mountains, one would have just about the same chance of lighting on them as you would have of finding a chipmunk in a big pine-forest."

"Couldn't find," the chief said, "but might follow. If they go fast never catch them; if wait about, hunt beaver, look for gold and silver, then might come up to them easy enough, if 'Rappahoes not catch and kill. Very bad place. Leaping Horse told them so. White brother said he think so too; but other men think they find gold somewhere, so they go on. They have got horses, of course. Three horses to ride, three horses to carry beaver-traps and food. Leaping Horse came back here to sell his skins. He had promised to meet a friend here, or he would not have left Straight Harry, who is a good man and a friend of Leaping Horse. Three men not enough in bad country."

"Do you think there would be any chance of my finding them?" Tom asked eagerly.

A slight gleam of amusement passed over the Indian's face.

"My brother is very young," he said. "He will be a brave warrior and a great hunter some day, but his eyes are not opened yet. Were he to try he would leave his scalp to dry in the 'Rappahoes' lodges."

"That is just what I told him, chief. It would be sheer madness."

The Indian made no reply, and Jerry turned the conversation.

"You don't drink spirits, chief, or I would go and get a bottle from the fort."

"Leaping Horse is not a madman," the Indian said scornfully, "that he should poison his brain with fire-water."

"Yes; I remembered, chief, that you had fallen into our ways and drink tea."

"Tea is good," the Indian said. "It is the best thing the white man has brought out on to the plains."

"That is so, chief, except tobacco. We did not bring that; but I reckon you got it from the Spaniards long ago, though maybe you knew of it before they came up from the south."

The meat was now cooked, and Tom took it off the fire and handed the pieces on the ramrod, that had served as a spit, to the others, together with some bread, poured out the tea from the kettle, and placed a bag of sugar before them. There was little talk until after the meal was over. Then the Indian and Jerry smoked steadily, while Tom took a single pipe, having only commenced the use of tobacco since he had left Denver. Presently the Indian arose.

"In the morning I will see my white friends again," he said, and without further adieu turned and walked gravely back to the fort.



Chapter IV

Leaping Horse


"He is a fine fellow," Jerry said, after the Indian had left him. "You must have a talk with him one of these days over his adventures among the 'Rappahoes and Navahoes, who are both as troublesome rascals as are to be found on the plains. An Indian seldom talks of his adventures, but sometimes when you can get him in the right humour you may hear about them."

"He talks very fair English," Tom said.

"Yes; he has been ten years among us. He was employed for two or three years supplying the railway men with meat; but no Indian cares to hunt long in one place, and he often goes away with parties of either hunters or gold-seekers. He knows the country well, and is a first-rate shot; and men are always glad to have him with them. There is no more trusty red-skin on the plains, and he will go through fire and water for those whom he regards as his special friends. I should say he is about the one man alive who could take you to your uncle."

"Do you think he would?" Tom asked eagerly.

"Ah, that is another matter; I don't know what his plans are. If he is engaged to go with another party he will go, for he would not fail anyone to whom he had made a promise. If he isn't engaged he might perhaps do it. Not for pay, for he has little use for money. His hunting supplies him with all he wants. It gives him food, and occasionally he will go with a bundle of pelts to the nearest town, and the money he gets for them will supply him with tea and tobacco and ammunition, and such clothes as he requires, which is little enough. Buckskin is everlasting wear, and he gets his worked up for him by the women of any Indian tribe among whom he may be hunting. If he were one of these fort Indians it would be only a question of money; but it would never do to offer it to him. He does not forget that he is a chief, though he has been away so many years from what there is left of his old tribe. If he did it at all it would be for the sake of your uncle. I know they have hunted together, and fought the Apachés together. I won't say but that if we get at him the right way, and he don't happen to have no other plans in his mind, that he might not be willing to start with you."

"I should be glad if he would, Jerry. I have been quite dreading to get to Fort Bridger. I have had such a splendid time of it with you that I should feel awfully lonely after you had gone on."

"Yes, I dare say you would feel lonesome. I should have felt lonesome myself if I did not light upon some mate going the same way. We got on very well together, Tom. When Pete Hoskings first put it to me whether I would be willing to take you with me as far as this, I thought that though I liked you well enough, it would not be in my way to be playing a sort of schoolmaster business to a young tenderfoot; but I had got to like the notion before we left Denver, and now it seems to me that we have had a rare good time of it together."

"We have indeed, Jerry; at least I have had. Even if the Indian would agree to take me I should miss you awfully."

Jerry made no reply, but sat smoking his pipe and looking into the fire. As he was sometimes inclined to be taciturn, Tom made no attempt to continue the conversation; and after moving out and shifting the picket-pegs so as to give the horses a fresh range of grass to munch during the night, he returned to the fire, wrapped himself in his blankets and lay down, his "Good-night, Jerry," meeting with no response, his companion being evidently absorbed in his own thoughts.

"You are not going on to-day, Jerry, are you?" Tom said, as he threw off his blankets and sat up in the morning. The sun was not yet up, but Jerry had already stirred up the embers, put some meat over them to cook, and put the kettle among them.

"No, I shall stop here for a day or two, lad. I am in no special hurry, and have no call to push on. I have not made up my mind about things yet."

They had scarcely finished breakfast when Leaping Horse came down from the fort.

"Tom here has been asking me, chief, whether there was any chance of getting you to guide him to his uncle. I said, of course, that I did not know what your plans were; but that if you had nothing special before you, possibly you might be willing to do so, as I know that you and Straight Harry have done some tall hunting and fighting together."

The Indian's face was impassive.

"Can my young brother ride day after day and night after night, can he go long without food and water, is he ready to run the risk of his scalp being taken by the 'Rappahoes? Can he crawl and hide, can he leave his horse and travel on foot, can he hear the war-cry of the red-skins without fear?"

"I don't say that I can do all these things, chief," Tom said; "but I can do my best. And, anyhow, I think I can promise that if we should be attacked you shall see no signs of my being afraid, whatever I may feel. I am only a boy yet, but I hope I am not a coward."

"You have come a long way across the sea to find my brother, Straight Harry. You would not have come so far alone if your heart had been weak. Leaping Horse is going back to join his white brother again, and will take you to him."

Tom felt that any outburst of delight would be viewed with distaste by this grave Indian, and he replied simply: "I thank you with all my heart, chief, and I am sure that my uncle will be grateful to you."

The chief nodded his head gravely, and then, as if the matter were settled and no more need be said about it, he turned to Jerry:

"Which way is my white friend going?"

"I'm dog-goned if I know. I had reckoned to go down past Utah, and to go out prospecting among the hills, say a hundred miles farther west; then while I journeyed along with Tom I got mixed in my mind. I should like to have handed him over safe to Harry; but if Harry had gone down to the Ute hills with an idea of trying a spot I have heard him speak of, where he thought he had struck it rich, he might not have cared to have had me come there, and so I concluded last night it was best the lad should wait here till Harry got back. Now the thing is altered; they are just hunting and prospecting, and might be glad to have me with them, and I might as well be there as anywhere else; so as you are going back there, I reckon I shall be one of the party."

"That will be capital, Jerry," Tom said. "With you as well as the chief we shall be sure to get through; and it will be awfully jolly having you with us."

"Don't you make any mistake," the miner said, "I should not be of much more use in finding them than you would. I ain't been up among the mountains all these years without learning something, but I ain't no more than a child by the side of the chief. And don't you think this affair is going to be a circus. I tell you it is going to be a hard job. There ain't a dozen white men as have been over that country, and we shall want to be pretty spry if we are to bring back our scalps. It is a powerful rough country. There are peaks there, lots of them, ten thousand feet high, and some of them two or three thousand above that. There are rivers, torrents, and defiles. I don't say there will be much chance of running short of food, if it wasn't that half the time one will be afraid to fire for fear the 'tarnal Indians should hear us. We ain't got above a month afore the first snows fall. Altogether it is a risky business, look at it which way you will."

"Well, Jerry, if it is as bad as that, I don't think it will be right for you and the chief to risk your lives merely that I should find my uncle. If he is alive he is sure to come back here sooner or later; or if he goes some other way back to Denver he will hear from Pete that I am here, and will either write or come for me."

"It ain't entirely on your account, lad, as I am thinking of going; and I am pretty sure the chief would tell you that it is the same with him. You see, he tried to persuade your uncle to turn back. My opinion is, that though he had to come here to keep the appointment, he had it in his mind to go back again to join your uncle. Haven't I about struck your thoughts, chief?"

The chief nodded. "My white brother Harry is in danger," he said. "Leaping Horse had to leave him; but would have started back to-day to take his place by his side. The Hunting Dog will go with him."

"I thought so, chief; I am dog-goned if I did not think so. It was Hunting Dog you came back here to meet, I suppose."

"Hunting Dog is of my tribe," he said; "he is my sister's son. He came across the plains to join me. He has hunted in his own country; this is the first time he has come out to take his place as a man. Leaping Horse will teach him to be a warrior."

"That is good; the more the better, so that there ain't too many. Well, what is your advice, chief? Shall we take our pack pony with the outfit?"

The chief shook his head decidedly. "Must travel quick and be able to gallop fast. My white brothers must take nothing but what they can carry with them."

"All right, chief; we will not overload ourselves. We will just take our robes and blankets, our shooting-irons, some tea and sugar, and a few pounds of flour. At what time shall we start?"

"In an hour we will ride out from the fort."

"We shall be ready. Ten minutes would fix us, except that I must go into the fort and sell my critter and what flour and outfit we sha'n't want, to a trader there.

"I ain't done badly by that deal," Jerry said when he returned. "I have sold the pony for more than I gave for him; for the red-skins have been keeping away from the fort of late, and the folks going by are always wanting horses in place of those that have died on the way. The other things all sold for a good bit more than we gave for them at Denver. Carriage comes mighty high on these plains; besides, the trader took his chances and reckoned them in."

"How do you mean, Jerry?"

"Waal, I told him we was going up to the Shoshone Sierra, and intended to hunt about and to come back, maybe by the Yellowstone and then by the Bear rivers, and that we would take the price of the goods out in trade when we got back. That made it a sort of lottery for him, for if we never came back at all he would never have to pay, so he could afford to take his risks and offer me a good price. I reckon he thinks he has got them at a gift. He has given two pieces of paper, one for you and one for me, saying that he owes the two of us the money; so if I should go under and you should get back, you will draw it all right."

They at once proceeded to pack their ponies. Divided between the saddle-bags of the two animals were four pounds of tea, eight of sugar, and thirty-six of flour. Each took a good store of ammunition, an extra pair of breeches, a flannel shirt, and a pair of stockings. The rest of their clothes had been packed, and taken up by Jerry to the traders to lie there until their return.

"That is light enough for anything," Jerry said, when the things were stowed into the saddle-bags. "Four-and-twenty pounds of grub and five pounds of ammunition brings it up to nine-and-twenty pounds each, little enough for a trip that may last three months for aught we know."

In addition to the ammunition in the saddle-bags, each carried a powder-horn and a bag of bullets over his shoulder. The revolvers were in their belts, and the rifles slung behind them. While Jerry was away at the fort Tom had made and baked three loaves, which were cut up and put in the holsters.

"Now we are ready, Tom; the Indians will be out in a minute or two. The sun is just at its highest."

Two minutes later the chief and his companion rode out from the gate of the fort. Jerry and Tom mounted their horses and cantered over to meet them. As they came up, Tom looked with interest at the young Indian. He judged him to be about nineteen, and he had a bright and intelligent face. He was, like his uncle, attired in buckskin; but the shirt was fringed and embroidered, as was the band that carried his powder-horn, a gift, doubtless, from some Indian maiden at his departure from his village. No greetings were exchanged; but the chief and Jerry rode at once side by side towards the northeast, and Tom took his place by the side of the young Indian.

"How are you?" he said, holding out his hand. The young Indian took it and responded to the shake, but he shook his head.

"Ah, you don't speak English yet?" Hunting Dog again shook his head. "That is a pity," Tom went on; "it would have been jolly if we could have talked together."

The chief said something to Jerry, who turned around in his saddle. "His uncle says he can talk some. He has taught him a little when he has paid visits to the village, but he has had no practice in speaking it. He will get on after a time."

All were well mounted, and they travelled fast. Just before sunset they crossed the Green River at a ford used by the emigrants, and some fifty miles northeast of Fort Bridger. They had seen a herd of deer by the way, and the two Indians had dismounted and stalked them. The others lost sight of them, but when two rifle-shots were heard Jerry said, "We will take the horses along to them, you may be sure they have got meat; the chief is a dead shot, and he says that his nephew has also gifts that way." As they expected, they found the Indians standing beside two dead deer. Hunting Dog laid open the stomachs with a slash of his knife, and removed the entrails, then tying the hind legs together swung the carcasses on to his horse behind the saddle, and the journey was at once renewed.

"You will make for Frémont's Buttes, I suppose, chief?" Jerry said, as after riding up the river for three or four miles so as to be able to obtain wood for their fire -- as for a considerable distance on either side of the emigrant trail not a shrub was to be seen -- they dismounted, turned the horses loose, lit a fire, and prepared a meal.

"Yes. We will go over the pass and camp at one of the little lakes at the head of the north fork, thence we will ride across the plain and ford Little Wind River, and then follow up the Sage Creek and make our camp at night on Buffalo Lake. From there we must follow their trail."

"And where shall we have to begin to look out for the 'Rappahoes?"

"They may be over the next rise; no one can say. The 'Rappahoes are like the dead leaves drifting before the wind. They come as far south as the emigrant trail, and have attacked caravans many times. After to-night we must look out for them always, and must put out our fires before dark."

Tom had noticed how carefully the young Indian had selected the wood for the fire; searching carefully along by the edge of the river for drift-wood, and rejecting all that contained any sap. He himself had offered to cut down some wood with the axe he carried strapped to his saddle, but Hunting Dog had shaken his head.

"No good, no good," he said. "Make heap smoke; smoke very bad."

Tom thought that the shrub he was about to cut would give out obnoxious smoke that would perhaps flavour the meat hanging over it, but when the Indian added, "Heap smoke, red-skins see a long way," he understood that Hunting Dog had been so careful in choosing the wood in order to avoid making any smoke whatever that might attract the attention of Indians at a distance from them. It was his first lesson in the necessity for caution; and as darkness set in he looked round several times, half expecting to see some crouching red-skins. The careless demeanour of his companions, however, reassured him, for he felt certain that if there was any fear of a surprise, they would be watchful.

After supper the Indian talked over with Jerry the route they would most probably have to pursue. The miner had never been in this part of the country before; indeed, very few white men, with the exception of trappers who had married Indian women and had been admitted into their tribes, had ever penetrated into this, the wildest portion of the Rocky Mountains. Vague rumours existed of the abundance of game there, and of the existence of gold, but only one attempt had been made to prospect on a large scale. This had taken place three years before, when a party of twenty Californian miners penetrated into the mountains. None of them returned, but reports brought down by Indians to the settlements were to the effect that, while working a gold reef they had discovered, they were attacked and killed to a man by a war party of Sioux.

"I was mighty nigh being one of that crowd," Jerry said when he told the story to Tom, as they sat over the camp-fire that night. "I heard of their start when I got back to Salt Lake City, after being away for some time among the hills. I legged it arter them as fast as I could, but I found when I got to the last settlement that they had gone on ten days before, and as I did not know what line they had followed, and did not care to cross the pass alone, I gave it up. Mighty lucky thing it was, though I did not think so at the time."

"But why should my uncle's party have gone into such a dangerous country when they knew that the natives were so hostile?"

"It is a mighty big place, it is pretty nigh as big as all the eastern states chucked into one, and the red-skins are not thick. No one knows how many there are, but it is agreed they are not a big tribe. Then it ain't like the plains, where a party travelling can be seen by an Indian scout miles and miles away. It is all broken ground, canons and valleys and rocks. Then again, when we get on the other side of the Wind River they tell me there are big forests. That is so, chief, isn't it?"

The chief nodded. "Heap forests," he said, "higher up rocks and bad lands; all bad. In winter snow everywhere on hills. Red-skins not like cold; too much cold, wigwam no good."

"That's it, you see, Tom. We are here a long way above the sea-level, and so in the hills you soon get above the timber-line. It's barren land there, just rock, without grass enough for horses, and in winter it is so all-fired cold that the Indians can't live there in their wigwams. I reckon their villages are down in the sheltered valleys, and if we don't have the bad luck to run plump into one of these we may wander about a mighty long time before we meet with a red-skin. That is what you mean, isn't it, chief?"

Leaping Horse grunted an assent.

"What game is there in the country?"

"There are wapitis, which are big stag with thundering great horns, and there are big-horns. Them are mountain sheep; they are mostly up above the timber-line. Wapitis and big-horns are good for food, but their skins ain't worth taking off. There is beaver, heaps of them; though I reckon there ain't as many as there were by a long way, for since the whites came out here and opened trade, and the red-skins found they could get good prices for beaver, they have brought them down by thousands every year. Still, there is no doubt there is plenty left, and that trappers would do first-rate there if the red-skins were friendly. In course, there is plenty of b'ars, but unless you happen to have a thundering good chance it is just as well to leave the b'ars alone, for what with the chances of getting badly mauled, and what with the weight of the skin, it don't pay even when you come right side up out of a tussle."

"Are there any maps of the region?"

"None of any account. They are all just guess-work. You may take it that this is just a heap of mountains chucked down anyhow. Such maps as there are have been made from tales trappers who came in with pelts have told. Well, firstly they only knew about just where the tribe they had joined lived, and in the second place you may bet they warn't such fools as to tell anything as would help other fellows to get there; so you may put down that they told very little, and what they did tell was all lies. Some day or other I suppose there will be an expedition fitted out to go right through, and to punish these dog-goned red-skins and open the country; but it will be a long time arter that afore it will be safe travelling, for I reckon that soldiers might march and march for years through them mountains without ever catching a sight of a red-skin if they chose to keep out of their way. And now I reckon we had best get in atween our blankets."

The two Indians had already lain down by the fire. Tom was some time before he could get to sleep. The thought of the wild and unknown country he was about to enter, with its great game, its hidden gold treasures, its Indians and its dangers, so excited his imagination that, tired as he was with the long ride, two or three hours passed before he fell off to sleep. He was awoke by being shaken somewhat roughly by Jerry.

"Why, you are sleeping as sound as a b'ar in a hollow tree," the miner said. "You are generally pretty spry in the morning." A dip in the cold water of the river awoke Tom thoroughly, and by the time he had rejoined his comrades breakfast was ready. The ground rose rapidly as they rode forward. They were now following an Indian trail, a slightly-marked path made by the Indians as they travelled down with their ponies laden with beaver skins, to exchange for ammunition, blankets, and tobacco at the trading station. The country was barren in the extreme, being covered only with patches of sage brush. As they proceeded it became more and more hilly, and distant ridges and peaks could be seen as they crossed over the crests.

"These are the bad lands, I suppose?"

"You bet they are, Tom, but nothing like as bad as you will see afore you are done. Sage brush will grow pretty nigh everywhere, but there are thousands of square miles of rock where even sage brush cannot live."

The hills presently became broken up into fantastic shapes, while isolated rocks and pinnacles rose high above the general level.

"How curiously they are coloured," Tom remarked, "just regular bands of white and red and green and orange; and you see the same markings on all these crags, at the same level."

"Just so, Tom. We reckon that this country, and it is just the same down south, was once level, and the rains and the rivers and torrents cut their way through it and wore it down, and just these buttes and crags and spires were left standing, as if to show what the nature of the ground was everywhere. Though why the different kinds of rocks has such different colours is more than I can tell. I went out once with an old party as they called a scientific explorer. I have heard him say this was all under water once, and sometimes one kind of stuff settled down like mud to the bottom, sometimes another, though where all the water came from is more nor I can tell. He said something about the ground being raised afterwards, and I suppose the water run off then. I did not pay much attention to his talk, for he was so choke-full of larning, and had got such a lot of hard names on the tip of his tongue, that there were no making head or tail of what he was saying."

Tom had learnt something of the elements of geology, and could form an idea of the processes by which the strange country at which he was looking had been formed.

"That's Frémont's Buttes," the Indian said presently, pointing to a flat-topped hill that towered above the others ahead.

"Why, I thought you said it was a fifty-mile ride to-day, Jerry, and we can't have gone more than half that."

"How far do you suppose that hill is off?"

"Three or four miles, I should think."

"It is over twenty, lad. Up here in the mountains the air is so clear you can see things plain as you couldn't make out the outlines of down below."

"But it seems to me so close that I could make out people walking about on the top," Tom said a little incredulously.

"I dare say, lad. But you will see when you have ridden another hour it won't seem much closer than it does now."

Tom found out that the miner was not joking with him, as he at first had thought was the case. Mile after mile was ridden, and the landmark seemed little nearer than before. Presently Hunting Dog said something to the chief, pointing away to the right. Leaping Horse at once reined in, and motioned to his white companions to do the same.

"What is it, chief?" Jerry asked.

"Wapiti," he replied.

"That is good news," the miner said. "It will be lucky if we can lay in a supply of deer flesh here. The less we shoot after we get through the pass the better. Shall we go with you, chief?"

"My white brothers had better ride on slowly," Leaping Horse said. "Might scare deer. No good lose time."

Tom felt rather disappointed, but as he went on slowly with Jerry, the miner said: "You will have plenty of chances later on, lad, and there is no time to lose in fooling about. The red-skins will do the business."

Looking back, Tom saw the two Indians gallop away till they neared the crest of a low swell. Then they leapt from their horses, and stooping low went forward. In a short time they lay prone on the ground, and wriggled along until just on the crest.

"I reckon the stag is just over there somewhere," Jerry said. "The young red-skin must have caught sight of an antler."

They stopped their ponies altogether now, and sat watching the Indians. These were half a mile away, but every movement was as clearly visible as if they were but a hundred yards distant. The chief raised himself on his arms and then on to his knees. A moment later he lay down again, and they then crawled along parallel with the crest for a couple of hundred yards. Then they paused, and with their rifles advanced they crept forward again.

"Now they see them," Jerry exclaimed.

The Indians lay for half a minute motionless. Then two tiny puffs of smoke darted out. The Indians rose to their feet and dashed forward as the sound of their shots reached the ears of their companions.

"Come on," Jerry said, "you may be sure they have brought down one stag anyhow. The herd could not have been far from that crest or the boy would not have seen the antler over it, and the chief is not likely to miss a wapiti at a hundred yards."

Looking back presently Tom saw that the Indian ponies had disappeared.

"Ay, Hunting Dog has come back for them. You may be sure they won't be long before they are up with us again."

In a quarter of an hour the two Indians rode up, each having the hind-quarters of a deer fastened across his horse behind the saddle, while the tongues hung from the peaks.

"Kill them both at first shot, chief?" Jerry asked; "I did not hear another report."

"Close by," the chief said; "no could miss."

"It seems a pity to lose such a quantity of meat," Tom remarked.

"The Indians seldom carry off more than the hindquarters of a deer, never if they think there is a chance of getting more soon. There is a lot more flesh on the hindquarters than there is on the rest of the stag. But that they are wasteful, the red-skins are, can't be denied. Even when they have got plenty of meat they will shoot a buffalo any day just for the sake of his tongue."

It was still early in the afternoon when they passed under the shadow of the buttes, and, two miles farther, came upon a small lake, the water from which ran north. Here they unsaddled the horses and prepared to camp.



Chapter V

In Danger


There were no bushes that would serve their purpose near the lake; they therefore formed their camp on the leeward side of a large boulder. The greatest care was observed in gathering the fuel, and it burned with a clear flame without giving out the slightest smoke.

"Dead wood dries like tinder in this here air," the miner said. "In course, if there wur any red-skins within two or three miles on these hills they would make out the camp, still that ain't likely; but any loafing Indian who chanced to be hunting ten or even fifteen miles away would see smoke if there was any, and when a red-skin sees smoke, if he can't account for it, he is darned sartin to set about finding out who made it."

The horses fared badly, for there was nothing for them to pick up save a mouthful of stunted grass here and there.

"Plenty of grass to-morrow," the chief said in answer to a remark of Tom as to the scantiness of their feed. "Grass down by Buffalo Lake good."

Early the next morning they mounted and rode down the hills into Big Wind River valley. They did not go down to the river itself, but skirted the foot of the hills until they reached Buffalo Lake.

"There," the chief said, pointing to a pile of ashes, "the fire of my white brother." Alighting, he and Hunting Dog searched the ground carefully round the fire. Presently the younger Indian lightly touched the chief and pointed to the ground. They talked together, still carefully examining the ground, and moved off in a straight line some fifty yards. Then they returned.

"Indian here," Leaping Horse said, "one, two days ago. Found fire, went off on trail of white men."

"That is bad news, chief."

"Heap bad," the Indian said gravely.

"Perhaps he won't follow far," Tom suggested.

The Indian made no answer. He evidently considered the remark to be foolish.

"You don't know much of Indian nature yet, Tom," the miner said. "When a red-skin comes upon the trail of whites in what he considers his country, he will follow them if it takes him weeks to do it, till he finds out all about them, and if he passes near one of his own villages he will tell the news, and a score of the varmint will take up the trail with him. It's them ashes as has done it. If the chief here had stopped with them till they started this would not have happened, for he would have seen that they swept every sign of their fire into the lake. I wonder they did not think of it themselves. It was a dog-goned foolish trick to leave such a mark as this. I expect they will be more keerful arterwards, but they reckoned that they had scarce got into the Indian country."

"Do you think it was yesterday the red-skin was here, or the day before, chief?"

"Leaping Horse can't say," the Indian replied. "Ground very hard, mark very small. No rain, trail keep fresh a long time. Only find mark twice." He led them to a spot where, on the light dust among the rocks, was the slight impression of a footmark.

"That is the mark of a moccasin, sure enough," Jerry said; "but maybe one of the whites, if not all of them, have put on moccasins for the journey. They reckoned on climbing about some, and moccasins beat boots anyhow for work among the hills."

"Red-skin foot," the Indian said quietly.

"Well, if you say it is, of course it is. I should know it myself if I saw three or four of them in a line, but as there is only one mark it beats me."

"How would you know, Jerry?"

"A white man always turns out his toes, lad, an Indian walks straight-footed. There are other differences that a red-skin would see at once, but which are beyond me, for I have never done any tracking work."

The Indian without speaking led them to another point some twenty yards away, and pointed to another impression. This was so slight that it was with difficulty that Tom could make out the outline.

"Yes, that settles it," Jerry said. "You see, lad, when there was only one mark I could not tell whether it was turned out or not, for that would depend on the direction the man was walking in. This one is just in a line with the other, and so the foot must have been set down straight. Had it been turned out a bit, the line, carried straight through the first footprint, would have gone five or six yards away to the right."

It took Tom two or three minutes to reason this out to himself, but at last he understood the drift of what his companion said. As the line through one toe and heel passed along the centre of the other, the foot must each time have been put down in a straight line, while if the footprints had been made by a person who turned out his toes they would never point straight towards those farther on.

"Well, what is your advice, chief?" Jerry asked.

"Must camp and eat," the Indian replied, "horses gone far enough. No fear here, red-skin gone on trail."

"Do you think there have been more than one, chief?"

"Not know," Leaping Horse said; "find out by and by."

Tom now noticed that Hunting Dog had disappeared.

"Where shall we make the fire?"

The chief pointed to the ashes.

"That's it," Jerry said. "If any red-skin came along you see, Tom, there would be nothing to tell them that more than one party had been here."

The chief this time undertook the collection of fuel himself, and a bright fire was presently burning. Two hours later Hunting Dog came back. He talked for some time earnestly with the chief, and taking out two leaves from his wampum bag opened them and showed him two tiny heaps of black dust. Jerry asked no questions until the conversation was done, and then while Hunting Dog cut off a large chunk of deer's flesh, and placing it in the hot ashes sat himself quietly down to wait until it was cooked, he said:

"Well, chief, what is the news?"

"The Indian had a horse, Hunting Dog came upon the spot where he had left it a hundred yards away. When he saw ashes, he came to look at them. Afterwards he followed the trail quite plain on the soft ground at head of lake. Over there," and he pointed to the foot of the hills, "Indian stopped and fired twice."

"How on earth did he know that, chief?"

The chief pointed to the two leaves. The scout examined the powder. "Wads," he said. "They are leather wads, Tom, shrivelled and burnt. What did he fire at, chief?"

"Signal. Half a mile farther three other mounted redskins joined him. They stopped and had heap talk. Then one rode away into hills, the others went on at gallop on trail."

"That is all bad, chief. The fellow who went up the hills no doubt made for a village?"

The chief nodded.

"The only comfort is that Harry has got a good start of them. It was a week from the time you left them before we met you, that is three days ago, so that if the red-skins took up the trail yesterday, Harry has ten days' start of them."

Leaping Horse shook his head. "Long start if travel fast, little start if travel slow."

"I see what you mean. If they pushed steadily on up the valley, they have gone a good distance, but if they stopped to catch beaver or prospect for gold they may not have got far away. Hadn't we better be pushing on, chief?"

"No good, horses make three days' journey; rest well to-day, travel right on to-morrow. If go farther to-night, little good to-morrow. Good camp here, all rest."

"Well, no doubt you are right, chief, but it worries one to think that while we are sitting here those 'tarnal red-skins may be attacking our friends. My only hope is that Harry, who has done a lot of Indian fighting, will hide his trail as much as possible as he goes on, and that they will have a lot of trouble in finding it."

The chief nodded. "My white brother, Harry, knows Indian ways. He did not think he had come to Indian country here or he would not have left his ashes. But beyond this he will be sure to hide his trail, and the 'Rappahoes will have to follow slow."

"You think they are 'Rappahoes, chief?"

"Yes, this 'Rappahoe country. The Shoshones are further north, and are friendly; the Bannacks and Nez Percés are in northwest, near Snake River; and the Sioux more on the north and east, on other side of great mountains. 'Rappahoes here."

"Waal," Jerry said wrathfully, "onless they catch Harry asleep, some of the darned skunks will be rubbed out afore they get his scalp. It is a good country for hiding trail. There are many streams coming down from the hills into the Big Wind, and they can turn up or down any of them as they please, and land on rocky ground too, so it would be no easy matter to track them. By the lay of the country there does not seem much chance of gold anywheres about here, and, as I reckon, they will be thinking more of that than of beaver skins, so I think they would push straight on."

"Harry said he should get out of Big Wind River valley quick," Leaping Horse said. "Too many Indians there. Get into mountains other side. Go up Rivière de Noir, then over big mountains into Sierra Shoshone, and then down Buffalo through Jackson's Hole, and then strike Snake River. I told him heap bad Indians in Jackson's Hole, Bannacks, and Nez Percés. He said not go down into valley, keep on foot-hills. I told him, too bad journey, but he and other pale-faces thought could do it, and might find much gold. No good Leaping Horse talk."

"This is a dog-goned bad business I have brought you into, Tom. I reckoned we should not get out without troubles, but I did not calkerlate on our getting into them so soon."

"You did not bring me here, Jerry, so you need not blame yourself for that. It was I brought you into it, for you did not make up your mind to come till I had settled to go with Leaping Horse."

"I reckon I should have come anyhow," Jerry grumbled. "Directly the chief said where Harry and the others had gone my mind was set on joining them. It was a new country, and there wur no saying what they might strike, and though I ain't a regular Indian-fighter, leaving them alone when they leave me alone, I can't say as I am averse to a scrimmage with them if the odds are anyways equal."

"It is a wonderful country," Tom said, looking at the almost perpendicular cliffs across the valley, with their regular coloured markings, their deep fissures, crags, and pinnacles, "and worth coming a long way to see."

"I don't say as it ain't curous, but I have seen the like down on the Colorado, and I don't care if I never see no more of it if we carry our scalps safe out of this. I don't say as I object to hills if they are covered with forest, for there is safe to be plenty of game there, and the wood comes in handy for timbering, but this kind of country that looks as if some chaps with paint-pots had been making lines all over it, ain't to my taste noway. Here, lad; I never travel without hooks and lines; you can get a breakfast and dinner many a day when a gun would bring down on you a score of red varmints. I expect you will find fish in the lake. Many of these mountain lakes just swarm with them. You had better look about and catch a few bugs, there ain't no better bait. Those jumping bugs are as good as any," and he pointed to a grasshopper, somewhat to Tom's relief, for the lad had just been wondering where he should look for bugs, not having seen one since he landed in the States.

There were two lines and hooks in the miner's outfit, and Tom and Hunting Dog, after catching some grasshoppers, went down to the lake, while Jerry and the chief had a long and earnest conversation together. The baited hooks were scarcely thrown into the water when they were seized, and in a quarter of an hour ten fine lake trout were lying on the bank. Tom was much delighted. He had fished from boats, but had never met with much success, and his pleasure at landing five fish averaging four or five pounds apiece was great. As it was evidently useless to catch more, they wound up their lines, and Hunting Dog split the fish open and laid them down on the rock, which was so hot that Tom could scarce bear his hand on it.

Seeing the elder men engaged in talk Tom did not return to them, but endeavoured to keep up a conversation with the young Indian, whom he found to be willing enough to talk now they were alone, and who knew much more English than he had given him credit for. As soon as the sun set the fire was extinguished, and they lay down to sleep shortly afterwards. An hour before daylight they were in the saddle. Hunting Dog rode ahead on the line he had followed the day before. As soon as it became light Tom kept his eyes fixed upon the ground, but it was only now and then, when the Indian pointed to the print of a horse's hoof in the sand between the rocks, that he could make them out. The two Indians followed the track, however, without the slightest difficulty, the horses going at a hand gallop.

"They don't look to me like horses' footprints," Tom said to Jerry when they had passed a spot where the marks were unusually clear.

"I reckon you have never seen the track of an unshod horse before, Tom. With a shod horse you see nothing but the mark of the shoe, here you get the print of the whole hoof. Harry has been careful enough here, and has taken the shoes off his ponies, for among all the marks, we have not seen any made by a shod horse. The Indians never shoe theirs, and the mark of an iron is enough to tell the first red-skin who passes that a white man has gone along there. The chief and I took off the shoes of the four horses yesterday afternoon when you were fishing. We put them and the nails by to use when we get out of this dog-goned country."

After riding for two hours they came to the bank of a stream. The chief held up his hand for them to stop, while he dismounted and examined the foot-marks. Then he mounted again and rode across the stream, which was some ten yards wide and from two to three feet deep. He went on a short distance beyond it, leapt from his saddle, threw the reins on the horse's neck, and returned to the bank on foot. He went a short distance up the stream and then as much down, stooping low and examining every inch of the ground. Then he stood up and told the others to cross.

"Leaping Horse Mounted, And Rode Across The Stream"

"Leave your horses by mine," he said as they joined him. "Trail very bad, all rock." He spoke to the young Indian, who, on dismounting, at once went forward, quartering the ground like a spaniel in search of game, while the chief as carefully searched along the bank.

"Best leave them to themselves, Tom; they know what they are doing."

"They are hunting for the trail, Jerry, I suppose?"

"Ay, lad. Harry struck on a good place when he crossed where he did, for you see the rock here is as smooth as the top of a table, and the wind has swept it as clean of dust as if it had been done by an eastern woman's broom. If the horses had been shod there would have been scratches on the rock that would have been enough for the dullest Indian to follow, but an unshod horse leaves no mark on ground like this. I expect the red-skins who followed them were just as much puzzled as the chief is. There ain't no saying whether they crossed and went straight on, or whether they never crossed at all or kept in the stream either up or down."

It was half an hour before the two Indians had concluded their examination of the ground.

"Well, chief, what do you make of it?" Jerry asked when they had spoken a few words together.

"Hunting Dog has good eyes," the chief said. "The white men went forward, the red men could not find the trail, and thought that they had kept in the river, so they went up to search for them. Come, let us go forward."

The miner and Tom mounted their horses, but the Indians led theirs forward some three hundred yards. Then Hunting Dog pointed down, and the chief stooped low and examined the spot.

"What is it, chief?" Jerry asked; and he and Tom both got off and knelt down. They could see nothing whatever.

"That is it," Leaping Horse said, and pointed to a piece of rock projecting half an inch above the flat.

"I am darned if I can see anything."

"There is a tiny hair there," Tom said, putting his face within a few inches of the ground. "It might be a cat's hair; it is about the length, but much thicker. It is brown."

"Good!" the chief said, putting his hand on Tom's shoulder. "Now let us ride." He leapt into his saddle, the others following his example, and they went on at the same pace as before.

"Well, chief," the miner said, "what does that hair tell you about it, for I can't make neither head nor tail of it?"

"The white men killed a deer on their way up here, and they cut up the hide and made shoes for horses, so that they should leave no tracks. One of the horses trod on a little rock and a hair came out of the hide."

"That may be it, chief," the miner said, after thinking the matter over, "though it ain't much of a thing to go by."

"Good enough," Leaping Horse said. "We know now the line they were taking. When we get to soft ground see trail plainer."

"What will the others do when they cannot find the trail anywhere along the bank?"

"Ride straight on," the chief said. "Search banks of next river, look at mouths of valleys to make sure white men have not gone up there, meet more of tribe, search everywhere closely, find trail at last."

"Well, that ought to give Harry a good start, anyhow."

"Not know how long gone on," the chief said gravely. "No rainfall. Six, eight -- perhaps only two days' start."

"But if they always hide their trail as well as they did here I don't see how the Indians can find them at all -- especially as they don't know where they are making for, as we do."

"Find camp. Men on foot may hide traces, but with horses sure to find."

"That is so," Jerry agreed, shaking his head. "An Indian can see with half an eye where the grass has been cropped or the leaves stripped off the bushes. Yes, I am afraid that is so. There ain't no hiding a camp from Indian eyes where horses have been about. It is sure to be near a stream. Shall you look for them, chief?"

The Indian shook his head. "Lose time," he said. "We go straight to Rivière de Noir."

"You don't think, then, they are likely to turn off before that?"

"Leaping Horse thinks not. They know Indian about here. Perhaps found Indian trail near first camp. Know, anyhow, many Indians. Think push straight on."

"That is the likeliest. Anyhow, by keeping on we must get nearer to them. The worst danger seems to me that we may overtake the red-skins who are hunting them."

The chief nodded.

"It is an all-fired fix, Tom," Jerry went on. "If we go slow we may not be in time to help Harry and the others to save their scalps; if we go fast we may come on these 'tarnal red-skins, and have mighty hard work in keeping our own ha'r on."

"I feel sure that the chief will find traces of them in time to prevent our running into them, Jerry. Look how good their eyes are. Why, I might have searched all my life without noticing a single hair on a rock."

After riding some fifteen miles beyond the stream, and crossing two similar though smaller rivulets, the chief, after a few words with Jerry, turned off to the left and followed the foot of the hills. At the mouth of a narrow valley he stopped, examined the ground carefully, and then led the way up it, carrying his rifle in readiness across the peak of the saddle. The valley opened when they had passed its mouth, and a thick grove of trees grew along the bottom. As soon as they were beneath their shelter they dismounted.

The horses at once began to crop the grass. Hunting Dog went forward through the trees, rifle in hand.

"Shall I take the bits out of the horses' mouths, Jerry?" Tom asked.

"Not till the young Indian returns. It is not likely there is a red-skin village up there, for we should have seen a trail down below if there had been. Still there may be a hut or two, and we can do nothing till he comes back."

It was half an hour before Hunting Dog came through the trees again. He shook his head, and without a word loosened the girths of his horse and took off the bridle.

"He has seen no signs of them, so we can light a fire and get something to eat. I am beginning to feel I want something badly."

Thus reminded, Tom felt at once that he was desperately hungry. They had before starting taken a few mouthfuls of meat that had been cooked the day before and purposely left over, but it was now three o'clock in the afternoon, and he felt ravenous. The Indians quickly collected dried wood, and four of the fish were soon frizzling on hot ashes, while the kettle, hung in the flame, was beginning to sing.

"We have done nigh forty miles, Tom, and the horses must have a couple of hours' rest. We will push on as fast as we can before dark, and then wait until the moon rises; it will be up by ten. This ain't a country to ride over in the dark. We will hide up before morning, and not go on again till next night. Of course we shall not go so fast as by day, but we sha'n't have any risk of being ambushed. The chief reckons from what he has heard that the Indian villages are thick along that part of the valley, and that it will never do to travel by day."

"Then you have given up all hopes of finding Harry's tracks?"

"It would be just wasting our time to look for them. We will push on sharp till we are sure we are ahead of them. We may light upon them by chance, but there can be no searching for them with these red varmint round us. It would be just chucking away our lives without a chance of doing any good. I expect Harry and his party are travelling at night too; but they won't travel as fast as we do, not by a sight. They have got pack-ponies with them, and they are likely to lay off a day or two if they come upon a good place for hiding."

They travelled but a few miles after their halt, for the Indians declared they could make out smoke rising in two or three places ahead; and although neither Jerry nor Tom could distinguish it, they knew that the Indians' sight was much keener than their own in a matter of this kind. They therefore halted again behind a mass of rocks that had fallen down the mountain-side. Hunting Dog lay down among the highest of the boulders to keep watch, and the horses were hobbled to prevent their straying. The miner and the chief lit their pipes, and Tom lay down on his back for a sleep. A short time before it became dusk the call of a deer was heard.

"There are wapiti, chief. We can't take a shot at them; but it don't matter, we have meat enough for a week."

The chief had already risen to his feet, rifle in hand.

"It is a signal from Hunting Dog," he said, "he has seen something in the valley. My white brother had better get the horses together," and he made his way up the rocks. In a minute or two he called out that the horses might be left to feed, and presently came leisurely down to them. "Seen Indians -- ten 'Rappahoes."

"Which way were they going?"

"Riding from Big Wind River across valley. Been away hunting among hills over there. Have got meat packed on horses, ride slow. Not have heard about white men's trail. Going to village, where we saw smoke."

Tom was fast asleep when Jerry roused him, and told him that the moon was rising, and that it was time to be off.

They started at a walk, the chief leading; Jerry followed him, while Tom rode between him and Hunting Dog, who brought up the rear. Tom had been warned that on no account was he to speak aloud. "If you have anything you want to say, and feel that you must say it or bust," Jerry remarked, "just come up alongside of me and whisper it. Keep your eyes open and your rifle handy, we might come upon a party any minute. They might be going back to their village after following Harry's trail as long as they could track it, or it might be a messenger coming back to fetch up food, or those fellows Hunting Dog made out going on to join those in front. Anyhow we have got to travel as quiet as if there was ears all round us."

As they passed the clumps of trees where the Indian villages stood they could see the reflection of the fires on the foliage, and heard the frequent barking of dogs and an occasional shout. A quarter of a mile farther the chief halted and spoke to Hunting Dog, who at once dismounted and glided away towards the village.

"Gone to see how many men there," the chief said in explanation to Jerry. "Too much laugh, no good."

"He means the men must have gone off again, Tom. If there were men in the camp the boys would not be making a noise."

They were but a few hundred yards from the trees, and in a very short time the Indian returned.

"Men are gone," he said; "only squaws and boys there."

"How many lodges are there?" the chief asked. Hunting Dog held up both hands with extended fingers, and then one finger only.

"Eleven of them," Jerry said. "I expect they are all small villages, and they move their lodges across into the forests when winter comes on."

As soon as they had mounted, the chief put his horse into a canter, and at this pace they went forward for some hours, breaking into a walk occasionally for a few minutes.

"I thought you said we should not go beyond a walk to-night, Jerry," Tom remarked on the first of these occasions.

"That is what we kinder agreed, lad; but you may be sure the chief has some good reason for going on faster. I dunno what it is, and I ain't going to ask. Red-skins hate being questioned. If he wants to tell us he will tell us without being asked."

A faint light was stealing over the sky when the chief halted his horse and sat listening. No sound, however, broke the stillness of the night.

"Did you think you heard anything, chief?"

"Leaping Horse heard nothing, but he stopped to listen. What does my white brother think of the 'Rappahoes having gone on directly they returned from the chase?"

"I thought that when they got the news that some white men had gone through, they might have started to join those following up the trail. Isn't that what you think, chief?"

"Only three white men, plenty Indians on trail; no hurry to follow; might have had feast after hunt and gone on in morning."

"So they might. You think the whites have been tracked, and are to be attacked this morning?"

"Perhaps attacked yesterday. Perhaps have got strong place, 'Rappahoes want more help to take it. White rifle shoot straight, perhaps want more men to starve them out."

They again went forward, at a gallop now. Jerry did not think much of the chief's idea. It seemed to him natural that the Indians should want to join in the hunt for scalps, and to get a share of the white men's goods, though he admitted that it was strange they should have gone on without taking a meal. Presently the chief reined in his horse again, and sat with head bent forward. Tom heard an angry grunt from between Hunting Dog's teeth. Listening intently also, he was conscious of a faint, far-away sound.

"You hear?" the chief said to Jerry.

"I heard something; but it might be anything. A waterfall in the hills miles away, that is what it sounds like."

"Guns," the chief said laconically.

"Do you think so?" Jerry said doubtfully. "There don't seem to me anything of guns in it. It is just a sort of murmur that keeps on and on."

"It is the mountains speaking back again," the chief said, waving his hand. "Hills everywhere. They say to each other, the red men who live in our bosoms are attacking the pale-face strangers."

"What do you think, Hunting Dog?" Tom whispered to the Indian.

"Gun-shot," he replied, in a tone of absolute conviction.

"Waal, chief, I will not gainsay your opinion," Jerry said. "How far do you think it is off?"

"The horses will take us there in two hours," the chief replied.

"Then we can put it at twenty miles at least. Let us be going; whatever the sound is, we shall know more about it before we have gone much farther."

"Not too fast," Leaping Horse said as the miner was urging his horse forward. "Maybe have to fight, maybe have to run. No good tire horse too much."

It was more than an hour before Tom could hear any distinct change in the character of the sound, but at last he was able to notice that, though seemingly continuous, the sound really pulsated; sometimes it almost died away, then suddenly swelled out again, and there were several vibrations close together. Jerry, more accustomed to the sound of firearms in the mountains, had before this come round to the chief's opinion.

"It is guns, sure enough, Tom; the chief has made no mistake about it. Waal, there is one comfort, they ain't been surprised. They are making a good fight of it, and we may be there in time to take a hand in the game."

"Shall we ride straight on and join them?"

"I reckon not, lad. We must wait until we see what sort of place Harry is in, and how we can best help him, before we fix on any scheme."

The sound became louder and clearer. The echo was still continuous, but the sound of the shots could be distinctly heard.

"It is over there, to the right," Jerry said. "They must have crossed the Big Wind River."

"And gone up the De Noir valley," the chief said. "We ought to be close to it now."

"Yes, I reckon it can't be far off, by what you told me about the distance."

"Better cross Big Wind at once. They no see us now."

"I agree with you, chief; it would not do for them to get sight of us. If they did our case would be worse than Harry's. I expect he has got strongly posted, or he would have been wiped out long ago; that is what would happen to us if they were to make us out and spy our numbers afore we get to some place where we and Harry's outfit can help each other."

They rode rapidly down to the river. With the exception of a few yards in the middle, where the horses had to swim, the depth was not great, and they were soon on the other side. They rode to the foot of the hills, and then kept along it. The sound of firing became louder and louder, and Tom felt his heart beat quickly at the thought that he might soon be engaged in a desperate fight with the Indians, and that with the odds greatly against his party.

Presently the hills fell sharply away, and they were at the entrance of the valley of the Rivière de Noir, which is the principal arm of the Big Wind River at this point. The firing had very much died out during the last few minutes, and only an occasional shot was heard.

"They have beat off the attack so far," Jerry said to him encouragingly. "Now we have got to lie low a bit, while the chief sees how things stand."

Leaping Horse dismounted at the mouth of a narrow canon running up into the cliff beside them. A little stream trickled down its centre.

"Could not have been better," Jerry said. "Here is a place we four could hold against a crowd of red-skins for hours. There is water anyway, and where there is water there is mostly a little feed for horses. I will take your horse, chief, and Tom will take Hunting Dog's, if so be you mean him to go with you.

"Don't you worry yourself, lad," he went on, seeing how anxious Tom looked, as they started with the horses up the canyon. "If Harry and his friends have beaten off the first attack, you may bet your boots they are safe for some time. It is clear the red-skins have drawn off, and are holding a pow-wow as to how they are to try next. They attacked, you see, just as the day was breaking; that is their favourite hour, and I reckon Harry must have been expecting them, and that he and his mates were prepared."



Chapter VI

United


The canyon showed no sign of widening until they had proceeded a quarter of a mile from the entrance, then it broadened suddenly for a distance of a hundred yards.

"There has been a big slip here both sides," the miner said, looking round. "It must have taken place a great many years ago, for the winter floods have swept away all signs of it, and there are grass and trees on the slopes. The horses can find enough to keep them alive here for a day or two, and that is all we shall want, I hope."

"It would be a nasty place to get out of, Jerry, for the cliffs are perpendicular from half-way up."

"It ain't likely as there is any place we could get out without following it to the upper end, which may be some fifty miles away. I don't know the country it runs through, but the red-skins are pretty certain to know all about it. If they were to track us here they would never try to fight their way in, but would just set a guard at the mouth and at the upper end and starve us out. It is a good place to hide in, but a dog-goned bad one to be caught in. However, I hope it ain't coming to that. It is we who are going to attack them, and not them us, and that makes all the difference. The red-skins can't have a notion that there are any other white men in this neighbourhood, and when we open fire on them it will raise such a scare for a bit that it will give us a chance of joining the others if we choose. That of course must depend on their position."

They walked back to the mouth of the canyon, and had not to wait long for the return of the Indians.

"Come," Leaping Horse said briefly, at once turning and going off at a swift pace.

Jerry asked no questions, but with Tom followed close on the Indians' heels. There were bushes growing among the fallen rocks and débris from the face of the cliff, and they were, therefore, able to go forward as quickly as they could leap from boulder to boulder, without fear of being seen. A quarter of an hour's run, and the chief climbed up to a ledge on the face of the cliff where a stratum harder than those above it had resisted the effects of the weather and formed a shelf some twelve feet wide. He went down on his hands and knees, and keeping close to the wall crawled along to a spot where some stunted bushes had made good their hold. The others followed him, and lying down behind the bushes peered through them.

The valley was four or five hundred yards wide, and down its centre ran the stream. Close to the water's edge rose abruptly a steep rock. It was some fifty feet in height and but four or five yards across at the top. On the north and west the rocks were too perpendicular to be climbed, but the other sides had crumbled down, the stones being covered with brushwood. From the point where they were looking they could see the six horses lying among the bushes. They were evidently tightly roped, and had probably been led up there when the attack began and thrown at the highest point to which they could be taken, a spot being chosen where the bushes concealed their exact position from those below. The rock was about two hundred and fifty yards from the spot where the party was lying, and their position was about level with its top. Some twenty Indians were gathered a few hundred yards higher up the valley, and about as many some distance down it.

"Why didn't the varmint take their places here?" Jerry whispered to the chief.

"They came here. See," and he pointed to a patch of blood a few feet beyond him. "Indian guns not shoot far," he said, "powder weak; white man's rifles carry here, red-skin not able to shoot so far. When they found that, went away again."

"What are they going to do now, do you think?"

"Soon attack again."


Half an hour passed, and then a loud yell gave the signal and the two troops galloped towards the rock. They had evidently had experience of the accuracy of the white men's fire; not an Indian showed himself, each dropping over one side of his pony, with an arm resting in a rope round the animals' necks and one leg thrown over the back. So they dashed forward until close to the foot of the rocks. Another instant and they would have thrown themselves from their horses and taken to the bushes, but although hidden from the sight of the defenders of the position, they were exposed to the full view of the party on the ledge, from whom they were distant not more than two hundred yards. The chief fired first, and almost together the other three rifles flashed out. Three of the Indians fell from their horses, another almost slipped off, but with an effort recovered his hold with his leg. A yell of astonishment and fear broke from the Indians. As the two bands mingled together, some of the riders were exposed to those on the top of the rock, and three shots were fired. Two more of the 'Rappahoes fell, and the whole band in obedience to a shout from one of their chiefs galloped at full speed down the valley. The three men sprang to their feet, waving their hats, while the party on the ledge also leapt up with a shout.

"It's you, chief, I see!" one of those on the rocks shouted. "I have been hoping ever since morning to hear the crack of your rifle, and I never heard a more welcome sound. We should have been rubbed out sure. Who have you got with you?"

"It's Jerry Curtis, Harry. I come up along with Leaping Horse, though I did not expect to find you in such a bad fix. This young Indian is Hunting Dog, and this young chap next to me is your nephew, Tom Wade. You did not expect to meet him like this, I reckon?"

While he had been speaking, all had reloaded their rifles.

"You had best go across and talk it over with Harry, chief, and consart measures with him for getting out of this fix. Those red-skins have got a bad scare, but you may bet they ain't gone far; and they have lost six of their bucks now beside what the others shot before, and it ain't in Indian natur for them to put up with such a loss as that." He had been looking at the rock as he spoke, and turning round uttered an exclamation of surprise, for the chief was no longer there. Looking down they saw that he had managed to make his way down the face of the cliff, and in another two minutes was ascending the rock. There he stood for some time in earnest conversation with the whites, and then returned to the ledge.

"Trouble over horses," he said.

"Ay, ay, I reckoned that was what you was talking over. There ain't no going back for them now."

The chief shook his head. "'Rappahoes keep watch," he said, "cannot go till night to fetch horses. All lie here to-day, go across to rock when darkness comes, then white men go up valley till get to trees an hour's march away; can see them from rock. Get in among trees and work up into hills. Leaping Horse and Hunting Dog cross river, go down other side past 'Rappahoes, then cross back and get into canyon, drive horses up. White men meet them up in mountains."

"That seems a good plan enough, chief. That is, if you can get out at the other end of the canyon."

"Canyon little up high," the chief replied. "Find some place to climb."

"But they may find the horses to-day."

The Indian nodded. "May find, perhaps not."

"Why should we not go across to the rock at once, chief?"

"Indian count on fingers how many. They do not know we only four; much troubled in their mind where men come from, who can be. Red-skins not like white men. Have many fancies. Fire come out of bush where 'Rappahoe had been killed; think that bad medicine, keep together and talk. Think if men here, why not go across to rock."

"I should not be surprised if you are right, chief. They are more likely to fancy we have come down from above than from below, for they must have reckoned for sure there were no other white men in the Big Wind valley, and our not showing ourselves will give them an all-fired scare."

"What does the chief mean by bad medicine, Jerry?" Tom asked.

"A red-skin is full of all sorts of ideas. Anything he can't make head nor tail of, is bad medicine; they think there is some magic in it, and that old Nick has had his finger in the pie. When they get an idea like that in their minds, even the bravest of them loses his pluck, and is like a child who thinks he has seen a ghost. It is a mighty good notion for us to lie low all day. The red-skins will reason it all out, and will say, if these are white men who killed our brothers why the 'tarnal don't they go and join the others, there ain't nothing to prevent them. If they ain't white men, who are they? Maybe they can move without our being able to see them and will shoot from some other place. No, I reckon it is likely they will keep pretty close together and won't venture to scatter to look for tracks, and in that case the chief's plan will work out all right. In course, a good deal depends on their chief; one of them is among those we shot, you can make out his feathers from here. If he is the boss chief, it may be that they will give it up altogether; the next chief will throw the blame on to him, and may like enough persuade them to draw off altogether. If it ain't the boss chief, then they are bound to try again. He would not like to take them back to their villages with the news that a grist of them had been killed and narry a scalp taken. I expect you will see this afternoon some of them come down to palaver with Harry."

The morning passed quietly and not unpleasantly, for they were lying in the shade, but before noon the sun had climbed up over the cliff behind them and shone down with great force, and they had to lie with their heads well under the bushes to screen them from its rays. Presently, Leaping Horse said:

"Indian chief come, no lift heads."

All shifted their position so as to look down the valley. An Indian chief, holding up his hands to show that he was unarmed, was advancing on foot, accompanied by another Indian also without arms.

"There is Harry going down to meet them," Jerry said.

Tom looked eagerly at the figure that came down from the rock and advanced to meet the Indians. It seemed strange to him that after having come so far to join his uncle they should remain for hours in sight of each other without meeting. It was too far to distinguish his features, but he saw by the light walk and easy swing of the figure that his uncle was a much more active man than he had expected to see. He had known indeed that he was but forty years old, but he had somehow expected that the life of hardship he had led would have aged him, and he was surprised to see that his walk and figure were those of a young man.

"Is it not rather dangerous, his coming down alone to meet two of them? They may have arms hidden."

"They have got arms, you maybe sure," Jerry replied. "They have knives for certain, and most likely tomahawks, but I expect Harry has got his six-shooter. But it don't matter whether he has or not, there are his two mates up on that rock with their rifles, and we are across here. The 'Rappahoes would know well enough their lives wouldn't be worth a red cent if they were to try any of their games. They don't mean business; they will make out they have come to persuade Harry and his mates to give up, which they know quite well they ain't fools enough to do. But what is really in their minds is to try and find out who we are, and where we have come from."

The conversation lasted a few minutes. Tom could see that questions were being asked about the concealed party, for the chief pointed to the ledge two or three times. When the talk was over the Indians went down the valley again at a slow pace, never once looking back, and the Englishman returned to the rocks.

"I don't suppose they have got much from Harry."

"I suppose uncle talks their language?"

"No, I don't reckon he knows the 'Rappahoe dialect. But the tribes on the western side of the plains can mostly understand each other's talk; and as I know he can get on well with the Utes, he is sure to be able to understand the 'Rappahoes' talk."

"Leaping Horse will go along the ledge," the chief said a few minutes later, after a short conversation with Hunting Dog. "The 'Rappahoes will try to find out who are here; not like to attack the rock till find out."

The two Indians lay down flat on the ledge, and crawled along without raising themselves in the slightest until they reached a point where the cliffs projected somewhat. From here they could see down the valley, and they lay immovable, with their rifles in front of them.

"They are not more than fifty yards or so from those bushes where we got up on to the ledge. That is where the red-skins are likely to try crawling up, for there they would be out of sight of the rock."

"Surely they would never venture to come along the ledge in daylight, Jerry. They would have to pass along under the fire of uncle and his mates, and would have our rifles to meet in front."

"No, it would only be one, or at most, two scouts. They would reckon that from that point where the chief is lying they would get a view right along the ledge to here, and be able to make out what we are. It is the strangeness of the thing that has kept them quiet all these hours, and I expect their chief will want to prove that there are only a few of us, and that we are men for certain. I reckon they have sent off to the villages already, and there will be more of the varmint here to-night. The Indians are never fond of attacking in the dark; still, if they were sure about us, they might try it. They would know they could get up to the foot of that rock before being seen, and once among the bushes they would reckon they could make easy work of it."

A quarter of an hour later there was the crack of a rifle, followed instantly by an Indian yell.

"That is the chief's piece, Tom, and I reckon the lead has gone straight."

The silence remained unbroken for the next two hours, and then Leaping Horse crawled back as quietly as he had gone.

"What was it, chief?"

"It was a 'Rappahoe, who will scout no more," the chief said quietly. "He came up the bushes, but before he could step on to the ledge Leaping Horse fired, and he will take no tales back to his tribe."

"They won't try again, chief?"

Leaping Horse shook his head. "First take rock," he said, "then when they have the scalps of the white men they will watch us here. Will know we cannot stay here long without water."

"You are right there, chief, and no m'stake; my tongue is like a piece of leather now, and as soon as it gets dark I shall make a bee-line down to the river. I want to have a talk with Harry, but just at present I want a drink a blamed sight worse. If I had thought we were going to be stuck up here all day I would have brought my water-bottle with me."

The time passed very slowly, although the air became cooler as soon as the sun had gone down behind the opposite range. As soon as the light faded a little, the Indian crawled farther along the ledge, and returned in a short time saying that he had found a spot where the whites could descend. Two or three times Jerry urged that it was dark enough, before the chief consented to move. At last, however, he stood up and gave the cry of an owl, and they were in a minute or two joined by Hunting Dog, who had until now remained at his post. The chief at once led the way along the ledge until he reached the spot where the rock had crumbled away somewhat.

"We had better go down one at a time," Jerry said. "For if there was a slip or a tumble it might let down a gun-hammer, and we want our lead for the 'Rappahoes, and not for each other."

When it came to Tom's turn, he found it a very difficult place to get down in the semi-darkness, and two or three times he almost lost his footing. As soon as all were down they fell into Indian file, and crossed the valley to the rock, the chief giving the hoot of an owl twice as he approached it. Three men at once stepped out from the bushes at its foot.

"I began to wonder when you were coming, and was just going to get the ponies down before it was too dark to do it without running the risk of breaking their legs. Well, I am right glad to see you, Jerry; and you too, Tom, though it is too dark to see much of you. The chief has been telling me how he brought you along. There is no time to talk now, but I am right glad to see you, lad" and he shook Tom heartily by the hand. "Now, mates, let us get the horses down."

"I must make tracks for the water first, Harry, the young un and I are pretty near choking; and I expect the Indians are as bad, though it ain't their natur to talk about it."

"Get down horses first," the chief said. "Too dark soon."

"Waal, I suppose five minutes won't make much difference," Jerry grumbled, "so here goes."

"I have tied some hide over their hoofs," Harry said, "so as to make as little noise as possible about it."

"Must make no noise," the chief said urgently. "Redskin scouts soon be crawling up."

One by one the horses were brought down, Harry leading them, and the others pushing aside the bushes as noiselessly as possible. Then their loads were carried down and packed upon them.

"You get on my horse, Jerry," Harry Wade whispered, "I will walk with Tom. I have had no time to say a word to him yet, or to ask about the people at home. Where is the chief?"

Leaping Horse and his companion had stolen away as soon as the loads had been adjusted. The others led the horses to the river, and allowed them to drink, while Jerry and Tom lay down and took a long draught of the water. The miners' bottles were filled, and they then started.

"It is lucky the river makes such a roar among these rocks here," Harry said, "it will drown the sound of the horses' hoofs."

For half an hour they proceeded at a fast walk, then the skins were taken off the horses' feet and they went on at a trot, the two Wades taking hold of Jerry's stirrup-leathers and running alongside. In half an hour they entered the belt of trees, and dismounting, at once began to ascend the hill. They were some distance up when they heard a distant yell.

"You may yell as much as you like," Jerry panted, "you won't catch us now. They have been a mighty long time finding out we were gone."

"They could not make out about you," Harry said. "I could see by the chief's manner, and the glances the Indian with him kept giving to the place where you were lying, that they were puzzled and alarmed. They offered if we would surrender that they would allow us to return down the valley without hurt. I said, of course, that I preferred staying where I was; we had come up the valley and intended going farther; we didn't want to interfere with them, and if they had left us alone we should have left them alone; and they had only themselves to thank for the loss of some of their braves. 'We have,' I said, 'many friends, who will protect us, and much harm will fall on the Indians who venture to meddle with us.'

"'Are your friends white men?' the chief asked. 'Have they wings that they have flown down here from the hills?'

"'They have come, that is enough,' I said. 'You see, when they were wanted they were here, and if they are wanted again you will hear of them, and your braves will die, and you will gain nothing. You had best go back to your lodges and leave us to go away in peace. Whoever they are, they can shoot, as you have found out to your cost. They have no ill-will to the red-skins, providing the redskins let us alone. They only fired four shots; if they had wished to, they could have killed many more.' When the chief saw that he could get nothing further from me he went away. As usual he spoke boastfully at last, and said that he had offered peace to us, and if war came, it would be our faults. I laughed, and said that we could take care of ourselves, and preferred doing so to trusting ourselves in the hands of the 'Rappahoes, when we had made some of their squaws widows."

"Would they have kept their word, uncle, do you think?" Tom asked.

"Not they. There are a few of the Indian tribes whose word can be taken, but as a rule words mean nothing with them, and if we had put ourselves in their power they would have tomahawked us instantly, or else taken us down and tortured us at their villages, which would have been a deal worse. I have no doubt they had a long talk after the chief returned to them, and that it was some time after it became dark before they could pluck up courage enough to climb the rock, though I expect they must have got close to it very soon after we left. I reckon they have been crawling up inch by inch. Of course, directly they got to where the horses had been tied they knew we had gone, and I expect that yell was a signal for a rush forward to the top. But we need not bother any more about them. They may ride as far as the foot of the forest, but when they find we have gained that safely they will give it up until morning; they will know well enough it is no good starting to search the woods in the dark. We may as well rest where we are until the moon is up, for we make so much noise crashing through this undergrowth that they could hear us down there."

"Now tell me, lad, about your mother and sisters, and how you came out after all."

Tom told his uncle of his mother's death, and the reason why he had left his sisters to come out to join him.

"It is a very bad business, lad, and I take a lot of blame to myself. When I got your mother's letter, telling me of poor John's death, and that she would not hear of your coming out, I said some very hard things to myself. Here had I been knocking about for twenty years, and having had a fair share of luck, and yet I could not put my hand on five hundred dollars, and there was my brother's widow and children, and I, their nearest relative, could not help them. It made me feel a pretty mean man, I can tell you. Your mother did not say much about her circumstances, but it did not need that. I knew that John had retired from the navy with little besides his half-pay, and that her pension as his widow must be a mighty slim one. Altogether I had a pretty bad time of it. However, I took a tall oath that the next rich strike I made the dollars should not be thrown away. I reckoned that you would be out before long; for it was certain that if you were a lad of spirit you would not be staying there doing nothing. Your mother said that the girls all intended to take up teaching, and it was not likely that you would let them work for the family while you were loafing about at home. I know in my time it was hard enough to get anything to do there, and young fellows who have come out here to ranche tell me that it is harder than ever now. I thought you would fancy this life, and that in time you would talk your mother over into letting you come."

"I should never have got her to agree to it, uncle. I wanted to go to sea, but after father's death she would not hear of it. She said I was her only boy and that she could not spare me, and I had to promise to give up the thought. She was still more against your plan, but when I wrote to you I thought that possibly in time she might agree to it. But it was not long afterwards that her health began to fail, and I saw then that I must give up all thought of leaving her, and must, when I left school, take anything that offered; and it was only after her death that I talked it over with the girls, and they agreed that to come here was the best thing for me."

"And you left before my last letter arrived?"

"Yes; we had no letter after the one you wrote asking me to come out."

"No, I suppose you could not have had it. I wrote before I started out three months ago from Salt Lake City. I had struck a ledge of pretty good stuff, I and another. We sold out for a thousand dollars, and I sent my share off to your mother, telling her that I had been having bad luck since I got her letter, but that I hoped to do better in future, and I thought, anyhow, I could promise to send her as much once a year, and if I had a real stroke of luck she and her girls would have the benefit of it."

"That was good of you, uncle."

"Not good at all," Harry Wade grumbled. "I have behaved like a fool all along; it is true that when I did get letters from your father, which was not very often, he always wrote cheerfully, and said very little about how he was situated as to money. But I ought to have known -- I did know, if I thought of it -- that with a wife and six children it must be mighty hard to make ends meet on a lieutenant's half-pay, and there was I, often throwing away twice as much as his year's pension on a week's spree. When I heard he was gone you may pretty well guess how I felt. However, lad, if things turn out well I will make it up as far as I can. Now, let us join the others."

The others, however, were all sound asleep, having wrapped themselves in their blankets, and lain down as soon as the halt was decided upon. Jerry, having had no sleep the previous night, and but little for four or five days, had not even thought of asking the others for food, which they doubtless had on their saddles, although he had tasted nothing for twenty-four hours. Tom, however, less accustomed to enforced fasts, felt ravenous.

"We have had nothing to eat to-day, uncle, except a crust left over from yesterday's baking, and I don't think I could get to sleep if I did not eat something."

"Bless me, I never thought of that, Tom. If I had I would have sent food across by the chief this morning. There is no bread, but there is plenty of cold meat. We cooked a lot yesterday evening, for we thought we might not get a chance of cooking to-day."

"Then you knew, uncle, the Indians were near?" Tom went on, when he had appeased his appetite and taken a drink of water, with a little whisky in it from his uncle's flask.

"Ay, lad; we guessed somehow we had been followed all along. We had done everything we could to throw them off the trail -- travelling as much as we could in the course of streams, muffling the feet of our ponies, and picking out the hardest ground to travel on; but every morning before daybreak one of us went up the hillside, and twice we made out mounted Indians moving about down the valley. Yesterday morning ten of them came galloping up within easy shot. I don't think they thought that we were so near. They drew up their horses suddenly, had a talk, and then came riding after us. It didn't need their yells to tell us what their intention was. We knocked three of them out of their saddles, then threw our horses down and lay behind them.

"They galloped round and round us shooting, but we picked two more off, and then they rode away. We knew enough of them to be sure that they were not going to give it up, but would follow us till joined by enough of their tribe to attack us again. We made a long march, hoping to get to the timber before they could come up, but just as the sun was setting we saw them coming along, about fifteen of them; and we had just time to get up to that rock. As they rode past we opened a smart fire and dropped four of them; the others rode up the valley, so as to cut us off from going farther. We filled our water-skins and got the horses half-way up as you saw, and then lighted a fire and cooked. We kept watch all night, two down below and one at the top; but everything was quiet, and we guessed they were waiting for others to come up.

"About an hour before daylight we heard another gang arrive below us. They halted there, and it was not long before they began crawling up from above and below, and for a bit we shot pretty brisk. The odds were too much against them, with us on the height, and they drew off. Then for an hour they were pretty quiet while they were holding council, except that we did some shooting with a party who had climbed up to that ledge opposite; then we saw both bands mount, and reckoned they were going to make a dash for us. We knew if they did it in earnest we must go down, for once among the rocks and bushes there would be no keeping them from mounting up. We made up our minds that the end was not far off, though I fancy we should have accounted for a good many of them before they rubbed us out. When your four rifles spoke from the ledge we thought it was a party who had gone back there, for we felt sure that we had driven them all away, but it wasn't more than a moment before we saw it wasn't that. There was no mistaking the yell of astonishment from the Indians, and as the horses swerved round we saw that three of them had fallen. You may guess we didn't stop to argue who it was, but set to work to do our share; but it seemed to us something like a miracle when the red-skins rode off.

"We had been talking of Leaping Horse during the night, for he had promised to come back to join us, and I knew him well enough to be able to bet all creation that he would come. He had only left us to keep an appointment with his nephew, who was to join him at Fort Bridger. If there had only been two guns fired we should have put it down to him, but being four I don't think either of us thought of him till he stood up and shouted. Now, lad, you had better take a sleep. We shall be moving on as soon as the moon is fairly up, and it won't be over that hill behind us till two or three. I will watch till then, but I don't think there is the least chance of their following us to-night; they have been pretty roughly handled, and I don't think they will follow until they have solved the mystery of that ledge. They searched it, no doubt, as soon as they found the rock was empty, and at daybreak they will set about tracing the trail up. That will be easy enough for them when they have once got rid of the idea that there was something uncanny about it, and then we shall have them on our heels again and on the chief's too. The first thing for us to do will be to make along the hill till we get to the edge of the canyon, where Leaping Horse has gone for your ponies, and to follow it to its upper end."

"I will watch, uncle, if you will wake me in an hour. I shall be all right after a nap, but I can scarcely keep my eyes open now."

It seemed, however, to Tom that he had not been asleep five minutes when his uncle shook him. The others were already on their feet. The moon was shining down through the trees, and with cautious steps, and taking the utmost trouble to avoid the branches, they started on their upward climb. Not a word was spoken, for all knew how far sound travels on a still night. There was, however, a slight breeze moving among the tree tops when they started, and in an hour this had so far increased that the boughs were swaying and the leaves rustling.

"I reckon there ain't no occasion to keep our mouths shut no longer," one of the men said. "Now that the trees are on the move they would not hear us if they were only a hundred yards away."

All were glad when daylight began to appear, Tom because the climbing would be much easier when the ground could be seen, the others because they were all longing for a pipe, but had hitherto not dared to light one, for the flash of a match could be seen far away. They had been bearing steadily to the right as they mounted, and shortly after daybreak they suddenly found themselves on the edge of a canyon.

"Do you think this is the one, Jerry?" one of the men asked.

"That is more than I can tell, Ben. I did not see an opening in the valley as we came up it, but we might very well have missed one in the dark. I should think from the distance we have gone towards the right it must be the one where we left our horses. Anyhow, whether it is or not, we must follow it up to the top and wait there for a bit to see if the chief comes."

"I reckon he will be there before us," Harry said; "that is if he got round the red-skins all right and found the horses. There would be no reason for him to wait, and I expect he would go straight on, and is like enough to be waiting for us by this time."



Chapter VII

Chased


The party pressed forward as rapidly as they could. The ground was rough and at times very steep, and those on foot were able to keep up with the horses without much difficulty.

"You think the Indians will follow, uncle?" Tom asked.

"They will follow, you may bet your boots, Tom; by this time they have got to the bottom of the mystery. The first thing this morning some of them will go up on to the ledge where you were, follow your tracks down to the canyon where you left the horses, and find that you came up the valley and not down it. They will have made out that there were two whites and two red-skins, and that the two red-skins have gone up the canyon with the horses. Directly the matter is all cleared up, they will be hotter than ever for our scalps, for there is nothing a red-skin hates worse than being fooled. Of course, they will know that it is a good deal harder to wipe out seven men than three, and I don't think they will attack us openly; they know well enough that in a fair fight two red-skins, if not three, are likely to go down for each white they rub out. But they will bide their time: red-skins are a wonderful hand at that; time is nothing to them, and they would not mind hanging about us for weeks and weeks if they can but get us at last. However, we will talk it all over when the Indians join us. I don't think there is any chance of fighting to-day, but whether we shall get out of these mountains without having another scrimmage is doubtful."

Tom noticed that in his talk with him his uncle dropped most of the western expressions which when speaking with the others he used as freely as they did. He was now able to have a fair look at him, and found that he agreed pretty closely with the ideas he had formed of him. There was a strong likeness between him and his brother. They were about the same height, but Harry was broader and more strongly built. His face was deeply bronzed by long exposure to the wind and sun. He had a large tawny beard, while Tom's father had been clean shaved. The sailor was five years the senior, but the miner looked far younger than Tom could ever remember his father looking, for the latter had never thoroughly recovered his, health after having had a long bout of fever on the Zanzibar station; and the long stride and free carriage of his uncle was in striking contrast to the walk of his father. Both had keen gray eyes, the same outline of face, the same pleasant smile.

"Now that I can see you fairly, Tom," the miner said, when they halted once for the horses to come up to them, "I can make out that you are a good deal like your father as I can first remember him."

"I was thinking you were very like him, uncle."

"We used to be alike in the old days, but I reckon the different lives we led must have changed us both a great deal. He sent me once a photograph four or five years ago, and at first I should not have known it was he. I could see the likeness after a bit, but he was very much changed. No doubt I have changed still more; all this hair on my face makes a lot of difference. You see, it is a very long time since we met. I was but twenty when I left England, and I had not seen him for two or three years before that, for he was on the Mediterranean station at the time. Well, here are the horses again, and as the ground looks flatter ahead we shall have to push on to keep up with them." They were presently altogether beyond the forest, and a broad plateau of bare rock stretched away in front of them for miles.

"There they are," Jerry Curtis shouted. "I was beginning to feel scared that the 'Rappahoes had got them."

It was a minute or two before Tom could make out the distant figures, for his eyes were less accustomed to search for moving objects than were those of his companions.

"They are riding fast," Harry Wade said. "I reckon they have made out some Indians on their trail."

The little dark mass Tom had first seen soon resolved itself into two horsemen and two riderless animals. They were still three or four miles away, but in twenty minutes they reached the party advancing to meet them. The whites waved their hats and gave them a cheer as they rode up.

"So you have managed to get through them all right, chief?"

"The 'Rappahoes are dogs. They are frightened at shadows; their eyes were closed. Leaping Horse stood near their fires and saw them go forward, and knew that his white brothers must have gained the forest before the 'Rappahoes got to the rock. He found the horses safe, but the canyon was very dark and in some places very narrow, with many rocks in the road, so that he had to stop till the moon was high. It was not until morning came that he reached the head of the canyon, an hour's ride from here. Half an hour back Leaping Horse went to the edge and looked down. There were ten 'Rappahoes riding fast up the trail. Has my brother heard anything of the others?"

"Nothing whatever," Harry said. "I reckon they did not begin to move until daylight, and as we went on when the moon rose they must be a good two hours behind us. Which way do you think we had better go, chief?"

"Where does my brother wish to go?"

"It matters mighty little. I should say for a bit we had better travel along this plateau, keeping about the same distance from the timber-line. I don't think the 'Rappahoes will venture to attack us in the open. If we keep on here we can cross the divide and get into the Shoshones' country, and either go down the Buffalo and then up the Snake and so work down south, or go east and strike some of the streams running that way into the Big Horn."

The chief shook his head.

"Too far, too many bad Indians; will talk over fire tonight."

"That is it, chief. It is a matter that wants a good deal of talking over. Anyhow, we had better be moving on at once."

Tom was glad to find himself in the saddle again, and the party rode on at a steady pace for some hours, then they halted, lit a fire, and cooked a meal. Tom noticed that the Indians no longer took pains to gather dry sticks, but took the first that came to hand. He remarked this to Jerry.

"They know it is no use trying to hide our trail here; the two bands of Indians will follow, one up and one down, until they meet at the spot where the chief joined us. From there they can track us easy enough. Nothing would suit us better than for them to come up to us here, for we should give them fits, sartin. This is a good place. This little stream comes down from that snow peak you see over there, and we have got everything we want, for this patch of bushes will keep us in firing for a bit. You see, there are some more big hills in front of us, and we are better here than we should be among them. I expect we shall camp here for the night."

"Then you don't think the Indians will come up close?"

"Not they. They will send a spy or two to crawl up, you may be sure, but they will know better than to come within reach of our rifles."

"I am mighty glad to have my teeth into some deer-flesh again," Ben Gulston said. "We had two or three chances as we came along, but we dare not fire, and we have just been living on bread and bacon. Where did you kill these wapiti?"

"At our first halt, near Fremont's Pass. We got two."

"Well, you haven't eaten much, Jerry," Sam Hicks said. "I reckon four men ought pretty well to have finished off two quarters by this time."

"I reckon we should have finished one of the bucks, Sam; but we caught a grist of fish the same day, dried them in the sun, and I think we mostly ate them. They would not keep as well as the flesh. That is as good as the day we shot it, for up here in the dry air meat keeps a sight better than down in the plains. Give me some more tea, Sam."

"What do you think, mates, of camping here?" Harry Wade said. "The chief thinks we are better here than we should be if we moved on. He feels certain the red-skins won't dare attack us."

There was a cordial agreement in favour of a halt, for after the work they had gone through during the last week they were glad of a rest. No one would have thought half an hour afterwards that the little party engaged in washing their shirts at the stream or mending their clothes, were in the heart of a country unknown to most of them, and menaced by a savage foe. The horses cropped the scanty tufts of grass or munched the young tops of the bushes, the rifles stood stacked by the fire, near which the two Indians sat smoking and talking earnestly together, Hunting Dog occasionally getting up and taking a long careful look over the plain. As the men finished their various jobs they came back to the fire.

"Now, chief," Harry said, "let us hear your ideas as to what we had best do. We are all pretty old hands at mountaineering, but we reckon you know a great deal more about it than we do. You don't like the plans I proposed."

"No can do it," the chief said positively. "In a moon the snow will fall, and there will be no crossing mountains."

"That is true enough," Jerry said. "An old trapper who had lived among the Shoshones told me that nine months in the year they were shut up in the valleys by the snow on the passes."

"Then how can live?" the chief went on. "As long as we stay in this country the 'Rappahoes will watch us. They will tell the Bannacks and the Nez Percés, and they too would be on our trail. As long as we keep together and watch they will not come, they fear the white man's rifle; but we cannot live without hunting, and then they kill one, two, till all killed. At night must always watch, at day cannot hunt. How we live? What good to stay? If we stop all killed sure."

There was silence round the circle. Every one of them felt the truth of the Indian's words, and yet they hated the thought of abandoning their search for gold, or, failing that, of a return home with their horses laden with beaver skins.

Harry was the first to speak. "I am afraid these varmint have interfered with our plans, mates. If we had had the luck to drop into one of the upper valleys without being noticed we could have hunted and trapped there and looked for gold for months without much chance of being discovered, but this has upset it all. I am afraid that what the chief says is true. If we keep together we starve, if we break up and hunt we shall be ambushed and killed. I hate giving up anything I have set my mind on, but this time I don't see a way out of it. We ain't the first party that has come up here and had to go back again with empty hands, and we know what happened to that party of twenty old-time miners from California two years ago, though none of them ever got back to tell the tale. We knew when we started, it wur just a chance, and the cards have gone against us."

"That is so," Ben agreed; "if it had turned out well we might have made a good strike. It ain't turned out well, and as every day we stay here there will be more of those varmint swarming round us, I say the sooner we get out of this dog-goned country the better."

"You can count me in with you, Ben," Sam Hicks said. "We have gone in for the game and we don't hold hands, and it ain't no use bluffing against them red-skins. We sha'n't have lost much time arter all, and I reckon we have all learned something. Some day when the railroad goes right across, Uncle Sam will have to send a grist of troops to reckon up with the red-skins in these hills, and arter that it may be a good country for mining and trapping, but for the present we are a darned sight more likely to lose our scalps than to get skins."

"Well, Leaping Horse, which way would you advise us to take, then?"

"Go straight back to canyon, ride down there, cross river, go up mountains other side, pass them north of Union Peak, come down on upper water Big Wind River. From there little way on to Green River. Leaping Horse never been there, but has heard. One long day's ride from here, go to upper waters of Green River."

"That sounds good," Jerry Curtis said. "If we could once strike the Green we should be out of the 'Rappahoe country altogether. I have known two or three men who have been up the Green nearly to its head, and there is good hunting and a good many beaver in the side streams. I should not have thought it would have come anywhere like as near as this, but I don't doubt the chief is right."

"Union Peak," the chief said, pointing to a crag rising among a tumble of hills to the south.

"Are you sure, chief?"

The Indian nodded. "Forty, fifty miles away," he said. "Leaping Horse has been to upper waters of Green River, seen the peak from other side."

"That settles it, then," Harry said. "That is our course, there cannot be a doubt. I should never have proposed the other if I had had an idea that we were within sixty or seventy miles of the Green River. And you think we had better take the canyon you came up by, chief?"

The Indian nodded. "If go down through forest may be ambushed. Open ground from here back to canyon. 'Rappahoes most in front. Think we go that way, not think we go back. Get good start. Once across river follow up little stream among hills other side, that the way to pass. If 'Rappahoes follow us we fight them."

"Yes, we shall have them at an advantage there, for they would have to come up under our fire, and there are sure to be places where half a dozen men could keep fifty at bay. Very well, chief, that is settled. When do you think we had better start?"

"When gets dark," the chief replied. "No lose time, more Indian come every hour. Keep fire burning well, 'Rappahoes think we camp here. Take horses a little way off and mount beyond light of fire."

"You think they will be watching us?"

"Sure to watch. First ride north half an hour, then turn and ride to canyon. If spies see us go off take word to friends we gone north. Too dark to follow trail. They think they catch us easy to-morrow, and take up trail in morning; but too late then, we cross river before that."

There was a general murmur of assent. The thought of being constantly watched, and suddenly attacked when least expecting it, made them feel restless, and the thought of early action was pleasant to them.

"You don't think that there are any spies watching us now, uncle, do you?"

"Not close, Tom; they would know better than that. They could see us miles away if we were to mount and ride off, and it is only when it gets dark that they would venture to crawl up, for if one were sighted in the daytime he would not have a ghost of a chance of getting away, for we could ride him down sartin."

"Well, I reckon we may as well take a sleep," Sam Hicks said. "You lie down for one, anyhow, Harry, for you watched last evening. We will toss up which of us keeps awake."

"Leaping Horse will keep watch," the chief said quietly. "No fear of Indians, but better to watch."

Knowing the power of the red-skins to keep awake for an almost unlimited time, none of the others thought of refusing the offer, and in a few minutes all were sound asleep. Towards sunset they were on their feet again. Another meal was cooked and eaten, then as it became dusk the horses were gathered fifty yards away, and Hunting Dog and Tom took their places beside them.

"Keep your eyes open and your rifle handy, Tom," his uncle said. "It is like enough that some young brave, anxious to distinguish himself, may crawl up with the intention of stampeding the ponies, though I don't think he would attempt it till he thought most of us were asleep. Still, there is no saying."

The watch was undisturbed, and soon it became so dark that objects could no longer be seen fifty yards away. Tom began to feel nervous. Every tuft of ground, every little bush seemed to him to take the form of a crawling Indian, and he felt a great sense of relief when he saw the figures round the fire rise and walk towards him.

"I am glad you have come, uncle," he said frankly; "I began to feel very uncomfortable several times. It seemed to me that some of the bushes moved."

"That is just what I thought you would be feeling, Tom. But it was just as well that your first watch should be a short one, without much chance of an ambush being on foot; and I knew that if your eyes deceived you, Hunting Dog was there. Next time you won't feel so nervous; that sort of thing soon passes off."

A fresh armful of brushwood had been thrown on to the fire before the men left it, and long after they had ridden away they could see the flames mounting high. After riding north for a quarter of an hour they changed their route and passed round, leaving the fire half a mile on their right. The light of the stars was quite sufficient for them to travel by, and after four hours' journey the chief, who was riding ahead, halted.

"Not far from canyon now. Listen."

A very faint murmur came to their ears, so faint that had not his attention been drawn to it Tom would not have noticed it at all.

"What is that noise?" he asked.

"That is the stream down in the canyon," his uncle replied. "How far are we from the head, chief?"

"Not far, must ride slow."

They proceeded at a walk, changing their course a little towards the east. Hunting Dog went on ahead, and in a quarter of an hour they heard his signal, the cry of an owl. It arose from a point still further east, and quickening their pace, in a few minutes they came up to the young Indian, who was standing by his horse at the edge of a steep descent, at the bottom of which Tom could see a stream of water.

"It looks very steep," Jerry said.

"Steep, but smooth," the Indian replied. "Came up here with horses this morning."

All dismounted, and Tom went up to his horse's head. "That won't do, Tom. Never go before a horse down a steep place where you can't see your way, always drive it before you."

There was some trouble in getting the horses to commence the descent, but after a short time the chief's pony set the example; and tucking its hind legs under it until it sat down on its haunches, began to slide down, while the other animals, after staring into the darkness with ears laid back and snorting with fear, were half-persuaded, half-forced to follow its example, and the men went down after them. The descent was not so steep as in the darkness it looked, and the depth was not over fifty feet. As soon as they reached the bottom they mounted again, and the chief leading the way, they rode down the canyon. At first they were able to proceed at a fair pace, but as the sides grew higher and more precipitous the darkness became more dense, and they were obliged to pick their way with great caution among the boulders that strewed the bottom of the ravine. Several times they had to dismount in order to get the horses over heavy falls, and it was four hours from the time they entered the canyon before they approached its mouth. When they entered the little wood where they had first left the horses, the chief said, "Make fire, cook food here. Leaping Horse and Hunting Dog go on and scout, maybe 'Rappahoes left watch in valley."

"Very well, chief. It is seven hours since we started; I think the horses will be all the better for an hour's rest, and I am sure we shall be the better of a feed. Besides, when we are once out of this hole we may have to travel fast."

"You don't think it likely that the 'Rappahoes are on the look-out for us at the entrance?" Tom asked, as the Indians moved away.

"Not likely at all, Tom. Still, as they might reckon that if we gave their searching party the slip we must come down again by the river or through this canyon, they may have left a party or sent down word to some of their villages to keep a watch in the valley."

It was more than an hour before the Indians returned.

"No 'Rappahoes in valley," the chief said, as he seated himself by the fire and began without loss of time to eat the meat they had cooked in readiness. "Better be going soon, must cross river and get on before light come; have seen fires, Indian villages up on hillsides. When light comes and 'Rappahoes find trail they come back quick."

"You may bet your boots they will, chief," Sam Hicks said. "They will be a pretty mad crowd when they make out that we have come down again by the canyon. As soon as they see which way we have headed some of them will make a bee-line down here in hopes of cutting us off at the mouth, but by the time they are here we shall be half-way up the hill."

The Indian made no reply, but he and Hunting Dog ate their meal steadily, and as soon as they had finished rose to their feet, and saying "Time to go" went out to fetch in their horses.

"I don't think the chief is as confident we shall get off without a fight as Sam seemed to be," Tom said to his uncle.

"There is never any saying what an Indian thinks, Tom, even when he has fallen into white man's ways, as Leaping Horse has done. It may be that the sight of the fires he made out on the opposite hills has troubled him. It will be light before we are far up on the side, and we may be made out by some of the varmint there. They are always restless. Go into an Indian village when you will, you will find some of them smoking by the fire. Their ears are so 'tarnal sharp, they can hear sounds that would never catch our ears, not at half the distance. The clink of a couple of pans together, or a stone set rolling by a horse's tread, were it ever so faint, would bring them on their feet directly, especially now they know that a war-party is out."

The march was again resumed. Passing through the narrowest part of the canyon they issued out into the valley and made for the river. Some time was lost here, for Sam Hicks, who was leading one of the pack-ponies, was carried down several hundred yards by the stream, and with difficulty effected his landing. The horse's load shifted and had to be repacked. As soon as this was done they followed the river down for two miles till they came upon a stream running into it from the southwest.

"You think this is the stream we have to follow, chief?"

"Must be him, no other came in on this side for a long way; right line for peak."

They turned up by the stream, and after riding a mile found themselves entering a mountain gorge. It was not a canyon but a steep, narrow valley. They picked their way with the greatest caution for some time, then the two Indians stopped simultaneously.

"What is the matter, chief?" Harry, who was riding next to them, whispered.

"Smell smoke."

Harry sniffed the air.

"I can't say I smell it, chief, but if you say you do that settles it. Where do you think it comes from?"

"Up valley; wind light, but comes that way. Indian village up here."

"Well, so much the worse for the Indian village if it interferes with us," Harry said grimly; "there is one thing certain, we have got to go through. Probably most of the braves are away up in the hills."

They now went on with redoubled caution. The chief gave his bridle to Hunting Dog and went forward on foot. A hundred yards farther the valley made a sharp turn and then widened out considerably, and the glow of a fire was visible among some trees standing on the hillside some fifty feet above the level of the stream. The chief looked at the sky; a faint light was breaking, and without pausing he continued to lead the way. They passed under the Indian encampment, and had got a few yards higher when the pony Sam Hicks was leading gave a sharp neigh.

"Darn its old ears!" Tom heard Jerry growl. Harry at the same moment put his horse to a trot, and the others following clattered up the valley, knowing that concealment was no longer of any use; indeed, an answering neigh from above and hurried shouts were heard, followed a moment afterwards by a loud yell as an Indian running through the trees caught sight of them in the moonlight.

"We are in for it now, Tom; that is, if there are men enough in the village to attack us."

The horses broke into a gallop. They had gone but fifty yards when a rifle-shot was heard from behind, and Tom felt a shock as the ball struck his saddle. Almost immediately another shot was fired abreast of him, and an Indian yell rose loudly behind them. A moment later Leaping Horse with a shout of triumph bounded down the rocks and leapt on to his horse. Four or five more shots were fired from behind, but none of them were hit. A hundred yards farther they were in shelter of a belt of trees that extended down to the stream. As they entered it Harry looked back. He could now see the hills beyond the main valley.

"Look, chief!" he exclaimed. "The varmint up there are signalling far off above the timber-line."

Bright tongues of fire could be seen, two close together and one a short distance to the left.

"What does that mean, uncle?" Tom asked, as the chief gave a short exclamation of surprise and anger.

"It means, lad, that the red-skins have been sharper than we gave them credit for. When their spies brought them news that we had started they must have come down to the fire and followed our trail at once with torches, before we had got above an hour or two away. No doubt it was slow work, but they must have found where we changed our course, and made out that we were making for the head of the canyon. I expect most of them lost no time in following the trail farther, but rode straight for the head of the canyon, and like enough they weren't half an hour behind us when we came out. The others rode to the edge of the plateau and set those fires alight."

"But what do they mean, uncle?"

"They are a warning to all the villages that we have headed back, you may be sure of that, though I can't say what the message is, for every tribe has its own signals, but it will have set them on the watch up and down the valley; and like enough the signal has been repeated somewhere at a point where it can be seen straight down the Big Wind Valley. The shooting will tell them all which way we are making, and if the 'Rappahoes have come out of the canyon, as I reckon they have, they need lose no more time in looking for our trail. I reckon in half an hour we shall have a hundred or so of the varmint after us. I only hope there are no more villages upon this line. I don't so much care about the fellows who are following us, we are sure to find some place where we can make a stand, but it would be awkward if we find our way barred."

"But if there is no one in front, uncle, I should think we might be able to keep ahead. Our horses are as good as they are likely to have."

"You and Jerry might be able to, Tom, for you have got hold of two first-rate ponies; but the Indians' are nothing out of the way, and our ponies ain't in it with you; besides, they and the pack-horses have all been doing hard work for the last week with none too much food, and many of the 'Rappahoes will be on fresh horses. I expect we have got some very tall climbing to do before we get up to the pass, and we have got to do our fighting before we get there."

The ground rose steeply, and was encumbered by fallen stones and boulders, and it was not long before the pack-horses began to show signs of distress, while those ridden by Harry and his two comrades were drawing their breath in short gasps. After emerging from the trees the ravine had run in almost a straight line for more than half a mile, and just as they reached the end of this stretch a yell was heard down the valley. Looking back they saw eight or ten mounted Indians emerging from the wood at the lower end.

"That is a signal," Harry exclaimed, as four rifles were fired in quick succession. "Well, we have got a bit of a start of them, and they won't venture to attack us until some more come up. We had better take it a bit quietly, chief, or our horses will give out. I expect we sha'n't be long before we come upon a place where we can make a stand."

The Seneca looked round at the horses. "You, Sam, Ben and pack-horses go on till you get to place where can fight. We four wait here; got good horses, and can ride on. We stop them here for a bit."

"That would be best. I don't like being out of it, but we will do our share presently."

No more words were necessary. Harry and his two mates rode on at a slower pace than before, while the two Indians, Jerry, and Tom dismounted, left their horses beyond the turn, and then coming back took up their positions behind four large boulders. The Indians had noticed their returning figures, for they suddenly drew up their horses and gathered together in consultation.

"Draw your bullet, Tom," Jerry said, "and drop in half a charge more powder; I reckon that piece of yours will send a bullet among them with the help of a good charge. Allow a bit above that top notch for extra, elevation. It's a good big mark, and you ought to be able to plump a bullet among them."

Tom followed the instructions, and then resting the barrel on the top of the boulder took a steady aim and fired. There was a sudden stir among the group of Indians. A horse reared high in the air, almost unseating its rider, and then they all rode off at the top of their speed, and halted two or three hundred yards lower down the valley. The Senecas uttered a grunt of approval.

"That was a good shot, Tom, though I wish you had hit one of the red-skins instead of his critter. Still, it will give them a good lesson, and make them mighty keerful. They won't care about showing their ugly heads within range of a piece that will carry five hundred yards."

A quarter of an hour passed without any movement on the part of the Indians. Then a large party of horsemen appeared from the trees below, and were greeted by them with a yell of satisfaction.

"There must be well-nigh fifty of them," Jerry said. "I reckon it's the party that came down the hill. They must have picked up a good many others by the way. Now the fun is going to begin."

After five minutes' consultation some twenty of the Indians dismounted, and dividing into two parties ascended the slopes of the valley and began to move forward, taking advantage of every stone and bush, so that it was but occasionally that a glimpse of one of their bodies was obtained.

"They are going to skirmish up to us," Jerry said, "till they are near enough to make it hot for us if we show a head above the rocks to fire. As soon as they can do that, the others will charge. I think they are not more than four hundred yards off now, Tom. That is within your range, so you may as well begin to show them that we are awake. If you can bring one down it will check their pace."

Tom had just noticed three Indians run behind a clump of bushes, and he now levelled his rifle so that it bore on a spot a foot on one side of it. Half a minute later an Indian appeared at the bush and began to run forward. Tom pressed the trigger. The Indian ran a few steps, and then fell forward on his face.

"Bravo, Plumb-centre!" Jerry shouted. "We said that you would do the rifle credit, Tom, and Billy the Scout could not have done better himself."

"Young white man make great hunter," the chief remarked approvingly. "Got good eye and steady hand."

The lesson had its effect. The Indian advance was no longer rapid, but was conducted with the greatest caution, and it was only occasionally that a glimpse could be caught of a dusky figure passing from rock to rock. When they came within three hundred yards the two Indians and Jerry also opened fire. One fell to a shot from the chief, but neither of the others hit their marks. Tom indeed did not fire again, the movements of the Indians being so rapid that they were gone before he could bring his sight to bear upon any of them.

"Go now," the chief said. "'Rappahoes fire soon; run quick."

It was but a few yards to shelter. As they dashed across the intervening space two or three Indian rifles rang out, but the rest of the assailants had been too much occupied in sheltering themselves and looking for the next spot to make for, to keep an eye upon the defenders, and the hastily-fired shots all missed. A moment later the party mounted their horses and rode up the ravine, the yells of the Indians ringing in their ears.

"A Moment Later The Indian Fell Forward On His Face."



Chapter VIII

In Safety


"We have gained half an hour anyhow," Jerry said, as they galloped up the ravine, "and I reckon by the time we overtake them we shall find them stowed away in some place where it will puzzle the red-skins to dislodge us. The varmint will fight hard if they are cornered, but they ain't good at advancing when there are a few rifle-tubes, in the hands of white men, pointing at them, and they have had a lesson now that we can shoot."

The ravine continued to narrow. The stream had become a mere rivulet, and they were high up on the hillside.

"I begin to be afeared there ain't no place for making a stand." Here he was interrupted by an angry growl, as a great bear suddenly rose to his feet behind a rock.

"You may thank your stars that we are too busy to attend to you," Jerry said, as they rode past within a few yards of it. "That is a grizzly, Tom; and an awkward beast you would have found him if you had come upon him by yourself without your shooting-iron. He is a big one too, and his skin would have been worth money down in the settlements. Ah, there they are."

The ravine made an abrupt turn to the west, and high up on its side they saw their three companions with the five horses climbing up the precipitous rocks.

"How ever did they get up there?" Jerry exclaimed.

"Found Indian trail," the chief said. "Let my brothers keep their eyes open."

They rode on slowly now, examining every foot of the steep hillside. Presently Hunting Dog, who was ahead, uttered an exclamation. Between two great boulders there was a track, evidently a good deal used.

"Let Hunting Dog go first," the chief said. "Leaping Horse will follow the white men."

"I reckon that this is the great Indian trail over the pass," Jerry said to Tom, who preceded him. "I have heard there ain't no way over the mountains atween that pass by Fremont's Buttes and the pass by this peak, which they calls Union Peak, and the red-skins must travel by this when they go down to hunt buffalo on the Green River. It is a wonder Harry struck on it."

"Leaping Horse told him to keep his eyes open," the chief said from the rear. "He knew that Indian trail led up this valley."

"Jee-rusalem! but it's a steep road," Jerry said presently. "I am dog-goned if I can guess how the red-skins ever discovered it. I expect they must have tracked some game up it, and followed to see where it went to."

The trail wound about in a wonderful way. Sometimes it went horizontally along narrow ledges, then there was a bit of steep climbing, where they had to lead their horses; then it wound back again, and sometimes even descended for a distance to avoid a projecting crag.

"Ah! would ye, yer varmint?" Jerry exclaimed, as a shot rang out from the valley below and a bullet flattened itself against a rock within a foot or two of his head. The shot was followed by a loud yell from below, as a crowd of mounted Indians rode at full gallop round the angle of the ravine.

"Hurry on, Hunting Dog, and get round the next corner, for we are regular targets here."

A few yards farther a turn of the path took them out of sight of the Indians, but not before a score of bullets came whistling up from below.

"The varmint have been riding too fast to shoot straight, I reckon. It will be our turn directly."

Just as he spoke the chief called upon them to dismount. They threw their bridles on their horses' necks, and descending to the ledge they had just left, lay down on it.

"Get your revolver out, Tom, before you shoot," Jerry said. "They will be off before you have time to load your rifle again."

The Indians were some four hundred feet below them, and were talking excitedly, evidently hesitating whether to follow up the trail. The four rifles cracked almost together. Two Indians fell, and the plunging of two horses showed that they were hit. In an instant the whole mass were on their way down the valley, followed by bullet after bullet from the revolvers which Leaping Horse as well as the whites carried. Anything like accurate aim was impossible, and no Indian was seen to fall, but it was probable that some of the bullets had taken effect among the crowded horsemen.

"Go on quiet now," Leaping Horse said, rising to his feet. "'Rappahoes not follow any farther. One man with this" -- and he touched his revolver -- "keep back whole tribe here."

Half an hour later they joined the party who had halted at the top of the track.

"It air too bad our being out of it," Ben said. "I hope you have given some of the varmint grist."

"Only five or six of them," Jerry replied regretfully, "counting in the one Leaping Horse shot at the village. Tom here did a big shot, and brought one down in his tracks at a good four hundred yards -- as neat a shot as ever I saw fired. The chief he accounted for another; then atween us we wiped out two down below; and I reckon some of the others are carrying some of our lead away. Waal, I think we have shook them off at last any how. I suppose there ain't, no other road they can come up here by, chief?"

"Leaping Horse only heard of one trail."

"You may bet your life there ain't another," Harry remarked. "They would never have used such a dog-goned road as this if there had been any other way of going up."

"Camp here," the chief said. "Long journey over pass, too much cold. Keep watch here at head of trail."

"That is a very good plan. I have heard that the pass is over nine thousand feet above the sea, and it would never do to have to camp up there. Besides, I have been looking at the sky, and I don't much like its appearance. Look over there to the north."

There were, indeed, evident signs of an approaching change in the weather. On the previous day every peak and jagged crest stood out hard and distinct in the clear air. Now all the higher summits were hidden by a bank of white cloud.

"Snow," the Indian said gravely; "winter coming."

"That is just what I thought, chief. At any rate we know where we are here, and there is brushwood to be gathered not far down the trail; and even if we are shut up here we can manage well enough for a day or two. These early snows don't lie long, but to be caught in a snow-storm higher up would be a sight worse than fighting with red-skins."

From the spot where they were now standing at the edge of the ravine the ground sloped very steeply up for some hundreds of feet, and then steep crags rose in an unbroken wall; but from the view they had had of the country from the other side they knew that behind this wall rose a range of lofty summits. The Indian trail ran along close to the edge of the ravine. The chief looked round earnestly.

"No good place to camp," he said. "Wind blow down hills, horses not able to stand against it. Heap snow tumble down from there," and he pointed upwards. "Carry everything down below."

"Well, if you think we had better push on, let us do so, chief."

The Indian shook his head and pointed to the clouds again. "See," he said; "storm come very soon."

Even in the last two or three minutes a change was perceptible. The upper edge of the clouds seemed to be suddenly broken up. Long streamers spread out like signal flags of danger. Masses of clouds seemed to be wrenched off and to fly with great rapidity for a short distance; some of them sinking a little, floated back until they again formed a part of the mountain cap, while others sped onwards towards the south.

"No time," the chief repeated earnestly; "must look for camp quick." He spoke in the Indian tongue to Hunting Dog, and the two stood on a point where the ground jutted out, and closely examined the ravine up whose side they had climbed. The chief pointed farther along, and Hunting Dog started at a run along the Indian trail. A few hundred yards farther he paused and looked down, moved a few steps farther, and then disappeared from sight. In three or four minutes he returned and held up his arms.

"Come," the chief said, and taking his horse's rein led it along the path. The others followed his example, glad, indeed, to be in motion. Five minutes before they had been bathed in perspiration from their climb up the cliff; now they were conscious of the extraordinary change of temperature that had suddenly set in, and each had snatched a blanket from behind his saddle and wrapped it round him. They soon reached the spot where Hunting Dog was standing, and looked down. Some thirty feet below there was a sort of split in the face of the cliff, a wall of rock rising to within four or five feet of the level of the edge of the ravine. At one end it touched the face of the rock, at the other it was ten or twelve feet from it, the space between being in the form of a long wedge, which was completely filled up with trees and brushwood. A ledge ran down from the point where Hunting Dog was standing to the mouth of the fissure.

"Jee-rusalem, chief!" Ben exclaimed. "That air just made for us -- we could not have found a better, not if we had sarched for a year. But I reckon we shall have to clear the place a bit before we take the critters down."

Two axes were taken from one of the pack-horses.

"Don't cut away the bigger stuff, Ben," Harry said as his two mates proceeded down the ledge, "their heads will shelter us from the snow a bit; and only clear away the bushes enough to give room for the horses and us, and leave those standing across the entrance to make a screen. While you are doing it we will fetch in as much more wood and grass as we can get hold of before the snow begins to fall."

The horses were left standing while the men scattered along the top of the ravine, and by the time Ben shouted that they were ready, a considerable pile of brushwood and a heap of coarse grass had been collected. The horses were then led down one by one, unsaddled, and packed together in two lines, having beyond them a great pile of the bushes that had been cut away.

"I am dog-goned if this ain't the best shelter I ever struck upon," Jerry said. "We could not have fixed upon a better if we had had it built special," the others cordially agreed.

The place they occupied was of some twelve feet square. On either side was a perpendicular wall of rock; beyond were the horses; while at the entrance the bush, from three to four feet high, had been left standing; above them stretched a canopy of foliage. Enough dry wood had been collected to start a fire.

"Don't make it too big. Jerry, we don't want to scorch up our roof," Harry Wade said. "Well, I reckon we have got enough fuel here for a week, for there is what you cut down and what we brought, and all that is left standing beyond the horses; and with the leaves and the grass the ponies should be able to hold out as long as the fuel lasts. We are short of meat, but we have plenty of flour; and as for water, we can melt snow."

Buffalo rugs were laid down on each side by the rock walls, and on these they took their seats and lighted their pipes.

"I have been wanting a smoke pretty bad," Jerry said; "I ain't had one since we halted in that there canyon. Hello, here it comes!"

As he spoke a fierce gust of wind swayed the foliage overhead and sent the smoke, that had before risen quietly upwards, whirling round the recess; then for a moment all was quiet again; then came another and a stronger gust, rising and gathering in power and laden with fine particles of snow. A thick darkness fell, and Harry threw some more wood on the fire to make a blaze. But loud as was the gale outside, the air in the shelter was hardly moved, and there was but a slight rustling of the leaves overhead. Thicker and thicker flew the snow flakes in the air outside, and yet none seemed to fall through the leaves.

"I am dog-goned if I can make this out," Sam Hicks said. "We are as quiet here as if we were in a stone house, and one would think there was a copper-plated roof overhead. It don't seem nat'ral."

The others were also looking up with an air of puzzled surprise, not unmingled with uneasiness. Harry went to the entrance and looked out over the breastwork of bushes. "Look here, Sam," he said.

"Why, Harry, it looks to me as if it were snowing up instead of down," the miner said as he joined him.

"That is just it. You see, we are in the elbow of the valley and are looking straight down it, into the eye of the wind. It comes rushing up the valley and meets this steep wall on its way, and pushed on by the wind behind has to go somewhere, and so it is driven almost straight up here and over the hilltops behind us. So you see the snow is carried up instead of falling, and this rock outside us shoots it clear up over the path we were following above. As long as the wind keeps north, I reckon we sha'n't be troubled by the snow in here."

The explanation seemed satisfactory, and there was a general feeling of relief.

"I remember reading," Tom said, as the others took their seats again, "that people can stand on the edge of a cliff, facing a gale, without feeling any wind. For the wind that strikes the cliff rushes up with such force that it forms a sort of wall. Of course, it soon beats down again, and not many yards back you can feel the gale as strongly as anywhere else. But just at the edge the air is perfectly still."

The miners looked at Tom as if they thought that he was making a joke at their expense. But his uncle said:

"Yes, I can quite believe that. You see, it is something like a waterfall; you can stand right under that, for the force shoots it outwards, and I reckon it is the same sort of thing here." The chief nodded gravely. He too had been surprised at the lull in their shelter when the storm was raging so furiously outside, but Harry's illustration of the action of rushing water enlightened him more than his first explanation had done.

"But water ain't wind, Harry," Ben said.


"It is like water in many ways, Ben. You don't see it, but you can feel it just the same. If you stand behind a tree or round a corner it rushes past you, and you are in a sort of eddy, just as you would be if it was a river that was moving alongside of you. Wind acts just the same way as water. If it had been a big river coming along the valley at the same rate as the wind it would rush up the rocks some distance and then sweep round and race up the valley; but wind being light instead of being heavy is able to rush straight up the hill till it gets right over the crest."

"Waal, if you say it is all right I suppose it is. Anyhow, it's a good thing for us, and I don't care how long it goes on in the same way. I reckoned that before morning we should have those branches breaking down on us with the weight of snow; now I see we are like to have a quiet night."

"I won't answer for that, Ben; it is early in the day yet, and there is no saying how the wind may be blowing before to-morrow morning. Anyhow, now we have time we may as well get some of those bundles of bushes that we brought down, and pile them so as to thicken the shelter of these bushes and lighten it a bit. If we do that, and hang a couple of blankets inside of them, it will give us a good shelter even if the wind works round, and will help to keep us warm. For though we haven't got wind or snow in here, we have got cold."

"You bet," Jerry agreed; "it is a regular blizzard. And although I don't say as it is too cold sitting here by the fire, it won't cost us anything to make the place a bit warmer."

Accordingly the bundles of wood they had gathered were brought out, and with these the screen of bush was thickened, and raised to a height of five feet; and when this was hung inside with a couple of blankets, it was agreed that they could get through the storm comfortably even if it lasted for a month.

They cooked their last chunk of deer's flesh, after having first prepared some bread and put it in the baking pot among the embers, and made some tea from the water in the skins. When they had eaten their meal they covered themselves up in buffalo robes and blankets, and lighted their pipes. There was, however, but little talk, for the noise of the tempest was so great, that it was necessary to raise the voice almost to a shout to be heard, and it was not long before they were all asleep.

For hours there was no stir in the shelter, save when a horse pawed the ground impatiently, or when Hunting Dog rose two or three times to put fresh sticks on the fire. It seemed to Tom when he woke that it ought to be nearly morning. He took out his watch, and by the light of the fire made out to his surprise that it was but ten o'clock. The turmoil of the wind seemed to him to be as loud as before, and he pulled the blankets over his shoulder again and was soon sound asleep. When he next woke, it was with the sensation of coldness in the face, and sitting up he saw that the blankets and the ground were covered with a thick coating of fine snow. There was a faint light in addition to that given by the embers of the fire, and he knew that morning was breaking. His movement disturbed his uncle, who was lying next him. He sat up and at once aroused the others.

"Wake up, mates," he said; "we have had somewhere about eighteen hours' sleep, and day is breaking."

In a minute all were astir. The snow was first shaken off the blankets, and then Harry, taking a shovel, cleared the floor. Jerry took the largest cooking-pot, and saying to Tom, "You bring that horse-bucket along," pushed his way out through a small gap that had been left in the screen of bushes. The wind had gone down a good deal, though it was still blowing strongly. The snow had drifted against the entrance, and formed a steep bank there; from this they filled the pot and bucket, pressing the snow down. Tom was glad to get back again within the shelter, for the cold outside was intense. The fire was already burning brightly, and the pot and a frying-pan were placed over it, and kept replenished with snow as fast as their contents melted. "We must keep on at this," Harry said, "there is not a drop left in the skins, and the horses must have water."

As soon as enough had melted it was poured into the kettle. There was some bacon among the trappers' stores, as they had calculated that they would not be able to hunt until out of Big Wind Valley and far up among the forests beyond. The frying-pan was now utilized for its proper work, while the pail was placed close enough to the fire to thaw its contents, without risking injury to it. Within an hour of breakfast being finished enough snow had been thawed to give the horses half a bucket of water each. In each pail a couple of pounds of flour had been stirred to help out what nourishment could be obtained from the leaves, and from the small modicum of grass given to each animal.

"It will be a big journey over the pass, anyhow," Harry had said. "Now that we are making tracks for the settlements we need not be sparing of the flour; indeed, the lighter we are the better."

The day did not pass so pleasantly as that preceding it, for the air was filled with fine snow that blew in at the entrance and found its way between the leaves overhead; while from time to time the snow accumulating there came down with a crash, calling forth much strong language from the man on whom it happened to fall, and shouts of laughter from his comrades. The party was indeed a merry one. They had failed altogether in the objects of their expedition, but they had escaped without a scratch from the Indians, and had inflicted some damage upon them; and their luck in finding so snug a shelter in such a storm far more than counterbalanced their disappointment at their failure.

"Have you often been caught in the snow, uncle?"

"You bet, Tom; me and the chief here were mighty nigh rubbed out three years ago. I was prospecting among the Ute hills, while Leaping Horse was doing the hunting for us both. It was in the middle of winter; the snow was deep on the ground in the valleys and on the tops of the hills, but there was plenty of bare rock on the hillside, so I was able to go on with my work. While as for hunting, the cold drove the big-horns down from the heights where they feed in summer, and the chief often got a shot at them; and they are good eating, I can tell you.

"We hadn't much fear of red-skins, for they ain't fond of cold and in winter move their lodges down to the most sheltered valleys and live mostly on dried meat. When they want a change they can always get a bear or maybe a deer in the woods. We were camped in a grove of pines in a valley and were snug enough. One day I had struck what I thought was the richest vein I had ever come on. I got my pockets full of bits of quartz with the gold sticking thick in it, and you may bet I went down to the camp in high glee. A quarter of a mile before I got there I saw Leaping Horse coming to meet me at a lope. It didn't want telling that there was something wrong. As soon as he came up he said 'Utes.' 'Many of them, chief?' I asked. He held up his open hands twice.

"'Twenty of them,' I said; 'that is pretty bad. How far are they away?' He said he had seen them coming over a crest on the other side of the valley. 'Then we have got to git,' I said, 'there ain't no doubt about that. What the 'tarnal do the varmint do here?' 'War-party,' the chief said. 'Indian hunter must have come across our trail and taken word back to the lodges.' The place where he had met me was among a lot of rocks that had rolled down. There had been no snow for a fortnight, and of course the red-skins would see our tracks everywhere, going and coming from the camp. We were on foot that time, though we had a pack-horse to carry our outfit. Of course they would get that and everything at the camp. I did not think much of the loss, the point was how were we to save our scalps? We had sat down behind a rock as soon as he had joined me. Just then a yell came from the direction of our camp, and we knew that the red-skins had found it. 'They won't be able to follow your trail here, chief, will they?' He shook his head. 'Trail everywhere, not know which was the last.' We could see the grove where the camp was, and of course they could see the rocks, and it was sartin that if we had made off up the hill they would have been after us in a squirrel's jump; so there was nothing to do but to lie quiet until it was dark. We got in among the boulders, and lay down where we could watch the grove through a chink.

"'I don't see a sign of them,' I said. 'You would have thought they would have been out in search of us.'

"'No search,' the chief said. 'No good look for us, not know where we have gone to. Hide up in grove. Think we come back, and then catch us.'

"So it turned out. Not a sign of them was to be seen, and after that first yell everything was as quiet as death. In a couple of hours it got dark, and as soon as it did we were off. We talked matters over, you may be sure. There weren't no denying we were cornered. There we were without an ounce of flour or a bite of meat. The chief had caught up a couple of buffalo rugs as soon as he sighted the red-skins. That gave us just a chance, but it wasn't more. In the morning the red-skins would know we had either sighted them or come on their trail, and would be scattering all over the country in search of us. We agreed that we must travel a good way apart, though keeping each other in sight. They would have noticed that the trails were all single, and if they came upon two together going straight away from the camp, would know for sure it was us making off.

"You may think that with so many tracks as we had made in the fortnight we had been there, they would not have an idea which was made the first day and which was made the last, but that ain't so. In the first place, the snow was packed hard, and the footprints were very slight. Then, even when it is always freezing there is an evaporation of the snow, and the footprints would gradually disappear; besides that, the wind on most days had been blowing a little, and though the drift does not count for much on packed snow, a fine dust is blown along, and if the prints don't get altogether covered there is enough drift in them to show which are old ones and which are fresh. We both knew that they could not make much mistake about it, and that they would be pretty sure to hit on the trail I had made in the morning when I went out, and on that of the chief to the rocks, and following mine back to the same place would guess that we had cached there till it was dark.

"I could have done that myself; one can read such a trail as that like a printed book. The worst of it was, there were no getting out of the valley without leaving sign. On the bare hillsides and among the rocks we could travel safe enough, but above them was everywhere snow, and do what we would there would be no hiding our trail. We agreed that the only thing was to cross the snow as quick as possible, to keep on the bare rock whenever we got a chance, and wherever we struck wood, and to double sometimes one way sometimes another, so as to give the red-skins plenty of work to do to follow our trail. We walked all that night, and right on the next day till early in the afternoon. Then we lay down and slept till sunset, and then walked again all night. We did not see any game. If we had we should have shot, for we knew the red-skins must be a long way behind. When we stopped in the morning we were not so very far from the camp we had started from, for if we had pushed straight back to the settlements we should have been caught sure, for the Utes would have been certain to have sent off a party that way to watch the valleys we should have had to pass through. We lay down among some trees and slept for a few hours and then set out to hunt, for we had been two days without food, and I was beginning to feel that I must have a meal.

"We had not gone far when we came across the track of a black bear. We both felt certain that the trail was not many hours old. We followed it for two miles, and found it went up to a slide of rocks; they had come down from a cliff some years before, for there were bushes growing among them. As a rule a black bear will always leave you alone if you leave him, and hasn't much fight in him at the best; so up we went, thinking we were sure of our bear-steak without much trouble in getting it. I was ahead, and had just climbed up on to a big rock, when, from a bush in front, the bear came out at me with a growl. I expect it had cubs somewhere, I had just time to take a shot from the hip and then he was on me, and gave me a blow on the shoulder that ripped the flesh down to the elbow.

"But that was not the worst, for the blow sent me over the edge, and I fell seven or eight feet down among the sharp rocks. I heard the chief's rifle go off, and it was some time after that before I saw or heard anything more. When I came to I found he had carried me down to the foot of the slide and laid me there. He was cutting up some sticks when I opened my eyes. 'Have you got the bear, Leaping Horse?'

"'The bear is dead,' he said. 'My brother is badly hurt.'

"'Oh, never mind the hurt,' I said, 'so that we have got him. What are you doing, chief? You are not going to make a fire here, are you?'

"'My brother's leg is broken,' he said. 'I am cutting some sticks to keep it straight.'

"That brought me round to my senses, as you may guess. To break one's leg up in the mountains is bad at any time, but when it is in the middle of winter, and you have got a tribe of red-skins at your heels, it means you have got to go under. I sat up and looked at my leg. Sure enough, the left one was snapt like a pipe-stem, about half-way between the knee and the ankle. 'Why, chief,' I said, 'it would have been a sight better if you had put a bullet through my head as I lay up there. I should have known nothing about it.'

"'The Utes have not got my white brother yet.'

"'No,' said I, 'but it won't be long before they have me; maybe it will be this afternoon, and maybe to-morrow morning.' The chief said nothing, but went on with his work. When he had got five or six sticks about three feet long and as many about a foot, and had cut them so that they each had one flat side, he took off his buckskin shirt, and working round the bottom of it cut a thong about an inch wide and five or six yards long. Then he knelt down and got the bone in the right position, and then with what help I could give him put on the splints and bandaged them tightly, a long one and a short one alternately. The long ones he bandaged above the knee as well as below, so that the whole leg was stiff. I felt pretty faint by the time it was done, and Leaping Horse said, 'Want food; my white brother will lie quiet, Leaping Horse will soon get him some.'

"He set to work and soon had a fire going, and then went up to the rocks and came down again with the bear's hams and about half his hide. It was not long before he had some slices cooked, and I can tell you I felt better by the time we had finished. We had not said much to each other, but I had been thinking all the time, and when we had done I said, 'Now, chief, I know that you will be wanting to stay with me, but I ain't going to have it. You know as well as I do that the Utes will be here to-morrow at latest, and there ain't more chance of my getting away from them than there is of my flying. It would be just throwing away your scalp if you were to stop here, and it would not do me a bit of good, and would fret me considerable. Now before you start I will get you to put me somewhere up among those stones where I can make a good fight of it. You shall light a fire by the side of me, and put a store of wood within reach and a few pounds of bear's flesh. I will keep them off as long as I can with the rifle, then there will be five shots with my Colt. I will keep the last barrel for myself; I ain't going to let the Utes amuse themselves by torturing me for a few hours before they finish me. Then you make straight away for the settlements; they won't be so hot after you when they have once got me. The next time you go near Denver you can go and tell Pete Hoskings how it all came about.'

"'My white brother is weak with the pain,' the chief said quietly; 'he is talking foolishly. He knows that Leaping Horse will stay with his friend. He will go and look for a place.' Without listening to what I had to say he took up his rifle and went up the valley, which was a steep one. He was away better than half an hour and then came back. 'Leaping Horse found a place,' he said, 'where he and his brother can make a good fight. Straight Harry get on his friend's back.' It was clear that there weren't no use talking to him. He lifted me up on to my feet, then he got me well up on to his back, as if I had been a sack of coal, and went off with me, striding along pretty near as quick as if I had not been there. It might have been half a mile, when he turned up a narrow ravine that was little more than a cleft in the rock that rose almost straight up from the valley. It did not go in very far, for there had been a slide, and it was blocked up by a pile of rocks and earth, forty or fifty feet high. It was a big job even for the chief to get me up to the top of them. The snow had drifted down thick into the ravine, and it was a nasty place to climb even for a man who had got nothing but his rifle on his shoulder. However, he got me up safely, and laid me down just over the crest. He had put my buffalo robe over my shoulders before starting, and he rolled me up in this and said, 'Leaping Horse will go and fetch rifles and bear-meat,' and he set straight off and left me there by myself."



Chapter IX

A Bad Time


"Even to me," Harry went on, after refilling and lighting his pipe, "it did not seem long before the chief was back. He brought a heavy load, for besides the rifles and bear's flesh he carried on his back a big faggot of brushwood. After laying that down he searched among the rocks, and presently set to work to dig out the snow and earth between two big blocks, and was not long before he scooped out with his tomahawk a hole big enough for the two of us to lie in comfortably. He laid the bear's-skin down in this, then he carried me to it and helped me in and then put the robes over me; and a snugger place you would not want to lie in.

"It was about ten feet below the level of the crest of the heap of rocks, and of course on the upper side, so that directly the red-skins made their appearance he could help me up to the top. That the two of us could keep the Utes back I did not doubt; we had our rifles, and the chief carried a revolver as well as I did. After they had once caught a glimpse of the sort of place we were on, I did not think they would venture into the ravine, for they would have lost a dozen men before they got to the mound. I had looked round while the chief was away, and I saw that a hundred yards or so higher up, the ravine came to an end, the sides closing in, so there was no fear of our being attacked from there. What I was afraid of was that the Indians might be able to get up above and shoot down on us, though whether they could or not depended on the nature of the ground above, and of course I could not see beyond the edge of the rocks.

"But even if they could not get up in the daylight, they could crawl up at night and finish us, or they could camp down at the mouth of the ravine and starve us out, for there was no chance of our climbing the sides, even if my leg had been all right. I was mighty sorry for the chief. He had just thrown his life away, and it must come to the same in the end, as far as I was concerned. Even now he could get away if he chose, but I knew well enough it weren't any good talking to him. So I lay there, just listening for the crack of his rifle above. He would bring down the first man that came in, sartin, and there would be plenty of time after that to get me up beside him, for they would be sure to have a long talk before they made any move. I did not expect them until late in the afternoon, and hoped it might be getting dark before they got down into the valley. There had been a big wind sweeping down it since the snow had fallen, and though it had drifted deep along the sides, the bottom was for the most part bare. I noticed that the chief had picked his way carefully, and guessed that, as they would have no reason for thinking we were near, they might not take up the trail till morning. Of course they would find our fire and the dead bear, or all that there was left of him, and they would fancy we had only stopped to take a meal and had gone on again. They would see by the fire that we had left pretty early in the day. I heard nothing of the chief until it began to get dark; then he came down to me.

"'Leaping Horse will go out and scout,' he said. 'If Utes not come soon, will come back here; if they come, will watch down at mouth of valley till he sees Utes go to sleep.' 'Well, chief,' I said; 'at any rate you may as well take this robe; one is enough to sleep with in this hole, and I shall be as snug as a beaver wrapped up in mine. Half your hunting shirt is gone, and you will find it mighty cold standing out there.'

"In an hour he came back again. 'Utes come,' he said. 'Have just lighted fire and going to cook. No come tonight. Leaping Horse has good news for his brother. There are no stars.'

"That is good news indeed,' I said. 'If it does but come on to snow to-night we may carry our scalps back to the settlement yet.'

"'Leaping Horse can feel snow in the air,' he said. 'If it snows before morning, good; if not, the Utes will tell their children how many lives the scalps of the Englishman and the Seneca cost.'

"The chief lay down beside me. I did not get much sleep, for my leg was hurting me mightily. From time to time he crawled out, and each time he returned saying, 'No snow.' I had begun to fear that when it came it would be too late. It could not have been long before daybreak when he said, as he crawled in: 'The Great Manitou has sent snow. My brother can sleep in peace.' An hour later I raised myself up a bit and looked out. It was light now. The air was full of fine snow, and the earth the chief had scraped out was already covered thickly. I could see as much as that, though the chief had, when he came in for the last time, drawn the faggot in after him. I wondered at the time why he did it, but I saw now. As soon as the snow had fallen a little more it would hide up altogether the entrance to our hole. Hour after hour passed, and it became impossible to get even a peep out, for the snow had fallen so thickly on the leafy end of the brushwood, which was outward, that it had entirely shut us in. All day the snow kept on, as we could tell from the lessening light, and by two o'clock only a faint twilight made its way in.

"'How long do you think we shall be imprisoned here, chief?' I asked.

"'Must not hurry,' he replied. 'There are trees up the valley, and the Utes may make their camp there and stay till the storm is over. No use to go out till my brother can walk. Wait till snow is over; then stay two or three days to give time for Utes to go away. Got bear's flesh to eat; warm in here, melt snow.' This was true enough, for I was feeling it downright hot. Just before night came on the chief pushed the end of his ramrod through the snow and looked out along the hole.

"'Snow very strong,' he said. 'When it is dark can go out if wish.'

"There is not much to tell about the next five days. The snow kept falling steadily, and each evening after dark the chief went outside for a short time to smoke his pipe, while I sat at the entrance and smoked mine, and was glad enough to get a little fresh air. As soon as he came in again the faggot was drawn back to its place, and we were imprisoned for another twenty-four hours. One gets pretty tired after a time of eating raw bear's flesh and drinking snow-water, and you bet I was pretty glad when the chief, after looking out through a peephole, said that the snow had stopped falling and the sun was shining. About the middle of that day he said suddenly: 'I hear voices.'

"It was some time before I heard anything, but I presently made them out, though the snow muffled them a good deal. They did not seem far off, and a minute or two later they ceased. We lay there two days longer, and then even the chief was of opinion that they would have moved off. My own idea was that they had started the first afternoon after the snow had stopped falling.

"'Leaping Horse will go out to scout as soon as it is dark,' he said. 'Go to mouth of ravine. If Utes are in wood he will see their fires and come back again. Not likely come up here again and find his traces.'

"That is what I had been saying for the last two days, for after some of them had been up, and had satisfied themselves that there was no one in the gully, they would not be likely to come through the snow again. When the chief returned after an hour's absence, he told me that the Utes had all gone. 'Fire cold,' he said; 'gone many hours. Leaping Horse has brought some dry wood up from their hearth. Can light fire now.' You may guess it was not long before we had a fire blazing in front of our den, and I never knew how good bear-steak really was till that evening.

"The next morning the chief took off the splints and rebandaged my leg, this time putting on a long strip of the bear's skin, which he had worked until it was perfectly soft while we had been waiting there. Over this he put on the splints again, and for the first time since that bear had knocked me off the rock I felt at ease. We stayed there another fortnight, by the end of which time the bones seemed to have knit pretty fairly. However, I had made myself a good strong crutch from a straight branch with a fork at the end, that the chief had cut for me, and I had lashed a wad of bear's skin in the fork to make it easy. Then we started, making short journeys at first, but getting longer every day as I became accustomed to the crutch, and at the end of a week I was able to throw it aside.

"We never saw a sign of an Indian trail all the way down to the settlements, and by the time we got there I was ready to start on a journey again. The chief found plenty of game on the way down, and I have never had as much as a twinge in my leg since. So you see this affair ain't a circumstance in comparison. Since then the chief and I have always hunted together, and the word brother ain't only a mode of speaking with us;" and he held out his hand to the Seneca, who gravely placed his own in it.

"That war a tight corner, Harry, and no blamed mistake. Did you ever find out whether they could have got on the top to shoot down on you?"

"Yes, the chief went up the day after the Utes had left. It was level up there, and they could have sat on the edge and fired down upon us, and wiped us out without our having a show."

"And you have never since been to that place you struck the day the Utes came down, Harry?" Jerry asked. "I have heard you talk of a place you knew of, just at the edge of the bad lands, off the Utah hills. Were that it?"

Harry nodded. "I have never been there since. I went with a party into Nevada the next spring, and last year the Utes were all the time upon the war-path. I had meant to go down this fall, but the Utes were too lively, so I struck up here instead; but I mean to go next spring whether they are quiet or not, and to take my chances, and find out whether it is only good on the surface and peters out to nothing when you get in, or whether it is a real strong lode. Ben and Sam, and of course the chief, will go with me, and Tom here, now he has come out, and if you like to come we shall be all glad."

"You may count me in," Jerry said, "and I thank you for the offer. I have had dog-goned bad luck for some time, and I reckon it is about time it was over. How are you going to share?"

"We have settled that. The chief and I take two shares each as discoverers. You four will take one share each."

"That is fair enough, Harry. Those are mining terms, and after your nearly getting rubbed out in finding it, if you and the chief had each taken three shares there would have been nothing for us to grunt at. They are a 'tarnal bad lot are the Utes. I reckon they are bad by nature, but the Mormons have made them worse. There ain't no doubt it's they who set them on to attack the caravans. They could see from the first that if this was going to be the main route west there would be so many coming along, and a lot perhaps settle there, that the Gentiles, as they call the rest of us, would get too strong for them. What they have been most afeard of is, that a lot of gold or silver should be found up in the hills, and that would soon put a stop to the Mormon business. They have been wise enough to tell the red-skins that if men came in and found gold there would be such a lot come that the hunting would be all spoilt. There is no doubt that in some of the attacks made on the caravans there have been sham Indians mixed up with the real ones. Red-skins are bad enough, but they are good men by the side of scoundrels who are false to their colour, and who use Indians to kill whites. That is one reason I want to see this railway go on till it jines that on the other side. It will be bad for game, and I reckon in a few years the last buffalo will be wiped out, but I will forgive it that, so that it does but break up the Saints as they call themselves, though I reckon there is about as little of the saint among them as you will find if you search all creation."

"Right you are, Jerry," Sam Hicks said. "They pretty nigh wiped me out once, and if Uncle Sam ever takes to fighting them you may bet that I am in it, and won't ask for no pay."

"How did it come about, Sam?" Jerry asked. "I dunno as I have ever heard you tell that story."

"Waal, I had been a good bit farther east, and had been doing some scouting with the troops, who had been giving a lesson to the red-skins there, that it was best for them to let up on plundering the caravans going west. We had done the job, and I jined a caravan coming this way. It was the usual crowd, eastern farmers going to settle west, miners, and such like. Among them was two waggons, which kept mostly as far apart from the others as they could. They was in charge of two fellows who dressed in store clothes, and had a sanctimonious look about them. There was an old man and a couple of old women, and two or three boys and some gals. They did not talk much with the rest, but it got about that they were not going farther than Salt Lake City, and we had not much difficulty in reckoning them up as Mormons. There ain't no law perviding for the shooting of Mormons without some sort of excuse, and as the people kept to themselves and did not interfere with no one, nothing much was said agin them. On a v'yage like that across the plains, folks has themselves to attend to, and plenty to do both on the march and in camp, so no one troubles about any one else's business.

"I hadn't no call to either, but I happened to go out near their waggons one evening, and saw two or three bright-looking maids among them, and it riled me to think that they was going to be handed over to some rich old elder with perhaps a dozen other wives, and I used to feel as it would be a satisfaction to pump some lead into them sleek-looking scoundrels who had them in charge. I did not expect that the gals had any idea what was in store for them. I know them Mormons when they goes out to get what they call converts, preaches a lot about the prophet, and a good deal about the comforts they would have in Utah. So much land for nothing, and so much help to set them up, and all that kind of thing, but mighty little about polygamy and the chance of their being handed over to some man old enough to be their father, and without their having any say in the matter. Howsoever, I did not see as I could interfere, and if I wanted to interfere I could not have done it; because all those women believed what they had been taught, and if I a stranger, and an ill-looking one at that, was to tell them the contrary, they wouldn't believe a word what I had said. So we went on till we got within four or five days' journey of Salt Lake City, then one morning, just as the teams were being hitched up, two fellows rode into camp.

"As we were in Utah now, there weren't nothing curious about that, but I reckoned them up as two as hard-looking cusses as I had come across for a long time. After asking a question or two they rode to the Mormon waggons, and instead of starting with the rest, the cattle was taken out and they stopped behind. Waal, I thought I would wait for a bit and see what they were arter. It weren't no consarn of mine noways, but I knew I could catch up the waggons if I started in the afternoon, and I concluded that I would just wait; so I sat by the fire and smoked. When the caravan had gone on the Mormons hitched up their cattle again. They were not very far away from where I was sitting, and I could see one of the men in black pointing to me as he talked with the two chaps who had just jined them. With that the fellow walked across to where I was sitting.

"'Going to camp here?' says he.

"'Waal,' I says, 'I dunno, as I haven't made up my mind about it. Maybe I shall, maybe I sha'n't.'

"'I allow it would be better for you to move on.'

"'And I allow,' says I, 'it would be better for you to attend to your own affairs.'

"'Look here,' says he, 'I hear as you have been a-spying about them waggons.'

"'Then,' says I, 'whosoever told you that, is an all-fired liar, and you tell him so from me.'

"I had got my hand on the butt of my Colt, and the fellow weakened.

"'Waal,' he said, 'I have given you warning, that is all.'

"'All right,' says I, 'I don't care none for your warnings; and I would rather anyhow be shot down by white skunks dressed up as red-skins, than I would have a hand in helping to fool a lot of innercent women.'

"He swore pretty bad at this, but I could see as he wasn't real grit, and he went off to the waggons. There was considerable talk when he got there, but as the Mormons must have known as I had been a scout, and had brought a lot of meat into the camp on the way, and as the chap that came across must have seen my rifle lying handy beside me, I guess they allowed that I had better be left alone. So a bit later the waggons started, and as I expected they would, went up a side valley instead of going on by the caravan route. The fellow had riz my dander, and after sitting for a bit I made up my mind I would go after 'em. I had no particular motive, it wur just out of cussedness. I was not going to be bluffed from going whar I chose. This air a free country, and I had as much right to go up that valley as they had."

"I should have thought yer had had more common sense, Sam Hicks," Jerry said reproachfully, "than to go a-mixing yourself up in a business in which you had no sort of consarn. Ef one of them women had asked you to help her, or if you had thought she was being taken away agin her will, you or any other man would have had a right to take a hand in the game; but as it was, you war just fooling with your life to interfere with them Mormons in their own country."

"That is so, Jerry, and I ain't a word to say agin it. It war just a piece of cussedness, and I have asked myself forty-eleven times since, what on arth made me make such a blame fool of myself. Afore that fellow came over to bluff me I hadn't no thought of following the waggons, but arter that I felt somehow as if he dared me to do it. I reckoned I was more nor a match for the two fellows who just jined them, and as for the greasy-faced chaps in black, I did not count them in, one way or the other. I had no thought of getting the gals away, nor of getting into any muss with them if they left me alone. It was just that I had got a right to go up that valley or any other, and I was not going to be bluffed out of it. So I took up my shooting-iron, strapped my blanket over my shoulder, and started. They war maybe a mile away when I turned into the valley. I wasn't hungry for a fight, so I didn't keep up the middle, but just skirted along at the foot of the hill where it did not seem likely as they would see me. I did not get any closer to them, and only caught sight of them now and then.

"As far as I could make out there was only one horseman with them, and I reckoned the other was gone on ahead; looking for a camping-ground maybe, or going on to one of the Mormon farms to tell them to get things ready there. What I reckoned on doing, so far as I reckoned at all, was to scout up to them as soon as it got dark and listen to their talk, and try to find out for certain whether the women war goin' willing. Then I thought as I would walk straight up to their fires and just bluff those four men as they tried to bluff me. Waal, they went on until late in the afternoon, unhitched the cattle, and camped. I waited for a bit, and now that I war cooled down and could look at the thing reasonable, I allowed to myself that I had showed up as a blamed fool, and I had pretty well made up my mind to take back tracks and go down the valley, when I heard the sound of some horses coming down fast from the camp.

"Then the thought that I was a 'tarnal fool came to me pretty strong, you bet. One of those fellows had ridden on and brought down some of the Regulators, as we used to call them in the mining camps, but I believe the Mormons call them Destroying Angels, though there is mighty little of angels about them. I hoped now that they had not caught sight of me during the day, and that the band were going right down to the waggon camp; but as I had not taken any particular pains to hide myself, I reckoned they must have made me out. It war pretty nigh dark, and as I took cover behind a bush I could scarce see them as they rode along. They went down about two hundred yards and then stopped, and I could hear some of them dismount.

"'You are sure we are far enough?' one said.

"'Yes; I can swear he was higher up than this when we saw him just before we camped.'

"'If you two fellows hadn't been the worst kind of curs,' a man said angrily, 'you would have hidden up as soon as you made out he was following you and shot him as he came along.'

"'I told you,' another voice said, 'that the man is an Indian fighter, and a dead shot. Suppose we had missed him.'

"'You could not have missed him if you had waited till he was close to you before you fired; then you might have chucked him in among the bushes and there would have been an end of it, and we should have been saved a twenty-mile ride. Now then, look sharp for him and search every bush. Between us and Johnson's party above we are sure to catch him.'

"I didn't see that, though I did wish the rocks behind had not been so 'tarnal steep. I could have made my way up in the daylight, though even then it would have been a tough job, but without light enough to see the lay of the ledges and the best places for getting from one to another, it was a business I didn't care about. I was just thinking of making across to the other side of the valley when some horsemen came galloping back.

"'You stop here, brother Ephraim, and keep your ears well open, as well as your eyes. You stop fifty yards higher up, Hiram, and the others at the same distance apart. When the men among the rocks come abreast of you, Ephraim, ride on and take your place at the other end of the line. You do the same, Hiram, and so all in turn; I will ride up and down.'

"It was clear they meant business, and I was doubting whether I would take my chance of hiding or make for the cliff, when I saw a light coming dancing down from the camp, and knew it was a chap on horseback with a torch. As he came up the man who had spoken before said: 'How many torches have you got, brother Williams?'

"'A dozen of them.'

"'Give me six, and take the other six down to the men below. That is right, I will light one from yours.'

"You may guess that settled me. I had got to git at once, so I began to crawl off towards the foot of the cliffs. By the time I had got there, there war six torches burning a hundred yards below, and the men who carried them were searching every bush and prying under every rock. Along the middle of the valley six other torches were burning fifty yards apart. There was one advantage, the torches were pitch-pine and gave a fairish light, but not so much as tarred rope would have done; but it was enough for me to be able to make out the face of the cliff, and I saw a break by which I could get up for a good bit anyhow. It was where a torrent came down when the snows were melting, and as soon as I had got to the bottom I made straight up. There were rocks piled at its foot, and I got to the top of these without being seen.

"I hadn't got a dozen feet higher when my foot set a boulder rolling, and down it went with a crash. There were shouts below, but I did not stop to listen to what they said, but put up the bed of the torrent at a two-forty gait. A shot rang out, and another and another, but I was getting now above the light of their torches. A hundred feet higher I came to a stand-still, for the rock rose right up in front of me, and the water had here come down from above in a fall. This made it a tight place, you bet. There war no ledge as I could see that I could get along, and I should have to go down a good bit afore I got to one. They kept on firing from below, but I felt pretty sure that they could not see me, for I could hear the bullets striking high against the face of the rock that had stopped me.

"You may bet I was careful how I went down again, and I took my time, for I could see that the men with the torches had halted at the foot of the heap of rocks below, not caring much, I expect, to begin to mount, while the horsemen kept on firing, hoping to hear my body come rolling down; besides, they must have known that with their torches they made a pretty sure mark for me. At last I got down to the ledge. It war a narrow one, and for a few yards I had to walk with my face to the rock and my arms spread out, and that, when I knew that at any moment they might make me out, and their bullets come singing up, warn't by no means pleasant. In a few yards the ledge got wider and there was room enough on it for me to lie down. I crawled along for a good bit, and then sat down with my back against the rock and reckoned the matter up. All the torches war gathered round where I had gone up. Four more men had come down from the camp on horseback, and five or six on foot with torches were running down the valley. They had been searching for me among the bushes higher up, and when they heard the firing had started down to jine the others. The leader was shouting to the men to climb up after me, but the men didn't seem to see it.

"'What's the use?' I heard one fellow say; 'he must be chock-full of bullets long ago. We will go up and find his carcass in the morning.'

"'But suppose he is not dead, you fool.'

"'Well, if he ain't dead he would just pick us off one after another as we went up with torches.'

"'Well, put your torches out, then. Here, I will go first if you are afraid,' and he jumped from his horse.

"You can bet your boots that my fingers itched to put a bullet into him. But it warn't to be done; I did not know how far the ledge went or whether there might be any way of getting off it, and now I had once got out of their sight it would have been chucking away my life to let them know whar I lay. So I got up again and walked on a bit farther. I came on a place where the rock had crumbled enough for me to be able to get up on to the next ledge, and after a lot of climbing up and down I got to the top in about two hours, and then struck across the hills and came down at eight o'clock next morning on to the caravan track. I hid up till evening in case they should come down after me, and next morning I came up to the caravan just as they were hitching the teams up for a start."

"You got out of that better than you deserved," Harry said. "I wouldn't have believed that any man would have played such a fool's trick as to go meddling with the Mormons in their own country without any kind of reason. It war worse than childishness."

The other two miners assented vigorously, and Sam said: "Waal, you can't think more meanly of me over that business than I do of myself. I have never been able to make out why I did it, and you may bet it ain't often I tells the story. It war a dog-goned piece of foolishness, and, as Harry says, I didn't desarve to get out of it as I did. Still, it ain't made me feel any kind of love for Mormons. When about two hundred shots have been fired at a man it makes him feel kinder like as if he war going to pay some of them back when he gets the chance, and you may bet I mean to."

"Jee-rusalem!"

The exclamation was elicited by the fall of a heavy mass of snow on to the fire, over which the kettle had just begun to boil. The tripod from which it hung was knocked over. A cloud of steam filled the place, and the party all sprung to their feet to avoid being scalded.

"It might have waited a few minutes longer," Jerry grumbled, "then we should have had our tea comfortable. Now the fire is out and the water is spilt, and we have got to fetch in some more snow; that is the last lot there was melted."

"It is all in the day's work, Jerry," Harry said cheerfully, "and it is just as well we should have something to do. I will fetch the snow in if the rest of you will clear the hearth again. It is a nuisance about the snow, but we agreed that there is no help for it, and we may thank our stars it is no worse."

It was not long before the fire was blazing again, but it took some time before water was boiling and tea made, still longer before the bread which had been soddened by the water from the kettle was fit to eat. By this time it was dark. When the meal was over they all turned in for the night. Tom was just going off to sleep, when he was roused by Leaping Dog suddenly throwing off his buffalo robe and springing to his feet with his rifle in his hand.

"Hist!" he said in a low tone. "Something comes!"

The men all seized their rifles and listened intently. Presently they heard a soft step on the snow outside, then there was a snuffing sound.

"B'ar!" the Indian said.

A moment later a great head reared itself over the bushes at the entrance. Five rifles rang out, the two Indians reserving their fire; the report was followed by the dull sound of a heavy fall outside.

"Wait a moment," Harry said sharply, as the others were preparing to rush out, "let us make sure he is dead."

"He is dead enough," Jerry said. "I reckon even a grizzly cannot walk off with five bullets in his head."

Harry looked over the screen. "Yes, he is dead enough; anyhow he looks so. Waal, this is a piece of luck." They all stepped out on to the platform.

"Is it a grizzly, uncle?" Tom asked excitedly.

"He is a grizzly, sure enough. You don't want to see his colour to know that. Look at his size."

"Why, he is as big as a cow."

"Ay, lad, and a big cow too. You go in and make up the fire while we cut off enough meat for supper."

The fact that they had eaten a meal but half an hour before, went for nothing; slices of bear-meat were soon frizzling, and as hearty a meal was eaten as if no food had been tasted since the previous day. The men were in the highest spirits; the fact that they were out of meat had been the greatest drawback to the prospect of being shut up for perhaps a week, for badly-baked bread is but a poor diet to men accustomed to live almost exclusively upon meat.

"What brought the bear down here?" Tom asked.

"Curiosity at first perhaps, and then hunger," his uncle replied. "I expect he was going along on the path above when he saw the light among the leaves, and then no doubt he smelt the bread, and perhaps us and the horses, and came down to see what he could get.

"Curiosity is a bad fault, Tom. You have had two lessons in that this evening. Bear in mind that in this part of the world the safest plan is always to attend strictly to your own business."

All thought of sleep was for the present dissipated; their pipes were again lighted, and it was midnight before they lay down. In the morning the bear was with some difficulty skinned and cut up, the joints being left outside to freeze through. The snow still fell steadily, but the wind had almost died down. Sallying out they cut five or six long poles, and with some difficulty fixed these from above across from the cliff to the outstanding rock, pushed the bear's-skin across them, and lashed it there, its bulk being sufficient to cover the space above the fire and a considerable portion of their dwelling room.

After breakfast snow was again melted for the horses, and the work for the day thus done they seated themselves contentedly round the fire.



Chapter X

An Avalanche


"You don't think, chief," Harry asked, "that there is any chance of the 'Rappahoes taking it into their heads to come up to have a look round?"

"Indians keep in lodges, no like cold; they think we have gone on over pass. If weather gets fine perhaps they come to look for our guns and packs. They think sure we die in snow-storm when we up in pass. When snow stops falling, we make no more fire; but path from valley all shut up by snow now."

"Yes, I don't think anyone would try to climb it till the sun has cleared the track; it was a pretty bad place when we came up," Harry said. "I don't say that men on foot could not make their way up; but as you say, the red-skins are not likely to try it until the weather has cleared a bit, though I don't say that they wouldn't if they knew we were camped here close to the top."

"What noise is that?" Tom asked. "I have heard it several times before, but not so loud as that."

"Snow-slide," Leaping Horse said. "Snow come down from mountains; break off trees, roll rocks down. Bad place all along here."

"Yes. I saw that you looked up at the hills behind there before you looked over the edge here, chief," Ben Gulston said, "and I reckoned that you had snow-slides in your mind. I thought myself that it was like enough the snow might come tumbling over the edge of that high wall and then come scooting down over where we war, and there would have been no sort of show for us if we had been camped whar the trail goes along."

"Leaping Horse has heard from his red brothers with whom he has spoken that trail from top of valley very bad when snow falls. Many Indians stopping too long at fort, to trade goods, have been swept away by snow-slides when caught in storm here."

"I thought it looked a bad place," Harry remarked. "There ain't no fooling with a snow-slide anyway. I have come across bones once or twice lying scattered about in snug-looking valleys -- bones of horses and men, and it was easy to see they had been killed by a snow-slide coming down on them. Rocks were heaped about among them, some of the bones were smashed. They had been hunting or trapping, and sheltered up in a valley when the storm came on and the slide had fallen on them, and there they had laid till the sun melted the snow in summer, when the coyotes and the vultures would soon clean the bones." He broke off suddenly; there was a dull sound, and at the same moment a distinct vibration of the ground, then a rustling murmur mingled with a rumbling as of a waggon passing over a rocky ground.

"There is another one," Jerry exclaimed, "and it is somewhere just above us. Keep your backs to the wall, boys."

"There Is Another Avalanche, Keep Your Backs To The Wall, Boys"

Louder and louder grew the sound; the tremor of the earth increased, the horses neighed with fright, the men stood with their backs against the rock next to the hill. Suddenly the light was darkened as a vast mass of snow mingled with rocks of all sizes leapt like a torrent over the edge of the cliff, the impetus carrying it over the outer wall of their shelter and down into the ravine. There was a mighty sound of the crashing of trees, mingled with a thumping and rolling of the rocks as they clashed against the side of the ravine and went leaping down into the valley. The ground shook with a continuous tremor, and then the light returned as suddenly as it had been cut off, and a few seconds later a dead stillness succeeded the deafening roar from below. The passage of the avalanche overhead had lasted but a minute, though to the men standing below it the time had seemed vastly longer. Instinctively they had pressed themselves against the rock, almost holding their breath, and expecting momentarily that one of the boulders in its passage would strike the top of the outside wall and fall in fragments among them. The silence that followed was unbroken for some seconds, and then Sam Hicks stepped a pace forward.

"Jee-rusalem!" he said, "that was a close call. I don't know how you felt, boys, but it seemed as if all the sand had gone out of me, and I weakened so that my knees have not done shaking yet."

The men, accustomed as they were to danger, were all equally affected. Tom felt relieved to see that the others all looked pale and shaken, for he was conscious that he had been in a terrible fright, and that his legs would scarcely support his weight.

"I am glad to hear you say so, Sam, for I was in an awful funk; but I should not have said so if you hadn't spoken."

"You needn't be ashamed of that, Tom," his uncle put in. "You showed plenty of pluck when we were in trouble with the red-skins, but I am sure there was not one of us that did not weaken when that snow-slide shot over us; and none of us need be ashamed to say so. A man with good grit will brace up, keep his head cool and his fingers steady on the trigger to the last, though he knows that he has come to the end of his journey and has got to go down; but it is when there is nothing to do, no fight to be made, when you are as helpless as a child and have no sort of show, that the grit runs out of your boots. I have fought red-skins and Mexicans a score of times; I have been in a dozen shooting scrapes in saloons at the diggings; but I don't know that I ever felt so scared as I did just now. Ben, there is a jar of whisky in our outfit; we agreed we would not touch it unless one of us got hurt or ill, but I think a drop of medicine all round now wouldn't be out of place."

There was a general assent. "But before we take it," he went on, "we will take off our hats and say 'Thank God' for having taken us safe through this thing. If He had put this shelter here for us express, He could not have planted it better for us, and the least we can do is to thank Him for having pulled us through it safe."

The men all took off their hats, and stood silent for a minute or two with bent heads. When they had replaced their hats Ben Gulston went to the corner where the pack-saddles and packs were piled, took out a small keg, and poured out some whisky for each of the white men. The others drank it straight; Tom mixed some water with his, and felt a good deal better after drinking it. Ben did not offer it to the Indians, neither of whom would touch spirits on any occasion.

"It is a good friend and a bad enemy," Harry said as he tossed off his portion. "As a rule there ain't no doubt that one is better without it; but there is no better medicine to carry about with you. I have seen many a life saved by a bottle of whisky. Taken after the bite of a rattlesnake, it is as good a thing as there is. In case of fever, and when a man is just tired out after a twenty-four hours' tramp, a drop of it will put new life into him for a bit. But I don't say as it hasn't killed a sight more than it has cured. It is at the bottom of pretty nigh every shooting scrape in the camps, and has been the ruin of hundreds of good men who would have done well if they could but have kept from it."

"But you ain't a temperance man yourself, Harry?"

"No, Sam; but then, thank God, I am master of the liquor, and not the liquor of me. I can take a glass, or perhaps two, without wanting more. Though I have made a fool of myself in many ways since I have come out here, no man can say he ever saw me drunk; if liquor were to get the better of me once, I would swear off for the rest of my life. Don't you ever take to it, Tom; that is, not to get so as to like to go on drinking it. In our life we often have to go for months without it, and a man has got to be very careful when he goes down to the settlements, else it would be sure to get over him."

"I don't care for it at all, uncle."

"See you don't get to care for it, Tom. There are plenty start as you do, and before they have been out here long they do get to like it, and from that day they are never any good. It is a big temptation. A man has been hunting or trapping, or fossicking for gold in the hills for months, and he comes down to a fort or town and he meets a lot of mates. One says 'Have a drink?' and another asks you, and it is mighty hard to be always saying 'no'; and there ain't much to do in these places but to drink or to gamble. A man here ain't so much to be blamed as folks who live in comfortable houses, and have got wives and families and decent places of amusement, and books and all that sort of thing, if they take to drink or gambling. I have not any right to preach, for if I don't drink I do gamble; that is, I have done; though I swore off that when I got the letter telling me that your father had gone. Then I thought what a fool I had made of myself for years. Why, if I had kept all the gold I had dug I could go home now and live comfortably for the rest of my life, and have a home for my nieces, as I ought to have. However, I have done with it now. And I am mighty glad it was the cards and not drink that took my dust, for it is a great deal easier to give up cards than it is to give up liquor when you have once taken to it. Now let us talk of something else; I vote we take a turn up on to the trail, and see what the snow-slide has done."

Throwing the buffalo robes round their shoulders the party went outside. The air was too thick with snow to enable them to perceive from the platform the destruction it had wrought in the valley below, but upon ascending the path to the level above, the track of the avalanche was plainly marked indeed. For the width of a hundred yards, the white mantle of snow, that covered the slope up to the point where the wall of cliff rose abruptly, had been cleared away as if with a mighty broom. Every rock and boulder lying upon it had been swept off, and the surface of the bare rock lay flat, and unbroken by even a tuft of grass. They walked along the edge until they looked down upon their shelter. The bear's hide was still in its place, sloping like a pent-house roof, from its upper side two or three inches below the edge of the rock, to the other wall three feet lower. It was, however, stripped of its hair, as cleanly as if it had been shorn off with a razor, by the friction of the snow that had shot down along it.

"That is the blamedest odd thing I ever saw," Sam Hicks said. "I wonder the weight of the snow didn't break it in."

"I expect it just shot over it, Sam," Harry said. "It must have been travelling so mighty fast that the whole mass jumped across, only just rubbing the skin. Of course the boulders and stones must have gone clean over. That shows what a narrow escape we have had; for if that outer rock had been a foot or so higher, the skin would have caved in, and our place would have been filled chock up with snow in a moment. Waal, we may as well turn in again, for I feel cold to the bones already."

On the evening of the fifth day the snow ceased falling, and next morning the sky was clear and bright. Preparations were at once made for a start. A batch of bread had been baked on the previous evening. Some buckets of hot gruel were given to the horses, a meal was hastily eaten, the horses saddled and the packs arranged, and before the sun had been up half an hour they were on their way. The usual stillness of the mountains was broken by a variety of sounds. From the valley at their feet came up sharp reports, as a limb of a tree, or sometimes the tree itself, broke beneath the weight of the snow. A dull rumbling sound, echoing from hill to hill, told of the falls of avalanches. Scarcely had the echoes of one ceased, than they began again in a fresh quarter. The journey was toilsome in the extreme, for the horses' hoofs sank deep in the freshly-fallen snow, rendering their progress exceedingly slow.

"If we had been sure that this weather would hold, chief, it would have been better to have waited a few days before making our start, for by that time the snow would have been hard enough to travel on."

The chief shook his head. "Winter coming for good," he said, waving his hand towards the range of snowy summits to the north. "Clouds there still; if stop, not able to cross pass till next summer."

"That is so; we agreed as to that yesterday, and that if we don't get over now the chances are we shall never get over at all. Yet, it is a pity we can't wait a few days for a crust to form on the snow."

Twice in the course of the next hour avalanches came down from the hills above them; the first sweeping down into the valley a quarter of a mile behind them, the next but two or three hundred yards ahead of them. Scarcely a word was spoken from end to end of the line. They travelled in Indian file, and each horse stepped in the footprints of its predecessor. Every few hundred yards they changed places, for the labour of the first horse was very much heavier than of those following. At the end of an hour the men drew together for a consultation. There was a wide break in the line of cliffs, and a valley ran nearly due south.

"What do you think, chief? This confounded snow has covered up all signs of the trail, and we have got to find our own way. There is no doubt this valley below is running a deal too much to the west, and that the trail must strike off somewhere south. It looks to me as if that were a likely valley through the cliff. There is no hiding the fact that if we take the wrong turn we are all gone coons."

"Leaping Horse knows no more than his brother," the chief said gravely. "He knows the pass is on the western side of the great peak. The great peak lies there," and he pointed a little to the west of the break in the hills up which they were looking.

"It may be that we must cross the hills into another valley, or perhaps this will turn west presently."

"I tell you what, Harry," Sam Hicks said, "my opinion is, that our best plan by a long chalk will be to go back to our last place and to stop there for a bit. We have got b'ar's flesh enough for another fortnight, and we may kill some more game afore that is done. Ef this is but a spell of snow it may melt enough in another ten days for us to make out the trail and follow it. Ef, as the chief thinks, we have got winter right down on us, we must wait till the snow crust hardens ef it is a month or double. Anything is better than going on like this. What with this soft snow and these 'tarnal snow-slides, there ain't no more chance of our getting over that pass in one day's journey, than there air in our flying right down to Salt Lake City. Ef the worst comes to the worst, I tell yer I would rather go back and take our chance of following the Big Wind River down, and fighting the red-skins, than I would of crossing over these dog-goned hills."

The other three men were of the same opinion.

"Well, what do you say, chief?" Harry asked the Indian.

"Leaping Horse thinks that the trail will not be found until next summer," the chief replied quietly. "Heap of hills in front and heap of snow. If snow-storm catch us in the hills no find way anywhere. Leaping Horse is ready to do whatever his white brother thinks."

"Well, I am with the others," Harry said. "I don't like the look of those clouds. They are quiet enough now, but they may begin to shift any time, and, as you say, if we are caught in a snow-storm on the hills there is an end of us. I think Sam is right. Even if we have to rustle all through the winter in that hut there, I would rather face it than keep on."

That settled it. The horses' heads were turned, and they retraced their steps until they reached the shelter. The bear's-skin had been left where it was, the fire was soon set going, and there was a general feeling of satisfaction as they laid out the robes and blankets again.

"Look here, boys," Harry said, "this is not going to be a holiday time, you bet. We have got to make this place a sight snugger than it is now, for, I tell you, when the winter sets in in earnest, it will be cold enough here to freeze a buffalo solid in an hour. We have got to set to work to make a roof all over this place, and we have got to hunt to lay in a big stock of meat. We have got to get a big store of food for the horses, for we must be mighty careful with our flour now. We can wait a fortnight to see how things go, but if it is clear then that we have got to fight it out here through the winter, we must shoot the pack-ponies at once, and I reckon the others will all have to go later. However, we will give them a chance as long as we can."

"Take them down into the valley," the chief said. "All Indian horses."

"Ah, I didn't think of that, chief. Yes, they are accustomed to rustle for their living, and they may make a shift to hold on down there. I don't think there is much fear of Indians coming up."

"No Indians," Leaping Horse said. "Indians go away when winter set in. Some go to forest, some go to lodges right down valley. No stop up here in mountains. When winter comes plenty game -- big-horn, wapiti."

"Ah, that is a more cheerful look-out, chief. If we can get plenty of meat we can manage without flour, and can go down and give the ponies a pail of hot gruel once a week, which will help them to keep life together. The first thing, I take it, is to cut some poles for the roof. I am afraid we shall have to go down to the bottom for them."

"Waal, we needn't begin that till to-morrow," Sam Hicks said. "If we had them, we have got no skins to cover them."

"Cut brushwood," Indian said. "First put plenty of brushwood on poles, then put skins over."

"Yes, that is the plan, chief. Well, if we get down there we shall have to take our shovels and clear the snow off some of the narrow ledges. If we do that we can lead one of the horses down to pack the poles up here."

The chief went out on to the platform. "No use clear snow now. Clouds moving. In two hours snow fall again."

The others joined him outside. "I reckon you are right, chief," Jerry said. "It is mighty lucky we didn't go on. It can't be much worse here than it was before."

At three in the afternoon it began to snow heavily again. There was less wind than there had been on the previous occasion, and the snow drifted through the entrance less than before. Just as they were turning in for the night an ominous crack was heard above. All leapt from their blankets, and looking up they could see by the light of the fire that the poles supporting the skin were all bent in a curve downwards.

"Jee-rusalem!" Sam Hicks exclaimed, "the whole outfit will be coming down on us."

"That it will, Sam. You see, there is no wind as there was before, and one of our jobs will be keeping the roof clear of snow. Turn out, boys; we must get rid of it somehow."

They at once set to work to lash two poles, some eight feet long, to the handles of the shovels, and as soon as this was done they all turned out. On reaching the edge of the ravine above the roof, they first cleared away the snow down to the rock so as to have firm standing, and then proceeded to shovel the snow off the surface of the skin. It was easier work than they expected, for as soon as it was touched it slid down the incline, and in a very few minutes the whole was cleared off.

"I think that is good until morning now," Harry said. "As long as the snow lasts we shall have to do it every few hours. Directly we get a spell of fine weather we must put some more poles under it to strengthen it."

For six days the snow continued to fall without intermission. At daybreak, at mid-day, and the last thing before they turned in at night the snow was cleared off the hide. With this exception they did not stir out of the shelter. They had also each day to clear out the inner portion of the fissure, as the snow now frequently broke through the trees in masses, startling the horses, and keeping them in a state of restlessness. The sixth day it stopped snowing, and the next morning the sky was bright and clear. The whole party at once started out, two of them taking shovels, and the rest brooms that they had made during the long hours of their confinement. By the middle of the day they had cleared the path down into the valley, and on their way back to dinner each carried up a large bundle of faggots.

The meal was cooked and eaten hastily, and the whole of the horses were then led down into the valley. Here a couple of dozen stout poles for the roof were cut by the whites, the two Indians at once going up the valley in search of game. In half an hour two rifle-shots were heard, and presently Hunting Dog ran in with the news that they had killed two wapiti. Jerry and Sam Hicks at once went off with him, leading two horses, and presently returned with the dead deer fastened across their backs.

"They are very like pictures I have seen of moose," Tom said to his uncle as he examined the great stags.

"New-comers often call them moose, Tom; but there is a difference between them, though what the difference is I cannot tell you, for I have never hunted moose. I believe the wapiti are peculiar to the West. They often go in great herds of three or four hundreds together."

"The chief says there are a great many of them up the valley," Jerry put in. "They made off when he fired, but I could see their foot-tracks myself all about. He says they have been driven down here by the storm for shelter. He has gone round with the lad to head them back."

"That is good news, Jerry. The meat we have got already will last some time, but it is as well to lay in a good stock, and we want the skins badly to make our roof. You had better lead these horses to the foot of the path, and then we will all take our post behind trees across the valley."

An hour later they heard the reports of two rifles a long way up the valley, and all stood in readiness. A few minutes later there was a dull trampling sound, and almost directly afterwards a herd of wapiti came along at a heavy trot, ploughing their way but slowly through the snow.

"Don't use your revolvers, boys," Harry had said, "except to finish off a stag you have wounded with your rifle. The chance is all against your bringing them down, and the poor brutes would only get away to die."

One after another the rifles rang out. Tom and his uncle both had the satisfaction of seeing the stags they had aimed at, plunge forward before they had gone many yards farther, and roll over dead. The other three had each hit the animal they aimed at, but as these kept on their course they dashed out in pursuit, firing their Colts, which in their hands were as deadly weapons as a rifle, and the three stags all fell, although one got nearly half a mile down the valley before he succumbed. A carcass was hoisted on to each of the horses' backs, and the loaded animals were then led up the track.

"Shall I wait until the Indians come back, uncle, and tell them why you have gone up?"

"There is no occasion for that, Tom; they would hear the shots, and will have guessed what has happened."

The poles were divided among the men and carried up to the top of the path, and laid down just above the shelter. Harry and Sam Hicks at once proceeded to cut them up into proper lengths, while the others skinned and cut up the deer. A number of thongs were cut from one of the hides for lashing cross-poles across those that were to act as ridge-poles. The bear's-skin was removed and additional poles placed at that spot, and all working together the framework of the roof was completed by nightfall. The Indians had returned soon after the party began their work, and taking their horses down fetched up the deer they had killed.

In the morning the roof was completed, hides being stretched over the framework and securely lashed to it with thongs. The whole of the trees and brushwood were then chopped down close to the ground so as to leave a level floor. The foliage was given to the horses, and the wood cut up and piled for fuel. The chief reported that at the upper end of the valley there was a thick pine-wood, which would give good shelter to the horses. Near it were plenty of bushes, and a level tract which had been a beaver meadow, and was thickly covered with grass, as he could see where the wapiti had scratched away the snow to get at it. This was excellent news, for the question of how the horses could be fed through the winter had troubled them much more than that of their own maintenance. The joints of venison were hung up on a pole outside what they now called their hut, one or two hams being suspended from the rafters over the fire, to be smoked.

"We shall have to rig up a b'ar-trap outside," Ben said, "or we shall be having them here after the meat; and a b'ar's ham now and then will make a change. Wapiti flesh ain't bad, but we should get dog-goned tired of it arter a bit."

"You may bet we shall, Ben," Jerry agreed; "but I reckon that we shall be able to get a lot of game through the winter. That valley down there is just the place for them to shelter in, and I hope we shall get a big-horn now and then. It will be a difficult thing to make a b'ar-trap outside. A grizzly wants a pretty strong pen to keep him in, and though the horses might drag up some big beams from below, there ain't no fastening them in this rock."

"No; I don't think we can make that sort of trap," Harry said. "We must contrive something else. We need not do all our work at once; we have got plenty of time before us. We want three or four more skins to finish our hut."

"You mean to fill up the entrance?"

"Yes; we will sew them together, and make a curtain to hang from the edge of the roof to the ground. I tell you it is going to be mighty cold here, and besides, it will keep the snow from drifting in."

"I wish to goodness we could make a chimney," Tom said. "The smoke went up through the leaves all right, but my eyes are watering now, and if you fill up the end with skins it will be something awful."

"You will get accustomed to it, Tom; but, of course, we must make a hole at the top when we fill up the entrance. What do you think is the next thing to be done, chief?"

"Get wood," the chief said emphatically. "Must fill all the end of hut with wood."

"That will be a big job, chief, but there is no doubt we must lay in a great store of it. Well, there is plenty of timber down in the valley, and with ten horses we can bring up a tidy lot every day."

"Let us cut quick before snow comes again."

"We will begin to-morrow morning, chief. I agree with you, the sooner the better."

Accordingly the next morning they went down to the valley. They had but two axes, and Jerry and Sam Hicks, who had both done a good deal of wood-cutting, undertook this portion of the work. The others took the horses up to the beaver meadow, where they at once began scraping at the snow, and were soon munching away at the rich grass.

"Why do you call it a beaver meadow, uncle? I don't see any beavers."

"They have gone long ago, perhaps a hundred years. As we know, this valley is occupied by the Indians in summer, and they would soon clear out the beavers. But it is called a beaver meadow because it was made by them. They set to work and dammed up the stream, and gradually all this flat became a lake. Well, in time, you know, leaves from the woods above, and soil and dead wood and other things brought down by the stream, gradually filled up the bottom. Then the beavers were killed, and their dams went to ruin and the water drained off, and in a short time grass began to grow. There are hundreds, ay, and thousands of beaver meadows among the hills, and on the little streams that run into the big rivers, and nowhere is the grass so rich. You will often see an Indian village by one of these meadows. They grow their roots and plant their corn there. The horses will do first-rate here through the winter if the snow don't get too deep for them, and, anyhow, we can help them out with a bucket of gruel occasionally."

"It will be awfully cold for them, though."

"It will be coldish, no doubt, but Indian ponies are accustomed to it."

"I should think, uncle, it would not take much trouble to make them a sort of shed up among the trees there."

Sam laughed, and even the chief smiled.

"It would not be a bad plan, Tom," his uncle said; "not so much for the sake of the warmth, though there is no doubt that the warmer they are the less they can do with to eat, but if they have a place to go to they are less likely to wander away, and we shall not have the trouble of hunting for them. Well, we will think it over."

Following the valley up, they found that it extended some ten miles farther, for the last two of which it was but a narrow canyon a few yards wide. They shot a black bear and four small deer, and returned carrying the skins, the hind-quarters of the deer, and the bear's hams.

"We seem to have got meat enough for anything," Tom remonstrated when they shot the deer.

"Seven men will get through a lot of meat, Tom, when they have nothing else to go with it; and we may be weeks before we can put our heads out of our hut. Besides, the skins will be useful. We shall want deer-skin shirts, trousers, and socks and caps; and the skin of these deer is softer and more pliable than that of the wapiti. I don't want to kill more than I can help, lad, for I hate taking life without there is a necessity for it, but we can do with a lot more skins before we are stocked."

When, driving the horses before them, they returned to the woodcutters, they found they had cut down and chopped into logs a number of trees; and Tom was quite astonished at the great pile of firewood that had been got ready by them in the course of a day's work. The logs were made up into bundles, each weighing about eighty pounds. These were tied together with the horses' lariats, and then secured, one on each side of the saddle, two of the horses carrying the meat. Harry took the bridle of his horse and started up the path, the others following at once.

"That is a good day's work," Harry said as the logs were piled at the inner end of the hut. "That is about half a ton of wood. If we have but a week of open weather we shall have a good store in our cellar."

The work continued steadily for a week. The horses were each day taken to feed at the meadow, the two wood-choppers continued their work, while the rest of the party hunted. The Indians had on the second day gone down the valley, and returned with the report that the Indian lodges had all disappeared and that the valley was entirely deserted. Eight more wapiti were killed during the week, and fourteen smaller deer. Of an evening they occupied themselves in sewing the skins together with thongs of leather, the holes being made with their knives; and a curtain at the mouth of the hut was completed and hung. Four wide slabs of wood had been cut. These had been bound together with thongs so as to form a sort of chimney four feet high, and with a good deal of difficulty this was secured by props in its position over a hole cut through the skins, above the fire.

"The first avalanche will carry it away, Tom."

"Yes, uncle; but we have had one avalanche here, and it seems to me the chances are strongly against our having another in exactly the same place."

The skins of the smaller deer were carefully scraped with knives on the inner side, smeared with bears' fat, and then rubbed and kneaded until they were perfectly soft.



Chapter XI

Winter


The erection of Tom's shed for the horses did not take long. The whole party, with the exception of the two Indians, -- who, as usual, went hunting, -- proceeded to the pine-wood above the beaver meadow. After a little search six trees were found conveniently situated with regard to each other. The axemen cut down three young firs. One was lashed by the others between the two central trees, to form a ridge-pole eight feet from the ground; the others against the other trees, at a height of three feet, to support the lower ends of the roof. They were but ten feet apart, so that the roof might have a considerable pitch. Numbers of other young trees were felled and fixed, six inches apart, from the ridge down to the eaves. On these the branches of the young fir-trees were thickly laid, and light poles were lashed lengthways over them to keep them in their places.

As the poles of the roof had been cut long enough to extend down to the ground, no side walls were necessary. The ends were formed of poles lashed across to the side trees, but extending down only to within four feet six of the ground, so as to allow the horses to pass under, and were, like the roof, thickly covered with boughs. The lower ends were left open for a width of four feet in the middle, uprights being driven into the ground and the sides completed as before.

"What do you want a doorway at both ends for?" Tom asked. "It would have been easier and quicker to have shut one end up altogether, and it would be a good deal warmer."

"So it would, Tom; but if a grizzly were to appear at the door, what would the horses do? They would be caught in a trap."

"Do you think they are likely to come, uncle?"

"The likeliest thing in the world, Tom. Horses can smell bear a good distance off, and if they heard one either coming down or going up the valley, they would bolt through the opposite door. They will do first-rate here; they will stand pretty close together, and the warmth of their bodies will heat the place up. They won't know themselves, they will be so comfortable. It has only taken us a day's work to make the shed; and though we laughed at your idea at first, I think now that the day has been well spent in getting them up such a good shelter. Jerry has got the big pail boiling over his fire, and we will put in a few handfuls of the flour we brought down. Bring the horses in from the meadow, and we will give them each a drink of gruel in the shed. They will soon learn that it is to be their home."

For two more days the open weather continued, and the horses took up three loads of wood each afternoon, as they had done the previous week. Then, as there were signs of change, they were given a good feed at their shed; the saddles were taken off and hung up on some cross-poles over their heads.

The party had scarcely returned to the hut when the snow began to fall. They were, however, weather-proof, and felt the immense additional comfort of the changes they had made. Their stock of firewood was now a very large one. At each journey the horses had brought up about fifteen hundredweight; and as the work had gone on for nine days, they had, they calculated, something like fourteen tons of firewood neatly stacked. They had also a stock of poles in case the roof should require strengthening. A certain amount of light found its way in at the edges of the curtain across the entrance, but they depended principally upon the fire-light. The smoke, however, was a serious grievance, and even the men were forced occasionally to go outside into the open air to allay the smarting of their eyes.

"Don't you think, uncle, we might do something to dry the wood?"

"I can't see that we can do more than we are doing, Tom. We always keep a dozen logs lying round the fire to dry a bit before they are put on."

"I should think we might make a sort of stage about four feet above the fire and keep some logs up there. We might pile them so that the hot air and smoke could go up through them. They would dry a great deal faster there than merely lying down on the ground."

"I think the idea is a very good one, Tom; but we shall have to make the frame pretty strong, for if it happened to come down it might break some of our legs."

The men all agreed that the idea was a capital one, and after some consultation they set to to carry it out. Two strong poles were first chosen. These were cut carefully to the right length, and were jambed between the rocks at a height of seven feet above the floor and five feet apart. They were driven in and wedged so tightly that they could each bear the weight of two men swinging upon them without moving. Then four upright poles were lashed to them, five feet apart, and these were connected with cross-poles.

"That is strong enough for anything," Jerry said when the structure had been so far completed. "If a horse were to run against one of the poles he would hardly bring the thing down."

Four other short poles were now lashed to the uprights three feet below the upper framework, and were crossed by others so as to form a gridiron. On this, the logs were laid in tiers crossing each other, sufficient space being left between them to allow for the passage of the hot air.

"That is a splendid contrivance," Harry said when they took their seats on the buffalo robes round the fire and looked up admiringly at their work. "The logs will get as dry as chips, and in future we sha'n't be bothered with the smoke. Besides, it will do to stand the pail and pots full of snow there, and keep a supply of water, without putting them down into the fire and running the risk of an upset."

They had occupation now in manufacturing a suit of clothes a-piece from the deer-skins. As the work required to be neater than that which sufficed for the making of the curtain, pointed sticks hardened in the fire were used for making the holes, and the thongs that served as thread were cut as finely as possible; this being done by the Indians, who turned them out no thicker than pack-thread.

There was no occasion for hurry, and there was much laughing and joking over the work. Their hunting-shirts and breeches served as patterns from which to cut out the skins; and as each strove to outvie the others, the garments when completed were very fair specimens of work. The hunting-shirts were made with hoods that, when pulled over the head, covered the whole face except the eyes, nose, and mouth. As they had plenty of skin, the hoods and shirts were made double, so that there was hair both inside and out. They were made to come down half-way to the knee, being kept close at the waists by their belts. The leggings were made of single thickness only, as they would be worn over their breeches; they were long and reached down below the ankle. The Indians made fresh moccasins for the whole party; they were made higher than usual, so as to come up over the bottom of the leggings. In addition each was provided with long strips of hide, which were to be wound round and round the leggings, from the knee to below the ankle, covering tightly the tops of the moccasins, and so preventing the snow from finding its way in there. Gloves were then manufactured, the fingers being in one and the thumb only being free.

The work occupied them a fortnight, broken only by one day's spell of fine weather, which they utilized by going down into the valley, taking with them their kettles and pail, together with a few pounds of flour. They found the horses out in the meadow, and these, as soon as they saw them, came trotting to meet them with loud whinnies of pleasure. A fire was lit near the shed, the snow melted, and an allowance of warm gruel given to each horse. At Tom's suggestion a few fir-boughs were hung from the bar over each entrance. These would swing aside as the horses entered, and would keep out a good deal of wind. When at the end of a fortnight the sky cleared, the chief said that he thought that there would be but little more snow.

"If storm come, sure to bring snow, but not last long. Winter now set in; soon snow harden. Now make snowshoes."

The hunters had all been accustomed to use these in winter. They had found the last expedition through the deep snow a very toilsome one, and they embraced the idea eagerly. Some of the poles were split into eight feet lengths. These were wetted and hung over the fire, the process being repeated until the wood was sufficiently softened to be bent into the required shape. This was done by the chief. Two cross-pieces were added, to stiffen them and keep them in the right shape when they dried; and the wood was then trimmed up and scraped by the men. When it had dried and hardened, the work of filling up the frame with a closely-stretched network of leather was undertaken. This part of the work occupied three or four days. The straps were attached to go across the toe and round the heel, and they were then ready to set off.

The weather was now intensely cold, but as there was but little wind it was not greatly felt; at the same time they were glad of their furs when they ventured outside the hut. On the first day after their snow-shoes were finished, the rest of the party started off to visit the horses, Hunting Dog remaining behind to give Tom instructions in the use of the snow-shoes, and to help him when he fell down.

Tom found it difficult work at first, the toe of the shoe frequently catching in the snow, and pitching him head foremost into it, and he would have had great difficulty in extricating himself, had not the young Indian been at hand. Before the day was over, however, he could get on fairly well; and after two or three more days' practice had made such progress that he was considered capable of accompanying the rest.

The wood-drying apparatus had succeeded excellently. The wood was now dried so thoroughly before being put on to the fire that there was no annoyance from the smoke inside the hut, and scarce any could be perceived coming from the chimney. Upon Harry's remarking upon this with satisfaction the first time they went out after using the dry wood, Tom said:

"What does it matter? There are no Indians in the valley."

"That is so, Tom; but as soon as the weather sets in clear, the red-skins will be hunting again. Winter is their best time for laying in their stock of pelts for trading. At other times the game is all high up in the mountains, and it is very difficult to get within range of it. In the winter the animals come down to the shelter of the forests and valleys, and they can be shot in numbers; especially as the Indians in their snow-shoes can get along almost as quickly as the wapiti can plough through the snow. At present the red-skins think that we must have been overtaken by that first storm and have all gone under; but as soon as they begin to venture out of their lodges to hunt, a column of smoke here would be sure to catch their eyes, and then we should be having them up the valley to a certainty. The first thing they would do would be to find our horses and drive them off, and the next thing would be to set themselves to work to catch us."

"But we could hold the path against them, uncle."

"Yes; but we should have to keep watch every day, which would be a serious trouble. Besides, there must be other places they could get up. No doubt their regular trail comes up here, because it is the straightest way to the pass, and possibly there may be no other point at which loaded animals could mount anywhere about here. But there must be plenty of places where Indians could climb, and even if it took them a detour of fifty miles they would manage it. As long as there is no smoke we may hope they will not discover us here, though any hunting party might come upon the horses. That is what has bothered me all along; but the chief and I have talked it over a dozen times, and can see no way of avoiding the risk.

"We can't keep the horses up here because we can't feed them; and even if we were to bring ourselves to leave this comfortable place and to build a hut down in the valley, we might be surprised and rubbed out by the red-skins. Of course we might bring them up here every night and take them down again in the morning, but it would be a troublesome business. We have agreed that we won't do much more shooting down in the valley, and that in coming and going to the horses we will keep along close to the foot of the cliffs this side, so that if two or three Indians do come up they won't see any tracks on the snow, unless they happen to come close up to the cliff. Of course if they go up as far as the beaver flat they will light upon the horses. There is no help for that; but the chief and I agreed last night that in future two of us shall always stay up here, and shall take it by turns to keep watch. It won't be necessary to stand outside. If the curtain is pulled aside three or four inches one can see right down the valley, and any Indians coming up could be made out. If the party is a strong one a gun would be fired as a signal to those away hunting, and some damp wood thrown on the fire. They might possibly push on up the valley to have a look at the place, but the two up here with their rifles would soon stop them. After that, of course, the horses would have to be brought up here at night, and a watch kept by night as well as by day."

Two or three mornings later they found on going out that two joints of venison had been carried off, and footprints in the snow showed that it had been done by a grizzly bear. This turned their attention again to the construction of a trap, which had not been thought of since the day it was first mentioned. A young tree of four or five inches in diameter was cut below and brought up. The butt was cut in the shape of a wedge, and this was driven strongly into a fissure in the rock. A rope with a running noose had been fastened to the tree, and this was bent down by the united strength of four men, and fixed to a catch fastened in the ground, the noose being kept open by two sticks placed across it.

A foot beyond the noose a joint of venison was hung, the rope passing over a pole and then down to the catch, so that upon the joint being pulled the catch would be loosened, when the tree would fly up and the noose catch anything that might be through it.

A week later they were disturbed by an outburst of violent growling. Seizing their rifles they rushed out. A huge bear was caught by one of his paws. The animal's weight was too great for it to be lifted from the ground, but it was standing upright with its paw above its head, making furious efforts to free itself. A volley of bullets at once put an end to its life. The tree was bent down again and the noose loosed, and they at once returned to their rugs, leaving the bear where it fell. Four times during the winter did they thus capture intruders, providing themselves with an ample supply of bear's flesh, while the skins would sell well down at the settlements.

Otherwise sport was not very good. No more wapiti came up, but black and white tail deer were occasionally shot, and five or six big-horn sheep also fell to their rifles. One day on approaching the beaver meadow the chief pointed to some deep footprints. No explanation was needed. All knew that they were made by a big grizzly, and that the animal was going up the valley. No horses were in view on the flat, and grasping their rifles they hurried towards the wood. Just as they reached it the horses came galloping to meet them, whinnying and snorting.

"They have been scared by the critter," Jerry said. "Do you see their coats are staring. Gosh, look at this pack-pony -- the bear has had his paw on him!"

The animal's hind-quarters were indeed badly torn.

"I wonder how it got away," Harry said. "When a grizzly once gets hold, it don't often leave go."

"There is something in front of the hut," Tom exclaimed.

"It's the grizzly, sure enough," Harry said. "It is a rum place for it to go to sleep."

They advanced, holding their rifles in readiness to fire, when Leaping Horse said:

"Bear dead."

"What can have killed him?" Harry asked doubtfully.

"Horses kill him," the chief replied. They hurried up to the spot. The bear was indeed dead, and there were signs of a desperate struggle. There was blood on the snow from a point near the door of the hut to where the animal was lying ten yards away. Round it the snow was all trampled deeply. The bear's head was battered out of all shape; its jaw was broken, and one of its eyes driven out. The Indians examined the ground closely.

"Well, what do you make of it, chief?" Harry asked.

"Bear walk round hut, come in other end. Horses not able to get out in time. Pack-horse last, bear catch him by hind-quarters. Horse drag him a little way and then fall. Then other horses come back, form ring round bear and kick him. Look at prints of fore-feet deep in snow. That is where they kick; they break bear's jaw, break his ribs, keep on kick till he dead."

"I suppose that is how it came about, chief. I should not have thought they would have done it."

The Seneca nodded. "When wild horses with young foals attacked by bear or mountain-lion, they form circle with colts in the middle, stand heads in and kick. Bears and mountain-lion afraid to attack them."

"Waal, I should hardly have believed if I had not seen it," Sam Hicks said, "that horses would come back to attack a grizzly."

"Not come back," the chief said, "if not for friend. Friend cry out loud, then horses come back, fight bear and kill him."

"Well, it was mighty plucky of them," Harry said. "I am afraid this pony won't get over it; he is terribly torn."

The chief examined the horse's wounds again. "Get over it," he said. "Cold stop wounds bleeding, get some fat and put in."

"I reckon you will find plenty inside the grizzly," Jerry said. The chief shook his head.

"Bear's fat bad; other horses smell him, perhaps keep away from him, perhaps kick him. Leaping Horse will bring fat from the big-horn he shot yesterday."

The animal lay where it had fallen, a mile up the valley. They went up and tied the great sheep's feet together, and putting a pole through them brought it down to the hut. Partly skinning it, they obtained some fat and melted this in a kettle over the fire. Sam Hicks had remained behind at the fire, the horses all standing near him, excited at the prospect of their usual meal. As soon as the fat was melted it was poured into the horse's wounds. The mess of gruel was then prepared and given to the animals. The bear was skinned and the hams cut off, then by a united effort it was dragged some distance from the hut, and the carcass of the big-horn, the bear's flesh and hide, were afterwards carried up to the hut.

Early in February the cold reached its extreme point, and in spite of keeping up a good fire they had long before this been compelled to build up the entrance with a wall of firewood, the interstices being stuffed with moss; the hut was lighted by lamps of bear and deer fat melted down and poured into tin drinking-cups, the wicks being composed of strips of birch bark. A watch was regularly kept all day, two always remaining in the hut, one keeping watch through a small slip cut in the curtain before the narrow orifice in the log wall, that served as a door, the other looking after the fire, keeping up a good supply of melted snow, and preparing dinner ready for the return of the hunters at sunset. Of an evening they told stories, and their stock of yarns of their own adventures and of those they had heard from others, seemed to Tom inexhaustible.

Hunting Dog had made rapid advances with his English, and he and Tom had become great friends, always hunting together, or when their turn came, remaining together on guard. The cold was now so intense that the hunting party was seldom out for more than two or three hours. Regularly twice a week the horses were given their ration of hot gruel, and although they had fallen away greatly in flesh they maintained their health, and were capable of work if called upon to do it. It was one day in the middle of February, that Hunting Dog, who was standing at the peep-hole, exclaimed:

"'Rappahoes!"

Tom sprang up from the side of the fire, and running to the entrance pulled aside the curtain and looked out. Six Indians on snow-shoes were coming up the valley. He ran out on to the platform and fired his ride. As the sound of the report reached the Indians' ears they stopped suddenly.

"Shall I throw some green wood on the fire, Hunting Dog?"

"No need," the Indian replied. "The others only gone an hour, not farther than horses' hut; hear gun plain enough. Perhaps 'Rappahoes go back."

The Indians remained for some time in consultation.

"Not know where gun fired," Hunting Dog said. "Soon see hut, then know."

After a time the red-skins continued their way up the valley, but instead of coming on carelessly in the centre they separated, and going to the other side crept along among the fallen boulders there, where they would have escaped observation had it not been for their figures showing against the white snow.

"Must fire now," the young Indian said, "then Leaping Horse know 'Rappahoes coming up."

They went out on to the platform and opened fire. They knew that their chance of hitting one of the Indians was small indeed; the other side of the valley was a quarter of a mile away, and the height at which they were standing rendered it difficult to judge the elevation necessary for their rifles. However, they fired as fast as they could load.

The Indians made no reply, for their guns would not carry anything like the distance. They occasionally gathered when they came upon a boulder of rock sufficiently large to give shelter to them all, and then moved on again one at a time. When opposite the lower end of the pathway they again held a consultation.

"No go further," Hunting Dog said. "Afraid we come down path and stop them. See, Leaping Horse among rocks."

It was some time before Tom could detect the Indian, so stealthily did he move from rock to rock.

"Where are the others?"

"No see, somewhere in bushes. Leaping Horse go on to scout; not know how many 'Rappahoes."

Presently they saw the chief raise his head behind a rock within a hundred yards of that behind which the 'Rappahoes were sheltering.

"He see them now," Hunting Dog said. "See, he going to fire." There was a puff of smoke and a sharp report, and almost simultaneously rose an Indian yell, and the war-cry of the Seneca. Then five Indians leapt out from behind the rock and made down the valley at full speed, while from a clump of trees two hundred yards above the spot from which the chief had fired the four white men hurried out rifle in hand. The chief waited until they joined him, for the bend in the valley prevented him from seeing that the 'Rappahoes were making straight down it, and it would have been imprudent to have ventured out until his white allies came up.

"They have gone right down," Tom shouted at the top of his voice. Harry waved his arm to show that he heard the words, and then the five men ran to the corner. The Indians were already a quarter of a mile away, and were just entering the wood below. The whites were about to fire, when the chief stopped them. "No use fire," he said. "Stand back behind rocks; no good let 'Rappahoes count our rifles."

"That is true enough, chief," Harry said, as they all sprang among the rocks. "All they know at present is, that there are two up on the top there and one down here. If we were sure that we could wipe them all out it would be worth following and making a running fight of it, but there would be no chance of that, and it is better to let them go without learning more about us. Well, I should say the first thing is to get up the horses."

The chief nodded.

"Get up," he said, "but no fear 'Rappahoes come back to-night. Many hours' journey down to villages, then great council. Next night scouts come up valley, look all about for sign, and then go back and tell friends."

"I dare say you are right, chief. Anyhow, I shall feel a great deal more comfortable when we have got the critters up."

It was late in the afternoon before they reached the hut. Some hours were spent in collecting tufts of grass in places sheltered from the snow, and in cutting off great bundles of young fir-branches and the heads of evergreen bushes, and the horses arrived almost hidden under the load of grass and foliage they carried. Little was said until some hot tea had been drunk and the bear steaks in readiness were disposed of, for although they had worked hard and kept themselves comparatively warm down in the valley, they had as they moved slowly up the path with the horses become chilled to the bone.

"Now then, chief," Harry said, when they had lighted their pipes with the mixture of tobacco and willow bark that they had taken to, as soon as they found that they were likely to be imprisoned all the winter, "we must hold a council. We have been longer than I expected without disturbance by these varmint, but it has come now, and the question is what are we to do? We have agreed all along that there is no getting over the pass till the spring comes."

"Too cold," the chief said, "deep drift snow. Indians all say no can pass over hills in winter."

"That air a fact," Jerry said. "Down in the valley there it is all right, but up here the cold pretty near takes one's breath away. We ain't sure about the way. We couldn't get over the pass in one day's tramp, and we should be all stiff before morning. There would be no taking the horses, and there is a hundred miles to be done over the snow before we reach the fort. It ain't to be thought of. I would a sight rather go down the valley and fight the hull tribe."

"I agree with you, Jerry. We might, with luck, get down the valley, but I don't think there is a possibility of our crossing the pass till the winter breaks."

"No can go down valley," Leaping Horse said; "they find trail on snow, sure."

"That is so, chief, and in that case it is evident that we have got to fight it out here."

"Good place to stop," the Seneca said; "no good place to fight."

This was self-evident. An enemy on the rock above would be able to fire down through the roof, without their having a chance of making an effectual reply.

"The only way I can see," Harry said after a long pause, "is to build a sort of fort up above. If we put it just at the top of this pathway, we should have them whether they came up by the trail from below or climbed up anywhere else and came along above. It need not be a very big place, only just big enough for us all to fire over. We might make a sort of shelter in it with a fire, and keep guard there by turns." The chief nodded, and there was a general exclamation of assent from the others.

"The worst of it is," Jerry said, "the ground is so 'tarnal hard that there will be no driving posts into it. We have cut down all the trees near the bottom of the pass, and it would be a risky thing to go up higher, when we might have the red-skins come whooping up the valley at any time."

"Why not make a snow fort?" Tom suggested. "There is four feet of snow up there, and with the shovels we could make a wall ten feet high in a very short time."

"So we might, Tom; that is a capital idea. The difficulty is, the snow does not bind in this bitter cold as it does in England."

"If it was hammered down it would, I should think, uncle. You know the Esquimaux make snow houses, and it is as cold there as it is here. The snow at the top is light enough, but I should think as it gets down it would be hard enough to cut out in blocks. We have plenty of water, and if we pour it over each layer of blocks it would freeze into solid ice directly. When we finish it we might pour more water down over the outside, and it would make a regular wall of ice that no one could climb up."

"Hooray! Bully for you, Tom!" Jerry shouted, while similar exclamations of approval broke from all the others, while the chief said gravely, "My young brother has the head of a man; he is able to teach warriors."

"You shall be engineer-in-chief, Tom," Harry said. "It is certain we may sleep quietly to-night; at daybreak to-morrow we will begin the job."

The first thing in the morning a semicircular line was traced out at the top of their pathway. It was thirty feet across, for, as Tom said, the walls ought to be at least four feet thick; and six feet would be better, as they would want a parapet at least two feet thick to fire over. It was agreed that the whites should use the two shovels by turns. The Indians were unaccustomed to the work, and were to undertake that of scouting along the hillside, and of watching by turns at night. The frying-pan was brought into requisition, a wooden handle being made for it. The hard upper crust was removed with the shovels, and the layer beneath this was sufficiently soft for the instrument to be used as a shovel. Below that it hardened, and could be cut out in great blocks. The loose snow was thrown inside of the line traced out.

As fast as the blocks were cut out they were carried and piled regularly to form the face. Tom's share of the work was to keep on melting snow, and to bring it up and pour between and over the blocks. As fast as a line of these were made the loose snow was thrown in behind it and trampled down hard. Except for meals there was no rest. The chief said that as there was little chance of the 'Rappahoes coming up so soon, Hunting Dog had better stay behind and help, and he lent his aid in carrying the blocks of snow on a rough stretcher they made for the purpose. By the time it became dark the wall had risen to a height of three feet above the general level of the snow, and was already sufficient to form an excellent breastwork.

At the end farthest from the side from which the Indians were likely to come, a gap was left between it and the edge of the ravine three feet wide, in order that if necessary the horses could pass out. When it became dark the chief returned. He had gone many miles along towards the main valley, but had seen no sign of any Indians. After supper was over he took one of the wapiti skins and his buffalo robe, went up to the "fort," as they had already called it, and laid the deer-skin down on the slope of snow behind the wall, wrapped the buffalo robe round him, and lay down upon it. Hunting Dog then threw another robe over him, projecting a foot beyond his head, so that he could from time to time raise it and look out over the snow. The night was a dark one, but any object moving across the unbroken white surface could be seen at a considerable distance.

"I feel sure I should go to sleep," Tom said, "if I were to lie down like that."

"I have no doubt you would, Tom, but there is no fear with the chief. An Indian never sleeps on the watch, or if he does sleep, it is like a dog: he seems to hear as well as if he were awake, and every minute or two his eyes open and he takes a look round. I would rather have an Indian sentry than half a dozen white ones, unless it is in the open, where there is no tree to lean against, and a man must keep moving."

Hunting Dog threw himself down as soon as he returned to the hut, and was almost instantly asleep. Three hours later he rose and went out, and Leaping Horse a minute or two later returned.

"All quiet," he said; and then after smoking for a short time also lay down.



Chapter XII

The Snow Fort


The hut was quiet at an unusually early hour, for the men had done a very hard day's work, and felt the strain after the long weeks of inactivity. At daybreak they were up and about, but could remain out but a few minutes, for the cold was so intense that they felt unable to face it until they had taken some hot tea and eaten something. Half an hour sufficed for this early breakfast. Hunting Dog was again left behind by the chief when he started.

"Two eyes enough," the latter said. "Hunting Dog more use here."

The wall of blocks was raised three more feet during the day, as it was agreed to devote all their efforts to this, and to defer the work of thickening it until the next day, for the snow had now been cleared so far from its foot that it could no longer be thrown inside. Though but six feet above the snow level, it was at least three feet more above the level of the rock, and its face was a solid sheet of ice, Tom having, during the two days, made innumerable journeys backwards and forwards with snow-water.

"Another couple of feet and it will be high enough for anything," Harry said. "I don't believe that the Indians will venture to attack us, but it is just as well to have it so high that they can't help each other up to the top. If they knew how strong it is, I am sure they would not attack, and would leave us alone altogether, but if a hundred of them creep up in the dark and make a rush, they will do their best to try to climb it. Anyhow we sha'n't need to make the bank behind very high. If it goes to within four feet and a half of the top, so that we can stand and fire over the wall, that is all that is wanted."

Leaping Horse returned at dusk as before. He uttered a warm approval of the work when he had examined it.

"Good fort," he said, "better than palisades. Indian no climb over it. No opening to fire through, good as wall of town house."

"I think they will be puzzled when they get here, chief."

"Must watch well to-night," the chief said. "Indian scout sure to come. Two men keep on watch; two better than one."

"That is so, chief; we will change every hour. But it will be mighty cold. I don't see why we shouldn't rig up a shelter against the wall, and have a bit of a fire there. Then the two on watch can take it by turns every few minutes to come in and get a warm."

With poles and skins a lean-to was speedily constructed against the wall. The snow was hammered down, and a hearth made of half a dozen logs packed closely together. Some brands were brought up from the fire in the hut, and the skins across the end of the lean-to dropped, so that the air within could get warm while they were at supper.

"Hunting Dog and Tom shall take the first watch," Harry said; "Sam and I will take the next, Jerry and Ben the third, then you, chief, can take the next."

"Leaping Horse watch by himself," the Seneca said; "his eyes will be open."

"Very well, chief. I know you are as good as any two of us, so that will give us each one hour out and three hours in bed."

Wrapping buffalo robes round them, Tom and the young Indian went up to the fort. Tom drew aside one of the skins and looked into the shelter. The hearth was in a glow, and two logs lying on it were burning well. The night was very still, except for the occasional rumble of some distant snow-slide. For a few minutes they stood looking over the wall, but keeping far back, so that only their heads were above its level.

"Tom go in by the fire," the Indian said. "All white, no need for four eyes."

"Very well, I will go in first; but mind, you have got to go in afterwards. I sha'n't go in if you don't."

After waiting for a few minutes in the shelter Tom went out again, and Hunting Dog took his place. It was his first war-path, and nothing would have persuaded him to retire from the watch had he not felt sure that even white men's eyes could not fail to detect any dark object moving on the surface of the snow. But although all white the surface was not level; here and there were sudden elevations marking rises in the rock beneath. Still it seemed impossible to Tom that anyone could approach unseen.

In spite of the protection of the buffalo robe it was intensely cold outside, and he was glad each time when his turn came for a warm by the fire. The changes, too, made the time pass quickly, and he was quite surprised when his uncle and Sam came out to relieve them. The other two men and the chief were still smoking by the fire. There was tea in the kettle, and they evidently did not mean to lie down until after their first watch. Every few minutes the chief got up and went out to the platform, and stood listening there intently for a short time. Just before it was time to change the guard again he said when he returned:

"Indian down in valley."

"Have you heard them, chief?"

"Leaping Horse heard a dead stick crack."

"That might have been a deer," Ben suggested.

The chief shook his head. "'Rappahoe; heard gun strike tree."

"Then I reckon they will be up in our watch," Ben said. "Well, we shall be ready for them."

"Perhaps come, perhaps not come; perhaps scout up valley first see if some of us there, and look for horses. Perhaps some come up path; but crawl up slow, not know whether look-out there."

"Well, I don't envy them if they have got much crawling to do to-night; it is cold enough to freeze one's breath."

"'Rappahoe not like cold," the chief said, "but wants scalp bad; that makes his blood warm."

"I will let some of it out," Jerry said wrathfully, "if I get a chance to lay a bead on one of them. Don't you be afeard, chief; we will look out sharp enough, you bet. Waal, I reckon it is about our time to turn out, Ben."

"Jerry tells me that you have heard noises below, chief," Harry said when he came in. "We heard nothing, but it ain't easy to hear well with these hoods over one's head."

"Hoods bad for hear," the chief assented. "Leaping Horse heard plain, Indians down below."

"Well, it is only what we expected, chief. Anyhow, we are ready for them when they come."

Tom lay down now, and knew nothing more till Hunting Dog touched him.

"Time to go and watch," he said.

"Has everything been quiet?"

The Indian nodded. "No come yet."

Leaping Horse remained at his post after they came out to relieve him. Tom made no comment. Harry had impressed upon him the necessity for absolute silence.

"If they hear voices they will never come near us," he had said, "and we would rather they came than stopped away. The sooner we get this job over the better."

The chief stood with his head slightly bent forward and the hood of his hunting-shirt thrown back, listening attentively. Then he touched Hunting Dog, and stooping low down whispered something in his ear, and then both stood again listening. Tom, too, threw back his hood, but he could hear nothing whatever, and was soon glad to pull it forward over his ears again. He strained his eyes in the direction towards which they were listening, which was apparently towards the edge of the ravine where the Indian trail came up from below. All seemed to him to be white and bare.

Presently the chief's rifle went up to his shoulder; there was a sharp crack, a dark figure leapt up from the snow fifty yards away and then fell headlong down again. It seemed to Tom almost magical. His eyes had been fixed in that direction for the last five minutes, and he could have sworn that the surface of the snow was unbroken. A minute later the other four men came running up.

"What is it, chief?" Harry whispered.

Leaping Horse pointed to the dark figure stretched out on the snow.

"So you have got the varmint. Good! Do you think there are any more of them about?"

"More there sure," the chief said, pointing to the path up from below. "Perhaps more there," and he pointed to a broad black line from the foot of the cliffs to the edge of the ravine, where, three days before, an avalanche from the hills above had swept the rock clear of snow.

"They must have made sure that we were all asleep, or that fellow would never have shown himself on the snow," Harry said.

"He did not show himself, uncle. How he got there I don't know; but I was looking at the spot when the chief fired, and I saw no signs of him whatever. How he hid himself I don't know. If it had been anywhere else I should have said he must have had a white sheet over him."

"It certainly was not that whatever it was, Tom. However, we shall see in the morning. Well, we may as well turn in again. Will they try again, do you think, chief?"

"Not try to-night, too cold; if any there, will hide up till daybreak. Now they know we are awake, will not venture on snow."

Half an hour later a great fire was lighted out of gunshot range lower down the valley, and three or four figures could be seen round it.

"Too cold," Hunting Dog said to Tom. "All gone down to get warm."

The watches were relieved regularly through the night, but there was no further alarm until just after daylight had broken, when Sam Hicks suddenly discharged his rifle. The others all turned out at once. He had fired at a bush just at the point where the trail came up from below, and he declared that he had seen a slight movement there, and that some pieces of the snow had dropped from the leaves.

"We will make sure that there is no one there," Harry said, "and then we will turn out and have a look. It is like enough that one of the red-skins from below came up the path to have a look at us this morning."

He took a steady aim and fired.

"Fetch up an axe, Tom; we will cut that bush away at once. It is lucky that Sam caught sight of the red-skin. If he had not done so he might have got a bullet in his own head, for when the red-skin had finished taking a view of the fort he would certainly have picked off Sam or myself before he went down. It is a weak point, that from here one can't command the path. If they come in force we shall have to keep watch on the platform too. From there you can get a sight of two or three of its turnings."

"They Went Out To Look At The Indian The Chief Had Shot."

They went out together, and as they passed, stopped to look at the body of the Indian the chief had shot. He was a young brave of two-or three-and-twenty, and the manner of his advance so far unperceived was now evident. Favoured by a slight fall in the ground, he had crawled forward, scooping a trench wide enough for his body a foot in depth, pushing the snow always forward, so that it formed a sort of bank in front of him and screened him from the sight of those on watch. The chief's keen eye had perceived a slight movement of the snow, and after watching a moment had fired at the point where he judged anyone concealed by it must be. He had calculated accurately. The ball had struck on the shoulder close to the neck, and had passed down through the body. The Indian had brought no rifle with him, but had knife and tomahawk in his belt.

"Poor young fellow," Harry said. "He wanted to win a name for himself by a deed of desperate bravery. It has cost him his life, but as he would have taken ours if he had had a chance it is of no use regretting it."

They now went on to the bush.

"You were right, Sam," he went on, as they saw the impression on the snow made by a figure lying down behind it. "There was an Indian here sure enough, and here is the mark of the stock of his rifle, and no doubt he would have picked off one of us if you had not scared him. I don't expect you hit him; there are no signs of blood."

"Fire too high," the chief said, pointing to a twig that had been freshly cut off two feet from the ground. "Always shoot low at man behind bush. Man cannot float in air."

There was a general laugh at Sam, who replied: "I did not suppose he could, chief. I just fired where I saw the snow fall, without thinking about it one way or the other. I was an all-fired fool, but I shall know better next time."

The bush was cut down, and also two or three others that grew along by the edge of the ravine. On their way back to the hut Harry stopped by the dead Indian.

"Fetch me a shovel, Tom," he said, "I will dig a hole in the snow; it ain't a pleasant object to be looking at anyway."

Tom fetched the shovel, Harry dug down in the snow till he reached the rock, then he and Jerry laid the body in it and filled in the snow again. The chief looked on.

"Bears get him," he said when they had finished.

"That is like enough, chief, but we have done the best we can for him. There is no digging into the rock."

"I thought the Indians always scalped enemies they shot?" Tom afterwards said to his uncle.

"So they do, Tom; but you see the chief is a sort of civilized Indian. He has consorted for years with whites, and he knows that we don't like it. I don't say he wouldn't do it if he were on the war-path by himself, but with us he doesn't, at any rate not openly. I have no doubt it went against his grain to see the red-skin buried with his hair on, for the scalp would have been a creditable one, as it would not have been got without a clear eye and good judgment in shooting. I have no doubt he has got some scalps about him now, though he don't show them; but they will be hung up some day if he ever settles down in a wigwam of his own.

"Well, chief, and what do you think," he asked Leaping Horse, as, after returning to the hut, they sat down to breakfast, "will they come or won't they?"

"I think they no come," the chief said. "Scout behind bush will tell them fort too strong to take; must cross snow, and many fall before they get to it. Very hard to climb. No like cold, Leaping Horse thinks they will stop in wigwams."

"No fools either," Jerry agreed; "a man would be worse than a natural if he were to go fooling about in this weather, and run a pretty good big risk of getting shot and nothing much to gain by it. They know we have left their country now, and ain't likely to come back again either to hunt there or to dig gold, and that all we want is to get away as soon as we can. I allow that the chief is right, and that we sha'n't hear no more of them, anyhow not for some time."

The chief nodded. "If come again, not come now. Wait a moon, then think perhaps we sleep sound and try again; but more likely not try."

"Much more likely," Harry assented. "Unless they can do it by a surprise. Indians are not fond of attacking; they know we shoot straighter than they do and have better rifles. You remember that time when you and I and Jersey Dick kept off a party of Navahoes from sunrise till sunset down near the Emigrant trail? It was lucky for us that a post-rider who was passing along heard the firing, and took the news to a fort, and that the officer there brought out fifty troopers just as the sun went down, or we should have been rubbed out that night sure."

The Seneca nodded.

"How was it, Harry?" Sam Hicks asked.

"It was just the usual thing, Sam. We had left the trail two days before, and were hunting on our own account when the Navahoes came down. We had just time to throw the three horses and lie down behind them. They were within two hundred yards when I began and fetched the chief, who was leading them, out of his saddle. Leaping Horse brought down another one and Jersey Dick held his fire, and instead of keeping straight on they began to straggle round. And they kept at that all day. Sometimes they would get in pretty close, but each time they did the chief brought down a horse, and when his rider, who was of course hanging on the other side of him, got up to run, I fetched him down. Dick wasn't much of a shot, so we would not let him fire. It discourages red-skins mightily when they see that there is never a shot thrown away, and that it is sure death whenever one draws a trigger. So at last they got careful and held off, knowing as they would get us at night, when they could have crawled up on foot and made a rush when they got close to us.

"The worst of it was we hadn't struck water the evening before, and it was just one of the hottest days on the plains, and we were pretty nigh mad with thirst before evening. I believe when the soldiers rode up I was about as glad to get a drink from one of their bottles as I was that the Navahoes bolted when they saw them coming. No, the red-skins ain't any good for an open attack; they would have lost fewer men by riding straight at us than they did by fooling round, but they could not bring themselves to do it, and I reckon that is what it will be here. They may, as the chief says, try, say six weeks on, when the frost begins to break, in hopes that we may have given up keeping watch: but if they find us awake they will never try an open attack, for they could not reckon on taking the place without losing a score of men in doing so. If the snow was off the ground it would be different. Then of a dark night they could crawl up close and make a rush."

After breakfast the chief and Hunting Dog went out scouting. When they returned they brought news that three Indians had come over the snow along the side of the hills, that three others had come up the valley, and that in a wood half a mile below where they had seen the fire, there had been a large party encamped.

"I reckoned that would be about it, chief. Three fellows came along over the hill, in case we should be keeping guard at the top of the path, and they had a big force somewhere down below, so that if the scouts reported that there was nothing to prevent them falling on us they would come up before morning and wipe us out. I suppose they have all ridden off?"

"All gone. Leaping Horse and Hunting Dog followed right down valley. No stop anywhere, gone back to lodges."

"Then in that case, Harry, we had best get the critters down to their shed again. They have eaten all that stuff they brought up three days ago, I gave them the last of it this morning. The Indians know that we keep a pretty sharp look-out during the day and there ain't no fear of their coming up here when it is light."

As the chief was also of opinion that there was no danger, the horses were taken down the path into the valley, where on having their bridles unbuckled they at once trotted off of their own accord towards the beaver meadow.

For the next six weeks a watch was kept regularly, but by only one man at a time. The horses were driven down to the valley every morning and brought up again before sunset. There was little hunting now, for they had as many skins as they could carry comfortably, and a supply of frozen meat sufficient to last well into the spring. In March the weather became perceptibly warmer, and the snow in the valley began to melt where the full power of the sun at mid-day fell upon it. Day by day the crashes of distant avalanches became more frequent, and they began to look forward to the time when they should be able to proceed on their journey.

One night towards the end of the month Tom was on watch, when he heard a rustling sound far up beyond the wall of cliff in front of him. It grew louder and rose to a roar, and then a white mass came pouring down over the cliff. Leaping from the wall he dashed down the path to the hut. It needed no word to call the men to their feet, for a deep rumbling filled the air and the rock seemed to quiver. The horses struggled to break their head-ropes and snorted with fright.

"Your backs to the wall!" Harry shouted, and as all leapt across at his order there was a crash overhead. The roof above them fell in and a mass of snow followed; a minute later a deep silence followed the deafening roar.

"Anyone hurt?" Harry shouted, and the replies came in muffled tones. Tom was jambed against the rock by the snow; he was nearest to the entrance, his uncle was next to him.

"I am all right at present, uncle, but I feel half smothered."

"All right, lad; I am pretty free, and I will soon clear you a bit."

The snow was pushed away from before Tom's face, his left arm was cleared, and then his uncle with a vigorous pull brought him back close to him. Here he was comparatively free, for a part of the roof had fallen close to the wall and had partially kept off the snow. Then Harry turned, and with some difficulty managed to get Jerry, who was next to him, freed from the snow.

"Now, Jerry, you work along that way and get at the others. Tom and I will try to burrow a way out."

It was a difficult task. Once through the passage in the log wall they pushed to the left towards the edge of the platform, taking it by turns to go first until the snow became lighter; then by a vigorous effort Harry rose to his feet, sending a mass of snow tumbling over the edge of the platform. As soon as Tom had joined him they set to work with hands and knives, and soon cleared a passage back to the entrance. Just as they did so Jerry crawled out from within.

"Are they all right, Jerry?"

"Yes, the others are coming; only about twelve feet of the roof caved in, and the two Indians and Sam soon got in among the horses. I had a lot of trouble with Ben; he had been knocked down, and I thought that he was gone when I got him out; but he is all right now, though he can't walk yet. The Indians and Sam have got the shovels, and are working away to clear a passage along by the wall; there is no getting Ben out through that rabbit-hole you have made."

"Thank God we are all right," Harry said; "it does not matter a bit, now that we know no one is badly hurt. We will begin at this end, but we sha'n't be able to do much until we get the shovels, the snow will fall in as fast as we get it out."

They soon found that they could do nothing in this way.

"We will try to tunnel again," Harry said, "it is not more than ten feet along. If we get in and hump ourselves, we shall soon get it big enough to drag Ben out, then the others can follow, and we can set to work with the spades to clear the place."

After a good deal of effort they succeeded in enlarging the hole, and then got Ben through it, one crawling backwards and pulling him while the other shoved at his legs.

"How do you feel, Ben?" Harry asked him when they laid him down outside.

"I dunno, Harry; I am afraid my back is badly hurt. I don't seem to feel my legs at all. I expect they are numbed from the weight of snow on them."

"I will crawl into our store and fetch out the keg."

"I reckon a drop of whisky will do me good if anything will," Ben said. "I was crushed pretty near flat, and if my head hadn't been against the wall I should have been smothered. Are you all right, young Tom?"

"Yes, I am not hurt at all. The snow squeezed me against the rock, and I could not move an inch, but uncle managed to get me a little free and then pulled me out of it."

Harry soon came back with the whisky, and was followed by the Indians and Sam, who found that they could do nothing with the snow, which fell in as fast as they cleared it. Their first step was to dig out a buffalo robe to wrap Ben in. His voice was stronger after he had drank some spirit, and he said that he felt better already. The others at once set to work with the shovels. They first cleared the platform along by the wall to the entrance, and then attacked the snow which filled the space between the two rock walls to the top.

Two of them worked with poles, loosening the snow above, and bringing it down in masses, while those with shovels cast it out on to the platform, going out occasionally to throw it over into the ravine. Hunting Dog made his way up over the snow to the top of the path, and called down to say that the fort was entirely swept away, and the chief told him to take up his post at once at the top of the path leading from below.

"He need not have told us that the fort was gone," Jerry grumbled. "If it had been made of cast-iron it would not have stood. The sooner we get our rifles out the better."

This could not be done for a time, for the loosening of the snow above had caused that below to slip, and the passage along by the wall had fallen in. The Indians, however, who had slept beyond the part filled by snow, had brought their pieces out with them, and could have defended the path alone. Several times those at work were buried by falls of snow, and had to be dragged out by the others. By daylight a considerable gap had been made in the snow, and they were able to get into the space beyond the fall. A number of logs, and a joint of meat that had been taken in the day before to thaw, were brought out, and a fire was soon blazing on the platform.

"I wonder why the snow did not shoot over as it did before?" Ben, who was now able to sit up, remarked.

"I reckon it is the fort did it," Harry said. "Of course it went, but it may have checked the rush of the snow for a moment, and those thick walls couldn't have got the same way on as the rest of the snow had."

"But the fort wasn't over the roof, uncle," Tom remarked.

"No, but it may have blocked the slide a little, and thrown some of it sideways; you see it is only this end that gave, while it shot right over the rest of the roof just as before."

"It is mighty lucky it did not break in all along," Sam Hicks said, "for it would have left us without horses if it had; and it would have been mighty rough on us to have lost them, just as we are going to want them, after our taking such pains with them all through the winter."

The chief took Hunting Dog's place as soon as he had finished his meal, and remained on watch all day. The men worked without ceasing, but it was not until sunset that the snow was completely cleared away.

"I reckon that we shall have to be starting before long," Jerry said as they sat round the fire in what they before called their store-room, having driven the horses as far in as possible to make room. "We could have held out before as long as we liked, but it is different now. The rock's cleared now for a hundred yards on each side of us, our fort's gone, and there is nothing to prevent the redskins from crawling close up the first dark night and making a rush. They are like enough to be sending scouts up the valley occasionally, and it won't be long before they hear that our fort has gone and the ground cleared of snow."

Leaping Horse nodded. "Two men must watch at top of path," he said.

"That is right enough, chief; but we know three of them came along the hills before, and it is like enough they will all come that way next time. They are safe to reckon that we shall hold the path."

"It is very unfortunate," Harry said; "in another month, we should have been able to travel. Anyhow, it seems to me that we have got to try now; it would never do to be caught in here by the red-skins. If we are to go, the sooner the better. All our meat has been carried over the edge. This is about the time we expected the Indians back, and it would be dangerous to scatter hunting. It is a big risk, too, taking the horses down to the meadow. No, I think we can manage to get over the pass. The snow gets softer every day when the sun is on it; but it freezes at night. We have the moon, too, so we shall be able to travel then; and even if we take three or four days getting over the divide we can sleep in the daytime."

"We must get a little more meat anyhow before we start," Jerry said. "This joint ain't more than enough for another square meal for us, and though I reckon the bighorns will be coming up to the hills again now, it won't do to risk that."

"We have the pack-horses, Jerry."

"Yes, I did not think of them. Horseflesh ain't so bad on a pinch; but I don't want to lose our skins."

"Better our skins than our hair," Sam laughed.

"That is right enough, Sam, but I would like to save both."

"Perhaps there is some of the meat under the snow," Tom suggested. "It hung near the wall, and the snow must have come straight down on it from above, as it did in here."

"That is so, Tom; we will have a look the first thing in the morning. I am so tired now I would not dig for it if it were gold."

As soon as it was light the next morning they began to clear the snow from the rest of the platform, and found to their great satisfaction four bear hams. The rest of the meat had been swept over the edge. The two Indians had not shared in the work, having started away early without saying where they were going. They returned to breakfast, each carrying a hind-quarter of venison, which they had found in the snow below.

It was agreed that a start should be made that evening. By sunset the horses were loaded, and half an hour later they moved away. Ben Gulston had to be assisted on to his horse, for although in other respects recovered, it was found that he had so severely strained his back across the loins that he was scarcely able to walk a foot. The moon was shining brightly, and as soon as they were on the snow they could see as plainly as if it were day. All were in high spirits that they had left the spot where for six months they had been prisoners. They had difficulty in restraining themselves from shouting and singing, but the chief before starting had warned them of the necessity for travelling silently. "Snow-slides very bad now; shouting might set them going."

The others looked rather incredulous, but Harry said:

"I know he is right, boys; for I have heard that in the Alps the guides always forbid talking when they are crossing places exposed to avalanches. At any rate we may as well give the snow as little chance as may be of going for us."

They travelled in Indian file from habit rather than necessity, for the snow was firm and hard, and the horses made their way over it without difficulty. There had been some debate as to the way they should go; but they determined at last to take the valley through the cliff wall, and to strike to the right whenever they came upon a likely spot for crossing. Two such attempts were made in vain, the upper slopes of snow being found too steep for the horses to climb; but at the third, which was made just after morning broke, they succeeded in getting up the hill to their right, and, after great difficulty, descended into another valley. This they had little doubt was the one that led to the pass, for from the hill they could see the great peak along whose foot the trail ran.

It was ten o'clock before they got down into the valley. The snow was beginning to be soft on the surface, and the horses were tired out. They therefore halted, made a fire with two or three of the logs they had brought with them for the purpose, boiled water and had breakfast, and gave half a bucket of gruel to each of the animals. Then wrapping themselves in their buffalo robes they lay down and slept till late in the afternoon. The journey was resumed at sunset, and before morning they had crossed the divide; and when the sun rose obtained a view over the country far to the south.



Chapter XIII

A Fresh Start


In the evening they camped on the banks of the Green River, here a stream of but small size, except when the melting snow swelled its waters into a torrent. At the spot where they halted a rivulet ran into the stream from a thickly-wooded little valley. It was frozen, but breaking the ice with their axes they found that water was flowing underneath. They had observed that there was a marked difference in temperature on this side of the mountains, upon which the strength of the southern sun had already in many places cleared away the snow.

"It is a comfort to be able to sit by a fire without the thought that red-skins maybe crawling up towards you," Sam Hicks said heartily, "and to sleep without being turned out to stand watch in the cold.

"You say the country ahead is bad, chief?"

"Bad lands both sides of Green River. Deep canons and bare rock."

"Well, we need not follow it; it don't make any difference to us whether we get down to the fort in a fortnight or six weeks."

"None at all," Harry said. "We have agreed that when summer fairly sets in we will try that place I hit on just as the Utes came down on us. It is the richest place I have ever seen, and if the Indians will but let us alone for a month we ought to bring back a big lot of dust; and if we do, we can sell our share in it for a big sum, and take down enough men to thrash the Utes out of their boots if they interfere with us. By our reckoning it is the end of March now, though we don't at all agree as to the day; but at any rate, it is there or thereabouts. That gives us a good six weeks, and if we start in the middle of May it will be time enough. So I propose that we strike more to the west, or to the east, whichever you think is the best, chief, and try and pick up a few more pelts so as to lay in a fresh stock of goods for our next trip."

"Bad hills everywhere," the chief said; "better go west, plenty of game there."

"No fear of Indians?"

"Indians there peaceable; make good trade with whites. Ten years ago fight, but lose many men and not get much plunder. Trappers here good friends with them. Traders bring up powder and cloth and beads. Indians no give trouble."

For the next six weeks, therefore, they travelled slowly, camping sometimes for two or three days on a stream, and then making a long march until they again came to water. The beaver traps had been left behind, but they were fortunate enough to come upon several beaver villages, and by exercising patience they were able to shoot a good many, getting in all some fifty skins. Tom used to go out in the evening and lie down to watch the beavers at work, but he would not take a gun.

"I could not shoot them down in cold blood, uncle. It is almost like looking at a village of human beings at work. One can shoot a man who is wanting to shoot you, without feeling much about it, but to fire at a man labouring in the fields is murder. Of course, if we wanted the flesh for food it would be different."

"I did not see you refuse that beaver-tail soup we had last night, Tom."

"No, and it was very good, uncle; but I would very much rather have gone without it than shoot the beaver the tail belonged to."

"Well, Tom, as we have all got guns, and as none of us have any scruples that way, there is no occasion whatever for you to draw a trigger on them. They take some shooting, for if you hit them in the water they sink directly, and you have got to kill them dead when they are on land, otherwise they make for the water at once and dive into their houses and die there."

They killed a good many other animals besides the beaver, including several wolverines, and by the time they got down to the fort in the middle of May they had had to give up riding and pack all the animals with the skins they had obtained. None of these were of any great value, but the whole brought enough to buy them a fresh outfit of clothes, a fresh stock of provisions and powder, and to give them a hundred dollars each.

The evening after the sale was effected Tom wrote home to his sisters, giving them a brief account of what had taken place since the letter he had posted to them before starting for the mountains, but saying very little of their adventures with Indians. "I am afraid you have been in a great fright about me," he said, "but you must never fidget when you don't get letters. We may often be for a long time away from any place where we can post them, or, as they call it here, mail them, though I certainly do not expect to be snowed up again for a whole winter. Owing to the Indians being hostile we did not do nearly so well as we expected, for we could not go down to hunt in the valleys. So after getting a fresh outfit for our next journey our share is only a hundred dollars each. I did not want to take a share, for of course I was not of much use to them, though I have learnt a lot in the last six months, and can shoot now as well as any of them, except the two Indians.

"However, they all insisted on my having the same share as the rest. Uncle wanted me to take his hundred dollars and send them home to you with mine, but I told him that I would not do so, for I know you have money enough to go on with, even if your school has turned out a failure. So I think it would be as well for us to keep our money in hand for the present. There is never any saying what may happen; we may lose our horses and kit, and it would be very awkward if we hadn't the money to replace them. As soon as we get more we will send it off, as you know I always intended to do. I have still some left of what I brought out with me, but that and the two hundred dollars would not be more than enough to buy an entirely new outfit for us both.

"I hope you got the five hundred dollars uncle sent you. He told me he sent it off from Denver, and it ought to have got home a few weeks after I left. It is horrid to think that there may be letters from you lying at Denver, but it serves me right for being so stupid as not to put in the short note I wrote you from here before I started, that you had better direct to me at Fort Bridger, as I shall almost be sure to come back to it before I go to Denver. I like uncle awfully; it seems to me that he is just what I expected he would be. I suppose they all put in equal shares, but the other men quite look upon him as their leader. Sometimes when he is talking to me he speaks just as people do at home. When he talks to the men he uses the same queer words they do. He is taller than father was, and more strongly built. What I like in him is, he is always the same. Sometimes the others used to get grumbly when we were shut up so long, but it never seemed to make any difference in him.

"I told you when I wrote from Denver that he was called 'Straight Harry,' because he always acted straightforwardly, and now I know him I can quite understand their calling him so. One feels somehow that one could rely upon his always being the same, whatever happened. Leaping Horse is a first-rate fellow, and so is Hunting Dog, though of course he does not know nearly as much as the chief does, but he knows a lot. The other three are all nice fellows, too, so we were a very jolly party. They know a tremendous lot of stories about hunting and red-skins and that sort of thing. Some of them would make all you girls' hairs stand on end. We are going to start off in two or three days to hunt up a gold mine uncle found three years ago. The Indians are going, too; they will hunt while the rest of us work. It will be quite a different journey to the last, and I expect it will be just as hot this time as it was cold last. We may be away for four months, and perhaps we may not come back till the snow sets in, so don't expect a letter till you see it."

This was by far the longest letter Tom had ever written, and it took him several hours to get through. He had the room to himself, for the others were talking over their adventures with old friends they had met at the fort. His uncle returned about ten o'clock.

"Where are the others?" Tom asked.

"In the saloon; but they are not drinking, that is, not drinking much. I told them that if they were to get drunk one of them would be sure to blab as to where we were going, or at any rate to say enough to excite suspicion among some of the old miners, that we knew of a good thing, and in that case we should get a lot of men following us, and it would interfere with our plans altogether. A party as small as ours may live for months without a red-skin happening to light on us, but if there were many more they would be certain to find us. There would be too much noise going on, too much shooting and driving backward and forward with food and necessaries. We want it kept dark till we thoroughly prove the place. So I made them all take an oath this morning that they would keep their heads cool, and I told them that if one of them got drunk, or said a word about our going after gold, I would not take him with us. I have given out that we are going on another hunting party, and of course our having brought in such a lot of skins will make them think that we have hit on a place where game is abundant and are going back there for the summer."

Two more pack-ponies had been added to the outfit. They might be away for five or six months, and were determined to take a good supply of flour this time, for all were tired of the diet of meat only, on which they had existed for the last six months, having devoted by far the greater part of the flour to the horses.

When they started next day they turned their faces north, as if they intended to hunt in the mountains where they had wintered. They made but a short march, camped on a stream, and long before daybreak started again, travelling for some hours to the west and then striking directly south. For two days they travelled rapidly, Tom going out every morning with the Indians hunting, while the others kept with the pack-horses. Ben had now quite recovered from the strain which had crippled him for the first three weeks of their march down to Fort Bridger. They were now fairly among the Ute hills, and at their third camping-place Harry said:

"We must do no more shooting now till we get to our valley. We have got a supply of deer-flesh for a week at least, and we must be careful in future. We heard at the fort that several miners have been cut off and killed by the Utes during the winter, and that they are more set than ever against white men entering their country. Everyone says those rascally Saints are at the bottom of it. We must hide our trail as much as we can. We are just at the edge of the bad lands, and will travel on them for the next two days. The red-skins don't go out that way much, there being nothing either to hunt or to plunder, so there is little fear of their coming on our trail on the bare rocks, especially as none of the horses are shod. On the third day we shall strike right up into their mountains."

"Are you sure that you will know the place again, Harry?"

"I reckon I could find it, but I should not feel quite certain about it if I had not the chief with me. There is no fear of his going wrong. When a red-skin has once been to a place he can find his way straight back to it again, even if he were a thousand miles off."

"You said when we were talking of it among the hills, uncle," Tom said, as he rode beside him the next morning, "that Leaping Horse and you each took two shares. I wonder what he will do with his if it turns out well."

"He won't do anything with it, Tom. The chief and I are like brothers. He does not want gold, he has no use for it; and, besides, as a rule, Indians never have anything to do with mining. He and Hunting Dog really come as hunters, and he has an understanding with me that when the expedition is over I shall pay them the same as they would earn from any English sportsman who might engage them as guides and hunters, and that I shall take their shares in whatever we may make. I need not say that if it turns out as well as we expect, the Indians will get as many blankets and as much ammunition as will last them their lives. You can't get a red-skin to dig. Even the chief, who has been with us for years, would consider it degrading to do work of that kind; and if you see an Indian at mining work, you may be sure that he is one of the fellows who has left his tribe and settled down to loaf and drink in the settlements, and is just doing a spell to get himself enough fire-water to make himself drunk on.

"The Seneca would be just as willing to come and hunt for us for nothing. He would get his food and the skins, which would pay for his tobacco and ammunition, and, occasionally, a new suit of leggings and hunting-shirt, made by an Indian woman, and with this he would be happy and contented. He doesn't mind taking money in return for skins, and he and Hunting Dog had their full share in the division at the fort. When I last talked to him about this business, he said, 'Leaping Horse doesn't want money. Of what use is it to him? He has got a bagful hidden at home, which he has been paid when he was scouting with the army, and for the skins of beasts he has shot. It is enough to buy many horses and blankets, and all that a chief can want. He is going with his friend to hunt, and to fight by his side if the Utes come; he wants none of the gold.' I explained the matter to him, and he said carelessly: 'Leaping Horse will take the two shares, but it will be for his brother, and that he may send it to the girls, the sisters of his friend Tom, of whom he spoke one night by the fire.'

"Hunting Dog is like Leaping Horse, he will take no gold. I have told the three men how matters stand. Of course, it makes no difference to them whether the Indians keep their share or hand it over to me, but at the same time I thought they ought to know how we stood. They said it was no business of theirs; that as I was the discoverer I had a right to sell the whole thing if I chose, and that they thought I had done the friendly thing by them in letting them in as partners. So you see it is all right and square. It is like enough, too, that we shall find some other lodes, and of course there they will come in on even terms with us. So they are pleased with the look-out, and know well enough it is likely to be the best strike they ever made in their lives."

They kept near the edge of the bad lands, as had they gone farther out they would have been obliged to make long detours to get round the head of the canyons made by rivers running down into the Colorado. They had filled their water-skins at the last stream where they had camped, and had taken with them enough dried wood for their fires. These they lit each night in a hollow, as from the upper slopes of the Ute hills a view could be obtained for a great distance over the flat rocky plateau. Tom was heartily glad when the two days' journey was over. Not a living creature had met their eyes; there was no grass on which beasts could exist, no earth in which prairie-dogs could burrow; even birds shunned the bare waste of rock.

"It is a desolate country," he said, as they sat round the fire; "it would be enough to give one the horrors if one were alone. It is hot now, and in the height of summer the heat and glare from the rock must be awful."

"It is, Tom; many and many a man has died of thirst in the bad lands. And what makes it more terrible is, that they can perhaps see water a thousand feet below them and yet die from the want of it."

"When we were camped on the Green River, uncle, you said that no one had ever followed it down."

"That is so, lad. One knows whereabouts it goes, as men driven by thirst have followed canyons down to it; and in some places it runs for many miles across low land before it plunges into another canyon. Then it cuts its way for two or three hundred miles, perhaps, through the hills, with walls two or three thousand feet high. No one, so far as I know, has gone down these big canyons, but it is certain there are rapids and whirlpools and rocks in them. Two or three parties have gone down through some of the shorter canyons to escape Indians, and most of them have never been heard of again, but one or two have got down some distance and managed to escape.

"No one has followed the course by land. They could not do so unless they carried all their provisions, and drink and food for their animals, and even then the expedition would take months, perhaps years to do; for every spring from the hills runs down a canyon to the river, sometimes fifty miles, sometimes a hundred long, and each time the party came upon one of these they would have to work up to the mountains to get round it. It is over a thousand miles in a straight line from the place where the Green River first enters a canyon to where the Colorado issues out on to the plains, and it may be quite twice that distance if one could follow all its windings. Some day when the country fills up attempts will no doubt be made to find out something about it; but it will be a big job whenever it is tried, and may cost a lot of lives before the canyons are all explored."

In the morning they started westward for the hills. The greatest care was observed on the march. They took advantage of every depression, and when obliged to pass over level ground moved at a distance apart, as a clump or string of moving animals would be made out at a distance from which a solitary one would be unnoticed. By noon they had left the bare rock, and were travelling up a valley clothed with grass and dotted with clumps of trees. In the first of these they halted.

"We will stay here until it begins to get dusk," Harry said, "and then move on as fast as we can go. If we don't lose our way we shall be there before morning."

There was no moon, but the stars shone brilliantly, and the mountains, with their summits still covered with snow, could be seen ahead. The chief went on in front. Sometimes they proceeded up valleys, sometimes crossed shoulders and spurs running down from the hills. They moved in Indian file, and at times proceeded at a brisk pace, at other times more slowly; but there was no halt or sign of hesitation on the part of their leader. At last, just as morning was breaking, the chief led them into a clump of trees. He moved a little distance in, and then reined in his horse and dismounted.

"Does my brother remember that?" he said to Harry, pointing to something on the ground.

"Jee-hoshaphat!" Harry exclaimed; "if that ain't my old pack-saddle! This is the very spot where we camped, boys. Well, chief, you are certainly a wonder. I doubt whether I could have found my way here in the daytime. Half a dozen times to-night it seemed to me that you were going in the wrong direction altogether, and yet you bring us as straight to the spot as if all the time you had been following a main road."

"Bully for the chief!" Jerry said warmly. "I am blamed if that ain't a fust-rate piece of tracking. Waal, here we are at our journey's end. Can we make a fire?"

"Make small fire, but must put screen round."

"Very well; we will leave the fire to you, and we will unpack the critters. There is a bundle of dry wood left, so we sha'n't have the bother of looking for it now."

Before lighting the fire the two Indians stretched some blankets some six feet above it, to prevent the light falling upon the foliage; then by their directions Sam cut a dozen short poles, and fixed them in a circle round the fire. Half a dozen more blankets were fastened to the poles, forming a wall round the fire, which the chief then lighted. The nights were, at that height above the sea-level, cool enough to make the heat pleasant, and there was just room for the seven men to sit between the blanket wall and the fire.

"Do you mean this to be our permanent camp, Harry?"

"What do you think, Leaping Horse?"

"Wait till me go up gold valley," the Seneca said. "If can't find a good place there better stay here; if go backwards and forwards every day make trail Indian squaw would notice."

"That is so, chief; but by what Harry says it is a mere gully, and the horses will have to range."

"Horses must feed," the chief said. "If we find a place up there, make hut, take saddles and outfit there. Tie up horses here, and let them loose to feed at night. No regular track then. But talk after sleep."

"It will be broad daylight by the time that we have finished our meal," Jerry said, "and I reckon none of us will be wanting to sleep till we have got a sight of Harry's bonanza."

As soon as they had finished their meal, the mining implements, which had been carefully hidden among the rest of their goods when they started from the fort, were brought out. Among these were a dozen light pick-heads and half a dozen handles, as many shovels, a flat iron plate for crushing ore upon, and a short hammer, with a face six inches in diameter, as a pounder; also a supply of long nails, to be used in fastening together troughs, cradles, or any other woodwork that might be required; three or four deep tin dishes, a bottle of mercury, a saw, and a few other tools. Three of the pick-heads were now fastened to their handles, and taking these, a couple of shovels, two of the tin basins, a sledge hammer, and some steel wedges, and the peculiar wooden platter, in shape somewhat resembling a small shield with an indentation in the middle, called a vanner, and universally used by prospectors, the five whites and Leaping Horse started from their camp for the spot where Harry had found the lode. It lay about a mile up a narrow valley, running into the larger one. A rivulet trickled down its centre.

"I reckoned on that," Harry said. "Of course it was frozen when we were here, but I could see that there was water in summer. You see this hollow runs right up into that wood, and there is sure to be water in it for the next three months anyhow."

They had gone but a short distance up when they stopped at a spot where the streamlet widened out into a pool.

"Let us try here," Jerry said, "and see if there is any sign."

Half a shovelful of sand was placed in the vanner with a small quantity of water, and while Harry and Sam proceeded to wash some gravel roughly in the pans, Tom stood watching Jerry's operations. He gave a gentle motion to the vanner that caused its contents to revolve, the coarser particles being thrown towards the edges while the finer remained in the centre. The water was poured away and the rougher particles of gravel and sand swept off by the hand; fresh water was then added, and the process repeated again and again, until at last no more than a spoonful of fine sand remained in the centre. A sideway action of the vanner caused this to slope gradually down towards the edge. At the very bottom three tiny bits of yellow metal were seen. They were no bigger than pins' heads. It seemed to Tom that this was a miserably small return for five minutes' labour, but the others seemed well satisfied, and were still more pleased when, on the two pans being cleaned out, several little pieces of gold were found, one of which was nearly as large as a small pea.

"That is good enough," Ben said; "it will run a lot richer when we get down on to the rock."

At two other places on their way up they tried the experiments, with increasingly good results.

"There is some tall work to be done here with washing," Harry said. "Now come on to the vein. I only saw one of them, but there must be a lot more or you would not find so much metal in the sand. However, the one I saw is good enough for anything." They went on again to a point where the rock cropped boldly out on both sides of the valley; Harry led them a few paces up the side, and pointed to some white patches in the rock. "That is where I chipped it off, lads, three years ago."

The face of the lode, discoloured by age and weather, differed but little from the rock surrounding it; but where it had been broken off it was a whitish yellow, thickly studded with little bits of dull yellow metal sticking out of it. Tom was not greatly impressed; but he saw from the faces of his companions that they were at once surprised and delighted.

"By gosh, Harry, you have done it this time!" Sam Hicks exclaimed. "You have struck it rich, and no mistake. I thought from the way you talked of it it must be something out of the way, but I am blamed if I thought it was like this."

"Stand back, you chaps," Jerry said, lifting the heavy sledge hammer; "let me get a drive at it. Here is a crack. Put one of them wedges in, Ben."

The wedge was placed in the fissure, and Ben held it while Jerry gave a few light blows to get it firmly fixed.

"That will do, Ben; take away your hand and let me drive at it." Swinging the hammer round his head Jerry brought it down with tremendous force on the head of the wedge. Again and again the heavy hammer rose and fell, with the accuracy of a machine, upon the right spot, until the wedge, which was nine inches long, was buried in the crevice.

"Now another one, Ben. Give me a longer one this time."

This time Ben held the wedge until it was half buried, having perfect confidence in Jerry's skill. It was not until the fourth wedge had been driven in that a fragment of rock weighing four or five hundredweight suddenly broke out from the face. All bent eagerly over it, and the miners gave a shout of joy. The inner surface, which was white, but slightly stained with yellow, with blurs of slate colour here and there, was thickly studded with gold. It stuck out above the surface in thin, leafy plates with ragged edges, with here and there larger spongy masses.

"I reckon that is good enough," Jerry said, wiping the sweat from his forehead. "Ef there is but enough of it, it is the biggest thing that ever was struck. There ain't no saying how rich it is, but I will bet my boots it's over five hundred ounces to the ton. It ain't in nature that it is going to run far like that, but it is good enough for anything. Well, what is the next thing, Harry?"

"We will break it up," Harry said, "and carry it down with us to the camp. If the Utes came down on us tomorrow, and we could get off with it, that would be plenty to show if we want to make a sale."

It took them a long time to break up the rock, for the quartz was hard, and was so bound together by the leafy gold running through it that each of the four men had several spells with the hammer before it was broken up into fragments weighing some twenty pounds apiece. As soon as this was done the men collected earth, filled up the hole in the face of the rock, and planted several large tufts of grass in it, and poured four or five tins of water over them; then they smeared with mud the patches where Harry had before broken pieces off.

"What is all that for, Jerry?" Tom asked.

"It is to hide up the traces, lad. We may have to bolt away from here to-morrow morning for anything we know, and before we come back again someone else may come along, and though we shall locate our claims at the mining register, there would be a lot of trouble if anyone else had taken possession, and was working the vein when we got back."

"It is not likely that anyone else would come along here, Jerry."

"Waal, I reckon that is so, but one ain't going to trust to chance when one has struck on such a place as this."

The Seneca had been the only unmoved person in the party.

"What do you think of that, chief?" Harry asked him.

"If my white brother is pleased Leaping Horse is glad," he replied. "But the Indian does not care for gold. What can he do with it? He has a good gun, he does not want twenty. He does not want many hunting suits. If he were to buy as many horses as would fill the valley he could not ride them all, and he would soon tire of sitting in his lodge and being waited upon by many wives. He has enough for his needs now. When he is old it will be time to rest."

"Well, that is philosophy, chief, and I don't say you are wrong from your way of looking at it. But that gold means a lot to us. It means going home to our people. It means living in comfort for the rest of our lives. It means making our friends happy."

"Leaping Horse is glad," the chief said gravely. "But he cannot forget that to him it means that the white brother, with whom he has so long hunted and camped and fought bad Indians, will go away across the great salt water, and Leaping Horse will see him no more."

"That is so, chief," Harry said, grasping the Indian's hand warmly, "and I was a selfish brute not to think of it before. There is one thing I will promise you. Every year or so I will come out here and do a couple of months' hunting with you. The journey is long, but it is quickly made now, and I know that after knocking about for twenty years I shall never be content if I don't take a run out on the plains for a bit every summer. I will give you my word, Leaping Horse, that as long as I have health and strength I will come out regularly, and that you shall see your white brother's friendship is as strong as your own."

The Seneca's grave face lit up with pleasure. "My white brother is very good," he said. "He has taken away the thorn out of the heart of Leaping Horse. His Indian brother is all glad now."

The quartz was placed in sacks they had brought with them to carry down samples, and they at once returned to the camp, where, after smoking a pipe, they lay down to sleep; but it was some time before all went off, so excited were they at the thought of the fortune that seemed before them.

In the afternoon they took one of the pieces of stone, weighing, by a spring balance, twenty pounds, and with the flat plate and the crushing-hammer went to the stream. The rock was first broken with the sledge into pieces the size of a walnut. These were pulverized on the iron plate and the result carefully washed, and when the work was finished the gold was weighed in the miner's scales, and turned the four-ounce weight.

"That is nearly five hundred ounces to the ton," Harry said, "but of course it is not going to run like that. I reckon it is a rich pocket; there may be a ton of the stuff, and there may be fifty. Now let's go up and have a quiet look for the lode, and see if we can trace it. We ought to see it on the rock the other side."

A careful search showed them the quartz vein on the face of the rock some fifty feet higher up the valley, and this showed them the direction of the run of the lode. It was here, however, only six inches wide instead of being two feet, as at the spot where it was first found. Some pieces were broken off: there was gold embedded in it, but it was evident that it was nothing like so rich as on the other side. A piece of ten pounds was pounded up, it returned only a little over a pennyweight of gold.

"About twelve ounces to the ton," Harry said. "Not bad, but a mighty falling off from the other. To-morrow morning we will follow the lode on the other side and see if we can strike an outcrop."

The next day they found the lode cropping up through the rock some thirty yards from their great find. It was about nine inches wide. They dug it out with their picks to a depth of two feet so as to get a fair sample. This when crushed gave a return at the rate of twenty ounces.

"That is rich enough again, and would pay splendidly if worked by machinery. Of course the question is, how far it holds on as rich as we found it at the face, and how it keeps on in depth? But that is just what we can't find. We want drills and powder, as picks are no sort of good on this hard quartz. Supposing it goes off gradually from the face to this point, there would be millions of dollars in it, even supposing it pinched in below, which there is no reason in the world to suppose. We may as well take a few of these chunks of rock, they will show that the gold holds fairly a good way back anyhow."

A few pieces were put aside and the rest thrown into the hole again, which was stamped down and filled up with dust. The party then went back to dinner, and a consultation was held as to what was next to be done.

"Of course we must stake out our claims at once," Harry said. "In the first place there are our own eight claims -- two for each of the discoverers and one each for the others. Hunting Dog will not have a share, but will be paid the regular rate as a hunter. Then we will take twenty claims in the names of men we know. They wouldn't hold water if it were a well-known place, and everyone scrambling to get a claim on the lode; but as there is no one to cut in, and no one will know the place till we have sold it and a company sends up to take possession and work it, it ain't likely to be disputed. The question is, What shall we do now? Shall we make back to the settlements, or try washing a bit?"

"Try washing, I should say," Jerry said. "You may be some time before you can sell the place. Anyone buying will know that they will have to send up a force big enough to fight the Utes, and besides they will want someone to come up here to examine it before they close the bargain. I vote we stick here and work the gravel for a bit so as to take enough away to keep us till next spring. I reckon we shall find plenty of stuff in it as we go down, and if that is so we can't do better than stick to it as long as there is water in the creek."

"I agree with you there, Jerry; but it will never do to risk losing those first samples. I am ready to stay here through the summer, but I vote we sew them up in deer-hide, and put two or three thicknesses of skin on them so as to prevent accidents. Two of us had best go with them to the fort and ask the Major to let us stow them away in his magazine, then, if we have to bolt, we sha'n't be weighted down with them. Besides, we might not have time for packing them on the horses, and altogether it would be best to get them away at once, then come what might we should have proofs of the value of the mine."

This proposal was cordially agreed to, and it was settled that on the following morning Harry himself should, with Hunting Dog and two pack-horses, start for the fort, following the same route they came, while the rest should set to work to construct a cradle, and troughs for leading the water to it.



Chapter XIV

An Indian Attack


A couple of trees were felled in the middle of the clump in which they were still encamped. They were first roughly squared and then sawn into planks, the three men taking it by turns to use the saw. The question of shifting the camp up to the spot where they intended to work was discussed the night before Harry started, but it was agreed at last that it would be better to remain where they were.

"If Utes come, sure to find traces," the chief said. "Many horses in valley make tracks as plain as noonday. Gold valley bad place for fight."

"That is so," Jerry agreed. "We should not have a show there. Even if we made a log-house, and it would be a dog-goned trouble to carry up the logs, -- we might be shut up in it, and the red-skins would only have to lie round and shoot us down if we came out. I reckon we had best stay here after all, Harry. We could keep them outside the range of our rifles anyhow by day."

"I don't see that that would be much good to us, Jerry; for if they came by day they would not find us here. Still I don't know that it ain't best for us to stay here; it would give us a lot of trouble to build a place. I reckon two of us had better stay here all the day with the horses. If the red-skins come, they can fire a couple of shots, and we shall hear them up at the washing-place. The red-skins would be safe to draw off for a bit to talk it over before they attacked, as they would not know how many there were among the trees. That would give the rest time to come down."

It took three days' hard work to saw the planks and make the cradle, and troughs sufficiently long to lead the water down into it from the stream higher up. These were roughly but strongly made, the joints being smeared with clay to prevent the water from running through. A dam was then made to keep back the water above the spot where they intended to begin, which was about fifty yards below the quartz vein, and from this dam the trough was taken along on strong trestles to the cradle.

The horses were brought into the camp at daybreak every morning and tied up to the trees, and were let out again at nightfall. Tom remained in camp, the chief being with him. The latter, however, was, during the time Harry was away, twice absent for a day on hunting excursions lower down the valley, which was there thickly wooded. The first time, he returned with the hams and a considerable portion of the rest of the flesh of a bear. The second time, he brought up the carcass of a deer.

"How far does the valley run?" Tom asked.

"Valley last ten miles. Sides get steep and high, then canyon begin."

"That will run right down to the Colorado?"

The chief nodded. "Leaping Horse go no farther. Canyon must go down to the river."

"How far is it before the sides of the valley get too steep to climb?"

"Two miles from here. Men could climb another mile or two, horses not."

"Is there much game down there, chief?"

The Seneca nodded.

"That is a comfort, we sha'n't be likely to run out of fresh meat."

The chief was very careful in choosing the wood for the fire, so that in the daytime no smoke should be seen rising from the trees. When the dead wood in the clump of trees was exhausted he rode down the valley each day, and returned in an hour with a large faggot fastened behind him on the horse. He always started before daybreak, so as to reduce the risk of being seen from the hills. On the sixth day the men began their work at the gravel. The bottle of mercury was emptied into the cradle, the bottom of which had been made with the greatest care, so as to prevent any loss from leakage. Two of the men brought up the gravel in buckets and pans, until the cradle was half full. Then water was let in, and the third man rocked the machine and kept on removing the coarse stuff that worked up to the top, while the others continued bringing up fresh gravel.

"Well, what luck?" Tom asked, when they returned in the evening.

"We have not cleaned up yet; we shall let it run for three or four days before we do. We are only on the surface yet, and the stuff wouldn't pay for the trouble of washing out."

On the eighth day after their departure Harry and Hunting Dog returned.

"Well, boys, it is all stowed away safely," he said. "I know the Major well, and he let me have a big chest, which he locked up, after I had put the bags in, and had it stowed away in the magazine; so there is no fear of its being touched. Any signs of the red-skins?"

"Nary a sign. We have none of us been up the valley beyond this, so that unless they come right down here, they would find no trail. The horses are always driven down the valley at night."

"How is the work going on, Jerry?"

"We began washing two days ago; to-morrow night we shall clean up. We all think it is going to turn out pretty good, for we have seen gold in the sand several times as we have carried it up in the pails."

The next day Tom went up with the others, the Indians remaining in camp. Two men now worked at the cradle, while the other three brought up the sand and gravel. Towards evening they began the work of cleaning up. No more stuff was brought up to the machine, but the water was still run into it. As fast as the shaking brought the rough gravel to the top it was removed, until only a foot of sand remained at the bottom. The water was now stopped and the sand dug out, and carefully washed in the pans by hand. At the bottom of each pan there remained after all the sand had been removed a certain amount of gold-dust, the quantity increasing as the bottom was approached. The last two panfuls contained a considerable amount.

"It does not look much," Tom said when the whole was collected together.

"It is heavy stuff, lad," Harry replied. "What do you think there is, Jerry? About twelve ounces, I should fancy."

"All that, Harry; nigher fourteen, I should think."

The pan was now put at the bottom of the cradle, a plug pulled out, and the quicksilver run into it. A portion of this was poured on wash-leather, the ends of which were held up by the men so as to form a bag. Harry took the leather, and holding it over another pan twisted it round and round. As the pressure on the quicksilver increased it ran through the pores of the leather in tiny streams, until at last a lump of pasty metal remained. This was squeezed again and again, until not a single globule of quicksilver passed through the leather. The ball, which was of the consistency of half-dried mortar was then taken out, and the process repeated again and again until the whole of the quicksilver had been passed through the leather. Six lumps of amalgam about the size of small hens' eggs remained.

"Is that good, uncle?" Tom asked.

"Very fair, lad; wonderfully good indeed, considering we have not got down far yet. I should say we shall get a pound and a half of gold out of it."

"But how does the gold get into it, uncle?"

"There is what is called an affinity between quicksilver and gold. The moment gold touches quicksilver it is absorbed by it, just as a drop of water is taken up by a lump of salt. It thickens the quicksilver, and as it is squeezed through the leather the quicksilver is as it were strained out, and what remains behind becomes thicker and thicker, until, as you see, it is almost solid. It is no good to use more pressure, for if you do a certain amount of the gold would be squeezed through the leather. You see, as the stuff in the cradle is shaken, the gold being heavier than the sand finds its way down to the bottom, and every particle that comes in contact with the quicksilver is swallowed up by it."

"And how do you get the quicksilver out of those lumps?"

"We put them in one of those clay crucibles you saw, with a pinch of borax, cover them up, and put them in a heap of glowing embers. That evaporates the quicksilver, and leaves the gold behind in the shape of a button." This was done that evening, and when the buttons were placed in the scales they just turned the two-pound weight.

"Well, boys, that is good enough for anything," Harry said. "That, with the dust, makes a pound a day, which is as good as the very best stuff in the early days of California."

They worked steadily for the next seven weeks. Contrary to their expectations the gravel was but little richer lower down than they had found it at the end of the first wash-up, but continued about equally good, and the result averaged about a pound weight of gold a day. This was put into little bags of deer-skin, each containing five pounds' weight, and these bags were distributed among the saddle-bags, so that in case of sudden disturbance there would be no risk of their being left behind. The Indians took it by turns to hunt; at other times they remained on guard in camp, Tom only staying when one of them was away. One day when the mining party stopped work, and sat down to eat some bread and cold meat, -- which they had from the first brought up, so as to save them the loss of time entailed by going to the camp and back, -- the report of a gun came upon their ears. All started to their feet and seized their rifles, and then stood listening intently. A minute later two more shots were heard at close intervals.

"Red-skins for sure!" Jerry exclaimed. "I thought as how our luck were too good to last." They started at a run down the little valley, and only paused when they reached its mouth. Harry then advanced cautiously until he could obtain a view of the main valley. He paused for a minute and then rejoined his companions.

"There are fifty of them," he said, "if there is one. They are Utes in their war-paint. They are a bit up the valley. I think if we make a rush we can get to the trees before they can cut us off."

"We must try anyhow," Sam Hicks said, "else they will get the two Indians and our horses and saddles and all. Just let us get breath for a moment, and then we will start."

"Keep close together as you run," Harry said, "and then if they do come up we can get back to back and make a fight of it." After a short pause they started. They had not gone twenty yards when a loud yell proclaimed that the Indians had seen them. They had, however, but three hundred yards to run, while the Utes were double that distance from the clump.

When the miners were within fifty yards of the trees two rifle-shots rang out, and two of the Utes, who were somewhat ahead of the rest; fell from their horses, while the rest swerved off, seeing that there was no hope of cutting the party off. A few more yards and the miners were among the trees.

"So the Utes have found us out, chief," Harry said as he joined Leaping Horse, who had just reloaded his ride.

"Must have tracked us. They are a war-party," the Seneca replied. "Hunter must have found tracks and taken news back to the villages."

"Well, we have got to fight for it, that is clear enough," Harry said. "Anyhow, now they see there are seven of us they are not likely to attack until it gets dark, so we have time to think over what had best be done. We had just begun our meal when we heard your shot, and the best thing we can do is to have a good feed at once. We may be too busy later on."

The chief said a word to the young Indian, and, leaving him on the watch, accompanied the others to the fire. They had scarcely sat down when Hunting Dog came up.

"More Utes," he said briefly, pointing across the valley.

They at once went to the outer line of trees. On the brow of the rise opposite were a party of horsemen between twenty and thirty strong.

"That shows they have learnt all about our position," Harry said. "Those fellows have been lying in wait somewhere over the hill to cut us off if we took to our horses on seeing the main body. Let us have a look the other side."

Crossing the clump of trees, they saw on the brow there another party of Utes.

"I reckon they must have crossed that valley we were working in just after we got through," Jerry said. "It is mighty lucky they did not come down on us while we were washing, for they could have wiped us all out before we had time to get hold of our guns. Well, Harry, we are in a pretty tight fix, with fifty of them up the valley and five-and-twenty or so on each side of us. We shall have to be dog-goned smart if we are to get out of this scrape."

"Hand me your rifle, Tom," his uncle said, "it carries farther than mine, and I will give those fellows a hint that they had best move off a bit."

Steadying his piece against a tree, he took a careful aim and fired. One of the Indians swerved in his saddle, and then fell forward on the neck of his horse, which turned and galloped off with the rest.

"Now we will have our meal and take council, chief," Harry said as he turned away. "If we have got to fight there is no occasion to fight hungry."

The fire was made up; there was no need to be careful now. Strips of deer's flesh were hung over it, and the meal was soon ready. But little was said while it was being eaten, then they all lighted their pipes and each put a pannikin of hot tea beside him.

"Now, chief," Harry said, "have you arrived at any way out of this? It is worse than it was the last time we got caught in this valley."

The chief shook his head. "No good fight here," he said; "when night come they creep up all round."

"Yes, I see that we have got to bolt, but the question is, how? If we were to ride they would ride us down, that is certain. Jerry and Tom might possibly get away, though that ain't likely. Their critters are good, but nothing downright extraordinary, and the chances are that some of the Utes have got faster horses than theirs. As for the rest of us, they would have us before we had ridden an hour."

"That ain't to be thought of," Jerry said. "It seems to me our best chance would be to leave the critters behind, and to crawl out the moment it gets dark, and try and get beyond them."

"They will close in as soon as it gets dark, Jerry. They will know well enough that that is the time we shall be moving. I reckon we should not have a chance worth a cent of getting through. What do you say, chief?"

Leaping Horse nodded in assent.

"Well, then," Sam Hicks said, "I vote we mount our horses and go right at them. I would rather do that and get rubbed out in a fair fight than lie here until they crawl up and finish us."

No one answered, and for some minutes they smoked on without a word being spoken, then Harry said:

"There is only one chance for us that I can see, and that is to mount now and to ride right down the valley. The chief says that in some places it is not more than fifty yards wide, with steep cliffs on each side, and we could make a much better fight there, for they could only attack us in front. There would be nothing for them then but to dismount and close in upon us from tree to tree, and we could make a running fight of it until we come to the mouth of the canyon. There must be places there, that we ought to be able to hold with our seven rifles against the lot of them."

"Bully for you, Harry! I reckon that would give us a chance anyhow. That is, if we ain't cut off before we get to the wood."

"Let us have a look round and see what they are doing," Harry said. "Ah! here comes Hunting Dog. He will tell us all about it."

"Utes on hills all gone up and joined the others," the young Indian said as he came up.

"It could not be better news!" Harry exclaimed. "I reckon they have moved away to tempt us to make a start for the fort, for they know if we go that way they will have us all, sure. They have not reckoned on our riding down the valley, for they will be sure we must have found out long ago that there ain't any way out of it. Well, we had best lose no time. There is some meat ready, Hunting Dog, and you had best fill up while we get ready for a start."

The blankets and buffalo rugs were wrapped up and strapped behind the saddles, as soon as these were placed behind the horses. They had only a small quantity of meat left, as the chief was going out hunting the next morning, but they fastened this, and eighty pounds of flour that still remained, on to one of the pack-horses. They filled their powder-horns from the keg, and each put three or four dozen bullets into his holsters, together with all the cartridges for their pistols; the rest of the ammunition was packed on another horse. When all was completed they mounted.

"We may get a couple of hundred yards more start before we are seen," Harry said. "Anyhow, we have got five hundred yards, and may reckon on making the two miles to where the valley narrows before they catch us."

The instant, however, they emerged from the wood, two loud yells were heard from Indians who had been left lying down on watch at the top of the slopes on either side. Sam, who was the worst shot of the party, had volunteered to lead the string of pack-horses, while Ben was ready to urge them on behind.

"You may want to stop some of the leading varmint, and I should not be much good at that game, so I will keep straight on without paying any attention to them."

A loud answering yell rose from the Indians up the valley.

"We shall gain fifty yards or so before they are fairly in the saddle," Harry said as they went off at the top of their speed, the horses seeming to know that the loud war-cry boded danger. They had gone half a mile before they looked round. The Indians were riding in a confused mass, and were some distance past the grove the miners had left, but they still appeared as far behind as they had been when they started. Another mile and the mass had broken up; the best-mounted Indians had left the rest some distance behind, and considerably decreased the gap between them and the fugitives. Another five minutes and the latter reached the wood, that began just where the valley narrowed and the cliffs rose almost perpendicularly on each side. As soon as they did so they leapt from their horses, and each posting himself behind a tree opened fire at their pursuers, the nearest of whom were but two hundred yards away. Four fell to the first seven shots; the others turned and galloped back to the main body, who halted at once.

"They won't try a charge," Harry said; "it isn't in Indian nature to come across the open with the muzzles of seven rifles pointed at them. They will palaver now; they know they have got us in a trap, and they will wait till night. Now, chief, I reckon that you and I and Hunting Dog had best stay here, so that if they try, as they are pretty sure to do, to find out whether we are here still, we can give them a hint to keep off. The other four had better ride straight down the canyon, and go on for a bit, to find out the best place for making a stand, and as soon as it is dark we will go forward and join them. There will be no occasion for us to hurry. I reckon the skunks will crawl up here soon after it is dark; but they won't go much farther, for we might hide up somewhere and they might miss us. In the morning they will come down on foot, sheltering behind the trees as much as they can, till at last they locate us."

The chief nodded his approval of the plan, and Tom and the three miners at once started, taking the pack-horses with them. On the way down they came upon a bear. Ben was about to fire, but Jerry said: "Best leave him alone, Ben; we are only three miles down, and these cliffs would echo the sound and the red-skins would hear it and know that some of us had gone down the valley, and might make a rush at once." In an hour and a half they came down to a spot where the valley, after widening out a good bit, suddenly terminated, and the stream entered a deep canyon in the face of the wall of rock that closed it in.

"I reckon all this part of the valley was a lake once," Jerry said. "When it got pretty well full it began to run over where this canyon is and gradually cut its way out down to the Colorado. I wonder how far it is to the river."

They had gone but a hundred yards down the canyon when they came to a place where a recent fall of rocks blocked it up. Through these the stream, which was but a small one, made its way.

"There is a grist of water comes down here when the snow melts in the spring," Ben remarked. "You can see that the rocks are worn fifty feet up. Waal, I reckon this place is good enough for us, Jerry."

"I reckon so, too," the latter agreed. "It will be a job to get our horses over; but we have got to do it anyhow, if we have to carry them." The animals, however, managed to scramble up the rocks that filled the canyon to the height of some thirty feet. The distance between the rock walls was not more than this in width.

"We could hold this place for a year," Ben said, "if they didn't take to chucking rocks down from above."

"Yes, that is the only danger," Jerry agreed; "but the betting is they could not get nigh enough to the edge to look down. Still, they might do it if the ground is level above; anyhow, we should not show much at this depth, for it is pretty dark down here, and the rocks must be seven or eight hundred feet high."

It was, indeed, but a narrow strip of sky that they saw as they looked up, and although still broad daylight in the valley they had left, it was almost dark at the bottom of the deep gorge, and became pitch dark as soon as the light above faded.

"The first job in the morning," Jerry said, "will be to explore this place down below. I expect there are places where it widens out. If it does, and there are trees and anything like grass, the horses can get a bite of food; if not, they will mighty soon go under, that is if we don't come upon any game, for if we don't we sha'n't be able to spare them flour."

"It is almost a pity we did not leave them in the valley to take their chance," Tom said.

"Don't you make any mistake," Jerry said. "In the first place they may come in useful to us yet, and even if we never get astride of them again they may come in mighty handy for food. I don't say as we mayn't get a bear if there are openings in the canyon, or terraces where they can come down, but if there ain't it is just horse-meat we have got to depend on. Look here, boys, it is 'tarnal dark here; I can't see my own hand. I vote we get a light. There is a lot of drift-wood jammed in among the stones where we climbed up, that will do to start a fire, and I saw a lot more just at the mouth of this gap. We know the red-skins ain't near yet, so I vote we grope our way up and bring some down. It will be a first-rate thing, too, to make a bit of fire half-way between here and the mouth; that would put a stop to their crawling up, as they are like enough to try to do, to make out whereabouts we are. Of course we shall have to damp our own fire down if they come, else we should show up agin the light if we went up on the rock."

The others agreed at once, for it was dull work sitting there in the black darkness. All had matches, and a piece of dry fir was soon found. This was lighted, and served as a torch with which to climb over the rocks. Jammed in between these on the upper side was a large quantity of drift-wood. This was pulled out, made into bundles, and carried over the rock barrier, and a fire was soon blazing there. Then taking a brand and two axes they went up to the mouth of the gorge, cut up the arms of some trees that had been brought down by the last floods and left there as the water sank. The greater part of these were taken down to their camping-place; the rest, with plenty of small wood to light them, were piled halfway between the barrier and the mouth of the canyon, and were soon blazing brightly.

They were returning to their camping-place, when Ben exclaimed that he heard the sound of horses' hoofs. All stopped to listen.

"There are not more than three of them," Ben said, "and they are coming along at a canter. I don't expect we shall hear anything of the red-skins until tomorrow morning."

They heard the horses enter the canyon, then Jerry shouted: "Are you all right, Harry?"

"Yes; the red-skins were all quiet when we came away. Why, where are you?" he shouted again when he came up to the fire.

"A hundred yards farther on I will show you a light."

Two or three blazing brands were brought up. Harry and the Indians had dismounted at the first fire, and now led their horses up to the stone barrier.

"What on arth have you lit that other fire for, Jerry?" Harry asked as he stopped at the foot of the barrier.

"Because we shall sleep a dog-goned sight better with it there. As like as not they may send on two or three young warriors to scout. It is as black as a wolf's mouth, and we might have sat listening all night, and then should not have heard them. But with that fire there they dare not come on, for they would know they could not pass it without getting a bullet in them."

"Well, it is a very good idea, Jerry; I could not think what was up when I got there and did not see anybody. I see you have another fire over the other side. I could make it out clear enough as we came on."

"It will burn down a bit presently," Jerry said. "I should not try to get those horses up here now, Harry. It was a bad place to come up in daylight, and like enough they would break their legs if they tried it now. They will do just as well there as they would on this side, and you can get them over as soon as the day breaks."

"I would rather get them over, Jerry; but I see it is a pretty rough place."

Leaving the horses, Harry and the Indians climbed over the barrier, and were soon seated with the others round their fire, over which the meat was already frizzling.

"So the Indians kept quiet all the afternoon, Harry?"

"As quiet as is their nature. Two or three times some of them rode down, and galloped backwards and forwards in front of us to make out if we were there. Each time we let them fool about for a good long spell, and then when they got a bit careless sent them a ball or two to let them know we were still there. Hunting Dog went with the three horses half a mile down the valley soon after you had gone, so that they might not hear us ride off.

"As soon as it began to get dusk we started. We had to come pretty slow, for it got so dark under the trees we could not make out the trunks, and had to let the horses pick their own way. But we knew there was no hurry, for they would not follow till morning, though of course their scouts would creep up as soon as it was dark, and wouldn't be long before they found out that we had left."

"I reckon they will all come and camp in the wood and wait for daylight before they move, though I don't say two or three scouts may not crawl down to try and find out where we are. They will move pretty slow, for they will have to pick their way, and will know well enough that if a twig cracks it will bring bullets among them. I reckon they won't get here under four or five hours. It is sartin they won't try to pass that fire above. As soon as they see us they will take word back to the others, and we shall have the whole lot down here by morning."

"We shall have to get the horses over, the first thing. Two of us had best go down, as soon as it is light enough to ride without risking our necks, to see what the canyon is like below."

"Yes, that is most important, Jerry; there may be some break where the red-skins could get down, and so catch us between two fires."

"I don't care a red cent for the Utes," Jerry said. "We can lick them out of their boots in this canyon. What we have been thinking of, is whether there is some place where the horses can get enough to keep them alive while we are shut up here. If there is game, so much the better; if there ain't, we have got to take to horseflesh."

"How long do you suppose that the Indians are likely to wait when they find that they can't get at us?" Tom asked.

"There ain't no sort of saying," his uncle replied. "I reckon no one ever found out yet how long a red-skin's patience will last. Time ain't nothing to them. They will follow up this canyon both sides till they are sartin that there ain't no place where a man can climb up. If there ain't, they will just squat in that valley. Like enough they will send for their lodges and squaws and fix themselves there till winter comes, and even then they might not go. They have got wood and water. Some of them will hunt and bring in meat, which they will dry for the winter; and they are just as likely to stay here as to go up to their villages."

A vigilant watch was kept up all night, two of them being always on guard at the top of the barrier. As soon as morning broke, the three horses were got over, and half an hour later Harry and Sam Hicks rode off down the canyon, while the others took their places on guard, keeping themselves well behind the rocks, between which they looked out. They had not long to wait, for an Indian was seen to dart rapidly across the mouth of the canyon. Two rifles cracked out, but the Indian's appearance and disappearance was so sudden and quick that they had no reason to believe that they had hit him.

"They will know now that we are here, and are pretty wide awake," Ben said. "You may be sure that he caught sight of these rocks."

A minute or two later several rifles flashed from among the fallen stones at the mouth of the gorge.

"Keep your eyes open," Jerry said, "and when you see the slightest movement, fire. But don't do it unless you feel certain that you make out a head or a limb. We've got to show the Utes that it is sartin death to try and crawl up here."

Almost immediately afterwards a head appeared above the stones, the chief's rifle cracked, and at the same instant the head disappeared.

"Do you think you got him, chief?"

"Think so, not sure. Leaping Horse does not often miss his mark at two hundred yards."

Almost directly afterwards Tom fired. An Indian sprang to his feet and bounded away.

"What did you fire at, Tom?"

"I think it was his arm and shoulder," Tom replied. "I was not sure about it, but I certainly saw something move."

"I fancy you must have hit him, or he would not have got up. Waal, now I reckon we are going to have quiet for a bit. They must have had a good look at the place while they were lying there, and must have seen that it air too strong for them. I don't say they mayn't come on again tonight -- that they may do, but I think it air more likely they won't try it. They would know that we should be on the watch, and with seven rifles and Colts we should account for a grist of them afore they got over. What do you say, chief?"

"Not come now," the Indian said positively. "Send men first along top see if can get down. Not like come at night; the canyons of the Colorado very bad medicine, red-skins no like come into them. If no way where we can get up, then Utes sit down to starve us."

"That will be a longish job, chief. A horse a week will keep us for three months."

"If no food for horse, horse die one week."

"So they will, chief. We must wait till Harry comes back, then we shall know what our chances are."

It was six hours before Harry and Sam returned. There was a shout of satisfaction from the men when they saw that they had on their saddles the hind-quarters of a bear.

"Waal, what is the news, Harry?"

"It ain't altogether good, Ben. It goes down like this for about twelve miles, then it widens out sudden. It gets into a crumbly rock which has got worn away, and there is a place maybe about fifty yards wide and half a mile long, with sloping sides going up a long way, and then cliff all round. The bottom is all stones; there are a few tufts of coarse grass growing between them. On the slopes there are some bushes, and on a ledge high up we made out a bear. We had two or three shots at him, and at last brought him down. There may be more among the bushes; there was plenty of cover for them."

"There was no place where there was a chance of getting up, Harry?"

"Nary a place. I don't say as there may not be, but we couldn't see one."

"But the bear must have got down."

"No. He would come down here in the dry season looking for water-holes, and finding the place to his liking he must have concluded to settle there. It is just the place a bear would choose, for he might reckon pretty confident that there weren't no chance of his being disturbed. Well, we went on beyond that, and two miles lower the canyon opened again, and five minutes took us down on to the bank of the Colorado. There was no great room between the river and the cliff, but there were some good-sized trees there, and plenty of bush growing up some distance. We caught sight of another bear, but as we did not want him we left him alone."

"Waal, let us have some b'ar-meat first of all," Jerry said. "We finished our meat last night, and bread don't make much of a meal, I reckon. Anyhow we can all do with another, and after we have done we will have a talk. We know what to expect now, and can figure it up better than we could before."



Chapter XV

The Colorado


"Well, boys," Harry Wade began after they had smoked for some time in silence, "we have got to look at this matter squarely. So far we have got out of a mighty tight place better than we expected. Yesterday it seemed to us that there weren't much chance of our carrying our hair away, but now we are out of that scrape. But we are in another pretty nigh as bad, though there ain't much chance of the red-skins getting at us."

"That air so, Harry. We are in a pretty tight hole, you bet. They ain't likely to get our scalps for some time, but there ain't no denying that our chance of carrying them off is dog-goned small."

"You bet there ain't, Jerry," Sam Hicks said. "Them pizon varmint will camp outside here; for they know they have got us in a trap. They mayn't attack us at present, but we have got to watch night and day. Any dark night they may take it into their heads to come up, and there won't be nothing to prevent them, for the rustling of the stream among the rocks would cover any little noise they might make. The first we should know of it would be the yell of the varmint at the foot of this barrier, and afore we could get to the top the two on guard would be tomahawked, and they would be down on us like a pack of wolves. I would a'most as soon put down my rifle and walk straight out now and let them shoot me, if I knew they would do it without any of their devilish tortures, as go on night after night, expecting to be woke up with their war-yell in my ears.

"Of course they will be always keeping a watch there at the mouth of the canyon, -- a couple of boys are enough for that, -- for they will know that if we ride out on our horses we must go right up the valley, and it is a nasty place to gallop through in the dark; besides, some of them will no doubt be placed higher up to cut us off, and if we got through, which ain't likely, they could ride us down in a few hours. If we crept out on foot and got fairly among the trees we should be no better off, for they would take up our trail in the morning and hunt us down. I tell you fairly, boys, I don't see any way out of it. I reckon it will come to our having to ride out together, and to wipe out as many of the Utes as possible afore we go down. What do you say, chief?"

"Leaping Horse agrees with his white brother, Straight Harry, whose mind he knows."

"Waal, go on then, Harry," Sam said. "I thought that you had made an end of it or I wouldn't have opened out. I don't see no way out of it at present, but if you do I am ready to fall in with it whatever it is."

"I see but one way out of it, boys. It is a mighty risky thing, but it can't be more risky than stopping here, and there is just a chance. I spoke to the chief last night, and he owned that it didn't seem to him there was a chance in that or any other way. However, he said that if I went he would go with me. My proposal is this, that we take to the river and try and get through the canyons."

There was a deep silence among the men. The proposal took them by surprise. No man had ever accomplished the journey. Though two parties similarly attacked by Indians had attempted to raft down some of the canyons higher up; one party perished to a man, one survivor of the other party escaped to tell the tale; but as to the canyons below, through which they would have to pass, no man had ever explored them. The Indians regarded the river with deep awe, and believed the canyons to be peopled with demons. The enterprise was so stupendous and the dangers to be met with so terrible, that ready as the western hunters were to encounter dangers, no one had ever attempted to investigate the windings and turnings of the river that for two thousand miles made its way through terrific precipices, and ran its course some three thousand feet below the surrounding country, until it emerged on to the plains of Mexico.

"That was why I was so anxious to reach the river," Harry went on after a pause. "I wanted to see whether there were some trees, by which we could construct a raft, near its bank. Had there not been, I should have proposed to follow it up or down, as far as we could make our way, in hopes of lighting on some trees. However, as it is they are just handy for us. I don't say as we shall get through, boys, but there is just a chance of it. I don't see any other plan that would give us a show."

Jerry was the first to speak.

"Waal, Harry, you can count me in. One might as well be drowned in a rapid or carried over a fall as killed, or, wuss, taken and tortured by the red-skins."

"That is so, Jerry," Sam Hicks agreed. While Ben said: "Waal, if we git through it will be something to talk about all our lives. In course there ain't no taking the horses?"

"That is out of the question, Ben. We shall not have much time to spare, for the Utes may take it into their heads to attack us any night; and, besides, we have no means of making a big raft. We might tie two or three trunks together with the lariats and spike a few cross-pieces on them, we might even make two such rafts; that is the outside. They will carry us and our stores, but as for the horses, we must either leave them down in the hollow for the Indians to find, or put a bullet through their heads. I expect the latter will be the best thing for them, poor beasts."

"No want trees," the chief said. "Got horses' skins; make canoes."

"You are right, chief," Harry exclaimed; "I never thought of that. That would be the very thing. Canoes will go down the rapids where the strongest rafts would be dashed to pieces, and if we come to a bad fall we can make a shift to carry them round."

The others were no less pleased with the suggestion, and the doubtful expression of their faces as they assented to the scheme now changed to one of hopefulness, and they discussed the plan eagerly. It was agreed that not a moment should be lost in setting to work to carry it out, and that they should forthwith retreat to the mouth of the lower canyon; for all entertained a secret misgiving that the Utes might make their attack that night, and felt that if that attack were made in earnest it would succeed. It was certain they would be able to find some point at which the lower gorge could be held; and at any rate a day would be gained, for at whatever hour of the night the Indians came up they would not venture farther until daybreak, and there would probably be a long palaver before they would enter the lower canyon.

Tom had not spoken. He recognized the justice of Harry's reasoning, but had difficulty in keeping his tears back at the thought of his horse being killed. For well-nigh a year it had carried him well; he had tended and cared for it; it would come to his call and rub its muzzle against his cheek. He thought that had he been alone he would have risked anything rather than part with it.

"Don't you like the plan, Tom?" Harry said to him, as, having packed and saddled the horses, they rode together down the canyon. "I don't suppose the passage is so terrible after all."

"I am not thinking of the passage at all, uncle," Tom said almost indignantly; "it will be a grand piece of adventure; but I don't like -- I hate -- the thought of my horse being killed. It is like killing a dear friend to save one's self."

"It is a wrench, lad," Harry said kindly; "I can quite understand your feelings, and don't like the thought myself. But I see that it has got to be done, and after all it will be better to kill the poor brutes than to let them fall into the hands of the Indians, who don't know what mercy to their beasts means, and will ride them till they drop dead without the least compunction."

"I know it is better, uncle, ever so much better -- but it is horrible all the same. Anyhow, don't ask me to do it, for I could not."

"I will see to that, Tom. You shall be one of the guards of the canyon. You would not be of much use in making the canoes, and you won't have to know anything about it till you go down and get on board."

Tom nodded his thanks; his heart was too full for him to speak, and he felt that if he said a word he should break down altogether. They rode rapidly along, passed through the little valley where the bear had been killed, without stopping, and went down the lower canyon, carefully examining it to fix upon the most suitable point for defence. There had been no recent fall, and though at some points great boulders lay thickly, there was no one place that offered special facilities for defence.

"Look here, boys," Harry said, reining up his horse at a point within two hundred yards of the lower end, "we can't do better than fix ourselves here. An hour's work will get up a wall that will puzzle the red-skins to get over, and there is the advantage that a shot fired here by the guard will bring our whole force up in a couple of minutes. I vote we ride the horses down to the river and let them pick up what they can, and then come back here and build the wall. It will be getting dark in an hour's time, and we may as well finish that job at once. Ben and Sam, you may as well pick out a couple of young fir-trees and bring them down at once, then there will be no time lost. Five of us will be enough for the wall. Keep your eyes open. Likely enough there is a bear or two about, and it would be a great thing for us to lay in a stock of meat before we start."

As soon as they issued from the gorge the horses were unsaddled and the stores taken off the pack-animals. As they were doing this Harry said a few words in a low tone to Sam. He then carefully examined the trees, and picked out two young firs. Sam and Ben took their axes, and the other five went up the gorge again, and were soon hard at work collecting boulders and piling them in a wall.

"There is a gun, uncle," Tom exclaimed presently.

"Well, I hope they have got sight of a bear, we shall want a stock of meat badly."

A dozen shots were fired, but Tom thought no more of it as he proceeded with his work. The bottom of the canyon was but fifteen feet wide, and by the time it was dark they had a solid wall across it nearly six feet high, with places for them to stand on to fire over.

"Now then, Tom, you may as well take post here at once. I will send Sam or Ben up to watch with you. I don't think there is a shadow of chance of their coming to-night, but there is never any answering for red-skins. I would leave Hunting Dog with you, but we shall want him to help make the framework for the canoes; the Indians are a deal handier than we are in making lashings. I will send your supper up here, lad, and your buffalo robes. Then you can take it by turns to watch and sleep. I reckon we shall be at work all night; we have got to get the job finished as quick as we can."

A quarter of an hour later Sam Hicks came up.

"Have you got the trees down, Sam?"

"Lor' bless you, it didn't take a minute to do that. We got them down and split them up, then lit a fire and got the meat over it and the kettle, and mixed the dough."

"Did you kill another bear? We heard you firing."

"No; the critter was too high up, and I ain't much good at shooting. Perhaps they will get sight of him tomorrow, and Harry and the chief will bring him down if he is within range of their shooting-irons. It is 'tarnal dark up here."

In twenty minutes two lights were seen approaching, and Harry and Hunting Dog came up carrying pine-wood torches. Each had a great faggot of wood fastened on his back, and Harry also carried the frying-pan, on which were a pile of meat and two great hunks of bread, while Hunting Dog brought two tin pannikins of hot tea.

"That will make it more cheerful for you," Harry said, as he unfastened the rope that tied the faggot to his shoulders. "Now, Hunting Dog, get a good fire as soon as you can, and then come down again to us."

The fire was soon blazing merrily, and Tom and Sam sat down to enjoy their meal.

"Don't you think one of us ought to keep watch, Sam?"

"Not a bit of it," Sam said. "The red-skins will never dare to enter that canyon until after dark, and if they started now and made their way straight on, they would not be here for another three or four hours. I would bet my boots they don't come at all tonight; even if they were not scared at us, they would be scared at coming near the river in the dark. No, we will just take our meal comfortable and smoke a pipe, and then I will take first watch and you shall take a sleep. We ain't closed an eye since the night before last."

Tom, indeed, was nearly asleep before he had finished his pipe, and felt that he really must get a nap. So saying to Sam, "Be sure and wake me in two hours," he rolled himself in his robe and instantly fell asleep.

It seemed to him that he had only just gone off when Sam roused him. He leapt to his feet, however, rifle in hand. "Anything the matter, Sam?"

"Everything quiet," the miner replied.

"What did you wake me for then? I have not been asleep five minutes."

"According to my reckoning, mate, you have been asleep better'n five hours. It was about half-past eight when you went off, and I reckon it is two now, and will begin to get light in another hour. I would not have waked you till daybreak, but I found myself dropping off."

"I am awfully sorry," Tom began.

"Don't you trouble, young un. By the time you have been as long in the West as I have you won't think anything of two nights' watch. Now you keep a sharp lookout. I don't think there is much chance of their coming, but I don't want to be woke up with a red-skin coming right down on the top of me."

"I see you have let the fire out, Sam," Tom said, with a little shiver.

"I put it out hours ago," Sam said, as he prepared to lie down. "It would never have done to keep it all night, for a red-skin would see my head over the top of the wall, while I should not get a sight of him till he was within arm's-length."

Tom took up his post, and gazed earnestly into the darkness beyond the wall. He felt that his sense of vision would be of no use whatever, and therefore threw all his faculties into that of listening. Slight as was the chance of the Indians coming, he yet felt somewhat nervous, and it was a satisfaction to him to see beyond the mouth of the canyon the glow of the fire, by which, as he knew, the others were hard at work.

In an hour the morning began to break, and as soon as he could see well up the canyon he relighted the fire, jumping up to take a look over the wall every minute or so. It was not long before he saw his uncle approaching with a kettle.

"I saw your smoke, Tom, and guessed that you would be glad of a mug of hot tea. You have seen no signs of Indians, I suppose?"

"We have heard nothing, uncle. As to seeing, up to half an hour ago there was no possibility of making out anything. But I have not even been listening; Sam went on guard directly we had finished supper, and I asked him to call me in two hours, but he did not wake me until two o'clock."

"He is a good fellow," Harry said. "Well, don't wake him now. I can't leave you the kettle, for we have to keep boiling water going, but you can put his tin into the ashes and warm it up when he wakes. Here are a couple of pieces of bread."

"Why do you have to keep the kettle boiling, uncle?"

"To bend the wood with. The piece we are working on is kept damp with boiling water. We hold it for a time over the fire, pouring a little water on as fast as it evaporates; that softens the wood, and we can bend it much more evenly than we could if we did it by force. Besides, when it is fastened into its position it remains, when it is dry, in that shape, and throws no strain on to anything."

"Are you getting on well?"

"Capitally. We should have done both the frames by now, but we were obliged to make them very strong so as to resist the bumps they are sure to get against rocks. When they are finished you might almost let them drop off the top of a house, they will be so strong and elastic. If the Indians will but give us time we shall make a first-rate job of them."

Three hours later Harry came up again with the kettle and some cooked meat. Sam had just woke up, and was quite angry with Tom for not rousing him before. "The others have been working all night," he said, "and here have I been asleep for five hours; a nice sort of mate they will think me."

"Well, but you were watching five hours, Sam; and I would a deal rather work all night than stand here for two hours in the dark, wondering all the time whether the Indians are crawling up, and expecting at any moment to hear a rush against the wall."

"I am going to take your place, Sam, when you have finished your breakfast," Harry said, as he came up. "If the Utes found out last night that we had gone, their scouts may be coming down before long. My rifle shoots a bit straighter than yours does."

"It ain't the rifle, Harry," Sam said good-temperedly; "it is the eye that is wrong, not the shooting-iron. I never had much practice with these long guns, but when it comes to a six-shooter, I reckon I can do my share as well as most. But they won't give me a chance with it."

"I hope they won't, Sam. I am sure they won't as long as there is light, and I hope that before it gets dark they will conclude to leave us alone."

A vigilant watch was kept now.

"I think I saw a head look out from that corner," Tom exclaimed suddenly, two hours after Sam had left them.

"I am quite sure I did, Tom. We must wait until he shows himself a bit more. I reckon it is a good three hundred yards off, and a man's head is a precious small mark at that distance. Stand a bit higher and lay your rifle on the wall. Don't fire if he only puts his head out. They know we can shoot, so there is not any occasion to give them another lesson. I don't hold to killing, unless you have got to do it. Let him have a good look at us.

"When he goes back and tells the tribe that there is a three hundred yards' straight passage without shelter, and a strong wall across the end of it, and two white men with rifles ready to shoot, I reckon they will know a good deal better than to try to come up it, as long as there is light. Besides, they won't think there is any occasion to hurry, for they won't count on our taking to the river, and will know that we shall be keeping watch at night. So it may very well be that they will reckon on wearing us out, and that we may not hear of them for a week. There is the fellow's head again!"

The head remained visible round the corner of the rock for two or three minutes.

"He knows all about it now, Tom. You won't see any more of him to-day. I will go down and lend them a hand below."

Tom asked no questions about the horses; he had thought of them a score of times as he stood on guard, and the thought had occurred to him that it was possible the shots he had heard while they were building the wall on the previous afternoon, had been the death shots of the horses. It did not occur to him when Sam was telling the story about the bear, that this was a got-up tale, but when he came to think it over, he thought it probable that it was so. Sam himself was not much of a shot, but Ben, although inferior to Harry or either of the two Indians, shot as well as Jerry, and would hardly have missed a bear three or four times running. Each time the thought of the horses occurred to him he resolutely put it aside, and concentrated his mind upon the probable perils of the passage down the canyons and the wonderful gorges they would traverse, and the adventures and excitement they were sure to pass through. He thought how fortunate it was they had taken the precaution of sending their specimens of quartz back to the fort; for were they in the canoes, the fruits of the journey would be irrevocably lost were these to upset; for now the Indians had twice discovered the presence of whites in the valley they would be sure to watch it closely, and it would not be possible to go up to the mine again unless in strong force.

The day passed quietly. Harry brought up Tom's meals, and late in the afternoon all hands came up, and the wall of stones was raised four feet, making it almost impregnable against a sudden attack. The two Indians took post there with Tom, and watched alternately all night. The Utes, however, remained perfectly quiet. They probably felt sure that the fugitives must sooner or later be forced to surrender, and were disinclined to face the loss that must occur before so strong a position, defended by seven men armed with rifles and revolvers, could be carried.

At three o'clock on the following afternoon Hunting Dog came up. "Tom go down and get dinner," he said, "Hunting Dog will watch."

Tom took his rifle and started down the canyon.

"Come on, lad," his uncle shouted. "We are pretty near ready for a start, and have all had our dinner; so be quick about it. We want to get well away from here before night."

Tom went to the fire and ate his meal. As he sat down he saw that the stores, blankets, and robes had all been carried away. When he finished, his uncle led him down to the river. Two canoes were floating in the water, and the other men were standing beside them.

"There, Tom, what do you think of them?"

"They are splendid, uncle; it seems impossible that you can have built them in two days."

"Five hands can do a lot of canoe-building in forty-eight hours' work, Tom."

The canoes were indeed models of strength if not of beauty. They were each about twenty feet long and five feet wide. Two strong pieces of pine two inches square ran along the top of each side, and one of the same width but an inch deeper formed the keel. The ribs, an inch wide and three-quarters of an inch thick, were placed at intervals of eighteen inches apart. The canoes were almost flat-bottomed. The ribs lay across the keel, which was cut away to allow them to lie flush in it, a strong nail being driven in at the point of junction -- these being the only nails used in the boat's construction. The ribs ran straight out to almost the full width of the canoe, and were then turned sharp up, the ends being lashed with thongs of hide to the upper stringers.

Outside the ribs were lashed longitudinal wattles of tough wood about an inch wide. They were placed an inch apart, extending over the bottom and halfway up the side. Over all was stretched the skin, five horses' hides having been used for each boat. They were very strongly sewed together by a double row of thongs, the overlaps having, before being sewed, been smeared with melted fat. Cross-pieces of wood at the top kept the upper framework in its place. The hair of the skin was outward, the inner glistened with the fat that had been rubbed into it.

"They are strong indeed," Tom said. "They ought to stand anything, uncle."

"Yes, I think they would stand a blow against any rock if it hadn't a cutting edge. They would just bound off as a basket would. Of course they are very heavy for canoes; but as they won't have to carry more than the weight of four men each, they will draw little over a couple of inches or so of water.

"That is why we made them so wide. We could not get strength without weight; and as there is no saying what shallows there may be, and how close in some places rocks may come up to the surface, we were obliged to build them wide to get light draught. You see we have made ten paddles, so as to have a spare one or two in case of breakage. We have two spare hides, so that we shall have the means of repairing damages."

Tom said nothing about the horses. Manufactured into a boat, as the skins were, there was not much to remind him of them; but he pressed his uncle's hand and said, "Thank you very much, uncle; I don't mind so much now, but I should not like to have seen them before."

"That is all right, Tom; it was a case of necessity. Sam and Ben shot them directly we got here."

The stores were all laid by the boats, being divided between them so that the cargoes were in all respects duplicates of each other. Before Tom came down some had already been placed in each boat, with a blanket thrown over them.

"You have got the gold, I suppose, uncle?"

"You may bet that we did not leave that behind. There is half in each boat, and the bags are lashed to the timbers, so that if there is an upset they cannot get lost."

"How are we going?"

"We have settled that you and I and the two Indians shall go together, and the rest in the other boat. The Indians know nothing of canoeing, and won't be of very much use. I know you were accustomed to boats, and I did some rowing when I was a young man. I wish we had a couple of Canadian Indians with us, or of half-breeds; they are up to this sort of work, and with one in the stern of each canoe it would be a much less risky business going down the rapids. However, no doubt we shall get handy with the paddles before long."

When everything was ready Harry fired his rifle, and in a couple of minutes Hunting Dog came running down. The others had already taken their seats. He stepped into Harry's boat, and they at once pushed off.

The river was running smoothly here, and Harry said, "Directly we get down a little way we will turn the boat's head up stream and practise for a bit. It would never do to get down into rough water before we can use the paddles fairly."

Tom sat in the bow of his boat, Hunting Dog was next to him, then came the chief, and Harry sat in the stern. A paddle is a much easier implement to manage for a beginner than is an oar, and it was not long before they found that they could propel the boats at a fair rate. In a short time they had passed the end of the shelf at the mouth of the canyon, and the cliffs on that side rose as abruptly as they did on the other. The river was some eighty yards wide.

"We will turn here," Harry said, "and paddle up. We sha'n't do more than keep abreast of these rocks now, for the stream runs fast though it is so smooth."

They found, indeed, that they had to work hard to hold their position.

"Now, Tom," Harry sang out, "it is you and I do the steering, you know. When you want the head to go to the right you must work your paddle out from the boat, when you want to go to the left you must dip it in the water rather farther out and draw it towards the boat. Of course when you have got the paddle the other side you must do just the contrary. You must sing out right or left according as you see rocks ahead, and I shall steer with my paddle behind. I have a good deal more power over the boat than you have, and you must depend upon me for the steering, unless there is occasion for a smart swerve."

At first the two boats shot backwards and forwards across the stream in a very erratic way, but after an hour's practice the steersmen found the amount of force required. An hour later Harry thought that they were competent to make a start, and turning they shot rapidly past the cliffs. In a couple of miles there was a break in the rocks to the left.

"We will land there," Harry said. "There are trees near the water and bushes farther up. We will make a camp there. There is no saying how far we may have to go before we get another opportunity. We have done with the Utes for good, and can get a sound night's sleep. If you, chief, will start with Hunting Dog as soon as we land, we will get the things ashore and light the fire. Maybe you will be able to get a bear for us."

They did not trouble to haul up the canoes, but fastened them by the head-ropes, which were made from lariats, to trees on the shore. Daylight was beginning to fade as they lighted the fire. No time was lost before mixing the dough, and it was in readiness by the time that there were sufficient glowing embers to stand the pot in. The kettle was filled and hung on a tripod over the fire. In a short time the Indians returned empty-handed.

"No find bear," the chief said, "getting too dark to hunt. To-morrow morning try."

Harry got up and went to the boats, and returned directly with a joint of meat. Tom looked up in surprise.

"It is not from yours, Tom," Jerry said as he saw him looking at it. "We took the hind-quarters of the four pack-ponies, but left the others alone. It was no use bringing more, for it would not keep."

"So it is horseflesh!" Tom rather shrank from the idea of eating it, and nothing would have induced him to touch it had he thought that it came from his own favourite. Some steaks were cut and placed in the frying-pan, while strips were hung over the fire for those who preferred the meat in that way. Tom felt strongly inclined to refuse altogether, but when he saw that the others took their meat as a matter of course, and proceeded to eat with a good appetite, he did not like to do so. He hesitated, however, before tasting it; but Harry said with a laugh, "Fire away, Tom. You can hardly tell it from beef, and they say that in Paris lots of horseflesh is sold as beef."

Thus encouraged, Tom took a mouthful, and found it by no means bad, for from their long stay in the valley the animals were all in excellent condition, and he acknowledged to himself that he would not have known the flesh from beef.

"I call it mighty good for a change." Terry said. "Out on the plains, where one can get buffalo, one would not take horse for choice, but as we have been eating deer and bear meat for about a year, horse-meat ain't bad by no means. What! You won't take another bit, Tom?"

"Not to-night, Jerry; next time I shall be all right. But it is my first trial, you know, and though I can't say it is not good, it gives me a queer feeling, so I will stick to the bread."

"Well, boys," Harry said presently, "we have made a first-rate start, and have got out of a big scrape, easier than I ever looked for. We could not have got two better canoes for our work if we had had them brought special from Canada, and it seems to me that they ought to go down pretty near anywhere without much damage. We shall get real handy with our paddles in two or three days, and I hope we sha'n't meet with any big rapids until we have got into the way of managing them well."

"You bet, Harry, we have got out well," said Jerry. "I tell you it looked downright ugly, and I wouldn't have given a continental for our chances. As for the rapids, I guess we shall generally find rocks one side or the other where we can make our way along, and we can let down the canoes by the ropes. Anyhow, we need not get skeery over them. After getting out of that valley with our hair on, the thought of them does not trouble me a cent."



Chapter XVI

Afloat In Canoes


The two Indians were off long before daylight, and just as the others were having a wash at the edge of the river they heard the crack of a rifle some distance up the cliff.

"Bear!" Jerry exclaimed; "and I reckon they have got it, else we should have heard another shot directly afterwards. That will set us up in food for some time. Get the fire made up, Tom, you won't have to eat horse steak for breakfast unless you like."

The Indians returned half an hour later laden with as much bear-flesh as they could carry.

"I vote we stop here for two days," Harry said. "We have got a lot of meat now, but it won't keep for twenty-four hours in this heat, so I vote we cut it up and dry it as the Indians do buffalo-meat; it will keep any time. Besides, we deserve a couple of days' rest, and we can practise paddling while the meat dries. We got on very well yesterday, but I do want us to get quite at home in the boats before we get to a bad bit."

The proposal was agreed to, and as soon as breakfast was over the whole of the meat was cut up into thin slices and hung up on cords fastened from tree to tree.

"It ought to take three days to do it properly, and four is better," Harry said. "Still, as we have cut it very thin, I should think two days in this hot sun ought to be enough."

"Are there any fish in the river, uncle?"

"I have no doubt there are, Tom, grists of them, but we have got no hooks."

"Jerry has got some, he told me he never travelled without them, and we caught a lot of fish with them up in the mountains just after we started before. I don't know about line, but one might unravel one of the ropes."

"I think you might do better than that, Tom. The next small animal we shoot we might make some lines from the gut. They needn't be above five or six feet long. Beyond that we could cut a strip of thirty or forty feet long from one of the hides. However, we can do nothing at present in that way. Now let us get into the canoes and have a couple of hours' paddling. After dinner we will have another good spell at the work."

By evening there was a marked improvement in the paddling over that of the previous day, and after having had another day's practice all felt confident that they should get on very well. By nightfall on the second day, the meat was found to be thoroughly dried, and was taken down and packed in bundles, and the next morning they started as soon as it was light. It was agreed that the boats should follow each other at a distance of a hundred yards, so that the leader could signal to the one behind if serious difficulties were made out ahead, and so enable it to row to the bank in time. Were both drawn together into the suck of a dangerous rapid they might find themselves without either boats or stores, whereas if only one of the boats was broken up, there would be the other to fall back upon. Harry's boat was to take the lead on the first day, and Tom, as he knelt in the bows, felt his heart beat with excitement at the thought of the unknown that lay before them, and that they were about to make their way down passes probably unpenetrated by man. Passing between what had seemed to them the entrance to a narrow canyon, they were surprised to rind the river widen out. On their right a great sweep of hills bent round like a vast amphitheatre, the resemblance being heightened by the ledges running in regular lines along it, the cliff being far from perpendicular.

"I should think one could climb up there," Tom said, half-turning round to his uncle.

"It looks like it, Tom, but there is no saying; some of those steps may be a good deal steeper than they look. However, I have no doubt one could find places where it would be possible to climb if there were any use in doing so, but as we should only find ourselves up on bad lands we should gain nothing by it."

"I don't mean we should want to climb up now, uncle; but it seemed a sort of satisfaction to know that there are places where one could climb in case we got the boats smashed up."

"If we had to make our way up, lad, it would be much better to go by one of the lateral canons like the one we came down by. I can see at least half a dozen of them going up there. We should certainly find water, and we might find game, but up on the plateau we should find neither one nor the other."

On the left-hand bank of the river the cliffs fell still farther back in wide terraces, that rose one behind the other up to a perpendicular cliff half a mile back from the river. There was a shade of green here and there, and the chief pointed far up the hill and exclaimed "Deer!"

"That is good," Harry said. "There are sure to be more of these places, and I should think we are not likely to starve anyhow. We can't spare time to stop now; we want to have a long day's paddle to see what it is going to be like, and we have got meat enough for the present. If we happen to see a deer within rifle-shot, so that we can get at him without much loss of time, we will stop, for after all fresh meat is better eating than dry."

"I should think it would be, uncle," Tom said. "From the look of the stuff I should think it would be quite as tough as shoe leather and as tasteless."

"It needs a set of sharp teeth, Tom, but if you are hard set I have no doubt you will be able to get through it, and at any rate it constitutes the chief food of the Indians between the Missouri and the Rockies."

For the next three hours they paddled along on the quiet surface of the river. The other canoe had drawn up, since it was evident that here at least there was no reason why they should keep apart.

"I didn't expect we should find it as quiet as this, Harry," Jerry Curtis said. "It is a regular water-party, and I should not mind how long I was at it if it were all like this."

"We shall have rough water enough presently, Jerry, and I expect we shall look back on this as the pleasantest part of the trip. It seems to me that the hills close in more towards the end of this sweep. It has made a regular horseshoe."

"I reckon it depends upon the nature of the rock," Ben put in.

"That is it, you may be sure, Ben. Wherever it is soft rock, in time it crumbles away like this; where it is hard the weather don't affect it much, and we get straight cliffs. I expect it is there we shall find the rapids worst. Well, we shall soon make a trial of them, I fancy. It looks like a wall ahead, but the road must go through somewhere."

A quarter of an hour later Harry said: "You had better drop back now, Jerry, there is the gap right ahead. If you see me hold up my paddle you row ashore. When we come to a bad rapid we had better all get out, and make our way down on the rocks as far as we can, to see what it is like. It will never do to go at it blind. Of course we may find places where the water comes to the wall faces on both sides, and then there is nothing to do but to take our chance, but I don't propose to run any risks that I can avoid."

There was a perceptible increase in the rate of the current as they neared the gorge, and when they came within a short distance of it Harry gave the signal to the boat behind, and both canoes made for the shore. As they stepped out on to the rocks the chief pointed to a ledge far above them. "There will be time for Hunting Dog to shoot a deer," he said, "while we go down to see canyon."

Tom in vain endeavoured to make out the object at which the Indian was pointing. Hunting Dog had evidently noticed it before landing, and upon Harry giving a nod of assent, started off with his rifle. The others waited until Jerry and his companions joined them, and then started along the rocks that had fallen at the foot of the cliffs. They were soon able to obtain a far better view of the gorge than they had done from the canoe. The river ran for a bit in a smooth glassy flood, but a short distance down, it began to form into waves, and beyond that they could see a mass of white foam and breakers. They made their way along the rocks for nearly two miles. It seemed well-nigh impossible to Tom that the boats could go down without being swamped, for the waves were eight or ten feet high, with steep sides capped with white. At last the gorge widened again, and although the cliff to the right rose perpendicularly, on the other side it became less steep, and seemed lower down to assume the same character as that above the gorge.

"It looks pretty bad," Harry said, speaking for almost the first time since they had started, for the roar of the water against the rocks, echoed and re-echoed by the cliffs, rendered conversation an impossibility. "It looks bad, but as far as I can see there are no rocks that come up near the surface, and the canoes ought to go through the broken water safely enough."

"It is an all-fired nasty-looking place," Jerry said; "but I have heard men who had been in the north talk about rapids they had gone through, and from what they said about them they must have been worse than this. We have got to keep as near the side as we can; the waves ain't as high there as they are in the middle, and we have got to keep the boat's head straight, and to paddle all we know. If we do that, I reckon the canoes will go through."

They retraced their steps up the gorge. Hunting Dog was standing by the boat with the dead deer at his feet. Jerry picked it up. "I had better take this, I reckon, Harry. You have got one man more than we have;" and he and his two companions went on to their boat.

"Now, what do you think, Tom?" his uncle said. "Can you trust your head to keep cool? It will need a lot of nerve, I can tell you, and if her head swerves in the slightest she will swing round, and over she will go, and it would want some tall swimming to get out of that race. You paddle as well as the chief, -- better, I think, -- but the chief's nerves are like iron. He has not been practising steering as you have, but as there seem to be no rocks about, that won't matter so much. I ought to be able to keep her straight, if you three paddle hard. It may need a turn of the paddle now and then in the bow, but that we can't tell. So it shall be just as you like, lad. If you think your nerves can stand it you take your usual place, but if you have doubts about it, it were best to let the chief go there."

"I think I could stand it, uncle, for I have been out in wherries in some precious rough seas at Spithead; but I think it would be best for the chief to take my place this time, and then I shall see how I feel."

Harry said a few words to the chief in his own language, and Leaping Horse without a word stepped into the bow, while Tom took the seat behind him.

"We sha'n't be long going down," Harry said, "I reckon the stream is running ten miles an hour, and as we shall be paddling, it will take us through in ten minutes. We had all better sit farther aft, so as to take her bow right out of water. She will go through it ever so much easier so."

They shifted their seats until daylight could be seen under the keel a foot from the bow.

"I think that is about the right trim," Harry said. "Now paddle all."

The boat shot off from the shore. A minute later it darted into the gorge, the Indian setting a long sweeping stroke. There were two or three long heaves, and then they dashed into the race. Tom held his breath at the first wall of water, but, buoyant and lightly laden as the canoe was, with fully a foot of free board, she rose like a feather over it, and darted down into the hollow beyond. Tom kept his eyes fixed on the back of the chief's head, clinched his teeth tightly, and paddled away with all his strength. He felt that were he to look round he should turn giddy at the turmoil of water. Once or twice he was vaguely conscious of Harry's shouts, "Keep her head inshore!" or "A little farther out!" but like a man rowing a race he heeded the words but little. His faculties were concentrated on his work, but he could see a slight swerve of the Indian's body when he was obeying an order.

He was not conscious of any change of motion, either in the boat or in the water round, when Harry shouted, "Easy all!" and even then it was the chief's ceasing to paddle rather than Harry's shout which caused him to stop. Then he looked round and saw that the race was passed, and that the canoe was floating in comparatively quiet water.

"She is a daisy!" Harry shouted; "we could not do better if we had been all Canadian half-breeds, chief. Now, we had better set to and bale her out as quickly as we can."

Tom now for the first time perceived that he was kneeling in water, and that the boat was nearly half-full.

Their tea pannikins had been laid by their sides in readiness, and Hunting Dog touched him and passed forward his tin and the chief's, both of which had been swept aft. The Seneca at once began to throw out the water, but Tom for a minute or two was unable to follow his example. He felt as weak as a child. A nervous quivering ran through his body, and his hand trembled so that he could not grasp the handle of the tin.

"Feel bad, Tom?" his uncle asked cheerily from behind. "Brace up, lad; it was a pretty warm ten minutes, and I am not surprised you feel it. Now it is over I am a little shaky myself."

"I shall be all right presently, uncle." A look at the chief's back did more to steady Tom's nerves than his own efforts. While he himself was panting heavily, and was bathed in perspiration, the chief's breath came so quietly that he could scarce see his shoulders rise and fall, as he baled out the water with perfect unconcern. With an effort the boy took hold of his dipper, and by the time the boat was empty his nerves were gaining their steadiness, though his breath still came quickly. As he laid down his tin he looked round.

"Heap water," Hunting Dog said with a smile; "run like herd of buffalo."

The other boat lay twenty yards behind them, and was also engaged in baling.

"All right now, Tom?"

"All right, uncle; but it is lucky you put the chief in the bows. I should have made a mess of it; for from the time we got into the waves it seemed nothing but confusion, and though I heard your voice I did not seem to understand what you said."

"It was a trial to the nerves, Tom, but we shall all get accustomed to it before we get through. Well, thank God, we have made our first run safely. Now paddle on, we will stop at the first likely place and have a meal."

A mile farther they saw a pile of drift-wood on the left bank, and Harry at once headed the canoe to it, and drawing the boat carefully alongside they got out. A minute later the other canoe joined them.

"Jee-hoshaphat, Harry!" Jerry exclaimed as he stepped out; "that was worse nor a cyclone. I would rather sit on the back of the worst kind of bucker than jump over those waves again. If we are going to have much of this I should say let us find our way back and ask the Utes to finish us off."

"It was a rough bit, Jerry; but it might have been a deal worse if there had been rocks in the stream. All we had to do was to keep her straight and paddle."

"And a pretty big all, too," Jerry grumbled. "I felt skeered pretty nigh out of my wits, and the other two allow they were just as bad. If it hadn't been for your boat ahead I reckon we should never have gone through it, but as long as you kept on straight, there didn't seem any reason why we shouldn't. I tell you I feel so shaky that if there were a grizzly twenty yards off I am blamed if I could keep the muzzle of my rifle on it."

Tom had been feeling a good deal ashamed of his nervousness, and was much relieved at hearing that these seasoned men had felt somewhat the same as he had done.

"What do you say, boys," Harry asked when breakfast had been cooked and eaten, "if we stop here for to-day? Likely enough we may get some game, and if not it won't matter, for the deer will last us a couple of days."

"You bet," Ben Gulston said; "I think we have had enough of the water for to-day. I don't feel quite sure now I ain't going round and round, and I don't think any of us will feel right till we have had a night's sleep. Besides, all the rugs and blankets are wet and want spreading out in the sun for a bit, and the flour will want overhauling."

"That settles it, Ben; let us get all the outfit out of the boats at once."

After the things had been laid out to dry the two Indians went off in search of game; but none of the others felt any inclination to move, and they spent the rest of the day lying about smoking and dozing. The Indians brought back a big-horn, and the next morning the canoes dropped down the stream again. For some miles the river flowed quietly along a wide valley. At the end of that time it made an abrupt turn and entered the heart of the mountains. As before, Harry's canoe went in advance. The canyon was here a deep gloomy chasm, with almost perpendicular sides, and for some distance the river ran swiftly and smoothly, then white water was seen ahead, so the two boats rowed in to the rocks at the foot of the precipice, and the occupants proceeded to explore the pass ahead. It was of a different character to the last. Black rocks rose everywhere above the surface, and among these the river flowed with extraordinary force and rapidity, foaming and roaring.

All agreed that it was madness to think of descending here, and that a portage was necessary. The contents of the boats were lifted out, and then one of them was carried down over the rocks by the united strength of the party. They had gone half a mile when they came to a spot where they could go no farther, as the water rushed along against the rock wall itself. Some fifty yards further down they could see that the ledge again began.

"We must go and fetch the other boat," Harry shouted above the din of the water, "and let them down one by one. There is no other way to do it."

The second boat was brought down, and another journey was made to bring down the stores. The lariats were then tied together.

"Let us sit down and smoke a pipe before we do anything more," Jerry said. "Three times up and down them rocks is worse nor thirty miles on a level."

All were glad to adopt this suggestion, and for half an hour they sat watching the rushing waters. As they did so they discussed how they had better divide their forces, and agreed that Harry's boat should, as before, go down first. Three men would be required to let the boat down, and it would need at least four to check the second boat when it came abreast of them. Although all felt certain that a single line of the plaited hide would be sufficient, they determined to use two lines to ensure themselves against risk.

"I should let them run out fast at first, Jerry, only keeping enough strain on them to keep her head well up stream. Begin to check her gradually, and let her down only inch by inch. When you see we are close to the rocks, hold her there while we get her alongside, and don't leave go till we lift her from the water. Directly we are out, fasten the ropes to the bow of your canoe, then launch her carefully; and whatever you do, don't let go of the rope. Launch her stern first close to the wall, then two get in and get well towards the stern, while the other holds the rope until the last moment. Then those two in the boat must begin to paddle as hard as they can, while the last man jumps in and snatches up his paddle. Keep her head close to the wall, for if the current catches it and takes her round she would capsize in a moment against those rocks. Paddle all you know; we shall haul in the rope as fast as you come down. When you come abreast two of us will check her, and the others will be on the rocks to catch hold of her side as she swings in."

The first canoe was launched stern foremost, the four men took their seats in her and began to paddle against, the stream with all their strength, while Jerry and his companions let the lines run through their fingers. The boat glanced along by the side of the wall. The men above put on more and more strain, giving a turn of the ropes round a smooth water-worn rock they had before picked out as suitable for the purpose. The water surged against the bow of the canoe, lifting it higher and higher as the full strain of the rope came upon it. The chief was kneeling in the stern facing the rocks below, and as the canoe came abreast of them he brought her in alongside. Harry held up his paddle, the men above gave another turn of the ropes round the rock, and the canoe remained stationary. Hunting Dog sprang out on to the rocks, and taking hold of the blade of the chief's paddle, brought the canoe in so close that the others were able to step ashore without difficulty. The baggage was taken out, and the canoe lifted from the water, turned upside down, and laid on the rocks.

Harry held up his hand to show that they were ready, having before he did so chosen a stone round which to wind the lariats. The other boat was then launched. Sam and Ben took their places astern and began to paddle against the stream. As they were in the back-water below the ledge of rock they were able to keep her stationary while Jerry took his place and got out his paddle. When all were ready, they paddled her out from the back-water. As soon as the current caught her she flew past the cliff like an arrow, although the three men were now paddling at the top of their speed. Harry and the chief pulled in the rope hand over hand, while Hunting Dog and Tom went a short way down the rocks.

"Don't check her too suddenly, chief," Harry shouted. "Let the rope run out easy at first and bring the strain on gradually."

"The ropes will hold," the chief said. "One stop buffalo in gallop, two stop boat."

"Yes, but you would pull the head out of the canoe; chief, if you stopped her too suddenly."

The chief nodded. He had not thought of that. In spite of the efforts of the oarsmen the canoe's head was swerving across the stream just as she came abreast of them. A moment later she felt the check of the rope.

"Easy, chief, easy!" Harry shouted, as the water shot up high over the bow of the canoe. "Wait till she gets a bit lower or we shall capsize her."

The check of the bow had caused the stern to swerve out, and when they again checked her she was several lengths below them with her head inclined to shore. More and more strain was put on the ropes, until they were as taut as iron bars. A moment later Tom and Hunting Dog seized two paddles held out to them, and the boat came gently in alongside.

"Gosh!" Ben exclaimed, as he stepped ashore, "it has taken as much out of me as working a windlass for a day. I am blamed if I did not think the hull boat was coming to pieces. I thought it was all over with us for sure, Harry; when she first felt the rope, the water came in right over the side."

"It was touch and go, Ben; but there was a rock just outside you, and if we had not checked her a bit her head would have gone across it, and if it had, I would not have given a red cent for your lives."

All day they toiled on foot, and by nightfall had made but four miles. Then they camped for the night among the rocks. The next four days were passed in similar labour. Two or three times they had to cross the torrent in order to get on to fallen rocks on the other side to that which they were following. These passages demanded the greatest caution. In each case there were rocks showing above water in the middle of the channel. One of these was chosen as most suited to their purpose, and by means of the ropes a canoe was sheered out to it. Its occupants then took their places on the rock, and in turn dropped the other boat down to the next suitable point, the process being repeated, step by step, until the opposite bank was reached.

At the end of the fourth day the geological formation changed. The rock was softer, and the stream had worn a more even path for itself, and they decided to take to the boats again. There was no occasion for paddling now, it was only when a swell on the surface marked some hidden danger below that a stroke or two of the paddle was needed to sweep them clear of it. For four hours they were carried along at the rate of fully twelve miles an hour, and at the end of that time they shot out from between the overhanging walls into a comparatively broad valley. With a shout of delight they headed the boats for shore, and leapt out on to a flat rock a few inches above the water.

"If we could go on at that pace right down we should not be long before we were out of the mountains," Tom said.

"We could do with a bit slower, Tom; that is too fast to be pleasant. Just about half that would do -- six miles an hour. Twelve hours a day would take us out of the canyons in a fortnight or so. We might do that safely, but we could not calculate on having such good luck as we have had to-day, when going along at twelve miles an hour. The pace for the last four days has been just as much too slow as this is too fast. Four miles a day working from morning till night is heart-breaking. In spite of our run to-day, we cannot have made much over a hundred miles since we started. Well, there is one comfort, we are in no great hurry. We have got just the boats for the work, and so far as we can see, we are likely to find plenty of food. A job like this isn't to be reckoned child's play. So far I consider we have had good luck; I shall be well content if it averages as well all the way down. The fear is we may get to falls where we can neither carry nor let the boats down. In that case we should have to get out of the canon somewhere, pack as much flour as we could carry, and make our way across country, though how far we might have to travel there is no knowing. I hope it mayn't come to that; but at any rate I would rather go through even worse places than that canyon above than have to quit the boats."

"Right you are, Harry," Jerry agreed. "I would rather tote the canoe on my back all the way down to Mexico, than have to try and make my way over the bad lands to the hills. Besides, when we get a bit farther we shall be in the Navahoe country, and the Utes ain't a sarcumstance to them. The Ute ain't much of a fighter anyway. He will kill white men he finds up in his hills, 'cause he don't want white men there, but he has to be five or six to one before he will attack him. The Navahoe kills the white man 'cause he is a white man, and 'cause he likes killing. He is a fighter, and don't you forget it. If it had been Navahoes instead of Utes that had caught us up in the hills, you may bet your bottom dollar our scalps would be drying in their lodges now."

"That is so, Jerry," Ben put in. "Besides, the Navahoes and the Apaches have got no fear of white men. They have been raiding Mexico for hundreds of years, and man to man they can whip Mexikins out of their boots. I don't say as they haven't a considerable respect for western hunters; they have had a good many lessons that these can out-shoot them and out-fight them; still they ain't scared of them as plain Indians are. They are a bad lot, look at them which way you will, and I don't want to have to tramp across their country noways. It was pretty hard work carrying that boat along them rocks, but I would rather have to do so, right down to the plains, then get into a muss with the Navahoes."

"How far does the Navahoe country come this way?"

"There ain't no fence, Tom, I expect. They reckon as it's their country just as far as they like to come. They don't come up as far north as this, but where they ends and where the Utes begin no one knows but themselves; and I reckon it shifts according as the Navahoes are busy with the Mexicans in the south, or have got a quiet spell, and take it into their heads to hunt this way."

For many days they continued their journey, sometimes floating quietly along a comparatively wide valley, sometimes carrying their boats past dangerous rapids, sometimes rushing along at great speed on the black, deep water, occasionally meeting with falls where everything had to be taken out of the canoes, and the boats themselves allowed to shoot over the falls with long ropes attached, by which they were drawn to shore lower down. It was seldom that they were without meat, as several big-horns and two bears were shot by the Indians. They had no doubt that they could have caught fish, but as a rule they were too tired when they arrived at their halting-place to do more than cook and eat their suppers before they lay down to rest.

"I reckon it won't be very long before we come upon a Mexican village," Harry said one day, after they had been six weeks on their downward course. "I have heard there is one above the Grand Canyon."

The scenery had varied greatly. In some of the valleys groves of trees bordered the river; sometimes not even a tuft of grass was to be seen. Occasionally the cliffs ran in an even line for many miles, showing that the country beyond was a level plateau, at other times rugged peaks and pinnacles resembling ruined castles, lighthouses, and churches could be seen. Frequently the cliffs rose three or four thousand feet in an almost unbroken line, but more often there were rounded terraces, where it would have been easy to ascend to the upper level. Everywhere the various strata were of different colours: soft grays and browns, orange, vermilion, purple, green, and yellow. They soon learned that when they passed through soft strata, the river ran quietly; where the rocks were hard there were falls and rapids; where the strata lay horizontal the stream ran smoothly, though often with great rapidity; where they dipped up stream there were dangerous rapids and falls.

Since the start the river had been largely swollen by the junctions of other streams, and was much wider and deeper than it had been where they embarked; and even where the rapids were fiercest they generally found comparatively quiet water close to the bank on one side or the other. Twice they had had upsets, both the boats having been capsized by striking upon rocks but an inch or two below the surface of the water. Little harm was done, for the guns and all other valuable articles were lashed to the sides of the boats, while strips of hide, zigzagged across the ends of the canoes at short distances apart, prevented the blankets and rugs and other bulky articles from dropping out when the boat capsized.

Since the river had become wider and the dangers less frequent, the boats always kept near each other. Upsets were therefore only the occasion for a hearty laugh; for it took but a few minutes to right the canoe, bale it out, and proceed on their way. Occasionally they had unpleasant visitors at their camp, and altogether they killed ten or twelve rattle-snakes. In some of the valleys they found the remains of the dwellings of a people far anterior to the present Indian races. Some of these ruins appeared to have been communal houses. At other points they saw cliff-dwellings in the face of the rock, with rough sculptures and hieroglyphics. The canons varied in length from ten to a hundred and fifty miles, the comparatively flat country between them varying equally in point of appearance and in the nature of the rocks. As they got lower they once or twice saw roughly-made rafts, composed of three or four logs of wood, showing where Indians had crossed the river. The journey so far had been much more pleasant than they had expected, for as the river grew wider the dangers were fewer and farther apart, and more easily avoided; and they looked forward to the descent of the Grand Canyon, from which they knew they could not be far distant, without much fear that it would prove impracticable.



Chapter XVII

The Grand Canyon


Passing from a short canyon, the boats emerged into a valley with flat shores for some distance from the river. On the right was a wide side canyon, which might afford a passage up into the hills. Half a mile lower down there were trees and signs of cultivation; and a light smoke rose among them. At this, the first sign of human life they had seen since they took to the boats, all hands paddled rapidly. They were approaching the shore, when Leaping Horse said to Harry: "No go close. Stop in river and see, perhaps bad Indians. Leaping Horse not like smoke."

Harry called to the other canoe, and they bore out into the stream again. The chief stood up in the boat, and after gazing at the shore silently for a moment said:

"Village burnt. Burnt little time ago, post still burning." As he resumed his seat Harry stood up in turn.

"That is so, chief. There have only been five or six huts; whether Indian or white, one can't tell now."

Just at this moment an Indian appeared on the bank. As his eye fell on the boats he started. A moment later he raised a war-yell.

"Navahoe," the chief said. "Navahoe war-party come down, kill people and burn village. Must row hard."

The yell had been answered from the wood, and in two or three minutes as many score of Indians appeared on the banks. They shouted to the boats to come to shore, and as no attention was paid, some of them at once opened fire. The river was about a quarter of a mile wide, and although the shots splashed round them the boats were not long in reaching the farther bank, but not unharmed, for Ben had dropped his paddle and fallen back in the boat.

"Is he badly hurt?" Harry asked anxiously, as the canoes drew alongside each other near the bank, and Sam turned round to look at his comrade.

"He has finished his journey," Sam said in a hoarse voice. "He has gone down, and a better mate and a truer heart I never met. The ball has hit him in the middle of the forehead. It were to be, I guess, for it could only have been a chance shot at that distance."

Exclamations of sorrow and fury broke from the others, and for a few minutes there was no thought of the Indians, whose bullets were still falling in the water, for the most part short of the boats. A sharp tap on the side of Harry's canoe, followed by a jet of water, roused them.

"We mustn't stop here," Harry said, as Hunting Dog plugged the hole with a piece of dried meat, "or poor Ben won't be the only one."

"Let us have a shot first," Jerry said. "Young Tom, do you take a shot with Plumb-centre. It is about four hundred and fifty yards as near as I can reckon, and she will carry pretty true that distance."

"We will give them a shot all round," Harry said, as he took up his rifle.

Six shots were discharged almost at the same moment. One of the Indians was seen to fall, the rest bounded away to a short distance from the bank. Then Hunting Dog at a word from the chief stepped into the other canoe. Keeping close under the bank they paddled down. The Indians had ceased firing, and had disappeared at a run.

"What are they up to now, chief?"

"Going down to mouth of canyon, river sure to be narrow; get there before us."

"Wait, Jerry," Harry shouted to the other boat, which was some twenty yards ahead. "The chief thinks they have gone to cut us off at the head of the canyon, which is likely enough. I don't suppose it is fifty yards wide there, and they will riddle us if we try to get through in daylight. We had better stop and have a meal and talk it over."

The boats were rowed ashore, and the men landed and proceeded to light a fire as unconcernedly as if no danger threatened them. Ben's death had cast a heavy gloom over them, and but few words were spoken, until the meal was cooked and eaten.

"It is a dog-goned bad business," Jerry said. "I don't say at night as we mayn't get past them without being hit, but to go rushing into one of those canyons in the dark would be as bad as standing their fire, if not wuss. The question is -- could we leave the boats and strike across?"

"We could not strike across this side anyhow," Harry said. "There are no settlements west of the Colorado. We know nothing of the country, and it is a hundred to one we should all die of thirst even if we could carry enough grub to last us. If we land at all it must be on the other side, and then we could not reckon on striking a settlement short of two hundred miles, and two hundred miles across a country like this would be almost certain death."

"As the Navahoes must have ridden down, Harry, there must be water. I reckon they came down that canyon opposite."

"Navahoe on track in morning," the chief said quietly. "When they see we not go down river look for boat, find where we land and take up trail. Canyon very plain road. Some go up there straight, take all our scalps."

No one spoke for a moment or two. What the Seneca said was so evident to them that it was useless to argue. "Well, chief, what do you advise yourself?" Harry asked at length.

"Not possible go on foot, Harry. Country all rocks and canyons; cannot get through, cannot get water. Trouble with Navahoes too. Only chance get down in boat to-night. Keep close under this bank; perhaps Indians not see us, night dark."

"Do you think they can cross over to this side?"

"Yes, got canoe. Two canoes in village, Leaping Horse saw them on bank. When it gets dark, cross over."

"We will get a start of them," Harry said. "Directly it is dark we can be off too. The shore is everywhere higher than our heads as we sit in the canoes, and we can paddle in the shadow without being seen by them on the other side, while they won't venture to cross till it is pitch dark. As the stream runs something like three miles an hour, I reckon that they are hardly likely to catch us. As for the rapids, they don't often begin until you are some little distance in. At any rate we shall not have to go far, for the red-skins will not dare to enter the canyon, so we can tie up till morning as soon as we are a short distance in. We have got to run the gauntlet of their fire, but after all that is better than taking our chances by leaving the boats. If we lie down when we get near them they may not see us at all; but if they do, a very few strokes will send us past them. At any rate there seems less risk in that plan than in any other."

The others agreed.

"Now, boys, let us dig a grave," he went on, as soon as the point was settled. "It is a sort of clay here and we can manage it, and it is not likely we shall find any place, when we are once in the canyon, where we can do it." They had neither picks nor shovels with them, for their mining tools had been left at the spot where they were at work, but with their axes and knives they dug a shallow grave, laid Ben's body in it, covered it up, and then rolled a number of boulders over it.

Ben's death affected Tom greatly. They had lived together and gone through many perils and risks for nearly a year, and none had shown more unflagging good-humour throughout than the man who had been killed. That the boats might upset and all might perish together, was a thought that had often occurred to him as they made their way down the river, but that one should be cut off like this had never once been contemplated by him. Their lives from the hour they met on the Big Wind River had seemed bound up together, and this sudden loss of one of the party affected him greatly. The others went about their work silently and sadly, but they had been so accustomed to see life lost in sudden frays, and in one or other of the many dangers that miners and hunters are exposed to, that it did not affect them to the same extent as it did Tom.

Except two or three men who remained on watch on the opposite bank, though carefully keeping out of rifle-range, they saw no signs of the Navahoes during the day. As soon as it became so dark that they were sure their movements could not be seen from the other side, they silently took their places in the boats, and pushed off into the current. For a quarter of an hour they lay in the canoes, then at a signal from Harry knelt up, took their paddles and began to row very quietly and cautiously, the necessity for dropping their paddles noiselessly into the water and for avoiding any splashing having been impressed on all before starting.

"There is no occasion for haste," Harry said. "Long and gentle strokes of the paddle will take us down as fast as we need go. If those fellows do cross over, as I expect they will, they will find it difficult to travel over the rocks in the dark as fast as we are going now, and there is no fear whatever of their catching us if we go on steadily."

After an hour's rowing they could make out a dark mass rising like a wall in front of them, and Harry passed the word back to the other canoe, which was just behind them, that they should now cease paddling, only giving a stroke occasionally to keep the head of the canoe straight, and to prevent the boat from drifting out from under the shelter of the bank, in the stillness of the night they could hear a low roaring, and knew that it was caused by a rapid in the canon ahead. Higher and higher rose the wall of rock, blotting out the stars in front of them till the darkness seemed to spread half-way over the sky.

They could see that the boat was passing the shore more rapidly, as the river accelerated its course before rushing into the gorge. Suddenly there was a shout on the right, so close that Tom was startled, then there was a rifle-shot, and a moment later a wild outburst of yells and a dozen other shots. At the first shout the paddles dipped into the water, and at racing speed the boats shot along. Eight or ten more rifle-shots were fired, each farther behind them.

"Anyone hurt?" Harry asked.

There was a general negative.

"I don't believe they really saw us," Harry said. "The first fellow may have caught sight of us, but I expect the others fired merely at random. Now let us row in and fasten up, for judging from that roaring there must be a big rapid close ahead."

The boats were soon fastened up against the rocks, and the chief stepped ashore, saying:

"Leaping Horse and Hunting Dog will watch. Navahoes may come down here. Don't think they will be brave enough to enter canyon, too dark to see. Still, better watch."

"Just as you like, chief," Harry said, "but I have no belief that they will come down here in the dark; it would be as much as they would dare do in broad daylight. Besides, these rocks are steepish climbing anyway, and I should not like myself to try to get over them, when it is so dark that I can't see my own hand, except by putting it up between my eyes and the stars."

"If it was not for that," Jerry said, "I would crawl along to the mouth and see if I couldn't get a shot at them varmint on the other side."

"You would not find them there, Jerry. You may be sure that when they saw us go through they would know it was of no use waiting there any longer. They would flatter themselves that they had hit some of us, and even if they hadn't, it would not seem to matter a cent to them, as the evil spirit of the canon would surely swallow us up."

"Well, they have been wrong in their first supposition, uncle," Tom said, "and I hope they will be equally wrong in the second."

"I hope so, Tom. Now we may as well go to sleep. As soon as there is any light we must explore as far as we can go, for by the noise ahead it must be either a fall or a desperately bad rapid."

When daylight broke, the whites found Hunting Dog sitting with his rifle across his knees on a rock above them.

"Where is the chief?" Harry asked him.

"Leaping Horse went up the rocks to see if Navahoes have gone."

"Very well. Tell him when he comes back we have gone down to have a look at the rapid. Tom, you may as well stay here. There is plenty of drift-wood among those rocks, and we will breakfast before we start down. I reckon we shall not have much time for anything of that sort after we are once off."

Tom was by no means sorry to be saved a heavy climb. He collected some wood and broke it up into suitable pieces, but at the suggestion of Hunting Dog waited for the chief's return before lighting it. The chief came down in a few minutes. "Navahoes all gone," he said briefly.

"Then I can light a fire, chief?"

Leaping Horse nodded, and Tom took out the tightly-fitting tin box in which he kept his matches. Each of the party carried a box, and to secure against the possibility of the matches being injured by the water in case of a capsize, the boxes were kept in deer's bladders tightly tied at the mouth. The fire was just alight when the others returned.

"It is better ahead than we expected," Harry said; "the noise was caused by the echo from the smooth faces of the rocks. It is lucky we hauled in here last night, for these rocks end fifty yards on, and as far as we can see down, the water washes the foot of the wall on both sides. We were able to climb up from them on to a narrow ledge, parallel with the water, and went on to the next turn, but there was no change in the character of the river. So we shall make a fair start anyway."

More wood was put on the fire, and in a quarter of an hour the kettle was boiling and slices of meat cooked. Half an hour later they took their places in the canoes and started. The canyon was similar to the one they had last passed; the walls were steep and high, but with irregular shelves running along them. Above these were steep slopes, running up to the foot of smooth perpendicular cliffs of limestone. The stream was very rapid, and they calculated that in the first half-hour they must have run six miles. Here the walls receded to a distance, and ledges of rock and hills of considerable heights intervened between the river and the cliffs. They checked the pace of their canoes just as they reached this opening, for a deep roar told of danger ahead. Fortunately there were rocks where they were able to disembark, and a short way below they found that a natural dam extended across the river.

"There has been an eruption of trap here," Harry said, looking at the black rock on either side. "There has been a fissure, I suppose, and the lava was squeezed up through it. You see the river has cut a path for itself some hundreds of feet deep. It must have taken countless ages, Tom, to have done the work."

Over this dam the water flowed swiftly and smoothly, and then shot down in a fall six feet high. Below for a distance of two or three hundred yards was a furious rapid, the water running among black rocks. With considerable difficulty they made a portage of the boats and stores to the lower end of the rapid. This transit occupied several hours, and they then proceeded on their way. Five more miles were passed; several times the boats were brought to the bank in order that falls ahead might be examined. These proved to be not too high to shoot, and the boats paddled over them. When they had first taken to the river they would never have dreamt of shooting such falls, but they had now become so expert in the management of the boats, and so confident in their buoyancy, that the dangers which would then have appalled them were now faced without uneasiness.

They now came to a long rapid, presenting so many dangers that they deemed it advisable to let down the boats by lines. Again embarking they found that the wall of rocks closed in and they entered a narrow gorge, through which the river ran with great swiftness, touching the walls on each side. Great care was needed to prevent the boats being dashed against the rock, but they succeeded in keeping them fairly in the middle of the stream. After travelling four miles through this gorge it opened somewhat, and on one side was a strip of sand.

"We will land there," Harry said. "It looks to me like granite ahead, and if it is we are in for bad times, sure."

The boats were soon pulled up, and they proceeded to examine the cliffs below. Hitherto the danger had been in almost exact proportion to the hardness of the rock, and as they were entering a far harder rock than they had before encountered, greater difficulties than those they had surmounted were to be expected.

They could not see a long distance down, but what they saw was enough to justify their worst anticipations. The canyon was narrower than any they had traversed, and the current extremely swift. There seemed but few broken rocks in the channel, but on either side the walls jutted out in sharp angles far into the river, with crags and pinnacles.

"Waal, it is of no use looking at it," Jerry said after a pause. "It is certain we can't get along the sides, so there is nothing to do but to go straight at it; and the sooner it is over the better."

Accordingly they returned to the boats, and soon darted at the speed of an arrow into the race. Bad as it was at starting it speedily became worse: ledges, pinnacles, and towers of rock rose above the surface of the stream breaking it into falls and whirlpools. Every moment it seemed to Tom that the boat must inevitably be dashed to pieces against one of these obstructions, for the light boats were whirled about like a feather on the torrent, and the paddlers could do but little to guide their course. The very strength of the torrent, however, saved them from destruction, the whirl from the rocks sweeping the boat's head aside when within a few feet of them, and driving it past the danger before they had time to realize that they had escaped wreck. Half an hour of this, and a side canyon came in. Down this a vast quantity of boulders had been swept, forming a dam across the river, but they managed to paddle into an eddy at the side, and to make a portage of the boats to the water below the dam, over which there was a fall of from thirty to forty feet high. Three more similar dams were met with. Over one the canoes were carried, but on the others there was a break in the boulder wall, and they were able to shoot the falls.

After three days of incessant labour, they heard, soon after starting from their last halting-place, a roar even louder and more menacing than they had yet experienced. Cautiously they got as close as possible to the side, and paddling against the stream were able to effect a landing just above the rapid. On examining it they found that it was nearly half a mile long, and in this distance the water made a fall of some eighty feet, the stream being broken everywhere with ledges and jagged rocks, among which the waves lashed themselves into a white foam. It seemed madness to attempt such a descent, and they agreed that at any rate they would halt for the day. The rocks through which the canyon ran were fully a thousand feet high, but they decided that, great as the labour might be, it would be better to make a portage, if possible, rather than descend the cataract.

"There is a gulch here running up on to the hill," Tom said. "Hunting Dog and I will start at once and see if it is possible to get up it, and if so how far it is to a place where we can get down again."

Harry assented; Leaping Horse without a word joined the explorers, and they set off up the gulch. It was found that the ravine was steep, but not too steep to climb. When they were nearly at the top Hunting Dog pointed to the hillside above them, and they saw a big-horn standing at the edge of the rock. The three fired their rifles simultaneously, and the wild sheep made a spring into the air and then came tumbling down the side of the ravine. As fresh meat was beginning to run short this was a stroke of good fortune, and after reloading their guns they proceeded up the ravine until they reached the crest of the hill. The soil was disintegrated granite, and tufts of short grass grew here and there. After walking about a mile, parallel to the course of the river, they found that the ground descended again, and without much difficulty made their way down until they reached the foot of a little valley; following this they were soon standing by the side of the river. Above, its surface was as closely studded with rocks as was the upper cataract; below, there was another fall that looked impracticable, except that it seemed possible to pass along on the rocks by the side. It was getting dark by the time they rejoined their comrades.

"Your report is not a very cheerful one," Harry said, "but at any rate there seems nothing else to be done than to make the portage. The meat you have got for us will re-stock our larder, and as it is up there we sha'n't have the trouble of carrying it over."

The next day was a laborious one. One by one the canoes were carried over, but the operation took them from daybreak till dark. The next morning another journey was made to bring over the rugs and stores, and they were able in addition to these to carry down the carcass of the sheep, after first skinning it and cutting off the head with its great horns. Nothing was done for the rest of the day beyond trying whether another portage could be made. This was found to be impracticable, and there was nothing for them but to attempt the descent. They breakfasted as soon as day broke, carried the boats down over the boulder dam with which the rapids commenced, and put them into the water. For some little distance they were able to let them down by ropes, then the rocks at the foot of the cliffs came to an end. Fortunately the seven lariats furnished them with a considerable length of line, and in addition to these the two Indians had on their way down plaited a considerable length of rope, with thongs cut from the skins of the animals they had killed.

The total available amount of rope was now divided into two lengths, the ends being fastened to each canoe. One of the boats with its crew on board was lowered to a point where the men were able to get a foothold on a ledge. As soon as they had done so the other boat dropped down to them, and the ropes were played out until they were in turn enabled to get a footing on a similar ledge or jutting rock, sometimes so narrow that but one man was able to stand. So alternately the boats were let down. Sometimes when no foothold could be obtained on the rock wall, the pinnacles and ledges in the stream were utilized. All the work had to be done by gesture, for the thunder of the waters was so tremendous that the loudest shout could not be heard a few yards away. Hour passed after hour. Their progress was extremely slow, as each step had to be closely considered and carried out with the greatest care.

At last a terrible accident happened. Harry, Leaping Horse, and Tom were on a ledge. Below them was a fall of three feet, and in the foaming stream below it, rose several jagged rocks. Jerry's canoe was got safely down the fall, but in spite of the efforts of the rowers was carried against the outer side of one of these rocks. They made a great effort to turn the boat's head into the eddy behind it, but as the line touched the rock its sharp edge severed the rope like a knife, and the boat shot away down the rapid. Those on the ledge watched it with breathless anxiety. Two or three dangers were safely passed, then to their horror they saw the head of the canoe rise suddenly as it ran up a sunken ledge just under the water. An instant later the stern swept round, bringing her broadside on to the stream, and she at once capsized.

"Quick!" Harry exclaimed, "we must go to their rescue. Keep close to the wall, chief, till we see signs of them. It is safest close in."

In an instant they were in their places, and as they released the canoe she shot in a moment over the fall. For a short distance they kept her close to the side, but a projecting ledge threw the current sharply outwards, and the canoe shot out into the full force of the rapid. The chief knelt up in the bow paddle in hand, keeping a vigilant eye for rocks and ledges ahead, and often with a sharp stroke of the paddle, seconded by the effort of Harry in the stern, sweeping her aside just when Tom thought her destruction inevitable. Now she went headlong down a fall, then was caught by an eddy, and was whirled round and round three or four times before the efforts of the paddlers could take her beyond its influence. Suddenly a cry came to their ears. Just as they approached a rocky ledge some thirty feet long, and showing a saw-like edge a foot above the water, the chief gave a shout and struck his paddle into the water.

"Behind the rock, Tom, behind the rock!" Harry exclaimed as he swept the stern round. Tom paddled with all his might, and the canoe headed up stream. Quickly as the movement was done, the boat was some twelve yards below the rock as she came round with her nose just in the lower edge of the eddy behind it, while from either side the current closed in on her. Straining every nerve the three paddlers worked as for life. At first Tom thought that the glancing waters would sweep her down, but inch by inch they gained, and drove the boat forward from the grasp of the current into the back eddy, until suddenly, as if released from a vice, she sprang forward. Never in his life had Tom exerted himself so greatly. His eyes were fixed on the rock in front of him, where Hunting Dog was clinging with one hand, while with the other he supported Jerry's head above water. He gave a shout of joy as the chief swept the head of the canoe round, just as it touched the rock, and laid her broadside to it.

"Stick your paddle between two points of the rock, Tom," Harry shouted, "while the chief and I get them in. Sit well over on the other side of the boat."

With considerable difficulty Jerry, who was insensible, was lifted into the boat. As soon as he was laid down Hunting Dog made his way hand over hand on the gunwale until close to the stern, where he swung himself into the boat without difficulty.

"Have you seen Sam?" Harry asked.

The young Indian shook his head. "Sam one side of the boat," he said, "Jerry and Hunting Dog the other. Boat went down that chute between those rocks above. Only just room for it. Jerry was knocked off by rock. Hunting Dog was near the stern, there was room for him. He caught Jerry's hunting-shirt, but could not hold on to boat. When came down here made jump at corner of rock. Could not hold on, but current swept him into eddy. Then swam here and held on, and kept calling. Knew his brothers would come down soon."

"Here is a spare paddle," Harry said, as he pulled one out from below the network, "there is not a moment to lose. Keep your eyes open, chief." Again the boat moved down the stream. With four paddles going the steersman had somewhat more control over her, but as she flew down the seething water, glanced past rocks and sprang over falls, Tom expected her to capsize every moment. At last he saw below them a stretch of quiet water, and two or three minutes later they were floating upon it, and as if by a common impulse all ceased rowing.

"Thanks be to God for having preserved us," Harry said reverently. "We are half-full of water; another five minutes of that work and it would have been all over with us. Do you see any signs of the canoe, chief?"

The chief pointed to a ledge of rock extending out into the stream. "Canoe there," he said. They paddled across to it. After what the young Indian had said they had no hopes of finding Sam with it, but Harry gave a deep sigh as he stepped out on to the ledge.

"Another gone," he said. "How many of us will get through this place alive? Let us carry Jerry ashore."

There was a patch of sand swept up by the eddy below the rock, and here Jerry was taken out and laid down. He moaned as they lifted him.

"Easy with him," Harry said. "Steady with that arm. I think he has a shoulder broken, as well as this knock on the head that has stunned him."

As soon as he was laid down Harry cut open his shirt on the shoulder. "Broken," he said shortly. "Now, chief, I know that you are a good hand at this sort of thing. How had this better be bandaged?"

"Want something soft first."

Tom ran to the canoe, brought out the little canvas sack in which he carried his spare flannel shirt, and brought it to the chief. The latter tore off a piece of stuff and rolled it into a wad. "Want two pieces of wood," he said, holding his hands about a foot apart to show the length he required. Harry fetched a spare paddle, and split a strip off each side of the blade. The chief nodded as he took them. "Good," he said. He tore off two more strips of flannel and wrapped them round the splints, then with Harry's aid he placed the shoulder in its natural position, laid the wad of flannel on the top of it, and over this put the two splints. The whole was kept in its place by flannel bandages, and the arm was fastened firmly across the body, so that it could not be moved. Then the little keg of brandy was brought out of the canoe, a spoonful poured into the pannikin, with half as much water, and allowed to trickle between Jerry's lips, while a wad of wet flannel was placed on his head.

"There is nothing more we can do for him at present," Harry said. "Now we will right the other boat, and get all the things out to dry."

Three or four pounds of flour were found to be completely soaked with water, but the main store was safe, as the bag was sewn up in bear-skin. This was only opened occasionally to take out two or three days' supply, and then carefully closed again. On landing, Hunting Dog had at once started in search of drift-wood, and by this time a fire was blazing. A piece of bear's fat was placed in the frying-pan, and the wetted flour was at once fried into thin cakes, which were tough and tasteless; but the supply was too precious to allow of an ounce being wasted. Some slices of the flesh of the big-horn were cooked.

"What is my white brother going to do?" the chief asked Harry.

"There is nothing to do that I can see, chief, but to keep on pegging away. We agreed that it would be almost impossible to find our way over these barren mountains. That is not to be thought of, now that one of our number cannot walk. There is no choice left, we have got to go on."

"Leaping Horse understand that," the chief said. "He meant would you take both canoes? One is big enough to take five."

"Quite big enough, chief, but it would be deeper in the water, and the heavier it is the harder it will bump against any rock it meets; the lighter they are the better. You see, this other canoe, which I dare say struck a dozen times on its way down, shows no sign of damage except the two rents in the skin, that we can mend in a few minutes. Another thing is, two boats are absolutely necessary for this work of letting down by ropes, of which we may expect plenty more. If we had only one, we should be obliged to run every rapid. The only extra trouble that it will give us is at the portages. I think we had better stay here for two or three days, so as to give Jerry a chance of coming round. No doubt we could carry him over the portages just as we can carry the boats, but after such a knock on the head as he has had, it is best that he should be kept quiet for a bit. If his skull is not cracked he won't be long in getting round. He is as hard as nails, and will pull round in the tenth of the time it would take a man in the towns to get over such a knock. It is a pity the halt is not in a better place. There is not a shadow of a chance of finding game among these crags and bare rocks."

From time to time fresh water was applied to the wad of flannel round Jerry's head.

"Is there any chance, do you think, of finding poor Sam's body?"

The chief shook his head. "No shores where it could be washed up, rocks tear it to pieces; or if it get in an eddy, might be there for weeks. No see Sam any more."

The fire was kept blazing all night, and they took it by turns to sit beside Jerry and to pour occasionally a little brandy and water between his lips. As the men were moving about preparing breakfast the next morning Jerry suddenly opened his eyes. He looked at Tom, who was sitting beside him.

"Time to get up?" he asked. "Why did you not wake me?" And he made an effort to move. Tom put his hand on him.

"Lie still, Jerry. You have had a knock on the head, but you are all right now."

The miner lay quiet. His eyes wandered confusedly over the figures of the others, who had, when they heard his voice, gathered round him.

"What in thunder is the matter with me?" he asked. "What is this thing on my head? What is the matter with my arm, I don't seem able to move it?"

"It is the knock you have had, Jerry," Harry said cheerfully. "You have got a bump upon your head half as big as a cocoa-nut, and you have damaged your shoulder. You have got a wet flannel on your head, and the chief has bandaged your arm. I expect your head will be all right in a day or two, but I reckon you won't be able to use your arm for a bit."

Jerry lay quiet without speaking for a few minutes, then he said: "Oh, I remember now; we were capsized. I had hold of the canoe, and I remember seeing a rock just ahead. I suppose I knocked against it."

"That was it, mate. Hunting Dog let go his hold and caught you, and managed to get into an eddy and cling to the rocks till we came down and took you on board."

Jerry held out his hand to the Indian. "Thankee," he said. "I owe you one, Hunting Dog. If I ever get the chance you can reckon on me sure, whatever it is. But where is Sam? Why ain't he here?"

"Sam has gone under, mate," Harry replied. "That chute you went down was only just wide enough for the boat to go through, and no doubt he was knocked off it at the same time as you were; but as the Indian was on your side, he saw nothing of Sam. I reckon he sank at once, just as you would have done if Hunting Dog hadn't been behind you."

Jerry made no reply, but as he lay still, with his eyes closed, some big tears made their way through the lids and rolled down his bronzed face. The others thought it best to leave him by himself, and continued their preparations for breakfast.



Chapter XVIII

Back To Denver


"When are you going to make a start again?" Jerry asked, after drinking a pannikin of tea.

"We are not going on to-day; perhaps not to-morrow. It will depend on how you get on."

"I shall be a nuisance to you anyway," the miner said, "and it would be a dog-goned sight the best way to leave me here; but I know you won't do that, so it ain't no use my asking you. I expect I shall be all right to-morrow except for this shoulder, but just now my head is buzzing as if there was a swarm of wild bees inside."

"You will be all the better when you have had a good sleep; I reckon we could all do a bit that way. Young Tom and Hunting Dog are going to try a bit of fishing with those hooks of yours. We talked about it when we started, you know, but we have not done anything until now. We want a change of food badly. We may be a month going down this canyon for anything I know, and if it keeps on like this there ain't a chance of seeing a head of game. It ought to be a good place for fish at the foot of the rapids -- that is, if there are any fish here, and I reckon there should be any amount of them. If they do catch some, we will wait here till we can dry a good stock. We have nothing now but the dried flesh and some of the big-horn. There ain't above twenty pounds of flour left, and we could clear up all there is in the boat in a week. So you need not worry that you are keeping us."

Half an hour later Hunting Dog and Tom put out in one of the canoes, and paddling to the foot of the rapids let the lines drop overboard, the hooks being baited with meat. It was not many minutes before the Indian felt a sharp pull. There was no occasion to play the fish, for the line was strong enough to hold a shark, and a trout of six pounds weight was soon laid in the bottom of the boat.

"My turn now," Tom said; and the Indian with a smile took the paddle from his hand, and kept the boat up stream while Tom attended to the lines. Fish after fish was brought up in rapid succession, and when about mid-day a call from below told them that it was time for dinner, they had some thirty fish averaging five pounds' weight at the bottom of the boat.

There was a shout of satisfaction from Harry as he looked down into the canoe, and even the chief gave vent to a grunt that testified his pleasure.

"Hand me up four of them, Tom; I did not know how much I wanted a change of food till my eyes lit on those beauties. We saw you pulling them out, but I did not expect it was going to be as good as this."

The fish were speedily split open, and laid on ramrods over the fire.

"I reckon you will want another one for me," Jerry, who had been asleep since they started, remarked. "I don't know that I am good for one as big as those, but I reckon I can pick a bit anyhow."

A small fish was put on with the others, and as soon as they were grilled, all set to at what seemed to Tom the best meal he had ever eaten in his life. He thought when he handed them to Harry that two would have been amply sufficient for them all, but he found no difficulty whatever in disposing of a whole one single-handed.

"Now, Tom, the chief and I will take our turn while you and Hunting Dog prepare your catch. He will show you how to do it, it is simple enough. Cut off the heads, split and clean them, run a skewer through to keep them flat, and then lay them on that rock in the sun to dry. Or wait, I will rig up a line between two of the rocks for you to hang them on. There is not much wind, but what there is will dry them better than if they were laid flat."

Jerry went off to sleep again as soon as the meal was finished, and the bandages round his head re-wetted. The paddle from which the strips had been cut furnished wood for the skewers, and in the course of half an hour the fish were all hanging on a line. Twenty two more were brought in at sunset. Some of these, after being treated like the others, were hung in the smoke of the fire, while the rest were suspended like the first batch.

The next morning Jerry was able to move about, and the fishing went on all day, and by night a quantity, considered sufficient, had been brought ashore.

"There are over four hundred pounds altogether," Harry said, "though by the time they are dried they won't be more than half that weight. Two pounds of dried fish a man is enough to keep him going, and they will last us twenty days at that rate, and it will be hard luck if we don't find something to help it out as we go down."

They stopped another day to allow the drying to be completed. The fish were taken down and packed on board that evening, and at daylight they were afloat again. For the next ten days their labours were continuous. They passed several rapids as bad as the one that had cost them so dear; but as they gained experience they became more skilful in letting down the boats. Some days only two or three miles were gained, on others they made as much as twelve. At last they got out of the granite; beyond this the task was much easier, and on the fifteenth day after leaving their fishing-ground, they emerged from the canyon.

By this time Jerry had perfectly recovered, and was with great difficulty persuaded to keep his arm bandaged. He had chafed terribly at first at his helplessness, and at being unable to take any share in the heavy labours of the others; but after the rapids were passed he was more contented, and sat quietly at the bottom of the boat smoking, while Harry and Tom paddled, the two Indians forming the crew of the other canoe. The diet of fish had been varied by bear's flesh, Leaping Horse having shot a large brown bear soon after they got through the rapids. A shout of joy was raised by the three whites as they issued from the gorge into a quiet valley, through which the river ran, a broad tranquil stream. Even the Indians were stirred to wave their paddles above their heads and to give a ringing whoop as their companions cheered. The boats were headed for the shore, and the camp was formed near a large clump of bushes.

Their joy at their deliverance from the dangers of the canyon was dashed only by the thought of the loss of their two comrades. The next day three short canyons were passed through, but these presented no difficulties, and in the afternoon they reached the mouth of the Rio Virgen, and continuing their journey arrived five days later at Fort Mojarve. This was a rising settlement, for it was here that the traders' route between Los Angeles and Santa Fé crossed the Colorado. Their appearance passed almost unnoticed, for a large caravan had arrived that afternoon and was starting east the next morning.

"We had best hold our tongues about it altogether," Harry said, as soon as he heard that the caravan was going on the next morning. "In the first place they won't believe us, and that would be likely to lead to trouble; and in the next place we should be worried out of our lives with questions. Besides, we have got to get a fresh outfit, for we are pretty near in rags, and to buy horses, food, and kit. We can leave the boats on the shore, no one is likely to come near them."

"I will stop and look after them," Tom said. "There are the saddles, buffalo-robes, blankets, and ammunition. This shirt is in rags, and the last moccasins Hunting Dog made me are pretty nearly cut to pieces by the rocks. I would rather stay here and look after the boats than go into the village; besides, it will save you the trouble of carrying all these bags of gold about with you."

Harry nodded, cut two of the little bags free from their lashings and dropped them into his pocket, and then went up to the Fort with Jerry and the Indians. Tom cut the other bags loose and put them on the ground beside him, threw a buffalo-robe over them, and then sat for some hours watching the quiet river and thinking over all they had gone through. It was almost dark when the others returned.

"It has taken us some time, Tom," his uncle said as they threw some bundles down beside him; "the stores and clothes were easy enough, but we had a lot of trouble to find horses. However, we did not mind much what we paid for them, and the traders were ready to sell a few at the prices we offered. So we have got five riding horses and two pack-ponies, which will be enough for us. That bundle is your lot, riding breeches and boots, three pairs of stockings, two flannel shirts, a Mexican hat, and a silk neck handkerchief. We may as well change at once and go up to the village."

The change was soon effected. Harry and Jerry Curtis had clothes similar to those they had bought for Tom, while the Indians wore over their shirts new deer-skin embroidered hunting-shirts, and had fringed Mexican leggings instead of breeches and boots. They, too, had procured Mexican sombreros. Taking their rifles and pistols, and hiding their stock of ammunition, the gold, and their buffalo-robes and blankets, they went up to the village. It was by this time quite dark: the houses were all lit up, and the drinking-shops crowded with the teamsters, who seemed bent on making a night of it, this being the last village through which they would pass until their arrival at Santa Fé.

They slept as usual, wrapped up in their buffalo-robes by the side of the boats, as all agreed that this was preferable to a close room in a Mexican house.

They were all a-foot as soon as daylight broke, and went up and breakfasted at a fonda, Tom enjoying the Mexican cookery after the simple diet he had been accustomed to. Then they went to the stable where the horses, which were strong serviceable-looking animals, had been placed, and put on their saddles and bridles.

The pack-horses were then laden with flour, tea, sugar, bacon, and other necessaries. By the time all was ready the caravan was just starting. Harry had spoken the afternoon before to two of its leaders, and said that he and four companions would be glad to ride with them to Santa Fé. Permission was readily granted, the traders being pleased at the accession of five well-armed men; for although Indian raids were comparatively rare along this trail, there was still a certain amount of danger involved in the journey. Some hours were occupied in crossing the river in two heavy ferry-boats, and the process would have been still longer had not half the waggons been sent across on the previous afternoon.

The long journey was made without incident, and no Indians were met with. A few deer were shot, but as it was now late in the autumn the scanty herbage on the plains was all withered up, and the game had for the most part moved away into deep valleys where they could obtain food.

The tale of their passage of the canyons was told more than once, but although it was listened to with interest, Harry perceived that it was not really believed. That they had been hunting, had been attacked by Indians, had made canoes and passed through some of the canyons was credible enough, but that they should have traversed the whole of the lower course of the Colorado, seemed to the traders, who were all men experienced in the country, simply incredible. The party stopped at Santa Fé a few days, and then started north, travelling through the Mexican villages, and finally striking across to Denver. At Santa Fé they had converted the contents of their bags into money, which had been equally shared among them. The Indians were not willing to accept more than the recognized monthly pay, but Harry would not hear of it.

"This has been no ordinary business, Leaping Horse," he said warmly; "we have all been as brothers together, and for weeks have looked death in the face every hour, and we must share all round alike in the gold we have brought back. Gold is just as useful to an Indian as it is to a white man, and when you add this to the hoard you spoke of, you will have enough to buy as many horses and blankets as you can use all your lifetime, and to settle down in your wigwam and take a wife to yourself whenever you choose. I fancy from what you said, Hunting Dog has his eye on one of the maidens of your tribe. Well, he can buy her father's favour now. The time is coming, chief, when the Indians of the plains will have to take to white men's ways. The buffaloes are fast dying out, and in a few years it will be impossible to live by hunting, and the Indians will have to keep cattle and build houses and live as we do. With his money Hunting Dog could buy a tidy ranche with a few hundred head of cattle. Of course, he can hunt as much as he likes so long as there is any game left, but he will find that as his cattle increase, he will have plenty to look after at home."

"We will take the gold if my brother wishes it," the chief replied gravely. "He is wise, and though now it seems to Leaping Horse that red-skins have no need of gold, it may be that some day he and Hunting Dog may be glad that they have done as their brother wished."

"Thank you, Leaping Horse. It will make my heart glad when I may be far away from you across the great salt water to know that there will always be comfort in my brother's wigwam."

On arriving at Denver they went straight to the Empire. As they entered the saloon Pete Hoskings looked hard at them.

"Straight Harry, by thunder!" he shouted; "and Jerry Curtis, and young Tom; though I would not have known him if he hadn't been with the others. Well, this air a good sight for the eyes, and to-morrow Christmas-day. I had begun to be afeard that something had gone wrong with you, I looked for news from you nigh three months ago. I got the message you sent me in the spring, and I have asked every old hand who came along east since the end of August, if there had been any news of you, and I began to fear that you had been rubbed out by the Utes."

"We have had a near escape of it, Pete; but it is a long story. Can you put us all up? You know Leaping Horse, don't you? The other is his nephew."

"I should think I do know Leaping Horse," Pete said warmly, and went across and shook the Indian's hand heartily.

"I was looking at you three, and did not notice who you had with you. In that letter the chap brought me, you said that the chief was going with you, and Sam Hicks and Ben Gulston. I did not know them so well; that is, I never worked with them, though they have stopped here many a time."

"They have gone under, Pete. Sam was drowned in the Colorado, Ben shot by the Navahoes. We have all had some close calls, I can tell you. Well now, can you put us up?"

"You need not ask such a question as that, Harry," Pete said in an aggrieved tone, "when you know very well that if the place was chock-full, I would clear the crowd out to make room for you. There are three beds in the room over this that will do for you three; and there is a room beside it as Leaping Horse and his nephew can have, though I reckon they won't care to sleep on the beds."

"No more shall we, Pete. We have been fifteen months and more sleeping in the open, and we would rather have our buffalo-robes and blankets than the softest bed in the world."

"You must have had a cold time of it the last three months up in those Ute hills, where you said you were going."

"We left there five months ago, Pete. We have been down as low as Fort Mojarve, and then crossed with a caravan of traders to Santa Fé."

Pete began pouring out the liquor.

"Oh, you won't take one, chief, nor the young brave. Yes; I remember you do not touch the fire-water, and you may be sure I won't press you. Well, luck to you all, and right glad I am to see you again. Ah! here is my bartender. Now we will get a good fire lit in another room and hurry up supper, and then we will talk it all over. You have put your horses up, I suppose?"

"Yes; we knew you had no accommodation that way, Pete."

The room into which Pete now led them was not his own sanctum, but one used occasionally when a party of miners coming in from the hills wanted to have a feast by themselves, or when customers wished to talk over private business. There was a table capable of seating some twelve people, a great stove, and some benches. A negro soon lighted a large fire; then, aided by a boy, laid the table, and it was not long before they sat down to a good meal. When it was over, Pete said:

"Lend me a hand, Jerry, to push this table aside, then we will bring the benches round the stove and hear all about it. I told the bar-tender that I am not to be disturbed, and that if anyone wants to see me he is to say that he has got to wait till to-morrow, for that I am engaged on important business. Here are brandy and whisky, and tobacco and cigars, and coffee for the chief and his nephew."

"I think you may say for all of us, Pete," Harry said. "After being a year without spirits, Jerry, Tom, and I have agreed to keep without them. We wouldn't say no to you when you asked us to take a drink, and we have not sworn off, but Jerry and I have agreed that we have both been all the better without them, and mean to keep to it; and as for Tom, he prefers coffee."

"Do as you please," Pete said; "I am always glad to hear men say no. I have made a lot of money out of it, but I have seen so many fellows ruined by it that I am always pleased to see a man give up drink."

"There is one thing, Pete," Tom said, "before we begin. We left our bundles of robes and blankets in the next room, if you don't mind I would a deal rather spread them out here -- and I am sure the chief and Hunting Dog would -- and squat down on them, instead of sitting on these benches. It is a long story uncle will have to tell you."

"We will fetch ours too," Harry agreed. "Benches are all well enough for sitting at the table to eat one's dinner, but why a man should sit on them when he can sit on the ground is more than I can make out."

Pete nodded. "I will have my rocking-chair in," he said, "and then we shall be fixed up for the evening."

The arrangements were soon made; pipes were lighted; the landlord sat in his chair at some little distance back from the front of the stove; Tom and the two Indians sat on their rugs on one side; Harry and Jerry Curtis completed the semicircle on the other.

"Well, in the first place, Pete," Harry began, "you will be glad to hear that we have struck it rich -- the biggest thing I have ever seen. It is up in the Ute country. We have staked out a claim for you next our own. There are about five hundred pounds of samples lying at Fort Bridger, and a bit of the rock we crushed, panned out five hundred ounces to the ton."

"You don't say!" Pete exclaimed. "If there is much of that stuff, Harry, you have got a bonanza."

"There is a good bit of it anyhow, Pete. It is a true vein, and though it is not all like that, it keeps good enough. Fifty feet back we found it run twenty ounces. That is on the surface, we can't say how it goes down in depth. Where we struck it on the face it was about fourteen feet high, and the lode kept its width for that depth anyhow."

"That air good enough," the landlord said. "Now, what do you reckon on doing?"

"The place is among the hills, Pete, and the Utes are hostile, and went very nigh rubbing us all out. We reckon it ought to be worked by a party of thirty men at least. They ought to be well armed, and must build a sort of fort. I don't think the Utes would venture to attack them if they were of that strength. There is a little stream runs close to the vein, and if it were dammed up it would drive a couple of stamps, which, with a concentrator and tables and blankets, would be quite enough for such stuff as that. I reckon fifteen men will be quite enough to work, and to hold the fort. The other fifteen men would include three or four hunters, and the rest would go backwards and forwards to Bridger for supplies, and to take the gold down. They would be seven or eight days away at a time; and if there should be trouble with the red-skins they would always be back before those at the fort were really pressed. But we should not be alone long, the news that a rich thing had been struck would bring scores of miners up in no time.

"We have taken up our own ten claims, which will include, of course, the rich part. Then we have taken up the next eight or ten claims for our friends. As I said, we put yours next to ours. We have not registered them yet, but that will be the first job; and of course you and the others will each have to put a man on your claims to hold them. The lode shows on the other side of the creek, though not so rich; still plenty good enough to work. But as we shall practically get all the water, the lode cannot be worked by anyone but ourselves. Still the gravel is rich all down the creek, as rich as anything I have seen in California, and will be sure to be taken up by miners as soon as we are at work. So there will be no real danger of trouble from the Indians then. What we propose is this. We don't what to sell out, we think it is good enough to hold, but we want to get a company to find the money for getting up the machinery, building a strong block-house with a palisade, laying in stores, and working the place. Jerry, Tom, and I would of course be in command, at any rate for the first year or so, when the rich stuff was being worked."

"How much money do you think it will want, and what share do you think of giving, Harry?"

"Well, I should say fifty thousand dollars, though I believe half that would be enough. Not a penny would be required after the first ton of rock goes through the stamps. But we should have to take the stamps and ironwork from the railway terminus to Bridger, and then down. We might calculate on a month or six weeks in getting up the fort, making the leat and water-wheel, putting up the machinery, and laying down the flumes. Say two months from the time we leave Bridger to the time we begin to work. There would be the pay of the men all that time, the cost of transporting stores, and all that sort of thing; so it would be better to say fifty thousand dollars. What share ought we to offer for that?"

"Well, if you could bring that five hundredweight of stuff here and get it crushed up, and it turns out as good as you say, I could get you the money in twenty-four hours. I would not mind going half of it myself, and I should say that a quarter share would be more than good enough."

"Well, we thought of a third, Pete."

"Well, if you say a third you may consider that part of the business is done. You won't be able to apply for claims in the names of Sam and Ben, and if you did it would be no good, because they could not assign them over to the company. There are eight claims without them, and the one you have put down in my name is nine. Well, I can get say eleven men in this place, who will give you an assignment of their claims for five dollars apiece. That is done every day. I just say to them, I am registering a share in your name in the Tom Cat Mine, write an assignment to me of it and I am good for five dollars' worth of liquor, take it out as you like. The thing is as easy as falling off a log. Well, what are you thinking of doing next?"

"We shall buy a light waggon and team to-morrow or next day and drive straight over to Bridger, then we shall go to Salt Lake City and register our claims at the mining-office there. We need not give the locality very precisely. Indeed, we could not describe it ourselves so that anyone could find it, and nobody would go looking for it before spring comes and the snow clears. Besides, there are scores of wild-cat claims registered every year. Until they turn out good no one thinks anything of them. When we have got that done we will go back to Bridger, and fetch the rock over here. We will write to-morrow to Pittsburg for the mining outfit, for all the ironwork of the stamps, the concentrator, and everything required, with axes, picks, and shovels, blasting tools and powder, to be sent as far as they have got the railway."

"But they will want the money with the order, Harry," Pete said in a tone of surprise.

"They will have the money. We washed the gravel for a couple of months before the Utes lit on us, and after buying horses and a fresh outfit for us all at Fort Mojarve, we have between us got something like five thousand dollars in gold and greenbacks."

"Jee-hoshaphat!" Pete exclaimed; "that was good indeed for two months' work. Well, look here, there is no hurry for a few days about your starting back to Bridger. Here we are now, nearly at the end of December. It will take you a month to get there, say another fortnight to go on to Salt Lake City and register your claim and get back to Bridger, then it would be a month getting back here again; that would take you to the middle of March. Well, you see it would be pretty nigh the end of April before you were back at Bridger, then you would have to get your waggons and your men, and that would be too late altogether.

"You have got to pick your miners carefully, I can tell you; and it is not a job to be done in a hurry. When they see what gold there is in the rock they will soon set to work washing the gravel, and the day they do they will chuck up your work altogether. I will tell you what I would rather do, and that is, pick up green hands from the east. There are scores of them here now; men who have come as far as this, and can't start west till the snows melt. You need not think anything more about the money. You tell me what you crushed is a fair sample of that five hundred pounds, and that is quite good enough for me, and the gravel being so rich is another proof of what the lode was when the stream cut through it. I can put the twenty-five thousand dollars down, and there are plenty of men here who will take my word for the affair and plank their money down too. If there weren't I would put a mortgage on my houses, so that matter is done. To-morrow I will get the men whose names you are to give in for a claim each; it will be time in another two months to begin to look about for some steady chaps from the east, farmers' sons and such like. That is, if you think that plan is a good one. I mean to see this thing through, and I shall go with you myself, and we three can do the blasting."

"We shall be wanted to look after the stamps and pans," Harry said. "We had best get three or four old hands for the rock."

"Yes, that is best," Pete said. "Between us it is hard if we can't lay our hands upon men we can trust, and who will give us their word to stay with us if we offer them six dollars a day."

"We might offer them ten dollars," Harry said, "without hurting ourselves; but we can say six dollars to begin with, and put some more on afterwards."

"There is old Mat Morgan," Jerry put in. "I don't know whether he is about here now. I would trust him. He is getting old for prospecting among the hills now, but he is as good a miner as ever swung a sledge-hammer, and as straight as they make them."

"Yes, he is a good man," Pete agreed. And after some talk they settled upon three others, all of whom, Pete said, were either in the town or would be coming in shortly.

"Now, you stop here for a week or two, or a month if you like, Harry, then you can go to Salt Lake City as you propose, and then go back to Bridger. If as you pass through you send me five-and-twenty pounds of that rock by express, it will make it easier for me to arrange the money affair. When you get back you might crush the rest up and send me word what it has panned out, then later on you can go down again to Salt Lake City and buy the waggons and flour and bacon, and take them back to Bridger. When March comes in, I will start from here with some waggons. We want them to take the machinery, and powder and tools, and the tea and coffee and things like that, of which we will make a list, on to Bridger, with the four men we pick out, if I can get them all; if not, some others in their place, and a score of young emigrants. I shall have no difficulty in picking out sober, steady chaps, for in a place like this I can find out about their habits before I engage them. However, there will be plenty of time to settle all those points. Now, let us hear all about your adventures. I have not heard about you since Tom left, except that he wrote me a short letter from Bridger saying that you had passed the winter up among the mountains by the Big Wind River. That you had had troubles with the Indians, and hadn't been able to do much trapping or looking for gold."

"Well, we will tell it between us," Harry said, "for it is a long yarn."

It was, indeed, past midnight before the story was all told. Long before it was finished the two Indians had taken up their rugs and gone up to their room, and although the other three had taken by turns to tell the tale of their adventures, they were all hoarse with speaking by the time they got through. Pete had often stopped them to ask question at various points where the narrators had been inclined to cut the story short.

"That beats all," he said, when they brought it to an end. "Only to think that you have gone down the Grand Canyon. I would not have minded being with you when you were fighting the 'Rappahoes or the Utes, but I would not try going down the canyons for all the gold in California. Well, look here, boys, I know that what you tell me is gospel truth, and all the men who know you well, will believe every word you say, but I would not tell the tale to strangers, for they would look on you as the all-firedest liars in creation."

"We have learnt that already, Pete," Harry laughed, "and we mean to keep it to ourselves, at any rate till we have got the mine at work. People may not believe the story of a man in a red shirt, and, mind you, I have heard a good many powerful lies told round a miner's fire, but when it is known we have got a wonderfully rich gold mine, I fancy it will be different. The men would say, if fellows are sharp enough to find a bonanza, it stands to reason they may be sharp enough to find their way down a canyon. Now, let us be off to bed, for the heat of the stove has made me so sleepy that for the last hour I have hardly been able to keep my eyes open, and have scarcely heard a word of what Jerry and Tom have been saying."

They only remained a few days at Denver. After the life they had been leading they were very speedily tired of that of the town, and at the end of a week they started on horseback, with a light waggon drawn by a good team, to carry their stores for the journey and to serve as a sleeping-place. There had been no question about the Indians accompanying them, this was regarded as a matter of course. It was by no means a pleasant journey. They had frequent snow-storms and biting wind, and had sometimes to work for hours to get the waggon out of deep snow, which had filled up gullies and converted them into traps. After a stay of three days at Fort Bridger to rest the animals, they went on to Utah, having forwarded the sample of quartz to Pete Hoskings.

A fortnight was spent at Salt Lake City. Waggons, bullocks, and stores were purchased, and Harry arranged with some teamsters to bring the waggons out to Fort Bridger as soon as the snow cleared from the ground.



Chapter XIX

A Fortune


On their return to Fort Bridger Harry and his companions pounded up the quartz that had been left there, and found that its average equalled that of the piece they had tried at the mine. The gold was packed in a box and sent to Pete Hoskings. A letter came back in return from him, saying that five of his friends had put in five thousand dollars each, and that he should start with the stores and machinery as soon as the track was clear of snow. The season was an early one, and in the middle of April he arrived with four large waggons and twenty active-looking young emigrants, and four miners, all of whom were known to Harry. There was a good deal of talk at Bridger about the expedition, and many offered to take service in it. But when Harry said that the lode they were going to prospect was in the heart of the Ute country, and that he himself had been twice attacked by the red-skins, the eagerness to accompany him abated considerably.

The fact, too, that it was a vein that would have to be worked by machinery, was in itself sufficient to deter solitary miners from trying to follow it up. Scarce a miner but had located a score of claims in different parts of the country, and these being absolutely useless to them, without capital to work them with, they would gladly have disposed of them for a few dollars. It was not, therefore, worth while to risk a perilous journey merely on the chance of being able to find another vein in the neighbourhood of that worked by Harry and the men who had gone into it with him. There was, however, some surprise among the old hands when Pete Hoskings arrived with the waggons.

"What! Have you cut the saloon, Pete, and are you going in for mining again?" one of them said as he alighted from his horse.

Pete gave a portentous wink.

"I guess I know what I am doing, Joe Radley. I am looking after the interests of a few speculators at Denver, who have an idea that they are going to get rich all of a sudden. I was sick of the city, and it just suited me to take a run and to get out of the place for a few months."

"Do you think it is rich, Pete?"

"One never can say," Hoskings replied with a grin. "We are not greenhorns any of us, and we know there is no saying how things are going to turn out. Straight Harry has had a run of bad luck for the last two years, and I am glad to give him a shoulder up, you know. I reckon he won't come badly off any way it turns out."

It was not much, but it was quite enough to send a rumour round the fort that Pete Hoskings had been puffing up a wild-cat mine in Denver for the sake of getting Straight Harry appointed boss of the expedition to test it.

Everything was ready at Bridger, and they delayed but twenty-four hours there. The teams had arrived from Salt Lake City with the stores a week before, and the eight waggons set off together. Pete, the three partners, the two Indians, and the four miners were all mounted. There were eight other horses ridden by as many of the young fellows Pete had brought with him, the rest walked on foot. They marched directly for the mine, as with such a force it was not necessary to make a detour over the bad lands. At the first halting-place some long cases Pete had brought with him were opened, and a musket handed to each of the emigrants, together with a packet of ammunition.

"Now," Pete said, "if the Utes meddle with us we will give them fits. But I reckon they will know better than to interfere with us."

The rate of progress with the heavy waggons was necessarily very much slower than that at which the party had travelled on their previous journey, and it was not until the afternoon of the eighth day after starting, that they came down into the valley. A halt was made at the former camping-place in the grove of trees, and the next morning Pete and the miners went up with Harry and his friends to choose a spot for the fort, and to examine the lode. As soon as the earth was scraped away from the spot from which the rock had been taken, exclamations of astonishment broke from the miners. They had been told by Pete that Harry had struck it rich, but all were astonished at the numerous particles and flakes of gold that protruded from the rock. Pete had forwarded early in the spring to Harry the list of the claimants to the mine, and the latter and Tom had ridden over to Salt Lake City a few days before the waggons came up from there to register the claims at the mining-office, and the first step was to stake out these claims upon the lode.

"It doesn't run like this far," Harry said to the miners, "and I reckon that beyond our ground it doesn't run above two ounces to the ton, so I don't think it is worth while your taking up claims beyond. Of course, you can do so if you like, and we will allow you an hour off every few days during the season to work your claims enough to keep possession, and of an evening you can do a bit of washing down below. You will find it good-pay dirt everywhere. At least we did as far as we tried it."

They now fixed on the site for the fort. It was upon the top of the bank, some twenty yards above the lode, and it was settled there should be a strong double palisade running down from it to the stream, so that in case of siege they could fetch water without being exposed to the bullets of an enemy taking post higher up the creek. Among the men from Denver were two or three experienced carpenters, and a blacksmith, for whose use a portable forge had been brought in the waggons.

The party returned to breakfast, and as soon as this was over the teams were put in and the waggons were brought up and unloaded, the stores being protected from wet by the canvas that formed the tilts. Some of the men accustomed to the use of the axe had been left in the valley to fell trees, and as soon as the waggons were unloaded they were sent down to bring up timber. All worked hard, and at the end of the week a log-hut fifty feet long and twenty-five feet wide had been erected. The walls were five feet high, and the roof was formed of the trunks of young trees squared, and laid side by side.

As rain fell seldom in that region it was not considered necessary to place shingles over them, as this could, in case of need, be done later on. The door opened out into the passage between the palisades down to the water, and the windows were all placed on the same side, loopholes being cut at short intervals round the other three sides. Another fortnight completed the preparations for work. The stamps were erected, with the water-wheel to work them; the stream dammed a hundred yards up, and a leat constructed to bring the water down to the wheel.

The waggons were formed up in a square. In this the horses were shut every night, four of the men by turns keeping guard there. During the last few days the miners had been at work blasting the quartz, and as soon as the stamps and machinery were in position they were ready to begin. The men were all told off to various duties, some to carry the rock down to the stamps, others to break it up into convenient sizes; two men fed the stamps, others attended to the concentrator and blankets, supervised by Harry. It was the duty of some to take the horses down to the valley and guard them while they were feeding, and bring them back at night. Two men were to bake and cook, Pete Hoskings taking this special department under his care. Jerry worked with the miners, and Tom was his uncle's assistant.

The stamps were to be kept going night and day, and each could crush a ton in twenty-four hours. To their great satisfaction each of the men was allowed one day a week to himself, during which he could prospect for other lodes or wash gravel as he pleased. The old cradle was found where it had been left, and as five of the men were off duty each day, they formed themselves into gangs and worked the cradle by turns, adding very considerably to the liberal pay they received. The two Indians hunted, and seldom returned without game of some sort or other. As the quicksilver in the concentrator was squeezed by Harry or Tom, and the blankets washed by them, none but themselves knew what the returns were. They and their partners were, however, more than satisfied with the result, for although the lode was found to pinch in as they got lower, it maintained for the first six weeks the extraordinary average of that they had first crushed.

At the end of that time the Indians reported that they had seen traces of the Utes having visited the valley. The number of men who went down with the horses was at once doubled, one or other of the Indians staying down with them, preceding them in the morning by half an hour to see that the valley was clear. A week later the horses were seen coming back again a quarter of an hour after they had started. The men caught up their guns, which were always placed handy for them while at work, and ran out to meet the returning party.

"What is it, Hunting Dog?"

"A large war-party," the Indian replied. "Three hundred or more."

The horses were driven into the inclosure, half the men took their places among the waggons, and the others, clustered round the hut, prepared to enter it as soon as the Indians made their appearance.

The partners had already arranged what course to take if the Indians should come down on them, and were for all reasons most anxious that hostilities should if possible be avoided.

Presently the Indians were seen approaching at a gallop. As soon as they caught sight of the log-house and the inclosure of waggons they reined in their horses. The men had been ordered to show themselves, and the sight of some forty white men all armed with rifles brought the Indians to a dead stand-still.

Pete Hoskings went forward a little and waved a white cloth, and then Harry and the chief, leaving their rifles behind them stepped up to his side and held their arms aloft. There was a short consultation among the Indians, and then two chiefs dismounted, handed their rifles and spears to their men, and in turn advanced. Harry and Leaping Horse went forward until they met the chiefs halfway between the two parties. Harry began the conversation.

"Why do my red brothers wish to fight?" he asked. "We are doing them no harm. We are digging in the hills. Why should we not be friends?"

"The white men killed many of the Utes when they were here last year," one of the chiefs replied. "Why do they come upon the Utes' land?"

"It was the fault of the Utes," Harry said. "The white men wished only to work in peace. The Utes tried to take their scalps, and the white men were forced against their will to fight. No one can be blamed for defending his life. We wish for peace, but, as the Utes can see, we are quite ready to defend ourselves. There are forty rifles loaded and ready, and, as you may see, a strong house. We have no fear. Last time we were but few, but the Utes found that it was not easy to kill us. Now we are many, and how many of the Utes would die before they took our scalps? Nevertheless we wish for peace. The land is the land of the Utes, and although we are strong and could hold it if we chose, we do not wish to take it by force from our red brothers. We are ready to pay for the right to live and work quietly. Let the chiefs go back to their friends and talk together, and say how many blankets and how many guns and what weight of ammunition and tobacco they will be content with. Then if they do not ask too much, the white men will, so long as they remain here, pay that amount each year in order that they may live in peace with the Utes."

The two Indians glanced at each other. "My white brother is wise," one said. "Why did he not tell the Utes so last year?"

"Because you never gave us time, chief. If you had done so we would have said the same to you then, and your young men would be with you now; but you came as enemies upon us, and when the rifle is speaking the voice is silent."

"I will speak with my braves," the chief said gravely. And turning round they walked back to their party, while Harry and the chief returned to the huts.

"What do you think, chief? Will it be peace?"

Leaping Horse nodded. "Too many rifles," he said. "The Utes will know they could never take block-house."

It was nearly two hours before the two Utes advanced as before, and Harry and the Seneca went out to meet them.

"My white brother's words are good," the chief said. "The Utes are great warriors, but they do not wish to fight against the white men who come as friends. The chiefs have talked with their braves, and the hatchets will be buried. This is what the Utes ask that the white men who have taken their land shall pay them."

Harry had arranged that the chief, who spoke the Ute language more perfectly than he did, should take charge of the bargaining. On the list being given Leaping Horse assumed an expression of stolid indifference.

"The land must be very dear in the Ute country," he said. "Do my brothers suppose that the white men are mad that they ask such terms? Peace would be too dear if bought at such a price. They are willing to deal liberally with the Utes, but not to give as much as would buy twenty hills. They will give this." And he enumerated a list of articles, amounting to about one quarter of the Indians' demands.

The bargaining now went on in earnest, and finally it was settled that a quantity of goods, amounting to about half the Indians' first demand, should be accepted, and both parties returned to their friends well satisfied.

A certain amount of goods had been brought out with a view to such a contingency, and half the amount claimed was handed over to the Utes. They had, indeed, more than enough to satisfy the demands, but Leaping Horse had suggested to Harry that only a portion should be given, as otherwise the Indians might suppose that their wealth was boundless. It would be better to promise to deliver the rest in three months' time. A dozen of the principal men of the Utes came over. The goods were examined and accepted, the calumet of peace was smoked and a solemn covenant of friendship entered into, and by the next morning the Indians had disappeared.

One end of the hut had been partitioned off for the use of the leaders of the party, and the gold obtained each day was carried by them there and deposited in a strong iron box, of which several had been brought by Pete Hoskings from Denver.

The day after the Indians left, a waggon, was sent off under the escort of eight mounted labourers to Bridger, and this continued to make the journey backward and forward regularly with the boxes of gold, Jerry and Pete Hoskings taking it by turns to command the escort. Harry and Pete had had a talk with the officer in command at Bridger on the evening before they had started on the expedition.

"You think you are going to send in a large quantity of gold?" the officer asked.

"If the mines are such as we think, Major, we may be sending down two or three hundredweight a month."

"Of course, the gold will be perfectly safe as long as it is in the fort, but if it gets known how much there is, you will want a strong convoy to take it across to the railway, and it would not be safe even then. Of course, the bulk is nothing. I should say at any rate you had better get it in here with as little fuss as possible."

"If you will keep it here for awhile," Pete said, "we will think over afterwards how it is to be taken further."

The officer nodded. "It mayn't turn out as difficult a business as you think," he said with a smile. "You are both old hands enough to know that mines very seldom turn out as rich as they are expected to do."

"We both know that," Pete Hoskings agreed. "I dunno as I ever did hear of a mine that turned out anything nigh as good as it ought to have done from samples, but I reckon that this is going to be an exception."

When within a few miles of the fort the escort always placed their rifles in the waggon and rode on some distance ahead of it, only one or two with their leader remaining by it. The boxes, which were of no great size, were covered by a sack or two thrown down in the corner of the waggon, and on its arrival in the fort it was taken first to the store, where a considerable quantity of provisions, flour, molasses, bacon, tea and sugar, currants and raisins, and other articles were purchased and placed in it. This was the ostensible purpose of the journey to the fort. Late in the evening Jerry or Pete, whichever happened to be the leader, and one of the men, carried the boxes across to the Major's quarters and stored them in a cellar beneath it.

There was a real need of provisions at the mine, for the population of the valley rapidly increased as the season went on. The upper part of the bed of the stream had been staked out into claims, the miners and other men each taking up one, but below them the ground was of course open to all, and although not nearly so rich as the upper gravel it was good enough to pay fairly for working. A stout palisading now surrounded the ground taken up by the machinery and the mine itself, and no one except those engaged by the company were allowed to enter here. Considerable surprise was felt in the camp when the first two or three miners came up and staked out claims on the stream.

"I wonder how they could have heard of it," Tom said to his uncle.

"The fact that we are remaining out here is enough to show that we are doing something, anyhow. The men who go in are always strictly ordered to say no word about what our luck is, but the mere fact that they hold their tongues -- and you may be sure they are questioned sharply -- is enough to excite curiosity, and these men have come to find out and see what the country is like, and to prospect the hills round where we are working. You will see a lot of them here before long."

As more came up it was determined to open a store. In the first place it furnished an explanation for the waggon going down so often, and in the second the fact that they were ready to sell provisions at cost prices would deter others from coming and setting up stores. There was no liquor kept on the mine, and Pete and Harry were very anxious that no places for its sale should be opened in the valley.

During the winter and spring Tom had received several letters from his sisters. They expressed themselves as very grateful for the money that he and their uncle had sent on their return to Denver, but begged them to send no more, as the school was flourishing and they were perfectly able to meet all their expenses. "It is very good of you, Tom," Carry said. "Of course, we are all very pleased to know that you have been able to send the money, because it relieves our anxiety about you; but we really don't want it, and it makes us afraid that you are stinting yourself. Besides, even if you are not, it would be much better for you to keep the money, as you may find some opportunity of using it to your advantage, while here it would only lie in the bank and do no good. It would be different if we had nothing to fall back upon in case of anything happening, such as some of us getting ill, or our having a case of fever in the school, or anything of that sort, but as we have only used fifty pounds of mother's money we have plenty to go on with for a very long time; so that really we would very much rather you did not send us any over. Now that we know your address and can write to you at Fort Bridger, it seems to bring you close to us. But we have had two very anxious times; especially the first, when we did not hear of you for six months. The second time was not so bad, as you had told us that it might be a long time before we should hear, and we were prepared for it, but I do hope it will never be so long again."

There had been some discussion as to whether the mine should be shut down in winter, but it was soon decided that work should go on regularly. Six more stamps were ordered to be sent from the east, with a steam-engine powerful enough to work the whole battery, and in September this and other machinery had reached the mine. Fresh buildings had been erected -- a storehouse, a house for the officers, and a shed covering the whole of the machinery and yard. By the time this was all ready and in place the valley below was deserted, the gravel having been washed out to the bed-rock. No other lodes of sufficient richness to work had been discovered by the prospectors, and with winter at hand there was no inducement for them to stay longer there.

Only two or three of the men at the mine wished to leave when their engagement for the season terminated. All had been well paid, and had in addition made money at gold-washing. Their food had been excellent, and their comforts attended to in all ways. Accordingly, with these exceptions all were ready to renew their engagements.

An arrangement was made with the Major at Fort Bridger for an escort under a subaltern officer to proceed with two waggons with the treasure to Denver. Pete Hoskings and Jerry were to remain as managers of the mine throughout the winter. Harry and Tom had made up their minds to go to England and to return in the spring. The ore was now very much poorer than it had been at first. The lode had pinched out below and they had worked some distance along it. The falling off, however, was only relative; the mine was still an extraordinarily rich one, although it contained little more than a tenth of the gold that had been extracted from the first hundred and fifty tons crushed.

None but Harry, Pete Hoskings, Jerry, and Tom had any idea of the amount of gold extracted in less than six months, although the miners were well aware that the amount must be very large. It was so indeed, for after repaying the amount expended in preliminary expenses, together with the new machinery, the wages of the men, provisions, and all outgoings, they calculated the treasure sent down to be worth one hundred and twenty-eight thousand pounds, while the mine if sold would fetch at least double that sum. After a hearty farewell to Pete and Jerry, Harry and Tom with the two Indians rode with the last waggon down to Bridger. The iron boxes had all been sewn up in deer-skins when they were sent down, and at night they were placed in the waggons by Harry and his companions. Over them were placed the provisions for the journey, as it was just as well that even the soldiers should not suspect the amount of treasure they were escorting.

They encountered some severe snow-storms by the way, but reached Denver without incident. The place had wonderfully changed since Tom had arrived there more than two years before. It had trebled in size; broad streets and handsome houses had been erected, and the town had spread in all directions. They drove straight to the bank, to which Pete Hoskings had sent down a letter a fortnight before they had started, and the boxes were taken out of the waggon and carried down into the vaults of the bank. A handsome present was made to each of the soldiers of the escort, a brace of revolvers was given by Harry to the subaltern, and the handsomest watch and chain that could be purchased in Denver was sent by him to the Major, with an inscription expressing the thanks of the company to him for his kindness.

"Well, Tom, I am thankful that that is off my mind," Harry said. "I have had a good many troubles in the course of my life, but this is the first time that money has ever been a care to me. Well, we are rich men, Tom, and we shall be richer, for the mine will run another two or three years before it finishes up the lode as far as we have traced it, and as we have now filed claims for a quarter of a mile farther back, it may be good for aught I know for another ten years. Not so good as it has been this year, but good enough to give handsome profits. Have you calculated what our share is?"

"No, uncle. I know it must be a lot, but I have never thought about what each share will be."

"Well, to begin with, a third of it goes to Pete Hoskings and his friends, that leaves eighty-five thousand. The remainder is divided into seven shares; I was to have two, the Indians three between them, you one, and Jerry one. His share is then about twelve thousand, which leaves seventy-three thousand between you and me. Of course, we shall divide equally."

"No, indeed, uncle; that would be ridiculous. I have been of very little use through it all, and I certainly ought not to have as much as Jerry. You and the chief discovered it, and it was entirely owing to you that any of the rest of us have a share of the profits, and of course your arrangement with the two Indians is only because the chief is so fond of you."

"Partly that, Tom; but chiefly because it is in accordance with red-skin customs. They are hunters, fighters, and guides, but they are not miners, and they never go in for shares in an enterprise of this sort. It went very much against the grain for Leaping Horse to take that three or four hundred pounds that came to him at the end of the last expedition, and he would be seriously offended if I were to press upon him more than his ordinary payment now; he would say that he has been simply hunting this year, that he has run no risks, and has had nothing to do with the mine. To-morrow morning we will go out to see what there is in the way of horse-flesh in Denver, and will buy him and Hunting Dog the two best horses in the town, whatever they may cost, with saddles, bridles, new blankets, and so on. If I can get anything special in the way of rifles I shall get a couple of them, and if not I shall get them in New York, and send them to him at Bridger. These are presents he would value infinitely more than all the gold we have stowed away in the bank to-day. He is going back to his tribe for the winter, and he and Hunting Dog will be at the mine before us next spring."

In the morning Harry was two hours at the bank, where he saw the gold weighed out, and received a receipt for the value, which came to within a hundred pounds of what they had calculated, as the dust had been very carefully weighed each time it was sent off. In accordance with the arrangement he had made with Pete Hoskings and Jerry the amount of their respective shares was placed to their credit at the bank. Drawing a thousand pounds in cash, he received a draft for the rest upon a firm at New York, where he would be able to exchange it for one on London. He then inquired at the hotel as to who was considered to possess the best horses in the town, and as money was no object to him, he succeeded in persuading the owners to sell two splendid animals; these with the saddles were sent to the hotel. He then bought two finely finished Sharpe's rifles of long range, and two brace of silver-mounted revolvers.

"Now, Tom," he said, "I shall give one of these outfits to the chief and you give the other to Hunting Dog; he has been your special chum since we started, and the presents will come better from you than from me. I expect them here in half an hour; I told them I should be busy all the morning."

The two Indians were delighted with their presents, even the chief being moved out of his usual impassive demeanour. "My white brothers are too good. Leaping Horse knows that Straight Harry is his friend; he does not want presents to show him that; but he will value them because he loves his white brothers, even more than for themselves." As for Hunting Dog, he was for a long time incredulous that the splendid horse, the rifle and pistols could really be for him, and he was so exuberant in his delight that it was not until Leaping Horse frowned at him severely that he subsided into silent admiration of the gifts.

"Here are papers, chief, that you and Hunting Dog had better keep: they are the receipts for the two horses, and two forms that I have had witnessed by a lawyer, saying that we have given you the horses in token of our gratitude for the services that you have rendered; possibly you may find them useful. You may fall in with rough fellows who may make a pretence that the horses have been stolen. Oh, yes! I know that you can hold your own; still, it may avoid trouble."

They had now no further use for their horses, so these were sold for a few pounds. They purchased a stock of clothes sufficient only for their journey to England.

"You may as well put your revolver in your pocket, Tom," Harry said as they prepared to start the next day. "I have sewn up the draft in the lining of my coat, but sometimes a train gets held up and robbed, and as we have six hundred pounds in gold and notes in our wallets, I certainly should not give it up without a fight."

The Indians accompanied them to the station. "Now, chief, you take my advice and look out for a nice wife before next spring. You are forty now, and it is high time you thought of settling down."

"Leaping Horse will think over it," the Seneca said gravely. "It may be that in the spring he will have a wigwam in the valley."

A few minutes later the train started east, and five days later they reached New York. A steamer left the next day for England, and in this they secured two first-class berths; and although Tom had managed very well on his way out, he thoroughly enjoyed the vastly superior comfort of the homeward trip. They went straight through to Southampton, for, as Harry said, they could run up to London and get their clothes any day; and he saw that Tom was in a fever of excitement to get home. Harriet came to the door of the little house at Southsea when they knocked. She looked surprised at seeing two gentlemen standing there. In the two years and a half that had passed since Tom had left he had altered greatly. He had gone through much toil and hardship, and the bronze of the previous summer's sun was not yet off his cheeks; he had grown four or five inches, and the man's work that he had been doing had made almost a man of him.

"Don't you know me, Harriet?" Tom said.

The girl at once recognized the voice, and with a loud cry of delight threw her arms round his neck. The cry brought Carry out from the parlour. "Why, Harriet," she exclaimed, "have you gone mad?"

"Don't you see it's Tom?" Harriet said, turning round, laughing and crying together.

"It is Tom, sure enough, Carry; you need not look so incredulous; and this is Uncle Harry."

There were a few minutes of wild joy, then they calmed down and assembled in the sitting-room.

"It is lucky the girls have all gone home to dinner," Carry said, "or they would certainly have carried the news to their friends that we were all mad. It is a half-holiday too, nothing could be more fortunate. Now we want to hear everything. Tom's letters were so short and unsatisfactory, uncle, that he told us next to nothing, except that you had found a mine, and that you were both working there, and that it was satisfactory."

"Well, my dears, that is the pith of the thing," Harry said. "The first thing for you to do is to send round notes to the mothers of these children saying that from unforeseen circumstances you have retired from the profession, and that the school has finally closed from this afternoon."

There was a general exclamation from the girls:

"What do you mean, uncle?"

"I mean what I say, girls. Tom and I have made our fortunes, and there is no occasion for you to go on teaching any longer. We have not yet made any plans for the future, but at any rate the first step is, that there is to be no more teaching."

"But are you quite, quite sure, uncle?" Carry said doubtfully. "We are getting on very nicely now, and it would be a pity to lose the connection."

Harry and Tom both laughed.

"Well, my girl," the former said, "that is of course a point to be thought of. But as Tom and I have over thirty-five thousand pounds apiece, and the mine will bring us in a good round sum for some years to come, I think we can afford to run the risk of the connection going."

After that it was a long while before they settled down to talk quietly again.

A week later they all went up to London for a month, while what Harry called "outfits" were purchased for the girls, as well as for him and Tom, and all the sights of London visited. Before their story came to an end, the grand consultation as to future plans had been held, and a handsome house purchased at Blackheath.

Tom did not return to Utah in the spring; his uncle strongly advised him not to do so.

"I shall go back myself, Tom; partly because I should feel like a fish out of water with nothing to do here, partly because I promised the chief to go back for a bit every year. I am beginning to feel dull already, and am looking forward to the trip across the water, but it will certainly be better for you to stay at home. You left school early, you see, and it would be a good thing for you to get a man to come and read with you for two or three hours a day for the next year or two. We have settled that the three younger girls are to go to school; and I don't see why you, Carry, and Janet, should not go, in the first place, for two or three months on to the Continent. They have had a dull life since you have been away, and the trip will be a treat for them, and perhaps do you some good also. It will be time enough to settle down to reading when you come back."

The mine returned large profits that year, the increased amount stamped making up to some extent for the falling off in the value of the ore, and the shares of the various proprietors were more than half what they had been at the end of the first season's work. The third year it fell off considerably. There was a further decrease the year after, and the fifth year it barely paid its expenses, and it was decided to abandon it. Harry Wade went over every season for many years, but spent only the first at the mine. After that he went hunting expeditions with Leaping Horse, who, to his amusement, had met him at his first return to the mine with a pretty squaw, and Hunting Dog had also brought a wife with him. Two wigwams were erected that year near the mine, but after that they returned to their tribe, of which Leaping Horse became the leading chief.

Tom's sisters all in due time married, each being presented on her wedding-day with a cheque for ten thousand pounds, as a joint present from her uncle and brother.

Tom himself did not remain a bachelor, but six years after his return to England took a wife to himself, and the house at Blackheath was none too large for his family. Harry Wade's home is with Tom, and he is still hale and hearty. Up to the last few years he paid occasional visits to America, and stayed for a while with his red brother Leaping Horse, when they lamented together over the disappearance of game and the extinction of the buffalo. Hunting Dog had, at Harry's urgent advice, settled down in the ways of civilization, taking up a ranche and breeding cattle, of which he now owns a large herd. Jerry Curtis and Pete Hoskings made a journey together to Europe after the closing of the mine. They stayed for a month at Blackheath, and ten years later Tom received a lawyer's letter from Denver saying that Peter Hoskings was dead, and that he had left his large house and other property in Denver to Mr. Thomas Wade's children. Jerry still lives at the age of seventy-five in that city.

<eob>

Through The Fray: A Tale Of The Luddite Riots

By

G. A. Henty



Chapter I: A Fishing Expedition


It has just struck one, and the boys are streaming out from the schoolroom of Mr. Hathorn's academy in the little town of Marsden in Yorkshire. Their appearance would create some astonishment in the minds of lads of the present generation, for it was the year 1807, and their attire differed somewhat materially from that now worn. They were for the most part dressed in breeches tight at the knee, and buttoning up outside the close fitting jacket nearly under the arms, so that they seemed almost devoid of waist. At the present moment they were bareheaded; but when they went beyond the precincts of the school they wore stiff caps, flat and very large at the top, and with far projecting peaks.

They were not altogether a happy looking set of boys, and many of their cheeks were stained with tears and begrimed with dirt from the knuckles which had been used to wipe them away; for there was in the year 1807 but one known method of instilling instruction into the youthful mind, namely, the cane, and one of the chief qualifications of a schoolmaster was to be able to hit hard and sharp.

Mr. Hathorn, judged by this standard, stood very high in his profession; his cane seemed to whiz through the air, so rapidly and strongly did it descend, and he had the knack of finding out tender places, and of hitting them unerringly.

Any one passing in front of the schoolhouse during the hours when the boys were at their lessons would be almost sure to hear the sharp cracks of the cane, followed sometimes by dead silence, when the recipient of the blows was of a sturdy and Spartan disposition, but more frequently by shrieks and cries.

That Hathorn's boys hated their master was almost a matter of course. At the same time they were far from regarding him as an exceptional monster of cruelty, for they knew from their friends that flogging prevailed almost everywhere, and accepted it as a necessary portion of the woes of boyhood. Indeed, in some respects, when not smarting under the infliction, they were inclined to believe that their lot was, in comparison with that of others, a fortunate one; for whereas in many schools the diet was so poor and bad that the boys were half starved, at Hathorn's if their food was simple and coarse it was at least wholesome and abundant.

Mr. Hathorn, in fact, intended, and as he quite believed with success, to do his duty by his boys. They were sent to him to be taught, and he taught them through the medium then recognized as most fitting for the purpose -- the cane; while, as far as an abundance of porridge for breakfast, and of heavy pudding at dinner, with twice a week an allowance of meat, the boys were unstinted. He would indeed point with pride to his pupils when their parents assembled at the annual presentation of prizes.

"Look at them!" he would say proudly. "None of your half starved skeletons here -- well filled out and in good condition every boy of them -- no stint of porridge here. It keeps them in good health and improves their learning; for, mark you, a plump boy feels the cane twice as much as a skinny one; it stings, my dear sir, it stings, and leaves its mark; whereas there is no getting at a boy whose clothes hang like bags about him."

This was no doubt true, and the boys themselves were conscious of it, and many had been the stern resolutions made while smarting in agony that henceforward food should be eschewed, or taken only in sufficient quantities to keep life together. But boys' appetites are stronger than boys' resolutions, and in the end there was never any marked falling off in the consumption of viands at Hathorn's.

Like other things punishment fails when administered in excess. There was no disgrace whatever in what was common to all, for although some of the boys of superior ability and perseverance would escape with a smaller amount of punishment than their fellows, none could hope to escape altogether. Thus it was only the pain that they had to bear, and even this became to some extent deadened by repetition, and was forgotten as soon as inflicted, save when a sudden movement caused a sharp pain in back or leg. Once in the playground their spirits revived, and except a few whose recent punishment incapacitated them for a time from active exercise, the whole were soon intent upon their games.

One only of the party wore his cap, and he after a few minutes left the others, and went toward a door which led from the playground into the road.

"Don't be long, Sankey; come back as soon as you can, you know we agreed to go fishing this afternoon."

"All right, Tompkins; I will come back directly I have done my dinner. I expect I shall have finished quite as soon as you will."

Edward Sankey, who was regarded with envy by his schoolfellows, was the only home boarder at Hathorn's; for, as a general thing, the master set his face against the introduction of home boarders. They were, he considered, an element of disturbance; they carry tales to and from the school; they cause discontent among the other boys, and their parents are in the habit of protesting and interfering. Not, indeed, that parents in those days considered it in any way a hardship for their boys to suffer corporal punishment; they had been flogged at school, and they believed that they had learned their lessons all the better for it. Naturally the same thing would happen to their sons. Still mothers are apt to be weak and soft hearted, and therefore Mr. Hathorn objected to home boarders.

He had made an exception in Sankey's case; his father was of a different type to those of the majority of his boys; he had lost his leg at the battle of Assaye, and had been obliged to leave the army, and having but small means beyond his pension, had settled near the quiet little Yorkshire town as a place where he could live more cheaply than in more bustling localities. He had, when he first came, no acquaintances whatever in the place, and therefore would not be given to discuss with the parents of other boys the doings in the school. Not that Mr. Hathorn was afraid of discussion, for he regarded his school as almost perfect of its kind. Still it was his fixed opinion that discussion was, as a general rule, unadvisable. Therefore, when Captain Sankey, a few weeks after taking up his residence in the locality, made a proposal to him that his son should attend his school as a home boarder, Mr. Hathorn acceded to the proposition, stating frankly his objections, as a rule, to boys of that class.

"I shall not interfere," Captain Sankey said. "Of course boys must be thrashed, and provided that the punishment is not excessive, and that it is justly administered, I have nothing to say against it. Boys must be punished, and if you don't flog you have to confine them, and in my opinion that is far worse for a boy's temper, spirit, and health."

So Ned Sankey went to Hathorn's, and was soon a great favorite there. Just at first he was regarded as a disobliging fellow because he adhered strictly to a stipulation which Mr. Hathorn had made, that he should not bring things in from the town for his school fellows. Only once a week, on the Saturday half holiday, were the boys allowed outside the bounds of the wall round the playground, and although on Wednesday an old woman was allowed to come into those precincts to sell fruit, cakes, and sweets, many articles were wanted in the course of the week, and the boys took it much amiss for a time that Ned refused to act as their messenger; but he was firm in his refusals. His father had told him not to do so, and his father's word was law to him; but when the boys saw that in all other respects he was a thoroughly good fellow, they soon forgave him what they considered his undue punctiliousness, and he became a prime favorite in the school.

It is due to Mr. Hathorn to say that no fear of interference induced him to mitigate his rule to thrash when he considered that punishment was necessary, and that Ned received his full share of the general discipline. He was never known to utter a cry under punishment, for he was, as his school fellows said admiringly, as hard as nails; and he was, moreover, of a dogged disposition which would have enabled him, when he had once determined upon a thing, to carry it through even if it killed him. Mr. Hathorn regarded this quality as obstinacy, the boys as iron resolution; and while the former did his best to conquer what he regarded as a fault, the boys encouraged by their admiration what they viewed as a virtue.

At home Ned never spoke of his punishments; and if his father observed a sudden movement which told of a hidden pain, and would say cheerfully, "What! have you been getting it again, Ned?" the boy would smile grimly and nod, but no complaint ever passed his lips.

There was no disgrace in being flogged -- it was the natural lot of schoolboys; why should he make a fuss about it? So he held his tongue. But Mr. Hathorn was not altogether wrong. Ned Sankey was obstinate, but though obstinate he was by no means sulky. When he made up his mind to do a thing he did it, whether it was to be at the top of his class in order to please his father, or to set his teeth like iron and let no sound issue from them as Mr. Hathorn's cane descended on his back.

Ned Sankey was about fourteen years of age. He had a brother and a sister, but between them and himself was a gap of four years, as some sisters who had been born after him had died in infancy. Ned adored his father, who was a most kind and genial man, and would have suffered anything in silence rather than have caused him any troubles or annoyance by complaining to him.

For his mother his feelings were altogether different. She was a kindly and well intentioned woman, but weak and silly. On leaving school she had gone out to join her father in India. Captain Sankey had sailed in the same ship and, taken by her pretty face and helpless, dependent manner, he had fallen in love with her, knowing nothing of her real disposition, and they had been married upon their arrival at the termination of the voyage. So loyal was his nature that it is probable Captain Sankey never admitted even to himself that his marriage had been a mistake; but none of his comrades ever doubted it. His wife turned out one of the most helpless of women. Under the plea of ill health she had at a very early period of their marriage given up all attempt to manage the affairs of the household, and her nerves were wholly unequal to the strain of looking after her children. It was noticeable that though her health was unequal to the discharge of her duties, she was always well enough to take part in any pleasure or gayety which might be going on; and as none of the many doctors who attended her were able to discover any specific ailment, the general opinion was that Mrs. Sankey's ill health was the creation of her own imagination. This, however, was not wholly the case. She was not strong; and although, had she made an effort, she would have been able to look after her children like other women, she had neither the disposition nor the training to make that effort.

Her son regarded her with the sort of pity, not unmingled with contempt, with which young people full of life and energy are apt to regard those who are weak and ailing without having any specific disease or malady which would account for their condition.

"All the bothers fall upon father," he would say to himself; "and if mother did but make up her mind she could take her share in them well enough. There was he walking about for two hours this evening with little Lucy in his arms, because she had fallen down and hurt herself; and there was mother lying on the sofa reading that book of poetry, as if nothing that happened in the house was any affair of hers. She is very nice and very kind, but I do wish she wouldn't leave everything for father to do. It might have been all very well before he lost his leg, but I do think she ought to make an effort now."

However, Mrs. Sankey made no effort, nor did her husband ever hint that it would be better for herself as well as her family if she did so. He accepted the situation as inevitable, and patiently, and indeed willingly, bore her burden as well as his own.

Fortunately she had in the children's nurse an active and trustworthy woman. Abijah Wolf was a Yorkshire woman. She had in her youth been engaged to a lad in her native village. In a moment of drunken folly, a short time before the day fixed for their wedding, he had been persuaded to enlist. Abijah had waited patiently for him twelve years. Then he had returned a sergeant, and she had married him and followed him with his regiment, which was that in which Captain Sankey -- at that time a young ensign -- served. When the latter's first child was born at Madras there was a difficulty in obtaining a white nurse, and Mrs. Sankey declared that she would not trust the child to a native. Inquiries were therefore made in the regiment, and Sergeant Wolf's wife, who had a great love for children although childless herself, volunteered to fill the post for a time. A few months afterward Sergeant Wolf was killed in a fight with a marauding hill tribe. His widow, instead of returning home and living on the little pension to which she was entitled at his death, remained in the service of the Sankeys, who soon came to regard her as invaluable.

She was somewhat rough in her ways and sharp with her tongue; but even Mrs. Sankey, who was often ruffled by her brusque independence, was conscious of her value, and knew that she should never obtain another servant who would take the trouble of the children so entirely off her hands. She retained, indeed, her privilege of grumbling, and sometimes complained to her husband that Abijah's ways were really unbearable. Still she never pressed the point, and Abijah appeared established as a permanent fixture in the Sankeys' household. She it was who, when, after leaving the service, Captain Sankey was looking round for a cheap and quiet residence, had recommended Marsden.

"There is a grand air from the hills," she said, "which will be just the thing for the children. There's good fishing in the stream for yourself, captain, and you can't get a quieter and cheaper place in all England. I ought to know, for I was born upon the moorland but six miles away from it, and should have been there now if I hadn't followed my man to the wars."

"Where are you going, Master Ned?" she asked as the boy, having finished his dinner, ran to the high cupboard at the end of the passage near the kitchen to get his fishing rod.

"I am going out fishing, Abijah."

"Not by yourself, I hope?"

"No; another fellow is going with me. We are going up into the hills."

"Don't ye go too far, Master Ned. They say the croppers are drilling on the moors, and it were bad for ye if you fell in with them."

"They wouldn't hurt me if I did."

"I don't suppose they would," the nurse said, "but there is never no saying. Poor fellows! they're druv well nigh out of their senses with the bad times. What with the machines, and the low price of labor, and the high price of bread, they are having a terrible time of it. And no wonder that we hear of frame breaking in Nottingham, and Lancashire, and other places. How men can be wicked enough to make machines, to take the bread out of poor men's mouths, beats me altogether."

"Father says the machinery will do good in the long run, Abijah -- that it will largely increase trade, and so give employment to a great many more people than at present. But it certainly is hard on those who have learned to work in one way to see their living taken away from them."

"Hard!" the nurse said. "I should say it were hard. I know the croppers, for there were a score of them in my village, and a rough, wild lot they were. They worked hard and they drank hard, and the girl as chose a cropper for a husband was reckoned to have made a bad match of it; but they are determined fellows, and you will see they won't have the bread taken out of their mouths without making a fight for it."

"That may be," Ned said, "for every one gives them the name of a rough lot; but I must talk to you about it another time, Abijah, I have got to be off;" and having now found his fishing rod, his box of bait, his paper of books, and a basket to bring home the fish he intended to get, Ned ran off at full speed toward the school.

As Abijah Wolf had said, the croppers of the West Riding were a rough set. Their occupation consisted in shearing or cropping the wool on the face of cloths. They used a large pair of shears, which were so set that one blade went under the cloth while the other worked on its upper face, mowing the fibers and ends of the wool to a smooth, even surface. The work was hard and required considerable skill, and the men earned about twenty-four shillings a week, a sum which, with bread and all other necessities of life at famine prices, barely sufficed for the support of their families. The introduction of power looms threatened to abolish their calling. It was true that although these machines wove the cloth more evenly and smoothly than the hand looms, croppers were still required to give the necessary smoothness of face; still the tendency had been to lower wages.

The weavers were affected even more than the croppers, for strength and skill were not so needed to tend the power looms as to work the hand looms. Women and boys could do the work previously performed by men, and the tendency of wages was everywhere to fall.

For years a deep spirit of discontent had been seething among the operatives in the cotton and woolen manufactures, and there had been riots more or less serious in Derbyshire, Nottingham, Lancashire and Yorkshire, which in those days were the headquarters of these trades. Factories had been burned, employers threatened and attacked, and the obnoxious machines smashed. It was the vain struggle of the ignorant and badly paid people to keep down production and to keep up wages, to maintain manual labor against the power of the steam engine.

Hitherto factories had been rare, men working the frames in their own homes, and utilizing the labor of their wives and families, and the necessity of going miles away to work in the mills, where the looms were driven by steam, added much to the discontent.

Having found his fishing appliances Ned hurried off to the school, where his chum Tompkins was already waiting him, and the two set out at once on their expedition.

They had four miles to walk to reach the spot where they intended to fish. It was a quiet little stream with deep pools and many shadows, and had its source in the heart of the moorlands. Neither of them had ever tried it before, but they had heard it spoken of as one of the best streams for fish in that part. On reaching its banks the rods were put together, the hooks were baited with worms, and a deep pool being chosen they set to work. After fishing for some time without success they tried a pool higher up, and so mounted higher and higher up the stream, but ever with the same want of success.

"How could they have said that this was a good place for fish?" Tompkins said angrily at last. "Why, by this time it would have been hard luck if we had not caught a dozen between us where we usually fish close to the town, and after our long walk we have not had even a bite."

"I fancy, Tompkins," Ned said, "that we are a couple of fools. I know it is trout that they catch in this stream, and of course, now I think of it, trout are caught in clear water with a fly, not with a worm. Father said the other day he would take me out some Saturday and give me a lesson in fly fishing. How he will laugh when I tell him we have wasted all our afternoon in trying to catch trout with worms!"

"I don't see anything to laugh at," Tompkins grumbled. "Here we waste a whole half holiday, and nothing to show for it, and have got six or seven miles at least to tramp back to school."

"Well, we have had a nice walk," Ned said, "even if we are caught in the rain. However, we may as well put up our rods and start. I vote we try to make a straight cut home; it must be ever so much shorter to go in a straight line than to follow all the windings of this stream."

They had long since left the low lands, where trees and bushes bordered the stream, and were in a lonely valley where the hills came down close to the little stream, which sparkled among the boulders at their feet. The slopes were covered with a crop of short wiry grass through which the gray stone projected here and there. Tiny rills of water made their way down the hillside to swell the stream, and the tinge of brown which showed up wherever these found a level sufficient to form a pool told that they had their source in the bogs on the moorland above. Tompkins looked round him rather disconcertedly.

"I don't know," he said. "It's a beastly long way to walk round; but suppose we got lost in trying to make our way across the hills."

"Well, just as you like," Ned said, "I am game to walk back the way we came or to try and make a straight cut, only mind don't you turn round and blame me afterward. You take your choice; whichever you vote for I am ready to do."

"My shoes are beginning to rub my heels," Tompkins said, "so I will take the shortest way and risk it. I don't see we can go far out of our way."

"I don't see that we can," Ned replied. "Marsden lies to the east, so we have only to keep our backs to the sun; it won't be down for another two hours yet, and before that we ought to be in."

By this time they had taken their rods to pieces, wound up their lines, and were ready to start. A few minutes' sharp climbing took them to the top of the slope. They were now upon the moor, which stretched away with slight undulations as far as they could see.

"Now," Ned said, "we will make for that clump of rocks. They seem to be just in the line we ought to take, and by fixing our eyes upon them we shall go straight."

This, however, was not as easy to do as Ned had fancied; the ground was in many places so soft and boggy that they were forced to make considerable detours. Nevertheless the rocks served as a beacon, and enabled them to keep the right direction; but although they made their way at the best of their speed it was an hour after starting before they approached the rock.

When they were within fifty yards of it a figure suddenly rose. It was that of a boy some fifteen years of age.

"Goa back," he shouted; "dang yer, what be'est a cooming here vor?"

The two boys stopped astonished.

"We are going to Marsden," Ned replied; "but what's that to you?"

"Doan't ee moind wot it be to oi," the boy said; "oi tell ee ee can't goa no further; yoi've got ter go back."

"We shan't go back," Ned said; "we have got as much right to go this way as you have. This is not your land; and if it is, we ain't hurting it."

By this time they were at the foot of the pile of rocks, and the lad was standing some ten feet above them.

"Oi tell ee," he repeated doggedly, "yoi've got vor to go back."

The boy was so much bigger and stronger than either Ned or his companion that the former, although indignant at this interference, did not deem it prudent to attempt to climb the crag, so he said to Tompkins: "Of course we ain't going back, but we had better take a turn so as to get out of the way of this fellow."

So saying they turned to the right and prepared to scout round the rock and continue their way; but this did not suit their obstructor.

"If ee doan't go back at oncet oi'll knock the heads off thee shoulders."

"We can't go back," Tompkins said desperately, "we are both as tired as we can be, and my heel is so sore that I can hardly walk. We shouldn't get to Marsden tonight if we were to turn back."

"That's nowt to oi," the boy said. "Oi bain't a-going to let ee pass here."

"What are we to do, Ned?" Tompkins groaned.

"Do!" Ned replied indignantly. "Why, go on, of course. Marsden cannot be more than three miles off, and I ain't going to walk twelve miles round to please this obstinate brute."

"But he is ever so much bigger than we are," Tompkins said doubtfully.

"Well, there are two of us," Ned said, "and two to one is fair enough when he is as big as the two of us together."

"We are going on," he said to the boy, "and if you interfere with us it will be the worse for you."

The boy descended leisurely from his position on the rocks.

"Oi don't want to hurt ee, but oi've got to do as oi were bid, and if ee doan't go back oi've got to make ee. There be summat a-going on thar," and he jerked his head behind him, "as it wouldn't be good vor ee to see, and ye bain't a-going vor to see it."

But Ned and Tompkins were desperate now, and dropping their rods made a rush together against him.



Chapter II: The Fight On The Moor


The lad threw himself into a position of defense as the two boys rushed at him.

"Oi doan't want vor to hurt ee," he said again, "but if ee will have it, why, it won't be moi vault;" and swinging his arm round, he brought it down with such force upon the nose of Tompkins that the latter was knocked down like a ninepin, and, once down, evinced no intention of continuing the conflict.

In Ned, however, the lad found an opponent of a different stamp. The latter saw at once that his opponent's far greater weight and strength rendered it hopeless for him to trust to close fighting, and he worked round and round him, every now and then rushing at him and delivering a telling blow, and getting off again before his heavy and comparatively unwieldy companion could reply.

Once or twice, indeed, the lad managed to strike him as he came in, each time knocking him fairly off his feet; but in the fair spirit which at that time animated English men and boys of all classes he allowed Ned each time to regain his feet without interference.

"Thou bee'st a plucky one," he said, as Ned after his third fall again faced him, "but thou bain't strong enough for oi."

Ned made no reply, but nerved himself for a fresh effort. The blows he had received had been heavy, and the blood was streaming from his face; but he had no idea of giving in, although Tompkins, in spite of his calls and reproaches, refused to raise himself beyond a sitting position.

"It's no good, Ned," he replied, "the brute is too big for us, and I'd rather try to walk home all the way round than get another like the last. My nose feels as big as my head."

Ned hardly heard what his companion said. He would have been killed rather than yield now, and gathering all his strength he sprang at his opponent like a tiger. Avoiding the blow which the boy aimed at him, he leaped upon him, and flung his arms round his neck. The sudden shock overthrew him, and with a crash both boys came to the ground together.

Ned at once loosened his hold, and springing to his feet again, awaited the rising of his opponent. The latter made a movement to get up, and then fell back with a cry.

"Thou hast beaten me," he said. "Oi think moi leg be broke."

Ned saw now that as the lad had fallen his leg had been twisted under him, and that he was unable to extricate it. In a moment he was kneeling before the prostrate lad.

"Oh! I am sorry," he exclaimed; "but you know I didn't mean to do it. Here, Tompkins, don't sit there like a fool, but come and help me move him and get his leg straight."

Although the boys did this as gently as they could, a groan showed how great was the agony.

"Where is it?" Ned asked.

"Aboove the knee somewhere," the lad said, and Ned put his hand gently to the spot, and to his horror could feel something like the end of a bone.

"Oh! dear, what is to be done? Here, Tompkins, either you or I must go on to the town for help."

"It's getting dark already," Tompkins said; "the sun has set some time. How on earth is one to find the way?"

"Well, if you like I will go," Ned said, "and you stop here with him."

The lad, who had been lying with closed eyes and a face of ghastly pallor, now looked up.

"There be soom men not a quarter of a mile away; they be a-drilling, they be, and oi was sot here to stop any one from cooming upon em; but if so bee as thou wilt go and tell em oi has got hurt, oi don't suppose as they will meddle with ye."

Ned saw now why the lad had opposed his going any further. Some of the croppers were drilling on the moor, and the boy had been placed as sentry. It wasn't a pleasant business to go up to men so engaged, especially with the news that he had seriously injured the boy they had placed on watch. But Ned did not hesitate a moment.

"You stop here, Tompkins, with him," he said quietly, "I will go and fetch help. It is a risk, of course, but we can't let him lie here."

So saying, Ned mounted the rock to get a view over the moor. No sooner had he gained the position than he saw some thirty or forty men walking in groups across the moor at a distance of about half a mile. They had evidently finished their drill, and were making their way to their homes. This at least was satisfactory. He would no longer risk their anger by disturbing them at their illegal practices, and had now only to fear the wrath which would be excited when they heard what had happened to the boy.

He started at a brisk run after them, and speedily came up to the last of the party. They were for the most part men between twenty and thirty, rough and strongly built, and armed with billhooks and heavy bludgeons, two or three of them carrying guns.

One of them looked round on hearing footsteps approaching, and gave a sudden exclamation. The rest turned, and on seeing Ned, halted with a look of savage and menacing anger on their faces.

"Who be'est, boy? dang ee, what brings ye here?"

Ned gulped down the emotion of fear excited by their threatening appearance, and replied as calmly as he could: "I am sorry to say that I have had a struggle with a boy over by that rock yonder. We fell together, and he has broken his leg. He told me if I came over in this direction I should find some one to help him."

"Broaken Bill's leg, did'st say, ye young varmint?" one of the men exclaimed. "Oi've a good moinde to wring yer neck."

"I am very sorry," Ned said; "but I did not mean it. I and another boy were walking back to Marsden from fishing, and he wouldn't let us pass; it was too far to go back again, so of course we had to try, and then there was a fight, but it was quite an accident his breaking his leg."

"Did'st see nowt afore ye had the voight?" one of the other men inquired.

"No," Ned replied; "we saw no one from the time we left the stream till we met the boy who would not let us pass, and I only caught sight of you walking this way from the top of the rock."

"If 'twere a vair voight, John, the boy bain't to be blamed, though oi be main grieved about thy brother Bill; but we'd best go back for him, voor on us. And moind, youngster, thee'd best keep a quiet tongue in thy head as to whaat thou'st seen here."

"I haven't seen anything," Ned said; "but of course if you wish it I will say nothing about it."

"It were best for ee, for if thou go'st aboot saying thou'st seen men with guns and clubs up here on the moor, it ull be the worsest day's work ee've ever done."

"I will say nothing about it," Ned replied, "but please come on at once, for I am afraid the boy is in terrible pain."

Four of the men accompanied Ned back to the rock.

"Hullo, Bill! what's happened ee?" his brother asked.

"Oi've had a fight and hurted myself, and broke my leg; but it wa'nt that chap's fault; it were a vair voight, and a right good 'un he be. Doan't do nowt to him."

"Well, that's roight enough then," the man said, "and you two young 'uns can go whoam. Marsden lies over that way; thou wilt see it below ye when ye gets to yon rock over there; and moind what I told ee."

"I will," Ned said earnestly; "but do let me come up to see how he is getting on, I shall be so anxious to know."

The man hesitated, but the lad said, "Let um coom, John, he bee a roight good un."

"Well, if thou would'st like it, Bill, he shall coom."

"If thou coom oop to Varley and ask vor Bill Swinton, anyone will show ee the place."

"Goodby," Ned said to the boy, "I am so sorry you have got hurt. I will come and see you as soon as I can."

Then he and Tompkins set off toward the rock the man had pointed out, which by this time, in the fast growing darkness, could scarce be made out. They would indeed probably have missed it, for the distance was fully a mile and a half; but before they had gone many yards one of the four men passed by them on a run on his way down to Marsden to summon the parish doctor, for a moment's examination had sufficed to show them that the boy's injury was far too serious to treat by themselves.

Tired as the boys were, they set off in his footsteps, and managed to keep him in sight until they reached the spot whence Marsden could be seen, and they could no longer mistake the way.

"Now, look here, Tompkins," Ned said as they made their way down the hill; "don't you say a word about this affair. You haven't got much to boast about in it, sitting there on the grass and doing nothing to help me. I shan't say anything more about that if you hold your tongue; but if you blab I will let all the fellows know how you behaved."

"But they will all notice my nose directly I get in," Tompkins said. "What am I to say?"

"Yes, there's no fear about their not noticing your nose," Ned replied. "I don't want you to tell a lie. You can say the exact truth. We were coming home across the moors; a boy interfered with us, and would not let us pass; we both pitched into him, and at last he got the worst of it, and we came home."

"But what's the harm of saying that you and he fell, and he broke his leg?"

"A great deal of harm," Ned replied. "If it was known that a boy's leg got broke in a fight with us it would be sure to come to Hathorn's ears; then there would be an inquiry and a row. Like enough he would go up to see the boy and inquire all about it. Then the men would suppose that we had broken our words, and the next time you and I go out on a fishing expedition there's no saying what mightn't happen to us. They are a rough lot those moor men, and don't stick at trifles."

"I will say nothing about it," Tompkins replied hastily; "you may rely on that. What a lucky fellow you are to be going home! Nothing will be said to you for being an hour late. I shall get a licking to a certainty. How I do hate that Hathorn, to be sure!"

They now came to the point where the road separated and each hurried on at his best speed.

"You are late tonight, Ned," the boy's father said when he entered. "I don't like your being out after dark. I don't mind how far you go so that you are in by sunset; but, halloo!" he broke off, as he caught sight of the boy's face as he approached the table at which the rest of the party were sitting at tea; "what have you been doing to your face?"

Captain Sankey might well be surprised. One of the boy's eyes was completely closed by a swelling which covered the whole side of his face. His lip was badly cut, and the effect of that and the swelling was to give his mouth the appearance of being twisted completely on one side.

"Oh! there's nothing the matter," Ned replied cheerfully; "but I had a fight with a boy on the moor."

"It is dreadful! -- quite dreadful!" Mrs. Sankey said; "your going on like this. It makes me feel quite faint and ill to look at you. I wonder you don't get killed with your violent ways."

Ned made no reply but took his seat at the table, and fell to work upon the hunches of thick brown bread and butter.

"I will tell you about it afterward, father," he said; "it really wasn't my fault."

"I am sure I don't wish to hear the story of your quarrels and fighting, Edward," Mrs. Sankey said; "the sight of you is quite enough to upset my nerves and make me wretched. Of course if your father chooses to support you in such goings on I can say nothing. Neither he nor you seem to remember how trying such things as these are to any one with a broken constitution like mine."

Captain Sankey, knowing from experience how useless it was to attempt to argue with his wife when she was in this mood, continued to eat his meal placidly. Ned seized his mug of milk and water, and took an impatient drink of it.

"Is there anything I had better do for my face?" he asked his father presently.

"I don't think anything you can do, Ned, will make you presentable for the next few days. I believe that a raw beefsteak is the best thing to put on your eye, but is not such a thing in the house, and if there was, I don't think that I should be justified in wasting it for such a purpose. I should say the next best thing would be to keep a cloth soaked in cold water on your face; that will probably take down the swelling to some extent."

After tea Ned repaired to the kitchen, where Abijah, with much scolding and some commiseration, applied a wet cloth to his face, and fastened a handkerchief over it to keep it in its place. Then the boy went into the little room which his father called his study, where he used to read the papers, to follow the doings of the British armies in the field, and above all to smoke his pipe in quiet. He laughed as Ned entered.

"You look like a wounded hero, indeed, Ned. Now sit down, my boy, and tell me about this business; not, you know, that I have any objection to your fighting when it's necessary. My experience is that it is the nature of boys to fight, and it is no use trying to alter boys' nature. As I have always told you, don't get into a fight if you can help it; but, if you once begin, fight it out like a man."

"Well, I couldn't help it this time, father, and I will tell you all about it. I promised not to tell; but what was meant by that was that I should not tell any one who would do anything about it; and as I know you won't, why, of course I can tell you."

"I don't know what you mean in the least, Ned; a promise, whatever it is about, is a promise."

"I know, father, but all that was meant in my case was that I would say nothing which would cause injury to those to whom I promised; and it will do them no injury whatever by telling you in confidence. Besides, it is probable you may learn about it in some other way; because, unfortunately, I broke the other fellow's leg very badly, and there is no saying what may come of it, so I think you ought to know all the circumstances."

"Very well, Ned," his father said quietly; "this seems to be a serious business. Go on, my boy."

Ned related the whole circumstances, his father saying no word until he had finished.

"You have been in no way to blame in the matter, nor could you have acted otherwise. The breaking of the boy's leg is unfortunate, but it was a pure accident, and even the boy's friends did not blame you in the matter. As to the illegal drilling, that is no new thing; it has been known to be going on for many months, and, indeed, in some places for years. The authorities take but little notice of it. An outbreak of these poor fellows would, indeed, constitute a considerable local danger. Mills might be burned down, and possibly some obnoxious masters killed, but a few troops of dragoons, or half a regiment of light infantry, would scatter them like chaff.

"The Irish rebellion thirteen years ago was a vastly more formidable affair. There it may be said that the whole country was in arms, and the element of religious fanaticism came into play; but in spite of that the resistance which they opposed to the troops was absolutely contemptible; however, it is just as well that you did not see them drill, because now, if by any chance this lad should die, and inquiry were made about it, there would be no occasion for you to allude to the subject at all. You would be able to say truthfully that finding that he was hurt, you went off, and happened to come upon four men on the moor and brought them to his assistance."

"I promised to go up to see the boy, father. I suppose that there is no harm?"

"None at all, Ned, it is only natural that you should entertain the wish; in fact you have injured him seriously, and we must do all in our power to alleviate his pain. I will go in the morning and see Dr. Green. I shall, of course, tell him that the boy was hurt in a tussle with you, and that you are very sorry about it. The fact that he is some two years older, as you say, and ever so much stronger and bigger, is in itself a proof that you were not likely to have wantonly provoked a fight with him. I shall ask the doctor if there is anything in the way of food and comforts I can send up for him."

Accordingly, the next morning, the first thing after breakfast, Captain Sankey went out and called upon the doctor. Ned awaited his return anxiously.

"The doctor says it's a bad fracture, Ned, a very bad fracture, and the boy must have had his leg curiously twisted under him for the bone to have snapped in such a way. He questions whether it will be possible to save the leg; indeed, he would have taken it off last night, but the boy said he would rather die, and the men were all against it. By the help of half a dozen men he got the bones into their places again, and has bandaged the leg up with splints; but he is very doubtful what will come of it."

Ned was crying now.

"I would give anything if it hadn't happened, father, and he really seemed a nice fellow. He said over and over again he didn't want to hurt us, and I am sure he didn't, only he thought he oughtn't to let us pass, and as we would go on he had to stop us."

"Well, it can't be helped, Ned," his father said kindly. "It is very natural that you should be grieved about it; but you see it really was an accident; there was nothing willful or intentional about it, and you must not take it to heart more than you can help."

But Ned did take it to heart, and for the next fortnight was very miserable. The doctor's reports during that time were not hopeful. Fever had set in, and for some days the boy was delirious, and there was no saying how it would turn out. At the end of that time the bulletins became somewhat more hopeful. The lad was quiet now from the complete exhaustion of his strength. He might rally or he might not; his leg was going on favorably. No bad symptom had set in, and it was now purely a question of strength and constitution whether he would pull through it.

Mrs. Sankey had been kept in entire ignorance of the whole matter. She had once or twice expressed a languid surprise at Ned's altered manner and extreme quietness; but her interest was not sufficient for her to inquire whether there were any reasons for this change. Abijah had been taken into Captain Sankey's counsels, and as soon as the fever had abated, and the doctor pronounced that the most nourishing food was now requisite, she set to work to prepare the strongest broths and jellies she could make, and these, with bottles of port wine, were taken by her every evening to the doctor, who carried them up in his gig on his visits to his patient in the morning. On the third Saturday the doctor told Ned that he considered that the boy had fairly turned the corner and was on the road to recovery, and that he might now go up and see him. His friends had expressed their warm gratitude for the supplies which had been sent up, and clearly cherished no animosity against Ned. The boy had been informed of the extreme anxiety of his young antagonist as to his condition, and had nodded feebly when asked if he would see Ned should he call upon him. It was therefore without any feeling of trepidation as to his reception that Ned on the Saturday afternoon entered Varley.

Varley was a scattered village lying at the very edge of the moor. The houses were built just where the valley began to dip down from the uplands, the depression being deep enough to shelter them from the winds which swept across the moor. Some of those which stood lowest were surrounded by a few stumpy fruit trees in the gardens, but the majority stood bleak and bare. From most of the houses the sound of the shuttle told that hand weaving was carried on within, and when the weather was warm women sat at the doors with their spinning wheels. The younger men for the most part worked as croppers in the factories in Marsden.

In good times Varley had been a flourishing village, that is to say its inhabitants had earned good wages; but no one passing through the bare and dreary village would have imagined that it had ever seen good days, for the greater proportion of the earnings had gone in drink, and the Varley men had a bad name even in a country and at a time when heavy drinking was the rule rather than the exception. But whatever good times it may have had they were gone now. Wages had fallen greatly and the prices of food risen enormously, and the wolf was at the door of every cottage. No wonder the men became desperate, and believing that all their sufferings arose from the introduction of the new machinery, had bound themselves to destroy it whatever happened.

A woman of whom he inquired for John Swinton's cottage told him that it was the last on the left. Although he told himself that he had nothing to be afraid of, it needed all Ned's determination to nerve himself to tap at the door of the low thatched cottage. A young woman opened it.

"If you please," Ned said, "I have come to see Bill; the doctor said he would see me. It was I who hurt him, but indeed I didn't mean to do it."

"A noice bizness yoi've made of it atween ee," the woman said, but in a not unkind voice. "Who'd ha' thought as Bill would ha' got hurted by such a little un as thou be'st; but coom in, he will be main glad to see ee, and thy feyther ha' been very good in sending up all sorts o' things for him. He's been very nigh agooing whoam, but I believe them things kept un from it."

The cottage contained but two rooms. In a corner of the living room, into which Ned followed the woman, Bill Swinton lay upon a bed which Captain Sankey had sent up. Ned would not have known him again, and could scarce believe that the thin, feeble figure was the sturdy, strong built boy with whom he had struggled on the moor. His eyes filled with tears as he went up to the bedside.

"I am so sorry!" he said; "I have grieved so all the time you have been ill."

"It's all roight, young un," the boy said in a low voice, "thar's no call vor to fret. It warn't thy fault; thou couldn't not tell why oi would not let ee pass, and ye were roight enough to foight rather than to toorn back. I doan't blame ee nohow, and thou stoodst up well agin me. Oi doan't bear no malice vor a fair foight, not loikely. Thy feyther has been roight good to oi, and the things he sends oi up has done oi a power o' good. Oi hoap as how they will let oi eat afore long; oi feels as if oi could hearty, but the doctor he woin't let oi."

"I hope in a few days he will let you," Ned said, "and then I am sure father will send you up some nice things. I have brought you up some of my books for you to look at the pictures."

The boy looked pleased.

"Oi shall like that," Bill said; "but oi shan't know what they be about."

"But I will come up every Saturday if you will let me, and tell you the stories all about them."

"Willee now? That will be main koinde o' ye."

"I don't think you are strong enough to listen today," Ned said, seeing how feebly the boy spoke; "but I hope by next Saturday you will be much stronger. And now I will say goodby, for the doctor said that I must not talk too long."

So saying Ned left the cottage and made his way back to Marsden in better spirits than he had been for the last three weeks.

From that time Ned went up regularly for some weeks every Saturday to see Bill Swinton, to the great disgust of his schoolfellows, who could not imagine why he refused to join in their walks or games on those days; but he was well repaid by the pleasure which his visits afforded. The days passed very drearily to the sick boy, accustomed as he was to a life spent entirely in the open air, and he looked forward with eager longing to Ned's visits.

On the occasion of the second visit he was strong enough to sit up in bed, and Ned was pleased to hear that his voice was heartier and stronger. He listened with delight as Ned read through the books he had brought him from end to end, often stopping him to ask questions as to the many matters beyond his understanding, and the conversations on these points were often so long that the continuance of the reading had to be postponed until the next visit. To Bill everything he heard was wonderful. Hitherto his world had ended at Marsden, and the accounts of voyages and travels in strange lands were full of surprise and interest to him. Especially he loved to talk to Ned of India, where the boy had lived up to the time when his father had received his wound, and Ned's account of the appearance and manners of the people there were even more interesting to him than books.

At the end of two months after Ned's first visit Bill was able to walk about with a stick, and Ned now discontinued his regular visits; but whenever he had a Saturday on which there was no particular engagement he would go for a chat with Bill, for a strong friendship had now sprung up between the lads.

On Ned's side the feeling consisted partly of regret for the pain and injury he had inflicted upon his companion, partly in real liking for the honesty and fearlessness which marked the boy's character. On Bill's side the feeling was one of intense gratitude for the kindness and attention which Ned had paid him, for his giving up his play hours to his amusement, and the pains which he had taken to lighten the dreary time of his confinement. Added to this there was a deep admiration for the superior knowledge of his friend.

"There was nothing," he often said to himself, "as oi wouldn't do for that young un."



Chapter III: A Cropper Village


Bad as were times in Varley, the two public houses, one of which stood at either end of the village, were for the most part well filled of an evening; but this, as the landlords knew to their cost, was the result rather of habit than of thirst. The orders given were few and far between, and the mugs stood empty on the table for a long time before being refilled. In point of numbers the patrons of the "Brown Cow" and the "Spotted Dog" were not unequal; but the "Dog" did a larger trade than its rival, for it was the resort of the younger men, while the "Cow" was the meeting place of the elders. A man who had neither wife nor child to support could manage even in these hard times to pay for his quart or two of liquor of an evening; but a pint mug was the utmost that those who had other mouths than their own to fill could afford.

Fortunately tobacco, although dear enough if purchased in the towns, cost comparatively little upon the moors, for scarce a week passed but some lugger ran in at night to some little bay among the cliffs on the eastern shore, and for the most part landed her bales and kegs in spite of the vigilance of the coast guard. So there were plenty of places scattered all over the moorland where tobacco could be bought cheap, and where when the right signal was given a noggin of spirits could be had from the keg which was lying concealed in the wood stack or rubbish heap. What drunkenness there was on the moors profited his majesty's excise but little.

The evenings at the "Cow" were not lively. The men smoked their long pipes and sipped their beer slowly, and sometimes for half an hour no one spoke; but it was as good as conversation, for every one knew what the rest were thinking of -- the bad times, but no one had anything new to say about them. They were not brilliant, these sturdy Yorkshiremen. They suffered patiently and uncomplainingly, because they did not see that any effort of theirs could alter the state of things. They accepted the fact that the high prices were due to the war, but why the war was always going on was more than any of them knew. It gave them a vague satisfaction when they heard that a British victory had been won; and when money had been more plentiful, the occasion had been a good excuse for an extra bout of drinking, for most of them were croppers, and had in their time been as rough and as wild as the younger men were now; but they had learned a certain amount of wisdom, and shook their heads over the talk and doings of the younger men who met at the "Dog."

Here there was neither quiet nor resignation, but fiery talk and stern determination; it was a settled thing here that the machines were responsible for the bad times. The fact that such times prevailed over the whole country in no way affected their opinion. It was not for them to deny that there was a war, that food was dear, and taxation heavy. These things might be; but the effect of the machinery came straight home to them, and they were convinced that if they did but hold together and wreck the machines prosperity would return to Varley.

The organization for resistance was extensive. There were branches in every village in West Yorkshire, Lancashire, Nottingham, and Derby -- all acting with a common purpose. The members were bound by terrible oaths upon joining the society to be true to its objects, to abstain on pain of death from any word which might betray its secrets, and to carry into execution its orders, even if these should involve the slaying of a near relation proved to have turned traitor to the society.

Hitherto no very marked success had attended its doings. There had been isolated riots in many places; mills had been burned, and machinery broken. But the members looked forward to better things. So far their only successes had been obtained by threats rather than deeds, for many manufacturers had been deterred from adopting the new machinery by the receipt of threatening letters signed "King Lud," saying that their factories would be burned and themselves shot should they venture upon altering their machinery.

The organ of communication between the members of the society at Varley and those in other villages was the blacksmith, or as he preferred to be called, the minister, John Stukeley, who on weekdays worked at the forge next door to the "Spotted Dog," and on Sundays held services in "Little Bethel" -- a tiny meeting house standing back from the road.

Had John Stukeley been busier during the week he would have had less time to devote to the cause of "King Lud;" but for many hours a day his fire was banked up, for except to make repairs in any of the frames which had got out of order, or to put on a shoe which a horse had cast on his way up the hill from Marsden, there was but little employment for him.

The man was not a Yorkshireman by birth, but came from Liverpool, and his small, spare figure contrasted strongly with those of the tall, square built Yorkshiremen, among whom he lived.

He was a good workman, but his nervous irritability, his self assertion, and impatience of orders had lost him so many places that he had finally determined to become his own master, and, coming into a few pounds at the death of his father, had wandered away from the great towns, until finding in Varley a village without a smith, he had established himself there, and having adopted the grievances of the men as his own, had speedily become a leading figure among them.

A short time after his arrival the old man who had officiated at Little Bethel had died, and Stukeley, who had from the first taken a prominent part in the service, and who possessed the faculty of fluent speech to a degree rare among the Yorkshiremen, was installed as his successor, and soon filled Little Bethel as it had never been filled before. In his predecessor's time, small as the meeting house was, it had been comparatively empty; two or three men, half a dozen women, and their children being the only attendants, but it was now filled to crowding.

Stukeley's religion was political; his prayers and discourses related to the position of affairs in Varley rather than to Christianity. They were a downtrodden people whom he implored to burst the bonds of their Egyptian taskmasters. The strength he prayed for was the strength to struggle and to fight. The enemy he denounced was the capitalist rather than the devil.

Up to that time "King Lud" had but few followers in Varley; but the fiery discourses in Little Bethel roused among the younger men a passionate desire to right their alleged wrongs, and to take vengeance upon those denounced as their oppressors, so the society recruited its numbers fast. Stukeley was appointed the local secretary, partly because he was the leading spirit, partly because he alone among its members was able to write, and under his vigorous impulsion Varley became one of the leading centers of the organization in West Yorkshire.

It was on a Saturday evening soon after Bill Swinton had become convalescent. The parlor of the "Brown Cow" was filled with its usual gathering; a peat fire glowed upon the hearth, and two tallow candles burned somewhat faintly in the dense smoke. Mugs of beer stood on the tables, but they were seldom applied to the lips of the smokers, for they had to do service without being refilled through the long evening. The silence was broken only by the short puffs at the pipes. All were thinking over the usual topic, when old Gideon Jones unexpectedly led their ideas into another channel.

"Oive heern," he said slowly, taking his pipe from his mouth, "as how Nance Wilson's little gal is wuss."

"Ay, indeed!"

"So oi've heern;"

"Be she now?" and various other exclamations arose from the smokers.

Gideon was pleased with the effect he had produced, and a few minutes later continued the subject.

"It be the empty coopbud more nor illness, I expect."

There was another chorus of assent, and a still heartier one when he wound up the subject: "These be hard toimes surely."

Thinking that he had now done sufficient to vindicate his standing as one of the original thinkers of the village, Gideon relapsed into silence and smoked away gravely, with his eyes fixed on the fire, in the post of honor on one side of which was his regular seat. The subject, however, was too valuable to be allowed to drop altogether, and Luke Marner brought it into prominence again by remarking:

"They tell oi as how Nance has asked Bet Collins to watch by the rood soide to catch doctor as he droives whoam. He went out this arternoon to Retlow."

"Oi doubt he woant do she much good; it be food, and not doctor's stuff as the child needs," another remarked.

"That be so, surely," went up in a general chorus, and then a newcomer who had just entered the room said:

"Oi ha' joost coom vrom Nance's and Bill Swinton ha' sent in a basin o' soup as he got vrom the feyther o' that boy as broke his leg. Nance war a feeding the child wi' it, and maybe it will do her good. He ha' been moighty koind to Bill, that chap hav."

"He ha' been that," Gideon said, after the chorus of approval had died away.

"Oi seed t' young un today a-sitting in front o' th' cottage, a-talking and laughing wi' Bill."

"They be good uns, feyther and son, though they tells oi as neither on them bain't Yaarkshire."

The general feeling among the company was evidently one of surprise that any good thing should be found outside Yorkshire. But further talk on the subject was interrupted by a slight exclamation at the door.

"O what a smoke, feyther! I can't see you, but I suppose you're somewhere here. You're wanted at home."

Although the speaker was visible to but few in the room there was no doubt as to her identity, or as to the person addressed as feyther. Mary Powlett was indeed the niece and not the daughter of Luke Marner, but as he had brought her up from childhood she looked upon him as her father. It was her accent and the tone of her voice which rendered it unnecessary for any of those present to see her face.

Luke was a bachelor when the child had arrived fifteen years before in the carrier's cart from Marsden, having made the journey in a similar conveyance to that town from Sheffield, where her father and mother had died within a week of each other, the last request of her mother being that little Polly should be sent off to the care of Luke Marner at Varley.

Luke had not then settled down into the position of one of the elders of the village, and he had been somewhat embarrassed by the arrival of the three year old girl. He decided promptly, however, upon quitting the lodgings which he had as a single man occupied and taking a cottage by himself. His neighbors urged upon him that so small a child could not remain alone all day while he was away at Marsden at work -- a proposition to which he assented; but to the surprise of every one, instead of placing her during the day under the care of one of the women of the place, he took her down with him to Marsden and placed her under the care of a respectable woman there who had children of her own.

Starting at five every morning from his cottage with Polly perched on his shoulder he tramped down to the town, leaving her there before going to work, and calling for her in the evening. A year later he married, and the village supposed that Polly would now be left behind. But they were mistaken. When he became engaged he had said:

"Now, Loiza, there's one point as oi wish settled. As oi have told ye, oi ha' partly chosen ye becos oi knowed as how ye would maake a good mother to my little Polly; but oi doan't mean to give up taking her down with me o' days to the town. Oi likes to ha' her wi' me on the roade -- it makes it shorter like. As thou knowest thyself, oi ha' bin a chaanged man sin she coom. There warn't a cropper in the village drank harder nor oi, but oi maad oop moi moind when she came to gi' it up, and oi have gi'd it up."

"I know, Luke," the girl said, "I wouldna have had ye, hadn't ye doon so, as I told ye two years agone. I know the child ha' done it, and I loves her for it, and will be a good mother to her."

"Oi knows you will, Loiza, and oi bain't feared as ye'll be jealous if so be as ye've children o' your own. Oi shan't love 'em a bit the less coss oi loves little Polly. She be just the image o' what moi sister Jane was when she war a little thing and oi used to take care o' her. Mother she didn't belong to this village, and the rough ways of the men and the drink frightened her. She war quiet and tidy and neat in her ways, and Jane took arter her, and glad she was when the time came to marry and get away from Varley. Oi be roight sure if she knows owt what's going on down here, she would be glad to know as her child ain't bein' brought oop in Varley ways. I ha' arranged wi' the woman where she gets her meals for her to go to school wi' her own children. Dost thee object to that, lass? -- if so, say so noo afore it's too late, but doon't thraw it in moi face arterwards. Ef thou'st children they shalt go to school too. Oi don't want to do more for Polly nor oi'd do for moi own."

"I ha' no objection, Luke. I remembers your sister, how pretty and quiet she wor; and thou shalt do what you likest wi' Polly, wi'out no grumble from me."

Eliza Marner kept the promise she had made before marriage faithfully. If she ever felt in her heart any jealousy as she saw Polly growing up a pretty bright little maiden, as different to the usual child product of Varley as could well be, she was wise enough never to express her thoughts, and behaved with motherly kindness to her in the evening hours spent at home. She would perhaps have felt the task a harder one had her own elder children been girls; but three boys came first, and a girl was not born until she had been married eleven years. Polly, who was now fourteen, had just come home from her schooling at Marsden for good, and was about to go out into service there. But after the birth of her little girl Mrs. Marner, who had never for a Varley girl been strong, faded rapidly away; and Polly's stay at home, intended at first to last but a few weeks, until its mother was about again, extended into months.

The failing woman reaped now the benefit of Polly's training. Her gentle, quiet way, her soft voice, her neatness and tidiness, made her an excellent nurse, and she devoted herself to cheer and brighten the sickroom of the woman who had made so kind an adopted mother to her. Her influence kept even the rough boys quiet; and all Varley, which had at first been unanimous in its condemnation of the manner in which Luke Marner was bringing up that "gal" of his, just as if the place was not good enough for her, were now forced to confess that the experiment had turned out well.

"Polly, my dear," the sick woman said to her one afternoon when the girl had been reading to her for some time, and was now busy mending some of the boys' clothes, while baby, nearly a year old, was gravely amusing herself with a battered doll upon the floor, "I used to think, though I never said so, as your feyther war making a mistake in bringing you up different to other gals here; but I see as he was right. There ain't one of them as would have been content to give up all their time and thoughts to a sick woman as thou hast done. There ain't a house in the village as tidy and comfortable as this, and the boys mind you as they never minded me. When I am gone Luke will miss me, but thar won't be no difference in his comfort, and I know thou'lt look arter baby and be a mother to her. I don't suppose as thou wilt stay here long; thou art over fifteen now, and the lads will not be long afore they begin to come a-coorting of thee. But doan't ee marry in Varley, Polly. My Luke's been a good husband to me. But thou know'st what the most of them be -- they may do for Varley bred gals, but not for the like of thee. And when thou goest take baby wi' thee and bring her up like thysel till she be old enough to coom back and look arter Luke and the house."

Polly was crying quietly while the dying woman was speaking. The doctor, on leaving that morning, had told her that he could do no more and that Mrs. Marner was sinking rapidly. Kneeling now beside the bed she promised to do all that her adopted mother asked her, adding, "and I shall never, never leave feyther as long as he lives."

The woman smiled faintly.

"Many a girl ha' said that afore now, Polly, and ha' changed her moind when the roight man asked her. Don't ee make any promises that away, lass. 'Tis natural that, when a lassie's time comes, she should wed; and if Luke feels loanly here, why he's got it in his power to get another to keep house for him. He be but a little over forty now; and as he ha' lived steady and kept hisself away from drink, he be a yoonger man now nor many a one ten year yoonger. Don't ye think to go to sacrifice your loife to hissen. And now, child, read me that chapter over agin, and then I think I could sleep a bit."

Before morning Eliza Marner had passed away, and Polly became the head of her uncle's house. Two years had passed, and so far Mary Powlett showed no signs of leaving the house, which, even the many women in the village, who envied her for her prettiness and neatness and disliked her for what they called her airs, acknowledged that she managed well. But it was not from lack of suitors. There were at least half a dozen stalwart young croppers who would gladly have paid court to her had there been the smallest sign on her part of willingness to accept their attentions; but Polly, though bright and cheerful and pleasant to all, afforded to none of them an opportunity for anything approaching intimacy.

On Sundays, the times alone when their occupations enabled the youth of Varley to devote themselves to attentions to the maidens they favored, Mary Powlett was not to be found at home after breakfast, for, having set everything in readiness for dinner, she always started for Marsden, taking little Susan with her, and there spent the day with the woman who had even more than Eliza Marner been her mother. She had, a month after his wife's death, fought a battle with Luke and conquered. The latter had, in pursuance of the plans he had originally drawn up for her, proposed that she should go into service at Marsden.

"Oi shall miss thee sorely, Polly," he said; "and oi doan't disguise it from thee, vor the last year, lass, thou hast been the light o' this house, and oi couldna have spared ye. But oi ha' always fixed that thou shouldst go into service at Marsden -- Varley is not fit vor the likes o' ye. We be a rough lot here, and a drunken; and though oi shall miss thee sorely for awhile, oi must larn to do wi'out thee."

Polly heard him in silence, and then positively refused to go.

"You have been all to me, feyther, since I was a child, and I am not going to leave you now. I don't say that Varley is altogether nice, but I shall be very happy here with you and the boys and dear little Susan, and I am not going to leave, and so -- there!"

Luke knew well how great would be the void which her absence would make, but he still struggled to carry out his plans.

"But, Polly, oi should na loike to see thee marry here, and thy mother would never ha' loiked it, and thou wilt no chance of seeing other men here."

"Why, I am only sixteen, feyther, and we need not talk of my marriage for years and years yet, and I promise you I shan't think of marrying in Varley when the time comes; but there is one thing I should like, and that is to spend Sundays, say once a fortnight, down with Mrs. Mason; they were so quiet and still there, and I did like so much going to the church; and I hate that Little Bethel, especially since that horrible man came there; he is a disgrace, feyther, and you will see that mischief will come out of his talk."

"Oi don't like him myself, Polly, and maybe me and the boys will sometoimes come down to the church thou art so fond of. However, if thou wilt agree to go down every Sunday to Mrs. Mason, thou shalt stay here for a bit till oi see what can best be done."

And so it was settled, and Polly went off every Sunday morning, and Luke went down of an evening to fetch her back.

"Well, what is't, lass?" he asked as he joined her outside the "Brown Cow."

"George has scalded his leg badly, feyther. I was just putting Susan to bed, and he took the kettle off the fire to pour some water in the teapot, when Dick pushed him, or something, and the boiling water went over his leg."

"Oi'll give that Dick a hiding," Luke said wrathfully as he hastened along by her side. "Why didn't ye send him here to tell me instead of cooming thyself?"

"It was only an accident, feyther, and Dick was so frightened when he saw what had happened and heard George cry out that he ran out at once. I have put some flour on George's leg; but I think the doctor ought to see him, that's why I came for you."

"It's no use moi goaing voor him now, lass, he be expected along here every minute. Jack Wilson, he be on the lookout by the roadside vor to stop him to ask him to see Nance, who be taken main bad. I will see him and ask him to send doctor to oor house when he comes, and tell Jarge I will be oop in a minute."

Upon the doctor's arrival he pronounced the scald to be a serious one, and Dick, who had been found sobbing outside the cottage, and had been cuffed by his father, was sent down with the doctor into the town to bring up some lint to envelop the leg. The doctor had already paid his visit to Nance Wilson, and had rated her father soundly for not procuring better food for her.

"It's all nonsense your saying the times are bad," he said in reply to the man's excuses. "I know the times are bad; but you know as well as I do that half your wages go to the public house; your family are starving while you are squandering money in drink. That child is sinking from pure want of food, and I doubt if she would not be gone now if it hadn't have been for that soup your wife tells me Bill Swinton sent in to her. I tell you, if she dies you will be as much her murderer as if you had chopped her down with a hatchet."

The plain speaking of the doctor was the terror of his parish patients, who nevertheless respected him for the honest truths he told them. He himself used to say that his plain speaking saved him a world of trouble, for that his patients took good care never to send for him except when he was really wanted.

The next day Mary Powlett was unable to go off as usual to Marsden as George was in great pain from his scald. She went down to church, however, in the evening with her father, Bill Swinton taking her place by the bedside of the boy.

"Thou hast been a-sitting by moi bedside hours every day, Polly," he said, "and it's moi turn now to take thy place here. Jack ha' brought over all moi books, for oi couldn't make shift to carry them and use moi crutches, and oi'll explain all the pictures to Jarge jest as Maister Ned explained 'em to oi."

The sight of the pictures reconciled George to Polly's departure, and seeing the lad was amused and comfortable, she started with Luke, Dick taking his place near the bed, where he could also enjoy a look at the pictures.

"Did you notice that pretty girl with the sweet voice in the aisle in a line with us, father," Ned asked that evening, "with a great, strong, quiet looking man by the side of her?"

"Yes, lad, the sweetness of her singing attracted my attention, and I thought what a bright, pretty face it was!"

"That's Mary Powlett and her uncle. You have heard me speak of her as the girl who was so kind in nursing Bill."

"Indeed, Ned! I should scarcely have expected to find so quiet and tidy looking a girl at Varley, still less to meet her with a male relation in church."

"She lives at Varley, but she can hardly be called a Varley girl," Ned said. "Bill was telling me about her. Her uncle had her brought up down here. She used to go back to sleep at night, but otherwise all her time was spent here. It seems her mother never liked the place, and married away from it, and when she and her husband died and the child came back to live with her uncle he seemed to think he would be best carrying out his dead sister's wishes by having her brought up in a different way to the girls at Varley. He has lost his wife now, and she keeps house for him, and Bill says all the young men in Varley are mad about her, but she won't have anything to say to them."

"She is right enough there," Captain Sankey said smilingly. "They are mostly croppers, and rightly or wrongly -- rightly, I am afraid -- they have the reputation of being the most drunken and quarrelsome lot in Yorkshire. Do you know the story that is current among the country people here about them?"

"No, father, what is it?"

"Well, they say that no cropper is in the place of punishment. It was crowded with them at one time, but they were so noisy and troublesome that his infernal majesty was driven to his wits' end by their disputes. He offered to let them all go. They refused. So one day he struck upon a plan to get rid of them. Going outside the gates he shouted at the top of his voice, 'Beer, beer, who wants beer?' every cropper in the place rushed out, and he then slipped in again and shut the gates, and has taken good care ever since never to admit a cropper into his territory."

Ned laughed at the story.

"It shows at any rate, father, what people think of them here; but I don't think they are as bad as that, though Bill did say that there are awful fights and rows going on there of an evening, and even down here if there is a row there is sure to be a cropper in it. Still you see there are some good ones; look at Luke Marner, that's the man we saw in church, see how kind he has been to his niece."

"There are good men of all sorts, and though the croppers may be rough and given to drink, we must not blame them too severely; they are wholly uneducated men, they work hard, and their sole pleasure is in the beer shop. At bottom they are no doubt the same as the rest of their countrymen, and the Yorkshire men, though a hard headed, are a soft hearted race; the doctor tells me that except that their constitutions are ruined by habitual drinking he has no better patients; they bear pain unflinchingly, and are patient and even tempered. I know he loves them with all their faults, and I consider him to be a good judge of character."



Chapter IV: The Worms Turn


"I say, it's a shame, a beastly shame!" Ned Sankey exclaimed passionately as the boys came out from school one day.

Generally they poured out in a confused mass, eager for the fresh air and anxious to forget in play the remembrance of the painful hours in school; but today they came out slowly and quietly, each with a book in his hand, for they had tasks set them which would occupy every moment till the bell sounded again.

"Every one says they know nothing about the cat. I don't know whether it's true or not, for I am sorry to say some of the fellows will tell lies to escape the cane, but whether it is so or not he's no right to punish us all for what can only be the fault of one or two."

That morning the cat, which was the pet of Mr. Hathorn and his wife, had been found dead near the door of the schoolhouse. It had been most brutally knocked about. One of its eyes had been destroyed, its soft fur was matted with blood, and it had evidently been beaten to death. That the cat was no favorite with the boys was certain. The door between the schoolroom and the house was unfastened at night, and the cat in her pursuit of mice not unfrequently knocked over inkstands, and the ink, penetrating into the desks, stained books and papers, and more than one boy had been caned severely for damage due to the night prowlings of the cat.

Threats of vengeance against her had often been uttered, and when the cat was found dead it was the general opinion in the school that one or other of their comrades had carried out his threats, but no suspicion fell upon any one in particular. The boys who were most likely to have done such a thing declared their innocence stoutly.

Mr. Hathorn had no doubt on the subject. The cane had been going all the morning, and he had told them that extra tasks would be given which would occupy all their playtime until the offender was given up to judgment.

In point of fact the boys were altogether innocent of the deed. Pussy was a noted marauder, and having been caught the evening before in a larder, from which she had more than once stolen titbits, she had been attacked by an enraged cook with a broomstick, and blows had been showered upon her until the woman, believing that life was extinct, had thrown her outside into the road; but the cat was not quite dead, and had, after a time, revived sufficiently to drag her way home, only, however, to die.

"I call it a shame!" Ned repeated. "Mind, I say it's a brutal thing to ill treat a cat like that. If she did knock down inkstands and get fellows into rows it was not her fault. It's natural cats should run after mice, and the wainscoting of the schoolroom swarmed with them. One can hear them chasing each other about and squeaking all day. If I knew any of the fellows had killed the cat I should go straight to Hathorn and tell him.

"You might call it sneaking if you like, but I would do it, for I hate such brutal cruelty. I don't see how it could have been any of the fellows, for they would have had to get out of the bedroom and into it again; besides, I don't see how they could have caught the cat if they did get out; but whether it was one of the fellows or not makes no difference. I say it's injustice to punish every one for the fault of one or two fellows.

"I suppose he thinks that in time we shall give up the names of the fellows who did it. As far as I am concerned, it will be just the other way. If I had known who had done it this morning, when he accused us, I should have got up and said so, because I think fellows who treat dumb animals like that are brutes that ought to be punished, but I certainly would not sneak because Hathorn punished me unjustly. I vote we all refuse to do the work he has set us."

This bold proposition was received with blank astonishment.

"But he would thrash us all fearfully," Tompkins said.

"He daren't if we only stuck together. Why, he wouldn't have a chance with us if we showed fight. If we were to say to him, 'We won't do these extra tasks; and if you touch one of us the whole lot will pitch into you,' what could he do then?"

"I will tell you what he could do, Sankey," Tom Room, a quiet, sensible boy, replied. "If we were in a desert island it would be all well enough, he could not tyrannize over us then: but here it is different. He would just put on his hat and go into the town, and in ten minutes he would be back again with the six constables, and if that wasn't enough he could get plenty of other men, and where would our fighting be then? We should all get the most tremendous licking we have ever had, and get laughed at besides through the town for a pack of young fools."

Ned broke into a good tempered laugh.

"Of course you are right, Room. I only thought about Hathorn himself. Still, it is horribly unfair. I will do it today. But if he goes on with it, as he threatens, I won't do it, let him do what he likes."

For some days this state of things continued. There was no longer any sound of shouting and laughter in the playground. The boys walked about moody and sullen, working at their lessons. They were fast becoming desperate. No clue had been obtained as to the destroyer of the cat, and the schoolmaster declared that if it took him months to break their spirits he would do it.

Ned Sankey had said nothing at home as to his troubles. His father noticed that he ran off again as soon as his dinner was over, and that he no longer said anything as to the sports in which he was engaged in playtime; also, that his lessons occupied him from tea time until he went up to bed.

"Anything is better than this," Ned said one day to some of the boys of his own age. "In my opinion it's better to have a regular row. What Room said was quite true; we shall get the worst of it; but the story will then come out, and it will be seen what a beastly tyranny we have been undergoing. I tell you, I for one will not stand it any longer, so here goes," and he threw his book up into a tree, in whose branches it securely lodged.

His comrades followed his example, and the news that Sankey and some of the other fellows were determined to put up with it no longer soon spread, and in five minutes not a book was to be seen in the playground. The spirit of resistance became strong and general, and when the bell rang the boys walked into the schoolroom silent and determined, but looking far less moody and downcast than usual. Mr. Hathorn took his seat at his desk.

"The first class will come up and say their tasks."

Not a boy moved in his seat.

"The first class will come up and say their tasks," the master repeated, bringing his cane down with angry emphasis on the desk.

Still no one moved.

"What does this mean?" he shouted, rising from his seat.

"It means, sir," Ned Sankey said, rising also, "that we are determined, all of us, that we will learn no more extra tasks. None of us, so far as we know, ever touched your cat, and we are not going to submit to be punished any longer for a fault which none of us have committed."

"No, no," rose in a general chorus through the schoolroom, "we will do no more tasks."

Mr. Hathorn stood petrified with astonishment and white with anger.

"So you are at the bottom of this, Sankey. I will make an example of you."

So saying, he took a stride forward toward Ned. In an instant a shower of books flew at him from all parts of the room. Infuriated by the attack, he rushed forward with his cane raised. Ned caught up a heavy inkstand.

"If you touch me," he shouted, "I will fling this at your head."

Mr. Hathorn hesitated. The shower of books had not affected him, but the heavy missile in Ned's hand was a serious weapon. In another moment he sprang forward and brought his cane down with all his force upon Ned's back.

Ned at once hurled the heavy inkstand at him. The schoolmaster sprang on one side, but it struck him on the shoulder, and he staggered back.

"You have broken my shoulder, you young scoundrel!" he exclaimed.

"I shouldn't care if I had broken your head," Ned retorted, white with passion; "it would have served you right if I had killed you, you tyrant."

"One of you go and fetch a constable," Mr. Hathorn said to the boys.

"Let him send his servant. He will find me at home. Mr. Hathorn, I am not going to run away, you need not think it. Give me in charge if you dare; I don't care what they do to me, but the whole country shall know what a tyrant you are."

So saying, he collected his books, put his cap on his head, and walked from the schoolroom, the boys cheering him loudly as he went. On reaching home he went at once to his father's study.

"I am sorry to say, sir, that there has been a row in the school, and Hathorn has threatened to send a constable here after me for throwing an inkstand at him."

"Throwing an inkstand!" Captain Sankey exclaimed. "Is it possible?"

"It is quite possible and quite true; he has been treating us shamefully for the last ten days; he has been always a cruel brute all along, though I never wanted to make a fuss about it, but it has been getting worse and worse. Ten days ago some one killed his cat, and I am almost sure it was none of the boys, but he chose to believe it was, and because he couldn't find out who, he has punished the whole school, and all our play hours have been taken up with lessons ever since, and he said he would keep on so till he found out who did it, if it was months.

"So at last we could not stand it any longer, and we all agreed that we wouldn't do the extra tasks, and that we would stick together when we told him so. He rushed at me with his cane, and gave me one with all his might, and I threw an inkstand at him, and it caught him on the shoulder, and he says it has broken it, and that he would send for a constable. So I told him to do so if he dared, and here I am."

"This is a very serious business, Ned," his father said gravely. "In the first place, there is something like a rebellion in the school, of which, I suppose, you were one of the leaders or he would not have singled you out. In the second place, you threw a missile at him, which has broken his shoulder, and might have killed him had it struck him on the head. I have warned you, my boy, over and over again against giving way to that passionate temper of yours, and have told you that it would lead you into serious trouble."

"I can't help it, sir," Ned said doggedly. "I've put up with a tremendous lot there, and have said nothing about it, because I did not wish to give you trouble; but when it came to downright tyranny like this I would rather be killed than put up with it. I warned him fairly that if he struck me I would throw the inkstand at him, and he brought it on himself."

Captain Sankey seeing that in his son's present state of mind talking would be useless to him, ordered him to remain in his study till his return, and putting on his hat went toward the school. Ned's temper had always been a source of anxiety to him. The boy was, no doubt, of a passionate nature, but had he had the advantage of a proper supervision and care when he was a child the tendency might have been overcome. Unfortunately this had not been the case. His mother had left the children entirely to the care of ayahs, he himself had been far too occupied with his regimental duties to be able to superintend their training, while Abijah's hands had been too full with the management of the house, which entirely devolved upon her, and with the constant attention demanded by Mrs. Sankey, to give them any close superintendence. Thus like most children born in India and left entirely in the charge of colored nurses, Ned had acquired the habit of giving way to bursts of ungovernable passion; for the black nurses have no authority over their young charges, unless seconded and supported by the firmness of their mothers. In this case no such support had been forthcoming.

Mrs. Sankey hated being troubled, and the ayahs always found that any complaints to her recoiled upon themselves, for she always took the part of her children, and insisted that the fault lay on the side of the nurses and not on them. The natural result was, that the ayahs ceased to trouble her, and found it easier to allow the children to do as they chose, and to give way quietly to Ned's outbursts of passion.

Captain Sankey knew nothing of all this. Ned was very fond of him, and was always bright and good tempered when with his father, and it was not until he left India and was thrown more with him that Captain Sankey discovered how grievously Ned's disposition, which was in other respects a fine one, was marred by the habit which had been encouraged by indulgence and want of control. Then he set to work earnestly to remedy the mischief, but the growth of years is hard to eradicate, and although under the influence of the affection for his father and his own good sense Ned had so far conquered himself that his fits of passion were few and far between, the evil still existed, and might yet, as his father felt, lead to consequences which would mar his whole life.

Thinking the matter sadly over, Captain Sankey was proceeding toward the school when he met one of the constables. The man touched his hat and stopped.

"This be a moighty oonpleasant business, captain," he said; "your boy, he ha' been and battered schoolmaister; and t' doctor says he ha' broke his collarbone. Oi ha' got to take him afore t' magistrate."

"Very well, Harper," Captain Sankey said quietly; "of course you must do your duty. It is a sad business, and I was on my way to the school to see if the matter could not be arranged; however, as it has been put in your hands it is now too late, and things must take their course; the magistrates are not sitting today. I will guarantee that my son shall be present at the sitting on Thursday, I suppose that will be sufficient?"

"Yes, oi supposes if you promises to produce him, that will do," the constable said. "Oi doan't suppose as nought will come o't; these schoolmaister chaps does thrash t' boys cruel, and oi ain't surprised as t' little chaps roises ag'in it soometoimes. T'others all seem moighty glad o' it: oi heard 'em shouting and, cheering in t' yard as if they was all mad."

Captain Sankey shook his head. "I'm afraid the magistrates won't see it in that light, Harper; discipline is discipline. However, we must hope for the best."

The story that there had been a rebellion among the boys at Hathorn's, that the schoolmaster had his shoulder broken, and that Captain Sankey's son was to go before the magistrates, spread rapidly through Marsden, and the courthouse was crowded at the sitting of the magistrates on Thursday.

There were two magistrates on the bench. Mr. Thompson the local banker, and Squire Simmonds of Lathorpe Hall, three miles from the town. Several minor cases were first disposed of, and then Ned's name was called. Captain Sankey had been accommodated with a seat near the magistrates, with both of whom he had some personal acquaintance. Ned was sitting by the side of the lawyer whom his father had retained to defend him; he now moved quietly into the dock, while Mr. Hathorn, with his arm in a sling, took his place in the witness box.

Ned had recovered now from his fit of passion, and looked amused rather than concerned as the schoolmaster gave his evidence as to the fray in the schoolroom.

"I have a few questions to ask you, Mr. Hathorn," Mr. Wakefield, Ned's lawyer, said. "Had you any reason for expecting any outbreak of this kind among your boys?"

"None whatever," Mr. Hathorn said.

"You use the cane pretty freely, I believe, sir."

"I use it when it is necessary," Mr. Hathorn replied.

"Ah, and how often do you consider it necessary?"

"That must depend upon circumstances."

"You have about thirty boys, I think?"

"About thirty."

"And you consider it necessary that at least fifteen out of that thirty should be caned every day. You must have got a very bad lot of boys, Mr. Hathorn?"

"Not so many as that," the schoolmaster said, flushing.

"I shall be prepared to prove to your worships," the lawyer said, "that for the last six months the average of boys severely caned by this man has exceeded sixteen a day, putting aside such minor matters as one, two, or three vicious cuts with the cane given at random. It fortunately happened, as I find from my young friend in the dock, that one of the boys has, from motives of curiosity, kept an account for the last six months of the number of boys thrashed every day. I have sent round for him, and he is at present in court."

Mr. Hathorn turned pale, and he began to think that it would have been wiser for him to have followed Ned's advice, and not to have brought the matter into court.

"Your worships," the lawyer said, "you have been boys, as I have, and you can form your own ideas as to the wretchedness that must prevail among a body of lads of whom more than half are caned daily. This, your worships, is a state of tyranny which might well drive any boys to desperation. But I have not done with Mr. Hathorn yet.

"During the ten days previous to this affair things wore even more unpleasant than usual in your establishment, were they not, sir? I understand that the whole of the boys were deprived of all play whatever, and that every minute was occupied by extra tasks, and moreover the prospect was held out to them that this sort of thing would continue for months."

There had already been several demonstrations of feeling in court, but at this statement by the lawyer there was a general hiss. The schoolmaster hesitated before replying.

"Now, Mr. Hathorn," the lawyer said briskly, "we want neither hesitation nor equivocation. We may as well have it from you, because if you don't like telling the truth I can put the thirty miserable lads under your charge into the box one after the other."

"They have had extra tasks to do during their play time," Mr. Hathorn said, "because they refused to reveal which among them brutally murdered my cat."

"And how do you know they murdered your cat?"

"I am sure they did," the schoolmaster said shortly.

"Oh! you are sure they did! And why are you so sure? Had they any grudge against your cat?"

"They pretended they had a grudge."

"What for, Mr. Hathorn?"

"They used to accuse her of upsetting the ink bottles when they did it themselves."

"You did not believe their statements, I suppose?"

"Not at all."

"You caned them just the same as if they had done it themselves. At least I am told so."

"Of course I caned them, especially as I knew that they were telling a lie."

"But if it was a lie, Mr. Hathorn, if this cat did not upset their ink, why on earth should these boys have a grudge against her and murder her?"

The schoolmaster was silent.

"Now I want an answer, sir. You are punishing thirty boys in addition to the sixteen daily canings divided among them; you have cut off all their play time, and kept them at work from the time they rise to the time they go to bed. As you see, according to your own statement, they could have had no grudge against the cat, how are you sure they murdered her?"

"I am quite sure." Mr. Hathorn said doggedly. "Boys have always a spite against cats."

"Now, your honors, you hear this," Mr. Wakefield said. "Now I am about to place in the witness box a very respectable woman, one Jane Tytler, who is cook to our esteemed fellow townsman, Mr. Samuel Hawkins, whose residence is, as you know, not far from this school. She will tell you that, having for some time been plagued by a thieving cat which was in the habit of getting into her larder and carrying off portions of food, she, finding it one day there in the act of stealing a half chicken, fell upon it with a broomstick and killed it, or as she thought killed it, and I imagine most cooks would have acted the same under the circumstances.

"She thought no more about it until she heard the reports in the town about this business at the school, and then she told her master. The dates have been compared, and it is found that she battered this cat on the evening before the Hathorn cat was found dead in the yard. Furthermore, the cat she battered was a white cat with a black spot on one side, and this is the exact description of the Hathorn cat; therefore, your honors, you will see that the assumption, or pretense, or excuse, call it what you will, by which this man justifies his tyrannical treatment of these unfortunate boys has no base or foundation whatever. You can go now, Mr. Hathorn; I have nothing further to say to you."

A loud hiss rose again from the crowded court as the schoolmaster stepped down from the witness box, and Jane Tytler took his place. After giving her evidence she was succeeded by Dick Tompkins in much trepidation. Dick was a most unwilling witness, but he produced the notebook in which he had daily jotted down the number of boys caned, and swore to the general accuracy of the figures.

Mr. Wakefield then asked the magistrates if they would like to hear any further witnesses as to the state of things in the schoolroom. They said that what they had heard was quite sufficient. He then addressed them on the merits of the case, pointing out that although in this case one of the parties was a master and the other a pupil this in no way removed it in the eye of the law from the category of other assaults.

"In this case," he said, "your worships, the affair has arisen out of a long course of tyranny and provocation on the part of one of the parties, and you will observe that this is the party who first commits the assault, while my client was acting solely in self defense.

"It is he who ought to stand in the witness box; and the complainant in the dock, for he is at once the aggressor and the assailant. The law admits any man who is assaulted to defend himself, and there is, so far as I am aware, no enactment whatever to be found in the statute book placing boys in a different category to grownup persons. When your worships have discharged my client, as I have no doubt you will do at once, I shall advise him to apply for a summons for assault against this man Hathorn."

The magistrates consulted together for some time, then the squire, who was the senior, said:

"We are of opinion that Master Sankey, by aiding this rebellion against his master, has done wrongly, and that he erred grievously in discharging a heavy missile at his master; at the same time we think that the provocation that he received by the tyranny which has been proved to have been exercised by Mr. Hathorn toward the boys under his charge, and especially by their unjust punishment for an offense which the complainant conceived without sufficient warrant, or indeed without any warrant at all, that they had committed, to a great extent justifies and excuses the conduct of Master Sankey. Therefore, with a reprimand as to his behavior, and a caution as to the consequences which might have arisen from his allowing his temper to go beyond bounds, we discharge him.

"As to you, sir," he said to the schoolmaster, "we wish to express our opinion that your conduct has been cruel and tyrannical in the extreme, and we pity the unfortunate boys who are under the care of a man who treats them with such cruel harshness as you are proved to have done."

The magistrates now rose, and the court broke up. Many of those present crowded round Ned and shook his hand, congratulating him on the issue; but at a sign from his father the boy drew himself away from them, and joining Captain Sankey, walked home with him.

"The matter has ended better than I expected, Ned," he said gravely; "but pray, my boy, do not let yourself think that there is any reason for triumph. You have been gravely reprimanded, and had the missile you used struck the schoolmaster on the head, you would now be in prison awaiting your trial for a far graver offense, and that before judges who would not make the allowances for you that the magistrates here have done.

"Beware of your temper, Ned, for unless you overcome it, be assured that sooner or later it may lead to terrible consequences."

Ned, who had in fact been inclined to feel triumphant over his success, was sobered by his father's grave words and manner; and resolved that he would try hard to conquer his fault; but evil habits are hard to overcome, and the full force of his father's words was still to come home to him.

He did not, of course, return to Mr. Hathorn's, and indeed the disclosures of the master's severity made at the examination before the magistrates obtained such publicity that several of his pupils were removed at once, and notices were given that so many more would not return after the next holidays that no one was surprised to hear that the schoolmaster had arranged with a successor in the school, and that he himself was about to go to America.

The result was that after the holidays his successor took his place, and many of the fathers who had intended to remove their sons decided to give the newcomer a trial. The school opened with nearly the usual number of pupils. Ned was one of those who went back. Captain Sankey had called on the new master, and had told him frankly the circumstances of the fracas between Ned and Mr. Hathorn.

"I will try your son at any rate, Mr. Sankey," the master said. "I have a strong opinion that boys can be managed without such use of the cane as is generally adopted; that, in my opinion, should be the last resort. Boys are like other people, and will do more for kindness than for blows. By what you tell me, the circumstances of your son's bringing up in India among native servants have encouraged the growth of a passionate temper, but I trust that we may be able to overcome that; at any rate I will give him a trial."

And so it was settled that Ned should return to Porson's, for so the establishment was henceforth to be known.



Chapter V: The New Master


It was with much excitement and interest that the boys gathered in their places for the first time under the new master. The boarders had not seen him upon their arrival on the previous evening, but had been received by an old housekeeper, who told them Mr. Porson would not return until the coach came in from York that night.

All eyes were turned to the door as the master entered. The first impression was that he was a younger man than they had expected. Mr. Hathorn had been some forty-five years old; the newcomer was not over thirty. He was a tall, loosely made man, with somewhat stooping shoulders; he had heavy eyebrows, gray eyes, and a firm mouth. He did not look round as he walked straight to his desk; then he turned, and his eyes traveled quietly and steadily round the room as if scanning each of the faces directed toward him.

"Now, boys," he said in a quiet voice, "a few words before we begin. I am here to teach, and you are here to learn. As your master I expect prompt obedience. I shall look to see each of you do your best to acquire the knowledge which your parents have sent you here to obtain. Above all, I shall expect that every boy here will be straightforward, honorable, and truthful. I shall not expect to find that all are capable of making equal progress; there are clever boys and stupid boys, just as there are clever men and stupid men, and it would be unjust to expect that one can keep up to the other; but I do look to each doing his best according to his ability. On my part I shall do my best to advance you in your studies, to correct your faults, and to make useful men of you.

"One word as to punishments. I do not believe that knowledge is to be thrashed into boys, or that fear is the best teacher. I shall expect you to learn, partly because you feel that as your parents have paid for you to learn it is your duty to learn, partly because you wish to please me. I hope that the cane will seldom be used in this school. It will be used if any boy tells me a lie, if any boy does anything which is mean and dishonorable, if any boy is obstinately idle, and when it is used it will be used to a purpose, but I trust that the occasion for it will be rare.

"I shall treat you as friends whom it is my duty to instruct. You will treat me, I hope, as a friend whose duty it is to instruct you, and who has a warm interest in your welfare; if we really bear these relations to each other there should be seldom any occasion for punishment. And now as a beginning today, boys, let each come up to my desk, one at a time, with his books. I shall examine you separately, and see what each knows and is capable of doing. I see by the report here that there are six boys in the first class. As these will occupy me all the morning the rest can go into the playground. The second class will be taken this afternoon."

The boys had listened with astonished silence to this address, and so completely taken aback were they that all save those ordered to remain rose from their seats and went out in a quiet and orderly way, very different from the wild rush which generally terminated school time.

Ned being in the second class was one of those who went out. Instead of scattering into groups, the boys gathered in a body outside.

"What do you think of that, Sankey?" Tompkins said. "It seems almost too good to be true. Only fancy, no more thrashing except for lying and things of that sort, and treating us like friends! and he talked as if he meant it too."

"That he did," Ned said gravely; "and I tell you, fellows, we shall have to work now, and no mistake. A fellow who will not work for such a man as that deserves to be skinned."

"I expect," said James Mather, who was one of the biggest boys in the school though still in the third class, "that it's all gammon, just to give himself a good name, and to do away with the bad repute the school has got into for Hathorn's flogging. You will see how long it will last! I ain't going to swallow all that soft soap."

Ned, who had been much touched at the master's address, at once fired up:

"Oh! we all know how clever you are, Mather -- quite a shining genius, one of the sort who can see through a stone wall. If you say it's gammon, of course it must be so."

There was a laugh among the boys.

"I will punch your head if you don't shut up, Sankey," Mather said angrily; "there's no ink bottle for you to shy here."

Ned turned very white, but he checked himself with an effort.

"I don't want to fight today -- it's the first day of the half year, and after such a speech as we've heard I don't want to have a row on this first morning. But you had better look out; another time you won't find me so patient. Punch my head, indeed! Why, you daren't try it."

But Mather would have tried it, for he had for the last year been regarded as the cock of the school. However, several of the boys interfered.

"Sankey is right, Mather; it would be a beastly shame to be fighting this morning. After what Porson said there oughtn't to be any rows today. We shall soon see whether he means it."

Mather suffered himself to be dissuaded from carrying his threat into execution, the rather that in his heart of hearts he was not assured that the course would have been a wise one. Ned had never fought in the school, but Tompkins' account of his fight on the moor with Bill Swinton, and the courage he had shown in taking upon himself the office of spokesman in the rebellion against Hathorn, had given him a very high reputation among the boys; and in spite of Mather's greater age and weight there were many who thought that Ned Sankey would make a tough fight of it with the cock of the school.

So the gathering broke up and the boys set to at their games, which were played with a heartiness and zest all the greater that none of them were in pain from recent punishment, and that they could look forward to the afternoon without fear and trembling.

When at twelve o'clock the boys of the first class came out from school the others crowded round to hear the result of the morning's lessons. They looked bright and pleased.

"I think he is going to turn out a brick," Ripon, the head of the first class, said. "Of course one can't tell yet. He was very quiet with us and had a regular examination of each of us. I don't think he was at all satisfied, though we all did our best, but there was no shouting or scolding. We are to go in again this afternoon with the rest. He says there's something which he forgot to mention to us this morning."

"More speeches!" Mather grumbled. "I hate all this jaw."

"Yes," Ripon said sharply; "a cane is the thing which suits your understanding best. Well, perhaps he will indulge you; obstinate idleness is one of the things he mentioned in the address."

When afternoon school began Mr. Porson again rose.

"There is one thing I forgot to mention this morning. I understand that you have hitherto passed your play time entirely in the playground, except on Saturday afternoons, when you have been allowed to go where you like between dinner and tea time. With the latter regulation I do not intend to interfere, or at any rate I shall not do so so long as I see that no bad effects come of it; but I shall do so only with this proviso: I do not think it good for you to be going about the town. I shall therefore put Marsden out of bounds. You will be free to ramble where you like in the country, but any boy who enters the town will be severely punished. I am not yet sufficiently acquainted with the neighborhood to draw the exact line beyond which you are not to go, but I shall do so as soon as I have ascertained the boundaries of the town.

"I understand that you look forward to Saturday for making such purchases as you require. Therefore each Saturday four boys, selected by yourselves, one from each class, will be allowed to go into the town to make purchases for the rest, but they are not to be absent more than an hour.

"In the second place, I do not think that the playground affords a sufficient space for exercise, and being graveled, it is unsuitable for many games. Therefore I have hired a field, which I dare say you all know; it is called 'The Four Acre Field,' about a hundred yards down the road on the left hand side. This you will use as your playground during the six summer months. I have brought with me from York a box which I shall place under the charge of Ripon and the two next senior to him. It contains bats, wickets, and a ball for cricket; a set of quoits; trap bat and ball for the younger boys; leaping bars and some other things. These will give you a start. As they become used up or broken they must be replaced by yourselves; and I hope you will obtain plenty of enjoyment from them. I shall come and play a game of cricket with you myself sometimes.

"You will bear in mind that it is my wish that you should be happy. I expect you to work hard, but I wish you to play hard too. Unless the body works the brain will suffer, and a happy and contented boy will learn as easily again as a discontented, and miserable one. I will give you the box after tea, so that you can all examine them together. The second and third classes will now stay in; the fourth class can go out in the playground with the first. I shall have time to examine them while the others are doing their work tomorrow."

There was a suppressed cheer among the boys and Ripon, as the senior, said:

"I am sure, sir, we are all very much obliged to you for your kindness, and we will do our best to deserve it."

There was a chorus of assent, and then the elder and younger boys went out into the playground while the work of examination of the second and third classes began.

On the following day lessons began in earnest, and the boys found their first impressions of the new master more than justified. A new era had commenced. The sound of the cane was no longer heard, and yet the lessons were far better done than had been the case before. Then the whole work had fallen on the boys; the principal part of the day's lessens had been the repeating of tasks learned by heart, and the master simply heard them and punished the boys who were not perfect.

There was comparatively little of this mechanical work now; it was the sense and not the wording which had to be mastered. Thus geography was studied from an atlas and not by the mere parrot-like learning of the names of towns and rivers. In grammar the boys had to show that they understood a rule by citing examples other than those given in their books. History was rather a lecture from the master than a repetition of dry facts and dates by the boys. Latin and mathematics were made clear in a similar way.

"It was almost too good to last," the boys said after the first day's experience of this new method of teaching; but it did last. A considerable portion of the work out of school was devoted to the keeping up the facts they had learned, for Mr. Porson was constantly going back and seeing that their memories retained the facts they had acquired, and what they called examinations were a part of the daily routine.

In some points upon which Mr. Hathorn had laid the greatest stress Mr. Porson was indifferent -- dates, which had been the bane of many a boy's life and an unceasing source of punishment, he regarded but little, insisting only that the general period should be known, and his questions generally took the form of, "In the beginning or at the end of such and such a century, what was the state of things in England or in Rome?" A few dates of special events, the landmarks of history, were required to be learned accurately, all others were passed over as unimportant.

It was not that the boys worked fewer hours than before, but that they worked more intelligently, and therefore more pleasantly to themselves. The boys -- and there were some -- who imagined that under this new method of teaching they could be idle, very soon found out their mistake, and discovered that in his way Mr. Porson was just as strict as his predecessor. He never lost his temper; but his cold displeasure was harder to bear than Mr. Hathorn's wrath; nor were punishments wanting. Although the cane was idle, those who would not work were kept in the schoolroom during play hours; and in cases where this was found to be ineffectual Mr. Porson coldly said:

"Your parents pay me to teach you, and if you do not choose to be taught I have only to write home to them and request them to take you away. If you are one of those boys who will only learn from fear of the cane you had better go to some school where the cane is used."

This threat, which would have been ineffective in Mr. Hathorn's time never failed to have an effect now; for even Mather, the idlest and worst boy there, was able to appreciate the difference between the present regime and the last. In a marvelously short time Mr. Porson seemed to have gauged the abilities of each of the boys, and while he expected much from those who were able' to master easily their tasks, he was content with less from the duller intellects, providing they had done their best.

After a week's experience of Mr. Porson, Ned gave so glowing an account to his father of the new master and his methods that Captain Sankey went down to the school and arranged that Charlie, now ten years old, should accompany his brother. There were several boys no older than he; but Charlie differed widely from his elder brother, being a timid and delicate child, and ill fitted to take care of himself. Captain Sankey felt, however, after what Ned had told him of Mr. Porson, that he could trust to him during the school hours, and Ned would be an active protector in the playground.

It was not until a fortnight after the school began that the Four Acre Field was ready. By that time a flock of sheep had been turned into it, and had eaten the grass smooth, and a heavy horse roller had been at work for a day making a level pitch in the center.

It was a Saturday afternoon when the boys took possession of it for the first time. As they were about to start in the highest glee, Mr. Porson joined them. Some of their faces fell a little; but he said cheerfully:

"Now, boys, I am going with you; but not, you know, to look after you or keep you in order. I want you all to enjoy yourselves just in your own way, and I mean to enjoy myself too. I have been a pretty good cricketer in my time, and played in the York Eleven against Leeds, so I may be able to coach you up a little, and I hope after a bit we may be able to challenge some of the village elevens round here. I am afraid Marsden will be too good for us for some time; still, we shall see."

On reaching the field Mr. Porson saw the ground measured and the wickets erected, and then said:

"Now I propose we begin with a match. There are enough of us to make more than two elevens; but there are the other games. Would any of the bigger boys like to play quoits better than cricket?"

Mather, who felt much aggrieved at the master's presence, said he should prefer quoits; and Williamson, who always followed his lead, agreed to play with him.

"Now," Mr. Porson said, "do you, Ripon, choose an eleven. I will take the ten next best. The little ones who are over can play at trap bat, or bowls, as they like."

There was a general approval of the plan. Ripon chose an eleven of the likeliest boys, selecting the biggest and most active; for as there had been no room for cricket in the yard their aptitude for the game was a matter of guesswork, though most of them had played during the holidays. Mr. Porson chose the next ten and after tossing for innings, which Ripon won, they set to work. Mr. Porson played for a time as long stop, putting on two of the strongest of his team as bowlers, and changing them from time to time to test their capacity. None of them turned out brilliant, and the runs came fast, and the wickets were taken were few and far between, until at last Mr. Porson himself took the ball.

"I am not going to bowl fast," he said, "just straight easy lobs;" but the boys found that the straight lobs were not so easy after all, and the wickets of the boys who had made a long score soon fell. Most of those who followed managed to make a few runs as well off Mr. Porson's bowling as from that at the other end; for the master did not wish to discourage them, and for a few overs after each batsman came to the wicket aimed well off it so as to give them a chance of scoring.

The last wicket fell for the respectable score of fifty-four. The junior eleven then went in, the master not going in until the last. Only twenty runs had been made when he took the bat. In the five balls of the over which were bowled to him he made three fours; but before it came to his turn again his partner at the other end was out, and his side were twenty-two behind on the first innings. The other side scored thirty-three for the first four wickets before he again took the ball, and the remaining six went down for twelve runs. His own party implored him to go in first, but he refused.

"No, no, boys," he said; "you must win the match, if you can, without much aid from me."

The juniors made a better defense this time and scored forty before the ninth wicket fell. Then Mr. Porson went in and ran the score up to sixty before his partner was out, the seniors winning the match by nine runs. Both sides were highly pleased with the result of the match. The seniors had won after a close game. The juniors were well pleased to have run their elders so hard.

They all gathered round their master and thanked him warmly.

"I am glad you are pleased, my boys," he said; "I will come down two or three times a week and bowl to you for an hour, and give you a few hints, and you will find that you get on fast. There is plenty of promise among you, and I prophesy that we shall turn out a fair eleven by the end of the season."

The younger boys had also enjoyed themselves greatly, and had been joined by many of the elders while waiting for their turn to go in. Altogether the opening day of the Four Acre Field had been a great success.

The old cake woman who had previously supplied the boys still came once a week, her usual time being Wednesday evening, when, after tea, the boys played for half an hour in the yard before going in to their usual lessons. Ned was not usually present, but he one evening went back to fetch a book which he needed. As he came in at the gate of the yard Mather was speaking to the woman.

"No, I won't let you have any more, Master Mather. You have broken your promises to me over and over again. That money you owed me last half ain't been paid yet. If it had only been the money for the cakes and sweets I shouldn't ha' minded so much, but it's that ten shillings you borrowed and promised me solemn you would pay at the end of the week and ain't never paid yet. I have got to make up my rent, and I tell ye if I don't get the money by Saturday I shall speak to t' maister about it and see what he says to such goings on."

"Don't talk so loud," Mather said hurriedly, "and I will get you the money as seen as I can."

"I don't care who hears me," the woman replied in a still louder voice, "and as soon as you can won't do for I. I have got to have it on Saturday, so that's flat. I will come up to the field, and you'll best have it ready for me."

Ned did not hear the last few words, but he had heard enough to know that Mather owed ten shillings which he had borrowed, besides a bill for cakes. Mather had not noticed him come into the yard, for his back was toward the gate, and the noise which the boys made running about and shouting prevented him hearing the gate open and close.

"It's a beastly shame," Ned muttered to himself as he went off to school, "to borrow money from an old woman like that. Mather must have known he couldn't pay it, for he has only a small allowance, and he is always short of money, and of course he could not expect a tip before the holidays. He might have paid her when he came back, but as he didn't I don't see how he is to do so now, and if the old woman tells Porson there will be a row. It's just the sort of thing would rile him most."

On the next Saturday he watched with some curiosity the entry of the old woman into the field. Several of the boys went up and bought sweets. When she was standing alone Mather strolled up to her. After a word or two he handed her something. She took it, and said a few words. Mather shook his head positively, and in a minute or two walked away, leaving her apparently satisfied.

"I suppose he has given her something on account," Ned said to himself. "I wonder where he got it. When Ripon asked him last Monday for a subscription to buy another set of bats and wickets, so that two lots could practise at once, he said he had only sixpence left, and Mather would not like to seem mean now, for he knows he doesn't stand well with any one except two or three of his own set, because he is always running out against everything that Porson does."

A week later Mr. Porson said, at the end of school:

"By the way, boys, have any of you seen that illustrated classical dictionary of mine? I had it in school about ten days ago when I was showing you the prints of the dress and armor of the Romans, and I have not seen it since. I fancy I must have left it on my table, but I cannot be sure. I looked everywhere in my library for it last night and cannot find it. Perhaps if I left it on the desk one of you has taken it to look at the pictures."

There was a general silence.

"I think it must be so," Mr. Porson went on more gravely. "If the boy who has it will give it up I shall not be angry, as, if I left it on the desk, there would be no harm in taking it to look at the pictures."

Still there was silence.

"I value the book," Mr. Porson went on, "not only because it is an expensive work, but because it is a prize which I won at Durham."

He paused a moment, and then said in a stern voice: "Let every boy open his desk."

The desks were opened, and Mr. Porson walked round and glanced at each.

"This is a serious matter now," he said. "Ripon, will you come to the study with me and help me to search again. It is possible it may still be there and I may have overlooked it. The rest will remain in their places till I return."

There was a buzz of conversation while the master was absent. On his return he said:

"The book is certainly not there. The bookshelves are all so full that it could only have been put in its own place or laid upon the table. Ripon and I have searched the room thoroughly and it is certainly not there. Now, boys, this is a serious business. In the first place, I will give a last chance to whoever may have taken it to rise in his place and confess it."

He paused, and still all were silent.

"Now mind," he said, "I do not say that any of you have taken it -- I have no grounds for such an accusation. It may have been taken by a servant. A tramp may have come in at the back gate when you were all away and have carried it off. These things are possible. And even were I sure that it had been done by one of you I should not dream of punishing all; therefore for the present we will say no more about it. But in order to assure myself and you I must ask you for the keys of your boxes. The servants' boxes will also be searched, as well as every nook and corner of the house; and then, when we have ascertained for a certainty that the book is not within these four walls, I shall go on with a lighter heart."

The boys all eagerly opened their trunks and play boxes, searched under the beds, in the cupboards, and in every nook and corner of their part of the house, and an equally minute search was afterward made in the other apartments; but no trace of the book was discovered. For days the matter was a subject of conversation among the boys, and endless were the conjectures as to what could have become of the dictionary. Their respect and affection for their master were greatly heightened by the fact that his behavior toward them was in no way altered by the circumstances. His temper was as patient and equable as before in the schoolroom; he was as cheerful and friendly in the cricket field, They could see, however, that he was worried and depressed, though he strove to appear the same as usual. Often did they discuss among themselves how different the state of things would have been had the loss happened to Mr. Hathorn, and what a life they would have led under those circumstances.

At the end of a week the happy thought struck Ripon that a subscription should be made to buy a new dictionary. The amount was a serious one, as they found that the book could not be purchased under two guineas; but every boy subscribed to his last farthing. Some promised their pocket money for weeks in advance; others wrote home to their parents to ask for money, and in ten days the boys had the satisfaction of seeing Ripon at the commencement of school walk up to Mr. Porson's desk and present him with the handsome volume in the name of all the boys. Ripon had taken some pains in getting up an appropriate speech, and it was voted a great success.

"Mr. Porson," he said, "in the name of all the boys in the school I beg to ask your acceptance of this volume. It cannot have the value to you of that which you have lost, as that was a prize; but we hope, that as a proof of the respect and affection which we all have for you, and as a token of our appreciation of your very great kindness toward us, you will accept it in place of the other."

Mr. Porson's face lit up with pleasure.

"My boys," he said, "I am very highly gratified at this proof that I have succeeded in my endeavors to make you feel that I am your friend as well as your master, and I shall value your gift far more highly than my college prize. That was simply the result of my own labor; this is a proof of kindness and affection on your parts. I shall value it very greatly all my life. And now, as I don't think you will be able to pay much attention to your work this morning, and as I have been for some days awaiting an opportunity to go over to York, where I have some pressing business, I shall start at once, and can just catch the stage, and shall get back in time for school tomorrow morning, so you will have the day to yourselves."

With a shout of pleasure the boys started off for a long day in the cricket field, while Mr. Porson hurried away to catch the stagecoach for York.



Chapter VI: The Thief Detected


Mr. Porson was in his place next morning, having returned only half an hour before school began; he looked fagged, and he was scarcely so attentive as usual to the lessons, his thoughts seeming to be elsewhere.

"He seems regularly done up with his journey," Ripon said as the boys came out of school.

"I think he is upset about something," Ned remarked. "Sometimes he hardly seemed paying attention to what was going on, and he did not speak as cheerfully as usual. I noticed a sort of change in his voice directly he began. I hope nothing wrong has occurred, we were getting on so jollily."

When afternoon school began Mr. Porson placed on the desk before him a packet done up in brown paper.

"Boys," he said, "I have got my book again."

An exclamation of surprise and pleasure burst from the boys. The mystery had weighed heavily on the school, and a look of eager curiosity came over every face to hear how the book had been recovered.

"It was found in a bookseller's shop in York," Mr. Porson went on. "I myself had inquired at Leighton's here, but with little hope of finding it, for no one who stole it would have disposed of it so near home. I then wrote to several friends in the large towns, and one of them, a clergyman at York, wrote to me two days ago to say that just such a book as I had described was on sale in the window of one of the booksellers there. It was a second hand copy, but in excellent preservation. The flyleaf was missing. On going over yesterday I found that it was my book, and was able to prove it by several marginal notes in my handwriting.

"The bookseller said at once that it was sent him by a general dealer at Marsden who was in the habit of picking up books at sales in the neighborhood and sending them to him; he had given eighteen shillings for it. This morning I have called upon the man, whose name is White, accompanied by a constable. He admitted at once that he had sent the book to York, and said that he bought it from some one about a month ago. His customer came late, and as White is short sighted, and there was only a tallow candle burning in the shop, he said that he should not know him again, and could say nothing about his age; however, I shall call him in; he is now outside with the constable. I am sure that for your own sakes you will not object to his taking a look at you."

Mr. Porson went to the door, and the constable and White entered. The chief constable, when Mr. Porson had called upon him to ask for one of his men to accompany him to the dealer's, had told him that White bore a very bad reputation. He was suspected of being the medium through whom stolen goods in that part of Yorkshire were sent up to London for disposal. A highwayman who had been caught and executed at York, had in his confession stated that this man had acted as his go between for the disposal of the watches and other articles he took from travelers, and White's premises had then been thoroughly searched by the constables; but as nothing suspicious was found, and there was only the unsupported confession of the highwayman against him, he had got off scot free.

"I don't think you will get anything out of him, Mr. Porson," the constable said. "The fact that he has been trusted by these fellows shows that he is not a man to peach upon those with whom he deals; and in the next place he would know well enough that if any one were convicted of stealing this book he would be liable to a prosecution as receiver; and though we could scarcely get a conviction against him, as we could not prove that he knew that it was stolen, it would do him no good."

The boys all stood up in a line. "I will look at 'em, sir," White said; "but, as I have told you, I should not know the man as I bought that book from, from Adam. Anyhow none of these little ones couldn't be he. If it weren't a man, he were as big as a man. You don't suppose an honest tradesman would buy an expensive book like that from a kid."

So saying he placed a pair of horn spectacles on his nose and walked round the line.

"I don't see any one here whose face I ever see before as far as I knows; but bless you, the man as I bought it of might have had hair all over his face, and I be none the wiser looking at him across that counter of mine in the dark."

"Thank you," Mr. Porson said; "then it is of no use troubling you further. I have got my book back; but I confess that this affords me but small gratification in comparison to that which I should feel if I could unravel this mystery."

The discovery of the book reopened the interest in the matter, and nothing else was talked of that evening in the playground.

"Ripon," Ned said, putting his arm in that of the head boy, "I want to tell you a thing that has been in my mind for the last three weeks; mind, I don't say that there's anything in it, and I hate to think harm of any one. There is another thing; he and I ain't good friends. If it hadn't been for that I should have spoken to you before; but I was afraid that it would look like a piece of dirty spite on my part; but I do think now that as head boy you ought to know, and I want your advice whether I ought to say anything about it or not."

"What a long winded chap you are, Sankey! What is it all about?"

"Well, you know, Ripon, when we got up that subscription for the cricket things, Mather didn't give anything. He said he had no money."

"No; and he hadn't any," Ripon said, "for I had only the day before lent him twopence to buy some string, and he paid me when he got his allowance on Saturday."

"Well, a day or two after that I came back after tea for a book that I had left behind me, and as I came in at the gate there Mather was standing at the corner talking to Mother Brown. He had his back to the door, and they didn't see me. She was talking loud and angry and I couldn't help hearing what she said."

"Well, what did she say?" Ripon said rather impatiently.

"She said, 'You have disappointed me over and over again, and if you don't pay me that ten shillings you borrowed of me last half, and the bill for the cakes, by Saturday, I will see the master and tell him all about it.' I didn't hear any more; but on the Saturday I saw him go up to her in the field and pay her something. Of course I don't know what it was; not all, I think, by the manner in which she took it; still, I suppose it was enough to content her. About ten days afterward we heard the book was missing. It didn't strike me at the time; but afterward, when I thought of it, I remembered that the last time Porson brought it out was on the Thursday, which was the day after Mather had been speaking to Mother Brown. Now, of course, Ripon, I don't actually suspect Mather of taking the book; still it is curious its being missing just at the time he wanted money so badly. He may have got the money from home, or he may have borrowed it from some other fellow."

"No," Ripon said positively, "I am sure Mather has had no letter, because I always distribute the letters, and Mather's people never write to him; and I am sure there was no fellow in the school had more than a shilling or two at the outside at that time. Why didn't you tell me before, Sankey?"

"I didn't like to, because every one knows Mather and I are not good friends; then I thought perhaps Mather might be able to explain it all right, and I should have cut a nice figure if he could; then at the time when I thought of it, and had got the dates right, the first excitement had died out and I thought we might hear no more of it and it would be forgotten; but now that the book has been found and the whole thing has come up fresh again I thought it better to tell you all about it and ask you what you would advise me to do."

Ripon did not answer for some time; then he said:

"I am sure I don't know, Ned; I will think it over till tomorrow. You have not said anything about it to any one else?"

"Not to a soul. I hesitated whether I should tell you or father, but he wouldn't understand how boys think of these things so well as you do; so I thought as you were head of the school it was best you should know."

"I wish you hadn't told me," Ripon grumbled. "I am sure I don't know what's best to do;" and he turned away and began to pace the yard moodily up and down.

"The only thing I have decided," he said to Ned the next day, "is to ask Mother Brown myself how much Mather paid her. We may as well settle that question first."

As this was Wednesday and the cake woman was coming that evening there was not long to wait. Ripon chose a time when most of the boys had made their purchases and the old woman was alone.

"Don't you give too much tick to any of the fellows, Mother Brown," he began. "You know it isn't always easy to get money that's owing."

"I should think not, Master Ripon; I wish they would always pay money down as you do. There's Master Mather, he been owing me money ever since last half. He borrowed ten shillings of me and promised solemn he would pay at the end of the week, and he has only paid five shillings yet, a month ago, and that was only 'cause I told him I would tell the master about him; there's that five shillings, and seven shillings and eightpence for cakes and things; but I have been giving him a piece of my mind this afternoon; and if I don't get that other five shillings by Saturday, sure enough I will speak to t' maister about it. No one can say as Mother Brown is hard on boys, and I am always ready to wait reasonable; but I can't abear lies, and when I lent that ten shillings I expected it was going to be paid punctual."

"Then he knows you are going to speak to Mr. Porson on Saturday if he doesn't pay up another five shillings?"

"He knows it," the old woman said, nodding. "When I says a thing I mean it. So he had best pay up."

When Ripon met Ned next day he said: "I talked to her last night. Mather paid her five shillings, and she has told him if he doesn't pay her the other five by Saturday she will speak to Porson; so I think the best plan is to wait till then and see what comes of it. She will tell the whole story and Porson will learn it without our interference, and can think what he likes about it."

Relieved in mind at finding that there was a prospect of his avoiding the decision whether or not to inform the master of his suspicions, Ned went to his desk. When afternoon school began Mr. Porson said gravely:

"Boys, when you came back from the field did you all go straight to the washing room to wash your hands before dinner?"

There was a chorus of surprised assent.

"I am sorry to tell you that another theft has been committed. A gold pencil case has disappeared from my study table. I was using it after school. I left it on the table when I went for a stroll before dinner. I remember most distinctly laying it down among the pens. I went into my study ten minutes ago; and wanting to make a note as to this afternoon's work looked for the pencil and it was gone. The window was open as usual, and it is possible that tramps passing along the road may have come into the garden and have got in at the window. As in the case of the book I suspect no one, but two such occurrences as these are very uncomfortable for us all. I shall not propose any search this time, for had any of you taken it, which I cannot for a moment believe, he would not have been careless enough to put it in his pocket, or conceal it in his desk or boxes, but would have stowed it away somewhere where there would be no chance whatever of its being found. Now let us dismiss the subject and go on with our lessons."

While the master was speaking Ripon and Sankey had glanced for a moment at each other; the same thought was in both their minds. After school was over they joined each other in the yard.

"Was Mather in the washing room with the others?" Sankey asked eagerly.

"He was, but he came up last," Ripon replied. "You know he generally saunters along in a lazy way and is the last to get in. So he was today, but I don't know that he was later than usual."

"I think, Ripon, we ought to speak to Porson."

"I think so too," Ripon rejoined gravely; "it is too serious to keep to ourselves. Any ordinary thing I would not peach about on any account, but a disgraceful theft like this, which throws a doubt over us all, is another thing; the honor of the whole school is at stake. I have been thinking it over. I don't want Mather to suspect anything, so I will go out at the back gate with you, as if I was going to walk part of the way home with you, and then we will go round to the front door and speak to Porson."

The master was sitting on a low seat in the window of his study. Hearing footsteps coming up from the front gate he looked round.

"Do you want to speak to me, boys?" he asked in some surprise through the open window. "What makes you come round the front way?"

"We want to see you privately, sir," Ripon said.

"Very well, boys, I will open the door for you.

"Now, what is it?" he asked as the boys followed him into the study.

"Well, sir, it may be nothing, I am sure I hope so," Ripon said, "but Sankey and I thought you ought to know and then it will be off our minds, and you can do as you like about it. Now, Sankey, tell what you knew first, then I will tell what Mother Brown said to me on Wednesday."

Ned told the story in the same words in which he had related it to Ripon; and Ripon then detailed his conversation with the cake woman, and her threats of reporting Mather on Saturday were the debt not paid. Ned had already given his reason for keeping silence in the matter hitherto, and Ripon now explained that they had determined to wait till Saturday to see what came of it, but that after that new theft they deemed it their duty to speak at once. Mr. Porson sat with his face half shaded with his hand and without speaking a single word until the boys had concluded.

"It is a sad business," he said in a low tone, "a very sad business. It is still possible that you may have come to false conclusions; but the circumstances you have related are terribly strong. I am grieved, indeed, over the business, and would rather have lost a hundred books and pencil cases than it should have happened. You have done quite right, boys; I am greatly obliged to you both, and you have acted very well. I know how painful it must be to you both to have been obliged to bring so grave a matter to my ears. Thank you; I will consider what is the best course to adopt. If it can be avoided, I shall so arrange that your names do not appear in the matter."

For some little time after the boys had left him Mr. Porson remained in deep thought; then he rose, put on his hat, and went out, first inquiring of the servant if she knew where the woman who sold cakes to the boys lived.

"Yes, sir; she lives in a little house in Mill Street; it's not a regular shop, but there are a few cakes in one of the windows; I have bought things there for the kitchen, knowing that she dealt with the young gentlemen."

Mr. Porson made his way to Mill Street and easily found the house he was in search of. On being questioned the old woman at first showed some reluctance in answering his questions, but Mr. Porson said sharply:

"Now, dame, I want no nonsense; I am acquainted with the whole affair, but wish to have it from your own lips. Unless you tell me the whole truth not a cake will you sell my boys in future."

Thus pressed Mrs. Brown at once related the story of Mather having borrowed some money of her; of her threats to report him unless he paid, and of his having given her five shillings on the following Saturday, saying that he would give her the rest in a few days, but could pay no more then; and how, after repeated disappointments, she had now given him till Saturday to settle the debt.

"If he didn't pay, sir, I meant to have come to ye and telled ye all about it, for I hate lies, and Master Mather has lied to me over and over again about it; but seeing that Saturday hasn't come I don't like telling ye the story, as he may have meant to keep his word to me this time."

"Here are the five shillings which he borrowed of you; as to the other money, you will never get it, and I hope it will be a lesson to you; and mind, if I find that you ever allow the boys to run an account with you further than the following Saturday after it is incurred, you will never come into my field or playground again."

Mr. Porson then went to the chief constable's, and after a short conversation with him a constable was told off to accompany him. He and the master took their station at a short distance from the shop of the man White and waited quietly. A little after nine a figure was seen coming down the street from the other end. He passed quickly into the shop.

"That is the boy," Mr. Porson said.

"Wouldn't it be better, sir," the constable asked, "to wait till the deed is completed, then we can lay our hands on White as a receiver?"

"No," Mr. Porson replied, "for in that case the boy would have to appear with him in the dock, and that I wish of all things to avoid."

So saying he walked quickly on and entered the shop.

Mather was leaning across the counter while the man was examining the pencil case by the light of the candle.

"Five shillings," the man said, "and no more. I was nearly getting into trouble over that last job of yours."

"But it's worth a great deal more than that," Mather said. "You might give me ten."

"Well, take it back then," the man said, pushing it across the counter.

"Thank you, I will take it myself," Mr. Porson said quietly, as he advanced and stretched out his hand.

Mather turned round with a sudden cry, and then stood the picture of silent terror.

"As for you," the master said indignantly to the dealer, "you scoundrel, if you had your deserts I would hand you over to the constable, who is outside the door, as a receiver of stolen goods, and for inciting this boy to theft. I heard you offer him a sum of money for it which shows that you knew it was stolen; but your time will come, sir, and you will hang over the gate of York prison as many a poor wretch far less guilty than yourself has done;" for in those days death was the punishment of receivers of stolen goods, as well as of these convicted of highway robbery and burglary.

"Have mercy, sir, oh, spare me!" Mather exclaimed, falling on his knees. "Don't give me in charge."

"I am not going to do so," the master said. "Get up and come with me."

Not a word was spoken on the way back to the school.

Mr. Porson then took Mather into his study, where they remained for half an hour. What passed between them was never known. In the morning the boys who slept in the room with Mather were surprised to find that his bed was empty and the window open. He had gone to bed at half past eight as usual, and saying he was sleepy had threatened to punch the head of any boy who spoke, so that all had gone off to sleep in a very short time. A stout ivy grew against the wall, and some fallen leaves on the ground showed them that he had climbed down with the assistance of its stem. But why he should have gone, and what on earth possessed him to run away, none could imagine. The news ran rapidly through the other bedrooms, and brimful of excitement all went down when the bell rang for prayers before breakfast. The list of names was called out by the master as usual, and the excitement grew breathless as the roll of the third class was called; but to the astonishment of all, Mather's name was omitted. When the list was concluded Mr. Porson said:

"Mather has left; I grieve to say that I have discovered that it was he who stole the book and pencil case. He has confessed the whole to me, and he is, I trust, sincerely penitent. He slept last night on the sofa in my study, and has gone off this morning by the coach. I have written to his parents stating the whole circumstances under which he was driven to commit the theft, and that although I could not permit him to remain here, I trusted and believed that his repentance was sincere, and that it would be a lesson to him through life, and I urged them to give him a further trial, and not to drive him to desperation by severity.

"There is a lesson which you may all learn from this. Mather committed these crimes because he had borrowed money which he could not repay. Most foolishly and mistakenly the woman who supplies you with cakes had lent him money and when he could not repay it according to his promise to her, threatened to report the case to me, and it was to prevent the matter coming to my ears that he took these things. Let this be a warning to you, boys, through life. Never borrow money, never spend more than your means afford. An extravagance may seem to you but a small fault, but you see crime and disgrace may follow upon it. Think this well over, and be lenient in your hearts to your late schoolfellow. He was tempted, you see, and none of us can tell what he may do when temptation comes, unless we have God's help to enable us to withstand it, and to do what is right. Now let us fall to at our breakfast."

It was a strangely silent meal. Scarce a word was spoken, even in a whisper. It came as a shock to everybody there, that after all the dictionary should have been taken by one of their number, and that the master's kindness on that occasion should have been requited by another robbery seemed a disgrace to the whole school. That Mather, too, always loud, noisy, and overbearing, should have been the thief was surprising indeed. Had it been some quiet little boy, the sort of boy others are given to regard as a sneak, there would have been less surprise, but that Mather should do such a thing was astounding. These were probably the first reflections which occurred to every boy as he sat down to breakfast.

The next impression was how good Mr. Porson had been about it. He might have given Mother in charge, and had him punished by law. He might have given him a terrific flogging and a public expulsion before all the school. Instead of that he had sent him quietly away, and seemed sorry for rather than angry with him. By the time the meal was finished there was probably not a boy but had taken an inward resolution that there was nothing he would not do for his master, and although such resolutions are generally but transient, Mr. Porson found that the good effect of his treatment of Mather was considerable and permanent. Lessons were more carefully learned, obedience was not perhaps more prompt, but it was more willing, and the boys lost no opportunity of showing how anxious they were to please in every respect.

Ned and his brother were not present when Mr. Porson explained the cause of Mather's absence to the others, but they were surrounded by their schoolfellows, all eager to tell the news upon their arrival in the playground a few minutes before the school began.

Before breaking up in June, Porson's played their first cricket match with a strong village team, and beat them handsomely, although, as the boys said, it was to their master's bowling that their success was due. Still the eleven all batted fairly, and made so long a score that they won in one innings; and Mr. Porson promised them that before the season ended they should have a whole holiday, and play the Marsden eleven.

Ned enjoyed his holiday rambles, taking several long walks across the moors accompanied by Bill Swinton, who had now perfectly recovered. The discontent among the croppers, and indeed among the workers in the mills generally through the country was as great as ever; but the season was a good one; bread had fallen somewhat in price, and the pinch was a little less severe than it had been. The majority of the masters had been intimidated by the action of their hands from introducing the new machinery, and so far the relations between master and men, in that part of Yorkshire at any rate, remained unchanged. But although Ned enjoyed his rambles he was glad when the holidays were over. He had no friends of his own age in Marsden; his brother was too young to accompany him in his long walks, and Bill obtained a berth in one of the mills shortly after the holidays began, and was no longer available. Therefore Ned looked forward to meeting his schoolfellows again, to the fun of the cricket field and playground, and even to lessons, for these were no longer terrible.

The school reopened with largely increased numbers. The reports which the boys had taken home of the changed conditions of things and of their master's kindness excited among all their friends an intense longing to go to a school where the state of things was so different to that which prevailed elsewhere; and the parents were equally satisfied with the results of the new master's teaching. Such as took the trouble to ask their boys questions found that they had acquired a real grasp of the subjects, and that they were able to answer clearly and intelligently. The consequence was, the house was filled with its full complement of fifty boarders, and indeed Mr. Porson was obliged to refuse several applications for want of room. As he had not the same objection as his predecessor to receive home boarders, the numbers were swelled by eighteen boys whose parents resided in Marsden.

To meet the increased demands upon his teaching powers Mr. Porson engaged two ushers, both of them young men who had just left Durham. They were both pleasant and gentlemanly young fellows; and as Mr. Porson insisted that his own mode of teaching should be adopted, the change did not alter the pleasant state of things which had prevailed during the past half year. Both the ushers were fond of cricket, and one turned out to be at least equal to Mr. Porson as a bowler. Therefore the boys looked forward to their match with Marsden with some confidence.

Captain Sankey saw with great pleasure the steady improvement which was taking place in Ned's temper. It was not to be expected that the boy would at once overcome a fault of such long standing, but the outbursts were far less frequent, and it was evident that he was putting a steady check upon himself; so that his father looked forward to the time when he would entirely overcome the evil consequences engendered by his unchecked and undisciplined childhood.



Chapter VII: A Terrible Shock


Ned had been looking forward with great anticipations to Michaelmas day, upon which the great match was to take place; for he was one of the eleven, being the youngest of the boys included in it. An event, however, happened which deprived him of his share in the match, and caused the day to pass almost unnoticed. On the 20th of September the servant came in to Mr. Porson during morning school to say that he was wanted. A minute or two later she again re-entered and said that Ned and his brother were to go to the master's study. Much surprised at this summons they followed her. Mr. Porson was looking exceedingly grave.

"My dear boys," he said, "I have bad news for you. Very bad news. You must bear it bravely, looking for support and consolation to Him who alone can give it. Dr. Green's boy has just been here. He was sent down by his master to say that there has been a serious accident in the town."

The commencement of the master's speech and the graveness of his tone sent a serious thrill through the hearts of the boys. Mr. Porson would never have spoken thus had not the news been serious indeed.

When he paused Ned gave a little gasp and exclaimed, "My father!"

"Yes, Ned, I am grieved to say that it is your brave father who has suffered from the accident. It seems that as he was walking down the High Street one of Ramsay's heavy wagons came along. A little girl ran across the street ahead, but stumbled and fell close to the horses. Your father, forgetful of the fact of his wooden leg, rushed over to lift her; but the suddenness of the movement, he being a heavy man, snapped the wooden leg in sunder, and he fell headlong in the street. He was within reach of the child, and he caught her by the clothes and jerked her aside; but before he could, in his crippled condition, regain his feet, the wheel was upon him, and he has suffered very serious injuries."

"He is not dead, sir?" Ned gasped, while his brother began to cry piteously.

"No, Ned, he is not dead," Mr. Porson said; "but I fear, my dear boy, that it would be cruel kindness did I not tell you to prepare yourself for the worst. I fear from what I hear that he is fatally injured, and that there is but little hope. Get your hats, my boys, and I will walk home with you at once."

There were but few words exchanged during that dismal walk, and these were addressed by Mr. Porson to Ned.

"Try to calm yourself, my boy," he said, putting his hand on his shoulder, which was shaking with the boy's efforts to keep down his convulsive sobs; "try and nerve yourselves for the sake of your father himself, of your mother, and the little ones. The greatest kindness you can show to your father new is by being calm and composed."

"I will try, sir," Ned said as steadily as he could; "but you don't know how I loved him!"

"I can guess it, my boy; for I, too, lost my father when I was just your age. God's ways are not our ways, Ned; and be sure, although you may not see it now, that he acts for the best."

A little crowd stood gathered near the door. They were talking in low tones of the gallant way in which the crippled officer had sacrificed himself to save the child. They made way silently for the boys to pass. Ned opened the door and entered.

Abijah was in the hall. She was tearless, but her face was white and set.

"My poor boy," she said to Ned, "he is in the parlor; he has just been asking for you. I am glad you have come. Your mother is in hysterics in her bedroom, and is going on like a mad woman. You must be calm, dear, for your father's sake."

Ned gave a little nod, and, taking his brother's hand, opened the door of the parlor.

Captain Sankey was lying on the hearth rug, his head propped up with pillows from the sofa; his face was an ashen pallor, and his eyes were closed. The doctor was kneeling beside him, pouring some liquid from a glass between his lips. A strong friendship had sprung up between the two men, and tears were running fast down the doctor's cheeks. He motioned to the boys to approach. They fell on their knees by their father's side.

"Sankey," the doctor said in a steady voice, "here are your boys, Ned and Charlie."

The eyes of the dying man opened slowly, and he looked at his sons, and Ned felt a slight pressure of the hand which he had taken in his own.

"God bless you, my boys!" he said, in a faint whisper. "Ned, be kind to your mother; care for her always. She will need all your kindness."

"I will, father," the boy said steadily. "I will take care of mother, I promise you."

A faint smile passed over the pale face; then the eyes closed again, and there was silence for five minutes, broken only by the sobbing of the younger boy. The doctor, who had his fingers on the pulse of Captain Sankey, leaned closely over him; then he laid his arm gently down, and putting his hand on Ned's shoulder said softly:

"Come, my boy, your father is out of pain now."

Ned gave one loud and bitter cry, and threw himself down by the side of the corpse, and gave way to his pent up emotion.

The doctor led the younger boy from the room, and gave him into the care of Abijah. Then he returned and stood for awhile watching Ned's terrible outburst of grief; then he poured some wine into a glass.

"My boy," he said tenderly, "you must not give way like this or you will make yourself ill. Drink this, Ned, and then go up and lie down on your bed until you feel better. Remember you must be strong for the sake of the others. You know you will have to bear your mother's burdens as well as your own."

He helped Ned to his feet and held the glass to his lips, for the boy's hand was shaking so that he could not have held it. After drinking it Ned stumbled upstairs and threw himself on the bed, and there cried silently for a long time; but the first passion of grief had passed, and he now struggled with his tears, and in an hour rose, bathed his flushed and swollen face, and went downstairs.

"Abijah," he said, in a voice which he struggled in vain to steady, "what is there for me to do? How is my mother?"

"She has just cried herself off to sleep, Master Ned, and a mercy it is for her, poor lady, for she has been going on dreadful ever since he was brought in here; but if you go in to Master Charlie and Miss Lucy and try and comfort them it would be a blessing. I have not been able to leave your mother till now, and the poor little things are broken hearted. I feel dazed myself, sir. Think of the captain, who went out so strong and well this morning, speaking so kind and bright just as usual, lying there!" and here Abijah broke down and for the first time since Captain Sankey was carried into the house tears came to her relief, and throwing her arms round Ned's neck she wept passionately.

Ned's own tears flowed too fast for him to speak for some time. At last he said quietly, "Don't cry so, Abijah. It is the death of all others that was fitted for him, he, so brave and unselfish, to die giving his life to save a child. You told me to be brave; it is you who must be brave, for you know that you must be our chief dependence now."

"I know, Master Ned; I know, sir," the woman said, choking down her sobs, and wiping her eyes with her apron, "and I will do my best, never fear. I feel better now I have had a good cry. Somehow I wasn't able to cry before. Now, sir, do you go to the children and I will look after things."

A fortnight passed. Captain Sankey had been laid in his grave, after such a funeral as had never been seen in Marsden, the mills being closed for the day, and all the shutters up throughout the little town, the greater part of the population attending the funeral as a mark of respect to the man who, after fighting the battles of his country, had now given his life for that of a child. The great cricket match did not come off, it being agreed on all hands that it had better be postponed. Mr. Porson had called twice to see Ned, and had done much by his comforting words to enable him to bear up. He came again the day after the funeral.

"Ned," he said, "I think that you and Charlie had better come to school again on Monday. The sooner you fall into your regular groove the better. It would only do you both harm to mope about the house here; and although the laughter and noise of your schoolfellows will jar upon you for awhile, it is better to overcome the feeling at once; and I am sure that you will best carry out what would have been his wishes by setting to your work again instead of wasting your time in listless grieving."

"I think so too, sir," Ned said, "but it will be awfully hard at first, and so terrible to come home and have no one to question one on the day's work, and to take an interest in what we have been doing."

"Very hard, Ned; I thoroughly agree with you, but it has to be borne, and remember there is One who will take interest in your work. If I were you I should take your brother out for walks this week. Get up into the hills with him, and try and get the color back into his cheeks again. He is not so strong as you are, and the confinement is telling upon him -- the fresh air will do you good, too."

Ned promised to take his master's advice, and the next morning started after breakfast with Charlie. His mother had not yet risen, and indeed had not been downstairs since the day of the accident, protesting that she was altogether unequal to any exertion whatever. Ned had sat with her for many hours each day, but he had indeed found it hard work. Sometimes she wept, her tears being mingled with self reproaches that she had not been able to do more to brighten her husband's life. Sometimes she would break off and reproach the boy bitterly for what she called his want of feeling. At other times her thoughts seemed directed solely toward the fashion of her mourning garments, and after the funeral she drove Ned almost to madness by wanting to knew all the details of who was there and what was done, and was most indignant with him because he was able to tell her nothing, the whole scene having been as a mist to him, absorbed as he was in the thought of his father alone.

But Ned had never showed the least sign of impatience or hastiness, meeting tears, reproaches, and inquiries with the same stoical calmness and gentleness. Still it was with a sigh of relief that he took a long breath of fresh air as he left the house and started for a ramble on the moor with his brother. He would have avoided Varley, for he shrank even from the sympathy which Bill Swinton would give; but Bill would be away, so as it was the shortest way he took that road. As he passed Luke Marner's cottage the door opened and Mary came down to the gate. One of the little ones had seen Ned coming along the road and had run off to tell her. Little Jane Marner trotted along by Polly's side.

"Good morning, Polly!" Ned said, and walked on. He dreaded speech with any one. Polly saw his intention and hesitated; then she said:

"Good morning, Master Ned! One moment, please, sir."

Ned paused irresolutely.

"Please don't say anything," he began.

"No, sir, I am not a-going to -- at least -- " and then she hesitated, and lifted up the child, who was about four years old, a soft eyed, brown haired little maiden.

"It's little Jenny," she said; "you know sir, you know;" and she looked meaningly at the child as the tears stood in her eyes.

Ned understood at once.

"What!" he said; "was it her? I did not know; I had not heard."

"Yes, sir; she and all of us owe her life to him. Feyther wanted to come down to you, but I said better not yet awhile, you would understand."

"How did it happen?" Ned said, feeling that here at least his wound would be touched with no rough hand.

"She went down to the town with Jarge, who was going to fetch some things I wanted. He left her looking in at a shop window while he went inside. They were some time serving him as there were other people in the shop. Jenny got tired, as she says, of waiting, and seeing some pictures in a window on the other side of the street started to run across, and her foot slipped, and -- and -- "

"I know," Ned said. "I am glad you have told me, Polly. I am glad it was some one one knows something about. Don't say anything more now, I cannot bear it."

"I understand, sir," the girl said gently. "God bless you!"

Ned nodded. He could not trust himself to speak, and turning he passed on with Charlie through the village, while Mary Powlett, with the child still in her arms, stood looking sorrowfully after him as long as he was in sight.

"So thou'st seen the boy?" Luke said, when on his return from work Polly told him what had happened. "Thou told's him, oi hope, how we all felt about it, and how grateful we was?"

"I didn't say much, feyther, he could not bear it; just a word or two; if I had said more he would have broken out crying, and so should I."

"Thou hast cried enoo, lass, the last ten days. Thou hast done nowt but cry," Luke said kindly, "and oi felt sore inclined to join thee. Oi ha' had hard work to keep back the tears, old though oi be, and oi a cropper."

"You are just as soft hearted as I am, feyther, every bit, so don't pretend you are not;" and indeed upon the previous day Luke Marner had broken down even more completely than Mary. He had followed the funeral at a short distance, keeping with Mary aloof from the crowd; but when all was over, and the churchyard was left in quiet again, Luke had gone and stood by the still open grave of the man who had given his life for his child's, and had stood there with the tears streaming down his cheeks, and his strong frame so shaken by emotion that Polly had been forced to dry her own eyes and stifle her sobs, and to lead him quietly away.

"Strange, bain't it, lass; feyther and son seem mixed up with Varley. First the lad has a foight wi' Bill Swinton, and braakes the boy's leg; then t' feyther sends oop all sorts o' things to Bill, and his son comes up here and gets as friendly with Bill as if he were his brother, and gets to know you, and many another in the village. Then our Jane goes down into t' town and would ha' lost her life if captain he hadn't been passing by and saaved her. Then he gets killed. Just gived his life for hearn. Looks like a fate aboot it; may be it eel be our toorn next, and if ever that lad waants a man to stand beside him Luke Marner will be there. And there's Bill too -- oi believe that boy would lay down his life for him. He's very fond of our Janey -- fonder nor her own brothers. He ain't got no sister of his own, and he's took to t' child wonderful since he got ill. He thowt a soight o' Ned Sankey afore; I doan't know what he wouldn't do for him now."

"I don't suppose, feyther, as any of us will be able to do anything for him; but we may do, who knows?"

"Ay, who knows, lass? toimes is main bad, and oi doot there will be trouble, but oi doan't see as that can affect him no ways, being as he is a lad, and having nowt to do with the mills -- but oi do hoape as the time may come, lass, as we can show un as we knows we owes a loife to him."

On the Monday following Ned and Charlie returned to school, and found it less painful than Ned had expected. Mr. Porson had taken Ripon aside and had told that the kindest way to treat the boys would be to avoid all allusion to their loss or anything like a show of open sympathy, but to let them settle quietly into their places.

"Sankey will know you all feel for him, Ripon, he will need no telling of that."

Ripon passed the word round the school, and accordingly when the boys came into the playground, two or three minutes before the bell rang, Ned, to his great relief, found that with the exception of a warm silent wring of the hand from a few of those with whom he was most intimate, and a kindly nod from others, no allusion was made to his fortnight's absence or its cause.

For the next month he worked hard and made up the time he had lost, running straight home when he came out from school, and returning just in time to go in with the others; but gradually he fell into his former ways, and by the time the school broke up at Christmas was able to mix with the boys and take part in their games. At home he did his best to make things bright, but it was uphill work. Mrs. Sankey was fretful and complaining. Their income was reduced by the loss of Captain Sankey's half pay, and they had now only the interest of the fortune of four thousand pounds which Mrs. Sankey had brought to her husband on her marriage. This sum had been settled upon her, and was entirely under her own control. The income was but a small one, but it was sufficient for the family to live upon with care and prudence.

Captain Sankey had made many friends since the time when he first settled at Marsden, and all vied with each other in their kindness to his widow. Presents of game were constantly left for her; baskets of chickens, eggs, and fresh vegetables were sent down by Squire Simmonds and other county magnates, and their carriages often stopped at the door to make inquiries. Many people who had not hitherto called now did so, and all Marsden seemed anxious to testify its sympathy with the widow of the brave officer.

Ned was touched with these evidences of respect for his father's memory. Mrs. Sankey was pleased for herself, and she would of an evening inform Ned with much gratification of the visits she had received.

Ned was glad that anything should occur which could rouse his mother, and divert her from her own grievances; but the tone in which she spoke often jarred painfully upon him, and he wondered how his mother could find it in her heart to receive these people and to talk over his father's death.

But Mrs. Sankey liked it. She was conscious she looked well in her deep mourning, and that even the somber cap was not unbecoming with her golden hair peeping out beneath it. Tears were always at her command, and she had ever a few ready to drop upon her dainty embroidered handkerchief when the occasion commanded it; and her visitors, when they agreed among themselves, what a soft gentle woman that poor Mrs. Sankey was, but sadly delicate you know -- had no idea of the querulous complaining and fretfulness whose display was reserved for her own family only.

To this Ned was so accustomed that it passed ever his head almost unheeded; not so her constant allusions to his father. Wholly unconscious of the agony which it inflicted upon the boy, Mrs. Sankey was incessantly quoting his opinions or utterances.

"Ned, I do wish you would not fidget with your feet. You know your dear father often told you of it;" or, "As your dear father used to say, Ned;" until the boy in despair would throw down his book and rush out of the room to calm himself by a run in the frosty night air; while Mrs. Sankey would murmur to herself, "That boy's temper gets worse and worse, and with my poor nerves how am I to control him?"

Mr. Porson was very kind to him in those days. During that summer holiday he had very frequently spent the evening at Captain Sankey's, and had formed a pretty correct idea of the character of Ned's mother. Thus when he saw that Ned, when he entered the school after breakfast or dinner, had an anxious hunted look, and was clearly in a state of high tension, he guessed he was having a bad time of it at home.

Charlie had fast got over the shock of his father's death; children quickly recover from a blow, and, though delicate, Charlie was of a bright and gentle disposition, ready to be pleased at all times, and not easily upset.

One morning when Ned came in from school looking pale and white, gave random answers to questions, and even, to the astonishment of the class, answered Mr. Porson himself snappishly, the master, when school was over and the boys were leaving their places, said:

"Sankey, I want to have a few words with you in the study."

Ned followed his master with an air of indifference. He supposed that he was going to be lectured for the way he had spoken, but as he said to himself, "What did it matter! what did anything matter!"

Mr. Porson did not sit down on entering the room, but when Ned had closed the door after him took a step forward and laid his hand on his shoulder.

"My boy," he said, "what is it that is wrong with you? I fear that you have trouble at home."

Ned stood silent, but the tears welled up into his eyes.

"It can't be helped, sir," he said in a choking voice, and then with an attempt at gayety: "it will be all the same fifty years hence, I suppose."

"That is a poor consolation, Ned," Mr. Porson rejoined. "Fifty years is a long time to look forward to. Can't we do anything before that?"

Ned was silent.

"I do not want you to tell me, Ned, anything that happens at home -- God forbid that I should pry into matters so sacred as relations between a boy and a parent! -- but I can see, my boy, that something is wrong. You are not yourself. At first when you came back I thought all was well with you; you were, as was natural, sad and depressed, but I should not wish it otherwise. But of late a change has come ever you; you are nervous and excited; you have gone down in your class, not, I can see, because you have neglected your work, but because you cannot bring your mind to bear upon it. Now all this must have a cause. Perhaps a little advice on my part might help you. We shall break up in a week, Ned, and I shall be going away for a time. I should like to think before I went that things were going on better with you."

"I don't want to say anything against my mother," Ned said in a low voice. "She means kindly, sir; but, oh! it is so hard to bear. She is always talking about father, not as you would talk, sir, but just as if he were alive and might come in at any moment, and it seems sometimes as if it would drive me out of my mind."

"No doubt it is trying, my boy," Mr. Porson said; "but you see natures differ, and we must all bear with each other and make allowances. Your mother's nature, as far as I have seen of her, is not a deep one. She was very fond of your father, and she is fond of you; but you know, just as still waters run deep, shallow waters are full of ripples, and eddies, and currents. She has no idea that what seems natural and right to her should jar upon you. You upon your part can scarcely make sufficient allowance for her different treatment of a subject which is to you sacred. I know how you miss your father, but your mother must miss him still more. No man ever more lovingly and patiently tended a woman than he did her so far as lay in his power. She had not a wish ungratified. You have in your work an employment which occupies your thoughts and prevents them from turning constantly to one subject; she has nothing whatever to take her thoughts from the past. It is better for her to speak of him often than to brood over him in silence. Your tribute to your father's memory is deep and silent sorrow, hers is frequent allusions. Doubtless her way jars upon you; but, Ned, you are younger than she, and it is easier for you to change. Why not try and accept her method as being a part of her, and try, instead of wincing every time that she touches the sore, to accustom yourself to it. It may be hard at first, but it will be far easier in the end."

Ned stood silent for a minute or two; then he said:

"I will try, sir. My father's last words to me were to be kind to mother, and I have tried hard, and I will go on trying."

"That is right, my boy; and ask God to help you. We all have our trials in this life, and this at present is yours; pray God to give you strength to bear it."



Chapter VIII: Ned Is Sorely Tried


Among the many who called upon Mrs. Sankey after the death of her husband was Mr. Mulready, the owner of a mill near Marsden. He was one of the leading men in the place, although his mill was by no means a large one. He took rank in the eyes of the little town with men in a much larger way of business by means of a pushing manner and a fluent tongue. He had come to be considered an authority upon most subjects. He paid much attention to his dress, and drove the fastest horse and the best got up gig in that part of the country; but it was Mr. Mulready's manner which above all had raised him to his present position in the esteem of the good people of Marsden. He had the knack of adapting himself to the vein of those he addressed.

With the farmers who came into market he was bluff and cordial; with the people in general he was genial and good tempered. At meetings at which the county gentry were present he was quiet, businesslike, and a trifle deferential, showing that he recognized the difference between his position and theirs.

With ladies he was gay when they were gay, sympathetic when sympathy was expected. With them he was even more popular than with the men, for the latter, although they admired and somewhat envied his varied acquirements, were apt in the intimacy of private conversation to speak of him as a humbug.

There was one exception, however, to his general popularity. There was no mill owner in the neighborhood more heartily detested by his workpeople; but as these did not mingle with the genteel classes of Marsden their opinion of Mr. Mulready went for nothing. The mill owner was a man of forty-three or forty-four, although when dressed in his tightly fitting brown coat with its short waist, its brass buttons, and high collar, and with a low hat with narrow brim worn well forward and coming down almost to the bridge of his nose, he looked seven or eight years younger.

His hair was light, his trimly cut muttonchop whiskers were sandy, he had a bright, fresh complexion, a large mouth, and good teeth, which he always showed when he smiled, and in public he was always smiling; his eyes were light in color, very close together, and had a somewhat peculiar appearance. Indeed there were men who hinted that he had a slight cast, but these were, no doubt, envious of his popularity.

Mrs. Sankey had been flattered by his visit and manner; indeed it could hardly have been otherwise, for he had expressed a sympathy and deference which were very soothing to her.

"It is indeed kind of you to receive me," he had said. "I know, of course, that it is not usual for a man who has the misfortune to be unmarried to make a call upon a lady, but I could not help myself. William Mulready is not a man to allow his feelings to be sacrificed to the cold etiquette of the world. I had not the pleasure of the acquaintance of that most brave and distinguished officer your late husband. I had hoped that some day circumstances might throw me in contact with him, but it was not for me, a humble manufacturer, to force my acquaintance upon one socially my superior; but, my dear madam, when I heard of that terrible accident, of that noble self devotion, I said to myself, 'William Mulready, when a proper and decent time elapses you must call upon the relict of your late noble and distinguished townsman, and assure her of your sympathy and admiration, even if she spurns you from the door.'"

"You could not think I should do that, Mr. Mulready," Mrs. Sankey said. "It is most gratifying to me to receive this mark of sympathy in my present sad position;" and she sighed deeply.

"You are good indeed to say so," Mr. Mulready said in a tone of deep gratitude; "but I might have been sure that my motives at least would not be misunderstood by a high bred and delicate lady like yourself. I will not now trespass on your time, but hope that I may be permitted to call again. Should there be anything in which so humble an individual could be in the slightest degree useful to you pray command my services. I know the responsibility which you must feel at being left in charge of those two noble boys and your charming little daughter must be well nigh overwhelming, and if you would not think it presumption I would say that any poor advice or opinion which I, who call myself in some degree a man of the world, can give, will be always at your service."

"You are very good," Mrs. Sankey murmured. "It is indeed a responsibility. My younger boy and girl are all that I could wish, but the elder is already almost beyond me;" and by the shake of her head she testified that her troubles on that score approached martyrdom.

"Never fear, my dear madam," Mr. Mulready said heartily. "Boys will be boys, and I doubt not that he will grow up everything that you could desire. I may have heard that he was a little passionate. There was a trifling affair between him and his schoolmaster, was there not? But these things mend themselves, and doubtless all will come well in time; and now I have the honor of wishing you good morning."

"Charming manners!" Mrs. Sankey said to herself when her visitor had left. "A little old fashioned, perhaps, but so kind and deferential. He seemed to understand my feelings exactly."

That evening when they were at tea Mrs. Sankey mentioned the agreeable visitor who had called in the afternoon.

"What! William Mulready!" Ned exclaimed; "Foxey, as his hands call him. I have heard Bill speak of him often. His men hate him. They say he is a regular tyrant. What impudence his coming here!"

"Ned, I am surprised at you," his mother said angrily. "I am sure Mr. Mulready is nothing of the sort. He is a most kind and considerate gentleman, and I will not allow you to repeat these things you hear from the low companions whom your father permitted you to associate with."

"Bill is not a low companion, mother," Ned exclaimed passionately. "A better fellow never stood, and Foxey is not kind and considerate. He is a brutal tyrant, and I am sure my father, if you will quote his opinion, would not have had such a man inside his doors."

"Leave the room, Ned, this moment," his mother exclaimed, more angry than he had ever seen her before. "I am ashamed of you speaking to me in that way. You would not have dared to do it had your father been alive."

Ned dashed down his scarcely begun bread and butter and flung himself out of the room, and then out of the house, and it was some hours before he returned. Then he went straight up to his mother's room.

"I beg your pardon, mother," he said quietly. "I am very sorry I spoke as I did. I ought not to have done so."

"Very well," Mrs. Sankey said coldly; "then don't do it again, Ned."

Without another word Ned went off to his books. He was grieved and sore at heart. He had during his walk fought a hard battle with himself, and had conquered. As his temper cooled down he had felt that he had broken his promise, that he had not been kind to his mother; felt, too, that her accusation was a true one -- he would not have dared to speak so to her had his father been alive.

"But it was so different then," he had said to himself as the tears chased each other down his cheeks. "Father understood me, and cared for me, and made allowances. It was worth while fighting against one's temper just to have him put his hand on my shoulder and say, 'Well done, my boy.' Now it is so different. I will go on trying for his sake; but I know it's no good. Do what I will, I can't please her. It's my fault, I dare say, but I do try my best. I do, indeed, father," he said, speaking out loud; "if you can hear me, I do, indeed, try to be kind to mother, but she won't let me. I do try to make allowances, that is, when I am not in a passion, and then I go and spoil it all, like a beast, just as I did tonight.

"Anyhow," he said to himself as he turned his face homeward again, "I will go and tell her I am sorry, and beg her pardon. I don't suppose she will be nice, but I can't help that. It's my duty anyhow, and I will try and not say anything against Foxey next time she speaks of him."

The latter part of his resolution Ned found it very hard to maintain, for Mr. Mulready became a not unfrequent visitor. He had always some excuse for calling, either to bring in a basket of fresh trout, some game, or hothouse fruit, for, as he said, he knew her appetite was delicate and needed tempting, or some book newly issued from the London press which he was sure she would appreciate.

After a short time Mrs. Sankey ceased to speak of these visits, perhaps because she saw how Ned objected to the introduction of Mr. Mulready's name, perhaps for some other reason, and a year passed without Ned's being seriously ruffled on the subject.

Ned was now nearly sixteen. He had worked hard, and was the head boy at Porson's. It had always been regarded as a fixed thing that he should go into the army. As the son of an officer who had lost his leg in the service it was thought that he would be able to obtain a commission without difficulty, and Squire Simmonds, who had been a kind friend since his father's death, had promised to ask the lord lieutenant of the county to interest himself in the matter, and had no doubt that the circumstances of Captain Sankey's death would be considered as an addition to the claim of his services in the army.

Captain Sankey had intended that Ned should have gone to a superior school to finish his education, but the diminished income of the family had put this out of the question, and the subject had never been mooted after his death. Ned, however, felt that he was making such good progress under Mr. Porson that he was well content to remain where he was.

His struggle with his temper had gone on steadily, and he hoped he had won a final victory over it. Mr. Porson had been unwearied in his kindnesses, and often took Ned for an hour in the evening in order to push him forward, and although he avoided talking about his home life the boy felt that he could, in case of need, pour out his heart to him; but, indeed, things had gone better at home. Mrs. Sankey was just as indisposed as ever to take any share whatever in the trouble of housekeeping, but as Abijah was perfectly capable of keeping the house in order without her instructions things went on smoothly and straightly in this respect.

In other matters home life was more pleasant than it had been. Mrs. Sankey was less given to querulous complaining, more inclined to see things in a cheerful light, and Ned especially noticed with satisfaction that the references to his father which had so tried him had become much less frequent of late.

One day in September, when his father had been dead just a year, one of the town boys, a lad of about Ned's age, said to him as they were walking home from school together:

"Well, Ned, I suppose I ought to congratulate you, although I don't know whether you will see it in that light."

"What do you mean?" Ned said. "I don't know that anything has happened on which I should be particularly congratulated, except on having made the top score against the town last week."

"Oh! I don't mean that," the boy said.. "I mean about Mulready."

"What do you mean?" Ned said, stopping short and turning very white.

"Why," the lad said laughing, "all the town says he is going to marry your mother."

Ned stood as if stupefied. Then he sprang upon his companion and seized him by the throat.

"It's a lie," he shouted, shaking him furiously. "It's a lie I say, Smithers, and you know it. I will kill you if you don't say it's a lie."

With a great effort Smithers extricated himself from Ned's grasp.

"Don't choke a fellow," he said. "It may be a lie if you say it is, but it is not my lie anyhow. People have been talking about it for some time. They say he's been down there nearly every day. Didn't you know it?"

"Know it?" Ned gasped. "I have not heard of his being in the house for months, but I will soon find out the truth."

And without another word he dashed off at full speed up the street. Panting and breathless he rushed into the house, and tore into the room where his mother was sitting trifling with a piece of fancy work.

"I do wish, Edward, you would not come into the room like a whirlwind. You know how any sudden noise jars upon my nerves. Why, what is the matter?" she broke off suddenly, his pale, set face catching her eye, little accustomed as she was to pay any attention to Ned's varying moods.

"Mother," he panted out, "people are saying an awful thing about you, a wicked, abominable thing. I know, of course, it is not true, but I want just to hear you say so, so that I can go out and tell people they lie. How dare they say such things!"

"Why, what do you mean, Edward?" Mrs. Sankey said, almost frightened at the boy's vehemence.

"Why, they say that you are going to marry that horrible man Mulready. It is monstrous, isn't it? I think they ought to be prosecuted and punished for such a wicked thing, and father only a year in his grave."

Mrs. Sankey was frightened at Ned's passion. Ever since the matter had first taken shape in her mind she had felt a certain uneasiness as to what Ned would say of it, and had, since it was decided, been putting off from day to day the telling of the news to him. She had, in his absence, told herself over and over again that it was no business of his, and that a boy had no right to as much as question the actions of his mother; but somehow when he was present she had always shrank from telling him. She now took refuge in her usual defense -- tears.

"It is shameful," she said, sobbing, as she held her handkerchief to her eyes, "that a boy should speak in this way to his mother; it is downright wicked."

"But I am not speaking to you, mother; I am speaking of other people -- the people who have invented this horrible lie -- for it is a lie, mother, isn't it? It is not possible it can be true?"

"It is true," Mrs. Sankey said, gaining courage from her anger; "it is quite true. And you are a wicked and abominable boy to talk in that way to me. Why shouldn't I marry again? Other people marry again, and why shouldn't I? I am sure your poor father would never have wished me to waste my life by remaining single, with nothing to do but to look after you children. And it is shameful of you to speak in that way of Mr. Mulready."

Ned stopped to hear no more. At her first words he had given a low, gasping cry, as one who has received a terrible wound. The blood flew to his head, the room swam round, and he seemed to feel the veins in his temples swell almost to bursting. The subsequent words of his mother fell unheeded on his ears, and turning round he went slowly to the door, groping his way as one half asleep or stupefied by a blow.

Mechanically he opened the door and went out into the street; his cap was still on his head, but he neither thought of it one way or the other.

Almost without knowing it he turned from the town and walked toward the hills. Had any one met him by the way they would assuredly have thought that the boy had been drinking, so strangely and unevenly did he walk. His face was flushed almost purple, his eyes were bloodshot; he swayed to and fro as he walked, sometimes pausing altogether, sometimes hurrying along for a few steps. Passing a field where the gate stood open he turned into it, kept on his way for some twenty yards further, and then fell at full length on the grass. There he lay unconscious for some hours, and it was not until the evening dews were falling heavily that he sat up and looked round.

For some time he neither knew where he was nor what had brought him there. At last the remembrance of what had passed flashed across him, and with a cry of "Father! father!" he threw himself at full length again with his head on his arm; but this time tears came to his relief, and for a long time he cried with a bitterness of grief even greater than that which he had suffered at his father's death.

The stars were shining brightly when he rose to his feet, his clothes were soaked with dew, and he trembled with cold and weakness.

"What am I to do?" he said to himself; "what am I to do?"

He made his way back to the gate and leaned against it for some time; then, having at last made up his mind, he turned his back on the town and walked toward Varley, moving more slowly and wearily than if he was at the end of a long and fatiguing day's walk. Slowly he climbed the hill and made his way through the village till he reached the Swintons' cottage. He tapped at the door with his hand, and lifting the latch he opened the door a few inches.

"Bill, are you in?"

There was an exclamation of surprise.

"Why, surely, it's Maister Ned!" and Bill came to the door.

"Come out, Bill, I want to speak to you."

Much surprised at the low and subdued tone in which Ned spoke, Bill snatched down his cap from the peg by the door and joined him outside.

"What be't, Maister Ned? what be t' matter with thee? Has owt gone wrong?"

Ned walked on without speaking. In his yearning for sympathy, in his intense desire to impart the miserable news to some one who would feel for him, he had come to his friend Bill. He had thought first of going to Mr. Porson. But though his master would sympathize with him he would not be able to feel as he did; he would no doubt be shocked at hearing that his mother was so soon going to marry again, but he would not be able to understand the special dislike to Mr. Mulready, still less likely to encourage his passionate resentment. Bill would, he knew, do both, for it was from him he had learned how hated the mill owner was among his people.

But at present he could not speak. He gave a short wave of his hand to show that he heard, but could not answer yet, and with his head bent down made his way out through the end of the village on to the moor -- Bill following him, wondering and sympathetic, unable to conjecture what had happened.

Presently, when they had left the houses far behind them, Ned stopped.

"What be't, Maister Ned?" Bill again asked, laying his strong hand upon Ned's shoulder; "tell oi what it be. Hast got in another row with t' maister? If there be owt as oi can do, thou knowest well as Bill Swinton be with thee heart and soul."

"I know, Bill -- I know," Ned said in a broken voice, "but you can do nothing; I can do nothing; no one can. But it's dreadful to think of. It's worse than if I had killed twenty masters. Only think -- only think, Bill, my mother's going to marry Mulready!"

"Thou doesn't say so, lad! What! thy mother marry Foxey! Oi never heer'd o' such a thing. Well, that be bad news, surely! Well, well, only to think, now! Poor lad! Well, that beats all!"

The calamity appeared so great to Bill that for some time no idea occurred to him which could, under the circumstances, be considered as consolatory. But Ned felt the sympathy conveyed in the strong grasp of his shoulder, and in the muttered "Well, well, now!" to which Bill gave vent at intervals.

"What bee'st going to do vor to stop it?" he asked at last.

"What can I do, Bill? She won't listen to me -- she never does. Anything I say always makes her go the other way. She wouldn't believe anything I said against him. It would only make her stick to him all the more.

"Dost think," Bill suggested after another long pause, "that if we got up a sort of depitation -- Luke Marner and four or five other steady chaps as knows him; yes, and Polly Powlett, she could do the talking -- to go to her and tell her what a thundering dad un he is -- dost think it would do any good?"

Even in his bitter grief Ned could hardly help smiling at the thought of such a deputation waiting upon his mother.

"No, it wouldn't do, Bill."

Bill was silent again for some time.

"Dost want un killed, Maister Ned?" he said in a low voice at last; "'cause if ye do oi would do it for ye. Oi would lay down my life for ye willing, as thou knowst; and hanging ain't much, arter all. They say 'tis soon over. Anyhow oi would chance it, and perhaps they wouldn't find me out."

Ned grasped his friend's hand.

"I could kill him myself!" he exclaimed passionately. "I have been thinking of it; but what would be the good? I know what my mother is -- when once she has made up her mind there's no turning her; and if this fellow were out of the way, likely enough she would take up with another in no time."

"But it couldn't been as bad as if wur Foxey," Bill urged, "he be the very worsest lot about Marsden."

"I would do it," Ned said passionately; "I would do it over and over again, but for the disgrace it would bring on Charlie and Lucy."

"But there would be no disgrace if oi was to do it, Maister Ned."

"Yes, there would, Bill -- a worse disgrace than if I did it myself. It would be a nice thing to let you get hanged for my affairs; but let him look out -- let him try to ill treat Charlie and Lucy, and he will see if I don't get even with him. I am not so much afraid of that -- it's the shame of the thing. Only to think that all Marsden should know my mother is going to be married again within a year of my father's death, and that after being his wife she was going to take such a man as this! It's awful, downright awful, Bill!"

"Then what art thou going to do, Maister Ned -- run away and 'list for a soldier, or go to sea?"

"I wish I could," Ned exclaimed. "I would turn my back on Marsden and never come back again, were it not for the little ones. Besides," he added after a pause, "father's last words were, 'Be kind to mother;' and she will want it more than he ever dreamed of."

"She will that," Bill agreed; "leastways unless oi be mistaken. And what be'st going to do now, lad? Be'st agoing whoam?"

"No, I won't go home tonight," Ned replied. "I must think it over quietly, and it would be worse to bear there than anywhere else. No, I shall just walk about."

"Thou canst not walk abowt all night, Maister Ned," Bill said positively; "it bain't to be thowt of. If thou don't mind thou canst have moi bed and oi can sleep on t' floor."

"No, I couldn't do that," Ned said, "though I do feel awfully tired and done up; but your brothers would be asking me questions and wondering why I didn't go home. I could not stand that."

"No, Maister Ned, oi can see that wouldn't do; but if we walk about for an hour or two, or -- no, I know of a better plan. We can get in at t' window of the school; it bain't never fastened, and bain't been for years, seeing as thar bain't been neither school nor schoolers since auld Mother Brown died. Oi will make a shift to light a fire there. There be shutters, so no one will see the light. Then oi will bring ee up some blankets from our house, and if there bain't enough Polly will lend me some when oi tell her who they are for. She bain't a one to blab. What dost thou say?"

Ned, who felt utterly worn out, assented gladly to the proposal, and an entrance was easily effected into the desolate cottage formerly used as a day school. Bill went off at once and soon returned with a load of firewood; the shutters were then carefully closed, and a fire quickly blazed brightly on the hearth. Bill then went away again, and in a quarter of an hour returned with Mary Powlett. He carried a bundle of rugs and blankets, while she had a kettle in one hand and a large basket in the other.

"Good evening! Master Sankey," she said as she entered. "Bill has told me all about it, and I am sorry indeed for you and for your mother. It is worse for her, poor lady, than for you. You will soon be old enough to go out into the world if you don't like things at home; but she will have to bear what trouble comes to her. And now I thought you would like a cup of tea, so I have brought the kettle and things up. I haven't had tea yet, and they don't have tea at Bill's; but I like it, though feyther grumbles sometimes, and says it's too expensive for the likes of us in sich times as these; but he knows I would rather go without meat than without tea, so he lets me have it. Bill comes in for a cup sometimes, for he likes it better than beer, and it's a deal better for him to be sitting taking a cup of tea with me than getting into the way of going down to the 'Spotted Dog,' and drinking beer there. So we will all have a cup together. No one will disturb us. Feyther is down at the 'Brown Cow,' and when I told the children I had to go out on special business they all promised to be good, and Jarge said he would see them all safely into bed. I told him I should be back in an hour."

While Polly was speaking she was bustling about the room, putting things straight; with a wisp of heather she swept up the dust which had accumulated on the floor, in a semicircle in front of the fire, and laid down the rugs and blankets to form seats. Three cups and saucers, a little jag of milk, a teapot, and basin of sugar were placed in the center, and a pile of slices of bread and butter beside them, while from a paper bag she produced a cake which she had bought at the village shop on her way up.

Ned watched her preparations listlessly.

"You are very good, Polly," he said, "and I shall be very glad of the cup of tea, but I cannot eat anything."

"Never mind," she said cheerfully. "Bill and I can do the eating, and perhaps after you have had a cup of tea you will be able to, for Bill tells me you have had nothing to eat since breakfast."

Ned felt cheered by the warm blaze of the fire and by the cheerful sound of the kettle, and after taking a cup of tea found that his appetite was coming, and was soon able to eat his share. Mary Powlett kept up a cheerful talk while the meal was going on, and no allusion was made to the circumstances which had brought Ned there. After it was done she sat and chatted for an hour. Then she said:

"I must be off now, and I think, Bill, you'd best be going soon too, and let Maister Ned have a good night of it. I will make him up his bed on the rugs; and I will warrant, after all the trouble he has gone through, he will sleep like a top."



Chapter IX: A Painful Time


When Ned was left alone he rolled himself up in the blankets, placed a pillow which Polly had brought him under his head, and lay and looked at the fire; but it was not until the flames had died down, and the last red glow had faded into blackness that he fell off to sleep.

His thoughts were bitter in the extreme. He pictured to himself the change which would take place in his home life with Mulready the manufacturer, the tyrant of the workmen, ruling over it. For himself he doubted not that he would be able to hold his own.

"He had better not try on his games with me," he muttered savagely. "Though I am only sixteen he won't find it easy to bully me; but of course Charlie and Lucy can't defend themselves. However, I will take care of them. Just let him be unkind to them, and see what comes of it! As to mother, she must take what she gets, at least she deserves to. Only to think of it! only to think of it! Oh, how bitterly she will come to repent! How could she do it!

"And with father only dead a year! But I must stand by her, too. I promised father to be kind to her, though he could never have guessed how she would need it. He meant that I would only put up, without losing my temper, with her way of always pretending to be ill, and never doing anything but lie on the sofa and read poetry. Still, of course, it meant I was to be kind anyhow, whatever happened, and I will try to be so, though it is hard when she has brought such trouble upon us all.

"As for Mulready I should like to burn his mill down, or to break his neck. I hate him: it's bad enough to be a tyrant; but to be a tyrant and a hypocrite, too, is horrible. Well, at any rate he shan't lord it over me;" and so at last Ned dropped off to sleep.

He was still soundly asleep when Bill Swinton came in to wake him. It was half past six, a dull October morning, with a dreary drizzling rain. Bill brought with him a mug of hot tea and some thick slices of bread and butter. Ned got up and shook himself.

"What o'clock is it, Bill?"

"Half past six -- the chaps went off to t' mill an hour gone; oi've kept some tea hot for ee."

"Thank you, Bill, my head aches, and so do all my bones, and I feel as if I hadn't been asleep all night, although, indeed, I must have slept quite as long as usual. Can't I have a wash?"

"Yes," Bill said, "thou canst come to our place; but thou had best take thy breakfast whilst it be hot. It will waken thee up like."

Ned drank the tea and ate a slice of bread and butter, and felt refreshed thereat. Then he ran with Bill to his cottage and had a wash, and then started for the town. It was eight o'clock when he reached home. Abijah was at the door, looking down the road as he came up.

"Oh! Master Ned, how can you go on so? Not a bit of sleep have I had this blessed night, and the mistress in strong hystrikes all the evening. Where have you been?"

Ned gave a grunt at the news of his mother's hysterics -- a grunt which clearly expressed "served her right," but he only answered the last part of the question.

"I have been up at Varley, and slept at the schoolhouse. Bill Swinn and Polly Powlett made me up a bed and got me tea and breakfast. I am right enough."

"But you shouldn't have gone away, Master Ned, in that style, leaving us to wait and worry ourselves out of our senses."

"Do you know what she told me, Abijah? Wasn't it enough to make any fellow mad?"

"Ay, ay," the nurse said. "I know. I have seen it coming months ago; but it wasn't no good for me to speak. Ay, lad, it's a sore trouble for you, surely a sore trouble for you, and for us all; but it ain't no manner of use for you to set yourself agin it. Least said sooner mended, Master Ned; in a case like this it ain't no good your setting yourself up agin the missis. She ain't strong in some things, but she's strong enough in her will, and you ought to know by this time that what she sets her mind on she gets. It were so allus in the captain's time, and if he couldn't change her, poor patient lamb -- for if ever there were a saint on arth he was that -- you may be sure that you can't. So try and take it quietly, dearie. It be main hard for ye, and it ain't for me to say as it isn't; but for the sake of peace and quiet, and for the sake of the little ones, Master Ned, it's better for you to take it quiet. If I thought as it would do any good for you to make a fuss I wouldn't be agin it: but it ain't, you know, and it will be worse for you all if you sets him agin you to begin with. Now go up and see your mother, dearie, afore you goes off to school. I have just taken her up her tea."

"I have got nothing to say to her," Ned growled.

"Yes, you have, Master Ned; you have got to tell her you hopes she will be happy. You can do that, you know, with a clear heart, for you do hope so. Fortunately she didn't see him yesterday; for when he called I told him she was too ill to see him, and a nice taking she was in when I told her he had been and gone; but I didn't mind that, you know, and it was better she shouldn't see him when she was so sore about the words you had said to her. It ain't no use making trouble aforehand, or setting him agin you. He knows, I reckon, as he won't be welcomed here by you. The way he has always come when you would be out showed that clear enough. But it ain't no use making matters worse. It's a pretty kettle of fish as it stands. Now, go up, dearie, like a good boy, and make things roight."

Ned lingered irresolute for a little time in the hall, and then his father's words, "Be kind to her," came strongly in his mind, and he slowly went upstairs and knocked at his mother's door.

"Oh! here you are again!" she said in querulous tones as he entered, "after being nearly the death of me with your wicked goings on! I don't know what you will come to, speaking to me as you did yesterday, and then running away and stopping out all night."

"It was wrong, mother," Ned said quietly, "and I have come to tell you I am sorry; but you see the news was very sudden, and I wasn't prepared for it. I did not know that he had been coming here, and the news took me quite by surprise. I suppose fellows never do like their mothers marrying again. It stands to reason they wouldn't; but, now I have thought it over, I am sorry I spoke as I did, and I do hope, mother, you will be happy with him."

Mrs. Sankey felt mollified. She had indeed all along dreaded Ned's hearing the news, and had felt certain it would produce a desperate outbreak on his part. Now that it was over she was relieved. The storm had been no worse than she expected, and now that Ned had so speedily come round, and was submissive, she felt a load off her mind.

"Very well, Ned," she said more graciously than usual, "I am glad that you have seen the wickedness of your conduct. I am sure that I am acting for the best, and that it will be a great advantage to you and your brother and sister having a man like Mr. Mulready to help you push your way in life. I am sure I am thinking of your interest as much as my own; and I have spoken to him over and over again about you, and he has promised dozens of times to do his best to be like a father to you all."

Ned winced perceptibly.

"All right, mother! I do hope you will be happy; but, please, don't let us talk about it again till -- till it comes off; and, please, don't let him come here in the evening. I will try and get accustomed to it in time; but you see it's rather hard at first, and you know I didn't expect it."

So saying Ned left the room, and collecting his books made his way off to school, leaving his mother highly satisfied with the interview.

His absence from afternoon school had, of course, been noticed, and Smithers had told his friends how Ned had flown at him on his speaking to him about the talk of his mother and Mulready. Of course before afternoon school broke up every boy knew that Ned Sankey had cut up rough about the report; and although the great majority of the boys did not know Mr. Mulready by name there was a general feeling of sympathy with Ned, The circumstances of his father's death had, of course, exalted him greatly in the eyes of his schoolfellows, and it was the unanimous opinion, that after having had a hero for his father, a fellow would naturally object to having a stepfather put over him.

Ned's absence was naturally associated with the news, and caused much comment and even excitement. His attack upon Mr. Hathorn had become a sort of historical incident in the school, and the younger boys looked up with a sort of respectful awe upon the boy who had defied a headmaster. There were all sorts of speculations rife among them as to what Ned had done, there being a general opinion that he had probably killed Mr. Mulready, and the debate turning principally upon the manner in which this act of righteous vengeance had been performed.

There was, then, a feeling almost of disappointment when Ned walked into the playground looking much as usual, except that his face was pale and his eyes looked heavy and dull. No one asked him any questions; for although Ned was a general favorite, it was generally understood that he was not the sort of fellow to be asked questions that might put him out. When they went in school, and the first class was called up, Ned, who was always at its head, took his place at the bottom of the class, saying quietly to the master:

"I have not prepared my lesson today, sir, and I have not done the exercises."

Mr. Porson made no remark; he saw at once by Ned's face that something was wrong with him. When several questions went round, which Ned could easily have answered without preparation, the master said:

"You had better go to your desk, Sankey; I see you are not well. I will speak to you after school is over."

Ned sat down and opened a book, but he did not turn a page until school was over; then he followed his master to the study.

"Well, my boy," he asked kindly, "what is it?"

"My mother is going to marry Mr. Mulready," Ned said shortly. The words seemed to come with difficulty from his lips.

"Ah! it is true, then. I heard the report some weeks ago, but hoped that it was not true. I am sorry for you, Ned. I know it must be a sore trial for you; it is always so when any one steps into the place of one we have loved and lost."

"I shouldn't care so much if it wasn't him," Ned said in a dull voice.

"But there's nothing against the man, is there?" Mr. Porson asked. "I own I do not like him myself; but I believe he stands well in the town."

"Only with those who don't know him," Ned replied; "his workpeople say he is the worst master and the biggest tyrant in the district."

"We must hope it's not so bad as that, Ned; still, I am sorry -- very sorry, at what you tell me; but, my boy, you must not take it to heart. You see you will be going out into the world before long. Your brother will be following you in a few years. It is surely better that your mother should marry again and have some one to take care of her."

"Nice care of her he is likely to take!" Ned laughed bitterly. "You might as well put a fox to take care of a goose."

"You are severe on both parties," Mr. Porson said with a slight smile; "but I can hardly blame you, my boy, for feeling somewhat bitter at first; but I hope that, for your own sake and your mother's, you will try and conquer this feeling and will make the best of the circumstances. It is worse than useless to kick against the pricks. Any show of hostility on your part will only cause unhappiness, perhaps between your mother' and him -- almost certainly between you and her. In this world, my boy, we have all our trials. Some are very heavy ones. This is yours. Happily, so far as you are concerned, you need only look forward to its lasting eighteen months or so. In that time you may hope to get your commission; and as the marriage can hardly take place for some little time to come, you will have but a year or so to bear it."

"I don't know, sir," Ned said gloomily; "everything seems upset now. I don't seem to know what I had best do."

"I am sure at present, Ned," Mr. Porson said kindly -- for he saw that the boy was just now in no mood for argument -- "the best is to try and think as little of it as possible. Make every allowance for your mother; as you know, my boy, I would not speak disrespectfully to you of her on any account; but she is not strong minded. She has always been accustomed to lean upon some one, and the need of some one to lean on is imperative with her. Had you been a few years older, and had you been staying at home, it is probable that you might have taken your place as her support and strength. As it is, it was almost inevitable that something of this sort would happen.

"But you know, Ned, where to look for strength and support. You have fought one hard battle, my boy, and have well nigh conquered; now you have another before you. Seek for strength, my boy, where you will assuredly find it, and remember that this discipline is doubtless sent you for your good, and that it will be a preparation for you for the struggle in after life. I don't want you to be a thoughtless, careless young officer, but a man earnest in doing his duty, and you cannot but see that these two trials must have a great effect in forming your character. Remember, Ned, that if the effect be not for good, it will certainly be for evil."

"I will try, sir," Ned said; "but I know it is easy to make good resolutions, and how it will be when he is in the house as master I can't trust myself even to think."

"Well, let us hope the best, Ned," Mr. Porson said kindly; "things may turn out better than you fear."

Then seeing that further talking would be useless now, he shook Ned's hand and let him go.

The next three or four months passed slowly and heavily. Ned went about his work again quietly and doggedly; but his high spirits seemed gone. His mother's engagement with Mr. Mulready had been openly announced, directly after he had first heard of it. Charlie had, to Ned's secret indignation, taken it quietly. He knew little of Mr. Mulready, who had, whenever he saw him, spoken kindly to him, and who now made him frequent presents of books and other things dear to schoolboys. Little Lucy's liking he had, however, failed to gain, although in his frequent visits he had spared no pains to do so, seldom coming without bringing with him cakes or papers of sweets. Lucy accepted the presents, but did not love the donor, and confided to Abijah that his teeth were exactly like those of the wolf who ate Little Red Riding Hood.

Ned found much more comfort in her society during those dull days than in Charlie's. He had the good sense, however, never to encourage her in her expressions of dislike to Mr. Mulready, and even did his best to combat her impression, knowing how essential it was for her to get on well with him. Ned himself did not often see Mr. Mulready during that time. The first time that they met, Ned had, on his return from school, gone straight up into the drawing room, not knowing that Mr. Mulready was there. On opening the door and seeing him he paused suddenly for a moment and then advanced. For a moment neither of them spoke, then Mr. Mulready said in his frankest manner:

"Ned, you have heard I am going to marry your mother. I don't suppose you quite like it; it wouldn't be natural if you did; I know I shouldn't if I were in your place. Still you know your disliking it won't alter it, and I hope we shall get on well together. Give me your hand, my lad, you won't find me a bad sort of fellow."

"I hope not," Ned said quietly, taking Mr. Mulready's hand and continuing to hold it while he went on: "I don't pretend I like it, and I know it makes no difference whether I do or not; the principal point is, that my mother should be happy, and if you make her happy I have no doubt we shall, as you say, get on well together; if you don't, we shan't."

There was no mistaking the threat conveyed in Ned's steady tones, and Mr. Mulready, as Ned dropped his hand, felt that he should have more trouble with the boy than he had expected. He gave a forced laugh.

"One would think, Ned, that you thought it likely I was going to be unkind to your mother."

"No," Ned said quietly, "I don't want to think about it one way or the other, only I promised my father I would be kind to my mother; that means that I would look after her, and I mean to.

"Well, mother," he said in his usual tone, turning to Mrs. Sankey, "and how are you this morning?"

"I was feeling better, Ned," she said sharply; "but your unpleasant way of talking, and your nonsense about taking care of me, have made me feel quite ill again. Somehow you always seem to shake my nerves. You never seem to me like other boys. One would think I was a child instead of being your mother. I thought after what you said to me that you were going to behave nicely."

"I am trying to behave nicely," Ned said. "I am sure I meant quite nicely, just as Mr. Mulready does; I think he understands me."

"I don't understand that boy," Mrs. Sankey said plaintively when Ned had left the room, "and I never have understood him. He was dreadfully spoiled when he was in India, as I have often told you; for in my weak state of health I was not equal to looking after him, and his poor father was sadly overindulgent. But he has certainly been much better as to his temper lately, and I do hope, William, that he is not going to cause trouble."

"Oh, no!" Mr. Mulready said lightly, "he will not cause trouble; I have no doubt we shall get on well together. Boys will be boys, you know; I have been one myself, and of course they look upon stepfathers as natural enemies; but in this case, you see, we shall not have to put up with each other long, as he will be getting his commission in a year or so. Don't trouble yourself about it, love; in your state of health you ought really not to worry yourself, and worry, you know, spoils the eyes and the complexion, and I cannot allow that, for you will soon be my property now."

The wedding was fixed for March. It was to be perfectly quiet, as Mrs. Sankey would, up to the day, be still in mourning. A month before the time Ned noticed that his mother was more uncertain in her temper than usual, and Abijah confided to him in secret that she thought things were not going on smoothly between the engaged couple.

Nor were they. Mr. Mulready had discovered, to his surprise, that, indolent and silly as Mrs. Sankey was in many respects, she was not altogether a fool, and was keen enough where her own interests were concerned. He had suggested something about settlements, hoping that she would at once say that these were wholly unnecessary; but to his surprise she replied in a manner which showed that she had already thought the matter over, and had very fixed ideas on the subject.

"Of course," she said, "that will be necessary. I know nothing about business, but it was done before, and my poor husband insisted that my little fortune should be settled so as to be entirely at my own disposal."

But this by no means suited Mr. Mulready's views. Hitherto want of capital had prevented his introducing the new machinery into his mills, and the competition with the firms which had already adopted it was injuring him seriously, and he had reckoned confidently upon the use of Mrs. Sankey's four thousand pounds. Although he kept his temper admirably under the circumstances, he gave her distinctly to understand, in the pleasantest way, that an arrangement which was most admirably suitable in every respect in the case of a lady marrying an officer in the army, to whom her capital could be of no possible advantage, was altogether unsuitable in the case of a manufacturer.

"You see, my love," he argued, "that it is for your benefit as well as mine that the business should grow and flourish by the addition of the new machinery which this little fortune of yours could purchase. The profits could be doubled and trebled, and we could look forward ere long to holding our heads as high as the richest manufacturers at Leeds and Bradford -- while the mere interest in this money invested in consols as at present would be absolutely useless to us."

Mrs. Sankey acknowledged the force of his argument, but was firm in her determination to retain her hold of her money, and so they parted, not in anger, for Mr. Mulready altogether disclaimed the possibility of his being vexed, but with the sense that something like a barrier had sprung up between them.

This went on for a few days, and although the subject was not mooted, Mrs. Sankey felt that unless some concession on her part was made it was likely that the match would fall through. This she had not the slightest idea of permitting, and rather than it should happen she would have married without any settlement at all, for she really loved, in her weak way, the man who had been so attentive and deferential to her.

So one day the subject was renewed, and at last an understanding was arrived at. Mrs. Sankey's money was to be put into the business in her own name. Should she not survive her husband, he was to have the option of paying the money to her children or of allowing them the sum of eighty pounds a year each from the business. Should he not survive her the mill was to be settled upon any children she might have after her marriage; should there be no children it was to be hers absolutely.

All this was only arrived at after several long discussions, in all of which Mrs. Sankey protested that she knew nothing of business, that it was most painful to her to be thus discussing money matters, and that it would be far better to leave it in the hands of a solicitor to arrange in a friendly manner with him. She nevertheless stuck to her views, and drove a bargain as keenly and shrewdly as any solicitor could have done for her, to the surprise and exasperation of Mr. Mulready. Had he known that she really loved him, and would, if she had been driven to it, have sacrificed everything rather than lose him, he could have obtained very different terms; but having no heart to speak of, himself, he was ignorant of the power he possessed over her.

Bankruptcy stared him in the face unless he could obtain this increase of capital, and he dared not, by pressing the point, risk its loss. The terms, he told himself, were not altogether unsatisfactory; it was not likely that she would survive him. They were of about the same age; he had never known what it was to be ill, and she, although not such an invalid as she fancied herself, was still not strong. If she did not survive him he would have the whole business, subject only to the paltry annuity of two hundred and forty pounds a year to the three children. If, the most unlikely thing in the world, she did survive him -- well, it mattered not a jot in that case who the mill went to.

So the terms were settled, the necessary deeds were drawn up by a solicitor, and signed by both parties. Mrs. Sankey recovered her spirits, and the preparations for the wedding went on.

Ned had intended to absent himself from the ceremony, but Mr. Porson, guessing that such might be his intention, had talked the matter gravely over with him. He had pointed out to Ned that his absence would in the first place be an act of great disrespect to his mother; that in the second place it would cause general comment, and would add to the unfavorable impression which his mother's early remarriage had undoubtedly created; and that, lastly, it would justify Mr. Mulready in regarding him as hostile to the marriage, and, should trouble subsequently arise, he would be able to point to it in self justification, and as a proof that Ned had from the first determined to treat him as an enemy.

So Ned was present at his mother's marriage. Quiet as the wedding was, for only two or three acquaintances were asked to be present, the greater part of Marsden were assembled in the church.

The marriage had created considerable comment. The death of Captain Sankey in saving a child's life had rendered his widow an object of general sympathy, and people felt that not only was this marriage within eighteen months of Captain Sankey's death almost indecent, but that it was somehow a personal wrong to them, and that they had been defrauded in their sympathy.

Therefore the numerous spectators of the marriage were critical rather than approving. They could find nothing to find fault with, however, in the bride's appearance. She was dressed in a dove colored silk, and with her fair hair and pale complexion looked quite young, and, as every one admitted, pretty. Mr. Mulready, as usual, was smiling, and seemed to convey by the looks which he cast round that he regarded the assemblage as a personal compliment to himself.

Lucy and Charlie betrayed no emotion either way; they were not pleased, but the excitement of the affair amused and interested them, and they might be said to be passive spectators. Ned, however, although he had brought himself to be present, could not bring himself to look as if the ceremony had his approval or sanction. He just glared, as Abijah, who was present, afterward confided to some of her friends, as if he could have killed the man as he stood. His look of undisguised hostility was indeed noticed by all who were in church, and counted heavily against him in the days which were to come.



Chapter X: Troubles At Home


It was not one of the least griefs of the young Sankeys connected with their mother's wedding that Abijah was to leave them. It was she herself who had given notice to Mrs. Sankey, saying that she would no longer be required. The first time that she had spoken of her intentions, Mrs. Sankey vehemently combated the idea, saying that neither she nor Lucy could spare her; but she did not afterward return to the subject, and seemed to consider it a settled thing that Abijah intended to leave. Mrs. Sankey had, in fact, spoken to Mr. Mulready on the subject, but instead of taking the view she had expected, he had said cheerfully:

"I am glad that she has given notice. I know that she is a valuable woman and much attached to you. At the same time these old servants always turn out a mistake under changed circumstances. She would never have been comfortable or contented. She has, my dear if I may say so, been mistress too long, and as I intend you to be mistress of my house, it is much better that she should go."

As Mrs. Sankey had certain doubts herself as to whether Abijah would be a success in the new home, the subject was dropped, and it became an understood thing that Abijah would leave after the wedding.

The newly married couple were absent for three weeks. Until two days before their return Abijah remained in the old house with the young Sankeys; then they moved into their new home, and she went off to her native village ten miles distant away on the moors. The next day there was a sale at the old house. A few, a very few, of the things had been moved. Everything else was sold, to the deep indignation of Ned, who was at once grieved and angry that all the articles of furniture which he associated with his father should be parted with. Abijah shared the boy's feelings in this respect, and at the sale all the furniture and fittings of Captain Sankey's study were bought by a friendly grocer on her behalf, and the morning after the sale a badly written letter, for Abijah's education had been neglected, was placed in Ned's hand.

"MY DEAR MASTER NED: Knowing as it cut you to the heart that everything should go away into the hands of strangers, I have made so bold as to ask Mr. Willcox for to buy all the furniter and books in maister's study. He is a-going to stow them away in a dry loft, and when so bee as you gets a home of your own there they is for you; they are sure not to fetch much, and when you gets a rich man you can pay me for them; not as that matters at all one way or the other. I have been a-saving up pretty nigh all my wages from the day as you was born, and is quite comfortable off. Write me a letter soon, dearie, to tell me as how things is going on. Your affectionate nurse, ABIJAH WOLF."

Although Ned was a lad of sixteen, he had a great cry over this letter, but it did him good, and it was with a softer heart that he prepared to receive his mother and her husband that evening. The meeting passed off better than he had anticipated. Mrs. Mulready was really affected at seeing her children again, and embraced them, Ned thought, with more fondness than she had done when they went away. Mr. Mulready spoke genially and kindly, and Ned began to hope that things would not be so bad after all.

The next morning, to his surprise, his mother appeared at breakfast, a thing which he could not remember that she had ever done before, and yet the hour was an early one, as her husband wanted to be off to the mill. During the meal Mr. Mulready spoke sharply two or three times, and it seemed to Ned that his mother was nervously anxious to please him.

"Things are not going on so well after all," he said to himself as he walked with his brother to school. "Mother has changed already; I can see that she isn't a bit like herself. There she was fussing over whether he had enough sugar with his tea, and whether the kidneys were done enough for him; then her coming down to breakfast was wonderful. I expect she has found already that somebody else's will besides her own has got to be consulted; it's pretty soon for her to have begun to learn the lesson."

It was very soon manifest that Mr. Mulready was master in his own house. He still looked pleasant and smiled, for his smile was a habitual one; but there was a sharpness in the ring of his voice, an impatience if everything was not exactly as he wished. He roughly silenced Charlie and Lucy if they spoke when he was reading his paper at breakfast, and he spoke snappishly to his wife when she asked him a question on such occasions. Ned felt his face burn, as with his eyes on his plate he continued his meal. To him Mr. Mulready seldom spoke unless it was absolutely necessary.

Ned often caught himself wondering over the change which had taken place in his mother. All the ways and habits of an invalid had disappeared. She not only gave directions for the management of the house, but looked after everything herself, and was forever going upstairs and down, seeing that everything was properly done. However sharply Mr. Mulready spoke she never replied in the same tone. A little flush of color would come into her cheek, but she would pass it off lightly, and at all times she appeared nervously anxious to please him. Ned wondered much over the change.

"He is a tyrant," he said, "and she has learned it already; but I do think she loves him. Fancy my mother coming to be the slave of a man like this! I suppose," he laughed bitterly, "it's the story of 'a woman, a dog, and a walnut tree, the more you thrash them the better they will be.' My father spent his whole life in making hers easy, and in sparing her from every care and trouble, and I don't believe she cared half as much for him as she does for this man who is her master."

For some months Mr. Mulready was very busy at his mill. A steam engine was being erected, new machinery brought in, and he was away the greater part of his time superintending it.

One day at breakfast, a short time before all was in readiness for a start with the new plant, Mr. Mulready opened a letter directed in a sprawling and ill written hand which lay at the top of the pile by his plate. Ned happened to notice his face, and saw the color fade out from it as he glanced at the contents. The mouth remained as usual, set in a smile, but the rest of the face expressed agitation and fear. The hand which held the letter shook. Mrs. Mulready, whose eyes seldom left her husband's face when he was in the room, also noticed the change.

"Is anything the matter, William?"

"Oh! nothing," he said with an unnatural laugh, "only a little attempt to frighten me."

"An attempt which has succeeded," Ned said to himself, "whatever it is."

Mr. Mulready passed the letter over to his wife. It was a rough piece of paper; at the top was scrawled the outline of a coffin underneath which was written:

"MR. MULREADY: Sir, this is to give you warning that if you uses the new machinery you are a dead man. You have been a marked man for a long time for your tyrannical ways, but as long as you didn't get the new machinery we let you live; but we has come to the end of it now; the day as you turns on steam we burns your mill to the ground and shoots you, so now you knows it."

At the bottom of this was signed the words "Captain Lud."

"Oh! William," Mrs. Mulready cried, "you will never do it! You will never risk your life at the hands of these terrible people!"

All the thin veneer of politeness was cracked by this blow, and Mr. Mulready said sullenly:

"Nice thing indeed; after I have married to get this money, and then not to be able to use it!"

His wife gave a little cry.

"It's a shame to say so," Charlie burst out sturdily.

Mr. Mulready's passion found a vent. He leaped up and seized the boy by the collar and boxed his ears with all his force.

In an instant the fury which had been smoldering in Ned's breast for months found a vent. He leaped to his feet and struck Mr. Mulready a blow between the eyes which sent him staggering back against the wall; then he caught up the poker. The manufacturer with a snarl like that of an angry wild beast was about to rush at him, but Ned's attitude as he stood, poker in hand, checked him.

"Stand back," Ned said threateningly, "or I will strike you. You coward and bully; for months I have put up with your tyrannizing over Charlie and Lucy, but touch either of them again if you dare. You think that you are stronger than I am -- so you are ever so much; but you lay a finger on them or on me, and I warn you, if I wait a month for an opportunity I will pay you for it, if you kill me afterward."

Mrs. Mulready's screams had by this time brought the servants into the room, and they stood astonished at the spectacle.

Lucy crying bitterly had run to Ned and thrown her arms round him, begging him to be quiet. Charlie, hardly recovered from the heavy blows he had received, was crying too. Mr. Mulready as pale as death was glaring at Ned, while his wife had thrown herself between them. Mr. Mulready was the first to recover himself.

"This is a nice spectacle," he said to the servants. "You see that boy has attacked me with the poker and might have murdered me. However, you can go now, and mind, no chattering about what you have seen.

"And now," he continued to Ned as the door closed behind the servants, "out of this house you go this day."

"You don't suppose I want to stay in your house," Ned said passionately. "You don't suppose that it's any pleasure to me to stop here, seeing you play the tyrant over my mother."

"Oh, Ned, Ned," Mrs. Mulready broke in, "how can you talk so!"

"It is true, mother, he is a tyrant to you as well as to every one else; but I don't mean to go, I mean to stop here to protect you and the children. He daren't turn me out; if he did, I would go and work in one of the mills, and what would the people of Marsden say then? What would they think of this popular, pleasant gentleman then, who has told his wife before her children that he married her for her money? They shall all know it, never fear, if I leave this house. I would have gone to Mr. Simmonds and asked him to apply for a commission for me before now, for other fellows get it as young as I am; but I have made up my mind that it's my duty not to do so.

"I know he has been looking forward to my being out of the way, and his being able to do just what he likes with the others, but I ain't going to gratify him. It's plain to me that my duty at present is to take care of you all, and though God knows how I set my mind upon going into the army and being a soldier like my father, I will give it up if it means leaving Charlie here under him."

"And do you suppose, sir," Mr. Mulready asked with intense bitterness, "that I am going to keep you here doing nothing all your life, while you are pleased to watch me?"

"No, I don't," Ned replied. "I shall get a clerkship or something in one of the mills, and I shall have Charlie to live with me until he is old enough to leave school, and then I will go away with him to America or somewhere. As to mother, I can do nothing for her. I think my being here makes it worse for her, for I believe you tyrannize over her all the more because you think it hurts me. I know you hated me from the first just as I hated you. As for Lucy, mother must do the best she can for her. Even you daren't hit a girl."

"Oh, Ned, how can you go on so?" Mrs. Mulready wailed. "You are a wicked boy to talk so."

"All right, mother," Ned replied recklessly; "if I am, I suppose I am. I know in your eyes he can do no wrong. And I believe if he beat you, you would think that you deserved it."

So he flung himself down in his chair and continued his breakfast.

Mr. Mulready drank off his tea without sitting down, and then left the room without another word; in fact, as yet he did not know what to say.

Almost speechless with passion as he was, he restrained himself from carrying out his threat and turning Ned at once from the house. Above all things he prized his position and popularity, and he felt that, as Ned had said, he would indeed incur a heavy odium by turning his wife's son from his doors. Captain Sankey's death had thrown almost a halo over his children. Mr. Mulready knew that he was already intensely unpopular among the operative class, but he despised this so long as he stood well with the rest of the townsmen; but he dared not risk Ned's going to work as an ordinary hand in one of the factories; public opinion is always against stepfathers, and assuredly this would be no exception. Hating him as he did, he dared not get rid of this insolent boy, who had struck and defied him. He cursed himself now with his rashness in letting his temper get the best of him and telling his wife openly that he had married her for her money; for this in Ned's hands would be a serious weapon against him.

That his wife's feelings were hurt he cared not a jot, but it would be an awkward thing to have it repeated in the town. Then there was this threatening letter; what was he to do about that? Other men had had similar warnings. Some had defied Captain Lud, and fortified their mills and held them. Many had had their property burned to the ground; some had been murdered. It wouldn't be a pleasant thing to drive about in the country knowing that at any moment he might be shot dead. His mill was some little distance out of the town; the road was dark and lonely. He dared not risk it.

Mr. Mulready was, like all tyrants, a coward at heart, and his face grew white again as he thought of the letter in his pocket. In the meantime Mrs. Mulready was alternately sobbing and upbraiding Ned as he quietly finished his breakfast. The boy did not answer, but continued his meal in dogged silence, and when it was over collected his books and without a word went off to school.

Weeks went on, and no outward change took place. Ned continued to live at home. Mr. Mulready never addressed him, and beyond helping him to food entirely ignored his presence. At mealtimes when he opened his lips it was either to snap at Charlie or Lucy, or to snarl at his wife, whose patience astonished Ned, and who never answered except by a smile or murmured excuse. The lad was almost as far separated from her now as from his stepfather. She treated him as if he only were to blame for the quarrel which had arisen. They had never understood each other, and while she was never weary of making excuses for her husband, she could make none for her son. In the knowledge that the former had much to vex him she made excuses for him even in his worst moods. His new machinery was standing idle, his business was getting worse and worse, he was greatly pressed and worried, and it was monstrous, she told herself, that at such a time he should be troubled with Ned's defiant behavior.

A short time before the school Christmas holidays Ned knocked at the door of Mr. Porson's study. Since the conversation which they had had when first Ned heard of his mother's engagement Mr. Porson had seen in the lad's altered manner, his gloomy looks, and a hardness of expression which became more and more marked every week, that things were going on badly. Ned no longer evinced the same interest in his work, and frequently neglected it altogether; the master, however, had kept silence, preferring to wait until Ned should himself broach the subject.

"Well, Sankey, what is it?" he asked kindly as the boy entered.

"I don't think it's any use my going on any longer, Mr. Porson."

"Well, Sankey, you have not been doing yourself much good this half, certainly. I have not said much to you about it, for it is entirely your own business: you know more than nineteen out of twenty of the young fellows who get commissions, so that if you choose to give up work it is your own affair."

"I have made up my mind not to go into the army," Ned said quietly.

Mr. Porson was silent a minute.

"I hope, my dear lad," he said, "you will do nothing hastily about this. Here is a profession open to you which is your own choice and that of your father, and it should need some very strong and good reason for you to abandon it. Come let us talk the matter over together, my boy, not as a master and his pupil, but as two friends.

"You know, my boy, how thoroughly I have your interest at heart. If you had other friends whom you could consult I would rather have given you no advice, for there is no more serious matter than to say anything which might influence the career of a young fellow just starting in life. Terrible harm often results from well intentioned advice or opinions carelessly expressed to young men by their elders; it is a matter which few men are sufficiently careful about; but as I know that you have no friends to consult, Ned, and as I regard you with more than interest, I may say with affection, I think it would be well for you to tell me all that there is in your mind before you take a step which may wreck your whole life.

"I have been waiting for some months in hopes that you would open your mind to me, for I have seen that you were unhappy; but it was not for me to force your confidence."

"I don't know that there's much to tell," Ned said wearily. "Everything has happened just as it was certain it would do. Mulready is a brute; he ill treats my mother, he ill treats Charlie and Lucy, and he would ill treat me if he dared."

"All this is bad, Ned," Mr. Porson said gravely; "but of course much depends upon the amount of his ill treatment. I assume that he does not actively ill treat your mother."

"No," Ned said with an angry look in his face; "and he'd better not."

"Yes, Ned, he had better not, no doubt," Mr. Porson said soothingly; "but what I want to know, what it is essential I should know if I am to give you any advice worth having, is what you mean by ill treatment -- is he rough and violent in his way with her? does he threaten her with violence? is he coarse and brutal?"

"No," Ned said somewhat reluctantly; "he is not that, sir; he is always snapping and snarling and finding fault."

"That is bad, Ned, but it does not amount to ill treatment. When a man is put out in business and things go wrong with him it is unhappily too often his custom to vent his ill temper upon innocent persons; and I fancy from what I hear -- you know in a little place like this every one's business is more or less known -- Mr. Mulready has a good deal to put him out. He has erected new machinery and dare not put it to work, owing as I hear -- for he has lain the documents before the magistrates -- for his having received threatening letters warning him against doing so. This is very trying to the man. Then, Ned, you will excuse my saying that perhaps he is somewhat tried at home. It is no pleasant thing for a man to have a young fellow like yourself in the house taking up an attitude of constant hostility. I do not say that his conduct may or may not justify it; but you will not deny that from the first you were prepared to receive him as an enemy rather than as a friend. I heard a story some weeks ago in the town, which emanated no doubt from the servants, that you had actually struck him."

"He hit Charlie, sir," Ned exclaimed.

"That may be," Mr. Porson went on gravely; "and I have no doubt, Ned, that you considered then, and that you consider now, that you were acting rightly in interfering on behalf of your brother. But I should question much whether in such a matter you are the best judge. You unfortunately began with a very strong prejudice against this man; you took up the strongest attitude of hostility to him; you were prepared to find fault with everything he said and did; you put yourself in the position of the champion of your mother, brother, and sister against him. Under such circumstances it was hardly possible that things could go on well. Now I suppose, Ned, that the idea which you have in your mind in deciding to give up the profession you have chosen, is that you may remain as their champion and protector here."

"Yes, sir," Ned said. "Father told me to be kind to mother, whatever happened."

"Quite so, my boy; but the question is, Are you being kind?"

Ned looked surprised.

"That you intend to be so, Ned, I am sure. The question is, Are you going the right way to work? Is this championship that you have taken upon yourself increasing her happiness, or is it not?"

Ned was silent.

"I do not think that it is, Ned. Your mother must be really fond of this man or she would not have married him. Do you think that it conduces to the comfort of her home to see the constant antagonism which prevails between you and him? Is it not the fact that this ill temper under which she suffers is the result of the irritation caused to him by your attitude? Do you not add to her burden rather than relieve it?"

Ned was still silent. He had so thoroughly persuaded himself that he was protecting his mother, his brother, and sister from Mr. Mulready that he had never considered the matter in this light.

"Does your mother take his part or yours in these quarrels, Ned?"

"She takes his part, sir," said Ned indignantly.

"Very well, Ned; that shows in itself that she does not wish for your championship, that in her eyes the trouble in the house is in fact caused by you. You must remember that when a woman loves a man she makes excuses for his faults of temper; his irritable moods, sharp expressions, and what you call snapping and snarling do not seem half so bad to her as they do to a third person, especially when that third person is her partisan. Instead of your adding to her happiness by renouncing your idea of going into the army, and of deciding to remain here in some position or other to take care of her, as, I suppose, is your intention, the result will be just the contrary. As to your sister, I think the same thing would happen.

"Your mother is certainly greatly attached to her and owing to her changed habits -- for I understand that she is now a far more active, and I may say, Ned, a more sensible woman than before her marriage -- I see no reason why Lucy should not be happy with her, especially if the element of discord -- I mean yourself -- were out of the way. As to Charlie, at the worst I don't think that he would suffer from your absence. His stepfather's temper will be less irritable; and as Charlie is away at school all day, and has to prepare his lessons in the evening, there is really but slight opportunity for his stepfather treating him with any active unkindness, even should he be disposed to do so.

"Did I think, my boy, that your presence here would be likely to benefit your family I should be the last person to advise you to avoid making a sacrifice of your private wishes to what you consider your duty; but upon the contrary I am convinced that the line which you have, with the best intention, taken up has been altogether a mistake, that your stay at home does vastly more harm than good, and that things would go on very much better in your absence."

This was a bitter mortification for Ned, who had hitherto nursed the idea that he was performing rather a heroic part, and was sacrificing himself for the sake of his mother.

"You don't know the fellow as I do," he said sullenly at last.

"I do not, Ned; but I know human nature, and I know that any man would show himself at his worst under such circumstances as those in which you hare placed him. It is painful to have to say, but I am sure that you have done harm rather than good, and that things will get on much better in your absence."

"I believe he is quite capable of killing her," Ned said passionately, "if he wanted her out of the way."

"That is a hard thing to say, Ned; but even were it so, we have no reason for supposing that he does want her out of the way. Come, Sankey, I am sure you have plenty of good sense. Hitherto you have been acting rather blindly in this matter. You have viewed it from one side only, and with the very best intentions in the world have done harm rather than good.

"I am convinced that when you come to think it over you will see that, in following out your own and your father's intentions and wishes as to your future career, you will really best fulfil his last injunctions and will show the truest kindness to your mother. Don't give me your answer now, but take time to think it over. Try and see the case from every point of view, and I think you will come to the conclusion that what I have been saying, although it may seem rather hard to you at first, is true, and that you had best go into the army, as you had intended. I am sure in any case you will know that what I have said, even if it seems unkind, has been for your good."

"Thank you, Mr. Porson," Ned replied; "I am quite sure of that. Perhaps you are right, and I have been making a fool of myself all along. But anyhow I will think it over."



Chapter XI: The New Machinery


It is rather hard for a lad who thinks that he has been behaving somewhat as a hero to come to the conclusion that he has been making a fool of himself; but this was the result of Ned Sankey's cogitation over what Mr. Porson had said to him. Perhaps he arrived more easily at that conclusion because he was not altogether unwilling to do so. It was very mortifying to allow that he had been altogether wrong; but, on the other hand, there was a feeling of deep pleasure at the thought that he could, in Mr. Porson's deliberate opinion, go into the army and carry out all his original hopes and plans. His heart had been set upon this as long as he could remember, and it had been a bitter disappointment to him when he had arrived at the conclusion that it was his duty to abandon the idea. He did not now come to the conclusion hastily that Mr. Porson's view of the case was the correct one; but after a fortnight's consideration he went down on New Year's Day to the school, and told his master that he had made up his mind.

"I see, sir," he said, "now that I have thought it all over, that you are quite right, and that I have been behaving like an ass, so I shall set to work again and try and make up the lost time. I have only six months longer, for Easter is the time when Mr. Simmonds said that I should be old enough, and he will write to the lord lieutenant, and I suppose that in three months after that I should get my commission."

"That is right, Ned. I am exceedingly glad you have been able to take my view of the matter. I was afraid you were bent upon spoiling your life, and I am heartily glad that you have been able to see the matter in a different light."

A day or two afterward Ned took an opportunity of telling his mother that he intended at Easter to remind Mr. Simmonds of his promise to apply for a commission for him; and had he before had any lingering doubt that the decision was a wise one it would have been dissipated by the evident satisfaction and relief with which the news was received; nevertheless, he could not help a feeling of mortification at seeing in his mother's face the gladness which the prospect of his leaving occasioned her.

It was some time since Ned had seen his friend Bill Swinton, for Bill was now regularly at work in Mr. Mulready's factory and was only to be found at home in the evening, and Ned had been in no humor for going out. He now, however, felt inclined for a friendly talk again, and the next Sunday afternoon he started for Varley.

"Well, Maister Ned," Bill said as he hurried to the door in answer to his knock, "it be a long time surely sin oi saw thee last -- well nigh six months, I should say."

"It is a long time, Bill, but I haven't been up to anything, even to coming up here. Put on your cap and we will go for a walk across the moors together."

In a few seconds Bill joined him, and they soon left the village behind.

"Oi thought as how thou didn't feel oop to talking loike, Moister Ned. Oi heared tell as how thou did'st not get on well wi' Foxey; he be a roight down bad un, he be; it were the talk of the place as how you gived him a clout atween t' eyes, and oi laughed rarely to myself when oi seed him come through t' mill wi' black and blue all round 'em. There warn't a hand there but would have given a week's pay to have seen it done."

"I am afraid I was wrong, Bill," Ned said, feeling ashamed rather then triumphant at the thought. "I oughtn't to have done it, but my beastly temper got the best of it."

"Doan't say that Maister Ned; he deserves ten toimes worse nor ye gived him, and he will get it some time if he doan't mind. Oi tell ee there be lots of talk of him, and Captain Lud's gang be a getting stronger and stronger. Oi tell ye, t' maisters be agoing to have a bad time on it afore long, and Foxey be sure to be one of the first served out."

"Well, don't you have anything to do with it, Bill. You know I have told you over and over again that no good can come of such bad doings, and that the men will only make matters much worse for themselves. My father used to say that no good ever came of mob violence. They may do some harm for a time, but it is sure to recoil on their own heads."

"Oi doan't ha' nowt to do wi' it," Bill replied, "cause oi told yer oi wouldn't; but oi've some trouble to keep oot o't. Ye see oi am nointeen now, and most o' t' chaps of moi age they be in 't; they meet at the 'Dog' nigh every noight, and they drills regular out on t' moor here, and it doan't seem natural for oi not to be in it, especial as moi brothers be in it. They makes it rough for me in t' village, and says as how I ain't got no spirit, and even t' girls laughs at me."

"Not Polly Powlett, I am sure, Bill."

"No, not Polly," Bill replied. "She be a different sort. A' together it be a bit hard, and it be well for me as oi 'm main strong and tough, for oi ha' to fight pretty nigh every Saturday. However, oi ha thrashed pretty nigh every young chap in Varley, and they be beginning now to leave oi alone."

"That's right, Bill; I am sure I have no right to preach to you when I am always doing wrong myself; still I am quite sure you will be glad in the long run that you had nothing to do with King Lud. I know the times are very hard, but burning mills and murdering masters are not the way to make them better; you take my word for that. And now how are things going on in Varley?"

"No great change here," Bill replied. "Polly Powlett bain't made up her moind yet atween t' chaps as is arter her. They say as she sent John Stukeley, the smith, to the roight about last Sunday; he ha' been arter her vor the last year. Some thowt she would have him, some didn't. He ha' larning, you see, can read and wroite foine, and ha' got a smooth tongue, and knows how to talk to gals, so some thought she would take him; oi knew well enough she wouldn't do nowt of the koind, for oi ha' heard her say he were a mischievous chap, and a cuss to Varley. Thou know'st, Maister Ned, they do say, but in course oi knows nowt about it, as he be the head of the Luddites in this part of Yorkshire.

"Luke Marner he be dead against King Lud, he be, and so be many of the older men here; it's most the young uns as takes to them ways; and nateral, Polly she thinks as Luke does, or perhaps," and Bill laughed, "it's Polly as thowt that way first, and Luke as thinks as she does. However it be, she be dead set agin them, and she's said to me jest the same thing as thou'st been a-saying; anyhow, it be sartain as Polly ha' said no to John Stukeley, not as she said nowt about it, and no one would ha' known aboot it ef he hadn't gone cussing and swearing down at the 'Dog.'

"I thinks. Maister Ned, as we shall ha' trouble afore long. The men ha been drilling four or five years now, and oi know as they ha' been saying, What be the good of it when nowt is done and the wages gets lower and lower? They have preachments now out on t' moor on Sunday, and the men comes from miles round, and they tells me as Stukeley and others, but him chiefly, goes on awful agin t' maisters, and says, There's Scripture vor it as they owt to smite 'em, and as how tyrants owt vor to be hewed in pieces."

"The hewing would not be all on one side, Bill, you will see, if they begin it. You know how easily the soldiers have put down riots in other places."

"That be true," Bill said; "but they doan't seem vor to see it. Oi don't say nowt one way or t' other, and oi have had more nor half a mind to quit and go away till it's over. What wi' my brothers and all t' other young chaps here being in it, it makes it moighty hard vor oi to stand off; only as oi doan't know what else vor to do, oi would go. Oi ha' been a-thinking that when thou get'st to be an officer oi'll list in the same regiment and go to the wars wi' thee. Oi am sick of this loife here."

"Well, Bill, there will be no difficulty about that if you really make up your mind to it when the time comes. Of course I should like to have you very much. I have heard my father say that each officer has a soldier as his special servant; and if you would like that, you see, when we were alone together we should be able to talk about Varley and everything here just as we do now. Then I suppose I could help you on and get you made first corporal and then a sergeant."

"Very well, Maister Ned, then we will look on that as being as good as settled, and as soon as thou gets to be an officer oi will go as one of your soldiers."

For an hour they walked across the moor, talking about a soldier's life, Ned telling of the various parts of the world in which England was at that time engaged in war, and wondering in which of them they would first see service. Then they came back to the village and there parted, and Ned, feeling in better spirits than he had been from the day when he first heard of his mother's engagement to Mr. Mulready, walked briskly down to Marsden.

For a time matters went on quietly. Few words were exchanged between Ned and Mr. Mulready; and although the latter could not but have noticed that Ned was brighter and more cheerful in his talk, he was brooding over his own trouble, and paid but little heed to it.

The time was fast approaching when he could no longer go on as at present. The competition with the mills using the new machinery was gradually crushing him, and it was necessary for him to come to a determination either to pluck up heart and to use his new machines, or to close his mill.

At last he determined to take the former course and to defy King Lud. Other manufacturers used steam, and why should not he? It was annoying to him in the extreme that his friends and acquaintances, knowing that he had fitted the mill with the new plant, were always asking him why he did not use it.

A sort of uneasy consciousness that he was regarded by his townsmen as a coward was constantly haunting him. He knew in his heart that his danger was greater than that of others, because he could not rely on his men. Other masters had armed their hands, and had turned their factories into strong places, some of them even getting down cannon for their defense: for, as a rule, the hands employed with the new machinery had no objection to it, for they were able to earn larger wages with less bodily toil than before.

The hostility was among the hands thrown out of employment, or who found that they could now no longer make a living by the looms which they worked in their own homes. Hitherto Mr. Mulready had cared nothing for the goodwill of his hands. He had simply regarded them as machines from whom the greatest amount of work was to be obtained at the lowest possible price. They might grumble and curse him beneath their breaths; they might call him a tyrant behind his back, for this he cared nothing: but he felt now that it would have been better had their relations been different: for then he could have trusted them to do their best in defense of the mill.

Having once determined upon defying King Lud, Mr. Mulready went before the magistrates, and laying before them the threatening letters he had received, for the first had been followed by many others, he asked them to send for a company of infantry, as he was going to set his mill to work. The magistrates after some deliberation agreed to do so, and wrote to the commanding officer of the troops at Huddersfield asking him to station a detachment at Marsden for a time.

The request was complied with. A company of infantry marched in and were billeted upon the town. A room was fitted up at the mill, and ten of them were quartered here, and upon the day after their arrival the new machinery started.

Now that the step was taken, Mr. Mulready's spirits rose. He believed that the presence of the soldiers was ample protection for the mill, and he hoped that ere they left the town the first excitement would have cooled down, and the Luddites have turned their attention to other quarters.

Ned met Bill on the following Sunday.

"I suppose, Bill," he said, "there is a rare stir about Foxey using his new machinery?"

"Ay, that there be, and no wonder," Bill said angrily, "there be twenty hands turned adrift. Oi bee one of them myself."

"You, Bill! I had no idea you had been discharged."

"Ay; oi have got the sack, and so ha' my brother and young Jarge Marner, and most o' t' young chaps in the mill. Oi suppose as how Foxey thinks as the old hands will stick to t' place, and is more afeerd as the young uns might belong to King Lud, and do him a bad turn with the machinery. Oi tell ye, Maister Ned, that the sooner as you goes as an officer the better, vor oi caan't bide here now and hold off from the others, Oi have had a dog's loife for some time, and it ull be worse now. It would look as if oi hadn't no spirit in the world, to stand being put upon and not join the others. T' other chaps scarce speak to me, and the gals turn their backs as oi pass them. Oi be willing vor to be guided by you as far as oi can; but it bain't in nature to stand this. Oi'd as lief go and hang myself. Oi would go and list tomorrow, only oi don't know what regiment you are going to."

"Well, Bill, it is hard," Ned said, "and I am not surprised that you feel that you cannot stand it; but it won't be for long now. Easter will be here in a fortnight, and then I shall see Mr. Simmonds and get him to apply at once. I met him in the street only last week, and he was talking about it then. He thinks that it will not be long after he sends in an application before I get my commission. He says he has got interest in London at the Horse Guards, and will get the application of the lord lieutenant backed up there; so I hope that in a couple of months at latest it will all be settled."

"Oi hope so, oi am sure, vor oi be main sick of this. However, oi can hold on for another couple of months; they know anyhow as it ain't from cowardice as I doan't join them. I fowt Jack Standfort yesterday and licked un; though, as you see, oi 'ave got a rare pair of black eyes today. If oi takes one every Saturday it's only eight more to lick, and oi reckon oi can do that."

"I wish I could help you, Bill," Ned said: "if father had been alive I am sure he would have let you have a little money to take you away from here and keep you somewhere until it is time for you to enlist; but you see I can do nothing now."

"Doan't you go vor to trouble yourself aboot me, Maister Ned. Oi shall hold on roight enow. The thought as it is for two months longer will keep me up. Oi can spend moi evenings in at Luke's. He goes off to the 'Coo,' but Polly doan't moind moi sitting there and smoking moi pipe, though it bain't every one as she would let do that."

Ned laughed. "It's a pity, Bill, you are not two or three years older, then perhaps Polly mightn't give you the same answer she gave to the smith."

"Lor' bless ee," Bill said seriously, "Polly wouldn't think nowt of oi, not if oi was ten years older. Oi bee about the same age as she; but she treats me as if I was no older nor her Jarge. No, when Polly marries it won't be in Varley. She be a good many cuts above us, she be. Oi looks upon her jest as an elder sister, and oi doan't moind how much she blows me up -- and she does it pretty hot sometimes, oi can tell ee; but oi should just loike to hear any one say a word agin her; but there be no one in Varley would do that. Every one has a good word for Polly; for when there's sickness in the house, or owt be wrong, Polly's always ready to help. Oi do believe that there never was such a gal. If it hadn't been for her oi would ha' cut it long ago. Oi wouldn't go agin what ye said, Maister Ned; but oi am danged if oi could ha' stood it ef it hadn't been for Polly."

"I suppose," Ned said, "that now they have got the soldiers down in Marsden it will be all right about the mill."

"Oi caan't say," Bill replied; "nateral they doan't say nowt to me; but oi be sure that some'ats oop. They be a-drilling every night, and there will be trouble avore long. Oi doan't believe as they will venture to attack the mill as long as the sojers be in Marsden; but oi wouldn't give the price of a pint of ale for Foxey's loife ef they could lay their hands on him. He'd best not come up this way arter dark."

"He's not likely to do that," Ned said. "I am sure he is a coward or he would have put the mill to work weeks ago."

Secure in the protection of the troops, and proud of the new machinery which was at work in his mill, Mr. Mulready was now himself again. His smile had returned. He carried himself jauntily, and talked lightly and contemptuously of the threats of King Lud. Ned disliked him more in this mood than in the state of depression and irritation which had preceded it. The tones of hatred and contempt in which he spoke of the starving workmen jarred upon him greatly, and it needed all his determination and self command to keep him from expressing his feelings. Mr. Mulready was quick in perceiving, from the expression of Ned's face, the annoyance which his remarks caused him, and reverted to the subject all the more frequently. With this exception the home life was more pleasant than it had been before.

Mr. Mulready, in his satisfaction at the prospect of a new prosperity, was far more tolerant with his wife, and her spirits naturally rose with his. She had fully shared his fears as to the threats by the Luddites, and now agreed cordially with his diatribes against the workpeople, adopting all his opinions as her own.

Ned's acquaintance with Bill Swinton had long been a grievance to her, and her constant complainings as to his love for low company had been one of the afflictions to which Ned had long been accustomed. Now, having her husband by her side, it was a subject to which she frequently reverted.

"Why can't you leave me alone, mother?" Ned burst out one day when Mr. Mulready had left the room. "Can't you leave me in quiet as to my friends, when in two or three months I shall be going away? Bill Swinton is going to enlist in the same regiment in which I am, so as to follow me all over the world.

"Would any of the fine friends you would like me to make do that? I like all the fellows at school well enough, but there is not one of them would do a fiftieth part as much for me as Bill would. Even you, mother, with all your prejudices; must allow that it will be a good thing for me to have some one with me who will really care for me, who will nurse me if I am sick or wounded, who would lay down his life for mine if necessary. I tell you there isn't a finer fellow than Bill living. Of course he's rough, and he's had no education, I know that; but it's not his fault. But a truer or warmer hearted fellow never lived. He is a grand fellow. I wish I was only half as true and as honest and manly as he is. I am proud to have Bill as a friend. It won't be long before I have gone, mother. I have been fighting hard with myself so that there shall be peace and quietness in the house for the little time I have got to be here, and you make it harder for me."

"It's ridiculous your talking so," Mrs. Mulready said peevishly, "and about a common young fellow like this. I don't pretend to understand you, Ned. I never have and never shall do. But I am sure the house will be much more comfortable when you have gone. Whatever trouble there is with my husband is entirely your making. I only wonder that he puts up with your ways as he does. If his temper was not as good as yours is bad he would not be able to do so."

"All right, mother," Ned said. "He is an angel, he is, we all know, and I am the other thing. Well, if you are contented, that's the great thing, isn't it? I only hope you will always be so; but there," he said, calming himself with a great effort as his father's last words again came into his mind, "don't let's quarrel, mother. I am sorry for what I have said. It's quite right that you should stick up for your husband, and I do hope that when I go you will, as you say, be more comfortable and happy. Perhaps you will. I am sure I hope so. Well, I know I am not nice with him. I can't help it. It's my beastly temper, I suppose. That's an old story. Come, mother, I have only a short time to be at home now. Let us both try and make it as pleasant as we can, so that when I am thousands of miles away, perhaps in India, we may have it to look back upon. You try and leave my friends alone and I will try and be as pleasant as I can with your husband."

Mrs. Mulready was crying now.

"You know, Ned, I would love you if you would let me, only you are so set against my husband. I am sure he always means kindly. Look how he takes to little Lucy, who is getting quite fond of him."

"Yes, I am very glad to think that he is, mother," Ned said earnestly. "You see Lucy is much younger, and naturally remembers comparatively little about her father, and has been able to take to Mr. Mulready without our prejudices. I am very glad to see that he really does like her -- in fact I do think he is getting quite fond of her. I shall go away feeling quite easy about her. I wish I could say as much about Charlie. He is not strong, like other boys, and feels unkindness very sharply. I can see him shrink and shiver when your husband speaks to him, and am afraid he will have a very bad time of it when I am gone."

"I am sure, Ned, he will get on very well," Mrs. Mulready said. "I have no doubt that when he gets rid of the example you set him -- I don't want to begin to quarrel again -- but of the example you set him of dislike and disrespect to Mr. Mulready, that he will soon be quite different. He will naturally turn to me again instead of looking to you for all his opinions, and things will go on smoothly and well."

"I am sure I hope so, mother. Perhaps I have done wrong in helping to set Charlie against Mulready. Perhaps when I have gone, too, things will be easier for him. If I could only think so I should go away with a lighter heart. Well, anyhow, mother, I am glad we have had this talk. It is not often we get a quiet talk together now."

"I am sure it is not my fault," Mrs. Mulready said in a slightly injured tone.

"Perhaps not, mother," Ned said kindly. "With the best intentions, I know I am always doing things wrong. It's my way, I suppose. Anyhow, mother, I really have meant well, and I hope you will think of me kindly after I have gone."

"You may be sure I shall do that, Ned," his mother said, weeping again. "I have no doubt the fault has been partly mine too, but you see women don't understand boys, and can't make allowances for them."

And so Ned kissed his mother for the first time since the day when she had returned home from her wedding tour, and mother and son parted on better terms than they had done for very many months, and Ned went with a lightened heart to prepare his lessons for the next day.



Chapter XII: Murdered!


In spite of Ned's resolutions that he would do nothing to mar the tranquillity of the last few weeks of his being at home, he had difficulty in restraining his temper the following day at tea. Never had he seen his stepfather in so bad a humor. Had he known that things had gone wrong at the mill that day, that the new machine had broken one of its working parts and had brought everything to a standstill till it could be repaired, he would have been able to make allowances for Mr. Mulready's ill humor.

Not knowing this he grew pale with the efforts which he made to restrain himself as his stepfather snarled at his wife, snapped at Lucy and Charlie, and grumbled and growled at everything throughout the meal. Everything that was said was wrong, and at last, having silenced his wife and her children, the meal was completed in gloomy silence.

The two boys went into the little room off the hall which they used of an evening to prepare their lessons for next day. Charlie, who came in last, did not abut the door behind him.

"That is a nice man, our stepfather," Ned said in a cold fury. "His ways get more and more pleasant every day; such an amiable, popular man, so smiling and pleasant!"

"Oh! it's no use saying anything," Charlie said in an imploring voice, "it only makes things worse."

"Worse!" Ned exclaimed indignantly; "how could they be worse? Well may they call him Foxey, for foxey he is, a double faced snarling brute."

As the last word issued from Ned's lips he reeled under a tremendous box on the ear from behind. Mr. Mulready was passing through the hall -- for his gig was waiting at the door to take him back to the mill, where some fitters would be at work till late, repairing the damages to the machine -- when he had caught Ned's words, which were spoken at the top of his voice.

The smoldering anger of months burst at once into a flame heightened by the ill humor which the day's events had caused, and he burst into the room and almost felled Ned to the ground with his swinging blow. Recovering himself, Ned flew at him, but the boy was no match for the man, and Mr. Mulready's passion was as fierce as his own; seizing his throat with his left hand and forcing him back into a corner of the room, his stepfather struck him again and again with all his force with his right.

Charlie had run at once from the room to fetch his mother, and it was scarcely a minute after the commencement of the outbreak that she rushed into the room, and with a scream threw her arms round her husband.

"The young scoundrel!" Mr. Mulready exclaimed, panting, as he released his hold of Ned; "he has been wanting a lesson for a long time, and I have given him one at last. He called me Foxey, the young villain, and said I was a double faced snarling brute; let him say so again and I will knock his head off."

But Ned just at present was not in a condition to repeat his words; breathless and half stunned he leaned in the corner, his breath came in gasps, his face was as pale as death, his cheek was cut, there were red marks on the forehead which would speedily become black, and the blood was flowing from a cut on his lip, his eyes had a dazed and half stupid look.

"Oh! William!" Mrs. Mulready said as she looked at her son, "how could you hurt him so!"

"Hurt him, the young reptile!" Mr. Mulready said savagely. "I meant to hurt him. I will hurt him more next time."

Mrs. Mulready paid no attention to his words, but went up to Ned.

"Ned, my boy," she said tenderly, "what is it? Don't look like that, Ned; speak to me."

His mother's voice seemed to rouse Ned into consciousness. He drew a long breath, then slowly passed his hand across his eyes, and lips, and mouth. He looked at his mother and seemed about to speak, but no sound came from his lips. Then his eye fell on his stepfather, who, rather alarmed at the boy's appearance, was standing near the door. The expression of Ned's face changed, his mouth became set and rigid, his eyes dilated, and Mr. Mulready, believing that he was about to spring upon him, drew back hastily half a step and threw up his hands to defend himself. Mrs. Mulready threw herself in Ned's way; the boy made no effort to put her aside, but kept his eyes fixed over her shoulder at his stepfather.

"Take care!" he said hoarsely, "it will be my turn next time, and when it comes I will kill you, you brute."

"Oh, go away, William!" Mrs. Mulready cried; "oh! do go away, or there will be more mischief. Oh! Ned, do sit down, and don't look so dreadful; he is going now."

Mr. Mulready turned and went with a laugh which he intended to be scornful, but in which there was a strong tinge of uneasiness. He had always in his heart been afraid of this boy with his wild and reckless temper, and felt that in his present mood Ned was capable of anything. Still as Mr. Mulready took his seat in his gig his predominant feeling was satisfaction.

"I am glad I have given him a lesson," he muttered to himself, "and have paid him off for months of insolence. He won't try it on again, and as for his threats, pooh! he'll be gone in a few weeks, and there will be an end of it."

After he had gone Mrs. Mulready tried to soothe Ned, but the boy would not listen to her, and in fact did not seem to hear her.

"Don't you mind, mother," he said in a strange, quiet voice, "I will pay him off;" and muttering these words over and over again he went out into the hall, took down his cap in a quiet, mechanical sort of way, put it on, opened the door, and went out.

"Oh! Charlie," Mrs. Mulready said to her second son, who, sobbing bitterly, had thrown himself down in a chair by the table, and was sitting with his head on his hands, "there will be something terrible come of this! Ned's temper is so dreadful, and my husband was wrong, too. He should never have beaten him so, though Ned did say such things to him. What shall I do? these quarrels will be the death of me. I suppose Ned will be wandering about all night again. Do put on your cap, Charlie, and go out and see if you can find him, and persuade him to come home and go to bed; perhaps he will listen to you."

Charlie was absent an hour, and returned saying that he could not find his brother.

"Perhaps he's gone up to Varley as he did last time," Mrs. Mulready said. "I am sure I hope he has, else he will be wandering about all night, and he had such a strange lock in his face that there's no saying where he might go to, or what he might do."

Charlie was almost heartbroken, and sat up till long past his usual time, waiting for his brother's return. At last his eyes would no longer keep open, and he stumbled upstairs to bed, where he fell asleep almost as his head touched the pillow, in spite of his resolution to be awake until Ned returned.

Downstairs Mrs. Mulready kept watch. She did not expect Ned to return, but she was listening for the wheels of her husband's gig. It was uncertain at what time he would return; for when he rose from the tea table she had asked him what time he expected to be back, and he had replied that he could not say; he should stop until the repairs were finished, and she was to go to bed and not bother.

So at eleven o'clock she went upstairs, for once before when he had been out late and she had sat up he had been much annoyed; but after she got in bed she lay for hours listening for the sound of the wheels. At last she fell asleep and dreamed that Ned and her husband were standing at the end of a precipice grappling fiercely together in a life and death struggle. She was awaked at last by a knocking at the door; she glanced at her watch, which hung above her head; it was but half past six.

"What is it, Mary?"

"Please, mum, there's a constable below, and he wants to speak to you immediate."

Mrs. Mulready sprang from the bed and began to dress herself hurriedly. All sorts of mischief that might have come to Ned passed rapidly through her mind; her husband had not returned, but no doubt he had stopped at the mill all night watching the men at work. His absence scarcely occasioned her a moment's thought. In a very few minutes she was downstairs in the kitchen, where the constable was standing waiting for her. She knew him by sight, for Marsden possessed but four constables, and they were all well known characters.

"What is it?" she asked; "has anything happened to my son?"

"No, mum," the constable said in a tone of surprise, "I didn't know as he wasn't in bed and asleep, but I have some bad news for you, mum; it's a bad job altogether."

"What is it?" she asked again; "is it my husband?"

"Well, mum, I am sorry to say as it be. A chap came in early this morning and told me as summat had happened, so I goes out, and half a mile from the town I finds it just as he says."

"But what is it?" Mrs. Mulready gasped.

"Well, mum, I am sorry to have to tell you, but there was the gig all smashed to atoms, and there was the little black mare lying all in a heap with her neck broke, and there was -- " and he stopped.

"My husband!" Mrs. Mulready gasped.

"Yes, marm, I be main sorry to say it were. There, yards in front of them, were Mr. Mulready just stiff and cold. He'd been flung right out over the hoss' head. I expect he had fallen on his head and must have been killed roight out; and the worst of it be, marm, as it warn't an accident, for there, tight across the road, about eighteen inches above the ground, was a rope stretched tight atween a gate on either side. It was plain enough to see what had happened. The mare had come tearing along as usual at twelve mile an hour in the dark, and she had caught the rope, and in course there had been a regular smash."

The pretty color had all gone from Mrs. Mulready's face as he began his story, but a ghastly pallor spread over her face, and a look of deadly horror came into her eyes as he continued.

"Oh, Ned, Ned," she wailed, "how could you!" and then she fell senseless to the ground.

The constable raised her and placed her in a chair.

"Are you sure the master's dead?" the servant asked, wiping her eyes.

"Sure enough," the constable said. "I have sent the doctor off already, but it's no good, he's been dead hours and hours. But," he continued, his professional instincts coming to the surface, "what did she mean by saying, 'Oh, Ned, how could you!' She asked me, too, first about him; ain't he at home?"

"No, he ain't," the servant said, "and ain't been at home all night; there were a row between him and maister last even; they had a fight. Maister Charlie he ran into the parlor as I was a clearing away the' tea things, hallowing out as maister was a-killing Ned. Missis she ran in and I heard a scream, then maister he drove off, and a minute or two later Maister Ned he went out, and he ain't come back again. When I went in with the candles I could see missis had been a crying. That's all I know about it."

"And enough too," the constable said grimly. "This here be a pretty business. Well, you had best get your missis round and see about getting the place ready for the corpse. They have gone up with a stretcher to bring him back. They will be here afore long. I must go to Justice Thompson's and tell him all about it. This be a pretty kittle of fish, surely. I be main sorry, but I have got my duty to do."

An hour later Williams the constable with a companion started out in search of Ned Sankey, having a warrant in his pocket for his arrest on the charge of willful murder.

The excitement in Marsden when it became known that Mr. Mulready had been killed was intense, and it was immensely heightened when it was rumored that a warrant had been issued for the arrest of his stepson on the charge of murder. Quite a little crowd hung all day round the house with closed blinds, within which their so lately active and bustling townsman was lying.

All sorts of conjectures were rife, and there were many who said that they had all along expected harm would come of the marriage which had followed so soon after the death of Captain Sankey. The majority were loud in expression of their sympathy with the dead mill owner, recalling his cheery talk and general good temper. Others were disposed to think that Ned had been driven to the act; but among very few was there any doubt as to his guilt. It was recalled against him that he had before been in the dock for his assault upon Mr. Hathorn, and that it had been proved that he had threatened to kill his master. His sullen and moody demeanor at the marriage of his mother told terribly against him, and the rumors of the previous quarrel when Ned had assaulted his stepfather, and which, related with many exaggerations, had at the time furnished a subject of gossip in the town, also told heavily to his disadvantage.

Williams having learned from the servant that Ned was in the habit of going up to Varley had first made his inquiries there; but neither Bill nor Luke Marner, who were, the constable speedily learned, his principal friends there, had seen him. Varley was greatly excited over the news of the murder. Many of the men worked at Mulready's mill, and had brought back the news at an early hour, as all work was of course suspended.

There was no grief expressed in Varley at Mr. Mulready's death, indeed the news was received with jubilant exultation.

"A good job too," was the general verdict; and the constable felt that were Ned in the village he would be screened by the whole population. He was convinced, however, that both Bill Swinton and Luke Marner were ignorant of his whereabouts, so genuine had been their astonishment at his questions, and so deep their indignation when they learned his errand.

"Thou duss'n't believe it, Luke?" Bill Swinton said as he entered the latter's cottage.

"No, lad, oi duss'n't," Luke said; "no more does Polly here, but it looks main awkward," he said slowly stroking his chin, "if as how what the constable said is right, and there was a fight atween them that evening."

"Maister Ned were a hot 'un," Bill said; "he allus said as how he had a dreadful temper, though oi never seed nowt of it in him, and he hated Foxey like poison; that oi allows; but unless he tells me hisself as he killed him nowt will make me believe it. He might ha' picked up summat handy when Foxey hit him and smashed him, but oi don't believe it of Maister Ned as he would ha done it arterward."

"He war a downright bad 'un war Foxey," Luke said, "vor sure. No worse in the district, and there's many a one as would rejoice as he's gone to his account, and oi believe as whoever's done it has saved Captain Lud from a job; but there, it's no use a talking of that now. Now, look here, Bill, what thou hast got to do be this. Thou hast got to find the boy; oi expect he be hiding somewheres up on t' moors. Thou knowst better nor oi wheere he be likely vor to be. Voind him out, lad, and tell him as they be arter him. Here be ten punds as oi ha had laying by me for years ready in case of illness; do thou give it to him and tell him he be heartily welcome to it, and can pay me back agin when it suits him. Tell him as he'd best make straight for Liverpool and git aboard a ship there for 'Merikee -- never moind whether he did the job or whether he didn't. Things looks agin him now, and he best be on his way."

"Oi'll do't," Bill said, "and oi'll bid thee goodby, Luke, and thee too, Polly, for ye won't see me back agin. Of course I shall go wi' him. He haven't got man's strength yet, and oi can work for us both. I bain't a-going to let him go by hisself, not loikely."

"Thou art roight, lad," Luke said heartily. "Dang it all, lad, thou speak'st loike a man. Oi be sorry thou art going, Bill, for oi loike thee; but thou be right to go wi' this poor lad. Goodby, lad, and luck be wi' ye;" and Luke wrung Bill's hand heartily.

"I shan't say goodby, Bill," Mary Powlett said quietly. "I don't think Ned Sankey can have done this thing, and if he hasn't you will find that he will not run away, but will stay here and face it out."

"Then he will be a fool," Luke Marner said. "I tell ee the evidence be main strong agin him, and whether he be innocent or not he will find it hard to clear hisself. Oi don't think much the worst of him myself if he done it, and most in Varley will be o' my way o' thinking. Foxey war a tyrant if ever there war one, and the man what was so hard a maister to his hands would be loike to be hard to his wife's children."

"Don't speak like that, feyther," Polly said; "murder is murder, you know."

"Ay, lass, and human natur be human natur, and it be no use your going agin it. If he ha been and ill treated the boy, and I don't doubt as he has, thou may'st argue all noight, but thou won't get me to say as oi blames him much if he has done it. Oi don't suppose as he meant to kill him -- not vor a moment. I should think hard of him if oi thowt as how he did. He meant, oi reckon, vor to throw his horse down and cut his knees, knowing, as every one did, as Mulready were moighty proud of his horse, and he may have reckoned as Foxey would git a good shake, and some bruises as well, as a scare, but oi doan't believe, not vor a moment, as he meant vor to kill him. That's how oi reads it, lass."

"Well, it may be so," Mary assented. "It is possible he may have done it, meaning really only to give him a fright and a shake; but I hope he didn't. Still if that was how it happened I will shake hands, Bill, and wish you goodby and good luck, for it would be best for him to get away, for I am afraid that the excuse that he only meant to frighten and not to kill him will not save him. I am sorry you are going, Bill, very sorry; but if you were my own brother I would not say a word to stop you. Didn't his feyther give up his life to save little Janey? and I would give mine to save his. But I do think it will be good for you, Bill; times are bad, and it has been very hard for you lately in Varley. I know all about it, and you will do better across the seas. You will write, won't you, sometimes?"

"Never fear," Bill said huskily, "oi will wroite, Polly; goodby, and God bless you all; but it mayn't be goodby, for oi mayn't foind him;" and, wringing the hands of Luke and Polly, Bill returned to his cottage, hastily packed up a few things in a kit, slung it over his shoulder on a stick, and started out in search of Ned.

Late that evening there came a knock at the door of Luke's cottage. On opening it he found Bill standing there.

"Back again, Bill! -- then thou hasn't found him?"

"No," Bill replied in a dejected voice. "Oi ha' hoonted high and low vor him; oi ha' been to every place on the moor wheer we ha' been together, and wheer oi thowt as he might be a-waiting knowing as oi should set out to look for him as soon as oi heard the news. Oi don't think he be nowhere on the moor. Oi have been a-tramping ever sin' oi started this mourning. Twice oi ha' been down Maarsten to see if so be as they've took him, but nowt ain't been seen of him. Oi had just coom from there now. Thou'st heerd, oi suppose, as the crowner's jury ha found as Foxey wer murdered by him; but it bain't true, you know, Luke -- be it?"

Bill made the assertions stoutly, but there was a tremulous eagerness in the question which followed it; He was fagged and exhausted. His faith in Ned was strong, but he had found the opinion in the town so unanimous against him that he longed for an assurance that some one beside himself believed in Ned's innocence.

"Oi doan't know, Bill," Luke Marner said, stroking his chin as he always did when he was thinking; "oi doan't know, Bill -- oi hoape he didn't do it, wi' all my heart. But oi doan't know aboot it. He war sorely tried -- that be sartain. But if he did it, he did it; it makes no difference to me. It doan't matter to me one snap ov the finger whether the lad killed Foxey or whether he didn't -- that bain't my business or yours. What consarns me is, as the son of the man as saved my child's loife at t' cost of his own be hunted by the constables and be in risk of his loife. That's t' question as comes home to me -- oi've had nowt else ringing in my ears all day. Oi ha' been oot to a searching high and low. Oi ain't a found him, but oi ha made oop moi moind whaat I be agoing to do."

They had moved a little away from the cottage now, but Luke lowered his voice:

"Oi be agoing down to t' town in the morning to give moiself oop vor the murder of Foxey."

Bill gave an exclamation of astonishment:

"But thou didn'st do it, Luke?"

"I moight ha' done it for owt thou know'st, Bill. He wer the worst of maisters, and, as thou know'st, Bill, oi hated him joost as all the countryside did. He's been warned by King Lud and ha' been obliged to get the sojers at his factory. Well, thou knowest it was nateral as he would drive down last noight to see how t' chaps at t' engine was a-getting on, and it coomed across my moind as it wer a good opportunity vor to finish un; so ther thou hast it."

Bill gazed in astonishment through the darkness at his companion.

"But it bain't true, Luke? Thou wast talking to me arter thou coom'd out of the Coo at noine o'clock, an thou saidst as thou was off to bed."

"Nowt of the koind," Luke replied. "Oi told ye, thou know'st, as I wer a-going down to t' toon and oi had got a job in hand. Oi spoke mysterous loike, and you noticed as how oi had got a long rope coiled up in moi hand."

Bill gave a gasp of astonishment.

"That's what thou hast got to say," Luke said doggedly; "only astead o' its being at noine o'clock it war at ten. Oi were just a-slipping owt of the cottage, t' others were all asleep and knew nowt aboot moi having goone out."

Bill was silent now.

"Oi wish oi had a-thowt of it," he said at last; "oi would ha' doon it moiself."

"Oi wouldn't ha' let thee, Bill," Luke said quietly. "He be a friend of thine, and oi know thou lovest him loike a brother, and a soight mor'n most brothers; but it be moi roight. The captain gave his loife vor moi child's, and oi bee a going vor to give mine for his. That will make us quits. Besides, thou art young; oi be a-getting on. Jarge, he will be a-arning money soon; and Polly, she can get a place in sarvice, and 'ul help t' young uns. They will manage. Oi ha' been thinking it over in all loites, and ha' settled it all in moi moind."

Bill was silent for a time and then said:

"Ther be one thing agin' it, Luke, and it be this: As we can't hear nowt of Maister Ned, oi be a thinking as he ha' made straight vor Liverpool or Bristol or London, wi' a view to going straight across the seas or of 'listing, or doing somewhat to keep out of t' way. He be sure to look in t' papers, to see how things be a-going on here; and as sure as he sees as how you've gived yourself up and owed up as you ha' done it, he will coom straight back again and say as how it were him."

"Maister Ned might ha' killed Foxey in a passion, but not loike this. He didn't mean to kill him, but only vor to give him a shaake and frighten him. But oi be sartin sure as he wouldn't let another be hoonged in his place. So ye see thou'd do more harm nor good."

"Oi didn't think of that," Luke said, rubbing his chin. "That be so, surely. He'd be bound to coom back agin. Well, lad, oi will think it over agin avore moorning, and do thou do t' same. Thou know'st moi wishes now. We ha' got atween us to get Maister Ned off -- that be the thing as be settled. It doan't matter how it's done, but it's got to be done soomhow; and oi rely on thee to maake moi story good, whatever it be.

"There can't be nowt wrong about it -- a loife vor a loife be fair, any way. There be more nor eno' in Yorkshire in these toimes, and one more or less be of no account to any one."

"Oi be thy man, Luke," Bill said earnestly. "Whatever as thou sayest oi will sweer to; but I would reyther change places."

"That caan't be, Bill, so it bain't no use thinking aboot it. Oi know thou wilt do thy best vor Polly and t' young uns. It 'ull be rough on her, but it bain't to be helped; and as she will be going away from Varley and settling elsewhere, it wouldn't be brought up again her as she had an uncle as were a Luddite and got hoong for killing a bad maister. Goodnoight, lad! oi will see thee i' t' morning."



Chapter XIII: Committed For Trial


After a talk with Luke Marner early in the morning Bill Swinton went down into Marsden to hear if there was any news of Ned. He was soon back again.

"Maister Ned's took," he said as he met Luke, who was standing in front of his cottage awaiting his return before starting out to renew his search for Ned.

"Oi hear, at noine o'clock last noight he walked in to Justice Thompson's and said as he had coom to give hisself up. He said as how he had been over at Painton, where the old woman as was his nurse lives; and directly as the news coom in t' arternoon as Foxey had been killed and he was wanted for the murder, he coom straight over."

"That's roight," Luke said heartily; "that settles it. He must ha' been innocent or he would ha' bolted straight away, and not coom back and gi'd hisself oop to justice. It were only his hiding away as maade oi think as he moight ha' done it. Noo in course he will be able to clear hisself; for if he was over at Painton, why, he couldn't be here -- that be plain to any one."

"Oi be aveared, by what t' constable told me, as he won't be able vor to prove it. It seems as how he didn't get to Painton till t' morning. He says as how he were awalking aboot on t' moor all night. So you see he will have hard work vor to clear hisself."

"Then I shall ha' to give meself up," Luke said quietly. "Ye see as it can't do him harm now, 'cause he ha' coom back; and ef oi says as I killed the man they will open the doors, and he will only have to walk out."

"Oi ha' been a-thinking of that as I coom back," Bill said, "and oi doan't think as oi see my way clear through it now. Firstly, if Maister Ned did it, of course he will hold his tongue and leave 'em to prove it, which maybe they can't do; so he has a chance of getting off. But if you cooms forward and owns up, he will be saaf, if he did it, to say so at once; and so you will have done him harm rather nor good. Vor of course he will be able to prove his story better nor you will yourn, and you will have put the noose round his neck instead of getting it put round yourn. In the second place, it be loike enough as they lawyer chaps moight find out as your story weren't true when they coom to twisting me inside owt in the box. They might foind as oi war a-swearing false. There be never no saying. They moight prove as that bit of rope warn't yourn. Polly moight swear as she hadn't been asleep till arter the time you said you went out, and that you never moved as long as she war awake. Lots of unexpected things moight turn up to show it war a lie and then you know they'd drop onto Maister Ned wourse nor ever."

"I doan't believe they would ask you any questions, Bill. When a man cooms and says, 'Oi did a murder,' they doan't want to ask many questions aboot it. They takes it vor granted as he wouldn't be such a fool as vor to say he did it when he didn't. But th' other point be more sarous. It be loike enough as t' lad did it, and if he did he will out wi' it when oi cooms forward. If oi could get to see him first oi moight argue him into holding his tongue by pointing owt that moi loife bain't of so much valley as hissen, also that I owe a debt to his feyther."

"Well, oi ha' been thinking it over," Bill said, "and moi opinion is thou had best hold thy tongue till the trial. Thou can'st be in the court. Ef the jury foind him innocent, of course thou will't hold thy tongue; ef they foind him guilty, then thou'lt get up in the court, and thou'lt say to the joodge, civil loike:

"Moi lord, the gentlemen of the jury have made a mistake; oi am the chap as killed Foxey and oi ha' got a young man here as a witness as moi words is true."

"Perhaps that will be the best way, Bill," Luke said thoughtfully. "Oi ha' bin thinking how we moight get over Polly's evidence agin me; every noight oi will get up regular and coom and ha' a talk wi' you; oi will coom out wi'out my shoes as quiet as a cat, and then if Polly sweers as oi didn't leave t' house that noight thou can'st sweer as she knows nothing at all aboot it, as oi ha' been out every noight to see thee."

So the matter was allowed to stand for the time; and Bill and Luke, when they had had their breakfast, went down again to Marsden to hear what was going on. Marsden was greatly excited. The sensation caused by the news of the murder scarcely exceeded that which was aroused when it was heard that Ned Sankey had come in and given himself up. Some thought that at the examination which was to take place at noon he would at once confess his guilt, while others believed that he would plead not guilty, and would throw the burden of proving that he killed his stepfather upon the prosecution.

All through the previous day Mrs. Mulready had been the central object of interest to the town gossips pending the capture of her son. Dr. Green had been in and out of the house all day. It was known that she had passed from one fit of hysterics into another, and that the doctor was seriously alarmed about her state. Rumors were about that the servants, having been interviewed at the back gate, said, that in the intervals of her screaming and wild laughter she over and over again accused Ned as the murderer of her husband. Dr. Green, when questioned, peremptorily refused to give any information whatever as to his patient's opinions or words.

"The woman is well nigh a fool at the best of times," he said irritably, "and at present she knows no more what she is saying than a baby. Her mind is thrown completely off any little balance that it had and she is to all intents and purposes a lunatic."

Only with his friend Mr. Porson, who called upon him after the first visit had been paid to Mrs. Mulready immediately after her husband's body had been brought in, did Dr. Green discuss in any way what had happened.

"I agree with you, Porson, in doubting whether the poor boy had a hand in this terrible business. We both know, of course, that owing to the bad training and total absence of control when he was a child in India his temper was, when he first came here, very hot and ungovernable. His father often deplored the fact to me, blaming himself as being to a great extent responsible for it, through not having had time to watch and curb him when he was a child; but he was, as you say, an excellently disposed boy, and your testimony to the efforts which he has made to overcome his faults is valuable. But I cannot conceal from you, who are a true friend of the boy's, what I should certainly tell to no one else, namely, that I fear that his mother's evidence will be terribly against him.

"She has always been prejudiced against him. She is a silly, selfish woman. So far as I could judge she cared little for her first husband, who was a thousand times too good for her; but strangely enough she appears to have had something like a real affection for this man Mulready, who, between ourselves, I believe, in spite of his general popularity in the town, to have been a bad fellow. One doesn't like to speak ill of the dead under ordinary circumstances, but his character is an important element in the question before us. Of course among my poorer patients I hear things of which people in general are ignorant, and it is certain that there was no employer in this part of the country so thoroughly and heartily detested by his men."

"I agree with you cordially," Mr. Porson said. "Unfortunately I know from Ned's own lips that the lad hated his stepfather; but I can't bring myself to believe that he has done this."

"I hope not," the doctor said gravely, "I am sure I hope not; but I have been talking with his brother, who is almost heartbroken, poor boy, and he tells me that there was a terrible scene last night. It seems that Mulready was extremely cross and disagreeable at tea time; nothing, however, took place at the table; but after the meal was over, and the two boys were alone together in that little study of theirs, Ned made some disparaging remarks about Mulready. The door, it seems, was open. The man overheard them, and brutally assaulted the boy, and indeed Charlie thought that he was killing him. He rushed in and fetched his mother, who interfered, but not before Ned had been sadly knocked about. Mulready then drove off to his factory, and Ned, who seems to have been half stunned, went out almost without saying a word, and, as you know, hasn't been heard of since.

"It certainly looks very dark against him. You and I, knowing the boy, and liking him, may have our doubts, but the facts are terribly against him, and unless he is absolutely in the position to prove an alibi, I fear that it will go hard with him."

"I cannot believe it," Mr. Porson said, "although I admit that the facts are terribly against him. Pray, if you get an opportunity urge upon his mother that her talk will do Ned horrible damage and may cost him his life. I shall at once go and instruct Wakefield to appear for him, if he is taken, and to obtain the best professional assistance for his defense. I feel completely unhinged by the news, the boy has been such a favorite of mine ever since I came here; he has fought hard against his faults, and had the makings of a very fine character in him. God grant that he may be able to clear himself of this terrible accusation!"

Ned's first examination was held on the morning after he had given himself up, before Mr. Simmonds and Mr. Thompson. The sitting was a private one. The man who first found Mr. Mulready's body testified to the fact that a rope had been laid across the road. Constable Williams proved that when he arrived upon the spot nothing had been touched. Man and horse lay where they had fallen, the gig was broken in pieces, a strong rope was stretched across the road. He said that on taking the news to Mrs. Mulready he had learned from the servants that the prisoner had not slept at home that night, and that there had been a serious quarrel between him and the deceased the previous evening.

After hearing this evidence Ned was asked if he was in a position to account for the time which had elapsed between his leaving home and his arrival at his nurse's cottage.

He replied that he could only say that he had been wandering on the moor.

The case was remanded for a week, as the evidence of Mrs. Mulready and the others in the house would be necessary, and it was felt that a mother could not be called upon to testify against her son with her husband lying dead in the house.

"I am sorry indeed to see you in this position," Mr. Simmonds said to Ned. "My friendship for your late father, and I may say for yourself, makes the position doubly painful to me, but I can only do my duty. I should advise you to say nothing at this period of the proceedings; but if there is anything which you think of importance to say, and which will give another complexion to the case, I am ready to hear it."

"I have nothing to say, sir," Ned said quietly, "except that I am wholly innocent of the affair. As you may see by my face I was brutally beaten by my stepfather on the evening before his death. I went out of the house scarce knowing what I was doing. I had no fixed intention of going anywhere or of doing anything, I simply wanted to get away from home. I went on to the moors and wandered about, I suppose for some hours. Then I threw myself down under the shelter of a pile of stones and lay there awake till it was morning. Then I determined to go to the house of my old nurse and to stop there until I was fit to be seen. In the afternoon I heard what had taken place here, and that I was accused of the murder, and I at once came over here and gave myself up."

"As you are not in a position to prove what you state," Mr. Simmonds said, "we have nothing to do but to remand the case until this day week. I may say that I have received a letter from Dr. Green saying that he and Mr. Porson are ready to become your bail to any amount; but we could not think of accepting bail in a charge of murder."

Ned bowed and followed the constable without a word to the cells. His appearance had not been calculated to create a favorable impression. His clothes were stained and muddy; his lips were swollen, his eyes were discolored and so puffed that he could scarcely see between the lids, his forehead was bruised and cut in several places. He had passed two sleepless nights; his voice had lost its clearness of ring and was low and husky. Mr. Simmonds shook his head to his fellow magistrate.

"I am afraid it's a bad case, Thompson, but the lad has been terribly ill used, there is no doubt about that. It's a thousand pities he takes up the line of denying it altogether. If he were to say, what is no doubt the truth, that having been brutally beaten he put the rope across the road intending to punish and even injure his stepfather, but without any intention of killing him, I think under the circumstances of extreme provocation, and what interest we could bring to bear on the matter, he would get off the capital punishment, for the jury would be sure to recommend him to mercy. I shall privately let Green and Porson, who are evidently acting as his friends in the matter, know that I think it would be far better for him to tell the truth and throw himself on the mercy of the crown."

"They may not find him guilty," Mr. Thompson said. "The jury will see that he received very strong provocation; and after all, the evidence is, so far as we know at present, wholly circumstantial, and unless the prosecution can bring home to him the possession of the rope, it is likely enough they will give him the benefit of the doubt."

"His life is ruined anyhow," Mr. Simmonds said. "Poor lad! poor lad! Another fortnight and I was going to apply for a commission for him. I wish to heavens I had done so at Christmas, and then all this misery would have been spared."

As soon as Ned had been led back to the cell Mr. Porson obtained permission to visit him. He found him in a strange humor.

"Well, my poor boy," he began, "this is a terrible business."

"Who do you mean it is a terrible business for, Mr. Porson, me or him?"

Ned spoke in a hard unnatural voice, without the slightest tone of trouble or emotion. Mr. Porson perceived at once that his nerves were brought up to such a state of tension by the events of the preceding forty-eight hours that he was scarce responsible for what he was saying.

"I think I meant for you, Ned. I cannot pretend to have any feeling for the man who is dead, especially when I look at your face."

"Yes, it is not a nice position for me," Ned said coldly, "just at the age of seventeen to be suspected of the murder of one's stepfather, and such a nice stepfather too, such a popular man in the town! And not only suspected, but with a good chance of being hung for it."

"Ned, my dear boy," Mr. Porson said kindly, "don't talk in that way. You know that we, your friends, are sure that you did not do it."

"Are you quite sure, sir?" Ned said. "I am not quite sure myself. I know I should have done it if I had had the chance. I thought over all sorts of ways in which I might kill him, and I wouldn't quite swear that I did not think of this plan and carry it out, though it doesn't quite seem to me that I did. I have no very definite idea what happened that night, and certainly could give but a vague account of myself from the time I left the house till next morning, when I found myself lying stiff and half frozen on the moor. Anyhow, whether I killed him or not it's all the same. I should have done so if I could. And if some one else has saved me the trouble I suppose I ought to feel obliged to him."

Mr. Porson saw that in Ned's present state it was useless to talk to him. Two nights without sleep, together with the intense excitement he had gone through, had worked his brain to such a state of tension that he was not responsible for what he was saying. Further conversation would do him harm rather than good. What he required was rest and, if possible, sleep. Mr. Porson therefore only said quietly:

"We will not talk about it now, Ned; your brain is over excited with all you have gone through. What you want now is rest and sleep."

"I don't feel sleepy, Mr. Porson. I don't feel as if I should ever get to sleep again. I don't look like it, do I?"

"No, Ned, I don't think you do at present; but I wish you did, my boy. Well, remember that we, your old friends, all believe you innocent of this thing, and that we will spare no pains to prove it to the world. I see," he said, looking at the table, "that you have not touched your breakfast. I am not surprised that you could not eat it. I will see that you have a cup of really good tea sent you in."

"No," Ned said with a laugh which it pained Mr. Porson to hear, "I have not eaten since I had tea at home. It was only the day before yesterday, but it seems a year."

On leaving the cell Mr. Porson went to Dr. Green, who lived only three or four doors away, told him of the state in which he had found Ned, and begged him to give him a strong and, as far as possible, tasteless sedative, and to put it in a cup of tea.

"Yes, that will be the best thing," the doctor replied. "I had better not go and see him, for talking will do him harm rather than good. We shall be having him on our hands with brain fever if this goes on. I will go round with the tea myself to the head constable and tell him that no one must on any account be permitted to see Ned, and that rest and quiet are absolutely necessary for him. I will put a strong dose of opium into the tea."

Ten minutes later Dr. Green called upon the chief constable and told him that he feared from what he had heard from Mr. Porson that Ned was in a very critical state, and that unless he got rest and sleep he would probably have an attack of brain fever, even if his mind did not give way altogether.

"I was intending to have him removed at once," the officer said, "to a comfortable room at my own house. He was only placed where he is temporarily. I exchanged a few words with him after the examination and was struck myself with the strangeness of his tone. Won't you see him?"

"I think that any talk is bad for him," the doctor said. "I have put a strong dose of opium in this tea, and I hope it will send him off to sleep. When he recovers I will see him."

"I think, doctor," the constable said significantly, "it would be a good thing if you were to see him at once. You see, if things go against him, and between ourselves the case is a very ugly one, if you could get in the box and say that you saw him here, and that, in your opinion, his mind was shaken, and that as likely as not he had not been responsible for his actions from the time he left his mother's house, it might save his life."

"That is a capital idea," Dr. Green said, "and Porson's evidence would back mine. Yes, I will go in and see him even if my visit does do him harm."

"I will move him into his new quarters first," the officer said; "then if he drinks the tea he may, if he feels sleepy, throw himself on the bed and go off. He will be quiet and undisturbed there."

Two or three minutes later the doctor was shown into a comfortable room. A fire was burning brightly, and the tea was placed on a little tray with a new roll and a pat of butter.

Ned's mood had somewhat changed. He received the doctor with a boisterous laugh.

"How are you, doctor? Here I am, you see, monarch of all I survey. This is the first time you have visited me in a room which I could consider entirely my own. Not a bad place either."

"I hope you will not be here long, Ned," Dr. Green said, humoring him. "We shall all do our best to get you out as soon as we can."

"I don't think your trying will be of much use, doctor; but what's the odds as long as you are happy!"

"That's right, my boy, nothing like looking at matters cheerfully. You know, lad, how warmly all your old friends are with you. Would you like me to bring Charlie next time I come?"

"No, no, doctor," Ned said almost with a cry. "No. I have thought it over, and Charlie must not see me. It will do him harm and I shall break down. I shall have to see him at the trial -- of course he must be there -- that will be bad enough."

"Very well," the doctor said quietly, "just as you like, Ned. I shall be seeing you every day, and will give him news of you. I am going to see him now."

"Tell him I am well and comfortable and jolly," Ned said recklessly.

"I will tell him you are comfortable, Ned, and I should like to tell him that you had eaten your breakfast."

"Oh, yes! Tell him that. Say I ate it voraciously." And he swallowed down the cup of tea and took a bite at the roll.

"I will tell him," Dr. Green said. "I will come in again this evening, and will perhaps bring in with me a little medicine. You will be all the better for a soothing draught."

"I want no draughts," Ned said. "Why should I? I am as right as ninepence."

"Very well. We will see," the doctor said. "Now I must be going my rounds."

As soon as he had gone Ned began pacing up and down the room, as he had done the whole of the past night without intermission. Gradually, however, the powerful narcotic began to take effect. His walk became slower, his head began to droop, and at last he stumbled toward the bed in the corner of the room, threw himself heavily down, and was almost instantly sound asleep. Five minutes later the door opened quietly and Dr. Green entered.

He had been listening outside the door, had noticed the change in the character of Ned's walk, and having heard the fall upon the bed, and had no fear of his rousing himself at his entrance. The boy was lying across the bed, and the doctor, who was a powerful man, lifted him gently and laid him with his head upon the pillow. He felt his pulse, and lifted his eyelid.

"It was a strong dose," he said to himself, "far stronger than I should have dared give him at any other time, but nothing less would have acted, with his brain in such an excited state. I must keep in the town today and look in from time to time and see how he is going on. It may be that I shall have to take steps to rouse him."

At the next visit Dr. Green looked somewhat anxious as he listened to the boy's breathing and saw how strongly he was under the influence of the narcotic.

"Under any other circumstances," he said to the chief constable, who had entered the room with him, "I should take strong measures to arouse him at once, but as it is I will risk it. I know it is a risk both for him and me, for a nice scrape I should get in if he slipped through my fingers; but unless he gets sleep I believe his brain will go, and anything is better than that."

"Yes, poor lad," the officer said. "When I look at his face I confess my sympathies are all with him rather than with the man he killed."

"I don't think he killed him," the doctor said quietly. "I am almost sure he didn't."

"You don't say so!" the chief constable said, surprised. "I had not the least doubt about it."

"No. Nobody seems to have the least doubt about it," the doctor said bitterly. "I am almost sure that he had nothing to do with it; but if he did it it was when he was in a state of such passion that he was practically irresponsible for his actions. At any rate, I am prepared to swear that his mind is unhinged at present. I will go back now and fetch two or three books and will then sit by him. He needs watching."

For several hours the doctor sat reading by Ned's bedside. From time to time he leaned over the lad, listened to his breathing, felt his pulse, and occasionally lifted his eyelid. After one of these examinations, late in the afternoon, he rose with a sigh of relief, pulled down the blinds, gently drew the curtains, and then, taking his books, went down and noiselessly closed the door after him.

"Thank God! he will do now," he said to the chief constable; "but it has been a very near squeak, and I thought several times I should have to take immediate steps to wake him. However, the effects are passing off, and he will soon be in a natural sleep. Pray let the house be kept as quiet as possible, and let no one go near him. The chances are he will sleep quietly till morning."

The doctor called again the last thing that evening, but was told that no stir had been heard in Ned's room, and the same report met him when he came again next morning.

"That is capital," he said. "Let him sleep on. He has a long arrears to make up. I shall not be going out today; please send in directly he wakes."

"Very well," the officer replied. "I will put a man outside his door, and the moment a move is heard I will let you know."



Chapter XIV: Committed For Trial


It was not until after midday that the message arrived, and Dr. Green at once went in. Ned was sitting on the side of the bed, a constable having come off with the message as soon as he heard him make the first move.

"Well, Ned, how are you now?" Dr. Green asked cheerfully as he went to the window and drew back the curtains. "Had a good sleep, my boy, and feel all the better for it, I hope."

"Yes, I think I have been asleep," Ned said in a far more natural voice than that of the previous day. "How did the curtains get drawn?"

"I drew them, Ned. I looked in in the afternoon, and found you fast asleep, so I darkened the room."

"Why, what time is it now?" Ned asked.

"Half past twelve, Ned."

"Half past twelve! Why, how can that be?"

"Why, my boy, you have had twenty-two hours' sleep."

Ned gave an exclamation of astonishment.

"You had two nights' arrears to make up for, and nature is not to be outraged in that way with impunity. I am very thankful that you had a good night, for I was really anxious about you yesterday."

"I feel rather heavy and stupid now," Ned said, "but I am all the better for my sleep.

"Let me think," he began, looking round the room, for up till now remembrance of the past had not come back again, "what am I doing here? Oh! I remember now."

"You are here, my boy, on a charge of which I have no doubt we shall prove you innocent. Of course Porson and I and all your friends know you are innocent, but we have got to prove it to the world, and we shall want all your wits to help us. But we needn't talk about that now. The first thing for you to do is to put your head in a basin of water. By the time you have had a good wash your breakfast will be here. I told my old cook to prepare it when I came out, and as you are a favorite of hers I have no doubt it will be a good one. After you have discussed that we can talk matters over. I sent my boy down to the school just now to ask Porson to come up here in half an hour. Then we three can lay our heads together and see what are the best steps to take."

"Let me see," Ned said thoughtfully. "Was I dreaming, or have I seen Mr. Porson since I came here?"

"You are not dreaming, Ned; but the fact is, you were not quite yourself yesterday. The excitement you had gone through had been too much for you."

"It all seems a dream to me," Ned said in a hopeless tone, "a confused, muddled sort of dream."

"Don't think about it now, Ned," the doctor said cheerfully, "but get off your things at once, and set to and sluice your head well with water. I will be back in a quarter of an hour with the breakfast."

At the end of that time the doctor returned, his boy carrying a tray. The constable on duty took it from him, and would have carried it into Ned's room, but the doctor said:

"Give it me, Walker. I will take it in myself. I don't want him to see any of you just at present. His head's in a queer state, and the less he is impressed with the fact that he is in charge the better."

Dr. Green found Ned looking all the better for his wash. The swelling of his face had now somewhat abated, but the bruises were showing out in darker colors than before; still he looked fresher and better.

"Here is your breakfast, Ned, and if you don't enjoy it Jane will be terribly disappointed."

"I shall enjoy it, doctor. I feel very weak; but I do think I am hungry."

"You ought to be, Ned, seeing that you have eaten nothing for two days."

The doctor removed the cloth which covered the tray. The meal consisted of three kidneys and two eggs, and a great pile of buttered toast. The steam curled out of the spout of a dainty china teapot, and there was a small jug brimful of cream.

The tears came into Ned's eyes.

"Oh! how good you are, doctor!"

"Nonsense, good!" the doctor said; "come, eat away, that will be the best thanks to Jane and me."

Ned needed no pressing. He ate languidly at first; but his appetite came as he went on, and he drank cup after cup of the fragrant tea, thick with cream. With the exception of one egg, he cleared the tray.

"There, doctor!" he said, as he pushed back his chair; "if you are as satisfied as I am you must be contented indeed."

"I am, Ned; that meal has done us both a world of good. Ah! here is Porson, just arrived at the right moment."

"How are you, Ned?" the master asked heartily.

"I am quite well, sir, thank you. Sleep and the doctor, and the doctor's cook, have done wonders for me. I hear you came yesterday, sir, but I don't seem to remember much about it."

"Yes, I was here, Ned," Mr. Porson said, "but you were pretty well stupid from want of sleep. However, I am glad to see you quite yourself again this morning."

"And now," the doctor said, "we three must put our heads together and see what is to be done. You understand, Ned, how matters stand, don't you?"

"Yes, sir," Ned said after a pause; "I seem to know that some one said that Mr. Mulready was dead, and some one thought that I had killed him, and then I started to come over to give myself up. Oh! yes, I remember that, and then there was an examination before the magistrates. I remember it all; but it seems just as if it had been a dream."

"Yes, that is what happened, Ned, and naturally it seems a dream to you, because you were so completely overcome by excitement and want of food and sleep that you were scarcely conscious of what was passing. Now we want you to think over quietly, as well as you can, what you did when you left home."

Ned sat for a long time without speaking.

"It seems all confused," he said at last. "I don't even remember going out of the house. I can remember his striking me in the face again and again, and then I heard my mother scream, and everything seems to have become misty. But I know I was walking about; I know that I was worrying to get at him, and that if I had met him I should have attacked him, and if I had had anything in my hand I should have killed him."

"But you don't remember doing anything, Ned? You cannot recall that you went anywhere and got a rope and fastened it across the road with the idea of upsetting his gig on the way back from the mill?"

"No, sir," Ned said decidedly; "I can't recollect anything of that at all. I am quite sure if I had done that I should remember it; for I seem to remember, now I think of it, a good deal of what I did. Yes, I went up through Varley; the lights weren't out, and I wondered what Bill would say if I were to knock at his door and he opened it and saw what a state my face was in. Then I went out on the moor, and it seems to me that I walked about for hours, and the longer I walked the more angry I was. At last -- it could not have been long before morning, I think -- I lay down for a time, and then when it was light I made up my mind to go over and see Abijah. I knew she would be with me. That's all I remember about it. Does my mother think I did it?"

Dr. Green hesitated a moment.

"Your mother is not in a state to think one way or the other, Ned; she is in such a state of grief that she hardly knows what she is saying or doing."

In fact Mrs. Mulready entertained no doubt whatever upon the subject, and had continued to speak of Ned's wickedness until Dr. Green that morning had lost all patience with her, and told her she ought to be ashamed of herself to be the first to accuse her son, and that if he was hung she would only have herself to blame for it.

Ned guessed by the doctor's answer that his mother was against him.

"It is curious," he said, "she did not take on so after my father's death, and he was always kind and good to her, while this man was just the reverse."

"There's never any understanding women," Dr. Green said testily, "and your mother is a singularly inconsequent and weak specimen of her sex. Well, Ned, and so that is all you can tell us about the way you passed that unfortunate evening. What a pity it is, to be sure, that you did not rouse up your friend Bill. His evidence would probably have cleared you at once. As it is, of course we believe your story, my boy. The question is, will the jury believe it?"

"I don't seem to care much whether they do or not," Ned said sadly, "unless we find the man who did it. Every one will think me guilty even if I am acquitted. Fancy going on living all one's life and knowing that everyone one meets is thinking to himself, 'That is the man who killed his stepfather' -- it would be better to be hung at once."

"You must look at it in a more hopeful way than that, Ned," Mr. Porson said kindly; "many will from the first believe, with us, that you are innocent. You will live it down, my boy, and sooner or later we may hope and believe that God will suffer the truth to be known. At the worst, you know you need not go on living here. The world is wide, and you can go where your story is unknown.

"Do not look on the darkest side of things. And now, for the present, I have brought you down a packet of books. If I were you I would try to read -- anything is better than going on thinking. You will want all your wits about you, and the less you worry your mind the better. Mr. Wakefield will represent you at the examination next week; but I do not see that there will be much for him to do, as I fear there is little doubt that you will be committed for trial, when of course we shall get the best legal assistance for you. I will tell him exactly what you have said to me, and he can then come and see you or not as he likes. I shall come in every day. I have already obtained permission from the magistrates to do so. I shall go now and see Charlie and tell him all about it. It will cheer him very much, poor boy. You may be sure he didn't think you guilty; still, your assurance that you know nothing whatever about it will be a comfort to him."

"Yes," Ned said, "Charlie knows that I would not tell a lie to save my life, though he knows that I might possibly kill any one when I am in one of my horrible tempers; and I did think I was getting over them, Mr. Porson!" he broke out with a half sob. "I have really tried hard."

"I know you have, Ned. I am sure you have done your best, my boy, and you have been sorely tried; but, now, I must be off. Keep up your spirits, hope for the best, and pray God to strengthen you to bear whatever may be in store for you, and to clear you from this charge."

That evening when Mr. Porson was in his study the servant came in and said that a young man wished to speak to him.

"Who is it, Mary?"

"He says his name is Bill Swinton, sir."

"Oh! I know," the master said; "show him in."

Bill was ushered in.

"Sit down, Bill," Mr. Porson said; "I have heard of you as a friend of Sankey's. I suppose you have come to speak to me about this terrible business?"

"Ay," Bill said, "that oi be, sir, seeing as how Ned always spake of you as a true friend, and loiked you hearty. They say too as you ha' engaged Lawyer Wakefield to defend him."

"That is so, Bill. I am convinced of the boy's innocence. He has always been a favorite of mine. He has no relations to stand by him now, poor boy, so we who are his friends must do our best for him."

"Surely," Bill said heartily; "and dost really think as he didn't do it?"

"I may say I am quite sure he did not, Bill. Didn't you think so too?"

"No, sir," Bill said; "it never entered my moind as he didn't do it. Oi heard as how t' chap beat Maister Ned cruel, and it seemed to me natural loike as he should sarve him out. Oi didn't suppose as how he meant vor to kill him, but as everyone said as how he did the job it seemed to me loike enough; but of course it didn't make no differ to oi whether so be as he killed un or not. Maister Ned's moi friend, and oi stands by him; still oi be main glad to hear as you think he didn't do it; but will the joodge believe it?"

"Ah! that I cannot say," Mr. Porson replied. "I know the lad and believe his word; but at present appearances are sadly against him. That unfortunate affair that he had with my predecessor induced a general idea that he was very violent tempered. Then it has been notorious that he and his stepfather did not get on well together, and this terrible quarrel on the evening of Mr. Mulready's death seems only too plainly to account for the affair; still, without further evidence, I question if a jury will find him guilty. It is certain he had no rope when he went out, and unless the prosecution can prove that he got possession of a rope they cannot bring the guilt home to him."

"No, surely," Bill assented, and sat for some time without further speech; then he went on, "now, sir, what oi be come to thee about be this. Thou bee'st his friend and know'st best what 'ould be a good thing for him. Now we ha' been a-talking aboot a plan, Luke Marner and oi, as is Maister Ned's friends, and we can get plenty of chaps to join us. We supposes as arter the next toime as they has him up in coort they will send him off to York Castle to be tried at the 'sizes."

"Yes; I have no doubt he will be committed after his next appearance, Bill; but what is the plan that you and your friend Luke were thinking of?"

"Well, we was a-thinking vor twenty or so on us to coom down at noight and break open t' cells. There be only t' chief constable and one other, and they wouldn't be no good agin us, and we could get Maister Ned owt and away long afore t' sojers would have toime to wake up and coom round; then we could hide un up on moor till there was toime to get un away across the seas. Luke he be pretty well bent on it, but oi says as before we did nothing oi would coom and ax thee, seeing as how thou bee'st a friend of his."

"No, Bill," Mr. Porson said gravely. "It would not do at all, and I am glad you came to ask me. If I thought it certain that the jury would find a verdict of guilty, and that Ned, innocent as I believe him of the crime, would be hung, I should say that your plan might be worth thinking of; for in that case Ned might possibly be got away till we his friends here could get at the bottom of the matter. Still it would be an acknowledgment for the time of his guilt, and I am sure that Ned himself would not run away without standing his trial even if the doors of his cell were opened. I shall see him tomorrow morning, and will tell him of your scheme on his behalf. I am sure he will be grateful, but I am pretty certain that he will not avail himself of it. If you will come down tomorrow evening I will let you know exactly what he says."

As Mr. Porson expected, Ned, although much moved at the offer of his humble friends to free him by force, altogether declined to accept it.

"It is just like Bill," he said, "ready to get into any scrape himself to help me: but I must stand my trial. I know that even if they cannot prove me guilty I cannot prove I am innocent; still, to run away would be an acknowledgment of guilt, and I am not going to do that."

On the day appointed Ned was again brought up before the magistrates. The examination was this time in public, and the justice room was crowded. Ned, whose face was now recovering from the marks of ill usage, was pale and quiet. He listened in silence to the evidence proving the finding of Mr. Mulready's body. The next witness put into the box was one of the engineers at the factory; he proved that the rope which had been used in upsetting the gig had been cut from one which he had a short time before been using for moving a portion of the machinery. He had used the rope about an hour before Mr. Mulready came back in the evening, and it was then whole. After it had been done with it was thrown outside the mill to be out of the way, as it would not be required again.

After he had given his evidence Mr. Wakefield asked:

"Did you hear any one outside the mill when Mr. Mulready was there?"

"No, sir; I heard nothing."

"Any one might have entered the yard, I suppose, and found the rope?"

"Yes; the gates were open, as we were at work."

"Would the rope be visible to any one who entered the yard?"

"It would not be seen plainly, because it was a dark night; but any one prowling about outside the mill might have stumbled against it."

"You have no reason whatever for supposing that it was Mr. Edward Sankey who cut this rope more than anyone else?"

"No, sir."

Charlie was the next witness. The boy was as white as a sheet, and his eyes were swollen with crying. He glanced piteously at his brother, and exclaimed with a sob, "Oh! Ned."

"Don't mind, Charlie," Ned said quietly. "Tell the whole story exactly as it happened. You can't do me any harm, old boy."

So encouraged Charlie told the whole story of the quarrel arising in the first place from his stepfather's ill temper at the tea table.

"Your brother meant nothing specially unpleasant in calling your stepfather Foxey?" Mr. Wakefield asked.

"No, sir; he had always called him so even before he knew that he was going to marry mother. It was a name, I believe, the men called him, and Ned got it from them."

"I believe that your stepfather had received threatening letters, had he not?"

"Yes, sir, several; he was afraid to put his new machines to work because of them."

"Thank you, that will do," Mr. Wakefield said. "I have those letters in my possession," he went on to the magistrates. "They are proof that the deceased had enemies who had threatened to take his life. Shall I produce them now?"

"It is hardly worth while, Mr. Wakefield, though they can be brought forward at the trial. I may say, indeed, that we have seen some of them already, for it was on account of these letters that we applied for the military to be stationed here."

It was not thought necessary to call Mrs. Mulready; but the servant gave her evidence as to what she had heard of the quarrel, and as to the absence of Ned from home that night.

"Unless you are in a position to produce evidence, Mr. Wakefield, proving clearly that at the time the murder was committed the prisoner was at a distance from the spot, we are prepared to commit him for trial."

Mr. Wakefield intimated that he should reserve his evidence for the trial itself, and Ned was then formally committed.

The examination in no way altered the tone of public opinion. The general opinion was that Ned had followed his stepfather to the mill, intending to attack him, that he had stumbled onto the coil of rope, and the idea occurred to him of tying it across the road and upsetting the gig on its return. Charlie's evidence as to the savage assault upon his brother had created a stronger feeling of sympathy than had before prevailed, and had the line of defense been that, smarting under his injuries, Ned had suddenly determined to injure his stepfather by upsetting the gig, but without any idea of killing him, the general opinion would have been that under such provocation as Ned had received a lengthened term of imprisonment would have been an ample punishment. More than one, indeed, were heard to say, "Well, if I were on the jury, my verdict would be, Served him right."

Still, although there was greater sympathy than before with Ned, there were few, indeed, who doubted his guilt.

After Ned was removed from court he was taken back by the chief constable to his house, and ten minutes later he was summoned into the parlor, where he found Charlie and Lucy waiting him. Lucy, who was now ten years old, sprang forward to meet him; he lifted her, and for awhile she lay with her head on his shoulder and her arms round his neck, sobbing bitterly, while Charlie clung to his brother's disengaged hand.

"Don't cry, Lucy, don't cry little woman; it will all come right in the end;" but Lucy's tears were not to be stanched. Ned sat down, and after a time soothed her into stillness, but she still lay nestled up in his arms.

"It was dreadful, Ned," Charlie said, "having to go into court as a witness against you. I had thought of running away, but did not know where to go to, and then Mr. Porson had a talk with me and told me that it was of the greatest importance that I should tell everything exactly word for word, just as it happened. He said every one knew there had been a quarrel, and that if I did not tell everything it would seem as if I was keeping something back in order to screen you, and that would do you a great deal of harm, and that, as really you were not to blame in the quarrel, my evidence would be in your favor rather than against you. He says he knew that you would wish me to tell exactly what took place."

"Certainly, Charlie; there is nothing I could want hid. I was wrong to speak of him as Foxey, and to let fly as I did about him; but there was nothing intended to offend him in that, because, of course, I had no idea that he could hear me. The only thing I have to blame myself very much for is for getting into a wild passion. I don't think any one would say I did wrong in going out of the house after being knocked about so; but if I had not got into a passion, and had gone straight to Bill's, or to Abijah, or to Mr. Porson, which would have been best of all, to have stopped the night, all this would not have come upon me; but I let myself get into a blind passion and stopped in it for hours, and I am being punished for it."

"It was natural that you should get in a passion," Charlie said stoutly. "I think any one would have got in a passion."

"I don't think you would, Charlie," Ned said, smiling.

"No," Charlie replied; "but then you see that is not my way. I should have cried all night; but then I am not a great, strong fellow like you, and it would not be so hard to be knocked about."

"It's no use making excuses, Charlie. I know I ought not to have given way to my temper like that. Now, Lucy dear, as you are feeling better, you must sit up and talk to me. How is mother?"

"Mother is in bed," Lucy said. "She's always in bed now; the house is dreadful, Ned, without you, and they say you are not to come back yet," and the tears came very near to overflowing again.

"Ah! well, I hope I shall be back before long, Lucy."

"I hope so," Lucy said; "but you know you will soon be going away again to be a soldier."

"I shall not go away again now, Lucy," Ned said quietly. "When I come back it will be for good."

"Oh! that will be nice," Lucy said joyously, "just as it used to be, with no one to be cross and scold about everything."

"Hush! little woman, don't talk about that. He had his faults, dear, as we all have, but he had a great deal to worry him, and perhaps we did not make allowances enough for him, and I do think he was really fond of you, Lucy, and when people are dead we should never speak ill of them."

"I don't want to," Lucy said, "and I didn't want him to be fond of me when he wasn't fond of you and Charlie or mother. It seems to me he wasn't fond of mother, and yet she does nothing but cry; I can't make that out, can you?"

Ned did not answer; his mother's infatuation for Mr. Mulready had always been a puzzle to him, and he could at present think of no reply which would be satisfactory to Lucy.

A constable now came in and said that there were other visitors waiting to see Ned. He then withdrew, leaving the lad to say goodby to his brother and sister alone. Ned kept up a brave countenance, and strove to make the parting as easy as possible for the others, but both were crying bitterly as they went out.

Ned's next visitors were Dr. Green and Mr. Porson.

"We have only a minute or two, my boy," Mr. Porson said, "for the gig is at the door. The chief constable is going to drive you to York himself. You will go halfway and sleep on the road tonight. It is very good of him, as in that way no one will suspect that you are any but a pair of ordinary travelers. Keep up your spirits, my boy. We have sent to London for a detective from Bow Street to try and ferret out something of this mysterious business; and even if we do not succeed, I have every faith that it will come right in the end. And now goodby, my boy, I shall see you in a fortnight, for of course I shall come over to York to the trial to give evidence as to character."

"And so shall I, Ned, my patients must get on without me for a day or two," the doctor said. "Mr. Wakefield is waiting to see you. He has something to tell you which may help to cheer you. He says it is of no legal value, but it seems to me important."



Chapter XV: Not Guilty


As soon as Mr. Porson and the doctor had left him Mr. Wakefield appeared.

"Well, Sankey, I hope you are not downcast at the magistrates' decision. It was a certainty that they would have to commit you, as we could not prove a satisfactory alibi. Never mind, I don't think any jury will find against you on the evidence they have got, especially in the face of those threatening letters and the fact that several men in Mulready's position have been murdered by the Luddites."

"It won't be much consolation to me, sir, to be acquitted if it can't be proved to the satisfaction of every one that I am innocent."

"Tut, tut! my boy; the first thing to do is to get you out of the hands of the law. After that we shall have time to look about us and see if we can lay our hands on the right man. A curious thing has happened today while I was in court. A little boy left a letter for me at my office here; it is an ill-written scrawl, as you see, but certainly important."

Ned took the paper, on which was written in a scrawling hand:

"Sir, Maister Sankey be innocent of the murder of Foxey. I doan't want to put my neck in a noose, but if so be as they finds him guilty in coort and be a-going to hang him, I shall come forward and say as how I did it. I bean't agoing to let him be hung for this job. A loife for a loife, saes oi; so tell him to keep up his heart."

There was no signature to the paper.

Ned looked up with delight in his face.

"But won't the letter clear me, Mr. Wakefield? It shows that it was not me, but some one else who did it."

"No, Sankey, pray do not cherish any false hopes on that ground. The letter is valueless in a legal way. To you and to your friends it may be a satisfaction; but it can have no effect on the court. There is nothing to prove that it is genuine. It may have been written by any friend of yours with a view of obtaining your acquittal. Of course we shall put it in at the trial, but it cannot be accepted as legal evidence in any way. Still a thing of that sort may have an effect upon some of the jury."

Ned looked again at the letter, and a shade came over his face now that he looked at it carefully. He recognized in a moment Bill's handwriting. He had himself instructed him by setting him copies at the time he was laid up with the broken leg, and Bill had stuck to it so far that he was able to read and write in a rough way.

Ned's first impulse was to tell Mr. Wakefield who had written the note, but he thought that it might get Bill into a scrape. It was evidently written by his friend, solely to create an impression in his favor, and he wondered that such an idea should have entered Bill's head, which was by no means an imaginative one. As to the young fellow having killed Mr. Mulready it did not even occur to Ned for a moment.

As, seated by the side of the chief constable, he drove along that afternoon, Ned turned it over anxiously in his mind whether it would be honest to allow this letter to be produced in court, knowing that it was only the device of a friend, Finally he decided to let matters take their course.

"I am innocent," he said to himself, "and what I have got to live for is to clear myself from this charge. Mr. Wakefield said this letter would not be of value one way or the other, and if I were to say Bill wrote it he might insist upon Bill's being arrested, and he might find it just as hard to prove his innocence as I do."

The assizes were to come on in three weeks. Ned was treated with more consideration than was generally the case with prisoners in those days, when the jails were terribly mismanaged; but Mr. Simmonds had written to the governor of the prison asking that every indulgence that could be granted should be shown to Ned, and Mr. Porson had also, before the lad left Marsden, insisted on his accepting a sum of money which would enable him to purchase such food and comforts as were permitted to be bought by prisoners, able to pay for them, awaiting their trial.

Thus Ned obtained the boon of a separate cell, he was allowed to have books and writing materials, and to have his meals in from outside the prison.

The days, however, passed but slowly, and Ned was heartily glad when the time for the assizes was at hand and his suspense was to come to an end. His case came on for trial on the second day of the sessions. On the previous evening he received a visit from Mr. Wakefield, who told him that Mr. Porson, Dr. Green and Charlie had come over in the coach with him.

"You will be glad to hear that your mother will not be called," the lawyer said. "The prosecution, I suppose, thought that it would have a bad effect to call upon a mother to give evidence against her son; besides, she could prove no more than your brother will be able to do. If they had called her, Green would have given her a certificate that she was confined to her bed and could not possibly attend. However I am glad they did not call her, for the absence of a witness called against the prisoner, but supposed to be favorable to him, always counts against him."

"And you have no clue as who did it, Mr. Wakefield?"

"Not a shadow," the lawyer replied. "We have had a man down from town ever since you have been away, but we have done no good. He went up to Varley and tried to get into the confidence of the croppers, but somehow they suspected him to be a spy sent down to inquire into the Luddite business, and he had a pretty narrow escape of his life. He was terribly knocked about before he could get out of the public house, and they chased him all the way down into Marsden. Luckily he was a pretty good runner, and had the advantage of having lighter shoes on than they had, or they would have killed him to a certainty. No, my lad, we can prove nothing; we simply take the ground that you didn't do it; that he was a threatened man and unpopular with his hands; and there is not a shadow of proof against you except the fact that he had ill treated you just before."

"And that I was known to bear him ill will," Ned said sadly.

"Yes, of course that's unfortunate," the lawyer said uneasily. "Of course they will make a point of that, but that proves nothing. Most boys of your age do object to a stepfather. Of course we shall put it to the jury that there is nothing uncommon about that. Oh! no, I do not think they have a strong case; and Mr. Grant, who is our leader, and who is considered the best man on the circuit, is convinced we shall get a verdict."

"But what do people think at Marsden, Mr. Wakefield? Do people generally think I am guilty?"

"Pooh! pooh!" Mr. Wakefield said hastily. "What does it matter what people think? Most people are fools. The question we have to concern ourselves with is what do the jury think, or at any rate with what they think is proved, and Mr. Grant says he does not believe any jury could find you guilty upon the evidence. He will work them up. I know he is a wonderful fellow for working up."

Mr. Grant's experience of juries turned out to be well founded. Ned, as he stood pale, but firm and composed in the dock, felt that his case was well nigh desperate when he heard the speech for the prosecution: his long and notorious ill will against the deceased, "one of the most genial and popular gentlemen in that part of the great county of Yorkshire," was dwelt upon. Evidence would be brought to show that even on the occasion of his mother's marriage the happiness of the ceremonial was marred by the scowls and menacing appearance of this most unfortunate and ill conditioned lad; how some time after the marriage this young fellow had violently assaulted his stepfather, and had used words in the hearing of the servants which could only be interpreted as a threat upon his life. This indeed, was not the first time that this boy had been placed in the dock as a prisoner. Upon a former occasion he had been charged with assaulting and threatening the life of his schoolmaster, and although upon that occasion he had escaped the consequences of his conduct by what must now be considered as the ill timed leniency of the magistrates, yet the facts were undoubted and undenied.

Then the counsel proceeded to narrate the circumstances of the evening up to the point when Mr. Mulready left the house.

"Beyond that point, gentlemen of the jury," the counsel said, "nothing certain is known. The rest must be mere conjecture; and yet it is not hard to imagine the facts. The prisoner was aware that the deceased had gone to the mill, which is situated a mile and a half from the town. You will be told the words which the prisoner used: 'It will be my turn next time, and when it comes I will kill you, you brute.'

"With these words on his lips, with this thought in his heart, he started for the mill. What plan he intended to adopt, what form of vengeance he intended to take, it matters not, but assuredly it was with thoughts of vengeance in his heart that he followed that dark and lonely road to the mill. Once there he would have hung about waiting for his victim to issue forth. It may be that he had picked up a heavy stone, may be that he had an open knife in his hand; but while he was waiting, probably his foot struck against a coil of rope, which, as you will hear, had been carelessly thrown out a few minutes before.

"Then doubtless the idea of a surer method of vengeance than that of which he had before thought came into his mind. A piece of the rope was hastily cut off, and with this the prisoner stole quietly off until he reached the spot where two gates facing each other on opposite sides of the lane afforded a suitable hold for the rope. Whether after fastening it across the road he remained at the spot to watch the catastrophe which he had brought about, or whether he hurried away into the darkness secure of his vengeance we cannot tell, nor does it matter. You will understand, gentlemen, that we are not in a position to prove these details of the tragedy. I am telling you the theory of the prosecution as to how it happened. Murders are not generally done in open day with plenty of trustworthy witnesses looking on. It is seldom that the act of slaying is witnessed by human eye. The evidence must therefore to some extent be circumstantial. The prosecution can only lay before juries the antecedent circumstances, show ill will and animus, and lead the jury step by step up to the point when the murderer and the victim meet in some spot at some time when none but the all seeing eye of God is upon them. This case is, as you see, no exception to the general rule.

"I have shown you that between the prisoner and the deceased there was what may be termed a long standing feud, which came to a climax two or three hours before this murder. Up to that fatal evening I think I shall show you that the prisoner was wholly in fault, and that the deceased acted with great good temper and self command under a long series of provocations; but upon this evening his temper appears to have failed, and I will admit frankly that he seems to have committed a very outrageous and brutal assault upon the prisoner. Still, gentlemen, such an assault is no justification of the crime which took place. Unhappily it supplies the cause, but it does not supply an excuse for the crime.

"Your duty in the case will be simple. You will have to say whether or not the murder of William Mulready is accounted for upon the theory which I have laid down to you and on no other. Should you entertain no doubt upon the subject it will be your duty to bring in a verdict of guilty; if you do not feel absolutely certain you will of course give the prisoner the benefit of the doubt."

The evidence called added nothing to what was known at the first examination. The two servants testified to the fact of the unpleasant relations which had from the first existed between the deceased and the prisoner, and detailed what they knew of the quarrel. Charlie's evidence was the most damaging, as he had to state the threat which Ned had uttered before he went out.

The counsel for the defense asked but few questions in cross examination. He elicited from the servants, however, the fact that Mr. Mulready at home was a very different person from Mr. Mulready as known by people in general. They acknowledged that he was by no means a pleasant master, that he was irritable and fault finding, and that his temper was trying in the extreme, He only asked one or two questions of Charlie.

"You did not find your stepfather a very pleasant man to deal with, did you?"

"Not at all pleasant," Charlie replied heartily.

"Always snapping and snarling and finding fault, wasn't he?"

"Yes, sir, always."

"Now about this threat of which we have heard so much on the part of your brother, did it impress you much? Were you frightened at it? Did you think that your brother intended to kill your stepfather?"

"No, sir, I am sure he didn't; he just said it in a passion. He had been knocked about until he could hardly stand, and he just said the first thing that came into his head, like fellows do."

"You don't think that he went out with any deliberate idea of killing your stepfather?"

"No, sir; I am sure he only went out to walk about till he got over his passion, just as he had done before."

"It was his way, was it, when anything put him out very much, to go and walk about till he got cool again?"

"Yes, sir."

For the defense Mr. Simmonds was called, and produced the threatening letters which Mr. Mulready had laid before him. He stated that that gentleman was much alarmed, and had asked that a military force should be called into the town, and that he himself and his colleague had considered the danger so serious that they had applied for and obtained military protection.

Luke Marner and several of the hands at the mill testified to the extreme unpopularity of their employer among his men, and said that they should never have been surprised any morning at hearing that he had been killed.

Dr. Green and Mr. Porson testified very strongly in favor of Ned's character. This was all the evidence produced. Mr. Grant then addressed the jury, urging that beyond the fact of this unfortunate quarrel, in which the deceased appeared to have been entirely to blame and to have behaved with extreme brutality, there was nothing whatever to associate the prisoner with the crime. The young gentleman before them, as they had heard from the testimony of gentlemen of the highest respectability, bore an excellent character. That he had faults in temper he admitted, such faults being the result of the lad having been brought up among Indian servants; but Dr. Green and Mr. Porson had both told them that he had made the greatest efforts to master his temper, and that they believed that no ordinary provocation could arouse him. But after all what did what they had heard amount to? simply this, the lad's mother had been married a second time to a man who bore the outward reputation of being a pleasant, jovial man, a leading character among his townsmen, a popular fellow in the circle in which he moved.

It had been proved, however, by the evidence of those who knew him best, of his workpeople, his servants, of this poor lad whom the prosecution had placed in the box as a witness against his brother, that this man's life was a long lie; that, smiling and pleasant as he appeared, he was a tyrant, a petty despot in his family, a hard master to his hands, a cruel master in his house, What wonder that between this lad and such a stepfather as this there was no love lost. There were scores, ay and thousands of boys in England who similarly hated their stepfathers, and was it to be said that, if any of the men came to a sudden and violent death, these boys were to be suspected of their murder. But in the present case, although he was not in a position to lay his finger upon the man who perpetrated this crime, they need not go far to look for him. Had they not heard that he was hated by his workpeople? Evidence had been laid before them to show that he was a marked man, that he had received threatening letters from secret associations which had, as was notorious, kept the south of Yorkshire, and indeed all that part of the country which was the seat of manufacture, in a state of alarm. So imminent was the danger considered that the magistrates had requested the aid of an armed force, and at the tame this murder was committed there were soldiers actually stationed in the mill, besides a strong force in the town for the protection of this man from his enemies.

The counsel for the prosecution had given them his theory as to the actions of the prisoner, but he believed that that theory was altogether wide of the truth. It was known that an accident had taken place to the machinery, for the mill was standing idle for the day. It would be probable that the deceased would go over late in the evening to see how the work was progressing, as every effort was being made to get the machinery to run on the following morning.

"What so probable, then, that the enemies of the deceased -- and you know that he had enemies, who had sworn to take his life -- should choose this opportunity for attacking him as he drove to or from the town. That an enemy was prowling round the mill, as has been suggested to you, I admit readily enough. That he stumbled upon the rope, that the idea occurred to him of upsetting the gig on its return, that he cut off a portion of the rope and fixed it between the two gateposts across the road, and that this rope caused the death of William Mulready. All this I allow; but I submit to you that the man who did this was a member of the secret association which is a terror to the land, and was the terror of William Mulready, and there is no proof whatever, not even the shadow not even the shadow of a proof, to connect this lad with the crime.

"I am not speaking without a warrant when I assert my conviction that it was an emissary of the association known as the Luddites who had a hand in this matter, for I am in possession of a document, which unfortunately I am not in a position to place before you, as it is not legal evidence, which professes to be written by the man who perpetrated this deed, and who appears, although obedient to the behests of this secret association of which he is a member, to be yet a man not devoid of heart, who says that if this innocent young man is found guilty of this crime he will himself come forward and confess that he did it.

"Therefore, gentlemen of the jury, there is every reason to believe that the slayer of William Mulready is indeed within these walls, but assuredly he is not the most unfortunate and ill treated young man who stands in the dock awaiting your verdict to set him free."

The summing up was brief. The judge commenced by telling the jury that they must dismiss altogether from their minds the document of which the counsel for the defense had spoken, and to which, as it had not been put into court, and indeed could not be put into court, it was highly irregular and improper for him to have alluded. They must, he said, dismiss it altogether from their minds. Their duty was simple, they were to consider the evidence before them. They had heard of the quarrel which had taken place between the deceased and the prisoner. They had heard the threat used by the prisoner that he would kill the deceased if he had an opportunity, and they had to decide whether he had, in accordance with the theory of the prosecution, carried that threat into effect; or whether on the other hand, as the defense suggested, the deceased had fallen a victim to the agent of the association which had threatened his life. He was bound to tell them that if they entertained any doubt as to the guilt of the prisoner at the bar they were bound to give him the benefit of the doubt.

The jury consulted together for a short time and then expressed their desire to retire to consider their verdict. They were absent about half an hour and on their return the foreman said in reply to the question of the judge that they found the prisoner "Not Guilty."

A perfect silence reigned in the court when the jury entered the box, and something like a sigh of relief followed their verdict. It was expected, and indeed there was some surprise when the jury retired, for the general opinion was that whether guilty or innocent the prosecution had failed to bring home unmistakably the crime to the prisoner. That he might have committed it was certain, that he had committed it was probable, but it was assuredly not proved that he and none other had been the perpetrator of the crime.

Of all the persons in the court the accused had appeared the least anxious as to the result. He received almost with indifference the assurances which Mr. Wakefield, who was sitting at the solicitor's table below him, rose to give him, that the jury could not find a verdict against him, and the expression of his face was unchanged when the foreman announced the verdict.

He was at once released from the dock. His solicitor, Dr. Green, and Mr. Porson warmly shook his hand, and Charlie threw his arms round his neck and cried in his joy and excitement.

"It is all right, I suppose," Ned said as, surrounded by his friends, he left the court, "but I would just as lief the verdict had gone the other way."

"Oh! Ned, how can you say so?" Charlie exclaimed.

"Well, no, Charlie," Ned corrected himself. "I am glad for your sake and Lucy's that I am acquitted; it would have been awful for you if I had been hung -- it is only for myself that I don't care. The verdict only means that they have not been able to prove me guilty, and I have got to go on living all my life knowing that I am suspected of being a murderer. It is not a nice sort of thing, you know," and he laughed drearily.

"Come, come, Ned," Mr. Porson said cheerily, "you mustn't take too gloomy a view of it. It is natural enough that you should do so now, for you have gone through a great deal, and you are overwrought and worn out; but this will pass off, and you will find things are not as bad as you think. It is true that there may be some, not many, I hope, who will be of opinion that the verdict was like the Scotch verdict 'Not Proven,' rather than 'Not Guilty;' but I am sure the great majority will believe you innocent. You have got the doctor here on your side, and he is a host in himself. Mr. Simmonds told me when the jury were out of the court that he was convinced you were innocent, and his opinion will go a long way in Marsden, and you must hope and trust that the time will come when your innocence will be not only believed in, but proved to the satisfaction of all by the discovery of the actual murderer."

"Ah!" Ned said, "if we ever find that out it will be all right; but unless we can do so I shall have this dreadful thing hanging over me all my life."

They had scarcely reached the hotel where Mr. Porson, the doctor, and Charlie were stopping, when Mr. Simmonds arrived.

"I have come to congratulate you, my boy," he said, shaking hands with Ned. "I can see that at present the verdict does not give so much satisfaction to you as to your friends, but that is natural enough. You have been unjustly accused and have had a very hard time of it, and you are naturally not disposed to look at matters in a cheerful light; but this gives us time, my boy, and time is everything. It is hard for you that your innocence has not been fully demonstrated, but you have your life before you, and we must hope that some day you will be triumphantly vindicated."

"That is what I shall live for in future," Ned said. "Of course now, Mr. Simmonds, there is an end of all idea of my going into the army. A man suspected of a murder, even if they have failed to bring it home to him, cannot ask for a commission in the army. I know there's an end to all that."

"No," Mr. Simmonds agreed hesitatingly, "I fear that for the present that plan had better remain in abeyance; we can take it up again later on when this matter is put straight."

"That may be never," Ned said decidedly, "so we need say no more about it."

"And now, my boy," Mr. Porson said, "try and eat some lunch. I have just ordered a post chaise to be round at the door in half an hour. The sooner we start the better. The fresh air and the change will do you good, and we shall have plenty of time to talk on the road."



Chapter XVI: Luke Marner's Sacrifice


Not until they had left York behind them did Ned ask after his mother. He knew that if there had been anything pleasant to tell about her he would have heard it at once, and the silence of his friends warned him that the subject was not an agreeable one.

"How is my mother?" he asked at last abruptly.

"Well, Ned," Dr. Green replied, "I have been expecting your question, and I am sorry to say that I have nothing agreeable to tell you."

"That I was sure of," Ned said with a hard laugh. "As I have received no message from her from the day I was arrested I guessed pretty well that whatever doubt other people might feel, my mother was positive that I had murdered her husband."

"The fact is, Ned," Dr. Green said cautiously, "your mother is not at present quite accountable for her opinions. The shock which she has undergone has, I think, unhinged her mind. Worthless as I believe him to have been, this man had entirely gained her affections. She has not risen from her bed since he died.

"Sometimes she is absolutely silent for hours, at others she talks incessantly; and painful as it is to tell you so, her first impression that you were responsible for his death is the one which still remains fixed on her mind. She is wholly incapable of reason or of argument. At times she appears sane and sensible enough and talks of other matters coherently; but the moment she touches on this topic she becomes excited and vehement. It has been a great comfort to me, and I am sure it will be to you, that your old servant Abijah has returned and taken up the position of housekeeper.

"As soon as your mother's first excitement passed away I asked her if she would like this, and she eagerly assented. The woman was in the town, having come over on the morning after you gave yourself up, and to my great relief she at once consented to take up her former position. This is a great thing for your sister, who is, of course, entirely in her charge, as your mother is not in a condition to attend to anything. I was afraid at first that she would not remain, so indignant was she at your mother's believing your guilt; but when I assured her that the poor lady was not responsible for what she said, and that her mind was in fact unhinged altogether by the calamity, she overcame her feelings; but it is comic to see her struggling between her indignation at your mother's irresponsible talk and her consciousness that it is necessary to abstain from exciting her by contradiction."

Dr. Green had spoken as lightly as he could, but he knew how painful it must be to Ned to hear of his mother's conviction of his guilt, and how much it would add to the trials of his position.

Ned himself had listened in silence. He sighed heavily when the doctor had finished.

"Abijah will be a great comfort," he said quietly, "a wonderful comfort; but as to my poor mother, it will of course be a trial. Still, no wonder that, when she heard me say those words when I went out, she thinks that I did it. However, I suppose that it is part of my punishment."

"Have you thought anything of your future plans, Ned?" Mr. Porson asked after they had driven in silence for some distance.

"Yes, I have been thinking a good deal," Ned replied, "all the time I was shut up and had nothing else to do. I did not believe that they would find me guilty, and of course I had to settle what I should do afterward. If it was only myself I think I should go away and take another name; but in that case there would be no chance of my ever clearing myself, and for father's sake and for the sake of Charlie and Lucy I must not throw away a chance of that. It would be awfully against them all their lives if people could say of them that their brother was the fellow who murdered their stepfather. Perhaps they will always say so now; still it is evidently my duty to stay, if it were only on the chance of clearing up the mystery.

"In the next place I feel that I ought to stay for the sake of money matters. I don't think, in the present state of things, with the Luddites burning mills and threatening masters, any one would give anything like its real value for the mill now. I know that it did not pay with the old machinery, and it is not every one who would care to run the risk of working with the new. By the terms of the settlement that was made before my mother married again the mill is now hers, and she and Charlie and Lucy have nothing else to depend upon. As she is not capable of transacting business it falls upon me to take her place, and I intend to try, for a time at any rate, to run the mill myself. Of course I know nothing about it, but as the hands all know their work the foreman will be able to carry on the actual business of the mill till I master the details.

"As to the office business, the clerk will know all about it. There was a man who used to travel about to buy wool, I know my mother's husband had every confidence in him, and he could go on just as before. As to the sales, the books will tell the names of the firms who dealt with us, and I suppose the business with them will go on as before. At any rate I can but try for a time. Of course I have quite made up my mind that I shall have no personal interest whatever in the business. They may think that I murdered Mulready, but they shall not say that I have profited by his death. I should suppose that my mother can pay me some very small salary, just sufficient to buy my clothes. So I shall go on till Charlie gets to an age when he can manage the business as its master; then if no clue has been obtained as to the murder I shall be able to give it up and go abroad, leaving him with, I hope, a good business for himself and Lucy."

"I think that is as good a plan as any," Mr. Porson said; "but, however, there is no occasion to come to any sudden determination at present. I myself should advise a change of scene and thought before you decide anything finally. I have a brother living in London and he would, I am sure, very gladly take you in for a fortnight and show you the sights of London."

"Thank you, sir, you are very kind," Ned said quietly; "but I have got to face it out at Marsden, and I would rather begin at once."

Mr. Porson saw by the set, steady look upon Ned's face that he had thoroughly made up his mind as to the part he had to play, and that any further argument would be of no avail. It was not until the postchaise was approaching Marsden that any further allusion was made to Ned's mother. Then the doctor, after consulting Mr. Porson by various upliftings of the eyebrows, returned to the subject.

"Ned, my boy, we were speaking some little time ago of your mother. I think it is best that I should tell you frankly that I do not consider her any longer responsible for her actions. I tell you this in order that you may not be wounded by your reception.

"Since that fatal day she has not left her bed. She declares that she has lost all power in her limbs. Of course that is nonsense, but the result is the same. She keeps her bed, and, as far as I can see, is likely to keep it. This is perhaps the less to be regretted, as you will thereby avoid being thrown into contact with her; for I tell you plainly such contact, in her present state of mind, could only be unpleasant to you. Were you to meet, it would probably at the least bring on a frightful attack of hysterics, which in her present state might be a serious matter. Therefore, my boy, you must make up your mind not to see her for awhile. I have talked the matter over with your old nurse, who will remain with your mother as housekeeper, with a girl under her. You will, of course, take your place as master of the house, with your brother and sister with you, until your mother is in a position to manage -- if ever she should be. But I trust at any rate that she will ere long so far recover as to be able to receive you as the good son you have ever been to her."

"Thank you," Ned said quietly. "I understand, doctor."

Ned did understand that his mother was convinced of his guilt and refused to see him; it was what he expected, and yet it was a heavy trial. Very cold and hard he looked as the postchaise drove through the streets of Marsden. People glanced at it curiously, and as they saw Ned sitting by the side of the men who were known as his champions they hurried away to spread the news that young Sankey had been acquitted.

The hard look died out of Ned's face as the door opened, and Lucy sprang out and threw her arms round his neck and cried with delight at seeing him; and Abijah, crying too, greeted him inside with a motherly welcome. A feeling of relief came across his mind as he entered the sitting room. Dr. Green, who was one of the trustees in the marriage settlement, had, in the inability of Mrs. Mulready to give any orders, taken upon himself to dispose of much of the furniture, and to replace it with some of an entirely different fashion and appearance. The parlor was snug and cosy; a bright fire blazed on the hearth; a comfortable armchair stood beside it; the room looked warm and homely. Ned's two friends had followed him in, and tears stood in both their eyes.

"Welcome back, dear boy!" Mr. Porson said, grasping his hand. "God grant that better times are in store for you, and that you may outlive this trial which has at present darkened your life. Now we will leave you to your brother and sister. I am sure you will be glad to be alone with them."

And so Ned took to the life he had marked out for himself. In two months he seemed to have aged years. The careless look of boyhood had altogether disappeared from his face. Except from his two friends he rejected all sympathy. When he walked through the streets of Marsden it was with a cold, stony face, as if he were wholly unaware of the existence of passersby. The thought that as he went along men drew aside to let him pass and whispered after he had gone, "That is the fellow who murdered his stepfather, but escaped because they could not bring it home to him," was ever in his mind. His friends in vain argued with him against his thus shutting himself off from the world. They assured him that there were very many who, like themselves, were perfectly convinced of his innocence, and who would rally round him and support him if he would give them the least encouragement, but Ned shook his head.

"I dare say what you say is true," he would reply; "but I could not do it -- I must go on alone. It is as much as I can bear now."

And his friends saw that it was useless to urge him further.

On the day after his return to Marsden Luke Marner and Bill Swinton came back on the coach from York, and after it was dark Ned walked up to Varley and knocked at Bill's door.

On hearing who it was Bill threw on his cap and came out to him. For a minute the lads stood with their hands clasped firmly in each other's without a word being spoken.

"Thank God, Maister Ned," Bill said at last, "we ha' got thee again!"

"Thank God too!" Ned said; "though I think I would rather that it had gone the other way."

They walked along for some time without speaking again, and then Ned said suddenly:

"Now, Bill, who is the real murderer?"

Bill stopped his walk in astonishment.

"The real murderer!" he repeated; "how ever should oi know, Maister Ned?"

"I know that you know, Bill. It was you who wrote that letter to Mr. Wakefield saying that the man who did it would be at the trial, and that if I were found guilty he would give himself up. It's no use your denying it, for I knew your handwriting at once."

Bill was silent for some time, It had never occurred to him that this letter would be brought home to him.

"Come, Bill, you must tell me," Ned said. "Do not be afraid. I promise you that I will not use it against him. Mind, if I can bring it home to him in any other way I shall do so; but I promise you that no word shall ever pass my lips about the letter. I want to know who is the man of whose crime the world believes me guilty. The secret shall, as far as he is concerned, be just as much a secret as it was before."

"But oi dunno who is the man, Maister Ned. If oi did oi would ha' gone into the court and said so, even though oi had been sure they would ha' killed me for peaching when oi came back. Oi dunno no more than a child."

"Then you only wrote that letter to throw them on to a false scent, Bill? Who put you up to that, for I am sure it would never have occurred to you?"

"No," Bill said slowly, "oi should never ha' thought of it myself; Luke told oi what to wroit, and I wroited it."

"Oh, it was Luke! was it?" Ned said sharply. "Then the man who did it must have told him."

"Oi didn't mean to let out as it waar Luke," Bill said in confusion; "and oi promised him solemn to say nowt about it."

"Well," Ned said, turning sharp round and starting on his way back to the village, "I must see Luke himself."

Bill in great perplexity followed Ned, muttering: "Oh, Lor'! what ull Luke say to oi? What a fellow oi be to talk, to be sure!"

Nothing further was said until they reached Luke's cottage. Ned knocked and entered at once, followed sheepishly by Bill.

"Maister Ned, oi be main glad to see thee," Luke said as he rose from his place by the fire; while Polly with a little cry, "Welcome!" dropped her work.

"Thanks, Luke -- thanks for coming over to York to give evidence. How are you, Polly? There! don't cry -- I ain't worth crying over. At any rate, it is a satisfaction to be with three people who don't regard me as a murderer. Now, Polly, I want you to go into the other room, for I have a question which I must ask Luke, and I don't want even you to hear the answer."

Polly gathered her work together and went out. Then Ned went over to Luke, who was looking at him with surprise, and laid his hand on his shoulder.

"Luke," he said, "I want you to tell me exactly how it was that you came to tell Bill to write that letter to Mr. Wakefield?"

Luke started and then looked savagely over at Bill, who stood twirling his cap in his hand.

"Oi couldn't help it, Luke," he said humbly. "Oi didn't mean vor to say it, but he got it out of me somehow. He knowed my fist on the paper, and, says he, sudden loike, 'Who war the man as murdered Foxey?' What was oi vor to say? He says at once as he knowed the idea of writing that letter would never ha' coom into my head; and so the long and short of it be, as your name slipped owt somehow, and there you be."

"Now, Luke," Ned said soothingly, "I want to know whether there was a man who was ready to take my place in the dock had I been found guilty, and if so, who he was. I shall keep the name as a secret. I give you my word of honor. After he had promised to come forward and save my life that is the least I can do, though, as I told Bill, if I could bring it home to him in any other way I should feel myself justified in doing so. It may be that he would be willing to go across the seas, and when he is safe there to write home saying that he did it."

"Yes, oi was afraid that soom sich thawt might be in your moind, Maister Ned, but it can't be done that way. But oi doan't know," he said thoughtfully, "perhaps it moight, arter all. Perhaps the chap as was a-coomin' forward moight take it into his head to go to Ameriky. Oi shouldn't wonder if he did, In fact, now oi thinks on't, oi am pretty sure as he will. Yes. Oi can say for sartin as that's what he intends. A loife vor a loife you know, Maister Nod, that be only fair, bean't it?"

"And you think he will really go?" Ned asked eagerly.

"Ay, he will go," Luke said firmly, "it's as good as done; but," he added slowly, "I dunno as he's got money vor to pay his passage wi'. There's some kids as have to go wi' him. He would want no more nor just the fare. But oi doan't see how he can go till he has laid that by, and in these hard toimes it ull take him some time to do that."

"I will provide the money," Ned said eagerly. "Abijah would lend me some of her savings, and I can pay her back some day."

"Very well, Maister Ned. Oi expect as how he will take it as a loan. Moind, he will pay it hack if he lives, honest. Oi doan't think as how he bain't honest, that chap, though he did kill Foxey. Very well," Luke went on slowly, "then the matter be as good as settled. Oi will send Bill down tomorrow, and he will see if thou canst let un have the money. A loife vor a loife, that's what oi says, Maister Ned. That be roight, bain't it?"

"That's right enough, Luke," Ned replied, "though I don't quite see what that has to do with it, except that the man who has taken this life should give his life to make amends."

"Yes, that be it, in course," Luke replied. "Yes; just as you says, he ought vor to give his loife to make amends."

That night Ned arranged with Abijah, who was delighted to hand over her savings for the furtherance of any plan that would tend to clear Ned from the suspicion which hung over him. Bill came down next morning, and was told that a hundred pounds would be forthcoming in two days.

Upon the following evening the servant came in and told Ned that a young woman wished to speak to him. He went down into the study, and, to his surprise, Mary Powlett was shown in. Her eyes were swollen with crying.

"Master Ned," she said, "I have come to say goodby."

"Good-by, Polly! Why, where are you going?"

"We are all going away, sir, tomorrow across the seas, to Ameriky I believe. It's all come so sudden it seems like a dream, Feyther never spoke of such a thing afore, and now all at once we have got to start. I have run all the way down from Varley to say goodby. Feyther told me that I wasn't on no account to come down to you. Not on no account, he said. But how could I go away and know that you had thought us so strange and ungrateful as to go away without saying goodby after your dear feyther giving his life for little Jenny. I couldn't do it, sir. So when he started off to spend the evening for the last time at the 'Cow' I put on my bonnet and ran down here. I don't care if he beats me -- not that he ever did beat sir, but he might now -- for he was terrible stern in telling me as I wasn't to come and see you."

Ned heard her without an interruption. The truth flashed across his mind. It was Luke Marner himself who was going to America, and was going to write home to clear him. Yet surely Luke could never have done it -- Luke, so different from the majority of the croppers -- Luke, who had steadily refused to have anything to say to General Lud and his schemes against the masters. Mary's last words gave him a clue to the mystery -- "Your dear feyther gave his life for little Jenny." He coupled it with Luke's enigmatical words, "A loife for a loife."

For a minute or two he sat absolutely silent. Mary was hurt at the seeming indifference with which he received the news. She drew herself up a little, and said, in an altered voice,

"I will say goodby, sir. I hope you won't think I was taking a liberty in thinking you would be sorry if we were all to go without your knowing it."

Ned roused himself at her words.

"It is not that, Polly. It is far from being that. But I want to ask you a question. You remember the night of Mr. Mulready's murder? Do you remember whether your father was at home all that evening?"

Polly opened her eyes in surprise at a question which seemed to her so irrelevant to the matter in hand;

"Yes, sir," she replied, still coldly. "I remember that night. We are not likely any of us to forget it. Feyther had not gone to the 'Cow.' He sat smoking at home. Bill had dropped in, and they sat talking of the doings of the Luddites till it was later than usual. Feyther was sorry afterward, because he said if he had been down at the 'Cow' he might have noticed by the talk if any one had an idea that anything was going to take place."

"Then he didn't go out at all that night, Polly?"

"No, sir, not at all that night; and now, sir, I will say goodby."

"No, Polly, you won't, for I shall go back with you, and I don't think that you will go to America."

"I don't understand," the girl faltered.

"No, Polly, I don't suppose you do; and I have not understood till now. You will see when you get back."

"If you please," Mary said hesitatingly, "I would rather that you would not be there when feyther comes back. Of course I shall tell him that I have been down to see you, and I know he will be very angry."

"I think I shall be able to put that straight. I can't let your father go. God knows I have few enough true friends, and I cannot spare him and you; and as for Bill Swinton, he would break his heart if you went."

"Bill's only a boy; he will get over it," Polly said in a careless tone, but with a bright flush upon her cheek.

"He is nearly as old as you are, Polly, and he is one of the best fellows in the world. I know he's not your equal in education, but a steadier, better fellow, never was."

Mary made no reply, and in another minute the two set out together for Varley. In spite of Ned's confident assurance that he would appease Luke's anger, Mary was frightened when, as they entered the cottage, she saw Luke standing moodily in front of the fire.

"Oi expected this," he said in a tone of deep bitterness. "Oi were a fool vor to think as you war different to other gals, and that you would give up your own wishes to your feyther's."

"Oh, feyther!" Polly cried, "don't speak so to me. Beat me if you like, I deserve to be beaten, but don't speak to me like that. I am ready to go anywhere you like, and to be a good daughter to you; forgive me for this once disobeying you."

"Luke, old friend," Ned said earnestly, putting his hand on the cropper's shoulder, "don't be angry with Polly, she has done me a great service. I have learned the truth, and know what you meant now by a life for a life. You were going to sacrifice yourself for me. You were going to take upon yourself a crime which you never committed to clear me. You went to York to declare yourself the murderer of Mulready, in case I had been found guilty. You were going to emigrate to America to send home a written confession."

"Who says as how oi didn't kill Foxey?" Luke said doggedly. "If oi choose to give myself oop now who is to gainsay me?"

"Mary and Bill can both gainsay you," Ned said. "They can prove that you did not stir out of the house that night. Come, Luke, it's of no use. I feel with all my heart grateful to you for the sacrifice you were willing to make for me. I thank you as deeply and as heartily as if you had made it. It was a grand act of self sacrifice, and you must not be vexed with Polly that she has prevented you carrying it out. It would have made me very unhappy had she not done so. When I found that you were gone I should certainly have got out from Bill the truth of the matter, and when your confession came home I should have been in a position to prove that you had only made it to screen me. Besides, I cannot spare you. I have few friends, and I should be badly off indeed if the one who has proved himself the truest and best were to leave me. I am going to carry on the mill, and I must have your help. I have relied upon you to stand by me, and you must be the foreman of your department. Come, Luke, you must say you forgive Polly for opening my eyes just a little sooner than they would otherwise have been to the sacrifice you wanted to make for me."

Luke, who was sorely shaken by Mary's pitiful sobs, could resist no longer, but opened his arms, and the girl ran into them.

"There, there," he said, "don't ee go on a crying, girl; thou hasn't done no wrong, vor indeed it must have seemed to thee flying in the face of natur to go away wi' out saying goodby to Maister Ned. Well, sir, oi be main sorry as it has turned out so. Oi should ha' loiked to ha' cleared thee; but if thou won't have it oi caan't help it. Oi think thou beest wrong, but thou know'st best."

"Never mind, Luke, I shall be cleared in time, I trust," Ned said. "I am going down to the mill tomorrow for the first time, and shall see you there. You have done me good, Luke. It is well, indeed, for a man to know that he has such a friend as you have proved yourself to be."



Chapter XVII: A Lonely Life


The machinery had not started since the death of Mr. Mulready, the foreman having received several letters threatening his life if he ventured to use the new machinery; and the works had therefore been carried on on their old basis until something was settled as to their future management.

The first few days after his return Ned spent his time in going carefully through the books with the clerk, and in making himself thoroughly acquainted with the financial part of the business. He was assisted by Mr. Porson, who came every evening to the house, and went through the accounts with him. The foreman and the men in charge of the different rooms were asked to give their opinion as to whether it was possible to reduce expenses in any way, but they were unanimous in saying that this could not be done. The pay was at present lower than in any other mill in the district, and every item of expenditure had been kept down by Mr. Mulready to the lowest point.

"It is clear," Ned said at last, "that if the mill is to be kept on we must use the new machinery. I was afraid it would be so, or he would never have taken to it and risked his life unless it had been absolutely necessary. I don't like it, for I have strong sympathies with the men, and although I am sure that in the long run the hands will benefit by the increased trade, it certainly cause great suffering at present, so if it had been possible I would gladly have let the new machinery stand idle until the feeling against it had passed away; but as I see that the mill has been running at a loss ever since prices fell, it is quite clear that we must use it at once."

The next morning Ned called the foreman into his office at the mill, and told him that he had determined to set the new machinery at work at once.

"I am sorry to be obliged to do so," he said, "as it will considerably reduce the number of hands at work; but it cannot be helped, it is either that or stopping altogether, which would be worse still for the men. Be as careful as you can in turning off the hands, and as far as possible retain all the married men with families. The only exception to that rule is young Swinton, who is to be kept on whoever goes."

That evening Luke Marner called at the house to see Ned.

"Be it true, Maister Ned, as the voreman says, the new machines is to be put to work?"

"It is true, Luke, I am sorry to say. I would have avoided it if possible; but I have gone into the matter with Mr. Porson, and I find I must either do that or shut up the mill altogether, which would be a good deal worse for you all. Handwork cannot compete with machinery, and the new machines will face a dozen yards of cloth while a cropper is doing one, and will do it much better and more evenly."

"That be so, surely, and it bain't no use my saying as it ain't, and it's true enough what you says, that it's better half the hands should be busy than none; but those as gets the sack won't see it, and oi fears there will be mischief. Oi don't hold with the Luddites, but oi tell ye the men be getting desperate, and oi be main sure as there will be trouble afore long. Your loife won't be safe, Maister Ned."

"I don't hold much to my life," Ned laughed bitterly, "so the Luddites won't be able to frighten me there."

"I suppose thou wilt have some of the hands to sleep at the mill, as they do at some of the other places. If thou wilt get arms those as is at work will do their best to defend it. Cartwright has got a dozen or more sleeping in his mill."

"I will see about it," Ned said, "but I don't think I shall do that. I don't want any men to get killed in defending our property."

"Then they will burn it, thou wilt see if they doan't," Luke said earnestly.

"I hope not, Luke. I shall do my best to prevent it anyhow."

"Oi will give ee warning if a whisper of it gets to moi ears, you may be sure, but the young uns doan't say much to us old hands, who be mostly agin them, and ov course they will say less now if oi be one of those kept on."

"We must chance it, Luke; but be sure, whatever I do I shan't let the mill be destroyed if I can help it."

And so on the Monday following the waterwheel was set going and the new machinery began to work. The number of hands at the mill was reduced by nearly one half, while the amount of cloth turned out each week was quadrupled.

The machinery had all the latest improvements, and was excellently arranged. Mr. Mulready had thoroughly understood his business, and Ned soon saw that the profits under the new system of working would be fully as great as his stepfather had calculated.

A very short time elapsed before threatening letters began to come in. Ned paid no heed to them, but quietly went on his way. The danger was, however, undoubted. The attitude of the Luddites had become more openly threatening. Throughout the whole of the West Riding open drilling was carried on.

The mills at Marsden, Woodbottom, and Ottewells were all threatened. In answer to the appeals of the mill owners the number of troops in the district was largely increased. Infantry were stationed in Marsden, and the 10th King's Bays, the 15th Hussars, and the Scots Greys were alternately billeted in the place. The roads to Ottewells, Woodbottom, and Lugards Mill were patrolled regularly, and the whole country was excited and alarmed by constant rumors of attacks upon the mills.

Ned went on his way quietly, asking for no special protection for his mill or person, seemingly indifferent to the excitement which prevailed. Except to the workmen in the mill, to the doctor, and Mr. Porson he seldom exchanged a word with any one during the day.

Mr. Simmonds and several of his father's old friends had on his return made advances toward him, but he had resolutely declined to meet them. Mr. Porson and the doctor had remonstrated with him.

"It is no use," he replied. "They congratulated me on my acquittal, but I can tell by their tones that there is not one of them who thoroughly believes in his heart that I am innocent."

The only exception which Ned made was Mr. Cartwright, a mill owner at Liversedge. He had been slightly acquainted with Captain Sankey; and one day soon after Ned's return as he was walking along the street oblivious, as usual, of every one passing, Mr. Cartwright came up and placing himself in front of him, said heartily:

"I congratulate you with all my heart, Sankey, on your escape from this rascally business. I knew that your innocence would be proved: I would have staked my life that your father's son never had any hand in such a black affair as this. I am heartily glad!"

There was no withstanding the frank cordiality of the Yorkshireman's manner. Ned's reserve melted at once before it.

"Thank you very much," he said, returning the grasp of his hand; "but I am afraid that though I was acquitted my innocence wasn't proved, and never will be. You may think me innocent, but you will find but half a dozen people in Marsden to agree with you."

"Pooh! pooh!" Mr. Cartwright said. "You must not look at things in that light. Most men are fools, you know; never fear. We shall prove you innocent some day. I have no doubt these rascally Luddites are at the bottom of it. And now, look here, young fellow, I hear that you are going to run the mill. Of course you can't know much about it yet. Now I am an old hand and shall be happy to give you any advice in my power, both for your own sake and for that of your good father. Now I mean what I say, and I shall be hurt if you refuse. I am in here two or three times a week, and my road takes me within five hundred yards of your mill, so it will be no trouble to me to come round for half an hour as I pass, and give you a few hints until you get well into harness. There are dodges in our trade, you know, as well as in all others, and you must be put up to them if you are to keep up in the race. There is plenty of room for us all, and now that the hands are all banding themselves against us, we mill owners must stand together too."

Ned at once accepted the friendly offer, and two or three times a week Mr. Cartwright came round to the mill, went round the place with Ned, and gave him his advice as to the commercial transactions. Ned found this of inestimable benefit. Mr. Cartwright was acquainted with all the buyers in that part of Yorkshire, and was able several times to prevent Ned from entering into transactions with men willing to take advantage of his inexperience.

Sometimes he went over with Mr. Cartwright to his mill at Liversedge and obtained many a useful hint there as to the management of his business. Only in the matter of having some of his hands to sleep at the mill Ned declined to act on the advice of his new friend.

"No," he said; "I am determined that I will have no lives risked in the defense of our property. It has cost us dearly enough already."

But though Ned refused to have any of his hands to sleep at the mill, he had a bed fitted up in his office, and every night at ten o'clock, after Charlie had gone to bed, he walked out to the mill and slept there: Heavy shutters were erected to all the lower windows, and bells were attached to these and to the doors, which would ring at the slightest motion.

A cart one evening arrived from Huddersfield after the hands had left the mill, and under Ned's direction a number of small barrels were carried up to his office.

Although three months had now elapsed since his return home he had never once seen his mother, and the knowledge that she still regarded him as the murderer of her husband greatly added to the bitterness of his life. Of an evening after Lucy had gone to bed he assisted Charlie with his lessons, and also worked for an hour with Bill Swinton, who came regularly every evening to be taught.

Bill had a strong motive for self improvement. Ned had promised him that some day he should be foreman to the factory, but that before he could take such a position it would, of course, be necessary that he should be able to read and write well. But an even higher incentive was Bill's sense of his great inferiority in point of education to Polly Powlett. He entertained a deep affection for her, but he knew how she despised the rough and ignorant young fellows at Varley, and he felt that even if she loved him she would not consent to marry him unless he were in point of education in some way her equal; therefore he applied himself with all his heart to improving his education.

It was no easy task, for Bill was naturally somewhat slow and heavy; but he had perseverance, which makes up for many deficiencies, and his heart being in his work he made really rapid progress.

Sometimes Ned would start earlier than usual, and walk up with Bill Swinton, talking to him as they went over the subjects on which he had been working, the condition of the villagers, or the results of Bill's Sunday rambles over the moors.

On arriving at Varley Ned generally went in for half an hour's talk with Luke Marner and Mary Powlett before going off for the night to sleep at the mill. With these three friends, who all were passionately convinced of his innocence, he was more at his ease than anywhere else, for at home the thought of the absent figure upstairs was a never ceasing pain.

"The wind is very high tonight," Ned said one evening as the cottage shook with a gust which swept down from the moor.

"Ay, that it be," Luke agreed; "but it is nowt to a storm oi saw when oi war a young chap on t' coast!"

"I did not know you had ever been away from Varley," Ned said, "tell me about it, Luke."

"Well, it coomed round i' this way. One of t' chaps from here had a darter who had married and gone to live nigh t' coast, and he went vor a week to see her.

"Theere'd been a storm when he was there, and he told us aboot the water being all broke up into furrowes, vor all the world like a plowed field, only each ridge wur twice as high as one of our houses, and they came a moving along as fast as a horse could gallop, and when they hit the rocks vlew up into t' air as hoigh as the steeple o' Marsden church. It seemed to us as this must be a lie, and there war a lot of talk oor it, and at last vour on us made up our moinds as we would go over and see vor ourselves.

"It war a longer tramp nor we had looked vor, and though we sometoimes got a lift i' a cart we was all pretty footsore when we got to the end of our journey. The village as we was bound for stood oop on t' top of a flattish hill, one side of which seemed to ha' been cut away by a knife, and when you got to the edge there you were a-standing at the end o' the world. Oi know when we got thar and stood and looked out from the top o' that wall o' rock thar warn't a word among us.

"We was a noisy lot, and oi didn't think as nothing would ha' silenced a cropper; but thar we stood a-looking over at the end of the world, oi should say for five minutes, wi'out a word being spoke. Oi can see it now. There warn't a breath of wind nor a cloud i' the sky. It seemed to oi as if the sky went away as far as we could see, and then seemed to be doubled down in a line and to coom roight back agin to our feet. It joost took away our breath, and seemed somehow to bring a lump into the throat. Oi talked it over wi' the others afterward and we'd all felt just the same.

"It beat us altogether, and you never see a lot of croppers so quiet and orderly as we war as we went up to t' village. Most o' t' men war away, as we arterward learned, fishing, and t' women didn't know what to make o' us, but gathered at their doors and watched us as if we had been a party o' robbers coom down to burn the place and carry 'em away. However, when we found Sally White -- that war the name of the woman as had married from Varley -- she went round the village and told 'em as we was a party of her friends who had joost walked across Yorkshire to ha' a lock at the sea. Another young chap, Jack Purcell war his name, as was Sally's brother, and oi, being his mate, we stopt at Sally's house. The other two got a lodging close handy.

"Vor the vurst day or two vokes war shy of us, but arter that they began to see as we meant no harm. Of course they looked on us as foreigners, just as we croppers do here on anyone as cooms to Varley. Then Sally's husband coom back from sea and spoke up vor us, and that made things better, and as we war free wi' our money the fishermen took to us more koindly.

"We soon found as the water warn't always smooth and blue like the sky as we had seen it at first. The wind coom on to blow the vurst night as we war thar, and the next morning the water war all tossing aboot joost as Sally's feyther had said, though not so high as he had talked on. Still the wind warn't a blowing much, as Sally pointed owt to us; in a regular storm it would be a different sort o' thing altogether. We said as we should loike to see one, as we had coom all that way o' purpose. The vorth noight arter we got there Sally's husband said: 'You be a going vor to have your wish; the wind be a getting up, and we are loike to have a big storm on the coast tomorrow.' And so it war. Oi can't tell you what it war loike, oi've tried over and over again to tell Polly, but no words as oi can speak can give any idee of it.

"It war not loike anything as you can imagine. Standing down on the shore the water seemed all broke up into hills, and as if each hill was a-trying to get at you, and a-breaking itself up on the shore wi' a roar of rage when it found as it couldn't reach you. The noise war so great as you couldn't hear a man standing beside you speak to you. Not when he hallooed. One's words war blowed away. It felt somehow as if one war having a wrastle wi' a million wild beasts. They tells me as the ships at sea sometoimes floates and gets through a storm loike that; but oi doan't believe it, and shouldn't if they took their Bible oath to it, it bain't in reason.

"One of them waves would ha' broaked this cottage up loike a eggshell. Oi do believes as it would ha' smashed Marsden church, and it doan't stand to reason as a ship, which is built, they tells me, of wood and plank, would stand agin waves as would knock doon a church. Arter the storm oi should ha' coom back next morning, vor I felt fairly frightened. There didn't seem no saying as to what t' water moight do next toime. We should ha' gone there and then, only Sally's husband told us as a vessel war expected in two or three days wi' a cargo of tubs and she was to run them in a creek a few miles away.

"He said as loike as not there moight be a foight wi' the officers, and that being so we naterally made up our moinds vor to stop and lend un a hand. One night arter it got dark we started, and arter a tramp of two or three hours cam' to the place. It were a dark noight, and how the ship as was bringing the liquor was to foind oot the place was more nor oi could make oot. Jack he tried to explain how they did it, but oi couldn't make head nor tails on it except that when they got close they war to show a loight twice, and we war to show a loight twice if it war all roight for landing.

"Oi asked what had becoom of the revenue men, and was told as a false letter had been writ saying a landing was to be made fifteen mile away. We went vorward to a place whar there war a break in the rocks, and a sort of valley ran down to the sea. There war a lot of men standing aboot, and just as we coom up thar war a movement and we hears as the loights had been shown and the vessel war running in close. Down we goes wi' the others, and soon a boat cooms ashore. As soon as she gets close the men runs out to her; the sailors hands out barrels and each man shoulders one and trudges off. We does the same and takes the kegs up to t' top, whar carts and horses was waiting for 'em. Oi went oop and down three toimes and began to think as there war moor hard work nor fun aboot it. Oi war a-going to knock off when some one says as one more trip would finish the cargo, so down oi goes again: Just when oi gets to t' bottom there war a great shouting oop at top.

"'They're just too late,' a man says; 'the kegs be all safe away except this lot,' for the horses and carts had gone off the instant as they got their loads. 'Now we must run for it, for the revenue men will be as savage as may be when they voinds as they be too late.' 'Where be us to run?' says oi. 'Keep close to me, oi knows the place,' says he.

"So we runs down and voinds as they had tumbled the bar'ls into t' boat again, and t' men war just pushing her off when there war a shout close to us. 'Shove, shove!' shouted the men, and oi runs into t' water loike t' rest and shooved. Then a lot o' men run up shouting, 'Stop! in the king's name!' and began vor to fire pistols.

"Nateral oi wasn't a-going to be fired at for nowt, so oi clutches moi stick and goes at 'em wi' the rest, keeping close to t' chap as told me as he knew the coontry. There was a sharp foight vor a minute. Oi lays aboot me hearty and gets a crack on my ear wi' a cootlas, as they calls theer swords, as made me pretty wild.

"We got the best o't. 'Coom on,' says the man to me, 'there's a lot moor on 'em a-cooming.' So oi makes off as hard as oi could arter him. He keeps straight along at t' edge o' t' water. It war soft rowing at first, vor t' place war as flat as a table, but arter running vor a vew minutes he says, 'Look owt!' Oi didn't know what to look owt vor, and down oi goes plump into t' water. Vor all at once we had coomed upon a lot o' rocks covered wi' a sort of slimy stuff, and so slippery as you could scarce keep a footing on 'em. Oi picks myself up and vollers him. By this toime, maister, oi war beginning vor to think as there warn't so mooch vun as oi had expected in this koind o' business. Oi had been working two hours loike a nigger a-carrying tubs. Oi had had moi ear pretty nigh cut off, and it smarted wi' the salt water awful. Oi war wet from head to foot and had knocked the skin off moi hands and knees when oi went down. However there warn't no toime vor to grumble. Oi vollers him till we gets to t' foot o' t' rocks, and we keeps along 'em vor aboot half a mile.

"The water here coombed close oop to t' rocks, and presently we war a-walking through it. 'Be'st a going vor to drown us all?' says oi. 'We are jest there,' says he. 'Ten minutes later we couldn't ha' got along.' T' water war a-getting deeper and deeper, and t' loomps of water cooms along and well nigh took me off my feet. Oi was aboot to turn back, vor it war better, thinks oi, to be took by t' king's men than to be droonded, when he says, 'Here we be.' He climbs oop t' rocks and oi follows him. Arter climbing a short way he cooms to a hole i' rocks, joost big enough vor to squeeze through, but once inside it opened out into a big cave. A chap had struck a loight, and there war ten or twelve more on us thar. 'We had better wait another five minutes,' says one, 'to see if any more cooms along. Arter that the tide ull be too high.'

"We waits, but no one else cooms; me and moi mate war t' last. Then we goes to t' back of the cave, whar t' rock sloped down lower and lower till we had to crawl along one arter t'other pretty nigh on our stomachs, like raats going into a hole. Oi wonders whar on aarth we war agoing, till at last oi found sudden as oi could stand oopright. Then two or three more torches war lighted, and we begins to climb oop some steps cut i' the face of t' rock. A rope had been fastened alongside to hold on by, which war a good job for me, vor oi should never ha' dared go oop wi'out it, vor if oi had missed my foot there warn't no saying how far oi would ha' fallen to t' bottom. At last the man avore me says, 'Here we be!' and grateful oi was, vor what wi' the crawling and the climbing, and the funk as oi was in o' falling, the swaat was a-running down me loike water. The torches war put out, and in another minute we pushes through some bushes and then we war on t' top of the cliff a hundred yards or so back from t' edge, and doon in a sort of hollow all covered thickly over wi' bushes. We stood and listened vor a moment, but no sound war to be heard. Then one on em says, 'We ha' done 'em agin. Now the sooner as we gets off to our homes the better.' Looky for me, Jack war one of the lot as had coom up through the cave. 'Coom along, Luke,' says he, 'oi be glad thou hast got out of it all roight. We must put our best foot foremost to get in afore day breaks.' So we sets off, and joost afore morning we gets back to village. As to t'other two from Varley, they never coom back agin. Oi heerd as how all as war caught war pressed for sea, and oi expect they war oot in a ship when a storm coom on, when in coorse they would be drownded. Oi started next day vor hoam, and from that day to this oi ha' never been five mile away, and what's more, oi ha' never grudged the price as they asked for brandy. It ud be cheap if it cost voive toimes as much, seeing the trouble and danger as there be in getting it ashore, to say nothing o' carrying it across the sea."

"That was an adventure, Luke," Ned said, "and you were well out of it. I had no idea you had ever been engaged in defrauding the king's revenue. But now I must be off. I shall make straight across for the mill without going into Varley."

One night Ned had as usual gone to the mill, and having carried down the twelve barrels from the office and placed them in a pile in the center of the principal room of the mill he retired to bed. He had been asleep for some hours when he was awoke by the faint tingle of a bell. The office was over the principal entrance to the mill, and leaping from his bed he threw up the window and looked out. The night was dark, but he could see a crowd of at least two hundred men gathered in the yard.

As the window was heard to open a sudden roar broke from the men, who had hitherto conducted their operations in silence.

"There he be, there's the young fox; burn the mill over his head. Now to work, lads, burst in the door."

And at once a man armed with a mighty sledgehammer began to batter at the door.

Ned tried to make himself heard, but his voice was lost in the roar without. Throwing on some clothes he ran rapidly downstairs and lighted several lamps in the machine room. Then he went to the door, which was already tottering under the heavy blows, shot back some of the bolts, and then took his place by the side of the pile of barrels with a pistol in his hand.

In another moment the door yielded and fell with a crash, and the crowd with exultant cheers poured in.

They paused surprised and irresolute at seeing Ned standing quiet and seemingly indifferent by the pile of barrels in the center of the room.

"Hold!" he said in a quiet, clear voice, which sounded distinctly over the tumult. "Do not come any nearer, or it will be the worse for you. Do you know what I have got here, lads? This is powder. If you doubt it, one of you can come forward and look at this barrel with the head out by my side. Now I have only got to fire my pistol into it to blow the mill, and you with it, into the air, and I mean to do it. Of course I shall go too; but some of you with black masks over your faces, who, I suppose, live near here, may know something about me, and may know that my life is not so pleasant a one that I value it in the slightest. As far as I am concerned you might burn the mill and me with it without my lifting a finger; but this mill is the property of my mother, brother, and sister. Their living depends upon it, and I am going to defend it. Let one of you stir a single step forward and I fire this pistol into this barrel beside me."

And Ned held the pistol over the open barrel.

A dead silence of astonishment and terror had fallen upon the crowd. The light was sufficient for them to see Ned's pale but determined face, and as his words came out cold and steady there was not one who doubted that he was in earnest, and that he was prepared to blow himself and them into the air if necessary.

A cry of terror burst from them as he lowered the pistol to the barrel of powder. Then in wild dismay every man threw down his arms and fled, jostling each other fiercely to make their escape through the doorway from the fate which threatened them. In a few seconds the place was cleared and the assailants in full flight across the country. Ned laughed contemptuously. Then with some difficulty he lifted the broken door into its place, put some props behind it, fetched a couple of blankets from his bed, and lay down near the powder, and there slept quietly till morning.

Luke and Bill Swinton were down at the factory an hour before the usual time. The assailants had for the most part come over from Huddersfield, but many of the men from Varley had been among them. The terror which Ned's attitude had inspired had been so great that the secret was less well kept than usual, and as soon as people were astir the events of the night were known to most in the village. The moment the news reached the ears of Luke and Bill they hurried down to the mill without going in as usual for their mug of beer and bit of bread and cheese at the "Brown Cow." The sight of the shattered door at once told them that the rumors they had heard were well founded. They knocked loudly upon it.

"Hullo!" Ned shouted, rousing himself from his slumbers; "who is there? What are you kicking up all this row about?"

"It's oi, Maister Ned, oi and Bill, and glad oi am to hear your voice. It's true, then, they haven't hurt thee?"

"Not a bit of it," Ned said as he moved the supports of the door. "I think they got the worst of it."

"If so be as what oi ha' heard be true you may well say that, Maister Ned. Oi hear as you ha' gived 'em such a fright as they won't get over in a hurry. They say as you was a-sitting on the top of a heap of gunpowder up to the roof with a pistol in each hand."

"Not quite so terrible as that, Luke; but the effect would have been the same. Those twelve barrels of powder you see there would have blown the mill and all in it into atoms."

"Lord, Maister Ned," Bill said, "where didst thou get that powder, and why didn't ye say nowt about it? Oi ha' seen it up in the office, now oi thinks on it. Oi wondered what them barrels piled up in a corner and covered over wi' sacking could be; but it warn't no business o' mine to ax."

"No, Bill, I did not want any of them to know about it, because these things get about, and half the effect is lost unless they come as a surprise; but I meant to do it if I had been driven to it, and if I had, King Lud would have had a lesson which he would not have forgotten in a hurry. Now, Luke, you and Bill had better help me carry them back to their usual place. I don't think they are likely to be wanted again."

"That they won't be," Luke said confidently; "the Luddites ull never come near this mill agin, not if thou hast twenty toimes as many machines. They ha' got a froight they won't get over. They told me as how some of the chaps at Varley was so freighted that they will be a long toime afore they gets round. Oi'll go and ask tonight how that Methurdy chap, the blacksmith, be a feeling. Oi reckon he's at the bottom on it. Dang un for a mischievous rogue! Varley would ha' been quiet enough without him. Oi be wrong if oi shan't see him dangling from a gibbet one of these days, and a good riddance too."

The powder was stowed away before the hands began to arrive, all full of wonder and curiosity. They learned little at the mill, however. Ned went about the place as usual with an unchanged face, and the hands were soon at their work; but many during the day wondered how it was possible that their quiet and silent young employer should have been the hero of the desperate act of which every one had heard reports more or less exaggerated.

A lad had been sent over to Marsden the first thing for some carpenters, and by nightfall a rough but strong door had been hung in place of that which had been shattered. By the next day rumor had carried the tale all over Marsden, and Ned on his return home was greeted by Charlie with:

"Why, Ned, there is all sorts of talk in the place of an attack upon the mill the night before last. Why didn't you tell me about it?"

"Yes, Maister Ned," Abijah put in, "and they say as you blew up about a thousand of them."

"Yes, Abijah," Ned said with a laugh, "and the pieces haven't come down yet."

"No! but really, Ned, what is it all about?"

"There is not much to tell you, Charlie. The Luddites came and broke open the door. I had got several barrels of powder there, and when they came in I told them if they came any further I should blow the place up. That put them in a funk, and they all bolted, and I went to sleep again. That's the whole affair."

"Oh!" Charlie said in a disappointed voice, for this seemed rather tame after the thrilling reports he had heard.

"Then you didn't blow up any of 'em, Maister Ned," Abijah said doubtfully.

"Not a man jack, Abijah. You see I could not very well have blown them up without going up myself too, so I thought it better to put it off for another time."

"They are very wicked, bad men," Lucy said gravely.

"Not so very wicked and bad, Lucy. You see they are almost starving, and they consider that the new machines have taken the bread out of their mouths, which is true enough. Now you know when people are starving, and have not bread for their wives and children, they are apt to get desperate. If I were to see you starving, and thought that somebody or something was keeping the bread out of your mouth, I dare say I should do something desperate."

"But it would be wrong all the same," Lucy said doubtfully.

"Yes, my dear, but it would be natural; and when human nature pulls one way, and what is right pulls the other, the human nature generally gets the best of it."

Lucy did not exactly understand, but she shook her head gravely in general dissent to Ned's view.

"Why did you not tell us when you came home to breakfast yesterday?" Charlie asked.

"Because I thought you were sure to hear sooner or later. I saw all the hands in the mill had got to know about it somehow or other, and I was sure it would soon get over the place; and I would rather that I could say, if any one asked me, that I had not talked about it to any one, and was in no way responsible for the absurd stories which had got about. I have been talked about enough in Marsden, goodness knows, and it is disgusting that just as I should think they must be getting tired of the subject here is something fresh for them to begin upon again."

As they were at tea the servant brought in a note which had just been left at the door. It was from Mr. Thompson, saying that in consequence of the rumors which were current in the town he should be glad to learn from Ned whether there was any foundation for them, and would therefore be obliged if he would call at eight o'clock that evening. His colleague, Mr. Simmonds, would be present.

Ned gave an exclamation of disgust as he threw down the note.

"Is there any answer, sir?" the servant asked. "The boy said he was to wait."

"Tell him to say to Mr. Thompson that I will be there at eight o'clock; but that -- no, that will do.

"It wouldn't be civil," he said to Charlie as the door closed behind the servant, "to say that I wish to goodness he would let my affairs alone and look to his own."

When Ned reached the magistrates at the appointed hour he found that the inquiry was of a formal character. Besides the two justices, Major Browne, who commanded the troops at Marsden, was present; and the justices' clerk was there to take notes.

Mr. Simmonds greeted Ned kindly, Mr. Thompson stiffly. He was one of those who had from the first been absolutely convinced that the lad had killed his stepfather. The officer, who was of course acquainted with the story, examined Ned with a close scrutiny.

"Will you take a seat, Ned?" Mr. Simmonds, who was the senior magistrate, said. "We have asked you here to explain to us the meaning of certain rumors which are current in the town of an attack upon your mill."

"I will answer any questions that you may ask," Ned said quietly, seating himself, while the magistrates' clerk dipped his pen in the ink and prepared to take notes of his statement.

"Is it the case that the Luddites made an attack upon your mill the night before last?"

"It is true, sir."

"Will you please state the exact circumstances."

"There is not much to tell," Ned said quietly. "I have for some time been expecting an attack, having received many threatening letters. I have, therefore, made a habit of sleeping in the mill, and a month ago I got in twelve barrels of powder from Huddersfield. Before going to bed of a night I always pile these in the middle of the room where the looms are, which is the first as you enter. I have bells attached to the shutters and doors to give me notice of any attempt to enter. The night before last I was awoke by hearing one of them ring, and looking out of the window made out a crowd of two or three hundred men outside. They began to batter the door, so, taking a brace of pistols which I keep in readiness by my bed, I went down and took my place by the powder. When they broke down the door and entered I just told them that if they came any further I should fire my pistol into one of the barrels, the head of which I had knocked out, and, as I suppose they saw that I meant to do it, they went off. That is all I have to tell, so far as I know."

The clerk's pen ran swiftly over the paper as Ned quietly made his statement. Then there was a silence for a minute or two.

"And did you really mean to carry out your threat, Mr. Sankey?"

"Certainly," Ned said.

"But you would, of course, have been killed yourself."

"Naturally," Ned said dryly; "but that would have been of no great consequence to me or any one else. As the country was lately about to take my life at its own expense it would not greatly disapprove of my doing so at my own, especially as the lesson to the Luddites would have been so wholesale a one that the services of the troops in this part of the country might have been dispensed with for some time."

"Did you recognize any of the men concerned?"

"I am glad to say I did not," Ned replied. "Some of them were masked. The others were, so far as I could see among such a crowd of faces in a not very bright light, all strangers to me."

"And you would not recognize any of them again were you to see them?"

"I should not," Ned replied. "None of them stood out prominently among the others."

"You speak, Mr. Sankey," Mr. Thompson said, "as if your sympathies were rather on the side of these men, who would have burned your mill, and probably have murdered you, than against them."

"I do not sympathize with the measures the men are taking to obtain redress for what they regard as a grievance; but I do sympathize very deeply with the amount of suffering which they are undergoing from the introduction of machinery and the high prices of provisions; and I am not surprised that, desperate as they are, and ignorant as they are, they should be led astray by bad advice. Is there any other question that you wish to ask me?"

"Nothing at present, I think," Mr. Simmonds said after consulting his colleague by a look. "We shall, of course, forward a report of the affair to the proper authorities, and I may say that although you appear to take it in a very quiet and matter of fact way, you have evidently behaved with very great courage and coolness, and in a manner most creditable to yourself. I think, however, that you ought immediately to have made a report to us of the circumstances, in order that we might at once have determined what steps should be taken for the pursuit and apprehension of the rioters."

Ned made no reply, but rising, bowed slightly to the three gentlemen and walked quietly from the room.

"A singular young fellow!" Major Browne remarked as the door closed behind him. "I don't quite know what to make of him, but I don't think he could have committed that murder. It was a cowardly business, and although I believe he might have a hand in any desperate affair, as indeed this story he has just told us shows, I would lay my life he would not do a cowardly one."

"I agree with you," Mr. Simmonds said, "though I own that I have never been quite able to rid myself of a vague suspicion that he was guilty."

"And I believe he is so still," Mr. Thompson said. "To me there is something almost devilish about that lad's manner."

"His manner was pleasant enough," Mr. Simmonds said warmly, "before that affair of Mulready. He was as nice a lad as you would wish to see till his mother was fool enough to get engaged to that man, who, by the way, I never liked. No wonder his manner is queer now; so would yours be, or mine, if we were tried for murder and, though acquitted, knew there was still a general impression of our guilt."

"Yes, by Jove," the officer said, "I should be inclined to shoot myself. You are wrong, Mr. Thompson, take my word for it. That young fellow never committed a cowardly murder. I think you told me, Mr. Simmonds, that he had intended to go into the army had it not been for this affair? Well, his majesty has lost a good officer, for that is just the sort of fellow who would lead a forlorn hope though he knew the breach was mined in a dozen places. It is a pity, a terrible pity!"



Chapter XVIII: Ned Is Attacked


As Ned had foreseen and resented, the affair at the mill again made him the chief topic of talk in the neighborhood, and the question of his guilt or innocence of the murder of his stepfather was again debated with as much earnestness as it had been when the murder was first committed. There was this difference, however, that whereas before he had found but few defenders, for the impression that he was guilty was almost universal, there were now many who took the other view.

The one side argued that a lad who was ready to blow himself and two or three hundred men into the air was so desperate a character that he would not have been likely to hesitate a moment in taking the life of a man whom he hated, and who had certainly ill treated him. The other side insisted that one with so much cool courage would not have committed a murder in so cowardly a way as by tying a rope across the road which his enemy had to traverse. One party characterized his conduct at the mill as that of the captain of a pirate ship, the other likened it to any of the great deeds of devotion told in history -- the death of Leonidas and his three hundred, or the devotion of Mutius Scaevola.

Had Ned chosen now he might have gathered round himself a strong party of warm adherents, for there were many who, had they had the least encouragement, would have been glad to shake him by the hand and to show their partisanship openly and warmly; but Ned did not choose. The doctor and Mr. Porson strongly urged upon him that he should show some sort of willingness to meet the advances which many were anxious to make.

"These people are all willing to admit that they have been wrong, Ned, and really anxious to atone as far as they can for their mistake in assuming that you were guilty. Now is your time, my boy; what they believe today others will believe tomorrow; it is the first step toward living it down. I always said it would come, but I hardly ventured to hope that it would come so soon."

"I can't do it, Mr. Porson; I would if I could, if only for the sake of the others; but I can't talk, and smile, and look pleasant. When a man knows that his mother lying at home thinks that he is a murderer how is he to go about like other people?"

"But I have told you over and over again, Ned, that your mother is hardly responsible for her actions. She has never been a very reasonable being, and is less so than ever at present. Make an effort, my boy, and mix with others. Show yourself at the cricket match next week. You know the boys are all your firm champions, and I warrant that half the people there will flock round you and make much of you if you will but give them the chance."

But Ned could not, and did not, but went on his way as before, living as if Marsden had no existence for him, intent upon his work at the mill, and unbending only when at home with his brother and sister.

His new friend, Cartwright, was, of course, one of the first to congratulate him on the escape the mill had had of destruction.

"I was wondering what you would do if they came," he said, "and was inclined to think you were a fool for not following my example and having some of your hands to sleep at the mill. Your plan was best, I am ready to allow; that is to say, it was best for any one who was ready to carry out his threat if driven to it. I shouldn't be, I tell you fairly. If the mill is attacked I shall fight and shall take my chance of being shot, but I could not blow myself up in cold blood."

"I don't suppose I could have done so either in the old times," Ned said with a faint smile. "My blood used to be hot enough, a good deal too hot, but I don't think anything could get it up to boiling point now, so you see if this thing had to be done at all it must have been in cold blood."

"By the way, Sankey, I wish you would come over one day next week and dine with me; there will be no one else there except my daughter."

Ned hastily muttered an excuse.

"Oh, that is all nonsense," Mr. Cartwright said good humoredly; "you are not afraid of me, and you needn't be afraid of my daughter. She is only a child of fifteen, and of course takes you at my estimate, and is disposed to regard you as a remarkable mixture of the martyr and the hero, and to admire you accordingly. Pooh, pooh, lad! you can't be living like a hermit all your life; and at any rate if you make up your mind to have but a few friends you must be all the closer and more intimate with them. I know you dine with Porson and Green, and I am not going to let you keep me at arm's length; you must come, or else I shall be seriously offended."

So Ned had no resource left him, and had to consent to dine at Liversedge. Once there he often repeated the visit. With the kind and hearty manufacturer he was perfectly at home, and although at first he was uncomfortable with his daughter he gradually became at his ease with her, especially after she had driven over with her father to make friends with Lucy, and, again, a short time afterward, to carry her away for a week's visit at Liversedge. For this Ned was really grateful. Lucy's life had been a very dull one. She had no friends of her own age in Marsden, for naturally at the time of Mr. Mulready's death all intimacy with the few acquaintances they had in the place had been broken off, for few cared that their children should associate with a family among whom such a terrible tragedy had taken place.

Charlie was better off, for he had his friends at school, and the boys at Porson's believed in Ned's innocence as a point of honor. In the first place, it would have been something like a reflection upon the whole school to admit the possibility of its first boy being a murderer; in the second, Ned had been generally popular among them, he was their best cricketer, the life and soul of all their games, never bullying himself and putting down all bullying among others with a strong hand. Their championship showed itself in the shape of friendship for Charlie; and at the midsummer following Mr. Mulready's death he had received invitations from many of them to stay with them during the holidays, and had indeed spent that time on a series of short visits among them.

He himself would, had he had his choice, have remained at home with Ned, for he knew how lonely his brother's life was, and that his only pleasure consisted in the quiet evenings; but Ned would not hear of it.

"You must go, Charlie, both for your sake and my own. The change will do you good; and if you were to stop at home and refuse to go out people would say that you were ashamed to be seen, and that you were crushed down with the weight of my guilt. You have got to keep up the honor of the family now, Charlie; I have proved a failure."

It was September now, and six months had elapsed since the death of Mr. Mulready. The getting in of the harvest had made no difference in the price of food, the general distress was as great as ever, and the people shook their heads and said that there would be bad doings when the winter with its long nights was at hand.

The mill was flourishing under its new management. The goods turned out by the new machinery were of excellent quality and finish, and Ned had more orders on hand than he could execute. The profits were large, the hands well paid and contented. Ned had begged Dr. Green and the other trustees of his mother's property to allow him to devote a considerable part of the profits to assist, during the hard time of winter, the numerous hands in Varley and other villages round Marsden who were out of employment; but the trustees said they were unable to permit this. Mrs. Mulready absolutely refused to hear anything about the mill or to discuss any questions connected with money, therefore they had no resource but to allow the profits, after deducting all expenses of living, to accumulate until, at any rate, Lucy, the youngest of the children, came of age.

Ned, however, was not to be easily thwarted, and he quietly reverted to the old method of giving out a large quantity of work to the men to be performed by the hand looms in their own cottages, while still keeping his new machinery fully employed. There was, indeed, a clear loss upon every yard of cloth so made, as it had, of course, to be sold at the lower prices which machinery had brought about; still the profits from the mill itself were large enough to bear the drain, and means of support would be given to a large number of families throughout the winter. Ned told Dr. Green what he had done.

"You see, doctor," he said, "this is altogether beyond your province. You and Mr. Lovejoy appointed me, as the senior representative of the family, to manage the mill. Of course I can manage it in my own way, and as long as the profits are sufficient to keep us in the position we have hitherto occupied I don't see that you have any reason to grumble."

"You are as obstinate as a mule, Ned," the doctor said, smiling; "but I am glad enough to let you have your way so long as it is not clearly my duty to thwart you; and indeed I don't know how those poor people at Varley and at some of the other villages would get through the winter without some such help."

"I am very glad I hit upon the plan. I got Luke Marner to draw up a list of all the men who had families depending upon them; but indeed I find that I have been able to set pretty nearly all the looms in the neighborhood at work, and of course that will give employment to the spinners and croppers. I have made a close calculation, and find that with the profit the mill is making I shall just be able to clear our household expenses this winter, after selling at a loss all the cloth that can be made in the looms round."

"At any rate, Ned," the doctor said, "your plan will be a relief to me in one way. Hitherto I have never gone to bed at night without an expectation of being awakened with the news that you have been shot on your way out to the mill at night. The fellows you frightened away last month must have a strong grudge against you in addition to their enmity against you as an employer. You will be safe enough in future, and can leave the mill to take care of itself at night if you like. You will have the blessings of all the poor fellows in the neighborhood, and may henceforth go where you will by night or day without the slightest risk of danger."

"You are right, no doubt," Ned said, "though that did not enter my mind. When I took the step my only fear was that by helping them for a time I might be injuring them in the future. Hand weaving, spinning, and cropping are doomed. Nothing can save them, and the sooner the men learn this and take to other means of gaining a livelihood the better. Still the prices that I can give are of course very low, just enough to keep them from starvation, and we must hope that ere long new mills will be erected in which the present hand workers will gradually find employment."

Hardly less warm than the satisfaction that the announcement that Sankey was about to give out work to all the hand looms excited in the villages round Marsden, was that which Abijah felt at the news.

Hitherto she had kept to herself the disapprobation which she felt at Ned's using the new machinery. She had seen in her own village the sufferings that had been caused by the change, and her sympathies were wholly with the Luddites, except of course when they attempted anything against the life and property of her boy. Strong in the prejudices of the class among whom she had been born and reared, she looked upon the new machinery as an invention of the evil one to ruin the working classes, and had been deeply grieved at Ned's adoption of its use. Nothing but the trouble in which he was could have compelled her to keep her opinion on the subject to herself.

"I am main glad, Maister Ned. I b'lieve now as we may find out about that other affair. I never had no hope before, it warn't likely as things would come about as you wanted, when you was a-flying in the face of providence by driving poor folks to starvation with them noisy engines of yours; it warn't likely, and I felt as it was wrong to hope for it. I said my prayers every night, but it wasn't reasonable to expect a answer as long as that mill was a-grinding men to powder."

"I don't think it was as bad as all that, Abijah. In another ten years there will be twice as many hands employed as ever there were, and there is no saying how large the trade may not grow."

Abijah shook her head as if to imply her belief that an enlargement of trade by means of these new machines would be clearly flying in the face of providence, however, she was too pleased at the news that hand work was to be resumed in the district to care about arguing the question. Even the invalid upstairs took a feeble interest in the matter when Abijah told her that Master Ned had arranged to give work to scores of starving people through the winter.

As a rule Abijah never mentioned his name to her mistress, for it was always the signal for a flood of tears, and caused an excitement and agitation which did not calm down for hours; but lately she had noticed that her mistress began to take a greater interest in the details she gave her of what was passing outside. She spoke more cheerfully when Lucy brought in her work and sat by her bedside, and she had even exerted herself sufficiently to get up two or three times and lie upon the sofa in her room. It was Charlie who, full of the news, had rushed in to tell her about Ned's defense at the mill. She had made no comment whatever, but her face had flushed and her lips trembled, and she had been very silent and quiet all that day. Altogether Abijah thought that she was mending, and Dr. Green was of the same opinion.

Although the setting to work of the hand looms and spindles relieved the dire pressure of want immediately about Marsden, in other parts things were worse than ever that winter, and the military were kept busy by the many threatening letters which were received by the mill owners from King Lud.

One day Mr. Cartwright entered Ned's office at the mill.

"Have you heard the news, Sankey?"

"No, I have heard no news in particular."

"Horsfall has been shot."

"You don't say so!" Ned exclaimed.

"Yes, he has been threatened again and again. He was over at Huddersfield yesterday afternoon; he started from the 'George' on his way back at half past five. It seems that his friend Eastwood, of Slaithwaite, knowing how often his life had been threatened, offered to ride back with him, and though Horsfall laughed at the offer and rode off alone, Eastwood had his horse saddled and rode after him, but unfortunately did not overtake him.

"About six o'clock Horsfall pulled up his horse at the Warren House Inn at Crossland Moor. There he gave a glass of liquor to two of his old work people who happened to be outside, drank a glass of rum and water as he sat in the saddle, and then rode off. A farmer named Parr was riding about a hundred and fifty yards behind him. As Horsfall came abreast of a plantation Parr noticed four men stooping behind a wall, and then saw two puffs of smoke shoot out. Horsfall's horse started round at the flash, and he fell forward on his saddle.

"Parr galloped up, and jumping off caught him as he was falling. Horsfall could just say who he was and ask to be taken to his brother's house, which was near at hand. There were lots of people in the road, for it was market day in Huddersfield, you know, and the folks were on their way home, so he was soon put in a cart and taken back to the Warren House. It was found that both balls had struck him, one in the right side and one in the left thigh. I hear he is still alive this morning, but cannot live out the day."

"That is a bad business, indeed," Ned said.

"It is, indeed. Horsfall was a fine, generous, high spirited fellow, but he was specially obnoxious to the Luddites, whose doings he was always denouncing in the most violent way. Whose turn will it be next, I wonder? The success of this attempt is sure to encourage them, and we may expect to hear of some more bad doings. Of course there will be a reward offered for the apprehension of the murderers. A laborer saw them as they were hurrying away from the plantation, and says he should know them again if he saw them; but these fellows hang together so that I doubt if we shall ever find them out."

After Mr. Cartwright had gone Ned told Luke what had happened.

"I hope, Luke, that none of the Varley people have had a hand in this business?"

"Oi hoape not," Luke said slowly, "but ther bain't no saying; oi hears little enough of what be going on. Oi was never much in the way of hearing, but now as I am head of the room, and all the hands here are known to be well contented, oi hears less nor ever. Still matters get talked over at the 'Cow.' Oi hears it said as many of the lads in the village has been wishing to leave King Lud since the work was put out, but they have had messages as how any man turning traitor would be put out of the way. It's been somewhat like that from the first, and more nor half of them as has joined has done so because they was afeared to stand out. They ain't tried to put the screw on us old hands, but most of the young uns has been forced into joining.

"Bill has had a hard toime of it to stand out. He has partly managed because of his saying as how he has been sich good friends with you that he could not join to take part against the maisters; part, as oi hears, because his two brothers, who been in the thick of it from the first, has stuck up agin Bill being forced into it. Oi wish as we could get that blacksmith out of t' village; he be at the bottom of it all, and there's nowt would please me more than to hear as the constables had laid their hands on him. Oi hear as how he is more violent than ever at that meeting house. Of course he never mentions names or says anything direct, but he holds forth agin traitors as falls away after putting their hands to the plow, and as forsakes the cause of their starving brethren because their own stomachs is full."

"I wish we could stop him," Ned said thoughtfully. "I might get a constable sent up to be present at the meetings, but the constables here are too well known, and if you were to get one from another place the sight of a stranger there would be so unusual that it would put him on his guard at once. Besides, as you say, it would be very difficult to prove that his expressions applied to the Luddites, although every one may understand what he means. One must have clear evidence in such a case. However, I hope we shall catch him tripping one of these days. These are the fellows who ought to be punished, not the poor ignorant men who are led away by them."

The feeling of gratitude and respect with which Ned was regarded by the workpeople of his district, owing to his action regarding the hand frames, did something toward lightening the load caused by the suspicion which still rested upon him. Although he still avoided all intercourse with those of his own station, he no longer felt the pressure so acutely. The hard, set expression of his face softened somewhat, and though he was still strangely quiet and reserved in his manner toward those with whom his business necessarily brought him in contact, he no longer felt absolutely cut off from the rest of his kind.

Ned had continued his practice of occasionally walking up with Bill Swinton to Varley on his way to the mill. There was now little fear of an attempt upon his life by the hands in his neighborhood; but since the failure on the mill he had incurred the special enmity of the men who had come from a distance on that occasion, and he knew that any night he might be waylaid and shot by them. It was therefore safer to go round by Varley than by the direct road. One evening when he had been chatting rather later than usual at Luke Marner's, Luke said:

"Oi think there's something i' t' wind. Oi heerd at t' Cow this evening that there are some straangers i' the village. They're at t' Dog. Oi thinks there's soom sort ov a council there. Oi heers as they be from Huddersfield, which be the headquarters o' General Lud in this part. However, maister, oi doan't think as there's any fear of another attack on thy mill; they war too badly scaared t'other noight vor to try that again."

When Ned got up to go Bill Swinton as usual put on his cap to accompany him, as he always walked across the moor with him until they came to the path leading down to the back of the mill, this being the road taken by the hands from Varley coming and going from work. When they had started a minute or two George, who had been sitting by the fire listening to the talk, got up and stretched himself preparatory to going to bed, and said in his usual slow way:

"Oi wonders what they be a-doing tonoight. Twice while ye ha' been a-talking oi ha' seen a chap a-looking in at t' window."

"Thou hast!" Luke exclaimed, starting up. "Dang thee, thou young fool! Why didn't say so afore? Oi will hoide thee when oi comes back rarely! Polly, do thou run into Gardiner's, and Hoskings', and Burt's; tell 'em to cotch up a stick and to roon for their loives across t' moor toward t' mill. And do thou, Jarge, roon into Sykes' and Wilmot's and tell 'em the same; and be quick if thou would save thy skin. Tell 'em t' maister be loike to be attacked."

Catching up a heavy stick Luke hurried off, running into two cottages near and bringing on two more of the mill hands with him. He was nearly across the moor when they heard the sound of a shot. Luke, who was running at the top of his speed, gave a hoarse cry as of one who had received a mortal wound. Two shots followed in quick succession. A minute later Luke was dashing down the hollow through which the path ran down from the moor. Now he made out a group of moving figures and heard the sounds of conflict. His breath was coming in short gasps, his teeth were set; fast as he was running, he groaned that his limbs would carry him no faster. It was scarce two minutes from the time when the first shot was fired, but it seemed ages to him before he dashed into the group of men, knocking down two by the impetus of his rush. He was but just in time. A figure lay prostrate on the turf; another standing over him had just been beaten to his knee. But he sprang up again at Luke's onward rush. His assailants for a moment drew back.

"Thou'rt joist in toime, Luke," Bill panted out. "Oi war well nigh done."

"Be t' maister shot?"

"No, nowt but a clip wi' a stick."

As the words passed between them the assailants again rushed forward with curses and execrations upon those who stood between them and their victim.

"Moind, Luke, they ha' got knoives!" Bill exclaimed. "Oi ha' got more nor one slash already."

Luke and Bill fought vigorously, but they were overmatched. Anger and fear for Ned's safety nerved Luke's arm, the weight of the last twenty years seemed to drop off him, and he felt himself again the sturdy young cropper who could hold his own against any in the village. But he had not yet got back his breath, and was panting heavily. The assailants, six in number, were active and vigorous young men; and Bill, who was streaming with blood from several wounds, could only fight on the defensive. Luke then gave a short cry of relief as the two men who had started with him, but whom he had left behind from the speed which his intense eagerness had given him, ran up but a short minute after he had himself arrived and ranged themselves by him. The assailants hesitated now.

"Ye'd best be off," Luke said; "there ull be a score more here in a minute."

With oaths of disappointment and rage the assailants fell back and were about to make off when one of them exclaimed: "Ye must carry Tom off wi' thee. It ull never do to let un lay here."

The men gathered round a dark figure lying a few yards away. Four of them lifted it by the hands and feet, and then they hurried away across the moor. As they did so Bill Swinton with a sigh fell across Ned's body. In two or three minutes four more men, accompanied by George and Polly, whose anxiety would not let her stay behind, hurried up. Luke and his companions had raised Ned and Bill into a sitting posture.

"Are they killed, feyther?" Polly cried as she ran up breathless to them.

"Noa, lass; oi think as t' maister be only stunned, and Bill ha' fainted from loss o' blood. But oi doan't know how bad he be hurted yet. We had best carry 'em back to t' house; we can't see to do nowt here."

"Best let them stay here, feyther, till we can stop the bleeding. Moving would set the wounds off worse."

"Perhaps you are right, Polly. Jarge, do thou run back to t' house as hard as thou canst go. Loight t' lanterns and bring 'em along, wi' a can o' cold water."

Although the boy ran to the village and back at the top of his speed the time seemed long indeed to those who were waiting. When he returned they set to work at once to examine the injuries. Ned appeared to have received but one blow. The blood was slowly welling from a wound at the back of his head.

"That war maade by a leaded stick, oi guess," Luke said; "it's cut through his hat, and must pretty nigh ha' cracked his skool. One of you bathe un wi' the water while we looks arter Bill."

Polly gave an exclamation of horror as the light fell upon Bill Swinton. He was covered with blood. A clean cut extended from the top of the ear to the point of the chin, another from the left shoulder to the breast, while a third gash behind had cut through to the bone of the shoulder blade.

"Never moind t' water, lass," Luke said as Polly with trembling hands was about to wash the blood from the cut on the face, "the bluid won't do un no harm -- thou must stop t' bleeding."

Polly tore three or four long strips from the bottom of her dress. While she was doing so one of the men by Luke's directions took the lantern and gathered some short dry moss from the side of the slope, and laid it in a ridge on the gaping wound. Then Luke with Polly's assistance tightly bandaged Bill's head, winding the strips from the back of the head round to the chin, and again across the temples and jaw. Luke took out his knife and cut off the coat and shirt from the arms and shoulder, and in the same way bandaged up the other two wounds.

After George had started to fetch the lantern, Luke had at Polly's suggestion sent two men back to the village, and these had now returned with doors they had taken off the hinges. When Bill's wounds were bandaged he and Ned were placed on the doors, Ned giving a faint groan as he was moved.

"That's roight," Luke said encouragingly; "he be a-cooming round."

Two coats were wrapped up and placed under their heads, and they were then lifted and carried off, Polly hurrying on ahead to make up the fire and get hot water.

"Say nowt to no one," Luke said as he started. "Till t' master cooms round there ain't no saying what he'd loike done. Maybe he won't have nowt said aboot it."

The water was already hot when the party reached the cottage; the blood was carefully washed off Ned's head, and a great swelling with an ugly gash running across was shown. Cold water was dashed in his face, and with a gasp he opened his eyes.

"It be all roight, Maister Ned," Luke said soothingly; "it be all over now, and you be among vriends. Ye've had an ugly one on the back o' thy head, but I dowt thou wilt do rarely now."

Ned looked round vaguely, then a look of intelligence came into his face.

"Where is Bill?" he asked.

"He be hurted sorely, but oi think it be only loss o' blood, and he will coom round again; best lie still a few minutes, maister, thou wilt feel better then; Polly, she be tending Bill."

In a few minutes Ned was able to sit up; a drink of cold brandy and water further restored him. He went to the bed on which Bill had been placed.

"He's not dead?" he asked with a gasp, as he saw the white face enveloped in bandages.

"No, surelie," Luke replied cheerfully; "he be a long way from dead yet, oi hoape, though he be badly cut about."

"Have you sent for the doctor?" Ned asked.

"No!"

"Then send for Dr. Green at once, and tell him from me to come up here instantly."

Ned sat down in a chair for a few minutes, for he was still dazed and stupid; but his brain was gradually clearing. Presently he looked up at the men who were still standing silently near the door.

"I have no doubt," he said, "that I have to thank you all for saving my life, but at present I do not know how it has all come about. I will see you tomorrow. But unless it has already got known, please say nothing about this. I don't want it talked about -- at any rate until we see how Bill gets on.

"Now, Luke," he continued, when the men had gone, "tell me all about it. My brain is in a whirl, and I can hardly think."

Luke related the incidents of the fight and the flight of the assailants, and said that they had carried off a dead man with them. Ned sat for some time in silence.

"Yes," he said at last, "I shot one. I was walking along with Bill when suddenly a gun was fired from a bush close by; then a number of men jumped up and rushed upon us. I had my pistol, and had just time to fire two shots. I saw one man go straight down, and then they were upon us. They shouted to Bill to get out of the way, but he went at them like a lion. I don't think any of the others had guns; at any rate they only attacked us with sticks and knives. I fought with my back to Bill as well as I could, and we were keeping them off, till suddenly I don't remember any more."

"One on them hit ye from behind wi' a loaded stick," Luke said, "and thou must ha' gone doon like a felled ox; then oi expects as Bill stood across thee and kept them off as well as he could, but they war too much for t' lad; beside that cut on the head he ha' one on shoulder and one behind. Oi war only joost in toime, another quarter of a minute and they'd ha' got their knives into thee."

"Poor old Bill," Ned said sadly, going up to the bedside and laying his hand on the unconscious figure. "I fear you have given your life to save one of little value to myself or any one else."

"Don't say that, Master Ned," Polly said softly; "you cannot say what your life may be as yet, and if so be that Bill is to die, and God grant it isn't so, he himself would not think his life thrown away if it were given to save yours."

But few words were spoken in the cottage until Dr. Green arrived. Ned's head was aching so that he was forced to lie down. Polly from time to time moistened Bill's lips with a few drops of brandy. George had been ordered off to bed, and Luke sat gazing at the fire, wishing that there was something he could do.

At last the doctor arrived; the messenger had told him the nature of the case, and he had come provided with lint, plaster, and bandages.

"Well, Ned," he asked as he came in, "have you been in the wars again?"

"I am all right, doctor. I had a knock on the head which a day or two will put right; but I fear Bill is very seriously hurt."

The doctor at once set to to examine the bandages.

"You have done them up very well," he said approvingly; "but the blood is still oozing from them. I must dress them afresh; get me plenty of hot water, Polly, I have brought a sponge with me. Can you look on without fainting?"

"I don't think I shall faint, sir," Polly said quietly; "if I do, feyther will take my place."

In a quarter of an hour the wounds were washed, drawn together, and bandaged. There was but little fresh bleeding, for the lad's stock of life blood had nearly all flowed away.

"A very near case," the doctor said critically; "as close a shave as ever I saw. Had the wound on the face been a quarter of an inch nearer the eyebrow it would have severed the temporal artery. As it is it has merely laid open the jaw. Neither of the other wounds are serious, though they might very well have been fatal."

"Then you think he will get round, doctor?" Ned asked in a low tone.

"Get round! Of course he will," Dr. Green replied cheerily. "Now that we have got him bound up we will soon bring him round. It is only a question of loss of blood."

"Hullo! this will never do," he broke off as Ned suddenly reeled and would have fallen to the ground had not Luke caught him.

"Pour this cordial down Swinton's throat, Polly, a little at a time, and lift his head as you do it, and when you see him open his eyes, put a pillow under his head; but don't do so till he begins to come round. Now let me look at Ned's head.

"It must have been a tremendous blow, Luke," he said seriously. "I, only hope it hasn't fractured the skull. However, all this swelling and suffusion of blood is a good sign. Give me that hot water. I shall put a lancet in here and get it to bleed freely. That will be a relief to him."

While he was doing this an exclamation of pleasure from Polly showed that Bill was showing signs of returning to life. His eyes presently opened. Polly bent over him.

"Lie quiet, Bill, dear; you have been hurt, but the doctor says you will soon be well again. Yes; Master Ned is all right too. Don't worry yourself about him."

An hour later both were sleeping quietly.

"They will sleep till morning," Dr. Green said, "perhaps well on into the day; it is no use my waiting any longer. I will be up the first thing."

So he drove away, while Polly took her work and sat down to watch the sleepers during the night, and Luke, taking his stick and hat, set off to guard the mill till daylight.

Ned woke first just as daylight was breaking; he felt stupid and heavy, with a splitting pain in his head. He tried to rise, but found that he could not do so. He accordingly told George to go down in an hour's time to Marsden, and to leave a message at the house saying that he was detained and should not be back to breakfast, and that probably he might not return that night. The doctor kept his head enveloped in wet bandages all day, and he was on the following morning able to go down to Marsden, although still terribly pale and shaken. His appearance excited the liveliest wonder and commiseration on the part of Charlie, Lucy, and Abijah; but he told them that he had had an accident, and had got a nasty knock on the back of his head. He kept his room for a day or two; but at the end of that time he was able to go to the mill as usual. Bill Swinton was longer away, but broths and jellies soon built up his strength again, and in three weeks he was able to resume work, although it was long before the ugly scar on his face was healed. The secret was well kept, and although in time the truth of the affair became known in Varley it never reached Marsden, and Ned escaped the talk and comment which it would have excited had it been known, and, what was worse, the official inquiry which would have followed.

The Huddersfield men naturally kept their own council. They had hastily buried their dead comrade on the moor, and although several of them were so severely knocked about that they were unable to go to work for some time, no rumor of the affair got about outside the circle of the conspirators. It need hardly be said that this incident drew Ned and Bill even more closely together than before, and that the former henceforth regarded Bill Swinton in the light of a brother.

At the end of the Christmas holidays Mr. Porson brought home a mistress to the schoolhouse. She was a bright, pleasant woman, and having heard from her husband all the particulars of Ned's case she did her best to make him feel that she fully shared in her husband's welcome whenever he came to the house, and although Ned was some little time in accustoming himself to the presence of one whom he had at first regarded as an intruder in the little circle of his friends, this feeling wore away under the influence of her cordiality and kindness.

"Is it not shocking," she said to her husband one day, "to think that for nearly a year that poor lad should never have seen his own mother, though she is in the house with him, still worse to know that she thinks him a murderer? Do you think it would be of any good if I were to go and see her, and tell her how wicked and wrong her conduct is?"

"No, my dear," Mr. Porson said, smiling, "I don't think that course would be at all likely to have a good effect. Green tells me that he is sure that this conviction which she has of Ned's guilt is a deep and terrible grief to her. He thinks that, weak and silly as she is, she has really a strong affection for Ned, as well as for her other children, and it is because this is so that she feels so terribly what she believes to be his guilt. She suffers in her way just as much, or more, than he does in his. He has his business, which occupies his mind and prevents him from brooding over his position; besides, the knowledge that a few of us are perfectly convinced of his innocence enables him to hold up. She has no distraction, nothing to turn her thoughts from this fatal subject.

"Green says she has several times asked him whether a person could be tried twice for the same offense, after he has been acquitted the first time, and he believes that the fear is ever present in her mind that some fresh evidence may be forthcoming which may unmistakably bring the guilt home to him. I have talked it over with Ned several times, and he now takes the same view of it as I do. The idea of his guilt has become a sort of monomania with her, and nothing save the most clear and convincing proof of his innocence would have any effect upon her mind. If that is ever forthcoming she may recover, and the two may be brought together again. At the same time I think that you might very well call upon her, introducing yourself by saying that as I was a friend of Captain Sankey's and of her sons you were desirous of making her acquaintance, especially as you heard that she was such an invalid. She has no friends whatever. She was never a very popular woman, and the line every one knows she has taken in reference to the murder of her second husband has set those who would otherwise have been inclined to be kind against her. Other people may be convinced of Ned's guilt, but you see it seems to every one to be shocking that a mother should take part against her son."

Accordingly Mrs. Porson called. On the first occasion when she did so Mrs. Mulready sent down to say that she was sorry she could not see her, but that the state of her health did not permit her to receive visitors. Mrs. Porson, however, was not to be discouraged. First she made friends with Lucy, and when she knew that the girl was sure to have spoken pleasantly of her to her mother she opened a correspondence with Mrs. Mulready. At first she only wrote to ask that Lucy might be allowed to come and spend the day with her. Her next letter was on the subject of Lucy's music. The girl had long gone to a day school kept by a lady in Marsden, but her music had been neglected, and Mrs. Porson wrote to say that she found that Lucy had a taste for music, and that having been herself well taught she should be happy to give her lessons twice a week, and that if Mrs. Mulready felt well enough to see her she would like to have a little chat with her on the subject.

This broke the ice. Lucy's backwardness in music had long been a grievance with her mother, who, as she lay in bed and listened to the girl practicing below had fretted over the thought that she could obtain no good teacher for her in Marsden. Mrs. Porson's offer was therefore too tempting to be refused, and as it was necessary to appear to reciprocate the kindness of that lady, she determined to make an effort to receive her.

The meeting went off well. Having once made the effort Mrs. Mulready found, to her surprise, that it was pleasant to her after being cut off for so many months from all intercourse with the world, except such as she gained from the doctor, her two children, and the old servant, to be chatting with her visitor, who exerted herself to the utmost to make herself agreeable. The talk was at first confined to the ostensible subject of Mrs. Porson's visit; but after that was satisfactorily arranged the conversation turned to Marsden and the neighborhood. Many people had called upon Mrs. Porson, and as all of them were more or less known to Mrs. Mulready, her visitor asked her many questions concerning them, and the invalid was soon gossiping cheerfully over the family histories and personal peculiarities of her neighbors.

"You have done me a world of good," she said when Mrs. Porson rose to leave. "I never see any one but the doctor, and he is the worst person in the world for a gossip. He ought to know everything, but somehow he seems to know nothing. You will come again, won't you? It will be a real kindness, and you have taken so much interest in my daughter that it quite seems to me as if you were an old friend."

And so the visit was repeated: but not too often, for Mrs. Porson knew that it was better that her patient should wait and long for her coming, and now that the ice was once broken, Mrs. Mulready soon came to look forward with eagerness to these changes in her monotonous existence.

For some time Ned's name was never mentioned between them. Then one day Mrs. Porson, in a careless manner, as if she had no idea whatever of the state of the relations between mother and son, mentioned that Ned had been at their house the previous evening, saying: "My husband has a wonderful liking and respect for your son; they are the greatest friends, though of course there is a good deal of difference in age between them. I don't know any one of whom John thinks so highly."

Mrs. Mulready turned very pale, and then in a constrained voice said: "Mr. Porson has always been very kind to my sons."

Then she sighed deeply and changed the subject of conversation.

"Your wife is doing my patient a great deal more good than I have ever been able to do," Dr. Green said one day to the schoolmaster. "She has become quite a different woman in the last five or six weeks. She is always up and on the sofa now when I call, and I notice that she begins to take pains with her dress again; and that, you know, is always a first rate sign with a woman. I think she would be able to go downstairs again soon, were it not for her feeling about Ned. She would not meet him, I am sure. You don't see any signs of a change in that quarter, I suppose?"

"No," Mrs. Porson replied. "The last time I mentioned his name she said: 'My son is a most unfortunate young man, and the subject pains me too much to discuss. Therefore, if you please, Mrs. Porson, I would rather leave it alone.' So I am afraid there is no chance of my making any progress there."



Chapter XIX: The Attack On Cartwright's Mill


Ned still slept at the mill. He was sure that there was no chance of a renewal of the attack by the workpeople near, but an assault might be again organized by parties from a distance. The murder of Mr. Horsfall had caused greater vigilance than ever among the military. At some of the mills the use of the new machinery had been discontinued and cropping by hand resumed. This was the case at the mills at Ottewells and Bankbottom, both of which belonged to Messrs. Abraham & John Horsfall, the father and uncle of the murdered man, and at other mills in the neighborhood. Mr. Cartwright and some of the other owners still continued the use of the new machinery. One night Ned had just gone to bed when he was startled by the ringing of the bell. He leaped from his bed. He hesitated to go to the window, as it was likely enough that men might be lying in wait to shoot him when he appeared. Seizing his pistols, therefore, he hurried down below. A continued knocking was going on at the front entrance. It was not, however, the noisy din which would be made by a party trying to force their way in, but rather the persistent call of one trying to attract attention.

"Who is there?" he shouted through the door; "and what do you want?"

"Open the door, please. It is I, Polly Powlett," a voice replied. "I want to speak to you particularly, sir.

"I have come down, sir," she said as Ned threw open the door and she entered, still panting from her long run, "to tell you that Cartwright's mill is going to be attacked. I think some of the Varley men are concerned in it. Anyhow, the news has got about in the village. Feyther and Bill are both watched, and could not get away to give you the news; but feyther told me, and I slipped out at the back door and made my way round by the moor, for they have got a guard on the road to prevent any one passing. There is no time to spare, for they were to join a party from Longroyd Bridge, at ten o'clock at the steeple in Sir George Armitage's fields, which ain't more than three miles from the mill. It's half past ten now, but maybe they will be late. I couldn't get away before, and indeed feyther only learned the particulars just as I started. He told me to come straight to you, as you would know what to do. I said, 'Should I go and fetch the troops?' but he said No -- it would be sure to be found out who had brought them, and our lives wouldn't be worth having. But I don't mind risking it, sir, if you think that's the best plan."

"No, Polly; on no account. You have risked quite enough in coming to tell me. I will go straight to Cartwright's. Do you get back as quickly as you can, and get in the same way you came. Be very careful that no one sees you."

So saying he dashed upstairs, pulled on his shoes, and then started at full speed for Liversedge. As he ran he calculated the probabilities of his being there in time. Had the men started exactly at the hour named they would be by this time attacking the mill; but it was not likely that they would be punctual -- some of the hands would be sure to be late. There would be discussion and delay before starting. They might well be half an hour after the time named before they left the steeple, as the obelisk in Sir George Armitage's field was called by the country people. He might be in time yet, but it would be a close thing; and had his own life depended upon the result Ned could not have run more swiftly.

He had hopes that as he went he might have come across a cavalry patrol and sent them to Marsden and Ottewells to bring up aid; but the road was quiet and deserted. Once or twice he paused for an instant, thinking he heard the sound of distant musketry. He held his breath, but no sound could he hear save the heavy thumping of his own heart.

His hopes rose as he neared Liversedge. He was close now, but as he ran into the yard he heard a confused murmur and the dull tramping of many feet. He had won the race, but by a few seconds only. The great stone built building lay hushed in quiet; he could see its outline against the sky, and could even make out the great alarm bell which had recently been erected above the roof. He ran up to the doorway and knocked heavily. The deep barking of a dog within instantly resounded through the building. Half a minute later Mr. Cartwright's voice within demanded who was there.

"It is I, Ned Sankey -- open at once. The Luddites are upon you!"

The bolts were hastily undrawn, and Ned rushed in and assisted to fasten the door behind him.

"They will be here in a minute," he panted out. "They are just behind."

The noise had already roused the ten men who slept in the building; five of these were Mr. Cartwright's workmen, the other five were soldiers. Hastily they threw on their clothes and seized their arms; but they were scarcely ready when a roar of musketry was heard, mingled with a clatter of falling glass, nearly every pane in the lower windows being smashed by the discharge of slugs, buckshot and bullets.

This was followed by the thundering noise of a score of sledge hammers at the principal entrance and the side doors. Mr. Cartwright and one of his workmen ran to the bell rope, and in a moment its iron tongue was clanging out its summons for assistance to the country round. A roar of fury broke from the Luddites; many of them fired at the bell in hopes of cutting the rope, and the men plied their hammers more furiously than before. But the doors were tremendously strong and were backed with plates of iron.

The defenders were not idle; all had their allotted places at the windows, and from these a steady return was kept up in answer to the scattering fire without. Ned had caught up the gun which Mr. Cartwright had laid down when he ran to the bell rope, and with it he kept up a steady fire at the dark figures below.

There was a shout of "Bring up Enoch!" This was a name given to the exceedingly heavy hammers at that time used in the Yorkshire smithies. They were manufactured by the firm of Enoch & James Taylor, of Marsden, and were popularly known among the men by the name of their maker. A powerful smith now advanced with one of these heavy weapons and began to pound at the door, which, heavy as it was, shook under his blows.

Ned, regardless of the fire of the Luddites, leaned far out of the window so as to be able to aim down at the group round the door, and fired. The gun was loaded with a heavy charge of buckshot. He heard a hoarse shout of pain and rage, and the hammer dropped to the ground. Another man caught up the hammer and the thundering din recommenced.

Mr. Cartwright had now joined Ned, leaving his workmen to continue to pull the bell rope.

"You had better come down, Sankey. The door must give way ere long; we must make a stand there. If they once break in, it will soon be all up with us."

Calling together three or four of the soldiers the manufacturer hurried down to the door. They were none too soon. The panels had already been splintered to pieces and the iron plates driven from their bolts by the tremendous blows of the hammer, but the stout bar still stood. Through the yawning holes in the upper part of the door the hammermen could be seen at work without.

Five guns flashed out, and yells and heavy falls told that the discharge had taken serious effect. The hammering ceased, for the men could not face the fire. Leaving Ned and one of the soldiers there, Mr. Cartwright hurried round to the other doors, but the assault had been less determined there and they still resisted; then he went upstairs and renewed the firing from the upper windows. The fight had now continued for twenty minutes, and the fire of the Luddites was slackening; their supply of powder and ball was running short. The determined resistance, when they had hoped to have effected an easy entrance by surprise, had discouraged them; several had fallen and more were wounded, and at any time the soldiers might be upon them.

Those who had been forced by fear to join the association -- and these formed no small part of the whole -- had long since begun to slink away quietly in the darkness, and the others now began to follow them. The groans and cries of the wounded men added to their discomfiture, and many eagerly seized the excuse of carrying these away to withdraw from the fight.

Gradually the firing ceased, and a shout of triumph rose from the little party in the mill at the failure of the attack. The defenders gathered in the lower floor.

"I think they are all gone now," Ned said. "Shall we go out, Mr. Cartwright, and see what we can do for the wounded? There are several of them lying round the door and near the windows. I can hear them groaning."

"No, Ned," Mr. Cartwright said firmly, "they must wait a little longer. The others may still be hiding close ready to make a rush if we come out; besides, it would likely enough be said of us that we went out and killed the wounded; we must wait awhile."

Presently a voice was heard shouting without: "Are you all right, Cartwright?"

"Yes," the manufacturer replied. "Who are you?"

The questioner proved to be a friend who lived the other side of Liversedge, and who had been aroused by the ringing of the alarm bell. He had not ventured to approach until the firing had ceased, and had then come on to see the issue.

Hearing that the rioters had all departed, Mr. Cartwright ordered the door to be opened. The wounded Luddites were lifted and carried into the mill, and Mr. Cartwright sent at once for the nearest surgeon, who was speedily upon the spot. Long before he arrived the hussars had ridden up, and had been dispatched over the country in search of the rioters, of whom, save the dead and wounded, no signs were visible.

As day dawned the destruction which had been wrought was clearly visible. The doors were in splinters, the lower window frames were all smashed in, scarce a pane of glass remained in its place throughout the whole building, the stonework was dotted and splashed with bullet marks, the angles of the windows were chipped and broken, there were dark patches of blood in many places in the courtyard, and the yard itself and the roads leading from the mill were strewn with guns, picks, levers, hammers, and pikes, which had been thrown away by the discomfited rioters in their retreat.

"They have had a lesson for once," Mr. Cartwright said as he looked round, "they won't attack my mill again in a hurry. I need not say, Sankey, how deeply I am obliged to you for your timely warning. How did you get to know of it?"

Ned related the story of his being awakened by Mary Powlett. He added, "I don't think, after all, my warning was of much use to you. You could have kept them out anyhow."

"I don't think so," Mr. Cartwright said. "I imagine that your arrival upset all their plans; they were so close behind you that they must have heard the knocking and the door open and close. The appearance of lights in the mill and the barking of the dog, would, at any rate, have told them that we were on the alert, and seeing that they ran on and opened fire I have no doubt that their plan was to have stolen quietly up to the windows and commenced an attack upon these in several places, and had they done this they would probably have forced an entrance before we could have got together to resist them. No, my lad, you and that girl have saved the mill between you."

"You will not mention, Mr. Cartwright, to any one how I learned the news. The girl's life would not be safe were it known that she brought me word of the intention of the Luddites."

"You may rely on me for that; and now, if you please, we will go off home at once and get some breakfast. Amy may have heard of the attack and will be in a rare fright until she gets news of me."

Mr. Cartwright's house was about a mile from the mill. When they arrived there it was still closed and quiet, and it was evident that no alarm had been excited. Mr. Cartwright's knocking soon roused the servants, and a few minutes later Amy hurried down.

"What is it, papa? What brings you back so early? it is only seven o'clock now. How do you do, Mr. Sankey? Why, papa, how dirty and black you both look! What have you been doing? And, oh, papa! you have got blood on your hands!"

"It is not my own, my dear, and you need not be frightened. The attack on the mill has come at last and we have given the Luddites a handsome thrashing. The danger is all over now, for I do not think the mill is ever likely to be attacked again. But I will tell you all about it presently; run and get breakfast ready as soon as you can, for we are as hungry as hunters, I can tell you. We will go and have a wash, and will be ready in ten minutes."

"We can't be ready in ten minutes, papa, for the fires are not lighted yet, but we will be as quick as we can; and do please make haste and come and tell me all about this dreadful business."

In half an hour the party were seated at breakfast. Amy had already been told the incidents of the fight, and trembled as she heard how nearly the rioters had burst their way into the mill, and was deeply grateful to Ned for the timely warning which had frustrated the plans of the rioters.

In vain did the soldiers scour the country. The Luddites on their retreat had scattered to their villages, the main body returning to Huddersfield and appearing at their work as usual in the morning. Large rewards were offered for information which would lead to the apprehension of any concerned in the attack, but these, as well as the notices offering two thousand pounds for the apprehension of the murderers of Mr. Horsfall, met with no responses. Scores of men must have known who were concerned in these affairs, but either fidelity to the cause or fear of the consequences of treachery kept them silent.

Mr. Cartwright was anxious to offer a handsome reward to Mary Powlett for the service she had rendered him, but Ned told him that he was sure she would not accept anything. Mr. Cartwright, however, insisting on the point, Ned saw Mary and sounded her upon the subject. She was indignant at the idea.

"No, Master Ned," she said, "I would not take money, not ever so. I came down to tell you because I thought it wicked and wrong of the men to destroy the mill, and because they would no doubt have murdered Mr. Cartwright and the people there; but I would not take money for doing it. Even if nobody ever got to know of it, it would always seem to me as if I had sold the hands, and they have suffered enough, God knows."

"I don't think Mr. Cartwright thought of offering you money. I told him that I was sure that you wouldn't take it, but he hoped that he might be able to do something for you in some other way."

"No, thank you, sir," Mary said with quiet dignity; "there isn't any way that I could take anything for doing what I did."

"Well, Mary, we won't say anything more about it. I only spoke, you know, because Mr. Cartwright insisted, and, of course, as he did not know you he could not tell how different you were from other girls. There is no suspicion, I hope, that you were away from the village?"

"No, sir, I don't think so. Two of the men sat here talking with feyther till past eleven o'clock, but they thought that I was in bed, as I had said goodnight and had gone into my room an hour before, and I did not see any one about in the village as I came back over the moor behind."

"None of the hands belonging to the village are missing, I hope, Mary. I was glad to find that none of them were among the killed and wounded round the mill."

"No, sir, except that John Stukeley has not been about since. The smithy was not opened the next morning and the chapel was closed yesterday. They say as he has been taken suddenly ill, but feyther thinks that perhaps he was wounded. Of course men don't speak much before feyther, and I don't talk much to the other women of the village, so we don't know what's going on; anyhow the doctor has not been here to see him, and if he had been only ill I should think they would have had Dr. Green up. Old Sarah James is nursing him. I saw her this morning going to the shop and asked her how he was; she only said it was no business of mine. But she doesn't like me because sometimes I nurse people when they are ill, and she thinks it takes money from her; and so it does, but what can I do if people like me to sit by them better than her? and no wonder, for she is very deaf and horribly dirty."

"I don't think they are to be blamed, Polly," Ned said, smiling. "If I were ill I should certainly like you to nurse me a great deal better than that bad tempered old woman."


The attack on Cartwright's mill made a great sensation through that part of the country. It was the most determined effort which the Luddites had yet made, and although it showed their determination to carry matters to an extremity, it also showed that a few determined men could successfully resist their attacks. Nothing else was talked about at Marsden, and as Mr. Cartwright everywhere said that the success of the resistance was due entirely to the upsetting of the plans of the rioters by the warning Ned had given him, the latter gained great credit in the eyes of all the peaceful inhabitants. But as it would make Ned still more obnoxious to the Luddites, Major Browne insisted on placing six soldiers permanently at the mill and on four accompanying him as an escort whenever he went backward or forward.

Ned was very averse to these measures, but the magistrates agreed with Major Browne as to the danger of assassination to which Ned was exposed from the anger of the croppers at his having twice thwarted their attempts, and he the more readily agreed as the presence of this guard soothed the fears which Charlie and Lucy felt for his safety whenever he was absent from the town. What perhaps most influenced him was a conversation which he had with Mrs. Porson.

"Your mother was speaking of you to me today, Ned," she said; "it is the first time she has done so since I made her acquaintance. She began by saying, 'Please, Mrs. Porson, tell me all about this attack on George Cartwright's mill; Abijah and Lucy have been talking about it, but Abijah always gets confused in her stories, and of course Lucy knows only what she is told. I should like to know all about it.' Of course I told her the whole story, and how much Mr. Cartwright says he is indebted to you for the warning you brought him, and how every one is speaking in praise of your conduct, and what a good effect it has had.

"I told her that of course the Luddites would be very much incensed against you and that it was adding to the risks that you already ran. She lay on the sofa quietly with her eyes shut all the time I was speaking. I could see her color come and go, and some tears fell down her cheeks; then she said in a tone which she tried to make hard and careless, but which really trembled, 'The military ought to put a guard over my son. Why does he go risking his life for other people? What business is it of his whether Cartwright's mill is burned or not?' I said that Mr. Cartwright had been very kind to you, and that I knew that you were much attached to him. I also said that the military were anxious that you should have an escort to and from the mill, but that you objected. I said that I was afraid that your life had not much value in your own eyes, for that it was by no means a happy one. 'It has value in other people's eyes,' she said irritably, 'in Lucy's and in his brother's. What would they do if he was to throw it away? Who would look after the mill and business then? He has no right to run such risks, Mrs. Porson, no right at all. Of course he is unhappy. People who let their tempers master them and do things are sure to be unhappy, and make other people unhappy, too; but that is no reason that he should cause more unhappiness by risking his own life needlessly, so, Mrs. Porson, please talk to your husband and tell him to make my son have an escort. I know he always listens to Mr. Porson.'"

"Naturally my mother is anxious, for the sake of Charlie and Lucy, that I should live to carry on the mill until Charlie is old enough to run it himself," Ned said bitterly.

"I do not think that it is only that, Ned," Mrs. Porson said kindly. "That was only the excuse that your mother made. I could see that she was deeply moved. I believe, Ned, that at heart she still loves you dearly. She has this unhappy fixed idea in her mind that you killed her husband, and believing this she cannot bear to see you; but I am sure she is most unhappy, most deeply to be pitied. I cannot imagine anything more dreadful than the state of mind of a woman who believes that a son of hers has murdered her husband. I think that if you quite realized what her feelings must be you would feel a little less bitter than you do.

"I know, Ned, how much you have to try you, but I am sure that I would not exchange your position for that of your mother. Her pain must be far greater than yours. You know that you are innocent, and hope that some day you may be able to prove it. She thinks she knows that you are guilty, and is in constant dread that something may occur that may prove your guilt to the world."

"Perhaps you are right, Mrs. Porson," Ned said wearily; "at any rate I will put up with the nuisance of this escort. I suppose it will not be for very long, for I expect that we shall not hear very much more of the Luddites. The failures upon Cartwright's mill and mine must have disheartened them, and the big rewards that are offered to any one who will come forward and betray the rest must make them horribly uncomfortable, for no one can be sure that some one may not be tempted to turn traitor."

"What is the matter with Bill?" Ned asked Luke Marner that afternoon. "I see he is away."

"Yes, sir, he be a-sitting with John Stukeley, who they say is main bad. It seems as how he has taken a fancy to t' lad, though why he should oi dunno, for Bill had nowt to do wi' his lot. Perhaps he thinks now as Bill were right and he were wrong; perhaps it only is as if Bill ha' got a name in the village of being a soft hearted chap, allus ready to sit up at noight wi' any one as is ill. Anyhow he sent last noight to ask him to go and sit wi' him, and Bill sent me word this morning as how he couldn't leave the man."

"Do you know what is the matter with him?"

"I dunno for certain, Maister Ned, but I has my suspicions."

"So have I, Luke. I believe he got a gunshot wound in that affair at the mill."

Luke nodded significantly.

"Dr. Green ought to see him," Ned said. "A gunshot wound is not a thing to be trifled with."

"The doctor ha' been up twice a day on the last three e days," Luke replied. "Oi suppose they got frighted and were obliged to call him in."

"They had better have done so at first," Ned said; "they might have been quite sure that he would say nothing about it to the magistrates whatever was the matter with Stukeley. I thought that fellow would get into mischief before he had done."

"It war a bad day for the village when he coomed," Luke said; "what wi' his preachings and his talk, he ha' turned the place upside down. I doan't say as Varley had ever a good name, or was a place where a quiet chap would have chosen to live, For fighting and drink there weren't a worse place in all Yorkshire, but there weren't no downright mischief till he came. Oi wur afraid vor a bit when he came a-hanging aboot Polly, as the gal might ha' took to him, for he can talk smooth and has had edication, and Polly thinks a wonderful lot of that. Oi were main glad when she sent him aboot his business."

"Well, there is one thing, Luke; if anything happens to him it will put an end to this Luddite business at Varley. Such a lesson as that in their midst would do more to convince them of the danger of their goings on than any amount of argument and advice."

"It will that," Luke said. "Oi hear as they are all moighty down in the mouth over that affair at Cartwright's. If they could not win there, when they were thirty to one, what chance can they have o' stopping the mills? Oi consider as how that has been the best noight's work as ha' been done in Yorkshire for years and years. There ain't a-been anything else talked of in Varley since. I ha' heard a score of guesses as to how you found owt what was a-going on in toime to get to the mill -- thank God there ain't one as suspects as our Polly brought you the news. My own boys doan't know, and ain't a-going to; not as they would say a word as would harm Polly for worlds, but as they gets a bit bigger and takes to drink, there's no saying what mightn't slip out when they are in liquor. So you and oi and Bill be the only ones as ull ever know the ins and outs o' that there business."



Chapter XX: Cleared At Last.


The night was a wild one. The weather had changed suddenly, and the rain beat fiercely in the faces of the hands as they made their way back from the mill up to Varley. As the night came on the storm increased. The wind as it swept across the moor swirled down into the hollow in which Varley stood, as if it would scoop the houses out of their foundations, and the drops of rain were driven against roof and wall with the force of hailstones.

Bill Swinton was sitting up again with John Stukeley, and as he bent over the sick man's bed and tenderly lifted his head while he held a cup with some cooling drink to his lips, the contrast between his broad, powerful figure, and his face, marked with the characteristics alike of good temper, kindness, and a resolute will, and the thin, emaciated invalid was very striking. Stukeley's face was without a vestige of color; his eyes were hollow and surrounded by dark circles; his cheeks were of an ashen gray pallor, which deepened almost to a lead color round his lips.

"Thou ought'st not to talk so much, John," Bill was saying. "Thou know'st the doctor said thou must not excite thyself."

"It makes no difference, Bill, no difference at all, talk or not talk. What does it matter? I am dying, and he knows it, and I know it -- so do you. That bit of lead in my body has done its work. Strange, isn't it, that you should be here nursing me when I have thought of shooting you a score of times? A year ago it seemed absurd that Polly Powlett should like a boy like you better than a man like me, and yet I was sure it was because of you she would have nothing to say to me; but she was right, you will make the best husband of the two. I suppose it's because of that I sent for you. I was very fond of Polly, Bill, and when I felt that I was going, and there wasn't any use my being jealous any longer, I seemed to turn to you. I knew you would come, for you have been always ready to do a kindness to a chap who was down. You are different to the other lads here. I do believe you are fond of reading. Whenever you think I am asleep you take up your book."

"Oi am trying to improve myself," Bill said quietly. "Maister Sankey put me in the roight way. He gives me an hour, and sometimes two, every evening. He has been wonderful kind to me, he has; there ain't nothing oi wouldn't do for him."

The sick man moved uneasily.

"No more wouldn't Luke and Polly," Bill went on. "His father gived his loife, you know, for little Jenny. No, there ain't nowt we wouldn't do for him," he continued, glad to turn the subject from that of Stukeley's affection for Polly. "He be one of the best of maisters. Oi would give my life's blood if so be as oi could clear him of that business of Mulready's."

For a minute or two not a word was said. The wind roared round the building, and in the intervals of the gusts the high clock in the corner of the room ticked steadily and solemnly as if distinctly intimating that its movements were not to be hurried by the commotion without.

Stukeley had closed his eyes, and Bill began to hope that he was going to doze off, when he asked suddenly; "Bill, do you know who sent that letter that was read at the trial -- I mean the one from the chap as said he done it, and was ready to give himself up if the boy was found guilty?"

Bill did not answer.

"You can tell me, if you know," Stukeley said impatiently. "You don't suppose as I am going to tell now! Maybe I shan't see any one to tell this side of the grave, for I doubt as I shall see the morning. Who wrote it?"

"I wrote it," Bill said; "but it warn't me as was coming forward, it war Luke's idee fust. He made up his moind as to own up as it was he as did it and to be hung for it to save Maister Ned, acause the captain lost his loife for little Jenny."

"But he didn't do it," Stukeley said sharply.

"No, he didn't do it," Bill replied.

There was a silence again for a long time; then Stukeley opened his eyes suddenly.

"Bill, I should like to see Polly again. Dost think as she will come and say goodby?"

"Oi am sure as she will," Bill said steadily. "Shall oi go and fetch her?"

"It's a wild night to ask a gal to come out on such an errand," Stukeley said doubtfully.

"Polly won't mind that," Bill replied confidently. "She will just wrap her shawl round her head and come over. Oi will run across and fetch her. Oi will not be gone three minutes."

In little more than that time Bill returned with Mary Powlett.

"I am awfully sorry to hear you are so bad, John," the girl said frankly.

"I am dying, Polly; I know that, or I wouldn't have sent for ye. It was a good day for you when you said no to what I asked you."

"Never mind that now, John; that's all past and gone."

"Ay, that's all past and gone. I only wanted to say as I wish you well, Polly, and I hope you will be happy, and I am pretty nigh sure of it. Bill here tells me that you set your heart on having young Sankey cleared of that business as was against him. Is that so?"

"That is so, John; he has been very kind to us all, to feyther and all of us. He is a good master to his men, and has kept many a mouth full this winter as would have been short of food without him; but why do you ask me?"

"Just a fancy of mine, gal, such a fancy as comes into the head of a man at the last. When you get back send Luke here. It is late and maybe he has gone to bed, but tell him I must speak to him. And now, goodby, Polly. God bless you! I don't know as I hasn't been wrong about all this business, but it didn't seem so to me afore. Just try and think that, will you, when you hear about it. I thought as I was a-acting for the good of the men."

"I will always remember that," Polly said gently.

Then she took the thin hand of the man in hers, glanced at Bill as if she would ask his approval, and reading acquiescence in his eyes she stooped over the bed and kissed Stukeley's forehead. Then without a word she left the cottage and hurried away through the darkness.

A few minutes later Luke Marner came in, and to Bill's surprise Stukeley asked him to leave the room. In five minutes Luke came out again.

"Go in to him, Bill," he said hoarsely. "Oi think he be a-sinking. For God's sake keep him up. Give him that wine and broath stuff as thou canst. Keep him going till oi coom back again; thou doan't know what depends on it."

Hurrying back to his cottage Luke threw on a thick coat, and to the astonishment of Polly announced that he was going down into Marsden.

"What! on such a night as this, feyther?"

"Ay, lass, and would if it were ten toimes wurse. Get ye into thy room, and go down on thy knees, and pray God to keep John Stukeley alive and clear headed till oi coomes back again."

It was many years since Luke Marner's legs had carried him so fast as they now did into Marsden. The driving rain and hail which beat against him seemed unheeded as he ran down the hill at the top of his speed. He stopped at the doctor's and went in. Two or three minutes after the arrival of this late visitor Dr. Green's housekeeper was astonished at hearing the bell ring violently. On answering the bell she was ordered to arouse John, who had already gone to bed, and to tell him to put the horse into the gig instantly.

"Not on such a night as this, doctor! sureley you are not a-going out on such a night as this!"

"Hold your tongue, woman, and do as you are told instantly," the doctor said with far greater spirit than usual, for his housekeeper was, as a general thing, mistress of the establishment.

With an air of greatly offended dignity she retired to carry out his orders. Three minutes later the doctor ran out of his room as he heard the man servant descending the stairs.

"John," he said, "I am going on at once to Mr. Thompson's; bring the gig round there. I shan't want you to go further with me. Hurry up, man, and don't lose a moment -- it is a matter of life and death."

A quarter of an hour later Dr. Green, with Mr. Thompson by his side, drove off through the tempest toward Varley.

The next morning, as Ned was at breakfast, the doctor was announced.

"What a pestilently early hour you breakfast at, Ned! I was not in bed till three o'clock, and I scarcely seemed to have been asleep an hour when I was obliged to get up to be in time to catch you before you were off."

"That is hard on you indeed, doctor," Ned said, smiling; "but why this haste? Have you got some patient for whom you want my help? You need not have got up so early for that, you know. You could have ordered anything you wanted for him in my name. You might have been sure I should have honored the bill. But what made you so late last night? You were surely never out in such a gale!"

"I was, Ned, and strange as it seems I never went in answer to a call which gave me so much satisfaction. My dear lad, I hardly know how to tell you. I have a piece of news for you; the greatest, the best news that man could have to tell you."

Ned drew a long breath and the color left his cheeks.

"You don't mean, doctor, you can't mean" -- and he paused.

"That you are cleared, my boy. Yes; that is my news. Thank God, Ned, your innocence is proved."

Ned could not speak. For a minute he sat silent and motionless. Then he bent forward and covered his face with his hands, and his lips moved as he murmured a deep thanksgiving to God for this mercy, while Lucy and Charlie, with cries of surprise and delight, leaped from the table, and when Ned rose to his feet, threw their arms round his neck with enthusiastic delight; while the doctor wrung his hand, and then, taking out his pocket handkerchief, wiped his eyes, violently declaring, as he did so, that he was an old fool.

"Tell me all about it, doctor. How has it happened? What has brought it about?"

"Luke Marner came down to me at ten o'clock last night to tell me that John Stukeley was dying, which I knew very well, for when I saw him in the afternoon I saw he was sinking fast; but he told me, too, that the man was anxious to sign a declaration before a magistrate to the effect that it was he who killed your stepfather. I had my gig got out and hurried away to Thompson's. The old fellow was rather crusty at being called out on such a night, but to do him justice, I must say he went readily enough when he found what he was required for, though it must have given him a twinge of conscience, for you know he has never been one of your partisans. However, off we drove, and got there in time.

"Stukeley made a full confession. It all happened just as we thought. It had been determined by the Luddites to kill Mulready, and Stukeley determined to carry out the business himself, convinced, as he says, that the man was a tyrant and an oppressor, and that his death was not only richly deserved, but that such a blow was necessary to encourage the Luddites. He did not care, however, to run the risk of taking any of the others into his confidence, and therefore carried it out alone, and to this day, although some of the others may have their suspicions, no one knows for certain that he was the perpetrator of the act.

"He had armed himself with a pistol and went down to the mill, intending to shoot Mulready as he came out at night, but, stumbling upon the rope, thought that it was a safer and more certain means. After fastening it across the road he sat down and waited, intending to shoot your stepfather if the accident didn't turn out fatal. After the crash, finding that Mulready's neck was broken and that he was dead, he made off home. He wished it specially to be placed on his deposition that he made his confession not from any regret at having killed Mulready, but simply to oblige Mary Powlett, whose heart was bent upon your innocence being proved. He signed the deposition in the presence of Thompson, myself, and Bill Swinton."

"And you think it is true, doctor, you really think it is true? It is not like Luke's attempt to save me?"

"I am certain it is true, Ned. The man was dying, and there was no mistake about his earnestness. There is not a shadow of doubt. I sent Swinton back in the gig with Thompson and stayed with the man till half past two. He was unconscious then. He may linger a few hours, but will not live out the day, and there is little chance of his again recovering consciousness. Thompson will today send a copy of the deposition to the home secretary, with a request that it may be made public through the newspapers. It will appear in all the Yorkshire papers next Saturday, and all the world will know that you are innocent."

"What will my mother say?" Ned exclaimed, turning pale again.

"I don't know what she will say, my lad, but I know what she ought to say. I am going round to Thompson's now for a copy of the deposition, and will bring it for her to see. Thompson will read it aloud at the meeting of the court today, so by this afternoon every one will know that you are cleared."

Abijah's joy when she heard that Ned's innocence was proved was no less than that of his brother and sister. She would have rushed upstairs at once to tell the news to her mistress, but Ned persuaded her not to do so until the doctor's return.

"Then he will have to be quick," Abijah said, "for if the mistress' bell rings, and I have to go up before he comes, I shall never be able to keep it to myself. She will see it in my face that something has happened. If the bell rings, Miss Lucy, you must go up, and if she asks for me, say that I am particular busy, and will be up in a few minutes."

The bell, however, did not ring before the doctor's return. After a short consultation between him and Ned, Abijah was called in.

"Mr. Sankey agrees with me, Abijah, that you had better break the news. Your mistress is more accustomed to you than to any one else, and you understand her ways. Here is the deposition. I shall wait below here till you come down. There is no saying how she will take it. Be sure you break the news gently."

Abijah went upstairs with a hesitating step, strongly in contrast with her usual quick bustling walk. She had before felt rather aggrieved that the doctor should be the first to break the news; but she now felt the difficulty of the task, and would gladly have been spared the responsibility.

"I have been expecting you for the last quarter of an hour, Abijah," Mrs. Mulready said querulously. "You know how I hate to have the room untidy after I have dressed.

"Why, what's the matter?". she broke off sharply as she noticed Abijah's face. "Why, you have been crying!"

"Yes, ma'am, I have been crying," Abijah said unsteadily, "but I don't know as ever I shall cry again, for I have heard such good news as will last me the rest of my whole life."

"What news, Abijah?" Mrs. Mulready asked quickly. "What are you making a mystery about, and what is that paper in your hand?"

"Well, ma'am, God has been very good to us all. I knew as he would be sooner or later, though sometimes I began to doubt whether it would be in my time, and it did break my heart to see Maister Ned going about so pale and unnatural like for a lad like him, and to know as there was people as thought that he was a murderer. And now, thank God, it is all over."

"All over! what do you mean, Abijah?" Mrs. Mulready exclaimed, rising suddenly from her invalid chair.

"What do you mean by saying that it is all over?" and she seized the old nurse's arm with an eager grasp.

"Don't excite yourself so, mistress. You have been sore tried, but it is over now, and today all the world will know as Maister Ned is proved to be innocent. This here paper is a copy of the confession of the man as did it, and who is, they say, dead by this time. It was taken all right and proper afore a magistrate."

"Innocent!" Mrs. Mulready gasped in a voice scarcely above a whisper. "Did you tell me, Abijah, that my boy, my boy Ned, is innocent?"

"I never doubted as he was innocent, ma'am; but now, thank God, all the world will know it. There, ma'am, sit yourself down. Don't look like that. I know as how you must feel, but for mercy sake don't look like that."

Mrs. Mulready did not seem to hear her, did not seem to notice, as she passively permitted herself to be seated in the chair, while Abijah poured out a glass of wine. Her face was pale and rigid, her eyes wide open, her expression one of horror rather than relief.

"Innocent! Proved innocent!" she murmured. "What must he think of me -- me, his mother!"

For some time she sat looking straight before her, taking no notice of the efforts of Abijah to call her attention, and unheeding the glass of wine which she in vain pressed her to drink.

"I must go away," she said at last, rising suddenly. "I must go away at once. Has he gone yet?"

"Go away, ma'am! Why, what should you go away for, and where are you going?"

"It does not matter; it makes no difference," Mrs. Mulready said feverishly, "so that I get away. Put some of my things together, Abijah. What are you staring there for? Don't you hear what I say? I must go away directly he has started for the mill."

And with trembling fingers she began to open her drawers and pull out her clothes.

"But you can't go away like that, mistress. You can't, indeed," Abijah said, aghast.

"I must go, Abijah. There is nothing else for me to do. Do you think I could see him after treating him as I have done? I should fall dead at his feet for shame."

"But where are you going, ma'am?" Abijah said, thinking it better not to attempt to argue with her in her present state.

"I don't know, I don't know. Yes, I do. Do you know whether that cottage you were telling me about where you lived while you were away from here, is to let? That will do nicely, for there I should be away from every one. Get me a box from the lumber room, and tell Harriet to go out and get me a post chaise from the Red Lion as soon as my son has gone to the mill."

"Very well," Abijah said. "I will do as you want me, 'm, if you will sit down quiet and not excite yourself. You know you have not been out of your room for a year, and if you go a-tiring yourself like this you will never be able to stand the journey. You sit down in the chair and I will do the packing for you. You can tell me what things you will take with you. I will get the box down."

So saying, Abijah left the room, and, running hastily downstairs, told Ned and the doctor the manner in which Mrs. Mulready had received the news. Ned, would have run up at once to his mother, but Dr. Green would not hear of it.

"It would not do, Ned. In your mother's present state the shock of seeing you might have the worst effect. Run up, Abijah, and get the box down to her. I will go out and come back and knock at the door in two or three minutes, and will go up and see her, and, if necessary. I will give her a strong soothing draught. You had better tell her that from what you hear you believe Mr. Sankey is not going to the mill today. That will make her delay her preparations for moving until tomorrow, and will give us time to see what is best to be done."

"I have brought the box, mistress," Abijah said as she entered Mrs. Mulready's room; "but I don't think as you will want to pack today, for I hear as Mr. Ned ain't a-going to the mill. You see all the town will be coming to see him to shake hands with him and tell him how glad they is that he is cleared."

"And only I can't!" Mrs. Mulready wailed. "To think of it, only I, his mother, can't see him! And I must stop in the house for another day! Oh! it is too hard! But I deserve it, and everything else."

"There is Dr. Green's knock," Abijah said.

"I can't see him, Abijah. I can't see him."

"I think you had better see him, ma'am. You always do see him, you know, and it will look so strange if you don't. There, I will pop these things into the drawers again and hide the box."

Abijah bustled about actively, and before Mrs. Mulready had time to take any decided step Dr. Green knocked at the door and came in.

"How are you today, Mrs. Mulready?" he asked cheerfully. "This is a joyful day indeed for us all. The whole place is wild with the news, and I expect we shall be having a deputation presently to congratulate Ned."

"I am not feeling very well," Mrs. Mulready said faintly. "The shock has been too much for me."

"Very natural, very natural, indeed," Dr. Green said cheerily. "We could hardly hope it would be otherwise; but after this good news I expect we shall soon make a woman of you again. Your son will be the most popular man in the place. People will not know how to make enough of him. Porson and I, who have been cheering him all along, will have to snub him now or his head will be turned. Now let me feel your pulse. Dear! dear! this will not do at all; it's going like a mill engine. This will never do. If you do not calm yourself we shall be having you in bed again for a long bout. I will send you a bottle of soothing medicine. You must take it every two hours, and keep yourself perfectly quiet. There, I will not talk to you now about this good news, for I see that you are not fit to stand it. You must lie down on the sofa at once, and not get off again today. I will look in this evening and see how you are."

Frightened at the threat that if she were not quiet she might be confined to her bed for weeks; Mrs. Mulready obeyed orders, took her medicine when it arrived, and lay quiet on the sofa. For a long time the sedative failed to have any effect. Every five minutes throughout the day there were knocks at the door. Every one who knew Ned, and many who did not, called to congratulate him. Some, like Mr. Thompson, made a half apology for having so long doubted him. A few, like Mr. Simmonds, were able heartily to assure him that they had never in their hearts believed it.

Ned was too full of gratitude and happiness to cherish the slightest animosity, and he received warmly and thankfully the congratulations which were showered upon him.

"He looks another man," was the universal comment of his visitors; and, indeed, it was so. The cloud which had so long overshadowed him had passed away, and the look of cold reserve had vanished with it, and he was prepared again to receive the world as a friend.

He was most moved when, early in the day, Mr. Porson and the whole of the boys arrived. As soon as he had left Mrs. Mulready, Dr. Green had hurried down to the schoolhouse with the news, and Mr. Porson, as soon as he heard it, had announced it from his desk, adding that after such news as that he could not expect them to continue their lessons, and that the rest of the day must therefore be regarded as a holiday. He yielded a ready assent when the boys entreated that they might go in a body to congratulate Ned.

Ned was speechless for some time as his old friend wrung his hand, and his former schoolfellows clustered round him with a very Babel of congratulations and good wishes. Only the knowledge that his mother was ill above prevented them from breaking into uproarious cheering.

In the afternoon, hearing that his mother was still awake, Ned, accompanied by Mr. Porson, went out for a stroll, telling Harriet that she was to remain at the open door while he was away, so as to prevent any one from knocking. It was something of a trial to Ned to walk through the street which he had passed along so many times in the last year oblivious of all within it. Every man and woman he met insisted on shaking hands with him. Tradesmen left their shops and ran out to greet him, and there was no mistaking the general enthusiasm which was felt on the occasion, and the desire of every one to atone as far as possible for the unmerited suffering which had been inflicted on him.

When he returned at six o'clock he found Harriet still on the watch, and she said in low tones that Abijah had just come downstairs with the news that her mistress had fallen asleep.

"I should not think any one more will come, Harriet, but I will get you to stop here for a little longer. Then we must fasten up the knocker and take off the bell. The doctor says that it is all important that my mother should get a long and undisturbed sleep."

Dr. Green came in again in the evening, and had a long chat with Ned. It was nearly midnight before Mrs. Mulready awoke. On opening her eyes she saw Ned sitting at a short distance from the sofa. She gave a sudden start, and then a look of terror came into her face.

Ned rose to his feet and held out his arms with the one word "Mother!"

Mrs. Mulready slid from the sofa and threw herself on her knees with her hands clasped.

"Oh! my boy, my boy!" she cried, "can you forgive me?"

Then, as he raised her in his arms, she fainted.

It was a happy party, indeed, that assembled round the breakfast table next morning. Mrs. Mulready was at the head of the table making tea, looking pale and weak, but with a look of quiet happiness and contentment on her face such as her children had never seen there before, but which was henceforth to be its habitual expression.

Ned did not carry out his original intention of entering the army. Mr. Simmonds warmly offered to make the application for a commission for him, but Ned declined. He had made up his mind, he said, to stick to the mill; there was plenty of work to be done there, and he foresaw that with a continued improvement of machinery there was a great future for the manufacturing interests of England.

The Luddite movement gradually died out. The high rewards offered for the discovery of the murderers of Mr. Horsfall and of the assailants of Cartwright's mill had their effect. Three croppers, Mellor, Thorpe and Smith, were denounced and brought to trial. All three had been concerned in the murder, together with Walker, who turned king's evidence for the reward -- Mellor and Thorpe having fired the fatal shots. The same men had been the leaders in the attack on Cartwright's mill.

They were tried at the assizes at York on the 2d of January, 1813, with sixty-four of their comrades, before Baron Thomas and Judge Le Blanc, and were found guilty, although they were defended by Henry (afterward Lord) Brougham. Mellor, Thorpe, and Smith were executed three days afterward. Fourteen of the others were hung, as were five Luddites who were tried before another tribunal.

After this wholesale act of severity the Luddite disturbances soon came to an end. The non-success which had attended their efforts, and the execution of all their leaders, thoroughly cowed the rioters, and their ranks were speedily thinned by the number of hands who found employment in the rapidly increasing mills in the district. Anyhow from that time the Luddite conspiracy ceased to be formidable.

The Sankeys' mill at Marsden flourished greatly under Ned's management. Every year saw additions to the buildings and machinery until it became one of the largest concerns in Yorkshire. He was not assisted, as he had at one time hoped he should be, by his brother in the management; but he was well contented when Charlie, on leaving school, declared his wish to go to Cambridge, and then to enter the church, a life for which he was far better suited by temperament than for the active life of a man of business.

The trial through which Ned Sankey had passed had a lasting effect upon his character. Whatever afterward occurred to vex him in business he was never known to utter a hasty word, or to form a hasty judgment. He was ever busy in devising schemes for the benefit of his workpeople, and to be in Sankey's mill was considered as the greatest piece of good fortune which could befall a hand.

Four years after the confession of John Stukeley Ned married the daughter of his friend George Cartwright, and settled down in a handsome house which he had built for himself a short distance out of Marsden. Lucy was soon afterward settled in a house of her own, having married a young landowner with ample estates. Mrs. Mulready, in spite of the urgent persuasions of her son and his young wife, refused to take up her residence with them, but established herself in a pretty little house close at hand, spending, however, a considerable portion of each day with him at his home.

The trials through which she had gone had done even more for her than for Ned. All her querulous listlessness had disappeared. She was bright, cheerful, and even tempered. Ned used to tell her that she grew younger looking every day. Her pride and happiness in her son were unbounded, and these culminated when, ten years after his accession to the management of the mill, Ned acceded to the request of a large number of manufacturers in the district, to stand for Parliament as the representative of the mill owning interest, and was triumphantly returned at the head of the poll.

Of the other characters of this story little need be said. Dr. Green and Mr. and Mrs. Porson remained Ned's closest friends to the end of their lives.

Mary Powlett did not compel Bill Swinton to wait until the situation of foreman of the mill became vacant, but married him two years after the death of John Stukeley. Bill became in time not only foreman but the confidential manager of the mill, and he and his wife were all their lives on the footing of dear friends with Mr. and Mrs. Sankey.

Luke Marner remained foreman of his room until too old for further work, when he retired on a comfortable pension, and was succeeded in his post by his son George. Ned and Amy Sankey had a large family, who used to listen with awe and admiration to the tale of the terrible trial which had once befallen their father, and of the way in which he had indeed been "tried in the fire."

<eob>

Dotty Dimple Stories: Dotty Dimple At Home

By

Sophie May



Chapter I.

The Lion And The Lamb.


Dotty Dimple, after a night of pleasant sleep, greeted herself in the morning with a groan. It was as if she had said, -- 

"O, dear! you here again, Dotty? Why didn't you sleep longer?"

Prudy noticed the cloud on her sister's face in a moment; she saw she had "waked up wrong."

Now I have never told you how peculiarly trying it was to live with Dotty Dimple. She seemed to have, at the same time, the nature of a lion and a lamb. When the lion raged, then her eyes blazed, and she looked as if she belonged in a menagerie; but when nothing occurred to rouse her wild temper, she was as gentle and tender as a little lamb frisking by its mother's side on a summer's day.

Indeed, if I were to describe the loveliness of her manners, and the sweetness of her face, I ought to dip my pen in liquid sunshine; whereas, the blackest of ink would not be at all too dark to draw her picture when she was out of temper.

In her earliest childhood it had been worse than it was now. Then she had not tried in the least to control herself, and the lion had had his own way. After one of her wild outbursts, she would follow her mother about the house, saying, in a soft, pleading voice, -- 

"Say, mamma, is I your little comfort?"

Before answering Dotty, the poor mother had to call to mind all the good things the child had ever said or done, and fancy how dreadful it would be to lose her. Then she would reply, -- 

"Yes, Dotty, you are mamma's dear little girl; but mamma doesn't like your naughty, naughty ways."

This failed to satisfy Miss Dimple. She would cry out again, in heart-broken tones, -- 

"Is I your little comfort, mamma? Is I?"

So, sooner or later, Mrs. Parlin was obliged, for the sake of peace, to kiss the child, and answer, "Yes." Then, perhaps, for twenty-four hours the lion would be curled up, asleep, and out of sight in his den, and the lamb would be playfully frisking about the house, a pet for everybody.

But often and often, when Susy and Prudy came in from school or play, they found their baby sister in disgrace, perched upon the wood-box in the kitchen, with feet and hands firmly tied. There she would sit, throwing out the loudest noise possible from her little throat. It was the young lion again, roaring in his cage.

Prudy, though her heart swelled with pity, dared not say, -- 

"Don't scream so, little sister! Please don't pound so with your feet!"

For when the lion fits were on, it was always safest to let the unhappy child alone. Prudy, who had no more temper than a humming-bird, and Susy, who was only moderately fretful once in a while, were made very unhappy by Dotty's dreadful behavior. At such times as I describe, they even looked guilty, and cast down their eyes, for they could not help feeling their sister's conduct as a family disgrace. They never spoke to any one about it, and bore all her freaks with wonderful patience. When the little one plucked at their hair or ears, they said, pitifully, -- 

"It's worse for her than it is for us. It makes her throat so sore to scream so."

They were especially careful never to provoke her to wrath. Perhaps, for the sake of peace, they yielded to her too much. If there was anything Dotty dearly loved, it was her own way; and the thing she most heartily despised was "giving up."

At the time of which we now write she was no longer a mere baby, and her "reasons," as Prudy had said, were "beginning to grow." She was never placed on the wood-box now, with hands and feet tied; and as for pulling hair, she was ashamed of the practice.

On this particular morning she had "waked up wrong." You all know what that means. Perhaps her dream stopped in the most interesting place, or perhaps some of the wonderful machinery of her body was out of order, and caused a twitching of the delicate nerves which lie under the skin. At any rate, when the cloudy sun peeped through the white curtains of Dotty's pleasant chamber, he found that little lady out of sorts.

"There, now, how long have you been awake, Prudy? Why didn't you speak?"

"O, it isn't anywhere near breakfast time, Dotty; Norah hasn't ground the coffee yet."

"Then I should think she might! She knows I'm hungry, and that makes her be as slow as a board nail! -- I'll tell you what I wish, Prudy. I wish the whole world was a 'normous cling-stone peach, so I could keep eating for always, and never come to the stone."

"I don't know," replied Prudy, pleasantly. "I believe I'd rather have it a Bartlett pear -- dead ripe."

"H'm! You may have your old Bartnot pears, Prudy Parlin; nobody wants 'em but just you! The next sweet, juicy peach that comes into this house I'll eat it myself, 'cause you don't like peaches; you just said you didn't!"

Prudy was considerate enough to make no reply. By living with Dotty, she had learned many lessons in "holding her peace."

"Perhaps we'd better get up," suggested she, rubbing her eyes.

Whereupon Dotty pursed her little red lips.

"Let's play keep house," answered she, for the sake of being cross-grained.

"Well, I don't care much," said Prudy, anxious to keep the peace.

They proceeded to make a tent of the upper sheet, and converse upon the trials of this troublesome life, as Mr. and Mrs. Carter, the two heads of a family.

"There's our Sammy," said Prudy, dolefully, "our poor Sammy. I don't see, Mrs. Carter, what we shall do with that boy. Within a day or two he has taken to stealing acorns!"

"Acorns!" responded Dotty, in a tragic tone. "O, Mr. Carter, I sejest the best thing we can do is to stand him up in the sink, and pump water on him!"

"I never thought of that, my dear wife! You are prob'bly correct! -- prob'bly correct. -- But what course shall we pursue with Mary Ann, and Julia Ann, and Anna Maria? They all bite their finger nails -- bite 'em down to the double-quick."

"I would sejest, sejest -- why don't you give those children some proxitude of iron, my dear -- through a knitting-needle? Hark!" continued she, as Prudy scratched the top of the tent with her forefinger. "There's a mouse in this house, Mr. Carter: you must set a trap as quick as you can spring!"

"Very correct," replied the obedient husband, "very correct, Mrs. Carter. I'll call Jerusha to toast some cheese. Je-ru-shay!"

"What do you mean by Jerusha, Mr. Carter? We haven't any in the house."

"O, she is our chambermaid, my dear."

"But I won't 'low her to be Jerusher, Mr. Carter!"

"But, my dear wife, Jerusha is a proper name; it belongs to her."

"No, it isn't a proper name either; it's a very improper name, Prudy Parlin; and if you call her Jerusher so, I'll get us both dis-vosed!"

Prudy saw it was useless to continue the game: Dotty was not in a mood to be satisfied. The two children arose and dressed themselves, Prudy taking peculiar care not to finish her own toilet first.

"I'm going to tell you something," said Dotty, grimly, "but you mustn't tell mamma. I've made up my mind to be naughty!"

"To be naughty?"

"Yes, that's what I said -- naughty! I'm tired all out o' bein' good! First thing I thought was, I'd be bad all day. I want to fret, and I'm going to fret!"

"O, Do-otty! Dotty Di-imple!"

"You needn't say anything, Prudy Parlin. You can talk as grand as a whale. But if I want to go and be naughty, you can't help yourself!"

Prudy's face took on a look of real distress. What this little queer mixture of a girl might do, if she really chose to be naughty, it was not pleasant to fancy.

The two went down stairs together. As they entered the cheerful dining-room, the joyous sun burst into a round smile, as if he had thrown off his yesterday's vapors, and never meant to be low-spirited again. But Dotty looked foggier than ever.

It was a delightful room. The wallpaper was the color of rich cream; the pictures were beautiful; the table, with its snowy cloth and white dishes, was pleasant to the eye; still, it was not so much the objects to be seen as it was the "air" of the room which made it seem so delightful. You knew at once, as you looked at the people who gathered around the table that morning, that they all loved one another; and family love makes any house seem like home.

Grandma Read was there in her plain Quaker cap, with the nicely-starched kerchief crossed upon her bosom; Mr. Parlin in his drab dressing-gown, lined with crimson; Mrs. Parlin in a print wrapper, with a linen collar at the throat, her hair as smooth as satin; the three little girls all neatly dressed, and all happy but Dotty. Susy's mocking-bird hung in a cage by one of the windows, and "brother Zip" was lounging in an arm-chair, catching flies.

After everybody was comfortably seated, and had said "Good morning," then a "silent blessing," according to the custom of the Friends, was asked upon the food. All sat with folded hands, and eyes reverently fixed upon their plates. Dotty knew very well they were asking to be made thankful for the excellent breakfast before them. She repeated to herself several times the sentence she had been taught; for, in spite of her intention to be naughty, she dared not omit it. When Mr. Parlin began to pass the butter, she was still looking at her plate, and startled the whole family by saying aloud, "Amen!"

Grandma looked at the little girl with surprise and disapproval. Dotty blushed painfully. She had not meant to be irreverent. Next moment she thought, -- 

"Now they all s'pose I did that to purpose! I don't care if they do! I'll act worse'n that! I wonder what my father'd say if I should jump right up and down, and scream?"

It certainly was not safe to try the experiment. Dotty contented herself by scowling at her dry toast.

But after her father had gone away to his business, and her mother had begun to make preserves in the kitchen, she went down cellar, into the wash-room, and began to tease Norah. Norah, who was fond of the child, and in general very good-natured, was not in a mood this morning to be trifled with.

"Indeed, Miss Flippet," said she, indignantly, "I shall put up with no more of your pranks! It's not your sister Prudy who would go to hidin' my soap, and me in a hurry!"

"She likes Prudy best. I always knew she did, and everybody else," thought Dotty, wrathfully, -- "everybody else but me!"

And the temper which had been smouldering all the morning blazed up hotly.

"Call me Miss Flippet again, if you dare!" cried she, with battle-fires in her eyes. "What you s'pose the mayor'll do to you, miss? He'll put you in the lockup -- yes, he will!"

At this foolish speech Norah's mouth assumed a mocking smile, which added live coals to Dotty's wrath.

"You mizzable Cath'lic girl! You -- you -- you -- "

Words were choked in the smoke and flame of her anger. I mean to say that dreadful "lion," which had not come out in his full strength for years, suddenly sprang up, and shook his mane. Dotty could not speak. She lost her reason. Her head was on fire. Her hands and feet began to fly out. She danced up and down. Her terrific screams brought her mother down in haste, to see what was the matter. Dotty's face was crimson; her eyes shining fiercely; her voice hoarse from screaming.

"Indeed, ma'am," said Norah, really alarmed, "I've no means of knowing what's put her in such a way, ma'am."

"She called me everything!" cried Dotty, getting her voice again. "I was Miss Flippet! I was all the wicked girls in this town!"

Norah looked a little mortified. She knew her mistress was very "particular," and did not allow any one in her house to "call names." But just now Mrs. Parlin had no time to give Norah a mild reproof, her whole attention being devoted to the half-insane Dotty, whose most unusual exhibition of temper filled her with dreadful apprehensions.

"Alas," thought the good mother, "is this child going to live over again those dreadful days of her babyhood? The Lord give me wisdom to know what to do with her!"

Mrs. Parlin soon succeeded in quieting the turbulent Dotty; and deep silence fell upon the wash-room.

"My dear little girl," said she, very gently, "I desire you to spend the rest of the morning alone. You need not talk or play with either of your sisters. You may think. When the bell rings you may come to dinner; and after dinner I would like to see you in the nursery."

In half an hour Dotty had such a look of heartache in her face that Prudy longed to comfort her, only speech was forbidden. The little creature was out in the front yard, poking dirt with a stick, and secretly wondering if she could make a hole deep enough to lie down in and die.



Chapter II.

A Sad Story.


After dinner, Mrs. Parlin was seated on the lounge in the nursery, looking very sad. Raising her eyes, she saw Dotty standing before her, twisting a corner of her apron. The child had entered as quietly as her own shadow, and her mother had not heard a footfall.

"My dear little girl, I am going to tell you a story."

"Yes, 'm."

Dotty looked steadily at her finger-nails.

"A true story about a child who let her temper run away with her."

"Yes, 'm," replied Dotty again, giving her mother a view of her rosy right ear.

Mrs. Parlin saw that Dotty was very much ashamed. Her face did not look as it had looked in the early morning. Then

"There was a hardness in her eye, There was a hardness in her cheek:"

now she appeared as if she would be very much obliged to the nursery floor if it would open like a trap-door and let her fall through, out of everybody's sight.

"The little girl I am going to tell you about, Dotty, lived in this state. Her name was Harriet Snow. Her father and mother were both dead. She had occasional fits of temper, which were very dreadful indeed. At such times she would hop up and down and scream."

Dotty tied the two corners of her apron into a hard knot. The story was rather too personal.

"Was the little girl pretty?" said she, trying to change the subject.

"Not very pretty, I think. Her skin was dark; her eyes were black, and remarkably bright. When I saw her, she was thirteen years old; and you may know, Dotty, that by that time her face could not well be very pleasant: temper always leaves its marks."

Dotty looked at her little plump hands, as if she expected to see black spots on them.

"Sometimes Harriet beat her head against the wall so violently that there seemed to be danger of her dashing her brains out."

Dotty looked up quite bravely. This dreadful little girl was worse than she had ever been! O, yes!

"Wasn't she crazy, mamma?"

Mrs. Parlin shook her head.

"No, I am afraid not, dear. Only, when she allowed anger to stay in her heart, it made her feel blind and dizzy. Perhaps she was crazy for the time."

Dotty hung her head again. She remembered how blind and dizzy she herself had felt while screaming at Norah that morning.

"This little girl had no mother to warn her against indulging her temper. When she had the feeling of hate swelling at her heart, nobody told her what it was like. You know what it is like, Dotty?"

Dotty's chin drooped, and rested in the hollow of her neck.

"I don't want to tell you, mamma."

"Like murder, my child."

Dotty shuddered, though she had known this before. Her mother had often read to her from the Bible, that "whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer."

"Well, there was no one to love this poor Harriet; she was not lovable."

"No, 'm, she was hateable!" remarked Dotty, anxious to say something; for if she held her peace, she was afraid her mother would think she was applying the story to herself.

"There was no one to love her; so a woman took her, and was paid for it by the town."

"Town? Town, mamma? A town is houses."

"She was paid for it by men in the town. I don't know whether this woman tried to teach Harriet in the right way or not. It may be she had so much to do that she thought it less trouble to punish her when she was naughty than to instruct her how to be good."

"O, yes; I s'pose she struck her with a stick," said Dotty, patting her forefingers together -- "just this way."

"Harriet had the care of one of Mrs. Gray's children, a lively little boy about two years old."

"Was he cunning? As cunning as Katie Clifford? Did he say, 'If you love me, you give me hunnerd dollars; and I go buy me 'tick o' canny'?"

"Very likely he was quite as cunning as Katie. You would hardly think any one could get out of patience with such a little creature -- would you, my daughter?"

"No, indeed!" cried Dotty, eagerly, and feeling that she was on safe ground, for she loved babies dearly, and was always patient with them.

"I don't know but Harriet was envious of Mrs. Gray's little boy, because he had nicer things to eat than she had."

"Well, it ought to have nicer things, mamma, 'cause it hadn't any teeth."

"And she got tired of running after him."

"No matter if she did get tired, mamma; the baby was tireder than she was!"

"And the parents think now it is very likely she was in the habit of striking him when nobody knew it."

"What a naughty, wicked, awful girl!" cried Dotty, her eyes flashing.

"She had a fiery temper, my child, and had never learned to control it."

Dotty looked at her feet in silence.

"The baby was afraid of his little nurse; but he could not speak to tell how he was abused; all he could do was to cry when he was left with Harriet. But one day Mrs. Gray was obliged to go away to see her sick mother. She charged Harriet to take good care of little Freddy, and give him some baked apples and milk if he was hungry."

"With bread in?" suggested Dotty.

"Yes, I suppose so. Then she kissed her baby. He put his arms around her neck, and cried to go too; but she could not take him."

"I s'pose he cried 'cause he 'xpected that awful girl was a-going to shake him," said Dotty, indignantly.

"I cannot tell you precisely what Harriet did to him; but when the father and mother got home, that darling boy was moaning in great pain. They sent for the doctor, who said his spine was injured, and perhaps he would never walk again; and, indeed, he never did."

"O, mamma! mamma Parlin!"

"Yes, my child; and it is supposed that Harriet must have hurt him in one of her fits of rage."

Dotty's face had grown very white.

"O, mamma, what did the folks do with Harriet?"

"They took her to court, and tried her for abusing the little boy. They could not prove that she was really guilty, though everybody believed she was."

"I know what 'guilty' means, mamma; it means hung."

"No, dear; if she hurt the baby she was guilty, whether she was punished for it or not."

"Well, she did it, I just know she did it!" exclaimed Dotty, greatly excited. "That little tinty boy!"

"The judge pitied her for her youth and ignorance; so did the twelve men called the 'jury;' and she was allowed to go free."

"Then did she 'buse somebody's else's baby, mamma?"

"I hope not. The last I heard of her she was married to a negro fiddler."

"O!"

"Do you know why I have told you this sad story, my little daughter?"

"'Cause, 'cause -- Harriet beat her head against the door, and hurt a baby, and -- and -- married black folks!"

Dotty was very pale, and there was a tear in her voice; still her mother could not be sure that her words had made much impression. She was afraid her long story had been "love's labor lost."

But I believe it had not been. Not entirely, at least. Dotty thought of Harriet all the afternoon, and walked about the house with a demureness quite unusual.

"O, Prudy!" said she, when they two were alone in the parlor, looking over a book of engravings, "I'm going to tell you something; 'twill make you scream right out loud, and your hair stick up!"

"I'M GOING TO TELL YOU SOMETHING." Page 34.

"Don't," laughed Prudy, "I've just brushed my hair."

"Once there was a girl, Prudy, lived in this state; and mother thinks she was just like me. But she wasn't, truly. She was homely; and her hair was black; and her mother was dead. The woman spatted her with a stick where she lived. And she didn't love the baby any at all, 'cause he had nicer things, you know; and I guess white sugar and verserves. So she stuck a spine into him -- only think! In his crib! So he never walked ever again! And his father and mother were gone away, and told her to give him baked apples and milk -- with bread in!"

"Why, that can't be true, Dotty Parlin!"

"Yes, indeed! Certain true, black and blue. Guess my mother knows!"

"What!" said Prudy, "just for baked apples and milk?"

"Yes. Her name was Harriet."

"What did you say she did it with, Dotty?"

"Mamma said a spine. They took her to the court-house; but they didn't hang her, 'cause she -- I've forgot what -- but they didn't. They made her marry a black man -- that's all I know!"

"Well, there, how queer!" said Prudy, drawing a long breath. "If I was Harriet I'd rather have been hung. Was he all black?"

"Yes, solid black. But I s'pose she didn't want to choke to death any more'n you do."

"Dotty," said Prudy, with a meaning in her tone, "what do you suppose made mamma tell you that story?"

"I don't know."

Dotty looked deeply dejected.

"Little sister," continued Prudy, taking advantage of the child's softened mood, "don't you wish you didn't let yourself be so angry?"

"Yes, I do, so there!" was the quick and earnest reply.

Prudy was astonished. It was the first time this proud sister had ever acknowledged herself wrong.

"Then, Dotty, what if you try to be good, and see how 'twill seem?"

"Won't you tell anybody, Prudy?"

"No, never."

"Well, I will be good! I can swallow it down if I want to."

Observe what faith the child had in herself!

Prudy clapped her hands.

"There, don't you talk any more," added Miss Dimple, with a sudden sense of shame, and a desire to conceal her emotions. "Let's make pictures on the slate."

Prudy was ready for anything; her heart was very light. She was too wise to remind Dotty of her new resolution; but she kept a journal, and that evening there was a precious item to make in it.

I think, by the way, that Prudy's habit of keeping a journal was an excellent thing. She learned by the means to express her thoughts with some degree of clearness, and it was also an improvement to her handwriting.

"July 2d. My sister Dotty thinks, certain, positive, she will be a good girl; and this is the day she begins. But I shall not tell anybody, for I promised, 'No, never.'

"My mother told her about a girl that almost killed a dear little boy because they asked her to give him baked apples and milk. I heard my father say to my mother that he thought the story pierced Dotty like a two-leg-ged sword. So I don't think she will ever get angry again. Finis."

Prudy always added the word "Finis" at the close of her remarks each day, considering it a very good ending.



Chapter III.

Fire.


For a few days after this, Dotty Dimple had little time to think of her new resolution. Nothing occurred to call forth her anger, but a great deal to fill her with astonishment and awe.

The three little girls, for the first time in their lives, were learning a lesson in the uncertainty of human events. They had never dreamed that anything about their delightful home could ever change. If they thought of it at all, they supposed their dear father and mother, and their serene grandmamma Read, would always live, and be exactly as they were now; that their home would continue beautiful and bright, and there would be "good times" in it as long as the world stands.

It is true they heard at church that it is not safe for us to set our affections too strongly upon things below, because they may fail us at any moment, and there is nothing sure but heaven. Still, like most children, they listened to such words carelessly, as to something vague and far away. It was only when they were left, in one short day, without a roof over their heads, that Susy sobbed out, -- 

"O, Prudy, this world is nothing but one big bubble!"

And Prudy replied, sadly, -- 

"Seems more like shavings!"

You all know how an innocent-looking fire-cracker set Portland ablaze, but you can have little idea of the terror which that woeful Fourth of July night brought to our three little girls.

When I think of it now, I fancy I see them speeding up and down that departed staircase, trying to help the men carry water to pour on the roof. The earnestness of their faces is very striking as Susy brandishes a pail, Dotty a glass pitcher, and Prudy a watering-pot, in the delusive hope that they are making themselves useful.

After this, when the children have had a troubled sleep, and wake in the morning to find the house actually on fire, the horror is something always to be remembered. Flames are already bursting out of some of the lower windows. It is no longer of any use to pour water. There is no time to be lost. Mrs. Parlin hurries the children down stairs, and out of the house, under their grandmother's protection.

They thread their dismal way up town, through smoke and flame, Susy shedding tears enough to put out a common coal fire. It is, indeed, a bitter thing to turn their backs upon that dear old home, and know for a certainty that they will never see it again! In the place where it stands there will soon be a black ruin!

"The fire is lapping and licking," says Prudy, "like a cat eating cream."

"I hope it has a good time eating our house up!" cried Dotty, in wrath.

Susy groans. Dotty thinks they are going to be beggars in rags and jags. Prudy, always ready with her trap to catch a sunbeam, says that after all there are other little girls in the world worse off than they are. Susy thinks not.

"O, children, you are young and can't realize it; but this is awful!"

Dotty tries to be more wretched than ever, to satisfy her eldest sister's ideas of justice. She sends out from her throat a sound of agony, which resembles a howl.

Prudy's chief consolation is in remembering, as she says, that "God knows we are afire." Prudy is always sure God will not let anything happen that is too dreadful. She has observed that her mother is calm; and whatever mamma says and does always approves itself to this second daughter.

But Susy can only wring her hands in hopeless despair. She has helped save the books, still she "expects they will burn up, somehow, on the road." Her pony has been trotting about through the night; his hair is singed, and she "presumes it will strike in and kill him." The world is, to Susy's view, one vast scene of lurid horrors. If she couldn't cry, she thinks she should certainly die.

But this strange night came to an end. Dreadful things may and do happen in this world, but, as a general rule, they do not last a great while. The fire did its work, and then stopped. It was fearful while it raged, and it left a pitiful wreck; still, as Mrs. Parlin said, it was "not so bad but it might have been worse." "Nothing," she always declared, "ought to make us really unhappy except sin."

"And here we are, all alive," said she, with tearful eyes, as she tried to put her arms around the three little girls at once. "All alive and well! Let us thank God for that."

"I guess I shan't cry much while I have my blessed mother to hold on to," said Prudy, pressing her cheek against Mrs. Parlin's belt-slide.

"Nor I neither," spoke up Dotty, very bravely, till a sudden spasm of recollection changed her tone, and she added, faintly, "If 'twasn't for my cunning little tea-set!"

"I shouldn't care a single thing about the fire," sobbed Susy, "if it hadn't burnt our house up, you know. You see it was where we lived. We had such good times in it, with the rooms as pleasant as you can think! Nothing in the world ever happened: and now that pony! O, dear, and my room where the sun rose! I don't know what's the matter with me, but seems as if I should die!"

"And me, too," sighed Dotty. "I just about know that man threw my tea-set into the Back Cove; and now we haven't any home!"

"It is home where the heart is, children," said Mrs. Parlin, tenderly; but something choked her voice as she spoke.

Though she was never known, either then or afterwards, to murmur, still it is barely possible she may have felt the loss of her precious home as much as even Susy did.

For the present the family were to remain at Mr. Eastman's; and it was in the parlor chamber of that house that Mrs. Parlin and her three children were standing, glad to find themselves together once more, after the night of confusion.

Grandma Read, who was as patient as her daughter, "tried to gather into stillness," and settle herself as soon as possible to her Bible. But the change from the Sabbath-like quiet of her old room to the confusion of this noisy dwelling must have tried her severely.

Mr. and Mrs. Eastman, and Mr. and Mrs. Parlin, were busy enough from morning till night, day after day, searching for missing goods, and aiding the sufferers from the fire. The Eastman mansion was left to the tender mercies of the five children -- the Parlins, and Florence, and Johnny.

Master Percy would probably look insulted if he were to be classed among the children. In his younger days he had had his share in ringing people's door-bells and then running away; now, in his maturer years, he did not scruple to tease little folks, when they could be "tickled with a straw" held under the chin, or when they were easily vexed, and answered him back with an angry word or a furious scowl. He liked to torture his "cousin Dimple." He said she shot out quills like a little porcupine. She was a "regular brick," almost as smart as Johnny, and that was saying a great deal; for Percy regarded the youthful Johnny as a very promising child. He was sorry to have him corrected for trifling follies. If Percy had had the care of him, the little fellow would not have lived long, for the older brother quite approved of such amusements as crossing pins on the railroad track, running under horses' feet, and walking on the dizzy roof of a house.

Mr. Eastman was always very busy, and his wife had a deal of visiting to do, so it usually happened that Johnny had more liberty than was good for him.

Mrs. Parlin knew this, and did not like to have Dotty thrown very much in his society, but just now it certainly could not be avoided; Dotty's constant desire to "get out doors and run somewhere" seemed to be fully gratified, for Johnny despised the inside of a house more than she did, and they both roamed about during the day like a couple of gypsies.

Sometimes Prudy went with them, but their games were rather rough for her taste. Susy and Florence were generally together, painting with water-colors, pasting scrapbooks, and doing a variety of things in which they did not care to have Prudy join. The dear little girl might have been lonely, and possibly grieved, if she had been anything but a "bird-child." As it was, she sang when she had no one to talk with, and, whether the rain fell or the sun shone, always awoke with a smile, and found the world as beautiful as a garden.

She amused herself by writing in her little red journal, which had come out of the fire unharmed. Here is her account of the tragedy: -- 

"July 7th. I ought to tell about the fire; but I can't write with mother's pen any more than Zip can write with a sponge.

"I am so sorry, but a boy fired a cracker. He didn't mean to burn up the city at all. He just touched it off for fun.

"There was going to be a procession, but I believe it didn't process. I never saw anything whiz and crack so in all my life! The fire danced and ran all over the city as if it was alive! It burnt just as if it was glad of it. The trees are all black where the green was scorched off. You wouldn't think it was summer. It doesn't look like winter. Father says it looks like a graveyard.

"Dotty lost her tea-set. Susy thought she should faint away, but she didn't -- we couldn't find the camphor bottle. A man saved six eggs and the pepper box.

"It was real too bad grandma's room was burnt up! When I went into grandma's room I used to feel just like singing. Mother says that isn't so bad as wickedness. She says it is 'home where the heart is.'

"Dotty hasn't had any temper for five days. Finis."

Just about this time a letter came from Willowbrook, saying Mrs. Clifford was quite ill, and asking Mrs. Parlin to go to her. Aunt Louisa said it was fortunate that the children could stay at their aunt Eastman's. She did not know that Mrs. Parlin left them there very reluctantly, having her own private fears that her youngest daughter might fall into mischief.

Dotty kissed her mother good by, and promised to be perfect; but Mrs. Parlin knew too well how the child's resolutions were apt to wither away for want of root.



Chapter IV.

Playing Hindoo.


"Johnny, Johnny, come to the window, quick!" said Dotty; "see this bird!"

"I've seen birds before," replied her little cousin, coolly, and walking as slowly as possible.

"But this one peeps as if he was hurt; see how he pecks to get in."

"Don't you take him in!" exclaimed Angeline, the kitchen girl; "it's a bad sign to have birds come fluttering round a window."

"What do you mean by a sign?" asked Dotty, who had never heard of any silly superstitions in her life.

"Let him alone," cried Johnny, "or you'll die before the week's out, sure's you live!"

Dotty laughed. "A bird can't make me die," said she, seizing the trembling little oriole, and holding him close to her bosom. "O, you birdie darling! Did your mamma go 'way off, and couldn't find a worm? Dotty'll be your mamma, so she will."

She put him in a basket stuffed with rags, and hung over him tenderly for half an hour.

"You're bringing down trouble, I'm afraid, child," said Angeline, gravely, as she walked back and forth, doing her work.

Mrs. Parlin, away off at Willowbrook, was at that moment bathing Mrs. Clifford's forehead. I think she might have dropped the sponge in dismay if she had known what pernicious nonsense was finding its way into Dotty's ears.

Just as Angeline was in the midst of a ghost story, Johnny rushed in again.

"Come," said he, shaking Dotty by the shoulders, "let's go play poison."

"O, no, Johnny. I'm hearing the nicest, awfullest story! And then it rains so, too!"

"Doesn't, either. Only sprinkles. And when it sprinkles, it's a sure sign it isn't going to rain."

"Who told you so?"

"Your grandmother Read. She's a Quaker, and she can't lie. Come, Dot Parlin; if you don't like poison, come out and play soldier."

"I don't want to play a single thing; so there, now, Johnny Eastman!"

"Then you're a cross old party, miss."

"I'm not a party at all. I'm only one girl."

"O, Dotty!" called Prudy from the cellar-way; "take care! take care!"

"So I am taking care," returned Dotty, stoutly. "For my own mother doesn't 'low me to go out doors and get rained on, and he knows it."

It was coming, Prudy feared -- her sister's naughty temper. She saw a shadow no larger than a man's hand; but it would not do to let it grow. She must brush it away at once.

"Let's play something in the house," said she, quickly.

"All right," returned Johnny; "only not sit down."

"Yes, let's do sit down," interposed Dotty, with a view to thwarting Johnny.

"Suppose we play Hindoo," suggested Prudy, "if we can get Susy and Flossy into it."

"Play what?"

"Why, play we are Hindoos, and live away off in the Indian Ocean."

"Fishes or sharks?" asked Johnny, growing interested.

"O, people; and they act so queer. Mother played it with us once, when Susy had the toothache."

The older girls were hard to be persuaded. They did not like to leave their shell-work; but they came at last.

"Johnny shall be Joggo," said Susy; "that's a boy's name; Prudy will be 'Drop of Honey,' and Flossy 'Young Beauty,' and Dotty 'Summer Moon,' and I 'Onno.'"

"'Young Beauty' 's the prettiest," said Dotty; "if I can't play that, I'd rather stay with my birdie, and not play."

"Why," cried Susy, "how foo -- ;" but catching Prudy's eye, she added, "you may as well be Young Beauty; Flossy wouldn't mind. But now I think of it, Prudy, we can't play school, for girls don't go to school in India."

"Make believe you are boys, then," observed Johnny, whose interest in the game had flagged since he knew that Hindoos were not sharks.

"We'll play it's six o'clock in the morning," continued Susy.

"That isn't school time," remonstrated Dotty.

"O, yes, it is, in India. I'm the teacher. Give me a stick, please."

"Here's my old riding-whip," said Flossy, producing it from the wood-box. Things were tucked away in very queer places at Mrs. Eastman's.

Susy tied a string about her waist for a girdle, stuck the whip into it, and began to march the floor with great dignity.

"Now school has begun. You must all come in, and bow 'way down to the ground, and say, 'O, respected teacher, grant us knowledge.' They are very polite in India. -- All but Prudy, she may stay behind and play truant."

The three pupils came forward, touched their foreheads to the floor, and repeated the sentence as directed, Johnny rendering it, -- 

"O, respectful Susy Parlin, don't you whip me!" -- at the same time turning a somerset.

"I forgot one thing," said the teacher, as her obedient pupils stood upright again, with flushed faces. "You ought to have brought me a present, every one of you, such as a fig of tobacco rolled up in a banana leaf, or -- "

"We didn't know you chewed," said Florence, laughing.

"Now you take your seats. No, not there! On the floor! What do you suppose? You're in India, children. There are mats on the floor (we'll pretend)."

The children seated themselves.

"O, we ought to say a prayer to the Muse; but I can't remember what it is. No matter. Multiplication Table comes next. Mother says it's just the same thing in India that it is in America."

The school repeated part of the table, making very absurd mistakes intentionally. Susy walked the floor like a general. "Angeline, please look up some more palm-leaf fans, and some splinters of wood."

Angeline was the soul of good nature, and left her baking to hunt in the meal-room for the fans.

"A pretty kind of school!" growled Johnny. "Don't they do anything out there in Hindoo but just fan themselves?"

"O, we pretend these fans are green, just off the trees. We are studying arithmetic, all so fast, and ciphering on these leaves with reeds -- (that's our splinters). Indian boys don't know what slates are. They think these leaves are good enough. They come off of the tallest palm trees. Fans don't grow in this country. Where did you ever see a leaf as broad as this?"

"Poh, plenty of 'em in Kennebec County!" said Johnny, confidently.

"Now," said the teacher, after a few moments of mock arithmetic, "now I've looked at my watch, and find it's seven o'clock. How conscionable late! And that Drop of Honey hasn't come to school yet! Joggo, you and Young Beauty go and bring her!"

Prudy, who was sitting at a little distance, under a swing-table, eating ginger snaps, was suddenly seized upon by the two little Indian constables.

"Why, what an idea!" said Prudy, with her mouth full; "I didn't know that was the way to play it."

"Yes," said Susy, "truants must come to school. If they don't come they must be arrested."

"Why, I've been a-resting all the time," said Prudy, laughing.

"Well, that doesn't make any difference, Miss Honey Drop," said Johnny, taking her by the shoulders, while Dotty dragged her feet. There was great laughing and scrambling, during which Prudy swallowed a crumb the wrong way, and was finally carried into school on a litter.

"Now, I should judge," said the heartless teacher, looking sternly at the crimson-faced victim, "I should judge that this wicked creature ought to have a terrific whipping!"

"That's so!" shouted Johnny; "we found Honey Drop top of a house, firing mud into a man's eyes."

"Yes, so we did," said Dotty, fully restored to good humor, "black mud; Honey's a bad Nindian. If you can't whip her hard enough, Joggie will help."

"There, now!" said the teacher, after dealing several "love-pats" with great pretended force; "now I should think 'twas time for school to be out. As you go by me, each of you, I must strike you just as many times as you were minutes late. Now go home, and eat rice for your dinners."

"Well, I don't think it's much of a play, any way," said Johnny.

"Who said it was?" retorted Florence. "Susy and I didn't want to come down; we did it just to please you."

"Please me!" sniffed Johnny. "I wanted to play poison, out in the yard!"

"I do wish," thought Susy, privately, "that cousin Flossy would be more polite to little Johnny. I really think he wouldn't be so rude if she would treat him as a lady should."

"There's another play we used to have," said Prudy, "where you sit round on the floor, right among the dishes, and eat your supper."

"Well, I declare for it," said Angeline, "those people off there do need missionaries more than ever I thought they did."

"Yes," replied Susy, "they tell such horrid stories to their little children. The children don't dare go out after dark, for they suppose there are demons up in the high trees, just ready to dart down and whisk them off."

"Angeline tells just such stories her own self," said Dotty.

"Then she's a heathen," said Florence, who usually spoke the first thought that came into her head.

"If that's the case," retorted Angeline, with dignity, "you'd better all walk out of this kitchen before you are entirely ruined."

As Angeline was evidently in earnest, the children slowly took their way into the dining-room.

"Are there real live ghosts, though, Susy?" asked Dotty, anxiously; "and if a bird comes to the window will you die?"

"Why, no, indeed, child! Mother told me once, when I was right little, that I mustn't let people tell me such foolish stories. If Angeline talks so to you, you must stop your ears. Now, remember!"

Dotty remembered; but she was not quite convinced. Those awful stories might be true, after all; perhaps Susy didn't know.



Chapter V.

Running Wild.


You begin to see how the children were running wild at Mrs. Eastman's. One morning Dotty climbed the hat-tree to get away from her cousin Percy.

"Don't believe 'cousin Dimple' knows a hat-tree wasn't made for little girls to sit on," said Percy.

"No, 'twas made to swing on," replied Dotty, tilting herself backward and forward like a bird on a bough. "I'm going to stay here till somebody carries me off pick-aback."

Percy, having nothing better to do, took his little cousin on his shoulders, danced her about the hall and through the house, and finally tossed her backward into a pile of shavings. Dotty sprang up, shook off the shavings, and ran after Percy, laughing so boisterously that Angeline said to the chambermaid, -- 

"I know of one person that will be glad when Mrs. Parlin gets back."

"And I know of another," replied Janey. "The child behaved like a lady when she first came; but what can you expect in this house with those boys?"

"How's that bird?" said Percy, as he and Dotty raced through the kitchen. "Can he stand on both legs yet?"

"Yes, indeed! He could stand on three legs if he had 'em. He's most well -- I must go and 'tend to him." -- ("I wonder what's going to happen that's bad," thought she, as she fed the bird in her own chamber with cream biscuit. "I hope it isn't a fire!") -- "Why, Johnny Eastman, I shouldn't think your mamma'd let you scream so loud!"

"Then you must hear the first time. Come, let's go out and have some fun; mother's gone to Cumberland."

As if Johnny did not have fun all day, and every day, whether his mother was at home or abroad!

"Prudy," said Dotty, "good by, for Johnny 'n' I are going down to the beach to get some shells."

Prudy looked up from her writing.

"Don't go near the water," said she; then throwing her arms about her little sister, she sang, -- 

"If you love me as I love you, No knife shall cut our love in two."

"Well, I do," replied Dotty, with an affectionate hug, "and I sha'n't go near the water."

"You won't forget?" said Prudy, anxiously. "You know mamma's as afraid of the water as she can be."

"What are you after?" cried Angeline, half a minute afterwards. "Of all the rummaging children!" At the same time she gave Dotty a nice cake warm from the oven.

"I'm looking for my hat," said the little girl, shutting the sink door. "Last time I saw it 'twas in a barrel somewhere."

But it happened to be in a hogshead.

"I think this is a real nice sort of world," thought Dotty, as she and Johnny trudged off in the pleasant sunshine. "I do think, just to myself -- though I wouldn't say it out loud -- that I'm as nice as anybody. I don't know what Prudy'd do 'thout me; and I guess Susy'd cry her eyes out!"

"What you thinking about?" said Johnny.

"O, 'bout a good many things! Let's run; it tires me to pieces to walk!"

"Look!" cried Johnny, "there's Mandoline!"

And such a pretty sight as bareheaded Mandoline presented! She was a little Jewess, with such beauty, perhaps, as that of the women we read about in the Bible. She had dark, wavy hair, like sea-foam with ink tipped over in it. Her eyes were like gems; there was a brilliant color in her cheeks, and her mouth was so sweet that

"Upon her lip the honey bee Might build her waxen throne."

Dotty did not know why she liked Mandoline so well, but like her she did. Mrs. Parlin was afraid Mandoline had not been taught to respect the truth, and had often desired her little daughter not to play with the beautiful Jewess.

But "Lina" went to Mrs. Eastman's, and Mrs. Eastman petted her. Dotty thought it could not be wrong to associate with a little girl her auntie liked so well.

"Come with us, Lina," said Johnny.

"Where are you going?"

"Going to make a Bunger Hill Monuement," replied Dotty. "We know where the shells grow real thick."

"But I've lost my shaker. A dog's got it."

"O, no matter, you don't care," said Dotty, in a grandmotherly tone, "for I won't let anybody laugh at you."

Lina yielded. The three children tripped along together, taking up Freddy Jackson on the way -- a deaf and dumb boy, who only knew when it thundered by the jar he could feel. Everybody was kind to Freddy. Dotty Dimple, with all her faults, was never known to be impatient with the poor boy.

The children reached the sea-shore, which was somewhere "near the water," though Dotty had assured Prudy to the contrary. Shell-gathering is more exciting work than picking strawberries in the country; for strawberries are all very much alike, whereas shells present some variety.

But in this instance it was very dull business, for the reason that there were no shells to be found. They had all become weary of groping about in the sand, when Johnny looked at the bay, and observed a boy coming towards them, rowing a boat.

"Hilloa, there!" shouted the boy.

"Hilloa!" responded Johnny. "If that isn't Sol Rosenberg!" (This was Mandoline's brother.) "Where you going, Sol?"

"Nowhere particular. Get in and go too?"

"Yes," said Johnny, "Fred Jackson and I. Fred can steer as straight's a needle. I'll paddle, you know."

"Girls too," added Solomon, gallantly.

With one accord the children walked eagerly towards the boat, which, by this time, Solomon had moored against the beach. All but Dotty.

"Are you old enough, Solly Rosenberg, old enough and know enough not to drown us all to pieces?"

Young Solomon laughed.

"If I can't manage a small concern like this!"

"But four, and one more, make five, Solly!"

"You don't say so! Well, I could carry sixteen, if they were all such little snips as you are!"

"Dot Parlin thinks she weighs as much as two tons," said Johnny, in an irritating tone.

"I'm dreadful 'fraid," murmured the little Jewess, shaking the wayward hair out of her magnificent eyes; "but I'll go if you will, Dotty Dimple."

Dotty shoved her feet into the sand and reflected.

"My mamma is afraid of the water; but then she was upset in a scursion, and that's why she's afraid."

"What kind of thing is a scursion?" asked Johnny.

"A Sabbath school picnic. And she wasn't upset either, only she 'xpected to be."

"Come on!" called Solly. "All aboard!"

"But my mamma said it wasn't safe!"

"No, she didn't. She never saw this boat; she doesn't know whether it's safe or not."

"Doesn't it leak a single speck, Solly Rosenberg? It looks wet."

"Pshaw! That's where the waves come in; it's as tight as the bark to a tree."

Dotty was becoming very eager to go. It sometimes did seem, when she really wished to do any particular thing, that she wished it more than any one else.

"But, O dear! my mamma doesn't 'low me to sail."

This was spoken sorrowfully; but there was a little wavering in the tone. Dotty had taken the first false step; she had listened to the voice of temptation, and every persuasive word of Solly's left her weaker than it had found her.

"My mamma doesn't ever 'low me to sail."

"You couldn't sail in a wherry if you were to try," said Johnny. "Come, Sol, don't stop to bother: who wants girls? They just spoil the fun."

"For shame!" said the more polite Solomon, drawing himself up and looking very manly; "the girls shall go if they want to. Only just round the curve."

Dotty liked Solly at that moment very much. She looked at her ill-mannered little cousin with royal disdain, and walked slowly and cautiously on towards the boat. Lina followed at a little distance. Her mother had also forbidden her to go on the water, and had declared that Solomon was too young to manage a boat; but neither Lina nor her brother had very tender consciences. If they did wrong things, and nobody knew it, it was all very well; but if they were found out -- ah! then was the time to be sorry! Dotty's conscience had been much better educated than theirs: it gave her plenty of warning, which she would not heed, and tried to stifle by talking.

"It isn't a sail boat. When my mamma went in the scursion, then it was a sail boat, and the wind whistled so the sails shook dreadfully. My mamma never talked to me about wherries; she didn't ever say I mustn't go in a wherry."

While Dotty was still talking, she entered the boat, the last of the five. She seated herself, but was annoyed to find her dainty gaiters sinking into a pool of dirty water. She lifted her feet, but could not keep them up. Well, perhaps she shouldn't have the sore throat after all; she couldn't help it now if she did have it. At any rate she was determined not to complain, when Solly had been so very polite.

"Isn't this prime?" said Johnny, as they launched out upon the water.

The motion was certainly pleasant, and for a few moments Dotty was quite delighted, thinking over and over again, -- 

"Mamma won't care; it's nothing but a wherry, and the wind doesn't blow."

Then she suddenly remembered her promise to Prudy, not to go "anywhere near the water."

"And I never thought I should. I never s'posed I should see Solly Rosenberg. I didn't know he was in this city. Prudy'd like it just as well as I do, if she was in here, and knew 'twas a wherry."



Chapter VI.

How It Ended.


Yes, no doubt Prudy would have liked it if her mother had approved; for then she could have gone with a clear conscience, and also without fear. But Prudy had suffered in her short life a great deal of what we call "discipline," and had learned pretty thoroughly the lesson of obedience. She knew it is never of the least use for little girls, or any one else, to expect to be happy in the wrong way.

"Straight is the line of duty, Curved is the line of beauty; Follow one, and thou shalt see The other ever following thee."

This means, when put into child's English, that if we try above everything else to have a good time, we never have it; but if we try first of all to do right, then the good time will come of itself. Dotty certainly had not tried to do right: now we will see if that beautiful "curved line" of happiness followed her.

She was very young, or she would have known better than to trust herself on the ocean with a little boy like Solly Rosenberg, even if her mother had not forbidden it: but Dotty was rash; her bold spirit never feared danger.

If she, or any of the rest of the party, had only looked at the sky! But if they had, I dare say they would have made nothing of it. There were clouds scudding about up there like shadowy sail-boats, and the sun had to fight his way through them, till by and by he gave it up entirely, and never so much as peeped out. By that time it was decidedly bad weather; the light had to be sifted through heavy gray curtains.

This made such a difference with the appearance of everything! The world, which had looked, an hour ago, so gay and light-hearted, was now rather gloomy. The waves, instead of sparkling, only foamed and bubbled; indeed they grew larger every moment, for the wind was blowing a gale. The white sea-gulls hovered over the bay, flapping their wings; and Dotty had never liked sea-gulls. She began to grow a very little uneasy.

"It was naughty for us to come," thought she, anxious to divide the sin with her companions; "we ought to have minded our mothers."

If the sky had continued fair, it may be Dotty would not have felt so guilty, though you and I know the weather had nothing to do with the sin; disobedience is disobedience always, whether it rains or shines.

The little Jewess grew very pale, said she was dizzy, and wished to change places with Dotty.

"Keep still, can't you, girls?" cried Johnny; "if you fuss round so the boat'll be sure to upset."

Johnny looked as dignified as if he had navigated ships across the Atlantic Ocean over and over again; but then, alas! his arms were so little! I suppose his paddle had nearly as much effect as if it had been an iron spoon; and he probably knew as much about boating as he did about the dead languages. Solly and Freddy were several years older, and considerably wiser; but the wisdom of all these five children, if it had been compounded together, would not have amounted to the wisdom of the three wise men of Gotham who went to sea in a bowl.

"O, dear!" screamed Dotty.

"O, dear! dear! dear!" cried Lina; "the water rolls in over the top!"

"Can't you steer for the shore, Solly Rosenbug?" said Dotty.

"You hadn't oughter made us come," sobbed Lina.

Johnny joined the mournful chorus.

"There goes my hat! You were in pretty business knocking it off my head, Dot Dimple!"

"I never; and I didn't mean to," replied Dotty, too much subdued to retort with her usual spirit.

"Fish it out with the paddle," remarked Solly, coolly.

This was intended as a joke, for the hat was already bounding far, far away over the waste of waters. Dotty knew she should always be accused of losing it, though in her secret soul she was sure the wind had blown it off. But a new hat, as we all know, is a mere trifle when we have gone to sea in a bowl! The first thing we think of is how to get home.

"Ahem!" ejaculated Solly, at last, "if you are really afraid, Lina, I suppose we'd better go ashore!"

Lina clapped her hands. "O, do! do! do!"

"Yes, indeed," said Dotty; "and, Solly, don't you bump too hard against the shore, 'cause 'twould spill us out."

It was very easy to talk about touching the shore: all the difficulty lay in being able to do it. Not that it was so very distant; indeed, it was in full sight, "so near, and yet so far!" If the wind had only been quiet, instead of "cracking its cheeks!" But, as it was, the boat rocked fearfully, and seemed to be blowing directly away from the land.

Solly and the deaf and dumb boy looked at each other with eyes which seemed to say, -- 

"The thing is coming to a pretty pass! Only you and I to manage this craft, and we neither of us know what we are about! But we'll keep a stiff upper lip, and make believe we do!"

"Why, Solly Rosenbug!" said Dotty, catching her breath, "you're going just the other way!"

"O, Solly Rosenberg," echoed Lina, "you're going the wrong way! There's the shore, off there!"

"Well, well," said Solly, his "stiff upper lip" very white, "we're coming round to it after a while: you just sit still."

"Yes," said Johnny, puffing very hard, and churning the foam with his paddle, as if he were whipping eggs with a beater, "yes, girls, we shall row round to it after a while, if you'll only keep still!"

I dare say Johnny thought the most of this commotion was made by his paddle. He was quite as consequential, in his way, as the fly who sat on a wagon-wheel, and said to the wagon, as it rattled down hill, "What a noise we make!"

"We wouldn't put for the shore at all," continued Johnny, "if it wasn't for you girls."

At that moment a remarkably high wave leaped over the side of the boat, and wet Johnny to the skin.

"Just enough wind to make it pleasant!" gasped the little fellow.

"O, dear! O, dear!" sighed the girls, in despair.

"Ugh! how my arms ache!" groaned Johnny, stopping to rub them. "Guess I wouldn't say much if I was nothing but a girl, and didn't have to paddle!"

"O, you needn't fuss with that paddle any longer, Johnny Eastman," said Solly, who had hitherto paid no heed to the little boy's vigorous but useless struggles; "you just drop it; it doesn't amount to anything."

"What! what!" cried Johnny, looking very much insulted. "How are you ever going to get ashore without ME, I'd like to know?"

All this while the boys were growing crimson in the face from the gigantic efforts they made, and the girls very pale with fright. Solly kept repeating, -- 

"Don't you be afraid, girls!" but his voice faltered as he said it; and as for Freddy Jackson, the trembling of his mute lips was as eloquent as speech. The two boys might put on what blustering airs they pleased -- it all amounted to nothing; there was more power in the wind than in the muscles of their small arms. The boat would not go near the shore: anywhere else but there. The sky grew more and more threatening, and the wind increased in force.

"We're going to be drow -- drow -- drownded!" screamed Dotty; "and I told you so: I knew it before! O, if Susy was here with a shingle!"

"We're going to be drownded!" cried Lina; "and, Solly Rosenberg, you hadn't oughter made me come!"

"And you told an awful, wicked story," struck in Dotty, "for, Solly Rosenberg, you said you's old enough to row, and you're nowhere near old enough; and, O! O! O! you don't know how. And I'll tell my father! And he'll never know where I am! And my mother's gone away to aunt Maria Clifford's, and I'm going to be dead when she gets back! And you won't try to row! Susy could row if she was here, and had a shingle. But Susy isn't here, and hasn't any shingle! O! O!"

All these sentences Dotty thrust out, one after another, having little idea what she said, only conscious of an overwhelming terror and an impulse to keep talking.

Suddenly poor Solly Rosenberg dropped his oar, exclaiming, -- 

"There, it's of no use; my arms are giving out!"

Freddy Jackson held out a few moments longer, then dropped his oar also, with a look of utter hopelessness.

IN THE BOAT. Page 93.

"Why don't you keep a pullin', boys?" said Johnny, dipping in his useless little paddle.

The boat whirled about like an egg-shell, completely at the mercy of the waves. If your papa and mamma had seen it, they would have said there was the last of Dotty Dimple. But, on second thought, you may be sure it was not the last of her; for if she was going to be drowned in the sixth chapter, I should never have written this book.

It was a wonderful mercy that the five rash children were spared; but life is full of just such mercies; and of course I knew all the while what was coming, or I could not have written so cheerfully.

What was coming?

"I see something," shouted Dotty, "ever so far off! It isn't a gull!"

"It's a sail! a sail!" cried Solly, and took to his oars again.

"A sail! a sail!" thought Freddy Jackson, though he could not say it; and he steered once more, with courage renewed; though, as to that matter, it would have been just as well if they had kept still.

By the time the sail-boat came up to the wherry, the children were thoroughly drenched and sobered. A more subdued set of little sailors the captain had never seen.

"Well, now," said he, patting the little girls on the head, "I had a fine lecture made up for you crazy chickens; but you are all so meek, that I reckon I'll just take you on board, and not scold you till I get you ashore."

It was the narrowest escape! and they all knew it. The "foolish chickens" hid their heads, and made mental resolves that they would never, never venture out of sight of land again without some older person to take care of them.

"Don't you tell my father, now," said Johnny to Dotty, as they went home, dripping like a pair of sea-bathers.

"Nor don't you tell mine, nor Susy, nor Prudy, neither."

"We shall have to make up some kind of a story," added Johnny, reflectively. "I don't know but we reached over too far after sea-shells, didn't we, and fell into the bay? You did (say), and I got in after you, and pulled you out by your hair."

"Why, Johnny!"

"Well, then, you didn't; I fell in, and you pulled me out -- by the boots; only my boots would have come off, though, they're so big!"

"O, Johnny Eastman!"

Dotty had stopped short in the road, and was looking at her cousin with an expression of mingled pity and scorn.

"Then make up something better to suit yourself."

"I don't make up stories, I just hope I don't," returned Dotty, squeezing the skirt of her dress indignantly.

"But," said Johnny, "they'll know it wasn't all rain-water."

"Then I shall tell the whole, whole truth," exclaimed Miss Dimple, setting her feet down so firmly that the water made a gurgling noise in her boots. "I'll tell how you boys teased us girls to go."

"O, ho, Dot Dimple! that's as much of a story as pulling out by the hair! I didn't want you to go. I tried to stop it."

"Yes, I know it, and that was why I went," said Dotty, gravely! "I wasn't going to have you say I mus'n't! If you'd been willing, I shouldn't have gone a step."

By this time they had reached Mr. Eastman's gate.

"You tell if you dare!" said Johnny. And, after that, Dotty never thought any longer of trying to conceal a single item of their remarkable adventure. Since Johnny had dared her, she would certainly tell.



Chapter VII.

Telling Of It.


Dotty saw her father through the window. She had not supposed it was dinner-time. Her head, which she had just been tossing so proudly, was suddenly lowered, and she entered the house with "faint-footed fear," and stole noiselessly up stairs, leaving wet tracks on the elegant carpet. She did not wish to meet her father while she was in such a plight.

"O, Prudy!" she called out, "something has happened!"

But Prudy was not within hearing. Angeline had given her permission to peel the potatoes for dinner, and she was now in the kitchen, quite unconscious of her little sister's forlorn situation. Hatless Johnny had crept around by the back door, and put himself under the care of Jane, the chambermaid. Janey was very kind-hearted, and withal a little weak-minded. She had often helped Johnny out of his predicaments, receiving in return plenty of kisses and sugar-plums.

But who was going to help Dotty? She did not know where to look for dry garments; for, since her mother went away, her own clothes, and those of her two sisters, had been tossed together in sad confusion. She did not like to go to Susy, for Susy would probably scold; and Dotty, just now, was so uncomfortable, and her nerves had been so terribly racked, that she thought she could bear anything better than to be blamed.

"O, dear! where in this world was Prudy?"

She fidgeted about, trying to find she knew not what. Then she remembered she had herself locked the trunk, to hide away some almond candy from the other girls. Where she had put the key she did not know.

The dinner-bell rang, and still Prudy did not appear.

"I believe she does it to purpose," thought Miss Dimple, pulling out the bureau drawers in great haste, and scattering their contents right and left.

"Seem's if I should freeze, but I don't s'pose she cares. I don't want any dinner. If Prudy'd bring me up a piece of pudding, I'd eat it; but she won't, nor pie either."

By this time Dotty had nearly forgotten that all her misery was the result of her own misconduct. She would remember it by and by with renewed shame; but, just now, she had somehow shifted the blame upon innocent Prudy, forgetting that that dear little sister did not even know she was in the house.

"And I sha'n't eat any supper," continued the shivering Dotty. "I wonder how many dinners and suppers 'twould take to starve folks to death? Prudy said she loved me; but if she does, why don't she come up here, and get me some clean clothes?"

Meanwhile, at the dinner-table down stairs, there were three places empty. Mrs. Eastman had gone to Cumberland, and Susy told her father that Johnny and Dotty were away somewhere at play. It was such a careless household, and the meals were so irregular, that Mr. Parlin had several times missed Dotty at table. He did not pay any more attention than usual to her absence to-day, but thought, with a feeling of relief, -- 

"Her mother will soon be at home, and then I shall feel very much easier about Alice and the other children."

If Mr. Parlin had only known that Dotty was shivering up stairs in wet clothes, he might not have lingered so long over his ice-cream. As it was, he chatted leisurely with Mr. Eastman, put on his hat, and walked away, saying to Susy, in a low voice, as he passed her in the hall, -- 

"My daughter, while I am so busy, and your mother is gone, I wish you would pay more attention to your little sister Alice. I am really afraid she is running wild."

"Yes, sir," replied Susy, with a swift pang of conscience; for she now recollected that it was seldom she even knew where Dotty was, her mind being wholly absorbed by play and fancy-work.

At this moment Johnny appeared, fresh from a bath, and dressed in a clean suit.

"Where is Dotty?" asked Susy, rather surprised by Johnny's tidy array.

"Dot? O, she's in the house somewhere. She came home when I did."

Johnny spoke very carelessly. He was anxious that no one should suppose anything unusual had occurred.

Susy and Prudy went up stairs in search of their missing sister. They found her in her own room, sitting down disconsolately in the middle of the floor.

"Why, Dotty Dimple, where have you been? How did you get so wet?"

No answer.

"Have you been trying to swim?" laughed Prudy, going up and stroking her forehead.

"Prudy Parlin, why didn't you come up here before?" was the sudden response. "I called you and called you. -- Where'd you put my clo'es?"

"Why, Dotty, dear, I didn't know you were in the house; and I never touched your clothes."

"Yes, you did. I can't find the key. I'm going to freeze. You don't care. You never brought me a speck of pudding. I'm sick, and going to have the sore throat. I wouldn't eat it now if the mayor was right in this room -- so there!"

Nothing could exceed the dreariness of Dotty's tone. Susy, though by no means unfeeling, could scarcely refrain from laughing at the child's unreasonableness; but Prudy, who "was exceeding wise" in reading the heart, knew that Dotty's anger was not very real; that it was partly assumed to hide her wretchedness. Therefore patient Prudy resolved to bear with the sharp words, believing Dotty would be pleasant by and by, when she felt comfortable.

After some delay in hunting, she and Susy dressed the child in fresh clothes. Then Dotty consented to eat a little dinner, and go into her grandma Read's room, to sit on the lounge.

"This little girl doesn't look well," said grandma Read, the first moment; "her cheeks are altogether too red. Where has thee been to-day, Alice?"

"Been down to the beach, picking shells, grandma," replied Dotty, looking hard at the carpet.

"O, where are the shells?" said Prudy.

"I'm sure I don't know; I didn't find any. I didn't come back the same way I went," replied Dotty, twirling her favorite lock of hair over her finger.

"Didn't come back the same way?"

"No, I went wherrying."

"Wherrying?" repeated Prudy.

"Yes, that's what I said."

"Prudence, what does thee suppose the child means?" said grandma Read, taking off her spectacles, and fixing her kind eyes steadily upon Dotty Dimple.

"Wherrying in a wherry," answered Dotty, dryly.

"Does thee mean in a boat?"

"Why no, grandma. It looks like a boat, but it isn't; it's a wherry."

"Who allowed thee to go on the water?"

"Nobody."

"Did thee think thee was doing right?"

"No'm."

"Who rowed the boat?"

"Some boys -- two -- and Johnny, grandma."

"Hasn't thy mother told thee not to go on the water?"

"She said I mus'n't sail, and I never. I wherried."

"Why, Dotty Parlin," said Prudy, "you'll scare me so I'll never get my breath again! You didn't go off on that bay with some boys?"

"Yes, I did," replied Dotty, trying to look defiant. "You wouldn't have dared to, Prudy."

"Thee may get in my lap, Alice, and tell me all about it," said grandma Read, laying down her knitting-work.

Dotty curled herself into a little heap in her grandmother's arms.

"My head aches," said she, "and I love to lay it against your soft kerjif."

"Well, dear, so thee may. Now, tell me what made thee go on the water?"

"'Cause, 'cause, grandma, Solly Rosenbug asked me to go, and Johnny tried to make me not go. I asked Solly was he old enough, and knew enough, and he said he did; but he didn't any such thing. And grandma, there it was, right in the middle of the solid water! And began to spin and dance round. We couldn't stop it from dancing; the more we held on, the quicker it went. Way up and down, grandma, and the rain raining, and our feet all sopping, and pouring right into that wherry like a -- a catara-duct. They were all afraid but me, and I was awful afraid too. You see I thought we should tip right over, and I didn't want to be drowned, and couldn't swim."

"Why, Dotty, how you make me tremble!" cried Prudy.

"The way Johnny paddled!" continued Dotty, triumphantly. "Solly said he couldn't. I could have paddled better, only I didn't dare to."

"You paddle!"

"No, I didn't. The wind blew me so I couldn't; 'twas much's ever I kept in the wherry. I had to hold on to Lina, too; she was just as 'fraid!"

Here grandma Read pressed Dotty close to her heart, as if she wished to make sure the child was really alive.

"'He gave his angels charge concerning thee,'" murmured she. "Tell me, child, how thee ever got to the shore."

"O, the captain took us in a sail-boat! He called us crazy chickens, but said he didn't scold. I was the first one that saw the sail; and then Solly rowed us to it, and it took us in, just as wet as ever was. Johnny lost that paddle. So we got home; and, O, how my head aches!"

"What a strange, strange child to tell a story!" said grandma Read, shaking her head. "But I've seen thee before. I understand thy odd ways. Thee is deeply ashamed of such wicked conduct -- that I am very sure. Thee must be aware, Alice, that it is only by the Lord's mercy thee is safe on dry land, instead of being drowned in the depths of the sea."

Dotty shuddered, and curled her crimson face more closely against the white kerchief.

"But I will not chide thee now. Thy mother will do what is right and proper when she comes home. But now thee must have a bowl of ginger tea, and go straight to bed."

Dotty made no objection. Indeed she was glad to find herself tucked warmly under blankets and coverlets, for she was still chilly, and her head grew worse continually. It was also a great relief to her that she had told the whole story. She knew her father would be sorely displeased; but he had never punished her in his life, and it was not likely he would do it now, while her head ached so dreadfully.

She wasn't going to tell anybody how sorry she was; but she had made up her mind to this -- that she would never look at salt water again as long as she lived.



Chapter VIII.

Mamma And "Little Me."


"O, dear!" thought Dotty, as she lay through the long afternoon, wakeful and feverish, "I should think there was a drum inside o' my head, and somebody was pounding on it, -- tummy, tum, tum."

Grandma had said it was best to leave her alone, in the hope that she might fall asleep. But the sleep would not come, though dreams did, one after another, like pictures in a panorama.

When she shut her eyes, she could see a little red boat rocking on the water like a cradle; then a great wave would dash against it, and turn it over, with all its passengers. The screaming sea-gulls seemed to be looking far down into the water in search of the sinking children; but the children could not look up to see the gulls, for their eyes were closed, and they were "drowned in the depths of the sea."

Dotty tried to shut out these horrid pictures. If her dear mamma were only here to talk to her, and lay a cool hand on her head -- that mamma she had just disobeyed! Then Dotty repeated some verses she had learned long ago: -- 

"At night my mamma comes up stairs, --  She comes to hear me say my prayers; And while I'm kneeling on her knee, She always kisses little me."

When it came to the last line the poor child buried her face in the pillow. Papa was good, and grandma was good; but there was no one like anybody's own mamma, after all.

"'She always kisses little me,'" murmured Dotty. "'She always kisses little me.' She gives me twenty kisses when I go to bed, 'cept when I'm naughty, and then I don't have but ten."

Dotty counted the number of knobs on the bureau drawers, and then went on: -- 

"I think if I was in my mamma's place, and had me to take care of, I'd throw me out of the window; I wouldn't keep such a girl!"

Dotty had great satisfaction in scolding herself when she was all alone. It was a way she had of "doing her own punishing."

Presently, while engaged in the soothing business of calling herself names, she dropped off to sleep. She dreamed of red wherries and "white waves;" but never once dreamed that her mother had come, and was bending over the bed, actually "kissing little me."

"Poor thing," said Mrs. Parlin to herself, "if she doesn't have a settled fever I shall be thankful. Will the time ever come when my little daughter will learn to obey her mother?"

Mrs. Parlin stole out of the room very softly; but a sly little rogue, observing that she left the creaking door a little ajar, watched an opportunity, and stole in on her "tipsy toes." It was "wee Katie." Mrs. Parlin had brought her home, to keep her out of the way of Mrs. Clifford, who was still quite ill.

The first thing which roused Dotty to consciousness was a feeling of suffocation. O, was she in the bay? Was she drowning? Something lay very close over her mouth; but it was not water: in fact it was a pillow; and on the pillow sat little Katie with her whole weight. But being a very restless child, it is not likely she would have remained in that position long enough to strangle her cousin, even if Dotty had not thrown up her arms and released herself suddenly.

"Why, Katie Clifford, is that you?"

"Yes, this is me!" replied Katie, with a voice as sweet as a wind-harp. "You didn't know I was comin'. You turned your face away: you wouldn't look to me!"

"I s'pose I was asleep, Katie. You didn't mean to sit down on my head, did you, darling?"

"Yes, I did meant to. But you is sick. Folks mus'n't talk."

"No," replied Dotty, smiling, "when folks are sick they mustn't talk."

"Well," said Katie, putting her finger on her lip, "they is!"

"O, Katie!" cried Dotty, a new idea seizing her, "where's mother? Did she come with you?"

Katie shook her head.

"My dee mamma velly sick."

"Yes, I know; but where's my mamma? Did she come with you in the cars?"

Katie shook her head again.

"Who did come with you, then? You didn't come alone?"

"No, there was folks."

By this time Dotty had sprung out of bed, and was rushing out of the room to learn whether her mother had come. Mrs. Parlin met her at the door.

"My darling child," said she, hugging and kissing her just as tenderly as if she had never been "wherrying." "You'd better lie down again, and let me bathe your head."

Dotty sprang into bed instantly. She was glad her mother had asked her to do something, so she might prove her desire to obey. She liked the touch of those cool fingers on her forehead.

"O, mamma," said she, "you do make me feel better. It felt a while ago as if they were beating drums in there."

"Is your neck stiff, dear?"

Katie thrust her little prying fingers under Dotty's chin, tickling her, of course.

"No, auntie," said she, "'tisn't any stiff, her neck isn't."

"But it's sore, mother. Not so sore, though, as it was when Jennie Vanee and I got caught in the thunder and lightning."

After she had said this, Dotty blushed, for the words recalled to her mind another act of disobedience. No wonder she had thought herself such a naughty girl, fit only to be thrown out of the window!

"What sort of a child has Dotty been since I have been gone?" asked Mrs. Parlin of Mrs. Eastman, as they both sat by the bedside.

Mrs. Eastman stroked the sheet with her white, jewelled hand before she replied. She was thinking how the little girl had turned the house upside down, and, as she believed, made Johnny more mischievous than ever; so she hesitated a moment.

"A tolerably good child."

This was all Mrs. Eastman could say; and it was as much as Mrs. Parlin had dared hope. She knew how Johnny and Dotty encouraged each other in rude behavior. She looked at her beautiful little daughter with pain, and wondered, as she had many times wondered before, if these bitter experiences she was suffering would ever have the effect to make her a better child.

Dotty did not understand the tender, regretful glance of her mother's eyes. She was not as yet very well acquainted with the English language, and did not know what "tolerably" meant; she supposed it meant "remarkably."

"It's so queer," she thought, "that auntie should tell my mamma I've been tol'ably good! Why, I haven't, I know I haven't: I've been tol'ably bad!"

She looked up at her auntie in surprise, and at that moment there entered into her small mind a doubt of Mrs. Eastman's truthfulness. It was a very faint doubt, which she did not express even to herself. It was almost incredible that a grown-up lady should tell the "thing which is not," or even color the truth by so much as the shadow of a shade. Still, when auntie had called Dotty a tol'ably good girl, she must have known it was a mistake!

Dotty did not have a fever; but for several days she was not at all well, and spent most of the time in her grandmamma's room, on the lounge. It would have been a good opportunity for reflection, if Katie had not been in the house. As it was, Dotty did think of her own conduct for several minutes at a time, during the intervals when Katie was not dancing attendance upon her. She decided never to disobey her mother again, and said so. This, you remember, was nothing new; she had made the same resolve fifty times before, and broken it as often.

Johnny, her little companion in naughtiness, escaped without so much as a sore throat; but he suffered in another way. His father, learning of his exploit upon the water, and being greatly incensed, punished him severely. It was not often that Johnny was corrected, and this time he was very indignant. He reflected that if it had not been for Dotty Dimple his sin would not have been found out. Dotty had ceased to be a "brick;" she was a tell-tale -- a hateful, mean tell-tale; and he wished she would go home and stay there.

"I'll pay her for this business," said Johnny, talking to his boots.

Just how he was going to "pay" his little cousin he did not know. As for being sorry for his disobedience, I doubt if Johnny thought of such a thing. He knew he had been in much peril, and now, while the remembrance of the fright was still fresh in his mind, he was not likely to fall into the same temptation again -- that was all.

Johnny missed his little lively cousin in his out-of-door sports; but he was so angry with her that he scarcely ever went up stairs to see her; and when he did go, amused himself by putting his mouth down to her ear, and crying, -- 

"E, for shame, Dot Parlin! Fore I'd run and tell!"

But Dotty did not know that her cousin Johnny was harboring such bitter thoughts against her. She had a high temper herself; but anger did not rankle in her heart for days and days, as it did in Johnny's. She was not eager, like him, for revenge.

The Parlins were now making ready to go into their new hired house.

They were all longing for a place they could call "home."

During the few days, while they yet remained at Mrs. Eastman's, very few events occurred which are worth recording. For one thing, Dotty's bird died. She had loved it for its helplessness; but Angeline said, -- 

"You needn't be sorry. What did I tell you when you took that bird into the window? I knew something would happen; but didn't know as it would be a boat-wreck exactly."

Dotty, and even Prudy, had received some very foolish ideas from Angeline. The Portland fire had affected the Parlin family in more ways than one; and it would be long before the three little girls would settle into their usual quiet habits again.



Chapter IX.

The New Home.


"Prudy," said Dotty, "you needn't say that word 'wherrying' to me any more. Mamma said there mus'n't anybody tease me about that, because I've -- I've repented it all up."

"O, I'm so glad!" replied Prudy.

"I'll never take another bird into the window," continued Dotty; "it's almost as bad as a ghost."

"You never saw a ghost, Dotty. Nobody ever did."

"Yes, indeed; Angeline has seen 'em as thick as spatter! They come when you're asleep, and there don't anybody know it. I shouldn't dare open my eyes in the night. They're wrapped in a sheet, all white, and their eyes snap like fire. Angeline says they do."

"I don't believe it," said Prudy, stoutly; "my mother told me 'twasn't true."

"P'r'aps mamma doesn't wake up in the night," said Dotty, "and p'r'aps the ghosts never come where she is. Why, Prudy, they're made out o' nothing! If you stick a knife into 'em it goes right through, and don't touch their blood, for they haven't got any blood. They don't care for knives -- they're just like bubbles."

"I don't believe it," replied Prudy, again. "I think it's wicked. My mother wouldn't like it if she knew how much you sat in Angeline's lap and talked about ghosts. I don't want to see any or hear any."

"I do, though!" cried Dotty. "I shouldn't be afraid -- the leastest speck. I'd go right up to 'em, and, said I, 'How do you do, sir?' And then they would melt like a wink. It blows 'em right out the moment you speak."

"Does it, though?" said Johnny, who had been listening at the door. "You don't say so! Call me when you see your ghostses, and let me talk to 'em too."

"And me! What is um?" said wee Katie, toddling in with her mouth full of candy.

"There, there!" cried Dotty Dimple, "you've been a-listening, Johnny Eastman."

"Don't care! 'Tisn't so bad as being a tell-tale, Miss!" said Johnny, ending the sentence in a naughty tone.

"Why, Johnny, you mus'n't say that!"

"Why, Johnny," echoed Katie, "you musser say that!"

"Say what?"

"Say Miss."

The children all laughed at this.

"Come, little ones," said Mr. Parlin, appearing at the door, "put on your hats; we are ready to start."

Prudy clapped her hands -- an action which cousin Percy did not consider very polite.

"It shows," said he, "how glad you are to leave us."

"O, but we are going home, you know, Percy! Only think of having a home to go to!"

"It isn't the burnt one, though," remarked Dotty, as she danced off the door-step; "and I 'spect I'll never see that darling little tea-set any more."

The new house was not in the least like the old one. Susy was always bewailing the contrast. She did not like the wallpaper; the carpets were homely; the rooms were, some of them, too large, and the door-yard, certainly, too small.

"But it's better than nothing," said Prudy, who, for one, was heartily tired of visiting.

"I think," said Mrs. Parlin, smiling, "this is a very good opportunity for my little daughters to learn to make the best of everything. We cannot have the old house, so we will try not to long for it. We never wish for the moon, you know."

"Katie does," laughed Susy.

"We cannot have the old home again, so we will make the new one as happy as we can. Isn't that the best way?"

"Of course it is, mamma," replied all the children.

"'Course, indeed, it is!" said Katie, trying to pull up the carpet in her search for a lost three-cent piece.

"I'm glad father's dressing-gown and slippers didn't get scorched," said Prudy; "and the piano sounds as sweetly as ever it did. It sounds to me just as if there was a family in there, living inside."

"Like what?"

"O, you know there are four parts playing at once, and it seems as if it was a man and his wife, and two children, all singing together!"

"I'm glad we brought so many flowers from aunt Eastman's," said Susy, brightening; "now we'll trim all the rooms."

"That is right," said Mrs. Parlin. "This is the first night in the new house: let us make it as cheerful as we can for dear papa. Susy, you may as well practise that new tune he likes so well."

"O, mamma," said Prudy, "I'll tell you what I'll do! I'll make some vinegar candy! -- if you'll boil it, you know, and pull it."

"A very brilliant idea, my daughter. Your part will be the looking on, I suppose."

"And what'll I do?" queried Dotty, twisting the inevitable lock of front hair; "if papa would only give me some money, I'd go and buy him a present."

"The wisest thing you can do just now, dear, is to wash that berry-stain off your lips; then you may bring me a fresh ruffle to baste in the neck of this dress."

Dotty obeyed at once. She was always glad to wear that white delaine with the scarlet spots.

The whole family were so very busy during the afternoon, that they forgot to feel any regrets for the old home. The furniture had been brought and arranged some time before, and the most Mrs. Parlin expected to do to-day was to make the house as pleasant as possible. Susy was allowed to attend to the flowers; the three others looked on, and watched Mrs. Parlin, while she made vinegar candy, filled some tarts with jelly, and helped Norah set the supper-table.

"How nice!" said Prudy, rubbing her hands. "Sometimes I don't much care if our house was burnt up."

"Nor I either," said Dotty. "This house has got a good deal the best places to hide in."

Mrs. Parlin smiled, in her sweet, contented way. She was thinking how many blessings we can all find in our lot if we only look for them. Not that she would ever have known about the "nice places to hide in" if the children had not mentioned them.

"Dotty," said she, "you may run up and ask grandmother if she will dare drink any coffee to-night."

Prudy and Dotty tripped up the broad staircase, which wound about so much that Prudy said it twisted her like a string. Katie ran after them, catching her breath.

There sat the dear grandmamma, knitting some winter stockings for Prudy. There were no curtains at the windows, and the August sunshine fell on her calm face, bathing it with warm light. The carpet had not been put down yet, and the children's feet made a hollow sound on the bare floor.

"Why, grandma," said Prudy, "it wouldn't be nice here a bit, only the room has got you in it!"

"Bless thy little heart, Prudence! It will be nice enough here to-morrow night. I wouldn't have thy mother touch it to-day."

"I've got a gamma to my house," said Katie, passing her little fingers over Mrs. Read's white kerchief; "but um don't have hang-fiss on um neck."

"Yes," said Mrs. Read, in reply to the children's question, "tell your mother I will take some coffee to-night, and she is very kind to inquire."

On the whole, the supper that evening was quite a success. Mr. Parlin had come home from business, tired and sad. It was not pleasant for him to turn his steps towards that part of the town: he missed his old home more than ever. But when he entered the strange house, the lonely look left his face; for there in the hall stood his wife and children, awaiting him with smiles of welcome.

"O, papa!" said Dotty, springing into his arms, while her sisters seized him by the coat-sleeves, "you ought to have a birthday to-night, we've got such a splendid supper!"

"Sthop!" cried Katie. "I's talking. Cake, and verjerves, and f'owers, and butter!"

"And Susy's been practising the 'Blue Violet's Carol,'" said Prudy.

"Yes, her packus, uncle Ed'ard!"

"And I'll read the paper to you if your eyes ache," went on Prudy; "and we are going to be just as happy, papa!"

"An' vindegar canny," struck in Katie.

"O, hush, now!" whispered Dotty, covering the child's mouth with her handkerchief.

The whole house was fragrant with flowers, and had such a festive appearance, that Mr. Parlin kept exclaiming, "Ah, indeed!" and stroking his beard. Prudy said she always knew when papa was pleased, for then he always "patted his whiskers."

The table was very attractive, and everybody had a fine appetite. After Mr. Parlin had drank a cup of delicious coffee, he no longer remembered that he was tired. He looked upon the merry group around him, and said to his wife, -- 

"I see, my dear, you are disposed to make the best of our misfortunes. But, after all, you are not quite as meek as one old lady I heard of once."

"Please tell it, if it's a story, papa," said the children.

"Not much of a story; only there were two old women who lived by themselves, and were so very poor that they had nothing in the world to eat but potatoes and salt. One day a friend went to see them, and when he sat down to their humble meal of roasted potatoes, he was moved with pity, and told them he was very sorry to see them so poor.

"Then one of the old ladies rolled up her eyes, and said, 'I was just a-thinkin', neighbor, that this meal is altogether too good for us, we're so unworthy! I only wish the potatoes was froze!'"

The children laughed.

"But I shouldn't like that old lady, though. I know how she looked: it was just this way," said Prudy, drawing down her mouth, and looking cross-eyed.

"She didn't want the potatoes frozed," added Dotty; "for if she did, she might have laid 'em out doors all night, and they'd have freezed as hard as a stick."

Grandma Read had a thought just then, though she did not express it. She was thinking what a contrast this cheerful family presented to another "burnt-out" family, who had this very day moved into a house across the street. The mother she had seen from the window, and she looked perfectly discouraged. The children were fretful, and it seemed as if they were all trying, with one accord, to see which could do most to make the new home disagreeable.

"I should say they freeze their potatoes," thought Mrs. Read.

She meant that, instead of trying to improve matters, they only made them worse.

After supper, just as the Parlins were sitting down for a quiet evening, the door-bell rang furiously, and shook for a minute afterwards, as if it were in an ague-fit. Who had come to break up the family harmony?

I will tell you in the next chapter.



Chapter X.

A Surprise.


Norah went to the door, hardly expecting to find any one there; for when the bell pealed in that violent manner, it was often some roguish boy who rang it, and then ran away. But this time, to her amazement, there stood on the door-step and in the yard as many as twenty boys and girls.

"Is Miss Susy Parlin at home?" said one of them.

"And Miss Prudy?" added another.

"She is -- I mean they are. Will you please walk in?"

As Norah spoke, she swung open the parlor door, too much "fluttered," as she afterwards said, to announce the arrival in due form. The guests poured in with all speed. Susy sprang up as suddenly as if the piano stool were exploding; but what to say she did not know, and stood still in dumb surprise. Prudy caught her by the skirts, and whispered, "Good evening;" but nobody heard it. Dotty Dimple, not in the least abashed, was about to do the honors, when Mr. and Mrs. Parlin came forward, and relieved her of the trouble. They greeted the little people very cordially, and gave them a pleasant welcome to the new house. Then Mrs. Parlin directed her daughters to carry away the hats and sacques of the young misses; and by the time this ceremony was over, the stiffness had somewhat worn away, and Susy and Prudy could breathe more freely.

Flyaway went up first to one, and then to another, with the question, -- 

"Did you came to see me?"

The two heads of the family retreated, Mr. Parlin saying to his wife as they went, -- 

"When you and I were children, we had our parties in the afternoon; but this is a new fashion, I suppose."

"It is the first time our little girls have ever received company in the evening," replied Mrs. Parlin. "I do hope these children will not stay late. It happens that I have made a large quantity of vinegar candy, but not enough, I think, for the whole company."

"Very well," said Mr. Parlin; "and now, as the little people seem to be doing very nicely, suppose we go out for a walk, and call at a confectioner's on our way home."

Susy felt very much flattered by this surprise party. It gave her an assurance that she was held in kind remembrance by her schoolmates, many of whom had been "burnt out," and knew exactly how to sympathize with her.

But Susy's satisfaction was by no means complete. In the first place, Katie would not go to bed, and could not be persuaded to leave the room any longer than just to bring in her ragged black Dinah, and the yellow-and-white kitten.

Dinah was passed around the room to be pitied. There was a mustard plaster on her chest, applied that day by Dotty, in order to break up a lung fever. Dinah's ankle, which was really broken, had been "set" and mended with a splinter, and was waiting for a new bone to grow. Percy Eastman, the oldest boy present, said, -- 

"Well, cousin Dimple, you and Flyaway do take extra care of Miss Dinah! If you should lose her, you can't have anything to reflect upon."

Susy did not so much mind the laughter at Dinah's expense; for, although such a hideous black baby was not suitable for genteel society, still it was Katie who was exhibiting it, and Katie was pardonable for the weakness. The trying question was, What would the child do next? There was nothing certain about Flyaway except her uncertainty. Susy was about to appeal to her mother to take the little one away, when she heard the hall door open and shut; her father and mother had gone out for their walk.

It did occur to Susy that this was a great pity; and, indeed, it is quite probable, Mrs. Parlin would not have left the house if she could have foreseen how much her presence would be needed.

And after all it was Dotty Dimple, and not Flyaway, who made the whole trouble. Flyaway was under every one's feet, it is true, and sat down in the middle of the floor to comb and brush the kitty's head; but then she never for a moment lost her temper: it was Dotty, the girl old enough to know better, who was cross and disagreeable.

I am sorry to record this of Dotty, and so I will try to make a little excuse for her. She was not well. She had hardly felt like herself since that unfortunate boat-ride. She was sleepy and tired, and ought to have gone to bed at eight o'clock -- the usual hour. Then, again, the guests were nearly all older than herself, and paid very little attention to her. She thought she might as well have worn her calico wrapper as this beautiful white delaine, for all the notice they took of her dress.

There was only one child present of Dotty's own age, -- Johnny Eastman, -- and if he would only have played cat's cradle with her, all might have gone well. But Johnny had not forgotten the severe correction his father had given him in the stable with a horsewhip. Every time he looked at his little cousin, the thought arose, -- 

"She was real mean to run and tell! I'll pay her for that -- won't I, though?"

Percy had promised to aid him in his revenge; and you will presently learn what this was to be. Percy liked "cousin Dimple" very well; he was only putting a wicked scheme into his little brother's head "just for the fun of the thing."

The guests were talking of having a few tableaux and charades, like some they had seen arranged by their older sisters.

"I don't care anything about their old tolly-blows -- do you, Johnny?" said Dotty. "Let's play 'I spy' -- you and I."

"No, you don't catch me playing high spy with such a cross party as you are, Dot Dimple."

"I wish you'd stop calling me a 'cross party' the whole time, Johnny Eastman," replied Dotty, shaking her elbows.

Just then Susy came, and whispered a few words in her ear.

"No, I won't be hung! I'm sure I won't be hung!" cried Dotty, who was by this time very much out of sorts.

"O, Dotty! what makes you act so? We've got a charade, 'Crisis.' Half of us are going to play it for the other half to guess. We only want to weigh you, with a yardstick through an old shawl; that's all. Come, let us pin you up; there's a goody girl."

"I don't want to be a goody girl. I'm too big to be goody. If you want a baby to make believe with, why don't you take Flyaway? She's littler than me."

"There, there!" said Prudy, coming to the rescue, "you needn't do a single thing, Dotty, if you don't want to. We didn't know but you'd like to play be weighed, you can squeal so be-you-tifully!"

"I know I can squeal just like a rubber doll; but s'posin' they should let me fall off the yardstick -- where'd I go to then?"

"O, but they wouldn't!"

"Of course they would, Prudy Parlin. And I should fall right into the tolly-blow -- that's where I should fall to."

"O, pshaw!" exclaimed Percy, coming into the corner where his cousins stood; "if cousin Dimple has got into one of her contrary fits, it's of no use teasing. You might as well try to move the side of the house."

This cutting speech was all that was needed to complete Dotty's ill humor. Did she remember any longer her promise not to get angry, but to swallow her temper right down? No, indeed; she forgot everything but her own self-will.

"Don't you speak again, Percy, or I'll scream my throat right in two!"

"Girls, I advise you to let that child alone," said her cousin, with a look of supreme contempt. "Let's try Flyaway; she's a little darling. Here, Flyaway, are'n't you willing to be pinned up in a shawl if we'll give you a whole cent?"

"Course, indeed, so!" replied the little one, tossing her kitten across a chair, and into the fireplace. "But you mus' gi' me mucher'n that! Gi' me hunnerd cents!"

No answer was made to this, except to dress the child in a ruffled cap and long clothes, and pin her into a plaid shawl.

"Now cry," said Percy; "cry just as if you had soap in your eyes."

"Ee! Ee!" wailed Katie, loudly.

"No, cry weak; cry just as you did when you were a baby."

"I don't 'member when I was a baby, 'twas so many years ago," sighed Flyaway.

But she practised crying again, and succeeded very well, Dotty all the while looking on in grim displeasure.

Susy was the mamma; and when the folding-doors opened upon the scene "Cry," she was sitting in a rocking-chair, admiring her child, a remarkably well-grown baby, two months old.

"Just the image of his papa, Mrs. Pettibone!" cried Florence Eastman, rushing in, in the character of an old lady, her head adorned with a scoop bonnet. "Let me look at the precious little creature! Yes, just the image of his papa! I said so before I ever set eyes on him. He's two months of age, you say, and how many teeth?"

"She is a girl," replied Mrs. Susy, kissing the big bundle, "and weighs twenty-nine pounds, three inches."

Susy meant "ounces."

Then followed a chat between herself and a few little old ladies concerning catnip and "pep'mint" tea; after which the wonderful baby was held up by the yardstick to be weighed.

Flyaway had not expected to be suspended so high in the air. She forgot the baby-like cry she had been practising, and screamed out in terror, -- 

"I wish I didn't be to Portland! O, I wish I didn't be to Portland!"

As this was a very long speech for a baby two months old, the audience were taken by surprise, and laughed heartily. Poor little Flyaway was lifted out of the shawl, and kissed over and over again. She had not played properly, it is true, but she had intended to do right, and was applauded for her good intentions.

Dotty saw and heard the whole. She was sorry she had refused the part, and she put her fingers in her mouth, and sulked, because little Flyaway had been stealing the praise she might have received herself.

After both syllables of the charade had been acted and guessed, then the other half of the company took their turn, and attempted to arrange a tableau. There was a deal of confusion. No one knew exactly what ought to be done. They were to have a Goddess of Liberty, and finally decided to dress her in an embroidered window curtain, with a shield on her breast made of a blue box cover, striped with yellow silk. Dotty was selected as goddess, on account of her superior beauty.

"But my mamma never 'lows me to wear window curtains, and I sha'n't be a tolly-blow 'thout I can wear my white dress with red spots, and a big bosom-pin in!"

"And a shaker," suggested one of the girls. "I didn't know before that Susy Parlin had such a bad sister."

This was too much. Dotty's head was on fire. She caught the girl by the shoulder, and shook her as if she had been a breadth of dusty carpeting; then ran away.

Which way she went she did not heed, and never stopped till she came to a dark pantry, which had been made without any windows, on purpose to keep out flies. The unhappy child threw herself, out of breath, upon the floor of this closet, her heart beating high with rage and shame.



Chapter XI.

Johnny's Revenge.


Dotty's cross behavior had entirely spoiled the pleasure of the evening for her two sisters. They felt, as they had felt years before, when they saw her, a mere baby, perched upon the wood-box, with her hands and feet tied -- they felt that it was a family disgrace.

All these little boys and girls, who had never known before what Dotty's temper was, knew all about it now; they would talk of it to one another; they would go home and tell of it, and remember it forever and ever.

"And, O dear!" thought Susy, "they won't know she was born so, and can't help it."

For that this was the case, Susy firmly believed.

"I've got it written in my journal," thought Prudy, "how she promised to swallow it down; but Dotty isn't well, and that's the reason she can't remember."

Both the sisters knew that Dotty had left the parlors, and they were very glad of it. They did not attempt to follow her. They did not know precisely where she had gone, but presumed she was pouting somewhere. That there could be danger of any sort for the poor child in that house they never dreamed. Neither did Mr. or Mrs. Parlin dream it, or they would have walked home a little faster from their visit to the white tents on Green Street.

The games went on as usual, and were quite as amusing to the guests as if they had not been very poor ones indeed. Susy and Prudy need not have feared that the little people would not have a good time; the "surprise party" was a perfect success, and Dotty's ill-humor made no one unhappy but her sensitive sisters. Meanwhile the wretched child was lying on the pantry floor, thinking very confused thoughts.

"I wish I was dead. No I don't. I'm too wicked. But I wasn't any wickeder 'n that girl. She said Susy Parlin had a bad sister. What made her say that? She knew I'd hear. I'm glad I shook her. No, I'm sorry. It was murder -- the Bible says so. Johnny murdered too -- murdered me. He called me a 'cross party.' That was a story. Johnny's wickeder 'n ever I was.

"Prudy thought I ought to be a baby. Percy thought so. He said, 'I devise you to let that child alone.' I'm going to let him alone! All the time! Did I want to fall off that yardstick, right into the tolly-blow?

"There's Prudy: she can be good; it doesn't hurt her. It hurts me to be good; it tires me all up.

"And here it is, as dark as a pickpocket." (Dotty raised her head and took a survey.) "Why, the moon can't get here, nor the sun. Is this down cellar? No, I didn't see any stairs. Where did I go to when I came? I walked right on the floor. What floor? Was it the dining-room, or was it out doors? I didn't look at it to see.

"This is a 'cuddy.' There's ever so many 'cuddies' in this house to hide in. I've gone and hid. Nobody'll ever find me. My father'll say, 'Why, where's that child?' And my mother'll say, 'I don't know.' And they'll hunt all over the house; and I shall keep my head in my apron, and won't say a word.

"Then Prudy'll say, 'O, my darling sister Dotty! How sweet and good she was!'

"And they'll think I'm dead! And Susy'll cry out loud, and tell Percy, and he'll say, 'O, how sorry I am I said "I devise you to let that child alone"!'"

Dotty sighed as she pictured to herself Percy's conscience-stricken face.

"And that girl that called me a bad sister -- how she'll feel! And Johnny -- I guess Johnny won't say 'cross party' any more!

"Grandma -- why, grandma'll read the Bible. And O, such a time!

"That Angeline girl will remember how she rocked that darling Dotty, and told me stories."

Dotty was seized with a sudden shivering. The stories came back to her mind vividly. If Angeline had told her simple little tales of every-day life, Dotty might have forgotten them; but, like all children, she had an active imagination, and anything marvellous or horrible made a deep impression.

The current of her thoughts was changed as soon as she remembered those unknown ghosts of Angeline's description.

"All white, wrapped in a sheet. Put a knife through, and they don't know it. No blood, no bones, no anything. Go through a keyhole. Will they, though? Prudy don't believe it. Am I anywhere near a keyhole? I don't know. I've gone and hid, and I can't find myself. I'm somewhere, but I don't know where."

Dotty began to feel very uncomfortable. There was no longer the slightest satisfaction in the thought of frightening the family. She was frightened herself, and with the worst kind of fear -- the fear of the supernatural.

"I can't see the leastest thing, and I can't hear anything, either. Ghosts don't make any noise. May be there are some in this house: been locked up, and the man didn't know it."

The silence seemed to grow deeper. Dotty could hear her heart beat.

"My heart thumps like a mouse in the wall. I'm going to get out of this place. I feel as if there's a ghost in here. It creeps all over me. I can't get my breath."

Dotty rose cautiously; but she had been lying so long in a cramped position that both her feet were asleep. While trying to recover her balance she caught at something, which proved to be a glass jar of raspberry jam. The cover came off, and the jam poured down her neck in a thick stream.

"My beautiful white dress with the red spots! Who put that dirty thing in my way? Smells like purserves. They ought to be ashamed!"

Dotty tried bearing her weight on both feet, and found she could walk.

"But I've whirled round three or four times. I didn't ever know which way to go, and now I'm sure I don't know so well as I did in the first place. If I step any more, perhaps I'll step into some molasses."

Dotty's meditations were becoming more confused than ever. Now it was not only ghosts, but jam and jelly which went to make up the terrors of the situation. But she was growing desperate. She groped right and left, saying to herself, -- 

"Where's the out?"

At last she came to the door, which she had unconsciously closed when she entered the pantry. She opened it, and her eyes were greeted with light. It was the moon shining in at the kitchen windows.

Her fears vanished. She was just wondering whether to return to the parlor in a forgiving spirit, or to stay away and make everybody unhappy, when a strange, horrible object met her view, -- not white, but yellow.

Was it -- was it -- a truly, truly ghost? O, it must be a ghost on fire! It hadn't any sheet round it. Nothing was to be seen but a hideous head peeping in at the window. No man ever looked like that. No man ever had such a mouth. It was as deep as a cave, and all ablaze. Somebody had gone and swallowed a stove; somebody had come to do -- do -- O, what had he come to do?

"It's a yellow ghost!" thought Dotty. "I didn't know they had such a kind. Angeline never said so. But its eyes are just like her ghosts' eyes -- going to burn you up!"

These thoughts darted through Dotty's mind like lightning-flashes. At the same time she gave one loud, terrified scream, and fell forward upon the floor. She did not rise, she did not speak, she seemed scarcely to breathe. The shock had partially stunned her.

"Why, Dotty -- Dotty Dimple!" exclaimed Percy, rushing in at the back door, and seizing his little cousin by the shoulders. "Look up here, darling! 'Twas nobody but me!"

No answer.

"Nobody but me and Percy," said Johnny, pulling Dotty's ears to attract her attention.

"Only a jack-o'-lantern, you dear little ducky," cried Percy.

"A pumpkin, you goosie," said Johnny.

No reply, but a sudden choking, followed by convulsive sobs. Whether the child heard and understood what was said to her, Percy could not determine. He was old enough to know that a sudden and powerful shock is always more or less dangerous. He redoubled his efforts.

"Look, dear, here's the pumpkin. Holes cut out for eyes. A gash for the mouth. A candle stuck in."

"Smart girl!" ejaculated Johnny, who was too young and ignorant to see anything but amusement in the whole affair. "Smart girl, scared of a pumpkin!"

"Johnny was angry with you," went on Percy, rather nervously; "he said he wanted to tease you. I brought the pumpkin from our house. I'm sorry. Look up, Dimple, see what it is! Don't be afraid. Laugh, or if you can't laugh, cry. Here's my handkerchief."

Dotty continued to moan.

Percy caught her up in his arms. "Any pump in the house? Johnny, get some water somewhere, quick! and then run for the camphor bottle."

Percy was at his wit's end. He ran round and round, with the little girl in his arms. She had life enough to cling to his neck. Johnny saw a pail of water, dipped a tea-strainer into it, and dashed two drops in Dotty's face.

"That won't do, boy! Throw on a quartful! Hurry!"

Johnny promptly obeyed. Dotty gasped for breath, and uttered a scream. Percy felt encouraged.

"More, Johnny; the whole pailful. We'll have her out of this double-quick -- "

Just as Percy had extended his little cousin on the floor, and Johnny had poured enough water over her to soak every thread of her clothing, there was a sound of foot-steps. Mr. and Mrs. Parlin were coming in at the back door.

"What does this mean?" they both exclaimed, very much alarmed, as might have been expected. There lay their little daughter, screaming and gurgling, her mouth full of water, her dress stained with the raspberry jam, which was easily mistaken for blood.

"Why, uncle Edward," stammered Percy, "'twas a -- "

"Why, auntie," cried Johnny, "'twas only a pumpkin. She went and was afraid of a pumpkin!"

The cause of this direful affright, the lighted jack-o'-lantern, was lying face upward on the floor, the candle within it smoking and dripping with tallow. One glance explained the whole mystery.

But by this time there seemed to be no further cause for anxiety with regard to Dotty. She gathered herself together, sat upright, and began to scold.

"'Twas blazing a-fire, mamma. He lighted it to plague me -- Johnny did."

"I'm ever so sorry, auntie," said Percy, and his regretful face said as much as his words.

"Johnny scared me to death," broke in Dotty; "and then he pumped water on me all over -- Johnny did."

"I'll never do so again," said Percy, shamed by the look of reproach in his uncle's face.

"See that you remember your promise, my boy. You have run a great risk to-night."

No one supposed, at the time, that Dotty had received a serious injury; but she did not sleep off the effects of her fright. She was remarkably pale next morning, and declined her breakfast. She had not been well for some time, but she had not trembled as now at the opening and shutting of a door. It was plain that her nerves had been quite unstrung.

Days passed, and still she did not seem quite like herself. Her father told the family physician she was not well, and asked what it was best to do with her. The doctor said he thought she only needed time enough, and she would recover her "tone."

"I have an idea," said Mr. Parlin to his wife some days after this. "If you approve, I believe I'll take the child West with me, next time I go there on business. I took Prudy once, and it is no more than fair that the other children should have their turn."

"We will see," said Mrs. Parlin; and so it was left. The subject was never mentioned before Dotty; but here is what Prudy said of it in her journal: -- 

"Sept. 5th. -- I think my little sister Dotty will go out West to see aunt Maria, &c.; but anybody mus'n't ever tell her of it. She is very pale, they poured so much water over her that night, and she thought it was a yellow ghost.

"I told her it was very, very wrong to sit in Angeline's lap and hear her talk so. We mus'n't believe anything for certain except Bible stories.

"She has had temper, and shook Ada Farley. But that was before she was frightened by the ghost, so she couldn't get her breath; and she won't do it again. Finis."

<eob>

Do And Dare

Or

A Brave Boy's Fight For Fortune

By

Horatio Alger, Jr.



Chapter I. The Post Office At Wayneboro.


"If we could only keep the post office, mother, we should be all right," said Herbert Carr, as he and his mother sat together in the little sitting room of the plain cottage which the two had occupied ever since he was a boy of five.

"Yes, Herbert, but I am afraid there won't be much chance of it."

"Who would want to take it from you, mother?"

"Men are selfish, Herbert, and there is no office, however small, that is not sought after."

"What was the income last year?" inquired Herbert.

Mrs. Carr referred to a blank book lying on the table in which the post-office accounts were kept, and answered:

"Three hundred and ninety-eight dollars and fifty cents."

"I shouldn't think that would be much of an inducement to an able-bodied man, who could work at any business."

"Your father was glad to have it."

"Yes, mother, but he had lost an arm in the war, and could not engage in any business that required both hands."

"That is true, Herbert, but I am afraid there will be more than one who will be willing to relieve me of the duties. Old Mrs. Allen called at the office to-day, and told me she understood that there was a movement on foot to have Ebenezer Graham appointed."

"Squire Walsingham's nephew?"

"Yes; it is understood that the squire will throw his influence into the scale, and that will probably decide the matter."

"Then it's very mean of Squire Walsingham," said Herbert, indignantly. "He knows that you depend on the office for a living."

"Most men are selfish, my dear Herbert."

"But he was an old schoolfellow of father's, and it was as his substitute that father went to the war where he was wounded."

"True, Herbert, but I am afraid that consideration won't weigh much with John Walsingham."

"I have a great mind to go and see him, mother. Have you any objections?"

"I have no objections, but I am afraid it will do no good."

"Mr. Graham ought to be ashamed, with the profits of his store, to want the post office also. His store alone pays him handsomely."

"Mr. Graham is fond of money. He means to be a rich man."

"That is true enough. He is about the meanest man in town."

A few words are needed in explanation, though the conversation explains itself pretty well.

Herbert's father, returning from the war with the loss of an arm, was fortunate enough to receive the appointment of postmaster, and thus earn a small, but, with strict economy, adequate income, until a fever terminated his earthly career at middle age. Mr. Graham was a rival applicant for the office, but Mr. Carr's services in the war were thought to give him superior claims, and he secured it. During the month that had elapsed since his death, Mrs. Carr had carried on the post office under a temporary appointment. She was a woman of good business capacity, and already familiar with the duties of the office, having assisted her husband, especially during his sickness, when nearly the whole work devolved upon her. Most of the village people were in favor of having her retained, but the local influence of Squire Walsingham and his nephew was so great that a petition in favor of the latter secured numerous signatures, and was already on file at the department in Washington, and backed by the congressman of the district, who was a political friend of the squire. Mrs. Carr was not aware that the movement for her displacement had gone so far.

It was already nine o'clock when Herbert's conversation with his mother ended, and he resolved to defer his call upon Squire Walsingham till the next morning.

About nine o'clock in the forenoon our young hero rang the bell of the village magnate, and with but little delay was ushered into his presence.

Squire Walsingham was a tall, portly man of fifty, sleek and evidently on excellent terms with himself. Indeed, he was but five years older than his nephew, Ebenezer Graham, and looked the younger of the two, despite the relationship. If he had been a United States Senator he could not have been more dignified in his deportment, or esteemed himself of greater consequence. He was a selfish man, but he was free from the mean traits that characterized his nephew.

"You are the Carr boy," said the squire, pompously, looking over his spectacles at Herbert, as he entered the door.

"My name is Herbert Carr," said Herbert, shortly. "You have known me all my life."

"Certainly," said the squire, a little ruffled at the failure of his grand manner to impose upon his young visitor. "Did I not call you the Carr boy?"

Herbert did not fancy being called the Carr boy, but he was there to ask a favor, and he thought it prudent not to show his dissatisfaction. He resolved to come to the point at once.

"I have called, Squire Walsingham," he commenced, "to ask if you will use your influence to have my mother retained in charge of the post office."

"Ahem!" said the squire, somewhat embarrassed. "I am not in charge of the post-office department."

"No, sir, I am aware of that; but the postmaster general will be influenced by the recommendations of people in the village."

"Very true!" said the squire, complacently. "Very true, and very proper. I do not pretend to say that my recommendation would not weigh with the authorities at Washington. Indeed, the member from our district is a personal friend of mine."

"You know how we are situated," continued Herbert, who thought it best to state his case as briefly as possible. "Father was unable to save anything, and we have no money ahead. If mother can keep the post office, we shall get along nicely, but if she loses it, we shall have a hard time."

"I am surprised that in your father's long tenure of office he did not save something," said the squire, in a tone which indicated not only surprise but reproof.

"There was not much chance to save on a salary of four hundred dollars a year," said Herbert, soberly, "after supporting a family of three."

"Ahem!" said the squire, sagely; "where there's a will there's a way. Improvidence is the great fault of the lower classes."

"We don't belong to the lower classes," said Herbert, flushing with indignation.

Squire Walmsgham was secretly ambitious of representing his district some day in Congress, and he felt that he had made a mistake. It won't do for an aspirant to office to speak of the lower classes, and the squire hastened to repair his error.

"That was not the term I intended to imply," he condescended to explain. "I meant to say that improvidence is the prevailing fault of those whose income is small."

"We haven't had much chance to be improvident!" said Herbert "We have had to spend all our income, but we are not in debt -- that is, we have no debts that we are unable to pay."

"That is well," said Squire Walsingham, "but, my young constituent -- I mean my young friend -- I apprehend that you do not take a right view of public office. It is not designed to support a privileged class in luxury."

"Luxury, on four hundred a year!" replied Herbert.

"I am speaking in general terms," said the squire, hastily. "I mean to say that I cannot recommend a person to office simply because he or she needs the income."

"No, sir, I know that; but my mother understands the duties of the office, and no complaint has been made that she does not make a good postmaster."

"Possibly," said the squire, non-commitally; "but I am opposed upon principle to conferring offices upon women. Men are more efficient, and better qualified to discharge responsible duties."

"Then, sir," said Herbert, his heart sinking, "I am to understand that you do not favor the appointment of my mother?"

"I should be glad to hear that your mother was doing well," said the squire, "but I cannot conscientiously favor the appointment of a woman to be postmaster of Wayneboro."

"That means that he prefers the appointment should go to his nephew," thought Herbert.

"If my mother were not competent to discharge the duties," he said, his face showing his disappointment in spite of himself, "I would not ask your influence, notwithstanding you were a schoolmate of father's, and he lost his arm while acting as your substitute."

"I have already said that I wish your mother well," said the squire, coloring, "and in any other way I am ready to help her and you. Indeed, I may be able to secure you a situation."

"Where, sir?"

"Mr. Graham needs a boy in his store, and I think he will take you on my recommendation."

"Is Tom Tripp going away?" asked Herbert.

"The Tripp boy is unsatisfactory, so Mr. Graham tells me."

Herbert knew something of what it would be to be employed by Mr. Graham. Tom Tripp worked early and late for a dollar and a half per week, without board, for a hard and suspicious taskmaster, who was continually finding fault with him. But for sheer necessity, he would have left Mr. Graham's store long ago. He had confided the unpleasantness of his position to Herbert more than once, and enlisted his sympathy and indignation. Herbert felt that he would not like to work for Mr. Graham at any price, more especially as it seemed likely that the storekeeper was likely to deprive his mother of her office and income.

"I should not like to work for Mr. Graham, sir," he said.

"It appears to me that you are very particular, young man," said Squire Walsingham.

"I would be willing to work for you, sir, but not for him."

"Ahem!" said the squire, somewhat mollified, "I will think of your case."

Herbert left the house, feeling that his mother's removal was only a matter of time.



Chapter II. Herbert's Chance.



Herbert left the house of Squire Walsingham in a sober frame of mind. He saw clearly that his mother would not long remain in office, and without her official income they would find it hard to get along. To be sure, she received a pension of eight dollars a month, in consideration of her husband's services in the war, but eight dollars would not go far towards supporting their family, small as it was. There were other means of earning a living, to be sure, but Wayneboro was an agricultural town mainly, and unless he hired out on a farm there seemed no way open to him, while the little sewing his mother might be able to procure would probably pay her less than a dollar a week.

The blow fell sooner than he expected. In the course of the next week Mrs. Carr was notified that Ebenezer Graham had been appointed her successor, and she was directed to turn over the papers and property of the office to him.

She received the official notification by the afternoon mail, and in the evening she was favored by a call from her successor.

Ebenezer Graham was a small man, with insignificant, mean-looking features, including a pair of weazel-like eyes and a turn-up nose. It did not require a skillful physiognomist to read his character in his face. Meanness was stamped upon it in unmistakable characters.

"Good-evening, Mr. Graham," said the widow, gravely.

"Good-evening, ma'am," said the storekeeper. "I've called to see you, Mrs. Carr, about the post office, I presume you have heard -- "

"I have heard that you are to be my successor."

"Just so. As long as your husband was alive, I didn't want to step into his shoes."

"But you are willing to step into mine," said Mrs. Carr, smiling faintly.

"Just so -- that is, the gov'ment appear to think a man ought to be in charge of so responsible a position."

"I shall be glad if you manage the office better than I have done."

"You see, ma'am, it stands to reason that a man is better fitted for business than a woman," said Ebenezer Graham, in a smooth tone for he wanted to get over this rather awkward business as easily as possible. "Women, you know, was made to adorn the domestic circles, et cetery."

"Adorning the domestic circle won't give me a living," said Mrs. Carr, with some bitterness, for she knew that but for the grasping spirit of the man before her she would have been allowed to retain her office.

"I was comin' to that," said the new postmaster. "Of course, I appreciate your position as a widder, without much means, and I'm going to make you an offer; that is, your boy, Herbert."

Herbert looked up from a book he was reading, and listened with interest to hear the benevolent intentions of the new postmaster.

"I am ready to give him a place in my store," proceeded Ebenezer. "I always keep a boy, and thinks I to myself, the wages I give will help along the widder Carr. You see, I like to combine business with consideration for my feller creeters."

Mrs. Carr smiled faintly, for in spite of her serious strait she could not help being amused at the notion of Ebenezer Graham's philanthropy.

"What's going to become of Tom Tripp?" asked Herbert, abruptly.

"Thomas Tripp isn't exactly the kind of boy I want in my store," said Mr. Graham. "He's a harum-scarum sort of boy, and likes to shirk his work. Then I suspect he stops to play on the way when I send him on errands. Yesterday he was five minutes longer than he need to have been in goin' to Sam Dunning's to carry some groceries. Thomas doesn't seem to appreciate his privileges in bein' connected with a business like mine."

Tom Tripp was hardly to blame for not recognizing his good luck in occupying a position where he received a dollar and a half a week for fourteen hours daily work, with half a dozen scoldings thrown in.

"How do you know I will suit you any better than Tom?" asked Herbert, who did not think it necessary to thank Mr. Graham for the proffered engagement until he learned just what was expected of him, and what his pay was to be.

"You're a different sort of a boy," said Ebenezer, with an attempt at a pleasant smile. "You've been brought up different. I've heard you're a smart, capable boy, that isn't afraid of work."

"No, sir, I am not, if I am fairly paid for my work."

The new postmaster's jaw fell, and he looked uneasy, for he always grudged the money he paid out, even the paltry dollar and a half which went to poor Tom.

"I always calkerlate to pay fair wages," he said; "but I ain't rich, and I can't afford to fling away money."

"How much do you pay Tom Tripp?" asked Herbert.

He knew, but he wanted to draw Mr. Graham out.

"I pay Thomas a dollar and fifty cents a week," answered the storekeeper, in a tone which indicated that he regarded this, on the whole, as rather a munificent sum.

"And he works from seven in the morning till nine o'clock at night," proceeded Herbert.

"Them are the hours," said Ebenezer, who knew better how to make money than to speak grammatically.

"It makes a pretty long day," observed Mrs. Carr.

"So it does, ma'am, but it's no longer than I work myself."

"You get paid rather better, I presume."

"Of course, ma'am, as I am the proprietor."

"I couldn't think of working for any such sum," said Herbert, decidedly.

Mr. Graham looked disturbed, for he had reasons for desiring to secure Herbert, who was familiar with the routine of post-office work.

"Well," he said, "I might be able to offer you a leetle more, as you know how to tend the post office. That's worth somethin'! I'll give you -- lemme see -- twenty-five cents more; that is, a dollar and seventy-five cents a week."

Herbert and his mother exchanged glances. They hardly knew whether to feel more amused or disgusted at their visitor's meanness.

"Mr. Graham," said Herbert, "if you wish to secure my services, you will have to pay me three dollars a week."

The storekeeper held up both hands in dismay.

"Three dollars a week for a boy!" he exclaimed.

"Yes, sir; I will come for a short time for that sum, till you get used to the management of the post office, but I shall feel justified in leaving you when I can do better."

"You must think I am made of money," said Ebenezer hastily.

"I think you can afford to pay me that salary."

For twenty minutes the new postmaster tried to beat down his prospective clerk, but Herbert was obstinate, and Ebenezer rather ruefully promised to give him his price, chiefly because it was absolutely necessary that he should engage some one who was more familiar with the post-office work than he was. Herbert agreed to go to work the next morning.



Chapter III. A Prodigal Son.



Herbert did not look forward with very joyful anticipations to the new engagement he had formed. He knew very well that he should not like Ebenezer Graham as an employer, but it was necessary that he should earn something, for the income was now but two dollars a week. He was sorry, too, to displace Tom Tripp, but upon this point his uneasiness was soon removed, for Tom dropped in just after Mr. Graham had left the house, and informed Herbert that he was to go to work the next day for a farmer in the neighborhood, at a dollar and a half per week, and board besides.

"I am glad to hear it, Tom," said Herbert, heartily. "I didn't want to feel that I was depriving you of employment."

"You are welcome to my place in the store," said Tom. "I'm glad to give it up. Mr. Graham seemed to think I was made of iron, and I could work like a machine, without getting tired. I hope he pays you more than a dollar and a half a week."

"He has agreed to pay me three dollars," said Herbert.

Tom whistled in genuine amazement.

"What! has the old man lost his senses?" he exclaimed. "He must be crazy to offer such wages as that."

"He didn't offer them. I told him I wouldn't come for less."

"I don't see how he came to pay such a price."

"Because he wanted me to take care of the post office. I know all about it, and he doesn't."

"As soon as he learns, he will reduce your wages."

"Then I shall leave him."

"Well, I hope you'll like store work better than I do."

The next two or three days were spent in removing the post office to one corner of Eben-ezer Graham's store. The removal was superintended by Herbert, who was not interfered with to any extent by his employer, nor required to do much work in the store. Our hero was agreeably surprised, and began to think he should get along better than he anticipated.

At the end of the first week the storekeeper, while they were closing the shutters, said: "I expect, Herbert, you'd just as lieves take your pay in groceries and goods from the store?"

"No, sir," answered Herbert, "I prefer to be paid in money, and to pay for such goods as we buy."

"I don't see what odds it makes to you," said Ebenezer. "It comes to the same thing, doesn't it?"

"Then if it comes to the same thing," retorted Herbert, "why do you want to pay me in goods?"

"Ahem! It saves trouble. I'll just charge everything you buy, and give you the balance Saturday night."

"I should prefer the money, Mr. Graham," said Herbert, firmly.

So the storekeeper, considerably against his will, drew three dollars in bills from the drawer and handed them to his young clerk.

"It's a good deal of money, Herbert," he said, "for a boy. There ain't many men would pay you such a good salary."

"I earn every cent of it, Mr. Graham," said Herbert, whose views on the salary question differed essentially from those of his employer.

The next morning Mr. Graham received a letter which evidently disturbed him. Before referring to its contents, it is necessary to explain that he had one son, nineteen years of age, who had gone to Boston two years previous, to take a place in a dry-goods store on Washington Street. Ebenezer Graham, Jr., or Eben, as he was generally called, was, in some respects, like his father. He had the same features, and was quite as mean, so far as others were concerned, but willing to spend money for his own selfish pleasures. He was fond of playing pool, and cards, and had contracted a dangerous fondness for whisky, which consumed all the money he could spare from necessary expenses, and even more, so that, as will presently appear, he failed to meet his board bills regularly. Eben had served an apprenticeship in his father's store, having been, in fact, Tom Tripp's predecessor; he tired of his father's strict discipline, and the small pay out of which he was required to purchase his clothes, and went to Boston to seek a wider sphere.

To do Eben justice, it must be admitted that he had good business capacity, and if he had been able, like his father, to exercise self-denial, and make money-getting his chief enjoyment, he would no doubt have become a rich man in time. As it was, whenever he could make his companions pay for his pleasures, he did so.

I now come to the letter which had brought disquietude to the storekeeper.

It ran thus:

"DEAR SIR: I understand that you are the father of Mr. Eben Graham, who has been a boarder at my house for the last six months. I regret to trouble you, but he is now owing me six weeks board, and I cannot get a cent out of him, though he knows I am a poor widow, dependent on my board money for my rent and house expenses. As he is a minor, the law makes you responsible for his bills, and, though I dislike to trouble you, I am obliged, in justice to myself, to ask you to settle his board bill, which I inclose.

"You will do me a great favor if you will send me the amount -- thirty dollars -- within a week, as my rent is coming due.

"Yours respectfully, SUSAN JONES."

The feelings of a man like Ebenezer Graham can be imagined when he read this unpleasant missive.

"Thirty dollars!" he groaned. "What can the graceless boy be thinking of, to fool away his money, and leave his bills to be settled by me. If this keeps on, I shall be ruined! It's too bad, when I am slaving here, for Eben to waste my substance on riotous living. I've a great mind to disown him. Let him go his own way, and fetch up in the poorhouse, if he chooses."

But it is not easy for a man to cast off an only son, even though he is as poorly supplied with natural affections as Ebenezer Graham. Besides, Eben's mother interceded for him, and the father, in bitterness of spirit, was about to mail a registered letter to Mrs. Jones, when the cause of his anguish suddenly made his appearance in the store.

"How are you, father?" he said, nonchalantly, taking a cigar from his mouth. "Didn't expect to see me, did you?"

"What brings you here, Eben?" asked Mr. Graham, uneasily.

"Well, the cars brought me to Stockton, and I've walked the rest of the way."

"I've heard of you," said his father, frowning. "I got a letter last night from Mrs. Jones."

"She said she was going to write," said Eben, shrugging his shoulders.

"How came it," said his father, his voice trembling with anger, "that you haven't paid your board bill for six weeks?"

"I didn't have the money," said Eben, with a composure which was positively aggravating to his father.

"And why didn't you have the money? Your wages are ample to pay all your expenses."

"It costs more money to live in Boston than you think for, father."

"Don't you get ten dollars a week, sir? At your age I got only seven, and saved two dollars a week."

"You didn't live in Boston, father."

"I didn't smoke cigars," said his father, angrily, as he fixed his eye on the one his son was smoking. "How much did you pay for that miserable weed?"

"You're mistaken, father. It's a very good article. I paid eight dollars a hundred."

"Eight dollars a hundred!" gasped Mr. Graham. "No wonder you can't pay your board bill -- I can't afford to spend my money on cigars."

"Oh, yes, you can, father, if you choose. Why, you're a rich man."

"A rich man!" repeated Mr. Graham, nervously. "It would take a rich man to pay your bills. But you haven't told me why you have come home."

"I lost my situation, father -- some meddlesome fellow told my employer that I occasionally played a game of pool, and my tailor came to the store and dunned me; so old Boggs gave me a long lecture and my walking papers, and here I am."

Ebenezer Graham was sorely troubled, and, though he isn't a favorite of mine, I confess, that in this matter he has my sincere sympathy.



Chapter IV. Herbert Loses His Place.



Ebenezer Graham with some difficulty ascertained from Eben that he had other bills, amounting in the aggregate to forty-seven dollars. This added to the board bill, made a total of seventy-seven dollars. Mr. Graham's face elongated perceptibly.

"That is bad enough," he said; "but you have lost your income also, and that makes matters worse. Isn't there a chance of the firm taking you back?"

"No, sir," replied the prodigal. "You see, we had a flare up, and I expressed my opinion of them pretty plainly. They wouldn't take me back if I'd come for nothing."

"And they won't give you a recommendation, either?" said Ebenezer, with a half groan.

"No, sir; I should say not."

"So you have ruined your prospects so far as Boston is concerned," said his father, bitterly. "May I ask how you expect to get along?"

"I have a plan," said Eben, with cheerful confidence.

"What is it?"

"I would like to go to California. If I can't get any situation in San Francisco, I can go to the mines."

"Very fine, upon my word!" said his father, sarcastically. "And how do you propose to get to California?"

"I can go either by steamer, across the isthmus, or over the Union Pacific road."

"That isn't what I mean. Where are you to get the money to pay your fare with?"

"I suppose you will supply that," said Eben.

"You do? Well, it strikes me you have some assurance," ejaculated Mr. Graham. "You expect me to advance hundreds of dollars, made by working early and late, to support a spendthrift son!"

"I'll pay you back as soon as I am able," said Eben, a little abashed.

"No doubt! You'd pay me in the same way you pay your board bills," said Ebenezer, who may be excused for the sneer. "I can invest my money to better advantage than upon you."

"Then, if you will not do that," said Eben, sullenly, "I will leave you to suggest a plan."

"There is only one plan I can think of, Eben. Go back to your old place in the store. I will dismiss the Carr boy, and you can attend to the post office, and do the store work."

"What, go back to tending a country grocery, after being a salesman in a city store!" exclaimed Eben, disdainfully.

"Yes, it seems the only thing you have left. It's your own fault that you are not still a salesman in the city."

Eben took the cigar from his mouth, and thought rapidly.

"Well," he said, after a pause, "if I agree to do this, what will you pay me?"

"What will I pay you?"

"Yes, will you pay me ten dollars a week -- the same as I got at Hanbury & Deane's?"

"Ten dollars a week!" ejaculated Ebenezer, "I don't get any more than that myself."

"I guess there's a little mistake in your calculations, father," said Eben, significantly. "If you don't make at least forty dollars a week, including the post office, then I am mistaken."

"So you are -- ridiculously mistaken!" said his father, sharply. "What you presume is entirely out of the question. You forget that you will be getting your board, and Tom Tripp only received a dollar and a half a week without board."

"Is that all you pay to Herbert Carr?"

"I pay him a leetle more," admitted Ebenezer.

"What will you give me?"

"I'll give you your board and clothes," said Ebenezer, "and that seems to be more than you made in Boston."

"Are you in earnest?" asked Eben, in genuine dismay.

"Certainly. It isn't a bad offer, either."

"Do you suppose a young man like me can get along without money?"

"You ought to get along without money for the next two years, after the sums you've wasted in Boston. It will cripple me to pay your bills," and the storekeeper groaned at the thought of the inroads the payment would make on his bank account.

"You're poorer than I thought, if seventy-five dollars will cripple you," said Eben, who knew his father's circumstances too well to be moved by this representation.

"I shall be in the poorhouse before many years if I undertake to pay all your bills, Eben."

After all, this was not, perhaps, an exaggeration, for a spendthrift son can get through a great deal of money.

"I can't get along without money, father," said Eben, decidedly. "How can I buy cigars, let alone other things?"

"I don't want you to smoke cigars. You'll be a great deal better off without them," said his father, sharply.

"I understand; it's necessary to my health," said Eben, rather absurdly.

"You won't smoke at my expense," said Ebenezer, decidedly. "I don't smoke myself, and I never knew any good come of it."

"All the same, I must have some money. What will people say about a young man of my age not having a cent in his pocket? They think my father is very mean."

"I'll allow you fifty cents a week," said Mr. Graham, after a pause.

"That won't do! You seem to think I am only six or seven years old!"

Finally, after considerable haggling, Mr. Graham agreed to pay his son a dollar and a half a week, in cash, besides board and clothes. He reflected that he should be obliged to board and clothe his son at any rate, and should save a dollar and a half from Herbert's wages.

"Well," he said, "when will you be ready to go to work?"

"I must have a few days to loaf, father. I have been hard at work for a long time, and need some rest."

"Then you can begin next Monday morning. I'll get Herbert to show you how to prepare the mail, so that you won't have any trouble about the post-office work."

"By the way, father, how do you happen to have the post office? I thought Mrs. Carr was to carry it on."

"So she did, for a time, but a woman ain't fit for a public position of that kind. So I applied for the position, and got it."

"What's Mrs. Carr going to do?"

"She's got her pension," said Ebenezer, shortly.

"Eight dollars a month, isn't it?"

"Yes."

"That ain't much to support a family."

"She'll have to do something else, then, I suppose."

"There isn't much to do in Wayneboro."

"That isn't my lookout. She can take in sewing, or washing," suggested Ebenezer, who did not trouble himself much about the care of his neighbors. "Besides there's Herbert -- he can earn something."

"But I'm to take his place."

"Oh well, I ain't under any obligations to provide them a livin'. I've got enough to take care of myself and my family."

"You'd better have let her keep the post office," said Eben. He was not less selfish than his father, but then his own interests were not concerned. He would not have scrupled, in his father's case, to do precisely the same.

"It's lucky I've got a little extra income," said Ebenezer, bitterly; "now I've got your bills to pay."

"I suppose I shall have to accept your offer, father," said Eben, "for the present; but I hope you'll think better of my California plan after a while. Why, there's a fellow I know went out there last year, went up to the mines, and now he's worth five thousand dollars!"

"Then he must be a very different sort of a person from you," retorted his father, sagaciously. "You would never succeed there, if you can't in Boston."

"I've never had a chance to try," grumbled Eben.

There was sound sense in what his father said. Failure at home is very likely to be followed by failure away from home. There have been cases that seemed to disprove my assertion, but in such cases failure has only been changed into success by earnest work. I say to my young readers, therefore, never give up a certainty at home to tempt the chances of success in a distant State, unless you are prepared for disappointment.

When the engagement had been made with Eben, Mr. Graham called Herbert to his presence.

"Herbert," said he, "I won't need you after Saturday night. My son is going into the store, and will do all I require. You can tell him how to prepare the mails, et cetery."

"Very well, sir," answered Herbert. It was not wholly a surprise, but it was a disappointment, for he did not know how he could make three dollars a week in any other way, unless he left Wayneboro.



Chapter V. Eben's Scheme.



Saturday night came, and with it the end of Herbert's engagement in the post office.

He pocketed the three dollars which his employer grudgingly gave him, and set out on his way home.

"Wait a minute, Herbert," said Eben. "I'll walk with you."

Herbert didn't care much for Eben's company but he was too polite to say so. He waited therefore, till Eben appeared with hat and cane.

"I'm sorry to cut you out of your place, Herbert," said the young man.

"Thank you," answered Herbert.

"It isn't my fault, for I don't want to go into the store," proceeded Eben. "A fellow that's stood behind the counter in a city store is fit for something better, but it's the old man's fault."

Herbert made no comment, and Eben proceeded:

"Yes," said he, "it's the old man's fault. He's awfully stingy, you know that yourself."

Herbert did know it, but thought it would not be in good taste to say so.

"I suppose Wayneboro is rather dull for you after living in the city," he remarked.

"I should say so. This village is a dull hole, and yet father expects me to stay here cooped up in a little country store. I won't stay here long, you may be sure of that."

"Where will you go?"

"I don't know yet. I want to go to California, but I can't unless the old man comes down with the requisite amount of tin. You'll soon have your situation back again. I won't stand in your way."

"I'm not very particular about going back," said Herbert, "but I must find something to do."

"Just so!" said Eben. "The place will do well enough for a boy like you, but I am a young man, and entitled to look higher. By the way, I've got something in view that may bring me in five thousand dollars within a month."

Herbert stared at his companion in surprise, not knowing any short cut to wealth.

"Do you mean it?" he asked, incredulously.

"Yes," said Eben.

"I suppose you don't care to tell what it is?"

"Oh, I don't mind -- it's a lottery."

"Oh!" said Herbert, in a tone of disappointment.

"Yes," answered Eben. "You may think lotteries are a fraud and all that, but I know a man in Boston who drew last month a prize of fifteen thousand dollars. The ticket only cost him a dollar. What do you say to that?"

"Such cases can't be very common," said Herbert, who had a good share of common sense.

"Not so uncommon as you think," returned Eben, nodding. "I don't mean to say that many draw prizes as large as that, but there are other prizes of five thousand dollars, and one thousand, and so on. It would be very comfortable to draw a prize of even five hundred, wouldn't it now?"

Herbert admitted that it would.

"I'd send for a ticket by Monday morning's mail," continued Eben, "if I wasn't so hard up. The old man's mad because I ran into debt, and he won't give me a cent. Will you do me a favor?"

"What is it?" asked Herbert, cautiously.

"Lend me two dollars. You've got it, I know, because you were paid off to-night. I would send for two tickets, and agree to give you quarter of what I draw. Isn't that fair?"

"It may be," said Herbert, "but I haven't any money to lend."

"You have three dollars in your pocket at this moment."

"Yes, but it isn't mine. I must hand it to mother."

"And give up the chance of winning a prize. I'll promise to give you half of whatever I draw, besides paying back the money."

"Thank you, but I can't spare the money."

"You are getting as miserly as the old man," said Eben, with a forced laugh.

"Eben," said Herbert, seriously, "you don't seem to understand our position. Mother has lost the post office, and has but eight dollars a month income. I've earned three dollars this week, but next week I may earn nothing. You see, I can't afford to spend money for lottery tickets."

"Suppose by your caution you lose five hundred dollars. Nothing risk, nothing gain!"

"I have no money to risk," said Herbert, firmly.

"Oh, well, do as you please!" said Eben, evidently disappointed. "I thought I'd make you the offer, because I should like to see you win a big prize."

"Thank you for your friendly intention," said Herbert, "but I am afraid there are a good many more blanks than prizes. If there were not, it wouldn't pay the lottery men to carry on the business."

This was common sense, and I cannot forbear at this point to press it upon the attention of my young reader. Of all schemes of gaining wealth, about the most foolish is spending money for lottery tickets. It has been estimated by a sagacious writer that there is about as much likelihood of drawing a large prize in a lottery as of being struck by lightning and that, let us hope, is very small.

"I guess I won't go any farther," said Eben, abruptly, having become convinced that Herbert could not be prevailed upon to lend him money.

"Good-night, then," said Herbert "Good-night."

"Well, mother, I'm out of work," said Herbert, as he entered the little sitting room, and threw down his week's wages. Our young hero was of a cheerful temperament but he looked and felt sober when he said this.

"But for the Grahams we should have a comfortable living," the boy proceeded. "First, the father took away the post office from you, and now the son has robbed me of my place."

"Don't be discouraged, Herbert," said his mother. "God will find us a way out of our troubles."

Herbert had been trained to have a reverence for religion, and had faith in the providential care of his heavenly Father, and his mother's words recalled his cheerfulness.

"You are right, mother," he said, more hopefully. "I was feeling low-spirited to-night, but I won't feel so any more. I don't see how we are to live, but I won't let it trouble me tonight."

"Let us do our part, and leave the rest to God," said Mrs. Carr. "He won't support us in idleness, but I am sure that in some way relief will come if we are ready to help ourselves."

"God helps them that help themselves," repeated Herbert.

"Exactly so. To-morrow is Sunday, and we won't let any worldly anxieties spoil that day for us. When Monday comes, we will think over what is best to be done."

The next day Herbert and his mother attended church in neat apparel, and those who saw their cheerful faces were not likely to guess the serious condition of their affairs. They were not in debt, to be sure, but, unless employment came soon, they were likely to be ere long, for they had barely enough money ahead to last them two weeks.

Monday morning came, and brought its burden of care.

"I wish there was a factory in Wayneboro," said Herbert. "I am told that boys of my age sometimes earn six or seven dollars a week."

"I have heard so. Here there seems nothing, except working on a farm."

"And the farmers expect boys to take their pay principally in board."

"That is a consideration, but, if possible, I hope we shall not be separated at meals."

"I will try other things first," said Herbert. "How would you like some fish for dinner, mother? My time isn't of any particular value, and I might as well go fishing."

"Do so, Herbert. It will save our buying meat, which, indeed, we can hardly afford to do."

Herbert felt that anything was better than idleness, so he took his pole from the shed, and, after digging a supply of bait, set out for the banks of the river half a mile away.

Through a grassy lane leading from the main street, he walked down to the river with the pole on his shoulder.

He was not destined to solitude, for under a tree whose branches hung over the river sat a young man, perhaps twenty-five years of age, with a book in his hand.



Chapter VI. Herbert's Good Luck.



"Good-morning," said the young man, pleasantly.

"Good-morning," answered Herbert, politely.

He recognized the young man, though he had never seen him before, as a visitor from the city, who was boarding at the hotel, if the village tavern could be so designated. He seemed to be a studious young man, for he always had a book in his hand. He had a pleasant face, but was pale and slender, and was evidently in poor health.

"I see you are going to try your luck at fishing," said the young man.

"Yes, sir; I have nothing else to do, and that brings me here."

"I, too, have nothing else to do; but I judge from your appearance that you have not the same reason for being idle."

"What is that, sir?"

"Poor health."

"No, sir; I have never been troubled in that way."

"You are fortunate. Health is a blessing not to be overestimated. It is better than money."

"I suppose it is, sir; but at present I think I should value a little money."

"Are you in want of it?" asked the young man, earnestly.

"Yes, sir; I have just lost my place in the post office."

"I think I have seen you in the post office."

"Yes, sir; my mother had charge of the office till two weeks since, when it was transferred to Mr. Graham. He employed me to attend to the duties, and serve the customers in the store, till Saturday night, when I was succeeded by his son, who had just returned from the city."

"Your mother is a widow, is she not?"

"Yes, sir."

"I know where you live; I have had it pointed out to me. Your father served in the war, did he not?"

"Yes, sir; and the injuries he received hastened his death."

The young man looked thoughtful. Then he said: "How much did Mr. Graham pay you for your services?"

"Three dollars a week."

"That was not -- excuse the question -- all you and your mother had to depend upon, was it?"

"Not quite; mother receives a pension of eight dollars per month."

"Five dollars a week altogether -- that is very little."

"It is only two dollars now, sir."

"True; but you have health and strength, and those will bring money. In one respect you are more fortunate than I. You have a mother -- I have neither father nor mother."

"I'm sorry for you, sir."

"Thank you; anyone is to be pitied who has lost his parents. Now, as I have asked about your affairs, it is only fair that I should tell you about myself. To begin with, I am rich. Don't look envious, for there is something to counterbalance. I am of feeble constitution, and the doctors say that my lungs are affected. I have studied law, but the state of my health has obliged me to give up, for the present at least, the practice of my profession."

"But if you are rich you do not need to practice," said Herbert, who may be excused for still thinking his companion's lot a happy one.

"No, I do not need to practice my profession, so far as the earning of money is concerned; but I want something to occupy my mind. The doctors say I ought to take considerable out-door exercise; but I suppose my physical condition makes me indolent, for my chief exercise has been, thus far, to wander to the banks of the river and read under the trees."

"That isn't very severe exercise," said Herbert, smiling.

"No; still it keeps me out in the open air, and that is something. Now tell me, what are your plans?"

"My hope is to find something to do that will enable me to help mother; but there doesn't seem much chance of finding anything in Wayneboro. Do you think I could get a place in the city?"

"You might; but even if you did, you would find it difficult to earn your own living, and there would be no chance of your helping your mother."

Herbert, though naturally sanguine and hopeful, looked sober. Just then he had a bite, and drew out a good-sized pickerel. This gave a new direction to his thoughts, and he exclaimed, triumphantly:

"Look at this pickerel! He must weigh over two pounds."

"All of that," said the young man, rising and examining the fish with interest. "Let me use your pole, and see what luck I have."

"Certainly."

The young man, some ten minutes later, succeeded in catching a smaller pickerel, perhaps half the size of Herbert's.

"That will do for me," he said, "though it doesn't come up to your catch."

For two hours Herbert and his friend alternately used the pole, and the result was quite a handsome lot of fish.

"You have more fish than you want," said the young man. "You had better bring what you don't want to the hotel. I heard the landlord say he would like to buy some."

"That would suit me," said Herbert. "If he wants fish, I want money."

"Come along with me, then. Really, I don't know when I have passed a forenoon so pleasantly. Usually I get tired of my own company, and the day seems long to me. I believe I see my way clear to a better way of spending my time. You say you want a place. How would you like me for an employer?"

"I am sure I should like you, but you are not in any business."

"No," said the young man, smiling; "or, rather, my business is the pursuit of health and pleasure just now. In that I think you can help me."

"I shall be very glad to, if I can, Mr. -- -"

"My name is George Melville. Let me explain my idea to you. I want your company to relieve my solitude. In your company I shall have enterprise enough to go hunting and fishing, and follow out in good faith my doctor's directions. What do you say?"

Herbert smiled.

"I would like that better than being in the post office," he said. "It would seem like being paid for having a good time."

"How much would you consider your services worth?" asked Mr. Melville.

"I am content to leave that to you," said Herbert.

"Suppose we say six dollars a week, then?"

"Six dollars a week!" exclaimed Herbert, amazed.

"Isn't that enough?" asked Melville, smiling.

"It is more than I can earn. Mr. Graham thought he was over-paying me with three dollars a week."

"You will find me a different man from Mr. Graham, Herbert. I am aware that six dollars is larger pay than is generally given to boys of your age. But I can afford to pay it, and I have no doubt you will find the money useful."

"It will quite set us on our feet again, Mr. Melville," said Herbert, earnestly. "You are very generous."

"Oh, you don't know what a hard taskmaster you may find me," said the young man, playfully. "By the way, I consider that you have already entered upon your duties. To-day is the first day. Now come to the hotel with me, and see what you can get for the fish. I happen to know that two of the guests, a lady and her daughter, are anxious for a good fish dinner and, as there is no market here, I think the landlord will be glad to buy from you."

Mr. Melville was right. Mr. Barton, the landlord, purchased the fish that Herbert had to sell, for sixty cents, which he promptly paid.

"Don't that pay you for your morning's work?" asked Melville.

"I don't know but the money ought to go to you, Mr. Melville," said Herbert, "as I am now in your employ. Besides, you caught a part of them."

"I waive all claim to compensation," said the young man, "though it would be a novel sensation to receive money for services rendered. What will you say, Herbert, when I tell you that I never earned a dollar in my life?"

Herbert looked incredulous.

"It is really true," said George Melville, "my life has been passed at school and college, and I have never had occasion to work for money."

"You are in luck, then."

"I don't know that; I think those who work for the money they receive are happy. Tell me, now, don't you feel more satisfaction in the sixty cents you have just been paid because you have earned it?"

"Yes, sir."

"I thought so. The happiest men are those who are usefully employed. Don't forget that, and never sigh for the opportunity to lead an idle life. But I suppose your dinner is ready. You may go home, and come back at three o'clock."

"Very well, sir."

Herbert made good time going home. He was eager to tell his mother the good news of his engagement.



Chapter VII. Eben Grows Envious.



"Well, mother," said Herbert, as he entered the house, "I have brought you enough fish for dinner."

"I waited to see what luck you would have, Herbert, and therefore have not got dinner ready. You will have to wait a little while."

"I shall be all the hungrier, mother," said Herbert.

Mrs. Carr could not help noticing the beaming look on her som's face.

"You look as if you had received a legacy, Herbert," she said.

Herbert laughed.

"There it is," he said, displaying the sixty cents he had received from the landlord.

"There are ten cents more than I should have received for a whole day's work at the store," he said.

"Where did you get it, Herbert?"

"I sold a mess of fish to Mr. Barton, of the hotel."

"You must have had good luck in fishing," said his mother, looking pleased.

"I had help, mother. Mr. Melville, the young man from the city, who boards at the hotel, helped me fish."

"Well, Herbert, you have made a good beginning. I couldn't help feeling a little depressed when you left me this morning, reflecting that we had but my pension to depend upon. It seemed so unlucky that Eben Graham should have come home just at this time to deprive you of your place in the store."

"It was a piece of good luck for me, mother."

"I don't see how," said Mrs. Carr, naturally puzzled.

"Because I have a better situation already."

Then Herbert, who had been saving the best news for the last, told his mother of his engagement as Mr. Melville's companion, and the handsome compensation he was to receive.

"Six dollars a week!" repeated his mother. "That is indeed generous. Herbert, we did well to trust in Providence."

"Yes, mother; and we have not trusted in vain."

After dinner Herbert did some chores for his mother, and then went to the hotel to meet his new employer. He found him occupying a large and pleasant room on the second floor. The table near the window was covered with books, and there were some thirty or forty volumes arranged on shelves.

"I always bring books with me, Herbert," said the young man. "I am very fond of reading, and hitherto I have occupied too much time, perhaps, in that way -- too much, because it has interfered with necessary exercise. Hereafter I shall devote my forenoon to some kind of outdoor exercise in your company, and in the afternoon you can read to me, or we can converse."

"Shall I read to you now, Mr. Melville?" asked Herbert.

"Yes; here is a recent magazine. I will select an article for you to read. It will rest my eyes, and besides it is pleasanter to have a companion than to read one's self."

The article was one that interested Herbert as well as Mr. Melville, and he was surprised when he had finished to find that it was nearly five o'clock.

"Didn't the reading tire you, Herbert?" asked Melville.

"No, sir; not at all."

"It is evident that your lungs are stronger than mine."

At five o'clock Melville dismissed his young companion.

"Do you wish me to come this evening?" asked Herbert.

"Oh, no. I wouldn't think of taking up your evenings."

"At the post office I had to stay till eight o'clock."

"Probably it was necessary there; I won't task you so much."

"When shall I come to-morrow?"

"At nine o'clock."

"That isn't very early," said Herbert, smiling.

"No, I don't get up very early. My health won't allow me to cultivate early rising. I shall not be through breakfast much before nine."

"I see you don't mean to overwork me, Mr. Melville."

"No, for it would involve overworking myself."

"I shall certainly have an easy time," thought Herbert, as he walked homeward.

He reflected with satisfaction that he was being paid at the rate of a dollar a day, which was quite beyond anything he had ever before earned. Indeed, to-day he had earned sixty cents besides. The sum received for the fish.

After supper Herbert went to the store to purchase some articles for his mother. He was waited on by Mr. Graham in person. As the articles called for would amount to nearly one dollar, the storekeeper said, cautiously: "Of course, you are prepared to pay cash?"

"Certainly, sir," returned Herbert.

"I mentioned it because I knew your income was small," said Ebenezer, apologetically.

"It is more than it was last week," said Herbert, rather enjoying the prospect of surprising the storekeeper.

"Why, you ain't found anything to do, have you?" asked Mr. Graham, his face indicating curiosity.

"Yes, sir; I am engaged as companion by Mr. Melville, who is staying at the hotel."

"I don't know what he wants of a companion," said the storekeeper, with that disposition to criticise the affairs of his neighbors often found in country places.

"He thinks he needs one," answered Herbert.

"And how much does he pay you now?" queried Ebenezer.

"Six dollars a week."

"You don't mean it!" ejaculated the storekeeper. "Why, the man must be crazy!"

"I don't think he is," said Herbert, smiling.

"Got plenty of money, I take it?" continued Ebenezer, who had a good share of curiosity.

"Yes; he tells me he is rich."

"How much money has he got?"

"He didn't tell me that."

"Well, I declare! You're lucky, that's a fact!"

There was an interested listener to this conversation in the person of Eben, who had been in the store all day, taking Herbert's place. As we know, the position by no means suited the young man. He had been employed in a store in Boston, and to come back to a small country grocery might certainly be considered a descent. Besides, the small compensation allowed him was far from satisfying Eben.

He was even more dissatisfied when he learned how fortunate Herbert was. To be selected as a companion by a rich young man was just what he would have liked himself, and he flattered himself that he should make a more desirable companion than a mere boy like Herbert.

As our hero was leaving the store, Eben called him back.

"What was that you were telling father about going round with a young man from the city?" he asked.

Herbert repeated it.

"And he pays you six dollars a week?" asked Eben, enviously.

"Yes; of course, I shouldn't have asked so much, but he fixed the price himself."

"You think he is very rich?" said Eben, thoughtfully.

"Yes, I think so."

"What a splendid chance it would be for me!" thought Eben. "If I could get intimate with a man like that, he might set me up in business some day; perhaps take me to Europe, or round the world!" "How much of the time do you expect to be with this Mr. Melville?" he asked.

Herbert answered the question.

"Does he seem like a man easy to get along with?"

"Very much so."

Eben inwardly decided that, if he could, he would oust Herbert from his desirable place, and substitute himself. It was a very mean thought, but Eben inherited meanness from his father.

"Herbert," he said, "will you do me a favor?"

"What is it?" asked our hero.

"Will you take my place in the store this evening? I am not feeling well, and want to take a walk."

"Yes," answered Herbert, "as soon as I have run home to tell mother where I am."

"That's a good fellow. You shan't lose anything by it. I'll give you ten cents."

"You needn't pay me anything, Eben. I'll do it as a favor."

"You're a trump, Herbert. Come back as soon as you can."

When Eben was released from the store, he went over to the hotel, and inquired for Mr. Melville, leaving his unsuspecting young substitute in the post office.



Chapter VIII. Eben's Assurance.



"A young man wishes to see you, Mr. Melville," said the servant.

George Melville looked up in some surprise from his book, and said: "You may show him up."

"It must be Herbert," he thought.

But when the door was opened, and the visitor shown in, Mr. Melville found it was an older person than Herbert. Eben, for it was he, distorted his mean features into what he regarded as a pleasant smile, and, without waiting to receive a welcome, came forward with extended hand.

"I believe you are Mr. Melville," he said, inquiringly.

"Yes, that is my name," said Melville, looking puzzled; "I don't remember you. Have I met you before?"

"You saw me in father's store, very likely," said Eben. "I am Eben Graham, son of Ebenezer Graham, the postmaster."

"Indeed! That accounts for your face looking familiar. You resemble your father very closely."

"I'm a chip off the old block with modern improvements," said Eben, smirking. "Father's always lived in the country, and he ain't very stylish. I've been employed in Boston for a couple of years past, and got a little city polish."

"You don't show much of it," thought Melville, but he refrained from saying so.

"So you have come home to assist your father," he said, politely.

"Well, no, not exactly," answered Eben, "I feel that a country store isn't my sphere."

"Then you propose to go back to the city?"

"Probably I shall do so eventually, but I may stay here in Wayneboro a while if I can make satisfactory arrangements. I assure you that it was not my wish to take Herbert Carr's place."

"Herbert told me that you had assumed his duties."

"It is only ad interim. I assure you, it is only ad interim. I am quite ready to give back the place to Herbert, who is better suited to it than I."

"I wonder what the fellow is driving at," thought Melville. Eben did not long leave him in doubt.

"Herbert tells me that he has made an engagement with you," continued Eben, desiring to come to his business as soon as possible.

"Yes, we have made a mutual arrangement."

"Of course, it is very nice for him; and so I told him."

"I think I am quite as much a gainer by it as he is," said Melville.

"Herbert was right. He is easily suited," said Eben, to himself.

"Of course," Eben added, clearing his throat, "Herbert isn't so much of a companion to you as if he were a few years older."

"I don't know that; it seems to me that he is a very pleasant companion, young as he is."

"To be sure, Herbert is a nice boy, and father was glad to help him along by giving him a place, with a larger salary than he ever paid before."

"What is he driving at?" thought Melville.

"To come to the point, Mr. Melville," said Eben, "I have made bold to call upon you to suggest a little difference in your arrangements."

"Indeed!" said Melville, coldly. Though he had no idea what his singular visitor was about to propose, it struck him emphatically that Eben was interfering in an unwarrantable manner with his affairs.

"You see," continued Eben, "I'm a good deal nearer your age than Herbert, and I've had the advantage of residing in the city, which Herbert hasn't, and naturally should be more company to you. Then, again, Herbert could do the work in the post office and store, which I am doing, nearly as well as I can. I'll undertake to get father to give him back his place, and then I shall be happy to make an arrangement with you to go hunting and fishing, or anything else that you choose. I am sure I should enjoy your company, Mr. Melville," concluded Eben, rubbing his hands complacently and surveying George Melville with an insinuating smile.

"You have certainly taken considerable trouble to arrange this matter for me," said Melville, with a sarcasm which Eben did not detect.

"Oh, no trouble at all!" said Eben, cheerfully. "You see, the idea came into my head when Herbert told me of his arrangements with you, and I thought I'd come and see you about it."

"Did you mention it to Herbert?" asked George Melville, with some curiosity.

"Well, no, I didn't. I didn't know how Herbert would look at it. I got Herbert to take my place in the store while I ran over to see you about the matter. By the way, though I am some years older than Herbert, I shan't ask more than you pay him. In fact, I am willing to leave the pay to your liberality."

"You are very considerate!" said Melville, hardly knowing whether to be amused or provoked by the cool assurance of his visitor.

"Oh, not at all!" returned Eben, complacently. "I guess I've fetched him!" he reflected, looking at Mr. Melville through his small, half-closed eyes.

"You have certainly surprised me very much, Mr. Graham," said Melville, "by the nature of your suggestion. I won't take into consideration the question whether you have thought more of your own pleasure or mine. So far as the latter is concerned, you have made a mistake in supposing that Herbert's youth is any drawback to his qualification as a companion. Indeed, his youth and cheerful temperament make him more attractive in my eyes. I hope, Mr. Graham, you will excuse me for saying that he suits me better than you possibly could."

Eben's countenance fell, and he looked quite discomfited and mortified.

"I didn't suppose a raw, country boy would be likely to suit a gentleman of taste, who has resided in the city," he said, with asperity.

"Then you will have a chance to correct your impression," said Melville, with a slight smile.

"Then you don't care to accept my offer?" said Eben, regretfully.

"Thank you, no. If you will excuse me for suggesting it, Mr. Graham, it would have been more considerate for you to have apprised Herbert of your object in asking him to take your place this evening. Probably he had no idea that you meant to supersede him with me."

Eben tossed his head.

"You mustn't think, Mr. Melville," he said, "that I was after the extra pay. Six dollars doesn't seem much to me. I was earning ten dollars a week in Boston, and if I had stayed, should probably have been raised to twelve."

"So that you were really consenting to a sacrifice in offering to enter my employment at six dollars a week?"

"Just so!"

"Then I am all the more convinced that I have decided for the best in retaining Herbert. I do not wish to interfere with your prospects in the city."

"Oh, as for that," said Eben, judging that he had gone too far, "I don't care to go back to the city just yet. I've been confined pretty steadily, and a few weeks in the country, hunting and fishing, will do me good."

George Melville bowed, but said nothing.

Eben felt that he had no excuse for staying longer, and reluctantly rose.

"If you should think better of what I've proposed," he said, "you can let me know."

"I will do so," said Melville.

"He's rather a queer young man," muttered Eben, as he descended the stairs. "It's funny that he should prefer a country boy like Herbert to a young man like me who's seen life, and got some city polish -- at the same price, too! He don't seem to see his own interest. I'm sorry, for it would have been a good deal more interesting to me, going round with him a few hours a day, than tending store for father. There's one thing sure, I won't do it long. I'm fitted for a higher position than that, I hope."

"For downright impudence and cool assurance, I think that young man will bear off the palm," thought George Melville, as his unwelcome visitor left the room. "Herbert is in no danger from him. It would probably surprise him if he knew that I should consider his company as an intolerable bore. I will tell Herbert to-morrow the good turn his friend has tried to do him."



Chapter IX. The Solitary Farmhouse.



If Eben had been sensitive, the cool reception which he met with at the hands of Mr. Melville would have disturbed him. As it was, he felt angry and disappointed, and desirous of "coming up with" Herbert, as he expressed it, though it was hard to see in what way the boy had injured him. It did not seem quite clear at present how he was to punish Herbert, but he only waited for an occasion.

When Herbert learned, the next morning, from Mr. Melville, in what manner Eben had tried to undermine him, and deprive him of his situation, he was naturally indignant.

"I didn't think Eben Graham could be so mean," he exclaimed.

"It was certainly a mean thing to do, Herbert," said George Melville; "but you can afford to treat young Graham with contempt, as he has been unable to do you any injury."

"What shall we do this morning, Mr. Melville?" asked Herbert.

"I should like a row on the river," said Melville. "Do you know of any boat we can have?"

"Walter Ingalls has a boat; I think we can hire that."

"Do you know him?"

"Yes, sir."

"Then you may go and ascertain whether we can have it, or I will go with you to avoid loss of time."

The boat was readily loaned, and the two were soon on the river. Mr. Melville first took the oars, but he was quickly fatigued, and resigned them to Herbert, who was strong and muscular for his age. As his companion observed his strong and steady strokes, he said:

"Herbert, I am disposed to envy you your strength and endurance. I get tired very easily."

"Were you not strong when a boy?" asked Herbert.

"I never had much endurance. My mother had a feeble constitution and was consumptive, and I inherit something of her weakness."

"It is fortunate that you have money, Mr. Melville, so that you are not obliged to work."

"True; but I would give half my fortune to be strong and well."

Herbert noticed the hectic flush upon Mr. Melville's cheeks, and his white, transparent hands, and his sympathy was aroused.

"I see," he said, thoughtfully, "that I am more fortunate than I thought in my health and strength."

"They are blessings not to be overestimated, Herbert. However, my lot is, on the whole, a happy one, even though my life will probably be brief, and I have still many sources of satisfaction and enjoyment."

The river led away from the village, flowing between wooded banks, with here and there a cottage set in the midst of the fields. Lying back in the stern, Melville enjoyed their tranquil passage, when their attention was suddenly attracted by a boy who stood on the bank, frantically waving his hat. Melville was the first to see him.

"What can that boy want?" he asked.

Herbert immediately looked around, and exclaimed in surprise:

"It's Tom Tripp!"

"Row to shore, and see what he wants," said Melville, quickly.

They were already near, and in a brief space of time they touched the bank.

"What's the matter, Tom?"

"There's a tramp in the house, stealing all he can lay hands on," answered Tom, in excitement.

"What house?"

"Farmer Cole's."

Mr. Cole was the farmer for whom Tom Tripp was working.

Tom explained that the farmer was gone to the village, leaving his wife alone. A tramp had come to the door and asked for a meal. While Mrs. Cole was getting something for him, the visitor looked about him and, finding that there was no man about, boldly demanded money, after unceremoniously possessing himself of the silver spoons.

"Is he armed?" asked Melville.

"I don't know; I don't think so."

"Does he know that you have gone for help?"

"No; he did not see me. I came from the fields, and saw him through the window. Mrs. Cole thinks I am in the field and there is no help near."

Physical courage and physical strength do not always go together, and a weak man often excels a strong man in bravery. George Melville was thoroughly roused. For injustice or brutality he had a hearty contempt, and he was not one to stand by and see a ruffian triumph.

"Come, Herbert," he said; "let us go to the help of this poor woman."

"With all my heart," answered Herbert, his eyes flashing.

Before describing the appearance of Herbert and George Melville upon the scene, I will go back a few minutes and relate what happened at the farmhouse.

Mrs. Cole was engaged in ironing when she heard a knock at the door.

Answering the summons, she found herself confronted by an ill-looking fellow whose dusty and travel-soiled garments revealed the character of the wearer.

"What is it you wish?" asked the farmer's wife.

"I'm hungry!" said the tramp. "Can you give me something to eat?"

"Yes," answered Mrs. Cole, cheerfully, for the good woman could not find it in her heart to turn away a fellow creature suffering from hunger. "We have enough and to spare. Come in, and sit down at the table."

The visitor followed her into the kitchen and took a seat at the table, while the farmer's wife went to the pantry and brought out half a loaf of bread and a plate of cold meat.

The tramp was not long in attacking it, but after a few mouthfuls laid down his knife and fork.

"Where's the coffee?" he asked.

"I have no warm coffee," she answered.

"Don't you drink coffee in the morning?"

"Yes, but breakfast was over two or three hours since. Shall I get you a glass of water?"

"Haven't you any cider?"

"It seems to me you are particular," said Mrs. Cole, growing indignant.

"All the same I want some cider," said the tramp, impudently.

"I have no cider," answered Mrs. Cole, shortly.

"A pretty farmhouse this is, without cider," growled the tramp. "You can make me some coffee, then!"

"Who are you to order me round in my own house?" demanded Mrs. Cole, angrily. "One would think you took this for a hotel."

"I take it for what I please," said the tramp.

"If my husband were here you wouldn't dare to talk to me like this!"

It was an unguarded admission, made on the impulse of the moment, and Mrs. Cole felt its imprudence as soon as she had uttered the words, but it was too late to recall them.

"Where is your husband?" asked the tramp, his face lighting up with a gleam of exultation.

"Near by," answered Mrs. Cole, evasively; but her visitor saw that this was not correct.

"How much money have you in the house?" he demanded, abruptly.

"Money?" gasped the farmer's wife, turning pale.

"Yes, money! Didn't I speak plain enough?" asked the tramp, angrily.

"Are you a thief, then?"

"Don't you dare to call me a thief!" said the tramp, menacingly.

"Then, if you are an honest man, why do you ask that question?"

"Because I am going to borrow what money you have."

"Borrow!"

"Yes," said the man, with a grin. "I'll hand it back when I come around again."

Under ordinary circumstances there would not have been money enough in the farmhouse to be anxious about, but it so happened that Farmer Cole had sold a yoke of oxen, and the money received, a hundred dollars, was upstairs in a bureau drawer. The thought of this, though she didn't suppose the tramp to be aware of it, was enough to terrify Mrs. Cole, and she sank back in the chair in a panic. Of course the tramp inferred that there was a considerable sum in the house.

"Come, hurry up!" he said, roughly, "I can't wait here all day. Where do you keep the money?"

"It is my husband's," said Mrs. Cole, terrified out of all prudence.

"All right! I'll pay it back to him. While you're about it, you may collect all the spoons, too. I'm going to open a boarding house," he continued, with a chuckle, "and I shall need them."

"Oh, heavens! What shall I do?" ejaculated the frightened woman.



Chapter X. An Exciting Scene.



"You'd better go upstairs and get that money, or I will go up myself," said the tramp, boldly.

"I will go," said Mrs. Cole, terrified.

It was at this time that Tom Tripp, looking in at the window, got an idea of the situation, but he was unobserved. The river bank was near, and he ran down to it, hoping, but not expecting, to see some one who could interfere with the impudent robber. We have already seen that he was luckier than he anticipated.

Meanwhile Mrs. Cole went upstairs, not knowing how to save the money from being carried away. She wished heartily that her husband had taken it with him. One hundred dollars, as she well knew, would be a serious loss to her husband, who was only moderately well to do. She thought it possible that the tramp might know how large a sum there was in the house, but could not be sure. She resolved, however, to make an effort to save the larger part of the money. From the wallet she took two five-dollar bills, and then, removing it from the drawer, put it between the beds. She lingered as long as she dared, and then went downstairs with the two bills in her hand.

"Well, have you got the money?" growled the tramp.

"Don't take it," she said; "be satisfied with the breakfast I have given you."

"You're a fool!" said the tramp, rudely. "How much have you got there?"

"Ten dollars."

"Ten dollars!" said the tramp, disdainfully. "What do you take me for?"

"It is a large sum of money to me and my husband, sir," said the poor woman, nervously.

"It isn't enough for me! You have got more money in the house. Don't lie to me! You know you have."

"I am not used to be talked to in that way," said Mrs. Cole, forgetting her timidity for the moment.

"I can't help what you are used to; you'd better not trifle with me. Go upstairs and bring down the rest of the money -- do you hear?"

"Oh, sir!"

"'Oh, sir!'" repeated the tramp, impatiently. "I can't stay here all day. Are you going to do as I tell you?"

"I suppose I must," said the poor woman.

"That's sensible. You'll find out after a while that nothing is to be gained by trying to fool me. I'll give you just three minutes to find that money and bring it down."

"You'll leave the spoons, then?"

"No; I want them, as I've already told you. Come, two minutes are passed. I don't want to kill you, but -- "

Mrs. Cole uttered a shriek of dismay, and turned to obey the command of her unwelcome visitor, when a loud, clear voice was heard from just outside the window.

"Stay where you are, Mrs. Cole! There is help at hand. This ruffian shall not harm you."

It was the voice of George Melville. The tramp turned swiftly and stared in ill-disguised dismay at Melville and Herbert.

"What business is it of yours?" he demanded, in a blustering tone.

"We make it our business to defend this lady from your thievish designs," said Melville.

"You!" exclaimed the tramp, contemptuously. "Why, I could twist either of you round my little finger."

"You'd better not try it!" said Melville, not showing the least trepidation. "Mrs. Cole, has this man anything of yours in his possession?"

"He has my spoons and I have just handed him ten dollars."

George Melville turned to the tramp.

"Be kind enough to lay the spoons on the table," he said, "and give back the ten dollars Mrs. Cole handed you."

"You must think I'm a fool!" said the tramp.

"No; but I think you are a prudent man. If you do as I say we will let you go; if not -- "

"Well, if not?" blustered the tramp.

"If not, you may regret it."

All this time George Melville had spoken in his usual tone of voice, and the tramp was puzzled to know whether he had any weapon with him. For himself, he was unarmed, and this made him feel rather ill at ease, notwithstanding his superiority in physical strength. He was rather disposed to think that George Melville had a pistol, for he could not understand how otherwise he should dare to confront a man of twice his size and strength.

"I don't care for the spoons," he said, "but I will take the money."

"No, you will return the money," said Melville, calmly.

"Who will make me?" demanded the tramp, defiantly.

"I will."

"We'll see about that!" said the tramp, desperately, and he sprang towards Melville, who had in the meantime entered the house and stood only six feet distant.

"Stay where you are!" exclaimed Melville, resolutely, and he drew a pistol, which he leveled at his formidable antagonist.

"That settles it, stranger!" said the tramp, "You've got the advantage of me this time. Just wait till we meet again."

"I am willing to wait for some time," said Melville, shrugging his shoulders. "I have no desire to cultivate your acquaintance, my friend."

"There are the spoons!" said the tramp, throwing them down on the table.

"Now for the money!"

The tramp looked at George Melville. Melville still held the pistol in his hand leveled at his breast. The thief was a large man, but he was not a brave one. He cowered before the resolute glance of his small opponent.

"Won't you interfere with me if I give back the money?" he asked.

"No."

"Will you let me go without firing at me?"

"Yes."

"Perhaps you won't keep your agreement," suggested the tramp, nervously.

"I am a man of my word," said Melville, calmly.

His calm, resolute tone, free from all excitement, impressed the tramp with confidence. He drew the notes from his vest pocket, where he had thrust them, and threw them on the table.

"Now, may I go?" he said.

In answer, George Melville, who stood between him and the door, drew aside, still, however, holding the pistol in position, and the tramp passed out, not sorry, it may be said, to get out of range of the weapon.

They watched him striding through the yard, and when he was fairly gone Mrs. Cole said:

"Oh, how can I thank you for saving me from this wretch?"

"I am glad to have been the instrument of deliverance," said Melville, politely.

"It was fortunate you had the pistol with you, Mr. Melville," said Herbert.

"Well, yes, perhaps it was," said Melville, smiling.

"Pray, put it up, Mr. Melville," said the farmer's wife, "it always makes me nervous to see a loaded pistol."

Melville bowed, and put back the pistol in his pocket.

"As your unpleasant visitor has gone," he said, "I may as well relieve your fears by saying that the pistol is not loaded."

"Not loaded!" exclaimed Herbert and Tom Tripp in concert.

"No; it has not been loaded to my knowledge for a year."

"Then how could you stand up against that man?" asked the farmer's wife, in wonder.

"He thought it was loaded!" replied Melville, "and that answered the purpose. I should be very reluctant to use a loaded pistol, for I have a high idea of the sacredness of human life, but I have no objection to playing upon the fears of a man like that."

Melville and Herbert remained at the farmhouse for half an hour, till the return of the farmer, when they resumed their river trip. They returned about noon. When they were walking through the main street, Herbert saw the town constable approaching with the air of a man who had business with him.

"Did you wish to speak to me, Mr. Bruce?" he asked.

"Yes, Herbert. I have a warrant for your arrest."

"For my arrest!" exclaimed Herbert, in amazement. "What for?"

"On complaint of Eben Graham, for abstracting postage stamps and money from the post office last evening."



Chapter XI. Tried For Theft.



Herbert stared at the constable in blank amazement.

"I am charged with stealing stamps and money from the post office?" he said.

"Yes."

"Who makes the charge?" demanded Herbert, in great excitement.

"Eben Graham."

"I don't know what it means," said our hero, turning to George Melville.

"It means," said Melville, "that the fellow is envious of you, and angry because he cannot supersede you with me. He evidently wants to do you an injury."

"It must be so; but I did not imagine that Eben could be so mean. Mr. Bruce, do you believe that I am a thief?"

"No, I don't, Herbert," said the constable, "and it was very much against my will that I started out to arrest you, you may be sure."

"When do you want me to go with you?" asked Herbert.

"You will go before Justice Slocum at two o'clock."

"Is it necessary for me to go to the lockup?" asked Herbert, shrinking, with natural repugnance, from entering the temporary house of tramps and law breakers.

"No, Herbert," answered the constable, in a friendly tone. "I'll take it upon myself to let you go home to dinner. I will call for you at quarter of two. Of course I shall find you ready to accompany me?"

"Yes, Mr. Bruce, I am impatient to meet Eben Graham, and tell him to his face that he has been guilty of a mean and contemptible falsehood, in charging me with theft. Not a person in the village who knows me will believe it."

"I will also call at your house, Herbert," said George Melville, "and accompany you to the office of the justice. I shall ask leave to give the details of Eben Graham's visit to me last evening."

"Thank you, Mr. Melville," said Herbert, "I am glad you do not believe a word of this story."

"I am not so easily deceived, Herbert. It is quite possible that stamps and money have been stolen, but, if so, it is your false friend and accuser who is guilty."

Of course Herbert had to tell his mother what had happened. She was agitated and alarmed, but became calmer when Herbert told her what was Eben's probable motive in making the charge.

"How can he behave so shamefully!" exclaimed the indignant parent.

"I didn't think him capable of it, myself, mother, although I had a poor opinion of him."

"Suppose that you can't prove that you are innocent, Herbert?" said Mrs. Carr, anxiously.

"It is for him to prove that I am guilty, mother," answered Herbert, who knew this much of law.

At a quarter of two Constable Bruce and Mr. Melville walked to the house together.

The door was opened for them by Herbert himself.

"So you haven't taken leg bail, Herbert," said the constable, jocosely.

"No, Mr. Bruce, I am on hand; I am in a hurry to meet Mr. Eben Graham and see whether he can look me in the face after his shameful behavior."

"Oh, Mr. Bruce, I never thought you would call at my home on such an errand," said Mrs. Carr, on the point of breaking down.

"Don't worry, Mrs. Carr," said the constable; "anybody may be charged with theft, however innocent. Your son has good friends who won't see him treated with injustice."

Herbert's mother was desirous of accompanying them to the office of the justice, but was persuaded to remain behind. Herbert knew that in her indignation she would not be able to be silent when she saw Eben Graham.

Justice Slocum was an elderly man, with a mild face and gray hair. When Herbert entered he greeted him in a friendly way.

"I am sorry to see you here, my boy," he said, "but I am sure there is some mistake. I have known you ever since you were a baby, and I don't believe you are guilty of theft now."

"I submit, Judge Slocum," said Eben Graham, who sat in a corner, his mean features looking meaner and more insignificant than usual, "I submit that you are prejudging the case."

"Silence, sir!" said Judge Slocum, warmly. "How dare you impugn my conduct? Though Herbert were my own son, I would give you a chance to prove him guilty."

"I hope you'll excuse me, judge," said Eben, cringing. "I am as sorry as you are to believe the boy guilty of stealing."

"Do your worst and say your worst, Eben Graham!" said Herbert, contemptuously, "but be very careful that you do not swear falsely."

"I don't need any instructions from you, Herbert Carr, considering that you are a criminal on trial," said Eben, maliciously.

"You are mistaken, sir," said George Melville. "To be under arrest does not make a man or boy a criminal."

"I am sure I am much obliged for the information, Mr. Melville," said Eben, spitefully. "You've chosen a nice companion."

"There you are right," said Melville, gravely. "I have done much better than if I had hired you."

Eben winced, but did not reply.

George Melville whispered to Herbert:

"Are you willing to accept me as your lawyer? I am not much of one, to be sure, but this case is very simple."

"I am very grateful for your offer, and accept it," said Herbert.

I do not propose to record the whole scene in detail, but only to give a general idea of the proceedings.

Eben Graham was sworn as a witness, and deposed that he had left Herbert in charge of the post office the previous evening. On his return he examined the stamps and contents of the money drawer, and found, to his surprise, that five dollars in money and six dollars' worth of stamps were missing.

"How did you know they were missing?" asked Melville.

"Because I knew precisely how much money was in the drawer and how many stamps were there."

"Then you counted them just before you went out?"

"Yes, sir."

"That was rather a singular time to make the count, was it not?"

"I don't know that it was, sir."

"I should suppose the end of the day would be a more appropriate time."

"I don't think so," answered Eben, shortly.

"Were you led to make the count because you suspected Herbert's honesty?" asked Mr. Melville.

"That was the very reason I did it," said Eben, with a malicious glance at Herbert.

"Isn't it a little curious that you should have selected a boy whose honesty you doubted, to fill your place?" asked George Melville, carelessly.

"There wasn't anybody else; he knew all about post-office work." answered Eben.

"Very good! Now, Mr. Graham, if you have no objection, will you tell why you wanted to get away from the post office last evening?"

Eben fidgeted, for he saw what was coming, and it made him nervous.

"I wanted a little rest," he answered, after a pause.

"Where did you go?"

"Why do you ask me that question?" asked Eben, moving about uneasily.

"Because I desire an answer."

"You know where I went," returned Eben, sullenly.

"Yes, but I wish you to tell me."

"Answer the question, witness!" said the judge, briefly.

"I went to the hotel," replied Eben, evasively.

"On whom did you call?"

"On you!" answered Eben, reluctantly.

"We have come to it at last. Now, what was your business with me?"

"To tell you that Herbert would not suit you as a companion," said the witness, who thought this answer rather a clever one.

"Whom did you recommend in his place?" pursued the questioner, relentlessly.

Eben hesitated, but his cleverness came again to his aid.

"I told you that I would be willing to come just to oblige you," he said.

"Did Herbert know that you were going to make this proposal?"

"No."

"You asked him, then, to remain in the post office while you absented yourself with a view of depriving him of the position he had just secured in my employ?"

"I would have got father to take him again in the store and post office," said Eben, defending himself from the implied charge of treachery.

"Yes, you told me so."

Eben nodded triumphantly. Even Melville had to admit that he was not treating Herbert meanly.

"By the way," said Melville, "isn't it rather strange that you should have been ready to recommend in your place a boy whose honesty you doubted?"

"I didn't know he was a thief," said Eben, somewhat abashed.

"No, but you suspected his honesty. That was your reason for counting the money and stamps before you left the office. At least, that is the reason you have given."

"He had been in the office before I was there," said Eben, uneasily.

"While he was there, were any stamps missing? Was he suspected of taking any stamps or money?"

"Not that I know of."

"Now, Mr. Graham, what answer did I make to your application?"

"What application?"

"To take you into my employ instead of Herbert."

"You wanted to keep him," said the witness, sullenly.

"Precisely. Having failed, then, in your application, you went home and discovered that some money and stamps had been stolen."

"Yes, sir. I was very much surprised -- "

"That will do, sir. Your discovery was remarkably well-timed. Herbert having obtained the position you sought, you straightway discovered proof of his dishonesty."

Eben colored, for the insinuation was plain enough for even him to understand.

"The two things had nothing to do with each other!" he said.

"That may be, but I call the attention of the judge to a very remarkable coincidence. Have the missing stamps or money been found on the person of the defendant?"

"He hasn't been searched."

"I will take it upon me to say that he is ready to submit to an examination," said Melville.

Herbert said, emphatically, "I am."

"Oh, it isn't likely you'd find anything now." said Eben, with a sneer.

"Why not?"

"He has had plenty of time to put 'em away."

"I am willing to have my mother's house searched," said Herbert, promptly.

"Oh, they ain't there!" said Eben, significantly.

"Where are they, then?"

Eben's answer took Herbert and his lawyer, and the judge himself, by surprise.



Chapter XII. Eben's Trump Card.



"I guess they're -- a part of them -- inside this letter," he said.

As he spoke he produced a letter, stamped and sealed, but not postmarked. The letter was addressed:

"Messrs. Jones & Fitch,

" -- -Chestnut Street,

"Philadelphia."

"What makes you think this letter contains money or postage stamps, Mr. Graham?" asked George Melville.

"Because I've seen an advertisement of Jones & Fitch in one of the weekly papers. They advertise to send several articles to any address on receipt of seventy-five cents in postage stamps."

"Very well. What inference do you draw from this?"

"Don't you see?" answered Eben, in malicious triumph. "That's where part of the stamps went. This letter was put into the post office by Herbert Carr this morning."

"That is not true," said Herbert, quietly.

"Maybe it isn't, but I guess you'll find Herbert Carr's name signed to the letter," said Eben.

"Have you seen the inside of the letter, Mr. Graham?"

"No, sir."

"Then how do you know Herbert Carr's name is signed to it?"

"I don't know, but I am pretty sure it is."

"You think Herbert Carr wrote the letter?"

"Yes, sir."

"If there is no objection," said Melville, "I will settle the matter by opening it."

"That's what I want you to do." said Eben Graham.

"And I also," said Herbert.

Mr. Melville deliberately cut open one end of the envelope with a small penknife, and drew out the folded sheet which it contained. As he did so, a small sheet of postage stamps fell upon the floor.

"There, do you see that?" said Eben in triumph.

The sheet of stamps contained twenty-five three-cent stamps, representing in value seventy-five cents.

"Shall I read the letter, sir?" asked Melville, of the judge.

"If there is no objection."

Melville read it aloud, as follows:

"WAYNEBORO, August 2lst. MESSRS. JONES & FITCH: I inclose seventy-five cents in stamps, and will be glad to have you send me the articles you advertise in the Weekly Gazette. Yours truly,

"Herbert Carr."

Herbert listened to the reading of this letter in amazement.

"I never wrote that letter," he said, "and I never heard of Jones & Fitch before."

"That's a likely story!" sneered Eben Graham. "I submit to Judge Slocum that I have proved my case. I haven't found out when all the stamps left, but I have shown where some are. One who will steal seventy-five cents' worth of stamps will steal six dollars' worth."

"I agree with you there, Mr. Graham," said George Melville. "Will you be kind enough to sit down at that table, and write to my dictation?"

"What should I do that for?" asked Eben, suspiciously.

"Never mind. Surely you can have no objection."

"Well, no; I don't know as I have, though I think it's all foolishness."

He sat down, and a pen was handed him.

"What shall I write?" he asked.

"Write 'Messrs. Jones & Fitch.'"

"What for?" demanded Eben, looking discomposed.

"That's my affair. Write."

Eben wrote the words, but he seemed to find some difficulty in doing so. It was clear that he was trying to disguise his handwriting.

"What next?" he asked.

"'I inclose seventy-five cents in stamps,'" proceeded George Melville.

"Do you want to throw suspicion on me?" asked Eben, throwing down the pen.

"Keep on writing!" said the judge.

Eben did so, but was very deliberate about it, and seemed very particular as to how he penned his letter.

"Very well!" said Melville. "Now, I wish Herbert Carr to take the pen, and I will dictate the same letter."

Herbert readily took the seat just vacated by Eben, and rapidly wrote the words dictated to him.

When he had finished his task, Mr. Melville took the two copies, and, first examining them himself, handed them, together with the original letter, to Justice Slocum.

"I have only to ask your honor," he said, "to compare these three notes and decide for yourself whether the original was written by Herbert Carr or Mr. Eben Graham, the witness against him."

Eben Graham looked very ill at ease, flushing and paling by turns while the examination was going on.

"I submit," he said, "that this is a very extraordinary way of treating a witness."

Justice Slocum, after a pause, said: "I find that Mr. Eben Graham's copy is unmistakably in the same handwriting as the original letter, purporting to be written by Herbert Carr."

"It's not so!" faltered Eben.

"Then," said George Melville, triumphantly, "as it seems clear that my young client is the victim of a base conspiracy, engineered by the man who has brought this charge of dishonesty against him, I have only to ask that he be honorably discharged."

"The request is granted," said Justice Slocum. "Herbert, you can go. It is clear that you are innocent of the charge made against you."

"I protest," began Eben Graham.

"As for you, Mr. Graham," said the justice, severely, "I have no words to express my scorn and detestation of your conduct in deliberately contriving a plot to ruin the reputation of an innocent boy, who has never done you any harm. Should Herbert Carr desire it, he is at liberty to sue you for having him arrested on a false charge trumped up by yourself."

Eben began to look frightened.

"I do not wish to punish Mr. Graham," said Herbert. "It is enough for me that my honesty has been vindicated."

"Go, then," said the justice to Eben. "It is fortunate for you that this boy is so forbearing."

Eben Graham slunk out of the justice's office, looking meaner and more contemptible than ever, while Herbert was surrounded by his friends, who congratulated him upon the happy issue of the trial.



Chapter XIII. Eben's Last Hope Fails.



Ebenezer Graham had taken no stock in his son's charge against Herbert. He was not prejudiced in favor of Herbert, nor did he feel particularly friendly to him, but he was a man of shrewdness and common sense, and he knew that Herbert was not a fool. When Eben made known to him the fact that the stamps and money were missing, he said keenly: "What has become of 'em?"

"I don't know," answered Eben, "but I can guess well enough."

"Guess, then," said his father, shortly.

"You know Herbert Carr took my place last evening?"

"Well?"

"There's no doubt that he took the stamps and money."

"That isn't very likely."

"I feel sure of it -- so sure that I mean to charge him with it."

"Well, you can see what he says."

Ebenezer did not understand that Eben intended to have the boy arrested, and would not have consented to it had he known. But Eben slipped out of the store, and arranged for the arrest without his father's knowledge. Indeed, he did not learn till the trial had already commenced, Eben having made some excuse for his absence.

When Eben returned his father greeted him in a tone very far from cordial.

"Well, Eben, I hear you've gone and made a fool of yourself?"

"I have only been defending your property, father," said Eben, sullenly. "I thought you'd appreciate it better than this."

"You've charged an innocent boy with theft, and now all his friends will lay it up agin' us."

"Were you going to be robbed without saying a word?" asked Eben.

"No, I'm not, Eben Graham; I'm goin' to say a word, and now's the time to say it. You can't pull wool over my eyes. The money's gone, and the stamps are gone, and somebody's got 'em."

"Herbert Carr!"

"No, it isn't Herbert Carr. It's somebody nearer to me, I'm ashamed to say, than Herbert Carr."

"Do you mean to say I took them?" asked Eben.

"I won't bring a charge unless I can prove it, but I shall watch you pretty closely after this."

"In that case, I don't wish to work for you any longer; I throw up the situation," said Eben, loftily.

"Verv well. When are you going to leave town?"

"I ain't going to leave town at present."

"Where are you going to board, then?"

Eben regarded his father in dismay.

"You're not going to send me adrift, are you?" he asked, in consternation.

"I'm not going to support you in idleness; if you give up your situation in the store, you'll have to go to work for somebody else."

"I wish I could," thought Eben, thinking of the rich young man at the hotel, from whom he had sought a position as companion.

"Then I shall have to leave Wayneboro," he said; "there's nothing to do here."

"Yes, there is; Farmer Collins wants a hired man."

"A hired man!" repeated Eben, scornfully. "Do you think I am going -- to hire out on a farm?"

"You might do a great deal worse," answered Ebenezer, sensibly.

"After being a dry-goods salesman in Boston, I haven't got down to that, I beg to assure you," said Eben, with an air of consequence.

"Then you will have to work in the store if you expect to stay at home," said his father. "And hark you, Eben Graham," he added, "don't report any more losses of money or stamps. I make you responsible for both."

Eben went back to his work in an uneasy frame of mind. He saw that he had not succeeded in imposing upon his father, and that the clear-sighted old gentleman strongly suspected where the missing articles had gone. Eben might have told, had he felt inclined, that the five-dollar bill had been mailed to a lottery agent in New York in payment for a ticket in a Southern lottery, and that the stamps were even now in his possession, and would be sold at the first opportunity. His plan to throw suspicion upon Herbert had utterly failed, and the cold looks with which he had been greeted showed what the villagers thought of his attempt.

"I won't stay in Wayneboro much longer," Eben inwardly resolved. "It's the dullest hole in creation. I can get along somehow in a large place, but here there's positively nothing. Hire out on a farm, indeed! My father ought to be ashamed to recommend such a thing to his only son, when he's so well off. If he would only give me two hundred dollars, I would go to California and trouble him no more. Plenty of people make money in California, and why shouldn't I? If that ticket draws a prize -- "

And then Eben went into calculations of what he would do if only he drew a prize of a thousand dollars. That wasn't too much to expect, for there were several of that amount, and several considerably larger. He pictured how independent he would be with his prize, and how he would tell his father that he could get along without him, displaying at the same time a large roll of bills. When he reached California he could buy an interest in a mine, and perhaps within three or four years he could return home twenty times as rich as his father. It was pleasant to think over all this, and almost to persuade himself that the good luck had actually come. However, he must wait a few days, for the ticket had not yet come, and the lottery would not be drawn for a week.

The ticket arrived two days later; Eben took care to slip the envelope into his pocket without letting his father or anyone else see it, for unpleasant questions might have been asked as to where he got the money that paid for it, Mr. Graham knowing very well that his son had not five dollars by him.

For a few days Eben must remain in Wayneboro, until the lottery was drawn. If he was unlucky, he would have to consider some other plan for raising money to get away from Wayneboro.

It was not till the day after the trial and his triumphant acquittal, that Herbert saw Eben. He came to the store to buy some groceries for his mother.

"Good-evening, Herbert," said Eben.

"Eben," said Herbert, coldly, "except in the way of business, I don't want to speak to you."

"You don't bear malice on account of that little affair, do you, Herbert?" said Eben, smoothly.

"That little affair, as you call it, might have been a very serious affair to me."

"I only did my duty," said Eben.

"Was it your duty to charge an innocent person with theft?"

"I didn't see who else could have taken the things," said Eben.

"Probably you know as well as anybody," said Herbert, contemptuously.

"What do you mean?" demanded Eben, coloring.

"You know better than I do. How much do I owe you?"

"Thirty-three cents."

"There is your money," said Herbert, and walked out of the store.

"I hate that boy!" said Eben, scowling at Herbert's retreating figure. "He puts on too many airs, just because a city man's taken him in charity and is paying his expenses. Some time I'll be able to come up with him, I hope."

Herbert was not of an unforgiving nature, but he felt that Eben had wronged him deeply, and saw no reason why he would not repeat the injury if he ever got the chance. He had at least a partial understanding of Eben's mean nature and utter selfishness, and felt that he wished to have nothing to do with him. Ebenezer Graham was very "close," but he was a hard-working man and honest as the world goes. He was tolerably respected in Wayneboro, though not popular, but Eben seemed on the high road to become a rascal.

A week slipped by, and a circular containing the list of prizes drawn was sent to Eben.

He ran his eyes over it in a flutter of excitement. Alas! for his hopes. In the list of lucky numbers the number on his ticket was not included.

"I have drawn a blank! Curse the luck!" he muttered, savagely. "The old man needn't think I am going to stay here in Wayneboro. If he won't give me money to go out West, why, then -- "

But he did not say what then.



Chapter XIV. A Trip To Boston.



"To-morrow, Herbert," said George Melville, as they parted for the day, "I shall propose a new excursion to you."

Herbert regarded him inquiringly.

"I want to go to Boston to make a few purchases, but principally to consult my physician."

"I hope you are not feeling any worse, Mr. Melville," said Herbert, with genuine concern, for he had come to feel a regard for his employer, who was always kind and considerate to him.

"No, I am feeling as well as usual; but I wish to consult Dr. Davies about the coming winter -- whether he would advise me to spend it in Massachusetts."

"If Mr. Melville goes away, I shall have to look for another place," thought Herbert, soberly. It was hardly likely, he knew, that he would obtain a position so desirable as the one he now filled.

"I hope he will be able to do so, Mr. Melville," he said, earnestly.

"I hope so; but I shall not be surprised if the doctor ordered me away."

"Then you won't want me to come to-morrow?"

"Certainly, unless you object to going to Boston with me."

"Object?" repeated Herbert, eagerly. "I should like nothing better."

In fact, our hero, though a well-grown boy of sixteen, had never been to Boston but three times, and the trip, commonplace as it may seem to my traveled young readers, promised him a large amount of novelty and pleasurable excitement.

"I shall be glad of your company, Herbert. I hardly feel the strength or enterprise to travel alone, even for so trifling a trip as going to Boston."

"At what hour will you go, Mr. Melville?"

"I will take the second train, at nine o'clock. It will afford me time enough, and save my getting up before my usual time."

Herbert would have preferred going by the first train, starting at half-past seven, as it would have given him a longer day in the city, but of course he felt that his employer had decided wisely.

"It will be quite a treat to me, going to Boston," he said. "I have only been there three times in my life."

"You certainly have not been much of a traveler, Herbert," said George Melville, smiling. "However, you are young, and you may see a good deal of the world yet before you die."

"I hope I will. It must be delightful to travel."

"Yes, when you are young and strong," said Melville, thoughtfully. "That makes a great deal of difference in the enjoyment."

Herbert did not fail to put in an appearance at the hotel considerably before it was time to leave for the train. George Melville smiled at his punctuality.

"I wish, Herbert," he said, "that I could look forward with as much pleasure as you feel to our trip to-day."

"I wish so, too, Mr. Melville."

"At any rate, I shall enjoy it better for having a companion."

The tickets were bought, and they took their places in one of the passenger cars.

Just as the train was ready to start, Herbert saw a young man with a ticket in his hand hurrying along the platform.

"Why, there's Eben Graham!" he said, in surprise.

"Is he entering the cars?"

"Yes, he has just got into the car behind us."

"I wonder if he is going to leave Wayneboro for good?"

"Probably he is only going to Boston for the day, perhaps to buy goods."

Herbert thought it doubtful whether Ebenezer Graham would trust his son so far, but did not say so. Eben, on his part, had not seen Herbert on board the train, and was not aware that he was a fellow passenger.

The journey was a tolerably long one -- forty miles -- and consumed an hour and a half. At last they rolled into the depot, and before the train had fairly stopped the passengers began to crowd toward the doors of the car.

"Let us remain till the crowd has passed out," said George Melville. "It is disagreeable to me to get into the throng, and it saves very little time."

"Very well, sir."

Looking out of the car window, Herbert saw Eben Graham walking swiftly along the platform, and could not forbear wondering what had brought him to the city.

"My doctor's office is on Tremont Street," said Mr. Melville. "I shall go there immediately, and may have to wait some time. It will be tiresome to you, and I shall let you go where you please. You can meet me at the Parker House, in School Street, at two o'clock."

"Very well, sir."

"Do you know where the hotel is?"

"No, but I can find it," answered Herbert, confidently.

"I believe I will also get you to attend to a part of my business for me."

"I shall be very glad to do so," said Herbert, sincerely. It made him feel more important to be transacting business in Boston.

"Here is a check for a hundred and fifty dollars on the Merchants' Bank," continued George Melville. "It is payable to the bearer, and you will have no trouble in getting the money on it. You may present it at the bank, and ask for fives and tens and a few small bills."

"Very well, sir."

Herbert felt rather proud to have so much confidence reposed in him, for to him a hundred and fifty dollars seemed a large sum of money, and he felt that George Melville was a rich man to draw so much at one time.

"Had I better go to the bank at once?" he asked.

"Yes, I think so; of course, I need not caution you to take good care of the money."

"I'll be sure to do that, sir."

They walked together to Tremont Street, and Mr. Melville paused at a doorway opposite the Common.

"My doctor's office is upstairs," he said. "We will part here and meet at the hotel. If you are late, I may go into the dining room; so if you don't see me in the reading room, go to the door of the dining room and look in."

"Very well, sir; but I think I shall be on time."

"The bank is open now, and you can cash the check if you go down there."

Left to himself, Herbert walked slowly along, looking into shop windows and observing with interested attention the people whom he met.

"It must be very pleasant to live in the city," he thought; "there is so much going on all the time."

It is no wonder that country boys are drawn toward the city, and feel that their cup of happiness would be full if they could get a position in some city store. They do not always find the reality equal to their anticipations. The long hours and strict discipline of a city office or mercantile establishment are not much like the freedom they pictured to themselves, and after they have paid their board bill in some shabby boarding house they seldom find much left over, either for amusement or needful expenses. The majority of boys would do better to remain in their country homes, where at least they can live comfortably and at small expense, and take such employment as may fall in their way. They will stand a much better chance of reaching a competence in middle life than if they helped to crowd the ranks of city clerks and salesmen. There is many a hard-working clerk of middle age, living poorly, and with nothing laid by, in the city, who, had he remained in his native village, might have reached a modest independence. It was hardly to be expected, however, that Herbert would feel thus. Upon him the show and glitter of the city shops and streets produced their natural effect, and he walked on buoyantly, seeing three times as much as a city boy would have done.

He turned down School Street, passing the Parker House, where he was to meet Mr. Melville. Just before he reached it he saw Eben Graham emerge from the hotel and walk towards Washington Street. Eben did not look behind him, and therefore did not see Herbert.

"I wonder where he is going?" thought our hero, as he followed a few steps behind Eben.



Chapter XV. An Obliging Guide.



On Washington Street, not far from Old South Church, is an office for the sale of railroad tickets to western points. It was this office which Eben entered.

"He is going to inquire the price of a ticket to some western city," thought Herbert. "I heard him say one day that he wanted to go West."

Our hero's curiosity was naturally aroused, and he stood at the entrance, where he could not only see but hear what passed within.

"What do you charge for a ticket to Chicago?" he heard Eben ask.

"Twenty-two dollars," was the answer of the young man behind the counter.

"You may give me one," said Eben.

As he spoke he drew from his vest pocket a roll of bills, and began to count off the requisite sum.

Herbert was surprised. He had supposed that Eben was merely making inquiries about the price of tickets. He had not imagined that he was really going.

"Can Mr. Graham have given him money to go?" he asked himself.

"When can I start?" asked Eben, as he received a string of tickets from the clerk.

"At three this afternoon."

Eben seemed well pleased with this reply. He carefully deposited the tickets in an inside vest pocket, and turned to go out of the office. As he emerged from it he caught sight of Herbert, who had not yet started to go. He looked surprised and annoyed.

"Herbert Carr!" he exclaimed. "How came you here?"

Mingled with his surprise there was a certain nervousness of manner, as Herbert thought.

"I came to Boston with Mr. Melville," said Herbert, coldly.

"Oh!" ejaculated Eben, with an air of perceptible relief. "Where is Mr. Melville?"

"He has gone to the office of his physician, on Tremont Street."

"Leaving you to your own devices, eh?"

"Yes."

"Look out you don't get lost!" said Eben, with affected gayety. "I am here on a little business for the old man."

Herbert did not believe this, in view of what he had seen, but he did not think it necessary to say so.

"Good-morning!" said Herbert, in a tone polite but not cordial.

"Good-morning! Oh, by the way, I have just been inquiring the cost of a ticket to St. Louis," said Eben, carelessly.

"Indeed! Do you think of going out there?"

"Yes, if the old man will let me," said Eben.

"Do you prefer St. Louis to Chicago?" asked Herbert, watching the face of Eben attentively.

Eben's face changed, and he looked searchingly at our hero, but could read nothing in his face.

"Oh, decidedly!" he answered, after a slight pause. "I don't think I would care for Chicago."

"And all the while you have a ticket for Chicago in your pocket!" thought Herbert, suspiciously, "Well, that's your own affair entirely, not mine."

"What train do you take back to Wayneboro?" asked Eben, not without anxiety.

"We shall not go before four o'clock."

"I may be on the train with you," said Eben, "though possibly I shall get through in time to take an earlier one."

"He is trying to deceive me," thought Herbert.

"Good-morning," he said, formally, and walked away.

"I wish I hadn't met him," muttered Eben to himself. "He may give the old man a clew. However, I shall be safe out of the way before anything can be done."

Herbert kept on his way, and found the bank without difficulty.

He entered and looked about him. Though unaccustomed to banks, he watched to see where others went to get checks cashed, and presented himself in turn.

"How will you have it?" asked the paying teller.

"Fives and tens, and a few small bills," answered Herbert, promptly.

The teller selected the requisite number of bank bills quickly, and passed them out to Herbert. Our hero counted them, to make sure that they were correct, and then put them away in his inside pocket. It gave him a feeling of responsibility to be carrying about so much money, and he felt that it was incumbent on him to be very careful.

"Where shall I go now?" he asked himself.

He would have liked to go to Charlestown, and ascend Bunker Hill Monument, but did not know how to go. Besides, he feared he would not get back to the Parker House at the time fixed by Mr. Melville. Still, he might be able to do it. He addressed himself to a rather sprucely dressed man of thirty-five whom he met at the door of the bank.

"I beg your pardon, sir, but can you tell me how far it is to Bunker Hill Monument?"

"About a mile and a half," answered the stranger.

"Could I go there and get back to the Parker House before one o'clock."

"Could you?" repeated the man, briskly. "Why, to be sure you could!"

"But I don't know the way."

"You have only to take one of the Charlestown horse cars, and it will land you only a couple of minutes' walk from the monument."

"Can you tell me what time it is, sir?"

"Only a little past eleven. So you have never been to Bunker Hill Monument, my lad?"

"No sir; I live in the country, forty miles away and seldom come to Boston."

"I see, I see," said the stranger, his eyes snapping in a very peculiar way. "Every patriotic young American ought to see the place where Warren fell."

"I should like to if you could tell me where to take the cars."

"Why, certainly I will," said the other, quickly. "In fact -- let me see," and he pulled out a silver watch from his vest pocket, "I've a great mind to go over with you myself."

"I shouldn't like to trouble you, sir," said Herbert.

"Oh, it will be no trouble. Business isn't pressing this morning, and I haven't been over for a long time myself. If you don't object to my company, I will accompany you."

"You are very kind," said Herbert. "If you are quite sure that you are not inconveniencing yourself, I shall be very glad to go with you -- that is, if you think I can get back to the Parker House by one o'clock."

"I will guarantee that you do," said the stranger, confidently. "My young friend, I am glad to see that you are particular to keep your business engagements. In a varied business experience, I have observed that it is precisely that class who are destined to win the favor of their employer and attain solid success."

"He seems a very sensible man," thought Herbert; "and his advice is certainly good."

"Come this way," said the stranger, crossing Washington Street. "Scollay's Square is close at hand, and there we shall find a Charlestown horse car."

Of course Herbert yielded himself to the guidance of his new friend, and they walked up Court Street together.

"That," said the stranger, pointing out a large, somber building to the left, "is the courthouse. The last time I entered it was to be present at the trial of a young man of my acquaintance who had fallen into evil courses, and, yielding to temptation, had stolen from his employer. It was a sad sight," said the stranger, shaking his head.

"I should think it must have been," said Herbert.

"Oh, why, why will young men yield to the seductions of pleasure?" exclaimed the stranger, feelingly.

"Was he convicted?" asked Herbert.

"Yes, and sentenced to a three years term in the State prison," answered his companion. "It always makes me feel sad when I think of the fate of that young man."

"I should think it would, sir."

"I have mentioned it as a warning to one who is just beginning life," continued the stranger. "But here is our car."

A Charlestown car, with an outside sign, Bunker Hill, in large letters, came by, and the two got on board.

They rode down Cornhill, and presently the stranger pointed out Faneuil Hall.

"Behold the Cradle of Liberty," he said. "Of course, you have heard of Faneuil Hall?"

"Yes, sir," and Herbert gazed with interest at the building of which he had heard so much.

It was but a short ride to Charlestown. They got out at the foot of a steep street, at the head of which the tall, granite column which crowns the summit of Bunker Hill stood like a giant sentinel ever on guard.



Chapter XVI. A New Battle Of Bunker Hill.



Just opposite the monument is a small, one-story structure, where views of the shaft may be purchased and tickets obtained.

"There is a small admission fee," said Herbert's companion.

"How much is it?" asked our hero.

"Twenty cents."

As Herbert thrust his hand into his pocket for the necessary money, his companion said:

"You had better let me pay for both tickets."

Though he said this, he didn't make any motion to do so.

"No, I will pay for both," said Herbert.

"But I really cannot permit you to pay for mine."

And still the speaker made no movement to purchase his ticket.

Herbert settled the matter by laying half a dollar on the desk, and asking for two tickets. He began to see that, in spite of his disclaimer, his guide intended him to do so. On the whole, this didn't please him. He would rather have had his offer frankly accepted.

"I didn't mean to have you pay," said the young man, as they passed through the door admitting them to an inner apartment, from which there was an exit into a small, inclosed yard, through which they were to reach the entrance to a spiral staircase by which the ascent was made.

Herbert did not answer, for he understood that his guide was not telling the truth, and he did not like falsehood or deceit.

They entered the monument and commenced the ascent.

"We have a tiresome ascent before us," said the other.

"How many steps are there?" asked Herbert.

"About three hundred," was the reply.

At different points in the ascent they came to landings where they could catch glimpses of the outward world through long, narrow, perpendicular slits in the sides of the monument.

At last they reached the top.

Herbert's guide looked about him sharply, and seemed disappointed to find a lady and gentleman and child also enjoying the view.

Herbert had never been so high before. Indeed, he had never been in any high building, and he looked about him with a novel sense of enjoyment.

"What a fine view there is here!" he said.

"True," assented his companion. "Let me point out to you the different towns visible to the naked eye."

"I wish you would," said the boy.

So his guide pointed out Cambridge, Chelsea, Malden, the Charles and Mystic Rivers, gleaming in the sunshine, the glittering dome of the Boston State House and other conspicuous objects. Herbert felt that it was worth something to have a companion who could do him this service, and he felt the extra twenty cents he had paid for his companion's ticket was a judicious investment.

He noticed with some surprise that his companion seemed annoyed by the presence of the other party already referred to. He scowled and shrugged his shoulders when he looked at them, and in a low voice, inaudible to those of whom he spoke, he said to Herbert: "Are they going to stay here all day?"

"What does it matter to me if they do?" returned Herbert, in surprise.

Indeed, to him they seemed very pleasant people, and he was especially attracted by the sweet face of the little girl. He wished he had been fortunate enough to possess such a sister.

At last, however, they finished their sightseeing, and prepared to descend. Herbert's companion waited till the sound of their descending steps died away, and then, turning to Herbert, said in a quick, stern tone: "Now give me the money you have in your pocket."

"What do you mean?" he said.

Herbert recoiled, and stared at the speaker in undisguised astonishment.

"I mean just what I say," returned the other. "You have one hundred and fifty dollars in your pocket. You need not deny it, for I saw you draw it from the bank and put it away."

"Are you a thief, then?" demanded Herbert.

"No matter what I am, I must have that money," said the stranger. "I came over with you exclusively to get it, and I mean business."

He made a step towards Herbert, but the boy faced him unflinchingly, and answered resolutely: "I mean business, too. The money is not mine, and I shall not give it up."

"Take care!" said the other, menacingly, "we are alone here. You are a boy and I am a man."

"I know that; but you will have to fight to get the money," said Herbert, without quailing.

He looked to the staircase, but his treacherous guide stood between him and it, and he was practically a prisoner at the top of the monument.

"Don't be a fool!" said the stranger. "You may as well give up the money to me first as last."

"I don't propose to give it up to you at all," said Herbert. "My employer trusted me with it, and I mean to be true to my trust."

"You can tell him that it was taken from you -- that you could not help yourself. Now hand it over!"

"Never!" exclaimed Herbert, resolutely.

"We'll see about that," said his companion, seizing the boy and grappling with him.

Herbert was a strong boy for his age, and he accepted the challenge. Though his antagonist was a man, he found that the boy was powerful, and not to be mastered as easily as he anticipated.

"Confound you!" he muttered, "I wish I had a knife!"

Though Herbert made a vigorous resistance, his opponent was his superior in strength, and would ultimately have got the better of him. He had thrown Herbert down, and was trying to thrust his hand into his coat pocket, when a step was heard, and a tall man of Western appearance stepped on the scene.

"Hello!" he said, surveying the two combatants in surprise. "What's all this? Let that boy alone, you skunk, you!"

As he spoke, he seized the man by the collar and jerked him to his feet.

"What does all this mean?" he asked, turning from one to the other.

"This boy has robbed me of one hundred and fifty dollars," said the man, glibly. "I fell in with him in the Boston cars, and he relieved me of a roll of bills which I had drawn from a bank in Boston."

"What have you got to say to this?" asked the Western man, turning to Herbert, who was now on his feet.

"Only this," answered Herbert, "that it is a lie. It was I who drew the money from the Merchants' Bank in Boston. This man saw me cash the check, followed me, and offered to come here with me, when I asked him for directions."

"That's a likely story!" sneered the young man. "My friend here is too sharp to believe it."

"Don't call me your friend!" said the Western man, bluntly. "I'm more than half convinced you're a scamp."

"I don't propose to stay here and be insulted. Let the boy give me my money, and I won't have him arrested."

"Don't be in too much of a hurry, young man! I want to see about this thing. What bank did you draw the money from?"

"From the Merchants' Bank -- the boy has got things reversed. He saw me draw it, inveigled himself into my confidence, and picked my pocket."

"Look here -- stop right there! Your story doesn't hang together!" said the tall Westerner, holding up his finger. "You said you met this boy in a horse car."

"We came over together in a Charlestown horse car," said the rogue, abashed.

"You've given yourself away. Now make yourself scarce! Scoot!"

The rascal looked in the face of the tall, resolute man from the West, and thought it prudent to obey. He started to descend, but a well-planted kick accelerated his progress, and he fell down several steps, bruising his knees.

"Thank you, sir!" said Herbert, gratefully. "It was lucky you came up just as you did. The rascal had got his hand on the money."

"He is a miserable scamp!" answered Herbert's new friend. "If there'd been a police-man handy, I'd have given him in charge. I've come clear from Wisconsin to see where Warren fell, but I didn't expect to come across such a critter as that on Bunker Hill."

Herbert pointed out to his new friend the objects in view, repeating the information he had so recently acquired. Then, feeling that he could spare no more time, he descended the stairs and jumped on board a horse car bound for Boston.



Chapter XVII. An Acceptable Present.



As the clock at the Old South Church struck one, Herbert ascended the steps of Parker's Hotel, and walked into the reading room. George Melville was already there.

"You are on time, Herbert," he said, with a smile, as our hero made his appearance.

"Yes, sir; but I began to think I should miss my appointment."

"Where have you been?"

"To Bunker Hill."

"Did you ascend the monument?"

"Yes, sir, and had a fight at the summit."

Mr. Melville looked at Herbert in amazement.

"Had a fight at the top of Bunker Hill Monument?" he ejaculated.

"Yes, sir; let me tell you about it."

When the story was told, Mr. Melville said: "That was certainly a remarkable adventure, Herbert. Still, I am not sorry that it occurred."

It was Herbert's turn to look surprised.

"I will tell you why. It proves to me that you are worthy of my confidence, and can be trusted with the care of money. It has also taught you a lesson, to beware of knaves, no matter how plausible they may be."

"I haven't got over my surprise yet, sir, at discovering the real character of the man who went with me. I am sorry I met him. I don't like to distrust people."

"Nor I. But it is not necessary to distrust everybody. In your journey through the world you will make many agreeable and trustworthy acquaintances in whom it will be safe to confide. It is only necessary to be cautious and not give your confidence too soon."

"Oh, I didn't mention that I met somebody from Wayneboro," said Herbert.

"Was it Eben Graham?"

"Yes."

"I met him myself on Washington Street. Did you speak to him?"

"Yes, sir."

"I suppose he goes back to-night?"

"I don't think he will go back at all, Mr. Melville."

His employer looked at him inquiringly.

"I saw him buy a ticket to Chicago, though he does not know it," continued Herbert. "When he spoke with me he didn't admit it, but spoke of going back by an afternoon train."

"I am afraid he has appropriated some of his father's funds," said Melville. "I doubt if Ebenezer Graham would voluntarily furnish him the means of going West."

"That was just what occurred to me," said Herbert; "but I didn't like to think that Eben would steal."

"Perhaps he has not. We shall be likely to hear when we return. But you must be hungry. We will go in to dinner."

Herbert followed Mr. Melville into the dining room, where a good dinner was ordered, and partaken of. Herbert looked over the bill of fare, but the high prices quite startled him. He was not used to patronizing hotels, and it seemed to him that the price asked for a single dish ought to be enough to pay for a whole dinner for two. He knew about what it cost for a meal at home, and did not dream that it would amount to so much more at a hotel.

When the check was brought Herbert looked at it.

"Two dollars and a half!" he exclaimed.

"It costs an awful amount to live in Boston."

"Oh a dinner can be got much cheaper at most places in Boston," said George Melville, smiling, "but I am used to Parker's, and generally come here."

"I am glad it doesn't cost so much to live in Wayneboro," said Herbert. "We couldn't afford even one meal a day."

"You haven't asked me what the doctor said," remarked Melville, as they left the dining room.

"Excuse me, Mr. Melville. It wasn't from any lack of interest."

"He advises me to go West by the first of October, either to Colorado or Southern California."

Herbert's countenance fell. The first of October would soon come, and his pleasant and profitable engagement with Mr. Melville would close.

"I am sorry," he said, gravely.

"I am not so sorry as I should have been a few weeks ago," said Melville. "Then I should have looked forward to a journey as lonely and monotonous. Now, with a companion, I think I may have a pleasant time."

"Who is going with you, Mr. Melville?" asked Herbert, feeling, it must be confessed, a slight twinge of jealousy.

"I thought perhaps you would be willing to accompany me," said Melville.

"Would you really take me, Mr. Melville?" cried Herbert, joyfully.

"Yes, if you will go."

"I should like nothing better. I have always wanted to travel. It quite takes my breath away to think of going so far away."

"I should hardly venture to go alone," continued George Melville. "I shall need some one to look after the details of the journey, and to look after me if I fall sick. Do you think you would be willing to do that?"

"I hope you won't fall sick, Mr. Melville; but if you do, I will take the best care of you I know how."

"I am sure you will, Herbert, and I would rather have you about me than a man. Indeed, I already begin to think of you as a younger brother."

"Thank you, Mr. Melville," said Herbert, gratefully. "I am glad you do."

"Do you think your mother will object to your leaving home, Herbert?"

"Not with you. She knows I shall be well provided for with you. Can I arrange to send money regularly to mother?" asked the boy. "I shouldn't like to think of her as suffering for want of it."

"Yes, but to guard against emergencies, we can leave her a sum of money before you start."

After dinner Mr. Melville proposed to Herbert to accompany him on a walk up Washington Street, They walked slowly, Herbert using his eyes diligently, for to him the display in the shop windows was novel and attractive.

At length they paused at the door of a large and handsome jewelry store -- one of the two finest in Boston.

"I want to go in here, Herbert," said his employer.

"Shall I stay outside?"

"No, come in with me. You may like to look about."

Though Herbert had no idea of the cost of the fine stock with which the store was provided, he saw that it must be valuable, and wondered where purchasers enough could be found to justify keeping so large a supply of watches, chains, rings and the numberless other articles in gold and silver which he saw around him.

"I would like to look at your watches," said Melville to the salesman who came forward to inquire his wishes.

"Gold or silver, sir?"

"Silver."

"This way, if you please."

He led the way to a case where through the glass covering Herbert saw dozens of silver watches of all sizes and grades lying ready for inspection.

"For what price can I get a fair silver watch?" asked Melville.

"Swiss or Waltham?"

"Waltham. I may as well patronize home manufactures."

"Here is a watch I will sell you for fifteen dollars," said the salesman, drawing out a neat-looking watch, of medium size. "It will keep excellent time, and give you good satisfaction."

"Very well; I will buy it on your recommendation. Have you any silver chains?"

One was selected of pretty pattern, and George Melville paid for both.

"How do you like the watch and chain, Herbert?" said his employer, as they left the store.

"They are very pretty, sir."

"I suppose you wonder what I want of two watches," said Melville.

"Perhaps you don't like to take your gold watch with you when you go out West, for fear of thieves."

"No, that is not the reason. If I am so unfortunate as to lose my gold watch, I will buy another. The fact is, I have bought this silver watch and chain for you."

"For me!" exclaimed Herbert, intensely delighted.

"Yes; it will be convenient for you, as well as me, to be provided with a watch. Every traveler needs one. There; put it in your pocket, and see how it looks."

"You are very kind to me, Mr. Melville," said Herbert, gratefully. "You couldn't have bought me anything which I should value more."

When Herbert had arranged the watch and chain to suit him, it must be confessed that it engrossed a large part of his attention, and it was wonderful how often he had occasion to consult it during the first walk after it came into his possession.



Chapter XVIII. A Thief In Trouble.



"Have you ever visited the suburbs of Boston?" asked Melville.

"No," answered Herbert. "I know very little of the city, and nothing of the towns near it."

"Then, as we have time to spare, we will board the next horse car and ride out to Roxbury."

"I should like it very much, Mr. Melville," said Herbert, in a tone of satisfaction. I may remark that Roxbury was at that time a separate municipality, and had not been annexed to Boston.

They did not have to wait long for a car. An open car, of the kind in common use during the pleasant season, drew near, and they secured seats in it. After leaving Dover Street, Washington Street, still then narrow, broadens into a wide avenue, and is called the Neck. It was gay with vehicles of all sorts, and Herbert found much to attract his attention.

"The doctor tells me I ought to be a good deal in the open air," said Melville, "and I thought I would act at once upon his suggestion. It is much pleasanter than taking medicine."

"I should think so," answered Herbert, emphatically.

Arrived at the end of the route, Melville and Herbert remained on the car, and returned at once to the city. When they reached the crowded part of Washington Street a surprise awaited Herbert.

From a small jewelry store they saw a man come out, and walk rapidly away.

"Mr. Melville," said Herbert, in excitement, "do you see that man?"

"Yes. What of him?"

"It is the man who tried to rob me on Bunker Hill Monument."

He had hardly uttered these words when another man darted from the shop, bareheaded, and pursued Herbert's morning acquaintance, crying, "Stop, thief!"

The thief took to his heels, but a policeman was at hand, and seized him by the collar.

"What has this man been doing?" he asked, as the jeweler's clerk came up, panting.

"He has stolen a diamond ring from the counter," answered the clerk. "I think he has a watch besides."

"It's a lie!" said the thief, boldly.

"Search him!" said the clerk, "and you'll find that I have made no mistake."

"Come with me to the station house, and prepare your complaint," said the policeman.

By this time a crowd had gathered, and the thief appealed to them.

"Gentlemen," he said, "I am a reputable citizen of St. Louis, come to Boston to buy goods, and I protest against this outrage. It is either a mistake or a conspiracy, I don't know which."

The thief was well dressed, and some of the bystanders were disposed to put confidence in him. He had not seen Herbert and George Melville, who had left the car and joined the throng, or he might not have spoken so confidently.

"He doesn't look like a thief," said one of the bystanders, a benevolent-looking old gentleman.

"I should say not," said the thief, more boldly. "It's a pretty state of things if a respectable merchant can't enter a store here in Boston without being insulted and charged with theft. If I only had some of my friends or acquaintances here, they would tell you that it is simply ridiculous to make such a charge against me."

"You can explain this at the station house," said the policeman. "It is my duty to take you there."

"Is there no one who knows the gentleman?" said the philanthropist before referred to. "Is there no one to speak up for him?"

Herbert pressed forward, and said, quietly:

"I know something of him; I passed the morning in his company."

The thief turned quickly, but he didn't seem gratified to see Herbert.

"The boy is mistaken," he said, hurriedly; "I never saw him before."

"But I have seen you, sir," retorted our hero. "You saw me draw some money from a bank in State Street, scraped acquaintance with me, and tried to rob me of it on Bunker Hill."

"It's a lie!" said the prisoner, hoarsely.

"Do you wish to make a charge to that effect?" asked the policeman.

"No, sir; I only mentioned what I knew of him to support the charge of this gentleman," indicating the jeweler's clerk.

The old gentleman appeared to lose his interest in the prisoner after Herbert's statement, and he was escorted without further delay to the station house, where a gold watch and the diamond ring were both found on his person. It is scarcely needful to add that he was tried and sentenced to a term of imprisonment in the very city -- Charlestown -- where he had attempted to rob Herbert.

"It is not always that retribution so quickly overtakes the wrongdoer," said Melville. "St. Louis will hardly be proud of the man who claims her citizenship."

"Dishonesty doesn't seem to pay in his case," said Herbert, thoughtfully.

"It never pays in any case, Herbert," said George Melville, emphatically. "Even if a man could steal enough to live upon, and were sure not to be found out, he would not enjoy his ill-gotten gain, as an honest man enjoys the money he works hard for. But when we add the risk of detection and the severe penalty of imprisonment, it seems a fatal mistake for any man to overstep the bounds of honesty and enroll himself as a criminal."

"I agree with you, Mr. Melville," said Herbert, thoughtfully. "I don't think I shall ever be tempted, but if I am, I will think of this man and his quick detection."

When they reached the depot, a little before four o'clock, George Melville sent Herbert to the ticket office to purchase tickets, while he remained in the waiting room.

"I might as well accustom you to the duties that are likely to devolve upon you," he said, with a smile.

Herbert had purchased the tickets and was turning away, when to his surprise he saw Ebenezer Graham enter the depot, laboring evidently under considerable excitement. He did not see Herbert, so occupied was he with thoughts of an unpleasant nature, till the boy greeted him respectfully.

"Herbert Carr!" he said; "when did you come into Boston?"

"This morning, sir."

"Have you seen anything of my son, Eben, here?" gasped Mr. Graham.

"Yes, sir; he was on the same train, but I did not see him to speak to him till after I reached the city."

"Do you know what he has been doing here?" asked Ebenezer, his face haggard with anxiety.

"I only saw him for five minutes," answered Herbert, reluctant to tell the father what he knew would confirm any suspicion he might entertain.

"Where did you see him?" demanded Ebenezer, quickly.

"At a railroad ticket office not far from the Old South Church."

"Do you know if he bought any ticket?" asked Ebenezer, anxiously.

"Yes," answered Herbert. "I overheard him purchasing a ticket to Chicago."

Ebenezer groaned, and his face seemed more and more wizened and puckered up.

"It is as I thought!" he exclaimed, bitterly. "My own son has robbed me and fled like a thief, as he is."

Herbert was shocked, but not surprised. He didn't like to ask particulars, but Ebenezer volunteered them.

"This morning," he said, "I foolishly gave Eben a hundred dollars, and sent him to Boston to pay for a bill of goods which I recently bought of a wholesale house on Milk Street. If I had only known you were going in, I would have sent it by you."

Herbert felt gratified at this manifestation of confidence, especially as he had so recently been charged with robbing the post office, but did not interrupt Mr. Graham, who continued:

"As soon as Eben was fairly gone, I began to feel sorry I sent him, for he got into extravagant ways when he was in Boston before, and he had been teasing me to give him money enough to go out West with. About noon I discovered that he had taken fifty dollars more than the amount I intrusted to him, and then I couldn't rest till I was on my way to Boston to find out the worst. I went to the house on Milk Street and found they had seen nothing of Eben. Then I knew what had happened. The graceless boy has robbed his father of a hundred and fifty dollars, and is probably on his way West by this time."

"He was to start by the three o'clock train, I think," said Herbert, and gave his reasons for thinking so.

Ebenezer seemed so utterly cast down by this confirmation of his worst suspicions, that Herbert called Mr. Melville, thinking he might be able to say something to comfort him.



Chapter XIX. Ebenezer Graham's Grief.



"How much have you lost by your son, Mr. Graham?" asked George Melville.

"Nearly two hundred and fifty dollars," groaned Ebenezer, "counting what I paid in the city to his creditors, it is terrible, terrible!" and he wrung his hands in his bitterness of spirit.

"I am sorry for you," said Melville, "and still more for him."

"Why should you be sorry for him?" demanded Ebenezer, sharply. "He hasn't lost anything."

"Is it nothing to lose his consciousness of integrity, to leave his home knowing that he is a thief?"

"Little he'll care for that!" said Mr. Graham, shrugging his shoulders. "He's laughing in his sleeve, most likely, at the way he has duped and cheated me, his father."

"How old is Eben, Mr. Graham?"

"He will be twenty in November," answered Ebenezer, apparently puzzled by the question.

"Then, as he is so young, let us hope that he may see the error of his ways, and repent."

"That won't bring me back my money," objected Ebenezer, querulously. It was clear that he thought more of the money he had lost than of his son's lack of principle.

"No, it will not give you back your money, but it may give you back a son purified and prepared to take an honorable position in society."

"No, no; he's bad, bad!" said the stricken father. "What did he care for the labor and toil it took to save up that money?"

"I hope the loss of the money will not distress you, Mr. Graham."

"Well, no, not exactly," said Ebenezer, hesitating. "I shall have to take some money from the savings bank to make up what that graceless boy has stolen."

It was clear that Ebenezer Graham would not have to go to the poorhouse in consequence of his losses.

"I can hardly offer you consolation," said George Melville, "but I suspect that you will not be called upon to pay any more money for your son."

"I don't mean to!" said Ebenezer, grimly.

"Going away as he has done, he will find it necessary to support himself, and will hardly have courage to send to you for assistance."

"Let him try it!" said Ebenezer, his eyes snapping.

"He may, therefore, being thrown upon his own resources, be compelled to work hard, and that will probably be the best thing that can happen to him."

"I hope he will! I hope he will!" said the storekeeper. "He may find out after a while that he had an easy time at home, and was better paid than he will be among strangers. I won't pay any more of his debts. I'll publish a notice saying that I have given him his time, and won't pay any more debts of his contracting. He might run into debt enough to ruin me, between now and the time he becomes of age."

George Melville considered that the storekeeper was justified in taking this step, and said so.

While they were on the train, Ebenezer got measurably reconciled to his loss, and his busy brain began to calculate how much money he would save by ceasing to be responsible for Eben's expenses of living and prospective debts. Without this drawback, he knew he would grow richer every year. He knew also that notwithstanding the sum it had just cost him, he would be better off at the end of the year than the beginning, and to a man of his character this was perhaps the best form of consolation that he could have.

Suddenly it occurred to Mr. Graham that he should need a clerk in place of his son.

"Now that Eben has gone, Herbert," he said, "I am ready to take you back."

This was a surprise, for Herbert had not thought of the effect upon his own business prospects.

"I have got a place, thank you, Mr. Graham," he said.

"You don't call trampin' round huntin' and fishin' work, do you?" said Ebenezer.

"It is very agreeable work, sir."

"But it stands to reason that you can't earn much that way. I wouldn't give you twenty-five cents a week for such doings."

"Are you willing to pay me more than Mr. Melville does?" asked Herbert, demurely, smiling to himself.

"How much does he pay you now?" asked Ebenezer, cautiously.

"Six dollars a week."

"Six dollars a week!" repeated the storekeeper, in incredulous amazement. "Sho! you're joking!"

"You can ask Mr. Melville, sir."

Ebenezer regarded George Melville with an inquiring look.

"Yes, I pay Herbert six dollars a week," said he, smiling.

"Well, I never!" ejaculated Ebenezer. "That's the strangest thing I ever heard. How in the name of conscience can a boy earn so much money trampin' round?"

"Perhaps it would not be worth as much to anyone else," said Melville, "but Herbert suits me, and I need cheerful company."

"You ain't goin' to keep him long at that figger, be you, Mr. Melville?" asked Mr. Graham, bluntly.

"I think we shall be together a considerable time, Mr. Graham. If, however, you should be willing to pay Herbert a larger salary, I might feel it only just to release him from his engagement to me."

"Me pay more'n six dollars a week!" gasped Ebenezer. "I ain't quite crazy. Why, it would take about all I get from the post office."

"You wouldn't expect me to take less than I can earn elsewhere, Mr. Graham," said Herbert.

"No-o!" answered the storekeeper, slowly. He was evidently nonplused by the absolute necessity of getting another clerk, and his inability to think of a suitable person.

"If Tom Tripp was with me, I might work him into the business," said Ebenezer, thoughtfully, "but he's bound out to a farmer."

An inspiration came to Herbert. He knew that his mother would be glad to earn something, and there was little else to do in Wayneboro.

"I think," he said, "you might make an arrangement with my mother, to make up and sort the mail, for a time, at least."

"Why, so I could; I didn't think of that," answered Ebenezer, relieved. "Do you think she'd come over to-morrow mornin'?"

"If she can't, I will," said Herbert. "I don't meet Mr. Melville till nine o'clock."

"So do! I'll expect you. I guess I'll come over and see your mother this evenin', and see if I can't come to some arrangement with her."

It may be added that Mr. Graham did as proposed, and Mrs. Carr agreed to render him the assistance he needed for three dollars a week. It required only her mornings, and a couple of hours at the close of the afternoon, and she was very glad to convert so much time into money.

"It makes me feel more independent," she said. "I don't want to feel that you do all the work, Herbert, and maintain the family single-handed."

The same evening Herbert broached the plan of traveling with Mr. Melville. As might have been expected, his mother was at first startled, and disposed to object, but Herbert set before her the advantages, both to himself and the family, and touched upon the young man's need of a companion so skillfully and eloquently that she was at last brought to regard the proposal favorably. She felt that George Melville was one to whom she could safely trust her only boy. Moreover, her own time would be partly occupied, owing to the arrangement she had just made to assist in the post office, so that Herbert carried his point.

The tenth of October arrived, the date which George Melville had fixed upon for his departure. Mrs. Carr had put Herbert's wardrobe in order, and he had bought himself a capacious carpetbag and an umbrella, and looked forward with eagerness to the day on which their journey was to commence. He had long thought and dreamed of the West, its plains and cities, but had never supposed that it would be his privilege to make acquaintance with them, at any rate, until he should have become twice his present age. But the unexpected had happened, and on Monday he and George Melville were to start for Chicago.



Chapter XX. An Old Acquaintance In Chicago.



In due time our travelers reached Chicago, and put up at the Palmer House. Herbert was much impressed by the elegance of the hotel, its sumptuous furniture, and luxurious table. It must be considered that he was an inexperienced traveler, though had he been otherwise he might be excused for his admiration.

"I have some business in Chicago, and shall remain two or three days," said George Melville.

Herbert was quite reconciled to the delay, and, as his services were not required, employed his time in making himself familiar with the famous Western city. He kept his eyes open, and found something new and interesting at every step. One day, as he was passing through the lower portion of the city, his attention was called to a young man wheeling a barrow of cabbages and other vegetables, a little in advance of him. Of course, there was nothing singular about this, but there seemed something familiar in the figure of the young man. Herbert quickened his step, and soon came up with him.

One glance was enough. Though disguised by a pair of overalls, and without a coat, Herbert recognized the once spruce dry-goods clerk, Eben Graham.

Eben recognized Herbert at the same time. He started, and flushed with shame, not because of the theft of which he had been guilty, but because he was detected in an honest, but plebeian labor.

"Herbert Carr!" he exclaimed, stopping short.

"Yes, Eben; it is I!"

"You find me changed," said Eben, dolefully.

"No, I should recognize you anywhere."

"I don't mean that. I have sunk very low," and he glanced pathetically at the wheelbarrow.

"If you refer to your employment, I don't agree with you. It is an honest business."

"True, but I never dreamed when I stood behind the counter in Boston, and waited on fashionable ladies, that I should ever come to this."

"He seems more ashamed of wheeling vegetables than of stealing," thought Herbert, and he was correct.

"How do you happen to be in this business, Eben?" he asked, with some curiosity.

"I must do it or starve. I was cheated out of my money soon after I came here, and didn't know where to turn."

Eben did not explain that he lost his money in a gambling house. He might have been cheated out of it, but it was his own fault, for venturing into competition with older and more experienced knaves than himself.

"I went for thirty-six hours without food," continued Eben, "when I fell in with a man who kept a vegetable store, and he offered to employ me. I have been with him ever since."

"You were fortunate to find employment," said Herbert.

"Fortunate!" repeated Eben, in a tragic tone. "How much wages do you think I get?"

"I can't guess."

"Five dollars a week, and have to find myself," answered Eben, mournfully. "What would my fashionable friends in Boston say if they could see me?"

"I wouldn't mind what they said as long as you are getting an honest living."

"How do you happen to be out here?" asked Eben.

His story was told in a few words.

"You are always in luck!" said Eben, enviously. "I wish I had your chance. Is Mr. Melville very rich?"

"He is rich; but I don't know how rich."

"Do you think he'd lend me money enough to get home?"

"I don't know."

"Will you ask him?"

"I will tell him that you made the request, Eben," answered Herbert, cautiously. "Have you applied to your father?"

"To the old man? Yes. He hasn't any more heart than a grindstone," said Eben, bitterly. "What do you think he wrote me?"

"He refused, I suppose."

"Here is his letter," said Eben, drawing from his pocket a greasy half sheet of note paper. "See what he has to say to his only son."

This was the letter:

"EBEN GRAHAM: I have received your letter, and am not surprised to hear that you are in trouble. 'As a man sows, so also shall he reap.' A young man who will rob his father of his hard earnings is capable of anything. You have done what you could to ruin me, and deserve what you have got. You want me to send you money to come home, and continue your wicked work -- I shall not do it. I wash my hands of you; I have already given notice, through the country paper that I have given you your time, and shall pay no more debts of your contracting.

"I am glad to hear that you are engaged in an honest employment. It is better than I expected. I would not have been surprised if I had heard that you were in jail. My advice to you is to stay where you are and make yourself useful to your employer. He may in time raise your wages. Five years hence, if you have turned over a new leaf and led an honest life, I may give you a place in my store. At present, I would rather leave you where you are.

"Ebenezer Graham."

"What do you say to that? Isn't that rather rough on an only son, eh?" said Eben.

It occurred to Herbert that Eben hardly deserved very liberal treatment from his father, notwithstanding he was an only son.

"Oh, the old man is awfully mean and close-fisted," said Eben. "He cares more for money than for anything else. By the way, how does Melville treat you?"

"Mr. Melville," said Herbert, emphasizing the Mr., "is always kind and considerate."

"Pays you well, eh?"

"He pays me more than I could get anywhere else."

"Pays all your hotel and traveling expenses, eh?"

"Of course."

"And a good salary besides?"

"Yes."

"Herbert," said Eben, suddenly, "I want you to do me a favor."

"What is it?"

"You've always known me, you know. When you was a little chap, and came into the store, I used to give you sticks of candy."

"I don't remember it," answered Herbert, truthfully.

"I did, all the same. You were so young that you don't remember it."

"Well, Eben, what of it?"

"I want you to lend me ten dollars, Herbert, in memory of old times."

Herbert was generously inclined, on ordinary occasions, but did not feel so on this occasion. He felt that Eben was not a deserving object, even had he felt able to make so large a loan. Besides, he could not forget that the young man who now asked a favor had brought a false charge of stealing against him.

"You will have to excuse me, Eben," he answered. "To begin with, I cannot afford to lend so large a sum."

"I would pay you back as soon as I could."

"Perhaps you would," said Herbert, "though I have not much confidence in it. But you seem to forget that you charged me with stealing only a short time since. I wonder how you have the face to ask me to lend you ten dollars, or any sum."

"It was a mistake," muttered Eben, showing some signs of confusion.

"At any rate, I won't say anything more about it while you are in trouble. But you must excuse my declining to lend you."

"Lend me five dollars, then," pleaded Eben.

"What do you want to do with it?"

"To buy lottery tickets. I am almost sure I should win a prize, and then I can pay you five dollars for one."

"I wouldn't lend any money for that purpose to my dearest friend," said Herbert "Buying lottery tickets is about the most foolish investment you could make."

"Then I won't buy any," said Eben. "Lend me the money and I will use it to buy clothes."

"You will have to excuse me," said Herbert, coldly.

"I didn't think you'd be so mean," whined Eben, "to a friend in distress."

"I don't look upon you as a friend, and for very good reasons," retorted Herbert, as he walked away.

Eben looked after him with a scowl of hatred.

"I'd like to humble that boy's pride," he muttered, as he slowly resumed his march.



Chapter XXI. Col. Warner.



When Herbert returned to the hotel he found George Melville in the reading room in conversation with a tall and dignified-looking stranger.

"Is that your brother, Mr. Melville?" asked the latter, as Herbert came forward and spoke to Melville.

"No, Colonel, he is my young friend and confidential clerk, Herbert Carr."

"Glad to make your acquaintance, Mr. Carr," said the colonel, affably, extending his hand as he spoke.

"This is Col. Warner, Herbert," explained George Melville.

Herbert, who was naturally polite, shook hands with the colonel, and said he was glad to make his acquaintance.

"I have been talking with Mr. Melville," said the colonel. "I am sorry to hear that he is traveling in search of health."

"Yes, sir; I hope he will find his journey beneficial."

"Oh, not a doubt of it! Not a doubt of it! I've been there myself. Do you know, when I was twenty-five, which I take to be about the age of your employer, I thought I should die of consumption?"

"I shouldn't have supposed it, sir," said Herbert, and Melville, too, felt surprised, as he noticed the stalwart proportions of the former consumptive.

"Ha! ha! I dare say not," said the colonel, laughing. "I don't look much like it now, eh?"

"No, you certainly don't, colonel," said Melville. "I am curious to know how you overcame the threatened danger."

"I did what you are doing, sir; I came West."

"But the mere coming West did not cure you, did it?"

"No, sir; it was the life I lived," returned Col. \Varner. "I didn't stay in the cities; I went into the wilderness. I lived in a log-cabin. I bought a horse, and rode every day. I kept in the open air, and, after a while, I found my strength returning and my chest expanding, and in a twelvemonth I could afford to laugh at doctors."

"And you have never had a return of the old symptoms?" asked Melville, with interest.

"Never, except four years afterwards, when I went to New York and remained nearly a year. I am now fifty, and rather hale and hearty for my years, eh?"

"Decidedly so."

"Let me advise you to follow my example, Mr. Melville."

"It was my intention when I started West to live very much as you indicated," said Melville. "Now that I have heard your experience, I am confirmed in my resolve."

"Good! I am glad to hear it. When do you leave Chicago?"

"To-morrow, probably."

"And how far West do you intend to go?"

"I have thought of Colorado."

"Couldn't do better. I know Colorado like a book. In fact, I own some valuable mining property there, up in -- ahem! Gilpin County. By the way -- I take it you are a rich man -- why don't you invest in that way? Perhaps, however, you have it in view?"

"No, I haven't thought of it," answered Melville. "The fact is, I am not anxious to become richer, having enough for all my present needs."

"Just so," said the colonel. "But you might marry."

"Even if I did -- "

"You would have money enough," said Col. Warner, finishing the sentence for him. "Well, I am delighted to hear it. I am very well fixed myself -- in fact, some of my friends call me, ha! ha! -- the nabob. But, as I was saying I am rich enough and to spare, and still -- you may be surprised -- still I have no objection to making a little more money."

Col. Warner nodded his head vigorously, and watched George Melville to see the effect upon him of this extraordinary statement.

"Very natural, colonel," said Melville. "I believe most people want to be richer. Perhaps if I had vigorous health I might have the same wish. At present my chief wish is to recover my health."

"You'll do it, sir, you'll do it -- and in short order, too! Then you can turn your attention to money-making."

"Perhaps so," said Melville, with a smile.

"If not for yourself, for your young friend here," added the colonel. "I take it he is not rich."

"I have my fortune still to make, Col. Warner," said Herbert, smiling.

"The easiest thing in the world out here, my boy!" said the colonel, paternally. "So you start to-morrow?" he inquired, turning to Melville.

"I think of it."

"Egad! I've a great mind to accompany you," said the colonel. "Why shouldn't I? I've got through all my business in Chicago, and I like the pure air of the prairies best."

"We shall be glad of your company, colonel," said Melville, politely.

"Thank you, sir; that decides me. I'll see you again and fix the hour of going, or rather I'll conform myself to your arrangements."

"Very well, colonel."

"What do you think of my new acquaintance, Col. Warner, Herbert?" asked Melville when they were alone.

"He seems to have a very good opinion of himself," answered Herbert.

"Yes, he is very well pleased with himself. He isn't a man exactly to my taste, but he seems a representative Western man. He does not look much like a consumptive?"

"No, sir."

"I feel an interest in him on that account," said Melville, seriously. "If at any time I could become as strong and stalwart I would willingly surrender one-half, nay nine-tenths of my fortune. Ill health is a great drag upon a man; it largely curtails his enjoyments, and deprives him of all ambition."

"I don't see why his remedy wouldn't work well in your case, Mr. Melville," said Herbert, earnestly.

"Perhaps it may. At any rate, I feel inclined to try it. I am glad the colonel is going to travel with us, as I shall be able to question him about the details of his cure. He seems a bluff, genial fellow, and though I don't expect to enjoy his companionship much, I hope to derive some benefit from it."

"By the way, Mr. Melville, I met an old acquaintance while I was out walking," said Herbert.

"Indeed!"

"Eben Graham."

"How did he look -- prosperous?"

"Hardly -- he was wheeling a barrow of vegetables."

"Did you speak with him?"

"Yes; he wanted to borrow money."

"I am not surprised at that; I thought it time for him to be out of money. Did you lend him?"

"No; I found he wanted money to buy a lottery ticket. I told him I wouldn't lend money to my best friend for that purpose."

"Very sensible in you, Herbert."

"If he had been in distress, I might have let him have a few dollars, notwithstanding he treated me so meanly at Wayneboro, but he seems to be earning a living."

"I presume he doesn't enjoy the business he is in?"

"No; he complains that he has lowered himself by accepting such a place."

"It doesn't occur to him that he lowered himself when he stole money from his father, I suppose."

"It doesn't seem to."

Later in the day Herbert came across Col. Warner in the corridor of the hotel.

"Ha! my young friend!" he said, affably. "I am glad to meet you."

"Thank you, sir."

"And how is your friend?"

"No change since morning," answered Herbert, slightly smiling.

"By the way, Herbert -- your name is Herbert, isn't it -- may I offer you a cigar?" said Col. Warner.

The colonel opened his cigar-case and extended it to Herbert.

"Thank you, sir, but I don't smoke."

"Don't smoke? That is, you don't smoke cigars. May I offer you a cigarette?"

"I don't smoke at all, colonel."

"Indeed, remarkable! Why, sir, before I was your age I smoked."

"Do you think it good for consumption?" asked Herbert.

"Ha, ha, you have me there! Well, perhaps not. Do you know," said the colonel, changing the conversation, "I feel a great interest in your friend."

"You are very kind."

"'Upon my soul, I do. He is a most interesting young man. Rich, too! I am glad he is rich!"

"He would value health more than money," said Herbert.

"To be sure, to be sure! By the way, you don't know how much property your friend has?"

"No, sir, he never told me," answered Herbert, surprised at the question.

"Keeps such matters close, eh? Now, I don't. I never hesitate to own up to a quarter of a million. Yes, quarter of a million! That's the size of my pile."

"You are fortunate, Col. Warner," said Herbert, sincerely.

"So I am, so I am! Two years hence I shall have half a million, if all goes well. So you won't have a cigar; no? Well, I'll see you later."

"He's a strange man," thought Herbert. "I wonder if his statements can be relied upon." Somehow Herbert doubted it. He was beginning to distrust the colonel.



Chapter XXII. A Mountain Stage.



We pass over several days, and change the scene. We left Herbert and Melville in the Palmer House in Chicago, surrounded by stately edifices and surging crowds. Now everything is changed. They are in a mountainous district, where a man might ride twenty miles without seeing a house. They are, in fact, within the limits of what was then known as the Territory of Colorado. It is not generally known that Colorado contains over a hundred mountain summits over ten thousand feet above the sea level. It is perhaps on account of the general elevation that it is recommended by physicians as a good health resort for all who are troubled with lung complaints.

At the time of which I speak most of the traveling was done by stage. Now railroads unite the different portions with links of steel, and make traveling less cumbersome and laborious. There was one of the party, however, who did not complain, but rather enjoyed the jolting of the lumbering stage-coach.

Col. Warner was of the party. He professed to feel an extraordinary interest in George Melville, and was anxious to show him the country where he had himself regained his health.

"Lonely, sir!" repeated the colonel, in answer to a remark of George Melville. "Why, sir, it's a populous city compared with what it was in '55, when I was out here. I built myself a cabin in the woods, and once for twelve months I didn't see a white face."

"Were there many Indians, Colonel?" asked Herbert.

"Indians? I should say so. Only twenty miles from my cabin was an Indian village."

"Did they trouble you any?" asked Herbert, curiously.

"Well, they tried to," answered the colonel. "One night as I lay awake I heard stealthy steps outside, and peeping through a crevice between the logs just above the head of my bed -- by the way, my bed was the skin of a bear I had myself killed -- I could see a string of Utes preparing to besiege me."

"Were you afraid?" asked Herbert, a little mischievously, for he knew pretty well what the colonel would say.

"Afraid!" repeated the colonel, indignantly. "What do you take me for? I have plenty of faults," continued Col. Warner, modestly, "but cowardice isn't one of them. No, sir; I never yet saw the human being, white, black, or red, that I stood in fear of. But, as I was saying, the redskins collected around my cabin, and were preparing to break in the door, when I leveled my revolver and brought down their foremost man. This threw them into confusion. They retreated a little way, then advanced again with a horrible yell, and I gave myself up for lost. But I got in another shot, bringing down another warrior, this time the son of their chief. The same scene was repeated. Well, to make a long story short, I repulsed them at every advance, and finally when but three were left, they concluded that prudence was the better part of valor, and fled, leaving their dead and wounded behind them."

"How many were there of them?" asked Herbert.

"Well, in the morning when I went out I found seven dead redskins, and two others lying at the point of death."

"That was certainly a thrilling adventure, Colonel," said George Melville, smiling.

"Egad, I should say so."

"I confess I don't care to meet with any such."

"Oh, no danger, no danger!" said the colonel, airily. "That is, comparatively speaking. In fact, the chief danger is of a different sort."

"Of the sleigh upsetting and tipping us out into some of the canyons, I suppose you mean?"

"No, I speak of the gentlemen of the road -- road agents as they are generally called."

"You mean highwaymen?"

"Yes."

"Is there much danger of meeting them?" asked Melville.

"Well, there's a chance. They are quite in the habit of attacking stage-coaches, and plundering the passengers. Sometimes they make rich hauls."

"That must be rather inconvenient to the passengers." said Melville. "Can't the laws reach these outlaws?"

"They don't seem to. Why, there are men who have been in the business for years, and have never been caught."

"Very true," said a fellow traveler. "There's Jerry Lane, for instance. He has succeeded thus far in eluding the vigilance of the authorities."

"Yes," said the colonel, "I once saw Lane myself. Indeed he did me the honor of relieving me of five hundred dollars."

"Couldn't you help it?" asked Herbert.

"No; he covered me with his revolver, and if I had drawn mine I shouldn't have lived to take aim at him."

"Were you in a stage at the time?"

"No, I was riding on horseback."

"Is this Lane a large man?" asked George Melville.

"Not larger than myself," continued the colonel.

"Where does he live -- in some secret haunt in the forest, I suppose?"

"Oh, no, he doesn't confine himself to one place. He travels a good deal. Sometimes he goes to St. Louis. I have heard that he sometimes even visits New York."

"And is he not recognized?"

"No; he looks like anything but an outlaw. If you should see him you might think him a prosperous merchant, or banker."

"That's curious!" said Herbert.

"The fact is," said the colonel, "when you travel by stage-coaches in these solitudes you have to take the chances. Now I carry my money concealed in an inner pocket, where it isn't very likely to be found. Of course I have another wallet, just for show, and I give that up when I have to."

There was a stout, florid gentleman present, who listened to the above conversation with ill-disguised nervousness. He was a New York capitalist, of German birth, going out to inspect a mine in which he proposed purchasing an interest. His name was Conrad Stiefel.

"Good gracious!" said he, "I had no idea a man ran such a risk, or I would have stayed at home. I decidedly object to being robbed."

"Men are robbed in a different way in New York," said George Melville.

"How do you mean, Mr. Melville?"

"By defaulting clerks, absconding cashiers, swindlers of excellent social position."

"Oh, we don't mind those things," said Mr. Stiefel. "We can look out for ourselves. But when a man points at you with a revolver, that is terrible!"

"I hope, my dear sir, you take good care of your money."

"That I do," said Stiefel, complacently. "I carry it in a belt around my waist. That's a good place, hey?"

"I commend your prudence, sir," said the colonel. "You are evidently a wise and judicious man."

"They won't think of looking there, hey?" laughed Stiefel.

"I should say not."

"You may think what you like, Mr. Stiefel," said a tall, thin passenger, who looked like a book peddler, "but I contend that my money is in a safer place than yours."

"Indeed, Mr. Parker, I should like to know where you keep it," said Col. Warner, pleasantly.

"You can't get at it without taking off my stockings," said the tall man, looking about him in a self-satisfied manner.

"Very good, 'pon my soul!" said the colonel. "I really don't know but I shall adopt your hiding place. I am an old traveler, but not too old to adopt new ideas when I meet with good ones."

"I think you would find it to your interest, Colonel," said Parker, looking flattered.

"Well, well," said the colonel, genially, "suppose we change the subject. There isn't much chance of our being called upon to produce our money, or part with it. Still, as I said a while since, it's best to be cautious, and I see that you all are so. I begin to feel hungry, gentlemen. How is it with you?"

"Are we anywhere near the place for supper?" asked Stiefel. "I wish I could step into a good Broadway restaurant; I feel empty."

"Only a mile hence, gentlemen, we shall reach Echo Gulch, where we halt for the night. There's a rude cabin there, where they will provide us with supper and shelter."

This announcement gave general satisfaction. The colonel proved to be right. The stage soon drew up in front of a long one-story building, which bore the pretentious name of the Echo Gulch Hotel.



Chapter XXIII. A Startling Revelation.



A stout, black-bearded man stood in front of the hotel to welcome the stage passengers. He took a clay pipe from his lips and nodded a welcome.

"Glad to see you, strangers," he said. "Here, Peter, you black rascal, help the gentlemen with their baggage."

The door was thrown open, and the party filed into a comfortless looking apartment, at one end of which was a rude bar.

One of the passengers, at least, seemed to know the landlord, for Col. Warner advanced to greet him, his face beaming with cordiality.

"How are you, John?" he said. "How does the world use you?"

The landlord growled something inaudible.

"Have a drink, colonel?" was the first audible remark.

"Don't care if I do. It's confounded dry traveling over these mountain roads. Walk up, gentlemen. Col. Warner doesn't drink alone."

With the exception of Herbert and George Melville, the passengers seemed inclined to accept the offer.

"Come along, Melville," said the colonel; "you and your friend must join us."

"Please excuse me, colonel," answered Melville. "I would prefer not to drink."

"Oh, nonsense! To oblige me, now."

"Thank you; but I am traveling for my health, and it would not be prudent."

"Just as you say, Melville; but a little whisky would warm you up and do you good, in my opinion."

"Thank you all the same, colonel; but I think you must count me out."

The colonel shrugged his shoulders and beckoned Herbert.

"You can come, anyway; your health won't prevent."

Melville did not interfere, for he knew it would give offense, but he hoped his young clerk would refuse.

"Thank you," said Herbert; "I won't object to a glass of sarsaparilla."

"Sarsaparilla!" repeated the colonel, in amazement. "What's that?"

"We don't keep no medicine," growled the landlord.

"Have you root-beer?" asked Herbert.

"What do you take me for?" said the landlord, contemptuously. "I haven't got no root-beer. Whisky's good enough for any man."

"I hope you'll excuse me, then," said Herbert. "I am not used to any strong drinks."

"How old are you?" asked the colonel, rather contemptuously.

"Sixteen."

"Sixteen years old and don't drink whisky! My young friend, your education has been sadly neglected."

"I dare say it has," answered Herbert, good-naturedly.

"Gentlemen," said Col. Warner, apologetically, "the boy is a stranger, and isn't used to our free Western ways. He's got the makings of a man in him, and it won't be long before he'll get over his squeamishness, and walk up to the bar as quick as any one of us."

Herbert and Melville stood apart, while the rest of the company emptied their glasses, apparently at a gulp. It was clear that their refusal had caused them to be regarded with dislike and suspicion.

The accommodations of the Echo Gulch Hotel were far from luxurious. The chambers were scarcely larger than a small closet, clap-boarded but not plastered, and merely contained a bedstead. Washing accommodations were provided downstairs.

Herbert and George Melville were assigned to a single room, to which they would not have objected had the room been larger. It was of no use to indulge in open complaints, however, since others had to fare in the same way.

"This isn't luxury, Herbert," said Melville.

"No," answered the boy; "but I don't mind it if you don't."

"I am afraid I may keep you awake by my coughing, Herbert."

"Not if I once get to sleep. I sleep as sound as a top."

"I wish I did; but I am one of the wakeful kind. Being an invalid, I am more easily annoyed by small inconveniences. You, with your sturdy health, are more easily suited."

"Mr. Melville, I had just as lief sleep downstairs in a chair, and give you the whole of the bed."

"Not on my account, Herbert. I congratulate myself on having you for a roommate. If I had been traveling alone I might have been packed away with the colonel, who, by this time, would be even less desirable as a bedfellow than usual."

The worthy colonel had not been content with a single glass of whisky, but had followed it up several times, till his utterance had become thick, and his face glowed with a dull, brick-dust color.

Col. Warner had been assigned to the adjoining chamber, or closet, whichever it may be called. He did not retire early, however, while Herbert and George Melville did.

Strangely enough, Herbert, who was usually so good a sleeper, after a short nap woke up. He turned to look at his companion, for it was a moonlight night, and saw that he was sleeping quietly.

"I wonder what's got into me?" he thought; "I thought I should sleep till morning."

He tried to compose himself to sleep, but the more effort he made the broader awake he became. Sometimes it seems as if such unaccountable deviations from our ordinary habits were Heaven-sent. As Herbert lay awake he suddenly became aware of a conversation which was being carried on, in low tones, in the next room. The first voice he heard, he recognized as that of the colonel.

"Yes," he said, "some of the passengers have got money. There's that Stiefel probably carries a big sum in gold and notes. When I was speaking of the chance of the stage being robbed, he was uncommon nervous."

"Who's Stiefel?" was growled in another voice, which Herbert had no difficulty in recognizing as the landlord's.

"Oh, he's the fat, red-faced German. From his talk, I reckon he's come out to buy mines somewhere in Colorado."

"We'll save him the trouble."

"So we will -- good joke, John. Oh, about this Stiefel, he carries his money in a belt round his waist. I infer that it is gold."

"Good! What about the others?"

"There's a tall, thin man -- his name is Parker," proceeded the colonel; "he's smart, or thinks he is; you'll have to pull his stockings off to get his money. Ha, ha!"

"How did you find out, colonel?" asked the landlord, in admiration.

"Drew it out of him, sir. He didn't know who he was confiding in. He'll wonder how the deuce his hiding place was suspected."

Other passengers were referred to who have not been mentioned, and in each case the colonel was able to tell precisely where their money was kept.

"How about that milksop that wouldn't drink with us?" inquired the landlord, after a while.

"Melville? I couldn't find out where he keeps his cash. Probably he keeps it in his pocket. He doesn't look like a cautious man."

"Who's the boy?"

"Only a clerk or secretary of Melville's. He hasn't any money, and isn't worth attention."

"Very glad to hear it," thought Herbert. "I don't care to receive any attention from such gentry. But who would have thought the colonel was in league with stage robbers? I thought him a gentleman."

Herbert began to understand why it was that Col. Warner, if that was his real name, had drawn the conversation to stage robbers, and artfully managed to discover where each of the passengers kept his supply of money. It was clear that he was in league with the landlord of the Echo Gulch Hotel, who, it was altogether probable, intended to waylay the stage the next day.

This was a serious condition of affairs. The time had been when, in reading stories of adventure, Herbert had wished that he, too, might have some experience of the kind. Now that the opportunity had come, our hero was disposed to regard the matter with different eyes.

"What can be done," he asked himself, anxiously, "to escape the danger which threatens us to-morrow?"



Chapter XXIV. A Morning Walk.



Herbert found it difficult to sleep from anxiety. He felt that the burden was too great for him alone to bear, and he desired to speak on the subject to George Melville. But there was a difficulty about doing this undetected, on account of the thinness of the partitions between the rooms. If he could hear Col. Warner, the latter would also be able to hear him.

The stage was to start at seven o'clock the next morning, and before that time some decision must be made. The first question was, should they, or should they not, take passage, as they had anticipated?

At half-past five, Herbert, turning in bed, found his bedfellow awake.

"Mr. Melville," he whispered, "I have something important to communicate, and cannot do so here on account of the danger of being heard in the next room. Are you willing to dress and take a little walk with me before breakfast?"

George Melville's physical condition did not make him usually favorable to early rising, but he knew Herbert well enough to understand that he had a satisfactory reason for his request.

"Yes, Herbert," he said, "I will get up."

Not a word was exchanged, for Mr. Melville's discretion prevailed over his curiosity. In ten minutes both were fully dressed and descended the stairs.

There was no one stirring except a woman, the landlord's wife, who was lighting the fire in order to prepare breakfast.

She regarded the two with surprise, and perhaps a little distrust.

"You're stirrin' early, strangers," she said.

"Yes," answered Melville, courteously, "we are going to take a little walk before breakfast; it may sharpen our appetites."

"Humph!" said the woman; "that's curious. I wouldn't get up so early if I wasn't obliged. There ain't much to see outdoors."

"It is a new part of the country to us," said Melville, "and we may not have another chance to see it."

"When will breakfast be ready?" asked Herbert.

"Half an hour, more or less," answered the woman, shortly.

"We will be back in time," he said.

The landlady evidently thought their early-rising a singular proceeding, but her suspicions were not aroused. She resumed her work, and Herbert and his friend walked out through the open door.

When they had reached a spot a dozen rods or more distant, Melville turned to his young clerk and asked:

"Well, Herbert, what is it?"

"I have discovered, Mr. Melville, that our stage is to be stopped to-day and the passengers plundered."

"How did you discover this?" asked Melville, startled.

"By a conversation which I overheard in the next chamber to us."

"But that chamber is occupied by Col. Warner."

"And he is one of the conspirators," said Herbert, quietly.

"Is it possible?" ejaculated Melville. "Can we have been so deceived in him? Does he propose to waylay the stage?"

"No, I presume he will be one of the passengers."

"Tell me all you know about this matter, Herbert. Who is engaged with him in this plot?"

"The landlord."

"I am not much surprised at this," said Melville, thoughtfully. "He is an ill-looking man, whose appearance fits the part of highwayman very well. Then you think the colonel is in league with him?"

"I am sure of that. Don't you remember how skillfully Col. Warner drew out of the passengers the hiding places of their money yesterday?"

"Yes."

"He has told all to the landlord, and he will no doubt make use of the knowledge. That is all, Mr. Melville. I could not rest till I had told you, so that you might decide what to do."

"It seems quite providential that you were kept awake last night, Herbert, otherwise this blow would have come upon us unprepared. Even with the knowledge that it impends, I hardly know what it is best for us to do."

"We might decide not to go in the stage," suggested Hebert.

"But we should have to go to-morrow. We cannot stay here, and there is no other way of traveling. As the colonel seems to think I have money, there would be another attack to-morrow. Besides, where could we stay except at this hotel, which is kept, as it appears, by the principal robber."

"That is true," said Herbert, puzzled; "I didn't think of that."

"I would quite as soon stand my chance of being robbed in the stage, as be attacked here. Besides, I cannot make up my mind to desert my fellow passengers. It seems cowardly to send them off to be plundered without giving them a hint of their danger."

"Couldn't we do that?"

"The result would be that they would not go, and there is no knowing how long we should be compelled to remain in this secluded spot."

"Mr. Melville," said Herbert, suddenly, "a thought has just struck me."

"I hope it may show us a way out of our danger."

"No, I am sorry to say that it won't do that."

"What is it, Herbert?"

"You remember that mention was made yesterday in the stage of a certain famous bandit named Jerry Lane?"

"Yes, I remember."

"Do you think it is possible that he and Col. Warner may be one and the same?"

"That is certainly a startling suggestion, Herbert. What reason have you for thinking so?"

"It was only a guess on my part; but you remember that the colonel said he was a man about his size."

"That might be."

"And he did not confine himself to the Western country, but might be met with in New York, or St. Louis. We met the colonel in Chicago."

"It may be as you surmise, Herbert," said George Melville, after a pause. "It did occur to me that our worthy landlord might be the famous outlaw in question, but the description to which you refer seems to fit the colonel better. There is one thing, however, that makes me a little incredulous."

"What is that, Mr. Melville?"

"This Jerry Lane I take to be cool and courageous, while the colonel appears to be more of a boaster. He looks like one who can talk better than he can act. If I had ever seen a description of his appearance, I could judge better."

The two had been walking slowly and thoughtfully, when they were startled by a rough voice.

"You're out early, strangers?"

Turning swiftly, they saw the dark, forbidding face of the landlord, who had approached them unobserved.

"Did he hear anything?" thought Herbert, anxiously.

"Yes, we are taking a little walk," said Melville, pleasantly.

"Breakfast will be ready soon. You'd better be back soon, if you're goin' by the stage this morning. You are goin', I reckon?" said the landlord, eyeing them sharply.

"We intend to do so," said Melville. "We will walk a little farther, and then return to the house."

The landlord turned and retraced his steps to the Echo Gulch Hotel.

"Do you think he heard anything that we were saying?" asked Herbert.

"I think not."

"I wonder what brought him out here?"

"Probably he wanted to make sure that we were going in the stage. He is laudably anxious to have as many victims and as much plunder as possible."

"You told him you were going in the stage?"

"Yes, I have decided to do so."

"Have you decided upon anything else, Mr. Melville?"

"Not positively; but there will be time to think of that. Did you hear where we were to be attacked?"

"At a point about five miles from here," said Herbert.

This he had gathered from the conversation he had overheard.

When the two friends reached the hotel, they found Col. Warner already downstairs.

"Good-morning, gentlemen!" he said. "So you have taken a walk? I never walk before breakfast, for my part."

"Nor do I often," said Melville. "In this case I was persuaded by my young friend. I am repaid by a good appetite."

"Can't I persuade you to try a glass of bitters, Mr. Melville?" asked the colonel.

"Thank you, colonel. You will have to excuse me."

"Breakfast's ready!" announced the landlady, and the stage passengers sat down at a long, unpainted, wooden table, where the food was of the plainest. In spite of the impending peril of which they, only, had knowledge, Herbert ate heartily, but Melville seemed preoccupied.



Chapter XXV. Melville Makes A Sensation.



Col. Warner seemed in very good spirits. He ate and drank with violent enjoyment, and was as affable as usual. George Melville regarded him with curiosity.

"The man does not appear like a desperado or outlaw," he thought. "There is nothing to distinguish him from the majority of men one meets in ordinary intercourse. He is a problem to me, I should like to study him."

Col. Warner did not fail to observe the unconscious intentness with which Melville regarded him, and, for some reason, it did not please him.

"You have lost your appetite, Mr. Melville," he said, lightly. "You have been looking at me until -- egad! -- if I were a vain man, I should conclude there was something striking about my appearance."

"I won't gainsay that, Colonel," answered Melville, adroitly. "I confess I am not very hungry, and I will further confess that I have something on my mind."

"Indeed! Better make me your father confessor," said the colonel, whose suspicion or annoyance was removed by this ready reply.

"So I may, after a while," said Melville.

He took the hint, and ceased to regard the colonel.

The latter made himself generally social, and generally popular.

The stage drove round to the door after breakfast, and there was the usual bustle, as the passengers bestowed themselves inside.

George Melville had intended to watch narrowly the landlord and Col. Warner, to detect, if possible, the secret understanding which must exist between them. But he was deprived of an opportunity, for the very good reason that the landlord had disappeared, and was not again seen before their departure.

The driver gathered up his reins, cracked his whip, and the stage started. Herbert looked at George Melville a little anxiously, not knowing what course he had decided to take. They two, it will be remembered, were the only ones who knew of the intended attack.

Before the stage started, Melville quietly took the opportunity to hand his pocketbook to Herbert, saying, briefly: "It will be safer with you in case of an attack."

"But won't it be considered suspicious that you have no money about you?" suggested Herbert.

"I have a roll of bills in my pocket-fifty dollars," answered Melville.

They had no further opportunity of speaking, as one of the passengers came up where they were standing.

Herbert had already taken his seat in the coach, when his employer said: "Herbert, wouldn't you like to ride outside with the driver?"

"Yes, sir," answered Herbert, promptly, for he understood, that this was Mr. Melville's wish.

"It will give us more room, and you will have a better view."

"Yes, sir; I shall like it."

In a quick manner Herbert made the change, taking care not to look significantly at Melville, as some boys might have done, and thus excited suspicion.

For the first mile there was very little conversation.

Then Col. Warner spoke.

"Well, gentlemen," he said, "we are fairly on our way. Let us hope nothing will mar our pleasure."

"Do you anticipate anything?" asked George Melville.

"I! Why should I? We have a skillful driver, and I guarantee he won't tip us over."

"Mr. Melville was, perhaps, referring to the chance of the stage being stopped by some enterprising road agent," suggested Parker.

"Oho! Sits the wind in that quarter?" said the Colonel, laughing lightly. "Not the least chance of that -- that is, the chance is very slight."

"You spoke differently yesterday," said the German capitalist.

"Did I? I didn't mean it, I assure you. We are as safe here as if we were riding in the interior of New York. I suppose I was only whiling away a few idle minutes."

"I am glad to hear it," said the German. "I shouldn't like to meet any of these gentlemen."

"Nor I," answered Melville; "but I am prepared to give him or them a warm reception."

As he spoke he drew a revolver from his pocket. He sat next to the door, and in an exposed situation.

"Put up your shooting iron, Mr. Melville," said Col. Warner, exhibiting a slight shade of annoyance. "Let me exchange places with you. I should prefer the post of danger, if' there is any."

"You are very kind, Colonel," said Melville, quietly, "but I don't care to change. I am quite satisfied with my seat."

"But, my dear sir, I insist -- " said the Colonel, making a motion to rise.

"Keep your seat, Colonel! I insist upon staying where I am," answered Melville.

He was physically far from formidable, this young man, but there was a resolute ring in his voice that showed he was in earnest.

"Really, my dear sir," said the Colonel, trying to conceal his annoyance, "you have been quite misled by my foolish talk. I did not suppose you were so nervous."

"Possibly I may have a special reason for being so," returned George Melville.

"What do you mean?" demanded the Colonel, quickly. "If you have, we are all interested, and ought to know it."

"The Colonel is right," said the German. "If you know of any danger, it is only fair to inform us all."

"I am disposed to agree with you, gentlemen," said Melville. "Briefly, then, I have good reason to think that this company of passengers has been marked for plunder."

Col. Warner started, but, quickly recovering himself, he laughed uneasily.

"Tush!" he said, "I put no faith in it. Some one has been deceiving you, my friend."

But the other passengers took it more seriously.

"You evidently know something that we do not," said Parker.

"I do," answered Melville.

Col. Warner looked at him searchingly, but did not speak.

Now was the time to test George Melville's nerve. He was about to take a bold step.

"Gentlemen," he said, "I regret to say that I have every reason to believe there is a man in this stage who is in league with the road agents."

This statement naturally made a sensation.

There were seven passengers, and each regarded the rest with new-born suspicion. There seemed, on the whole, about as much reason to suspect one man as another, and each, with the exception of Melville, found himself looked upon with distrust.

"Pooh, Melville! You must have had bad dreams!" said Col. Warner, who was the first to recover his self-possession. "Really, I give you credit for a first-class sensation. As for you, gentlemen, you may take stock in this cock-and-bull story, if you like; I shall not. I, for one, have no fear of my fellow passengers. I regard them all as gentlemen, and shall not allow myself to be disturbed by any silly fears."

The air of calm composure with which the Colonel spoke served to tranquilize the rest of the passengers, who wished to put credit in his assurance.

"The Colonel speaks sensibly," said Mr. Parker, "and unless Mr. Melville assigns a reason for his remarkable belief, I am disposed to think we have taken alarm too quick."

"Of course, of course; all sensible men will think so," said the Colonel. "My friend, we shall be tempted to laugh at you if you insist on entertaining us with such hobgoblin fancies. My advice is, to put up that weapon of yours, and turn your attention to the scenery, which I can assure you, gentlemen, is well worthy of your admiration. Just observe the walls of yonder canyon, and the trees growing on the points."

"Gentlemen," said Melville, "I should be glad to take the view of the last speaker, if I had not positive proof that he is the man who has agreed to deliver us into the hands of a road agent within the space of half an I hour!"

"Sir, you shall answer for this!" exclaimed the Colonel, furiously, as he struggled to secure the weapon, his face livid with passion.

But two passengers, one the German, who, though short, was very powerful, forcibly prevented him.



Chapter XXVI. A Council Of War.



"Are you sure of what you say?" asked a passenger, turning with a puzzled look from George Melville, who, in the midst of the general excitement produced by his revelation, sat, not unmoved indeed, but comparatively calm. Courage and physical strength are by no means inseparable, and this frail young man, whose strength probably was not equal to Herbert's, was fearless in the face of peril which would daunt many a stalwart six-footer.

In reply to this very natural question, George Melville repeated the essential parts of the conversation which had taken place between Col. Warner and the landlord.

Col. Warner's countenance changed, and he inwardly execrated the imprudence that had made his secret plan known to one of the intended victims.

"Is this true, Col. Warner?" asked Parker.

"No, it's a lie!" returned the colonel, with an oath.

"Gentlemen!" said George Melville, calmly, "you can choose which you will believe. I will only suggest that this man managed very adroitly to find out where each one of us kept his money. You can also consider whether I have any cause to invent this story."

It was clear that the passengers were inclined to put faith in Melville's story.

"Gentlemen!" said the Colonel, angrily, "I never was so insulted in my life. I am a man of wealth, traveling on business; I am worth a quarter of a million at least. To associate me with road agents, whom I have as much reason to fear as you, is most ridiculous. This young man may be well-meaning, but he is under a most extraordinary hallucination. It is my belief that he dreamed the nonsense he has been retailing to you."

"Ask the driver to stop the stage," said Mr. Benson, a gentleman from Philadelphia. "If Mr. Melville's story is trustworthy, we may at any time reach the spot where the highwayman is lurking. We must have a general consultation, and decide what is to be done."

This proposal was approved, and the driver drew up the stage.

"I don't propose to remain in the company of men who so grossly misjudge me," said the Colonel, with dignity, as he made a motion to leave his fellow passengers.

"Stay here, sir!" said Mr. Benson, in a tone of authority. "We cannot spare you yet."

"Do you dare to detain me, sir?" exclaimed Warner, menacingly.

"Yes, we do," said the German. "Just stay where you are, Mr. Colonel, till we decide what to do."

As each one of the company had produced his revolver, the Colonel thought it prudent to obey.

"I am disgusted with this fooling," he said, "You're all a pack of cowards."

"Driver," said George Melville, "has this stage ever been robbed?"

"Several times," the driver admitted.

"When was the last time?"

"Two months since."

"Where did it happen?"

"About a mile further on."

"Did you ever see this gentleman before?" he asked, pointing to the colonel.

"Yes," answered the driver, reluctantly.

"When did he last ride with you?"

"On the day the stage was robbed," answered the driver.

The passengers exchanged glances, and then, as by a common impulse, all turned to Col. Warner, to see how he would take this damaging revelation. Disguise it as he might, he was clearly disconcerted.

"Is this true, colonel?" asked Benson.

"Yes, it is," answered Col. Warner, with some hesitation. "I was robbed, with the rest. I had four hundred dollars in my wallet, and the road agent made off with it."

"And yet you just now pooh-poohed the idea of a robbery, and said such things were gone by."

"I say so now," returned the colonel, sullenly. "I have a good deal of money with me, but I am willing to take my chances."

"Doubtless. Your money would be returned to you, in all probability, if, as we have reason to believe, you have a secret understanding with the thieves who infest this part of the country."

"Your words are insulting. Let go my arm, sir, or it will be the worse for you."

"Softly, softly, my good friend," said the German. "Have you any proposal to make, Mr. Melville?"

"Only this. Let us proceed on our journey, but let each man draw his revolver, and be ready to use it, if need be."

"What about the colonel?"

"He must go along with us. We cannot have him communicating with our enemies outside."

"Suppose I refuse, sir?"

"Then, my very good friend, I think we shall use a little force," said the German, carelessly pointing his weapon at the captive.

"I will go upon compulsion," said the colonel, "but I protest against this outrage. I am a wealthy capitalist from Chicago, who knows no more about road agents than you do. You have been deceived by this unsophisticated young man, who knows about as much of the world as a four-year-old child. It's a fine mare's nest he has found."

This sneer did not disturb the equanimity of George Melville.

"I should be glad to believe the colonel were as innocent as he claims," he said, "but his own words, overheard last night, contradict what he is now saying. When we have passed the spot indicated for the attack, we will release him, and give him the opportunity he seeks of leaving our company."

The passengers resumed their places in the stage, with the exception of Herbert, who again took his seat beside the driver. George Melville had not mentioned that it was Herbert, not himself, who had overheard the conversation between the colonel and the land lord, fearing to expose the boy to future risk.

Col. Warner sat sullenly between the German and Benson. He was evidently ill at ease and his restless glances showed that he was intent upon some plan of escape. Of this, however, such was the vigilance of his guards, there did not seem much chance.

The stage kept on its way till it entered a narrow roadway, lined on one side by a thick growth of trees.

Melville, watching the colonel narrowly, saw that, in spite of his attempt at calmness, his excitement was at fever heat.

The cause was very evident, for at this point a tall figure bounded from the underbrush, disguised by a black half mask, through which a pair of black eyes blazed fiercely.

"Stop the stage!" he thundered to the driver, "or I will put a bullet through your head."

The driver, as had been directed, instantly obeyed.



Chapter XXVII. Col. Warner Changes Front.



It may seem a daring thing for one man to stop a stage full of passengers, and require them to surrender their money and valuables, but this has been done time and again in unsettled portions of the West. For the most part the stage passengers are taken by surprise, and the road agent is known to be a desperado, ready to murder in cold blood anyone who dares oppose him.

In the present instance, however, the passengers had been warned of their danger and were ready to meet it.

Brown -- for, of course, the masked man was the landlord -- saw four revolvers leveled at him from inside the stage.

"Let go that horse, my friend, or you are a dead man!" said Conrad Stiefel, calmly. "Two can play at your game."

Brown was taken by surprise, but he was destined to be still more astonished.

Col. Warner protruded his head from the window, saying:

"Yes, my friend, you had better give up your little plan. It won't work."

Such language from his confederate, on whom he fully relied, wholly disconcerted the masked robber.

"Well, I'll be blowed!" he muttered, staring, in ludicrous perplexity, at his fellow conspirator.

"Yes, my friend," said the colonel, "I shall really be under the necessity of shooting you myself if you don't leave us alone. We are all armed and resolute. I think you had better defer your little scheme."

Brown was not quick-witted. He did not see that his confederate was trying cunningly to avert suspicion from himself, and taking the only course that remained to him. Of course, he thought he was betrayed, and was, as a natural consequence, exasperated.

He released his hold on the horses, but, fixing his eyes on the colonel fiercely, muttered:

"Wait till I get a chance at you! I'll pay you for this."

"What an idiot!" thought Warner, shrugging his shoulders. "Why can't he see that I am forced to do as I am doing? I must make things plain to him."

He spoke a few words rapidly in Spanish, which Brown evidently understood. His face showed a dawning comprehension of the state of affairs, and he stood aside while the stage drove on.

"What did you say?" asked Conrad Stiefel, suspiciously.

"You heard me, sir," said the colonel, loftily. "You owe your rescue from this ruffian to me. Now, you can understand how much you have misjudged me."

Conrad Stiefel was not so easily satisfied of this.

"I heard what you said in Mexican, or whatever lingo it is, but I didn't understand it."

"Nor I," said Benson.

"Very well, gentlemen; I am ready to explain. I told this man that if he ever attempted to molest me I should shoot him in his track."

"Why didn't you speak to him in English?" asked Stiefel.

"Because I had a suspicion that the fellow was the same I met once in Mexico, and I spoke to him in Spanish to make sure. As he understood, I am convinced I was right."

"Who is it, then?" asked Benson.

"His name, sir, is Manuel de Cordova, a well-known Mexican bandit, who seems to have found his way to this neighborhood. He is a reckless desperado, and, though I addressed him boldly, I should be very sorry to meet him in a dark night."

This explanation was very fluently spoken, but probably no one present believed what the colonel said, or exonerated him from the charge which George Melville had made against him.

Five miles further on Col. Warner left the stage.

"Gentlemen," he said, "I am sorry to leave this pleasant company, but I have a mining claim in this neighborhood, and must bid you farewell. I trust that when you think of me hereafter, you will acquit me of the injurious charges which have been made against me. I take no credit to myself for driving away the ruffian who stopped us, but hope you won't forget it."

"No one interfered with the colonel when he proposed to leave the stage. Indeed, the passengers were unanimous in accepting his departure as a relief. In spite of his plausible representations, he was regarded with general suspicion.

"I wish I knew the meaning of that Spanish lingo," said the German, Conrad Stiefel.

"I can interpret it for you, Mr. Stiefel," said George Melville, quietly. "I have some knowledge of Spanish."

"What did he say?" asked more than one, eagerly.

"He said: 'You fool! Don't you see the plot has been discovered? It wasn't my fault. I will soon join you and explain.'"

This revelation made a sensation.

"Then he was in league with the road agent, after all?" said Parker.

"Certainly he was. Did you for a moment doubt it?" said Melville.

"I was staggered when I saw him order the rascal away."

"He is a shrewd villain!" said Benson. "I hope we shan't encounter him again."



Chapter XXVIII. The Conspirators In Council.



It is needless to say that Col. Warner's intention in leaving the stage was to join his fellow conspirator. There was no advantage in remaining longer with his fellow travelers, since the opportunity of plundering them had passed, and for the present was not likely to return. He had been a little apprehensive that they would try to detain him on suspicion, which would have been awkward, since they had numbers on their side, and all were armed. But in that unsettled country he would have been an elephant on their hands, and if the idea entered the minds of any one of the stage passengers, it was instantly dismissed.

When the stage was fairly on the way, Col. Warner went to a house where he was known, and asked for a horse.

"Any news, colonel?" asked the farmer, as he called himself. Really he was in league with the band of which Warner was the chief.

"No," answered the Colonel, gloomily. "No, worse luck! There might have been, but for an unfortunate circumstance."

"What's that?"

"There's plenty of good money in that stage coach and Brown and I meant to have it, but some sharp-eared rascal heard us arranging the details of the plan, and that spoiled it."

"Is it too late now?" asked the farmer, eagerly. "We can follow them, and overtake them yet, if you say so."

"And be shot for our pains. No, thank you. They are all on the alert, and all have their six-shooters in readiness. No, we must postpone our plan. There's one of the fellows that I mean to be revenged upon yet -- the one that ferreted out our secret plan. I must bide my time, but I shall keep track of him."

Soon the Colonel, well-mounted, was on his way back to the rude inn where he had slept the night before.

Dismounting he entered without ceremony, and his eyes fell upon the landlord's wife, engaged in some household employment.

"Where's Brown?" he asked, abruptly.

"Somewheres round," was the reply.

"How long has he been home?"

"A matter of two hours. He came home awfully riled, but he wouldn't tell me what it was about. What's happened?"

"We've met with a disappointment -- that's what's the matter."

"Did the passengers get the better of you?" asked the woman, for she was in her husband's guilty secrets, and knew quite well what manner of man she had married.

"They found out our little game," answered Warner, shortly, for he did not see any advantage in wasting words on his confederate's wife. "Which way did Brown go?"

"Yonder," answered Mrs. Brown, pointing in a particular direction.

Col. Warner tied his horse to a small sapling, and walked in the direction indicated.

He found the landlord sullenly reclining beneath a large tree.

"So you're back?" he said, surveying Warner with a lowering brow.

"Yes."

"And a pretty mess you've made of the job!" said the landlord, bitterly.

"It's as much your fault -- nay, more!" said his superior, coolly.

"What do you mean?" demanded Brown, not over cordially.

"You would persist in discussing our plan last night in my room, though I warned you we might be overheard."

"Well?"

"We were overheard."

"What spy listened to our talk?"

"The young man, Melville -- the one traveling with a boy. He kept it to himself till the stage was well on its way, and then he blabbed the whole thing to all in the stage."

"Did he mention you?"

"Yes, and you."

"Why didn't you tell him he lied, and shoot him on the spot?"

"Because I shouldn't have survived him five minutes," answered the colonel, coolly, "or, if I had, his companions would have lynched me."

Brown didn't look as if he would have been inconsolable had this occurred. In fact, he was ambitious to succeed to the place held by the colonel, as chief of a desperate gang of outlaws.

"I might have been dangling from a branch of a tree at this moment, had I followed your plan, my good friend Brown, and that would have been particularly uncomfortable."

"They might have shot me," said Brown, sullenly.

"I prevented that, and gave you timely warning. Of course it's a disappointment, but we shall have better luck next time."

"They've got away."

"Yes, but I propose to keep track of Melville and the boy, and have my revenge upon them in time. I don't care so much about the money, but they have foiled me, and they must suffer for it. Meanwhile, I want your help in another plan."

The two conferred together, and mutual confidence was re-established.



Chapter XXIX. A New Home In The Woods.



George Melville had no definite destination. He was traveling, not for pleasure, but for health, and his purpose was to select a residence in some high location, where the dry air would be favorable for his pulmonary difficulties.

A week later he had found a temporary home. One afternoon Herbert and he, each on horseback, for at that time public lines of travel were fewer than at present, came suddenly upon a neat, one-story cottage in the edge of the forest. It stood alone, but it was evidently the home of one who aimed to add something of the graces of civilization to the rudeness of frontier life.

They reined up simultaneously, and Melville, turning to Herbert, said: "There, Herbert, is my ideal of a residence. I should not be satisfied with a rude cabin. There I should find something of the comfort which we enjoy in New England."

"The situation is fine, too," said Herbert, looking about him admiringly.

The cottage stood on a knoll. On either side were tall and stately trees. A purling brook at the left rolled its silvery current down a gentle declivity, and in front, for half a mile, was open country.

"I have a great mind to call and inquire who lives here." said Melville. "Perhaps we can arrange to stay here all night."

"That is a good plan, Mr. Melville."

George Melville dismounted from his horse, and, approaching, tapped with the handle of his whip on the door.

"Who's there?" inquired a smothered voice, as of one rousing himself from sleep.

"A stranger, but a friend," answered Melville.

There was a sound as of some one moving, and a tall man, clad in a rough suit, came to the door, and looked inquiringly at Melville and his boy companion.

Though his attire was rude, his face was refined, and had the indefinable air of one who would be more at home in the city than in the country.

"Delighted to see you both," he said, cordially, offering his hand. "I don't live in a palace, and my servants are all absent, but if you will deign to become my guests I will do what I can for your comfort."

"You have anticipated my request," said Melville. "Let me introduce myself as George Melville, an invalid by profession, just come from New England in search of health. My young friend here is Herbert Carr, my private secretary and faithful companion, who has not yet found out what it is to be in poor-health. Without him I should hardly have dared to come so far alone."

"You are very welcome, Herbert," said the host, with pleasant familiarity. "Come in, both of you, and make yourselves at home."

The cottage contained two rooms. One was used as a bedchamber, the other as a sitting room. On the walls were a few pictures, and on a small bookcase against one side of the room were some twenty-five books. There was an easel and an unfinished picture in one corner, and a small collection of ordinary furniture.

"You are probably an artist," suggested Melville.

"Yes, you have hit it. I use both pen and pencil," and he mentioned a name known to Melville as that of a popular magazine writer.

I do not propose to give his real name, but we will know him as Robert Falkland.

"I am familiar with your name, Mr. Falkland," said Melville, "but I did not expect to find you here."

"Probably not," answered Falkland. "I left the haunts of civilization unexpectedly, some months ago, and even my publishers don't know where I am."

"In search of health?" queried Melville.

"Not exactly. I did, however, feel in need of a change. I had been running in a rut, and wanted to get out of it, so I left my lodgings in New York and bought a ticket to St. Louis; arrived there, I determined to come farther. So here I have been, living in communion with nature, seeing scarcely anybody, enjoying myself, on the whole, but sometimes longing to see a new face."

"And you have built this cottage?"

"No; I bought it of its former occupant, but have done something towards furnishing it; so that it has become characteristic of me and my tastes."

"How long have you lived here?"

"Three months; but my stay is drawing to a close."

"How is that?"

"Business that will not be put off calls me back to New York. In fact, I had appointed to-morrow for my departure."

Melville and Herbert exchanged a glance. It was evident that the same thought was in the mind of each.

"Mr. Falkland," said George Melville, "I have a proposal to make to you."

The artist eyed him in some surprise.

"Go on," he said.

"I will buy this cottage of you, if you are willing."

Falkland smiled.

"This seems providential," he said. "We artists and men of letters are apt to be short of money, and I confess I was pondering whether my credit was good with anybody for a hundred dollars to pay my expenses East. Once arrived there, there are plenty of publishers who will make me advances on future work."

"Then we can probably make a bargain," said Mr. Melville. "Please name your price."

Now, I do not propose to show my ignorance of real estate values in Colorado by naming the price which George Melville paid for his home in the wilderness. In fact, I do not know. I can only say that he gave Falkland a check for the amount on a Boston bank, and a hundred in cash besides.

"You are liberal, Mr. Melville," said Falkland, gratified. "I am afraid you are not a business man. I have not found that business men overpay."

"You are right, I am not a business man," answered Melville, "though I wish my health would admit of my being so. As to the extra hundred dollars, I think it worth that much to come upon so comfortable a home ready to my hand. It will really be a home, such as the log cabin I looked forward to could not be."

"Thank you," said Falkland; "I won't pretend that I am indifferent to money, for I can't afford to be. I earn considerable sums, but, unfortunately, I never could keep money, or provide for the future."

"I don't know how it would be with me," said Melville, "for I am one of those, fortunate or otherwise, who are born to a fortune. I have sometimes been sorry that I had not the incentive of poverty to induce me to work."

"Then, suppose we exchange lots," said the artist, lightly. "I shouldn't object to being wealthy."

"With all my heart," answered Melville. "Give me your health, your literary and artistic talent, and it is a bargain."

"I am afraid they are not transferable," said the artist, "but we won't prolong the discussion now. I am neglecting the rites of hospitality; I must prepare supper for my guests. You must know that here in the wilderness I am my own cook and dishwasher."

"Let me help you?" said Melville.

"No, Mr. Melville," said Herbert, "it is more in my line. I have often helped mother at home, and I don't believe you have had any experience."

"I confess I am a green hand," said Melville, laughing, "but, as Irish girls just imported say, 'I am very willing.'"

"On the whole, I think the boy can assist me better," said Falkland. "So, Mr. Melville, consider yourself an aristocratic visitor, while Herbert and myself, sons of toil, will minister to your necessities."

"By the way, where do you get your supplies?" asked Melville.

"Eight miles away there is a mining camp and store. I ride over there once a week or oftener, and bring home what I need."

"What is the name of the camp?"

"Deer Creek. I will point out to Herbert, before I leave you, the bridle path leading to it."

"Thank you. It will be a great advantage to us to know just how to live."

With Herbert's help an appetizing repast was prepared, of which all three partook with keen zest.

The next day Falkland took leave of them, and Melville and his boy companion were left to settle down in their new home.



Chapter XXX. A Terrible Moment.



Melville's purchase comprised not only the cottage, but its contents, pictures and books included. This was fortunate, for though Herbert, who was strong, and fond of outdoor sports, such as hunting and fishing, could have contented himself, Melville was easily fatigued, and spent at least half of the day in the cabin. The books, most of which were new to him, were a great and unfailing resource.

Among the articles which Falkland left behind him were two guns, of which Herbert and Melville made frequent use. Herbert had a natural taste for hunting, though, at home, having no gun of his own, he had not been able to gratify his taste as much as he desired. Often after breakfast the two sallied forth, and wandered about in the neighboring woods, gun in hand. Generally Melville returned first, leaving Herbert, not yet fatigued, to continue the sport. In this way our hero acquired a skill and precision of aim which enabled him to make a very respectable figure even among old and practiced hunters.

One morning, after Melville had returned home, Herbert was led, by the ardor of the chase, to wander farther than usual. He was aware of this, but did not fear being lost, having a compass and knowing his bearings. All at once, as he was making his way along a wooded path, he was startled by hearing voices. He hurried forward, and the scene upon which he intruded was dramatic enough.

With arms folded, a white man, a hunter, apparently, stood erect, and facing him, at a distance of seventy-five or eighty feet, was an Indian, with gun raised, and leveled at the former.

"Why don't you shoot, you red rascal!" said the white man. "You've got the drop on me, I allow, and I am in your power."

The Indian laughed in his guttural way; but though he held the gun poised, he did not shoot. He was playing with his victim as a cat plays with a mouse before she kills it.

"Is white man afraid?" said the Indian, not tauntingly, but with real curiosity, for among Indians it is considered a great triumph if a warrior can inspire fear in his foe, and make him show the white feather.

"Afraid!" retorted the hunter. "Who should I be afraid of?"

"Of Indian."

"Don't flatter yourself, you pesky savage," returned the white man, coolly, ejecting a flood of tobacco juice from his mouth, for though he was a brave man, he had some drawbacks. "You needn't think I am afraid of you."

"Indian shoot!" suggested his enemy, watching the effect of this announcement.

"Well, shoot, then, and be done with it."

"White man no want to live?"

"Of course I want to live. Never saw a healthy white man that didn't. If I was goin' to die at all, I wouldn't like to die by the hands of a red rascal like you."

"Indian great warrior," said the dusky denizen of the woods, straightening up, and speaking complacently.

"Indian may be great warrior, but he is a horse thief, all the same," said the hunter, coolly.

"White man soon die, and Indian wear his scalp," remarked the Indian, in a manner likely to disturb the composure of even the bravest listener.

The hunter's face changed. It was impossible to reflect upon such a fate without a pang. Death was nothing to that final brutality.

"Ha! White man afraid now!" said the Indian, triumphantly -- quick to observe the change of expression in his victim.

"No, I am not afraid," said the hunter, quickly recovering himself; "but it's enough to disgust any decent man to think that his scalp will soon be dangling from the belt of a filthy heathen like you. However, I suppose I won't know it after I'm dead. You have skulked and dogged my steps, you red hound, ever since I punished you for trying to steal my horse. I made one great mistake. Instead of beating you, I should have shot you, and rid the earth of you once for all."

"Indian no forget white man's blows. White man die, and Indian be revenged."

"Yes, I s'pose that's what it's coming to," said the hunter, in a tone of resignation. "I was a 'tarnal fool to come out this mornin' without my gun. If I had it you would sing a different song."

Again the Indian laughed, a low, guttural, unpleasant laugh, which Herbert listened to with a secret shudder. It was so full of malignity, and cunning triumph, and so suggestive of the fate which he reserved for his white foe, that it aggravated the latter, and made him impatient to have the blow fall, since it seemed to be inevitable.

"Why don't you shoot, you red savage?" he cried. "What are you waiting for?"

The Indian wished to gloat over the mental distress of his foe. He liked to prolong his own feeling of power -- to enjoy the consciousness that, at any moment, he could put an end to the life of the man whom he hated for the blows which he felt had degraded him, and which he was resolved never to forget or forgive. It was the same feeling that has often led those of his race to torture their hapless victims, that they may, as long as possible, enjoy the spectacle of their agonies. For this reason he was in no hurry to speed on its way the fatal bullet.

Again the Indian laughed, and, taking aim, made a feint of firing, but withheld his shot. Pale and resolute his intended victim continued to face him. He thought that the fatal moment had come, and braced himself to meet his fate; but he was destined to be disappointed.

"How long is this goin' to last, you red hound?" he demanded. "If I've got to die, I am ready."

"Indian can wait!" said the savage, with a smile of enjoyment.

"You wouldn't find it prudent to wait if I were beside you," said the hunter. "It's easy enough to threaten an unarmed man. If some friend would happen along to foil you in your cowardly purpose -- -"

"White man send for friend!" suggested the Indian, tauntingly.

Herbert had listened to this colloquy with varying emotions, and his anger and indignation were stirred by the cold-blooded cruelty of the savage. He stood motionless, seen by neither party, but he held his weapon leveled at the Indian, ready to shoot at an instant's warning. Brought up, as he had been, with a horror for scenes of violence, and a feeling that human life was sacred, he had a great repugnance to use his weapon, even where it seemed his urgent duty to do so. He felt that on him, young as he was, rested a weighty responsibility. He could save the life of a man of his own color, but only by killing or disabling a red man. Indian though he was, his life, too, was sacred; but when he threatened the life of another he forfeited his claim to consideration.

Herbert hesitated till he saw it was no longer safe to do so -- till he saw that it was the unalterable determination of the Indian to kill the hunter, and then, his face pale and fixed, he pulled the trigger.

His bullet passed through the shoulder of the savage. The latter uttered a shrill cry of surprise and dismay, and his weapon fell at his feet, while he pressed his left hand to his wounded shoulder.

The hunter, amazed at the interruption, which had been of such essential service to him, lost not a moment in availing himself of it. He bounded forward, and before the savage well knew what he purposed, he had picked up his fallen weapon, and, leveling it at his wounded foe, fired.

His bullet was not meant to disable, but to kill. It penetrated the heart of the savage, and, staggering back, he fell, his face distorted with rage and disappointment.

"The tables are turned, my red friend!" said the hunter, coolly. "It's your life, not mine, this time!"

At that moment Herbert, pale and shocked, but relieved as well, pressed forward, and the hunter saw him for the first time.

"Was it you, boy, who fired the shot?" asked the hunter, in surprise.

"Yes," answered Herbert.

"Then I owe you my life, and that's a debt Jack Holden isn't likely to forget!"



Chapter XXXI. Jack Holden On The Indian Question.



It is a terrible thing to see a man stretched out in death who but a minute before stood full of life and strength. Herbert gazed at the dead Indian with a strange sensation of pity and relief, and could hardly realize that, but for his interposition, it would have been the hunter, not the Indian, who would have lost his life.

The hunter was more used to such scenes, and his calmness was unruffled.

"That's the end of the dog!" he said, touching with his foot the dead body.

"What made him want to kill you?" asked Herbert.

"Revenge," answered Holden.

"For what? Had you injured him?"

"That's the way he looked at it. One day I caught the varmint stealin' my best hoss. He'd have got away with him, too, if I hadn't come home just as I did. I might have shot him -- most men would -- but I hate to take a man's life for stealin'; and I took another way. My whip was lyin' handy, and I took it and lashed the rascal over his bare back a dozen times, and then told him to dust, or I'd serve him worse. He left, but there was an ugly look in his eyes, and I knew well enough he'd try to get even."

"How long ago was this?"

"Most a year. It's a long time, but an Indian never forgets an injury or an insult, and I knew that he was only bidin' his time. So I always went armed, and kept a good lookout. It was only this mornin' that he caught me at a disadvantage. I'd been taking a walk, and left my gun at home. He was prowlin' round, and soon saw how things stood. He'd have killed me sure, if you hadn't come in the nick of time."

"I am glad I was near," said Herbert, "but it seems to me a terrible thing to shoot a man. I'm glad it wasn't I that killed him."

"Mebbe it was better for me, as he was my enemy," said Jack Holden. "It won't trouble my conscience a mite. I don't look upon an Indian as a man."

"Why not?"

"He's a snake in the grass -- a poisonous serpent, that's what I call him," said Jack Holden.

Herbert shook his head. He couldn't assent to this.

"You feel different, no doubt. You're a tenderfoot. You ain't used to the ways of these reptiles. You haven't seen what I have," answered Holden.

"What have you seen?" asked Herbert, judging correctly that Holden referred to some special experience.

"I'll tell you. You see, I'm an old settler in this Western country. I've traveled pretty much all over the region beyond the Rockies, and I've seen a good deal of the red men. I know their ways as well as any man. Well, I was trampin' once in Montany, when, one afternoon, I and my pard -- he was prospectin' -- came to a clearin', and there we saw a sight that made us all feel sick. It was the smokin' ruins of a log cabin, which them devils had set on fire. But that wasn't what I referred to. Alongside there lay six dead bodies -- the man, his wife, two boys, somewhere near your age, a little girl, of maybe ten, and a baby -- all butchered by them savages, layin' -- in the hunter's vernacular -- in their gore. It was easy to see how they'd killed the baby, by his broken skull. They had seized the poor thing by the feet, and swung him against the side of the house, dashin' out his brains."

Herbert shuddered, and felt sick, as the picture of the ruined home and the wretched family rose before his imagination.

"It was Indians that did it, of course," proceeded Holden. "They're born savage, and such things come natural to them."

"Are there no good Indians?" asked the boy.

"There may be," answered Jack Holden, doubtfully, "though I haven't seen many. They're as scarce as plums in a boardin' house puddin', I reckon."

I present this as Jack Holden's view, not mine. He had the prejudices of the frontier, and frontiersmen are severe judges of their Indian neighbors. They usually look at but one side of the picture, and are not apt to take into consideration the wrongs which the Indians have undeniably received. There is another extreme, however, and the sentimentalists who deplore Indian wrongs, and represent them as a brave, suffering and oppressed people, are quite as far away from a just view of the Indian question.

"What's your name, youngster?" asked Holden, with the curiosity natural under the circumstances.

"Herbert Carr."

"Do you live nigh here?"

Herbert indicated, as well as he could, the location of his home.

"I know -- you live with Mr. Falkland. Are you his son?"

"No; Mr. Falkland has gone away."

"You're not living there alone, be you?"

"No; I came out here with a young man -- Mr. Melville. He bought the cottage of Mr. Falkland, who was obliged to go East."

"You don't say so. Why, we're neighbors. I live three miles from here."

"Did you know Mr. Falkland?"

"Yes; we used to see each other now and then. He was a good fellow, but mighty queer. What's the use of settin' down and paintin' pictures? What's the good of it all?"

"Don't you admire pictures, Mr. Holden?" asked Herbert.

"That's that you called me? I didn't quite catch on to it."

"Mr. Holden. Isn't that your name?"

"Don't call me mister. I'm plain Jack Holden. Call me Jack."

"I will if you prefer it," said Herbert, dubiously.

"Of course I do. We don't go much on style in the woods. Won't you come home with me, and take a look at my cabin? I ain't used to company, but we can sit down and have a social smoke together, and then I'll manage to find something to eat."

"Thank you, Mr. Holden -- I mean, Jack -- but I must be getting home; Mr. Melville will be feeling anxious, for, as it is, I shall be late."

"Is Mr. Melville, as you call him, any way kin to you?"

"No; he is my friend and employer."

"Young man?"

"Yes; he is about twenty-five."

"How long have you two been out here?"

"Not much over a week."

"Why isn't Melville with you this morning?"

"He is in delicate health -- consumption -- and he gets tired sooner than I do."

"I must come over and see you, I reckon."

"I hope you will. We get lonely sometimes. If you would like to borrow something to read, Mr. Melville has plenty of books."

"Read!" repeated Jack. "No, thank you. I don't care much for books. A newspaper, now, is different. A man likes to know what's going on in the world; but I leave books to ministers, schoolmasters, and the like."

"If you don't read, how do you fill up your time, Jack?"

"My pipe's better than any book, lad. I'm goin' to set down and have a smoke now. Wish I had an extra pipe for you."

"Thank you," said Herbert, politely, "but I don't smoke."

"Don't smoke! How old are you?"

"Sixteen."

"Sixteen years old, and don't smoke! Why, where was you raised?"

"In the East," answered Herbert, smiling.

"Why, I smoked before I was three foot high, I was goin' to say. I couldn't get along without smokin'."

"Nor I without reading."

"Well, folks will have their different tastes, I allow. I reckon I'll be goin' back."

"Shan't you bury him?" asked Herbert, with a glance at the dead Indian.

"No; he wouldn't have buried me."

"But you won't leave him here? If you'll bury him, I'll help you."

"Not now, boy. Since you make a point of it, I'll come round to-morrow, and dig a hole to put him in. I'll take the liberty of carryin' home his shootin' iron. He won't need it where he's gone."

The two parted in a friendly manner, and Herbert turned his face homeward, grave and thoughtful.



Chapter XXXII. The Blazing Star Mine.



Toward noon the next day George Melville and Herbert were resting from a country trip, sitting on a rude wooden settee which our hero had made of some superfluous boards, and placed directly in front of the house, when a figure was seen approaching with long strides from the shadow of the neighboring woods. It was not until he was close at hand that Herbert espied him.

"Why, it's Mr. Holden!" he exclaimed.

"Jack Holden, my lad," said the hunter, correcting him. "Is this the man you're living with?"

Jack Holden was unconventional, and had been brought up in a rude school so far as manners were concerned. It did not occur to him that his question might have been better framed.

"I am Mr. Melville," answered that gentleman, seeing that Herbert looked embarrassed. "Herbert is my constant and valued companion."

"He's a trump, that boy!" continued Holden. "Why, if it hadn't been for him, there'd been an end of Jack Holden yesterday."

"Herbert told me about it. It was indeed a tragic affair. The sacrifice of life is deplorable, but seemed to have been necessary, unless, indeed, you could have disabled him."

"Disabled him!" echoed the hunter. "That wouldn't have answered by a long shot. As soon as the reptile got well he'd have been on my trail ag'in. No, sir; it was my life or his, and I don't complain of the way things turned out."

"Have you buried him?" asked Herbert.

"Yes, I've shoved him under, and it's better than he deserved, the sneakin' rascal. I'm glad to make your acquaintance, Mr. Melville. Didn't know I had changed neighbors till the boy there told me yesterday. I've tramped over this mornin' to give you a call."

"You are very kind, Mr. Holden. Sit down here beside us."

"I'm more at home here," answered Holden, stretching himself on the ground, and laying his gun beside him. "How do you like Colorado?"

"Very much, as far as I have seen it," said Melville. "Herbert probably told you my object, in coming here?"

"He said you were ailin' some way."

"Yes, my lungs are weak. Since I have been here, I am feeling better and stronger, however."

"There don't seem to be anything the matter with the boy."

"Nothing but a healthy appetite," answered Herbert, smiling.

"That won't hurt anybody. Mr. Melville, do you smoke?"

"No, thank you."

"Queer! Don't see how you can do without it? Why, sir, I'd been homesick without my pipe. It's company, I tell you, when a chap's alone and got no one to speak to."

"I take it, Mr. Holden, you are not here for your health?"

"No, I should say not; I'm tough as a hickory nut. When I drop off it's more likely to be an Indian bullet than any disease. I'm forty-seven years old, and I don't know what it is to be sick."

"You are fortunate, Mr. Holden."

"I expect I am. But I haven't answered your question. I'm interested in mines, Mr. Melville. Have you ever been to Deer Creek?"

"Yes, I went over with Herbert to visit the store there one day last week."

"Did you ever hear of the Blazing Star Mine?"

"No, I believe not."

"I own it," said Holden. "It's a good mine, and would make me rich if I had a little more money to work it."

"Are the indications favorable, then?" asked Melville.

"It looks well, if that's what you mean. Yes, sir; the Star is a first-class property."

"Then it's a pity you don't work it."

"That's what I say myself. Mr. Melville, I've a proposal to make to you."

"What is it, Mr. Holden?"

"If you could manage to call me Jack, it would seem more social like."

"By all means, then, Jack!" said Melville smiling.

"You give me money enough to develop the mine, and I'll make half of it over to you."

"How much is needed?" asked Melville.

"Not over five hundred dollars. It's a bargain, I tell you."

"I do not myself wish to assume any business cares," said Melville.

Jack Holden looked disappointed.

"Just as you say," he responded.

"But Herbert may feel differently," continued Melville.

"I'd like the lad for a partner," said Holden, briskly.

"But I have no money!" said Herbert, in surprise.

George Melville smiled.

"If the mine is a good one," he said, "I will advance you the money necessary for the purchase of a half interest. If it pays you, you may become rich. Then you can repay the money."

"But suppose it doesn't, Mr. Melville," objected Herbert, "how can I ever repay you so large a sum?"

"On the whole, Herbert, I will take the risk."

"You are very kind, Mr. Melville," said Herbert, his face glowing with anticipation. To be half owner of a mine, with the chance of making a large sum of money, naturally elated him.

"Why shouldn't I be, Herbert? But I want to see the mine first."

"Can't you go over this afternoon?" asked Holden, eager to settle the matter as soon as possible.

"It is a long journey," said Melville, hesitating.

"You can stay overnight," said Jack Holden, "and come back in the morning."

"Very well; let us go then -- that is, after dinner. Herbert, if you will set the table, we will see if we can't offer our friend here some refreshment. He is hungry, I am sure, after his long walk."

"You've hit it, Mr. Melville," said Holden. "I allow I'm as hungry as a wolf. But you don't set down to table, do you?"

"Oh, yes," answered Mr. Melville, smiling pleasantly.

"I ain't used to it," said Holden; "but I was once. Anyhow, it won't make no difference in the victuals."

When dinner was ready the three sat down, and did ample justice to it; but Jack Holden made such furious onslaughts that the other two could hardly keep pace with him. Fortunately, there was plenty of food, for Melville did not believe in economical housekeeping.

After dinner they set out for Deer Creek. As has been already explained, it was the name of a mining settlement. Now, by the way, it is a prosperous town, though the name has been changed. Then, however, everything was rude and primitive.

Jack Holden led the way to the Blazing Star Mine, and pointed out its capabilities and promise. He waited with some anxiety for Melville's decision.

"I don't understand matters very well," said Melville, "but I am willing to take a good deal on trust. If you desire it, I will buy half the mine, paying you five hundred dollars for that interest. That is, I buy it for Herbert."

"Hooray!" shouted Holden. "Give us your hand, pard. You are my partner now, you know."

As he spoke he gripped Herbert's hand in a pressure which was so strong as to be painful, and the necessary business was gone through.

So Herbert found himself a half owner of the Blazing Star Mine, of Deer Creek, Colorado.

"I hope your mine will turn out well, Herbert," said Melville, smiling.

"I wish it might for mother's sake!" said Herbert, seriously.

"It won't be my fault if it don't," said his partner. "I shall stay here now, and get to work."

"Ought I not to help you?" asked Herbert.

"No; Mr. Melville will want you. I will hire a man here to help me, and charge it to your share of the expenses."

So the matter was arranged; but Herbert rode over two or three times a week to look after his property.



Chapter XXXIII. Good News From The Mine.



"Well, Herbert, what news from the mine?" asked Melville, two weeks later, on Herbert's return from Deer Creek, whither he had gone alone.

"There are some rich developments, so Jack says. Do you know, Mr. Melville, he says the mine is richly worth five thousand dollars."

"Bravo, Herbert! That would make your half worth twenty-five hundred."

"Yes," said the boy complacently; "if we could sell at that figure, I could pay you back and have two thousand dollars of my own. Think of that, Mr. Melville," continued Herbert, his eyes glowing with pride and pleasure. "Shouldn't I be a rich boy?"

"You may do even better, Herbert. Don't be in a hurry to sell. That is my advice. If the present favorable indications continue, you may realize a considerably larger sum."

"So Jack says. He says he is bound to hold on, and hopes I will."

"You are in luck, Herbert."

"Yes, Mr. Melville, and I don't forget that it is to you I am indebted for this good fortune," said the boy, earnestly. "If you hadn't bought the property for me, I could not. I don't know but you ought to get some share ef the profits."

George Melville shook his head.

"My dear boy," he said, "I have more than my share of money already. Sometimes I feel ashamed when I compare my lot with others, and consider that for the money I have, I have done no work. The least I can do is to consider myself the Lord's trustee, and do good to others, when it falls in my way."

"I wish all rich men thought as you do, Mr. Melville; the world would be happier," said Herbert.

"True, Herbert. I hope and believe there is a considerable number who, like myself, feel under obligations to do good."

"I shall be very glad, on mother's account, if I can go home with money enough to make her independent of work. By the way, Mr. Melville, I found a letter from mother in the Deer Creek post office. Shall I read it to you?"

"If there is nothing private in it, Herbert."

"There is nothing private from you, Mr. Melville."

It may be explained that Deer Creek had already obtained such prominence that the post-office department had established an office there, and learning this, Herbert had requested his mother to address him at that place.

He drew the letter from his pocket and read it aloud.

We quote the essential portions.

"'I am very glad to hear that you have made the long journey in safety, and are now in health.'"

Herbert had not mentioned in his home letter the stage-coach adventure, for he knew that it would disturb his mother to think that he had been exposed to such a risk.

"It will do no good, you know," he said to Mr. Melville, and his friend had agreed with him.

"'It is very satisfactory to me,' continued Herbert, reading from the letter, 'that you are under the charge of Mr. Melville, who seems to me an excellent, conscientious young man, from whom you can learn only good.'"

"Your mother thinks very kindly of me," said Melville, evidently pleased.

"She is right, too, Mr. Melville," said Herbert, with emphasis.

"'It will no doubt be improving to you, my dear Herbert, to travel under such pleasant auspices, for a boy can learn from observation as well as from books. I miss you very much, but since the separation is for your advantage, I can submit to it cheerfully.

"'You ask me about my relations with Mr. Graham. I am still in the post office, and thus far nearly the whole work devolves upon me. Except in one respect, I am well treated. Mr. G-. is, as you know, very penurious, and grudges every cent that he has to pay out. When he paid me last Saturday night the small sum for which I agreed to assist him, he had much to say about his large expenses, fuel, lights, etc., and asked me if I wouldn't agree to work for two dollars a week, instead of three. I confess, I was almost struck dumb by such an exhibition of meanness, and told him that it would be quite impossible. Since then he has spent some of the time himself in the office, and asked me various questions about the proper way of preparing the mail, etc., and I think it is his intention, if possible, to get along without me. I don't know, if he absolutely insists upon it, but it would be better to accept the reduction than to give up altogether. Two dollars a week will count in my small household.'

"Did you ever hear of such meanness, Mr. Melville?" demanded Herbert, indignantly. "Here is Mr. Graham making, I am sure, two thousand dollars a year clear profit, and yet anxious to reduce mother from three to two dollars a week."

"It is certainly a very small business, Herbert. I think some men become meaner by indulgence of their defect."

"I shall write mother to give up the place sooner than submit to such a reduction. Three dollars a week is small enough in all conscience."

"I approve the advice, Herbert. If Mr. Graham were really cramped for money, and doing a poor business, it would be different. As it is, it seems to me he has no excuse for his extreme penuriousness."

"How pleasant it would be to pay a flying visit to Wayneboro," said Herbert, thoughtfully. "One never appreciates home until he has left it."

"That pleasure must be left for the future. It will keep."

"Very true, and when I do go home I want to go well fixed."

Herbert had already caught the popular Western phrase for a man well to do.

"We must depend on the Blazing Star Mine for that," said Melville, smiling. My young readers may like to know that, while Herbert was prospering financially, he did not neglect the cultivation of his mind. Among the books left by Mr. Falkland were a number of standard histories, some elementary books in French, including a dictionary, a treatise on natural philosophy, and a German grammar and reader.

"Do you know anything of French or German, Mr. Melville?" inquired our hero, when they made their first examination of the library.

"Yes, Herbert, I am a tolerable scholar in each."

"I wish I were."

"Would you like to study them?"

"Yes, very much."

"Then I will make you a proposal. You are likely to have considerable time at your disposal. If you will study either, or both, I will be your teacher."

"I should like nothing better," said Herbert, eagerly.

"Moreover, if you wish to study philosophy, I will aid you, though we are not in a position to illustrate the subject by experiments."

Herbert was a sensible boy. Moreover, he was fond of study, and he saw at once how advantageous this proposal was. He secured a private tutor for nothing, and, as he soon found, an excellent one. Though Mr. Melville had never been a teacher, he had an unusual aptitude for teaching, and it is hard to decide whether he or Herbert enjoyed more the hours which they now regularly passed in the relation of teacher and pupil.

It must be said, also, that while George Melville evinced an aptitude for teaching, Herbert showed an equal aptitude for learning. The tasks which he voluntarily undertook most boys would have found irksome, but he only found them a source of pleasure, and had the satisfaction, after a very short time, to find himself able to read ordinary French and German prose with comparative ease.

"I never had a better pupil," said George Melville.

"I believe I am the first you ever had," said Herbert, laughing.

"That is true. I spoke as if I were a veteran teacher."

"Then I won't be too much elated by the compliment."



Chapter XXXIV. Two Old Acquaintances Reappear.



In the rude hotel kept by the outlaw, whom we have introduced under the name of Brown, there sat two men, to neither of whom will my readers need an introduction. They have already appeared in our story.

One was Brown himself, the other Col. Warner, or, as we may as well confess, Jerry Lane, known throughout the West as an unscrupulous robber and chief of a band of road agents, whose depredations had been characterized by audacity and success.

Brown was ostensibly an innkeeper, but this business, honest enough in itself, only veiled the man's real trade, in which he defied alike the laws of honesty and of his country. The other was by turns a gentleman of property, a merchant, a cattle owner, or a speculator, in all of which characters he acted excellently, and succeeded in making the acquaintance of men whom he designed to rob.

The two men wore a sober look. In their business, as in those more legitimate, there are good times and dull times, and of late they had not succeeded.

"I want some money, captain," said Brown, sullenly, laying down a black pipe, which he had been smoking.

"So do I, Brown," answered Warner, as we will continue to call him. "It's a dry time with me."

"You don't understand me, captain," continued Brown. "I want you to give me some money."

"First you must tell me where I am to get it," answered Warner, with a shrug of his shoulders.

"Do you mean to say you have no money?" asked Brown, frowning.

"How should I have?"

"Because in all our enterprises you have taken the lion's share, though you haven't always done the chief part. You can't have spent the whole."

"No, not quite; but I have nothing to spare. I need to travel about, and -- "

"You've got a soft thing," grumbled Brown. "You go round and have a good time while I am tied down to this fourth-rate tavern in the woods."

"Well, it isn't much more than that," said Warner, musingly.

"Do you expect me to keep a first-class hotel?" demanded Brown, defiantly.

"No, of course not. Brown," continued Warner, soothingly, "don't let us quarrel; we can't afford it. Let us talk together reasonably."

"What have you to say?"

"This, that it isn't my fault if things have gone wrong. Was it my fault that we found so little cash in that last store we broke open?"

"Nineteen dollars!" muttered Brown, contemptuously.

"Nineteen dollars, as you say. It didn't pay us for our trouble. Well, I was as sorry as you. I fail to see how it was my fault. Better luck next time."

"When is the next time to be?" asked Brown, somewhat placated.

"As soon as you please."

"What is it?"

"I will tell you. You remember that stagecoach full of passengers that fooled us some time since?"

"I ought to."

"I always meant to get on the track of that Melville, who spoiled our plot by overhearing us and giving us away to the passengers. He is very rich, so the boy who was with him told me, and I have every reason to rely upon his statement. Well, I want to be revenged upon him, and, at the same time, to relieve him of the doubtless large sum of money which he keeps with him."

"I'm with you. Where is he?"

"I have only recently ascertained -- no matter how. He lives in a small cabin, far from any other, about eight miles from the mining town of Deer Creek."

"I know the place."

"Precisely. No one lives there with him except the boy, and it would be easy enough to rob him. I saw a man from Deer Creek yesterday. He tells me that Melville has bought for the boy a half share in a rich mine, and is thought to have at least five thousand dollars in gold and bills in his cabin."

Brown's eyes glistened with cupidity.

"That would be a big haul," he said.

"Of course, it would. Now, Brown, while you have been grumbling at me I have been saving this little affair for our benefit -- yours and mine. We won't let any of the rest of them into it, but whatever we find we will divide, and share alike."

"Do you mean this, captain?"

"Yes, I mean it, friend Brown. You shan't charge me with taking the lion's share in this case. If there are five thousand dollars, as my informant seems to think, your share shall be half."

"Twenty-five hundred dollars!"

"Exactly; twenty-five hundred dollars."

"That will pay for my hard luck lately," said Brown, his face clearing.

"Very handsomely, too."

"When shall we start?"

"To-morrow morning. We will set out early in the morning; and, by the way, Brown, it's just as well not to let your wife or anyone else know where we are going."

"All right," answered Brown, cheerfully.

The next morning the two worthies set out their far from meritorious errand. Brown told his wife vaguely, in reply to her questioning, that he was called away for a few days on business.

If he expected to evade further question by this answer, he was mistaken. Mrs. Brown was naturally of a jealous and suspicious temperament, and doubt was excited in her breast.

"Where shall I say you have gone if I am asked?" she said.

"You may say that you don't know," answered Brown, brusquely.

"I don't think much of a man who keeps secrets from his wife," said Mrs. Brown, coldly.

"And I don't think much of a man who tells everything to his wife," retorted Brown. "It's all right, Kitty, You needn't concern yourself. But the captain and I are on an expedition, which, to be successful, needs to be kept secret."

Mrs. Brown was not more than half convinced, but she was compelled to accept this statement, for her husband would vouchsafe no other.

That part of the State into which they journeyed was not new ground to either. They were familiar with all the settled portion of Colorado, and had no difficulty in finding the cabin occupied by George Melville.

Now it happened that they reached the modest dwelling in the woods about three o'clock in the afternoon. Herbert had ridden over to Deer Creek to look after his mining property, and it was not yet time to expect him back. George Melville was therefore left alone.

Knowing, as my young readers do, his literary tastes, they will understand that, though left alone, he was not lonely. The stock of books which he had bought from his predecessor was to him an unfailing resource. Moreover, he had taken up Italian, of which he knew a little, and was reading in the original the "Divina Comedia" of Dante, a work which consumed many hours, and was not likely soon to be over. To-day, however, for some reason Melville found it more difficult than usual to fix his mind upon his pleasant study. Was it a presentiment of coming evil that made him so unusually restless? At all events, the hours, which were wont to be fleet-footed, passed with unusual slowness, and he found himself longing for the return of his young friend.

"I don't know what has got into me to-day," said Melville to himself. "It's only three o'clock, yet the day seems very long. I wish Herbert would return. I feel uneasy. I don't know why. I hope it is not a presage of misfortune. I shall not be sure that something has not happened to Herbert till I see him again."

As he spoke George Melville rose from his chair, and was about to put on his hat and take a short walk in the neighboring woods, when he heard the tramp of approaching horses. Looking out from the window, he saw two horsemen close at hand.

He started in dismay, for in the two men he was at no loss in recognizing his stagecoach companion, Col. Warner, and the landlord who had essayed the part of a road agent.



Chapter XXXV. Melville In Peril.



Col. Warner and his companion enjoyed the effect of their presence upon their intended victim, and smiled in a manner that boded little good to Melville, as they dismounted from their steeds and advanced to the door of the cabin.

"How are you, Melville?" said Warner, ironically. "I see you have not forgotten me."

"No, I have not forgotten you," answered Melville, regarding his visitor uneasily.

"This is my friend, Mr. Brown. Perhaps you remember him?"

"I do remember him, and the circumstances under which I last saw him," replied Melville, rather imprudently.

Brown frowned, but he did not speak. He generally left his companion to do the talking.

"Being in the neighborhood, we thought we'd call upon you," continued Col. Warner.

"Walk in, gentlemen, if you see fit," said Melville. "I suppose it would be only polite to say that I am glad to see you, but I have some regard for truth, and cannot say it."

"I admire your candor, Mr. Melville. Walk in, Brown. Ha! upon my word, you have a nice home here. Didn't expect to see anything of the kind in this wilderness. Books and pictures! Really, now, Brown, I am quite tempted to ask our friend, Melville, to entertain us for a few days."

"I don't think it would suit you," said Melville, dryly. "You are probably more fond of exciting adventure than of books."

"Does the boy live with you?" asked Warner, dropping his bantering tone, and looking about his searchingly.

"Yes, he is still with me."

"I don't see him."

"Because he has gone to Deer Creek on business."

When Melville saw the rapid glance of satisfaction interchanged by the two visitors he realized that he had made an imprudent admission. He suspected that their design was to rob him, and he had voluntarily assured them that he was alone, and that they could proceed without interruption.

"Sorry not to see him," said Warner. "I'd like to renew our pleasant acquaintance."

Melville was about to reply that Herbert would be back directly, when it occurred to him that this would be a fresh piece of imprudence. It would doubtless lead them to proceed at once to the object of their visit, while if he could only keep them till his boy companion did actually return, they would at least be two to two. Even then they would be by no means equally matched, but something might occur to help them.

"I suppose Herbert will return by evening," he replied. "You can see him if you remain till then."

Another expression of satisfaction appeared upon the faces of his two visitors, but for this he was prepared.

"Sorry we can't stay till then," said Warner, "but business of importance will limit our stay. Eh, Brown?"

"I don't see the use of delaying at all!" growled Brown, who was not as partial as his companion to the feline amusement of playing with his intended victim. With him, on the contrary, it was a word, and a blow, and sometimes the blow came first.

"Come to business!" continued Brown, impatiently, addressing his associate.

"That is my purpose, friend Brown."

"Mr. Melville, it is not solely the pleasure of seeing you that has led my friend and myself to call this afternoon."

Melville nodded.

"So I supposed," he said.

"There is a little unfinished business between us, as you will remember. I owe you a return for the manner in which you saw fit to throw suspicion upon me some time since, when we were traveling together."

"I shall be very glad to have you convince me that I did you an injustice," said Melville. "I was led to believe that you and your friend now present were leagued together to rob us of our money and valuables. If it was not so -- "

"You were not very far from right, Mr. Melville. Still it was not polite to express your suspicions so rudely. Besides, you were instrumental in defeating our plan."

"I can't express any regret for that, Col. Warner, or Jerry Lane, as I suppose that is your real name."

"I am Jerry Lane!" said Warner, proudly. "I may as well confess it, since it is well that you should know with whom you have to deal. When I say that I am Jerry Lane, you will understand that I mean business."

"I do," answered Melville, quietly.

"You know me by reputation?" said the outlaw, with a curious pride in his unenviable notoriety.

"I do."

"What do men say of me?"

"That you are at the head of a gang of reckless assassins and outlaws, and that you have been implicated in scores of robberies and atrocities."

This was not so satisfactory.

"Young man," said Lane -- to drop his false name -- "I advise you to be careful how you talk. It may be the worse for you. Now, to come to business, how much money have you in the house?"

"Why do you ask, and by what right?"

"We propose to take it. Now answer my question."

"Gentlemen, you will be very poorly paid for the trouble you have taken in visiting me. I have very little money."

"Of course, you say so. We want an answer."

"As well as I can remember I have between forty and fifty dollars in my pocketbook."

Brown uttered an oath under his breath, and Lane looked uneasy.

"That's a lie!" said Brown, speaking first. "We were told you had five thousand dollars here."

"Your informant was badly mistaken, then. I am not very wise, perhaps, in worldly matters, but I certainly am not such a fool as to keep so large a sum of money in a lonely cabin like this."

"Perhaps not so much as that," returned Lane. "I don't pretend to say how much you have. That is for you to tell us."

George Melville drew from his pocket a wallet, and passed it to the outlaw.

"Count the money for yourself, if you wish," he said. "You can verify my statement."

Lane opened the wallet with avidity, and drew out the contents. It was apparent at the first glance that the sum it contained was small. It was counted, however, and proved to amount to forty-seven dollars and a few silver coins.

The two robbers looked at each other in dismay. Was it possible that this was all? If so, they would certainly be very poorly paid for their trouble.

"Do you expect us to believe, Mr. Melville," said Jerry Lane, sternly, "that this is all the money you have?"

"In this cabin -- yes."

"We are not so easily fooled. It is probably all you carry about with you; but you have more concealed somewhere about the premises. It will be best for you to produce at once, unless you are ready to pass in your checks."

"That means," said Melville, growing pale in spite of himself, for he knew from report the desperate character of his guests, "that means, I suppose, that you will kill me unless I satisfy your rapacity."

"It does," said Lane, curtly. "Now for your answer!"

"Gentlemen, I cannot accomplish impossibilities. It is as I say. The money in your hands is all that I have by me."

"Do you mean to deny that you are rich?" asked Lane.

"No, I do not deny it. That is not the point in question. You ask me to produce all the money I have with me. I have done so."

"Do you believe this, Brown?" asked the captain, turning to his subordinate.

"No, I don't."

"It is strictly true."

"Then," said Brown, "you deserve to die for having no more money for us."

"True," chimed in Lane. "Once more, will you produce your secret hoard?"

"I have none."

"Then you must be dealt with in the usual way. Brown, have you a rope?"

"Yes."

"Is there a convenient tree near by."

"We'll find one."

The two seized Melville, and, despite his resistance, dragged him violently from the cabin, and adjusted a rope about his neck. The young man was pale, and gave himself up for lost.



Chapter XXXVI. The Mine Is Sold.



While his friend was in peril, where was Herbert?

For him, too, it had been an exciting day -- Deer Creek had been excited by the arrival of a capitalist from New York, whose avowed errand it was to buy a mine. Reports from Deer Creek had turned his steps thither, and all the mine owners were on the qui vive to attract the attention of the monied man. It was understood that he intended to capitalize the mine, when purchased, start a company, and work it by the new and improved methods, which had replaced the older and ruder appliances at first employed.

Mr. Compton, though not a mining expert, was a shrewd man, who weighed carefully the representations that were made to him, and reserved his opinion. It was clear that he was not a man who would readily be taken in, though there were not wanting men at Deer Creek who were ready to palm off upon him poor or worthless mines. About the only mine owners who did not seek him were the owners of the Blazing Star, both of whom were on the ground. The mine was looking up. The most recent developments were the most favorable, and the prospects were excellent. They might, indeed, "peter out" as the expression is, but it did not seem likely.

"Jack," said Herbert, "shall we invite Mr. Compton to visit our mine?"

"No," answered Jack Holden; "I am willing to keep it."

"Wouldn't you sell?"

"Yes, if I could get my price."

"What is your price?"

"Twenty-five thousand dollars for the whole mine!"

"That is twelve thousand five hundred for mine," said Herbert, his cheek flushing with the excitement he felt.

"You've figured it out right, my lad," said his partner.

"That would leave me twelve thousand after I have paid up Mr. Melville for the sum I paid in the beginning."

"Right again, my lad."

"Why, Jack!" exclaimed Herbert. "Do you know what that means? It means that I should be rich -- that my mother could move into a nicer house, that we could live at ease for the rest of our lives."

"Would twelve thousand dollars do all that?"

"No; but it would give me a fund that would establish me in business, and relieve me of all anxiety. Jack, it's too bright to be real."

"We may not be able to sell the mine at that figure, Herbert. Don't let us count our chickens before they are hatched, or we may be disappointed. I'm as willin' to keep the mine as to sell it."

"Jack, here is Mr. Compton coming," said Herbert.

The capitalist paused, and addressing Herbert, said:

"Have you anything to do with the mine, my lad?"

"I am half owner," answered Herbert, promptly, and not without pride.

"Who is the other half owner?"

"Mr. Holden," answered Herbert, pointing out Jack.

"May I examine the mine?"

"You are quite welcome to, sir."

Possibly the fact that this mine alone had not been pressed upon him for purchase, predisposed Mr. Compton to regard it with favor. Every facility was offered him, and Jack Holden, who thoroughly understood his business, gave him the necessary explanations.

After an hour spent in the examination, Mr. Compton came to business.

"Is the mine for sale?" he asked.

"Yes, sir."

"What is your price?"

"Twenty-five thousand dollars."

"Is that your lowest price?"

"It is."

Jack Holden wasted no words in praising the mine, and this produced a favorable impression on the capitalist with whom he was dealing.

"I'll take it," he answered.

"Then it's a bargain."

Herbert found it difficult to realize that these few words had made him a rich boy. He remained silent, but in his heart he was deeply thankful, not so much for himself, as because he knew that he was now able to rejoice his mother's heart, and relieve her from all pecuniary cares or anxieties.

"You've made a good bargain, sir, if I do say it," said Jack Holden. "For my own part, I wasn't so particular about selling the mine, but my young partner here is differently placed, and the money will come handy to him."

"You are rather young for a mine owner," said Mr. Compton, regarding Herbert with some curiosity.

"Yes, sir; I believe I am the youngest mine owner here."

"Are you a resident of this State?"

"Only temporarily, sir. I came here with a friend whose lungs are weak."

"You expect to return to the East soon?"

"Yes, sir."

"When you do, come to see me. I am a commission merchant in Boston. If it is your intention to follow a business life, I may be able to find you a place."

"Thank you, sir; I should like nothing better."

"To-morrow," said Mr. Compton, "I will come here and complete the purchase."

"Jack," said Herbert, when the new purchaser of the mine had left them, "there is no work for us here. Come with me, and let us together tell Mr. Melville the good news."

"A good thought, my lad!"

So the two mounted their horses, and left Deer Creek behind them. They little suspected how sorely they were needed.



Chapter XXXVII. To The Rescue.



Herbert and his companion drew near the forest cabin, which had been the home of the former, without a suspicion that George Melville was in such dire peril. The boy was, indeed, thinking of him, but it was rather of the satisfaction his employer would feel at his good fortune.

"Somehow I feel in a great hurry to get there, Jack," said Herbert. "I shall enjoy telling Mr. Melville of my good luck."

"He's a fine chap, that Melville," said Jack Holden, meaning no disrespect by this unceremonious fashion of speech.

"That he is! He's the best friend I ever had, Jack," returned Herbert, warmly.

"It's a pity he's ailing."

"Oh, he's much stronger than he was when he came out here. All the unfavorable symptoms have disappeared."

"Maybe he'll outgrow it. I had an uncle that was given up to die of consumption, when he was about Melville's age, and he died only last year at the age of seventy-five."

"That must have been slow consumption, Jack," said Herbert, smiling. "If Mr. Melville can live as long as that, I think neither he nor his friends will have reason to complain."

"Is he so rich, lad?"

"I don't know how rich, but I know he has plenty of money. How much power a rich man has," said Herbert, musingly. "Now, Mr. Melville has changed my whole life for me. When I first met him I was working for three dollars a week. Now I am worth twelve thousand dollars!"

Herbert repeated this with a beaming face. The good news had not lost the freshness of novelty. There was so much that he could do now that he was comparatively rich. To do Herbert justice, it was not of himself principally that he thought. It was sweet to reflect that he could bring peace, and joy, and independence to his mother. After all, it is the happiness we confer that brings us the truest enjoyment. The selfish man who eats and drinks and lodges like a prince, but is unwilling to share his abundance with others, knows not what he loses. Even boys and girls may try the experiment for themselves, for one does not need to be rich to give pleasure to others.

"Come, Jack, let us ride faster; I am in a hurry," said Herbert, when they were perhaps a quarter of a mile distant from the cabin.

They emerged from the forest, and could now see the cottage and its surroundings. They saw something that almost paralyzed them.

George Melville, with a rope round his neck, stood beneath a tree. Col. Warner was up in the tree swinging the rope over a branch, while Brown, big, burly and brutal, pinioned the helpless young man in his strong arms.

"Good heavens! Do you see that?" exclaimed Herbert. "It is the road agents. Quick, or we shall be too late!"

Jack had seen. He had not only seen, but he had already acted. Quick as thought he raised his weapon, and covered Brown. There was a sharp report, and the burly ruffian fell, his heart pierced by the unerring bullet.

Herbert dashed forward, and, seizing the rope, released his friend.

"Thank Heaven, Herbert! You have saved my life!" murmured Melville, in tones of heartfelt gratitude.

"There's another of them!" exclaimed Jack Holden, looking up into the tree, and he raised his gun once more.

"Don't shoot!" exclaimed the man, whom we know best as Col. Warner; "I'll come down."

So he did, but not in the manner he expected. In his flurry, for he was not a brave man, outlaw though he was, he lost his hold and fell at the feet of Holden.

"What shall we do with him, Mr. Melville?" asked Jack. "He deserves to die."

"Don't kill him! Bind him, and give him up to the authorities."

"I hate to let him off so easy," said Jack, but he did as Melville wished. But the colonel had a short reprieve. On his way to jail, a bullet from some unknown assailant pierced his temple, and Jerry Lane, the notorious road agent, died, as he had lived, by violence.



Chapter XXXVIII. Conclusion.



It had been the intention of George Melville to remain in Colorado all winter, but his improved health, and the tragic event which I have just narrated, conspired to change his determination.

"Herbert," he said, when the business connected with the sale of the mine had been completed, "how would you like to go home?"

"With you?"

"Yes, you don't suppose I would remain here alone?"

"If you feel well enough, Mr. Melville, there is nothing I should like better."

"I do feel well enough. If I find any unfavorable symptoms coming back, I can travel again, but I am anxious to get away from this place, where I have come so near losing my life at the hands of the outlaws."

There was little need of delay. Their preparations were soon made. There was an embarrassment about the cottage, but that was soon removed.

"I'll buy it of you, Mr. Melville," said Jack Holden.

"I can't sell it to you, Mr. Holden."

"I will give you a fair price."

"You don't understand me," said George Melville, smiling. "I will not sell it, because I prefer to give it."

"Thank you, Mr Melville, but you know I am not exactly a poor man. The sale of the mine -- -"

"Jack," said Melville, with emotion, "would you have me forget that it is to you and Herbert that I owe my rescue from a violent and ignominious death?"

"I want no pay for that, Mr. Melville."

"No, I am sure you don't. But you will accept the cabin, not as pay, but as a mark of my esteem."

Upon that ground Jack accepted the cottage with pleasure. Herbert tried to tempt him to make a visit to the East, but he was already in treaty for another mine, and would not go.

The two stayed a day in Chicago on their way to Boston.

"I wonder if Eben is still here?" thought Herbert.

He soon had his question answered. In passing through a suburban portion of the great city, he saw a young man sawing wood in front of a mean dwelling, while a stout negro was standing near, with his hands in his pockets, surveying the job. He was the proprietor of a colored restaurant, and Eben was working for him.

Alas, for Eben! The once spruce dry-goods clerk was now a miserable-looking tramp, so far as outward appearances went. His clothes were not only ragged, but soiled, and the spruce city acquaintances whom he once knew would have passed him without recognition.

"Eben!"

Eben turned swiftly as he heard his name called, and a flush of shame overspread his face.

"Is it you, Herbert?" he asked, faintly.

"Yes, Eben. You don't seem very prosperous."

"I never thought I should sink so low," answered Eben, mournfully, "as to saw wood for a colored man."

"What are you talkin' about?" interrupted his boss, angrily. "Ain't I as good as a worfless white man that begged a meal of vittles of me, coz he was starvin'? You jest shut up your mouf, and go to work."

Eben sadly resumed his labor. Herbert pitied him, in spite of his folly and wickedness.

"Eben, do you owe this man anything?" he added.

"Yes, he does. He owes me for his dinner. Don't you go to interfere!" returned the colored man.

"How much was your dinner worth?" asked Herbert, putting his hand into his pocket.

"It was wuf a quarter."

"There is your money! Now, Eben, come with me."

"I've been very unfortunate," wailed Eben.

"Would you like to go back to Wayneboro?" asked Herbert.

"Yes, anywhere," answered Eben, eagerly. "I can't make a livin' here. I have almost starved sometimes."

"Eben, I'll make a bargain with you. If I will take you home, will you turn over a new leaf, and try to lead a regular and industrious life?"

"Yes, I'll do it," answered Eben.

"Then I'll take you with me to-morrow."

"I shouldn't like my old friends to see me in these rags," said Eben, glancing with shame at his tattered clothes.

"They shall not. Come with me, and I will rig you out anew."

"You're a good fellow, Herbert," said Eben, gratefully. "I'm sorry for the way I treated you."

"Then it's all right," said Herbert. Herbert kept his promise. He took Eben to a barber shop, where there were also baths, having previously purchased him a complete outfit, and Eben emerged looking once more like the spruce dry-goods salesman of yore.

*****

One day not long afterwards Mrs. Carr was sitting in her little sitting room, sewing. She had plenty of leisure for this work now, for Mr. Graham had undertaken to attend to the post-office duties himself. It was natural that she should think of her absent boy, from whom she had not heard for a long time.

"When shall I see him again?" she thought, wearily.

There was a knock at the outer door.

She rose to open it, but, before she could reach it, it flew open, and her boy, taller and handsomer than ever, was in her arms.

"Oh, Herbert!"

It was all she could say, but the tone was full of joy.

"How I have missed you!"

"We will be together now, mother."

"I hope so, Herbert. Perhaps you can find something to do in Wayneboro, and even if it doesn't pay as well -- "

"Mother," interrupted Herbert, laughing, "is that the way to speak to a rich boy like me?"

"Rich?"

"Yes, mother, I bring home twelve thousand dollars."

Mrs. Carr could not believe it at first, but Herbert told his story, and she gave joyful credence at last.

Eben did not receive as warm a welcome, but finally his father was propitiated, and agreed to give his son employment in his own store. He's there yet. His hard experience in the West has subdued his pride, and he has really "turned over a new leaf," as he promised Herbert. His father will probably next year give him a quarter interest in the firm, and the firm's name will be

"Ebenezer Graham & Son."

Herbert and his mother have moved to Boston. Our hero is learning business in the counting room of Mr. Compton. They live in a pleasant house at the South End, and Mr. Melville, restored to a very fair measure of health, is boarding, or, rather, has his home with them. He is devoting his time to literary pursuits, and I am told that he is the author of a brilliant paper in a recent number of the North American Review. Herbert finds some time for study, and, under the guidance of his friend and former employer, he has already become a very creditable scholar in French, German and English literature. He enjoys his present prosperity all the better for the hardships through which he passed before reaching it.

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A Kidnapped Santa Claus

By

L. Frank Baum



Santa Claus lives in the Laughing Valley, where stands the big, rambling castle in which his toys are manufactured. His workmen, selected from the ryls, knooks, pixies and fairies, live with him, and every one is as busy as can be from one year's end to another.

It is called the Laughing Valley because everything there is happy and gay. The brook chuckles to itself as it leaps rollicking between its green banks; the wind whistles merrily in the trees; the sunbeams dance lightly over the soft grass, and the violets and wild flowers look smilingly up from their green nests. To laugh one needs to be happy; to be happy one needs to be content. And throughout the Laughing Valley of Santa Claus contentment reigns supreme.

On one side is the mighty Forest of Burzee. At the other side stands the huge mountain that contains the Caves of the Daemons. And between them the Valley lies smiling and peaceful.

One would thing that our good old Santa Claus, who devotes his days to making children happy, would have no enemies on all the earth; and, as a matter of fact, for a long period of time he encountered nothing but love wherever he might go.

But the Daemons who live in the mountain caves grew to hate Santa Claus very much, and all for the simple reason that he made children happy.

The Caves of the Daemons are five in number. A broad pathway leads up to the first cave, which is a finely arched cavern at the foot of the mountain, the entrance being beautifully carved and decorated. In it resides the Daemon of Selfishness. Back of this is another cavern inhabited by the Daemon of Envy. The cave of the Daemon of Hatred is next in order, and through this one passes to the home of the Daemon of Malice -- situated in a dark and fearful cave in the very heart of the mountain. I do not know what lies beyond this. Some say there are terrible pitfalls leading to death and destruction, and this may very well be true. However, from each one of the four caves mentioned there is a small, narrow tunnel leading to the fifth cave -- a cozy little room occupied by the Daemon of Repentance. And as the rocky floors of these passages are well worn by the track of passing feet, I judge that many wanderers in the Caves of the Daemons have escaped through the tunnels to the abode of the Daemon of Repentance, who is said to be a pleasant sort of fellow who gladly opens for one a little door admitting you into fresh air and sunshine again.

Well, these Daemons of the Caves, thinking they had great cause to dislike old Santa Claus, held a meeting one day to discuss the matter.

"I'm really getting lonesome," said the Daemon of Selfishness. "For Santa Claus distributes so many pretty Christmas gifts to all the children that they become happy and generous, through his example, and keep away from my cave."

"I'm having the same trouble," rejoined the Daemon of Envy. "The little ones seem quite content with Santa Claus, and there are few, indeed, that I can coax to become envious."

"And that makes it bad for me!" declared the Daemon of Hatred. "For if no children pass through the Caves of Selfishness and Envy, none can get to MY cavern."

"Or to mine," added the Daemon of Malice.

"For my part," said the Daemon of Repentance, "it is easily seen that if children do not visit your caves they have no need to visit mine; so that I am quite as neglected as you are."

"And all because of this person they call Santa Claus!" exclaimed the Daemon of Envy. "He is simply ruining our business, and something must be done at once."

To this they readily agreed; but what to do was another and more difficult matter to settle. They knew that Santa Claus worked all through the year at his castle in the Laughing Valley, preparing the gifts he was to distribute on Christmas Eve; and at first they resolved to try to tempt him into their caves, that they might lead him on to the terrible pitfalls that ended in destruction.

So the very next day, while Santa Claus was busily at work, surrounded by his little band of assistants, the Daemon of Selfishness came to him and said:

"These toys are wonderfully bright and pretty. Why do you not keep them for yourself? It's a pity to give them to those noisy boys and fretful girls, who break and destroy them so quickly."

"Nonsense!" cried the old graybeard, his bright eyes twinkling merrily as he turned toward the tempting Daemon. "The boys and girls are never so noisy and fretful after receiving my presents, and if I can make them happy for one day in the year I am quite content."

So the Daemon went back to the others, who awaited him in their caves, and said:

"I have failed, for Santa Claus is not at all selfish."

The following day the Daemon of Envy visited Santa Claus. Said he: "The toy shops are full of playthings quite as pretty as those you are making. What a shame it is that they should interfere with your business! They make toys by machinery much quicker than you can make them by hand; and they sell them for money, while you get nothing at all for your work."

But Santa Claus refused to be envious of the toy shops.

"I can supply the little ones but once a year -- on Christmas Eve," he answered; "for the children are many, and I am but one. And as my work is one of love and kindness I would be ashamed to receive money for my little gifts. But throughout all the year the children must be amused in some way, and so the toy shops are able to bring much happiness to my little friends. I like the toy shops, and am glad to see them prosper."

In spite of the second rebuff, the Daemon of Hatred thought he would try to influence Santa Claus. So the next day he entered the busy workshop and said:

"Good morning, Santa! I have bad news for you."

"Then run away, like a good fellow," answered Santa Claus. "Bad news is something that should be kept secret and never told."

"You cannot escape this, however," declared the Daemon; "for in the world are a good many who do not believe in Santa Claus, and these you are bound to hate bitterly, since they have so wronged you."

"Stuff and rubbish!" cried Santa.

"And there are others who resent your making children happy and who sneer at you and call you a foolish old rattlepate! You are quite right to hate such base slanderers, and you ought to be revenged upon them for their evil words."

"But I don't hate 'em!" exclaimed Santa Claus positively. "Such people do me no real harm, but merely render themselves and their children unhappy. Poor things! I'd much rather help them any day than injure them."

Indeed, the Daemons could not tempt old Santa Claus in any way. On the contrary, he was shrewd enough to see that their object in visiting him was to make mischief and trouble, and his cheery laughter disconcerted the evil ones and showed to them the folly of such an undertaking. So they abandoned honeyed words and determined to use force.

It was well known that no harm can come to Santa Claus while he is in the Laughing Valley, for the fairies, and ryls, and knooks all protect him. But on Christmas Eve he drives his reindeer out into the big world, carrying a sleighload of toys and pretty gifts to the children; and this was the time and the occasion when his enemies had the best chance to injure him. So the Daemons laid their plans and awaited the arrival of Christmas Eve.

The moon shone big and white in the sky, and the snow lay crisp and sparkling on the ground as Santa Claus cracked his whip and sped away out of the Valley into the great world beyond. The roomy sleigh was packed full with huge sacks of toys, and as the reindeer dashed onward our jolly old Santa laughed and whistled and sang for very joy. For in all his merry life this was the one day in the year when he was happiest -- the day he lovingly bestowed the treasures of his workshop upon the little children.

It would be a busy night for him, he well knew. As he whistled and shouted and cracked his whip again, he reviewed in mind all the towns and cities and farmhouses where he was expected, and figured that he had just enough presents to go around and make every child happy. The reindeer knew exactly what was expected of them, and dashed along so swiftly that their feet scarcely seemed to touch the snow-covered ground.

Suddenly a strange thing happened: a rope shot through the moonlight and a big noose that was in the end of it settled over the arms and body of Santa Claus and drew tight. Before he could resist or even cry out he was jerked from the seat of the sleigh and tumbled head foremost into a snowbank, while the reindeer rushed onward with the load of toys and carried it quickly out of sight and sound.

Such a surprising experience confused old Santa for a moment, and when he had collected his senses he found that the wicked Daemons had pulled him from the snowdrift and bound him tightly with many coils of the stout rope. And then they carried the kidnapped Santa Claus away to their mountain, where they thrust the prisoner into a secret cave and chained him to the rocky wall so that he could not escape.

"Ha, ha!" laughed the Daemons, rubbing their hands together with cruel glee. "What will the children do now? How they will cry and scold and storm when they find there are no toys in their stockings and no gifts on their Christmas trees! And what a lot of punishment they will receive from their parents, and how they will flock to our Caves of Selfishness, and Envy, and Hatred, and Malice! We have done a mighty clever thing, we Daemons of the Caves!"

Now it so chanced that on this Christmas Eve the good Santa Claus had taken with him in his sleigh Nuter the Ryl, Peter the Knook, Kilter the Pixie, and a small fairy named Wisk -- his four favorite assistants. These little people he had often found very useful in helping him to distribute his gifts to the children, and when their master was so suddenly dragged from the sleigh they were all snugly tucked underneath the seat, where the sharp wind could not reach them.

The tiny immortals knew nothing of the capture of Santa Claus until some time after he had disappeared. But finally they missed his cheery voice, and as their master always sang or whistled on his journeys, the silence warned them that something was wrong.

Little Wisk stuck out his head from underneath the seat and found Santa Claus gone and no one to direct the flight of the reindeer.

"Whoa!" he called out, and the deer obediently slackened speed and came to a halt.

Peter and Nuter and Kilter all jumped upon the seat and looked back over the track made by the sleigh. But Santa Claus had been left miles and miles behind.

"What shall we do?" asked Wisk anxiously, all the mirth and mischief banished from his wee face by this great calamity.

"We must go back at once and find our master," said Nuter the Ryl, who thought and spoke with much deliberation.

"No, no!" exclaimed Peter the Knook, who, cross and crabbed though he was, might always be depended upon in an emergency. "If we delay, or go back, there will not be time to get the toys to the children before morning; and that would grieve Santa Claus more than anything else."

"It is certain that some wicked creatures have captured him," added Kilter thoughtfully, "and their object must be to make the children unhappy. So our first duty is to get the toys distributed as carefully as if Santa Claus were himself present. Afterward we can search for our master and easily secure his freedom."

This seemed such good and sensible advice that the others at once resolved to adopt it. So Peter the Knook called to the reindeer, and the faithful animals again sprang forward and dashed over hill and valley, through forest and plain, until they came to the houses wherein children lay sleeping and dreaming of the pretty gifts they would find on Christmas morning.

The little immortals had set themselves a difficult task; for although they had assisted Santa Claus on many of his journeys, their master had always directed and guided them and told them exactly what he wished them to do. But now they had to distribute the toys according to their own judgment, and they did not understand children as well as did old Santa. So it is no wonder they made some laughable errors.

Mamie Brown, who wanted a doll, got a drum instead; and a drum is of no use to a girl who loves dolls. And Charlie Smith, who delights to romp and play out of doors, and who wanted some new rubber boots to keep his feet dry, received a sewing box filled with colored worsteds and threads and needles, which made him so provoked that he thoughtlessly called our dear Santa Claus a fraud.

Had there been many such mistakes the Daemons would have accomplished their evil purpose and made the children unhappy. But the little friends of the absent Santa Claus labored faithfully and intelligently to carry out their master's ideas, and they made fewer errors than might be expected under such unusual circumstances.

And, although they worked as swiftly as possible, day had begun to break before the toys and other presents were all distributed; so for the first time in many years the reindeer trotted into the Laughing Valley, on their return, in broad daylight, with the brilliant sun peeping over the edge of the forest to prove they were far behind their accustomed hours.

Having put the deer in the stable, the little folk began to wonder how they might rescue their master; and they realized they must discover, first of all, what had happened to him and where he was.

So Wisk the Fairy transported himself to the bower of the Fairy Queen, which was located deep in the heart of the Forest of Burzee; and once there, it did not take him long to find out all about the naughty Daemons and how they had kidnapped the good Santa Claus to prevent his making children happy. The Fairy Queen also promised her assistance, and then, fortified by this powerful support, Wisk flew back to where Nuter and Peter and Kilter awaited him, and the four counseled together and laid plans to rescue their master from his enemies.

It is possible that Santa Claus was not as merry as usual during the night that succeeded his capture. For although he had faith in the judgment of his little friends he could not avoid a certain amount of worry, and an anxious look would creep at times into his kind old eyes as he thought of the disappointment that might await his dear little children. And the Daemons, who guarded him by turns, one after another, did not neglect to taunt him with contemptuous words in his helpless condition.

When Christmas Day dawned the Daemon of Malice was guarding the prisoner, and his tongue was sharper than that of any of the others.

"The children are waking up, Santa!" he cried. "They are waking up to find their stockings empty! Ho, ho! How they will quarrel, and wail, and stamp their feet in anger! Our caves will be full today, old Santa! Our caves are sure to be full!"

But to this, as to other like taunts, Santa Claus answered nothing. He was much grieved by his capture, it is true; but his courage did not forsake him. And, finding that the prisoner would not reply to his jeers, the Daemon of Malice presently went away, and sent the Daemon of Repentance to take his place.

This last personage was not so disagreeable as the others. He had gentle and refined features, and his voice was soft and pleasant in tone.

"My brother Daemons do not trust me overmuch," said he, as he entered the cavern; "but it is morning, now, and the mischief is done. You cannot visit the children again for another year."

"That is true," answered Santa Claus, almost cheerfully; "Christmas Eve is past, and for the first time in centuries I have not visited my children."

"The little ones will be greatly disappointed," murmured the Daemon of Repentance, almost regretfully; "but that cannot be helped now. Their grief is likely to make the children selfish and envious and hateful, and if they come to the Caves of the Daemons today I shall get a chance to lead some of them to my Cave of Repentance."

"Do you never repent, yourself?" asked Santa Claus, curiously.

"Oh, yes, indeed," answered the Daemon. "I am even now repenting that I assisted in your capture. Of course it is too late to remedy the evil that has been done; but repentance, you know, can come only after an evil thought or deed, for in the beginning there is nothing to repent of."

"So I understand," said Santa Claus. "Those who avoid evil need never visit your cave."

"As a rule, that is true," replied the Daemon; "yet you, who have done no evil, are about to visit my cave at once; for to prove that I sincerely regret my share in your capture I am going to permit you to escape."

This speech greatly surprised the prisoner, until he reflected that it was just what might be expected of the Daemon of Repentance. The fellow at once busied himself untying the knots that bound Santa Claus and unlocking the chains that fastened him to the wall. Then he led the way through a long tunnel until they both emerged in the Cave of Repentance.

"I hope you will forgive me," said the Daemon pleadingly. "I am not really a bad person, you know; and I believe I accomplish a great deal of good in the world."

With this he opened a back door that let in a flood of sunshine, and Santa Claus sniffed the fresh air gratefully.

"I bear no malice," said he to the Daemon, in a gentle voice; "and I am sure the world would be a dreary place without you. So, good morning, and a Merry Christmas to you!"

With these words he stepped out to greet the bright morning, and a moment later he was trudging along, whistling softly to himself, on his way to his home in the Laughing Valley.

Marching over the snow toward the mountain was a vast army, made up of the most curious creatures imaginable. There were numberless knooks from the forest, as rough and crooked in appearance as the gnarled branches of the trees they ministered to. And there were dainty ryls from the fields, each one bearing the emblem of the flower or plant it guarded. Behind these were many ranks of pixies, gnomes and nymphs, and in the rear a thousand beautiful fairies floated along in gorgeous array.

This wonderful army was led by Wisk, Peter, Nuter, and Kilter, who had assembled it to rescue Santa Claus from captivity and to punish the Daemons who had dared to take him away from his beloved children.

And, although they looked so bright and peaceful, the little immortals were armed with powers that would be very terrible to those who had incurred their anger. Woe to the Daemons of the Caves if this mighty army of vengeance ever met them!

But lo! coming to meet his loyal friends appeared the imposing form of Santa Claus, his white beard floating in the breeze and his bright eyes sparkling with pleasure at this proof of the love and veneration he had inspired in the hearts of the most powerful creatures in existence.

And while they clustered around him and danced with glee at his safe return, he gave them earnest thanks for their support. But Wisk, and Nuter, and Peter, and Kilter, he embraced affectionately.

"It is useless to pursue the Daemons," said Santa Claus to the army. "They have their place in the world, and can never be destroyed. But that is a great pity, nevertheless," he continued musingly.

So the fairies, and knooks, and pixies, and ryls all escorted the good man to his castle, and there left him to talk over the events of the night with his little assistants.

Wisk had already rendered himself invisible and flown through the big world to see how the children were getting along on this bright Christmas morning; and by the time he returned, Peter had finished telling Santa Claus of how they had distributed the toys.

"We really did very well," cried the fairy, in a pleased voice; "for I found little unhappiness among the children this morning. Still, you must not get captured again, my dear master; for we might not be so fortunate another time in carrying out your ideas."

He then related the mistakes that had been made, and which he had not discovered until his tour of inspection. And Santa Claus at once sent him with rubber boots for Charlie Smith, and a doll for Mamie Brown; so that even those two disappointed ones became happy.

As for the wicked Daemons of the Caves, they were filled with anger and chagrin when they found that their clever capture of Santa Claus had come to naught. Indeed, no one on that Christmas Day appeared to be at all selfish, or envious, or hateful. And, realizing that while the children's saint had so many powerful friends it was folly to oppose him, the Daemons never again attempted to interfere with his journeys on Christmas Eve.

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The Story Of Red Feather: A Tale Of The American Frontier

By

Edward S. Ellis



Chapter One

Brother And Sister -- The Signal


It is within my memory that Melville Clarendon, a lad of sixteen years, was riding through Southern Minnesota, in company with his sister Dorothy, a sweet little miss not quite half his own age.

They were mounted on Saladin, a high-spirited, fleet, and good-tempered pony of coal-black color. Melville, who claimed the steed as his own special property, had given him his Arabian name because he fancied there were many points of resemblance between him and the winged coursers of the East, made famous as long ago as the time of the Crusades.

The lad sat his horse like a skilled equestrian, and indeed it would be hard to find his superior in that respect throughout that broad stretch of sparsely settled country. Those who live on the American frontier are trained from their earliest youth in the management of quadrupeds, and often display a proficiency that cannot fail to excite admiration.

Melville's fine breech-loading rifle was slung over his shoulder, and held in place by a strap that passed in front. It could be quickly drawn from its position whenever needed. It was not of the repeating pattern, but the youth was so handy with the weapon that he could put the cartridges in place, aim, and fire not only with great accuracy, but with marked rapidity.

In addition, he carried a good revolver, though he did not expect to use either weapon on the short journey he was making. He followed, however, the law of the border, which teaches the pioneer never to venture beyond sight of his home unprepared for every emergency that is likely to arise.

It was quite early in the forenoon, Melville having made an early start from the border-town of Barwell, and he was well on his way to his home, which lay ten miles to the south. "Dot," as his little sister was called by her friends, had been on a week's visit to her uncle's at the settlement, the agreement all round being that she should stay there for a fortnight at least; but her parents and her big brother rebelled at the end of the week. They missed the prattle and sunshine which only Dot could bring into their home, and Melville's heart was delighted when his father told him to mount Saladin and bring her home.

And when, on the seventh day of her visit, Dot found her handsome brother had come after her, and was to take her home the following morning, she leaped into his arms with a cry of happiness; for though her relatives had never suspected it, she was dreadfully home-sick and anxious to get back to her own people.

In riding northward to the settlement, young Clarendon followed the regular trail, over which he had passed scores of times. Not far from the house he crossed a broad stream at a point where the current (except when there was rain) was less than two feet deep. Its shallowness led to its use by all the settlers within a large radius to the southward, so that the faintly marked trails converged at this point something like the spokes of a large wheel, and became one from that point northward to the settlement.

A mile to the east was another crossing which was formerly used. It was not only broader, but there were one or two deep holes into which a horse was likely to plunge unless much care was used. Several unpleasant accidents of this nature led to its practical abandonment.

The ten miles between the home of the Clarendons and the little town of Barwell consisted of prairie, stream, and woodland. A ride over the trail, therefore, during pleasant weather afforded a most pleasing variety of scenery, this being especially the case in spring and summer. The eastern trail was more marked in this respect and it did not unite with the other until within about two miles of the settlement. Southward from the point of union the divergence was such that parties separating were quickly lost to view of each other, remaining thus until the stream of which I have spoken was crossed. There the country became so open that on a clear day the vision covered all the space between.

I have been thus particular in explaining the "lay of the land," as it is called, because it is necessary in order to understand the incidents that follow.

Melville laughed at the prattle of Dot, who sat in front of him, one of his arms encircling her chubby form, while Saladin was allowed to walk and occasionally gallop, as the mood prompted him.

There was no end of her chatter; and he asked her questions about her week's experience at Uncle Jack's, and told her in turn how much he and her father and mother had missed her, and what jolly times they would have when she got back.

Melville hesitated for a minute on reaching the diverging point of the paths. He was anxious to get home; but his wish to give his loved sister all the enjoyment possible in the ride led him to take the abandoned trail, and it proved a most unfortunate thing that he did so.

Just here I must tell you that Melville and Dot Clarendon were dressed very much as boys and girls of their age are dressed to-day in the more settled parts of my native country. Remember that the incidents I have set out to tell you took place only a very few years ago.

Instead of the coon-skin cap, buckskin suit, leggings and moccasins, of the early frontier, Melville wore a straw hat, a thick flannel shirt, and, since the weather was quite warm, he was without coat or vest. His trousers, of the ordinary pattern, were clasped at the waist by his cartridge belt, and his shapely feet were encased in strong well-made shoes. His revolver was thrust in his hip-pocket, and the broad collar of his shirt was clasped at the neck by a twisted silk handkerchief.

As for Dot, her clustering curls rippled from under a jaunty straw hat, and fluttered about her pretty shoulders, while the rest of her visible attire consisted of a simple dress, shoes, and stockings. The extra clothing taken with her on her visit was tied in a neat small bundle, fastened to the saddle behind Melville. Should they encounter any sudden change in the weather, they were within easy reach, while the lad looked upon himself as strong enough to make useless any such care for him.

Once or twice Melville stopped Saladin and let Dot down to the ground, that she might gather some of the bright flowers growing by the wayside; and at a spring of bubbling icy-cold water both halted and quaffed their fill, after which Saladin was allowed to push his nose into the clear fluid and do the same.

Once more they mounted, and without any occurrence worth the telling, reached the bank of the stream at the Upper Crossing. He halted a minute or two to look around before entering the water, for, as you will bear in mind, he had now reached a spot which gave him a more extended view than any yet passed.

Their own home was in plain sight, and naturally the eyes of the brother and sister were first turned in that direction. It appeared just as they expected. Moderate in size, built of logs somewhat after the fashion on the frontier at an earlier date, with outbuildings and abundant signs of thrift, it was an excellent type of the home of the sturdy American settler of the present.

"Oh, Mel!" suddenly exclaimed Dot, calling her brother by the name she always used, "who is that on horseback?"

Dot pointed to a slight eminence between their house and the stream; and, shifting his glance, Melville saw an Indian horseman standing as motionless as if he and his animal were carved in stone. He seemed to have reined up on the crest of the elevation, and, coming to a halt, was doing the same as the brother and sister -- surveying his surroundings.

His position was midway between Melville and his house, and his horse faced the brother and sister. The distance was too great to distinguish the features of the red man clearly, but the two believed he was looking at them.

Now, there was nothing to cause special alarm in this sight, for it was a common thing to meet Indians in that part of the country, where indeed many of them may be seen to-day; but the lad suddenly remembered that when looking in the direction of his home he had failed to see any signs of life, and he was at once filled with a misgiving which caused him to swallow a lump in his throat before answering the question -- 

"Who is it, Mel?"

"Some Indian; he is too far off for me to tell who he is, and likely enough we have never seen him before."

"What's he looking at us so sharply for?"

"I'm not sure that he is looking at us; his face seems to be turned this way, but he may have his eyes on something else."

"Watch him! See what he is doing!"

No need to tell the lad to watch, for his attention was fixed upon the warrior. Just as Dot spoke he made a signal which the intelligent youth could not comprehend. He flung one end of a blanket in the air slightly above and in front of him, and, holding the other part in his hand, waved it vigorously several times.

That it was intended for the eyes of the brother and sister seemed beyond all question; but, as I have said, they did not know what it meant, for it might have signified a number of things. It is a practice with many Indians to use such means as a taunt to their enemies, but they generally utter shouts and defiant cries, and nothing of the kind was now heard.

Besides this, it was not to be supposed that a Sioux warrior (that, no doubt, being the tribe of the red man before them) would indulge in any such action in the presence of a single white youth and small girl.

"I don't understand it," said Melville, "but I'll be as polite as he."

With which, he took off his hat and swung it above his head. Then, seeing that the Indian had ceased waving his blanket, he replaced his hat, still watching his movements.

"The distance was too great to distinguish the features of the red man." -- Page 7

The next moment the Sioux wheeled his horse, and heading westward, galloped off with such speed that he almost instantly vanished.

The Indian had been gone less than a minute when Melville spoke to Saladin, and he stepped into the water.

The instant his hoof rested on dry land the youth struck him into a swift canter, which was not checked until he arrived at the house. While yet some distance, the lad's fears were deepened by what he saw, or rather by what he failed to see. Not a horse or cow was in sight; only the ducks and chickens were there, the former waddling to the water.

When Archie Clarendon made his home on that spot, a few years before, one of the questions he had to meet was as to the best way of guarding against attacks from Indians, for there were plenty of them in that part of the country. There are very few red men who will not steal; and they are so fond of "firewater," or intoxicating drink, that they are likely to commit worse crimes.

The pioneer, therefore, built his house much stronger than he would have done had he waited several years before putting it up.

It was made of logs, strongly put together, and the windows were so narrow that no person, unless very slim, could push his way through them. Of course the door was heavy, and it could be fastened in its place so firmly that it would have resisted the assault of a strong body of men.

By this time Melville, who had galloped up to the front and brought his horse to a halt, was almost sure that something dreadful had happened, and he hesitated a moment before dismounting or lowering Dot to the ground. She began twisting about in his grasp, saying plaintively -- 

"Let me down, Mel; I want to see papa and mamma."

"I don't think they are there," he said, again swallowing a lump in his throat.

She turned her head around and looked wonderingly up in his face, not knowing what he meant. He could not explain, and he allowed her to drop lightly on her feet.

"Wait a minute," he called, "till I take a look inside."

In imagination he saw an awful sight. It was that of his beloved parents slain by the cruel red men -- one of whom had waved his blanket tauntingly at him only a few minutes before.

He could not bear that Dot should look upon the scene that would haunt her, as it would haunt him, to her dying day. He meant to hold her back until he could take a look inside; but her nimble feet carried her ahead, and she was on the porch before he could check her.

Saladin was a horse that would stand without tying; and, paying no heed to him, the youth hurried after his sister, seizing her hand as it was raised to draw the string hanging outside the door.

"Dot," he said, "why do you not obey me? You must wait till I first go in."

It was not often her big brother spoke so sternly, and there came a tear into each of the bright eyes, as she stepped back and poutingly waited for him to do as he thought best.

Melville raised his hand to draw the latch, but his heart failed. Stepping to one side, he peered through the narrow window that helped to light up the lower floor.

The muslin curtain was partly drawn, but he was able to see most of the interior. Table, chairs, and furniture were all in place, but not a glimpse of a living person was visible.

"He peered through the narrow window."

The emotions of childhood are as changeable as the shadows of the flitting clouds.

Dot was pouting while Mel stood irresolute on the small porch, and was sure she would never, never speak to the mean fellow again; but the instant he peeped through the narrow window she forgot everything else, and darted forward to take her place at his side, and find out what it was that made him act so queerly.

Before she reached him she stopped short with the exclamation -- 

"Oh, Mel! here's a letter for you!"



Chapter Two

An Important Letter -- Shut In


Astonished by the cry, young Clarendon turned his head and looked at his sister, who landed at his side that moment like a fairy. She was holding a sheet of paper in her hand. It was folded in the form of an envelope, and pencilled on the outside in bold letters were the words -- 

"Melville Clarendon. "In haste; read instantly."

He took the letter from his sister and trembled, as if from a chill, as he hurriedly unfolded the paper and read -- 

"MY DEAR MEL, -- Leave at once! The Sioux have taken the war-path, and a party of their worst warriors from the Muddy Creek country have started out on a raid. They are sure to come this way, and I suppose the house will be burned, and everything on which they can lay hands destroyed. They are under the lead of the desperate Red Feather, and will spare nothing. A friendly Sioux stopped this morning before daylight and warned me. I gathered the animals together, and your mother and I set out for Barwell in all haste, driving the beasts before us.

"I feel certain of either finding you and Dot at my brother's in the settlement or of meeting you on the way, for I suppose, of course, you will follow the regular trail; but, at the moment of starting, your mother suggests the possibility that you may take the upper route. To make sure, I write this letter. If the Indians reach the building before you, they will leave such traces of their presence that you will take the alarm. If you arrive first and see this note, re-mount Saladin, turn northward, and lose not a minute in galloping to the settlement. None of them can overtake you. Avoid the upper trail, where it is much easier for them to ambush you; keep as much on the open prairie as possible; see that your weapons are loaded; make Saladin do his best; and God be with you and Darling Dot. --  Your Father."

"He hurriedly unfolded the paper and read."

The youth read this important message aloud to Dot, who stood at his side, looking wistfully up in his face. She was too young to comprehend fully its meaning, but she knew that her parents had left for the settlement, and that her father had ordered Melville to follow at once with her.

"The bad Indians are coming," he added, "and if we stay here they will shoot us. I don't think," he said, glancing around, "that they are anywhere near; but they are likely to come any minute, so we won't wait."

"Oh, Mel!" suddenly spoke up Dot, "you know I forgot to take Susie with me when I went away; can't I get her now?"

Susie was Dot's pet doll, and the fact that she left it behind when making her visit to Uncle Jack's had a great deal more to do with her home-sickness than her friends suspected. The thought of leaving it behind again almost broke her heart.

"I am sure mother took it with her when she went off this morning," replied Melville, feeling a little uneasy over the request.

"I'll soon find out," said she, stepping hastily towards the door.

He could not refuse her wish, for he understood the depth of the affection she felt for the doll, whose dress was somewhat torn, and whose face was not always as clean as her own. Besides, it could take only a minute or two to get the plaything, if it had been left in the house. Although his situation prevented his seeing anything in the rear of the building, he was sure the dreaded Indians were not yet in sight, and he desired to make a hasty survey of the interior of the house himself.

How familiar everything looked! There were the chairs placed against the wall, and the deal table in the middle of the room. Melville noticed that the pictures which had hung so long on the walls had been taken away. They were portraits of the members of the family, and the mother looked upon them as too precious to be allowed to run any risk of loss. A few other valuables, including the old Bible, had been removed; but the parents were too wise to increase their own danger by loading themselves with goods, however much they regretted leaving them behind.

Although there was an old-fashioned fire-place, the Clarendons used a large stove standing near it. Curiosity led Melville to examine it, and he smiled to find it still warm. The ashes within, when stirred, showed some embers glowing beneath. There was something in the fact which made the youth feel as though the distance between him and his parents had become less than a short time before.

"Strange that I took the upper trail," he said to himself, resuming his standing position, "and thereby missed them. It's the first time I have been over that course for a long while, and it beats me that to-day when I shouldn't have done so I must do it; but fortunately no harm was done."

It struck him that Dot was taking an unusually long time in the search for her doll. Walking to the foot of the stairs, he called to her -- 

"It won't do to wait any longer, Dot; we must be off. If you can't find your doll, it's because mother took it with her."

"I've found it! I've found it!" she exclaimed, dancing with delight; "I had hid it in the bed, where mother didn't see it; bless your soul, Susie!"

And Melville laughed as he heard a number of vigorous smacks which told how much the child loved her pet.

"I suppose you are happy now," remarked Melville, taking her hand, while he held his gun in the other, as they walked towards the door.

"Indeed I am," she replied, with that emphatic shake of the head by which children of her years often give force to their words.

Melville placed his hand on the latch of the door, and, raising it, drew the structure inward. He had lowered his arm and once more taken the hand of his sister, and was in the act of stepping outside, when the sharp report of a rifle broke the stillness, and he felt the whiz of the bullet, which grazed his face and buried itself in the wall behind him.

The lad was quick-witted enough to know on the instant what it meant; and, leaping back, he hastily closed the door, drew in the latch-string, and, leaning his rifle against the side of the room, slipped the bar in place.

He had hardly done so when there was a shock, as if some heavy body were flung violently against it. Such was the fact, a Sioux warrior having turned himself sideways at the moment of leaping, so that his shoulder struck it with a force sufficient to carry a door off its hinges.

"What's the matter?" asked the frightened Dot; "why do you fasten the door, Mel?"

"The bad Indians have come; they are trying to get into the house so as to hurt us."

"And do they want Susie?" she asked Melville, hugging her doll very closely to her breast.

"Yes, but we won't let them have her. Keep away from the window!" he added, catching her arm, and drawing her back from the dangerous position into which her curiosity was leading her. "Sit down there," he said, pointing to one of the chairs which was beyond reach of any bullet that could be fired through a window; "don't stir unless I tell you to, or the bad Indians will take you and dolly, and you will never see father or mother or me again."

This was terrible enough to scare the little one into the most implicit obedience of her brother. She meekly took her seat, with Susie still clasped in her arms, willing to do anything to save the precious one from danger, and content to leave everything to her brother.

The youth had not time to explain matters more fully to his sister, nor would it have been wise to do so; she had been told enough already to distress and render her obedient to his wishes.

Following the startling shock against the door came a voice from the outside. The words were in broken English, and were uttered by the Sioux warrior that had made the vain effort to drive the structure inward.

"Open door -- open door, brudder."

"I will not open the door," called back Melville.

"Open door -- Injin won't hurt pale-face -- come in -- eat wid him."

"You cannot come in; we want no visitors. Go away, or I will shoot you!"

This was a brave threat, but it did not do all that the lad hoped. Whether the assailants knew how weak the force was within the house the youth could not say. He was not without belief that they might think there were several armed defenders who would make an attack or siege on the part of the Sioux too costly for them to continue it long.

The first purpose of Melville, therefore, was to learn how strong the force was that had made such a sudden attack. It was too perilous to attempt to look through one of the four narrow windows lighting the large room where he stood, and which covered the entire lower part of the building, and he decided, therefore, to got upstairs.

Before doing so, he made Dot repeat her promise to sit still where she was. She assured him that he need have no fear whatever, and he hurriedly made his way to the rooms above.

Advancing to one of the windows at the front, he peered out with the utmost caution.

The first Indian whom he saw was the very one he dreaded above all others. He recognized him at the first glance by the cluster of eagle-feathers stuck in his crown. There were stained of a crimson red, several of the longer ones drooping behind, so as to mingle with his coarse black hair which streamed over his shoulders.

This was Red Feather, one of the most desperate Sioux known in the history of the border. Years before he was a chief noted for his daring and detestation of the white men. As the country became partly settled he acquired most of the vices and few of the virtues of the white race. He was fond of "firewater," was an inveterate thief, sullen and revengeful, quarrelsome at all times; and, when under the influence of drink, was feared almost as much by his own people as by the whites.

Red Feather was mounted on a fine-looking horse, which there is little doubt had been stolen from some of the settlers in that part of the country. He had brought him to a stand about a hundred yards from the building, he and the animal facing the house.

As the Sioux chieftain held this position the lad was struck by his resemblance to the horseman whom he and Dot noticed at the time they halted on the other bank of the stream.

"Red Feather, one of the most desperate Sioux." -- Page 20

This discovery of young Clarendon suggested an explanation of the sight which so puzzled him and his sister. The chief had descried them at the same moment, if not before they saw him. Inasmuch as the occupants of the building were absent, he must have thought they had gone off together, and he could not have believed that, if such were the case, any members of the company would return -- the boy, therefore, had ridden part way back to learn what was to be fate of the cabin and property left behind. Red Feather had waved his blanket as a taunt, and then rode off for his warriors, encamped near by, with the purpose of directing them in an attack on the house.

It was a most unfortunate oversight that Melville did not make a survey of the surrounding country before entering his own home, for had he done so, he would have learned of his peril; but you will remember that his first purpose was not to enter his house, and in truth it was Susie, the little doll, that brought all the trouble.

The dismay caused by his unexpected imprisonment was not without something in the nature of relief.

In the first place, a careful survey of his surroundings showed there were only six Sioux warriors in the attacking party. All were mounted, as a matter of course, fully armed, and eager to massacre the settler and his family. You will say these were enough to frighten any lad, however brave; but you must remember that Melville held a strong position in the house.

Such a fine horse as Saladin could not fail to catch the eye of the dusky scamps, and at the moment Red Feather fired his well-nigh fatal shot at the youth three warriors were putting forth their utmost efforts to capture the prize.

But the wise Saladin showed no liking for the red men, and would not permit any of them to lay hands on him. It was an easy matter to do this, for among them all there was not one that could approach him in fleetness. He suffered them to come quite near, and then, flinging up his head with a defiant neigh, sped beyond their reach like an arrow darting from the bow.

Melville's eyes kindled.

"I am proud of you, Saladin," he said, "and if I dared, I would give you a hurrah."

He watched the performance for several minutes, the rapid movement of the horses causing him to shift his position once or twice from one side of the house to the other. Finally, one of the Sioux saw how idle their pursuit was, and, angered at being baffled, deliberately raised his rifle and fired at Saladin.

"Saladin showed no liking for the red men."

Whether he hit the horse or not Melville could not say, though the animal showed no signs of being hurt: but the lad was so indignant that he levelled his own weapon, and, pointing the muzzle out of the narrow window, muttered -- 

"If you want to try that kind of business, I'm willing, and I think I can make a better shot than you did."

Before, however, he could be sure of his aim, he was startled by a cry from Dot -- 

"Come down here quick, Mel! A great big Indian is getting in the house by the window!"



Chapter Three

Caught Fast -- A Friend In Need


Melville Clarendon was so interested in the efforts of the three Sioux to capture his horse, that for a minute or two he forgot that Dot was below-stairs. Her cry, however, roused him to the situation and truth, and he flew down the steps.

In fact, the little girl had had a stirring time. While she was too young to realize the full danger of herself and brother, she knew there were bad Indians trying to get into the house, and the best thing for her to do was to obey every instruction Melville gave to her.

It will be recalled that Melville had a few words of conversation with one of the Sioux outside the door, who asked to be admitted. After the youth's refusal, there was silence for a minute or two, and, supposing the Indian was gone, the lad hurried to the upper story to gain a survey of his surroundings.

But the warrior had not left. After the departure of Melville he resumed his knocking on the door, but so gently that no one heard him except Dot. In her innocence she forgot the warnings given to her, and, sliding off her chair, stepped forward, and began shoving the end of the leathern string through, so that the Indian could raise the latch. She had tried to raise it herself, but the pressure from the outside was so strong that the friction prevented.

"Pull the string, and the door will open."

"There!" said the little girl; "all you've got to do is to pull the string, and the door will open."

When the Indian saw the head of the string groping its way through the little hole in the door like a tiny serpent, he grasped the end, and gave it such a smart jerk that the latch flew up.

But, fortunately, it was necessary to do more than draw the latch to open the door. The massive bar was in place, and the Sioux, most likely with a suspicion of the truth, made no effort to force the structure.

But while he was thus employed Red Feather had slipped from the back of his pony and approached the house. He took the side opposite to that from which Melville was looking forth, so that the youth did not notice his action. He saw the idleness of trying to make his way through the door, and formed another plan.

With little effort he raised the sash in the narrow window on the right. About half-way to the top was a wooden button to hold the lower sash in place when raised. The occupants of the house used no care in securing the windows, since, as I have explained, they were too narrow to allow any person, unless very thin of figure, to force his way through them.

Red Feather seemed to forget that he had tried to take the life of one of the white persons only a few minutes before; but, since no return shot had come from within the building, he must have concluded the defenders were panic-stricken, or else he showed a daring that amounted to recklessness; for, after raising the sash, he pushed the curtain aside, and began carefully shoving his head through the opening.

Now, the house being of logs, it was necessary for the chieftain to force his shoulders a slight distance to allow his head fairly to enter the room. This required great care and labor, and more risk on the part of the Sioux than he suspected -- since he should have known that it is easier to advance under such circumstances than to retreat, and, inasmuch as it was so hard to push on, it was likely to be still harder to retreat.

Dot Clarendon, like her brother, was so interested in another direction that she failed for the time to note that which was of far more importance.

But the feeling that she and her brother were in a situation of great danger became so strong that she felt there was only One who could save them, and, just as she had been taught from earliest infancy, she now asked that One to take care of them.

Sinking on her chubby knees, she folded her hands, shut her eyes and poured out the simple prayer of faith and love to Him whose ear is never closed to the appeal of the most helpless. Her eyes were still closed, and her lips moving, when the noise made by Red Feather in forcing himself through the narrow opening caused her to stop suddenly and look around.

The sight which met her gaze was enough to startle the bravest man. The head and shoulders of a hideous Sioux warrior were within six feet of where she was kneeling. The Indian was still struggling but he could get no farther, and, as it was, he was wedged very closely.

It must have caused strange feelings in the heart of the wicked savage when he observed the tiny figure kneeling on the floor, with clasped hands, closed eyes, upturned face, and murmuring lips. It is hard to think there could be any one untouched by the sight, though Red Feather gave no sign of such emotion at the time.

The face of the Sioux was not painted, though it is the fashion of his people to do so when upon the war-trail. It could not have looked more frightful had it been daubed with streaks and spots, and Dot was terrified. Springing to her feet, she recoiled with a gasp, and stared at the dreadful countenance.

Red Feather beckoned as best he could for the little one to come nigh him.

It was at this juncture that Dot uttered the cry which brought Melville in such haste from the room above. He rushed down, loaded gun in hand, and it is stating the matter mildly to say that he effected a change in the situation. Startled by the sound of the steps on the stairs, Red Feather glanced up and saw the lad, his face white with anger, and a very dangerous-looking rifle in his hand.

"I'll teach you manners!" called out Melville, halting on reaching the floor, and bringing his weapon to a level; "such a rogue as you ain't fit to live."

"Poured out the simple prayer of faith and love."

As you may suppose, Red Feather was satisfied that the best thing for him to do was to leave that place as quickly as he knew how. He began struggling fiercely to back out, and he must have been surprised when he found he was fast, and that the more he strove to free himself the more firmly he became wedged in.

Seeing his predicament, Melville advanced a couple of steps, holding his weapon so that its muzzle was within arm's length of the terrified visage of the chieftain.

"I've got you, Red Feather!" said the exultant youth; "and the best thing I can do is to shoot you."

"Oh, Mel!" called Dot, running towards her brother, "don't hurt him, for that would be wicked."

I must do Melville Clarendon the justice to state that he had no intention of shooting the Sioux chieftain who was caught fast in such a curious way. Such an act would have been cruel, though many persons would say it was right, because Red Feather was trying to slay both Melville and his little sister.

But the youth could not help enjoying the strange fix in which the Indian was caught, and he meant to make the best use of it. It is not often that an American Indian loses his wits when in danger, but Red Feather, for a few minutes, was under the control of a feeling such as a soldier shows when stricken by panic.

Had he kept cool, and carefully turned and twisted about as required, while slowly drawing backward, he could have released himself from the snare without trouble; but it was his frantic effort which defeated his own purpose, and forced him to stop, panting and despairing, with his head still within the room, and at the mercy of the youth, who seemed to lower his gun only at the earnest pleading of his little sister.

It was no more than natural that the Sioux should have felt certain that his head and shoulders were beginning to swell, and that, even if the lad spared him, he would never be able to get himself out of the scrape, unless the side of the house should be first taken down.

It was a time to sue for mercy, and the desperate, ugly-tempered Red Feather was prompt to do so. Ceasing his efforts, and turning his face, all aglow with cold perspiration, towards the boy, who had just lowered the muzzle of his gun, he tried to smile, though the expression of his countenance was anything but smiling, and said -- 

"Red Feather love white boy -- love white girl!"

It is hard to restrain one's pity for another when in actual distress, and Melville's heart was touched the instant the words were uttered.

"Sit down in your chair," he said gently to Dot, "and don't disobey me again by leaving it until I tell you."

"But you won't hurt him, will you?" she pleaded, half obeying, and yet hesitating until she could receive his answer.

Not wishing Red Feather to know his decision, he stooped over and whispered in her ear -- 

"No, Dot, I will not hurt him; but don't say anything, for I don't want him to know it just yet."

It is more than likely that the distressed Sioux saw enough in the bright face to awaken hope, for he renewed his begging for mercy.

"Red Feather love white folks -- he been bad Injin -- he be good Injin now -- 'cause he love white folks."

"Red Feather," said he, lowering his voice so as not to reach the ears of the other Sioux, drawn to the spot by the strange occurrence; "you do not deserve mercy, for you came to kill me and all my folk. There! don't deny it, for you speak with a double tongue. But she has asked me to spare you, and perhaps I will. If I keep away all harm from you, what will you do for us?"

"Love white folks -- Red Feather go away -- won't hurt -- bring game to his brother."

Having rested a few minutes, the Sioux began wriggling desperately again, hoping to free himself by sheer strength; but he could not budge his head and shoulders from their vice-like imprisonment, and something like despair must have settled over him when all doubt that he was swelling fast was removed.

It was at the same instant that two of the warriors on the outside, seeing the hapless position of their chief, seized his feet, and began tugging with all their power.

They quickly let go, however; for the impatient sachem delivered such a vigorous kick that both went over backward, with their feet pointed towards the clouds.

"Red Feather," said Melville, standing close enough to the hapless prisoner to touch him with his hand, "if I help you out of that place and do not hurt you, will you and your warriors go away?"

The Sioux nodded so vigorously that he struck his chin against the wood hard enough to cause him some pain.

"Me go away -- all Sioux go away -- neber come here 'gin -- don't hurt nuffin -- hurry way."

"And you will not come back to harm us?"

"Neber come back -- stay way -- love white folks."

"I don't believe you will ever love them, and I don't ask you to do so; but you know that my father and mother and I have always treated your people kindly, and they have no reason to hurt us."

"Dat so -- dat so -- Red Feather love fader, love moder, love son, love pappoose of white folks."

"You see how easy it would be for me to shoot you where you are now without any risk to myself, but I shall not hurt you. I will help to get your head and shoulders loose; but I am afraid that when you mount your horse again and ride out on the prairie you will forget all you promised me."

"Neber, neber, neber!" replied the chieftain, with all the energy at his command.

"Oh, Mel!" called Dot "don't hurt him." -- Page 30

"You will think that you know enough never to run your head into that window again, and you will want to set fire to the house and tomahawk us."

The Sioux looked as if he was deeply pained at this distrust of his honorable intentions, and he seemed at a loss to know what to say to restore himself to the good graces of his youthful master.

"You are sure you won't forget your promise, Red Feather?"

"Red Feather Sioux chief -- he neber tell lie -- he speak wid single tongue -- he love white folks."

"I counted five warriors with you; are they all you have?"

"Dey all -- hab no more."

Melville believed the Indian spoke the truth.

"Where are the rest?"

"Go down oder side Muddy Riber -- won't come here."

Melville was inclined to credit this statement also. If Red Feather spoke the truth, the rest of his band, numbering fully a score, were twenty miles distant, and were not likely to appear in that part of the country. Such raids as that on which they were engaged must of necessity be pushed hard and fast. Even if the settlers do not instantly rally, the American cavalry are quite sure to follow them, and the Indians have no time to loiter. The rest of the band, if a score of miles away, were likely to have their hands full without riding thus far out of their course.

"Well," said Melville, after a moment's thought, as if still in doubt as to what he ought to do, "I shall not hurt you -- more than that, I will help you to free yourself."

He leaned his gun against the table near him, and stepped forward and placed his hands on the head and shoulders of the suffering prisoner.

"Oogh!" grunted Red Feather; "grow bigger -- swell up fast -- bimeby Red Feather get so big, he die."

"I don't think it is as bad as that," remarked Melville, unable to repress a smile, "but it will take some work to get you loose."



Chapter Four

The Consultation -- On The Roof


Melville now examined the fix of the chieftain more closely. His struggles had hurt the skin about his neck and shoulders, and there could be no doubt he was suffering considerably.

Clasping the dusky head with his hands, the youth turned it gently, so that it offered the least possible resistance. Then he asked him to move his shoulder slightly to the left, and, while Melville pushed carefully but strongly, told him to exert himself, not hastily but slowly, and with all the power at his command.

Resting a minute or two, the attempt was renewed and this time Red Feather succeeded in withdrawing for an inch or two, though the effort plainly caused him pain.

"That's right," added Melville, encouragingly; "we shall succeed -- try it again."

There was a vigorous scraping, tugging, and pulling, and all at once the head and shoulders vanished through the window. Red Feather was released from the vice.

"There, I knew you would be all right!" called the lad through the opening. "Good-bye, Red Feather."

The chief must have been not only confused and bewildered, but chagrined by the exhibition made before the lad and his own warriors, who, had they possessed any sense of humor, would have laughed at the sorry plight of their leader.

Stepping back from the window, so as not to tempt any shot from the other Sioux, all of whom had gathered about the chief, Melville found himself in a dilemma.

"Shall I take Red Feather at his word?" he asked himself; "shall I open the door and walk out with Dot, mount Saladin and gallop off to Barwell, or -- wait?"

There is little doubt, from what followed, that the former would have been the wiser course of the youth. Despite the treacherous character of the Sioux leader, he was so relieved by his release from what he felt at the time was a fatal snare, and by the kindness received from the boy, that his heart was stirred by something akin to gratitude, and he would have restrained his warriors from violence.

Had Melville been alone, he would not have hesitated; but he was irresolute on account of Dot. Looking down in her sweet trustful face, his heart misgave him; he felt that, so long as she was with him, he could assume no risks. He was comparatively safe for a time in the building, while there was no saying what would follow if he should place himself and Dot in the power of Indians that had set out to destroy and slay.

Besides, if Red Feather meant to keep his promise he could do so without involving the brother and sister in the least danger. He had only to ride off with his warriors, when Melville would walk forth, call Saladin to him, mount, and ride away.

"If he is honest," was his decision, "he will do that; I will wait until they are only a short distance off, and then will gallop to the settlement."

"Come," said he, taking the hand of Dot, "let's go upstairs."

"Why don't you stay down here, Mel?"

"Well, I am afraid to leave you alone because you are so apt to forget your promises to me; and since I want to go upstairs I must take you with me."

She made no objection, and holding Susie clasped by one arm, she placed the other hand in her brother's, and, side by side, the two walked up the steps to the larger room, occupied by their parents when at home.

"Now," said Melville, speaking with great seriousness, "you must do just as I tell you, Dot; for it you don't the bad Indians will surely hurt you, and you will never see Susie again."

She gave her pledge with such earnestness that he could depend upon her from that time forward.

"You must not go near the window unless I tell you to do so: the reason for that is that some of the Indians will see you, and they will fire their guns at you. If the bullet does not strike Dot and kill her, it will hit Susie, and that will be the last of her. The best thing you can do is to lie down on the bed and rest."

Dot obeyed cheerfully, reclining on the couch, with her round plump face against the pillow, where a few minutes later she sank into a sweet sleep. Poor child! little did she dream of what was yet to come.

She was safe so long as she remained thus, since, though a bullet fired through any one of the windows must cross the room, it would pass above the bed, missing her by several feet.

"The chief and his five followers had re-mounted their ponies." -- Page 41

Relieved of all present anxiety concerning her, Melville now gave his attention to Red Feather and his warriors. That which he saw was not calculated to add to his peace of mind.

The chief and his five followers had re-mounted their ponies, and ridden to a point some two hundred yards distant on the prairie, where they halted, as if for consultation.

"Just what I feared," said the youth, feeling it safe to stand before the upper window and watch every movement; "Red Feather has already begun to repent of his pledge to me, and his warriors are trying to persuade him to break his promise. I don't believe they will find it hard work to change his mind."

But whatever was said, it was plain that the Sioux were much in earnest. All were talking, and their arms swung about their heads, and they nodded with a vigor that left no doubt all were taking part in the dispute, and each one meant what he said.

"Where there is so much wrangling, it looks as if some were in favor of letting us alone," thought Melville, who added the next minute -- "I don't know that that follows, for it may be they are quarrelling over the best plan of slaying us, with no thought on the part of any one that they are bound in honor to spare us."

By-and-by the ponies, which kept moving uneasily about, took position so that the heads of all were turned fully or partly towards the building, from which the lad was attentively watching their movements.

During these exciting moments Melville did not forget Saladin. The sagacious animal, being no longer troubled by those that were so anxious to steal him, had halted at a distance of an eighth of a mile, where he was eating the grass as though there was nothing unusual in his surroundings.

"I hope you will be wise enough, old fellow," muttered his young master, "to keep them at a distance; that shot couldn't have hit you, or, if it did, it caused nothing more than a scratch."

The horse's wisdom was tested the next minute. One of the warriors withdrew from the group, and began riding at a gallop towards Saladin. As he drew near he brought his pony down to a walk, and evidently hoped to calm the other's fears sufficiently to permit a still closer approach.

Melville's heart throbbed painfully as the distance lessened, and he began to believe he was to lose his priceless animal after all.

"Why didn't I think of it?" he asked himself, placing his finger in his mouth, and emitting a shrill whistle that could have been heard a mile distant.

It was a signal with which Saladin was familiar. He instantly raised his head and looked towards the house. As he did so he saw one of his mounted enemies slowly approaching, and within a dozen rods. It was enough, and breaking into a gallop, he quickly ended all hope of his capture by that Sioux brave.

That signal of Melville Clarendon had also been heard by all the Sioux, who must have thought it was due to that alone that the warrior failed to secure the valuable animal. The youth saw the group looking inquiringly at the house, as if to learn from what point the sound came, and the expression on the dark faces was anything but pleasing to him.

He wished to give Red Feather credit for the delay on the part of the Sioux. Their actions showed they were hotly disputing over something, and what more likely than that it was the question of assailing the house and outbuildings?

But there were several facts against this theory. Red Feather held such despotic sway over his followers that it was hard to understand what cause could arise for any dispute with them about the disposal to be made of the brother and sister. If he desired to leave them alone, what was to prevent him riding off and obliging every one of his warriors to go with him?

This was the question which Melville continually asked himself, and which he could not answer as he wished, being unable to drive away the belief that the chief was acting a double part.

The Sioux had reached some decision; for, on the return of the one who failed to secure Saladin, they ceased disputing, and rode towards the window from which Melville was watching them.

Their ponies were on a slow walk, and the expression on their forbidding faces was plainly seen as their eyes ranged over the front of the building. The youth had withdrawn, so as to stand out of range; but, to end the doubt in his mind, he now stepped out in full view of every one of the warriors.

"Melville had warning enough to leap back."

The doubt was removed at once. Previous to this the lad had raised the lower sash, so as to give him the chance to fire, and as he stood, his waist and shoulders were in front of the upper part of the glass. It so happened that Red Feather and one of his warriors were looking at the very window at which he appeared. Like a flash both guns went to their shoulders and were discharged.

"He pointed his own weapon outward, and fired."

But Melville had enough warning to leap back, as the jingle and crash of glass showed how well the miscreants had aimed. Stirred to the deepest anger, he pointed his own weapon outward and fired into the party, doing so with such haste that he really took no aim at all.

It is not likely that his bullet had gone anywhere near the Sioux, but it had served the purpose of warning them that he was as much in earnest as themselves.

Melville placed a cartridge in the breech of his rifle with as much coolness as a veteran, and prepared himself for what he believed was to be a desperate defence of himself and sister.

It must not be thought that he was in despair; for, when he came to look over the situation, he found much to encourage him. In the first place, although besieged by a half-dozen fierce Sioux, he was sure the siege could not last long. Whatever they did must be done within a few hours.

While it was impossible to tell the hour when his parents started from Barwell, it must have been quite early in the morning, and there was every reason to hope they would reach the settlement by noon at the latest. The moment they did so they would learn that Melville had left long before for home, and therefore had taken the upper trail, since, had he not done so, the parties would have met on the road.

True, Mr. Clarendon would feel strong hope that his son, being so well mounted, would wheel about and follow without delay the counsel in the letter; but he was too shrewd to rely fully on such hope. What could be more certain than that he would instantly gather a party of friends and set out to their relief?

The great dread of the youth was that the Sioux would set fire to the buildings, and he wondered many times that this was not done at the time Red Feather learned of the flight of the family.

Melville glanced at Dot, and, seeing she was asleep, he decided to go downstairs and make a fuller examination of the means of defence.

"Everything seems to be as secure as it can be," he said, standing in the middle of the room and looking around; "that door has already been tried, and found not wanting. The only other means of entrance is through the windows, and after Red Feather's experience I am sure neither he nor any of his warriors will try that."

There were four windows -- two at the front and two at the rear -- all of the same shape and size. There was but the single door, of which so much has already been said, and therefore the lower portion of the building could not be made safer.

The stone chimney, so broad at the base that it was more than half as wide as the side of the outside wall, was built of stone, and rose a half-dozen feet above the roof. It was almost entirely out of doors, but was solid and strong.

"If the Indians were not such lazy people," said Melville -- looking earnestly at the broad fire-place, in front of which stood the new-fashioned stove -- "they might set to work and take down the chimney, but I don't think there is much danger of that."

He had hardly given expression to the thought when he fancied he heard a slight noise on the outside, and close to the chimney itself. He stepped forward, and held his ear to the stones composing the walls of the fire-place.

Still the sounds were faint, and he then touched his ear against them, knowing that solid substances are much better conductors of sound than air. He now detected the noise more plainly, but it was still so faint that he could not identify it.

He was still striving hard to do so when, to his amazement, Dot called him from above-stairs -- 

"Where are you, Mel? Is that you that I can hear crawling about over the roof?"



Chapter Five

A Strange Visit -- Ominous Signs


Melville Clarendon went up the short stairs three steps at a time, startled as much by the call of his sister as by anything that had taken place since the siege of the cabin began.

As he entered the room he saw Dot sitting up in bed, and staring wonderingly at the shivered window-glass, particles of which lay all around.

"Oh, Mel!" said she, "papa will scold you for doing that; how came you to do it?"

"It was the bad Indians who fired through the window at me, and I fired at them: you were sleeping so soundly that you only half awoke; but you must keep still a few minutes longer."

"I thought that was you on the roof," she added, in a lower voice.

That there was someone overhead was certain. The rasping sound of a person moving carefully along the peak of the roof was audible. The lad understood the meaning of that which puzzled him when on the lower floor: one of the warriors was carefully climbing the chimney -- a task not difficult, because of its rough uneven formation.

The significance of such a strange act remained to be seen. It appeared unlikely that any of the Sioux were daring enough to attempt a descent of the chimney; but that such was really his purpose became clear within the following minute.

The Indian, after making his way a short distance along the peak, returned to the chimney, where, from the noises which reached the listening ones, it was manifest that he was actually making his way down the flue, broad enough to admit the passage of a larger body than himself.

"I won't be caught foul this time," said Melville, turning to descend the stairs again; "Dot, stay right where you are on the bed till I come back or call to you."

She promised to obey, and there could be no doubt that she would do so.

"They must think I'm stupid," muttered the youth, taking his position in the middle of the room, with his rifle cocked and ready for instant use; "but they will find out the idiot is some one else."

He had not long to wait when in the large open space at the back of the stove appeared a pair of moccasins groping vaguely about for support. The pipe from the stove, instead of passing directly up the chimney, entered it by means of an elbow. Had it been otherwise, the daring warrior would have found himself in a bad fix on arriving at the bottom.

It would have been idle for the young man standing on the watch to fire at the feet or legs, and he waited an instant, when the Indian dropped lightly on his feet, and, without the least hesitation, stepped forward in the apartment and confronted Melville.

The latter was dumbfounded, for the first glance at his face showed that he was the chieftain Red Feather, the Indian whom of all others he least expected to see.

The act of the savage was without any possible explanation to the astonished youth, who, recoiling a step, stared at him, and uttered the single exclamation -- 

"Red Feather!"

"Howly do, broder?" was the salutation of the Sioux, whose dusky face showed just the faintest smile.

Red Feather's descent of the chimney had not been without some disagreeable features. His blanket and garments, never very tidy, were covered with soot, enough of which had got on his face to suggest that he had adopted the usual means of his people to show they were on the war-path.

"A pair of moccasins groping vaguely about for support."

His knife and tomahawk were thrust in his girdle at his waist, and throughout this laborious task he had held his rifle fast, so that he was fully armed.

"Howly do?" he repeated, extending his hand, which Melville was too prudent to accept.

"No," he replied, compressing his lips, and keeping his finger on the trigger of his gun, "Red Feather speaks with a double tongue; he is not our friend."

"Red Feather been bad Injin -- want white folks' scalp -- don't want 'em now -- little pappoose pray to Great Spirit -- dat make Red Feather feel bad -- he hab pappoose -- he lub Injin pappoose -- lub white pappoose -- much lub white pappoose."

This remark shed light upon the singular incident. To Melville it was a mystery beyond understanding that any person could look upon the sweet innocent face of Dot without loving her. Knowing how vile an Indian Red Feather had been, it was yet a question with the youth whether he could find it in his heart to wish ill to his wee bit of a sister.

Was it unreasonable, therefore, to believe that this savage warrior had been touched by the sight of the little one on her knees, with her hands clasped in prayer, and by her eagerness to keep away all harm from him?

This theory helped to explain what took place after the release of Red Feather from his odd imprisonment. The five warriors whom he had brought with him upon his raid must have combated his proposal to leave the children unharmed. In the face of his savage overbearing disposition they had fought his wish to keep the pledge to them, while he as firmly insisted upon its fulfilment.

But if such were the fact, how could his descent of the chimney be explained?

Melville did not try to explain it, for he had no time just then to speculate upon it; the explanation would come shortly.

The youth, however, was too wise to act upon that which he hoped was the truth. He had retreated nearly to the other side of the room, where he maintained the same defiant attitude as at first.

Red Feather read the distrust in his face and manner. With a deliberation that was not lacking in dignity, he walked slowly to the corner of the apartment, Melville closely following him with his eye, and leaned his gun against the logs. Then he drew his knife and tomahawk from his girdle, and threw them on the floor beside the more valuable weapon. That done, he moved back to the fire-place, folded his arms, and, fixing his black eyes on the countenance of the lad, repeated -- "Red Feather friend of white folk."

"I believe you," responded Melville, carefully letting down the hammer of his rifle and resting the stock on the floor; "now I am glad to shake hands with you."

A broader smile than before lit up the dusky face as the chief warmly pressed the hand of the youth, who felt just a little trepidation when their palms met.

"Where pappoose?" asked Red Feather, looking suggestively at the steps leading to the upper story.

"Dot!" called Melville, "come down here; someone wants to see you."

The patter of feet was heard, and the next instant the little one came tripping downstairs, with her doll clasped by one arm to her breast.

"Red Feather is a good Indian now, and he wants to shake hands with you."

With a faint blush and a sweet smile Dot ran across the floor and held out her tiny hand. The chieftain stooped, and not only took the palm of the little girl, but placed each of his own under her shoulders and lifted her from the floor. Straightening up, he touched his dusky lips to those of the innocent one, murmuring, with a depth of emotion which cannot be described -- 

"Red Feather lub white pappoose -- she make him good Injin -- he be her friend always."

The chieftain touched his lips but once to those of the little one, who showed no hesitation in accepting the salute. Pure, innocent, and good herself, she had not yet learned how evil the human heart may become.

Not only did she receive the salute willingly, but threw her free arm around the neck of the Indian and gave him a kiss.

"Red Feather, what made you come down the chimney?" questioned Melville when the Indian had released his sister.

"Can't come oder way," was the instant response.

"True; but why do you want to enter this house?"

"Be friend of white folk -- come tell 'em."

"I am sure of that; but what can you do for us?"

Red Feather gave no direct answer to this question, but walked upstairs. As he did so he left every one of his weapons on the lower floor, and by a glance cast over his shoulder expressed the wish that the brother and sister should follow him. They did so, Dot tripping ahead, while Melville retained his weapons.

Reaching the upper floor, the Sioux walked directly to the window through which the shots had come that shattered the two panes of glass.

There was a curious smile on his swarthy face as he pointed at the pane on the left, and said -- 

"Red Feather fire dat!"

The explanation of his remark was that had Melville kept his place in front of the window at the moment the rifles were discharged, only one of the bullets would have hit him, and that would have been the one which Red Feather did not fire.

"'She make him good Injin -- he be her friend always.'" -- Page 51

The shot which he sent into the apartment, and which filled the youth with so much indignation, had been fired for the purpose of making the other warriors believe the chieftain was as bitter an enemy of the brother and sister as he was of all white people.

Having convinced his followers on this point, he made his position still stronger with them by declaring his purpose of descending the chimney, and having it out with them, or rather with the lad, within the building.

Red Feather peered out of the window, taking care that none of his warriors saw him, though they must have felt a strong curiosity to learn the result of his strange effort to overcome the little garrison. Melville supposed that he had arranged to communicate with them by signal, for the result of the attempt must be settled quickly.

The youth took the liberty of peeping forth from the other window on the same side of the house.

Only two of the Sioux were in their field of vision, and their actions did not show that they felt much concern for their chief. They were mounted on their horses, and riding at a walk towards the elevations from which Red Feather had waved his blanket to the brother and sister when on the other side of the stream.

Melville's first thought was that they had decided to leave the place, but that hope was quickly dispelled by the action of the warriors. At the highest point of the hill they checked their ponies, and sat for a minute gazing fixedly to the northward in the direction of the settlement.

"They are looking for our friends," thought the youth, "but I am afraid they will not be in sight for a good while to come."

At this juncture one of the warriors deliberately rose to a standing position on the back of his pony, and turned his gaze to the westward.

"Now they are looking for their friends," was the correct conclusion of Melville, "and I am afraid they see them; yes, there is no doubt of it."

The warrior, in assuming his delicate position, passed his rifle to his companion, whose horse was beside him. Then, with his two hands free, he drew his blanket from around his shoulders and began waving it, as Red Feather had done earlier in the day.

Melville glanced across at Red Feather, who was attentively watching the performance. He saw the countenance grow more forbidding, while a scowl settled on his brow.

It was easy to translate all this. The Sioux had caught sight of some of their friends, and signalled them. This would not have been done had there not been some person or persons to observe it.

The party which the chieftain had described as being in the Muddy Creek country must have changed their course and hastened to join Red Feather and the smaller party. If such were the fact, they would arrive on the spot within a brief space of time.

The interesting question arose whether, in the event of such arrival, and the attack that was sure to follow, Red Feather would come out as open defender of the children against his own people. Had there been only the five original warriors, he might have played a part something akin to neutrality, on the ground that his descent of the chimney had turned out ill for him, and, being caught at disadvantage he was held idle under the threat of instant death. Still further, it might have been his province to assume the character of hostage, and thus to defeat the overthrow of the couple by the Sioux.

But the arrival of the larger party would change everything. Among the Muddy Creek band were several who disliked Red Feather intensely enough to be glad of a chance to help his discomfiture.

He had agreed that, in the event of his surprising the lad who was making such a brave defence, he would immediately appear at the front window and announce it, after which he would unbar the door and admit the warriors to the "last scene of all."

"'Let the Sioux send more of his warriors down the chimney!'"

Several minutes had now passed, and no such announcement was made. The other three Sioux were lingering near the building, awaiting the signal which came not.

While the two were engaged on the crest of the hill the others suddenly came round in front of the house. They were on foot, and looked inquiringly at the windows, as if at a loss to understand the cause of the silence. Red Feather instantly drew back, and said in a low voice to Melville -- 

"Speak to Injin -- dem tink Red Feather lose scalp."

Grasping the situation, the youth showed himself at the window, where the Sioux were sure to see him, and uttered a tantalizing shout.

"Let the Sioux send more of their warriors down the chimney!" he called out; "the white youth is waiting for them, that he may take their scalps."

This was followed by another shout, as the lad withdrew beyond reach of a rifle-ball, that left no doubt of its meaning on the minds of the astounded warriors.



Chapter Six

The Muddy Creek Band -- The Torch


It was easy for any spectator to interpret the actions and signals of the Sioux warrior who was standing erect on his pony and waving his blanket at some party invisible to the others.

After a minute or two he rested, with the blanket trailing beside him, while he still held his erect position, and continued gazing earnestly over the prairie. This showed that he was waiting for an answer to his signal. Either there was none, or that which was given was not satisfactory, for up went the blanket once more, and he swung it more vigorously than before, stopping and gazing away again.

This time the reply was what was desired, for the warrior dropped as suddenly astride of his horse as though his feet had been knocked from under him, and, wheeling about, he and his companion galloped down the hill to where the others were viewing the cabin.

The taunting words which Melville had called through the front window must have convinced the Sioux that the pitcher had gone once too often to the fountain. Red Feather had escaped by a wonderful piece of good fortune when wedged in the window, and had been encouraged to another attempt, which ended in his ruin.

"Red Feather," said Melville, stepping close to the chieftain, who was still peering through one of the windows, "the other Sioux will soon be here."

"Dat so -- dat so," replied the Indian, looking around at him and nodding his head several times.

"What will they do?"

"Standing erect and waving his blanket."

Instead of replying to this question the chief seemed to be plunged in thought. He gazed fixedly in the face of the youth, as if uncertain what he ought to answer, and then he walked to the head of the stairs.

"Wait here -- don't come."

And, without anything more, he went down the steps slowly, and without the slightest noise. Melville listened, but could hear nothing of his footfalls, though certain that he was moving across the floor.

"I don't like this," muttered the lad, compressing his lips and shaking his head; "it makes me uneasy."

He was now in the lower story, where he left his rifle, knife, and tomahawk. He was therefore more fully armed than the youth, and, if he chose to play the traitor, there was nothing to prevent it.

It seemed to Melville that the coming of the larger party was likely to change whatever plans Red Feather might have formed for befriending him and his sister. What more probable than that he had decided to return to his first love?

But speculation could go on this way for ever, and without reaching any result.

"I'll do as I have done all along," he muttered; "I'll trust in Heaven and do the best I can. I'm sure of one thing," he added; "whatever comes, Red Feather won't hurt Dot: he has spared me on her account: and if he turns against me now, he will do what he can to save her. Therefore I'll make use of the little one."

Dot had held her peace through these trying moments, but he now called her to him and explained what he wished her to do. It was that she should place herself at the head of the stairs and watch Red Feather. In case he started to open the door, or to come up the stairs, she was to tell him. Dot was beginning to understand more clearly than before the situation in which she was placed. The belief that she could be of some use to her brother made her more anxious than ever to do her part. She walked to the head of the stairs and sat down where she could see what went on below.

Returning to his place at the window, Melville found enough to interest him without thinking of Red Feather.

"The whole party broke out in a series of yells." -- Page 63

The band from the Muddy Creek country had just arrived, and as nearly as he could judge, there were fully a score -- all wild, ugly-looking fellows, eager for mischief. They had just galloped up the hill, where they gathered round the man that had first signalled them, he having ridden forward to meet them. They talked for several minutes, evidently to learn what had taken place in and around the Clarendon cabin.

This was soon made clear to them, and then the whole party broke into a series of yells enough to startle the bravest man. At the same time they began riding rapidly back and forth, swinging their rifles over their heads, swaying their bodies first on one side and then on another, and apparently growing more excited every minute.

At first they described short circles on the prairie, and then suddenly extended them so as to pass entirely around the house.

The Sioux, as they came in sight in front of the cabin, were in such a fire range that the youth felt sure he could bring down a warrior at every shot. He was tempted to do so, but restrained himself.

He reflected that, though several shots had been fired, no one, so far as he knew, had been hurt on either side. He had brought his own rifle to his shoulder more than once, and but a feather's weight more pressure on the trigger would have discharged it, but he was glad he had not done so.

"I shall not shoot any one," he said, determinedly, "until I see it must be done for the sake of Dot or myself. I wonder what Red Feather is at?"

Dot was still sitting at the head of the stairs, dividing her attention between Susie her doll and the chieftain. Stepping softly toward her, Melville asked -- 

"What is he doing, Dot?"

"Nothing."

"Where is he standing?"

"Beside the front window, looking out just like you did a minute ago."

This was reassuring information, and helped to drive away the fear that had troubled the youth ever since the Sioux passed below stairs.

"Mel," called his sister the next minute, "I'm awful hungry; ain't it past dinner-time?"

"I'm afraid there is nothing to eat in the house."

"I'm awful thirsty, too."

"I feel a little that way myself, but I don't believe there is anything to eat or drink. You know, father and mother didn't expect us to stay here, or they would have left something for us."

"Can't I go downstairs and look?"

"Yes, if you will keep away from the windows, and tell Red Feather what you are doing."

"Hasn't he got eyes that he can see for himself?" asked the little one as she hurried down the steps.

The chief looked around when he heard the dainty steps, wondering what errand brought her downstairs.

"Red Feather," said the young lady, "I'm hungry; ain't you?"

"No -- me no hungry," he answered, his dark face lighting up with pleasure at sight of the picture of innocence.

"Then you must have eaten an awful big breakfast this morning," remarked Dot, walking straight to the cupboard in the farther corner of the room, into which Melville had glanced when he first entered the house; "I know where mother keeps her jam and nice things."

That she knew where the delicacies were stored Dot proved the next minute, when, to her delight, she found everything that heart, or rather appetite, could wish.

There were a jar of currant jam, a pan of cool milk, on which a thick crust of yellow cream had formed, three-fourths of a loaf of bread, and an abundance of butter. Good Mrs. Clarendon left them behind because she had an abundance without them. Little did she dream of the good service they were destined to do.

Dot uttered such a cry of delight that the chief walked toward her, and Melville seized the excuse to hurry below.

The first thing that struck him was that Red Feather's tomahawk and knife still lay in the corner where he had placed them. He simply held his rifle which most likely he was ready to use against his own people whenever the necessity arose.

"Well, Dot, you have found a prize," said her brother, following the chief, who was looking over her shoulder; "I had no idea that mother had left anything behind; there's enough for all."

She insisted that the others should partake while she waited, but neither would permit it. No matter how a-hungered either might have been, he enjoyed the sight of seeing her eat tenfold more than in partaking himself.

And you may be sure that Dot did ample justice to the rich find. Melville cut a thick slice for her, and spread the butter and jam on it, while a portion of the milk was poured into a cup.

I never heard of a little girl who could eat a piece of bread well covered with jam or preserves without failing to get most of it on her mouth. Dot Clarendon was no exception to the rule; and before she was through a goodly part of it, the sticky sweet stuff was on her cheeks and nose. When she looked up at the two who were watching her, the sight was so comical that Red Feather did that which I do not believe he had done a dozen times in all his life -- he threw back his head and laughed loud. Melville caught the contagion and gave way to his mirth, which was increased by the naive remark of Dot that she couldn't see anything to laugh at.

"He threw back his head and laughed loud."

The appetite of the young queen having been satisfied, Melville insisted on Red Feather sharing what was left with him. The Sioux declined at first, but yielded, and the remaining bread and milk furnished them a grateful and nourishing repast. They did not use all, but saved enough to supply another meal for Dot, whose appetite was sure to make itself felt before many hours passed by.

Like most boys of his age in these later days, Melville Clarendon carried a watch, which showed that it was past three o'clock in the afternoon. This was considerably later than he supposed, and proved that in the rush of incidents time had passed faster than he had suspected.

"What shall I do?" asked the youth, turning to the chief.

"Go -- up up," he replied, pointing up the steps; "watch out. Red Feather -- he watch out here."

"Do you want Dot to stay with you?" asked Melville, pausing on his way to the steps.

"Leave wid Red Feather -- he take heap care ob pappoose."

"There can be no doubt of that," remarked the brother, as he bounded up the stairs, resuming his former station near the window.

Looking out with the same care he had shown from the first, he found the Sioux had grown tired of galloping round the house and buildings, or they were plotting some other kind of mischief, for only one of them was in sight.

He was seated on his pony on the crest of the hill from which the signals were made to the Muddy Creek warriors. A moment's study of the red men showed that his attention was directed not toward the west but the north, in the direction of the settlement.

"He is now looking for enemies instead of friends," was the conclusion of Melville.

The truth was, the youth was beginning to wonder why the settlers did not come. If no accident had befallen his parents, they ought to have reached Barwell several hours before, and a gallop of ten miles was only a moderate ride for a party of horsemen eager to strike the marauders a blow.

But the fact that they were not yet in sight set the youth speculating as to what the result was likely to be if they did not come at all, or rather, if their coming should be delayed until nightfall, for it was not to be supposed that relief would not be sent sooner or later.

"There is only a faint moon to-night," he reflected; "and I'm afraid that's against us."

The American Indian prefers to do his mischief in the dark, and, since it would be impossible for the horsemen to conceal their approach, they would be likely to suffer in the first collision with the red men.

But, on the other hand, would not the gloom be of help to Red Feather in some scheme doubtless formed to help the children whose friend he had so suddenly become?

What the nature of this scheme was (if such existed) Melville could not guess; it might be that it required a bright moon for its success.

It may be said that the Sioux chieftain, as he stood beside one of the narrow windows on the lower floor, racked his brain until he hit upon a way of aiding the brother and sister -- especially the latter -- in their desperate peril. It was a strange plan, indeed, and, with all his adroitness, he knew the chances were ten to one against its success.

But the chief gave no hint to Melville of what was going on in his mind, and the latter could only wait, and hope and pray that the same Heavenly Father who had protected and preserved them thus far would keep them to the end.

The youth was in the midst of his speculations over the matter when he fancied he detected a peculiar odor from the outside. He could not tell its nature, though he snuffed the air repeatedly. He was alarmed, for he connected it with the silence of the war-party outside.

He was on the point of appealing to Red Feather downstairs, when its nature flashed upon him. It was smoke!

He had hardly reached the decision when a mass of thick vapor rolled in front of the house, so dense and blinding that for the moment it shut from his sight the mounted sentinel on the hill.

What was dreaded by the besieged had come at last. The Sioux, aware of the great value of the minutes, had resorted to the torch.



Chapter Seven

"A Little Child Shall Lead Them." -- Surrounded By Peril


Within a distance of a dozen yards of the house of Archibald Clarendon stood his barn. It was what might be called a nondescript building, being open at the bottom to an extent sufficient to admit his wagons, ploughs, farming implements, harnesses, and indeed about everything used in the cultivation of the fertile land.

In the upper portion were stowed his hay and grain, and in the rear of the lower part were the stables for his horses and cows. The latter, with his principal wagon, had been removed that morning, when the settler started with his family on their hasty flight northward to the settlement of Barwell; but the timber was dry, and enough hay was stored in the loft to render the building very combustible.

It was to this structure that the Sioux had applied the torch, and at the moment the smoke rolled in front of the house the whole building was in flames. Unfortunately, there was a gentle breeze blowing from the barn directly toward the house, and it was because of this favoring fact that the former was fired. The marauders had every reason to believe the flames would soon communicate with the dwelling and burn it to the ground.

The barn faced the end with the broad stone chimney, through which Red Feather made his singular entrance. It was therefore out of the field of vision of the inmates, since there was not a single window up or down stairs with an outlook in that direction.

Melville started to run down the steps on making the startling discovery, but met Red Feather coming up with one hand grasping that of Dot.

"My gracious!" exclaimed the youth; "what can be done now, Red Feather? We shall all be burned alive."

"Oogh! not yet -- house ain't afire!" replied the chieftain, without any evidence of excitement.

"But the wind is blowing this way, and the house is sure to go."

"Mebbe go -- mebbe won't go," was the reply with the same stolidity of manner; "wait -- see bimeby."

It would seem that, since the Sioux had such a good chance to do mischief, they would have applied the fire to the house itself. But, though the logs were dry enough to burn readily when the flames were fairly started, it was still a task requiring considerable time and work. It was necessary to pile the fuel against the logs, and to nurse the flames until they set the heavy material going. The barn was so inflammable that a tiny match would ignite it, and, should the fire reach the house, the task would be equally effective, and far more enjoyable to the cruel spectators.

"It was to this structure that the Sioux had applied the torch." -- Page 69

While Red Feather and Melville stood near each other on the upper floor, talking in low tones, Dot slipped her hand from the grasp of the chieftain, and walking to the side of the bed on which she had been lying, knelt down, closed her eyes, and clasped her hands, just as she had been accustomed to do at her mother's knee ever since she was old enough to form the words after her parent.

"She is praying," whispered her brother.

After repeating a simple prayer for their safety the child opened her eyes, and, seeing her friends looking at her, she sprang nimbly up and ran to them.

"Don't be scared, brother and Red Feather; I prayed that we might all be taken care of, and I'm not afraid one bit now, are you?"

Melville tried to speak, but his voice choked him. His eyes filled, and, lifting the precious one in his arms, he pressed her to his breast and kissed her again and again.

The chieftain said nothing, but he too raised the child in his arms and touched his lips to hers. Not only that, but he filled her with delight by saluting Susie in the same manner.

Who shall try to make known the emotions which stirred that savage heart? He had often turned in scorn from the words of the good missionaries who had come to his country; but there was something in the faith of the sweet child which touched his nature as it had never been touched before.

Having set the little one on her feet, the Sioux stepped across the main room to the window from which most of their observations had been made on that floor. Melville followed him, and noticed that the smoke had vanished, so that the sentinel on the hill was in sight again.

Red Feather thrust his hand through the windows, so that his fingers projected slightly beyond. This was done to ascertain the direction of the wind.

"Oogh!" he muttered, with a curious expression on his countenance "wind blow oder way! Great Spirit hear what pappoose say."

"Can it be possible?" asked the awed Melville.

There was no doubt of it; the slight breeze, which had been coming directly from the barn toward the house had changed, and was now blowing in exactly the opposite direction.

The chief and the youth passed into the smaller apartment which was nearest the chimney. The former pressed his ear against the logs to help his hearing. Had they caught the flames from the barn, which was still burning furiously, he could not have failed to detect the fact. A moment's attention told him that up to the present the building was safe.

But it was not in the nature of things that the Sioux should refrain because their first effort failed. They were not the ones to give up on a single trial.

Several noteworthy things took place during the latter part of this eventful afternoon. First of all, there was such a decided lowering of the temperature that a fire would have felt comfortable to the occupants of the building. It looked indeed to Melville as though one of those fearful storms known in the west as "blizzards" was approaching.

This was hardly possible, for it was summer-time, but the plains of Texas and many portions of the west are often swept by what are termed "northers" during the warm season. These winds are accompanied by such cutting cold that people and animals often perish, the suddenness of the visitation shutting them out from securing refuge.

Red Feather offered his blanket to Dot, but she shook her head. "It's too dirty," she said, noticing the soot which the owner did not seem to mind; "I can use a blanket from the bed, for mamma did not take them all with her."

Had Melville suspected the thought in the mind of his little sister, he would have checked its utterance through fear of offending the chieftain, but there was no need of that: one of the impossibilities was for Dot to hurt his feelings.

The next most interesting event was the second failure of the Sioux to set fire to the house. This was singular, for there seemed no reason why they should not have succeeded with such facilities at command.

The barn burned so readily that long before dusk it was reduced to a mass of smoking ruins.

From these, it would have appeared, enough brands could have been collected to make a bonfire of the structure.

Several of the Sioux gathered fuel at one corner of the building, and made an attempt to fire it. The sounds which reached those within left no doubt of what was going on, and you may be sure they listened with anxiety.

It was while matters were in this critical shape that Melville put the direct question to Red Feather as to what he would do in the event of the house being fired. The chieftain replied that, when he saw there was no saving the building, he intended to take Dot in his arms and walk out of the door among his own warriors. The lad was to follow immediately, and he would insist that the lives of the children should be spared because of the promise made by him to them.

Pressed further, the chief admitted that the plan was likely to be only partially successful. He was confident he could save Dot, because of her sex and years; but there was little hope for Melville. Unless prevented by the care of the little girl, Red Feather was willing to join in the fight which the youth would have to make for his life with scarcely an earthly prospect of winning.

But the attempt to fire the log structure came to naught, and, strangest of all, the Sioux gave it up -- at least for a time, for it would have been contrary to Indian nature had they abandoned the effort to destroy their enemies so long as there was a chance of success.

Thus matters stood until the shadows of night began closing over the prairie. During the interval, many glimpses of the Sioux had been caught, as they moved backward and forward at will, sometimes mounted and often on foot. The sentinel kept his place on the crest of the hill, or rather, he exchanged it with one of his brother warriors, who walked about, sat down, smoked his pipe, and used every means at his command to cause the time to pass comfortably to him.

The failure of the arrival of help caused not only surprise but distress to Melville Clarendon; for there was but one way of interpreting it: something had befallen his parents by which they were prevented from reaching the settlement.

The youth had tried all through the afternoon to drive away the misgivings which had troubled him on this score; but he could do so no longer. It was in keeping with the tactics of the Indians that, after arranging to attack the home of Clarendons, they should circle to the northward, so as to approach it from the direction of the settlement. Had they done this, with a view of shutting off all escape to Barwell, it was more than likely they did it early enough in the day to meet the pioneer and his wife hurrying from the place of danger.

Had this meeting taken place, nothing could have saved the couple. Melville secured some consolation from the belief that, if such an awful calamity had overtaken his parents, the Sioux would give evidence of the fact. That is to say, they would have taken possession of the horses and enough of the property for the lad to see them on the first survey of the assailants.

The fact that he did not detect anything of the kind might be accepted as proof that no meeting had taken place with the particular party under the leadership of Red Feather.

But that question was easily answered by Red Feather himself. He assured Melville that he and his warriors had come from the south, arriving on the spot only a short time before the appearance of the brother and sister on the other bank of the stream. He had waved his blanket at the children as a taunt, not supposing they would come any closer after seeing him; but, riding over the hill, he peeped cautiously back, and learned that Melville, not catching the meaning of the gesture, was approaching his home. Thereupon the chief called back his men who were riding off, and arranged to secure the young birds returning to the nest from which the parents had flown.

All the comfort that the youth might have got from this story was spoiled by the declaration of the chief that he believed an encounter had taken place between Mr. Clarendon and the other party of Sioux which reached the spot later in the afternoon. These were under the lead of Tall Bear, a rival of Red Feather, between whom a jealousy amounting to bitter enmity existed.

Had Red Feather not seen Tall Bear among the group he would have adopted a course which the presence of that rival prevented. He would have gone out among his own warriors, and insisted on his rights with a vigor that could hardly have failed of success. Though his men were not afraid of dispute with him, yet they were not likely to invite violence. When they saw he was fully resolved they would yield. The conclusion to be reached from this statement is that Red Feather after all did not make half as determined an argument in behalf of his friends as he appeared to have done. Melville, therefore, was right in his first suspicion, though he was too thoughtful to say so.

"Something unusual was going on among the Sioux outside."

Darkness had not fully come when it became clear to the watchers within the building that something unusual was going on among the Sioux outside. Nearly the entire party came together on the crest of the hill, where they were only dimly visible in the gathering gloom. They could be seen walking back and forth, making many gestures, and talking so loud that their voices were clearly heard.

"Red Feather strained his hearing to catch some words."

Leaning against the side of the window, Red Feather strained his hearing to catch some words that would give him an inkling of what it all meant.

The heart of the youth throbbed with the hope that the long-expected help was in sight at last. It seemed to him the Sioux were acting just as they would do in case they detected the approach of hostile horsemen.

But the sorely-tried lad could only wait until Red Feather should answer the question on his tongue, or until it should be answered by the events themselves.



Chapter Eight

Tall Bear And His Warriors -- A Surprising Discovery


You will recall that when Red Feather wedged himself in the narrow window he said, in answer to the sharp questioning of Melville Clarendon, that the Muddy Creek band of Sioux were so far off that nothing was to be feared from them.

The original band of marauders numbered over a score, and were under the joint leadership of Tall Bear and Red Feather, both of whom were eager to sweep along the thin line of settlements like a cyclone, scattering death and destruction in their path. It may strike you that so small a force was hardly equal to the task of such a raid; but I have only to remind you that the famous Geronimo and his Apaches, who made their home among the alkali deserts and mountain fastnesses of Arizona and New Mexico, numbered few warriors at times, and yet they baffled for years a regiment of United States cavalry. It was only when the chieftain chose to come in and surrender himself under the pledge of good treatment that hostilities ended.

The twenty-odd horsemen under the leadership of Red Feather and Tall Bear were fitting types of that savage horde which in the early summer of 1876 blotted out General Custer and his troops. It so happened, however, with the smaller party that they found no such favoring circumstances to help them. At the first settler's cabin assailed they discovered the inmates ready for them. In some way or other, several families had learned of their danger in time to prepare for their assailants.

It was clear to the Indians that the settlers in that section had taken the alarm, and Red Feather proposed they should abandon their first plan and push northward towards Barwell, attacking the isolated homes to the south of that settlement. Tall Bear opposed so warmly, and with such slurs on his rival, that a personal conflict was narrowly averted.

The end of the quarrel was that Red Feather, with five of his followers, drew off from the rest and rode northward. The result of this separation was unsatisfactory to both parties.

The friendly Indian who had hastened toward Barwell to warn the pioneers of their danger did his work so well that hardly one was neglected. The inmates of the first cabin attacked by Red Feather were awaiting him. Only a few shots were exchanged, when the wrathful chieftain withdrew, and, pushing to the northward, next swooped down on the dwelling of Archibald Clarendon.

No resistance was encountered there, for, as you know, the inmates had left some time before. For some reason never fully explained, Red Feather did not fire the buildings at once. Shortly after, Melville Clarendon and his sister appeared on the scene, and the incidents which followed have already been told.

Meanwhile, Tall Bear and his warriors met with no better success than the smaller party. The proof became so strong that the whole district was on the alert that he abruptly changed his mind and led his warriors at a sweeping gallop to the northward over the trail of Red Feather and his warriors.

When he arrived on the scene he heard the curious story the five warriors had to tell. A dwelling at last had been found in which the occupants were not fully prepared, or rather, were so insignificant in strength that no company of Sioux, however small, could consent to a repulse.

But there stood the cabin defying them. Red Feather had forced his way partly through the window and then was caught so fast that, but for the mercy of the sturdy youth within, he would have been killed without being able to use a finger to defend himself.

Among the whole party who heard the remarkable narrative, there was not one who would have thought of keeping a promise made under such circumstances as was that of the chief. No pledge could have been more solemn, and yet those are the very ones that are first repudiated by the red man.

To Tall Bear and his band the action of Red Feather in descending the chimney was natural. The bitterest enemy of the chieftain never questioned his courage, and, knowing how chagrined he must feel over his mishap, they could understand the desperate feeling that prompted the deed, the like of which was seldom if ever known before.

There was little said about Red Feather's wish to keep his agreement with Melville, for the reason I have already hinted -- his proposal to do so was not earnest enough to mislead them.

But to the Sioux outside it looked very much as if the descent of the chimney by the chief had marked the end of his career. Among all the warriors there was not one who believed the truth -- that he had been changed from the fiercest enemy into the most beloved friend of the boy and girl.

The tantalizing shout of Melville from the window was proof to the warriors that Red Feather had been slain by the boy, though, as I have said, no report of a gun was heard from within the building.

The chieftain's course, after proving himself a friend of the brother and sister, showed his desire to keep his presence in the house unsuspected by his own people. He took care that no glimpse of him was caught through the windows, and he refrained from firing when he had any number of chances to bring down an Indian.

Doubtless there were several reasons for this forbearance. Such a shot would be credited to Melville, and might excite the Sioux to an attack too furious to be resisted. At the same time, it is hardly to be supposed that Red Feather's feelings had so changed, because of his wish to save Dot and her brother, that he was ready to turn about and begin shooting at the very ones whom he had led on this raid.

It cannot be said that Tall Bear grieved any more over the loss of his rival leader than did most of the warriors. He prudently uttered some words of sympathy, but they hardly deceived those who heard them. They agreed with him, however, in declaring that his fall must be avenged, and that the boy who had caused his death, as well as his little sister, must suffer torture-punishment for the deed.

Several circuits around the building proved that it could hardly be carried by the most determined assault in their power. All the windows were too narrow to be used as a means of entrance, even if any one was brave enough to repeat the disastrous experiment of the other chief. The single door had already resisted the strongest shock they could give it, and no weak point was visible.

True, the path used by Red Feather when he finally succeeded in gaining the interior was open to the rest; but it is no reflection on their courage to say that among the whole party there was not one willing to head the procession down the chimney, even though but a solitary boy and a single rifle stood in the way.

Clearly there was one means at the command of Tall Bear and his Sioux which was not only terrible, but effective. They could set fire to the building and reduce it to ashes.

The lookout on the hill reported the horizon clear in every direction; and, since his wide sweep of vision extended toward every point of the compass, he was able to discover the approach of hostile horsemen a good while before they could reach the spot. He knew that if help came it would be from the northward, where Barwell lay, whither Mr. Clarendon and his wife had hurried on the first alarm. The prairie for a couple of miles was under a scrutiny that would let nothing escape.

The circumstances were so favorable that Tall Bear and his party decided to indulge in a feast. Enough poultry were wandering about the premises to afford a fine meal for a larger band than he had with him, and it took only a short time to wring the necks of more than a score of ducks and chickens.

The Sioux gathered to the westward of the barn and ate like so many wild animals until all were satisfied. The meal finished, they gave their attention to the serious business before them. Had the incidents I am relating taken place half a century ago, the red men would have been obliged to resort to the old-fashioned flint and steel with which our forefathers used to start a fire; but they were abreast of these modern times to that extent that nearly every one carried more or less lucifer-matches.

The favoring wind led to the barn being fired, under the belief that the flames would quickly communicate with the house but a short distance off; but, as you have learned, Providence favored the threatened ones to that extent that the breeze changed its course, and for a time Dot and Melville were saved.

"His attention was drawn to the sentinel on the hill." -- Page 86

Tall Bear and the Sioux waited till, to their disappointment and surprise, they saw the barn sink into blazing ruins and leave the house intact.

The next proceeding was to gather what embers they could and pile them against the dwelling, where they speedily burst into flames. It now looked certain that the structure was doomed; but the heavy logs, although dry on the outside, were damp within. It takes such timber a long time to part with its natural moisture, and, fortunately for our friends, a driving rain-storm less than a week previous had so soaked the wood that only an intense and long-continued heat could set it aflame. The logs were charred and scorched, and more than once appeared to be on the point of breaking into a roaring blaze; but the brands piled against the end of the house finally sank down to embers and ashes, and though considerable smoke arose, the house stood really as firm and as strong as at the first.

This was a keener disappointment than Tall Bear had yet met, for it looked as though the most potent if not the only means at his command was powerless to bring the boy to terms.

The chieftain himself examined the logs which had been subjected to the fire. He dug his hunting-knife into them, and soon discovered why they resisted the fire so effectually. Then he tested other parts of the house in the same manner and with the same result.

For the first time since his arrival on the spot he was forced to see the probability of another failure. His career from the hour he bounded upon his pony and entered so eagerly on the raid had been a continual disappointment. He was angered and resentful toward the supposed dead Red Feather, because he allowed himself to be baffled at the beginning by a solitary boy.

Tall Bear's pride was stirred, and he was unwilling to confess himself beaten after openly blaming his predecessor for failing to capture the place with less than one-third of his force.

But there seemed to be no help for it, unless he should persevere with the fire until the logs of the house were forced into combustion. They must yield in time, if the effort was kept up; and he was on the point of renewing the attempt on a larger scale than before when his attention was drawn to the sentinel on the hill, who uttered the startling cry that horsemen were in sight to the northward.

"More Sioux comin' -- open door quick." -- Page 90

The chief and the warriors who were not already on the spot hurried thither to learn what it meant.

As I have explained elsewhere, this discovery did not take place until near nightfall, when darkness was beginning to render surrounding objects indistinct. The long delay in the arrival of help for the children of the pioneer led Tall Bear to believe it was not likely to come before morning; but once more it looked as if Providence was about to interfere to bring his wicked schemes to naught.

The gloom overspreading stream and prairie prevented the Sioux from seeing the horsemen clearly enough to identify them. The forms were so shadowy and vague that nothing more could be learned than that there were about a dozen men mounted on horses, and riding toward the cabin on a slow walk, as if not without some misgiving.

It was certain that while the sentinel on the hill commanded an unusually wide sweep of vision, he himself was conspicuous, and the others had been as quick to discover him as he was to detect them. Both parties, therefore, were aware of the presence of the other, and neither was likely to make a mistake at this critical juncture.

But neither Tall Bear nor any of his warriors could tell of a surety whether the approaching horsemen were white or red men. The Sioux grouped around the house were not the only ones by any means that were engaged on this memorable raid in Southern Minnesota, and it was not impossible that a party of friends were in sight.

It was somewhat curious that the majority of the Sioux believed a party of their own people at hand. Tall Bear himself was inclined to think the same; but to guard against any fatal mistake, he directed his warriors to ride down the hill on the east, so as to interpose between them and the strangers, who could now be barely distinguished.

Two other Sioux were to wait until the horsemen came near enough to settle the question, when they would make it known by signal, after which the course of the band would be open. If the new-comers proved to be enemies, a sharp fight was likely to follow, in which serious damage was certain to be inflicted on both sides.

The directions of the leader were promptly followed, the warriors galloping off and quickly disappearing in the direction of the upper trail, along which Melville and Dot had ridden on their way from the settlement.

"The door swung inward."

While they were thus engaged, Tall Bear cantered to the front of the cabin and leaped to the ground. He had determined to attempt a trick.

Striking his fist against the door, he called out -- 

"More Sioux comin' -- open door quick -- Tall Bear won't hurt -- don't wait."

He hoped the actions of himself and warriors had made known the former fact before he announced it in words. He counted upon a panic that would show the lad his situation was hopeless, and induce him to surrender while there was hope of mercy.

There was no reply to his summons, and he raised his fist to strike the door again, when he discovered the latch-string on the outside. With no suspicion of what it meant, he gave it a twitch.

To his amazement, the door swung inward of its own weight, and, before he could check himself, he had to take a step within to escape falling.

With a vague suspicion of the truth, he called to the lad again, and groped about the lower room.

He quickly discovered that it was empty, and then, with little personal fear, he hurried up the stairs.

Two minutes were enough to make clear the truth.

He was the only living person in the cabin!



Chapter Nine

Nat Trumbull And His Men -- Out In The Night


The American Indian rarely shows any emotion that may be stirring his heart. I am sure, however, that if one could have had a look at the face of Tall Bear when he made the discovery that neither the brother nor sister was in the cabin he would have seen a picture of as blank amazement as ever held a person speechless.

This was not caused so much by what the children had done as by the course of the Sioux themselves, for nothing was plainer to the chieftain than the manner in which Melville and Dot had escaped.

They had been on the alert, and when the warriors hastened to the top of the hill Melville Clarendon was bright enough to seize the opportunity thus given. He had quietly stepped out of the front door, where, in the gloom and the absorbing interest of the red men in another direction, neither he nor the little girl attracted notice. The two were doubtless making all haste from the endangered spot.

But the chieftain was astounded over another discovery: in order to make his search absolutely thorough he had caught up a smouldering brand, quickly fanned it into a flame, and then explored the upper and lower storys. Not a nook or corner was left unvisited, and a hiding cat would have been brought to light.

That which almost knocked Tall Bear breathless was the fact that he found nothing of the remains of Red Feather, who had entered the chimney before the eyes of five of his own warriors.

"Explored the upper and lower storys."

The inference was certain: Red Feather had not been killed, but had gone out of the front door just as the children had done.

Tall Bear was still far from suspecting the whole truth, though, had he been left with nothing else on his mind for a short time only, he must have divined, or at least suspected, what actually took place.

But a party of horsemen were approaching, and must already be close at hand. They required attention, for if they should prove to be enemies, the chief would have his hands full. His position, with a lighted torch within the building, was not the most prudent he could take, and as he came outside he flung the light to the ground where it sputtered out in the darkness.

Tall Bear's pony was standing where he had left him, and vaulting lightly upon his back, he sent him on a gallop to the top of the hill, to learn something about the new-comers.

The main party of warriors were some distance off, awaiting the signal to know whether they were to fight or to join the parties whose identity was still in doubt. The couple whom Tall Bear had despatched to reconnoitre were still absent, so that he found himself alone on the elevation.

It is at such times that the American Indian displays a wonderful keenness of sight and hearing. The chief sat motionless, peering into the gloom and listening. None could know better than he that he had taken a most dangerous position.

If the horsemen, who could not be far off, were hostile, they would surround the hill whereon they last saw the Sioux, and unless Tall Bear kept his wits about him he was likely to be shut in on every hand.

But it would have been hard for the most skilful Indian scout to take him unawares. He was certain to see and hear the approach of any one as soon as the latter could see or hear him, and the chieftain was not the one to fall asleep under such circumstances.

Darting his penetrating glances here, there, and everywhere, he suddenly fixed them upon a point directly ahead. Something was vaguely assuming form in the gloom, and a minute later he observed a man walking toward him.

Tall Bear leaned forward over the neck of his pony, that he might not lose the advantage of an inch of space. The stranger was advancing without any more noise than if he was a shadow, and he was alone, or, if he had any companions, they were so far behind when he was in full view as to be invisible.

The man on foot came to a halt while still too far off to be more than faintly visible, and emitted a low tremulous whistle. Tall Bear promptly answered in the same manner, and then the other ran forward to his side. He was one of the two scouts the chief had sent out, and he brought important tidings.

The party of horsemen which caused the Sioux such concern were white men -- every one -- under the leadership of the famous frontier scout Nat Trumbull. The warrior had ventured near enough to the company to recognize his voice when he gave the order for his men to move around to the south and approach the house from that direction.

Trumbull was a veteran who had done good service during the lurid summer of 1862, when the Sioux desolated a large portion of the Minnesota frontier, and Tall Bear feared him more than any white man living. He knew that if Trumbull and his rangers got a chance at the Sioux they would force matters without mercy. No sooner, therefore, did the Sioux scout tell what he had learned than Tall Bear made up his mind that the best place for him and his warriors was somewhere else. When he asked after the other scout who accompanied the one that returned, the chieftain was told that he had ventured so near the white men that he narrowly escaped capture, and was forced to dodge off in another direction.

That was enough. Tall Bear wheeled his pony like a flash, and galloped toward the point where he knew his warriors were awaiting the news with as much anxiety as his own.

Such tidings travel fast, and within five minutes after the return of the scout with his message Tall Bear and his warriors were riding as if for life from the neighborhood.

It may as well be explained how it was that the relief which Melville Clarendon expected hours before was so delayed that, but for an unexpected occurrence, it would have arrived too late.

You have learned that Mr. Clarendon and his wife left their home early that morning and hurried northward over the ten miles between them and Barwell.

All went well until they had passed half the distance, when the sudden appearance of three mounted Indians showed that they were not likely to get through without trouble. The settler at once came to a halt and prepared to make the best defence possible. The animals were gathered near the wagon, where Mr. Clarendon made his wife crouch down to escape the flying bullets, and, loaded gun in hand, he waited the attack that was sure to come.

A skilful marksman in the situation of Mr. Clarendon generally considers himself the equal of three mounted men on the open plain, and the conduct of the warriors showed that they held the settler in respect. Keeping beyond easy range, they circled about the wagon and its inmates as if looking for an opening, and finally all three brought their guns to their shoulders and let fly.

The volley killed one of the horses, which dropped dead as he stood near the wagon.

The settler instantly returned the shot, and -- rather curiously -- though the distance was considerable, he brought down the pony of the nearest Indian, which made such a frenzied leap that his rider was thrown. Mr. Clarendon at first thought it was he who had been struck; but he quickly sprang to his feet and vaulted upon another pony behind one of his comrades.

The Sioux continued circling around the settler at a still greater distance, and sent in another volley, which did no harm. At last they concluded the risk of a charge and attack too great, and drew off, finally disappearing in the distance.

"He brought down the pony of the nearest Indian."

Mr. Clarendon waited an hour or more, expecting them to return, but they did not, and he resumed his journey to the settlement.

Having but a single horse, he was obliged to leave part of his load behind, and such slow progress was made in his crippled condition that the day was well gone before he reached Barwell.

There he was startled to learn that his children had started homeward early in the day, and were still absent. He set about organizing a rescue party at once. Fortunately, Nat Trumbull and several of his rangers were present, and they eagerly gave their help. Within half an hour after the father received the alarming tidings Trumbull was cantering southward with a dozen tried men and true, and among them was Archibald Clarendon himself.

Although the escape of the three parties from the beleaguered cabin may strike you as wonderful, yet, after all, there was nothing very remarkable in it.

Red Feather would have forgotten his lifelong training, had he failed to see and take instant advantage of the providential diversion when the Sioux, in the gathering darkness, made all haste to the top of the hill to learn about the horsemen approaching from the north.

Had the Sioux suspected that the brain of one of their shrewdest chiefs was helping the boy and girl, they would have been far more vigilant; but, as it was, they must have believed that nothing could draw the lad outside of his shelter until the appearance of his friends.

Red Feather was standing as before at one of the upper windows when the stampede took place to the crest of the hill. He read its meaning, and saw his golden opportunity.

"Now we go," he said in an undertone; "me carry pappoose (child) -- you come 'long -- put blanket round -- den look like Indian."

There was another reason for using the blanket; the air was cold enough to require it.

Melville was quick to catch the idea, and, whipping a quilt from the bed, he gathered it about his shoulders, so that it came almost to his crown. His straw hat would have been too conspicuous, and he held that in front of his breast, under the blanket, to be put in its proper place again when it should become safe to do so.

"I'm ready," he said, standing erect, and looking at Red Feather as well as he could in the gloom.

"Me too."

The chief had lifted Dot in his arms, and he covered her with his thick blanket, doing so with such skill that hardly any one would have suspected the nature of the precious burden he carried next to his heart.

Not a minute was lost. Red Feather passed down the steps, paused in front of the door, and waited for Melville to unfasten it. The youth donned his hat, flung aside his blanket, and set his gun down to give his arms play. The heavy bar was lifted from its place, and then, in obedience to an odd whim, he thrust the end of the leathern string through the orifice above the latch.

He gathered his blanket about his shoulders and head as before, doffing his hat and returning it to its hiding-place, and paused for the chieftain to precede him.

Red Feather stood a minute on the threshold, peering out in the darkness. Everything looked favorable, and he stepped forward. Melville was directly behind him, and softly closed the door as he left the cabin.

The Sioux, instead of walking straight away from the building, moved stealthily along the front, passed around the corner, and started southward. By this means he interposed the cabin between himself and the party on the hill.

"The youth was almost on his heels. His heart beat fast, and he was eager to break into a run." -- Page 98

The youth was almost on his heels. His heart beat fast, and he was eager to break into a run that would quickly increase the distance between him and the war-party. He was about to suggest that they should hasten, when, to his surprise, he perceived that his friend was moving so much faster than he that he threatened to leave him out of sight altogether. Red Feather had struck a peculiar gait. It looked as if he was walking, but his pace was a loping trot, in which the feet were lifted only slightly from the ground. The movement was as smooth as that of a pacing horse, and he adopted it in order to save Dot from jolting.

The Sioux, on emerging from the building, had glanced sharply about him, in the hope of catching sight of his own pony, or one belonging to a warrior; but there was none convenient, and he dared not wait.

"Saladin must be hovering somewhere in the neighborhood," thought his young owner, "and it would be mighty fine if I could run against him, but it doesn't look as if there is much chance."

Red Feather continued his loping gait for two or three hundred yards, when he once more dropped to a walk; but his steps were so lengthy and rapid that the lad had to trot most of the time to hold his own.

Melville fancied his leader was changing his course, but he could only guess its direction. Looking back, nothing was visible of the cabin left a few minutes before. Everything was dark, the country being an undulating prairie. Mr. Clarendon used no fences, and the ground travelled by the fugitives had not been broken.

It seemed to the youth that the most natural thing for Red Feather to do was to make directly for the settlement, ten miles to the northward. It was a long tramp, but the two were capable of doing much more without special fatigue.

The chieftain did not speak as he hurried forward; and the boy asked him no questions, content to wait until he chose to tell his plans. His pace grew more moderate, and soon became easy for Melville to keep his place beside him.

It need not be said that both made good use of their eyes and ears. Although beyond sight of the house, it was too soon to think themselves safe. If a collision took place between Tall Bear and the new-comers, some of the Indians were likely to be skurrying backwards and forwards on their ponies, and it was probable they would come upon the fugitives.

Whenever Red Feather should meet his fellows there would be a sensation, but he was not the warrior to shrink the test, though he wished it to be deferred until the brother and sister were beyond the resentment of every one of his tribe.



Chapter Ten

An Old Friend -- Separated


Suddenly Red Feather stopped. Melville did the same, wondering what the cause could be.

The youth stood so near that he saw the chief was looking to the right, as though he had heard a suspicious sound or saw something in that direction. The lad gave close attention, since he could detect nothing.

The Indian resumed his walk more slowly than before, but did not utter a word. His glances, however, to one side showed he was not free from misgiving, and by-and-by he stopped walking and listened intently as before.

"What is it?" asked Melville, giving way to his curiosity.

"Me hear something," was the reply, the Indian going still slower.

"I can't detect anything," said the lad, as though the fact ought to lighten the fears of the other.

Red Feather now tenderly placed Dot on her feet. The little one was half asleep, and rubbed her eyes after the manner of children when disturbed.

A whispered word from her brother kept her quiet, and, kneeling down, Red Feather pressed his ear to the ground, holding it there for a full minute. Then he raised his head a few inches, looked off into the darkness, placed the side of his face against the ground for a few seconds more, after which he rose to his feet.

Instead of explaining, he turned to Melville.

"You see Red Feather do -- you do same as him."

Melville promptly obeyed, assuming the same posture that his friend had taken. Closing his eyes, so as to shut out everything that might distract his senses, he gave all his efforts to that of hearing.

Yes, he did hear something -- just the faintest irregular beating on the ground -- so faint indeed that he would not have believed it anything except for what the Sioux had said.

"Hear nuffin?" asked the other, as the boy came to his feet.

"Yes, I think I did hear a faint noise."

"What him be?"

"That's more than I can tell, Red Feather."

"Hoss -- hear hoss walking -- dat what hear."

"Is that the fact?" asked Melville, somewhat startled, peering toward the same point of the compass at which the chief had gazed though the lad had no other idea of the right course.

"Hoss -- he come dis way."

"If that is so there is likely to be someone on him, and I don't think it is well for us to meet him."

To this wise remark Red Feather gave no answer, but continued peering in the same direction as before.

"If there is one horseman there is likely to be more --  -- "

Melville cut short his own words, and whistled cautiously, checking that with equal suddenness, through fear of offending his friend.

But the chief showed no displeasure, and, before anything could be said, the form of a riderless horse came out of the gloom and trotted forward with a faint neigh of pleasure.

"Saladin, my own Saladin!" exclaimed the delighted youth, flinging his arms around the outstretched neck, and actually touching his lips to the silken nose of the noble steed.

"Saladin, old fellow, I'm proud of you," said Melville; "the Sioux did their best to steal you away from us, but you were too smart for them. One was cruel enough to shoot at you, but it don't look as if he did any damage."

The youth could not resist the temptation to place his foot in the stirrup, and leap into the saddle, where he was "at home."

"Now, Red Feather," he added, "things are beginning to look up; I can relieve you of carrying Dot; the truth is that after we cross the stream I shall feel safe. Under heaven, we owe everything to you; but you need go no farther with us."

"Ain't safe," said the chieftain sententiously; "Injins all round -- Red Feather go all way home wid pappoose."

"That is very kind, but I can relieve you of your burden."

"Me carry pappoose," replied the Sioux, moving toward the little one.

"Dot," said her brother, "which would you rather do -- ride on Saladin with me or let Red Feather carry you?"

"A riderless horse came out of the gloom."

"It's a good deal nicer to have him carry me; take me, Red Feather," she added, reaching out her arms.

Melville was glad to hear this answer, for he knew it would touch the chieftain, whose heart had become wrapped up in the sweet little one.

Before he could lift her, however, he paused, and, saying "Wait," again knelt down with his ear to the ground.

The result was satisfactory, and, remarking that he heard nothing more, he stood upon his feet, stooped over, and lifted the little one to her old place. Then the flight was taken up as before.

Melville held Saladin back, so as to follow the leader, who reached the side of the stream a few minutes later. Objects were indistinct, but the youth was so familiar with the spot that he recognized it as the Upper Crossing. When the lad would have lost himself the Sioux had gone as unerringly to the spot as though the sun were shining overhead to guide him.

"Now," said Melville, as they waited a minute or two on the brink, "there is no need for you to wade across, and wet your leggings to the knees; it can be easily fixed."

"Oogh! heap big load for hoss -- carry all."

The lad laughed.

"That isn't what I mean; the pony is strong enough to bear us, but it isn't necessary; I'll ride him over, and then send him back after you."

This was a sensible course, for, though an Indian cares little for the inconvenience of wading through water of considerable depth, yet he will not do so when there in any practicable means of avoiding it.

"You must be careful," added Melville, as he was about to ride into the current, "for there are some deep places which the horse will have to skirt closely. If he steps into one, he will go over his depth, and that will make it bad for you and Dot; I think I had better carry her over with me."

"Oogh! Red Feather know holes, 'cause he fall in 'em -- mebbe you fall in wid pappoose -- how den, eh?"

"All right," replied the youth with a smile, as he gave the word to Saladin, who began wading with the same snuffing and care that his kind always show when entering a body of water.

His rider was wise enough to decide that the safest course was to leave everything to him, for he had travelled that way often enough to be familiar with its dangers.

He narrowly missed plunging into a hole near the other bank, but he saved himself, and finally emerged on the farther shore with his rider dry-shod.

"Now, old fellow," said Melville, affectionately patting his head, "go back and bring over Red Feather and Dot. Try not to come as near making a slip as you did with me."

"Go back and bring over Red Feather and Dot."

The pony showed his comprehension of the request by stepping at once in the stream and making his way toward the other shore.

Long before the little party reached the stream just crossed by Melville night had fully come. The moon did not rise until late in the evening, and the darkness was such that, after parting with Saladin, he saw him vanish when he was no more than half-way across the creek. Of course, therefore, Red Feather and Dot were out of sight altogether.

Melville sat down on the sloping bank, with his rifle across his knees, to await the coming of his friend. In the stillness, the slightest sound could be heard a long way. The plashing of the pony's feet as he carefully felt his way through the water was so plain that it was easy to tell every step he took.

The youth was looking idly off in the gloom when he observed a rapidly growing light toward the south-east, which you will bear in mind was on the other side of the stream. He watched it for a minute or two, when the cause became apparent.

A couple of miles east of the Clarendon home was that of the nearest neighbor. He was without any family, his only companion being a hired man. They had received warning of the impending danger in time to escape, but being well mounted and armed, took a different direction from that leading toward Barwell, whither Mr. Clarendon and his wife hastened.

They were gone, but their property remained. The buildings were more extensive than those of Mr. Clarendon, and they had been fired by the Sioux. They created a huge glare which lit up the horizon in every direction.

"It must be," thought Melville, "that Tall Bear and his warriors have been scared away by the appearance of white men, and have touched off those buildings out of revenge. If Red Feather and I could have only known that friends were coming we could have stayed at home. I wonder they didn't try to fire that again, now that they can get inside and have so much better chance."

Melville watched the glare growing brighter and brighter, until it suddenly occurred to him that Red Feather was a long time in crossing the stream. The light from the conflagration brought the opposite shore into faint view, but failed to reveal the Sioux. While the youth was looking and wondering, however, he heard the splashing of water and observed Saladin making his way back.

But, instead of doing so at the regular ferry-place, he had gone some distance above, where the depth was greater. Even while staring at the pony, the animal sank down so low that it was plain he was swimming.

This of itself was curious, without the additional fact that there was no one upon his back; he was returning, as may be said, empty handed.

As you may well believe, Melville was startled and alarmed; something unusual must have happened on the other shore. There could be no doubt that Saladin had gone entirely across, and now came back without the chief who expected to ride over the ford.

The lad rose and walked down to the edge of the water to meet his steed. The latter was obliged to swim only a short distance, when the depth became so shallow that his body rose above the surface, and he quickly stepped out on dry land.

"What can this mean?" muttered Melville examining the wetted saddle, bridle, and accoutrements; "were you sent back, Saladin, or did you come of your own accord? Ah, if you had the gift of speech!"

It seemed to the lad that he could discern something moving on the other side, but, with the help of the glare of the distant fire, he could not make it out.

He ventured to signal to Red Feather by means of the whistle with which he was accustomed to summon Saladin. The Sioux was sure to identify it if it reached his ears.

The signal was emitted with such care that it could not have been heard more than a hundred yards away, and the youth listened with a rapidly beating heart for the reply.

It came, but in a far different form than was expected or desired. The sounds showed that other animals had entered the water and were approaching the opposite bank. At this juncture, too, the glare from the burning buildings increased to that extent that the other shore came out more distinctly than ever.

To his dismay Melville observed that the bank was lined with mounted Indians, three of whom had already ridden into the stream and were urging their ponies across. They were doing this, too, with a skill which left no doubt that they knew all about the holes into which one was likely to plunge.

Where these Sioux -- as they undoubtedly were -- could have come from with such abruptness was more than the startled lad could tell, though he naturally supposed they belonged to the party that had fired the burning buildings. Whether they were members of Tall Bear's band or an independent body could not be told just then, and Melville had no time or inclination to puzzle himself over the question.

It was enough to know that he and his pony were in imminent danger, and that not a second was to be lost in leaving the spot.

He was in the saddle in a twinkling, and turned the head of Saladin to the north.

"A good deal depends on you," he said, patting the neck of the noble animal; "we have a rugged path to travel, and there isn't much chance to show them what you can do in the way of speed, but I know they can't beat you."

"To his dismay Melville observed that the bank was lined with mounted Indians." -- Page 110

I told you in the earlier part of this story that the upper trail, as it was called, was much more rugged and difficult to traverse than the lower one, which fact accounted for its general abandonment by those who had occasion to cross the stream. Had the ground for some distance been open prairie, Saladin would have shown a clean pair of heels to his enemies, and speedily borne his master beyond danger; but within a hundred yards of the bank of the stream the surface became so broken that it was difficult for a horse to travel faster than a walk.

But our young friend did not hesitate to assume the risk, and Saladin instantly broke into a canter, which, to say the least, was the equal in speed of any pace his pursuers dare attempt. The difficulty, however, was that the latter were already so close that a volley from them could not fail to do damage. The fact that they had some distance yet to travel through the water, where their ponies could not be forced off a walk, was a vast help to Melville, who improved the brief space to that extent that he was almost out of sight when the horsemen forced their animals up the bank and struck into a gallop.

Melville rode a reckless gait, which proved to be the wisest thing he could do; for, though Saladin came near stumbling more than once, he did not fall, and drew so far away from his pursuers that he soon left them out of sight. Satisfying himself of this, the youth abruptly drew him to one side, forced him among some rocks and bushes, faced about, and held him motionless.

"I don't know what has happened to Red Feather and Dot," he said, "and it may be they don't need my help; but I shan't do anything that looks like deserting them -- sh!"

At that moment, the hoofs of the pursuing horses fell on his ear in his hiding-place, and he knew the three Sioux were at hand.



Chapter Eleven

At The Lower Crossing -- Tall Bear's Last Failure


Nothing could have shown more strongly the confidence of Melville Clarendon in Saladin than the course he followed in trying to throw the pursuing Sioux off his track.

He had halted at a distance of less than fifty feet from the path, and, sitting erect on the back of the steed, he waited for the three Indians to ride past.

At such times a horse is quicker than its rider to discover the presence of other animals, and the temptation to make it known by a whinny or neigh has often upset all calculations and overthrown the plans of the fugitive or scout.

Melville knew the peril from this source, but he had little misgiving about Saladin. He softly patted his neck, and knew he understood the situation well enough to hold his peace; but how would it be with the other animals -- would they betray their discovery of the motionless steed at the side of the trail? A faint neigh from them would be certain to give their cunning riders a clue to the truth; and, checking their own horses, they would leap to the ground, and be upon the youth before he could dash into cover.

You may understand, therefore, the anxiety of Melville when through the gloom he caught the dim outlines of the first horseman, as he came opposite, closely followed by the others.

The suspense was short. While the boy held his breath, the last of the three horsemen vanished in the gloom, and he was placed at the rear, with enemies on both sides of him.

The ruse of Melville had succeeded, and the question now to be answered was as to what use he should make of his opportunity, if such it should prove to be?

It would seem that nothing could be more reckless than for the youth, after eluding his three immediate pursuers, to return over the trail to the crossing, but only a moment's thought was necessary for him to decide to do that very thing.

"The last of the three horsemen vanished in the gloom."

From where he sat on his pony, screened by bushes and rocks, he observed that the light from the burning buildings to the south-east was fast diminishing. The fire had been rapid, and before long total darkness would rest on the stream and plain again. It would therefore be safe for him to approach the edge of the creek, provided none of the remaining Sioux had crossed over.

Waiting only long enough to make sure that the three Indians were beyond reach of the sound of Saladin's hoofs, he gently jerked the bit and spoke softly to him. The steed stepped forward with as much care as his rider could have shown, and soon stood in the path again.

Here Melville held him motionless a moment or two, while he peered around and listened. Nothing was seen or heard of the Indians, and, heading toward the stream, the horse advanced on a gentle walk.

Melville kept his pony at a walk for no other reason than to prevent any betrayal from the sound of his feet. The distance was slight, and soon he came to a halt on the very edge of the stream, while the rider, peering across, failed to catch the faintest outline of the horsemen that were in sight a short time before.

Nothing could have justified the risk of attempting to ride to the other bank; for if the Sioux were in the neighborhood they would not only discover the youth, but would have him at such disadvantage that escape would be out of the question.

The lad held no such purpose, but, turning his animal to the right, began making his way down stream, toward the Lower Crossing, near his own home. It was easy to do this by keeping close to the water, since the unevenness of the ground did not begin until a few yards or rods from the bank.

The darkness was such that Saladin was left to himself, Melville knowing he could give him no help by any attempt at guiding him. The sagacious beast thrust his nose forward, and, like an elephant, crossing the stream, seemed to feel every foot of the way.

Despite the extreme care, he had not taken a dozen steps when a rolling stone caused him to stumble, and the rider narrowly missed taking a header over his ears. Saladin quickly recovered himself, but at the moment of doing so the youth was startled by a whistle from the other shore, instantly answered by a similar call from the bank along which he was riding.

This proved that not only were the main party waiting, but the three Sioux that had started to pursue the young fugitive had returned.

But if the stumble of Saladin had revealed his whereabouts, Melville was still in great peril. Without waiting to assure himself on the point, he urged his pony to a brisk walk, never pausing until fully two hundred yards were placed behind him. Then, when he looked back and listened, he was convinced his fears were groundless, and it was a simple coincidence that the signals which startled him were emitted at the moment of the slight mishap to his horse.

So far as he could judge, he had a clear course now, and he allowed Saladin to advance as rapidly as he chose.

His chief distress was concerning Dot. The withdrawal of Red Feather was so sudden that some unusual cause must have been at the bottom. The lad could not help thinking the chieftain should have given him a hint of his course before the youth learned it at such a risk to himself.

He was not without fear that harm had befallen his beloved sister, but his confidence in Red Feather was perfect, and he knew that he would do his best to take care of her.

Convinced that the Sioux at the Upper Crossing were the ones that had fired the buildings to the south-east, and that they belonged to Tall Bear's band, it followed that something must have taken place to drive them from the siege of Melville's home.

It might be that, learning of the flight of the children, they had scattered to search for them. It would seem that they were small game for such a big effort, but the ill success that had marked Tall Bear's brief career as a raider may have made him glad of even a small degree of success. Besides, it might be that only a portion of his party was on the hunt.

But to Melville the most likely belief was the one formed some time before, to the effect that company whose appearance had caused such excitement were white men numerous and strong enough to send the Sioux skurrying away to avoid a fight with them.

It was this belief which caused Melville to seek the Lower Crossing, when there was much risk involved in the attempt.

"If father and a lot of his friends have scared off Tall Bear and his Sioux, they can't be far off --  -- "

"Climb down thar, pard, mighty quick!"

It was a startling summons that thus broke in upon the reverie of Melville, but he quickly recovered from the shock, knowing by the voice that it was that of a friend.

He had reached the Lower Crossing, when a horseman that was awaiting him suddenly loomed in sight through the gloom, and hailed him with the rough command to dismount.

"I don't see why I should get off my horse when he isn't stolen," replied the youth with a laugh.

"Wal, to be sure, if it isn't young Clarendon! Hello, Archie, here's your younker (boy), sure as you live."

It was the famous scout Nat Trumbull who spoke these cheery words, and, before the youth knew it, it looked as if a dozen horsemen had sprung from the ground and surrounded him.

"We're looking for Injins," added Nat; "thar was plenty of 'em a while ago, but they've become powerful scarce all of a sudden."

"I've seen more than I wished," replied Melville, "but I guess, you've frightened them off --  -- "

At this juncture the boy's father rode hurriedly forward through the group, and, leaning from his saddle, gratefully pressed the hand of his son, and anxiously asked about Dot.

The youth, as briefly as he could, told the story which is familiar to you. The amazement of the listeners was great, and to more than one it seemed impossible that the detested Red Feather should have proved himself a friend instead of the most cruel enemy of the children.

"Why, it's him that we war after more than any one else," said Nat Trumbull; "but if he's made a change like that, why I'll shake hands with him and call the account squar."

Mr. Clarendon's distress over the uncertainty about Dot was so great that the thoughts of all were turned toward her; and when he asked that an effort should be made to trace her and Red Feather, Nat and the rest gave their eager consent, and the start was made without a minute's unnecessary delay.

Nat Trumbull was disappointed because of his failure to locate Tall Bear and his band. The outbreak of the Sioux was so sudden that even those who were best acquainted with their ways did not believe it was so near, but when the truth became known the authorities saw the only right course to take.

There were many hundred Sioux within the boundaries of Minnesota at that time, and unless the revolt was suppressed at once and with a strong hand it would rapidly spread, with the most lamentable consequences. There was a hasty organization and gathering of forces to start after the raiders and bring them to terms before they should gain courage by any important successes.

It was the ardent desire of the rangers under Trumbull to force Red Feather and his band into a fight where there would be no getting away on either side. The scout meant to hit hard when he did strike.

This statement will make clear the course of the irregular cavalry -- as they may be called -- when they became aware that the Indians whom they were after were gathered around the home of Archibald Clarendon. That gentleman was eager for himself and friends to dash forward, but Nat reminded him that the presence of the Sioux and the fact that, although the barn was a mass of ashes and smoking ruins, his house stood intact were proofs that the raiders had been unable to burn down the cabin or secure his children.

Such being the case, Trumbull began manoeuvring with a view of getting matters in such a shape that a fight would be certain. There were several glasses among the rangers, and in the deepening darkness they gave important aid.

It was evident from the manner of the Sioux that they were not sure of the identity of the horsemen. Could they have used spy-glasses like the white men, they could not have failed to learn the truth.

Trumbull turned this uncertainty to his own advantage. He purposely held his men back to prevent the truth becoming known; but as the darkness increased he kept edging to the southward, spreading the horsemen out to an extent that would have proved costly had the Sioux been sagacious enough to take advantage of it.

Nat's force was too small to attempt to surround the Indians, and he was still hopeful of forcing them into a fight. He did not lose a minute, but worked farther and farther along, until all were far from that part of the horizon where first seen.

"Pressed the hand of his son, and anxiously asked about Dot." -- Page 119

But while Nat Trumbull was vigorously pushing things, it became known that two of the Sioux were hovering near and watching every movement. That these fellows were wonderfully cunning and quick was proved by their escape when both were charged by the horsemen. Despite everything that could be done, these scouts made off, and of course carried their important news to their chief.

The flight of the Sioux scouts caused a change in the plans of Nat Trumbull. Knowing it was useless to try to surprise the dusky rogues, he brought his men together and rode rapidly toward the Clarendon cabin. He hoped to arrive before the raiders could get away, and to administer sharp punishment to them.

Trumbull approached the house and smoking ruins with care, for there was abundant chance for their enemies to hide themselves and give the white men a rattling volley before they could escape the peril. It required considerable time for the rangers to learn that none of their enemies were there, and then Mr. Clarendon himself discovered the door of his house open. Still uncertain of the truth, he and his friends waited some time before daring to venture within.

The conclusion of this examination was the natural one, that the Sioux had fled, taking the children with them. But, as it was clear they could not have gone far, Trumbull galloped with most of his men to the crossing, in the hope of coming upon the marauders there.

He had no more than fairly convinced himself that he was in error again when Melville Clarendon rode up on Saladin, his father making his appearance shortly after.

The light in the south-east had attracted the notice of the scouts some time before, and the story told by the youth led Trumbull to believe the main body was near the Upper Crossing, where doubtless they had made Red Feather prisoner.

Accordingly, the dozen horsemen set their faces in that direction and struck into a rapid gallop. The leader was hopeful that, if the slippery scamps were located, he could reach them. He believed his men were as well mounted as they, and, if only a fair chance were given, they would compel the others to fight.

Nat rode at the head, with Mr. Clarendon and Melville just behind him. The keen eyes of the ranger peered through the darkness into which he was plunging so swiftly, on the alert for the first sign of an enemy. As he drew near the Upper Crossing he slackened his pace slightly, those behind doing the same, with the exception of the settler and his son, who found themselves at the side of the leader.

"Helloa! there's one of 'em!" exclaimed Nat.

The three saw the figure of an Indian running over the ground with great swiftness. Knowing his danger, he flung aside his blankets, so that his flight was unimpeded, and his exhibition of speed excited the admiration of his pursuers.

"Let him alone," added Trumbull; "I don't want any one else to interfere -- he belongs to me."

And then, to the astonishment of every one, the scout made a flying leap from the saddle, and bounded after the fugitive on foot.

It was an odd chivalrous feeling which led him to do this. Inasmuch as the warrior had no pony, Trumbull meant that the contest between them should be without any unfair advantage to either party.

The Sioux was running like a deer, but the white man beat him. Nat Trumbull is to-day one of the fleetest runners in the north-west, and no doubt he felt a natural wish to show this Indian, as well as his own friends, what he could do in that line.

It may be said that from the first the fugitive was doomed; for if Trumbull should prove unequal to the task of running him down, the cavalry would do it, and if his strangely absent comrades should rally to his help, they would be fiercely attacked in turn. Since the white man quickly proved his superiority, it must be admitted that the outlook for the fleeing warrior was discouraging from the beginning.

Steadily and rapidly Nat gained on the desperate fugitive, until, in less time than would be supposed, he was almost at his elbow.

"Surrender, pard!" called out the scout; "for you don't know how to run, and I've got you, dead sure."

Realizing that there was no escape by flight, the Sioux dropped his rifle, and, whipping out his hunting-knife while still fleeing at the highest bent of his speed, he stopped short, wheeled about, and struck viciously at his pursuer with the weapon.

But the veteran scout was expecting that very thing, and parrying the blow with admirable skill, he sent the knife spinning a dozen feet to one side. Dropping his own gun, Trumbull then dashed in and seized the warrior around the waist.

"It's you, Tall Bear, is it?" said he, recognizing his old antagonist; "we'll settle this again by a wrestling-match. If you can throw me, we'll let you go without a scratch; but if I fling you, then you're mine. Keep back boys, and may the best man win!"

It was a curious scene, but the contest could not have been fairer. Trumbull waited till his opponent had secured his best hold, for Tall Bear was as quick to identify his rival as the latter was to recognize him.

The scout waited till the chief said he was ready. Then, like a flash, he dropped to a low stooping posture, seized each leg of the other below the knee in a grip of iron, and straightening up with marvelous quickness and power sent Tall Bear sprawling like a frog through the air, and over his head.

"Sent Tall Bear sprawling like a frog through the air."

Despite the remarkable agility of the Sioux, he could not save himself, but alighted on his crown with tremendous force.

Not the least amusing part of this contest was that, at the instant Tall Bear started on his erial flight, he called out -- 

"Me surrender! Tall Bear good Injin -- he lub white --  -- "

The crash of his head against the solid ground checked his words, and left for ever uncertain what the chieftain meant to say. He quickly recovered from the shock, for possibly, it may be said, he was becoming accustomed to such rough treatment and could stand it better than at first.

In the course of a minute or two Tall Bear staggered uncertainly to his feet, and looking up in the faces of the horsemen who were on every side of him, was compelled to admit that he was their prisoner.

So it proved that the last essay of the chieftain who was on a little scout for himself was the greatest failure of them all, and in the end it was fortunate that such was the fact; for when the strong arm of the authorities was laid upon the raiders the chief had no trouble in proving that he had inflicted no serious harm to the settlers. True, he had destroyed some property, and tried hard to do greater damage; but, as I have said, he failed utterly.



Chapter Twelve

Conclusion


But for his solicitude for Dot Clarendon, Red Feather never would have made the error he did, when waiting on the southern bank of the Upper Crossing for the return of the pony which was to carry them across to the waiting Melville on the other side.

The weather was still crisp and chilly, and, when he found himself alone, he began carefully gathering the blanket around the precious form, so, as to keep away all cold from her body. No mother could have handled her more gently. His left arm remained immovable, while his right fingered about her. He was quick to discover that she was in a sound slumber -- a pleasant proof of the success of the grim warrior in the role of a soothing friend to the imperilled little one.

Softly raising a corner of the blanket, he looked down in the sweet face, which, though seen dimly, was as the face of an angel. Pure and holy emotions were stirred in that dark heart as never before that evening. He had parted his lips to utter something in his own language, when he was sharply reminded of his remissness by the clamp of horse's feet. Quickly replacing the blanket, he looked behind him, and saw outlined against the glare of the burning buildings the figures of six or eight horsemen, so close that it was useless for him to think of hiding or getting away.

Red Feather made no attempt to do either; for, like most of his people, he had a strong sense of dignity, which would have been disturbed by such action. His chief regret was that the horsemen had come upon him so suddenly that his action with the blanket must have betrayed, or at least raised a suspicion of, the truth. Had he but a minute's time, he would have gathered the covering about the form in such a way that in the darkness he might have kept secret the fact that he carried a small child in his arms.

His supposition was that these Indians were his own warriors; and a curious meeting must follow between them and the chief whom they thought dead, unless they had learned of his flight from the house, in which event a troublesome explanation must be made to them.

But the chief was pleased to observe that the men belonged to still another band, that had come from the south-east on their way to the Lower Crossing, in the hope of intercepting the settlers and their families fleeing in the direction of Barwell.

To use a common expression, Red Feather decided to "take the bull by the horns." He was well known and held in fear by all the warriors. He said he had captured a small child, stepping forward and parting the blanket enough for them to see her in his arms, and adding that he meant to take her home to his own wigwam as a present to his squaw. If the latter did not want her, he would put her out of the way, or hold her for ransom.

Had the new-comers possessed the courage, they might have asked Red Feather some troublesome questions, but they feared to rouse his anger.

He tried to keep their attention away from the other shore; but just then the glare from the burning buildings became so bright that he failed, and not only was Saladin observed making his way to that bank, but Melville was discovered as he rose to his feet.

Red Feather affected great surprise at the discovery, and offered no objection when the three Sioux set out to capture the lad and his valuable animal.

In the presence of these warriors Red Feather was his old, domineering, ugly self. He spoke sharply, and finally ordered one of the horsemen to dismount and give up his animal. He offered no theory to account for the appearance of the boy on the other shore, or for the singular fact that he was on foot himself.

The promptness with which his order was obeyed would have been amusing under other circumstances. Red Feather took possession of his property secured in this rather questionable manner, and then calmly awaited the return of the three who had set out to capture Melville and Saladin.

His fear was that the main party under Tall Bear might arrive and complicate matters; for the chief had formed the conclusion that the strange horsemen whose appearance allowed him to escape so easily from the cabin were white men, and that the main band of Sioux therefore had withdrawn.

By-and-by the warriors returned from the other side, with the announcement that the lad had escaped, and it was useless to follow him farther.

There was no chief with the smaller company, and Red Feather told them that, since there was no chance of finding any settlers in the neighborhood, they would ride back to their own villages, which lay to the south-east.

The start was made, and the horsemen passed fully a mile in grim silence. At the end of the mile he ordered them to keep the course they were following, while he alone turned to the right in quest of Tall Bear and his band of Muddy Creek Sioux.

Left to himself, Red Feather rode a short distance to the right, and then, changing his course due north, struck the pony into a gallop.

He was now heading toward the home of the Clarendons, where he had met so many singular experiences during the earlier part of the evening. He held Dot with such care that she continued sleeping as sweetly as if lying in her own bed at home.

Never was Red Feather more cautious and skilful. Thoroughly trained in woodcraft, and an adept in all the cunning of his people, he used those gifts with success, and, though he approached close to the party of Sioux which were hurrying away from the vengeance of the white men, they never suspected the fact, and the meeting was avoided.

Within the succeeding half-hour his listening ear caught the neigh of a horse which had detected his own while the two were invisible. Instantly the chieftain brought the pony to a standstill, and peered and listened with all the acuteness he possessed.

The horsemen were coming that way, and would soon be in sight. At the very moment their figures were beginning to outline themselves he emitted a whistle, precisely the same as that used by Melville Clarendon when he signaled to him from the Upper Crossing.

"The horseman were coming that way."

As he did so he held his pony ready to send him flying over the prairie at break-neck speed.

But his heart was thrilled almost in the same second by a reply, which he knew came from no lips except those of the boy himself.

Yes; Melville had recognized the call, and sending back the reply, he shouted -- 

"That's Red Feather! Come, father; I know he's got Dot!"

In a twinkling, as may be said, the chief found himself in the middle of the band of Nat Trumbull and his rangers, where he was overwhelmed with congratulations. Although Dot was asleep, her father could not be restrained, and caught her in his arms and pressed her to his heart with tears of joy and thanks to Heaven for its mercy in restoring her to him unharmed.

It must be said that Dot was disposed to be cross at being awakened in this summary fashion; but when her little brain came to understand all that had taken place, and she saw that it was her own father who was caressing her, she laughed and shouted, and wanted to kiss and embrace every one of the party, who were just as much pleased to fondle the child as though each had a proprietary interest in her.

Since it was evident the Sioux could not be brought to book, Nat Trumbull turned about and headed for Barwell, which the whole party reached before the morning sun appeared. Red Feather kept them company, and I must say that I doubt whether the President of the United States himself could have received a warmer welcome when the whole truth became known to the pioneers.

The outbreak of the Sioux was repressed before it had time to assume serious proportions, and, inasmuch as every one who had taken any part in it was anxious to clear himself, the leaders envied the position of Red Feather, who had faced about so early that no suspicion could attach to him. He was re-established in the good graces of his people, and since that time has acted in such a manner that no one will question his right to be considered a good Indian.

<eob>

Legends That Every Child Should Know: A Selection Of The Great Legends Of All Times For Young People

By

Hamilton Wright Mabie



Chapter I

WIGWAM LEGEND OF HIAWATHA [Footnote: This story is ascribed to Abraham le Fort, an Onondaga chief, a graduate of Geneva College. The poem of Longfellow has given it general interest. Hiawatha is an example of the intellectual capacity of one of that race of whom it has been said "Take these Indians in their owne trimme and naturall disposition, and they bee reported to bee wise, lofty spirited, constant in friendship to one another: true in their promise, and more industrious than many others." -- Wood's, "New England's Prospect," London, 1634.]


On the banks of Tioto, or Cross Lake, resided an eminent man who bore the name of Hiawatha, or the Wise Man.

This name was given him, as its meaning indicates, on account of his great wisdom in council and power in war. Hiawatha was of high and mysterious origin. He had a canoe which would move without paddles, obedient to his will, and which he kept with great care and never used except when he attended the general council of the tribes. It was from Hiawatha the people learned to raise corn and beans; through his instructions they were enabled to remove obstructions from the water courses and clear their fishing grounds; and by him they were helped to get the mastery over the great monsters which overran the country. The people listened to him with ever increasing delight; and he gave them wise laws and maxims from the Great Spirit, for he had been second to him only in power previous to his taking up his dwelling with mankind.

Having selected the Onondagas for his tribe, years passed away in prosperity; the Onondagas assumed an elevated rank for their wisdom and learning, among the other tribes, and there was not one of these which did not yield its assent to their superior privilege of lighting the council-fire.

But in the midst of the high tide of their prosperity, suddenly there arose a great alarm at the invasion of a ferocious band of warriors from the North of the Great Lakes; and as these bands advanced, an indiscriminate slaughter was made of men, women, and children. Destruction fell upon all alike.

The public alarm was great; and Hiawatha advised them not to waste their efforts in a desultory manner, but to call a council of all the tribes that could be gathered together, from the East to the West; and, at the same time, he appointed a meeting to take place on an eminence on the banks of the Onondaga Lake. There, accordingly, the chief men assembled, while the occasion brought together a vast multitude of men, women, and children, who were in expectation of some marvellous deliverance.

Three days elapsed, and Hiawatha did not appear. The multitude began to fear that he was not coming, and messengers were despatched for him to Tioto, who found him depressed with a presentiment that evil would follow his attendance. These fears were overruled by the eager persuasions of the messengers; and Hiawatha, taking his daughter with him, put his wonderful canoe in its element and set out for the council. The grand assemblage that was to avert the threatened danger appeared quickly in sight, as he moved rapidly along in his magic canoe; and when the people saw him, they sent up loud shouts of welcome until the venerated man landed. A steep ascent led up the banks of the lake to the place occupied by the council; and, as he walked up, a loud whirring sound was heard above, as if caused by some rushing current of air. Instantly, the eyes of all were directed upward to the sky, where was seen a dark spot, something like a small cloud, descending rapidly, and as it approached, enlarging in its size and increasing in velocity. Terror and alarm filled the minds of the multitude and they scattered in confusion. But as soon as he had gained the eminence, Hiawatha stood still, causing his daughter to do the same -- deeming it cowardly to fly, and impossible, if it was attempted, to divert the designs of the Great Spirit. The descending object now assumed a more definite aspect; and, as it came nearer, revealed the shape of a gigantic white bird, with wide-extended and pointed wings. This bird came down with ever increasing velocity, until, with a mighty swoop, it dropped upon the girl, crushing her at once to the earth.

The fixed face of Hiawatha alone indicated his consciousness of his daughter's death; while in silence he signalled to the warriors, who had stood watching the event in speechless consternation. One after the other stepped up to the prostrate bird, which was killed by its violent fall, and selecting a feather from its snow-white plumage, decorated himself therewith. [Footnote: Since this event, say the Indians of this tribe, the plumage of the white heron has been used for their decorations on the war-path.]

But now a new affliction fell upon Hiawatha; for, on removing the carcass of the bird, not a trace could be discovered of his daughter. Her body had vanished from the earth. Shades of anguish contracted the dark face of Hiawatha. He stood apart in voiceless grief. No word was spoken. His people waited in silence, until at length arousing himself, he turned to them and walked in calm dignity to the head of the council.

The first day he listened with attentive gravity to the plans of the different speakers; on the next day he arose and said: "My friends and brothers; you are members of many tribes, and have come from a great distance. We have come to promote the common interest, and our mutual safety. How shall it be accomplished? To oppose these Northern hordes in tribes singly, while we are at variance often with each other, is impossible. By uniting in a common band of brotherhood we may hope to succeed. Let this be done, and we shall drive the enemy from our land. Listen to me by tribes. You, the Mohawks, who are sitting under the shadow of the great tree, whose branches spread wide around, and whose roots sink deep into the earth, shall be the first nation, because you are warlike and mighty. You, the Oneidas, who recline your bodies against the everlasting stone that cannot be moved, shall be the second nation, because you always give wise counsel. You, the Onondagas, who have your habitation at the foot of the great hills, and are overshadowed by their crags, shall be the third nation, because you are greatly gifted in speech. You, the Senecas, whose dwelling is in the dark forest, and whose home is all over the land, shall be the fourth nation, because of your superior cunning in hunting. And you, the Cayugas, the people who live in the open country and possess much wisdom, shall be the fifth nation, because you understand better the art of raising corn and beans, and making lodges. Unite, ye five nations, and have one common interest, and no foe shall disturb and subdue you. You, the people who are the feeble bushes, and you who are a fishing people, may place yourselves under our protection, and we will defend you. And you of the South and West may do the same, and we will protect you. We earnestly desire the alliance and friendship of you all. Brothers, if we unite in this great bond, the Great Spirit will smile upon us, and we shall be free, prosperous, and happy; but if we remain as we are, we shall be subject to his frown. We shall be enslaved, ruined, perhaps annihilated. We may perish under the war-storm, and our names be no longer remembered by good men, nor be repeated in the dance and song. Brothers, those are the words of Hiawatha. I have spoken. I am done." [Footnote: Canassatego, a renowned chief of the Confederacy, in his remarkable piece of advice to the Colonial Commissioners of Lancaster in July, 1744, seems to imply that there was an error in this plan of Hiawatha, as it did not admit all nations into their Confederacy with equal rights.]

The next day his plan of union was considered and adopted by the council, after which Hiawatha again addressed the people with wise words of counsel, and at the close of this speech bade them farewell; for he conceived that his mission to the Iroquois was accomplished, and he might announce his withdrawal to the skies. He then went down to the shore, and assumed his seat in his mystical canoe. Sweet music was heard in the air as he seated himself; and while the wondering multitude stood gazing at their beloved chief, he was silently wafted from sight, and they saw him no more. He passed to the Isle of the Blessed, inhabited by Owayneo [Footnote: A name for their Great Spirit in the dialect of the Iroquois.] and his manitos.

And they said, "Farewell forever!" Said, "Farewell, O Hiawatha!" And the forests, dark and lonely, Moved through all their depths of darkness^ Sighed, "Farewell, O Hiawatha!" And the waves upon the margin, Rising, rippling on the pebbles, Sobbed, "Farewell, O Hiawatha!" And the heron, the shuh-shu-gah, From her haunts among the fen-lands, Screamed, "Farewell, O Hiawatha!" Thus departed Hiawatha, Hiawatha the Beloved, In the glory of the sunset, In the purple mists of evening, To the regions of the home-wind, Of the northwest wind, Keewaydin, To the Islands of the Blessed, To the kingdom of Ponemah, To the land of the Hereafter.

[Footnote: "The Song of Hiawatha," by H. W. Longfellow.]



Chapter II

Beowulf


Old King Hrothgar built for himself a great palace, covered with gold, with benches all round outside, and a terrace leading up to it. It was bigger than any hall men had ever heard of, and there Hrothgar sat on his throne to share with men the good things God had given him. A band of brave knights gathered round him, all living together in peace and joy.

But there came a wicked monster, Grendel, out of the moors. He stole across the fens in the thick darkness, and touched the great iron bars of the door of the hall, which immediately sprang open. Then, with his eyes shooting out flame, he spied the knights sleeping after battle. With his steel finger nails the hideous fiend seized thirty of them in their sleep. He gave yells of joy, and sped as quick as lightning across the moors, to reach his home with his prey.

When the knights awoke, they raised a great cry of sorrow, whilst the aged King himself sat speechless with grief. None could do battle with the monster, he was too strong, too horrible for any one to conquer. For twelve long years Grendel warred against Hrothgar; like a dark shadow of death he prowled round about the hall, and lay in wait for his men on the misty moors. One thing he could not touch, and that was the King's sacred throne.

Now there lived in a far-off land a youngster called Beowulf, who had the strength of thirty men. He heard of the wicked deeds of Grendel, and the sorrow of the good King Hrothgar. So he had made ready a strong ship, and with fourteen friends set sail to visit Hrothgar, as he was in need of help. The good ship flew over the swelling ocean like a bird, till in due time the voyagers saw shining white cliffs before them. Then they knew their journey was at an end; they made fast their ship, grasped their weapons, and thanked God that they had had an easy voyage.

Now the coastguard spied them from a tower. He set off to the shore, riding on horseback, and brandishing a huge lance.

"Who are you," he cried, "bearing arms and openly landing here? I am bound to know from whence you come before you make a step forward. Listen to my plain words, and hasten to answer me." Beowulf made answer that they came as friends, to rid Hrothgar of his wicked enemy Grendel, and at that the coastguard led them on to guide them to the King's palace. Downhill they ran together, with a rushing sound of voices and armed tread, until they saw the hall shining like gold against the sky. The guard bade them go straight to it, then, wheeling round on his horse, he said, "It is time for me to go. May the Father of All keep you in safety. For myself, I must guard the coast."

The street was paved with stone, and Beowulf's men marched along, following it to the hall, their armour shining in the sun and clanging as they went. They reached the terrace, where they set down their broad shields. Then they seated themselves on the bench, while they stacked their spears together and made themselves known to the herald. Hrothgar speedily bade them welcome. They entered the great hall with measured tread, Beowulf leading the way. His armour shone like a golden net-work, and his look was high and noble, as he said, "Hail, O King! To fight against Grendel single-handed have I come. Grant me this, that I may have this task alone, I and my little band of men. I know that the terrible monster despises weapons, and therefore I shall bear neither sword, nor shield, nor buckler. Hand to hand I will fight the foe, and death shall come to whomsoever God wills. If death overtakes me, then will the monster carry away my body to the swamps, so care not for my body, but send my armour to my King. My fate is in God's hands."

Hrothgar loved the youth for his noble words, and bade him and his men sit down to the table and merrily share the feast, if they had a mind to do so. As they feasted, a minstrel sang with a clear voice. The Queen, in cloth of gold, moved down the hall and handed the jewelled cup of mead to the King and all the warriors, old and young. At the right moment, with gracious words, she brought it to Beowulf. Full of pride and high purpose, the youth drank from the splendid cup, and vowed that he would conquer the enemy or die.

When the sun sank in the west, all the guests arose. The King bade Beowulf guard the house, and watch for the foe. "Have courage," he said, "be watchful, resolve on success. Not a wish of yours shall be left unfulfilled, if you perform this mighty deed."

Then Beowulf lay down to rest in the hall, putting off from him his coat of mail, helmet, and sword.

Through the dim night Grendel came stealing. All slept in the darkness, all but one! The door sprang open at the first touch that the monster gave it. He trod quickly over the paved floor of the hall; his eyes gleamed as he saw a troop of kinsmen lying together asleep. He laughed as he reckoned on sucking the life of each one before day broke. He seized a sleeping warrior, and in a trice had crunched his bones. Then he stretched out his hand to seize Beowulf on his bed. Quickly did Beowulf grip his arm; he stood up full length and grappled with him with all his might, till his fingers cracked as though they would burst. Never had Grendel felt such a grip; he had a mind to go, but could not. He roared, and the hall resounded with his yells, as up and down he raged, with Beowulf holding him in a fast embrace. The benches were overturned, the timbers of the hall cracked, the beautiful hall was all but wrecked. Beowulf's men had seized their weapons and thought to hack Grendel on every side, but no blade could touch him. Still Beowulf held him by the arm; his shoulder cracked, and he fled, wounded to death, leaving hand, arm, and shoulder in Beowulf's grasp. Over the moors, into the darkness, he sped as best he might, and to Beowulf was the victory.

Then, in the morning, many a warrior came from far and near. Riding in troops, they tracked the monster's path, where he had fled stricken to death. In a dismal pool he had yielded up his life.

Racing their horses over the green turf, they reached again the paved street. The golden roof of the palace glittered in the sunlight. The King stood on the terrace and gave thanks to God. "I have had much woe," he said, "but this lad, through God's might, has done the deed that we, with all our wisdom, could not do. Now I will heartily love you, Beowulf, as if you were my son. You shall want for nothing in this world, and your fame shall live forever."

The palace was cleansed, the walls hung anew with cloth of gold, the whole place was made fair and straight, for only the roof had been left altogether unhurt after the fight.

A merry feast was held. The King brought forth out of his treasures a banner, helmet, and mail coat. These he gave to Beowolf; but more wonderful than all was a famous sword handed down to him through the ages. Then eight horses with golden cheekplates were brought within the court; one of them was saddled with King Hrothgar's own saddle, decorated with silver. Hrothgar gave all to Beowulf, bidding him enjoy them well. To each of Beowulf's men he gave rich gifts. The minstrels sang; the Queen, beautiful and gracious, bore the cup to the King and Beowulf. To Beowulf she, too, gave gifts: mantle and bracelets and collar of gold. "Use these gifts," she said, "and prosper well! As far as the sea rolls your name shall be known."

Great was the joy of all till evening came. Then the hall was cleared of benches and strewn with beds. Beowulf, like the King, had his own bower this night to sleep in. The nobles lay down in the hall, at their heads they set their shields and placed ready their helmets and their mail coats. Each slept, ready in an instant to do battle for his lord.

So they sank to rest, little dreaming what deep sorrow was to fall on them.

Hrothgar's men sank to rest, but death was to be the portion of one. Grendel the monster was dead, but Grendel's mother still lived. Furious at the death of her son, she crept to the great hall, and made her way in, clutched an earl, the King's dearest friend, and crushed him in his sleep. Great was the uproar, though the terror was less than when Grendel came. The knights leapt up, sword in hand; the witch hurried to escape, she wanted to get out with her life.

The aged King felt bitter grief when he heard that his dearest friend was slain. He sent for Beowulf, who, like the King, had had his own sleeping bower that night. The youth stood before Hrothgar and hoped that all was well.

"Do not ask if things go well," said the sorrowing King, "we have fresh grief this morning. My dearest friend and noblest knight is slain. Grendel you yourself destroyed through the strength given you by God, but another monster has come to avenge his death. I have heard the country folk say that there were two huge fiends to be seen stalking over the moors, one like a woman, as near as they could make out, the other had the form of a man, but was huger far. It was he they called Grendel. These two haunt a fearful spot, a land of untrodden bogs and windy cliffs. A waterfall plunges into the blackness below, and twisted trees with gnarled roots overhang it. An unearthly fire is seen gleaming there night after night. None can tell the depth of the stream. Even a stag, hunted to death, will face his foes on the bank rather than plunge into those waters. It is a fearful spot. You are our only help, dare you enter this horrible haunt?"

Quick was Beowulf's answer: "Sorrow not, O King! Rouse yourself quickly, and let us track the monster. Each of us must look for death, and he who has the chance should do mighty deeds before it comes. I promise you Grendel's kin shall not escape me, if she hide in the depths of the earth or of the ocean."

The King sprang up gladly, and Beowulf and his friends set out. They passed stony banks and narrow gullies, the haunts of goblins.

Suddenly they saw a clump of gloomy trees, overhanging a dreary pool. A shudder ran through them, for the pool was blood-red.

All sat down by the edge of the pool, while the horn sounded a cheerful blast. In the water were monstrous sea-snakes, and on jutting points of land were dragons and strange beasts: they tumbled away, full of rage, at the sound of the horn.

One of Beowulf's men took aim at a monster with his arrow, and pierced him through, so that he swam no more.

Beowulf was making ready for the fight. He covered his body with armour lest the fiend should clutch him. On his head was a white helmet, decorated with figures of boars worked in silver. No weapon could hurt it. His sword was a wonderful treasure, with an edge of iron; it had never failed any one who had needed it in battle.

"Be like a father to my men, if I perish," said Beowulf to Hrothgar, "and send the rich gifts you have given me to my King. He will see that I had good fortune while life lasted. Either I will win fame, or death shall take me."

He dashed away, plunging headlong into the pool. It took nearly the whole day before he reached the bottom, and while he was still on his way the water-witch met him. For a hundred years she had lived in those depths. She made a grab at him, and caught him in her talons, but his coat of mail saved him from her loathsome fingers. Still she clutched him tight, and bore him in her arms to the bottom of the lake; he had no power to use his weapons, though he had courage enough. Water-beasts swam after him and battered him with their tusks.

Then he saw that he was in a vast hall, where there was no water, but a strange, unearthly glow of firelight. At once the fight began, but the sword would not bite -- it failed its master in his need; for the first time its fame broke down. Away Beowulf threw it in anger, trusting to the strength of his hands. He cared nothing for his own life, for he thought but of honour.

He seized the witch by the shoulder and swayed her so that she sank on the pavement. Quickly she recovered, and closed in on him; he staggered and fell, worn out. She sat on him, and drew her knife to take his life, but his good mail coat turned the point. He stood up again, and then truly God helped him, for he saw among the armour on the wall an old sword of huge size, the handiwork of giants. He seized it, and smote with all his might, so that the witch gave up her life.

His heart was full of gladness, and light, calm and beautiful as that of the sun, filled the hall. He scanned the vast chamber, and saw Grendel lying there dead. He cut off his head as a trophy for King Hrothgar, whose men the fiend had killed and devoured.

Now those men who were seated on the banks of the pool watching with Hrothgar saw that the water was tinged with blood. Then the old men spoke together of the brave Beowulf, saying they feared they would never see him again. The day was waning fast, so they and the King went homeward. Beowulf's men stayed on, sick at heart, gazing at the pool. They longed, but did not expect, to see their lord and master.

Under the depths, Beowulf was making his way to them. The magic sword melted in his hand, like snow in sunshine; only the hilt remained, so venomous was the fiend that had been slain therewith. He brought nothing more with him than the hilt and Grendel's head. Up he rose through the waters where the furious sea-beasts before had chased him. Now not one was to be seen; the depths were purified when the witch lost her life. So he came to land, bravely swimming, bearing his spoils. His men saw him, they thanked God, and ran to free him of his armour. They rejoiced to get sight of him, sound and whole.

Now they marched gladly through the highways to the town. It took four of them to carry Grendel's head. On they went, all fourteen, their captain glorious in their midst. They entered the great hall, startling the King and Queen, as they sat at meat, with the fearful sight of Grendel's head.

Beowulf handed the magic hilt to Hrothgar, who saw that it was the work of giants of old. He spake to Beowulf, while all held their peace, praised him for his courage, said that he would love him as his son, and bade him be a help to mankind, remembering not to glory in his own strength, for he held it from God, and death without more ado might subdue it altogether. "Many, many treasures," he said, "must pass from me to you to-morrow, but now rest and feast."

Gladly Beowulf sat down to the banquet, and well he liked the thought of the rest.

When day dawned, he bade the King farewell with noble words, promising to help him in time of need. Hrothgar with tears and embraces let him go, giving him fresh gifts of hoarded jewels. He wept, for he loved Beowulf well, and knew he would never see him any more.

The coastguard saw the gallant warriors coming, bade them welcome, and led them to their ship. The wind whistled in the sails, and a pleasant humming sound was heard as the good ship sped on her way. So Beowulf returned home, having done mighty deeds and gained great honour.

In due time Beowulf himself became King, and well he governed the land for fifty years. Then trouble came.

A slave, fleeing from his master, stumbled by an evil chance into the den of a dragon. There he saw a dazzling hoard of gold, guarded by the dragon for three hundred winters. The treasure tempted him, and he carried off a tankard of gold to give to his master, to make peace with him.

The dragon had been sleeping, now he awoke, and sniffed the scent of an enemy along the rock. He hunted diligently over the ground; he wanted to find the man who had done the mischief in his sleep. In his rage he swung around the treasure mound, dashing into it now and again to seek the jewelled tankard. He found it hard to wait until evening came, when he meant to avenge with fire the loss of his treasure.

Presently the sun sank, and the dragon had his will. He set forth, burning all the cheerful homes of men: his rage was felt far and wide. Before dawn he shot back again to his dark home, trusting in his mound and in his craft to defend himself.

Now Beowulf heard that his own home had been burnt to the ground. It was a great grief to him, almost making him break out in a rage against Providence. His breast heaved with anger.

He meant to rid his country of the plague, and to fight the dragon single handed. He would have thought it shame to seek him with a large band, he who, as a lad, had killed Grendel and his kin. As he armed for the fray, many thoughts filled his mind; he remembered the days of his youth and manhood. "I fought many wars in my youth," he said, "and now that I am aged, and the keeper of my people, I will yet again seek the enemy and do famously."

He bade his men await him on the mountain-side. They were to see which of the two would come alive out of the tussle.

There the aged King beheld where a rocky archway stood, with a stream of fire gushing from it; no one could stand there and not be scorched. He gave a great shout, and the dragon answered with a hot breath of flame. Beowulf, with drawn sword, stood well up to his shield, when the burning dragon, curved like an arch, came headlong upon him. The shield saved him but little; he swung up the sword to smite the horrible monster, but its edge did not bite. Sparks flew around him on every side; he saw that the end of his days had come.

His men crept away to the woods to save their lives. One, and one only, Wiglaf by name, sped through the smoke and flame to help his lord.

"My Lord Beowulf!" he cried, "with all your might defend life, I will support you to the utmost."

The dragon came on in fury; in a trice the flames consumed Wiglaf's shield, but, nothing daunted, he stepped under the shelter of Beowulf's, as his own fell in ashes about him. The King remembered his strength of old, and he smote with his sword with such force that it stuck in the monster's head, while splinters flew all around. His hand was so strong that, as men used to say, he broke any sword in using it, and was none the worse for it.

Now, for the third time, the dragon rushed upon him, and seized him by the neck with his poisonous fangs. Wiglaf, with no thought for himself, rushed forward, though he was scorched with the flames, and smote the dragon lower down than Beowulf had done. With such effect the sword entered the dragon's body that from that moment the fire began to cease.

The King, recovering his senses, drew his knife and ended the monster's life. So these two together destroyed the enemy of the people. To Beowulf that was the greatest moment of his life, when he saw his work completed.

The wound that the dragon had given him began to burn and swell, for the poison had entered it. He knew that the tale of his days was told. As he rested on a stone by the mound, he pondered thoughtfully, looking on the cunning work of the dwarfs of old, the stone arches on their rocky pillars. Wiglaf, with tender care, unloosed his helmet and brought him water, Beowulf discoursing the while: "Now I would gladly have given my armour to my son, had God granted me one. I have ruled this people fifty years, and no King has dared attack them. I have held my own with justice, and no friend has lost his life through me. Though I am sick with deadly wounds, I have comfort in this. Now go quickly, beloved Wiglaf, show me the ancient wealth that I have won for my people, the gold and brilliant gems, that I may then contentedly give up my life."

Quickly did Wiglaf enter the mound at the bidding of his master. On every side he saw gold and jewels and choice vases, helmets and bracelets, and over head, a marvellous banner, all golden, gleaming with light, so that he could scan the surface of the floor and see the curious treasured hoards. He filled his lap full of golden cups and platters, and also took the brilliant banner.

He hastened to return with his spoils, wondering, with pain, if he should find his King still alive. He bore his treasures to him, laid them on the ground, and again sprinkled him with water. "I thank God," said the dying King, "that I have been permitted to win this treasure for my people; now they will have all that they need. But I cannot be any longer here. Bid my men make a lofty mound on the headland overlooking the sea, and there place my ashes. In time to come men shall call it Beowulf's Barrow, it shall tower aloft to guide sailors over the stormy seas."

The brave King took from his neck his golden collar, took his helmet and his coronet, and gave them to his true knight, Wiglaf. "Fate has swept all my kinsmen away," said he, "and now I must follow them."

That was his last word, as his soul departed from his bosom, to join the company of the just.

Of all Kings in the world, he was, said his men, the gentlest to his knights and the most desirous of honour.



Chapter III

Childe Horn


There dwelt once in Southland a King named Altof, who was rich, powerful, and gentle. His Queen was named Gotthild, and they had a young son called Horn. The rain never rained, the sun never shone upon a fairer boy; his skin was like roses and lilies, and as clear as glass; and he was as brave as he was handsome. At fifteen years old his like was not to be seen in all the kingdoms around. He had a band of play-fellows, twelve boys of noble birth, but not one of them could throw the ball so high as Horn. Out of the twelve, two were his special companions, and one of them, Athulf, was the best of the company, while the other, Figold, was altogether the worst.

It came to pass one summer morning that good King Altof was riding on the sea-shore with only two attendants, and he looked out to sea and saw fifteen ships lying in the offing. It was the heathen Vikings who had come from Northland, bent on plundering Christian lands. When these saw the three Norsemen, they swarmed on to shore like a pack of wolves, all armed and full of battle fury. They slew the King and his knights, and made themselves masters of the whole land.

Queen Gotthild wept much for her lord, and more for her son, Childe Horn, who could not now ascend his father's throne. She clad herself in mourning garments, the meanest she could find, and went to dwell in a cave, where she prayed night and day for her son, that he might be preserved from the malice of his enemies, at whose mercy he and his comrades lay. At first they thought to have slain him, but one of their leaders was touched by his glorious beauty, and so he said to the boy, "Horn, you are a fair stripling and a bold, and when you come to years, you and your band here, you are like to prove too many for us, so I am going to put you all in a boat and let it drift out to sea -- where may the gods preserve you, or else send you to the bottom; but, for all our sakes, you cannot remain here."

Then they led the boys down to the shore, placed them in a little skiff, and pushed it off from the land. All but Horn wrung their hands in fear. The waves rose high, and, as the boat was tossed up and down, the lads gave themselves up for lost, not knowing whither they were driven; but when the morning of the second day broke, Horn sprang up from where he sat in the forepart of the skiff, crying, "I hear the birds sing, and I see the grass growing green -- we are at the land!" Then they sprang right gladly on shore, and Horn called after the boat as it floated away, "A good voyage to thee, little boat! May wind and wave speed thee back to Southland. Greet all who knew me, and chiefly the good Queen Gotthild, my mother. And tell the heathen King that some day he shall meet his death at my hand."

Then the boys went on till they came to a city, where reigned King Aylmer of Westland -- whom God reward for his kindness to them. He asked them in mild words whence they came, "for in good sooth," said he, "never have I seen so well-favoured a company"; and Horn answered proudly, "We are of good Christian blood, and we come from Southland, which has just been raided by pagans, who slew many of our people, and sent us adrift in a boat, to be the sport of the winds and waves. For a day and a night we have been at sea without a rudder; and now we have been cast upon your coast, you may enslave or slay us, if but, it please thee, show us mercy."

Then the good King asked, "What is your name, my child?" and the boy answered. "Horn, at your pleasure, my Lord King; and if you need a servant, I will serve you well and truly."

"Childe Horn," said the King, "you bear a mighty name for one so young and tender.

"Over hills and valleys oft the horn has rung, In the royal palace long the horn has hung. So shall thy name, O Hornchild, through every land resound, And the fame of thy wondrous beauty in all the West be found."

So Horn found great favour with the King, and he put him in charge of Athelbrus, the house-steward, that he might teach him all knightly duties, and he spared no pains with him, nor yet with his companions; but well trained as they all were, Horn was far ahead of them both in stature and noble bearing. Even a stranger looking at him could guess his lofty birth, and the splendour of his marvellous beauty lit up all the palace; while he won all hearts, from the meanest grooms to the greatest of the court ladies.

Now the fairest thing in that lordly court was the King's only daughter, Riminild. Her mother was dead, and she was well-beloved of her father, as only children are. Not a word had she ever ventured to speak to Horn when she saw him among the other knights at the great feasts, but day and night she bore his image in her heart. One night she dreamed that he entered her apartments (and she wondered much at his boldness), and in the morning she sent for Athelbrus, the house-steward, and bade him conduct Horn into her presence. But he went to Athulf, who was the pure minded and true one of Horn's two chosen companions, while Figold, the other, was a wolf in sheep's clothing, and said to him, "You shall go with me in Horn's stead to the Princess."

So he went, and she, not recognising him in the ill-lighted room, stretched out her hand to him, crying, "Oh, Horn, I have loved you long. Now plight me your troth."

But Athulf whispered to her, "Hold! I am not Horn. I am but his friend, Athulf, as unlike him as may well be. Horn's little finger is fairer than my whole body; and were he dead, or a thousand miles off, I would not play him false."

Then Riminild rose up in anger and glared upon the old steward, crying, "Athelbrus, you wicked man, out of my sight, or I shall hate you for evermore! All shame and ill befall you if you bring me not Childe Horn himself!"

"Lady and Princess," answered Athelbrus warily, "listen, and I will tell you why I brought Athulf. The King entrusted Horn to my care, and I dread his anger. Now be not angry with me, and I will fetch him forthwith."

Then he went away, but, instead of Horn, this time he called Figold, the deceiver, and said to him, "Come with me, instead of Horn, to the royal Princess. Do not betray yourself, lest we both suffer for it."

Willingly went the faithless one with him, but to Figold the maid held not out her hand -- well she knew that he was false, and she drove him from her presence in rage and fury. Athelbrus feared her anger, and said to himself, "To make my peace with her I must now send her the true Horn." He found him in the hall presenting the wine cup to the King, and whispered to him, "Horn, you are wanted in the Princess's apartments"; and when Horn heard this his hand holding the full goblet so trembled that the wine ran over the edge. He went straight into the presence of the royal maiden, and as he knelt before her his beauty seemed to light up the room.

"Fair befall thee and thy maidens, O Lady!" said he. "The house-steward has sent me hither to ask thy will."

Then Riminild stood up, her cheeks red as the dawn, and told him of her love; and Horn took counsel with himself how he should answer her.

"May God in heaven bless him whom thou weddest, whoever he may be," he said. "I am but a foundling, and the King's servant to boot -- it would be against all rule and custom were he to wed me with thee."

When Riminild heard this her heart died within her, and she fell fainting on the floor; but Horn lifted her up, and advised her to request her father that he might now receive knighthood. "An then," said he, "I will win you by my brave deeds."

When she heard that, she recovered herself and said, "Take my ring here to Master Athelbrus, and bid him from me ask the King to make you a knight."

So Horn went and told all to Athelbrus, who sought the King forthwith, and said, "To-morrow is a festival; I counsel thee to admit Horn to knighthood." And the King was pleased, and said, "Good! Horn is well worthy of it. I will create him a knight to-morrow, and he himself shall confer it on his twelve companions."

The next day the newly knighted one went to Riminild's bower, and told her that now he was her own true knight, and must go forth to do brave deeds in her name, and she said she would trust him evermore, and she gave him a gold ring with her name graven on it, which would preserve him from all evil. "Let this remind thee of me early and late," she said, "and thou canst never fall by treachery." And then they kissed each other, and she closed the door behind him, with tears.

The other knights were feasting and shouting in the King's hall, but Horn went to the stable, armed from head to foot. He stroked his coal-black steed, then sprang upon his back and rode off, his armour ringing as he went. Down to the seashore he galloped, singing joyously and praying God soon to send him the chance to do some deed of knightly daring, and there he met a band of pagen marauders, who had just landed from their pirate-ship. Horn asked them civilly what they wanted there, and one of the pagans answered insolently, "To conquer the land and slay all that dwell in it, as we did to King Altof, whose son now serves a foreign lord."

Horn, on hearing this, drew his sword and struck off the fellow's head; then he thought of his dead father and of his mother in her lonely cave; he looked on his ring and thought of Riminild, and dashed among the pirates, laying about him right and left, till, I warrant you, there were few of them left to tell the tale. "This," he cried, "is but the foretaste of what will be when I return to my own land and avenge my father's death!"

Then he rode back to the palace and told the King how he had slain the invaders, and "Here," he said, "is the head of the leader, to requite thee, O King, for granting me knighthood."

The next day the King went a-hunting in the forest, and the false Figold rode at his side, but Horn stayed at home. And Figold spoke to the King out of his wicked heart and said, "I warn thee, King Aylmer, Horn is plotting to dishonour thee -- to rob thee of thy daughter and of thy kingdom to boot. He is even now plotting with her in her bower."

Then the King galloped home in a rage, and burst into Riminild's bower, and there, sure enough, he found Horn, as Figold had said. "Out of my land, base foundling!" he cried. "What have you to do with the young Queen here?"

And Horn departed without a word. He went to the stable, saddled his horse, then he girded on his sword and returned to the palace; he crossed the hall and entered Riminild's apartments for the last time. "Lady," he said, "I must go forth to strange lands for seven years; at the end of that time I will either return or send a messenger; but if I do neither, you may give yourself to another, nor wait longer for me. Now kiss me a long farewell."

Riminild promised to be true to him, and she took a gold ring from her finger, saying, "Wear this above the other which I gave you, or if you grow weary of them, fling them both away, and watch to see if its two stones change colour; for if I die, the one will turn pale, and if I am false, the other will turn red."

"Riminild," said Childe Horn, "I am yours for evermore! There is a pool of clear water under a tree in the garden -- go there daily and look for my shadow in the water. If you see it not, know that I am unaltered; and if you see it, know that I no longer love thee."

Then they embraced and kissed each other, and Horn parted from her, and rode down to the coast, and took passage on a ship bound for Ireland. When he landed there, two of its King's sons met him, and took him to their father, good King Thurstan, before whom Horn bowed low, and the King bade him welcome, and praised his beauty, and asked his name.

"My name is Good Courage," said Horn boldly, and the King was well pleased.

Now, at Christmas, King Thurstan made a great feast, and in the midst of it one rushed in crying, "Guests, O King! We are besieged by five heathen chiefs, and one of them proclaims himself ready to fight any three of our knights single handed to-morrow at sunrise."

"That would be but a sorry Christmas service," said King Thurstan; "who can advise me how best to answer them?" Then Horn spoke up from his seat at the table, "If these pagans are ready to fight, one against three, what may not a Christian dare? I will adventure myself against them all, and one after another they shall go down before my good sword."

Heavy of heart was King Thurstan that night, and little did he sleep. But "Sir Good Courage" rose early and buckled on his armour. Then he went to the King and said, "Now, Sir King, come with me to the field, and I will show you in what coin to pay the demands of these heathen." So they rode on together in the twilight, till they came to the green meadow, where a giant was waiting for them. Horn greeted him with a blow that brought him to the ground at once, and ran another giant through the heart with his sword; and when their followers saw that their leaders were slain, they turned and fled back to the shore, but Horn tried to cut them off from their ships, and in the scrimmage the King's two sons fell. At this Horn was sore grieved, and he fell upon the pagans in fury, and slew them right and left, to avenge the King and himself.

Bitterly wept King Thurstan when his sons were brought home to him on their biers; there was great mourning for the young princes, who were buried with high honours in the vault under the church. Afterwards the King called his knights together and said to Horn, "Good Courage, but for you we were all dead men. I will make you my heir; you shall wed my daughter Swanhild, who is bright and beautiful as the sunshine, and shall reign here after me."

So Horn lived there for six years, always under the name of Good Courage, but he sent no messenger to Riminild, not wishing any man to know his secret, and consequently Riminild was in great sorrow on his account, not knowing whether he was true to her or not. Moreover, the King of a neighbouring country sought her hand in marriage, and her father now fixed a day for the wedding.

One morning, as Horn was riding to the forest, he saw a stranger standing in the wayside, who, on being questioned said, "I come from Westland, and I seek the Knight Sir Horn. Riminild the maiden is in sore heaviness of spirit, bewailing herself day and night, for on Sunday next she is to be married to a King."

Then was Horn's grief as great as that of Riminild. His eyes overflowed with tears. He looked at his ring with its colored stones; the one had not turned red, but it seemed to him that the other was turning pale. "Well knew my heart that you would keep your troth with me, Riminild," said he to himself, "and that never would that stone grow red; but this paling one bodes ill. And you doubtless have often looked in the garden pool for my shadow, and have seen naught there but your own lovely image. That shadow shall never come, O sweet love, Riminild, to prove to you that your love is false, but he himself shall come and drive all shadows away.

"And you, my trusty messenger," he said aloud, "go back to maid Riminild and tell her that she shall indeed wed a King next Sunday, for before the church bells ring for service I will be with her."

The Princess Riminild stood on the beach and looked out to sea, hoping to see Horn coming in his helmet and shield to deliver her; but none came, save her own messenger, who was washed up on the shore -- drowned! And she wrung her hands in her anguish.

Horn had gone immediately to King Thurstan, and, after saluting him, told him his real name and his present trouble. "And now, O King," said he, "I pray you to reward me for all my services by helping me to get possession of Riminild. Your daughter, Swanhild, will I give to a man the best and faithfullest ever called to the ranks of knighthood."

Then said the King, "Horn, follow your own counsel"; then he sent for his knights, and many of them followed Horn, so that he had a thousand or more at his command. The wind favoured their course, and in a few hours the ships cast anchor on the shore of Westland. Horn left his forces in a wood while he went on to learn what was doing. Well did he know the way, and lightly did he leap over the stones. As he went he met a pilgrim, and asked him the latest news, who answered, "I come from a wedding feast -- but the bride's true love is far away, and she only weeps. I could not stay to see her grief."

"May God help me!" said Horn: "but this is sorrowful news. Let us change garments, good pilgrim. I must go to the feast, and once there I vow. I will give them something by which to remember Horn!" He blackened his eyebrows, and took the pilgrim's hat and staff, and when he reached the gate of the palace, the porter was for turning him back, but Horn took him up and flung him over the bridge, and then went on to the hall where the feast was being held. He sat down among the lowest, on the beggar's bench, and glowered round from under his blackened eyebrows. At a distance he saw Riminild sitting like one in a dream; then she rose to pour out mead and wine for the knights and squires, and Horn cried out, "Fair Queen, if ye would have God's blessing, let the beggar's turn come next."

She set down the flagon of wine, and poured him out brown beer in a jug, saying: "There, drink that off at a draught, thou boldest of beggar men!" But he gave it to the beggars, his companions, saying "I am not come to drink jugs of beer, but goblets of wine. Fair Queen," he cried, "thou deemest me a beggar, but I am rather a fisherman, come to haul in my net, which I left seven years ago hanging from a fair hand here in Westland." Then was Riminild much troubled within herself, and she looked hard at Horn. She reached him the goblet and said, "Drink wine then, fisherman, and tell me who thou art."

He drank from the goblet, and then dropped into it the gold ring, and said, "Look, O Queen, at what thou findest in the goblet, and ask no more who I am." The Queen withdrew into her bower with her four maidens, and when she saw the gold ring that she had given to Horn, she was sore distressed, and cried out, "Childe Horn must be dead, for this is his ring."

She then sent one of her waiting-maids to command the stranger to her presence, and Horn, all unrecognised, appeared before her. "Tell me, honest pilgrim, where thou gottest this ring?" she asked him.

"I took it," said he, "from the finger of a man whom I found lying sick unto death in a wood. Loudly he was bewailing himself and the lady of his heart, one Riminild, who should at this time have wedded him." As he spoke he drew his cap down over his eyes, which were full of tears.

Then Riminild cried, "Break, heart, in my bosom! Horn is no more -- he who hath already caused thee so many tender pangs." She threw herself on her couch and called for a knife, to kill the bridegroom and herself.

Her maidens shrieked with fear, but Horn flung his arms around her and pressed her to his heart. Then he cast away hat and staff, and wiped the brown stain from his face, and stood up before his love in his own fair countenance, asking, "Dear love, Riminild, know thou me not now? Away with your grief and kiss me -- I am Horn! -- Horn, your true lover and born slave."

She gazed into his eyes. At first she could not believe that it was he, but at last she could doubt no longer; she fell upon his neck, and in the sweet greetings that followed were two sick hearts made whole.

"Horn, you miscreant! how could you play me such a trick?"

"Have patience, sweet love, maid Riminild, and I will tell you all. Now let me go and finish my work, and when it is done I will come and rest at your side."

So he left her, and went back to the forest, and Riminild sent for Athulf, who met her with a doleful countenance. "Athulf!" she cried, "rejoice with me! Horn has come -- I tell you Horn is here!"

"Alas!" said Athulf, "that cannot be. Who hath brought thee such an idle tale? Day and night have I stood here watching for him, but he came not, and much I fear me the noble Horn is dead."

"I tell you he is living," she said -- "aye, and more alive than ever. Go to the forest and find him -- he is there with all his faithful followers."

Athulf made haste to the forest, still unbelieving, but soon his heart bounded for joy, for there rode Horn in his shining armour at the head of his troops. Athulf rode to his side, and they returned together to the city, where Riminild was watching them from her turret. And Horn pointed to her and cried to his company, "Knights, yonder is my bride -- help me to win her!"

Then was there a fierce storming of the gate -- the shock of it shook Riminild's tower -- and Horn and his heroes burst, all unheralded, into the King's hall. Fierce and furious was the bridal dance that followed; the tumult of it rose up to Riminild, and she prayed, "God preserve my lover in this wild confusion!"

Right merrily danced her dancer, and all unscathed he flashed through the hall, thanks to his true love and God's care. King Aylmer and the bridegroom confronted him and the younger, the bridegroom King, asked him what he sought there. "I seek my bride," said he, "and if you do not give her up to me I will have your life."

"Better thou should have the bride than that," said the other; "though I would sooner be torn in pieces than give thee either." And he defended himself bravely, but it availed him naught. Horn struck off his head from his shoulders, so that it bounded across the hall. Then cried Horn to the other guests, "The dance is over!" after which he proclaimed a truce, and, throwing himself down on a couch, spake thus to King Aylmer: "I was born in Southland, of a royal race. The pagan Vikings slew King Altof, my father, and put me out to sea with my twelve companions. You did train me for the order of knighthood, and I have dishonoured it by no unworthy deeds, though you did drive me from your kingdom, thinking I meant to disgrace you through your daughter. But that which you credited me with I never contemplated. Accept me then, O King, for your son-in-law. Yet will I not claim my bride till I have won back my kingdom of Southland. That will I accomplish quickly, with the help of my brave knights and such others as I pray you to lend me, leaving in pledge therefor the fairest jewel in my crown, until King Horn shall be able to place Queen Riminild beside him on his father's throne."

As he spoke Riminild entered, and Horn took her hand and led her to her father, and the young couple stood before the old King -- a right royal pair. Then King Aylmer spoke jestingly, "Truly I once did chide a young knight in my wrath, but never King Horn, whom I now behold for the first time. Never would I have spoken roughly to King Horn, much less forbidden him to woo a Princess."

Then all the knights and lords came offering their good wishes to the happy pair; and the old house-steward, Athelbrus, would have bent the knee to his former pupil, but Horn took the old man in his arms and embraced him, thanking him for all the pains he had taken with his breeding.

Horn's twelve companions came also, and did him homage as their sovereign, and he rejoiced to see them all, but especially Athulf the brave and true. "Athulf," he told him, "thou hast helped me to win my bride here, now come with me to Southland and help me to make a home for her. And you, too, shall win a lady -- I have already chosen her; her name is Swanhild, and she will look fair even beside Riminild." Then did Athulf rejoice, but Figold, the traitor, was ready to sink into the ground with shame and envy.

Then Horn returned to his ship, taking Athulf with him, but Figold he left behind. Truly it is ill knowing what to do with a traitor, whether you take him to the field or leave him at home.

On went the ship before a favouring wind; the voyage lasted but four days. Horn landed at midnight, and he and Athulf went inland together. On the way they came upon a noble looking knight asleep under his shield, upon which a cross was painted, and Horn cried to him, "Awake, and tell us what they are doing here. Thou seemest to be a Christian, I trow, else would I have hewn thee in pieces with my sword!"

The good knight sprang up aghast, and said, "Against my will I am serving the heathen who rule here. I am keeping a place ready for Horn, the best loved of all heroes. Long I have wondered why he does not bestir himself to return and fight for his own. God give him power so to do till he slay every one of these miscreants. They put him out to sea, a tender boy, with his twelve playmates, one of whom was my only son, Athulf. Dearly he loved Horn, and was beloved by him. Could I but see them both once more, I should feel that I could die in peace."

"Then rejoice," they told him, "for Horn and Athulf are here!"

Joyfully did the old man greet the youths; he embraced his son and bent the knee to Horn, and all three rejoiced together.

"Where is your company?" asked the old knight. "I suppose you two have come to explore the land. Well, your mother still lives, and if she knew you to be living would be beside herself with joy."

"Blessed be the day that I and my men landed here," said Horn. "We will catch these heathen dogs, or else tame them. We will speak to them in our own language."

Then Horn blew his horn, so that all on board the ship heard it and came on shore. As the young birds long for the dawn, so Horn longed for the fight that should free his country from her enemies. From morning to night the battle raged, till all the heathen, young and old, were slain, and young King Horn himself slew the pirate King. Then he went to church, with all his people, and an anthem was sung to the glory of God, and Horn gave thanks aloud for the restoration of his kingdom, after which he sought the place where his mother dwelt. How his heart wept for joy when he saw her! He placed a crown on her head, and arrayed her in rich robes, and brought her up to the palace. "Thou art glad to have thy child again," he said to her in the joy of his heart, "but I will make thee gladder still by bringing thee home a daughter, one who will please thee well." And he thought of his love, Riminild, with whom, however, things were just then going very much amiss.

For as son as Horn had departed, the treacherous Figold had collected a great army of workmen and made them build him a tower in the sea, which could only be reached when the tide was out. Now about this time Horn had a dream, in which he saw Riminild on board a ship at sea, which presently went to pieces, and she tried to swim ashore, steering with her lily-white hand, while Figold, the traitor, sought to stop her with the point of his sword. Then he awoke and cried, "Athulf, true friend, we must away across the sea. Unless we make all speed some evil will befall us." And in the midst of a storm they set sail.

In the meantime Figold had left his tower and appeared in the presence of King Aylmer. Cunningly, out of his false heart spoke the traitor, "King Aylmer, Horn has sent me word that he would have his bride handed over to my care. He has regained his crown and realm and would fain have her there to be his Queen."

"Very well," said the King, "let her go with thee."

But Riminild was much displeased at the thought of being put into the hands of Figold, whom in her soul she would not trust.

"Why comes not Horn for me himself?" she asked. "I know not the way to his kingdom either by land or by sea."

"But I know it," said Figold, "and I will soon bring thee thither, most beauteous queen." But his wicked smile made her uneasy at heart.

"If Horn could not come himself," she said, "why did he not send Athulf, his faithful friend?" But this question pleased the traitor so little that he gave her no answer.

Her father blessed her, and she set forth, wringing her white hands.

Meanwhile, Horn, sailing from the south, was driven in shore by a storm, and he beheld Figold's high tower, and asked who had built such an ugly thing. He thought he heard a low murmuring as his ship flew past it before the wind, but knew not what it might be. Soon he saw the battlements of King Aylmer's palace rising in the distance; there Riminild should be, looking out for him, but all was bare and empty. It seemed to him as though a star were missing from heaven; and as he crossed the threshold the ill news was told him how Figold had carried off Riminild. Horn had no mind to linger with the King. "Come, Athulf, true friend," said he, "and help me to search for her." So they searched far and near, in vain, till at last Horn remembered that strange tower in the sea, and set sail for the lonely fortress where Figold had the fair princess in his evil keeping. "Now, my eleven companions, and you, too, Athulf," said he, "abide here while I go up alone with my horn. God hath shown me how to order this attempt."

He left his sword on the ship, and took only a fishing line with a long hook. Then round and round the tower he walked, and he blew a loud blast out into the raging storm, until a head appeared out of a hole in the wall of the tower -- it was that wicked knave Figold's; and Horn cast his line, and hauled the writhing traitor clean out of the tower. He whirled round the sea wolf at the end of the line, and swung him over the water by the sheer force of his arm, so that he was cast over to Athulf in the ship; and sore afraid was the traitor when the true men on board seized him.

Then Horn took up his bugle once more and sounded it so loudly that at the first blast the door was uncovered; at the second he could enter the tower; the third was heard as he led Riminild forth. Lightly did he clasp her round the waist and swing her into his boat, and then pulled for the ship.

He brought Riminild on board his ship, and called to his band, "Ho there, my trusty eleven! Our voyage is ended, and we will now go merrily home. And you, Athulf, my chosen and tried friend, shall now have your guerdon; I will bring you to your bride Swanhild, and Riminild and I will be wedded at the same time -- the same wedding feast shall serve us both.

"And Riminild, my sweet pearl, whom I have rescued from the deep, not all that I have suffered on your account grieves me like the perfidy this false one wrought on you, my loving heart. Through him the goodly tale of my twelve followers is broken; now when they gather round the table, one seat will ever be empty. Must it ever be that no dozen of men can be got together but one will prove a traitor?"

Then he bade them "Set the traitor in the boat and let it drift out to sea, as we poor children were made to do aforetime. Let the waves bear away treachery as once they bore innocence -- our ship will make better speed; and as for him, let him drift till he find a land where no traitors are."



Chapter IV

Sir Galahad


My good blade carves the casques of men, My tough lance thrusteth sure, My strength is as the strength of ten, Because my heart is pure. The shattering trumpet shrilleth high, The hard brands shiver on the steel, The splinter'd spear-shafts crack and fly, The horse and rider reel: They reel, they roll in changing lists, And when the tide of combat stands, Perfume and flowers fall in showers, That lightly rain from ladies' hands.

How sweet are looks that ladies bend On whom their favours fall! For them I battle till the end, To save from shame and thrall: But all my heart is drawn above, My knees are bow'd in crypt and shrine: I never felt the kiss of love, Nor maiden's hand in mine. More bounteous aspects on me beam, Me mightier transports move and thrill; So keep I fair thro' faith and prayer A virgin heart in work and will.

When down the stormy crescent goes, A light before me swims, Between dark stems the forest glows, I hear a noise of hymns: Then by some secret shrine I ride; I hear a voice but none are there; The stalls are void, the doors are wide, The tapers burning fair. Fair gleams the snowy altar-cloth, The silver vessels sparkle clean, The shrill bell rings, the censer swings, And solemn chaunts resound between.

Sometimes on lonely mountain-meres I find a magic bark; I leap on board: no helmsman steers: I float till all is dark. A gentle sound, an awful light! Three angels bear the Holy Grail: With folded feet, in stoles of white, On sleeping wings they sail. Ah, blessed vision! blood of God! My spirit beats her mortal bars, As down dark tides the glory slides, And star-like mingles with the stars.

When on my goodly charger borne Thro' dreaming towns I go, The cock crows ere the Christmas morn, The streets are dumb with snow. The tempest crackles on the leads, And, ringing, spins from brand and mail; But o'er the dark a glory spreads, And gilds the driving hail.

I leave the plain, I climb the height; No branchy thicket shelter yields; But blessed forms in whistling storms Fly o'er waste fens and windy fields.

A maiden knight -- to me is given Such hope, I know not fear; I yearn to breathe the airs of heaven That often meet me here. I muse on joy that will not cease, Pure spaces clothed in living beams, Pure lilies of eternal peace, Whose odors haunt my dreams; And, stricken by an angel's hand, This mortal armour that I wear, This weight and size, this heart and eyes, Are touch'd, are turn'd to finest air.

The clouds are broken in the sky, And thro' the mountain-walls A rolling organ-harmony Swells up, and shakes and falls. Then move the trees, the copses nod, Wings flutter, voices hover clear: "O just and faithful knight of God! Ride on! the prize is near." So pass I hostel, hall, and grange; By bridge and ford, by park and pale, All-arm'd I ride, whate'er betide, Until I find the Holy Grail.



Chapter V

Rustem And Sohrab


Give ear unto the combat of Sohrab against Rustem, though it be a tale replete with tears.

It came about that on a certain day Rustem arose from his couch, and his mind was filled with forebodings. He bethought him therefore to go out to the chase. So he saddled Rakush and made ready his quiver with arrows. Then he turned him unto the wilds that lie near Turan, even in the direction of the city of Samengan. And when he was come nigh unto it, he started a herd of asses and made sport among them till that he was weary of the hunt. Then he caught one and slew it and roasted it for his meal, and when he had eaten it and broken the bones for the marrow, he laid himself down to slumber, and Rakush cropped the pasture beside him.

Now while the hero was sleeping there passed by seven knights of Turan, and they beheld Rakush and coveted him. So they threw their cords at him to ensnare him. But Rakush, when he beheld their design, pawed the ground in anger, and fell upon them as he had fallen upon the lion. And of one man he bit off the head, and another he struck down under his hoofs, and he would have overcome them all, but they were too many. So they ensnared him and led him into the city, thinking in their hearts, "Verily a goodly capture have we made." But Rustem when he awoke from his slumbers was downcast and sore grieved when he saw not his steed, and he said unto himself:

"How can I stand against the Turks, and how can I traverse the desert alone?"

And his heart was full of trouble. Then he sought for the traces of the horse's hoofs, and followed them, and they led him even unto the gates of the city. Now when those within beheld Rustem, and that he came before them on foot, the King and the nobles came forth to greet him, and inquired of him how this was come about. Then Rustem told them how Rakush was vanished while he slumbered, and how he had followed his track even unto these gates. And he sware a great oath, and vowed that if his courser were not restored unto him many heads should quit their trunks. Then the King of Samengan, when he saw that Rustem was beside himself with anger, spoke words of soothing, and said that none of his people should do wrong unto the hero; and he begged him that he would enter into his house and abide with him until that search had been made, saying:

"Surely Rakush cannot be hid."

And Rustem was satisfied at these words, and cast suspicion from his spirit, and entered the house of the King, and feasted with him, and beguiled the hours with wine. And the King rejoiced in his guest, and encompassed him with sweet singers and all honour. And when the night was fallen the King himself led Rustem unto a couch perfumed with musk and roses, and he bade him slumber sweetly until the morning. And he declared to him yet again that all was well for him and for his steed.

Now when a portion of the night was spent, and the star of morning stood high in the arch of heaven, the door of Rustem's chamber was opened, and a murmur of soft voices came in from the threshold. And there stepped within a slave bearing a lamp perfumed with amber, and a woman whose beauty was veiled came after her. And as she moved musk was scattered from her robes. And the women came nigh unto the bed of the hero heavy with wine and slumber. And he was amazed when he saw them. And when he had roused him somewhat he spake and said:

"Who are thou, and what is thy name and thy desire, and what seekest thou from me in the dark night?"

Then the Peri-faced answered him, saying, "I am Tahmineh, the daughter of the King of Samengan, the race of the leopard and the lion, and none of the princes of this earth are worthy of my hand, neither hath any man seen me unveiled. But my heart is torn with anguish, and my spirit is tossed with desire, for I have heard of thy deeds of prowess, and how thou fearest neither Deev nor lion, neither leopard nor crocodile, and how thy hand is swift to strike, and how thou didst venture alone into Mazinderan, and how wild asses are devoured of thee, and how the earth groaneth under the tread of thy feet, and how men perish at thy blows, and how even the eagle dareth not swoop down upon her prey when she beholdeth thy sword. These things and more have they told unto me, and mine eyes have yearned to look upon thy face. And now hath God brought thee within the gates of my father, and I am come to say unto thee that I am thine if thou wilt hear me, and if thou wilt not, none other will I espouse. And consider, O Pehliva, how that love has obscured mine understanding and withdrawn me from the bosom of discretion, yet peradventure God will grant unto me a son like to thee for strength and valour, to whom shall be given the empire of the world. And if thou wilt listen unto me, I will lead forth before thee Rakush thy steed, and I will place under thy feet the land of Samengan."

Now while this moon of beauty was yet speaking, Rustem regarded her. And he saw that she was fair, and that wisdom abode in her mind; and when he heard of Rakush, his spirit was decided within him, and he held that this adventure could not end save gloriously. So he sent a Mubid unto the King and demanded the hand of Tahmineh from her father. And the King, when he heard the news, was rejoiced, and gave his daughter unto the Pehliva, and they concluded an alliance according to custom and the rites. And all men, young and old, within the house and city of the King were glad at this alliance, and called down blessings upon Rustem.

Now Rustem, when he was alone with the Peri-faced, took from his arm an onyx that was known unto all the world. And he gave it to her, and said:

"Cherish this jewel, and if Heaven cause thee to give birth unto a daughter, fasten it within her locks, and it will shield her from evil; but if it be granted unto thee to bring forth a son, fasten it upon his arm, that he may wear it like his father. And he shall be strong as Keriman, of stature like unto Saum the son of Neriman, and of grace of speech like unto Zal, my father."

The Peri-faced, when she had heard these words, was glad in his presence. But when the day was passed there came in unto them the King her father, and he told Rustem how that tidings of Rakush were come unto his ears, and how that the courser would shortly be within the gates. And Rustem, when he heard it, was filled with longing after his steed, and when he knew that he was come he hastened forth to caress him. And with his own hands he fastened the saddle, and gave thanks unto Ormuzd, who had restored his joy between his hands. Then he knew that the time to depart was come. And he opened his arms and took unto his heart Tahmineh the fair of face, and he bathed her cheek with his tears and covered her hair with kisses. Then he flung him upon Rakush, and the swift-footed bare him quickly from out of her sight. And Tahmineh was sorrowful exceedingly, and Rustem too was filled with thoughts as he turned him back unto Zaboulistan. And he pondered this adventure in his heart, but to no man did he speak of what he had seen or done.

Now when nine moons had run their course there was born unto Tahmineh a son in the likeness of his father, a babe whose mouth was filled with smiles, wherefore men called him Sohrab. And when he numbered but one month he was like unto a child of twelve, and when he numbered five years he was skilled in arms and all the arts of war, and when ten years were rolled above his head there was none in the land that could resist him in the games of strength. Then he came before his mother and spake words of daring. And he said:

"Since I am taller and stouter than my peers, teach unto me my race and lineage, and what I shall say when men ask me the name of my sire. But if thou refuse an answer unto my demands, I will strike thee out from the rolls of the living."

When Tahmineh beheld the ardour of her son, she smiled in her spirit because that his fire was like to that of his father. And she opened her mouth and said:

"Hear my words, O my son, and be glad in thine heart, neither give way in thy spirit to anger. For thou art the offspring of Rustem, thou art descended from the seed of Saum and Zal, and Neriman was thy forefather. And since God made the world it hath held none like unto Rustem, thy sire."

Then she showed to him a letter written by the Pehliva, and gave to him the gold and jewels Rustem had sent at his birth. And she spake and said:

"Cherish these gifts with gratitude, for it is thy father who hath sent them. Yet remember, O my son, that thou close thy lips concerning these things; for Turan groaneth under the hand of Afrasiyab, and he is foe unto Rustem the glorious. If, therefore, he should learn of thee, he would seek to destroy the son for hatred of the sire. Moreover, O my boy, if Rustem learned that thou wert become a mountain of valour, perchance he would demand thee at my hands, and the sorrow of thy loss would crush the heart of thy mother."

But Sohrab replied, "Nought can be hidden upon earth for aye. To all men are known the deeds of Rustem, and since my birth be thus noble, wherefore hast thou kept it dark from me so long? I will go forth with an army of brave Turks and lead them unto Iran, I will cast Kai Kaous from off his throne, I will give to Rustem the crown of the Kaianides, and together we will subdue the land of Turan, and Afrasiyab shall be slain by my hands. Then will I mount the throne in his stead. But thou shalt be called Queen of Iran, for since Rustem is my father and I am his son no other kings shall rule in this world, for to us alone behoveth it to wear the crowns of might. And I pant in longing after the battlefield, and I desire that the world should behold my prowess. But a horse is needful unto me, a steed tall and strong of power to bear me, for it beseemeth me not to go on foot before mine enemies."

Now Tahmineh, when she had heard the words of this boy, rejoiced in her soul at his courage. So she bade the guardians of the flocks lead out the horses before Sohrab her son. And they did as she had bidden, and Sohrab surveyed the steeds, and tested their strength like as his father had done before him of old, and he bowed them under his hand, and he could not be satisfied. And thus for many days did he seek a worthy steed. Then one came before him and told of a foal sprung from Rakush, the swift of foot. When Sohrab heard the tidings he smiled, and bade that the foal be led before him. And he tested it and found it to be strong. So he saddled it and sprang upon its back, and cried, saying:

"Now that I own a horse like thee, the world shall be made dark to many."

Then he made ready for war against Iran, and the nobles and warriors flocked around him. And when all was in order Sohrab came before his grandsire and craved his counsel and his aid to go forth into the land of Iran and seek out his father. And the King of Samengan, when he heard these wishes, deemed them to be just, and he opened the doors of his treasures without stint and gave unto Sohrab of his wealth, for he was filled with pleasure at this boy. And he invested Sohrab with all the honours of a King, and he bestowed on him all the marks of his good pleasure.

Meantime a certain man brought news unto Afrasiyab that Sohrab was making ready an army to fall upon Iran, and to cast Kai Kaous from off his throne. And he told Afrasiyab how the courage and valour of Sohrab exceeded words. And Afrasiyab, when he heard this, hid not his contentment, and he called before him Human and Barman, the doughty. Then he bade them gather together an army and join the ranks of Sohrab, and he confided to them his secret purpose, but he enjoined them tell no man thereof. For he said:

"Into our hands hath it been given to settle the course of the world. For it is known unto me that Sohrab is sprung from Rustem the Pehliva, but from Rustem must it be hidden who it is that goeth out against him, then peradventure he will perish by the hands of this young lion, and Iran, devoid of Rustem, will fall a prey into my hands. Then we will subdue Sohrab also, and all the world will be ours. But if it be written that Sohrab fall under the hand of Tehemten, then the grief he shall endure when he shall learn that he hath slain his son will bring him to the grave for sorrow."

So spake Afrasiyab in his guile, and when he had done unveiling his black heart he bade the warriors depart unto Samengan. And they bare with them gifts of great price to pour before the face of Sohrab. And they bare also a letter filled with soft words. And in the letter Afrasiyab lauded Sohrab for his resolve, and told him how that if Iran be subdued the world would henceforth know peace, for upon his own head should he place the crown of the Kaianides; and Turan, Iran, and Samengan should be as one land.

When Sohrab had read this letter, and saw the gifts and the aid sent out to him, he rejoiced aloud, for he deemed that now none could withstand his might. So he caused the cymbals of departure to be clashed, and the army made them ready to go forth. Then Sohrab led them into the land of Iran. And their track was marked by desolation and destruction, for they spared nothing that they passed. And they spread fire and dismay abroad, and they marched on unstayed until they came unto the White Castle, the fortress wherein Iran put its trust.

Now the guardian of the castle was named Hujir, and there lived with him Gustahem the grave, but he was grown old, and could aid no longer save with his counsels. And there abode also his daughter Gurdafrid, a warlike maid, firm in the saddle, and practised in the fight. Now when Hujir beheld from afar a dusky cloud of armed men he came forth to meet them. And Sohrab, when he saw him, drew his sword, and demanded his name, and bade him prepare to meet his end. And he taunted him with rashness that he was come forth thus unaided to stand against a lion. But Hujir answered Sohrab with taunts again, and vowed that he would sever his head from his trunk and send it for a trophy unto the Shah. Yet Sohrab only smiled when he heard these words, and he challenged Hujir to come near. And they met in combat, and wrestled sore one with another, and stalwart were their strokes and strong; but Sohrab overcame Hujir as though he were an infant, and he bound him and sent him captive unto Human.

But when those within the castle learned that their chief was bound they raised great lamentation, and their fears were sore. And Gurdafrid, too, when she learned it, was grieved, but she was ashamed also for the fate of Hujir. So she took forth burnished mail and clad herself therein, and she hid her tresses under a helmet of Roum, and she mounted a steed of battle and came forth before the walls like to a warrior. And she uttered a cry of thunder, and flung it amid the ranks of Turan, and she defied the champions to come forth to single combat. And none came, for they beheld her how she was strong, and they knew not that it was a woman, and they were afraid. But Sohrab, when he saw it, stepped forth and said:

"I will accept thy challenge, and a second prize will fall into my hands."

Then he girded himself and made ready for the fight. And the maid, when she saw he was ready, rained arrows upon him with art, and they fell quick like hail, and whizzed about his head; and Sohrab, when he saw it, could not defend himself, and was angry and ashamed. Then he covered his head with his shield and ran at the maid. But she, when she saw him approach, dropped her bow and couched a lance, and thrust at Sohrab with vigour, and shook him mightily, and it wanted little and she would have thrown him from his seat. And Sohrab was amazed, and his wrath knew no bounds. Then he ran at Gurdafrid with fury, and seized the reins of her steed, and caught her by the waist, and tore her armour, and threw her upon the ground. Yet ere he could raise his hand to strike her, she drew her sword and shivered his lance in twain, and leaped again upon her steed. And when she saw that the day was hers, she was weary of further combat, and she sped back unto the fortress. But Sohrab gave rein unto his horse, and followed after her in his great anger. And he caught her, and seized her, and tore the helmet off her head, for he desired to look upon the face of the man who could withstand the son of Rustem. And lo! when he had done so, there rolled forth from the helmet coils of dusky hue, and Sohrab beheld it was a woman that had overcome him in the fight. And he was confounded. But when he had found speech he said:

"If the daughters of Iran are like to thee, and go forth unto battle, none can stand against this land."

Then he took his cord and threw it about her, and bound her in its snare, saying:

"Seek not to escape me, O moon of beauty, for never hath prey like unto thee fallen between my hands."

Then Gurdafrid, full of wile, turned unto him her face that was unveiled, for she beheld no other means of safety, and she said unto him:

"O hero without flaw, is it well that thou shouldest seek to make me captive, and show me unto the army? For they have beheld our combat, and that I overcame thee, and surely now they will gibe when they learn that thy strength was withstood by a woman. Better would it beseem thee to hide this adventure, lest thy cheeks have cause to blush because of me. Therefore let us conclude a peace together. The castle shall be thine, and all it holds; follow after me then, and take possession of thine own."

Now Sohrab, when he had listened, was beguiled by her words and her beauty, and he said:

"Thou dost wisely to make peace with me, for verily these walls could not resist my might."

And he followed after her unto the heights of the castle, and he stood with her before its gates. And Gustahem, when he saw them, opened the portal, and Gurdafrid stepped within the threshold, but when Sohrab would have followed after her she shut the door upon him. Then Sohrab saw that she had befooled him, and his fury knew no bounds. But ere he was recovered from his surprise she came out upon the battlements and scoffed at him, and counselled him to go back whence he was come; for surely, since he could not stand against a woman, he would fall an easy prey before Rustem, when the Pehliva should have learned that robbers from Turan were broken into the land. And Sohrab was made yet madder for her words, and he departed from the walls in his wrath, and rode far in his anger, and spread terror in his path. And he vowed that he would yet bring the maid into subjection.

In the meantime Gustahem the aged called before him a scribe, and bade him write unto Kai Kaous all that was come about, and how an army was come forth from Turan, at whose head rode a chief that was a child in years, a lion in strength and stature. And he told how Hujir had been bound, and how the fortress was like to fall into the hands of the enemy; for there were none to defend it save only his daughter and himself and he craved the Shah to come to their aid.

Albeit when the day had followed yet again upon the night, Sohrab made ready his host to fall upon the castle. But when he came near thereto he found it was empty, and the doors thereof stood open, and no warriors appeared upon its walls. And he was surprised, for he knew not that in the darkness the inmates were fled by a passage that was hidden under the earth. And he searched the building for Gurdafrid, for his heart yearned after her in love and he cried aloud:

"Woe, woe is me that this moon is vanished behind the clouds!"

Now when Kai Kaous had gotten the writing of Gustahem, he was sore afflicted and much afraid, and he called about him his nobles and asked their counsels. And he said:

"Who shall stand against this Turk? For Gustahem doth liken him in power unto Rustem, and saith he resembleth the seed of Neriman."

Then the warriors cried with one accord, "Unto Rustem alone can we look in this danger!"

And Kai Kaous hearkened to their voice, and he called for a scribe and dictated unto him a letter. And he wrote unto his Pehliva, and invoked the blessings of Heaven upon his head, and he told him all that was come to pass, and how new dangers threatened Iran, and how to Rustem alone could he look for help in his trouble. And he recalled unto Tehemten all that he had done for him in the days that were gone by, and he entreated him once again to be his refuge. And he said:

"When thou shalt receive this letter, stay not to speak the word that hangeth upon thy lips; and if thou bearest roses in thy hands, stop not to smell them, but haste thee to help us in our need."

Then Kai Kaous sent forth Gew with this writing unto Zaboulistan, and bade him neither rest nor tarry until he should stand before the face of Rustem. And he said -- 

"When thou hast done my behest, turn thee again unto me; neither abide within the courts of the Pehliva, nor linger by the roadside."

And Gew did as the Shah commanded, and took neither food nor rest till he set foot within the gates of Rustem. And Rustem greeted him kindly, and asked him of his mission; and when he had read the writing of the Shah, he questioned Gew concerning Sohrab. For he said:

"I should not marvel if such an hero arose in Iran, but that a warrior of renown should come forth from amid the Turks, I cannot believe it. But thou sayest none knoweth whence cometh this knight. I have myself a son in Samengan, but he is yet an infant, and his mother writeth to me that he rejoiceth in the sports of his age, and though he be like to become a hero among men, his time is not yet come to lead forth an army. And that which thou sayest hath been done; surely it is not the work of a babe. But enter, I pray thee, into my house, and we will confer together concerning this adventure."

Then Rustem bade his cooks make ready a banquet, and he feasted Gew, and troubled his head with wine, and caused him to forget cares and time. But when morn was come Gew remembered the commands of the Shah that he tarry not, but return with all speed, and he spake thereof to Rustem, and prayed him to make known his resolve. But Rustem spake, saying:

"Disquiet not thyself, for death will surely fall upon these men of Turan. Stay with me yet another day and rest, and water thy lips that are parched. For though this Sohrab be a hero like to Saum and Zal and Neriman, verily he shall fall by my hands."

And he made ready yet another banquet, and three days they caroused without ceasing. But on the fourth Gew uprose with resolve, and came before Rustem girt for departure. And he said:

"It behoveth me to return, O Pehliva, for I bethink me how Kai Kaous is a man hard and choleric, and the fear of Sohrab weigheth upon his heart, and his soul burneth with impatience, and he hath lost sleep, and hath hunger and thirst on this account. And he will be wroth against us if we delay yet longer to do his behest."

Then Rustem said, "Fear not, for none on earth dare be angered with me."

But he did as Gew desired, and made ready his army, and saddled Rakush, and set forth from Zaboulistan, and a great train followed after him.

Now when they came nigh unto the courts of the Shah, the nobles came forth to meet them, and do homage before Rustem. And when they were come in, Rustem gat him from Rakush and hastened into the presence of his lord. But Kai Kaous, when he beheld him, was angry, and spake not, and his brows were knit with fury; and when Rustem had done obeisance before him, he unlocked the doors of his mouth, and words of folly escaped his lips. And he said:

"Who is Rustem, that he defieth my power and disregardeth my commands? If I had a sword within my grasp I would spilt his head like to an orange. Seize him, I command, and hang him upon the nearest gallows, and let his name be never spoken in my presence."

When he heard these words Gew trembled in his heart, but he said, "Dost thou set forth thy hand against Rustem?"

And the Shah when he heard it was beside himself, and he cried with a loud voice that Gew be hanged together with the other; and he bade Tus lead them forth. And Tus would have led them out, for he hoped the anger of the Shah would be appeased; but Rustem broke from his grasp and stood before Kai Kaous, and all the nobles were filled with fear when they saw his anger. And he flung reproaches at Kai Kaous, and he recalled to him his follies, and the march into Mazinderan and Hamaveran, and his flight into Heaven; and he reminded him how that but for Rustem he would not now be seated upon the throne of light. And he bade him threaten Sohrab the Turk with his gallows, and he said:

"I am a free man and no slave, and am servant alone unto God; and without Rustem Kai Kaous is as nothing, And the world is subject unto me, and Rakush is my throne, and my sword is my seal, and my helmet my crown. And but for me, who called forth Kai Kobad, thine eyes had never looked upon this throne. And had I desired it I could have sat upon its seat. But now am I weary of thy follies, and I will turn me away from Iran, and when this Turk shall have put you under his yoke I shall not learn thereof."

Then he turned him and strode from out the presence-chamber. And he sprang upon Rakush, who waited without, and he was vanished from before their eyes ere yet the nobles had rallied from their astonishment. And they were downcast and oppressed with boding cares, and they held counsel among themselves what to do; for Rustem was their mainstay, and they knew that, bereft of his arm and counsel, they could not stand against this Turk. And they blamed Kai Kaous, and counted over the good deeds that Rustem had done for him, and they pondered and spake long. And in the end they resolved to send a messenger unto Kai Kaous, and they chose from their midst Gudarz the aged, and bade him stand before the Shah. And Gudarz did as they desired, and he spake long and without fear, and he counted over each deed that had been done by Rustem; and he reproached the Shah with his ingratitude, and he said how Rustem was the shepherd, and how the flock could not be led without its leader. And Kai Kaous heard him unto the end, and he knew that his words were the words of reason and truth, and he was ashamed of that which he had done, and confounded when he beheld his acts thus naked before him. And he humbled himself before Gudarz, and said:

"That which thou sayest, surely it is right."

And he entreated Gudarz to go forth and seek Rustem, and bid him forget the evil words of his Shah, and bring him back to the succor of Iran. And Gudarz hastened forth to do as Kai Kaous desired, and he told the nobles of his mission, and they joined themselves unto him, and all the chiefs of Iran went forth in quest of Rustem. And when they had found him, they prostrated themselves into the dust before him, and Gudarz told him of his mission, and he prayed him to remember that Kai Kaous was a man devoid of understanding, whose thoughts flowed over like to new wine that fermenteth. And he said:

"Though Rustem be angered against the King, yet hath the land of Iran done no wrong that it should perish at his hands. Yet, if Rustem save it not, surely it will fall under this Turk."

But Rustem said, "My patience hath an end, and I fear none but God. What is this Kai Kaous that he should anger me? and what am I that I have need of him? I have not deserved the evil words that he spake unto me, but now will I think of them no longer, but cast aside all thoughts of Iran."

When the nobles heard these words they grew pale, and fear took hold on their hearts. But Gudarz, full of wisdom, opened his mouth, and said:

"O Pehliva! the land, when it shall learn of this, will deem that Rustem is fled before the face of this Turk; and when men shall believe that Tehemten is afraid, they will cease to combat, and Iran will be downtrodden at his hands. Turn thee not, therefore, at this hour from thy allegiance to the Shah, and tarnish not thy glory by this retreat, neither suffer that the downfall of Iran rest upon thy head. Put from thee, therefore, the words that Kai Kaous spake in his empty anger, and lead us forth to battle against this Turk. For it must not be spoken that Rustem feared to fight a beardless boy."

And Rustem listened, and pondered these words in his heart, and knew that they were good. But he said:

"Fear hath never been known of me, neither hath Rustem shunned the din of arms, and I depart not because of Sohrab, but because that scorn and insult have been my recompense."

Yet when he had pondered a while longer, he saw that he must return unto the Shah. So he did that which he knew to be right, and he rode till he came unto the gates of Kai Kaous, and he strode with a proud step into his presence.

Now when the Shah beheld Rustem from afar, he stepped down from off his throne and came before Pehliva, and craved his pardon for that which was come about. And he said how he had been angered because Rustem had tarried in his coming, and how haste was his birthright, and how he had forgotten himself in his vexation. But now was his mouth filled with the dust of repentance. And Rustem said:

"The world is the Shah's, and it behoveth thee to do as beseemeth thee best with thy servants. And until old age shall my loins be girt in fealty unto thee. And may power and majesty be thine for ever!"

And Kai Kaous answered and said, "O my Pehliva, may thy days be blessed unto the end!"

Then he invited him to feast with him, and they drank wine till far into the night, and held counsel together how they should act; and slaves poured rich gifts before Rustem, and the nobles rejoiced, and all was well again within the gates of the King.

Then when the sun had risen and clothed the world with love, the clarions of war were sounded throughout the city, and men made them ready to go forth in enmity before the Turks. And the legions of Persia came forth at the behest of their Shah, and their countless thousands hid the earth under their feet, and the air was darkened by their spears. And when they were come unto the plains where stood the fortress of Hujir, they set up their tents as was their manner. So the watchman saw them from the battlements, and he set up a great cry. And Sohrab heard the cry, and questioned the man wherefore he shouted; and when he learned that the enemy were come, he rejoiced, and demanded a cup of wine, and drank to their destruction. Then he called forth Human and showed him the army, and bade him be of good cheer, for he said that he saw within its ranks no hero of mighty mace who could stand against himself. So he bade his warriors to a banquet of wine, and he said that they would feast until the time was come to meet their foes in battle. And they did as Sohrab said.

Now when night had thrown her mantle over the earth, Rustem came before the Shah and craved that he would suffer him to go forth beyond the camp that he might see what manner of man was this stripling. And Kai Kaous granted his request, and said that it was worthy a Pehliva of renown. Then Rustem went forth disguised in the garb of a Turk, and he entered the castle in secret, and he came within the chamber where Sohrab held his feast. Now when he had looked upon the boy he saw that he was like to a tall cypress of good sap, and that his arms were sinewy and strong like to the flanks of a camel, and that his stature was that of a hero. And he saw that round about him stood brave warriors. And slaves with golden bugles poured wine before them, and they were all glad, neither did they dream of sorrow. Then it came about that while Rustem regarded them, Zindeh changed his seat and came nigh unto the spot where Rustem was watching. Now Zindeh was brother unto Tahmineh, and she had sent him forth with her son that he might point out to him his father, whom he alone knew of all the army, and she did it that harm might not befall if the heroes should meet in battle. Now Zindeh, when he had changed his seat, thought that he espied a watcher, and he strode toward the place where Rustem was hid, and he came before him and said -- 

"Who art thou? Come forth into the light that I may behold thy face."

But ere he could speak further, Rustem had lifted up his hand and struck him, and laid him dead upon the ground.

Now Sohrab, when he saw that Zindeh was gone out, was disquieted, and he asked of his slaves wherefore the hero returned not unto the banquet. So they went forth to seek him, and when they had found him in his blood, they came and told Sohrab what they had seen. But Sohrab would not believe it; so he ran to the spot and bade them bring torches, and all the warriors and singing girls followed after him. Then when Sohrab saw that it was true he was sore grieved; but he suffered not that the banquet be ended, for he would not that the spirits of his men be damped with pity. So they went back yet again to the feast.

Meanwhile Rustem returned him to the camp, and as he would have entered the lines he encountered Gew, who went around to see that all was safe. And Gew, when he saw a tall man clad In the garb of a Turk, drew his sword and held himself ready for combat. But Rustem smiled and opened his mouth, and Gew knew his voice, and came to him and questioned him what he did without in the darkness. And Rustem told him. Then he went before Kai Kaous also and related what he had seen, and how no man like unto Sohrab was yet come forth from amid the Turks. And he likened him unto Saum, the son of Neriman.

Now when the morning was come, Sohrab put on his armour. Then he went unto a height whence he could look down over the camp of the Iranians. And he took with him Hujir, and spake to him, saying:

"Seek not to deceive me, nor swerve from the paths of truth. For if thou reply unto my questions with sincerity, I will loosen thy bonds and give thee treasures; but if thou deceive me, thou shalt languish till death in thy chains."

And Hujir said, "I will give answer unto thee according to my knowledge."

Then Sohrab said, "I am about to question thee concerning the nobles whose camps are spread beneath our feet, and thou shalt name unto me those whom I point out. Behold yon tent of gold brocade, adorned with skins of leopard, before whose doors stand an hundred elephants of war. Within its gates is a throne of turquoise, and over it floateth a standard of violet with a moon and sun worked in its centre. Tell unto me now whose is this pavilion that standeth thus in the midst of the whole camp?"

And Hujir replied, "It pertaineth unto the Shah of Iran."

Then Sohrab said, "I behold on its right hand yet another tent draped in the colours of mourning, and above it floateth a standard whereon is worked an elephant."

And Hujir said, "It is the tent of Tus, the son of Nuder, for he beareth an elephant as his ensign."

Then Sohrab said, "Whose is the camp in which stand many warriors clad in rich armour? A flag of gold with a lion worked upon it waveth along its field."

And Hujir said, "It belongeth unto Gudarz the brave. And those who stand about it are his sons, for eighty men of might are sprung from his loins."

Then Sohrab said, "To whom belongeth the tent draped with green tissues? Before its doors is planted the flag of Kawah. I see upon its throne a Pehliva, nobler of mien than all his fellows, whose head striketh the stars. And beside him standeth a steed tall as he, and his standard showeth a lion and a writhing dragon."

When Hujir heard this question he thought within himself, "If I tell unto this lion the signs whereby he may know Rustem the Pehliva, surely he will fall upon him and seek to destroy him. It will beseem me better, therefore, to keep silent, and to omit his name from the list of the heroes." So he said unto Sohrab:

"This is some ally who is come unto Kai Kaous from far Cathay, and his name is not known unto me."

And Sohrab when he heard it was downcast, and his heart was sad that he could nowhere discover Rustem; and though it seemed unto him that he beheld the marks whereby his mother said that he would know him, he could not credit the words of his eyes against the words of Hujir. Still he asked yet again the name of the warrior, and yet again Hujir denied it unto him, for it was written that that should come to pass which had been decreed. But Sohrab ceased not from his questionings. And he asked:

"Who dwelleth beneath the standard with the head of a wolf?"

And Hujir said, "It is Gew, the son of Gudarz, who dwelleth within that tent, and men call him Gew the valiant."

Then Sohrab said, "Whose is the seat over which are raised awnings and brocades of Roum, that glisten with gold in the sunlight?"

And Hujir said, "It is the throne of Fraburz, the son of the Shah."

Then Sohrab said, "It beseemeth the son of a Shah to surround himself with such splendour."

And he pointed unto a tent with trappings of yellow that was encircled by flags of many colours. And he questioned of its owner.

And Hujir said, "Guraz the lion-hearted is master therein."

Then Sohrab, when he could not learn the tent of his father, questioned Hujir concerning Rustem, and he asked yet a third time of the green tent. Yet Hujir ever replied that he knew not the name of its master. And when Sohrab pressed him concerning Rustem, he said that Rustem lingered in Zaboulistan, for it was the feast of roses. But Sohrab refused to give ear unto the thought that Kai Kaous should go forth to battle without the aid of Rustem, whose might none could match. So he said unto Hujir:

"And thou show not unto me the tents of Rustem, I will strike thy head from off thy shoulders, and the world shall fade before thine eyes. Choose, therefore, the truth or thy life."

And Hujir thought within himself, "Though five score men cannot withstand Rustem when he be roused to battle-fury, my mind misgiveth me that he may have found his equal in this boy. And, for that the stripling is younger, it might come about that he subdue the Pehliva. What recketh my life against the weal of Iran? I will therefore abandon me into his hands rather than show unto him the marks of Rustem the Pehliva. So he said:

"Why seekest thou to know Rustem the Pehliva? Surely thou wilt know him in battle, and he shall strike thee dumb, and quell thy pride of youth. Yet I will not show him unto thee."

When Sohrab heard these words he raised his sword and smote Hujir, and made an end of him with a great blow. Then he made himself ready for fight, and leaped upon his steed of battle, and he rode till he came unto the camp of the Iranians, and he broke down the barriers with his spear, and fear seized upon all men when they beheld his stalwart form and majesty of mien and action. Then Sohrab opened his mouth, and his voice of thunder was heard even unto the far ends of the camp. And he spake words of pride, and called forth the Shah to do battle with him, and he sware with a loud voice that the blood of Zindeh should be avenged. Now when Sohrab's voice had run throughout the camp, confusion spread within its borders, and none of those who stood about the throne would accept his challenge for the Shah. And with one accord they said that Rustem was their sole support, and that his sword alone could cause the sun to weep. And Tus sped him within the courts of Rustem. And Rustem said:

"The hardest tasks doth Kai Kaous ever lay upon me."

But the nobles would not suffer him to linger, neither to waste time in words, and they buckled upon him his armour, and they threw his leopard-skin about him, and they saddled Rakush, and made ready the hero for the strife. And they pushed him forth, and called after him:

"Haste, haste, for no common combat awaiteth thee, for verily Ahriman standeth before us."

Now when Rustem was come before Sohrab, and beheld the youth, brave and strong, with a breast like unto Saum, he said to him:

"Let us go apart from hence, and step forth from out the lines of the armies."

For there was a zone between the camps that none might pass. And Sohrab assented to the demand of Rustem, and they stepped out into it, and made them ready for single combat. But when Sohrab would have fallen upon him, the soul of Rustem melted with compassion, and he desired to save a boy thus fair and valiant. So he said unto him:

"O young man, the air is warm and soft, but the earth is cold. I have pity upon thee, and would not take from thee the boon of life. Yet if we combat together, surely thou wilt fall by my hands, for none have withstood my power, neither men nor Deevs nor dragons. Desist, therefore, from this enterprise, and quit the ranks of Turan, for Iran hath need of heroes like unto thee."

Now while Rustem spake thus, the heart of Sohrab went out to him. And he looked at him wistfully, and said:

"O hero, I am about to put unto thee a question, and I entreat of thee that thou reply to me according to the truth. Tell unto me thy name, that my heart may rejoice in thy words, for it seemeth unto me that thou art none other than Rustem, the son of Zal, the son of Saum, the son of Neriman,"

But Rustem replied, "Thou errest, I am not Rustem, neither am I sprung from the race of Neriman. Rustem is a Pehliva, but I, I am a slave, and own neither a crown nor a throne,"

These words spake Rustem that Sohrab might be afraid when he beheld his prowess, and deem that yet greater might was hidden in the camp of his enemy. But Sohrab when he heard these words was sad, and his hopes that were risen so high were shattered, and the day that had looked so bright was made dark unto his eyes. Then he made him ready for the combat, and they fought, until their spears were shivered and their swords hacked like unto saws. And when all their weapons were bent, they betook them into clubs, and they waged war with these until they were broken. Then they strove until their mail was torn and their horses spent with exhaustion, and even then they could not desist, but wrestled with one another with their hands till that the sweat and blood ran down from their bodies. And they contended until their throats were parched and their bodies weary, and to neither was given the victory. They stayed them a while to rest, and Rustem thought within his mind how all his days he had not coped with such a hero. And it seemed to him that his contest with the White Deev had been as nought to this.

Now when they had rested a while they fell to again, and they fought with arrows, but still none could surpass the other. Then Rustem strove to hurl Sohrab from his steed, but it availed him naught, and he could shake him no more than the mountain can be moved from its seat. So they betook themselves again unto clubs, and Sohrab aimed at Rustem with might and smote him, and Rustem reeled beneath the stroke, and bit his lips in agony. Then Sohrab vaunted his advantage, and bade Rustem go and measure him with his equals; for though his strength be great, he could not stand against a youth. So they went their ways, and Rustem fell upon the men of Turan, and spread confusion far and wide among their ranks; and Sohrab raged along the lines of Iran, and men and horses fell under his hands. And Rustem was sad in his soul, and he turned with sorrow into his camp. But when he saw the destruction Sohrab had wrought his anger was kindled, and he reproached the youth, and challenged him to come forth yet again to single combat. But because that the day was far spent they resolved to rest until the morrow.

Then Rustem went before Kai Kaous and told him of this boy of valour, and he prayed unto Ormuzd that He would give him strength to vanquish his foe. Yet he made ready also his house lest he should fall in the fight, and he commanded that a tender message be borne unto Rudabeh, and he sent words of comfort unto Zal, his father. And Sohrab, too, in his camp lauded the might of Rustem, and he said how the battle had been sore, and how his mind had misgiven him of the issue. And he spake unto Human, saying:

"My mind is filled with thoughts of this aged man, mine adversary, for it would seem unto me that his stature is like unto mine, and that I behold about him the tokens that my mother recounted unto me. And my heart goeth out toward him, and I muse if it be Rustem, my father. For it behoveth me not to combat him. Wherefore, I beseech thee, tell unto me how this may be."

But Human answered and said, "Oft have I looked upon the face of Rustem in battle, and mine eyes have beheld his deeds of valour; but this man in no wise resembleth him, nor is his manner of wielding his club the same."

These things spake Human in his vileness, because that Afrasiyab had enjoined him to lead Sohrab into destruction. And Sohrab held his peace, but he was not wholly satisfied.

Now when the day had begun to lighten the sky and clear away the shadows, Rustem and Sohrab strode forth unto the midway spot that stretched between the armies. And Sohrab bare in his hands a mighty club, and the garb of battle was upon him; but his mouth was full of smiles, and he asked of Rustem how he had rested, and he said:

"Wherefore hast thou prepared thy heart for battle? Cast from thee, I beg, this mace and sword of vengeance, and let us doff our armour, and seat ourselves together in amity, and let wine soften our angry deeds. For it seemeth unto me that this conflict is impure. And if thou wilt listen to my desires, my heart shall speak to thee of love, and I will make the tears of shame spring up into thine eyes. And for this cause I ask thee yet again, tell me thy name, neither hide it any longer, for I behold that thou art of noble race. And it would seem unto me that thou art Rustem, the chosen one, the Lord of Zaboulistan, the son of Zal, the son of Saum the hero."

But Rustem answered, "O hero of tender age, we are not come forth to parley but to combat, and mine ears are sealed against thy words of lure. I am an old man, and thou art young, but we are girded for battle, and the Master of the world shall decide between us."

Then Sohrab said, "O man of many years, wherefore wilt thou not listen to the counsel of a stripling? I desired that thy soul should leave thee upon thy bed, but thou hast elected to perish in the combat. That which is ordained must be done, therefore let us make ready for the conflict."

So they made them ready, and when they had bound their steeds they fell upon each other, and the crash of their encounter was heard like thunder throughout the camps. And they measured their strength from the morning until the setting of the sun. And when the day was about to vanish, Sohrab seized upon Rustem by the girdle and threw him upon the ground, and kneeled upon him, and drew forth his sword from the scabbard, and would have severed his head from his trunk. Then Rustem knew that only wile could save him. So he opened his mouth and said:

"O young man, thou knowest not the customs of the combat. It is written in the laws of honour that he who overthroweth a brave man for the first time should not destroy him, but preserve him for fight a second time, then only is it given unto him to kill his adversary."

And Sohrab listened to Rustem's words of craft and stayed his hand, and he let the warrior go, and because that the day was ended he sought to fight no more, but turned him aside and chased the deer until the night was spent. Then came to him Human, and asked of the adventures of the day. And Sohrab told him how he had vanquished the tall man, and how he had granted him freedom. And Human reproached him with his folly, and said:

"Alas! young man, thou didst fall into a snare, for this is not the custom among the brave. And now perchance thou wilt yet fall under the hands of this warrior."

Sohrab was abashed when he heard the words of Human, but he said:

"Be not grieved, for in an hour we meet again in battle, and verily he will not stand a third time against my youthful strength."

Now while Sohrab was thus doing, Rustem was gone beside a running brook, and laved his limbs, and prayed to God in his distress. And he entreated of Ormuzd that He would grant him such strength that the victory must be his. And Ormuzd heard him, and gave to him such strength that the rock whereon Rustem stood gave way under his feet, because it had not power to bear him. Then Rustem saw it was too much, and he prayed yet again that part thereof be taken from him. And once more Ormuzd listened to his voice. Then when the time for combat was come, Rustem turned him to the meeting-place, and his heart was full of cares and his face of fears. But Sohrab came forth like a giant refreshed, and he ran at Rustem like to a mad elephant, and he cried with a voice of thunder:

"O thou who didst flee from battle, wherefore art thou come out once more against me? But I say unto thee, this time shall thy words of guile avail thee naught."

And Rustem, when he heard him, and looked upon him, was seized with misgiving, and he learned to know fear. So he prayed to Ormuzd that He would restore to him the power He had taken back. But he suffered not Sohrab to behold his fears, and they made them ready for the fight. And he closed upon Sohrab with all his new-found might, and shook him terribly, and though Sohrab returned his attacks with vigour, the hour of his overthrow was come. For Rustem took him by the girdle and hurled him unto the earth, and he broke his back like to a reed, and he drew forth his sword to sever his body. Then Sohrab knew it was the end, and he gave a great sigh, and writhed in his agony, and he said:

"That which is come about, it is my fault, and henceforward will my youth be a theme of derision among the people. But I sped not forth for empty glory, but I went out to seek my father; for my mother had told me by what tokens I should know him, and I perish for longing after him. And now have my pains been fruitless, for it hath not been given unto me to look upon his face. Yet I say unto thee, if thou shouldest become a fish that swimmeth in the depths of the ocean, if thou shouldest change into a star that is concealed in the farthest heaven, my father would draw thee forth from thy hiding-place, and avenge my death upon thee when he shall learn that the earth is become my bed. For my father is Rustem the Pehliva, and it shall be told unto him how that Sohrab his son perished in the quest after his face."

When Rustem heard these words his sword fell from out of his grasp, and he was shaken with dismay. And there broke from his heart a groan as of one whose heart was racked with anguish. And the earth became dark before his eyes, and he sank down lifeless beside his son. But when he had opened his eyes once more, he cried unto Sohrab in the agony of his spirit. And he said:

"Bearest thou about thee a token of Rustem, that I may know that the words which thou speakest are true? For I am Rustem the unhappy, and may my name be struck from the lists of men!"

When Sohrab heard these words his misery was boundless, and he cried:

"If thou art indeed my father, then hast thou stained thy sword in the life-blood of thy son. And thou didst it of thine obstinacy. For I sought to turn thee unto love, and I implored of thee thy name, for I thought to behold in thee the tokens recounted of my mother. But I appealed unto thy heart in vain, and now is the time gone by for meeting. Yet open, I beseech thee, mine armour and regard the jewel upon mine arm. For it is an onyx given unto me by my father, as a token whereby he should know me."

Then Rustem did as Sohrab bade him, and he opened his mail and saw the onyx; and when he had seen it he tore his clothes in his distress, and he covered his head with ashes. And the tears of penitence ran from his eyes, and he roared aloud in his sorrow. But Sohrab said:

"It is in vain, there is no remedy. Weep not, therefore, for doubtless it was written that this should be."

Now when the sun was set, and Rustem returned not to the camp, the nobles of Iran were afraid, and they went forth to seek him. And when they were gone but a little way they came upon Rakush, and when they saw that he was alone they raised a wailing, for they deemed that of a surety Rustem was perished. And they went and told Kai Kaous thereof, and he said:

"Let Tus go forth and see if this indeed be so, and if Rustem be truly fallen, let the drums call men unto battle that we may avenge him upon this Turk."

Now Sohrab, when he beheld afar off the men that were come out to seek Rustem, turned to his father and said:

"I entreat of thee that thou do unto me an act of love. Let not the Shah fall upon the men of Turan, for they came not forth in enmity to him but to do my desire, and on my head alone resteth this expedition. Wherefore I desire not that they should perish when I can defend them no longer. As for me, I came like the thunder and I vanish like the wind, but perchance it is given unto us to meet again above."

Then Rustem promised to do the desires of Sohrab. And he went before the men of Iran, and when they beheld him yet alive they set up a great shout, but when they saw that his clothes were torn, and that he bare about him the marks of sorrow, they asked of him what was come to pass. Then he told them how he had caused a noble son to perish. And they were grieved for him, and joined in his wailing. Then he bade one among them to go forth into the camp of Turan, and deliver this message unto Human. And he sent word unto him, saying:

"The sword of vengeance must slumber in the scabbard. Thou art now leader of the host; return, therefore, whence thou camest, and depart across the river ere many days be fallen. As for me, I will fight no more, yet neither will I speak unto thee again, for thou didst hide from my son the tokens of his father, of thine iniquity thou didst lead him into this pit."

Then when he had thus spoken, Rustem turned him yet again to his son. And the nobles went with him, and they beheld Sohrab, and heard his groans of pain. And Rustem, when he saw the agony of the boy, was beside himself, and would have made an end of his own life, but the nobles suffered it not, and stayed his hand. Then Rustem remembered him that Kai Kaous had a balm mighty to heal. And he prayed Gudarz go before the Shah, and bear unto him a message of entreaty from Rustem his servant. And he said:

"O Shah, if ever I have done that which was good in thy sight, if ever my hand have been of avail unto thee, recall now my benefits in the hour of my need, and have pity upon my dire distress. Send unto me, I pray thee, of the balm that is among thy treasures, that my son may be healed by thy grace."

And Gudarz outstripped the whirlwind in his speed to bear unto the Shah this message. But the heart of Kai Kaous was hardened, and he remembered not the benefits he had received from Rustem, and he recalled only the proud words that he had spoken before him. And he was afraid lest the might of Sohrab be joined to that of his father, and that together they prove mightier than he, and turn upon him. So he shut his ear unto the cry of his Pehliva. And Gudarz bore back the answer of the Shah, and he said:

"The heart of Kai Kaous is flinty, and his evil nature is like to a bitter gourd that ceaseth never to bear fruit. Yet I counsel thee, go before him thyself, and see if peradventure thou soften this rock."

And Rustem in his grief did as Gudarz counselled, and turned to go before the Shah, but he was not come before him ere a messenger overtook him, and told unto him that Sohrab was departed from the world. Then Rustem set up a wailing such as the earth hath not heard the like of, and he heaped reproaches upon himself, and he could not cease from plaining the son that was fallen by his hands. And he cried continually:

"I that am old have killed my son. I that am strong have uprooted this mighty boy. I have torn the heart of my child, I have laid low the head of a Pehliva."

Then he made a great fire, and flung into it his tent of many colours, and his trappings of Roum, his saddle, and his leopard-skin, his armour well tried in battle, and all the appurtenances of his throne. And he stood by and looked on to see his pride laid in the dust. And he tore his flesh, and cried aloud:

"My heart is sick unto death."

Then he commanded that Sohrab be swathed in rich brocades of gold worthy his body. And when they had enfolded him, and Rustem learned that the Turanians had quitted the borders, he made ready his army to return unto Zaboulistan. And the nobles marched before the bier, and their heads were covered with ashes, and their garments were torn. And the drums of the war-elephants were shattered, and the cymbals broken, and the tails of the horses were shorn to the root, and all the signs of mourning were abroad.

Now Zal, when he saw the host returning thus in sorrow, marvelled what was come about; for he beheld Rustem at their head, wherefore he knew that the wailing was not for his son. And he came before Rustem and questioned him. And Rustem led him unto the bier and showed unto him the youth that was like in feature and in might unto Saum the son of Neriman, and he told him all that was come to pass, and how this was his son, who in years was but an infant, but a hero in battle. And Rudabeh too came out to behold the child, and she joined her lamentations unto theirs. Then they built for Sohrab a tomb like to a horse's hoof, and Rustem laid him therein in a chamber of gold perfumed with ambergris. And he covered him with brocades of gold. And when it was done, the house of Rustem grew like to a grave, and its courts were filled with the voice of sorrow. And no joy would enter into the heart of Rustem, and it was long before he held high his head.

Meantime the news spread even unto Turan, and there too did all men grieve and weep for the child of prowess that was fallen in his bloom. And the King of Samengan tore his vestments, but when his daughter learned it she was beside herself with affliction. And Tahmineh cried after her son, and bewailed the evil fate that had befallen him, and she heaped black earth upon her head, and tore her hair, and wrung her hands, and rolled on the ground in her agony. And her mouth was never weary of plaining. Then she caused the garments of Sohrab to be brought unto her, and his throne and his steed. And she regarded them, and stroked the courser and poured tears upon his hoofs, and she cherished the robes as though they yet contained her boy, and she pressed the head of the palfrey unto her breast, and she kissed the helmet that Sohrab had worn. Then with his sword she cut off the tail of his steed and set fire unto the house of Sohrab, and she gave his gold and jewels unto the poor. And when a year had thus rolled over her bitterness, the breath departed from out her body, and her spirit went forth after Sohrab her son.



Chapter VI

The Seven Sleepers Of Ephesus


One of the most picturesque myths of ancient days is that told by Jacques de Voragine, in his "Legenda Aurea":

"The seven sleepers were natives of Ephesus. The Emperor Decius, who persecuted the Christians, having come to Ephesus, ordered the erection of temples in the city, that all might come and sacrifice before him; and he commanded that the Christians should be sought out and given their choice, either to worship the idols, or to die. So great was the consternation in the city, that the friend denounced his friend, the father his son, and the son his father.

"Now there were in Ephesus seven Christians, Maximian, Malchus, Marcian, Dionysius, John, Serapion, and Constantine by name. These refused to sacrifice to the idols, and remained in their houses praying and fasting. They were accused before Decius, and they confessed themselves to be Christians. However, the Emperor gave them a little time to consider what line they would adopt. They took advantage of this reprieve to dispense their goods among the poor, and they retired, all seven, to Mount Celion, where they determined to conceal themselves.

"One of their number, Malchus, in the disguise of a physician, went to the town to obtain victuals. Decius, who had been absent from Ephesus for a little while, returned, and gave orders for the seven to be sought. Malchus, having escaped from the town, fled, full of fear, to his comrades, and told them of the Emperor's fury. They were much alarmed; and Malchus handed them the loaves he had bought, bidding them eat, that, fortified by the food, they might have courage in the time of trial. They ate, and then, as they sat weeping and speaking to one another, by the will of God they fell asleep.

"The pagans sought everywhere, but could not find them, and Decius was greatly irritated at their escape. He had their parents brought before him, and threatened them with death if they did not reveal the place of concealment; but they could only answer that the seven young men had distributed their goods to the poor, and that they were quite ignorant as to their whereabouts.

"Decius, thinking it possible that they might be hiding in a cavern, blocked up the mouth with stones, that they might perish of hunger."

*    *    *    *    *

"Three hundred and sixty years passed, and in the thirtieth year of the reign of Theodosius, there broke forth a heresy denying the resurrection of the dead.

"Now, it happened that an Ephesian was building a stable on the side of Mount Celion, and finding a pile of stones handy, he took them for his edifice, and thus opened the mouth of the cave. Then the seven sleepers awoke, and it was to them as if they had slept but a single night. They began to ask Malchus what decision Decius had given concerning them.

"'He is going to hunt us down, so as to force us to sacrifice to the idols,' was his reply. 'God knows,' replied Maximian, 'we shall never do that.' Then exhorting his companions, he urged Malchus to go back to the town to buy some more bread, and at the same time to obtain fresh information. Malchus took five coins and left the cavern. On seeing the stones he was filled with astonishment; however, he went on toward the city; but what was his bewilderment, on approaching the gate, to see over it a cross! He went to another gate, and there he beheld the same sacred sign; and so he observed it over each gate of the city. He believed that he was suffering from the effects of a dream. Then he entered Ephesus, rubbing his eyes, and he walked to a baker's shop. He heard people using our Lord's name, and he was the more perplexed. 'Yesterday, no one dared pronounce the name of Jesus, and now it is on every one's lips. Wonderful! I can hardly believe myself to be in Ephesus.' He asked a passer-by the name of the city, and on being told that it was Ephesus, he was thunderstruck. Now he entered a baker's shop, and laid down his money. The baker, examining the coin, inquired whether he had found a treasure, and began to whisper to some others in the shop. The youth, thinking that he was discovered, and that they were about to conduct him to the emperor, implored them to let him alone, offering to leave loaves and money if he might only be suffered to escape. But the shop-men seizing him, said, 'Whoever you are, you have found a treasure; show us where it is, that we may share it with you, and then we will hide you.' Malchus was too frightened to answer. So they put a rope round his neck, and drew him through the streets into the marketplace. The news soon spread that the young man had discovered a great treasure, and there was presently a vast crowd about him. He stoutly protested his innocence. No one recognised him, and his eyes, ranging over the faces which surrounded him, could not see one which he had known, or which was in the slightest degree familiar to him.

"St. Martin, the bishop, and Antipater, the governor, having heard of the excitement, ordered the young man to be brought before them, along with the bakers.

"The bishop and the governor asked him where he had found the treasure, and he replied that he had found none, but that the few coins were from his own purse. He was next asked whence he came. He replied that he was a native of Ephesus, 'if this be Ephesus.'

"'Send for your relations -- your parents, if they live here,' ordered the governor.

"'They live here certainly,' replied the youth; and he mentioned their names. No such names were known in the town. Then the governor exclaimed, 'How dare you say that this money belonged to your parents when it dates back three hundred and seventy-seven years, and is as old as the beginning of the reign of Decius, and it is utterly unlike our modern coinage? Do you think to impose on the old men and sages of Ephesus? Believe me, I shall make you suffer the severities of the law till you show where you made the discovery.'

"'I implore you,' cried Malchus, 'in the name of God, answer me a few questions, and then I will answer yours. Where is the Emperor Decius gone to?'

"The bishop answered,'My son, there is no emperor of that name; he who was thus called died long ago.'

"Malchus replied, 'All I hear perplexes me more and more. Follow me, and I will show you my comrades, fled with me into a cave of Mount Celion, only yesterday, to escape the cruelty of Decius. I will lead you to them.'

"The bishop turned to the governor. 'The hand of God is here,' he said. Then they followed, and a great crowd after them. And Malchus entered first into the cavern to his companions, and the bishop after him. And there they saw the martyrs seated in the cave, with their faces fresh and blooming as roses; so all fell down and glorified God. The bishop and the governor sent notice to Theodosius, and he hurried to Ephesus. All the inhabitants met him and conducted him to the cavern. As soon as the saints beheld the Emperor, their faces shone like the sun, and the Emperor gave thanks unto God, and embraced them, and said, 'I see you, as though I saw the Saviour restoring Lazarus.' Maximian replied, 'Believe us! for the faith's sake, God has resuscitated us before the great resurrection day, in order that you may believe firmly in the resurrection of the dead. For as the child is in its mother's womb living and not suffering, so have we lived without suffering, fast asleep.' And having thus spoken, they bowed their heads, and their souls returned to their Maker. The Emperor, rising, bent over them and embraced them weeping. He gave them orders for golden reliquaries to be made, but that night they appeared to him in a dream, and said that hitherto they had slept in the earth, and that in the earth they desired to sleep on till God should raise them again."



Chapter VII

Guy Of Warwick


Of all the nobles of Britain none was so strong as Rohand, Earl of Warwick, Rockingham, and Oxford. He made just laws, and made them to be obeyed; nor king nor baron in the land could buy his favour with fine words or gold, or shield the wrong-doer from his punishment. Passing fair was Felice, his daughter, like some stately marble shaft of perfect mould; haughty was she as the great gerfalcon which spurns the earth and towers up into the noon to look the burning sun in the face. Wise masters, hoar with learning, came out from Toulouse to teach her the seven arts and sciences, until there was not her like for wisdom anywhere.

Earl Rohand had a favourite page, named Guy, son of his just and upright steward, Segard of Wallingford; a brave and fearless youth, of strong and well-knit frame, whom Heraud of Ardenne, his tutor, taught betimes to just with lance and sword, and how to hunt with hawk and hound by wood and river side.

It was the feast of Pentecost, when by old custom every maiden chose her love and every knight his leman. Guy, clad in a new silken dress, being made cup-bearer at the banquet table, saw for the first time the beautiful Felice, as, kneeling, he offered the golden ewer and basin and demask napkin to wash her finger-tips before the banquet. Thenceforward he became so love-stricken with her beauty that he heard not the music of the glee-men, saw neither games nor tourneys, but dured in a dream, like one crazed, all through the fourteen days festival. Knights and fair dames praised his handsome figure and well grown sinewy limbs; he heeded not -- but once Felice gave him a courteous word as he offered her the wine-cup; he blushed and stammered and spilled the wine, and was rebuked for awkwardness.

The feast being over, Guy went away to his chamber, and there fell into a great love-sickness. Hopeless it seemed for a vassal to love one so far above him as his sovereign's daughter; so he gave himself up to despair, and his disease grew so sore that the most skilful leeches of Earl Rohand's court were unable to cure his complaint. In vain they let him of blood or gave him salve or potion. "There is no medicine of any avail," the leeches said. Guy murmured, "Felice: if one might find and bring Felice to me, I yet might live." "Felice?" the leeches said among themselves, and shook their heads, "It is not in the herbal. Felice? Felix? No, there is no plant of that name."

"No herb is Felice," sighing answered Guy, "but a flower -- the fairest flower that grows."

"He is light-headed," they said. "The flower Felice? He seeks perchance the flower of happiness, growing in the garden of the blessed, away in Paradise. He is surely near his end."

"It is truly Paradise where Felice is," Guy answered,

"You hear? You see," the leeches whispered one to another. "Come, let us go; for we can be of no more good."

Night came, and being left alone Guy thought to rise up from his bed and drag himself into the presence of his mistress, there to die at her feet. So weak was he become, he scarce could stand, but fainted many times upon the way.

Now Felice had heard many whisperings how Guy was dying for love of her, since her handmaidens had compassion on the youth, and sought to turn her heart toward him; but Felice was in no mind to have a page for a lover. Howbeit on this very night she had a dream, wherein being straitly enjoined to entreat the youth with kindness as the only way to save a life which would hereafter be of great service to the world, she arose and came to a bower in the garden where Guy lay swooning on the floor. Felice would not stoop to help him, but her maids having restored him to his senses, Guy fell at her feet and poured out all his love before her. Never a word answered Felice, but stood calmly regarding him with haughty coldness. Then said one of her maids, "O lady! were I the richest king's daughter in the land, I could not turn away from love so strong and true." Felice rebuked her, saying, "Could not? Silly child, see that your soft heart do not prove your shame." So with a tingling cheek the maid withdrew abashed. Then said Felice to Guy, "Why kneel there weeping like a girl? Get up, and show if there is the making of a man in you. Hear what I have to say. The swan mates not with the swallow, and I will never wed beneath me. Prove that your love is not presumption. Show yourself my peer. For I could love a brave and valiant knight before whose spear men bowed as to a king, nor would I ask his parentage, prouder far to know that my children took their nobleness from a self-made nobleman. But a weeping, love-sick page! No! Go, fight and battle -- show me something that you do that I can love. Meantime I look for such a lover, and I care not if his name be Guy the page."

Then Guy took heart and said, "Lady, I ask no better boon than to have you for witness of what love for you can do."

Felice answered, "Deeds, not words. Be strong and valiant. I will watch and I will wait."

Then Guy took leave of his mistress and in the course of a few days regained his health, to the surprise of all the court, but more especially of the leeches who had given him over for dead, and coming to Earl Rohand, entreated him to make him a knight. To this Earl Rohand having agreed, Guy was knighted at the next feast of Holy Trinity with a dubbing worthy a king's son; and they brought him rich armour, and a good sword and spear and shield, and a noble steed with costly trappings, together with rich silken cloaks and mantles fur-trimmed, and of great price. Then bidding farewell to Segard his father, Sir Guy left Warwick with Heraud his tutor, and Sir Thorold and Sir Urry for company, and having reached the nearest seaport, set sail for Normandy in search of adventures wherein to prove his valour.

They came to Rouen, and whilst they tarried at an inn a tournament was proclaimed in honour of the fair Blancheflor, daughter to Regnier, Emperor of Germany, and the prize was the hand of the Princess, a white horse, two white hounds, and a white falcon. So Sir Guy and his companions rode into the lists, where was a great company of proven knights and champions. Three days they tourneyed, but none could withstand Sir Guy's strong arm. He overthrew Otho Duke of Pavia, Sir Garie the Emperor's son, Regnier Duke of Sessoyne, the Duke of Lowayne, and many more, till not a man was left who dared encounter him; and being master of the field, he was adjudged the prize. The horse and hounds and falcon he sent by two messengers to Felice in England as trophies of his valour. Then he knelt before the beautiful Princess Blancheflor and said, "Lady, I battle in honour of my mistress, the peerless Felice, and am her servant," whereat the Emperor and his daughter, admiring his constancy, loaded him with rich presents and allowed him to depart.

Sir Guy then travelled through Spain, Lombardy, and Almayne, into far lands; and wheresoever a tournament was held, there he went and justed, coming out victor from them all; till the fame of his exploits spread over Christendom. So a year passed, and he returned to England unconquered, and renowned as the most valiant knight of his time. A while he sojourned in London with King Athelstan, who rejoiced to do him honour; then he came to Warwick, where he received from Earl Rohand a princely welcome. Then Sir Guy hastened to Felice.

"Fair mistress," said he, "have I now won your love? You have heard my deeds, how I have travelled all through Christendom, and have yet found no man stand against my spear. I have been faithful in my love, Felice, as well as strong in fight. I might have wedded with the best. King's daughters and princesses were prizes in the tournaments; but I had no mind for any prize but thee. Say, is it mine, sweet mistress?"

Then Felice kissed her knight and answered, "Right nobly have you won my love and worship, brave Sir Guy. You are more than my peer; you are become my sovereign; and my love pays willing homage to its lord. But for this same cause I will not wed you yet. I will not have men point at me and say, 'There is a woman who for selfish love's sake, wedded the knight of most renown in Christendom ere yet he did his bravest deeds-drew him from his level to her own-made him lay by his sword and spear for the slothful pleasures of a wedded life, and dwarfed a brave man down to a soft gentleman.' Nay, dear one, I can wait, and very proudly, knowing myself your chiefest prize. But seek not to possess the prize too soon, lest your strivings for renown, being aimless, should wax feeble. It is because I love you that I hold your fame far dearer than my love. Go rather forth again, travel through heathen lands, defend the weak against the strong; go, battle for the right, show yourself the matchless knight you are; and God and my love go with thee."

Then Sir Guy got him ready for his new quest. Earl Rohand tried to persuade him to remain at home, as likewise did his father Segard; and his mother, weeping, prayed him stay. She said, "Another year it may not fare so well with thee, my son. Leave well alone. Felice is cold and proud and cares not for thee, else she would not risk thy life again. What is it to her? If thou wert slain she would get another lover; we have no more sons."

Yet would not Sir Guy be turned from his purpose, but embarked with his companions, Sir Heraud, Sir Thorold, and Sir Urry, for Flanders. Thence he rode through Spain, Germany, and Lombardy, and bore away the prize at every tournament. But coming into Italy, he got a bad wound jousting at Beneventum, which greatly weakened him.

Duke Otho of Pavia, whom Sir Guy overthrew in his first tournament at Rouen, thought now to be avenged on him. So he set a chosen knight, Earl Lombard, with fifteen other knights to lie in ambush in a wood and slay Sir Guy; and as Sir Guy, with his three companions, came ambling slowly through the wood, he smarting and well-nigh faint with his wound, the men in ambush broke out from their concealment and called on him to yield. The danger made him forget his pain, and straightway he dressed his shield and spurred among them.

Sir Heraud, Sir Thorold, and Sir Urry killed the three first knights they rode against. Then Earl Lombard slew Sir Urry; and at the same time Hugo, nephew to Duke Otho, laid Sir Thorold dead at his horse's feet. Then only Sir Guy and Sir Heraud being left to fight, Sir Guy attacked Earl Lombard and smote him to the heart, whilst Sir Heraud chased Hugo, fleeing like a hound, and drove his spear throughout his body. Thus were Sir Urry and Sir Thorold avenged. But one of the felon knights, called Sir Gunter, smote Sir Heraud a mighty stroke when he was off his guard, and hewed his shield and coat of mail in pieces, and Sir Heraud fell to the earth covered with blood and lay as dead.

Thereupon Sir Guy's anger waxed furious at his master's death; and he spurred his horse so that fire rose from under its feet, and with one blow of his sword cleft Sir Gunter from his helmet to the pummel of his saddle. As for the other knights he slew them all except Sir Guichard, who fled on his swift steed to Pavia, and got back to Duke Otho.

Heavily Sir Guy grieved for the loss of his three friends, but most of all for his dear master Sir Heraud. He sought about the wood until he found a hermit. To him he gave a good steed, charging him to bury the bodies of Sir Urry and Sir Thorold. From Sir Heraud's body he would not part. Lifting the old knight to his arms, he laid him across his horse, and led the steed by the bridle-rein till they came to an abbey, where he left the body with the abbot, promising rich presents in return for giving it sumptuous burial with masses and chants. But Sir Guy departed and hid himself in a hermit's cave away from the malice of Duke Otho, until his wound should be healed.

Now there was in the abbey whither Heraud's body was taken, a monk well skilled in leech-craft, who knew the virtues of all manner of grasses and herbs. And this monk, finding by his craft that life still flickered in the body, nursed and tended it; and after a long while Sir Heraud was well enough to travel. Disguised as a palmer he came into Burgundy, and there, to his great joy, found Sir Guy, who had come thither meaning to take his way back to England. But they lingered still, till Heraud should grow stronger, and so it fell out that they came to St. Omers. There they heard how the Emperor Regnier had come up against Segwin, Duke of Lavayne, laid waste his land, and besieged him in his strong city Seysone, because he had slain Sadoc, the Emperor's cousin, in a tournament. But when Sir Guy learned that Sadoc had first provoked Duke Segwin, and brought his death upon himself, he determined to help Segwin against his sovereign the Emperor Regnier. He therefore gathered fifty knights together with Heraud, and coming secretly at night to the city of Seysone, was let in at a postern gate without the enemy being aware. In the morning after mass they made a sally against their foes, which numbered thirty thousand strong, and routed them, taking many noble prisoners. Three times the Emperor came against the Greeks, each time with a new army larger than before. Twice did Sir Guy vanquish the host, and drive them from the walls. The third time he took Sir Gaire, the Emperor's son, prisoner, and carried him into the city. Then the Emperor Regnier determined, since he could not take the place by assault, to beleaguer it, and starve the town into surrender. And it was so that, while his army was set down before the walls, the Emperor hunted alone in a wood hard by, and Sir Guy, meeting him there, gathered a branch of olive tree, and came bending to the Emperor, saying, "God save you, gentle sire. Duke Segwin sendeth me to make his peace with you. He will yield you all his lands and castles in burg and city, and hold them of you henceforth in vassalage, but he now would have your presence in the city to a feast." So the Emperor was forced to go with him into the city as a prisoner, albeit he was served with the humility due to a sovereign both by Sir Guy and Duke Segwin's knights. Sir Gaire and the other captive nobles came also and prayed for peace with Duke Segwin, for they had been so well treated that they felt nothing but the truest friendship for their captor. So it befell when the Emperor found himself feasting in the enemy's castle, surrounded by the flower of his own knights and nobles, and Duke Segwin and his band serving them humbly at table as though they had been servants in place of masters, he was touched by their generosity, and willingly agreed to a free and friendly peace. And this was celebrated by the Emperor giving Duke Segwin his niece to wife, whilst the Duke of Saxony wedded Duke Segwin's sister amid great rejoicings.

Now after this, learning that Ernis, Emperor of Greece, was besieged in Constantinople his capital by the Saracens, Sir Guy levied an army of a thousand knights and went to his assistance. Well pleased was Ernis at so timely a succor, and he promised to reward Sir Guy by making him heir to the throne and giving him the hand of his only daughter the beautiful Loret. Then Sir Guy led the army forth from the city against the Soudan and his host, and defeated them so badly that for some days they were unable to rally their men for another encounter.

In the meantime, one of Sir Guy's knights named Sir Morgadour fell in love with the Princess Loret, and being envious of Sir Guy's achievements as well as jealous of such a rival, he sought how to embroil him with the Emperor and compass his disgrace. Wherefore one day when the Emperor Ernis was gone a-rivering with his hawks, Sir Morgadour challenged Sir Guy to play a game of chess in the Princess Loret's chamber. They played there, Sir Guy not thinking of treachery. But by-and-by the Princess entered, and Sir Morgadour after greeting her took his leave quickly and came to the Emperor Ernis, telling him how Sir Guy was alone in the chamber with his daughter. Ernis, however, paid little heed to the tale, for he said: "Well, and what of it? Loret is his promised bride, and Sir Guy is a good true knight. Away with your tales!" But Sir Morgadour was not to be baffled, so he went to Sir Guy and said: "Behold how little trust is to be placed in a king! Here is the Emperor Ernis mad wroth to hear you were alone with the Princess Loret, and swears he will have your life." Then Sir Guy in great anger summoned his knights, and was going over to the Saracens, when, on his way, he met the Emperor, who told him of the malice of Sir Morgadour and all was made plain.

But now the Saracens coming anew against the city, Sir Guy went forth to meet them with many engines upon wheels which threw great stones quarried from a hill. Sir Guy and his army again defeated the Saracens, insomuch that a space of fifteen acres was covered so thick with dead that a man might not walk between, whilst the pile of slain around Sir Guy reached breast high. So the Soudan and his host withdrew to their camps.

Then Sir Morgadour bethought him of another wile. The Soudan had sworn to kill every Christian found in his camp, without regard to flag of truce or ambassage. So Sir Morgadour persuaded Ernis to send Sir Guy to the Soudan saying, that, since the war seemed likely to come to no speedy issue, it should be settled by single combat between two champions chosen from the Christian and the Saracen hosts. The counsel seemed good to Ernis, but yet he liked not to risk his son-in-law's life; wherefore he called his Parliament together and asked for some bold knight to go and bear this message. When all the others held their peace, Sir Guy demanded to be sent upon the business, neither could the prayers and entreaties of Ernis cause him to forego the enterprise. He clad himself in iron hose and a trusty hauberk, set a helm of steel, gold-circled, on his head, and having girt his sword about him, leapt on his steed without so much as touching stirrup, and rode up to the Soudan's pavilion. He well knew it from the rest, since on the top thereof flashed a great carbuncle stone.

There were feasting the Soudan, ten kings, and many barons, when Sir Guy walked into the pavilion and delivered his message with great roughness of speech. "Seize him and slay him!" cried the Soudan. But Sir Guy cut his way through his assailants and rushing on the Soudan cut off his head; and while he stooped to pick up the trophy with his left hand, with his right he slew six Saracens, then fought his passage past them all to the tent door, and leapt upon his horse. But the whole Saracen host being roused he never would have got back for all his bravery, but that Heraud within the city saw in a dream the danger he was in, and assembling the Greek army and Sir Guy's knights, came to his rescue and put the Saracens to flight. Then after the battle, Sir Guy came in triumph to Constantinople and laid the Soudan's head at the feet of the Emperor Ernis.

Ernis now, being at peace from his enemies, would take Sir Guy through his realms. On their way they saw a dragon fighting a lion, and the lion having much the worst of the combat, Sir Guy must needs go and fight the dragon. After a hard battle he laid the monster dead at his feet, and the lion came and licked the hands of his deliverer, and would in no wise depart from his side.

Soon afterward the Emperor Ernis gathered a great company of princes, dukes, earls, barons, bishops, abbots, and priors to the wedding feast, and in presence of them all he gave Sir Guy to be ruler over half the kingdom, and led forth the Princess Loret to be his bride.

But when Sir Guy saw the wedding-ring, his old love came to his mind, and he bethought him of Felice. "Alas!" he cried, "Felice the bright and beautiful, my heart misgives me of forgetting thee. None other maid shall ever have my love." Then he fell into a swoon and when he came to himself he pleaded sudden sickness. So the marriage was put off, to the great distress of Ernis and his daughter Loret, and Sir Guy gat him to an Inn. Heraud tended him there, and learned how it was for the sake of Felice that Guy renounced so fair a bride, dowered with so rich a kingdom. But after a fortnight, when he could no longer feign illness because of the watchfullness of the Emperor and the Princess after his health, he was forced to return to court, and delay his marriage from day to day by one excuse and another, until at length fortune delivered him from the strait. The lion which Sir Guy had tamed was used to roam about the palace, and grew so gentle that none feared him and none sought him harm. But Sir Morgadour, being sore vexed to think that all his plans against Sir Guy had failed, determined to wreak his spite upon the lion. He therefore watched until he found the lion asleep within an arbour, and then wounded him to death with his sword. The faithful beast dragged himself so far as Sir Guy's chamber, licked his master's hands, and fell dead at his feet. But a little maid which had espied Sir Morgadour told Sir Guy who had slain his lion. Then Sir Guy went forth in quest of Sir Morgadour, and fought with him and slew him. He had forgiven the wrongs against himself, since he outwitted them; but he was fain to avenge his faithful favourite. Now Sir Morgadour was steward to the German Emperor Regnier. So Sir Guy showed Ernis that if he remained longer at his court, Regnier would surely make war on Greece to avenge his steward's death. Wherefore with this excuse he took his departure and set sail with Heraud in the first ship he could find. They landed in Germany, and visited the Emperor Regnier without telling anything about his steward's death. Then they came to Lorraine.

As Sir Guy took his way alone through a forest, having sent his servants on to prepare a place for him at an inn, he heard the groaning of a man in pain, and turning his horse that way, found a knight sore wounded, and like to die. This knight was named Sir Thierry, and served the Duke of Lorraine. He told how he was riding through the wood with his lady, Osile, when fifteen armed men beset him, and forcibly carried off the lady to take her to Duke Otho of Pavia, his rival Then said Sir Guy, "I also have a score to settle with Otho, the felon duke." Then he took Sir Thierry's arms and armour, and went in pursuit of the ravishers whom he soon overtook, and having slain every one, he set the lady on his steed and returned to the place where he had left the wounded knight. But now Sir Thierry was gone; for four knights of Duke Otho's band had come and carried him off. So Sir Guy set down the lady, and started to find the four knights. Having fought and vanquished them, he set Sir Thierry on his horse and returned. But now Osile was gone. He searched for many hours to find her, but in vain. So as nightfall drew on he took Sir Thierry to the inn. There by good fortune they found the lady, Sir Guy's servants having met her in the wood and brought her with them to await his coming. A leech soon came and dressed Sir Thierry's wounds, and by the careful tending of Osile and Sir Guy, he got well Then Sir Guy and Sir Thierry swore brotherhood in arms.

Soon there came a messenger, saying that Duke Otho, hotly wroth at losing the fair Osile, had gone to lay waste the lands of Aubry, Sir Thierry's father; the Duke of Lorraine was likewise helping him. Thereupon Sir Guy equipped five hundred knights and came with Sir Thierry to the city of Gurmoise where Aubry dwelt. It was a well ramparted city, and after being beaten in two battles with Sir Guy, Duke Otho found, despite the larger numbers of his host, that he could not stand against the courage of the little army and the valour of its leader. Thinking therefore to gain Osile by treachery, he sent an archbishop to Aubry, offering peace and pledging himself to confirm the marriage of Sir Thierry and Osile, provided only that the lovers would go and kneel in homage to their sovereign Duke of Lorraine. Thereon Sir Thierry and his bride, together with Sir Guy and Sir Heraud, set out unarmed, and after wending a day's journey out of Gurmoise, they met the Duke of Lorraine, who embraced and kissed them in token of peace. But Otho coming forward as if to do the like, made a sign to a band of men whom he had in waiting to seize them. These quickly surrounded Sir Heraud and Sir Thierry and carried them off; but Sir Guy with only his fists slew many of his assailants, and broke away to where a countryman stood with a staff in his hand. Snatching this for a weapon, Sir Guy beat down the quickest of his pursuers, and made his escape. Duke Otho cast Sir Thierry into a deep dungeon in Pavia, and meanwhile gave Osile a respite of forty days wherein to consent to be his bride. But the Duke of Lorraine carried off Sir Heraud.

Weary and hungered, and vexed at the loss of his friends, Sir Guy came to a castle where he sought harbour for the night. Sir Amys of the Mountain, who dwelt there, welcomed him with a good will, and hearing his adventures, offered to raise an army of fifteen hundred men to help him against Duke Otho. But to this Sir Guy said nay, because it would take too long. So, after a day or two, having hit upon a plan, he disguised, himself by staining his face and darkening his hair and beard and eyebrows; and setting out alone, came to Duke Otho with a present of a war-horse of great price, and said, "You have in your keeping a dastard knight by name Sir Thierry, who has done me much despite, and I would fain be avenged upon him." Then Duke Otho, falling into the trap, appointed him jailor of Sir Thierry.

The dungeon wherein Sir Thierry was prisoned was a pit of forty fathoms deep, and very soon Sir Guy spake from the pit's mouth bidding him be of good cheer, for he would certainly deliver him. But a false Lombard overheard these words, and thereby knowing that it was Sir Guy, ran off straightway to tell Duke Otho. Sir Guy followed quickly and sought to bribe the man with money to hold his peace, but without avail, for he would go into the palace where the Duke was, and opened his mouth to tell the tale. Then with one blow Sir Guy slew him at Duke Otho's feet. But Otho, very wroth, would have killed Sir Guy then and there, only that he averred that this was a certain traitor whom he found carrying food to the prisoner. Thus having appeased the Duke's anger, he gat away secretly to Osile, and bade her change her manner to Duke Otho, and make as though she was willing to have his love. The night before the day fixed for the wedding, Sir Guy let down a rope to Thierry in his pit, and having drawn him up, the two made all speed to the castle of Sir Amys. There, getting equipped with arms and armour, they leaped to horse on the morrow, and riding back to Pavia, met the wedding procession. Rushing into the midst Sir Guy slew Otho and Sir Thierry carried off Osile, whereupon they returned to Sir Amys with light hearts. And when the Duke of Lorraine had tidings of what had befallen Otho he had great fear of Sir Guy, and sent Sir Heraud back with costly gifts to make his peace. So Sir Thierry and Osile were wed, and a sumptuous banquet was held in their honour, with game, and hunting, and hawking, and justing, and singing of glee-men, more than can be told.

Now as Sir Guy went a-hunting one day, he rode away from his party to pursue a boar of great size. And this boar, being very nimble and fleet of foot, led him a long chase till he came into Flanders. And when he killed the boar he blew upon his horn the prize. Florentine, King of Flanders, hearing it in his palace, said, "Who is this that slays the tall game on my lands?" And he bade his son go forth and bring him in. The young prince coming with a haughty message to Sir Guy, the knight struck him with his hunting-horn, meaning no more than chastisement for his discourtesy. But by misadventure the prince fell dead at his feet. Thinking no more of the mishap, and knowing not who it was whom he had slain, Sir Guy rode on to the palace, and was received with good cheer at the King's table. But presently the prince's body being brought in, and Guy owning that he had done this deed, King Florentine took up an axe, and aimed a mighty blow at the slayer of his son. This Sir Guy quickly avoided, and when all arose to seize him, he smote them down on either hand, and fought his way through the hall till he reached his steed, whereon lightly leaping he hasted back to Sir Thierry.

Then after a short while he took leave of Sir Thierry, and came with Sir Heraud to England, to the court of King Athelstan at York. Scarce had he arrived there when tidings came that a great black and winged dragon was ravaging Northumberland, and had destroyed whole troops of men which went against him. Sir Guy at once armed himself in his best proven armour, and rode off in quest of the monster. He battled with the dragon from prime till undern, and on from undern until evensong, but for all the dragon was so strong and his hide so flinty Sir Guy overcame him, and thrust his sword down the dragon's throat, and having cut off his head brought it to King Athelstan. Then while all England rang with this great exploit, he took his journey to Wallingford to see his parents. But they were dead; so after grieving many days for them he gave his inheritance to Sir Heraud, and hasted to Felice at Warwick.

Proudly she welcomed her true knight, and listened to the story of his deeds. Then laughingly Sir Guy asked, should he go another quest before they two were wed?

"Nay, dear one," said Felice, "my heart misgives me I was wrong to peril your life so long for fame's sake and my pride in you. A great love-longing I have borne to have you home beside me. But now you shall go no more forth. My pride it was that made me wish you great and famous, and for that I bade you go; but now, beside your greatness and your fame, I am become so little and so unworthy that I grow jealous lest you seek a worthier mate. We will not part again, dear lord Sir Guy." Then he kissed her tenderly and said, "Felice, whatever of fame and renown I may have gained, I owe it all to you. It was won for you, and but for you it had not been -- and so I lay it at your feet in loving homage, owning that I hold it all of you."

So they were wed amid the joy of all the town of Warwick; for the spousings were of right royal sort, and Earl Rohand held a great tournament, and kept open court to all Warwick, Rockingham, and Oxford for fourteen days.

Forty days they had been wed, when it happened that as Sir Guy lay by a window of his tower, looking out upon the landscape, he fell to musing on his life. He thought, "How many men I have slain, how many battles I have fought, how many lands I have taken and destroyed! All for a woman's love; and not one single deed done for my God!" Then he thought, "I will go a pilgrimage for the sake of the Holy Cross." And when Felice knew what he meditated she wept, and with many bitter tears besought him not to leave her. But he sighed and said, "Not yet one single deed for God above!" and held fast to his intent. So he clad himself in palmer's dress, and having taken a gold ring from his wife's hand and placed upon his own, he set out without any companion for the Holy Land.

But Felice fell into a great wan-hope at his departure, and grieved continually, neither would be comforted; for she said, "I have brought this on myself by sending him such perilous journeys heretofore, and now I cannot bear to part from him." But that she bore his child she would have taken her own life for very trouble of heart; only for that child's sake she was fain to live and mature it when it should be born.

Now after Sir Guy had made his toilsome pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and shrived him of his life, and done his prayers and penances about the holy places, he took his way to Antioch.

Beside a well he met a certain Earl Jonas, whose fifteen sons were held in prison till he should find a champion to deliver the Saracen Sir Triamour from the hands of a fierce and terrible Ethiopian giant named Amiraunt. So Sir Guy took arms again, and rode into the lists, and fought with Amiraunt and slew him; thus both Sir Triamour was delivered from his enemy, and the sons of Earl Jonas were restored to him. After this, Sir Guy travelled many years as a pilgrim of the Cross, till in his wanderings, chancing to come into Almayne, he there fell in with Sir Thierry, who, dressed in palmer's weeds, made sorry complaint. Sir Thierry told how a knight named Barnard inherited Pavia in the room of his cousin Duke Otho; and how Barnard, being at enmity with him because of the slaying of Duke Otho, had never rested from doing him mischief with his sovereign, until the Duke of Lorraine dispossessed him from his lands and brought him into poverty. Howbeit Sir Guy would not reveal himself, and Sir Thierry being faint and weary, laid his head upon Sir Guy's knees, and so great a heaviness came over him that he fell asleep. As he slept, Sir Guy, watching him, saw a small white weasel creep out from the mouth of the sleeping man, and run to a little rivulet that was hard by, going to and fro beside the bank, not seeming wistful how to get across. Then Sir Guy rose gently and laid his sword athwart the stream from bank to bank; so the weasel passed over the sword, as it had been a bridge, and having made his way to a hole at the foot of the hill on the other side, went in thereat. But presently the weasel came out, and crossing the stream in the same manner as before jumped into the sleeper's mouth again. Then Sir Thierry woke and told his dream. "I dreamed," said he, "that I came beside a mighty torrent which I knew not how to pass, until I found a bridge of shining steel, over which I went, and came into a cavern underground, and therein I found a palace full of gold and jewels. I pray thee, brother palmer, read to me this dream."

Then Sir Guy said that without doubt it betokened a fair treasure hid by a waterside, and with that showed him the hole under the hill whereat he had seen the weasel go in. There they digged and found the treasure, which was very great; yet Sir Guy would have no share therein, but took leave of Sir Thierry without ever making himself known, and came to Lorraine the duke that was Sir Thierry's sovereign.

Seeing a palmer the Duke of Lorraine asked tidings of his travels. "Sir," said the palmer, "men in all lands speak of Sir Thierry, and much do blame you for taking away his heritage at the bidding of so false a knight as Sir Barnard. And palmer though I be, I yet will prove Sir Barnard recreant and traitor upon his body, and thereto I cast down my glove." Then Sir Barnard took up the glove, and Sir Guy being furnished with armour and a sword and shield and spear, they did battle together. And in the end Sir Guy overcame and slew Sir Barnard, and demanded of the duke to restore Sir Thierry to his possessions, which being granted, he went in search of the banished man, and having found him in a church making his prayer, brought him straightway to the duke, and thus they were made friends. And when Sir Thierry found who his deliverer was he was exceeding glad and would willingly have divided all his inheritance with him. But Sir Guy would receive neither fee nor reward, and after he had abode some time with him at the court, he took his way to England.

Now Athelstan was besieged in Winchester by Anlaf King of Denmark, and could not come out of the city for the great host that was arrayed against him, whilst all the folk within the city walls were famishing for want of food and thought of nothing but surrender. Moreover King Anlaf had proclaimed a challenge, giving them seven days' grace wherein either to deliver up the city keys, or to find a champion who should fight against the great and terrible Danish giant Colbrand; and every day for seven days' the giant came before the walls and cried for a man to fight with him. But there was found no man so hardy to do battle with Colbrand. Then King Athelstan, as he walked to and fro in his city and saw the distress of his people, was suddenly aware of a light that shone about him very brightly, and he heard a voice which charged him to intrust his cause to the first poor palmer he should meet. Soon after he met a palmer in the city, and weening not that it was Sir Guy, kneeled humbly to him, in sure faith in the heavenly voice, and asked his help. "I am an old man," said the palmer, "with little strength except what Heaven might give me for a people's need beset by enemies. But yet for England's sake and with Heaven's help I will undertake this battle."

They then clothed him in the richest armour that the city could furnish, with a good hauberk of steel, and a helmet whose gold circle sparkled with precious stones, and on the top whereof stood a flower wrought of divers colours in rare gems. Gloves of mail he wore, and greaves upon his legs, and a shirt of ring-mail upon his body, with a quilted gambeson beneath: sharp was the sword, and richly carved the heavy spear he bare; his threefold shield was overlaid with gold. They led forth to him a swift steed; but before he mounted he went down upon his knees and meekly told his beads, praying God to succor him that day. And the two kings held a parley for an hour, Anlaf promising on his part that if his champion fell he would go back with all his host to Denmark and never more make war on Britain, whilst Athelstan agreed, if his knight were vanquished, to make Anlaf King of England, and henceforth to be his vassal and pay tribute both of gold and silver money.

Then Colbrand stode forth to the battle. So great was he of stature that no horse could bear him, nor indeed could any man make a cart wherein to carry him. He was armed with black armour of so great weight that a score of men could scarce bear up his hauberk only, and it took three to carry his helmet. He bare a great dart within his hand, and slung around his body were swords and battle-axes more than two hundred in number.

Sir Guy rode boldly at him, but his spear shivered into pieces against the giant's armour. Then Colbrand threw three darts. The first two passed wide, but the third crashed through Sir Guy's shield, and glided betwixt his arm and side, nor fell to ground till it had sped over a good acre of the field. Then a blow from the giant's sword just missed the knight, but lighting on his saddle at the back of him hewed horse and saddle clean in two; so Sir Guy was brought to ground. Yet lightly sprang he to his feet, and though seemingly but a child beside the monster man, he laid on hotly with his sword upon the giant's armour, until the sword brake in his hands. Then Colbrand called on him to yield, since he had no longer a weapon wherewith to fight. "Nay," answered Sir Guy, "but I will have one are of thine," and with that ran deftly to the giant's side and wrenched away a battle-axe wherewith he maintained the combat. Right well Sir Guy endured while Colbrand's mighty strokes shattered his armour all about him, until his shield being broke in pieces it seemed he could no longer make defence, and the Danes raised a great shout at their champion's triumph. Then Colbrand aimed a last stroke at the knight to lay him low, but Sir Guy lightly avoiding it, the giant's sword smote into the earth a foot or more, and before he could withdraw it or free his hand, Sir Guy hewed off the arm with his battle-axe; and since Colbrand's weight leaned on that arm, he fell to the ground. So Sir Guy cut off his head, and triumphed over the giant Colbrand, and the Danes withdrew to their own country.

Then without so much as telling who he was, Sir Guy doffed his armour and put on his palmer's weeds again, and secretly withdrawing himself from all the feasts and games they held in honour of him in the city of Winchester, passed out alone and took his journey toward Warwick on foot.

Many a year had gone since he had left his wife and home. The boy whom Felice had borne him, named Raynburn, he had never seen; nor, as it befell, did he ever see his son. For Raynburn in his childhood had been stolen away by Saracens and carried to a far heathen country, where King Aragus brought him up and made him first his page, then chamberlain, and as he grew to manhood, knighted him. And now he fought the battles of King Aragus with a strong arm like his father Guy's, neither could any endure against his spear. But all these years Felice had passed in prayer and charity, entertaining pilgrims and tired wayfarers, and comforting the sick and the distressed. And it was so that Sir Guy, all travel-worn and with his pilgrim's staff in hand, came to her house and craved an alms. She took him in and washed his feet and ministered to him, asking oftentimes if in his travels he had seen her lord Sir Guy. But when he watched her gentleness to the poor and to the children at her gate, he feared to break in upon her holy life, and so refrained himself before her and would not reveal himself, but with a heavy heart came out from the lady's door and gat him to a hermit's cell. There he abode in fasting and in penitence many weeks, till feeling his end draw near, he took the ring from his finger and sent it by a herdsman to Felice. "Where got you this token?" cried Felice, all trembling with her wonderment and fear. "From a poor beggar-man that lives in yonder cell," the herdsman answered. "From a beggar? Nay, but from a kingly man," said Felice, "for he is my husband, Guy of Warwick!" and gave the herdsman a hundred marks. Then she hasted and came to Sir Guy in his hermit's cell, and for a long space they wept in each other's arms and neither spake a word.

Weaker and fainter waxed Sir Guy. In a little while he died, and Felice closed his tired eyes. Fifteen weary days she lingered sore in grief, and then God's angel came and closed her own.



Chapter VIII

Chevy Chase


God prosper long our noble king, Our lives and safeties all; A woeful hunting once there did In Chevy Chase befall.

To drive the deer with hound and horn Earl Percy took the way; The child may rue that is unborn The hunting of that day.

The stout earl of Northumberland A vow to God did make, His pleasure in the Scottish woods Three summer days to take -- 

The chiefest harts in Chevy Chase To kill and bear away. These tidings to Earl Douglas came In Scotland where he lay;

Who sent Earl Percy present word He would prevent his sport. The English earl not fearing that, Did to the woods resort. With fifteen hundred bowmen bold, All chosen men of might, Who knew full well in time of need To aim their shafts aright.

The gallant greyhound swiftly ran To chase the fallow deer; On Monday they began to hunt Ere daylight did appear;

And long before high noon they had A hundred fat bucks slain; Then having dined, the drovers went To rouse the deer again.

The bowmen mustered on the hills, Well able to endure; Their backsides all with special care That day were guarded sure.

The hounds ran swiftly through the woods, The nimble deer to take, That with their cries the hills and dales An echo shrill did make.

Lord Percy to the quarry went To view the tender deer; Quoth he, "Earl Douglas promised once This day to meet me here."

"But if I thought he would not come, No longer would I stay"; With that a brave young gentleman Thus to the earl did say:

"Lo, yonder doth Earl Douglas come, His men in armour bright; Full twenty hundred Scottish spears All marching in our sight;

"All men of pleasant Teviotdale, Fast by the River Tweed." "O cease your sports," Earl Percy said, "And take your bows with speed;

"And now with me, my countrymen, Your courage forth advance, For there was never champion yet, In Scotland or in France,

"That ever did on horseback come, And if my hap it were, I durst encounter man for man With him to break a spear."

Earl Douglas on his milk white steed, Most like a baron bold, Rode foremost of his company, Whose armour shone like gold.

"Show me," said he, "whose men you be, That hunt so boldly here, That, without my consent, do chase And kill my fallow deer."

The first man that did answer make, Was noble Percy he, Who said, "We list not to declare Nor show whose men we be:

"Yet will we spend our dearest blood Thy chiefest harts to slay." Then Douglas swore a solemn oath, And thus in rage did say:

"Ere thus I will out-braved be, One of us two shall die; I know thee well, an earl thou art --  Lord Percy, so am I.

"But trust me, Percy, pity it were, And great offence, to kill Any of these our guiltless men, For they have done none ill.

"Let thou and I the battle try, And set our men aside." "Accurst be he," Earl Percy said, "By whom it is denied."

Then stept a gallant squire forth --  Witherington was his name --  Who said, "I would not have it told To Henry, our king, for shame,

"That e'er my captain fought on foot, And I stood looking on. You be two earls," quoth Witherington, "And I a squire alone;

"I'll do the best that do I may, While I have power to stand; While I have power to wield my sword, I'll fight with heart and hand."

Our English archers bent their bows --  Their hearts were good and true; At the first flight of arrows sent, Full four score Scots they slew.

To drive the deer with hound and horn, Douglas bade on the bent, Two captains moved with mickle might, Their spears to shivers went.

They closed full fast on every side, No slackness there was found, But many a gallant gentleman Lay gasping on the ground.

O Christ! it was great grief to see How each man chose his spear, And how the blood out of their breasts Did gush like water clear.

At last these two stout earls did meet Like captains of great might; Like lions wode, they laid on lode; They made a cruel fight.

They fought until they both did sweat, With swords of tempered steel, Till blood down their cheeks like rain They trickling down did feel.

"O yield thee, Percy!" Douglas said, "And in faith I will thee bring Where thou shalt high advanced be By James, our Scottish king.

"Thy ransom I will freely give, And this report of thee, Thou art the most courageous knight That ever I did see."

"No, Douglas," quoth Earl Percy then, "Thy proffer I do scorn; I will not yield to any Scot That ever yet was born."

With that there came an arrow keen, Out of an English bow, Which struck Earl Douglas on the breast A deep and deadly blow.

Who never said more words than these: "Fight on, my merry men all! For why, my life is at an end, Lord Percy sees my fall."

Then leaving life, Earl Percy took The dead man by the hand; Who said, "Earl Douglas, for thy life Would I had lost my land!

"O Christ! my very heart doth bleed For sorrow for thy sake, For sure a more redoubted knight Mischance could never take."

A knight amongst the Scots there was Which saw Earl Douglas die, Who straight in heart did vow revenge Upon the Lord Percy.

Sir Hugh Montgomery was he called, Who, with a spear full bright, Well mounted on a gallant steed, Ran fiercely through the fight,

And past the English archers all, Without all dread or fear, And through Earl Percy's body then He thrust his hateful spear.

With such a vehement force and might His body he did gore, The staff ran through the other side A large cloth-yard, and more.

Thus did both those nobles die, Whose courage none could stain; An English archer then perceived The noble earl was slain.

He had a good bow in his hand Made of a trusty tree; An arrow of a cloth-yard long To the hard head haled he.

Against Sir Hugh Montgomery His shaft full right he set; The gray-goose-wing that was thereon In his heart's blood was wet.

This fight from break of day did last Till setting of the sun, For when they rang the evening-bell The battle scarce was done.

With stout Earl Percy there was slain Sir John of Egerton, Sir Robert Harcliff and Sir William, Sir James, that bold baron.

And with Sir George and Sir James, Both knights of good account, Good Sir Ralph Raby there was slain, Whose prowess did surmount.

For Witherington needs must I wail As one in doleful dumps. For when his legs were smitten off, He fought upon his stumps.

And with Earl Douglas there was slain Sir Hugh Montgomery, And Sir Charles Morrell, that from field One foot would never flee;

Sir Roger Heuer of Harcliff, too, His sister's son was he; Sir David Lambwell, well esteemed, But saved he could not be.

And the Lord Maxwell, in like case, With Douglas he did die; Of twenty hundred Scottish spears, Scarce fifty-five did fly.

Of fifteen hundred Englishmen Went home but fifty-three; The rest in Chevy Chase were slain, Under the greenwood tree.

Next day did many widows come Their husbands to bewail; They washed their wounds in brinish sears. But all would not prevail.

Their bodies, bathed in purple blood, They bore with them away; They kissed them dead a thousand times Ere they were clad in clay.

The news was brought to Edinburgh, Where Scotland's king did reign, That brave Earl Douglas suddenly Was with an arrow slain.

"O heavy news!" King James can say, "Scotland may witness be I have not any captain more Of such account as he."

Like tidings to King Henry came Within as short a space, That Percy of Northumberland Was slain at Chevy Chase.

"Now God be with him!" said our king, "Since it will no better be; I trust I have within my realm Five hundred as good as he."

"Yet shall not Scots nor Scotland say But I will vengeance take, And be revenged on them all For brave Earl Percy's sake."

This vow the king did well perform After on Humble-down; In one day fifty knights were slain With lords of great renown.

And of the rest, of small account, Did many hundreds die: Thus endeth the hunting in Chevy Chase Made by the Earl Percy.

God save our king, and bless this land With plenty, joy, and peace, And grant henceforth that foul debate Twixt noble men may cease!



Chapter IX

The Fate Of The Children Of Lir


Now at the time when the Tuatha de Danaan chose a king for themselves after the battle of Tailltin, and Lir heard the kingship was given to Bodb Dearg, it did not please him, and he left the gathering without leave and with no word to any one; for he thought it was he himself had a right to be made king. But if he went away himself, Bodb was given the kingship none the less, for not one of the five begrudged it to him but only Lir. And it is what they determined, to follow after Lir, and to burn down his house, and to attack himself with spear and sword, on account of his not giving obedience to the king they had chosen. "We will not do that," said Bodb Dearg, "for that man would defend any place he is in; and besides that," he said, "I am none the less king over the Tuatha de Danaan, although he does not submit to me."

All went on like that for a good while, but at last a great misfortune came on Lir, for his wife died from him after a sickness of three nights. And that came very hard on Lir, and there was heaviness on his mind after her. And there was great talk of the death of that woman in her own time.

And the news of it was told all through Ireland, and it came to the house of Bodb, and the best of the Men of Dea were with him at that time. And Bodb said: "If Lir had a mind for it," he said, "my help and my friendship would be good for him now, since his wife is not living to him. For I have here with me the three young girls of the best shape, and the best appearance, and the best name in all Ireland, Aobh, Aoife, and Aihbhe, the three daughters of Oilell of Aran, my own three nurselings." The Men of Dea said then it was a good thought he had, and that what he said was true.

Messages and messengers were sent then from Bodb Dearg to the place Lir was, to say that if he had a mind to join with the Son of the Dagda and to acknowledge his lordship, he would give him a foster-child of his foster-children. And Lir thought well of the offer, and he set out on the morrow with fifty chariots from Sidhe Fionna-chaidh; and he went by every short way till he came to Bodb's dwelling-place at Loch Dearg, and there was a welcome before him there, and all the people were merry and pleasant before him, and he and his people got good attendance that night.

And the three daughters of Oilell of Aran were sitting on the one seat with Bodb Dearg's wife, the queen of the Tuatha de Danaan, that was their foster-mother. And Bodb said: "You may have your choice of the three young girls, Lir." "I cannot say," said Lir, "which one of them is my choice, but whichever of them is the eldest, she is the noblest, and it is better for me to take her." "If that is so," said Bodb, "it is Aobh is the eldest, and she will be given to you, if it is your wish." "It is my wish," he said. And he took Aobh for his wife that night, and he stopped there for a fortnight, and then he brought her away to his own house, till he would make a great wedding-feast.

And in the course of time Aobh brought forth two children, a daughter and a son, Fionnuala and Aodh their names were. And after a while she was brought to bed again, and this time she gave birth to two sons, and they called them Fiachra and Conn. And she herself died at their birth. And that weighed very heavy on Lir, and only for the way his mind was set on his four children he would have gone near to die of grief.

The news came to Bodb Dearg's place, and all the people gave out three loud, high cries, keening their nursling. And after they had keened her it is what Bodb Dearg said: "It is a fret to us our daughter to have died, for her own sake and for the sake of the good man we gave her to, for we are thankful for his friendship and his faithfulness. However," he said, "our friendship with one another will not be broken, for I will give him for a wife her sister Aoife."

When Lir heard that he came for the girl and married her, and brought her home to his house. And there was honour and affection with Aoife for her sister's children; and indeed no person at all could see those four children without giving them the heart's love.

And Bodb Dearg used often to be going to Lir's house for the sake of those children; and he used to bring them to his own place for a good length of time, and then he would let them go back to their own place again. And the Men of Dea were at that time using the Feast of Age in every hill of the Sidhe in turn; and when they came to Lir's hill those four children were their joy and delight for the beauty of their appearance; and it is where they used to sleep, in beds in sight of their father Lir. And he used to rise up at the break of every morning, and to lie down among his children.

But it is what came of all this, that a fire of jealousy was kindled in Aoife, and she got to have a dislike and a hatred of her sister's children.

Then she let on to have a sickness, that lasted through nearly the length of a year. And the end of that time she did a deed of jealousy and cruel treachery against the children of Lir.

And one day she got her chariot yoked, and she took the four children in it, and they went forward toward the house of Bodb Dearg; but Fionnuala had no mind to go with her, for she knew by her she had some plan for their death or their destruction, and she had seen in a dream that there was treachery against them in Aoife's mind. But all the same she was not able to escape from what was before her.

And when they were on their way Aoife said to her people: "Let you kill now," she said, "the four children of Lir, for whose sake their father has given up my love, and I will give you your own choice of a reward out of all the good things of the world." "We will not do that indeed," said they; "and it is a bad deed you have thought of, and harm will come to you out of it."

And when they would not do as she bade them, she took out a sword herself to put an end to the children with; but she being a woman and with no good courage, and with no great strength in her mind, she was not able to do it.

They went on then west to Loch Dairbhreach, the Lake of the Oaks, and the horses were stopped there. And Aoife bade the children of Lir to go out and bathe in the lake, and they did as she bade them. And as soon as Aoife saw them out in the lake she struck them with a Druid rod, and put on them the shape of four swans, white and beautiful. And it is what she said: "Out with you, children of the king, your luck is taken away from you forever; it is sorrowful the story will be to your friends it is with flocks of birds your cries will be heard for ever."

And Fionnuala said: "Witch, we know now what your name is, you have struck us down with no hope of relief; but although you put us from wave to wave, there are times when we will touch the land. We shall get help when we are seen; help, and all that is best for us; even though we have to sleep upon the lake, it is our minds will be going abroad early."

And then the four children of Lir turned toward Aoife, and this is what Fionnuala said: "It is a bad deed you have done, Aoife, and it is a bad fulfilling of friendship, you to destroy us without cause; and vengeance for it will come upon you, and you will fall in satisfaction for it, for your power for our destruction is not greater than the power of our friends to avenge it on you; and put some bounds now," she said, "to the time this enchantment is to stop on us." "I will do that," said Aoife, "and it is worse for you, you to have asked it of me. And the bounds I I set to your time are this, till the Woman from the South and the Man from the North will come together. And since you ask to hear it of me," she said, "no friends and no power that you have will be able to bring you out of these shapes you are in through the length of your lives, until you have been three hundred years on Loch Dairbhreach, and three hundred years on Sruth na Maoile between Ireland and Alban, and three hundred years at Irrus Domnann and Inis Gluaire; and these are to be your journeys from this out," she said.

But then repentance came on Aoife, and she said: "Since there is no other help for me to give you now, you may keep your own speech; and you will be singing sweet music in the Sidhe, that would put the men of the earth to sleep, and there will be no music in the world equal to it; and your own sense and your own nobility will stay with you, the way it will not weigh so heavy on you to be in the shape of birds. And go away out of my sight now, children of Lir," she said, "with your white faces, with your stammering Irish. It is a great curse on tender lads, they to be driven out on the rough wind. Nine hundred years to be on the water, it is a long time for any one to be in pain; it is I put this on you through treachery, it is best for you to do as I tell you now.

"Lir, that got victory with so many a good cast, his heart is a kernel of death in him now; the groaning of the great hero is a sickness to me, though it is I that have well earned his anger."

And then the horses were caught for Aoife, and the chariot yoked for her, and she went on to the palace of Bodb Dearg, and there was a welcome before her from the chief people of the place. And the son of the Dagda asked her why she did not bring the children of Lir with her. "I will tell you that," she said. "It is because Lir has no liking for you, and he will not trust you with his children, from fear you might keep them from him altogether."

"I wonder at that," said Bodb Dearg, "for those children are dearer to me than my own children." And he thought in his own mind it was deceit the woman was doing on him, and it is what he did, he sent messengers to the North to Sidhe Fionnachaidh. And Lir asked them what did they come for. "On the head of your children," said they. "Are they not gone to you along with Aoife?" he said. "They are not," said they; "and Aoife said it was yourself would not let them come."

It is downhearted and sorrowful Lir was at that news, for he understood well it was Aoife had destroyed or made an end of his children. And early in the morning of the morrow his horses were caught, and he set out on the road to the Southwest. And when he was as far as the shore of Loch Dairbhreach, the four children saw the horses coming toward them, and it is what Fionnuala said: "A welcome to the troop of horses I see coming near to the lake; the people they are bringing are strong, there is sadness on them; it is us they are following, it is for us they are looking; let us move over to the shore, Aodh, Fiachra, and comely Conn. Those that are coming can be no others in the world but only Lir and his household."

Then Lir came to the edge of the lake, and he took notice of the swans having the voice of living people, and he asked them why was it they had that voice.

"I will tell you that, Lir," said Fionnuala. "We are your own four children, that are after being destroyed by your wife, and by the sister of our own mother, through the dint of her jealousy." "Is there any way to put you into your own shapes again?" said Lir. "There is no way," said Fionnuala, "for all the men of the world could not help us till we have gone through our time, and that will not be," she said, "till the end of nine hundred years."

When Lir and his people heard that, they gave out three great heavy shouts of grief and sorrow and crying.

"Is there a mind with you," said Lir, "to come to us on the land, since you have not your own sense and your memory yet?" "We have not the power," said Fionnuala, "to live with any person at all from this time; but we have our own language, the Irish, and we have the power to sing sweet music, and it is enough to satisfy the whole race of men to be listening to that music. And let you stop here to-night," she said, "and we will be making music for you."

So Lir and his people stopped there listening to the music of the swans, and they slept there quietly that night. And Lir rose up early on the morning of the morrow and he made this complaint:

"It is time to go out from this place. I do not sleep though I am in my lying down. To be parted from my dear children, it is that is tormenting my heart.

"It is a bad net I put over you, bringing Aoife, daughter of Oilell of Aran, to the house. I would never have followed that advice if I had known what it would bring upon me.

"O Fionnuala, and comely Conn, O Aodh, O Fiachra of the beautiful arms; it is not ready I am to go away from you, from the border of the harbour where you are."

Then Lir went on to the palace of Bodb Dearg, and there was a welcome before him there; and he got a reproach from Bodb Dearg for not bringing his children along with him. "My grief!" said Lir. "It is not I that would not bring my children along with me; it was Aoife there beyond, your own foster-child and the sister of their mother, that put them in the shape of four white swans on Loch Dairbhreach, in the sight of the whole of the men of Ireland; but they have their sense with them yet, and their reason, and their voice, and their Irish."

Bodb Dearg gave a great start when he heard that, and he knew what Lir said was true, and he gave a very sharp reproach to Aoife, and he said: "This treachery will be worse for yourself in the end, Aoife, than to the children of Lir. And what shape would you yourself think worst of being in?" he said.

"I would think worst of being a witch of the air," she said. "It is into that shape I will put you now." said Bodb. And with that he struck her with a Druid wand, and she was turned into a witch of the air there and then, and she went away on the wind in that shape, and she is in it yet, and will be in it to the end of life and time.

As to Bodb Dearg and the Tuatha de Danaan they came to the shore of Loch Dairbhreach, and they made their camp there to be listening to the music of the swans.

And the Sons of the Gael used to be coming no less than the Men of Dea to hear them from every part of Ireland, for there never was any music or any delight, heard in Ireland to compare with that music of the swans. And they used to be telling stories, and to be talking with the men of Ireland every day, and with their teachers and their fellow-pupils and their friends. And every night they used to sing very sweet music of the Sidhe; and every one that heard that music would sleep sound and quiet whatever trouble or long sickness might be on him; for every one that heard the music of the birds, it is happy and contented he would be after it.

These two gatherings now of the Tuatha de Danaan and of the Sons of the Gael stopped there around Loch Dairbhreach through the length of three hundred years. And it is then Fionnuala said to her brothers: "Do you know," she said, "we have spent all we have to spend of our time here, but this one night only."

And there was great sorrow on the sons of Lir when they heard that, for they thought it the same as to be living people again, to be talking with their friends and their companions on Loch Dairbhreach, in comparison with going on the cold, fretful sea of the Maoil in the North.

And they came early on the morrow to speak with their father and with their foster-father, and they bade them farewell, and Fionnuala made this complaint:

"Farewell to you, Bodb Dearg, the man with whom all knowledge is in pledge. And farewell to our father along with you, Lir of the Hill of the White Field.

"The time is come, as I think, for us to part from you, O pleasant company; my grief it is not on a visit we are going to you.

"From this day out, O friends of our heart, our comrades, it is on the tormented course of the Maoil we will be, without the voice of any person near us.

"There hundred years there, and three hundred years in the bay of the men of Domnann, it is a pity for the four comely children of Lir, the salt waves of the sea to be their covering by night.

"O three brothers, with the ruddy faces gone from you, let them all leave the lake now, the great troop that loved us, it is sorrowful our parting is."

After that complaint they took to flight, lightly, airily, till they came to Sruth na Maoile between Ireland and Alban. And that was a grief to the men of Ireland, and they gave out an order no swan was to be killed from that out, whatever chance there might be of killing one, all through Ireland.

It was a bad dwelling-place for the children of Lir they to be on Sruth na Maoile. When they saw the wide coast about them, they were filled with cold and with sorrow, and they thought nothing of all they had gone through before, in comparison to what they were going through on that sea.

Now one night while they were there a great storm came on them, and it is what Fionnuala said: "My dear brothers," she said, "it is a pity for us not to be making ready for this night, for it is certain the storm will separate us from one another. And let us," she said, "settle on some place where we can meet afterward, if we are driven from one another in the night."

"Let us settle," said the others, "to meet one another at Carraig na Ron, the Rock of the Seals, for we all have knowledge of it."

And when midnight came, the wind came on them with it, and the noise of the waves increased, and the lightning was flashing, and a rough storm came sweeping down; the way the children of Lir were scattered over the great sea, and the wideness of it set them astray, so that no one of them could know what way the others went. But after that storm a great quiet came on the sea, and Fionnuala was alone on Sruth na Maoile; and when she took notice that her brothers were wanting she was lamenting after them greatly, and she made this complaint:

"It is a pity for me to be alive in the state I am; it is frozen to my sides my wings are; it is little that the wind has not broken my heart in my body, with the loss of Aodh.

"To be three hundred years on Loch Dairbhreach without going into my own shape, it is worse to me the time I am on Sruth na Maoile.

"The three I loved, Och! the three I loved, that slept under the shelter of my feathers; till the dead come back to the living I will see them no more for ever.

"It is a pity I to stay after Fiachra, and after Aodh, and after comely Conn, and with no account of them; my grief I to be here to face every hardship this night."

She stopped all night there upon the Rock of the Seals until the rising of the sun, looking out over the sea on every side till at last she saw Conn coming to her, his feathers wet through and his head hanging, and her heart gave him a great welcome; and then Fiachra came wet and perished and worn out, and he could not say a word they could understand with the dint of the cold and the hardship he had gone through. And Fionnuala put him under her wings, and she said: "We would be well off now if Aodh would but come to us."

It was not long after that, they saw Aodh coming, his head dry and his feathers beautiful, and Fionnuala gave him a great welcome, and she put him in under the feathers of her breast, and Fiachra under her right wing and Conn under her left wing, the way she could put her feathers over them all. "And Och! my brothers," she said, "this was a bad night to us, and it is many of its like are before us from this out."

They stayed there a long time after that, suffering cold and misery on the Maoil, till at last a night came on them they had never known the like of before, for frost and snow and wind and cold. And they were crying and lamenting the hardship of their life, and the cold of the night and the greatness of the snow and the hardness of the wind. And after they had suffered cold to the end of a year, a worse night again came on them, in the middle of winter. And they were on Carraig na Ron, and the water froze about them, and as they rested on the rock, their feet and their wings and their feathers froze to the rock, the way they were not able to move from it. And they made such a hard struggle to get away, that they left the skin of their feet and their feathers and the tops of their wings on the rock after them.

"My grief, children of Lir," said Fionnuala, "it is bad our state is now, for we cannot bear the salt water to touch us, and there are bonds on us not to leave it; and if the salt water goes into our sores," she said, "we will get our death." And she made this complaint:

"It is keening we are to-night; without feathers to cover our bodies; it is cold the rough, uneven rocks are under our bare feet.

"It is bad our stepmother was to us the time she played enchantments on us, sending us out like swans upon the sea.

"Our washing place is on the ridge of the bay, in the foam of flying manes of the sea; our share of the ale feast is the salt water of the blue tide.

"One daughter and three sons; it is in the clefts of the rocks we are; it is on the hard rocks we are, it is a pity the way we are."

However, they came on to the course of the Maoil again, and the salt water was sharp and rough and bitter to them, but if it was itself, they were not able to avoid it or to get shelter from it. And they were there by the shore under that hardship till such time as their feathers grew again, and their wings, and till their sores were entirely healed. And then they used to go every day to the shore of Ireland or of Alhan, but they had to come back to Sruth na Maoile every night.

Now they came one day to the mouth of the Banna, to the north of Ireland, and they saw a troop of riders, beautiful, of the one colour, with well-trained pure white horses under them, and they travelling the road straight from the Southwest.

"Do you know who those riders are, sons of Lir?" said Fionnuala.

"We do not," they said; "but it is likely they might be some troop of the Sons of the Gael, or of the Tuatha de Danaan."

They moved over closer to the shore then, that they might know who they were, and when the riders saw them they came to meet them until they were able to hold talk together.

And the chief men among them were two sons of Bodb Dearg, Aodh Aithfhiosach, of the quick wits, and Fergus Fithchiollach, of the chess, and a third part of the Riders of the Sidhe along with them, and it was for the swans they had been looking for a long while before that, and when they came together they wished one another a kind and loving welcome.

And the children of Lir asked for news of all the men of Dea, and above all of Lir, and Bodb Dearg and their people.

"They are well, and they are in the one place together," said they, "in your father's house at Sidhe Fionnachaidh, using the Feast of Age pleasantly and happily, and with no uneasiness on them, only for being without yourselves, and without knowledge of what happened you from the day you left Loch Dairbhreach."

"That has not been the way with us," said Fionnuala, "for we have gone through great hardship and uneasiness and misery on the tides of the sea until this day."

And she made this complaint:

"There is delight to-night with the household of Lir! Plenty of ale with them and of wine, although it is in a cold dwelling-place this night are the four children of the King.

"It is without a spot our bedclothes are, our bodies covered over with curved feathers; but it is often we were dressed in purple, and we drinking pleasant mead.

"It is what our food is and our drink, the white sand and the bitter water of the sea; it is often we drank mead of hazel nuts from round four-lipped drinking cups.

"It is what our beds are, bare rocks out of the power of the waves; it is often there used to be spread out for us beds of the breast feathers of birds.

"Though it is our work now to be swimming through the frost and through the noise of the waves, it is often a company of the sons of kings were riding after us to the Hill of Bodb.

"It is what wasted my strength, to be going and coming over the current of the Maoil the way I never was used to, and never to be in the sunshine on the soft grass.

"Fiachra's bed and Conn's bed is to come under the cover of my wings on the sea. Aodh has his place under the feathers of my breast, the four of us side by side.

"The teaching of Manannan without deceit, the talk of Bodb Dearg on the pleasant ridge; the voice of Angus, his sweet kisses; it is by their side I used to be without grief."

After that the riders went on to Lir's house, and they told the chief men of the Tuatha de Danaan all the birds had gone through, and the state they were in. "We have no power over them," the chief men said, "but we are glad they are living yet, for they will get help in the end of time."

As to the children of Lir, they went back toward their old place in the Maoil, and they stopped there till the time they had to spend in it, was spent. And then Fionnuala said: "The time is come for us to leave this place. And it is to Irrus Domnann we must go now," she said, "after our three hundred years here. And indeed there will be no rest for us there, or any standing ground, or any shelter from the storms. But since it is time for us to go, let us set out on the cold wind, the way we will not go astray."

So they set out in that way, and left Sruth na Maoile behind them, and went to the point of Irrus Domnann, and there they stopped, and it is a life of misery and a cold life they led there. And one time the sea froze about them that they could not move at all, and the brothers were lamenting, and Fionnuala was comforting them, for she knew there would help come to them in the end.

And they stayed at Irrus Domnann till the time they had to spend there was spent. And then Fionnuala said: "The time is come for us to go back to Sidhe Fionnachaidh, where our father is with his household and with all our own people."

"It pleases us well to hear that," they said.

So they set out flying through the air lightly till they came to Sidhe Fionnachaidh; and it is how they found the place, empty before them, and nothing in it but green hillocks and thickets of nettles, without a house, without a fire, without a hearthstone. And the four pressed close to one another then, and they gave out three sorrowful cries, and Fionnuala made this complaint:

"It is a wonder to me this place is, and it without a house, without a dwelling-place. To see it the way it is now, Ochonel it is bitterness to my heart.

"Without dogs, without hounds for hunting, without women, without great kings; we never knew it to be like this when our father was in it,

"Without horns, without cups, without drinking in the lighted house; without young men, without riders; the way it is to-night is a foretelling of sorrow.

"The people of the place to be as they are now, Ochone! it is grief to my heart! It is plain to my mind to-night the lord of the house is not living.

"Och, house where we used to see music and playing and the gathering of people! I think it is a great change to see it lonely the way it is to-night.

"The greatness of the hardships we have gone through going from one wave to another of the sea, we never heard of the like of them coming on any other person.

"It is seldom this place had its part with grass and bushes; the man is not living that would know us, it would be a wonder to him to see us here."

However, the children of Lir stopped that night in their father's place and their grandfather's, where they had been reared, and they were singing very sweet music of the Sidhe. And they rose up early on the morning of the morrow and went to Inis Gluarie, and all the birds of the country gathered near them on Loch na-n Ean, the Lake of the Birds. And they used to go out to feed every day to the far parts of the country, to Inis Geadh and to Accuill, the place Donn, son of Miled, and his people that were drowned were buried, and to all the western islands of Connacht, and they used to go back to Inis Gluaire every night.

It was about that time it happened them to meet with a young man of good race, and his name was Aibric; and he often took notice of the birds, and their singing was sweet to him and he loved them greatly, and they loved him. And it is this young man that told the whole story of all that had happened them, and put it in order.

And the story he told of what happened them in the end is this.

It was after the faith of Christ and blessed Patrick came into Ireland, that Saint Mochaomhog came to Inis Gluaire. And the first night he came to the island, the children of Lir heard the voice of his bell, ringing near them. And the brothers started up with fright when they heard it. "We do not know," they said, "what is that weak, unpleasing voice we hear."

"That is the voice of the bell of Mochaomhog," said Fionnuala; "and it is through that bell," she said, "you will be set free from pain and from misery."

They listened to that music of the bell till the matins were done, and then they began to sing the low, sweet music of the Sidhe.

And Mochaomhog was listening to them, and he prayed to God to show him who was singing that music, and it was showed to him that the children of Lir were singing it. And on the morning of the morrow he went forward to the Lake of the Birds, and he saw the swans before him on the lake, and he went down to them at the brink of the shore. "Are you the children of Lir?" he said.

"We are indeed," said they.

"I give thanks to God for that," said he, "for it is for your sakes I am come to this island beyond any other island, and let you come to land now," he said, "and give your trust to me, that you may do good deeds and part from your sins."

They came to the land after that, and they put trust in Mochaomhog, and he brought them to his own dwelling-place, and they used to be hearing Mass with him. And he got a good smith and bade him make chains of bright silver for them, and he put a chain between Aodh and Fionnuala, and a chain between Conn and Fachra, And the four of them were raising his heart and gladdening his mind, and no danger and no distress that was on the swans before put any trouble on them now.

Now the king of Connacht at that time was Lairgnen, son of Colman, son of Colman, son of Cobthach, and Deoch, daughter of Finghin, was his wife. And that was the coming together of the Man from the North and the Woman from the South, that Aoife had spoken of.

And the woman heard talk of the birds, and a great desire came on her to get them, and she bade Lairgnen to bring them to her, and he said he would ask them of Mochaomhog.

And she gave her word she would not stop another night with him unless he would bring them to her. And she set out from the house there and then. And Lairgnen sent messengers after her to bring her back, and they did not overtake her till she was at Cill Dun. She went back home with them then, and Lairgnen sent messengers to ask the birds of Mochaomhog, and he did not get them.

There was great anger on Lairgnen then, and he went himself to the place Mochaomhog was, and he asked was it true he had refused him the birds. "It is true indeed," said he. At that Lairgnen rose up, and he took hold of the swans, and pulled them off the altar, two birds in each hand, to bring them away to Deoch. But no sooner had he laid his hand on them than their bird skins fell off, and what was in their place was three lean, withered old men and a thin withered old woman, without blood or flesh.

And Lairgnen gave a great start at that, and he went out from the place. It is then Fionnuala said to Mochaomhog: "Come and baptise us now, for it is short till our death comes; and it is certain you do not think worse of parting with us than we do of parting with you. And make our grave afterward," she said, "and lay Conn on my right side and Fiachra on my left side, and Aodh before my face, between my two arms. And pray to the God of Heaven," she said, "that you may he able to baptise us."

The children of Lir were baptised then, and they died and were buried as Fionnuala had desired; Fiachra and Conn one at each side of her, and Aohd before her face. And a stone was put over them, and their names were written in Ogham, and they were keened there, and heaven was gained for their souls.

And that is the fate of the children of Lir.



Chapter X

The Beleaguered City


I have read, in some old marvellous tale Some legend strange and vague, That a midnight host of spectres pale Beleaguered the walls of Prague.

Beside the Moldau's rushing stream. With the wan moon overhead, There stood, as in an awful dream, The army of the dead.

White as a sea-fog, landward bound, The spectral camp was seen, And, with a sorrowful, deep sound, The river flowed between.

No other voice nor sound was there, No drum, nor sentry's pace; The mist-like banners clasped the air, As clouds with clouds embrace.

But, when the old cathedral bell Proclaimed the morning prayer, The white pavilions rose and fell On the alarmed air.

Down the broad valley fast and far The troubled army fled; Up rose the glorious morning star, The ghastly host was dead.

I have read, in the marvellous heart of man, That strange and mystic scroll, That an army of phantoms vast and wan Beleaguer the human soul.

Encamped beside Life's rushing stream, In Fancy's misty light, Gigantic shapes and shadows gleam Portentous through the night.

Upon its midnight battle-ground The spectral camp is seen, And, with a sorrowful, deep sound, Flows the River of Life between.

No other voice, nor sound is there, In the army of the grave; No other challenge breaks the air, But the rushing of Life's wave.

And, when the solemn and deep church-bell Entreats the soul to pray, The midnight phantoms feel the spell The shadows sweep away.

Down the broad Vale of Tears afar The spectral camp is fled; Faith shineth as a morning star, Our ghastly fears are dead.



Chapter XI

Prester John


About the middle of the twelfth century, a rumour circulated through Europe that there reigned in Asia a powerful Christian Emperor, Presbyter Johannes. In a bloody fight he had broken the power of the Mussulmans, and was ready to come to the assistance of the Crusaders. Great was the exultation in Europe, for of late the news from the East had been gloomy and depressing, the power of the infidel had increased, overwhelming masses of men had been brought into the field against the chivalry of Christendom, and it was felt that the cross must yield before the odious crescent.

The news of the success of the Priest-King opened a door of hope to the desponding Christian world. Pope Alexander III. determined at once to effect a union with this mysterious personage, and on the 27th of September, 1177, wrote him a letter, which he intrusted to his physician, Philip, to deliver in person.

Philip started on his embassy, but never returned. The conquests of Tschengis-Khan again attracted the eyes of Christian Europe to the East. The Mongol hordes were rushing in upon the West with devastating ferocity; Russia, Poland, Hungary, and the Eastern provinces of Germany had succumbed, or suffered grievously; and the fears of other nations were roused lest they too should taste the misery of a Mongolian invasion. It was Gog and Magog come to slaughter, and the times of Antichrist were dawning. But the battle of Liegnitz stayed them in their onward career, and Europe was saved.

Pope Innocent IV. determined to convert these wild hordes of barbarians, and subject them to the cross of Christ; he therefore sent among them a number of Dominican and Franciscan missioners, and embassies of peace passed between the Pope, the King of France, and the Mogul Khan,

The result of these communications with the East was, that the travellers learned how false were the prevalent notions of a mighty Christian empire existing in Central Asia. Vulgar superstition or conviction is not, however, to be upset by evidence, and the locality of the monarchy was merely transferred by the people to Africa, and they fixed upon Abyssinia, with a show of truth, as the seat of the famous Priest-King. However, still some doubted. John de Piano Carpini and Marco Polo, though they acknowledged the existence of a Christian monarch in Abyssinia, yet stoutly maintained as well that Prester John of popular belief reigned in splendour somewhere in the dim Orient.

But before proceeding with the history of this strange fable, it will be well to extract the different accounts given of the Priest-King and his realm by early writers; and we shall then be better able to judge of the influence the myth obtained in Europe.

Otto of Freisingen is the first author to mention the monarchy of Prester John, with whom we are acquainted. Otto wrote a chronicle up to the date 1156, and he relates that in 1145 the Catholic Bishop of Cabala visited Europe to lay certain complaints before the Pope. He mentioned the fall of Edessa, and also "he stated that a few years ago a certain King and Priest called John, who lives on the farther side of Persia and Armenia, in the remote East, and who, with all his people, were Christians, though belonging to the Nestorian Church, had overcome the royal brothers Samiardi, kings of the Medes and Persians, and had captured Ecbatana, their capital and residence. The said kings had met with their Persian, Median, and Assyrian troops, and had fought for three consecutive days, each side having determined to die rather than take to flight. Prester John, for so they are wont to call him, at length routed the Persians, and after a bloody battle, remained victorious. After which victory the said John was hastening to the assistance of the Church at Jerusalem, but his host, on reaching the Tigris, was hindered from passing, through a deficiency in boats, and he directed his march North, since he had heard that the river was there covered with ice. In that place he had waited many years, expecting severe cold; but the winters having proved unpropitious, and the severity of the climate having carried off many soldiers, he had been forced to retreat to his own land. This king belongs to the family of the Magi, mentioned in the Gospel, and he rules over the very people formerly governed by the Magi; moreover, his fame and his wealth are so great, that he uses an emerald sceptre only.

"Excited by the example of his ancestors, who came to worship Christ in his cradle, he had proposed to go to Jerusalem, but had been impeded by the above-mentioned causes."

At the same time the story crops up in other quarters; so that we cannot look upon Otto as the inventor of the myth. The celebrated Maimonides alludes to it in a passage quoted by Joshua Lorki, a Jewish physician to Benedict XIII. Maimonides lived from 1135 to 1204. The passage is as follows: "It is evident both from the letters of Rambam (Maimonides), whose memory be blessed, and from the narration of merchants who have visited the ends of the earth, that at this time the root of our faith is to be found in the lands of Babel and Teman, where long ago Jerusalem was an exile; not reckoning those who live in the land of Paras and Madai, of the exiles of Schomrom, the number of which people is as the sand: of these some are still under the yoke of Paras, who is called the Great-Chief Sultan by the Arabs; others live in a place under the yoke of a strange people ... governed by a Christian chief, Preste-Cuan by name. With him they have made a compact, and he with them; and this is a matter concerning which there can be no manner of doubt."

Benjamin of Tudela, another Jew, travelled in the East between the years 1159 and 1173, the last being the date of his death. He wrote an account of his travels, and gives in it some information with regard to a mythical Jew king, who reigned in the utmost splendour over a realm inhabited by Jews alone, situate somewhere in the midst of a desert of vast extent. About this period there appeared a document which produced intense excitement throughout Europe -- a letter, yes! a letter from the mysterious personage himself to Manuel Comnenus, Errmeror of Constantinople (1143-1180). The exact date of this extraordinary epistle cannot be fixed with any certainty, but it certainly appeared before 1241, the date of the conclusion of the chronicle of Albericus Trium Fontium. This Albericus relates that in the year 1165 "Presbyter Johannes, the Indian king, sent his wonderful letter to various Christian princes, and especially to Manuel of Constantinople, and Frederic the Roman Emperor." Similar letters were sent to Alexander III, to Louis VII of France, and to the King of Portugal, which are alluded to in chronicles and romances, and which were indeed turned into rhyme, and sung all over Europe by minstrels and trouveres. The letter is as follows:

"John, Priest by the Almighty power of God and the Might of our Lord Jesus Christ, King of Kings, and Lord of Lords, to his friend Emanuel, Prince of Constantinople, greeting, wishing him health, prosperity, and the continuance of Divine favour.

"Our Majesty has been informed that you hold our Excellency in love, and that the report of our greatness has reached you. Moreover, we have heard through our treasurer that you have been pleased to send to us some objects of art and interest, that our Exaltedness might be gratified thereby.

"Being human, I receive it in good part, and we have ordered our treasurer to send you some of our articles in return.

"Now we desire to be made certain that you hold the right faith, and in all things cleave to Jesus Christ, our Lord, for we have heard that your court regard you as a god, though we know that you are mortal, and subject to human infirmities....Should you desire to learn the greatness and excellency of our Exaltedness and of the land subject to our sceptre, then hear and believe: I, Presbyter Johannes, the Lord of Lords, surpass all under heaven in virtue, in riches, and in power; seventy-two kings pay us tribute....In the three Indies our Magnificence rules, and our land extends beyond India, where rests the body of the holy Apostle Thomas; it reaches toward the sunrise over the wastes, and it trends toward deserted Babylon near the tower of Babel. Seventy-two provinces, of which only a few are Christian, serve us. Each has its own king, but all are tributary to us.

"Our land is the home of elephants, dromedaries, camels, crocodiles, meta-collinarum, cametennus, ten-sevetes, wild asses, white and red lions, white bears, white merules, crickets, griffins, tigers, lamias, hyenas, wild horses, wild oxen and wild men, men with horns, one-eyed, men with eyes before and behind, centaurs, fauns, satyrs, pygmies, forty-ell-high giants, Cyclopses, and similar women; it is the home, too, of the phoenix, and of nearly all living animals. We have some people subject to us who feed on the flesh of men and of prematurely born animals, and who never fear death. When any of these people die, their friends and relations eat them ravenously, for they regard it as a main duty to munch human flesh. Their names are Gog and Magog, Anie, Agit, Azenach, Fommeperi, Befari, Conei-Samante, Agrimandri, Vintefolei, Casbei, Alanei. These and similar nations were shut in behind lofty mountains by Alexander the Great, toward the North. We lead them at our pleasure against our foes, and neither man nor beast is left undevoured, if our Majesty gives the requisite permission. And when all our foes are eaten, then we return with our hosts home again. These accursed fifteen nations will burst forth from the four quarters of the earth at the end of the world, in the times of Antichrist, and overrun all the abodes of the Saints as well as the great city Rome, which, by the way, we are prepared to give to our son who will be born, along with all Italy, Germany, the two Gauls, Britain and Scotland. We shall also give him Spain and all the land as far as the icy sea. The nations to which I have alluded, according to the words of the prophet, shall not stand in the judgment, on account of their offensive practices, but will be consumed to ashes by a fire which will fall on them from heaven.

"Our land streams with honey, and is overflowing with milk. In one region grows no poisonous herb, nor does a querulous frog ever quack in it; no scorpion exists, nor does the serpent glide amongst the grass, nor can any poisonous animals exist in it, or injure any one.

"Among the heathen, flows through a certain province the River Indus; encircling Paradise, it spreads its arms in manifold windings through the entire province. Here are found the emeralds, sapphires, carbuncles, topazes, chrysolites, onyxes, beryls, sardius, and other costly stones. Here grows the plant Assidos, which, when worn by any one, protects him from the evil spirit, forcing it to state its business and name; consequently the foul spirits keep out of the way there. In a certain land subject to us, all kinds of pepper is gathered, and is exchanged for corn and bread, leather and cloth....At the foot of Mount Olympus bubbles up a spring which changes its flavour hour by hour, night and day, and the spring is scarcely three days' journey from Paradise, out of which Adam was driven. If any one has tasted thrice of the fountain, from that day he will feel no fatigue, but will, as long as he lives, be as a man of thirty years. Here are found the small stones called Nudiosi, which, if borne about the body, prevent the sight from waxing feeble, and restore it where it is lost. The more the stone is looked at, the keener becomes the sight. In our territory is a certain waterless sea, consisting of tumbling billows of sand never at rest. None have crossed this sea; it lacks water altogether, yet fish are cast up upon the beach of various kinds, very tasty, and the like are nowhere else to be seen. Three days' journey from this sea are mountains from which rolls down a stony, waterless river, which opens into the sandy sea. As soon as the stream reaches the sea, its stones vanish in it, and are never seen again. As long as the river is in motion, it cannot be crossed; only four days a week is it possible to traverse it. Between the sandy sea and the said mountains, in a certain plain is a fountain of singular virtue, which purges Christians and would-be Christians from all transgressions. The water stands four inches high in a hollow stone shaped like a musselsheil. Two saintly old men watch by it, and ask the comers whether they are Christians, or are about to become Christians, then whether they desire healing with all their hearts. If they have answered well, they are bidden to lay aside their clothes, and to step into the mussel. If what they said be true, then the water begins to rise and gush over their heads; thrice does the water thus lift itself, and every one who has entered the mussel leaves it cured of every complaint.

"Near the wilderness trickles between barren mountains a subterranean rill, which can only by chance be reached, for only occasionally the earth gapes, and he who would descend must do it with precipitation, ere the earth closes again. All that is gathered under the ground there is gem and precious stone. The brook pours into another river, and the inhabitants of the neighbourhood obtain thence abundance of precious stones. Yet they never venture to sell them without having first offered them to us for our private use: should we decline them, they are at liberty to dispose of them to strangers. Boys there are trained to remain three or four days under water, diving after the stones.

"Beyond the stone river are the ten tribes of the Jews, which, though subject to their own kings, are, for all that, our slaves and tributary to our Majesty. In one of our lands, hight Zone, are worms called in our tongue Salamanders. These worms can only live in fire, and they build cocoons like silk-worms, which are unwound by the ladies of our palace, and spun into cloth and dresses, which are worn by our Exaltedness. These dresses, in order to be cleaned and washed, are cast into flames.... When we go to war, we have fourteen golden and bejewelled crosses borne before us instead of banners; each of these crosses is followed by 10,000 horsemen, and 100,000 foot soldiers fully armed, without reckoning those in charge of the luggage and provision.

"When we ride abroad plainly, we have a wooden, unadorned cross, without gold or gem about it, borne before us, in order that we may meditate on the sufferings of Our Lord Jesus Christ; also a golden bowl filled with earth, to remind us of that whence we sprung, and that to which we must return; but besides these there is borne a silver bowl full of gold, as a token to all that we are the Lord of Lords.

"All riches, such as are upon the world, our Magnificence possesses in superabundance. With us no one lies, for he who speaks a lie is thenceforth regarded as dead; he is no more thought of, or honoured by us. No vice is tolerated by us. Every year we undertake a pilgrimage, with retinue of war, to the body of the holy prophet Daniel, which is near the desolated site of Babylon. In our realm fishes are caught, the blood of which dyes purple. The Amazons and the Brahmins are subject to us. The palace in which our Super-eminency resides, is built after the pattern of the castle built by the Apostle Thomas for the Indian king Gundoforus. Ceilings, joists, and architrave are of Sethym wood, the roof of ebony, which can never catch fire. Over the gable of the palace are, at the extremities, two golden apples, in each of which are two carbuncles, so that the gold may shine by day, and the carbuncles by night. The greater gates of the palace are of sardius, with the horn of the horned snake inwrought, so that no one can bring poison within.

"The other portals are of ebony. The windows are of crystal; the tables are partly of gold, partly of amethyst, and the columns supporting the tables are partly of ivory, partly of amethyst. The court in which we watch the jousting is floored with onyx in order to increase the courage of the combatants. In the palace, at night, nothing is burned for light but wicks supplied with balsam....Before our palace stands a mirror, the ascent to which consists of five and twenty steps of porphyry and serpentine." After a description of the gems adorning this mirror, which is guarded night and day by three thousand armed men, he explains its use: "We look therein and behold all that is taking place in every province and region subject to our sceptre.

"Seven kings wait upon us monthly, in turn, with sixty-two dukes, two hundred and fifty-six counts and marquises: and twelve archbishops sit at table with us on our right, and twenty bishops on the left, besides the patriarch of St. Thomas, the Sarmatian Protopope, and the Archpope of Susa....Our lord high steward is a primate and king, our cup-bearer is an archbishop and king, our chamberlain a bishop and king, our marshal king and abbot."



Chapter XII

The Wandering Jew


The year 1228, "a certain Archbishop of Armenia the Greater came on a pilgrimage to England to see the relics of the saints, and visit the sacred places in the kingdom, as he had done in others; he also produced letters of recommendation from his Holiness the Pope, to the religious and the prelates of the churches, in which they were enjoined to receive and entertain him with due reverence and honour. On his arrival, he came to St. Albans, where he was received with all respect by the abbot and the monks; and at this place, being fatigued with his journey, he remained some days to rest himself and his followers, and a conversation took place between him and the inhabitants of the convent, by means of their interpreters, during which he made many inquiries relating to the religion and religious observances of this country, and told many strange things concerning the countries of the East. In the course of conversation he was asked whether he had ever seen or heard any thing of Joseph, a man of whom there was much talk in the world, who, when our Lord suffered, was present and spoke to Him, and who is still alive, in evidence of the Christian faith; in reply to which, a knight in his retinue, who was his interpreter, replied, speaking in French, 'My lord well knows that man, and a little before he took his way to the western countries, the said Joseph ate at the table of my lord the Archbishop of Armenia, and he has often seen and conversed with him.'

"He was then asked about what had passed between Christ and the said Joseph; to which he replied, 'At the time of the passion of Jesus Christ, He was seized by the Jews, and led into the hall of judgment before Pilate, the governor, that He might be judged by him on the accusation of the Jews; and Pilate, finding no fault for which he might sentence Him to death, said unto them, "Take Him and judge Him according to your law"; the shouts of the Jews, however, increasing, he, at their request, released unto them Barabbas, and delivered Jesus to them to be crucified. When, therefore, the Jews were dragging Jesus forth, and had reached the door, Cartaphilus, a porter of the hall in Pilate's service, as Jesus was going out of the door, impiously struck Him on the back with his hand, and said in mockery, "Go quicker, Jesus, go quicker; why do you loiter?" and Jesus, looking back on him with a severe countenance, said to him, "I am going, and you shall wait till I return." And according as our Lord said, this Cartaphilus is still awaiting His return. At the time of our Lord's suffering he was thirty years old, and when he attains the age of a hundred years, he always returns to the same age as he was when our Lord suffered. After Christ's death, when the Catholic faith gained ground, this Cartaphilus was baptised by Ananias (who also baptised the Apostle Paul), and was called Joseph. He dwells in one or other divisions of Armenia, and in divers Eastern countries, passing his time amongst the bishops and other prelates of the Church; he is a man of holy conversation, and religious; a man of few words, and very circumspect in his behaviour; for he does not speak at all unless when questioned by the bishops and religious; and then he relates the events of olden times, and speaks of things which occurred at the suffering and resurrection of our Lord, and of the witnesses of the resurrection, namely, of those who rose with Christ, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto men. He also tells of the creed of the Apostles, and of their separation and preaching. And all this he relates without smiling, or levity of conversation, as one who is well practised in sorrow and the fear of God, always looking forward with dread to the coming of Jesus Christ, lest at the Last Judgment he should find Him in anger whom, when on His way to death, he had provoked to just vengeance. Numbers came to him from different parts of the world, enjoying his society and conversation; and to them, if they are men of authority, he explains all doubts on the matters on which he is questioned. He refuses all gifts that are offered him, being content with slight food and clothing.'"

Much about the same date, Philip Mouskes, afterward Bishop of Tournay, wrote his rhymed chronicle (1242), which contains a similar account of the Jew, derived from the same Armenian prelate:

"Adonques vint un arceveskes De ca mer, plains de bonnes teques Par samblant, et fut d'Armenie,"

and this man, having visited the shrine of "St. Tumas de Kantobire," and then having paid his devotions at "Monsigour St. Jake," he went on to Cologne to see the heads of the three kings. The version told in the Netherlands much resembled that related at St. Albans, only that the Jew, seeing the people dragging Christ to his death, exclaims:

"Atendes moi! g'i vois, S'iert mis le faus profete en crois."

Then

"Le vrais Dieux se regarda, Et li a dit qu'e n'i tarda, Icist ne t'atenderont pas, Mais saces, tu m'atenderas."

We hear no more of the wandering Jew till the sixteenth century, when we hear first of him in a casual manner, as assisting a weaver, Kokot, at the royal palace in Bohemia (1505), to find a treasure which had been secreted by the great-grandfather of Kokot, sixty years before, at which time the Jew was present. He then had the appearance of being a man of seventy years.

Curiously enough, we next hear of him in the East, where he is confounded with the prophet Elijah. Early in the century he appeared to Fadhilah, under peculiar circumstances.

After the Arabs had captured the city of Elvan, Fadhilah, at the head of three hundred horsemen, pitched his tents, late in the evening, between two mountains. Fadhilah, having begun his evening prayer with a loud voice, heard the words "Allah akbar" (God is great) repeated distinctly, and each word of his prayer was followed in a similar manner. Fadhilah, not believing this to be the result of an echo, was much astonished, and cried out, "O thou! whether thou art of the angel ranks, or whether thou art of some other order of spirits, it is well; the power of God be with thee; but if thou art a man, then let mine eyes light upon thee, that I may rejoice in thy presence and society." Scarcely had he spoken these words, before an aged man, with bald head, stood before him, holding a staff In his hand, and much resembling a dervish in appearance. After having courteously saluted him, Fadhilah asked the old man who he was. Thereupon the stranger answered, "Bassi Hadhret Issa, I am here by command of the Lord Jesus, who has left me in this world, that I may live therein until he come a second time to earth. I wait for this Lord, who is the Fountain of Happiness, and in obedience to his command I dwell behind yon mountain." When Fadhilah heard these words, he asked when the Lord Jesus would appear; and the old man replied that his appearing would be at the end of the world, at the Last Judgment. But this only increased Fadhilah's curiosity, so that he inquired the signs of the approach of the end of all things, whereupon Zerib Bar Elia gave him an account of general, social, and moral dissolution, which would be the climax of this world's history.

In 1547 he was seen in Europe, if we are to believe the following narration:

"Paul von Eitzen, Doctor of the Holy Scriptures, and Bishop of Schleswig, [Footnote: Paul v. Eitzen was born January 25, 1522, at Hamburg; in 1562 he was appointed chief preacher for Schleswig, and died February 25, 1598.] related as true for some years past, that when he was young, having studied at Wittemberg, he returned home to his parents in Hamburg in the winter of the year 1547, and that on the following Sunday, in church, he observed a tall man, with his hair hanging over his shoulders, standing barefoot, during the sermon, over against the pulpit, listening with deepest attention to the discourse, and, whenever the name of Jesus was mentioned, bowing himself profoundly and humbly, with sighs and beating of the breast. He had no other clothing, in the bitter cold of the winter, except a pair of hose which were in tatters about his feet, and a coat with a girdle which reached to his feet; and his general appearance was that of a man of fifty years. And many people, some of high degree and title, have seen this same man in England, France, Italy, Hungary, Persia, Spain, Poland, Moscow, Lapland, Sweden, Denmark, Scotland, and other places.

"Every one wondered over the man. Now, after the sermon, the said Doctor inquired diligently where the stranger was to be found; and when he had sought him out, he inquired of him privately whence he came, and how long that winter he had been in the place. Thereupon he replied, modestly, that he was a Jew by birth, a native of Jerusalem, by name Aliasverus, by trade a shoemaker; he had been present at the crucifixion of Christ, and had lived ever since, travelling through various lands and cities, the which he substantiated by accounts he gave; he related also the circumstances of Christ's transference from Pilate to Herod, and the final crucifixion, together with other details not recorded in the Evangelists and historians; he gave accounts of the changes of government in many countries, especially of the East, through several centuries; and moreover he detailed the labours and deaths of the holy Apostles of Christ most circumstantially.

"Now when Doctor Paul v. Eitzen heard this with profound astonishment, on account of its incredible novelty, he inquired further, in order that he might obtain more accurate information. Then the man answered, that he had lived in Jerusalem at the time of the crucifixion of Christ, whom he had regarded as a deceiver of the people, and a heretic; he had seen Him with his own eyes, and had done his best, along with others, to bring this deceiver, as he regarded Him, to justice, and to have Him put out of the way. When the sentence had been pronounced by Pilate, Christ was about to be dragged past his house; then he ran home, and called together his household to have a look at Christ, and see what sort of a person He was.

"This having been done, he had his little child on his arm, and was standing in his doorway, to have a sight of the Lord Jesus Christ.

"As, then, Christ was led by, bowed under the weight of the heavy cross, He tried to rest a little, and stood still a moment; but the shoemaker, in zeal and rage, and for the sake of obtaining credit among the other Jews, drove the Lord Christ forward, and told Him to hasten on His way. Jesus, obeying, looked at him, and said, 'I shall stand and rest, but thou shalt go till the last day.' At these words the man set down the child; and, unable to remain where he was, he followed Christ, and saw how cruelly He was crucified, how He suffered, how He died. As soon as this had taken place, it came upon him suddenly that he could no more return to Jerusalem, nor see again his wife and child, but must go forth into foreign lands, one after another, like a mournful pilgrim. Now, when, years after, he returned to Jerusalem, he found it ruined and utterly razed, so that not one stone was left standing on another; and he could not recognise former localities.

"He believes that it is God's purpose, in thus driving him about in miserable life, and preserving him undying, to present him before the Jews at the end, as a living token, so that the godless and unbelieving may remember the death of Christ, and be turned to repentance. For his part he would well rejoice were God in heaven to release him from this vale of tears. After this conversation, Doctor Paul v. Eitzen, along with the rector of the school of Hamburg, who was well read in history, and a traveller, questioned him about events which had taken place in the East since the death of Christ, and he was able to give them much information on many ancient matters; so that it was impossible not to be convinced of the truth of his story, and to see that what seems impossible with men is, after all, possible with God.

"Since the Jew has had his life extended, he has become silent and reserved, and only answers direct questions. When invited to become any one's guest, he eats little, and drinks in great moderation; then hurries on, never remaining long in one place. When at Hamburg, Dantzig, and elsewhere, money has been offered him, he never took more than two shillings (fourpence, one farthing), and at once distributed it to the poor, as token that he needed no money, for God would provide for him, as he rued the sins he had committed in ignorance.

"During the period of his stay in Hamburg and Dantzig he was never seen to laugh. In whatever land he travelled he spoke its language, and when he spoke Saxon, it was like a native Saxon. Many people came from different places to Hamburg and Dantzig in order to see and hear this man, and were convinced that the providence of God was exercised in this individual in a very remarkable manner. He gladly listened to God's word, or heard it spoken of always with great gravity and compunction, and he ever reverenced with sighs the pronunciation of the name of God, or of Jesus Christ, and could not endure to hear curses; but whenever he heard any one swear by God's death or pains, he waxed indignant, and exclaimed, with vehemence and with sighs, 'Wretched man and miserable creature, thus to misuse the name of thy Lord and God, and His bitter sufferings and passion. Hadst thou seen, as I have, how heavy and bitter were the pangs and wounds of thy Lord, endured for thee and for me, thou wouldst rather undergo great pain thyself than thus take His sacred name in vain!'

"Such is the account given to me by Doctor Paul von Eitzen, with many circumstantial proofs, and corroborated by certain of my own old acquaintances who saw this same individual with their own eyes in Hamburg.

"In the year 1575 the Secretary Christopher Krause, and Master Jacob von Holstein, legates to the Court of Spain, and afterward sent into the Netherlands to pay the soldiers serving his Majesty in that country, related on their return home to Schleswig, and confirmed with solemn oaths, that they had come across the same mysterious individual at Madrid in Spain, in appearance, manner of life, habits, clothing, just the same as he had appeared in Hamburg. They said that they had spoken with him, and that many people of all classes had conversed with him, and found him to speak good Spanish. In the year 1599, in December, a reliable person wrote from Brunswick to Strasburg that the same mentioned strange person had been seen alive at Vienna in Austria, and that he had started for Poland and Dantzig; and that he purposed going on to Moscow. This Ahasverus was at Lubeck in 1601, also about the same date in Revel in Livonia, and in Cracow in Poland. In Moscow he was seen of many and spoken to by many.

"What thoughtful, God-fearing persons are to think of the said person, is at their option. God's works are wondrous and past finding out, and are manifested day by day, only to be revealed in full at the last great day of account.

"Dated, Revel, August 1st, 1613. "D. W. "D. "Chrysostomus Duduloeus, "Westphalus."

*    *    *    *    *

In 1604 he seems to have appeared in Paris. Rudolph Botoreus says, under this date, "I fear lest I be accused of giving ear to old wives' fables, if I insert in these pages what is reported all over Europe of the Jew, coeval with the Saviour Christ; however, nothing is more common, and our popular histories have not scrupled to assert it. Following the lead of those who wrote our annals, I may say that he who appeared not in one century only, in Spain, Italy, and Germany, was also in this year seen and recognised as the same individual who had appeared in Hamburg, anno MDLXVI. The common people, bold in spreading reports, relate many things of him; and this I allude to, lest anything should be left unsaid."

J. C. Bulenger puts the date of the Hamburg visit earlier. "It was reported at this time that a Jew of the time of Christ was wandering without food and drink, having for a thousand and odd years been a vagabond and outcast, condemned by God to rove, because he, of that generation of vipers, was the first to cry out for the crucifixion of Christ and the release of Barabbas; and also because soon after, when Christ, panting under the burden of the rood, sought to rest before his workshop (he was a cobbler), the fellow ordered Him off with acerbity. Thereupon Christ replied, 'Because thou grudgest Me such a moment of rest, I shall enter into My rest, but thou shalt wander restless.' At once, frantic and agitated, he fled through the whole earth, and on the same account to this day he journeys through the world. It was this person who was seen in Hamburg in MDLXIV. Credat Judaeus Apella! I did not see him, or hear anything authentic concerning him, at that time when I was in Paris."

A curious little book, written against the quackery of Paracelsus, by Leonard Doldius, a Nurnberg physician, and translated into Latin and augmented, by Andreas Libavius, doctor and physician of Rotenburg, alludes to the same story, and gives the Jew a new name nowhere else met with. After having referred to a report that Paracelsus was not dead, but was seated alive, asleep or napping, in his sepulchre at Strasburg, preserved from death by some of his specifics, Labavius declares that he would sooner believe in the old man, the Jew, Ahasverus, wandering over the world, called by some Buttadaeus, and otherwise, again, by others.

He is said to have appeared in Naumburg, but the date is not given; he was noticed in church, listening to the sermon. After the service he was questioned, and he related his story. On this occasion he received presents from the burgers. In 1633 he was again in Hamburg. In the year 1640, two citizens, living in the Gerberstrasse, in Brussels, were walking in the Sonian wood, when they encountered an aged man, whose clothes were in tatters and of an antiquated appearance. They invited him to go with them to a house of refreshment, and he went with them, but would not seat himself, remaining on foot to drink. When he came before the doors with the two burgers, he told them a great deal; but they were mostly stories of events which had happened many hundred years before. Hence the burgers gathered that their companion was Isaac Laquedem, the Jew who had refused to permit our Blessed Lord to rest for a moment at his door-step, and they left him full of terror. In 1642 he is reported to have visited Leipzig. On the 22d July, 1721, he appeared at the gates of the city of Munich. About the end of the seventeenth century or the beginning of the eighteenth, an impostor, calling himself the Wandering Jew, attracted attention in England, and was listened to by the ignorant, and despised by the educated. He, however, managed to thrust himself into the notice of the nobility, who, half in jest, half in curiosity, questioned him, and paid him as they might a juggler. He declared that he had been an officer of the Sanhedrim, and that he had struck Christ as he left the judgment hall of Pilate. He remembered all the Apostles, and described their personal appearance, their clothes, and their peculiarities. He spoke many languages, claimed the power of healing the sick and asserted that he had travelled nearly all over the world. Those who heard him were perplexed by his familiarity with foreign tongues and places. Oxford and Cambridge sent professors to question him, and to discover the imposition, if any. An English nobleman conversed with him in Arabic. The mysterious stranger told his questioner in that language that historical works were not to be relied upon. And on being asked his opinion of Mahomet, he replied that he had been acquainted with the father of the prophet, and that he dwelt at Ormuz. As for Mahomet, he believed him to have been a man of intelligence; once when he heard the prophet deny that Christ was crucified, he answered abruptly by telling him he was a witness to the truth of that event. He related also that he was in Rome when Nero set it on fire; he had known Saladin, Tamerlane, Bajazeth, Eterlane, and could give minute details of the history of the Crusades.

Whether this wandering Jew was found out in London or not, we cannot tell, but he shortly after appeared in Denmark, thence travelled into Sweden, and vanished.



Chapter XIII

King Robert Of Sicily


Robert of Sicily, brother of Pope Urbane And Valmond, Emperor of Allemaine, Apparelled in magnificent attire, With retinue of many a knight and squire, On St. John's eve, at vespers, proudly sat And heard the priests chant the Magnificat. And as he listened, o'er and o'er again Repeated, like a burden or refrain, He caught the words, "Deposuit potentes De sede, et exaltavit humiles"; And slowly lifting up his kingly head He to a learned clerk beside him said, "What mean these words?" The clerk made answer meet, "He has put down the mighty from their seat, And has exalted them of low degree." Thereat King Robert muttered scornfully, "'T is well that such seditious words are sung Only by priests and in the Latin tongue; For unto priests and people be it known, There is no power can push me from my throne!" And leaning back, he yawned and fell asleep, Lulled by the chant monotonous and deep. When he awoke, it was already night; The church was empty, and there was no light,

Save where the lamps, that glimmered few and faint, Lighted a little space before some saint. He started from his seat and gazed around, But saw no living thing and heard no sound. He groped toward the door, but it was locked; He cried aloud, and listened, and knocked, And uttered awful threatenings and complaints, And imprecations upon men and saints. The sounds reechoed from the roof and walls As if dead priests were laughing in their stalls.

At length the sexton, hearing from without The tumult of the knocking and the shout, And thinking thieves were in the house or prayer, Came with his lantern, asking, "Who is there?" Half choked with rage, King Robert fiercely said, "Open:'tis I, the King! Art thou afraid?" The frightened sexton, muttering, with a curse, "This is some drunken vagabond, or worse!" Turned the great key and flung the portal wide; A man rushed by him at a single stride, Haggard, half naked, without hat or cloak, Who neither turned, nor looked at him, nor spoke, But leaped into the blackness of the night, And vanished like a spectre from his sight.

Robert of Sicily, brother of Pope Urbane And Valmond, Emperor of Allemaine, Despoiled of his magnificent attire, Bareheaded, breathless, and besprent with mire, With sense of wrong and outrage desperate, Strode on and thundered at the palace gate;

Rushed through the courtyard, thrusting in his rage To right and left each seneschal and page, And hurried up the broad and sounding stair, His white face ghastly in the torches' glare. From hall to hall he passed with breathless speed; Voices and cries he heard, but did not heed, Until at last he reached the banquet-room, Blazing with light, and breathing with perfume.

There on the dais sat another king, Wearing his robes, his crown, his signet-ring, King Robert's self in features, form, and height, But all transfigured with angelic light! It was an Angel; and his presence there With a divine effulgence rilled the air, An exaltation, piercing the disguise, Though none the hidden Angel recognised.

A moment speechless, motionless, amazed, The throneless monarch on the Angel gazed, Who met his look of anger and surprise With the divine compassion of his eyes; Then said, "Who art thou? and why com'st thou here?" To which King Robert answered with a sneer, "I am the King, and come to claim my own From an impostor, who usurps my throne!" And suddenly, at these audacious words, Up sprang the angry guests, and drew their swords; The Angel answered, with unruffled brow, "Nay, not the King, but the King's Jester, thou

Henceforth shalt wear the bells and scalloped cape, And for thy counsellor shalt lead an ape; Thou shalt obey my servants when they call, And wait upon my henchmen in the hall!"

Deaf to King Robert's threats and cries and prayers, They thrust him from the hall and down the stairs; A group of tittering pages ran before, And as they opened wide the folding-door, His heart failed, for he heard, with strange alarms, The boisterous laughter of the men-at-arms, And all the vaulted chamber roar and ring With the mock plaudits of "Long live the King!"

Next morning, waking with the day's first beam, He said within himself, "It was a dream!" But the straw rustled as he turned his head, There were the cap and bells beside his bed, Around him rose the bare, discolored walls, Close by, the steeds were champing in their stalls, And in the corner, a revolting shape, Shivering and chattering sat the wretched ape. It was no dream; the world he loved so much Had turned to dust and ashes at his touch!

Days came and went; and now returned again To Sicily the old Saturnian reign; Under the Angel's governance benign The happy island danced with corn and wine, And deep within the mountain's burning breast Enceladus, the giant, was at rest.

Meanwhile King Robert yielded to his fate, Sullen and silent and disconsolate. Dressed in the motley garb that Jesters wear, With look bewildered and a vacant stare,

Close shaven above the ears, as monks are shorn, By courtiers mocked, by pages laughed to scorn, His only friend the ape, his only food What others left -- he still was unsubdued. And when the Angel met him on his way, And half in earnest, half in jest, would say, Sternly, though tenderly, that he might feel The velvet scabbard held a sword of steel, "Art thou the King?" the passion of his woe Burst from him in resistless overflow And, lifting high his forehead he, would fling The haughty answer back, "I am, I am the King!"

Almost three years were ended; when there came Ambassadors of great repute and name From Valmond, Emperor of Allemaine, Unto King Robert, saying that Pope Urbane By letter summoned them forthwith to come On Holy Thursday to his city of Rome. The Angel with great joy received his guests, And gave them presents of embroidered vests, And velvet mantles with rich ermine lined, And rings and jewels of the rarest kind. Then he departed with them o'er the sea Into the lovely land of Italy, Whose loveliness was more resplendent made By the mere passing of that cavalcade,

With plumes, and cloaks, and housings, and the stir Of jewelled bridle and of golden spur. And lo! among the menials, in mock state, Upon a piebald steed, with shambling gait, His cloak of fox-tails flapping in the wind, The solemn ape demurely perched behind, King Robert rode, making huge merriment In all the country towns through which they went.

The Pope received them with great pomp and blare Of bannered trumpets, on Saint Peter's square, Giving his benediction and embrace, Fervent, and full of apostolic grace. While with congratulations and with prayers He entertained the Angel unawares, Robert, the Jester, bursting through the crowd, Into their presence rushed, and cried aloud, "I am the King! Look, and behold in me Robert, your brother, King of Sicily! This man, who wears my semblance to your eyes, Is an impostor in a king's disguise. Do you not know me? does no voice within Answer my cry, and say we are akin?" The Pope in silence, but with troubled mien, Gazed at the Angel's countenance serene; The Emperor, laughing, said, "It is strange sport To keep a madman for thy Fool at court!" And the poor, baffled Jester in disgrace Was hustled back among the populace. In solemn state the Holy Week went by, And Easter Sunday gleamed upon the sky; The presence of the Angel, with its light, Before the sun rose, made the city bright,

And with new fervour filled the hearts of men, Who felt that Christ indeed had risen again. Even the Jester, on his bed of straw, With haggard eyes the unwonted splendour saw, He felt within a power unfelt before, And, kneeling humbly on his chamber-floor, He heard the rushing garments of the Lord Sweep through the silent air, ascending heavenward.

And now the visit ending, and once more Valmond returning to the Danube's shore, Homeward the Angel journeyed, and again The land was made resplendent with his train, Flashing along the towns of Italy Unto Salerno, and from thence by sea. And when once more within Palermo's wall, And, seated on the throne in his great hall, He heard the Angelus from convent towers, As if the better world conversed with ours, He beckoned to King Robert to draw nigher, And with a gesture bade the rest retire; And when they were alone, the Angel said, "Art thou the King?" Then, bowing down his head, King Robert crossed both hands upon his breast, And meekly answered him: "Thou knowest best! My sins as scarlet are; let me go hence, And in some cloister's school of penitence, Across those stones, that pave the way to heaven, Walk barefoot, till my guilty soul be shriven!"

The Angel smiled, and from his radiant face A holy light illumined all the place, And through the open window, loud and clear, They heard the monks chant in the chapel near, Above the stir and tumult of the street: "He has put down the mighty from their seat, And has exalted them of low degree!" And through the chant a second melody Rose like the throbbing of a single string: "I am an Angel, and thou art the King!"

King Robert, who was standing near the throne, Lifted his eyes, and lo! he was alone! But all apparelled as in days of old, With ermined mantle and with cloth of gold; And when his courtiers came, they found him there Kneeling upon the floor, absorbed in silent prayer.


Interlude

And then the blue-eyed Norseman told A Saga of the days of old. "There is," said he, "a wondrous book Of Legends in the old Norse tongue, Of the dead kings of Norroway --  Legends that once were told or sung In many a smoky fireside nook Of Iceland, in the ancient day, By wandering Saga-man or Scald; 'Heimskringla' is the volume called; And he who looks may find therein The story that I now begin."

And in each pause the story made Upon his violin he played, As an appropriate interlude, Fragments of old Norwegian tunes That bound in one the separate runes, And held the mind in perfect mood, Entwining and encircling all The strange and antiquated rhymes With melodies of olden times; As over some half-ruined wall, Disjointed and about to fall, Fresh woodbines climb and interlace, And keep the loosened stones in place.



Chapter XIV

The Beato Torello Da Poppi


In that time in which the portion of Tuscany called Casentino was not yet subject to the Florentines, but was ruled by its own counts, in the lands of Poppi, an important place in that valley through which runs the river Arno, and not far from its source, a son was born to a certain good man named Paolo, to whom he gave the name of Torello, and whom, when a suitable age, he not only taught to fear God, and to lead a Christian life, but sent to school, that he might learn the first principles of letters -- which he soon did -- and to avoid evil companions and imitate the good. The young Torello, being accustomed to this life, and his father dying, for some time proceeded from good to better.

But that not pleasing our common enemy, who always goes about seeking whom he may devour, he so tempted Torello -- God permitting it, for future and greater good -- that he abandoned a virtuous life, and gave himself to the pursuit of the pleasures of the world; so that instead of being praised for his blameless and religious life, he was censured by all, and had become the very opposite of what he had at first been.

But the blessed Lord -- who had never abandoned him, though He had left him to wander, in order to permit him to become a true mirror of penitence -- called him to himself in this manner; as he was one day wandering and seeking amusement with his idle companions, a cock that was on a perch outside a window suddenly fell, and alighted on his shoulder, and crowed three times, and then flew back to the perch. Torello, calling to mind how the Apostle Peter had in a similar manner been made to gee his guilt, awaked from his sleep of vice and sin in a state of wonder and fear; and thinking that this could have happened only by divine Providence, and to show him that he was in the power of the devil, left his companions instantly, and in penitence and tears sought the Abbot of Poppi, of the order of Vallombrosa; and commending himself to his prayers, threw himself at his feet, humbly begging for the robe of a mendicant friar, since he desired to serve God in the humblest manner. The abbot wondered much, knowing by common report Torello to be a youth of most incorrect life, to see him thus kneeling in contrition before him, and endeavoured, together with the monks, to persuade him to take their habit of St. John Gualberto. But at last, seeing he had no heart for it, and remained constant to his first request, he at last granted it; and he became a poor brother, and almost a desert hermit, for having received the benediction of the abbot, without communicating with either his family or friends, he left that country and took his way toward the most desert and savage places of the mountains, wandering among them for eight days, and passing the night wherever it chanced to overtake him. But having at last come to a great rock, near a place called Avellanato, he remained there, adopting it for a cell eight days more, weeping for his sins, praying, and imploring God to pardon him; living all this time on three small loaves, which he had brought with him, and on wild herbs like the animals; and being much pleased with the place, he determined to make a cell under that great rock, and there spend all the days of this life, serving God with fasts, vigils, discipline, and prayers, and bitterly lamenting his past sins and evil life.

Having taken this resolution, he went to his own country to put his affairs in order; and all his relatives and friends came about him, praying him with much earnestness, if he sought to serve God, to leave this life of a wild beast and join some order, living like other monks. But all was of no avail; and selling all his goods, he gave the price to the poor, reserving to himself only a small sum of money to build a cell. And he returned to his solitude with a mason, who made for him a miserable cell under that same rock; and he bought near it enough land for a small garden, and there established himself, practising the most severe austerities.

Having now spoken of the penitence and life of the Beato Torello, we must make mention of the great gifts and grace which he received from God during his life, and which were often granted to him in behalf of those who commended themselves to him in faith and devotion.

A poor woman of Poppi, who had only one son, three years old, going to the spring to wash her clothes, took him with her; and he having strayed from her a little way while she was washing, a savage wolf seized him and carried him away, and the poor woman's shrieks could be heard almost at Poppi, while she could do nothing but commend the child to God. While the wolf was escaping with his prey between his teeth, he came, as it pleased God -- who thus began to make known the reward of his service -- to the cell of the Beato Torello; who, when he saw this, instantly ordered the wolf, in God's name, to lay the child on the ground, safe and sound; which command the wolf no sooner heard than he came to him immediately, and laid the child at his feet. And after he had, with evident humility, received the directions of the holy father, that neither he, nor any of the wolves his companions, should do any harm to any person of that country, he departed, and returned to the forest; and the servant of God took the half-dead child into his cell, where he made a prayer to the Lord, and he was immediately healed of the wounds the wolf's teeth had made in his throat. And when his mother came seeking him with great lamentation and sorrow, he graciously restored him to her alive and well, but with the command that while he lived she should never reveal this miracle.

Carlo, Count of Poppi, being very fond of the Beato Torello, sent him by his steward, one evening in Carnival, a basket full of provisions, praying the good father to accept it for love of him. The steward also carried him many other gifts, which some good ladies, knowing where he was going, took the opportunity to send by his hand.

Having arrived at the cell, he presented them all to the padre, who thanked him much, and returned him the empty baskets; when he took occasion to enquire, how he, being alone, could possibly eat so much in one evening. And Torello, seeing that the steward thought him a great eater, answered: "I am not alone, as you suppose; my companion will come from the woods before long, who has a great appetite, and he will help me." And the steward, hearing this, hid himself in the wood not far from the hermitage, to see who this could be who the padre said had such a fine appetite. He had not waited long when he saw a great wolf go straight to the door of the saint's cell, who opened it for him, and fed him until he had devoured everything that the steward had brought; and he then began to caress the saint, as a faithful and affectionate dog would his master; and this he continued to do until Torello gave him permission to go, and reminded him that neither he, nor any of his companions, should do any harm to the people of that place until they were at such a distance as to be out of hearing of the bell of the monastery, which the wolf promised to do and obey, by bowing his head. The servant, having seen and heard this, returned home, and related it to the count and the others, to their great amazement.

There was a lady of Bologna, named Vittoriana, who made a pilgrimage to the holy place in Vernia, where the glorious St. Francis received the stigmata; and there her two children fell ill with a violent and dangerous fever; and being, in consequence, much distressed and afflicted, she consulted with some ladies from Poppi, whose devotion had also brought them to the same place, who advised her to take her children, as soon as possible, to the blessed Torello, and commend them to him, that by means of his prayers God would restore their health. And going to him, she commended them to him with faith and tears and hope beyond the power of words to describe. And truly it was not in vain; for the holy man, who was most pitiful, kneeled down and prayed to the Lord for her and her children as only the true servants of God pray; and having so done, he took some water from the spring of which he usually drank and gave it to the children, and they were entirely cured and delivered from that fever. And what is more, the water of that fountain is to this day called the fountain of St. Torello, and is a sovereign remedy against every kind of fever to those who drink of it, as experience has testified and still testifies.

But at last, in the year of our salvation twelve hundred and eighty-two, the saint having reached the eightieth year of his life, and spent them all in the service of God -- many of his good works being unknown -- an angel brought him this message: "Rejoice, Torello, for the time is come when thou shalt receive the crown of glory thou hast so long desired, and the reward in paradise of ail thy labour in the service of God; for thirty days from this time, on the sixteenth of March, thou shalt be delivered from the prison of this world."

The blessed Torello, having heard this, continued all his devout exercises until the end, which approaching, he went to the abbot and confessed his sins for the last time, and received the holy communion from his hands; and they embraced each other, and he returned to his hermitage. And he took leave of one of his disciples, named Pietro, and exhorted him to persevere in God's service; and having with many affectionate prayers recommended his country and the people of it to the blessing of God, praying especially that it should not be ravaged by wolves, he departed in peace.

And all the people of the parishes around, hearing of his death, hastened to the hermitage; and all desiring that his holy body should repose in their church, a great controversy arose, and much scandal would have ensued, had not the Abbot of Poppi passed into the midst of them and convinced them it was the will of God it should be laid in his monastery; to which they all finally agreed. And a wonderful and miraculous event occurred; for while they were all standing around the holy body, a wolf came in with a little pig in his mouth, and passing through them without fear, placed it at the foot of the bier, and went away.



Chapter XV

The Lorelei


I know not whence it rises, This thought so full of woe: But a tale of the times departed Haunts me -- and will not go.

The air is cool, and it darkens, And calmly flows the Rhine; The mountain peaks are sparkling In the sunny evening-shine.

And yonder sits a maiden, The fairest of the fair; With gold is her garment glittering, And she combs her golden hair.

With a golden comb she combs it, And a wild song singeth she, That melts the heart with a wondrous And powerful melody.

The boatman feels his bosom With a nameless longing move; He sees not the gulfs before him, His gaze is fixed above.

Till over boat and boatman The Rhine's deep waters run; And this with her magic singing The Lorelei hath done!



Chapter XVI

The Passing Of Arthur


So all day long the noise of battle roll'd Among the mountains by the winter sea. Until King Arthur's Table, man by man, Had fall'n in Lyonnesse about their Lord, King Arthur. Then, because his wound was deep, The bold Sir Bedivere uplifted him, And bore him to a chapel nigh the field, A broken chancel with a broken cross. That stood on a dark strait of barren land: On one side lay the Ocean, and on one Lay a great water, and the moon was full.

Then spake King Arthur to Sir Bedivere: "The sequel of to-day unsolders all The goodliest fellowship of famous knights Whereof this world holds record. Such a sleep They sleep -- the men I loved. I think that we Shall never more, at any future time, Delight our souls with talk of knightly deeds, Walking about the gardens and the halls Of Camelot, as in the days that were. I perish by this people which I made --  Tho' Merlin sware that I should come again To rule once more; but, let what will be, be, I am so deeply smitten thro' the helm That without help I cannot last till morn.

Thou therefore take my brand Excalibur, Which was my pride: for thou rememberest how In those old days, one summer noon, an arm Rose up from out the bosom of the lake, Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful, Holding the sword -- and how I row'd across And took it, and have worn it, like a king; And, wheresoever I am sung or told In aftertime, this also shall be known: But now delay not: take Excalibur, And fling him far into the middle mere: Watch what thou seest and lightly bring me word." To him replied the bold Sir Bedivere: "It is not meet, Sir King, to leave thee thus, Aidless, alone, and smitten thro' the helm --  A little thing may harm a wounded man; Yet I thy hest will all perform at full, Watch what I see, and lightly bring thee word." So saying, from the ruin'd shrine he stept, And in the moon athwart the place of tombs, Where lay the mighty bones of ancient men, Old knights, and over them the sea-wind sang Shrill, chill, with flakes of foam. He, stepping down By zigzag paths, and juts of pointed rock, Came on the shining levels of the lake. There drew he forth the brand Excalibur, And o'er him, drawing it, the winter moon, Brightening the skirts of a long cloud, ran forth And sparkled keen with frost against the hilt: For all the haft twinkled with diamond sparks, Myriads of topaz-lights, and jacinth-work Of subtlest jewellery. He gazed so long That both his eyes were dazzled, as he stood,

This way and that dividing the swift mind, In act to throw: but at the last it seem'd Better to leave Excalibur conceal'd There in the many-knotted water flags, That whistled stiff and dry about the marge. So strode he back slow to the wounded King. Then spake King Arthur to Sir Bedivere: "Hast thou perform'd my mission which I gave? What is it thou hast seen? or what hast heard?" And answer made the bold Sir Bedivere: "I heard the ripple washing in the reeds, And the wild water lapping on the crag." To whom replied King Arthur, faint and pale: "Thou hast betray'd thy nature and thy name, Not rendering true answer, as beseem'd Thy fealty, nor like a noble knight: For surer sign had followed either hand, Or voice, or else a motion of the mere. This is a shameful thing for men to lie. Yet now, I charge thee, quickly go again, As thou art lief and dear, and do the thing I bade thee, watch, and lightly bring me word." Then went Sir Bedivere the second time Across the ridge, and paced beside the mere, Counting the dewy pebbles, fix'd in thought; But when he saw the wonder of the hilt, How curiously and strangely chased, he smote His palms together, and he cried aloud: "And if indeed I cast the brand away, Surely a precious thing, one worthy note, Should thus be lost forever from the earth, Which might have pleased the eyes of many men. What good should follow this, if this were done?

What harm, undone? Deep harm to disobey, Seeing obedience is the bond of rule. Were it well to obey then, if a king demand An act unprofitable, against himself? The King is sick, and knows not what he does. What record, or what relic of my lord Should be to aftertime, but empty breath And rumours of a doubt? but were this kept, Stored in some treasure-house of mighty kings, Some one might show it at a joust of arms, Saying, 'King Arthur's sword, Excalibur, Wrought by the lonely maiden of the Lake. Nine years she wrought it, sitting in the deeps Upon the hidden bases of the hills.' So might some old man speak in the aftertime To all the people, winning reverence. But now much honour and much fame were lost." So spake he, clouded with his own conceit, And hid Excalibur the second time, And so strode back slow to the wounded King. Then spoke King Arthur, breathing heavily: "What is it thou hast seen? or what hast heard?" And answer made the bold Sir Bedivere: "I heard the water lapping on the crag, And the long ripple washing in the reeds." To whom replied King Arthur, much in wrath: "Ah, miserable and unkind, untrue, Unknightly, traitor-hearted! Woe is me! Authority forgets a dying king, Laid widow'd of the power in his eye That bow'd the will. I see thee what thou art, For thou, the latest-left of all my knights, In whom should meet the offices of all,

Thou wouldst betray me for the precious hilt; Either from lust of gold, or like a girl Valuing the giddy pleasure of the eyes. Yet, for a man may fail in duty twice, And the third time may prosper, get thee hence: But, if thou spare to fling Excalibur, I will arise and slay thee with my hands." Then quickly rose Sir Bedivere, and ran, And, leaping down the ridges lightly, plunged Among the bulrush beds, and clutch'd the sword, And strongly wheel'd and threw it. The great brand Made lightings in the splendour of the moon, And flashing round and round, and whirl'd in an arch, Shot like a streamer of the northern morn, Seen where the moving isles of winter shock By night with noises of the Northern Sea. So flashed and fell the brand Excalibur: But ere he dipt the surface, rose an arm Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful, And caught him by the hilt, and brandish'd him Three times, and drew him under in the mere. And lightly went the other to the King. Then spoke King Arthur, drawing thicker breath: "Now see I by thine eyes that this is done. Speak out: what is it thou hast heard, or seen?" And answer made the bold Sir Bedivere: "Sir King, I closed mine eyelids, lest the gems Should blind my purpose, for I never saw, Nor shall see, here or elsewhere, till I die, Not tho' I live three lives of mortal men, So great a miracle as yonder hilt. Then with both hands I flung him, wheeling him; But when I look'd again, beheld an arm,

Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful. That caught him by the hilt, and brandished him Three times, and drew him under In the mere." And answer made King Arthur, breathing hard: "My end draws nigh;'tis time that I were gone. Make broad thy shoulders to receive my weight, And bear me to the margin; yet I fear My wound hath taken cold, and I shall die." So saying, from the pavement he half rose, Slowly, with pain, reclining on his arm, And looking wistfully with wide blue eyes As in a picture. Him Sir Bedivere Remorsefully regarded thro' his tears, And would have spoken, but he found not word; Then took with care, and kneeling on one knee, O'er both his shoulders drew the languid hands, And rising bore him thro' the place of tombs. But, as he walk'd, King Arthur panted hard, Like one that feels a nightmare on his bed When all the house is mute. So sigh'd the King, Muttering and murmuring at his ear, "Quick, quick! I fear it is too late, and I shall die." But the other swiftly strode from ridge to ridge, Clothed with his breath, and looking, as he walk'd, Larger than human on the frozen hills. He heard the deep behind him, and a cry Before. His own thought drove him like a goad. Dry clashed his harness in the icy caves And barren chasms, and all to left and right The bare black cliff clang'd round him, as he based His feet on juts of slippery crag that rang Sharp-smitten with the dint of armed heels --  And on a sudden, lo! the level lake,

And the long glories of the winter moon. Then saw they how there hove a dusky barge, Dark as a funeral scarf from stern to stern, Beneath them; and descending they were ware That all the decks were dense with stately forms, Black-stoled, black-hooded, like a dream -- by these Three Queens with crowns of gold: and from them rose A cry that shiver'd to the tingling stars, And, as it were one voice, an agony Of lamentation, like a wind that shrills All night in a waste land, where no one comes Or hath come, since the making of the world. Then murmur'd Arthur, "Place me in the barge." So to the barge they came. There those three Queens Put forth their hands, and took the King, and wept. But she, that rose the tallest of them all And fairest, laid his head upon her lap, And loosed the shatter'd casque, and chafed his hands, And call'd him by his name, complaining loud, And dropping bitter tears against a brow Striped with dark blood: for all his face was white And colourless, and like the withered moon Smote by the fresh beam of the springing east; And all his greaves and cuisses dash'd with drops Of onset; and the light and lustrous curls --  That made his forehead like a rising sun High from the dias-throne -- were parch'd with dust; Or, clotted into points and hanging loose, Mix'd with the knightly growth that fringed his lips. So like a shatter'd column lay the King; Not like that Arthur who, with lance in rest, From spur to plume a star of tournament, Shot thro' the lists of Camelot, and charged

Before the eyes of ladles and of kings, Then loudly cried the bold Sir Bedivere: "Ah! my Lord Arthur, whither shall I go? Where shall I hide my forehead and my eyes? For now I see the true old times are dead, When every morning brought a noble chance, And every chance brought out a noble knight. Such times have been not since the light that led The holy Elders with the gift of myrrh. But now the whole Round Table is dissolved Which was an image of the mighty world, And, I the last, go forth companionless, And the days darken round me, and the years, Among new men, strange faces, other minds." And slowly answered Arthur from the barge: "The old order changeth, yielding place to new, And God fulfils himself in many ways, Lest one good custom should corrupt the world. Comfort thyself: what comfort is in me? I have lived my life, and that which I have done May He within himself make pure! but thou, If thou shouldst never see my face again, Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by prayer Than this world dreams of. Wherefore, let thy voice Rise like a fountain for me night and day. For what are men better than sheep or goats That nourish a blind life within the brain, If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer Both for themselves and those who call them friend? For so the whole round earth is every way Bound by gold chains about the feet of God. But now farewell. I am going a long way With these thou seest-if indeed I go

(For all my mind is clouded with a doubt) To the island-valley of Avilion; Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow, Nor ever wind blows loudly; but it lies Deep-meadow'd, happy, fair with orchard lawns And bowery hollows crown'd with summer sea. Where I will heal me of my grievous wound." So said he, and the barge with oar and sail Moved from the brink, like some full-breasted swan That, fluting a wild carol ere her death, Ruffles her pure cold plume, and takes the flood With swarthy webs. Long stood Sir Bedivere Revolving many memories, till the hull Look'd one black dot against the verge of dawn, And on the mere the wailing died away. But when that moan had past for evermore, The stillness of the dead world's winter dawn Amazed him, and he groan'd, "The King is gone." And therewithal came on him the weird rhyme, "From the great deep to the great deep he goes"

Whereat he slowly turn'd and slowly clomb The last hard footstep of that iron crag; Thence mark'd the black hull moving yet, and cried, "He passes to be King among the dead, And after healing of his grievous wound He comes again; but -- if he come no more --  O me, be yon dark Queens in yon black boat, Who shriek'd and wail'd, the three whereat we gazed On that high day, when, clothed with living light, They stood before his throne in silence, friends Of Arthur, who should help him at his need?"

Then from the dawn it seem'd there came, but faint As from beyond the limit of the world, Like the last echo born of a great cry, Sounds, as if some fair city were one voice Around a king returning from his wars.

Thereat once more he moved about, and clomb Ev'n to the highest he could climb, and saw, Straining his eyes beneath an arch of hand, Or thought he saw, the speck that bare the King, Down that long water opening on the deep Somewhere far off, pass on and on, and go From less to less and vanish into light. And the new sun rose bringing the new year.



Chapter XVII

Rip Van Winkle


The following tale was found among the papers of the late Diedrich Knickerbocker, an old gentleman of New York, who was very curious in the Dutch history of the province, and the manners of the descendants from its primitive settlers. His historical researches, however, did not lie so much among books as among men; for the former are lamentably scanty on his favourite topics; whereas he found the old burghers, and still more their wives, rich in that legendary lore so invaluable to true history. Whenever, therefore, he happened upon a genuine Dutch family, snugly shut up in its low-roofed farmhouse under a spreading sycamore, he looked upon it as a little clasped volume of black-letter, and studied it with the zeal of a book worm.

The result of all these researches was a history of the province during the reign of the Dutch governors, which he published some years since. There have been various opinions as to the literary character of his work, and, to tell the truth, it is not a whit better than it should be. Its chief merit is its scrupulous accuracy, which indeed was a little questioned on its first appearance, but has since been completely established; and it is now admitted into all historical collections, as a book of unquestionable authority.

The old gentleman died shortly after the publication of his work, and now that he is dead and gone, it cannot do much harm to his memory to say that his time might have been much better employed in weightier labours. He, however, was apt to ride his hobby his own way; and though it did now and then kick up the dust a little in the eyes of his neighbours, and grieve the spirit of some friends, for whom he felt the truest deference and affection; yet his errors and follies are remembered "more in sorrow than in anger," and it begins to be suspected that he never intended to injure or offend. But however his memory may be appreciated by critics, it is still held dear by many folk, whose good opinion is worth having; particularly by certain biscuit-bakers, who have gone so far as to imprint his likeness on their new-year cakes; and have thus given him a chance for immortality, almost equal to the being stamped on a Waterloo Medal, or a Queen Anne's farthing.

Whoever has made a voyage up the Hudson must remember the Kaatskill Mountains. They are a dismembered branch of the great Appalachian family, and are seen away to the west of the river, swelling up to a noble height, and lording it over the surrounding country. Every change of season, every change of weather, indeed, every hour of the day, produces some change in the magical hues and shapes of these mountains, and they are regarded by all the good wives, far and near, as perfect barometers. When the weather is fair and settled, they are clothed in blue and purple, and print their bold outlines on the clear evening sky; but sometimes when the rest of the landscape is cloudless they will gather a hood of gray vapours about their summits, which, in the last rays of the setting sun, will glow and light up like a crown of glory.

At the foot of these fairy mountains, the voyager may have descried the light smoke curling up from a village, whose shingle-roofs gleam among the trees, just where the blue tints of the upland melt away into the fresh green of the nearer landscape. It is a little village of great antiquity, having been founded by some of the Dutch colonists in the early time of the province, just about the beginning of the government of the good Peter Stuyvesant (may he rest in peace!) and there were some of the houses of the original settlers standing within a few years, built of small yellow bricks brought from Holland, having latticed windows and gable fronts, surmounted with weathercocks.

In that same village, and in one of these very houses (which, to tell the precise truth, was sadly time-worn and weather-beaten), there lived many years since, while the country was yet a province of Great Britain, a simple, good-natured fellow, of the name of Rip Van Winkle. He was a descendant of the Van Winkles who figured so gallantly in the chivalrous days of Peter Stuyvesant, and accompanied him to the siege of Fort Christina. He inherited, however, but little of the martial character of his ancestors. I have observed that he was a simple, good-natured man; he was, moreover, a kind neighbour, and an obedient hen-pecked husband. Indeed, to the latter circumstance might be owing that meekness of spirit which gained him such universal popularity; for those men are most apt to be obsequious and conciliating abroad, who are under the discipline of shrews at home. Their tempers, doubtless, are rendered pliant and malleable in the fiery furnace of domestic tribulation; and a curtain lecture is worth all the sermons in the world for teaching the virtues of patience and long-suffering. A termagant wife may, therefore, in some respects be considered a tolerable blessing, and if so, Rip Van Winkle was thrice blessed.

Certain it is, that he was a great favourite among all the good wives of the village, who, as usual with the amiable sex, took his part in all family squabbles; and never failed, whenever they talked those matters over in their evening gossipings, to lay all the blame on Dame Van Winkle. The children of the village, too, would shout with joy whenever he approached. He assisted at their sports, made their playthings, taught them to fly kites and shoot marbles, and told them long stories of ghosts, witches, and Indians. Whenever he went dodging about the village, he was surrounded by a troop of them, hanging on his skirts, clambering on his back, and playing a thousand tricks on him, with impunity; and not a dog would bark at him throughout the neighbourhood.

The great error in Rip's composition was an insuperable aversion to all kinds of profitable labour. It could not be from the want of assiduity or perseverance; for he would sit on a wet rock, with a rod as long and heavy as a Tartar's lance, and fish all day without a murmur, even though he should not be encouraged by a single nibble. He would carry a fowling-piece on his shoulder for hours together, trudging through woods and swamps, and up hill and down dale, to shoot a few squirrels or wild pigeons. He would never refuse to assist a neighbour, even in the roughest toil, and was a foremost man at all country frolics for husking Indian corn, or building stone-fences; the women of the village, too, used to employ him to run their errands, and to do such little odd jobs as their less obliging husband^ would not do for them. In a word, Rip was ready to attend to anybody's business but his own; but as to doing family duty, and keeping his farm in order, he found it impossible.

In fact, he declared it was of no use to work on his farm; it was the most pestilent little piece of ground in the whole country; everything about it went wrong, and would go wrong, in spite of him. His fences were continually falling to pieces; his cow would either go astray or get among the cabbages; weeds were sure to grow quicker in his fields than any where else; the rain always made a point of setting in just as he had some out-door work to do; so that though his patrimonial estate had dwindled away under his management, acre by acre, until there was little more left than a mere patch of Indian corn and potatoes, yet it was the worst-conditioned farm in the neighbourhood.

His children, too, were as ragged and wild as if they belonged to nobody. His son Rip, an urchin begotten in his own likeness, promised to inherit the habits, with the old clothes of his father. He was generally seen trooping like a colt at his mother's heels, equipped in a pair of his father's cast-off galligaskins, which he had much ado to hold up with one hand, as a fine lady does her train in bad weather.

Rip Van Winkle, however, was one of those happy mortals, of foolish, well-oiled dispositions, who take the world easy, eat white bread or brown, whichever can be got with least thought or trouble, and would rather starve on a penny than work for a pound. If left to himself; he would have whistled life away in perfect contentment; but his wife kept continually dinning in his ears about his idleness, his carelessness, and the ruin he was bringing on his family. Morning, noon, and night her tongue was incessantly going, and everything he said or did was sure to produce a torrent of household eloquence. Rip had but one way of replying to all lectures of the kind, and that, by frequent use, had grown into a habit. He shrugged his shoulders, shook his head, cast up his eyes, but said nothing. This, however, always provoked a fresh volley from his wife; so that he was fain to draw off his forces, and take to the outside of the house -- the only side which, in truth, belongs to a henpecked husband.

Rip's sole domestic adherent was his dog Wolf, who was as much henpecked as his master; for Dame Van Winkle regarded them as companions in idleness, and even looked upon Wolf with an evil eye, as the cause of his master's going so often astray. True it is, in all points of spirit befitting an honourable dog, he was as courageous an animal as ever scoured the woods -- but what courage can withstand the ever-during and all-besetting terrors of a woman's tongue? The moment Wolf entered the house his crest fell, his tail drooped to the ground, or curled between his legs, he sneaked about with a gallows air, casting many a sidelong glance at Dame Van Winkle, and at the least flourish of a broomstick or ladle he would fly to the door with yelping precipitation.

Times grew worse and worse with Rip Van Winkle as years of matrimony rolled on; a tart temper never mellows with age, and a sharp tongue is the only edged tool that grows keener with constant use. For a long while he used to console himself, when driven from home, by frequenting a kind of perpetual club of the sages, philosophers, and other idle personages of the village; which held its sessions on a bench before a small inn, designated by a rubicund portrait of His Majesty George the Third. Here they used to sit in the shade through a long lazy summer's day, talking listlessly over village gossip, or telling endless, sleepy stories about nothing. But it would have been worth any statesman's money to have heard the profound discussions that sometimes took place, when by chance an old newspaper fell into their hands from some passing traveller. How solemnly they would listen to the contents, as drawled out by Derrick Van Bummel, the school-master, a dapper learned little man, who was not to be daunted by the most gigantic word in the dictionary; and how sagely they would deliberate upon public events some months after they had taken place.

The opinions of this junto were completely controlled by Nicholas Vedder, a patriarch of the village, and landlord of the inn, at the door of which he took his seat from morning till night, just moving sufficiently to avoid the sun and keep in the shade of a large tree; so that the neighbours could tell the hour by his movements as accurately as by a sun-dial. It is true he was rarely heard to speak, but smoked his pipe incessantly. His adherents however (for every great man has his adherents), perfectly understood him, and knew how to gather his opinions. When anything that was read or related displeased him, he was observed to smoke his pipe vehemently, and to send forth short, frequent and angry puffs; but when pleased, he would inhale the smoke slowly and tranquilly, and emit it in light and placid clouds; and sometimes, taking the pipe from his mouth, and letting the fragrant vapour curl about his nose, would gravely nod his head in token of perfect approbation.

From even this stronghold the unlucky Rip was at length routed by his termagant wife, who would suddenly break in upon the tranquillity of the assemblage and call the members all to naught; nor was that august personage, Nicholas Vedder himself, sacred from the daring tongue of this terrible virago, who charged him outright with encouraging her husband in habits of idleness.

Poor Rip was at last reduced almost to despair; and his only alternative, to escape from the labour of the farm and clamour of his wife, was to take gun in hand and stroll away into the woods. Here he would sometimes seat himself at the foot of a tree, and share the contents of his wallet with Wolf, with whom he sympathised as a fellow-sufferer in persecution. "Poor Wolf," he would say, "thy mistress leads thee a dog's life of it; but never mind, my lad, whilst I live thou shalt never want a friend to stand by thee!" Wolf would wag his tail, look wistfully in his master's face, and if dogs can feel pity I verily believe he reciprocated the sentiment with all his heart.

In a long ramble of the kind on a fine autumnal day, Rip had unconsciously scrambled to one of the highest parts of the Kaatskill Mountains. He was after his favourite sport squirrel shooting, and the still solitudes had echoed and reechoed with the reports of his gun. Panting and fatigued, he threw himself, late in the afternoon, on a green knoll, covered with mountain herbage, that crowned the brow of a precipice. From an opening between the trees he could overlook all the lower country for many a mile of rich woodland. He saw at a distance the lordly Hudson, far, far below him, moving on its silent but majestic course, with the reflection of a purple cloud, or the sail of a lagging bark, here and there sleeping on its glassy bosom, and at last losing itself in the blue highlands.

On the other side he looked down into a deep mountain glen, wild, lonely, and shagged, the bottom filled with fragments from the impending cliffs, and scarcely lighted by the reflected rays of the setting sun. For some time Rip lay musing on this scene; evening was gradually advancing; the mountains began to throw their long blue shadows over the valleys; he saw that it would be dark long before he could reach the village, and he heaved a heavy sigh when he thought of encountering the terrors of Dame Van Winkle.

As he was about to descend, he heard a voice from a distance, hallooing, "Rip Van Winkle! Rip Van Winkle!" He looked round, but could see nothing but a crow winging its solitary flight across the mountain. He thought his fancy must have deceived him, and turned again to descend, when he heard the same cry ring through the still evening air: "Rip Van Winkle! Rip Van Winkle!" -- at the same time Wolf bristled up his back, and giving a low growl, skulked to his master's side, looking fearfully down into the glen. Rip now felt a vague apprehension stealing over him; he looked anxiously in the same direction, and perceived a strange figure slowly toiling up the rocks, and bending under the weight of something he carried on his back. He was surprised to see any human being in this lonely and unfrequented place; but supposing it to be some one of the neighbourhood in need of his assistance, he hastened down to yield it.

On nearer approach he was still more surprised at the singularity of the stranger's appearance. He was a short, square-built old fellow, with thick bushy hair, and a grizzled beard. His dress was of the antique Dutch fashion: a cloth jerkin strapped round the waist, several pair of breeches, the outer one of ample volume, decorated with rows of buttons down the sides, and bunches at the knees. He bore on his shoulder a stout keg, that seemed full of liquor, and made signs for Rip to approach and assist him with the load. Though rather shy and distrustful of this new acquaintance, Rip complied with his usual alacrity; and mutually relieving one another, they clambered up a narrow gully, apparently the dry bed of a mountain torrent. As they ascended, Rip every now and then heard long rolling peals like distant thunder, that seemed to issue out of a deep ravine, or rather cleft, between lofty rocks, toward which their rugged path conducted. He paused for a moment, but supposing it to be the muttering of one of those transient thunder-showers which often take place in mountain heights, he proceeded. Passing through the ravine, they came to a hollow, like a small amphitheatre, surrounded by perpendicular precipices, over the brinks of which impending trees shot their branches, so that you only caught glimpses of the azure sky and the bright evening cloud. During the whole time Rip and his companion had laboured on in silence; for though the former marvelled greatly what could be the object of carrying a keg of liquor up this wild mountain, yet there was something strange and incomprehensible about the unknown, that inspired awe and checked familiarity.

On entering the amphitheatre, new objects of wonder presented themselves. On a level spot in the centre was a company of odd-looking personages playing at nine-pins. They were dressed in a quaint outlandish fashion; some wore short doublets, others jerkins, with long knives in their belts, and most of them had enormous breeches of similar style with that of the guide's. Their visages, too, were peculiar; one had a large beard, broad face, and small piggish eyes; the face of another seemed to consist entirely of nose, and was surmounted by a white sugar-loaf hat, set off with a little red cock's tail. They all had beards, of various shapes and colours. There was one who seemed to be the commander. He was a stout old gentleman, with a weather-beaten countenance; he wore a laced doublet, broad belt and hanger, high-crowned hat and feather, red stockings, and high-heeled shoes, with roses in them. The whole group reminded Rip of the figures in an old Flemish painting in the parlour of Dominie Van Shaick, the village parson, which had been brought over from Holland at the time of the settlement.

What seemed particularly odd to Rip was, that though these folks were evidently amusing themselves, yet they maintained the gravest faces, the most mysterious silence, and were, withal, the most melancholy party of pleasure he had ever witnessed. Nothing interrupted the stillness of the scene but the noise of the balls, which, whenever they were rolled, echoed along the mountains like rumbling peals of thunder.

As Rip and his companion approached them, they suddenly desisted from their play, and stared at him with such fixed, statue-like gaze, and such strange, uncouth, lack-lustre countenances that his heart turned within him, and his knees smote together. His companion now emptied the contents of the keg into large flagons, and made signs to him to wait upon the company. He obeyed with fear and trembling; they quaffed the liquor in profound silence, and then returned to their game.

By degrees Rip's awe and apprehension subsided. He even ventured, when no eye was fixed upon him, to taste the beverage, which he found had much of the flavour of excellent Hollands. He was naturally a thirsty soul, and was soon tempted to repeat the draught. One taste provoked another; and he reiterated his visits to the flagon so often that at length his senses were overpowered, his eyes swam in his head, his head gradually declined, and he fell into a deep sleep.

On waking, he found himself on the green knoll whence he had first seen the old man of the glen. He rubbed his eyes -- it was a bright, sunny morning. The birds were hopping and twittering among the bushes, and the eagle was wheeling aloft, and breasting the pure mountain breeze. "Surely," thought Rip, "I have not slept here all night." He recalled the occurrences before he fell asleep. The strange man with a keg of liquor -- the mountain ravine -- the wild retreat among the rocks -- the woe-begone party at nine-pins -- the flagon -- "Oh! that flagon! that wicked flagon!" thought Rip -- "what excuse shall I make to Dame Van Winkle?"

He looked round for his gun, but in place of the clean, well-oiled fowling-piece, he found an old firelock lying by him, the barrel incrusted with rust, the lock falling off, and the stock worm-eaten. He now suspected that the grave roisters of the mountain had put a trick upon him, and, having dosed him with liquor, had robbed him of his gun. Wolf, too, had disappeared, but he might have strayed away after a squirrel or partridge. He whistled after him, and shouted his name, but all in vain; the echoes repeated his whistle and shout, but no dog was to be seen.

He determined to revisit the scene of the last evening's gambol, and if he met with any of the party, to demand his dog and gun. As he rose to walk, he found himself stiff in the joints, and wanting in his usual activity. "These mountain beds do not agree with me," thought Rip, "and if this frolic should lay me up with a fit of the rheumatism, I shall have a blessed time with Dame Van Winkle." With some difficulty he got down into the glen; he found the gully up which he and his companion had ascended the preceding evening; but to his astonishment a mountain stream was now foaming down it, leaping from rock to rock and filling the glen with babbling murmurs. He, however, made shift to scramble up its sides, working his toilsome way through thickets of birch, sassafras, and witch-hazel, and sometimes tripped up or entangled by the wild grapevines that twisted their coils or tendrils from tree to tree, and spread a kind of network in his path.

At length he reached to where the ravine had opened through the cliffs to the amphitheatre; but no traces of such opening remained. The rocks presented a high, impenetrable wall, over which the torrent come tumbling in a sheet of feathery foam, and fell into a broad, deep basin, black from the shadows of the surrounding forest. Here, then, poor Rip was brought to a stand. He again called and whistled after his dog; he was only answered by the cawing of a flock of idle crows, sporting high in air about a dry tree that overhung a sunny precipice; and who, secure in their elevation, seemed to look down and scoff at the poor man's perplexities. What was to be done? the morning was passing away, and Rip felt famished for want of his breakfast. He grieved to give up his dog and gun; he dreaded to meet his wife; but it would not do to starve among the mountains. He shook his head, shouldered the rusty firelock, and, with a heart full of trouble and anxiety, turned his steps homeward.

As he approached the village he met a number of people, but none whom he knew, which somewhat surprised him, for he had thought himself acquainted with every one in the country round. Their dress, too, was of a different fashion from that to which he was accustomed. They all stared at him with equal marks of surprise, and whenever they cast their eyes upon him, invariably stroked their chins. The constant recurrence of this gesture induced Rip, involuntarily, to do the same, when, to his astonishment, he found his beard had grown a foot long!

He had now entered the skirts of the village. A troop of strange children ran at his heels, hooting after him, and pointing at his gray beard. The dogs, too, not one of which he recognised for an old acquaintance, barked at him as he passed. The very village was altered; it was larger and more populous. There were rows of houses which he had never seen before, and those which had been his familiar haunts had disappeared. Strange names were over the doors -- strange faces at the windows -- everything was strange. His mind now misgave him; he began to doubt whether both he and the world around him were not bewitched. Surely this was his native village, which he had left but the day before. There stood the Kaatskill Mountains -- there ran the silver Hudson at a distance -- there was every hill and dale precisely as it had always been -- Rip was sorely perplexed -- "That flagon last night," thought he, "has addled my poor head sadly!"

It was with some difficulty that he found the way to his own house, which he approached with silent awe, expecting every moment to hear the shrill voice of Dame Van Winkle. He found the house gone to decay -- the roof fallen in, the windows shattered, and the doors off the hinges. A half-starved dog that looked like Wolf was skulking about it. Rip called him by name, but the cur snarled, showed his teeth, and passed on. This was an unkind cut indeed -- "My very dog," sighed poor Rip, "has forgotten me!"

He entered the house, which, to tell the truth, Dame Van Winkle had always kept in neat order. It was empty, forlorn, and apparently abandoned. This desolateness overcame all his connubial fears -- he called loudly for his wife and children -- the lonely chambers rang for a moment with his voice, and then again all was silence.

He now hurried forth, and hastened to his old resort, the village inn -- but it, too, was gone. A large, rickety wooden building stood in its place, with great gaping windows, some of them broken and mended with old hats and petticoats, and over the door was painted, "The Union Hotel, by Jonathan Doolittle." Instead of the great tree that used to shelter the quiet little Dutch inn of yore, there now was reared a tall naked pole, with something on the top that looked like a red night-cap, and from it was fluttering a flag, on which was a singular assemblage of stars and stripes -- all this was strange and incomprehensible. He recognised on the sign, however, the ruby face of King George, under which he had smoked so many a peaceful pipe; but even this was singularly metamorphosed. The red coat was changed for one of blue and buff, a sword was held in the hand instead of a sceptre, the head was decorated with a cocked hat, and underneath was painted in large characters, GENERAL WASHINGTON.

There was, as usual, a crowd of folk about the door, but none that Rip recollected. The very character of the people seemed changed. There was a busy, bustling, disputatious tone about it, instead of the accustomed phlegm and drowsy tranquillity. He looked in vain for the sage Nicholas Vedder, with his broad face, double chin, and fair long pipe, uttering clouds of tobacco-smoke instead of idle speeches; or Van Bummel, the school-master, doling forth the contents of an ancient newspaper. In place of these, a lean, bilious-looking fellow, with his pockets full of handbills, was haranguing vehemently about rights of citizens -- elections -- members of Congress -- liberty -- Bunker's Hill -- heroes of seventy-six -- and other words, which were a perfect Babylonish jargon to the bewildered Van Winkle.

The appearance of Rip, with his long grizzled beard, his rusty fowling-piece, his uncouth dress, and an army of women and children at his heels, soon attracted the attention of the tavern-politicians. They crowded round him, eying him from head to foot with great curiosity. The orator bustled up to him, and, drawing him partly aside, inquired "on which side he voted?" Rip started in vacant stupidity. Another short but busy little fellow pulled him by the arm, and, rising on tiptoe, inquired in his ear, "Whether he was Federal or Democrat?" Rip was equally at a loss to comprehend the question; when a knowing, self-important old gentleman, in a sharp cocked hat, made his way through the crowd, putting them to the right and left with his elbows as he passed, and planting himself before Van Winkle, with one arm akimbo, the other resting on his cane, his keen eyes and sharp hat penetrating, as it were, into his very soul, demanded in an austere tone, "what brought him to the election with a gun on his shoulder, and a mob at his heels, and whether he meant to breed a riot in the village?" -- "Alas! gentlemen," cried Rip, somewhat dismayed, "I am a poor quiet man, a native of the place, and a loyal subject of the king, God bless him!"

Here a general shout burst from the bystanders -- "A tory! a tory! a spy! a refugee! hustle him! away with him!" It was with great difficulty that the self-important man in the cocked hat restored order; and having assumed a tenfold austerity of brow, demanded again of the unknown culprit what he came there for, and whom he was seeking? The poor man humbly assured him that he meant no harm, but merely came there in search of some of his neighbours, who used to keep about the tavern.

"Well -- who are they? -- name them."

Rip bethought himself a moment, and inquired, "Where's Nicholas Vedder?"

There was a silence for a little while, when an old man replied, in a thin, piping voice: "Nicholas Vedder! why, he is dead and gone these eighteen years! There was a wooden tombstone in the church yard that used to tell all about him, but that's rotten and gone too."

"Where's Brom Butcher?"

"Oh, he went off to the army in the beginning of the war; some say he was killed at the storming of Stony Point -- others say he was drowned in a squall at the foot of Antony's Nose. I don't know -- he never came back again."

"Where's Van Bummel, the school-master?"

"He went off to the wars too, was a great militia general, and is now in Congress."

Rip's heart died away at hearing of these sad changes in his home and friends, and finding himself thus alone in the world. Every answer puzzled him too, by treating of such enormous lapses of time, and of matters which he could not understand: war -- Congress -- Stony Point; he had no courage to ask after any more friends, but cried out in dispair, "Does nobody here know Rip Van Winkle?"

"Oh, Rip Van Winkle!" exclaimed two or three, "Oh, to be sure! that's Rip Van Winkle yonder, leaning against the tree."

Rip looked, and beheld a precise counterpart of himself, as he went up the mountain: apparently as lazy, and certainly as ragged. The poor fellow was now completely confounded. He doubted his own identity, and whether he was himself or another man. In the midst of his bewilderment, the man in the cocked hat demanded who he was, and what was his name?

"God knows," exclaimed he, at his wit's end; "I'm not myself -- I'm somebody else -- that's me yonder -- no -- that's somebody else got into my shoes -- I was myself last night, but fell asleep on the mountain, and they've changed my gun, and everything's changed, and I'm changed, and I can't tell what's my name, or who I am!"

The bystanders began now to look at each other, nod, wink significantly, and tap their fingers against their foreheads. There was a whisper, also, about securing the gun, and keeping the old fellow from doing mischief, at the very suggestion of which the self-important man in the cocked hat retired with some precipitation. At this critical moment a fresh, comely women pressed through the throng to get a peep at the gray-bearded man. She had a chubby child in her arms, which, frightened at his looks, began to cry. "Hush, Rip," cried she, "hush, you little fool; the old man won't hurt you." The name of the child, the air of the mother, the tone of her voice, all awakened a train of recollections in his mind. "What is your name, my good woman?" asked he.

"Judith Gardenier."

"And your father's name?"

"Ah, poor man, Rip Van Winkle was his name, but it's twenty years since he went away from home with his gun, and never has been heard of since, -- his dog came home without him; but whether he shot himself, or was carried away by the Indians, nobody can tell. I was then but a little girl."

Rip had but one question more to ask; and he put it with a faltering voice:

"Where's your mother?"

"Oh, she too had died but a short time since; she broke a blood-vessel in a fit of passion at a New England peddler."

There was a drop of comfort at least, in this intelligence. The honest man could contain himself no longer. He caught his daughter and her child in his arms. "I am your father!" cried he -- "Young Rip Van Winkle once -- old Rip Van Winkle now! Does nobody know poor Rip Van Winkle?"

All stood amazed, until an old woman, tottering out from among the crowd, put her hand to her brow, and peering under it in his face for a moment, exclaimed, "Sure enough it is Rip Van Winkle -- it is himself! Welcome home again, old neighbour -- Why, where have you been these twenty long years?"

Rip's story was soon told, for the whole twenty years had been to him but as one night. The neighbours stared when they heard it; some were seen to wink at each other, and put their tongues in their cheeks; and the self-important man in the cocked hat, who, when the alarm was over, had returned to the field, screwed down the corners of his mouth, and shook his head -- upon which there was a general shaking of the head throughout the assemblage.

It was determined, however, to take the opinion of old Peter Vanderdonk, who was seen slowly advancing up the road. He was a descendant of the historian of the that name, who wrote one of the earliest accounts of the province. Peter was the most ancient inhabitant of the village, and well versed in all the wonderful events and traditions of the neighbourhood. He recollected Rip at once, and corroborated his story in the most satisfactory manner. He assured the company that it was a fact, handed down from his ancestor the historian, that the Kaatskill Mountains had always been haunted by strange beings. That it was affirmed that the great Hendrick Hudson, the first discoverer of the river and country, kept a kind of vigil there every twenty years, with his crew of the Half-moon; being permitted in this way to revisit the scenes of his enterprise, and keep a guardian eye upon the river and the great city called by his name. That his father had once seen them in their old Dutch dresses playing at nine-pins in a hollow of the mountain; and that he himself had heard, one summer afternoon, the sound of their balls like distant peals of thunder.

To make a long story short, the company broke up, and returned to the more important concerns of the election. Rip's daughter took him home to live with her; she had a snug well-furnished house, and a stout cheery farmer for a husband, whom Rip recollected for one of the urchins that used to climb upon his back. As to Rip's son and heir, who was the ditto of himself, seen leaning against the tree, he was employed to work on the farm; but evinced an hereditary disposition to attend to anything else but his business.

Rip now resumed his old walks and habits; he soon found many of his former cronies, though all rather the worse for the wear and tear of time; and preferred making friends among the rising generation, with whom he soon grew into great favour.

Having nothing to do at home, and being arrived at that happy age when a man can be idle with impunity, he took his place once more on the bench at the inn door, and was reverenced as one of the patriarchs of the village, and a chronicle of the old times "before the war." It was some time before he could get into the regular track of gossip, or could be made to comprehend the strange events that had taken place during his torpor. How that there had been a revolutionary war -- that the country had thrown off the yoke of old England -- and that, instead of being a subject of his Majesty George the Third, he was now a free citizen of the United States. Rip, in fact, was no politician; the changes of states and empires made but little impression on him; but there was one species of despotism under which he had long groaned, and that was -- petticoat government. Happily that was at an end; he had got his neck out of the yoke of matrimony, and could go in and out whenever he pleased, without dreading the tyranny of Dame Van Winkle. Whenever her name was mentioned, however, he shook his head, shrugged his shoulders, and cast up his eyes, which might pass either for an expression of resignation to his fate, or joy at his deliverance.

He used to tell his story to every stranger that arrived at Mr. Doolittle's hotel. He was observed, at first, to vary on some points every time he told it, which was, doubtless, owing to his having so recently awaked. It at last settled down precisely to the tale I have related, and not a man, woman, or child in the neighbourhood but knew it by heart. Some always pretended to doubt the reality of it, and insisted that Rip had been out of his head, and that this was one point on which he always remained flighty. The old Dutch inhabitants, however, almost universally gave it full credit. Even to this day they never hear a thunder-storm of a summer afternoon about the Kaatskill, but they say Hendrick Hudson and his crew are at their game of nine-pins; and it is a common wish of all henpecked husbands in the neighbourhood, when life hangs heavy on their hands, that they might have a quieting draught out of Rip Van Wrinkle's flagon.



Chapter XVIII

The Gray Champion


There was once a time when New England groaned under the actual pressure of heavier wrongs than those threatened ones which brought on the Revolution. James II, the bigoted successor of Charles the Voluptuous, had annulled the charters of all the colonies, and sent a harsh and unprincipled soldier to take away our liberites and endanger our religion. The administration of Sir Edmund Andros lacked scarcely a single characteristic of tyranny: a Governor and Council, holding office from the King, and wholly independent of the country; laws made and taxes levied without concurrence of the people immediate or by their representatives; the rights of private citizens violated, and the titles of all landed property declared void; the voice of complaint stifled by restrictions on the press; and, finally, disaffection overawed by the first band of mercenary troops that ever marched on our free soil. For two years our ancestors were kept in sullen submission by that filial love which had invariably secured their allegiance to the mother country, whether its head chanced to be a Parliament, Protector, or Popish Monarch. Till these evil times, however, such allegiance had been merely nominal, and the colonists had ruled themselves, enjoying far more freedom than is even yet the privilege of the native subjects of Great Britain.

At length a rumour reached our shores that the Prince of Orange had ventured on an enterprise, the success of which would be the triumph of civil and religious rights and the salvation of New England. It was but a doubtful whisper; it might be false, or the attempt might fail; and, in either case, the man that stirred against King Tames would lose his head. Still the intelligence produced a marked effect. The people smiled mysteriously in the streets, and threw bold glances at their oppressors; while far and wide there was a subdued and silent agitation, as if the slightest signal would rouse the whole land from its sluggish despondency. Aware of their danger, the rulers resolved to avert it by an imposing display of strength, and perhaps to confirm their despotism by yet harsher measures. One afternoon in April, 1689, Sir Edmund Andros and his favourite councillors, being warm with wine, assembled the red-coats of the Governor's Guard, and made their appearance in the streets of Boston. The sun was near setting when the march commenced.

The roll of the drum at that unquiet crisis seemed to go through the streets, less as the martial music of the soldiers, than as a muster-call to the inhabitants themselves. A multitude, by various avenues, assembled in King Street, which was destined to be the scene, nearly a century afterward, of another encounter between the troops of Britain, and a people struggling against her tyranny. Though more than sixty years had elapsed since the pilgrims came, this crowd of their descendants still showed the strong and sombre features of their character perhaps more strikingly in such a stern emergency than on happier occasions. There were the sober garb, the general severity of mien, the gloomy but undismayed expression, the scriptural forms of speech, and the confidence in Heaven's blessing on a righteous cause, which would have marked a band of the original Puritans, when threatened by some peril of the wilderness. Indeed, it was not yet time for the old spirit to be extinct; since there were men in the street that day who had worshipped there beneath the trees, before a house was reared to the God for whom they had become exiles. Old soldiers of the Parliament were here, too, smiling grimly at the thought that their aged arms might strike another blow against the house of Stuart. Here, also, were the veterans of King Philip's war, who had burned villages and slaughtered young and old, with pious fierceness, while the godly souls throughout the land were helping them with prayer. Several ministers were scattered among the crowd, which, unlike all other mobs, regarded them with such reverence, as if there were sanctity in their very garments. These holy men exerted their influence to quiet the people, but not to disperse them. Meantime, the purpose of the Governor, in disturbing the peace of the town at a period when the slightest commotion might throw the country into a ferment, was almost the universal subject of inquiry, and variously explained.

"Satan will strike his master-stroke presently," cried some, "because he knoweth that his time is short. All our godly pastors are to be dragged to prison! We shall see them at a Smithfield fire in King Street!"

Hereupon the people of each parish gathered closer round their minister, who looked calmly upward and assumed a more apostolic dignity, as well befitted a candidate for the highest honour of his profession, the crown of martyrdom. It was actually fancied, at that period, that New England might have a John Rogers of her own to take the place of that worthy in the Primer.

"The Pope of Rome has given orders for a new St. Bartholomew!" cried others. "We are to be massacred, man and male child!"

Neither was this rumour wholly discredited, although the wiser class believed the Governor's object somewhat less atrocious. His predecessor under the old charter, Bradstreet, a venerable companion of the first settlers, was known to be in town. There were grounds for conjecturing, that Sir Edmund Andros intended at once to strike terror by a parade of military force, and to confound the opposite faction by possessing himself of their chief.

"Stand firm for the old charter Governor!" shouted the crowd, seizing upon the idea. "The good old Governor Bradstreet!"

While this cry was at the loudest, the people were surprised by the well-known figure of Governor Bradstreet himself, a patriarch of nearly ninety, who appeared on the elevated steps of a door, and, with characteristic mildness, besought them to submit to the constituted authorities.

"My children," concluded this venerable person, "do nothing rashly. Cry not aloud, but pray for the welfare of New England, and expect patiently what the Lord will do in this matter!"

The event was soon to be decided. All this time, the roll of the drum had been approaching through Cornhill, louder and deeper, till with reverberations from house to house, and the regular tramp of martial footsteps, it burst into the street. A double rank of soldiers made their appearance, occupying the whole breadth of the passage, with shouldered matchlocks, and matches burning, so as to present a row of fires in the dusk. Their steady march was like the progress of a machine, that would roll irresistibly over everything in its way. Next, moving slowly, with a confused clatter of hoofs on the pavement, rode a party of mounted gentlemen, the central figure being Sir Edmund Andros, elderly, but erect and soldier-like. Those around him were his favourite councillors, and the bitterest foes of New England. At his right hand rode Edward Randolph, our arch-enemy, that "blasted wretch," as Cotton Mather calls him, who achieved the downfall of our ancient government, and was followed with a sensible curse through life and to his grave. On the other side was Bullivant, scattering jests and mockery as he rode along. Dudley came behind, with a downcast look, dreading, as well he might, to meet the indignant gaze of the people, who beheld him, their only countryman by birth, among the oppressors of his native land. The captain of a frigate in the harbour, and two or three civil officers under the Crown, were also there. But the figure which most attracted the public eye, and stirred up the deepest feeling, was the Episcopal clergyman of King's Chapel, riding haughtily among the magistrates in his priestly vestments, the fitting representative of prelacy and persecution, the union of church and state, and all those abominations which had driven the Puritans to the wilderness. Another guard of soldiers, in double rank, brought up the rear.

The whole scene was a picture of the condition of New England, and its moral, the deformity of any government that does not grow out of the nature of things and the character of the people. On one side the religious multitude, with their sad visages and dark attire, and on the other, the group of despotic rulers, with the high churchman in the midst, and here and there a crucifix at their bosoms, all magnificently clad, flushed with wine, proud of unjust authority, and scoffing at the universal groan. And the mercenary soldiers, waiting but the word to deluge the street with blood, showed the only means by which obedience could be secured.

"O Lord of Hosts," cried a voice among the crowd, "provide a Champion for thy people!"

This ejaculation was loudly uttered, and served as a herald's cry, to introduce a remarkable personage. The crowd had rolled back, and were now huddled together nearly at the extremity of the street, while the soldiers had advanced no more than a third of its length. The intervening space was empty -- a paved solitude, between lofty edifices, which threw almost a twilight shadow over it. Suddenly, there was seen the figure of an ancient man, who seemed to have emerged from among the people, and was walking by himself along the centre of the street, to confront the armed band. He wore the old Puritan dress, a dark cloak and a steeple-crowned hat, in the fashion of at least fifty years before, with a heavy sword upon his thigh, but a staff in his hand to assist the tremulous gait of age.

When at some distance from the multitude, the old man turned slowly round, displaying a face of antique majesty, rendered doubly venerable by the hoary beard that descended on his breast. He made a gesture at once of encouragement and warning, then turned again, and resumed his way.

"Who is this gray patriarch?" asked the young men of their sires.

"Who is this venerable brother?" asked the old men among themselves.

But none could make reply. The fathers of the people, those of four-score years and upwards, were disturbed, deeming it strange that they should forget one of such evident authority, whom they must have known in their early days, the associate of Winthrop, and all the old councillors, giving laws, and making prayers, and leading them against the savage. The elderly men ought to have remembered him, too, with locks as gray in their youth, as their own were now. And the young! How could he have passed so utterly from their memories -- that hoary sire, the relic of long-departed times, whose awful benediction had surely been bestowed on their uncovered heads, in childhood?

"Whence did he come? What is his purpose? Who can this old man be?" whispered the wondering crowd.

Meanwhile, the venerable stranger, staff in hand, was pursuing his solitary walk along the centre of the street. As he drew near the advancing soldiers, and as the roll of their drum came full upon his ear, the old man raised himself to a loftier mien, while the decrepitude of age seemed to fall from his shoulders, leaving him in gray but unbroken dignity. Now, he marched onward with a warrior's step, keeping time to the military music. Thus the aged form advanced on one side, and the whole parade of soldiers and magistrates on the other, till, when scarcely twenty yards remained between, the old man grasped his staff by the middle, and held it before him like a leader's truncheon.

"Stand!" cried he.

The eye, the face, and attitude of command; the solemn, yet warlike peal of that voice, fit either to rule a host in the battle-field or be raised to God in prayer, were irresistible. At the old man's word and outstretched arm, the roll of the drum was hushed at once, and the advancing line stood still. A tremulous enthusiasm seized upon the multitude. That stately form, combining the leader and the saint, so gray, so dimly seen, in such an ancient garb, could only belong to some old champion of the righteous cause, whom the oppressor's drum had summoned from his grave. They raised a shout of awe and exultation, and looked for the deliverance of New England.

The Governor, and the gentlemen of his party, perceiving themselves brought to an unexpected stand, rode hastily forward, as if they would have pressed their snorting and affrighted horses right against the hoary apparition. He, however, blenched not a step, but glancing his severe eye round the group, which half encompassed him, at last bent it sternly on Sir Edmund Andros. One would have thought that the dark old man was chief ruler there, and that the Governor and Council, with soldiers at their back, representing the whole power and authority of the Crown, had no alternative but obedience.

"What does this old fellow here?" cried Edward Randolph, fiercely. "On, Sir Edmund! Bid the soldiers forward, and give the dotard the same choice that you give all his countrymen -- to stand aside or be trampled on!"

"Nay, nay, let us show respect to the good grandsire," said Bullivant, laughing. "See you not, he is some old round-headed dignitary, who hath lain asleep these thirty years, and knows nothing of the change of times? Doubtless, he thinks to put us down with a proclamation in Old Noll's name!"

"Are you mad, old man?" demanded Sir Edmund Andros, in loud and harsh tones. "How dare you stay the march of King James's Governor?"

"I have stayed the march of a King himself, ere now," replied the gray figure, with stern composure, "I am here, Sir Governor, because the cry of an oppressed people hath disturbed me in my secret place; and beseeching this favour earnestly of the Lord, it was vouchsafed me to appear once again on earth, in the good old cause of his saints. And what speak ye of James? There is no longer a Popish tyrant on the throne of England, and by to-morrow noon, his name shall be a byword in this very street, where ye would make it a word of terror. Back, thou that wast a Governor, back! With this night thy power is ended -- to-morrow, the prison! -- back, lest I foretell the scaffold!"

The people had been drawing nearer and nearer, and drinking in the words of their champion, who spoke in accents long disused, like one unaccustomed to converse, except with the dead of many years ago. But his voice stirred their souls. They confronted the soldiers, not wholly without arms, and ready to convert the very stones of the street into deadly weapons. Sir Edmund Andros looked at the old man; then he cast his hard and cruel eye over the multitude, and beheld them burning with that lurid wrath, so difficult to kindle or to quench; and again he fixed his gaze on the aged form, which stood obscurely in an open space, where neither friend nor foe had thrust himself. What were his thoughts, he uttered no word which might discover. But whether the oppressor were averawed by the Gray Champion's look, or perceived his peril in the threatening attitude of the people, it is certain that he gave back, and ordered his soldiers to commence a slow and guarded retreat. Before another sunset, the Governor, and all that rode so proudly with him, were prisoners, and long ere it was known that James had abdicated, King William was proclaimed throughout New England.

But where was the Gray Champion? Some reported that, when the troops had gone from King Street, and the people were thronging tumultuously in their rear, Bradstreet, the aged Governor, was seen to embrace a form more aged than his own. Others soberly affirmed, that while they marvelled at the venerable grandeur of his aspect, the old man had faded from their eyes, melting slowly into the hues of twilight, till, where he stood, there was an empty space. But all agreed that the hoary shape was gone. The men of that generation watched for his reappearance, in sunshine and in twilight, but never saw him more, nor knew when his funeral passed, nor where his gravestone was.

And who was the Gray Champion? Perhaps his name might be found in the records of that stern Court of Justice, which passed a sentence, too mighty for the age, but glorious in all after-times, for its humbling lesson to the monarch and its high example to the subject. I have heard, that whenever the descendants of the Puritans are to show the spirit of their sires, the old man appears again. When eighty years had passed, he walked once more in King Street. Five years later, in the twilight of an April morning, he stood on the green, beside the meeting-house, at Lexington, where now the obelisk of granite, with a slab of slate inlaid, commemorates the first fallen of the Revolution. And when our fathers were toiling at the breastwork on Bunker's Hill, all through that night the old warrior walked his rounds. Long, long may it be, ere he comes again! His hour is one of darkness, and adversity, and peril. But should domestic tyranny oppress us, or the invader's step pollute our soil, still may the Gray Champion come, for he is the type of New England's hereditary spirit; and his shadowy march, on the eve of danger, must ever be the pledge, that New England's sons will vindicate their ancestry.



Chapter XIX

The Legend Of Sleepy Hollow Found Among The Papers Of The Late Diedrich Knickerbocker


IN THE bosom of one of those spacious coves which indent the eastern shore of the Hudson, at that broad expansion of the river denominated by the ancient Dutch navigators the Tappan Zee, and where they always prudently shortened sail and implored the protection of St. Nicholas when they crossed, there lies a small market town or rural port, which by some is called Greensburgh, but which is more generally and properly known by the name of Tarry Town. This name was given, we are told, in former days, by the good housewives of the adjacent country, from the inveterate propensity of their husbands to linger about the village tavern on market days. Be that as it may, I do not vouch for the fact, but merely advert to it, for the sake of being precise and authentic. Not far from this village, perhaps about two miles, there is a little valley or rather lap of land among high hills, which is one of the quietest places in the whole world. A small brook glides through it, with just murmur enough to lull one to repose; and the occasional whistle of a quail or tapping of a woodpecker is almost the only sound that ever breaks in upon the uniform tranquillity.

I recollect that, when a stripling, my first exploit in squirrel-shooting was in a grove of tall walnut trees that shades one side of the valley. I had wandered into it at noontime, when all nature is peculiarly quiet, and was startled by the roar of my own gun, as it broke the Sabbath stillness around and was prolonged and reverberated by the angry echoes. If ever I should wish for a retreat whither I might steal from the world and its distractions, and dream quietly away the remnant of a troubled life, I know of none more promising than this little valley.

From the listless repose of the place, and the peculiar character of its inhabitants, who are descendants from the original Dutch settlers, this sequestered glen has long been known by the name of Sleepy Hollow, and its rustic lads are called the Sleepy Hollow Boys throughout all the neighbouring country. A drowsy, dreamy influence seems to hang over the land, and to pervade the very atmosphere. Some say that the place was bewitched by a High German doctor, during the early days of the settlement; others, that an old Indian chief, the prophet or wizard of his tribe, held his powwows there before the country was discovered by Master Hendrick Hudson. Certain it is, the place still continues under the sway of some witching power, that holds a spell over the minds of the good people, causing them to walk in a continual reverie. They are given to all kinds of marvellous beliefs; are subject to trances and visions, and frequently see strange sights, and hear music and voices in the air. The whole neighbourhood abounds with local tales, haunted spots, and twilight superstitions; stars shoot and meteors glare oftener across the valley than in any other part of the country, and the nightmare, with her whole ninefold, seems to make it the favourite scene of her gambols.

The dominant spirit, however, that haunts this enchanted region, and seems to be commander-in-chief of all the powers of the air, is the apparition of a figure on horseback, without a head. It is said by some to be the ghost of a Hessian trooper, whose head had been carried away by a cannon-ball, in some nameless battle during the Revolutionary War, and who is ever and anon seen by the country folk hurrying along in the gloom of night, as if on the wings of the wind. His haunts are not confined to the valley, but extend at times to the adjacent roads, and especially to the vicinity of a church at no great distance. Indeed, certain of the most authentic historians of those parts, who have been careful in collecting and collating the floating facts concerning this spectre, allege that the body of the trooper having been buried in the churchyard, the ghost rides forth to the scene of battle in nightly quest of his head, and that the rushing speed with which he sometimes passes along the Hollow, like a midnight blast, is owing to his being belated, and in a hurry to get back to the churchyard before daybreak.

Such is the general purport of this legendary superstition, which has furnished materials for many a wild story in that region of shadows; and the spectre is known at all the country firesides, by the name of the Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow.

It is remarkable that the visionary propensity I have mentioned is not confined to the native inhabitants of the valley, but is unconsciously imbibed by every one who resides there for a time. However wide awake they may have been before they entered that sleepy region, they are sure, in a little time, to inhale the witching influence of the air, and begin to grow imaginative, to dream dreams, and see apparitions.

I mention this peaceful spot with all possible laud; for it is in such little retired Dutch valleys, found here and there embosomed in the great state of New York, that population, manners, and customs remain fixed, while the great torrent of migration and improvement, which is making such incessant changes in other parts of this restless country, sweeps by them unobserved. They are like those little nooks of still water, which border a rapid stream, where we may see the straw and bubble riding quietly at anchor, or slowly revolving in their mimic harbour, undisturbed by the brush of the passing current. Though many years have elapsed since I trod the drowsy shades of Sleepy Hollow, yet I question whether I should not still find the same trees and the same families vegetating in its sheltered bosom.

In this by-place of nature there abode, in a remote period of American history, that is to say, some thirty years since, a worthy wight of the name of Ichabod Crane, who sojourned, or, as he expressed it, "tarried," in Sleepy Hollow, for the purpose of instructing the children of the vicinity. He was a native of Connecticut, a state which supplies the Union with pioneers for the mind as well as for the forest, and sends forth yearly its legions of frontier woodmen and country schoolmasters. The cognomen of Crane was not inapplicable to his person. He was tall, but exceedingly lank, with narrow shoulders, long arms and legs, hands that dangled a mile out of his sleeves, feet that might have served for shovels, and his whole frame most loosely hung together. His head was small, and flat at top, with huge ears, large green glassy eyes, and a long snipe nose, so that it looked like a weathercock perched upon his spindle neck to tell which way the wind blew. To see him striding along the profile of a hill on a windy day, with his clothes bagging and fluttering about him, one might have mistaken him for the genius of famine descending upon the earth, or some scarecrow eloped from a cornfield.

His schoolhouse was a low building of one large room, rudely constructed of logs; the windows partly glazed, and partly patched with leaves of old copybooks. It was most ingeniously secured at vacant hours, by a withe twisted in the handle of the door, and stakes set against the window shutters; so that though a thief might get in with perfect ease, he would find some embarrassment in getting out -- an idea most probably borrowed by the architect, Yost Van Houten, from the mystery of an eelpot. The schoolhouse stood in a rather lonely but pleasant situation, just at the foot of a woody hill, with a brook running close by, and a formidable birch tree growing at one end of it. From hence the low murmur of his pupils' voices, conning over their lessons, might be heard in a drowsy summer's day, like the hum of a beehive; interrupted now and then by the authoritative voice of the master, in the tone of menace or command; or, peradventure, by the appalling sound of the birch, as he urged some tardy loiterer along the flowery path of knowledge. Truth to say, he was a conscientious man, and ever bore in mind the golden maxim, "Spare the rod and spoil the child." Ichabod Crane's scholars certainly were not spoiled.

I would not have it imagined, however, that he was one of those cruel potentates of the school who joy in the smart of their subjects; on the contrary, he administered justice with discrimination rather than severity; taking the burden off the backs of the weak, and laying it on those of the strong. Your mere puny stripling, that winced at the least flourish of the rod, was passed by with indulgence; but the claims of justice were satisfied by inflicting a double portion on some little tough, wrong-headed, broad-skirted Dutch urchin, who sulked and swelled and grew dogged and sullen beneath the birch. All this he called "doing his duty by their parents"; and he never inflicted a chastisement without following it by the assurance, so consolatory to the smarting urchin, that "he would remember it and thank him for it the longest day he had to live."

When school hours were over, he was even the companion and playmate of the larger boys; and on holiday afternoons would convoy some of the smaller ones home, who happened to have pretty sisters, or good housewives for mothers, noted for the comforts of the cupboard. Indeed, it behooved him to keep on good terms with his pupils. The revenue arising from his school was small, and would have been scarcely sufficient to furnish him with daily bread, for he was a huge feeder, and, though lank, had the dilating powers of an anaconda; but to help out his maintenance, he was, according to country custom in those parts, boarded and lodged at the houses of the farmers whose children he instructed. With these he lived successively a week at a time, thus going the rounds of the neighbourhood, with all his worldly effects tied up in a cotton handkerchief.

That all this might not be too onerous on the purses of his rustic patrons, who are apt to consider the costs of schooling a grievous burden, and schoolmasters as mere drones, he had various ways of rendering himself both useful and agreeable. He assisted the farmers occasionally in the lighter labours of their farms, helped to make hay, mended the fences, took the horses to water, drove the cows from pasture, and cut wood for the winter fire. He laid aside, too, all the dominant dignity and absolute sway with which he lorded it in his little empire, the school, and became wonderfully gentle and ingratiating. He found favour in the eyes of the mothers by petting the children, particularly the youngest; and like the lion bold, which whilom so magnanimously the lamb did hold, he would sit with a child on one knee, and rock a cradle with his foot for whole hours together.

In addition to his other vocations, he was the singing-master of the neighbourhood, and picked up many bright shillings by instructing the young folks in psalmody. It was a matter of no little vanity to him on Sundays, to take his station in front of the church gallery, with a band of chosen singers; where, in his own mind, he completely carried away the palm from the parson. Certain it is, his voice resounded far above all the rest of the congregation; and there are peculiar quavers still to be heard in that church, and which may even be heard half a mile off, quite to the opposite side of the mill-pond, on a still Sunday morning, which are said to be legitimately descended from the nose of Ichabod Crane. Thus, by divers little makeshifts, in that ingenious way which is commonly denominated "by hook and by crook," the worthy pedagogue got on tolerably enough, and was thought, by all who understood nothing of the labour of headwork, to have a wonderfully easy life of it.

The schoolmaster is generally a man of some importance in the female circle of a rural neighbourhood; being considered a kind of idle, gentlemanlike personage, of vastly superior taste and accomplishments to the rough country swains, and, indeed, inferior in learning only to the parson. His appearance, therefore, is apt to occasion some little stir at the tea-table of a farmhouse, and the addition of a supernumerary dish of cakes or sweetmeats, or, peradventure, the parade of a silver teapot. Our man of letters, therefore, was peculiarly happy in the smiles of all the country damsels. How he would figure among them in the churchyard, between services on Sundays! gathering grapes for them from the wild vines that overran the surrounding trees; reciting for their amusement all the epitaphs on the tombstones; or sauntering, with a whole bevy of them, along the banks of the adjacent mill-pond; while the more bashful country bumpkins hung sheepishly back, envying his superior elegance and address.

From his half itinerant life, also, he was a kind of travelling gazette, carrying the whole budget of local gossip from house to house, so that his appearance was always greeted with satisfaction. He was, moreover, esteemed by the women as a man of great erudition, for he had read several books quite through, and was a perfect master of Cotton Mather's "History of New England Witchcraft," in which, by the way, he most firmly and potently believed.

He was, in fact, an odd mixture of small shrewdness and simple credulity. His appetite for the marvellous, and his powers of digesting it, were equally extraordinary; and both had been increased by his residence in this spellbound region. No tale was too gross or monstrous for his capacious swallow. It was often his delight, after his school was dismissed in the afternoon, to stretch himself on the rich bed of clover bordering the little brook that whimpered by his schoolhouse, and there con over old Mather's direful tales, until the gathering dusk of evening made the printed page a mere mist before his eyes. Then, as he wended his way by swamp and stream and awful woodland, to the farmhouse where he happened to be quartered, every sound of nature, at that witching hour, fluttered his excited imagination -- the moan of the whip-poor-will from the hillside, the boding cry of the tree toad, that harbinger of storm, the dreary hooting of the screech owl, to the sudden rustling in the thicket of birds frightened from their roost. The fireflies, too, which sparkled most vividly in the darkest places, now and then startled him, as one of uncommon brightness would stream across his path; and if, by chance, a huge blockhead of a beetle came winging his blundering flight against him, the poor varlet was ready to give up the ghost, with the idea that he was struck with a witch's token. His only resource on such occasions, either to drown thought or drive away evil spirits, was to sing psalm tunes; and the good people of Sleepy Hollow, as they sat by their doors of an evening, were often filled with awe at hearing his nasal melody, "in linked sweetness long drawn out," floating from the distant hill, or along the dusky road.

Another of his sources of fearful pleasure was to pass long winter evenings with the old Dutch wives, as they sat spinning by the fire, with a row of apples roasting and spluttering along the hearth, and listen to their marvellous tales of ghosts and goblins, and haunted fields, and haunted brooks, and haunted bridges, and haunted houses, and particularly of the headless horseman, or Galloping Hessian of the Hollow, as they sometimes called him. He would delight them equally by his anecdotes of witchcraft, and of the direful omens and portentous sights and sounds in the air, which prevailed in the earlier times of Connecticut; and would frighten them woefully with speculations upon comets and shooting stars; and with the alarming fact that the world did absolutely turn round, and that they were half the time topsy-turvy!

But if there was a pleasure in all this, while snugly cuddling in the chimney corner of a chamber that was all of a ruddy glow from the crackling wood fire, and where, of course, no spectre dared to show its face, it was dearly purchased by the terrors of his subsequent walk homewards. What fearful shapes and shadows beset his path, amidst the dim and ghastly glare of a snowy night! With what wistful look did he eye every trembling ray of light streaming across the waste fields from some distant window! How often was he appalled by some shrub covered with snow, which, like a sheeted spectre, beset his very path! How often did he shrink with curdling awe at the sound of his own steps on the frosty crust beneath his feet; and dread to look over his shoulder, lest he should behold some uncouth being tramping close behind him! and how often was he thrown into complete dismay by some rushing blast, howling among the trees, in the idea that it was the Galloping Hessian on one of his nightly scourings!

All these, however, were mere terrors of the night, phantoms of the mind that walk in darkness; and though he had seen many spectres in his time, and been more than once beset by Satan in divers shapes, in his lonely perambulations, yet daylight put an end to all these evils; and he would have passed a pleasant life of it, in despite of the Devil and all his works, if his path had not been crossed by a being that causes more perplexity to mortal man than ghosts, goblins, and the whole race of witches put together, and that was -- a woman.

Among the musical disciples who assembled, one evening in each week, to receive his instructions in psalmody, was Katrina Van Tassel, the daughter and only child of a substantial Dutch farmer. She was a blooming lass of fresh eighteen; plump as a partridge; ripe and melting and rosy-cheeked as one of her father's peaches, and universally famed, not merely for her beauty, but her vast expectations. She was withal a little or a coquette, as might be perceived even in her dress, which was a mixture of ancient and modern fashions, as most suited to set off her charms. She wore the ornaments of pure yellow gold, which her great-great-grandmother had brought over from Saardam; the tempting stomacher of the olden time, and withal a provokingly short petticoat, to display the prettiest foot and ankle in the country round.

Ichabod Crane had a soft and foolish heart toward the sex; and it is not to be wondered at, that so tempting a morsel soon found favour in his eyes, more especially after he had visited her in her paternal mansion. Old Baltus Van Tassel was a perfect picture of a thriving, contented, liberal hearted farmer. He seldom, it is true, sent either his eyes or his thoughts beyond the boundaries of his own farm; but within those everything was snug, happy and well-conditioned. He was satisfied with his wealth, but not proud of it; and piqued himself upon the hearty abundance, rather than the style in which he lived. His stronghold was situated on the banks of the Hudson, in one of those green, sheltered, fertile nooks in which the Dutch farmers are so fond of nestling. A great elm tree spread its broad branches over it, at the foot of which bubbled up a spring of the softest and sweetest water, in a little well formed of a barrel; and then stole sparkling away through the grass, to a neighbouring brook, that babbled along among alders and dwarf willows. Hard by the farmhouse was a vast barn, that might have served for a church; every window and crevice of which seemed bursting forth with the treasures of the farm; the flail was busily resounding within it from morning to night; swallows and martins skimmed twittering about the eaves; and rows of pigeons, some with one eye turned up, as if watching the weather, some with their heads under their wings or buried in their bosoms, and others swelling, and cooing, and bowing about their dames, were enjoying the sunshine on the roof. Sleek unwieldy porkers were grunting in the repose and abundance of their pens, from whence sallied forth, now and then, troops of sucking pigs, as if to snuff the air. A stately squadron of snowy geese were riding in an adjoining pond, convoying whole fleets of ducks; regiments of turkeys were gobbling through the farmyard, and Guinea fowls fretting about it, like ill-tempered housewives, with their peevish, discontented cry. Before the barn door strutted the gallant cock, that pattern of a husband, a warrior and a fine gentleman, clapping his burnished wings and crowing in the pride and gladness of his heart -- sometimes tearing up the earth with his feet, and then generously calling his ever-hungry family of wives and children to enjoy the rich morsel which he had discovered.

The pedagogue's mouth watered as he looked upon this sumptuous promise of luxurious winter fare. In his devouring mind's eye, he pictured to himself every roasting-pig running about with a pudding in his belly, and an apple in his mouth; the pigeons were snugly put to bed in a comfortable pie, and tucked in with a coverlet of crust; the geese were swimming in their own gravy; and the ducks pairing cosily in dishes, like snug married couples, with a decent competency of onion sauce. In the porkers he saw carved out the future sleek side of bacon, and juicy relishing ham; not a turkey but he beheld daintily trussed up, with its gizzard under its wing, and, peradventure, a necklace of savoury sausages; and even bright chanticleer himself lay sprawling on his back, in a side dish, with uplifted claws, as if craving that quarter which his chivalrous spirit disdained to ask while living.

As the enraptured Ichabod fancied all this, and as he rolled his great green eyes over the fat meadow lands, the rich fields of wheat, of rye, of buckwheat, and Indian corn, and the orchards burdened with ruddy fruit, which surrounded the warm tenement of Van Tassel, his heart yearned after the damsel who was to inherit these domains, and his imagination expanded with the idea, how they might be readily turned into cash, and the money invested in immense tracts of wild land, and shingle palaces in the wilderness. Nay, his busy fancy already realised his hopes, and presented to him the blooming Katrina, with a whole family of children, mounted on the top of a wagon loaded with household trumpery, with pots and kettles dangling beneath; and he beheld himself bestriding a pacing mare, with a colt at her heels, setting out for Kentucky, Tennessee -- or the Lord knows where!

When he entered the house, the conquest of his heart was complete. It was one, of those spacious farmhouses, with high ridged but lowly sloping roofs, built in the style handed down from the first Dutch settlers; the low projecting eaves forming a piazza along the front, capable of being closed up in bad weather. Under this were hung flails, harness, various utensils of husbandry, and nets for fishing in the neighbouring river. Benches were built along the sides for summer use; and a great spinning-wheel at one end, and a churn at the other, showed the various uses to which this important porch might be devoted. From this piazza the wondering Ichabod entered the hall, which formed the centre of the mansion, and the place of usual residence. Here rows of resplendent pewter, ranged on a long dresser, dazzled his eyes. In one corner stood a huge bag of wool, ready to be spun; in another, a quantity of linsey-woolsey just from the loom; ears of Indian corn, and strings of dried apples and peaches, hung in gay festoons along the walls, mingled with the gaud of red peppers; and a door left ajar gave him a peep into the best parlour, where the claw footed chairs and dark mahogany tables shone like mirrors; andirons, with their accompanying shovel and tongs, glistened from their covert of asparagus tops; mock-oranges and conch-shells decorated the mantle-piece; strings of various coloured birds' eggs were suspended above it; a great ostrich egg was hung from the centre of the room, and a corner cupboard, knowingly left open, displayed immense treasures of old silver and well mended china.

From the moment Ichabod laid his eyes upon these regions of delight, the peace of his mind was at an end, and his only study was how to gain the affections of the peerless daughter of Van Tassel. In this enterprise, however, he had more real difficulties than generally fell to the lot of a knight-errant of yore, who seldom had anything but giants, enchanters, fiery dragons, and such like easily conquered adversaries, to contend with, and had to make his way merely through gates of iron and brass, and walls of adamant to the castle keep, where the lady of his heart was confined; all which he achieved as easily as a man would carve his way to the centre of a Christmas pie; and then the lady gave him her hand as a matter of course. Ichabod, on the contrary, had to win his way to the heart of a country coquette, beset with a labyrinth of whims and caprices, which were forever presenting new difficulties and impediments; and he had to encounter a host of fearful adversaries of real flesh and blood, the numerous rustic admirers, who beset every portal to her heart, keeping a watchful and angry eye upon each other, but ready to fly out in the common cause against any new competitor.

Among these, the most formidable was a burly, roaring, roystering blade, of the name of Abraham, or, according to the Dutch abbreviation, Brom Van Brunt, the hero of the country round, which rang with his feats of strength and hardihood. He was broad-shouldered and double-jointed, with short curly black hair, and a bluff but not unpleasant countenance, having a mingled air of fun and arrogance. From his Herculean frame and great powers of limb, he had received the nickname of Brom Bones, by which he was universally known. He was famed for great knowledge and skill in horsemanship, being as dexterous on horseback as a Tartar. He was foremost at all races and cock-fights; and, with the ascendancy which bodily strength always acquires in rustic life, was the umpire in all disputes, setting his hat on one side, and giving his decisions with an air and tone that admitted of no gainsay or appeal. He was always ready for either a fight or a frolic; but had more mischief than ill-will in his composition; and with all his overbearing roughness, there was a strong clash of waggish good humour at bottom. He had three or four boon companions, who regarded him as their model, and at the head of whom he scoured the country, attending every scene of feud or merriment for miles round. In cold weather he was distinguished by a fur cap, surmounted with a flaunting fox's tail; and when the folks at a country gathering descried this well-known crest at a distance, whisking about among a squad of hard riders, they always stood by for a squall. Sometimes his crew would be heard dashing along past the farmhouses at midnight, with whoop and halloo, like a troop of Don Cossacks; and the old dames, startled out of their sleep, would listen for a moment till the hurry-scurry had clattered by, and then exclaim, "Ay, there goes Brom Bones and his gang!" The neighbours looked upon him with a mixture of awe, admiration, and good-will; and, when any madcap prank or rustic brawl occurred in the vicinity, always shook their heads, and warranted Brom Bones was at the bottom of it.

This rantipole hero had for some time singled out the blooming Katrina for the object of his uncouth gallantries, and though his amorous toyings were something like the gentle caresses and endearments of a bear, yet it was whispered that she did not altogether discourage his hopes. Certain it is, his advances were signals for rival candidates to retire, who felt no inclination to cross a lion in his amours; insomuch, that when his horse was seen tied to Van Tassel's paling, on a Sunday night, a sure sign that his master was courting, or, as it is termed, "sparking," within, all other suitors passed by in despair, and carried the war into other quarters.

Such was the formidable rival with whom Ichabod Crane had to contend, and, considering all things, a stouter man than he would have shrunk from the competition, and a wiser man would have despaired. He had, however, a happy mixture of pliability and perseverance in his nature; he was in form and spirit like a supple-jack -- yielding, but tough; though he bent, he never broke; and though he bowed beneath the slightest pressure, yet, the moment it was away -- jerk! -- he was as erect, and carried his head as high as ever.

To have taken the field openly against his rival would have been madness; for he was not a man to be thwarted in his amours, any more than that stormy lover, Achilles. Ichabod, therefore, made his advances in a quiet and gently insinuating manner. Under cover of his character of singing-master, he made frequent visits at the farmhouse; not that he had anything to apprehend from the meddlesome interference of parents, which is so often a stumbling block in the path of lovers. Balt Van Tassel was an easy, indulgent soul; he loved his daughter better even than his pipe, and, like a reasonable man and an excellent father, let her have her way in everything. His notable little wife, too, had enough to do to attend to her housekeeping and manage her poultry; for, as she sagely observed, ducks and geese are foolish things, and must be looked after, but girls can take care of themselves. Thus, while the busy dame bustled about the house, or plied her spinning-wheel at one end of the piazza, honest Balt would sit smoking his evening pipe at the other, watching the achievements of a little wooden warrior, who, armed with a sword in each hand, was most valiantly fighting the wind on the pinnacle of the barn. In the meantime, Ichabod would carry on his suit with the daughter by the side of the spring under the great elm, or sauntering along in the twilight, that hour so favourable to the lover's eloquence.

I profess not to know how women's hearts are wooed and won. To me they have always been matters of riddle and admiration. Some seem to have but one vulnerable point, or door of access; while others have a thousand avenues, and may be captured in a thousand different ways. It is a great triumph of skill to gain the former, but a still greater proof of generalship to maintain possession of the latter, for a man must battle for his fortress at every door and window. He who wins a thousand common hearts is therefore entitled to some renown; but he who keeps undisputed sway over the heart of a coquette is indeed a hero. Certain it is, this was not the case with the redoubtable Brom Bones; and from the moment Ichabod Crane made his advances, the interests of the former evidently declined: his horse was no longer seen tied to the palings on Sunday nights, and a deadly feud gradually arose between him and the preceptor of Sleepy Hollow.

Brom, who had a degree of rough chivalry in his nature, would fain have carried matters to open warfare and have settled their pretensions to the lady, according to the mode of those most concise and simple reasoners, the knights-errant of yore -- by single combat; but Ichabod was too conscious of the superior might of his adversary to enter the lists against him; he had overheard a boast of Bones, that he would "double the schoolmaster up, and lay him on a shelf of his own schoolhouse"; and he was too wary to give him an opportunity. There was something extremely provoking in this obstinately pacific system; it left Brom no alternative but to draw upon the funds of rustic waggery in his disposition, and to play off boorish practical jokes upon his rival. Ichabod became the object of whimsical persecution to Bones and his gang of rough riders. They harried his hitherto peaceful domains, smoked out his singing-school by stopping up the chimney, broke into the schoolhouse at night, in spite of its formidable fastenings of withe and window stakes, and turned everything topsy-turvy, so that the poor schoolmaster began to think all the witches in the country held their meetings there. But what was still more annoying, Brom took all opportunities of turning him into ridicule in presence of his mistress, and had a scoundrel dog whom he taught to whine in the most ludicrous manner, and introduced as a rival of Ichabod's, to instruct her in psalmody.

In this way matters went on for some time, without producing any material effect on the relative situations of the contending powers. On a fine autumnal afternoon, Ichabod, in pensive mood, sat enthroned on the lofty stool from whence he usually watched all the concerns of his little literary realm. In his hand he swayed a ferule, that sceptre of despotic power; the birch of justice reposed on three nails behind the throne, a constant terror to evil doers; while on the desk before him might be seen sundry contraband articles and prohibited weapons detected upon the persons of idle urchins, such as half-munched apples, popguns, whirligigs, fly-cages, and whole legions of rampant little paper game-cocks. Apparently there had been some appalling act of justice recently inflicted, for his scholars were all busily intent upon their books, or slyly whispering behind them with one eye kept upon the master; and a kind of buzzing stillness reigned throughout the schoolroom. It was suddenly interrupted by the appearance of a negro in tow-cloth jacket and trousers, a round-crowned fragment of a hat, like the cap of Mercury, and mounted on the back of a ragged, wild, half-broken colt, which he managed with a rope by way of halter. He came clattering up to the school door with an invitation to Ichabod to attend a merry-making or "quilting-frolic," to be held that evening at Mynheer Van Tassel's; and having delivered his message with that air of importance and effort at fine language which a negro is apt to display on petty embassies of the kind, he dashed over the brook, and was seen scampering away up the Hollow, full of the importance and hurry of his mission.

All was now bustle and hubbub in the late quiet schoolroom. The scholars were hurried through their lessons without stopping at trifles; those who were nimble skipped over half with impunity, and those who were tardy had a smart application now and then in the rear, to quicken their speed or help them over a tall word. Books were flung aside without being put away on the shelves, inkstands were overturned, benches thrown down, and the whole school was turned loose an hour before the usual time, bursting forth like a legion of young imps, yelping and racketing about the green in joy at their early emancipation.

The gallant Ichabod now spent at least an extra half hour at his toilet, brushing and furbishing up his best, and indeed only suit of rusty black, and arranging his locks by a bit of broken looking-glass that hung up in the schoolhouse. That he might make his appearance before his mistress in the true style of a cavalier, he borrowed a horse from the farmer with whom he was domiciliated, a choleric old Dutchman of the name of Hans Van Ripper, and, thus gallantly mounted, issued forth like a knight-errant in quest of adventures. But it is meet I should, in the true spirit of romantic story, give some account of the looks and equipments of my hero and his steed. The animal he bestrode was a broken down plow-horse, that had outlived almost everything but its viciousness. He was gaunt and shagged, with a ewe neck, and a head like a hammer; his rusty mane and tail were tangled and knotted with burs; one eye had lost its pupil, and was glaring and spectral, but the other had the gleam of a genuine devil in it. Still he must have had fire and mettle in his day, if we may judge from the name he bore of Gunpowder. He had, in fact, been a favourite steed of his master's, the choleric Van Ripper, who was a furious rider, and had infused, very probably, some of his own spirit into the animal; for, old and broken down as he looked, there was more of the lurking devil in him than in any young filly in the country.

Ichabod was a suitable figure for such a steed. He rode with short stirrups, which brought his knees nearly up to the pommel of the saddle; his sharp elbows stuck out like grasshoppers'; he carried his whip perpendicularly in his hand, like a sceptre, and as his horse jogged on, the motion of his arms was not unlike the flapping of a pair of wings. A small wool hat rested on the top of his nose, for so his scanty strip of forehead might be called, and the skirts of his black coat fluttered out almost to the horse's tail. Such was the appearance of Ichabod and his steed as they shambled out of the gate of Hans Van Ripper, and it was altogether such an apparition as is seldom to be met with in broad daylight.

It was, as I have said, a fine autumnal day; the sky was clear and serene, and nature wore that rich and golden livery which we always associate with the idea of abundance. The forests had put on their sober brown and yellow, while some trees of the tenderer kind had been nipped by the frosts into brilliant dyes of orange, purple, and scarlet. Streaming files of wild ducks began to make their appearance high in the air; the bark of the squirrel might be heard from the groves of beech and hickory nuts, and the pensive whistle of the quail at intervals from the neighbouring stubble field.

The small birds were taking their farewell banquets. In the fullness of their revelry, they fluttered, chirping and frolicking from bush to bush, and tree to tree, capricious from the very profusion and variety around them. There was the honest cockrobin, the favourite game of stripling sportsmen, with its loud querulous note; and the twittering blackbirds flying in sable clouds; and the golden-winged woodpecker, with his crimson crest, his broad black gorget, and splendid plumage; and the cedar-bird, with its red-tipt wings and yellow-tipt tail and its little monteiro cap of feathers; and the blue jay, that noisy coxcomb, in his gay light blue coat and white underclothes, screaming and chattering, nodding and bobbing and bowing, and pretending to be on good terms with every songster of the grove.

As Ichabod jogged slowly on his way, his eye, ever open to every symptom of culinary abundance, ranged with delight over the treasures of jolly autumn. On all sides he beheld vast store of apples: some hanging in oppressive opulence on the trees; some gathered into baskets and barrels for the market; others heaped up in rich piles for the cider-press. Farther on he beheld great fields of Indian corn, with its golden ears peeping from their leafy coverts, and holding out the promise of cakes and hasty-pudding; and the yellow pumpkins lying beneath them, turning up their fair round bellies to the sun, and giving ample prospects of the most luxurious of pies; and anon he passed the fragrant buckwheat fields breathing the odour of the beehive, and as he beheld them, soft anticipations stole over his mind of dainty slap-jacks, well buttered, and garnished with honey or treacle, by the delicate little dimpled hand of Katrina Van Tassel.

Thus feeding his mind with many sweet thoughts and "sugared suppositions," he journeyed along the sides of a range of hills which look out upon some of the goodliest scenes of the mighty Hudson. The sun gradually wheeled his broad disk down in the west. The wide bosom of the Tappen Zee lay motionless and glassy, excepting that here and there a gentle undulation waved and prolonged the blue shadow of the distant mountain. A few amber clouds floated in the sky, without a breath of air to move them. The horizon was of a fine golden tint, changing gradually into a pure apple green, and from that into the deep blue of the mid-heaven. A slanting ray lingered on the woody crests of the precipices that overhung some parts of the river, giving greater depth to the dark gray and purple of the rocky sides. A sloop was loitering in the distance, dropping slowly down with the tide, her sail hanging uselessly against the mast; and as the reflection of the sky gleamed along the still water, it seemed as if the vessel was suspended in the air.

It was toward evening that Ichabod arrived at the castle of the Heer Van Tassel, which he found thronged with the pride and flower of the adjacent country. Old farmers, a spare leathern-faced race, in homespun coats and breeches, blue stockings, huge shoes, and magnificent pewter buckles. Their brisk, withered little dames, in close crimped caps, long waisted short-gowns, homespun petticoats, with scissors and pincushions, and gay calico pockets hanging on the outside. Buxom lasses, almost as antiquated as their mothers, excepting where a straw hat, a fine ribbon, or perhaps a white frock, gave symptoms of city innovation. The sons, in short square skirted coats, with rows of stupendous brass buttons, and their hair generally queued in the fashion of the times, especially if they could procure an eelskin for the purpose, it being esteemed throughout the country as a potent nourisher and strengthener of the hair.

Brom Bones, however, was the hero of the scene, having come to the gathering on his favourite steed Daredevil, a creature, like himself, full of mettle and mischief, and which no one but himself could manage. He was, in fact, noted for preferring vicious animals, given to all kinds of tricks which kept the rider in constant risk of his neck, for he held a tractable, well broken horse as unworthy of a lad of spirit.

Fain would I pause to dwell upon the world of charms that burst upon the enraptured gaze of my hero, as he entered the state parlour of Van Tassel's mansion. Not those of the bevy of buxom lasses, with their luxurious display of red and white; but the ample charms of a genuine Dutch country tea-table, in the sumptuous time of autumn. Such heaped-up platters of cakes of various and almost indescribable kinds, known only to experienced Dutch housewives! There was the doughty doughnut, the tender olykoek, and the crisp and crumbling cruller; sweet cakes and short cakes, ginger cakes and honey cakes, and the whole family of cakes. And then there were apple pies, and peach pies, and pumpkin pies; besides slices of ham and smoked beef: and moreover delectable dishes of preserved plums, and peaches, and pears, and quinces; not to mention broiled shad and roasted chickens; together with bowls of milk and cream, all mingled higgledy-piggledy, pretty much as I have enumerated them, with the motherly teapot sending up its clouds of vapour from the midst -- Heaven bless the mark! I want breath and time to discuss this banquet as it deserves, and am too eager to get on with my story. Happily, Ichabod Crane was not in so great a hurry as his historian, but did ample justice to every dainty.

He was a kind and thankful creature, whose heart dilated in proportion as his skin was filled with good cheer, and whose spirits rose with eating, as some men's do with drink. He could not help, too, rolling his large eyes round him as he ate, and chuckling with the possibility that he might one day be lord of all this scene of almost unimaginable luxury and splendour. Then he, thought, how soon he'd turn his back upon the old school-house; snap his fingers in the face of Hans Van Ripper, and every other niggardly patron, and kick any itinerant pedagogue out of doors that should dare to call him comrade!

Old Baltus Van Tassel moved about among his guests with a face dilated with content and good humour, round and jolly as the harvest moon. His hospitable attentions were brief, but expressive, being confined to a shake of the hand, a slap on the shoulder, a loud laugh and a pressing invitation to "fall to, and help themselves."

And now the sound of the music from the common room, or hall, summoned to the dance. The musician was an old gray-headed negro, who had been the itinerant orchestra of the neighbourhood for more than half a century. His instrument was as old and battered as himself. The greater part of the time he scraped on two or three strings, accompanying every movement of the bow with a motion of the head; bowing almost to the ground, and stamping with his foot whenever a fresh couple were to start.

Ichabod prided himself upon his dancing as much as upon his vocal powers. Not a limb, not a fibre about him was idle; and to have seen his loosely hung frame in full motion, and clattering about the room, you would have thought St. Vitus himself, that blessed patron of the dance, was figuring before you in person. He was the admiration of all the negroes; who, having gathered, of all ages and sizes, from the farm and the neighbourhood, stood forming a pyramid of shining black faces at every door and window; gazing with delight at the scene; rolling their white eye-balls, and showing grinning rows of ivory from ear to ear. How could the flogger of urchins be otherwise than animated and joyous? the lady of his heart was his partner in the dance, and smiling graciously in reply to all his amorous oglings; while Brom Bones, sorely smitten with love and jealousy, sat brooding by himself in one corner.

When the dance was at an end, Ichabod was attracted to a knot of the sager folks, who, with Old Van Tassel, sat smoking at one end of the piazza, gossiping over former times, and drawing out long stories about the war.

This neighbourhood, at the time of which I am speaking, was one of those highly favoured places which abound with chronicle and great men. The British and American line had run near it during the war; it had, therefore, been the scene of marauding, and infested with refugees, cow-boys, and all kinds of border chivalry. Just sufficient time had elapsed to enable each story-teller to dress up his tale with a little becoming fiction, and, in the indistinctness of his recollection, to make himself the hero of every exploit.

There was the story of Doffue Martling, a large blue-bearded Dutchman, who had nearly taken a British frigate with an old iron nine-pounder from a mud breast work, only that his gun burst at the sixth discharge. And there was an old gentleman who shall be nameless, being too rich a mynheer to be lightly mentioned, who, in the battle of White Plains, being an excellent master of defence, parried a musket-ball with a small-sword, insomuch that he absolutely felt it whiz round the blade, and glance off at the hilt; in proof of which he was ready at any time to show the sword, with the hilt a little bent. There were several more that had been equally great in the field, not one of whom but was persuaded that he had a considerable hand in bringing the war to a happy termination.

But all these were nothing to the tales of ghosts and apparitions that succeeded. The neighbourhood is rich in legendary treasures of the kind. Local tales and superstitions thrive best in these sheltered, long-settled retreats; but are trampled under foot by the shifting throng that forms the population of most of our country places. Besides, there is no encouragement for ghosts in most of our villages, for they have scarcely had time to finish their first nap and turn themselves in their graves, before their surviving friends have travelled away from the neighbourhood; so that when they turn out at night to walk their rounds, they have no acquaintance left to call upon. This is perhaps the reason why we so seldom hear of ghosts except in our long established Dutch communities.

The immediate cause, however, of the prevalence of supernatural stories in these parts, was doubtless owing to the vicinity of Sleepy Hollow. There was a contagion in the very air that blew from that haunted region; it breathed forth an atmosphere of dreams and fancies infecting all the land. Several of the Sleepy Hollow people were present at Van Tassel's, and, as usual, were doling out their wild and wonderful legends. Many dismal tales were told about funeral trains, and mourning cries and wailings heard and seen about the great tree where the unfortunate Major Andre was taken, and which stood in the neighbourhood. Some mention was made also of the woman in white, that haunted the dark glen at Raven Rock, and was often heard to shriek on winter nights before a storm, having perished there in the snow. The chief part of the stories, however, turned upon the favourite spectre of Sleepy Hollow, the Headless Horseman, who had been heard several times of late, patrolling the country; and, it was said, tethered his horse nightly among the graves in the churchyard.

The sequestered situation of the church seems always to have made it a favourite haunt of troubled spirits. It stands on a knoll, surrounded by locust trees and lofty elms from among which its decent, whitewashed walls shine modestly forth, like Christian purity beaming through the shades of retirement. A gentle slope descends from it to a silver sheet of water, bordered by high trees, between which, peeps may be caught at the blue hills of the Hudson. To look upon its grass-grown yard, where the sunbeams seem to sleep so quietly, one would think that there at least the dead might rest in peace. On one side of the church extends a wide woody dell, along which raves a large brook among broken rocks and trunks of fallen trees. Over a deep black part of the stream, not far from the church, was formerly thrown a wooden bridge; the road that led to it, and the bridge itself, were thickly shaded by overhanging trees, which cast a gloom about it, even in the daytime; but occasioned a fearful darkness at night. Such was one of the favourite haunts of the Headless Horseman, and the place where he was most frequently encountered. The tale was told of old Brouwer, a most heretical disbeliever in ghosts, how he met the Horseman returning from his foray into Sleepy Hollow, and was obliged to get up behind him; how they galloped over bush and brake, over hill and swamp, until they reached the bridge; when the Horseman suddenly turned into a skeleton, threw old Brouwer into the brook, and sprang away over the tree-tops with a clap of thunder.

This story was immediately matched by a thrice marvellous adventure of Brom Bones, who made light of the Galloping Hessian as an arrant jockey. He affirmed that on returning one night from the neighbouring village of Sing Sing, he had been overtaken by this midnight trooper; that the had offered to race with him for a bowl of punch, and should have won it too, for Daredevil beat the goblin horse all hollow, but just as they came to the church bridge, the Hessian bolted, and vanished in a flash of fire.

All these tales, told in that drowsy undertone with which men talk in the dark, the countenances of the listeners only now and then receiving a casual gleam from the glare of a pipe, sank deep in the mind of Ichabod. He repaid them in kind with large extracts from his invaluable author, Cotton Mather, and added many marvellous events that had taken place in his native state of Connecticut, and fearful sights which he had seen in his nightly walks about Sleepy Hollow.

The revel now gradually broke up. The old farmers gathered together their families in their wagons, and were heard for some time rattling along the hollow roads, and over the distant hills. Some of the damsels mounted on pillions behind their favourite swains, and their light-hearted laughter, mingling with the clatter of hoofs, echoed along the silent woodlands, sounding fainter and fainter, until they gradually died away -- and the late scene of noise and frolic was all silent and deserted. Ichabod only lingered behind, according to the custom of country lovers, to have a tete-a-tete with the heiress; fully convinced that he was now on the high road to success. What passed at this interview I will not pretend to say, for in fact I do not know. Something, however, I fear me, must have gone wrong, for he certainly sallied forth, after no very great interval, with an air quite desolate and chapfallen. Oh, these women! these women! Could that girl have been playing off any of her coquettish tricks? Was her encouragement of the poor pedagogue all a mere sham to secure her conquest of his rival? Heaven only knows, not I! Let it suffice to say, Ichabod stole forth with the air of one who had been sacking a henroost, rather than a fair lady's heart. Without looking to the right or left to notice the scene of rural wealth, on which he had so often gloated, he went straight to the stable, and with several hearty cuffs and kicks roused his steed most uncourteously from the comfortable quarters in which he was soundly sleeping, dreaming of mountains of corn and oats, and whole valleys of timothy and clover.

It was the very witching time of night that Ichabod, heavy-hearted and crest-fallen, pursued his travels homewards, along the sides of the lofty hills which rise above Tarry Town, and which he had traversed so cheerily in the afternoon. The hour was as dismal as himself. Far below him the Tappen Zee spread its dusky and indistinct waste of waters, with here and there the tall mast of a sloop, riding quietly at anchor under the land. In the dead hush of midnight, he could even hear the barking of the watchdog from the opposite shore of the Hudson; but it was so vague and faint as only to give an idea of his distance from this faithful companion of man. Now and then, too, the long-drawn crowing of a cock, accidentally awakened, would sound far, far off, from some farmhouse away among the hills -- but it was like a dreaming sound in his ear. No signs of life occurred near him, but occasionally the melancholy chirp of a cricket, or perhaps the guttural twang of a bull-frog from a neighbouring marsh, as if sleeping uncomfortably and turning suddenly in his bed.

All the stories of ghosts and goblins that he had heard in the afternoon now came crowding upon his recollection. The night grew darker and darker; the stars seemed to sink deeper in the sky, and driving clouds occasionally hid them from his sight. He had never felt so lonely and dismal. He was, moreover, approaching the very place where many of the scenes of the ghost stories had been laid. In the centre of the road stood an enormous tulip-tree, which towered like a giant above all the other trees of the neighbourhood, and formed a kind of landmark. Its limbs were gnarled and fantastic, large enough to form trunks for ordinary trees, twisting down almost to the earth, and rising again into the air. It was connected with the tragical story of the unfortunate Andre, who had been taken prisoner hard by, and was universally known by the name of Major Andre's tree. The common people regarded it with a mixture of respect and superstition, partly out of sympathy for the fate of its ill-starred namesake, and partly from the tales of strange sights, and doleful lamentations, told concerning it.

As Ichabod approached this fearful tree, he began to whistle; he thought his whistle was answered; it was but a blast sweeping sharply through the dry branches. As he approached a little nearer, he thought he saw something white, hanging in the midst of the tree: he paused, and ceased whistling; but, on looking more narrowly, perceived that it was a place where the tree had been scathed by lightning, and the white wood laid bare. Suddenly he heard a groan -- his teeth chattered, and his knees smote against the saddle: it was but the rubbing of one huge bough upon another, as they were swayed about by the breeze. He passed the tree in safety, but new perils lay before him.

About two hundred yards from the tree, a small brook crossed the road, and ran into a marshy and thickly-wooded glen, known by the name of Wiley's Swamp. A few rough logs, laid side by side, served for a bridge over this stream. On that side of the road where the brook entered the wood, a group of oaks and chestnuts, matted thick with wild grape-vines, threw a cavernous gloom over it. To pass this bridge was the severest trial. It was at this identical spot that the unfortunate Andre was captured, and under the covert of those chestnuts and vines were the sturdy yeomen concealed who surprised him. This has ever since been considered a haunted stream, and fearful are the feelings of the schoolboy who has to pass it alone after dark.

As he approached the stream, his heart began to thump; he summoned up, however, all his resolution, gave his horse half a score of kicks in the ribs, and attempted to dash briskly across the bridge; but instead of starting forward, the perverse old animal made a lateral movement, and ran broadside against the fence. Ichabod, whose fears increased with the delay, jerked the reins on the other side, and kicked lustily with the contrary foot: it was all in vain; his steed started, it is true, but it was only to plunge to the opposite side of the road into a thicket of brambles and alder-bushes. The schoolmaster now bestowed both whip and heel upon the starveling ribs of old Gunpowder, who dashed forward, snuffling and snorting, but came to a stand just by the bridge, with a suddenness that had nearly sent his rider sprawling over his head. Just at this moment a plashy tramp by the side of the bridge caught the sensitive ear of Ichabod. In the dark shadow of the grove, on the margin of the brook, he beheld something huge, misshapen, and towering. It stirred not, but seemed gathered up in the gloom, like some gigantic monster ready to spring upon the traveller.

The hair of the affrighted pedagogue rose upon his head with terror. What was to be done? To turn and fly was now too late; and besides, what chance was there of escaping ghost or goblin, if such it was, which could ride upon the wings of the wind? Summoning up, therefore, a show of courage, he demanded in stammering accents, "Who are you?" He received no reply. He repeated his demand in a still more agitated voice. Still there was no answer. Once more he cudgelled the sides of the inflexible Gunpowder, and, shutting his eyes, broke forth with involuntary fervour into a psalm tune. Just then the shadowy object of alarm put itself in motion, and with a scramble and a bound stood at once in the middle of the road. Though the night was dark and dismal, yet the form of the unknown might now in some degree be ascertained. He appeared to be a horseman of large dimensions, and mounted on a black horse of powerful frame. He made no offer of molestation or sociability, but kept aloof on one side of the road, jogging along on the blind side of old Gunpowder, who had now got over his fright and waywardness.

Ichabod, who had no relish for this strange midnight companion, and bethought himself of the adventure of Brom Bones with the Galloping Hessian, now quickened his steed in hopes of leaving him behind. The stranger, however, quickened his horse to an equal pace. Ichabod pulled up, and fell into a walk, thinking to lag behind -- the other did the same. His heart began to sink within him; he endeavoured to resume his psalm tune, but his parched tongue clove to the roof of his mouth, and he could not utter a stave. There was something in the moody and dogged silence of this pertinacious companion that was mysterious and appalling. It was soon fearfully accounted for. On mounting a rising ground, which brought the figure of his fellow-traveller in relief against the sky, gigantic in height, and muffled in a cloak, Ichabod was horror-struck on perceiving that he was headless! but his horror was still more increased on observing that the head, which should have rested on his shoulders, was carried before him on the pommel of his saddle! His terror rose to desperation; he rained a shower of kicks and blows upon Gunpowder, hoping by a sudden movement to give his companion the slip; but the spectre started full jump with him. Away, then, they dashed through thick and thin; stones flying and sparks flashing at every bound. Ichabod's flimsy garments fluttered in the air, as he stretched his long lank body away over his horse's head, in the eagerness of his flight.

They had now reached the road which turns off to Sleepy Hollow; but Gunpowder, who seemed possessed with a demon, instead of keeping up it, made an opposite turn, and plunged headlong down hill to the left. This road leads through a sandy hollow, shaded by trees for about a quarter of a mile, where it crosses the bridge famous in goblin story; and just beyond swells the green knoll on which stands the whitewashed church.

As yet the panic of the steed had given his unskilful rider an apparent advantage in the chase; but just as he had got half way through the hollow, the girths of the saddle gave way, and he felt it slipping from under him. He seized it by the pommel, and endeavoured to hold it firm, but in vain; and had just time to save himself by clasping old Gunpowder round the neck, when the saddle fell to the earth, and he heard it trampled under foot by his pursuer. For a moment the terror of Hans Van Ripper's wrath passed across his mind -- for it was his Sunday saddle; but this was no time for petty fears; the goblin was hard on his haunches; and (unskilful rider that he was!) he had much ado to maintain his seat; sometimes slipping on one side, sometimes on another, and sometimes jolted on the high ridge of his horse's backbone, with a violence that he verily feared would cleave him asunder.

An opening in the trees now cheered him with the hopes that the church bridge was at hand. The wavering reflection of a silver star in the bosom of the brook told him that he was not mistaken. He saw the walls of the church dimly glaring under the trees beyond. He recollected the place where Brom Bones's ghostly competitor had disappeared. "If I can but reach that bridge," thought Ichabod, "I am safe." Just then he heard the black steed panting and blowing close behind him; he even fancied that he felt his hot breath. Another convulsive kick in the ribs, and old Gunpowder sprang upon the bridge; he thundered over the resounding planks; he gained the opposite side; and now Ichabod cast a look behind to see if his pursuer should vanish, according to rule, in a flash of fire and brimstone. Just then he saw the goblin rising in his stirrups, and in the very act of hurling his head at him. Ichabod endeavoured to dodge the horrible missile, but too late. It encountered his cranium with a tremendous crash -- he was tumbled headlong into the dust, and Gunpowder, the black steed, and the goblin rider, passed by like a whirlwind.

The next morning the old horse was found without his saddle, and with the bridle under his feet, soberly cropping the grass at his master's gate. Ichabod did not make his appearance at breakfast; dinner-hour came, but no Ichabod. The boys assembled at the schoolhouse, and strolled idly about the banks of the brook; but no schoolmaster. Hans Van Ripper now began to feel some uneasiness about the fate of poor Ichabod, and his saddle. An inquiry was set on foot, and after diligent investigation they came upon his traces. In one part of the road leading to the church was found the saddle trampled in the dirt; the tracks of horses' hoofs deeply dented in the road, and evidently at furious speed, were traced to the bridge, beyond which, on the dank of a broad part of the brook, where the water ran deep and black, was found the hat of the unfortunate Ichabod, and close beside it a shattered pumpkin.

The brook was searched, but the body of the schoolmaster was not to be discovered. Hans Van Ripper, as executor of his estate, examined the bundle which contained all his worldly effects. They consisted of two shirts and a half; two stocks for the neck; a pair or two of worsted stockings; an old pair of corduroy small-clothes; a rusty razor; a book of psalm tunes full of dog's-ears; and a broken pitch-pipe. As to the books and furniture of the schoolhouse, they belonged to the community, excepting Cotton Mather's History of Witchcraft, a New England Almanac, and a book of dreams and fortune-telling; in which last was a sheet of foolscap much scribbled and blotted in several fruitless attempts to make a copy of verses in honour of the heiress of Van Tassel. These magic books and the poetic scrawl were forthwith consigned to the flames by Hans Van Ripper; who, from that time forward, determined to send his children no more to school; observing that he never knew any good come of this same reading and writing. Whatever money the schoolmaster possessed, and he had received his quarter's pay but a day or two before, he must have had about his person at the time of his disappearance.

The mysterious event caused much speculation at the church on the following Sunday. Knots of gazers and gossips were collected in the churchyard, at the bridge, and at the spot where the hat and pumpkin had been found. The stories of Brouwer, of Bones, and a whole budget of others were called to mind; and when they had diligently considered them all, and compared them with the symptoms of the present case, they shook their heads, and came to the conclusion that Ichabod had been carried off by the Galloping Hessian. As he was a bachelor, and in nobody's debt, nobody troubled his head any more about him; the school was removed to a different quarter of the Hollow, and another pedagogue reigned in his stead.

It is true, an old farmer, who had been down to New York on a visit several years after, and from whom this account of the ghostly adventure was received, brought home the intelligence that Ichabod Crane was still alive; that he had left the neighbourhood partly through fear of the goblin and Hans Van Ripper, and partly in mortification at having been suddenly dismissed by the heiress; that he had changed his quarters to a distant part of the country; had kept school and studied law at the same time; had been admitted to the bar; turned politician; electioneered; written for the newspapers; and finally had been made a justice of the ten pound court. Brom Bones, too, who, shortly after his rival's disappearance conducted the blooming Katrina in triumph to the altar, was observed to look exceedingly knowing whenever the story of Ichabod was related, and always burst into a hearty laugh at the mention of the pumpkin; which led some to suspect that he knew more about the matter than he chose to tell.

The old country wives, however, who are the best judges of these matters, maintain to this day that Ichabod was spirited away by supernatural means; and it is a favourite story often told about the neighbourhood round the winter evening fire. The bridge became more than ever an object of superstitious awe; and that may be the reason why the road has been altered of late years, so as to approach the church by the border of the mill-pond. The schoolhouse being deserted soon fell to decay, and was reported to be haunted by the ghost of the unfortunate pedagogue; and the plough-boy, loitering homeward of a still summer evening, has often fancied his voice at a distance, chanting a melancholy psalm tune among the tranquil solitudes of Sleepy Hollow.

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Bunny Brown And His Sister Sue Keeping Store

By

Laura Lee Hope



Chapter I

A Grand Crash


Patter, patter, patter came the rain drops, not only on the roof, but all over, out of doors, splashing here and there, making little fountains in every mud puddle.

Bunny Brown and his sister Sue stood with their faces pressed against the windows, looking out into the summer storm.

"I can make my nose flatter'n you can!" suddenly exclaimed Bunny.

"Oh, you cannot!" disputed Sue. "Look at mine!"

She thrust her nose against the pane of glass so hard that it almost cracked -- I mean the glass nearly cracked.

"Look at that, Bunny Brown!" exclaimed Sue. "Isn't my nose flatter'n yours? Look at it!"

"How can I look at your nose when I'm looking at mine?" asked Bunny.

He, too, had pushed his nose against the glass of his window, the children standing in the dining room where two large windows gave them a good view of things outside.

"You must look at my nose to see if it's flatter'n yours!" insisted Sue. "Else how you going to know who beats?"

"Well, I can make mine a flatter nose than yours!" declared Bunny. "You look at mine first and then I'll look at yours."

This seemed a fair way of playing the game, Sue thought. She left her window and went over to her brother's side. The rain seemed to come down harder than ever. If the children had any idea of being allowed to go out and play in it, even with rubber boots and rain coats, they had about given up that plan. Mrs. Brown had been begged, more than once, to let Bunny and Sue go out, but she had shaken her head with a gentle smile. And when their mother smiled that way the children knew she meant what she said.

"Now, go ahead, Bunny Brown!" called Sue. "Let's see you make a flat nose!"

Bunny drew his face back from the window. His little nose was quite white where he had pressed it -- white because he had kept nearly all the blood from flowing into it. But soon his little "smeller," as sometimes Bunny's father called his nose, began to get red again. Bunny began to rub it.

"What you doing?" Sue wanted to know, thinking her brother might not be playing fair in this little game.

"I'm rubbing my nose," Bunny answered.

"Yes, I know. But what for?"

"'Cause it's cold. If I'm going to make my nose flatter'n yours I have to warm it a little. The glass is cold!"

"Yes, it is a little cold," agreed Sue. "Well, go ahead now; let's see you flat your nose!"

Bunny took a long breath. He then pressed his nose so hard against the glass that tears came into his eyes. But he didn't want Sue to see them. And he wouldn't admit that he was crying, which he really wasn't doing.

"Look at me now! Look at me!" cried Bunny, talking as though he had a very bad cold in his head.

Sue took a look.

"Yes, it is flat!" she agreed. "But I can flatter mine more'n that! You watch me!"

Sue ran to her window. She made up her mind to beat her brother at this game. Closing her teeth firmly, as she always did when she was going to jump rope more times than some other girl, Sue fairly banged her nose against the window pane.

Her little nose certainly flattened out, but whether more so than Bunny's was never discovered. For Sue banged herself harder than she had meant to, and a moment later she gave a cry of pain, turned away from the window, and burst into tears.

"What's the matter?" asked Mrs. Brown, hurrying in from the next room: "Who's hurt?"

Sue was crying so hard that she could not answer, and Bunny was too surprised to say anything for the moment. Mrs. Brown looked at the two children. She saw Sue holding her nose in one hand, while Bunny's nose was turning from white to red as the blood came back into it.

"Have you children been bumping noses again?" she asked. This was a game Bunny and Sue sometimes played, though they had been told not to.

"No, Mother; we weren't 'zactly banging noses," explained Bunny. "We were just seeing who could make the flattest one on the window, and Sue bumped her nose too hard. I didn't do anything!"

"No, it -- it wasn't Bun -- Bunny's fault!" sobbed Sue. "I did it myself! I was trying to -- to flatter my nose more'n his!"

"You shouldn't play such games," said Mother Brown. "I'm sorry, Sue! Let me see! Is your nose bleeding?" and she gently took the little girl's hand down.

"Is -- is -- it?" asked Sue herself, stopping her sobs long enough to find out if anything more than a bump had taken place.

"No, it isn't bleeding," said Mrs. Brown. "Now be good children. You can't go out in the rain, so don't ask it. Play something else, can't you?"

"Could we play store?" asked Bunny, with a sudden idea. It was not altogether new, as often before, on other rainy days, he and Sue had done this.

"Oh, yes, let's keep store!" cried Sue, forgetting all about her bumped nose.

"That will be nice," said Mother Brown. "Tell Mary to let you have some things with which to play store. You may play in the kitchen, as Mary is working upstairs now."

"Oh, now we'll have fun!" cried Sue, clapping her hands.

"Could we have Splash in?" asked Bunny.

"The dog? Why do you want him?" asked Mrs. Brown.

"We could tie a basket around his neck," explained Bunny, "and he could be the grocery delivery dog!"

"Oh, yes!" laughed Sue.

"No," said Mother Brown, with a gentle shake of her head, "you can't have Splash in now. He has been splashing through mud puddles and he'd soil the clean kitchen floor. Play store without Splash."

There was one nice thing about Bunny Brown and his sister Sue. If they couldn't have one thing they did very well with something else. So now Bunny said:

"Oh, all right! We can take turns sending the things out ourselves, Sue."

"Yes, and we'll take turns tending store," added Sue. "'Cause I don't want to be doing the buying all the while."

"Yes, we'll take turns," agreed Bunny.

Soon the children were in the kitchen, keeping store with different things from the pantry that Mary, the cook, gave them to play with. Unopened boxes of cinnamon, cloves and other spices; some cakes of soap in their wrappers just as they had come from the real store, a few nuts, some coffee beans, other beans, dried peas and a bunch of vegetables made up most of the things with which the children played. After they had finished their fun everything could be put back in the pantry.

Bunny tore some old newspapers into squares to use in wrapping the "groceries." Mary also gave the children bits of string for tying bundles.

The store counter was the ironing board placed across the seats of two chairs in front of a table, and on the table back of this ironing board counter the different things to sell were placed.

"What are we going to do for money?" asked Bunny, when the "store" was almost ready to open.

"I'll give you some buttons," said his mother.

Bunny was given a handful of flat buttons of different sizes and colors to use for change. He placed them in his cash box. Sue also had other buttons to use as money in buying groceries.

"Now we're all ready to play," said Bunny, looking over the store. "You must come and buy something, Sue."

"Yes. And then I want to keep store," said the little girl.

"All right," her brother agreed.

Bunny took his place behind the counter and waited. Sue went out into the hall, paused a moment, and then, with a little basket over her arm, came walking in, as much like a grown-up lady as she could manage.

"Good morning, Mrs. Snifkins!" exclaimed Bunny. He always called Sue "Mrs. Snifkins" when they kept store.

"Oh, good morning, Mr. Huntley," Sue replied. She always called her brother "Mr. Huntley," when they kept store. Perhaps this was because he used to pretend to hunt for things on the make-believe shelves.

"What can I do for you this morning, Mrs. Snifkins?" asked Bunny, rubbing his hands as he had seen Mr. Gordon, the real grocer, do.

"I want some prunes, some coffee, some eggs, some sugar, some salt, some butter, some --  -- " ordered Sue all in one breath.

"Stop! Stop! Wait a minute!" cried Bunny. "I can't remember all that! Now what did you say first?"

"Prunes," replied Sue.

There were some real prunes among the things the children were playing store with, and Bunny wrapped a few of these in a paper.

"Now some sugar," Sue ordered.

As real sugar was rather messy if it spilled on the floor, Bunny had some bird gravel, which was almost as good, and he pretended to weigh some of this out on an old castor that was the make-believe scales. Some real coffee beans were also wrapped up for Sue, and then for eggs Bunny used empty thread spools.

"Will that be all to-day, Mrs. Snifkins?" asked Grocer Huntley, when Sue had put the things in her basket.

"Yes, that's all," Sue answered, placing two large black buttons on the ironing board counter and getting back in change a small white button.

Sue went out with her "groceries," and soon came back for more. After her third trip, by which time she had bought nearly everything in the store, she said:

"Now I want to be storekeeper."

"All right," agreed Bunny.

Sue brought back the things she had pretended to buy, they were put on the shelves again, and Bunny became a purchaser while Sue waited on him.

Outside it still rained hard, as Bunny saw when he looked from the window. But it was fun in the house, keeping store. The children kept on taking turns, first one being the keeper of the store and then the other, until Bunny suddenly had a new idea.

"Oh, I know what we can do!" cried the little boy.

"What?" asked Sue.

"We'll play hardware store," Bunny said. "I'm tired of having a grocery. We'll keep hammers and nails and things like that."

"I think a grocery is more fun," said Sue.

"Nope! A hardware store is better," Bunny insisted. "I'll sell you washboilers, basins, tin pans and things like that, and knives and forks. We can have ever so many more of those things than we can have groceries."

"Well, maybe we can," Sue agreed, doubtfully.

"I'll make a high-up shelf, like those in the hardware store down town," went on Bunny. "I'll have things high up on the shelf, and I'll climb up on a ladder to get 'em, as they do down town."

"What you going to climb up on?" Sue asked.

"The stepladder."

"What you going to make a high shelf of?" Sue inquired.

"There's another ironing board down in the laundry," Bunny answered. "And I can get the washboiler and a lot of things. I'll put the other ironing board away up there, across the top of the two doors."

"That'll be awful high," said Sue, looking to where Bunny pointed. The pantry door and the one leading from the kitchen into the hall were close together on one side of the room. By opening these doors half way a board could be placed across their tops, making a high shelf. This was soon done, and on this shelf the big tin washboiler was placed, and also some tin pans from the pantry. Bunny climbed up on the stepladder to put the shelf and things in place.

Other articles for a hardware play-store were placed on the lower ironing board shelf, and then Bunny was ready for "Mrs. Snifkins" to come again. Sue had her button money all ready, the store was in order, and new fun was about to begin, when Mary, coming suddenly in from the hall and not knowing what the children were doing, pushed wider open the hall door.

Instantly there was a grand crash! Down came the upper shelf from the tops of the doors. Down came the washboiler and a lot of tin pans. My, what a racket there was!

And, worst of all, Bunny Brown himself was hidden from sight in that mess of ironing board, washboiler, and other things!

"Oh! Oh! Oh!" cried Sister Sue, dropping her basket and her button money, which rolled all over the floor. "Oh, dear!"

"Bless and save us!" cried Mary, the cook. "What has happened?"

Bunny Brown said nothing.



Chapter II

Feeding The Alligators


Mrs. Brown came hurrying into the kitchen from the living room.

"What has happened?" she asked. "What was that crash?"

It needed only one look to show her what had happened and what had caused the rattling, banging, crashing sound. On the floor, over and around the two chairs and the large ironing board, were the smaller board, the stepladder, the washboiler, two hammers, a lot of nails, many bread, cake, and pie pans, and some knives and forks.

"Where's Bunny?" asked Mrs. Brown.

Well might she ask that, for Sue's brother was not in sight, nor had he uttered a word since the accident.

"He -- he's under there I -- I guess," faltered Sue. She was not quite sure where Bunny had gone when that terrible crash came.

"Yes, I see his legs! I'll pull him out, Ma'am," offered Mary. "Oh, I hope nothing has happened to him!"

Mrs. Brown hurried to assist Mary in digging Bunny from under the wreckage of his hardware store. And while they are doing that I will beg a moment's time from those of you who have never before read any of these books, to tell you something of the two children who are to have some queer adventures in this present volume.

Bunny Brown and his sister Sue are well known to many of you children. Bunny and his sister lived with their father and mother, Mr. and Mrs. Walter Brown, in the town of Bellemere, on Sandport Bay, near the ocean. Mr. Brown kept a boat and fish dock, and one of his helpers was Bunker Blue, a young man who was very fond of Bunny and Sue.

In the Brown home were also Uncle Tad, who was Mr. Brown's relative, and Mary, the good-natured cook. There was also Splash, a big dog. And I might mention Toby, a Shetland pony. There were other pets to whom I will introduce you from time to time. Toby had been away from the Brown children for a while, but was now back again.

In the village were many friends of Bunny and Sue. Mrs. Redden, who kept a candy store, was a very special sort of friend, and she gave the biggest penny's worth of sweets for miles around. Mr. Gordon, as I have told you, kept a real grocery store, and then there was Mr. Jed Winkler, an old sailor who owned a parrot and a monkey named Wango. Mr. Winkler's sister, Miss Euphemia, did not like either Polly or Wango.

Charlie Star, George Watson, Mary Watson, Sadie West, Helen Newton, Harry Bentley, and fat Bobbie Boomer were all friends of the Brown children.

Now that you know the names of most of the characters who are to appear in this book, I might mention some of the other volumes. The first one was called "Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue," and told of their adventures around home. Then they went to Grandpa's farm, they played circus, they visited Aunt Lu in her city home, they went to "Camp Rest-a-While," and then they went to the Big Woods. After that they had exciting adventures on an auto tour, and you can imagine what joy was theirs when they were given a Shetland pony, that was named Toby.

Bunny Brown and his sister were always thinking up new ideas, and when they wanted to give a show few doubted but what they would succeed. They did, and made a goodly sum for a home for the blind. One of the trips the Browns made was to Christmas Tree Cove, and in the book of that name you will find their adventures set forth. They also made a winter trip to the South, and they had not long been back from that when the things happened that I have just told you about -- the grand crash in the make-believe hardware store.

With the help of Mary and Mrs. Brown, Bunny was pulled from beneath the wreckage. At first the little boy could hardly speak, and his mother, no less than Mary and Sue, was beginning to get frightened. But suddenly with a gasp Bunny found his voice, and his first question was:

"Did you get hurt, Sue?"

"No," she answered. "But I guess you did."

"Only a little crack on the head," Bunny replied, rubbing the place that hurt. "But who knocked down my high shelf? Did Splash get in and wag his tail?"

Sometimes the big dog did this with funny results.

"I guess I knocked down your shelf, Bunny," said Mary. "I'm sorry, but I didn't know you had a board on top of the doors."

"Did you have that, Bunny?" asked his mother.

"Yes'm, I -- I guess I did," Bunny had to admit. "It was a high shelf for our hardware store. I had the washboiler up there!"

"No wonder there was a crash!" exclaimed Mrs. Brown. "It's a wonder you weren't hurt!"

"I guess the big ironing board fell on the stepladder first, and stayed there, and the rest of the things didn't hit Bunny because he was under the board," explained Mary.

And that is about how it happened. Bunny was under a sort of arch formed by the stepladder and the two ironing boards, and so was saved from being hit on the head by the heavy things. One of the overturned chairs, however, had struck him in the stomach, and this had rather knocked his breath out, which made him unable to talk for a little while.

"Well, I'm glad it was no worse than this," said Mrs. Brown. "Mercy sakes, though, the kitchen is a sight!"

"I don't mind! I'll clean it up," offered good-natured Mary. "The children have to play something in the house when it rains out of doors."

"Yes," agreed Mrs. Brown. "But they could have kept on playing grocery store. They didn't need to make a high shelf and put the big washboiler up on it to fall down when the door was moved the least bit!"

"I did that," confessed Bunny, anxious that Sue should not be blamed for what was not her fault. "I didn't know anybody would push the door."

"Well, it's a mercy it was no worse," remarked his mother. "And now, after you have helped Mary pick up the things, go on with your playing. Can't you play grocery instead of hardware store, Bunny, my dear?"

"Oh, hardware store is nicer, and we have all the things now," Bunny replied. "But I won't make any more high shelves."

The washboiler, the pans, and the scattered knives and forks were picked up, and then Bunny and Sue went on playing, using only the low ironing board shelf, which was made over the seats of two chairs. They took turns keeping store and doing the buying, and had a great deal of fun.

But even making believe keep a hardware store gets tiresome after a while, especially if there are only two playing, and after a while Bunny Brown and his sister Sue wanted something else to interest them.

"'Tisn't raining quite so hard now," Sue observed, after a look from the window.

"That's right!" cried Bunny. "Oh, say! Maybe we can go out in the barn and feed our alligators!"

"That'll be fun," agreed Sue. "And I guess they're hungry; don't you, Bunny?"

"Yes, I guess so. Let's go ask mother if we can feed 'em."

"I know she'll say yes, so I'll get some scraps of meat from Mary," said Sue.

As the rain was slackening and as Mrs. Brown knew that the alligators might need food, she told the children they could go out to the barn if they put on their rubber boots and coats.

"Aren't you afraid the alligators will bite you?" asked Mary, as she cut up some bits of meat for the children.

"Course not; we aren't afraid!" boasted Bunny. "They're only little alligators, and they're real tame."

One of the long-tailed, scaly pets given to the children by Mr. Bunn had been brought from the South where the Browns spent part of the winter, and later Mr. Brown had gotten some others. The alligators were kept in a tank of water in the barn. Bunny and Sue wanted the alligators kept in the house, but Mrs. Brown insisted that the barn was the place for pets of that sort.

Out into the rain storm, which was now almost over, went Bunny Brown and his sister Sue to feed the alligators. There were three or four of the scaly creatures, and as the children drew near the tank the alligators came crawling out of the water up on some bits of wood and stone that made a resting place for them. For alligators cannot stay under water all the while, as can a fish. They must come out every now and then to get air.

"Oh, look at Judy!" cried Sue, dangling a piece of meat in front of the nose of one of the queer pets. "She's awful hungry!"

"And so is Jim!" said Bunny, feeding another of the creatures. They lifted up their long snouts, opened their mouths, and took in the pieces of meat.

"Where's Jumbo?" suddenly asked Sue. "I don't see him!"

"Maybe he got out!" said Bunny, for the largest of the pet alligators was not in sight. Not that Jumbo was very large, for though he was the biggest in the tank he was not more than ten inches long.

"Oh, here he comes!" cried Sue, as Jumbo swam up from the bottom of the tank. "I guess he was asleep."

"I guess so," agreed her brother. "Here, Jumbo!" he went on. "Here's some meat for you!"

"Jumbo's getting real big," said Sue, as she watched the largest of the pets.

"And Judy is growing," added Bunny. "I wish we had had these 'gators when we gave our show."

"Yes," agreed his sister. "Well, maybe we can have another show. Or we could put the alligators in a store the next time we play."

"Yes," said Bunny. "Only maybe you couldn't wrap up a 'gator in a piece of paper. He might bite his way out."

"That's so," said Sue. "Well, we could --  -- "

But she did not finish what she was saying, for a loud barking suddenly sounded outside the barn. At this noise Bunny and Sue started on a run for the door.



Chapter III

Something In A Desk


Splash, the dog, was barking loudly at something up in a tree near the barn. Bunny and Sue could not see what it was, but it was something that had caused Splash to get very much excited. He leaped up and down and ran in circles about the tree, barking loudly all the while.

"It's a cat!" exclaimed Sue.

"Can't be a cat," Bunny answered. "Splash likes all the cats around here."

"Maybe it's a strange cat," went on Sue.

"That's so," agreed Bunny Brown. "Here, Splash!" he called. "What you barking at a cat for?"

The only answer the dog made was to bark again.

Bunny and his sister, forgetting all about their pet alligators, ran to the foot of the tree, up in which was something that had caused Splash to cease his play in another part of the yard and run toward the barn. The rain had now stopped, and the sun was getting ready to shine.

"What is it, Splash? What is it?" asked Bunny, trying to peer up among the leaves of the tree.

"I see it!" suddenly cried Sue. "It's Wango, Mr. Winkler's pet monkey!"

"Oh, yes! I see it now!" called Bunny. "Here, Splash! Stop barking at Wango!" ordered the little boy. "Don't you know he's a friend of yours? Stop it, Splash!"

Splash finally ceased barking and sat down to look eagerly up into the tree. He would not have hurt the monkey, for the two animals were good friends. I suppose Splash had seen the monkey leaping from the branches of one tree into another, and, not realizing that it was his friend Wango, had given chase. Wango was a bit frightened at first, even by the barking of his dog friend Splash, and had taken refuge in the tree near the barn.

"Come on down, Wango! Come on down!" invited Bunny.

"Yes, please do," added Sue. "We won't let Splash hurt you. Don't you bark any more, Splash!" she cried, shaking her finger at the dog.

Splash whined. He really only meant to have a little fun with Wango. But the monkey did not come down. He clung to the tree branch with his hands and tail and looked at the children, whom he well knew, for they were kind to him.

"I know how to get him down," said Bunny. "You go into the house and get a piece of cake for him, Sue. Take Splash with you. Then Wango won't be afraid."

"All right," agreed the little girl. She was always ready to run errands like this when she and Bunny could have fun. "Come on, Splash!" she called, and the dog followed her, looking back once at Bunny, as if to ask why the boy, too, was not following. But Bunny stayed near the tree in which Wango still clung.

"Mother," cried Sue, tramping into the house in her rubber boots, "please may Bunny and I have some cake for Wango?"

"You can't go over to Mr. Winkler's in the rain," said Mrs. Brown. "You'd better stay out in the barn and feed your pet alligators."

"Oh, but the rain is over," Sue explained. "The sun is coming out. And Wango isn't over at his own home. He's up in one of our trees. Splash chased him up there, I guess, and barked at him. And he won't come down -- I mean Wango won't. And will you please keep him in here till I take him out some cake. I mean," explained Sue, half out of breath, "you please keep Splash here in the house while I take some cake out to Bunny to feed Wango to get him down from the tree."

"My, what a lot of talk for a little girl!" laughed Mrs. Brown. "Well, I suppose Wango has run away again from Jed. You and Bunny may take the monkey back. Ask Mary to give you a bit of cake. I'll keep Splash in the house."

Sue got the cake, but it was rather difficult for Mrs. Brown to keep the dog in. He was eager to follow Sue back to the tree again. But it would be hard work to get Wango down, once the monkey was frightened, if Splash kept on barking, which he was pretty sure to do. He even barked loudly, Splash did, while he was being held in the house by Mrs. Brown.

Sue ran out with the cake to Bunny, who was waiting beneath the tree.

"Is Wango there yet?" the little girl wanted to know.

"Yes," Bunny answered. "But he's coming down a little."

And the monkey came down still farther when he saw the cake, of which he was very fond. He was soon perched on Bunny's shoulder, eating the treat, Sue feeding him little pieces one at a time.

"Let's take him back to Mr. Winkler's house," suggested Bunny, as the sun now came out bright and warm. "I guess the sailor will be looking for him."

"Yes, I guess so," agreed Sue.

Wango had a great habit of running away from his master's home, and, more than once, Bunny Brown and his sister Sue had taken back the sailor's pet. This they now did again, and as they knocked at the side door, Miss Winkler opened it.

"Here's your monkey back," said Bunny, after the first greetings.

"Huh! 'Tisn't my monkey!" declared Miss Winkler. "It's Jed's! I shouldn't ever worry if it never came home! Still, that isn't saying it's your fault, Bunny and Sue. I know you mean to be kind, and Jed will thank you, even if I don't. Wango, you rascal, why don't you stay away when you run off? I don't want you around! What with the poll parrot --  -- "

"Polly wants a cracker! Polly wants a cracker!" shrieked the green bird.

"A fire cracker's what you ought to have!" sniffed Miss Winkler, who did not like the two pets her sailor brother had brought back with him from one of his voyages.

"Cracker! Cracker! Put the kettle on the fire! Polly wants a cracker!" yelled the bird, and Wango began to chatter, the two of them making such a racket that Miss Winkler held her hands over her ears while Bunny and Sue could not help laughing.

"Stop it! Stop it!" yelled the maiden lady, and finally the monkey and the parrot grew quiet.

"Put Wango in his cage, Sue, if you please," said Miss Winkler. "And I'll tell Jed, when he comes home, how good you were to bring Wango back -- not that I want the creature, though. Well, it's cleared off, I'm glad to see. And now maybe you two will have a piece of cake for yourselves. I won't give Wango any, though!"

"Yes'm, I could eat a bit," said Bunny, with a smile.

"I like it, too," added Sue.

The children were soon having a lunch of cake and milk. Though Miss Winkler was a bit fussy over her brother's pets, yet she had a good heart, and she liked Bunny and Sue.

Through the little mud puddles, left after the rain, Bunny and Sue splashed their way back home. Their mother saw them coming, and, as Splash was making a great fuss at being kept in the house, she let the dog out. He ran to meet the children.

"What'll we do now?" asked Bunny, when they had told their mother about taking Wango home.

"Let's go down and wade in the brook," proposed Sue. "We have our boots on, and we won't have 'em on to-morrow. We'll have to go to school then, anyhow. So let's go wade in the brook now."

"All right!" agreed Bunny. "And we'll sail boats!"

With their dog, the children were soon splashing in the shallow brook, made a bit higher on account of the rain. They found some boards and made a raft, on which they pushed themselves about the wider part of the brook. Splash climbed on the raft with them, and the children pretended they were Robinson Crusoe on a voyage.

"Well, we had a lot of fun to-day," sighed Bunny in contentment, as he and Sue were going to bed that night. "Lots of fun!"

"Yes," agreed his sister. "And to-morrow we have to go to school."

"Oh, well," Bunny remarked, "maybe we'll have fun there." The children had been kept at home on account of the heavy rain.

"We won't have any fun like the hardware store shelf falling down on you," laughed Sue, as she remembered the queer accident.

"No, I don't want anything like that," said Bunny. "Once is enough."

Early the next morning the children were ready for school. But, almost at the last minute, Bunny could not find his large pencil box.

"Where did you have it last?" his mother asked him.

"Oh, I remember! I saw it in the barn!" exclaimed Sue.

"That's right -- we were playing school there day before yesterday," said Bunny. "I'll get it!"

He ran to the barn, got the pencil box, thrust it into his bag with his books, and trotted along with Sue.

Having to hunt for his pencil box at almost the last moment nearly made Bunny and Sue late for school. But they slipped into their seats just as the last bell was ringing. After the morning exercises, Bunny placed his pencil box and the books he did not need to use right away in his desk and went to his reading class.

It was when Bunny was doing his turn at reading up near the front platform that Sadie West, who sat in the seat next to Bunny, gave a sudden little cry.

"What is the matter, Sadie?" asked Miss Bradley, the teacher.

"Oh! Oh, if you please, Teacher, there's something in Bunny Brown's desk making faces at me!" exclaimed Sadie.

"Something making faces at you? What do you mean, Sadie?" asked Miss Bradley in surprise. "What is it?"

"It -- it's a -- a mouse!" cried the little girl.

"A mouse?" repeated the teacher.

"Yes'm! A mouse in Bunny Brown's desk!" and Sadie screamed.

At this some of the other children screamed, and there was much noise and confusion in the schoolroom.



Chapter IV

The Corner Store


"Quiet, children! Quiet!" ordered Miss Bradley. "This is school, not the playground at recess. Now, Sadie," she went on, as soon as there was a little quiet in the room, "tell me again, and be careful what you say. What did you see?"

"Please, teacher, I saw a mouse in Bunny Brown's desk, and he made a face at me. I mean the mouse made a face at me -- not Bunny!" Sadie made haste to explain, for she saw Bunny look at her when she made the statement about his desk and the mouse.

Sadie had left her seat beside Bunny's desk, and was now up front.

"How many other girls saw the mouse in Bunny's desk?" asked Miss Bradley.

No one answered.

"Raise your hands if you are afraid to speak," said the teacher, with a smile. She was beginning to believe that Sadie had imagined it all, or else that an edge of a book had looked like a mouse.

None of the girls raised her hands except Sadie West.

"Did any boy see the mouse?" Miss Bradley next asked.

"No, but I wish I had!" exclaimed Charlie Star. "If I'd see it I'd grab it!"

The other pupils giggled on hearing this.

"Quiet, children! Quiet!" begged the teacher again.

"Are you sure, Sadie, that you saw a mouse in Bunny Brown's desk?" asked Miss Bradley.

"Yes'm, I'm sure I did," was the answer.

"Bunny, did you bring a mouse to school?" Miss Bradley next asked. "I mean a pet mouse, for I know you and Sue have many pets. Did you bring a mouse to school, Bunny?"

"Oh, no, Teacher! I wouldn't do such a thing!" Bunny declared very earnestly.

"I didn't believe you would," said Miss Bradley, with a kind smile. "I think Sadie must be mistaken. But still, to quiet her -- and all of you," she added, looking at the pupils, "I will look in Bunny's desk. I am quite sure I will find nothing more than a book or a piece of paper that may have moved, making Sadie think it was a mouse."

Miss Bradley went to Bunny's desk. All the desks in the room were of the sort with a lid that raised up and down on hinges, like the cover of a box. As Miss Bradley came near Bunny's desk she noticed that the top was raised a little way, leaving a crack of an opening. Bunny had put one of his books in hurriedly, and the desk lid rested on this.

As the teacher raised the desk lid and looked in, the room was very quiet. Some of the girls almost held their breaths. One of them covered her eyes with her hands, lest she might, by accident, see the mouse.

Sadie West leaned forward eagerly, anxious, in a way, that a mouse should be found, for that would make her story true, and she was sure, in her own mind, that she had seen a mouse. Bunny, too, looked eagerly at Miss Bradley, and so did Sue, from the other side of the room.

"Grab a book, everybody!" said Charlie Star in a hoarse whisper to the other boys. "Grab a book, and if the mouse runs out we'll bang him!"

Charlie was an active little chap, almost as lively as Bunny Brown himself.

Miss Bradley heard what Charlie said and, with the desk lid half raised, she said:

"No, boys! No throwing of books, if you please! Should there be a mouse in the desk I can call the janitor to get it out."

"Oh, let me get it out!" begged Bunny.

There was no time to say more, for now Miss Bradley had Bunny's desk lid fully raised. She looked inside for a moment, then with a queer look on her face she closed the desk again and moved away.

"Did you see it, Teacher? Did you see the little mouse -- same as I did?" eagerly asked Sadie.

"No," answered Miss Bradley. "There isn't a mouse in the desk, but there is a little alligator!"

"Alligator!" cried the girls -- that is, all but Sue.

"Alligator!" shouted the boys.

"Let's see it!" cried Charlie Star.

"Quiet, children! Quiet!" ordered Miss Bradley. Then, turning to Bunny she asked: "Did you bring that little alligator to school?"

"No'm," Bunny answered.

"Is it yours?" went on Miss Bradley.

"Well, I have some pet alligators home," Bunny admitted. "Half of 'em's Sue's. We got one of 'em down South, and Daddy bought the rest. But I didn't bring any to school. If you let me look I can tell if it's mine or Sue's."

"I'll help!" offered Charlie Star. "I know Bunny's alligators, too!"

"No, let Bunny manage his own pets," said the teacher. "Come here, Bunny, and see what really is in your desk. I can't understand how an alligator would get in there if you didn't bring it."

Bunny opened his desk cover, the other boys wishing they had his chance to "show off" this way right in the school room. Bunny looked inside and then laughed.

"Yes," he said, "it's Judy, the littlest alligator. She won't hurt anybody."

"But how did it get to school?" asked Miss Bradley.

"It's in my big pencil box," Bunny answered. "I brought my pencil box to school this morning, but I didn't open it and --  -- "

"Teacher! Teacher! I know!" exclaimed Sue, raising her hand to show that she had something to tell.

"Well, how did it happen?" asked Miss Bradley.

"If you please, Teacher," said the little girl, "Bunny's pencil box was out in the barn where we keep the alligators. He left it there when we played school the other day. This morning Bunny couldn't find his pencil box, but it was out in the barn. He brought it in from there and we came to school."

"And I guess," said Bunny, finishing the story his sister had started, "that Judy climbed into my pencil box in the night and went to sleep there and I didn't see her."

This seemed to be as good an explanation as any, and was probably the way it had happened. Anyhow there was the little alligator in the pencil box inside Bunny's desk. The scaly creature had crawled in and then out, and when Bunny went up to recite the little creature had thrust its snout out beneath the partly raised lid. It was this that Sadie West had seen and thought was a mouse.

"Well, Bunny," said Miss Bradley, "I know it wasn't your fault, so we'll say nothing more about it. Only, after this, please look in your pencil boxes before you bring them to school."

"I will," promised Sue's brother.

"And now I'll excuse you from class while you take your alligator home," went on Miss Bradley.

"I can help him, Miss Bradley, if he wants me to," offered Charlie Star. "I know a lot about alligators."

"No, thank you," replied the teacher with a smile. "This alligator is so little I think Bunny can manage it alone. Now we will go on with our lessons!"

There was something like a sigh of disappointment among the children. For they had all welcomed the happening, since it gave them a sort of recess. But now they must pay attention to their books.

Bunny shut Judy up in his pencil box, as the easiest way of carrying the little alligator, and soon he was on his way home with his pet.

"Why, Bunny! what's the matter?" his mother asked, as he came into the house. "Why are you home?"

"I had to bring back one of the alligators," he explained.

"Ha! Ha!" laughed Uncle Tad. "Like Mary's lamb, the alligator followed you to school one day, did it, Bunny?"

"She didn't 'zactly follow me," Bunny explained, as he took his pet out to the tank in the barn. "I carried Judy in my pencil box, but I didn't know it."

Bunny went back to school and finished his lessons. And all the remainder of the day, when the pupils had a chance to speak, they talked of nothing but Sadie West, the "mouse" and Bunny's pet alligator. It was very exciting, all together.

When Bunny and Sue reached home that afternoon they found their mother on the steps waiting for them.

"I'll take your books," she told the children, "and I want you to go to the store for me. Mary started to bake a cake and found, at the last moment, she was out of baking powder. I want you to go for a box. You needn't go all the way to the big store. Stop at the little one on the corner -- Mrs. Golden's, you know. She sometimes has the kind I want. Go to the corner store and get the baking powder."

"All right!" exclaimed Bunny, and he and Sue hurried off. They knew where Mrs. Sarah Golden's little corner store was located -- just a few blocks from their home, much nearer than the big store where Mrs. Brown generally traded. Bunny and Sue had been in Mrs. Golden's store before, but not often, as it was rather out of the way, and such a small place that Mrs. Brown was afraid things would not be as fresh as at the larger grocery. Besides groceries, Mrs. Golden also kept "notions" -- that is, pins, thread, hooks and eyes, and things like that. She also had candy and a few toys for sale.

"Her store isn't much bigger than our play store was, is it?" asked Bunny of Sue, as they reached Mrs. Golden's.

"Not much," agreed Sue. "Didn't we have fun when we played store?"

"Lots!" agreed Bunny. "And didn't the boiler make a big racket when it fell down?"

He and Sue laughed at remembering this, but their laughs died away as they entered the little corner store and heard groans coming from behind one of the counters. Groans and sighs greeted the children as they opened the door. No one was in sight.

"Oh, Bunny!" exclaimed Sue, frightened, "what you s'pose has happened?"



Chapter V

A New Pupil


Though Bunny Brown and his sister Sue had not often bought things in Mrs. Golden's store, they knew the woman who kept the place, and she knew them, for she often called them by name as they passed when she was out in front. But now Mrs. Golden was not in sight, though the groans that came from behind one of the counters seemed to tell that she was there.

"Oh, Bunny, I'm afraid!" whispered Sue, standing in the opened door with her brother. "Don't let's go in!"

"Why not?" Bunny asked.

"'Cause maybe burglars have been here and maybe they've hurt Mrs. Golden!"

"Well, if they have, then we've got to help her," decided Bunny. "But burglars don't come in the daytime. They come only at night time."

"That's so," agreed Sue, growing bolder.

And then the groans stopped and the voice of an old lady said:

"Who is there, my dears? Some children, I know by your voices, but I can't see you. Don't be afraid, but come and help me."

"Where are you, and what's the matter?" asked Bunny.

"I'm down behind the notion counter," went on the voice. "I stepped up on a box to reach something from the shelf, and I slipped and fell. I'm not badly hurt, thank goodness, but I'm sort of wedged in here between the box and the wall, and I can't get up. If you can pull the box out I'll be all right."

"We'll do that!" cried Bunny, and he ran around behind the notion counter, on the side of the store where the needles, pins, and spools of thread were kept. Sue followed her brother.

There, just as Mrs. Golden had said, they found the old lady storekeeper. She was lying on the floor with a small packing box so wedged between her back and the side wall that she could not easily get up, especially as she was old and feeble.

"Oh, it's Bunny Brown and his sister Sue!" exclaimed Mrs. Golden, when she saw the children. "I'm so glad you came in! I was hoping some one would come in to help me. The breath was sort of knocked out of me when I fell, and I could only grunt and groan for a few minutes."

"We heard you," said Bunny.

"And I thought it was burglars," added Sue.

"Bless your hearts!" exclaimed Mrs. Golden. "Burglars wouldn't come to my poor, little store. Now just pull the box out and I'll be all right."

Bunny and Sue tugged at the box on which Mrs. Golden had been standing when she slipped and fell. It was hard work, but they managed to pull it out, and then Mrs. Golden, with a few more grunts and groans, could get up.

"Oh, my poor back!" she exclaimed, as she sank into a chair outside the counter.

"Is it broken?" asked Sue anxiously.

"No, not quite," was the answer, with a little smile. "But it's strained, and I expect I'll be lame for a while. Philip always told me not to stand up on things to reach the top shelves, and I guess he was right."

"Who is Philip?" asked Bunny.

"Philip is my son," was the answer. "He's a grown man, and he has to go off to work every day, though he helps me in the store as much as he can. I wouldn't want him to know I fell. It would only worry him, and he might make me give up my store. And I don't want to do that. I'm feeling better now. I'll be all right in a little while. Did you want something, my dears?" she asked, for she must not forget that she was a storekeeper.

"We wanted some baking powder," said Sue. "But we aren't in any hurry."

"We are in a little hurry," said Bunny. "'Cause Mary's got a cake partly made, but maybe --  -- "

"Oh, I have baking powder," said Mrs. Golden quickly. "And I'll be glad to sell it to you. If I sold more things I'd make more money. Let me see now; I'm feeling sort of queer in my head on account of my tumble, but baking powder -- oh, it's on one of the high shelves. I -- I'm almost afraid to reach up for it."

"Oh, let me get it!" eagerly begged Bunny. "I like to climb up. I'd like to get it! I like to keep store!"

"So do I!" added Sue. "We played store the other day, and a lot of things fell down when Mary closed the door. We had a high shelf, too."

"Yes, one needs high shelves in a store," said Mrs. Golden. "But, Bunny, do you think you can reach up and get the baking powder?" she asked. "I can point it out to you."

"Sure, I can get it!" declared the little boy. "I'd love to."

"We don't want you to fall again," said Sue.

"That's very kind of you," replied Mrs. Golden. "Well, the baking powder is on the other side of my store -- the grocery side. There it is," and with a bent and trembling finger she pointed out the tin boxes.

"Oh, that's an easy climb!" exclaimed Bunny, and he soon proved that it was by clambering up and getting the box of baking powder he wanted. Then he paid for it.

The children asked Mrs. Golden if they could help her further. She said she was feeling better and would soon be all right.

"But don't climb up any more," warned Sue.

"That's right," echoed Bunny. "Maybe we could help you tend store, Mrs. Golden. I'm a good climber."

"Yes, Bunny, I notice you are," said the old lady, with a smile. "And it is very kind of you, but you see I never could tell when some one might come in and want something from a high shelf. Unless you stayed here all the while it wouldn't be of much use."

"No, that's so," the little boy admitted. "I'd like to stay here all the while, though. I like to keep store!"

"So do I," added Sue.

"But children must go to school," said Mrs. Golden, with a smile. "I'll have to get my son Philip to put all the things on low shelves, I guess. Then I can reach them without climbing up. Run along now, Bunny and Sue. Your mother will be waiting for that baking powder."

Bunny and Sue told their mother what had happened at the store.

"Poor old lady!" sighed Mrs. Brown. "She is very poor, I'm afraid. We must buy more of our things there, Mary. It will be a help to her."

"Yes'm, it will," agreed the cook. "I often stop there when I want something in a hurry. She and her son are honest and hard-working."

"And I worked, too!" said Bunny. "I helped her tend store. I climbed up and got the baking powder."

"That was kind of you. But you, too, must be careful, son," his mother told him.

On their way to school the next day Bunny and Sue went past Mrs. Golden's store to ask how she was. They found her smiling and cheerful, little the worse for her tumble.

"My son Philip is going to make me some lower shelves," she said.

"Then I can help reach things down for you," exclaimed Sue, with a smile.

"Yes, dearie," murmured Mrs. Golden.

"Wouldn't it be fun if we had a little store like that?" said Sue to Bunny, as they hurried along, to school. "I mean a real store, with real things to sell, and we could take in real money."

"Yes, it would be lots of fun!" agreed Bunny. "But I don't s'pose it will ever happen."

However, something very like that was to happen, almost before the children knew it.

"Yes," went on Bunny, when they had almost reached the school, "it would be dandy to have a store like Mrs. Golden's!"

"Maybe you will have some day -- when you grow up," replied Sue.

"That's a long way off," sighed Bunny, as he looked down at his little, short legs.

There was nothing to disturb the school classes that morning. No pet alligators were found in the desk of Bunny or any of the other pupils, and neither Sadie West nor any of the other girls thought she saw a mouse.

However, something happened in the afternoon. It was a warm day, early in summer, though the long vacation had not yet come. The windows were open and the bright sun streamed in.

After a period of study Miss Bradley called the first class in spelling. Bunny and Sue were in this division, and they went up to the front seats where Miss Bradley heard all recitations.

"Sadie West, please spell church," called Miss Bradley. Sadie spelled the word right.

"Sue Brown, please spell horse," called the teacher, and Sue did not make a miss.

"Now, Bunny, it is your turn," said the teacher, with a smile. "Your word is cracker."

Bunny paused a moment.

"C -- r -- a --  -- " he began.

Then suddenly, sounding throughout the school room, a harsh voice cried:

"Cracker! Cracker! Give me a cracker!"

Miss Bradley hurriedly stood up beside her chair. What pupil had thus dared to speak aloud in school?



Chapter VI

A Busy Buzzer


Bunny, Sue and the other children were just as much surprised as was Miss Bradley when that strange, harsh voice called out. And it needed but a look at the faces of her pupils to show the teacher that none of them had broken one of the rules of the classroom.

Bunny still held his mouth open, for he was half way through the spelling of the word "cracker." He was about to keep on, when once more the voice called:

"Cracker! Cracker! Polly wants a cracker!"

The sound came from the cloak closet on one side of the classroom.

"It's a parrot!" cried Charlie Star. "A poll parrot!"

"Yes, I believe it is," said Miss Bradley.

"You didn't bring a parrot to school to-day, did you, Bunny?" she asked.

"Oh, no, Ma'am!" he exclaimed, so earnestly that of course Miss Bradley believed him.

"But I know whose parrot it is," said Sue, eagerly.

"Whose?" asked the teacher.

"Mr. Winkler's! He's got a parrot and a monkey. They're always getting loose. Maybe the monkey's in the cloakroom, too, only the monkey can't talk like Polly," went on Sue.

"Keep your seats, children!" said Miss Bradley. "I'll look in the cloakroom. There is no need to be excited. A parrot will hurt no one, nor a monkey, either. Keep your seats!"

As she opened the cloakroom door the harsh voice again sounded more loudly than before.

"Bow! Wow! Wow!" it barked. "Cracker! Cracker! Polly wants a cracker! Let's have a song! Ha! Ha! Ha!"

Then it began what I suppose the bird thought was singing.

The children laughed, and so did the teacher.

Out of the cloakroom flew the parrot, fluttering up on the teacher's desk. There it perched, preening its feathers with its big beak and thick, black tongue, now and then uttering harsh squawks and making remarks, some of which could not be understood.

"Is this the parrot you meant, Sue?" asked Miss Bradley.

"Yes'm, that's Mr. Winkler's," answered Sue. "I can take it back to him if you want me to. Polly knows me."

"And he knows me, too!" exclaimed Bunny.

"And me!" eagerly added Charlie Star. "Let me and Bunny take him home, please?" he begged.

"Is that the way to say it?" remarked the teacher, for the room was more quiet now. "What should you have said, Charlie?"

"Let Bunny and me," corrected Charlie.

"That's right. Always speak of yourself last. It is more polite. Well, I think you and Bunny may take the parrot back to Mr. Winkler," went on the teacher. "Certainly we don't want him in our class, though he seems a bright bird."

"You ought to see Wango, the monkey, climb!" cried fat Bobbie Boomer, and all the other children laughed. "He's great!"

"Well, I think a parrot is enough for one day," remarked Miss Bradley, with a smile. "Take Polly home, Bunny and Charlie."

"Just see, Teacher, he's tame and he knows me," Bunny said, stroking Polly's head, a caress the parrot seemed to like. Polly perched herself on Bunny's shoulder, and then he and Charlie went out, envied by the other pupils.

"Oh that bird! Out again!" cried Miss Winkler, when Polly was restored to her. "I declare, I'll make Jed get rid of her and Wango! They're more bother than they're worth!"

"I'll take 'em if you don't want 'em!" offered Charlie Star.

"So will I!" said Bunny.

But as Miss Winkler usually made this threat three or four times a week (or every time the monkey or parrot got loose), and as Mr. Winkler had never yet given them away, it did not seem likely that he would do so now. So Bunny and Charlie had small hopes of owning either pet.

The boys went back to school, passing, on their way, the store of Mrs. Golden.

"Let's go in," suggested Charlie. "I want to buy a top!"

"All right," agreed Bunny.

"Well, boys, what can I sell you to-day?" asked Mrs. Golden, coming out from the little back room where she generally sat when there were no customers to wait on.

"Got any tops?" asked Charlie.

"A few," Mrs. Golden answered, "but not many. I'm going to have a new lot in next week. Good day, Bunny," she went on. "Did your mother like that baking powder?"

"I guess so," Bunny answered. Then he and Charlie began looking at the tops. But the kind Charlie wanted was not in the case, and after looking at several Charlie decided not to buy any.

"Here's a tin automobile I'm selling cheap," said Mrs. Golden, taking a red toy out from another case. "It's the last one I have, and I'll sell it to you for what it cost me -- twenty-five cents. The regular price would be fifty cents. See, I'll wind it up for you."

This she did, setting it down on the floor. With a whizz and a buzz the auto darted across the store, bringing up with a bang against the low part of the opposite counter.

"Say, that's a dandy!" exclaimed Charlie. "I'd like to own that!"

"So would I!" agreed Bunny. "Only I haven't twenty-five cents."

"I have!" Charlie said. "I was going to spend only ten cents for a top, but I guess I'll buy this buzzer auto for a quarter."

"It's in good order," said Mrs. Golden. "I'm not going to keep such expensive toys after this. I'm getting too old to run a toy store as well as groceries and notions. I'm giving up most of my toys. But this is a good auto, Charlie."

"Yes'm, I'll take it," said the little boy, and he bought the auto.

"You can't take it to school with you," said Bunny, as he and his chum left Mrs. Golden's store.

"Yes, I can," answered Charlie.

"If teacher sees it she'll take it away."

"Well, she won't see it. I can put it in my coat pocket." This Charlie did, after a struggle, for the pocket was rather small and the toy auto rather large.

"It sticks out and shows," Bunny said, after the toy had been crowded in.

"I'll stuff my handkerchief over it," Charlie decided, and this was done.

Then the two boys went on to school, arriving just as it was time for recess, so they did not have to go back to their lessons right away.

"And I didn't have to spell!" laughed Bunny. "Though I did know how to spell cracker."

"Come on!" called Charlie. "We'll have some fun with my new auto! I'll let it run around the yard."

This he did to the delight of the other boys. As for the girls, they gathered on the other side of the school yard for their own particular recess fun.

Sue, Mary Watson, Sadie West, Helen Newton and some others raced about, playing tag and jumping rope.

"Oh, I know what we can do!" suddenly cried Helen, when they were all tired from having romped about playing tag.

"What?" asked Sue.

"Let's go down to the end of the yard where the men are digging, and see how big the hole is," suggested Helen.

"Oh, teacher said we mustn't!" exclaimed Sadie.

"Well, we won't go very close," went on Helen. "She just told us to be careful not to fall in. But if we don't go too close we can't fall in."

This seemed a safe way of looking at it, and the girls were curious to see what the workmen had done at the far end of the school yard. The laborers had been digging for some days, fixing water pipes, and had made a deep trench, so deep that when a man stood down in it only his head showed above.

Just now none of the men was near the hole, all having gone away to get other tools, and as the boys were busy playing at the other end of the yard, or watching Charlie's auto, the girls could explore the digging by themselves.

"It's nothing but a hole!" said Sue, in some disappointment, as they approached as near as they dared and looked in.

"I'd like to go down in it!" exclaimed Helen, who was rather daring.

"Oh!" cried Sue. "Come back! Don't go too close!"

But Helen did not heed. She went up to the very edge of the long, deep trench, and was looking in when suddenly her feet slipped out from under her, and down she went, sliding right into the hole!

"Oh! Oh!" she cried.

"Oh! Oh!" screamed the other girls, and in such excited voices that Miss Bradley came running out of the classroom and the boys crowded down to the end of the yard.

"What has happened?" asked the teacher.

"Helen Newton fell into the big hole!" cried Sadie West.

"Did the dirt cave in on her?" asked Miss Bradley.

Fortunately, it had not. The walls of the trench were firm and solid, and the only thing that had happened was that Helen was down in the deep trench, and could not get up by herself. She was crying now.

"Don't cry," said Miss Bradley. "You're all right. We'll soon get you out. Now you other boys and girls keep back from the edges, or you'll cause the sides to cave in and they'll cover Helen! Keep back, Bunny, Sue, every one!"

This was good advice, and as the other children moved back away from the trench there was less danger. Miss Bradley was just going to send one of the boys to call the janitor when two workmen came back. They broke into a run as they saw the crowd about their digging place, for they had told the teacher to keep the children away from it.

"There's been an accident!" said one man.

But it was not so bad as he feared, and he and his companion soon lifted Helen out on solid ground again, a rather frightened little girl, but not in the least hurt.

"I told you to stay away from that hole!" said Miss Bradley, rather severely. "I was afraid something like this might happen. It is fortunate it was no worse. Who started it?"

There was a moment's pause, and then Helen raised her hand. She had been crying.

"If -- if you please, Teacher, I went there first," she stammered.

"Well, I think your fright has been punishment enough for you," said Miss Bradley kindly, "and we will say nothing more about it. But if any of you go near that hole again he or she will be kept in after school. It isn't that I mind your seeing what the workmen are doing, it is just that it would be dangerous for even grown folks to go too near the edge of the trench, and much more so for you little folk. So keep away from the hole. I hope the pipes will be in this week, and the hole closed up. Now do you all promise to keep away?" she asked. "Raise your hands!"

Every hand went up, for the boys and girls were fond of their teacher and did not want to cause her worry.

It was a solemn moment, for they all felt that something dreadful might have happened to Helen had the dirt caved in on her.

"Hands down," said Miss Bradley, and down they went.

Just then the bell rang. Recess was over, and the lines of boys and girls marched into the schoolhouse once again.

Charlie Star reached for his handkerchief, which he had again stuffed over his toy automobile after he had crowded that toy into his pocket when going back into school after recess. As he pulled out his handkerchief the auto came with it and fell to the floor.

Suddenly there was a strange buzzing sound in the room. Neither the teacher nor the girls knew what it was, but Bunny and the boys knew it was Charlie Star's new toy automobile which he had bought from Mrs. Golden.

With a buzz the busy auto ran from Charlie's desk straight down the aisle toward Miss Bradley, who was standing in front of her platform.



Chapter VII

The Barn Store


For a second or two Miss Bradley seemed to pay no attention to the buzzing sound which Bunny, Charlie, and some of the other pupils heard only too plainly. The teacher was busy thinking whether she had done enough talking to make sure her boys and girls would not again go near the deep hole in the school yard.

"I wouldn't want any of them to get hurt," thought Miss Bradley. "I had better scare them a little now than have any of them harmed the least bit."

She was thinking what else she might say, to impress on the pupils the danger of the hole, when she seemed to hear, for the first time, the buzzing of Charlie's auto.

"What's that?" asked Miss Bradley.

No one answered, except that, here and there in the room, a boy or girl snickered.

There was one queer thing about Charlie's new toy auto. It made a great deal of buzzing as the wheels whirred around when the wound-up spring made them do this, but the machine itself did not go very fast. It seemed to make a great fuss about getting anywhere, but it took its own time in doing it.

This was the reason why the auto, though it had been pulled out of Charlie's pocket with his handkerchief and had fallen into the aisle down which it ran, did not very soon get where Miss Bradley could see it. She could hear the buzzing sound, but she did not know what it was.

"Who is making that noise?" she asked again.

No one answered, for, truth to tell, neither a boy nor a girl in the room was causing the noise; though of course Charlie was to blame, in a way.

Miss Bradley was looking over the room, into the faces of her pupils. The buzzing sound kept up. It seemed to be coming nearer and nearer. The windows were open, and she thought a bee or a wasp might have flown in. But it would be a very large wasp or bee, indeed, which would make so loud a buzzing sound as this.

"Children --  -- " began Miss Bradley, and then she suddenly stopped, for something struck her on the foot. And it was right near her foot that the buzzing noise sounded. But as she had walked a little way down from her platform, and her foot was partly under the first desk -- that of fat Bobbie Boomer -- Miss Bradley could not see what had struck her.

"Oh!" she cried, as she jumped back, rather startled.

Charlie Star and Bunny Brown could not help laughing right out loud. They knew what had caused all this excitement.

A moment later Miss Bradley knew also. For Charlie's buzzing auto, having struck her foot, turned aside and rolled out on the floor in front of her teaching platform, in plain sight. There the little red toy came to a stop, for its spring was fully unwound.

Charlie and Bunny stopped their laughing suddenly as the teacher looked down at them.

"Whose is this?" asked Miss Bradley, in a voice she hardly ever used in the classroom, for her pupils were generally very orderly. "Who owns this automobile?" she asked, sternly.

Timidly Charlie Star raised his hand.

"If you please, Teacher, it's mine," he said. And such a weak little voice as it was! Not at all like the loud, hearty tones Charlie used when he called to Bunny, "first shot agates!"

Miss Bradley stooped over and picked up the toy. She placed it on her desk, and then, turning to face the children, she said:

"I am very sorry about this. I thought, after what had happened to Helen, that you were going to settle down and study your lessons. Why did you bring this auto to school, Charlie? And why did you take it out?"

Charlie was silent a moment, and then he answered, saying:

"I -- I didn't exactly take it out, Miss Bradley. It came out when I took out my handkerchief. I -- I didn't mean to do it."

"Very well then, you didn't," the teacher agreed, with a little smile, for she knew Charlie was telling the truth. "But why did you bring the auto to school at all?"

Then Charlie told of having bought the toy that morning, on his way to school with Bunny Brown.

"I didn't have time to go home with it after I bought it," he said, "so I put it in my pocket. We played with it at recess, and I forgot and wound it up and stuck it in my pocket. I didn't mean to let it get out and run down the aisle."

Miss Bradley wanted to smile, but she knew it would not be just the thing to do. So she said:

"Well, Charlie, I will excuse you this time. But please don't bring any more toys into the schoolroom. And now, as we have lost much time from our lessons, we must study extra hard to make it up. Come to me after school, Charlie, and I'll give you back your auto."

Miss Bradley put the toy in her desk for safe keeping, and went on with the lessons. But it was rather hard for the pupils to get their minds back on their studies, because so much had happened that day from the time the parrot had screeched "Cracker! Cracker!" in the cloakroom until Charlie's auto fell out of his pocket and went buzzing down the aisle to bang into the teacher's foot.

However, the day came to an end at last, and then, talking and laughing, the boys and girls ran out of doors. Charlie stayed after the others, and walked shyly up to the desk at which Miss Bradley sat, looking over some examination papers. The room was very still and quiet after the noise and excitement of the children's outgoing.

"Yes, Charlie. What is it?" asked Miss Bradley, as she saw him standing near her desk.

"If you please -- my auto --  -- "

"Oh, yes," and she opened her desk and handed it to him. "It is a cute little toy," and she smiled at Charlie.

"You ought to see it go!" he exclaimed eagerly, for Miss Bradley was really a friend to her pupils, and she knew how to make kites and spin tops almost as good as a boy.

"Here! I'll show you!" Charlie went on. "It's a dandy!"

Quickly he wound up the auto and set it down on the floor. The wheels buzzed and the little red car spun across the schoolroom floor.

Bunny Brown and George Watson, waiting outside for Charlie, wondered what was keeping their chum. They knew he had stayed in to get his plaything.

"Maybe she's going to make him stay in half an hour," suggested George.

"She didn't say she was," replied Bunny. "But maybe she's giving him a -- a leshure." What Bunny meant was lecture.

"Let's look in," suggested George.

On tiptoes they went to a window whence they could see into the room. There they saw Miss Bradley winding up Charlie's auto, and they heard Charlie saying:

"You try it now, Miss Bradley! See how nice it runs!"

And as the surprised watchers looked on, their teacher started the toy across the floor as Charlie had done. For, following the first showing of his plaything, Charlie had offered to let his teacher wind it, and she had agreed.

"Yes, it is a cute toy," said the teacher, as the auto banged into a side wall and stopped. "But we mustn't play with it in school hours."

"Oh, no'm!" agreed Charlie, and then he hurried outside, where Bunny and George were waiting for him.

"Say, you ought to see!" exclaimed Charlie, half breathless. "She ran the auto herself!"

"We saw her," said Bunny.

"She's a dandy teacher all right!" declared George.

One Saturday morning Bunny and Sue came downstairs to breakfast at the same hour as on other days. Usually this did not happen, for on Saturdays they were allowed to remain in bed a little longer than on days when they had to go to school.

"Well, what does this mean?" asked Uncle Tad, who was finishing his meal and reading the paper at the same time. "This is Saturday, isn't it? Unless I have on the wrong glasses!" he added, as he looked at the calendar on the wall.

"Yes, it's Saturday," said Bunny.

"Then why are you up so early?" asked Uncle Tad.

"'Cause a lot of the boys and girls are coming over, and we're going to play store out in our barn," explained Sue. "You can come and buy something if you want to, Uncle Tad."

"Thanks! Maybe I will!" chuckled the old soldier. "Are you going to sell any inside outside cocoanuts flavored with saltmint?" he asked.

"What are those?" Bunny inquired.

"Oh, he's only joking!" declared Sue, as she saw a twinkle in the eyes of Uncle Tad. And of course he was joking.

"Well, maybe I'll look in and see what you do have to sell in your barn store," he said, as he left the table.

Bunny Brown and his sister Sue were not long in finishing their breakfast, and then they hurried out to the barn where they were to keep store. Bunny and Sue had found some boards and boxes out there which would make fine shelves for a pretend store.

"We'll put the shelves up before the others get here," said Bunny.

"Yes," she agreed. "But what kind of store are you going to play? Are you going to have washboilers and tin pans?"

"No, I guess not," said Bunny, after thinking about it a moment. "We'll keep a store like Mrs. Golden's."

"Yes, that will be nice," agreed Sue. "Here, Splash!" she cried. "Get out of there! That box isn't for you to sleep in!" For the big dog had crawled into one of the boxes that were to form the store shelves. Splash was curling up most comfortably.

"We'll use him for a delivery dog," said Bunny. "We'll tie a basket on his neck and he can take the groceries and things to different places."

"Oh, that will be fun!" laughed Sue, clapping her hands. "Here comes Helen!" she cried a moment later, and then, with joyous shouts and laughter, a number of children came running into the Brown yard, ready to play barn store.



Chapter VIII

In A Hole


"What things are you going to sell?"

"Who's going to tend store?"

"I want to be cashier!"

These were some of the things the boys and girls shouted as they ran into the barn where Bunny Brown and his sister Sue were waiting for them to play store. Charlie Star, Helen Newton, fat Bobbie Boomer, Harry Bentley, George and Mary Watson and Sadie West were among the boys and girls who came crowding into the barn, for the day before Bunny and his sister had invited them to spend Saturday in having fun.

"We'll take turns tending store," explained Bunny, after he had shown his playmates the shelves and boxes that were to be used for shelves.

"And we're going to have our dog Splash deliver things with a basket on his neck," explained Sue.

"I should think it would be more fun to hitch up your pony Toby to the basket cart and have him to deliver things," remarked Helen.

"We thought of that," replied Bunny. "But Bunker Blue has taken Toby down to the boat dock. He has to do some errands for my father, so we can't have Toby."

As Bunny and his sister had played this game more than the others, they were allowed to lay out the plans. Bunny showed the boys how the boards were to be put across the boxes to make shelves, and Sue took the girls down to the brook to gather little pebbles and the shells of fresh water mussels which were to be used for money, as there were going to be so many "customers" for the barn store that Mrs. Brown's buttons would not be enough to make change.

"What things are we going to sell?" asked Charlie, as he began pulling something from his pocket.

"Oh, we'll get stones, sand, gravel, some leaves, pieces of bark, twigs, and things like that," Bunny explained. "But what you got in your pocket, Charlie?"

"My wind-up auto. I thought maybe we could use it in the store."

"How?"

"Well, it could be like a cash register. You see," Charlie went on, "somebody's got to be the cashier just as in a big store. We'll have different clerks, and when anybody buys anything they must pay the money to whoever is clerk."

"Yes," agreed Bunny, who understood thus far.

"Then," went on Charlie, "the clerk must put the money the customer pays into my auto, and send it on a plank up to the cashier's desk. The cashier will make change and send it back in the auto."

"Oh, that'll be great!" cried Bunny. "And I guess you ought to be the cashier for thinking it up, Charlie."

"Well, maybe I ought, 'cause it's my auto," Charlie said. He had been hoping for this all along. "Now I'll make myself a place to be cashier," he went on, "and I'll fix up a long plank for the auto to run back and forth on. One winding will bring it up to me and back to the clerk."

When the other children heard this plan they were much delighted. Soon the store was ready for business. Boards had been placed across the boxes and a tier of shelves made, the top one so high that a long box had to be used like a stepladder to reach it. On the shelves were placed different things picked up around the barn, in the yard, and in the patch of woods not far away, or brought from the shore of the brook.

Then the boys and girls divided themselves up, some were to be customers to buy things in the store, while others were to be clerks to wait on the customers. Charlie took his place at the end of the tier of shelves to act as cashier. From the end of the shelves to his box ran a long narrow plank on which the auto change-carrier was to run.

Finally everything was ready, even to torn pieces of newspaper in which the things bought were to be wrapped. Splash was on hand with a basket tied to his neck to deliver the goods. And each customer had picked out a certain part of the barn as his or her "home" where the things were to be delivered.

"All ready!" called Bunny Brown. He and Sue were to be clerks in the store at first; afterward they would take a turn at being customers.

"I want a pound of sugar!" ordered Sadie West, coming up to Bunny, standing behind his part of the front counter.

"Yes, Ma'am. A pound of sugar!" repeated Bunny, scooping up some sand in a clam shell. "Nice day, isn't it -- Mrs. er -- Mrs. --  -- "

"Snyder is my name," said Sadie. "I'm Mrs. Snyder and I live at 756 Oatbin Avenue," she added, as she looked toward the part of the barn she had picked out for her "house." It was near Toby's oat bin.

"Yes, Ma'am," answered Bunny. "I'll send it right over to Oatbin Avenue."

He wrapped up the sand-sugar in a piece of paper and took the black mussel shell which Sadie handed him as her "five-dollar bill." Bunny placed the shell in the automobile, and started it up the plank to where Charlie waited. Taking out the large shell, Charlie put in two smaller ones and a white stone. This was "change."

Back whizzed the auto down the plank until it reached Bunny, who took out the "change" and handed it to "Mrs. Snyder."

"Please send my sugar right over," she ordered.

"Yes, Ma'am, it will go on the first delivery," Bunny answered, as he had heard Mr. Gordon, the real grocer, often say.

"Here, Splash!" called Bunny, and his dog, with the basket on his neck, came running up, wagging his tail.

"Oh, look out!" cried Sue, who was acting as a clerk next to Bunny.

"What's the matter?" Bunny asked.

"Splash is wagging his tail so hard that he'll knock down my eggs!" complained Sue.

Of course the "eggs" were only pine cones from the woods near by, but when you are playing store you must pretend everything is real, or else it isn't any fun.

"Keep your tail still, Splash!" cried Bunny. But the dog seemed only to wag it the harder.

Splash might have knocked down all the "eggs" and done other damage in the store had not Bunny placed Mrs. Snyder's sugar in the basket and sent his pet to deliver the make-believe sweet stuff.

And Splash delivered it very carefully, too. Sadie had gone back to her home at "756 Oatbin Avenue" to wait for her sugar, and when it came she took it from the basket on Splash's neck. Then the dog went back to the barn store to run on more delivery errands.

This was a sample of the way Bunny, Sue, and their friends played that Saturday morning. Now and then they would change about, some who had been clerks becoming customers and the customers clerks.

Of course accidents happened. Splash wagged his tail so hard that he knocked over a box of prunes, scattering them on the barn floor. Even if the prunes were only little black stones it wasn't just the thing for Splash to do, and Sue scolded him for it. But Splash didn't seem to mind.

Another time, when the dog had been sent to deliver some ice-cream (which was really some white sand from the brook) to Mrs. Leland Sayre, who lived at 1056 Straw Terrace (Mrs. Sayre being Mary Watson), an accident happened. Splash was on his way to Mrs. Sayre's home when he heard another dog barking outside the barn.

With a bark of greeting Splash dashed out, spilling the "ice-cream" all over the barn floor.

"Oh, dear! And I wanted it for a party!" said Mrs. Sayre.

But of course it was all in fun.

More than once the change auto ran off the plank, either on its way to the cashier or coming back, and spilled the money all over the barn floor. But that could not be helped.

"Only it isn't good for my auto," said Charlie.

"We'll put some straw down on the floor so when it falls it won't get bent," said Bunny, and this was done.

All morning the children played store in the barn, selling the things over and over again. Splash got tired of being a delivery dog after a while, and Bobbie Boomer said he'd take his place. Bobbie was more to be depended on than Splash, who, try as he did, would sometimes deliver things to the wrong houses.

When noon came the neighboring children were talking of going home to lunch, but Mrs. Brown gave them all a pleasant surprise, including Bunny and Sue, by asking all the boys and girls to remain and have something to eat, served in the barn.

"Oh, what fun!" cried Sadie West.

"The best ever!" declared Charlie Star. "I'm glad I came!"

Lunch over, the playing of store went on again, until first one and then another began to tire, and it was given up. Then they put away the planks and boxes and played tag and hide and seek until it was time for supper, when the boys and girls went home.

"We've had a lovely time!" they said to Bunny and Sue.

Just before supper Mrs. Brown needed something from the store.

"I'll go get it," offered Bunny. "I'll get it at Mrs. Golden's."

"I'll go with you," said Sue, and soon they were at the little corner grocery.

"How are you to-day, Mrs. Golden?" asked Bunny, as the old woman was getting the yeast cake he had been sent for.

"Oh, pretty well," she answered, with a cheery smile on her kind but wrinkled face. "I'd like it if I wasn't so stiff, but then we can't have all we want in this world."

"We played store in our barn to-day," said Sue, looking around at the various shelves filled with many articles.

"Did you, dearie? That was nice. I guess it's easier to play store than it is to keep one really," said Mrs. Golden.

"Oh, I'd like to keep store!" declared Bunny Brown. "Only, how do you remember where everything is?" he asked. "There's such a lot of stuff!"

"Yes, there is," agreed Mrs. Golden. "And sometimes I forget. But I'm getting old, I reckon. There's your yeast cake. Now run along, and be careful when you cross the street."

"Yes'm, we will!" promised Bunny, as he took Sue's hand.

"Maybe, when vacation comes, Mrs. Golden will let us help her in her store," said Bunny to his sister, as they neared their home.

"Oh, maybe!" Sue agreed. "And it soon will be vacation, won't it?"

"Yes," said Bunny. "I wonder where we'll go this summer."

"I wonder, too," mused Sue. "If we could stay at home and have a real store it would be fun!"

Bunny agreed to this.

Several days passed. The hole in the school yard was filled up so there was no further danger of any of the boys or girls falling in. Charlie did not again bring his toy auto to school.

But something else happened.

One afternoon Charlie Star walked home with Bunny and Sue from school. Bunny had made a new sailboat, and he wanted Charlie to see it make the first voyage down the brook which ran back of the Brown home.

"May I come, too?" asked Sue, as Bunny carried his little vessel down to the stream.

"Sure, let her come," advised Charlie.

"All right," called Bunny, and Sue ran along after the boys.

But Bunny and Charlie were so interested in sailing the new boat that they did not pay much attention to Sue after reaching the brook. They watched the wind puff out the sails and Charlie was just going to ask Bunny if he would trade the boat for the toy auto when there came a loud scream from Sue, who had wandered off by herself.

"Oh, Bunny! I've falled in! I've falled in!" cried Sue.

"Oh, she is in!" exclaimed Charlie, glancing upstream.

"And there's a deep hole there!" shouted Bunny, darting away. "Come on, Charlie! Help me pull Sue out of the hole!"



Chapter IX

Up A Ladder


Charlie Star needed no second urging. Bunny had forgotten all about his toy ship, but Charlie gave one look and saw that it had safely blown on shore. Then Charlie sped after his chum.

"We're coming, Sue! We're coming!" cried Bunny. "Don't be afraid!"

"We'll get you out!" added Charlie.

The brook that ran back of the Brown house was rather deep in places, and some of these places were near shore where the bank went steeply down into the water. It was at one of these places that Sue had fallen in.

The little girl had been looking for "sweet-flag." This is the root of a plant something like the cat-tail in looks -- that is, it has the same kind of long, narrow ribbon-like leaves.

But while the root of the sweet-flag is pleasant to gnaw, though a trifle smarty, the root of the cat-tail is of no use -- that is, as far as Sue could tell. She wanted some sweet-flag, but not cat-tail root, and to find out which was right she had to pull up many of the long, green streamers. If Sue had known how to tell the difference otherwise it would have been easier.

It was in bending over to pull up some of the flag roots that she had leaned too far, and suddenly she found herself in the water. She had slipped off the muddy bank at a place where it was steep and the water was deep.

Luckily Sue had slipped in feet first, and now she was standing in water over her waist, yelling for Bunny to come and help her.

Breathless, the two boys reached the little girl. They could see then, that she was in no special danger, since the water was not over her head. If Sue had fallen in head first instead of feet first that would have been sadly different.

"Come on out! Come on out!" cried Bunny, reaching his hand toward his sister.

"I -- I can't!" she answered.

"Why not?" Charlie asked.

"'Cause I'm stuck. I'm stuck in the mud!" Sue answered.

"Oh!" exclaimed Bunny. "Then we have to pull you out!"

"That's right!" said Charlie Star. "I'll help!"

"Look out you don't fall in yourselves!" warned Sue, as they held out their hands to her. "It's awful slippery!"

And the bank was, as Charlie and Bunny soon found, for Charlie nearly slid in as Sue had done and Bunny almost followed. But by digging their heels in the slippery mud they held on and soon they had pulled Sue out of the hole.

But, oh, in what a sad plight was the little girl!

She was soaking wet to a line above her waist, and she was splashed with water above that, some mud spots being on her face, one on the end of her nose making her appear rather odd. Her shoes and stockings were covered with black, mucky mud.

"Oh! Oh, dear!" exclaimed Sue, looking down at her legs, and began to cry.

"Don't cry!" advised Charlie.

"I -- I can't help it!" wailed Sue. "And there's something on my nose, too!"

"It's only a blob of mud," said Bunny. "I'll wipe it off," and he did, very kindly.

"Look -- look at my shoo-shooes!" sobbed Sue.

"Splash 'em in the water," advised Charlie. "Sit down on the bank, Sue, and splash your feet in the water."

"What'll I do that for?" she asked, through her tears. "I'm wet enough now!"

"Yes, I know," said Charlie. "And you can't get any wetter by dabbling your feet and legs in the water. But it will wash off the mud. You might as well wash it off."

"That's right," agreed Bunny. "Your legs will dry better if they are just wet, instead of being wet and muddy, Sue. Dabble 'em in the brook."

Sue thought this must be good advice, since it came from both boys. She was about to sit down near the place where she had slid into the brook, but Charlie said:

"No, not there! That water's all muddy. Come on down to a clean place."

This Sue did, sitting on the grassy bank and thrusting her feet and legs into the water up to her knees, splashing them up and down until most of the mud was washed from her stockings and shoes.

"Now we'll take you home," said Charlie.

"No!" exclaimed Sue. "I don't want to go home!"

"You don't want to go home?" repeated Bunny. "Why not? You have to get dry things on, Sue! Mother won't scold you for falling into the brook when it wasn't your fault!"

"I know she won't," Sue said. "But -- but -- I'm not going in the house looking all soaking wet! There's company -- some ladies came to call on mother before we went out to play -- and they'll see me if I go in the front door. I'm not going to have them laugh at me!"

"We'll take you in the side door then," offered Bunny.

"That'll be just as bad," whimpered Sue. "They can see me from the window."

"Well, then we'll go in the back way," Charlie proposed.

"No!" sobbed Sue. "If I go in the back way Mary'll see me, and she'll say, 'bless an' save us!' and make such a fuss that mother'll come out and it will be as bad as the front or side door!" complained the little girl. "I don't want to go home all wet!"

"But you'll have to!" insisted Bunny. "You can't stay out here till you get dry. You must go to the house, Sue!"

"Not the front way nor the side way nor the back way!" Sue declared.

"Then how are you going to get in?" asked Bunny. "Do you want to go in through the cellar?"

"I'd have to come up in the kitchen," objected Sue, "and Mary would see me just the same and she'd say, 'bless an' save us!'"

"Well, but how are you going to get in?" Bunny demanded. "There isn't any other way."

"Yes, there is!" suddenly exclaimed Charlie.

"How?" asked Bunny Brown.

"Up the painter's ladder," went on Charlie. "They're painting the roof of your sun parlor. And the ladder's right there. We can get Sue up the ladder to the roof of the sun parlor, and there's a second-story window she can get in so nobody can see her, and change her things."

"Oh! A ladder!" gasped Sue, when she heard how Charlie and her brother planned to get her into the house unseen by company. "A ladder!"

"Sure!" cried Bunny. "That's the best way! Charlie and I'll help you up."

"You won't let me fall?" asked Sue.

"Course not!" declared Charlie. "I've climbed lots of ladders!"

"So have I!" boasted Bunny Brown. "And so have you, Sue Brown!"

"And can't anybody see me if I go up the painter's ladder?" asked Sue, who was feeling most uncomfortable, being clammy and wet.

"Nobody'll see you!" declared Charlie. "The ladder's away off on one side of the sun parlor. Mary can't see you from the kitchen, and your mother and the company can't see you."

"Is the painter there?" Sue went on. She was asking a good many questions and making a number of objections, I think.

"No, the painter isn't there," Charlie said. "I saw him going back to the shop after more paint when we came down here."

"All right then!" sighed Sue. "Help me up the ladder!"

Cautiously the children approached it. There the ladder stood, a big one, on a long slant leading from the ground to the roof of the one-story sun parlor. From the roof of this extension were several windows Sue could climb into, one opening from her own room.

No one was in sight, and the painter had not come back. Sue was just starting up the ladder, with Bunny going before her and Charlie following her, when the little girl happened to think of something else.

"S'posin' the roof's just been painted?" she asked. "How can I walk on it?"

This was a poser for a moment until Charlie exclaimed:

"If it is I'll get some boards and we can lay them down to walk on."

Sue had no further excuse for not going up the ladder, and she began to climb. She reached the top, and it was found that the painter had spread his red mixture on only part of the roof. There was room enough to walk on the unpainted part to her room window.

She was just climbing in, with the help of the boys, when she suddenly noticed something that made her exclaim:

"Oh, look! How did that happen?"



Chapter X

The Legacy


"What's the matter? What's happened?" asked Bunny Brown. "Are you going to fall, Sue?"

He was helping his sister on one side to climb in the window, and Charlie was on the other side of the little girl.

"No, I'm not going to fall," Sue answered. "But look at my dress! It's all red paint!"

And so it was! In addition to being wet and muddy her skirt was now covered with big blotches of red paint -- the same kind of paint that was being put on the roof.

"How did it happen?" went on Sue, almost ready to cry again. "I didn't step in any paint, did I?"

"Even if you did I don't see how it got on your dress," said Charlie Star.

"There's some on me, too!" cried Bunny Brown. "There's some on my pants!"

"And I'm daubed just like you!" cried Charlie. "We're all three painted!"

And they were, only Sue had more of it on her dress than the boys had on their clothes.

"It must have been on the ladder," decided Charlie. "The painter man got some of his red stuff on the ladder and we got it on us."

"Oh, dear!" sighed Sue. "Now after my dress is dry and I brush the mud off mother will see the red paint. Course I'd tell her, anyhow, but I wish she wouldn't see it first!"

However, there seemed no help for it. All three of the children had red paint on their clothes, and paint, you know, can't be brushed off. When it's on it stays, unless turpentine, or something like that, is used to take it off.

Sue, and the boys, too, had hoped that Mrs. Brown would not know what had happened. It wasn't that they wanted to deceive, or fool, her, but Sue wanted to tell of the accident at the brook in her own way and time. She really did not want to cause her mother worry when Mrs. Brown had company. And Mrs. Brown would certainly begin to ask questions when she saw those red spots on Sue's dress.

"Oh, dear!" sighed Sue again, and she seemed about to burst into tears. Neither Bunny nor Charlie knew what to do.

"Oh, dear!" sighed Sue for the third time.

Suddenly the three children saw the upper end of the ladder -- the part that was raised up over the roof of the sun parlor. They saw this part of the ladder moving.

"Oh, somebody's coming up!" exclaimed Charlie.

"Maybe it's mother!" wailed Sue. "Oh, help me get in the window! I don't want her to see me this way!"

"Mother wouldn't be coming up the ladder!" declared Bunny. "What would she be coming up the ladder for?"

"That's so!" agreed Charlie. "I guess she wouldn't."

"But somebody's coming up!" declared Sue, and this was very plain to be seen. The ladder shook more and more.

Wonderingly the children watched it, and then there came into sight, above the roof of the sun parlor, the head and shoulders of the painter. He looked surprised as he saw the children, and then a cheerful smile spread over his face as he said:

"Well, you've been getting daubed up, I see!"

"Ye-yes," faltered Bunny. "We got some of your paint on us!"

"'Tisn't my paint!" laughed the painter. "It's your father's, Bunny. I got this paint down at his boat dock to paint the roof of this sun parlor. I don't mind how much of it you daub on yourselves. 'Tisn't my paint, you know!"

"But we don't want it on us!" exclaimed Sue. "Oh, I fell in the brook and I got all muddy and now I'm all covered with paint! Oh, dear!"

Sue was almost crying again, and the painter who at first had thought the children were merely playing, now began to understand that something was wrong.

"What's the matter?" he asked.

Then the story was told, of why the boys had helped Sue climb up the ladder to get into her room so her mother and the company would not see her in her soiled dress.

"But now we're all paint!" wailed Sue.

"Well, never mind!" said the good-natured painter. "I can take those paint spots out for you, if that's all you're worrying about."

"Oh, can you?" eagerly cried Sue.

"How?" asked Charlie Star, who was a rather curious little chap.

"Will you?" asked Bunny Brown, which was more to the point.

"I can and will!" said the painter. "Wait until I get some clean rags and my turpentine."

He want back down the ladder, but soon came up again, with a can of something with a strong, but not unpleasant smell. Bunny remembered that smell. Once when he was little, and had a bad cold, his mother had rubbed lard and turpentine on his chest.

"This turpentine will take the paint out when it's fresh," said the painter. "Stand still now."

He wet the rag in some turpentine, which, as you know, is the juice, or sap, of the pine and other trees. It is used to mix with paint, which it will dissolve, or melt away after a fashion. It also helps the paint to dry more quickly when spread on a house or bridge.

With the turpentine rag the painter rubbed at the red spots on Sue's dress, and then, having taken those out, he began on Bunny and Charlie. But the boys wanted to take out their own paint spots, and the painter let them do it.

"There you are," he finally said. "I guess they won't show now."

"And my dress is nearly dry!" exclaimed Sue. "Oh, I'm so glad. Mother won't know until I tell her. And of course I'll tell her," she quickly added.

Sue was as good as her word. After she got into her room and the boys had climbed down the ladder to go back and play with Bunny's little ship, Sue changed into dry clothes.

Then, after the company had gone, she told her mother all that had happened.

"I suppose it couldn't be helped," said Mrs. Brown with a smile. "I mean about falling into the brook. But it would have been just as well to come and tell me at once, Sue, instead of climbing the ladder. You might have fallen."

"I didn't want the company to know about it, Mother!"

"That was thoughtful of you. But if you had fallen off the ladder the company would have known about that, and it would have been much worse than just being seen in a wet and muddy dress."

"Oh, I couldn't fall with Bunny and Charlie to help me!" declared Sue.

That evening, just before supper, after Charlie Star had gone home and Bunny and Sue were playing out in the side yard, Mary called to them, asking:

"Do you children want to run to the store for me?"

"Yes," answered Bunny, and Sue inquired:

"What do you want?"

"A little pepper," was the answer. "I forgot that we were out and didn't order any when the grocery boy called to-day."

"We'll get it at Mrs. Golden's corner store!" said Bunny. "She keeps pepper."

"All right," Mary agreed. "Wait and I'll get you the money. We don't charge things at her store."

A little later Bunny Brown and his sister Sue, hand in hand, entered Mrs. Golden's little store.

"Well, my dears, what is it to-day?" asked the old lady, with a smile.

"Some pepper, if you please," answered Sue.

"Red or black?" asked Mrs. Golden.

Bunny and Sue looked at one another. This was something they had not thought about. Which did Mary want -- red or black?

Seeing that the children were puzzled, Mrs. Golden said:

"What is your mother going to use it for, my dears?"

"Mother didn't tell us to get it," replied Bunny. "It was Mary, our cook, who sent us after it, 'cause she forgot to get any for supper."

"Oh, then it's black pepper she wants, I suppose," said Mrs. Golden. "She wouldn't want red pepper unless she were putting up pickles or something like that. I'll give you black pepper."

She started to rise from her chair, for she had been seated near the back of the store, but seemed so old and feeble that Bunny and Sue felt very sorry for her. When ladies got as old as Mrs. Golden seemed to be they ought always to rest in easy chairs, Bunny thought, and not have to get up to wait on a store.

Mrs. Golden grunted and groaned a little as she pushed herself up from the arms of the big chair.

"Are you terrible old?" asked Sue.

"I'm pretty old, yes, my dear," said Mrs. Golden. "But I don't mind that. It's the stiffness and the rheumatism. It's hard for me to get about, and the black pepper's on a high shelf, too. If my son Philip was only here he'd reach it down for me."

"Where is Philip?" asked Sue.

"Oh, he's gone to the city on business. He hopes to get a little legacy."

"What's a leg-legacy?" asked Bunny. "Is it something to sell in the store?"

"Bless your heart, no!" laughed Mrs. Golden. "A legacy is money, or property, or something like that which is left to you. If some of your rich relations die they leave money in the bank, or a house and lot, and it comes to you. That's a legacy."

"Did some of your rich relations die?" asked Sue.

"Well, an old man, who wasn't a very close relation, died," said the storekeeper. "There was some talk that he might leave me something, and Philip went to the city to see about it.

"But, dear, me! things are so uncertain in this world that I don't believe I'll get anything. There's no use thinking about it. I don't want to be disappointed, but I would like to get some money!"

Poor old lady! She seemed very sad and feeble, and the children felt sorry for her.

"Let me see now," went on Mrs. Golden. "Was it salt you said you wanted, Bunny?"

"No'm, pepper -- black pepper."

"Oh, yes, black pepper! And it's on a high shelf, too. I wish Philip was back. He'd reach it down for me. I don't believe he'll get that legacy after all. Let me see now -- pepper -- black pepper --  -- "

"Let me get it!" begged Bunny. "I can climb up on a high shelf!"

"So can I!" cried Sue. "I went up on a ladder, after I fell in the brook, and I got red paint on my dress!"

"My, what a lot of things to happen!" murmured Mrs. Golden, as slowly and feebly she made her way around the store to the side where she kept the groceries.

"Let me get the pepper!" begged Bunny, as he saw the old woman looking toward a top shelf. "I can climb up."

"Well, my dear, if you're sure you won't fall, you may get it," said Mrs. Golden. "I've got some sort of a thing to reach down packages and boxes from the high shelf. My boy Philip got it for me. But I can hardly ever find it when I want it. Be careful now, Bunny."

"I will," said the little fellow, as he began to climb.

Sue watched her brother, thinking over what Mrs. Golden had told them about a legacy.

"If she got a lot of money," mused Sue, "she could get a big store, all spread out flat and she wouldn't have to have any high shelves. I hope she gets her legacy."

Bunny was just reaching for the box of pepper when there was a sudden barking of dogs outside the store and something black and furry, with a long tail, rushed in, leaped up on the counter, and thence to the top shelf, knocking down a lot of boxes and cans.

"Oh! Oh!" screamed Sue. "Look out, Bunny!"



Chapter XI

The Last Day


Mrs. Golden was too surprised to do or say anything. She just stood still, looking up at Bunny. As for the little boy, he had been so startled that he almost let go his hold on one of the upright pieces of wood that held up the shelves. But he did not quite unclasp his hand, and so he clung there. Sue was dancing up and down in her excitement.

Then into the store rushed a big dog, barking and leaping about, his eyes fixed on that scrambling object in brown fur which had sprung to the highest shelf.

"Mercy me! What's that?" cried Mrs. Golden.

"It's Wango, Mr. Winkler's monkey," Sue answered.

And that is what it was.

Wango had got loose -- nothing new for him -- and had wandered out into the street. There a strange dog, catching sight of the animal, had chased him. Bunny and Sue knew it was a strange dog, for their own dog, Splash, and most other dogs in the neighborhood, were used to Wango and liked him. They seldom ran after him or barked at him. But this was a strange dog.


"GO ON OUT OF HERE!" SUE ORDERED. Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue Keeping Store. Page 109

"Go on out of here!" Sue ordered this dog. The animal stood looking from her to Wango on the high shelf, barking loudly now and then. "Go on out and let Wango alone!" Sue ordered.

The dog did not seem to want to go, however, and Mrs. Golden was getting a bit worried. She feared the monkey would leap about and knock down many things from her shelves.

"Wait a minute," called Bunny Brown. "I've got the pepper. I'll come down there and make the dog sneeze with it if he doesn't go out."

Bunny started to climb down, but there was no need for him to sprinkle pepper on the dog's nose to make him sneeze. For just as Bunny reached the floor in came Jed Winkler himself, looking for his pet monkey. Mr. Winkler drove out the strange dog, closed the door, and then coaxed Wango down from the high shelf.

"Did he do any damage, Mrs. Golden?" asked the old sailor. "If my monkey did any damage I'll pay for it."

"No, he didn't do any harm," she answered. "He just startled us all a little."

"Wango's a good monkey, but he will run away," said Mr. Winkler, petting his furry companion. "I'm glad he didn't do any damage. My sister said he'd be sure to this time, but I'm glad he didn't."

"He's a good climber," said Sue. "If you had a monkey, Mrs. Golden, he could reach things down from the high shelves for you, when your son goes off after leg-legacies."

"I'm afraid, dearie, that a monkey would be more bother than he was worth to me, just to lift things down off high shelves," laughed the old lady. "Wango is a lively chap, though."

"What's this about a legacy?" asked Mr. Winkler, for he was an old friend of Mrs. Golden.

"I don't count much on it," she answered. "Philip has gone to see about it. I got word that an uncle of mine had died and left some money and property. We may get a share of it and we may not."

"I hope you do!" exclaimed Mr. Winkler. "I most certainly hope you do!"

So did Bunny Brown and his sister Sue, for they were getting quite fond of Mrs. Golden, and liked to buy things at her store.

When the children were on their way home with the pepper, Mr. Winkler walking with them part of the way carrying Wango on his shoulder, Bunny said:

"When I keep a store like that I'm going to have a monkey to reach things down off the high shelves for me."

"He might get the wrong things," Sue objected.

"Maybe he would first," said Bunny. "But I'd train him. It would be fun to have a monkey in a store, wouldn't it, Sue?"

"Lots of fun!" agreed Sue.

"My goodness, children!" laughed Mary, as they entered the kitchen with the pepper, "it took you quite a while, and I was in a hurry. Didn't Mrs. Golden have any pepper?"

"Yes, but Wango got in the store," explained Bunny. "When I keep a store I'm going to keep a monkey, too!"

"Bless and save us, what does the child mean?" murmured Mary, but she did not stop for an answer, as she was in a hurry to get the supper on the table.

Some days after this, during which time Bunny Brown and his sister Sue had had much fun with their playmates keeping store and doing other things, the two children came down dressed to go to school. But they were singing and laughing in a way they seldom did unless something different was happening, or going to happen.

"Bless and save us!" exclaimed Mary, as she saw Bunny and Sue start out of the house hand in hand. "You're very joyful this morning. What's going on?"

"It's the last day of school!" explained Bunny, laughing still more.

"We'll have hardly any lessons," Sue added. "And when we come home to-day we don't have to go back to school for a long, long while. It'll be vacation!"

"Oh, so that's the reason!" laughed Mary. "No wonder you feel so pert and chipper -- no school! Well, have a good time when you're young."

Bunny and Sue certainly had good times if ever children did.

As Sue had said, there were hardly any lessons at school that day. Reports were to be given out, little gifts were to be made to the teachers, and there were to be "exercises." That is, the pupils would recite or sing in their different classrooms.

Bunny and Sue were each to "speak a piece," and they had been preparing for some time, going over their recitations each night at home to make sure they would not forget and stumble and halt when they stood on the platform.

Miss Bradley was such a great favorite with her children that many had brought her little gifts.

These were placed on her desk, and then, after a few lessons, which no one took very seriously, Miss Bradley read the class a story. Then came the speaking of "pieces."

This was always one of the things that took place on the "last day," and was much enjoyed. No one had to recite unless he or she wanted to, and so no one was nervous or afraid, except about forgetting the lines.

Sadie West recited a verse about bees and flowers, and very pretty it was, too. Sue had picked out a funny verse about a little mouse, a trap, and a piece of cheese. I think most of you know it, so I'll not tell you about it.

Then came the turn of fat Bobbie Boomer. Bobbie was funny just to look at, and he was funnier when he got up to recite. He had picked out as his recitation that old, old poem about Mary and her lamb, for it was easy for him to remember that.

Now Bobbie had been very sure that he would not forget any of the verses when he got up on the platform. He had practiced his "piece" at home over and over until he knew it "by heart," and could almost say it in his sleep, his father remarked.

But when Bobbie got up on the platform and after he had made a funny, jerky, fat, little bow, all of a sudden every word of that poem seemed to slip from his mind! He stood there, looking around the room, now up at the ceiling and now down at the floor. His face grew red, and he began pulling at the buttons on his coat.

Miss Bradley felt sorry for him, and she laid her finger over her lips when she heard some of the children beginning to laugh.

"What is the name of your selection, Bobbie?" the teacher asked kindly.

"It -- it's about Ma -- Mary and her -- her little lamb!"

"That's a cute little poem. Don't be afraid. I'll start you off, and then perhaps you can remember the rest. Now begin," and Miss Bradley said the first line.

This helped Bobbie very much, and he got along all right until he came to the verse about the lamb following Mary to school. Bobbie got as far as, "It followed her to school one day which was --  -- "

And there poor Bobbie "stuck." He couldn't think what came next.

"It followed her to school one day -- school one day -- one day," he said slowly.

"Yes," said Miss Bradley kindly. "And what comes next, Bobbie? Was it right for the lamb to follow Mary to school?"

Miss Bradley wanted Bobbie to say, "which was against the rule," but Bobbie couldn't just then remember that. Suddenly his eyes opened wide. He pointed to the back of the room, where a clattering sound was heard, and cried:

"Look! Look what's coming in!"



Chapter XII

Watering The Garden


Instantly all the children turned around to look at what Bobbie Boomer was pointing to. And gasps of surprise came from Bunny Brown and Sue, as well as from the other pupils and the teacher.

For, standing in the doorway of the classroom, which was on the ground floor, was Toby, the Brown's Shetland pony. He stood there looking in, the wind blowing his fluffy mane and forelock, and his bright eyes looking around the classroom as if for a sight of Bunny and his sister.

"Oh, Toby!" cried Bunny. He had spoken out loud in school, but as it was the last day it did not so much matter.

"He came to school, just like Mary's lamb!" exclaimed Charlie Star.

Fat Bobbie Boomer seemed to be forgotten, but the sight of the pony appeared to have brought back to the little boy's mind the line he had missed.

"Which was against the rule!" he suddenly exclaimed.

Every one laughed, even Miss Bradley, and she added:

"Yes, it was against the rule for the lamb to follow Mary to school, and I suppose it's just as much against the rule for the pony to follow Bunny Brown and his sister Sue."

"Please, Teacher, he didn't follow me!" said Bunny.

"Nor me!" added Sue. "We didn't know he was coming! He was in the stable when we came from home."

This was very true, and they were all wondering how it had happened that Toby had followed the children. It was something he had never done before, and, though he was a great pet, he was not exactly Mary's lamb -- he did not follow Bunny and Sue everywhere they went.

"Suppose, Bunny, you take Toby out of the room," suggested Miss Bradley, for the Shetland pony did not seem to want to go of his own accord. "Can you manage him?" the teacher asked.

"Oh, yes, I can ride home on his back, if you'll let me," said the little boy.

"School is almost over for the day, and also for the term," said the teacher with a smile. "You may be excused."

But Bunny did not have to leave. For just then in came Bunker Blue, the young man who worked for Mr. Brown at the fish and boat dock.

"Oh, you're in here, are you?" asked Bunker, speaking to Toby and taking hold of the thick mane of the little horse.

"Did he run away?" asked Bunny of Bunker. "Did he get out of his stall?"

"Not exactly," explained the tall young helper. "I was taking him down to the blacksmith shop to have new shoes put on him. I left him in front of the hardware store while I went in to get something for your father, Bunny, and when I came out Toby had slipped from his halter. I didn't know where he was until some one said they saw him come into the schoolhouse."

"He hasn't done any harm," remarked Miss Bradley.

"How did he get loose from the pony cart?" Sue asked.

"He wasn't hitched to the pony cart," answered Bunker Blue. "I was just leading him by the halter, but I guess I didn't have it strapped tight enough. Come along, Toby," he added. "I guess you've said your lessons," and the whole class, teacher and all, joined in the laugh which Bunker Blue started.

Toby whinnied, which was his way of laughing, I suppose, and then Bunker Blue led him forth from the classroom. So Bunny didn't have to leave school to ride his pet home, though I believe the little boy would have been very glad to do so -- as would, in fact, any boy in the class.

"Well, now we will go on with our exercises," said Miss Bradley. "Can you remember your recitation now, Bobbie?"

The appearance of Toby seemed to have had a good effect, for Bobbie began again about Mary and her lamb, and gave all the verses, without forgetting a single line. Every one clapped his or her hands when he finished and made his bow.

In turn the other children recited. Then came the singing of some songs in which the whole school joined in the big assembly hall, and the "last day," ended.

"Now for the long vacation!" cried Bunny Brown, as he raced out of the schoolyard with the other boys.

"And lots of fun!" added Charlie Star.

"We'll go camping!" said George Watson.

"And sail boats!" added Harry Bentley.

The girls, too, were no less joyful. They talked of what they would do, of the play parties they would have and of picnics in the woods.

"Will you play store any more?" asked Mary Watson of Sue.

"Oh, I guess so," was the answer. "Bunny and I like that fun. Bunny wants to keep a real store when he grows up. Sometimes he lifts things down from the shelves for Mrs. Golden in her store."

Laughing, shouting, tagging each other, and running away, talking of what they would do during the long vacation, the school children ran on through the streets of Lakeport.

"Let's have a race!" cried Bunny.

"I can beat you!" declared Charlie Star.

Off they ran, feet fast flying, and Bunny was first to reach the hitching post in front of his house, this being the end of the race course for that particular time.

"Did Bunker Blue come back with Toby?" asked Bunny of his mother, after he had been given a piece of bread and sugar by Mary.

"No," was the answer. "But how did you know Bunker had Toby out? He didn't come for him until after you went to school," said Mrs. Brown.

"Oh, Toby came to school!" explained Sue, laughing.

"Toby came to school?" repeated her mother.

And then the story was told amid much laughter.

Just before supper Bunker Blue came back with Toby, and the children were allowed to hitch the Shetland pony to the basket cart.

"Do you want anything from the store?" asked Bunny, as he took his seat beside Sue and grasped the pony's reins.

"Better ask Mary," was the reply.

And, as it happened, Mary wanted some sugar.

"We'll get it at Mrs. Golden's," called Bunny, as he drove out of the yard.

"My, the children are getting fond of that old lady store keeper," mused Mary, as she went back to her kitchen work.

"I'm glad to have them," said Mrs. Brown. "It does children good to learn to be kind and thoughtful toward others. And, from what I hear, Mrs. Golden needs help. Her son works, but does not earn much, and she can't make a very good living from so small a store. We must buy what we can from her."

"Trust the children for that!" laughed Mary. "They'd run there all the while if we'd let them. Bunny was telling me Mrs. Golden had something the matter with one of her legs."

"Oh, no. He said she expected a legacy," explained Mrs. Brown. "That means she hopes to get a little property or some money from a relative who has died."

"Oh, I thought it was her legs, poor old lady!" said Mary. "Rheumatism, or something like that."

"Mrs. Golden isn't very well able to get around," admitted Mrs. Brown. "But that has nothing to do with a legacy."

Bunny and Sue drove up to the door of the little corner store.

"My, but you're coming in style!" exclaimed Mrs. Golden, when she saw them. "Are you going to buy me out?"

"No, we just want some sugar," said Bunny. "We're going to get five pounds, 'cause we can carry it in the pony cart."

"Yes, if it wasn't for the cart I'd be a bit afraid to give you so much as five pounds," said Mrs. Golden, as she went slowly behind the counter to weigh out the sweet stuff. "You might drop it. But it'll be safe in the pony cart. You'll be like a regular grocery delivery."

"Do you deliver things?" asked Sue.

"No, dearie. I can't afford to have a delivery wagon and a horse, to say nothing of one of those automobiles. And it wouldn't pay me to hire a boy, even when Philip is away. Sometimes he takes heavy things that are ordered, but mostly folks carry away what they buy. Let's see, now, how many pounds did you say, Bunny?"

"Five, Mrs. Golden. And please may I scoop it out of the barrel?"

"Well, yes, maybe; if you don't spill it."

"I won't spill any!" promised Bunny eagerly. "And may I put it on the scales? You see I'm going to keep a store when I grow up," he went on, "and I'll want to know how to weigh things on the scales."

"I hope you make more money than I do," sighed Mrs. Golden. "Now be careful of the scoop, dearie!"

Bunny felt quite proud of himself as he leaned down in the sugar barrel and dipped up the sweet, sparkling grains. Mrs. Golden guided his hands as he poured the sugar into the scoop of the scale, and of course she watched to make sure the weight was right, for Bunny was hardly old enough to know that.

But he did it nearly all himself, and he told his father so that evening after supper.

"My! I'll have to be on the lookout for a vacant place to rent so you and Sue can keep a store during vacation," replied Mr. Brown, laughing.

"Oh, we don't want to start a store unless Mrs. Golden gets her legacy so she'll be rich," declared Sue. "If we had a store she wouldn't sell so much and she'd be sorry."

"Well, maybe that's so," agreed her father, with a smile. "We'll wait until we find out about the legacy before we start you and Bunny in the store business. When will Mrs. Golden know about it?"

"When her son Philip comes back. He's gone to see about the legacy," said Bunny.

When they went to bed that night Bunny and Sue talked of what they would do during the long vacation. On account of some business matters, Mr. Brown could not take his family away that summer until about the middle of August. This left them with a good part of the vacation to spend in Bellemere, and the two children were beginning to plan for their fun.

One of the first things Bunny found to do the next morning -- the first morning of the vacation -- was to water the garden.

"May I take the hose and sprinkle?" he asked.

"If you don't get yourself wet through," his mother answered.

"I'll be careful," Bunny promised.

There was a vegetable garden at the side of the house, a garden which Uncle Tad had made and of which he was very proud. As there had been no rain for some days the garden was in need of water.

The hose was attached to the faucet, for Uncle Tad had been watering the garden the night before, and he had gone away, leaving word that if any one had time to spray more water on the vegetables they should do so, as the ground was very dry.

"I like to water the garden," said Bunny, and he took great delight in directing the stream from the hose over the cabbages, beets and potatoes which were coming up.

After watering for some time Bunny began to feel hungry, as he often did, and started in to ask Mary for some bread and jam. He laid the hose down, with the water still running, but he turned the stream so it would spray on the grass and not on the garden, so it would not wash out any of the growing things.

Bunny was coming out again, with a large slice of bread and jam, when from the front street he heard a man's voice crying:

"Here! Look out what you're doing! Be careful with that hose! You're soaking me!"

"Oh, oh!" cried Bunny Brown. "Sue must have picked up the hose that I left and squirted water on somebody!"



Chapter XIII

Helping Mrs. Golden


Almost dropping his slice of bread and jam, so excited was he, Bunny Brown ran toward the hose. Before he reached it, for it was around the corner of the house, he heard the man's voice again calling out:

"Here! Stop that I say! Can't people go along the street without being wet with water from a hose? Pull your hose farther back!"

"Sue! Sue! Don't do that! Be careful! You're wetting some one," cried Bunny, as he ran along, not yet seeing the hose. But he could guess what had happened.

Sue, coming along and seeing the hose turned on, with the water spurting out, had picked up the nozzle end and was watering the garden. Only she held the hose so high that the water shot over the high front hedge and was wetting some man passing in the street.

That is what Bunny thought. But that is not what had happened.

Just before he turned the corner of the house he heard the man's voice once more saying:

"Say, isn't it enough to wet me once? What are you keeping it up for? I am trying to get out of the way, but you follow me. I'm coming in and see about this!"

Something very like trouble seemed about to happen.

"Sue! Sue!" cried Bunny, still thinking his sister was to blame. "Let that hose alone!"

But when he turned the corner of the house and could see the garden, Sue was not in sight. And, stranger still, no one was at the hose. There it lay, still spurting water out on the thick, green grass.

Who had picked up the nozzle and sprayed the unseen man in the street? If it was Sue where had she gone?

"Sue! Sue!" called Bunny. "Were you playing with the hose?"

Sue's head was thrust out of the window of her room upstairs.

"What's the matter, Bunny?" she asked.

"Oh, you're up there, are you?" exclaimed the little boy, much surprised. "Were you down here at the hose?"

"No. I'm getting dressed. I haven't been down in the yard at all yet."

"Then who did it?" thought Bunny. "I wonder --  -- "

But just then a man, who seemed to have been out in a rain storm without an umbrella, came hurrying around the side path. He caught sight of Bunny standing near the hose.

"Look here, my little boy," said the man, trying not to speak angrily, though he was rightfully provoked, "you must be more careful with your hose. You have wet me very much. Does your mother know you are doing this?"

"She -- she knows I'm watering the garden," Bunny answered.

"Does she know you were watering me?" asked the man, with a half smile.

"No -- no, sir," replied the small boy. "I didn't wet you!"

"You didn't! Then who did?"

"I -- I don't know," stammered Bunny. "I left the hose here while I went in to get some bread and jam. Here's some of it now," and he held out what was left of his slice. "I heard you calling, and I thought maybe it was my sister Sue. Course she wouldn't 'a' done it on purpose. But it wasn't Sue. She hasn't been downstairs yet."

"Then who was it?" insisted the man. "Surely the hose didn't wet me all by itself."

"No," admitted Bunny. "But it might have been Mr. Winkler's monkey."

"Who's Mr. Winkler's monkey, and how could he wet me with a hose?" demanded the man.

"His name is Wango -- I mean the monkey's is," explained Bunny. "Sometimes he gets away and does things. He climbed up on Mrs. Golden's shelves -- she keeps a store. Maybe Wango got loose and came over here and picked up the hose to get a drink or something, and so wet you."

"Well, that's possible," admitted the man. "And if that's the case I beg your pardon. Do you see Wango around here?" he went on, while Sue, looking from her upper window, wondered who the stranger could be.

"No, I don't see Wango," replied Bunny, looking about. "But I'll look for him. Maybe he's hiding."

"Maybe he is," and the man now laughed. "I'll help you search. For if the monkey is up to tricks like that he ought to be stopped. He may wet some one else if you go away and leave the water turned on."

"That's right," agreed Bunny.

He left the hose, still spurting, on the grass, and, followed by the man, walked around the yard, looking for Wango. But the mischievous monkey was not in sight, nor did he come when Bunny called, though Mr. Winkler's pet nearly always did this.

"I guess he isn't here," said Bunny at length. "But I didn't wet you with the hose."

"Then who --  -- " began the man, but he stopped short to point and cry: "Look at that!"

As Bunny and the stranger were walking back toward the hose, Splash, the big dog, ran out from under the back porch and took hold of the hose in his teeth. He began to shake it as he often shook things with which he played.

"There!" laughed the man. "That's how I was sprayed! Your dog picked up the hose after you left it, and raised it high, so the water shot over the hedge and on me! Now the mystery is explained! It was the dog that did it!"

And so it was.

"Splash!" cried Bunny. "Drop that hose!"

Splash dropped it, and with a bark came running up to be petted. He did not know he had done wrong.

"I'm very sorry," said Bunny. "Splash, you're a bad dog!" he declared, and Splash drooped his tail between his legs.

"Oh, don't scold him," the man begged. "I like dogs, and I know they don't like to be scolded any more than we do -- or than boys or girls do. It wasn't his fault. He thought the hose was left there for him to play with."

"Is anything wrong?" asked Mrs. Brown. Sue had told her mother about a strange man, all wet, in the yard talking to Bunny, and Mrs. Brown had come down to see about it.

"Just a little accident," explained the stranger. "I was passing in the street when it suddenly began to rain -- or at least I thought at first it was rain. Then I knew it was some one using a hose and spraying me. I called to them, but that did no good, and I came in. I saw this little boy and the hose, and naturally thought he had wet me by accident. But it seems it was his dog," and he explained how it had happened.

"I am very sorry," apologized Mrs. Brown. "If there is anything I can do --  -- "

"Oh, I will soon dry in the sun!" laughed the man. "I wasn't really angry, only I know children will get careless when they have a hose, and I was going to tell them to be more careful. But I don't suppose I can make Splash understand," and he patted the dog, whose tail was now wagging again.

"I'm glad you are so kind about it," said Mrs. Brown. "Bunny generally is careful when he waters the garden. If you will come in and get dry --  -- "

"Oh, no, thank you! I'll dry better in the sun. Clean water will hurt no one, and I might just as well have been caught in a shower. Good-bye!" he called, and hurried away.

"After this, Bunny," advised his mother, as he kept on wetting the garden, "it will be best to turn off the water if you leave the hose."

"Yes, Mother, I will," he promised.

So that little happening passed off all right, and later Bunny and the gentleman -- who was a newcomer in town, Mr. Halsted by name -- became good friends.

One day, about a week after vacation had started, during which time Bunny and Sue had had much fun, the two children went to the little corner store kept by Mrs. Golden. Bunny and Sue each had two cents to spend, and they were allowed to get some candy.

As they entered the store they saw Mrs. Golden trying to sweep, but the way in which the old woman used the broom showed that she was in pain. As the children entered she stopped, held her hand to her side, and tried to stand up.

"Oh!" she murmured, in a low voice.

"Is it your rheumatism?" asked Bunny.

"That, or something worse," replied the old lady, with a sigh. "I get a pain in my side every time I sweep."

"Let me do it!" begged Sue. "I love to sweep, and I'd like to help you."

"So would I!" exclaimed Bunny. "I can sweep, too. Please let me!"

Almost before she realized it, Mrs. Golden had given up the broom to Sue, and the little girl was sweeping the store, while Bunny waited for his turn.

Suddenly the doorway was darkened, and a big man with a bushy black beard came stalking in.

"Where's Mrs. Golden?" he asked, looking at some papers in his hand. "I want to see Mrs. Golden," and his voice was cross.

"I'm Mrs. Golden," answered the old lady. "What can I do for you?"

"The best thing you can do is to pay that money!" snapped the man.



Chapter XIV

The Cross Man


Bunny and Sue had at first paid no attention to the big man with the black beard who entered the little corner grocery store so suddenly. The children thought he was a customer come to buy some groceries.

But when the man, in that cross voice, said Mrs. Golden had better pay him some money, Bunny and Sue looked sharply at him, Sue holding on to the broom.

"'Cause I thought maybe he was a robber coming after Mrs. Golden's money," she explained later.

"What would you have done if he had been a robber?" asked Uncle Tad.

"I'd 'a' hit him with the broom," Sue replied.

"And I'd have helped her!" exclaimed Bunny.

But this was afterward. The man, however, as the children looked at him, did not appear to be a robber. He was big, and not very pleasant to look at, and his black beard was as bristling as some of those worn by moving-picture pirates. But he did not seem to be going to take any money from the cash drawer.

From the way poor Mrs. Golden looked, though, the children were sure the man had frightened her. She sank down in a chair, and stared silently at the man.

"Well!" exclaimed the cross man more crossly than at first, "I'm Mr. Flynt of the Grocery Supply Company. If you're Mrs. Golden, I want to know why you don't pay me that money?"

"I -- I wish I could, Mr. Flynt," murmured the old lady store keeper. "I really thought I'd have it for you last week."

"But you didn't!" snapped out the man. "You told our agent who called two weeks ago that you'd have it last week. But you didn't pay it. Then you said you'd send it this week, and you didn't. Now I've come for it. You can't fool me!"

Truly, thought Bunny Brown and his sister Sue, no one could fool this man, nor play with him nor do anything with him except dislike him.

"Come, come, Mrs. Golden!" went on Mr. Flynt. "You owe us this money, you know, and you'll have to pay it!"

"If you'll only wait until my son Philip comes back," murmured the old lady, "he'll pay you some, I'm sure. He's gone away to get a little legacy, and if he gets it I'll have enough to pay you all I owe and more!"

"Yes, if he gets it!" sneered the cross man. "I've heard those stories before. But if your son doesn't get that legacy what then?"

"Oh, I'm sure he'll get it!" said Mrs. Golden, trying to smile. "But if -- if he doesn't, why, I'll just have to owe you the money, that's all!"

"That isn't all!" exclaimed Mr. Flynt. "We've got to have money. We've been as easy on you as we could be. We've let your bill run a good deal longer than we do most folks' bills. You've got to pay your debts, just as we have to pay ours. Come now, I want some money!"

Bunny and Sue looked at each other. Both had the same thought. Sue dropped the broom and began feeling in her pocket beneath her handkerchief. Sue had only one pocket, and she was lucky, being a girl, to have that. Bunny had any number of pockets, and he was going through first one and then the other, finding different things in each -- a top, pieces of string, his knife, odd bits of stone, a very black piece of licorice, and some nails. Bunny never knew when he might want some of these things.

"Here, Mrs. Golden!" exclaimed Sue, she being the first to get what she was after in her pocket. "Here's two cents I was going to spend for candy. You can have it to give to the man!"

"Bless your heart, dearie!" murmured Mrs. Golden, "I can't take your money."

"And here's my two cents!" exclaimed Bunny. "You can keep it. And you don't need to give us any candy either."

"No!" added Sue, though she had a catch in her breath as she said it, for she really wanted a bit of sweet stuff that day.

"No, no, my dear," said Mrs. Golden, trying to smile, though there were tears in her eyes. "Keep your money. I'll sell you some candy if you want it, but you mustn't give your pennies away. Anyhow, I must pay Mr. Flynt a great deal more than that."

"I should say so!" exclaimed the black-bearded man, though, somehow or other, his voice was not quite so cross as before. "Four cents wouldn't pay postage on the bills we have sent you!

"But now, Mrs. Golden," he went on, "I don't want to be any harder on you than I have to. If you're going to get some money in, or your son is, and you can pay us what you owe we won't sell you out."

"Sell me out!" cried the old lady. "Were you thinking of doing that?"

"We'll have to if you don't pay," was the answer. "You bought a lot of goods of us, and you must pay for them. If you don't we'll have to take these things away," and he looked around at the shelves of the store.

"If you take things away from her how can she sell them?" asked Bunny Brown.

"She can't," said Mr. Flynt. "But she must pay. Everybody must pay what they owe or be sold out. Now I'll give you a little more time," he went on. "I'll tell them, back at the office, that you expect a legacy, and when that comes you must pay."

"Yes, yes! I'll pay!" promised Mrs. Golden. "Only give me a little more time and I'll pay."

"Well, see that you do!" grumbled the black-bearded man, who appeared to be crosser than ever now. "When I come again I want money!"

He stalked out of the store with a scowl on his face, and Bunny and Sue looked first at each other and then at poor Mrs. Golden.

"I don't like that man!" declared Sue, as she picked up the broom.

"I don't, either!" said Bunny. "What makes him so cross, Mrs. Golden?"

"Maybe he can't help it, dearie. Going around making people pay up is a cross sort of work, I guess."

"But what makes him want you to give him money?" asked Sue. "I thought a store was a place where people paid you money. I didn't think you had to pay money out. Bunny's going to keep a store when he grows up. Will he have to pay out money?"

"No, I'm not going to!" cried the little boy. "People have got to pay me money, but I don't pay any."

"You have lots to learn about a store, little man!" said Mrs. Golden. "It isn't all fun, as you and Sue suppose. Do you see all these things on my shelves?" she asked.

The children looked around at them and nodded their heads.

"To get them I have to buy them from other people -- from the wholesalers, as they are called," explained Mrs. Golden. "The Grocery Supply Company is one of them. I buy barrels of sugar, barrels of flour, big boxes of prunes, and so on, from this company. Then I sell a few pounds of sugar, flour or prunes at a time and make a little money each time I sell. You see I don't pay as much for the flour and sugar as I sell it for. The difference in price comes to me, and is what I live on, and sometimes it's little enough.

"And now the trouble is I have bought a great many things from this Mr. Flynt's company, and I haven't the money to pay for them. That's why he's cross. He has a right to his money, but I haven't it to give him."

"Why not?" Bunny asked.

"Well, because I don't sell very much in my little store. If I sold more I'd have the money to pay my bills."

"Oh, Bunny, I know what we can do!" cried Sue. "We can tell mother to buy everything here -- all her groceries and things -- and then Mrs. Golden will have money to pay the cross man."

"Your mother is very kind as it is," said the old lady. "I'd like to have her trade here, but of course I don't keep the best of everything. I have to sell cheap goods. But of course if I sold more of them I'd have more money and then I could pay my bills.

"But there, my dears, this isn't any fun for you. You came to get your pennies' worth of candy, and I'll pick it out for you. An old woman's troubles aren't for little ones like you."

"My father had troubles once," said Bunny, "and we hugged him and kissed him; didn't we, Sue? That was when there was a fire on his boat dock."

"Yes, we were sorry a lot," Sue replied. "And we're sorry for you now, Mrs. Golden, and I'm going to tell mother to buy all her things here."

"That's very kind of you," said the woman. "But if Philip only gets that legacy I'll have money enough to pay all my debts and a little left over. Now don't worry about me. Try to have a good time. I'll get your candy!"

"And I'll finish this sweeping," laughed Sue.

"I'll help," said Bunny Brown, and then, in spite of the cross man, there seemed to be a little bit of sunshine in Mrs. Golden's store.



Chapter XV

The Broken Window


"Daddy," said Bunny Brown that night, as the family were in the pleasant living room, "have you much money in the bank?"

"I have a little, Bunny, yes. But why do you ask?" Mr. Brown wanted to know.

"I have some in my bank!" cried Sue, before her brother could answer. "I guess maybe I have a hundred and seventy dollars!"

"Pennies you mean, dear! Pennies! Not dollars!" laughed her mother, for the children each had a penny bank.

"Well, pennies, then," agreed Sue. "But aren't a hundred and seventy pennies 'most the same as a hundred dollars?"

"Pooh! No!" said Bunny. "It takes a hundred pennies to make even one dollar!"

"Oh -- o -- o -- ! Does it?" exclaimed Sue. "What a terrible lot of money!"

"Yes, it does seem a lot," laughed Mr. Brown. "But why are you talking about money?" and he looked at his little son. "Why did you ask if I had any money in the bank?"

"I was wondering if Mrs. Golden had any in her bank," said Bunny.

"I don't believe she has very much," said Mr. Brown. "I was past her store to-day. It's a very small one. I don't see how she makes a living there."

"We were in there to-day," went on Bunny, "and a man came in and wanted a lot of money. He said Mrs. Golden owed him. He was from the grocery company."

"Yes, the wholesale house, I presume," remarked Mr. Brown. "Well, Bunny, did Mrs. Golden pay her bills?"

"No," said Bunny, a bit sadly, "she didn't. And Mr. Flynt was cross. I was thinking maybe if you had a lot of money in the bank you could take some out and give it to Mrs. Golden, and then she wouldn't have to cry when cross men came in. And she could pay you back when she got her leg -- her legacy!" and Bunny brought the last word out with a jerk, for it was rather hard for him to remember.

"What's all this about?" asked Mr. Brown, looking at his wife in some surprise.

"I don't know," answered the children's mother. "It's the first I've heard of it. Bunny and Sue often go to the little corner store. It's handy when Mary wants something in a hurry."

"Tell me more about Mrs. Golden, Bunny," asked his father.

Thereupon the story of the cross man and the money the old lady owed to the grocery company was told as well as the children could tell it.

"It's too bad!" exclaimed Mrs. Brown. "I want you children to be as kind as you possibly can to Mrs. Golden. Help her all you can, Bunny and Sue."

"And will you buy things there?" asked Sue.

"Why, yes," agreed her mother. "We will trade there all we can. Mr. Gordon, the big grocer, can afford to lose a little of our custom."

"Do you think you could give her any money out of your bank, Daddy?" asked Bunny. "And she could give it back after she got her legacy."

"I'll see about it," was the smiling answer. "I know some of the men in the Grocery Supply Company," went on Mr. Brown, "and I'll ask them to be a bit easy with the old lady. But you didn't tell us about this legacy, Bunny. You told us about the cross man, but not about the legacy."

"The children have spoken of it to me several times," said Mrs. Brown. "It seems some relative of Mrs. Golden has died, and her son has gone to see about some money or property that may come to his mother."

"She'll have plenty of money when she gets her legacy," remarked Bunny. "She told me so."

"Then let us hope that she gets it," said Mr. Brown. "And now don't you children worry any more about it," he told Bunny and Sue. "I'll help Mrs. Golden if she really needs it."

"And we'll help her, too," said Bunny to his sister, as they went to bed that night.

"Hey, Bunny! Hi, Bunny Brown!" called a voice under Bunny's window early the next morning.

"Hello! Who's down there?" Bunny asked, jumping out of bed.

"Come on down!" cried Charlie Star. "We're going to have a ball game! We're waiting for you! Bobbie Boomer, Harry Bentley, George Watson, and all the fellows are over in the lots waiting. Come on have a ball game!"

"I didn't know it was so late!" murmured Bunny, rubbing his eyes. "I'll be right down!"

He had, indeed, slept later than usual, and as this was vacation time, his mother had not called him, though Sue had got up and had gone off to play with some of the girls.

Bunny had his breakfast and then he ran over to the big lots with Charlie. A number of boys were tossing and batting balls, and when Bunny arrived there were enough to make up two "sides" and have a game. Bunny was captain of one team and Charlie Star of the other.

"Now, fellows, we want to beat!" cried Bunny, as he took his place to pitch the first ball of the game.

"Yes! Ho! Ho! I'd like to see your side win!" laughed Charlie. "We won't let you get a single run!"

It was all jolly good fun, and though each side tried to win it was in good-nature, which is how all games should be played. First Bunny's team was ahead, and then Charlie's, until it came close to noon, when the boys knew they would have to stop playing and go home to dinner.

"Now, fellows," said Bunny Brown, as it was his turn to bat, "I'm going to knock a home run and that will win the game for us!"

"Pooh! You can't knock a home run!" laughed Charlie, who was pitching for his side.

Bunny swung hard at the ball which Charlie pitched to him. And Bunny himself was a little surprised when his bat struck it squarely and the ball sailed away, much farther than he had ever knocked a ball before.

"Run, everybody! Run!" cried Bunny Brown, dropping the bat and starting for first base himself. Two of his side were on the other bases, and if they could all get in on his home run it would mean that his side would win.

Higher and higher and farther and farther sailed the ball Bunny had knocked, away over the head of fat Bobbie Boomer, who was playing out in center field. It surely was going to be a home run.

"Oh, look where that ball's going!" cried Charlie Star, turning to watch it. "Oh, it's going to break one of Mr. Morrison's windows!" Mr. Morrison was a rather crabbed, cross old man who had a house on the edge of the vacant lots where the boys played ball.

Bunny was too excited over his home run to pay much attention to where the ball went, and Tom Case and Jerry Bond, who were running "home," thought only of how fast they could run. But the others watched the ball, and a moment later saw it crash through one of Mr. Morrison's windows.

By this time Bunny was at third base. He did not stop there, but ran on in, touched home plate, and sank down to rest, very tired but happy because he was sure his side would now win the ball game.

Out in the field, near the fence that was around Mr. Morrison's house, Bobbie Boomer was calling:

"I can't get the ball! I can't get the ball! It's in Mr. Morrison's house!"

And, surely enough, that's where it was -- right in the house. It had gone through the window.

"I -- I made the home run all right!" panted Bunny Brown. "I told you I would, Charlie Star!"

Bunny had run so fast that he had not heard the tinkle of the breaking glass, nor had he seen where his ball went.

"Yes, you made a home run all right!" yelled Charlie. "And now we'd better all run home or Old Morrison will be after us for busting his window. Come on, fellows! Let's run home!"

The game was practically over, and a number of the boys, fearing the anger of Mr. Morrison, started after Charlie, running away from the lots. But this was not Bunny Brown's way.

"Did I -- did the ball I batted break a window?" he asked.

"You ought to 'a' heard the crash!" panted Bobbie Boomer, running in from center field. "Old Morrison will be here in a minute! You'd better run, Bunny!"

Surely enough, a moment or two later Mr. Morrison came out on his back porch, from which he could look into the lots. He saw the boys, some of them running away. In his hand he held the baseball that had crashed through his window.

"Hi, there!" he cried. "Who did this?"

One or two boys, seeing that Bunny was not going to run, had stayed with him.

"Who did this?" cried Mr. Morrison again.

Up spoke Bunny Brown, walking toward the angry man.

"I -- I knocked the ball," he said.

"Well, you broke my window, young man, and you've got to pay for it!"

"I -- I will!" faltered Bunny. "I have some money in my bank, and if you come home with me I'll take it out and pay you."

Mr. Morrison seemed surprised at this. In times past when his windows were broken the boys had run away, or, if they had not, they had been saucy to him and had refused to pay for any glass. This was something new.

"What's your name?" asked Mr. Morrison.

"Bunny Brown," was the answer.

"Does your father keep the boat dock where Bunker Blue works?"

"Yes, Sir."

"Oh," said Mr. Morrison, not so angry now. "Well, of course this window has to be paid for, but I know your father, Bunny Brown. He and I do business together. And Bunker Blue does me favors once in a while. I guess there won't be any hurry about paying for this glass. You can pay me five cents a week if you want to. And I should think the other boys ought to chip in and help you pay for it. That's what we used to do when I played ball. If a window was broken we all helped pay for it."

"I'll help," offered one boy.

"So will I!" said another.

By this time Charlie Star and the boys who had started to run away began straggling back. They wondered why Bunny and his companions were not being chased by Mr. Morrison. And when Charlie and his chums heard about the offer to pay shares for the broken glass Charlie said:

"I'll pay my part, too!"

"So will I!" cried his players.

"That's more like it," chuckled Mr. Morrison, and, somehow or other, the boys began wondering why they had ever called him cross. Certainly he seemed quite different now. Perhaps it was the way Bunny had acted, so bravely, that made the change.

"Now look here, boys," went on the uncross Mr. Morrison. "I know you have to play ball, and this isn't the first time you have broken my windows. But it's the first time any of you have had the nerve to stay here and offer to pay. I like that. And now that you all offer to chip in and pay for it, it'll not be too hard for any one boy. It's the right spirit. And I want to say that if you always do that there'll not be any trouble.

"Not that I want any more windows broken," he added, with a laugh. "But if they are smashed, chip in and pay for them. And now I'll have the pane of glass put in and you can take up a collection among yourselves and pay me later on. I'm in no hurry as long as you act fair.

"And now if you'll come in here I think maybe I can find something that you boys would like to have," he added. "Don't be afraid, come on in," he invited, opening a gate in his side fence.

The boys hesitated a moment, and then, led by Bunny Brown, they entered. What could Mr. Morrison have in mind?

They soon found out. He led them down into the cellar and showed them some old baseballs, some bats, some gloves, and, best of all, a good catcher's mask.

"Here are some old baseball things," said Mr. Morrison. "I got them in a lot of junk I bought a year ago, and I've been wondering what to do with them. I like the way you boys acted -- especially some of you," and he looked at Bunny. "I'm going to let you have these things for your team," he said. "But try not to break any more of my windows!" he laughed.

"We won't!" promised Bunny Brown. "Or, if we do, we'll pay for 'em!"

"Crackie! What dandy stuff!" cried Bobbie Boomer.

"Now we can have regular league games!" exclaimed Charlie Star, who was perhaps the best player of all the boys.

"And a real mask, like the Pirates have!" cried Harry Bentley.

"Take 'em along," said Mr. Morrison. "They're only cluttering up my cellar. I'm glad to get rid of 'em, and especially to good boys."

"We -- we were afraid of you at first," said Charlie.

"Well, you needn't be any more," chuckled Mr. Morrison. "Just pay for my window, when you get the money together, and we'll call it square!"

Talking, laughing gleefully, and wondering at their good fortune, the boys hurried from the cellar. And they had another game that same afternoon, with the balls, bats, gloves and mask that Mr. Morrison had given them. Only Bunny knocked no more home runs, and Charlie's team won, which was, perhaps, as it ought to be. And, best of all, no more windows were broken.

It was quite an adventure for Bunny Brown, but it was not the last he and his sister Sue were to have, for many good times were ahead of them for the long vacation.



Chapter XVI

Little Storekeepers


"Here, Bunny! Here, Sue!" called Mrs. Brown, one bright, sunny morning. "Where are you?"

"We're coming, Mother!" answered Bunny.

He and his sister were playing in the yard down near the brook. Bunny had carried to the brook a little boat, and Sue had with her one of her very small dolls which was having a voyage on the small vessel. She had picked out a celluloid doll.

"'Cause then if she falls off into the water it won't hurt if she gets wet," said Sue.

"That's right!" agreed Bunny.

But now the children left their play and ran to see what their mother wanted.

Before doing so, however, Bunny made fast the little boat to a tree on the bank of the brook, tying it by a long string. And Sue took the celluloid doll off the deck and laid her on the grass in the shade.

"'Cause she might go off sailing by herself," Sue explained.

"Pooh! She couldn't sail my boat!" laughed Bunny.

"Well, she might," said Sue.

Then they ran to their mother -- who was waiting for them on the back steps.

"What do you want, Mother?" asked Sue.

"Is it time to eat?" is what Bunny Brown asked. Bunny, like many children, was always ready for this.

"No, it isn't time for lunch," laughed Mrs. Brown. "But I want you to bring some things from the store so Mary can get lunch ready. And this is a chance for you to help your friend Mrs. Golden."

"What do you mean -- help her?" asked Bunny. "Is daddy going to give her some money out of his bank so she can pay the cross man?"

"I don't know about that," replied Mrs. Brown. "But I mean you can help her now by getting some groceries from her. The more we buy and the more other families buy, the more money she will make, and then she can pay her bills."

"That's so!" exclaimed Bunny. "I'm going to ask all the fellows to buy their things of Mrs. Golden instead of going to Gordon's."

"And I'll ask the girls!" exclaimed Sue.

"We mustn't desert Mr. Gordon altogether," said Mrs. Brown. "He wants to do business, too. But Mrs. Golden needs our trade most, I guess, so get these things of her. I've written them down on a paper so you'll not forget, and as there are a number of them you had better take a basket, Bunny."

"I will," he said. "Do we have to hurry back, Mother?" he asked.

"Oh, there is no special hurry," his mother answered. "But what did you want to do? Play another game of ball and break another window?" and she smiled at Bunny, for she had heard the story. Mr. Morrison's window had been paid for by all the boys "chipping in," or clubbing together.

"I'm not going to play ball," said Bunny. "But Sue and I might stay with Mrs. Golden a little while and help her in the store if you weren't in a hurry."

"No, I'm not in a hurry," Mrs. Brown said. "Help Mrs. Golden all you can, poor old lady!"

Together Bunny and Sue went around the corner to the little grocery and notion store. They were talking of what they might do to help the storekeeper, and they were planning what fun they could have with the little boat and doll when they reached home again. By this time they were at the store, but, to their surprise, the front door was closed, though this was summer, and it generally stood wide open.

And in one corner of the door was a piece of paper on which something was written. Bunny and Sue saw this notice and they at once guessed that something had happened.

"Maybe she's gone away with her son Philip to get the leg-legacy!" exclaimed Bunny.

"Maybe," said Sue. "Go on, Bunny, you can read better'n I can. Read what it says."

Slowly Bunny read the little notice on the front door. It said:

"Please come to the side door."

Wonderingly the children went along the path to the side door, for the grocery of Mrs. Golden was in an old-fashioned house which had been built over so she could sell things in it. The side door was almost closed, but, though open a small crack, Bunny and Sue did not want to push it open further and go in. Instead they knocked.

"Yes? What is it? Who's there?" called the voice of Mrs. Golden. It was a weak, quavering old voice.

"We're here," answered the little boy. "Bunny Brown and his sister Sue!"

"Oh, my dears! I'm glad it's you and not Mr. Flynt!" said Mrs. Golden. "Push the door open and come in. I have such a dreadful headache that I couldn't keep the store open. I had to come to my room back here and lie down. I just had to close the store!"

The children entered to see their friend lying on a sofa in the room back of the store. She had her head tied in a rag.

"Are you very sick?" asked Sue.

"'Cause if you are I'll go for the doctor," offered Bunny.

"Oh, no, thank you, my dears, I'm not ill enough for that," answered Mrs. Golden. "Just a bad sick-headache. I'll be better to-morrow. But I couldn't keep the store open to-day."

"That's too bad," said Bunny. "We came to get some things," and he took out the list his mother had written for him.

"Well, I want to sell things, but I am too ill to get up and wait on you," said the storekeeper. "I put that sign in the front door so if any wholesale wagons came to leave stuff they could find me. But, really, I don't feel able to get up."

Then Bunny had an idea.

"Couldn't Sue and I wait on ourselves?" he asked eagerly. "We want to get these things here, and if you told me where to find them -- though I know where to find some myself -- and if you told me how much they were, I could pay you, and it would be all right. I have the money."

"Yes, you might do that," said Mrs. Golden. "It would be fine if you could. Now let me see what you want, and then see if you can get it from the shelves."

"I can climb like anything!" said Bunny gleefully.

"Well, don't fall!" cautioned Mrs. Golden. Together, with the help of their friend, Bunny and Sue picked out from the closed store the things their mother had written on the list for them to get. Mrs. Golden told them where certain groceries were kept, and the price.

"Why, you are regular little storekeepers!" declared Mrs. Golden, trying not to think of her aching head. "You have waited on yourselves as well as I could have done."

"I wish we could wait on some regular customers!" boldly exclaimed Bunny.

"Wouldn't it be fun!" laughed Sue.

There came a knock on the side door, and a woman's voice called:

"Are you there, Mrs. Golden? I want a few things. May I come in?"

"Oh, yes, come in, Mrs. Clark," replied the storekeeper, as she recognized the voice of one of her customers. "If I can't wait on you you can help yourself, as Bunny and Sue did."

A woman came in the side door.

"Let us wait on you, please!" begged Bunny. "My sister and I can get what you want."

"Why, yes, I guess you can!" agreed Mrs. Clark, with a laugh. "I want a yeast cake and some sugar. It's too bad you two children couldn't stay and help Mrs. Golden," she added, as Bunny and Sue brought what she wanted and she was giving the money to the store owner.

"We'd love to stay!" cried Bunny.

"And we can, for a while," added Sue. "Mother said we didn't have to hurry."

"Oh, could we open the front door and tend store for you really?" asked Bunny, his eyes sparkling in delight.



Chapter XVII

Two Letters


Mrs. Golden thought it over for a minute. Really, with her head aching as it did, she was in almost too much pain to think, but she felt that something must be done. She needed all the money she could take in, and if customers were turned away from her store, because the door was closed, she would lose trade. Not many would come around to the side as Mrs. Clark had done.

"Couldn't we tend store for you -- a little while?" asked Bunny again, as he saw Mrs. Golden thinking, as his mother sometimes thought, when he or Sue asked her if they might do something.

"We could ask you where things are that we don't know about," added Sue, "and we wouldn't talk loud or make a noise."

"Bless your hearts, dearies!" sighed Mrs. Golden. "You are very kind; but I'm sure I don't know what to say."

"Then let me say it," advised Mrs. Clark. "I say let the children tend store for you, Mrs. Golden. Bunny and Sue are a lot smarter for their age than most children. You let them tend store for you, and I'll run over once in a while to see if everything is all right."

"Very well," said Mrs. Golden. "You may keep store for me, Bunny and Sue."

"Goodie!" exclaimed Sue, clapping her hands. Then she happened to remember that she must not make too much noise, and she grew quieter.

"I'll open the front door and take down the sign," said Bunny. "We'll wait on the customers for you, Mrs. Golden."

Bunny felt quite like a grown man as he removed the card and turned the lock in the front door, swinging it open. The shades had been pulled down over the show windows, and Bunny and Sue now ran these up.

"I'll run along now," said Mrs. Clark, going out the front door and nodding in friendly fashion at the children. "I guess you'll make out all right, and I'll be back in a little while. If she gets any worse, or anything happens, just come and tell me -- you know where I live," she said in a low voice, so Mrs. Golden, in the back room, would not hear.

Sue nodded and Bunny smiled. They were rather anxious for Mrs. Clark to go, so they would be left in charge of the store. And when this happened, when really, for the first time, Bunny Brown and his sister Sue were truly storekeepers you can hardly imagine how pleased they were.

"You go to sleep now, Mrs. Golden," said Sue, going on tiptoe to the rear room, to look at the old woman lying on the couch. "You go to sleep. Bunny and I will tend store."

Then she went back to Bunny, who sat on a stool behind the grocery counter. He had decided he would sell things from that side of the store, while Sue could wait on the dry-goods and notions side.

"All we want now is some customers," remarked the little boy.

"Yes," agreed Sue. "We want to sell things."

They waited some little time, for the corner store was not in a busy part of town. Several times, as footsteps were heard outside, Bunny and Sue hardly breathed, hoping some one would come in to buy. But each time they were disappointed.

Finally, however, just when they were about to give up, thinking they would have to go home, a woman came in and looked around, not at first seeing any one.

"What can I do for you to-day, lady?" asked Bunny Brown, as he had often heard Mr. Gordon say.

"Oh, are you tending store?" the lady asked. She was a stranger to Bunny and Sue.

"Yes'm, I and my sister -- I mean my sister and I -- are keeping store for Mrs. Golden. She's sick," said Bunny. "I can get you anything you want."

"All I want is a loaf of bread," the lady answered.

Bunny knew where to get this, and also the kind the lady wanted, as it was the same sort of loaf his mother often sent him for. He put it in a paper bag and took the money. The lady gave the right change, so Bunny did not have to trouble Mrs. Golden.

All this while Sue stood on her side of the Store, rather anxiously waiting. She wished the customer would buy of her.

"You are rather small to be in a store, aren't you?" asked the lady, as she started to leave with the bread.

"Oh, we know lots about stores," said Bunny. "We often play keep one, but this is the first time we ever did it regular."

"I know how to keep store, too," said Sue, unable to keep still any longer. "Would you like some needles and thread?"

"Yes, now that you speak of it, I remember I do need some thread, my dear," the lady answered, with a smile. "Can you get me the kind I want?"

"I -- I guess so," Sue answered, yet she was a bit doubtful, as there were so many things among the notions.

"Well, perhaps I can help you," said the lady. "I see the tray of spools of silk right behind you, and if you'll pull it out I'll pick the shade I want. I have a sample of dress goods here."

SUE HELPED HER CUSTOMER MATCH HER SAMPLE. Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue Keeping Store. Page 174

Sue had often been with her mother when Mrs. Brown matched sewing silk in this way, and the little girl pulled out the shallow drawer of small spools. She saw the sample and knew the lady needed red sewing silk; so she at once pulled out the right drawer. Then she helped the customer match her sample until she had what she wanted.

"How much is it?" asked the lady, taking out her purse.

Here was Sue's trouble -- she did not know exactly, and she did not want to go ask Mrs. Golden, for the storekeeper might be sleeping. To call her might make her head suddenly ache worse.

"I generally pay ten cents a spool," said the customer, "and I suppose that's what it is here. If it's any more I can stop in the next time I pass. That is, unless you can find out for sure."

"Oh, I guess ten cents is all right," said Sue, and she found out later that it was.

Then the lady left with her bread and thread. The children had waited on their first customer all alone.

In the next hour, during which the children remained in the store, they waited on several customers, and did it very well, too, not having to ask Mrs. Golden about anything, for which they were glad. Of course the things they sold were simple articles, easy to find, and of such small price that the men or women who bought them had the right change all ready.

Once a boy came in, and you should have seen how surprised he was when Bunny waited on him. He was Tommy Shadder, a boy Bunny knew slightly.

"Huh! you workin' here?" asked Tommy, as he took the sugar Bunny put in a bag, not having spilled very much.

"Sure, I'm working here!" declared Bunny. "That is, for a while," he added, for he knew he would soon have to go home.

"Huh!" said Tommy again, as he went out. "Huh!"

"Mail!" suddenly called a voice, and the postman entered the store. "Where's Mrs. Golden?" he asked, as he saw Bunny and Sue, whom he knew.

"She's got a headache, and we're tending store," Sue answered proudly.

"Oh, all right. Here's a couple of letters for her. She's been asking me for letters all week, and I didn't have any for her. Now here are two."

He tossed them on the counter and went out into the sunlit street. Bunny looked at the two letters.

"Oh!" he exclaimed. "One's from Mrs. Golden's son Philip. Maybe it's about the legacy!" Bunny had seen the name Philip Golden in the corner of the envelope.

"Who's the other from?" asked Sue.

"The Grocery Supply Company," read the little boy from the other envelope.

"Oh, dear!" sighed Sue.

"What's the matter?" asked Bunny.

"Maybe that's a bill," Sue said, for she had often been in her father's office on the dock when the mail came in, and when he received a thin letter Mr. Brown would hold it up to the light, laugh, and say:

"I guess this is a bill."

Sue knew what bills were, all right, and she seemed to feel that bills coming to Mrs. Golden, who had little money, would be worse than those which came to her father's office, for Mr. Brown never seemed to worry about the bills.

As the children looked at the letters on the counter, wondering whether or not to take them in to Mrs. Golden, she herself came out of the back room. She looked at the children and then at the letters.

"Oh, some mail!" she exclaimed. "I hope it's from Philip about the legacy! If it is, I'm sure it will completely cure my headache, which is much better."

Eagerly Bunny and Sue watched to see Mrs. Golden open the letters.



Chapter XVIII

Bunny Has An Idea


Mrs. Golden read first the letter from her son, sent to her from the distant city. But if Bunny and Sue thought to see a look of joy spread over the store owner's face they were disappointed.

"Did he -- did your son send you the legacy?" asked Bunny, as the letter was folded and put back in the envelope.

"Well, no, not exactly," was the answer. "It seems there is some trouble about it. I hoped Philip could come home to help me, but he can't, and it will be some time before we'll get any money from that legacy -- if we ever get it. Oh, dear! So many troubles!"

Mrs. Golden sighed and opened the other letter. Her troubles seemed to be more now, for she sighed again as she laid this letter aside. Sue could not help asking:

"Is it a bill?"

"Something like that, yes," answered the old lady. "It's from Mr. Flynt's grocery company. It says if I don't pay soon I'll be sold out."

Mrs. Golden sighed again. The children did not know exactly what it was all about, but they knew there was trouble of some kind and they wanted to help. But they felt, too, that it was time they went home.

Mrs. Golden must have seen the worried looks on their faces, for she tried to smile through the clouds of her own trouble as she said:

"Never mind, my dears! Run along now, for I'm sure your mother will be getting anxious about you. You have been a great help to me. I guess I'll find some way out of my troubles -- I hope so, anyhow. Run along now! It was good of you to help me."

So Bunny and Sue, taking the things they had bought, started out of the store.

"If she could only sell more things she'd have more money and then she could pay that grocery bill," said Bunny to his sister.

"Yes," agreed Sue. "We'll tell daddy about it and see what he says. Daddy has lots of money."

"But maybe he needs it," suggested Bunny. And very likely Mr. Brown did.

However, children of the ages of Bunny and Sue are not unhappy for very long at a time, and trouble seems to roll away from them like water off a duck's back. On the way home they met some of their playmates, and in talking over a picnic that was to be held in a few days Bunny and Sue forgot about Mrs. Golden for a while.

"You stayed rather a long time," said Mrs. Brown, when Bunny and Sue finally reached home with the groceries she had sent them for.

"You said we could stay," said Bunny.

"And we helped Mrs. Golden by tending store," added Sue.

"Did you really tend store?" Uncle Tad asked, and he was much surprised when the children told what they had done.

"I guess she doesn't do much business," remarked Uncle Tad. "She has a store on a corner, which is the best place for one, as people on two streets pass it. But I'm afraid she isn't enough of a hustler."

"What's a hustler?" asked Bunny, wondering if Mrs. Golden might be made into one.

"A hustler," said Uncle Tad, "is a person that does things in a hurry. Some storekeepers are hustlers for business. If business doesn't come to them they go after it. That's how they sell things."

"How could Mrs. Golden sell more things?" Bunny questioned. "She's got lots of things in her store -- heaps and packs of 'em -- but she doesn't sell much."

"That's the trouble!" said Uncle Tad. "She doesn't advertise, and she doesn't make any window display."

"What's a window display?" Sue inquired.

"I saw you looking at one the other day," replied the old soldier. "Do you remember when I passed you and Bunny while you were looking in the drug store window on Main Street?"

"Oh, yes! Where the rubber bags were!" cried Bunny.

"A little doll was making believe swim in a rubber bag," said Sue, "and there was a big crowd looking at it."

"That's it!" exclaimed Uncle Tad. "That drug store man got a big crowd in front of his store by putting something in the window that made people stop and look. That's advertising."

"Maybe Mrs. Golden could fix up her windows so a crowd would stop in front!" exclaimed Sue.

"What good would that do?" Bunny asked. "She wants people to come inside her store and buy things."

"That's it," agreed Uncle Tad. "But if you get a crowd outside a store, because there's something to look at in the windows, some of that crowd will go inside and buy something."

"Only Mrs. Golden hasn't any rubber bags," went on Bunny. "But I guess Sue could lend her a doll if she wanted it to take a swim."

"Mrs. Golden doesn't need to put rubber bags in her window," said Uncle Tad. "That wouldn't be the thing for a grocery and notion store. She should put in something that people would stop to look at, or have a special sale or something like that. And another thing I've noticed, when I've been past her place is that the windows are very dirty. You can hardly see what's inside. If her windows were cleaned and she had something in them, a crowd would stop and more people would go in and buy than go in now. Mrs. Golden needs to advertise in that way."

Uncle Tad went out. Mrs. Brown busied herself about the house, and Bunny Brown motioned to his sister Sue to come to the side porch.

"What you want?" asked Sue.

Bunny put his finger over his lips.

"I've got an idea!" he said. "I know how we can help Mrs. Golden get a crowd in front of her store."



Chapter XIX

The Window Display


Bunny Brown and his sister Sue spent much time during the next few days out in their barn -- that is when they were not going to the store for their mother. Every chance they had, however, they bought things of Mrs. Golden, to help her as much as they could by trading at her store.

"And we ought to get the other boys and girls to go there," Sue said.

"We will, after a while," agreed Bunny. "Just now we have to do something else."

And the something else had to do with his idea and the time he and Sue spent in the barn. With them, most of the time, was Splash, their dog, and Charlie Star often came over with a covered basket.

"What do you think the children are doing?" asked Mrs. Brown of Mary, the cook, one day.

"Oh, I guess they're getting up some kind of a show," Mary answered. "I can hear Splash barking now and then, and there's a cat mewing."

"Cat!" exclaimed Mrs. Brown. "We haven't a cat!"

"I guess it's Charlie Star's," went on the cook. "He brings it over every day in a basket and takes it home again. I guess they're getting ready for a show."

"Bunny and Sue did have a show once," observed Mrs. Brown. "I hardly believe they would get up another. I must see what they are up to."

However, as company came just then and Mrs. Brown had to entertain them, she forgot all about her two children. Meanwhile things were happening out in the barn.

But Bunny and Sue kept it a secret, in which only Charlie Star had a share, and Charlie did not tell. When Mrs. Brown's company had left some one telephoned to her and she forgot all about her plan to ask Bunny what was going on.

It was a few days after this that Bunny and Sue were again sent to the store for their mother, and you may easily guess to which store they went -- the little corner one, of course.

Mrs. Golden was sitting in her usual easy chair, and there were no other customers in the place.

"How's business?" asked Bunny, as he had often heard men ask his father.

"It might be better and not hurt itself," was Mrs. Golden's answer. "Customers are few and far between."

"Mrs. Golden," said Bunny, "my Uncle Tad says you ought to have a special sale. Did you ever have one?"

"Oh, yes, years ago," she answered. "I had a sale of notions, and a number of women came in to get things to make dresses with. But I haven't had a special sale for a long while."

"Why don't you, then?" asked Bunny eagerly. "I think a special grocery sale would be good. You could put a lot of things in your window and mark the prices on them, and people would come in to buy."

"Yes, I suppose I could do that," agreed Mrs. Golden slowly. "I have a big stock of a new kind of oatmeal on hand. Some new concern sold it to me, but it didn't take very well. Lately I got a letter from them saying I could sell it at a special price. I suppose that would bring in some trade. I never thought of it. I'm getting too old, I guess, and worrying too much. When my son Philip comes home I'll have a special sale."

"No, don't wait!" cried Bunny Brown eagerly. "Let's have it now! Where are those oatmeal things?"

Mrs. Golden smiled at his eager, bustling air.

"They're in the storeroom," she said. "Some of the cases aren't open yet."

"We'll open 'em for you!" cried Bunny. "Then we'll stack the oatmeal in the window, and we'll make a sign saying it's awful cheap and you'll sell a lot, Mrs. Golden."

"Well, maybe I will, dearie. I'm sure I hope so. And it's good of you to help me. Let me see now, I'll put 'em in the left window, I guess. That has less in it," and she looked toward the window she meant. So did Bunny and Sue, and Sue's first idea was made plain when she said:

"Could I wash that window, Mrs. Golden?"

"Wash the window? Why, yes, I suppose so," answered the storekeeper. "It is pretty dirty," she added. "I don't very often look at 'em, and that's a fact. I declare! you can hardly see what I have in my windows, can you? Dear me, I am getting old. If Philip was here he'd wash 'em for me."

"I'll do it!" offered Sue. "I often wash the low windows for mother. She lets me. Have you got any of that white stuff that makes 'em shine?"

"Oh, yes, I know what you mean," said Mrs. Golden. "Yes, you can take a cake from the grocery shelf. My, I never thought of a special sale and having windows washed. It may bring me trade!"

"Uncle Tad says it will!" exclaimed Bunny. In a measure it was Uncle Tad's idea that Bunny and Sue were carrying out.

"You wash the window," he told his sister, "and I'll open the oatmeal."

Soon there was a busy time in Mrs. Golden's store. Bunny was hammering and pounding away opening the oatmeal cases, and Sue was washing the window, having first taken out the few things Mrs. Golden had on display there -- not that you could see them very well from the outside, however.

"Could I wash the other window, too?" asked Sue, when she had finished the first.

"Are you going to put oatmeal in both windows?" asked Mrs. Golden. "Seems to me that will be too much. Wash the other window if you want to, dearie, but two of them filled with oatmeal --  -- "

"Oh, we aren't going to put oatmeal in both!" exclaimed Bunny, with a queer look at his sister. "We're going to fix up the second window to make people come in and buy."

Mrs. Golden did not seem to understand exactly. She shook her head in a puzzled way and murmured that she was getting old.

And as the postman came along just then with a letter from Philip, she was soon so busy reading it that she paid little attention to what Bunny and Sue were doing.

The children worked hard and faithfully all morning, and promised to come back in the afternoon. When they left to go home to lunch, both windows were brightly shining, though there were a few streaks here and there where Sue had forgotten to wipe off the white, cleaning powder. But they didn't matter.

"I'll pull the shades down," said Bunny, as he was leaving. "We don't want people looking in the windows until we get 'em all fixed up, and then we'll surprise 'em."

"Just as you like, dearie. Just as you like," said Mrs. Golden, in a dreamy tone. She was thinking of what her son had said in his letter.

Hurrying through their lunch as quickly as their mother would let them, Bunny and Sue hastened back to Mrs. Golden's store. They told something of their plans at home, and Uncle Tad said:

"That's a fine idea! I'll stop down there later and see how it looks."

"Come on, Splash!" called Bunny to his dog, as he and his sister started back. "We want you!"

"And we must stop at Charlie's house and tell him," said Sue.

"Yes, we will," Bunny agreed, and Charlie, when he heard the news, said:

"I'll be at the store in about half an hour."

Certainly things were getting ready to happen.

Bunny and Sue found Mrs. Golden lying down on her couch in the back room when they reached the store again.

"I'm afraid I have another of my bad headaches coming on," she said.

"You lie down," said Sue kindly. "Bunny and I will tend store again, and we'll start the special sale."

The windows were now dry and clean. All the old goods had been taken out, and Bunny and his sister were ready to put in the special display of oatmeal which was to be sold at a low price. Mrs. Golden told Bunny where to find some price cards to put in the window telling of the special sale. These cards were of a sort that most grocers keep on hand.

With the help of Sue, Bunny piled the boxes of oatmeal in the window. They were stacked up as nearly like a fort as he could make them, and he knew how to do this, for he had often helped the boys build forts of snow. Here and there he left holes in the piled-up wall of oatmeal boxes.

"Oh, if you only had something like little cannons to put in the holes it would look more like a real fort!" said Sue.

Bunny thought this was a good idea, and looked around for something to use. He saw some round pasteboard boxes, the top covers of which were a dull black.

"They'll look just like cannons," he said, as he fitted them in the holes of the oatmeal box fort. The window shades being down, no one could see from the street what was going on. Splash, the big dog, was content to sleep in the store while the children were there.

"Now for the other window," said Bunny to Sue, when the oatmeal was all in place, with the low price plainly marked on cards stuck here and there.

"We have to wait for Charlie," Sue said.

"He's coming now," observed Bunny, looking from the door. No customers had come in while the children were busy fixing the window, and they were just as well satisfied. They hoped for a rush of trade when the shades were raised.

Charlie came in with the covered basket, and the next fifteen minutes were busy ones for the children. Mrs. Golden had fallen asleep and did not come out of the back room to see what they were doing.

"Well, we're all ready now," said Bunny, at last. "Pull up the shades!"

He and Charlie did this. The sun shone in through the newly cleaned windows and lit up such a display as never before had been seen in Mrs. Golden's store.



Chapter XX

In The Flour Barrel


Slowly the heavy green shades, which hid what was in the cleaned windows from the sight of persons in the street, rolled up. Bunny Brown, his sister Sue, and Charlie Star waited for what was to happen next. They looked first at one of the windows in which they had made a display, and then at the other.

In one was the pile of oatmeal packages built up like a small fort, with holes here and there through which stuck round boxes, with black covers so that they seemed to be small cannon.

In the other window -- but I can best tell you what was in that by telling you what happened.

The curtains had not been up very long, and the children were feeling rather proud of what they had done, especially Sue in making the glass so clean, when a boy who was passing along the street stopped to look in one of the windows.

And the window he looked at was not the one where the oatmeal boxes were piled. It was at the other. This boy was soon joined by a second. Then a girl who had been running, as if in a hurry, came to a stop, and she stood near the two boys, looking in.

"The crowd is beginning to come!" remarked Charlie Star.

"But they aren't buying any of the oatmeal," objected Sue.

"Never mind," Charlie went on. "These kids wouldn't buy anything anyhow; they haven't any money. Wait till the big folks come." Charlie spoke of the "kids" as if he were about twenty years old himself. He seemed to have become much bigger and more important since helping Bunny and Sue fix up Mrs. Golden's windows.

And, surely enough, a few minutes later men and women began to stop to look at the windows of the little corner store. And the men and women at first looked not at the oatmeal but at the other window.

"It's making a big hit!" said Bunny Brown. He had learned this saying at the time when he and his sister Sue gave a show.

By this time quite a crowd had gathered in the street outside, and there was some talk and laughter which was heard inside the store. It was even heard in the back room where Mrs. Golden had gone to lie down, and it aroused her from her doze.

"Well, children," she said, as she came slowly out, "have you got the windows washed, and the special sale of oatmeal started?"

"Yes, everything is all ready," answered Bunny, with a sly look at his sister and Charlie.

Then Mrs. Golden saw the crowd outside.

"My goodness!" she exclaimed. "I never knew oatmeal to be so popular. I can sell it all, maybe!" Then she noticed that the crowd was mostly looking at the other window.

"What have you in there, Bunny Brown?" she asked.

"Take a look and see," invited Sue.

Mrs. Golden peered over the wooden partition that fenced the show window off from the remainder of the store. And in the window she saw -- what do you think? Well, I imagine you must have guessed by this time.

Yes, it was Splash, the big dog, and asleep on his back was Charlie Star's little white kitten! It made the cutest picture you can imagine, for Splash kept very still, as if he did not want to wake up the sleeping puss, and the little cat was curled up just as if on a silken cushion.

It was this that Bunny and Charlie had been planning in the barn for several days. At first Splash would have nothing to do with the white kitten, and the kitten fluffed up her tail and made funny noises at Splash.

But finally the boys and Sue had trained the two to be friends, so that Splash would lie down and allow the kitten to go to sleep on his back. And it was this that Bunny and Sue, together with Charlie Star, had planned to attract attention to Mrs. Golden's poor little store.

The children had succeeded better than they had dared dream. Outside the crowd was getting larger and larger all the while, and men were saying:

"That's a pretty good dog!"

The women said:

"What a pretty picture!"

Little girls said:

"I wish I had that pussy!"

The boys wished they owned Splash. Many of them knew him, for they had often seen the dog with Bunny Brown. But the kitten was new, and few knew that Charlie Star owned it.

And then happened just what Uncle Tad had told the children would take place if they could draw a crowd outside the store. Some began to look at the special display of oatmeal in the other window, and a few came in to buy. Some bought not only oatmeal but other things as well, happening to remember that they were needed at home.

Mrs. Golden, who felt much better after her sleep, was kept very busy waiting on customers, and Bunny and Sue helped her, as did Charlie.

SPLASH AND THE KITTEN DID THEIR SHARE IN DRAWING TRADE. Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue Keeping Store. Page 199

Splash and the kitten did their share, too, in drawing trade. For soon the kitten awakened and began playing with a spool which Charlie had hung up on a string in the window. The little white cat struck at the spool with her paws as she stood up on the back of the big dog. Splash did not seem to mind it in the least. In fact, he looked as if he enjoyed it, and this amused the crowd all the more.

"Well, I do declare! You children beat anything I ever saw!" exclaimed Mrs. Golden, when she had time to look and see what was going on in the special display window. "You've made my store into a regular circus!"

"But it's good for business, isn't it?" asked Bunny.

"Indeed it is!" said the old lady, with a smile. "I never was so busy. That oatmeal is selling fine. I wish I'd had a special sale of it before."

Besides the boxes in the window there were packages of oatmeal piled on shelves ready to be sold. And as the price was lower than oatmeal could be bought for at other stores, Mrs. Golden did a good trade.

After a while things became a little quieter in the store, after the first surprise had worn off. But now people were constantly passing in the street, and many of them stopped to look at the dog and cat, which were now playing together, Splash gently pawing at the white kitten which climbed all over him.

Bunny had just finished selling a man a package of oatmeal, and Sue was getting out a paper of pins for a lady when Uncle Tad came into the store.

"Hello, children!" he cried in his jolly way. "I see you took some of my advice and advertised by your show windows," he added to Mrs. Golden.

"Bunny and Sue did it for me," she said, "with the help of Charlie Star. It is wonderful."

"If you'll get me a white piece of cardboard and a pen and some ink I'll make you a sign to put in that oatmeal window," offered the old soldier. "Those signs are all right, Bunny," said Uncle Tad. "But for a special sale you want a special sign. Let me see now," he went on, as Mrs. Golden got him what he had asked for. "You have made those oatmeal boxes into the shape of a fort with guns. Now I must make a sign to go with it. Let me see. Ah, I have it!"

He was busy with the ink for several minutes, and then he held up a sign which read:

Fort-Ify Your Constitution With This Oatmeal

"There!" exclaimed Uncle Tad, "this ought to bring more customers!"

"Ha! Ha!" laughed Mrs. Golden. "That's a pretty good joke!"

Bunny, Sue, and Charlie could not see anything funny, or like a joke, in the sign. But then it was not intended for children, so it did not matter.

But men and women passing in the street and pausing to read what Uncle Tad had printed, seemed to think it was odd, for they stopped, read it, laughed or chuckled, and then either passed on or came in and bought some oatmeal. And quite a few came in, so that by night Mrs. Golden had sold nearly all of the cereal.

"My goodness!" she said, when it was time for Bunny, Sue, and Charlie to go home. "This has been a wonderful day. Could you come over to-morrow?" she asked. "I don't mean to work," she added quickly. "For I'm afraid your mothers will think you're doing too much for me. But I mean could you come over and bring your dog and cat to put in the window. They certainly brought the crowd."

"Yes, we'll bring Splash," said Bunny.

"And I'll bring my kitten," offered Charlie.

"And we'll come and help you sell things!" laughed Sue. "We like it, don't we?" she asked the boys, and of course they said they did.

The first attempt of Bunny and Sue to advertise Mrs. Golden's store had been very successful. Of course Uncle Tad had told them how to do it, and Charlie Star had helped by bringing his kitten and training her with Bunny and Sue. So the special oatmeal sale made quite a bit of talk in that section of Bellemere near the little corner store.

Of course Mrs. Golden did not make a great deal of money, for the profit on each thing she sold, even the many boxes of oatmeal, was small. But it brought new customers to her store, and she was well pleased with what had happened.

"And if Philip can only get that legacy," she murmured to herself that night, "things will be easier for me. But I owe a lot of money to Mr. Flynt, and I don't know where I'm going to get it to pay -- not even if those dear children help me with a lot more special sales, bless their hearts! Well, I'll do the best I can."

The next day Bunny, Sue, and Charlie again came to Mrs. Golden's store. Charlie could not stay, however, as he had to rake up the leaves around his home, but he brought his kitten, and again the dog and the white pussy drew crowds to the store window.

Besides oatmeal Mrs. Golden also had a special sale on notions, and she did a fairly good business in them, so that she and Sue were kept busy behind the counter. Not that Sue could do as much as Mrs. Golden, but she did all she could.

Bunny waited on some customers who came in to buy groceries, and when one lady wanted some flour an accident happened. Bunny was leaning over to scoop the white stuff out of the barrel, and as it was near the bottom he had to stand up on a box to reach it.

Suddenly the lady on whom he was waiting, and who was watching him, gave a startled cry.

"What's the matter?" asked Mrs. Golden.

"That little boy has fallen into the flour barrel!" was the answer.



Chapter XXI

Sue Couldn't Stop It


There was a banging, kicking sound and several cries of "Oh, dear!" The cries were faint and muffled, as if they came from the cellar. Then the lady who had ordered three pounds of flour, which Bunny was trying to scoop out for her, ran behind the counter.

Sue followed. So did Mrs. Golden. All they saw were Bunny's heels sticking out of the barrel, waving in the air, and now and then banging against a low shelf near which the flour barrel stood.

"Oh, dear! Oh, dear!" cried Bunny, from inside the barrel.

For that is where he was. He had fallen into the flour barrel!

"Pull him out!" begged Sue.

"I can't. I'm not strong enough to pull him up!" panted the customer, but doing her best.

"We must all pull!" exclaimed Sue. "Bunny pulled me out of the brook, and I'll pull him out of the flour barrel!"

"Yes, we must all pull!" said Mrs. Golden.

Together they all grasped Bunny by the heels and lifted him out of the flour barrel.

Oh, but he was a queer sight! Luckily he had stuck out his two hands when he felt himself falling head first into the nearly empty barrel, and had landed on his outstretched palms. And as there was not much flour in the barrel his head had not gone into the fluffy white stuff, or he might nearly have smothered. As it was his face was completely covered with the white particles.

And when Mrs. Golden, the customer and Sue had pulled the little boy from the barrel, and set him on his feet, Sue could not help laughing.

"Oh, Bunny!" she cried, giggling. "You look -- you look just like the clown in the circus!"

And truly Bunny did, for his face was plastered as white as the face of any funny man that ever made jokes beneath the canvas.

"You poor boy," said the customer.

"Oh, Bunny, I'm so sorry!" exclaimed Mrs. Golden.

"I -- I'm all right," declared Bunny, blowing out a white cloud of flour as he talked. "I -- I didn't spill any!"

"No, you spilled yourself more than anything else," said Mrs. Golden. "I guess I'd better get the flour, Bunny, after we brush you off. It's too low in the barrel for you to reach. I don't want you falling in again."

"All right," agreed Bunny. "I guess I'm not quite big enough for flour barrels."

He was dusted off out in the side yard, so no great harm resulted from his accidental dive into the barrel, and Mrs. Golden waited on the flour customer.

"What did you think, Bunny, when you were falling into the flour barrel?" asked Sue, when the excitement was over and business was going on as before in the little corner store.

"What did I think?" he repeated. "Why, I guess I didn't have time to think anything. I just felt myself slipping, and then I fell in. I stuck out my hands, and I'm glad the flour wasn't deep in the barrel."

"It was like the time when I fell into the brook!" said Sue, with a little laugh. "Only I fell in feet first and you went in head first."

"Yes," laughed Bunny, "I went in head first all right!"

Mrs. Golden told the children they must not try to do things that were too hard for them, even though they meant to be kind and help her.

The second day of the special sale of oatmeal and notions was not quite as busy as the first. The novelty of the cat and dog in the window wore off and Bunny brought some of the little pet alligators to show. Still quite a number of people came in to buy, and Mrs. Golden was well pleased, thanking Bunny, Sue, and Charlie many times. She also wanted to thank Splash and the white kitten and the best way to do this was to feed them, which she did, as well as the alligators.

"We'll come and help you tend store to-morrow," said Bunny as he and Sue went home that night, Sue carrying Charlie's kitten in a basket and Splash following at Bunny's heels. The alligators were left till next day.

"I'm afraid your mother will think you are doing too much for me," said the old lady, as she said good-bye.

"Oh, no!" exclaimed Bunny. "She told us to help you all we could."

"And we like it!" Sue exclaimed. "It's fun."

"Except when you fall into flour barrels!" added Bunny Brown, with a laugh at some white spots that still clung to his jacket.

Mrs. Brown did not mind how much Bunny and his sister helped Mrs. Golden, but she told the children they must not stay in the store too much.

"Your long vacation from school is given you so you may play out in the sunshine and fresh air," said Mother Brown. "And though it is all right for you to help Mrs. Golden in her store, I want you to have some fun also."

"It's fun in the store," said Bunny.

"Well, I mean other kinds of fun," added Mrs. Brown.

So there were days when Bunny and Sue only went to Mrs. Golden's grocery on some errand for their mother or Mary, but even on these short trips they often were able to help the storekeeper, sometimes making little sales, if she was busy in another part of the house, or by arranging goods on the shelves.

Having learned that she could do more business by having her windows clean and with things nicely piled in them, Mrs. Golden kept this plan up, Bunny and Charlie and Sue often stacking goods where they would show well.

But with all this even the children could see that Mrs. Golden was worried. Bunny often saw her adding up figures on bits of paper, and she would look at the sum and sigh.

"What's the matter?" Bunny once asked.

"Oh, I owe so much money I'm afraid I'll never be able to pay," she said. "And it seems to be getting worse, even with all the help you children give me. If only Philip would get that legacy!"

"Hasn't he got it yet?" asked Bunny.

"No, not yet," was the answer. "And I'm afraid he never will. I miss him so, too. If he were here to help me things might go easier. But there! I mustn't complain. I'm much better off than lots of folks!" she added, trying to be cheerful.

"If more people would come to buy here you'd have more money," said the little boy. And that gave him an idea that he did not speak about just then, but turned over and over in his busy little head.

Heeding their mother's advice, Bunny and Sue played out of doors with their boy and girl chums, sometimes going on picnics and excursions or on walks through the woods and over the fields. Bunny and Charlie often played at boats in the brook, and more than once they fell in. Sue and her friends often waded in the water of the brook.

Bunny did not again, though, topple into any flour barrels. It was Sue who had the next accident at the corner grocery, and this is the way it happened.

The little girl had been sent by her mother to get a yeast cake at Mrs. Golden's, and when Sue reached the store she found the old lady busy with two women who were matching sewing silk. At the same time a little boy had come in for some molasses.

"I'll get the molasses for you," Sue offered, for she knew where the barrel was kept, and once Mrs. Golden had allowed her to raise the handle of the spigot and let the thick, sticky stuff run out into the quart measure. Sue was sure she could do this again. So, taking the boy's pail, she went to the molasses barrel.

It was kept in the back part of the store, and perhaps if Mrs. Golden had seen what Sue was about to do she would have stopped the little girl. But the two customers were very particular about the sewing silk they wanted, and kept Mrs. Golden busy pulling out different trays.

Sue reached the molasses barrel, set the quart measure under the spout, as she had seen Mrs. Golden do, and raised the handle. The next thing the storekeeper knew was when Sue came running up to her in great alarm crying:

"I can't stop it! I can't stop it!"

"Can't stop what, my dear?" asked Mrs. Golden.

"I can't stop the molasses from running out!" cried Sue. "I got it turned on, but I can't turn it off, and it's running all over the floor!"

"Oh, my goodness!" cried Mrs. Golden, hurrying to the back of the store.



Chapter XXII

A Shower Of Boxes


Sister Sue, as soon as she had told Mrs. Golden what had happened also started to run back to the molasses barrel. In fact she ran ahead of the storekeeper, and Sue's hurry was the cause of another accident.

For the molasses, running out of the spigot which Sue had not been able to close, had overflowed the quart measure, and was now spreading itself out in a sticky pool on the floor.

It was a slippery puddle, as well as a sticky one, and Sue's feet, landing in it as she ran, slid out from under her.

Bang! she came to the floor with a thud.

"Oh, my dear little girl!" cried one of the customers, who had been buying the sewing silk. "Are you hurt, child?"

Sue, sitting in the molasses puddle -- yes, she was actually sitting in it now -- looked up, thought about the matter for a moment, and then answered, saying:

"No, thank you, I'm not hurt. But I'm stuck fast. I can't get up."

It was very sticky molasses.

Mrs. Golden, thinking more about the waste of her precious molasses than about Sue for the moment, reached over and shut off the spigot. It had caught and was hard to close, which was why Sue could not do it.

Fortunately, however, the little girl had nearly closed it before the quart measure was quite full, and not so much of the molasses had run out on the floor as might have if the spigot had been wide open all the while. But, as it was, there was enough to make Sue fall, and to hold her there in the sticky mess after she had sat down so hard.

"Dear me, what a mess!" exclaimed one of the customers.

"Isn't it!" said the other.

"I -- I'm awful sorry," faltered Sue. "My father will pay for the molasses I let run out, Mrs. Golden!"

"Oh, don't worry about that," said the old lady, though she was a bit worried over the loss, for nearly a pint of the sweet stuff had run away. "It's you I'm thinking of," she said. "Are you sure you aren't hurt?"

"No," answered Sue. "But my dress is. Oh, how am I going to get home?" she went on, as she pulled up the edge of her skirt and saw how dirty and sticky it was.

"You'll have to get into the bath tub, clothes and all," said one of the customers.

"It's like when I fell in the brook," half sobbed Sue.

"There, never mind!" said Mrs. Golden kindly. "Here, little boy," she said, reaching over and lifting up the brimming measure of sweet stuff, "take your molasses and run along. Then I'll clean up here."

Leaning over, to keep her feet out of the puddle, Mrs. Golden helped Sue to rise, though it was a bit hard on account of the sticky molasses. Then the little girl's dress was taken off and she was sent into Mrs. Golden's bedroom.

"I'll wash this dress and your petticoat out for you, Sue," said Mrs. Golden, when her thread customers were gone. "But it will hardly be dry for you to wear home before dark."

"If you should see Bunny, you could send him home to get another dress for me," Sue suggested.

"Yes, I could do that," agreed Mrs. Golden. "I'll see if Bunny is coming after I put your clothes to soak."

But Bunny was off playing ball that day, and did not come to the corner store. However, fat Bobbie Boomer happened to pass, and Mrs. Golden sent him to Sue's house.

He rather frightened Mrs. Brown at first, for Bobbie twisted the message and said Sue had fallen into a barrel of molasses, instead of just into a puddle on the floor, so that Mrs. Brown came hurrying to the store, imagining all sorts of things had happened.

She had to laugh when she heard the real story, and then she went back to get a clean dress for Sue, leaving the other to be washed and dried by Mrs. Golden.

"I'm afraid the children are more of a bother to you than a help," said Mrs. Brown, as she started home with Sue.

"Oh, bless their hearts, I don't know what I'd do without them!" said the storekeeper. "They are a great help. My store business is much better than before they began coming here. That special oatmeal sale brought me new customers, and Bunny and Sue are a great help."

As it would be rather hard work for Mrs. Golden to clean up the sticky puddle, Mrs. Brown sent Bunker Blue up from the boat dock to help. For this Mrs. Golden was very glad, as she could hardly have handled the broom and pails of water as well as Bunker did.

"This is easier than cleaning out boats," declared the fish boy as he "swabbed" the floor, as he called it.

Soon the store was scrubbed nice and clean and ready for more customers the next day. As Bunny and Sue had nothing special to do they went to the corner grocery to see if they could do anything to help. And Sue was told by her mother to bring home the washed dress and petticoat.

"We've come to help," Sue announced, as she entered the store. "But I'm not to draw any more molasses! Mother said I wasn't to!"

"Well, perhaps it will be as well for me to do that," said Mrs. Golden, with a smile. "That spigot is sometimes hard to close."

"And I'm not to dip up any more flour," added Bunny.

"Yes, I suppose it will be as well for me to do that, too," said the storekeeper. "But since you like to help me tend store there are many other things you can do."

Bunny and Sue found them, for it was afternoon now, and many families in the neighborhood sent children to buy things for supper.

"Hello, Sue!" called George Watson as he came into the store, whistling. "I told my mother about that special sale of oatmeal you had here last week. Got any more?"

"Yes, a few boxes left," said Mrs. Golden, who was behind the grocery counter with Sue. Bunny was out in the storeroom opening a new box of prunes. "They're up on a high shelf, I'll get one down for you, Sue."

But as she was going to do this a man entered the store. He was Mr. Flynt, and Sue heard Mrs. Golden sigh when she saw him.

"You'll have to wait a minute about that oatmeal," said the storekeeper to George. "I'll get it down for you in a little while. I have to see this gentleman first."

George was willing to wait, but Sue was anxious to help in the store, and as she saw that Mrs. Golden was going to be busy talking to Mr. Flynt, the little girl decided she could get down the box of oatmeal herself. She felt sure that Mrs. Golden would have trouble with Mr. Flynt who would want money, and Mrs. Golden had very little to pay.

"I'll get the box of oatmeal for you, George," said Sue. "I know where it is."

She climbed up on the counter by means of a box, and stretched up her little hands and arms to the shelf on which the cereal was stacked. Sue reached for a box, managing to get hold of it by stretching as far as she could and standing on her tiptoes. But as she pulled the one box out it caught on several others standing in line on the shelf.

"Look out!" cried George, as he saw what was going to happen.

But it was too late. Sue could not get out of the way, and a moment later a shower of pasteboard boxes of oatmeal and other things fell all around her.

"What is happening?" cried Mrs. Golden, hearing the clattering sound. She came hurrying from the back of the store where she had gone to talk quietly to Mr. Flynt.

"Everything is going to fall!" cried George.

But it was not quite so bad as this. Sue kept her hands raised above her so nothing would hit her head, though one or two boxes did bump her a little.

Box after box slipped from the shelf, falling on the floor, on the counter, and all around poor little Sue!



Chapter XXIII

The Pony Express


Bunny Brown ran out of the storeroom, in his hand a hammer with which he had been opening the box of prunes. Mrs. Golden gave a cry of alarm as she heard the clatter of the boxes falling around Sue. Mr. Flynt joined Bunny in a rush to help the little girl. As for George, he was so frightened by the sudden toppling of things from the shelf that a tune he had started to whistle died away and he got ready to run out of the store.

"Mercy sakes! what is going on in here?" cried Mrs. Clark, entering the store as the boxes ceased falling. "Is anybody hurt?"

No one knew for a moment, as Sue had uttered no cry save the first frightened one. But by the time Bunny and Mr. Flynt reached her the shower of boxes was over and the little girl took down her hands from over her head.

"Did anything break?" asked Sue, looking about her. "Oh, dear, what a terrible mess!" she cried.

"Don't worry about that, child!" exclaimed Mrs. Golden. "What if a few boxes are broken open? It's you I'm thinking of."

"Oh, I'm all right!" Sue said, and she laughed a little.

And when they came to look her over nothing worse had happened than that she had a few bumps and bruises. And they were not very hard ones, for the boxes were of pasteboard and not wood.

And only one or two of the oatmeal packages were split open, so that not much was lost in that way. So, take it all in all, the accident was a very little one, though it made a great deal of excitement for the time being.

"You oughtn't to reach up for such high things, little girl," said Mr. Flynt, when he had helped pick up the packages.

"No, sir, I guess I oughtn't," agreed Sue. "But George wanted one and I thought I could get it."

"You call me when you want things from a high shelf," said Bunny, going back to the task of opening the box of prunes. "I'm a good climber."

"I wasn't climbing, I was reaching," answered Sue, as if that made a lot of difference. "Here's your oatmeal, George," she added, and the whistling boy came back to the counter and got it.

Bunny and Sue stayed in the store for an hour or more after the fall of the oatmeal boxes. Bunny finished opening the box of prunes, and he and Sue waited on several customers, for Mrs. Golden seemed to be quite busy talking to Mr. Flynt in the back room. And it was not a pleasant talk, either, as Bunny and Sue guessed when they caught glimpses now and then of Mrs. Golden wiping tears from her eyes.

Finally the grocery man came out of the back room with Mrs. Golden. He was saying, so that the children could hear:

"Now you'd better take my advice, Mrs. Golden, and sell out your store here. You'll never make it pay, and you keep on owing us more money all the while. I know you're trying to do your best, but you must either pay us or we'll have to take our things back and sell you out besides for the rest that you owe us.

"Take my advice and sell out before you're sold out. It will be better that way. We can't wait any longer. This is a good little store, but you don't make it pay."

"Maybe I could if my son Philip were to come back," sadly said the old lady. "He's gone after a legacy, and when he comes back --  -- "

"There there, Mrs. Golden! It's of no use to talk that way!" exclaimed Mr. Flynt. "You've been telling me about that legacy a long time. Why doesn't it come?"

"I don't know, Sir."

"No. And I don't believe it ever will come. We've waited as long as we ought, but I'll give you a little more time, and that will be the last. If you don't pay we'll have to close your store. Think it over and sell out before you're sold out."

And then Mr. Flynt went out.

Bunny and Sue, who had been about to go home, looked at Mrs. Golden and felt sorry for her. They could see that she was feeling bad, and that she had been crying.

"What's the matter?" asked Bunny.

"Not enough money -- that's the trouble," was her answer. "Oh, dear, I don't want to sell my store!" she said. "I want to keep it."

"Have you got to sell?" asked Sue.

"Mr. Flynt says so," came the reply, "because I owe him a lot of money I can't pay. If business was only better I might keep my store going until Philip comes back with the legacy. Once we get that we'll be all right! But if we don't --  -- "

Mrs. Golden put her handkerchief to her eyes. Then, seeing that she was making Bunny and Sue sad, she added:

"There now! Run along. Maybe I can get the money somehow. At any rate you children have been most kind to me. Run along now, and don't mind a poor old woman."

But Bunny and Sue did mind. They talked matters over on their way home and decided that something must be done. They wanted to help more than they had been doing, and Bunny thought of a way. As usual Sue agreed with him, for she was willing to do anything her brother did.

That evening after supper Bunny brought his little tin savings bank from a shelf in his room, and Sue brought hers. There was a great rattling as the pennies, dimes and nickels in the tin boxes clattered against the sides.

"My goodness! what's going on?" cried Daddy Brown, looking up from the paper he was reading. "Are you two going to buy an automobile with all that money?"

"Will you please open my bank, Daddy, and see how much is in it?" asked Bunny.

His father, wondering what was "in the wind," as old Jed Winkler would say, did so. With Bunny's help the cash was counted. There was eight dollars and fifteen cents.

"I have more than that!" exclaimed Sue, and indeed she had, for Bunny had taken some of his money the week before to buy a top and a set of kite sticks. Sue had ten dollars and forty-six cents in her bank.

"What are you going to do with it?" asked Mrs. Brown, for she knew the children would not have gotten down their banks unless they had some plan in their heads.

"We're going to give it to Mrs. Golden," said Bunny.

"Mrs. Golden?" cried their father.

"You mean you're going to buy something at her store?" asked Mrs. Brown.

"No, we're going to give it to her," said Bunny gravely. "She owes money and Mr. Flynt will close up her store if she doesn't pay. So we're going to give her our money so she can pay Mr. Flynt and then the store will stay open."

"'Cause if it's closed," added Sue, "we can't have any more fun helping keep it."

"Oh, ho! I see!" laughed Mr. Brown. "Well, I must admit I forgot all about Mrs. Golden. I promised to see if I couldn't help her when you told me about Mr. Flynt before, but I forgot. Now, children, it wouldn't be right for you to take your bank money to help Mrs. Golden. She wouldn't want you to do that. Put away your pennies, and I'll see what I can do to help."

This made Bunny and Sue feel happier, and they went to bed more satisfied, for they felt sure their father could make everything right. But the next day, when they went in to see Mrs. Golden, to help keep store, they found her looking very sad and unhappy.

"What's the matter?" asked Sue.

"Oh, just the same old trouble," Mrs. Golden answered. "I need money to pay bills."

"Mr. Flynt's?" asked Bunny.

"Yes, his and another man's. I'm afraid, children, you won't be able to come here much longer and help keep store."

"Why not?" Bunny wanted to know.

"Because there won't be any store -- at least I won't have it. I'm afraid I'm going to lose it. If I could only get some more customers and do more business I might manage to pull through until Philip gets back. But I don't know -- I don't know!" and she shook her head sadly.

That afternoon, going home with Sue, Bunny had another idea.

"Sue!" he exclaimed, "if we can't give our money to Mrs. Golden maybe we can get her more customers."

"How?" asked the little girl.

"We can ask everybody we know to come and trade there," said Bunny. "I remember when the Italian shoemaker started down at the end of our street and I took my rubber boots there to have him fix a hole, he said for me to tell all the boys I knew to bring their boots and shoes to him to be mended."

"Did you?" Sue inquired.

"Yes. And the shoeman said I brought him good trade and he gave me a piece of beeswax. So maybe we could get customers for Mrs. Golden."

"Maybe we could!" cried Sue. "Let's tell the other boys and girls to get their fathers and mothers to let them buy things at Mrs. Golden's, and then she'll have a lot of customers!"

"Oh, let's!" cried Bunny Brown.

And they did. The next day, when Bunny and Sue were playing with Charlie, George, Mary, Sadie, Helen, Harry and Bobbie, the idea was spoken of again.

"Fellows and girls!" exclaimed Bunny, who got up to make a speech, "we have to help Mrs. Golden."

"You should speak of the girls first," said Sadie, who was a little older than the others.

"Well, anyhow, we ought to help Mrs. Golden," went on Bunny. "She needs customers. Now, if all of you would buy everything you could of her, like Sue and I do, maybe she wouldn't lose her store."

"My mother says she'd trade there if Mrs. Golden would deliver stuff," remarked Helen Newton. "But she says she can't cart heavy things from any store."

"My mother said the same thing," added Mary Watson.

"She can't afford to hire a delivery horse and wagon," said Charlie Star. "I know, 'cause I helped in her store."

"She needs an auto like Mr. Gordon," said Bobbie Boomer.

"Pooh, autos are only for big stores!" exclaimed Harry.

Bunny Brown seemed to be doing some hard thinking. He had a new idea.

"Fellows!" he suddenly cried, "I have it! I'll get a delivery wagon for Mrs. Golden!"

"You will?"

"A delivery wagon?"

"How?"

These cries greeted what Bunny had said.

"I'll take our Shetland pony, Toby, and deliver things for her in the little cart!" cried Bunny Brown. "If all of you will promise to buy as much as you can from her, I'll deliver things in our pony cart!"

"Hurray for the pony express!" cried Charlie Star. "I'll help!"



Chapter XXIV

Bad News


The boys and girls, all of whom promised to buy as much as they could from Mrs. Golden and who also promised to tell their mothers at home that things could now be delivered from the little corner store, were bubbling over with fun and good-nature as they left the yard of Bunny and Sue where the "meeting" was held. But after his playmates had gone Bunny Brown began to do a little worrying.

"I know Toby will like to deliver groceries and be a pony express," said the little boy to his sister. "But maybe mother won't let us do it."

"Oh, I guess she will," said Sue.

"I'll ask her, anyhow," decided Bunny, and he did.

Mrs. Brown thought the matter over carefully when Bunny and Sue told her about it.

"Is Mrs. Golden really in such need of money?" asked Mrs. Brown.

"Oh, yes!" cried Bunny. "She feels so sad when Mr. Flynt comes and says he's going to close her store. And we'll feel sad if we don't have any place to go any more and learn how to work in it, Mother! Please let us take Toby and be a pony express!"

"I'll talk it over with your father," said Mrs. Brown.

The children waited anxiously for what their father should say, and they were glad when they heard him laugh after Mrs. Brown had spoken to him of the plan.

"Why, yes," he agreed. "I don't see any harm in it. Toby doesn't get enough exercise as it is. And Bunny and Sue can manage the little Shetland very well. The only thing is, I wouldn't want them to drive all over town delivering groceries -- I mean out on the main street where there are so many autos now."

"Oh, we wouldn't go there!" promised Bunny.

"We might work it this way," went on Mr. Brown. "If there are things to be delivered on the other side of Main Street I'll let Bunker Blue do it. He can spare the time once a day. Bunny and Sue can do the rest of the delivery."

So it was decided, and you can imagine how delighted Bunny and Sue were when they hastened to tell the good news to Mrs. Golden.

"Why, that's perfectly wonderful!" exclaimed the old lady, and there were happy tears in her eyes. "Oh, you are two darling children to think so much of helping an old woman."

"You're not so old," declared Bunny politely. "Besides, we like to keep store; don't we, Sue?"

"Lots!" answered the little girl.

Bunny and Sue clerked in the store as much as they had time for, but as they were now to deliver things in the pony cart they could not spend so much time behind the counter. And Mr. Brown said that Bunny and Sue must both go in the pony cart, as it would be safer for them that way.

"Sue can hold Toby while you take the groceries into the houses," said Mr. Brown. "Only you mustn't lift too heavy boxes, Bunny."

"No, Daddy!" he promised. "If it's too heavy I'll lift it twice!" He meant he would make two trips of it.

Toby was almost as much help to Mrs. Golden as Bunny and Sue had been, for many housekeepers, when they found they could have groceries delivered from the corner store, took part of their trade there. And Bunny and Sue were quite proud to load up the basket cart with boxes and packages and start out to leave the orders at the different houses.

Mrs. Golden did not grow any younger or more active, and there were times when she could hardly get around the store. At such times, if Bunny and Sue had to be out with the pony cart, Charlie Star would come in and be a clerk.

When things needed to be delivered on the other side of Main Street, along which many automobiles were driven, then Bunker Blue was called on. He gladly drove the "pony express" as it was laughingly called, and many customers were served this way.

But in spite of this increase in trade the worried look did not leave Mrs. Golden's face, and, more than once, Bunny and Sue again saw her counting up her money and looking at bills she owed Mr. Flynt.

"Will you have to sell the place now?" asked Bunny one day, coming in with Sue to help tend store. The two previous days had been busy ones, when many customers had bought things.

"Well, I don't know about it, Bunny, my dear," was the answer. "More money is coming in, to be sure, but things cost so much I make hardly any profit. Things still look black. But don't worry. You and Sue are a big help. If Philip only gets that legacy, then I'll be all right!"

"I hope he does!" said Bunny Brown.

Several customers came in and the children helped Mrs. Golden wait on them. Then one woman wanted flour, sugar, and potatoes sent to her house on the other side of Main Street, a place where Bunny and Sue had never been.

"But we'll load the things in the pony cart," said Bunny to Sue, "and drive to our house. Bunker Blue is going to be there, for he's going to cut the grass, and he can drive across Main Street to Mrs. Larken's house."

"That will be all right," said Mrs. Golden. "It's very kind of you to help me this way."

The children started out with Toby, and they were almost at their own home when they heard a great shouting and racket behind them.

"Oh, Bunny!" cried Sue, "maybe we dropped something out of the cart and they're calling to us to pick it up."

Bunny gave one look back over the way they had come. Then he pulled hard on Toby's reins and shouted:

"No, we didn't drop anything, but here comes the fire engine!"

And, surely enough, dashing down the street was the shiny new engine that had lately been bought for Bellemere.

"Oh, pull over to one side!" cried Sue, clasping Bunny's arm. "Pull over to one side!"

"I -- I'm trying to!" he answered. But Toby did not seem to want to go over near the curb, and out of danger. Once in a while the Shetland pony had a stubborn streak, and this was one of those times.

"Get over! Get over there!" cried Bunny, pulling on the reins.

But instead of swinging to the right Toby turned to the left, and down the street, clanging and thundering came the fire engine.

"Get out the way!"

"Look at those children!"

"Pull over! Pull over!" cried people along the sidewalk.

One or two men ran out to grasp the bridle of Toby and swing him over, for it seemed that all Bunny was doing had no effect. But before any of the men could reach the pony Bunker Blue came dashing along. He was on his way to the Brown house to cut the grass, and he saw the danger of Bunny and Sue.

"What's the matter with you, Toby? What's the matter?" cried Bunker Blue. The Shetland pony seemed to know the fish boy's voice, for he allowed himself to be swung over to the curb and out of danger just before the fire engine dashed by.

"Oh dear!" sighed Sue.

"Pooh! That wasn't anything!" declared Bunny Brown. "I could have got him over. And, anyhow, the fire engine would have steered out! But I'm glad you came, Bunker," he said, for this talk did not seem to show a kindly feeling toward the fish boy who had been so quick to act.

"Yes, I guess you'd 'a' been all right," said Bunker, with a laugh. "But that fire engine was going very fast. You've got to be careful of it."

And all the rush and excitement was for nothing, as there was no fire, the alarm being a false one. Bunker took charge of the pony cart and delivered the groceries before he cut the grass. Then Bunny and Sue drove back to the corner store.

They saw Mr. Flynt talking to Mrs. Golden as they entered.

"It's of no use!" the cross man was saying. "I have bad news for you. You'll have to give up the store, Mrs. Golden."

"Won't your company give me a little more time?" she asked.

"No," said Mr. Flynt. "We've been waiting and waiting, hoping you could pay. Of course things are better than early in the summer. I guess these children have helped you a lot," and he looked at Bunny and Sue. "But you don't take in enough money to pay your bills. If you could pay up you might get along, for you have a good trade now. But you can't pay your bills, and so we're going to sell you out!"

"Does that mean close up the store?" asked Bunny timidly.

"That's what it means, little man," was the answer, and Mr. Flynt did not seem so cross now. Perhaps he was sorry for what he had to do. "Mrs. Golden will have to give up her store."



Chapter XXV

Good News


Bunny Brown and his sister Sue looked at each other with sad eyes. After all their work it had come to this. The store would be closed! They would have no place to come and have good times during the long vacation days! It was too bad! What was to be done?

Sue waited for Bunny to speak, as she usually did, and Bunny, after thinking the matter over, asked:

"Are you going to close it up right away?"

"Within a day or so, unless Mrs. Golden can pay her bills," answered Mr. Flynt. "We have waited as long as we can. I'm going to begin now to close out her business, but it will take two or three days. If she can raise the money in that time --  -- "

"There's no use waiting or hoping -- I can't do it!" sighed the old lady, with tears in her eyes. "I've tried my best, but I can't do it, even with the help of these dear children and the pony express," and she looked out of the window at Toby, hitched to the little basket cart.

"It is too bad," said Mr. Flynt. "We know you've done your best, and if you didn't owe so much you might get along now, with the start you have. But it takes all you can make to pay your back debts. It's best that you should give up the store. My company is sorry for you, but we've waited as long as we can. You'll have to sell out, Mrs. Golden."

"Yes, I suppose so," she agreed. "But if I could only hear from Philip, and if he could bring the money from that legacy, I could pay all I owe and start a bigger store. But I don't suppose there's any use hoping for that."

"No, I believe not," agreed Mr. Flynt. "Your son Philip doesn't seem to have gotten that legacy. Have you heard from him?"

"Not lately," said Mrs. Golden, with a sad shake of her head. "I don't know why he hasn't written. Perhaps because he has no good news for me."

"Very likely," said Mr. Flynt. "Well, I must go. You had better arrange to sell everything by the end of the week, and pay us what you can. We'll have to wait for the rest, I reckon."

"Won't there be a store here any more?" asked Sue.

"Oh, some one else may start one. It isn't a bad place for a grocery and notion shop," answered the black-whiskered man. "But Mrs. Golden can't keep this store any more."

"Maybe she can if my father will help her!" exclaimed Bunny. "He said he would!"

"Well, if some one would pay what she owes, of course she could keep on with the store," agreed Mr. Flynt. "But we can't wait any longer. We've got to sell her out."

When Bunny and Sue told at home that evening what had happened, Mrs. Brown said:

"Walter, can't you do something for that poor old woman?"

"Yes, I must try," he said. "I meant to look into her affairs long before this, but I've had so many other things to do that I let it go. We'll save the store for her if we can."

"'Cause we like to help tend it," said Bunny. "Don't we, Sue?"

"Yes," answered the little girl.

Instead of going to his boat and fish dock the next morning, as he nearly always did, Mr. Brown called to Bunny to get ready and go down to the corner grocery with him.

"May I come?" asked Sue.

"Yes," her father answered. "You are in this as much as Bunny. We are going to help Mrs. Golden if we can."

They found the old lady sitting sadly in her easy chair near the back of the store where she generally could be found when no customers needed to be waited on.

"Good morning, Mrs. Golden," said Mr. Brown. "I understand you are in trouble."

"If owing a lot of money and not being able to pay it is trouble, then I'm in almost up to my eyes," she answered, with a shake of her head.

"Like I was in the brook!" said Sue.

"Yes, I suppose so," sighed Mrs. Golden. "I'm afraid I've got to lose my store."

"Tell me how much you owe," begged Mr. Brown.

And when he heard he shook his head, saying:

"It is more than I thought. If it had been only about a hundred dollars I might have lent it to you, or found some one who would, but now I'm afraid nothing can be done."

"Do you mean the store will have to close?" asked Bunny.

"I'm afraid so, Son," replied his father.

"Oh dear!" sighed Mrs. Golden! "If Philip were only here then I might --  -- "

"Well, here I am, Mother!" cried a voice at the front door. "What's the trouble?" and in came big, strong, jolly Philip Golden. He had just arrived on a train. "What's wrong?" he asked, for he could see that his mother had tears in her eyes.

The trouble was soon told.

"Sell the store!" he cried. "I guess not much! Didn't you get my telegram, Mother?"

"What telegram?"

"The one telling about the legacy. We have it -- several thousand dollars! It won't make us rich, but it will be enough to make you comfortable for life. I heard the good news yesterday, and I sent you a telegram telling about it so you wouldn't worry any more."

"I never got your message!" said Mrs. Golden, smiling through her tears. "But it doesn't matter. I suppose there was some mistake and it went to the wrong address. But it was better to have you bring the good news. Are you sure we're to have the legacy?"

"Sure, Mother! I brought some money with me and more will come. You'll be all right now. You can pay all your bills and have plenty left over."

"Oh, I'm so glad!" cried Sue. "Then you can have a real nice store, can't you?"

"Yes," answered Mrs. Golden with a happy smile on her face, "I suppose I can. Oh, how glad I am, and how thankful I am to you dear children. You've helped me more than I can tell you."

"And we're going to help more!" cried Bunny Brown. "When you get your new store I'm going to be a clerk in it; can't I, Daddy?"

"Maybe," said Mr. Brown, with a smile.

And so the good news came after the bad, which is always the best way to have it come, I think. Mrs. Golden paid all her debts, and later she and her son Philip opened a larger store and did very well. Sometimes Bunny and Sue went to see the new place, but it was too far from their home for them to "work" in it. And, anyhow, there were other things for Bunny Brown and his sister Sue to do.

But now we have come to the end of our story and must say good-bye.

<eob>

Dave Darrin's Fourth Year At Annapolis

Or

Headed For Graduation And The Big Cruise

By

H. Irving Hancock



Chapter I

Wanted -- -A Doughface!


"Now, then, Danny boy, we --  -- -"

First Classman Dave Darrin, midshipman at the United States Naval Academy, did not finish what he was about to say.

While speaking he had closed the door behind him and had stepped into the quarters occupied jointly by himself and by Midshipman Daniel Dalzell, also of the first or upper class.

"Danny boy isn't here. Visiting, probably," mused Dave Darrin, after having glanced into the alcove bedroom at his right hand.

It was a Saturday night, early in October. The new academic year at the Naval Academy was but a week old. There being no "hop" that night the members of the brigade had their time to spend as they pleased. Some of the young men would need the time sadly to put in at their new studies. Dave, fortunately, did not feel under any necessity to spend his leisure in grinding over text-books.

Dave glanced at his study desk, though he barely saw the pile of text-books neatly piled up there.

"No letters to write tonight," he thought "I was going to loan Danny boy one of my two new novels. No matter; if he'd rather visit let him do so."

In the short interval of recreation that had followed the evening meal Dave had missed his home chum and roommate, but had thought nothing of it. Nor was Dave now really disappointed over the present prospect of having an hour or two by himself. He went to a one-shelf book rack high overhead and pulled down one of his two recent novels.

"If I want Danny boy at any time I fancy I have only to step as far as Page's room," mused Dave, as he seated himself by his desk.

An hour slipped by without interruption. An occasional burst of laughter floated down the corridor. At some distance away, on the same deck of barracks in Bancroft Hall, a midshipman was industriously twanging away on a banjo. Darrin, however, absorbed in his novel, paid no heed to any of the signs of Saturday-night jollity. He was a third of the way through an exciting tale when there came a knock on the door -- -a moment later a head was thrust in.

Midshipman Farley's head was thrust inside.

"All alone, Darry?" called Mr. Farley.

"Yes," Dave answered, laying his novel aside after having thrust an envelope between pages to hold the place. "Come in, Farl."

"Where's Dalzell?" inquired Farley, after having closed the door behind him.

"Until this moment I thought that he was in your room."

"I haven't seen him all evening," Farley responded. "Page and I have been yawning ourselves to death."

"Danny boy is visiting some other crowd, then," guessed Darrin. "He will probably be along soon. Did you want to see him about anything in particular?"

"Oh, no. I came here to escape being bored to death by Page, and poor old Pagey has just fled to Wilson's room to escape being bored by me. What are these Saturday evenings for, anyway, when there's no way of spending them agreeably?"

"For a good many of the men, who want to get through," smiled Dave, "Saturday evening is a heaven-sent chance to do a little more studying against a blue next week. As for Danny boy, I imagine he must have carried his grin up to Wilson's room. Or, maybe, to Jetson's. Danny has plenty of harbors where he's welcome to cast his anchor."

"May I sit down?" queried Mr. Farley.

"Surely, Furl, and with my heartiest apologies for having been too dull to push a chair toward you."

"I can easily help myself," laughed the other midshipman, "since there's only one other chair in the room."

"What have you and Page been talking about tonight?" asked Dave.

"Why do you want to know?"

"So that I won't run the risk of boring you by talking oh the same subject."

"Well," confessed Midshipman Farley, "we've been talking about this season's football."

"Oh, dear!" sighed Darrin. "That's the only topic really worth talking about."

"Speaking of football," resumed Farley, "don't you believe that we have a stronger eleven than we had last year!"

"If we haven't we ought to walk the plank," retorted Dave. "You remember how the Army walloped us last year?"

"That was because the Army team had Prescott and Holmes on it," rejoined Farley quickly.

"Well, they'll have 'em this year, too, won't they?

"So Prescott and Holmes are to be out for the Army this year!"

"I haven't heard anything definite on that head," Dave answered. "But I take it as a matter of course that Prescott and Holmes will play once more with the Army. They're West Point men, and they know their duty."

"What wonders that pair are!" murmured Farley with reluctant admiration for the star players of the United States Military Academy. "Yet, after all, Darry, I can't for the life of me see where Prescott and Holmes are in any way superior to yourself and Dan Dalzell."

"Except," smiled Dave, "that Prescott and Holmes, last year, got by us a good deal oftener than we got by them -- -and so the Army lugged off the score from Franklin Field."

"But you won't let 'em do it this year, Darry!"

"Dan and I will do all we can to stop our oldtime chums, now of the Army," agreed Dave. "But they're a hard pair to beat. Any one who saw Prescott and Holmes play last year will agree that they're a hard pair of nuts for the Navy to crack."

"We've got to beat the Army this year," Farley protested plaintively.

"I certainly hope we shall do so."

"Darry, what is your candid opinion of Wolgast?"

"As a man?"

"You know better!"

"As a midshipman?"

"Darry, stop your nonsense! You know well enough that I'm asking your opinion of Wolgast as captain of the Navy eleven."

"He seems inclined to be fair and just to every member of the squad, so what more can you ask of him."

"But do you think he's any real good, Darry, as captain for the Navy?"

"I do."

"We ought to have had you for captain of the team, Darry," insisted Farley.

"So two or three other fellows thought," admitted Dave. "But I refused to take that post, as you know, and I'm glad I did."

"Oh, come, now!

"Yes; I'm glad I refused. A captain should be in mid-field. Now, if Dalzell and I are any good at all on the gridiron --  -- -"

"Oh, Mr. Modesty!"

"If we're of any use at all," pursued Darrin, "it's only on the flank. Now, where would the Navy be with a captain directing from the right or left flank."

"Darry, you funker, you could play center as well as Wolgast does."

"Farl, you're letting your prejudices spoil your eyesight."

"Oh, I've no prejudice at all against Wolgast," Farley hastened to rejoin. "Only I don't consider him our strongest man for captain. Now, Wolgast --  -- -"

"Here!" called a laughing voice. The door had opened, after a knock that Darrin had not noticed.

"Talking about me?" inquired Midshipman Wolgast pleasantly, as he stopped in the middle of the room.

Midshipman Farley was nothing at all on the order of the backbiter. Service in the Brigade of Midshipmen for three years had taught him the virtue of direct truth.

"Yes, Wolly," admitted Farley without embarrassment. "I was criticizing your selection as captain of the eleven."

"Nothing worse than that?" laughed First Classman Wolgast.

"I was saying -- -no offense, Wolly -- -that I didn't consider you the right man to head the Navy eleven."

Midshipman Wolgast stepped over to Farley, holding out his right hand.

"Shake, Farl! I'm glad to find a man of brains on the eleven. I know well enough that I'm not the right captain. But we couldn't make Darry accept the post."

Midshipman Wolgast appeared anything but hurt by the direct candor with which he had been treated. He now threw one leg over the corner of the study table, though he inquired:

"Am I interrupting anything private?"

"Not in the least," Dave assured him.

"Am I intruding in any way?"

"Not a bit of it," Darrin answered heartily "We're glad to have you here with us."

"Surely," nodded Farley.

"Now, then, as to my well known unfitness to command the Navy football team," continued First Classman Wolgast, "do either of you see any faults in me that can be remedied?"

"I can't," Dave answered. "I believe, Wolly, that you can lead the team as well as any other man in the squad. On the whole, I believe you can lead a little better than any other man could do."

"No help from your quarter, then, Darry," sighed Midshipman Wolgast. "Farl, help me out. Tell me some way in which I can improve my fitness for the post of honor that has been thrust upon me. I assure you I didn't seek it."

"Wolgast, my objection to you has nothing personal in it," Farley went on. "With me it is a case simply of believing that Darry could lead us on the gridiron much better than you're likely to."

"That I know," retorted Wolgast, with emphasis. "But what on earth are we going to do with a fellow like Darrin? He simply won't allow himself to be made captain. I'd resign this minute, if we could have Darry for our captain."

"You're going to do all right, Wolgast. I know you are," Dave rejoined.

"Then what's the trouble? Why don't I suit all hands?" demanded the Navy's football captain.

Darrin was silent for a few moments. The midshipmen visitors waited patiently, knowing that, from this comrade, they could be sure of a wholly candid reply.

"Have you found the answer, Darry?" pressed Wolgast at last.

"Yes," said Dave slowly; "I think I have. The reason, as I see it, is that there are no decidedly star players on this year's probable eleven. The men are all pretty nearly equal, which doesn't give you a chance to tower head and shoulders above the other players. Usually, in the years that I know anything of, it has been the other way. There have been only two or three star players in the squad, and the captain was usually one of the very best. You're plenty good enough football man, Wolgast, but there are so many other pretty good ones that you don't outshine the others as much as captains of poorer teams have done in other years."

"By Jupiter! Darry has hit it!" cried Farley, leaping from his seat. "Wolly, you have the luck to command an eleven in which most of the men are nearly, if not quite, as good as the captain. You're not head and shoulders over the rest, and you don't tower -- -that's all. Wolly, I apologize for my criticisms. Darry has shown me the truth."

"Then you look for a big slaughter list for us this year, Darry?" Wolgast asked.

"Yes; unless the other elevens that we're to play improve as much as the Navy is going to do."

At this moment Page and Jetson rapped and then entered. Ten minutes later there were fully twenty midshipmen in the room, all talking animatedly on the one subject at the United States Naval Academy in October -- -football.

So the time sped. Dave lost his chance to read his novel, but he did not mind the loss. It was Jetson who, at last, discovered the time.

"Whew, fellows!" he muttered. "Only ten minutes to taps."

That sent most of the midshipmen scuttling away. Page and Farley, however, whose quarters were but a few doors away on the same deck, remained.

"Farl," murmured Darrin, "for the first time tonight I'm feeling a bit worried."

"Over Danny?"

"The same."

"What's up?" Page wanted to know.

"Why, he hasn't been around all evening. Surely Dalzell would be coming back by this time, unless --  -- -"

"Didn't he have leave to visit town?" demanded Midshipman Page.

"Not that I've heard of," Dave Darrin answered quickly. "Nor do I see how he could have done so. You see, Wednesday he received some demerits, and with them went the loss of privileges for October."

"Whew!" whistled Page.

"What?" demanded Dave, his alarm increasing.

"Why, not long after supper I saw Danny heading toward the wall on the town side."

"I have been afraid of that for the last two or three minutes," exclaimed Dave Darrin, his uneasiness now showing very plainly. "Dan didn't say a word to me about going anywhere, but --  -- -"

"You think, leave being impossible, Danny has Frenched it over the wall?" demanded Farley.

"That's just what I'm afraid of," returned Dave.

"But why --  -- -"

"I don't know any reason."

"Then --  -- -"

"Farl", broke in Dave hurriedly, almost fiercely, "has anyone a doughface?"

"Yes."

"Who has it?"

"I don't know."

"Find it -- -on the jump!"

"But --  -- -"

"There's no time for 'buts,'" retorted Darrin, pushing Farley toward the door. "Find it!"

"And I --  -- -" added Page, springing toward the door.

"You'll stay here," ordered Dave.

Darrin was already headed toward his friend's alcove, where Dalzell's cot lay. Page followed.

"The dummy," explained Darrin briefly.

Every midshipman at Annapolis, doubtless, is familiar with the dummy. Not so many, probably, are familiar with the doughface, which, at the time this is written, was a new importation.

Swiftly Dave and Page worked. First they turned down the clothing, after having hurriedly made up the cot. Now, from among the garments hanging on the wall nearby the two midshipmen took down the garments that normally lay under others. With these they rigged up a figure not unlike that of a human being. At least, it looked so after the bed clothes had been drawn up in place.

Then, glancing at the time, Dave Darrin waited -- -breathless.

Farley hastened into the room without losing time by knocking. Under one arm he bore, half hidden, some roundish object, wrapped in a towel.

Without a word, but with a heart full of gratitude, Dave Darrin snatched out from its wrapping the effigy of a male human head. It was done in wax, with human hair on the head.

Dave Darrin neatly fitted this at the top of the outlines of a figure under the bed clothing.

Under the full light the doughface looked ghostly. In a dimmer light it would do very well.

"Thank you a thousand times, fellows," trembled Dave Darrin. "Now hustle to your own quarters before the first stroke of taps sounds."

The two useful visitors were gone like a flash. Ere they had quite closed the door, Dave Darrin was removing his own uniform and hanging up trousers and blouse. Next off came the underclothing and on went pajamas.

Just then taps sounded. Out went the electric light, turned off at the master switch.

Dave Darrin dived under the bed clothes on his own cot and tried to still the beating of his own heart.

Two minutes later a brisk step sounded on the corridor of the "deck."

Door after door was opened and closed. Then the door to Dave's room swung open, and a discipline officer and a midshipman looked into the room.

"All in?" the midshipman called.

A light snore from Dave Darrin's throat answered. In his left hand the discipline officer carried an electric pocket light. A pressure of a button would supply a beam of electric light that would explore the bed of either midshipman supposed to be in this room.

But the officer saw Midshipman Darrin plainly enough, thanks to beams of light from the corridor. Over in the opposite alcove the discipline officer made out, more vaguely, the lay figure and the doughface intended to represent Midshipman Dan Dalzell.

"Both in. Darrin and Dalzell never give us any trouble, at any rate," thought the discipline officer to himself, then closed the door, and his footsteps sounded further down the corridor.

"Oh, Danny boy, I wish I had you here right at this minute!" muttered Dave Darrin vengefully. "Maybe I wouldn't whang your head off for the fright that you've given me! I'll wager half of my hairs have turned gray in the last minute!"

However, Midshipman Dan Dalzell was not there, as Darrin knew to his own consternation. Dave did not go to sleep. Well enough he knew that he was on duty indefinitely through the hours until Dan should return. If Midshipman Darrin fell into a doze this night he would be as bad as any sentry falling asleep on any other post.

So Darrin lay there and fidgeted. Twenty times he tried to solve, in his own mind, the riddle of why Dalzell should be away, and where he was. But it was a hopeless puzzle.

"Of course, Danny didn't hint that he was going to French it tonight," thought Dave bitterly. "Good reason why, too! He knew that, if I got wind of his intention, I'd thrash him sooner than let him take such a chance. Oh, Dan! Dan, you idiot! To take such a fool chance in your last year here, when detection probably means your being dropped from brigade, and your career ended!"

For Dave Darrin knew the way of discipline officers too well to imagine that that one brief inspection of the room was positively all the look-in that would be offered that night. Some discipline officers have a way of looking in often during the night. Being themselves graduates of the Naval Academy, officers are sure to know that the inspection immediately after taps does not always suffice. Midshipmen have been known to be in bed at taps, and visiting in quarters of other midshipmen ten minutes later. True, the electric light in rooms is turned off at taps -- -but midshipmen have been known to keep candles hidden, and to be experts in clouding doors and windows so that no ray of light gets through into a corridor after taps.

Just how often discipline officers were accustomed to look in through the night, Dave Darrin did not know from his own knowledge. Usually, at the times of such extra visits, Darrin was too blissfully asleep.

Tonight, however, despite the darkness of the room at present, Dave lay wide awake. No sleep for him before daylight -- -perhaps not then -- -unless Dan turned up in the meantime.

After an interval that seemed several nights long, the dull old bell of the clock over on academic Hall began tolling. Dave listened and counted. He gave an almost incredulous snort when the total stopped at eleven.

Then another long period of waiting. Darrin did not grow drowsy. On the contrary, he became more wide awake. In fact, he began to imagine that he was becoming possessed of the vision of the cat. Dark as it was in the room, Dave began to feel certain that he could distinguish plainly the ghostly figure of the saving doughface in the alcove opposite.

Twelve o'clock struck. Then more waiting. It was not so very long, this time, however, before there came a faint tapping at the window.

Dave Darrin was out of bed as though he had been shot out. Like a flash he was at the window, peering out. Where, after all, was the cat's vision of which he had thought himself possessed? Some one was outside the window. Dave thought he recognized the Naval uniform, but he could not see a line of the face.

Tap-tap-tap! sounded softly. Dave threw the window up stealthily.

"You, Dan?" he whispered.

"Of course," came the soft answer. "Stand aside. Let me in -- -on the double-quick!"

Dave pushed the window up the balance of the way, then stepped aside. Dan Dalzell landed on his feet in the room, cat-like, from the terrace without. Then Dave, without loss of an instant, closed the window and wheeled about in the darkness.

"Hustle!" commanded Dave.

"What about?"

"Get off your uniform! Get into pajamas. Then I'll --  -- -"

Dave's jaws snapped together resolutely. He did not finish, just then, for he knew that Midshipman Dalzell could be very stubborn at times.

"I'll have a light in a jiffy," whispered Dan "I brought back a candle with me."

"You won't use it -- -not in here," retorted Dave. "The dark is light enough for you. Hustle into your pajamas."

Perhaps Midshipman Dalzell did not make all the speed that his roommate desired, but at last Dan was safely rid of his uniform, underclothing and shoes, and stood arrayed in pajamas.

"Now, I'll hide this doughface over night," whispered Darrin, going toward Dalzell's bed. "At the same time you get the articles of your equipment out from under your bed clothes and hang them up where they belong."

"I'll have to light the candle for that," muttered Dan.

"If you do, I'll blow it out. There's a regulation against running lights in the rooms after taps."

"Do you worship the little blue-covered volume of regulations, Dave?" Dan demanded with a laugh.

"No; but I don't propose to take any chances in my last year here. I don't intend to lose my commission in the Navy just because I can't control myself."

Dan sniffed, but he silently got his parts of uniform out from between the sheets and hung up the articles where they belonged, in this going by the sense of feeling.

Then, all in the dark as they were, Midshipman Dave Darrin seized his chum and roommate by the shoulders.

"Danny boy," he commanded firmly, "come over with an account of yourself! Why this mad prank tonight -- -and what was it?"



Chapter II

Some One Pushes The Tungsten


You don't have to know every blessed thing that I do, do you?" demanded Dan Dalzell, in an almost offended tone.

"No; and I have no right to know anything that you don't tell me willingly. Are you ready to give me any explanation of tonight's foolishness?

"Seeing that you kept awake for me, and were on hand to let me in, I suppose I'll have to," grumbled Dan.

"Well, then?

"Dave, for the first time tonight, I struck my flag."

"Struck to whom?"

"Oh -- -a girl, of course," grunted Dan.

"You? A girl?" repeated Dave in amazement.

"Yes; is it any crime for me to get acquainted with a girl, and to call on her at her home?"

"Certainly not. But, Dan, I didn't believe that you ever felt a single flutter of the pulse when girls were around. I thought you were going to grow up into a cheerful, happy old bachelor."

"So did I," sighed Dan.

"And now you've gone and met your fate?"

"I'm not so sure about that," Dalzell retorted moodily.

"Do you mean that you don't stand any real show in front of the pair of bright eyes that have made you strike your colors?"

"I'm afraid I don't."

"Dan, is the game worth the candle," argued Darrin.

"You're mightily interested in Belle Meade, aren't you?"

"Yes; but that's different, Danny boy."

"How is it different, I'd like to know?"

"Well, in the first place, there's no guesswork in my case. Belle and I are engaged, and we feel perfectly sure each of the other. I'm so sure of Belle that I dream about her only in my leisure moments. I don't ever let her face come between myself and the pages of a textbook. I am here at the Naval Academy working for a future that Belle is to share with me when the time comes, and so, in justice to her, I don't let the thought of her get between myself and the duties that will lead to the career she is to share with me."

"Humph!" commented Midshipman Dalzell.

"Above all, Dan, I've never Frenched it over the wall. I don't take any disciplinary chances that can possibly shut me off from the career that Belle and I have planned. Belle Meade, Danny boy, would be the first to scold me if she knew that I had Frenched it over the wall in order to meet her."

"Well, Miss Preston doesn't know but what I had regular leave tonight," Danny replied.

"Miss Preston?" repeated Dave his interest taking a new tack. "I don't believe I know her."

"I guess you don't," Dan replied. "She's new in Annapolis. Visiting her uncle and aunt, you know. And her mother's with her."

"Are your intentions serious in this, Danny?" Darrin went on.

"Blessed if I know," Dalzell answered candidly. "She's a mighty fine girl, is May Preston. I don't suppose I'll ever be lucky enough to win the regard of such a really fine girl."

"Then you aren't engaged?"

"Hang it, man! This evening is only the second time that I've met Miss Preston."

"And you've risked your commission to meet a girl for the second time?" Dave demanded almost unbelievingly.

"I haven't risked it much," Dan answered. "I'm in safe, now, and ready to face any discipline officer."

"But wouldn't this matter wait until November, when you're pretty sure to have the privilege of town leave again?" pressed Midshipman Darrin.

"By November a girl like Miss Preston might be married to some one else," retorted Dan Dalzell.

"It was a fool risk to take, Dan!"

"If you look at it that way."

"Will you promise me not to take the risk again, Danny boy?"

"No."

"It's a serious affair, then, so far as you are concerned," grinned Dave, though in the dark Dan could not see his face. "For your sake, Danny, I hope Miss Preston is as much interested in you as you certainly are in her."

"Are you going to lecture me?"

"Not tonight, Dan."

"Then I'm going to get in between sheets. It's chilly here in the room."

"Duck!" whispered Dave with sudden energy.

Footsteps could be heard coming down the corridor. It was a noise like a discipline officer.

Three doors above that of the room occupied by our midshipman friends were opened, one after the other. Then a hand rested on the knob of the door to Dave and Dan's room. The door was opened, and the rays of a pocket electric light flashed into the room.

Dan lay on one side, an arm thrown out of bed, his breathing regular but a trifle loud. Dave Darrin had again found recourse to a snore.

In an instant the door closed. Any discipline officer ought to be satisfied with what this one had seen.

"Safe!" chuckled Dalzell.

"An awfully close squeak," whispered Dave across the intervening room.

"What if he had started his rounds ten minutes earlier?"

"He didn't, though," replied Dan contentedly.

Now another set of footsteps passed hurriedly along the "deck" outside.

"What's that?" questioned a voice sharply. "You say that you saw some one entering a room from the upper end of the terrace?"

"Oh, by George," groaned Dan Dalzell, now beginning to shiver in earnest. "Some meddling marine sentry has gone and whispered tales."

"Keep a stiff upper lip," Dave whispered hoarsely, encouragingly. "If the officer returns don't give yourself away by your shaking."

"But if he asks me?"

"If you're asked a direct question," sighed Dave mournfully, "you'll have to give a truthful answer."

"And take my medicine!"

"Of course."

That annoying discipline officer was now on his way back, opening doors once more. Moreover, the two very wide-awake midshipmen could hear him asking questions in the rooms further along the "deck."

"He's questioning each man," whispered Dave.

"Of course," nodded Dan gloomily.

"It'll be our turn soon."

"D-D-Dave!"

"What?"

"I -- -I'm feeling ill -- -or I'm going to."

"Don't have cold feet, old fellow. Take your dose like a man -- -if you have to."

"D-Dave, I wonder if I couldn't have a real sickness? Couldn't it be something so you'll have to jump up and help me to hospital? Couldn't I have -- -a -- -a fit?"

"A midshipman subject to fits would be ordered before a medical board, and then dropped from the brigade," Dave replied thoughtfully. "No; that wouldn't do."

That meddling discipline officer was getting closer and closer. Dave and Dan could hear him asking questions in each room that he visited. And there are no "white lies" possible to a midshipman. When questioned he must answer truthfully. If the officers over him catch him in a lie they will bring him up before a court-martial, and his dismissal from the service will follow. If the officers don't catch him in a lie, but his brother midshipmen do, they won't report him, but they'll ostracize him and force him to resign. A youngster with the untruthful habit can find no happiness at the Naval Academy.

"He -- -he's in the next room now," whispered Dan across the few feet of space.

"Yes," returned Dave Darrin despairingly, "and I can't think of a single, blessed way of getting you out of the scrape."

"Woof!" sputtered Midshipman Dan Dalzell, which was a brief way of saying, "Here he comes, now, for our door."

Then a hand rested on the knob and the door swung open. Lieutenant Adams, U.S.N., entered the room.

"Mr. Darrin, are you awake?" boomed the discipline officer.

Dave stirred in bed, rolled over so that he could see the lieutenant, and then replied:

"Yes, sir."

"Rise, Mr. Darrin, and come to attention."

Dave got out of bed, but purposely stumbled in doing so. This might give the impression that he had been actually awakened.

"Mr. Darrin," demanded Lieutenant Adams, "have you been absent from this room tonight?"

"Yes, sir."

"After taps was sounded?"

"No, sir."

"You are fully aware of what you have answered?"

"Yes, sir."

"Very good."

That was all. A midshipman's word must be taken, for he is a gentleman -- -that is to say, a man of honor.

"Mr. Dalzell!"

Poor Dan stirred uneasily.

"Mr. Dalzell!" This time the Naval officer's voice was sharper.

Dan acted as though he were waking with difficulty. He had no intention, in the face of a direct question, of denying that he had been absent without leave. But he moved thus slowly, hoping desperately that the few seconds of time thus rained would be sufficient to bring to him some inspiration that might save him.

"Mr Dalzell, come to attention!"

Dan stood up, the personification of drowsiness, saluted, then let his right hand fall at his side and stood blinking, bracing for them correct military attitude.

"It's too bad to disturb the boy!" thought Lieutenant Adams. "Surely, this young man hasn't been anywhere but in bed since taps."

None the less the Naval officer, as a part of his duty, put the question:

"Mr. Dalzell, have you, since taps, been out of this room? Did you return, let us say, by the route of the open window from the terrace?"

Midshipman Dalzell stiffened. He didn't intend to betray his own honor by denying, yet he hated to let out the admission that would damage him so much.

Bang! It was an explosion like a crashing pistol shot, and it sounded from the corridor outside.

There could be no such thing as an assault at arms in guarded Bancroft Hall. The first thought that flashed, excitedly, through Lieutenant Adams's mind was that perhaps the real delinquent guilty of the night's escapade had just shot himself. It was a wild guess, but a pistol shot sometimes starts a wilder guess.

Out into the corridor darted Lieutenant Adams. He did not immediately return to the room, so Dave Darrin, with rare and desperate presence of mind, closed the door.

"Get back into the meadow grass, Danny boy," Darrin whispered, giving his friend's arm a hard grip. "If the 'loot'nant' comes back, get up fearfully drowsy when he orders you. Gape and look too stupid to apologize!"

Lieutenant Adams, however, had other matters to occupy his attention. There was a genuine puzzle for him in the corridor. Just out, side the door of Midshipmen Farley and Page there lay on the floor tiny glass fragments of what had been an efficient sixty-candle-power tungsten electric bulb. It was one of the lights that illuminated the corridor.

Now one of these tungsten bulbs, when struck smartly, explodes with a report like that of a pistol.

At this hour of the night, however, there were none passing save Naval officers on duty. None other than the lieutenant himself had lately passed in the corridor. How, then, had this electric light bulb been shattered and made to give forth the sound of the explosion?

"It wouldn't go up with a noise like that," murmured the lieutenant to himself. "These tungsten lights don't explode like that, except when rapped in some way. They don't blow up, when left alone. At least, that is what I have always understood."

So the puzzle waxed and grew, and Lieutenant Adams found it too big to solve alone.

"At any rate, I've questioned all the young gentlemen about the window episode, and they all deny knowledge of it," Lieutenant Adams told himself. "So I'll just report that fact to the O.C., and at the same time I'll tell him of the blowing up of this tungsten light."

Two minutes later Lieutenant Adams stood in the presence of Lieutenant-Commander Henderson, the officer in charge.

"So you questioned all of the midshipmen who might, by any chance, have entered by a window?" asked the O.C.

"Yes, sir."

"And they all denied it?"

"Yes, sir."

"Did you see signs of any sort to lead you to believe that any of the midshipmen might have answered in other than the strict truth?" continued the O.C.

"No, sir," replied Lieutenant Adams, and flushed slightly, as he went on: "Of course, sir, I believe it quite impossible for a midshipman to tell an untruth."

"The sentiment does you credit, Lieutenant," smiled the O.C. Then he fell to questioning the younger discipline officer as to the names of the midshipmen whom he had questioned. Finally the O.C. came to the two names in which the reader is most interested.

"Darrin denied having been out after taps?" questioned Lieutenant-Commander Henderson.

"He did, sir."

"Did Mr. Dalzell also deny having been out of quarters after taps?"

"He did, sir."

Lieutenant Adams answered unhesitatingly and unblushingly. In fact, Lieutenant Adams would have bitten off the tip of his tongue sooner than have lied intentionally. So firmly convinced had Adams been that Dan was about to make a denial that now, with the incident broken in two by the report of the tungsten bulb, Lieutenant Adams really believed that had so denied. But Dan had not, and had Dave Darrin been called as a witness he would been compelled to testify that Dan did not deny being out.

The explosion of the tungsten bulb was too great a puzzle for either officer to solve. A man was sent with a new bulb, and so that part of the affair became almost at once forgotten.

Dan finally fell into a genuine sleep, and so did Dave Darrin. In the morning Dave sought out Midshipman Farley to inquire to whom the doughface should be returned.

"Give it over to me and I'll take care of it," Farley replied. "Say, did you hear a tungsten bulb blow up in the night!"

"Did It" echoed Darrin devoutly. Then a sudden suspicion crossed his mind.

"Say, how did that happen, Farl?" demanded Dave.

"If anyone should ask you --  -- -" began the other midshipman.

"Yes --  -- -?" pressed Darrin.

"Tell 'em -- -that you don't know," finished Farley tantalizingly, and vanished.

It was not until long after that Darrin found out the explanation of the accident to the tungsten bulb. Farley, during Dan's absence, had been almost as much disturbed as had Dave. So Mr. Farley was wide awake. When he heard Lieutenant Adams receive the message in the corridor Farley began to wonder what he could do. Presently he was made to rise, with Page, stand at attention, and answer the questions of the discipline officer.

Soon after Dave and Dan were called up, Farley, listening with his door ajar half an inch, slipped out and hit the tungsten burner a smart rap just in the nick of time to save Dan Dalzell's Navy uniform to that young man.



Chapter III

Bad News From West Point


Bump! The ball, hit squarely by the toe of Wolgast's football shoe, soared upward from the twenty-five-yard line. It described an arc, flying neatly over and between the goal-posts at one end of the athletic field.

"That's the third one for you, Wolly," murmured Jetson. "You're going to be a star kicker!"

"Shall I try out the rest of the squad, sir?" asked Wolgast, turning to Lieutenant-Commander Parker, this year's new coach.

"Try out a dozen or so of the men," nodded coach, which meant, in effect: "Try out men who are most likely to remain on the Navy team."

"Jetson!" called Wolgast.

Jet tried, but it took his third effort to make a successful kick.

"You see, Wolly, who is not to be trusted to make the kick in a game," remarked Jetson with a rueful smile.

"It shows me who may need practice more than some of the others -- -that's all," answered Wolgast kindly.

With that the ball went to Dave. The first kick he missed.

"I can do better than that, if you'll give me the chance," observed Darrin quietly.

At a nod from Coach Parker, Dave was allowed five more trials, in each one of which he made a fair kick.

"Mr. Darrin is all right. He won't need to practice that very often, Mr. Wolgast," called coach.

Then Dan had his try. He made one out of three.

"No matter, Danny Grin," cried Page solacingly, "we love you for other things that you can do better on the field."

Farley made two out of three. Page, though a rattling good man over on the right flank, missed all three kicks.

"I'm a dub at kicking," he growled, retiring in much disgust with himself.

Other midshipmen had their try, with varying results.

"Rustlers, forward!" shouted Lieutenant-Commander Parker.

Eleven young fellows who had been waiting with more or less patience now threw aside their blankets or robes and came running across the field, their eyes dancing with keen delight.

"Mr. Wolgast, let the Rustlers start the ball -- -and take it away from 'em in snappy fashion!" admonished coach.

The game started. In the second team at Annapolis there were some unusually good players -- -half a dozen, at least, who were destined to win a good deal of praise as subs. that year.

Tr-r-r-r-ill! sounded the whistle, and the ball was in motion.

Yet, try as he did, the captain of the Rustlers made a side kick, driving the ball not far out of Dave Darrin's way. It was coming, now, in Dan's path, but Dalzell muttered in a barely audible undertone:

"You, Davy!"

So Darrin, playing left end on the Navy team, darted in and caught the ball. He did not even glance sideways to learn where Dan was. He knew that Dalzell would be either at his back or right elbow as occasion demanded.

"Take it away from Darry!" called Pierson, captain of the Rustlers. "Block him!"

The scores of spectators lining the sides of the field were watching with keenest interest.

It was rumored that Dave and Dan had some new trick play hidden up their sleeves.

Yet, with two men squarely in the path of Darrin it seemed incredible that he could get by, for the Rustlers had bunched their interference skillfully at this point.

"Darry will have to stop!" yelled a score of voices at once, as Dave bounded at his waiting opponents.

"Yah, yah, yah!"

"Wow!"

"Whoop!"

The spectators had been treated to a sight that they never forgot.

Just as Dave reached those who blocked him he seemed to falter. It was Dan Dalzell who bumped in and received the opposition alone. Dan went down under it, all glory to him!

But Dave, in drawing back as he had done, had stepped aside like lightning, and now he had gone so far that he had no opposing end to dodge.

Instead, he darted straight ahead, leaving all of the forward line of the Rustlers behind.

But there was the back field to meet!

As Dave shot forward, Jetson, too, smashed over the line, blocking the halfback who got in his way.

Straight over the line charged Dave Darrin, and laid the ball down.

Now the athletic field resounded with excited yells. Annapolis had seen "a new one," and it caught the popular fancy like lightning.

Back the pigskin was carried, and placed for the kick.

"You take it, Darry," called Wolgast. "You've earned it!"

"Take it yourself, Wolly," replied Dave Darrin. "This is your strong point."

So Wolgast kicked and scored. The Rustlers at first looked dismayed over it all, but in another instant a cheer had broken loose from them.

It was the business of the Rustlers to harry the Navy team all they could -- -to beat the Navy, if possible, for the Rustlers received their name from the fact that they were expected to make the team members rustle to keep their places.

Just the same the Rustlers were delighted to find themselves beaten by a trick so simple and splendid that it fairly took their breath away. For it was the Navy team, not the Rustlers, who met the enemy from the colleges and from West Point. Rustlers and team men alike prayed for the triumph of the Navy in every game that was fought out.

"You never told me that you had that trick, Darry," muttered Wolgast, in the rest that followed this swift, brilliant play.

"I wanted to show it to you before telling you about it" laughed Dave.

"Why?"

"Because I didn't know whether it were any good."

"Any good? Why, Darry, if you can get up one or two more like that you'll be the greatest gridiron tactician that the Navy has ever had!"

"I didn't get up that one," Dave confessed modestly.

"You didn't, Mr. Darrin?" interposed Coach Parker. "Who did?"

"Mr. Jetson, sir."

"I helped a bit," admitted Jetson, turning red as he found himself the center of admiring gazes. "Dalzell and Darrin helped work it out, too."

"Have you any more like that one, Mr. Darrin?" questioned Coach Parker.

"I think we have a few, sir," Dave smiled steadily.

"Are you ready to exhibit them, Mr. Darrin?"

"We'll show 'em all, if you order it, sir," Darrin answered respectfully. "But we'll undoubtedly spring two or three of 'em, anyway, in this afternoon's practice."

"I'll be patient, then," nodded coach. "But I want a brief talk with you after practice, Mr. Darrin."

"Very good, sir."

"I just want you to sketch out the new plays to me in private, that I may consider them," explained the lieutenant-commander.

"Yes, sir. But I am not really the originator of any of the new plays. Mr. Dalzell and Mr. Jetson have had as much to do with all of the new ones as I have, sir."

"And this is Darrin's last year! The Navy will never have his like again," groaned one fourth classman to another.

"Ready to resume play!" called coach. "Navy to start the ball."

The play was on again, in earnest, but this time it fell to the right flank of, the Navy team to stop the onward rush of the Rustlers as they charged down with the ball after the Navy's kick-off.

In fact, not during the team practice did Dave or Dan get a chance to show another of their new tricks.

"Just our luck!" grunted many of the spectators.

Meanwhile Dave, Dan and Jet got out of their togs, and through with their shower baths as quickly as they could, for Lieutenant-Commander Parker was on hand, awaiting them impatiently.

Until close to supper call did the coach hold converse with these three men of the Navy's left flank. Then the lieutenant-commander went to Midshipman Wolgast, who was waiting.

"Mr. Wolgast, I see the Army's banner trailed low in the dust this year," laughed coach. "These young gentlemen have been explaining to me some new plays that will cause wailing and gnashing of teeth at West Point."

"I'm afraid, sir, that you forget one thing," smiled Darrin.

"What is that, sir?" demanded coach.

"Why, sir, the Army has Prescott and Holmes, beyond a doubt, for they played last year."

"I saw Prescott and Holmes last year," nodded Mr. Parker. "But they didn't have a thing to compare with what you've just been explaining to me."

"May I remark, sir, that that was last year?" suggested Dave.

"Then you think that Prescott and Holmes may have developed some new plays."

"I'd be amazed, sir, if they hadn't done so. And I've tried to have the Navy always bear in mind, sir, that Dalzell and myself learned everything we know of football under Dick Prescott, who, for his weight, I believe to be the best football player in the United States!"

"You're not going to get cold feet, are you, Mr. Darrin?" laughed Lieutenant-Commander Parker.

"No, sir; but, on the other hand, I don't want to underestimate the enemy."

"You don't seem likely to commit that fault, Mr. Darrin. For my part," went on coach, "I'm going to feel rather satisfied that Prescott and Holmes, of the Army, won't be able to get up anything that will equal or block the new plays you've been describing to me."

Dave and Dan were more than usually excited as they lingered in their room, awaiting the call to supper formation. Farley and Page, all ready to respond to the call, were also in the room.

"I hope old Dick and Greg haven't got anything new that will stop us!" glowed Dan Dalzell.

"It's just barely possible, of course," assented Darrin, "that they haven't."

"If they haven't," chuckled Farley gleefully, "then we scuttle the Army this year."

"Wouldn't it be truly great," laughed Page, "to see the great Prescott go down in the dust of defeat. Ha, ha! I can picture, right now, the look of amazement on his Army face!"

"We mustn't laugh too soon," Dave warned his hearers.

"Don't you want to see the redoubtable Prescott shoved into the middle of next year?" challenged Midshipman Page.

"Oh, yes; of course. Yet that's not because he's Prescott, for good old Dick is one of the most precious friends I have in the world," Dave answered earnestly. "I want to see Prescott beaten this year, and I want to have a hand in doing it -- -simply for the greater glory of the Navy!"

"Well," grunted Page, "that's good enough for me."

"We'll trail Soldier Prescott in the dust!" was a gleeful boast that circulated much through the Naval Academy during the few succeeding days.

Even Dave became infected with it, for he was a loyal Navy man to the very core. He began to think much of every trick of play that could possibly help to retire Dick Prescott to the background -- -all for the fame of the Navy and not for the hurt of his friend.

Dave even dreamed of it at night.

As for Dalzell, he caught the infection, proclaiming:

"We're out, this year, just to beat old Prescott and Holmes!"

Yet readers of the High School Boys' Series, who know the deep friendship that had existed, and always would, between Prescott and Holmes on the one side, and Darrin and Dalzell, on the other, do not need to be told that this frenzied feeling had in it nothing personal.

"If you two go on," laughed Midshipman Farley, one evening after release, "you'll both end up with hating your old-time chums."

"Don't you believe it!" retorted Dave Darrin almost sharply. "This is just a matter between the two service academies. What we want is to show the country that the Navy can put up an eleven that can walk all around the Army on Franklin Field."

"A lot the country cares about what we do!" laughed Page.

"True," admitted Dare. "A good many people do seem to forget that there are any such American institutions as the Military and the Naval Academies. Yet there are thousands of Americans who are patriotic enough to be keenly interested in all that we do."

"This is going to be a bad year for Army friends," chuckled Farley.

"And for the feelings of Cadets Prescott and Holmes," added Page with a grimace.

As the practice went on the spirits of the Navy folks went up to fever heat. It was plain that, this year, the Navy eleven was to make history in the world of sports.

"Poor old Dick!" sighed Darrin one day, as the members of the squad were togging to go on to the field.

"Why?" Dan demanded.

"Because, in spite of myself, I find that I am making a personal matter of the whole business. Dan, I'm obliged to be candid with myself. It has come to the point that it is Prescott and Holmes that I want to beat!"

"Same case here," Dan admitted readily. "They gave us a trouncing last year, and we're bound to pass it back to 'em."

"I believe I'd really lose all interest in the game, if Dick and Greg didn't play on the Army this year."

"I think I'd feel the same way about it," agreed Dan. "But never fear -- -they will play."

Two days later Dan finished his bath and dressing, after football practice, to find that Dave had already left ahead of him. Dan followed to their quarters in Bancroft Hall, to find Dave pacing the floor, the picture of despair.

"Dan!" cried Darrin sharply. "This letter is from Dick. He doesn't play this year!"

"Don't tell me anything funny, like that, when I've got a cracked lip," remonstrated Midshipman Dalzell.

"Dick doesn't play, I tell you -- -which means that Greg won't, either. A lot of boobs at the Military Academy have sent Dick to Coventry for something that he didn't do. Dan, I don't care a hang about playing this year -- -we can't beat Prescott and Holmes, for they won't be there!"



Chapter IV

Dave's Work Goes Stale


"Aye, you're not -- -not joking?" demanded Dan Dalzell half piteously.

"Do you see any signs of mirth in my face?" demanded Dave Darrin indignantly.

Rap-tap! Right after the summons Midshipman Farley and Page entered the room.

"Say, who's dead?" blurted out Farley, struck by the looks of consternation on the faces of their hosts.

"Tell him, Dave," urged Dan.

"Prescott and Holmes won't play on this year's Army team," stated Darrin.

"Whoop!" yelled Farley gleefully. "And that was what you're looking so mighty solemn about? Cheer up, boy! It's good news."

"Great!" seconded Midshipman Page with enthusiasm.

"I tell you, fellows," spoke Dave solemnly, "it takes all the joy out of the Army-Navy game."

"Since when did winning kill joy?" demanded Farley aghast. "Why, with Prescott and Holmes out of it the Navy will get a fit of crowing that will last until after Christmas!"

"It makes the victory too cheap," contended Darrin.

"A victory is a victory," quoth Midshipman Page, "and the only fellow who can feel cheap about it is the fellow who doesn't win. Cheer up, Davy. It's all well enough to wallop a stray college, here and there, but the one victory that sinks in deep and does our hearts good is the one we carry away from the Army. Whoop! I could cry for joy."

"But why won't Prescott and Holmes play this year?" asked Farley, his face radiant with the satisfaction that the news had given him.

"Because the corps has sent Prescott to Coventry for something that I'm certain the dear old fellow never did," Darrin replied.

"Lucky accident!" muttered Farley.

"But the corps will repent, when they find their football hope gone," predicted Page, his face losing much of its hitherto joyous expression.

"No! No such luck," rejoined Midshipman Darrin. "If the brigade, here, sent a fellow to Coventry for what they considered cause, do you mean to tell me that they'd take the fellow out of Coventry just to get a good player on the eleven?"

"No, of course, not," Page admitted.

"Then do you imagine that the West Point men are any more lax in their views of corps honor?" pressed Dave.

"To be sure they are not -- -they can't be."

"Then there's only a chance in a thousand that Dick Prescott will, by any lucky accident, be restored to favor in the corps -- -at least, in time to play on this year's eleven. If he doesn't play, Holmes simply won't play. So that takes all the interest out of this year's Army-navy game."

"Not if the Navy wins," contended Midshipman Page.

"Bosh, there's neither profit nor honor in the Navy winning, unless it's against the best men that the Army can put forth," retorted Dave Darrin stubbornly. "By the great Dewey, I'm afraid nine tenths of my enthusiasm for the game this year has been killed by the miserable news that has come in."

Within less than five minutes after the midshipmen had seated themselves around the scores of tables in the mess hall, the news had flown around that Prescott and Holmes were to be counted as out of the Army eleven for this year.

Here and there suppressed cheers greeted the announcement The bulk of the midshipmen, however, were much of Dave Darrin's opinion that there was little glory in beating less than the best team that the Army could really put forth.

"Darry looks as though he had just got back from a funeral," remarked one member of the third class to another youngster.

"I don't blame him," replied the one so addressed.

"But he's all the more sure of winning over the Army this year."

"I don't believe either of you youngsters know Darrin as well as I do," broke in a second classman. "What I'm afraid of is, if Prescott and Holmes don't play with the soldiers, then Darry will lose interest in the game to such a degree that even Army dubs will be able to take his shoestrings away from him. Danny doesn't enjoy fighting fourth-raters. It's the big game that he enjoys going after. Why, I'm told that he had simply set his heart on pushing Prescott and Holmes all the way across Franklin Field this year."

Readers who are anxious to know why Dick Prescott, one of the finest of American youths, had been sent to Coventry by his comrades at the United States Military Academy, will find it all set forth in the concluding volume of the West Point Series, entitled "Dick Prescott's Fourth Year At West Point."

Strangely enough, the first effect of this news from West Point was to send the Navy eleven somewhat "to the bad." That is to say, Dave Darrin, despite his best endeavors, seemed to go stale from the first hour when he knew that he was not to meet Dick Prescott on the gridiron.

"Mr. Darrin, what ails you?" demanded coach kindly, at the end of the second practice game after that.

"I don't know, sir."

"You must brace up."

"Yes, sir."

"You seem to have lost all ambition. No; I won't just say that. But you appear, Mr. Darrin, either to have lost some of your snap or ambition, or else you have gone unaccountably stale."

"I realize my defects, sir, and I am trying very, very hard to overcome them."

"Are you ill at ease over any of your studies?" persisted coach.

"No, sir; it seems to me that the fourth year studies are the easiest in the whole course."

"They are not, Mr. Darrin. But you have had the advantage of three hard years spent in learning how to study, and so your present course appears rather easy to you. Are you sleeping well?"

"Yes, sir."

"Eating well?"

"Splendid appetite, sir."

"Hm! I shall soon have a chance to satisfy myself on that point, Mr. Darrin. The day after to-morrow the team goes to training table. Have you any idea, Mr. Darrin, what is causing you to make a poorer showing?"

"I have had one very great disappointment, sir. But I'd hate to think that a thing like that could send me stale."

"Oh, a disappointment?"

"Yes, sir," Dave went on frankly. "You see, sir, I have been looking forward, most eagerly, to meeting Prescott and downing him with the tricks that Jetson, Dalzell and I have been getting up."

"Oh! Prescott of the Army team?"

"Yes, sir."

"I think I heard something about his having been sent to Coventry at the Military Academy."

"But, Mr. Darrin, you are not going to fail us just because the Army loses a worthy player or two?" exclaimed Lieutenant-Commander Parker in astonishment.

"Probably that isn't what ails me, sir," Dave answered flushing. "After all, sir, probably I'm just beginning to go stale. If I can't shake it off no doubt I had better be retired from the Navy eleven."

"Don't you believe it!" almost shouted coach. "Mr. Darrin, you will simply have to brace! Give us all the best that's in you, and don't for one instant allow any personal disappointments to unfit you. You'll do that, won't you?"

"Yes, sir."

Darrin certainly tried hard enough. Yet just as certainly the Navy's boosters shook their heads when they watched Darrin's work on the field.

"He has gone stale," they said. "The very worst thing that could happen to the Navy this year!"

Then came the first game of the season -- -with Lehigh. Darrin roused himself all he could, and his playing was very nearly up to what might have been expected of him -- -though not quite.

The visitors got away with a score of eight to five against the Navy.

Next week the Lehighs went to West Point and suffered defeat at the hands of the Army.

The news sent gloom broadcast through the Naval Academy.

"We get beaten by one of the smaller colleges, that West Point can trim," was the mournful comment.

It did, indeed, look bad for the Navy!



Chapter V

Dan Hands Himself Bad Money


As the season went on it was evident that Dave Darrin was slowly getting back to form.

Yet coach was not wholly satisfied, nor was anyone else who had the triumph of the Navy eleven at heart.

Three more games had been played, and two of them were won by the Navy. Next would come Stanford College, a hard lot to beat. The Navy tried to bolster up its own hopes; a loss to Stanford would mean the majority of games lost out of the first five.

True, the news from West Point was not wholly disconcerting to the Navy. The Army that year had some strong players, it was true; still, the loss of Prescott and Holmes was sorely felt. Word came, too, in indirect ways, that there was no likelihood whatever that the Coventry against Cadet Dick Prescott would be lifted. It was the evident purpose of the Corps of Cadets, for fancied wrongs, to ostracize Dick Prescott until he found himself forced to resign from the United States Military Academy.

November came in. Stanford came. Coach talked to Dave Darrin steadily for ten minutes before the Navy eleven trotted out on to the field. Stanford left Annapolis with small end of the score, in a six-to-two game, and the Navy was jubilant.

"Darrin has come back pretty close to his right form," was the general comment.

For that Saturday evening Dan Dalzell, being now "on privilege" again, asked and received leave to visit in town -- -this the more readily because his work on the team had prevented his going out of the Yard that afternoon.

Dave, too, requested and secured leave to go into town, though he stated frankly that he had no visit to make, and wanted only a stroll away from the Academy grounds.

Darrin went most of the way to the Prestons.

"Come right along through, and meet Miss Preston," urged Dan.

"If you ask it as a favor I will, old chap," Dave replied.

"No; I thought the favor would be to you."

"So it would, ordinarily," Darrin replied gallantly. "But to-night I just want to stroll by myself."

"Ta-ta, then." The grin on Dan Dalzell's face as he turned away from his chum was broader than usual. Dan was thinking that, this time, though his call must be a short one, he would be in no danger on his return. He could report unconcernedly just before taps.

"No doughface need apply to-night," chuckled Dan. "But Davy was surely one awfully good fellow to get me through that other scrape as he did."

All thought of football fled from Dan Dalzell's brain as he pulled the bellknob at the Preston house.

After all this was to be but the third meeting. Dan fancied, however, that absence had made his heart fonder. Since the night when he had Frenched it over the wall Dan had received two notes from Miss Preston, in answer to his own letters, but the last note was now ten days' old.

"May I see Mrs. Preston?" asked Dan, as a colored servant opened the door and admitted him.

This was Dan's correct idea of the way to call on a young woman to whom he was not engaged, but half hoped to be, some day.

The colored maid soon came back.

"Mrs. Preston is so very busy, sah, that she asks to be excused, sah," reported the servant, coming into the parlor where Dan sat on the edge of a chair. "But Mistah Preston will be down right away, sah."

A moment later a heavier step was heard on the stairway. Then May Preston's uncle came into the parlor.

"You will pardon Mrs. Preston not coming down stairs to-night, I know, Mr. Dalzell," said the man of the house, as he and the midshipman shook hands. "The truth is, we are very much occupied to-night."

"I had not dreamed of it, or I would not have called," murmured Dan reddening. "I trust you will pardon me."

"There is no need of pardon, for you have not offended," smiled Mr. Preston. "I shall be very glad to spare you half an hour, if I can interest, you."

"You are very kind, sir," murmured Dan. "And Miss Preston --  -- "

"My niece?"

"Yes, sir."

"It is mainly on my niece's account that we are so busy to-night," smiled the host.

"She is not ill, sir?" asked Dan in alarm.

"Ill! Oh, dear me, no!"

Mr. Preston laughed most heartily.

"No; she is not in the least ill, Mr. Dalzell, though, on Monday, she may feel a bit nervous toward noon,"

"Nervous -- -on Monday?" asked Dan vaguely. It seemed rank nonsense that her uncle should be able to predict her condition so definitely on another day.

"Why, yes; Monday is to be the great day, of course."

"Great day, sir? And why 'of course'?" inquired Dan, now as much interested as he was mystified.

"Why, my niece is to be married Monday at high noon."

"Married?" gasped Midshipman Dalzell, utterly astounded and discomfited by such unlooked-for news.

"Yes; didn't you know Miss Preston was engaged to be married?"

"I -- -I certainly did not," Dan stammered.

"Why, she spoke to you much of 'Oscar' --  -- -"

"Her brother?"

"No; the man who will be her husband on Monday," went on Mr. Preston blandly. Being quite near-sighted the elder man had not discovered Dan's sudden emotion. "That is what occupies us to-night. We leave on the first car for Baltimore in the morning. Mrs. Preston is now engaged over our trunks."

"I -- -I am very certain, then, that I have come at an unseasonable time," Dan answered hastily. "I did not know -- -which fact, I trust, will constitute my best apology for having intruded at such a busy season, Mr. Preston."

"There has been no intrusion, and therefore no apology is needed, sir," replied Mr. Preston courteously.

Dan got out, somehow, without staggering, or without having his voice quiver.

Once in the street he started along blindly, his fists clenched.

"So that's the way she uses me, is it?" he demanded of himself savagely. "Plays with me, while all the time the day for her wedding draws near. She must be laughing heartily over -- -my greenness! Oh, confound all girls, anyway!"

It was seldom that Midshipman Dalzell allowed himself to get in a temper. He had been through many a midshipman fight without having had his ugliness aroused. But just now Dan felt humiliated, sore in spirit and angry all over -- -especially with all members of the gentler sex.

He even fancied that Mr. Preston was at that moment engaged in laughing over the verdant midshipman. As a matter of fact, Mr. Preston was doing nothing of the sort. Mr. Preston had not supposed that Dan's former call had been intended as anything more than a pleasant social diversion. The Prestons supposed that every one knew that their niece was betrothed to an excellent young fellow. So, at this particular moment, Mr. Preston was engaged in sitting on a trunk, while his wife tried to turn the key in the lock. Neither of them was favoring Midshipman Dalzell with as much as a thought.

"Why on earth is it that all girls are so tricky?" Dan asked himself savagely, taking it for granted that all girls are "tricky" where admirers are concerned.

"Oh, my, what a laugh Davy will have over me, when he hears!" was Dan's next bitter thought, as he strode along.

Having just wronged all girls in his own estimation of them, Dan was now proceeding to do his own closest chum an injustice. For Dave Darrin was too thorough a gentleman to laugh over any unfortunate's discomfiture.

"What a lucky escape I had from getting better acquainted with that girl!" was Dalzell's next thought. "Why, with one as wholly deceitful as she is there can be no telling where it would all have ended. She might have drawn me into troubles that would have resulted in my having to leave the service!"

Dan had not the least desire to do any one an injustice, but just now he was so astounded and indignant that his mind worked violently rather than keenly.

"Serves me right!" sputtered Dalzell, at last. "A man in the Navy has no business to think about the other sex. He should give his whole time and thought to his profession and his country. That's what I'll surely do after this."

Having reached this conclusion, the midshipman should have been more at peace with himself, but he wasn't. He had been sorely, even if foolishly wounded in his own self esteem, and it was bound to hurt until the sensation wore off.

"You'll know more, one of these days, Danny boy," was his next conclusion. "And what you know will do you a lot more good, too, if it doesn't include any knowledge whatever of girls -- -except the disposition and the ability to keep away from 'em! I suppose there are a few who wouldn't fool a fellow in this shameless way but it will be a heap safer not to try to find any of the few!"

Dan's head was still down, and he was walking as blindly as ever, when he turned a corner and ran squarely into some one.

"Why don't you look out where you're going?" demanded that some one.

"Why don't you look out yourself?" snapped Midshipman Dalzell, and the next instant a heavy hand was laid upon him.



Chapter VI

The "Forgot" Path To Trouble


"Here, confound you! I'll teach you to --  -- -"

"Teach me how to walk the way you were going when I stopped you?" demanded the same voice, and a harder grip was taken on Dalzell's shoulder.

In his misery Dan was not at all averse to fighting, if a good excuse were offered. So his first move was not to look up, but to wrest him self out of that grip, haul away and put up his guard.

"Dave Darrin!" gasped Midshipman Dan, using his eyes at last.

Dave was laughing quietly.

"Danny boy, you shouldn't cruise without lights and a bow watch!" admonished Dave. "What sent your wits wool gathering? You look terribly upset over something."

"Do I?" asked Dan, looking guilty.

"You certainly do. And see here, is this the way to the Preston house?"

"No; it's the way away from it."

"But you had permission to visit at the Prestons."

"That isn't any news to me," grunted Dalzell.

"Then -- -pardon me -- -but why aren't you there?"

"Are you the officer of the day?" demanded Dan moodily.

"No; merely your best friend."

"I beg your pardon, Dave. I am a grouch tonight."

"Wasn't Miss Preston at home."

"I -- -I don't know."

"Don't know? Haven't you been there?"

"Yes; but I didn't ask --  -- -"

As Dan hesitated Dave rested both hands on his chum's shoulders, looking sharply into that young man's eyes.

"Danny, you act as though you were loco. (crazy). What on earth is up? You went to call on Miss Preston. You reached the house, and evidently you left there again. But you don't know whether Miss Preston was in; you forgot to ask. Let me look in at the answer to the riddle."

"Dave -- -Miss Preston is going to be married!"

"Most girls are going to be," Darrin replied quietly. "Do you mean that Miss Preston is going to marry some one else than yourself?"

"Yes."

"Soon?"

"Monday noon."

Dave Darrin whistled.

"So this is the meaning of your desperation? Danny boy, if you're stung, I'm sincerely sorry for you."

"I don't quite know whether I want any sympathy," Dan replied, though he spoke rather gloomily. "Perhaps I'm to be congratulated."

He laughed mirthlessly, then continued:

"When a girl will treat a fellow like that, isn't it just as well to find out her disposition early?"

"Perhaps," nodded Darrin. "But Danny, do you mean to say that you attempted to pay your call without an appointment?"

"What was the need of an appointment?" demanded Dan. "Miss Preston invited me to call at any time -- -just drop in. Now, she must know that Saturday evening is a midshipman's only chance at this time of the year."

"Nevertheless, you were wrong at that point, in the game," Dave went on gravely. "Unless you're on the best of terms with a young lady, don't attempt to call on her without having learned that your purpose will be agreeable to her. And so Miss Preston, while receiving your calls, has been engaged to some one else?"

Dan nodded, adding, "She might have given me some hint, I should think."

"I don't know about that," Darrin answered thoughtfully. "Another good view of it would be that a young lady's private affairs are her own property. Didn't she ever mention the lucky fellow to you?"

"It seems that she did," Dalzell assented. "But I thought, all the time, that she was talking about her brother."

"Why should you especially think it was her brother whom she was mentioning?"

"Because she seemed so mighty fond of the fellow," Dan grunted.

Dave choked a strong impulse to laugh.

"Danny boy," he remarked, "girls, very often, are mighty fond, also, of the fellow to whom they're engaged."

"Why did she let me call?" demanded Dan gloomily.

"How often have you called?" inquired Midshipman Darrin.

"Once, before to-night."

"Only once? Then, see here, Danny! Don't be a chump. When you call on a girl once, and ask if you may call some other time, how on earth is she to guess that you're an intended rival of the man she has promised to marry?"

"But --  -- -" That was as far as Midshipman Dalzell got. He halted, wondering what he really could say next.

"Dan, I'm afraid you've got an awful lot to learn about girls, and also about the social proprieties to be observed in calling on them. As to Miss Preston receiving a call from you, and permitting you to call again, that was something that any engaged girl might do properly enough. Miss Preston came to Annapolis, possibly to learn something about midshipman life. She met you and allowed you to call. Very likely she permitted others to call. From what you've told me I can't see that she treated you unfairly in any way; I don't believe Miss Preston ever guessed that you had any other than the merest social reasons for calling."

"And I'm not sure that I did have," grunted Dalzell.

Dave shot another swift look into his chum's face before he said:

"Danny boy, your case is a light one. You'll recover speedily. Your vanity has been somewhat stung, but your heart won't have a scar in three days from now."

"What makes you think you know so much about that?" insisted Dan, drawing himself up with a dignified air.

"It isn't hard to judge, when it's another fellow's case," smiled Darrin. "I believe that, at this minute, I understand your feelings better than you do yourself."

"I don't know about my feelings," proclaimed Dan gloomily still, "but I do know something about my experience and conclusions. No more girls for me!"

"Good idea, Danny boy," cried Darrin, slapping his friend on the back. "That's the best plan for you, too."

"Why?"

"Because you haven't head enough to understand girls and their ways."

"I don't want to."

"Good! I hope you will keep in that frame of mind. And now, let's talk of something serious."

"Of what, then?" inquired Dalzell, as the two started to walk along together.

"Football."

"Is that more serious than girls?" demanded Dan Dalzell, suspicious that his friend was making fun of him.

"It's safer, at any rate, for you. Why, if a girl happens to say, 'Delighted to meet you, Mr. Dalzell,' you expect her to give up all other thoughts but you, and to be at home every Saturday evening. No, no, Danny. The company of the fair is not for you. Keep to things you understand better -- -such as football."

Dan Dalzell's eyes shot fire. He was certain, now, that his chum was poking fun at him, and this, in his present temper, Dan could not quite endure.

"So, since we've dropped the subject of girls," Dave continued placidly, "what do you think are our real chances for the balance of this season?"

"They'd be a lot improved," grunted Dan, "if you'd get the grip on yourself that you had at the beginning of the season."

"I know I'm not playing in as good form as I had hoped to," Dave nodded. "The worst of it is, I can't find out the reason."

"A lot of the fellows think you've lost interest since you found that you won't have the great Prescott to play against in the Army-Navy game," Dan hinted.

"Yes; I know. I've heard that suspicion hinted at."

"Isn't it true?" challenged Dalzell.

"To the best of my knowledge and belief, it isn't. Why, Danny, it would be absurd to think that I couldn't play right now, just because Dick isn't to be against us on Franklin Field."

"I know it would sound absurd," Dan replied. "But let us put it another way, Dave. All along you've been working yourself up into better form, because you knew that, otherwise, it was very doubtful whether the Navy could beat the Army on the gridiron. So you had worked yourself up to where you played a better game than ever Dick Prescott thought of doing. Then you hear that poor Dick is in Coventry, and therefore not on the team. You haven't got the great Army man to beat, and, just for that reason, you slack up on your efforts."

"I am not slacking up," retorted Dave with some spirit. "I am doing the best that is in me, though I admit I appear to have gone stale."

"And so something will happen," predicted Dan.

"What will that be?"

"Between now and the game with the Army, Prescott's comrades will find what boobs they've been, and they'll lift the Coventry. Prescott and Holmes will get into the Army team at the last moment, and the fellows from West Point will ride rough-shod over the Navy, just as they did last year."

"Do you really think that will happen?" demanded Darrin eagerly. "Do you really believe that dear old Dick will get out of that Coventry and back on the Army eleven?"

"Well," returned Midshipman Dalzell soberly, "I'll venture a prediction. If you don't get a brace on your playing soon, then it'll be regular Navy luck for Prescott to come to Philadelphia and put on his togs. Then the soldiers will drag us down the field to the tune of 46 to 2."

"I'd sooner he killed on the field than see that happen!" cried Midshipman Dave, his eyes flashing.

"Then don't let it happen! You're the only star on our team, Dave, that isn't up to the mark. If we lose to the Army, this year, Prescott or no Prescott, it will be your fault, Dave Darrin. You're not one of our weak spots, really but you're not as strong as you ought to be and can be if you'll only brace."

"Brace!" quivered Dave. "Won't I, though?"

"Good! Just stick to that."

"Dan!" Darrin halted his chum before a store where dry goods and notions were sold. "Let's go in here --  -- -"

"What, for?" Midshipman Dalzell asked in astonishment.

"I want to make a purchase," replied Dave soberly. "Danny boy, I'm going to buy you a hat pin -- -one at least ten inches long. You're to slip it in, somewhere in your togs. When you catch me lagging -- -practice or game -- -just jab that hat pin into me as far as you can send it."

"Bosh!" retorted Dan impatiently. "Come along."

Dave submitted, in patient silence, to being led away from the store. For some moments the chums strolled along together in silence.

"Now, speaking of Miss Preston," began Dan, breaking the silence at last, "she --  -- -"

"Drop that! Get back to football, Danny -- -it's safer," warned Dave Darrin.

"But --  -- -"

"Hold on, I tell you! You had almost recovered, Danny, in the short space of five minutes. Now, don't bring on a relapse by opening up the old sore. I shall soon begin to believe it was your heart that was involved, instead of your vanity."

"Oh, hang girls, then!" exploded Dan.

"Couldn't think of it," urged Dave gently. "That wouldn't be chivalrous, and even a midshipman is required to be a gentleman at all times. So --  -- -"

"Good evening, gentlemen," spoke a pleasant voice. The midshipmen glanced up, then promptly brought up their hands in salute to an officer whom they would otherwise have passed without seeing.

That officer was Lieutenant Adams, discipline officer.

"Are you enjoying your stroll, Mr. Darrin?" asked Mr. Adams.

"Very much, sir; thank you."

"And you, Mr. Dalzell. But let me see -- -wasn't your liberty for the purpose of paying a visit?"

"Yes, sir," Dan answered, coloring.

"And you are strolling, instead?"

"Yes, sir; the person on whom I went to call was not there."

"Then, Mr. Darrin, you should have returned to Bancroft Hall, and reported your return."

"Yes, sir; I should have done that," Dan confessed in confusion. "The truth is, sir, it hadn't occurred to me."

"Return at once, Mr. Dalzell, and place yourself on report for strolling without permission."

"Yes, sir."

Both midshipmen saluted, then turned for the shortest cut to Maryland Avenue, and thence to the gate at the end of that thoroughfare.

"Ragged!" muttered Dan. "And without the slightest intention of doing anything improper."

"It was improper, though," Dave replied quickly, "and both you and I should have thought of it in time."

"I really forgot."

"Forgot to think, you mean, Dan, and that's no good excuse in bodies of men where discipline rules. Really, I should have gone on report, too."

"But you had liberty to stroll in town."

"Yes; but I'm guilty in not remembering to remind you of your plain duty."

Lieutenant Adams had not in the least enjoyed ordering Dan to place himself on report. The officer had simply done his duty. To the average civilian it may seem that Dan Dalzell had done nothing very wrong in taking a walk when he found the purpose of his call frustrated; but discipline, when it imposes certain restrictions on a man, cannot allow the man himself to be the judge of whether he may break the restrictions. If the man himself is to be the judge then discipline ceases to exist.

"So I've got to stick myself on pap, and accept a liberal handful of demerits, all on account of a girl?" grumbled Dan, as the chums turned into the road leading to Bancroft Hall."

"That is largely because you couldn't get the girl out of your head," Dave rejoined. "Didn't I tell you, Danny, that you hadn't head enough to give any of your attention to the other sex?"

"It's tough to get those demerits, though," contended Dan. "I imagine there'll be a large allowance of them, and in his fourth year a fellow can't receive many demerits without having to get out of the Academy. One or two more such scrapes, and I'll soon be a civilian, instead of an officer in the Navy!"

"See here, Dan; I'll offer an explanation that you can make truthfully. Just state, when you're called up, that you and I were absorbed talking football, and that you really forgot to turn in the right direction while your mind was so full of Navy football. That may help some."

"Yes; it will -- -not!"

Dan Dalzell passed into the outer room of the officer in charge, picked up a blank and filled it out with the report against himself.

Dave was waiting outside as Dan came out from the disagreeable duty of reporting himself.

"Hang the girls!" Dalzell muttered again disgustedly.



Chapter VII

Dan's Eyes Jolt His Wits


Dan Dalzell, on the point of stepping out of Bancroft Hall, wheeled like a flash, and bounded back against Farley, Jetson and Page.

"Don't look!" whispered Dan hoarsely. "Duck!"

"What on earth is the matter?" demanded Midshipman Darrin, eyeing his chum sharply.

"I -- -I don't know what it is," muttered Dan, after he had backed his friends some feet from the entrance.

"What does it look like?" asked Farley.

"Something like a messenger boy," returned Dan.

"Surely, you're not afraid of a messenger boy with a telegram," laughed Darrin. "Little chance that the message is for you, at any rate."

"But -- -it's got a Naval uniform on, I tell you," warned Dan.

"No; you hadn't told us. What is it -- -another midshipman?"

"Not by a jugful!" Dan sputtered. "It's wearing an officer's uniform."

"Then undoubtedly you chanced to glance at an officer of the Navy," Darrin replied, sarcastically soothing. "Brace up, Dan."

"But he's only a kid!" remonstrated Dan. "And he wear a lieutenant's insignia!"

"Bosh! Some officers are quite boyish-looking," remarked Farley. "Come on out, fellows; I haven't forgotten how to salute an officer when I see one."

The others, except Dan, started briskly for the entrance. As for Dalzell, he brought up the rear, grumbling:

"All right; you fellows go on out and see whether you see him. If you don't, then I'm going to report myself at hospital without delay. Really, I can't swear that I saw -- -it."

But at that moment the object of Dan's alarm reached one of the doors of the entrance of Bancroft Hall and stepped briskly inside.

This new-comer's glance fell upon the knot of midshipmen, and he glanced at them inquiringly, as though to see whether these young men intended to salute him.

Surely enough, the newcomer was decidedly boyish-looking, yet he wore the fatigue uniform and insignia of a lieutenant of the United States Navy. If he were masquerading, here was a dangerous place into which to carry his antics.

The five midshipmen brought their right hands hesitatingly to the visors of their uniform caps. The very youthful lieutenant smartly returned their salutes, half smiled, then turned, in search of the officer in charge.

"Scoot! Skip! Let's escape!" whispered Dan hoarsely, and all five midshipmen were speedily out in the open.

"Now, did you fellows really see -- -it -- -or did I have a delusion that I saw you all salute when I did?"

"I saw it," rejoined Farley, "and I claim it, if no one else wants it."

"The service is going to the dogs," growled Page, "when they give away a lieutenant's uniform with a pound of tea!"

"What ails you fellows?" rebuked Dave Darrin. "The man who passed us was a sure-enough lieutenant in the Navy."

"Him?" demanded Midshipman Dalzell, startled out of his grip on English grammar. "A lieutenant? That -- -that -- -kid?"

"He's a lieutenant of the Navy, all right," Dave insisted.

"You're wrong," challenged Page. "Don't you know, Dave, that a man must be at least twenty-one years old in order to hold an officer's commission in the Navy?"

"That man who received our salutes is a Naval, officer," Dave retorted. "I don't know anything about his age."

"Why, that little boy can't be a day over seventeen," gasped Dan Dalzell. "Anyway, fellows, I'm overjoyed that you all saw him! That takes a load off my mind as to my mental condition."

"Whoever he is, he's a Navy officer, and he has trod the bridge in many a gale," contended Dave. "Small and young as he looks, that man had otherwise every bit of the proper appearance of a Navy officer."

"What a joke it will be on you," grinned Page, "when you find the watchman dragging the little fellow away to turn over to the doctors from the asylum!"

The midshipmen were on their way to report for afternoon football work. As they had started a few minutes early, and had time to spare, they had now halted on the way, and were standing on the sidewalk in front of the big and handsome barracks building.

"Can you fellows still use your eyes?" Dave wanted to know. "If you can, look toward the steps of Bancroft."

The officer in charge was coming out. At his side was the very youthful looking one in the lieutenant's uniform.

"The O.C. is decoying the stranger away to turn him over to the watchmen without violence," guessed Midshipman Farley.

Three officers were approaching. These the five midshipmen turned and saluted. In another moment all of the five save Dave Darrin received a sharp jolt. For the O.C. had halted and was introducing the three Navy officers to the youthful one.

"This is Lieutenant Benson, the submarine expert of whom you have heard so much," said the O.C., loudly enough for the amazed middies to hear.

"Sub -- -sub --  -- say, did you fellows hear that?" begged Dan hoarsely.

"Yes," assented Dave calmly. "And say, you fellows are a fine lot to be serving here. You all remember Mr. Benson. He was here last year -- -he and his two submarine friends. We didn't see them, because our class didn't go out on the Pollard submarine boat that was here last year. But you remember them, just the same. You remember, too, that Mr. Benson and his friends were hazed by some of the men in last year's youngster class. You heard about that? A lot of the fellows came near getting ragged, but Benson didn't take offense, and his quick wit pulled that lot of last year's youngsters out of a bad fix."

"Then Benson and his mates are real people?" demanded Dan, still doubtful, if his voice were an indication.

"Yes; and Benson is a real submarine expert, too, even if he is a boy," Dave went on.

"Then he is only a boy?"

"He's seventeen or eighteen."

"Then how can he be a lieutenant?" demanded Dalzell, looking more bewildered.

"He isn't," Dave answered simply.

"But the O.C. introduced him that way."

"And quite properly," answered Darrin, whereat his companions stared at him harder than ever.

"Let's walk along," proposed Dave, "and I'll tell you the little that I know, or think I know, about the matter. Of course, you fellows all know about the Pollard submarine boats? The government owns a few of them now, and is going to buy a lot more of the Pollard craft."

"But that kid officer?" insisted Dan.

"If you'll wait I'll come to that. Benson, his name is; Jack Benson he's commonly called. He and two boy friends got in on the ground floor at the Farnum shipyard. They were boys of considerable mechanical skill, and they found their forte in the handling of submarine boats. They've done some clever, really wonderful feats with submarines. Farnum, the owner of the yard, trusted these boys, after a while, to show off the fine points of the craft to our Navy officers and others."

"But what has that to do with giving Benson a commission in the Navy?" demanded Farley.

"I'm coming to that," Dave replied. "As I've heard the yarn, Benson and his two boy friends attracted attention even from the European governments. The Germans and some other powers even made them good offers to desert this country and go abroad as submarine experts. Our Navy folks thought enough of Benson and his chums to want to save them for this country. So the Secretary of the Navy offered all three the rank and command of officers without the actual commissions. As soon as these young men, the Submarine Boys as they are called, are twenty-one, the Navy Department will bestir itself to give them actual commissions and make them real staff or line officers."

"So that those kids will rank us in the service?" grumbled Dan.

"Well, up to date," replied Dave quietly, "the Submarine Boys have done more for their country than we have. Of course, in the end, we may be admirals in the Navy, even before they're captains. Who can tell?"

"I wonder what Benson is doing here?" murmured Farley.

"Lieutenant Benson," Dave corrected him, "is probably here on official business. If you want exact details, suppose we stop at the superintendent's house and ask him."

"Quit your kidding," grinned Farley.

"So I've got to say 'sir,' if that boy speaks to me?" asked Dan.

"I think it would be better," smiled Darrin, "if you're anxious to escape another handful of demerits."

By the time that the football squad began to assemble on the football field, Dan and his friends found that some of the midshipmen were full of information about the famous Submarine Boys. Readers who may not be familiar with the careers of Lieutenant Jack Benson, Ensign Hal Hastings, and Ensign Eph Somers are referred to the volumes of the Submarine Boys' Series. In "The Submarine Boys and the Middies" will be found the account of the hazing that Jack, Hal and Eph had received at the hands of midshipmen.

Benson and his two friends, with a crew of four men, were now at the Naval Academy, having arrived at two o'clock that afternoon, for the purpose of giving the first classmen instruction aboard the latest Pollard submarine, the "Dodger."

But play was called, and that stopped, for the time being, all talk about the Submarine Boys.



Chapter VIII

The Prize Trip On The "Dodger"


The following afternoon, at the hour for instruction in the machine shops, the entire first class was marched down to the basin, where the "Dodger" lay. Squad by squad the midshipmen were taken on board the odd-looking little craft that was more at home beneath the waves than on them.

While the exact place and scale of importance of submarine war craft has not been determined as yet, boats of the Pollard type are certainly destined to play a tremendously important part in the Naval wars of the future. Hence all of the midshipmen were deeply interested in what they saw and were told.

Some of these first classmen were twenty-four years of age, others from twenty to twenty-two. Hence, with many of them, there was some slight undercurrent of feeling over the necessity for taking instruction from such very youthful instructors as Jack Benson, Hal Hastings and Eph Somers.

Had any of this latter trio been inclined to put on airs there might have been some disagreeable feeling engendered in the breasts of some of the middies. But Jack and his associates were wholly modest, pleasant and helpful.

Beginning on the following day, it was announced, the "Dodger" would take a squad of six midshipmen down Chesapeake Bay for practical instruction in submarine work, both above and below the surface of the water. This instruction would continue daily, with squads of six midshipmen on board, until all members of the first class had received thorough drilling.

"That's going to be a mighty pleasant change from the usual routine here," whispered Farley in Dave's ear.

"It surely will," Darrin nodded. "It will be even better fun than football."

"With no chance for the Army to beat us out on this game," Farley replied slyly.

At last it came the turn of Dave, Dan, Farley, Page, Jetson and Wolgast to go aboard the "Dodger."

"Gentlemen," announced Lieutenant Jack Benson, "Ensign Somers will show you all that is possible about the deck handling and the steering below the surface, and then Ensign Hastings will explain the mechanical points of this craft. When both are through, if you have any questions. I will endeavor to answer them."

In a few minutes the "showing" had been accomplished.

"Any questions, gentlemen?" inquired Lieutenant Benson.

Dave was ready with three; Farley had four and Jetson two. Lieutenant Benson looked particularly pleased as he answered. Then, at last, he inquired:

"What's your name?"

"Darrin, sir," Dave replied.

The other midshipmen present were asked their names, and gave them.

"Gentlemen," continued youthful Lieutenant Benson, "this present squad impresses me as being more eager and interested in submarines than any of the squads that have come aboard."

"Thank you, sir," Dave replied for himself and the others.

"Are you really exceptionally interested?" inquired Benson.

"I think we are, sir," Dave responded.

"On Saturday of each week, as long as the 'Dodger' is at Annapolis," went on Benson, "we intend to take out one of the best squads. We shall drop down the Bay, not returning, probably before Sunday noon. Would you gentlemen like to be the first squad to go on the longer cruise -- -next Saturday?"

The faces of all six midshipmen shone with delight for an instant, until Dave Darrin answered mournfully:

"It would give us great delight, sir, but for one thing. We play Creighton University next Saturday, and we are all members of the Navy team."

"None of you look forward to having to go to hospital during the progress of the game, do you?" inquired Lieutenant Benson with a slight smile.

"Hardly, sir."

"Then the 'Dodger' can sail an hour after the finish of the game, and perhaps stay out a little later on Sunday. Will that solve the problem?"

"Splendidly, sir!"

"Then I will use such persuasion as I can with the superintendent to have you six men detailed for the Saturday-Sunday detail this week," promised Lieutenant Benson. "And now I will write your names down, in order that there may be no mistake about the squad that reports to me late next Saturday afternoon. Dismissed!"

As Dave and his friends stepped ashore even Dan Dalzell had a more gracious estimate of "that kid, Benson."

That night, and for several nights afterwards, the "Dodger" and her officers furnished a fruitful theme for discussion among the midshipmen. As the "Dodger" was believed to be the very finest submarine craft anywhere among the navies of the world, the interest grew rather than waned.

Dave and Dan, as well as their four friends, began to look forward with interest to the coming cruise down the bay.

"Fellows," warned Wolgast, "you'll have to look out not to get your heads so full of submarines that you lose to Creighton on Saturday."

"On the contrary," retorted Dave, "you can look for us to push Creighton all over the field. We'll do it just as a sheer vent to our new animal spirits."

That was a decidedly boastful speech for Dave Darrin, yet on Saturday he made good, or helped tremendously, for Creighton retired from the field with the small end of an eight-to-two score.

"Now, hustle on the dressing," roared Wolgast, as they started to un-tog and get under the showers, after the football victory.

"What's the need of rush?" demanded Peckham one of the subs.

"It doesn't apply to you," Wolgast shot back over his shoulder, as he started on a run to the nearest shower. "I'm talking only to to-night's submarine squad."

The six midshipmen found many an envious look shot in their direction.

"Those extremely youthful officers seem to have a bad case of spoons on you six," remarked Peckham almost sourly.

"Show some nearly human intelligence, and maybe you'll get a chance at one of the Saturday cruises, Peckham," called back Farley, as he began to towel down vigorously.

Dave and his friends were the first men of the team to be dressed and ready to leave.

"Give our best regards to Davy Jones!" shouted one of the football men.

"If you go down to the bottom of Chesapeake Bay, and can't get up again, don't do anything to spoil the fishing," called another middy.

By this time Dave Darrin and his mates were outside and on their way to the basin.

Lieutenant Jack Benson was the only one of the "Dodger's" officers on view when the midshipmen arrived alongside. They passed aboard, saluting Benson, who returned their salutes without affectation.

"All here?" said Benson. "Mr. Somers, tumble the crew on deck!"

"Shall we go below, sir?" inquired Dave, again saluting.

"Not until so directed," Benson replied. "I wish you to see every detail of the boat handling."

At Lieutenant Jack's command the crew threw the hawsers aboard and soon had them out of the way.

Benson gave the starting signal to Eph Somers.

No sooner had the "Dodger's" hawsers been cast aboard than the submarine torpedo boat headed out. It was a get-away swift enough -- -almost to take the breath of the midshipmen.

"You see, gentlemen," Lieutenant Benson explained quietly, "we act on the theory that in submarine work every second has its value when in action. So we have paid a good deal of attention to the speedy start. Another thing that you will note is that, aboard so small a craft, it is important that, as far as is possible, the crew act without orders for each move. What do you note of the crew just now?"

"That they performed their work with lightning speed, sir, and that they have already gone below, without waiting for orders to that effect."

"Right," nodded Jack Benson. "Had the crew been needed on deck I would have ordered them to remain. As I did not so order they have gone below, where they are out of the way until wanted. A craft that fights always on the surface of the water should have some men of the crew always on deck. But here on a submarine the men would be in the way, and we want a clear range of view all over the deck, and seaward, in order that we may see everything that it is possible to see. Mr. Darrin, Mr. Dalzell and Mr. Farley will remain on deck with me. The other young gentlemen will go below to study the workings of the engines under Ensign Hastings."

Though it was a true pleasure trip for all six of the midshipmen, it was one of hard, brisk instruction all the time.

"Here, you see," explained Lieutenant Jack, leading his trio just forward of the conning tower, "we have a deck wheel for use when needed. Mr. Somers, give up the wheel."

"Aye, aye, sir," and Ensign Eph, who had been sitting at the tower wheel since the start, moved away and came on deck.

"Mr. Darrin, take the wheel," directed Benson. "Are you familiar with the Bay?"

"Not sufficiently, sir, to be a pilot."

"Then I will give you your directions from time to time. How does this craft mind her wheel?"

"With the lightest touch, sir, that I ever saw in a wheel."

"The builders of the 'Dodger' have been working to make the action of the steering wheel progressively lighter with each boat that they have built. Men on a submarine craft must have the steadiest nerves at all times, and steady nerves do not go hand in hand with muscle fatigue."

Lieutenant Jack walked to the entrance to the conning tower. "Mallock!" he called down to one of the crew.

"Aye, aye, sir."

"My compliments to Mr. Hastings, and ask him to crowd the speed of the boat gradually."

"Aye, aye, sir."

The "Dodger" had been moving down the bay at a ten-knot pace. Suddenly she gave a jump that caused Midshipman Dave Darrin to wonder. Then the submarine settled down to a rushing sixteen-knot gait."

"I didn't know, sir," ventured Farley, "that submarines could go quite so fast."

"The old types didn't," Lieutenant Jack answered. "However, on the surface a capable submarine must be able to show a good deal of speed."

"For getting away, sir?"

"Oh, no. Naturally, when a submarine is pursued she can drop under the surface and leave no trail. But suppose a single submarine to be guarding a harbor, unaided by other fighting craft. A twenty-or twenty-two knot battleship is discovered, trying to make the harbor. Even if the battleship steams away the submarine should be capable of following. The engines of the 'Dodger,' in favorable weather, can drive her at twenty-six knots on the surface."

"She's as fast as a torpedo-boat destroyer, then, sir," hazarded Dan.

"Yes; and the submarine needs to be as fast. With the improvement of submarine boats the old style of torpedo boat will pass out altogether. Then, if the destroyer is retained the submarine must be capable of attacking the destroyer on equal terms. Undoubtedly, after a few years more the river gunboat and the submarine torpedo boat will be the only small fighting craft left in the navies of the leading powers of the world."

Even while this brief conversation was going on the speed of the "Dodger" had begun to increase again. Ensign Hasting's head showed through the opening in the conning tower.

"We're going now at a twenty-knot clip, sir," Hal reported. "Do you wish any more speed?"

"Not in Chesapeake Bay; navigating conditions are not favorable."

"Very good, sir." Hal vanished below. Never very talkative, Hal was content to stand by his engines in silence when there was no need of talking.

From time to time, as the craft sped on down the bay, Lieutenant Benson glanced at the chronometer beside the deck wheel.

"You don't have the ship's bell struck on this craft, sir?" inquired Midshipman Darrin.

"Only when at anchor or in dock," replied Lieutenant Jack Benson. "A submarine's natural mission is one of stealth, and it wouldn't do to go about with a clanging of gongs. Now, let me have the wheel, Mr. Darrin. You gentlemen go to the conning tower and stand so that you can hear what goes on below."

While the three midshipmen stood as directed the speed of the "Dodger" slackened.

Then, after a space of a full minute, the submarine returned to her former twenty-knot speed.

"Did you hear any clanging or jangling of a signal bell or gong when the speeds were changed?" questioned Lieutenant Benson.

"No, sir," Darrin answered.

"That was because no bells were sounded," explained Benson. "From deck or conning tower signals can be sent that make no noise. On a dark night, or in a fog, we could manoeuvre, perhaps, within a stone's throw of an enemy's battleship, and the only sound that might betray our presence would be our wash as we moved along. Take the wheel, Mr. Farley."

Then, after giving Farley a few directions as to the course to follow, Lieutenant Benson added:

"Take command of the deck, Mr. Farley."

"Humph!" muttered Dan. "The lieutenant doesn't seem to be afraid that we'll run his craft into any danger."

"He knows as well as we do what would happen to me, if there were any disaster, and I had to explain it before a court of inquiry," laughed Midshipman Farley. "Hello! Who slowed the boat down?"

Dan had done it, unobserved by his comrades, in an irrepressible spirit of mischief. He had reached over, touching the indicator, and thus directing the engine-room man to proceed at less speed. Dalzell, however, did not answer.

"I'd like to know if the speed were slackened intentionally," fussed Farley. "Darry, do you mind going below and inquiring?"

"Not in the least," smiled Dave, "but is it good Naval etiquette for one midshipman to use another midshipman as a messenger?"

"Oh, bother etiquette!" grunted Farley. "What would you really do if you were in command of the deck -- -as I am -- -and you wanted to ask a question, with the answer down below?"

"I'll go to the conning tower and summon a man on deck, if you wish," Dave offered.

Farley nodded, so Dave stepped over to the conning tower, calling down:

"One man of the watch -- -on deck!"

Seaman Mallock was on deck in a hurry, saluting Midshipman Farley.

"Mallock, report to Lieutenant Benson, or the next ranking officer who may be visible below. Report with my compliments that the speed of the craft has slackened, and inquire whether that was intentional."

"Aye, aye, sir."

Mallock was soon back, saluting.

"Engine tender reports, sir, that he slowed down the speed in obedience to the indicator."

"But I --  -- -" Farley began. Then he checked himself abruptly, noting out of the corner of his eye that Dan Dalzell had wandered over to the rail and stood looking off to seaward. If Dan were responsible for the slowing down of the speed, and admitted it under questioning, then Farley, under the regulations, would be obliged to report Dalzell, and that young man already had some demerits against his name.

"Oh, very good, then, Mallock," was Midshipman Farley's rather quick reply. "Who is the ranking officer visible below at present?"

"Ensign Somers, sir."

"Very good. My compliments to Mr. Somers, and ask at what speed he wishes to run."

Seaman Mallock soon returned, saluting.

"Ensign Somers' compliments sir, and the ensign replies that Mr. Farley is in command of the deck."

"Very good, then," nodded Midshipman Farley, and set the indicator at the twenty mark.

Ten minutes later Lieutenant Benson reappeared on deck. First of all he noted the "Dodger's" position. Then, as Ensign Eph and Mallock appeared, Benson announced:

"Gentlemen, you will come down to Supper now. Mr. Somers, you will take command of the deck."

"Very good, sir," Eph responded. "Mallock, take the wheel."

Lieutenant Benson seated himself at the head of the table, with Ensign Hastings on his right. The midshipmen filled the remaining seats.

"We're necessarily a little crowded on a craft of this size," explained Benson. "Also the service is not what it would be on a battleship. We can carry but few men, so the cook must also act as waiter."

At once a very good meal was set on the table, and all hands were busily eating when Eph Somers came down the stairs, saluted and reported:

"Sir, we are on the bottom of Chesapeake Bay, with our nose in the mud!"



Chapter IX

The Treachery Of Morton


To the midshipmen that was rather startling news to receive while in the act of enjoying a very excellent meal.

Lieutenant Jack Benson, however, appeared to take the news very coolly.

"May I ask," he inquired, "whether any of you young gentlemen noticed anything unusual in our motion during the last two or three minutes?"

All six of the midshipmen glanced at him quickly, then at Darrin the other five looked, as though appointing him their spokesman.

"No, sir; we didn't note anything," replied Dave. "We were too busy with our food and with listening to the talk."

"But now you notice something?"

"Yes, sir."

"What?"

"That the boat appears motionless, as though speed had been stopped."

"And that is the case," smiled Benson. "Mr. Somers, soon after the soup was placed on the table, came in from the deck with the one man of his watch, closed the tower and signaled for changing to the electric motors. Then he filled the forward tanks and those amidships, at last filling the tanks astern. We came below so gently that you very intent young men never noticed the change. We are now on the bottom -- -in about how many feet of water, Mr. Somers?"

"About forty, sir," replied Eph.

The six midshipmen stared at one another, then felt a somewhat uncomfortable feeling creeping over them.

"Had it been daylight," smiled Benson, "you would have been warned by the disappearance of natural light and the increased brilliancy of the electric light here below. However, your experience serves to show you how easily up-to-date submarines may be handled."

"What do you think of the way the trick was done?" asked Hal Hastings, looking up with a quiet smile.

"It was marvelous," replied Midshipman Farley promptly.

"I would like to ask a question, sir, if I may," put in Midshipman Jetson.

"Go ahead, sir."

"Were submarines ever handled anywhere near as neatly before you three gentlemen began your work with the Pollard Company?"

"We didn't handle them as easily, at all events," replied Jack with a smile. "It has required a lot of work and practice, night and day. Steward, a plate for Mr. Somers."

"This is the way we generally manage at meal times," smiled Ensign Eph, as he took his place at table. "There's no use in keeping an officer and a man on deck, or a tender at the engines, unless we're going somewhere, in a hurry. So, in a case like this, where the deck officer wants his meal, we just sink into the mud and rest easy until the meal is over."

"Are you giving instruction, or merely seeking to amuse your guests, Mr. Somers?" Lieutenant Jack Benson asked quietly.

"Oh, I forgot," explained Eph, with another smile; "these young gentlemen are not yet acquainted with me. When they are they'll know that no one ever takes me too seriously."

"A bad habit for a superior officer, isn't it?" inquired Benson, looking around at his student guests. "But Mr. Somers may be taken very seriously indeed -- -when he's on duty. He is unreliable at table only."

"Unreliable at table?" echoed Eph, helping himself to a slice of roast meat. "Why, it seems to me that this is the one place where I can be depended upon to do all that is expected of me."

The others now sat back, out of courtesy, looking on and chatting while Ensign Eph Somers ate his meal. "There may be a few questions -- -or many -- -that you would like to ask," suggested Lieutenant Jack Benson. "If so, gentlemen, go ahead with your questions. For that matter, during your stay aboard, ask all the questions you can think of."

"Thank you, sir," replied Midshipman Dave Darrin, with a slight bow. "I have been thinking of one point on which I would be glad of information."

"And that is --  -- -"

"The full complement of this craft appears to consist of three officers and four enlisted men -- -that is, of course, outside of your combined cook and steward."

"Yes," nodded Benson.

"One of the officers is commanding officer; another is deck officer and the third engineer officer."

"Yes."

"Then, on a cruise," pursued Dave, "how can you divide watches and thus keep going night and day?"

"Why, originally," Jack replied, "we put on long cruises with only three aboard -- -the three who are at present officers. With a boat like the 'Dodger,' which carries so few men, the commanding officer cannot stand on his dignity and refuse to stand watch. I frequently take my trick at the wheel. That gives Mr. Somers his chance to go below and sleep."

"Yet Mr. Hastings is your only engineer officer."

"True, but two of our enlisted men are trained as engine-tenders. Our engines are rather simple, in the main, and an enlisted engine-tender can run our engine room for hours at a stretch under ordinary conditions. Of course, if anything out of the usual should happen while Mr. Hastings were taking his trick in his berth, he would have to be wakened. But we can often make as long a trip as from New York to Havana without needing to call Mr. Hastings once from his berth during his hours of rest."

"Then you have two enlisted men aboard who thoroughly understand your engines?" pressed Dave Darrin.

"Ordinarily," replied Hal Hastings, here breaking in. "But one of our engine-tenders reached the end of his enlisted period to-day, and, as he wouldn't re-enlist, we had to let him go. So the new enlisted man whom we took aboard is just starting in to learn his duties."

"Small loss in Morton," laughed Lieutenant Jack Benson. "He was enough of a natural genius around machinery, but he was a man of sulky and often violent temper. Really, I am glad that Morton took his discharge to-day. I never felt wholly safe while we had him aboard."

"He was a bad one," Ensign Hal Hastings nodded. "Morton might have done something to sink us, only that he couldn't do so without throwing away his own life."

"I don't know, sir, what I'd do, if I were a commanding officer and found that I had such a man in the crew," replied Midshipman Darrin.

"Why, in a man's first enlistment," replied Lieutenant Jack, "the commanding officer is empowered to give him a summary dismissal from the service. Morton was in his second enlistment, or I surely would have dropped him ahead of his time. I'm glad he's gone."

Ensign Eph had now finished his meal and was sitting back in his chair. Lieutenant Jack therefore gave the rising sign.

"I want to show the midshipmen everything possible on this trip," said the very young commanding officer. "So we won't lie here in the mud any more. Mr. Somers, you will return to the tower steering wheel, and you, Mr. Hastings, will take direct charge of the engines. I will gather the midshipmen around me here in the cabin, and show the young gentlemen how easily we control the rising of a submarine from the bottom."

Hal and Eph hurried to their stations. The midshipmen followed Jack Benson over to what looked very much like a switchboard. The young lieutenant held a wrench in his right hand.

"I will now turn on the compressed air device," announced Lieutenant Jack. "First of all I will empty the bow chambers of water by means of the compressed air; then the middle chambers, and, lastly, the stern chambers. On a smaller craft than this we would operate directly with the wrench. On a boat of the 'Dodger's' type we must employ the wrench first, but the work must be backed up with the performance of a small electric motor."

Captain Jack rapidly indicated the points at which the wrench was to be operated, adding:

"I want you to note these points as I explain them, for after I start with the wrench I shall have to work rapidly along from bow to stern tanks. Otherwise we would shoot up perpendicularly, instead of going up on a nearly even keel. Mr. Hastings, are you all ready at your post?"

"Aye, aye, sir," came back the engineer officer's reply.

"On post, Mr. Somers?"

"Aye, aye, sir."

Lieutenant Jack applied the wrench, calling snappily:

"Watch me. I've no time to explain anything now."

With that he applied one of the wrenches and gave it a turn. Instantly one of the electric motors in the engine-room began to vibrate.

Almost imperceptibly the bow of the "Dodger" began to rise. Lieutenant Jack, intent on preserving an even keel as nearly as possible, passed on to the middle station with his wrench.

Just as he applied the tool the electric motor ceased running.

"What's the matter, Mr. Hastings?" Jack inquired quietly. "Something blow out of the motor?"

The submarine remained slightly tilted up at the bow.

"I don't know, sir, as yet, what has happened," Hal Hastings answered back. "I'm going over the motor now."

In a moment more he stepped into the cabin, a much more serious look than usual on his fine face.

"This, looks like the man Morton's work," Hal announced holding a small piece of copper up before the eyes of the midshipmen. "Gentlemen, do you notice that the under side of this plate has been filed considerably?"

"Yes, sir," nodded Dan Dalzell, a queer look crossing his face. "Won't the motor operate without that plate being sound?"

"It will not."

The other midshipmen began to look and to feel strange.

"Then are we moored for good at the bottom of the bay?" asked Jetson.

"No; for we carry plenty of duplicate parts for this plate," replied Ensign Hal. "Come into the engine room and I will show you how I fit the duplicate part on."

Hal led the midshipmen, halting before a small work bench. He threw open a drawer under the bench.

"Every duplicate plate has been removed from this drawer," announced Hastings quietly. "Then, indeed, we are stuck in the mud, with no chance of rising. Gentlemen, I trust that the Navy will send divers here to rescue us before our fresh air gives out!"



Chapter X

"We Belong To The Navy, Too!"


"You mean, sir," asked Midshipman Jetson, his voice hoarse in spite of his efforts to remain calm, "that we are doomed to remain here at the bottom of the bay unless divers reach us in time?"

"Yes," nodded Hal Hastings, his voice as quiet and even as ever. "Unless we can find a duplicate plate -- -and that appears impossible -- -the 'Dodger' is wholly unable to help herself."

"If the outlook is as black as it appears, gentlemen," spoke Jack Benson from behind their backs, "I'm extremely sorry that such a disaster should have happened when we had six such promising young Naval officers aboard."

"Oh, hang us and our loss!" exploded Dave Darrin forgetting that he was addressing an officer. "I guess the country won't miss us so very much. But it surely will be a blow to the United States if the Navy's three best submarine experts have to be lost to the country to satisfy a discharged enlisted man's spite."

Eph Somers had come down from the tower. He, too, looked extremely grave, though he showed no demoralizing signs of fear.

As for the six midshipmen, they were brave. Not a doubt but that every one of them showed all necessary grit in the face of this fearful disaster. Yet they could not conceal the pallor in their faces, nor could they hide the fact that their voices shook a little when they spoke.

"Make a thorough search, Mr. Hastings," directed Lieutenant Jack Benson, in a tone as even as though he were discussing the weather. "It's barely possible that the duplicate plates have been only mislaid -- -that they're in another drawer."

Hal Hastings turned with one of his quiet smiles. He knew that the system in his beloved engine room was so exact that nothing there was ever misplaced.

"I'm looking, sir," Hastings answered, as he opened other drawers in turn, and explored them. "But I'm not at all hopeful of finding the duplicate plates. This damaged one had been filed thinner, which shows that it was done by design. The man who would do that trick purposely wouldn't leave any duplicate plates behind."

The four enlisted men and the cook had gathered behind their officers.

"Morton -- -the hound! This is his trick!" growled Seaman Kellogg hoarsely. "Many a time I've heard him brag that he'd get even for the punishments that were put upon him. And now he has gone and done it -- -the worse than cur!"

"No; there are no duplicate parts here," announced Ensign Hastings at last.

"See if you can't fit on the old, worn one," proposed Lieutenant Jack.

"No such luck!" murmured Hal Hastings. "Morton was too good a mechanic not to know bow to do his trick! He hasn't left us a single chance for our lives!"

None the less Hal patiently tried to fit the plate back and make the motor work, Lieutenant Jack, in the meantime, standing by the board with the wrench in hand. In the next ten minutes several efforts were made to start the motor, but all of them failed.

"And all for want of a bit of copper of a certain size, shape and thickness," sighed Midshipman Dan Dalzell.

"It does seem silly, doesn't it," replied Lieutenant Jack with a wan smile.

"At least," murmured Midshipman Wolgast, "we shall have a chance to show that we know how to die like men of the Navy."

"Never say die," warned Ensign Eph Somers seriously, "until you know you're really dead!"

This caused a laugh, and it eased them all.

"Well," muttered Jetson, "as I know that I can't be of any use here I'm going back into the cabin and sit down. I can at least keep quiet and make no fuss about it."

One after another the other midshipmen silently followed Jetson's example. They sat three on either side of the cabin, once in a while looking silently into the face of the others.

Not until many minutes more had passed did the three officers of the "Dodger" cease their efforts to find a duplicate plate for the motor.

Kellogg and another of the seamen, though they met their chance of death with grit enough, broke loose into mutterings that must have made the ears of ex-seaman Morton burn, wherever that worthy was.

"I wish I had that scoundrel here, under my heel," raged Seaman Kellogg.

"It will be wiser and braver, my man," broke in Lieutenant Jack quietly, "not to waste any needless thought on matters of violence. It will be better for us all if every man here goes to his death quietly and with a heart and head free from malice."

"You're right, sir," admitted Kellogg. "And I wish to say, sir, that I never served under braver officers."

"There won't be divers sent after us -- -at least, within the time that we're going to be alive," spoke Midshipman Farley soberly. "In the first place, Chesapeake Bay is a big place, and no Naval officer would know where to locate us."

"Mr. Benson," broke in Jetson suddenly, "I heard once that you submarine experts had invented a way of leaving a submarine boat by means of the torpedo tube. Why can't you do that now?"

"We could," smiled Lieutenant Jack Benson, "if our compressed air apparatus were working. We can't do the trick without compressed air. If we had any of that which we could use, we wouldn't need to leave the boat and swim to the top. We could take the boat to the surface instead."

"Then it's impossible, sir, to leave the boat?" questioned Jetson, his color again fading.

"Yes; if we opened the outer end of the torpedo tube, without being able to throw compressed air in there first, then the water would rush in and drown us."

"I'm filled with wonder," Dan Dalzell muttered to himself. "Staring certain death in the face, I can't understand how it happens that I'm not going around blubbering and making a frantic jackanapes of myself. There's not a chance of living more than an hour or two longer, and yet I'm calm. I wonder how it happens? It isn't because I don't know what is coming to me. I wonder if the other fellows feel just as I do?"

Dan glanced curiously around him at the other midshipmen faces.

"Do you know," said Darrin quietly, "I've often wondered how other men have felt in just such a fix as we're in now."

"Well, how do you feel, Darry?" Farley invited.

"I'm blessed if I really know. Probably in an instant when I fail briefly to realize all that this means my feeling is that I wouldn't have missed such an experience for anything."

"You could have all my share of it, if I could make an effective transfer," laughed Wolgast.

"If we ever do get out of this alive," mused Page aloud, "I don't doubt we'll look back to this hour with a great throb of interest and feel glad that we've had one throb that most men don't get in a lifetime."

"But we won't get out," advanced Jetson. "We're up hard against it. It's all over but the slow strangling to death as the air becomes more rare."

"I wonder if it will be a strangling and choking," spoke Darrin again in a strange voice; "or whether it will be more like an asphyxiation? In the latter case we may drop over, one at a time, without pain, and all of us be finished within two or three minutes from the time the first one starts."

"Pleasant!" uttered Wolgast grimly. "Let's start something -- -a jolly song, for instance."

"Want to die more quickly?" asked Dalzell. "Singing eats up the air faster."

Lieutenant Jack Benson came out of the engine room for a moment. He took down the wrench and went back to the engine room. But first he paused, for a brief instant, shooting at the midshipmen a look that was full of pity for them. For himself, Jack Benson appeared to have no especial feeling. Then the young commanding officer went back into the engine room, closing the door after him.

"What did he shut the door for?" asked Jetson.

"Probably they're going to do something, in there, that will call for a good deal of physical exertion."

"Well, what of that?" demanded Jetson, not seeing the point.

"Why," Dave explained, "a man at laborious physical work uses up more air than a man who is keeping quiet. If the three officers are going to work hard in there then they've closed the door in order not to deprive us of air."

"We called them kids, at first," spoke Dan

Dalzell ruefully, "but they're a mighty fine lot of real men, those three acting Naval officers."

Dave Darrin rose and walked over to the engine room, opening the door and looking in. Hal and Eph were hard at work over the motor, while Lieutenant Jack Benson, with his hand in his pockets, stood watching their efforts.

"I beg your pardon, sir," said Darrin, saluting, "but did you close this door in order to leave more air to us?"

"Yes," answered Jack Benson. "Go back and sit down."

"I hope you won't think us mutinous, sir," Darrin returned steadily, "but we don't want any more than our share of whatever air is left on board this craft. We belong to the Navy, too."

From the after end of the cabin came an approving grunt. It was here that the cook and the four seamen had gathered.

With the door open the midshipmen could see what was going on forward, and they watched with intense fascination.

Eph Somers had taken 'the too-thin copper' plate to the work-bench, and had worked hard over it, trying to devise some way of making it fit so that it would perform its function in the motor. Now, he and Hal Hastings struggled and contrived with it. Every time that the pair of submarine boys thought they had the motor possibly ready to run Hal tried to start the motor. Yet he just as often failed to get a single movement from the mechanism.

"I reckon you might about as well give it up," remarked Lieutenant Jack Benson coolly.

"What's the use of giving up," Eph demanded, "as long as there's any life left in us?"

"I mean," the young lieutenant explained, "that you'd better give up this particular attempt and make a try at something else."

"All right, if you see anything else that we can do," proposed Eph dryly. "Say, here's a quarter to pay for your idea."

Seemingly as full of mischief as ever, Eph Somers pressed a silver coin into Jack Benson's hand.

But Jack, plainly impatient with such trifling, frowned slightly as he turned and pitched the quarter forward.

"This isn't a twenty-five-cent proposition," Benson remarked. "In fact, all the money on earth won't save us this time!"



Chapter XI

A Quarter's Worth Of Hope


"Until some one can think of something else, I'm going to keep on trying the hopeless thing and endeavoring to make this old, thin plate work," declared Hal Hastings, who was still bent over the motor, studying it intently.

Benson had turned back to examine the work, after tossing the coin away, but just as suddenly he glanced forward again.

At the extreme forward end of the engine room of the "Dodger" was another bench. Here were a vise and other heavier tools. On the floor under this bench were stowed many mechanical odds and ends -- -pieces of wood, coils of rope, even a bundle of tent-pegs, though nothing was visible of a metallic nature.

"You fellows keep at work," Jack Benson shot back suddenly over his shoulder.

"Where you going?" demanded Eph.

"Forward."

That much was evident, but Jack was now down on hands and knees carefully yet feverishly moving the wooden articles, cordage and such things from under the forward bench.

"What are you doing?" called Eph. "Go ahead with your work -- -there's no time to be lost," replied Lieutenant Jack.

"Hold this a moment, Eph," Hal Hastings requested, and Somers's attention was forced back to the motor.

Sc-cratch! Flare! Jack Benson was using matches under that work bench, now that be had made some clear space there.

"I wonder if Jack has gone clean daffy?" half chuckled Somers under his breath.

"What are you talking about?" Hastings demanded.

"Jack's lighting matches up forward, under the other bench."

"What if he is?"

"Maybe he thinks he can explode some gasoline and blow us to the surface."

"Quit your nonsense," returned Hal almost angrily, "and help me with this job."

"I'm waiting to see if Jack is going to let out a maniac yell," grimaced Eph Somers.

"Quit your --  -- -"

"Wow! Whoop!" uttered young Benson excitedly. "Never tell me again that it's unlucky to throw money away! Whoop!"

"What did I tell you?" demanded Eph. "If Jack's making a noise like that," retorted Hastings, as be straightened up and wheeled about, "he's got a mighty good reason for it."

"Of course. Every lunatic has loads of good reasons for anything he does," muttered Eph.

"Look here, fellows!" ordered Jack Benson, almost staggering as he approached them.

"Great Dewey! Am I going crazy, too?" muttered Eph, staring hard. "What I think I see in Jack's hands are some of the missing copper plates."

"It's exactly what you do see," announced Jack Benson, his face beaming.

"But how -- -"

"How they came to be there I don't know," Benson replied. "But when I threw away your quarter, Eph, it rolled under the bench. There wasn't supposed to be anything metallic under the bench, but I felt almost, sure that I had heard the silver strike against something metallic. Even then it seemed like a crazy notion to me. I didn't really expect to find anything, but some uncontrollable impulse urged me to go hustling under the bench. And so I found these duplicate plates, wedged in behind a lot of junk and right up against the partition."

Hal Hastings, in the meantime, had taken one of the plates from Lieutenant Jack's hand, and was now quietly fitting it where it belonged on the motor.

The six midshipmen, as soon as they realized what had happened, had sprung eagerly to the door of the engine room and stood peering in. Behind them were the cook and crew of the "Dodger."

Presently Hal straightened up.

"Sir," he said gravely, "I have hopes that if you test the compressed air apparatus you will find that this motor will do its share."

Midshipmen and crew drew back as Jack and Eph came out of the engine room. Lieutenant Jack had his wrench in hand, and went back to his former post.

"Young gentlemen," the commanding officer announced coolly, "we will take up, at the point where we were interrupted, the work of expelling the water from the compartments Are you ready, Mr. Hastings?"

"Right by my post, sir," came from Hal.

The six midshipmen gathered about Benson with a stronger sense of fascination than ever. Eph stepped past them to the stairs leading -- -to the little conning tower.

With steady hand Jack Benson turned the wrench. The motor began to "mote" and there was a sense of being lifted.

"Going up!" sang Ensign Eph, with a grin.

Nor could Dan Dalzell help imitating the grin and calling out jovially:

"Let me out at the top floor, please!"

Having set the compressed air at work on the forward tanks, Jack Benson quickly shifted the wrench, and without a word, getting at work on the midship's compartments. Then the stern tanks were emptied.

"May I come up, sir?" called Dan, his voice trembling with joy, at the foot of the stairs.

"Very good," Eph sang back. "Room for only one, though,"

So Dan Dalzell hastily mounted the iron stairs until he found himself side by side with Eph Somers.

For a few seconds all was inky darkness on the other side of the thick plate glass of the conning tower. Then, all in a flash, Dalzell caught sight of the twinkling stars as the dripping conning tower rose above the top of the water.

"I have the honor to report that all's well again, and that we're on earth once more," Dan announced, as he came down the steps into the little cabin.

"Attention, gentlemen," called Lieutenant Jack Benson, as soon as the "Dodger" was once more under way, her sea-going gasoline engines now performing the work lately entrusted to the electric motors.

At the word "attention" the six midshipmen became rigidly erect, their hands dropping at their sides.

"Gentlemen," continued Benson, "I realize that the late strain has been a severe one on us all. We of the 'Dodger' have been through the same sort of thing before. You midshipmen have not. If you feel, therefore, that you would prefer to have me head about and return to the Naval Academy I give you my word that I shall not think you weak-kneed for making the request."

"Thank you, sir," replied Dave Darrin, "but we belong to the United States Navy and we have no business to suffer with nerves. If our wish alone is to be consulted, we prefer to finish the cruise as we would any other tour of duty."

Dave's five comrades in the Brigade of Midshipmen loved him for that answer!



Chapter XII

Ready To Trim West Point


"Have had an experience, sir, that we shall never forget, and one that we wouldn't have missed!"

Thus spoke Dave Darrin the, following afternoon, as he saluted the young officers of the "Dodger" before going over the side as the boat lay alongside the wall of the basin.

To which the other midshipmen agreed.

"We have enjoyed having you aboard," replied Lieutenant Jack Benson. "None of us will ever forget this cruise."

Then the six midshipmen strode briskly along the walks until they reached Bancroft Hall.

It wasn't long ere news of the adventure of the night before got whispered along the decks. Then Dave and Dan, Farley and Page, Jetson and Wolgast all had so much midshipman company that it was a relief when the evening study hours came around.

All six of the midshipmen had to tell the story of their submarine experience until all of them fairly hated to talk about the matter. Seaman Morton was never heard from again, and so did not come in for his share of the excitement. However, it was not destined to last long, for the football season was at its height and every blue-clad middy thought, talked and dreamed about the Navy team.

A good team it was, too, and a good year for the Navy. The young men of the Naval Academy played one of their most brilliant seasons of football.

Dave, by a bigger effort than any one understood, forced back his interest in the gridiron until he played a brilliant game.

The Navy won more victories than it had done before in any one of fifteen seasons of football.

Yet report said that the Army, too, was playing a superb game, considering that it had been deprived of its two best players, Prescott and Holmes.

Up to the last Dave continued to hope that Cadet Dick Prescott might be restored to the Army eleven. Dick's letters from West Point, however, appeared to indicate clearly that he was not to play. Therefore Greg Holmes wouldn't play.

At last came the fateful day, the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Early the Brigade of Midshipmen was marched over to the trolley line, where a long string of cars waited to receive them.

"We want an extra car to-night," one first classman called jovially to the car inspector who was in charge of the transportation. "We want that extra car to bring back the Army scalp in."

All the way to Baltimore and thence to Philadelphia, Dave Darrin was unusually quiet. Dalzell, on the other hand, made noise enough for both of them.

"Darry hasn't the sulks over anything, has be?" Wolgast anxiously asked Dalzell.

"Don't you believe it," Dan retorted.

"But he's so abominably quiet."

"Saving all his breath to use on the field."

"Are you sure Darry is in form?" persisted Wolgast.

"Yes. Wait and see."

"I'll have to," sighed Wolgast, with another sidelong glance at Darrin's emotionless face.

The Navy team and subs. arrived at dressing quarters nearly an hour before it would be necessary to tog.

As the West Point men were on hand, also, Dave stepped outside. Almost the first man he met was a tall, slim, soldierly looking fellow in the cadet gray.

"Aren't you Fields?" asked Dave, holding out his hand.

"Yes," replied the cadet, giving his own hand.

"And you're Darrin -- -one of the few men we're afraid of."

"Does Prescott play to-day?" Dave asked eagerly.

The West Pointer's brow clouded.

"No," he replied. "Mr. Prescott isn't a subject for conversation at the Military Academy. Mr. Prescott is in Coventry."

"Sad mistake," muttered Darrin.

"Eh?"

"A sad mistake. You men have made a bad bungle; I know it."

"It is a matter of internal discipline in the corps," replied the West Point cadet, speaking much more coldly.

"Yes, I know it," Dave replied quickly, "and I beg your pardon for having seemed to criticise the action of the Corps of Cadets. However, anything that unpleasantly affects Dick Prescott is a sore subject with me. Prescott is one of the best friends I have in the world."

"Why, I've heard something about that," replied Fields in a less constrained tone. "You and Mr. Prescott are old school cronies."

"Of the closest kind," Dave nodded. "That's why I feel certain that Dick Prescott never did, and never could do, anything dishonorable. You'll surely find it out before long, and then the Corps will make full amends."

"I fear not," replied Cadet Fields. "Mr. Prescott had every opportunity given him to clear himself, and failed to do so to the satisfaction of the Corps. Therefore he'll never graduate from the Military Academy. It wouldn't do him any good to try. He'd only be ostracized in the Army if he had the cheek to stay in the Corps."

"Let's not talk about that part of it any more," begged Dave. "But you'll miss Prescott from your fighting line to-day."

"That's very likely," assented the West Point man. "I'm glad we haven't Mr. Prescott here, but we'd be heartily glad if we had some one else as good on the football field."

"And you haven't Holmes, either?" sighed Dave.

"That isn't any one's fault but Holmesy's," frowned Cadet Fields. "We wanted Holmesy to play, and we gave him every chance, but --  -- -"

"But he wouldn't," finished Dave. "No more would I play on the Navy team if the fellows had done anything unjust to Dalzell."

"Do you feel that you're going to have an easy walk-over with us to-day?" demanded Cadet Fields cheerily.

"No; but we're prepared to fight. We'll get the game if it's in any way possible," Darrin assured his questioner.

"Are the bonfires back in Annapolis all ready to be lighted to-night?" inquired Fields smilingly.

"They must be."

"What a lot of unnecessary labor," laughed the West Point man.

"Why?" challenged Dave.

"Because the Army is going to win again." That "again" caused Dave Darrin to wince. "We win almost every time, you know," Fields explained.

"Almost every time?" challenged Dan Dalzell, joining the pair. "Are you sure of your statistics?"

"Oh, I have the statistics, of course," Fields answered. "That's why I speak so confidently."

At this point three more West Point men approached.

"Hey, fellows," called Fields good-humoredly. "Do you know of an impression that I find to prevail among the middies to-day?"

"What is that?" inquired one of the gray-clad cadets, as the newcomers joined the group.

"Why, the middies seem to think that they're going to take the Army's scalp to-day."

"Is that really your idea of the matter?" asked one of the gray-clad cadets.

"So Mr. Fields has said," Dave answered.

"But what do you say?"

"About the most that I feel like saying," Darrin answered as quietly as ever, "is that the Navy prefers to do its bragging afterwards."

"An excellent practice," nodded one of the cadets. "You've acquired the habit through experience, I presume. It has saved your having to swallow a lot of your words on many occasions."

All laughed good-naturedly. Though there was the most intense rivalry between the two government military schools, yet all were gentlemen, and the fun-making could not be permitted to go beyond the limits of ordinary teasing.

"What's your line-up?" broke in Dan Dalzell.

"Haven't you fellows gotten hold of the cards yet?" asked one of the West Point men. "Then take a look over mine."

Standing together Dave and Dan eagerly glanced down the printed line-up of the Military Academy.

"I know a few of these names," ventured Darrin, "and they're the names of good men. Several of the other names I don't know at all. And you've left out the names of the two Army men that we're most afraid of in a game of football."

"It seems queer to think of an Army line-up without Prescott and Holmes," Dan declared musingly.

Over the faces of the cadets there crept a queer look, but none of them spoke.

"So you've boycotted Prescott and Holmes?" pursued Dalzell.

"Yes," replied one of the cadets. "Or, rather, Prescott is in Coventry, and Holmes prefers to stand by his friend in everything. Holmes, being Prescott's roommate, doesn't have to keep away from Mr. Prescott."

"Humph!" laughed Dan. "I think I can see Greg Holmes turning his back upon Dick Prescott. Why, Greg wouldn't do that even if he had to get out of the Army in consequence."

"We did the only thing we could with the Prescott fellow," spoke up another cadet.

Dave Darrin's dark eyes flashed somewhat.

"Gentlemen," he begged quietly, "will you do me the very great favor not to refer to Prescott slightingly as a 'fellow.' He's one of the noblest youngsters I've ever known, and I'm his friend through thick and thin. Of course, I don't expect you to know it yet, but I feel positive that you've made a tremendous mistake in sending to Coventry one of nature's noblemen."

"Hm!" muttered some of the cadets, and slight frowns were visible.

"And when you lose the game to-day," continued Dan Dalzell, "it may be a comfort to you to know that you might possibly have won it if you had had Prescott and Holmes in your battle front."

"Prescott isn't the only football player in the Army," returned Cadet Fields. "Nor are he and Holmes the only pair of 'em."

"You'll lose without that pair, though," ventured Dave. "And it must shake the confidence of your men, too, for you've come here without your two best men."

"Of course, we have to manage our own affairs," interposed one of the cadets.

"Gentlemen," spoke up Dave quickly, "of course, you have to manage your own problems, and no one else is fitted to do so. If I've gone too far in what might have seemed like criticism, then I beg you to forget it. I don't want to be suspected of any disagreeable intent. If I spoke almost bitterly it was because Prescott is my very dear friend. I have another, and a real grievance -- -I wanted to test myself out today against Dick Prescott, as any two friends may contest to vanquish one another on the field of sports."

"No one had any thought, I am sure, Mr. Darrin, of accusing you of wishing to be disagreeable," spoke up Cadet Fields. "We believe you to be a prince of good and true fellows; in fact, we accept you at the full estimate of the Brigade of Midshipmen. Wade in and beat us to-day, if you can -- -but you can't Prescott or no Prescott."

"Better run inside and tog!" called Wolgast from a distance.

"You'll excuse us now, won't you?" asked Dave. "Come along, Danny boy."

As the two midshipmen lifted their caps and hastened away, Fields gazed after them speculatively:

"There goes the Navy's strength in to-day's game," he announced.

"I wonder if we have done Prescott any wrong?" said another cadet slowly.

"That question has been settled by formal class action," replied another. "It's a closed matter."

Then these West Point men strolled over to quarters to get into togs. As they were to play subs. they did not need to be as early at togging as the members of the team.

Out on Franklin Field thousands and thousands of Americans, from the President of the United States down, waited impatiently for the excitement of the day to begin.

On either side of the field some hundreds of seats were still left vacant. The music of a band now floated out, proclaiming that one set of seats was soon to be filled. Then in, through a gate, marched the Military Academy band at the head of the Corps of Cadets. Frantic cheers broke loose on the air, and there was a great fluttering of the black and gray banners carried by the Army's boosters in the audience. Gray and steel-like the superb corps marched in across the field, and over to the seats assigned to them.

Barely had the Army band ceased playing when another struck up in the distance. It was now the turn of the fine Naval Academy band to play the Brigade of Midshipmen on to the field. Again the air vibrated with the intensity of the loyal cheers that greeted the middies.

Over in quarters, after the middies of the team had togged, a few anxious minutes of waiting followed. What was to be the fate of the day?

"Darry," spoke Wolgast in a voice full of feeling, "you're not woozy to-day, are you?"

"I don't believe I am," smiled Dave.

"Well, you know, old chap, you've been unaccountably stale -- -or something -- -at times this season. You haven't been the real Darry -- -always. You're feeling in really bully form today?"

"I'm pretty sure that I'm in good winning form," Dave replied. "Will that be enough?"

Wolgast looked him over, then rejoined:

"Somehow, I think you're in pretty good form. I'll feel better, very likely, after we've played for ten minutes. Darry, old fellow, just don't forget how much the Navy depends upon you."

"Are you all right, Davy?" Dan Dalzell demanded in a more than anxious undertone.

"I certainly am, Danny boy."

"But, you know --  -- -"

"Yes; I know that, for a while, I showed signs of going fuzzy. But I'm over that."

"Good!" chuckled Dan, as he caught the resolute flash in Darrin's eyes. "I was fearfully afraid that you'd go bad simply because you didn't have Prescott to go up against. For a good many days that very fact seemed to prey upon your mind and make you indifferent."

"Danny boy, I am going to play my mightiest, just because Prescott isn't with the Army!"

"What do you mean by that?"

"I mean that I'm going to make the West Point fellows most abominably sorry that they didn't have Dick Prescott on their eleven. And you want to stand with me in that, Danny boy. Keep hammering the Army to-day, and with every blow just think it's another blow struck for Dick Prescott and Greg Holmes. Oh, we'll trim West Point in their joint name!"



Chapter XIII

When "Brace Up, Army!" Was The Word


"All out for practice!" called Wolgast.

Team men and subs. bunched, the Navy players trotted on to the field, amid a tempest of wild cheering.

No sooner had Dave Darrin halted for an instant, when he broke into a whirlwind of sprinting speed. Dan Dalzell tried to keep up with him, but found it impossible.

"Good old Darry!" yelled a hoarse voice from one of the grandstands. "That's the way you'll go around the end to-day!"

Some of the other Navy players were kicking a ball back and forth. The Army team was not yet on the field, but it came, a few moments later, and received a tremendous ovation from its own solid ranks of rooters.

This time Darrin barely glanced at any of the Army players. He knew that Prescott and Holmes were not there. Whoever else might be, he was not interested.

Only a very few minutes were allowed for practice. During this exercise the Army and Navy bands played alternately.

Then the referee signaled the bands to stop.

Tril-l-l-l! sounded the whistle, and Army and Navy captains trotted to the center of the field to watch the toss of the coin. Wolgast won, and awarded the kick-off to the Army.

Then the teams jogged quickly to places, and in an instant all was in readiness.

Over the spectators' seats a hush had fallen. Even the Army and Navy cheer leaders looked nearly as solemn as owls. The musicians of the two bands lounged in their seats and instruments had been laid aside. There would be no more noise until one team or the other had started to do real things.

Quick and sharp came the signal. West Point kicked and the ball was in play.

Navy's quarterback, after a short run, placed himself to seize the arching pigskin out of the air. Then he ran forward, protected by the Navy interference.

By a quick pass the ball came into Dave Darrin's hands. Dalzell braced himself as he hit the strong Army line.

It was like butting a stone wall, but Darrin got through, with the aid of effective interference.

Army men bunched and tackled, but Dave struggled on. He did not seem to be exerting much strength, but his elusiveness was wonderful,

Then, after a few yards had been gained, Dave was borne to the earth, the bottom of a struggling mass until, the referee's whistle ended the scrimmage.

Annapolis players could not help shooting keen glances of satisfaction at each other. The test had been a brief one, but now they saw that Darrin was in form, and that he could be depended upon to-day, unless severe accident came to cripple him.

Again the ball was put in play, this time going over to Farley and Page on the right end.

Only a yard did Farley succeed in advancing the ball, but that was at least a gain.

Then again came the pigskin to the left flank, and Dave fought it through the enemy's battle line for a distance of eight feet ere he was forced to earth with it.

By this time the West Point captain was beginning to wonder what ailed his men. The cadet players themselves were worried. If the Navy could play like this through the game, it looked as though Annapolis might wipe out, in one grand and big-scored victory, the memory of many past defeats.

"Brace up, Army!" was the word passed through West Point's eleven.

"Good old Darry!" chuckled Wolgast, and, though he did not like to work Darrin too hard at the outset, yet it was also worth while to shake the Army nerve as much as possible. So Wolgast signaled quarterback to send the ball once more by Midshipman Dave.

Another seven yards was gained by Darrin. The West Point men were gasping, more from chagrin than from actual physical strain. Was it going to prove impossible to stop these mad Navy rushes?

Then Wolgast reluctantly as he saw Dave limp slightly, decided upon working Page and Farley a little harder just at present. So back the ball traveled to the right flank was making, however, the Navy cheermaster started a triumphant yell going, in which nearly eight hundred midshipmen joined with all their lung power.

Of course, the Army cheermaster came back with a stirring West Point yell, but one spectator, behind the side lines, turned and bawled at the Army cheermaster:

"That's right, young man! Anything on earth to keep up your crowd's courage!"

In the laugh that followed many a gray-clad cadet joined simply because he could not help himself.

"If we don't break at some point it's all ours to-day," Wolgast was informing the players nearest him. "I've never seen Darry so wildly capable as he is right now. The demon of victory seems to have seized him."

Dave's limp had vanished. He was ready for work -- -aching for it. Wolgast worked his left flank once more, and the Army was sorely pressed.

"Brace up, Army!" was the word passing again among the West Point men. Douglass, captain of the Army team, was scolding under his breath.

But straight on Darrin and Dalzell worked the ball. It was when Wolgast decided to rest his left that Farley and Page came in for more work. These two midshipmen were excellent football men, but the Army's left was well defended. The Navy lost the ball on downs. But the Army boys were sweating, for the Navy was now within nine yards of goal line.

The Army fought it back, gaining just half a yard too little in three plays, so the ball came back to the blue and gold ranks of the Navy.

"Brace, Army!" was the word that Cadet Douglass passed. "And look out, on the right, for Darrin and Dalzell!"

There was a feint of sending the ball to Farley, but Darrin had it instead. The entire Army line, however, was alert for this very trick. Playing in sheer desperation, the cadets stopped the midshipmen when but a yard and a half had been gained. With the next play the gain was but half a yard. The third play was blocked, and once more the cadets received the pigskin.

Both Army and Navy cheermasters now refrained from inviting din. Those of the spectators who boosted for the Army were now silent, straining their vision and holding their breath. It began to look, this year, as though the Navy could do with the Army as it pleased.

Wolgast lined his men up for a fierce onslaught Darrin and Dalzell, panting, looked like a pair who would die in their tracks ere allowing the ball to go by them.

In a moment more the Army signal was being called out crisply. The whistle sounded, and both elevens were in instant action.

But the cadets failed to get through. The middies were driving them back. In sheer desperation the cadet with the ball turned and dropped behind the Army goal line -- -a safety.



Chapter XIV

The Navy Goat Grins


All at once the Navy band chopped out a few swift measures of triumphant melody.

The entire Brigade of Midshipmen cheered under its cheermaster. Thousands of blue and gold Navy banners fluttered through the stands.

That safety had counted two on the score for the Navy.

Given breathing time, the Army now brought the ball out toward midfield, and once more the savage work began. The Navy had gained ten yards, when the time-keeper signaled the end of the first period.

As the players trotted off the Navy was exultant, the Army depressed. Captain Douglass was scowling.

"You fellows will have to brace!" he snapped. "Are you going to let the little middies run over us?"

"I shall have no bad feeling, suh, if you think it well to put a fresh man in my place, suh," replied Cadet Anstey.

"Hang it, I don't want a man in your place!" retorted Douglass angrily. "I want you, and every other man, Anstey, to do each better work than was done in that period. Hang it, fellows, the middies are making sport of us."

Among the Navy players there was not so much talk. All were deeply contented with events so far.

"I've no remarks to make, fellows," Captain Wolgast remarked. "You are all playing real football."

"At any rate Darry and his grinning twin are," chuckled Jetson. "My, but you can see the hair rise on the Army right flank when Darry and Danny leap at them!"

In the second period, which started off amid wild yelling from the onlookers, the Army fought hard and fiercely, holding back the Navy somewhat. During the period two of the cadets were so badly hurt that the surgeons ordered them from the field. Two fresh subs. came into the eleven, and after that the Army seemed endowed with a run of better luck. The second period closed with no change in the score, though at the time of the timekeeper's interference the Navy had the ball within eleven yards of the Army goal line.

"We've got the Navy stopped, now, I think," murmured Douglass to his West Point men. "All we've got to do now is to keep 'em stopped."

"If they don't break our necks, or make us stop from heart failure, suh," replied Cadet Anstey, with a grimace.

"We've got the Army tired enough. We must go after them in the third period," announced Captain Wolgast.

But this did not happen until the third time that the Navy got the pigskin. Then Darrin and Dalzell, warned, began to run the ball down the field. Here a new feint was tried. When the Navy started in motion every Army man was sure that Wolgast was going to try to put through a center charge. It was but a ruse, however. Darrin had the pigskin, and Dalzell was boosting him through. The entire Navy line charged with the purpose of one man. There came the impact, and then the Army line went down. Darrin was charging, Dalzell and Jetson running over all who got in the way. The halfback on that side of the field was dodged. Dalzell and Jetson bore down on the victim at the same instant, and Dave, running to the side like a flash, had the ball over the line.

Wolgast himself made the kick to follow, and the score was now eight to nothing.

The applause that followed was enough to turn wiser heads. When play was resumed the Army was fighting mad. It was now victory or death for the soldier boys. The West Point men were guilty of no fouls. They played squarely and like gentlemen, but they cared nothing for snapping muscles and sinews. Before the mad work the Navy was borne back. Just before the close of the third period, the Navy was forced to make a safety on its own account.

"But Wolgast was satisfied, and the Navy coaches more than pleased.

"There's a fourth period coming," Wolgast told himself. "But for Darry and his splendid interference the Army would get our scalp yet. Darry looks to be all right, and I believe he is. He'll hold out for the fourth."

Eight to two, and the game three quarters finished. The Army cheermaster did his duty, but did it half dejectedly, the cadets following with rolling volumes of noise intended to mask sinking hearts. When it came the Navy's turn to yell, the midshipmen risked the safety of their windpipes. The Naval Academy Band was playing with unwonted joy.

"Fellows, nothing on earth will save us but a touchdown and a kick," called Douglass desperately, when he got his West Point men aside. "That will tie the score. It's our best chance to-day."

"Unless, suh," gravely observed Anstey, "We can follow that by driving the midshipmen into a safety."

"And we could do even that, if we had Prescott and Holmesy here," thought Douglass, with sinking heart to himself. He was careful not to repeat that sentiment audibly.

"Holmesy ought to be here to-day, and working," growled one of the Army subs. "He's a sneak, just to desert on Mr. Prescott's account."

"None of that!" called Doug sharply.

The Army head coach came along, talking quietly but forcefully to the all but discouraged cadets. Then he addressed himself to Douglass, explaining what he thought were next to the weakest points in the Navy line.

"You ought to be able to save the score yet, Mr. Douglass," wound up coach.

"I wish some one else had the job!" sighed Doug to himself.

"Fellows, the main game that is left," explained Wolgast to the midshipmen, "is to keep West Point from scoring. As to our own points, we have enough now -- -though more will be welcome."

Play began in the fourth period. At first it was nip and tuck, neck and neck. But the Army braced and put the pigskin within sixteen yards of the Navy's goal line. Then the men from Annapolis seemed suddenly to wake up. Darrin, who had had little to do in the last few plays, was now sent to the front again. Steadily, even brilliantly, he, Dalzell and Jetson figured in the limelight plays. Yard after yard was gained, while the Army eleven shivered. At last it came to the inevitable. The Army was forced to use another safety. Stinging under the sense of defeat, the cadet players put that temporary chance to such good advantage that they gradually got the pigskin over into Naval territory. But there the midshipmen held it until the timekeeper interposed.

The fourth period and the game were over. West Point had gone down in a memorable, stinging defeat. The Navy had triumphed, ten to two.

What a crash came from the Naval Academy Band! Yet the Military Academy Band, catching the spirit and the tune, joined in, and both bands blared forth, the musicians making themselves heard faintly through all the tempest of huzzas.

Dave Darrin smiled faintly as he hurried away from the field. All his personal interest in football had vanished. He had played his last game of football and was glad that the Navy had won; that was about all.

Yet he was not listless -- -far from it. On the contrary Dave fairly ran to dressing quarters, hustled under a shower and then began to towel and dress.

For out in the audience, well he knew, had sat Belle Meade and her mother.

"Darry, you're a wonder!" cried Wolgast. "Every time to-day we called upon you you were ready with the push."

But Dave, rushing through his dressing, barely heard this and other praise that was showered on him.

"I'll get along before assembly time, Davy," whispered Dan Dalzell.

"Come along now," Dave called back.

"Oh, no! I know that you and Belle want some time to yourselves," murmured Dalzell wisely. "I'll get along at the proper time."

Dave didn't delay to argue. He stepped briskly outside, then into the field, his eyes roving over the thousands of spectators who still lingered. At last a waving little white morsel of a handkerchief rewarded Darrin's search.

"Oh, you did just splendidly to-day," was Belle's enthusiastic greeting, as Dave stepped up to the young lady and her mother. "I've heard lots of men say that it was all Darrin's victory."

"Yes; you're the hero of Franklin Field, this year," smiled Mrs. Meade.

"Laura Bentley and her mother didn't come over?" Dave inquired presently.

"No; of course not --  -- after the way that the cadets used Dick Prescott," returned Belle. "Wasn't it shameful of the cadets to treat a man like Dick in that fashion?"

"I have my opinion, of course," Dave replied moodily, "but it's hardly for a midshipman to criticise the cadets for their own administration of internal discipline in their own corps. The absence of Prescott and Holmes probably cost the Army the game to-day."

"Not a bit of it!" Belle disputed warmly. "Dave, don't belittle your own superb work in that fashion! The Army would have lost to-day if the West Point eleven had been made up exclusively of Prescotts and Holmeses!"

As Belle spoke thus warmly her gaze wandered, resting, though not by intent, on the face of a young Army officer passing at that moment.

"If the remark was made to me, miss," smiled the Army officer, "I wish to say that I wholly agree with you. The Navy's playing was the most wonderful that I ever saw."

Dave, in the meantime, had saluted, then stood at attention until the Army officer had passed.

"There!" cried Belle triumphantly. "You have it from the other side, now -- -from the enemy."

"Hardly from the enemy," replied Dave, laughing. "Between the United States Army and the United States Navy there can never be a matter of enmity. Annually, in football, the Army and Navy teams are opponents -- -rivals, perhaps -- -but never enemies."

Mrs. Meade had strolled away for a few yards, the better to leave the young people by themselves.

"Dave," announced Belle almost sternly, "you've simply got to say something savage about the action of the West Point men in sending Dick Prescott to Coventry."

"The West Point men didn't do it," rejoined Dave. "It was all done by the members of the first class alone."

"Well, then, you must say something very disagreeable about the first class at the Military Academy."

"But why?" persisted Dave Darrin. He was disgusted enough over the action of the first class cadets, but, being in the service himself, he felt it indelicate in him to criticise the action of the cadets of the United States Military Academy.

"Why?" repeated Belle. "Why, simply because Laura Bentley will insist on asking me when I get home what you had to say about Dick's case. If I can't tell Laura that you said something pretty nearly awful, then Laura will be terribly hurt."

"Shall I swear?" asked Dave innocently.

Belle opened her eyes wide in amazement.

"No, you won't swear," Belle retorted. "Profanity isn't the accomplishment of a gentleman. But you must say something about Dick's case which will show her that all of Dick's friends are standing by the poor fellow."

"But, Belle, you know it isn't considered very manly for a fellow in one branch of the service to say anything against fellows in the other branch."

"Not even -- -for Laura's sake?"

"Oh, well," proposed Midshipman Darrin, squirming about between the horns of the dilemma, "you just think of whatever will please Laura most to hear from me."

"Yes --  -- -?" pressed Miss Meade.

"Then tell it to her and say that I said it."

"But how can I say that you said it if you didn't say it?" demanded Belle, pouting prettily.

"Easiest thing in the world, Belle. I authorize you, fully, to say whatever you like about Dick, as coming from me. If I authorize you to say it, then you won't be fibbing, will you?"

Belle had to think that over. It was a bit of a puzzle, as must be admitted.

"Now, let's talk about ourselves," Darrin pressed her. "I see Danny boy coming, with that two-yard grin of his, and we won't have much further chance to talk about ourselves."

The two young people, therefore, busied themselves with personal talk. Dan drifted along, but merely raised his cap to Belle, then stationed himself by Mrs. Meade's side.

It was not until Dave signaled quietly that Dalzell came over to take Belle's proffered hand and chat for a moment.

The talk was all too short for all concerned. A call of the bugle signaled the midshipmen to leave friends and hasten back for assembly.

It was not until the train had started away from Philadelphia that Dave and Dan were all but mobbed by way of congratulation. Wolgast, Jetson, Farley, Page and others also came in for their share of good words.

"And to think, Darry, that you can never play on the Navy eleven again!" groaned a second classman.

"You'll have some one else in my place," laughed Dave.

"The Navy never before had a football player like you, and we'll never have one again," insisted the same man. "Dalzell's kind come once in about every five years, but your kind, Darry, never come back -- -in the Navy!"



Chapter XV

Dan Feels As "Sold" As He Looks


It was the first hop after the New Year.

"Tell me one thing Dave," begged Belle Meade, who, with Laura Bentley, and accompanied by Mrs. Meade, had come down to Annapolis for this dance.

"I'll tell you two things, if I know how," Darrin responded promptly.

"Dan has danced a little with Laura, to be sure, but he introduced Mr. Farley to her, and has written down Farley's name for a lot of dances on Laura's card."

"Farley is a nice fellow," Dave replied. "But why didn't Dan want more of the dances with Laura, instead of turning them over to Mr. Farley?" followed up Belle. "And -- -there he goes now."

"Farley?"

"No, stupid! Dan."

"Well, why shouldn't he move about?" Midshipman Darrin inquired.

"But with -- -By the way, who is that girl, anyway?"

The girl was tall, rather stately and of a pronounced blonde type. She was a girl who would have been called more than merely pretty by any one who had seen her going by on Midshipman Dalzell's arm.

"I don't really know who she is," Dave admitted.

"Have you seen her here before?"

"Yes; I think I have seen the young lady half a dozen times before to-night."

"Then it's odd that you don't know who she is," pursued Miss Meade.

"I've never been introduced to her, you see."

"Oh! I imagined that you midshipmen were always being presented to girls."

"That's a fairy tale," said Dave promptly. "The average midshipman has about all he can do to hold his place here, without losing any time in running around making the acquaintances of young women who probably don't care at all about knowing him."

"What I'm wondering about," Belle went on, "is whether the young woman we have been discussing is any one in whom Dan Dalzell is seriously interested."

"I'll ask Dan."

"Oh! And I suppose you'll tell him that it's I who really want to know."

"I'll tell him that, too, if you wish it."

"Dave, you won't even mention my name to Dan in connection with any topic so silly."

"All right, Belle. All I want is my sailing orders. I know how to follow them."

"You're teasing me," Miss Meade went on, pouting. "I don't mean to be curious, but I noticed that Dan appears to be quite attentive to the young lady, and I was wondering whether Dan had met his fate -- -that's all."

"I don't know," smiled Midshipman Darrin, "and I doubt if Dan does, either. He's just the kind of fellow who might ignore girls for three years, then be ardently attentive to one for three days -- -and forget all about her in a week."

"Is Dan such a flirt as that?" Belle demanded, looking horrified.

"Dan -- -a flirt!" chuckled Dave. "I shall have to tell that to some of the fellows; it will amuse them. No; I wouldn't call Dan a flirt. He's anything but that. Dan will either remain a bachelor until he's past forty, or else some day he'll marry suddenly after having known the girl at least twenty-four hours. Dan hasn't much judgment where girls are concerned."

"He appears to be able to tell a pretty girl when he sees one," argued Belle Meade, turning again to survey Dan's companion.

Belle, with the sharp eyes and keen intuition of her sex, was quite justified in believing that Midshipman Dalzell realized fully the charms of the girl with whom he was talking.

Miss Catharine Atterly was the only daughter of wealthy parents, though her father had started life as a poor boy. Daniel Atterly, however, had been shrewd enough to know the advantages of a better education than he had been able to absorb in his boyhood. Miss Catharine, therefore, had been trained in some of the most expensive, if not the best, schools in the country. She was a buxom, healthy girl, full of the joy of living, yet able to conceal her enthusiasm under the polish that she had acquired in the schools she had attended. Miss Atterly, on coming to Annapolis, had conceived a considerable liking for the Naval uniform, and had attracted Dan to her side within the last three days. And Dan had felt his heart beating faster when nearing this pretty young creature.

Now, he was endeavoring to display himself to the best advantage before her eyes.

"You midshipmen have a very graceful knack of being charmingly attentive to the ladies," Miss Atterly suggested coyly.

"We receive a little bit of training in social performance, if that is what you mean, Miss Atterly," Dan replied.

"And that enables you to be most delightfully attentive to every girl that comes along?"

"I don't know," Midshipman Dalzell replied slowly. "I haven't had much experience."

Miss Atterly laughed as though she felt certain that she knew better.

"Do you say that to every girl?" she asked.

"I don't get many chances," Dan insisted. "Miss Atterly, all the hops that I've attended could be counted on your fingers, without using the thumbs?"

"Oh, really?"

"It is the truth, I assure you. Some of the midshipmen attend many hops. Most of us are too busy over our studies as a rule."

"Then you prefer books to the society of girls?"

"It isn't that," replied Dan, growing somewhat red under Miss Atterly's amused scrutiny. "The fact is that a fellow comes here to the Naval Academy for the purpose of becoming an officer in the Navy."

"To be sure."

"And, unless the average fellow hugs his books tightly he doesn't have any show to get through and become an officer. There are some fellows, of course, to whom the studies come easily. With most of us it's a terrible grind. Even with the grind about forty per cent. of the fellows who enter the Naval Academy are found deficient and are dropped. If you are interested in knowing, I had a fearful time in keeping up with the requirements."

"Oh, you poor boy!" cried Miss Atterly half tenderly.

"I never felt that I wanted any sympathy," Dan declared stoutly. "If I couldn't keep up, then the only thing to do was to go back to civil life and find my own level among my own kind."

"Now, that was truly brave in you!" declared Miss Atterly, admiration shining in her eyes.

"There's the music starting," Dan hastily reminded her. "Our dance."

"Would it seem disagreeable in me if I asked you to sit out this number with me?" inquired the girl. "The truth is, I can dance any evening, but you and your brave fight here, Mr. Dalzell, interest me -- -oh, more than I can tell you!"

Under this line of conversation Midshipman Dalzell soon began to feel highly uncomfortable. Miss Atterly, however, in getting Dan to talk of the midshipman and the Naval life, soon had him feeling at his ease. Nor could Dalzell escape noticing the fact that Miss Atterly appeared to enjoy his company hugely.

Then Dan was led on into talking of the life of the Naval officer at sea, and he spoke eloquently.

"A life of bravery and daring," commented Miss Atterly thoughtfully. "Yet, after all, I would call it rather a lonely life."

"Perhaps it will prove so," Dalzell assented. "Yet it is all the life that I look forward to. It's all the life that I care about."

"Despite the loneliness -- -or rather, because of it -- -it will seem all the finer and more beautiful to come home to wife and children," said Miss Atterly after a pause. "Nearly all Naval officers marry, don't they?"

"I -- -I believe they do," Dalzell stammered. "I -- -I never asked any Naval officers for statistics."

"Now, you are becoming droll," cried Miss Atterly, her laughter ringing out.

"I didn't mean to be," Dan protested. "I beg your pardon."

Whereat Miss Atterly laughed more than ever.

"I like you even better when you're droll," Miss Atterly informed him.

Something in the way that she said it pleased Midshipman Dalzell so immensely that he began to notice, more than before, what a very fine girl Miss Atterly was. Then, to win her applause, Dan made the mistake of trying to be funny, whereat the girl was extremely kind.

"Dave," whispered Belle soon after the music had stopped, "I can't get away from the belief that Dan's companion is leading him on. See! Dan now looks at her almost adoringly."

Laura Bentley, too, had noticed Dan's preoccupation, but she merely smiled within herself. She did not believe that Dan could really be serious where girls were concerned. Now, as Laura's midshipman partner led her to a seat, and soon left her, Dan, tearing himself away from Miss Atterly, came to remind Laura that his name was written on her card for the next dance.

"Very fine girl I've been talking with, Laura," Dan confided in the straightforward way that he had always used with Miss Bentley, who was such a very old school friend.

"She certainly is very pretty," Laura nodded.

"And -- -er -- -distinguished looking, don't you think?" Dan ventured.

"Yes, indeed."

"But I was speaking more of her character -- -at least, her disposition. Miss Atterly is highly sympathetic. I wish you'd meet her, Laura."

"I shall be delighted to do so, Dan."

"After this dance, then? And I want Belle to meet her, too. Miss Atterly has noticed you both, and was much interested when she learned that you were old school-day friends of mine."

So, after the music had ceased, Dan escorted Laura over to where Dave and Belle were chatting.

"Belle," asked Dan in his most direct way, "will you come and be introduced to Miss Atterly?"

"The young lady you've been dancing with so much?" Miss Meade inquired. "The tall, stately blonde?"

"Yes," Dan nodded.

"I shall be glad to meet Miss Atterly. But how about her? Do you think she could stand the shock?"

"Miss Atterly is very anxious to meet you both," Dalzell assured Belle.

"Take me over and shock her, then," laughed Belle.

Dan stood gazing about the scene. "I -- -I wonder where Miss Atterly is?" Dan mused aloud.

"Oh, I can tell you," Belle answered. "A moment ago she went through the entrance over yonder."

"Alone?"

"No; an older woman, probably Miss Atterly's mother, was with her."

"Oh! Let's look them up, then, if you don't mind."

As Belle rose, taking Dave's arm, Dan and Laura took the lead.

Just beyond the entrance that Belle had indicated no one else was in sight when the four young friends reached the spot. There was a clump of potted tropical shrubbery at one side.

On the other side of this shrubbery sat Mrs. and Miss Atterly, engaged in conversation.

"Why do you prefer to sit in this out-of-the-way place, Catharine?" her mother inquired, just as the young people came up.

"I want to get away from two rather goodlooking but very ordinary girls that Mr. Dalzell wants to present to me, mamma," she replied.

"If they are midshipmen's friends are they too ordinary to know?" inquired Mrs. Atterly.

"Mamma, if I am going to interest Mr. Dalzell, I don't want other girls stepping in at every other moment. I don't want to know his girl friends."

"Are you attracted to Mr. Dalzell, Cathy?" asked her mother.

"Not especially, I assure you, mamma."

"Oh, then it is not a serious affair."

"It may be," laughed the girl lightly. "If I can learn to endure Mr. Dalzell, then I may permit him to marry me when he is two years older and has his commission."

"Even if you don't care much for him?" asked Mrs. Atterly, almost shocked.

"If I marry," pouted Miss Atterly, "I don't want a husband that leaves the house every morning, and returns every evening."

"Cathy!"

"Well, I don't! In some ways I suppose it's nice to be a married woman. One has more freedom in going about alone. Now, a Naval officer, mamma, would make the right sort of husband for me. He'd be away, much of the time, on long cruises."

"But I understand, Cathy, that sometimes a Naval officer has a year or two of shore duty."

"If that happened," laughed the girl, "I could take a trip to Europe couldn't I? And the social position of a Naval officer isn't a bad one. His wife enjoys the same social position, you know, mamma."

"Yet why Mr. Dalzell, if you really don't care anything about him?"

"Because he's so simple, mamma. He would be dreadfully easy to manage!"

The four young people looking for the Atterlys had unavoidably heard every word. They halted, Dan violently red in the face. Then Laura, with quick tact, wheeled about and led the way back to the ball room floor.

"Better luck next time, Dan," whispered Belle, gripping Dalzell's arm.

"Don't you think twice is enough for a simpleton like me?" blurted Midshipman Dan.



Chapter XVI

The Day Of Many Doubts


Busy days followed, days which, for some of the first classmen, were filled with a curious discontent.

Some, to be sure, among these midshipmen soon to graduate, took each day as it came, with little or no emotion. To them the Naval life ahead was coming only as a matter of course. There were others, however -- -and Dave Darrin was among them -- -who looked upon a commission as an officer of the Navy as a sacred trust given them by the nation.

Dave Darrin was one of those who, while standing above the middle of his class, yet felt that he had not made sufficiently good use of his time. To his way of thinking there was an appalling lot in the way of Naval duties that he did not understand.

"I may get through here, and out of here, and in another couple of years be a line or engineer officer," Midshipman Darrin confided to his chum and roommate one day. "But I shall be only a half-baked sort of officer."

"Well, are cubs ever anything more?" demanded Dan.

"Yes; Wolgast, for instance, is going to be something more. So will Fenton and Day, and several others whom I could name."

"And so is Darrin," confidently predicted Midshipman Dalzell.

But Dave shook his head.

"No, no, Danny boy. The time was when I might have believed extremely well of myself, but that day has gone by. When I entered the Naval Academy I probably thought pretty well of myself. I've tried to keep up with the pace here --  -- -"

"And you've done it, and are going to do it right along," interjected Midshipman Dalzell.

"No; it almost scares me when I look over the subjects that I'm not really fit in. It's spring, now, and I'm only a few weeks away from graduation, only something like two years this side of a commission as ensign, and -- -and -- -Dan, I wonder if I'm honestly fit to command a rowboat."

"You've got a brief grouch against yourself, Davy," muttered Dan.

"No; but I think I know what a Naval officer should be, and I also know how far short I fall of what I should be."

"If you get your diploma," argued Midshipman Dalzell, "the faculty of the Naval Academy will testify on the face of it that you're a competent midshipman and on your way to being fit to hold an ensign's commission presently."

"But that's just the point, Danny. I shall know, myself, that I'm only a poor, dub sort of Naval officer. I tell you, Danny, I don't know enough to be a good Naval officer."

"Then that's a reflection on your senior officers who have had your training on hand," grinned Dalzell. "If you talk in the same vein after you've gotten your diploma, it will amount to a criticism of the intelligence of your superior officers. And that's something that's wisely forbidden by the regulations."

Dan picked up a text-book and opened it, as though he believed that he had triumphantly closed the discussion. Midshipman Darrin, however, was not to be so easily silenced.

"Then, if you're not fitted to be a Naval officer," blurted Dalzell, "what on earth can be said of me?"

"You may not stand quite as high as I do, on mere markings," Dave assented. "But there are a lot of things, Danny, that you know much better than I do."

"Name one of them," challenged Dalzell.

"Well, steam engineering, for instance. Now, I'm marked higher in that than you are, Danny. Yet, when the engine on one of the steamers goes wrong you can hunt around until you get the engine to running smoothly. You're twice as clever at that as I am."

"Not all Naval officers are intended to be engineer officers," grunted Midshipman Dalzell. "If you don't feel clever enough in that line, just put in your application for watch officer's work."

"Take navigation," Dave continued. "I stand just fairly well in the theory of the thing. But I've no real knack with a sextant."

"Well, the sextant is only a hog-yoke," growled Dalzell.

"Yes; but I shiver every time I pick up the hog-yoke under the watchful gaze of an instructor."

"Humph! Only yesterday I heard Lieutenant-Commander Richards compliment you for your work in nav."

"Yes; but that was the mathematical end. I'm all right on the paper end and the theoretical work, but it's the practical end that I'm afraid of."

"You'll get plenty of the practical work as soon as you graduate and get to sea," Dan urged.

"Yes; and very likely make a chump of myself, like Digby, of last year's class. Did you hear what he did in nav.?"

"No," replied Dalzell, looking up with real interest this times "If Digby made a fool of himself I'll be glad to hear about it, for Dig was always just a little bit too chesty to suit me."

"Well, Dig wasn't a bit chesty the first day that he was ordered to shoot the sun," Dave laughed. "Dig took the sextant, and made a prize shot, or thought he did. After he had got the sun, plumb at noon, he lowered the instrument and made his reading most carefully. Then he went into the chart room, and got busy with his calculations. The longer Dig worked the worse his head ached. He stared at his figures, tore them up and tried again. Six or eight times he worked the problem over, but always with the same result. The navigating officer, who had worked the thing out in two minutes, sat back in his chair and looked bored. You see, Dig's own eyes had told him that the ship was working north, and about five miles off the coast of New Jersey. But his figures told him that the ship was anchored in the old fourth ward of the city of Newark. Try as he would, Dig couldn't get the battleship away from that ward."

Dan Dalzell leaned back, laughing uproariously at the mental picture that this story of Midshipman Digby brought up in his mind.

"It sounds funny, when you hear it," Dave went on. "But I sometimes shiver over the almost certainty that I'm going to do something just as bad when I get to sea. If I get sent to the engine room I'll be likely to fill the furnaces with water and the boilers with coal."

"Rot!" objected Dan. "You're not crazy -- -not even weak-minded."

"Or else, if I'm put to navigating, I'm fairly likely to bring the battleship into violent collision with the Chicago Limited, over in Ohio."

"Come out of that funk, Davy!" ordered his chum.

"I'm trying to, Danny boy; but there's many an hour when I feel that I haven't learned here all that I should have learned, and that I'll be miles behind the newest ensigns and lieutenants."

"There's just about one thing for you to do, then," proposed Dan.

"Resign?" queried Darrin, looking quizzically at his chum.

"Not by a long sight. Just go in for a commission as second lieutenant of marines. You can get that and hold it. A marine officer doesn't have to know anything but the manual of arms and a few other little simple things."

"But a marine officer isn't a real sailor, Danny. He lives and works on a warship, to be sure, but he's more of a soldier. Now, as it happens, my whole heart and soul are wrapped up in being a Naval officer -- -a real Naval officer."

"With that longing, and an Annapolis diploma," teased Dalzell, "there is just one thing to do."

"What?"

"Beat your way to the realization of your dream. You've got a thundering good start."

Midshipman Dave Darrin was not the kind to communicate his occasional doubts to anyone except his roommate. Had Darrin talked on the subject with other members of his class he would have found that many of his classmates were tortured by the same doubts that assailed him. With midshipmen who were destined to get their diplomas such doubts were to be charged only to modesty, and were therefore to their credit. Yet, every spring dozens of Annapolis first classmen are miserable, instead of feeling the joyous appeal of the budding season. They are assailed by just such fears as had reached Dave Darrin.

Dalzell, on the other hand, was tortured by no such dreads. He went hammering away with marvelous industry, and felt sure, in his own mind, that he would be retired, in his sixties, an honored rear admiral.

Had there been only book studies some of the first classmen would have broken down under the nervous strain. However, there was much to be done in the shops -- -hard, physical labor, that had to be performed in dungaree clothing; toil of the kind that plastered the hard-worked midshipmen with grime and soot. There were drills, parades, cross-country marches. The day's work at the Naval Academy, at any season of the year, is arranged so that hard mental work is always followed by lively physical exertion, much of it in the open air.

Dalzell, returning one afternoon from the library encountered Midshipman Farley, who was looking unaccountably gloomy.

"What's the trouble, Farl -- -dyspepsia?" grinned Dan, linking one arm through his friend's. "Own up!"

"Danny, I'm in the dumps," confessed Farley. "I hate to acknowledge it, but I've been fearfully tempted, for the last three days, to send in my resignation."

"What's her name?" grinningly demanded Dalzell, who had bravely recovered from his own two meetings with Venus.

"It isn't a girl -- -bosh!" jeered Farley. "There's only one girl in the world I'm interested in -- -and she's my kid sister."

"Then why this talk of resigning."

"Danny, I'm simply afraid that I'm not made of the stuff to make a competent Naval officer. My markings are all right, but I know that I don't know enough to take a sailboat out and bring it back."

"Oh, is that all?" cried Dalzell laughingly. "Then I know just what you want."

"What?"

"Drop into our room and have a talk with Darry. Dave knows just how to comfort and cheer a fellow who has that glum bug in his head of cabbage. Come right along!"

Dan almost forced Farley to the door of the room, opened it and shoved the modest midshipman inside.

"Darry," Dan called joyously, "here's a case for your best talents. Farley has a pet bee in his bonnet that he isn't fit to be a Naval officer. He doesn't know enough. So he's going to resign. I've told him you'll know just how to handle his case. Go after him, now!"

Midshipman Dalzell pulled the door shut, chuckling softly to himself, and marched back to the library. It was just before the call for supper formation when Dan returned from "boning" in the library.

"Did you brace Farl up, Davy?" demanded Dan.

"You grinning idiot!" laughed Darrin. "What on earth made you bring him to me?"

"Because I thought you needed each other."

"Well, perhaps we did," laughed Midshipman Darrin. "At any rate I've been hammering at Farl all the time that he wasn't hammering at me. I certainly feel better, and I hope that he does."

"You both needed the same thing," declared Dan, grinning even more broadly as he picked up his hair brushes.

"What did we need?"

"You've both been studying so hard that your brain cells are clogged."

"But what did Farley and I both need?" insisted Midshipman Darrin.

"Mental exercise -- -brain-sparring," rejoined Dalzell. "You both needed something that could take you out of the horrible daily grooves that you've been sailing in lately. You both needed something to stir you up -- -and I hope you gave each other all the excitement you could."

In the way of a stirring-up something was about to happen that was going to stir up the whole first class -- -if not the entire brigade.

Nor was Dave Darrin to escape being one of the central figures in the excitement.

Here is the way in which the whole big buzzing-match got its start and went on to a lively finish.



Chapter XVII

Mr. Clairy Deals In Outrages


"Mr. Darrin!"

With that hail proceeded sharply from the lips of a first classman, who on this evening happened to be the midshipman in charge of the floor.

Clairy sat at his desk in the corridor, his eyes on a novel until Dave happened along. As he gave the sharp hail Mr. Clairy thrust his novel under a little pile of text-books.

"Well, sir?" inquired Dave, halting. "Mr. Darrin, what do you mean by coming down the corridor with both shoes unlaced."

"They are not unlaced," retorted Dave, staring in amazement at Midshipman Clairy.

"They are not now -- -true."

"And they haven't been unlaced, sir, since I first laced them on rising this morning."

"Don't toy with the truth, Mr. Darrin!" rang Clairy's voice sternly.

"If my shoes had been unlaced, they would still be unlaced, wouldn't they, sir?" demanded Dave.

"No; for you have laced them since I spoke to you about it!"

This was entirely too much for Darrin, who gulped, gasped, and then stared again at the midshipman in charge of the floor.

Then, suddenly, a light dawned on Dave. He grinned almost as broadly as Dan Dalzell could have done.

"Come, come, now, Clairy!" chided Dave. "What on earth is the joke -- -and why?"

Midshipman Clairy straightened himself, his eyes flashing and his whole appearance one of intense dignity.

"Mr. Darrin, there is no joke about it, as you are certainly aware, sir. And I must call your attention to the fact that it is bad taste to address a midshipman familiarly when he is on official duty."

"Why, hang you -- -" Dave broke forth utterly aghast.

"Stop, sir!" commanded Mr. Clairy, rising. "Mr. Darrin, you will place yourself on report for strolling along the corridor with both shoes unlaced. You will also place yourself on report for impertinence in answering the midshipman in charge of the floor."

"But --  -- -"

"Go at once, sir, and place yourself on report"

Dave meditated, for two or three seconds, over the advisability of knocking Mr. Clairy down. But familiarity with the military discipline of the Naval Academy immediately showed Darrin that his only present course was to obey.

"I wonder who's loony now?" hummed Dave to himself, as he marched briskly along on his way to the office of the officer in charge. There be picked up two of the report slips, dipping a pen in ink.

First, in writing, he reported himself on the charge of having his shoes unlaced. In the space for remarks Darrin wrote tersely:

"Untrue."

Against the charge of unwarranted impertinence to the midshipman in charge of the floor Dave wrote the words:

"Impertinence admitted, but in my opinion entirely warranted."

So utterly astounded was Darrin by this queer turn of affairs, that he forgot the matter that had taken him from his room. On his way back he met Midshipman Page. On the latter's face was a look as black as a thundercloud.

"What on earth is wrong, Page?" Darrin asked.

"I've got the material for a first-class fight on my hands," Page answered, his eyes flashing.

"What -- -"

"Clairy has ordered me to report myself."

"What does he say you were doing that you weren't doing?" inquired Midshipman Darrin, a curious look in his eyes.

"Clairy has the nerve to state that I was coming along the corridor with my blouse unbuttoned. He ordered me to button it up, which I couldn't do since it was already buttoned. But he declared that I buttoned it up while facing him, and so I'm on my way to place myself on report for an offense that I didn't commit."

"Clairy just sent me to the O.C. to frap the pap for having my shoes unlaced," remarked Dave, his face flushing darkly.

"What on earth is Clairy up to?" cried Page.

"I don't know. I can't see his game clearly. But he's certainly hunting trouble."

"Then --  -- -"

"See here, Page, we've no business holding indignation meetings in study hours. But come to my room just as soon as release sounds -- -will you?"

"You can wager that I will," shot back Midshipman Page as he started along the corridor.

"Hello," hailed Midshipman Dalzell, looking up as his chum entered. "Why, Darry, you're angry -- -really angry. Who has dared throw spitballs at you?"

"Quit your joking, Dan!" returned Dave Darrin, his voice quivering. "Clairy is hunting real trouble, I imagine, and I fancy he'll have to be obliged."

Dave thereupon related swiftly what had happened, Dan staring in sheer amazement. Then Dalzell jumped up.

"Where are you going?" Darrin answered.

"To interview Clairy."

"You'd better not, Dan. The trouble is thick enough already."

"I'm going to interview Clairy -- -perhaps," retorted Midshipman Dalzell. "I've just thought of a perfectly good excuse for being briefly out of quarters during study hours. I'll be back soon -- -perhaps with some news."

Off Dan posted. In less than ten minutes he returned, looking even more indignant than had his chum.

"Davy," broke forth Dalzell hotly, "that idiot is surely hunting all the trouble there is in Annapolis."

"He went after you, then?"

"I was making believe to march straight by the fellow's desk," resumed Dan, "when Clairy brought me up sharply. Told me to frap the pap for strolling with my hands in my pockets. I didn't do anything like that."

In another hour indignation was running riot in that division. Midshipman Clairy had ordered no less than eight first classmen to put themselves on report for offenses that none of them would admit having committed.

Oh, but there was wrath boiling in the quarters occupied by those eight first classmen.

Immediately after release had sounded, Page and Farley made a bee-line for Dave's room.

"Did Clairy wet you, Farley?" demanded Darrin.

"No; I haven't been out of my room until just now."

"Page," continued Darrin, "circulate rapidly in first class rooms on this deck and find out whether Clairy improperly held up any more of the fellows. Dan was a victim, too."

Page had five first classmen on the scene in a few minutes. The meeting seemed doomed to resolve itself into a turmoil of angry language.

"Clairy is a hound!"

"A liar in my case!"

"He's hunting a fight!"

"Coventry would do him more good."

"Yes; we'll have to call the class to deal with this."

"The scoundrel!"

"The pup!"

"He's trying to pile some of us up with so many demerits that we won't be able to graduate."

"Oh, well," argued Page, "Fenwick has hit it. We can't fight such a lying hound. All we can do is to get the class out and send the fellow to Coventry."

"What do you imagine it all means, Darry?" questioned Fenwick.

Dave's wrath had had time to simmer down, and he was cooler now.

"I wish I knew what to think, fellows," Dave answered slowly. "Clairy has never shown signs of doing such things before."

"He has always been a sulk, and never had a real friend in the class," broke in Farley.

"He has always been quiet and reticent," Dave admitted. "But we never before had any real grievance against Mr. Clairy."

"We have a grievance now, all right!" glowered Page. "Coventry, swift and tight, is the only answer to the situation."

"Let's not be in too much haste, fellows," Darrin urged.

"You -- -you give such advice as that?" gasped Midshipman Dalzell. "Why, Davy, the fellow went for you in fearful shape. He insulted you outrageously."

"I know he did," Darrin responded. "That's why I believe in going slowly in the matter."

"Now, why?" hissed Page. "Why on earth -- -why?"

"Clairy must have had some motive behind his attack," Dave urged.

"It couldn't have been a good motive, anyway," broke in another midshipman hotly.

"Never mind that part of it, just now," Dave Darrin retorted. "Fellows, I, for one, don't like to go after Mr. Clairy too hastily while we're all in doubt about the cause of it."

"We don't need to know the cause," stormed indignant Farley. "We know the results, and that's enough for us. I favor calling a class meeting to-morrow night."

"We can do just as much, and act just as intelligently, if we hold the class-meeting off for two or three nights," Midshipman Darrin maintained.

"Now, why on earth should we bold off that long?" insisted Fenwick. "We know, now, that Mr. Clairy has insulted eight members of our class. We know that he has lied about them, and that the case is so bad as to require instant attention. All I'm sorry for is that it's too late to hold the class meeting within the next five minutes."

Dave found even his own roommate opposed to delay in dealing with the preposterous case of the outrageous Mr. Clairy.

Yet such was Darrin's ascendency over his classmates in matters of ethics and policy, that he was able, before taps, to bring the rest around to his wish for a waiting programme for two or three days.

"There'll be some explanation of this," Dave urged, when he had gotten his comrades into a somewhat more reasonable frame of mind.

"The explanation will have to be sought with fists," grumbled Fenwick. "And there are eight of us, while Clairy has only two eyes that can be blackened."

The news had spread, of course, and the first class was in a fury of resentment against one of its own members.

Meanwhile Midshipman Clairy sat at his desk out in the corridor, clearly calm and indifferent to all the turmoil that his acts had stirred up in the brigade.



Chapter XVIII

The Whole Class Takes A Hand


"Then, Mr. Darrin, you admit the use of impertinent language to Mr. Clairy, when the midshipman was in charge of the floor?"

This question was put to Dave, the following morning, by the commandant of midshipmen.

"It would have been an impertinence, sir, under ordinary conditions," Darrin answered. "Under the circumstances I believed, sir, that I had been provoked into righteous anger."

"You still assert that Mr. Clairy's charge that your shoes were unlaced when you approached him was false?"

"Absolutely false, sir."

"Do you wish any time to reflect over that answer, Mr. Darrin?"

"No, sir."

"You are willing your answer should go on record, then?"

"My denial of the charge of having my shoes unlaced is the only answer that I can possibly make, sir."

The commandant reflected. Then he directed that Midshipman Clairy be ordered to report to him. Clairy came, almost immediately. The commandant questioned him closely. Clairy still stuck resolutely to his story that Dave Darrin had been passing through the corridor with his shoes unlaced; and, furthermore, that Darrin, when rebuked and ordered to place himself on report, had used impertinent language.

During this examination the midshipmen did not glance toward each other. Both stood at attention, their glances on the commandant's face.

"I do not know what to say," the officer admitted at last. "I will take the matter under advisement. You may both go."

Outside, well away from the office, Dave Darrin halted, swinging and confronting Clairy sternly.

"You lying scoundrel!" vibrated Darrin, his voice shaking with anger.

"It constitutes another offense, Mr. Darrin, to use such language for the purpose of intimidating a midshipman in the performance of his duty," returned Midshipman Clairy, looking back steadily into Dave's eyes.

"An offense? Fighting is another, under a strict interpretation of the rules," Dave replied coldly.

"And I do not intend to fight you," replied Clairy, still speaking smoothly.

"Perhaps I should know better than to challenge you," replied Midshipman Darrin. "The spirit of the brigade prohibits my fighting any one who is not a gentleman."

"If that is all you have to say, Mr. Darrin, I will leave you. You cannot provoke me into any breach of the regulations."

Clairy walked away calmly, leaving Dave Darrin fuming with anger.

Page was sent for next, then Dalzell. Both denied utterly the charges on which Clairy had ordered them to report themselves. Again Mr. Clairy was sent for, and once more he asserted the complete truthfulness of his charges.

It was so in the cases of the five remaining midshipmen under charges, though still Mr. Clairy stuck to the correctness of the report.

Action in all of the eight cases was suspended by the commandant, who went post-haste to the superintendent. That latter official, experienced as he was in the ways of midshipmen, could offer no solution of the mystery.

"You see, my dear Graves," explained the superintendent, "it is the rule of custom here, and a safe rule at that, to accept the word of a midshipman as being his best recollection or knowledge of the truth of any statement that he makes. In that case, we would seem to be bound to accept the statements of Mr. Clairy."

On the other hand, we are faced with the fact that we must accept the statements made by Mr. Darrin, Mr. Page, Mr. Dalzell, Mr. Fenwick and others. We are on the horns of a dilemma, though I doubt not that we shall find a way out of it."

"There appears, sir, to be only the statement of one midshipman against the word of eight midshipmen," suggested the commandant.

"Not exactly that," replied the superintendent. "The fact is that Mr. Clairy's charges do not concern the eight midshipmen collectively, but individually. Had Mr. Clairy charged all eight of the midshipmen of an offense committed at the same time and together, and had the eight midshipmen all denied it, then we should be reluctantly compelled to admit the probability that Mr. Clairy had been lying. But his charges relate to eight different delinquencies, and not one of the eight accused midshipmen is in a position to act as witness for any of the other accused men."

"Then what are we going to do, sir?"

"I will admit that I do not yet know," replied the superintendent. "Some method of getting at the truth in the matter is likely to occur to us later on. In the meantime, Graves, you will not publish any punishments for the reported delinquencies."

"Very good, sir," nodded the commandant.

"Keep your wits at work for a solution of the mystery, Graves."

"I will, sir."

"And I will give the matter all the attention that I can," was the superintendent's last word.

If anger had been at the boiling point before, the situation was even worse now.

Page and Fenwick openly challenged Clairy to fight. He replied, in each case, with a cool, smiling refusal.

"We've got to hold that class meeting!" growled Farley.

"Why?" inquired Dave. "The class can't do anything more to Clairy than has already been done. His refusals to fight will send him to Coventry as securely as could action by all four of the classes. No fellow here can refuse to fight, unless he couples with his refusal an offer to submit the case to his own class for action. No one, henceforth, will have a word to say to Clairy."

"Perhaps not; but I still insist that the class meeting ought to be called."

This was the general sentiment among the first classmen. Darrin was the only real dissenter to the plan.

"Oh, well, go ahead and call the class together, if you like," agreed Dave. "My main contention is that such a meeting will be superfluous. The action of the class has really been taken already."

"Will you come to the meeting, Darry?" asked Fenwick.

"Really, I don't know," Dave answered thoughtfully. "My presence would do neither good nor harm. The action of the class has already been decided. In fact, it has been put into effect."

"Then you won't be there?" spoke up Farley.

"I don't know. I'll come, however, if it will please any of you especially."

"Oh, bother you, Darry! We're not going to beg your presence as a favor."

At formation for dinner, when the brigade adjutant published the orders, every midshipman in the long ranks of the twelve companies waited eagerly to learn what had been done in the cases of the eight midshipmen. They were doomed to disappointment, however.

At brigade formation for supper notice of a meeting of the first class in Recreation Hall was duly published. There was rather an unwonted hush over the tables that night.

Immediately afterwards groups of midshipmen were seen strolling through the broad foyer of Bancroft Hall, and up the low steps into Recreation Hall. Yet it was some ten minutes before there was anything like a full gathering of the first class.

"Order!" rapped the class president Then, after glancing around:

"Is Mr. Clairy present?"

He was not.

"Where's Darry?" buzzed several voices.

But Dave Darrin was not present either.

"Where is he?" several demanded of Dan.

"Blessed if I know," Dan answered. "I wish I did, fellows."

"Isn't Darry going to attend?"

"I don't know that, either."

Midshipman Gosman now claimed the floor. He spoke a good deal as though he had been retained as advocate for the eight accused midshipmen. In a fiery speech Mr. Gosman recited that eight different members of the class had been falsely accused by Mr. Clairy.

"There are not eight liars in our class," declared Midshipman Gosman, with very telling effect.

Then, after more fiery words aimed at Clairy, Mr. Gosman demanded:

"Why is not Mr. Clairy here to speak for himself? Let him who can answer this! Further, Mr. Clairy has been challenged to fight by some of those whom be accused. Now, sir and classmates, a midshipman may refuse to fight, but if he does he must submit his case to his class, and then be guided by the class decision as to whether he must fight or not. Mr. Clairy has not done this."

"He's a cur!" shouted a voice.

"I accept the remark," bowed Mr. Gosman, "if I am permitted to express the class's apology to all dogs for the comparison."

"Good!" yelled several.

"Mr. President and classmates," continued the angry orator, "I believe we are all of one mind, and I believe that I can express the unanimous sentiment of the first class."

"You can!"

"You bet you can!"

"Go ahead!"

"Mr. President, I take it upon myself to move that the first class should, and hereby does, send Mr. Clairy to Coventry for all time to come!"

"Second the motion!" cried several voices.

Then a diversion was created.

One of the big doors opened and a midshipman stepped into the room, closing the door.

That midshipman was Dave Darrin. Every first classman in the room felt certain that Darrin had entered for the express purpose of saying something of consequence.



Chapter XIX

Midshipman Darrin Has The Floor


But Dave did not speak at first. Advancing only a short distance into the hall he stood with arms folded, his face well-nigh expressionless.

For a moment the class president glanced at Darrin, then at the assemblage.

"Gentlemen," announced the class president, "you have heard the motion, that Mr. Clairy be sent to Coventry for all time to come. The motion has been duly seconded. Remarks are in order."

"Mr. President!"

It was Dave who had spoken. All eyes were turned in his direction at once.

"Mr. Darrin," announced the chair. "Mr. President, and classmates, I, for one, shall vote against the motion."

An angry clamor rose, followed by calls of, "Question! Put the motion!"

"Do any of you know," Darrin continued, "why Mr. Clairy is not here this evening?"

"He's afraid to come!"

"Did any of you note that Mr. Clairy was not at supper?"

"The hound hadn't any appetite," jeered Fenwick angrily.

"You have observed, of course, that Mr. Clairy was not here at the meeting?"

"He didn't dare come!" cried several voices.

"If you have any explanation to make, Mr. Darrin, let us have it," urged the chair.

"Mr. President and classmates," Midshipman Darrin continued, "all along I have felt that there must be some explanation to match Mr. Clairy's most extraordinary conduct. I now offer you the explanation. The officer in charge sent for me, to impart some information that I am requested to repeat before this meeting."

"Go on!" cried several curious voices when Dave paused for a moment.

"Fellows, I hate to tell you the news, and you will all be extremely sorry to hear it. You will be glad, however, that you did not pass the motion now before the class. Mr. President, I have to report, at the request of the officer in charge, the facts in Mr. Clairy's case.

"From the peculiar nature of the case both the superintendent and the commandant of midshipmen were convinced that there was something radically wrong with Mr. Clairy."

"Humph! I should say so!" uttered Penwick, with emphasis.

"Mr. Clairy was not at our mess at supper," resumed Dave Darrin, "for the very simple reason that he had been taken to hospital. There he was examined by three surgeons, assisted by an outside specialist. Mr. President and classmates, I know you will all feel heartily sorry for Clairy when I inform you that he has been pronounced insane."

Dave ceased speaking, and an awed silence prevailed. It was the chair who first recovered his poise.

"Clairy insane!" cried the class president. "Gentlemen, now we comprehend what, before, it was impossible to understand."

In the face of this sudden blow to a classmate all the midshipmen sat for a few minutes more as if stunned. Then they began to glance about at each other.

"I think this event must convince us, sir," Darrin's voice broke in, "that we young men don't know everything, and that we should learn to wait for facts before we judge swiftly."

"Mr. President!"

It was Gosman, on his feet. In a husky voice that midshipman begged the consent of his seconders for his withdrawing the motion he had offered sending Midshipman Clairy to Coventry. In a twinkling that motion had been withdrawn.

"Will Mr. Darrin, state, if able, how serious Clairy's insanity is believed to be?" inquired the chair.

"It is serious enough to ruin all his chances in the Navy," Dave answered, "though the surgeons believe that, after Clairy has been taken by his friends to some asylum, his cure can eventually be brought about."

The feeling in the room was too heavy for more discussion. A motion to adjourn was offered and carried, after which the first classmen hurried from the room.

Of course no demerits were imposed as a result of the crazy reports ordered by Midshipman Clairy on that memorable night. Three days later the unfortunate young man's father arrived and had his son conveyed from Annapolis. It may interest the reader to know that, two years later, the ex-midshipman fully recovered his reason, and is now successfully engaged in business.

Spring now rapidly turned into early summer. The baseball squad had been at work for some time. Both Darrin and Dalzell had been urged to join.

"Let's go into the nine, if we can make it -- -and we ought to," urged Dan.

"You go ahead, Danny boy, if you're so inclined," replied Dave.

"Aren't you going in?"

"I have decided not to."

"You're a great patriot for the Naval Academy, Davy."

"I'm looking out for myself, I'll admit. I want to graduate as high in my class as I can, Danny. Yet I'd sacrifice my own desires if the Naval Academy needed me on the nine. However, I'm not needed. There are several men on the nine who play ball better than I but don't let me keep you off the nine, Dan."

"If you stay off I guess I will," replied Dalzell. "If the nine doesn't need you then it doesn't need me."

"But I thought you wanted to play."

"Not unless you and I could be the battery, David, little giant. I'd like to catch your pitching, but I don't want to stop any other fellow's pitching."

So far the nine had gone on without them. Realizing how much Dan wanted to play with the Navy team in this, their last year, Dave changed his mind, and both joined. A very creditable showing was made after their entrance into the nine. That year the Navy captured more than half the games played, though the Navy was fated to lose to the Army by a score of four to three. This game is described in detail in "Dick Prescott's Fourth Year At West Point."

With the approach of graduation time Dave's heart was gladdened by the arrival in Annapolis of Belle Meade and her mother, who stopped at the Maryland House. Dave saw them on the only days when it was possible -- -that is to say, on Saturdays and Sundays. He had many glimpses of his sweetheart, however, at other times, for Belle, filled with the fascination of Naval life, came often with her mother to watch the outdoor drills.

When Dave saw her at such times, however, he was obliged to act as though he did not. Not by look or sign could he convey any intimation that he was doing anything but pay the strictest heed to duty.

Then came the Saturday before examination. Dave Darrin, released after dinner, would gladly have hurried away from the Academy grounds to visit his sweetheart in town, but Belle willed it otherwise.

"These are your last days here, Dave," whispered Belle, as she and her handsome midshipman strolled about. "If I'm to share your life with you, I may as well begin by sharing the Naval Academy with you to-day."

"Shall we go over to the field and watch the ball game when it starts?" Darrin asked.

"Not unless you very especially wish to," Miss Meade replied. "I'd rather have you to myself than to share your attention with a ball game."

So, though Midshipman Dave was interested in the outcome of the game, he decided to wait for the score when it had been made.

"Where's Dan to-day?" Belle inquired.

"Over at the ball game."

"Alone?"

"No; the brigade is with him, or he's with the brigade," laughed Darrin.

"Then he's not there with a girl?"

"Oh, no; I think Danny's second experience has made him a bit skeptical about girls."

"And how are you, on that point, Mr. Darrin?" teased Belle, gazing up at him mirthfully.

"You know my sentiments, as to myself, Belle. As for Dan -- -well, I think it beyond doubt that he will do well to wait for several years before he allows himself to be interested in any girls."

"Why?"

"Well, because Danny's judgment is bad in that direction. And he's pretty sure to be beaten out by any determined rival. You see, when Danny gets interested in a girl, he doesn't really know whether he wants her. From a girl's point of view what do you think of that failing, Belle?"

"I am afraid the girl is not likely to feel complimented."

"So," pursued Dave, "while Danny is really interested in a girl, but is uneasily unable to make up his mind, the girl is pretty sure to grow tired of him and take up with the more positive rival."

"Poor Dan is not likely to have a bride early in life," sighed Belle.

"Oh, yes; one very excellent bride for a Naval officer to have."

"What is that?"

"His commission. Dan, if he keeps away from too interesting girls, will have some years in which to fit himself splendidly in his profession. By that time he'll be all the better equipped for taking care of a wife."

"I wonder," pondered Belle, "what kind of wife Dan will finally choose."

"He won't have anything to do with the choosing," laughed Darrin. "One of these days some woman will choose him, and then Dan will be anchored for life. It is even very likely that he'll imagine that he selected his wife from among womankind, but he won't have much to say about it."

"You seem to think Dan is only half witted," Belle remarked.

"Only where women are concerned, Belle. In everything else he's a most capable young American. He's going to be a fine Naval officer."

In another hour Belle had changed her mind. She had seen all of the Academy grounds that she cared about for a while, and now proposed that they slip out through the Maryland Avenue gate for a walk through the shaded, sweet scented streets of Annapolis. As Darrin had town liberty the plan pleased him.

Strolling slowly the young people at last neared State Circle.

"I thought midshipmen didn't tell fibs," suddenly remarked Belle.

"They're not supposed to," Dave replied.

"But you said Dan was at the ball game."

"Isn't he?"

"Look there!" Belle exclaimed dramatically.



Chapter XX

Dan Steers On The Rocks Again


Just entering Wiegard's were Midshipman Dalzell and a very pretty young woman.

Dan had not caught sight of his approaching friends.

"Why, that fellow told me he was going to see if he couldn't be the mascot for a winning score to-day," Dave exclaimed.

"But he didn't say that the score was to be won in a ball game, did he?" Belle queried demurely.

"Now I think of it, he didn't mention ball," Darrin admitted. "But I thought it was the game down on the Academy athletic field."

"No; it was very different kind of game," Belle smiled. "Dave, you'll find that Dan is incurable. He's going to keep on trying with women until --  -- -"

"Until he lands one?" questioned Dave.

"No; until one lands him. Dave, I wonder if it would be too terribly prying if we were to turn into Wiegard's too?"

"I don't see any reason why it should be," Darrin answered. "Mr. Wiegard conducts a public confectioner's place. It's the approved place for any midshipman to take a young lady for ice cream. Do you feel that you'd like some ice cream?"

"No," Belle replied honestly. "But I'd like to get a closer look at Dan's latest."

So Dave led his sweetheart into Wiegard's. In order to get a seat at a table it was necessary to pass the table at which Dan and his handsome friend were seated. As Dalzell's back was toward the door he did not espy his friends until they were about to pass.

"Why, hello, Darry!" cried Dan, rising eagerly, though his cheeks flushed a bit. "How do you do, Miss Meade? Miss Henshaw, may I present my friends? Miss Meade and Mr. Darrin."

The introduction was pleasantly acknowledged all around. Miss Henshaw proved wholly well-bred and at ease.

"Won't you join us here?" asked Dalzell, trying hard to conceal the fact that he didn't want any third and fourth parties.

"I know you'll excuse us," answered Dave, bowing, "and I feel certain that I am running counter to Miss Meade's wishes. But I have so little opportunity to talk to her that I'm going to beg you to excuse us. I'm going to be selfish and entice Miss Meade away to the furthest corner."

That other table was so far away that Dave and Belle could converse in low tones without the least danger of being overheard. There were, at that time, no other patrons in the place.

"Well, Belle, what do you think of the lady, now that you've seen her?"

"You've named her," replied Belle quietly. "Dan's new friend is beyond any doubt a lady."

"Then Dan is safe, at last."

"I'm not so sure of that," Belle answered.

"But, if she's really a lady, she must be safe company for Dan."

Belle smiled queerly before she responded:

"I'm afraid Dan is in for a tremendous disappointment."

"In the lady's character?" pressed Darrin.

"Oh, indeed, no."

"Wait and see."

"But I'd rather know now."

"I'll tell you what I mean before you say good-bye this afternoon," Belle promised.

"By Jove, but I am afraid that is going to be too late," murmured Midshipman Darrin. "Unless I'm greatly misled as to the meaning of the light that has suddenly come into Danny's eyes, he's proposing to her now!"

"Oh!" gasped Belle, and the small spoonful of cream that was passing down her throat threatened to strangle her.

"Dave, how old do you think Miss Henshaw is?" asked Miss Meade, as soon as she could trust herself to speak.

"Twenty, I suppose."

"You don't know much about women's ages, then, do you?" smiled Belle.

"I don't suppose I've any business to know."

"Miss Henshaw is a good many years older than Dan."

"She doesn't look it," urged Dave.

"But she is. Trust another woman to know!"

"There, by Jove!" whispered Dave. "It has started. Danny is running under the wire! I can tell by his face that he has just started to propose."

"Poor boy! He'll have an awful fall!" muttered Belle.

"Why do you say that? But, say! You're right, Belle. Dan's face has turned positively ghastly. He looks worse than he could if he'd just failed to graduate."

"Naturally," murmured Belle. "Poor boy, I'm sorry for him."

"But what's the matter?"

"Did you notice Miss Henshaw's jewelry?"

"Not particularly. I can see, from here, that she's wearing a small diamond in each ear."

"Dave, didn't you see the flat gold band that she wears on the third finger of her left hand?" Belle demanded in a whisper.

"No," confessed Midshipman Darrin innocently. "But what has that to do with -- -"

"Her wedding ring," Belle broke in. "Dan has gotten her title twisted. She's Mrs. Henshaw."

"Whew! But what, in that case, is she doing strolling around with a midshipman? That's no proper business for a married woman," protested Dave Darrin.

"Haven't you called on or escorted any married women since you've been at Annapolis?" demanded Belle bluntly.

"Yes; certainly," nodded Dave. "But, in every instance they were wives of Naval officers, and such women looked upon midshipmen as mere little boys."

"Isn't there an Admiral Henshaw in the Navy?" inquired Belle.

"Certainly."

"That's Mrs. Henshaw," Belle continued.

"How do you know?"

"I don't, but I'm certain, just the same. Now, Dan has met Mrs. Henshaw somewhere down at the Naval Academy. He heard her name and got it twisted into Miss Henshaw. It's his own blundering fault, no doubt. But Admiral Henshaw's young and pretty wife is not to be blamed for allowing a boyish midshipman to stroll with her as her escort."

"Whew!" whistled Dave Darrin under his breath. "So Dan has been running it blind again? Oh, Belle, it's a shame! I'm heartily sorry that we've been here to witness the poor old chap's Waterloo."

"So am I," admitted Belle. "But the harm that has been done is due to Dan's own blindness. He should learn to read ordinary signs as he runs."

No wonder Dan Dalzell's face had gone gray and ashy. For the time being he was feeling keenly. He had been so sure of "Miss" Henshaw's being a splendid woman -- -as, indeed, she was -- -that he decided on this, their third meeting, to try his luck with a sailor's impetuous wooing. In other words, he had plumply asked the admiral's wife to marry him;

"Why, you silly boy!" remonstrated Mrs. Henshaw, glancing up at him with a dismayed look. "I don't know your exact age, Mr. Dalzell, but I think it probable that I am at least ten years older than -- -"

"I don't care," Dan maintained bravely.

"Besides, what would the admiral say?"

"Is he your father or your brother?" Dan inquired.

"My husband!"

Then it was that Midshipman Dalzell's face had gone so suddenly gray. He fairly gasped and felt as though he were choking.

"Mr. Dalzell," spoke Mrs. Henshaw, earnestly, "let us both forget that you ever spoke such unfortunate words. Let us forget it all, and let it pass as though nothing had happened at all. I will confess that, two or three times, I thought you addressed me as 'miss.' I believed it to be only a slip of the tongue. I didn't dream that you didn't know. Even if I were a single woman I wouldn't think of encouraging you for a moment, for I am much -- -much -- -too old for you. And now, let us immediately forget it all, Mr. Dalzell. Shall we continue our stroll?"

Somehow the dazed midshipman managed to reply gracefully, and to follow his fair companion from Wiegard's.

"Poor Dan!" sighed Dave. "I'll wager that's the worst crusher that Dalzell ever had. But how do you read so much at a glance, Belle?"

"By keeping my eyes moderately well opened," that young woman answered simply.

"I wonder where poor Dan's adventures in search of a wife are going to end up?" mused Darrin.

"He'd better accept the course that you outlined for him a little while ago," half smiled Belle. "Dan's very best course will be to devote his thoughts wholly to his profession for a few years, and wait until the right woman comes along and chooses him for herself. You may tell Dan, from me, some time, if it won't hurt his feelings, that I think his only safe course is to shut his eyes and let the woman do the choosing."

"I must be a most remarkably fine fellow myself," remarked Midshipman Darrin modestly.

"Why do you think that?"

"Why, a girl with eyes as sharp as yours, Belle, would never have accepted me if there had been a visible flaw on me anywhere."

"There are no very pronounced flaws except those that I can remedy when I take charge of you, Dave," replied Belle with what might have been disconcerting candor.

"Then I'm lucky in at least one thing," laughed Darrin good-humoredly. "When my turn comes I shall be made over by a most capable young woman. Then I shall be all but flawless."

"Or else I shall take a bride's privilege," smiled Belle demurely, "and go back to mother."

"You'll have plenty of time for that," teased Dave. "A Naval officer's time is spent largely at sea, and he can't take his wife with him."

"Don't remind me of that too often," begged Belle, a plaintive note in her voice. "Your being at sea so much is the only flaw that I see in the future. And, as neither of us will be rich, I can't follow you around the world much of the time."

When Midshipman Dave Darrin reentered his quarters late that afternoon be found Dan Dalzell sitting back in a chair, his hands thrust deep into his pockets. His whole attitude was one of most unmilitary dejection.

"Dave, I've run the ship aground again," Dan confessed ruefully.

"I know you have, Danny," Darrin replied sympathetically.

Dan Dalzell bounded to his feet.

"What?" he gasped. "Is the story going the rounds?"

"It can't be."

"Then did you hear what we were saying this afternoon in Wiegard's?"

"No; we were too far away for that. But I judged that you had succeeded in making Mrs. Henshaw feel very uncomfortable for a few moments."

"Then you knew she was a married woman, Dave?"

"No; but Belle did."

"How, I -- -wonder?"

"She saw the wedding ring on Mrs. Henshaw's left hand."

Dan Dalzell looked the picture of amazement. Then he whistled in consternation.

"By the great Dewey!" he groaned hoarsely. "I never thought of that!"

"No; but you should have done so."

"Dave, I'm the biggest chump in the world. Will you do me a supreme favor -- -kick me?"

"That would be too rough, Dan. But, if you can stand it, Belle offered me some good advice for you in your affairs with women."

"Thank her for me, when you get a chance, but I don't need it," replied Dan bitterly. "I'm through with trying to find a sweetheart, or any candidate to become Mrs. Dalzell."

"But you'd better listen to the advice," Dave insisted, and repeated what Belle had said.

"By Jove, Dave, but you're lucky to be engaged to a sensible girl like Belle! I wish there was another like her in the world."

"Why?"

"If there were another like Belle I'd be sorely tempted to try my \ luck for the fourth time."

"Dan Dalzell!" cried Dave sternly. "You're not safe without a guardian! You'll do it again, between now and graduation."

"You can watch me, if you want, then; but I'll fool you," smiled Dan. "But say, Dave!"

"Well?"

"You don't suppose Belle will say anything about this back in Gridley, do you? By Jove, if she does I'd feel --  -- -

"You'll feel something else," warned Dave snappily, "if you don't at once assure me that you know Belle too well to think that she'd make light of your misfortunes."

"But sometimes girls tell one another some things --  -- -"

"Belle Meade doesn't," interrupted Dave so briskly that Dalzell, after a glance, agreed:

"You're right there, David, little giant. I've known Belle ever since we were kids at the Central Grammar School. If Belle ever got into any trouble through too free use of her tongue, then I never heard anything about it."

"Dan, do you want a fine suggestion about the employment of the rest of your liberty time while we're at Annapolis?"

"Yes."

"You remember Barnes's General History, that we used to have in Grammar school?"

"Yes."

"Devote your liberty time to reading the book through again."



Chapter XXI

In The Thick Of Disaster


Examination week -- -torture of the "wooden" and seventh heaven of the "savvy!"

For the wooden man, he who knows little, this week of final examinations is a period of unalloyed torture. He must go before an array of professors who are there to expose his ignorance.

No "wooden" man can expect to get by. The gates of hope are closed before his face. He marches to the ordeal, full of a dull misery. Whether he is fourth classman or first, he knows that hope has fled; that he will go below the saving 2.5 mark and be dropped from the rolls.

But your "savvy" midshipman -- -he who knows much, and who is sure and confident with his knowledge, finds this week of final examinations a period of bliss and pride. He is going to "pass"; he knows that, and nothing else matters.

Eight o'clock every morning, during this week, finds the midshipman in one recitation room or another, undergoing his final. As it is not the purpose of the examiners to wear any man out, the afternoon is given over to pleasures. There are no afternoon examinations, and no work of any sort that can be avoided. Indeed, the "savvy" man has a week of most delightful afternoons, with teas, lawn parties, strolls both within and without the walls of the Academy grounds, and many boating parties. It is in examination week that the young ladies flock to Annapolis in greater numbers than ever.

Sometimes the "wooden" midshipman, knowing there is no further hope for him, rushes madly into the pleasures of this week, determined to carry back into civil life with him the memories of as many Annapolis pleasures as possible.

A strong smattering there is of midshipmen who, by no means "savvy," are yet not so "wooden" but that they hope, by hard study at the last to pull through on a saving margin in marks.

These desperate ones do not take part in the afternoon pleasures, for these midshipmen, with furrowed brows, straining eyes, feverish skin and dogged determination, spend their afternoons and evenings in one final assault on their text-books in the hope of pulling through.

Dave Darrin was not one of the honor men of his class, but he was "savvy" just the same. Dan Dalzell was a few notches lower in the class standing, but Dan was as sure of graduation as was his chum.

"One thing goes for me, this week," announced Dan, just before the chums hustled out to dinner formation on Monday.

"What's that?" Dave wanted to know. "No girls; no tender promenades!" grumbled Midshipman Dalzell.

"Poor old chap," muttered Dave sympathetically.

"Oh, that's all right for you," grunted Dan. "You have one of the 'only' girls, and so you're safe."

"There are more 'only' girls than you've any idea of, Dan Dalzell," Dave retorted with spirit. "The average American girl is a mighty fine, sweet, wholesome proposition."

"I'll grant that," nodded Dan, with a knowing air. "But I've made an important discovery concerning the really fine girls."

"Produce the discovery," begged Darrin. "The really fine girl," announced Dan, in a hollow voice, "prefers some other fellow to me."

"Well, I guess that'll be a fine idea for you to nurse -- -until after graduation," reflected Darrin aloud. "I'm not going to seek to undeceive you, Danny boy."

So Dave went off to meet Belle and her mother, while Dan Dalzell hunted up another first classman who also believed that the girls didn't particularly esteem him. That other fellow was Midshipman Jetson.

"Mrs. Davis is giving a lawn party this afternoon," announced Dave, after he had lifted his cap in greeting of Mrs. Meade and her daughter. "I have an invitation from Mrs. Davis to escort you both over to her house. Of course, if you find the tea and chatter a bit dull over there, we can go somewhere else presently."

"I never find anything dull that is a part of the life here," returned Belle, little enthusiast for the Navy. "It will suit you, mother?"

"Anything at all will suit me," declared Mrs. Meade amiably. "David, just find me some place where I can drop into an armchair and have some other middle-aged woman like myself to talk with. Then you young people need pay no further heed to me. Examination week doesn't last forever."

"It doesn't," laughed Darrin, "and many of our fellows are very thankful for that."

"How are you going to come through?" Belle asked, with a quick little thrill of anxiety.

"Nothing to worry about on that score," Dave assured her. "I'm sufficiently 'savvy' to pull sat. all right."

"Isn't that fine? And Dan?"

"Oh, he'll finish sat., too, if he doesn't sight another craft flying pink hair ribbons."

"Any danger of that?" asked Belle anxiously, for Dan was a townsman of hers.

"Not judging by the company that Dan is keeping to-day," smiled Darrin.

"Who is his companion to-day, then?"

"Jetson, a woman hater."

"Really a woman hater?" asked Belle.

"Oh, no; Jet wouldn't poison all girls, or do anything like that. He isn't violent against girls. In fact, he's merely shy when they're around. But in the service any fellow who isn't always dancing attendance on the fair is doomed to be dubbed a woman hater. In other words, a woman hater is just a fellow who doesn't pester girls all the time."

"Are you a woman hater?" Belle asked.

"Except when you are at Annapolis," was Dave's ready explanation.

That afternoon's lawn party proved a much more enjoyable affair than the young people had expected. Belle met there, for the first time, five or six girls with whom she was to be thrown often later on.

When it was over, Dave, having town liberty as well, proudly escorted his sweetheart and her mother back to the hotel.

There were more days like it. Dave, by Thursday, realizing that he was coming through his morning trials with flying colors, had arranged permission to take out a party in one of the steamers.

As the steamer could be used only for a party Darrin invited Farley and Wolgast to bring their sweethearts along. Mrs. Meade at first demurred about going.

"You and Belle have had very little time together," declared that good lady, "and I'm not so old but that I remember my youth. With so large a party there's no need of a chaperon."

"But we'd immensely like to have you come," urged Dave; "that is, unless you'd be uncomfortable on the water."

"Oh, I'm never uncomfortable on the water," Belle's mother replied.

"Then you'll come, won't you?" pleaded Dave. Belle's mother made one of the jolly party.

"You'd better come, too, Danny boy," urged Dave at the last moment. "There'll be no unattached girl with the party, so you'll be vastly safer with us than you would away from my watchful eye."

"Huh! A fine lot your watchful eye has been on me this week," retorted Midshipman Dalzell. "Jetson has been my grandmother this week."

It was a jolly party that steamed down Chesapeake Bay in the launch that afternoon. There was an enlisted man of the engineer department at the engine, while a seaman acted as helmsman.

"Straight down the bay, helmsman," Dave directed, as the launch headed out.

"Aye, aye, sir," replied the man, touching his cap.

After that the young people -- -Mrs. Meade was included under that heading -- -gave themselves over to enjoyment. Belle, with a quiet twinkle in her eyes that was born of the love of teasing, tried very hard to draw Mr. Jetson out, thereby causing that young man to flush many times.

Dan, from the outset, played devoted squire to Mrs. Meade. That was safe ground for him.

"What's that party in the sailboat yonder?" inquired Mrs. Meade, when the steamer had been nearly an hour out. "Are the young men midshipman or officers?"

Dave raised to his eyes the glasses with which the steamer was equipped.

"They're midshipmen," he announced. "Gray and Lambert, of our class, and Haynes and Whipple of the second class."

"They've young ladies with them."

"Certainly."

"Isn't it rather risky for midshipmen to have control of the boat, then, with no older man along?" asked Mrs. Meade.

"It ought not to be," Dave replied. "Midshipmen of the upper classes are expected to be familiar with the handling of sailboats."

"Those fellows are getting careless, at any rate," muttered Dan Dalzell. "Look at the way that sail is behaving. Those fellows are paying too much attention to the girls and too little heed to the handling of the craft!"

Even as Dalzell spoke the helm was jammed over and the boat started to come about.

"Confound Lambert! He ought to ease off his sheet a good bit," snapped Midshipman Dalzell.

"Helmsman, point our boat so as to pass under the other craft's stern," spoke Darrin so quietly that only Dan and Belle overheard him.

"Aye, aye, sir," murmured the helmsman, in a very low voice. Dave signaled the engineman silently to increase the speed.

"There the boat goes, the sail caught by a cross current of air!" called Midshipman Dalzell almost furiously.

The girls aboard the sailboat now cried out in alarm as they felt the extreme list of the boat under them. All too late Midshipman Gray Sprang for the sheet to ease it off.

Too late! In another moment the sailboat had capsized, the mast nearly snapping in the blow over.

"Make haste -- -do!" cried Mrs. Meade, rising in the steamer.

But the steamer was already under increased headway, and the helmsman had to make but a slight turn to bear down directly to the scene of the disaster.

Three midshipmen could be seen floundering in the water, each steadily supporting the head of a girl. But the fourth, midshipman was floundering about wildly. Then he disappeared beneath the water.

"That young man has given up and gone down!" cried Mrs. Meade, whom Dave had just persuaded to resume her seat.

"No," Dave assured her. "Gray isn't drowning. But his girl companion is missing, and he has dived to find her."

"Then the girl is lost!" quivered Mrs. Meade.

"No; I think not. Gray is a fine swimmer, and will find Miss Butler before she has been under too long a time."

Then Dave rose, for he was commander here. "Danny boy, throw off your shoes and blouse and cap. The rest stand by the boat to give such aid as you can. Ladies, you'll excuse us."

Thereupon Dave Darrin doffed his own cap, blouse and shoes. He and Dalzell were the two best swimmers in the party, and it looked as though there would be work ahead for them to do.

In another moment the steamer was on the scene, and speed was shut off. Lambert, Haynes and Whipple, with their girl companions, were speedily reached and hauled aboard.

Then Gray came up, but alone.

"Hasn't Pauline come up?" he gasped in terror.

"No," Darrin replied shortly, but in a voice laden with sympathy.

"Then I've got to down again," replied Gray despairingly. "I'd better stay down, too."

He sank instantly, a row of bubbles coming up at the spot where he had vanished.

"The poor, unfortunate fellow! He won't really attempt to drown himself, will he, if he doesn't find his young woman friend?" inquired Mrs. Meade.

"No," Dave answered without turning. "And we wouldn't allow him to do so, either."

Dave waited but a brief interval, this time. Then, as Midshipman Gray did not reappear, he called:

"Danby!"

"Yes, sir," replied the enlisted man by the engine.

"Hustle forward and rig a rope loop to the anchor cable. How long is the anchor?"

"About three feet, sir."

"Then rig the loop two feet above the mudhook."

"Yes, sir."

"Hustle!"

"Yes, sir."

"Is Gray trying to stay under? Trying to drown himself as a sign of his repentance?" whispered Wolgast in Dave's ear. But Darrin shook his head. An instant later Gray shot up to the surface -- -alone!

"Come aboard," ordered Dave Darrin, but he did not rely entirely on coaxing. Snatching up a boat-hook he fastened it in Gray's collar and drew that midshipman alongside, where many ready hands stretched out and hauled him aboard.

Two of the rescued young women were now sobbing almost hysterically.

"If you won't let me stay in the water, won't some of the rest of you do something?" demanded Midshipman Gray hoarsely.

"We're going to," nodded Dave. "Danby!"

"Yes, sir."

"Let go the anchor."

"Very good, sir."

"Follow me, Dan," directed Dave. The anchor went overboard while the two midshipmen were hustling forward.

"I'm going down first, Danny," explained Dave. "Follow whenever you may think you need to, but don't be in too big a hurry. Use good judgment."

"Trust me," nodded Dan hoarsely.

With that Dave seized the visible part of the anchor cable and went down, forcing himself toward the bottom by holding to the cable. It was a difficult undertaking, as, after he had gone part of the way, the buoyancy of the water fought against his efforts to go lower. But Midshipman Darrin still gripped hard at the cable, fighting foot by foot. His eyes open, at last he sighted the loop near the anchor. With a powerful effort he reached that loop, thrusting his left arm through it. The strain almost threatened to break that arm, but Dave held grimly, desperately on.

Now he looked about him. Fortunately there was no growth of seaweed at this point, and he could see clearly for a distance of quite a few yards around him.

"Queer what can have become of the body!" thought Darrin. "But then, the boat has drifted along slightly, and Miss Butler may have sunk straight down. She may be lying or floating here just out of my range of vision. I wish I could let go and strike out, but I'd only shoot up to the surface after a little."

Many a shadow in the deep water caused Darrin to start and peer the harder, only to find that he had been deceived.

At that depth the weight of the water pressed dangerously upon his head and in his ears. Dave felt his senses leaving him.

"I'd sooner die than give up easily!" groaned the young midshipman, and he seemed about to have his wish.



Chapter XXII

The Search At The Bottom Of The Bay


By the strongest effort of the will that he could make, Darrin steadied himself and forced his eyes once more open.

Drifting toward him, two feet above his head, was what looked like another shadow. It came closer.

At the first thought Darrin was inclined not to believe his senses.

"I'll have to go up, after all, and let Dan have his chance. I'm seeing things," Dave decided.

For, though the object floating toward him had some of the semblance of a skirt-clad figure, yet it looked all out of proportion -- -perhaps twice the size of Pauline Butler.

That was a trick of the scanty light coming through the water at an angle -- -this coupled with Darrin's own fatigue of the eyes.

Closer it came, and looked a bit smaller.

"It is a girl -- -a woman -- -some human being!" throbbed Dave internally.

Now, though his head seeming bursting, Dave hung on more tightly than ever. The drift of the water was bringing the body slowly nearer to him. He must hold on until he could let himself strike upward, seizing that body in his progress.

At last the moment arrived. Dave felt a hard tug at the cable, but he did not at that instant realize that Dan Dalzell had just started down from the steamer.

Dave judged that the right instant had come. He let go of the loop, and was shot upward. But, as he moved, his spread arms caught hold of the floating figure.

Up to within a few feet of the surface Darrin and his burden moved easily. Then he found it necessary to kick out hard with his feet. Thus he carried the burden clear, to the open air above, though at a distance of some forty feet from the steamer.

"There they are!" Farley's voice was heard calling, and there was a splash.

"Bully for you, old fellow! Hold her up, and I'm with you!" hailed Midshipman Farley.

In another moment Dave Darrin had been eased of his human burden, and Farley was swimming to the steamer with the senseless form of Pauline Butler.

Darrin tried to swim, and was astounded at finding himself so weak in the water. He floated, propelling himself feebly with his hands, completely exhausted.

Just at that moment nearly every eye was fixed on Farley and his motionless burden, and many pairs of hands stretched out to receive them.

Yet the gaze of one alert pair of eyes was fixed on Darrin, out there beyond.

"Now, you'd better look after Dave," broke in the quiet, clear voice of Belle Meade. "I think he needs help."

Wolgast went over the side in an instant, grappling with Midshipman Darrin and towing him to the side of the boat.

"All in!" cried Midshipman Gray jubilantly.

"Except Dan. Where's he?" muttered Dave weakly, as he sat on one of the side seats.

"I'll signal him," muttered Wolgast, and hastened forward to the anchor cable. This he seized and shook clumsily several times. The vibrated motion must have been imparted downward, for soon Dan Dalzell's head came above water.

"Everyone all right?" called Dan, as soon as he had gulped in a mouthful of air.

"O.K." nodded Wolgast. "Come alongside and let me haul you in."

"You let me alone," muttered Dalzell, coming alongside and grasping the rail. "Do you think a short cold bath makes me too weak to attend to myself?"

With that Dan drew himself aboard. Back in the cockpit Mrs. Meade and some of the girls were in frenzied way doing their best to revive Pauline Butler, who, at the present moment, showed no signs of life.

"Let me take charge of this reviving job. I've taken several tin medals in first aid to the injured," proclaimed Farley modestly.

In truth the midshipman had a decided knack for this sort of work. He assailed it with vigor, making a heap of life preservers, and over these placing Miss Butler, head downward. Then Farley took vigorous charge of the work of "rolling" out the water that Miss Butler must have taken into her system.

"Get anchor up and start the steamer back to Annapolis at the best speed possible," ordered Dave, long before he could talk in a natural voice.

Wolgast and Dan aided Danny in hoisting the anchor. Steam was crowded on and the little craft cut a swift, straight path for Annapolis.

"Pauline is opening her eyes!" cried Farley, after twenty minutes more of vigorous work in trying to restore the girl.

The girl's eyes merely fluttered, though, as a slight sigh escaped her. The eyelids fell again, and there was but a trace of motion at the pulse.

"We mustn't lose the poor child, now that we've succeeded in proving a little life there," cried Mrs. Meade anxiously.

"Now, that's what I call a reflection on the skill of Dr. Farley," protested that midshipman in mock indignation. It was necessary, at any amount of trouble, to keep these women folks on fair spirits until Annapolis was reached. Then, perhaps, many of them would faint.

All of the dry jackets of midshipmen aboard had been thrown protectingly around the girls who had been in the water.

"Torpedo boat ahead, sir," reported the helmsman.

"Give her the distress signal to lie to," directed Dave.

The engine's whistle sent out the shrieking appeal over the waters. The destroyer was seen to heave about and come slowly to meet the steamer.

Long before the two craft had come together Dave Darrin was standing, holding to one of the awning stanchions, for he was not yet any too strong.

"Destroyer, ahoy!" he shouted as loudly as he could between his hands. "Have you a surgeon aboard?"

"Yes," came back the answer.

"Let us board you, sir!"

"What's --  -- -"

But Dave had turned to the helmsman with:

"Steam up alongside. Lose no time."

In a very short space of time the destroyer was reached and the steamer ran alongside. The unconscious form of Miss Butler was passed up over the side, followed by the other members of the sailboat party. Mrs. Meade followed, in case she could be of any assistance.

"You may chaperon your party of young ladies in the steamer, Belle," smiled Mrs. Meade from the deck of the destroyer. "I give you express authority over them."

Farley's and Wolgast's sweethearts laughed merrily at this. All hands had again reached the point where laughter came again to their lips without strong effort. Pauline Butler was safe under the surgeon's hands, if anywhere.

Then the destroyers pulled out again, hitting a fast clip for Annapolis.

"That's the original express boat; this is only a cattle-carrier," muttered Dave, gazing after the fast destroyer.

"Calling us cattle, are you?" demanded Belle. "As official chaperon I must protest on behalf of the young ladies aboard."

"A cattle boat often carries human passengers," Dave returned. "I call this a cattle boat only because of our speed."

"We don't need speed now," Belle answered. "Those who do are on board the destroyer."

By the time that the steamer reached her berth at the Academy wall, and the young people had hastened ashore, they learned that Pauline Butler had been removed to a hospital in Annapolis; that she was very much alive, though still weak, and that in a day or two she would again be all right.

With a boatswain's mate in charge, another steamer was despatched down the bay to recover and tow home the capsized sailboat.

Examination week went through to its finish. By Saturday night the first classmen knew who had passed. But two of the members of the class had "bilged." Dave, Dan and all their close friends in the class had passed and had no ordeal left at Annapolis save to go through the display work of Graduation Week.

"You still have your two years at sea, though, before you're sure of your commission," sighed Belle, as they rested between dances that Saturday night.

"Any fellow who can live through four years at Annapolis can get through the two years at sea and get his commission at last," laughed Dave Darrin happily. "Have no fears, Belle, about my being an ensign, if I have the good fortune to live two years more."



Chapter XXIII

Graduation Day -- -At Last


Graduation Week!

Now came the time when the Naval Academy was given over to the annual display of what could be accomplished in the training of midshipmen.

There were drills and parades galore, with sham battles in which the sharp crack of rifle fire was punctured by the louder, steadier booms of field artillery. There were gun-pointing contests aboard the monitors and other practice craft.

There were exhibitions of expert boat-handling, and less picturesque performances at the machine shops and in the engine and dynamo rooms. There were other drills and exhibitions -- -enough of them to weary the reader, as they doubtless did weary the venerable members of a Board of Visitors appointed by the President.

On Wednesday night came the class german. Now our young first classmen were in for another thrill -- -the pleasure of wearing officers' uniforms for the first time.

On graduation the midshipman is an officer of the Navy, though a very humble one. The graduated midshipman's uniform is a more imposing affair than the uniform of a midshipman who is still merely a member of the brigade at the Naval Academy.

On this Wednesday evening the new uniforms were of white, the summer and tropical uniform of the Navy. These were donned by first classmen only in honor of the class german, which the members of the three lower classes do not attend.

All the young Women attending were also attired wholly in white, save for simple jewelry or coquettish ribbons.

Dave Darrin, of course, escorted Belle Meade with all the pride in the world. Most of the other midshipmen "dragged" young women on this great evening.

Dan Dalzell did not. He attended merely for the purpose of looking on, save when he danced with Belle Meade.

On the following evening, after another tiresome day spent in boring the Board of Visitors, came the evening promenade, a solemnly joyous and very dressy affair.

Then came that memorable graduation morning, when so many dozens of young midshipmen, since famous in the Navy, received their diplomas.

Early the young men turned out.

"It seems queer to be turning out without arms, doesn't it?" grumbled Dan Dalzell.

But it is the rule for the graduating class to turn out without arms on this one very grand morning. The band formed on the right of line. Next to them marched to place the graduating class, minus arms. Then the balance of the brigade under arms.

When the word was given a drum or two sounded the step, and off the brigade marched, slowly and solemnly. A cornet signal, followed by a drum roll, and then the Naval Academy Band crashed into the joyous march, consecrated to this occasion, "Ain't I glad I'm out of the wilderness!"

"Amen! Indeed I'm glad," Dave Darrin murmured devoutly under his breath. "There has been many a time in the last four years when I didn't expect to graduate. But now it's over. Nothing can stop Dan or myself!"

Crowds surrounded the entrance to the handsome, classic chapel, though the more favored crowds had already passed inside and filled the seats that are set apart for spectators.

Inside filed the midshipmen, going to their seats in front. The chaplain, in the hush that followed the seating, rose, came forward and in a voice husky with emotion urged:

"Friends, let us pray for the honor, success, glory and steadfast manhood through life of the young men who are about to go forth with their diplomas."

Every head was bowed while the chaplain's petition ascended.

When the prayer was over the superintendent, in full dress uniform, stepped to the front of the rostrum and made a brief address. Sailors are seldom long-winded talkers. The superintendent's address, on this very formal occasion, lasted barely four minutes. But what he said was full of earnest manhood and honest patriotism.

Then the superintendent dropped to his chair. There were not so very many dry eyes when the choir beautifully intoned:

"God be with you till we meet again!"

But now another figure appeared on the rostrum. Though few of the young men had ever seen this new-comer, they knew him by instinct. At a signal from an officer standing at the side of the chapel, the members of the brigade broke forth into thunderous hurrahs. For this man, now about to address them, was their direct chief.

"Gentlemen and friends," announced the superintendent, "I take the greatest pleasure that may come to any of us in introducing our chief -- -the Secretary of the Navy."

And now other officers appeared on the rostrum, bearing diplomas and arranging them in order.

The name of the man to graduate first in his class was called. He went forward and received his diploma from the Secretary, who said:

"Mr. Ennerly, it is, indeed, a high honor to take first place in such a class as yours!"

Ennerly, flushed and proud, returned to his seat amid applause from his comrades.

And so there was a pleasant word for each midshipman as he went forward.

When the Secretary picked up the seventeenth diploma he called:

"David Darrin!"

Who was the most popular man in the brigade of midshipmen? The midshipmen themselves now endeavored to answer the question by the tremendous explosions of applause with which they embarrassed Dave as he went forward.

"Mr. Darrin," smiled the Secretary, "there are no words of mine that can surpass the testimonial which you have just received from your comrades. But I will add that we expect tremendous things from you, sir, within the next few years. You have many fine deeds and achievements to your credit here, sir. Within the week you led in a truly gallant rescue human life down the bay. Mr. Darrin, in handing you your well-earned diploma, I take upon myself the liberty of congratulating your parents on their son!"

As Dave returned to his seat with his precious sheepskin the elder Darrin, who was in the audience, took advantage of the renewed noises of applause to clear his throat huskily several times. Dave's mother honestly used her handkerchief to dry the tears of pride that were in her eyes.

Another especial burst of applause started when Daniel Dalzell, twenty-first in his class, was called upon to go forward.

"I didn't believe Danny Grin would ever get through," one first classman confided behind his hand to another. "I expected that the upper classmen would kill Danny Grin before he ever got over being a fourth classman."

But here was Dan coming back amid more applause, his graduation number high enough to make it practically certain that he would be a rear admiral one of these days when he had passed the middle stage of life in the service.

One by one the other diplomas were given out, each accompanied by some kindly message from the Secretary of the Navy, which, if remembered and observed, would be of great value to the graduate at some time in the future.

The graduating exercises did not last long. To devote too much time to them would be to increase the tension.

Later in the day the graduated midshipmen again appeared. They were wearing their new coats now, several inches longer in the tail, and denoting them as real officers in the Navy. A non-graduate midshipman must salute one of these graduates whenever they meet.

In their room, to be occupied but one night more, Dave and Dan finished dressing in their new uniforms at the same moment.

"Shake, Danny boy!" cried Dave Darrin, holding out his hand. "How does it seem, at last, to know that you're really an officer in the Navy?"

"Great!" gulped Dalzell. "And I don't mind admitting that, during the last four years, I've had my doubts many a time that this great day would ever come for we. But get your cap's and let's hustle outside."

"Why this unseemly rush, Danny?"

"I want to round up a lot of under classmen and make them tire their arms out saluting me."

"Your own arm will ache, too, then, Danny. You are obliged, as of course you know, to return every salute."

"Hang it, yes! There's a pebble in every pickle dish, isn't there?"

"You're going to the graduation ball tonight, of course?"

"Oh, surely," nodded Dalzell. "After working as I've worked for four years for the privilege, I'd be a fool to miss it. But I'll sneak away early, after I've done a friend's duty by you and Belle. No girls for me until I'm a captain in the Navy!"

The ball room was a scene of glory that night. Bright eyes shone unwontedly, and many a heart fluttered. For Belle Meade was not the only girl there who was betrothed to a midshipman. Any graduate who chose might marry as soon as he pleased, but nearly all the men of the class preferred to wait until they had put in their two years at sea and had won their commissions as ensigns.

"This must be a night of unalloyed pleasure to you," murmured Belle, as she and her young officer sweetheart sat out one dance. "You can look back over a grand four years of life here."

"I don't know that I'd have the nerve to go through it all again," Darrin answered her honestly.

"You don't have to," Belle laughed happily. "You put in your later boyhood here, and now your whole life of manhood is open before you."

"I'll make the best use of that manhood that is possible for me," Dave replied solemnly.

"You must have formed some wonderful friendships here."

"I have."

"And, I suppose," hesitated Belle, "a few unavoidable enmities."

"I don't know about that," Dave replied promptly and with energy. "I can't think of a fellow here that I wouldn't be ready and glad to shake hands with. I hope -- -I trust -- -that all of the fellows in the brigade feel the same way about me."



Chapter XXIV

Conclusion


There was one more formation yet -- -one more meal to be eaten under good old Bancroft Hall.

But right after breakfast the graduates, each one now in brand-new cit. attire, began to depart in droves.

Some went to the earliest train; others stopped at the hotels and boarding houses in town to pick up relatives and friends with whom the gladsome home journey was to be made.

"I don't like you as well in cits.," declared Belle, surveying Dave critically in the hotel parlor.

"In the years to come," smiled Dave, "you'll see quite enough of me in uniform."

"I don't know about that," Belle declared, her honest soul shining in her eyes. "Do you feel that you'll ever see enough of me?"

"I know that I won't," Dave rejoined. "You have one great relief in prospect," smiled Belle. "Whenever you do grow tired of me you can seek orders to some ship on the other side of the world."

"The fact that I can't be at home regularly," answered Midshipman Darrin, "is going to be the one cloud on our happiness. Never fear my seeking orders that take me from home -- -unless in war time. Then, of course, every Naval officer must burn the wires with messages begging for a fighting appointment."

"I'm not afraid of your fighting record, if the need ever comes," replied Belle proudly. "And, Dave, though my heart breaks, I'll never show you a tear in my eyes if you're starting on a fighting cruise."

Mrs. Meade and Dave's parents now entered the room, and soon after Danny Grin, who had gone in search of his own father and mother, returned with them.

"What are we going to do now?" asked Mr. Darrin. "I understand that we have hours to wait for the next train."

"We can't do much, sir," replied Dave. "Within another hour this will be the deadest town in the United States."

"I should think you young men would want to spend most of the intervening time down at the Naval Academy, looking over the familiar spots once more," suggested Mrs. Dalzell.

"Then I'm afraid, mother, that you don't realize much of the way that a midshipman feels. The Naval Academy is our alma mater, and a beloved spot. Yet, after what I've been through there during the last few years I don't want to see the Naval Academy again. At least, not until I've won a solid step or two in the way of promotion."

"That's the feeling of all the graduates, I reckon," nodded Dave Darrin. "For one, I know I don't want to go back there to-day."

"Some day you will go back there, though," observed Danny Grin.

"Why are you so sure?" Dave asked.

"Well, you were always such a stickler for observing the rules that the Navy Department will have to send you there for some post or other. Probably you'll go back as a discipline officer."

"I would have one advantage over you, then, wouldn't I?" laughed Darrin. "If I had to rebuke a midshipman I could do it with a more serious face than you could."

"I can't help my face," sighed Danny Grin.

"You see, Dave," Mr. Dalzell observed, with a smile, "Dan inherited his face."

"From his father's side of the family," promptly interposed Mrs. Dalzell.

Here Mr. Farley, also in cits., entered the parlor in his dignified fashion.

"Darry, and you, too, Danny Grin, some of the fellows are waiting outside to see you. Will you step out a moment?"

"Where are the fellows?" asked Dave unsuspectingly.

"You'll find them on the steps outside the entrance."

Dave started for the door.

"You're wanted, too, Danny Grin, as I told you," Farley reminded him.

"I'll be the Navy goat, then. What's the answer?" inquired Midshipman Dalzell.

"Run along, like a good little boy, and your curiosity will soon be gratified."

Danny Grin looked as though he expected some joke, but he went none the less.

Dave, first to reach the entrance, stepped through into the open. As he did so he saw at least seventy-five of his recent classmates grouped outside.

The instant they perceived their popular comrade the crowd of graduates bellowed forth:

"N N N N, A A A A, V V V V, Y Y Y Y, NAVY! Darrin! Darrin! Darrin!"

In another moment Danny Grin showed himself. Back in his face was hurled the volley:

"N N N N, A A A A, V V V V, Y Y Y Y, NAVY! Grin! Grin! Grin!"

"Eh?" muttered Danny, when the last line reached him. They were unexpected. Then, as be faced the laughing eyes down in the street, Dalzell justified his nickname by one of those broad smiles that had made him famous at the Naval Academy.

Dave Darrin waved his hand in thanks for the "Four-N" yell, the surest sign of popularity, and vanished inside. When he returned to the parlor be found that Farley had conducted his parents and friends to one of the parlor windows, from which, behind drawn blinds, they had watched the scene and heard the uproar without making themselves visible.

At noon the hotel dining room was overrun with midshipmen and their friends, all awaiting the afternoon train.

But at last the time came to leave Annapolis behind in earnest. Extra cars had been put on to handle the throng, for the "train," for the first few miles of the way, usually consists of but one combination trolley car.

"You're leaving the good old place behind," murmured Belle, as the car started.

"Never a graduate yet but was glad to leave Annapolis behind," replied Dave.

"It seems to me that you ought not to speak of the Naval Academy in that tone."

"You'd understand, Belle, if you had been through every bit of the four-year grind, always with the uncertainty ahead of you of being able to get through and grad."

"Perhaps the strict discipline irked you, too," Miss Meade hinted.

"The strict discipline will be part of the whole professional life ahead of me," Darrin responded. "As to discipline, it's even harder on some ships, where the old man is a stickler for having things done just so."

"The old man?" questioned Belle.

"The 'old man' is the captain of a warship."

"It doesn't sound respectful."

"Yet it has always been the name given to the ship's captain, and I don't suppose it will be changed in another hundred years. How does it feel, Danny boy, going away for good?"

"Am I really going away for good?" grinned Dalzell. "I thought it was only a dream."

"Well, here's Odenton. You'll be in Baltimore after another little while, and then it will all seem more real."

"Nothing but Gridley will look real to me on this trip," muttered Dan. "Really, I'm growing sick for a good look at the old home town."

"I wish you could put in the whole summer at home, Dan," sighed his mother. "But, of course, I know that you can't."

"No, mother; I'll have time to walk up and down the home streets two or three times, and then orders will come from the Navy Department to report aboard the ship to which I'm to be assigned. Mother, if you want to keep a boy at home you shouldn't allow him to go to a place where he's taught that nothing on earth matters but the Navy!"

Later in the afternoon the train pulled in at Baltimore. It was nearing dusk when the train pulled out of Philadelphia on its way further north.

Yet the passage of time and the speeding of country past the ear windows was barely noticed by the Gridley delegation. There was too much to talk about -- -too many plans to form for the next two or three weeks of blissful leave before duty must commence again.

Here we will take leave of our young midshipmen for the present, though we shall encounter them again as they toil on upward through their careers.

We have watched Dave and Dan from their early teens. We met them first in the pages of the "Grammar School Boys' Series." We know what we know of them back in the days when they attended the Central Grammar School and studied under that veteran of teachers, "Old Dut," as he was affectionately known.

We saw them with the same chums, of Dick & Co., when that famous sextette of schoolboys entered High School. We are wholly familiar with their spirited course in the High School. We know how all six of the youngsters of Dick & Co. made the name of Gridley famous for clean and manly sports in general.

Our readers will yet hear from Dave and Dan occasionally. They appear in the pages of the "Young Engineers' Series," and also in the volumes of the "Boys of the Army Series."

In this latter series our young friends will learn just how the romance of Dave Darrin and Belle Meade developed; and they will also come across the similar affair of Dick Prescott and Laura Bentley.

Dave and Dan had, as they had expected, but a brief stay in the home town.

Bright and early one morning a postman handed to each a long, official envelope from the Navy Department. In each instance the envelope contained their orders to report aboard one of the Navy's biggest battleships.

Our two midshipmen were fortunate in one respect. Both were ordered to the same craft, their to finish their early Naval educations in two years of practical work as officers at sea ere they could reach the grade of ensign and step into the ward-room.

<eob>

Mother Goose In Prose

By

L. Frank Baum



Sing a Song o' Sixpence

Sing a song o' sixpence, a handful of rye, Four-and-twenty blackbirds baked in a pie; When the pie was opened the birds began to sing, Wasn't that a dainty dish to set before the King?


IF you have never heard the legend of Gilligren and the King's pie you will scarcely understand the above verse; so I will tell you the whole story, and then you will be able to better appreciate the rhyme.

Gilligren was an orphan, and lived with an uncle and aunt who were very unkind to him. They cuffed him and scolded him upon the slightest provocation, and made his life very miserable indeed. Gilligren never rebelled against this treatment, but bore their cruelty silently and with patience, although often he longed to leave them and seek a home amongst kinder people.

It so happened that when Gilligren was twelve years old the King died, and his son was to be proclaimed King in his place, and crowned with great ceremony. People were flocking to London from all parts of the country, to witness the festivities, and the boy longed to go with them.

One evening he said to his uncle,

"If I had sixpence I could make my fortune."

"Pooh! nonsense!" exclaimed his uncle, "a sixpence is a small thing. How then could you make a fortune from it?"

"That I cannot tell you," replied Gilligren, "but if you will give me the sixpence I will go to London, and not return until I am a rich man."

"The boy is a fool!" said his uncle, with anger; but the aunt spoke up quickly.

"Give him the money and let him go," she said, "and then we shall be well rid of him and no longer be obliged to feed and clothe him at our expense."

"Well," said her husband, after a moment's thought, "here is the money; but remember, this is all I shall ever give you, and when it is gone you must not come to me for more."

"Never fear," replied Gilligren, joyfully, as he put the sixpence in his pocket, "I shall not trouble you again."

The next morning he cut a short stick to assist him in walking, and after bidding good-bye to his uncle and aunt he started upon his journey to London.

"The money will not last him two days," said the man, as he watched Gilligren go down the turnpike road, "and when it is gone he will starve to death."

"Or he may fall in with people who will treat him worse than we did," rejoined the woman, "and then he'll wish he had never left us."

But Gilligren, nothing dismayed by thoughts of the future, trudged bravely along the London road. The world was before him, and the bright sunshine glorified the dusty road and lightened the tips of the dark green hedges that bordered his path. At the end of his pilgrimage was the great city, and he never doubted he would find therein proper work and proper pay, and much better treatment than he was accustomed to receive.

So, on he went, whistling merrily to while away the time, watching the sparrows skim over the fields, and enjoying to the full the unusual sights that met his eyes. At noon he overtook a carter, who divided with the boy his luncheon of bread and cheese, and for supper a farmer's wife gave him a bowl of milk. When it grew dark he crawled under a hedge and slept soundly until dawn.

The next day he kept steadily upon his way, and toward evening met a farmer with a wagon loaded with sacks of grain.

"Where are you going, my lad?" asked the man.

"To London," replied Gilligren, "to see the King crowned."

"Have you any money?" enquired the farmer.

"Oh yes," answered Gilligren, "I have a sixpence."

"If you will give me the sixpence," said the man, "I will give you a sack of rye for it."

"What could I do with a sack of rye?" asked Gilligren, wonderingly.

"Take it to the mill, and get it ground into flour. With the flour you could have bread baked, and that you can sell."

"That is a good idea," replied Gilligren, "so here is my sixpence, and now give me the sack of rye."

The farmer put the sixpence carefully into his pocket, and then reached under the seat of the wagon and drew out a sack, which he cast on the ground at the boy's feet.

"There is your sack of rye," he said, with a laugh.

"But the sack is empty!" remonstrated Gilligren.

"Oh, no; there is some rye in it."

"But only a handful!" said Gilligren, when he had opened the mouth of the sack and gazed within it.

"It is a sack of rye, nevertheless," replied the wicked farmer, "and I did not say how much rye there would be in the sack I would give you. Let this be a lesson to you never again to buy grain without looking into the sack!" and with that he whipped up his horses and left Gilligren standing in the road with the sack at his feet and nearly ready to cry at his loss.

"My sixpence is gone," he said to himself, "and I have received nothing in exchange but a handful of rye! How can I make my fortune with that?"

He did not despair, however, but picked up the sack and continued his way along the dusty road. Soon it became too dark to travel farther, and Gilligren stepped aside into a meadow, where, lying down upon the sweet grass, he rolled the sack into a pillow for his head and prepared to sleep.

The rye that was within the sack, however, hurt his head, and he sat up and opened the sack.

"Why should I keep a handful of rye?" he thought, "It will be of no value to me at all."

So he threw out the rye upon the ground, and rolling up the sack again for a pillow, was soon sound asleep.

When he awoke the sun was shining brightly over his head and the twitter and chirping of many birds fell upon his ears. Gilligren opened his eyes and saw a large flock of blackbirds feeding upon the rye he had scattered upon the ground. So intent were they upon their feast they never noticed Gilligren at all.

He carefully unfolded the sack, and spreading wide its opening threw it quickly over the flock of blackbirds. Some escaped and flew away, but a great many were caught, and Gilligren put his eye to the sack and found he had captured four and twenty. He tied the mouth of the sack with a piece of twine that was in his pocket, and then threw the sack over his shoulder and began again his journey to London.

"I have made a good exchange, after all," he thought, "for surely four and twenty blackbirds are worth more than a handful of rye, and perhaps even more than a sixpence, if I can find anyone who wishes to buy them."

He now walked rapidly forward, and about noon entered the great city of London.

Gilligren wandered about the streets until he came to the King's palace, where there was a great concourse of people and many guards to keep intruders from the gates.

Seeing he could not enter from the front, the boy walked around to the rear of the palace and found himself near the royal kitchen, where the cooks and other servants were rushing around to hasten the preparation of the King's dinner.

Gilligren sat down upon a stone where he could watch them, and laying the sack at his feet was soon deeply interested in the strange sight.

Presently a servant in the King's livery saw him and came to his side.

"What are you doing here?" he asked, roughly.

"I am waiting to see the King," replied Gilligren.

"The King! The King never comes here," said the servant; "and neither do we allow idlers about the royal kitchen. So depart at once, or I shall be forced to call a guard to arrest you."

Gilligren arose obediently and slung his sack over his shoulder. As he did so the birds that were within began to flutter.

"What have you in the sack?" asked the servant.

"Blackbirds," replied Gilligren.

"Blackbirds!" echoed the servant, in surprise, "well, that is very fortunate indeed. Come with me at once!" He seized the boy by the arm and drew him hastily along until they entered the great kitchen of the palace.

"Here, Mister Baker!" the man called, excitedly, "I have found your blackbirds!"

A big, fat man who was standing in the middle of the kitchen with folded arms and a look of despair upon his round, greasy face, at once came toward them and asked eagerly,

"The blackbirds? are you sure you can get them?"

"They are here already; the boy has a bag full of them."

"Give them to me," said the cook, who wore a square cap, that was shaped like a box, upon his head.

"What do you want with them?" asked Gilligren.

"I want them for a pie for the King's dinner," answered Mister Baker; "His Majesty ordered the dish, and I have hunted all over London for the blackbirds, but could not find them. Now that you have brought them, however, you have saved me my position as cook, and perhaps my head as well."

"But it would be cruel to put the beautiful birds in a pie," remonstrated Gilligren, "and I shall not give them to you for such a purpose."

"Nonsense!" replied the cook, "the King has ordered it; he is very fond of the dish."

"Still, you cannot have them," declared the boy stoutly, "the birds are mine, and I will not have them killed."

"But what can I do?" asked the cook, in perplexity; "the King has ordered a blackbird pie, and your birds are the only blackbirds in London."

Gilligren thought deeply for a moment, and conceived what he thought to be a very good idea. If the sixpence was to make his fortune, then this was his great opportunity.

"You can have the blackbirds on two conditions," he said.

"What are they?" asked the cook.

"One is that you will not kill the birds. The other condition is that you secure me a position in the King's household."

"How can I put live birds in a pie?" enquired the cook.

"Very easily, if you make the pie big enough to hold them. You can serve the pie after the King has satisfied his hunger with other dishes, and it will amuse the company to find live birds in the pie when they expected cooked ones."

"It is a risky experiment," exclaimed the cook, "for I do not know the new King's temper. But the idea may please His Majesty, and since you will not allow me to kill the birds, it is the best thing I can do. As for your other condition, you seem to be a very bright boy, and so I will have the butler take you as his page, and you shall stand back of the King's chair and keep the flies away while he eats."

The butler being called, and his consent secured, the cook fell to making the crusts for his novel pie, while Gilligren was taken to the servants' hall and dressed in a gorgeous suit of the King's livery.

When the dinner was served, the King kept looking for the blackbird pie, but he said nothing, and at last the pie was placed before him, its crusts looking light and brown, and sprigs of myrtle being stuck in the four corners to make it look more inviting.

Although the King had already eaten heartily, he smacked his lips when he saw this tempting dish, and picking up the carving-fork he pushed it quickly into the pie.

At once the crust fell in, and all the four and twenty blackbirds put up their heads and began to look about them. And coming from the blackness of the pie into the brilliantly lighted room they thought they were in the sunshine, and began to sing merrily, while some of the boldest hopped out upon the table or began flying around the room.

At first the good King was greatly surprised; but soon, appreciating the jest, he lay back in his chair and laughed long and merrily. And his courtiers and the fine ladies present heartily joined in the laughter, for they also were greatly amused.

Then the King called for the cook, and when Mister Baker appeared, uncertain of his reception, and filled with many misgivings, His Majesty cried,

"Sirrah! how came you to think of putting live birds in the pie?"

The cook, fearing that the King was angry, answered,

"May it please your Majesty, it was not my thought, but the idea of the boy who stands behind your chair."

The King turned his head, and seeing Gilligren, who looked very well in his new livery, he said,

"You are a clever youth, and deserve a better position than that of a butler's lad. Hereafter you shall be one of my own pages, and if you serve me faithfully I will advance your fortunes with your deserts."

And Gilligren did serve the King faithfully, and as he grew older acquired much honor and great wealth.

"After all," he used to say, "that sixpence made my fortune. And it all came about through such a small thing as a handful of rye!"



The Story of Little Boy Blue



The Story of Little Boy Blue

Little Boy Blue, come blow your horn, The sheep's in the meadow, the cow's in the corn; Where's the little boy that minds the sheep? He's under the haystack, fast asleep!


THERE once lived a poor widow who supported herself and her only son by gleaning in the fields the stalks of grain that had been missed by the reapers. Her little cottage was at the foot of a beautiful valley, upon the edge of the river that wound in and out among the green hills; and although poor, she was contented with her lot, for her home was pleasant and her lovely boy was a constant delight to her.

He had big blue eyes, and fair golden curls, and he loved his good mother very dearly, and was never more pleased than when she allowed him to help her with her work.

And so the years passed happily away till the boy was eight years old, but then the widow fell sick, and their little store of money melted gradually away.

"I don't know what we shall do for bread," she said, kissing her boy with tears in her eyes, "for I am not yet strong enough to work, and we have no money left."

"But I can work," answered the boy; "and I'm sure if I go to the Squire up at the Hall he will give me something to do."

At first the widow was reluctant to consent to this, since she loved to keep her child at her side, but finally, as nothing else could be done, she decided to let him go to see the Squire.

Being too proud to allow her son to go to the great house in his ragged clothes, she made him a new suit out of a pretty blue dress she had herself worn in happier times, and when it was finished and the boy dressed in it, he looked as pretty as a prince in a fairy tale. For the bright blue jacket set off his curls to good advantage, and the color just matched the blue of his eyes. His trousers were blue, also, and she took the silver buckles from her own shoes and put them on his, that he might appear the finer. And then she brushed his curls and placed his big straw hat upon them and sent him away with a kiss to see the Squire.

It so happened that the great man was walking in his garden with his daughter Madge that morning, and was feeling in an especially happy mood, so that when he suddenly looked up and saw a little boy before him, he said, kindly,

"Well, my child, what can I do for you?"

"If you please, sir," said the boy, bravely, although he was frightened at meeting the Squire face to face, "I want you to give me some work to do, so that I can earn money."

"Earn money!" repeated the Squire, "why do you wish to earn money?"

"To buy food for my mother, sir. We are very poor, and since she is no longer able to work for me I wish to work for her."

"But what can you do?" asked the Squire; "you are too small to work in the fields."

"I could earn something, sir, couldn't I?"

His tone was so pleading that mistress Madge was unable to resist it, and even the Squire was touched. The young lady came forward and took the boy's hand in her own, and pressing back his curls, she kissed his fair cheek.

"You shall be our shepherd," she said, pleasantly, "and keep the sheep out of the meadows and the cows from getting into the corn. You know, father," she continued, turning to the Squire, "it was only yesterday you said you must get a boy to tend the sheep, and this little boy can do it nicely."

"Very well," replied the Squire, "it shall be as you say, and if he is attentive and watchful he will be able to save me a good bit of trouble and so really earn his money."

Then he turned to the child and said,

"Come to me in the morning, my little man, and I will give you a silver horn to blow, that you may call the sheep and the cows whenever they go astray. What is your name?"

"Oh, never mind his name, papa!" broke in the Squire's daughter; "I shall call him Little Boy Blue, since he is dressed in blue from head to foot, and his dress but matches his eyes. And you must give him a good wage, also, for surely no Squire before ever had a prettier shepherd boy than this."

"Very good," said the Squire, cheerfully, as he pinched his daughter's rosy cheek; "be watchful, Little Boy Blue, and you shall be well paid."

Then Little Boy Blue thanked them both very sweetly and ran back over the hill and into the valley where his home lay nestled by the river-side, to tell the good news to his mother.

The poor widow wept tears of joy when she heard his story, and smiled when he told her that his name was to be Little Boy Blue. She knew the Squire was a kind master and would be good to her darling son.

Early the next morning Little Boy Blue was at the Hall, and the Squire's steward gave him a new silver horn, that glistened brightly in the sunshine, and a golden cord to fasten it around his neck. And then he was given charge of the sheep and the cows, and told to keep them from straying into the meadowlands and the fields of grain.

It was not hard work, but just suited to Little Boy Blue's age, and he was watchful and vigilant and made a very good shepherd boy indeed. His mother needed food no longer, for the Squire paid her son liberally and the Squire's daughter made a favorite of the small shepherd and loved to hear the call of his silver horn echoing amongst the hills. Even the sheep and the cows were fond of him, and always obeyed the sound of his horn; therefore the Squire's corn thrived finely, and was never trampled.

Little Boy Blue was now very happy, and his mother was proud and contented and began to improve in health. After a few weeks she became strong enough to leave the cottage and walk a little in the fields each day; but she could not go far, because her limbs were too feeble to support her long, so the most she could attempt was to walk as far as the stile to meet Little Boy Blue as he came home from work in the evening. Then she would lean on his shoulder and return to the cottage with him, and the boy was very glad he could thus support his darling mother and assist her faltering steps.

But one day a great misfortune came upon them, since it is true that no life can be so happy but that sorrow will creep in to temper it.

Little Boy Blue came homeward one evening very light of heart and whistled merrily as he walked, for he thought he should find his mother awaiting him at the stile and a good supper spread upon the table in the little cottage. But when he came to the stile his mother was not in sight, and in answer to his call a low moan of pain reached his ears.

Little Boy Blue sprang over the stile and found lying upon the ground his dear mother, her face white and drawn with suffering, and tears of anguish running down her cheeks. For she had slipped upon the stile and fallen, and her leg was broken!

Little Boy Blue

Little Boy Blue ran to the cottage for water and bathed the poor woman's face, and raised her head that she might drink. There were no neighbors, for the cottage stood all alone by the river, so the child was obliged to support his mother in his arms as best he could while she crawled painfully back to the cottage. Fortunately, it was not far, and at last she was safely laid upon her bed. Then Little Boy Blue began to think what he should do next.

"Can I leave you alone while I go for the doctor, mamma?" he asked, anxiously, as he held her clasped hands tightly in his two little ones. His mother drew him towards her and kissed him.

"Take the boat, dear," she said, "and fetch the doctor from the village. I shall be patient till you return."

Little Boy Blue rushed away to the river bank and unfastened the little boat; and then he pulled sturdily down the river until he passed the bend and came to the pretty village below. When he had found the doctor and told of his mother's misfortune, the good man promised to attend him at once, and very soon they were seated in the boat and on their way to the cottage.

It was very dark by this time, but Little Boy Blue knew every turn and bend in the river, and the doctor helped him pull at the oars, so that at last they came to the place where a faint light twinkled through the cottage window. They found the poor woman in much pain, but the doctor quickly set and bandaged her leg, and gave her some medicine to ease her suffering. It was nearly midnight when all was finished and the doctor was ready to start back to the village.

"Take good care of your mother," he said to the boy, "and don't worry about her, for it is not a bad break and the leg will mend nicely in time; but she will be in bed many days, and you must nurse her as well as you are able."

All through the night the boy sat by the bedside, bathing his mother's fevered brow and ministering to her wants. And when the day broke she was resting easily and the pain had left her, and she told Little Boy Blue he must go to his work.

"For," said she, "more than ever now we need the money you earn from the Squire, as my misfortune will add to the expenses of living, and we have the doctor to pay. Do not fear to leave me, for I shall rest quietly and sleep most of the time while you are away."

Little Boy Blue did not like to leave his mother all alone, but he knew of no one he could ask to stay with her; so he placed food and water by her bedside, and ate a little breakfast himself, and started off to tend his sheep.

The sun was shining brightly, and the birds sang sweetly in the trees, and the crickets chirped just as merrily as if this great trouble had not come to Little Boy Blue to make him sad.

But he went bravely to his work, and for several hours he watched carefully; and the men at work in the fields, and the Squire's daughter, who sat embroidering upon the porch of the great house, heard often the sound of his horn as he called the straying sheep to his side.

But he had not slept the whole night, and he was tired with his long watch at his mother's bedside, and so in spite of himself the lashes would droop occasionally over his blue eyes, for he was only a child, and children feel the loss of sleep more than older people.

Still, Little Boy Blue had no intention of sleeping while he was on duty, and bravely fought against the drowsiness that was creeping over him. The sun shone very hot that day, and he walked to the shady side of a big haystack and sat down upon the ground, leaning his back against the stack.

The cows and sheep were quietly browsing near him, and he watched them earnestly for a time, listening to the singing of the birds, and the gentle tinkling of the bells upon the wethers, and the far-away songs of the reapers that the breeze brought to his ears. And before he knew it the blue eyes had closed fast, and the golden head lay back upon the hay, and Little Boy Blue was fast asleep and dreaming that his mother was well again and had come to the stile to meet him.

The sheep strayed near the edge of the meadow and paused, waiting for the warning sound of the horn. And the breeze carried the fragrance of the growing corn to the nostrils of the browsing cows and tempted them nearer and nearer to the forbidden feast. But the silver horn was silent, and before long the cows were feeding upon the Squire's pet cornfield and the sheep were enjoying themselves amidst the juicy grasses of the meadows.

The Squire himself was returning from a long, weary ride over his farms, and when he came to the cornfield and saw the cows trampling down the grain and feeding upon the golden stalks he was very angry.

"Little Boy Blue!" he cried; "ho! Little Boy Blue, come blow your horn!" But there was no reply. He rode on a way and now discovered that the sheep were deep within the meadows, and that made him more angry still.

"Here, Isaac," he said to a farmer's lad who chanced to pass by, "where is Little Boy Blue?"

"He's under the hay-stack, your honor, fast asleep!" replied Isaac with a grin, for he had passed that way and seen that the boy was lying asleep.

"Will you go and wake him?" asked the Squire; "for he must drive out the sheep and the cows before they do more damage."

"Not I," replied Isaac, "if I wake him he'll surely cry, for he is but a baby, and not fit to mind the sheep. But I myself will drive them out for your honor," and away he ran to do so, thinking that now the Squire would give him Little Boy Blue's place, and make him the shepherd boy, for Isaac had long coveted the position.

The Squire's daughter, hearing the angry tones of her father's voice, now came out to see what was amiss, and when she heard that Little Boy Blue had failed in his trust she was deeply grieved, for she had loved the child for his pretty ways.

The Squire dismounted from his horse and came to where the boy was lying.

"Awake!" said he, shaking him by the shoulder, "and depart from my lands, for you have betrayed my trust, and let the sheep and the cows stray into the fields and meadows!"

Little Boy Blue started up at once and rubbed his eyes; and then he did as Isaac prophesied, and began to weep bitterly, for his heart was sore that he had failed in his duty to the good Squire and so forfeited his confidence.

But the Squire's daughter was moved by the child's tears, so she took him upon her lap and comforted him, asking,

"Why did you sleep, Little Boy Blue, when you should have watched the cows and the sheep?"

"My mother has broken her leg," answered the boy, between his sobs, "and I did not sleep all last night, but sat by her bedside nursing her. And I tried hard not to fall asleep, but could not help myself; and oh, Squire! I hope you will forgive me this once, for my poor mother's sake!"

"Where does your mother live?" asked the Squire, in a kindly tone, for he had already forgiven Little Boy Blue.

"In the cottage down by the river," answered the child; "and she is all alone, for there is no one near to help us in our trouble."

"Come," said Mistress Madge, rising to her feet and taking his hand; "lead us to your home, and we will see if we cannot assist your poor mother."

So the Squire and his daughter and Little Boy Blue all walked down to the little cottage, and the Squire had a long talk with the poor widow. And that same day a big basket of dainties was sent to the cottage, and Mistress Madge bade her own maid go to the widow and nurse her carefully until she recovered.

So that after all Little Boy Blue did more for his dear mother by falling asleep than he could had he kept wide awake; for after his mother was well again the Squire gave them a pretty cottage to live in very near to the great house itself, and the Squire's daughter was ever afterward their good friend, and saw that they wanted for no comforts of life.

And Little Boy Blue did not fall asleep again at his post, but watched the cows and the sheep faithfully for many years, until he grew up to manhood and had a farm of his own.

He always said his mother's accident had brought him good luck, but I think it was rather his own loving heart and his devotion to his mother that made him friends. For no one is afraid to trust a boy who loves to serve and care for his mother.



The Cat and the Fiddle



The Cat and the Fiddle

Hey, diddle, diddle, The cat and the fiddle, The cow jumped over the moon! The little dog laughed To see such sport, And the dish ran off with the spoon!


PERHAPS you think this verse is all nonsense, and that the things it mentions could never have happened; but they did happen, as you will understand when I have explained them all to you clearly.

Little Bobby was the only son of a small farmer who lived out of town upon a country road. Bobby's mother looked after the house and Bobby's father took care of the farm, and Bobby himself, who was not very big, helped them both as much as he was able.

It was lonely upon the farm, especially when his father and mother were both busy at work, but the boy had one way to amuse himself that served to pass many an hour when he would not otherwise have known what to do. He was very fond of music, and his father one day brought him from the town a small fiddle, or violin, which he soon learned to play upon. I don't suppose he was a very fine musician, but the tunes he played pleased himself, as well as his father and mother, and Bobby's fiddle soon became his constant companion.

One day in the warm summer the farmer and his wife determined to drive to the town to sell their butter and eggs and bring back some groceries in exchange for them, and while they were gone Bobby was to be left alone.

"We shall not be back till late in the evening," said his mother, "for the weather is too warm to drive very fast. But I have left you a dish of bread and milk for your supper, and you must be a good boy and amuse yourself with your fiddle until we return."

Bobby promised to be good and look after the house, and then his father and mother climbed into the wagon and drove away to the town.

The boy was not entirely alone, for there was the big black tabby-cat lying upon the floor in the kitchen, and the little yellow dog barking at the wagon as it drove away, and the big moolie-cow lowing in the pasture down by the brook. Animals are often very good company, and Bobby did not feel nearly as lonely as he would had there been no living thing about the house.

Besides he had some work to do in the garden, pulling up the weeds that grew thick in the carrot-bed, and when the last faint sounds of the wheels had died away he went into the garden and began his task.

The little dog went too, for dogs love to be with people and to watch what is going on; and he sat down near Bobby and cocked up his ears and wagged his tail and seemed to take a great interest in the weeding. Once in a while he would rush away to chase a butterfly or bark at a beetle that crawled through the garden, but he always came back to the boy and kept near his side.

By and by the cat, which found it lonely in the big, empty kitchen, now that Bobby's mother was gone, came walking into the garden also, and lay down upon a path in the sunshine and lazily watched the boy at his work. The dog and the cat were good friends, having lived together so long that they did not care to fight each other. To be sure Towser, as the little dog was called, sometimes tried to tease pussy, being himself very mischievous; but when the cat put out her sharp claws and showed her teeth, Towser, like a wise little dog, quickly ran away, and so they managed to get along in a friendly manner.

By the time the carrot-bed was all weeded, the sun was sinking behind the edge of the forest and the new moon rising in the east, and now Bobby began to feel hungry and went into the house for his dish of bread and milk.

"I think I'll take my supper down to the brook," he said to himself, "and sit upon the grassy bank while I eat it. And I'll take my fiddle, too, and play upon it to pass the time until father and mother come home."

It was a good idea, for down by the brook it was cool and pleasant; so Bobby took his fiddle under his arm and carried his dish of bread and milk down to the bank that sloped to the edge of the brook. It was rather a steep bank, but Bobby sat upon the edge, and placing his fiddle beside him, leaned against a tree and began to eat his supper.

The little dog had followed at his heels, and the cat also came slowly walking after him, and as Bobby ate, they sat one on either side of him and looked earnestly into his face as if they too were hungry. So he threw some of the bread to Towser, who grabbed it eagerly and swallowed it in the twinkling of an eye. And Bobby left some of the milk in the dish for the cat, also, and she came lazily up and drank it in a dainty, sober fashion, and licked both the dish and spoon until no drop of the milk was left.

Then Bobby picked up his fiddle and tuned it and began to play some of the pretty tunes he knew. And while he played he watched the moon rise higher and higher until it was reflected in the smooth, still water of the brook. Indeed, Bobby could not tell which was the plainest to see, the moon in the sky or the moon in the water. The little dog lay quietly on one side of him, and the cat softly purred upon the other, and even the moolie-cow was attracted by the music and wandered near until she was browsing the grass at the edge of the brook.

After a time, when Bobby had played all the tunes he knew, he laid the fiddle down beside him, near to where the cat slept, and then he lay down upon the bank and began to think.

It is very hard to think long upon a dreamy summer night without falling asleep, and very soon Bobby's eyes closed and he forgot all about the dog and the cat and the cow and the fiddle, and dreamed he was Jack the Giant Killer and was just about to slay the biggest giant in the world.

And while he dreamed, the cat sat up and yawned and stretched herself, and then began wagging her long tail from side to side and watching the moon that was reflected in the water.

But the fiddle lay just behind her, and as she moved her tail, she drew it between the strings of the fiddle, where it caught fast. Then she gave her tail a jerk and pulled the fiddle against the tree, which made a loud noise. This frightened the cat greatly, and not knowing what was the matter with her tail, she started to run as fast as she could. But still the fiddle clung to her tail, and at every step it bounded along and made such a noise that she screamed with terror. And in her fright she ran straight towards the cow, which, seeing a black streak coming at her, and hearing the racket made by the fiddle, became also frightened and made such a jump to get out of the way that she jumped right across the brook, leaping over the very spot where the moon shone in the water!

Bobby had been awakened by the noise, and opened his eyes in time to see the cow jump; and at first it seemed to him that she had actually jumped over the moon in the sky, instead of the one in the brook.

The dog was delighted at the sudden excitement caused by the cat, and ran barking and dancing along the bank, so that he presently knocked against the dish, and behold! it slid down the bank, carrying the spoon with it, and fell with a splash into the water of the brook.

As soon as Bobby recovered from his surprise he ran after the cat, which had raced to the house, and soon came to where the fiddle lay upon the ground, it having at last dropped from the cat's tail. He examined it carefully, and was glad to find it was not hurt, in spite of its rough usage. And then he had to go across the brook and drive the cow back over the little bridge, and also to roll up his sleeve and reach into the water to recover the dish and the spoon.

Then he went back to the house and lighted a lamp, and sat down to compose a new tune before his father and mother returned.

The cat had recovered from her fright and lay quietly under the stove, and Towser sat upon the floor panting, with his mouth wide open, and looking so comical that Bobby thought he was actually laughing at the whole occurrence.

And these were the words to the tune that Bobby composed that night:

Hey, diddle, diddle, The cat and the fiddle, The cow jumped over the moon! The little dog laughed To see such sport, And the dish ran away with the spoon!



The Black Sheep



The Black Sheep

Black sheep, black sheep, have you any wool? Yes, my little master, three bags full; One for my master and one for his dame, And one for the little boy that lives in the lane.


IT was a bright spring day, and the sun shone very warm and pleasant over the pastures, where the new grass was growing so juicy and tender that all the sheep thought they had never tasted anything so delicious.

The sheep had had a strange experience that morning, for the farmer had taken them down to the brook and washed them, and then he tied their legs together and laid them on the grass and clipped all the heavy, soft wool from their bodies with a great pair of shears.

The sheep did not like this very well, for every once in a while the shears would pull the wool and hurt them; and when they were sheared they felt very strange, for it was almost as if someone took off all your clothes and let you run around naked. None of them were in a very good temper this morning, although the sun shone so warmly and the grass was so sweet, and as they watched the farmer and his man carry their wool up to the house in great bags, the old ram said, crossly,

"I hope they are satisfied, now that they have stolen from us all our soft, warm fleece."

"What are they going to do with it?" asked one of the sheep.

"Oh, they will spin it into threads and make coats for the men and dresses for the women. For men are such strange creatures that no wool grows on them at all, and that is why they selfishly rob us of our fleece that they may cover their own skinny bodies!"

"It must be horrid to be a man," said the Black Sheep, "and not to have any wool grow on you at all. I'm sorry for that little boy that lives in the lane, for he will never be able to keep warm unless we give him some of our wool."

"But what a shame it is," continued the ram, "for the farmer to steal all the wool from us when we have taken all the trouble to grow it!"

"I don't mind," bleated a young lamb named Frisky, as it kicked up its heels and gambolled about upon the grass; "it's nice to have all that heavy wool cut off my back, for I sha'n't have to carry it around wherever I go."

"Oh, indeed!" sneered the ram, "you like it, do you? Have you any idea what you look like, all sheared down to your skin? How would you like to have someone come along and see you, now that you are all head and legs?"

"Oh, I wouldn't mind," said the lamb again; "I shall grow more wool by winter-time, and I'm sure I don't look any worse than you do."

Some of the sheep looked at the ram and began to titter, for he was old and thin, and looked very comical indeed without any wool. And this made him so angry that he went off by himself and began eating grass, and would not speak to the others at all.

"I don't know why sheep should feel badly about having their fleeces cut," remarked the Black Sheep, thoughtfully, "for the farmer is very kind to us, and so is his dame, and I am glad my wool serves to keep them warm in the winter. For before the snow comes our wool will grow out again, and we shall not be any the worse for our loss."

"What do those people who haven't any sheep do for clothes?" asked the lamb.

"I'm sure I don't know. They must nearly freeze in the winter. Perhaps the ram can tell us."

But the ram was still angry, and refused to say anything, so the sheep stopped talking and began to scatter over the pasture and eat the tender, new grass.

By and by the Black Sheep wandered near the lane, and looking up, saw the little boy watching it through the bars.

"Good morning, Black Sheep," said the boy; "why do you look so funny this morning?"

"They have cut off my wool," answered the sheep.

The Black Sheep

"What will they do with it, Black Sheep?" enquired the little boy.

"They will make coats of it, to keep themselves warm."

"I wish I had some wool," said the boy, "for I need a new coat very badly, and mamma is so poor she cannot buy me one."

"That is too bad," replied the Black Sheep; "but I shall have more wool by and by, and then I will give you a bagful to make a new coat from."

"Will you really?" asked the boy, looking very much pleased.

"Indeed I will," answered the sheep, "for you are always kind and have a pleasant word for me. So you watch until my wool grows again, and then you shall have your share of it."

"Oh, thank you!" said the boy, and he ran away to tell his mother what the Black Sheep had said.

When the farmer came into the field again the Black Sheep said to him,

"Master, how many bags of wool did you cut from my back?"

"Two bags full," replied the farmer; "and it was very nice wool indeed."

"If I grow three bags full the next time, may I have one bag for myself?" asked the sheep.

"Why, what could you do with a bag of wool?" questioned the farmer.

"I want to give it to the little boy that lives in the lane. He is very poor and needs a new coat."

"Very well," answered the master; "if you can grow three bags full I will give one to the little boy."

So the Black Sheep began to grow wool, and tried in every way to grow the finest and heaviest fleece in all the flock. She always lay in the sunniest part of the pastures, and drank from the clearest part of the brook, and ate only the young and juicy shoots of grass and the tenderest of the sheep-sorrel. And each day the little boy came to the bars and looked at the sheep and enquired how the wool was growing.

"I am getting along finely," the Black Sheep would answer, "for not one sheep in the pasture has so much wool as I have grown already."

"Can I do anything to help you?" asked the little boy.

"Not that I think of," replied the sheep, "unless you could get me a little salt. I believe salt helps the wool to grow."

So the boy ran to the house and begged his mother for a handful of salt, and then he came back to the bars, where the Black Sheep licked it out of his hand.

Day by day the wool on the sheep grew longer and longer, and even the old ram noticed it and said,

"You are foolish to grow so much wool, for the farmer will cut it all off, and it will do you no good. Now I am growing just as little as possible, for since he steals what I have I am determined he shall get very little wool from my back."

Black Sheep did not reply to this, for she thought the old ram very ill-tempered and selfish, and believed he was doing wrong not to grow more wool.

Finally the time came to shear the sheep again, and the farmer and his man came into the pasture to look at them, and were surprised to see what a fine, big fleece the Black Sheep had grown.

"There will be three bagsful at the least," said the master, "and I will keep my promise and give one to the little boy in the lane. But, my goodness! how scraggly and poor the old ram looks. There is scarcely any wool on him at all. I think I must sell him to the butcher!"

And, in truth, although the ram kicked and struggled and bleated with rage, they tied his legs and put him into the cart and carried him away to the butcher. And that was the last the sheep ever saw of him.

But the Black Sheep ran up to the bars by the lane and waited with a glad heart till the little boy came. When he saw the sheep waiting for him he asked,

"Black Sheep, Black Sheep, have you any wool?"

And the sheep replied,

"Yes my little master, three bags full!"

"That is fine!" said the boy; "but who are the three bags for?"

"One for my master, one for his dame, And one for the little boy that lives in the lane."

"Thank you, Black Sheep," said the little boy; "you are very kind, and I shall always think of you when I wear my new coat."

The next day the sheep were all sheared, and the Black Sheep's fleece made three big bagsful. The farmer kept his promise and carried one bag to the little boy that lived in the lane, and the wool was so soft and so heavy that there was enough not only for the new coat, but to make his mother a warm dress as well.

The Black Sheep was very proud and happy when the mother and her little boy came down to the bars and showed the new clothes that had been made from the wool.

"This pays me for all my trouble," said the Black Sheep, and the little boy reached his hand through the bars and patted her gently upon the head.



Old King Cole



Old King Cole

Old King Cole was a merry old soul, And a merry old soul was he; He called for his pipe and he called for his bowl And he called for his fiddlers three.


OLD KING COLE was not always a king, nor was he born a member of any royal family. It was only chance -- "hard luck" he used to call it -- that made him a king at all.

He had always been a poor man, being the son of an apple peddler, who died and left him nothing but a donkey and a fiddle. But that was enough for Cole, who never bothered his head about the world's goods, but took things as they came and refused to worry about anything.

So, when the house he lived in, and the furniture, and even the apple-cart were sold to pay his father's debts, and he found himself left with the old fiddle that nobody wanted and the old donkey that no one would have -- it being both vicious and unruly -- he uttered no word of complaint. He simply straddled the donkey and took the fiddle under his arm and rode out into the world to seek his fortune.

When he came to a village he played a merry tune upon the fiddle and sang a merry song with it, and the people gave him food most willingly. There was no trouble about a place to sleep, for if he was denied a bed he lay down with the donkey in a barn, or even on the village green, and making a pillow of the donkey's neck he slept as soundly as anyone could in a bed of down.

And so he continued riding along and playing upon his fiddle for many years, until his head grew bald and his face was wrinkled and his bushy eyebrows became as white as snow. But his eyes never lost their merry twinkle, and he was just as fat and hearty as in his younger days, while, if you heard him singing his songs and scraping upon the old fiddle, you would know at once his heart was as young as ever.

He never guided the donkey, but let the beast go where it would, and so it happened that at last they came to Whatland, and entered one day the city where resided the King of that great country.

Now, even as Cole rode in upon his donkey the King of Whatland lay dying in his palace, surrounded by all the luxury of the court. And as he left no heir, and was the last of the royal line, the councilors and wise men of Whatland were in a great quandary as to who should succeed him. But finally they bethought themselves of the laws of the land, and upon looking up the records they found in an old book a law that provided for just such a case as this.

"If the King dies," so read the law, "and there be no one to succeed to the throne, the prime minister shall be blinded and led from the palace into the main street of the city. And he shall stretch out his arms and walk about, and the first person he touches shall be crowned as King of the land."

The councilors were greatly pleased when they found this law, for it enabled them to solve the problem that confronted them. So when the King had breathed his last they blindfolded the prime minister and led him forth from the palace, and he began walking about with outstretched arms seeking someone to touch.

Of course the people knew nothing of this law, nor even that the old King was dead, and seeing the prime minister groping about blindfolded they kept out of his way, fearing they might be punished if he stumbled against them. But Cole was then riding along on the donkey, and did not even know it was the prime minister who was feeling about in such a funny way. So he began to laugh, and the minister, who had by this time grown tired of the game, heard the laugh and came toward the stranger and touched him, and immediately all the wise men and the councilors fell down before him and hailed him as King of Whatland!

Thus did the wandering fiddler become King Cole, and you may be sure he laughed more merrily than ever when they explained to him his good fortune.

Old King Cole

They carried him within the palace and dressed him in purple and fine linen, and placed a crown of gold upon his bald head and a jeweled scepter in his wrinkled hand, and all this amused old King Cole very much. When he had been led to the great throne-room and placed upon the throne of gold (where the silken cushions felt very soft and pleasant after his long ride upon the donkey's sharp back) the courtiers all knelt before him and asked what commands he wished to give, since everyone in the kingdom must now obey his slightest word.

"Oh well," said the new King, "I think the first thing I would like is my old pipe. You'll find it in the pocket of the ragged coat I took off."

One of the officers of the court at once ran for the pipe, and when it was brought King Cole filled it with tobacco from his greasy pouch and lighted it, and you can imagine what a queer sight it was to see the fat King sitting upon the rich throne, dressed in silks and satins and a golden crown, and smoking at the same time an old black pipe!

The councilors looked at each other in dismay, and the ladies of the court sneezed and coughed and seemed greatly shocked, and all this pleased old King Cole so much that he lay back in his throne and roared with laughter.

Then the prime minister came forward very gravely, and bowing low he said,

"May it please your Majesty, it is not the custom of Kings to smoke a pipe while seated upon the throne."

"But it is my custom," answered Cole.

"It is impolite, and -- unkingly!" ventured the minister.

"Now, see here, old fellow," replied his Majesty, "I didn't ask to be King of this country; it's all your own doing. All my life I have smoked whenever I wished, and if I can't do as I please here, why, I won't be king -- so there!"

"But you must be the King, your Majesty, whether you want to or not. The law says so."

"If that's the case," returned the King, "I can do as I please in other things. So you just run and get me a bowl of punch, there's a good fellow."

The aged minister did not like to be addressed thus, but the King's commands must be obeyed; so, although the court was greatly horrified, he brought the bowl of punch, and the King pushed his crown onto the back of his head and drank heartily, and smacked his lips afterwards.

"That's fine!" he said; "but say -- what do you people do to amuse yourselves?"

"Whatever your Majesty commands," answered one of the councilors.

"What! must I amuse you as well as myself? Methinks it is no easy task to be a King if so many things are required of me. But I suppose it is useless to fret, since the law obliges me to reign in this great country against my will. Therefore will I make the best of my misfortune, and propose we have a dance, and forget our cares. Send at once for some fiddlers, and clear the room for our merry-making, and for once in our lives we shall have a jolly good time!"

So one of the officers of the court went out and soon returned with three fiddlers, and when at the King's command they struck up a tune, the monarch was delighted, for every fiddler had a very fine fiddle and knew well how to use it.

Now, Old King Cole was a merry old soul, so he soon set all the ladies and gentlemen of the court to dancing, and he himself took off his crown and his ermine robe and laid them upon the throne, while he danced with the prettiest lady present till he was all out of breath.

Then he dismissed them, and they were all very well pleased with the new King, for they saw that, in spite of his odd ways, he had a kind heart, and would try to make every one about him as merry as he was himself.

The next morning the King was informed that several of his subjects craved audience with him, as there were matters of dispute between them that must be settled. King Cole at first refused to see them, declaring he knew nothing of the quarrels of his subjects and they must manage their own affairs; but when the prime minister told him it was one of his duties as king, and the law required it, he could not do otherwise than submit. So he put on his crown and his ermine robe and sat upon the throne, although he grumbled a good deal at the necessity; for never having had any business of his own to attend to he thought it doubly hard that in his old age he must attend to the business of others.

The first case of dispute was between two men who each claimed to own a fine cow, and after hearing the evidence, the King ordered the cow to be killed and roasted and given to the poor, since that was the easiest way to decide the matter. Then followed a quarrel between two subjects over ten pieces of gold, one claiming the other owed him that sum. The King, thinking them both rascals, ordered the gold to be paid, and then he took it and scattered it amongst the beggars outside the palace.

By this time King Cole decided he had transacted enough business for one day, so he sent word to those outside that if anyone had a quarrel that was not just he should be severely punished; and, indeed, when the subjects learned the manner in which the King settled disputes, they were afraid to come to him, as both sides were sure to be losers by the decision. And that saved King Cole a lot of trouble thereafter, for the people thought best to settle their own differences.

The King, now seeing he was free to do as he pleased, retired to his private chamber, where he called for the three fiddlers and made them play for him while he smoked his pipe and drank a bowl of punch.

Every evening he had a dance in the palace, and every day there were picnics and merry-makings of all kinds, and before long King Cole had the reputation of having the merriest court in all the world.

He loved to feast and to smoke and to drink his punch, and he was never so merry as when others were merry with him, so that the three fiddlers were almost always by his side, and at any hour of the day you could hear sweet strains of music echoing through the palace.

Old King Cole did not forget the donkey that had been his constant companion for so long. He had a golden saddle made for him, with a saddle-cloth broidered in gold and silver, and the bridle was studded with diamonds and precious stones, all taken from the King's treasury.

And when he rode out, the old fat King always bestrode the donkey, while his courtiers rode on either side of him upon their prancing chargers.

Old King Cole reigned for many years, and was generally beloved by his subjects; for he always gave liberally to all who asked, and was always as merry and happy as the day was long.

When he died the new King was found to be of a very different temper, and ruled the country with great severity; but this only served to make the memory of Old King Cole more tenderly cherished by his people, and they often sighed when they recalled his merry pranks, and the good times they enjoyed under his rule.



Mistress Mary



Mistress Mary

Mistress Mary, quite contrary, How does your garden grow? With dingle bells and cockle shells And cowslips, all in a row.


HIGH upon a cliff that overlooked the sea was a little white cottage, in which dwelt a sailor and his wife, with their two strong sons and a little girl. The sons were also sailors, and had made several voyages with their father in a pretty ship called the "Skylark." Their names were Hobart and Robart. The little girl's name was Mary, and she was very happy indeed when her father and her brothers were at home, for they petted her and played games with, her and loved her very dearly. But when the "Skylark" went to sea, and her mother and herself were left alone in the little white cottage, the hours were very dull and tedious, and Mary counted the days until the sailors came home again.

One spring, just as the grasses began to grow green upon the cliff and the trees were dressing their stiff, barren branches in robes of delicate foliage, the father and brothers bade good-bye to Mary and her mother, for they were starting upon a voyage to the Black Sea.

"And how long will you be gone, papa?" asked Mary, who was perched upon her father's knee, where she could nestle her soft cheek against his bushy whiskers.

"How long?" he repeated, stroking her curls tenderly as he spoke; "well, well, my darling, it will be a long time indeed! Do you know the cowslips that grow in the pastures, Mary?"

"Oh, yes; I watch for them every spring," she answered.

"And do you know the dingle-bells that grow near the edge of the wood?" he asked again.

"I know them well, papa," replied Mary, "for often I gather their blue blossoms and put them in a vase upon the table."

"And how about the cockle-shells?"

"Them also I know," said Mary eagerly, for she was glad her father should find her so well acquainted with the field flowers; "there is nothing prettier than the big white flowers of the cockle-shells. But tell me, papa, what have the flowers to do with your coming home?"

"Why, just this, sweetheart," returned the sailor gravely; "all the time that it takes the cowslips and dingle-bells and cockle-shells to sprout from the ground, and grow big and strong, and blossom into flower, and, yes -- to wither and die away again -- all that time shall your brothers and I sail the seas. But when the cold winds begin to blow, and the flowers are gone, then, God willing, we shall come back to you; and by that time you may have grown wiser and bigger, and I am sure you will have grown older. So one more kiss, sweetheart, and then we must go, for our time is up."

The next morning, when Mary and her mother had dried their eyes, which had been wet with grief at the departure of their loved ones, the little girl asked earnestly,

"Mamma, may I make a flower-garden?"

"A flower-garden!" repeated her mother in surprise; "why do you wish a flower-garden, Mary?"

"I want to plant in it the cockle-shells and the cowslips and the dingle-bells," she answered.

And her mother, who had heard what the sailor had said to his little girl, knew at once what Mary meant; so she kissed her daughter and replied,

"Yes, Mary, you may have the flower-garden, if you wish. We will dig a nice little bed just at the side of the house, and you shall plant your flowers and care for them yourself."

"I think I'd rather have the flowers at the front of the house," said Mary.

"But why?" enquired her mother; "they will be better sheltered at the side."

"I want them in front," persisted Mary, "for the sun shines stronger there."

"Very well," answered her mother, "make your garden at the front, if you will, and I will help you to dig up the ground."

"But I don't want you to help," said Mary, "for this is to be my own little flower-garden, and I want to do all the work myself."

Now I must tell you that this little girl, although very sweet in many ways, had one serious fault. She was inclined to be a bit contrary, and put her own opinions and ideas before those of her elders. Perhaps Mary meant no wrong in this; she often thought she knew better how to do a thing than others did; and in such a case she was not only contrary, but anxious to have her own way.

And so her mother, who did not like her little daughter to be unhappy, often gave way to her in small things, and now she permitted Mary to make her own garden, and plant it as she would.

So Mary made a long, narrow bed at the front of the house, and then she prepared to plant her flowers.

"If you scatter the seeds," said her mother, "the flower-bed will look very pretty."

Now this was what Mary was about to do; but since her mother advised it, she tried to think of another way, for, as I said, she was contrary at times. And in the end she planted the dingle-bells all in one straight row, and the cockle-shells in another straight row the length of the bed, and she finished by planting the cowslips in another long row at the back.

Her mother smiled, but said nothing; and now, as the days passed by, Mary watered and tended her garden with great care; and when the flowers began to sprout she plucked all the weeds that grew among them, and so in the mild spring weather the plants grew finely.

"When they have grown up big and strong," said Mary one morning, as she weeded the bed, "and when they have budded and blossomed and faded away again, then papa and my brothers will come home. And I shall call the cockle-shells papa, for they are the biggest and strongest; and the dingle-bells shall be brother Hobart, and the cowslips brother Robart. And now I feel as if the flowers were really my dear ones, and I must be very careful that they come to no harm!"

She was filled with joy when one morning she ran out to her flower-garden after breakfast and found the dingle-bells and cowslips were actually blossoming, while even the cockle-shells were showing their white buds. They looked rather comical, all standing in stiff, straight rows, one after the other; but Mary did not mind that.

While she was working she heard the tramp of a horse's hoofs, and looking up saw the big bluff Squire riding toward her. The big Squire was very fond of children, and whenever he rode near the little white cottage he stopped to have a word with Mary. He was old and bald-headed, and he had side-whiskers that were very red in color and very short and stubby; but there was ever a merry twinkle in his blue eyes, and Mary well knew him for her friend.

Now, when she looked up and saw him coming toward her flower-garden, she nodded and smiled at him, and the big bluff Squire rode up to her side, and looked down with a smile at her flowers.

Then he said to her in rhyme (for it was a way of speaking the jolly Squire had),

"Mistress Mary, so contrary, How does your garden grow? With dingle-bells and cockle-shells And cowslips all in a row!"

And Mary, being a sharp little girl, and knowing the Squire's queer ways, replied to him likewise in rhyme, saying,

"I thank you, Squire, that you enquire How well the flowers are growing; The dingle-bells and cockle-shells And cowslips all are blowing!"

The Squire laughed at this reply, and patted her upon her head, and then he continued,

"'Tis aptly said. But prithee, maid, Why thus your garden fill When ev'ry field the same flowers yield To pluck them as you will?"

"That is a long story, Squire," said Mary; "but this much I may tell you,

"The cockle-shell is father's flower, The cowslip here is Robart, The dingle-bell, I now must tell, I've named for Brother Hobart.

"And when the flowers have lived their lives In sunshine and in rain, And then do fade, why, papa said He'd sure come home again."

"Oh, that's the idea, is it?" asked the big bluff Squire, forgetting his poetry. "Well, it's a pretty thought, my child, and I think because the flowers are strong and hearty that you may know your father and brothers are the same; and I'm sure I hope they'll come back from their voyage safe and sound. I shall come and see you again, little one, and watch the garden grow." And then he said "gee-up" to his gray mare, and rode away.

The very next day, to Mary's great surprise and grief, she found the leaves of the dingle-bells curling and beginning to wither.

"Oh, mamma," she called, "come quick! Something is surely the matter with brother Hobart!"

"The dingle-bells are dying," said her mother, after looking carefully at the flowers; "but the reason is that the cold winds from the sea swept right over your garden last night, and dingle-bells are delicate flowers and grow best where they are sheltered by the woods. If you had planted them at the side of the house, as I wished you to, the wind would not have killed them."

Mary did not reply to this, but sat down and began to weep, feeling at the same time that her mother was right and it was her own fault for being so contrary.

While she sat thus the Squire rode up, and called to her

"Fie, Mary, fie! Why do you cry, And blind your eyes to knowing How dingle-bells and cockle-shells And cowslips all are growing?"

"Oh, Squire!" sobbed Mary, "I am in great trouble.

"Each dingle-bell I loved so well Before my eyes is dying, And much I fear my brother dear In sickness now is lying!"

"Nonsense!" said the Squire; "because you named the flowers after your brother Hobart is no reason he should be affected by the fading of the dingle-bells. I very much suspect the real reason they are dying is because the cold sea wind caught them last night. Dingle-bells are delicate. If you had scattered the cockle-shells and cowslips all about them, the stronger plants would have protected the weaker; but you see, my girl, you planted the dingle-bells all in a row, and so the wind caught them nicely."

Again Mary reproached herself for having been contrary and refusing to listen to her mother's advice; but the Squire's words comforted her, nevertheless, and made her feel that brother Hobart and the flowers had really nothing to do with each other.

The weather now began to change, and the cold sea winds blew each night over Mary's garden. She did not know this, for she was always lying snugly tucked up in her bed, and the warm morning sun usually drove away the winds; but her mother knew it, and feared Mary's garden would suffer.

One day Mary came into the house where her mother was at work and said, gleefully,

"Papa and my brothers will soon be home now."

"Why do you think so?" asked her mother.

"Because the cockle-shells and cowslips are both fading away and dying, just as the dingle-bells did, and papa said when they faded and withered he and the boys would come back to us."

Mary's mother knew that the harsh winds had killed the flowers before their time, but she did not like to disappoint her darling, so she only said, with a sigh,

"I hope you are right, Mary, for we both shall be glad to welcome our dear ones home again."

But soon afterward the big bluff Squire came riding up, as was his wont, to where Mary stood by her garden, and he at once asked,

"Pray tell me, dear, though much I fear The answer sad I know, How grow the sturdy cockle-shells And cowslips, all in a row?"

And Mary looked up at him with her bright smile and answered,

"Dingle-bells and cockle-shells And cowslips are all dead, And now my papa's coming home, For so he surely said."

"Ah," said the Squire, looking at her curiously, "I'm afraid you are getting way ahead of time. See here, Mary, how would you like a little ride with me on my nag?"

"I would like it very much, sir," replied Mary.

"Then reach up your hand. Now! -- there you are, little one!" and Mary found herself seated safely in front of the Squire, who clasped her with one strong arm so that she could not slip off.

"Now, then," he said, "we'll take a little ride down the hill and by the path that runs beside the wood."

So he gave the rein to his mare and they rode along, chatting merrily together, till they came to the wood. Then said the Squire,

"Take a look within that nook And tell me what is there."

And Mary exclaimed,

"A dingle-bell, and truth to tell In full bloom, I declare!"

The Squire now clucked to his nag, and as they rode away he said,

"Now come with me and you shall see A field with cowslips bright, And not a garden in the land Can show so fair a sight."

And so it was, for as they rode through the pastures the cowslips bloomed on every hand, and Mary's eyes grew bigger and bigger as she thought of her poor garden with its dead flowers.

And then the Squire took her toward the little brook that wandered through the meadows, flowing over the pebbles with a soft, gurgling sound that was very nearly as sweet as music; and when they reached it the big Squire said,

"If you will look beside the brook You'll see, I know quite well, That hidden in each mossy nook Is many a cockle-shell."

This was indeed true, and as Mary saw them she suddenly dropped her head and began to weep.

"What's the matter, little one?" asked the Squire in his kind, bluff voice. And Mary answered,

"Although the flowers I much admire, You know papa did say He won't be home again, Squire, Till all have passed away."

"You must be patient, my child," replied her friend; "and surely you would not have been thus disappointed had you not tried to make the field flowers grow where they do not belong. Gardens are all well enough for fancy flowers to grow in, but the posies that God gave to all the world, and made to grow wild in the great garden of Nature, will never thrive in other places. Your father meant you to watch the flowers in the field; and if you will come and visit them each day, you will find the time of waiting very short indeed."

Mary dried her eyes and thanked the kindly old Squire, and after that she visited the fields each day and watched the flowers grow.

And it was not so very long, as the Squire said, before the blossoms began to wither and fall away; and finally one day Mary looked out over the sea and saw a little speck upon the waters that looked like a sail. And when it came nearer and had grown larger, both she and her mother saw that it was the "Skylark" come home again, and you can imagine how pleased and happy the sight of the pretty little ship made them.

And soon after, when Mary had been hugged by her two sunburned brothers and was clasped in her father's strong arms, she whispered,

"I knew you were coming soon, papa."

"And how did you know, sweetheart?" he asked, giving her an extra kiss.

"Because I watched the flowers; and the dingle-bells and cowslips and cockle-shells are all withered and faded away. And did you not say that, God willing, when this happened you would come back to us?"

"To be sure I did," answered her father, with a happy laugh; "and I must have spoken truly, sweetheart, for God in His goodness was willing, and here I am!"



The Wond'rous Wise Man



The Wond'rous Wise Man

There was a man in our town And he was wond'rous wise; He jumped into a bramble bush And scratched out both his eyes. And when he saw his eyes were out, With all his might and main He jumped into another bush And scratched them in again!


OUR town is a quiet little town, and lies nestling in a little valley surrounded by pretty green hills. I do not think you would ever have heard our town mentioned had not the man lived there who was so wise that everyone marvelled at his great knowledge.

He was not always a wise man; he was a wise boy before he grew to manhood, and even when a child he was so remarkable for his wisdom that people shook their heads gravely and said, "when he grows up there will be no need of books, for he will know everything!"

His father thought he had a wond'rous wise look when he was born, and so he named him Solomon, thinking that if indeed he turned out to be wise the name would fit him nicely, whereas, should he be mistaken, and the boy grow up stupid, his name could be easily changed to Simon.

But the father was not mistaken, and the boy's name remained Solomon.

When he was still a child Solomon confounded the schoolmaster by asking, one day,

"Can you tell me, sir, why a cow drinks water from a brook?"

"Well really," replied the abashed schoolmaster, "I have never given the subject serious thought. But I will sleep upon the question, and try to give you an answer to-morrow."

But the schoolmaster could not sleep; he remained awake all the night trying to think why a cow drinks water from a brook, and in the morning he was no nearer the answer than before. So he was obliged to appear before the wise child and acknowledge that he could not solve the problem.

"I have looked at the subject from every side," said he, "and given it careful thought, and yet I cannot tell why a cow drinks water from a brook."

"Sir," replied the wise child, "it is because the cow is thirsty."

The shock of this answer was so great that the schoolmaster fainted away, and when they had brought him to he made a prophecy that Solomon would grow up to be a wond'rous wise man.

It was the same way with the village doctor. Solomon came to him one day and asked,

"Tell me, sir, why has a man two eyes?"

"Bless me!" exclaimed the doctor, "I must think a bit before I answer, for I have never yet had my attention called to this subject."

So he thought for a long time, and then he said,

"I must really give it up. I cannot tell, for the life of me, why a man has two eyes. Do you know?"

"Yes, sir," answered the boy.

"Then," said the doctor, after taking a dose of quinine to brace up his nerves, for he remembered the fate of the schoolmaster, "then please tell me why a man has two eyes."

"A man has two eyes, sir," returned Solomon, solemnly, "because he was born that way."

And the doctor marvelled greatly at so much wisdom in a little child, and made a note of it in his note-book.

Solomon was so full of wisdom that it flowed from his mouth in a perfect stream, and every day he gave new evidence to his friends that he could scarcely hold all the wise thoughts that came to him. For instance, one day he said to his father,

"I perceive our dog has six legs."

"Oh, no!" replied his father, "our dog has only four legs."

"You are surely mistaken, sir," said Solomon, with the gravity that comes from great wisdom, "these are our dog's fore legs, are they not?" pointing to the front legs of the dog.

The Wond'rous Wise Man

"Yes," answered his father.

"Well," continued Solomon, "the dog has two other legs, besides, and two and four are six; therefore the dog has six legs."

"But that is very old," exclaimed his father.

"True," replied Solomon, "but this is a young dog."

Then his father bowed his head in shame that his own child should teach him wisdom.

Of course Solomon wore glasses upon his eyes -- all wise people wear them, -- and his face was ever grave and solemn, while he walked slowly and stiffly so that people might know he was the celebrated wise man, and do him reverence.

And when he had grown to manhood the fame of his wisdom spread all over the world, so that all the other wise men were jealous, and tried in many ways to confound him; but Solomon always came out ahead and maintained his reputation for wisdom.

Finally a very wise man came from Cumberland, to meet Solomon and see which of them was the wisest. He was a very big man, and Solomon was a very little man, and so the people all shook their heads sadly and feared Solomon had met his match, for if the Cumberland man was as full of wisdom as Solomon, he had much the advantage in size.

They formed a circle around the two wise men, and then began the trial to see which was the wisest.

"Tell me," said Solomon, looking straight up into the big man's face with an air of confidence that reassured his friends, "how many sisters has a boy who has one father, one mother, and seven brothers?"

The big wise man got very red in the face, and scowled and coughed and stammered, but he could not tell.

"I do not know," he acknowledged; "nor do you know, either, for there is no rule to go by."

"Oh, yes, I know," replied Solomon; "he has two sisters. I know this is the true answer, because I know the boy and his father and his mother and his brothers and his sisters, so that I cannot be mistaken."

Now all the people applauded at this, for they were sure Solomon had got the best of the man from Cumberland.

But it was now the big man's turn to try Solomon, so he said,

"Fingers five are on my hand; All of them upright do stand. One a dog is, chasing kittens; One a cat is, wearing mittens; One a rat is, eating cheese; One a wolf is, full of fleas; One a fly is, in a cup --  How many fingers do I hold up?"

"Four," replied Solomon, promptly, "for one of them is a thumb!"

The wise man from Cumberland was so angry at being outwitted that he sprang at Solomon and would no doubt have injured him had not our wise man turned and run away as fast as he could go. The man from Cumberland at once ran after him, and chased him through the streets and down the lanes and up the side of the hill where the bramble-bushes grow.

Solomon ran very fast, but the man from Cumberland was bigger, and he was just about to grab our wise man by his coat-tails when Solomon gave a great jump, and jumped right into the middle of a big bramble-bush!

The people were all coming up behind, and as the big man did not dare to follow Solomon into the bramble-bush, he turned away and ran home to Cumberland.

All the men and women of our town were horrified when they came up and found their wise man in the middle of the bramble-bush, and held fast by the brambles, which scratched and pricked him on every side.

"Solomon! are you hurt?" they cried.

"I should say I am hurt!" replied Solomon, with a groan; "my eyes are scratched out!"

"How do you know they are?" asked the village doctor.

"I can see they are scratched out!" replied Solomon; and the people all wept with grief at this, and Solomon howled louder than any of them.

Now the fact was that when Solomon jumped into the bramble-bush he was wearing his spectacles, and the brambles pushed the glasses so close against his eyes that he could not open them; and so, as every other part of him was scratched and bleeding, and he could not open his eyes, he made sure they were scratched out.

"How am I to get out of here?" he asked at last.

"You must jump out," replied the doctor, "since you have jumped in."

So Solomon made a great jump, and although the brambles tore him cruelly, he sprang entirely out of the bush and fell plump into another one.

This last bush, however, by good luck, was not a bramble-bush, but one of elderberry, and when he jumped into it his spectacles fell off, and to his surprise he opened his eyes and found that he could see again.

"Where are you now?" called out the doctor.

"I'm in the elderberry bush, and I've scratched my eyes in again!" answered Solomon.

When the people heard this they marvelled greatly at the wisdom of a man who knew how to scratch his eyes in after they were scratched out; and they lifted Solomon from the bush and carried him home, where they bound up the scratches and nursed him carefully until he was well again.

And after that no one ever questioned the wond'rous wisdom of our wise man, and when he finally died, at a good old age, they built a great monument over his grave, and on one side of it were the words,

"Solomon; the Man who was Wond'rous Wise."

and on the other side was a picture of a bramble-bush.



What Jack Horner Did



What Jack Horner Did

Little Jack Horner sat in a corner, Eating a Christmas pie; He put in his thumb and pulled out a plum And said, "What a good boy am I!"


LITTLE JACK HORNER lived in an old, tumble-down house at the edge of a big wood; and there many generations of Horners had lived before him, and had earned their living by chopping wood. Jack's father and mother were both dead, and he lived with his grandfather and grandmother, who took great pains to teach him all that a boy should know.

They lived very comfortably and happily together until one day a great tree fell upon Grandpa Horner and crushed his legs; and from that time on he could not work at all, but had to be nursed and tended very carefully.

This calamity was a great affliction to the Horners. Grandma Horner had a little money saved up in an old broken teapot that she kept in the cupboard, but that would not last them a great time, and when it was gone they would have nothing with which to buy food.

"I'm sure I don't know what is to become of us," she said to Jack, "for I am too old to work, and you are too young." She always told her troubles to Jack now; small though he was, he was the only one she could talk freely with, since it would only bother the poor crippled grandfather to tell him how low the money was getting in the teapot.

"It is true," replied Jack, "that you are too old to work, for your rheumatism will barely allow you to care for the house and cook our meals; and there is grandpa to be tended. But I am not too young to work, grandma, and I shall take my little hatchet and go into the wood. I cannot cut the big trees, but I can the smaller ones, and I am sure I shall be able to pile up enough wood to secure the money we need for food."

"You are a good boy, dear," said grandma Horner, patting his head lovingly, "but you are too young for the task. We must think of some other way to keep the wolf from the door."

But Jack was not shaken in his resolve, although he saw it was useless to argue further with his grandmother. So the next morning he rose very early and took his little axe and went into the wood to begin his work. There were a good many branches scattered about, and these he was able to cut with ease; and then he piled them up nicely to be sold when the wood-carter next came around. When dinner-time came he stopped long enough to eat some of the bread and cheese he had brought with him, and then he resumed his work.

But scarcely had he chopped one branch when a faint cry from the wood arrested his attention. It seemed as if some one was shouting for help. Jack listened a moment, and again heard the cry.

Without hesitation he seized his axe and ran toward the place from whence the cry had proceeded. The underbrush was very thick and the thorns caught in his clothing and held him back, but with the aid of his sharp little axe he overcame all difficulties and presently reached a place where the wood was more open.

He paused here, for often he had been told by Grandpa Horner that there were treacherous bogs in this part of the wood, which were so covered with mosses and ferns that the ground seemed solid enough to walk upon. But woe to the unlucky traveler who stepped unawares upon their surface; for instantly he found himself caught by the clinging moist clay, to sink farther and farther into the bog until, swallowed up in the mire, he would meet a horrible death beneath its slimy surface. His grandfather had told him never to go near these terrible bogs, and Jack, who was an obedient boy, had always kept away from this part of the wood. But as he paused, again that despairing cry came to his ears, very near to him now, it seemed:

"Help!"

Forgetful of all save a desire to assist this unknown sufferer, Jack sprang forward with an answering cry, and only halted when he found himself upon the edge of a vast bog.

Jack Horner

"Where are you?" he then shouted.

"Here!" answered a voice, and, looking down, Jack saw, a few feet away, the head and shoulders of a man. He had walked into the bog and sunk into its treacherous depths nearly to his waist, and, although he struggled bravely, his efforts only seemed to draw him farther down toward a frightful death.

For a moment, filled with horror and dismay, Jack stood looking at the man. Then he remembered a story he had once heard of how a man had been saved from the bog.

"Be quiet, sir!" he called to the unfortunate stranger; "save all your strength, and I may yet be able to rescue you."

He then ran to a tall sapling that stood near and began chopping away with his axe. The keen blade speedily cut through the young but tough wood, and, then Jack dragged it to the edge of the bog, and, exerting all his strength, pushed it out until the sapling was within reach of the sinking man.

"Grab it, sir!" he called out, "and hold on tightly. It will keep you from sinking farther into the mire, and when you have gained more strength you may be able to pull yourself out."

"You are a brave boy," replied the stranger, "and I shall do as you tell me."

It was a long and tedious struggle, and often Jack thought the stranger would despair and be unable to drag his body from the firm clutch of the bog; but little by little the man succeeded in drawing himself up by the sapling, and at last he was saved, and sank down exhausted upon the firm ground by Jack's side.

The boy then ran for some water that stood in a slough near by, and with this he bathed the stranger's face and cooled his parched lips. Then he gave him the remains of his bread and cheese, and soon the gentleman became strong enough to walk with Jack's help to the cottage at the edge of the wood.

Grandma Horner was greatly surprised to see the strange man approaching, supported by her sturdy little grandson; but she ran to help him, and afterward gave him some old clothing of Grandpa Horner's to replace his own muddy garments. When the man had fully rested, she brewed him her last bit of tea, and by that time the stranger declared he felt as good as new.

"Is this your son, ma'am?" he asked, pointing to Jack.

"He is my grandson, sir," answered the woman.

"He is a good boy," declared the stranger, "and a brave boy as well, for he has saved my life. I live far away in a big city, and have plenty of money. If you will give Jack to me I will take him home and educate him, and make a great man of him when he grows up."

Grandma Horner hesitated, for the boy was very dear to her and the pride of her old age; but Jack spoke up for himself.

"I'll not go," he said, stoutly; "you are very kind, and mean well by me, but grandma and grandpa have only me to care for them now, and I must stay with them and cut the wood, and so keep them supplied with food."

The stranger said nothing more, but he patted Jack's head kindly, and soon after left them and took the road to the city.

The next morning Jack went to the wood again, and began chopping as bravely as before. And by hard work he cut a great deal of wood, which the wood-carter carried away and sold for him. The pay was not very much, to be sure, but Jack was glad that he was able to earn something to help his grandparents.

And so the days passed rapidly away until it was nearly Christmas time, and now, in spite of Jack's earnings, the money was very low indeed in the broken teapot.

One day, just before Christmas, a great wagon drove up to the door of the little cottage, and in it was the stranger Jack had rescued from the bog. The wagon was loaded with a store of good things which would add to the comfort of the aged pair and their grandson, including medicines for grandpa and rare teas for grandma, and a fine suit of clothes for Jack, who was just then away at work in the wood.

When the stranger had brought all these things into the house, he asked to see the old teapot. Trembling with the excitement of their good fortune, Grandma Horner brought out the teapot, and the gentleman drew a bag from beneath his coat and filled the pot to the brim with shining gold pieces.

"If ever you need more," he said, "send to me, and you shall have all you wish to make you comfortable."

Then he told her his name, and where he lived, so that she might find him if need be, and then he drove away in the empty wagon before Grandma Horner had half finished thanking him.

You can imagine how astonished and happy little Jack was when he returned from his work and found all the good things his kind benefactor had brought. Grandma Horner was herself so delighted that she caught the boy in her arms, and hugged and kissed him, declaring that his brave rescue of the gentleman had brought them all this happiness in their hour of need.

"To-morrow is Christmas," she said, "and we shall have an abundance with which to celebrate the good day. So I shall make you a Christmas pie, Jack dear, and stuff it full of plums, for you must have your share of our unexpected prosperity."

And Grandma Horner was as good as her word, and made a very delicious pie indeed for her darling grandson.

And this was how it came that

"Little Jack Horner sat in a corner Eating a Christmas pie; He put in his thumb and pulled out a plum, And said, 'What a good boy am I!'"

And he was -- a very good boy. Don't you think so?



The Man in the Moon



The Man in the Moon

The Man in the Moon came tumbling down, And enquired the way to Norwich; He went by the south and burned his mouth With eating cold pease porridge!


WHAT! have you never heard the story of the Man in the Moon? Then I must surely tell it, for it is very amusing, and there is not a word of truth in it.

The Man in the Moon was rather lonesome, and often he peeked over the edge of the moon and looked down upon the earth and envied all the people who lived together, for he thought it must be vastly more pleasant to have companions to talk to than to be shut up in a big planet all by himself, where he had to whistle to keep himself company.

One day he looked down and saw an alderman sailing up through the air towards him. This alderman was being translated (instead of being transported, owing to a misprint in the law) and as he came near the Man in the Moon called to him and said,

"How is everything down on the earth?"

"Everything is lovely," replied the alderman, "and I wouldn't leave it if I was not obliged to."

"What's a good place to visit down there? enquired the Man in the Moon.

"Oh, Norwich is a mighty fine place," returned the alderman, "and it's famous for its pease porridge;" and then he sailed out of sight and left the Man in the Moon to reflect upon what he had said.

The words of the alderman made him more anxious than ever to visit the earth, and so he walked thoughtfully home, and put a few lumps of ice in the stove to keep him warm, and sat down to think how he should manage the trip.

You see, everything went by contraries in the Moon, and when the Man wished to keep warm he knocked off a few chunks of ice and put them in his stove; and he cooled his drinking water by throwing red-hot coals of fire into the pitcher. Likewise, when he became chilly he took off his hat and coat, and even his shoes, and so became warm; and in the hot days of summer he put on his overcoat to cool off.

All of which seems very queer to you, no doubt; but it wasn't at all queer to the Man in the Moon, for he was accustomed to it.

Well, he sat by his ice-cool fire and thought about his journey to the earth, and finally he decided the only way he could get there was to slide down a moonbeam.

So he left the house and locked the door and put the key in his pocket, for he was uncertain how long he should be gone; and then he went to the edge of the moon and began to search for a good strong moonbeam.

At last he found one that seemed rather substantial and reached right down to a pleasant-looking spot on the earth; and so he swung himself over the edge of the moon, and put both arms tight around the moonbeam and started to slide down. But he found it rather slippery, and in spite of all his efforts to hold on he found himself going faster and faster, so that just before he reached the earth he lost his hold and came tumbling down head over heels and fell plump into a river.

The cool water nearly scalded him before he could swim out, but fortunately he was near the bank and he quickly scrambled upon the land and sat down to catch his breath.

By that time it was morning, and as the sun rose its hot rays cooled him off somewhat, so that he began looking about curiously at all the strange sights and wondering where on earth he was.

By and by a farmer came along the road by the river with a team of horses drawing a load of hay, and the horses looked so odd to the Man in the Moon that at first he was greatly frightened, never before having seen horses except from his home in the moon, from whence they looked a good deal smaller. But he plucked up courage and said to the farmer,

"Can you tell me the way to Norwich, sir?"

"Norwich?" repeated the farmer musingly; "I don't know exactly where it be, sir, but it's somewhere away to the south."

The Man in the Moon

"Thank you," said the Man in the Moon. -- But stop! I must not call him the Man in the Moon any longer, for of course he was now out of the moon; so I'll simply call him the Man, and you'll know by that which man I mean.

Well, the Man in the -- I mean the Man (but I nearly forgot what I have just said) -- the Man turned to the south and began walking briskly along the road, for he had made up his mind to do as the alderman had advised and travel to Norwich, that he might eat some of the famous pease porridge that was made there. And finally, after a long and tiresome journey, he reached the town and stopped at one of the first houses he came to, for by this time he was very hungry indeed.

A good-looking woman answered his knock at the door, and he asked politely,

"Is this the town of Norwich, madam?"

"Surely this is the town of Norwich," returned the woman.

"I came here to see if I could get some pease porridge," continued the Man, "for I hear you make the nicest porridge in the world in this town."

"That we do, sir," answered the woman, "and if you'll step inside I'll give you a bowl, for I have plenty in the house that is newly made."

So he thanked her and entered the house, and she asked,

"Will you have it hot or cold, sir?"

"Oh, cold, by all means," replied the Man, "for I detest anything hot to eat."

She soon brought him a bowl of cold pease porridge, and the Man was so hungry that he took a big spoonful at once.

But no sooner had he put it into his mouth than he uttered a great yell, and began dancing frantically about the room, for of course the porridge that was cold to earth folk was hot to him, and the big spoonful of cold pease porridge had burned his mouth to a blister!

"What's the matter?" asked the woman.

"Matter!" screamed the Man; "why, your porridge is so hot it has burned me."

"Fiddlesticks!" she replied, "the porridge is quite cold."

"Try it yourself!" he cried. So she tried it and found it very cold and pleasant. But the Man was so astonished to see her eat the porridge that had blistered his own mouth that he became frightened and ran out of the house and down the street as fast as he could go.

The policeman on the first corner saw him running, and promptly arrested him, and he was marched off to the magistrate for trial.

"What is your name?" asked the magistrate.

"I haven't any," replied the Man; for of course as he was the only Man in the Moon it wasn't necessary he should have a name.

"Come, come, no nonsense!" said the magistrate, "you must have some name. Who are you?"

"Why, I'm the Man in the Moon."

"That's rubbish!" said the magistrate, eyeing the prisoner severely, "you may be a man, but you're not in the moon -- you're in Norwich."

"That is true," answered the Man, who was quite bewildered by this idea.

"And of course you must be called something," continued the magistrate.

"Well, then," said the prisoner, "if I'm not the Man in the Moon I must be the Man out of the Moon; so call me that."

"Very good," replied the judge; "now, then, where did you come from?"

"The moon."

"Oh, you did, eh? How did you get here?"

"I slid down a moonbeam."

"Indeed! Well, what were you running for?"

"A woman gave me some cold pease porridge, and it burned my mouth."

The magistrate looked at him a moment in surprise, and then he said,

"This person is evidently crazy; so take him to the lunatic asylum and keep him there."

This would surely have been the fate of the Man had there not been present an old astronomer who had often looked at the moon through his telescope, and so had discovered that what was hot on earth was cold in the moon, and what was cold here was hot there; so he began to think the Man had told the truth. Therefore he begged the magistrate to wait a few minutes while he looked through his telescope to see if the Man in the Moon was there. So, as it was now night, he fetched his telescope and looked at the Moon, -- and found there was no man in it at all!

"It seems to be true," said the astronomer, "that the Man has got out of the Moon somehow or other. Let me look at your mouth, sir, and see if it is really burned."

Then the Man opened his mouth, and everyone saw plainly it was burned to a blister! Thereupon the magistrate begged his pardon for doubting his word, and asked him what he would like to do next.

"I'd like to get back to the Moon," said the Man, "for I don't like this earth of yours at all. The nights are too hot."

"Why, it's quite cool this evening!" said the magistrate.

"I'll tell you what we can do," remarked the astronomer; "there's a big balloon in town which belongs to the circus that came here last summer, and was pawned for a board bill. We can inflate this balloon and send the Man out of the Moon home in it."

"That's a good idea," replied the judge. So the balloon was brought and inflated, and the Man got into the basket and gave the word to let go, and then the balloon mounted up into the sky in the direction of the moon.

The good people of Norwich stood on the earth and tipped back their heads, and watched the balloon go higher and higher, until finally the Man reached out and caught hold of the edge of the moon, and behold! the next minute he was the Man in the Moon again!

After this adventure he was well contented to stay at home; and I've no doubt if you look through a telescope you will see him there to this day.



The Jolly Miller



The Jolly Miller

There was a jolly miller Lived on the river Dee; He sang and worked from morn till night, No lark so blithe as he. And this the burden of his song Forever seemed to be: I care for nobody, no! not I, Since nobody cares for me.


"CREE-E-EEKETY-CRUCK-CRICK! cree-e-eekety-cruck-crick!" sang out the big wheel of the mill upon the river Dee, for it was old and ricketty and had worked many years grinding corn for the miller; so from morning till night it creaked and growled and complained as if rebelling against the work it must do. And the country people, at work in the fields far away, would raise their heads when the soft summer breezes wafted the sound of the wheel to their ears and say,

"The jolly miller is grinding his corn." And again, at the times when the mill was shut down and no sound of the wheel reached them, they said to one another,

"The jolly miller has no corn to grind to-day," or, "The miller is oiling the great wheel." But they would miss the creaking, monotonous noise, and feel more content when the mill started again and made music for them as they worked.

But no one came to the mill unless they brought corn to grind, for the miller was a queer man, and liked to be alone. When people passed by the mill and saw the miller at his work, they only nodded their heads, for they knew he would not reply if they spoke to him.

He was not an old man, nor a sour man, nor a bad man; on the contrary he could be heard singing at his work most of the time. But the words of his song would alone have kept people away from him, for they were always these:

"I care for nobody, no! not I, Since nobody cares for me."

He lived all alone in the mill-house, cooking his own meals and making his own bed, and neither asking nor receiving help from anyone. It is very certain that if the jolly miller had cared to have friends many would have visited him, since the country people were sociable enough in their way; but it was the miller himself who refused to make friends, and old Farmer Dobson used to say,

"The reason nobody cares for the miller is because he won't let them. It is the fault of the man himself, not the fault of the people!"

However this may have been, it is true the miller had no friends, and equally sure that he cared to have none, for it did not make him a bit unhappy.

Sometimes, indeed, as he sat at evening in the doorway of the mill and watched the moon rise in the sky, he grew a bit lonely and thoughtful, and found himself longing for some one to love and cherish, for this is the nature of all good men. But when he realized how his thoughts were straying he began to sing again, and he drove away all such hopeless longings.

At last a change came over the miller's life. He was standing one evening beside the river, watching the moonbeams play upon the water, when something came floating down the stream that attracted his attention. For a long time he could not tell what it was, but it looked to him like a big black box; so he got a long pole and reached it out towards the box and managed to draw it within reach just above the big wheel. It was fortunate he saved it when he did, for in another moment it would have gone over the wheel and been dashed to pieces far below.

When the miller had pulled the floating object upon the bank he found it really was a box, the lid being fastened tight with a strong cord. So he lifted it carefully and carried it into the mill-house, and then he placed it upon the floor while he lighted a candle. Then he cut the cord and opened the box, and behold! a little babe lay within it, sweetly sleeping upon a pillow of down.

The miller was so surprised that he stopped singing and gazed with big eyes at the beautiful face of the little stranger. And while he gazed its eyes opened -- two beautiful, pleading blue eyes, -- and the little one smiled and stretched out her arms toward him.

"Well, well!" said the miller, "where on earth did you come from?"

The baby did not reply, but she tried to, and made some soft little noises that sounded like the cooing of a pigeon.

The tiny arms were still stretched upwards, and the miller bent down and tenderly lifted the child from the box and placed her upon his knee, and then he began to stroke the soft, silken ringlets that clustered around her head, and to look upon her wonderingly. The baby leaned against his breast and fell asleep again, and the miller became greatly troubled, for he was unused to babies and did not know how to handle them or care for them. But he sat very still until the little one awoke, and then, thinking it must be hungry, he brought some sweet milk and fed her with a spoon.

The baby smiled at him and ate the milk as if it liked it, and then one little dimpled hand caught hold of the miller's whiskers and pulled sturdily, while the baby jumped its little body up and down and cooed its delight.

Do you think the miller was angry? Not a bit of it! He smiled back into the laughing face and let her pull his whiskers as much as she liked. For his whole heart had gone out to this little waif that he had rescued from the river, and at last the solitary man had found something to love.

The baby slept that night in the miller's own bed, snugly tucked in beside the miller himself; and in the morning he fed her milk again, and then went out to his work singing more merrily than ever.

Every few minutes he would put his head into the room where he had left the child, to see if it wanted anything, and if it cried even the least bit he would run in and take it in his arms and soothe the little girl until she smiled again.

That first day the miller was fearful some one would come and claim the child, but when evening came without the arrival of any stranger he decided the baby had been cast adrift and now belonged to nobody but him.

"I shall keep her as long as I live," he thought, "and never will we be separated for even a day. For now that I have found some one to love I could not bear to let her go again."

He cared for the waif very tenderly; and as the child was strong and healthy she was not much trouble to him, and to his delight grew bigger day by day.

The country people were filled with surprise when they saw a child in the mill-house, and wondered where it came from; but the miller would answer no questions, and as year after year passed away they forgot to enquire how the child came there and looked upon her as the miller's own daughter.

She grew to be a sweet and pretty child, and was the miller's constant companion. She called him "papa," and he called her Nathalie, because he had found her upon the water, and the country people called her the Maid of the Mill.

The miller worked harder than ever before, for now he had to feed and clothe the little girl; and he sang from morn till night, so joyous was he, and still his song was:

"I care for nobody, no! not I, Since nobody cares for me."

One day, while he was singing this, he heard a sob beside him, and looked down to see Nathalie weeping.

"What is it, my pet?" he asked, anxiously.

"Oh, papa," she answered, "why do you sing that nobody cares for you, when you know I love you so dearly?"

The miller was surprised, for he had sung the song so long he had forgotten what the words meant.

"Do you indeed love me, Nathalie?" he asked.

"Indeed, indeed! You know I do!" she replied.

"Then," said the miller, with a happy laugh, as he bent down and kissed the tear-stained face, "I shall change my song."

And after that he sang:

"I love sweet Nathalie, that I do, For Nathalie she loves me."

The years passed by and the miller was very happy. Nathalie grew to be a sweet and lovely maiden, and she learned to cook the meals and tend the house, and that made it easier for the miller, for now he was growing old.

One day the young Squire, who lived at the great house on the hill, came past the mill and saw Nathalie sitting in the doorway, her pretty form framed in the flowers that climbed around and over the door.

And the Squire loved her after that first glance, for he saw that she was as good and innocent as she was beautiful. The miller, hearing the sound of voices, came out and saw them together, and at once he became very angry, for he knew that trouble was in store for him, and he must guard his treasure very carefully if he wished to keep her with him. The young Squire begged very hard to be allowed to pay court to the Maid of the Mill, but the miller ordered him away, and he was forced to go. Then the miller saw there were tears in Nathalie's eyes, and that made him still more anxious, for he feared the mischief was already done.

Indeed, in spite of the miller's watchfulness, the Squire and Nathalie often met and walked together in the shady lanes or upon the green banks of the river. It was not long before they learned to love one another very dearly, and one day they went hand in hand to the miller and asked his consent that they should wed.

"What will become of me?" asked the miller, with a sad heart.

"You shall live in the great house with us," replied the Squire, "and never again need you labor for bread."

But the old man shook his head.

"A miller I have lived," quoth he, "and a miller will I die. But tell me, Nathalie, are you willing to leave me?"

The girl cast down her eyes and blushed sweetly.

"I love him," she whispered, "and if you separate us I shall die."

"Then," said the miller, kissing her with a heavy heart, "go; and may God bless you!"

So Nathalie and the Squire were wed, and lived in the great house, and the very day after the wedding she came walking down to the mill in her pretty new gown to see the miller.

But as she drew near she heard him singing, as was his wont; and the song he sung she had not heard since she was a little girl, for this was it:

"I care for nobody, no! not I, Since nobody cares for me."

She came up softly behind him, and put her arms around his neck.

"Papa," said she, "you must not sing that song. Nathalie loves you yet, and always will while she lives; for my new love is complete in itself, and has not robbed you of one bit of the love that has always been your very own."

The miller turned and looked into her blue eyes, and knew that she spoke truly.

"Then I must learn a new song again," he said, "for it is lonely at the mill, and singing makes the heart lighter. But I will promise that never again, till you forget me, will I sing that nobody cares for me."

And the miller did learn a new song, and sang it right merrily for many years; for each day Nathalie came down to the mill to show that she had not forgotten him.



The Little Man and His Little Gun



The Little Man and His Little Gun

There was a little man and he had a little gun, And the bullets were made of lead, lead, lead. He went to the brook and shot a little duck, And the bullet went right through its head, head, head.


THERE was once a little man named Jimson, who had stopped growing when he was a boy, and never started again. So, although he was old enough to be a man he was hardly big enough, and had he not owned a bald head and gray whiskers you would certainly have taken him for a boy whenever you saw him.

This little man was very sorry he was not bigger, and if you wanted to make him angry you had but to call attention to his size. He dressed just as big men do, and wore a silk hat and a long-tailed coat when he went to church, and a cap and top-boots when he rode horseback. He walked with a little cane and had a little umbrella made to carry when it rained. In fact, whatever other men did this little man was anxious to do also, and so it happened that when the hunting season came around, and all the men began to get their guns ready to hunt for snipe and duck, Mr. Jimson also had a little gun made, and determined to use it as well as any of them.

When he brought it home and showed it to his wife, who was a very big woman, she said,

"Jimson, you'd better use bullets made of bread, and then you won't hurt anything."

"Nonsense, Joan," replied the little man, "I shall have bullets made of lead, just as other men do, and every duck I see I shall shoot and bring home to you."

"I'm afraid you won't kill many," said Joan.

But the little man believed he could shoot with the best of them, so the next morning he got up early and took his little gun and started down to the brook to hunt for duck.

It was scarcely daybreak when he arrived at the brook, and the sun had not yet peeped over the eastern hill-tops, but no duck appeared anywhere in sight, although Mr. Jimson knew this was the right time of day for shooting them. So he sat down beside the brook and begun watching, and before he knew it he had fallen fast asleep.

By and by he was awakened by a peculiar noise.

"Quack, quack, quack!" sounded in his ears; and looking up he saw a pretty little duck swimming in the brook and popping its head under the water in search of something to eat. The duck belonged to Johnny Sprigg, who lived a little way down the brook, but the little man did not know this. He thought it was a wild duck, so he stood up and carefully took aim.

"I'm afraid I can't hit it from here," he thought, "so I'll just step upon that big stone in the brook, and shoot from there."

So he stepped out upon the stone, and took aim at the duck again, and fired the gun.

The next minute the little man had tumbled head over heels into the water, and he nearly drowned before he could scramble out again; for, not being used to shooting, the gun had kicked, or recoiled, and had knocked him off the round stone where he had been standing.

When he had succeeded in reaching the bank he was overjoyed to see that he had shot the duck, which lay dead upon the water a short distance away. The little man got a long stick, and, reaching it out, drew the dead duck to the bank. Then he started joyfully homeward to show the prize to his wife.

"There, Joan," he said, as he entered the house, "is a nice little duck for our dinner. Do you now think your husband cannot shoot?"

"But there's only one duck," remarked his wife, "and it's very small. Can't you go and shoot another? Then we shall have enough for dinner."

"Yes, of course I can shoot another," said the little man, proudly; "you make a fire and get the pot boiling, and I'll go for another duck."

"You'd better shoot a drake this time," said Joan, "for drakes are bigger."

She started to make the fire, and the little man took his gun and went to the brook; but not a duck did he see, nor drake neither, and so he was forced to come home without any game.

"There's no use cooking one duck," said his wife, "so we'll have pork and beans for dinner and I'll hang the little duck in the shed. Perhaps you'll be able to shoot a drake to-morrow, and then we'll cook them both together."

So they had pork and beans, to the great disappointment of Mr. Jimson, who had expected to eat duck instead; and after dinner the little man lay down to take a nap while his wife went out to tell the neighbors what a great hunter he was.

The news spread rapidly through the town, and when the evening paper came out the little man was very angry to see this verse printed in it:

There was a little man and he had a little gun, And the bullets were made of lead, lead, lead. He went to the brook and shot a little duck, And the bullet went right through its head, head, head.

He carried it home to his good wife Joan, And bade her a fire to make, make, make, While he went to the brook where he shot the little duck, And tried for to shoot the drake, drake, drake.

"There's no use putting it into the paper," exclaimed the little man, much provoked, "and Mr. Brayer, the editor, is probably jealous because he himself cannot shoot a gun. Perhaps people think I cannot shoot a drake, but I'll show them to-morrow that I can!"

So the next morning he got up early again, and took his gun, and loaded it with bullets made of lead. Then he said to his wife,

"What does a drake look like, my love?"

"Why," she replied, "it's much like a duck, only it has a curl on its tail and red on its wing."

"All right," he answered, "I'll bring you home a drake in a short time, and to-day we shall have something better for dinner than pork and beans."

When he got to the brook there was nothing in sight, so he sat down on the bank to watch, and again fell fast asleep.

Now Johnny Sprigg had missed his little duck, and knew some one had shot it; so he thought this morning he would go the brook and watch for the man who had killed the duck, and make him pay a good price for it. Johnny was a big man, whose head was very bald; therefore he wore a red curly wig to cover his baldness and make him look younger.

When he got to the brook he saw no one about, and so he hid in a clump of bushes. After a time the little man woke up, and in looking around for the drake he saw Johnny's red wig sticking out of the top of the bushes.

"That is surely the drake," he thought, "for I can see a curl and something red;" and the next minute "bang!" went the gun, and Johnny Sprigg gave a great yell and jumped out of the bushes. As for his beautiful wig, it was shot right off his head, and fell into the water of the brook a good ten yards away!

"What are you trying to do?" he cried, shaking his fist at the little man.

"Why, I was only shooting at the drake," replied Jimson; "and I hit it, too, for there it is in the water."

"That's my wig, sir!" said Johnny Sprigg, "and you shall pay for it, or I'll have the law on you. Are you the man who shot the duck here yesterday morning?"

"I am, sir," answered the little man, proud that he had shot something besides a wig.

"Well, you shall pay for that also," said Mr. Sprigg; "for it belonged to me, and I'll have the money or I'll put you in jail!"

The little man did not want to go to jail, so with a heavy heart he paid for the wig and the duck, and then took his way sorrowfully homeward.

He did not tell Joan of his meeting with Mr. Sprigg; he only said he could not find a drake. But she knew all about it when the paper came out, for this is what it said on the front page:

There was a little man and he had a little gun, And the bullets were made of lead, lead, lead. He shot Johnny Sprigg through the middle of his wig, And knocked it right off from his head, head, head.

The little man was so angry at this, and at the laughter of all the men he met, that he traded his gun off for a lawn-mower, and resolved never to go hunting again.

He had the little duck he had shot made into a pie, and he and Joan ate it; but he did not enjoy it very much.

"This duck cost me twelve dollars," he said to his loving wife, "for that is the sum Johnny Sprigg made me pay; and it's a very high price for one little duck -- don't you think so, Joan?"



Hickory, Dickory, Dock



Hickory, Dickory, Dock

Hickory, Dickory, Dock! The mouse ran up the clock. The clock struck one, The mouse ran down, Hickory, Dickory, Dock!


WITHIN the hollow wall of an old brick mansion, away up near the roof, there lived a family of mice. It was a snug little home, pleasant and quiet, and as dark as any mouse could desire. Mamma Mouse liked it because, as she said, the draught that came through the rafters made it cool in summer, and they were near enough to the chimney to keep warm in winter-time.

Besides the Mamma Mouse there were three children, named Hickory and Dickory and Dock. There had once been a Papa Mouse as well; but while he was hunting for food one night he saw a nice piece of cheese in a wire box, and attempted to get it. The minute he stuck his head into the box, however, it closed with a snap that nearly cut his head off, and when Mamma Mouse came down to look for him he was quite dead.

Mamma Mouse had to bear her bitter sorrow all alone, for the children were too young at that time to appreciate their loss. She felt that people were very cruel to kill a poor mouse for wishing to get food for himself and his family. There is nothing else for a mouse to do but take what he can find, for mice cannot earn money, as people do, and they must live in some way.

But Mamma Mouse was a brave mouse, and knew that it was now her duty to find food for her little ones; so she dried her eyes and went bravely to work gnawing through the base-board that separated the pantry from the wall. It took her some time to do this, for she could only work at night. Mice like to sleep during the day and work at night, when there are no people around to interrupt them, and even the cat is fast asleep. Some mice run about in the day-time, but they are not very wise mice who do this.

At last Mamma Mouse gnawed a hole through the base-board large enough for her to get through into the pantry, and then her disappointment was great to find the bread jar covered over with a tin pan.

"How thoughtless people are to put things where a hungry mouse cannot get at them," said Mamma Mouse to herself, with a sigh. But just then she espied a barrel of flour standing upon the floor; and that gave her new courage, for she knew she could easily gnaw through that, and the flour would do to eat just as well as the bread.

It was now nearly daylight, so she decided to leave the attack upon the flour barrel until the next night; and gathering up for the children a few crumbs that were scattered about, she ran back into the wall and scrambled up to her nest.

Hickory and Dickory and Dock were very glad to get the crumbs, for they were hungry; and when they had breakfasted they all curled up alongside their mother and slept soundly throughout the day.

"Be good children," said Mamma Mouse the next evening, as she prepared for her journey to the pantry, "and don't stir out of your nest till I come back. I am in hopes that after to-night we shall not be hungry for a long time, as I shall gnaw a hole at the back of the flour barrel, where it will not be discovered."

She kissed each one of them good-bye and ran down the wall on her errand.

When they were left alone Hickory wanted to go to sleep again, but little Dock was wide awake, and tumbled around so in the nest that his brothers were unable to sleep.

"I wish I could go with mother some night," said Dock, "it's no fun to stay here all the time."

"She will take us when we are big enough," replied Dickory.

"We are big enough now," declared Dock, "and if I knew my way I would go out into the world and see what it looks like."

"I know a way out," said Hickory, "but mamma wouldn't like it if we should go without her permission."

"She needn't know anything about it," declared the naughty Dock, "for she will be busy at the flour-barrel all the night. Take us out for a little walk, Hick, if you know the way."

"Yes do," urged Dickory.

"Well," said Hickory, "I'd like a little stroll myself, so if you'll promise to be very careful, and not get into any mischief, I'll take you through the hole that I have discovered."

So the three little mice started off, with Hickory showing the way, and soon came to a crack in the wall. Hickory stuck his head through, and finding everything quiet, for the family of people that lived in the house were fast asleep, he squeezed through the crack, followed by his two brothers. Their little hearts beat very fast, for they knew if they were discovered they would have to run for their lives; but the house was so still they gained courage, and crept along over a thick carpet until they came to a stairway.

"What shall we do now?" whispered Hickory to his brothers.

"Let's go down," replied Dock.

So, very carefully, they descended the stairs and reached the hallway of the house, and here they were much surprised by all they saw.

There was a big rack for hats and coats, and an umbrella stand, and two quaintly carved chairs, and, most wonderful of all, a tall clock that stood upon the floor and ticked out the minutes in a grave and solemn voice.

When the little mice first heard the ticking of the clock they were inclined to be frightened, and huddled close together upon the bottom stair.

"What is it?" asked Dickory, in an awed whisper.

"I don't know," replied Hickory, who was himself rather afraid.

"Is it alive?" asked Dock.

"I don't know," again answered Hickory.

Then, seeing that the clock paid no attention to them, but kept ticking steadily away and seemed to mind its own business, they plucked up courage and began running about.

Presently Dickory uttered a delighted squeal that brought his brothers to his side. There in a corner lay nearly the half of a bun which little May had dropped when nurse carried her upstairs to bed. It was a great discovery for the three mice, and they ate heartily until the last crumb had disappeared.

"This is better than a cupboard or a pantry," said Dock, when they had finished their supper, "and I shouldn't be surprised if there were plenty more good things around if we only hunt for them."

But they could find nothing more, for all the doors leading into the hall were closed, and at last Dock came to the clock and looked at it curiously.

"It doesn't seem to be alive," he thought, "although it does make so much noise. I'm going behind it to see what I can find."

He found nothing except a hole that led to the inside of the clock, and into this he stuck his head. He could hear the ticking plainer than ever now, but looking way up to the top of the clock he saw something shining brightly, and thought it must be good to eat if he could only get at it. Without saying anything to his brothers, Dock ran up the sides of the clock until he came to the works, and he was just about to nibble at a glistening wheel, to see what it tasted like, when suddenly "Bang!" went the clock.

It was one o'clock, and the clock had only struck the hour, but the great gong was just beside Dock's ear and the noise nearly deafened the poor little mouse. He gave a scream of terror and ran down the clock as fast as he could go. When he reached the hall he heard his brothers scampering up the stairs, and after them he ran with all his might.

It was only when they were safe in their nest again that they stopped to breathe, and their little hearts beat fast for an hour afterward, so great had been their terror.

When Mamma Mouse came back in the morning, bringing a quantity of nice flour with her for breakfast, they told her of their adventure.

She thought they had been punished enough already for their disobedience, so she did not scold them, but only said,

"You see, my dears, your mother knew best when she told you not to stir from the nest. Children sometimes think they know more than their parents, but this adventure should teach you always to obey your mother. The next time you run away you may fare worse than you did last night; remember your poor father's fate."

But Hickory and Dickory and Dock did not run away again.



Little Bo-Peep



Little Bo-Peep


On the beautiful, undulating hills of Sussex feed many flocks of sheep, which are tended by many shepherds and shepherdesses, and one of these flocks used to be cared for by a poor woman who supported herself and her little girl by this means.

They lived in a small cottage nestled at the foot of one of the hills, and each morning the mother took her crook and started out with her sheep, that they might feed upon the tender, juicy grasses with which the hills abounded. The little girl usually accompanied her mother and sat by her side upon the grassy mounds and watched her care for the ewes and lambs, so that in time she herself grew to be a very proficient shepherdess.

So when the mother became too old and feeble to leave her cottage, Little Bo-Peep (as she was called) decided that she was fully able to manage the flocks herself. She was a little mite of a child, with flowing nut-brown locks and big gray eyes that charmed all who gazed into their innocent depths. She wore a light gray frock, fastened about the waist with a pretty pink sash, and there were white ruffles around her neck and pink ribbons in her hair.

All the shepherds and shepherdesses upon the hills, both young and old, soon came to know Little Bo-Peep very well indeed, and there were many willing hands to aid her if (which was not often) she needed their assistance.

Bo-Peep usually took her sheep to the side of a high hill above the cottage, and allowed them to eat the rich grass while she herself sat upon a mound and, laying aside her crook and her broad straw hat with its pink ribbons, devoted her time to sewing and mending stockings for her aged mother.

One day, while thus occupied, she heard a voice beside her say:

"Good morning, Little Bo-Peep!" and looking up the girl saw a woman standing near her and leaning upon a short stick. She was bent nearly double by weight of many years, her hair was white as snow and her eyes as black as coals. Deep wrinkles seamed her face and hands, while her nose and chin were so pointed that they nearly met. She was not pleasant to look upon, but Bo-Peep had learned to be polite to the aged, so she answered, sweetly,

"Good morning, mother. Can I do anything for you?"

"No, dearie," returned the woman, in a cracked voice, "but I will sit by your side and rest for a time."

The girl made room on the mound beside her, and the stranger sat down and watched in silence the busy fingers sew up the seams of the new frock she was making.

By and by the woman asked,

"Why do you come out here to sew?"

"Because I am a shepherdess," replied the girl.

"But where is your crook?"

"On the grass beside me."

"And where are your sheep?"

Bo-Peep looked up and could not see them.

"They must have strayed over the top of the hill," she said, "and I will go and seek them."

"Do not be in a hurry," croaked the old woman; "they will return presently without your troubling to find them."

"Do you think so?" asked Bo-Peep.

"Of course; do not the sheep know you?"

"Oh, yes; they know me every one."

"And do not you know the sheep?"

"I can call every one by name," said Bo-Peep, confidently; "for though I am so young a shepherdess I am fond of my sheep and know all about them."

The old woman chuckled softly, as if the answer amused her, and replied,

"No one knows all about anything, my dear."

"But I know all about my sheep," protested Little Bo-Peep.

"Do you, indeed? Then you are wiser that most people. And if you know all about them, you also know they will come home of their own accord, and I have no doubt they will all be wagging their tails behind them, as usual."

"Oh," said Little Bo-Peep, in surprise, "do they wag their tails? I never noticed that!"

"Indeed!" exclaimed the old woman, "then you are not very observing for one who knows all about sheep. Perhaps you have never noticed their tails at all."

"No," answered Bo-Peep, thoughtfully, "I don't know that I ever have."

The woman laughed so hard at this reply that she began to cough, and this made the girl remember that her flock had strayed away.

"I really must go and find my sheep," she said, rising to her feet, "and then I shall be sure to notice their tails, and see if they wag them."

"Sit still, my child," said the old woman, "I am going over the hill-top myself, and I will send the sheep back to you."

So she got upon her feet and began climbing the hill, and the girl heard her saying, as she walked away,

"Little Bo-Peep has lost her sheep, And doesn't know where to find 'em. But leave 'em alone, and they'll come home, All wagging their tails behind 'em."

Little Bo-Peep sat still and watched the old woman toil slowly up the hill-side and disappear over the top. By and by she thought, "very soon I shall see the sheep coming back;" but time passed away and still the errant flock failed to make its appearance.

Soon the head of the little shepherdess began to nod, and presently, still thinking of her sheep,

Little Bo-Peep fell fast asleep, And dreamt she heard them bleating; But when she awoke she found it a joke, For still they were a-fleeting.

The girl now became quite anxious, and wondered why the old woman had not driven her flock over the hill. But as it was now time for luncheon she opened her little basket and ate of the bread and cheese and cookies she had brought with her. After she had finished her meal and taken a drink of cool water from a spring near by, she decided she would not wait any longer.

So up she took her little crook, Determined for to find them,

and began climbing the hill.

When she got to the top there was never a sight of sheep about -- only a green valley and another hill beyond.

Now really alarmed for the safety of her charge, Bo-Peep hurried into the valley and up the farther hill-side. Panting and tired she reached the summit, and, pausing breathlessly, gazed below her.

Quietly feeding upon the rich grass was her truant flock, looking as peaceful and innocent as if it had never strayed away from its gentle shepherdess.

Little Bo-Peep

Bo-Peep uttered a cry of joy and hurried toward them; but when she came near she stopped in amazement and held up her little hands with a pretty expression of dismay. She had

Found them, indeed, but it made her heart bleed, For they'd left their tails behind them!

Nothing was left to each sheep but a wee little stump where a tail should be, and Little Bo-Peep was so heart-broken that she sat down beside them and sobbed bitterly.

But after awhile the tiny maid realized that all her tears would not bring back the tails to her lambkins; so she plucked up courage and dried her eyes and arose from the ground just as the old woman hobbled up to her.

"So you have found your sheep, dearie," she said, in her cracked voice.

"Yes," replied Little Bo-Peep, with difficulty repressing a sob; "but look, mother! They've all left their tails behind them!"

"Why, so they have!" exclaimed the old woman; and then she began to laugh as if something pleased her.

"What do you suppose has become of their tails?" asked the girl.

"Oh, some one has probably cut them off. They make nice tippets in winter-time, you know;" and then she patted the child upon her head and walked away down the valley.

Bo-Peep was much grieved over the loss that had befallen her dear sheep, and so, driving them before her, she wandered around to see if by any chance she could find the lost tails.

But soon the sun began to sink over the hill-tops, and she knew she must take her sheep home before night overtook them.

She did not tell her mother of her misfortune, for she feared the old shepherdess would scold her, and Bo-Peep had fully decided to seek for the tails and find them before she related the story of their loss to any one.

Each day for many days after that Little Bo-Peep wandered about the hills seeking the tails of her sheep, and those who met her wondered what had happened to make the sweet little maid so anxious. But there is an end to all troubles, no matter how severe they may seem to be, and

It happened one day, as Bo-Peep did stray Unto a meadow hard by, There she espied their tails side by side, All hung on a tree to dry!

The little shepherdess was overjoyed at this discovery, and, reaching up her crook, she knocked the row of pretty white tails off the tree and gathered them up in her frock. But how to fasten them onto her sheep again was the question, and after pondering the matter for a time she became discouraged, and, thinking she was no better off than before the tails were found, she began to weep and to bewail her misfortune.

But amidst her tears she bethought herself of her needle and thread.

"Why," she exclaimed, smiling again, "I can sew them on, of course!" Then

She heaved a sigh and wiped her eye And ran o'er hill and dale, oh, And tried what she could As a shepherdess should, To tack to each sheep its tail, oh.

But the very first sheep she came to refused to allow her to sew on the tail, and ran away from her, and the others did the same, so that finally she was utterly discouraged.

She was beginning to cry again, when the same old woman she had before met came hobbling to her side and asked,

"What are you doing with my cat tails?"

"Your cat tails!" replied Bo-Peep, in surprise; "what do you mean?"

"Why, these tails are all cut from white pussy-cats, and I put them on the tree to dry. What are you doing with them?"

"I thought they belonged to my sheep," answered Bo-Peep, sorrowfully; "but if they are really your pussy-cat tails, I must hunt until I find those that belong to my sheep."

"My dear," said the old woman, "I have been deceiving you; you said you knew all about your sheep, and I wanted to teach you a lesson. For, however wise we may be, no one in this world knows all about anything. Sheep do not have long tails -- there is only a little stump to answer for a tail. Neither do rabbits have tails, nor bears, nor many other animals. And if you had been observing you would have known all this when I said the sheep would be wagging their tails behind them, and then you would not have passed all those days in searching for what is not to be found. So now, little one, run away home, and try to be more thoughtful in the future. Your sheep will never miss the tails, for they have never had them."

And now

Little Bo-Peep no more did weep; My tale of tails ends here. Each cat has one, But sheep have none; Which, after all, is queer!



The Story of Tommy Tucker



The Story of Tommy Tucker

Little Tommy Tucker sang for his supper. What did he sing for? white bread and butter. How could he cut it, without any knife? How could he marry, without any wife?


LITTLE TOMMY TUCKER was a waif of the streets. He never remembered having a father or mother or any one to care for him, and so he learned to care for himself. He ate whatever he could get, and slept wherever night overtook him -- in an old barrel, a cellar, or, when fortune favored him, he paid a penny for a cot in some rude lodging-house.

His life about the streets taught him early how to earn a living by doing odd jobs, and he learned to be sharp in his speech and wise beyond his years.

One morning Tommy crawled out from a box in which he had slept over night, and found that he was hungry. His last meal had consisted of a crust of bread, and he was a growing boy with an appetite.

He had been unable to earn any money for several days, and this morning life looked very gloomy to him. He started out to seek for work or to beg a breakfast; but luck was against him, and he was unsuccessful. By noon he had grown more hungry than before, and stood before a bake-shop for a long time, looking wistfully at the good things behind the window-panes, and wishing with all his heart he had a ha'penny to buy a bun.

And yet it was no new thing for Little Tommy Tucker to be hungry, and he never thought of despairing. He sat down upon a curb-stone, and thought what was best to be done. Then he remembered he had frequently begged a meal at one of the cottages that stood upon the outskirts of the city, and so he turned his steps in that direction.

"I have had neither breakfast nor dinner," he said to himself, "and I must surely find a supper somewhere, or I shall not sleep much to-night. It is no fun to be hungry."

So he walked on until he came to a dwelling-house where a goodly company sat upon a lawn and beneath a veranda. It was a pretty place, and was the home of a fat alderman who had been married that very day.

The alderman was in a merry mood, and seeing Tommy standing without the gate he cried to him,

"Come here, my lad, and sing us a song."

Tommy at once entered the grounds, and came to where the fat alderman was sitting beside his blushing bride.

"Can you sing?" enquired the alderman.

"No," answered Tommy, earnestly, "but I can eat."

"Ho, ho!" laughed the alderman, "that is a very ordinary accomplishment. Anyone can eat."

"If it please you, sir, you are wrong," replied Tommy, "for I have been unable to eat all day."

"And why is that?" asked the alderman.

"Because I have had nothing to put to my mouth. But now that I have met so kind a gentleman, I am sure that I shall have a good supper."

The alderman laughed again at this shrewd answer, and said,

"You shall have supper, no doubt; but you must sing a song for the company first, and so earn your food."

Tommy shook his head sadly.

"I do not know any song, sir," he said.

The alderman called a servant and whispered something in his ear. The servant hastened away, and soon returned bearing upon a tray a huge slice of white bread and butter. White bread was a rare treat in those days, as nearly all the people ate black bread baked from rye or barley flour.

"Now," said the alderman, placing the tray beside him, "you shall have this slice of white bread and butter when you have sung us a song, and complied with one condition."

"And what is that condition?" asked Tommy.

"I will tell you when we have heard the song," replied the fat alderman, who had decided to have some amusement at the boy's expense.

Tommy Tucker

Tommy hesitated, but when he glanced at the white bread and butter his mouth watered in spite of himself, and he resolved to compose a song, since he did not know how to sing any other.

So he took off his cap, and standing before the company he sang as follows:

"A bumble-bee lit on a hollyhock flower That was wet with the rain of a morning shower. While the honey he sipped His left foot slipped, And he couldn't fly again for half an hour!"

"Good!" cried the alderman, after the company had kindly applauded Tommy. "I can't say much for the air, nor yet for the words; but it was not so bad as it might have been. Give us another verse."

So Tommy pondered a moment, and then sang again:

"A spider threw its web so high It caught on a moon in a cloudy sky. The moon whirled round, And down to the ground Fell the web, and captured a big blue fly!"

"Why, that is fine!" roared the fat alderman. "You improve as you go on, so give us another verse."

"I don't know any more," said Tommy, "and I am very hungry."

"One more verse," persisted the man, "and then you shall have the bread and butter upon the condition."

So Tommy sang the following verse:

"A big frog lived in a slimy bog, And caught a cold in an awful fog. The cold got worse, The frog got hoarse, Till croaking he scared a polliwog!"

"You are quite a poet," declared the alderman; "and now you shall have the white bread upon one condition."

"What is it?" said Tommy, anxiously.

"That you cut the slice into four parts."

"But I have no knife!" remonstrated the boy.

"But that is the condition," insisted the alderman. "If you want the bread you must cut it."

"Surely you do not expect me to cut the bread without any knife!" said Tommy.

"Why not?" asked the alderman, winking his eye at the company.

"Because it cannot be done. How, let me ask you, sir, could you have married without any wife?"

"Ha, ha, ha!" laughed the jolly alderman; and he was so pleased with Tommy's apt reply that he gave him the bread at once, and a knife to cut it with.

"Thank you, sir," said Tommy; "now that I have the knife it is easy enough to cut the bread, and I shall now be as happy as you are with your beautiful wife."

The alderman's wife blushed at this, and whispered to her husband. The alderman nodded in reply, and watched Tommy carefully as he ate his supper. When the boy had finished his bread -- which he did very quickly, you may be sure, -- the man said,

"How would you like to live with me and be my servant?"

Little Tommy Tucker had often longed for just such a place, where he could have three meals each day to eat and a good bed to sleep in at night, so he answered,

"I should like it very much, sir."

So the alderman took Tommy for his servant, and dressed him in a smart livery; and soon the boy showed by his bright ways and obedience that he was worthy any kindness bestowed upon him.

He often carried the alderman's wig when his master attended the town meetings, and the mayor of the city, who was a good man, was much taken with his intelligent face. So one day he said to the alderman,

"I have long wanted to adopt a son, for I have no children of my own; but I have not yet been able to find a boy to suit me. That lad of yours looks bright and intelligent, and he seems a well-behaved boy into the bargain."

"He is all that you say," returned the alderman, "and would be a credit to you should you adopt him."

"But before I adopt a son," continued the mayor, "I intend to satisfy myself that he is both wise and shrewd enough to make good use of my money when I am gone. No fool will serve my purpose; therefore I shall test the boy's wit before I decide."

"That is fair enough," answered the alderman; "but in what way will you test his wit?"

"Bring him to my house to-morrow, and you shall see," said the mayor.

So the next day the alderman, followed by Tommy and a little terrier dog that was a great pet of his master, went to the grand dwelling of the mayor. The mayor also had a little terrier dog, which was very fond of him and followed him wherever he went.

When Tommy and the alderman reached the mayor's house the mayor met them at the door and said:

"Tommy, I am going up the street, and the alderman is going in the opposite direction. I want you to keep our dogs from following us; but you must not do it by holding them."

"Very well, sir," replied Tommy; and as the mayor started one way and the alderman the other, he took out his handkerchief and tied the tails of the two dogs together. Of course each dog started to follow its master; but as they were about the same size and strength, and each pulled in a different direction, the result was that they remained in one place, and could not move either one way or the other.

"That was well done," said the mayor, coming back again; "but tell me, can you put my cart before my horse and take me to ride?"

"Certainly, sir," replied Tommy; and going to the mayor's stable he put the harness on the nag and then led him head-first into the shafts, instead of backing him into them, as is the usual way. After fastening the shafts to the horse, he mounted upon the animal's back, and away they started, pushing the cart before the horse.

"That was easy," said Tommy. "If your honor will get into the cart I'll take you to ride." But the mayor did not ride, although he was pleased at Tommy's readiness in solving a difficulty.

After a moment's thought he bade Tommy follow him into the house, where he gave him a cupful of water, saying,

"Let me see you drink up this cup of water."

Tommy hesitated a moment, for he knew the mayor was trying to catch him; then, going to a corner of the room, he set down the cup and stood upon his head in the corner. He now carefully raised the cup to his lips and slowly drank the water until the cup was empty. After this he regained his feet, and, bowing politely to the mayor, he said,

"The water is drunk up, your honor."

"But why did you stand on your head to do it?" enquired the alderman, who had watched the act in astonishment.

"Because otherwise I would have drunk the water down, and not up," replied Tommy.

The mayor was now satisfied that Tommy was shrewd enough to do him honor, so he immediately took him to live in the great house as his adopted son, and he was educated by the best masters the city afforded.

And Tommy Tucker became in after years not only a great, but a good man, and before he died was himself mayor of the city, and was known by the name of Sir Thomas Tucker.



Pussy-cat Mew



Pussy-cat Mew

"Pussy-cat, Pussy-cat, where do you go?" "To London, to visit the palace, you know." "Pussy-cat Mew, will you come back again?" "Oh, yes! I'll scamper with might and with main!"


PUSSY-CAT MEW set off on her way, Stepping quite softly and feeling quite gay. Smooth was the road, so she traveled at ease, Warmed by the sunshine and fanned by the breeze.

Over the hills to the valleys below, Through the deep woods where the soft mosses grow, Skirting the fields, with buttercups dotted, Swiftly our venturesome Pussy-cat trotted.

Sharp watch she kept when a village she neared, For boys and their mischief our Pussy-cat feared. Often she crept through the grasses so deep To pass by a dog that was lying asleep.

Once, as she walked through a sweet-clover field, Something beside her affrightedly squealed, And swift from her path there darted away A tiny field-mouse, with a coat of soft gray.

"Now here," thought our Pussy, "is chance for a dinner; The one that runs fastest must surely be winner!" So quickly she started the mouse to give chase, And over the clover they ran a great race.

But just when it seemed that Pussy would win, The mouse spied a hole and quickly popped in; And so he escaped, for the hole was so small That Pussy-cat couldn't squeeze in it at all.

So, softly she crouched, and with eyes big and round Quite steadily watched that small hole in the ground. "This mouse really thinks he's escaped me," she said, "But I'll catch him sure if he sticks out his head!"

But while she was watching the poor mouse's plight, A deep growl behind made her jump with affright; She gave a great cry, and then started to run As swift as a bullet that's shot from a gun!

"Meow! Oh, meow!" our poor Puss did say; "Bow-wow!" cried the dog, who was not far away. O'er meadows and ditches they scampered apace, O'er fences and hedges they kept up the race!

Then Pussy-cat Mew saw before her a tree, And knew that a safe place of refuge 'twould be; So far up the tree with a bound she did go, And left the big dog to growl down below.

But now, by good fortune, a man came that way, And called to the dog, who was forced to obey; But Puss did not come down the tree till she knew That the man and the dog were far out of view.

Pursuing her way, at nightfall she came To London, a town you know well by name; And wandering 'round in byway and street, A strange Pussy-cat she happened to meet.

"Good evening," said Pussy-cat Mew. "Can you tell In which of these houses the Queen may now dwell? I'm a stranger in town, and I'm anxious to see What sort of a person a real Queen may be."

"My friend," said the other, "you really must know It isn't permitted that strangers should go Inside of the palace, unless they're invited, And stray Pussy-cats are apt to be slighted.

"By good luck, however, I'm quite well aware Of a way to the palace by means of a stair That never is guarded; so just come with me, And a glimpse of the Queen you shall certainly see."

Puss thanked her new friend, and together they stole To the back of the palace, and crept through a hole In the fence, and quietly came to the stair Which the stranger Pussy-cat promised was there.

"Now here I must leave you," the strange Pussy said, "So don't be 'fraid-cat, but go straight ahead, And don't be alarmed if by chance you are seen, For people will think you belong to the Queen."

So Pussy-cat Mew did as she had been told, And walked through the palace with manner so bold She soon reached the room where the Queen sat in state, Surrounded by lords and by ladies so great.

And there in the corner our Pussy sat down, And gazed at the scepter and blinked at the crown, And eyed the Queen's dress, all purple and gold; Which was surely a beautiful sight to behold.

But all of a sudden she started, for there Was a little gray mouse, right under the chair Where her Majesty sat, and Pussy well knew She'd scream with alarm if the mouse met her view.

So up toward the chair our Pussy-cat stole, But the mouse saw her coming and ran for its hole; But Pussy ran after, and during the race A wonderful, terrible panic took place!

The ladies all jumped on their chairs in alarm, The lords drew their swords to protect them from harm, And the Queen gave a scream and fainted away --  A very undignified act, I must say.

And some one cried "Burglars!" and some one cried "Treason!" And some one cried "Murder!" but none knew the reason; And some one cried "Fire! they are burning the house!" And some one cried "Silence! it's only a mouse!"

But Pussy-cat Mew was so awfully scared By the shouting and screaming, no longer she dared To stay in the room; so without more delay She rushed from the palace and scampered away!

So bristling her fur, and with heart beating fast, She came to the road leading homeward at last. "What business," she thought, "has a poor country cat To visit a city of madmen like that?

"Straight homeward I'll go, where I am well fed, Where mistress is kind, and soft is my bed; Let other cats travel, if they wish to roam, But as for myself, I shall now stay at home."

And now over hills and valleys she ran, And journeyed as fast as a Pussy-cat can; Till just as the dawn of the day did begin She, safely at home, stole quietly in.

And there was the fire, with the pot boiling on it, And there was the maid, in the blue checkered bonnet, And there was the corner where Pussy oft basked, And there was the mistress, who eagerly asked:

"Pussy-cat, Pussy-cat, where have you been?" "I've been to London, to visit the Queen." "Pussy-cat, Pussy-cat, what did you there?" "I frightened a little mouse under her chair!"



How the Beggars Came to Town



How the Beggars Came to Town

Hark, hark, the dogs do bark, The beggars are coming to town: Some in rags, and some in tags, And some in velvet gown.


VERY fair and sweet was little Prince Lilimond, and few could resist his soft, pleading voice and gentle blue eyes. And as he stood in the presence of the King, his father, and bent his knee gracefully before His Majesty, the act was so courteous and dignified it would have honored the oldest nobleman of the court.

The King was delighted, and for a time sat silently regarding his son and noting every detail of his appearance, from the dark velvet suit with its dainty ruffles and collar to the diamond buckles on the little shoes, and back again to the flowing curls that clustered thick about the bright, childish face.

Well might any father be proud of so manly and beautiful a child, and the King's heart swelled within him as he gazed upon his heir.

"Borland," he said to the tutor, who stood modestly behind the Prince, "you may retire. I wish to speak privately with his royal highness."

The tutor bowed low and disappeared within the ante-room, and the King continued, kindly,

"Come here, Lilimond, and sit beside me. Methinks you seem over-grave this morning."

"It is my birthday, Your Majesty," replied the Prince, as he slowly obeyed his father and sat beside him upon the rich broidered cushions of the throne. "I am twelve years of age."

"So old!" said the King, smiling into the little face that was raised to his. "And is it the weight of years that makes you sad?"

"No, Your Majesty; I long for the years to pass, that I may become a man, and take my part in the world's affairs. It is the sad condition of my country which troubles me."

"Indeed!" exclaimed the King, casting a keen glance at his son. "Are you becoming interested in politics, then; or is there some grievous breach of court etiquette which has attracted your attention?"

"I know little of politics and less of the court, sire," replied Lilimond; "it is the distress of the people that worries me."

"The people? Of a surety, Prince, you are better posted than am I, since of the people and their affairs I know nothing at all. I have appointed officers to look after their interests, and therefore I have no cause to come into contact with them myself. But what is amiss?"

"They are starving," said the Prince, looking at his father very seriously; "the country is filled with beggars, who appeal for charity, since they are unable otherwise to procure food."

"Starving!" repeated the King; "surely you are misinformed. My Lord Chamberlain told me but this morning the people were loyal and contented, and my Lord of the Treasury reports that all taxes and tithes have been paid, and my coffers are running over."

"Your Lord Chamberlain is wrong, sire," returned the Prince; "my tutor, Borland, and I have talked with many of these beggars the past few days, and we find the tithes and taxes which have enriched you have taken the bread from their wives and children."

"So!" exclaimed the King. "We must examine into this matter." He touched a bell beside him, and when a retainer appeared directed his Chamberlain and his Treasurer to wait upon him at once.

The Prince rested his head upon his hand and waited patiently, but the King was very impatient indeed till the high officers of the court stood before him. Then said the King, addressing his Chamberlain,

"Sir, I am informed my people are murmuring at my injustice. Is it true?"

The officer cast an enquiring glance at the Prince, who met his eyes gravely, before he replied,

"The people always murmur, Your Majesty. They are many, and not all can be content, even when ruled by so wise and just a King. In every land and in every age there are those who rebel against the laws, and the protests of the few are ever heard above the contentment of the many."

"I am told," continued the King, severely, "that my country is overrun with beggars, who suffer for lack of the bread we have taken from them by our taxations. Is this true?"

"There are always beggars, Your Majesty, in every country," replied the Chamberlain, "and it is their custom to blame others for their own misfortunes."

The King thought deeply for a moment; then he turned to the Lord of the Treasury.

"Do we tax the poor?" he demanded.

"All are taxed, sire," returned the Treasurer, who was pale from anxiety, for never before had the King so questioned him, "but from the rich we take much, from the poor very little."

"But a little from the poor man may distress him, while the rich subject would never feel the loss. Why do we tax the poor at all?"

"Because, Your Majesty, should we declare the poor free from taxation all your subjects would at once claim to be poor, and the royal treasury would remain empty. And as none are so rich but there are those richer, how should we, in justice, determine which are the rich and which are the poor?"

Again the King was silent while he pondered upon the words of the Royal Treasurer. Then, with a wave of his hand, he dismissed them, and turned to the Prince, saying,

"You have heard the wise words of my councilors, Prince. What have you to say in reply?"

"If you will pardon me, Your Majesty, I think you are wrong to leave the affairs of the people to others to direct. If you knew them as well as I do, you would distrust the words of your councilors, who naturally fear your anger more than they do that of your subjects."

"If they fear my anger they will be careful to do no injustice to my people. Surely you cannot expect me to attend to levying the taxes myself," continued the King, with growing annoyance. "What are my officers for, but to serve me?"

"They should serve you, it is true," replied the Prince, thoughtfully, "but they should serve the people as well."

"Nonsense!" answered the King; "you are too young as yet to properly understand such matters. And it is a way youth has to imagine it is wiser than age and experience combined. Still, I will investigate the subject further, and see that justice is done the poor."

"In the meantime," said the Prince, "many will starve to death. Can you not assist these poor beggars at once?"

"In what way?" demanded the King.

"By giving them money from your full coffers."

"Nonsense!" again cried the King, this time with real anger; "you have heard what the Chamberlain said: we always have beggars, and none, as yet, have starved to death. Besides, I must use the money for the grand ball and tourney next month, as I have promised the ladies of the court a carnival of unusual magnificence."

The Prince did not reply to this, but remained in silent thought, wondering what he might do to ease the suffering he feared existed on every hand amongst the poor of the kingdom. He had hoped to persuade the King to assist these beggars, but since the interview with the officers of the court he had lost heart and despaired of influencing his royal father in any way.

Suddenly the King spoke.

"Let us dismiss this subject, Lilimond, for it only serves to distress us both, and no good can come of it. You have nearly made me forget it is your birthday. Now listen, my son: I am much pleased with you, and thank God that he has given me such a successor for my crown, for I perceive your mind is as beautiful as your person, and that you will in time be fitted to rule the land with wisdom and justice. Therefore I promise, in honor of your birthday, to grant any desire you may express, provided it lies within my power. Nor will I make any further condition, since I rely upon your judgment to select some gift I may be glad to bestow."

As the King spoke, Lilimond suddenly became impressed with an idea through which he might succor the poor, and therefore he answered,

"Call in the ladies and gentlemen of the court, my father, and before them all will I claim your promise."

"Good!" exclaimed the King, who looked for some amusement in his son's request; and at once he ordered the court to assemble.

The ladies and gentlemen, as they filed into the audience chamber, were astonished to see the Prince seated upon the throne beside his sire, but being too well bred to betray their surprise they only wondered what amusement His Majesty had in store for them.

When all were assembled, the Prince rose to his feet and addressed them.

"His Majesty the King, whose kindness of heart and royal condescension is well known to you all, hath but now promised me, seeing that it is my birthday, to grant any one request that I may prefer. Is it not true, Your Majesty?"

"It is true," answered the King, smiling upon his son, and pleased to see him addressing the court so gravely and with so manly an air; "whatsoever the Prince may ask, that will I freely grant."

"Then, oh sire," said the Prince, kneeling before the throne, "I ask that for the period of one day I may reign as King in your stead, having at my command all kingly power and the obedience of all who owe allegiance to the crown!"

For a time there was perfect silence in the court, the King growing red with dismay and embarrassment and the courtiers waiting curiously his reply. Lilimond still remained kneeling before the throne, and as the King looked upon him he realized it would be impossible to break his royal word. And the affair promised him amusement after all, so he quickly decided in what manner to reply.

"Rise, oh Prince," he said, cheerfully, "your request is granted. Upon what day will it please you to reign?"

Lilimond arose to his feet.

"Upon the seventh day from this," he answered.

"So be it," returned the King. Then, turning to the royal herald he added, "Make proclamation throughout the kingdom that on the seventh day from this Prince Lilimond will reign as King from sunrise till sunset. And whoever dares to disobey his commands will be guilty of treason and shall be punished with death!"

The court was then dismissed, all wondering at this marvellous decree, and the Prince returned to his own apartment where his tutor, Borland, anxiously awaited him.

Now this Borland was a man of good heart and much intelligence, but wholly unused to the ways of the world. He had lately noted, with much grief, the number of beggars who solicited alms as he walked out with the Prince, and he had given freely until his purse was empty. Then he talked long and earnestly with the Prince concerning this shocking condition in the kingdom, never dreaming that his own generosity had attracted all the beggars of the city toward him and encouraged them to become more bold than usual.

Thus was the young and tender-hearted Prince brought to a knowledge of all these beggars, and therefore it was that their condition filled him with sadness and induced him to speak so boldly to the King, his father.

When he returned to Borland with the tidings that the King had granted him permission to rule for a day the kingdom, the tutor was overjoyed, and at once they began to plan ways for relieving all the poor of the country in that one day.

For one thing, they dispatched private messengers to every part of the kingdom, bidding them tell each beggar they met to come to the Prince on that one day he should be King and he would relieve their wants, giving a broad gold piece to every poor man or woman who asked.

For the Prince had determined to devote to this purpose the gold that filled the royal coffers; and as for the great ball and tourney the King had planned, why, that could go begging much better than the starving people.

On the night before the day the Prince was to reign there was a great confusion of noise within the city, for beggars from all parts of the kingdom began to arrive, each one filled with joy at the prospect of receiving a piece of gold.

There was a continual tramp, tramp of feet, and a great barking of dogs, as all dogs in those days were trained to bark at every beggar they saw, and now it was difficult to restrain them.

And the beggars came to town singly and by twos and threes, until hundreds were there to await the morrow. Some few were very pitiful to behold, being feeble and infirm from age and disease, dressed in rags and tags, and presenting an appearance of great distress. But there were many more who were seemingly hearty and vigorous; and these were the lazy ones, who, not being willing to work, begged for a livelihood.

And some there were dressed in silken hose and velvet gowns, who, forgetting all shame, and, eager for gold, had been led by the Prince's offer to represent themselves as beggars, that they might add to their wealth without trouble or cost to themselves.

The next morning, when the sun arose upon the eventful day, it found the Prince sitting upon the throne of his father, dressed in a robe of ermine and purple, a crown upon his flowing locks and the King's scepter clasped tightly in his little hand. He was somewhat frightened at the clamor of the crowd without the palace, but Borland, who stood behind him, whispered,

"The more you can succor the greater will be your glory, and you will live in the hearts of your people as the kind Prince who relieved their sufferings. Be of good cheer, Your Majesty, for all is well."

Then did the Prince command the Treasurer to bring before him the royal coffers, and to stand ready to present to each beggar a piece of gold. The Treasurer was very unwilling to do this, but he was under penalty of death if he refused, and so the coffers were brought forth.

"Your Majesty," said the Treasurer, "if each of those who clamor without is to receive a piece of gold, there will not be enough within these coffers to go around. Some will receive and others be denied, since no further store of gold is to be had."

At this news the Prince was both puzzled and alarmed.

"What are we to do?" he asked of the tutor; but Borland was unable to suggest a remedy.

Then said the aged Chamberlain, coming forward, and bowing low before the little King,

"Your Majesty, I think I can assist you in your difficulty. You did but promise a piece of gold to those who are really suffering and in need, but so great is the greed of mankind that many without are in no necessity whatever, but only seek to enrich themselves at your expense. Therefore I propose you examine carefully each case that presents itself, and unless the beggar is in need of alms turn him away empty-handed, as being a fraud and a charlatan."

"Your counsel is wise, oh Chamberlain," replied the Prince, after a moment's thought; "and by turning away the impostors we shall have gold enough for the needy. Therefore bid the guards to admit the beggars one by one."

When the first beggar came before him the Prince asked,

"Are you in need?"

"I am starving, Your Majesty," replied the man, in a whining tone. He was poorly dressed, but seemed strong and well, and the Prince examined him carefully for a moment. Then he answered the fellow, saying,

"Since you are starving, go and sell the gold ring I see you are wearing upon your finger. I can assist only those who are unable to help themselves."

At this the man turned away muttering angrily, and the courtiers murmured their approval of the Prince's wisdom.

The next beggar was dressed in velvet, and the Prince sent him away with a sharp rebuke. But the third was a woman, old and feeble, and she blessed the Prince as she hobbled joyfully away with a broad gold-piece clasped tightly within her withered hand.

The next told so pitiful a story that he also received a gold-piece; but as he turned away the Prince saw that beneath his robe his shoes were fastened with silver buckles, and so he commanded the guards to take away the gold and to punish the man for attempting to deceive his King.

And so many came to him that were found to be unworthy that he finally bade the guards proclaim to all who waited that any who should be found undeserving would be beaten with stripes.

That edict so frightened the imposters that they quickly fled, and only those few who were actually in want dared to present themselves before the King.

And lo! the task that had seemed too great for one day was performed in a few hours, and when all the needy had been provided for but one of the royal coffers had been opened, and that was scarcely empty!

"What think you, Borland?" asked the Prince, anxiously, "have we done aright?"

"I have learned, Your Majesty," answered the tutor, "that there is a great difference between those who beg and those who suffer for lack of bread. For, while all who needed aid were in truth beggars, not all the beggars needed aid; and hereafter I shall only give alms to those I know to be honestly in want."

"It is wisely said, my friend," returned the Prince, "and I feel I was wrong to doubt the wisdom of my father's councilors. Go, Borland, and ask the King if he will graciously attend me here."

The King arrived and bowed smilingly before the Prince whom he had set to reign in his own place, and at once the boy arose and presented his sire with the scepter and crown, saying,

"Forgive me, oh my King, that I presumed to doubt the wisdom of your rule. For, though the sun has not yet set, I feel that I am all unworthy to sit in your place, and so I willingly resign my power to your more skillful hands. And the coffers which I, in my ignorance, had determined to empty for the benefit of those unworthy, are still nearly full, and more than enough remains for the expenses of the carnival. Therefore forgive me, my father, and let me learn wisdom in the future from the justness of your rule."

Thus ended the reign of Prince Lilimond as King, and not till many years later did he again ascend the throne upon the death of his father.

And really there was not much suffering in the kingdom at any time, as it was a prosperous country and well governed; for, if you look for beggars in any land you will find many, but if you look only for the deserving poor there are less, and these all the more worthy of succor.

I wish all those in power were as kind-hearted as little Prince Lilimond, and as ready to help the needy, for then there would be more light hearts in the world, since it is "better to give than to receive."



Tom, the Piper's Son



Tom, the Piper's Son

Tom, Tom, the piper's son, Stole a pig and away he run; The pig was eat and Tom was beat And Tom ran crying down the street.


THERE was not a worse vagabond in Shrewsbury than old Barney the piper. He never did any work except to play the pipes, and he played so badly that few pennies ever found their way into his pouch. It was whispered around that old Barney was not very honest, but he was so sly and cautious that no one had ever caught him in the act of stealing, although a good many things had been missed after they had fallen into the old man's way.

Barney had one son, named Tom; and they lived all alone in a little hut away at the end of the village street, for Tom's mother had died when he was a baby. You may not suppose that Tom was a very good boy, since he had such a queer father; but neither was he very bad, and the worst fault he had was in obeying his father's wishes when Barney wanted him to steal a chicken for their supper or a pot of potatoes for their breakfast. Tom did not like to steal, but he had no one to teach him to be honest, and so, under his father's guidance, he fell into bad ways.

Tom, the Piper's Son

One morning

Tom, Tom, the piper's son, Was hungry when the day begun; He wanted a bun and asked for one, But soon found out that there were none.

"What shall we do?" he asked his father.

"Go hungry," replied Barney, "unless you want to take my pipes and play in the village. Perhaps they will give you a penny."

"No," answered Tom, shaking his head; "no one will give me a penny for playing; but Farmer Bowser might give me a penny to stop playing, if I went to his house. He did last week, you know."

"You'd better try it," said his father; "it's mighty uncomfortable to be hungry."

So Tom took his father's pipes and walked over the hill to Farmer Bowser's house; for you must know that

Tom, Tom, the piper's son, Learned to play when he was young; But the only tune that he could play Was "Over the hills and far away."

And he played this one tune as badly as his father himself played, so that the people were annoyed when they heard him, and often begged him to stop.

When he came to Farmer Bowser's house, Tom started up the pipes and began to play with all his might. The farmer was in his woodshed, sawing wood, so he did not hear the pipes; and the farmer's wife was deaf, and could not hear them. But a little pig that had strayed around in front of the house heard the noise, and ran away in great fear to the pigsty.

Then, as Tom saw the playing did no good, he thought he would sing also, and therefore he began bawling, at the top of his voice,

"Over the hills, not a great ways off, The woodchuck died with the whooping-cough!"

The farmer had stopped sawing to rest, just then; and when he heard the singing he rushed out of the shed, and chased Tom away with a big stick of wood.

The boy went back to his father, and said, sorrowfully, for he was more hungry than before,

"The farmer gave me nothing but a scolding; but there was a very nice pig running around the yard."

"How big was it?" asked Barney.

"Oh, just about big enough to make a nice dinner for you and me."

The piper slowly shook his head; "'Tis long since I on pig have fed, And though I feel it's wrong to steal, Roast pig is very nice," he said.

Tom knew very well what he meant by that, so he laid down the pipes, and went back to the farmer's house.

When he came near he heard the farmer again sawing wood in the woodshed, and so he went softly up to the pig-sty and reached over and grabbed the little pig by the ears. The pig squealed, of course, but the farmer was making so much noise himself that he did not hear it, and in a minute Tom had the pig tucked under his arm and was running back home with it.

The piper was very glad to see the pig, and said to Tom,

"You are a good son, and the pig is very nice and fat. We shall have a dinner fit for a king."

It was not long before the piper had the pig killed and cut into pieces and boiling in the pot. Only the tail was left out, for Tom wanted to make a whistle of it, and as there was plenty to eat besides the tail his father let him have it.

The piper and his son had a fine dinner that day, and so great was their hunger that the little pig was all eaten up at one meal!

Then Barney lay down to sleep, and Tom sat on a bench outside the door and began to make a whistle out of the pig's tail with his pocket-knife.

Now Farmer Bowser, when he had finished sawing the wood, found it was time to feed the pig, so he took a pail of meal and went to the pigsty. But when he came to the sty there was no pig to be seen, and he searched all round the place for a good hour without finding it.

"Piggy, piggy, piggy!" he called, but no piggy came, and then he knew his pig had been stolen. He was very angry, indeed, for the pig was a great pet, and he had wanted to keep it till it grew very big.

So he put on his coat and buckled a strap around his waist, and went down to the village to see if he could find out who had stolen his pig.

Up and down the street he went, and in and out the lanes, but no traces of the pig could he find anywhere. And that was no great wonder, for the pig was eaten by that time and its bones picked clean.

Finally the farmer came to the end of the street where the piper lived in his little hut, and there he saw Tom sitting on a bench and blowing on a whistle made from a pig's tail.

"Where did you get that tail?" asked the farmer.

"I found it," said naughty Tom, beginning to be frightened.

"Let me see it," demanded the farmer; and when he had looked at it carefully he cried out,

"This tail belonged to my little pig, for I know very well the curl at the end of it! Tell me, you rascal, where is the pig?"

Then Tom fell in a tremble, for he knew his wickedness was discovered.

"The pig is eat, your honor," he answered.

The farmer said never a word, but his face grew black with anger, and, unbuckling the strap that was about his waist, he waved it around his head, and whack! came the strap over Tom's back.

"Ow, ow!" cried the boy, and started to run down the street.

Whack! whack! fell the strap over his shoulders, for the farmer followed at his heels half-way down the street, nor did he spare the strap until he had given Tom a good beating. And Tom was so scared that he never stopped running until he came to the end of the village, and he bawled lustily the whole way and cried out at every step as if the farmer was still at his back.

It was dark before he came back to his home, and his father was still asleep; so Tom crept into the hut and went to bed. But he had received a good lesson, and never after that could the old piper induce him to steal.

When Tom showed by his actions his intention of being honest he soon got a job of work to do, and before long he was able to earn a living more easily, and a great deal more honestly, than when he stole the pig to get a dinner and suffered a severe beating as a punishment.

Tom, Tom, the piper's son Now with stealing pigs was done, He'd work all day instead of play, And dined on tart and currant bun.



Humpty, Dumpty



Humpty Dumpty

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. All the King's horses And all the King's men Cannot put Humpty together again.


AT the very top of the hay-mow in the barn, the Speckled Hen had made her nest, and each day for twelve days she had laid in it a pretty white egg. The Speckled Hen had made her nest in this out-of-the-way place so that no one would come to disturb her, as it was her intention to sit upon the eggs until they were hatched into chickens.

Each day, as she laid her eggs, she would cackle to herself, saying, "This will in time be a beautiful chick, with soft, fluffy down all over its body and bright little eyes that will look at the world in amazement. It will be one of my children, and I shall love it dearly."

She named each egg, as she laid it, by the name she should call it when a chick, the first one being "Cluckety-Cluck," and the next "Cadaw-Cut," and so on; and when she came to the twelfth egg she called it "Humpty Dumpty."

This twelfth egg was remarkably big and white and of a very pretty shape, and as the nest was now so full she laid it quite near the edge. And then the Speckled Hen, after looking proudly at her work, went off to the barn-yard, clucking joyfully, in search of something to eat.

When she had gone, Cluckety-Cluck, who was in the middle of the nest and the oldest egg of all, called out, angrily,

"It's getting crowded in this nest; move up there, some of you fellows!" And then he gave Cadaw-Cut, who was above him, a kick.

"I can't move unless the others do; they're crowding me down!" said Cadaw-Cut; and he kicked the egg next above him. And so they continued kicking one another and rolling around in the nest until one kicked Humpty Dumpty, and as he lay on the edge of the nest he was kicked out and rolled down the hay-mow until he came to a stop near the very bottom.

Humpty did not like this very well, but he was a bright egg for one so young, and after he had recovered from his shaking up he began to look about to see where he was. The barn door was open, and he caught a glimpse of trees and hedges, and green grass with a silvery brook running through it. And he saw the waving grain and the tasselled maize and the sunshine flooding it all.

The scene was very enticing to the young egg, and Humpty at once resolved to see something of this great world before going back to the nest.

He began to make his way carefully through the hay, and was getting along fairly well when he heard a voice say,

"Where are you going?"

Humpty looked around and found he was beside a pretty little nest in which was one brown egg.

"Did you speak?" he asked.

"Yes," replied the brown egg; "I asked where you were going."

"Who are you?" enquired Humpty; "do you belong in our nest?"

"Oh, no!" answered the brown egg; "my name is Coutchie-Coulou, and the Black Bantam laid me about an hour ago."

"Oh," said Humpty, proudly; "I belong to the Speckled Hen, myself."

"Do you, indeed!" returned Coutchie-Coulou. "I saw her go by a little while ago, and she's much bigger than the Black Bantam."

"Yes, and I'm much bigger than you," replied Humpty. "But I'm going out to see the world, and if you like to go with me I'll take good care of you."

"Isn't it dangerous for eggs to go about all by themselves?" asked Coutchie, timidly.

"Perhaps so," answered Humpty; "but it's dangerous in the nest, too; my brothers might have smashed me with their kicking. However, if we are careful we can't come to much harm; so come along, little one, and I'll look after you."

Coutchie-Coulou gave him her hand while he helped her out of the nest, and together they crept over the hay until they came to the barn floor. They made for the door at once, holding each other tightly by the hand, and soon came to the threshold, which appeared very high to them.

"We must jump," said Humpty.

"I'm afraid!" cried Coutchie-Coulou. "And I declare! there's my mother's voice clucking, and she's coming this way."

"Then hurry!" said Humpty. "And do not tremble so or you will get yourself all mixed up; it doesn't improve eggs to shake them. We will jump, but take care not to bump against me or you may break my shell. Now, -- one, -- two, -- three!"

They held each other's hand and jumped, alighting safely in the roadway. Then, fearing their mothers would see them, Humpty ran as fast as he could go until he and Coutchie were concealed beneath a rose-bush in the garden.

"I'm afraid we're bad eggs," gasped Coutchie, who was somewhat out of breath.

"Oh, not at all," replied Humpty; "we were laid only this morning, so we are quite fresh. But now, since we are in the world, we must start out in search of adventure. Here is a roadway beside us which will lead us somewhere or other; so come along, Coutchie-Coulou, and do not be afraid."

The brown egg meekly gave him her hand, and together they trotted along the roadway until they came to a high stone wall, which had sharp spikes upon its top. It seemed to extend for a great distance, and the eggs stopped and looked at it curiously.

"I'd like to see what is behind that wall," said Humpty, "but I don't think we shall be able to climb over it."

"No, indeed," answered the brown egg, "but just before us I see a little hole in the wall, near the ground; perhaps we can crawl through that."

They ran to the hole and found it was just large enough to admit them. So they squeezed through very carefully, in order not to break themselves, and soon came to the other side.

They were now in a most beautiful garden, with trees and bright-hued flowers in abundance and pretty fountains that shot their merry sprays far into the air. In the center of the garden was a great palace, with bright golden turrets and domes, and many windows that glistened in the sunshine like the sparkle of diamonds.

Richly dressed courtiers and charming ladies strolled through the walks, and before the palace door were a dozen prancing horses, gaily caparisoned, awaiting their riders.

It was a scene brilliant enough to fascinate anyone, and the two eggs stood spellbound while their eyes feasted upon the unusual sight.

"See!" whispered Coutchie-Coulou, "there are some birds swimming in the water yonder. Let us go and look at them, for we also may be birds some day."

"True," answered Humpty, "but we are just as likely to be omelets or angel's-food. Still, we will have a look at the birds."

So they started to cross the drive on their way to the pond, never noticing that the King and his courtiers had issued from the palace and were now coming down the drive riding upon their prancing steeds. Just as the eggs were in the middle of the drive the horses dashed by, and Humpty, greatly alarmed, ran as fast as he could for the grass.

Then he stopped and looked around, and behold! there was poor Coutchie-Coulou crushed into a shapeless mass by the hoof of one of the horses, and her golden heart was spreading itself slowly over the white gravel of the driveway!

Humpty sat down upon the grass and wept grievously, for the death of his companion was a great blow to him. And while he sobbed, a voice said to him,

"What is the matter, little egg?"

Humpty looked up, and saw a beautiful girl bending over him.

"One of the horses has stepped upon Coutchie-Coulou," he said; "and now she is dead, and I have no friend in all the world."

The girl laughed.

"Do not grieve," she said, "for eggs are but short-lived creatures at best, and Coutchie-Coulou has at least died an honorable death and saved herself from being fried in a pan or boiled in her own shell. So cheer up, little egg, and I will be your friend -- at least so long as you remain fresh. A stale egg I never could abide."

"I was laid only this morning," said Humpty, drying his tears, "so you need have no fear. But do not call me 'little egg,' for I am quite large, as eggs go, and I have a name of my own."

"What is your name?" asked the Princess.

"It is Humpty Dumpty," he answered, proudly. "And now, if you will really be my friend, pray show me about the grounds, and through the palace; and take care I am not crushed."

So the Princess took Humpty in her arms and walked with him all through the grounds, letting him see the fountains and the golden fish that swam in their waters, the beds of lilies and roses, and the pools where the swans floated. Then she took him into the palace, and showed him all the gorgeous rooms, including the King's own bedchamber and the room where stood the great ivory throne.

Humpty sighed with pleasure.

"After this," he said, "I am content to accept any fate that may befall me, for surely no egg before me ever saw so many beautiful sights."

"That is true," answered the Princess; "but now I have one more sight to show you which will be grander than all the others; for the King will be riding home shortly with all his horses and men at his back, and I will take you to the gates and let you see them pass by."

"Thank you," said Humpty.

So she carried him to the gates, and while they awaited the coming of the King the egg said,

"Put me upon the wall, Princess, for then I shall be able to see much better than in your arms."

"That is a good idea," she answered; "but you must be careful not to fall."

Then she sat the egg gently upon the top of the stone wall, where there was a little hollow; and Humpty was delighted, for from his elevated perch he could see much better than the Princess herself.

"Here they come!" he cried; and, sure enough, the King came riding along the road with many courtiers and soldiers and vassals following in his wake, all mounted upon the finest horses the kingdom could afford.

As they came to the gate and entered at a brisk trot, Humpty, forgetting his dangerous position, leaned eagerly over to look at them. The next instant the Princess heard a sharp crash at her side, and, looking downward, perceived poor Humpty Dumpty, who lay crushed and mangled among the sharp stones where he had fallen!

The Princess sighed, for she had taken quite a fancy to the egg; but she knew it was impossible to gather it up again or mend the matter in any way, and therefore she returned thoughtfully to the palace.

Now it happened that upon this evening several young men of the kingdom, who were all of high rank, had determined to ask the King for the hand of the Princess; so they assembled in the throne room and demanded that the King choose which of them was most worthy to marry his daughter.

The King was in a quandary, for all the suitors were wealthy and powerful, and he feared that all but the one chosen would become his enemies. Therefore he thought long upon the matter, and at last said,

"Where all are worthy it is difficult to decide which most deserves the hand of the Princess. Therefore I propose to test your wit. The one who shall ask me a riddle I cannot guess, can marry my daughter."

At this the young men looked thoughtful, and began to devise riddles that his Majesty should be unable to guess. But the King was a shrewd monarch, and each one of the riddles presented to him he guessed with ease.

Now there was one amongst the suitors whom the Princess herself favored, as was but natural. He was a slender, fair-haired youth, with dreamy blue eyes and a rosy complexion, and although he loved the Princess dearly he despaired of finding a riddle that the King could not guess.

But while he stood leaning against the wall the Princess approached him and whispered in his ear a riddle she had just thought of. Instantly his face brightened, and when the King called, "Now, Master Gracington, it is your turn," he advanced boldly to the throne.

"Speak your riddle, sir," said the King, gaily; for he thought this youth would also fail, and that he might therefore keep the Princess by his side for a time longer.

But Master Gracington, with downcast eyes, knelt before the throne and spoke in this wise:

"This is my riddle, oh, King:

"Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. All the King's horses And all the King's men Cannot put Humpty together again!"

"Read me that, sire, an' you will!"

The King thought earnestly for a long time, and he slapped his head and rubbed his ears and walked the floor in great strides; but guess the riddle he could not.

"You are a humbug, sir!" he cried out at last; "there is no answer to such a riddle."

"You are wrong, sire," answered the young man; "Humpty Dumpty was an egg."

"Why did I not think of that before!" exclaimed the King; but he gave the Princess to the young man to be his bride, and they lived happily together.

And thus did Humpty Dumpty, even in his death, repay the kindness of the fair girl who had shown him such sights as an egg seldom sees.



The Woman Who Lived in a Shoe



The Woman Who Lived in a Shoe

There was an old woman Who lived in a shoe, She had so many children She didn't know what to do; She gave them some broth Without any bread, And whipped them all soundly And sent them to bed.


A LONG time ago there lived a woman who had four daughters, and these in time grew up and married and went to live in different parts of the country. And the woman, after that, lived all alone, and said to herself, "I have done my duty to the world, and now shall rest quietly for the balance of my life. When one has raised a family of four children and has married them all happily, she is surely entitled to pass her remaining days in peace and comfort."

She lived in a peculiar little house, that looked something like this picture. It was not like most of the houses you see, but the old woman had it built herself, and liked it, and so it did not matter to her how odd it was. It stood upon the top of a little hill, and there was a garden at the back and a pretty green lawn in front, with white gravel paths and many beds of bright colored flowers.

The old woman was very happy and contented there until one day she received a letter saying that her daughter Hannah was dead and had sent her family of five children to their grandmother to be taken care of.

This misfortune ruined all the old woman's dreams of quiet; but the next day the children arrived -- three boys and two girls, -- and she made the best of it and gave them the beds her own daughters had once occupied, and her own cot as well; and she made a bed for herself on the parlor sofa.

The youngsters were like all other children, and got into mischief once in awhile; but the old woman had much experience with children and managed to keep them in order very well, while they quickly learned to obey her, and generally did as they were bid.

But scarcely had she succeeded in getting them settled in their new home when Margaret, another of her daughters, died, and sent four more children to her mother to be taken care of.

The old woman scarcely knew where to keep this new flock that had come to her fold, for the house was already full; but she thought the matter over and finally decided she must build an addition to her house.

So she hired a carpenter and built what is called a "lean-to" at the right of her cottage, making it just big enough to accommodate the four new members of her family. When it was completed her house looked very much as it does in this picture.

She put four little cots in her new part of the house, and then she sighed contentedly, and said, "Now all the babies are taken care of and will be comfortable until they grow up." Of course it was much more difficult to manage nine small children than five; and they often led each other into mischief, so that the flower beds began to be trampled upon and the green grass to be worn under the constant tread of little feet, and the furniture to show a good many scratches and bruises.

But the old woman continued to look after them, as well as she was able, until Sarah, her third daughter, also died, and three more children were sent to their grandmother to be brought up.

The old woman was nearly distracted when she heard of this new addition to her family, but she did not give way to despair. She sent for the carpenter again, and had him build another addition to her house, as the picture shows. Then she put three new cots in the new part for the babies to sleep in, and when they arrived they were just as cozy and comfortable as peas in a pod.

The grandmother was a lively old woman for one of her years, but she found her time now fully occupied in cooking the meals for her twelve small grandchildren, and mending their clothes, and washing their faces, and undressing them at night and dressing them in the morning. There was just a dozen of the babies now, and when you consider they were about the same age you will realize what a large family the old woman had, and how fully her time was occupied in caring for them all.

And now, to make the matter worse, her fourth daughter, who had been named Abigail, suddenly took sick and died, and she also had four small children that must be cared for in some way.

The old woman, having taken the other twelve, could not well refuse to adopt these little orphans also.

"I may as well have sixteen as a dozen," she said, with a sigh; "they will drive me crazy some day, anyhow, so a few more will not matter at all!"

Once more she sent for the carpenter, and bade him build a third addition to the house; and when it was completed she added four more cots to the dozen that were already in use. The house presented a very queer appearance now, but she did not mind that so long as the babies were comfortable. "I shall not have to build again," she said; "and that is one satisfaction. I have now no more daughters to die and leave me their children, and therefore I must make up my mind to do the best I can with the sixteen that have already been inflicted upon me in my old age."

It was not long before all the grass about the house was trodden down, and the white gravel of the walks all thrown at the birds, and the flower beds trampled into shapeless masses by thirty-two little feet that ran about from morn till night. But the old woman did not complain at this; her time was too much taken up with the babies for her to miss the grass and the flowers.

It cost so much money to clothe them that she decided to dress them all alike, so that they looked like the children of a regular orphan asylum. And it cost so much to feed them that she was obliged to give them the plainest food; so there was bread-and-milk for breakfast and milk-and-bread for dinner and bread-and-broth for supper. But it was a good and wholesome diet, and the children thrived and grew fat upon it.

One day a stranger came along the road, and when he saw the old woman's house he began to laugh.

"What are you laughing at, sir?" asked the grandmother, who was sitting upon her door-steps engaged in mending sixteen pairs of stockings.

"At your house," the stranger replied; "it looks for all the world like a big shoe!"

"A shoe!" she said, in surprise.

"Why, yes. The chimneys are shoe-straps, and the steps are the heel, and all those additions make the foot of the shoe."

"Never mind," said the woman; "it may be a shoe, but it is full of babies, and that makes it different from most other shoes."

But the stranger went on to the village and told all he met that he had seen an old woman who lived in a shoe; and soon people came from all parts of the country to look at the queer house, and they usually went away laughing.

The old woman did not mind this at all; she was too busy to be angry. Some of the children were always getting bumped heads or bruised shins, or falling down and hurting themselves, and these had to be comforted. And some were naughty and had to be whipped; and some were dirty and had to be washed; and some were good and had to be kissed. It was "Gran'ma, do this!" and "Gran'ma, do that!" from morning to night, so that the poor grandmother was nearly distracted. The only peace she ever got was when they were all safely tucked in their little cots and were sound asleep; for then, at least, she was free from worry and had a chance to gather her scattered wits.

"There are so many children," she said one day to the baker-man, "that I often really don't know what to do!"

"If they were mine, ma'am," he replied, "I'd send them to the poor-house, or else they'd send me to the mad-house."

Some of the children heard him say this, and they resolved to play him a trick in return for his ill-natured speech.

The baker-man came every day to the shoe-house, and brought two great baskets of bread in his arms for the children to eat with their milk and their broth.

So one day, when the old woman had gone to the town to buy shoes, the children all painted their faces, to look as Indians do when they are on the war-path; and they caught the roosters and the turkey-cock and pulled feathers from their tails to stick in their hair. And then the boys made wooden tomahawks for the girls and bows-and-arrows for their own use, and then all sixteen went out and hid in the bushes near the top of the hill.

By and by the baker-man came slowly up the path with a basket of bread on either arm; and just as he reached the bushes there sounded in his ears a most unearthly war-whoop. Then a flight of arrows came from the bushes, and although they were blunt and could do him no harm, they rattled all over his body; and one hit his nose, and another his chin, while several stuck fast in the loaves of bread.

Altogether, the baker-man was terribly frightened; and when all the sixteen small Indians rushed from the bushes and flourished their tomahawks, he took to his heels and rand down the hill as fast as he could go!

When the grandmother returned she asked, "Where is the bread for your supper?"

The children looked at one another in surprise, for they had forgotten all about the bread. And then one of them confessed, and told her the whole story of how they had frightened the baker-man for saying he would send them to the poor-house.

"You are sixteen very naughty children!" exclaimed the old woman; "and for punishment you must eat your broth without any bread, and afterwards each one shall have a sound whipping and be sent to bed."

Then all the children began to cry at once, and there was such an uproar that their grandmother had to put cotton in her ears that she might not lose her hearing.

But she kept her promise, and made them eat their broth without any bread; for, indeed, there was no bread to give them.

Then she stood them in a row and undressed them, and as she put the night-dress on each one she gave it a sound whipping and sent it to bed.

They cried some, of course, but they knew very well they deserved the punishment, and it was not long before all of them were sound asleep.

They took care not to play any more tricks on the baker-man, and as they grew older they were naturally much better behaved.

Before many years the boys were old enough to work for the neighboring farmers, and that made the woman's family a good deal smaller. And then the girls grew up and married, and found homes of their own, so that all the children were in time well provided for.

But not one of them forgot the kind grandmother who had taken such good care of them, and often they tell their children of the days when they lived with the old woman in a shoe and frightened the baker-man almost into fits with their wooden tomahawks.



Little Miss Muffet



Little Miss Muffet

Little Miss Muffet Sat on a tuffet, Eating of curds and whey. There came a great spider And sat down beside her And frightened Miss Muffet away.


LITTLE MISS MUFFET'S father was a big banker in a big city, and he had so much money that the house he lived in was almost as beautiful as a king's palace. It was built of granite and marble, and richly furnished with every luxury that money can buy. There was an army of servants about the house, and many of them had no other duties than to wait upon Miss Muffet, for the little girl was an only child and therefore a personage of great importance. She had a maid to dress her hair and a maid to bathe her, a maid to serve her at table and a maid to tie her shoestrings, and several maids beside. And then there was Nurse Holloweg to look after all the maids and see they did their tasks properly.

The child's father spent his days at his office and his evenings at his club; her mother was a leader in society, and therefore fully engaged from morning till night and from night till morn; so that Little Miss Muffet seldom saw her parents and scarce knew them when she did see them.

I have never known by what name she was christened. Perhaps she did not know herself, for everyone had called her "Miss Muffet" since she could remember. The servants spoke of her respectfully as Miss Muffet. Mrs. Muffet would say, at times, "By the way, Nurse, how is Miss Muffet getting along?" And Mr. Muffet, when he met his little daughter by chance on the walk or in the hallway, would stop and look at her gravely and say, "So this is Miss Muffet. Well, how are you feeling, little one?" And then, without heeding her answer, he would walk away.

Perhaps you think that Miss Muffet, surrounded by every luxury and with a dozen servants to wait upon her, was happy and contented; but such was not the case. She wanted to run and romp, but they told her it was unladylike; she wished to play with other children, but none were rich enough to be proper associates for her; she longed to dig in the dirt in the garden, but Nurse Holloweg was shocked at the very thought. So Miss Muffet became sullen and irritable, and scolded everyone about her, and lived a very unhappy life. And her food was too rich and gave her dyspepsia, so that she grew thin and pale and did not sleep well at night.

One afternoon her mother, who happened to be at home for an hour, suddenly thought of her little daughter; so she rang the bell and asked for Nurse Holloweg.

"How is Miss Muffet, Nurse?" enquired the lady.

"Very badly, ma'am," was the reply.

"Badly! What do you mean? Is she ill?"

"She's far from well, ma'am," answered the Nurse, "and seems to be getting worse every day."

"Well," replied the lady; "you must have the doctor to see her; and don't forget to let me know what he says. That is all, Nurse."

She turned to her novel again, and the Nurse walked away and sent a servant for the doctor. That great man, when he came, shook his head solemnly and said,

"She must have a change. Take her away into the country as soon as possible."

"And very good advice it was, too," remarked the Nurse to one of the maids; "for I feel as if I needed a change myself."

When she reported the matter to Mrs. Muffet the mother answered,

"Very well; I will see Mr. Muffet and have him write out a cheque."

And so it was that a week later Little Miss Muffet went to the country, or rather to a small town where there was a summer hotel that had been highly recommended to Nurse Holloweg; and with her went the string of maids and a wagon-load of boxes and trunks.

The morning after their arrival the little girl asked to go out upon the lawn.

"Well," replied Nurse Holloweg, "Sarah can take you out for half an hour. But remember you are not to run and get heated, for that will ruin your complexion; and you must not speak to any of the common children you meet, for your mother would object; and you must not get your shoes dusty nor your dress soiled, nor disobey Sarah in any way."

Little Miss Muffet went out in a very angry and sulky mood.

"What's the use of being in the country," she thought, "if I must act just as I did in the city? I hate Nurse Holloweg, and Sarah, and all the rest of them! and if I dared I'd just -- just run away."

Indeed, a few minutes later, when Sarah had fallen asleep upon a bench under a big shade tree, Miss Muffet decided she would really run away for once in her life, and see how it seemed.

There was a pretty lane near by, running between shady trees far out into the country, and, stealing softly away from Sarah's side, the little girl ran as fast as she could go, and never stopped until she was all out of breath.

While she rested and wondered what she could do next, a farmer came along, driving an empty cart.

"I'll catch on behind," said Miss Muffet, gleefully, "just as I've seen the boys do in the city. Won't it be fun!"

So she ran and caught on the end of the cart, and actually climbed into it, falling all in a heap upon the straw that lay upon the bottom. But it didn't hurt her at all, and the next minute the farmer whipped up his horses, and they went trotting along the lane, carrying Miss Muffet farther and farther away from hated Nurse Holloweg and the dreadful maids.

She looked around upon the green fields and the waving grain, and drew in deep breaths of the fresh country air, and was happy for almost the first time in her little life. By and by she lay back upon the straw and fell asleep; and the farmer, who did not know she was in his cart, drove on for many miles, until at last he stopped at a small wooden farm-house, and jumped to the ground.

A woman came to the door to greet him, and he said to her,

"Well, mother, we're home again, you see."

"So I see," she answered; "but did you bring my groceries?"

"Yes," he replied, as he began to unharness the horses; "they are in the cart."

So she came to the cart and looked within, and saw Miss Muffet, who was still asleep.

"Where did you get the little girl?" asked the farmer's wife, in surprise.

"What little girl?" asked he.

"The one in the cart."

He came to the cart and looked in, and was as surprised as his wife.

"She must have climbed into the cart when I left the town," he said; "but waken her, wife, and we will hear what she has to say."

So the farmer's wife shook the girl by the arm, and Miss Muffet sat up in the cart and rubbed her eyes and wondered where she was.

"How came you in my cart?" asked the farmer.

"I caught on behind, and climbed in," answered the girl.

"What is your name, and where do you live?" enquired the farmer's wife.

"My name is Miss Muffet, and I live in a big city, -- but where, I do not know."

And that was all she could tell them, so the woman said at last,

"We must keep her till some one comes to claim her, and she can earn her living by helping me make the cheeses."

"That will be nice," said Miss Muffet, with a laugh, "for Nurse Holloweg never lets me do anything, and I should like to help somebody do something."

So they led her into the house, where the farmer's wife wondered at the fine texture of her dress and admired the golden chain that hung around her neck.

"Some one will surely come for her," the woman said to her husband, "for she is richly dressed and must belong to a family of some importance."

Nevertheless, when they had eaten dinner, for which Little Miss Muffet had a wonderful appetite, the woman took her into the dairy and told her how she could assist her in curdling the milk and preparing it for the cheese-press.

"Why, it's really fun to work," said the girl, at first, "and I should like to live here always. I do hope Nurse Holloweg will not find me."

After a time, however, she grew weary, and wanted to rest; but the woman had not yet finished her cheese-making, so she bade the girl keep at her tasks.

"It's time enough to rest when the work is done," she said, "and if you stay with me you must earn your board. No one is allowed to idle in this house."

So Little Miss Muffet, though she felt like crying and was very tired, kept at her work until at length all was finished and the last cheese was in the press.

"Now," said the farmer's wife, "since you have worked so well I shall give you a dish of curds and whey for your supper, and you may go out into the orchard and eat it under the shade of the trees."

Little Miss Muffet had never eaten curds and whey before, and did not know how they tasted; but she was very hungry, so she took the dish and went into the orchard.

She first looked around for a place to sit down, and finally discovered a little grassy mound, which is called a tuffet in the country, and seated herself upon it. Then she tasted the curds and whey and found them very good.

But while she was eating she chanced to look down at her feet, and there was a great black spider coming straight towards her. The girl had never seen such an enormous and hideous-looking spider before, and she was so frightened that she gave a scream and tipped backward off the tuffet, spilling the curds and whey all over her dress as she did so. This frightened her more than ever, and as soon as she could get upon her feet she scampered away to the farm-house as fast as she could go, crying bitterly as she ran.

The farmer's wife tried to comfort her, and Miss Muffet, between her sobs, said she had seen "the awfulest, biggest, blackest spider in all the world!"

This made the woman laugh, for she was not afraid of spiders.

Soon after they heard a sound of wheels upon the road and a handsome carriage came dashing up to the gate.

"Has anyone seen a little girl who has run away?" asked Nurse Holloweg, leaning out of the carriage.

"Oh, yes," answered Little Miss Muffet; "here I am, Nurse." And she ran out and jumped into the carriage, for she was very glad to get back again to those who would care for her and not ask her to work making cheeses.

When they were driving back to the town the Nurse said,

"You must promise me, Miss Muffet, never to run away again. You have frightened me nearly into hysterics, and had you been lost your mother would have been quite disappointed."

The little girl was silent for a time; then she answered,

"I will promise not to run away if you will let me play as other children do. But if you do not allow me to run and romp and dig in the ground, I shall keep running away, no matter how many horrid spiders come to frighten me!"

And Nurse Holloweg, who had really been much alarmed at so nearly losing her precious charge, thought it wise to agree to Miss Muffet's terms.

She kept her word, too, and when Little Miss Muffet went back to her home in the city her cheeks were as red as roses and her eyes sparkled with health. And she grew, in time, to be a beautiful young lady, and as healthy and robust as she was beautiful. Seeing which, the doctor put an extra large fee in his bill for advising that the little girl be taken to the country; and Mr. Muffet paid it without a word of protest.

Even after Miss Muffet grew up and was married she never forgot the day that she ran away, nor the curds and whey she ate for her supper, nor the great spider that frightened her away from the tuffet.



Three Wise Men of Gotham



Three Wise Men of Gotham

Three Wise Men of Gotham Went to sea in a bowl. If the bowl had been stronger My tale had been longer.


THERE lived in the great city of Gotham, over against the north gate, a man who possessed a very wise aspect, but very little else. He was tall and lean, and had a fine large head, bald and smooth upon the top, with a circle of white hair behind the ears. His beard was pure white, and reached to his waist; his eyes were small, dark, and so piercing that they seemed to read your every thought. His eyebrows were very heavy, and as white as his beard. He dressed in a long black mantle with a girdle corded about the middle, and he walked slowly and majestically, and talked no more than he was obliged to.

When this man passed down the street with his stately tread the people all removed their hats and bowed to him with great reverence, saying within themselves,

"He is very wise, this great man; he is a second Socrates."

And soon this was the only name he was called by, and every one in Gotham knew him as "Socrates."

To be sure this man was not really wise. Had they realized the truth, not one he met but knew more than Socrates; but his venerable appearance certainly betokened great wisdom, and no one appeared to remember that things are seldom what they seem.

Socrates would strut about with bowed head and arms clasped behind him, and think:

"My! how wise these people take me to be. Every one admires my beautiful beard. When I look into their faces they drop their eyes. I am, in truth, a wonderful man, and if I say nothing they will believe I am full of wisdom. Ah, here comes the schoolmaster; I shall frown heavily and refuse to notice him, for then he also will be deceived and think I am pondering upon matters of great import."

Really, the one wise thing about this Socrates was his ability to keep quiet. For, saying no word, it was impossible he should betray his ignorance.

Singularly enough, over by the south gate of Gotham there dwelt another wise man, of much the same appearance as Socrates. His white beard was a trifle longer and he had lost his left eye, which was covered by a black patch; but in all other ways his person betokened as much wisdom as that of the other.

He did not walk about, being lazy and preferring his ease; but he lived in a little cottage with one room, where the people came to consult him in regard to all their troubles.

They had named him Sophocles, and when anything went wrong they would say,

"Let us go and consult Sophocles, for he is very wise and will tell us what to do."

Thus one man, who had sued his neighbor in the courts, became worried over the outcome of the matter and came to consult the wise man.

"Tell me, O Sophocles!" he said, as he dropped a piece of money upon a plate, "shall I win my lawsuit or not?"

Sophocles appeared to ponder for a moment, and then he looked at his questioner with his one eye and replied,

"If it is not decided against you, you will certainly win your suit."

And the man was content, and went away feeling that his money had been well invested.

At another time the mother of a pair of baby twins came to him in great trouble.

"O most wise Sophocles!" she said, "I am in despair! For my little twin girls are just alike, and I have lost the ribbon that I placed on one that I might be able to tell them apart. Therefore I cannot determine which is Amelia and which is Ophelia, and as the priest has christened them by their proper names it would be a sin to call them wrongly."

Three Wise Men of Gotham

"Cannot the priest tell?" asked the wise man.

"No one can tell," answered the woman; "neither the priest nor their father nor myself, for they are just alike. And they are yet too young to remember their own names. Therefore your great wisdom is our only resource."

"Bring them to me," commanded Sophocles.

And when they were brought he looked at them attentively and said,

"This is Ophelia and this Amelia. Now tie a red ribbon about Ophelia's wrist and put a blue ribbon on Amelia, and so long as they wear them you will not be troubled to tell them apart."

Everyone marvelled greatly that Sophocles should know the children better than their own mother, but he said to himself,

"Since no one can prove that I am wrong I am sure to be right;" and thus he maintained his reputation for wisdom.

In a little side street near the center of Gotham lived an old woman named Deborah Smith. Her home was a wretched little hut, for she was poor, and supported herself and her husband by begging in the streets. Her husband was a lazy, short, fat old man, who lay upon a ragged blanket in the hut all day and refused to work.

"One beggar in the family is enough," he used to grumble, when his wife upbraided him, "and I am really too tired to work. So let me alone, my Deborah, as I am about to take another nap."

Nothing she could say would arouse him to action, and she finally allowed him to do as he pleased.

But one day she met Socrates walking in the street, and after watching him for a time made up her mind he was nothing more than a fool. Other people certainly thought him wise, but she was a shrewd old woman, and could see well enough that he merely looked wise. The next day she went to the south of the city to beg, and there she heard of Sophocles. When the people repeated his wise sayings she thought,

"Here is another fool, for any one could tell as much as this man does."

Still, she went to see Sophocles, and, dropping a penny upon his plate, she asked,

"Tell me, O wise man, how shall I drive my husband to work?"

"By starving him," answered Sophocles; "if you refuse to feed him he must find a way to feed himself."

"That is true," she thought, as she went away; "but any fool could have told me that. This wise man is a fraud; even my husband is as wise as he."

Then she stopped short and slapped her hand against her forehead.

"Why," she cried, "I will make a Wise Man of Perry, my husband, and then he can earn money without working!"

So she went to her husband and said,

"Get up, Perry Smith, and wash yourself; for I am going to make a Wise Man of you."

"I won't," he replied.

"You will," she declared, "for it is the easiest way to earn money I have ever discovered."

Then she took a stick and beat him so fiercely that at last he got up, and agreed to do as she said.

She washed his long beard until it was as white as snow, and she shaved his head to make him look bald and venerable. Then she brought him a flowing black robe with a girdle at the middle; and when he was dressed, lo! he looked fully as wise as either Socrates or Sophocles.

"You must have a new name," she said, "for no one will ever believe that Perry Smith is a Wise Man. So I shall hereafter call you Pericles, the Wisest Man of Gotham!"

She then led him into the streets, and to all they met she declared,

"This is Pericles, the wisest man in the world."

"What does he know?" they asked.

"Everything, and much else," she replied.

Then came a carter, and putting a piece of money in the hand of Pericles, he enquired,

"Pray tell me of your wisdom what is wrong with my mare?"

"How should I know?" asked Pericles.

"I thought you knew everything," returned the carter, in surprise.

"I do," declared Pericles; "but you have not told me what her symptoms are."

"She refuses to eat anything," said the carter.

"Then she is not hungry," returned Pericles; "for neither man nor beast will refuse to eat when hungry."

And the people who heard him whispered together and said,

"Surely this is a wise man, for he has told the carter what is wrong with his mare."

After a few days the fame of Pericles' sayings came to the ears of both Socrates and Sophocles, and they resolved to see him, for each feared he would prove more wise than they were, knowing themselves to be arrant humbugs. So one morning the three wise men met together outside the hut of Pericles, and they sat themselves down upon stools, facing each other, while a great crowd of people gathered around to hear the words of wisdom that dropped from their lips.

But for a time all three were silent, and regarded one another anxiously, for each feared he might betray himself.

Finally Sophocles winked his one eye at the others and said, in a grave voice,

"The earth is flat; for, were it round, as some fools say, all the people would slide off the surface."

Then the people, who had listened eagerly, clapped their hands together and murmured,

"Sophocles is wisest of all. What he says is truth."

This provoked Socrates greatly, for he felt his reputation was in danger; so he said with a frown,

"The world is shallow, like a dish; were it flat the water would all run over the edges, and we should have no oceans."

Then the people applauded more loudly than before, and cried,

"Socrates is right! he is wisest of all."

Pericles, at this, shifted uneasily upon his stool, for he knew he must dispute the matter boldly or his fame would depart from him. Therefore he said, with grave deliberation,

"You are wrong, my friends. The world is hollow, like the shell of a cocoanut, and we are all inside the shell. The sky above us is the roof, and if you go out upon the ocean you will come to a place, no matter in which direction you go, where the sky and the water meet. I know this is true, for I have been to sea."

The people cheered loudly at this, and said,

"Long live Pericles, the wisest of the wise men!"

"I shall hold I am right," protested Sophocles, "until Pericles and Socrates prove that I am wrong."

"That is fair enough," said the people.

"And I also shall hold myself to be right until they prove me wrong," declared Socrates, firmly.

"I know I am right," said Pericles, "for you cannot prove me wrong."

"We can take a boat and sail over the sea," remarked Socrates, "and when we come to the edge we will know the truth. Will you go?"

"Yes," answered Sophocles; and Pericles, because he did not dare refuse, said "Yes" also.

Then they went to the shore of the sea, and the people followed them. There was no boat to be found anywhere, for the fishers were all away upon the water; but there was a big wooden bowl lying upon the shore, which the fishermen used to carry their fish to market in.

"This will do," said Pericles, who, because he weighed the most, was the greatest fool of the three.

So the wise men all sat within the bowl, with their feet together, and the people pushed them out into the water.

The tide caught the bowl and floated it out to sea, and before long the wise men were beyond sight of land.

They were all greatly frightened, for the bowl was old and cracked, and the water leaked slowly through until their feet were covered. They clung to the edge with their hands and looked at one another with white faces. Said Pericles,

"I was a fool to come to sea in this bowl."

"Ah," remarked Socrates, "if you are a fool, as you confess, then you cannot be a wise man."

"No," answered Pericles, "but I'll soon be a dead man."

"I also was a fool," said Sophocles, who was weeping from his one eye and trembling all over, "for if I had stayed upon land I would not have been drowned."

"Since you both acknowledge it," sighed Socrates, "I will confess that I also am a fool, and have always been one; but I looked so wise the people insisted I must know everything!"

"Yes, yes," Sophocles groaned, "the people have murdered us!"

"My only regret," said Pericles, "is that my wife is not with me. If only she were here" -- 

He did not finish what he was saying, for just then the bowl broke in two. And the people are still waiting for the three wise men to come back to them.



Little Bun Rabbit



Little Bun Rabbit

"Oh, Little Bun Rabbit, so soft and so shy, Say, what do you see with your big, round eye?" "On Christmas we rabbits," says Bunny so shy, "Keep watch to see Santa go galloping by."


LITTLE DOROTHY had passed all the few years of her life in the country, and being the only child upon the farm she was allowed to roam about the meadows and woods as she pleased. On the bright summer mornings Dorothy's mother would tie a sun-bonnet under the girl's chin, and then she romped away to the fields to amuse herself in her own way.

She came to know every flower that grew, and to call them by name, and she always stepped very carefully to avoid treading on them, for Dorothy was a kind-hearted child and did not like to crush the pretty flowers that bloomed in her path. And she was also very fond of all the animals, and learned to know them well, and even to understand their language, which very few people can do. And the animals loved Dorothy in turn, for the word passed around amongst them that she could be trusted to do them no harm. For the horse, whose soft nose Dorothy often gently stroked, told the cow of her kindness, and the cow told the dog, and the dog told the cat, and the cat told her black kitten, and the black kitten told the rabbit when one day they met in the turnip patch.

Therefore when the rabbit, which is the most timid of all animals and the most difficult to get acquainted with, looked out of a small bush at the edge of the wood one day and saw Dorothy standing a little way off, he did not scamper away, as is his custom, but sat very still and met the gaze of her sweet eyes boldly, although perhaps his heart beat a little faster than usual.

Dorothy herself was afraid she might frighten him away, so she kept very quiet for a time, leaning silently against a tree and smiling encouragement at her timorous companion until the rabbit became reassured and blinked his big eyes at her thoughtfully. For he was as much interested in the little girl as she in him, since it was the first time he had dared to meet a person face to face.

Finally Dorothy ventured to speak, so she asked, very softly and slowly,

"Oh, Little Bun Rabbit, so soft and so shy, Say, what do you see with your big, round eye?"

"Many things," answered the rabbit, who was pleased to hear the girl speak in his own language; "in summer-time I see the clover-leaves that I love to feed upon and the cabbages at the end of the farmer's garden. I see the cool bushes where I can hide from my enemies, and I see the dogs and the men long before they can see me, or know that I am near, and therefore I am able to keep out of their way."

"Is that the reason your eyes are so big?" asked Dorothy.

"I suppose so," returned the rabbit; "you see we have only our eyes and our ears and our legs to defend ourselves with. We cannot fight, but we can always run away, and that is a much better way to save our lives than by fighting."

"Where is your home, bunny?" enquired the girl.

"I live in the ground, far down in a cool, pleasant hole I have dug in the midst of the forest. At the bottom of the hole is the nicest little room you can imagine, and there I have made a soft bed to rest in at night. When I meet an enemy I run to my hole and jump in, and there I stay until all danger is over."

"You have told me what you see in summer," continued Dorothy, who was greatly interested in the rabbit's account of himself, "but what do you see in the winter?"

"In winter we rabbits," said Bunny so shy, "Keep watch to see Santa go galloping by."

"And do you ever see him?" asked the girl, eagerly.

"Oh, yes; every winter. I am not afraid of him, nor of his reindeer. And it is such fun to see him come dashing along, cracking his whip and calling out cheerily to his reindeer, who are able to run even swifter than we rabbits. And Santa Claus, when he sees me, always gives me a nod and a smile, and then I look after him and his big load of toys which he is carrying to the children, until he has galloped away out of sight. I like to see the toys, for they are so bright and pretty, and every year there is something new amongst them. Once I visited Santa, and saw him make the toys."

"Oh, tell me about it!" pleaded Dorothy.

"It was one morning after Christmas," said the rabbit, who seemed to enjoy talking, now that he had overcome his fear of Dorothy, "and I was sitting by the road-side when Santa Claus came riding back in his empty sleigh. He does not come home quite so fast as he goes, and when he saw me he stopped for a word.

"'You look very pretty this morning, Bun Rabbit,' he said, in his jolly way; 'I think the babies would love to have you to play with.'

"'I don't doubt it, your honor,' I answered; 'but they'd soon kill me with handling, even if they did not scare me to death; for babies are very rough with their playthings.'

"'That is true,' replied Santa Claus; 'and yet you are so soft and pretty it is a pity the babies can't have you. Still, as they would abuse a live rabbit I think I shall make them some toy rabbits, which they cannot hurt; so if you will jump into my sleigh with me and ride home to my castle for a few days, I'll see if I can't make some toy rabbits just like you.'

"Of course I consented, for we all like to please old Santa, and a minute later I had jumped into the sleigh beside him and we were dashing away at full speed toward his castle. I enjoyed the ride very much, but I enjoyed the castle far more; for it was one of the loveliest places you could imagine. It stood on the top of a high mountain and is built of gold and silver bricks, and the windows are pure diamond crystals. The rooms are big and high, and there is a soft carpet upon every floor and many strange things scattered around to amuse one. Santa Claus lives there all alone, except for old Mother Hubbard, who cooks the meals for him; and her cupboard is never bare now, I can promise you! At the top of the castle there is one big room, and that is Santa's work-shop, where he makes the toys. On one side is his work-bench, with plenty of saws and hammers and jack-knives; and on another side is the paint-bench, with paints of every color and brushes of every size and shape. And in other places are great shelves, where the toys are put to dry and keep new and bright until Christmas comes and it is time to load them all into his sleigh.

"After Mother Hubbard had given me a good dinner, and I had eaten some of the most delicious clover I have ever tasted, Santa took me up into his work-room and sat me upon the table.

"'If I can only make rabbits half as nice as you are,' he said, 'the little ones will be delighted.' Then he lit a big pipe and began to smoke, and soon he took a roll of soft fur from a shelf in a corner and commenced to cut it out in the shape of a rabbit. He smoked and whistled all the time he was working, and he talked to me in such a jolly way that I sat perfectly still and allowed him to measure my ears and my legs so that he could cut the fur into the proper form.

"'Why, I've got your nose too long, Bunny,' he said once; and so he snipped a little off the fur he was cutting, so that the toy rabbit's nose should be like mine. And again he said, 'Good gracious! the ears are too short entirely!' So he had to get a needle and thread and sew on more fur to the ears, so that they might be the right size. But after a time it was all finished, and then he stuffed the fur full of sawdust and sewed it up neatly; after which he put in some glass eyes that made the toy rabbit look wonderfully life-like. When it was all done he put it on the table beside me, and at first I didn't know whether I was the live rabbit or the toy rabbit, we were so much alike.

"'It's a very good job,' said Santa, nodding his head at us pleasantly; 'and I shall have to make a lot of these rabbits, for the little children are sure to be greatly pleased with them.'

"So he immediately began to make another, and this time he cut the fur just the right size, so that it was even better than the first rabbit.

"'I must put a squeak in it,' said Santa.

"So he took a box of squeaks from a shelf and put one into the rabbit before he sewed it up. When it was all finished he pressed the toy rabbit with his thumb, and it squeaked so naturally that I jumped off the table, fearing at first the new rabbit was alive. Old Santa laughed merrily at this, and I soon recovered from my fright and was pleased to think the babies were to have such pretty playthings.

"'After this,' said Santa Claus, 'I can make rabbits without having you for a pattern; but if you like you may stay a few days longer in my castle and amuse yourself.'

"I thanked him and decided to stay. So for several days I watched him making all kinds of toys, and I wondered to see how quickly he made them, and how many new things he invented.

"'I almost wish I was a child,' I said to him one day, 'for then I too could have playthings.'

"'Ah, you can run about all day, in summer and in winter, and enjoy yourself in your own way,' said Santa; 'but the poor little children are obliged to stay in the house in the winter and on rainy days in the summer, and then they must have toys to amuse them and keep them contented.'

"I knew this was true, so I only said, admiringly,

"'You must be the quickest and the best workman in all the world, Santa.'

"'I suppose I am,' he answered; 'but then, you see, I have been making toys for hundreds of years, and I make so many it is no wonder I am skillful. And now, if you are ready to go home, I'll hitch up the reindeer and take you back again.'

"'Oh, no,' said I, 'I prefer to run by myself, for I can easily find the way and I want to see the country.'

"'If that is the case,' replied Santa, 'I must give you a magic collar to wear, so that you will come to no harm.'

"So, after Mother Hubbard had given me a good meal of turnips and sliced cabbage, Santa Claus put the magic collar around my neck and I started for home. I took my time on the journey, for I knew nothing could harm me, and I saw a good many strange sights before I got back to this place again."

"But what became of the magic collar?" asked Dorothy, who had listened with breathless interest to the rabbit's story.

"After I got home," replied the rabbit, "the collar disappeared from around my neck, and I knew Santa had called it back to himself again. He did not give it to me, you see; he merely let me take it on my journey to protect me. The next Christmas, when I watched by the road-side to see Santa, I was pleased to notice a great many of the toy rabbits sticking out of the loaded sleigh. The babies must have liked them, too, for every year since I have seen them amongst the toys.

"Santa never forgets me, and every time he passes he calls out, in his jolly voice,

"'A merry Christmas to you, Bun Rabbit! The babies still love you dearly.'"

The Rabbit paused, and Dorothy was just about to ask another question when Bunny raised his head and seemed to hear something coming.

"What is it?" enquired the girl.

"It's the farmer's big shepherd dog," answered the Rabbit, "and I must be going before he sees me, or I shall have to run for my life. So good bye, Dorothy; I hope we shall meet again, and then I will gladly tell you more of my adventures."

The next instant he had sprung into the wood, and all that Dorothy could see of him was a gray streak darting in and out amongst the trees.

<eob>

The Gorilla Hunters

By

R.M. Ballantyne



Chapter One.

In Which The Hunters Are Introduced.

It was five o'clock in the afternoon. There can be no doubt whatever as to that. Old Agnes may say what she pleases -- she has a habit of doing so -- but I know for certain (because I looked at my watch not ten minutes before it happened) that it was exactly five o'clock in the afternoon when I received a most singular and every way remarkable visit -- a visit which has left an indelible impression on my memory, as well it might; for, independent of its singularity and unexpectedness, one of its results was the series of strange adventures which are faithfully detailed in this volume.

It happened thus: -- 

I was seated in an armchair in my private study in a small town on the west coast of England. It was a splendid afternoon, and it was exactly five o'clock. Mark that. Not that there is anything singular about the mere fact, neither is it in any way mixed up with the thread of this tale; but old Agnes is very obstinate -- singularly positive -- and I have a special desire that she should see it in print, that I have not given in on that point. Yes, it was five precisely, and a beautiful evening. I was ruminating, as I frequently do, on the pleasant memories of bygone days, especially the happy days that I spent long ago among the coral islands of the Pacific, when a tap at the door aroused me.

"Come in."

"A veesiter, sir," said old Agnes (my landlady), "an' he'll no gie his name."

Old Agnes, I may remark, is a Scotchwoman.

"Show him in," said I.

"Maybe he's a pickpocket," suggested Agnes.

"I'll take my chance of that."

"Ay! that's like 'ee. Cares for naethin'. Losh, man, what if he cuts yer throat?"

"I'll take my chance of that too; only do show him in, my good woman," said I, with a gesture of impatience that caused the excellent (though obstinate) old creature to depart, grumbling.

In another moment a quick step was heard on the stair, and a stranger burst into the room, shut the door in my landlady's face as she followed him, and locked it.

I was naturally surprised, though not alarmed, by the abrupt and eccentric conduct of my visitor, who did not condescend to take off his hat, but stood with his arms folded on his breast, gazing at me and breathing hard.

"You are agitated, sir; pray be seated," said I, pointing to a chair.

The stranger, who was a little man and evidently a gentleman, made no reply, but, seizing a chair, placed it exactly before me, sat down on it as he would have seated himself on a horse, rested his arms on the back, and stared me in the face.

"You are disposed to be facetious," said I, smiling (for I never take offence without excessively good reason).

"Not at all, by no means," said he, taking off his hat and throwing it recklessly on the floor. "You are Mr Rover, I presume?"

"The same, sir, at your service."

"Are you? oh, that's yet to be seen! Pray, is your Christian name Ralph?"

"It is," said I, in some surprise at the coolness of my visitor.

"Ah! just so. Christian name Ralph, t'other name Rover -- Ralph Rover. Very good. Age twenty-two yesterday, eh?"

"My birthday was yesterday, and my age is twenty-two. You appear to know more of my private history than I have the pleasure of knowing of yours. Pray, sir, may I -- but, bless me! are you unwell?"

I asked this in some alarm, because the little man was rolling about in his seat, holding his sides, and growing very red in the face.

"Oh no! not at all; perfectly well -- never was better in my life," he said, becoming all at once preternaturally grave. "You were once in the Pacific -- lived on a coral island -- "

"I did."

"Oh, don't trouble yourself to answer. Just shut up for a minute or two. You were rather a soft green youth then, and you don't seem to be much harder or less verdant now."

"Sir!" I exclaimed, getting angry.

"Just so," continued he, "and you knew a young rascal there -- "

"I know a rascal here," I exclaimed, starting up, "whom I'll kick -- "

"What!" cried the little stranger, also starting up and capsizing the chair; "Ralph Rover, has time and sunburning and war so changed my visage that you cannot recognise Peterkin?"

I almost gasped for breath.

"Peterkin -- Peterkin Gay!" I exclaimed.

I am not prone to indulge in effeminate demonstration, but I am not ashamed to confess that when I gazed on the weather-beaten though ruddy countenance of my old companion, and observed the eager glance of his bright blue eyes, I was quite overcome, and rushed violently into his arms. I may also add that until that day I had had no idea of Peterkin's physical strength; for during the next five minutes he twisted me about and spun me round and round my own room until my brain began to reel, and I was fain to cry him mercy.

"So, you're all right -- the same jolly, young old wiseacre in whiskers and long coat," cried Peterkin. "Come now, Ralph, sit down if you can. I mean to stay with you all evening, and all night, and all to-morrow, and all next day, so we'll have lots of time to fight our battles o'er again. Meanwhile compose yourself, and I'll tell you what I've come about. Of course, my first and chief reason was to see your face, old boy; but I have another reason too -- a very peculiar reason. I've a proposal to make and a plan to unfold, both of 'em stunners; they'll shut you up and screw you down, and altogether flabbergast you when you hear 'em, so sit down and keep quiet -- do."

I sat down accordingly, and tried to compose myself; but, to say truth, I was so much overjoyed and excited by the sight of my old friend and companion that I had some difficulty at first in fixing my attention on what he said, the more especially that he spoke with extreme volubility, and interrupted his discourse very frequently, in order to ask questions or to explain.

"Now, old fellow," he began, "here goes, and mind you don't interrupt me. Well, I mean to go, and I mean you to go with me, to -- but, I forgot, perhaps you won't be able to go. What are you?"

"What am I?"

"Ay, your profession, your calling; lawyer, M.D., scrivener -- which?"

"I am a naturalist."

"A what?"

"A naturalist."

"Ralph," said Peterkin slowly, "have you been long troubled with that complaint?"

"Yes," I replied, laughing; "I have suffered from it from my earliest infancy, more or less."

"I thought so," rejoined my companion, shaking his head gravely. "I fancied that I observed the development of that disease when we lived together on the coral island. It don't bring you in many thousands a year, does it?"

"No," said I, "it does not. I am only an amateur, having a sufficiency of this world's goods to live on without working for my bread. But although my dear father at his death left me a small fortune, which yields me three hundred a year, I do not feel entitled to lead the life of an idler in this busy world, where so many are obliged to toil night and day for the bare necessaries of life. I have therefore taken to my favourite studies as a sort of business, and flatter myself that I have made one or two not unimportant discoveries, and added a few mites to the sum of human knowledge. A good deal of my time is spent in scientific roving expeditions throughout the country, and in contributing papers to several magazines."

While I was thus speaking I observed that Peterkin's face was undergoing the most remarkable series of changes of expression, which, as I concluded, merged into a smile of beaming delight, as he said, -- "Ralph, you're a trump!"

"Possibly," said I, "you are right; but, setting that question aside for the present, let me remind you that you have not yet told me where you mean to go to."

"I mean," said Peterkin slowly, placing both hands on his knees and looking me steadily in the face -- "I mean to go a-hunting in -- but I forgot. You don't know that I'm a hunter, a somewhat famous hunter?"

"Of course I don't. You are so full of your plans and proposals that you have not yet told me where you have been or what doing these six years. And you ye never written to me once all that time, shabby fellow. I thought you were dead."

"Did you go into mourning for me, Ralph?"

"No, of course not."

"A pretty fellow you are to find fault. You thought that I, your oldest and best friend, was dead, and you did not go into mourning. How could I write to you when you parted from me without giving me your address? It was a mere chance my finding you out even now. I was taking a quiet cup of coffee in the commercial room of a hotel not far distant, when I overheard a stranger speaking of his friend 'Ralph Rover, the philosopher,' so I plunged at him promiscuously, and made him give me your address. But I've corresponded with Jack ever since we parted on the pier at Dover."

"What! Jack -- Jack Martin?" I exclaimed, as a warm gush of feeling filled my heart at the sound of his well-remembered name. "Is Jack alive?"

"Alive! I should think so. If possible, he's more alive than ever; for I should suppose he must be full-grown now, which he was not when we last met. He and I have corresponded regularly. He lives in the north of England, and by good luck happens to be just now within thirty miles of this town. You don't mean to say, Ralph, that you have never met!"

"Never. The very same mistake that happened with you occurred between him and me. We parted vowing to correspond as long as we should live, and three hours after I remembered that we had neglected to exchange our addresses, so that we could not correspond. I have often, often made inquiries both for you and him, but have always failed. I never heard of Jack from the time we parted at Dover till to-day."

"Then no doubt you thought us both dead, and yet you did not go into mourning for either of us! O Ralph, Ralph, I had entertained too good an opinion of you."

"But tell me about Jack," said I, impatient to hear more concerning my dear old comrade.

"Not just now, my boy; more of him in a few minutes. First let us return to the point. What was it? Oh! a -- about my being a celebrated hunter. A very Nimrod -- at least a miniature copy. Well, Ralph, since we last met I have been all over the world, right round and round it. I'm a lieutenant in the navy now -- at least I was a week ago. I've been fighting with the Kaffirs and the Chinamen, and been punishing the rascally sepoys in India, and been hunting elephants in Ceylon and tiger-shooting in the jungles, and harpooning whales in the polar seas, and shooting lions at the Cape; oh, you've no notion where all I've been. It's a perfect marvel I've turned up here alive. But there's one beast I've not yet seen, and I'm resolved to see him and shoot him too -- "

"But," said I, interrupting, "what mean you by saying that you were a lieutenant in the navy a week ago?"

"I mean that I've given it up. I'm tired of the sea. I only value it as a means of getting from one country to another. The land, the land for me! You must know that an old uncle, a rich old uncle of mine, whom I never saw, died lately and left me his whole fortune. Of course he died in India. All old uncles who die suddenly and leave unexpected fortunes to unsuspecting nephews are old Indian uncles, and mine was no exception to the general rule. So I'm independent, like you, Ralph, only I've got three or four thousand a year instead of hundreds, I believe; but I'm not sure and don't care -- and I'm determined now to go on a long hunting expedition. What think ye of all that, my boy?"

"In truth," said I, "it would puzzle me to say what I think, I am so filled with surprise by all you tell me. But you forget that you have not yet told me to which part of the world you mean to go, and what sort of beast it is you are so determined to see and shoot if you can."

"If I can!" echoed Peterkin, with a contemptuous curl of the lip. "Did not I tell you that I was a celebrated hunter? Without meaning to boast, I may tell you that there is no peradventure in my shooting. If I only get there and see the brute within long range, I'll -- ha! won't I!"

"Get where, and see what?"

"Get to Africa and see the gorilla!" cried Peterkin, while a glow of enthusiasm lighted up his eyes. "You've heard of the gorilla, Ralph, of course -- the great ape -- the enormous puggy -- the huge baboon -- the man monkey, that we've been hearing so much of for some years back, and that the niggers on the African coast used to dilate about till they caused the very hair of my head to stand upon end? I'm determined to shoot a gorilla, or prove him to be a myth. And I mean you to come and help me, Ralph; he's quite in your way. A bit of natural history, I suppose, although he seems by all accounts to be a very unnatural monster. And Jack shall go too -- I'm resolved on that; and we three shall roam the wild woods again, as we did in days of yore, and -- "

"Hold, Peterkin," said I, interrupting. "How do you know that Jack will go?"

"How do I know? Intuitively, of course. I shall write to him to-night; the post does not leave till ten. He'll get it to-morrow at breakfast, and will catch the forenoon coach, which will bring him down here by two o'clock, and then we'll begin our preparations at once, and talk the matter over at dinner. So you see it's all cut and dry. Give me a sheet of paper and I'll write at once. Ah! here's a bit; now a pen. Bless me, Ralph, haven't you got a quill? Who ever heard of a philosophical naturalist writing with steel. Now, then, here goes: -- 'B'luv'd Jack,' -- will that do to begin with, eh? I'm afraid it's too affectionate; he'll think it's from a lady friend. But it can't be altered, -- 'Here I am, and here's Ralph -- Ralph Rover!!!!!! think of that,' (I say, Ralph, I've put six marks of admiration there); 'I've found him out. Do come to see us. Excruciatingly important business. Ever thine -- Peterkin Gay.' Will that bring him, d'ye think?"

"I think it will," said I, laughing.

"Then off with it, Ralph," cried my volatile friend, jumping up and looking hastily round for the bell-rope. Not being able to find it, my bell-pull being an unobtrusive knob and not a rope, he rushed to the door, unlocked it, darted out, and uttered a tremendous roar, which was followed by a clatter and a scream from old Agnes, whom he had upset and tumbled over.

It was curious to note the sudden change that took place in Peterkin's face, voice, and manner, as he lifted the poor old woman, who was very thin and light, in his arms, and carrying her into the room, placed her in my easy-chair. Real anxiety was depicted in his countenance, and he set her down with a degree of care and tenderness that quite amazed me. I was myself very much alarmed at first.

"My poor dear old woman," said Peterkin, supporting my landlady's head; "my stupid haste I fear you are hurt."

"Hech! it's nae hurt -- it's deed I am, fair deed; killed be a whaumlskamerin' young blagyird. Oh, ma puir heed!"

The manner and tone in which this was said convinced me that old Agnes was more frightened than injured. In a few minutes the soothing tones and kind manner of my friend had such an effect upon her that she declared she was better, and believed after all that she was only a "wee bit frichtened." Nay, so completely was she conciliated, that she insisted on conveying the note to the post-office, despite Peterkin's assurance that he would not hear of it. Finally she hobbled out of the room with the letter in her hand.

It is interesting to note how that, in most of the affairs of humanity, things turn out very different, often totally different, from what we had expected or imagined. During the remainder of that evening Peterkin and I talked frequently and much of our old friend Jack Martin. We recalled his manly yet youthful countenance, his bold, lion-like courage, his broad shoulders and winning gentle smile, and although we knew that six years must have made an immense difference in his personal appearance -- for he was not much more than eighteen when we last parted --  we could not think of him except as a hearty, strapping sailor-boy. We planned, too, how we would meet him at the coach; how we would stand aside in the crowd until he began to look about for us in surprise, and then one of us would step forward and ask if he wished to be directed to any particular part of the town, and so lead him on and talk to him as a stranger for some time before revealing who we were. And much more to the same effect. But when next day came our plans and our conceptions were utterly upset.

A little before two we sauntered down to the coach-office, and waited impatiently for nearly twenty minutes. Of course the coach was late; it always is on such occasions.

"Suppose he does not come," said I.

"What a fellow you are," cried Peterkin, "to make uncomfortable suppositions! Let us rather suppose that he does come."

"Oh, then, it would be all right; but if he does not come, what then?"

"Why, then, it would be all wrong, and we should have to return home and eat our dinner in the sulks, that's all."

As my companion spoke we observed the coach come sweeping round the turn of the road about half a mile distant. In a few seconds it dashed into the town at full gallop, and finally drew up abruptly opposite the door of the inn, where were assembled the usual group of hostlers and waiters and people who expected friends by the coach.

"He's not there," whispered Peterkin, in deep disappointment -- "at least he's not on the outside, and Jack would never travel inside of a coach even in bad weather, much less in fine. That's not him on the back-seat beside the fat old woman with the blue bundle, surely! It's very like him, but too young, much too young. There's a great giant of a man on the box-seat with a beard like a grenadier's shako, and a stout old gentleman behind him with gold spectacles. That's all, except two boys farther aft, and three ladies in the cabin. Oh, what a bore!"

Although deeply disappointed at the non-arrival of Jack, I could with difficulty refrain from smiling at the rueful and woe-begone countenance of my poor companion. It was evident that he could not bear disappointment with equanimity, and I was on the point of offering some consolatory remarks, when my attention was attracted by the little old woman with the blue bundle, who went up to the gigantic man with the black beard, and in the gentlest possible tone of voice asked if he could direct her to the white house.

"No, madam," replied the big man hastily; "I'm a stranger here."

The little old woman was startled by his abrupt answer. "Deary me, sir, no offence, I hope."

She then turned to Peterkin and put the same question, possibly under a vague sort of impression that if a gigantic frame betokened a gruff nature, diminutive stature must necessarily imply extreme amiability. If so, she must have been much surprised as well as disappointed, for Peterkin, rendered irascible by disappointment, turned short round and said sharply, "Why, madam, how can I tell you where the white house is, unless you say which white house you want? Half the houses of the town are white -- at least they're dirty white," he added bitterly, as he turned away.

"I think I can direct you, ma'am," said I, stepping quickly up with a bland smile, in order to counteract, if possible, my companion's rudeness.

"Thank you, sir, kindly," said the little old woman; "I'm glad to find some little civility in the town."

"Come with me, ma'am; I am going past the white house, and will show you the way."

"And pray, sir," said the big stranger, stepping up to me as I was about to move away, "can you recommend me to a good hotel?"

I replied that I could; that there was one in the immediate vicinity of the white house, and that if he would accompany me I would show him the way. All this I did purposely in a very affable and obliging tone and manner; for I hold that example is infinitely better than precept, and always endeavour, if possible, to overcome evil with good. I offered my arm to the old woman, who thanked me and took it.

"What!" whispered Peterkin, "you don't mean me to take this great ugly gorilla in tow?"

"Of course," replied I, laughing, as I led the way.

Immediately I entered into conversation with my companion, and I heard "the gorilla" attempt to do so with Peterkin; but from the few sharp cross replies that reached my ear, I became aware that he was unsuccessful. In the course of a few minutes, however, he appeared to have overcome his companion's ill-humour, for I overheard their voices growing louder and more animated as they walked behind me.

Suddenly I heard a shout, and turning hastily round, observed Peterkin struggling in the arms of the gorilla! Amazed beyond measure at the sight, and firmly persuaded that a cowardly assault had been made upon my friend, I seized the old woman's umbrella, as the only available weapon, and flew to the rescue.

"Jack, my boy! can it be possible?" gasped Peterkin.

"I believe it is," replied Jack, laughing. -- "Ralph, my dear old fellow, how are you?"

I stood petrified. I believed that I was in a dream.

I know not what occurred during the next five minutes. All I could remember with anything like distinctness was a succession of violent screams from the little old woman, who fled shouting thieves and murder at the full pitch of her voice. We never saw that old woman again, but I made a point of returning her umbrella to the "white house."

Gradually we became collected and sane.

"Why, Jack, how did you find us out?" cried Peterkin, as we all hurried on to my lodgings, totally forgetful of the little old woman, whom, as I have said, we never saw again, but who, I sincerely trust, arrived at the white house in safety.

"Find you out! I knew you the moment I set eyes on you. Ralph puzzled me for a second, he has grown so much stouter; but I should know your nose, Peterkin, at a mile off."

"Well, Jack, I did not know you," retorted Peterkin, "but I'm safe never again to forget you. Such a great hairy Cossack as you have become! Why, what do you mean by it?"

"I couldn't help it, please," pleaded Jack; "I grew in spite of myself; but I think I've stopped now."

"It's time," remarked Peterkin.

Jack had indeed grown to a size that men seldom attain to without losing in grace infinitely more than they gain in bulk, but he had retained all the elegance of form and sturdy vigour of action that had characterised him as a boy. He was fully six feet two inches in his stockings, but so perfect were his proportions that his great height did not become apparent until you came close up to him. Full half of his handsome manly face was hid by a bushy black beard and moustache, and his curly hair had been allowed to grow luxuriantly, so that his whole aspect was more like to the descriptions we have of one of the old Scandinavian Vikings than a gentleman of the present time. In whatever company he chanced to be he towered high above every one else, and I am satisfied that, had he walked down Whitechapel, the Horse Guards would have appeared small beside him, for he possessed not only great length of limb but immense breadth of chest and shoulders.

During our walk to my lodgings Peterkin hurriedly stated his "plan and proposal," which caused Jack to laugh very much at first, but in a few minutes he became grave, and said slowly, "That will just suit -- it will do exactly."

"What will do exactly? Do be more explicit, man," said Peterkin, with some impatience.

"I'll go with you, my boy."

"Will you?" cried Peterkin, seizing his hand and shaking it violently; "I knew you would. I said it; didn't I, Ralph? And now we shall be sure of a gorilla, if there's one in Africa, for I'll use you as a stalking-horse."

"Indeed!" exclaimed Jack.

"Yes; I'll put a bear-skin or some sort of fur on your shoulders, and tie a lady's boa to you for a tail, and send you into the woods. The gorillas will be sure to mistake you for a relative until you get quite close; then you'll take one pace to the left with the left foot (as the volunteers say), I'll take one to the front with the right -- at fifty yards, ready -- present -- bang, and down goes the huge puggy with a bullet right between its two eyes! There. And Ralph's agreed to go too."

"O Peterkin, I've done nothing of the sort. You proposed it."

"Well, and isn't that the same thing? I wonder, Ralph that you can give way to such mean-spirited prevarication. What? 'It's not prevarication!' Don't say that now; you know it is. Ah! you may laugh, my boy, but you have promised to go with me and Jack to Africa, and go you shall."

And so, reader, it was ultimately settled, and in the course of two weeks more we three were on our way to the land of the slave, the black savage, and the gorilla.



Chapter Two.

Life In The Wild Woods.

One night, about five or six weeks after our resolution to go to Africa on a hunting expedition was formed, I put to myself the question, "Can it be possible that we are actually here, in the midst of it?"

"Certainly, my boy, in the very thick of it," answered Peterkin, in a tone of voice which made Jack laugh, while I started and exclaimed -- 

"Why, Peterkin, how did you come to guess my thoughts?"

"Because, Ralph, you have got into a habit of thinking aloud, which may do very well as long as you have no secrets to keep but it may prove inconvenient some day, so I warn you in time."

Not feeling disposed at that time to enter into a bantering conversation with my volatile companion, I made no reply, but abandoned myself again to the pleasing fancies and feelings which were called up by the singular scene in the midst of which I found myself.

It seemed as if it were but yesterday when we drove about the crowded streets of London making the necessary purchases for our intended journey, and now, as I gazed around, every object that met my eye seemed strange, and wild, and foreign, and romantic. We three were reclining round an enormous wood fire in the midst of a great forest, the trees and plants of which were quite new to me, and totally unlike those of my native land. Rich luxuriance of vegetation was the feature that filled my mind most. Tall palms surrounded us, throwing their broad leaves overhead and partially concealing the starlit sky. Thick tough limbs of creeping plants and wild vines twisted and twined round everything and over everything, giving to the woods an appearance of tangled impenetrability; but the beautiful leaves of some, and the delicate tendrils of others, half concealed the sturdy limbs of the trees, and threw over the whole a certain air of wild grace, as might a semi-transparent and beautiful robe if thrown around the form of a savage.

The effect of a strong fire in the woods at night is to give to surrounding space an appearance of ebony blackness, against which dark ground the gnarled stems and branches and pendent foliage appear as if traced out in light and lovely colours, which are suffused with a rich warm tone from the blaze.

We were now in the wilds of Africa, although, as I have said, I found it difficult to believe the fact. Jack and I wore loose brown shooting coats and pantaloons; but we had made up our minds to give up waistcoats and neckcloths, so that our scarlet flannel shirts with turned-down collars gave to us quite a picturesque and brigand-like appearance as we encircled the blaze -- Peterkin smoking vigorously, for he had acquired that bad and very absurd habit at sea. Jack smoked too, but he was not so inveterate as Peterkin.

Jack was essentially moderate in his nature. He did nothing violently or in a hurry; but this does not imply that he was slow or lazy. He was leisurely in disposition, and circumstances seldom required him to be otherwise. When Peterkin or I had to lift heavy weights, we were obliged to exert our utmost strength and agitate our whole frames; but Jack was so powerful that a comparatively slight effort was all that he was usually obliged to make. Again, when we two were in a hurry we walked quickly, but Jack's long limbs enabled him to keep up with us without effort. Nevertheless there were times when he was called upon to act quickly and with energy. On those occasions he was as active as Peterkin himself, but his movements were tremendous. It was, I may almost say, awful to behold Jack when acting under powerful excitement. He was indeed a splendid fellow, and not by any means deserving of the name of gorilla, which Peterkin had bestowed on him.

But to continue my description of our costume. We all wore homespun grey trousers of strong material. Peterkin and Jack wore leggings in addition, so that they seemed to have on what are now termed knickerbockers. Peterkin, however, had no coat. He preferred a stout grey flannel shirt hanging down to his knees and belted round his waist in the form of a tunic. Our tastes in headdress were varied. Jack wore a pork-pie cap; Peterkin and I had wide-awakes. My facetious little companion said that I had selected this species of hat because I was always more than half asleep! Being peculiar in everything, Peterkin wore his wide-awake in an unusual manner -- namely, turned up at the back, down at the front, and curled very much up at the sides.

We were so filled with admiration of Jack's magnificent beard and moustache, that Peterkin and I had resolved to cultivate ours while in Africa; but I must say that, as I looked at Peterkin's face, the additional hair was not at that time an improvement, and I believe that much more could not have been said for myself. The effect on my little comrade was to cause the lower part of his otherwise good-looking face to appear extremely dirty.

"I wonder," said Peterkin, after a long silence, "if we shall reach the niggers' village in time for the hunt to-morrow. I fear that we have spent too much time in this wild-goose chase."

"Wild-goose chase, Peterkin!" I exclaimed. "Do you call hunting the gorilla by such a term?"

"Hunting the gorilla? no, certainly; but looking for the gorilla in a part of the woods where no such beast was ever heard of since Adam was a schoolboy -- "

"Nay, Peterkin," interrupted Jack; "we are getting very near to the gorilla country, and you must make allowance for the enthusiasm of a naturalist."

"Ah! we shall see where the naturalist's enthusiasm will fly to when we actually do come face to face with the big puggy."

"Well," said I, apologetically, "I won't press you to go hunting again; I'll be content to follow."

"Press me, my dear Ralph!" exclaimed Peterkin hastily, fearing that he had hurt my feelings; "why, man, I do but jest with you -- you are so horridly literal. I'm overjoyed to be pressed to go on the maddest wild-goose chase that ever was invented. My greatest delight would be to go gorilla-hunting down Fleet Street, if you were so disposed. -- But to be serious, Jack, do you think we shall be in time for the elephant-hunt to-morrow?"

"Ay, in capital time, if you don't knock up."

"What! I knock up! I've a good mind to knock you down for suggesting such an egregious impossibility."

"That's an impossibility anyhow, Peterkin, because I'm down already," said Jack, yawning lazily and stretching out his limbs in a more comfortable and degage manner.

Peterkin seemed to ponder as he smoked his pipe for some time in silence.

"Ralph," said he, looking up suddenly, "I don't feel a bit sleepy, and yet I'm tired enough."

"You are smoking too much, perhaps," I suggested.

"It's not that," cried Jack; "he has eaten too much supper."

"Base insinuation!" retorted Peterkin.

"Then it must be the monkey. That's it. Roast monkey does not agree with you."

"Do you know, I shouldn't wonder if you were right; and it's a pity, too, for we shall have to live a good deal on such fare, I believe. However, I suppose we shall get used to it. -- But I say, boys, isn't it jolly to be out here living like savages? I declare it seems to me like a dream or a romance. -- Just look, Ralph, at the strange wild creepers that are festooned overhead, and the great tropical leaves behind us, and the clear sky above, with the moon -- ah! the moon; yes, that's one comfort -- the moon is unchanged. The same moon that smiles down upon us through a tangled mesh-work of palm-leaves and wild vines and monkeys' tails, is peeping down the chimney-pots of London and Edinburgh and Dublin!"

"Why, Peterkin, you must have studied hard in early life to be so good a geographer."

"Rather," observed Peterkin.

"Yes; and look at the strange character of the tree-stems," said I, unwilling to allow the subject to drop. "See those huge palmettoes like -- like -- "

"Overgrown cabbages," suggested Peterkin; and he continued, "Observe the quaint originality of form in the body and limbs of that bloated old spider that is crawling up your leg, Ralph!"

I started involuntarily, for there is no creature of which I have a greater abhorrence than a spider.

"Where is it? oh! I see," and the next moment I secured my prize and placed it with loathing, but interest, in my entomological box.

At that moment a hideous roar rang through the woods, seemingly close behind us. We all started to our feet, and seizing our rifles, which lay beside us ready loaded, cocked them and drew close together round the fire.

"This won't do, lads," said Jack, after a few minutes' breathless suspense, during which the only sound we could hear was the beating of our own hearts; "we have allowed the fire to get too low, and we've forgotten to adopt our friend the trader's advice, and make two fires."

So saying, Jack laid down his rifle, and kicking the logs with his heavy boot, sent up such a cloud of bright sparks as must certainly have scared the wild animal, whatever it was, away; for we heard no more of it that night.

"You're right, Jack," remarked Peterkin; "so let us get up a blaze as fast as we can, and I'll take the first watch, not being sleepy. Come along."

In a few minutes we cut down with our axes a sufficient quantity of dry wood to keep two large fires going all night; we then kindled our second fire at a few yards distant from the first, and made our camp between them. This precaution we took in order to scare away the wild animals whose cries we heard occasionally during the night. Peterkin, having proposed to take the first watch -- for we had to watch by turns all the night through -- lighted his pipe and sat down before the cheerful fire with his back against the stem of a palm-tree, and his rifle lying close to his hand, to be ready in case of a surprise. There were many natives wandering about in that neighbourhood, some of whom might be ignorant of our having arrived at their village on a peaceful errand. If these should have chanced to come upon us suddenly, there was no saying what they might do in their surprise and alarm, so it behoved us to be on our guard.

Jack and I unrolled the light blankets that we carried strapped to our shoulders through the day, and laying ourselves down side by side with our feet to the fire and our heads pillowed on a soft pile of sweet-scented grass, we addressed ourselves to sleep. But sleep did not come so soon as we expected. I have often noted with some surprise and much interest the curious phases of the phenomenon of sleep. When I have gone to bed excessively fatigued and expecting to fall asleep almost at once, I have been surprised and annoyed to find that the longer I wooed the drowsy god the longer he refused to come to me; and at last, when I have given up the attempt in despair, he has suddenly laid his gentle hand upon my eyes and carried me into the land of Nod. Again, when I have been exceedingly anxious to keep awake, I have been attacked by sleep with such irresistible energy that I have been utterly unable to keep my eyelids open or my head erect, and have sat with my eyes blinking like those of an owl in the sunshine, and my head nodding like that of a Chinese mandarin.

On this our first night in the African bush, at least our first night on a hunting expedition -- we had been many nights in the woods on our journey to that spot -- on this night, I say, Jack and I could by no means get to sleep for a very long time after we lay down, but continued to gaze up through the leafy screen overhead at the stars, which seemed to wink at us, I almost fancied, jocosely. We did not speak to each other, but purposely kept silence. After a time, however, Jack groaned, and said softly -- 

"Ralph, are you asleep?"

"No," said I, yawning.

"I'm quite sure that Peterkin is," added Jack, raising his head and looking across the fire at the half-recumbent form of our companion.

"Is he?" said Peterkin in a low tone. "Just about as sound as a weasel!"

"Jack," said I.

"Well?"

"I can't sleep a wink. Ye-a-ow! isn't it odd?"

"No more can I. Do you know, Ralph, I've been counting the red berries in that tree above me for half an hour, in the hope that the monotony of the thing would send me off; but I was interrupted by a small monkey who has been sitting up among the branches and making faces at me for full twenty minutes. There it is yet, I believe. Do you see it?"

"No; where?"

"Almost above your head."

I gazed upward intently for a few minutes, until I thought I saw the monkey, but it was very indistinct. Gradually, however, it became more defined; then to my surprise it turned out to be the head of an elephant! I was not only amazed but startled at this.

"Get your rifle, Jack!" said I, in a low whisper.

Jack made some sort of reply, but his voice sounded hollow and indistinct. Then I looked up again, and saw that it was the head of a hippopotamus, not that of an elephant, which was looking down at me. Curiously enough, I felt little or no surprise at this, and when in the course of a few minutes I observed a pair of horns growing out of the creature's eyes and a bushy tail standing erect on the apex of its head, I ceased to be astonished at the sight altogether, and regarded it as quite natural and commonplace. The object afterwards assumed the appearance of a lion with a crocodile's bail, and a serpent with a monkey's head, and lastly of a gorilla, without producing in me any other feeling than that of profound indifference. Gradually the whole scene vanished, and I became totally oblivious.

This state of happy unconsciousness had scarcely lasted -- it seemed to me -- two minutes, when I was awakened by Peterkin laying his hand on my shoulder and saying -- 

"Now then, Ralph, it's time to rouse up."

"O Peterkin," said I, in a tone of remonstrance, "how could you be so unkind as to waken me when I had just got to sleep? Shabby fellow!"

"Just got to sleep, say you? You've been snoring like an apoplectic alderman for exactly two hours."

"You don't say so!" I exclaimed, getting into a sitting posture.

"Indeed you have. I'm sorry to rouse you, but time's up, and I'm sleepy; so rub your eyes, man, and try to look a little less like an astonished owl if you can. I have just replenished both the fires, so you can lean your back against that palm-tree and take it easy for three-quarters of an hour or so. After that you'll have to heap on more wood."

I looked at Jack, who was now lying quite unconscious, breathing with the slow, deep regularity of profound slumber, and with his mouth wide open.

"What a chance for some waggish baboon to drop a nut or a berry in!" said Peterkin, winking at me with one eye as he lay down in the spot from which I had just risen.

He was very sleepy, poor fellow, and could hardly smile at his own absurd fancy. He was asleep almost instantly. In fact, I do not believe that he again opened the eye with which he had winked at me, but that he merely shut the other and began to slumber forthwith.

I now began to feel quite interested in my responsible position as guardian of the camp. I examined my rifle to see that it was in order and capped; then leaning against the palm-tree, which was, as it were, my sentry-box, I stood erect and rubbed my hands and took off my cap, so that the pleasant night air might play about my temples, and more effectually banish drowsiness.

In order to accomplish this more thoroughly I walked round both fires and readjusted the logs, sending up showers of sparks as I did so. Then I went to the edge of the circle of light, in the centre of which our camp lay, and peered into the gloom of the dark forest.

There was something inexpressibly delightful yet solemn in my feelings as I gazed into that profound obscurity where the great tree-stems and the wild gigantic foliage nearest to me appeared ghost-like and indistinct, and the deep solitudes of which were peopled, not only with the strange fantastic forms of my excited fancy, but, as I knew full well, with real wild creatures, both huge and small, such as my imagination at that time had not fully conceived. I felt awed, almost oppressed, with the deep silence around, and, I must confess, looked somewhat nervously over my shoulder as I returned to the fire and sat down to keep watch at my post.



Chapter Three.

Wherein I Mount Guard, And How I Did It, Etcetera.

Now it so happened that the battle which I had to fight with myself after taking my post was precisely the converse of that which I fought during the earlier part of that night. Then, it was a battle with wakefulness; now, it was a struggle with sleep; and of the two fights the latter was the more severe by far.

I began by laying down my rifle close by my side, leaning back in a sitting posture against the palm-tree, and resigning myself to the contemplation of the fire, which burned merrily before me, while I pondered with myself how I should best employ my thoughts during the three long hours of my watch. But I had not dwelt on that subject more than three minutes, when I was rudely startled by my own head falling suddenly and heavily forward on my chest. I immediately roused myself. "Ah! Ralph, Ralph," said I to myself in a whisper, "this won't do, lad. To sleep at your post! shame on you! Had you been a sentinel in time of war that nod would have cost you your life, supposing you to have been caught in the act."

Soliloquising thus, I arose and shook myself. Then I slapped my chest several times and pulled my nose and sat down again. Only a few minutes elapsed before the same thing occurred to me again, so I leaped up, and mended the fires, and walked to and fro, until I felt thoroughly awake, but in order to make sure that it should not occur again, I walked to the edge of the circle of light and gazed for some time into the dark forest, as I had done before. While standing thus I felt my knees give way, as if they had been suddenly paralysed, and I awoke just in time to prevent myself falling to the ground. I must confess I was much amazed at this, for although I had often read of soldiers falling asleep standing at their posts, I had never believed the thing possible.

I now became rather anxious, "for," thought I, "if I go to sleep and the fires die down, who knows but wild beasts may come upon us and kill us before we can seize our arms." For a moment or two I meditated awaking Jack and begging him to keep me company, but when I reflected that his watch was to come immediately after mine, I had not the heart to do it. "No!" said I (and I said it aloud for the purpose of preventing drowsiness) -- "no; I will fight this battle alone! I will repeat some stanzas from my favourite authors. Yes, I will try to remember a portion of 'A Midsummer-Night's Dream.' It will be somewhat appropriate to my present circumstances."

Big with this resolve, I sat down with my face to the fire and my back to the palm-tree, and -- fell sound asleep instantly!

How long I lay in this condition I know not, but I was suddenly awakened by a yell so appalling that my heart leaped as if into my throat, and my nerves thrilled with horror. For one instant I was paralysed; then my blood seemed to rebound on its course. I sprang up and attempted to seize my rifle.

The reader may judge of my state of mind when I observed that it was gone! I leaped towards the fire, and grasping a lighted brand, turned round and glared into the woods in the direction whence the yell came.

It was grey dawn, and I could see things pretty distinctly; but the only living object that met my gaze was Peterkin, who stood with my rifle in his hand laughing heartily!

I immediately turned to look at Jack, who was sitting up in the spot where he had passed the night, with a sleepy smile on his countenance.

"Why, what's the meaning of this?" I inquired.

"The meaning of it?" cried Peterkin, as he advanced and restored the rifle to its place. "A pretty fellow you are to mount guard! we might have been all murdered in our sleep by niggers or eaten alive by gorillas, for all that you would have done to save us."

"But, Peterkin," said I gravely, "you ought not to have startled me so; you gave me a terrible fright. People have been driven mad before now, I assure you, by practical jokes."

"My dear fellow," cried Peterkin, with much earnestness, "I know that as well as you. But, in the first place, you were guilty of so heinous a crime that I determined to punish you, and at the same time to do it in a way that would impress it forcibly on your memory; and in the second place, I would not have done it at all had I not known that your nerves are as strong as those of a dray-horse. You ought to be taking shame to yourself on account of your fault rather than objecting to your punishment."

"Peterkin is right, my boy," said Jack, laughing, "though I must say he had need be sure of the nerves of any one to whom he intends to administer such a ferocious yell as that. Anyhow, I have no reason to complain; for you have given me a good long sleep, although I can't say exactly that you have taken my watch. It will be broad daylight in half an hour, so we must be stirring, comrades."

On considering the subject I admitted the force of these remarks, and felt somewhat crestfallen. No doubt, my companions had treated the thing jocularly, and, to say truth, there was much that was comical in the whole affair; but the more I thought of it, the more I came to perceive how terrible might have been the consequences of my unfaithfulness as a sentinel. I laid the lesson to heart, and I can truly say that from that day to this I have never again been guilty of the crime of sleeping at my post.

We now busied ourselves in collecting together the dying embers of our fire and in preparing breakfast, which consisted of tea, hard biscuit, and cold monkey. None of us liked the monkey; not that its flesh was bad -- quite the contrary -- but it looked so like a small roasted baby that we could not relish it at all. However, it was all we had; for we had set off on this hunting excursion intending to live by our rifles, but had been unfortunate, having seen nothing except a monkey or two.

The kettle was soon boiled, and we sat down to our meagre fare with hearty appetites. While we are thus engaged, I shall turn aside for a little and tell the reader, in one or two brief sentences, how we got to this place.

We shipped in a merchant ship at Liverpool, and sailed for the west coast of Africa. Arrived there we found a party, under the command of a Portuguese trader, about to set off to the interior. He could speak a little English; so we arranged to go with him as far as he intended to proceed, learn as much of the native language as possible while in his company, and then obtain a native guide to conduct us to the country in which the gorillas are found. To this native guide, we arranged, should be explained by the trader our object in visiting the country, so that he might tell the tribes whom we intended to visit. This, we found, was an absolutely needful precaution, on the following ground.

The natives of Africa have a singular and very bad style of carrying on trade with the white men who visit their shores. The traffic consists chiefly of ivory, barwood (a wood much used in dyeing), and indiarubber. The natives of the far interior are not allowed to convey these commodities directly to the coast, but by the law of the land (which means the law of the strongest, for they are absolute savages) are obliged to deliver their goods to the care of the tribe next to them; these pass them on to the next tribe; and so on they go from tribe to tribe till they reach the coast, where they are sold by the tribe there. The price obtained, which usually consists of guns, powder and shot, looking-glasses, cloth, and sundry other articles and trinkets useful to men in a savage state, is returned to the owners in the far interior through the same channel; but as each tribe deducts a percentage for its trouble, the price dwindles down as it goes, until a mere trifle, sometimes nothing at all, remains to be handed over to the unfortunate people of the tribe who originally sent off the goods for sale. Of course, such a system almost paralyses trade. But the intermediate tribes between the coast and the interior being the gainers by this system, are exceedingly jealous of anything like an attempt to carry on direct trade. They are ready to go to war with the tribes of the interior, should they attempt it, and they throw all the opposition they can in the way of the few white men who ever penetrate the interior for such a purpose.

It will thus be seen that our travels would be hindered very much, if not stopped altogether, and ourselves be regarded with jealousy, or perhaps murdered, if our motives in going inland were not fully and satisfactorily explained to the different tribes as we passed through their lands. And we therefore proposed to overcome the difficulty by taking a native guide with us from the tribe with which we should chance to be residing when obliged to separate from the Portuguese trader.

We had now reached this point. The day before that on which we encamped in the woods, as above related, we arrived at a native village, and had been received kindly by the king. Almost immediately after our arrival we heard so many stories about gorillas that I felt persuaded we should fall in with one if we went a-hunting, and being exceedingly anxious to add one to my collection of animals -- for I had a small museum at home -- I prevailed on Jack and Peterkin to go one day's journey into the bush to look for them. They laughed very much at me indeed, and said that we were still very far away from the gorilla country; but I had read in some work on Africa a remark to the effect that there is no cordillera, or mountain range, extending across the whole continent to limit the habitat of certain classes of animals, and I thought that if any animal in Africa would not consent to remain in one region when it wished to go to another, that animal must be the ferocious gorilla. The trader also laughed at me, and said that he had never seen any himself in that region, and that we would have to cross the desert before seeing them. Still, I felt a disposition to try; besides, I felt certain that we should at least fall in with some sort of animals or plants or minerals that would be worth collecting; so it was agreed that we should go out for a single day, and be back in time for a great elephant-hunt which was about to take place.

But to return from this digression. Having finished breakfast, we made three bundles or packages of our blankets, provisions, and camp equipage; strapped them on our backs; and then, shouldering our rifles, set out on our return to the negro village.

Of course we gave Jack the largest and heaviest bundle to carry. Peterkin's and mine were about equal, for although I was taller than Peterkin, I was not by any means so powerful or active. I often wondered at the great strength that lay in the little frame of my friend. To look at him, no one would believe that he was such a tough, wiry, hardy little fellow. He was the same hearty, jovial creature that I had lived with so pleasantly when he and Jack and I were cast away on the coral island. With the exception of a small scrap of whisker on each cheek, a scar over the right eye, and a certain air of manliness, there was little change in my old comrade.

"Ralph," said Jack, as we strode along through the forest, "do you remember how we three used to wander about together in the woods of our coral island?"

"Remember!" I cried with enthusiasm, for at that moment the thought occurred to my own mind; "how can I ever forget it, Jack? It seems to me just like yesterday. I can hardly believe that six long years have passed since we drank that delicious natural lemonade out of the green cocoa-nuts, and wandered on the coral beach, and visited Penguin Island, and dived into the cave to escape the pirates. The whole scene rises up before me so vividly that I could fancy we were still there. Ah! these were happy times."

"So they were," cried Peterkin; "but don't you go and become sentimentally sad, Ralph, when you talk of those happy days. If we were happy there, are we not happy here? -- There's no change in us -- except, indeed, that Jack has become a gorilla."

"Ay, and you a monkey," retorted Jack.

"True; and Ralph a naturalist, which is the strangest beast of all," added Peterkin. -- "Can you tell me, Ralph, by the way, what tree that is?"

"I'm sure I cannot tell. Never saw or heard of one like it before," I replied, looking at the tree referred to with some interest. It was a fine tree, but the great beauty about it was the gorgeous fruit with which it was laden. It hung in the form of bunches of large grapes, and was of the brightest scarlet colour. The glowing bunches seemed like precious gems glittering amongst the green foliage, and I observed that a few monkeys and several parrots were peeping at us through the branches.

"It seems good for food," said Jack. "You'd better climb up, Peterkin, and pull a few bunches. The puggies won't mind you, of course, being one of themselves."

"Ralph," said Peterkin, turning to me, and deigning no reply to Jack, "you call yourself a naturalist; so I suppose you are acquainted with the habits of monkeys, and can turn your knowledge to practical account."

"Well," I replied, "I know something about the monkey tribes, but I cannot say that at this moment I remember any particular habit of which we might avail ourselves."

"Do you not? Well, now, that's odd. I'm a student of nature myself, and I have picked up a little useful knowledge in the course of my travels. Did you ever travel so far as the Zoological Gardens in London?"

"Of course I have done so, often."

"And did you ever observe a peculiar species of monkey, which, when you made a face at it, instantly flew into a towering passion, and shook the bars of its cage until you expected to see them broken?"

"Yes," said I, laughing; "what then?"

"Look here, you naturalist, and I'll put a wrinkle on your horn. Yonder hangs a magnificent bunch of fruit that I very much desire to possess."

"But it's too high to reach," said I.

"But there's a monkey sitting beside it," said Peterkin.

"I see. You don't expect him to pull it and throw it down, do you?"

"Oh no, certainly not; but -- " Here Peterkin stepped up to the tree, and looking up at the monkey, said, "O-o-o-oo-o!" angrily.

"O-o-o-oo-oo!" replied the monkey, stretching out its neck and looking down with an expression of surprise and indignation, as if to say, "What on earth do you mean by that?"

"Oo-o-o-oo-o!" roared Peterkin.

Hereupon the monkey uttered a terrific shriek of passion, exposed all its teeth and gums, glared at its adversary like a little fiend, and seizing the branch with both hands, shook it with all its might. The result was, that not only did the coveted bunch of fruit fall to the ground, but a perfect shower of bunches came down, one of which hit Jack on the forehead, and, bursting there, sent its fragrant juice down his face and into his beard, while the parrots and all the other monkeys took to flight, shrieking with mingled terror and rage.

"You see I'm a practical man," observed Peterkin quietly, as he picked up the fruit and began to eat it. "Knowledge is power, my boy. A man with a philosophical turn of mind like yourself ought to have been up to a dodge of this sort. How capital this fruit is, to be sure! -- Does it make good pomade, Jack?"

"Excellent; but as I'm not in the habit of using pomade, I shall wash this out of my beard as quickly as possible."

While Jack went to a brook that ran close to where we stood, I tasted the fruit, and found it most excellent, the pulp being juicy, with a very pleasant flavour.

While we were thus engaged a wild pig ran grunting past us.

"Doesn't that remind you of some of our doings on the coral island, Ralph?" said Peterkin.

Before I could reply a herd of lovely small gazelles flew past. Our rifles were lying on the ground, and before either of us could take aim the swift creatures were lost sight of in the thick underwood. Peterkin fired one shot at a venture, but without any result.

We were still deploring our stupidity in not having our rifles handy, when a strange sound was heard in the distance. By this time Jack had come up, so we all three seized our rifles and listened intently. The sound was evidently approaching. It was a low, dull, booming roar, which at one moment seemed to be distant thunder, at another the cry of some huge animal in rage or pain. Presently the beating of heavy hoofs on the turf and the crash of branches were heard. Each of us sprang instinctively towards a tree, feeling that if danger were near its trunk would afford us some protection.

Being ignorant, as yet, of the cries of the various wild beasts inhabiting those woods, we were greatly at a loss to determine what creature it could be that approached at such headlong speed. That its mad career was caused by fear soon became apparent, for the tones of terror either in man or beast, when distinctly heard, cannot be mistaken.

Immediately in front of the spot where we stood was an open space or glade of considerable extent. Towards this the animal approached, as was evident from the increasing loudness of its wild roar, which was almost continuous. In another moment the thick wall of underwood at its farther extremity was burst asunder with a crash, and a wild buffalo bull bounded into the plain and dashed madly across. On its neck was crouched a leopard, which had fixed its claws and teeth deep in the flesh of the agonised animal. In vain did the bull bound and rear, toss and plunge. At one moment it ran like the wind; the next it stopped with such violence as to tear up the turf and scatter it around. Then it reared, almost falling back; anon it plunged and rushed on again, with the foam flying from its mouth, and its bloodshot eyes glaring with the fire of rage and terror, while the woods seemed to tremble with its loud and deep-toned bellowing. Twice in its passage across the open glade it ran, in its blind fury, straight against a tree, almost beating in its skull, and for a moment arresting its progress; but it instantly recovered the shock and burst away again as madly as ever. But no effort that it was capable of making could relieve the poor creature from its deadly burden, or cause the leopard in the slightest degree to relax its fatal gripe.

It chanced that the wild bull's mad gallop was in a direction that brought it within a few yards of the spot where we stood, so we prepared to put an end to its misery. As it drew near, Jack, who was in advance, raised his rifle. I, being only a short distance from him, also made ready to fire, although I confess that in the agitation of the moment I could not make up my mind whether I should fire at the buffalo or the leopard. As far as I can recall my rapid and disjointed thoughts on that exciting occasion, I reasoned thus: "If I shoot the leopard the bull will escape, and if I shoot the bull the leopard will escape." It did not occur to me at that trying moment, when self-possession and decision were so necessary, that I might shoot the bull with one barrel, and the leopard with the other. Still less did it occur to me that I might miss bull and leopard altogether.

While I was engaged in this hurried train of troubled thought, Jack fired both barrels of his rifle, one after the other, as quickly as possible. The bull stumbled forward upon its knees. In order to make assurance doubly sure, I aimed at its head and fired both barrels at once. Instantly the bull rose, with a hideous bellow, and stood for one moment irresolute, glaring at its new enemies. The leopard, I observed, was no longer on its back. At this moment I heard an exclamation of anger, and looking round I observed Peterkin struggling violently in the grasp of one of the wild vines or thorny plants which abound in some parts of the African forests and render them almost impassable. It seems that as the bull drew near, Peterkin, who, like Jack and me, was preparing to shoot, found that a dense thicket came between him and the game, so as to prevent his firing. He leaped nimbly over a bush, intending to run to another spot, whence he could more conveniently take aim, but found himself, as I have related, suddenly entangled among the thorns in such a way that the more he struggled the more firmly he became ensnared. Being of an impatient disposition, he did struggle violently, and it was this, probably, that attracted the attention of the bull and decided its future course and its ultimate fate; for after remaining one moment, as I have stated, in an irresolute attitude, it turned suddenly to the left and rushed, with its head down and its tail up, straight at Peterkin.

I cannot describe the sensations that overwhelmed me on observing the imminent danger of my friend. Horror almost overwhelmed me as I gazed with a stare of fascination at the frightful brute, which with flashing eyes and bloody foam dripping from its mouth charged into the thicket, and crashed through the tough boughs and bushes as if they were grass. A film came over my eyes. I tried to reload my rifle, but my trembling hand refused to act, and I groaned with mingled shame and despair on finding myself thus incapable of action in the hour of extreme peril. At that moment I felt I would joyfully have given my own life to have saved that of Peterkin. It takes me long to describe it, but the whole scene passed with the rapidity almost of a flash of light.

Jack did not even attempt to load, but uttering a fearful cry, he sprang towards our friend with a bound like that of an enraged tiger. A gleam of hope flashed through my soul as I beheld his gigantic form dash through the underwood. It seemed to me as if no living creature could withstand such a furious onset. Alas for Peterkin, had his life depended on Jack, strong and lion-like though he was! His aid could not have been in time. A higher Power nerved his arm and steeled his heart at that terrible moment. As I gazed helplessly at Peterkin, I observed that he suddenly ceased his struggles to get free, and throwing forward the muzzle of his piece, stood boldly up and awaited the onset with calm self-possession. The bull was on him almost in an instant. One stride more and he would have been lost, but that stride was never taken. His rifle poured its deadly charge into the skull of the wild bull, which fell a mass of dead flesh, literally at his feet.

It were vain to attempt to describe the state of our feelings on this memorable occasion -- the fervour with which we thanked our heavenly Father for our friend's deliverance -- the delight with which we shook his hands, again and again, and embraced him. It was with considerable difficulty that we extricated Peterkin from his entanglement. When this was accomplished we proceeded to examine our prize.

We were not a little puzzled on discovering that only three bullets had struck the bull. For my part, I fired straight at its forehead, and had felt certain at the time that my shots had taken effect; yet there was but one ball in the animal's head, and that was undoubtedly Peterkin's, for the hair all round the hole was singed off, so near had it been to him when he fired. The other two shots were rather wide apart -- one in the shoulder, the other in the neck. Both would have proved mortal in the long run, but neither was sufficiently near to a vital spot to kill speedily.

"Now, Ralph, my boy," said Jack, after our excitement was in some degree abated, "you and I must divide the honour of these two shots, for I fear we can't tell which of us fired them. Peterkin only fired once, and that was pretty effectual."

"Yes," I replied, "it is rather perplexing; for although I have no objection whatever to your having all the honour of those two shots, still one likes to know with certainty who actually made them."

"You'd better toss for them," suggested Peterkin, who was seated on the trunk of a fallen tree, examining, with a somewhat rueful countenance, the tattered condition of his garments.

"There would not be much satisfaction in that," replied Jack, laughing.

"It is probable," said I, "that each of us hit with one barrel and missed with the other."

"And it is possible," added Jack, "that one of us hit with both, and the other missed with both. All that I can positively affirm is that I fired both barrels at his shoulder -- one after the other."

"And all that I am certain of," said I, "is that I fired both barrels at his forehead, and that I discharged them both at once."

"Did you?" said Peterkin, looking up quickly; "then, Ralph, I'm afraid you must give all the honour to Jack, for you have missed altogether."

"How do you know that?" I asked, in a somewhat piqued tone.

"Simply enough. If you fired both shots together at so short a distance, they would have been found close together wherever they had struck, whereas the two shots in the neck and shoulder are more than two feet apart."

I was compelled to admit that there was much truth in the observation, but still felt unwilling to give up all claim to having assisted in slaying our first buffalo. I pondered the subject a good deal during the remainder of the time we spent in cutting up and packing part of the buffalo meat, and in preparing to continue our journey, but could come at no satisfactory conclusion in my own mind, and, to say truth, I felt not a little crestfallen at my conduct in the whole affair.

While wandering in this mood near the spot where the buffalo had been first wounded, I received a sudden and severe start on observing the leopard crouching within a couple of yards of me. I saw it through the bushes quite distinctly, but could not make quite sure of its attitude. With a mingled cry of alarm and astonishment I sprang back to the place where I had left my rifle.

Jack and Peterkin instantly ran up with their pieces cocked.

"Where is it?" they cried in a breath.

"There, crouching just behind that bush."

Jack darted forward.

"Crouching!" he cried, with a loud laugh, seizing the animal by the tail and dragging it forth; "why, it's dead -- stone dead."

"Dead as mutton," said Peterkin. "Hallo! what's this?" he added in surprise. "Two holes close together in its forehead, I do declare! Hooray! Ralph, my boy, give us your paw! You've missed the bull and hit the leopard! If you haven't been and put two bullets right between its two eyes, I'm a Dutchman!"

And so, in truth, it turned out. I had aimed at the bull and hit the leopard. So I left that spot not a little pleased with my bad aim and my good fortune.



Chapter Four.

Wherein Will Be Found Much That Is Philosophical.

Having skinned the leopard and cut off as much of the buffalo meat as we could carry, we started for the negro village at a round pace, for we had already lost much time in our last adventure. As we walked along I could not help meditating on the uncertainty of this life, and the terrible suddenness with which we might at any unexpected moment be cut off. These thoughts led me naturally to reflect how important a matter it is that every one, no matter how young, should be in a state of preparedness to quit this world.

I also reflected, and not without a feeling of shame, on my want of nerve, and was deeply impressed with the importance of boys being inured from childhood to trifling risks and light dangers of every possible description, such as tumbling into ponds and off trees, etcetera, in order to strengthen their nervous system. I do not, of course, mean to say that boys ought deliberately to tumble into ponds or climb trees until they fall off; but they ought not to avoid the risk of such mishaps. They ought to encounter such risks and many others perpetually. They ought to practise leaping off heights into deep water. They ought never to hesitate to cross a stream on a narrow unsafe plank for fear of a ducking. They ought never to decline to climb up a tree to pull fruit merely because there is a possibility of their falling off and breaking their necks. I firmly believe that boys were intended to encounter all kinds of risks, in order to prepare them to meet and grapple with the risks and dangers incident to man's career with cool, cautious self-possession -- a self-possession founded on experimental knowledge of the character and powers of their own spirits and muscles. I also concluded that this reasoning applies to some extent to girls as well as boys, for they too are liable through life to occasional encounters with danger -- such as meeting with mad bulls, being run away with on horseback, being upset in boats, being set on fire by means of crinoline; in all of which cases those who have been trained to risk slight mishaps during early life will find their nerves equal to the shock, and their minds cool and collected enough to look around and take hasty advantage of any opportunity of escape that may exist; while those who have been unhappily nurtured in excessive delicacy, and advised from the earliest childhood to "take care of themselves and carefully avoid all risks," will probably fall victims to their nervous alarms and the kind but injudicious training of parents or guardians.

The more I pondered this subject the more deeply impressed did I become with its great importance to the well-being of mankind, and I was so profoundly engrossed with it that my companions utterly failed to engage me in general conversation as we walked briskly along through the forest. Jack again and again attempted to draw my attention to the splendour of the curious specimens of tropical foliage and vegetation through which we passed; but I could not rouse myself to take interest therein. In vain did Peterkin jest and rally me, and point out the monkeys that grinned at us ever and anon as we passed beneath them, or the serpents that glided more than once from our path, I was fascinated with my train of meditation, and as I could not then give it up until I had thought it out, so now I cannot pass from the subject until I have at least endeavoured to guard myself from misconception.

I beg, then, that it will be understood that I do not by any means inculcate hare-brained recklessness, or a course of training that will foster that state of mind. On the contrary, the course of training which I should like to see universally practised would naturally tend to counteract recklessness, for it would enable a boy to judge correctly as to what he could and could not do. Take an illustration. A naturally bold boy has been unwisely trained to be exceedingly careful of himself. He does not know the extent of his own courage, or the power and agility of his own muscles; he knows these things to some extent indeed, but owing to restraint he does not know them fully. Hence he is liable both to over and under estimate them.

This bold boy -- we shall call him Tom -- takes a walk into the country with a friend, whom we shall name Pat. Pat is a bad boy, but he has been permitted to train his muscles as he pleased, and his natural disposition has led him to do difficult and sometimes slightly dangerous things.

"You can't jump over that river, Tom," says Pat.

"Perhaps not," replies Tom: "I never tried such a jump, because my mother tells me never to go where I am likely to tumble into the water."

"Oh, your mother's a muff!" cries Pat.

"Pat," says Tom, flushing with indignation and confronting his friend, "don't you ever say that again, else the friendship between you and me will come to an end. I know you don't really mean what you say; but I won't allow you to speak disrespectfully of my mother."

"Well, I won't," says Pat, "but you're a muff, anyhow."

"Perhaps I am," replies Tom.

"Of course you are, because you're afraid to jump over that river, and I'm not. So here goes."

Pat thereupon jumps the river (he is a splendid leaper), and Tom hesitates.

"Come along, Tom; don't be a hen."

Tom gives way, alas! to a disobedient impulse, and dashing at the leap comes to the edge, when he finds, somehow, that he has not got the proper foot first for the spring -- almost every boy knows the feeling I allude to; his heart fails, and he balks.

"O Tom, what a nimini-pimini muff you are, to be sure!"

Tom, as I have said, is a bold boy. His blood boils at this; he rushes wildly at the bank, hurls himself recklessly into the air, barely reaches the opposite side with a scramble, and falls souse into the river, from which he issues, as Pat says amid peals of laughter, "like a half-drowned rat."

Now, had Tom been permitted to follow the bent of his own bold impulses, he would have found out, years ago, how far and how high he could leap, and how far exactly he could depend on his own courage in certain circumstances; and he would either, on the one hand, have measured the leap with an accustomed eye, and declined to take it with a good-humoured admission that it was beyond his powers, or, on the other hand, he would calmly have collected his well and oft tried energies for the spring. The proper foot, from long experience, would have come to the ground at the right time. His mind, freed from all anxiety as to what he could accomplish, would have received a beneficial impulse from his friend's taunt. No nervous dread of a ducking would have checked the completeness of his bound, because he would have often been ducked before, and would have discovered that in most cases, if the clothes be changed at once, a ducking is not worth mentioning -- from a hydropathic point of view is, in fact, beneficial -- and he would have cleared the river with comfort to himself and confusion to his friend, and without a ducking or the uneasiness of conscience caused by the knowledge that he had disobeyed his mother. Had Peterkin not been trained to encounter danger, his natural boldness alone would never have enabled him to stand the charge of that buffalo bull.

There are muffs in this world. I do not refer to those hairy articles of female apparel in which ladies are wont to place their hands, handkerchiefs, and scent-bottles. Although not given to the use of slang, I avail myself of it on this occasion, the word "muff" being eminently expressive of a certain class of boys, big as well as little, old as well as young. There are three distinct classes of boys -- namely, muffs, sensible fellows, and boasters. I say there are three distinct classes, but I do not say that every boy belongs to one or other of those classes. Those who have studied chemistry know that nature's elements are few. Nearly all kinds of matter, and certainly all varieties of mind, are composite. There are no pure and simple muffs. Most boasters have a good deal of the muff in them, and many muffs are boasters; while sensible fellows are occasionally tinged with a dash of both the bad qualities -- they are, if I may be allowed to coin a word, sensible-boasto-muffers! Still, for the sake of lucidity, I will maintain that there are three distinct phases of character in boys.

The muff is a boy who from natural disposition, or early training, or both, is mild, diffident, and gentle. So far he is an estimable character. Were this all, he were not a muff. In order to deserve that title he must be timid and unenthusiastic. He must refuse to venture anything that will subject him to danger, however slight. He must be afraid of a shower of rain; afraid of dogs in general, good and bad alike; disinclined to try bold things; indifferent about learning to swim. He must object to the game called "dumps," because the blows from the ball are sometimes severe; and be a sworn enemy to single-stick, because the whacks are uncommonly painful. So feeling and acting, he will, when he becomes a man, find himself unable to act in the common emergencies of life -- to protect a lady from insolence, to guard his house from robbery, or to save his own child should it chance to fall into the water. The muff is addicted to boasting sometimes, especially when in the company of girls; but when on the playground he hangs on the skirts of society, and sings very small. There are many boys, alas! who are made muffs by injudicious training, who would have grown up to be bold, manly fellows had they been otherwise treated. There are also many kinds of muffs. Some are good-hearted, amiable muffs; others are petty, sneaking muffs.

With many of the varieties I have a strong sympathy, and for their comfort I would say that muffs may cure themselves if they choose to try energetically.

Courage and cowardice are not two distinct and entirely antagonistic qualities. To a great extent those qualities are the result of training. Every courageous man has a slight amount of cowardice in his composition, and all cowards have a certain infusion of courage. The matador stands before the infuriated bull, and awaits its charge with unflinching firmness, not because he has more courage than his comrades in the ring who run away, but because long training has enabled him to make almost certain of killing the bull. He knows what he has done before, he feels that he can do it again, therefore he stands like a hero. Were a doubt of his capacity to cross his mind for an instant, his cheek would blanch, his hand would tremble, and, ten to one, he would turn and flee like the rest.

Let muffs, therefore, learn to swim, to leap, and to run. Let them wrestle with boys bigger than themselves, regardless of being thrown. Let them practise "jinking" with their companions, so that if even they be chased by a mad bull, they will, if unable to get out of his way by running, escape perhaps by jinking. Let them learn to leap off considerable heights into deep water, so that, if ever called on to leap off the end of a pier or the side of a ship to save a fellow-creature, they may do so with confidence and promptitude. Let them even put on "the gloves," and become regardless of a swelled nose, in order that they may be able to defend themselves or others from sudden assault. So doing they will become sensible fellows, whose character I have thus to some extent described. Of course, I speak of sensible fellows only with reference to this one subject of training the nerves and muscles. Let it never be forgotten that there are men who, although sensible in this respect, are uncommonly senseless in regard to other things of far higher moment.

As to boasters, I will dismiss them with a few words. They are too easily known to merit particular description. They are usually loud and bold in the drawing-room, but rather mild in the field. They are desperately egotistical, fond of exaggeration, and prone to depreciate the deeds of their comrades. They make bad soldiers and sailors, and are usually held in contempt by others, whatever they may think of themselves. I may wind up this digression -- into which I have been tempted by an earnest desire to warn my fellow-men against the errors of nervous and muscular education, which, in my case, led to the weak conduct of which I had been guilty that day -- I may wind up this digression, I say, by remarking that the boys who are most loved in this world are those who are lambs, almost muffs, in the drawing-room, but lions in the field.

How long I should have gone on pondering this subject I know not, but Peterkin somewhat rudely interrupted me by uttering a wild scream, and beginning to caper as if he were a madman. I was much alarmed as well as surprised at this course of conduct; for although my friend was an inveterate joker, he was the very reverse of what is termed a buffoon, and never indulged in personally grotesque actions with a view to make people laugh -- such as making faces, a practice which, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, causes the face-makers to look idiotical rather than funny, and induces beholders to pity them, and to feel very uncomfortable sensations.

Peterkin's yells, instead of ceasing, continued and increased.

"Why, what's wrong?" I cried, in much alarm.

Instead of answering, Peterkin darted away through the wood like a maniac, tearing off his clothes as he went. At the same moment Jack began to roar like a bull, and became similarly distracted. It now flashed across me that they must have been attacked by an army of the Bashikouay ant, a species of ant which is so ferocious as to prove a perfect scourge to the parts of the country over which it travels. The thought had scarcely occurred to me when I was painfully convinced of its accuracy. The ants suddenly came to me, and in an instant I was covered from head to foot by the passionate creatures, which hit me so severely that I also began to scream and to tear off my garments; for I had been told by the trader who accompanied us to this part of the country that this was the quickest method of getting rid of them.

We all three fled, and soon left the army of Bashikouay ants behind us, undressing, as we ran, in the best way we could; and when we at length came to a halt we found ourselves almost in a state of nudity. Hastily divesting ourselves of the remainder of our apparel, we assisted each other to clear away the ants, though we could not rid ourselves of the painful effects of the bites with which we were covered.

"What dreadful villains!" gasped Peterkin, as he busied himself in hastily picking off the furious creatures from his person.

"It would be curious to observe the effect of an army of soldiers stepping into an army of Bashikouays," said Jack. "They would be routed instantly. No discipline or courage could hold them together for two minutes after they were attacked."

I was about to make some reply, when our attention was attracted by a shout at no great distance, and in a few seconds we observed, to our confusion, the trader and a band of negroes approaching us. We hurried on our clothes as rapidly as possible, and were a little more presentable when they arrived. They had a good laugh at us, of course, and the naked blacks seemed to be much tickled with the idea that we had been compelled to divest ourselves, even for a short time, of what they considered our unnecessary covering.

"We thought you were lost," said the trader, "and I began to blame myself for letting you away into the woods, where so many dangers may be encountered, without a guide. But what have you got there? meat of some kind? Your guns seem to have done service on this your first expedition."

"Ay, that they have," answered Jack. "We've killed a buffalo bull, and if you send your black fellows back on our track for some hours they'll come to the carcass, of which we could not, of course, bring very much away on our shoulders, which are not accustomed yet to heavy loads."

"Besides," added Peterkin, "we were anxious to get back in time for your elephant-hunt, else we should have brought more meat with us. But Jack has not mentioned what I consider our chief prize, the honour of shooting which belongs to my friend Ralph Rover. -- Come, Ralph, unfasten your pack and let them see it."

Although unwilling to put off more time, I threw down my pack, and untying it, displayed my leopard skin. The shout of delight and surprise which the sight of it drew from the negroes was so enthusiastic that I at once perceived I was considered to have secured a great prize.

"Why, Mr Rover, you're in luck," said the trader, examining the skin; "it's not every day that one falls in with such a fine leopard as that. And you have already made a reputation as a daring hunter, for the niggers consider it a bold and dangerous thing to attack these critters; they're so uncommon fierce."

"Indeed I do not by any means deserve such a reputation," said I, refastening my pack, "for the shot was entirely accidental; so I pray you, good sir, to let the negroes know that, as I have no desire to go under a false flag, as my friend Peterkin would say -- "

"Go under a false flag!" exclaimed Peterkin, in contempt. "Sail under false colours, man! That's what you should have said. Whatever you do, Ralph, never misquote a man. Go under a false flag! ha, ha! Why, you might just as well have said, 'progress beneath assumed bunting.'"

"Well, accidental or otherwise," said the trader, "you've got credit for the deed, and your fame will be spread among the tribe whether you will or not; for these fellows are such incorrigible liars themselves that they will never believe you if you tell them the shot was accidental. They will only give you credit for some strange though unknown motive in telling such a falsehood."

While the trader was speaking I observed that the negroes were talking with the eager looks and gesticulations that are peculiar to the Africans when excited, and presently two or three of them came forward and asked several questions, while their eyes sparkled eagerly and their black faces shone with animation as they pointed into the woods in the direction whence we had come.

"They want to know where you have left the carcass of the leopard, and if you have taken away the brains," said the trader, turning to me. "I daresay you know -- if not you'll soon come to find out -- that all the nigger tribes in Africa are sunk in gross and cruel superstitions. They have more fetishes, and greegrees, and amulets, and wooden gods, and charms, than they know what to do with, and have surrounded themselves with spiritual mysteries that neither themselves nor anybody else can understand. Among other things, they attach a very high value to the brains of the leopard, because they imagine that he who possesses them will be rendered extraordinarily bold and successful in hunting. These fellows are in hopes that, being ignorant of the value of leopard brains, you have left them in the carcass, and are burning with anxiety to be off after them."

"Poor creatures!" said I, "they are heartily welcome to the brains; and the carcass lies not more than four hours' march from this spot, I should think, -- Is it not so, Jack?"

My friend nodded assent, and the trader, turning to the expectant crowd of natives, gave them the information they desired. No sooner had he finished than with loud cries they turned and darted away, tossing their arms wildly in the air, and looking more like to a band of scared monkeys than to human beings.

"They're queer fellows," remarked Peterkin.

"So they are," replied the trader, "and they're kindly fellows too --  jovial and good-humoured, except when under the influence of their abominable superstitions. Then they become incarnate fiends, and commit deeds of cruelty that make one's blood run cold to think of."

I felt much saddened by these remarks, and asked the trader if the missionaries accomplished any good among them.

"Oh yes," he replied, "they do much good, such of them at least as really are missionaries; for it does not follow that every one who wears a black coat and white neck-cloth, and goes abroad, is a missionary. But what can a few men scattered along the coast here and there, however earnest they be, do among the thousands upon thousands of savages that wander about in the interior of Africa? No good will ever be done in this land, to any great extent, until traders and missionaries go hand in hand into the interior, and the system of trade is entirely remodelled."

"From what you remark," said I, feeling much interested, "I should suppose that you have given this subject a good deal of attention."

"I have. But there are people in this world who, supposing that because I am a trader I am therefore prone to exalt trade to an equality with religion, do not give me credit for disinterestedness when I speak. Perhaps you are one of these."

"Not I, in truth," said I, earnestly. "My chief desire in conversing with mankind is to acquire knowledge; I therefore listen with attention and respect to the opinions of others, instead of endeavouring to assert my own. In the present instance, being ignorant, I have no opinions to assert."

"I wish there were more people in your country," replied the trader, "who felt as you do. I would tell them that, although a trader, I regard the salvation of men's souls as the most important work in this world. I would argue that until you get men to listen, you cannot preach the gospel to them; that the present system of trade in Africa is in itself antagonistic to religion, being based upon dishonesty, and that, therefore, the natives will not listen to missionaries -- of course, in some cases they will; for I believe that the gospel, when truly preached, is never preached in vain -- but they will throw every possible impediment in their way. I would tell them that in order to make the path of the missionary practicable, the system of trade must be inverted, the trader and the missionary must go hand in hand, and commerce and religion -- although incomparably different in their nature and ends -- must act the part of brother and sister if anything great is to be done for the poor natives of Africa."

Conversing thus we beguiled the time pleasantly while we proceeded rapidly on our way, for the day was drawing to a close, and we were still at a considerable distance from the native village.



Chapter Five.

Preparations For A Grand Hunt.

All was bustle, noise, and activity in the village, or, more correctly speaking, in the native town of his Majesty King Jambai, early in the morning after our arrival. A great elephant-hunt had been resolved on. The hunters were brushing up their spears and old guns -- all of which latter were flint-locks that had been procured from traders, and were not worth more than a few shillings. The women were busy preparing breakfast, and the children were playing around their huts.

These huts were of the simplest construction -- made of bamboo, roofed with large palm-leaves, and open in front. The wants of savages are generally few; their household furniture is very plain, and there is little of it. A large hut near to that of his sable majesty had been set apart for the trader and his party during our residence at the town. In this we had spent the night as pleasantly as we could, but the mosquitoes kept up an unceasing warfare upon us, so that daylight was welcomed gladly when it came.

On going to the hut of King Jambai, who had invited us to breakfast with him, we found the Princess Oninga alone, seated in the king's armchair and smoking her pipe with uncommon gusto. She had spent the early part of the morning in preparing breakfast for her father and ourselves, and was now resting from her labours.

"You are early astir, Princess Oninga," said the trader as we entered and took our seats round the fire, for at that hour the air felt chilly.

The princess took her pipe from her lips and admitted that she was, blowing a long thin cloud of smoke into the air with a sigh of satisfaction.

"We are ready for breakfast," added the trader. "Is the king at home?"

"He is in the woods, but will be back quickly." With this remark the princess rose, and knocking the ashes out of her pipe, left the tent.

"Upon my word, she's a cool beauty," said Peterkin.

"I should rather say a black one," remarked Jack.

"Perhaps an odd one would be the most appropriate term," said I. "Did you ever see such a headdress?"

The manner in which the Princess Oninga had seen fit to dress her head was indeed peculiar, I may say ludicrous. Her woolly hair had been arranged in the form of a cocked hat, with a horn projecting in front, and at a short distance off it might easily have been mistaken for the headpiece of a general officer minus the feathers. There was little in the way of artificial ornament about it, but the princess wore a number of heavy brass rings on her arms and ankles. Those on the latter reached half-way up to her knees, and they were so heavy that her walk was little better than a clumsy waddle. Before we could pass further comment on her appearance, King Jambai entered, and saluted us by taking us each separately and rubbing noses with us. This done, he ordered in breakfast, which consisted of roast and boiled plantains, ground nuts, roast fowl, and roast pig; so we fell to at once, and being exceedingly hungry after our long walk of the day before, made a hearty meal.

"Now, sir," said Jack, when our repast was about concluded, "as you are going to leave us soon, you had better arrange with the king about getting us an interpreter and supplying us with a few men to carry our goods. I think you said there was once a man in the tribe who spoke a little English. Have you found out whether he is alive?"

"Yes; I have heard that he is alive and well, and is expected in every day from a hunting expedition. He is a splendid hunter and a capital fellow. His name is Makarooroo, and if you get him you will be fortunate."

"Then ask his black majesty," said Peterkin, "as quick as you please, for, to say truth, I'm rather anxious on this point. I feel that we should never get on without a good interpreter."

To our satisfaction we found that the king was quite willing to do all that we wished and a great deal more. In fact, we soon perceived that he felt highly honoured by our visit, and had boasted not a little of "his white men" to the chiefs of neighbouring tribes, some of whom had come a considerable distance to see us.

"You have made quite a conquest, gentlemen, of worthy Jambai," said the trader, after translating the king's favourable reply. "The fact is he is pleased with the liberality you have shown towards him in the way of gifts, and is proud of the confidence you have placed in him. Had you been bent on a trading expedition, he would have opposed your further progress; but knowing that you are simply hunters, he is anxious to assist you by all the means at his command. He is surprised, indeed, at your taking so much trouble and coming so far merely to kill wild animals, for he cannot understand the idea of sporting. He himself hunts for the sake of procuring meat."

"Can he not understand," said Peterkin, "that we hunt for fun?"

"No, he don't quite see through that. He said to me a few minutes ago, 'Have these men no meat at home, that they come all this long way to get it?' I told him that you had plenty, and then endeavoured to explain your idea of hunting 'for fun.' But he shook his head, and I think he does not believe you."

At this point in our conversation the king rose and gave the signal to set out on the hunting expedition. Instantly the whole population of the town turned out and rushed to the banks of the river, near which it stood, where canoes were prepared for us. Suddenly there arose a great shout, and the name "Makarooroo, Makarooroo," passed from mouth to mouth. Presently a fine, tall, deep-chested and broad-shouldered negro stepped up to the king and laid a leopard skin at his feet, while the people shouted and danced with delight at the success of their companion; for, as I have already stated, it is deemed a bold feat to attack and slay a leopard single-handed.

While the commotion caused by this event was going on, I said to the trader -- 

"How comes it that Makarooroo can speak English?"

"He spent a couple of years on the coast, in the service of a missionary, and during that time attended the missionary school, where he picked up a smattering of English and a trifle of geography and arithmetic; but although a stout, sturdy hunter, and an intelligent man, he was a lazy student, and gave the good missionary much trouble to hammer the little he knows into his thick skull. At last he grew tired of it, and returned to his tribe; but he brought his Bible with him, and I am told is very diligent in the study of it. His education has gained for him a great reputation as a fetishman, or doctor of mysteries, among his people. I used often to see him at school hammering away at m-a, ma-b-a, ba, and so on, amid a group of children. He used to sit beside the king -- "

"The king!" said I, in surprise.

"Ay; the king of that district became a Christian, and he and the queen, with one or two others of the royal household, used to attend school with the children every day, and their diligence in studying the A B C was beyond all praise. But they were terribly stupid. The children beat them easily, showing how true is the saying that 'youth is the time to learn.' The king was always booby, and Makarooroo was always beside him."

As the trader spoke, Makarooroo came forward and shook hands with him in the English fashion. He was then introduced to us, and expressed his willingness to become our interpreter in somewhat curious but quite comprehensible English. As I looked at his intelligent, good-natured countenance, I could not help thinking that the trader had underrated his intellectual powers.

"He's a funny dog that Makarooroo," said Peterkin, as our interpreter hastened away to fetch his rusty old gun and spears; for he meant to join our hunting expedition, although he had only that moment arrived from a long and fatiguing chase.

"Do you think so?" said Jack.

"I don't agree with you," said I; "to me he seems rather of a grave and quiet disposition."

"O Ralph, what a bat you are! He was grave enough just now, truly; but did you not observe the twinkle in his eye when he spoke to us in English? Depend on it he's a funny dog."

"There must be freemasonry, then, among funny dogs," I retorted, "for Jack and I don't perceive it."

"Is this our canoe?" inquired Jack of the trader.

"It is."

"Then let's jump in."

In a few seconds the river was crowded with a fleet of small canoes, and we all paddled quickly up the stream, which was sluggish at that part. We did not intend to proceed more than a few miles by water, as the place where game was expected was at some distance from the river. I felt some regret at this, for the trip up the river was to me most enchanting.

Every yard we advanced new beauties of scenery were revealed to view. The richness of the tropical vegetation seemed in this place to culminate, it was so rank and gorgeous. The day was fine, too, and all the strange-looking creatures -- ugly and beautiful, large and small --  peculiar to those regions, seemed to have resolved on a general peace in order to bask in the sunshine and enjoy the glorious weather. Man alone was bent on war, and our track, alas! was marked with blood wherever we passed along. I pondered much on this subject, and wondered at the bloodthirsty spirit which seems to be natural to man in all conditions and climes. Then I thought of the difficulty these poor Africans have at times in procuring food, the frequency with which they are reduced almost to a state of starvation, and I ceased to wonder that they shot and speared everything that came in their way.

We proceeded up the left bank of the river, keeping close in to the shore in order to obtain the protection of the overhanging boughs and foliage; for the sun soon began to grow hot, and in the middle of the day became so intense that I sometimes feared that I or my companions would receive a sunstroke. I confess that the subject of health often caused me much anxiety; for although I knew that we were all old experienced travellers -- though young in years -- and had become in a great degree inured to hardships, I feared that the deadly climate of Central Africa might prove too much for our European constitutions. By the free use of quinine, however, and careful attention to the roles of health as far as circumstances would permit, we were fortunate enough to keep in excellent health and spirits during the whole course of our sojourn there; for which, when I thought of the hundreds of Europeans who had perished on that deadly coast without even venturing into the interior, I felt very thankful. One of our chief delights, to which I in a great degree attribute our uninterrupted health, was bathing daily in the streams and ponds with which we fell in, or on which we paddled during our travels. On these occasions we were fain, however, to be exceeding careful in the selection of our bathing-pool, as crocodiles and alligators, and I know not what other hideous animals, were constantly on the lookout for prey, and I make no doubt would have been very ready to try the flavour of a morsel of English food had we given them the chance.

On these occasions, when we had made sure of our pool, we were wont to paddle about in the cool refreshing stream, and recall to mind the splendid dips we had had together six years before in the clear waters of the coral island. Since that time Peterkin had learned to swim well, which was not only a source of much satisfaction and gratification to himself now, but, he told me, had been the means of preserving not only his own life on more than one occasion, but the life of a little child which he had the good fortune to rescue from drowning when cruising off the island of Madagascar.

Peterkin used to speak very strongly when talking on this subject, and I observed, from the unusual seriousness of his manner, that he felt deeply too.

"Ralph," he said to me one day, "half the world is mad -- I am not sure that I might not say three-quarters of the world is mad -- and I'm quite certain that all the ladies in the world are mad with the exception of the brown ladies of the South Seas, and a few rare specimens elsewhere; they're all mad together in reference to the matter of swimming. Now that I have learned it nothing is so easy, and any one who is not as blind as a rheumatic owl must see that nothing is more important; for every one almost is subject to being pitched now and then into deep water, and if he can't swim it's all up with him. Why, every time an angler goes out to fish he runs the chance of slipping and being swept into a deep hole, where, if he cannot swim, he is certain to be drowned. And yet five strokes would save his life. Good swimming is by no means what is wanted; swimming of any kind, however poor, is all that is desiderated. Every time a lady goes to have a row on a lake she is liable to be upset by the clumsiness of those who accompany her, and although it may be close to shore, if she cannot swim, down she goes to the bottom. And floating won't do. Some ladies delude themselves with the idea that floating is of great value. In nine cases out of ten it is of no value at all; for unless water be perfectly smooth and still, a person cannot float so as to keep the waves from washing over the face, in which case choking is the certain result. There is no excuse for not learning to swim. In most large cities there are swimming-baths; if the sea is not available, a river is, everywhere. I tell you what it is, Ralph: people who don't learn to swim are -- are -- I was going to say asses, but that would be an insult to the much-maligned long-eared animal; and parents who don't teach their offspring to swim deserve to be drowned in butter-milk; and I wish I saw -- no, I don't quite wish I saw them all drowned in that way, but I do wish that I could impress upon mankind over the length and breadth of this rotund world the great, the immense, the intense importance of boys and girls being taught to swim."

"You make use of strong language," said I.

"Quite a powerful orator," added Jack, laughing.

"Bah!" exclaimed Peterkin; "your reception of this grand truth is but a type of the manner in which it will be received by the pig-headed world. What's the use of preaching common sense? I'm a perfect donkey!"

"Nay, Peterkin," said Jack; "I appreciate what you say, and have no doubt whatever that your remarks, if made public, would create quite a revolution in the juvenile world, and convert them speedily into aquatic animals. Did you ever think of sending your views on that subject to the Times?"

"The Times!" cried Peterkin.

"Yes, the Times; why not?"

"Because," said Peterkin slowly, "I once sent a letter to that great but insolent periodical, and what do you think it did?"

"Can't tell, I'm sure."

"Took no notice of it whatever!" said Peterkin, with a look of ineffable disgust.

But to return from this digression. I was much struck with the splendid contrast of colours that met my eye everywhere here. The rich variety of greens in the different trees harmonised with the bright pink plums and scarlet berries, and these latter were almost dimmed in their lustre by the bright plumage of the birds, which I felt intense longing to procure, many of them being quite new to me, and, I am certain, totally unknown to naturalists, while others I recognised with delight as belonging to several of the species of which I had read in ornithological works. I tried hard to shoot several of these lovely creatures, intending to stuff them, but, to my regret, was utterly unable to hit them. Seeing this, Peterkin took pity on me, and sitting down in the bow of our canoe, picked off all the birds I pointed out to him as we passed, with unerring precision. Most of them fell into the water, and were easily secured, while one or two toppled off the branches into the canoe. Several of them he shot on the wing -- a feat which even filled Jack with surprise, and so astounded the natives that they surrounded our canoe at last, and gazed open-mouthed at my friend, whom they evidently regarded as the greatest fetishman that had ever come amongst them.

He was obliged to stop at last and lay down his gun in order to make the natives cease from crowding round us and delaying our voyage. A number of iguanas were observed on the branches of the trees that overhung the stream. They dropped into the water as we approached; but the natives succeeded in spearing a good many, and I afterwards found that they considered them excellent food.

If I was charmed with the birds, Peterkin was no less delighted with the monkeys that chattered at us as we passed along. I never saw a man laugh as he did that day. He almost became hysterical, so much was he tickled with their antics; and the natives, who have a keen sense of the ludicrous, seemed quite to sympathise with his spirit, although, of course, what amused him could not have similarly affected them, seeing that they were used to monkeys from infancy.

"There's something new!" exclaimed Jack, as we rounded a bend in the river and came in view of an open flat where it assumed somewhat the aspect of a pond or small lake. He pointed to a flock of birds standing on a low rock, which I instantly recognised to be pelicans.

"Surely," said I, "pelicans are not new to you!"

"Certainly not; but if you look a little more attentively, I think you will find material for your note-book."

Jack was right. I observed a very fine fish-hawk circling over the head of one of the pelicans. Its head and neck were white, and its body was of a reddish chocolate colour. Just as we came in sight, the pelican caught a fine fish, which it stowed away safe in the pouch under its chin. The sly hawk, which had been watching for this, immediately made a descent towards its victim, making a considerable noise with its wings as it came down. Hearing this, the pelican looked hastily up, and supposing that a terrible and deadly assault was about to be made, opened its mouth and screamed in terror. This was just what the hawk wanted. The open bill revealed the fish in the pouch. Down he swooped, snatched it out, and then soared away with his ill-gotten gains in his talons.

"Oh, what a thief!" exclaimed Peterkin.

"And the pelican seems to take his loss in a remarkably philosophical manner," observed Jack.

To my surprise the great stupid bird, instead of flying away, as I had expected, quietly resumed his fishing as if nothing had happened. No doubt he was well pleased to find himself still alive, and it is not improbable that the hawk made several more meals at the expense of his long-beaked friend after we had passed by.

We soon put him to flight, however, by landing near the spot where he stood, this being the place where we were to quit our canoes and pass through the jungle on foot. The hunters now prepared themselves for action, for the recent tracks of elephants were seen on the bank of the stream, and the natives said they could not be far off. Jack and Peterkin were armed with immensely heavy rifles, which carried balls of the weight of six-ounces. I carried my trusty, double-barrelled fowling-piece, which is of the largest size, and which I preferred to a rifle, because, not being a good shot, I resolved, on all occasions, to reserve my fire until we should come to close quarters with game, leaving my more expert comrades to take the longer shots. We had also two natives -- one being our guide, Makarooroo, who carried Jack and Peterkin's double-barrelled guns as a reserve. These were loaded, of course, with ball.

"This looks something like business," said Jack, as he leaned on his heavy rifle and looked at the natives, who were selecting their spears and otherwise making preparations.

"It does," replied Peterkin. "Are you loaded?"

"Ay, and I have just examined the caps to see that they are dry; for it's not like grouse-shooting on the Scottish hills this African hunting, depend upon it. A snapping cap might cost us our lives, --  Ralph, my boy, you must keep well in rear. I don't want to hurt your feelings, but it won't do to go in front when you cannot depend on your nerves."

I experienced a feeling of sadness not unmingled with shame as my friend said this, but I could not question the justness of his remark, and I knew well that he would not have made it at all, but for his anxiety lest I should run recklessly into danger, which I might find myself, when too late, unable to cope with. I was careful, however, to conceal my feelings as I replied with a smile -- 

"You are right, Jack. I shall act the part of a support, while you and Peterkin skirmish in advance."

"And be careful," said Peterkin, solemnly, "that you don't fire into us by mistake."

Somewhat of Peterkin's own spirit came over me as I replied, "Indeed, I have been thinking of that, and I'm not sure that I can restrain myself when I see a chimpanzee monkey and a gorilla walking through the woods before me."

"I think we'd better take his gun from him," suggested Jack.

At this moment the king gave the signal to advance, so we shouldered our weapons and joined him. As we walked rapidly along, Jack suggested that we should allow the natives to kill any elephants we might fall in with in their own way, so as to observe how they managed it, rather than try to push ourselves forward on this our first expedition. We all agreed to this, and shortly after we came to the place which elephants were known to frequent.

Here great preparations had evidently been made for them. A space of more than a mile was partially enclosed by what might be termed a vine wall. The huge, thorny, creeping vines had been torn down from the trees and woven into a rude sort of network, through which it was almost impossible for any animal except an elephant to break. This was intended -- not to stop the elephant altogether, but to entangle and retard him in his flight, until the hunters could kill him with their spears. The work, we were given to understand, was attended with considerable danger, for some of the natives were occasionally caught by the thorny vines when flying from the charge of the infuriated animal, and were instantly stamped to death by his ponderous feet.

I felt a new and powerful excitement creep over me as I saw the natives extend themselves in a wide semicircle of nearly two miles in extent, and begin to advance with loud shouts and cries, in order to drive the game towards the vines, and the flashing eyes and compressed lips of my two companions showed that they were similarly affected. We determined to keep together and follow close on that part of the line where the king was.

"You no be 'fraid?" said Makarooroo, looking down at Peterkin, who, he evidently supposed, was neither mentally nor physically adapted for an African hunter.

Peterkin was so tickled with the question that he suddenly began to tremble like an aspen leaf, and to chatter with his teeth and display all the symptoms of abject terror. Pointing over Makarooroo's shoulder into the bush behind him, he gasped, "The leopard!"

The negro uttered a hideous yell, and springing nearly his own height into the air, darted behind a tree with the agility of a wild-cat.

Instantly Peterkin resumed his composure, and turning round with a look of cool surprise, said -- 

"What! you're not afraid, Makarooroo?" The good-humoured fellow burst into a loud laugh on perceiving the practical joke that had been passed on him, and it was evident that the incident, trifling though it was, had suddenly raised his estimation of Peterkin to a very exalted pitch.

We now began to draw near to the enclosure, and I was beginning to fear that our hunt was to prove unsuccessful that day. A considerable quantity of small game had passed us, alarmed by the cries of the natives; but we purposely withheld our fire, although I saw that Jack was sorely tempted once or twice, when several beautiful gazelles and one or two wild pigs ran past within shot. Presently we heard a shrill trumpeting sound, which Peterkin, who had hunted in the forests of Ceylon, told us, in an excited voice, was the cry of the elephant. We hastened forward with our utmost speed, when suddenly we were brought to a stand by hearing a tremendous roar close in front of us. Immediately after, a large male lion bounded from among the bushes, and with one stroke of his enormous paw struck down a negro who stood not twenty yards from us. The terrible brute stood for an instant or two, lashing his sides with his tail and glaring defiance. It chanced that I happened to be nearest to him, and that the position of the tangled underwood prevented my companions from taking good aim; so without waiting for them, being anxious to save, if possible, the life of the prostrate negro, I fired both barrels into the lion's side. Giving utterance to another terrible roar, he bounded away into the bush, scattering the negroes who came in his way, and made his escape, to our great disappointment.

We found, to our horror, on going up to the fallen hunter, that he was quite dead. His skull had been literally smashed in, as if it had received a blow from a sledge-hammer.

I cannot describe my feelings on beholding thus, for the first time, the king of beasts in all the savage majesty of strength and freedom, coupled with the terrible death of a human being. My brain was in a whirl of excitement; I scarce knew what I was doing. But I had no time to think, for almost immediately after firing the shots at the lion, two elephants came crashing through the bushes. One was between ten and eleven feet high, the other could not have been less than twelve feet. I had never seen anything like this in the menageries of England, and their appearance, as they burst thus suddenly on my vision, was something absolutely appalling.

Those who have only seen the comparatively small and sluggish animals that are wont to ring their bells to attract attention, and to feed on gingerbread nuts from the hands of little boys, can form no idea of the terrible appearance of the gigantic monsters of Africa as they go tearing in mad fury through the forests with their enormous ears, and tails, and trunks erect, their ponderous tusks glistening in the sunshine, and their wicked little eyes flashing like balls of fire as they knock down, rend asunder, and overturn all that comes in their way.

The two that now approached us in full career were flying before a crowd of negroes who had already fixed a number of spears in their sides, from which the blood was flowing copiously. To say that the bushes went down before them like grass would not give a correct idea of the ponderous rush of these creatures. Trees of three and four inches diameter were run against and snapped off like twigs, without proving in any degree obstructive.

By this time the negroes had crowded in from all sides, and as the elephants approached the place where we stood, a perfect cloud of spears and javelins descended on their devoted sides. I observed that many of the active natives had leaped up into the trees and discharged their spears from above, while others, crouching behind fallen trees or bushes, threw them from below, so that in a few seconds dozens of spears entered their bodies at every conceivable angle, and they appeared as if suddenly transformed into monstrous porcupines or hedgehogs. There was something almost ludicrous in this, but the magnitude and aspect of the animals were too terrible, and our danger was too imminent, to permit anything like comic ideas to enter our brains. I observed, too, that the natives were perfectly wild with excitement. Their black faces worked convulsively, and their white eyes and teeth glittered as they leaped and darted about in a state of almost perfect nudity, so that their aspect was quite demoniacal.

The suddenness and violence of the attack made near to us had the effect of turning the elephants aside, and the next instant they were tearing and wrenching themselves through the meshes of the tough and thorny vines. The natives closed in with wild cries and with redoubled energy. Nothing surprised me so much as to observe the incredible number of spears that were sticking all over these creatures, and the amount of blood that they lost, without any apparent diminution of strength resulting. It seemed as if no human power could kill them, and at that moment I almost doubted Peterkin's assertion that he had, while in Ceylon, actually killed elephants with a single ball.

While Jack and Peterkin and I were gazing in deep interest and surprise at the curious struggle going on before us, and holding ourselves in readiness to act, should there be any chance of our game escaping, the larger of the two elephants succeeded in disentangling himself by backing out of the snare. He then wheeled round and charged straight at King Jambai, who stood close to us, with incredible fury. The beast, as it came on with the bristling spears all over it, the blood spirting from its innumerable wounds, and trumpeting shrill with rage, seemed to me like some huge unearthly phantom. It was with difficulty I could believe the whole scene other than a hideous dream. Jambai launched his javelin into the animal's chest, and then turned and fled. The other natives also darted and scattered hither and thither, so that the elephant could not make up its mind on which of its enemies to wreak its vengeance. We, too, turned and took to our heels at once with right good will. All at once I heard Jack utter a wild shout or yell, very unlike to anything I ever heard from him before. I looked back, and saw that his foot had got entangled in a thorny shrub, and that the elephant was making at him.

To this day I have never been able to account for the remarkable condition of mind and body that ensued on this occasion. Instead of being paralysed as I had been when Peterkin was in imminent danger, all sensation of fear or hesitancy seemed to vanish on thine instant. I felt my nerves and muscles strung, as it were, and rendered firm as a rock, and with calm deliberation, yet with the utmost rapidity of which I was capable, I turned round, sprang between Jack and the enraged beast, and presented my piece at his head.

"Right in the centre of his forehead," gasped Jack, as he endeavoured to wrench his foot from the entanglement.

At that moment I observed Peterkin leap to my side; the next instant the report of both our guns rang through the woods; the elephant bounded completely over Jack, as Peterkin and I leaped to either side to let it pass, and fell to the ground with such violence that a tree about six inches thick, against which it struck, went down before it like a willow wand.

We immediately assisted Jack to extricate himself; but we had no time to congratulate ourselves on our narrow escape, for mingled shouts and yells from the men in the bushes ahead apprised us that some new danger menaced them in that direction.

Reloading as fast as we could, we hastened forward, and soon gained the new scene of battle. Here stood the other elephant, trying to break down a small tree up which King Jambai had climbed, partly for safety and partly in order to dart a javelin down on the brute as it passed.

This was a common custom of the natives; but the king, who was a bold, reckless man, had neglected to take the very necessary precaution of selecting a strong tree. The elephant seemed actually to have observed this, for instead of passing on, it suddenly rushed headlong against the tree and began to break it down. When we came up the beast was heaving and straining with all its might, the stout tree was cracking and rending fearfully, so that the king could scarcely retain his position on it. The natives were plying their spears with the utmost vigour; but although mortally wounded, it was evident that in a few more seconds the elephant would succeed in throwing down the tree and trample the king to death.

Peterkin instantly sprang forward, but Jack laid his hand on his shoulder.

"It's my turn this time, lad," he cried, and leaping towards the monster, he placed the muzzle of his rifle close to its shoulder and sent a six-ounce ball right through its heart.

The effect was instantaneous. The elephant fell to the ground, a mountain of dead flesh.

The delight of the negroes at this happy termination of the battle was excessive. They leaped and laughed and danced like insane men, and we had much ado to prevent them seizing us in their arms and rubbing noses with us.

As we had not commenced the hunt until well on in the day, evening was now closing in; so the king gave orders to encamp on a dry rising ground not far distant, where the jungle was less dense, and thither we all repaired, the natives bringing in all the game, and cutting up the elephants in a very short space of time.

"Your shot was not such a bad one this time, Ralph," observed Peterkin, as we three stood looking at the large elephant which the natives were cutting up. "There they are, just above the proboscis. But let me warn you never again to venture on such a foolhardy thing as to fire in the face of a charging elephant unless you are a dead shot."

"Thank you, Peterkin, for your advice, which, however, I will not take when a comrade's life may depend on my doing so."

"I give you full credit for the excellence of your intention," rejoined my friend; "but if Jack's life had depended on those two shots from your double-barrel, he would have been but a dead man now. There is only one vulnerable spot in the front of an elephant's head; that is, exactly in the centre of the forehead. The spot is not bigger than a saucer, and the bone is comparatively thin there. If you cannot make sure of hitting that, you simply face certain death. I would not have tried it on any account whatever, had I not seen that both you and Jack would have been killed had I not done so."

On examination we found that the heavy ball from Peterkin's rifle had indeed penetrated the exact spot referred to, and had been the means of killing the elephant, while my two bullets were found embedded in the bone.

The tusks of this animal were magnificent. I do not know what their exact weight was, not having the means wherewith to weigh them. They were probably worth a considerable sum of money in the British market. Of course we did not lay claim to any part of the spoil of that day, with the exception of a few of the beautiful birds shot on the voyage up the river, which were of no value to the natives, although priceless to me. Alas! when I came to examine them next morning, I found that those destructive creatures the white ants had totally destroyed the greater part of them, and the few that were worth stuffing were very much damaged.

Experience is a good though sometimes a severe teacher. Never again did I, after that, put off the stuffing of any valuable creature till the next day. I always stuffed it in the evening of the day on which it was killed; and thus, although the practice cost me many a sleepless night, I preserved, and ultimately brought home, many specimens of rare and beautiful birds and beasts, which would otherwise have been destroyed by those rapacious insects.

That night the scene of our camp was indescribably romantic and wild. Numerous huge fires were lighted, and round these the negroes circled and cooked elephant and venison steaks, while they talked over the events of the day or recounted the adventures of former hunts with noisy volubility and gesticulation.

The negro has a particular love for a fire. The nights in his warm climate are chill to him, though not so to Europeans, and he luxuriates in the heat of a fire as a cat does in the rays of the sun. The warm blaze seems to draw out his whole soul, and causes his eyes to sparkle with delight. A good supper and a warm fire render him almost perfectly happy. There is but one thing wanting to render him supremely so, and that is -- a pipe! No doubt, under similar circumstances, the white man also is in a state of enviable felicity, but he does not show his joy like the negro, who seems to forget his cares and sorrows, the miseries which his gross superstitions entail on him, the frequency with which he is exposed to sudden destruction; everything, in short, is forgotten save the present, and he enjoys himself with unmitigated fervour.

It really did my heart good as I sat with my comrades beside our fire and looked around me on their happy faces, which were rendered still happier by the gift from us of a small quantity of tobacco, with which we had taken care to provide ourselves for this very purpose.

I could scarcely believe that the jovial, kindly, hearty fellows were the very men who are well-known to be such cruel, bloodthirsty fiends when under the influence of their dreadful superstitions, and who, but a few hours before, had been darting through the woods besmeared with blood and yelling like maniacs or demons. In fact, the whole scene before me, and the day's proceedings, seemed to me, at that time, like a vivid dream instead of a reality. Moreover, after I lay down, the reality became a dream, and I spent that night, as I had spent the day, shooting gazelles, lions, wild pigs, and elephants in imagination.



Chapter Six.

Dreaming And Feeding And Bloody Work Enlarged Upon.

The first object of which my senses became cognisant on awaking next morning was my friend Peterkin, who had evidently awakened just a moment or two before me, for he was in the act of yawning and rubbing his eyes.

I have all my life been a student of character, and the most interesting yet inexplicable character which I have ever studied has been that of my friend Peterkin, whose eccentricities I have never been able fully to understand or account for. I have observed that, on first awaking in the mornings, he has been wont to exhibit several of his most eccentric and peculiar traits, so I resolved to feign myself asleep and watch him.

"Heigh-ho!" he exclaimed, after the yawn I have just referred to. Having said this, he stretched out both arms to the utmost above his head, and then flung himself back at full length on his couch, where he lay still for about half a minute. Then he started up suddenly into a sitting posture and looked slowly from one to another of the recumbent forms around him. Satisfied, apparently, that they were asleep, he gave vent to a long yawn which terminated in a gasp, and then he looked up contemplatively at the sky, which was at that hour beginning to warm with the red rays of the rising sun. While thus engaged, he caressed with his right hand the very small scrap of whisker that grew on his right cheek. At first it seemed as if this were an unconscious action, but he suddenly appeared to become absorbed in it, and stared straight before him as one does when only half awake, mumbling the while in an undertone. I could not make out distinctly what he said, but I think I caught the words, "Yes, a little -- a very little thicker -- six new hairs, I think -- umph! slow, very slow." Here he looked at Jack's bushy beard and sighed.

Suddenly he thrust both hands deep into his breeches pockets and stared at the black embers of the extinct fire; then as suddenly he pulled out his hands, and placing the forefinger of his right hand on the end of the thumb of his left, said slowly -- 

"Let me see -- I'll recall it."

He spoke with intense gravity. Most persons do when talking to themselves.

"Yes, I remember now. There were two elephants and four -- or three, was it? -- no, it must have been four lions. The biggest elephant had on a false front of fair curls and a marriage-ring on its tail. Stay; was it not the other one had that? No, it was the biggest. I remember now, for it was just above the marriage-ring I grasped it when I pulled its tail out. I didn't pull it off, for it wouldn't come off; it came out like a telescope or a long piece of indiarubber. Ha! and I remember thinking how painful it must be. That was odd, now, to think of that. The other elephant had on crinoline. That was odder still; for of all animals in the world it least required it. Well, let me see. What did I do? Oh yes, I shot them both. Of course, that was natural; but it wasn't quite so natural that the big one should vomit up a live lion, which attacked me with incredible fury. But I killed it cleverly. Yes, it was a clever thing, undoubtedly, to split a lion in two, from the tip of its nose to the extremity of its tail, with one stroke of a penknife -- "

At this climax I could contain myself no longer, and burst into a loud laugh as I perceived that Peterkin had spent the night, as I myself had done, in hunting -- though, I confess, there was a considerable difference in the nature of our achievements, and in the manner of their accomplishment.

"Why, what are you laughing at?" said Jack, sitting up and gazing at me with a stupid stare.

"At Peterkin's dreams," said I.

"Ah!" said Jack, with a smiling yawn, "that's it, is it? Been hunting elephants and lions, eh?"

"Why, how did you guess that?" I asked, in surprise; "were you not asleep just now?"

"Of course I was, and dreaming too, like yourself, I make no doubt. I had just bagged my fifteenth elephant and my tenth lion when your laugh awoke me. And the best of it is that I was carrying the whole bagful on my back at once, and did not feel much oppressed by the weight."

"That beats my dream hollow," observed Peterkin; "so its my opinion we'd better have breakfast. -- Makarooroo, hy! d'ye hear? rouse up, you junk of ebony."

"Yis, massa, comin'," said our guide, rising slowly from his lair on the opposite side of our fireplace.

"D'you hear?"

"Yis, massa."

"You're a nigger!"

"Dat am a fact."

"Well, being a nigger you're a brick, so look sharp with that splendid breakfast you promised us last night. I'll wager a million pounds that you had forgotten all about it."

"No, massa, me no forgit. Me up in centre ob de night and put 'im in de hole. Wat you call 'im -- oben?"

"Ay, oven, that's it."

"Yis. Well, me git 'im d'rec'ly."

"And, I say, hold on," added Peterkin. "Don't you suppose I'm going to stand on ceremony with you. Your name's too long by half. Too many rooroos about it, so I'm going to call you Mak in future, d'ye understand?"

The negro nodded and grinned from ear to ear as he left us. Presently he returned with a huge round, or lump of meat, at which we looked inquisitively. The odour from it was delightful, and the tender, juicy appearance of the meat when Makarooroo, who carved it for us, cut the first slice, was quite appetising to behold.

"What is it?" inquired Peterkin.

"Elephant's foot," replied the guide.

"Gammon," remarked Peterkin.

"It's true, massa. Don't you see him's toe?"

"So it is," said Jack.

"And it's first-rate," cried I, tasting a morsel.

With that we fell to and made a hearty meal, after which we, along with the king and all his people, retraced our steps to the river and returned to the native town, where we spent another day in making preparations to continue our journey towards the land of the gorilla.

During the hunt which I have just described I was very much amused as well as amazed at the reckless manner in which the negroes loaded their rusty old trade-guns. They put in a whole handful of powder each time, and above that as much shot and bits of old iron of all kinds as they dared; some I saw charged thus to within a few inches of the muzzle, and the owners seemed actually afraid to put them to their shoulders, as well they might be, for the recoil was tremendous, and had the powder been good their guns must have been blown to pieces and themselves killed.

On our return to the village we found the people on the eve of one of those terrible outbursts of superstitious passion which rarely if ever pass away without some wretched human creature perishing under the hands of murderers.

"There is something wrong with the fetishman, I think," remarked Jack, as we disembarked at the landing. "He seems excited. Do you know what it can be at, Makarooroo?"

"Jack," interposed Peterkin, "I have changed his name to Mak, so you and Ralph will please to remember that. -- Mak, my boy, what's wrong with your doctor?"

The negro looked very grave and shook his head as he replied, "Don' know, massa. Him's be goin' to rizz de peepil wid him norrible doin's. Dere will be death in the camp mos' bery quick -- p'raps dis night."

"That is terrible," said I. "Are you sure of what you say?"

"Sartin sure," replied the negro, with another shake of the head.

"Then, Mak," said Jack, "it behoves us to look to ourselves. You look like an honest fellow, and I believe we may trust you. We cannot expect you to help us to fight against your own kith and kin, but I do expect that you will assist us to escape if any foul play is intended. Whatever betides, it is as well that you should know that white men are not easily conquered. Our guns are good -- they never miss fire. We will sell our lives dearly, you may depend on it."

"Ay," added Peterkin, "it is well that you should know that; moreover, it is well that the rascally niggers of your tribe should know it too; so you can take occasion to give them a hint that we shall keep ourselves prepared for them, with my compliments."

"De mans ob my peepil," replied the negro, with some dignity of manner, "be not wuss dan oder mans. But dem is bad enuff. But you no hab need for be fraid. Dey no touch de white mans. Dem bery much glad you com' here. If any bodies be killed it be black mans or 'oomans."

We felt somewhat relieved on hearing this, for, to say truth, we knew well enough that three men, no matter how well-armed or resolute they might be, could not hope to defend themselves against a whole tribe of savages in their own country. Nevertheless we resolved to keep a sharp lookout, and be prepared for the worst. Meanwhile we did all in our power to expedite our departure.

That evening the trader started on his return journey to the coast, leaving us in charge of King Jambai, who promised earnestly to take good care of us. We immediately put his willingness to fulfil his promise to the test by begging him to furnish us with men to carry our goods into the interior. He tried very hard to induce us to change our minds and remain hunting with his tribe, telling us that the gorilla country was far far away from his lands; that we should never reach it alive, or that if we did we should certainly be killed by the natives, who, besides being cruel and warlike, were cannibals; and that if we did meet in with gorillas we should all be certainly slain, for no one could combat successfully with that ferocious giant of the monkey tribe.

To this we replied that we were quite aware of the dangers we should have to encounter in our travels, but added that we had come there for the very purpose of encountering such dangers, and especially to pay a visit to the giant monkeys in their native land, so that it was in vain his attempting to dissuade us, as we were resolved to go.

Seeing that we were immovable, the king eventually gave in, and ordered some of his best men to hold themselves in readiness to start with us on the following morning. We then proceeded to his majesty's house, where we had supper, and afterwards retired to our own hut to rest.

But we were destined to have little or no rest that night. The doctor or fetishman of the tribe had stirred up the passions of the people in a manner that was quite incomprehensible to us. King Jambai, it seems, had been for some weeks suffering from illness -- possibly from indigestion, for he was fond of gorging himself -- and the medicine-man had stated that his majesty was bewitched by some of the members of his own tribe, and that unless these sorcerers were slain there was no possibility of his getting well.

We never could ascertain why the fetishman should fix upon certain persons to be slain, unless it was that he had a personal enmity against them; but this seemed unlikely, for two of the persons selected were old female slaves, who could never, of course, have injured the doctor in any way. But the doings of Africans, especially in regard to religious superstitions, I afterwards found were so mysterious that no one could or would explain the meaning of them to us. And I am inclined to believe that in reference to the meaning of many things they were themselves utterly ignorant.

Towards midnight the people had wrought themselves up to a frenzied condition, and made so much noise that we could not sleep. In the midst of the uproar Makarooroo, who we observed had been very restless all the evening, rushed into our hut, exclaiming, "Massa! massa! come, save my Okandaga! come quick!"

The poor fellow was trembling with anxiety, and was actually pale in the face; for a distinctly discernible pallor overspreads the countenance of the negro when under the influence of excessive terror.

Okandaga we had previously heard of and seen. She was, according to African notions, an exceedingly pretty young girl, with whom our worthy guide had fallen desperately in love. Makarooroo's education had done much for him, and especially in regard to females. Having observed the kind, respectful consideration with which the missionaries treated their wives, and the happiness that seemed to be the result of that course of conduct, he resolved in his own mind to try the experiment with one of the girls of his own tribe, and soon after rejoining it paid his attentions to Okandaga, who seemed to him the most modest and lovable girl in the village.

Poor Okandaga was first amazed and then terrified at the strangely gentle conduct of her lover, and thought that he meant to bewitch her; for having never before been accustomed to other than harsh and contemptuous treatment from men, she could not believe that Makarooroo meant her any good. Gradually, however, she began to like this respectful wooer, and finally she agreed to elope with him to the sea-coast and live near the missionaries. It was necessary, however, to arrange their plans with great caution. There was no difficulty in their getting married. A handsome present to the girl's father was all that was necessary to effect that end, and a good hunter like Makarooroo knew he could speedily obtain possession of his bride, but to get her removed from her tribe and carried to the coast was quite a different affair. While the perplexed negro was pondering this subject and racking his brains to discover a way of getting over the difficulty, our arrival at the village occurred. At once he jumped to the conclusion that somehow or other he should accomplish his object through our assistance; and holding this in view, he the more willingly agreed to accompany us to the gorilla country, intending first to make our acquaintance, and afterwards to turn us to account in furthering his plans. All this we learned long afterwards. At the period of which I am now writing, we were profoundly ignorant of everything save the fact that Okandaga was his affianced bride, and that the poor fellow was now almost beside himself with horror because the fetishman had condemned her, among others, to drink the poisoned cup.

This drinking of the poisoned cup is an ordeal through which the unhappy victims to whom suspicion has been attached are compelled to pass. Each one drinks the poison, and several executioners stand by, with heavy knives, to watch the result. If the poison acts so as to cause the supposed criminal to fall down, he is hacked in pieces instantly; but if, through unusual strength or peculiarity of constitution, he is enabled to resist the effects of the poison, his life is spared, and he is declared innocent.

Jack and Peterkin and I seized our weapons, and hurrying out, followed our guide to the spot where this terrible tragedy was enacting.

"Don't fear, Mak," said Peterkin, as we ran along; "we'll save her somehow. I'm certain of that."

The negro made no reply, but I observed a more hopeful expression on his countenance after the remark. He evidently had immense faith in Peterkin; which I must say was more than I had, for when I considered our small numbers, my hope of influencing savages was very slight.

The scene that met our eyes was indescribably horrible. In the centre of a dense circle of negroes, who had wrought themselves up to a pitch of ferocity that caused them to look more like wild beasts than men, stood the king, and beside him the doctor or fetishman. This latter was ornamented with a towering headdress of feathers. His face was painted white, which had the effect of imparting to him an infinitely more hideous and ghastly aspect than is produced in the white man when he is painted black. A stripe of red passed round his head, and another down his forehead and nose. His naked body was decked with sundry fantastic ornaments, and altogether he looked more like a fiend than I had believed it possible for man to appear.

The ground all round him was saturated with blood and strewn with arms, fingers, cleft skulls, and masses of flesh that had been hewn from the victims who had already fallen, one of whom, we afterwards learned, had belonged to the royal family. Two still remained -- a young female and an old man. The emaciated frame and white woolly head of the latter showed that in the course of nature his earthly career must soon terminate. It is probable that the poor old man had become a burden to his relations, and the doctor took this opportunity of ridding the tribe of him. The girl was Okandaga, who stood weeping and trembling as she gazed upon the butchery that had already taken place.

The old man had swallowed the poison shortly before we arrived, and he was now struggling to maintain an erect position. But he failed, his quivering limbs sank beneath him, and before we could interfere the bloody executioners had cut off his head, and then, in a transport of passion, they literally hacked his body to pieces.

We rushed hastily forward to the king, and Jack, in an earnest voice, implored him to spare the last victim.

"Surely," said he, "enough have been sacrificed already. -- Tell him, Makarooroo, that I will quit his village and never see him more if he does not spare the life of that young girl."

The king appeared much perplexed by this unlooked-for interference on our part.

"I cannot check the spirits of my people now," he replied. "They are roused. The girl has bewitched me and many others. She must die. It is our custom. Let not my white men be offended. Let them go to their hut and sleep."

"We cannot sleep while injustice is done in the village," answered Jack, in a lofty tone. "Let not King Jambai do that which will make his visitors ashamed of him. Let the girl live till to-morrow at midnight. Let the case be investigated, and if she be proved guilty then let her die."

The king commenced a long reply in the same dignified manner and tone which Jack had assumed. While he was thus engaged Peterkin touched our guide on the shoulder and whispered -- 

"I say, Mak, tell the doctor to back up Jack's request, and I'll give him a gun."

The negro slipped at once to the side of the doctor, who had begun to frown fiercely on Jack, and whispered a few words in his ear. Instantly his face assumed a calmer aspect, and presently he stepped up to the king, and a whispering conversation ensued, in which the doctor, carefully refraining from making any mention of the gun, commended the wise advice of the white man, and suggested that the proposal should be agreed to, adding, however, that he knew for certain that the girl was a witch, but that the investigation would do good in the way of proving that he, the doctor, was correct, and thus the girl should perish on the following night, and the white men would be satisfied.

Having announced this to the multitude, the king ordered Okandaga to be conducted back to her prison and carefully guarded; and we returned to our hut -- not, however, to sleep, but to consult as to what was to be done next.

"I knew that you wanted a respite for her," said Peterkin, as we sat round our fire, "that you might have time to consider how to act, and I backed up your request accordingly, as you know. But now, I confess, I'm very much at a loss what to suggest. It seems to me we have only purchased a brief delay."

"True," answered Jack. "The delay is not so brief, however, but that we may plan some method of getting the poor girl out of this scrape. -- What say you, Mak?"

"If you no can tink 'pon someting, I gib up all hope," replied our guide sorrowfully.

"Come, Mak, cheer up," cried Peterkin. "If the worst comes to the worst, you can, at any rate, fight for your bride."

"Fight!" exclaimed the negro, displaying his white teeth like a mastiff, rolling his eyes and clinching his fists convulsively. Then in a calmer tone he continued, "Ay, me can fight. Me could kill all de guards an' take Okandaga by de hand, an' run troo de bushes for eber. But guards no die widout hollerin' an' yellerin' like de gorilla; an' nigger mans can run fasterer dan womans. No, no, dat am dumpossobable."

"Nothing's 'dumpossobable' to brave hearts and stout arms," replied Jack. "There are only four guards put over her, I believe. Well, there are just four of us -- not that we require to be equal, by any means. Peterkin and I could settle them easily; but we require to be equal in numbers, in order to do it quietly. I have a plan in my head, but there's one hitch in it that I cannot unravel."

"And what may that be?" If asked.

"Why, I don't see how, after getting clear off with Okandaga, we are to avoid being pursued on suspicion and captured."

"Dere is one cave," remarked the guide, "not far off to here. P'raps we be safe if we git into 'im. But I 'fraid it not do, cause him be peepiled by fiends an' dead man's spirits."

"That's a grave objection," said Peterkin, laughing.

"Yes, an' de tribe neber go near dere; dey is most drefful terrorfied to be cotched dere."

"Then, that will just do," cried Jack, with animation. "The very thing. And now I'll tell you what my plan is. To-morrow morning early we will tell the king that we wish to be off at once -- that we have put off too much time already, and wish to make no further delay. Then we'll pack up and start. At night we will encamp in a quiet, out-of-the-way part of the woods, and slip back to the village in the dark a short time before midnight. The whole village will at that time be assembled, probably, at the spot where the execution is to take place; so we can rush in, overpower the guard, free Okandaga, and make our escape to the cave, where they will never think of looking for us."

Peterkin shook his head. "There are two difficulties in your plan, Jack. First, what if the natives are not assembled on the place of execution, and we find it impossible to make our entrance into or exit from the village quietly?"

"I propose," replied Jack, "that we shall undress ourselves, rub ourselves entirely over with charcoal and grease, so that they shall not recognise us, and dash in and carry the girl off by a coup de main. In which case it will, of course, be neck or nothing, and a tremendous race to the cave, where, if they follow us, we will keep them at bay with our rifles."

"Umph! dashing, no doubt, but risky," said Peterkin -- "extremely risky. Yet it's worth trying. Well, my second difficulty is -- what if they don't stick to their promise after we quit, and kill the poor thing before midnight?"

"We must take our chance of that. But I shall put the king on his honour before leaving, and say that I will make particular inquiry into the way in which the trial has been conducted on my return."

"Put the king on his honour!" observed Peterkin. "I'm afraid that you'll put his majesty on an extremely unstable foundation. However, I see nothing better that can be done."

"Have you any more difficulties?"

"Yes," said I. "There is one other. What do you propose to do with the men who are to be supplied us by the king during these extremely delicate and difficult manoeuvres?"

The countenances of my comrades fell at this question.

"I never thought of them," said Jack.

"Nor I," said Peterkin.

Makarooroo groaned.

"Well," said I, "if you will allow me to suggest, I would recommend that we should, towards the close of the day, send them on ahead of us, and bid them encamp at a certain place, saying that we shall spend the night in hunting, and return to them in the morning."

"The very thing," said Jack. "Now, comrades, to rest. I will occupy myself until I fall asleep in maturing my plans and thinking out the details. Do you the same, and if anything should occur to you let us consult over it in the morning."

We were all glad to agree to this, being wearied more perhaps by excitement than want of rest; so bidding each other good-night, we lay down side by side to meditate, and for my part to dream of the difficult and dangerous work that awaited us on the morrow.



Chapter Seven.

We Circumvent The Natives.

We arose on the following morning with the dawn of day, and began to make preparation for our departure.

To our satisfaction we found the king quite willing that we should go; so embarking our goods in one of the native canoes, we ordered our negroes to embark, and commenced our journey amid the firing of guns and the good wishes of the natives. I must confess that I felt some probings of conscience at the thought of the double part we were compelled to play; but the recollection of the horrid fate that awaited the poor negro girl put to flight such feelings, and induced a longing for the time of action to arrive.

I have more than once referred to our goods. Perhaps it may be as well to explain that, when we first landed on the African coast, we made inquiries of those who were best acquainted with the nature and requirements of the country we were about to explore, as to what goods we ought to purchase of the traders, in order to be in a position to pay our way as we went along; for we could not, of course, expect the savages to feed us and lodge us and help us on our way for nothing. After mature consideration, we provided ourselves with a supply of such things as were most necessary and suitable -- such as tobacco, powder, and shot, and ball, a few trade-guns, several pieces of brightly-coloured cloth, packages of beads (some white enamelled, others of coloured glass), coffee and tea, knives, scissors, rings, and a variety of other knick-knacks. These, with a little brandy to be used medicinally, our blankets and camp cooking utensils, formed a heavy load for ten men; but, of course, as we advanced, the load was lightened by the consumption of our provisions and the giving away of goods. The additions which I made, however, in the shape of stuffed specimens, began in the course of time to more than counterbalance this advantage.

Being resolved to impress the natives with a respect for our physical powers, we made a point of each carrying a pretty heavy load on our journeys -- excepting, of course, when we went out a-hunting. But to return.

Our crew worked willingly and well, so that ere night closed in upon us we were a considerable distance away from the village. As the sun set we landed, and ordering our men to advance in the canoe to a certain bend in the river, and there encamp and await our return, we landed and went off into the woods as if to search for game.

"Now, Makarooroo, quick march, and don't draw rein till we reach the cave," said Jack when we were out of sight of the canoe.

Our guide obeyed in silence, and for the next two hours we travelled through the woods at a sort of half trot that must have carried us over the ground at the rate of five miles in hour. The pace was indeed tremendous, and I now reaped the benefit of those long pedestrian excursions which for years past I had been taking, with scientific ends in view, over the fields and hills of my native land. Jack and Peterkin seemed both to be made of iron, and incapable of suffering from fatigue. But I have no doubt that the exciting and hazardous nature of the expedition on which we had embarked had much to do with our powers of endurance.

After running and doubling, gliding and leaping through the dense woods, as I have said, for two hours, we arrived at a broken, rocky piece of ground, over which we passed, and eventually came upon a thick jungle that concealed a vast cliff almost entirely from view. The cracking of the bushes as we approached showed that we had disturbed the slumbers of more than one of the wild beasts that inhabited the spot. Here Makarooroo paused, and although it was intensely dark I could observe that he was trembling violently.

"Come, Mak," said I in a whisper, "surely you, who have received a Christian education, do not really believe that devils inhabit this spot?"

"Me don know, massa. Eber since me was be a pikaniny me 'fraid --  horrobably 'fraid ob dat cave."

"Come, come," said Jack impatiently; "we have no time for fears of any kind this night. Think of Okandaga, Mak, and be a man."

This was sufficient. The guide pushed boldly forward, and led us to the mouth of a large cavern, at which he halted and pointed to the gloomy interior.

"You have the matches, Peterkin; quick, strike a light. It is getting late," said Jack.

In another moment a light was struck, and with it we kindled three goodly-sized torches with which we had provided ourselves. Holding these high over our heads, we entered the cavern -- Jack first, Peterkin second, I next, and the terrified negro in rear.

We had scarcely entered, and were peering upwards at the black vault overhead, when an indescribable rushing sound filled the air of the cavern, and caused the flame of our torches to flicker with such violence that we could not see any object distinctly. We all came to a sudden pause, and I confess that at that moment a feeling of superstitious dread chilled the blood in my veins. Before we could discover the cause of this strange effect, several large black objects passed through the air near our heads with a peculiar muffled noise. Next instant the three torches were extinguished.

Unable to command himself any longer, the negro uttered a cry of terror and turned to fly; but Jack, whose wits seemed always prepared for any emergency, had foreseen the probability of this, and springing quickly after him, threw his arms round his neck and effectually prevented his running away.

The noise caused by the scuffle seemed to arouse the fury of all the evil spirits of the place, for a perfect hurricane of whirring sounds raged around us for a few seconds.

"It's only bats," cried Jack. -- "Look alive, Peterkin; another light."

In a few seconds the torches were rekindled, and we advanced into the cavern; and Mak, after recovering from his fright and learning the cause thereof, became much bolder. The cave was about a hundred yards deep by about fifty wide; but we could not ascertain its height, for the light of our torches failed to penetrate the deep gloom overhead. It was divided into two natural chambers, the outer being large, the inner small -- a mere recess, in fact. In this latter we planted our torches, and proceeded with our hasty preparations. Peterkin was ready first. We endeavoured to make ourselves as like to the natives in all respects as possible; and when I looked at my companions, I was obliged to confess that, except in the full blaze of the torch-light, I could not discern any point of difference between them and our guide.

"Now then, Jack," said Peterkin, "as you're not quite ready and I am, I shall employ myself in preparing a little plan of my own which I intend to put in force if the savages dare to venture into the cavern after us."

"Very good; but see that you finish it in less than five minutes, for I'll be ready in that time."

Peterkin immediately poured out a large quantity of powder on a flat rock, and mingling with it a little water from a pool near by, converted it into a semi-moist ball. This he divided into three parts, and forming each part into the shape of a tall cone, laid the whole carefully aside.

"There!" said he, "lie you there until you are wanted."

At this moment, while Jack and I were bending down fastening the latchet of our shoes, our ears were saluted with one of the most appalling yells I ever listened to. Makarooroo fell flat to the earth in his fright, and my own heart chilled with horror, while Jack sprang up and instinctively grasped the handle of his hunting-knife.

"Very good," said Peterkin, as he stood laughing at us quietly, and we immediately perceived that it was he who uttered the cry.

"Why, what mean you?" said Jack, almost angrily. "Surely this is no time for foolish jesting."

"I am anything but jesting, Jack. I'm only rehearsing another part of my plan."

"But you ought to give us warning when you are about to do such startling things," said I remonstratively.

"Nay, that would not have done at all, because then I should not have known what effect my cry is likely to produce on unexpectant ears."

"Well, now, are you all ready?" inquired Jack. "Then let us go."

Issuing forth armed only with our double-barrelled guns and heavy hunting-knives, we hastened towards the native village. When within a hundred yards of the edge of the wood that skirted it we stopped to pull off our shoes, for it was necessary that we should have nothing about our persons to tell who we were should any one chance to see us as we ran. We also left our rifles beside the shoes at a spot where we could find them in an instant in passing, and then slowly approached the outskirts of the village.

Presently we heard the hum of distant voices shouting, and the fear that the scene of bloodshed had already begun induced us to quicken our pace to a smart run. I never saw a man so deeply affected as was our poor guide, and when I looked at him I felt extremely anxious lest his state of mind should unfit him for acting with needful caution.

We gained the first cottages -- they were empty. The village having been recently built, no stockade had yet been thrown round it, so our progress was unimpeded.

"We must be very cautious now," observed Jack in a whisper. -- "Restrain yourself, Makarooroo; Okandaga's life depends on our coolness."

On reaching the back of the next hut, which was also empty. Jack motioned to us to halt, and coming close to us looked earnestly in each of our faces without saying a word. I supposed that, like a wise general, he was reviewing his troops -- seeing whether the men he was about to lead into battle were fit for their work.

"Now," said he rapidly, "it's evident from the shouting that's going on that they won't waste much time with their palaver. The hut in which she is confined is not fifty yards off; I took care to ascertain its position before leaving this morning. What we have to do is simple. Spring on the guards and knock them down with our fists or the hilts of our hunting-knives, or with bits of stick, as suits us best. But mind" -- here he looked pointedly at our guide -- "no shedding of blood if it can be avoided. These men are not our enemies. Follow me in single file; when I halt, come up into line; let each single out the man nearest to him, and when I hold up my hand spring like wild-cats. If there happen to be five or six guards instead of four, leave the additional ones to me." We merely nodded assent, and in another minute were close upon the prison. Peterkin, Mak, and I had provided us with short heavy bludgeons on our way. These we held in our right hands; our left hands we kept free either to grasp our opponents with, or to draw our knives if necessary. Jack carried his long knife -- it might almost have been termed a short sword -- in his left hand, and from the manner in which he clinched his right I saw that he meant to make use of it as his principal weapon.

On gaining the back of the house we heard voices within, but could see nothing, so we moved softly round to the front, keeping, however, well behind the screen of bushes. Here Jack halted, and we ranged up alongside of him and peeped through the bushes. The hut was quite open in front and the interior was brightly lighted by a strong fire, round which the four guards -- stout fellows all of them -- were seated with their spears beside them on the ground. They were conversing in an excited tone, and taking no notice of Okandaga, who sat behind them, partially in the shade, with her face buried in her hands. She was not tied in any way, as the guards knew well enough that she could not hope to escape them by mere running way.

One rapid glance showed us all this, and enabled us to select our men. Then Jack gave the signal, and without an instant's hesitation we darted upon them. I know not in what manner my comrades acted their part. From the moment I set eyes on the negro nearest to me, my blood began to boil. Somehow or other I saw Jack give the signal without taking my eyes off my intended victim, then I sprang forward, and he had barely time to look up in alarm when I struck him with all my force on the right temple. He fell without a groan. I looked round instantly, and there lay the other three, with my companions standing over them. Our plan had been so well concerted and so promptly executed that the four men fell almost at the same instant, and without a cry.

Poor Okandaga leaped up and uttered a faint scream of alarm, but Makarooroo's voice instantly reassured her, and with an exclamation of joy she sprang into his arms. There was no time for delay. While the scene I have described was being enacted the shouts in the centre of the village had been increasing, and we guessed that in a few minutes more the bloodthirsty executioners would come for their helpless victim. We therefore left the hut at once, and ran as fast as we could towards the place where our guns and shoes had been left. Our guide seized Okandaga by the wrist and dragged her along; but indeed she was so nimble that at first she required no assistance. In a short time, however, we were obliged to slacken our pace in order to enable her to keep up. We reached the guns in safety; but while we were in the act of lifting them a burst of wild cries, that grew louder and fiercer as they approached, told that the natives were rushing tumultuously towards the prison.

"Now, lads," said Jack, "we must put on full speed. -- Mak, take her right hand. -- Here, Okandaga, your left."

At that instant there was a shout in the village, so loud that we knew the escape was discovered. An indescribable hubbub ensued, but we soon lost it in the crackling of the underwood as we burst through it in our headlong flight towards the cave. The poor girl, feeling that her life depended on it, exerted herself to the utmost, and with the aid of Jack and her lover kept well up.

"She'll never hold out to the end," said Peterkin, glancing over his shoulder as he ran.

The cries of the savages filled the woods in all directions, showing that they had instantly scattered themselves in the pursuit, in order to increase their chances of intercepting us. We had already traversed the greater part of the wood that lay between the village and the haunted cavern, when two negroes, who must have taken a shorter route, descried us. They instantly uttered a yell of triumph and followed us at full speed, while from the cries closing in upon us we could tell that the others had heard and understood the shout. Just then Okandaga's strength began to fail, and her extreme terror, as the pursuers gained on us, tended still further to increase her weakness. This was all the more unfortunate that we were now almost within a couple of hundred yards of the mouth of the cave.

Makarooroo spoke encouragingly to her, but she was unable to reply, and it became evident that she was about to sink down altogether. Jack glanced over his shoulder. The two negroes were within fifty yards of us, but no others were in sight.

"Hold my gun," said Jack to me sharply.

I seized it. He instantly stooped down, grasped Okandaga round the waist, and without stopping, swung her, with an exertion of strength that seemed to me incredible, into his arms. We gained the mouth of the cavern; Jack dropped Okandaga, who immediately ran in, while the rest of us stopped abruptly and faced about.

"Back, all of you," cried Jack, "else they will be afraid to come on."

The words had scarcely passed his lips when the two negroes came up, but halted a few yards from the mouth of the cave on seeing such a giant form guarding the entrance.

To let those men escape and reveal the place of our concealment was not to be thought of. Jack darted out upon them. They separated from each other as they turned to fly. I was peeping out of the cave, and saw that Jack could not secure them both; I therefore darted out, and quickly overtaking one, seized him by the hair of the head and dragged him into the cave with the aid of Peterkin. Jack lifted the other savage completely from the ground, and carried him in struggling in his gripe like a child in its nurse's arms.

This last episode was enacted so quickly that the two negroes were carried into the cavern and gagged before the other pursuers came up. At the cave's mouth the whole of the men of the village shortly assembled with the king at their head. Thus far the excitement of the chase had led them; but now that the first burst of their rage was over, and they found themselves on the threshold of that haunted cavern, the fear of which had been an element in their training from infancy, they felt, no doubt, overawed by superstitious dread, and hesitated to enter, although most of them must have been convinced that the fugitives were there. Their fears increased as their anger abated, and they crowded round King Jambai, who seemed loath to take upon himself the honour of leader.

"They must have sought shelter here," said the king, pointing to the cavern and looking round with an assumption of boldness which he was evidently far from feeling. "Who among my warriors will follow me?"

"Perhaps the evil spirits have carried them away," suggested one of the sable crew.

"That is the word of a coward," cried the king, who, although somewhat timorous about spirits, was in reality a bold, brave man, and felt nettled that any of his warriors should show the white feather. "If evil spirits are there, our fetishman will drive them away. Let the doctor stand forth."

At that moment the doctor, worthy knave, must have wished in his inmost soul that he had remained quietly at home and left to warriors the task of capturing the fugitives, but there was no resisting the mandate of the king; besides, his honour and credit as a fetishman was at stake; moreover, no doubt he felt somewhat emboldened by the presence of such a large number of men -- there were certainly several hundreds on the ground -- so, all things considered, he thought it best to accept the post of leader with a good grace. Stepping quickly forward, he cried, "Let torches be brought, and I will lead the way."

A murmur of approbation ran through the crowd of blacks, who, like a flock of sheep, felt bold enough to follow a leader blindly.

While the consultation was going on outside, we were making hasty preparation for defending ourselves to the last extremity. Peterkin, in particular, was extremely active, and, to say truth, his actions surprised us not a little. I once or twice fancied that excitement had turned his brain. He first dressed up his head in a species of wild turban made of dried grass and tall sedgy leaves; then he put several patches of red and white earth on his black face, as well as on his body in various places, and fastened a number of loose pieces of rag, torn from a handkerchief, and bits of tattered leaves to his arms and legs in such a manner as to give him an extremely wild and dishevelled appearance. I must say that when his hasty toilet was completed he seemed to me the most horrible-looking demon I had ever conceived of. He next poured out nearly a whole flask of gunpowder on a ledge of rock, the edge of which was visible from the entrance to the cave, while the rock itself concealed him from view. Last of all, he took up the three cones of moistened gunpowder which the reader will remember he had made before we left the cave to attack the village. One of these he placed among the grass and branches on his head, the other two he held in his hands.

"Now, boys," he said, when all was ready, "all I have to ask of you is that you will stand by with matches, and when I give the word light the points of those three cones of gunpowder simultaneously and instantly, and leave me to finish the remainder of my part. Of course you will be prepared to back me up with your rifles if need be, but keep well out of sight at first."

We now saw the drift of our eccentric friend's intention, but for my part I felt little confidence in his success. The plan seemed altogether too wild and absurd. But our danger was imminent. No way of escape seemed possible, and it is wonderful how readily men will grasp at anything in the shape of a ruse or stratagem, no matter how silly or wild, that affords the most distant chance of escape from danger. Jack, too, I could see from the look of his face, put little faith in the plan; and I observed an expression on the countenance of our negro guide which seemed to indicate that his respect for Peterkin's wisdom was on the wane.

We had not to wait long. The doctor, with several torch-bearers, suddenly darted in with a shout, followed closely by the warriors, who yelled furiously, in order, no doubt, to keep up their courage.

Alarmed by such an unusual hubbub in their usually quiet domain, the bats came swooping from their holes in the walls by hundreds, and the torches were extinguished almost instantly. The savages who were near the entrance drew back in haste; those who had entered stood rooted to the spot in terror.

"Now!" whispered Peterkin eagerly.

We struck our lights at once and applied them to the points of the gunpowder cones, which instantly began to spout forth a shower of sparks with great violence. Peterkin darted out from behind the rock with a yell so appalling that we ourselves were startled by it, having forgotten that it formed an element in his plan. In passing he allowed a few sparks to fall on the heap of powder, which exploded with so bright a flame that the whole cavern was illuminated for an instant. It also set fire to the ragged scraps with which Peterkin had decked himself out -- a result which had neither been intended nor anticipated --  so that he rushed towards the mouth of the cave howling with pain as well as with a desire to scare the savages.

The effect of this apparition was tremendous. The negroes turned and crushed through the narrow entrance screaming and shrieking with terror. The bats, no less alarmed than the men, and half suffocated with smoke, fled out of the cave like a whirlwind, flapping their wings on the heads of the negroes in their flight, and adding, if that were possible, to their consternation. The negroes ran as never men ran before, tumbling over each other in their mad haste, dashing against trees and crashing through bushes in their terror, while Peterkin stood leaping in the cave's mouth, smoking and blazing and spurting, and unable to contain himself, giving vent to prolonged peals of demoniacal laughter. Had the laugh been that of negroes it might have been recognised; but Peterkin's was the loud, violent, British guffaw, which, I make no doubt, was deemed by them worthy of the fiends of the haunted cave, and served to spur them on to still greater rapidity in their wild career.

Returning into the cave's innermost recess, we lighted one of the torches dropped by the savages, and placing it in a sort of natural niche, seated ourselves on several pieces of rock to rest.

Our first act was to look earnestly in each other's faces; our next to burst into peals of laughter.

"I say, comrades," I exclaimed, checking myself, "don't we run some risk in giving vent to our feelings so freely?"

"No fear," cried Peterkin, who was still smoking a little from unextinguished sparks. "There is not a man in the whole crew who will draw rein till he is sitting, with the teeth still chattering in his head, at his own fireside. I never saw men in such a fright since I was born. Depend upon it, we are safe enough here from this day forth. --  Don't you think so, Mak?"

Our guide, who was now trying to reassure his trembling bride, turned, with a broad grin on his sable countenance, and said -- 

"Safe? ho! yis, massa. Dere not be a man as'll come to dis yere cuvern for de nix tree hun'r year or more. Massa Peterkin be de most horriboble ghost dey ever did saw, an' no mistake. But, massas, we mus' go 'way quick an' git to our camp, for de king sure to go dere an' see if you no hab someting to do wid it all. Him's a bery clebber king, am Jambai -- bery clebber; him's no be bughummed bery easy."

"Humbugged, you mean," said Jack, laughing. "You're right, Mak; we must set off at once. But what are we to do with poor Okandaga, now that we have got her?"

This was indeed a puzzling question. It was impossible to take her to our camp and account to the negroes for her appearance in a satisfactory manner; besides, if Jambai took it into his head to pursue us, in order to ascertain whether we had had anything to do with the rescue, our case would be hopeless. It was equally impossible to leave her where she was, and to let her try to make her escape through the woods alone was not to be thought of. While we pondered this dilemma an idea occurred to me.

"It seems to me," said I, "that men are seldom, perhaps never, thrown into a danger or difficulty in this world without some way of escape being opened up, which, if they will but grasp at it promptly, will conduct them at last out of their perplexities. Now, it has just occurred to me that, since everything else seems to be impossible, we might send Okandaga into the woods, with Makarooroo to guide and defend her and to hunt for her. Let them travel in a line parallel with the river route which we intend to follow. Each night Mak will make a secure shelter for her, and then return to our camp as if he had come in from hunting. Each morning he will set off again into the woods as if to hunt, rejoin Okandaga; and thus we will journey together, as it were, and when we reach the next tribe of natives we will leave the girl in their charge until we return from the gorilla country. What do you think of that plan?"

"Not a bad one," replied Jack; "but if Mak is away all day, what are we to do for an interpreter?"

"Make him describe to us and to the men the day's route before leaving us," suggested Peterkin; "and as for the talking, we can manage that well enough for all needful purposes by a mixture of the few phrases we know with signs."

In the excitement of this whole affair we had totally forgotten our two prisoners, who lay not far from us on the ground, gagged and pinioned. We were now reminded of their presence rather abruptly. We must have secured their fastenings badly, for during the time we were conversing they managed to free themselves, and made a sudden dash past us. Jack's eye fortunately caught sight of them in time. He sprang up, rushed at the one nearest him, and throwing out his foot as he passed, tripped him up. It chanced that at that spot there was a deep hole in the floor of the cavern. Into this the poor wretch plunged head first, and he was killed on the spot. Meanwhile, the other gained the outlet of the cave, and had almost escaped into the forest, when Makarooroo darted after him with the speed of an antelope. In a few seconds we heard a cry, and shortly after our guide returned with his knife clotted with blood. He had overtaken and slain the other negro.

I cannot convey to the reader the horror that filled me and my two companions at this unexpected and melancholy termination of the affair. Yet we felt that we were guiltless of rashly spilling human blood, for Jack had no intention of killing the poor negro whom he tripped up; and as to the other, we could not have prevented our guide from doing what he did. He himself deemed it justifiable, and said that if that man had escaped to the village, and told who it was that frightened them out of the cave, they would certainly have come back and murdered us all. There was truth in this. Still we could not but feel overwhelmed with sadness at the incident.

We were now doubly anxious to get away from this cave, so we rapidly finished the discussion of our plan, and Jack arranged that he should accompany what may be termed the overland part of our expedition. This settled, we washed the charcoal off our persons, with the exception of that on our faces, having been advised by King Jambai himself to hunt with black faces, as wild animals were quicker to perceive our white skins than their black ones. Then we resumed our garments, and quitting the haunted cavern, set out on our return journey to the camp.



Chapter Eight.

Peterkin Distinguishes Himself, And Okandaga Is Disposed Of, Etcetera.

When within about three miles of the place where our men had been ordered to haul the canoe out of the water and make the camp, we came to a halt and prepared a spot for Okandaga to spend an hour or two in sleep. The poor creature was terribly exhausted. We selected a very sequestered place in a rocky piece of ground, where the light of the small fire we kindled, in order to cook her some supper, could not be seen by any one who might chance to pass by that way.

Jack remained with her, but the guide went on with us, in order to give instructions to our men, who, when we arrived, seemed much surprised that we had made such a bad hunt during the night. Having pointed out our route, Makarooroo then left us, and we lay down to obtain a few hours' repose.

We had not lain more than an hour when one of our men awoke us, saying that it was time to start; so we rose, very unwillingly, and embarked.

"I say, Ralph," observed Peterkin, as we glided up the stream, which in this place was narrow and sluggish, "isn't it strange that mankind, as a rule, with very few exceptions, should so greatly dislike getting up in the morning?"

"It is rather curious, no doubt. But I suspect we have ourselves to thank for the disinclination. If we did not sit up so late at night we should not feel the indisposition to rise so strong upon us in the morning."

"There you are quite wrong, Ralph. I always find that the sooner I go to bed the later I am in getting up. The fact is, I've tried every method of rousing myself, and without success. And yet I can say conscientiously that I am desirous of improving; for when at sea I used to have my cot slung at the head with a block-tackle, and I got one of the middies to come when the watch was changed and lower me, so that my head lay on the deck below, and my feet pointed to the beams above. And would you believe it, I got so accustomed to this at last that, when desperately sleepy, I used to hold on in that position for a few minutes, and secure a short nap during the process of suffocation with blood to the head."

"You must indeed have been incorrigible," said I, laughing. "Nevertheless, I feel assured that the want of will lies at the root of the evil."

"Of course you do," retorted Peterkin testily; "people always say that when I try to defend myself."

"Is it not probable that people always say that just because they feel that there is truth in the remark?"

"Humph!" ejaculated my friend.

"Besides," I continued, "our success in battling with the evil tendencies of our natures depends often very much on the manner in which we make the attack. I have pondered this subject deeply, and have come to the conclusion that there is a certain moment in the awaking hour of each day which if seized and improved gains for us the victory. You know Shakespeare's judicious remark -- 'There is a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune,' or something to that effect. I never feel quite sure of the literal correctness of my quotations, although I am generally certain as to the substance. Well, there is a tide also in the affair of getting up in the morning, and its flood-point is the precise instant when you recover consciousness. At that moment every one, I believe, has moral courage to leap violently out of bed; but let that moment pass, and you sink supinely back, if not to sleep, at least into a desperate condition of unconquerable lethargy."

"You may be very correct in your reasoning," returned Peterkin; "but not having pondered that subject quite so deeply as you seem to have done, I shall modestly refrain from discussing it. Meanwhile I will go ashore, and stalk yonder duck which floats so comfortably and lazily in the cove just beyond the point ahead of us, that I think it must be in the condition of one who, having missed the flood-tide you have just referred to, is revelling in the luxury of its second nap. -- Ho, you ebony-faced scoundrel!" he added, turning to the negro who steered our canoe; "shove ashore, like a good fellow. -- Come, Ralph, lend me your fowling-piece, and do you carry my big rifle. There is nothing so good for breakfast as a fat duck killed and roasted before it has had time to cool."

"And here is a capital spot on which to breakfast," said I, as we landed.

"First-rate. Now then, follow me, and mind your muzzle. Better put the rifle over your shoulder, Ralph, so that if it does go off it may hit the sun or one of the stars. A six-ounce ball in one's spine is not a pleasant companion in a hunting expedition."

"But," retorted I, "you forget that I am particularly careful. I always carry my piece on half-cock, and never put my finger on the trigger."

"Indeed: not even when you pull it?"

"Of course when I am about to fire; but you know well enough what I mean."

"Hush, Ralph! we must keep silence now and step lightly."

In a few minutes we had gained the clump of bushes close behind which the duck lay; and Peterkin, going down on all fours, crept forward to get a shot. I followed him in the same manner, and when he stopped to take a deliberate aim, I crept up alongside. The duck had heard our approach, and was swimming about in a somewhat agitated manner among the tall reeds, so that my companion made one or two unsuccessful attempts to take aim.

"What an aggravating thing!" exclaimed Peterkin in a whisper.

At that moment I happened to cast my eyes across the river, and the reader may judge of my surprise when I beheld two elephants standing among the trees. They stood so silently and so motionless, and were so like in colour to the surrounding foliage, that we had actually approached to within about thirty yards without observing them. I touched Peterkin on the shoulder, and pointed to them without saying a word. The expression of amazement that instantly overspread his features showed that he also saw them.

"The rifle, Ralph," he said, in a low, excited whisper.

I handed it to him. With careful deliberation he took aim, and fired at the animal nearest to us. The heavy ball entered its huge body just behind the shoulder. Both elephants tossed up their trunks, and elevating their great ears they dashed furiously into the bush; but the one that had been hit, after plunging head foremost down a low bank fell to the ground with a heavy crash, quite dead.

It was a splendid shot. The natives, who almost immediately after came up screaming with delight, could scarcely believe their eyes. They dashed across the river in the canoe, while some of them, regardless of the alligators that might be hidden there, sprang into the water and swam over.

"I'm sorry we did not get the duck, however," observed Peterkin, as we returned to the place where we had left the canoe. "Elephant meat is coarse, nasty stuff, and totally unfit for civilised mouths, though these niggers seem to relish it amazingly."

"You forget the baked foot," said I.

"Well, so I did. It was pretty good, certainly; but that's the only part o' the brute that's fit to eat."

Soon after this the canoe came back and took us over the river; and we breakfasted on the side where the elephant had fallen, in order to allow the natives to cut off such portions of the meat as they required, and to secure the tusks. Then we continued our journey, and at night encamped near a grove of palm-trees which Makarooroo had described to us, and where we were soon joined by him and Jack, who told us that he had got on well, during the day -- that he had shot an antelope, and had seen a zebra and a rhinoceros, besides a variety of smaller game. He also told us that Okandaga was encamped in a place of safety a few miles to the right of our position, and that she had stood the journey well.

I was much interested by Jack's account of the zebra and the rhinoceros, specimens of both of which animals I had seen in menageries, and felt disposed to change places with him on the march; but reflecting that he was much more likely than I successfully to hunt anything he might pursue, I made up my mind to remain by the canoe.

Thus we travelled for several days without anything particular occurring, and at length arrived at a native village which lay on the banks of a noble stream.

Here Makarooroo introduced us to Mbango the chief, a fine-looking and good-natured negro, who received us most hospitably, supplied us with food, and urged us to remain and hunt with his people. This, however, we declined to do, telling our entertainer that we had come to his country for the purpose of shooting that wonderful animal the gorilla, but assuring him that we would come back without fail if we should be spared. We further assured him on this head by proposing to leave in his charge a woman for whom we had a great respect and love, and whom we made him promise faithfully to take care of till we returned.

Peterkin, who soon gave them a specimen of his powers as a marksman, and contrived in other ways to fill the minds of the chief and his people with a very exalted idea of his powers both of body and intellect, endeavoured to make assurance doubly sure by working on their superstitious fears.

"Tell Mbango," said he to our guide, "that though we be small in numbers we are very powerful; that we can do deeds" (here he became awfully solemn and mysterious) "such as no black man ever conceived of; and that if a hair of the head of Okandaga is hurt, we will on our return -- "

Instead of completing the sentence, Peterkin started up, threw himself into violent contortions, rolled his eyes in a fearful manner, and, in short, gave the chief and his people to understand that something quite indescribable and unutterably terrible would be the result of their playing us false.

"Send for Njamie," said Mbango to one of his retainers.

Njamie, who was the chief's principal wife, soon appeared. She led a sturdy little boy by the hand. He was her only son, and a very fine little fellow, despite the blackness of his skin and his almost total want of clothing.

To this woman Mbango gave Okandaga in charge, directing her in our presence how to care for her, and assuring her of the most terrible punishment should anything befall the woman committed to her care.

Njamie was a mild, agreeable woman. She had more modesty of demeanour and humility of aspect than the most of the women of her tribe whom we happened to see, so that we felt disposed to believe that Okandaga was placed in as safe keeping as it was possible for us to provide for her in our circumstances. Even Makarooroo appeared to be quite at ease in his mind; and it was evidently with a relieved breast and a light heart that he bade adieu to his bride, and started along with us on the following day on our journey into the deeper recesses of the wilderness.

Before entering upon these transactions with the people of this village, we took care to keep our crew in total ignorance of what passed by sending them on in advance with the canoe under Jack's care, a few hours before we brought Okandaga into the village, or even made mention of her existence; and we secured their ready obedience to our orders, and total indifference as to our motives in these incomprehensible actions, by giving them each a few inches of tobacco -- a gift which rendered them supremely happy.

One day, about a week after the events above narrated, we met with an adventure which well-nigh cost Jack his life, but which ultimately resulted in an important change in our manner of travelling. We were traversing an extremely beautiful country with the goods on our shoulders, having, in consequence of the increasing turbulence of the river as well as its change of direction, been compelled to abandon our canoe, and cut across the country in as straight a line as its nature would permit. But this was not easy, for the grass, which was bright green, was so long as to reach sometimes higher than our shoulders.

In this species of country Jack's towering height really became of great use, enabling him frequently to walk along with his head above the surrounding herbage, while we were compelled to grope along, ignorant of all that was around us save the tall grass at our sides. Occasionally, however, we came upon more open ground, where the grass was short, and then we enjoyed the lovely scenery to the full. We met with a great variety of new plants and trees in this region. Many of the latter were festooned with wild vines and other climbing plants. Among others, I saw several specimens of that curious and interesting tree the banyan, with its drop-shoots in every state of growth -- some beginning to point towards the earth, in which they were ultimately destined to take root; some more than half-way down; while others were already fixed, forming stout pillars to their parent branches -- thus, as it were, on reaching maturity, rendering that support which it is the glory as well as the privilege of youth to accord to age. Besides these, there were wild dates and palmyra trees, and many others too numerous to mention, but the peculiar characteristics of which I carefully jotted down in my note-book. Many small water-courses were crossed, in some of which Mak pointed out a number of holes, which he said were made by elephants wading in them. He also told us that several mud-pools, which seemed to have been recently and violently stirred up, were caused by the wallowing of the rhinoceros; so we kept at all times a sharp lookout for a shot.

Lions were also numerous in this neighbourhood, and we constantly heard them roaring at night, but seldom saw them during our march.

Well, as I have already remarked, one day we were travelling somewhat slowly through the long grass of this country, when, feeling oppressed by the heat, as well as somewhat fatigued with my load, I called to Jack, who was in advance, to stop for a few minutes to rest.

"Most willingly," he replied, throwing down his load, and wiping away the perspiration which stood in large drops on his brow. "I was on the point of calling a halt when you spoke. -- How do you get on down there, Peterkin?"

Our friend, who had seated himself on the bale he had been carrying, and seemed to be excessively hot, looked up with a comical expression of countenance, and replied -- 

"Pretty well, thank'ee. How do you get on up there?"

"Oh, capitally. There's such a nice cool breeze blowing, I'm quite sorry that I cannot send a little of it down."

"Don't distress yourself, my dear fellow; I'll come up to snuff it."

So saying, Peterkin sprang nimbly upon Jack's shoulders, and began to gaze round him.

"I say, Peterkin," said Jack, "why are you a very clever fellow just now?"

"Don't know," replied Peterkin. "I give it up at once. Always do. Never could guess a riddle in all my life."

"Because," said Jack, "you're 'up to snuff.'"

"Oh, oh! that certainly deserves a pinch; so there's for you."

Jack uttered a roar, and tossed Peterkin off his shoulders, on receiving the punishment.

"Shabby fellow!" cried Peterkin, rubbing his head. "But, I say, do let me up again. I thought, just as you dropped me, that I saw a place where the grass is short. Ay, there it is, fifty yards or so ahead of us, with a palmyra tree on it. Come, let us go rest there, for I confess that I feel somewhat smothered in this long grass."

We took up our packs immediately, and carried them to the spot indicated, which we found almost free from long grass. Here we lay down to enjoy the delightful shade of the tree, and the magnificent view of the country around us. Our negroes also seemed to enjoy the shade, but they were evidently not nearly so much oppressed with the heat as we were, which was very natural. They seemed to have no perception of the beautiful in nature, however, although they appreciated fully the agreeable influences by which they were surrounded.

While I lay at the foot of that tree, pondering this subject, I observed a very strange-looking insect engaged in a very curious kind of occupation. Peterkin's eye caught sight of it at the same instant with mine.

"Hollo! Jack, look here!" he cried in a whisper. "I declare, here's a beast been and shoved its head into a hole, and converted its tail into a trap!"

We all three lay down as quietly as possible, and I could not but smile when I thought of the literal correctness of my friend's quaint description of what we saw.

The insect was a species of ant-eater. It was about an inch and a quarter long, as thick as a crow-quill, and covered with black hair. It put its head into a little hole in the ground, and quivered its tail rapidly. The ants, which seemed to be filled with curiosity at this peculiar sight, went near to see what the strange thing could be; and no sooner did one come within the range of the forceps on the insect's tail, than it was snapped up.

"Now, that is the most original trapper I ever did see or hear of," remarked Peterkin, with a broad grin. "I've seen many things in my travels, but I never expected to meet with a beast that could catch others by merely wagging its tail."

"You forget the hunters of North America," said Jack, "who entice little antelopes towards them by merely wagging a bit of rag on the end of a ramrod."

"I forget nothing of the sort," retorted Peterkin. "Wagging a ramrod is not wagging a tail. Besides, I spoke of beasts doing it; men are not beasts."

"Then I hold you self-convicted, my boy," exclaimed Jack; "for you have often called me a beast."

"By no means, Jack. I am not self-convicted, but quite correct, as I can prove to the satisfaction of any one who isn't a philosopher. You never can prove anything to a philosopher."

"Prove it, then."

"I will. Isn't a monkey a beast?"

"Certainly."

"Isn't a gorilla a monkey?"

"No doubt it is."

"And aren't you a gorilla?"

"I say, lads, it's time to be going," cried Jack, with a laugh, as he rose and resumed his load.

At that moment Mak uttered an exclamation, and pointed towards a particular spot in the plain before us, where, close by a clump of trees, we saw the graceful head and neck and part of the shoulders of a giraffe. We were naturally much excited at the sight, this being the first we had fallen in with.

"You'd better go after it," said Jack to Peterkin, "and take Mak with you."

"I'd rather you'd go yourself," replied Peterkin; "for, to say truth, I'm pretty well knocked up to-day. I don't know how it is -- one day one feels made of iron, as if nothing could tire one; and the next, one feels quite weak and spiritless."

"Well, I'll go; but I shall not take any one with me. -- Take observation of the sun, Mak, and keep a straight course as you are now going until night. D'ye see yonder ridge?"

"Yes, massa."

"Then hold on direct for that, and encamp there. I'll not be long behind you, and hope to bring you a giraffe steak for supper."

We endeavoured to dissuade Jack from going out alone, but he said truly that his load distributed among us all was quite sufficient, without adding to it by taking away another member of the party. Thus we parted; but I felt a strange feeling of depression, a kind of foreboding of evil, which I could not shake off, despite my utmost efforts. Peterkin, too, was unusually silent, and I could not avoid seeing that he felt more anxiety on account of Jack's rashness than he was willing to allow. Our friend took with him one of our large-bore rifles, and a double-barrel of smaller bore slung at his back.

Shortly after parting with him, we descried an ostrich feeding in the plain before us. I had long desired to meet with a specimen of this gigantic bird in its native wilds, and Peterkin was equally anxious to get a shot at it; so we called a halt, and prepared to stalk it. We were aware that the ostrich is a very silly and very timid bird, but not being aware of the best method of hunting it, we asked Makarooroo to explain how he was in the habit of doing it.

"You mus' know," he began, "dat bird hims be a mos' ex'roroninary beast. When hims run hims go fasterer dan -- oh! it be dumpossobable for say how much fast hims go. You no can see him's legs; dey go same as legs ob leetle bird. But hims be horrobably stupid. Suppose he see you far, far away, goin' to de wind'ard ob him, he no run 'way to leeward; hims tink you wants to get round him, so off him start to git past you, and before hims pass he sometimes come close 'nuff to be shooted or speared. Me hab spear him dat way, but him's awful differcult to git at for all dat."

"Well then, Mak, after that lucid explanation, what d'you propose that we should do?" inquired Peterkin, examining the locks of his rifle.

"Me pruppose dat you go far ober dere, Massa Ralph go not jist so far, and me go to de wind'ard and gib him fright."

Acting upon this advice, we proceeded cautiously to the several spots indicated, and our guide set off towards an exposed place, where he intended to show himself. In a few minutes we observed the gigantic bird look up in alarm, and then we saw Makarooroo running like a deer over the plain. The ostrich instantly rushed off madly at full speed, not, as might have been expected, in a contrary direction, or towards any place of shelter, but simply, as it appeared to me, with no other end in view than that of getting to windward of his supposed enemy. I observed that he took a direction which would quickly bring him within range of my companion's rifle, but I was so amazed at the speed with which he ran that I could think of nothing else.

Every one knows that the ostrich has nothing worthy of the name of wings -- merely a small tuft of feathers at each side, with which he cannot make even an attempt to fly; but every one does not know, probably, that with his stout and long legs he can pass over the ground nearly at the ordinary speed of a locomotive engine. I proved this to my own satisfaction by taking accurate observation. On first observing the tremendous speed at which he was going, I seized my note-book, and pulling out my watch, endeavoured to count the number of steps he took in a minute. This, however, I found was totally impossible; for his legs, big though they were, went so fast that I could no more count them than I could count the spokes of a carriage-wheel. I observed, however, that there were two bushes on the plain in the direction of his flight, which he would soon have to pass. I therefore laid down my note-book and rifle, and stood with my watch in hand, ready to note the precise instants at which he should pass the first and second. By afterwards counting the number of footsteps on the ground between the bushes, and comparing the result with the time occupied in passing between the two, I thus proposed to myself to ascertain his rate of speed.

Scarcely had I conceived this idea when the bird passed the first bush, and I glanced at my watch; then he passed the second, and I glanced again. Thus I noted that he took exactly ten seconds to pass from one bush to the other. While I was in the act of jotting this down I heard the report of Peterkin's rifle, and looking up hastily, saw the tail-feathers of the ostrich knocked into the air, but the bird itself passed on uninjured. I was deeply mortified at this failure, and all the more so that, from past experience, I had been led to believe that my friend never missed his mark. Hurrying up, I exclaimed -- 

"Why, my dear fellow, what can have come over you?"

Poor Peterkin seemed really quite distressed; he looked quite humbled at first.

"Ah!" said he, "it's all very well for you to say, 'What has come over you?' but you ought to make allowance for a man who has carried a heavy load all the forenoon. Besides, he was almost beyond range. Moreover, although I have hunted a good deal, I really have not been in the habit of firing at animal locomotives under full steam. Did you ever see such a slapping pace and such an outrageous pair of legs, Ralph?"

"Never," said I. "But come with me to yonder bushes. I'm going to make a calculation."

"What's a calcoolashun?" inquired our guide, who came up at that moment, panting violently.

"It's a summation, case of counting up one, two, three, etcetera -- and may be multiplying, subtracting, and dividing into the bargain."

"Ho! dat's what me been do at de missionary school."

"Exactly; but what sort of calculation Ralph means to undertake at present I know not. Perhaps he's going to try to find out whether, if we were to run at the rate of six miles an hour till doomsday, in the wrong direction, there would be any chance of our ever sticking that ostrich's tail again on his big body. But come along; we shall see."

On reaching the spot I could scarcely believe my eyes. Each step this bird had taken measured fourteen feet in length! I always carried a rolled-up yard-measure about with me, which I applied to the steps, so that I could make no mistake. There were exactly thirty of those gigantic paces between the two bushes. This multiplied by six gave 180 steps, or 2,520 feet in one minute, which resulted in 151,200 feet, or 50,400 yards, or very nearly thirty miles in the hour.

"No wonder I only knocked his tail off," said Peterkin.

"On the contrary," said I, "the wonder is that under the circumstances you hit the bird at all."

On further examination of the place where we had seen the ostrich before it was alarmed, we ascertained that his ordinary walking pace varied from twenty to twenty-six inches in length.

After this unsuccessful hunt we returned to our comrades, and proceeded to the rendezvous where we expected to find Jack; but as he was not there, we concluded that he must have wandered farther than he intended, so, throwing down our packs, we set about preparing the camp and a good supper against his return. Gradually the sun began to sink low on the horizon; then he dipped below it, and the short twilight of those latitudes was rapidly merging into night; but Jack did not return, and the uneasiness which we had all along felt in regard to him increased so much that we could not refrain from showing it.

"I'll tell you what it is, Ralph," cried Peterkin, starting up suddenly: "I'm not going to sit here wasting the time when Jack may be in some desperate fix. I'll go and hunt for him."

"Me tink you right," said our guide; "dere is ebery sort ob ting here --  beasties and mans. P'raps Massa Jack am be kill."

I could not help shuddering at the bare idea of such a thing, so I at once seconded my companion's proposal, and resolved to accompany him.

"Take your double-barrel, Ralph, and I'll lend our spare big gun to Mak."

"But how are we to proceed? which way are we to go? I have not the most distant idea as to what direction we ought to go in our search."

"Leave that to Mak. He knows the ways o' the country best, and the probable route that Jack has taken. Are you ready?"

"Yes. Shall we take some brandy?"

"Ay; well thought of. He'll perhaps be the better of something of that sort if anything has befallen him. Now, then, let's go."

Leaving our men in charge of the camp, with strict injunctions to keep good watch and not allow the fires to go down, lest they should be attacked by lions, we three set forth on our nocturnal search. From time to time we stood still and shouted in a manner that would let our lost friend know that we were in search of him, should he be within earshot, but no answering cry came back to us; and we were beginning to despair, when we came upon the footprints of a man in the soft soil of a swampy spot we had to cross. It was a clear moonlight night, so that we could distinguish them perfectly.

"Ho!" exclaimed our guide, as he stooped to examine the marks.

"Well, Mak, what do you make of it?" inquired Peterkin anxiously.

Mak made no reply for a few seconds; then he rose, and said earnestly, "Dat am Massa Jack's foot."

I confess that I was somewhat surprised at the air of confidence with which our guide made this statement; for after a most careful examination of the prints, which were exceedingly indistinct, I could discern nothing to indicate that they had been made by Jack.

"Are you sure, Mak?" asked Peterkin.

"Sartin sure, massa."

"Then push on as fast as you can."

Presently we came to a spot where the ground was harder and the prints more distinct.

"Ha! you're wrong, Mak," cried Peterkin, in a voice of disappointment, as he stooped to examine the footsteps again. "Here we have the print of a naked foot; Jack wore shoes. And, what's this? blood!"

"Yis, massa, me know dat Massa Jack hab shoes. But dat be him's foot for all dat, and him's hurt somehow for certain."

The reader may imagine our state of mind on making this discovery. Without uttering another word, we quickened our pace into a smart run, keeping closely in the track of Jack's steps. Soon we observed that these deviated from side to side in an extraordinary manner, as if the person who made them had been unable to walk straight. In a few minutes more we came on the footprints of a rhinoceros -- a sight which still further increased our alarm. On coming out from among a clump of low bushes that skirted the edge of a small plain, we observed a dark object lying on the ground about fifty yards distant from us. I almost sank down with an undefinable feeling of dread on beholding this.

We held our rifles in readiness as we approached it at a quick pace, for we knew not whether it was not a wild animal which might spring upon us the moment we came close enough. But a few seconds dispelled our dread of such an attack and confirmed our worst fears, for there, in a pool of blood, lay Jack's manly form. The face was upturned, and the moon, which shone full upon it, showed that it was pale as death and covered with blood. His clothes were rent and dishevelled and covered with dust, as if he had struggled hard with some powerful foe, and all round the spot were footprints of a rhinoceros, revealing too clearly the character of the terrible monster with which our friend had engaged in unequal conflict.

Peterkin darted forward, tore open Jack's shirt at the breast, and laid his hand upon his heart.

"Thank God," he muttered, in a low, subdued tone, "he's not dead! Quick, Ralph -- the brandy-flask."

I instantly poured a little of the spirit into the silver cup attached to the flask, and handed it to Peterkin, who, after moistening Jack's lips, began assiduously to rub his chest and forehead with brandy. Kneeling down by his side I assisted him, while I applied some to his feet. While we were thus engaged we observed that our poor friend's arms and chest had received several severe bruises and some slight wounds, and we also discovered a terrible gash in his right thigh which had evidently been made by the formidable horn of the rhinoceros. This, and the other wounds which were still bleeding pretty freely, we stanched and bound up, and our exertions were at length rewarded by the sight of a faint tinge of colour returning to Jack's cheeks. Presently his eyes quivered, and heaving a short, broken sigh, he looked up.

"Where am I, eh? Why, what's wrong? what has happened?" he asked faintly, in a tone of surprise.

"All right, old boy. Here, take a swig of this, you abominable gorilla," said Peterkin, holding the brandy-flask to his mouth, while one or two tears of joy rolled down his cheeks.

Jack drank, and rallied a little.

"I've been ill, I see," he said gently. "Ah! I remember now. I've been hurt -- the rhinoceros; eh, have you killed it? I gave it a good shot. It must have been mortal, I think."

"Whether you've killed it or not I cannot tell," said I, taking off my coat and putting it under Jack's head for a pillow, "but it has pretty nearly killed you. Do you feel worse, Jack?"

I asked this in some alarm, observing that he had turned deadly pale again.

"He's fainted, man; out o' the way!" cried Peterkin, as he applied the brandy again to his lips and temples.

In a few seconds Jack again rallied.

"Now, Mak, bestir yourself," cried Peterkin, throwing off his coat. "Cut down two stout poles, and we'll make some sort of litter to carry him on."

"I say, Ralph," whispered Jack faintly, "do look to my wounds and see that they are all tightly bound up. I can't afford to lose another drop of blood. It's almost all drained away, I believe."

While I examined my friend's wounds and readjusted the bandages, my companions cut down two poles. These we laid on the ground parallel to each other and about two feet apart, and across them laid our three coats, which we fastened in a rough fashion by means of some strong cords which I fortunately happened to have with me. On this rude litter we laid our companion, and raised him on our shoulders. Peterkin and I walked in rear, each supporting one of the poles; while Makarooroo, being the stoutest of the three, supported the entire weight of the other ends on his broad shoulders. Jack bore the moving better than we had expected, so that we entertained sanguine hopes that no bones were broken, but that loss of blood was all he had to suffer from.

Thus slowly and with much difficulty we bore our wounded comrade to the camp.



Chapter Nine.

I Discover A Curious Insect, And Peterkin Takes A Strange Flight.

It happened most fortunately at this time that we were within a short day's journey of a native village, to which, after mature consideration, we determined to convey Jack, and remain there until he should be sufficiently recovered to permit of our resuming our journey. Hitherto we had studiously avoided the villages that lay in our route, feeling indisposed to encounter unnecessarily the risk of being inhospitably received -- perhaps even robbed of our goods, if nothing worse should befall us. There was, however, no other alternative now; for Jack's wounds were very severe, and the amount of blood lost by him was so great that he was as weak as a child. Happily, no bones were broken, so we felt sanguine that by careful nursing for a few weeks we should get him set firmly upon his legs again.

On the following morning we set forth on our journey, and towards evening reached the village, which was situated on the banks of a small stream, in the midst of a beautiful country composed of mingled plain and woodland.

It chanced that the chief of this village was connected by marriage with King Jambai -- a most fortunate circumstance for us, as it ensured our being hospitably received. The chief came out to meet us riding on the shoulders of a slave, who, although a much smaller man than his master, seemed to support his load with much case. Probably habit had strengthened him for his special work. A large hut was set apart for our accommodation; a dish of yams, a roast monkey, and a couple of fowls were sent to us soon after our arrival, and, in short, we experienced the kindest possible reception.

None of the natives of this village had ever seen a white face in their lives, and, as may well be imagined, their curiosity and amazement were unbounded. The people came constantly crowding round our hut, remaining, however, at a respectful distance, and gazed at us until I began to fear they would never go away.

Here we remained for three weeks, during which time Jack's wounds healed up, and his strength returned rapidly. Peterkin and I employed ourselves in alternately tending our comrade, and in scouring the neighbouring woods and plains in search of wild animals.

As we were now approaching the country of the gorilla -- although, indeed, it was still far distant -- our minds began to run more upon that terrible creature than used to be the case; and our desire to fall in with it was increased by the strange accounts of its habits and its tremendous power that we received from the natives of this village, some of whom had crossed the desert and actually met with the gorilla face to face. More than once, while out hunting, I have been so taken up with this subject that I have been on the point of shooting a native who appeared unexpectedly before me, under the impression that he was a specimen of the animal on which my thoughts had been fixed.

One day about a week after our arrival, as I was sitting at the side of Jack's couch relating to him the incidents of a hunt after a buffalo that Makarooroo and I had had the day before, Peterkin entered with a swaggering gait, and setting his rifle down in a corner, flung himself on the pile of skins that formed his couch.

"I'll tell you what it is," said he, with the look and tone of a man who feels that he has been unwarrantably misled -- "I don't believe there's such a beast as a gorilla at all; now, that's a fact."

There was something so confident and emphatic in my comrade's manner that, despite my well-grounded belief on that point, I felt a sinking at the heart. The bare possibility that, after all our trouble and toil and suffering in penetrating thus far towards the land which he is said to inhabit, we should find that there really existed no such creature as the gorilla was too terrible to think upon.

"Peterkin," said I anxiously, "what do you mean?"

"I mean," replied he slowly, "that Jack is the only living specimen of the gorilla in Africa."

"Come, now, I see you are jesting."

"Am I?" cried Peterkin savagely -- "jesting, eh? That means expressing thoughts and opinions which are not to be understood literally. Oh, I would that I were sure that I am jesting! Ralph, it's my belief, I tell you, that the gorilla is a regular sell -- a great, big, unnatural hairy do!"

"But I saw the skeleton of one in London."

"I don't care for that. You may have been deceived, humbugged. Perhaps it was a compound of the bones of a buffalo and a chimpanzee."

"Nay, that were impossible," said I quickly; "for no one pretending to have any knowledge of natural history and comparative anatomy could be so grossly deceived."

"What like was the skeleton, Ralph?" inquired Jack, who seemed to be rather amused by our conversation.

"It was nearly as tall as that of a medium-sized man -- I should think about five feet seven or eight inches; but the amazing part about it was the immense size and thickness of its bones. Its shoulders were much broader than yours, Jack, and your chest is a mere child's compared with that of the specimen of the gorilla that I saw. Its legs were very short -- much shorter than those of a man; but its arms were tremendous --  they were more than a foot longer than yours. In fact, if the brute's legs were in the same proportion to its body as are those of a man, it would be a giant of ten or eleven feet high. Or, to take another view of it, if you were to take a robust and properly proportioned giant of that height, and cut down his legs until he stood about the height of an ordinary man, that would be a gorilla."

"I don't believe it," cried Peterkin.

"Well, perhaps my simile is not quite so felicitous as -- "

"I don't mean that," interrupted Peterkin; "I mean that I don't believe there's such a brute as a gorilla at all."

"Why, what has made you so sceptical?" inquired Jack.

"The nonsense that these niggers have been telling me, through the medium of Mak as an interpreter; that is what has made me sceptical. Only think, they say that a gorilla is so strong that he can lift a man by the nape of the neck clean off the ground with one of his hind feet! Yes, they say he is in the habit of sitting on the lower branches of trees in lonely dark parts of the wood watching for prey, and when a native chances to pass by close enough he puts down his hind foot, seizes the wretched man therewith, lifts him up into the tree, and quietly throttles him. They don't add whether or not he eats him afterwards, or whether he prefers him boiled or roasted. Now, I don't believe that."

"Neither do I," returned Jack; "nevertheless the fact that these fellows recount such wonderful stories at all, is, to some extent, evidence in favour of their existence: for in such a country as this, where so many wonderful and horrible animals exist, men are not naturally tempted to invent new creatures; it is sufficient to satisfy their craving for the marvellous that they should merely exaggerate what does already exist."

"Go to, you sophist! if what you say be true, and the gorilla turns out to be only an exaggerated chimpanzee or ring-tailed roarer, does not that come to the same thing as saying that there is no gorilla at all --  always, of course, excepting yourself?"

"Credit yourself with a punched head," said Jack, "and the account shall be balanced when I am sufficiently recovered to pay you off. Meanwhile, continue your account of what the niggers say about the gorilla."

Peterkin assumed a look of offended dignity as he replied -- 

"Without deigning any rejoinder to the utterly absurd and totally irrelevant matter contained in the preliminary sentences of your last remark, I pass on to observe that the natives of these wilds hold the opinion that there is one species of the gorilla which is the residence of the spirits of defunct niggers, and that these fellows are known by their unusual size and ferocity."

"Hold," cried I, "until I get out my note-book. Now, Peterkin, no fibs."

"Honour bright," said he, "I'll give it you just as I got it. These possessed brutes are never caught, and can't be killed. (I only hope I may get the chance to try whether that be true or not.) They often carry off natives into the woods, where they pull out their toe and finger nails by the roots and then let them go; and they are said to be uncommonly fond of sugar-cane, which they steal from the fields of the natives sometimes in a very daring manner."

"Is that all?" said I.

"All!" exclaimed my comrade. "How much more would you have? Do you suppose that the gorilla can do anything it likes -- hang by its tail from the moon, or sit down on its nose and run round on its chin?"

"Massa Jack," said Makarooroo, entering the hut and interrupting our conversation at this point, "de chief hims tell to me for to tell to you dat w'en you's be fit for go-hid agin hims gib you cottle for sit upon."

"Cottle, Mak! what's cottle?" inquired Jack, with a puzzled look.

"Ho, massa, you know bery well; jist cottle -- hoxes, you know."

"Indeed, I don't know," replied Jack, still more puzzled.

"I've no doubt," interposed Peterkin, "that he means cuttle, which is the short name for cuttle-fish, which, in such an inland place as this, must of course be hoaxes! But what do you mean, Mak? Describe the thing to us."

Mak scratched his woolly pate, as if he were quite unable to explain himself.

"O massas, you be most stoopid dis yer day. Cottle not a ting; hims am a beast, wid two horn an' one tail. Dere," said he, pointing with animation to a herd of cattle that grazed near our hut, "dat's cottle, or hoxes."

We all laughed at this proposal.

"What!" cried Jack, "does he mean us to ride upon 'hoxes' as if they were horses?"

"Yis, massa, hims say dat. Hims hear long ago ob one missionary as hab do dat; so de chief he tink it bery good idea, an' hims try too, an' like it bery much; only hims fell off ebery tree steps an' a'most broke all de bones in him's body down to powder. But hims git up agin and fell hoff agin. Oh, hims like it bery much!"

"If we follow the chief's example," said I, laughing, "we shall scarcely be in a fit state to hunt gorillas at the end of our journey; but now I come to think of it, the plan seems to me not a bad one. You know a great part of our journey now lies over a comparatively desert country, where we shall be none the worse of a ride now and then on ox-back to relieve our limbs. I think the proposal merits consideration."

"Right, Ralph," said Jack. -- "Go, Mak, and tell his majesty, or chieftainship, or his royal highness, with my compliments, that I am much obliged by the offer, and will consider it. Also give him this plug of tobacco; and see you don't curtail its dimensions before it leaves your hand, you rascal."

Our guide grinned as he left the hut to execute his mission, and we turned to converse on this new plan, which, the more we thought of it, seemed the more to grow in our estimation as most feasible.

"Now, lads, leave me," said Jack, with a sigh, after we had chatted for more than an hour. "If I am to go through all that our worthy host seems to have suffered, it behoves me to get my frame into a fit state to stand it. I shall therefore try to sleep."

So saying he turned round on his side, and we left him to his slumbers.

As it was still early in the afternoon, we two shouldered our rifles and strolled away into the woods, partly with the intention of taking a shot at anything that might chance to come in our way, but chiefly with the view of having a pleasant chat about our prospect of speedily reaching that goal of our ambition -- the gorilla country.

"It seems to me," observed Peterkin, as we walked side by side over an open grassy and flower-speckled plain that lay about a couple of miles distant from the village -- "it seems to me that we shall never reach this far-famed country."

"I have no doubt that we shall," said I; "but tell me, Peterkin, do you really doubt the existence of the gorilla?"

"Well, since you do put it to me so very seriously, I can scarce tell what I believe. The fact is, that I'm such a sceptical wretch by nature that I find it difficult to believe anything unless I see it."

I endeavoured to combat this very absurd state of mind in my companion by pointing out to him very clearly that if he were to act upon such a principle at all times, he would certainly disbelieve many of the commonest facts in nature, and give full credit, on the other hand, to the most outrageous absurdities.

"For instance," said I, "you would believe that every conjurer swallows fire, and smoke, and penknives, and rabbits, because you see him do it; and you would disbelieve the existence of the pyramids, because you don't happen to have seen them."

"Ralph," said my companion seriously, "don't go in too deep, else I shall be drowned!"

I was about to make some reply, when my attention was attracted by a very singular appearance of moisture at the foot of a fig-tree under which we were passing. Going up to it I found that there was a small puddle of clear water near the trunk. This occasioned me much surprise, for no rain had fallen in that district since our arrival, and probably there had been none for a long period before that. The ground everywhere, except in the large rivers and water-courses, was quite dry, insomuch that, as I have said, this little solitary pool (which was not much larger than my hand) occasioned us much surprise.

"How comes it there?" said I.

"That's more than I can tell," replied Peterkin. "Perhaps there's a small spring at the root of the tree."

"Perhaps there is," said I, searching carefully round the spot in all directions; but I found nothing to indicate the presence of a spring --  and, indeed, when I came to think of it, if there had been a spring there would also certainly have been a water-course leading from it. But such was not the case. Presently I observed a drop of water fall into the pool, and looking up, discovered that it fell from a cluster of insects that clung to a branch close over our heads.

I at once recognised this water-distilling insect as an old acquaintance. I had seen it before in England, although of a considerably smaller size than this African one. My companion also seemed to be acquainted with it, for he exclaimed -- 

"Ho! I know the fellow. He's what we used at home to call a 'frog-hopper' after he got his wings, and a 'cuckoo-spit' before that time; but these ones are six times the size of ours."

I was aware that there was some doubt among naturalists as to whence these insects procured the water they distilled. My own opinion, founded on observations made at this time, led me to think the greater part of the moisture is derived from the atmosphere, though, possibly, some of it may be procured by suction from the trees. I afterwards paid several visits to this tree, and found, by placing a vessel beneath them, that these insects distilled during a single night as much as three or four pints of water!

Turning from this interesting discovery, we were about to continue our walk, when we observed a buffalo bull feeding in the open plain, not more than five or six hundred yards off from us.

"Ha! Ralph, my boy," cried Peterkin enthusiastically, "here is metal more attractive! Follow me; we must make a detour in order to get to leeward of him."

We set off at a brisk pace, and I freely confess that, although the contemplation of the curious processes of the water-distilling insect afforded me deeper and more lasting enjoyment, the gush of excitement and eagerness that instantly followed the discovery of the wild buffalo bull enabled me thoroughly to understand the feeling that leads men --  especially the less contemplative among them -- infinitely to prefer the pleasures of the chase to the calmer joys attendant upon the study of natural history.

At a later period that evening I had a discussion with my companions on that subject, when I stood up for the pursuit of scientific knowledge as being truly elevating and noble, while the pursuit of game was, to say the least of it, a species of pleasure more suited to the tastes and condition of the savage than of the civilised man.

To this Peterkin replied -- having made a preliminary statement to the effect that I was a humbug -- that a man's pluck was brought out and his nerves improved by the noble art of hunting, which was beautifully scientific in its details, and which had the effect of causing a man to act like a man and look like a man -- not like a woman or a nincompoop, as was too often the case with scientific men.

Hereupon Jack announced it as his opinion that we were both wrong and both right; which elicited a cry of "Bravo!" from Peterkin. "For," said Jack, "what would the naturalist do without the hunter? His museums would be almost empty and his knowledge would be extremely limited. On the other hand, if there were no naturalists, the hunter -- instead of being the hero who dares every imaginable species of danger, in order to procure specimens and furnish information that will add to the sum of human knowledge -- would degenerate into the mere butcher, who supplies himself and his men with meat; or into the semi-murderer, who delights in shedding the blood of inferior animals. The fact is, that the naturalist and the hunter are indispensably necessary to each other -- 'both are best,' to use an old expression; and when both are combined in one, as in the case of the great American ornithologist Audubon, that is best of all."

"Betterer than both," suggested Peterkin.

But to return from this digression.

In less than quarter of an hour we gained a position well to leeward of the buffalo, which grazed quietly near the edge of the bushes, little dreaming of the enemies who were so cautiously approaching to work its destruction.

"Keep well in rear of me, Ralph," said Peterkin, as we halted behind a bush to examine our rifles. "I'll creep as near to him as I can, and if by any chance I should not kill him at the first shot, do you run up and hand me your gun."

Without waiting for a reply, my companion threw himself on his breast, and began to creep over the plain like a snake in the grass. He did this so well and so patiently that he reached to within forty yards of the bull without being discovered. Then he ceased to advance, and I saw his head and shoulders slowly emerge from among the grass, and presently his rifle appeared, and was slowly levelled. It was one of our large-bore single-barrelled rifles.

He lay in this position for at least two minutes, which seemed to me a quarter of an hour, so eager was I to see the creature fall. Suddenly I heard a sharp snap or crack. The bull heard it too, for it raised its huge head with a start. The cap of Peterkin's rifle had snapped, and I saw by his motions that he was endeavouring, with as little motion as possible, to replace it with another. But the bull caught sight of him, and uttering a terrific roar charged in an instant.

It is all very well for those who dwell at home in security to think they know what the charge of an infuriated buffalo bull is. Did they see it in reality, as I saw it at that time, tearing madly over the grass, foaming at the mouth, flashing at the eyes, tossing its tail, and bellowing hideously, they would have a very different idea from what they now have of the trials to which hunters' nerves are frequently exposed.

Peterkin had not time to cap. He leaped up, turned round, and ran for the woods at the top of his speed; but the bull was upon him in an instant. Almost before I had time to realise what was occurring, I beheld my companion tossed high into the air. He turned a distinct somersault, and fell with a fearful crash into the centre of a small bush. I cannot recall my thoughts on witnessing this. I remember only experiencing a sharp pang of horror and feeling that Peterkin must certainly have been killed. But whatever my thoughts were they must have been rapid, for the time allowed me was short, as the bull turned sharp round after tossing Peterkin and rushed again towards the bush, evidently with the intention of completing the work of destruction.

Once again I experienced that strange and sudden change of feeling to which I have before referred. I felt a bounding sensation in my breast which tingled to my finger-ends. At the same time my head became clear and cool. I felt that Providence had placed the life of my friend in my hands. Darting forward in advance of the bush, I awaited the charge of the infuriated animal. On it came. I knew that I was not a sufficiently good shot to make sure of hitting it in the brain. I therefore allowed it to come within a yard of me, and then sprang lightly to one side. As it flew past, I never thought of taking aim or putting the piece to my shoulder, but I thrust the muzzle against its side and pulled both triggers at once.

From that moment consciousness forsook me, and I knew not what had occurred for some minutes after. The first object that met my confused vision when I again opened my eyes was Peterkin, who was seated close beside me on the body of the dead buffalo, examining some bloody scratches on the calf of his left leg. He had evidently been attempting to restore me to consciousness, for I observed that a wet handkerchief lay on my forehead. He muttered to himself as he examined his wounds -- 

"This comes of not looking to one's caps. Humph! I do believe that every bone in my body is -- ah! here's another cut, two inches at least, and into the bone of course, to judge from the flow of blood. I wonder how much blood I can afford to lose without being floored altogether. Such a country! I wonder how high I went. I felt as if I'd got above the moon. Hollo, Ralph! better?"

I sat up as he said this, and looked at him earnestly.

"My dear Peterkin, then you're not killed after all."

"Not quite, but pretty near. If it had not been for that friendly bush I should have fared worse. It broke my fall completely, and I really believe that my worst hurts are a few scratches. But how are you, Ralph? Yours was a much more severe case than mine. You should hold your gun tighter, man, when you fire without putting it to your shoulder."

"How? why? what do you mean?"

"Simply this, that in consequence of your reckless manner of holding your rifle, it came back with such a slap on your chest that it floored you."

"This, then, accounts for the pain I feel in it. But come," said I, rising and shaking my limbs to make sure that no bones were broken; "we have reason to be very thankful we have escaped so easily. I made sure that you were killed when I saw you flying through the air."

"I always had a species of cat-luck about me," replied Peterkin, with a smile. "But now let us cut off a bit o' this fellow to take back with us for Jack's supper."

With some difficulty we succeeded in cutting out the buffalo's tongue by the root, and carried it back to the village, where, after displaying it as an evidence of our prowess, we had it cooked for supper.

The slight hurts that we had received at the time of this adventure were speedily cured, and about two weeks after that we were all well enough to resume our journey.



Chapter Ten.

Water Appreciated -- Destructive Files, Etcetera.

Our first start from the village where we had been entertained so hospitably and so long was productive of much amusement to ourselves and to the natives.

We had determined to accept of three oxen from the chief, and to ride these when we felt fatigued; but we thought it best to let our native porters carry our baggage on their shoulders, as they had hitherto done.

When the animals were led up to our hut, we could not refrain from laughing. They were three sturdy-looking dark-skinned oxen, with wicked-looking black eyes and very long horns.

"Now, Jack, do you get up first," said Peterkin, "and show us what we are to expect."

"Nay, lad; I am still entitled to be considered an invalid: so you must get up first, and not only so, but you must try them all, in order that I may be enabled to select the quietest."

"Upon my word, you are becoming despotic in your sickness, and you forget that it is but a short time since I came down from a journey to the sky, and that my poor bones are still tender. But here goes. I was born to be victimised, so I submit to the decrees of Fate."

Peterkin went up to one of the oxen and attempted to mount it; but the animal made a demonstration of an intention to gore him, and obstinately objected to this.

"Hold him tight, Mak," he cried, after several futile attempts to mount. "I was always good at leap-frog when a schoolboy; see if I don't bring my powers into play now."

So saying, he went behind the ox, took a short race and sprang with the agility of a monkey over its tail on to its back! The ox began to kick and sidle and plunge heavily on receiving this unexpected load; but its rider held on well, until it took it into its head to dart under a neighbouring tree, the lower branches of which swept him off and caused him to fall with a heavy plump to the ground.

"I told you so," he cried, rising with a rueful face, and rubbing himself as he limped forward. However, his pain was more than half affected, for the next minute he was on the back of another ox. This one also proved restive, but not so much so as the first. The third was a very quiet animal, so Jack appropriated it as his charger.

Having bade adieu to the chief and rubbed noses with him and with several of our friends in the village, we all three got upon our novel steeds and set forth. But we had not got away from the village more than a mile when the two restive oxen began to display a firm determination to get rid of their intolerable burden. Mine commenced to back and sidle, and Peterkin's made occasional darts forward, and then stopping suddenly, refused to budge a step. We lost all patience at last, and belaboured them soundly with twigs, the effect of which was to make them advance rather slowly, and evidently under protest.

"Look out for branches," cried Peterkin as we came up to a narrow belt of wood.

I had scarcely time to raise my head when I was swept off my seat and hurled to the ground by a large branch. Peterkin's attention was drawn to me, and his ox, as if aware of the fact, seized the opportunity to swerve violently to one side, thereby throwing its rider off. Both animals gave a bellow, as of triumph, erected their tails, and ran away. They were soon recaptured, however, by our negroes; and mounting once more, we belaboured them well and continued our journey. In course of time they became more reconciled to their duties; but I cannot say that I ever came to enjoy such riding, and all of us ultimately agreed that it was a most undesirable thing to journey on ox-back.

Thus we commenced our journey over this desert or plain of Africa, and at the end of many weeks found ourselves approaching that part of the country near the equator in which the gorilla is said to dwell. On the way we had many adventures, some of an amusing, some of a dangerous character, and I made many additions to my collection of animals, besides making a number of valuable and interesting notes in my journal; but all this I am constrained to pass over, in order to introduce my reader to those regions in which some of our most wonderful adventures occurred.

One or two things, however, I must not omit to mention.

In passing over the desert we suffered much from want of water. Frequently the poor oxen had to travel two or three days without tasting a drop, and their distress was so great that we more than once thought of turning them adrift at the first good watering-place we should come to, and proceed, as formerly, on foot; for we had all recovered our wonted vigour, and were quite capable of standing the fatigues of the journey as well as our men. But several times we had found the country destitute of game, and were reduced to the point of starvation; so we continued to keep the oxen, lest we should require them for food.

On one occasion we were wending our way slowly along the bed of what in the rainy season would become a large river, but which was now so thoroughly dry that we could not find even a small pool in which the oxen might slake their thirst. They had been several days absolutely without a drop of water, while we were reduced to a mouthful or two per man in the day. As we could not exist much longer without the life-giving fluid, Jack dismounted, and placing the load of one of the men on the ox's back, sent him off in advance to look for water. We had that morning seen the footprints of several animals which are so fond of water that they are never found at any great distance from some spot where it may be found. We therefore felt certain of falling in with it ere long.

About two hours afterwards our negro returned, saying that he had discovered a pool of rain-water, and showing the marks of mud on his knees in confirmation of the truth of what he said.

"Ask him if there's much of it, Mak," said Jack, as we crowded eagerly round the man.

"Hims say there be great plenty ob it -- 'nuff to tumble in."

Gladdened by this news we hastened forward. The oxen seemed to have scented the water from afar, for they gradually became more animated, and quickened their pace of their own accord, until they at last broke into a run. Peterkin and I soon outstripped our party, and quite enjoyed the gallop.

"There it is," cried my comrade joyfully, pointing to a gleaming pond in a hollow of the plain not two hundred yards off.

"Hurrah!" I shouted, unable to repress my delight at the sight.

The oxen rushed madly forward, and we found that they were away with us. No pulling at our rope-bridles had any effect on them. My companion, foreseeing what would happen, leaped nimbly off just as he reached the margin of the pond. I being unable to collect my thoughts for the emergency, held on. My steed rushed into the water up to the neck, and stumbling as he did so, threw me into the middle of the pond, out of which I scrambled amidst the laughter of the whole party, who came up almost as soon as the oxen, so eager were they to drink.

After appeasing our own thirst we stood looking at the oxen, and it really did our hearts good to see the poor thirsty creatures enjoy themselves so thoroughly. They stood sucking in the water as if they meant to drink up the whole pond, half shutting their eyes, which became mild and amiable in appearance under the influence of extreme satisfaction. Their sides, which had been for the last two days in a state of collapse, began to swell, and at last were distended to such an extent that they seemed as if ready to burst. In point of fact the creatures were actually as full as they could hold; and when at length they dragged themselves slowly, almost unwillingly, out of the pool, any sudden jerk or motion caused some of the water to run out of their mouths!

Some time after that we were compelled to part with our poor steeds, in consequence of their being bitten by an insect which caused their death.

This destructive fly, which is called tsetse, is a perfect scourge in some parts of Africa. Its bite is fatal to the horse, ox, and dog, yet, strange to say, it is not so to man or to wild animals. It is not much larger than the common house-fly, and sucks the blood in the same manner as the mosquito, by means of a proboscis with which it punctures the skin. When man is bitten by it, no more serious evil than slight itching of the part follows. When the ox is bitten no serious effect follows at first, but a few days afterwards a running takes place at the eyes and nose, swellings appear under the jaw and on other parts of the body, emaciation quickly follows, even although the animal may continue to graze, and after a long illness, sometimes of many weeks, it dies in a state of extreme exhaustion.

The tsetse inhabits certain localities in great numbers, while other places in the immediate neighbourhood are entirely free. Those natives, therefore, who have herds of cattle avoid the dangerous regions most carefully; yet, despite their utmost care, they sometimes come unexpectedly on the habitat of this poisonous fly, and lose the greater part of their cattle.

When our poor oxen were bitten and the fatal symptoms began to appear, we knew that their fate was sealed; so we conducted them into a pleasant valley on which we chanced to alight, where there was plenty of grass and water, and there we left them to die.

Another incident occurred to us in this part of our journey which is worthy of record.

One day Peterkin and I had started before our party with our rifles, and had gone a considerable distance in advance of them, when we unexpectedly came upon a band of natives who were travelling in an opposite direction. Before coming up with their main body, we met with one of their warriors, who came upon us suddenly in the midst of a wooded spot, and stood rooted to the earth with fear and amazement; at which, indeed, we were not much surprised, for as he had probably never seen white faces before, he must have naturally taken us for ghosts or phantoms of some sort.

He was armed with shield and spear, but his frame was paralysed with terror. He seemed to have no power to use his weapons. At first we also stood in silent wonder, and returned his stare with interest; but after a few seconds the comicality of the man's appearance tickled Peterkin so much that he burst into a fit of laughter, which had the effect of increasing the terror of the black warrior to such a degree that his teeth began to chatter in his head. He actually grew livid in the face. I never beheld a more ghastly countenance.

"I say, Ralph," observed my companion, after recovering his composure, "we must try to show this fellow that we don't mean him any harm, else he'll die of sheer fright."

Before I could reply, or any steps could be taken towards this end, his party came up, and we suddenly found ourselves face to face with at least a hundred men, all of whom were armed with spears or bows and arrows. Behind them came a large troop of women and children. They were all nearly naked, and I observed that they were blacker in the skin than most of the negroes we had yet met with.

"Here's a pretty mess," said Peterkin, looking at me.

"What is to be done?" said I.

"If we were to fire at them, I'd lay a bet they'd run away like the wind," replied my comrade; "but I can't bear to think of shedding human blood if it can possibly be avoided."

While we spoke, the negroes, who stood about fifty yards distant from us, were consulting with each other in eager voices, but never for a moment taking their eyes off us.

"What say you to fire over their heads?" I suggested.

"Ready, present, then," cried Peterkin, with a recklessness of manner that surprised me.

We threw forward our rifles, and discharged them simultaneously.

The effect was tremendous. The whole band -- men, women, and children --  uttered an overwhelming shriek, and turning round, fled in mad confusion from the spot. Some of the warriors turned, however, ere they had gone far, and sent a shower of spears at us, one of which went close past my cheek.

"We have acted rashly, I fear," said I, as we each sought shelter behind a tree.

No doubt the savages construed this act of ours into an admission that we did not consider ourselves invulnerable, and plucked up courage accordingly, for they began again to advance towards us, though with hesitation. I now saw that we should be compelled to fight for our lives, and deeply regretted my folly in advising Peterkin to fire over their heads; but happily, before blood was drawn on either side, Makarooroo and Jack came running towards us. The former shouted an explanation of who and what we were to our late enemies, and in less than ten minutes we were mingling together in the most amicable manner.

We found that these poor creatures were starving, having failed to procure any provisions for some time past, and they were then on their way to another region in search of game. We gave them as much of our provisions as we could spare, besides a little tobacco, which afforded them inexpressible delight. Then rubbing noses with the chief, we parted and went on our respective ways.



Chapter Eleven.

How We Met With Our First Gorilla, And How We Served Him.

"It never rains but it pours," is a true proverb. I have often noticed, in the course of my observations on sublunary affairs, that events seldom come singly. I have often gone out fishing for trout in the rivers of my native land, day after day, and caught nothing, while at other times I have, day after day, returned home with my basket full.

As it was in England, so I found it in Africa. For many days after our arrival in the gorilla country, we wandered about without seeing a single creature of any kind. Lions, we ascertained, were never found in those regions, and we were told that this was in consequence of their having been beaten off the field by gorillas. But at last, after we had all, severally and collectively, given way to despair, we came upon the tracks of a gorilla, and from that hour we were kept constantly on the qui vive, and in the course of the few weeks we spent in that part of the country, we "bagged," as Peterkin expressed it, "no end of gorillas" -- great and small, young and old.

I will never forget the powerful sensations of excitement and anxiety that filled our breasts when we came on the first gorilla footprint. We felt as no doubt Robinson Crusoe did when he discovered the footprint of a savage in the sand. Here at last was the indubitable evidence of the existence and presence of the terrible animal we had come so far to see. Here was the footstep of that creature about which we had heard so many wonderful stories, whose existence the civilised world had, up to within a very short time back, doubted exceedingly, and in regard to which, even now, we knew comparatively very little.

Makarooroo assured us that he had hunted this animal some years ago, and had seen one or two at a distance, though he had never killed one, and stated most emphatically that the footprint before us, which happened to be in a soft sandy spot, was undoubtedly caused by the foot of a gorilla.

Being satisfied on this head, we four sat down in a circle round the footprint to examine it, while our men stood round about us, looking on with deep interest expressed in their dark faces.

"At last!" said I, carefully brushing away some twigs that partly covered the impression.

"Ay, at last!" echoed Jack, while his eyes sparkled with enthusiasm.

"Ay," observed Peterkin, "and a pretty big last he must require, too. I shouldn't like to be his shoemaker. What a thumb, or a toe. One doesn't know very well which to call it."

"I wonder if it's old?" said I.

"As old as the hills," replied Peterkin; "at least 50 I would judge from its size."

"You mistake me. I mean that I wonder whether the footprint is old, or if it has been made recently."

"Him's quite noo," interposed our guide.

"How d'ye know, Mak?"

"'Cause me see."

"Ay; but what do you see that enables you to form such an opinion?"

"O Ralph, how can you expect a nigger to understand such a sentence as that?" said Jack, as he turned to Mak and added, "What do you see?"

"Me see one leetle stick brok in middel. If you look to him you see him white and clean. If hims was old, hims would be mark wid rain and dirt."

"There!" cried Peterkin, giving me a poke in the side, "see what it is to be a minute student of the small things in nature. Make a note of it, Ralph."

I did make a note of it mentally on the spot, and then proposed that we should go in search of the gorilla without further delay.

We were in the midst of a dark gloomy wood in the neighbourhood of a range of mountains whose blue serrated peaks rose up into the clouds. Their sides were partly clothed with wood. We were travelling -- not hunting -- at the time we fell in with the track above referred to, so we immediately ordered the men to encamp where they were, while we should go after the gorilla, accompanied only by Mak, whose nerves we could depend on.

Shouldering our trusty rifles, and buckling tight the belts of our heavy hunting-knives, we sallied forth after the manner of American Indians, in single file, keeping, as may well be supposed, a sharp lookout as we went along. The fact was that long delay, frequent disappointment, and now the near prospect of success, conspired together to fill us with a species of nervous excitement that caused us to start at every sound.

The woods here were pretty thick, but they varied in their character so frequently that we were at one time pushing slowly among dense, almost impenetrable underwood, at another walking briskly over small plains which were covered in many places with large boulders. It was altogether a gloomy, savage-looking country, and seemed to me well suited to be the home of so dreadful an animal. There were few animals to be seen here. Even birds were scarce, and a few chattering monkeys were almost the only creatures that broke the monotonous silence and solitude around us.

"What a dismal place!" said Peterkin, in a low tone. "I feel as if we had got to the fag-end of the world, as if we were about plunging into ancient chaos."

"It is, indeed," I replied, "a most dreary region. I think that the gorillas will not be disturbed by many hunters with white faces."

"There's no saying," interposed Jack. "I should not wonder, now, if you, Ralph, were to go home and write a book detailing our adventures in these parts, that at least half the sportsmen of England would be in Africa next year, and the race of gorillas would probably become extinct."

"If the sportsmen don't come out until I write a book about them, I fear the gorillas will remain undisturbed for all time to come."

At that time, reader, I was not aware of the extreme difficulty that travellers experience in resisting the urgent entreaties of admiring and too partial friends!

Presently we came to a part of the forest where the underwood became so dense that we could scarcely make our way through it at all, and here we began for the first time to have some clearer conception of the immense power of the creature we were in pursuit of; for in order to clear its way it had torn down great branches of the trees, and in one or two places had seized young trees as thick as a man's arm, and snapped them in two as one would snap a walking-cane.

Following the track with the utmost care for several miles, we at length came to a place where several huge rocks lay among the trees. Here, while we were walking along in silence, Makarooroo made a peculiar noise with his tongue, which we knew meant that he had discovered something worthy of special attention, so we came to an abrupt pause and looked at him.

"What is it, Mak?" inquired Jack.

The guide put his finger on his mouth to impose silence, and stood in a listening attitude with his eyes cast upon the ground, his nostrils distended, and every muscle of his dusky frame rigid, as if he were a statue of black marble. We also listened attentively, and presently heard a sound as of the breaking of twigs and branches.

"Dat am be gorilla," said the guide, in a low whisper.

We exchanged looks of eager satisfaction.

"How shall we proceed, Mak?" inquired Jack.

"We mus' go bery slow, dis way," said the guide, imitating the process of walking with extreme caution. "No break leetle stick. If you break leetle stick hims go right away."

Promising Mak that we would attend to his injunctions most carefully, we desired him to lead the way, and in a few minutes after came so near to where the sound of breaking sticks was going on that we all halted, fearing that we should scare the animal away before we could get a sight of it amongst the dense underwood.

"What can he be doing?" said I to the guide, as we stood looking at each other for a few seconds uncertain how to act.

"Him's breakin' down branches for git at him's feed, s'pose."

"Do you see that?" whispered Peterkin, as he pointed to an open space among the bushes. "Isn't that a bit o' the hairy brute?"

"It looks like it," replied Jack eagerly.

"Cluck!" ejaculated Makarooroo, making a peculiar noise with his tongue. "Dat him. Blaze away!"

"But it may not be a mortal part," objected Peterkin. "He might escape if only wounded."

"Nebber fear. Hims come at us if hims be wound. Only we mus' be ready for him."

"All ready," said Jack, cocking both barrels of his rifle. -- "Now, Peterkin, a good aim. If he comes here he shall get a quietus."

All this was said in the lowest possible whispers. Peterkin took a steady aim at the part of the creature that was visible, and fired.

I have gone through many wild adventures since then. I have heard the roar of the lion and the tiger in all circumstances, and the laugh of the hyena, besides many other hideous sounds, but I never in all my life listened to anything that in any degree approached in thundering ferocity the appalling roar that burst upon our ears immediately after that shot was fired. I can compare it to nothing, for nothing I ever heard was like it. If the reader can conceive a human fiend endued with a voice far louder than that of the lion, yet retaining a little of the intonation both of the man's voice and of what we should suppose a fiend's voice to be, he may form some slight idea of what that roar was. It is impossible to describe it. Perhaps Mak's expression in regard to it is the most emphatic and truthful: it was absolutely "horriboble!" Every one has heard a sturdy, well-grown little boy, when being thrashed, howling at the very top of his bent. If one can conceive of a full-grown male giant twenty feet high pouring forth his whole soul and voice with similarly unrestrained fervour, he may approximate to a notion of it.

And it was not uttered once or twice, but again and again, until the whole woods trembled with it, and we felt as if our ears could not endure more of it without the tympanums being burst.

For several moments we stood motionless with our guns ready, expecting an immediate attack, and gazing with awe, not unmingled -- at least on my part -- with fear, at the turmoil of leaves and twigs and broken branches that was going on round the spot where the monster had been wounded.

"Come," cried Jack at length, losing patience and springing forward; "if he won't attack us we must attack him."

We followed close on his heels, and next moment emerged upon a small and comparatively open space, in the midst of which we found the gorilla seated on the ground, tearing up the earth with its hands, grinning horribly and beating its chest, which sent forth a loud hollow sound as if it were a large drum. We saw at once that both its thighs had been broken by Peterkin's shot.

Of all the hideous creatures I had ever seen or heard of, none came up in the least degree to this. Apart altogether from its gigantic size, this monster was calculated to strike terror into the hearts of beholders simply by the expression of its visage, which was quite satanic. I could scarcely persuade myself that I was awake. It seemed as if I were gazing on one of those hideous creatures one beholds when oppressed with nightmare.

But we had little time to indulge in contemplation, for the instant the brute beheld us it renewed its terrible roar, and attempted to spring up; but both its legs at once gave way, and it fell with a passionate growl, biting the earth, and twisting and tearing bunches of twigs and leaves in its fury. Suddenly it rushed upon us rapidly by means of its fore legs or arms.

"Look out, Jack!" we cried in alarm.

Jack stood like a rock and deliberately levelled his rifle. Even at this moment of intense excitement I could not help marvelling at the diminutive appearance of my friend when contrasted with the gorilla. In height, indeed, he was of course superior, and would have been so had the gorilla been able to stand erect, but his breadth of shoulder and chest, and his length and size of arm, were strikingly inferior. Just as the monster approached to within three yards of him, Jack sent a ball into its chest, and the king of the African woods fell dead at our feet!

It is impossible to convey in words an idea of the gush of mingled feelings that filled our breasts as we stood beside and gazed at the huge carcass of our victim. Pity at first predominated in my heart, then I felt like an accomplice to a murder, and then an exulting sensation of joy at having obtained a specimen of one of the rarest animals in the world overwhelmed every other feeling.

The size of this animal -- and we measured him very carefully -- was as follows: -- 

Height, 5 feet 6 inches; girth of the chest, 4 feet 2 inches; spread of its arms, 7 feet 2 inches. Perhaps the most extraordinary measurement was that of the great thumb of its hind foot, which was 5 and a half inches in circumference. When I looked at this and at the great bunches of hard muscles which composed its brawny chest and arms, I could almost believe in the stories told by the natives of the tremendous feats of strength performed by the gorilla. The body of this brute was covered with grey hair, but the chest was bare and covered with tough skin, and its face was intensely black. I shuddered as I looked upon it, for there was something terribly human-like about it, despite the brutishness of its aspect.

"Now, I'll tell you what we shall do," said Jack, after we had completed our examination of the gorilla. "We will encamp where we are for the night, and send Makarooroo back to bring our fellows up with the packs, so that you, Ralph, will be able to begin the work of skinning and cleaning the bones at once. What say you?"

"Agreed, with all my heart," I replied.

"Well, then," observed Peterkin, "here goes for a fire, to begin with, and then for victuals to continue with. By the way, what say you to a gorilla steak? I'm told the niggers eat him. -- Don't they, Mak?"

"Yis, massa, dey does. More dan dat, de niggers in dis part ob country eat mans."

"Eat mans!" echoed Peterkin in horror.

"Yis, eat mans, and womins, an' childerdens."

"Oh, the brutes! But I don't believe you, Mak. What are the villains called?"

"Well, it not be easy for say what dem be called. Miss'naries calls dem canibobbles."

"Ho!" shouted Peterkin, "canibobbles? eh! well done. Mak, I must get you to write a new dictionary; I think it would pay!"

"It won't pay to go on talking like this, though," observed Jack. "Come, hand me the axe. I'll fell this tree while you strike a light, Peterkin. -- Be off with you, Mak. -- As for Ralph, we must leave him to his note-book; I see there is no chance of getting him away from his beloved gorilla till he has torn its skin from its flesh, and its flesh from its bones."

Jack was right. I had now several long hours' work before me, which I knew could not be delayed, and to which I applied myself forthwith most eagerly, while my comrades lit the fire and prepared the camp, and Makarooroo set off on his return journey to bring up the remainder of our party.

That night, while I sat by the light of the camp-fire toiling at my task, long after the others had retired to rest, I observed the features of Jack and Peterkin working convulsively, and their hands clutching nervously as they slept, and I smiled to think of the battles with gorillas which I felt assured they must be fighting, and the enormous "bags" they would be certain to tell of on returning from the realms of dreamland to the regions of reality.



Chapter Twelve.

Peterkin's Schoolday Reminiscences.

The day following that on which we shot our first gorilla was a great and memorable day in our hunting career in Africa, for on that day we saw no fewer than ten gorillas: two females, seven young ones -- one of which was a mere baby gorilla in its mother's arms -- and a huge lone male, or bachelor gorilla, as Peterkin called him. And of these we killed four -- three young ones, and the old bachelor. I am happy to add that I saved the lives of the infant gorilla and its mother, as I shall presently relate.

The portion of country through which we travelled this day was not so thickly wooded as that through which we had passed the day before, so that we advanced more easily, and enjoyed ourselves much as we went along. About the middle of the day we came to a spot where there were a number of wild vines, the leaves of which are much liked by the gorilla, so we kept a sharp lookout for tracks.

Soon we came upon several, as well as broken branches and twigs, in which were observed the marks of teeth, showing that our game had been there. But we passed from the wood where these signs were discovered, out upon an open plain of considerable extent. Here we paused, undecided as to whether we should proceed onward or remain there to hunt.

"I vote for advancing," said Peterkin, "for I observe that on the other side of this plain the wood seems very dense, and it is probable that we may find Mister Gorilla there. -- What think you, Mak?"

The guide nodded in reply.

"I move," said Jack, "that as the country just where we stand is well watered by this little brook, besides being picturesque and beautiful to look upon, we should encamp where we are, and leaving our men to guard the camp, cross this plain -- we three take Mak along with us, and spend the remainder of the day in hunting."

"I vote for the amendment," said I.

"Then the amendment carries," cried Jack, "for in all civilised societies most votes always carry; and although we happen to be in an uncivilised region of the earth, we must not forget that we are civilised hunters. The vote of two hunters ought certainly to override that of one hunter."

Peterkin demurred to this at once, on the ground that it was unfair.

"How so?" said I.

"In the first place," replied he, looking uncommonly wise, and placing the point of his right finger in the palm of his left hand -- "in the first place, I do not admit your premises, and therefore I object to your conclusion. I do not admit that in civilised societies most votes carry; on the contrary, it too frequently happens that, in civilised societies, motions are made, seconded, discussed, and carried without being put to the vote at all; often they are carried without being made, seconded, or discussed -- as when a bottle-nosed old gentleman in office chooses to ignore the rights of men, and carry everything his own way. Neither do I admit that we three are civilised hunters; for although it is true that I am, it is well-known that you, Ralph, are a philosopher, and Jack is a gorilla. Therefore I object to your conclusion that your two votes should carry; for you cannot but admit that the vote of one hunter ought to override that of two such creatures, which would not be the case were there an equality existing between us."

"Peterkin," said I, "there is fallacy in your reasoning."

"Can you show it?" said he.

"No; the web is too much ravelled to disentangle."

"Not at all," cried Jack; "I can unravel it in a minute, and settle the whole question by proving that there does exist an equality between us; for it is well-known, and generally admitted by all his friends, and must be acknowledged by himself, that Peterkin is an ass."

"Even admitting that," rejoined Peterkin, "it still remains to be proved that a philosopher, a gorilla, and an ass are equal. Of course I believe the latter to be superior to both the former animals; but in consideration of the lateness of the hour, and the able manner in which you have discussed this subject, I beg to withdraw my motion, and to state that I am ready to accompany you over the plain as soon as you please."

At this point our conversation was interrupted by the shriek of a small monkey, which had been sitting all the time among the branches of the tree beneath which we stood.

"I declare it has been listening to us," cried Peterkin.

"Yes, and is shouting in triumph at your defeat," added Jack.

As he spoke, Makarooroo fired, and the monkey fell to the ground almost at our feet.

"Alas! it has paid a heavy price for its laugh," said Peterkin, in a tone of sadness.

The poor thing was mortally wounded; so much so that it could not even cry. It looked up with a very piteous expression in our faces. Placing its hand on its side, it coughed once or twice, then lying down on its back and stretching itself out quite straight, it closed its eyes and died.

I never could bear to shoot monkeys. There was something so terribly human-like in their sufferings, that I never could witness the death of one without feeling an almost irresistible inclination to weep. Sometimes, when short of provisions, I was compelled to shoot monkeys, but I did so as seldom as possible, and once I resolved to go supperless to bed rather than shoot one whose aspect was so sad and gentle that I had not the heart to kill it. My companions felt as I did in this matter, and we endeavoured to restrain Makarooroo as much as possible; but he could not understand our feelings, and when he got a chance of a shot, almost invariably forgot our injunctions to let monkeys alone unless we were absolutely ill off for food. To do him justice, however, I must add that we were at this particular time not overburdened with provisions, and the men were much pleased to have the prospect of a roast monkey for supper.

Having given our men a little tobacco, a gift which caused their black faces to beam with delight, we shouldered our rifles and set off across the plain towards the thick wood, which was not more than five miles distant, if so much.

It was a beautiful scene, this plain with its clumps of trees scattered over it like islands in a lake, and its profusion of wild flowers. The weather, too, was delightful -- cooler than usual -- and there was a freshness in the air which caused us to feel light of heart, while the comparative shortness of the grass enabled us to proceed on our way with light steps. As we walked along for some time in silence, I thought upon the goodness and the provident care of the Creator of our world; for during my brief sojourn in Africa I had observed many instances of the wonderful exactness with which things in nature were suited to the circumstances in which they were placed, and the bountiful provision that was made everywhere for man and beast. Yet I must confess I could not help wondering, and felt very much perplexed, when I thought of the beautiful scenes in the midst of which I moved being inhabited only by savage men, who seemed scarcely to appreciate the blessings by which they were surrounded, and who violated constantly all the laws of Him by whom they were created. My meditations were interrupted by Jack saying -- 

"I cannot help wondering why that poor monkey kept so still all the time we were talking. One would think that it should have been frightened away just as we came under the tree."

"I have no doubt," said I, "that although of course it could not understand what we said, yet it was listening to us."

"I'm not so certain that it did not understand," observed Peterkin. "You know that sailors believe that monkeys could speak if they chose, but they don't for fear that they should be made to work!"

"Well, whatever truth there may be in that, of this I am certain, they are the most deceptive creatures that exist."

"I don't agree with you," rejoined Peterkin. "It's my opinion that little boys are the greatest deceivers living."

"What! all little boys!" exclaimed Jack.

"No, not all. I have not so bad an opinion of the race as that. I've had a good deal to do with boys during my naval career, and among the middies of her Majesty's navy I have met with as fine little chaps as one would wish to see -- regular bricks, afraid of nothing (except of doing anything that would be thought sneaking or shabby), ready to dare anything -- to attack a seventy-four single-handed in a punt or a bumboat if need be; nevertheless, I've met boys, and a good many of them too, who would beat all the monkeys in Africa at sneaking and deceiving. I remember one rascal, who went to the same school with me, who was a wonderfully plausible deceiver. I can't help laughing yet when I think of the curious way he took to free himself of the restraint of school."

"How was it?" cried Jack; "tell us about it -- do."

"Well, you must know," began Peterkin, "that this boy was what Jack tars would call a 'great, stupid, lubberly fellow.' He was a very fair-haired, white eyelashed sort of chap, that seemed to grow at such a rate that he was always too big for his clothes, and showed an unusual amount of wrist and ankle even for a boy. Most people who met him thought him a very stupid boy at first; but those who came to know him well found that he was rather a sharp, clever fellow, but a remarkably shy dog. We called him Doddle.

"His mother was a widow, and he was an only son, and had been spoiled, of course, so that he was not put to school till he was nearly twelve years of age. He had been at several schools before coming to ours, but had been deemed by each successive schoolmaster a hopeless imbecile. And he was so mischievous that they advised his poor mother to take him away and try if she could not instil a little knowledge into him herself. The old lady was a meek, simple body, and quite as stupid as her hopeful son appeared to be. Hearing that our master was a sharp fellow, and somewhat noted as a good manager of obstreperous boys, she brought him to our school as a last resource, and having introduced him to the master, went her way.

"It was near the end of play-hour when she brought him, so he was turned out into the playground, and stood there looking like a mongrel cur turned unexpectedly into a kennel of pointers.

"'Well, Doddle,' said one of the sixth-form boys, going up to him and addressing him for the first time by the name which stuck to him ever after, 'where did you grow; and who cut you down and tossed you in here?'

"'Eh?' said Doddle, looking sheepish.

"'What's your name, man, and where did you come from, and how old are you, and how far can you jump without a race? and in fact I want to know all about you.'

"'My name's Tommy Thompson,' replied the boy, 'and I -- '

"At that moment the bell rang, and the remainder of his sentence was drowned in the rush of the rest of us to the classroom.

"When all was quiet the master called Doddle up, and said, 'Well, Thompson, my boy, your mother tells me you have learned a little grammar and a little arithmetic. I hope that we shall instil into you a good deal of those branches of learning, and of many others besides, ere long. Let me hear what you can do.'

"'I can play hockey and dumps,' began Doddle, in a sing-song tone, and with the most uncommonly innocent expression of visage; 'an' I can -- '

"'Stay, boy,' interrupted the master, smiling; 'I do not want to know what you can play at. Keep silence until I put a few questions to you. What is English grammar?'

"'Eh?'

"'Don't say "Eh!" When you fail to understand me, say "Sir?" interrogatively. What is English grammar?'

"'It's a book.'

"The master looked over the top of his spectacles at Doddle in surprise.

"'English grammar,' said he, slowly, and with a slight touch of sternness, 'is indeed contained in a book; but I wish to know what it teaches.'

"'Eh? -- a -- I mean sir interrogatively.'

"'What does English grammar teach, boy?' cried the master angrily.

"Doddle laid hold of his chin with his right hand, and looked down at the floor with an air of profound thought, saying slowly, in an undertone to himself, 'What -- does -- English -- grammar -- teach -- teach --  grammar -- teach? It -- teaches -- a -- I don't know what it teaches. Perhaps you can tell me, sir?'

"He looked up, and uttered the last sentence with such an air of blank humility that we all had to cram our pocket handkerchiefs into our mouths to prevent a universal explosion. The master looked over his spectacles again at Doddle with an expression of unutterable amazement. We looked on with breathless interest, not unmingled with awe, for we expected some awful outbreak on the part of the master, who seemed quite unable to make up his mind what to do or say, but continued to stare for nearly a minute at the boy, who replied to the stare with a humble, idiotic smile.

"Suddenly the master said sharply, 'How much are seven times nine?'

"'Five hundred and forty-two and a half,' answered Doddle, without a moment's hesitation.

"The master did not look surprised this time, but he took Doddle by the shoulder, and drawing him towards his chair, looked earnestly into his face. Then he said quietly, 'That will do, Thompson; go to your seat.'

"This was all that occurred at that time. During a whole week the master tried by every means to get Doddle to learn something; but Doddle could learn nothing. Yet he seemed to try. He pored over his book, and muttered with his lips, and sometimes looked anxiously up at the ceiling, with an expression of agony on his face that seemed to indicate a tremendous mental effort. Every species of inducement was tried, and occasionally punishment was resorted to. He was kept in at play-hours, and put in a corner during school-hours; and once, the master having lost patience with him, he was flogged. But it was all one to Doddle. All the methods tried proved utterly unavailing. He could not be got to acquire a single lesson, and often gave such remarkable answers that we all believed him to be mad.

"On the Monday forenoon of his second week at the school, the master called him up again for examination.

"'Now, Thompson,' he began, 'you have been a long time over that lesson; let us see how much of it you have learned. What is etymology?'

"'Etymology,' answered Doddle, 'is -- is -- an irregular pronoun.'

"'Boy!' cried the master sternly.

"'Please, sir,' pleaded Doddle, with deprecatory air, 'I -- I suppose I was thinkin' o' one o' the other mologies, not the etty one.'

"'Ha!' ejaculated the master; 'well, tell me, how many parts of speech are there?'

"'Nineteen,' answered the boy, quite confidently.

"'Oh!' exclaimed the master, with a good deal of sarcasm in his tone; 'pray, name them.'

"In a very sing-song voice, and with an air of anxious simplicity, Doddle began, 'Article, noun, adjective, pronoun, verb, adverb, preposition, conjunction, interjection, outerjection, beginning with ies in the plural -- as, baby, babies; lady, ladies; hady, hadies. Please, sir, isn't that last one a bad word?'

"'The boy is a lunatic!' muttered the master.

"The boys in the class were far past laughing now; we were absolutely stunned. The master seemed perplexed, for Doddle was gazing at him with a look of mild self-satisfaction.

"'I say, Peterkin,' whispered the boy next to me, 'as sure as you're alive that boy's shamming stupid.'

"Presently the master, who had been turning over the leaves of the grammar in a way that showed he was not conscious of what he was about, looked up, and said abruptly, 'What is a proper noun?'

"'A well-behaved one,' replied Doddle.

"At this the whole school tittered violently.

"'Silence, boys,' cried the master, in a tone that produced the desired effect so thoroughly that you might have heard a pin drop. Then laying his hand on Doddle's shoulder, he looked him full in the face, and said solemnly, 'Thompson, I have found you out. Go, sir, to your seat, and remain behind when the other boys go to the playground.'

"We observed that Doddle grew very red in the face as he came back to his seat, and during the rest of the hour he never once looked up.

"During the whole of the play-hour the master and he remained shut up together in the schoolroom. We never discovered what took place there between them, for neither threats nor coaxing could induce Doddle afterwards to speak on the subject; but from that day forward he was a changed boy. He not only learned his lessons, but he learned them well, and in the course of time became one of the best scholars in the school; so that although he never would admit it, we all came to the conclusion he had been shamming stupid -- attempting to deceive the master into the belief that he was incurable, and thus manage to get rid of lessons and school altogether."

"A most remarkable boy," observed Jack when Peterkin concluded. "Certainly he beat the monkeys hollow."

"I wonder," said I, "what the master said or did to him that wrought such a mighty change."

"Don't know," replied Peterkin; "I suppose he told him that now he had found him out, he would flay him alive if he didn't give in, or something of that sort."

We had now entered the dark forest that edged the plain over which we had been walking, and further conversation on this subject was stopped, and the subject itself banished utterly from our minds by the loud, startling cry of a gorilla at no great distance from us.

"Hist! that's him," whispered Peterkin.

Instantly throwing our rifles into a position of readiness we pushed rapidly through the underwood in the direction whence the cry had come.



Chapter Thirteen.

We Get Into "The Thick Of It" -- Great Success.

In a few minutes we came upon a female gorilla, which, all unconscious of our approach, was sitting at the foot of a vine, eating the leaves. There were four young ones beside her, engaged in the same occupation. In order to approach within shot of these, we had to creep on all fours through the brushwood with the greatest caution; for gorillas are sharp-sighted, and they have a remarkably acute sense of hearing, so that sometimes the breaking of a dry twig under one's foot is sufficient to alarm them.

We did not venture to speak even in whispers as we advanced; but by a sign Jack told Peterkin to take the lead. Jack himself followed. Makarooroo went next, and I brought up the rear.

In all our hunting expeditions we usually maintained this arrangement, where it was necessary. Peterkin was assigned the post of honour, because he was the best shot; Jack, being next best, came second; and I came last, not because our guide was a better shot than I, but because he was apt to get excited and to act rashly, so that he required looking after. I was at all times ready to lay hold of him by the hair of his woolly head, which, as he was nearly naked, was the only part of him that one could grasp with any degree of firmness.

After creeping in this manner for some distance, we got within range. Peterkin and Jack took aim and fired together. The old gorilla and one of the young ones fell instantly, and from their not struggling it was evident that they were shot quite dead. The guide and I fired immediately after, but only the one that I fired at fell. The other two ran off as fast as they could. Sometimes they ran on all fours; and I observed that while running in this fashion the hind legs passed between the arms, or, as it were, overstepped them. Occasionally, however, they rose and ran on their hind legs, in a stooping position.

When they did this I was particularly struck with their grotesque yet strong resemblance to man, and I do not think that I could at that time have prevailed upon myself to fire at them. I should have felt like a murderer. In truth, my thoughts and sensations just then were anything but agreeable. Nevertheless I was so excited by the chase that I am quite certain no one, to look at me, could have guessed what was passing in my mind.

We ran as rapidly as was possible in such a tangled forest, but we had no chance with the young gorillas. Peterkin at last ran himself out of breath. Stopping suddenly, he said, pantingly -- 

"It's -- o' -- no use whatever. Ho! dear me, my bellows are about exploded."

"We've no chance in a race with these hairy men," responded Jack, as he wiped the perspiration from his forehead. -- "Why did you miss, Mak?"

"'Cause me no could hit, s'pose, massa."

"Very justly and modestly said," remarked Peterkin, with an approving nod. "'Tis a pity that men are not more generally animated with your spirit, Mak. Most people, when they do wrong or make a mistake, are too apt to try to excuse themselves."

"Yes," I added, with a laugh; "particularly when they blow the tails out of ostriches."

Peterkin shook his head, and said solemnly, "Ralph, my boy, don't take to joking. It don't agree with your constitution. You'll get ill if you do; and we can't afford to have you laid up on our hands in these out-o'-the-way regions."

"Come, now, let us back to the gorillas and secure them, lest their comrades carry them away," said Jack, turning to retrace our steps.

I was anxious to shoot as many gorillas as possible, in order that I might study the peculiarities of, and differences existing between, the different species -- if there should be such -- and between various individuals of the same species in all stages of development. I had made an elaborate examination of our first gorilla, and had taken copious notes in regard to it. Being desirous of doing the same as far as possible with the female and the two young ones we had just killed, I hastened back with my companions, and we fastened them securely among the branches of a conspicuous tree, intending to send out some of our men for them on our return to camp.

After this we resumed our search for more, but wandered about for several hours without meeting with any, although we observed recently-made footprints in abundance. We went as nearly as possible in a direction parallel to our camp, so that although we walked far we did not increase our distance from it to any great extent.

Presently Makarooroo made a peculiar "cluck" with his tongue, and we all came to an abrupt stand.

"What is't, Mak?"

The negro did not speak, but pointed eagerly in front of him, while the whites of his eyes seemed to sparkle with animation, and raised his gun to shoot.

We came up at the moment, and through an opening in the bushes saw what he was about to fire at. It was a female gorilla, with a baby gorilla in her arms. Fierce and hairy though she was, there was a certain air of tenderness about this mother, as she stroked and pawed her little one, that went straight to my heart, and caused me almost involuntarily to raise my arm and strike up the muzzle of Makarooroo's gun, at the moment he pulled the trigger. The consequence of this act was that the ball passed close over their heads. The report of the piece was instantly followed by a roar of consternation, mingled with rage, from the mother, and a shriek of terror from the baby, which again was immediately followed by a burst of laughter from us, as we beheld the little baby clasp its arms tightly round its mother, while she scampered wildly away from us.

Mak looked at me in amazement.

"What for you be do dat, massa?"

"To prevent you from committing murder, you rascal," said I, laughing. "Have you no feelings of natural pity or tenderness, that you could coolly aim at such a loving pair as that?"

The guide seemed a little put out by this remark, and went on reloading his gun without making reply. He had received enough of moral education at the mission stations to appreciate to some extent the feelings by which I was actuated; yet he had been so long accustomed and so early inured to harsh, unfeeling deeds, that the only idea that probably occurred to him on seeing this mother and her baby was, how near he could get to them in order to make sure of his aim.

"Ah! Ralph," said Jack, as we resumed our march, "you're too tender-hearted, my boy, for a hunter in Africa. There you've lost a chance of getting a gorilla baby, which you have been desiring so much the last few days, and which you might have stuck in a bottle of spirits, and sent home to be held up to universal admiration in Piccadilly, who knows."

"Ay, who knows?" echoed Peterkin. "I think it more probable, however, that it would be held up to universal ridicule. Besides, you forget that we have no spirits to preserve it in, except our own, which I admit are pretty high -- a good deal overproof, considering the circumstances in which we are placed, and the unheard-of trials we have to endure. I'm sure I don't know what ever induced me to come, as a Scotch cousin of mine once said, 'so far frae my ain fireside' to endure trials. I do believe I've had more trials since I came to this outrageous land than all the criminals of the last century in England put together have had."

"Peterkin," said I seriously, "trials are a decided benefit and blessing to mankind -- "

"Oh, of course," interrupted Peterkin; "but then, as you have often retorted upon me that I am of the monkey kind, I think that I could get on pretty well without them."

"My opinion is that they are good both for man and monkey," said Jack. "Just consider, now: it must have been a terrible trial for yon gorilla-mamma to hear a bullet pass within an inch of her head, and have her sweet little darling frightened almost out of its wits. Well, but just think of the state of satisfaction and rejoicing that she must be in now at having escaped. Had it not been for that trial she would now have been in her ordinary humdrum condition. I quite agree with Ralph that trials are really a blessing to us."

"I declare it is quite refreshing to hear that you 'agree' with anybody, Jack," rejoined Peterkin, in a tone of sarcasm. -- "Perhaps Mr Rover will kindly enlarge on this most interesting subject, and give us the benefit of his wisdom. -- And, Mak, you lump of ebony, do you keep a sharp lookout for gorillas in the meantime."

The guide, whose appreciation of fun was very considerable, said, "Yis, massa," grinned from ear to ear, in doing which he displayed a double row of tremendous white teeth, and pretended to be gazing earnestly among the bushes on either side in search of game, as he followed us. The moment we began to talk, however, I observed that he came close up behind, and listened with all his ears. If eager expansion indicates anything, I may add that he listened with all his eyes too!

"I shall have much pleasure in obliging you, Peterkin," said I, with a smile. "And in the first place -- "

"O Ralph, I entreat you," interrupted Peterkin, "do not begin with a 'first place.' When men begin a discourse with that, however many intermediate places they may have to roam about in and enlarge on, they never have a place of any kind to terminate in, but go skimming along with a couple of dozen 'lastlies,' like a stone thrown over the surface of a pond, which, after the first two or three big and promising bounds, spends itself in an endless succession of twittering ripples, and finally sinks, somehow or nohow, into oblivion."

"Ahem! Shakespeare?" said Jack.

"Not at all," retorted Peterkin. "If anybody gave utterance to the sentiment before, it was Shelley, and he must have been on the sea-shore at the time with a crotchet, if not a crab, inside of him. -- But pray go on, Ralph."

"Well, then, in the first place," I repeated with emphasis, whereat Peterkin sighed, "trials, when endured in a proper spirit, improve our moral nature and strengthen our hearts; the result of which is, that we are incited to more vigorous mental, and, by consequence, physical exertion, so that our nervous system is strengthened and our muscular powers are increased."

"Very well put, indeed," cried Peterkin. "Now, Ralph, try to forget your 'secondly,' omit your 'thirdly,' throw your 'fourthly' to the winds, and let your 'first place' be your 'last place,' and I'll give you credit for being a wise and effective speaker."

I gave in to my volatile friend at that time, as I saw that he would not allow me to go on, and, to say truth, I thought that I had exhausted my subject. But, after all, Peterkin did not require to be incited either to good thoughts or good actions. With all his exuberant fun and jocularity, he was at bottom one of the most earnest and attached friends I ever possessed. I have lived to know that his superficial lightness of character overlaid as deeply earnest and sympathetic a spirit as ever existed.

While we were thus conversing and wandering through the forest, we again came upon the fresh tracks of a gorilla, and from their great size we conjectured them to be those of a solitary male. It is a remarkable fact that among several of the lower animals we find specimens of that unnatural class of creatures which among men are termed old bachelors! Among the gorillas these solitaires are usually very large, remarkably fierce, uncommonly ugly, desperately vindictive, and peculiarly courageous; so much so that the natives hold them in special dread. It is of these wild men of the woods that their most remarkable and incredible stories are related.

"I don't think it's a gorilla at all," said Jack, stooping down to examine the footprints, which in that place were not very distinct; "I think an elephant or a rhinoceros must have passed this way."

"No, massa, them's not deep 'nuff for dat. Hims be a gorilla -- a bery big one, too."

"Don't let us talk then, lest we should scare it," whispered Peterkin. "Lead the way, Mak; and mind, when we come close enough, move your great carcass out of the way and let me to the front."

"No, no, lad," said Jack. "Fair play. It's my turn now."

"So be it, my boy. But get on."

The tracks led us a considerable distance deeper into the wood, where the trees became so thick that only a species of twilight penetrated through them. To add to our discomfort, the light, we knew, would soon fail us altogether, as evening was drawing on apace, so we quickened our pace to a smart run.

We had not proceeded far when we were brought to a sudden standstill by one of those awfully loud and savage roars which we at once recognised as being that of a gorilla. It sounded like what we might term barking thunder, and from its intensity we were assured that our conjectures as to the creature being a solitary male gorilla were correct.

"Dat him, massas!" cried our guide quickly, at the same time cocking both barrels of his rifle. "Look hout! we no hab go after him no more. Him's come to fight us. Most always doos dot -- de big ole gorilla."

We saw from the deeply earnest expression of the negro's countenance that he felt himself now to be in a very serious position, which would demand all his nerve and coolness.

Again the roar was repeated with terrible loudness and ferocity, and we heard something like the beating of a huge bass drum, mingled with the cracking of branches, as though some heavy creature were forcing its way through the underwood towards us.

We were all much impressed with this beating sound, and, as is often the case when men are startled by sounds which they cannot account for, we were more filled with the dread of this incomprehensible sound than of the gorilla which we knew was approaching us. We might, indeed, have asked an explanation from Makarooroo, but we were all too much excited and anxious just then to speak.

We drew together in a group.

Jack, who stood a little in front of us, having claimed the first shot, was whispering something about its being a pity there was so little light, when his voice was drowned by a repetition of the roar, so appalling that we each started, feeling as though it had been uttered close to our ears. Next instant the bushes in front of us were torn aside, and the most horrible monster I ever saw, or hope to set eyes on, stood before us.

He was evidently one of the largest-sized gorillas. In the gloom of the forest he appeared to us to be above six feet high. His jet-black visage was working with an expression of rage that was fearfully satanic. His eyes glared horribly. The tuft of hair on the top of his head rose and fell with the working of his low wrinkled forehead in a manner that peculiarly enhanced the ferocity of his expression. His great hairy body seemed much too large for his misshapen legs, and his enormous arms much too long for the body. It was with the fists at the ends of those muscular arms that he beat upon his bulky chest, and produced the unaccountable sounds above referred to. As he stood there uttering roar upon roar -- apparently with the view of screwing up his courage to attack us -- displaying his great canine teeth, and advancing slowly, step by step, I felt a mingling of powerful emotions such as I had never felt before in all my life, and such as cannot by any possibility be adequately described.

I felt quite self-possessed, however, and stood beside my comrades with my rifle ready and my finger on the trigger.

"Now!" whispered Peterkin. But Jack did not move.

"Now!" said he again, more anxiously, as the immense brute advanced, beating its chest and roaring, to within eight yards of us. Still Jack did not move, and I observed that it was as much as Peterkin could do to restrain himself.

As it took the next step, and appeared about to spring, Jack pulled the trigger. The cap alone exploded! Like a flash of light the other trigger was pulled; it also failed! some moisture must have got into the nipples in loading. Almost as quick as thought Jack hurled his piece at the brute with a force that seemed to me irresistible. The butt struck it full in the chest, but the rifle was instantly caught in its iron gripe. At that moment Peterkin fired, and the gorilla dropped like a stone, uttering a heavy groan as it fell prone with its face to the earth -- not, however, before it had broken Jack's rifle across, and twisted the barrel as if it had been merely a piece of wire!

"That was a narrow escape, Jack," said I seriously, after we had recovered from the state of agitation into which this scene had thrown us.

"Indeed it was; and thanks to Peterkin's ever-ready rifle that it was an escape at all. What a monstrous brute!"

"Much bigger than the first one," said Peterkin. -- "Where is your measure, Ralph? Out with it."

I pulled out my measure, and applying it to the prostrate carcass, found that the gorilla we had now shot was five feet eight inches in height, and proportionately large round the chest. It seemed to be a mass of sinews and hard muscles, and as I gazed at its massive limbs I could well imagine that it had strength sufficient to perform many, at least, if not all of the wonderful feats ascribed to it by the natives.

Shortly after the death of the gorilla, night settled down upon the scene, so we hurried back towards our camp, where we arrived much exhausted, yet greatly elated, by our successful day's sport.

I spent a great part of that night making entries in my note-book, by the light of our camp-fires, while my companions slept. And, truly, I enjoyed such quiet hours after days of so great mental and physical excitement. I observed, also, that the negroes enjoyed those seasons exceedingly. They sat round the blaze, talking and laughing, and recounting, I have no doubt, their feats of daring by flood and field; then, when they began to grow sleepy, they sat there swaying to and fro, making an occasional remark, until they became too sleepy even for that, when they began to nod and wink and start, and almost fell into the fire, so unwilling did they seem to tear themselves away from it, even for the distance of the few feet they required to draw back in order to enable them to lie down. At last nature could hold out no longer, and one by one they dropped back in their places.

I, too, began to nod at last, and to make entries in my note-book which were too disjointed at last to be comprehensible; so I finally resigned myself to repose, and to dream, as a matter of course.



Chapter Fourteen.

Our Plans Are Suddenly Altered -- Wicked Designs Discovered.

For several weeks after this we wandered about in the woods searching for gorillas. We were very successful, and shot so many that I had the satisfaction of making elaborate notes of specimens of nearly all ages and kinds.

But an event was looming in the future which we little thought of, and which ultimately compelled us to abandon the gorilla country and retrace our steps towards the southern part of the continent.

One day we set out, as was our wont, to hunt for gorillas, accompanied only by our faithful follower Makarooroo. It chanced to be a lovely day, and the country through which we were passing was exceedingly beautiful, so that we found more pleasure at that time in conversing together on the beauties of nature and on the wonderful works of nature's God than in contemplating our chances of falling in with game.

"It's a splendid country," said Jack, as we walked along under the shade of some magnificent ebony trees. "I wish that it were inhabited by a Christian people. Perhaps this may be the case one of these days, but I don't think we shall live to see it."

"There's no saying, Jack," observed Peterkin. "Does not the Bible speak of a 'nation being born in a day?' Of course that must be figurative language; nevertheless it must mean something, and I incline to think that it means that there shall be a time when men shall flock rapidly, and in unusually great numbers, to the Saviour."

"It may be so," observed I, "but I have made up my mind on this point, that Christian people are not sufficiently awake to the terrible condition of the natives of countries such as this, or to the fact that they have much in their power to do for the amelioration of both their temporal and spiritual welfare. I, for one, will, if spared to return home, contribute more largely than I have been wont to do to the cause of missions."

"Talking of that," said Peterkin, "do you think it right to support the missions of other churches besides your own?"

"Do I think it right?" I exclaimed in surprise. "Of course I do. I think it one of the greatest evils that can befall a Christian, that he should become so narrow-minded as to give only to his own church, and think only of his own church's missions. Why, surely a soul saved, if a matter of rejoicing in heaven, ought to be a matter of joy on earth, without reference to the particular church which was the instrument used by the Holy Spirit for that end. I feel very strongly that all Christians who love our Saviour with deep sincerity must of necessity have a warm feeling towards His people in all churches. At any rate we ought to cultivate such a feeling."

"Who can these be?" cried Jack, stopping and pointing to some figures that appeared to be approaching us in the distance.

"They are negroes, at any rate," said I; "for they seem to be black, and are evidently naked."

"Warriors, too, if I mistake not. They have not yet observed us. Shall we hide and let them pass?"

Jack hesitated a moment, then leaping behind a bush, cried -- 

"Ay, 'tis well to be cautious when nothing is to be gained by daring. These fellows outnumber us, and war-parties are not to be trusted -- at least not if these of Africa resemble those of North America."

"Hollo! there's a white man with them," cried Peterkin, as he peeped over the bushes behind which we were hid.

"You don't say so, eh? So there is. Come; we have nothing to fear from the party of a traveller. -- What, Mak, you shake your head! What mean you?"

Makarooroo increased the shaking of his head, and said, "Me no know dat, massa. P'raps hab more to fear dan you tink."

"Oh, stuff! come along. Why, Mak, it seems as if gorilla-hunting had failed to improve your courage."

As Jack said this he stepped out from among the bushes and advanced to meet the strangers. Of course we all followed, and although we carried our rifles in a careless manner, as if we expected no evil, yet we held ourselves in readiness to take instant action if necessary.

The moment the negroes perceived us, they set up a great shout and brandished their spears and guns, but the voice of their leader was instantly heard commanding them to halt. They obeyed at once, and the European stranger advanced alone to meet us. As he drew near we observed that he was a splendid-looking man, nearly as large as Jack himself, with a handsome figure and a free, off-hand gait. But on coming closer we saw that his countenance, though handsome, wore a forbidding, stern expression.

"Dat am a slabe-dealer," whispered our guide, as the stranger came up and saluted us in French.

Jack replied in the same language; but on learning that we were Englishmen, he began to talk in our own tongue, although he evidently understood very little of it.

"Do you travel alone with the natives?" inquired Jack, after a few preliminary remarks.

"Yaas, sair, I doos," replied the stranger, who was a Portuguese trader, according to his own account.

"You seem to carry little or no merchandise with you," said Jack, glancing towards the party of natives, who stood at some distance looking at us and conversing together eagerly.

"I has none wis me, true, bot I has moche not ver' far off. I bees go just now to seek for ivory, and ebony, and sl-a -- -w'at you call him? barwood."

The man corrected himself quickly, but the slip confirmed Makarooroo's remark and our own suspicions that he was a slave-dealer.

"De day is far gone," he continued, putting as amiable a smile on his countenance as possible; "perhaps you vill stop and we have dine togedder."

Although we did not much like the appearance of our new friend or his party, we felt that it would be uncourteous in so wild a country, where we had so few chances of meeting with white faces, to refuse, so we agreed. A camp-fire was speedily kindled, and the two parties mingled together, and sat down amicably to discuss roast monkey and venison steaks together.

During the course of the meal the Portuguese trader became so communicative and agreeable that we all began to think we had judged him harshly. We observed, too, that Makarooroo and the negroes had fraternised heartily, and our guide was singing and laughing, and making himself agreeable at a very uncommon rate, so much so as to call forth our surprise.

"Mak seems to be mad to-day," observed Peterkin, as one of our guide's jovial laughs rang through the wood and was echoed by his new acquaintances.

"Bees him not always so?" inquired the Portuguese.

"He's always hearty enough," replied Jack, "but I must confess I never saw him in such high spirits as he seems to be in just now. It must be the effect of meeting with new faces, I suppose."

"Ah! s'pose so," remarked the trader.

I was struck with the manner in which this was said. There was a tone of affected indifference, such as one assumes when making a passing remark, but at the same time a dark frown rested for one moment on his brow, and he cast a piercing vindictive glance at our guide. Next moment he was smiling blandly and making some humorous remark to Peterkin.

I looked at my companions, but they had evidently not observed this little piece of by-play. It seemed to me so unaccountable, considering that the two men had never met before, that I resolved to watch them. I soon observed that Makarooroo's mirth was forced, that he was in fact acting a part, and I noticed once or twice that he also cast an occasional stealthy and piercing glance at the Portuguese. It afterwards turned out that both men had been acting the same part, and that each had suspected what the other was doing.

When our meal was concluded we prepared to resume our separate routes.

"I goes to de west," observed the Portuguese, in a casual way, as he buckled on the belt that supported his hunting-knife.

"Indeed! I had understood you to say that you were going south."

"No; you not have onderstand me. I goes to de west, ver' long way."

"Then, sir, I wish you a safe and pleasant journey," said Jack, lifting his cap.

"De same to you, sairs, an' goot plenty of gorillas to you. Farder nord dey be more plenty. Adieu!"

We took off our caps to each other, and saying farewell, we turned away, and soon lost sight of the party.

"Ho! de yaller-faced villain," exclaimed Makarooroo between his clinched teeth, after we were out of earshot.

"Why, what's wrong, Mak?" inquired Peterkin, in great surprise.

"Ho! noting porteekler," replied the guide, with an air and tone of sarcasm that quite amused us. "Hims not go sout', ho no! hims go west, ho yis! Hims advise us to go nort', ho dear! dat bery clibber, bery mush clibber; but we is clibberer, we is, ho! ho! ho!"

Our worthy guide looked so terribly fierce as he uttered this fiendish laugh, that we all came to a stand and gazed at him in surprise; we fancied that something must have deranged his mind.

"Mak," said Peterkin, "you are mad. What mean you by such grimaces?"

Pursing his lips tightly, and looking at each of us for a few moments in silence, he finally crossed his arms on his chest, and turning eagerly to Jack, said with extreme volubility -- 

"Dat rascal! dat tief! Him's no trader, him's slabe-dealer; hims no go west, hims go south; an' w'at for hims go? W'at for hims carry guns so many, eh? Hims go" (here the guide dropped his voice into a whisper of intense bitterness) -- "hims go for attack village an' take all peepils away for be slabes. No pay for 'em -- tief! -- take dem by force."

"Why, how did you come to know all this," said Jack, "or rather to suspect it? for you cannot be sure that you are right."

"W'at, no can be sure me right? ho, yis, me sartin sure. Me bery clibber. Stop, now. Did him -- dat tief! -- speak bery mush?"

"Certainly he did, a good deal."

"Yis, ho! An' did him make you speak bery mush?"

"I rather think he did," replied Peterkin, laughing at our guide's eagerness.

"Yis, ho! hims did. An' did him ax you plenty question, all 'bout where you go, an' where you come from, an' de way back to village where we be come from? An' did hims say, when him find you was come from sout, dat hims was go west, though before dat hims hab say dat hims be go sout, eh?"

"Certainly," said Jack, with a thoughtful look, "he did say all that, and a great deal more to that effect."

"Yis, ho! hims did. Me know bery well. Me see him. An' me also dood to de niggers what hims do to you. Me talk an' laugh an' sing, den me ax dem questions. But dey bery wise; dey no speak mush, but dey manage to speak 'nuff for me. Yis, me bam -- bam -- eh?"

"Boozle," suggested Peterkin.

"Vis, bamboozle dem altogidder, ho! ho!"

After a little further explanation we found that this Portuguese trader was a man-stealer, on his way to one of the smaller villages, with the intention of attacking it. Makarooroo ascertained that they meant to proceed direct to that of King Jambai, first, however, getting one of the neighbouring tribes to pick a quarrel with that monarch and go to war with him; and we now recollected, with deep regret, that in our ignorance of what the Portuguese was, we had given him a great deal of information regarding the village of our late hospitable entertainer which might prove very useful to him, and very hurtful to poor King Jambai, in the event of such a raid being carried out.

But, in addition to this, Makarooroo had ascertained that it was possible that, before going to King Jambai's village, they might perhaps make a descent on that of our friend Mbango, with whom we had left poor Okandaga. It was this that raised the wrath of our guide to such a pitch.

The instant we heard it Jack said -- 

"Then that settles the question of our future proceedings. We must bid adieu to the gorillas at once, and dog the steps of this marauding party, so as to prevent our good friends Mbango and Jambai being surprised and carried into slavery along with all their people. It seems to me that our path is clear in this matter. Even if we were not bound in honour to succour those who have treated us hospitably, we ought to do our best to undo the evil we have done in telling their enemies so much about them. Besides, we must save Okandaga, whatever happens. What say you, comrades?"

"Of course we must," said Peterkin. I also heartily concurred.

"You's a good man," said Makarooroo, his eyes glistening with emotion.

"If I did not stand by you at such a time as this," replied Jack, smiling, "I should certainly be a very bad man."

"But what are we to do about our goods?" inquired I, "We cannot hope to keep up with these robbers if we carry our goods with us; and yet it seems hard to leave them behind, for we should fare ill, I fear, in this country if we travel as beggars."

"We shall easily manage as to that," replied Jack. "I have observed that one of our niggers is a sensible, and, I am disposed to think, a trustworthy fellow -- "

"D'you mean the man with the blind eye and the thumping big nose?" inquired Peterkin.

"The same. Well, I shall put him in charge, and tell him to follow us to Mbango's village; then we four shall start off light, and hunt our way south, travelling as fast as we can, and carrying as many strings of beads, by way of small change, as we can stuff into our pockets and fasten about our persons."

"The very thing," cried Peterkin. "So let's put it in practice at once."

"Ay, this very night," said Jack, as we hurried back to the spot where our goods had been left.

As we went along in silence I noticed that Peterkin sighed once or twice very heavily, and I asked him if he was quite well.

"Well? Ay, well enough in body, Ralph, but ill at ease in mind. How can it be otherwise when we are thus suddenly and unexpectedly about to take leave of our dear friends the gorillas? I declare my heart is fit to break."

"I sympathise with you, Peterkin," said I, "for I have not yet made nearly as many notes in regard to these monster-monkeys as I could have wished. However, I am thankful for what I have got, and perhaps we may come back here again one of these days."

"What bloodthirsty fellows!" cried Jack, laughing. "If you talk so, I fear that Mak and I shall have to cut your acquaintance; for, you see, he and I have got a little feeling left."

"Well, it's natural, I fancy," observed Peterkin, "that gorillas should feel for their kindred. However, I console myself with the thought that the country farther south is much better filled with other game, although the great puggy is not there. And then we shall come among lions again, which we can never find, I believe, in the gorilla country. I wonder if the gorilla has really driven them out of this part of Africa."

"Some think it probable," observed I, "but we cannot make sure of that point."

"Well, we can at all events make sure of this point," cried Peterkin, as we came in sight of our encampment, "that lions are thick enough in the country whither we are bound; so let's have a good supper, and hurrah for the south! It's a bright prospect before us. A fair lady to be saved; possibly a fight with the niggers, and lion, elephant, rhinoceros, alligator, hippopotamus, and buffalo shooting by way of relaxation in the intervals of the war!"



Chapter Fifteen.

An Unexpected Meeting -- We Fly, And I Make A Narrow Escape From An Appalling Fate.

During many days after the incidents narrated in the last chapter did Jack, and Peterkin, and Makarooroo, and I, push across the continent through bush and brake, over hill and dale, morass and plain, at our utmost possible speed. We did not, during the whole course of our journey, overtake the Portuguese slave-dealer; but we thought little of that, for it was not very probable that we should hit upon exactly the same route, and we entertained sanguine hopes that the energy and speed with which we kept steadily and undeviatingly on our way would enable us to reach the village of Mbango before the slave-dealer and his party.

When I look back upon that time now, and reflect calmly on the dangers we encountered and the hardships we endured, I confess that I am filled with amazement. I might easily fill several volumes such as this with anecdotes of our encounters with wild animals, and other adventures; but however interesting these might be in themselves, I must not forget that some of the main incidents of our sojourn in Africa have yet to be related, and that there is a limit to the patience of even youthful readers.

Our power of enduring fatigue and sustained active exertion, with comparatively short intervals of nightly repose, was much greater than I could have believed to be possible. I have no doubt that anxiety to save Okandaga from the terrible fate that hung over her enabled us to bear up under fatigues which would at other times have overcome us. I know not well how it was that I kept up with my strong and agile comrades. Oftentimes I felt ready to drop down as I walked, yet somehow I never thought of falling behind, but went doggedly on, and at nights found myself little worse in condition than they. Peterkin, although small, was tough and springy, and his spirits seemed rather to rise than otherwise as his strength abated. As for Jack, I never saw any one like him. He seemed like a lion roaming in his strength over his native deserts. So hardened had we all become during the course of our travels that we found ourselves not only equal to Makarooroo in pedestrian powers, but superior; for when occasion required we could almost knock him up, but I am free to admit that we never succeeded in doing this thoroughly. In short, we were all as nearly as possible equal to each other, with the exception of Jack, who seemed in every way invulnerable.

During this long and hurried but intensely interesting and delightful journey we came upon, at different times, almost every species of animal, plant, and tree peculiar to the African continent. Oftentimes we passed by droves and herds of elephants, deer, buffalo, giraffes, antelopes, and zebras; we saw rhinoceroses, alligators, leopards, lions, apes of several kinds, and smaller monkeys innumerable. We also saw great numbers of birds -- some curious on account of their habits and form, others beautiful and bright as the rainbow.

Yet although, as I have said, this journey was very delightful, our feelings were at different times exceedingly varied, and not unfrequently pained; for while we saw around us much that was beautiful, innocent, and lovely, we also witnessed the conflicts of many wild creatures, and sometimes came across evidences of the savage and cruel dispositions of the human beings by whom the country was peopled. We always, however, carefully avoided native villages, being anxious not to be interrupted on our forced march. Neither did we turn aside to hunt, although we were much tempted so to do, but contented ourselves with killing such animals as we required for our daily subsistence; and of these we shot as many as we required without having to turn aside from our straight course.

Thus we went on day after day, and slept under the shade of the trees or under the wide canopy of heaven night after night, until we arrived one day at a beautiful valley, bordered by a plain, and traversed by a river, where Peterkin met with a sad accident, and our onward progress was for a short period arrested.

It happened thus: -- The region through which we chanced to be passing was peopled by so many natives that we had the utmost difficulty in avoiding them, and more than once were compelled to halt during the daytime in some sequestered dell, and resume our journey during the night.

One day -- it was, if I remember rightly, about two o'clock in the afternoon -- we came suddenly in sight of a native village on the banks of the river whose course we were at that time following, and made a wide detour in order to avoid it. We had passed it several miles, and were gradually bending into our course again, when we came unexpectedly upon a band of natives who had been out hunting and were returning to their village with the spoils of the chase on their shoulders. Both parties at once came to an abrupt halt, and we stood for several minutes looking at each other -- the natives in speechless amazement, while we conversed in whispers, uncertain what to do.

We knew that if we made friendly advances we should no doubt be welcomed, but then we should certainly be compelled to go back with them to their village and spend at least a day or two with them, as we could not hope to give them a satisfactory reason for our going on at once. We also knew that to go on in spite of them would produce a quarrel, and, of course, a fight, which, as it would certainly result in bloodshed, was by all means to be avoided for we could not bear to think that a mere caprice of ours in visiting Africa should be the means of causing the death of a single human being, if we could prevent it.

"What is to be done?" said Peterkin, looking at Jack in despair.

"I don't know," replied Jack. "It's very awkward. It will never do to go all the way back to the village with these stupid fellows, and we cannot tell them our real reason for going on; for, in the first place, they would perhaps not believe us, or, in the second place, they might offer to join us."

"Fight," said Makarooroo in a low tone, grinding his teeth together and clutching his rifle.

I felt deep sympathy with the poor fellow, for I knew well that in disposition he was naturally the reverse of quarrelsome, and that his present state of mind was the consequence of anxiety for the deliverance of his faithful bride.

"No, no," replied Jack quickly; "we shall not fight."

"Suppose we bolt!" whispered Peterkin, brightening up as the idea occurred to him -- "regularly run away!"

We seized at the idea instantly. We were all of us hard of muscle and strong of wind now, and we knew that we could outstrip the savages.

"We'll do it!" said Jack hastily. "Let us scatter, too, so as to perplex them at the outset."

"Capital! Then here goes. I'm off," cried Peterkin.

"Stay!" said Jack.

"Why?" demanded Peterkin.

"Because we must appoint a place of rendezvous if we would hope to meet again."

"True; I forgot that."

"D'you all see yonder blue mountain-peak?"

"Let us meet there. If we miss each other at the base, let us proceed to the summit and wait. Away!"

As Jack uttered the last word we all turned right about and fled like the wind. The savages instantly set up a hideous yell, and darted after us; but we made for the thick woods, and scattering in all directions, as had been previously arranged, speedily threw them off the scent, and finally made our escape.

For the first time since landing on the continent of Africa, I now found myself totally alone in the wild forest. After separating from my companions, I ran at my utmost speed in the direction of a dense jungle, where I purposed taking shelter until the natives should pass by, and then come out and pursue my way leisurely. But I was prevented from adopting this course in consequence of two very fleet negroes discovering my intention, and, by taking a short cut, frustrating it. I was compelled, therefore, to keep in the more open part of the forest, and trust simply to speed and endurance for escape.

I should think that I ran nearly two miles at full speed, and kept well ahead of my pursuers. Indeed, I had distanced them considerably; but feeling that I could not hold out long at such a killing pace, I pulled up a little, and allowed them to gain on me slightly. I was just about to resume my full speed, and, if possible, throw them at once far behind, when my foot was caught by a thorny shrub, and I fell headlong to the ground. I was completely stunned for a moment or two, and lay quite motionless. But my consciousness suddenly returned, accompanied by a feeling of imminent danger, which caused me to spring up and renew my headlong career. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw that the two natives had gained so much on me that had I lain a few seconds longer I must inevitably have been captured.

I exerted myself now beyond my powers. My head, too, from the shock I had received, became confused, and I scarce knew whither I was going. Presently a loud, dull roar, as if of distant thunder, struck upon my ear, and I beheld what appeared to me to be a vast white plain covered with mist before. Next moment I found myself on the brink of a precipice of a hundred feet deep, over which, a little to my left, a large river fell, and thundered down into a dark abyss, whence issued those clouds of spray which I had taken for a white plain in the confusion of my brain and vision.

I made a desperate effort to check myself, but it was too late. My heels broke off the earthy edge of the cliff, and I obtained just one awful glance of the horrid turmoil directly below me as I fell over with a mass of debris. I uttered an involuntary shriek of agony, and flung my arms wildly out. My hand clutched the branch of an overhanging bush. This, slight though it was, was the means, under God, of saving my life. The branch broke off, but it checked my fall, and at the same time swung me into the centre of a tree which projected out from the cliff almost horizontally. Through this tree I went crashing with fearful violence, until I was arrested by my chest striking against a stout branch. This I clutched with the tenacity of despair, and wriggling myself, as it were, along it, wound my arms and legs round it, and held on for some time with the utmost fervour of muscular energy.

My position now was beyond conception horrible. I shut my eyes and prayed earnestly for help. Presently I opened them, and in the position in which I then lay, the first thing I saw was the boiling water of the fall more than a hundred feet below me. My agony was such that large drops of perspiration broke out all over my forehead. It was many minutes before I could summon up courage to turn my head so as to look upward, for I had a vague feeling that if I were to move the branch on which I lay would break off. When I did so, I observed that the branches over my head completely screened the sky from me, so that I knew I had escaped one danger; for the natives, believing, no doubt, that I had fallen down into the river, would at once give up their hopeless pursuit. The branch on which I lay was so slender that it swayed about with every motion that I made, and the longer I remained there the more nervous did I become.

At last I bethought me that unless I made a manful effort I should certainly perish, so I looked about me until I became accustomed to the giddy position. Then I perceived that, by creeping along the branch until I gained the trunk of the tree, I could descend by means of it to the face of the precipice from which it projected, and thus gain a narrow ledge of rock that overhung the abyss. In any other circumstances I would as soon have ventured to cross the Falls of Niagara on a tight-rope; but I had no other alternative, so I crept along the branch slowly and nervously, clinging to it, at the same time, with terrible tenacity. At last I gained the trunk of the tree and breathed more freely, for it was much steadier than the branch.

The trunk projected, as I have said, almost horizontally from the precipice, so I had to draw myself carefully along it, not daring to get on my hands and knees, and finally reached the ledge above referred to. Compared with my former position, this was a place of temporary safety, for it was three feet wide, and having a good head, I had no fear of falling over. But on looking up my heart sank within me, for the bare cliff offered no foothold whatever. I do not believe that a monkey could have climbed it. To descend the precipice was equally impossible, for it was like a wall. My only hope, therefore, lay in the ledge on which I stood, and which, I observed, ran along to the right and turned round a projecting rock that hid the remainder of it from view.

Hasting along it, I found, to my inexpressible relief, that it communicated with the top of the precipice. The ascent was difficult and dangerous; but at last I succeeded in passing the most serious part, and soon gained the summit of the cliff in safety, where I immediately fell on my knees and returned thanks for my deliverance.

I had passed nearly an hour in the trying adventure which I have just related, and feeling that my companions would naturally begin soon to be anxious about me, I started for our rendezvous, which I reached in little more than an hour and a half. Here I found Jack seated alone beside a stream of water, from which he occasionally lifted a little in the hollow of his hand and drank greedily.

"Ah, Ralph, my boy!" he exclaimed joyfully as I came up, "I'm glad you've come. I had begun to fear that you must have been captured. Ay, drink, lad! You seem warm enough, though I scarcely think you can be much more so than I am. What a run we have had, to be sure! But, what, Ralph -- your clothes are much torn, and your face and hands are scratched. Why, you must have got among thorns. Not badly hurt, I trust?"

"Oh no; nothing to speak of. I have, however, had a narrow escape. But before I speak of that, what of Peterkin?"

"I don't know," replied Jack, with an anxious expression; "and to say truth, I begin to feel uneasy about him, for he ought to have been here almost as soon as myself."

"How so? Did you, then, run together?"

"Latterly we did. At first we separated, and I knew not what had become either of him or you. The fact is, I had enough to do to look out for myself, for a dozen of rascally niggers kept close upon my heels and tried my powers of running somewhat; so I took to the thick wood and made a detour, to throw them off the scent. All at once I heard a smashing of the bushes right in front of me, and before I knew what I was about, Peterkin bounced through the underwood and almost plunged into my arms. We both gave an involuntary yell of alarm.

"'There's two of 'em right on my heels,' said he in a gasp, as he dashed off again. 'Come along with me, Jack.'

"I followed as fast as I could, and we crossed an open plain together, when I looked over my shoulder, and saw that all the other fellows had given up the chase except the two mentioned by Peterkin. These kept on after us, and somehow or other we got separated again, just after re-entering the wood on the other side of the plain. Of course I ran on, expecting to see my companion every minute. Finally I came to the rendezvous, and here I found that the savages had given up all hope of overtaking me, for I could see nothing of them."

"How long ago is that?" I inquired quickly.

"About an hour."

"Then poor Peterkin must have been caught," said I, in a voice of despair.

"No, that is not likely," replied Jack; "for I climbed a high tree and saw the savages recrossing the plain alone. I think it probable he may have lost his way, and is afraid to climb trees or to fire off his gun to signal us, for fear of being heard or seen by the niggers. I have sent Mak, who came here soon after I did, to search for him."

"It may be as you say, Jack, but we must go at once to look for him."

"With all my heart, Ralph. I only waited until you had sufficiently rested."

"The body cannot rest when the mind is ill at ease. Come, let us start at once. I shall tell you of my little adventure as we go along."

We soon reached the edge of the plain where Jack had been separated from his companion, and here we proceeded to make a careful search. Being certain that the savages were now out of earshot, we began to halloo occasionally as we went along. But monkeys and parrots alone replied to us.

"This is the very spot where I last saw him," said Jack, leading me to a palm-tree which stood a little within the outer verge of the wood; "and here are his footsteps faintly indicated on the grass."

"Ah! then let us follow these up," said I eagerly.

"We might, if we were North American backwoodsmen or Red Indians; but I can scarcely follow. Stay, here they enter upon a piece of soft ground, and are more distinct. Now, then, we shall get on."

For nearly quarter of an hour we followed the footprints; then we came to dry ground again, and lost all traces of them. We wandered about perseveringly, nevertheless, and were rewarded by again discovering them about quarter of a mile farther on, leading down to the banks of the river on another part of which I had had such a narrow escape.

While we were advancing -- I in front -- I felt the ground beneath me suddenly begin to give way with a crackling sound. I instinctively threw up my arms and sprang back.

"Hollo, Ralph!" cried my companion, seizing me with one hand by the collar, and hauling, or rather lifting me back, as if I had been a poodle dog. "Why, you were as near as possible into a pitfall."

"Thanks to you, Jack, that I am not actually in," said I, putting my somewhat twisted costume to rights. "But, I say, does it not strike you that perhaps Peterkin has fallen into one of these?"

We both started and listened with breathless attention, for at that moment we heard a faint groan not far from us. It was repeated almost immediately, though so faintly that we could scarcely ascertain the direction whence it came. We advanced cautiously, however, a few paces, and discovered a hole in the ground, from which, at that very moment, the dishevelled head of poor Peterkin appeared, like Jack coming out of his box. His sudden appearance and serio-comic expression would have been at any other time sufficient to have set us off in fits of laughter; but joy at finding him, and anxiety lest he should prove to be seriously hurt, restrained us at that time effectually.

"My dear fellow!" cried Jack, hurrying forward.

"Keep back! avaunt ye. Oh dear me, Jack, my poor head!" said Peterkin with a sigh, pressing his hand to his forehead; "what an intolerable whack I have got on my miserable caput. There; don't come nearer, else you'll break through. Reach me your hand. That's it; thank'ee."

"There you are, all safe, my boy," cried Jack, as he drew Peterkin out of the hole. -- "But hollo! I say, Ralph, run down for some water; I believe the poor fellow has fainted."

I sprang down the river-bank, and speedily returned with some water in the crown of my wide-awake. Peterkin had recovered before I came back, and a long draught quite restored him, so that in a few minutes he was able to relate how the accident had befallen him.

"You see," said he, in a jocular tone, for it was a most unusually severe accident indeed that could drive the fun out of our little friend -- "you see, after I lost sight of Jack, I took a leaf out of the hare's book, and doubled on my course. This brought me, unhappily, to the banks of the river, where I came upon one of the pitfalls that are made by the niggers here to catch wild beasts, and in I went. I kept hold of the surface boughs, however, scrambled out again, and pushed on. But I had not gone ten yards when the ground began to crackle and sink. I made a desperate bound to clear it, but my foot caught in a branch, and down I went head foremost into the pit. And that's the whole of my story. How long I remained there I know not. If I had known what time it was when I dived in, and you were to tell me what o'clock it is now, we might arrive at a knowledge of the time I have spent at the bottom of that hole. All that I can positively affirm is, that I went in, and within in the last ten minutes I came out!"

We laughed at this free-and-easy manner of narrating the incident, and then prepared to return to our rendezvous; but on attempting to walk, Peterkin found that he had received a greater shake than at first he had imagined. Several times during our march he became giddy, and had to be supported; and after reaching our encampment, where we found Makarooroo waiting for us, he fainted. We were therefore obliged to make up our minds to encamp where we were for a few days.



Chapter Sixteen.

An Unfortunate Delay, And A Terrible Visitor.

Only those who have been forcibly held back when filled with the deepest anxiety to go forward, can form any thing like a conception of our state of mind during the few days that succeeded that on which Peterkin met with his accident.

We felt like chained hounds when the huntsmen pass by. We knew that every hour increased the distance between us and the slave-dealer's party, who, unless we succeeded in passing them and reaching the villages first, would infallibly succeed in their villainous design. But Peterkin was unable to proceed without great risk, as whenever he attempted to walk steadily for any distance his head became giddy, and we were compelled to halt, so that a day or two's rest was absolutely necessary. Poor Makarooroo was nearly beside himself with impatience; but to do him justice, he endeavoured to conceal the state of his feelings when in Peterkin's presence.

During this period of forced inaction, although of course I had nothing to do, I found it impossible to apply my mind closely to the study of any of the strange and beautiful objects by which I was surrounded. Anxiety banished from me almost entirely the love of study, as well as the power of observation. Nevertheless, one or two things that I saw were so curious that they could not but make a deep impression on my memory.

I discovered a spider of a very remarkable kind, which was such an ingenious creature as to be capable of making a door to the entrance of its house. I came upon the animal one day while taking a stroll a short distance from our camp. It was as large as a shilling, reddish in colour, and from the fierce, rapid way in which it ran about hither and thither as if in search of prey, it had an exceedingly horrible and voracious aspect. The hole of this creature is visible only when its owner is absent from home. It is quite evident either that there are no thieves among the lower animals there, or that there is nothing in the hole to steal, for when he goes out he leaves the door open behind him. When he returns he shuts the door, and the hole becomes invisible, in consequence of the door being coated with earth on the outside. Its inside is lined with a pure white silky substance, which at once attracted my attention as I passed. On trying to pick up the door, I found that it was attached by a hinge to the hole, and on being shut it fitted exactly.

Perhaps the most singular discovery I made was a tree, the stem of which had been so completely surrounded by spiders' webs that it could not be seen, and I had to cut through the network with my knife in order to get at the tree. The lines of those webs were as thick as coarse threads, and pretty strong, as I had reason to know; for when walking back to camp the same evening, meditating deeply on our unfortunate detention, I ran my head into the middle of a spider's web, and was completely enveloped in it, so much so that it was with considerable difficulty I succeeded in clearing it away. I was as regularly netted as if a gauze veil had been thrown over me.

On our third morning after the accident we set forth again, and continued our journey by forced marches as Peterkin could bear it. Although the two past days and nights had been absolutely lost, and could not now be recalled, yet the moment we set out and left our camp behind us, the load of anxiety was at once lifted off our minds, and we hurried forward with an elasticity of step and spirit that was quite delightful. We felt like prisoners set free, and kept up a continual flow of conversation, sometimes in reference to the scenery and objects around us, at other times in regard to our future plans or our past experiences.

"It seems to me," said Jack, breaking silence at the end of a long pause which had succeeded an animated discussion as to whether it were better to spend one's life in the civilised world or among the wilds of Africa, in which discussion Peterkin, who advocated the wild life, was utterly, though not admittedly, beaten -- "it seems to me that, notwithstanding the short time we stayed in the gorilla country, we have been pretty successful. Haven't we bagged thirty-three altogether?"

"Thirty-six, if you count the babies in arms," responded Peterkin.

"Of course we are entitled to count these."

"I think you are both out in your reckoning," said I, drawing out my note-book; "the last baby that I shot was our thirty-seventh."

"What!" cried Peterkin, "the one with the desperately black face and the horrible squint, that nearly tore all the hair out of Jack's head before he managed to strangle him? That wasn't a baby; it was a big boy, and I have no doubt a big rascal besides."

"That may be so," I rejoined; "but whatever he was, I have him down as number thirty-seven in my list."

"Pity we didn't make up the forty," observed Jack.

"Ah! yes indeed," said Peterkin. "But let me see: could we not manage to make it up to that yet?"

"Impossible," said I. "We are far away from the gorilla land now, I know; for, in addition to the fact that we have seen no traces of gorillas for a long time, we have, within the last few days, seen several lions, which, you are well aware, do not exist in the gorilla country."

"True; but you mistake me," rejoined Peterkin. "I do not mean to make up the number to forty by killing three more, but by proving, almost to demonstration, that we have already been the death of that number, in addition to those noted down."

"You'll find that rather difficult," said Jack, laughing.

"Not at all," cried Peterkin. "Let me think a minute. You remember that enormously big, hairy fellow, that looked so like an ugly old man that Ralph refused point-blank to fire at him, whereupon you fired at him point-blank and wounded him in the shoulder as he was running away?"

"We treated several big fellows in that way," replied Jack; "which of them do you allude to? -- the one that roared so loud and terrified you so much that you nearly ran away?"

"No, no; you know well enough which one I mean. The one that ran along the edge of the stagnant pool into which you tumbled as we were coming back."

"Oh yes! I remember," said Jack, laughing.

"Well, that fellow flew into such a horrible rage when he was wounded," continued Peterkin, "that I am perfectly certain he went straight home and murdered his wife in a passion; which brings up the number to thirty-eight. Then there was that old woman-gorilla that I brought down when we were descending yon hill that was covered with such splendid vines. You remember? Well, I'm quite certain that the young man-gorilla beside her, who ran off and escaped, was her son, and that he went home straightway and died of grief. That makes thirty-nine. Then -- "

"Oh, do be quiet, Peterkin, please," said I, with a shudder. "You put things in such a fearfully dark and murderous light that I feel quite as if I were a murderer. I feel quite uneasy, I assure you; and if it were not that we have killed all these creatures in the cause of science, I should be perfectly miserable."

"In the cause of science!" repeated Peterkin; "humph! I suspect that a good deal of wickedness is perpetrated under the wing of science."

"Come, come," said Jack; "don't you begin to grow sarcastic, Master Peterkin. I abominate sarcasm, and cannot tolerate sarcastic people. If you adopt that style, I shall revert to my natural habits as a gorilla, and tear you in pieces."

"There you exhibit your unnatural ignorance of your own natural habits," retorted Peterkin; "for you ought to know that gorillas never tear men in pieces -- their usual mode being to knock you down with a blow of their huge paws."

"Well, I will knock you down if you prefer it."

"Thank you; I'd rather not. Besides, you have almost knocked me up already; so pray call a halt and let me rest a bit."

We were all very willing to agree to this request, having walked the last two or three miles at a very quick pace. Seating ourselves on the trunk of a fallen tree, we enjoyed the beautiful prospect before us. An open vista enabled us to see beyond the wood in which we were travelling into an extensive sweep of prairie-land on which the sinking sun was shedding a rich flood of light. It happened to be a deliciously cool evening, and the chattering of numerous parrots as well as the twittering songs of other birds -- less gorgeous, perhaps, but more musical than they -- refreshed our ears as the glories of the landscape did our eyes. While we were gazing dreamily before us in silent enjoyment, Jack suddenly interrupted our meditations by exclaiming -- 

"Hist! look yonder!"

He pointed as he spoke to a distant part of the plain on which the forest closely pressed.

"A zebra!" cried I, with delight; for besides the feeling of pleasure at seeing this splendid creature, I entertained a hope that we might shoot him and procure a steak for supper, of which at that time we stood much in need.

"I'm too tired to stalk it now," said Peterkin, with an air of chagrin. -- "Are you up to it, Jack?"

"Quite; but I fear he's an animal that's very difficult to stalk in such an open country. -- What say you, Mak?"

"Hims no be cotched dis yer night, massa; hims too far away an' too wide 'wake."

"What say you to a long shot, Peterkin? Your rifle is sighted for four hundred yards, and he seems to be little more than six hundred off."

"I'll try," said our friend, going down on one knee and adjusting the sight of his piece. Taking a long, steady aim, he fired, and in another instant the zebra lay dead on the plain. I need hardly add that our amazement was excessive. Even Peterkin himself could scarcely believe his eyes. Had his rifle been sighted for such a distance, the shot, although a splendid one, would not have amazed us so much, because we knew that our friend's aim was deadly; but as he had to elevate the muzzle above the object fired at and guess the amount of elevation, the shot was indeed wonderful. It was a long time before our guide could move, but when he did recover himself he danced and shouted like a madman with delight, and then, setting off with a bound, sped across the plain like a deer.

"Come along," cried Jack with a laugh -- "let's follow; for Mak looked so rabid when he went off that I believe he'll eat the beast raw before we can claim our share, if we don't look sharp."

We all of us set off at a smart trot, and soon came to the spot where our prize lay. It was a splendid creature, and in prime condition. After examining it carefully, and descanting on the beauty of its striped skin, I sat down beside it and pulled out my note-book, while my comrades entered the forest to search for a suitable place on which to encamp, and to kindle a fire. A spot was quickly found, and I had scarcely finished making notes when they returned to carry the zebra into the encampment. We accomplished this with some difficulty, and laid it beside the fire. Then cutting four large steaks from its flanks we proceeded to sup, after which we made our arrangements for spending the night there. We little knew the startling surprise that was in store for us that night.

As the forest in that place happened to be swarming with wild animals of every kind, we deemed it prudent to set a watch as well as to keep up a blazing fire. Jack and I and the negro kept watch by turns; Peterkin, being still sufficiently an invalid to claim exemption from laborious duties, was permitted to rest undisturbed.

About midnight I aroused Jack, and having made him sit up, in order to show that he was thoroughly awake, I lay down and went to sleep.

How long I slept I cannot tell, but I was suddenly awakened by one of the most tremendous roars I ever heard. It was so chose to me that, in the confusion of my sleepy brain, it seemed to be far more terrible than that even of the gorilla. I was mistaken in this, however, and no doubt my semi-somnolent condition tended to increase its awfulness.

Springing into a sitting posture, and by an involuntary impulse reaching out my hand for my gun which lay close to me, I beheld a sight that was calculated to appal the stoutest heart. A lion of the largest size was in the very act of springing over the bushes and alighting on the zebra, which, as I have said, lay on the other side of the fire and not four yards off from us. As the light glared in the brute's eyes, and, as it were, sparkled in gleams on its shaggy mane, which streamed out under the force of its majestic bound, it seemed to my bewildered gaze as though the animal were in the air almost above my head, and that he must inevitably alight upon myself. This, at least, is the impression left upon my mind now that I look back upon that terrific scene. But there was no time for thought. The roar was uttered, the bound was made, and the lion alighted on the carcass of the zebra almost in one and the same moment. I freely confess that my heart quailed within me. Yet that did not prevent my snatching up my gun; but before I had time to cock it the crashing report of Jack's elephant rifle almost split the drum of my ear, and I beheld the lion drop as if it had been a stone.

It lay without motion, completely dead, and we found, on examination, that the ball had smashed in the centre of its forehead and completely penetrated its brain.

Some time elapsed before we could find words to express our feelings. Our guide, who had so completely enveloped his head and shoulders in grass when he lay down to sleep that he was the last to spring up, looked at the huge carcass of the lion with an expression of utter bewilderment.

"What a magnificent fellow! And what a splendid shot!" exclaimed Peterkin at last. "Why, Jack, I don't believe there's a finer lion in Africa. It's lucky, though, that you were on the qui vive."

"Yes," said I; "had it not been for you we might have been all killed by this time."

"No fear o' dat," chimed in our guide, as he sat down on the lion's shoulder, and began to stroke its mane; "hims was want him's supper off de zebra, ho! ho! Hims got him's supper off a bullet!"

"'Tis well that he has," observed Jack, as he reloaded his rifle. "To say truth, comrades, I scarcely deserve credit for being guardian of the camp, for I'm ashamed to say that I was sound asleep at the moment the lion roared. How I ever managed to take so quick and so good an aim is more than I can tell. Luckily my rifle was handy, and I had fallen asleep in a sitting posture. Had it been otherwise, I could scarcely have been in time to prevent the brute springing on us, had he felt so disposed."

Here was now another subject for my note-book, so I sat down, and began a minute inspection of the noble-looking animal, while my comrades, heaping fresh logs on the fire, sat down in front of it, and for upwards of an hour, "fought their battles o'er again."

It was a matter of deep regret to us all that we could not afford to carry away with us the skin of this lion as a memorial; but circumstanced as we then were, that was out of the question, so we contented ourselves with extracting his largest teeth and all his claws, which we still preserve in our museum as trophies of the adventure.



Chapter Seventeen.

We Visit A Natural Menagerie, See Wonderful Sights, And Meet With Strange Adventures.

We observed, on this journey, that the elephants which we met with in our farthest north point were considerably smaller than those farther to the south, yet though smaller animals, their tusks were much larger then those of the south. The weight of those tusks varied from twenty to fifty pounds, and I saw one that was actually upwards of one hundred pounds in weight -- equal, in fact, to the weight of a big boy or a little man. Such tusks, however, were rare.

At nights, when we encamped near to a river or pool of water, we saw immense numbers of elephants come down to drink and enjoy themselves. They seemed, in fact, to be intoxicated with delight, if not with water; for they screamed with joy, and filling their trunks with water, spurted it over themselves and each other in copious showers. Of course, we never disturbed them on such occasions, for we came to the conclusion that it would be the height of barbarity and selfishness to spoil the pleasure of so many creatures merely for the sake of a shot.

Frequently we were wont to go after our supper to one of those ponds, when we chanced to be in the immediate neighbourhood of one, and lying concealed among the bushes, watch by the light of the moon the strange habits and proceedings of the wild creatures that came there to drink. The hours thus passed were to me the most interesting by far that I spent in Africa. There was something so romantic in the kind of scenery, in the dim mysterious light, and in the grand troops of wild creatures that came there in all the pith and fire of untamed freedom to drink. It was like visiting a natural menagerie on the most magnificent scale; for in places where water is scarce any pool that may exist is the scene of constant and ever-changing visits during the entire night.

In fact, I used to find it almost impossible to tear myself away, although I knew that repose was absolutely needful, in order to enable me to continue the journey on the succeeding day, and I am quite certain that had not Peterkin and Jack often dragged me off in a jocular way by main force, I should have remained there all night, and have fallen asleep probably in my ambush.

One night of this kind that we passed I shall never forget. It was altogether a remarkable and tremendously exciting night; and as it is a good type of the style of night entertainment to be found in that wild country, I shall describe it.

It happened on a Saturday night. We were then travelling through a rather dry district, and had gone a whole day without tasting water. As evening approached we came, to our satisfaction, to a large pond of pretty good water, into which we ran knee-deep, and filling our caps with water, drank long and repeated draughts. Then we went into a piece of jungle about a quarter of a mile distant, and made our encampment, intending to rest there during the whole of the Sabbath.

I may mention here that it was our usual custom to rest on the Sabbath days. This we did because we thought it right, and we came ere long to know that it was absolutely needful; for on this journey southward we all agreed that as life and death might depend on the speed with which we travelled, we were quite justified in continuing our journey on the Sabbath. But we found ourselves at the end of the second week so terribly knocked up that we agreed to devote the whole of the next Sabbath to repose. This we did accordingly, and found the utmost benefit from it; and we could not avoid remarking, in reference to this on the care and tenderness of our heavenly Father, who has so arranged that obedience to His command should not only bring a peculiar blessing to our souls, but, so to speak, a natural and inevitable advantage to our bodies. These reflections seemed to me to throw some light on the passage, "The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath." But as this is not the place for theological disquisition, I shall not refer further to that subject.

Not having, then, to travel on the following day, we made up our minds to spend an hour or two in a place of concealment near the margin of this pond; and I secretly resolved that I would spend the whole night there with my note-book (for the moon, we knew, would be bright), and make a soft pillow of leaves on which I might drop and go to sleep when my eyes refused any longer to keep open.

The moon had just begun to rise when we finished our suppers and prepared to go to our post of observation. We took our rifles with us of course, for although we did not intend to shoot, having more than sufficient food already in camp, we could not tell but that at any moment those weapons might be required for the defence of our lives. Makarooroo had been too long accustomed to see wild animals to understand the pleasure we enjoyed in merely staring at them, so he was left in charge of our camp.

"Now, then," said Peterkin, as we left the encampment, "hurrah, for the menagerie!"

"You may well call it that," said Jack, "for there's no lack of variety."

"Are we to shoot?" inquired Peterkin.

"Better not, I think. We don't require meat, and there is no use in murdering the poor things. What a splendid scene!"

We halted to enjoy the view for a few seconds. The forest out of which we had emerged bordered an extensive plain, which was dotted here and there with scattered groups of trees, which gave to the country an exceedingly rich aspect. In the midst of these the pond lay glittering in the soft moonlight like a sheet of silver. It was surrounded on three sides by low bushes and a few trees. On the side next to us it was open and fully exposed to view. The moonlight was sufficiently bright to render every object distinctly visible, yet not so bright as to destroy the pleasant feeling of mysterious solemnity that pervaded the whole scene. It was wonderfully beautiful. I felt almost as if I had reached a new world.

Continuing our walk we quickly gained the bushes that fringed the margin of the pool, which was nowhere more than thirty yards broad, and on our arrival heard the hoofs of several animals that we had scared away clattering on the ground as they retreated.

"There they go already," cried Jack; "now let us look for a hillock of some kind on which to take up our position."

"We shall not have to look far," said I, "for here seems a suitable spot ready at our hand."

"Your eyes are sharp to-night, Ralph," observed Peterkin; "the place is splendid, so let's to work."

Laying down our rifles, we drew our hunting-knives, and began to cut down some of the underwood on the top of a small hillock that rose a little above the surrounding bushes, and commanded a clear view of the entire circumference of the pond. We selected this spot for the double reason that it was a good point of observation and a safe retreat, as animals coming to the pond to drink, from whatever quarter they might arrive, would never think of ascending a hillock covered with bushes, if they could pass round it.

Having cleared a space sufficiently large to hold us -- leaving, however, a thin screen of shrubs in front through which we intended to peep -- we strewed the ground with leaves, and lay down to watch with our loaded rifles close beside us. We felt certain of seeing a good many animals, for even during the process of preparing our unlace of retreat several arrived, and were scared away by the noise we made.

Presently we heard footsteps approaching.

"There's something," whispered Peterkin.

"Ay," returned Jack. "What I like about this sort o' thing is your uncertainty as to what may turn up. It's like deep-sea fishing. Hist! look out."

The steps were rapid. Sometimes they clattered over what appeared to be pebbly ground, then they became muffled as the animal crossed a grassy spot; at last it trotted out of the shade of the bushes directly opposite to us into the moonlight, and showed itself to be a beautiful little antelope of the long-horned kind, with a little fawn by its side. The two looked timidly round for a few seconds, and snuffed the air as if they feared concealed enemies, and then, trotting into the water, slaked their thirst together. I felt as great pleasure in seeing them take a long, satisfactory draught as if I had been swallowing it myself, and hoped they would continue there for some time; but they had barely finished when the rapid gallop of several animals was heard, and scared them away instantly.

The newcomers were evidently heavy brutes, for their tread was loud and quite distinct, as compared with the steps of the antelopes. A few seconds sufficed to disclose them to our expectant eyes. A large herd of giraffes trotted to the water's edge and began to drink. It was a splendid sight to behold these graceful creatures stooping to drink, and then raising their heads haughtily to a towering height as they looked about from side to side. In the course of a couple of hours we saw elands, springboks, gnus, leopards, and an immense variety of wild creatures, some of which fawned on and played with each other, while others fought and bellowed until the woods resounded with the din.

While we were silently enjoying the sight, and I attempting to make a few entries in my note-book, our attention was attracted to a cracking of the branches close to the right side of our hillock.

"Look out!" whispered Jack; but the warning was scarcely needed, for we instinctively seized our rifles. A moment after our hearts leaped violently as we heard a crashing step that betokened the approach of some huge creature.

"Are we safe here?" I whispered to Jack.

"Safe enough if we keep still. But we shall have to cut and run if an elephant chances to get sight of us."

I confess that at that moment I felt uneasy. The hillock on the summit of which we lay was only a place of comparative safety, because no animal was likely to ascend an elevated spot without an object in view, and as the purpose of all the nocturnal visitors to that pond was the procuring of water, we did not think it probable that any of them would approach unpleasantly near to our citadel; but if any wild beast should take a fancy to do so, there was nothing to prevent him, and the slight screen of bushes by which we were surrounded would certainly have been no obstacle in the way.

A hunter in the African wilds, however, has not much time to think. Danger is usually upon him in a moment. We had barely time to full-cock our rifles when the bushes near us were trodden down, and a huge black rhinoceros sauntered slowly up to us. So near was he that we could have sprung out from our hiding-place and have caught hold of him, had we chosen to do so.

This enormous unwieldy monster seemed to me so large that he resembled an elephant on short legs, and in the dim, mysterious moonlight I could almost fancy him to be one of those dreadful monsters of the antediluvian world of which we read so much in these days of geological research. I held my breath and glanced at my comrades. They lay perfectly motionless, with their eyes fixed on the animal, which hesitated on approaching our hillock. My blood almost stagnated in my veins. I thought that he must have observed us or smelt us, and was about to charge. He was only undecided as to which side of the hillock he should pass by on his way to the pond. Turning to the left, he went down to the water with a heavy, rolling gait, crushing the shrubs under his ponderous feet in a way that filled me with an exalted idea of his tremendous power.

I breathed freely again, and felt as if a mighty load had been lifted off me. From the suppressed sighs vented by my comrades, I judge that they also had experienced somewhat similar relief. We had not, however, had time to utter a whisper before our ears were assailed by the most tremendous noise that we had yet heard. It came from the opposite side of the pool, as if a great torrent were rushing towards us. Presently a black billow seemed to burst out of the jungle and roll down the sloping bank of the pond.

"Elephants!" exclaimed Jack.

"Impossible," said I; "they must be buffaloes."

At that instant they emerged into the full blaze of the moon, and showed themselves to be a herd of full-grown elephants, with a number of calves. There could not have been fewer than one hundred on the margin of the pond; but from the closeness of their ranks and their incessant movements I found it impossible to count their numbers accurately. This magnificent army began to drink and throw water about, waving their trunks and trumpeting shrilly at the same time with the utmost delight. The young ones especially seemed enjoy themselves immensely, and I observed that their mothers were very attentive to them, caressing them with their trunks and otherwise showing great fondness for their offspring.

"I say," whispered Peterkin, "what a regiment of cavalry these fellows would make, mounted by gorillas armed with scythe-blades for swords and Highland claymores for dirks!"

"Ay, and cannon-revolvers in their pockets!" added Jack. "But, look --  that hideous old rhinoceros. He has been standing there for the last two minutes like a rock, staring intently across the water at the elephants."

"Hush!" said I. "Whisper softly. He may hear us."

"There goes something else on our side," whispered Peterkin, pointing to the right of our hillock. "Don't you see it? There, against the -- I do believe it's another giraffe!"

"So it is! Keep still. His ears are sharp," muttered Jack, examining the lock of his rifle.

"Come, come!" said I; "no shooting, Jack. You know we came to see, not to shoot."

"Very true; but it's not every day one gets such a close shot at a giraffe. I must procure a specimen for you, Ralph."

Jack smiled as he said this, and raised his rifle. Peterkin at the same moment quietly raised his, saying, "If that's your game, my boy, then here goes at the rhinoceros. Don't hurry your aim; we've lots of time."

As I waited for the reports with breathless attention, I was much struck at that moment by the singularity of the circumstances in which we were placed. On our left stood the rhinoceros, not fifteen yards off; on our right the giraffe raised his long neck above the bushes, about twenty yards distant, apparently uncertain whether it was safe to advance to the water; while in front lay the lake, reflecting the soft, clear moonlight, and beyond that the phalanx of elephants, enjoying themselves vastly. I had but two moments to take it all in at a glance, for Jack said "Now!" in a low tone, and instantly the loud report of the two rifles thundered out upon the night air.

Words cannot convey, and the reader certainly cannot conceive, any idea of the trumpeting, roaring, crashing, shrieking, and general hubbub that succeeded to the noise of our firearms. It seemed as if the wild beasts of twenty menageries had simultaneously commenced to smash the woodwork of their cages, and to dash out upon each other in mingled fury and terror; for not only was the crashing of boughs and bushes and smaller trees quite terrific, but the thunderous tread of the large animals was absolutely awful.

We were thoroughly scared, for, in addition to all this, from the midst of the horrid turmoil there came forth a royal roar close behind us that told of a lion having been secretly engaged in watching our proceedings; and we shuddered to think that, but for our firing, he might have sprung upon us as we lay there, little dreaming of his presence.

Since our last adventure with the king of beasts, Makarooroo had entertained us with many anecdotes of the daring of lions, especially of those monsters that are termed man-eaters; so that when we heard the roar above referred to, we all three sprang to our feet and faced about with the utmost alacrity. So intent were we on looking out for this dreadful foe -- for we had made up our minds that it must be a man-eating lion -- that we were utterly indifferent to the other animals. But they were not indifferent to us; for the wounded rhinoceros, catching sight of us as we stood with our backs towards him, charged at once up the hillock.

To utter three simultaneous yet fearfully distinct yells of terror, spring over the low parapet of bushes, and fly like the wind in three different directions, was the work of a moment. In dashing madly down the slope my foot caught in a creeping shrub, and I fell heavily to the earth.

The fall probably saved my life, for before I could rise the rhinoceros sprang completely over me in its headlong charge. So narrow was my escape that the edge of one of its ponderous feet alighted on the first joint of the little finger of my left hand, and crushed it severely. Indeed, had the ground not been very soft, it must infallibly have bruised it off altogether. The moment it had passed I jumped up, and turning round, ran in the opposite direction. I had scarcely gone ten paces when a furious growl behind me, and the grappling sound as of two animals in deadly conflict, followed by a fierce howl, led me to conclude that the lion and the rhinoceros had unexpectedly met each other, and that in their brief conflict the former had come off second best.

But I gave little heed to that. My principal thought at that moment was my personal safety; so I ran on as fast as I could in the direction of our encampment, for which point, I had no doubt, my companions would also make.

I had not run far when the growl of a lion, apparently in front, caused me to stop abruptly. Uncertain of the exact position of the brute, I turned off to one side, and retreated cautiously and with as little noise as possible, yet with a feeling of anxiety lest he should spring upon me unawares. But my next step showed me that the lion was otherwise engaged. Pushing aside a few leaves that obstructed my vision, I suddenly beheld a lion in the midst of an open space, crouched as if for a spring. Instinctively I threw forward the muzzle of my rifle; but a single glance showed me that his tail, not his head, was towards me. On looking beyond, I observed the head and shoulders of Jack, who, like the lion, was also in a crouching position, staring fixedly in the face of his foe. They were both perfectly motionless, and there could not have been more than fifteen or twenty yards between them.

The true position of affairs at once flashed across me. Jack in his flight had unwittingly run almost into the jaws of the lion; and I now felt convinced that this must be a second lion, for it could not have been the one that was disturbed by the rhinoceros, as I had been running directly away from the spot where these two brutes had met. Jack had crouched at once. We had often talked, over our camp-fire, of such an event as unexpectedly meeting a lion face to face; and Peterkin, who knew a good deal about such matters, had said that in such a case a man's only chance was to crouch and stare the lion out of countenance. We laughed at this; but he assured us positively that he had himself seen it done to tigers in India, and added that if a man turned and ran his destruction would be certain. To fire straight in the face of a lion in such a position would be excessively dangerous; for while the bullet might kill, it was more than probable it would glance off the bone of the forehead, which would be presented at an angle to the hunter. The best thing to do, he said, was to stare steadily at the creature until it began to wince, which, if not a wounded beast, it would certainly do; and then, when it turned slowly round, to slink away, take aim at its heart, and fire instantly.

The moon was shining full in Jack's face, which wore an expression of intense ferocity I had never before witnessed, and had not believed it possible that such a look could have been called up by him. The lower part of his face, being shrouded in his black beard, was undiscernible; but his cheeks and forehead were like cold marble. His dark brows were compressed so tightly that they seemed knotted, and beneath them his eyes glittered with an intensity that seemed to me supernatural. Not a muscle moved; his gaze was fixed; and it was not difficult to fancy that he was actually, instead of apparently, petrified.

I could not, of course, observe the visage of the lion, and, to say truth, I had no curiosity on that point; for just then it occurred to me that I was directly in the line of fire, and that if my friend missed the lion there was every probability of his killing me. I was now in an agony of uncertainty. I knew not what to do. If I were to endeavour to get out of the way, I might perhaps cause Jack to glance aside, and so induce the lion to spring. If, on the other hand, I should remain where I was, I might be shot. In this dilemma it occurred to me that, as Jack was a good shot and the lion was very close, it was extremely unlikely that I should be hit; so I resolved to bide my chance, and offering up a silent prayer, awaited the issue.

It was not long of coming. The fixed gaze of a bold human eye cowed at last even the king of the woods. The lion slowly and almost imperceptibly rose, and sidled gently round, with the intention, doubtless, of bounding into the jungle. I saw that if it did so it would pass very close to me so I cocked both barrels and held my piece in readiness.

The click of my locks attracted the lion's attention; its head turned slightly round. At that instant Jack's rifle sprang to his shoulder, and the loud crack of its report was mingled with and drowned by the roar of the lion, as he sprang with a terrible bound, not past me, but straight towards me. I had no time to aim, but throwing the gun quickly to my shoulder, drew both triggers at once.

I had forgotten, in my perturbation, that I carried Peterkin's heavy elephant rifle, charged with an immense quantity of powder and a couple of six-ounce balls. My shoulder was almost dislocated by the recoil, and I was fairly knocked head over heels. A confused sound of yells and roars filled my ear for a moment. I struggled to collect my faculties.

"Hollo! Jack! -- Ralph! where are you?" shouted a voice that I well knew to be that of Peterkin. "Hurrah I'm coming. Don't give in! I've killed him! The rhinoceros is dead as a door-nail! Where have you -- "

I heard no more, having swooned away.



Chapter Eighteen.

Strange And Terrible Discoveries -- Jack Is Made Commander-In-Chief Of An Army.

When my consciousness returned, I found myself lying on my back beside our camp-fire, with my head resting on Peterkin's knee; and the first sound I heard was his pleasant voice, as he said -- 

"All right, Jack; he's coming round. I'm quite certain that no serious damage is done. I know well what sort o' rap he must have got. It'll bother him a little at first, but it won't last long."

Comforted not a little by this assurance, I opened my eyes and looked up.

"What has happened?" I inquired faintly.

"Ah! that's right, Ralph. I'm glad to hear your voice again. D'you know, I thought at first it was all over with you?"

"Over with him!" echoed Peterkin; "it's only begun with him. Ralph's days of valorous deeds are but commencing. -- Here, my boy; put this flask to your mouth. It's lucky I fetched it with us. Here, drink."

"No, not until you tell me what has occurred," said I, for I still felt confused in my brain.

"Then I won't tell you a word until you drink," repeated my friend, as he looked anxiously in my face and held the flask to my lips.

I sipped a mouthful, and felt much revived.

"Now," continued Peterkin, "I'll tell you what has happened. We've floored a rhinoceros and a giraffe and a lion, which, to my thinking, is a pretty fair bag to make after dusk of a Saturday night! And my big rifle has floored you, which is the least satisfactory part of the night's entertainment, but which wouldn't have occurred had you remembered my instructions, which you never do."

"Oh, I recollect now," said I, as the spirits revived me. "I'm all right. -- But, Jack, I trust that you have not received damage?"

"Not a scratch, I'm thankful to say; though I must confess I was near catching an ugly wound."

"How so?" I inquired quickly, observing a peculiar smile on Jack's face as he spoke.

"Oh, make your mind easy," put in Peterkin; "it was just a small bit of an escape he made. When you let drive at the lion so effectively, one of the balls went in at his mouth and smashed its way out at the back of his skull. The other ball shaved his cheek, and lodged in a tree not two inches from Jack's nose."

"You don't mean it!" cried I, starting up, regardless of the pain occasioned to my injured shoulder by the movement, and gazing intently in Jack's face.

"Come, come," said he, smiling; "you must not be so reckless, Ralph. Lie down again, sir."

"Peterkin, you should not talk lightly of so narrow an escape," said I reproachfully. "The fact that such a terrible catastrophe has nearly occurred ought to solemnise one."

"Granted, my dear boy; but the fact that such a catastrophe did not occur, ought, I hold, to make us jolly. There's no managing a fellow like you, Ralph. I knew that if I told you of this gravely, you would get into such a state of consternational self-reproachativeness, so to speak, that you would infallibly make yourself worse. And now that I tell it to you 'lightly,' as you call it, you take to blowing me up."

I smiled as my friend said this, and held out my hand, which he grasped and squeezed. Feeling at the moment overcome with drowsiness, I unconsciously retained it in my grasp, and thus fell sound asleep.

Three days after this misadventure I was nearly as well as ever, and we were once more journeying by forced marches towards the south. Two days more, we calculated, would bring us to Mbango's village. As the end of our journey approached, we grew more desperately anxious to push forward, lest we should be too late to give them timely warning of the slave-dealer's approach. We also became more taciturn, and I could see plainly that the irrepressible forebodings that filled my own heart, were shared by my companions. Poor Makarooroo never spoke, save in reply to questions addressed pointedly to himself; and seeing the state of his mind, we forbore to trouble him with conversation.

Yet, even while in this anxious state, I could not avoid noticing the singular variety and beauty of both the animal and the vegetable kingdom in the regions through which we passed.

In one part of our journey we had to cross a portion of what is called desert country, but which, notwithstanding its name, was covered with grass, and in many places with bushes, and even trees. Its vegetation, however, as compared with other parts of the country, was light; and it was almost entirely destitute of water, there being no rivers or springs; only a few pools of rain-water were to be found in the hard beds of ancient river-courses. This desert land was inhabited by numbers of bushmen and other natives, as well as by large quantities of game of various kinds. But what struck me as being most singular was the great variety of tuberous roots with which the region was supplied, and which were evidently designed by our beneficent Creator to make up to the inhabitants in a great degree for the want of a full supply of water.

I also observed, with much interest, a species of plant which, like man, is capable of being, as it were, acclimatised. It is not by nature a tuber-bearing plant; yet here it had become so, in order to be able to retain a sufficiency of moisture during the dry season. Makarooroo also dug up for us several tuber-roots, which were the size of a large turnip, and filled with a most delicious juice, which, as we were much oppressed with thirst at the time, appeared to us like nectar. Besides these, we also procured water-melons in abundance at certain spots, which were a great treat, not only to us, but also to elephants, rhinoceroses, antelopes, and many other animals, whose footprints we found in great numbers, and whose depredations among the water-melons were very evident.

During the whole of this journey we made a point, as I have already remarked, of avoiding man; not that we were indifferent to him, but anxious not to be detained at that particular time. We were very fortunate in this matter, for we succeeded in eluding the observation of the natives of many villages that we passed, in escaping others by flight, and in conciliating those who caught us by making them liberal gifts of beads.

One day we came to a halt under the most magnificent tree I ever saw. It was a mowano tree, whose trunk consisted of six stems united in one. The circumference a yard or so from the ground was eighty-four feet --  upwards of nine yards in diameter.

"What a tree for a nobleman's park!" said Jack, as we gazed at it, lost in admiration.

"Ay; and behold a gentleman worthy to take up his residence under it," said Peterkin, pointing as he spoke to a living creature that sat among the grass near its roots.

"What can it be?" I exclaimed.

"The original father of all frogs!" replied Peterkin, as he darted forward and killed the thing with a stick.

"I believe it is a frog," said Jack.

We all burst into a fit of laughter, for undoubtedly it was a frog, but certainly the largest by far that any of us had ever seen. It was quite as large as a chicken!

"What a shame to have killed it!" said I. "Why did you do it?"

"Shame! It was no shame. In the first place, I killed it because I wish you to make scientific inspection of it; and in the second place, I wanted to eat it. Why should not we as well as Frenchmen eat frogs? By the way, that reminds me that we might introduce this giant species into France, and thereby make our fortunes."

"You greedy fellow," cried Jack, who was busying himself in lighting the fire, "your fortune is made already. How many would you have?"

"D'ye know, Jack, I have been in possession of my fortune, as you call it, so short a time that I cannot realise the fact that I have it. --  Hollo! Mak, what's wrong with you?"

Peterkin thus addressed our guide because he came into the camp at that moment with a very anxious expression of countenance.

"Dere hab bin fight go on here," said he, showing several broken arrows, stained with blood, which he had picked up near our encampment.

"Ha! so there has, unless these have been shot at wild beasts," said Jack, examining the weapons carefully.

"No, massa; no shot at wild beast. De wild beast hab bin here too, but dey come for to eat mans after he dead."

"Come, let us see the spot," said Jack.

Makarooroo at once led the way, and we all followed him to a place not a hundred yards distant, where there were evident traces of a fight having taken place. Jack seemed to be much distressed at the sight.

"There can be no question as to the fact," he remarked as we returned to our fire; "and at any other time or in any other place I would have thought nothing of it, for we know well enough that the natives here often go to war with each other; but just at this time, and so near to our friend Mbango -- I fear, I fear much that that villain has been before us."

"No been long, massa," said Makarooroo earnestly. "If we go quick we ketch 'im."

"We shall go quick, Mak. But in order to do that, we must eat well, and sleep at least an hour or so. If we push on just now, after a hard day's journey, without food or rest, we shall make but slow progress; and even if we did come up with the slave-dealer, we should not be in a very fit state for a battle."

This was so obvious that we all felt the wisdom of Jack's remarks; so we ate a hearty supper, and then lay down to rest. Peterkin declared the frog to be excellent, but I could not at that time make up my mind to try it.

An hour and a half after lying down, our guide awakened us, and we set forth again with recruited energies.

That night the lions and hyenas roared around us more than was their wont, as if they were aware of our anxious condition, and were desirous of increasing our discomforts. We had to keep a sharp lookout, and once or twice discharged our rifles in the direction of the nearest sounds, not in the expectation of hitting any of the animals, but for the purpose of scaring them away.

Towards morning we came out upon an open plain, and left these evil prowlers of the night behind us.

About daybreak we came within sight of Mbango's village, but the light was not sufficient to enable us to distinguish any object clearly. Here again we came upon traces of war, in the shape of broken arrows and daggers, and human bones; for the poor wretches who had been slain had been at once devoured by wild beasts.

Hurrying forward with intense anxiety, we reached the outskirts of the village; and here a scene presented itself that was well calculated to fill our breasts with horror and with the deepest anxiety. Many of the houses had been set on fire, and were reduced to ashes. The mangled corpses of human beings were seen lying here and there amongst the embers -- some partially devoured by wild beasts, others reduced to simple skeletons, and their bones left to whiten on the ruins of their old homes. In one place the form of a woman tied to a tree, and dreadfully mangled, showed that torture had been added to the other horrors of the attack.

With feelings of mingled rage, pity, and anxiety, we hastened towards the hut that had been the residence of Mbango, the chief. We found it, like the rest, in ruins, and among them discovered the remains of a child. Recollecting the little son of our friend Njamie, Okandaga's guardian, I turned the body over in some anxiety; but the features were too much mutilated to be recognisable.

"Alas! alas!" I exclaimed, as we collected in a group round this remnant of a little child, "what a dreadful sight! What an unhappy race of beings! Without doubt our friends have been slain, or carried into captivity."

Poor Makarooroo, who had been from the first going about among the ruins like a maniac, with a bewildered air of utter despair on his sable countenance, looked at me as if he hoped for a slight word that might reanimate hope in his bosom. But I could give him none, for I myself felt hopeless.

Not so, Jack. With that buoyancy of spirit that was peculiar to him, he suggested many ideas that consoled our guide not a little.

"You see," said he, "the rascally Portuguese trafficker in human flesh would naturally try to effect his object with as little bloodshed as possible. He would just fight until he had conquered, not longer; and then he would try to take as many prisoners as he could, in order to carry them away into slavery. Now, I cannot conceive it possible that he could catch the whole tribe."

"Of course not," interrupted Peterkin; "he had a comparatively small party. To take a whole tribe prisoners with such a band were impossible."

"Ay, but you forget," said I, "that he might easily prevail on some other tribe to go to war along with him, and thus capture nearly the whole. Yet some must have escaped into the woods, and it is probable that among these may have been the chief and his household. Okandaga may be safe, and not far off, for all we know."

The guide shook his head.

"At any rate," observed Jack, "if caught they would certainly be guarded with care from injury; so that if we could only find out which way they have gone, we might pursue and attack them."

"Four men attack forty or fifty!" said I despondingly.

"Ay, Ralph. Why not?" asked Peterkin.

"Oh, I doubt not our pluck to do it," I replied; "but I doubt very much our chances of success."

While we were yet speaking our attention was attracted by a low wail, and the appearance of some living object creeping amongst the ruins not far from us. At first we thought it must be a beast of prey lurking in the neighbourhood of the dead, and impatient at our having interrupted its hideous banquet; but presently the object sat up and proved to be a woman. Yet she was so covered with blood and dust, and so awfully haggard in appearance, that we could with difficulty believe her to be a human being.

At first she appeared to be in ignorance of our presence. And indeed so she actually was; for her whole soul was absorbed in the contemplation of the dead and mangled body of an infant which lay in her arms, and which she pressed ever and anon with frantic energy to her breast, uttering occasionally a wail of such heart-broken sadness that the tears sprang irresistibly into my eyes while I gazed upon her. There needed no explanation of her tale of woe. The poor mother had crept back to her hut after the fierce din of battle was over to search for her child, and she had found it; but ah, who can conceive the unutterable anguish of heart that its finding had occasioned!

"Speak to her, Mak," said Peterkin, in a husky voice; "she will be less afraid of you, no doubt, than of us."

Our guide advanced. The slight noise he made in doing so attracted the poor woman's attention, and caused her to look up with a wild, quick glance. The instant she saw us she leaped up with the agility of a leopard, clasped her dead child tightly to her breast, and uttering shriek upon shriek, rushed headlong into the jungle.

"After her!" cried Jack, bounding forward in pursuit. "She's our only chance of gaining information."

We all felt the truth of this, and joined in the chase at top speed. But although we ran fast and well, the affrighted creature at first outstripped us. Then, as we tired her out and drew near, she doubled on her track, and dived hither and thither among the thick underwood in a way that rendered it exceedingly difficult to catch her.

Peterkin was the first to come up with her. He gradually but perseveringly ran her down. When he came within a few yards of her, the poor creature sank with a low wail to the ground, and turning half round, glanced at her pursuer with a timid, imploring, yet despairing expression. Alas! despair mingled with it, because she knew too well the terrible cruelty of savage men when their blood is up, and she knew nothing yet of the hearts of Christians.

Peterkin, whose susceptible nature was ever easily touched, felt a thrill of self-reproach as the thought suddenly occurred that, however good his intentions might be, he was in reality running a helpless woman down like a bloodhound. He stopped short instantly, and acting, as on most occasions he did, impulsively, he threw his rifle away from him, unclasped his belt, and throwing it, with his hunting-knife, also away, sat down on the ground and held out both his hands.

There was something almost ludicrous in the act, but it had the effect of, to some extent, relieving the poor woman's fears. Seeing this, as we successively came up we all laid down our rifles, and stood before the crouching creature with our empty hands extended towards her, to show that we meant her no harm. Still, although she seemed less terrified, she trembled violently, and panted from her recent exertion, but never for a moment relaxed her hold of the dead child.

"Speak to her, Mak," said Jack, as the guide came up. "Tell her who and what we are at once, to relieve her feelings; and let her know especially that we are the bitter enemies of the villain who has done this deed."

While Makarooroo explained, the woman's countenance seemed to brighten up, and in a few minutes she began to tell with great volubility the events of the attack. The trader, she said, had come suddenly on them in the dead of night with a large band, and had at once routed the warriors of the village, who were completely taken by surprise. A few had escaped; but Mbango, with Okandaga and his household, had been taken prisoners, and carried away with many others.

"How long is it since this happened?" inquired Jack.

"She say two days, massa. Den dey go off to 'tack King Jambai."

"Ah! then it is too late to save him," returned Jack, in a tone of sadness.

Our hearts sank on learning this; but on questioning the woman further, we found that the marauding party, deeming themselves too weak to attack so large a village as that of King Jambai, had talked of turning aside to secure the assistance of another tribe not far distant, who, they knew, would be too glad to pick a quarrel with that chief.

"Then we shall do it yet!" cried Jack, springing up energetically. "We shall be in time to warn Jambai and to save Okandaga and her friends. Come, Mak, cheer up; things begin to look better."

The cheerful, confident voice in which our friend said this raised my hopes wonderfully, even although, on consideration, I could not see that our chances of success were very great. Our guide was visibly comforted, and we stepped aside to pick up our rifles with considerable alacrity.

During the brief period in which we were thus employed, the poor woman managed to creep away, and when we again looked round she was gone. Our first impulse was to give chase again, but the thought of the needless terror which that would occasion her deterred us, and before we could make up our minds what to do she was almost beyond our reach, and would certainly have cost us an hour of search, if not longer, to find her. Time pressed. To reach the village of King Jambai with the utmost possible speed was essential to the safety of the tribe, so we resolved to leave her, feeling as we did so that the poor creature could sustain herself on roots and berries without much difficulty or suffering until she reached the village of some neighbouring tribe.

We now pushed on again by forced marches, travelling by night and by day, shooting just enough game as we required for food, and taking no more rest than was absolutely necessary to enable us to hold on our way. In a short time we reached the village, which, to our great joy, we found in much the same state as it was when we left it.

King Jambai received us with great delight, and his people went into a state of immense rejoicing -- firing guns, and shouting, and beating kettles and drums, in honour of the arrival of the "white faces;" which name was certainly a misnomer, seeing that our faces had by that time become the very reverse of white -- indeed they were little lighter than the countenances of the good people by whom we were surrounded.

But the king's consternation was very great when we told him the reason of our unexpected visit, and related to him the details of the terrible calamity that had befallen poor Mbango and his people. He appeared sincerely grateful for the effort we had made to warn him of the impending attack, and seemed unable to express his thanks when we offered to aid him in the defence of his village.

We now deemed this a fitting moment to tell the king boldly of our having assisted in the escape of Okandaga from his village, and beg his forgiveness. He granted this at once, but strongly advised us to keep our secret quiet, and leave it to him to account to his warriors for the reappearance of the runaway maiden when retaken. Of course we could make no objection to this, so after thanking him we entered upon a discussion of the best method of frustrating the slave-dealer's designs.

"Tell the king," said Jack, addressing himself to our guide, "that if he will make me commander-in-chief of his forces, I will show him how white warriors manage to circumvent their enemies."

"I would like much," said Peterkin, laughing, "to know how Mak will translate the word 'circumvent.' Your style is rather flowery, Jack, for such an interpreter; and upon my word, now I think of it, your presumption is considerable. How do you know that I do not wish to be commander-in-chief myself?"

"I shall make over the command to you with all my heart, if you wish it," said Jack, smiling blandly.

"Nay, I'll none of it. However suited I may be to the work, the work is not suited to me, so I resign in your favour."

"Well, then," said Jack, "since you decline to accept the chief command, I'll make you my second. Mak shall be my aide-de-camp; you and Ralph shall be generals of divisions."

"I thank you much, my honoured and honourable generalissimo; but perhaps before being thus liberal of your favours, it were well to ascertain that your own services are accepted."

"That is soon done. -- What says the king, Mak?"

"Hims say that him's delighted to git you, an' you may doos how you like."

"That's plain and explicit. You see, Peterkin, that I'm fairly installed; so you and I will take a short walk together, and hold a consultation as to our plans in the approaching campaign, while Ralph arranges our hut and makes things comfortable."

"A glorious campaign, truly, to serve in an army of baboons, led by a white gorilla! I would deem it almost comical, did I not see too sure a probability of bloodshed before its conclusion," remarked Peterkin.

"That you shall not see, if I can prevent it; and it is for the purpose of consulting you on that point, and claiming your services in an old and appropriate character, that I drag you along with me now," said Jack, as he rose, and, making a bow to the king, left the hut.



Chapter Nineteen.

Preparations For War, And Peculiar Drill.

The plan which Jack and Peterkin concocted, while I was engaged in making the interior of our old residence as comfortable as possible, was as follows: -- 

Scouts were, in the first place, to be sent out that night all over the country, to ascertain the whereabouts of the enemy. Then, when the enemy should be discovered, they were to send back one of their number to report; while the remainder should remain to dog their steps, if need be, in order to ascertain whether Mbango and Okandaga were in their possession, and if so, where they were kept -- whether in the midst of the warriors or in their rear.

This settled, the remainder of the warriors of the village were to be collected together, and a speech to be made to them by Jack, who should explain to them that they were to be divided into two bands: all who carried guns to be under the immediate charge of Jack himself; the others, carrying bows and spears, to be placed under me. Peterkin was to act a peculiar part, which will appear in the course of narration.

Having partaken of a hearty supper, we assembled the scouts, and having, through Makarooroo, given them their instructions, sent them away just as the shades of night began to fall. We next caused a huge bonfire to be kindled, and round this all the men of the village assembled, to the extent of several hundreds. The king soon appeared, and mounting the trunk of a fallen tree, made a long speech to his warriors, telling them of the danger that threatened them, in such vivid and lively terms that the greater part of them began to exhibit expressions of considerable uneasiness on their countenances. He then told them of the trouble that we had taken, in order to give them timely warning -- whereat they cast upon us looks of gratitude; and after that introduced Jack to them as their commander-in-chief, saying, that as a white man led the enemy, nothing could be better than that a white man should lead them to meet the enemy -- whereat the sable warriors gave a shout of satisfaction and approval.

Having been thus introduced, Jack mounted the trunk of the fallen tree, and Makarooroo got up beside him to interpret. He began, like a wise diplomatist, by complimenting King Jambai, and spoke at some length on courage in general, and on the bravery of King Jambai's warriors in particular; which, of course, he took for granted. Then he came to particulars, and explained as much of his intended movements as he deemed it good for them to know; and wound up by saying that he had three words of command to teach them, which they must learn to understand and act upon that very night. They were, "Forward!" "Halt!" and "Fire!" By saying the first of these words very slow and in a drawling voice, thus, "Forw-a-a-a-a-a-rd!" and the second in a quick, sharp tone, and the third in a ferocious yell that caused the whole band to start, he actually got them to understand and distinguish the difference between the commands, and to act upon them in the course of half an hour.

The drill of his army being thus completed, Jack dismissed them with a caution to hold themselves in readiness to answer promptly the first call to arms; and the king enforced the caution by quietly assuring them that the man who did not attend to this order, and otherwise respect and obey Jack as if he were the king, should have his heart, eyes, and liver torn out, and the rest of his carcass cast to the dogs -- a threat which seemed to us very horrible and uncalled for, but which, nevertheless, was received by the black warriors with perfect indifference.

"Now, Mak," said Jack, as he descended to the ground, "do you come with me, and help me to place sentries."

"W'at be dat, massa?"

"Men who are placed to guard the village from surprise during the night," explained Jack.

"Ho! dat be de ting; me know someting 'bout dat."

"No doubt you do, but I daresay you don't know the best way to place them; and perhaps you are not aware that the pretty little threat uttered by the king shall be almost carried out in the case of every man who shall be found asleep at his post or who shall desert it."

The guide grinned and followed his commander in silence, while I returned to our hut and busied myself in cleaning the rifles and making other preparations for the expected fight.

At an early hour on the following morning we were awakened by the arrival of one of the scouts, who reported that the Portuguese trader, with a strong and well-armed force, was encamped on the margin of a small pond about fifteen miles distant from the village. The scout had gone straight to the spot on being sent out, knowing that it was a likely place for them to encamp, if they should encamp at all. And here he found them making active preparations for an attack on the village. Creeping like a serpent through the grass, the scout approached near enough to overhear their arrangements, which were to the elect that the attack should take place at midnight of the following day. He observed that there were many prisoners in the camp -- men, women, and children --  and these were to be left behind, in charge of a small party of armed men; while the main body, under the immediate command of the Portuguese trader, should proceed to the attack of the village.

From the scout's description of the prisoners, we became convinced that they were none other than our friends Mbango and his people, and one woman answering to the description of Okandaga was among them.

"So, Mak, we shall save her yet," cried Jack heartily, slapping the shoulder of the guide, whose honest visage beamed with returning hope.

"Yis, massa. S'pose we go off dis hour and fight 'em?"

"Nay; that were somewhat too hasty a movement. 'Slow but sure' must be our motto until night. Then we shall pounce upon our foes like a leopard on his prey. But ask the scout if that is all he has got to tell us."

"Hims say, massa, dat hims find one leetle chile -- one boy -- when hims go away from de camp to come back to here."

"A boy!" repeated Jack; "where -- how?"

"In de woods, where hims was trow'd to die; so de scout take him up and bring him to here."

"Ah, poor child!" said I; "no doubt it must have been sick, and being a burden, has been left behind. But stay. How could that be possible if it was found between the camp and this village?"

On further inquiry, we ascertained that the scout, after hearing what he thought enough of their arrangements, had travelled some distance beyond the encampment, in order to make sure that there were no other bands connected with the one he had left, and it was while thus engaged that he stumbled on the child, which seemed to be in a dying condition.

"Hims say, too," continued Makarooroo, after interpreting the above information, "that there be one poor woman in awfable sorrow, screechin' and hollerowin' like one lion."

"Eh?" exclaimed Peterkin. "Describe her to us."

The scout did so as well as he could.

"As sure as we live," cried Peterkin, "it is our friend Njamie, and the child must be her boy! Come, show us the little fellow."

We all ran out and followed the scout to his hut, where we found his wives -- for he had three of them -- nursing the child as tenderly as if it had been their own. It was very much wasted, evidently through want of food and over-fatigue; but we instantly recognised the once sturdy little son of Njamie in the faded little being before us. He, too, recognised us, for his bright spectral eyes opened wide when he saw us.

"I knew it," said I.

"I told you so," cried Peterkin. -- "Now, Mak, pump him, and let's hear what he knows."

The poor child was far too much exhausted to undergo the pumping process referred to. He could merely answer that Njamie and Okandaga and Mbango were prisoners in the camp, and then turned languidly away, as if he desired rest.

"Poor boy!" said Peterkin tenderly, as he laid his hand gently on the child's woolly pate. -- "Tell them, Mak, to look well after him here, and they shall be paid handsomely for -- nay" (here he interrupted himself), "don't say that. 'Tis a bad thing to offer to pay for that which people are willing to do for love."

"Right, lad," said Jack: "we can easily make these poor folk happy by giving them something afterwards, without saying that it is bestowed because of their kindness to the boy. The proper reward of diligent successful labour is a prize, but the best reward of love and kindness is a warm, hearty recognition of their existence. -- Just tell them, Mak, that we are glad to see them so good and attentive to the little chap. --  And now, my generals, if it is consistent with your other engagements, I would be glad to have a little private consultation with you."

"Ready and willing, my lord," said Peterkin, as we followed Jack towards the king's palace. "But," he added seriously, "I don't like to be a general of division at all."

"Why not, Peterkin?"

"Why, you see, when I was at school I found division so uncommonly difficult, and suffered so much, mentally and physically, in the learning of it, that I have a species of morbid antipathy to the very name. I even intend to refuse a seat in parliament, when offered to me, because of the divisions that are constantly going on there. If you could only make me a general of subtraction now, or -- "

"That," interrupted Jack, "were easily done, by deducting you from the force altogether, and commanding you to remain at home."

"In which case," rejoined Peterkin, "I should have to become general of addition, by revolunteering my services, in order to prevent the whole expedition from resolving itself into General Muddle, whose name and services are well-known in all branches of military and civil service."

"So that," added Jack, "it all comes to this, that you and Ralph and I must carry on the war by rule of three, each taking his just and appropriate proportion of the work to be done. Now, to change the subject, there's the sun getting up, and so is the king, if I may judge from the stir in his majesty's household."

Having begged the king to assemble his warriors together, Jack now proceeded to divide them into four companies, or bands, over which he appointed respective leaders. All the men who possessed guns were assembled together in one band, numbering about one hundred and fifty men. These Jack subdivided into two companies, one including a hundred, the other fifty men. The remainder, constituting the main army, were armed with bows and arrows, spears and knives. Of these a large force was told off to remain behind and guard the village.

This home-guard was placed under command of the king in person. The hundred musketeers were placed under Peterkin's command. The other fifty were given to me, along with a hundred spear and bow men. Jack himself took command of the main body of spearmen. As Peterkin had to act a special and independent part, besides commanding his hundred musketeers, Makarooroo was made over to him, to act as lieutenant.

All these arrangements and appointments were made in a cool, quiet, and arbitrary manner by Jack, to whom the natives, including the king, looked up with a species of awe amounting almost to veneration.

"Now," said our commander-in-chief to Lieutenant Mak, "tell the niggers I am going to make them a speech," (this was received with a grunt of satisfaction), "and that if they wish to have the smallest chance of overcoming their enemies, they had better give their closest attention to what I have to say."

Another grunt of acquiescence followed this announcement.

"Say that I am going to speak to them of things so mysterious that they shall not by any conceivable or possible effort understand them."

This being quite in accordance with the superstitions and tastes of the negroes, was received with eager acclamations of delight.

"Tell them," continued Jack, in a deep, solemn tone, and frowning darkly, "that we shall gain the victory only through obedience. Each man must keep his ears open and his eye on his leader, and must obey orders at once. If the order 'Halt' should be given, and any man should have his mouth open at the time, he must keep his mouth open, and shut it after he has halted."

Here Jack took occasion to revert to the three orders, "Forward," "Halt," and "Fire," and repeated the lesson several times, until his men were quite perfect. Then he put the various bodies under their respective commanders, and telling the musketeers to make believe to fire (but making sure that they should not really do it, by taking their guns from them), he made each of us give the various words separately, so that our men should become familiar with our voices.

This done, he called the generals of divisions to him, and said -- 

"Now, gentlemen, I am going to review my troops, and to give them their final lesson in military tactics, with the double view of seeing that they know what they have got to do, and of impressing them with a due sense of the great advantage of even a slight knowledge of drill."

He then directed us to take command of our several companies (Makarooroo being placed on this occasion over the king's band), and pointed out the separate directions in which we were ultimately to post our troops, so as to advance upon the spot on which the king stood when the signal should be given. We had already taught the men the necessity of attacking in a compact single line, and of forming up into this position from what is termed Indian file, with which latter they were already acquainted. Of course we could not hope to teach them the principles of wheeling in the short time at our command. To overcome this difficulty, we told each band to follow its leader, who should walk in front; to advance when he advanced, to retire when he retired, and to turn this way or that way, according to his movements.

At a signal we gave the word "Forward!" and the whole band defiled into the woods before the king, and disappeared like a vision, to the unutterable amazement of his majesty, who stood perfectly motionless, with eyes and mouth open to their fullest extent.

Having marched together for some distance, each leader detached his men and led them, as it were, to opposite directions of the compass, three of the bands making a considerable detour, in order to get the spot where the king stood in the centre of us. Then we halted and awaited the next signal. In about ten minutes it was given -- a loud whistle -- and we gave the word "Forward" again. I say "we," because the result proved that we had done so. Being out of sight of the other bands, of course I could not see how they acted.

On I rushed over brake and bush and morass, my men following me in a very good line, considering the nature of the ground. I had divided them into four lines, with an interval of about six yards between each. And it was really wonderful how well they kept in that position. The other companies had been ordered to act in the same way.

On bursting out of the woods I saw that we had outstripped the other companies, so I held my men in check by running somewhat slower; and they had been so deeply impressed with the fatal consequences of not doing exactly as I did, that they stared at me with all their eyes, to the no small risk of their lives; for one or two dashed against trees, and others tumbled head over heels into holes, in their anxiety to keep their eyes upon me.

In a few seconds I observed Peterkin spring out of the woods, followed by his men, so I went on again at full speed. As we entered the village, our ranks were sadly broken and confused by the huts; but on gaining the open space where Jack stood, I was pleased to observe that the negroes tried, of their own accord, to regain their original formation, and succeeded so well that we came on in four tolerably straight and compact lines. Each commander having been forewarned to hold his men in check, or to push forward, so as to arrive at the central point at the same moment, Jack, Peterkin, Makarooroo, and I ran in upon the king together, and unitedly gave the word "Halt!" whereupon we found ourselves in the centre of a solid square.

So deeply had the men been impressed with the necessity of obedience that they had scarcely observed each other's approach. They now stood rooted to the ground in every possible attitude of suddenly-arrested motion, and all with their eyes and mouths wide open. In another moment the result of their combined movement became evident to them, and they uttered a yell of delighted surprise.

"Very good, very good indeed," said Jack; "and that concluding yell was very effective -- quite magnificent. -- But you see," he added, turning to me, "although such a yell is sufficiently appalling to us, it will no doubt be a mere trifle to men who are used to it. What say you to teaching them a British cheer?"

"Absurd," said I; "they will never learn to give it properly."

"I don't know that," rejoined Jack, in a doubtful manner.

"Try," said Peterkin.

"So I will. -- Mak, tell them now that I'm going to continue the speech which this little review interrupted."

"They's all ready for more, massa."

This was patent to the meanest capacity; for the negroes stood gazing at their commander-in-chief with eyes and mouths and ears open, and nostrils expanded, as if anxious to gulp in and swallow down his words through every organ.

"There is a cry," said Jack, "which the white man gives when he enters into battle -- a terrible cry, which is quite different from that of the black man, and which is so awful that it strikes terror into the heart of the white man's enemies, and has even been known to make a whole army fly almost without a shot being fired. We shall let you hear it."

Thereupon Jack and I and Peterkin gave utterance to a cheer of the most vociferous description, which evidently filled the minds of the natives with admiration.

"Now," resumed Jack, "I wish my black warriors to try that cheer -- "

Some of the black warriors, supposing that the expression of this wish was a direct invitation to them to begin, gave utterance to a terrific howl.

"Stay! stop!" cried Jack, holding up his hand.

Every mouth was closed instantly.

"You must cheer by command. I will say 'Hip, hip, hip!' three times; as soon as I say the third 'hip,' out with the cry. Now then. Hip, hip -- "

"'Popotamus," whispered Peterkin.

"Hip, hurrah!" shouted Jack.

"Hurl! ho! sh! kee! how!" yelled the savages, each man giving his own idea of our terror-inspiring British cheer.

"That will do," said Jack quietly; "it is quite evident that the war-cry of the white man is not suited to the throat of the black. You will utter your usual shout, my friends, when the signal is given; but remember, not before that.

"And now I come to the greatest mystery of all." (Every ear was eagerly attentive.) "The shot and bits of metal and little stones with which King Jambai's warriors are accustomed to kill will not do on this great and peculiar occasion. They will not answer the purpose -- my purpose; therefore I have provided a kind of bullet which every one must use instead of his usual shot. No warriors ever used such bullets in the fight before. They are very precious, because I have only enough of them to give one to each man. But that will do. If the enemy does not fly at the first discharge, then you may load with your own shot."

So saying, Jack, with the utmost gravity, took from the pouch that hung at his side a handful of little balls of paper about the size of a musket bullet, which he began to distribute among the savages. We had observed Jack making several hundreds of these, the night previous to this memorable day, out of one or two newspapers we had carried along with us for wadding; but he would not at that time tell us what he was going to do with them. The negroes received this novel species of ammunition with deep interest and surprise. Never having seen printed paper before, or, in all probability, paper of any kind, they were much taken up with the mysterious characters imprinted thereon, and no doubt regarded these as the cause of the supernatural power which the bullets were supposed to possess.

"Remember," said Jack, "when these are discharged at the enemy, I do not say that they will kill, but I do say that they will cause the enemy to fly. Only, be assured that everything depends on your obedience. And if one single stone, or nail, or hard substance is put in along with these bullets, the chief part of my plans will be frustrated."

It was quite evident, from the expression of their sable countenances, that the idea of the bullets not killing was anything but agreeable. They were too deeply impressed, however, with Jack's power, and too far committed in the enterprise, and generally too much overwhelmed with mingled surprise and perplexity, to offer any objection.

"Now," said Jack in conclusion, "you may go and eat well. To-night, when it grows dark, hold yourselves in readiness to go forth in dead silence. Mind that: not a sound to be uttered until the signal, 'Hip, hip, hip!' is given."

"And," added Peterkin, in an undertone to Makarooroo, "tell them that King Jambai expects that every man will do his duty."

This remark was received with a shout and a frightful display of white teeth, accompanied by a tremendous flourish of guns, bows, and spears.

There was something quite awful, not to say picturesque, in this displaying of teeth, which took place many times during the course of the above proceedings. You looked upon a sea of black ebony balls, each having two white dots with black centres near the top of it. Suddenly the ebony balls were gashed across, and a sort of storm, as it were, of deep red mingled with pure white swept over the dark cloud of heads before you, and vanished as quickly as it had appeared, only to reappear, however, at the next stroke of humour, or at some "touch of that nature" which is said on very high authority, to "make the whole world kin."

The proceedings eventually closed with a brief speech from the king, who referred to Peterkin's remark about each man doing his duty, and said that, "if each man did not do his duty -- " Here his majesty paused for a minute, and wrought his countenance into horrible contortions, indicative of the most excruciating agony, and wound up with an emphatic repetition of that dire threat about the unnatural treatment of eyes, heart, liver, and carcass, which had on the previous evening sounded so awful in our ears, and had been treated with such profound indifference by those whom it was specially designed to affect.

"I didn't know, Jack," observed Peterkin gravely, as we returned to our hut, "that you were such an out-and-out humbug."

"You are severe, Peterkin. I scarcely deserve to be called a humbug for acting to the best of my judgment in peculiar circumstances."

"Peculiar circumstances!" responded Peterkin. "Truly they have received peculiar treatment!"

"That is as it should be," rejoined Jack; "at any rate, be they peculiar or be they otherwise, our plans are settled and our mode of action fixed, so we must e'en abide the issue."



Chapter Twenty.

A Warlike Expedition And A Victory.

It was excessively dark that night when we set forth on our expedition.

The scout from whom we had already ascertained so much about the intended movements of the enemy also told us that they meant to set out at a little before midnight and march on the village by a certain route. Indeed, it was very unlikely that they would approach by any other, as the jungle elsewhere was so thick as to render marching, especially at night, very difficult.

Jack therefore resolved to place the greater proportion of his troops in ambush at the mouth of a small gully or dell a few miles from the enemy's camp, where they were almost certain to pass. But with a degree of caution that I thought highly creditable in so young and inexperienced a general, he sent out a considerable number of the most trustworthy men in advance, with instructions to proceed with the stealth of leopards, and to bring back instant information of any change of route on the part of the foe.

The troops placed in ambush at the dell above referred to were Peterkin's hundred musketeers, supported by Jack's spear and bow men. I was ordered to advance by a circuitous route on the camp itself with my fifty musketeers, followed by my small company of spearmen. My instructions were, to conceal my men as near to the camp as possible, and there await the first discharge of firearms from the dell, when I was to rise, advance upon the camp, utter a terrific shout when within fifty yards, rush forward to within twenty-five yards, halt, pour in one withering volley of blank cartridge, and charge without giving my men time to load.

Of course I could not speak to my men; but this was a matter of little consequence, as they were now well acquainted with our three words of command, "Forward," "Halt," and "Fire," and fully understood that they must under all circumstances follow their leader. I knew well enough that there must be no little danger in this arrangement, because the leader would necessarily be always in front of the muzzles of the loaded guns. But there was no help for it, so I resolved to act upon my usual principle -- namely, that when a thing is inevitable, the best thing to do is to treat it as being unavoidable.

Having conducted my men stealthily and successfully to the vicinity of the enemy's camp, though with some difficulty, owing to the almost impenetrable nature of the jungle through which we had to pass in making the detour necessary to avoid falling in with the attacking force, we proceeded to advance to within as short a distance of it as possible without running the risk of being discovered. This was not difficult, for the men left to guard the camp, supposing, no doubt, that their presence in that part of the country was not suspected, had taken no precautions in the way of placing sentries; so we quickly arrived at the foot of a small mound about sixty yards or so from the encampment. At the foot of this mound I caused my men to lie down, giving them to understand, by signs, that they were on no account to move until I should return. Then I crept alone to the brow of the mound, and obtained a clear view of the camp.

The men who should have guarded it were, I found, busily employed in cooking their supper. There were, perhaps, upwards of a hundred of them. To my great satisfaction, I observed the captives sitting near to the fire; and although at so considerable a distance from them, I felt certain that I recognised the figures of Mbango and Okandaga. Hastening back to my men, I endeavoured to give them as much information as possible by means of signs, and then lay down beside them to await the signal from Jack's party.

Although the attack of both our parties was to be simultaneous, the first shot was to be fired by our troops in the dell. I will therefore describe their part of the engagement first. Jack described it to me minutely after all was over.

On reaching the dell Jack disposed his forces so as to command the only approach to it. The hundred musketeers he placed in a double row directly across the deepest and darkest part. The spearmen he divided into two bodies, which he posted on the flanks of the musketeers among the bushes. He then showed the rear rank of the latter how to point their pieces over the shoulders of the men in the front rank at a given signal, but carefully reiterated the order not to touch a trigger until the word "Fire" should be given.

"Now, Peterkin," said Jack, when these dispositions had been made, "it is time for you to get ready. Makarooroo and I can manage these fellows, so you have my permission to go and play your own independent part. Only let me warn you to remember your last exploit in this way, and see that you don't do yourself a damage."

"Thanks, noble general, for the permission," answered Peterkin, "of which I shall avail myself. In reference to your advice, I may remark that it is exceedingly valuable -- so much so, indeed, that I would advise you not to part with it until asked for."

With that Peterkin ran into the jungle, and was soon lost to view.

On gaining a sufficient distance from the men, he took off the greater part of his clothes, and wound round his person several pieces of light-coloured cotton that he chanced to have with him, and some pieces of old newspaper. Then he decked his head with leaves and ragged branches, as he had done before in the haunted cave, making himself, in short, as wild and fantastic a looking creature as possible -- the only difference between his getting-up on this and the former occasion being that he was white instead of black. For he wisely judged that a white demon must naturally appear infinitely more appalling and horrible to a negro than one of his own colour.

The two cones of moistened powder, however, which he had prepared for this occasion, were very much larger than the former, and had been fitted into two wooden handles, or cups, for safety. With these in his hands, he crept to the top of a steep, sloping mound or hill near the entrance to the dell, and considerably in advance of the troops. Here he sat down to await the approach of the enemy.

There is something very eerie and awe-inspiring in a solitary night-watch, especially if it be kept in a wild, lonesome place. Peterkin afterwards told me that, while sitting that night on the top of the mound, looking out upon a plain, over which the enemy were expected to approach, on the one hand, and down into the dark dell where our troops were posted, on the other hand, his heart more than once misgave him; and he could not help asking himself the questions, "What if our plans miscarry? What if our united volley and cheer, and my demoniac display, should fail to intimidate the negroes?" Such questions he did not like to dwell upon, for he knew that in the event of failure a regular pitched battle would be fought, and much blood would certainly flow.

While indulging in such thoughts, he observed a dark form glide past the foot of the mound on which he lay, and vanish in the obscurity of the dell, which was so surrounded by crags and rocky places covered with underwood that no light could penetrate into it. At first he was startled, and thought of giving the alarm to his comrades; but on second thoughts he concluded the person must have been one of his own scouts returned with news; at all events, he felt that one man could do no harm worth speaking of to so large a party.

Presently he observed a large band of men coming over the plain towards the entrance of the dell. These, he felt assured, must be the enemy; and he was right. They came on in a large, compact body, and were well-armed; yet, from the quick and unguarded manner of their approach, he could perceive that they suspected no ambush.

They entered the dell in a confused though solid and silent body; and Peterkin could observe, by the dim light, that they were led by one man, who walked in advance, whom he rightly judged to be the Portuguese slave-dealer.

The time for action had now come. He examined the points of his powder-cones, to ascertain that they were dry, then held a match in readiness, and listened intently to the footsteps of the foe.

I have already explained that Jack had drawn his musketeers across the dell, and placed the spearmen in the jungle on both flanks. They were arranged in such a way as to form three sides of a square, into which the unsuspecting enemy now marched. Jack allowed them to approach to within thirty paces of his musketeers, and then gave, in a loud, deep, sonorous tone, the word -- "Hip! hip! hip!"

The compound cheer and yell that instantly followed the last hip was so tremendous, coming, as it did, from all sides except the rear, that the enemy were absolutely paralysed. They stood rooted to the earth, as motionless as if they had been transformed into stone.

Jack raised his hand, in which he held a bunch of white grass that could be distinctly seen in the dark.

Every muzzle was pointed on the instant, but not a sound was heard save the click of a hundred locks.

The sound was familiar to the enemy, although never before heard at one moment in such numbers. They started; but before a step could be taken, the word "Fire" was given.

Instantly a sheet of flame swept across the entire dell, and the united crash of a hundred guns seemed to rend the very earth. The surrounding cliffs reverberated and multiplied the horrid din, while, led by Jack, cheer followed cheer, or rather howls and yells filled the air, and kept awake the echoes of the place.

The enemy turned and fled, and the shrieks to which they gave utterance as they ran betokened the extremity of their terror. It wanted but one touch to complete their consternation, and that touch was given when Peterkin, lighting his powder-cones, showed himself on the mound, dancing in a blaze of fire, and shrieking furiously as the horrified tide of men swept by.

In the midst of his wild orgies, Peterkin acted an impromptu and unintentional part by tripping over the brow of the hill, and rolling down the steep declivity like a fire-wheel into the very midst of the flying crew. Jumping hastily up, he charged through the ranks of the foe, flung the two hissing cones high into the air, and darting into the jungle, hid himself effectually from view.

Meanwhile Jack still held the bunch of white straw aloft. Every eye was fixed on it, but not a man moved, because it remained stationary. This absence of pursuit in the midst of such appalling sights and sounds must, undoubtedly, have added to the mystery and therefore to the terrors of the scene.

Suddenly the white bunch was seen to dart forward. Jack, who now considered the enemy almost beyond the chance of being overtaken, gave the word, "Forward!" in the voice of a Stentor, following it up with "Hip, hip, hurrah!" and the whole host, musketeers and spearmen in a mingled mass, rushed yelling out upon the plain, and gave chase to the foe.

"Not so badly done," said Jack, with a quiet laugh, as he laid his hand on Peterkin's shoulder.

"Why, Jack, how did you find me out?"

"Easily enough, when it is considered that I saw you go in. The flame of your wild-fire indicated your movements pretty plainly to me, although terror and amazement no doubt blinded the eyes of every one else. Even Mak's teeth began to chatter when he saw you perform that singular descent of the hill, and no wonder. I hope no bones have been broken?"

"No; all right as far as that goes," replied Peterkin within a laugh; "but I've lost a good deal of skin. However, it'll grow again. I'm glad it's no worse. But I say, Jack, do you think our fellows won't overtake these rascals?"

"No fear of that. I took care to give them a good start, and if there be any truth in the generally received idea that terror lends wings, I'm pretty sure that each man in the enemy's ranks must have obtained the loan of several pairs to-night. But have you heard the sound of Ralph's guns?"

"No; the din here was enough to drown anything so distant."

"Well, we must away to him as fast as we can. I expect that poor Mak is off before us."

"But you'll wait until I put on my clothes?" said Peterkin, hasting back towards the place where he had undressed.

"Certainly, lad; only look alive."

Soon afterwards they left the place together.

While this was going on at the dell, I, on hearing the first shot, gave the word "Forward!" in a low tone. My men instantly rose and followed me, and I could not, even at that anxious moment, help admiring the serpent-like facility with which they glided from bush to bush, without the slightest noise. We descended a hill, crossed a small brook, and approached to within thirty yards of the camp without being discovered.

Suddenly I leaped on the top of a hillock, and shouted at the utmost pitch of my voice the single word "Halt!"

On hearing it all the men in the camp sprang to their arms, and stood gazing round them with looks of consternation.

My next word was, "Fire!"

A firm, tremendous crash burst from among the bushes, and my single person, enveloped in smoke and flame, was, I believe, the only object visible to those in the camp.

"Hip, hip, hip, hurrah! forward!" I shouted; and with a ferocious yell we poured like a whirlwind upon the foe.

The same result that had occurred at the dell took place here. The enemy never awaited our charge. They fled instantly, and so great was their terror that they actually threw down their arms, in order to facilitate their flight.

On gaining the camp, however, I found, to my sorrow, that we had done the thing only too vigorously; for we had not only put the enemy to flight, but we had also frightened away those whom we had come to deliver!

At this point in the engagement I came to learn how incompetent I was to command men in cases of emergency, for here my presence of mind utterly forsook me. In my anxiety to capture Mbango and his friends I ordered an immediate pursuit. Then it occurred to me that, in the event of my men being successful in overtaking the fugitives, they would instantly murder them all, so I tried to call them back; but, alas! they did not understand my words, and they were by this time so excited as to be beyond all restraint. In a few minutes I found myself left alone in the enemy's camp, and heard the shouts of pursued and pursuers growing gradually fainter and more distant, as they scattered themselves through the jungle.

Seating myself by the fire in a state of mind bordering on despair, I buried my face in my hands, and endeavoured to collect myself, and consider what, under the circumstances, should be now done.



Chapter Twenty One.

Arrangements For Pursuing The Enemy, And Sudden Change Of Plans.

"You seem to be taking it easy, old boy," said a voice close to my elbow.

I started, and looked up hastily.

"Ah! Peterkin. You there?"

"Ay; and may I not reply, with some surprise, you here?"

"Truly you may, -- but what could I do? The men ran away from me, whether I would or no; and you are aware I could not make myself understood, not being able to -- But where is Jack?"

I asked this abruptly, because it occurred to me at that moment that he and Peterkin should have been together.

"Where is Jack?" echoed Peterkin; "I may ask that of you, for I am ignorant on the point. He and I got separated in endeavouring to escape from the scrimmage caused by your valiant attack. You seem to have scattered the whole force to the winds. Oh, here he is, and Mak along with him."

Jack and our guide came running into the camp at that moment.

"Well, Ralph, what of Okandaga?"

"Ah! what of her indeed?" said Peterkin. "I forgot her. You don't moan to say she was not in the camp?"

"Indeed she was," said I, "and so were Mbango, and his wife Njamie, and one or two others whom I did not know; but my men went at them with such ferocity that they fled along with our enemies."

"Fled!" cried Jack.

"Ay; and I fear much that it will fare ill with them if they are overtaken, for the men were wild with excitement and passion."

"Come, this must be looked to," cried Jack, seizing his rifle and tightening his belt; "we must follow, for if they escape our hands they will certainly be retaken by their former captors."

We followed our comrade, without further remark, in the direction of the fugitives; but although we ran fast and long, we failed to come up with them. For two hours did we dash through bush and brake, jungle and morass, led by Makarooroo, and lighted by the pale beams of the moon. Then we came to a halt, and sat down to consult.

"Dem be gone," said our wretched guide, whose cup of happiness was thus dashed from his hand just as he was about to raise it to his lips.

"Now, don't look so dismal, Mak," cried Peterkin, slapping the man on the shoulder. "You may depend upon it, we will hunt her up somehow or other. Only let us keep stout hearts, and we can do anything."

"Very easily said, Master Peterkin," observed Jack; "but what course do you propose we should follow just now?"

"Collect our scattered men; go back to the village; have a palaver with King Jambai and his chiefs; get up a pursuit, and run the foxes to earth."

"And suppose," said Jack, "that you don't know in which direction they have fled, how can we pursue them?"

"It is very easy to suppose all manner of difficulties," retorted Peterkin. "If you have a better plan, out with it."

"I have no better plan, but I have a slight addition to make to yours, which is, that when we collect a few of our men, I shall send them out to every point of the compass, to make tracks like the spokes of a wheel, of which the village shall be the centre; and by that means we shall be pretty certain to get information ere long as to the whereabouts of our fugitives. So now let us be up and doing; time is precious to-night."

In accordance with this plan, we rapidly retraced our steps to the dell, which had been appointed as our place of rendezvous. Here we found the greater part of our men assembled; and so well-timed had Jack's movements been, that not one of them all had been able to overtake or slay a single enemy. Thus, by able generalship, had Jack gained a complete and bloodless victory.

Having detached and sent off our scouts -- who, besides being picked men, travelled without any other encumbrance than their arms -- we resumed our journey homeward, and reached the village not long after sunrise, to the immense surprise of Jambai, who could scarcely believe that we had routed the enemy so completely, and whose scepticism was further increased by the total, and to him unaccountable, absence of prisoners, or of any other trophies of our success in the fight. But Jack made a public speech, of such an elaborate, deeply mysterious, and totally incomprehensible character, that even Makarooroo, who translated, listened and spoke with the deepest reverence and wonder; and when he had concluded, there was evidently a firm impression on the minds of the natives that this victory was -- by some means or in some way or other quite inexplicable but highly satisfactory -- the greatest they had ever achieved.

The king at once agreed to Jack's proposal that a grand pursuit should take place, to commence the instant news should be brought in by the scouts. But the news, when it did come, had the effect of totally altering our plans.

The first scout who returned told us that he had fallen in with a large body of the enemy encamped on the margin of a small pond. Creeping like a snake through the grass, he succeeded in getting near enough to overhear the conversation, from which he gathered two important pieces of information -- namely, that they meant to return to their own lands in a north-easterly direction, and that their prisoners had escaped by means of a canoe which they found on the banks of the river that flowed past King Jambai's village.

The first piece of information decided the king to assemble his followers, and go off in pursuit of them at once; the second piece of news determined us to obtain a canoe and follow Mbango and his companions to the sea-coast, whither, from all that we heard, we concluded they must certainly have gone. As this, however, was a journey of many weeks, we had to take the matter into serious consideration.

"It is quite evident," said Jack, as we sat over our supper on the night after receiving the above news -- "it is quite evident that they mean to go to the coast, for Mbango had often expressed to Mak a wish to go there; and the mere fact of their having been seen to escape and take down stream, is in itself pretty strong evidence that they did not mean to return to their now desolated village, seeing that the country behind them is swarming with enemies; and of course they cannot know that we have conquered the main body of these rascals. I therefore propose that we should procure a canoe and follow them: first, because we must at all hazards get hold of poor Okandaga, and relieve the anxiety of our faithful guide Makarooroo; and second, because it is just as well to go in that direction as in any other, in order to meet with wild animals, and see the wonders of this land."

"But what if King Jambai takes it into his black woolly head to decline to let us go?" said Peterkin.

"In that case we must take French leave of him."

"In which case," said I, in some alarm, "all my specimens of natural history will be lost."

Jack received this remark with a shake of his head and a look of great perplexity; and Peterkin said, "Ah, Ralph, I fear there's no help for it. You must make up your mind to say good-bye to your mummies -- big puggies and all."

"But you do not know," said I energetically, "that Jambai will detain us against our will."

"Certainly not," replied Jack; "and for your sake I hope that he will not. At any rate I will go to see him about this point after supper. It's of no use presenting a petition either to king, lord, or common while his stomach is empty. But there is another thing that perplexes me: that poor sick child, Njamie's son, must not be left behind. The poor distracted mother has no doubt given him up for lost. It will be like getting him back from the grave."

"True," said I; "we must take him with us. Yet I fear he is too ill to travel, and we cannot await his recovery."

"He is not so ill as he seemed," observed Peterkin. "I went to see him only half an hour ago, and the little chap was quite hearty, and glad to see me. The fact is, he has been ill-used and ill-fed. The rest and good treatment he has received have, even in the short time he has been here, quite revived him."

"Good," said Jack; "then he shall go with us. I'll engage to take him on my back when he knocks up on the march -- for we have a march before us, as I shall presently explain -- and when we get into a canoe he will be able to rest."

"But what march do you refer to?" I asked.

"Simply this. Mak, with whom I have had a good deal of conversation on the subject, tells me that the river makes a considerable bend below this village, and that by taking a short cut of a day's journey or so over land we can save time, and will reach a small hamlet where canoes are to be had. The way, to be sure, is through rather a wild country; but that to us is an advantage, as we shall be the more likely to meet with game. I find, also, that the king has determined to follow the same route with his warriors in pursuit of the enemy, so that thus far we may travel together. At the hamlet we will diverge to the north-east, while we, if all goes well, embarking in our canoe, will proceed toward the west coast, where, if we do not overtake them on the way, we shall be certain to find them on our arrival. Okandaga has often longed to go to the mission station there, and as she knows it is in vain to urge Mbango to return to his destroyed village, she will doubtless advise him to go to the coast."

"What you say seems highly probable," said I; "and I think the best thing you can do is to go to the king at once and talk him over."

"Trust Jack for that," added Peterkin, who was at that moment deeply engaged with what he called the drumstick of a roast monkey. "Jack would talk over any creature with life, so persuasive is his eloquence. I say, Ralph," he added, holding the half-picked drumstick at arm's length, and regarding it with a critical gaze, "I wonder, now, how the drumstick of an ostrich would taste. Good, I have no doubt, though rather large for one man's dinner."

"It would be almost equal to gorilla ham, I should fancy," said Jack, as he left the hut on his errand to the king.

"O you cannibal, to think of such a thing!" cried Peterkin, throwing the bone of his drumstick after our retreating comrade. -- "But 'tis always thus," he added, with a sigh: "man preys upon man, monkey upon monkey. Yet I had hoped better things of Jack. I had believed him to be at least a refined species of gorilla. I say, Ralph, what makes you look so lugubrious?"

"The difficulties, I suppose, that beset our path," said I sadly; for, to say truth, I did not feel in a jesting humour just then. I was forced, however, in spite of myself, to laugh at the expression of mingled disgust and surprise that overspread the mobile countenance of my friend on hearing my reply.

"'The difficulties,'" echoed he, "'that beset our path!' Really, Ralph, life will become insupportable to me if you and Jack go on in this fashion. A man of nerve and sanguine temperament might stand it, but to one like me, of a naturally timid and leaning nature, with the addition of low spirits, it is really crushing -- quite crushing."

I laughed, and replied that he must just submit to be crushed, as it was impossible for Jack and me to change our dispositions to suit his convenience; whereupon he sighed, lighted his pipe, and began to smoke vehemently.

In the course of little more than an hour Jack returned, accompanied by Makarooroo, and from the satisfied expression of their faces I judged that they had been successful.

"Ah! I see; it's all right," said Peterkin, raising himself on one elbow as they entered the hut and seated themselves beside the fire. "Old Jambai has been 'talked over.'"

"Right; but he needed a deal of talk -- he was horribly obstinate," said Jack.

"Ho, yis; ho! ho! horribubly obsterlate," added Makarooroo in corroboration, rubbing his hands and holding his nose slyly over the bowl of Peterkin's pipe, in order to enjoy, as it were, a second-hand whiff.

"Here, there's a bit for yourself, old boy. Sit down and enjoy yourself while Jack tells us all about his interview with royalty," said Peterkin, handing a lump of tobacco to our guide, whose eyes glistened and white teeth gleamed as he received the much-prized gift.

Jack now explained to us that he had found the king in a happy state of satiety, smoking in his very curious and uneasy-looking easy-chair; that he had at first begged and entreated him (Jack) to stay and take command of his warriors, and had followed up his entreaties with a hint that it was just possible he might adopt stronger measures if entreaty failed.

To this Jack replied in a long speech, in which he pointed out the impossibility of our complying with the king's request under present circumstances, and the absolute necessity of our returning at some period or other to our native land to tell our people of the wonders we had seen in the great country of King Jambai. Observing that his arguments did not make much impression on the king, he brought up his reserve force to the attack, and offered all the remainder of our goods as a free gift to his majesty, stipulating only that he (the king) should, in consideration thereof, carefully send our boxes of specimens down to the coast, where the messengers, on arriving, should be handsomely paid if everything should arrive safely and in good order.

These liberal offers had a visible influence on the sable monarch, whose pipe indicated the state of his mind pretty clearly -- thin wreaths of smoke issuing therefrom when he did not sympathise with Jack's reasoning, and thick voluminous clouds revolving about his woolly head, and involving him, as it were, in a veil of gauze, when he became pleasantly impressed. When Jack made mention of the valuable gifts above referred to, his head and shoulders were indistinctly visible amid the white cloudlets; and when he further offered to supply him with a few hundreds of the magical paper balls that had so effectually defeated his enemies the day before, the upper part of his person was obliterated altogether in smoke.

This last offer of Jack's we deemed a great stroke of politic wisdom, for thereby he secured that the pending war should be marked by the shedding of less blood than is normal in such cases. He endeavoured further to secure this end by assuring the king that the balls would be useless for the purpose for which they were made if any other substance should be put into the gun along with them, and that they would only accomplish the great end of putting the enemy to flight if fired at them in one tremendous volley at a time when the foe had no idea of the presence of an enemy.

All things being thus amicably arranged, we retired to rest, and slept soundly until daybreak, when we were awakened by the busy sounds of preparation in the village for the intended pursuit.

We, too, made active arrangements for a start, and soon after were trooping over the plains and through the jungle in the rear of King Jambai's army, laden with such things as we required for our journey to the coast, and Jack, besides his proportion of our food, bedding, cooking utensils, etcetera, carrying Njamie's little sick boy on his broad shoulders.



Chapter Twenty Two.

We Meet With A Ludicrously Awful Adventure.

The day following that on which we set out from King Jambai's village, as narrated in the last chapter, Jack, Peterkin, Makarooroo, Njamie's little boy, and I embarked in a small canoe, and bidding adieu to our hospitable friends, set out on our return journey to the coast.

We determined to proceed thither by another branch of the river which would take us through a totally new, and in some respects different, country from that in which we had already travelled, and which, in the course of a few weeks, would carry us again into the neighbourhood of the gorilla country.

One beautiful afternoon, about a week after parting from our friends, we met with an adventure in which the serious and the comic were strangely mingled. Feeling somewhat fatigued after a long spell at our paddles, and being anxious to procure a monkey or a deer, as we had run short of food, we put ashore, and made our encampment on the banks of the river. This done, we each sallied out in different directions, leaving Makarooroo in charge of the camp.

For some time I wandered about the woods in quest of game, but although I fired at many animals that were good for food, I missed them all, and was unwillingly compelled to return empty-handed. On my way back, and while yet several miles distant from the camp, I met Jack, who had several fat birds of the grouse species hanging at his girdle.

"I am glad to see that you have been more successful than I, Jack," said I, as we met.

"Yet I have not much to boast of," he replied. "It is to be hoped that Peterkin has had better luck. Have you seen him?"

"No; I have not even heard him fire a shot."

"Well, let us go on. Doubtless he will make his appearance in good time. What say you to following the course of this brook? I have no doubt it will guide us to the vicinity of our camp, and the ground immediately to the left of it seems pretty clear of jungle."

"Agreed," said I; and for the next ten minutes or so we walked beside each other in silence. Suddenly our footsteps were arrested by a low peculiar noise.

"Hark! is that a human voice?" whispered Jack, as he cocked his rifle.

"It sounds like it," said I.

At the same moment we heard some branches in an opposite direction crack, as if they had been broken by a heavy tread. Immediately after, the first sound became louder and more distinct. Jack looked at me in surprise, and gradually a peculiar smile overspread his face.

"It's Peterkin," said I, in a low whisper.

My companion nodded, and half-cocking our pieces, we advanced with slow and cautious steps towards the spot whence the sound had come. The gurgling noise of the brook prevented us from hearing as well as usual, so it was not until we were close upon the bushes that fringed the banks of the streamlet that we clearly discerned the tones of Peterkin's voice in conversation with some one, who, however, seemed to make no reply to his remarks. At first I thought he must be talking to himself, but in this I was mistaken.

"Let's listen for a minute or two," whispered my companion, with a broad grin.

I nodded assent, and advancing cautiously, we peeped over the bushes. The sight that met our eyes was so irresistibly comic that we could scarcely restrain our laughter.

On a soft grassy spot, close to the warbling stream, lay our friend Peterkin, on his breast, resting on his elbows, and the forefinger of his right hand raised. Before him, not more than six inches from his nose, sat the most gigantic frog I ever beheld, looking inordinately fat and intensely stupid. My memory instantly flew back to the scene on the coral island where Jack and I had caught our friend holding a quiet conversation with the old cat, and I laughed internally as I thought on the proverb, "The boy is the father of the man."

"Frog," said Peterkin, in a low, earnest voice, at the same time shaking his finger slowly and fixing his eyes on the plethoric creature before him -- "frog, you may believe it or not as you please, but I do solemnly assure you that I never did behold such a great, big, fat monster as you are in all -- my -- life! What do you mean by it?"

As the frog made no reply to this question, but merely kept up an incessant puffing motion in its throat, Peterkin continued -- 

"Now, frog, answer me this one question -- and mind that you don't tell lies -- you may not be aware of it, but you can't plead ignorance, for I now tell you that it is exceedingly wicked to tell lies, whether you be a frog or only a boy. Now, tell me, did you ever read 'Aesop's Fables?'"

The frog continued to puff, but otherwise took no notice of its questioner. I could not help fancying that it was beginning to look sulky at being thus catechised.

"What, you won't speak! Well, I'll answer for you: you have not read 'Aesop's Fables;' if you had you would not go on blowing yourself up in that way. I'm only a little man, it's true -- more's the pity -- but if you imagine that by blowing and puffing like that you can ever come to blow up as big as me, you'll find yourself mistaken. You can't do it, so you needn't try. You'll only give yourself rheumatism. Now, will you stop? If you won't stop you'll burst -- there."

Peterkin paused here, and for some time continued to gaze intently in the face of his new friend. Presently he began again -- 

"Frog, what are you thinking of? Do you ever think? I don't believe you do. Tightened up as you seem to be with wind or fat or conceit, if you were to attempt to think the effort would crack your skin, so you'd better not try. But, after all, you've some good points about you. If it were not that you would become vain I would tell you that you've got a very good pair of bright eyes, and a pretty mottled skin, and that you're at least the size of a big chicken -- not a plucked but a full-fledged chicken. But, O frog, you've got a horribly ugly big mouth, and you're too fat -- a great deal too fat for elegance; though I have no doubt it's comfortable. Most fat people are comfortable. Oh! you would, would you?"

This last exclamation was caused by the frog making a lazy leap to one side, tumbling heavily over on its back, and rolling clumsily on to its legs again, as if it wished to escape from its tormentor, but had scarcely vigour enough to make the effort. Peterkin quietly lifted it up and placed it deliberately before him again in the same attitude as before.

"Don't try that again, old boy," said he, shaking his finger threateningly and frowning severely, "else I'll be obliged to give you a poke in the nose. I wonder, now, Frog, if you ever had a mother, or if you only grew out of the earth like a plant. Tell me, were you ever dandled in a mother's arms? Do you know anything of maternal affection, eh? Humph! I suspect not. You would not look so besottedly stupid if you did. I tell you what it is, old fellow: you're uncommonly bad company, and I've a good mind to ram my knife through you, and carry you into camp to my friend Ralph Rover, who'll skin and stuff you to such an extent that your own mother wouldn't know you, and carry you to England, and place you in a museum under a glass case, to be gazed at by nurses, and stared at by children, and philosophised about by learned professors. Hollo! none o' that now. Come, poor beast; I didn't mean to frighten you. There, sit still, and don't oblige me to stick you up again, and I'll not take you to Ralph."

The poor frog, which had made another attempt to escape, gazed vacantly at Peterkin again without moving, except in regard to the puffing before referred to.

"Now, frog, I'll have to bid you good afternoon. I'm sorry that time and circumstance necessitate our separation, but I'm glad that I have had the pleasure of meeting with you. Glad and sorry, frog, in the same breath! Did you ever philosophise on that point, eh? Is it possible, think you, to be glad and sorry at one and the same moment? No doubt a creature like you, with such a very small intellect, if indeed you have any at all, will say that it is not possible. But I know better. Why, what do you call hysterics? Ain't that laughing and crying at once --  sorrow and joy mixed? I don't believe you understand a word that I say. You great puffing blockhead, what are you staring at?"

The frog, as before, refused to make any reply; so our friend lay for some time chuckling and making faces at it. While thus engaged he happened to look up, and to our surprise as well as alarm we observed that he suddenly turned as pale as death.

To cock our rifles, and take a step forward so as to obtain a view in the direction in which he was gazing with a fixed and horrified stare, was our immediate impulse. The object that met our eyes on clearing the bushes was indeed well calculated to strike terror into the stoutest heart; for there, not three yards distant from the spot on which our friend lay, and partially concealed by foliage, stood a large black rhinoceros. It seemed to have just approached at that moment, and had been suddenly arrested, if not surprised, by the vision of Peterkin and the frog. There was something inexpressibly horrible in the sight of the great block of a head, with its mischievous-looking eyes, ungainly snout, and ponderous horn, in such close proximity to our friend. How it had got so near without its heavy tread being heard I cannot tell, unless it were that the noise of the turbulent brook had drowned the sound.

But we had no time either for speculation or contemplation. Both Jack and I instantly took aim -- he at the shoulder, as he afterwards told me; I at the monster's eye, into which, with, I am bound to confess, my usual precipitancy, I discharged both barrels.

The report seemed to have the effect of arousing Peterkin out of his state of fascination, for he sprang up and darted towards us. At the same instant the wounded rhinoceros crossed the spot which he had left with a terrific rush, and bursting through the bushes as if it had been a great rock falling from a mountain cliff, went headlong into the rivulet.

Without moving from the spot on which we stood, we recharged our pieces with a degree of celerity that, I am persuaded, we never before equalled. Peterkin at the same time caught up his rifle, which leaned against a tree hard by, and only a few seconds elapsed after the fall of the monster into the river ere we were upon its banks ready for another shot.

The portion of the bank of the stream at this spot happened to be rather steep, so that the rhinoceros, on regaining his feet, experienced considerable difficulty in the attempts to clamber out, which he made repeatedly and violently on seeing us emerge from among the bushes.

"Let us separate," said Jack; "it will distract his attention."

"Stay; you have blown out his eye, Ralph, I do believe," said Peterkin.

On drawing near to the struggling monster we observed that this was really the case. Blood streamed from the eye into which I had fired, and poured down his hideous jaws, dyeing the water in which he floundered.

"Look out!" cried Jack, springing to the right, in order to get on the animal's blind side as it succeeded in effecting a landing.

Peterkin instantly sprang in the same direction, while I bounded to the opposite side. I have never been able satisfactorily to decide in my own mind whether this act on my part was performed in consequence of a sudden, almost involuntary, idea that by so doing I should help to distract the creature's attention, or was the result merely of an accidental impulse. But whatever the cause, the effect was most fortunate; for the rhinoceros at once turned towards me, and thus, being blind in the other eye, lost sight of Jack and Peterkin, who with the rapidity almost of thought leaped close up to its side, and took close aim at the most vulnerable parts of its body. As they were directly opposite to me, I felt that I ran some risk of receiving their fire. But before I had time either to reflect that they could not possibly miss so large an object at so short a distance, or to get out of the way, the report of both their heavy rifles rang through the forest, and the rhinoceros fell dead almost at my feet.

"Hurrah!" shouted Peterkin, throwing his cap into the air at this happy consummation, and sitting down on the haunch of our victim.

"Shame on you, Peterkin," said I, as I reloaded his rifle for him -- "shame on you to crow thus over a fallen foe!"

"Ha, boy! it's all very well for you to say that now, but you know well enough that you would rather have lost your ears than have missed such a chance as this. But, I say, it'll puzzle you to stuff that fellow, won't it?"

"No doubt of it," answered Jack, as he drew a percussion cap from his pouch, and placed it carefully on the nipple of his rifle. "Ralph will not find it easy; and it's a pity, too, not to take it home with us, for under a glass case it would make such a pretty and appropriate pendant, in his museum, to that interesting frog with which you -- "

"Oh, you sneaking eavesdropper!" cried Peterkin, laughing. "It is really too bad that a fellow can't have a little tete-a-tete with a friend but you and Ralph must be thrusting your impertinent noses in the way."

"Not to mention the rhinoceros," observed Jack.

"Ah! to be sure -- the rhinoceros; yes, I might have expected to find you in such low company, for 'birds of a feather,' you know, are said to 'flock together.'"

"If there be any truth in that," said I, "you are bound, on the same ground, to identify yourself with the frog."

"By the way," cried Peterkin, starting up and looking around the spot on which his interesting tete-a-tete had taken place, "where is the frog? It was just here that -- Ah! -- oh! -- oh! poor, poor frog!

"'Your course is run, your days are o'er; We'll never have a chat no more,'

"As Shakespeare has it. Well, well, who would have thought that so conversable and intelligent a creature should have come to such a melancholy end?"

The poor frog had indeed come to a sad and sudden end, and I felt quite sorry for it, although I could not help smiling at my companion's quaint manner of announcing the fact.

Not being gifted with the activity of Peterkin, it had stood its ground when the rhinoceros charged, and had received an accidental kick from the great foot of that animal which had broken its back and killed it outright.

"There's one comfort, however," observed Jack, as we stood over the frog's body: "you have been saved the disagreeable necessity of killing it yourself, Ralph."

This was true, and I was not sorry that the rhinoceros had done me this service; for, to say truth, I have ever felt the necessity of killing animals in cold blood to be one of the few disagreeable points in the otherwise delightful life of a naturalist. To shoot animals in the heat and excitement of the chase I have never felt to be particularly repulsive or difficult; but the spearing of an insect, or the deliberate killing of an unresisting frog, are duties which I have ever performed with a feeling of deep self-abhorrence.

Carefully packing my frog in leaves, and placing it in my pouch, I turned with my companions to quit the scene of our late encounter and return to our camp, on arriving at which we purposed sending back Makarooroo to cut off the horn of the rhinoceros; for we agreed that, as it was impossible to carry away the entire carcass, we ought at least to secure the horn as a memorial of our adventure.



Chapter Twenty Three.

We See Strange Things, And Give Our Negro Friends The Slip.

During the two following days we passed through a country that was more thickly covered with the indiarubber vine than any place we had before met with in our African travels. I could not help feeling regret that such a splendid region should be almost, if not altogether, unknown and useless to civilised man. There seemed to be an unlimited supply of caoutchouc; but the natives practised a method of gathering it which had the effect of destroying the vine.

One day, some weeks after this, we came upon the habitation of a most remarkable species of monkey, named the Nshiego Mbouve, which we had often heard of, but had not up to that time been so fortunate as to see. Being exceedingly anxious to observe how this remarkable creature made use of its singular house, Peterkin and I lay down near the place, and secreting ourselves in the bushes, patiently awaited the arrival of the monkey, while Jack went off in another direction to procure something for supper.

"I don't believe he'll come home to-night," said Peterkin, after we had lain down. "People never do come in when any one chances to be waiting for them. The human race seems to be born to disappointment. Did you never notice, Ralph, how obstinately contrary and cross-grained things go when you want them to go otherwise?"

"I don't quite understand you," said I.

"Of course you don't. Yours seems to be a mind that can never take anything in unless it is hammered in by repetition."

"Come now, Peterkin, don't become, yourself, an illustration of your own remark in reference to cross-grained things."

"Well, I won't. But seriously, Ralph, have you not observed, in the course of your observant life, that when you have particular business with a man, and go to his house or office, you are certain to find him out, to use the common phrase? It would be more correct, however, to say 'you are certain not to find him in.'"

"You are uncommonly particular, Peterkin."

"Truly I had need to be so, with such an uncommonly stupid audience."

"Thank you. Well?"

"Well, have you never observed that if you have occasion to call at a house where you have never been before, the number of that particular house is not in its usual place, and you find it after a search quite away from where it ought to be? Has it never struck you that when you take out your umbrella, the day is certain to become hot and sunny; while, if you omit to carry it with you, it is sure to rain?"

"From all of which you conclude," said I, "that the Nshiego will not come home to-night?"

"Exactly so; that is my meaning precisely."

After Peterkin said this, we relapsed into silence; and it was well that we did so, for had we continued our conversation even in the whispering tones in which it had up to that time been conducted, we should have frightened away the ape which now came, as it were, to rebuke Peterkin for his unbelief.

Coming quickly forward, the Nshiego Mbouve chambered quickly up the tree where its nest was built. This nest was not a structure into which it clambered, but a shelter or canopy formed of boughs with their leaves, somewhat in shape like an umbrella, under which it sat. The construction of this shelter exhibited a good deal of intelligent ingenuity on the part of the ape; for it was tied to the tree by means of wild vines and creepers, and formed a neat, comfortable roof, that was quite capable of shedding the night dews or heavy rains, and thus protecting its occupant.

We were greatly amused by the manner in which the creature proceeded to make itself comfortable. Just below the canopy was a small branch which jutted out horizontally from the stem of the tree. On this branch the ape seated itself, its feet and haunches resting thereon. Then it threw one arm round the tree, and hugging that lovingly to its side, gave what appeared to me to be a small sigh of satisfaction, and prepared to go to sleep.

At this Peterkin chuckled audibly. The Nshiego's eyes opened at once. I cocked my gun and took aim. The desire to procure a specimen was very strong within me, but an unconquerable aversion to kill an animal in such cozy circumstances restrained me. The Nshiego got up in alarm. I pointed the gun, but could not fire. It began to descend. I pulled the trigger, and, I am happy to add, missed my aim altogether, to the intense delight of Peterkin, who filled the woods with laughter, while the Nshiego Mbouve, dropping to the ground, ran shrieking from the spot.

My forbearance at this time was afterwards repaid by my obtaining two much finer specimens of this shelter-building ape, both of which were killed by Peterkin.

On quitting this place we had a narrow escape, the recollection of which still fills me with horror. We were walking rapidly back towards our encampment, chatting as we went, when Peterkin suddenly put his foot on what appeared to be the dead branch of a tree. No sooner had he done so than the curling folds of a black snake fully ten feet long scattered the dry leaves into the air, and caused us both to dart aside with a yell of terror.

I have thought that in the complicated and wonderful mechanism of man there lies a species of almost involuntary muscular power which enables him to act in all cases of sudden danger with a degree of prompt celerity that he could not possibly call forth by a direct act of volition. At all events, on the present emergency, without in the least degree knowing what I was about, I brought my gun from my shoulder into a horizontal position, and blew the snake's head off almost in an instant.

I have pondered this subject, and from the fact that while at one time a man may be prompt and courageous in case of sudden danger, at another time the same man may become panic-stricken and helpless, I have come to the conclusion that the all-wise Creator would teach us -- even the bravest among us -- the lesson of our dependence upon each other, as well as our dependence upon Himself, and would have us know that while at one time we may prove a tower of strength and protection to our friends, at another time our friends may have to afford succour and protection to us.

I have often wondered, in reference to this, that many men seem to take pride in bold independence, when it is an obvious fact that every man is dependent on his fellow, and that this mutual dependence is one of the chief sources of human happiness.

The black snake which I had killed turned out to be one of a very venomous kind, whose bite is said to be fatal, so that we had good cause to be thankful, and to congratulate ourselves on our escape.

In this region of Africa we were particularly fortunate in what we saw and encountered, as the narrative of our experiences on the day following the above incidents will show.

We had scarcely advanced a few miles on our journey on the morning of that day, when we came upon a part of the country where the natives had constructed a curious sort of trap for catching wild animals; and it happened that a large band of natives were on the point of setting out for a grand hunt at that time.

We were greeted with immense delight on our arrival, for those natives, we soon discovered, had already heard of our exploits in the lands of the gorilla, and regarded us as the greatest hunters that had ever been born. After a short conversation with the chief, through the medium of Makarooroo, we arranged to rest there a day, and accompany them on their hunting expedition; and the better to secure their good will, we presented some of the head men with a few of the beads which we still possessed. Then hauling our canoe out of the water, we prepared ourselves for the chase.

After a long and tedious march through somewhat dense jungle, we came upon the ground, which was partly open, partly clothed with trees and shrubs. Here the natives, who numbered several hundreds, spread themselves out in a long semicircular line, in order to drive the game into the trap.

As we followed them, or rather formed part of the line, I overheard the following conversation between Peterkin and Makarooroo, who chanced to be together.

"Now, Mak," said the former, examining the caps of his rifle, "explain to me what sort of trap this is that we're coming to, and what sort of brutes we may expect to find in it."

"De trap, massa," replied our faithful follower, drawing the back of his hand across his mouth -- "de trap am be call hopo -- "

"Called what-o?" inquired Peterkin.

"Hopo."

"Oh! go on."

"An' hims be made ob great number oh sticks tumble down -- an' hole at de end ob dat; an' de beasties dat goes in be zebros, elosphants, eelands, buff'los, gaffs, nocrices, noos, an' great more noders ob which me forgit de names."

"Oh! you forgit de names, do you?"

"Yis, massa."

"Ah! it wouldn't be a great loss, Mak, if you were to forget the names of those you remember."

The conversation was interrupted at this point by the appearance of a buffalo, which showed that we were drawing near to the scene of action. But as Makarooroo's description is not remarkable for lucidity, I may explain here that the hopo, or trap, consists of two parts; one part may be termed the conducting hedges, the other the pit at their termination, and into which the game is driven. The conducting hedges are formed in the shape of the letter V. At the narrow extremity there is a narrow lane, at the end of which is the terminating pit. This pit is about eight feet deep and fifteen feet broad, and its edges are made to overlap in such a way that once the animals are in it, they have no chance whatever of getting out again. The surface of the pit is concealed by a thin crust of green rushes, and the hedges are sometimes a mile long, and nearly the same width apart at the outer extremities.

We were still a considerable distance from the outer ends of the hedges, when the natives spread out as above described, and I am convinced that our line extended over at least four miles of ground. The circle, of course, narrowed as they advanced, shouting wildly, in order to drive the game into the enclosure.

That the country was teeming with game soon became apparent, for ever and anon as we advanced a herd of gnus or buffaloes or hartbeests would dart affrighted from their cover, and sweep over the open ground into another place of shelter, out of which they were again driven as the line advanced. In the course of half an hour we drove out hartbeests, zebras, gnus, buffaloes, giraffes, rhinoceroses, and many other kinds of smaller game, either singly or in herds.

"Now, lads," said Jack, approaching Peterkin and me as we walked together, "it is quite evident that if we wish to see this sport in perfection we must get outside the hedge, and run along towards the pit; for there, in the natural course of things, we may expect the grand climax. What say you? Shall we go?"

"Agreed," said I.

"Ditto," cried Peterkin.

So without more words we turned aside, followed by Makarooroo, leaped the hedge, and running down along it soon reached the edge of the pit.

Here we found a number of the natives assembled with spears, looking eagerly through the interstices of the hedges in expectation of the advancing herds. We took up our stand on a convenient spot, and prepared to wait patiently. But our patience was not severely tried. We had not been more than five minutes stationed when the noise of the closing line was heard, and a herd of buffaloes dashed wildly out from a small piece of jungle in which they had sought shelter, and galloped over the plain towards us. Suddenly they halted, and stood for a moment snuffing the air, as if uncertain what to do; while we could see, even at that distance, that every muscle of their bodies trembled with mingled rage and terror. Before they could decide, a herd of gnus burst from the same place; and presently a dozen zebras galloped out, tossing up their heels and heads in magnificent indignation. These last scattered, and approached the hedges; which caused several natives to dart into the enclosure, who from beneath the shelter of oval shields as large as themselves, threw their spears with unerring certainty into the sides of the terrified creatures.

At this moment there was a general rush from the scattered groups of trees and clumps of jungle, for the animals were now maddened with terror, not only at the shouts of their human persecutors, but at their own wild cries and the increasing thunder of their tread.

The shouting and tumult now became excessive. It was almost bewildering. I looked round upon the faces of the negroes nearest to me. They seemed to be almost insane with suppressed excitement, and their dark faces worked in a manner that was quite awful to witness.

Presently there was a general and indiscriminate rush of all kinds of wild animals towards the narrow end of the hopo. The natives pressed in upon them with wild cries. Spears flew in all directions. Ere long the plain was covered with wounded animals struggling and bellowing in their death-agonies. As the rushing multitude drew nearer to the fatal pit, they became crowded together, and now the men near us began to play their part.

"Look out, Jack!" I cried, as a buffalo bull with glaring eyes and foaming jaws made a desperate effort to leap over the barrier in our very faces.

Jack raised his rifle and fired; at the same instant a spear was sent into the buffalo's breast, and it fell back to form a stumbling-block in the way of the rushing mass.

The report of the rifle caused the whole herd to swerve from our side so violently that they bore down the other side, until I began to fear the hedge would give way altogether; but they were met by the spears and the furious yells of the natives there, and again swept on towards the narrow lane.

And now the head of the bellowing mass came to the edge of the pit. Those in front seemed to suspect danger, for they halted suddenly; but the rush of those behind forced them on. In another moment the thin covering gave way, and a literal cataract of huge living creatures went surging down into the abyss.

The scene that followed was terrible to witness; and I could not regard it with other than feelings of intense horror, despite my knowledge of the fact that a large tribe of natives depended on the game then slain for their necessary food. The maddened animals attempted to leap out of the pit, but the overlapping edges already referred to effectually prevented this until the falling torrent filled it up; then some of them succeeded in leaping out from off the backs of their smothered comrades. These, however, were quickly met and speared by the natives, while ever and anon the great mass was upheaved by the frantic struggles of some gigantic creature that was being smothered at the bottom.

While this scene of wholesale destruction was going on, Makarooroo came up to me and begged me, with mysterious looks, to follow him out of the crowd.

I obeyed, and when we had got away from the immediate neighbourhood of the turmoil, I said, -- "Well, Mak, what's wrong?"

"De chief, massa, hims tell me few moments ago dat canoe wid Mbango and oomans hab pass dis way to-morrow."

"To-morrow!" I exclaimed.

"No, me forgit; hab pass yistumday."

"Indeed!"

"Yis, an' de chief hims say hims want us to stop wid him and go hunt for week or two. P'raps he no let us go 'way."

"That's just possible, Mak. Have you told Jack?"

"No, massa."

"Then go bring him and Peterkin hither at once."

In a few minutes my companions were with me, and we held a brief earnest consultation as to what we should do.

"I think we should tell the chief we are anxious to be off at once, and leave him on good terms," said I.

Peterkin objected to this. "No," said he; "we cannot easily explain why we are anxious to be off so hastily. I counsel flight. They won't find out that we are gone until it is too late to follow."

Jack agreed with this view, so of course I gave in, though I could not in my heart approve of such a method of sneaking away. But our guide seemed also to be exceedingly anxious to be off, so we decided; and slipping quietly away under the shelter of the hedge, while the natives were still busy with their bloody work, we soon gained the forest. Here we had no difficulty in retracing our steps to the village, where, having picked up our little companion, Njamie's son, who had been left to play with the little boys of the place, we embarked, swept down the stream, and were soon far beyond the chance of pursuit.



Chapter Twenty Four.

A Long Chase, And A Happy Termination Thereof.

Knowing that unless we advanced with more than ordinary speed we could not hope to overtake our friends for several days -- a stern chase being proverbially a long one -- we travelled a great part of the night as well as all day; and on our third day after quitting the scene of the curious hunt described in the last chapter, we descried the fugitives descending the river about a quarter of a mile ahead of us.

Unhappily we made a stupid mistake at this time. Instead of waiting until we were near enough to be recognised, we shouted to our friends the moment we saw their canoe. I cannot say that we knew them to be our friends, but we had every reason to suppose so. The result of our shout was that they supposed us to be enemies, and paddled away as if for their lives. It was in vain that we tried to show by signs that we were not enemies.

"Yell!" cried Peterkin, turning to Makarooroo, who sat close behind him.

Our guide opened his huge mouth, and gave utterance to a yell that might well have struck terror into the heart of Mars himself.

"Stop! stay!" cried Peterkin hastily. "I didn't mean a war-yell; I meant a yell of -- of peace."

"Me no hab a yell ob peace," said Makarooroo, with a look of perplexity.

"I should not suppose you had," observed Jack, with a quiet laugh, as he dipped his paddle more energetically than ever into the stream. -- "The fact is, Peterkin, that we shall have to go in for a long chase. There is no doubt about it. I see that there are at least four men in their canoe, and if one of them is Mbango, as we have reason to believe, a stout and expert arm guides them. But ho! give way! 'never venture, never win.'"

With that we all plied our paddles with our utmost might. The chase soon became very exciting. Ere long it became evident that the crews of the two canoes were pretty equally matched, for we did not, apparently, diminish the distance between us by a single inch during the next half-hour.

"What if it turns out not to be Mbango and his party after all?" suggested Peterkin, who wielded his light paddle with admirable effect.

Jack, who sat in the bow, replied that in that case we should have to make the best apology and explanation we could to the niggers, and console ourselves with the consciousness of having done our best.

For some time the rapid dip of our paddles and the rush of our canoe through the water were the only sounds that were heard. Then Peterkin spoke again. He could never keep silence for any great length of time.

"I say, Jack, we'll never do it. If we had only another man, or even a boy." (Peterkin glanced at Njamie's little son, who lay sound asleep at the bottom of the boat.) "No, he won't do; we might as well ask a mosquito to help us."

"I say, lads, isn't one of the crew of that canoe a woman?" said Jack, looking over his shoulder, but not ceasing for an instant to ply his paddle.

"Can't tell," answered Peterkin. -- "What say you, Mak?"

"Ye-is, massa," replied the guide, with some hesitation. "Me tink dat am be one ooman's arm what wag de paddil. Oh! yis, me sartin sure now, dat am a ooman."

"That being the case," observed Jack, in a tone of satisfaction, "the chase won't last much longer, for a woman's muscles can't hold out long at such a pace. Ho! give way once more."

In less than five minutes the truth of Jack's remark became apparent, for we began rapidly to overhaul the fugitives. This result acted with a double effect: while it inspirited us to additional exertion, it depressed those whom we were pursuing, and so rendered them less capable than before of contending with us. There was evidently a good deal of excitement and gesticulation among them. Suddenly the man in the stern laid down his paddle, and stooping down seized a gun, with which, turning round, he took deliberate aim at us.

"That's rather awkward," observed Jack, in a cool, quiet way, as if the awkwardness of the case had no reference whatever to him personally.

We did not, however, check our advance. The man fired, and the ball came skipping over the water and passed us at a distance of about two yards.

"Hum! I expected as much," observed Jack. "When a bad shot points a bad gun at you, your best plan is to stand still and take your chance. In such a case the chance is not a bad one. Hollo! the rascal seems about to try it again. I say, boys, we must stop this."

We had now gained so much on the fugitives that we had reason to hope that we might by signs enable them to understand that we were not enemies. We had to make the attempt rather abruptly, for as Jack uttered his last remark, the man in the stern of the canoe we were chasing, having reloaded his gun, turned round to aim at us again. At the same time the rest of the crew suddenly ceased to paddle, in order to enable their comrade to take a steady aim. It was evident that they rested all their hopes upon that shot disabling one of our number, and so enabling them to escape. Seeing this, Makarooroo in desperation seized his rifle and levelled it.

"No, no," said Peterkin, hastily holding up his hand. "Give me your rifle, Mak; and yours, Ralph. Now then, stop paddling for a moment; I'll try an experiment."

So saying, he sprang to his feet, and grasping a rifle in each hand, held them high above his head, intending thus to show that we were well-armed, but that we did not intend to use our weapons.

The device was happily successful: the man in the other canoe lowered the gun with which he was in the act of taking aim at us.

"Now, boys, paddle slowly towards the bank," cried Peterkin, laying down the rifles quickly and standing erect again with his empty hands extended in the air, to confirm the fugitives in regard to our good intentions. They understood the sign, and also turned toward the bank, where in a few minutes both parties landed, at the distance of about two hundred yards from each other.

"Mak, you had better advance alone," said Jack. "If it is Mbango and his friends, they will know you at once. Don't carry your rifle; you won't need it."

"Nay, Jack," I interposed; "you do not act with your usual caution. Should it chance not to be Mbango, it were well that Mak should have his rifle and a companion to support him."

"O most sapient Ralph," said Peterkin, "don't you know that Jack and I have nothing to do but sit down on this bank, each with a double-barrel in his hand, and if anything like foul play should be attempted, four of the enemy should infallibly bite the dust at the same time? But you'd better go with Mak, since you're so careful of him. We will engage to defend you both. -- Hollo, Puggy! take the line of our canoe here and fasten it to yonder bush."

The latter part of this remark was addressed to Njamie's little boy, whose name we had never learned, and who had been called Puggy by Peterkin -- not, let me remark, in anything approaching to a contemptuous spirit. He evidently meant it as a title of endearment. We had tacitly accepted it, and so had the lad, who for some time past had answered to the name of Puggy, in utter ignorance, of course, as to its signification.

Mak and I now advanced unarmed towards the negroes, and in a few seconds we mutually recognised each other. I was overjoyed to observe the well-known face of Okandaga, who no sooner recognised her lover than she uttered a joyful shout and ran towards him. I at the same time advanced to Mbango, and grasping his hand shook it warmly; but that good-hearted chief was not satisfied with such a tame expression of good will. Seizing me by the shoulders, he put forward his great flat nose and rubbed mine heartily therewith. My first impulse was to draw back, but fortunately my better judgment came to my aid in time, and prevented me from running the risk of hurting the feelings of our black friend. And I had at that time lived long enough to know that there is nothing that sinks so bitterly into the human heart as the repulse, however slightly, of a voluntary demonstration of affection. I had made up my mind that if the dirtiest negro in all Africa should offer to rub noses with me, I would shut my eyes and submit.

I observed among the crew of Mbango's canoe a female figure who instantly attracted my attention and awakened my sympathy. She was seated on a rock, paying no attention whatever to the events that were occurring so near to her, and which, for aught she could tell, might be to her matter of life or death. Her hands hung idly by her side; her body was bowed forward; her head drooped on her breast; and her whole appearance indicated a depth of woe such as I have never before seen equalled.

I pointed to her and looked at Mbango in surprise. He looked first at the woman and then at me, and shook his head mournfully; but being unable to speak to me, or I to him, of course I could not gather much from his looks.

I was about to turn to our guide, when the woman raised her head a little, so that her face was exposed. I at once recognised the features of Njamie, Mbango's favourite wife, and I was now at no loss to divine the cause of her grief.

Starting up in haste, I ran away back at full speed towards the spot where our canoe lay. Jack and Peterkin, seeing how matters stood, were by that time advancing to meet us, and the little boy followed. I passed them without uttering a word, seized the boy by the wrist, and dragged him somewhat violently towards the place where his mother sat.

"Hollo, Ralph," shouted Peterkin as I passed, "see that you don't damage my Puggy, else you'll have to -- "

I heard no more. The next instant I stood beside Njamie, and placed her boy before her. I have never in my life witnessed such a mingling of intense eagerness, surprise, and joy, as was expressed by the poor woman when her eyes fell on the face of her child. For one moment she gazed at him, and the expressions I have referred to flitted, or rather flashed, across her dusky countenance; then giving utterance to a piercing shriek, she sprang forward and clasped her son to her bosom.

I would not have missed that sight for the world. I know not very well what my thoughts were at the time, but the memory of that scene has often since, in my musings, filled me with inexpressible gladness; and in pondering the subject, I have felt that the witnessing of that meeting has given additional force to the line in Scripture wherein the word "love" alone is deemed sufficiently comprehensive to describe the whole character of the Almighty.

Here, on the one hand, I beheld unutterable, indescribable woe; on the other hand, unutterable, inconceivable joy -- both, I should suppose, in their extremest degree, and both resulting from pure and simple love. I pondered this much at the time; I have pondered it often since. It is a subject of study which I recommend to all who chance to read this page.



Chapter Twenty Five.

I Have A Desperate Encounter And A Narrow Escape.

The happiness that now beamed in the faces of Makarooroo, Okandaga, and Njamie was a sufficient reward to us for all the trouble we had taken and all the risk we had run on their account. Poor Njamie was exceedingly grateful to us. She sought by every means in her power to show this, and among other things, hearing us call her son by the name of Puggy, she at once adopted it, to the immense amusement and delight of Peterkin.

After the first excitement of our meeting had subsided somewhat, we consulted together as to what we should now do. On the one hand, we were unwilling to quit the scene of our hunting triumphs and adventures; on the other hand, Makarooroo and his bride were anxious to reach the mission stations on the coast and get married in the Christian manner.

"Our opposing interests are indeed a little perplexing," said Jack, after some conversation had passed on the subject. -- "No doubt, Mak, you and Mbango with his friends might reach the coast safely enough without us; but then what should we do without an interpreter?"

Our poor guide, whose troubles seemed as though they would never end, sighed deeply and glanced at his bride with a melancholy countenance as he replied -- 

"Me'll go wid you, massa, an' Okandaga'll go to coast an' wait dere for me come."

"Ha!" ejaculated Peterkin, "that's all very well, Mak, but you'll do nothing of the sort. That plan won't do, so we'll have to try again."

"I agree with you, Peterkin," observed Jack. "That plan certainly will not do; but I cannot think of any other that will, so we must just exercise a little self-denial for once, give up all further attacks on the wild beasts of Africa, and accompany Mak to the coast."

"Could we not manage a compromise?" said I.

"What be a cumprumoise?" asked Makarooroo, who had been glancing anxiously from one to the other as we conversed.

Peterkin laid hold of his chin, pursed up his mouth, and looked at me with a gleeful leer.

"There's a chance for you, Ralph," said he; "why don't you explain?"

"Because it's not easy to explain," said I, considering the best way in which to convey the meaning of such a word. -- "A compromise, Mak, is -- is a bargain, a compact -- at least so Johnson puts it -- "

"Yes," interposed Peterkin; "so you see, Mak, when you agree with a trader to get him an elephant-tusk, that's a cumprumoise, according to Johnson."

"No, no, Mak," said I quickly; "Peterkin is talking nonsense. It is not a bargain of that kind; it's a -- a -- You know every question has two sides?"

"Yis, massa."

"Well, suppose you took one side."

"Yis."

"And suppose I took the other side."

"Then suppose we were to agree to forsake our respective sides and meet, as it were, half-way, and thus hold the same middle course -- "

"Ay, down the middle and up again; that's it, Mak," again interrupted Peterkin -- "that's a cumprumoise. In short, to put it in another and a clearer light, suppose that I were to resolve to hit you an awful whack on one side of your head, and suppose that Ralph were to determine to hit you a frightful bang on the other side, then suppose that we were to agree to give up those amiable intentions, and instead thereof to give you, unitedly, one tremendous smash on the place where, if you had one, the bridge of your nose would be -- that would be a cumprumoise."

"Ho! ha! ha! hi!" shouted our guide, rolling over on the grass and splitting himself with laughter; for Makarooroo, like the most of his race, was excessively fond of a joke, no matter how bad, and was always ready on the shortest notice to go off into fits of laughter, if he had only the remotest idea of what the jest meant. He had become so accustomed at last to expect something jocular from Peterkin, that he almost invariably opened his mouth to be ready whenever he observed our friend make any demonstration that gave indication of his being about to speak.

From the mere force of sympathy Mbango began to laugh also, and I know not how long the two would have gone on, had not Jack checked them by saying -- 

"I suspect we are not very well fitted to instruct the unenlightened mind," ("Ho -- hi!" sighed Makarooroo, gathering himself up and settling down to listen), "and it seems to me that you'll have to try again, Peterkin, some other mode of explanation."

"Very good, by all means," said our friend. -- "Now, Mak, look here. You want to go there" (pointing to the coast with his left hand), "and we want to go there" (pointing to the interior with his right hand). "Now if we both agree to go there," (pointing straight before him with his nose), "that will be a cumprumoise. D'ye understand?"

"Ho yis, massa, me compiperhend now."

"Exactly so," said I; "that's just it. There is a branch of this river that takes a great bend away to the north before it turns towards the sea, is there not? I think I have heard yourself say so before now."

"Yis, massa, hall right."

"Well, let us go by that branch. We shall be a good deal longer on the route, but we shall be always nearing the end of our journey, and at the same time shall pass through a good deal of new country, in which we may hope to see much game."

"Good," said Jack; "you have wisdom with you for once, Ralph -- it seems feasible. -- What say you, Mak? I think it a capital plan."

"Yis, massa, it am a copitle plan, sure 'nuff."

The plan being thus arranged and agreed to, we set about the execution of it at once, and ere long our two canoes were floating side by side down the smooth current of the river.

The route which we had chosen led us, as I had before suspected, into the neighbourhood of the gorilla country, and I was much gratified to learn from Mbango, who had travelled over an immense portion of south-western Africa, that it was not improbable we should meet with several of those monstrous apes before finally turning off towards the coast. I say that I was much gratified to learn this; but I little imagined that I was at that time hastening towards a conflict that well-nigh proved fatal to me, and the bare remembrance of which still makes me shudder.

It occurred several weeks after the events just related. We had gone ashore for the purpose of hunting, our supply of provisions chancing at that time to be rather low. Feeling a desire to wander through the woods in solitude for a short time, I separated from my companions. I soon came to regret this deeply, for about an hour afterwards I came upon the tracks of a gorilla. Being armed only with my small-bore double rifle, and not being by any means confident of my shooting powers, I hesitated some time before making up my mind to follow the tracks.

At first I thought of retracing my steps and acquainting my comrades with the discovery I had made; but the little probability there was of my finding them within several hours deterred me. Besides, I felt ashamed to confess that I had been afraid to prosecute the chase alone; so, after pondering the matter a little, I decided on advancing.

Before doing so, however, I carefully examined the caps of my rifle and loosened my long hunting-knife in its sheath. Then I cautiously followed up the track, making as little noise as possible, for I was well aware of the watchfulness of the animal I was pursuing.

The footprints at first were not very distinct, but ere long I came on a muddy place where they were deeply imprinted, and my anxiety was somewhat increased by observing that they were uncommonly large -- the largest I had ever seen -- and that, therefore, they had undoubtedly been made by one of those solitary and gigantic males, which are always found to be the most savage.

I had scarcely made this discovery when I came unexpectedly on the gorilla itself. It was seated at the foot of a tree about fifty yards from the spot where I stood, the space between us being comparatively clear of underwood. In an instant he observed me, and rose, at the same time giving utterance to one of those diabolical roars which I have before referred to as being so terrible.

I halted, and felt an irresistible inclination to fire at once; but remembering the oft-repeated warnings of my companions, I restrained myself. At that moment I almost wished, I freely confess, that the gorilla would run away. But the monster had no such intention. Again uttering his horrible roar, he began slowly to advance, at the same time beating his drum-like chest with his doubled fist.

I now felt that my hour of trial had come. I must face the gorilla boldly, and act with perfect coolness. The alternative was death. As the hideous creature came on, I observed that he was considerably larger than the biggest we had yet seen; but, strange to say, this fact made no deeper impression upon me. I suppose that my whole mental and nervous being was wound up to the utmost possible state of tension. I felt that I was steady and able to brave the onset. But I was not aware of the severity of the test to which I was destined to be subjected. Instead of coming quickly on and deciding my fate at once, the savage animal advanced slowly, sometimes a step or two at a time, and then pausing for a moment ere it again advanced. Sometimes it even sat down on its haunches for a second or two, as if the weight of its overgrown body were too much for its hind legs; but it did not cease all that time to beat its chest, and roar, and twist its features into the most indescribable contortions. I suppose it took nearly five minutes to advance to within twelve yards of me, but those five minutes seemed to me an hour. I cannot describe the mental agony I endured.

When within ten yards of me I could restrain myself no longer. I raised my rifle, aimed at its chest, and fired. With a terrible roar it advanced. Again I fired, but without effect, for the gorilla rushed upon me. In despair, I drew my hunting-knife and launched it full at the brute's chest with all my might. I saw the glittering blade enter it as the enormous paw was raised to beat me down. I threw up my rifle to ward off the fatal blow, and at the same moment sprang to one side, in the hope of evading it. The stock of the rifle was shattered to pieces in an instant, and the blow, which would otherwise have fallen full on my head or chest, was diverted slightly, and took effect on my shoulder, the blade of which was smashed as I was hurled with stunning violence to the ground. For one moment I felt as if I were falling headlong down a precipice; the next, I became unconscious.

On recovering, I found myself lying on my back at the bottom of what appeared to be a large pit. I must have lain there for a considerable time, for I felt cold and stiff; and when I attempted to move, my wounded shoulder caused me unutterable anguish. I knew, however, that I must certainly perish if I did not exert myself; so with much difficulty I crept out of the pit. The first object that met my eyes, on rising to my feet, was the carcass of my late antagonist; which, on examination, I found, though badly wounded by both bullets, had eventually been killed by the knife. It must have died almost immediately after giving me the blow that had hurled me into the pit. I had not observed this pit, owing to the screen of bushes that surrounded it, but I have now no doubt that it was the means of saving my life.

My recollections of what followed this terrible adventure are exceedingly confused. I remember that I wandered about in a state of dreamy uncertainty, endeavouring to retrace my steps to our encampment. I have a faint recollection of meeting, to my surprise, with Jack and Peterkin, and of their tender expressions of sympathy; and I have a very vivid remembrance of the agony I endured when Jack set my broken shoulder-blade and bandaged my right arm tightly to my side. After that, all was a confused dream, in which all the adventures I had ever had with wild beasts were enacted over again, and many others besides that had never taken place at all.

Under the influence of fever, I lay in a state of delirium for many days in the bottom of the canoe; and when my unclouded consciousness was at length restored to me, I found myself lying in a bed, under the hospitable roof of a missionary, the windows of whose house looked out upon the sea.

And now, reader, the record of our adventures is complete. During the few weeks that I spent with the kind missionary of the Cross, I gained strength rapidly, and amused myself penning the first chapters of this book. Makarooroo and Okandaga were married, and soon became useful members of the Christian community on that part of the African coast. Mbango and his friends also joined the missionary for a time, but ultimately returned to the interior, whither I have no doubt they carried some of the good influences that they had received on the coast along with them.

King Jambai proved faithful to his engagement. All our packages and boxes of specimens arrived safely at the coast; and when unpacked for examination, and displayed in the large schoolroom of the station, the gorillas, and other rare and wonderful animals, besides curious plants, altogether formed a magnificent collection, the like of which has not yet been seen in Great Britain, and probably never will be.

When I was sufficiently restored to stand the voyage, Jack and Peterkin and I embarked in a homeward-bound trading vessel, and taking leave of our kind friends of the coast, and of Makarooroo and Okandaga, who wept much at the prospect of separation from us, we set sail for Old England.

"Farewell," said I, as we leaned over the vessel's side and gazed sadly at the receding shore -- "farewell to you, kind missionaries and faithful negro friends."

"Ay," added Peterkin, with a deep sigh, "and fare-you-well, ye monstrous apes; gorillas, fare-you-well!"

<eob>

Bully And Bawly No-Tail (The Jumping Frogs)

By

Howard R. Garis



Story I

Bully And Bawly Go Swimming


Once upon a time, not so very many years ago, there were two little frog boys who lived in a little pond near a nice big farm. It wasn't very far from where Peetie and Jackie Bow-Wow, the puppy dogs, had their home, and the frogs' house was right next door to the pen where Lulu and Alice and Jimmie Wibblewobble the ducks lived.

There was Bully No-Tail, and his brother Bawly No-Tail, and the reason Bawly had such a funny name was because when he was a little baby he used to cry a good bit. And once he cried so much that he made a lot more water in the pond than should have been there, and it ran over, just like when you put too much milk in your glass, and made the ground all wet.

The last name of the frogs was "No-Tail," because, being frogs, you see, they had no tails.

But now Bawly was larger, and he didn't cry so much, I'm glad to say. And with the frog boys lived their papa and mamma, and also a nice, big, green and yellow spotted frog who was named Grandpa Croaker. Oh, he was one of the nicest frogs I have ever known, and I have met quite a number.

One day when Bully and Bawly were hopping along on the ground, close to the edge of the pond, Bully suddenly said:

"Bawly, I think I can beat you in a swimming race."

"I don't believe you can," spoke Bawly, as he thoughtfully scratched his left front leg on a piece of hickory bark.

"Well, we'll try," said Bully. "We'll see who can first swim to the other side of the pond, and whoever does it will get a stick of peppermint candy."

"Where can we get the candy?" asked Bawly. "Have you got it? For if you have I wish you'd give me a bite before we jump in the water, Bully."

"No, I haven't it," replied his brother. "But I know Grandpa Croaker will give it to us after the race. Come on, let's jump in."

So the next minute into the pond jumped those two frog boys, and they didn't take off their shoes or their stockings, nor even their coats or waists, nor yet their neckties. For you see they wore the kind of clothes which water couldn't hurt, as they were made of rubber, like a raincoat. Their mamma had to make them that kind, because they went in the water so often.

Into the pond the frogs jumped, and they began swimming as fast as they could. First Bully was a little distance ahead, and then Bawly would kick out his front legs and his hind legs, and he would be in the lead.

"I'm going to win! I'll get the peppermint candy!" Bawly called to his brother, winking his two eyes right in the water, as easily as you can put your doll to sleep, or play a game of marbles.

"No. I'll beat!" declared Bully. "But if I get the candy I'll give you some."

So they swam on, faster and faster, making the water splash up all around them like a steamboat going to a picnic.

Well, the frogs were almost half way across the pond, when Lulu and Alice Wibblewobble, the duck girls, came out of their pen. They had just washed their faces and their yellow bills, and had put on their new hair ribbons, so they looked very nice, and proper.

"Oh, see Bully and Bawly having a swimming race!" exclaimed Lulu. "I think Bully will win!"

"I think Bawly will!" cried Alice. "See, he is ahead!"

"No, Bully is ahead now," called Lulu, and surely enough so Bully was, having made a sudden jump in the water.

And then, all of a sudden, before you could take all the seeds out of an apple or an orange, if you had one with seeds in, Bawly disappeared from sight down under the water. He vanished just as the milk goes out of baby's bottle when she drinks it all up.

"Oh, look!" cried Lulu. "Bawly is going to swim under water!"

"That's so he can win the race easier, I guess," spoke Alice.

"What's that?" asked Bully, wiggling his two eyes.

"Your brother has gone down under the water!" cried the two duck girls together.

"So he has!" exclaimed Bully, glancing around. And then, when he had looked down, he cried out: "Oh, a great big fish has hold of Bawly's toes, and he's going to eat him, I guess! I must save my brother!"

Bully didn't think anything more about the race after that. No, indeed, and some tomato ketchup, too! Down under water he dived, and he swam close up to the fish who was pulling poor Bawly away to his den in among a lot of stones.

"Oh, let my brother go, if you please!" called Bully to the fish.

"No, I'll not," was the answer, and then the big fish flopped his tail like a fan and made such a wave that poor Bully was upset, turning a somersault in the water. But that didn't scare him, and when he had turned over right side up again he swam to the fish once more and said:

"If you don't let my brother go I'll call a policeman!"

"No policeman can catch me!" declared the fish, boldly, and in a saucy manner.

"Oh, do something to save me!" cried poor Bawly, trying to pull his toes away from the fish's teeth, but he couldn't.

"I'll save you!" shouted Bully, and then he took a stick, and tried to put it in the fish's mouth to make him open his jaws and let loose of Bawly. But the stick broke, and the fish was swimming away faster than ever. Then Bully popped his head out of the water and cried to the two duck girls:

"Oh, run and tell Grandpa Croaker! Tell him to come and save Bawly!"

Well, Alice and Lulu wibbled and wobbled as fast as they could go to the frog house, and told Grandpa Croaker, and the old gentleman gave one great big leap, and landed in the water right down close to where the fish had Bawly by the toes.

"Boom! Boom! Croak-croak-croaker-croak!" cried Grandpa in his deepest bass voice. "You let Bawly go!" And, would you believe it, his voice sounded like a cannon, or a big gun, and that fish was so frightened, thinking he was going to be shot, that he opened his mouth and let Bawly go. The frog boy's toes were scratched a little by the teeth of the fish, but he could still swim, and he and his brother and Grandpa were soon safe on shore.

"Well, I guess we won't race any more to-day," said Bawly. "Thank you very much for saving me, Grandpa."

"Oh, that's all right," said Mr. Croaker kindly. "Here is a penny for each of you," and he gave Bully and Bawly and Lulu and Alice each a penny, and they bought peppermint candy, so Bully and Bawly had something good to eat, even if they didn't finish the race, and the bad fish had nothing. Now, in case I see a green rose in bloom on the pink lilac bush, I'll tell you next about Bully making a water wheel.




Story II

Bully Makes A Water Wheel


Bully No-Tail, the frog boy, was sitting out in the yard in front of his house, with his knife and a lot of sticks. He was whittling the sticks, and making almost as many chips and shavings as a carpenter, and as he whittled away he whistled a funny little tune, about a yellow monkey-doodle with a pink nose colored blue, who wore a slipper on one foot, because he had no shoe.

Pretty soon, along came Dickie Chip-Chip, the sparrow boy, and he perched on the fence in front of Bully, put his head on one side -- not on one side of the fence, you know, but on one side of his own little feathered neck -- and Dickie looked out of his bright little eyes at Bully, and inquired:

"What are you making?"

"I am making a water-wheel," answered the frog boy.

"What! making a wheel out of water?" asked the birdie in great surprise. "I never heard of such a thing."

"Oh, no indeed!" exclaimed Bully with a laugh. "I'm making a wheel out of wood, so that it will go 'round and 'round in the water, and make a nice splashing noise. You see it's something like the paddle-wheel of a steamboat, or a mill wheel, that I'm making."

"And where are you going to get the water to make it go 'round?" asked Dickie.

"Down by the pond," answered Bully. "I know a little place where the water falls down over the rocks, and I'm going to fasten a wooden wheel there, and it will whizz around very fast!"

"Does the water hurt itself when it falls down over the rocks?" asked Dickie Chip-Chip. "Once I fell down over a little stone, and I hurt myself quite badly."

"Oh, no, water can't hurt itself," spoke Bully, as he made a lot more shavings. "There, the wheel is almost done. Don't you want to see it go 'round, Dickie?"

The little sparrow boy said that he did, so he and the frog started off together for the pond. Dickie hopping along on the ground, and Bully flying through the air.

What's that? I'm wrong? Oh, yes, excuse me. I see where I made the mistake. Of course, Dickie flew through the air, and Bully hopped along on the ground. Now we're all straight.

Well, pretty soon they came to the pond and to the little place where the water fell over the rocks and didn't hurt itself, and there Bully fastened his water-wheel, which was nearly as large as he was, and quite heavy. He fixed it so that the water would drop on the wooden paddles that stuck out like the spokes of the baby carriage wheels, and in a short while it was going around as fast as an automobile, splashing the drops of water up in the sunlight, and making them look like the diamonds which pretty ladies wear on their fingers.

"That's a fine wheel!" cried Dickie. "I wonder if we could ride on it?"

"I guess we could," spoke Bully. "It's like a merry-go-round, only it's turned up the wrong way. I'll see if I can ride on it, and if it goes all right with me you can try it."

So Bully hopped on the moving water-wheel, and, surely enough, he had a fine ride, only, of course, he got all splashed up, but he didn't care.

"Do you mind getting your feathers wet?" he asked of Dickie as he hopped off, "because if you don't mind the wet, you can ride."

"Oh, I don't mind the wet a bit," said the sparrow boy. "In fact, I take a bath every morning and I wet my feathers then. So I'll ride on the wheel and get wet now."

Well, he got on, and around the wheel went, splashing in the water, and then Bully got on, and they both had a fine ride, just as if they were in a rainstorm with the sun shining all the while.

But listen. Something is going to happen, I think. Wait a minute -- yes, it's going to happen right now. What's that animal sneaking along through the woods, closer and closer up to where Bully and Dickie are playing? What is it, eh? A cat! I knew it. A bad cat, too! I could just feel that something was going to happen.

You see that cat was hungry, and she hoped to catch the sparrow and the frog boy and eat them. Up she sneaked, walking as softly as a baby can creep, and just then Dickie and Bully got off the wheel, and sat down on the bank to eat a cookie, which Bully found in his water-proof pocket.

"Now's my chance!" thought the cat. "I'll grab 'em both, and eat 'em!" So she made a spring, but she didn't jump quite far enough and she missed both Bully and Dickie. Dickie flew up into a tree, and so he was safe, but Bully couldn't fly, though he hopped away.

After him jumped the cat, and she cried:

"I'll get you yet!"

Bully hopped some more, but the cat raced toward him, and nearly had the froggie. Then began quite a chase. The cat was very quick, and she kept after Bully so closely that she was making him very tired. Pretty soon his jumps weren't as long as they had been at first. And the cat was keeping him away from the pond, too, for she knew if he jumped into that he would get away, for cats don't like water, or rain.

But finally Bully managed to head himself back toward the pond, and the cat was still after him. Oh, how savage she looked with her sharp teeth, and her glaring eyes! Poor Bully was much frightened.

All of a sudden, as he hopped nearer and nearer to the pond, he thought of a trick to play on that cat. He pretended that he could hardly hop any more, and only took little steps. Nearer and nearer sneaked the cat, lashing her tail. At last she thought she could give one big spring, and land on Bully with her sharp claws.

She did spring, but Dickie, up in the tree, saw her do it, and he called to his friend Bully to look out. Then Bully gave a great big hop and landed on the water-wheel, and the cat was so surprised that she jumped, too, and before she knew it she had leaped on the wheel also. Around and around it went, with Bully and the cat on it, and water splashed all over, and the cat was so wet and miserable that she forgot all about eating Bully. But Bully only liked the water, and didn't mind it a bit.

Then the frog boy hopped off the wheel to the shore and hurried away, with Dickie flying overhead, and the cat, who was now as wet as a sponge, and very dizzy from the wheel going around so fast, managed to jump ashore a little while afterward. But her fur was so wet and plastered down that she couldn't chase after Bully any more, and he got safely home; and the cat had to stay in the sun all day to dry out. But it served her right, I think.

Now in case the little boy next door doesn't take our baby carriage and make an automobile of it, I'll tell you next about Bawly and Uncle Wiggily.




Story III

Bawly And Uncle Wiggily


Bawly No-Tail, the frog boy, was hopping along through the woods one fine day, whistling a merry tune, and wondering if he would meet any of his friends, with whom he might have a game of ball. He had a baseball with him, and he was very fond of playing. I just wish you could have seen him stand up on his hind legs and catch balls in his mouth. It was as good as going to the best kind of a moving picture show. Perhaps some day you may see Bawly.

Well, as I said, he was hopping along, tossing the ball up into the air and catching it, sometimes in his paw and sometimes in his mouth, when, all of a sudden he heard a funny pounding noise, that seemed to be in the bushes.

"Gracious, I wonder what that can be!" exclaimed Bawly, looking around for a good place to hide.

He was just going to crawl under a hollow stump, for he thought perhaps the noise might be made by a bad wolf, or a savage fox, sharpening his teeth on a hard log, when Bawly heard some one say:

"There, I've dropped my hammer! Oh, dear! Now I'll have to climb all the way down and get it, I s'pose."

"Well, that doesn't sound like a wolf or a fox," thought Bawly. "I guess it's safe to go on."

So he didn't hide under the stump, but hopped along, and in a little while he came to a place in the woods where there were no trees, and, bless you! if there wasn't the cutest little house you've ever seen! It wasn't quite finished, and, in fact, up on the roof was Uncle Wiggily Longears, the old gentleman rabbit, putting on the shingles to keep out the rain if it came.

"Oh, hello, Uncle Wiggily!" called Bawly, joyfully.

"Hello," answered the rabbit carpenter. "You are just in time, Bawly. Would you mind handing me my hammer? It slipped and fell to the ground."

"Of course I'll throw it up to you," said Bawly, kindly. "But you had better get behind the chimney, Uncle Wiggily, for I might hit you with the hammer, though, of course, I wouldn't mean to. You see I am a very good thrower from having played ball so much."

"I see," answered Uncle Wiggily. "Well, I'll get behind the chimney."

So Bawly picked up the hammer and he threw it carefully toward the roof, but, would you believe me, he threw it so hard that it went right over the house, chimney and all, and fell down on the other side.

"My! You are too strong!" exclaimed Uncle Wiggily laughing so that his fur shook. "Try again, Bully, if you please."

"Oh, I'm Bawly, not Bully," said the frog boy.

"Excuse me, that was my mistake," spoke the old gentleman rabbit. "I'll get it right next time, Peetie -- I mean Bawly."

Well, Bawly threw the hammer again, and this time it landed right on the roof close to the chimney, and Uncle Wiggily picked it up and began nailing on more shingles.

"If you please," asked Bawly, when he had watched the rabbit carpenter put in about forty-'leven nails, "who is this house for?"

"It is for Sammie and Susie Littletail," answered Uncle Wiggily. "They are going to have rabbit play-parties in it, and I hope you and Bully will come sometimes."

"We'll be glad to," spoke Bawly. Then Uncle Wiggily drove in another nail, and the house was almost done.

"How do you get up and down off the roof?" asked Bawly, who didn't see any ladder.

"Oh, I slide up and down a rope," answered Uncle Wiggily. "I have a strong cord fastened to the chimney, and I crawl up it, just like a monkey-doodle, and when I want to come down, I slide down. It's better than a ladder, and I can climb a rope very well, for I used to be a sailor on a ship. See, here is the rope."

Well, he took hold of it, near where it was fastened to the chimney, to show the frog boy how it was done, but, alas, and also alack-a-day! All of a sudden that rope became untied, it slipped out of Uncle Wiggily's paw and fell to the ground! Now, what do you think about that?

"Oh, my! Now I have gone and done it!" exclaimed the elderly rabbit, as he leaned over the edge of the roof and looked down. "Now I am in a pickle! -- if you will kindly excuse the expression. How am I ever going to get down? Oh, dear me, suz dud and a piece of sticking-plaster likewise. Oh, me! Oh, my!"

"Can't you jump, Uncle Wiggily?" asked Bawly.

"Oh, my, no! I might be killed. It's too far! I could never jump off the roof of a house."

"Perhaps you can climb down from one window shutter to the other, and so get to the ground," suggested Bawly.

"No," said Uncle Wiggily, looking over the edge of the house again. "There are no window shutters on as yet. So I can't climb on 'em."

Well, it did seem as if poor Uncle Wiggily would have to stay up there on the roof for a long, long time, for there was no way of getting down.

"If there was a load of hay here, you could jump on that, and you wouldn't be hurt," said Bawly, scratching his nose.

"But there is no hay here," said the rabbit carpenter, sadly.

"Well, if there was a fireman here with a long ladder, then you could get down," said Bawly, wiggling his toes.

"But there is no fireman here," objected Uncle Wiggily. "Ah, I have it, Bawly! You are a good jumper, perhaps you can jump up here to the roof with the rope and I can fasten it to the chimney again and slide down as I did before."

"I'll try," said Bawly, and he did; but bless you! He couldn't jump as high as the house, no matter how many times he tried it. And the dinner bell rang and Uncle Wiggily was very hungry and very anxious to get off the roof and eat something.

"Oh, I know how to do it!" cried Bawly at length, when he had jumped forty-sixteen times. "I'll tie a string to my baseball, and I'll throw the ball up to you. Then you catch it, untie the string, which I'll keep hold of on this end, and I'll tie the rope to the cord. Then you can haul up the rope, fasten it to the chimney, and slide down."

"Good!" cried Uncle Wiggily, clapping his front paws together in delight.

Well, if you'll believe me, Bawly did tie the string to his baseball and with one big throw he threw it right up to Uncle Wiggily, who caught it just as if he were on first base in a game. And then with the little cord, which reached down to the ground, he pulled up the big rope, knotted it around the chimney, and down he slid, just in time for dinner, and he took Bawly home with him and gave him a penny.

Now if it should happen that I don't lose my watch down the inkwell so I can see when it's time for my pussy cat to have his warm soup, I'll tell you in the story after this about Bully's and Bawly's big jump.




Story IV

Bully's And Bawly's Big Jump


One day Mrs. No-Tail, the frog lady, looked in the pantry to see what there was to eat for dinner and there wasn't a single thing. No, just like Mother Hubbard's cupboard, the pantry was bare, though there was a bone in it that was being saved for some time when Peetie and Jackie Bow Wow, the puppie-dog boys, might come on a visit.

"Oh, some one will have to go to the store to get something for supper," said Mrs. No-Tail. "Do you feel able to go, Grandpa Croaker?"

"Well, I could go," said the old frog gentleman, in his deepest bass voice, which sounded like the rumble of thunder over the hills and far away, "but I promised I would go over and play a game of checkers with Uncle Wiggily Longears. He has just finished the playhouse for Sammie and Susie, and he wants to show me that. So I don't see how I can go to the store very well."

"If Bully and Bawly were here they'd go," said their mamma. "I wish they'd come. Oh, here they are now," she went on, as she looked out of the window and saw the two frog boys coming home from school. "Hurry!" she called to them. "I want you to go to the store."

"All right," they both answered, and they were so polite about it that Mrs. No-Tail gave them each a penny, though, of course, they would have gone without that, for they always liked to help their mamma.

"I want some sugar, and molasses, and bread, and butter, and some corn meal, and bacon and watercress salad," said the mother frog, and Bully and Bawly each took a basket in which to carry the things. Then they hopped on toward the store.

"I'm going to buy marbles with my penny," said Bully.

"And I'm going to buy a whistle with mine," said Bawly.

Well, they got to the grocery, all right, and the cow lady who kept it gave them the things their mamma wanted. Then they went to the toy store and Bully got his marbles, and Bawly his whistle, which made a very loud noise.

Now I'm very sorry to be obliged to tell it, but something is going to happen to Bully and Bawly very soon. In fact, I think it is going to take place at once. Just excuse me a moment, will you, until I look out of the window and see if the alligator is coming. Yes, there he is. He just got off the trolley car. The conductor put him off because he had the wrong transfer.

So, all at once, as Bully and Bawly were hopping along through the woods, this alligator that I was telling you about jumped out at them from under a prickly briar bush. Right at them he jumped, and he was a very savage alligator, for he had gotten loose out of the circus, where he belonged, and he had been tramping around without anything to eat for a long time, so he was very hungry.

"Now, I see where I'm going to have a nice dinner," the alligator said to himself, as he jumped out at Bully and Bawly.

But those two frog boys were smart little fellows, and they were always looking around for danger. So, as soon as the alligator made a jump at them, they also leaped to one side, and the unpleasant creature didn't get them.

"Oh, you just wait! I'll have you in a minute!" the alligator cried, and he opened his mouth so wide that it went all the way back to his ears, and the top of his head nearly flew off.

"We haven't time to wait," said Bully with a laugh, as he hopped on with his basket of groceries.

"No, we must get back home in time for supper," spoke Bawly. "So we'll have to leave you," and on he hipped and skipped and hopped with his basket.

Those frog boys didn't really think that that alligator could reach them, for he was so big and clumsy-looking that it didn't seem as if he could run very fast. But he could, and the first thing Bully and Bawly knew, that most unprepossessing creature, with a smile that went away around to his ears, was close behind them and gnashing his teeth at them.

"Oh, hop, Bully, hop!" cried Bawly in great fright.

"Sure, I'll hop!" answered his brother. "You hop, too!"

Well, they both hopped as fast as they could, but on account of the baskets of groceries which they had they couldn't hop as fast as usual. The alligator saw this, and after them he crawled, and several times he nearly had them by their tails. Oh, no, excuse me, if you please, frogs don't have tails. I was thinking of tadpoles.

"Oh, just wait until I catch you!" cried the alligator, snapping his teeth together.

But Bully and Bawly didn't wait. On they hopped, as fast as they could, hoping to get away. And would you ever believe that an alligator could be so mean as this one was? For he chased Bully and Bawly right up a steep hill. You know it's hard to walk up hill, and harder still to hop, so Bully and Bawly were soon tired. But do you s'pose that alligator cared? Not a bit of it!

Right after them he kept crawling, faster and faster.

Bully and Bawly hopped as swiftly as they could, but the alligator kept getting nearer and nearer to them, for he was big and strong, and didn't mind the hill. They could hear his savage jaws gnashing together, and they trembled so that Bully almost spilled the molasses out of his basket and Bawly nearly dropped the granulated sugar.

Well, finally the two frog boys were at the top of the hill, and they were very thankful, thinking that they could now get away from the alligator, when they suddenly saw that the hill came to an end, and fell over the edge of a great precipice just like the Niagara waterfall, only there wasn't any water there, of course.

"Oh, we can't go any farther," cried Bully, coming to a stop.

"No," said his brother, "we can't jump down that awful gully. But look, Bully, there is another hill over there," and he pointed across the big, open space. "If we could jump across from this hill to that hill, the alligator couldn't get us."

"Oh, but it's a terrible big jump," said Bully, and indeed it was; about as wide as a big river. "But we've got to do it!" cried Bully, "for here comes the terrible beast!"

The alligator was almost upon them. He opened his mouth to grab them with his teeth, when Bully, spreading out his legs, and taking a firm hold of his grocery basket, gave a great, big jump. Through the air he sailed, over the deep valley, and he landed safely on the other hill. Then Bawly did the same, and with one most tremendous, extemporaneous and extraordinary jump, he landed close beside his brother, and the alligator couldn't get either of them because he couldn't jump across the chasm.

Oh, but he was an angry alligator though! He gnashed his teeth and wiggled his tail and even cried big round tears. Nearly all alligators cry little square tears, but even round ones didn't do a bit of good. Then Bully threw a marble at the savage creature, and hit him on the nose, and Bawly blew his whistle so loud, that the alligator thought a policeman, or postman, was coming, and he turned around and ran away, and the frog boys went on safely home with their baskets of groceries and had a good supper.

Now in case that alligator doesn't chase after me, and chew up my typewriter to make mincemeat of it for the wax doll, I'll tell you in the next story about Grandpa Croaker digging a well.




Story V

Grandpa Croaker Digs A Well


It happened, once upon a time when Mrs. No-Tail, the frog lady, went to the pump to get some water for supper, that a little fish jumped out of the pump spout and nearly bit her on the nose.

"Ha! That is very odd," she said. "There must be fish in our well, and in that case I think we had better have a new one."

So that night, when Mr. No-Tail came home from the wallpaper factory, where he stepped into ink and then hopped all over white paper to make funny patterns on it -- that night, I say, Mrs. No-Tail said to her husband:

"I think we will have to get a new well." Then she told him about the fish from the pump nearly biting her, and Mr. No-Tail remarked:

"Yes, I think we had better have a new place to get our water, for the fish in the old well may drink it all up."

"Well, well!" exclaimed Grandpa Croaker in such a deep bass voice that he made the dishpan on the gas stove rattle as loudly as if Bully or Bawly were drumming on it with a wishbone from the Thanksgiving turkey. "Let me dig the well," went on the old gentleman frog. "I just love to shovel the dirt, and I can dig a well so deep that no fish will ever get into it."

"Very well," said Mr. No-Tail. "You may start in the morning, and Bully and Bawly can help you, as it will be Saturday and there is no school."

Well, the next morning Grandpa Croaker started in. He marked a nice round circle on the ground in the back yard, because he wanted a round well, and not a square one, you see; and then he began to dig. At first there was nothing for Bully and Bawly to do, as when he was near the top of the well their Grandpa could easily throw the dirt out himself. But when he had dug down quite a distance it was harder work, to toss up the dirt, so Grandpa Croaker told the boys to get a rope, and a hook and some pails.

The hook was fastened to one end of the rope, and then a pail was put on the hook. Then the pail was lowered into the well, down to where Grandpa Croaker was working. He filled the pail with dirt, and Bully and Bawly hauled it up and emptied it.

"Oh, this is lots of fun!" exclaimed Bully, as he and his brother pulled on the rope. "It's as much fun as playing baseball."

"I think so, too," agreed Bawly. Then Sammie Littletail, the rabbit boy, came along, and so did Peetie and Jackie Bow Wow, the puppy dogs. They wanted to help pull up the dirt, so Bully and Bawly let them after Sammie had given the frog brothers a nice marble, and Peetie and Jackie each a stick of chewing gum.

Grandpa Croaker kept on digging the well, and the frog boys and their friends pulled up the dirt, and pretty soon the hole in the ground was so deep and dark that, by looking up straight, from down at the bottom of it, the old gentleman frog could see the stars, and part of the moon, in the sky, even if it was daylight.

Then he dug some more, and, all of a sudden, his shovel went down into some water, and then Grandpa Croaker knew that the well was almost finished. He dug out a little more earth, in came more water, wetting his feet, and then the frog well-digger cried:

"I've struck water! I've struck water!"

"Hurrah!" shouted Bawly.

"Hurray! Hurray!" exclaimed Bully, and they were so happy that they danced up and down. Then Sammie Little-Tail and Peetie and Jackie Bow Wow grew so excited and delighted that they ran off to tell all their friends about Grandpa Croaker digging a well. That left Bully and Bawly all alone up at the edge of the big hole in the ground, at the bottom of which was their grandpa.

"Let's have another little dance!" suggested Bully.

"No," replied Bawly, "let's jump down the well and have a drink of the new water that hasn't any fishes in it."

So, without thinking what they were doing, down they leaped into the well, almost failing on Grandpa Croaker's bald head, and carrying down with them the rope, by which they had been pulling up the pails of dirt. Into the water they popped, and each one took a big drink.

"Well, now you've done it!" cried Grandpa Croaker, as he leaned on his shovel and looked at his two grandsons.

"Why, what is the matter?" asked Bully, splashing some water on Bawly's nose.

"Yes. All we did was to jump down here," added Bawly. "What's wrong?"

"Why that leaves no one above on the ground to help me get up," said the old gentleman frog. "I was depending on you to haul me up by the rope, and here you jump down, and pull the rope with you. It's as bad as when Uncle Wiggily was on the roof, only he was up and couldn't get down, and we're down and can't get up."

"Oh, I think I can jump to the top of the well and take the rope with me. If I can't take this rope I'll get another and pull you both up," said Bully. So he hopped and he hopped, but he couldn't hop to the top of the well. Every time he tried it, he fell back into the water, ker-slash!

"Let me try," said his brother. But it was just the same with Bawly. Back he sploshed-splashed into the well-water, getting all wet.

"Now we'll never get out of here," said Grandpa Croaker sadly. "I wish you boys would think a little more, and not do things so quickly."

"We will -- next time," promised Bawly as he gave another big jump, but he came nowhere near the top of the well.

Then it began to look as if they would have to stay down there forever, for no one came to pull them out.

"Let's call for help," suggested Bully. So he and Bawly called as loud as they could, and so did Grandpa Croaker. But the well was so deep, and their voices sounded so loud and rumbling, coming out of the hole in the ground, that every one thought it was thunder. And the animal people feared it would rain, so they all ran home, and no one thought of grandpa and the two frog boys in the deep well.

But at last along came Alice Wibblewobble, and, being a duck, she didn't mind a thunder storm. So she didn't run away, and she heard Grandpa Croaker and Bully and Bawly calling for help at the bottom of the well. She asked what was the trouble, and Bully told her what had happened.

"Oh, you silly boys, to jump down a well!" exclaimed Alice. "But never fear, I'll help you up." So they never feared, and Alice got a rope and lowered it down to them, and then, with the help of her brother Jimmie and her sister Lulu, she pulled all three frogs up from the well, and they lived happy for ever after, and drank the water that had no fishes in it.

Now if the faucet in the kitchen sink doesn't turn upside down, and squirt the water on the ceiling and into the cat's eye, I'll tell you next about Papa No-Tail in trouble.




Story VI

Papa N


Papa No-tail, the frog gentleman, was working away in the wallpaper factory one day, when something quite strange happened to him, and if you all sit right nice and quiet, as my dear old grandmother used to say, I'll tell you all about it, from the beginning to the end, and I'll even tell you the middle part, which some people leave out, when they tell stories.

Papa No-Tail would dip his four feet, which were something like hands, in the different colored inks at the factory. There was red ink, and blue ink, and white ink, and black ink, and sky-purple-green ink, and also that newest shade, skilligimink color, which Sammie Littletail once dyed his Easter eggs. After he had his feet nicely covered with the ink, Papa No-Tail would hop all over pieces of white paper to make funny patterns on them. Then they would be ready to paper a room, and make it look pretty.

"I think that is very well done," said the old gentleman frog to himself as he looked at one roll of paper on which he had made a picture of a mouse chasing a big lion. "Now I think I will make a pattern of a doggie standing on his left ear." And he did so, and very fine it was, too.

"Now, while I'm waiting for the ink to dry," said Mr. No-Tail, "I'll lie down and take a nap." So he went fast, fast asleep on a long piece of the wall paper that was stretched out on the floor, and this was the beginning of his trouble.

For, all at once, a puff of wind -- not a cream puff, you understand, but a wind puff -- came in the window, and rolled up the wallpaper in a tight little roll, and the worst of it was that Papa No-Tail was asleep inside. Yes, fast, fast asleep, and he never knew that he was wrapped up, just like a stick of chewing gum; only you mustn't ever chew gum in school, you know.

Well, time went on, and the clock ticked, and Papa No-Tail still slept. Then a man looked in the window of the wallpaper factory and, seeing no one there, he thought he would take a roll of paper home with him, to paste on his little boy's bedroom.

"The next time I come past here, perhaps some one will be in the office," the man said, "and then I can pay them for the paper," for he wanted to be very honest, you see. "I'll get Uncle Butter, the goat, to paste the paper on the wall for me," said the man. Then he reached inside the room, and what do you think? Why he picked up the very piece of wallpaper that was wrapped around Papa Chip-Chip -- Oh, no, excuse me! I mean Papa No-Tail. Yes, the man picked up that roll, with Bully's and Bawly's papa inside, and away he went with it, and the old gentleman frog was still sound asleep.

Now this is about the middle of his trouble, just as I said I'd tell you, but we haven't gotten to the end yet, though we will in a little while.

Home that man went, as fast as he could go, and on his way he stopped at Uncle Butter's office.

"I have a little wallpapering I want done at my house," the man said to the old gentleman goat, "and I wish you'd come right along with me and do it. I have the paper here."

"To be sure I will," said Uncle Butter. So he got his pail of paste, and gave Billie and Nannie Goat a little bit on some brown paper, just like jam, and they liked it very much. The goat paper-hanger took his shears, and his brushes, and his stepladders, tying them on his horns, and away he went with the man.

Pretty soon they came to the house where the man lived, and his little boy was there, and very delighted he was when he heard that he was to have some new paper on his room.

"May I watch you put it on?" he asked Uncle Butter.

"Yes," answered the old gentleman goat, "if you don't step in the paste, and spoil the carpet."

The little boy promised that he wouldn't, and Uncle Butter went to work. First he got his sticky stuff all ready, and then he made a little table on which to lay out and paste the paper.

"Now, we'll cut the roll into strips and fasten it on the wall good and tight, so that it won't fall off in the middle of the night and scare you," said Uncle Butter. Then he reached for the roll of paper, and, mind you, Papa No-Tail was still asleep inside of it. But all at once, just as the paper-hanger goat was about to pick up the roll, Mr. No-Tail awakened and was quite surprised to discover where he was.

"My, I never would have believed it," he said, and he wiggled his legs and arms and made a great rustling sound inside the roll of paper like a fly in a sugar bag.

"Hello! What's that?" cried Uncle Butter, jumping back so quickly that he upset his paste-pot.

"What's the matter?" asked the little boy in glad surprise.

"Why, there's something inside that paper!" cried the goat. "See, it's moving! There must be a fairy inside!"

Surely enough, the paper was rolling and twisting around on the floor in a most remarkable manner, for Papa No-Tail inside was wriggling and twisting, and trying his best to get out. But the paper was wound around him too tightly, and he couldn't get loose.

"Oh, do you think it's a fairy?" asked the little boy eagerly, for he loved the dear creatures, and wanted to see one.

"Let me out! Oh, please let me out!" suddenly cried Papa No-Tail just then.

"Of course it's a fairy, my boy!" exclaimed Uncle Butter. "Didn't you hear it call? Oh, I'm going right away from here! I've pasted all kinds of paper, but never before have I handled fairy paper, and I'm afraid to begin now."

He started to run out of the room but his foot slipped in the paste, and down he fell, and his little table fell on top of him, and the stepladder was twisted in his horns. And Papa No-Tail was trying harder than ever to get loose, and the roll of wallpaper rolled right toward Uncle Butter.

"Don't catch me! Please, don't catch me!" the goat called to the fairy he supposed was inside. "I never did anything to you!"

Faster and faster rolled the paper, for Mr. No-Tail was wiggling quite hard now, and he was crying to be let out. Then, all of a sudden, the paper with the frog in, rolled close to the little boy. The boy was brave, and he loved fairies, so he opened the roll, and out hopped Mr. No-Tail, being very glad indeed to get loose, for it was quite warm inside there.

"Oh my! Was that you in the paper?" asked Uncle Butter, solemnly, sitting in the middle of the floor, on a lot of paste.

"It was," said Papa No-Tail, as he helped the goat to get up.

"Well, I never heard tell of such a thing in all my life! Never!" exclaimed the goat, when the frog gentleman told him all about it. Then Uncle Butter pasted the paper on the wall, and Papa No-Tail hopped home, and that's the end of the story, just as I promised it would be.

Now in case the pussy cat doesn't wash the puppy dog's face with the cork from the ink bottle and make his nose black, I'll tell you on the next page about Bully playing marbles.




Story VII

Bully N


It happened one day that, as Bully No-Tail, the frog boy, was walking along with his bag of marbles going clank-clank in his pocket, he met Johnnie and Billie Bushytail, the squirrels.

"Hello, Bully!" called the two brothers. "Do you want to have a game of marbles?"

"Of course I do," answered Bully. "I just bought some new ones. 'First shot agates!'"

"First shot!" yelled Billie, right after Bully.

"First shot!" also cried Johnnie, almost at the same time.

"Well, I guess we're about even," spoke Bully, as he opened his marble bag to look inside. "Now, how are we going to tell who will shoot first?"

"I'll tell you," proposed Billie. "We'll each throw a marble up into the air, and the one whose comes down first will shoot first."

Well, the other two animal boys thought that was fair, so they tossed their marble shooters up into the air. Billie only sent his up a little way, for then he knew it would come down first, but Johnnie and Bully didn't think of this, and they threw their shooters up as high as they could. And, of course, their marbles were so much longer coming down to the ground again.

"Oh, ho! Here's mine!" cried Billie. "I'm to shoot first."

"And here's mine," added Johnnie, a little later, as his marble came down.

"Yes, but where's mine?" asked Bully, and they all listened carefully to tell when Bully's shooter would fall down. But the funny part of it was that it didn't come.

"Say, did you throw it up to the sky?" asked Billie surprised like.

"Because, if you did, it won't come down until Fourth of July," added Johnnie.

"No, I didn't throw it as high as that," replied the frog boy. "But perhaps Dickie Chip-Chip, the sparrow boy, is flying around up there, and he may have taken it in his bill for a joke."

So they looked up toward the clouds as far as they could, but no little sparrow boy did they see.

"Well, we'll have a game of marbles, anyhow," said Bully at length. "I have another shooter."

So he and Billie and Johnnie made a ring in the dirt, and put some marbles in the centre.

Then they began to play, and Billie shot first, then Johnnie, and last of all Bully. And all the while the frog boy was wondering what had happened to his first marble. Now, a very queer thing had happened to it, and you'll soon hear all about it.

Billie and Johnnie had each missed hitting any marbles, and when it came Bully's turn he took careful aim, with his second-best shooter, a red and blue one.

"Whack-bang!" That's the way Bully's shooter hit the marbles in the ring, scattering them all over, and rolling several outside.

"Say, are you going to knock 'em all out?" asked Billie.

"That's right! Leave some for us," begged Johnnie.

"Wait until I have one more trial," went on Bully, for you see he had two shots on account of being lucky with his first one and knocking some marbles from the ring.

Then he went to look for his second-best shooter, for it had rolled away, but he couldn't find it. It had completely, teetotally, mysteriously and extraordinarily disappeared.

"I'm sure it rolled over here," said Bully as he poked around in the grass near a big bush. "Please help me look for it, fellows."

So Billie and Johnnie helped Bully look, but they couldn't find the second shooter that the frog boy had lost.

"You two go on playing and I'll hunt for the marble," said Bully after a while, so he searched along in the grass, and, as he did so, he dropped a nice glass agate out of his bag. He stooped to pick it up, but before he could get his toes on it something that looked like a big chicken's bill darted out of the prickly briar bush and gobbled up the marble.

"Oh!" cried Bully in fright, jumping back, "I wonder if that was a snake?"

"No, I'm not a snake," was the answer. "I'm a bird," and then out from behind the bush came a great, big Pelican bird.

"Did -- did you take my marble?" asked Bully timidly.

"I did!" cried the Pelican bird, snapping his bill together just like a big pair of scissors. "I ate the first one after it fell to the ground near me, and I ate the second one that you shot over here. They're good -- marbles are! I like 'em. Give me some more!"

The bird snapped his beak again, and Bully jumped back. As he did so the marbles in his pocket rattled, and the Pelican heard them.

"Ha! You have more!" he cried: "Hand 'em over. I'll eat 'em all up. I just love marbles!"

"No, you can't have mine!" exclaimed Bully, backing away. "I want to play some more games with Billie and Johnnie with these," and he looked to see where his two friends were. They were quite some distance off, shooting marbles as hard as they could.

Then, all of a sudden, that Pelican bird made a swoop for poor Bully, and before the frog boy could get out of the way the bird had gobbled him up in his big bill. There Bully was, not exactly swallowed by the bird, you understand, but held a prisoner in the big pouch, or skin laundry-bag that hung down below the bird's lower beak.

"Oh, let me out of here!" cried Bully, hopping about inside the big bag on the bird's big bill. "Let me out! Let me out!"

"No, I'll not," said the big bird, speaking through his nose because his mouth was shut. "I'll keep you there until you give me all your marbles, or until I decide whether or not I'll eat you for my supper."

Well, poor Bully was very much frightened, and I guess you'd be, too. He tried to get out but he couldn't, and the bird began walking off to his nest, taking the frog boy with him. Then Bully thought of his bag of marbles, and, inside the big bill, he rattled them as loudly as he could.

"Billie and Johnnie Bushytail may hear me, and help me," he thought.

And, surely enough the squirrel boys did. They heard the rattle of Bully's marbles inside the Pelican's beak, and they saw the big bird, and they guessed at once where Bully was. Then they ran up to the Pelican, and began hitting him with their marbles, which they threw at him as hard as they could. In the eyes and on his ears and on his wiggily toes and on his big beak they hit him with marbles, until that Pelican bird was glad enough to open his bill and let Bully go, marbles and all. Then the bird flew away to its nest, and Bully and his friends could play their game once more.

The Pelican didn't come back to bother them, but he had Bully's two shooters, that he had swallowed. So Johnnie, the squirrel, lent the boy frog another shooter, and it was all right. And, in case the rain doesn't come down the chimney and put the fire out, so I can't cook some pink eggs with chocolate on for my birthday, I'll tell you in the following story about Bawly and the soldier hat.




Story VIII

Bawly And The Soldier Hat


Susie Littletail and Jennie Chipmunk were having a play party in the woods. They had their lunch in little birch-bark baskets, and they used a nice, big, flat stump for a table. They took an old napkin for a tablecloth, and they had pieces of carrots boiled in molasses and chocolate, and cabbage with pink frosting on, and nuts all covered with candy, and some sugared popcorn, and all nice things like that, to eat.

"Oh, isn't this lovely!" exclaimed Susie. "Please pass me the fried lolly-pops, Jennie, aren't they lovely?"

"Yes, they're perfectly grand!" spoke Jennie as she passed over some bits of turnip, which they made believe were fried lolly-pops. "I'll have some sour ginger snaps, Susie."

So Susie passed the plate full of acorns, which were make-believe sour ginger snaps, you know, and the little animal girls were having a very fine time, indeed. Oh, my, yes, and a bottle of horseradish also!

Now, don't worry, if you please. I know I did promise to tell about Bawly and the soldier hat, and I'm going to do it. But Susie's and Jennie's play party has something to do with the hat, so I had to start off with them.

While they were playing in the woods, having a fine time, Bawly No-Tail, the frog boy, was at home in his house, making a big soldier hat out of paper. I suppose you children have often made them, and also have played at having a parade with wooden swords and guns. If you haven't done so, please get your papa to make you a soldier hat.

Well, finally Bawly's hat was finished, and he put a feather in it, just as Yankee Doodle did, only Bawly didn't look like macaroni.

"Now, I'll go out and see if I can find the boys and we'll pretend there's a war, and a battle, and shooting and all that," went on the frog chap, who loved to do exciting things. So Bawly hopped out, and Grandpa Croaker, who was asleep in the rocking chair didn't hear him go. Anyhow, I don't believe the old gentleman frog would have cared, for Bawly's papa was at work in the wallpaper factory and his mamma had gone to the five and ten cent store to buy a new dishpan that didn't have a hole in it. As for the other frog boy, Bawly's brother Bully, he had gone after an ice cream cone, I think, or maybe a chocolate candy.

On Bawly hopped, but he didn't meet any of his friends. He had on his big, paper soldier hat, with the feather sticking out of the top, and Bawly also had a wooden gun, painted black, to make it look real, and he had a sword made out of a stick, all silvered over with paint to make it look like steel.

Oh, Bawly was a very fine soldier boy! And as he marched along he whistled a little tune that went like this:

"Soldier boy, soldier boy, Brave and true, I'm sure every one is Frightened at you. Salute the flag and Fire the gun, Now wave your sword and Foes will run. Your feathered cap gives Lots of joy, Oh! you're a darling Soldier boy!"

Well, Bawly felt finer than ever after that, and though he still didn't meet any of his friends, with whom he might play, he was hoping he might see a savage fox or wolf, that he might do battle with the unpleasant creature. But perhaps you had better wait and see what happens.

All this while, as Bawly was marching along through the woods with his soldier cap on, Susie and Jennie were playing party at the old stump. They had just eaten the last of the sweet-sour cookies, and drank the last thimbleful of the orange-lemonade when, all at once, what should happen but that a great big alligator crawled out of the bushes and made a jump for them! Dear me! Would you ever expect such a thing?

"Oh, look at that!" cried Susie as she saw the alligator.

"Yes. Let's run home!" shouted Jennie in fright.

But before either of them could stir a step the savage alligator, who had escaped from the circus again, grabbed them, one in each claw, and then, holding them so that they couldn't get away, he sat up on the end of his big tail, and looked first at Susie and then at Jennie.

"Oh, please let us go!" cried Susie, with tears in her eyes.

"Oh, yes, do; and I'll give you this half of a cookie I have left," spoke Jennie kindly.

"I don't want your cookie, I want you," sang the alligator, as if he were reciting a song. "I'm going to eat you both!"

Then he held them still tighter in his claws, and fairly glared at them from out of his big eyes.

"I'm going to eat you all up!" he growled, "but the trouble is I don't know which one to eat first. I guess I'll eat you," and he made a motion toward Susie. She screamed, and then the alligator changed his mind. "No, I guess I'll eat you," and he opened his mouth for Jennie. Then he changed his mind again, and he didn't know what to do. But, of course, this made Jennie and Susie feel very nervous and also a big word called apprehensive, which is the same thing.

"Oh, help! Help! Will no one help us?" cried Susie at last.

"No, I guess no one will," spoke the alligator, real mean and saucy like.

But he was mistaken. At that moment, hopping through the woods was Bawly No-Tail, wearing his paper soldier hat. He heard Susie call, and up he marched, like the brave soldier frog boy that he was. Through the holes in the bushes he could see the big alligator, and he saw Susie and Jennie held fast in his claws.

"Oh, I can never fight that savage creature all alone," thought Bawly. "I must make him believe that a whole army of soldiers is coming at him."

So Bawly hid behind a tree, where the alligator couldn't find him, and the frog boy beat on a hollow log with a stick as if it were a drum. Then he blew out his cheeks, whistling, and made a noise like a fife. Then he aimed his wooden gun and cried: "Bang! Bang! Bung! Bung!" just as if the wooden gun had powder in it. Next Bawly waved his cap with the feather in it, and the alligator heard all this, and he saw the waving soldier cap, and he, surely enough, thought a whole big army was coming after him.

"I forgot something," the alligator suddenly cried, as he let go of Susie and Jennie. "I have to go to the dentist's to get a tooth filled," and away that alligator scrambled through the woods as fast as he could go, taking his tail with him. So that's how Bawly saved Susie and Jennie, and very thankful they were to him, and if they had had any cookies left they would have given him two or sixteen, I guess.

Now if our gas stove doesn't go out and dance in the middle of the back yard and scare the cook, so she can't bake a rice-pudding pie-cake, I'll tell you next about Grandpa Croaker and the umbrella.




Story IX

Grandpa Croaker And The Umbrella


One day, as Bully No-Tail, the frog boy, was coming home from school he thought of a very hard word he had had to spell in class that afternoon. It began with a "C," and the next letter was "A" and the next one was "T" -- CAT -- and what do you think? Why Bully said it spelled "Kitten," and just for that he had to write the word on his slate forty-'leven times, so he'd remember it next day.

"I guess I won't forget it again in a hurry," thought Bully as he hopped along with his books in a strap over his shoulder. "C-a-t spells -- " And just then he heard a funny noise in the bushes, and he stopped short, as Grandfather Goosey Gander's clock did, when Jimmy Wibblewobble poured molasses in it. Bully looked all around to see what the noise was. "For it might be that alligator, or the Pelican bird," he whispered to himself.

Just then he heard a jolly laugh, and his brother Bawly hopped out from under a cabbage leaf.

"Did I scare you, Bully?" asked Bawly, as he scratched his right ear with his left foot.

"A little," said Bully, turning a somersault to get over being frightened.

"Well, I didn't mean to, and I won't do it again. But now that you are out of school, come on, let's go have a game of ball. It'll be lots of fun," went on Bawly.

So the two brothers hopped off, and found Billie and Johnnie Bushytail, the squirrels, and Sammie Littletail, the rabbit boy, and some other animal friends, and they had a fine game, and Bawly made a home run.

Now, about this same time, Grandpa Croaker, the nice old gentleman frog, was hopping along through the cool, shady woods, and he was wondering what Mrs. No-Tail would have good for supper.

"I hope she has scrambled watercress with sugar on top," thought Grandpa, and just then he felt a drop of rain on his back. The sun had suddenly gone under a cloud, and the water was coming down as fast as it could, for April showers bring May flowers, you know. Grandpa Croaker looked up, and, as he did so a drop of rain fell right in his eye! But bless you! He didn't mind that a bit. He just hopped out where he could get all wet, for he had on his rubber clothes, and he felt as happy as your dollie does when she has on her new dress and goes for a ride in the park. Frogs love water.

The rain came down harder and harder and the water was running about, all over in the woods, playing tag, and jumping rope, and everything like that, when, all at once, Grandpa Croaker heard a little voice crying:

"Oh, dear! I'll never get home in all this rain without wetting my new dress and bonnet! Oh, what shall I do?"

"Ha, I wonder if that can be a fairy?" said Grandpa.

"No, I'm not a fairy," went on the voice. "I'm Nellie Chip-Chip, the sparrow girl, and I haven't any umbrella."

"Oh, ho!" exclaimed Grandpa Croaker as he saw Nellie huddled up under a big leaf, "why do you come out without an umbrella when it may rain at any moment? Why do you do it?"

"Oh, I came out to-day to gather some nice wild flowers for my teacher," said Nellie. "See, I found some lovely white ones, like stars," and she held them out so Grandpa could smell them. But he couldn't without hopping over closer to where the little sparrow girl was.

"I was so interested in the flowers that I forgot all about bringing an umbrella," went on Nellie, and then she began to cry, for she had on a new blue hat and dress, and didn't want them to get spoiled by the rain that was splashing all over.

"Oh, don't cry!" begged Grandpa.

"But I can't get home without an umbrella," wailed Nellie.

"Oh, I can soon fix that," said the old gentleman goat -- I mean frog. "See, over there is a nice big toadstool. That will make the finest umbrella in the world. I'll break it off and bring it to you, and then you can fly home, holding it over your head, in your wing, and then your hat and dress won't get wet."

Nellie thanked Grandpa Croaker very kindly and thought what a fine frog gentleman he was. Off he hopped through the rain, never minding it the least bit, and just as he got to the toadstool what do you s'pose he saw? Why, a big, ugly snake was twined around it, just as a grapevine twines around the clothes-post.

"Hello, there!" cried Grandpa. "You don't need that toadstool at all, Mr. Snake, for water won't hurt you. I want it for Nellie Chip-Chip, so kindly unwind yourself from it."

"Indeed, I will not," spoke the snake, saucily, hissing like a steam radiator on a hot day.

"I demand that you immediately get off that toadstool!" cried Grandpa Croaker in his hoarsest voice, so that it sounded like distant thunder. He wanted to scare the snake.

"I certainly will not get off!" said the snake, firmly, "and what's more I'm going to catch you, too!" And with that he reached out like lightning and grabbed Grandpa, and wound himself around him and the toadstool also, and there the poor gentleman frog was, tight fast!

"Oh! Oh! You're squeezing the life out of me!" cried Grandpa Croaker.

"That's what I intend to do," spoke the snake, savagely.

"Oh, dear! Oh, dear! What shall I do?" asked Nellie. "Shall I bite his tail, Mr. Frog?"

"No, stay there. Don't come near him, or he'll grab you," called Grandpa Croaker in a choking voice. "Besides you'll get all wet, for it's still raining. I'll get away somehow." But no matter how hard he struggled Grandpa couldn't get away from the snake, who was pressing him tighter and tighter against the toadstool.

Poor Grandpa thought he was surely going to be killed, and Nellie was crying, but she didn't dare go near the snake, and the snake was laughing and snickering as loud as he could. Oh, he was very impolite! Then, all of a sudden, along hopped Bully and Bawly, the frog boys. The ball game had been stopped on account of the rain, you know.

"Oh, look!" cried Bully. "We must save Grandpa from that snake!"

"That's what we must!" shouted Bawly. "Here, we'll make him unwind himself from Grandpa and the toadstool and then hit him with our baseball bats."

So those brave frog boys went quite close to the snake, and that wiggily creature thought he could catch them, and so put out his head to do it. Then Bully and Bawly hopped around the toadstool in a circle, and the snake, keeping his beady, black eyes on them, followed them with his head, around and around, still hoping to catch them, until he finally unwound himself, just like a corkscrew out of a bottle.

Then Bully and Bawly hit him with their baseball bats, and the snake ran away, taking his tail with him, and Grandpa Croaker was free. Then, taking a long breath, for good measure, the old gentleman frog broke off the toadstool and gave it to Nellie Chip-Chip for an umbrella, and the sparrow girl could go home in the rain without getting wet. And Grandpa thanked Bully and Bawly and hopped on home with them. So that's the end of this story.

But in case the little dog next door doesn't take our doormat and eat it for supper with his bread and butter I'll tell you in the story after this one about Bawly and Jollie Longtail.




Story X

Bawly N


For a few days after Grandpa Croaker, the old frog gentleman, had been wound around the toadstool by the snake, as I told you in the story before this one, he was so sore and stiff from the squeezing he had received, that he had to sit in an easy chair, and eat hot mush with sugar on. And, in order that he would not be lonesome, Bawly and Bully No-Tail, the frog boys, sat near him, and read him funny things from their school books, or the paper, and Grandpa Croaker was very thankful to them.

The frog boys wanted very much to go away and play ball with their friends, for, it being the Easter vacation, there was no school, but, instead, they remained at home nearly all the while, so Grandpa wouldn't feel lonesome.

But at last one day the old gentleman frog said:

"Now, boys, I'm sure you must be very tired of staying with me so much. You need a little vacation. I am almost well now, so I'll hop over and see Uncle Wiggily Longears. Then you may go and play ball, and here is a penny for each of you."

Well, of course Bully and Bawly thanked their Grandpa, though they really hadn't expected anything like that, and off they hopped to the store to spend the money. For they had saved all the pennies for a long time, and they were now allowed to buy something.

Bully bought a picture post card to send to Aunt Lettie, the nice old lady goat, and Bawly bought a bean shooter. That is a long piece of tin, with a hole through it like a pipe, and you put in a bean at one end, blow on the other end, and out pops the bean like a cork out of a soda water bottle.

"What are you going to do with that bean shooter?" asked Bully of his brother.

"Oh, I'm going to carry it instead of a gun," said Bawly, "and if I see that bad alligator, or snake, again I'll shoot 'em with beans."

"Beans, won't hurt 'em much," spoke Bully.

"No, but maybe the beans will tickle 'em so they'll laugh and run away," replied his brother. Then they hopped on through the woods, and pretty soon they met Peetie and Jackie Bow Wow, the puppy dogs.

"Let's have a ball game," suggested Peetie, as he wiggled his left ear.

"Oh, yes!" cried Jackie, as he dug a hole in the ground to see if he could find a juicy bone, but he couldn't I'm sorry to say.

Well, they started the ball game, and Bawly was so fond of his bean shooter that he kept it with him all the while, and several times, when the balls were high in the air, he tried to hit them by blowing beans at them. But he couldn't, though the beans popped out very nicely.

But finally the other players didn't like Bawly to do that, for the beans came down all around them, and tickled them so that they had to laugh, and they couldn't play ball.

Then Bawly said he'd lay his shooter down in the grass, but before he could do so his brother Bully knocked such a high flying ball that you could hardly see it.

"Oh, grab it, Bawly! Grab it!" cried Peetie and Jackie, dancing about on the ends of their tails, for Bawly was supposed to chase after the balls. Away he went with his bean shooter, almost as fast as an automobile.

Farther and farther went the ball, and Bawly was chasing after it. All of a sudden he found himself in the back yard of a house where the ball had bounced over the fence, and of course, being a good ball player, Bawly kept right on after it. But he never expected to find himself in the yard, and he certainly never expected to see what he did see.

For there was a great, big, ugly, cruel boy, and he had something in his hand. At first Bawly couldn't tell what it was, and then, to his surprise, he saw that the boy had caught Jollie Longtail, the nice little mousie boy, about whom I once told you.

"Ah ha! Now I have you!" cried the boy to the mouse. "You went in the feed box in my father's barn, and I have caught you."

"Oh, but I only took the least bit of corn," said Jollie Longtail. But the boy didn't understand the mouse language, though Bawly did.

"I'm going to tie your tail in a knot, hang you over the clothes line and then throw stones at you!" went on the cruel boy. "That will teach you to keep away from our place. We don't like mice."

Well, poor Jollie Longtail shivered and shook, and tried to get away from that boy, but he couldn't, and then the boy began tying a knot in the mousie's tail, so he could fasten Jollie to the clothes line in the yard.

"Oh, this is terrible!" cried Bawly, and he forgot all about the ball that was lying in the grass close beside him. "How sorry I am for poor Jollie," thought Bawly.

"There's one knot!" cried the boy as he made it. "Now for another!"

Poor Jollie squirmed and wiggled, but he couldn't get away.

"Now for the last knot, and then I'll tie you on the clothes line," spoke the boy, twisting Jollie's tail very hard.

"Oh, if he ever gets tied on the clothes line that will be the last of him!" thought Bawly. "I wonder how I can save him?"

Bawly thought, and thought, and thought, and finally he thought of his bean shooter, and the beans he still had with him.

"That's the very thing!" he whispered. Then he hid down in the grass, where the boy couldn't see him, and just as that boy was about to tie Jollie to the line, Bawly put a bean in the shooter, put the shooter in his mouth, puffed out his cheeks and "bango!" a bean hit the boy on the nose!

"Ha!" cried the boy. "Who did that?" He looked all around and he thought, maybe, it was a hailstone, but there weren't any storm clouds in the sky. Then the boy once more started to tie Jollie to the line.

"Bungo!" went a bean on his left ear, hitting him quite hard.

"Stop that!" the boy cried, winking his eyes very fast.

"Cracko!" went a bean on his right ear, for Bawly was blowing them very fast now.

"Oh, wait until I get hold of you, whoever you are!" shouted the boy, looking all around, but he could see no one, for Bawly was hiding in the grass.

"Smacko!" went a bean on the boy's nose again, and then he danced up and down, and was so excited that he dropped poor Jollie in the soft grass, and away the mousie scampered to where he saw Bawly hiding.

Then Bawly kindly loosened the knots in the mousie's tail, picked up the ball, and away they both scampered back to the game, and told their friends what had happened. And maybe Jollie wasn't thankful to Bawly! Well, I just guess he was! And that boy was so kerslastrated, about not being able to find out who blew the beans at him, that he stood right up on his head and wiggled his feet in the air, and then ran into the house.

Now, if it should happen that our pussy cat doesn't go roller skating and fall down and hurt its little nose so he can't lap up his milk, I'll tell you next about Bully and the water bottle.




Story XI

Bully And The Water Bottle


Well, just as I expected, my little cat did go roller skating, and skated over a banana skin, and fell down and rubbed some of the fur off his ear. But anyhow I'll tell you a story just the same, and it's going to be about what happened to Bully No-Tail, the frog, when he had a water bottle.

Do you know what a water bottle is? Now don't be too sure. You might think it was a bottle made out of water, but instead it's a bottle that holds water. Any kind of a bottle will do, and you can even take a milk bottle and put water in it if the milkman lets you.

Well, one day, when Bully didn't know what to do to have some fun, and when Bawly, his brother, had gone off to play ball, Bully thought about making a water bottle, as Johnnie Bushytail had told him how to do it.

Bully took a bottle that once had held ink, and he cleaned it all out. Then he got a cork, and, taking one of his mamma's long hatpins, he made, with the sharp point, a number of holes through the cork, just as if it were a sieve, or a coffee strainer. Then Bully filled the bottle with water, put in the cork, and there he had a sprinkling-water-bottle, just as nice as you could buy in a store.

"Now I'll have some fun!" exclaimed Bully, as he jiggled the bottle up and down quite fast, with the cork end held down. The water squirted out from it just like from the watering can, when your mamma waters the flowers.

"I guess I'll go water the garden first," thought Bully. So he hopped over to where there were some seeds planted and the little green sprouts were just peeping up from the ground. Bully sprinkled water on the dry earth and made it soft so the flowers could come through more easily.

"Oh, this is great!" cried the frog boy, as he held the water bottle high in the air and let some drops sprinkle down all around on his own head and clothes.

But please don't any of you try that part of the trick unless you have on your bathing suit, for your mamma might not like it. As for Bully, it didn't matter how wet he got, for frogs just like water, and they have on clothes that water doesn't harm.

So Bully watered all the flowers, and then he sprinkled the dust on the sidewalk and got a broom, and swept it nice and clean.

"Ha! That's a good boy!" said Grandpa Croaker, in his deepest voice, as he hopped out of the yard to go over and play checkers with Uncle Wiggily Longears. "A very good boy, indeed. Here is a penny for you," and he gave Bully a bright, new one.

"I'm going to buy some marbles, as I lost all mine," said Bully, as he thanked his Grandpa very kindly and hopped off to the store.

But before Bully had hopped very far he happened to think that his water bottle was empty, so he stopped at a nice cold spring that he knew of, beside the road, and filled it -- that is, he filled his water bottle, you know, not the spring.

"For," said Bully to himself, "I might happen to meet a bad dog, and if he came at me to bite me I could squirt water in his eyes, almost as well as if I had a water pistol, and the dog would howl and run away."

Well, the frog boy hopped along, and pretty soon he came to a store where the marbles were. He bought a penny's worth of brown and blue ones, and then the monkey-doodle, who kept the store, gave him a piece of candy.

"Now I'll find some of the boys, and have a game of marbles," thought Bully, as he took three big hops and two little ones. Then he hopped into the woods to look for his friends.

Well, Bully hadn't gone on very far before, just as he was hopping past a big stump, he heard a voice calling:

"Now I have you!"

Well, you should have seen that frog boy jump, for he thought it was a savage wolf or fox about to grab him. But, instead he saw Johnnie Bushytail, the squirrel, and right in front of Johnnie was a great big horned owl, with large and staring eyes.

"Now I have you!" cried the owl again, and this time Bully knew the bad bird was speaking to poor Johnnie Bushytail and not to him. And at that the owl put out one claw, and, before the squirrel could run away the savage creature had grabbed him. "Didn't I tell you I had you?" the bird asked, sarcastic like.

"Yes, I guess I did," answered Johnnie, trembling so that his tail looked like a dusting brush. "But please let me go, Mr. Owl. I never did anything to you."

"Didn't you climb up a tree just now?" asked the owl, real saucy like.

"Yes. I guess I did," answered Johnnie. "I'm always climbing trees, you know. But that doesn't hurt you; does it?"

"Yes, it does, for you knocked down a piece of bark, and it hit me on the beak. And for that I'm going to take you home and cook you for dinner," the owl hooted.

"Oh, please, please don't!" begged poor Johnnie, but the owl said he would, just the same, and he began to get ready to fly off to his nest with the squirrel.

"Ha, I must stop that, if it's possible," thought Bully, the frog, who was still hiding behind the stump. "I mustn't let the owl carry Johnnie away. But how can I stop him?" Bully peeked around the edge of the stump and saw the owl squeezing poor Johnnie tighter and tighter in his claws.

"Ah, I have it!" cried Bully. "My water bottle and my marbles!" And with that he hopped softly up on top of the stump, and leaning over the edge he saw below him the owl holding Johnnie. Then Bully took the water bottle, turned it upside down, and he sprinkled the water out as hard as he could on that savage owl's back. Down it fell in a regular shower.

"My goodness me!" cried the owl. "It's raining and I have no umbrella! I'll get all wet!"

Then Bully squirted out more water, shaking it from the bottle as hard as he could, and he rattled his bag of marbles until they sounded like thunder and hailstones, and the owl looked up, but couldn't see Bully on the stump for the water was in his eyes. Then, being very much afraid of rain and thunder storms, that bad owl bird suddenly flew away, leaving Johnnie Bushytail on the ground, scared but safe.

"Ha! That's the time the water bottle did a good trick!" cried Bully, as he went to see if Johnnie was hurt. But the squirrel wasn't, very much, and he could soon scramble home, after thanking Bully very kindly.

And that owl was so wet that he caught cold and had the epizootic for a week, and it served him right. Now in case the baby's rattle box doesn't bounce into the pudding dish and scare the chocolate cake, I'll tell you next about Bawly going hunting.




Story XII

Bawly N


"Oh, Grandpa, will you please tell us a story?" begged Bully and Bawly No-Tail one evening after supper, when they sat beside the old gentleman frog, who was reading a newspaper. "Do tell us a story about a giant."

"Ha! Hum!" exclaimed Grandpa Croaker. "I'm afraid I don't know any giant stories, but I'll tell you one about how I once went hunting and was nearly caught myself."

"Oh, that will be fine!" cried the two frog boys, so their Grandpa took one of them up on each knee, and in his deepest, bass, rumbling, stumbling, bumbling voice he told them the story.

It was a very good story, and some day perhaps I may tell it to you. It was about how, when Grandpa was a young frog, he started out to hunt blackberries, and got caught in a briar bush and couldn't get loose for ever so long, and the mosquitoes bit him very hard, all over.

"And after that I never went hunting blackberries without taking a mosquito netting along," said the old frog gentleman, as he finished his story.

"My but that was an adventure!" cried Bully.

"That's what!" agreed his brother. "You were very brave, Grandpa, to go off hunting blackberries all alone."

"Yes, I was considered quite brave and handsome when I was young," admitted the old gentleman frog, in his bass voice. "But now, boys, run off to bed, and I'll finish reading the paper."

The next morning when Bully got up he saw Bawly at the side of the bed, putting some beans in a bag, and taking his bean shooter out from the bureau drawer where he kept it.

"What are you going to do, Bawly?" asked Bully.

"I'm going hunting, as Grandpa did," said his brother.

"But blackberries aren't ripe yet. They're not ripe until June or July," objected Bully.

"I know it, but I'm going to hunt mosquitoes, not blackberries. I'm going to kill all I can with my bean shooter, and then there won't be so many to bite the dear little babies this summer. Don't you want to come along?" asked Bawly.

"I would if I had a bean shooter," answered Bully. "Perhaps I'll go some other time. To-day I promised Peetie and Jackie Bow Wow I'd come over and play ball with them."

So Bully went to play ball, with the puppy dogs, and Bawly went hunting, after his mamma had said that he might, and had told him to be careful.

"I'll put up a little lunch for you," she said, "so you won't get hungry hunting mosquitoes in the woods."

Off Bawly hopped, with his lunch in a little basket on one leg and carrying his bean shooter, and plenty of beans. He knew a deep, dark, dismal stretch of woodland where there were so many mosquitoes that they wouldn't have been afraid to bite even an elephant, if one had happened along. You see there were so many of the mosquitoes that they were bold and savage, like bears or lions.

"But just wait until I get at them with my bean shooter," said Bawly bravely. "Then they'll be so frightened that they'll fly away, and never come back to bother people any more."

On and on he hopped and pretty soon he could hear a funny buzzing noise.

"Those are the mosquitoes," said the frog boy. "I am almost at the deep, dark, dismal woods. Now I must be brave, as my Grandpa was when he hunted blackberries; and, so that I may be very strong, to kill all the mosquitoes, I'll eat part of my lunch now."

So Bawly sat down under a toadstool, for it was very hot, and he ate part of his lunch. He could hear the mosquitoes buzzing louder and louder, and he knew there must be many of them; thousands and thousands.

"Well, here I go!" exclaimed the frog boy at length, as he wrapped up in a paper what was left of his lunch, and got his bean shooter all ready. "Now for the battle. Charge! Forward, March! Bang-bang! Bung-bung!" and he made a noise like a fife and drum going up hill.

"Well, I wonder what that can be coming into our woods?" asked one mosquito of another as he stopped buzzing his wings a moment.

"It looks like a frog boy," was the reply of a lady mosquito.

"It is," spoke a third mosquito, sharpening his biting bill on a stone. "Let's sting him so he'll never come here again."

"Yes, let's do it!" they all agreed.

So they all got ready with their stingers, and Bawly hopped nearer and nearer. They were just going to pounce on him and bite him to pieces when he suddenly shot a lot of beans at them, hitting quite a number of mosquitoes and killing a few.

"My! What's this? What's this?" cried the mosquitoes that weren't killed. "What is happening?" and they were very much surprised, not to say startled.

"This must be a war!" said some others. "This frog boy is fighting us!"

"That's just what I'm doing!" cried Bawly bravely. "I'm punishing you for what you did to Grandfather Croaker! Bang-bang! Bung-bung! Shoot! Fire! Aim! Forward, March!" and with that he shot some more beans at the mosquitoes, killing hundreds of them so they could never more bite little babies or boys and girls, to say nothing of papas and mammas and aunts and uncles.

Oh, how brave Bawly was with his bean shooter! He made those mosquitoes dance around like humming birds, and they were very much frightened. Then Bawly took a rest and ate some more of his lunch, laying his bean shooter down on top of a stump.

"Now the battle will go on again!" he cried, when he had eaten the last crumb and felt very strong. But, would you believe me, while he was eating, those mosquitoes had sneaked up and taken away his bean shooter.

"Oh, this is terrible!" cried Bawly, as he saw that his tin shooter was gone. "Now I can't fight them any more."

Then the mosquitoes knew that the frog boy didn't have his bean-gun with him, for they had hid it, and they stung him, so much that maybe, they would have stung him to death if it hadn't happened that Dickie and Nellie Chip-Chip, the sparrows, flew along just then. Into the swarm of mosquitoes the birds flew, and they caught hundreds of them in their bills and killed them, and the rest were so frightened that they flew away, and in that manner Bawly was saved.

So that's how he went hunting all alone, and when he got home his Grandpa Croaker and all the folks thought him very brave. Now, in case I see a red poodle dog, with yellow legs, standing on his nose while he wags his tail at the pussy cat, I'll tell you next about Papa No-Tail and the giant.




Story XIII

Papa No-Tail And The Giant


Did you ever hear the story of the giant with two heads, who chased a whale, and caught him by the tail, and tickled the terrible monster with a big, crooked hickory fence rail?

Well, I'm not going to tell you a story about that giant, but about another, who had only one head, though it was a very large one, and this giant nearly scared Papa No-Tail, the frog gentleman, into a conniption fit, which is almost as bad as the epizootic.

It happened one day that there wasn't any work for Mr. No-Tail to do at the wallpaper factory, where he dipped his feet in ink and hopped around to make funny black, and red, and green, and purple splotches, so they would turn out to be wallpaper patterns. The reason there was no work was because the Pelican bird drank up all the ink in his big bill, so they couldn't print any paper.

"I have a holiday," said Papa No-Tail, as he hopped about, "and I am going to have a good time."

"What are you going to do?" asked Grandpa Croaker as he started off across the pond to play checkers with Uncle Wiggily Longears.

"I think I will take Bully and Bawly and go for a swim, and then we'll take a hop through the woods and perhaps we may find an adventure," answered Mr. No-Tail.

So he went up to the house, where Bully and Bawly, the two boy frogs, were just getting ready to go out roller skating, and Mr. No-Tail asked them if they didn't want to come with him instead.

"Indeed we do!" cried Bully, as he winked both eyes at his brother, for he knew that when his papa took them out hopping, he used often to stop in a store and buy them peanuts or candy.

Well, pretty soon, not so very long, in a little while, Papa No-Tail and the two boys got to the edge of the pond, and into the water they hopped to have a swim. My! I just wish you could have seen them. Papa No-Tail swam in ever so many different ways, and Bully and Bawly did as well as they could. And, would you believe me? just as Bully was getting out of the water, up on the bank, ready to go hopping off with Bawly and his papa through the woods, a big fish nearly grabbed the little frog boy by his left hind leg.

"Oh my!" he cried, and his papa hopped over quickly to where Bully was, and threw a stick at the bad fish to scare him away.

"Ha! hum!" exclaimed Mr. No-Tail, "that was nearly an adventure, Bully, but I don't like that kind. Come on into the woods, boys, and we'll see what else we can find."

So into the woods they went, where there were tall trees, and little trees, and bushes, and old stumps where owls lived. And the green leaves were just coming out nicely on the branches, and there were a few early May flowers peeping up from under the leaves and moss, just as baby peeps up at you, out from under the bedclothes in the morning when the sun awakens her.

"Oh, isn't it just lovely here in the woods!" cried Bully.

"It is certainly very fine," agreed Bawly, and he looked up in the treetops, where Johnnie and Billie Bushytail, the squirrels, were frisking about, and then down on the ground, where Sammie and Susie Littletail, the rabbits, were sitting beside an old stump, in which there were no bad owls to scare them.

"Now I think we'll sit down here and eat our lunch," said Papa No-Tail after a while, as they came to a nice little open place in the woods, where there was a large flat stump, which they could use as a table. So they opened the baskets of lunch that Mamma No-Tail had put up for them, and they were eating their watercress sandwiches, and talking of what they would do next, when, all of a sudden, they heard a most startling, tremendous and extraordinary noise in the bushes.

It was just as if an elephant were tramping along, and at first Papa No-Tail thought it might be one of those big beasts, or perhaps an alligator.

"Keep quiet, boys," he whispered, "and perhaps he won't see us." So they kept very quiet, and hid down behind the stump.

But the noise came nearer and nearer, and it sounded louder and louder, and, before you could spell "cat" or "rat," out from under a big, tall tree stepped a big, tall giant. Oh, he was a fearful looking fellow! His head was as big as a washtub full of clothes on a Monday morning, and his legs were so long that I guess he could have hopped, skipped and jumped across the street in about three steps.

"Oh, look!" whispered Bully.

"Oh, isn't he terrible!" said Bawly, softly.

"Hush!" cautioned their papa. "Please keep quiet and maybe he won't see us."

So they kept as quiet as they could, hoping the giant would pass by, but instead he came right over to the stump, and the first any one knew he had sat down on the top of it. I tell you it's a good thing Bully and Bawly and their papa had hopped off or they would have been crushed flat. But they weren't, I'm glad to say, for they were hiding down behind the stump, and they didn't dare hop away for fear the giant would see, or hear them.

The big man sat on the stump, and he looked all about, and he saw some bread and watercress crumbs where Bully and Bawly and their papa had been eating their lunch.

"My!" exclaimed the giant. "Some one has been having dinner here. Oh, how hungry I am! I wish I had some dinner. I believe I could eat the hind legs of a dozen frogs if I had them!"

Well, you should have seen poor Bully and Bawly tremble when they heard that.

"This must be a terrible giant," said Mr. No-Tail. "Now I tell you what I am going to do. Bully, I will hide you and Bawly in this hollow stump, and then I'll hop out where the giant can see me. He'll chase after me, but I'll hop away as fast as I can, and perhaps I can get to some water and hide before he catches me. Then he'll be so far away from the stump that it will be safe for you boys to come out."

Well, Bully and Bawly didn't want their papa to do that, fearing he would be hurt, but he said it was best, so they hid inside the stump, and out Mr. No-Tail hopped to where the giant could see him. Papa No-Tail expected the big man would chase after him, but instead the giant never moved and only looked at the frog and then he laughed and said:

"Hello, Mr. Frog! Let's see you hop!" And then, what do you think that giant did? Why he took off his head, which wasn't real, being hollow and made of paper, like a false face, so that his own head went inside of it. And there he was only a nice, ordinary man after all.

"What! Aren't you a giant?" cried Papa No-Tail, who was so surprised that he hadn't hopped a single hop.

"No," said the man; "I am only a clown giant in a circus, but I ran away to-day so I could see the flowers in the woods. I was tired of being in the circus so much and doing funny tricks."

"But -- but -- what makes you so tall?" asked Mr. No-Tail.

"Oh, those are wooden stilts on my legs," said the giant. "They make me as tall as a clothes post, these stilts do."

And, surely enough, they did, being like wooden legs, and the man wasn't a real giant at all, but very nice, like Mr. No-Tail, only different: and he left off his big hollow paper head, and Bully and Bawly came out of the stump, and the circus clown-giant, just like those you have seen, told the frog boys lots of funny stories. Then they gave him some of their lunch and showed him where flowers grew. Afterward the make-believe giant went back to the circus, much happier than he had been at first.

So that's all now, if you please, but if the rose bush in our back yard doesn't come into the house and scratch the frosting off the chocolate cake I'll tell you next about Bawly and the church steeple.




Story XIV

Bawly And The Church Steeple


After Bully and Bawly No-Tail, the frogs, and their papa, reached home from the woods, where they met the make-believe giant, as I told you in the story before this one, they talked about it for ever so long, and agreed that it was quite an adventure.

"I wish I'd have another adventure to-morrow," said Bawly, as he went to bed that night.

"Perhaps you may," said his papa. "Only I can't be with you to-morrow, as I have to go to work in my wallpaper factory. We made the Pelican bird give back the ink, so the printing presses can run again."

Well, the next day the frog boys' mamma said to them:

"Bully and Bawly, I wish you would go to the store for me. I want a dozen lemons and some sugar, for I am going to make lemonade, in case company comes to-night."

"All right, we'll go," said Bully very politely. "I'll get the sugar and Bawly can get the lemons."

So they went to the store and got the things, and when they were hopping out, the storekeeper, who was a very kind elephant gentleman, gave them each a handful of peanuts, which they put in the pockets of their clothes, that water couldn't hurt.

Well, when Bully and Bawly were almost home, they came to a place where there were two paths. One went through the woods and the other across the pond.

"I'll tell you what let's do," suggested Bully. "You go by the woodland path, Bawly, and I'll go by way of the pond and we'll see who will get home first."

"All right," said Bawly, so on he hopped through the woods, going as fast as he could, for he wanted to beat. And Bully swam as fast as he could in the water, carrying the sugar, for it was in a rubber bag, so it wouldn't get wet. But now I'm going to tell you what happened to Bawly.

He was hopping along, carrying the lemons, when all at once he heard some one calling to him:

"Hello, little frog, are you a good jumper?"

Bawly looked all around, and there right by a great, big stone he saw a savage, ugly fox. At first Bawly was going to throw a lemon at the bad animal, to scare him away, and then he happened to think that the lemons were soft and wouldn't hurt the fox very much.

"Don't be afraid," said the fox, "I won't bite you. I wouldn't hurt you for the world, little frog," and then the fox came slowly from behind the stone, and Bawly saw that both the sly creature's front feet were lame from the rheumatism, like Uncle Wiggily's, so the fox couldn't run at all. Bawly knew he could easily hop away from him, as the sly animal couldn't go any faster than a snail.

"Oh, I guess the reason you won't hurt me, is because you can't catch me," said Bawly, slow and careful-like.

"Oh, I wouldn't hurt you, anyhow," went on the fox, trying not to show how hungry he was, for really, you know, he wanted to eat Bawly, but he knew he couldn't catch him, with his sore feet, so he was trying to think of another way to get hold of him. "I just love frogs," said the fox.

"I guess you do," thought Bawly. "You like them too much. I'll keep well away from you."

"But what I want to know," continued the fox, "is whether you are a good jumper, Bawly."

"Yes, I am -- pretty good," said the frog boy.

"Could you jump over this stone?" asked the fox, slyly, pointing to a little one.

"Easily," said Bawly, and he did it, lemons and all.

"Could you jump over that stump?" asked the fox, pointing to a big one.

"Easily," answered Bawly, and he did it, lemons and all.

"Ha! Here is a hard one," said the fox. "Could you jump over my head?"

"Easily," replied Bawly, and he did it, lemons and all.

"Well, you certainly are a good jumper," spoke the fox, wagging his bushy tail with a puzzled air. "I know something you can't do, though."

"What is it?" inquired Bawly.

"You can't jump over the church steeple."

"I believe I can!" exclaimed Bawly, before he thought. You see he didn't like the fox to think he couldn't do it, for Bawly was proud, and that's not exactly right, and it got him into trouble, as you shall soon see.

You know that fox was very sly, and the reason he wanted Bawly to try to jump over the church steeple was so the frog boy would fall down from a great height and be hurt, and then the fox could eat him without any trouble, sore feet or none. I tell you it's best to look out when a fox asks you to do anything.

"Yes, I can jump over the church steeple," declared Bawly, and he hopped ahead until he came to the church, the fox limping slowly along, and thinking what a fine meal he'd have when poor Bawly fell, for the fox knew what a terrible jump it was, and how anyone who made it would be hurt, but the frog boy didn't.

Bawly tucked the bag of lemons under his leg, and he took a long breath, and he gave a jump, but he didn't go very far up in the air as his foot slipped.

"Ha! I knew you couldn't do it!" sneered the fox.

"Watch me!" cried Bawly, and this time he gave a most tremendous and extraordinary jump, and right up to the church steeple he went, but he didn't go over it, and it's a good thing, too, or he'd have been all broken to pieces when he landed on the ground again. But instead he hit right on top of the church steeple and stayed there, where there was a nice, round, golden ball to sit on.

"Jump down! Jump down!" cried the fox, for he wanted to eat Bawly.

"No, I'm going to stay here," answered the frog boy, for now he saw how far it was to the ground, and he knew he'd be killed if he leaped off the steeple.

Well, the fox tried to get him to jump down, but Bawly wouldn't. And then the frog boy began to wonder how he'd ever get home, for the steeple was very high.

Then what do you think Bawly did? Why, he took a lemon and threw it at the church bell, hoping to ring it so the janitor would come and help him down. But the lemon was too soft to ring the bell loudly enough for any to hear.

Then Bawly thought of his peanuts, and he threw a handful of them at the church bell in the steeple, making it ring like an alarm clock, and the janitor, who was sweeping out the church for Sunday, heard the bell, and he looked up and saw the frog on the steeple. Then the janitor, being a kind man, got a ladder and helped Bawly down, and the fox, very much disappointed, limped away, and didn't eat the frog boy after all.

"But you must never try to jump over a steeple again," said Bawly's mamma when he told her about it, after he got home with the lemons, and found Bully there ahead of him with the sugar.

So Bawly promised that he wouldn't, and he never did. And now, if the postman brings me a pink letter with a green stamp on from the playful elephant in the circus, I'll tell you next about Bully and the basket of chips.




Story XV

Bully And The Basket Of Chips


One nice warm day, as Bully No-Tail, the frog boy, was hopping along through the woods, he felt so very happy that he whistled a little tune on a whistle he made from a willow stick. And the tune he whistled went like this, when you sing it:

"I am a little froggie boy, Without a bit of tail. In fact I'm like a guinea pig, Who eats out of a pail.

"I swim, I hop, I flip, I flop, I also sing a tune, And some day I am going to try To hop up to the moon.

"Because you see the man up there Must very lonesome be, Without a little froggie boy, Like Bawly or like me."

"Oh, ho! I wouldn't try that if I were you," suddenly exclaimed a voice.

"Try what?" asked Bully, before he thought.

"Try to jump up to the moon," went on the voice. "Don't you remember what happened to your brother Bawly when he tried to jump over the church steeple? Don't do it, I beg of you."

"Oh, I wasn't really going to jump to the moon," went on Bully. "I only put that in the song to make it sound nice. But who are you, if you please?" for the frog boy looked all around and he couldn't see any one.

"Here I am, over here," the voice said, and then out from behind a clump of tall, waving cat-tail plants, that grew in a pond of water, there stepped a long-legged bird, with a long, sharp bill like a pencil or a penholder.

"Oh ho! So it's you, is it?" asked Bully, making ready to hop away, for as soon as he saw that long-legged and sharp-billed bird, he knew right away that he was in danger. For the bird was a heron, which is something like a stork that lives on chimneys in a country called Holland. And the heron bird eats frogs and mice and little animals like that.

"Yes, it is I," said the heron. "Won't you please sing that song on your whistle again, Bully? I am very fond of music." And, as he said that, the heron slyly took another step nearer to the frog boy, intending to grab him up in his sharp beak.

"I -- I don't believe I have time to sing another verse," answered Bully. "And anyhow, there aren't any more verses. So I'll be going," and he hopped along, and hid under a stone where the big, big savage bird couldn't get him.

Oh, my! how angry the heron was when he saw that he couldn't fool Bully. He stamped his long legs on the ground and said all sorts of mean things, just because Bully didn't want to be eaten up.

"Now I wonder how I'm going to get away from here without that bird biting me?" thought poor Bully, after a while.

Well, it did seem a hard thing to do, for the heron was there waiting for Bully to come out, when he would jab his bill right through the frog boy. Then Bully thought and thought, which you must always do when you are in trouble, or have hard examples at school, and finally Bully thought of a plan.

"I'll hop along and go from one stone to another," he said to himself, "and by hiding under the different rocks the heron can't get me."

So he tried that plan, hopping very quickly, and he got along all right, for every time the heron tried to stick the frog boy with his sharp bill, the bird would pick at a stone, under which Bully was hidden, and that would make him more angry than ever. I mean it would make the heron angry, not Bully.

Well, the frog boy was almost home, and he knew that pretty soon the heron would have to turn back and run away, for the bird wouldn't dare go right up to Bully's house. Then, all of a sudden, Bully saw a poor old mouse lady going along through the woods, with a basket of chips on her arm. She had picked them up where some men were cutting wood, and the mouse lady intended to put the chips in her kitchen stove, and boil the teakettle with them.

She walked along, when, all of a sudden, she stumbled on an acorn, and fell down, basket and all, and she hurt her paw on a thorn, so she couldn't carry the basket any more.

"Oh, that's too bad!" exclaimed Bully. "I must help the poor mouse lady." So, forgetting all about the savage, long-billed bird, waiting to grab him, out from under a stone hopped Bully, and he picked up the basket of chips for the poor mouse lady.

"Oh, thank you kindly, little frog boy," she said, and then the heron made a rush for Bully and the mouse lady and tried to stick them both with his sharp beak.

"Oh, quick! Quick! Hop in here with me!" exclaimed the mouse lady, as she pointed to a hole in a hollow stump, and into it she and Bully went, basket of chips and all, just in time to escape the bad heron bird.

"Oh, I'll get you yet! I'll get you yet!" screeched the bird, hopping along, first on one leg and then on the other, and dancing about in front of the stump. "I'll eat you both, that's what I will!" Then he tried to reach in with his bill and pull the frog boy and the mouse lady out of the hollow stump, but he couldn't, and then he stood on one leg and hid the other one up under his feathers to keep it warm.

"I'll wait here until you come out, if I have to wait all night," said the bird. "Then I'll get you."

"I guess he will, too," said Bully, peeping out of a crack. "We are safe here, but how am I going to get home, and how are you going to get home, Mrs. Mouse?"

"I will show you," she answered. "We'll play a trick on that heron. See, I have some green paint, that I was going to put on my kitchen cupboard. Now we'll take some of it, and we'll paint a few of the chips green, and they'll look something like a frog. Then we'll throw them out to the heron, one at a time, and he'll be so hungry that he'll grab them without looking at them. When he eats enough green chips he'll have indigestion, and be so heavy, like a stone, that he can't chase after us when we go out."

"Good!" cried Bully. So they painted some chips green, just the color of Bully, and they tossed one out of the stump toward the bird.

"Now I have you!" cried the heron, and, thinking it was the frog boy, he grabbed up that green chip as quick as anything. And, before he knew what it was, he had swallowed it, and then Mrs. Mouse and Bully threw out more green chips, and the bad bird didn't know they were only wood, but he thought they were a whole lot of green frogs hopping out, and he gobbled them up, one after another, as fast as he could.

And, in a little while, the sharp chips stuck out all over inside of him, like potatoes in a sack, and the heron had indigestion, and was so heavy that he couldn't run. Then Bully and Mrs. Mouse came out of the stump, and went away, leaving the bad bird there, unable to move, and as angry as a fox without a tail. Bully helped Mrs. Mouse carry the rest of the chips home, and then he hopped home himself.

Now that's the end of this story, but I know another, and if the little boy across the street doesn't throw his baseball at my pussy cat and make her tail so big I can't get her inside the house, I'll tell you about Bawly and his whistles.




Story XVI

Bawly And His Whistles


Did you ever make a willow whistle -- that is, out of a piece of wood off a willow tree?

No? Well, it's lots of fun, and when I was a boy I used to make lots of them. Big ones and little ones, and the kind that would almost make as much noise as some factory whistles. If you can't make one yourself, ask your big brother, or your papa, or some man, to make you one.

Maybe your big sister can, for some girls, like Lulu Wibblewobble, the duck, can use a knife almost as good as a boy.

Well, if I'm going to tell you about Bawly No-Tail, the frog, and his whistles I guess I'd better start, hadn't I? and not talk so much about big brothers and sisters.

One afternoon Bawly was hopping along in the woods. It was a nice, warm day, and the wind was blowing in the treetops, and the flowers were blooming down in the moss, and Bawly was very happy.

He came to a willow tree, and he said to himself:

"I guess I'll make a whistle." So he cut off a little branch, about eight inches long, and with his knife he cut one end slanting, just like the part of a whistle that goes in your mouth. Then he made a hole for the wind to come out of.

Then he pounded the bark on the stick gently with his knife handle, and pretty soon the bark slipped off, just as mamma takes off her gloves after she's been down to the five-and-ten-cent store. Then Bully cut away some of the white wood, slipped on the bark again, and he had a whistle.

"My! That's fine!" he cried, as he blew a loud blast on it. "I think I'll make another."

So he made a second one, and then he went on through the woods, blowing first one whistle and then the other, like the steam piano in the circus parade.

"Hello!" suddenly cried a voice in the woods, "who is making all that noise?"

"I am," answered Bawly. "Who are you?"

"I am Sammie Littletail," was the reply, and out popped the rabbit boy from under a bush. "Oh, what fine whistles!" he cried when he saw those Bawly had made. "I wish I had one."

"You may have, Sammie," answered Bawly kindly, and he gave his little rabbit friend the biggest and loudest whistle. Then the two boy animals went on through the woods, and pretty soon they came to a place where there was a pond of water.

"Excuse me for a minute," said Bawly. "I think I'll have a little swim. Will you join me, Sammie?" he asked, politely.

"No," answered the rabbit, "I'm not a good swimmer, but I'll wait here on the bank for you."

"Then you may hold my whistle as well as your own," said Bawly, "for I might lose it under water." Then into the pond Bawly hopped, and was soon swimming about like a fish.

But something is going to happen, just as I expected it would, and I'll tell you all about it, as I promised.

All of a sudden, as Bawly was swimming about, that bad old skillery, scalery alligator, who had escaped from a circus, reared his ugly head up from the pond, where he had been sleeping, and grabbed poor Bawly in his claws.

"Oh, let me go!" cried the boy frog. "Please let me go!"

"No, I'll not!" answered the alligator savagely. "I had you and your brother once before, and you got away, but you shan't get loose this time. I'm going to take you to my deep, dark, dismal den, and then we'll have supper together."

Well, Bawly begged and pleaded, but it was of no use. That alligator simply would not let him go, but held him tightly in his claws, and made ugly faces at him, just like the masks on Hallowe'en night.

All this while Sammie Littletail sat on the bank of the pond, too frightened, at the sight of the alligator, to hop away. He was afraid the savage creature might, at any moment, spring out and grab him also, and the rabbit boy just sat there, not knowing what to do.

"I wish I could save Bawly," thought Sammie, "but how can I? I can't fight a big alligator, and if I throw stones at him it will only make him more angry. Oh, if only there was a fireman or a policeman in the woods, I'd tell him, and he'd hit the alligator, and make him go away. But there isn't a policeman or a fireman here!"

Then the alligator started to swim away with poor Bawly, to take him off to his deep, dark, dismal den, when, all of a sudden, Sammie happened to think of the two willow whistles he had -- his own and Bawly's.

"I wonder if I could scare the alligator with them, and make him let Bawly go?" Sammie thought. Then he made up a plan. He crept softly to one side, and he hid behind a stump. Then he took the two whistles and he put them into his mouth.

Next, the rabbit boy gathered up a whole lot of little stones in a pile. And the next thing he did was to build a little fire out of dry sticks. Then he hunted up an old tin can that had once held baked beans, but which now didn't have anything in it.

"Oh, I'll make that alligator wish he'd never caught Bawly!" exclaimed Sammie, working very quickly, for the savage reptile was fast swimming away with the frog boy.

Sammie put the stones in the tin can, together with some water, and he set the can on the fire to boil, and he knew the stones would get hot, too, as well as the water. And, surely enough, soon the water in the can was bubbling and the stones were very hot.

Then Sammie took a long breath and he blew on those whistles, both at the same time as hard as ever he could. Then he took some wet moss and wrapped it around the hot can, so it wouldn't burn his paws, and he tossed everything -- hot water, hot stones, hot can and all -- over into the pond, close to where the alligator was. Then Sammie blew on the whistles some more. "Toot! Toot! Toot! Toot!"

"Splash!" Into the water went the hot stones, hissing like snakes.

"Buzz! Bubble! Fizz!" went the hot water all over the alligator.

"Toot! Toot!" went the whistles which Sammie was blowing.

"Skizz! Skizz!" went the hot fire-ashes that also fell into the pond.

"Oh, it's a fire engine after me! It's a terrible fire engine after me! It's spouting hot water and sparks on me!" cried the alligator, real frightened like, and then he was so scared that he let go of Bawly, and sank away down to the bottom of the pond to get out of the way of the hot stones and the hot water and the hot sparks, and where he couldn't hear the screechy whistles which he thought came from fire engines. And Bawly swam safely to shore, and he thanked Sammie Littletail very kindly for saving his life, and they went on a little farther and had a nice game of tag together until supper time.

So that's how the whistles that Bawly made did him a good service, and next, if it stops raining long enough so the moon can come out without getting wet, and go to the moving pictures, I'll tell you about Grandpa Croaker and Uncle Wiggily Longears.




Story XVII

Grandpa Croaker And Uncle Wiggily


After the trick which Sammie Littletail, the rabbit boy, played on the alligator, making him believe a fire engine was after him, it was some time before Bully or Bawly No-Tail, the frogs, went near that pond again, where the savage creature with the long tail lived, after he had escaped from the circus.

"Because it isn't safe to go near that water," said Bawly.

"No, indeed," agreed his brother. "Some day we'll get a pump and pump all the water out of the pond, and that will make the alligator go away."

Well, it was about a week after this that Grandpa Croaker, the old gentleman frog, put on his best dress. Oh, dear me! Just listen to that, would you! I mean he put on his best suit and started out, taking his gold-headed cane with him.

"Where are you going?" asked Mrs. No-Tail.

"Oh! I think I'll go over and play a game of checkers with Uncle Wiggily Longears," replied the old gentleman frog. "The last game we played he won, but I think I can win this time."

"Well, whatever you do, Grandpa," spoke Bully, "please don't go past the pond where the bad alligator is."

"No, indeed, for he might bite you," said Bawly, and their Grandpa promised that he would be careful.

Well, he went along through the woods, Grandpa Croaker did, and pretty soon, after a while, not so very long, he came to where Uncle Wiggily lived, with Sammie and Susie Littletail, and their papa and mamma and Miss Jane Fuzzy-Wuzzy, the muskrat nurse. But to-day only Uncle Wiggily was home alone, for every one else had gone to the circus.

So the old gentleman goat -- I mean frog -- and the old gentleman rabbit sat down and played a game of checkers. And after they had played one game they played another, and another still, for Uncle Wiggily won the first game, and Grandpa Croaker won the second, and they wanted to see who would win the third.

Well, they were playing away, moving the red and black round checkers back and forth on the red and black checker board, and they were talking about the weather, and whether there'd be any more rain, and all things like that, when, all of a sudden Uncle Wiggily heard a noise at the window.

"Hello! What's that?" he cried, looking up.

"It sounded like some one breaking the glass," answered Grandpa Croaker. "I hope it wasn't Bawly and Bully playing ball."

Then he looked up, and he saw the same thing that Uncle Wiggily saw, and the funny part of it was that Uncle Wiggily saw the same thing Grandpa Croaker saw. And what do you think this was?

Why it was that savage skillery, scalery alligator chap who had poked his ugly nose right in through the window, breaking the glass!

"Ha! What do you want here?" cried Uncle Wiggily, as he made his ears wave back and forth like palm leaf fans, and twinkled his nose like two stars on a frosty night.

"Yes, get right away from here, if you please!" said Grandpa Croaker in his deepest, hoarsest, rumbling, grumbling, thunder-voice. "Get away, we want to play checkers."

But he couldn't scare the alligator that way, and the first thing he and Uncle Wiggily knew, that savage creature poked his nose still farther into the room.

"Oh, ho!" the alligator cried. "Checkers; eh? Now, do you know I am very fond of checkers?" And with that, what did he do but put out his long tongue, and with one sweep he licked up the red checkers and the black checkers and the red and black squared checker board at one swallow, and down his throat it went, like a sled going down hill.

"Ah, ha!" exclaimed the alligator. "Those were very fine checkers. I think I won that game!" he said, smiling a very big smile.

"Yes, I guess you did," said Uncle Wiggily, sadly, as he looked for his cornstalk crutch. When he had it he was just going to hop away, and Grandpa Croaker was going with him, for they were afraid to stay there any more, when the alligator suddenly cried:

"Where are you going?"

"Away," said Uncle Wiggily.

"Far, far away," said Grandpa Croaker, for it made him sad to think of all the nice red and black checkers, and the board also, being eaten up.

"Oh, no! I think you are going to stay right here," snapped the alligator. "You'll stay here, and as soon as I feel hungry again I'll eat you."

And with that the savage creature with the double-jointed tail put out his claws, and in one claw he grabbed Uncle Wiggily and in the other he caught Grandpa Croaker, and there he had them both.

Now, it so happened that a little while before this, Bully and Bawly No-Tail, the frog boys, had started out for a walk in the woods.

"Dear me," said Bully, after a while, "do you know I am afraid that something has happened to Grandpa Croaker."

"What makes you think so?" asked his brother.

"Because I think he went past the pond where the alligator was, and that the bad creature got him."

"Oh, I hope not," replied Bawly. "But let's walk along and see." So they walked past the pond, and they saw that it was all calm and peaceful, and they knew the alligator wasn't in it.

So they kept on to Uncle Wiggily's house, thinking they would walk home with Grandpa Croaker, and when they came to where the old gentleman rabbit lived, they saw the alligator standing on his tail outside with his head in through the window.

"I knew it!" cried Bully. "I knew that alligator would be up to some tricks! Perhaps he has already eaten Grandpa Croaker and Uncle Wiggily."

Just then they heard both the old animal gentlemen squealing inside the house, for the alligator was squeezing them.

"They're alive! They're still alive!" cried Bawly. "We must save them!"

"How?" asked Bully.

"Let's build a fire under the alligator's tail," suggested Bawly. "He can't see us, for his head is inside the room."

So what did those two brave frog boys do but make a fire of leaves under the alligator's long tail. And he was so surprised at feeling the heat, that he turned suddenly around, dropped Uncle Wiggily and Grandpa Croaker on the table cloth, and then, pulling his head out of the window, he turned it over toward the fire, and he cried great big alligator tears on the flames and put them out. Oh, what a lot of big tears he cried.

Then he tried to catch Bully and Bawly, but the frog boys hopped away, and the alligator ran after them. Just then the man from the circus came, with a long rope and caught the savage beast and put him back in the cage and made him go to sleep, after he put some vaseline on his burns.

So that's how Bully and Bawly saved Uncle Wiggily and Grandpa Croaker, by building a fire under the alligator's long tail.

And in case some one sends me a nice ring for my finger, or thumb, with a big orange in it instead of a diamond, I'll tell you next about Mrs. No-Tail and Mrs. Longtail.




Story XVIII

Mrs. N


"Now, boys," said Mrs. No-Tail, the frog lady, to Bully and Bawly one day, as she put on her best bonnet and shawl and started out, "I hope you will be good while I am away."

"Where are you going, mamma?" asked Bully.

"I am going over to call on Mrs. Longtail, the mouse," replied Mrs. No-Tail. "She is the mother of the mice children, Jollie and Jillie Longtail, you know, and she has been ill with mouse-trap fever. So I am taking her some custard pie, and a bit of toasted cheese."

"Oh, of course we'll be good," promised Bawly. "But if you don't come home in time for supper, mamma, what shall we eat?"

"I have made up a cold supper for you and your papa and Grandpa Croaker," said Mrs. No-tail. "You will find it in the oven of the stove. You may eat at 5 o'clock, but I think I'll be back before then."

Poor Mrs. No-Tail didn't know what was going to happen to her, nor how near she was to never coming home at all again. But there, wait, if you please, I'll tell you all about it.

Away hopped Mrs. No-Tail through the woods, carrying the custard pie and the toasted cheese for Mrs. Longtail in a little basket. And when she got there, I mean to the mouse house, she found the mouse lady home all alone, for Jollie and Jillie and Squeaky-Eaky, the little cousin mouse, had gone to a surprise party, given by Nellie Chip-Chip, the sparrow girl.

"Oh, I'm so glad to see you," said Mrs. Longtail. "Come right in, if you please, Mrs. No-Tail. I'll make you a cup of tea."

"Oh, are you able to be about?" asked Bully's mamma.

"Yes," replied Jollie's mamma. "I am much better, thank you. I am so glad you brought me a custard pie. But now sit right down by the window, where you can smell the flowers in the garden, and I'll make tea."

Well in a little while, about forty-'leven seconds, Mrs. Longtail had the tea made, and she and Mrs. No-Tail sat in the dining-room eating it -- I mean sipping it -- for it was quite hot. And they were talking about spring housecleaning, and about moths getting in the closets, and eating up the blankets and the piano, and about whether there would be many mosquitoes this year, after Bawly had killed such numbers of them with his bean shooter. They talked of many other things, and finally Mrs. Longtail said:

"Let me get you another cup of tea, Mrs. No-Tail."

So the lady mouse went out in the kitchen to get the tea off the stove, and when she got there, what do you think she saw? Why, a great, big, ugly, savage cat had, somehow or other, gotten into the room and there he sat in front of the fire, washing his face, which was very dirty.

"Oh, ho!" exclaimed the cat, blinking his yellow eyes, "I was wondering whether anybody was at home here."

"Yes, I am at home!" exclaimed the mouse lady, "and I want you to get right out of my house, Mr. Cat."

"Well," replied the cat, licking his whiskers with his red tongue, "I'm not going! That's all there is to it. I am glad I found you at home, but you are not going to be at home long."

"Why not?" asked Mrs. Longtail, suspicious like.

"Because," answered that bad cat, "I am going to eat you up, and I think I'll start right in!"

"Oh, don't!" begged Mrs. Longtail, as she tried to run back into the dining-room, where Mrs. No-Tail was sitting. But the savage cat was too quick for her, and in an instant he had her in his paws, and was glaring at her with his yellowish-green eyes.

"I don't know whether to eat you head first or tail first," said the cat, as he looked at the poor mouse lady. "I must make up my mind before I begin."

Now while he was making up his mind Mrs. No-Tail sat in the other room, wondering what kept Mrs. Longtail such a long time away, getting the second cup of tea.

"Perhaps I had better go and see what's keeping her," Mrs. No-Tail thought. "She may have burned herself on the hot stove, or teapot." So she went toward the kitchen, and there she saw a dreadful sight, for there was that bad cat, holding poor Mrs. Longtail in his claws and opening his mouth to eat her.

"Oh, let me go! Please let me go!" the mouse lady begged.

"No, I'll not," answered the cat, and once more he licked his whiskers with his red tongue.

"Oh, I must do something to that cat!" thought Mrs. No-Tail. "I must make him let Mrs. Longtail go."

So she thought and thought, and finally the frog lady saw a sprinkling can hanging on a nail in the dining-room, where Mrs. Longtail kept it to water the flowers with.

"I think that will do," said Mrs. No-Tail. So she very quietly and carefully took it off the nail, and then she went softly out of the front door, and around to the side of the house to the rain-water barrel, where she filled the watering can. Then she came back with it into the house.

"Now," she thought, "if I can only get up behind the cat and pour the water on him, he'll think it's raining, and as cats don't like rain he may run away, and let Mrs. Longtail go."

So Mrs. No-Tail tip-toed out into the kitchen as quietly as she could, for she didn't want the cat to see her. But the savage animal, who had made his tail as big as a skyrocket, was getting ready to eat Mrs. Longtail, and he was going to begin head first. So he didn't notice Mrs. No-Tail.

Up she went behind him, on her tippiest tiptoes, and she held the watering can above his head. Then she tilted it up, and suddenly out came the water -- drip! drip! drip! splash! splash!

Upon the cat's furry back it fell, and my, you should have seen how surprised that cat was!

"Why, it's raining in the house," he cried. "The roof must leak. The water is coming in! Get a plumber! Get a plumber!"

Then he gave a big jump, and bumped his head on the mantelpiece, and this so startled him that he dropped Mrs. Longtail, and she scampered off down in a deep, dark hole and hid safely away. Then the cat saw Mrs. No-Tail pouring water from the can, and he knew he had been fooled.

"Oh, I'll get you!" he cried, and he jumped at her, but the frog lady threw the sprinkling can at the cat, and it went right over his head like a bonnet, and frightened him so that he jumped out of the window and ran away. And he didn't come back for a week or more. So that's how Mrs. No-Tail saved Mrs. Longtail.

Now in case the baker man doesn't take the front door bell away to put it on the rag doll's carriage, I'll tell you next about Bawly and Arabella Chick.




Story XIX

Bawly And Arabella Chick.


Bawly No-Tail, the frog boy, had been kept in after school one day for whispering. It was something he very seldom did in class, and I'm quite surprised that he did it this time.

You see, he was very anxious to play in a ball game, and when teacher went to the blackboard to draw a picture of a cat, so the pupils could spell the word better, Bawly leaned over and asked Sammie Littletail, the rabbit boy, in a whisper:

"Say, Sammie, will you have a game of ball after school?"

Sammie shook his head "yes," but he didn't talk. And the lady mouse teacher heard Bawly whispering, and she made him stay in. But he was sorry for it, and promised not to do it again, and so he wasn't kept in very late.

Well, after a while the nice mouse teacher said Bawly could go, and soon he was on his way home, and he was wondering if he would meet Sammie or any of his friends, but he didn't, as they had hurried down to the vacant lots, where the circus tents were being put up for a show.

"Oh, my, how lonesome it is!" exclaimed Bawly. "I wish I had some one to play with. I wonder where all the boys are?"

"I don't know where they are," suddenly answered a voice, "but if you like, Bawly, I will play house with you. I have my doll, and we can have lots of fun."

Bawly looked around, to make sure it wasn't a wolf or a bad owl trying to fool him, and there he saw Arabella Chick, the little chicken girl, standing by a big pie-plant. It wasn't a plant that pies grow on, you understand, but the kind of plant that mamma makes pies from.

"Don't you want to play house?" asked Arabella, kindly, of Bawly.

"No -- no thank you, I -- I guess not," answered Bawly, bashfully standing first on one leg, and then on the other. "I -- er -- that is -- well, you know, only girls play house," the frog boy said, for, though he liked Arabella very much, he was afraid that if he played house with her some of his friends might come along and laugh at him.

"Some boys play house," answered the little chicken girl. "But no matter. Perhaps you would like to come to the store with me."

"What are you going to get?" asked Bawly, curious like.

"Some kernels of corn for supper," answered Arabella, "and I also have a penny to spend for myself. I am going to get some watercress candy, and -- "

"Oh, I'll gladly come to the store with you," cried Bawly, real excited like. "I'll go right along. I don't care very much about playing ball with the boys. I'd rather go with you."

"I'll give you some of my candy if you come," went on Arabella, who didn't like to go alone.

"I thought -- that is, I hoped you would," spoke Bawly, shyly-like. Well, the frog boy and the chicken girl went on to the store, and Arabella got the corn, and also a penny's worth of nice candy flavored with watercress, which is almost as good as spearmint gum.

The two friends were walking along toward home, each one taking a bite of candy now and then, and Bawly was carrying the basket of corn. He was taking a nice bite off the stick of candy that Arabella held out to him, and he was thinking how kind she was, when, all of a sudden the frog boy stumbled and fell, and before he knew it the basket of corn slipped from his paw, and into a pond of water it fell -- ker-splash!

"Oh dear!" cried Arabella.

"Oh dear!" also cried Bawly. "Now I have gone and done it; haven't I?"

"But -- but I guess you didn't mean to," spoke Arabella, kindly.

"No," replied Bawly, "I certainly did not. But perhaps I can get the corn up for you. I'll reach down and try."

So he stretched out on the bank of the pond, and reached his front leg down into the water as far as it would go, but he couldn't touch the corn, for it was scattered out of the basket, all over the floor, or bottom, of the pond.

"That will never do!" cried Bawly. "I guess I'll have to dive down for that corn."

"Dive down!" exclaimed Arabella. "Oh, if you dive down under water you'll get all wet. Wait, and perhaps the water will all run out of the pond and we can then get the corn."

"Oh I don't mind the wet," replied the frog boy. "My clothes are made purposely for that. I'm so sorry I spilled the corn." So into the water Bawly popped, clothes and all, just as when you fall out of a boat, and down to the bottom he went. But when he tried to pick up the corn he had trouble. For the kernels were all wet and slippery and Bawly couldn't very well hold his paw full of corn, and swim at the same time. So he had to let go of the corn, and up he popped.

"Oh!" cried Arabella, when she saw he didn't have any corn. "I'm so sorry! What shall we do? We need the corn for supper."

"I'll try again," promised Bawly, and he did, again and again, but still he couldn't get any of the corn up from under the water. And he felt badly, and so did Arabella, and even eating what they had left of the candy didn't make them feel any better.

"I tell you what it is!" cried Bawly, after he had tried forty-'leven times to dive down after the corn, "what I need is something like an ash sieve. Then I could scoop up the corn and water, and the water would run out, and leave the corn there."

"But you haven't any sieve," said Arabella, "and so you can never get the corn, and we won't have any supper, and --  --  Oh, dear! Boo-hoo! Hoo-boo!"

"Oh, please don't cry," begged Bawly, who felt badly enough himself. "Here, wait, I'll see if I can't drink all the water out of the pond, and that will leave the ground dry so we can get the corn."

Well, he tried, but, bless you, he couldn't begin to drink all the water in the pond. And he didn't know what to do, until, all of a sudden, he saw, coming along the road, Aunt Lettie, the nice old lady goat. And what do you think she had? Why, a coffee strainer, that she had bought at the five-and-ten-cent store. As soon as Bawly saw that strainer he asked Aunt Lettie if he could take it.

She said he could, and pretty soon down he dived under the water again, and with the coffee strainer it was very easy to scoop up the corn from the bottom of the pond, and soon Bawly got it all back again, and the water hadn't hurt it a bit, only making it more tender and juicy for cooking.

And just as Bawly got up the last of the corn in the coffee strainer, down swooped a big owl, and he tried to grab Bawly and Arabella and the corn and sieve and Aunt Lettie, all at the same time. But the old lady goat drove him away with her sharp horns, and then Bawly and Arabella thanked her very kindly and went home, the frog boy carrying the corn he had gotten up from the pond, and taking care not to spill it again. And so every one was happy but the owl.

Now in case the fish man doesn't paint the glass of the parlor windows sky-blue pink, so I can't see Uncle Wiggily Longears when he rings the door bell, I'll tell you next about Bully and Dottie Trot.




Story XX

Bawly And Arabella Chick.


One day Bully No-Tail, the frog boy, was hopping along through the woods, and he felt so very fine, and it was such a nice day, that, when he came to a place where some flowers grew up near an old stump, nodding their pretty heads in the wind, the frog boy sang a little song.

"I love to skip and jump and hop, I love to hear firecrackers pop, I love to play The whole long day, I love to spin my humming top."

That's what Bully sang, and if there had been a second, or a third, or a forty-'leventh verse he would have sung that too, as he felt so good. Well, after he had sung the one verse he hopped on some more, and pretty soon he came to the place where the mouse lady lived, whose basket of chips Bully had once picked up, when she hurt her foot on a thorn. I guess you remember about that story.

"Ah, how to you do, Bully?" asked the mouse lady, as the frog boy hopped along.

"Thank you, I am very well," he answered politely. "I hope you are feeling pretty good."

"Well," she made answer, "I might feel better. I have a little touch of cat-and-mouse-trap fever, but I think if I stay in my hole and take plenty of toasted cheese, I'll be better. But here is a nice sugar cookie for you," and with that the nice mouse lady went to the cupboard, got a cookie, and gave it to the frog boy.

Bully ate it without getting a single crumb on the floor, which was very good of him, and then, saving a piece of the cookie for his brother Bawly, he hopped on, after bidding the mouse lady good-by and hoping that she would soon be better.

Along and along hopped Bully, and all of a sudden the big giant jumped out of the bushes -- Oh, excuse me, if you please! there is no giant in this story. The giant went back to the circus, but I'll tell you a story about him as soon as I may. As Bully was hopping along, all of a sudden out from behind a bush there jumped a savage, ugly wolf, and he had gotten out of his circus cage again, and was looking around for something to eat.

"Ah, ha! At last I have found something!" cried the wolf, as he made a spring for Bully, and he caught the frog boy under his paws and held him down to the earth, just like a cat catches a mouse.

"Oh, let me go! Please let me go! You are squeezing the breath out of me!" cried poor Bully.

"Indeed I will not let you go!" replied the wolf, real unpleasant-like. "I have been looking for something to eat all day and now that I've found it I'm not going to let you go. No, indeed, and some horseradish in a bottle besides."

"Are you really going to eat me?" asked Bully, sorrowfully.

"I certainly am," replied the wolf. "You just watch me. Oh, no, I forgot. You can't see me eat you, but you can feel me, which is much the same thing."

Then the wolf sharpened his teeth on a sharpening stone, and he got ready to eat up the frog boy. Now Bully didn't want to be eaten, and I don't blame him a bit; do you? He wanted to go play ball, and have a lot of fun with his friends, and he was thinking what a queer world this is, where you can be happy and singing a song, and eating a sugar cookie one minute, and the next minute be caught by a wolf. But that's the way it generally is.

Then, as Bully thought of how good the sugar cookie was he asked the wolf:

"Will you let me go for a piece of cookie, Mr. Wolf?"

"Let me see the cookie," spoke the savage creature.

So Bully reached in his pocket, and took out the piece of cookie that he was saving for Bawly. He knew Bawly would only be too glad to have the wolf take it, if he let his brother Bully go.

But, would you ever believe it? That unpleasant and most extraordinary wolf animal snatched the cookie from Bully's paw, ate it up with one mouthful, and only smiled.

"Well, now, are you going to let me go?" asked Bully.

"No," said the wolf. "That cookie only made me more hungry. I guess I'll eat you now, and then go look for your brother and eat him, too."

"Oh, will no one save me?" cried Bully in despair, and just then he heard a rustling in the bushes. He looked up and there he saw Dottie Trot, the little pony girl. She waved her hoof at Bully, and then the frog boy knew she would save him if she could. So he thought of a plan, while Dottie, with her new red hair ribbon tied in a pink bow, hid in the bushes, where the wolf couldn't see her, and waited.

"Well, if you are going to eat me, Mr. Wolf," said Bully, most politely, after a while, "will you grant me one favor before you do so?"

"What is it?" asked the wolf, still sharpening his teeth.

"Let me take one last hop before I die?" asked Bully.

"Very well," answered the wolf. "One hop and only one, remember. And don't think you can get away, for I can run faster than you can hop."

Bully knew that, but he was thinking of Dottie Trot. So the wolf took his paws off Bully, and the frog boy got ready to take a last big hop. He looked over through the bushes, and saw the pony girl, and then he gave a great, big, most tremendous and extraordinarily strenuous jump, and landed right on Dottie's back!

"Here we go!" cried the pony girl. "Here is where I save Bully No-Tail! Good-by bad Mr. Wolf." And away she trotted as fast as the wind.

"Here, come back with my supper! Come back with my supper!" cried the disappointed wolf, and off he ran after Dottie, who had Bully safely on her back.

Faster and faster ran the wolf, but faster and faster ran Dottie, and no wolf could ever catch her, no matter how fast he ran. And Dottie galloped and trotted and cantered, and went on and on, and on, and the wolf came after her, but he kept on being left farther and farther behind, and at last Dottie was out of the woods, and she and Bully were safe, for the wolf didn't dare go any nearer, for fear the circus men would catch him.

"Oh, thank you so much, Dottie, for saving me," said Bully. "I'll give you this other piece of cookie I was saving for Bawly. He won't mind."

So he gave it to Dottie, and she liked it very much indeed, and that wolf was so angry and disappointed about not having any supper that he bit his claw nails almost off, and went back into the woods, and growled, and growled, and growled all night, worse than a buzzing mosquito.

But Bully and Dottie didn't care a bit and they went on home and they met Uncle Wiggily Longears, the rabbit gentleman, who bought them an ice cream soda flavored with carrots.

Now in case my little bunny rabbit doesn't bite a hole in the back steps so the milkman drops a bottle down it when he comes in the morning, I'll tell you in the following story about Grandpa Croaker and Brighteyes Pigg.




Story XXI

Grandpa And Brighteyes Pigg


One nice warm day, right after he had eaten a breakfast of watercress oatmeal, with sweet-flag-root-sugar and milk on it, Grandpa Croaker, the nice old gentleman frog, started out for a hop around the woods near the pond. And he took with him his cane with the crook on the handle, hanging it over his paw.

"Where are you going, Grandpa?" asked Bully No-Tail, as he and his brother Bawly started for school.

"Oh, I hardly know," said the old frog gentleman in his hoarsest, deepest, thundering, croaking voice. "Perhaps I may meet with a fairy or a big giant, or even the alligator bird."

"The alligator isn't a bird, Grandpa," spoke Bawly.

"Oh no, to be sure," agreed the old gentleman rabbit -- I mean frog -- "no more it is. I was thinking of the Pelican. Well, anyhow I am going out for a walk, and if you didn't have to go to school you could come with me. But I'll take you next time, and we may go to the Wild West show together."

"Oh fine!" cried Bully, as he hopped away with his school books under his front leg.

"Oh fine and dandy!" exclaimed Bawly, as he looked in his spelling book to see how to spell "cow."

Well, the frog boys hopped on to school, and Grandpa Croaker hopped off to the woods. He went on and on, and he was wondering what sort of an adventure he would have, when he heard a little noise up in the trees. He looked up through his glasses, and he saw Jennie Chipmunk there.

She was a little late for school, but she was hurrying all she could. She called "good morning" to Grandpa Croaker, and he tossed her up a sugar cookie that he happened to have in his pocket. Wasn't he the nice old Grandpa, though? Well, I just guess he was!

So he went on a little farther, and pretty soon he came to the place where Buddy and Brighteyes Pigg lived. Only Buddy wasn't at home, being at school. But Brighteyes, the little guinea pig girl, was there in the house, and she was suffering from the toothache, I'm sorry to say.

Oh! the poor little guinea pig girl was in great pain, and that's why she couldn't go to school. Her face was all tied up in a towel with a bag of hot salt on it, but even that didn't seem to do any good.

"Oh, I'm so sorry for you, Brighteyes!" exclaimed Grandpa. "Have you had Dr. Possum? Where is your mamma?"

"Mamma has gone to the doctor's now to get me something to stop the pain," answered Brighteyes, "and to-morrow I am going to have the tooth pulled. We tried mustard and cloves and all things like that but nothing would stop the pain."

"Perhaps if I tell you a little story it will make you forget it until mamma comes with the doctor's medicine," suggested Grandpa, and then and there he told Brighteyes a funny story about a little white rabbit that lived in a garden and had carrots to eat, and it ate so many that its white hair turned red and it looked too cute for anything, and then it went to the circus.

Well, the story made Brighteyes forget the pain for a time, but the story couldn't last forever, and soon the pain came back. Then Grandpa thought of something else.

"Why are all the ladders, and boards, and cans, and brushes piled outside your house?" he asked Brighteyes, for he had noticed them as he came in.

"Oh! we are having the house painted," said Brighteyes.

"But where is the painter monkey?" asked Grandpa. "I didn't see him."

"Oh! he forgot to bring some red paint to make the blinds green or blue or some color like that," answered the little guinea pig girl, "so he went home to get it. He'll be back soon."

"Suppose you come outside and show me how he paints the house," suggested Grandpa, thinking perhaps that might make Brighteyes forget her pain.

"Of course I will, Grandpa Croaker," said the little creature. "I know just how he paints, for I watched him just before you came, and when I saw him put on the bright colors it made me forget my toothache. Come, I'll show you how he does it."

So Brighteyes took Grandpa's paw, and led him outside where there were ladders and scaffolds and pots of paint and lumps of putty, and spots of bright colors all over, and lots of brushes, little and big, and more putty and paint, and oh! I don't know what all.

"Now this is how the painter monkey does it," said Brighteyes. "He takes a brush, and he dips it in the paint pot, and then he lets some of the loose paint fall off, and then he wiggles the brush up and down and sideways and across the middle on the boards of the house, and -- it's painted."

"I see," said Grandpa, and then, before he could stop her, Brighteyes took one of the painter monkey's brushes, and dipped it into a pot of the pink paint. And she leaned over too far, and the first thing you know she fell right into that pink paint pot, clothes, toothache and all! What do you think of that?

"Oh! Oh! Oh!" she cried, as soon as she could get her breath. "This is awful -- terrible!"

"It certainly is!" said Grandpa Croaker. "But never mind, Brighteyes. I'll help you out. Don't cry." So he fished her out with his cane, and he took some rags, and some turpentine, and he cleaned off the pink paint as best he could, and then he took Brighteyes into the house, and the little guinea pig girl put on clean clothes, and then she looked as good as ever, except that there were some spots of pink paint on her nose.

"Never mind," said Grandpa, as he gave her a sugar cookie, and just then Mrs. Pigg came back with the doctor's medicine.

"Why -- why!" exclaimed Brighteyes as she kissed her mother, "my toothache has all stopped!" and, surely enough it had. I guess it got scared because of the pink paint and went away.

Anyhow the tooth didn't ache any more, and the next day Brighteyes went to the dentist's and had it pulled. And the painter monkey didn't mind about the paint that was spilled, and Mrs. Pigg didn't mind about Brighteyes's dress being spoiled, and they all thought Grandpa Croaker was as kind as he could be, and he didn't mind because his cane was colored pink, where he fished out the little guinea pig girl with it. So everybody was happy.

Now in case our cat doesn't fall into the red paint pot and then go to sleep on my typewriter paper and make it look blue, I'll tell you next about Papa No-Tail and Nannie Goat.




Story XXII

Papa N


One morning, bright and early, Papa No-Tail, the frog gentleman, started for the wallpaper factory where he worked at making patterns on the paper by dipping his feet in the different colored inks and jumping up and down. And when he got there he saw, standing outside the factory, the man who made the engines go, and this man said:

"There is no work to-day for you, Mr. No-Tail."

"Ah ha! What is the matter?" asked Bully's papa.

"That bad Pelican bird came again in the night and chewed up all the ink," said the engine man. "So you may have a vacation until we get some more ink."

"This is very unexpected -- very," spoke Papa No-Tail. "But I will enjoy myself. I'll go take a nice long hop, and perhaps I will see something I can bring home to Bully and Bawly." So off he started, and he had no more idea what was going to happen to him than you have what you're going to get for next Christmas.

Papa No-Tail was hopping along, thinking what a fine day it was when, all of a sudden, he came to a place in the woods where there were some nice flowers.

"Ha! I will take these home to my wife," thought Mr. No-Tail, as he picked the pretty blossoms. Then he hopped on some more, and he came to a place where there were some nice round stones, as white as milk.

"Ah! I will take these home for Bully and Bawly to play marbles with," said the frog papa. Then he hopped on a little farther and he came to a place in the woods where was growing a nice big stick with a crooked handle.

"Ho! I will take that home to Grandpa Croaker for a cane that he can use when he gets tired of carrying the one with the pink paint on it," spoke Mr. No-Tail, and he pulled up the cane-stick, and went on with that and the flowers and the round white stones, as white as molasses -- Oh, there I go again! I mean milk, of course.

Well, it was still quite early, and as he hopped along through the woods Papa No-Tail heard the school bell ring to call the boy and girl animals to their classes.

"I hope Bully and Bawly are not late," thought their father. "When one goes to school one must be on time, and always try to have one's lessons." Still he felt pretty sure that his two little boys were on time, for they were usually very good.

On hopped Mr. No-Tail, wishing he could see the bad Pelican bird, and make him give up the wallpaper-printing ink, when all of a sudden, as quickly as you can tie your shoe lace, or your hair ribbon, Papa No-Tail heard a great crashing in the bushes, and then he heard a growling and then presto-changeo! out popped Nannie Goat, and after her came running a black, savage bear! Oh, he was a most unpleasant fellow, that bear was, with a long, red tongue, and long, sharp, white teeth, and long claws, bigger than a cat's claws, and he had shaggy fur like an automobile coat.

"Oh! Oh! Oh! Stop! Stop! Stop! Don't catch me! Don't catch me! Don't catch me!" cried Nannie, the goat girl, running on and crashing through the bushes. But the bear never minded. On he came, right after Nannie, for he wanted to catch and eat her. You see he used to be in a cage in a big animal park, but he got loose and he was now very hungry, for no one had fed him in some time.

Well, Papa No-Tail was so surprised that, for a moment, he didn't know what to do. He just sat still under a big cabbage leaf, and looked at the bear chasing after Nannie.

"Oh, will no one save me?" cried the poor little goat girl. "Will no one save me from this savage bear?"

"No; no one will save you," answered the shaggy creature, as he cleaned his white teeth with his red tongue for a brush. "I am going to eat you up."

"No, you are not!" cried Papa No-Tail, boldly.

"Ha! Who says I am not going to eat her?" asked the bear, surly-like.

"I do!" went on Papa No-Tail, hopping a bit nearer. "You shall never eat her as long as I am alive!"

"And who are you, if I may be so bold as to ask," went on the bear, stopping so he could laugh.

"I am the brave Mr. No-Tail, who works in the wallpaper factory, but I can't work to-day as the bad Pelican bird took the ink," replied Bully's and Bawly's papa.

"Oh, fiddlesticks!" cried the bear, real impolite-like. "Now, just for that I will eat you both!" He made a rush for Nannie, but with a scream she gave a big jump, and then something terrible happened. For she jumped right into a sand bank, which she didn't notice, and there she stuck fast by her horns, which jabbed right into the hard sand and dirt. There she was held fast, and the bear, seeing her, called out:

"Now I can get you without any trouble. You can't get away from me, so I'll just eat this frog gentleman first."

Oh, but that bear was savage, and hungry, and several other kinds of unpleasant things. He made a big jump for the frog, but what do you think Bully's papa did? Why he took the bunch of flowers, and he tickled that bear so tickily-ickly under the chin, that the bear first sneezed, and then he laughed and as Papa No-Tail kept on tickling him, that bear just had to sit down and laugh and sneeze at the same time, and he couldn't chase even a snail.

"Now for the next act!" bravely cried Mr. No-Tail, and with that he took the stick he intended for Grandpa Croaker's cane, and put it under the bear's legs, and he twisted the stick, Papa No-Tail did, and the first thing that bear knew he had been tripped up and turned over just like a pancake, and he fell on his nose and bumped it real hard.

Then, before he could get up, Papa No-Tail pelted him with the round stones as white as milk, and the bear thought it was snowing and hailing, and he was as frightened as anything, and as soon as he could get up, away he ran through the woods, crying big, salty bear tears.

"Oh, I'm so glad you drove that bear away! You are very brave, Mr. No-Tail," said Nannie Goat. "But how am I to get loose in time to get to school without being late?" For she was still fast by her horns in the sand bank.

"Never fear, leave it to me," said Papa No-Tail. So Nannie never feared, and Papa No-Tail tried to pull her horns out of the sand bank, but he couldn't, because the ground was too hard. So what did he do but go to the pond, and get some water in his hat, and he threw the water on the sand, and made it soft, like mud pies, and then Nannie could pull out her own horns.

After thanking Mr. No-Tail she ran on to school, and got there just as the last bell rang, and wasn't late. And the teacher and all the pupils were very much surprised when Nannie told them what had happened. Bully and Bawly were afraid the bear might come back and hurt their papa, but nothing like that happened I'm glad to say.

Now in case the tea kettle doesn't sing a funny song and waken the white rabbit with the pink eyes that's in a cage out in our yard, I'll tell you to-morrow night about Mamma No-Tail and Nellie Chip-Chip.




Story XXIII

Mrs. N


Nellie Chip-Chip, the little sparrow girl, flew along over the trees after school was out, with a box of chocolate under her wing. And under her other wing was a purse, with some money in it that rattled like sleigh bells.

"What are you going to do with that chocolate?" asked Bully No-Tail, the frog boy, as he and his brother, who were hopping to a ball game, happened to see Nellie.

"Oh, I guess she's going to eat it," said Bawly. "If you want us to help you, we will, won't we, Bully?" he added.

"Sure," said Bully, hungry like.

"Oh, indeed, that's very kind of you boys," replied Nellie, politely, "but you see I'm not eating this chocolate. I am selling it for our school. We want to get some nice pictures to put in the rooms, and so I'm trying to help get the money to buy them by selling cakes of chocolate."

"Ha! That's a good idea," said Bully. "Say, Nellie, if you go to our house maybe our mamma will buy some chocolate."

"I'll fly right over there," declared the little sparrow girl, "for I want very much to sell my chocolate, and, so far, very few persons have bought any of me."

"I guess our mamma will," said Bawly, and, then when Nellie had flown on with her chocolate, Bawly winked both his eyes and spoke thusly: "Say, Bully, if mamma buys the chocolate from Nellie I guess she'll give us some."

"I hope so," replied his brother, and then they went on to the ball game and had a good time. Well, as I was telling you, Nellie flew over to Mrs. No-Tail's house, and knocked at the door with her little bill.

"Don't you want to buy some chocolate so I can make money to get pictures for our school?" the sparrow girl politely asked.

"Indeed I do," replied Mrs. No-Tail. "I just need some chocolate for a cake I'm baking. And if you would like to come in, and help me make the cake, and put the chocolate on, I'll give you some, and you can take a piece home to Dickie."

"Indeed, I'll be very glad to help," said Nellie, so she went in the house, and Mrs. No-Tail paid her for some of the chocolate, and then Nellie took off her hat, and put on an apron, and she helped make the cake.

Oh, it was a most delicious one! with about forty-'leven layers, and chocolate between each one, and then on top! Oh, it just makes me hungry even to typewrite about it! Why the chocolate on top of that cake was as thick as a board, and then on top of the chocolate was sprinkled cocoanut until you would have thought there had been a snow storm! Talk about a delicious cake! Oh, dear me! Well, I just don't dare write any more about it, for it makes me so impatient.

"Now," said Mrs. No-Tail, after the baking was over, "we'll just set the cake on the table by the open window to cool, Nellie, and we'll wash up the dishes."

So they were working away, talking of different things, and Nellie was a great help to Mrs. No-Tail. Every once in a while, however, Nellie would look over to the cake, because it was so nice she just couldn't keep her eyes away from it. She was just wishing it was time for her to have some to take home, but it wasn't, quite yet.

Well, all of a sudden, when Nellie looked over for about the twenty-two-thirteenth time, she saw that all the chocolate was gone from the top of the cake. All the chocolate and the cocoanut was missing.

"Oh! Oh!" cried the little sparrow girl.

"What's the matter?" asked Mrs. No-Tail quickly.

"Look!" exclaimed Nellie, pointing to the cake.

"Well, of all things!" cried Mrs. No-Tail. "That chocolate must have disappeared. It must have gone up like a balloon. I will have to buy some more of you, and put that on." Then she went over and looked at the cake, and she wondered at the queer scratches in the top, just as if a cat had clawed off the chocolate. But there were no cats around.

So Mrs. No-Tail and Nellie put more chocolate and cocoanut on the cake, and they went on washing up the dishes, and pretty soon, not so very long, in a little while Nellie looked at the cake again. And, would you believe me, the chocolate was all off once more.

"This is very strange," said Mrs. No-Tail. "That must be queer chocolate to disappear that way. Perhaps a fairy is taking it."

"Maybe Bully and Bawly are doing it for a joke," said Nellie. So she and Mrs. No-Tail looked from the window but they could see no one, not even a fairy, and, anyhow, Mrs. No-Tail knew the boys wouldn't be so impolite as to do such a thing.

"It is very strange," said the frog boys' mamma. "But we will put the chocolate and cocoanut on once more, and then we'll watch to see who takes it."

So they did, making the cake even better than before. Oh, with such thick chocolate and cocoanut on! and then they hid down behind the stove, and watched the window.

Pretty soon a big, shaggy paw, with long, sharp claws on it, was put in the open window, and the paw went right on top of the cake, and scraped off some of the chocolate and cocoanut.

"Ah! Yum-yum! That is most delicious!" exclaimed a grumbling, rumbling voice, and the paw, all covered with the cake chocolate, just as a lollypop stick is covered with candy, went out of the window, and the paw was all cleaned off somehow, when it came back again. More chocolate was then scraped off the cake by those sharp claws.

"Oh, ho! This is simply scrumptious!" went on the voice, as the paw was pulled back. Then a third time it came, and scraped off what was left of the chocolate and cocoanut.

"Oh, how perfectly delightful and proper this sweet stuff is!" cried the voice. "I wish there was more!"

Then a great, big, shaggy, ugly bear, the same one that once chased Nannie Goat, stuck his head in the window.

"Oh, did you scrape the chocolate off my cake?" asked Mrs. No-Tail.

"I did," the bear said, "have you any more?"

"No, indeed," she answered. "But you are a bold, bad creature, and if you don't get away from here I'll have you arrested."

"I am not a bit afraid," answered the bear impolitely, "and as there is no more chocolate I'll take the cake."

Well, he was just reaching for it with his sharp clawy-paws, and Mrs. No-Tail and Nellie were very much frightened, fearing the beast would get them. But just then a man's voice cried out:

"Ah, ha! You bad animal! So I've caught you, have I? And you are up to your tricks as usual! Now you come with me!" And who should appear but the man from the animal park where the bear once lived. And he had a whip and a rope, and he tied the rope around the bear's neck and whipped him for being so bad, and took him back to his cage. And Mrs. No-Tail and Nellie were very glad. And I guess you'd be also. Eh?

There was some chocolate left, and some cocoanut, and soon the cake was even better than before, and Nellie had sold all her chocolate to Mrs. No-Tail, and she could buy lots of pictures for the school. And Nellie took home a big piece of the cake for Dickie, her brother, and of course some for herself. So it all came out right after all, and that bear was very sorry for what he did.

Now, in the story after this one, if the fish we're going to have for supper doesn't swim away with my new soft hat and get it all wet, I'll tell you about Bully No-Tail and Alice Wibblewobble.




Story XXIV

Bully And Alice Wibblewobble


"Bully," said the frog boy's mamma to him one Saturday morning, when there wasn't any school, "I wish you would go on an errand for me."

"Of course I will, mother," he said. "Do you want me to go to the store for some lemons, or some sugar?"

"Neither one, Bully. I wish you would go to Mrs. Wibblewobble's house and tell the nice duck lady I can't come over to-day to help her sew carpet rags, and piece-out the bedquilt. I have to put away the winter flannels so the moths won't get in them, and then, too, it is so rainy and foggy that we couldn't see to sew carpet rags very well. Tell her I'll be over the first pleasant day."

"Very well," answered Bully, "and may I stay a while and play with Jimmie Wibblewobble?"

"You may," said his mother, and off Bully hopped all alone, for his brother Bawly had gone fishing.

It was a very unpleasant day for any one except ducks or frogs. For sometimes it rained, and when it wasn't rainy it was misty, and moisty, and foggy. And it was wet all over. The water dripped down off the trees and bushes, and even the ponds and little brooks were wetter than usual, for the rain rained into them, and splished and splashed.

But Bully didn't mind, not in the least. Away he hopped in his rubber suit, that water couldn't hurt, and he felt very fine. Soon he was at Mrs. Wibblewobble's house, and he delivered the message his mother had given him.

"And now I'll go play with Jimmie," said Bully. "Where is he, and where are Lulu and Alice, Mrs. Wibblewobble?"

"Oh! the girls went over to see Grandfather Goosey Gander," replied their mamma. "As for Jimmie, you'll find him out somewhere on the pond. But be careful you don't get lost, for the fog is very thick to-day."

"I should think it was," replied Bully as he hopped away, "it's almost as thick as molasses." Well, pretty soon he came to the edge of the pond, and in he plumped, and began swimming about.

"Jimmie! Hey, Jimmie! Where are you, Jimmie?" he called.

"Over here, making a water wheel," answered the boy duck, and though the frog chap couldn't see him, he could tell, by Jimmie's voice, where he was, and soon he had hopped to the right place.

Well, Bully and Jimmie had a fine time, making the water wheel, that went splash-splash around in the water. And when they became tired of playing that, they played water-tag with the water-spiders, and then they played hop-skip-and-jump, at which game Bully was very good.

"Now let's go up to the house," proposed Jimmie, "and I'm sure mother will give us some cornmeal sandwiches with jam and bread and butter on."

Off they went through the fog, and it was now so thick that they couldn't see their way, and by mistake they went to the barn instead of the house. I don't know what they would have done, only just then along came Old Percival, the circus dog, and he could smell his way through the misty fog up to the house. Maybe he could smell the sandwiches, with jam and bread and butter on. I don't know, but anyhow Mrs. Wibblewobble gave him one when she made some for Bully and Jimmie.

Well, now I'm coming to the Alice part of the story. As Jimmie and Bully were eating their sandwiches on the back porch, not minding the rain in the least, all at once Lulu Wibblewobble came waddling along. As soon as she got to the steps she called out:

"Oh, is Alice home yet?"

"Alice home?" exclaimed Mrs. Wibblewobble. "Why, didn't she come from Grandfather Goosey Gander's house with you?"

"No, she started on ahead, some time ago," said Lulu. "She said she wanted to put on her new hair ribbon for dinner. She ought to have been here some time ago. Are you sure she isn't here?"

"No, she isn't," answered Jimmie. "She must be lost in the fog!"

"Oh, dear! That's exactly what has happened!" cried the mamma duck. "Oh, this dreadful fog! What shall I do?"

"Don't worry, Mrs. Wibblewobble," spoke Bully. "Jimmie and I will go and hunt her. We can find her in the fog."

"Oh, you may get lost yourselves!" said the duck lady. "It's bad enough as it is, but that would be dreadful. Oh, what shall I do?"

"I'll tell you," said Lulu. "We'll all hunt for her, and so that we will not become lost in the fog, we'll tie several strings to our house, and then each of us will keep hold of one string, and when we go off in the fog we can follow the string back again, and we won't get lost."

"That's a good idea!" cried Bully, and they all thought it was. So they each tied a long string to the front porch rail, and, keeping hold of the other end, started off in the fog, Mrs. Wibblewobble, Jimmie, Bully and Lulu. Off into the fog they went, and the white mist was now thicker than ever; thicker than molasses, I guess.

Mrs. Wibblewobble looked one way, and Jimmie another, and Lulu another, and Bully still another. And for a long time neither one of them could find Alice.

"I'm going to call out loud, and perhaps she'll hear me," said Bully. "She probably wandered off on the wrong path coming from Grandfather Goosey Gander's house." So he cried as loudly as he could: "Alice! Alice! Where are you, Alice?"

"Oh, here I am!" the duck girl suddenly cried, though Bully couldn't see her on account of the fog. "Oh, I'm so glad you came to find me, for I've been lost a long time."

"Walk right over this way!" called Bully, "and I'll take you home by the string. Come over here!"

"Yes, come over here!" called another voice, and Bully looked and what should he see but a savage alligator, hiding in the fog, with his mouth wide open. The alligator hoped Alice would, by mistake, walk right into his mouth so he could eat her. And he kept calling right after Bully, and poor Alice got so confused with the two of them shouting that she didn't know what to do.

Bully was afraid the alligator would get her, so what did he do but take up a big stone, and, hiding in the fog, he threw the rock into the alligator's mouth.

"There! Chew on that!" called Bully, and the alligator was so angry that he crawled right away, taking his scaly, double-jointed tail with him.

Then Bully called again, and this time Alice found where he was in the fog, and she waddled up to him, and she wasn't lost any more, and Bully took her home by following the string. Then the fog blew away and they were all happy, and had some more jam sandwiches.

Now, in case it doesn't rain and wet my new umbrella so that the pussy cat can go to school, and learn how to make a mouse trap, I'll tell you next about Bawly No-Tail and Lulu Wibblewobble.




Story XXV

Bawly And Lulu Wibblewobble


Bawly No-Tail, the frog boy, was hopping along one day whistling a little tune about a yellow-spotted doggie, who found a juicy bone, and sold it to a ragman for a penny ice cream cone. After the little frog boy had finished his song he hopped into a pond of water and swam about, standing on his head and wiggling his toes in the air, just as when the boys go in bathing.

Well, would you ever believe it? When Bawly bounced up out of the water to catch his breath, which nearly ran away from him down to the five-and-ten-cent-store -- when Bawly bounced up, I say, who should he see but Lulu Wibblewobble, the duck girl, swimming around on the pond.

"Hello, Lulu!" called Bawly.

"Hello!" answered Lulu. "Come on, Bawly, let's see who can throw a stone the farthest; you or I."

"Oh, pooh!" cried the frog boy. "I can, of course. You're only a girl."

Well, would you ever believe it? When Bawly and Lulu were out on the shore of the pond and had thrown their stones, Lulu's went ever so much farther than did Bawly's. Oh! she was a good thrower, Lulu was!

"Well, anyhow, I can beat you jumping!" cried Bawly. "Now, let's try that game."

So they tried that, and, of course, Bawly won, being a very good jumper. He jumped over two stones, three sticks, a little black ant and also a big one, a hump of dirt, two flies and a grain of sand. And, as for Lulu, she only jumped over a brown leaf, a bit of straw, part of a stone and a little fuzzy bug.

"Now we're even," said Bawly, who felt good-natured again. "Let's go for a walk in the woods and we'll get some wild flowers and maybe something will happen. Who knows?"

"Who knows?" agreed Lulu. So off they started together, talking about the weather and ice cream cones and Fourth of July and all things like that. For it was Saturday, you see, and there was no school.

Well, pretty soon, in a little while, not so very long, as Bawly was hopping, and Lulu was wobbling along, they heard a noise in the bushes. Now, of course, when you're in the woods there is always likely to be a noise in the bushes. Sometimes it's made by a fairy, and sometimes by a giant and sometimes by a squirrel or a rabbit, or a doggie, or a kittie, and sometimes only by the wind blowing in the treetops. And you can never tell what makes the noise until you look. So Bawly and Lulu looked to see what made the noise in the bushes.

"Maybe it's a giant!" exclaimed Lulu.

"Maybe it's a fairy," said Bawly, and they looked and looked and pretty soon, in a jiffy, out came a man -- just a plain, ordinary man.

"Oh, me!" cried Bawly.

"Oh, my!" exclaimed Lulu.

Then they both started to run away, for they were afraid they might be hurt. But the man saw them going off, and he called after them.

"Oh, pray don't be frightened, little ones. I wouldn't hurt you for the world. I was just looking for a frog and a duck, and here you are."

"Are -- are you going to eat us?" asked Bawly, blinking his eyes.

"No, indeed," replied the man, kindly.

"Are you going to carry us away in a bag?" asked Lulu, wiggling her feet.

"Oh, never, never, never!" cried the man, quickly. "I will put you in my pockets if you will let me, and I will do a funny trick with you."

"A trick?" asked Bawly, for he was very fond of them. "What kind?"

"A good trick," replied the man. "You see, I am a magician in a show -- that is I do all sorts of funny tricks, such as making a rabbit come out of a hat, or shutting a pig up in a box and changing it to a bird, and making a boy or girl disappear.

"I also do tricks with ducks and frogs, but the other day the pet frog and duck which I have got sick, and I can't do any more tricks with them until they are better. But if you would come with me, I could do some tricks with you in the show, and I wouldn't hurt you a bit, and I'd give you each ten cents, and you could have a nice time. Will you come with me? I took a walk out in the woods specially to-day, hoping I could find a new duck or frog to use in my tricks."

Well, Lulu and Bawly thought about it, and as the man looked very kind they decided to go with him. So he put Lulu in one of his big pockets and Bawly in the other, and off he started through the woods.

And pretty soon he came to the place where he did the tricks. It was a big building, and there was a whole crowd of people there waiting for the magician -- men and women and boys and girls.

"Now, don't be afraid, Bawly and Lulu," said the man kindly, for he could talk duck and frog language. "No one will hurt you."

So he put Bawly and Lulu down on a soft table, where the people couldn't see them, and then that man did the most surprising and extraordinary tricks. He made fire come out of a pail of water, and he opened a box, and there was nothing in it, and he opened it again, and there was a rabbit in it. Then he took a man's hat, and he said:

"Now, there is nothing in his hat but in a moment I am going to make a little frog come in it. Watch me closely."

Well, of course, the people hardly believed him, but what do you think that man did? Why, he took the hat and turned around, and when nobody was looking he slipped Bawly off from the table and put him inside it -- inside the hat, I mean, and then the magician said:

"Presto-changeo! Froggie! Froggie! Come into the hat!"

Then he put his hand in, and lifted out Bawly, who made a polite little bow, and the frog wasn't a bit afraid. And, my! How those people did clap their hands and stamp their feet!

"Now if some lady will lend me her handbag, I'll make a duck come in it," said the magician. So a lady in the audience gave him her handbag, and after the magician had taken out ten handkerchiefs, and a purse with no money in it, and a looking-glass, and some feathers all done up in a puff ball, and some peppermint candies, and two postage stamps and some chewing gum and five keys, why he went back on the stage. And as quick as a wink, when no one was looking, with his back to the people, he slipped Lulu Wibblewobble into the empty handbag, and she kept very quiet for she didn't want to spoil the trick.

And then the magician turned to the audience, and he said:

"Behold! Behold!" and he lifted out the duck girl. Oh my! how those people did clap; and the lady that owned the handbag was as surprised as anything. Then the man did lots more tricks, and he called a boy, and told him to take Lulu and Bawly back home, after he had given them each ten cents. For his regular trick duck and frog were all well again, and he could do magic with them. So that's how Lulu and Bawly were in a magical show, and they told all their friends about it and everyone was so surprised that they said: "Oh! Oh! Oh!" more than forty-'leven times.

And next, if our new kitten, whose name is Peter, doesn't fall into a basket of soap bubbles and wet his tail so he can't go to the moving picture show, I'll tell you about Bully No-Tail and Kittie Kat.




Story XXVI

Bully N


"Bully, what are you doing?" the frog boy's mother called to him one day, as she heard him making a funny noise.

"Oh, mother, I am just counting to see how many marbles I have," he answered.

"Well, would you mind going to the store for me?" asked Mrs. No-Tail. "I was going to make a cake, but I find I have no cocoanut to put on top."

"Oh, indeed, I'll go for you, mother, right away!" cried Bully, quickly, for he was very fond of cocoanut cake. But I guess he would have gone to the store anyhow, even if his mamma had only wanted vinegar, or lemons, or a yeast cake.

So off he started, whistling a little tune about a fuzzy-wuzzy pussy cat, who drank a lot of milk and had a crinkly Sunday dress, made out of yellow silk.

"Well, I feel better after that!" exclaimed Bully, as he hopped along, sailing high in the air, above the clouds. Oh, there I go again! I was thinking of Dickie Chip-Chip, the sparrow. No, Bully hopped along on the ground, and pretty soon he came to the store and bought the cocoanut for the cake.

He was hopping home, hoping his mamma would give him and his brother Bawly some of the cake when it was baked, when, just as he came near a pond of water he heard some one crying. Oh, such a sad, pitiful cry as it was, and at first Bully thought it might be some bad wolf, or fox, or owl, crying because it hadn't any dinner, and didn't see anything to catch to eat for supper.

"I must look out that they don't catch me," thought Bully, and he took tight hold of the cocoanut, and peeked through the bushes. And what did he see but poor Kittie Kat -- you remember her, I dare say; she was a sister to Joie and Tommie Kat -- there was Kittie Kat, crying as if her heart would break, and right in front of her was a savage fox, wiggling his bushy tail to and fro, and snapping his cruel jaws and sharp teeth.

"Now I've caught you!" cried the fox. "I've been waiting a good while, but I have you now."

"Yes, I -- I guess you have," said poor Kittie, for the fox had hold of the handle of a little basket that Kittie was carrying, and wouldn't let go. In the basket was a nice cornmeal pie that Kittie was taking to Grandfather Goosey Gander, when the fox caught her. "Will you please let me go?" begged poor Kittie Kat.

"No," replied the bad fox. "I'm going to eat you up -- all up!"

Well, Kittie cried harder than ever at that, but she still kept hold of the basket with the cornmeal pie in it, and the fox also had hold of it. And Bully was hiding behind the bushes where neither of them could see him -- hiding and waiting.

"Oh, I must save Kittie from that fox!" he thought. "How can I do it?"

So Bully thought and thought, and thought of a plan. Then he leaned forward and whispered in Kittie's ear, so low that the fox couldn't hear him:

"Let go of the basket, Kittie," he told her, "and then give a big jump and run up a tree."

Well, Kittie was quite surprised to hear Bully whispering out of the bushes to her, for she didn't know that he was around, but she did as he told her to. She suddenly let go of the basket handle, and the fox was so surprised that he nearly fell over sideways. And before he could straighten himself up Kittie Kat jumped back, and up a tree she scrambled before you could shake a stick at her, even if you wanted to. You see, she never thought of going up a tree until Bully told her to.

"Here! You come back!" cried the fox, real surprised like.

"Tell him you are not going to," whispered Bully, and that's what Kittie called to the fox from up in the tree, for, you see, he couldn't climb up to her, and he still had hold of her basket.

"If you don't come down I'll throw this basket of yours in the water!" threatened the bad fox, gnashing his teeth.

"Oh, I don't want him to do that!" said Kittie.

"Never mind, perhaps he won't," suggested Bully. "Wait and see."

"Are you coming down and let me eat you?" asked the fox of the little kitten girl, for the savage animal did not yet know that Bully was hiding there. "Are you coming down, I ask you?"

"No, indeed!" exclaimed Kittie.

"Then here goes the basket!" cried the fox, and, just to be mean he threw the nice basket, containing the cornmeal pudding -- I mean pie -- into the pond of water.

"Oh! Oh! Oh dear!" cried Kittie Kat. "What will Grandfather Goosey Gander do now?"

"Never mind, I'll get it for you, as I don't mind water in the least," spoke Bully, bravely.

So he started to hop out, to jump into the water to save the kittie girl's basket, for he knew the fox wouldn't dare go in the pond after him, as the fox doesn't like to wet his feet and catch cold.

Well, Bully was just about to hop into the pond, when he happened to think of the package of cocoanut his mamma had sent him to get at the store.

"Oh, dear! I never can get that wet in the water or it will be spoiled!" he thought. "What can I do? If I leave it on the shore here while I go after Kittie's basket the fox will eat it, and we'll have no cake. I guess I'm in trouble, all right, for I must get the basket."

Well, he didn't know what to do, and the fox was just sneaking up to eat him when Kittie Kat cried out:

"Oh, be careful, Bully. Jump! Jump into the water so the fox can't get you!"

"What about the cocoanut?" asked Bully.

"Here, give it to me, and I'll hold it," said Kittie, and she reached down with her sharp claws, and hooked them into the pink string around the package of cocoanut and pulled it up on the tree branch where she sat, and then the fox couldn't get it. And oh! how disappointed he was and how he did gnash his teeth.

And then, before he could grab Bully and eat him up, the frog boy leaped into the pond and swam out and got Kittie's basket and the cornmeal pie before it sank. And then Bully swam to a floating log, and crawled out on it with the basket, which wasn't harmed in the least, nor was the pie, either.

And the fox sat upon the shore of the pond, and first he looked at Bully, and wished he could eat him, and then he looked at Kittie, and he wished he could eat her, and then he looked at the cocoanut, which Kittie held in her claws, and he couldn't eat that, and he couldn't eat the cornmeal pie -- in fact, he had nothing to eat.

Then, all of a sudden, along came Percival, the kind old circus dog, and he barked at that fox, and nipped his tail and the fox ran away, and Kittie and Bully were then safe. Bully came off the log, and Kittie came down out of the tree and they both went on home after thanking Percival most kindly.

Now, in case my little girl's tricycle doesn't roll down hill and bunk into the peanut man and make him spill his ice cream, I'll tell you next about Bawly helping his teacher.




Story XXVII

How Bawly Helped His Teacher


It was quite warm in the schoolroom one day, and the teacher of the animal children, who was a nice young lady robin, had all the windows open. But even then it was still warm, and the pupils, including Bully and Bawly No-Tail, the frog boys, and Lulu and Alice and Jimmie Wibblewobble, the ducks, weren't doing much studying.

Every now and then they would look out of the window toward the green fields, and the cool, pleasant woods, where the yellow and purple violets were growing, and they wished they were out there instead of in school.

"My, it's hot!" whispered Bully to Bawly, and of course it was wrong to whisper in school, but perhaps he didn't think.

"Yes, I wish we could go swimming," answered Bawly, and the teacher heard the frog brothers talking together.

"Oh, Bully and Bawly," she said, as she turned around from the blackboard, where she was drawing a picture of a house, so the children could better learn how to spell it, "I am sorry to hear you whispering. You will both have to stay in after school."

Well, of course Bully and Bawly didn't like that, but when you do wrong you have to suffer for it, and when the other animal boys and girls ran out after school, to play marbles and baseball, and skip rope, and jump hop-scotch and other games, the frog boys had to stay in.

They sat in the quiet schoolroom, and the robin teacher did some writing in her books. And Bawly looked out of the window over at the baseball game. And Bully looked out of the window over toward the swimming pond. And the teacher looked out of the window at the cool woods, where those queer flowered Jack-in-the-pulpits grew, and she too, wished she was out there instead of in the schoolroom.

"Well, if you two boys are sorry you whispered, and promise that you won't do it again, you may go," said the teacher after a while, when she had looked out of the window once more. "You know it isn't really wicked to whisper in school, only it makes you forget to study, and sometimes it makes other children forget to study, and that's where the wrong part comes in."

"I'm sorry, teacher," said Bully.

"You may go," said the young robin lady with a smile. "How about you, Bawly?"

"I'm not!" he exclaimed, real cross-like, "and I'll whisper again," for all the while Bawly had been thinking how mean the teacher was to keep him in when he wanted to go out and play ball.

The robin lady teacher looked very much surprised at the frog boy, but she only said, "Very well, Bawly. Then you can't go."

So Bully hurried out, and Bawly and the teacher stayed there.

Bawly kept feeling worse and worse, and he began to wish that he had said he was sorry. He looked at the teacher, and he saw that she was gazing out of the window again, toward the woods, where there were little white flowers, like stars, growing by the cool, green ferns. And Bawly noticed how tired the teacher looked, and as he watched he was sure he saw a tear in each of her bright eyes. And finally she turned to him and said:

"It is so nice out of doors, Bawly, that I can't keep you here any longer, no matter whether you are sorry or not. But I hope you'll be sorry to-morrow, and won't whisper again. For it helps me when boys and girls don't whisper. Run out now, and have a good time. I wish I could go, but I have some work to do," and then with her wing she patted Bawly on his little green head, and opened the door for him.

Bawly felt rather queer as he hopped out, and he didn't feel like playing ball, after all. Instead he hopped off to the woods, and sat down under a big Jack-in-the-pulpit to think. And he thought of how his teacher couldn't live in the nice green country as he did, for she had to stay in a boarding-house in the city, to be near her school, and she couldn't see the flowers growing in the woods as often as could Bawly, for she nearly always had to stay in after school to write in the report-books.

"I -- I wish I hadn't whispered," Bawly said to himself. "I -- I'm going to help teacher after this. I'll tell her I'm sorry, and -- and I guess I'll bring her some flowers for her desk."

Every one wondered what made Bawly so quiet that evening at home. He studied his lessons, and he didn't want to go out and play ball with Bully.

"I hope he isn't going to be sick," said his mamma, anxious-like.

"Oh! I guess maybe he's got a touch of water-lily fever," said Grandpa Croaker. "A few days of swimming will make him all right again."

Bawly got up very early the next morning, and without telling any one where he was going he hopped over to the woods, and gathered a lot of flowers.

Oh, such a quantity as he picked! There were purple violets, and yellow ones, and white ones, and some wild, purple asters, and some blue fringed gentian, and some lovely light-purple wild geraniums, and several Jacks-in-the-pulpit, and many other kinds of flowers. And he made them into a nice bouquet with some ferns on the outside.

Then, just as he was hopping to school, what should happen but that a great big alligator jumped out of the bushes at him.

"Ha! What are you doing in my woods," asked the alligator, crossly.

"If -- if you please, I'm getting some flowers for my teacher, because I whispered," said Bawly.

"Oh, in that case it's all right," said the alligator, smacking his jaws. "I like school teachers. Give her my regards," and would you believe it? the savage creature crawled off, taking his double-jointed tail with him, and didn't hurt Bawly a bit. The flowers made the alligator feel kind and happy.

Well, Bawly got to school all right, before any of the other children did, and he put the flowers on teacher's desk, and he wrote a little note, saying:

"Dear teacher, I'm sorry I whispered, but I'm going to help you to-day, and not talk."

And Bawly didn't. It was quite hard in school that day, but at last it was over. And, just when the children were going home, the robin lady teacher said:

"Boys and girls, you have all helped me very much to-day by being good, and I thank you. And something else helped me. It was these flowers that Bawly brought me, for they remind me of the woods where I used to play when I was a little girl," and then she smelled of the flowers, and Bawly saw something like two drops of water fall from the teacher's eyes right into one of the Jacks-in-the-pulpit. I wonder if it was water?

And then school was over and all the children ran out to play and Bawly thought he never had had so much fun in all his life as when he and Bully and some of the others had a ball game, and Bawly knocked a fine home run.

Now, in case the cuckoo clock doesn't fall down off the wall and spatter the rice pudding all over the parlor carpet, I'll tell you in the story after this one about Bully and Sammie Littletail.




Story XXVIII

Bully And Sammie Littletail


One day when the nice young lady robin school teacher, about whom I told you last night, called the roll of her class, to see if all the animal children were there, Samuel Littletail, the rabbit boy, didn't answer.

"Why, I wonder where Sammie can be?" asked the teacher. "Has anyone seen him this morning?"

They all shook their heads, and Bully No-Tail, the frog boy, answered:

"If you please, teacher, perhaps his sister, Susie, knows."

"Oh, of course! Why didn't I think to ask her?" said the teacher. So she looked over on the girls' side of the room, but, would you believe it? Susie, the rabbit girl, wasn't there either.

"That is very odd," said the teacher, "both Sammie and Susie out! I hope they haven't the epizootic, or the mumps, or carrot fever, or anything like that. Well, we'll go on with our lessons, and perhaps they will come in later."

So the first thing the pupils did was to sing a little song, and though I can't make up very nice ones, I'll do the best I can to give you an idea of it. This is how it went, to the tune, "Tum-Tum-Tum, Tiddle De-um!"

Good morning! How are you? We hope you're quite well. We're feeling most jolly, So hark to us spell.

C-A and a T, with A dot on the eye. Makes cat, dog or rat, Or a bird in the sky.

Take two and two more. What have you? 'Tis five! What? Four? Oh, of course, See the B in the hive.

Now sing the last verse, Ah, isn't it pretty? We're glad that you like Our dear little kittie.

Well, after the children had sung that they all looked around to see if Sammie or Susie had come in, but they hadn't, and then the lessons began, and everyone got a perfect mark. Still the rabbit children didn't come, and after school Bully No-Tail said:

"I think I'll stop at Sammie's house and see what is the matter."

"I wish you would," spoke the teacher, "and then you can tell us to-morrow. I hope he is not ill."

But Sammie was worse than ill, as Bully very soon found out when he got to the house. He found Mr. and Mrs. Littletail very much excited. Mrs. Littletail was crying, and so was Susie, and as for Nurse Jane Fuzzy-Wuzzy, the muskrat lady, she was washing up the dishes so fast that she broke a cup and saucer and dropped a knife and spoon. And Uncle Wiggily Longears was limping around on his crutch, striped red, white and blue like a barber pole, and saying: "Oh dear! Oh dear me! Oh hum suz dud."

"Why, whatever has happened?" asked Bully. "Is Sammie dead?"

"Worse than that," said Susie, wiping her eyes on her apron.

"Much worse," chimed in Uncle Wiggily. "Just think, Bully, when Sammie was starting off for school this morning, he went off in the woods a little way to see if he could find a wild carrot, when a big boy rushed up, grabbed him, and put him in a bag before any of us could save him! And now he's gone! Completely gone!"

"So that's why he didn't come to school to-day," said Nurse Jane sadly.

"And I didn't feel like coming either," spoke Susie, crying some more. "I tried to find Sammie, but I couldn't. Oh dear! Boo hoo!"

"We all tried to find him," said Mr. Littletail sadly.

"But we can't," added Mrs. Littletail still more sadly. "Our Sammie is gone! The bad boy has him!"

"Oh, that is awful!" cried Bully. "But I'll see if I can't find him for you."

So Bully hopped off through the woods, hoping he could find where the boy lived who had taken Sammie away with him.

"And if I find him I'll help Sammie to get away," thought Bully. So he went on and on, but for a long time he couldn't find Sammie. For, listen, the boy who had caught the little rabbit had taken Sammie home, and had made a cage for him.

"I'm going to keep you forever," said the boy, looking in through the wire cage at Sammie. "I've always wanted a rabbit and now I have one." Well, poor Sammie asked the boy to let him go, but the boy didn't understand rabbit language, and maybe he wouldn't have let the bunny go, anyhow.

Well, it was getting dark, and Sammie was very much frightened in his cage, and he was wondering whether any of his friends would find him, and help him escape.

"I'll call out loud, so they'll know where to look for me," he said, and he grunted as loudly as he could and whistled through his twinkling nose.

Well, it happened that just then Bully was hopping up a little hill, and he heard Sammie calling.

"That's Sammie!" exclaimed Bully. "Now, if I can only rescue him!"

So the frog boy hopped on farther, and pretty soon he came to the yard of the house where the boy lived. And Bully peeped in through a knothole in the fence, and he saw Sammie in the cage.

"I'm here, Sammie!" cried Bully through the hole. "Don't be afraid, I'll get you out of there."

"Oh, I'm so glad!" cried Sammie, clapping his paws.

But, after he had said it, Bully saw that it wasn't going to be very easy to get Sammie out, for the cage was very strong. The boy was in the house cutting up some cabbage for the rabbit, and the little frog knew he would have to work very quickly if he was to rescue Sammie.

So Bully hunted until he found a place where he could crawl under the fence, and he went close up to the cage, and what did he do but hop inside, thinking he could unlock the door for Sammie. For Bully was little enough to hop through between the holes in the wire, but Sammie was too big to get out that way.

But Bully couldn't open the door because the lock was too strong, and the frog boy couldn't break the wire.

"Oh, if Nurse Jane Fuzzy-Wuzzy were only here!" he exclaimed, "she could get us out of this trap very soon. But she isn't."

"Let's both together try to break it," proposed Sammie, but they couldn't do it. I don't know what they would have done, and perhaps Sammie would have had to stay there forever, but at that moment along came the old alligator. He looked through the knothole in the fence, and he saw Sammie and Bully in the cage.

"Ah, here is where I get a good dinner!" thought the alligator, so with one savage and swooping sweep of his big, scaly tail, he smashed down the fence and broke the cage all to pieces, but he didn't hurt Bully or Sammie, very luckily, for they were in a far corner.

"Now's our chance!" cried the frog. "Run, Sammie, run!" And they both scudded away as fast as they could before the alligator could catch them, or even before the boy could run out to see what the noise was. And when the alligator saw the boy the savage creature flurried and scurried away, taking his scalery-ailery tail with him, and the boy was very much surprised when he saw that the rabbit was gone.

But Sammie and Bully got safely home, and the next day Sammie went to school as usual, just as if nothing had happened, and every one said Bully was very brave to help him.

So that's all for to-night, if you please, and in case the housecleaning man gets all the ice cream up from under the sitting-room matting, and makes a snowball of it for the poll parrot to play horse with, I'll tell you next about Bully and Bawly going to the circus.




Story XXIX

Bully And Bawly At The Circus


"Oh, mamma, may we go?" exclaimed Bawly No-Tail one day as he came home from school, and hopped into the house with such a big hop, that he hopped right up into the frog lady's lap.

"Go where?" asked Bawly's mother, wondering if the alligator were after her son.

"Oh, do please let us go!" cried Bully, hopping in after his brother. Bully tried to stand on his head, but his foot slipped and he nearly fell into the ink bottle. "Please let us go, mother?"

"Where? Where?" she asked again, as Bawly hopped out of her lap.

"To the circus!" cried Bully.

"It's coming!" exclaimed Bawly.

"Down in the vacant lots," went on Bully.

"Oh, you ought to see the posters! Lions and tigers and elephants, and men jumping in the air, and horses and -- and -- "

Bawly had to stop for breath then, and so he couldn't say any more. Neither could Bully. Oh, but they were excited, let me tell you.

"May we go?" they both cried out again.

"Well, I'll see," began their mother slowly. "I don't know -- "

"Oh, I guess you'd better let them go," spoke up Grandpa Croaker in his deepest, rumbling voice. "I -- I think I can spare the time to look after them. I don't really want to go, you know, as I was going to play a game of checkers with Uncle Wiggily Longears, but I guess I can take the boys to the circus. Ahem!"

"Oh, goody!" cried Bawly, jumping up and down.

"Where are you going?" asked their papa, just then coming in from the wallpaper factory.

"To the circus," said Bawly. "Grandpa Croaker will take us."

"Ha! Hum!" exclaimed Papa No-Tail. "I am very busy, but I guess I can spare the time to take you. We won't bother Grandpa."

"Oh, it's no bother -- none at all, I assure you," quickly spoke the grandpa frog, in a thundering, rumbling voice. "We can both take them."

"Well, I never heard of such a thing!" exclaimed Mamma No-Tail. "Any one would think you two old men frogs wanted to go as much as the boys do. But I guess it will be all right."

So Bully and Bawly and their papa and their grandpa went to the circus next day. And what do you think? Just as they were buying their tickets if they didn't meet Uncle Wiggily Longears! And he had Sammie and Susie, the rabbits, with him, and there was Aunt Lettie, the old lady goat, with the three Wibblewobble children, and many other little friends of Bully and Bawly.

Well, that was a fine circus! There were lots of tents with flags on, and outside were men selling pink lemonade and peanuts for the elephant, and toy balloons, only those weren't for the elephant, you know, and there were men shouting, and lots of excitement, and there was a side show, with pictures outside the tent of a man swallowing swords by the dozen, and also knives and forks, and another picture of a lady wrapping a fat snake around her neck, because she was cold, I guess, and then you could hear the lions roaring and the elephants trumpeting, and the band was playing, and the peanut wagons were whistling like teakettles, and -- and -- Oh! why, if I write any more about that circus I'll want to take my typewriter, and put it away in a dark closet, and go to the show myself!

But anyhow it was very fine, and pretty soon Bully and Bawly and their papa and grandpa were in the tent looking at the animals. They fed the elephant peanuts until they had none for themselves, and they looked at the camel with two humps, and at the one with only one hump, because I s'pose he didn't have money enough to buy two, and then they went in the tent where the real show was.

Well it went off very fine. The big parade was over, and the men were doing acts on the trapeze, and the trained seals were playing ball with their noses, and the clowns were cutting up funny capers. And all at once a man, with a shiny hat on, came out in the middle of the ring, and said:

"Ladies and gentlemen, permit me to call your attention to our jumping dog, Nero. He is the greatest jumping dog in the world, and he will jump over an elephant's back!"

Well, the people clapped like anything after that, and a clown came out, leading a dog. Everybody was all excited, especially when another clown led out a big elephant. Then it was the turn of the dog to jump over the elephant. Well, he tried it, but he didn't go over. The clown petted him, and gave him a sweet cracker, and the dog tried it again, but he couldn't do it. Then he tried once more and he fell right down under the elephant, and the elephant lifted Nero up in his trunk, and set him gently down on some straw.

Then the clown took off his funny, pointed hat and said:

"Ladies and gentlemen, I am very sorry, but my poor dog is sick and he can't jump to-day, and I have nothing else that can jump over the elephant's back."

Every one felt quite disappointed at that, but still they were sorry for the poor dog. The clown led him away, and the other clown was leading the elephant off, when Bully said to Bawly:

"Don't you think we could do that jump? We once did a big jump to get away from the alligator, you know."

"Let's try it," said Bawly. "Then the people won't be disappointed. Come on." So they slipped from their seats, when their papa and grandpa were talking to Uncle Wiggily about the trained seals, and those two frog boys just hopped right into the middle of the circus ring. At first a monkey policeman was going to put them out, but they made motions that they wanted to jump over the elephant, for they couldn't speak policeman talk, you know.

"Ah ha! I see what they want," said the kind clown. "Well, I don't believe they can do it, but let them try. It may amuse the people." So he made the elephant go back to his place, and every one became interested in what Bully and Bawly were going to do.

"Are you already?" asked Bully of his brother.

"Yes," answered Bawly.

"Then take a long breath, and jump as hard as you can," said Bully. So they both took long breaths, crouched down on their hind legs, and then both together, simultaneously and most extraordinarily, they jumped. My, what a jump it was! Bigger than the time when they got away from the alligator. Right over the elephant's back they jumped, and they landed on a pile of soft straw so they weren't hurt a bit. My! You should have heard the people cheer and clap!

"Good!" cried the clown. "That was a great jump! Will you stay in the circus with me? I will pay you as much as I pay my dog."

"Oh, no! They must go home," said their papa, as Bully and Bawly went back to their seats. "That is, after the circus is over," said Mr. No-Tail.

So the frog boys saw the rest of the show, and afterward all their friends told them how brave it was to do what they had done.

And for a long time after that whenever any one mentioned what good jumpers Bully and Bawly were, Sammie Littletail would say:

"Ah, but you should have seen them in the circus one day."

And on the next page, if the lilac bush in our back yard doesn't reach in through the window, and take off my typewriter ribbon to wear to Sunday school, I'll tell you about Bully and Bawly playing Indian.




Story XXX

Bully And Bawly Play Indian


It happened, once upon a time, after the circus had gone away from the place where Bully and Bawly No-Tail, the frogs, lived that a Wild West show came along.

And my goodness! There were cowboys and cowgirls, and buffaloes and steers and men with lassos, and Mexicans and Cossacks, and Indians! Real Indians, mind you, that used to be wild, and scalp people, which was very impolite to do, but they didn't know any better; the Indians didn't I mean. Then they got tame and didn't scalp people any more. Yes, sir, they were real Indians, and they had real feathers on them!

Of course the feathers didn't belong to the Indians, the same as a chicken's feathers, or a turkey's feathers belong to them. That is, the feathers didn't grow on the Indians, even if they did seem to. No, the Indians put them on for ornaments, just as ladies put plumes on their hats with long hatpins.

Well, of course, Bully and Bawly and the other boys all went to the Wild West show, and when they got home about all they did for several days was to play cowboys or Indians. Indians mostly, for they liked them the best. And the boys gave regular warwhoop cries.

"We'll have a new game," said Bully to Bawly one day. "We'll dress up like the Indians did, and we'll go off in the woods, and we'll see if we can capture white people."

"Real?" asked Bawly.

"No, only make-believe ones. And we'll build a camp fire, and take our lunch, and sleep in the woods."

"After dark?" asked Bawly.

"Sure. Why not? Don't Indians sleep in the woods after dark?"

"Oh, but they have real guns and knives to kill the bears with," objected Bawly, "and our guns and knives will only be wooden."

"Well, maybe it will be better to only pretend it's night in the woods," agreed Bully. "We can go in a dark place under the trees, and make believe it's night, and that will do just as well."

So they agreed to do that way, and for the next few days the frog boys were busy making themselves up to look like Indians. Their mother let them take some old blankets, and they got some red and green chalk to put on their faces for war paint, and they found a lot of feathers over at the homes of Charlie and Arabella Chick, and the three Wibblewobble duck children. These feathers they put around their heads, and down their backs, as the Indians in the Wild West show did.

"Now I guess we're ready to start off and hunt make-believe white people," said Bawly one Saturday morning when there wasn't any school.

"Have you the lunch? We mustn't forget that," spoke Bully.

"Yes, I have it," his brother replied. "Take your bow and arrow, and I'll carry the wooden gun."

Off they started as brave as an elephant when he has a bag of peanuts in his trunk. They hurried to the woods, so none of their friends would see them, for Bully and Bawly wanted to have it all a surprise. And pretty soon they were under the trees where it was quite dark. Bawly gave a big hop, and landed up front beside his brother.

"You mustn't walk here," said Bully. "Indians always go in single file, one behind the other. Get behind me."

"I -- I'm afraid," said Bawly.

"Of what?" asked his brother. "Indians are never afraid."

"I -- I'm afraid I might scare somebody," said Bawly. "I -- I look so fierce you know. I just saw myself reflected back there in a pond of water that was like a looking-glass and I'm enough to scare anybody."

"So much the better," said his brother. "You can scare the make-believe white people whom we are going to capture and scalp. Get in behind me."

"Wouldn't it be just as well if I pretended to walk behind you, and still stayed up front here, beside you?" asked Bawly, looking behind him.

"Oh, I guess so," answered his brother. So the two frog boys, who looked just like Indians, went on side by side though the woods. They looked all around them for something to capture, but all that they saw was an old lady hoptoad, going home from market.

"Shall we capture her?" asked Bawly, getting his bow and arrow ready.

"No," replied his brother. "She might tell mamma, and, anyhow, we wouldn't want to hurt any of mamma's friends. We'll capture some of the fellows." But Bully and Bawly couldn't seem to find any one, not even a make-believe white person, and they were just going to sit down and eat their lunch, anyhow, when they heard some one shouting:

"Help! Help! Oh, some one please help me!" called a voice.

"Some one's in trouble!" cried Bully. "Let's help them!"

So he and his brother bravely hurried on through the woods, and soon they came to a place where they could hear the voice more plainly. Then they looked between the bushes, and what should they see but poor Arabella Chick, and a big hand-organ monkey had hold of her, and the monkey was slowly pulling all the feathers from Arabella's tail.

"Oh, don't, please!" begged the little chicken girl. "Leave my feathers alone."

"No, I shan't!" answered the monkey. "I want the feathers to make a feather duster, to dust off my master's hand-organ," and with that he yanked out another handful.

"Oh, will no one help me?" cried poor Arabella, trying to get away. "I'll lose all my feathers!"

"We must help her," said Bawly to Bully.

"We surely must," agreed Bully. "Get all ready, and we'll shoot our arrows at that monkey, and then we'll go out with our make-believe guns, and shoot bang-bang-pretend-bullets at him, and then we'll holler like the wild Indians, and the monkey will be so frightened that he'll run away."

Well, they did that. Zip-whizz! went two make-believe arrows at the monkey. One hit him on the nose, and one on the leg, and the pain was real, not make-believe. Then out from the bushes jumped Bully and Bawly, firing their make-believe guns as fast as they could.

Then they yelled like real Indians and when the monkey saw the red and green and yellow and purple and pink and red feathers on the frog Indians and saw their colored-chalk faces he was so frightened that he wiggled his tail, blinked his eyes, clattered his teeth together, and, dropping Arabella Chick, off he scrambled up a tree after a make-believe cocoanut.

"Now, you're safe!" cried Bully to the chicken girl.

"Yes," said Bawly, "being Indians was some good after all, even if we didn't capture any make-believe white people to scalp."

So they sat down under the trees, and Arabella very kindly helped them to eat the lunch, and she said she thought Indians were just fine, and as brave as soldiers.

So now we've reached the end of this story, and as you're sleepy you'd better go to bed, and in case the piano key doesn't open the front door, and go out to play hop-scotch on the sidewalk, I'll tell you next about the Frogs' farewell hop.




Story XXXI

The Frogs' Farewell Hop


One night Papa No-Tail, the frog gentleman, came home from his work in the wallpaper factory with a bundle of something under his left front leg.

"What have you there, papa?" asked Bawly, as he scratched his nose on a rough stone; "is it ice cream cones for us?"

"No," said Mr. No-Tail, "it is not anything like that; but, anyhow, the weather is almost warm enough for ice cream."

"Is it some new kind of wallpaper that you hopped on to-day after you dipped your feet in red and green ink?" asked Bully.

"No," replied his papa. "I have here some wire to tack over the windows, to keep out the flies and mosquitoes, for it is getting to be summer now, and those insects will soon be flying and buzzing around."

So after supper Mr. No-Tail, and his two boys, Bully and Bawly, tacked the wire mosquito netting on the windows, and when they were all done Mr. No-Tail went down to the corner drug store and he bought a quart of ice cream, the kind all striped like a sofa cushion, and he and his wife and Bully and Bawly sat out on the porch eating it with spoons out of a dish, just as real as anything.

"Oh dear me! There's a mosquito buzzing around!" suddenly exclaimed Mamma No-Tail, as she ate the last of her cream. "They are on hand early this year. I'm going in the house."

"I'll go get my bean shooter, and see if I can kill that mosquito!" exclaimed Bawly, who once went hunting after the buzzers, and shot quite a number. But land sakes! it was so dark on the porch that he couldn't see the buzzing mosquitoes though he blew a number of beans about, and one hit Uncle Wiggily Longears on the nose, just as the old gentleman rabbit was hopping over to play checkers with Grandpa Croaker. But Uncle Wiggily forgave Bawly, as it was an accident, and as there was a little ice cream left, the old gentleman rabbit and Grandpa Croaker ate it up.

Well, something happened that night when they had all gone to bed. Along about 12 o'clock, when it was all still and quiet, and when the little mice were just coming out to play hide and seek and look for some crackers and cheese, Bawly No-Tail felt some one pulling him out of bed.

"Here! Hold on! Don't do that, Bully!" he cried.

"What's the matter?" asked his brother. "Are you dreaming or talking in your sleep? I'm not doing anything."

"Aren't you pulling me out of bed?" asked Bawly, and he had to grab hold of the bedpost to prevent himself falling to the floor.

"Why, no, I'm in my own bed," answered Bully. "Oh, dear me! Oh, suz dud! Some one's pulling me, too!" And he let out such a yell that Mamma No-Tail came running in with a light. And what do you think she saw?

Why two, great, big buzzing mosquitoes flew out of the window through a hole in the wire netting, and it was those mosquitoes who had been trying to pull Bully and Bawly out of bed, so they could fly away with them to eat them up.

"Oh, my! How bold those mosquitoes are this year!" exclaimed the mamma frog. "They actually bit a hole in the wire screen."

"They did, eh?" cried Papa No-Tail. "Well, I'll fix that!" So he got a hammer and some more wire, and he mended the hole which the mosquitoes had made. Then Bully and Bawly went to sleep again. They were afraid the mosquitoes would come in once more, but though the savage insects buzzed around outside for quite a while, the screen was too strong for them this time, and they didn't get in the house.

"If this keeps on," said Papa No-Tail, as he hopped off to work next morning, "we'll have to go to a place where there are no mosquitoes."

Well, that night the same thing happened. Along about 1 o'clock Bully felt some one pulling him out of bed, and he cried, and his mamma came with a light, and there was another mosquito, twice as big as before, with a long sharp bill, and long, dingly-dangly legs, and buzzy-uzzy wings, just skeddadling out of the window.

"There! They've bitten another hole in the screen!" cried Mrs. No-Tail. "Oh, this is getting terrible!"

"I'll put double screens on to-morrow," said Papa No-Tail, and he did. But would you believe it? Those mosquitoes still came. The big ones couldn't make their way through the two nets, but lots of the little ones came in. One would manage to get his head through the wire, and then all his friends would push and pull on him until he was inside, then another would wiggle in, and that's how they did it. Then they went and hid down cellar, until they grew big enough to bite.

And, though these mosquitoes couldn't pull Bully and Bawly out of bed, for the pestiferous insects weren't strong enough, they nipped the frog boys all over, until their legs and arms and faces and noses and ears smarted and burned terribly, and their mamma had to put witch hazel and talcum powder on the bites.

"I can see that we'll soon have to get away from here," said Papa No-Tail, one morning, when the mosquitoes had been very bad and troublesome in the night. "They come right through the screens," he said. "Now we'll hop off to the mountains or seashore, where there are no mosquitoes."

"Don't you s'pose Bully and I could sit up some night and kill them with our bean shooters?" said Bawly.

"You may try," said his papa. So the two frog boys tried it that night. They sat up real late, and they shot at several mosquitoes that came in, and they hit some. And then Bully and Bawly fell asleep, and the first thing you know the mosquitoes buzzing outside heard them snoring, and they bit a big hole right through the double screen this time, and were just pulling Bully and Bawly out of bed, when the frog boys' mamma heard them crying, and came with the lamp, scaring the savage insects away.

"There is no use talking!" said Papa No-Tail. "We will hop off in the morning. We'll say good-by to this place."

So the next morning the frogs packed up, and they sent word to all their friends that they were going to take their farewell hop to the mountains, where there were no more mosquitoes.

Oh such a crowd as gathered to see them hop away! There was Sammie and Susie Littletail, and Johnnie and Billie Bushytail, and Lulu and Alice and Jimmie Wibblewobble, and Munchie and Dottie Trot, and Peetie and Jackie Bow Wow, and Uncle Wiggily Longears and Nurse Jane Fuzzy-Wuzzy and Buddy Pigg and all the other animal friends.

Away hopped Papa No-Tail, and away hopped Mamma No-Tail, and then Grandpa Croaker and Bully and Bawly hopped after them, calling good-bys to all their friends. Every one waved his handkerchief and Susie Littletail and Jennie Chipmunk cried a little bit, for they liked Bully and Bawly very much, and didn't like to see them hop away.

And what do you think? Some of the mosquitoes were so mean that they flew out of the woods and tried to bite the frogs as they were hopping away. But Bully and Bawly had their bean shooters and they shot a number of the creatures, so the rest soon flew off and hid in a hollow tree.

"I'm coming to see you some time!" called Uncle Wiggily Longears to Bully and Bawly. "Be good boys!"

"Yes, we'll be good!" promised Bully.

"As good as we can," added his brother Bawly, as he tickled Grandpa Croaker with the bean shooter.

Then the No-Tail family of frogs hopped on and on, until they came to a nice place in the woods, where there was a little pond, covered with duck weed, in which they could swim.

"Here is where we will make our new home," said Papa No-Tail.

"Oh, how lovely it is," said Mrs. No-Tail, as she sat down to rest under a toadstool umbrella, for the sun was shining.

"Ger-umph! Ger-umph!" said Grandpa Croaker, in his deep, bass voice. "Very nice indeed."

"Fine!" cried Bully.

"Dandy!" said Bawly. "Come on in for a swim," and into the pond jumped the two frog boys. And they lived happily there in the woods for ever after.

So now we have come to the end of this book. But, if you would like to hear them, I have more stories to tell you. And I think I will make the next book about some goat children. Nannie and Billie Wagtail were their names, and the book will be called after them -- "Nannie and Billie Wagtail." The goat children wagged their little, short tails, and did the funniest things; eating pictures off tin cans, and nibbling bill-board circus posters of elephants and lions and tigers. And there was Uncle Butter, the goat gentleman, who pasted wallpaper, and Aunt Lettie, the old lady goat, and --  -- 

But there, I will let you read the book yourself and find out all that happened to Nannie and Billie Wagtail. And until you do read that, I will just say good-bye, for a little while.

<eob>

Girlhood And Womanhood: The Story Of Some Fortunes And Misfortunes

By

Sarah Tytler



Cain's Brand


I. On The Moor.

Cain's brand! that is no fact of the far past, no legend of the Middle Ages, for are there not Cains among us; white-faced, haggard-featured Cains to the last? Men who began with a little injury, and did not dream that their gripe would close in deadly persecution? Cains who slew the spirit, and through the spirit murdered the body? Cains unintentionally, whom all men free from the stain of blood, and to whom in the Jewish economy the gates of the Cities of Refuge would have stood wide open, yet who are never again light of thought and light of heart? On their heads the grey is soon sprinkled, and in the chamber of their hearts is drawn a ghastly picture, whose freshness fades, but whose distinct characters are never obliterated.

Of this class of men, of hot passions, with rash advisers, who meditated wrong, but not the last wrong, victims of a narrow, imperious code of honour, only to-day expunged from military and social etiquette, was the Laird of the Ewes. Many of us may have seen such another -- a tall, lithe figure, rather bent, and very white-headed for his age, with a wistful eye; but otherwise a most composed, intelligent, courteous gentleman of a laird's degree. Take any old friend aside, and he will tell, with respectful sympathy, that the quiet, sensible, well-bred Laird, has suffered agonies in the course of his life, though too wise and modest a man to hold up his heart for daws to peck at, and you will believe him. Look narrowly at the well-preserved, well-veiled exterior, and you will be able to detect, through the nicely adjusted folds, or even when it is brightened by smiles, how remorse has sharpened the flesh, and grief hollowed it, and long abiding regret shaded it.

Twenty years before this time, Crawfurd of the Ewes, more accomplished than many of the lairds, his contemporaries, and possessed of the sly humour on which Scotchmen pride themselves, had been induced to write a set of lampoons against a political opponent of his special chief. He was young then, and probably had his literary vanity; at least he executed his task to the satisfaction of his side of the question; and without being particularly broad and offensive, or perhaps very fine in their edge, his caricatures excited shouts of laughter in the parish, and in the neighbouring town.

But he laughs best who laughs last. A brother laird, blind with fury, and having more of the old border man in him than the Laird of the Ewes, took to his natural arms, and dispatched Mr. Crawfurd a challenge to fight him on the Corn-Cockle Moor. No refusal was possible then, none except for a man of rare principle, nerve, and temper. The Laird of the Ewes had no pretensions to mighty gifts; so he walked out with his second one autumn morning when his reapers were flourishing their sickles, met his foe, and though without the skill to defend himself, he shot his man right through the head. He was tried and acquitted. He was the challenged, not the challenger; he might have given the provocation, but no blame was suffered to attach to him. His antagonist, with a foreboding of his fate, or by way of clearing his conscience, as the knights used to confess of a morning before combat, had exonerated Mr. Crawfurd before he came upon the ground. The Court was strongly in his favour, and he was sent back to his family and property without anything more severe than commiseration; but that could never reach his deep sore.

How was this gentle, nervous, humorous Laird to look out upon the world, from which he had sent the soul of a companion who had never even harmed him? The widow, whom he had admired as a gay young matron, dwelt not a mile from him in her darkened dwelling; the fatherless boy would constantly cross the path of his well-protected, well-cared-for children. How bear the thousand little memories -- the trifling dates, acts, words, pricking him with anguish? They say the man grew sick at the mere sight of the corn-cockle, which, though not plentiful on other moors, chanced to abound on this uncultivated tract, and bestowed on it its name; and he shivered as with an ague fit, morning after morning, when the clock struck the hour at which he had left his house. He did in some measure overcome this weakness, for he was a man of ordinary courage and extraordinary reserve, but it is possible that he endured the worst of his punishment when he made no sign.

The Laird was a man of delicate organism, crushed by a blow from which he could not recover. Had he lived a hundred years earlier, or been a soldier on active service, or a student walking the hospitals, he might have been more hardened to bloodshed. Had his fate been different, he might have borne the brunt of the offence as well as his betters; but the very crime which he was least calculated to commit and survive encountered him in the colours he had worn before the eventful day.

Yet there was nothing romantic about Crawfurd of the Ewes, or about the details of his deed, with one singular exception, and this was connected with his daughter Joanna. The rest of the family were commonplace, prosperous young people, honest enough hearts, but too shallow to be affected by the father's misfortune. The father's sour grapes had not set these children's teeth on edge. Joanna -- Jack, or Joe, as they called her in sport -- whom they all, without any idea of selfishness or injustice, associated with the Laird, as one member of the family is occasionally chosen to bear the burdens of the others, -- Joanna was papa's right hand, papa's secretary, steward, housekeeper, nurse. It had always been so; Joanna had been set aside to the office, and no one thought of depriving her of it, any more than she dreamt of resigning it.

Joanna was the child born immediately after the duel, and on the waxen brow of the baby was a crimson stain, slight but significant, which two fingers might have covered. Was this the token of retribution -- the threat of vengeance? The gossips' tongues wagged busily. Some said it was Cain's brand, "the iniquity of the fathers visited on the children;" others alleged more charitably that it ought to prove a sign in the Laird's favour, to have the symbol of his guilt transferred to a scape-goat -- the brow of a child. However, the gossips need not have hidden the child's face so sedulously for the first few days from the mother. Mrs. Crawfurd took the matter quite peaceably, and was relieved that no worse misfortune had befallen her or her offspring. "Poor little dear!" it was sad that she should carry such a trace; but she daresayed she would outgrow it, or she must wear flat curls -- it was a pity that they had gone quite out of fashion. It was the father who kissed the mark passionately, and carried the child oftenest in his arms, and let her sit longest on his knee; and so she became his darling, and learnt all his ways, and could suit herself to his fancies, and soothe his pains, from very youthful years. The public recognised this peculiar property of her father in Joanna, and identified her with the sorrowful period of his history. She was pointed out in connexion with the story -- the tragedy of the county, -- and she knew instinctively that there would be a whispered reference to her whenever it was told in society.

The Crawfurds had a cousin visiting them -- an English cousin, Polly Musgrave -- from the luxury and comparative gaiety of her rich, childless aunt's house in York. Polly was a well-endowed orphan, had no near family ties, and had been educated in the worldly wisdom and epicurean philosophy of a fashionable girls' school. She had come to spend a few weeks, and get acquainted with her Scotch country cousins. Polly had not found her heart, but it was to the credit of her sense and good-nature that she made the very best of a sojourn that had threatened to be a bore to her. She dazzled the girls, she romped with the boys, she entered with the greatest glee into rural occupations, rode on the roughest pony, saw sunset and sunrise from Barnbougle, and threatened to learn to milk cows and cut corn. She brought inconceivable motion and sparkle into the rather stagnant country house, and she was the greatest possible contrast to Joanna Crawfurd. Joanna was a natural curiosity to Polly, and the study amused her, just as she made use of every other variety and novelty, down to the poultry-yard and kitchen-garden at the Ewes.

The girls were out on the moor, in the drowsy heat of a summer day, grouped idly and prettily into such a cluster as girls will fall into without effort. Susan, the beauty -- there is always a beauty among several girls -- in languid propriety, with her nice hair, and her scrupulously falling collar and sleeves, and her blush of a knot of ribbon; Lilias, the strong-minded, active person, sewing busily at charity work, of which all estimable households have now their share; Constantia, the half-grown girl, lying in an awkward lump among the hay, intently reading her last novel, and superlatively scorning the society of her grown-up relatives; Joanna, sitting thoughtfully, stroking old Gyp, the ragged terrier, that invariably ran after either Joanna or her father; and Polly, who had been riding with Oliver, standing with her tucked-up habit, picturesque hat and feathers, smart little gentleman's riding-gloves and whip, and very espiègle face -- a face surrounded by waves of silky black hair, with a clear pale skin, and good eyes and teeth, which Polly always declared were her fortune in the way of good looks; but her snub nose was neither of a vulgar nor coarse tendency -- it was a very lively, coquettish, handsomely cut, irresistible cock nose.

If these girls on the moor had been tried in the fire heated seven times, it would not have been to the strong-minded, broad-chested, dark-browed Lilias that they would have clung. They would have come crouching in their extremity and taken hold of the skirt of round, soft, white Joanna, with the little notable stain on her temple.

Polly was detailing her adventures and repeating her news with a relish that was appetizing.

"We went as far as Lammerhaugh, when Oliver remembered that he had a commission for your father at Westcotes, just when my love, Punch, was broken off his trot, and promised to canter, and the morning was so fresh then -- a jewel of a morning. It was provoking; I wanted Noll to continue absent in mind, or prove disobedient, or something, but you good folks are so conscientious."

"Duty first, and then pleasure," said Lilias emphatically.

"That was a Sunday-school speech, Lilias, and spoken out of school; you ought to pay a forfeit; fine her, Susie."

"Aren't you hot, Polly?" asked Susan, without troubling herself to take up the jest.

"Not a bit -- no more than you are; I'm up to a great deal yet; I'll go to the offices and gather the eggs. No, I am warm though, and I don't want to be blowsy to-night; I think I'll go into the house to the bath-room, and have a great icy splash of a shower-bath."

"You'll hurt your health, Polly, for ever bathing at odd hours, as you do," remonstrated Joanna.

"All nonsense, my dear; I always do what is pleasantest, and it agrees with me perfectly. In winter, I do toast my toes; and you know I eat half-a-dozen peaches and plums at a time like a South Sea Islander, only I believe they feast on cocoa-nut and breadfruit; don't they, Conny? You are the scholar; you know you have your geography at your finger-ends yet."

"Oh, don't tease me, Polly!" protested Conny impatiently.

"Dear Jack, hand me a sprig of broom to stick in Conny's ear," persisted Polly in a loud whisper.

Constantia shook her head furiously, as if she were already horribly tickled, and that at the climax of her plot.

"Never mind, Conny, I'll protect you. What a shame, Polly, to spoil her pleasure!" cried Joanna indignantly.

"I beg your pardon, Donna Quixotina."

"I wonder you girls can waste your time in this foolish manner," lectured Lilias, with an air of superiority; "you are none of you better than another, always pursuing amusement."

"What a story, Lilias!" put in Polly undauntedly; "you know I sew yard upon yard of muslin-work, and embroider ells of French merino, and task myself to get done within a given time. Aunt Powis says I make myself a slave."

"Because you like it," declared Lilias disdainfully; "you happen to be a clever sewer, and you are fond of having your fingers busy and astonishing everybody -- besides, you admire embroidery in muslin and cloth; and even your pocket-money -- what with gowns and bonnets, tickets to oratorios and concerts, and promenades, and 'the kid shoes and perfumery,' which are papa's old-fashioned summing up of our expenses, bouquets and fresh gloves would be nearer the truth -- won't always meet the claims upon your gold and silver showers; and Susan," added Lilias, not to be cheated out of her diatribe, and starting with new alacrity, "practising attitudes and looking at her hands; and Conny reading her trashy romances."

"It is not a romance, Lilias," complained Conny piteously; "it is a tale of real life."

"It is all the same," maintained the inexorable Lilias; "one of the most aggravating novels I ever read was a simple story."

"Oh, Lilias, do lend it to me!" begged Polly; "I'm not literary, but it is delightful to be intensely interested until the very hair rises on the crown of one's head."

"I don't know that you would like it," put in Joanna; "it is not one of the modern novels, and it has only one dismal catastrophe; it is the fine old novel by Mrs. Inchbald."

"Then I don't want it; I don't care for old things, since I have not a palate for old wines or an eye for old pictures. I hate the musty, buckram ghosts of our fathers."

"Oh! but Mrs. Inchbald never raised ghosts, Polly; she manoeuvred stately, passionate men and women of her own day."

"The wiser woman she. But they would be ghosts to me, Jack, unless they were in the costume of the present day; there is not an inch of me given to history."

"And you, Joanna," concluded Lilias, quite determined to breast every interruption and finish her peroration, "you have listened, and smiled, and frowned, and dreamt for an hour."

"I was waiting in case papa should want me," apologized Joanna, rather humbly.

"That need not have hindered you from hemming round the skirt of this frock."

"Oh, Lilias! I am sorry for you, girl," cried Polly. "You're in a diseased frame of mind; you are in a fidget of work; you don't know the enjoyment of idleness, the luxury of laziness. You'll spoil your complexion; your hair will grow grey; no man will dare to trifle with such a notable woman!"

"I don't care!" exclaimed Lilias bluntly and magnanimously. "I don't want to be trifled with; I don't value men's admiration."

"Now! Now!! Now!!! Now!!!!" protested Polly; "I don't value men's admiration either, of course, but I like partners, and I would not be fond of being branded as a strong-minded female, a would-be Lady Bountiful, a woman going a-tracking; that's what men say of girls who don't care to be trifled with. But, Lilias, are you quite sure you don't believe in any of the good old stories -- the 'goody' stories I would call them if I were a man -- of the amiable girl who went abroad in the old pelisse, and who was wedded to the enthusiastic baronet? My dears, you must have observed they were abominably untrue; the baronet, weak and false, always, since the world began, marries the saucy, spendthrift girl, who is prodigal in rich stuffs, and bright colours, and becoming fits, and neat boots and shoes -- who thinks him worth listening to, and laughing with, and thinking about -- the fool."

"Really, Polly, you are too bad," cried both Susan and Lilias at once; their stock-in-trade exhausted, and not knowing very well what they meant, or what they should suggest further if this sentence were not answer enough.

"Now, I believe Joanna does not credit the goody stories, or does not care for them, rather; but we are not all heroines, we cannot all afford an equal indifference."

Joanna coloured until the red stain became undistinguishable, and even Polly felt conscious that her allusion was too flippant for the cause.

"So you see, Lilias," she continued quickly, "I'm not the least ashamed of having been caught fast asleep in my room before dinner the other rainy day. I always curl myself up and go to sleep when I've got nothing better to do, and I count the capacity a precious gift; besides, I will let you into a secret worth your heads: it improves your looks immensely after you've been gadding about for a number of days, and horribly dissipated in dancing of nights at Christmas, or in the oratorio week, or if you are in a town when the circuit is sitting -- not present as a prisoner, Conny."

"Polly!" blazed out Constantia, who, on the plea of the needle-like sharpness and single-heartedness which sometimes distinguishes her fifteen years, was permitted to be more plain-spoken and ruder than her sisters; "I hate to hear you telling of doing everything you like with such enjoyment. I think, if you had been a man, you would have been an abominable fellow, and you are only harmless because you are a girl."

Polly laughed immoderately. "Such a queer compliment, Conny!"

"Hold your tongue, Conny."

"Go back to your book; we'll tell mamma," scolded the elder girls; and Conny hung her head, scarlet with shame and consternation.

Conny had truth on her side; yet Polly's independence and animal delight in life, in this artificial world, was not to be altogether despised either.

Polly maintained honestly that the girl had done no harm. She was glad she had never had to endure senior sisters, and if she had been afflicted with younger plagues, she would have made a point of not snubbing them, on the principle of fair play.

"And you were a little heathenish, Polly," suggested Joanna, "not giving fair play to the heroism of the ancients."

But Susan had long been waiting her turn, testifying more interest in her right to speak than she usually wasted on the affairs of the state. She wished to cross-examine Polly on a single important expression, and although Susan at least was wonderfully harmless, her patience could hold out no longer.

"Why are you afraid of being blowsy to-night, Polly?"

"I'm not frightened, I would not disturb myself about a risk; but you've kept an invitation all this time under my tongue, not in my pockets, I assure you;" and Polly elaborately emptied them, the foppish breast pocket, and that at the waist.

"It is only from Mrs. Maxwell," sighed Susan; "we are never invited anywhere except to Hurlton, in this easy way."

"But there is company; young Mr. Jardine has come home to Whitethorn, and he is to dine with the Maxwells, and we are invited over to Hurlton in the evening lest the claret or the port should be too much for him."

The girls did not say "Nonsense!" they looked at each other; Joanna was very pale, the red stain was very clear now. At last Lilias spoke, hesitating a little to begin with, "It is so like Mrs. Maxwell -- without a moment's consideration -- so soon after his return, before we had met casually, as we must have done. I dare say she is sorry now, when she comes to think over it. I hope Mr. Maxwell will be angry with her -- the provoking old goose," ran on Lilias, neither very reverently nor very gratefully for an excellent, exemplary girl.

"There is one thing, we can't refuse," said Susan with marvellous decision; "it would be out of the question for us to avoid him; it would be too marked for us to stay away."

"Read your book, Conny," commanded Lilias fiercely; "you were sufficiently intent upon it a moment ago; girls should not be made acquainted with such troubles."

"I don't want to be a bar upon you," cried the belated Conny, rising and walking away sulkily, but pricking her ears all the time.

"Joanna, you had better mention the matter to papa."

"Don't you think you're making an unnecessary fuss?" remarked Polly. "Of course, I remembered uncle's misfortune," she admitted candidly, "though none of you speak of it, and I noticed Oliver stammer dreadfully when Mrs. Maxwell mentioned Mr. Jardine; but I thought that at this time of day, when everybody knew there was no malice borne originally, and Uncle Crawfurd might have been killed, you might have been polite and neighbourly with quiet consciences. I tell you, I mean to set my cap at young Mr. Jardine of Whitethorn, and when I marry him, and constitute him a family connexion, of course the relics of that old accident will be scattered to the winds."

"Oh! Polly, Polly!" cried the girls, "you must never, never speak so lightly to papa."

"Of course not, I am not going to vex my uncle; I can excuse him, but Joanna need not look so scared. There is not such a thing as retribution and vengeance, child, in Christian countries; it is you who are heathenish. Or have you nursed a vain imagination of encountering Mr. Jardine, unknown to each other, and losing your hearts by an unaccountable fascination, and being as miserable as the principals in the second last chapter of one of Conny's three volumes? or were you to atone to him in some mysterious, fantastic, supernatural fashion, for the unintentional wrong? Because if you have done so, I'm afraid it is all mist and moonshine, poor Jack, quite as much as the twaddling goody stories."

"Polly," said Joanna angrily, but speaking low, "I think you might spare us on so sad a subject."

"I want you to have common sense; I want you to be comfortable; no wonder my uncle has never recovered his spirits."

"Indeed, Polly, I don't think you've any reason to interfere in papa's concerns."

"I don't see that you are entitled to blame Joanna," defended sister Lilias, stoutly; -- Lilias, who was so swift to find fault herself.

"There, I'll say no more; I beg your pardon, I merely intended to show you your world in an ordinary light."

"Do you know, Polly, that Mrs. Jardine has never visited us since?" asked Susan.

"Very likely, she was entitled to some horror. But she is a reasonable woman. Mr. Maxwell told me -- every third party discusses the story behind your backs whenever it chances to come up, I warn you -- Mr. Maxwell informed me that she never blamed Uncle Crawfurd, and that she sent her son away from her because she judged it bad for him to be brought up among such recollections, and feared that when he was a lad he might be tampered with by the servants, and might imbibe prejudices and aversions that would render him gloomy and vindictive, and unlike other people for the rest of his life; she could not have behaved more wisely. I am inclined to suppose that Mrs. Jardine of Whitethorn has more knowledge of the world and self-command than the whole set of my relations here, unless, perhaps, my Aunt Crawfurd -- she will only speculate on your dresses -- that is the question, Susan."


II. The Ordeal.

"Would you not have liked to have gone with the other girls, Joanna? for Conny, she must submit to be a halflin yet. But is it not dull for you only to hear of a party? country girls have few enough opportunities of being merry," observed Mr. Crawfurd, with his uneasy consciousness, and his sad habit of self-reproach.

"Oh, Mr. Crawford, it would not have done -- not the first time -- Joanna had much better stay at home on this occasion. She is too well brought up to complain of a little sacrifice."

It is curious how long some wives will live on friendly terms with their husbands and never measure their temperaments, never know where the shoe pinches, never have a notion how often they worry, and provoke, and pain their spouses, when the least reticence and tact would keep the ship and its consort sailing in smooth water.

Mrs. Crawfurd would have half-broken her heart if Mr. Crawfurd had not changed his damp stockings; she would fling down her work and look out for him at any moment of his absence; she would not let any of her children, not her favourite girl or boy, take advantage of him; she was a good wife, still she did not know where the shoe pinched, and so she stabbed him perpetually, sometimes with fretting pin-pricks, sometimes with sore sword-strokes.

"My dear, I wish you were not a sacrifice to me." It is a heart-breaking thing to hear a man speak quite calmly, and like a man, yet with a plaintive tone in his voice. Ah! the old, arch spirit of the literary Laird of the Ewes had been shaken to its centre, though he was a tolerable man of business, and rather fond of attending markets, sales, and meetings.

"Papa, what are you thinking of?" exclaimed Joanna indignantly. "I am very proud to help you, and I go out quite as often as the others. Do you not know, we keep a card hung up on Lilias's window-shutter, and we write down every month's invitations -- in stormy weather they are not many -- and we fulfil them in rotation. You don't often want me in the evenings, for you've quite given me up at chess, and you only condescend to backgammon when it is mid-winter and there has been no curling, and the book club is all amiss. Lilias insists upon the card, because the parties are by no means always merry affairs, and she says that otherwise we would slip them off on each other, and pick and choose, and be guilty of a great many selfish, dishonourable proceedings."

"Lilias is the wise woman in the household. I'm aware there is a wise woman in every family -- but how comes it that Lilias is the authority with us? It always rather puzzles me, Joanna; for when I used to implore Miss Swan to accept her salary, and pay Dominie Macadam his lawful demand of wages for paving the boys' brains in preparation for the High School, they always complimented me with the assurance that you were my clever daughter."

"Because they saw your weak side, I dare say, my dear," suggests Mrs. Crawfurd.

"No, I am the cleverest, papa; I am so deep that I see that it is easier to live under an absolute monarchy than to announce myself a member of a republic, and assert my prerogatives and defend my privileges -- but I confess I have a temper, papa. Lilias says I am very self-willed, and I must grant that she is generally in the right."

"You don't feel satisfied with the bridle, child, till it gets into stronger hands."

"Yes, Joanna has a temper," chimed in Mrs. Crawfurd, pursuing her own thread of the conversation. "Strangers think her softer than Susan; but I have seen her violent, and when she takes it into her head, she is the most stubborn of the whole family. I don't mean to scold you, my dear; you are a very good girl, too, but you are quite a deception."

"Oh, mamma! what a character!" Joanna could not help laughing. "I must amend my ways."

Of course, Joanna was violent at times, as we imagine a sensitive girl with an abhorrence of meanness and vice, and she was stubborn when she was convinced of the right and her friends would assert the wrong. Mr. Crawfurd's idea was, that Joanna had a temper like Cordelia, not when she spoke in her pleased accents, "gentle, soft, and low," but when she was goaded into vehemence, as will happen in the best regulated palaces and households.

"Oh, dear!" exclaimed Mrs. Crawfurd, five minutes afterwards, disturbing the cosy little party round the tea-table by her sudden air of distress. "Oh! dear, dear me! Susie has left her pearl sprigs behind her. There they are on the loo-table. My pearl sprigs, Mr. Crawfurd, that I used to wear when I was young; they have come in again for the hair, and Susie settled they were just the thing to give a more dressed look to her spring silk -- these easy way parties are so ill to manage, and Polly was of the same mind, and she came in to show me the effect, for I always like to see the girls after they are dressed, and be satisfied how they look -- and there she has forgotten the box, and she will appear quite a dowdy, and be so vexed."

"I don't think it will signify very much, mamma; Susan looks very well in her blue silk."

"But it is such a pity, Joanna; so unfortunate, -- she only put them out of her hand for one moment, and you see there they are still;" and so Mrs. Crawfurd sounded the lamentation, and dwelt on its salient points, and ingeniously extracted new grounds of regret, till, by dint of repetition, in ten minutes more Mr. Crawfurd and Joanna were almost persuaded that Susan had sustained a serious loss.

"Send a servant with the foolery," proposed Mr. Crawfurd, seeking a little relief, and tolerably affronted at his interest in the question.

"I don't think it would do. Would it, Joanna? There is always such confusion at Hurlton when there is company? and then they have people dining. There would be a mistake, and my pearls are no joke, Mr. Crawfurd. They cost papa fifty pounds when they were so prettily set to go to Sir William's ball. Ah! you don't remember it. There would be a fuss, and Lilias would not like it. If Oliver had not been there at dinner, or Charlie had been at home -- "

"Of the two evils choose the least," recommended Mr. Crawfurd, taking up his book.

"If you are very anxious, mamma," said Joanna, "as it is very early, and they set out to walk round by the garden at Houndswood to get some geraniums, which Polly saw yesterday, and set her heart upon; if you order out the ponies and Sandy, I think Conny and I could easily ride over to Hurlton, and deliver the little parcel to the girls in time. It would be a nice evening ride for us, since you are afraid that Conny hangs too much over her books."

"Thank you, dear; that is just like you, Joanna, you are so sensible and helpful, no wonder papa monopolizes you. I will be so glad that Susie has the pearls. Such a pity, poor dear! that her evening should be spoilt, and they lying ready to be put on. Conny? Yes, indeed, that girl will be getting spine complaint, or the rickets. In my day it was sewing in frames that twisted girls; but these books in the lap, the head poked forward, one shoulder up, and knees half as high as the shoulder, are a thousand times worse."

"Good luck to you, Jack. Now you deserve your name, since you constitute yourself groom of the chambers to your sisters."

Joanna laughed back to him. "Come and meet us, papa." And in the shortest interval given to tie on their hats and skirts, the girls were racing along to Hurlton.

In that moorland country, with outlying moorland fields where it was not primitive nature -- in a large family like that of the Crawfurds, rough walking ponies swarmed as in Shetland. They were in constant request at the Ewes, and the girls rode them lightly and actively, with the table-boy, Sandy, at their heels, as readily as they walked. Perhaps Joanna was the least given to the practice, though she availed herself of it on this domestic occasion.

Joanna was a deception, as her mother said. She was a little, round, soft thing, whom you would have expected to flash over with sunshine. She was not a melancholy girl -- as you may have been able to judge -- and it was not her blame that anything in her position had developed her into a thoughtful, earnest character. But then she was always fancied younger than she really was; people supposed her as easy as her mother, while she could be vehement, and was firm to tenacity. Perhaps the reason of the puzzle might be, not only that she had a little of that constitutional indolence which serves to conceal latent energy, but that, in trifles, she did inherit, in a marked degree, the unexacting, kindly temper which causes the wheels of every-day life to turn easily. She allowed herself to be pushed aside. She accepted the fate or superstition which linked her with her father's sorrow; she was content, she thought, to suffer the dregs of his act with him; she wished she could suffer for him; the connexion had indeed a peculiar charm for her enthusiasm and generosity, like her admiration of this Corncockle Moor.

Corncockle Moor, in its dreariness, loneliness, and wildness, now hung out a vast curtain, which Joanna and Conny were skirting under the golden decline of day, not so far from the spot where the little group of men had gathered on the autumn morning, and the two sharp, short cracks, and the little curl of blue smoke had indicated where one life had gone out, and another was blasted in a single second. Joanna had scarcely got time to wonder how Harry Jardine and her sisters would look at each other, and she did not allow herself to think of it now. She would wait till she had skilfully avoided any chance of encountering the company, delivered her mother's errand, and was safe with Conny, cantering homewards. Even then she would not dwell on the notion, lest her father should allude to the stranger, and she should betray any feeling to discompose him. "I must take care of papa. Papa is my charge," repeated Joanna, proud as any Roman maid or matron.

What malign star sent Mrs. Maxwell into the bedroom, just as Joanna had entered it? She ought to have been only quitting the dining-room for the drawing-room, but Mrs. Maxwell was always to be found where she was least expected. She was a good-natured, social, blundering body, whom girls condescended to affect, because she liberally patronized young people, proving, however, quite as often the marplot, as the maker of their fortunes -- not from malice, but from a certain maladroitness and fickleness. Mrs. Maxwell took it into her head to lay hands on Joanna, and to send out for Conny, whom Joanna had cautiously deposited in the paddock, and to insist that they should remain, and join the party. She would take no denial; she never got them all together; it was so cruel to leave out Joanna and Conny, a pair of her adopted children, since she had no bairns of her own to bless herself with. She had plenty of partners, or the girls would dance together. Yes, say no more about it; she was perfectly delighted with the accession to her number -- it was to be.

Conny's eyes sparkled greedily. "Oh, Joanna! mamma won't be angry."

Oh, Conny! you traitor!

"There, it will be a treat to Conny, and there is nothing to prevent it. Conny has let the cat out of the bag, as Tom would say. Conny consents, Joanna may sulk as she pleases."

"I won't sulk, Mrs. Maxwell; I'll go off by myself, and leave you Constantia, since she wishes it."

"To hear of such a thing! You girls won't allow it. It is very shabby, Susan, Lilias, Miss Musgrave, that Joanna should not have a little amusement with the rest."

"I'm sure we won't prevent it, Mrs. Maxwell, we don't stand in the way," said Lilias stiffly; "Joanna is free to remain or return as she chooses. Joanna, you had better stay, or there will be a scene, and the whole house will hear of it."

"Keep her, Mrs. Maxwell, please," cried Miss Polly mischievously; "my cousin Joan is so scarce of her countenance, that I want to know how she can behave in company."

"Very well, I assure you," avouched Mrs. Maxwell zealously; then she began to remember, and start, and flounder -- "only she is so modest. Joanna, my dear, you cannot be so stupid as to hesitate from a certain reason?"

"Oh, no. You can send back Sandy, Mrs. Maxwell, since you are so good. Mamma knows what we will require; or I will write a little note."

Joanna could have borne any encounter rather than a discussion of the obstacle with Mrs. Maxwell -- a discussion which might be gone over again any day to anybody.

But Joanna was terribly vexed and provoked that she had exposed herself to this infliction, though she was fain to comfort herself with the argument that it would make no difference to papa's feelings; and she trusted that she and Conny would slip into the drawing-room when the guests were occupied, and subside into corners, and escape attention.

Joanna was established in her recess, nearly confident that she was not conspicuous, and considerably interested in watching Harry Jardine.

Mrs. Jardine's intentions had been in a great measure fulfilled. The young Laird of Whitethorn had grown up at his English school and German university without the cloud which rested on his father's end descending on his spirit. He was as strong and pleasant and blithe as his father, with the self-possession which a life amongst strangers, and the available wallet of a traveller's information, could graft upon his gentle birth and early manhood. At the same time, there was no deception about Harry Jardine. While he was gay and good-humoured, he had an air of vigour and action, and even a dash of temper lurking about his black curls and bright eyes, which prepared one for hearing that he had not only hobnobbed with the Göttingen students, but had also won their prizes, and thrashed them when they aspired to English sports; and had travelled four nights without sleep, under stress of weather, to reach Whitethorn on the day he had fixed to his mother. He had brought a steady character along with him, too; they said that he had been a good son, and had remembered that his mother was a widow, and had endured enough grief to last her all her days. Mrs. Jardine, who was not a flatterer, declared that Harry had not cost her a care which she needed to grudge. There is enough temptation, and to spare, for men like Harry Jardine, but it is not in such that early self-indulgence and lamentable weakness may be feared.

Harry Jardine was the style of man fitted to command the admiration of Joanna Crawfurd. Contemplative girls love men of experience. Staid girls love men with a dash -- a dash of bravery, self-reliance, or even of recklessness. Harry Jardine's gladness to be at home; his interest in everything and everybody; the pleasant tone in which he referred to his mother; the genuine fun of which he gave a glimpse; the ring of his laugh, were all set store upon by Joanna with a sober satisfaction.

Harry had not been so agreeable, or felt the world so pleasant, two hours before. It was impossible to escape memories or to hide wincing; but he had said to himself that these associations ought to have been worn threadbare by familiarity, or to have been approached gradually, and he could not conquer his awkwardness or crush his susceptibility. But youth is pliable and versatile, and Harry Jardine was determined to evince no dislike, and make no marked distinction. Very soon the Miss Crawfurds and their cousin blended with the other young ladies in his view, -- nay, he discovered that he had come across a cousin of theirs settled abroad, and was qualified to afford them information of his prospects and pursuits handsomely.

So far Joanna's penalty had been moderate, until, towards the close of the evening, when most of the young people had gone into the library to get some refreshments, she found herself left in her corner almost alone, with Mr. Jardine talking to Mrs. Maxwell within a few yards of her. This was the occurrence which Joanna had dreaded. "By the pricking of her thumbs" she was aware of a wicked destiny approaching her. Mr. Jardine in his conversation glanced towards her, then looked away, and beat his foot on the carpet, and a twitch passed over the muscles of his face, and his smile, though he still affected a smile, had lost all its glow. Joanna dared not look any longer. Mrs. Maxwell was certainly speaking of her. Perhaps in her rash inconsiderate way she had volunteered information.

Perhaps Harry Jardine had himself made inquiry -- the pale girl who kept in the background, with the little scar -- was it -- on her temple? Joanna quivered under the process, and the witness beneath the light brown hair throbbed painfully. She was glad when Mr. Jardine walked away quickly; but the next moment he came back and turned directly towards her.

"I have been introduced to your sisters, Miss Crawfurd, and you must excuse further ceremony from me. Will you allow me to take you into the next room and get a glass of wine or a biscuit for you? You should not try fasting at an evening party. Mrs. Maxwell would call it a very bad example."

He spoke fast, with a laugh, and crimsoned all over. She knew perfectly well what he was about. He was determined to perform all that could possibly be required of him. He would put down invidious comments, disarm gossip, in short cut off the gorgon's head at the first struggle. They might term it unnatural, overdone, but at least it would not be to do again; and Harry Jardine's was the temper, that, if you presented an obstacle to it, it itched the more to grapple with the obstacle on the spot.

Precisely for the reason that she could not ride away from the party, after Mrs. Maxwell assailed her with a motive for her conduct, Joanna could not repel his overture. It was incredibly trying to her. He saw how differently she was affected from her sisters. He was aware of another influence. He felt very uncomfortable. Why, the very flesh of his arm, which she touched lightly enough, crept, when the superstition of the old ordeal of the bier flashed upon him, as he caught, with a furtive glance, the tiny brand prickling and burning to fiery incandescence above the waxen face. Was it a splash of his father's blood impressed there, till the "solid flesh" would verily "melt"? Was it his neighbourhood which brought out the ruddy spot, that, like the scarlet streaks down Lady Macbeth's little hands, would not wash off? Absurd folly! But he wished he had done with it. He wished old ladies would confine themselves to their own concerns. He hoped fainting was not heard of among the girls of the moors -- that would be a talk! He supposed he must say something commonplace and civil; he must task his brains for that purpose. He coined a remark, and Joanna answered him quietly and with simplicity. She must have possessed and exercised great self-command. It struck Harry Jardine. It was a quality he valued highly, possibly because he felt such difficulty in looking it up on his own account. All through the few minutes' further conversation and association between them, it impressed him, conjointly with the odd recoiling sensations, which he had so rapidly shaken off, where her sisters were concerned.

Harry had the faults of his kind, not inveterately, for he spoke good English to women; but as he indulged in his dear island slang to men, he felt bound to use it to himself. "This poor little woman is thorough game," he said to himself. "I can see that she is as tender as a little bird, yet she has shown as much pluck as a six-foot grenadier? She has not flinched at all. I can do justice to this spirit." He remembered it all the time when Polly Musgrave was sounding him, and when he did not choose to give her the slightest satisfaction.

"I saw you with my cousin Joanna, Mr. Jardine; you'll find her in the Spanish style."

"Not in complexion certainly. Do you mean in name?"

"Oh, no! Do you know so little about the south of Scotland after all? You had better conceal this piece of ignorance. I am sure you understand this much -- a general acquaintance with the whole habitable globe would not atone for a deficiency with regard to this one dear little spot of earth. Joanna is as common a name in the south of Scotland as Dorothy is in the north of England. Examine the register, and see if you have not twenty Jardine cousins christened Joanna. I call Joanna in the Spanish style, because, although she conceals it, and you cannot have found it out yet, she is a vestige of romantic chivalry. Joanna is a Donna Quixotina, an unworldly, unearthly sort of girl, with a dream of tilting with the world and succouring the distressed. I term it a dream, because, of course, she will never accomplish it, any more than the knight of La Mancha, and she will be obliged to descend from her stilts by-and-by. I call Susan in the beautiful style, and Lilias in the good style, and Conny in the sweet sixteen style."

"Miss Musgrave, I am not versed in ladies' styles, you must teach me;" and Polly and he looked into each other's eyes, and laughed and felt they were match for match.

And Joanna had a little regret that Mr. Jardine should, like most men, be caught with Polly Musgrave; not that Joanna did not admire Polly, though she was her antithesis, and count her handsome and brilliant in her way, like any sun-loving dahlia or hollyhock; but Joanna had no enthusiasm in her admiration of Polly, and she had a little enthusiasm in her estimation of Harry Jardine.


III. "He Lay Down To Sleep On The Moorland So Dreary."

Polly Musgrave was gone with flying colours. She had been indefatigable in procuring her aunt, uncle, and cousins, parting gifts that would suit their tastes; she had actually toiled herself in paying courtesy-calls round the neighbourhood; and she had written half-a-dozen letters, and evinced a considerable amount of successful management in procuring an invitation for two of her cousins to join her during the week or weeks of York's gaieties. She would have had Joanna also, but Joanna would not leave home at the season when her father was liable to his worst rheumatic twinges. Polly had shown herself really good-natured under her ease and luxury, and Joanna had been a little penitent and vexed that she did not like Polly any more than in a cousinly way. Whether Polly was right in saying that Joanna was romantic or not, Polly had not a particle of romance in her constitution, though much was flourishing, fresh, and fragrant, in pure, commonplace, selfish, good-natured worldliness, for it is a mistake to suppose that quality (without hypocrisy) has not its attractive guise. Without knowing herself romantic, Joanna was apt to quarrel in her own mind with cleverer girls, accomplished girls, pleasant girls, even good girls, sensible women, business women, nay religious women, until she feared she must be fault-finding, satirical, sour -- as her sisters protested at intervals. Joanna, sour? Joanna, so charitable and sympathizing? Take comfort, Joanna; the spirit is willing, though the flesh is weak.

The Ewes was in its normal condition; the parish was in its normal condition; the excitement of Harry Jardine's return to Whitethorn had died out; he might shoot, as it was September, or fish still, or farm, or ride, or read as he pleased. He retained his popularity. His father had been a popular man, fully more popular than Mr. Crawfurd of the Ewes. Harry was even more approved, for mingling with the world had smoothed down in him the intolerance of temper which beset his father. What did Joanna Crawfurd say to such compromising agreeability? Joanna was disarmed in his case; she contradicted herself, as we all do. She had the penetration to perceive that many externals went to raise Harry Jardine's price in the eyes of the world; externals which had little to do with the individual man, -- youth, a good presence, a fair patrimony, freedom from appropriating ties. Strip Harry of these, render him middle-aged, time-worn or care-worn, reduce him to poverty, marry him, furnish him with a clamorous circle of connections, land-lock him with children! Would the difference not be startling? Would he need to be condemned for the world's favour, then? Joanna trowed not.

The Crawfurds met Mr. Jardine occasionally, but there was no probability of the acquaintance ripening, since Mr. Crawfurd could not call for Harry at Whitethorn, and Harry did not see the necessity of offering his company at the Ewes. Mrs. Jardine had not visited much since the shock of her widowhood, and she only now began to recur to her long-disused visiting-list on Harry's account. Though a reasonable woman, it is scarcely requisite to say that she did not propose to renew her friendship with the family at the Ewes. The blow which rendered her without control did not break her spirit, but it pressed out its buoyance. Mrs. Jardine was a grave, occupied, resigned woman, no longer a blithe one, very fond and proud of Harry, but grateful, not glad in her fondness and pride.

The frost had come early, strong, and stern on those Highlands of the Lowlands, those moors of the south. The "lustre deep" at twilight and dawn, the imperial Tyrian dye at noon, the glorious "orange and purple and grey" at sunset and sunrise, which, once known and loved, man never forgets, nor woman either -- all would soon be swept away this year, and Joanna regretted it. She liked the flower-garden, but, after all, the garden was tame to the moor. The moor's seasons were, at best, short -- short the golden flush of its June; short the red gleam of its September. Not that the lowland Moor has not its dead, frosted grace in its winter winding-sheet, and its tender spring charm, when curlews scream over it incessantly. But Joanna had never seen the autumn so short as this year; and she had heard them tell, that in the Fall, when poor Mr. Jardine was killed, the heather remained bright till November.

Thinking of that date caused Joanna, when she strolled out on the moor one morning, to go near the scene with its melancholy celebrity.

It was quite early in the morning, a hail shower lying all around, though the sky was a deep sapphire blue, with the wan ghost of the moon lingering on the horizon, and the atmosphere bitter cold. The breakfast was late at the Ewes, owing to Mr. Crawfurd's delicate health, and because Mrs. Crawfurd had her fancies like Mrs. Primrose. Thus Joanna was frequently abroad before breakfast, and, like most persons of healthy organization, was rather tempted to court the stinging air as it blew across the heather, bracing her whole frame, nipping her fingers and toes, and sending blush-roses into her cheeks.

Joanna was walking along, feeling cheerful, although she was in that neighbourhood, and vaunting to herself that their moor was infinitely superior to a park, when a grey object caught her eye, lying beyond some whin bushes -- a thing raised above the ground, but stretched still and motionless. Joanna stopped with a strange thrill. No! it was not on that piece of earth; but so must he have lain on that disastrous morning, far removed from the abundance, and garnered goods, and heartiness of harvest.

Joanna stood a moment, then reproaching herself with cowardice, egotism, inhumanity, she advanced, her heart fluttering wildly. Yes, it was a man in tweed-coat, trousers, and cap; and stay! was that a gun by his side? Joanna could not go a step further; she closed her eyes to hide the blood which she felt must be oozing and stealing along the ground, or else congealed among the heather and it was only after she had told herself how far she was from home, and how long it would be ere she could run back for assistance, that she opened them and approached the figure. There was no blood that she could see; the man might not be dead, but stupefied or insensible. Oh, dear! it was Harry Jardine of Whitethorn; the hail-drops among his black curls, the sprigs of the heather dinted into his brown cheek.

It darted into Joanna's mind like inspiration how the chance had occurred. She remembered Susan had said, yesterday, that she had met Mr. Jardine going in shooting garb across the moor in the afternoon, and he had stopped her and asked if she had seen a dog. He had taken out a new dog and lost it, and was vexed at wasting half the morning in the pursuit. She recalled, with a peculiar vividness of perception, that somebody had observed, one day lately, that Mr. Jardine was not so strong as he looked; that he had fever while abroad, just before he came home, and that his mother was annoyed because he would not take care of himself, and complained that he was constantly over-taxing his unrecovered powers, and subjecting himself to fresh attacks of illness. Joanna remembered, with a pang, that she had laughed at the remark, mentally conjuring up Harry Jardine's athletic, sunburnt comeliness.

Joanna freed herself more quickly from this phantom than from the last, and, while she did so, called out his name, and stepped to his side, stooping down and even touching him. He was breathing, though he was very cold and stiff, and she did not rouse him. Oh, Joanna was very thankful! But what should she do next? Life must be very faint, and frozen in the muscular, active young man. He had loitered at his sport till the dusk; he had been bewildered on the moor -- strange to him as to a foreigner; he had wandered here and there impatient and weary; but still more angry with himself than alarmed. He had sat down in the intense chill and dim darkness to recover himself; no way forewarned, "simply because he was on Corncockle Moor, so near home," on a September night. He had sunk down further and further, until the stealthy foe sprang upon him and held him fast -- the sleep from which there is so tardy an awakening.

Joanna dared not leave the faint, vital spark to smoulder down or leap out. The moor was very unfrequented at this hour; at certain periods of the day, portions of it, intersected by meandering tracks, were crossed by men labouring in the adjacent fields or quarry; but till then it was only the circumstance of alarm being excited on Harry's account, or her protracted absence giving rise to surmise and search, that could bring them companions.

As a forlorn hope Joanna raised her voice and cried for assistance; fear and distress choked the sound, and the freezing air caused it to fall on the silence with a ringing quaver. She persevered, however, every now and then varying the appeal, "Papa, Lilias, Sandy, do some of you come to me; I want you here, for God's sake! here."

She took his big hands and chafed them between her own little ones; she lifted his head on her lap, her fingers getting entangled in his curly hair, she prayed for him that he might be restored to them.

He continued to breathe dully and heavily; his eyes never unclosed; she felt tempted to raise the lashes, as she would lift up and peep under the lids of a child. Ah! but she feared to see the balls sightless and glazing over fast. The marked, lively face was placid as if it were set in death, and the slight contraction between the brows, which she had remarked the first night she saw him, was almost effaced. How dreadful it would be if he died on her knees there, in the solitude of the moor! The son at the daughter's feet, as his father at her father's. How would his mother bear it? Her father would never survive this mournful re-writing of the old letters traced in blood. It should be she rather who should die; and Joanna in her piety, her goodness, her great love for her father, her exquisite kindness for Harry Jardine, did ask God if He sought a life, in His justice and mercy, to allow hers to pay for Harry's, to substitute her in some way for Harry; and Joanna well remembered that prayer afterwards.

Joanna was beginning to cower and fail in her trial. Suddenly she shook herself up, when she was lapsing into a heap nearly as passive as that beside her; a suggestion darted across her brain; she detected in the little pocket of her dress a bottle of a strong essence and perfume, which Polly Musgrave had forced upon her the day she left.

Joanna was quick and clear in following out a notion. With trembling fingers she poured the hot, stimulating, subtle liquid into her hollow hands, and bathed his forehead. She unloosed his cravat, and sent the warm stream over his throat and chest, rubbing them with her free hand, while she supported his head on the other arm; and inspired with fresh courage and trust she called anew this time a shrill, echoing call, and Harry Jardine shivered, sobbed, and stretched himself, and slowly opened his sealed eyes, looking her first vaguely and then wonderingly in the face, and her father's and Lilias's voices rose from opposite sides of the heath, near and far in reply. "What is it, Joanna? What has kept you? What has happened? We missed you; we were getting anxious; we are coming, coming!"


IV. Mercy And Not Sacrifice.

Harry Jardine was taken to the Ewes some hours before his mother, who had happily been deceived as to his return on the previous night, was even apprised of his narrow escape. He received the greatest kindness from the Crawfurds, and his mother herself found it incumbent on her to write a little note to the Ewes, thanking the family for their humanity and benevolence towards her son. It is possible, had Mrs. Jardine been awakened to her son's danger a little sooner, and before its traces were entirely blotted out, the expressions in the note might have been a few shades less general and cold.

Mr. Crawfurd excused her fully. He would not have expected Harry to come back to the Ewes, though he rejoiced, from the bottom of his heart, that Joanna had served the young fellow. How much his poor father would have been delighted in him? Mr. Crawfurd rejoiced, although he was too righteous and humble-minded to say to himself that God was appeased, or that He had permitted this atonement as a sign in answer to his life-long penance.

Harry Jardine represented a different theory; he would be a dolt, a brute, unpardonably vindictive, if he did not cherish all friendly feelings to the Crawfurds; if he did not visit them openly and frankly. He did visit at the Ewes, but he found the plainest opportunities ready made for him during one fortnight at Hurlton, to come in contact with Joanna Crawfurd. She had gone there to look after Conny, suborned by Mrs. Maxwell, and laid up with a sore throat, and forlorn and wretched if one of her sisters was not looking after her.

This intercourse could scarcely fail to have one grand climax. Joanna, the thoughtful, imaginative, true, tender woman -- a fair woman besides, with that one little blot which singularly appealed to him with a harsh sweet voice -- a sufficiently rare woman, to stand quite distinct from her sisters and companions in the light of the practical, active, ardent, honest heart -- became the one mistress in the world for Harry Jardine, coveted and craved by him as the best gift of God, without which the others were comparatively worthless, and for which he could have been willing to sacrifice them one and all. Harry himself, in after years, confessed that since the moment he awakened from that leaden drowsiness on the moor, the image of Joanna Crawfurd, tending him as a mother her sick child, was constantly before him.

Joanna had not precisely the same experience. From the moment that, with the prescience of a woman where feelings are concerned, she saw the end, she avoided Harry Jardine with all her power. Harry's generous determination and daring, his fearlessness, confidence, and steadfastness overpowered her.

Mr. Crawfurd was dreadfully upset by Harry Jardine's application to him, his claim for forbearance, his entreaty for grace, and his candid confession that his mother was violently opposed to his suit. It was a case which could neither be considered nor rejected without remorse. Oh, bitterness, which spread like an infection through so many years, and into such different relations, and spoilt even the young man's fairness, good faith, free forgiveness, and the purity and earnestness of his passion, the pearl of his manhood, which, if lost to him, would be a loss indeed! How Harry implored Mr. Crawfurd to spare it to him, to reflect that it was the greatest benefit which he asked at his hands, to pause before he denied it to him solely because he had been the unfortunate means of depriving him of his father!

Harry had agitating scenes with his mother besides; these two had never been placed against each other before, and the contest between them was neither gracious nor good for either heart.

"Harry, I am horrified at you; it is a dishonour to your poor father's memory; it is shocking to think of it; and if you have been so lost to duty as to fall into so unnatural an entanglement, it is surely the least you owe to both parents to give it up."

"Mother! I cannot see it as you do; my father fully exonerated Mr. Crawfurd -- you have told me so a hundred times. No one, not you, his widow, mourned my father as Mr. Crawfurd mourned -- nay, mourns him to this day."

"Harry, do you wish to see a bloody guest present at your wedding?"

"Mother, that is a baseless, cruel horror. You would not wish me to maintain a hereditary feud on the principle of my forefathers. I cannot tell what the Christian religion teaches if it does not enjoin forgiveness of injuries."

"I hope I am a Christian, Harry, and I have tried to forgive my enemies, but it is one thing to make every allowance for them and entertain charitable feelings towards them, and another to ally myself with them, and constitute them my closest friends. Harry, the whole neighbourhood would shrink from the idea of what you contemplate."

"If my principles and my heart said Yes, not the neighbourhood, but the whole world might cry No, and I would not feel bound to listen to the clamour."

"A young man's improper boast, Harry, and since you force me to it, not the world alone -- I tell you nature objects to that girl -- that girl of them all; how can you look her in the face and think of love?"

"Would you have me think of hate? Since you make the allusion, I declare to you, mother, that mark appeals to you and me in another fashion. Cain's brand! do they call it? And who set the brand, and when, on Cain's brow? Sovereign clemency, after the wanderer's punishment was more than he could bear, if the reflection of my father's blood was transmitted to so innocent and noble a proxy, it must have been designed to teach such as you and me New Testament lessons of perfect charity."

"Harry, I have never been able to look that girl in the face."

"Mother, I pray never to forget that face, although it remain like an angel's face to me, because it is the fairest example of the human face divine that I ever hope to behold."

"Harry Jardine, you are mad, or worse; these are some of the sickening French and German sentimentalities against which I have been warned. There is such a thing as a wholesome sense of repulsion, an honest manly recoil, a pure instinct of loathing, a thousand times to be preferred to this morbid mixture of good and evil, friend and foe, life and death, this defiance of decency and general opinion."

"Very true, mother; but there are a thousand exceptional cases, and a million points of ruthless prejudice. 'An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth,' sounded very righteous and respectable in the ears of the Jews, yet I believe the sentence had its condemnation, and the amendment was neither French nor German."

"Harry, you are profane, and you forget what is due to yourself and me."

The last saying was a hard one; his mother could be no judge of his profanity, but he had been a good son, and it had not been without a curb upon him that the strong man had accustomed himself to leave so much of the power and authority of Whitethorn in the wilful woman's hands.

In the library at the Ewes Mr. Crawfurd was addressing Joanna very gently.

"My dear, I am very sorry it cannot be; of course Mrs. Jardine will never consent, but it goes to my heart to grieve you."

"Papa, I cannot help it."

"And to grieve Harry Jardine."

"Papa, that is worse; but do not think that anybody -- that he blames you."

"We shall trust, my dear, that he will soon recover the disappointment."

"Of course -- it is not a great loss."

"My dear, pray don't smile when it hurts you, for I cannot bear it; it is natural that this should be a heavy cross to you; but setting it aside as unavoidable, is there no respect in which I can lighten it to you? No indulgence which you could fancy that I could procure for you? No old wish of his Joan's that papa could by an effort gratify? Surely I cannot be so miserable, child."

"Oh, no, papa! I mean you can please in a great many things; you always could, and you always will. Women are not like men, their natures are not so concentrated. They have so many tastes and whims, you know; I possess them by the score, and I will never cease to relish their fulfilment so long as you and I keep labouring together, papa. I am not going to be a hypocrite, papa. This strange story has vexed me a good deal, but I was aware from the first of its unsubstantial character. I still want money to be charitable on my own account, like Lilias. I've a notion to revive our old greenhouse; I've a longing to see a little of the world with you, sir, in spring and summer; I've never been indifferent to silks and muslins, though I think my chief weakness in dress is the very finest of fine chintz prints, ever so dear a yard, papa, which an artist might paint, and more of a Duchess's wear than velvet. All these matters are acceptable to me, papa."

"You are sure that you are my pet and darling."

"Yes, papa; you have spoilt me."

Joanna was gone to her own room; there she laid her head on her arm, and asked her heart bitterly, "Have I succeeded in deceiving papa? Can he believe for a moment that any poor precious treasure in the wide world will make up to me for the want of Harry Jardine; that there is anything left me but Heaven instead of Harry Jardine? But then there is papa, dear papa, and I used to be papa's. What will not women do for their children? I always thought I could attain as much for papa. I was proud to prove my love to him, and I will drive out Harry's image for papa's sake, though I should die in the struggle."

Harry did not altogether admire this resolution. He was a good fellow, an excellent fellow, and he had the true, ineffable devotion to Joanna Crawfurd; but he was not free from jealousy and irritation, as well as sorrow and fear, when he was compelled to part from her for a time, and content himself with swearing fidelity on his own account, and seeing her occasionally as an ordinary acquaintance, until their relative positions should be changed, or his truth fail.

The common world rolled on its course; the seasons succeeded each other, although even they seemed to culminate in dull, monotonous vanity and vexation of spirit. The frosty wind had swept "that lustre deep from glen and brae," and the chill watery mosses alone looked green and fresh when the snow melted. It was the cold under which Joanna Crawfurd shivered and shrank; at least so she assured every friendly person who remarked that she was thin, and paler than ever. Mrs. Jardine had looked her in the face, nay, kept nervously glancing at her when she was visible at church, on the loch where the curling match was played, or in the concert-room at the county town.

Of course the girl would get over it; yet Joanna bore a suspicious likeness to Mrs. Jardine's sister Anne, who did not "get over" such a cross. Mrs. Jardine remembered well her sister Anne's parting look, and now, strive as she would, she could not resist the conviction that it was hovering over Joanna Crawfurd's face. Mrs. Jardine, like the Laird of the Ewes, could have cried, "Pray do not smile, girl; you do not know how you look; we, the initiated, have not stony enough hearts to stand that." Mrs. Jardine was surprised that Harry could be so foolish as to redden and appear displeased at Joanna Crawfurd's gaiety.

Mrs. Jardine almost complained against Providence that she was condemned to punish her only child. Then she could not help speculating whether, if by some unimaginable arrangement of events, she had been the sufferer, and Harry's father had been spared to him, he would have denied Harry his happiness in the name of her memory, and from a sense of righteous animosity, whether, if she could have looked down purified and peaceful from the spirit-world, she would have desired the sacrifice, and whether she would not have pleaded against it for love and mercy's sake?

The winter was gone, the early spring was at hand, and all around the outskirts of the moor, like an incense to spring and the Lord of the spring, rose the smoke of the whin burnings which were to clear the ground for the sweet young grass, to employ the nibbling teeth of hundreds on hundreds of sheep and lambs. Joanna Crawfurd had never so sighed for spring, never sat in such passive inertness (highly provocative to Lilias), receiving and realizing what it brought to her.

But the period of listlessness and inaction, life-long to some, was nearly ended for this pair. With the last snowdrops of the garden in February, and the first glinting gowans of the lea in March, came the news to the country-side of the bankruptcy of one of the first of the chain of banks, whose defalcations have accomplished more in causing property to change hands than the lances of the moss-troopers. The young Laird of Whitethorn held money in the shape of his father's shares in one of those unlucky banks; and so it fell upon him one morning like a clap of thunder that he was responsible for about as much as the acres of Whitethorn would retrieve, besides the trifling morsel to whet his appetite in the loss of his loose thousands. Harry Jardine was likely to know himself as "landless, landless," as ever a proscribed Macgregor.

Harry rose to the encounter. "I am sorry for you, mother, and I do not pretend that I shall not regret the old moorland acres; but I shall do very well, notwithstanding. I'm old to learn a profession; but how many volunteers and retired lieutenants had to study and serve apprenticeships after the long wars! I will stick in; I don't mind it on my own account, and I will be proud to provide for you. I say, mother, don't vex yourself; perhaps it is the best thing that can happen to me. I don't think a fellow gets well seasoned unless he is knocked about at some time: better late than never. I have been coveting change -- any change and occupation, an engrossing occupation -- for the last few months." He said that to reconcile her to what was an overwhelming blow to her, and his words aroused her with a sharp pang. Had Harry become so miserable and sick of his blessings that he was ready to welcome the cold-bath of labour and poverty as a relief to his oppressive languor, and a ground of hope for his fainting mind?

But Harry came in to her with a troubled face, on another day -- a mild day -- a subtle, penetrating, relaxing day, under whose balmy breath it is doubly difficult to contend with encircling difficulties, and reject the one clue suddenly vouchsafed to lead us out of the labyrinth.

"I must tell you, mother, though, of course, it cannot be in the circumstances -- he does not see it -- but there is no fatality to bind me to his views. Mr. Crawfurd of the Ewes sent for me this morning, and I went to him immediately; I could not tell what he might have to say to me."

"Without consulting your mother, Harry?"

"Yes, mother," answered Harry, with unconscious sternness, "because it might have been my own business, entirely my own affair, with which no mortal, not even you, can be entitled to interfere. But it was only to offer and urge upon me a loan of money to enable me to satisfy the bank's claims, if they come to the worst, and retain Whitethorn, paying him at my leisure. I assure you that it was delicately done; my father's ghost may rest in peace. I beg your pardon, mother; I did not mean to pain you. I am afraid I do speak queerly at times. Well, well; it was a kind, confiding, neighbourly action, though I refused it decidedly, from the man whose alliance is forbidden to us. I had no resource but to respect myself, as I respected him; and it is no great matter that it hurt me to cut up that gentle, inoffensive old man, endeavouring to show his rue for having proved, twenty years ago, what my father was to at least an equal degree, and what I have no assurance that I would not have found myself, to a far greater extent than either of them -- a slave to a false code of honour."

Harry sat down, haggard, dispirited, half-desperate. His mother made no reply. All the rest of the day she walked about the house like a restless spirit; half the night she paced up and down her chamber softly, lest Harry should hear her, and come in again, and begin to caress her; for she could not endure Harry's kisses now -- they were like Joanna Crawfurd's smiles.

Was Harry quarrelling with his father's memory? It was a ghastly sacrilege to her; yet might he not arrive at cursing in his heart, even while he was grasping the devil within him by the throat? What had it not cost him? First, his young love and the cream of his happiness; and now his paternal acres, and his position among the independent, influential gentlemen of his native county. He might not value the last in his present fever and rashness, but he would weigh it more justly hereafter. The moorland inheritance was not of great money purchase, but it had descended to its possessors through long generations. It was hallowed by venerable associations. The name and the property together were of some importance in this nook of the south. Harry's father had a family affection for his place, and, doubtless, Harry entertained it also, undeveloped as yet, but to grow and acquire full maturity one day, addressing him at every pensive interval with a vain craving and yearning. And, again, in the confusion and distraction of Mrs. Jardine's feelings, there was her sister Anne haunting her dreams, and reproaching her with having forgotten her; and lastly, one verse in her well-worn Bible was constantly standing out before her aching eyes in letters of fire, and shining into her rebellious but scared heart, "I will have mercy and not sacrifice."

It is one thing to have been Christians all our lives, drawn along by a current, only broken by comparatively trivial, every-day temptations, contests and sacrifices, and another thing to wrestle with a decree that all at once confronts and contradicts a master-passion, a deeply-founded verdict, a strongly-rooted opinion whose overthrow will shake the entire framework of our lives.

Mrs. Jardine descended the stairs the next morning very pale and exhausted, and for the first time (though she was a widow by a peculiarly sorrowful visitation), with a certain wistful air which Harry had observed in Mr. Crawfurd. It touched him -- a fiery, dogged man -- extremely, in the one case as in the other. His mother, on the announcement of his loss, had insisted on undertaking various domestic examinations with respect to general retrenchment; he had humoured her, under the impression that it diverted her mind, and broke the force of what was a great calamity to her. He believed that she had over-exerted herself, and he commenced to remonstrate in the imperious, reproachful, affectionate tone, which the mother loves in her manly son.

"Yes, Harry, I have undertaken too much, and therefore I have requested the company of two friends, who will be willing to lighten our burden."

"Strangers in the house at this time, mother?" exclaimed Harry, bewildered. "Well, if you can bring yourself to suggest it, and wish it, I need have no objection. Never mind me, mother. Besides, I shall be from home. Yes, I do believe it will be a good plan."

"I thought, Harry," said Mrs. Jardine, so tremulously that Harry felt quite alarmed for his upright, obdurate mother, "as Mr. Crawfurd had been so friendly in his intentions towards you -- the only man who has come forward with such a proposal and entreaty -- isn't he, Harry? -- that two of the Miss Crawfurds might consent to pay us a visit at last. I believe they would waive all ceremony, and their father would like it. It would show that we were willing, at least, to be reconciled in our evil day; that we appreciated their magnanimity; that we were not mean as well as malicious, Harry."

Harry stared, "Mother," he said slowly, colouring violently, "are you prepared for the consequences of inviting the Miss Crawfurds here, or what do you mean?"

"I have counted the cost, Harry; I have written and sent away a note, asking if Miss Joanna and one of her sisters will have so much consideration for an old afflicted woman."

Harry burst away from her, that she might not read the glow which was in his eyes and searched through his whole being.

Mrs. Jardine cried a little, as a woman might say, quietly and comfortably; a strange thing for her, since she was one of those women who shed vehement tears or none at all; then she dried her eyes and folded her hands reverently, saying, "I have a strange sense of calm and of Divine favour this morning. I am sure I am not mystical, but one jogs along the beaten way, and gets stupified, and doubts whether one can be a Christian or no, there is so little conviction of the fact in what divines, from the Bible, call 'the inner man of the spirit;' but when we conquer our wills, and obey one of His everlasting decrees, then we do feel that we must belong to Him, and we have an assurance of His presence, which is a great enough reward without the gratification of earthly afflictions. Ah! I have had dear old Annie's voice ringing in my ears all the morning; and I have heard George Jardine bidding me take care of Harry, as he always did before he went from home, except the last day when he dared not face me."

The Crawfurds came to Whitethorn. Mr. Crawfurd sent them at once; he would not listen to a single objection or obstacle, though Lilias and Conny were with Polly Musgrave, and it was inconvenient to spare the others on a moment's warning. Susan could not understand it -- why they should be bidden to Whitethorn now, when it had been so long debarred to them; but Susan liked company, even company under a cloud; and she had a curiosity to inspect Whitethorn, into which not one of them had put a foot, except papa and mamma, long ago. Joanna made no demur, though, a month before, nothing would have induced her to believe that she would be staying with Susie this March at Whitethorn. Mr. Crawfurd walked with his daughters to the great gate, and Joanna, looking back, saw him, on his return, switching the thistle-heads in the hedge, as she had never witnessed him attempt in her experience; she could almost fancy he was whistling, as Harry Jardine went piping along before he fell in love with her.

It was a trial when Harry Jardine was introduced into the Crawfurds' company; but Mrs. Jardine was very hospitable and kind, and Harry rapidly recovered or assumed his usual ease and animation, and Susan soon lost all peculiar consciousness, and Joanna fell back on the woman's armour, dinted, but not broken, of her self-control. In a few hours they did wonderfully well together. Susan was delighted with the novelties of the old-fashioned country-house, and Harry was not particularly downcast in his misfortunes; he was almost as amusing as ever, and invented fun for her as if he had never heard the name of bank, and, finally, he did not complain of the arrangement, of which Susan highly approved, that she should be Harry's companion, and Joanna should belong to Mrs. Jardine. Joanna was so sedate, and, although she was not a business-woman like Lilias (how Susan would boast of the ground she had gained when she wrote and amazed Lilias!) she was used to associating with older people, and could suit herself to their ways and be handy to them.

Harry smiled blandly on the partition for three whole days. At the close of the third day, when Susan and Joanna were brushing their hair together, Susan started the proposal that they should return to the Ewes whenever Mrs. Jardine's inventories, and settling and sorting of accounts, were brought to an end; "because, Joanna, Harry is getting cross; I am sure of it; he is not half so agreeable as he was the first night. I think he is angry because his mother keeps you to herself, and sends me to talk to him and give him music. When I come to think of it, it is a very senseless plan of hers, and perhaps she is spiteful though she is so attentive, and I am not frightened at her any longer. She is a quick woman, but as pleasant as possible; but if you please, Joanna, you can be shut up with her, and go out with her till we leave, for I should not care for it very much, and I see no call for it on my part; and I am certain we had better fix on going home again as soon as we can manage it."

"Very well, Susan; only you speak very fast; I can scarcely follow you. It strikes me you are wrong on one point. I never noticed that Harry Jardine was tired of being your host, or that he minded who sat next him."

"Not tired of me exactly, or careless of my enjoyment, because, to be sure, Harry Jardine is courting all of us. Nonsense, Joanna, you need not affect to be sage and precise and unconcerned. I am not so silly, and it is very conceited of you, and I have no patience with you. Of course I was not blind and deaf, and I have not lost my memory. Harry Jardine is continually looking after you, whatever his mother persuades herself. He never notices what I wear, and he remembered ribbons you wore months since. I put on mine, and he looked at it and said, 'That is like one of Joanna's; is it not?' Now I know very well he never calls any of us by our Christian names to other people, and only you to one or other of us, and he does it pointedly, as if to express, 'I mean to be your brother-in-law one of these days, and I want to keep you in mind of my intentions, so I take the liberty.'"

"Why don't you say, 'Mr. Jardine, Joanna does not like a liberty taken with her name'?"

"I dare say! and have him reply, 'Did Joanna tell me so herself?' I believe he would be only too glad to have you speak to him on any subject, and I put him into such a fume about your appearance, Jack! Of course, I intended no harm, the words came out somehow. You remember, last night, his showing me an engraving he had bought. 'Tell me some one that is like,' he said to me. It was the least in the world like you, or like your mode of dressing your hair, but it flattered you, as these chance likenesses always do. 'Is it a little like Joanna?' I asked trying him; and I continued, 'Our Joanna would be rather a pretty girl if it were not for the blemish;' and there I stopped short, for I recollected that I should not have mentioned it to him. I wish you had seen him, how hot and haughty he was, as if you were not my own sister, and as if I had not more business with you than he had yet. 'I wonder how any one who has any regard for Joanna can term that mark a defect: it is very sacred and beautiful, otherwise Joanna is without spot' -- and there he caught himself and turned away -- he was about to add, 'or wrinkle or any such thing,' and I am afraid it was a quotation from the Bible; but I fancy he felt that he was making a fool of himself, and held his tongue. We ought to speak of going home."

"Susie, dear, don't be unreasonable; you know what a claim this family has upon ours; you know what papa desires."

"I know nothing except that Harry Jardine wants me out of his way, and you in his way. It is very disagreeable to me, and a great responsibility to me. You are an interested party, you cannot be expected to see things as you should."

"Why not? I told you to correct him when he was wrong. But I thought you were great friends; and poor Mrs. Jardine, Susan, I can be of use to her in her adversity. I can do things for her as I do for -- "

"As you do for papa; there is a fine confession!"

Joanna ensconced herself in silence. Susan had provocation, but Joanna took great care next day not to support Harry Jardine in his levity and discontent. All the morning she spent with Mrs. Jardine; she pinned herself to her sleeve until, after luncheon, she was taken by the old lady into her own room, with its bright fire and shining dogs, its broad, easy couch, its table, with the handsome ponderous writing-desk, flanking the handsome heavy dressing-case, and its look-out from the warmly-curtained windows quite across the moor.

"What a comfortable room, Mrs. Jardine!" Joanna could not help exclaiming; "I never saw a more fresh, inspiriting view to my taste, and such a stretch of sky, -- you may sit and foretell all weathers here."

"Yes, my dear, and I have foretold all weathers here. I'll talk to you a little of my nice room, and why I am so sorry to think of leaving it."

"We hope you will not leave it," Joanna ventured, timidly.

"Ah! that rests with others now. But I came here a gay girl; I visited at Whitethorn before my marriage, Joanna; I dwelt here a thoughtless, happy young wife; and here I kept Harry, not quite so troublesome as now; and here I lay a heart-stricken widow while they were bringing home the corpse of my husband, who had left me a vigorous, determined man two hours before."

"It must have been dreadful! dreadful!" murmured Joanna faintly; but lifting up her face to Mrs. Jardine with the earnest confiding eyes, the blanched cheeks, and that seal on her brow -- "Oh, how often papa and I have thought of it, and pitied you and ourselves!"

"My dear, it was one of those dispensations of Providence which one never forgets to the end of a long life. But I was a sinner, I deserved what I bore; we all deserve the sorest evil that can afflict us; and, thank God, there is mercy mingled with the greatest misery. I do not speak often of it, but I can do so to-day; and I find it is a relief to talk to you of our misfortune, because you can sympathize with me; you were a sufferer in it like myself; it cannot be to many other living persons what it is to us two. I have had that brought home to me, my love. I do not grieve or frighten you, Joanna?"

"No, Mrs. Jardine, I have lamented it all my life. I am very grateful that you should let me say that papa was very sorry; they sound very little words, Mrs. Jardine, but you understand them, and papa will never cease to be sorry in this world, and we have only wanted to comfort you."

"Poor fellow!" sighed Mrs. Jardine absently. "Crawfurd of the Ewes, an accomplished, pleasant fellow -- so broken a man!"

They talked a little longer of the tragedy with composed but strong mutual interest and commiseration; and Mrs. Jardine acknowledged that such pity was not like the world's pity, but was delicate and tender as the ministry of any Barnabas or son of consolation; and when she finished, she kissed Joanna on the forehead, and said to herself, "Harry was right. If this is the sign of George Jardine's blood, it was placed there to pay her father's debt, and set her apart for us."

"Now, the sun is shining out, Joanna -- 'a clear shining after rain,' -- don't you like the Bible words? -- I know you do. You must have a walk yet. Why, the violets will be out in another ten days. Hand me my garden bonnet, and we will have a turn in the garden or shrubbery. I saw Harry and your sister take the way there. My dear, you have the look of a sister I was very fond of, and I think Mr. Jardine would have admired you. Yonder they are, Joanna. I should like that you would send Miss Crawfurd to me, and have a stroll with Harry yourself. You will injure your health, child, if you do not attend more to yourself. And, Joanna, if my son questions you as to what I said to you, for he is a curious fellow, tell him I have been reading a text for myself this morning, and for several mornings -- 'I will have mercy, and not sacrifice.' And although I am an old woman, I have got it by heart. And bid him show you the thorn walk."

Joanna did not like to decline a commission of Mrs. Jardine's, but she could no more have asked Harry to walk with her than if he had been a duke. However, Harry was loitering and watching them, and came forward at this moment, and Mrs. Jardine herself appropriated Susan, and transferred Joanna to Harry.

"I am very much obliged to you for your kindness to my mother," said Harry formally -- no Joanna this time, no name at all. "I never saw my mother take so much to any one," he continued eagerly; "she is naturally a self-reliant, reserved woman; but she has opened up to you?"

"Yes," answered Joanna softly; "and do you know, she has been talking to me of the past."

Harry started. "What did she say, Joanna? She could not offend you. Pray what did she say to you?"

"She did not offend me -- far from that -- she was very good, and she gave me a message to you, if you were inquisitive -- she had been studying a text, 'I will have mercy, and not sacrifice.'"

"Ah! I am very happy to understand it."

"It seems easily understood; and she advised us to walk in the thorn walk. Is it near at hand? Shall we have time?"

"We must take time, we cannot disappoint my mother. The thorn walk is a favourite with her all the year round, although it is only in its beauty in the month of May. Shall I explain to you why she has selected it to-day?"

"Yes, if you please."

"My father lived here, when he was a young man, with his uncle the laird. They had no near female relative. It was a dull house, as dull an establishment as my mother and I maintain together."

"Much duller, I should think."

"No; for before a certain time he was not sensible of its deficiency; he had no definite wishes or hopes for an increase to their circle, a re-modelling of their housekeeping. My mother was distantly related to him; she came on a visit to my grand-uncle with an elderly lady, who was also a connexion; she was a lively young girl then. My father often told her afterwards to what an incalculable degree her presence brightened the old house and the two forlorn gentlemen; it would have been utter darkness if she had left them again to their old hazy sunlessness; so my father took the desperate step of leading her to the thorn walk. It was the month of May then, and it was covered with blossoms, sending a white shower on their bent heads from a whole line of trysting trees; but, when I think of it, March, which is lightly esteemed, is preferable to May, for March has all the promise of the year in prospect; and see, it has cloth of gold and silver to step upon, in the shape of the bright, commonplace, unjustly overlooked crocuses."

"You have been reading the seedsman's tallies, Mr. Jardine."

"Never mind; you agree with me?"

"The world and the poets choose May. And you begin to be eccentric and choose March."

"My father conducted my mother here; she has told me the circumstances a hundred times, though she is a quiet woman; and she wore such a cloth gown as you wear to-day."

"Mr. Jardine, you are talking nonsense; this is a new stuff, I assure you it has not been half-a-dozen months out of the looms; and do you suppose, sir, that I shall wear this dress in the month of May?"

"That comes of confiding those details to men. I always thought it was a gown like this one; and he asked her to abide at Whitethorn, and crown his lairdship and gladden and sweeten his entire future career; and he succeeded at last in winning her consent. And this is the thorn walk, Joanna, and I am free to re-enact the old passage in two lives, and plead with you not to desert Whitethorn if we are to retain it. I am poorer by a few thousands since I first made the same prayer to you; but your father puts no weight on the difference, or, in his rare generosity, lets it tell in my favour; and I don't think we need break our hearts about our little loss, if we look to our great gain. Here I beg you, as the humblest and most sincere of your petitioners, to put your life into my life, and cause the united life to bud and blossom into the May of the heart."

"And November and December would come to that year likewise."

"Yes, they will; but they will tread hard upon the real new-year, the veritable new year, that will

"Ring out the false, ring in the true"

of this hoary world. Will you travel to it with me, Joanna? Shall we strive and pray, and help each other to reach it together? Shall we begin it even here? Your father will bestow you solemnly and gladly; my mother will accept you with a blessing."

Joanna said, "Yes; God bless us, Harry," reverently; and, reverently, God blessed them.

Harry was energetic, and Joanna was prudent, and old Mrs. Jardine was proud of the spirit with which they saved the swamped estate of Whitethorn even from Mr. Crawfurd's bond; and having helped themselves, they helped others, then and ever afterwards.

Polly Musgrave applied to them in time. Polly had written on Joanna Crawfurd's marriage a jeering, jibing letter. "So you have gone and done as I prophesied, after all your wrath on the moor, and preciseness at Hurlton. But, first, you were as silly as possible, and wanted to revive the Middle Ages, which was quite in Don Quixote's tone; you to pine and die, and he to shoot himself (as violent deaths are hereditary), or addict himself to loose living and destruction. Then, when he loses his money, and in common sense you may both think better of it, shake hands and go your several ways; you make all up, post haste, and come together with a flourish of trumpets, and poverty will come in at the door, and love fly out at the window. Fie! I am ashamed of you, after all!"

But Polly wrote in a different strain a year or two later: -- "DEAR COUSIN JOANNA, -- I am not so healthy and heartless as I used to be, and I have been teased with a desire to come to Whitethorn, and perhaps profit by your carriage in this world, as I never dreamt of once upon a time. But I will say this for myself, I only wrote and crowed over you when you were quite able to afford it. I was very glad of your happiness, child (as our grandmother wrote, and one of our grandmothers was the same person! think of that, Harry Jardine!). Is Harry Jardine as promising as he used to be before you took him in hand; or is the promise fulfilled in an upright, generous, gladsome (and because of that last word you would insist on adding godly) man? He was a man of whom to make a spoon or spoil a horn, and you were the woman to perform the delectable feat."

Polly had found her heart not a very lofty one, not a very sensitive one -- but an honest and kind heart in the main, which was permitted to extricate itself from the slough of luxury and self-indulgence, and beat warmly and faithfully throughout the rest of its course.



On The Stage And Off The Stage.


I. The "Bear" At Bath.

The Place was old Bath, in the days immediately succeeding those of Alexander Pope and William Hogarth, and dovetailing into those of Horace Walpole and the Wesleys.

The Age was one of rackets and reaction from morning till night, and Bath was the head-quarters of the first -- the scene of the pump-room, the raffle, the public breakfast, the junketing at mid-day, the ball at midnight, the play, the ridotto.

The Scene was a private room in the "Bear," when it was crowded with peers, bullies, rooks, highwaymen, leaders of fashion, waiting-women, and stage stars. The "Bear" was held by great Mrs. Price, a hostess large, shining, portly -- a friendly great woman, too magnificent to be fussy, or mean, or spiteful. The "Bear" looked out on the Parade, with its throngs of beaux -- veritable beaux, with Beau Nash at their head -- wigged, caned, and snuff-boxed, and belles with trains borne by black boys, cambric caps and aprons, and abundance of velvet patches. In and out of its yawning doorway strutted fine gentlemen, chaplains, and wits, while grooms, public and private, swarmed round the house. Its broad stairs and low wide corridors, traversed by the more private company, led to sitting rooms of all degrees, panelled with oak or lined with cedar, with worked worsted wonders in the shape of chairs, and China monsters by way of ornaments.

The Person was a handsome woman, attired negligently in what was called a sacque, with a mob-cap. She sat sipping a dish of tea, as sober women will after fatigue or in anticipation of exertion, and making occasional reference to some shabby, well-worn volumes and printed sheets piled up beside her. Her attitude was studious, for days when a chapter of the Bible, a cookery recipe, a paper by Addison or Dick Steele, or a copy of verses, included all the knowledge after which the gentler sex aspired; her retirement was remarkable at that gay era, and in that gadding neighbourhood; and her morning dress, though it would not have offended a Tabitha Tidy, looked plain among the silvered mazarines and the tippets of pheasants' tails.

She was a woman of about five-and-twenty; but her beauty, though still in its prime, showed the wear and tear of years. Had it not been that its chief power lay in the intellect and goodness which sat on the capacious but not cloudy brow, and gleamed out of the cordial dark blue eyes, and hovered round the somewhat wide and somewhat lined but never sensual mouth -- you would have said this was a faded queen whom the world was mad to worship. As it was, she did look faded this spring afternoon, and occasionally fretted audibly enough as she turned over the leaves of her volumes, and sighed "heigho!" as she looked at her repeater -- not quite so common an appendage as the little Geneva story-tellers, though a footpad carried always a goodly supply, and a gentleman's gentleman of very fine prestige would wear a couple, "one in each fob" -- and sipped her tea; which, by the way, she drank, not out of one of the diminutive China cups, but out of an old battered, but very shining little silver tankard.

Anon my lady rose and strolled to a back window. She looked across the noisy, crowded stable-yard into the corner of a garden, where a lilac bush was budding into dusty dim purple and a hoary apple-tree blossomed white and pink like a blushing child, away over the green fields to a farmhouse upon a hill, where russet and yellow stacks proved the farmer's command of ready money, or caution in selling. From just such another farmhouse as that on which our bright benevolent woman -- even in the dumps -- was gazing wistfully, issued Caroline Inchbald, a beauty, and a generous, virtuous woman under great temptations, a friend and rival on equal terms with Amelia Opie.

But hark! an arrival in the next room: fresh guests -- country people of consequence, for they were ushered in by Mrs. Price herself, who received in person their orders for an incongruous meal, neither dinner nor supper, to recruit them for some gala in which they had the prospect of figuring, to judge from a torrent of exclamations which pierced through a convenient cupboard in the partition.

"Make haste, girls," in bass tones.

"Eat away, Fiddy," in treble, mimicking the bass.

"Uncle, don't attempt the game-pie. We'll be too late, as sure as our heads. Didn't you hear Mrs. Price say there was a power of company wanting seats; it would be too bad if we lost the sight after all."

"What, Prissy, worse than Admiral Byng's defeat, or my spoilt medal?"

"Oh! Uncle Rowland, how can you joke! Now, Fiddy, there's a dear creature, don't have anything to say to the cream-tart. What although we're as hungry as hawks, if we only get a good view to talk about at the Vicarage and Larks' Hall."

"There -- Prissy, dear, then I've done. I'll just run and shake our myrtle crapes and fresh pinch our stomachers."

"Hold! no such thing, lasses. I'm not to be left here to feed in solitude, and without e'er a portfolio or picture. You little geese, it is two good hours to the exhibition. Are you to be frizzing, and painting, and lacing, and mincing, and capering for two mortal hours, and your poor country uncle left to spoil his digestion for want of something else to do than eat? Is that your gratitude, when here have I come against my will to introduce you to the wicked, gay world, and spoil your Arcadian simplicity? Don't make faces, Prissy!"

"Oh! Uncle Rowland; you are making base pretences."

"Indeed, sir, I think you are as wild to see the wonders as we are."

But the remonstrance had its effect, for the young ladies evidently sat down again, and, by the clatter of knives and forks, one could judge they condescended to do some justice to the good things provided for their solace, while the conversation went on in more regular order.

The lady in the Nankin sitting-room had decidedly the advantage in this situation, as she did not soliloquize in private, and she heard through the cupboard and the locked door of communication the chat of her neighbours. They spoke no treason, and they ought to be more prudent if they told secrets: it was a real benefit to a lonely wight, a little irritated in nerve and temper, to be a party to their lively, affectionate, simple intercourse; and, as the truth must be told, the lady in the Nankin sitting-room crossed her hands with a motion of indolent interest and turned her head with an air of listless pleasure, nodding and beating her foot lightly on the floor now and then, in interjection and commentary. She could figure the group perfectly. Two rosy little girls brought into the town for a day and a night's shopping and gadding, as they would call it, under the escort of an indulgent uncle: a bachelor probably, else madam, his wife, would have been there to keep them in order; and not so very elderly, for the good man was of what is styled a sprightly turn, and though his nieces submitted to his authority, there was a decidedly modified amount of reverence in the way in which they insisted,

"You must comb out your curls, Uncle Rowland."

"And I'll tie your cravat for you, sir, and make you quite smart. We are not to appear abroad with a country bumpkin or a fright of a student, are we, Prissy?"

And mutual jokes were bandied pretty freely.

"Now, Prissy, are we to see the famous Traveller?"

"No, sir, it is to be the Virtuoso, with the mock copper coins."

"Bronze, child, bronze."

"We're to have nobody in particular, only Lady Betty," chimed in the more girlish voice. "The company, the other gentlefolks, will be quite sufficient besides."

"And Fiddy will scream when the blunderbusses are fired. Shall we take the precaution of putting cotton in her ears beforehand?" derided the man.

Then the single lady fixed further, that Prissy (Mistress Priscilla, doubtless, in company down in Somersetshire) was the cleverest and most forward, and that Fiddy (Mistress Fidelia) was the shyest and, perhaps, the prettiest, for she was clearly Uncle Rowland's favourite. But then, for all her rosy cheeks, poor child! she was delicate, since there was a constant cry from the conductor of the party, "Fiddy, you vain doll, remember your mantle; Madam is not here to wrap you up, nor Granny."

"Oh, sir! we've lots of scarfs and shawls, all for Fiddy; and she is to tie on her Iris hood against the draughts."

"What! one of the poppies and bluebells that Will Honeycomb admired? She'll beat you, Prissy, out and out. I would sicken and bear her company."

"I wonder to hear you, sir. I can tell you, Granny would not coddle me so. Granny is always preaching of hardening weakness."

"Ah, the old mother is no milksop!"

There, was she not right? Had she not full hints of the history of the Vicarage and madam its mistress, the mother of these two little girls; and of the parish priest her husband, their father -- the younger brother of the tolerably educated squire yonder, with his Larks' Hall; and of Granny, who kept house there still for her elder son, where she had once reigned queen paramount in the hearty days of her homely goodman. It was a scroll fairly unfolded, and perfectly legible to the experienced woman.

"Uncle Rowland," prefaced the soft voice, more quietly, "do you really think the gay world of the town so much more vicious than the sober world of the country?"

"Why, no, my dear," answered the manly voice, now graver, and with a little sadness in its ring, "ignorance is not innocence, and depravity is vastly more general than any mode. Nevertheless, there are customs of which I would greatly prefer Prissy and Fiddy to remain unaware, like their mother before them."

"But Granny lived in the great world, and there is not one of us like Granny."

"The risk is too great, child; the fire is wondrous strong, though the pure gold be sometimes refined in the process -- as your father would preach."

"And, sir, this Mistress Lumley, or Lady Betty, as they called her downstairs, is as virtuous as she is clever."

"You may depend upon that, Miss, or you had not come to Bath to see her play. They term the poor soul Lady Betty because she has turned on her heel from the worthless London sparks, and taught them to keep their distance."

"Uncle Rowland, I don't think you heartily sympathize with charming Lady Betty."

"Tut! child, I have not seen her. You would not have me captivated ere I ever set eyes on my enslaver? But, to speak honestly, little Fiddy, I own I have no great leaning to actresses and authoresses. There are perils enough in a woman's natural course, without her challenging the extremes of a fictitious career. More than that, Fiddy, I have not much faith in the passion that is ranted to the public; even if it were always a creditable passion. Those who are sorely hurt don't bawl, child: deep streams are still."

"I will play to him," the lady of the Nankin sitting-room says to herself, her lips parting with a slight smile, and her colour rising at the same time. Your true woman is easily pained, and, the more fully furnished, the more finely skilled, she is all the more susceptible to blame as to praise, and so on that account the less qualified for public life. There was many a strong enough argument against the stage and the desk which Master Rowland might have used instead of his weak one.

Lady Betty, in that bubbling, frothing, steaming London -- Mistress Lumley in the provinces -- was a young actress of great repute and good character, who had compelled success, like Mrs. Siddons after her, and reigned for several seasons, and still her fame was paramount and her respectability unquestioned. In those very dissipated days of Queen Anne and the early Georges, the broad prejudices which darken the stage were light in tint and slender in force. The great world was tumultuous, giddy, reckless, with innumerable victims falling suddenly into its yawning chasms, like the figures from the bridge in Mirza's vision; and the theatre was not a more exposed sphere than many another, and that made all the difference in the world. Very few save the strictest Methodists condemned it, when Henry Brooke wrote for it, and Dr. Johnson stood with his hands behind his back in the green room.

Mrs. Betty Lumley, tall, comely, high-principled, warm-hearted, and ingenuous, was come of yeomen ancestors. She did not see a play in a barn and run away after the drama, like Caroline Inchbald; but on the death of her father and mother, she went up with an elder sister and young brother to London to seek for an employment and a livelihood. Encountering some person of dramatic pursuits -- manager, stage-painter, ticket-taker, or the like, or the wife of one or other -- she was recommended to the stage. She was supported in the idea by all her connections, for then no one questioned the perfect respectability of the profession. She studied hard in new, though not uncongenial fields; she ventured; she tried again and again, with the "modest but indomitable pluck" of genius, and she at last won a position and a prospect of independence. In all this nobody blamed her; on the contrary, the magnates of the hour -- kings, councillors, bishops -- awarded her great credit for her parts, her industry, her integrity, her honour.

Not a lady of quality in London was more respected and admired, rightly or wrongly, than Mistress Betty. At the same time it is possible that, having reached the goal, could she have turned back and begun her walk anew, she would have hesitated before following this thorny path. It was a thorny path, for all its applause and success; nay, on account of them; even with a good woman like Mistress Betty it required all her sincerity, her sobriety, and, according to the prevailing standard, her religion, to deliver her from imminent danger. Moreover, with the attainment of the object, had come the bitter drops which qualified the cup. Her plain, fond, innocent sister was in her grave; and so within the two last years was the young brother, for whom her interest had procured a post of some importance in the Colonies, whence he bequeathed to Mistress Betty, his dear distinguished sister, his little savings. She struggled to be resigned, and was not only weary, but tempted to grasp at material rewards. This was the turning-point of her life. She would be virtuous to the last. Her honest, clear character revolted at vice; but she might harden, grow greedy of power, become imperious and arrogant. For, remember, I do not say that Mistress Betty had contracted no contamination. No, no; she had suffered from her selfish fits, her vain fits, her malicious fits -- she had experienced her hours of boldness and levity -- she had made her own way to eminence -- she had struggled with unscrupulous rivals -- she had heard much which we would have wished her not to have heard -- she had been a member of that wild, ultra-fine, coarse, scandalous society: but as we find saints in strange company sometimes, so the cordial, faithful, generous woman remained with only a slight coating of affectation and worldliness, thirst for praise, desire after excitement, habit of command.

"I'll play to this horrid country Justice," whispers Mistress Betty, quite roused, and looking animated and brilliant already. "I hear by the gentleness of his voice, when he speaks of the sins and sorrows of mankind, and when he addresses his little girl, that the fellow has a heart; but he gave me no quarter, and he shall receive none in return. I'll conquer him. To come within sight and sound of the boards with his muddy boots and his snarls, spoiling the enjoyment of the lasses!"

Very true, Mistress Betty, it was neither very wise nor very gallant; but you ought to remember that the most loyal prejudices are sometimes as loyally abandoned.


II. Lady Betty On The Stage.

The principal theatre of the queen of watering-places in her palmy days was filling fast, as it had done for the last two nights. Other attractions lost their power. Ombre, basset, hazard, lansquenet, loo, spread their cards and counters in vain for crafty or foolhardy fingers. The master of the ceremonies found his services at a discount; no troops of maidens, no hosts of squires, answered to his appeal; no double sets were forming to the inspiring strains of "Nancy Dawson." The worthy, charming, gifted Lady Betty had come down for three nights to improve, entertain, and enrapture, and this being her last night the theatre constituted the only orbit in which the planets would revolve.

The world was here in full-blown variety; sublime, languid peers, needy placemen, hilarious foxhunters, brave tradesmen, aspiring mechanics, poor good-for-nothings; sober housewives, whose thoughts were still of their husbands' shirt-fronts and their hasty-puddings, and who never dreamt that they were impugning their sobriety by attending a play; and above all, fine ladies armed with their fans and their essences. As a whole, the audience was in a vastly respectful attitude -- the gentlemen tapping their snuff-boxes meditatively, and desisting in a great measure from their loud laughter, their bets, their cursing and swearing; the ladies only whispering behind their handkerchiefs, and moving to cause their diamonds to sparkle, all in acknowledgment of the vicinity of the fair and potent Lady Betty.

The play was Venice Preserved, and Lady Betty entered in an early scene. Truly a fine woman -- not so lovely as Anne Oldfield, not so superb as Sarah Siddons; but with a frank, fair, womanly presence -- bright, genial, quick, passionate through the distress of Belvidera, the repudiated daughter and beggared wife.

Dressed in the English fashion under the Georges, walked the maiden reared in the air blowing off the lagoons within the shadow of the grim lion of St. Mark, to such sentimental accompaniments as the dipping oar and the gondolier, and finished off with the peculiar whims of Betty Lumley. She wore a fair, flowered brocade, for which William Hogarth might have designed the pattern and afterwards prosecuted for payment the unconscionable weaver; a snow-white lace kerchief was crossed over her bosom and reached even to her shapely chin, where it met the little black velvet collar with its pearl sprig; her brown hair (which had shown rather thin, rolled up beneath her mob-cap) was shaken out and gathered in rich bows with other pearl sprigs on the top of her head; her cheeks showed slightly hollow, but were so fresh, so modest, so cool in their unpainted paleness, and on the smallest provocation acquired the purest sea-shell pink which it would have been a sin and a shame to eclipse with staring paint; the contour, a little sharper than it had once been, was only rendered more delicate by the defect, and so sweet yet -- so very sweet; her beautiful arms were bare to the elbow, but shaded with falls of cobweb lace; and in one hand, poised daintily between two fingers, she held a natural flower, a bunch of common rural cowslips. At this period of the year such an appendage under any other touch would have been formal as the Miss Flamborough's oranges, but it was graceful in this woman's slight clasp.

"Enchanting creature!" "Fine woman!" "Otway's devoted wife to the life!" murmured the company, in a flutter of genuine admiration -- forgetting themselves, these Sir Plumes and Belindas, once in a way.

"I do hope the poor soul will not be deserted and undone -- she's so easy to serve -- and all Bath, and, for that matter, Lon'on too, as I believe, at her feet!" says Mrs. Price, emphatically, to young Medlicot, whom she is patronizing for one night, because he knows somewhat of plays and players; and who, in spite of his allegiance to swimming, simpering Clarissa, would give a fortune to paint that pose. Belvidera need fear no lolling, no sneering, no snapping at her little peculiarities this night.

As she came on, "kind, good, and tender," telling poor distracted, misguided Jaffier, in his humiliation, that she joyed more in him than did his mother, Lady Betty darted a sharp, searching glance through the boxes. Ah! yonder they were! The little girls the parson's daughters, with their uncle the squire, fault-finding, but honourable. Two round-faced, eager, happy girls, intent upon the play, and the great London star, beautiful, bewitching Lady Betty, who is now looking at them -- yes, actually staring them full in the face with her deep, melting, blue eyes, while she reassures her cowardly husband. How dared uncle Rowland disparage her?

There was uncle Rowland, younger than Lady Betty had taken him for -- not more than five-and-forty -- his coat trimmed with silver lace, a little old-fashioned, and even a little shabby in such company, his Mechlin tie rather out of date and already disordered, and his cocked-hat crushed below his arm. His face is bluff and ruddy among his pinched and sallow brethren: that of a big English gentleman, who hunted, shot, or fished, or walked after his whistling ploughman every morning, and on occasions daringly dashed in amongst the poachers by the palings of his park or paddock on summer evenings; yet whose hands were reasonably white and flexible, as if they handled other things than guns and fishing-rods, and whose eyes, at once clear and meditative, had studied more than the spire of his brother's church and the village street, more than quiet country towns, and loud watering-places, and deep metropolises.

Master Rowland had no family ties beyond the Vicarage; and was in no hurry to marry or settle, as the phrase went; though he was settled long ago, and might have married once a year without any impediment from old madam, as Mistress Betty would have been swift to suppose. He perfectly approved of Mr. Spectator's standard of virtue -- "Miss Liddy can dance a jig, raise a pasty, write a good hand, keep an account, give a reasonable answer, and do as she is bid;" but then, it only made him yawn. The man was sinking down into an active-bodied, half-learned, half-facetious bachelor. He was mentally cropping dry and solid food contentedly, and, at the same time, he was a bit of a humourist. He loved his little Prissy and Fiddy, as dear god-daughters, whom he had spoilt as children, and whom he was determined to present with portions when he presided at their wedding dinners; but he had no mind to take any of their fellows, for better for worse, as his companion, till death did them part.

Then Lady Betty stepped upon the stage at Bath, and before a multitude of frivolous and simple, or gross and depraved spectators, incapable of comprehending her, she played to the manly, modestly intellectual squire.

Master Rowland woke up, looked his fill, as open-mouthed as the rest, and while he did so, his system received a shock. Lady Betty was revenged to an extent she had not foreseen.

The noble woman went with her whole soul into the sorrows of the dark-eyed, brown-faced sister whom Titian might have painted, and made them accord with her fair English love of justice, her blue-eyed devotion to her husband, her Saxon fearlessness and faith in the hour of danger: only she did look strange and foreign when, in place of lying prostrate in submission and rising in chaste, meek patience to rear her orphan son, she writhed, like a Constance in agony, and died more speedily from her despair than Jaffier by the dagger which on the scaffold freed Pierre. The assembly rose in whole rows, and sobbed and swooned. Mrs. Prissy and Mrs. Fiddy cried in delicious abandonment; Master Rowland sat motionless.

"I declare I had forgotten the Justice," reflects Lady Betty, resting behind the scenes. "I do believe I am that poor Belvidera for the last half-hour. I meant to bring the man to tears. His blooming face was as white as a sheet; -- poor, dear, good man, I hope he's none the worse of it."

Master Rowland knows full well that she is Mistress Betty Lumley the great London actress, not Belvidera the Venetian senator's daughter; but he will never again turn from the chill of his stone-arched hall, where his fingers have grown benumbed riveting a piece of armour or copying an epitaph or an epigram, or linger under his mighty oak-tree, or advise with his poor tenants, or worship in church, without the sickening sense of a dull blank in his heart and home.


III. Mistress Betty Becomes Nurse.

Bath was sleeping as soundly as if it had been a quaker town: any sounds of riot were scattered and subdued. The dowager did not count her gains as she clutched them, while borne along the street by the glare of the dropping flambeaux. Her son, who, like the young Duke of Marlborough and his brother peer, carried no meaner change than golden guineas, did not clink them as he tossed them to the chairmen fighting for the prize. The "Bear" was reasonably still for a great public-house with twos and threes of travellers departing at all hours, as waiters and ostlers stirred on their behalf, horses trotted out from adjoining stables, and circles of chariots suffered displacement -- all in addition to the distinct and fervent sensation of the night coach.

Suddenly a noise and a flurry arose in the grey light and its general repose. Accents of terror and anxiety are heard, and a movement of pity and distress arises and grows in the establishment. A young girl is attacked by violent illness -- a life in its spring-time is threatened with sudden extinction; friends at hand are seeking remedies and bewailing the calamity -- friends at a distance, all unconscious, are mentioned with subdued voices and averted eyes.

Mrs. Price was wiping her eyes and carrying up restoratives with her own hands. "'Twas Mistress Fiddy, whom she had known from a child; the niece of Master Rowland, who had always supported the house; and madam, her mother, away at the Vicarage, and the dear child, so good and quiet."

"I will come, my good Mrs. Price. My sister had these fainting fits; I'm used to them. I'll revive the child: the poor child, I am sure she'll not be offended at the liberty. Pooh! I can sit up as well as sleep after playing. Dear! dear! Many a night I was happy to sit up with Deb," pleaded an urgent, benevolent voice, waxing plaintive towards the conclusion of the speech.

"Indeed you are too gracious, my lady -- I mean madam," protested the perplexed, overwhelmed Mrs. Price; "but I dare not venture without Master Rowland's consent: he will do everything himself, issue his orders even, although Dr. Fulford's been upstairs lending his advice these ten minutes."

"A fudge for doctors when there's a helpful woman at hand, Mrs. Price? Convey my message to the squire; inform him that I've had experience -- mind, experience -- and am a full-grown, reasonable woman, and not a fine lady. I know the poor little sister will be shaking like a leaf, and frightening the darling; and you are stiff in the joints yourself, Mrs. Price, and a little overcome. I'm just the person, so let me in!"

Master Rowland, without his coat (for though he had an orderly turn of his own, he was not a methodical enough man to travel with a gown and slippers in his valise), was labouring to recover his niece; Mistress Prissy, with her cloak huddled round her, was making magnanimous efforts to aid her uncle; while the poor little sufferer -- guileless, affectionate Mistress Fiddy -- lay pale, faint, and chill, with life flickering beneath her half-closed eyelids and in the gushes of her fitful breath. Master Rowland's trouble rendered him outwardly cold and hard, as it does some men; yet Mistress Fiddy's closing eyes turned trustfully to him, and her weak fingers clung tightly to his strong hand.

"No, no; the fewer onlookers the better. What would a stranger do here, Mrs. Price?" he inquired angrily, remembering, with a pang, that certain new, unaccountable, engrossing emotions had quite banished Fiddy from his thoughts and notice, when he might have detected the signs of approaching illness, met them and vanquished them before their climax.

"Bid him speak a word with me, Mrs. Price, a gentleman cannot refuse. I have reasons which will excuse my importunity," reiterated that sympathetic voice.

He walked out doggedly, and never once lifted his eyes. "Madam, I am your servant; but we do not need your help: my niece would be scared by the presence of a stranger. Reserve your charity --  -- " "for the poor" he was about to add; but she put her frank hand upon his arm, and said, "Your worship, I believe I could nurse the young lady better than anybody: I have seen my dear sister afflicted, as I judge similarly. Do not stand on ceremony, sir, and deprive a poor girl of a benefit which Providence has sent her, if you would not regret it. I beg your pardon, but do let me succour her."

He looked up. There she stood in her white wrapping-gown and cap, ready prepared for her patient; so appropriate-looking in dress and face, with her broad forehead full of thought, and her cheek flushed with feeling; an able tender woman in her prime, endeavouring to do Christian offices, longing to pour balm into gaping, smarting wounds, imploring to be allowed to fulfil her mission. He bowed, and stood aside; she curtsied, and passed in. He heard her voice the next moment, low, but perfectly audible, cheerful and pleasant, addressing Mistress Prissy. "My dear madam, your uncle has permitted me to count myself a mature friend, like madam your mother; and after this introduction you will excuse me for taking care of you. Doctor, what drops do you favour? You have them there; if you please, I'll offer them: I've administered them before." She spoke to the doctor very courteously; perhaps remarking that he was young and somewhat agitated. "Mayn't I chafe Mistress Fiddy's hands, doctor? You're better, my dear?"

Mistress Fiddy's head was on her arm; her eyes were raised to her nurse's face wonderingly but complacently, and, though quite conscious, Mistress Fiddy involuntarily sighed out "mother." Very motherly was the elder woman's assurance: "Yes, my dear, I'll serve as madam your mother in her absence, till madam herself comes; and she'll laugh at our confusion and clumsiness, I warrant."

Mistress Fiddy smiled a little smile herself. Nature was reacting in its own redemption; the necessary stimulus was obtained, and the little lass was in a fair way of recovery.

But Mistress Betty did not leave off her cares; she elected herself mistress of the sick room -- for she reigned there as everywhere else. She dismissed shivering, tearful, grateful Prissy with a hug, and a whispered promise that her dear sister Fiddy would be as lively as a grig in the morning; got rid of the doctor and Mrs. Price, and all but routed Master Rowland, succeeding in driving him as far as the next room.

How light her foot was -- light as her fingers were nimble; how cleverly she shaded the sick girl from the light, without depriving her of air! How resigned Fiddy was to be consigned to her! how quickly and entirely the child had confided in her; she had hailed her as another mother! Mistress Betty was putting the chamber to rights, in defiance of all the chamber-maids of the "Bear;" she was concocting some refreshing drink, for which Mrs. Price had supplied the materials, over the fire, which she had ordered in case of mould and damp, even in the well-seasoned "Bear." Once she began to sing softly what might have been a cradle-song, but stopped short, as if fearing to disturb Fiddy, and composed herself to perfect stillness. Then Master Rowland heard Mistress Fiddy question Mistress Betty in her weak, timid voice, on Fiddy's own concerns. "You said you had seen these fits before, madam? May I be so bold as to ask, did the sufferer recover?"

There was a moment's silence. "It was my sister, Fiddy: she was much older than I. She had a complication of diseases, besides being liable to swoons all her life. My dear, she died, as we must all die when our time comes; and may we all be as well prepared as was Deb! In the meantime we are in God's hands. I have been taken with fainting fits myself, Fiddy, ere now. I think they are in my constitution, but they are not called out yet, and I believe they will be kept under; as, I fully trust, country air, and exercise, and early hours, will conquer yours."

"And you will take great care of yourself, and go into the country sometimes, dear Mistress Betty," pleaded the girl fondly, forgetting herself.

Mistress Betty laughed, and turned the conversation, and finally read her patient to sleep with the Morning Lesson, given softly and reverently, as good Bishop Ken himself might have done it.

The poor squire was a discomfited, disordered Sir Roger. He could not cope with this fine woman; and then it came home to him imperatively that he was precisely in that haggard, unbecoming state of looks and costume significantly expressed in those days by the powder being out of a man's hair and his frills rumpled. So he absented himself for an hour, and returned freshened by a plunge in the river and a puff in his wig. But, alas! he found that Mistress Betty, without quitting Mistress Fiddy's bedchamber, and by the mere sleight of hand of tying on a worked apron with vine clusters and leaves and tendrils all in purple and green floss silks, pinning a pink bow under her mob-cap, and sticking in her bosom a bunch of dewy ponceau polyanthuses, had beat him most completely.

Mistress Fiddy was, as Mistress Betty had predicted, so far re-established that she could breakfast with the party and talk of riding home later in the day; though wan yet, like one of those roses with a faint colour and a fleeting odour in their earliest bud. And Mistress Betty breakfasted with the Parnells, and was such company as the little girls had never encountered before; nor, for that matter, their uncle before them, though he kept his discovery a profound secret. It was not so pleasant in one sense, and yet in another it made him feel like a king.

This was Mistress Betty's last day in Bath, and she was to travel up to Town in the train of my Lord and Lady Salop, by easy stages and long halts; otherwise she must have hired servants, or carried pistols, and been prepared to use them, in the mail. Fortunately the Salops' chariots and gigs did not start till the afternoon, so that Mistress Betty had the morning to spend with her new friends, and she was delighted to bestow it on them; though my Lord and Lady and their satellites were perpetually sending lacqueys with compliments, conveniences, and little offerings to court Mistress Betty, -- the star in the plenitude of her lustre, who might emulate Polly Peacham, and be led to the altar by another enslaved Duke of Bolton.

How pleasant Mistress Betty was with the girls! Upon the whole, she slighted "the Justice," as she had dubbed him. She saw with her quick eyes that he was something superior; but then she saw many men quite as well-looking, well-endowed, well-mannered, and with as fair intellects, and more highly cultivated than he.

But she did not often find a pair of unsophisticated little girls won to her by her frankness and kindness, and dazzled by her goodness and greatness. How she awoke Fiddy's laugh with the Chit-Chat Club and the Silence Stakes. What harmless, diverting stories she told them of high life -- how she had danced at Ranelagh, sailed upon the Thames, eaten her bun at Chelsea, mounted one of the eight hundred favours which cost a guinea a piece when Lady Die became a countess, and called upon Lady Petersham, in her deepest mourning, when she sat in her state-bed enveloped in crape, with her children and grandchildren in a row at her feet! And then she told that she was born in a farmhouse like that on the hill, and would like to know if they roasted groats and played at shovelboard there still; and ended by showing them her little silver tankard, which her godfather the jolly miller had given her, and out of which her elder sister, who had never taken kindly to tea, had drunk her ale and her aniseed water. And Fiddy and Prissy had each a draught of milk out of it, to boast of for the rest of their lives, as if they had sipped caudle out of the caudle-cup at a royal heir's christening.

Mistress Betty made the girls talk, too, -- of their garden, the old parish clerk, the housekeeper at Larks' Hall, granny, madam, the vicar, and, to his face, of Uncle Rowland, his horses and colts, his cows and calves, his pictures and cabinets. They spoke also of Foxholes, of Letty and Grizel, of Sedley and Bearwood, and Dick Ashbridge -- at whose name Prissy laughed saucily, and Fiddy bit her lips and frowned as fiercely as she was able. With what penetration Mistress Betty read their connections, and how blithely and tenderly she commented upon them!

Mistress Betty promised to send her young friends sets of silk for their embroidery (and kept her word); she presented Prissy with her enamel snuff-box, bearing an exact representation of that ugly building of St. James's; and Fiddy with her "equipage" -- scissors, tablets, and all, chased and wreathed with tiny pastorals, shepherds reclining and piping on sylvan banks, and shepherds and shepherdesses dancing on velvet lawns.

Mistress Betty kissed the girls at parting, and wished them health, peace, and good husbands; she held out her hand to Master Rowland, who took it with a crimson cheek, and raised it to his lips: pshaw! she never once looked at him.

The poor bachelor squire drove off, but for his manhood, groaning inwardly. Lady Betty had acted, and caught not only her share of Master Rowland's ticket, to which she was fairly entitled, but the cream of his fancy and the core of his heart; with which she had no manner of business, any more than with the State Papers and the Coronation-jewels.


IV. Master Rowland Goes Up To London.

In the green-room of one of the great London theatres -- David Garrick's, perhaps -- the stage company and their friends were waiting the call-boy and the rising of the curtain.

As strange boards as any -- as broad contrasts. Here a king, with his crown cast down; there a beggar, with his wallet laid aside. But kings and beggars are not affording the glaring discrepancies of Hogarth's "Olympus in a Barn," but suggesting and preserving the distinctions far below the buskins, the breastplate, the sandals, the symars. Here are heroes, with the heroism only skin deep; and peers, like their Graces of Bolton and Wharton, with less of the lofty, self-denying graces and the ancient chivalry, than the most grovelling of ploughmen.

Among the crowd, Lady Betty is biding her time, very nonchalant, and a little solitary in her state. Ladies who are independent, exclusive, and inflexible, however admired and respected, are generally left to enjoy their own opinions unmolested and at their leisure, whether behind the stage curtain or elsewhere.

Just then a country gentleman, whose murrey coat has a certain country cut, while his complexion breathes of hay-fields and hedge sides, is introduced, gazes round, and steps up to her. Mistress Betty cries out, "La!" -- an exclamation not a whit vulgar in her day -- "the Justice!" And she holds forth both her hands. "How are dear Mistress Prissy and Mistress Fiddy? Have you come up to town for any time, sir? I wish prosperity to your business."

He has not held such kind, unaffected, friendly hands since they parted; he has only once before held a hand that could have led a Jaffier to confess his conspiracy -- that could have clung to a crushed man, and striven to raise him when calamity, like a whirlwind, cast him down.

The squire is sensibly moved, and Mistress Betty vindicates her womanliness by jumping at a conclusion and settling in her own mind that his brain is addled with this great London -- its politicians, its mohawks, its beggars in Axe Lane, its rich tradesmen in Cranbourne Alley, its people of quality, fashion, and taste in their villas at Twickenham.

He asks if she is on in Belvidera, and when he hears that it is another actress's benefit, and that she has only consented to appear in a secondary part in a comedy of Sir John's, who is now a great castle-builder, he does not trouble himself to enter a box; at which she is half flattered, half perplexed. He waits, hot and excited, until her short service is over. He will not call upon her at her lodgings, because, in his delicacy, he has so keen a remembrance of her exposed position.

In the corner behind the curtain, bounded by the refreshment table, and filled with the prompter's monotonous drawl, -- far, far from his barley ripe for the mowing, his boxwood peacocks, his greyhaired Hal and his buxom milkmaids; far from old madam, the pedantic, formal vicar, young madam, brisk, hot, and genial, and his old charmers Prissy and Fiddy, -- the squire told his tale of true love. The man threw down the costs and besought Mistress Betty Lumley, Lady Betty, to renounce the stage, forsake fame, quit studies, rehearsals, opening-nights, and concluding curtsies amidst the cheers of thousands, to go down with him to rural Larks' Hall, to grow younger, happier, and better every day, and die like Lady Loudon in her hundredth year, universally regretted, -- above all, to fill up the gulf which had yawned in the market-place of his existence since that night at Bath.

It was a primitive proceeding. Lady Betty was amazed at the man's assurance, simplicity, and loyalty. He spoke plainly -- almost bluntly -- but very forcibly. It was no slight or passing passion which had brought the squire, a gentleman of a score and more of honourable descents, to seek such an audience-chamber to sue a pasteboard queen. It was no weak love which had dislodged him from his old resting-place, and pitched him to this dreary distance.

Mistress Betty was taken "all in a heap;" she had heard many a love-tale, but never one with so manly a note. Shrewd, sensitive Mistress Betty was bewildered and confounded, and in her hurry she made a capital blunder. She dismissed him summarily, saw how white he grew, and heard how he stopped to ask if there were no possible alternative, no period of probation to endure, no achievement to be performed by him. She waved him off the faster because she became affrighted at his humility; and got away in her chair, and wrung her hands, and wept all night in the long summer twilight, and sat pensive and sick for many days.

In time, Mistress Betty resumed her profession; but she was unusually languid: she played to disappointed houses, and cherished always, with more romance, the shade of the brave, trustful, Somersetshire squire and antiquary. Suddenly she adopted the resolution of retiring from the stage in the summer of her popularity, and living on her savings and her poor young brother's bequest. Her tastes were simple; why should she toil to provide herself with luxuries? She had no one now for whose old age she could furnish ease, or for the aims and accidents of whose rising station she need lay by welcome stores; she had not even a nephew or niece to tease her. She would not wear out the talents a generous man had admired on a mass of knaves and villains, coxcombs and butterflies; she would not expose her poor mind and heart to further deterioration. She would fly from the danger; she would retire, and board with her cousin Ward, and help her with a little addition to her limited income, and a spare hand in her small family; and she would jog-trot onwards for the rest of her life, so that when she came to die, Mistress Prissy and Mistress Fiddy would have no cause to be ashamed that so inoffensive, inconspicuous, respectable a person had once been asked to stand to them in the dignified relation of aunt. The public vehemently combated Mrs. Betty's verdict, in vain; they were forced to lament during twice nine days their vanished favourite, who had levanted so unceremoniously beyond the reach of their good graces.


V. Mistress Betty Travels Down Into Somersetshire.

A formal but friendly letter came to Mistress Betty, when her life was one of long dusty exertion, and her heart was very thirsty and parched. The shabby-genteel world and the tradesman's life, unless in exceptional cases of great wealth, were different things a hundred and fifty years ago from what they are now. The villas at Twickenham, the rural retreats, the gardens, the grottos, the books, the harpsichords, the water-colour drawings, belonged to the quality, or to the literary lions: to Lady Mary or Pope, Horace Walpole or his young friends the Berrys. The half-pay officer's widow, the orphan of the bankrupt in the South Sea business, the wife and family of the moderately flourishing haberdasher, or coach-builder, or upholsterer -- the tobacconist rose far above the general level -- were cooped up in the City dwellings, and confined to gossip, fine clothes, and good eating if they could afford them. A walk in the City gardens, a trip to Richmond Hill, and the shows, were their pastimes, and Mr. Steele's 'Christian Hero,' 'An Advice to a Daughter,' and De Foe's 'History of the Plague,' were their mental delectation.

But Mistress Betty had the soul of a martyr; she had resigned herself to sinking down into the star of cousin Ward's set, who went on holidays to the play -- mostly honest, fat and fatuous, or jaunty and egotistical folk, who admired the scenery and the dresses, but could no more have made a play to themselves than they could have drawn the cartoons. She helped cousin Ward, not only with her purse, but with a kinswoman's concern in her and hers: she assisted to wash and dress the children of a morning; she took a turn at cooking in the middle of the day; she helped to detain Master Ward at the tea-table, and to keep his wig and knee-buckles from too early an appearance and too thorough a soaking of his self-conceit and wilfulness at his tavern; and she heard the lads their lessons, while she darned their frills before supper.

Then arrived the summons, over which Mistress Betty, a little worn by voluntary adversity, shed "a power" of joyful tears. To travel down into Somersetshire, and stroll among the grass in the meadows, and the gorse on the commons, which she had not seen for twelve months; to feed the calves, and milk the cows, and gather the eggs, and ride Dapple, and tie up the woodbine, and eat syllabub in a bower; to present "great frieze coats" and "riding-hoods" to a dozen of the poorest old men and women in the parish; to hear prayers in a little grey church, through whose open windows ivy nodded, and before whose doors trees arched in vistas; to see her sweet little Prissy and Fiddy, who had taken such a fancy to her, and the vicar, and madam, and granny, and find them all perfectly agreeable, and not slighting her or doubting her because she had been a woman of fashion and an actress; and Master Rowland well disposed of elsewhere; Larks' Hall deserted by its master -- the brave, generous, enamoured squire -- heigho! Mistress Betty, for all her candour, good humour, and cordiality, had her decent pride, and would not have thrown herself at any man's head.

Somersetshire, in spite of Bath, was as antediluvian a hundred and fifty years ago as the lanes and coombes of Devonshire. Larks' Hall, Foxholes, Bearwood, the Vicarage of Mosely, and their outlying acquaintances, their yeomen and their labourers, lived as old-fashioned and hearty a life as if the battle of Sedgemoor had never been fought.

Down in Somersetshire, among its orchards, nutteries, and blackberry thickets, poor little Mistress Fiddy was drooping, as girls would pine sometimes, even in the days of Will Shakspeare, ere cloth-yard shafts were abolished from merry England, when there were still mayings among the hyacinths, and milkmaids' dances under the thorns, and mummings when the snow fell. And Dick Ashbridge shot and fished in the most disconsolate abandonment, though the girl yet ran past him "like a ghost" when the beetle and bat were abroad, and he was still mooning about the vicarage meadows.

Neither of them knew for certain, and nobody could predict exactly, that she would live to wed Dick, bear him children, and leave him a sorrowful widower, whose heart was chastened -- not torn. No; nor could the good folk in Somersetshire understand how closely Lady Betty and little Fiddy were bound up together, and how little Fiddy was to return Lady Betty's kindness, in the days when the little girl should be the teacher, and the fine woman the scholar, and the lesson to be learnt came from regions beyond the stars.

In the meantime, Fiddy was a sick, capricious, caressed darling in a cambric cap and silk shawl, on whom fond friends were waiting lovingly: whom nobody in the world, not even the doctor, the parish clerk, or the housekeeper at Larks' Hall, dreamt of subjecting to the wholesome medicine of contradiction -- unless it might be Granny, when she came in with her staff in her hand. She would laugh at their excess of care, and order them to leave off spoiling that child; but even Granny herself would let fall a tear from her dim eyes when she read the register of the child's age in the family Bible.

"Ah!" sighs whimsical little Mistress Fiddy, "if only Lady Betty were here -- great, good, kind, clever, funny, beautiful Lady Betty -- who cured me that night at Bath, papa and mamma, I would be well again. She knows the complaint; she has had it herself; and her face is so cheering, her wit so enlivening, and she reads the lessons so solemnly and sweetly. O mamma! send for Mistress Betty; she will come at once; she does not play now; the prints say so. She will be the better of the country air too. Send for Mistress Betty to Mosely."

Madam was in a difficulty. An actress at the vicarage! And Master Rowland had been so rash. He had dropped hints, which, along with his hurried visit to London, had instilled dim, dark suspicions into the minds of his appalled relations of the whirlpool he had just coasted, they knew not how: they could not believe the only plain palpable solution of the fact. And Granny had inveighed against women of fashion and all public characters, ever since Uncle Rowland took that jaunt to town, whence he returned so glum and dogged. But then, again, how could the mother deny her ailing Fiddy? And this brilliant Mistress Betty from the gay world might possess some talisman unguessed by the quiet folks at home. Little Fiddy had no real disease, no settled pain: she only wanted change, pleasant company, and diversion, and would be plump and strong again in no time. And Mistress Betty had retired from the stage now; she was no longer a marked person: she might pass anywhere as Mistress Lumley, who had acted with success and celebrity, and withdrawn at the proper moment, with the greatest dignity and discretion. And Master Rowland was arranging his affairs to make the grand tour in the prime of life: his absence would clear away a monstrous objection. What would the Vicar say? What would Granny say?

The Vicar ruled his parish, and lectured in the church; but in the parsonage he thought very much as madam did, and was only posed when old madam and young madam pulled him different ways.

And Granny! Why, to madam's wonder, Granny required no wheedling, but -- apprised of the deliberation, by the little minx Prissy, who in Fiddy's illness attended on Granny -- she sent for madam before madam even knew that the proposal had been so much as mooted to her, and struck her stick on the ground in her determined way, and insisted that Mistress Betty should be writ for forthwith and placed at the head of the child's society. Granny, who had soundly rated fine ladies and literary women not two days before! It was very extraordinary; but Granny must have her way. The children paid her affectionate duty, young madam did her half-grateful, half-vexed homage, the Vicar and Master Rowland deferred to her in her widowhood and dependence, and with little less grace and reverence than what she had taught them to practise when they were lads under tutelage. She was, in fact, the fully accredited mistress of Larks' Hall.

And Granny, in reality, presided at the vicarage; not oppressively, for she was one of those sagacious magnates who are satisfied with the substance of power without loving its show. Notwithstanding, she prevented the publication of more than two calf-skin volumes at a time of the Vicar's sermons; she turned madam aside when she would have hung the parlour with gilt leather, in imitation of Foxholes; and she restricted the little girls to fresh ribbons once a month, and stomachers of their own working. And so, when Granny decreed that Mistress Betty was to be invited down to Mosely, there was no more question of the propriety of the measure that there would have been of an Act of Council given under the Tudors; the only things left to order were the airing of the best bedroom, the dusting of the ebony furniture, and the bleaching on the daisies of old madam's diamond quilt.

Down to Somersetshire went Mistress Betty, consoling cousin Ward with the gift of a bran-new mantua and a promise of a speedy return, and braving those highwaymen who were for ever robbing King George's mail; but the long, light midsummer nights were in their favour, and their mounted escort had to encounter no paladins of the road in scarlet coats and feathered hats.

Mistress Betty's buoyant spirit rose with the fresh air, the green fields, and the sunshine. She was so obliging and entertaining to an invalid couple among her fellow-travellers, an orange nabob from India and his splendid wife, that they declared she had done them more good than they would derive from the Pump-room, the music, and the cards, to which they were bound. They asked her address, and pressed her to pay them a visit; when they would have certainly adopted her, and bequeathed to her their plum. As it was, half-a-dozen years later, when, to her remorse, she had clean forgotten their existence, they astounded her by leaving her a handsome legacy; which, with the consent of another party concerned -- one who greatly relished the mere name of the bequest, as a proof that nobody could ever resist Lady Betty -- she shared with a cross-grained grand-nephew whom the autocratic pair had cut off with a shilling.


VI. Between Mosely And Larks' Hall.

At Mosely Mistress Betty alighted at last, entered the wicket-gate, and approached the small, weather-stained, brick house. She made her curtsy to madam, asked the Vicar's blessing -- though he was not twenty-five years her senior and scarcely so wise -- hugged the little girls, particularly sick Fiddy, and showered upon them pretty tasteful town treasures, which little country girls, sick or well, dearly love. Fiddy's eyes were glancing already; but she did not leave off holding Mistress Betty's hand in order to try on her mittens, or to turn the handle of the musical box. And Mistress Betty finally learned, with some panic and palpitation, which she was far too sensible and stately a woman to betray, that the Justice was not gone -- that Master Rowland, in place of examining the newly-excavated Italian cities, or dabbling in state treason in France, was no further off than Larks' Hall, confined there with a sprained ankle: nobody being to blame, unless it were Granny, who had detained Master Rowland to the last moment, or Uncle Rowland himself, for riding his horse too near the edge of the sandpit, and endangering his neck as well as his shin-bones. However, Mistress Betty did not cry out that she had been deceived, or screech distractedly, or swoon desperately (though the last was in her constitution), neither did she seem to be brokenhearted by the accident.

But Granny's reception of her was the great event of the day. Granny was a picture, in her grey gown and "clean white hood nicely plaited," seated in her wicker seat "fronting the south, and commanding the washing-green." Here Granny was amusing herself picking gooseberries -- which the notable Prissy was to convert into gooseberry-fool, one of the dishes projected to grace the town lady's supper -- when Mistress Betty was led towards her.

It was always a trying moment when a stranger at Mosely was presented to old Madam Parnell. The Parnells had agreed, for one thing, that it would be most proper and judicious, as Mistress Betty had quitted the stage -- doubtless in some disappointment of its capabilities, or condemnation of the mode in which it was conducted, -- to be chary in theatrical illusions, to drop the theatrical sobriquet Lady Betty, and hail their guest with the utmost ceremony and sincerity as Mistress Lumley. But Granny turned upon her visitor a face still fresh, in its small, fine-furrowed compass, hailed her as Lady Betty on the spot, and emphatically expressed all the praise she had heard of her wonderful powers; regretting that she had not been in the way of witnessing them, and declaring that as they escaped the snares and resisted the temptations of her high place, they did her the utmost honour, for they served to prove that her merits and her parts were equal. Actually, Granny behaved to Lady Betty as to a person of superior station, and persisted in rising and making room for the purpose of sharing with her the wicker seat; and there they sat, the old queen and the young.

Young madam had been quite determined that, as Uncle Rowland was so unfortunate as to be held by the foot at Larks' Hall from his tour, he should not risk his speedy recovery by hobbling over to Mosely, when she could go herself or send Prissy every morning to let him know how the invalid was. But the very day after Mistress Betty's arrival old madam secretly dispatched Tim, the message-boy, to desire the squire to order out the old coach, and make a point of joining the family party either at dinner or at supper. Young madam was sufficiently chagrined; but then the actress and the squire met so coldly, and little Fiddy was flushing up into a quiver of animation, and Mistress Betty was such delightful company in the slumbrous country parsonage.

It is pleasant to think of the doings of the Parnells, the witcheries of Mistress Betty, and the despotism of old madam, during the next month. Indeed, Mistress Betty was so reverent, so charitable, so kind, so gentle as well as blithe under depressing influences, and so witty under stagnation, that it would have been hard to have lived in the same house with her and have been her enemy: she was so easily gratified, so easily interested; she could suit herself to so many phases of this marvellous human nature. She listened to the Vicar's "argument" with edification, and hunted up his authorities with diligence. She scoured young madam's lutestring, and made it up in the latest and most elegant fashion of nightgowns, with fringes and buttons, such as our own little girls could match. She made hay with Prissy and Fiddy, and not only accomplished a finer cock than weak Fiddy and impatient Priss, but surpassed the regular haymakers. And she looked, oh! so well in her haymaker's jacket and straw hat -- though young madam was always saying that her shape was too large for the dress, and that the slight hollows in her cheeks were exaggerated by the shade from the broad-brimmed flapping straw.

Of course Mistress Betty performed in the "Traveller" and "Cross Purposes," and gave out riddles and sang songs round the hearth of a rainy evening, or about the cherrywood table in the arbour, of a cloudless twilight, much more pat than other people -- that was to be looked for; but then she also played at love after supper, loo and cribbage for a penny the game -- deeds in which she could have no original superiority and supremacy -- with quite as infectious an enthusiasm.

To let you into a secret, young madam was in horror at one time that Dick Ashbridge was wavering in his allegiance to her white rosebud, Fiddy; so enthralling was this scarlet pomegranate, this purple vine. But one evening Mrs. Betty turned suddenly upon the mad boy, to whom she had been very soft, saying that he bore a great resemblance to her cousin's second son Jack, and asked how old he was? and did he not think of taking another turn at college? This restored the boy to his senses in a trice, and she kissed Mistress Fiddy twice over when she bade her good night.

But old madam and Lady Betty were the chief pair of friends. Granny, with her own sway in her day, and her own delicate discrimination, acute intellect, and quick feelings, was a great enough woman not to be jealous of a younger queen, but to enjoy her exceedingly. Madam Parnell had seen the great world as well as Lady Betty, and never tired of reviving old recollections, comparing experiences, and tracing the fates of the children and grandchildren of the great men and women her contemporaries. Prissy and Fiddy vowed over and over again, that the stirring details were more entertaining than any story-book. For this reason, Granny took a personal pride in Lady Betty's simplest feat, as well as in her intellectual crown, and put her through every stage of her own particular recipes for cream cheese and pickled walnuts.

"The dickons!" cried a Somerset yeoman: "The Lon'on madam has opened the five-barred gate that beat all the other women's fingers, and gathered the finest elder-flowers, and caught the fattest chicken; and they tell me she has repeated verses to poor crazed Isaac, till she has lulled him into a fine sleep. 'Well done, Lon'on!' cries I; 'luck to the fine lady:' I never thought to wish success to such a kind." Granny, too, cried, "Well done, Lon'on! Luck to the fine lady!" If all Helens were but as pure, and true, and tender as Lady Betty!

Granny would have Lady Betty shown about among the neighbours, and maintained triumphantly that she read them, Sedleys, Ashbridges, and Harringtons, as if they were characters in a printed book -- not that she looked down on them, or disparaged them in any way; she was far more tolerant than rash, inexperienced Prissy and Fiddy. And Granny ordered Lady Betty to be carried sight-seeing to Larks' Hall, and made minute arrangements for her to inspect Granny's old domain, from garret to cellar, from the lofty usher-tree at the gate to the lowly

"Plaintain ribbed that heals the reapers' wound"

in the herb-bed. No cursory inspection would suffice her: the pragmatical housekeeper and the rosy milkmaids had time to give up their hearts to Lady Betty like the rest. Master Rowland, as in courtesy bound, limped with the stranger over his helmets and gauntlets, his wooden carvings, his black-letter distich; and, although she was not overflowing in her praises, she had seen other family pictures by Greuze, and she herself possessed a fan painted by Watteau, to which he was vastly welcome if he cared for such a broken toy.

She fancied the head of one of the Roman emperors to be like his Grace of Montague; she had a very lively though garbled familiarity with the histories of the veritable Brutus and Cassius, Coriolanus, Cato, Alexander, and other mighty, picturesque, cobbled-up ancients, into whose mouths she could put appropriate speeches; and she accepted a loan of his 'Plutarch's Lives,' "to clear up her classics," as she said merrily; altogether poor Squire Rowland felt that he had feasted at an intellectual banquet.

At last it was time to think of redeeming her pledge to cousin Ward; and, to Mistress Betty's honour, the period came while Master Rowland was still too lame to leave Larks' Hall, except in his old coach, and while it yet wanted weeks to the softening, gladdening, overwhelming bounty of the harvest-home.

Then occurred the most singular episodes of perverseness and reiterated instances of inconsistency of which Granny had been found guilty in the memory of man, either as heiress of Larks' Hall or as old madam of the vicarage. At first she would not hear of Mistress Betty's departure, and asked her to be her companion, during her son's absence, in his house of Larks' Hall, where all at once she announced that she meant to take up her temporary residence. She did not approve of its being committed entirely to the supervision of Mrs. Prue, her satellite, the schoolmaster's daughter who used so many long words in cataloguing her preserves and was so trustworthy: Mrs. Prue would feel lonesome; Mrs. Prue would take to gadding like the chits Prissy and Fiddy. No, she would remove herself for a year, and carry over her old man Morris along with her, and see that poor Rowley's goods were not wasted or his curiosities lost while he chose to tarry abroad.

Master Rowland stared, but made no objection to this invasion; Mrs. Betty, after much private rumination and great persuasion, consented to the arrangement. Young madam was obliged to be ruefully acquiescent, though secretly irate at so preposterous a scheme; the Vicar, good man, to do him justice, was always ponderously anxious to abet his mother, and had, besides, a sneaking kindness for Mistress Betty; the girls were privately charmed, and saw no end to the new element of breadth, brightness, and zest, in their little occupations and amusements.

When again, of a sudden, after the day was fixed for Master Rowland's departure, and the whole family were assembled in the vicarage parlour -- old madam fell a-crying and complaining that they were taking her son away from her -- robbing her of him: she would never live to set eyes on him again -- a poor old body of her years and trials would not survive another flitting. She had been fain to gratify some of his wishes; but see if they would not destroy them both, mother and son, by their stupid narrow-mindedness and obstinacy.

Such a thing had never happened before. Who had ever seen Granny unreasonable and foolish? The Vicar slipped his hand to her wrist, in expectation that he would detect signs of hay-fever, though it was a full month too late for the complaint -- there had been cases in the village -- and was shaken off with sufficient energy for his pains.

"Mother," exclaimed Master Rowland, haughtily, "I understand you; but I had a plain answer to a plain question months ago, and I will have no reversal to please you. Pity craved by an old woman's weakness! favours granted in answer to tears drawn from dim eyes! I am not such a slave!"

The others were all clamouring round Granny, kissing her hand, kneeling on her footstool, imploring her to tell them what she wanted, what she would like best, what they could go and do for her; only the squire spoke in indignant displeasure, and nobody attended to him but Mistress Betty.

It did appear that the squire had been too fast in repelling advances which did not follow his mother's appeal. Mistress Betty gave no token -- she stood pulling the strings of her cap, and growing first very red, and then ominously white, like any girl.

Perhaps the squire suspected that he had been too hasty, that he had not been grateful to his old mother, or generous to the woman who, however fine, and courted, and caressed, was susceptible of a simple woman's anguish at scorn or slight. Perhaps there flashed on his recollection a certain paper in the 'Spectator,' wherein a young lady's secret inclination towards a young gentleman is conclusively revealed, not by her advances to save his pride, but by her silence, her blushes, her disposition to swoon with distress when an opportunity is afforded her of putting herself forward to attract his notice -- nay, when she is even urged to go so far as to solicit his regard.

Master Rowland's brow lightened as if a cloud lowering there had suddenly cleared away -- Master Rowland began to look as if it were a much more agreeable experience to contemplate Mistress Betty nervous and glum, than Lady Betty armed at a hundred points, and all but invulnerable -- Master Rowland walked as alertly to her side as if there were no such things as sprains in this world. "Madam, forgive me if I have attributed to you a weak complacency to which you would never condescend. Madam, if you have changed your mind, and can now tolerate my suit, and accord it the slightest return, I am at your feet."

Assuredly, the tall, vigorous, accomplished squire would have been there, not figuratively but in his imposing person. Family explanations were admissible a century and a half ago; public declarations were sometimes a point of honour; bodily prostration was by no means exploded; matter-of-fact squires knelt like romantic knights; Sir Charles Grandison and Sir Roger de Coverley bent as low for their own purposes as fantastic gauze and tinsel troubadours.

But Mistress Betty prevented him. "I am not worth it, Master Rowland," cried Mistress Betty, sobbing and covering her face with her hands; and, as she could not have seen the obeisance, the gentleman intermitted it, pulled down the hands, kissed Madam Betty oftener than the one fair salute, and handed her across the room to receive Granny's blessing. Granny sat up and composed herself, wished them joy (though she had the grace to look a little ashamed of herself), very much as if she had obtained her end.

There is no use in denying that young madam took to bed for three days, and was very pettish for a fortnight; but eventually gave in to the match, and was not so much afflicted by it as she had expected, after the first brunt. Granny, in her age, was so absurdly set on the mésalliance, and so obliging and pleasant about everything else -- the Vicar and the little lasses were so provokingly careless of the wrong done them and the injury to the family, -- that she knew very well, when her back was turned, they formed as nonsensically hilarious a bridal party as if the wedding had concerned one of themselves and not the bachelor uncle, the squire of Larks' Hall. And Mistress Betty ordered down the smartest livery; and the highest gentry in Somersetshire would have consented to grace the ceremony, had she cared for their presence, such a prize was she in their country-houses when they could procure her countenance during their brief sojourn among sparkling rills and woodland shades. Altogether, young madam, in spite of her vanities and humours, loved the children, the Vicar, Granny, the bridegroom, and even (with a grudge) the bride, and was affected by the sweet summer season and the happy marriage-tide, and was, in the main, too good to prove a kill-joy.

Master Rowland and Mistress Betty were married by Master Rowland's own brother in the Vicar's own church, with Fiddy and Prissy and the Sedleys for bridesmaids, and Dick Ashbridge for a groom's-man. Cousin Ward, brought all the way from town to represent the bride's relations, was crying as if she were about to lose an only daughter. For Granny, she would not shed one bright, crystal tear on any account; besides, she was ever in state at Larks' Hall to welcome home, the happy couple. Ah, well, they were all happy couples in those days!

At Larks' Hall Mistress Betty bloomed during many a year; for a fine woman knows no decay; she only passes from one stage of beauty and excellence to another, wearing, as her rightful possession, all hearts -- her sons', as their father's before them. And Master Rowland no longer sat lonely in his hall, in the frosty winter dusk or under the usher-oak in the balmy summer twilight, but walked through life briskly and bravely, with a perfect mate; whom he had not failed to recognize as a real diamond among the bits of glass before the footlights -- a diamond which his old mother had consented to set for him.

Our squire and Lady Betty are relics of a former generation. We have squires as many by thousands, as accomplished by tens of thousands; but the inimitable union of simplicity and refinement, downrightness and dignity, disappeared with the last faint reflection of Sir Roger de Coverley. And charming Lady Betty departed also with early hours, pillions, and cosmetics -- that blending of nature and art, knowledge of the corrupt world and abiding true-heartedness, which then existed -- a sort of marvel.



A Cast In The Waggon.


I. Dulcie's Start In The Waggon For Her Company.

Old and young were clamouring hoarsely and shrilly by daybreak one September morning round a little girl, one of a cloth-worker's numerous family. She had been rather a tender lass, and change of air was thought good for her full growth. Though she was still small, she was close on her one-and-twentieth year, and her friends held it was high time for her to see the world. It was seeing the world to go with a late mayor's daughter, an orphan and an heiress, who had been visiting the cloth-worker's family, and would have Dulcie to live with her for awhile in a neighbouring town as a friend and companion.

Mind those worthy warm-hearted relatives of Dulcie's had no idea of her returning to her parents' nest in a hurry, though the two towns, Fairfax and Redwater, were within a day's journey by waggon of each other. Dulcie would see the world, and stay in her new abode in the next country town, or lose her character for dignity and spirit; and girls were fain to be thought discreet and decided a hundred years ago or so. She might as lief marry as not, when she was away on her travels. Girls married then with far less trouble than they accomplished such a journey. They ran down to Richmond and married on a Sunday, to save a talk and a show; they walked out of the opera where Handel might be performing, and observant gentlemen took the cue, followed on their heels, and had the knot tied by a priest, waiting in the house opposite the first chair-stand. Indeed, they contracted alliances so unceremoniously, that they went to Queen Caroline's or the Princesses' drawing-room, without either themselves or the world appearing quite sure whether they were maids or wives. Dear! dear! what did come of these foolish impulsive matches? Did they fulfil the time out of mind adage, "Happy's the wooing that's not long a-doing"? or that other old proverb, "Marry in haste, and repent at leisure"? Which was the truth?

It is a pity that you should see Dulcie, for the first time, in tears. Dulcie, who only cried on great occasions, in great sorrow or great joy -- not above half-a-dozen times in her life. Dulcie, whom the smallpox could not spoil, with her pretty forehead, cat's eyes, and fine chin. Does that description give you an idea of Dulcie -- Dulcie Cowper, not yet Madam, but any day she liked Mistress Dulcie? It seems expressive. An under-sized, slight-made girl, with a little face clearly, very clearly cut, but round in all its lines as yet; an intelligent face, an enthusiastic face, a face that could be very shrewd and practical, and, at the same time, a face that could be lavishly generous. The chief merit of her figure lay in this particular, that she "bridled" well. Yes, it is true, we have almost forgotten the old accomplishment of "bridling" -- the head up and the chin in, with the pliant knees bent in a low curtsey. Dulcie "bridled," as she prattled, to perfection. She had light brown hair, of the tint of a squirrel's fur, and the smoothness of a mouse's coat, though it was twisted and twirled into a kind of soft willowy curls when she was in high dress. Ah! no wonder that Kit Cowper, the cloth-worker, groaned to see that bright face pass from his ninepin alley; but it was the way of the world, or rather the will of Providence to the cloth-worker, that the child should fulfil her destiny. So Dulcie was launched on the sea of life, as far as Redwater, to push her fortune.

No wonder Dulcie was liked by Clarissa Gage. Clarissa was two years younger than Dulcie, but she was half-a-dozen years older in knowledge of the world, and therefore fell in love with Dulcie for the sake of variety. Clarissa had the bones of a noble woman under her pedantry and affectation; she was a peg above Dulcie in station, and a vast deal before her in the world's estimation. She was indeed "a fortune;" and you err egregiously if you suppose a fortune was not properly valued a hundred years ago. Men went mad for fair faces and glib tongues, but solidly and sensibly married fortunes, according to all the old news-prints. But Clarissa was also a beauty, far more of a regular beauty than Dulcie, with one of those inconceivably dazzling complexions that blush on like a June rose to old age, and a stately height and presence for her years. She had dark brown curls of the deep brown of mountain waters, with the ripple of the same, hanging down in a wreath of tendrils on the bend of the neck behind. With all her gifts, Mistress Clary had the crowning bounty which does not always accompany so many inferior endowments: she had sense under her airs, and she was good enough to like Dulcie instinctively, and to think how nice it would be to have Dulcie with her and Mistress Cambridge in their formal brick house, with the stone coping and balcony, at Redwater. Besides, (credit to her womanhood,) Clarissa did reflect what a fine thing it would be for Dulcie Cowper getting up in years, really getting up in years, however young in spirit, to have the variety, and the additional chance of establishing herself in life. Certainly, Redwater was a town of more consideration than Fairfax, and had its occasional assemblies and performances of strolling players; and Clarissa, in right of her father's family, visited the vicar and the squire, and could carry Dulcie along with her, since the child's manners were quite genteel, and her clothes perfectly presentable.

It was a harmonious arrangement, in which not only Clarissa but Mistress Cambridge agreed. Cambridge was one of those worthy, useful persons, whom nobody in those strangely plain but decidedly aristocratic days -- not even Clarissa and Dulcie, though they sat with her, ate with her, hugged her when they wanted to coax her -- ever thought or spoke of otherwise than "Cambridge, a good sort of woman in her own way." The only temporary drawback to the contentment of the party was the shower of tears which fell at Dulcie's forcible separation from her relatives. It was forcible in the end; all the blessings had been given in the house -- don't sneer, they did her no harm, no harm, but a vast deal of good -- and only the kisses and tears were finished off in the street.

After all this introduction, it is painful to describe how the company travelled. It was in a stage waggon! But they could not help it. We never stated that they were out-and-out quality; and not even all the quality could travel in four coaches and six, with twelve horsemen riding attendance, and an unpaid escort of butchers, bakers, and apothecaries, whipping and spurring part of the way for the custom. What could the poor Commons do? There were not stage coaches in every quarter of the great roads; and really if they pocketed their gentility, the huge brown waggons were of the two extinct conveyances the roomier, airier, and safer both from overturns and highwaymen. The seats were soft, the space was ample, and the three unprotected females were considered in a manner incognito, which was about as modest a style as they could travel in. Of course, they were not in their flowered silks, their lutestrings, their mantuas. We are assured every respectable woman travelled then in a habit and hat, and no more thought of hoops than of hair powder. The only peculiarity was that beneath their hats they wore mob-caps, tied soberly under the chin, and red or blue handkerchiefs knotted over the hat, which gave them the air of Welsh market-women, or marvellously clean and tidy gipsies. Clarissa was spelling out the words in Pharamond -- a French classic; Dulcie was looking disconsolately straight before her through their sole outlet, the bow at the end of the waggon, which circumscribed as pretty and fresh a circle of common and cornfield, with crimson patches of wood and the blue sky above, as one might wish to see. Occasionally the crack of a sportsman's gun was heard to the right or left, followed by a pheasant or a string of partridges darting across the opening of the canvas car; but as yet no claimant had solicited the privilege and honour of sharing the waggon and the view with our fair travellers.


II. Two Lads Seek A Cast In The Waggon.

"Hullo, Joe! we want a lift," cries a brisk voice, and the couple of great steeds -- they might have been Flanders mares or Clydesdale horses, so powerful were they over the shoulders, so mighty in the flanks -- almost swerved out of their direct line and their decorum. Two fellows suddenly started up from a couch where they had lain at length on a hay-stack, slid down the height, crashed over an intervening bit of waste land, and arrested the waggoner in his smock-frock and clouted shoes.

"Get in, Will, and take possession. Ha! hum! here are ladies: where will we stow our feet? I declare Will is on their skirts already, with more green slime than is carried on the breast of a pond. I believe he thinks them baggage -- lay figures, as they've turned aside their heads. Gentlefolks for a wager! duchesses in disguise! I must make up to them, anyhow. Ladies, at your service; I humbly beg your pardon for having so much as thought of incommoding you, but indeed I was not aware of your presence. Come, Will, tumble out again instantly, and do not let us be so rude as to plague the ladies."

Poor Will! very stiff and tired, stared about him, disturbed and discomforted, and prepared to perform the behest of his more energetic companion.

Dulcie did a little of her "bridling," but said never a word; Clarissa lifted her large, rather languishing eyes, let them fall again on her mittens, and remained dumb. They speak before they were spoken to? not they, they knew better. At the same time, when Will stumbled as he alighted on his weary feet, they were guilty of an inclination to titter, though the accident was excusable, and the point of the joke small.

"You are very polite, sirs," protested Cambridge, making round eyes, and reddening and blowing at being constituted the mouthpiece of the party on any interest save that of victuals. "I vow it is very pretty behaviour; but as it is a public carriage, I don't think we are at liberty to deprive Joe of his money, and you, sirs, of your seats. What say you, Mistress Clary?"

"I decline to give an opinion," answered Clarissa with great dignity; in which she broke down a little by adding hastily, in half audible accents. "Be quiet, Dulcie!" for Dulcie's risible faculties had been excited in a lively degree. She had been crying so lately that there was a hysterical turn in her mirth, and having once given way to it she could not restrain herself, but was making all sorts of ridiculous faces and spasms in her throat without effect. You see, these were two ordinary, happy young girls; and the stiff starch of their manners and pretensions only brought out in a stronger light, and with a broader contrast, their youthful frolicsomeness.

"I think, sirs, you may come in -- that is, if you keep your distance," Mistress Cambridge decided, with solemn reservation. With a multitude of apologies and thanks, the two young men, more considerate and courteous in their forward and backward fashion than many a fine gentleman of the time, clambered up, and coiled themselves into corners, leaving a respectful void between them and the original occupants of the waggon.

Tranquillity settled down on the travellers -- a tranquillity only broken by the drowsy rumble of the waggon-wheels, and the perennial whistle of the stooping, grizzled waggoner. Dulcie was just thinking that they might have been Turks, they were so silent, when Mistress Cambridge stirred the still atmosphere by the inquiry -- 

"Pray, sirs, have you happened to fall in with any stubble chickens in your walk; I think you said you had been walking hereabouts?" affording Clarissa an opportunity of complaining afterwards, in the retirement of the little inn's private room, that these young fellows would judge them a set of gluttons or farmers' daughters abroad for a holiday, aping gentlewomen, instead of being duchesses in disguise.

Although the girls never lifted their eyes, yet, by a magic only known to such philosophers, they had taken as complete an inventory of the young men, beginning at their wardrobes, as if they had looked at them coolly from head to foot for a whole half-hour. They were aware that the fellows were in plain suits, though one of them was not without the air of being fine on occasions. Their coats were cloth, not brocade or velvet; their ruffles were cambric, not lace; their shoe-buckles were only silver; their hats were trimmed with braid, and neither with gold nor silver edging. They were not my lords; they were not in regimentals; they did not rap out oaths; they had not the university air; they showed no parson's bands; they were not plain country bumpkins -- what were they?

After all, it was scarcely worth inquiry whether the newcomers belonged to law or physic; for the young women in their pride and petulance felt bound not to consider the investigation worth the trouble. The lad who was the leader, and who was unquestionably of gentle enough nurture, was a plain little fellow, sallow and homely-featured, although a good-natured person might suppose from his smiling sagacity that in animated conversation it would be quite possible to forget his face in his countenance. The other was ruddy, with a face as sharply cut as a girl's, and delicate features not fitting his long limbs -- clearly he was no better than a nincompoop. Yes, the girls were perfectly justifiable in whispering as the waggon stopped to bait at the "Nine Miles House," and they got out to bait also -- 

"What a pair!"

"Such a fright, the little fellow, Clary!"

"Such a goose, the tall fellow, Dulcie!"

It is a sad truth that foolish young women will judge by the exterior, leap at conclusions, and be guilty of rude and cruel remarks.

What would come of it if the silly, sensitive hearts were in earnest, or if they did not reserve to themselves the indefeasible right of changing their opinions?

At the "Nine Miles House" the wayfarers rested, either in the sanded parlour, or the common kitchen of the ale-house. Mistress Clarissa and her party had the sanded parlour for themselves; the young men, with their cramped legs, stumbled into the flitch-hung kitchen, the more entertaining room of the two, and had plates of beans and bacon, a toast and a tankard; for the day was in September, and the wind was already bracing both to body and appetite. Mistress Clarissa carried her private stores, and Cambridge laid out her slices of roasts and broils, plates of buns and comforts, and cruets with white wines. But when did a heroine remain in a sanded parlour in an inn, when she could stroll over the country and lose her way, and get run at by wild cattle, and stared at by naughty gentlemen? Clary was not so mean-spirited, though she was physically lazier than Dulcie; she was eager to scamper across the stubble fields (where Cambridge expected chickens to roam in flocks), and to wander, book in hand, by yon brook with the bewitching pollards.

Dulcie could not accompany her. Dulcie being a practical woman, a needle in innocent sharpness, had peeped about the waggon to inspect their luggage, and had found to her horror that one of her boxes had burst its fastenings -- that very box with her respected mother's watered tabby, and her one lace head on the place of honour on the top. So she and Cambridge had an earnest consultation on the accident, which resulted in their proceeding to tuck up their skirts, empty the receptacle with the greatest care and tenderness, and repack it with such skill that a rope would replace its rent hinges. Dulcie was not for walking.

Clarissa was thus forced to saunter alone, and after she had got to the brook and the pollards, she sat down, and leant her arms on the bars of an old farm gate. Soon tiring of looking about her, staring at the minnows and the late orange coltsfoot and white wild ranunculus, and the straw-coloured willow-leaves drooping into the water, she took out of her pocket that little brown French classic, Pharamond, and started again to accompany the French storyteller, advancing on the very tallest of stilts that storyteller ever mounted. It was a wonder truly that Clary on her mossy bank, and by a rustic stile, had not preferred the voices of the winds and the waters, the last boom of the beetle, the last screech of the martin, the last loud laugh of the field-workers borne over a hedge or two on the breeze, to the click and patter of these absurd Frenchmen's tongues.

At last Clarissa bethought her of the hour, sprang up, carefully put away her volume -- volumes and verses were precious then -- and began to pick her steps homewards. Ah! there had been a wretch of a man looking at her -- actually drawing her in his portfolio -- the ugly fellow in the waggon. Thank goodness, he could not have recognized her as his fellow-traveller; he had copied the old farm-gate from the other side, and he could only have got a glimpse of her figure through the bars with not so much as the crown of her hat above them. He had only put her in faithfully by a line or two, and three dots, and he did not observe her now as she passed behind him and scanned his performance ere she scampered off. But what a risk she had run of having her likeness taken without her knowledge or consent, and carried about the country by a walking gentleman!

It was quite an adventure; yet how could Clary think it so when an earthquake and a whole town burnt to ashes were nothing in her French novels! But, still true to the instinct of personality which causes us to think a molehill in reference to our dear selves a world more momentous and interesting than a mountain in reference to a princess of the blood-royal, stately Clarissa flew off like a lapwing to tell Dulcie that she had just had such an escape, and hit on such a discovery -- she had found out all about the two fellows; they were a couple of painters. Marry! it was a marvel to see the one so hearty, and the other so rosy. Doubtless they did not have an odd penny in their purse between them.

Clarissa came too late; she encountered Dulcie running out to meet her, all alive with the same news, only gathered in a more orthodox manner. The fair, soft lad, whom they had reckoned a nincompoop, had shaken himself up in his companion's absence, and had offered his landlady a drawing for his share of the dinner, "if you will score the value off the bill." And the landlady had repeated the story to Cambridge and Dulcie when she showed the picture to them, and expressed her conviction that the lad was far gone in the spleen -- he seemed always in a brown study; too quiet-like for a lad. She should have no peace in her mind about him if she were in any way related to him. Bless her heart! he would sell another for something much less than a crown.

Dulcie, all in a glow, had actually been chaffering with the painter for one of those wonderful groups of luscious peaches, mellow pears, July flowers, and striped balsamine, singing birds and fluttering insects, full of extravagant beauty. In the business, too, Dulcie had been by far the more overcome of the two. The painter, roused to a job, had not cheated her; on the contrary, he had been as usual a conscientious spendthrift of his powers. He had conducted the negotiation in the plainest, manliest spirit, looking the eager girl in the face with his blue eyes, and receiving her crown-piece in his hand, which was nobler than his face, inasmuch as it was seamed with the action of his paints and tools, without a notion of anything unbecoming or degrading.

The brother painter shook his head when he returned, and found what Will had been about in his absence.

"Man, man, didn't I bargain that I was to pay for your company, and haven't I put you in the worst bed, and allowed you the burnt meat and the sodden bread, and the valise to carry twice as often as I took it myself, to satisfy your plaguy scruples? And yet you could go and scurvily steal a march upon me the moment you were out of my sight! But," brightening immeasurably, and bowing low, "you have certainly contrived what I had not the face to attempt -- an introduction to the ladies -- although, no doubt, it was very simply done, and you are a very modest man, as I do not need to tell them. Ladies, I am Sam Winnington, son of the late gallant Captain Winnington, though I should not call him so; and this is Will Locke, the vagrant child of an excellent man, engaged, I believe, in the bookselling and stationery trade. We are painters, if it please you, on a tour in search of sketches and commissions. I beg to assure you, that I do portraits on a great scale as well as a small, and Will sometimes does lions in the jungle, as well as larks in a tuft of grass."

Cambridge was more posed than ever by the fresh advance included in this merry speech; but the girls were quite of another mind, and took the matter forthwith into their own hands, as is usual with the class, and bore down caution and experience, particularly when it proceeded from their housekeeper. They liked the young man's congenial sense and spirit, they secretly hankered after his vivacity; they were, with their dear woman's romance, all afire in three minutes about pictures, gods, and goddesses, historic scenes, and even scratches in Indian ink. A true woman and a painter are hand and glove at a moment's warning in any age. Cambridge could but drop naturally into the background, and regard the constant puzzle, "How girls can talk with fellows!"

The chance companions were once more packed into the waggon, pleasantly mixed together this time, and away they trundled yet many weary miles by the sunset and the light of the moon. The boughs in the horses' collars dangled brown, Cambridge and the waggoner nodded drowsily; but, divine privilege of youth! the spirits of the lads and lasses only freshened as the long day waned and they neared the goal. They were dramatis persone on a moving stage, jesting like country folks going to a fair. Even Will Locke was roused and lively as he answered Dulcie's pertinacious, pertinent questions about the animal and vegetable life he loved so well; while Dulcie, furtively remembering the landlady's suggestion, wondered, kind heart! if she could use the freedom to mention to him that ground ivy was all but infallible in early stages of the spleen, and that turnip broth might be relied on to check every incipient cough. Clarissa was coquettish, Sam Winnington was gallant. With all the girls' mock heroism, and all their arrogance and precision, trust me, girls and lads formed a free and friendly company in the end.


III. Redwater Hospitality.

Clarissa and Dulcie did do the young men service in their calling. They said it would be a shame not to help two such likely fellows (you know they had undauntedly set the one down as a fright and the other as a goose in the morning); they were sure they were industrious and worthy, and they would give bail for their honesty. So they spoke right and left to the few influential families who were at Redwater of the two young painters, who by mere luck had come with them in the waggon, had put up at the "Rod and Fly," and were waiting for commissions. Had the Warrens or the Lorimers not heard of them? they would come bound they were a couple of geniuses, from their conversation.

The old world grinned, and said to the girls' faces that the lasses had better not be too zealous for the lads; they were generally fit to manage their own business, and something more into the bargain. Uncle Barnet would not care to have his niece Clary fling herself away with her tidy fortune on a walking gentleman, though he were a genius.

The result was that Dulcie "bridled" in a twitter of wounded faith and anger. Clarissa was superb and scornful. She ordered a full-length portrait, and fixed the hour for the sitting within the week. Dulcie set off alone with Master Will Locke -- Dulcie, who knew no more of Redwater than he should have done, if his wits had not been woolgathering -- to find the meadow which was beginning to purple over with the meadow saffron.

But for all the townspeople laughed at Mistress Clary's and Mistress Dulcie's flights, they never dreamt of them as unbecoming or containing a bit of harm. Fine girls like Clary and Dulcie, especially an accomplished girl like Clary, who could read French and do japan, besides working to a wish in cross-stitch and tent-sketch, were not persons to be slighted. The inhabitants saw for themselves that the painters had coats which were not out at elbows, and tongues, one of which was always wagging, and the other generally at rest, but which never said a word fairly out of joint. They needed no further introduction; the gentlemen called for the young men, the ladies curtsied to them in the bar of the "Rod and Fly," in the church-porch, in the common shop, and began conversations with them while they were chaffering at the same counter for the same red ribbons to tie up the men and the women's hair alike; and they felt that their manners were vastly polite and gracious, an opinion which was not far from the truth.

The Vicar lent the painters books. The Mayor invited them to supper. The nearest Justice, who was a family man, with a notable wife, had them to a domestic party, where they heard a little girl repeat a fable, and saw the little coach which the Justice had presented to his son and heir, then in long clothes, in which he was to be drawn along the smooth oak boarded passages of the paternal mansion as soon as he could sit upright.

Lastly, Clarissa Gage, under the sufficient guardianship of Cambridge, treated the strangers to a real piece of sport -- a hop on the washing-green, under her mulberry-tree. It commenced at four o'clock in the afternoon, and ended with dusk and the bats, and a gipsy fire, and roasting groats and potatoes in the hot ashes, in imitation of the freakish oyster supper which Clary had attended in town.

Clary took care to have her six couples well assorted, and not to be severed till the merry-making was over; she did not mind uniting herself to Master Sam Winnington, and Dulcie to Master Will Locke -- mind! the arrangement was a courteous compliment to the chief guests, and it gave continual point to the entertainment. The company took a hilarious pleasure in associating the four two-and-two, and commented openly on the distribution: "Mistress Clary is mighty condescending to this jackanapes." "Mistress Dulcie and t'other form a genteel pair."

To be sure the two young men heard the remarks, which they might have taken as broad hints, and the girls heard them too, uttered as they were without disguise; but so healthy were our ancestors, that nobody was put out -- not even soft, mooning Will Locke. Nothing came of it that evening, unless a way Dulcie had of pressing her red lips together, throwing back her little brown head, shaking out the powder from her curls, and shaking down the curls themselves, with a gleeful laugh, which appeared to turn her own "bridling" into derision; and a high assertion of Clary's that she was determined never to wed a man beneath the rank of a county member or a peer. Now, really, after Clary had danced fifteen dances, and was about to dance other five, without stopping, with a portrait painter, of her own free will, this was drawing a longish and very unnecessary bow. But then Sam Winnington did not take it amiss or contradict her. He said she was right, and he had no doubt she would keep her word, and there was a quick, half-comic, half-serious gleam from the depths of his grey eyes which made Clarissa Gage look more bashful and lovelier than any man had ever yet beheld her. Pity the member or the peer could not have been that man!

Imagine the party after Mistress Cambridge had provided them with some of her favourite chickens, and more substantial Dutch beef, with wet fruit and dry, cold Rhenish and sugar, and mulled wine against the dew and damp feet, collecting merrily round the smoky fire, with little jets of flame shooting up and flashing out on the six couples! Sam Winnington in his silk stockings and points neatly trussed at the knee, was on all-fours poking the blue and red potatoes into the glowing holes. Another man with rough waggishness suddenly stirred the fire with an oak branch, and sent a shower of sparks like rockets into the dark blue sky, but so near that it caused the women to recoil, screaming and hiding their faces on convenient shoulders, and lodged half-a-dozen instruments of ignition and combustion in Sam Winnington's hair, singeing it and scorching his ears. Had Sam not been the best-natured and most politic fellow in the world, he would have dragged the aggressor by the collar or the cuff over the smoking crackling wood, and made the ladies shriek in greater earnest.

There was the strange ruddy light now on this face, now on that -- on Will Locke's as he overturned a shovel of groats at Dulcie's feet, and on Dulcie's, so eager to cover his blunder, that she quite forgot the circumstances of the case, and never came to herself till she had burnt all the five tips of her rosy fingers catching the miller's pearls. Then Will Locke was so sorry, stroked the fingers so daintily, hung upon Cambridge so beseechingly, imploring her to prepare a cool mash for Mistress Dulcie's finger points, the moment they were all gone -- that Dulcie could have cried for his tenderness of heart, and quickness and keenness of remorse.

Conjure up the whole fourteen -- the Vicar and Cambridge of the number -- when the fire had sunk white in ashes, when they could scarcely see each other's faces, and only guess each other's garments, having a round at "Puss in the corner," running here and rushing there, seizing this shoulder-knot, holding tight like a child by that skirt, drawing up, pulling back, whirling round all blowsy, all panting, all faint with fun and laughter, and the roguish familiarity which yet thought no evil. Very romping, was it not? very hoydenish? yes certainly. Very improper? by no means. It was practised by dignitaries of the Church, still more classic than the Vicar scuttling and ducking after Cambridge (you never saw the like), and by the pink and pride of English womanhood.

Redwater was hospitable to these painter lads, as we understand hospitality, unquestionably, ungrudgingly hospitable; but it was more than hospitable to them, it was profitable to them in a pecuniary sense, without which great test of its merits they could not long have tarried within its bounds. They were neither fools nor hypocrites to pretend to be clean indifferent to the main chance.

The Vicar fancied a likeness of himself in his surplice, which his parishioners might buy and engrave, if they had a mind to preserve his lineaments when he was no longer among them. The Justice took a notion to have his big girls and his little girls, his boy and nurse, his wife, and himself as the sheltering stem of the whole young growth, in one canvas.

But the great achievement was Sam Winnington's picture of Clarissa, "not as a crazy Kate this time," she told him saucily, "but myself in my hair and brocade, to show what a grand lady I can be." Thus Clarissa dressed herself out in one of those magnificent toilettes all in the autumn mornings, and sat there in state for hours, for the sole benefit of posterity, unless Sam Winnington was to reap a passing advantage by the process. Clarissa in her brocade, with the stiff body and the skirt standing on end, her neckerchief drawn through the straps of her bodice, her bouquet pinned, "French fashion," on her side; surely that picture was a masterpiece. So speaking was the copy of her deep brown hair, her soft, proud cheek, the wave of her ripe red lips, that a tame white pigeon, accustomed to sit on her shoulder, flew into the window right at the canvas, and, striking against the hard, flat surface, fell fluttering and cooing in consternation to the ground. If that was not an acknowledgment of the limner's fidelity, what could be?

Clary, in person, played my lady very well, reclining in her father's great chair. Her hall was roomy enough; it had its space for Sam Winnington's easel as well as Clary's harpsichord, and, what was more useful, her spinning-wheel, besides closets and cupboards without number. Sam Winnington entertained Clarissa; he was famous in years to come for keeping his sisters in good humour. He told her of the academy and the president's parties, of the public gardens and the wild beast shows; and how the Princesses had their trains borne as they crossed the park. He asked her what quality in herself she valued the most; and owned that he was hugely indebted to his coolness. When his colours were not drying fast enough, he read her a page or two of grand heroic reading from Pope's 'Homer' about Agamemnon and Achilles, Helen and Andromache; when she tired of that he was back again to the sparkling gossip of the town, for he was a brilliant fellow, with a clear intellect and a fine taste; and he had stored up and arranged elegantly on the shelves of his memory all the knowledge that was current, and a little more besides.

When he was gone, Clary would meditate what powers of conversation he had, and consider rather glumly how she would miss the portrait painter when he migrated to his native air, the town; how dull Redwater would be; how another face would soon supplant hers on the canvas! He had shown her others in his portfolio quite as blooming and dignified, though he had tumbled them carelessly over; and so he would treat hers when another's was fresh before him. Clary would be restless and cross at her own suppositions; for where is the use of being a beauty and a wit if one must submit to be either forgotten or beaten, even by a portrait painter?

In the meantime, the Vicar also wanted a facsimile of his hayfield, as it looked when the haymakers were among the tedded grass, or under the Redwater ash-trees, to present him with a pleasant spectacle within, now that the bleak autumn was coming on, and there would be nothing without but soaked or battered ground, dark skies, and muddy or snowy ways. The Mayor desired a pig-sty, with the most charming litter of little black and white pigs, as nice as guinea-pigs, and their considerably coarser grunting mamma, done to hand. He was a jolly, prosaic man, Master Mayor, very proud of his prosaicness, as you rarely see a real man of his poetry: he maintained, though Mrs. Mayor nearly swooned at the idea, that he would sooner have a pig-sty than a batch of heroes. Perhaps the heroes of Master Mayor's day had sometimes wallowed in the mire to suggest the comparison. And Clarissa Gage would have her bower done -- her clematis bower before the leaves were brown and shrivelled and there only remained the loving spindle-shanked stems clinging faithfully to the half-rotten framework which they could no longer clothe with verdure.

What a bower Will Locke made of Clary's bower! as unique as Sam Winnington's portrait of Clary herself. It was not the literal bower; and it would not have suited Master Mayor or the Justice, though it might have had a charm for the Vicar. We will go with the Vicar; although he also had his bombast, and, when elevated by company and cheer, denominated Cambridge a goddess, and raised in the poor woman's breast expectations never to be realized. We don't altogether approve that wonderful bit of work, but we like it. There never were such deep damask roses as hung over the trellis, there never were such flaming sunflowers, or pure white lilies as looked in at the sides. Squirrels don't frequent garden bowers unless they are tamed and chained by the leg. Our robin redbreasts are in the fields in summer, and do not perch on boughs opposite speckled thrushes when they can get abundance of worms and flies among the barley. We have not little green lizards at large in England; the only one ever seen at Redwater was in the apothecary's bottle. Still what a bower that is! What a blushing, fluttering bower, trilling with song, glancing and glowing with the bronze mail of beetles and the softened glory of purple emperors! What a thing it was to examine; how you could look in and discover afresh, and dwell for five minutes at a time on that hollow petal of a flower steeped in honey, on that mote of a ladybird crawling to its couch of olive moss.

Dulcie was speechless with admiration before this vision of Clarissa's bower. Heigho! it was an enchanted bower to Dulcie as to Will Locke. It was veritably alive to him, and he could tell her the secrets of that life. What perfume the rose was shedding -- he smelt it about his palette; what hour of the clock the half-closed sunflower was striking; whence the robin and the thrush had come, and what bean fields they had flown over, and what cottage doors they had passed; of what the lizard was dreaming in south or east as he turned over on his slimy side -- all were plain to him.

Ostensibly Dulcie was taking lessons from Will Locke in flower-painting, for Dulcie had a delicate hand and a just eye for colours, and the sweetest, natural fondness for this simple, common, beautiful world. And Will Locke was a patient, indulgent teacher. He was the queerest mixture of gentleness and stubbornness, shyness and confidence, reserve and candour. He claimed little from other people, he exacted a great deal from himself. He was the most retiring lad in society, backward and out of place; he was free with Dulcie as a girl of her own stamp could be. He had the most unhesitating faith in his own ability, he relied on it as on an inspiration, he talked of it to Dulcie, he impressed it upon her until he infected her with his own credulity until she believed him to be one of the greatest painters under the sun. She credited his strangest imagination, and that quiet lad had the fancy of a prince of dreamers.

In the end Dulcie was humble and almost awed in Will Locke's presence. Now here comes the sign of Dulcie's innate beauty of character. Had Dulcie been a commonplace, coarse girl, she would have been wearied, aggrieved, fairly disgusted by Will Locke in three days. But Dulcie was brimfull of reverence, she was generous to the ends of her hair, she liked to feel her heart in her mouth with admiration.

The truth of the matter was, Dulcie would have been fain to lift up Will Locke's pencil as they pretend Cesar served Titian, to clean his palette, gather flowers for him, busk them into a nosegay, preserve them in pure water, and never steal the meanest for her own use. Will Locke was her saint, Dulcie was quite ready to be absorbed in his beams. Well for her if they did not scorch her, poor little moth!

Oh! Dulcie, Dulcie, your friends could not have thought it of you -- not even Clary, tolerably misled on her own account, would have believed you serious in your enamourment, though you had gone down on your knees and sworn it to them. It was nothing but the obliging humour of Mistress Dulcie and the single-heartedness of the youth; still even in this mild view of the case, if their friends had paid proper attention to them, they would have counselled Dulcie to abide more securely by her chair covers, and my simple man to stick more closely to his card or his ivory, his hedges or his hurdles.

Sometimes, late as the season was, Will Locke and Dulcie went out picking their steps in search of plants and animals, and it was fortunate for Dulcie that she could pull her mohair gown through her pocket-holes, and tuck her mob-cap under her chin beneath her hat, for occasionally the boisterous wind lifted that trifling appendage right into the air, and deposited it over a wall or a fence, and Will Locke was not half so quick as Dulcie in tracing the region of its flight, neither was he so active, however willing, in recovering the truant. Why, Dulcie found his own hat for him, and put it on his head to boot one day. He had deposited it on a stone, that he might the better look in the face a dripping rock, shaded with plumes of fern and tufts of grass, and formed into mosaic by tiny sprays of geranium faded into crimson and gold. It was a characteristic of Will that while he was so fanciful in his interpretation, the smallest, commonest text sufficed him. The strolls of these short autumn days were never barren of interest and advantage to him. The man carried his treasures within himself; he only needed the slightest touchstone from the outside world to draw them out. A fieldmouse's nest was nearly as good to him as an eagle's eyrie, an ox-eyed daisy as a white rose, a red hemp-nettle as a foxglove. He put down his hat and stood contemplating the bit of rock, until every morsel of leaf told him its tale, and then proceeded to fill his pockets and hands with what the poorest country boy would have deemed the veriest weeds; and at last he would have faced round, and marched home, unconscious that his fair hair, bleached like a child's, was undefended from a pitiless shower impending over his head. Dulcie lingered dutifully behind, picked up that three-cornered hat timidly, called his attention to his negligence, and while he stooped with the greatest ease in life, she, bashfully turning her eyes another way, finally clapped the covering on his crown, as a mother bonnets her child.


IV. Other Casts Following The Cast In The Waggon.

Clary and Dulcie were slightly censured for their officiousness in the affairs of these painter fellows: but it is in the nature of women not to take well with contradiction: it is in the nature of good women to fly furiously in the face of whatever crosses their generosity, or thwarts their magnanimity.

The crisis came about in this way: Will Locke had finished his work long before Sam; not that Will was more industrious, but he had not got half the commissions at only half the price, and that was about the usual division of labour between them. The two men were born to it. Sam's art took the lucrative shape of portrait-painting; Will's the side of flower and fruit and landscape painting, which was vilely unremunerative then, and allegorical painting, which no one will be at the pains to understand, or, what is more to the purpose, to buy, in this enlightened nineteenth century. Sam, who was thriving already, fell in love with Clarissa Gage, with her six thousand pounds fortune: there was no premeditation, or expediency, or cunning, in the matter; it was the luck of the man. But Will Locke could never have done it: he, who could never make a clear subsistence for himself, must attach himself to a penniless, cheery, quick little girl like Dulcie; and where he could not well maintain one, must provide for two at the lowest estimate. Will Locke was going, and there was no talk of his return; Dulcie was helping him to put up his sketches with her orderly, ready, and respectful hands.

"When we are parted for good, I shall miss you," he said, simply.

Her tender heart throbbed with gratitude, but she only answered, "Are we to be parted for good? Will you never come back to Redwater?"

"I cannot come back like Sam," he affirmed, sadly, not bitterly; "I am not a rising man, Dulcie, though I may paint for future ages."

A bright thought struck Dulcie, softening and warming her girlish face, till it was like one of those faces which look out of Fra Angelico's pictures, and express what we are fond of talking about -- adoration and beneficence: "Could I paint for the potteries, Master Locke?" For, in his noble thriftless way, he had initiated her into some of the very secrets of his tinting, and Dulcie was made bold by the feats she had achieved.

"What should set you labouring on paltry porringers? -- you are provided with your bit and sup, Mistress Dulcie."

"I thought it might be fine to help a great painter like you," confessed the gentle lass; very gently, with reluctance and pain, for it was wrung by compulsion from her maidenliness.

"Do you think so? I love you for thinking it," he said directly: but he would never have done so, brave as he was in his fantasies, without her drawing him on.

However, after that speech, there was no further talk of their parting for good: indeed, Dulcie would do her part; and slave at these "mugs and pigs" to any extent; and all for a look of his painting before he quitted the easel of nights; a walk, hanging upon his arm, up Primrose Hill; a seat by his side on the Sundays in the city church where he worshipped. Dulcie did not care to trouble her friends at home with the matter: instead, she had a proud vision of surprising them with the sight of -- her husband. "They would be for waiting till they could spare money to buy more clothes, or perhaps a chest of drawers; they could not afford it; no more could Will find means to fly up and down the country. Father dear will be pleased to see him so temperate: he cannot drink more than a glass of orange-wine, or a sip of cherry-brandy; he says it makes his head ache: he prefers the clear, cold water, or at most a dish of chocolate. Mother may jeer at him as unmanly; she has a fine spirit, mother: and she may think I might have done better; but mother has grown a little mercenary, and forgotten that she was once young herself, and would have liked to have served a great genius with such a loving heart and such blue eyes as Will's. Ah! the girls will all envy me, when they get a glance from Will's blue eyes: and let them, for he is too good a fellow to look at anybody but his poor ordinary silly wife, and if he did, the odds are that he would not see them: could not see whether their hair were black or red. Ah me! I am not sure whether Will always sees me -- poor me -- and not one of his angels from paradise."

But Dulcie did mean to tell Clary, and to ask her what she would advise her to wear for her wedding-gown, and whether she and Sam Winnington would be best maid and best man. But Clary put her foot through the plan neatly. Clary was in one of her vapourish moods when she inquired one night, "Is Will Locke coming down again, Dulcie? Oh! what ever is he seeking here? What more can we do for him? Nobody wants any more sheep or goats (were they sheep or goats, Dulcie?), or strawberries and currants, unless as mutton, and kid, and preserves. And, Dulcie, you must not stand in your own light, and throw away any more notice upon him; it is wasting your time, and the word of him may keep away others. A match with him would be purely preposterous: even Sam Winnington, who is a great deal more of a scamp, my dear, treats him as a sublime simpleton."

What induced Clary to attempt to lock the stable after the steed was stolen? What drove her off all of a sudden on this dreadfully candid and prudent tack? She only knew. Possibly it was to ease her own troubled conscience: but with Sam Winnington constantly dangling about her skirts, and receiving sufficient encouragement, too, it was hard for Dulcie to bear. She was in a fine passion; she would not tell Clary, after that round of advice; no, not a word. How did she know what Clary would do next? Perhaps forbid Will the house, when he came back from London with the licence, lock her into a room, and write an evil report to her friends? No, Dulcie could keep her own counsel: she was sorry to live in Clary's house, and eat the bread of deceit, but she would not risk Will's happiness as well as her own.

Will Locke reappeared on the scene within a fortnight. The lad did not tell Dulcie, though, that he had walked the most of the way, and that he had rendered himself footsore, in order to be able to count out Dulcie's modest expenses up to town, and perhaps a month's housekeeping beforehand: for that was the extent of his outlook. Will Locke appointed the Vicar to meet him and a young woman in Redwater church, the very morning after his return: there was no use in delay, except to melt down the first money he had hoarded; and Will and Dulcie were like two children, eager to have the business over and done with, and not to do again by the same parties. The Vicar was quite accustomed to these sudden calls, and he submitted to them with a little groan. He did not know who the young woman might be, and he did not care; it might be Mistress Cambridge, it might be Mistress Clarissa herself, it might be the still-room maid, or the barmaid at the "Rod and Fly;" it was all one to him. As for the young painter fellow, the quiet lads were as likely to slip into these scrapes as the rattles; indeed, the chances were rather against them: the Vicar was inclined to cry, "Catch Mr. Sam Winnington in such a corner." But the Vicar was in no way responsible for a youth who was not even his own parishioner; he was not accountable for his not having worldly goods wherewith to endow the young woman whom he was to lead to the altar. Oddly enough, though worldly goods are undoubtedly introduced into the service, there are no accompanying awkward questions: such as, "What are your worldly goods, M.?" or, "Have you any worldly goods, M.?" The Vicar did not care at all, except for his incipient yawns, and his disordered appetite; he was a rebuke to gossips.

When the hour came, Dulcie was distressed: not about wrongdoing, for the girl had no more idea that she was doing wrong than you have when you write a letter on your own responsibility, and at your own dictation; not at the absence of friends, for in Dulcie's day friends were considered very much in the way on such occasions. Indeed, the best accredited and most popular couples would take a start away from their companions and acquaintances, and ride ten miles or so to be married privately, and so escape all ceremony. Dulcie was troubled by the want of a wedding-gown; yes, a wedding-gown, whether it is to wear well or not, is to a woman what a wig is to a barrister, what a uniform is to a soldier. Dulcia's had no existence, not even in a snip; no one could call a half-worn sacque a wedding-gown, and not even her mother's tabby could be brought out for fear of observation. Only think! a scoured silk: how could Dulcie "bridle" becomingly in a scoured silk? There would have been a certain inappropriateness in its shabbiness in the case of one who had done with the vanities of this world: but a scoured silk beside bridal blushes! -- alas, poor Dulcie!

In every other respect, there appears something touching as well as humorous in that primitive marriage-party on the grey October morning, with the autumn sunbeams, silver not golden, faintly brightening the yellowing vine, over the sexton's house, and the orange and grey lichens, the only ornaments outside the solid old church, with its low, heavy Saxon arches. The Vicar bowed with ceremony, and with a dignified and deliberate air, as he recognised Mistress Dulcie; the old clerk and his wrinkled wife stumbled into an apprehension that it was Mistress Clarissa Gage's friend who was to have the knot tied all by herself so early: but it was nothing to them either -- nothing in comparison with the Christmas dole. The lad and lass so trustful, so isolated, making such a tremendous venture, deserved to have the cheery sunshine on their lot, if only for their faith and firmness.

When it was over, Dulcie plucked Will's sleeve, to turn him into the vestry. One must be the guide if not the other, and "it's main often the woman," the old clerk would tell you, with a toothless grin.

Then Dulcie went with Will straight to the "Rod and Fly;" for such was the established rule. These occurrences were so frequent, that they had their etiquette cut out for them. From the "Rod and Fly" Will and Dulcie sent the coolest and most composed, the most perfectly reasonable and polite of messages, to say they had got married together that morning, and that Mistress Cambridge need not have the trouble of keeping breakfast for Mistress Dulcie. A separate apology was sent from Dulcie for not having procured the watercresses which she was to have sought for Cambridge. Further, Mr. and Mrs. Will Locke would expect all of their friends who approved of the step they had taken to come to the "Rod and Fly," and offer their congratulations and drink their healths that morning without fail; as the young couple had to start by the very waggon in which they had first set eyes on each other. "Think of that, Will!" Dulcie had exclaimed, breathlessly, as if she was calling his notice to a natural phenomenon. They had now to ask and receive Dulcie's parents' blessing before they began housekeeping in Will's lodgings in London, on the strength of a month's prices with future orders and outwork from the potteries. Oh! these old easy beginnings! What have we gained by complicating them?

Will Locke and Dulcie had cast the die, and, on the first brush of the affair, their friends at Redwater took it as ill as possible: Clarissa was hysterical, Sam Winnington was as sulky as a bear. If this treatment were to be regarded as a foreshadowing of what the behaviour of the authorities at Fairfax would prove, then the actors in the little drama might shake in their shoes. But Will Locke placidly stood the storm they had brewed, only remembering in years to come some words which Dulcie did not retain for a sun-down. Dulcie was now affronted and hurt, now steady as a stepping-stone and erect as a sweet-pea, when either of the two assailants dared to blame Will, or to imply that he should have refrained from this mischief. Why, what could Will have done? What could she have done without him? She was not ashamed to ask that, the moment they reflected upon Will Locke, though she had not borne his name an hour. Oh! child, child!

Notwithstanding, it was very trying to Dulcie when Clary protested that she never would have believed that Dulcie could have stolen such a march upon her; never. Dulcie to deceive her! Dulcie to betray her! Poor Clary! Whom could she turn to for affection and integrity, in the days that might remain to her in this wicked world? She had walked all along the street with its four or five windows in every gable turned to the thoroughfare, with her handkerchief at her eyes, while the whole town was up, and each window full. She was so spent now, with her exertions and her righteous indignation, that she sat fanning herself in the bar: for Will and Dulcie could not even afford a private room to receive their wedding company so summarily assembled. Never was such a business, in Clary's opinion; not that she had not often heard of its like -- but to happen to a kind, silly, credulous pair, such as Dulcie and Will Locke! Clary sat fanning herself, and casting knots on her pocket-handkerchief, and glancing quickly at Sam Winnington's gloomy, dogged face, so different from the little man's wonted bland, animated countenance. What on earth could make Sam Winnington take the wilful deed so much to heart? Hear him rating Will, whom he had been used to patronize in a careless, gracious style, but upon whom he now turned in strong resentment. These reproaches were not unprovoked, but they were surely out of bounds; and their matter and manner rankled in the breasts of both these men many a day after they had crossed the Rubicon, and travelled far into the country on whose borders they were still pressing.

"You have disgraced yourself and me, sir! You have gone far to ruin the two of us! People will credit us of the same stock: a pair of needy and reckless adventurers!"

"Master Winnington, I was willing: I could do what I liked with myself without your leave; and I suppose Will Locke was equally independent," fired up Dulcie.

"We'll never be mistaken for the same grain, Sam Winnington," declared Will Locke, with something like disdain. "I always knew that we were clean different: and the real substance of the wood will come out more and more distinctly, now that the mere bark is rubbed off."

Clary was modified at last; she kissed and sobbed over Dulcie, wished her joy sincerely, half promised to visit her in town, and slipped a posy ring from her own hand to the bride's, on the very finger where Will Locke had the face to put the marriage-ring which wedded a comely, sprightly, affectionate young woman to struggles and disappointments, and a mad contest between spirit and matter. But Sam Winnington would not so much as shake hands with Will; though he did not bear any malice against Dulcie, and would have kissed her fingers if she would have allowed it: and the young men, erstwhile comrades, looked so glumly and grimly at each other, that it was a universal relief when the great waggon drew up at the inn door.

Dulcie, in another character now, and that even before the fall of the russet leaves -- half ashamed but very proud, the little goose! of the quick transformation -- stepped into the waggon; the same boxes were piled beside her; Will leapt in after her, and away they rolled. There was nothing more for Dulcie to do but to wave her hand to Clary and Cambridge, and the women of the inn (already fathoms deep in her interest), and to realize that she was now a married woman, and had young Will Locke the great painter, in his chrysalis state, to look after.

But why was Sam Winnington so irate? He had never looked sweet on Dulcie for half a second. Was it not rather that a blundering dreamer like Will Locke had anticipated him, marred his tactics, and fatally injured his scientific game? Sam came dropping down upon Redwater whenever he could find leisure, when the snow was on the ground, or when the peaches were plump and juicy, for the next two or three years. If he had not been coming on finely in his profession, heightening his charges five guineas at a time, and if Clary had not possessed that six thousand pounds' fortune, they would have done off the matter in a trice, like Will Locke and Dulcie Cowper. Poor Sam! poor Clary! -- what an expenditure of hours and days and emotions, they contrived for themselves! They were often wretched! and they shook each other's faith: it is doubtful if they ever quite recovered it. They were so low occasionally that it must have been dreadfully difficult for them to get up again; they were so bitter that how they became altogether sweet once more, without any lingering remains of the acrid flavour in their mouths, is scarcely to be imagined. They were good and true in their inmost hearts; but it does appear that some of the tricks of which they were guilty left them less honest human creatures. There was a strong dash of satire in Sam's fun afterwards; there was a sharpness in Clary's temper, and a despotism in her dignity. To be sure, Clary always liked Sam's irony a thousand times better than another man's charity, and Sam ever thought Clary's impatient, imperious ways far before the cooing of any turtle-dove in the wood; but that was only an indication that the real metal was there, not that it was not smirched and corroded with rust.

The first effect of Will and Dulcie's exploit was extremely prejudicial to the second case on the books. Uncle Barnet, a flourishing London barrister, a man with strong lines about his mouth, a wart on his forehead, and great laced flaps at his coat pockets, and who was supposed to be vehemently irresistible in the courts, hurried down to Redwater on purpose to overhaul Clary. What sort of doings were those she presided over in her maiden house at Redwater? Not the runaway marriage of a companion; that occurred every day in the most polite circles; Clary could not fairly be called to account for such a trifle; besides, a girl without a penny might do as she chose. But there was something a vast deal more scandalous lurking in the background: there was word of another fellow of the same kidney buzzing about Clary -- Clary with her six thousand pounds' fortune, her Uncle Barnet, her youth, her handsome person, her what not? Now, as sure as Uncle Barnet's name was Barnet, as he wore a wig, as there was justice in the country, he would have the law of the fellow. Don't tell him the man was advancing rapidly in his profession. What was a painter's profession? -- or the son of a gallant Captain Winnington? If a gallant Captain Winnington could do nothing more than gallant, he did not deserve the name; it was a piece of fudge to cheat foolish women with. Yes; he would have the law of the fellow if he buzzed about his niece; he would have the law of Clary if she encouraged him.

What could Clary do? she had been taught to look up to Uncle Barnet; she had seen polite society under his wife's wing; she had obeyed him at once as her Mentor and her Mecenas -- as her father and prime-minister. She cried and kissed his hand, and promised not to forget her position, and to be a good girl; and as she was not engaged to Sam Winnington, and did not know for certain that he would return to Redwater for the grass-mowing or the hop-gathering, she thought she might be free to promise also that she would not see him again with her will. Of course, she meant to keep her word if she might; but there are two at a bargain-making: and observe, she said "with her will;" she made no reference to Sam Winnington's pleasure. And yet, arrogant as Clary could be on her worst side, she had found her own intentions and purposes knocked down by Sam Winnington's determinations before now.

When Sam Winnington did come down next, Clary had such honour and spirit, that she ordered the door to be shut in his face; but then she cried far more bitterly than she had done to Uncle Barnet, in the same hall where Sam had painted her and jested with her; and somehow her affliction reached Sam's ears, living in a little place like Redwater at the "Rod and Fly" for several days on end.

At last another spice entered into the dish; another puppet appeared on the boards, and increased the disorder of the former puppets. The county member did turn up. Clary was a prophet: he came on a visit to his cousin the Justice, and was struck with tall, red and white, and large-eyed Clary; he furbished up an introduction, and offered her the most marked attention.

Mistress Clarissa was in ecstasy, so her gossips declared, and so she almost persuaded herself, even after she had certain drawbacks to her pleasure, and certain cares intruding upon her exultation; after she was again harassed and pestered with the inconvenient resuscitation of that incorrigible little plain, vain portrait painter, Sam Winnington. He was plain -- he had not the county member's Roman nose; and he was vain -- Clary had already mimicked the fling of his cravat, and the wave of his white hands. Clever, smart fellows, like Sam Winnington, are generally coxcombs. Oh, Sam! where, in order to serve your own turn now, be your purple shadows, your creamy whites, your marvellous reading of people's characters, and writing of the same on their faces, their backs, their very hands and feet, which should leave the world your delighted debtor long after it had forgotten yon member's mighty services?

Clarissa had never danced so many dances with one evening's partner as with the smitten member, at the assembly given on the spur of the moment in his honour, whereat Sam Winnington, standing with his hat under his arm, and leaning against the carved door, was an observant spectator. He was not sullen as when Will Locke and Dulcie tumbled headlong into the pit of matrimony! he was smiling and civil; but his lips were white and his eyes sunken, as if the energetic young painter did not sleep of nights.