The Press., 1895-08-22
Number 21.
attend to other folks dooryards- saucy thing!"

 saucy thing!"
 "Did you see the little boy? ?'
 "Yes, and he had better manners. He sat back in a corner on a box, and kept as quiet as mouse. He's pale, sickly- looking little fellow, and he walks little lame. I've seen him out in the timber picking up sticks to burn. I've heard of them borrowing things all over the neighborhood, but haven't heard of their paying anything back"
 However, the next day Fan came up to our house and returned the sugar she had borrowed the week before, and asked for some more flour. My mother, who was frying doughnuts, gave Fan three or four of these, in addition to the flour, to carry home to her little brother.
 "Oh, I'm ever so much obliged, Mis- Harley!" Fan exclaimed, with tears in her eyes. "Carey'll be so pleased! I was trying to make up my mind to ask you for one for him, but I was ashamed. Dad don't earn scal cely anything, but he's husking corn now for a farmer, and I hope he'll have steady work for awhile"
 But the next evening we heard that 'Dad" had been at Jim Fifer's saloon all day, and we knew that Fans hopes had come to naught. At ten o'clock that same evening my father, as he was pre- pairing to go to bed, heard what seemed to him light, timid knock on the front door.
 It was a dark, cold and stormy night; the wind blew with such force that my father could not be sure that what he heard was knock at the door. He lis- tened, and when the knock was repeated he opened the door. Fan and Carey Ira cy stood there in the cold, bareheaded and without wraps. They had been crying, and Carey's lips were quivering still.
 "Will you let us come in out of the storm, MT. Harley?" said Fan, with bit terness in her voice. "We've no place to go, and I wouldn't ask for any place for myself-Id crawl into haystack or stay in the woods all night; but I don't dare to with Carey. He isn't strong, and I wish you'd please take him in, anyhow"
 "Come in, both of you," replied my father. "Why are you out at this time of the night ?"
 Fan hesitated.
 ''I'll have to tell you the honest truth" she said, presently. "Father came home from that ferry saloon about an hour ago, and turned us out. He never would have done it If he hadn't been drinking. He isn't mean to us when he's sober It's the fault of the saloon that he acts so, and I'll teGr doom that saloon to the ground I just eOiU!"
 "But that would be breaking the law, and another saloon would probably be built in it's place." said father. Perhaps if you spoke to the saloon-keeper it might"
 'I have been to him" interrupted Fan. I've coaxed and begged him not to let father father have drink, but what good did it do? Not a bit.
 She put an arm around Carey protect ingly, and the little fellow clung to her side. My mother rose and prepared a bed for Fan and her little brother.
 The next morning my father went home with them to see if he could not make some appeal to Tracy in behalf of his helpless children.
 The man was sober now and repentant He promised that this should be the last time that he would drink rum.
 "But he's promised that so many times 7" said Fan, wearily, following my father a short distance from the old house. "He promised it over and over to mother before she died, and he'd keep his promise if he could. He can't while there are saloons around. But there'll be one less in this neighborhood some day if this happens again."
 It did happen again. It happened three days later, but this time Tracy did not at first turn his children out of the house. He fell to the floor in a drunken stupor the moment he stumbled across his own threshold, and lay there, a help less, degraded creature, 8 shame and sorrow to his children and to himself.
 Fan had put little Carey to bed before his father came home. Now she sat alone in the dim light of a smoldering fire in the rusty stove at one end of the room. Her father lay, breathing heavily, just where he had fallen when he had stumbled into the house, and Fan sat or crouched down on the floor by the stove and looked at him.
 (Continued next weekly