The St. Johns herald., 1901-05-18
|. A PEACE EIE ADVOCATE Agl|!!g:!g !!!7IEE

Old Carmelius shrank a little. fn spite of himself. The farm house was at a distance from the village. The nearest neighbOr was Will Camps father. The tramps were young. vigor- ous and desperately hungry. Besides, there were four of them.
 You can have one pie" said Car mellus at length, grudgingly.
 Ihank ye, boss, but we'd prefer 'em ah' was the cool reply. "One pie wouldn't go far with us fellers."
 Carmelius' whole soul rose up in de fense or his precious pies. "You can't nave en-" he said. dOggedly. Get out! And he shut the door in the tramps faces and locked it.
 Scarcely had he returned tO his terrf- ned wife and daughter, when there was a grating sound in the pantry. The pies were being removed from the sln or the open window! Then the three plainly heard a man climb over the sill and drop down into the pantry. There was no strategy about It. The tramps understood their physical ad- vantage, and they wanted the pies.
 Carmelius opened the pantry door | and looked in A man stood with his back toward him, slowing pies away in an old sack. Three fierce, intent faces filled up the open window space. Carmelius shut the door, stamped across the kitchen and banged the table savagely with his fist. Then he kicked chair half way across the room. Few things were capable of stirring him to such wrath as the loss of a pie Final ly, he unlocked the kitchen door and Ilmped out to the barn. He stOOS glowering there in the door as the tramps departed with a sack full of pies.
 A week passed. There had been a new pie baking day in the interim. and the Foote's were not disturbed. But when the larder haS once more fallen empty and was being restoeked with the saYory disks, the same gang sud denly reappeared, and once more Ht- orally sacked the pantry. Carmelius was furious-SO furious that he went without pies for a fortnight hoping thus to outwit and defeat the tramDs: for he was a man of peace. But not a ragged Outcast appeared during that time. On the third Wednesday he or dered pie baking again, and just as the last pie was out of the oven the ragged quartette came slouching into the farm yard.
 Carmelius FOOte was harnessing a horse in the barn when he first saw them. Stripping off all but the head stall, he led the horse to the grain box and climbed from thence to it's bare back. Then he thundered out of the barn and down the road.
 In an amazingly short space of time he was seen returning, seated at Will Camps side in the latter's ght buggy. | Will had his soldier clothes On. and his gun rested against the edge of the seat ! between the two men. The buggy rat tied into the farm yard and Will Camp | leaped out. leaving Carmelius to hitch J the horse to the fence with his slow old fingers. The young soldier burst into the house just in time to see the tramp in the pantry crawling over the sill after a sack of pies which he had delivered to his companions. Will Camp appeared at the window. with his Springfield rifle at his shoulder. ''Set down that bag and Gitr' he cried, with a vernacular snap lacking to pro per military language. The tramps dropped their sack with a great elatter of crockery, and ran helter-skelter for the woods.
 Amber and Will were standing side by side, laughing happily, when Car melius FOOte, eX-peace advocate and exemplar, came into the kitchen, flush ed and chuckling.
 ''They might just as well have taken the pies," he said. ''I don't know who'd touch lem now. But we've saved the plates anyhow. and I reckon by the way they skedaddled, the dirty rascals will never turn up again Moth CT, hadn't you better ask Will to sta to tea ?'-POrtland Transcript.