XXI But ten minutes later she saw Mr. Woods in the distance striding across the sunlit terraces, and was seized with a conviction that their interview was likely to prove a stormy one.


Mr. Woods said he had no doubt of it.


You  ah, well, we won't discuss that now. Give me the will, my dear, and I'll burn it before your eyes. That ought to show you, Peggy, that you're wrong." Billy was very white lipped as he ended, for the Woods temper is a short one. But she had an arrow left for him. "Give it to you! And do you think I'd trust you with it, Billy Woods?" "Peggy!


He can afford to grin." Aloud, he stated, "You're an angel, Peggy that's what you are. I've always suspected it, and I'm glad to know it now for a fact. But in this prosaic world not even angels are allowed to burn up wills for recreation.


"Before God!" he said, between his teeth, "loving you as I do, I wouldn't marry you now for all the wealth in the world!


I hate you. What do I care if you _are_ a snob, and a cad, and a fortune hunter, and a forger, and  well, I don't care! Perhaps you haven't ever forged anything yet, but I'm quite sure you would if you ever got an opportunity. You'd be delighted to do it. Yes, you would  you're just the sort of man who _revels_ in crime.


Suave, gentle, sweet as honey was the speech of Margaret as she lifted her face to his, but her eyes were tragedies. "Ah!" said Billy. "Ah  yes  you think  that." He was very careful in articulating his words, was Billy, and afterward he nodded his head gravely.


And you're hinting that I've accepted Billy because of his money, aren't you? Well, it is true that I wouldn't marry him if he were poor. But he's very far from being poor. And he cares for me. And I am fond of him. And so I shall marry him and make him as good a wife as I can. So there!" Mrs. Saumarez faced him with an uneasy defiance.


And now you must take her without the money. Poor Felix! Ah, you poor, petty liar, who've over reached yourself so utterly!" And again Kathleen began to laugh, but somewhat shrilly, somewhat hysterically.


She was peeping at him meltingly from under her lashes. "I  I'm imagining vain things," said Mr. Woods. "I  oh, Peggy, Peggy, I think I must be going mad!" He stared hungrily at the pink, startled face that lifted toward his. Ah, no, no, it could not be possible, this thing he had imagined for a moment.


I grieve to admit it, but with Billy's scruples she hadn't the slightest sympathy. Then Kennaston cried, suddenly: "Why, you're mad, Kathleen! Woods wants to marry _you!_ Why, he's heels over head in love with Miss Hugonin!" Miss Hugonin turned to Mr. Woods with a little intake of the breath.


Why _can't_ you let me alone? Ever since I've had it you've hunted me as if I'd been a wild beast. God help me, I haven't had a moment's peace, a moment's rest, a, moment's quiet, since Uncle Fred died.


Gently the fat old man restrained him. "Yes," said Petheridge Jukesbury; "dear me, yes. Why, dear me, of course."


There must be some way to explain to her, though, because where there's a will there is always a way, and there were three wills.


A part is never greater than the whole, Peggy, but I will explain about that when you open that desk. There are sharks in it. Aren't there, Peggy?  _aren't_ there?" His voice had risen to a querulous tone. Gently the fat old man restrained him. "Yes," said Petheridge Jukesbury; "dear me, yes. Why, dear me, of course."


_Damn_ you!" she screamed, her voice high, flat, quite unhuman; "ah, God in Heaven damn you!"


"But why, attractive?" queried his daughter. "May they be qualified with such and such adjectives!"


When Margaret refused him  for the sixth time, I think  I won't swear that she didn't kiss him under the dark stairway. And if she did, he was a nice boy, and he deserved it.


Behind his fat back, Petheridge Jukesbury waved a cautioning hand at Margaret, who had risen from her chair. "But it is very absurd," Billy murmured, in the mere ghost of a voice, "because men don't propose by mistake except in farces.


Can't you do something for a poor workingman, lady, with a poor dying mother  and a poor, sick wife," Mr. Flinks added as a dolorous afterthought; and drew nearer to her and held out one hand appealingly.


"Lady," said Mr. Flinks, twisting in his grimy hand the bill she had given him  and there, too, the Eagle flaunted in his vigour and heartened him, "lady, that ain't much for you to give.


Oh!" cried the Colonel, and shook an immaculate, withered old hand toward the spring sky, "may they be qualified with such and such adjectives!" And that, so far as we are concerned, was the end of Margaret's satellites. My dear Mrs. Grundy, may one point the somewhat obvious moral?


The Colonel, standing beside her, used language that was unrefined. His aspirations as to the future of Mr. Kennaston and Mr. Jukesbury, it appeared, were both lurid and unfriendly. "But why, attractive?" queried his daughter. "May they be qualified with such and such adjectives!"


she panted; "ah, don't you _dare_!" "Aw, hell!" said Mr. Flinks, disgustedly, and his dirty hands were upon her, and his foul breath reeked in her face. In her hour of need Margaret's heart spoke. "Billy!"


And the sun always rises at an hour when sensible people are abed and have not the least need for its services; which is foolish. And what you and I, my dear madam, are to do about rectifying either one of these vexatious circumstances, I am sure I don't know.


A rich man cannot pass through a needle's eye. Oh, Peggy, Peggy, I love your eyes, but they're so _big_, Peggy!" So Billy Woods lay still and babbled ceaselessly.


Almost happily. Billy was dying, but she knew now, past any doubting, that he loved her.


Afterward, for the first and only time in history, Miss Hugonin fainted  fainted with an anxious smile. Petheridge Jukesbury caught her as she fell, and began to blubber like a whipped schoolboy as he stood there holding her in his arms. XXVII But Billy was not dead.


But this is both cynical and digressive.


And besides, they were utterly engrossed with one another, and utterly happy, and utterly selfish with the immemorial selfishness of lovers, who cannot for a moment conceive that the whole world is not somehow benefited by their happiness and does not await with breathless interest the outcome of their bickerings with the blind bow god, and from this providential delusion derive a meritorious and comfortable glow.


And beside the big open fireplace, where a wood fire chattered companionably, sat a very pallid Billy, a rather thin Billy, with a great many bandages about his head.


oh, the hint of faint, nameless perfume she diffused! thus ran the meditations of Billy's dizzied brain. "Listen! I told you I burned the other will.


Oh, Peggy. Peggy, if you could only have loved me! if only this accursed money hadn't spoiled you so utterly!


Ready, Peggy?" "It may be honourable, but it's _extremely_ silly," Margaret temporised, "and for my part, I'm very, very glad God had run out of a sense of honour when He created the woman."


Then Billy clamoured for Colonel Hugonin, and subsequently the Colonel came in some bewilderment to his daughter's rooms.


In the summer house I thought for a moment  ah, well, you've shown in a hundred ways that you don't care  and I wouldn't have you come to me, not caring. So I'm going to burn the paper, dear." Margaret bowed her head. Had she ever known happiness before?


"But," said she, "if the Fates are kind to me  and I sometimes think I _have_ a pull with the gods  I'll make you happy, Billy Woods, in spite of yourself." The mirror flashed back a smile. Margaret was strangely interested in the mirror.


the fat twisted coils tumbled loose and slowly unravelled themselves, and her pink and white face, half eclipsed, showed a delectable wedge between big, odourful, crinkly, ponderous masses of hair.


"Peggy!" This was the first observation of Mr. Woods when he came to his senses. He swore feebly when Peggy was denied to him.


And scattered about it were birds, and butterflies, and snaky, emaciated dragons, with backs like saw teeth, and prodigious fangs, and claws, and very curly tails, such as they breed in Nankeen plates and used to breed on packages of fire crackers  all done in gold, the gold of her hair.


And you made me promise not to take any steps in the matter till you got well. I knew you would.


On this point Jeal was adamantean. "In a sick room," he vehemently declared, "a woman is well enough, but _the_ woman is the devil and all.


I consider that a very silly reason. I'll _make_ Billy Woods take the money, and I'll make him see that I'm _not_ a little pig, and that I trust him implicitly. And I think I'm quite justified in using a little  we'll call it diplomacy  because otherwise he'd go back to France or some other objectionable place, and we'd both be _very_ unhappy." Margaret began to laugh softly.


The metallic blocks are used for a great variety of purposes. There are some high class artists who have immortalized themselves by their master pieces, one of which I saw on a five cornered metallic sheet measuring about eight feet in diameter.


The homes of Stazza are made of metallic substances. There are a few minerals very plentiful, resembling brass, and it is a common sight to see polished buildings fantastic in their arrangement, shining through the pellucid water like gold.


The cities are built on gentle inclines in the deeper waters and present a picturesque scene. They look more like a cluster of giant fairy abodes than like New York or London.


In the waters of Stazza there are many under currents similar to our Gulf Stream. These are used by the inhabitants for transportation.


They construct little hammock cars so that when they are filled with human freight they float in the water.


Of course the land strips are not inhabited by human beings, but vegetation is abundant, similar to that found in our tropical regions. Many kinds of fruit, growing on the land, are sought after by the masters of the water.


] There is nothing more interesting about this race of beings than the manner in which they pluck land fruit and catch land animals, and yet when you compare this with our world, it is the same to them as fishing is to us.


A car of special design is furnished by each community in which each bridal pair spends the Wedlock Ride, or the Honey Moon, as we would call it.


"I would like to be of some comfort," Paredes answered gravely. His fingers on the banister made that restless, groping movement. Graham summoned Katherine. One of the black clothed men opened the door of Silas Blackburn's room. He stepped aside, beckoning. He had an air of a showman craving approbation for the surprise he has arranged.


"Ought I to want you to stand by me?" Bobby said. "Oughtn't I to make a clean breast of it? At least I must do something about Paredes."


And Bobby turned and hurried back along the roughly restored path, as if fleeing from an immaterial thing suddenly quickened with the power of accusation.


"Fact is, Bobby, I left New York too suddenly. I hadn't noticed until a little while ago. You see I spent a good deal in Smithtown yesterday."


He saw that the district attorney realized that, too, for he sprang from his chair, and, followed by Rawlins, started upward. The entire company crowded the stairs. At the top Bobby found Paredes at his side. "Carlos! Why do you come?"


So for the second time the living met the dead, and the law watched hopefully. Robinson stood opposite, but he didn't look at Silas Blackburn who could no longer accuse.


Paredes sipped the coffee which Jenkins had poured. "Splendid coffee! You should have tasted what I had this morning. Simple enough, Mr. Graham. I telephoned as soon as Rawlins got me to the Bastille. I communicated with the lawyer who represents the company for which I once worked. He's a prominent and brilliant man.


That he should have come back at all was sufficiently strange, but it was harder to understand why he should express no resentment for his treatment yesterday, why he should fail to refer to Bobby's questions at the moment of his arrest, or to the openly expressed enmity of Graham. Only one theory promised to fit at all. It was necessary for the Panamanian to return to the Cedars.


GRIEF AND HIS DUE When Jupiter was assigning the various gods their privileges, it so happened that Grief was not present with the rest: but when all had received their share, he too entered and claimed his due.


Squire Harrington likewise learned all about the man's doings on the previous afternoon, and was able to fix the time at which he had started for home.


It was wet and besmirched with mud, and, in fact was lying half in and half out of a little puddle of water when it was found. Then the searchers made sure of finding the body.


But in this they were disappointed. They explored the recesses of the swamp from end to end and side to side with the utmost thoroughness, but found nothing further to reward their search.


Squire Harrington was especially active, and left no stone unturned to unravel the mystery. Lapierre gave up all his time to the search, and left the Royal Oak to the care of its landlady. The local constabulary bestirred themselves as they had never done before.


The ground was too soft and marshy to retain any traces of footsteps, and the mare and saddle furnished the only evidence that the object of their quest had been in the neighborhood of the swamp  and of course this evidence was of the most vague and inconclusive character.


A reward of a hundred pounds was offered for any information which should lead to the discovery of the missing man, dead or alive, or, which should throw any light upon his fate.


He was of a cheery, open nature; was not greedy or grasping; had a fairly prosperous business, and was tolerably well to do. On the night of the 17th, he had undertaken to go down town and bring home the absent man, but he had done so at the pressing request of the man's wife, and out of pure kindness of heart.


Again, he could not have had any conceivable motive for making away with Savareen, as he had been working all day in the fields and knew nothing about the four hundred pounds. Besides, a little quiet investigation proved the thing to be an absolute impossibility.


The only other persons upon whom the shadow of suspicion could by any possibility fall were Lapierre and Jonathan Perry. Well, so far as the latter was concerned the idea was too absurd for serious consideration. To begin with, Jonathan was seventy six years of age, feeble and almost decrepid. Then, he was a man of excellent character, and, notwithstanding his humble station in life, was liked and respected by all who knew him.


Steve Parker, the district game protector, aimed his Leica at the carcass of the dog and snapped the shutter. "We're doing something about it," he said shortly. Then he stepped ten feet to the left and edged around the mangled heifer, choosing an angle for his camera shot.


"The surplus stores are full of machetes and jungle knives," the sergeant considered. "I think I'll call up Doc Winters, at the County Hospital, and see if all his squirrel fodder is present and accounted for."


For half an hour, they followed the brush grown trail beside the little stream; once, they passed a dark gray commercial model jeep, backed to one side. Then they came to the head of the gap.


"You were just finishing one, about fifty paraseconds off, when I came through," Verkan Vall told her. The girl looked at him in obviously feigned indignation.


"Paratime Police Field, back of the Paratime Administration Building." "Right, sir. Twenty seconds to blast, when you're ready." "Ready now." Verkan Vall relaxed, counting seconds subconsciously.


Taking the disk of blue plastic from his packet, he handed it to the clerk at the desk, who dropped it into a slot in the voder in front of him.


On the Fourth Level, the colonists evidently met with some disaster and lost all memory of their extraterrestrial origin, as well as all extraterrestrial culture. As far as they know, they are an indigenous race; they have a long pre history of stone age savagery.


Verkan Vall blew smoke at the air renovator. A lecture on paratime theory would nicely fill in the three hour interval until the landing at Dhergabar. At least, this kid was asking intelligent questions.


"Sectors are areas of paratime on any level in which the prevalent culture has a common origin and common characteristics. They are divided more or less arbitrarily into sub sectors. Belts are areas within sub sectors where conditions are the result of recent alternate probabilities.


Verkan Vall had been expecting it; he answered patiently. "The Ghaldron Hesthor field generator is like every other mechanism; it can operate only in the area of primary time in which it exists.


Walking briskly to a patch of damp ground beside the little stream, he leaned the rifle against a tree and opened the bag.


First, he took out a pair of gloves of some greenish, rubberlike substance, and put them on, drawing the long gauntlets up over his coat sleeves. Then he produced a bottle and unscrewed the cap.


It excited the curiosity of a couple of police officers and a game protector, who should be familiar with the weapons of their own time line. I evaded by disclaiming ownership or intimate knowledge, and they seemed satisfied, but it worried me."


"Yes. That was made in our duplicating shops, here in Dhergabar." Tortha Karf carried it to a photographic bench, behind his desk. "I'll have it checked, while you're taking your hypno mech. Want to exchange it for something authentic?"


"But when you've been at this desk as long as I have, you'll have a sour moment or two, now and then, too."


Verkan Vall bent and took cloth wrapped objects from his bag, unwrapping them and laying them on the desk. They were casts, in hard black plastic, of the footprints of some large three toed animal. "What do these look like, sir?" he asked.


"Exactly. And then, instead of beating their brains about _where_ their specimen came from, they'll begin asking _when_ it came from.


After we began paratime transposition, our population climbed to ten billion, and there it stayed for the last eight thousand years. Just enough of us to enjoy our planet and the other planets of the system to the fullest; enough of everything for everybody that nobody needs fight anybody for anything.


That was all right. But then, Captain Kalzarn ordered away a flight of antigrav disks, fully manned, to take pictures, and finally authorized a landing in the western mountain range, Northern Continent, Minor Land Mass. That's when the trouble started." He flipped the run back switch, till he had recovered the page he wanted.


Electricity, as a medicinal agent, is rapidly going out of use, as it has been proved that it has very little effect, except in special cases. The reader is advised against the purchase of any electrical appliance for beautifying or other purposes without the advice of a physician.


Mortgaged property cannot be moved, altered, or changed without the consent of the mortgagor.


=  The glory of the American merchant service, so far as sailing vessels are concerned, has passed into history. Comparatively few sailing vessels, save coasting schooners, ply the seas, as steam has taken the place of sail.


About 60 years ago scientific bodies refused to consider it, as it was proved to be impossible.


It was introduced into England in 1766. =Plate Glass.=  The sand, out of which glass is made, is melted until it is of about the consistency of molasses.


10. Crusade of Louis IX.  Unfortunately, Louis, during a severe illness, made a vow to go on a crusade. His first fulfilment of this vow was made early in his reign, in 1250, when his mother was still alive to undertake the regency.


The country we now know as France is the tract of land shut in by the British Channel, the Bay of Biscay, the Pyrenees, the Mediterranean, and the Alps.


His attempt was to attack the heart of the Saracen power in Egypt, and he effected a landing and took the city of Damietta. There he left his queen, and advanced on Cairo; but near Mansourah he found himself entangled in the canals of the Nile, and with a great army of Mamelukes in front.


What most checked the ravages of these pirates was the resistance of Paris, a town which commanded the road along the river Seine; and it was in defending the city of Paris from the Northmen, that a warrior named Robert the Strong gained the trust and affection of the inhabitants of the Neustrian kingdom.


Romance and poetry were flourishing, and influencing people's habits, so that courtesy, _i.e._ the manners taught in castle courts, was softening the demeanour of knights and nobles.


A Salic law, so called from the place whence the Franks had come, was supposed to exist; but this had never been used by their subjects, whose law remained that of the old Roman Empire.


There was an understanding that the king could only act by their consent, and must be chosen by them; but matters went more by old custom and the right of the strongest than by any law.


Dreadful execution was done; the whole country was laid waste, and Raymond reduced to such distress that Peter I.


_, William, Duke of Normandy, obtained the kingdom of England, and thus became far more powerful than his suzerain, the King of France, a weak man of vicious habits, who lay for many years of his life under sentence of excommunication for an adulterous marriage with Bertrade de Montfort, Countess of Anjou.


Pope Innocent III., after sending some of the order of friars freshly established by the Spaniard, Dominic, to preach to them in vain, declared them as great enemies of the faith as Mahometans, and proclaimed a crusade against them and their chief supporter, Raymond, Count of Toulouse.


While fighting his uncle's battles on the Pyrenees, and besieging Gerona, Philip III. caught a fever, and died on his way home in 1285. His successor, _Philip IV.


After seventeen years' vengeance for his father's death, the Duke of Burgundy made his peace with Charles by a treaty at Arras, on condition of paying no more homage, in 1434. Bedford died soon after, and there were nothing but disputes among the English.


Six offered themselves, but their lives were spared, and they were honourably treated. Edward expelled all the French, and made Calais an English settlement.


Charles was of a slow, sluggish nature, and the men around him were selfish and pleasure loving intriguers, who kept aloof all the bolder spirits from him.


There had been grievous havoc of buildings in the north and centre of France; much lawlessness and cruelty prevailed; and yet there was a certain advance in learning, and much love of romance and the theory of chivalry.


6. House of Burgundy.  _Charles VI._ was a boy of nine years old, motherless, and beset with ambitious uncles.


These years of war had created a dreadful class of men, namely, hired soldiers of all nations, who, under some noted leader, sold their services to whatever prince might need them, under the name of Free Companies, and when unemployed lived by plunder.


Leading the army with a consecrated sword, which she never stained with blood, she filled the French with confidence, the English with fear as of a witch, and thus she gained the day wherever she appeared.


Renewal of the War.  This expedition ruined the prince's health, and exhausted his treasury.


The Burgundians hated her even more than the English. The inquisitor was of their party, and a court was held at Rouen, which condemned her to die as a witch. Bedford consented, but left the city before the execution.


The Armagnacs were admitted into Paris, and took a terrible vengeance on the Butchers and on all adherents of Burgundy, in the name of the Dauphin Louis, the king's eldest son, a weak, dissipated youth, who was entirely led by the Count of Armagnac.


Edward was called in to the aid of the citizens of Ghent by their leader Jacob van Arteveldt; and gained a great victory over the French fleet at Sluys, but with no important result.


Charles showed himself from this time a wary, able man, and did much to regain what had been lost by craftily watching his opportunity.


But though Joan was gone, her work lasted.


The Swiss were incited by Louis to join them; René of Lorraine made common cause with them.


His brother had been already elected to the Empire, but his son Philip II. became King of Spain and Naples, and also inherited the Low Countries.


But the insolent exactions of the French soldiery caused the people to rise against them; and when Charles returned, he was beset at Fornovo by a great league of Italians, over whom he gained a complete victory.


Learning and scholarship, especially classical, increased much; and the king's sister, Margaret, Queen of Navarre, was an excellent and highly cultivated woman, but even her writings prove that the whole tone of feeling was terribly coarse, when not vicious.


The war was soon renewed. Francis set up a claim to Savoy, as the key of Italy, allied himself with the Turks and Moors, and slaves taken by them on the coasts of Italy and Spain were actually brought into Marseilles.


After the siege a five years' truce was made, during which Charles V. resigned his crowns.


_Francis I._ was one of the vainest, falsest, and most dashing of Frenchmen.


He was meditating another expedition, when he struck his head against the top of a doorway, and died in 1498.


He died only two years later, in 1547.


"Follow my white plume," his last order to his troops, became one of the sayings the French love to remember.


Moreover, the presentation to the civil offices held by lawyers was made hereditary in their families, on payment of a sum down, and of fees at the death of each holder.


A conspiracy for seizing the person of the king and destroying the Guises at the castle of Amboise was detected in time to make it fruitless.


Many of the great men who made France illustrious were either ending or beginning their careers at this time.


Their hovels and their food were wretched, and any attempt to amend their condition on the part of their lord would have been looked on as betokening dangerous designs, and probably have landed him in the Bastille.


Anne of Austria held fast by Mazarin, and was supported by the Duke of Enghien, whom his father's death had made Prince of Condé.


And at this time the ambition of France found a favourable field in the state both of Germany and of Spain.


The Thirty Years' War had been raging in Germany for many years, and France had taken no part in it, beyond encouraging the Swedes and the Protestant Germans, as the enemies of the Emperor.


Richelieu was quick to seize this pretext for attacking Spain, for Spain was now dying into a weak power, and he saw in the war a means of acquiring the Netherlands, which belonged to the Spanish crown.


7. War in the Low Countries.


The last of the four great wars of Louis's reign was far more unfortunate.


In Spain Louis was ultimately successful, and his grandson Philip V.


Princes of the blood and nobles of every degree were contented to hang about the court, crowding into the most narrow lodgings at Versailles, and thronging its anterooms; and to be ordered to remain in the country was a most severe punishment.


All freedom of worship was denied them; their ministers were banished, but their flocks were not allowed to follow them. If taken while trying to escape, men were sent to the galleys, women to captivity, and children to convents for education.


On the plea of a supposed inheritance of his sister in law, the Duchess of Orleans, Louis invaded the Palatinate on the Rhine, and carried on one of the most ferocious wars in history, while he was at the same time supporting the cause of his cousin, James II.


The Duke of Orleans died suddenly in 1723.


To be accused of "conspiring against the State" was instantly fatal, and no one's life was safe.


The real desire of France was to obtain the much coveted frontier of the Rhine, and the Emperor heated their armies with boastful proclamations which were but the prelude to direful defeats, at Weissenburg, Wörth, and Forbach.


His wife, the Empress Eugènie, had to flee, a republic was declared, and the city prepared to stand a siege. The Germans advanced, and put down all resistance in other parts of France.


Louis Philippe did his best to gratify and amuse the people by sending for the remains of Napoleon, and giving him a magnificent funeral and splendid monument among his old soldiers  the Invalides; but his popularity was waning.


Almost every possible combination of topics may be found in the text books now on the market, ranging all the way from the strictly chronological presentation of the events to an apparent disregard of the time element altogether.


It is an easy and a natural transition from the development of trade as affected by the Crusades to a consideration of the towns themselves and town life.


A number of circumstances combined together in Italy to accentuate city development, not the least of which was the failure of the popes and emperors to realize their dreams of universal dominion.


It may be a comparatively easy matter to reach a conclusion as to the order of the first few topics, say to the revival of the empire by Otto I, but from that time forward to the Renaissance so many combinations and arrangements are possible that it becomes increasingly difficult to hit upon an order which is entirely satisfactory.


And the tendency of twenty four hundred years ago as well as of to day was and is to give larger right and opportunity to the common man. Greek Poetry and Architecture.


In the smaller towns pictures of famous buildings may be used. (Remember that the dome is not Greek, but Roman.)


Doubtless trade plays a larger part in political development than many people think. And desire for trade and wealth was a great motive in the upbuilding of the Athenian empire out of the Delian League.


Pictures may be made of great service. Teachers in our great centers, who have their own history rooms, with their proper apparatus and adornments, have a great advantage here; but humbler means, like the Perry pictures, are available by all.


So the wealth and the political pre eminence that Athens gained out of the Delian League gave her genius means and scope for its perfect flowering in the age of Pericles. And that will bring us to our next chapter.


This isolated development, in spite of the common language, games and festivities, was the perpetual weakness of Greece.


Her armed efficiency more than once saved Greece as a whole when the less practical Athenian system had broken down.


The social struggle, with its various mitigations of the lot of the very poor parallels the political strife. Our children are breathing in from the papers and from current discussions the idea that our social inequalities and our contest between capital and labor are a new phenomenon.


"Ridiculous!" cried the baronet; and he proceeded to argue his hellish project in a manner which showed how fully he had considered it in all its details, and how artfully he had devised the means to render an exposure improbable.


"I will endeavour to render it a little more interesting," observed the baronet complacently. "A few days ago I called at Torrens Cottage, and found the house in the greatest confusion.


At first he was astounded when the light began to dawn upon him, and he caught a glimpse of my meaning; but as I carelessly displayed a roll of notes before him, he grew attentive, and appeared to reflect profoundly."


Love for his daughters he has not: he merely regards them as beautiful objects, to be sold to the highest bidder—and on what terms he scarcely cares, so that they become the means of producing him money.


I was not unprepared for such an objection; and I accordingly proposed that he should permit Clarence Villiers to marry Adelais without delay—her drooping health serving as the plea for this relenting disposition on his part.


"No: as my mistress—as any thing I choose," returned Sir Henry Courtenay, emphatically. Mrs. Slingsby shuddered from head to foot.


A sheriff's officer entered and arrested Mr. Torrens for a considerable amount—seven hundred pounds.


Rosamond was to remain with her father, Mrs. Slingsby not having as yet sent her an invitation to Old Burlington Street, for fear that Clarence might throw some obstacle in the way of its being accepted.


"God grant that my dearest sister may be happy!" said the maiden, her voice almost completely lost in sobs. "If she is not, it will be her own fault," observed Mr. Torrens harshly, as he paced the room.


"Heavens! how have I deserved these reproaches—at least to day?" asked Rosamond, bursting into an agony of tears.


For it must necessarily occur that the "upper classes," as they insolently denominate themselves, are the most profligate, unprincipled, and licentious of all the sections into which society is divided.


Mr. Torrens was cold, moody, and distant: but this was his manner—and, as the young people knew not what fierce fires raged beneath that aspect of ice, they did not bestow any unusual attention on the subject.


Acute—intensely acute was the pain which he endured in endeavouring to subdue those emotions,—or rather in composing his features in such a way that his countenance might not indicate the awful warring that disturbed his soul.


Yet I suspect the impression Brougham generally leaves is that of a good natured friend.


Rather a tearing, mocking, pugnacious cast of countenance. The mouth is fashioned to the saying of harsh, hard, impertinent things: not cruel, but downright; but never to whisper compliments, or simper out platitudes.


When I first saw this eminent person, he gave me the idea of a French Virgil. Not that he was like a Frenchman, much less the French translator of Virgil. I found him as handsome as the Abbé Delille is said to have been ugly.


My impression of him was what I conceived Shakespeare's idea of a gentleman to be, something which we like to have in a picture.


"_Our Father_," gave the key note of freedom. "Ye are _all_ the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus."


We are not left entirely to conjecture as to the effect of female influence on home life when it is exerted under these unenlightened and demoralizing conditions.


Moreover, the Mohammedan nations, for all purposes of common elevation and for all efforts of philanthropy and liberty, are (as they live in public and beyond the inner recesses of their homes) but a truncated and imperfect exhibition of humanity.


There may, it is true, be some advance, from time to time, in science and in material prosperity; but the social groundwork for the same is wanting, and the people surely relapse into the semi barbarism forced upon them by an ordinance which is opposed to the best instincts of humanity.


They acknowledge, indeed, that Jesus was a true prophet sent of God; but they deny his crucifixion and death, and they know nothing of the power of his resurrection.


_Second._ The inducements, whether material or spiritual, to embrace Islam have proved insufficient of themselves (speaking broadly) to spread the faith, in the absence of the sword, and without the influence of the political or secular arm.


At the root of its fairest culture a worm has ever lived that has caused its blossoms soon to wither and die.


Contrast with this our Saviour's words, "_He which made them at the beginning made them male and female....


"[k] Men are to treat "the elder women as mothers; the younger as sisters, with all purity."


[77] And this law, coupled with other restrictions of the kind, has led to the imposition of the _boorka_ or _purdah_ (the dress which conceals the person and the veil) and to the greater or less seclusion of the harem and zenana.


Farther, he will then extend a helping hand to his Eastern brother with far more of sensibility and tenderness; and in proportion to the measure of his loving sympathy will doubtless be the measure of his success.


Here is one passage out of multitudes similar: "Hurl thy hottest thunder bolt upon them! Uproot them! Cleave them asunder! O, Indra, overpower, subdue, slay the demon!


But the great offering was the Asvamedha, or sacrifice of the horse. The body of the horse was hacked to pieces; the fragments were dressed  part was boiled, part roasted; some of the flesh was then eaten by the persons present, and the rest was offered to the gods.


How could these be the thoughts, or those the expressions, of the imperfectly civilized shepherds of the Panjab? But if it be only a hymn book, with its materials arranged for liturgical purposes, the difficulty vanishes.


He alone knew the sacred verses and the sacred rites. An error in the pronunciation of the mystic text might bring destruction on the worshiper; what could he do but lean upon the priest?


Talismans, plants, or gems are invoked, as possessed of irresistible might to kill or heal.


Of these a few are equal to those in the Rig Veda; but, as a whole, the Atharva is far inferior to the other in a moral and spiritual point of view. It abounds in imprecations, charms for the destruction of enemies, and so forth.


An acute critic has affirmed that the Vedic poems are "pre eminently sacerdotal, and in no sense popular."[1] We can thus explain a pervading characteristic of the book which has taken most readers by surprise.


] The deities are generally said in the Veda to be "thrice eleven" in number.


The next in importance is the Atharva, sometimes termed the Brahma Veda; which we may render the Veda of incantations. It contains six hundred and seventy hymns.


] The winds are his breath, the sun his eye, the sky his garment. He rewards the good and punishes the wicked.


] We have first referred to Agni and Soma, as being the only divinities of highest rank which still retain their physical character.


With all the qualifications now stated, the Veda must retain a position of high importance for all who study Indian thought and life. The religious stamp which the compilers of the Veda impressed so widely and so deeply has not been obliterated in the course of thirty centuries.


The conceptions and feelings hence arising have from the beginning powerfully affected the religion of the Hindus. Every where we can trace the impress of the grander manifestations of nature  the impress of their beneficence, their beauty, their might, their mystery, or their terribleness.


The winkings of men's eyes are numbered by him. He upholds order, both physical and moral, throughout the universe.


] In the religion of the Rig Veda we hardly see fetichism  if by fetichism we mean the worship of small physical objects, such as stones, shells, plants, etc.


The pantheism is sometimes not so much a coldly reasoned system as an aspiration, a yearning, a deep felt need of something better than the mob of gods who came in the train of Indra, and the darker deities who were still crowding in.


Ignorance makes the soul think itself different from God; and it also "projects" the appearance of an external world.


Then, he preached  he, though not a Brahman  in the vernacular languages  an immense innovation, which made his teachings popular. He put in the forefront of his system certain great fundamental principles of morality.


A learned writer thus expresses himself: "The only one of the six schools that seem to recognize the doctrine of divine providence is the Yoga.


The later form is so, but it says nothing of the moral attributes of God, nor of his government.


] When we compare the religion embodied in the Puranas with that of Vedic times we are startled at the magnitude of the change. The Pantheon is largely new; old deities have been superseded; other deities have taken their place.


He grinds some white powder, mixing it with water; dips the ends of his three forefingers in it and draws them across the image.


The great poem in which it is described at fullest length  the Ramayana of Valmiki  seems to have been an alteration, made in the interests of Hinduism, of early Buddhist legends; and the Buddhist quality of gentleness has not disappeared in the history.


It has still its purer instincts; and, when the legends about abominable gods and goddesses are falling like mildew, these are still to some extent kept alive by the sweet influences of earth and sky and by the charities of family life.


Its renowned sages were noted for irritability and selfishness  great men at cursing; and the gods for the most part were worse.


When we turn from such representations of divinity to "the Word made flesh" we seem to have escaped from the pestilential air of a charnel house to the sweet, pure breath of heaven.


Then comes the beatific vision of God. Glorified in soul and body, the companion of angels and saints, strong in immortal youth, he will serve without let or hinderance the God and Saviour whom he loves.


How unlike in all this is the Gospel!


How unlike in all this is the Gospel! The Bible dwells with all possible earnestness on the evil of sin, not of ceremonial but moral defilement  the transgression of the divine law, the eternal law of right. [Sidenote: Atonement.


] Hinduism is deplorably deficient in power to raise and purify the human soul, from having no high example of moral excellence. Its renowned sages were noted for irritability and selfishness  great men at cursing; and the gods for the most part were worse.


Poor India! No wonder if her mind is bewildered as she listens to such a Babel of voices.


Vagaries, either in doctrine or rites, have been carefully shunned; its partisans profess a pure Theistic creed and labor diligently in the cause of social reform.


4. If I commit any sin through the weakness of my moral nature I will repent of it and ask the pardon of God.


_ One God, one Scripture, one Church. _b._ Eternal progress of the soul. _c._ Communion of prophets and saints. _d._ Fatherhood and motherhood of God. _e._ Brotherhood of man and sisterhood of woman.


Now, Mr. Sen had been earnest and successful in getting the Brahmo Marriage Act passed, which ruled that the lowest marriageable age for a woman was fourteen, and for a man eighteen.


In quite recent times they have had successors. Some account of their work may form a fitting conclusion to our discussion. [Sidenote: Advance of Christianity in India.] With the large influx into India of Christian ideas it was to be expected that some impression would be made on Hinduism.


Since the death of Mr. Sen there has been a violent dispute between his family and the "Apostolic Durbar," on one side, and one of his ablest followers, on the other; and the New Dispensation will probably split in two, if it does not perish altogether.


We formerly noted that, in India, there have arisen from time to time men who saw and sorrowed over the erroneous doctrines and degrading rites of the popular system. In quite recent times they have had successors. Some account of their work may form a fitting conclusion to our discussion. [Sidenote: Advance of Christianity in India.


The drawbacks and attractions of the system are examined. The former were not such as to deter men of the world from embracing the faith. The sexual indulgences sanctioned by it are such as to make Islam "the Easy way."


Without the truths contained in the system success would have been impossible, but neither without the sword would the religion have been planted in Arabia, nor beyond. The alternatives offered to conquered peoples were Islam, the sword, or tribute.


He was simply the preacher commissioned to deliver a message, and bidden to leave the responsibility with his Master and his hearers.


If Christian nations are (as with shame it must be confessed) in some strata of society immoral, it is in the teeth of their divine law.


Besides the churches spared at the time of conquest no new buildings can be erected for the purposes of worship; nor can free entrance into their holy places at pleasure be refused to the Moslem.


Victory is from the Lord. He is mighty and wise. I the Lord will cast terror into the hearts of the infidels. Strike off their heads and their fingers' ends.


Their children must be taught by Moslem masters, and the race, however able or well qualified, proscribed from any office of high emolument or trust.


All this is true; but it is still not the less true that without the sword Islam would never have been planted even in Arabia, much less ever have spread to the countries beyond.


This they do to be seen of me, while their convictions, I am well aware, are just the opposite of that which they profess.


... And not content therewith, instead of humbling thyself before the Lord, and seeking pardon for the crime, thou sayest of such a one slain in the war that "he hath earned paradise," and thou namest him "a martyr in the ways of the Lord!"


Abdal Rahman, one of the "companions" of Mohammed, had issue by sixteen wives, not counting slave girls.[62] Moghira ibn Shoba, another "companion," and governor of Kufa and Bussorah, had in his harem eighty consorts, free and servile.


Thus Al Mamun himself, in a speech delivered before his council, characterizes certain of his courtiers accused as secret adherents of the Zoroastrian faith: "Though professing Islam, they are free from the same.


how close art thou beneath the arrow's point and the falchion's flash!


] Having escaped from Mecca and found a new and congenial home in Medina, Mohammed was not long in changing his front. At Mecca, surrounded by enemies, he taught toleration.


And so there came over to them the kings and great ones of the earth.


While thus she fared, from Ravenswood Came Injuns o'er the plain, And seized upon that beauteous maid And rent her doll in twain. Oh, 't was a piteous thing to hear Her lamentations wild; She tore her golden curls and cried: "My child! My child! My child!"


Then in affright I call him   I hear his gleeful shouts! Begone, ye dread forebodings   Begone, ye killing doubts! For, with my arms about him, My heart warms through and through With the oogling and the googling Of my little Googly Goo!


The sunbeams hear his music, And they seek his little bed, And they dance their prettiest dances Round his golden curly head: Schottisches, galops, minuets, Gavottes and waltzes, too, Dance they unto the music Of my googling Googly Goo.


He wuz long in the bar'l, like a fyce oughter be; His color wuz yaller as ever you see; His tail, curlin' upward, wuz long, loose, an' slim   When he didn't wag it, why, the tail it wagged him!


Of daytimes he'd sneak to the road an' lie down, An' tackle the country dorgs comin' to town; By common consent he wuz boss in St. Joe, For what he took hold of he never let go! An' a dude that come courtin' our girl left a slice Of his white flannel suit with our bench legged fyce!


Dearest, feel upon your brow That caressing magic now; For the crickets in the glen Chirp and chirp and chirp again, While upon the haunted green Fairies dance around their queen, And the moonbeams hover o'er Playthings sleeping on the floor   Hush, my sweet!


Layeth she her hands upon My dear weary little one, And those white hands overspread Like a veil the curly head, Seem to fondle and caress Every little silken tress; Then she smooths the eyelids down Over those two eyes of brown   In such soothing, tender wise Cometh Lady Button Eyes.


For the grace that through the lattice streamed Over my folded eyelids seemed To have the gift of prophecy, And to bring me glimpses of times to be When manhood's clarion seemed to call   Ah!


And further say I have a sled Cushioned in blue and painted red!


SEEIN' THINGS I ain't afeard uv snakes, or toads, or bugs, or worms, or mice, An' things 'at girls are skeered uv I think are awful nice!


Once Fisherman Jim sailed into the bay As the sun went down in a cloudy sky, And never a kid saw he at play, And he listened in vain for the welcoming cry. In his little house he learned it all, And he clinched his hands and he bowed his head   "The fever!" they said.


Then Fisherman Jim says he to me: "It's a long, long cruise you understand   But over beyont the ragin' sea I kin see my boys on the shinin' sand Waitin' to help this ol' hulk ashore, Just as they used to  ah, mate, you know!   In the long ago."


Yet always contented and busy was he With that vocal recurrence of "Fiddle dee dee." Hard by lived a brave little soldier of four, That weird iteration repented him sore; "I prithee, Dear Mother Mine!


The brave little soldier quoth never a word, But he up and he drew a straight bead on that bird; And, while that vain creature provokingly sang, The gun it went off with a terrible bang!


Hereafter no evil at all need I fear, With such a brave soldier as You My Love here!" She kissed the dear boy. (The bird in the tree Continued to whistle his "Fiddle dee dee") OVER THE HILLS AND


Then came, with a knowing nod, A connoisseur, and I heard him say; "'Tis Mary, the Mother of God." So I painted a halo round her hair, And I sold her and took my fee, And she hangs in the church of Saint Hillaire, Where you and all may see.


I hid all trace of her heart unclean; I painted a babe at her breast; I painted her as she might have been If the Worst had been the Best. She laughed at my picture and went away.


My Madonna I haled me a woman from the street, Shameless, but, oh, so fair! I bade her sit in the model's seat And I painted her sitting there. I hid all trace of her heart unclean; I painted a babe at her breast; I painted her as she might have been If the Worst had been the Best.


In happy homes he saw the lightOf household fires gleam warm and bright;Above, the spectral glaciers shone,And from his lips escaped a groan,Excelsior!


His brow was sad; his eye beneath,Flashed like a falchion from its sheath,And like a silver clarion rungThe accents of that unknown tongue,Excelsior!In happy homes he saw the lightOf household fires gleam warm and bright;Above, the spectral glaciers shone,And from his lips escaped a groan,Excelsior!


He shall not have the power to stain with blood That whiteness    for the thirsty sword shall fall And he shall cry and catch me in his arms, Bearing me back to Sparta on his breast. Lo, I shall live to conquer Greece again!


Autumn frosts have slain July.


12 'O hold thy hand, hold thy hand,' said Robin Hood, 'And thou shalt be one of my string, To range in the wood with bold Robin Hood, To hear the sweet nightingall sing.'


13 When Marian did hear the voice of her love, Her self shee did quickly discover, And with kisses sweet she did him greet, Like to a most loyall lover. 14 When bold Robin Hood his Marian did see, Good lord, what clipping was there! With kind imbraces, and jobbing of faces, Providing of gallant cheer.


10 But Robin Hood, hee himself had disguised, And Marian was strangly attir'd, That they provd foes, and so fell to blowes, Whose vallour bold Robin admir'd, 11 They drew out their swords, and to cutting they went, At least an hour or more, That the blood ran apace from bold Robins face, And Marian was wounded sore.


But you are more beautiful now; for, in the years that have come and gone since then, the joys and the sorrows of maternity have impressed their saintly grace upon the dear face I used to kiss, and have made your gentle heart gentler still.


And I  of course I do it; for, as his progenitor, It is such pretty, pleasant play as this that I am for!


The woods are the cherry trees Down in the orchard lot, And the soldiers are marching to seize The booty the Injuns got. With tum titty um tum tum, And r r rat tat tat, When soldiers marching come Injuns had better scat! Step up there, little Fred, And, Charley, have a mind!


But the gingham dog and the calico cat Wallowed this way and tumbled that, Employing every tooth and claw In the awfullest way you ever saw   And, oh! how the gingham and calico flew! (Don't fancy I exaggerate   I got my news from the Chinese plate!)


Tell me not, in mournful numbers, Life is but an empty dream ! For the soul is dead that slumbers. And things are not what they seem.


An artist's eye would look around, Upon these calmer days, And view the pure white heaps of snow, With pleas'd and puzzl'd gaze.


Like purest marble, deftly carv'd, They stretch o'er vale and hill, Fair monuments, not made by man, But rear'd by nature's skill.


I hear the wintry wind again, I see the blinding snow, Pil'd high, by eddying winds, in heaps, No matter where I go.


Buster was a blundering, good natured chap. And to Chirpy's relief, instead of getting angry he merely laughed. "I didn't mean to hurt your feelings," Chirpy told him. "If I'm disagreeable this morning, it's because I need a good rest. And your family's humming disturbs me."


To tell the truth, they wake me every morning. And often I'd rather sleep."


"But why does the fly stay on your tongue?" said Tommy Smith. "Why doesn't it fly away?" "It would if it could, of course," said the frog; "but it can't. My tongue, you see, is sticky—just feel it,—and so whatever it touches sticks to it, and comes back with it, if it isn't too large."


"Well, it is very curious," said Tommy Smith. "But when you said you could catch a fly, I did not know that you were going to eat it too. Then, do you like flies? and do you eat them every day?"


"You see," said the frog, "that is how we change our skin, just as you would change a suit of clothes. Does he not look handsome in his new one?"


The more the toad wriggled, the looser the old skin got, and it was soon plain that he was wriggling himself out of it, just as you might wriggle your hand out of an old glove.


After a time, out of each egg there comes a tiny little brown thing, and directly it comes out, it begins to swim about in the water, as well as if it had had swimming lessons, although, of course, it has never had any.


In the early spring, when the weather begins to get a little warmer, we come up again, and then the mother frog lays a lot of eggs, which float about in the water, and look like a great ball of jelly.


But is there any other clever thing you can do besides catching flies? I can catch flies myself, but I do it with my hand instead of with my tongue."


It soon grows bigger, and then you can see that it has a large round head and a long tail, but you cannot see any legs.


"Why, where were you?" he said. "I did not see you there when I looked."


Now if there were no one to kill this great, greedy thing, I don't know what the farmers would do, for all their crops would be spoilt. But we rooks kill them, and eat them too, for they are very nice, and we like them very much.


As yet, I do not even know what he is accused of. Perhaps it is of stealing the sticks from another rook's nest to make his own with.


What a wicked, wicked thing to do!" Tommy Smith thought that there must be someone on the other side of the haystack, so he went there to see; but he found no one. Then he walked all round it, but nobody was there. But the rooks had seen him as he went round the haystack, and they all flew away.


The slugs and the caterpillars, and, above all, the great, hungry cockchafer grubs, had eaten almost everything up; for, you see, there were no hungry rooks to eat _them_.


"Because I don't like eating in the night," Tommy Smith answered; "and, besides, I can't eat what rats eat." At this there was a great commotion, and the king of the rats cried out, "Bite him!"


said the rat. "Then I suppose your father, or someone else, took it away from her, and _I_ call _that_ stealing." "Oh no," said Tommy Smith; "I don't think it is." "Don't you?" said the rat. "Well, you had better ask the hen what _she_ thinks. I feel sure she would agree with me."


"Well, you had better ask the hen what _she_ thinks. I feel sure she would agree with me." Tommy Smith felt certain that the rat was wrong, and that the egg had not been stolen.


said the king of the rats. "Didn't you hear me tell you to begin?" "But I don't want to begin," said Tommy Smith. "Why not?" said the king; and all the other rats stopped eating, and said, "Why not?"


"That is one reason," the rat answered; "but you can't be sure you could do it even if you had one. It might be too short, you know. Now, come along." Pat, pat, pat. "Do you hear?" Tommy Smith heard quite plainly, and he followed the rat through the door, and down the stairs, and right into the kitchen.


"Oh, do tell me," said Tommy Smith, for the hare had paused a little, and seemed to be thinking. "Ah!" he began again; "how well I remember it. I was very nearly caught that time. How fast the greyhounds ran, and how close behind me they were!


Then sometimes he comes down to roost quite close to me, and we talk to each other.


"Now," said the hare, "when I am coming back to my form, I leap first to this side and then to that side, and then I make a very big jump indeed, and down I come in my own house.


Sometimes he will wait by a hole in the hedge that he has seen me go through, and when I come to it again, he springs out and seizes me with his teeth and kills me, for he is much stronger than I am.


Sometimes I run under a gate. The dogs are too big to do this, so they are obliged to jump over it. Then, when they are near me, on the other side I double, in the way I told you, run as fast as I can back to the gate, and go under it again.


What was it? Tommy Smith knew well enough, for he had often seen such an animal before.


"But I have other ways of getting away from him, as well as from other dogs, and I will tell you some of them.


said Tommy Smith. "No," said the hare, "they would not be able to; for the flock would keep together, so that the dogs could only run round the outside of it. But _I_ should keep right in the middle, and wherever the sheep went, I should go with them; _I_ could run between their feet, you know.


"It was an adder," said Tommy Smith out loud. "That, at least, is an animal which I _ought_ to kill, because it is poisonous." "I beg your pardon," said a sharp, hissing voice.


"I should like to see some of your eggs," said Tommy Smith. "What are they like?"


They were as sharp as needles and almost as thin, but they were not straight like common needles, but curved backwards like crochet needles. "What curious teeth!" he said. "Perhaps they are more curious than you think," said the adder; "just look at the tips of them, and see if you notice anything."


"And if it is an adder," he said to himself, "why, I ought to kill it." And then he said out loud, "Mr. Adder, you don't seem at all afraid of me; but, do you know, I think I ought to kill you, because you are poisonous."


"How funny!" said Tommy Smith. "But do you know, Mr. Grass Snake, I should not like to wrap myself up in your skin, even if I could, because it is so hard and covered with scales. And besides, how could the fairies get into it without killing you first?


"Where are you?" he called out. "Do you mean me?" said a voice quite near him. It was a hissing voice, certainly, and sounded a good deal like the grass snake's. But still it did not sound quite the same, Tommy Smith thought.


But he thought that if he did, the adder might attack him when his back was turned. So he stood quite still, and only said, "Why aren't you harmless like the grass snake?"


You see, when a snake eats a frog (or anything else), he does not chew it, as we do, but just swallows it whole, and then sometimes the frog will keep alive for some time inside the snake's stomach. Tommy Smith spoke to the frogs, but they were too faint to answer.


No; it is the two long teeth in my upper jaw that are poisonous, and, if you will just kneel down, I will open my mouth so that you can see them, and then I can explain all about it to you."


It is true that my two front teeth are poisonous, and that I can kill some creatures by biting them.


Indeed, it was such a _very_ nasty smell that Tommy Smith was glad to drop him, so that he got away into the bush again. "Ah, ha!" the snake said, as soon as he was safe, "I thought you wouldn't hold me very long. Just look at your hand now."


I don't suppose you can change it as the frog and the toad do." "Not change it!" said the grass snake. "And why not, pray?


"Are you playing a game in the air when you fly like that, Mr. Peewit?" asked Tommy Smith. "Yes," answered the peewit; "that is just what I am doing. Sometimes I play it by myself, but I like it better when there are some other peewits to play it with me.


"Yes, they _are_ good to eat," said the mother peewit, as she nestled down on her eggs again. "Oh, how I wish they were not!" "Why?" said Tommy Smith. (He was only a little boy, or he would not have asked such questions.)


But I think this one will be the cleverest," she added. "There was a certain something in the way he chipped the shell, and he has lain in a thoughtful attitude ever since he came out."


The peewit was not at all afraid, but looked up at Tommy Smith, with his head on one side, and said, "Yes, that is my name. A name isn't sensible if it hasn't a meaning.


"The very idea of it makes one shudder. A world without peewits! Oh dear! a nice sort of world _that_ would be!" The mother peewit shook her head. "It could hardly go on, dear; could it?" she said.


Tommy Smith would rather have listened to what the peewit had to tell him about himself first, and then asked him some questions afterwards, for, just then, he didn't quite know what questions to ask.


Fowls, you know, are accustomed to it, but we peewits have finer feelings." "Yes," said the mother peewit; "we are more sensitive than common poultry."


_Now_ you say, 'How sweetly the lark sings,' or 'How beautifully the nightingale sings,' because they sing better than other birds.


Tommy Smith saw that he had not said the right thing, so he tried to think of something to say that the mole would like better. "Oh," he said at last, "what a very pretty, soft coat you have! I like it very much, indeed."


"Oh, but if you only knew how the mother peewit"—Tommy Smith was beginning again. "I should be sorry to take _her_ as an example," said the mole sharply; "she is a flighty thing, without solid qualities.


Could those be eyes? Tommy Smith hardly believed that they could be, for some time; they were so _very_ small. "Are those your eyes, Mrs. Mole?" he asked at last. "Yes, indeed they are," the mother mole answered; "and are they not a beautiful pair?


But he had only thought so because he had never taken any trouble to find out about it. "I see you are cleverer than I thought, Mr. Mole," he said; "but I should like you to tell me something more about your palace and fortress."


So, when he saw a little black thing scrambling about in the grass, he cried out, "Oh!


"Oh, but I call those worms!" said Tommy Smith. "You may call them so if you like," said the mole, "but _I_ call them snakes.


"Five different passages! That is a lot," cried Tommy Smith. "Yes; and there are three more from the upper gallery into the bedroom!" said the mole. "How many doors are there into _your_ rooms?"


"Oh no," said Tommy Smith; but he thought the mole was very conceited. "Not that it is his fault," the mole continued. "Of course, he cannot be expected to make such wonderful places as I do. After all, what has he got to dig with?


"Then do you always sleep in the daytime?" asked Tommy Smith. "I know nothing about daytime or nighttime," the mole answered, "and perhaps if you lived under the ground, as I do, you would not either. I feel tired _now_, so I shall go to sleep now.


said the mole. "As for doors, they are things I don't understand. Galleries and tunnels are what I use, and I think them much grander." "But"—Tommy Smith was beginning. "Let me get on," said the mole. "I have two galleries inside my fortress, an upper one and a lower one.


"Then do you both feed them?" asked Tommy Smith. "Yes," said the father woodpigeon; "and we take it in turns. You would not find many cocks who would do that, I think."


"If they waited till their parents put a worm into their mouths, they would starve," said the father woodpigeon. "It is quite dreadful to think of." "But I think the little chickens like picking up their own food," said Tommy Smith. "They look so pretty running about."


"He is so impetuous," said the mother woodpigeon. "There is no stopping him when he wants to do anything. But _I_ will tell you what we do all day, so listen. We rise early, of course, and fly down to breakfast at about six.


"Your wings are the oars, I suppose," said Tommy Smith. "Yes, indeed," said the woodpigeon, "and how fast they row me along. Swish! swish! swish! and when I am tired I just spread them out and float along without using them. That is delightful. I call it resting on my wings."


However much it rains they can never be damp, for how can a bed be damp and well aired at the same time?" Tommy Smith couldn't think of the right answer to this, and the woodpigeon went on, "So, now, I have told you how we pass the day. What a happy, happy life!


However, you can watch some tame pigeons the next time they are drinking, for we all belong to one great family, and have the same ideas upon important points. Now I am going for a short fly, but if you like to stay and talk to my wife, I shall be back again in an hour."


"Aren't they rather hard?" said Tommy Smith. "Not at all," said the woodpigeon. "You see, we have our own feathers, so that makes them feather beds. They are soft enough and warm enough for us, you may be quite sure." "But it must be very windy up in the trees," said Tommy Smith.


But Tommy Smith had to go too, for his lessons began at eleven o'clock, and of course it would not do to miss them, though it seemed to him that he was getting a much better lesson from the woodpigeons. "But I wish," he said, "before you fly away, Mr. Woodpigeon, you would just tell me what you do all day."


Tommy Smith didn't know how to answer this, so he thought he would change the subject. "What have you been doing this morning, Mr. Woodpigeon?" he said.


"Oh, do let me see them," cried Tommy Smith. "Oh no," said the woodpigeon. "They are too high up for that. You would not be able to climb so far, and you cannot fly as we birds do, for you are only a poor boy, and have no wings."


"You couldn't have eaten all those this morning, because they are not all ripe now, and"— "I didn't say they were ripe," said the woodpigeon; "and if I didn't eat them this morning, then I did on some other morning, so it's all the same.


That couldn't be people. No men, and no women either, have such a pretty voice as that." "Coo oo oo oo, coo oo oo oo," said the voice. It had been some way off before, but now it sounded much nearer.


That is how summer houses are always built, you know. Perhaps you have one in your garden." "Oh yes, we have," said Tommy Smith. "And isn't it much smaller than the other one?" said the squirrel. "Oh yes, it is," said Tommy Smith.


"Why, sometimes when we are very hungry," said the squirrel, "we gnaw the bark all round the trunk of a small tree, and then it dies.


That would be very unsafe. Besides, I should never feel comfortable if I did not rock with the wind when I was asleep.


"Why, of course we do," said the squirrel; "and great fun it is, too. You should see how we swing about in a high wind. Delightful!"


Tommy Smith thought that it was not every little boy who could have a talk with a woodpigeon either. But he wanted to have both, so he said, "Very well, Mr. Squirrel, and I hope you will tell me something interesting about yourself."


I should have a nasty fixed feeling, which would wake me up every minute." This surprised Tommy Smith a good deal.


But he thought _he_ would be polite, at anyrate, so he went on, all in a hurry, "I suppose, Mr. Squirrel, as you go to sleep in the winter, you have to come out of the trees and find a place on the ground to"— "Out of the trees!" exclaimed the squirrel. "I should think not, indeed.


"Oh, in all sorts of places," said the squirrel. "Sometimes I scrape a hole in the ground and bury them in it, and sometimes I put them into holes in the trunks of trees, or under their roots, if they run along the ground, or into any other little nook or crevice near where I live.


So I call mine 'Tree tops.' That describes it very well, because it is in a tree top, and there are tree tops all round it." "But aren't all squirrels' nests like that?" said Tommy Smith. "Oh yes," said the squirrel; "and they can all be called 'Tree tops.


What a pity you are not nocturnal! Then, even my breast is not quite white.


As he said this, the great white bird flew back again, but—just fancy!—instead of passing by the window as it did before, it flew up on to it, and sat with its head inside the room, looking at Tommy Smith.


"They would peck at him too, I daresay, if they weren't afraid," he said to himself; "and no wonder, if he eats them." But he wasn't quite sure whether the owl did this or not, so he thought he had better ask him before feeling angry with him. "_Do_ you eat the little birds, Mr. Owl?" he said.


It has some very pretty grey tints about it. And yet I am called the 'white owl,' as well as the 'barn owl,' and often that name is put first in books. It is very annoying.


_" IT was just the very exact time for a little boy like Tommy Smith to have been in bed for about five minutes (your mother will know _what_ time it was); so, of course, he _had_ been in bed for about five minutes, and he wasn't asleep yet.


"It's all very well to say 'think,' but the fact is, you _can't_ think what a useful bird an owl is—and especially a barn owl. But, perhaps, you don't believe me." "Oh yes, I do," said Tommy Smith. "I always thought that owls killed rats and mice." "You can prove it, if you like," said the owl, "and I'll tell you how.


and very soon It will be high up as the moon! And don't you think the man up there Will wonder what it is, and stare? Perhaps hell say, "_Well, I declare!


And now more cages come rumbling by With glittering people throned on high; So many spangles and precious things, They surely must all be queens and kings!


Then our lovely loads we'll carry Down the village street, On each door, with laughter merry, Hang a basket sweet.


Hey a day day! It is spring now, Lazy folks, awake!


Did you ever see one waken very thirsty and drink up All the honey dew that glimmered in a golden buttercup? Did you ever see one fly away on rainbow twinkling wings? If you did not, why, how comes it that you never see such things?


Hark the drummers' beat! See them with their flags and guns Marching down the street!


Jump off, some one! Quick! and go To the pantry, for, you know, We must have the cookie jar For our Pullman dining car!


FAIRY RINGS Softly in the gloaming Flitting through the vale, Fairy folk are roaming Over hill and dale. Pixies in the hollow, Elves upon the height, Let us follow, follow Through the paling light.


As once the apostolic twelve Of goods allotment made, So equity dealt out with care The widow's and the orphan's share, And of the aged forced to delve At drudging task or trade.


If every year and everywhere Could kindness thus expand In bounteous gratuity, To all her children earth would be A flowery vale like Eden fair, A milk and honey land.


At first, it seemed that the only difference between isotopes might be in their radioactive properties and that only radioactive atoms were involved. Quickly that proved not to be so.


The isotopes always have atomic weights that are close to, but not quite, whole numbers.


The neon ions ended on a photographic plate, which was darkened at the point of landing. There were two regions of darkening, because there were neon ions of two different masses that curved in two different degrees and ended in two different places.


Still another part didn't swerve at all but moved on in a straight line. The conclusion was that uranium and thorium gave off three kinds of radiation. One carried a positive charge of electricity, one a negative charge, and one no charge at all.


In crystals, atoms are arranged in regular order and at known distances from each other.


If the atomic weight of some element happens to be very close to a whole number to begin with, it may consist of a single kind of atom.


The atom had a structure and physicists became interested in discovering exactly what that structure was.


The light of the spark, and the crackling sound it makes, are the results of the electric current interacting with molecules of air and heating them. Neither the light nor the sound is the electricity itself.


This meant the massive portion was very small and that most alpha particles tore through the atom without coming anywhere near it.


It was this new atom that was eventually found to give off a beta particle, and then another atom of still another element was formed.


There was such a close connection, in fact, that Moseley could arrange the elements in order according to the wavelength of the characteristic X rays. For some 40 years prior to this, the elements had been listed in order of atomic weight.


Physicists, however, felt uneasy at using an average as standard for they were more interested in working with individual isotopes.


Uranium X₁, had, however, radioactive properties different from ordinary thorium.


It was soon shown that thorium was also radioactive. Thorium, which had been discovered in 1829 by Berzelius, was made up of atoms that were the second most massive known at the time.


The elements in this table were sometimes numbered consecutively ("atomic number") but this was inconvenient since, when new elements were discovered, the list of atomic numbers might have to be reorganized.


For that reason, he set the atomic weight of oxygen at exactly 16 and in that case, the atomic weight of hydrogen had to be placed just a trifle higher than 1.


The radioactive elements did not escape this new view either.


Chemical Energy There is energy in a piece of wood. Left quietly to itself, it seems completely incapable of bringing about any kind of work.


Could the radioactive atoms somehow collect energy from their surroundings, concentrate it several million fold, and then let it out all at once?


It had, to man's best knowledge, been radiating heat and light, with no perceptible change, throughout the history of civilization and, from what biologists and geologists could deduce, for countless ages earlier.


If _all_ the energy delivered by a gram of uranium in the course of its radioactivity over many billions of years was totalled, it was enormously greater than the energy produced by the burning of a candle with a mass equal to that of uranium.


Once Helmholtz had stated that energy could neither be created nor destroyed, however, he was bound to ask where the sun's energy came from.


It takes a considerably larger amount of energy to pull apart a water molecule into separate atoms than to pull apart either hydrogen or oxygen molecules.


Set it on fire, however, and the wood plus the oxygen in the air will give off heat and light that are clearly forms of energy.


It turned out that some electron arrangements were more stable than others.


The early investigators quickly found that the breakdown of uranium 238, for instance, could not be hastened by heat, pressure, changes in chemical combination, or, indeed, anything else they could think of. It remained incredibly slow.


Something very like a smile flitted across Simmons's wooden countenance. Perhaps it amused him to be ordered to "toddle."


They had waited on the imposing doorstep for a long five minutes when it occurred to Marjory to ask if any one had pushed the bell.


"Everybody stand up straight," commanded Marjory. "We must look our best when we go up the walk."


"Follow me and don't make a sound. It's time to be formal."


Simmons, just toddle down to the lower regions for some fruit and anything else you can find; send them up to my room."


"You won't forget my shoes, will you?" reminded anxious Jean. "I'd like to know how I _could_," demanded Wallace, feelingly. Although Mabel had taken a most complete bath the night before, she spent the noon hour taking another. She put on her best stockings and shoes, but looked doubtfully at her Sunday suit.


"That's the house," announced Jean, as they turned the corner. "That big one with the covered driveway." "Ugh!" shuddered Marjory, "it gives me chills to think of ringing such a wealthy doorbell. Are the cards safe, Bettie? My! I hope you haven't lost them."


You're a mischief in school, yesterday you seemed almost sad and to day you're so polite." "Oh, _thank_ you," said Henrietta, rising to sweep a deep and very much exaggerated courtesy.


"Midge, you shouldn't have done it," reproved Mrs. Slater, whose black eyes, however, were sparkling with only half suppressed merriment. "That wasn't quite a courteous way to treat your guests!"


"Confession is good for the soul, my dear." Henrietta's infectious laugh gurgled out suddenly and merrily.


When they came you were out, so I took them upstairs, gave them things to eat and a jolly good time, generally.


"I _think_ I like her," said Bettie. "I know _I_ don't," asserted Mabel, waving her throbbing hands in the evening breeze to cool them. "I do and I don't," said Marjory. "I admire her, but she makes me uncomfortable. I feel as if she were just playing with me." "She seems more than fourteen," murmured Jean, dreamily.


"What luck!" cried Henrietta, pulling off her gloves. "Now I can make a long, long call instead of four short ones. What are you doing  Christmas presents? Give me a spool of fine white thread, some pins and a sofa pillow. I'm going to make one, too."


"Look!" cried Mabel, her eyes bulging with astonishment. "She's really making lace!" "It's for you," said Henrietta, flashing a bright glance at Mabel. "It's an apology, Mam'selle, for my past  and perhaps my future  misdeeds." "I _said_ I didn't like you," blurted honest Mabel, "but I do."


"Mother's been reading the boarding school advertisements in the magazines lately," said Mabel. "I heard her read some of them aloud to Father. But of course they couldn't have been thinking about _me_. But they sounded interesting."


"Where's that baby you adopted?" asked Henrietta, abruptly changing the subject. "Didn't one of you adopt a baby or something like that?" "It was Mabel," replied Marjory. "The rest of us are pretty good, but Mabel's sort of thoughtless about borrowing things. She just happened to borrow an unreturnable baby, one day." "Where is it now?"


Miss Hunter came upon little Olive one afternoon sitting on the stairs in a breathless, exhausted state, and Roland was remonstrating with her.


Sitting by the cheery wood fire was the youngest of the sisters, a frail and delicate invalid. She was turning her face anxiously towards the speaker, and now put in her word very gently.


'Frosts kill all the flowers  that is why James does not like it coming; but it is the flowers out of doors that feel it most.' 'But,' said Roland, edging up to his aunt, 'there are no flowers to kill; there are only bare, dried up trees and dark bushes. Mr. Bob told us they had all gone to sleep under the ground.'


'Now come and talk to us,' said Miss Amabel briskly, as the children appeared; 'we are all bored to death, and we want you to entertain us.' Roland sat down on a footstool, and clasped his knees in an old fashioned way.


Little Olive squeezed the old man's hand tightly. 'I feel as if I was going to cry,' she said.


'Yes, and so will we, when we see the dead flowers come up, and all the dead people too!' 'Oh, don't get them on the subject of "dead people" and graves,' murmured Miss Hester sleepily; 'they can talk of nothing else at present.'


Them were the very two tex's she said to me, and then she says: "The nex' time you'll see me, Bob, will be in my body o' glory! Unless you foller me first, but I can't help thinking," she says, "that the Resurrection mayn't be far off!" And so she left me!'


Now you come back with me, and I'll tell you their story. 'Tis too cold for us to be standin' here, but don't forget my five grassy mounds in this corner when I tells the tale!' As the children turned away to follow him, Roland said thoughtfully, 'They're all under the ground, just like you say the flowers are!'


The boy felt snubbed, and said no more; but that afternoon, when he and his little sister came down to the drawing room, the subject was opened afresh. [Illustration] Their aunts found Sunday afternoon long and tedious, especially as now a heavy downpour of sleet and rain had set in, and it was in the hope of being amused that Miss Hunter sent for the children.


'And the good women were sobbing and crying,' put in Olive again, 'and they thought they were never going to see Him again, _never_!' 'And then one of them, called Mary, saw some one in the garden, and she didn't quite know who it was; and then He called out her name, and then she saw it was Jesus Himself.'


But thank the good Lord I got my bit o' cheer when Easter came. And it have come reg'lar and fresh like every Easter since.


Never as long as they lived would the children forget the scene before them! The budding trees, the singing of the birds, and the sweet scents that came to them were only part of the great surprise that awaited them.


There is a deal goin' on in the silence and darkness that we knows nothin' about, but it's fact all the same.'


Roland has just said, in his little weak, quavering voice, "Auntie, perhaps Olive and I are going to die and be put in a grave." And when I told him that wasn't likely, and he mustn't think of such things, he said in quite a cheerful tone, "Oh, well we shall come up at Easter, you know.


'Eh, my dears, how you run on! Old Bob has missed you sure enough, and as for his lilies, well, you shall see them, for 'tis my custom to do the same every year.' He paused as they came in sight of those grassy mounds, and the children pressed forward with eagerness.


'But He came out of His grave first!' said the child triumphantly. Their conversation was interrupted by Roland, who came flying out of the house. 'Aunt Marion has changed her mind; she says we can go to church, Olive. Come along and tell nurse!'


The service over, the children begged their aunt's permission to speak to Bob. Seizing hold of his hands, they led him to his graves.


Olive scampered into the house, and Miss Sibyl walked along, thinking deeply. For some weeks past she had been anxious and ill at ease. She realized how fruitless and empty her life had been, but could not see how to remedy it. Her own words to Olive came back to her,   'He had finished His work.


4 Come, little Amy, come, and walk Within this shining street;' I think they hear me while I talk, They look so kind and sweet." "Dear child, the angels sent from Heaven, Are always near to you, Whenever to your heart is given Some feeling good and true.


Within her sight, beyond the wall, A gaudy sunflower grows ; 'Midst fragrant flowers, above them all, Its yellow petals rose. "I wish, among the other flowers, My happier lot was thrown!" Still sighed the Bose — one thought that sours All joys that bless her own.


W ITH fragrant roses, bright green leaves, Beside the hedge it grows, And many a drop of dew receives, At dawn and daylight's close.


But plant to wave upon the wind Above my silent dust, The fairest flowers your hands can find, To breathe of Hope and Trust!"


"When in the quiet room above, You see a figure pale, That clasped you once in tenderest love, Let not your young heart fail; "Hor think the Father of us all Hath dealt too hard a blow.


"Not till long afterward," Alida Stair had said. Well, supposing Ned had seen one when they first came, and had known only within the last week what had happened to him?


There was a just perceptible delay in Boyne's reply. "The suit's been withdrawn    that's all." But she persisted, as if to exonerate herself from the inward charge of being too easily put off.


Once or twice, now that this new life had actually drawn its magic circle about them, she had asked herself if she had done right; but hitherto such conjectures had been no more than the retrospective excursions of an active fancy.


"But doesn't this suit worry you? Why have you never spoken to me about it?"


Your correspondent must have got hold of a back number of the 'Sentinel.'" She felt a quick thrill of relief. "You mean it's over? He's lost his case?"


Mary had, indeed, as became the tenant of a haunted house, made the customary inquiries among her few rural neighbors, but, beyond a vague, "They du say so, Ma'am," the villagers had nothing to impart.


Her short sighted eyes had given her but a blurred impression of slightness and grayness, with something foreign, or at least unlocal, in the cut of the figure or its garb; but her husband had apparently seen more    seen enough to make him push past her with a sharp "Wait!"


She lingered there till, somewhere in those depths, she heard the closing of a door; then, mechanically impelled, she went down the shallow flights of steps till she reached the lower hall. The front door stood open on the mild sunlight of the court, and hall and court were empty.


I don't understand. What does this man accuse you of?" "Oh, pretty nearly every crime in the calendar." Boyne had tossed the clipping down, and thrown himself comfortably into an arm chair near the fire.


After all, no definition in his category could be more comprehensive than that.


" "Well, he didn't kill himself, exactly. He dragged on two months before he died."


They sat opposite each other in silence, he swinging his eyeglass thoughtfully about his finger, she, motionless, her arms stretched along her knees in an attitude of rigid tension.


This negative information, sole fruit of the first fortnight's feverish search, was not increased by a jot during the slow weeks that followed.


She had even renounced, one by one, the various theories as to his disappearance which had been advanced by the press, the police, and her own agonized imagination. In sheer lassitude her mind turned from these alternatives of horror, and sank back into the blank fact that he was gone.


She went first to the kitchen garden, where the espalier pear trees drew complicated patterns on the walls, and pigeons were fluttering and preening about the silvery slated roof of their cot.


Boyne must have gone to the gardens to meet her, and since she had missed him, it was clear that he had taken the shorter way by the south door, instead of going round to the court.


The first was her husband's, taken from a photograph made the year they had come to England. It was the picture of him that she liked best, the one that stood on the writing table up stairs in her bedroom.


Mary flashed out at her, her own mind, in the same instant, leaping back to an image left on it that morning, but temporarily lost under layers of subsequent impressions.


III One of the strangest things she was afterward to recall out of all the next day's incredible strangeness was the sudden and complete recovery of her sense of security.


"I couldn't exactly say the hour, Madam, because I didn't let the gentleman in," she replied, with the air of magnanimously ignoring the irregularity of her mistress's course.


The parlor maid appeared to hesitate between the obvious duty of obeying orders and an equally obvious conviction of the foolishness of the injunction laid upon her. The struggle resulted in her saying doubtfully, "If you please, Madam, Mr. Boyne's not up stairs." "Not in his room? Are you sure?" "I'm sure, Madam."


[STORY For one terrible moment all was still, but in it the children could almost hear her lift up her tail, and then, with a fearful blow, the little painted door was cracked and splintered.


The odours of the wilderness—smells of wind and earth, of trees and water, clean, vigorous, and mighty—were the true odours of a virgin world unspoilt by men, more penetrating and more subtly intoxicating than any other perfume in the whole world.


The girl made no reply, and when I took her hand I felt that it trembled a little and was cold.


In her quick way the girl understood and thanked me, and the last thing I heard as I moved off to the men's quarters was Mrs. Maloney crying that there were beetles in her tent, and Joan's laughter as she went to help her turn them out.


Although the larger islands boasted farms and fishing stations, the majority were uninhabited.


"Sangree only stays the month, you know. And, anyhow, you are such an odd creature yourself that you should feel generously towards other odd creatures," I ended lamely, with a forced laugh.


"I didn't want to be left alone with him," the girl said presently in a low voice. "I'm always afraid he's going to say or do something—" She hesitated a moment, looking quickly over her shoulder towards the ridge where he had just disappeared—"something that might lead to unpleasantness."


And Joan, luckily, had not observed him, her head being bowed and her eyes tightly closed while her father prayed.


A complete change of setting often furnishes a startlingly new view of people hitherto held for well known; they present another facet of their personalities.


"I know, but I can't help it," she whispered, lest her voice should carry in the stillness; "there's something about him that—that makes me feel creepy and half afraid." "But, poor man, it's not his fault if he is delicate and sometimes looks like death," I laughed gently, by way of defending what I felt to be a very innocent member of my sex.


I seemed to see my own party almost as new people—people I had not known properly hitherto, people who would drop all disguises and henceforth reveal themselves as they really were.


"Oh, but it's not that I mean," she answered quickly; "it's something I feel about him, something in his soul, something he hardly knows himself, but that may come out if we are much together. It draws me, I feel, tremendously.


I explained it in some measure by the fact that the girl, tired out by the fatigue of many days' travel, had suffered a vigorous reaction of some kind from the strong, desolate scenery, and further, perhaps, that she had been treated to my own experience of seeing the members of the party in a new light—the Canadian, being partly a stranger, more vividly than the rest of us.


Paths, too, outlined themselves from tent to tent, from the bathing places and the landing stage, and a fair division of the island was decided upon between the quarters of the men and the women.


Some folk, of course, who talk glibly about the simple life when it is safely out of reach, betray themselves in camp by for ever peering about for the artificial excitements of civilisation which they miss.


But the inner shore, the shore of the lagoon, was low and regular, and so well protected by the wall of trees along the ridge that no storm could ever send more than a passing ripple along its sandy marges. Eternal shelter reigned there.


His voice, too, was deeper and his manner bespoke for the first time a greater measure of confidence in himself.


It was barely four o'clock, and the sun came down a long vista of blue islands that led out to the open sea and Finland.


He now had some claims to be called nice looking, or at least to a certain air of virility that would not lessen his value in the eyes of the opposite sex.


Thenceforward the personality of Sangree was never far from my thoughts, and I was for ever analysing and searching for the explanation that took so long in coming.


About the cooking fire, greatly improved with stones from the shore, we built a high stockade consisting of upright poles thickly twined with branches, the roof lined with moss and lichen and weighted with rocks, and round the interior we made low wooden seats so that we could lie round the fire even in rain and eat our meals in peace.


She was so in earnest that she forgot the canoe, and the wind caught it sideways and made us roll dangerously. "I have tried hard not to ask this," she added, bringing the canoe round again, "but I simply can't help myself."


And then I saw that it was not Sangree at all. It was an animal.


And just as I came up I saw Mrs. Maloney, marvellously attired, fumbling with a lantern. Other voices became audible in the same moment behind me, and Timothy Maloney arrived, breathless, less than half dressed, and carrying another lantern that had gone out on the way from being banged against a tree.


There was a sense of wonder, of poignant distress, and of trepidation. Alarm stood waiting at our elbows. We shivered. Then, suddenly, as we looked into each other's faces, came the long, unwelcome pause in which this new arrival established itself in our hearts.


Indeed, but for these, and the torn tent, I think it would, of course, have been possible to ignore the existence of this beast intruder altogether.


Nothing came to disturb or perplex.


And it was here, under this angry dawn, as we stood in the shelter of the stockade from the pouring rain, weary yet so strangely excited—it was here, out of this confusion of voices and explanations, that—very stealthily—the ghost of something horrible slipped in and stood among us.


The creature seemed somehow to melt away into him, almost as though it belonged to him and were a part of himself, but in the same instant—that instant of extraordinary confusion and terror in my mind—it seemed to pass over and behind him, and, in some utterly unaccountable fashion, it was gone.


He was extraordinarily excited, I thought. Anything affecting Joan, of course, stirred him prodigiously. "Get your guns and we'll start the drive at once," he cried. He lit another lantern and handed one each to his wife and Joan, and while I ran to fetch my gun I heard him singing to himself with the excitement of it all.


During the day, a day of heavy and ceaseless rain, we kept more or less to our tents, and though there were signs of mysterious conferences between the three members of the Maloney family, I think that most of us slept a good deal and stayed alone with his thoughts.


On his face there was an expression of effort, almost of painful effort, so far as the uncertain light permitted me to see, and his sleep seemed to be very profound.


"We'll hunt the island from end to end at once," he said, with excitement; "that's what we'll do. The beast can't be far away.


Briefly—Joan's silk tent had been torn, and the girl was in a state bordering upon hysterics.


But on this island there was not even a squirrel or a mouse.


For his admission that he knew it was in pain and starved was in reality nothing more or less than a revelation of his deeper self. It was in the nature of a confession. He was speaking of something that he knew positively, something that was beyond question or argument, something that had to do directly with himself.


We moved back a dozen yards or so. It was like a scene in some impossible play, or in some ghastly and oppressive nightmare from which I should presently awake to find the blankets all heaped up upon my chest.


For the first time since its appearance the creature moved. Its ears twitched and it shifted the weight of its body on to the hind legs. Then, lifting its head and muzzle to the sky, it opened its long jaws and gave vent to a dismal and prolonged howling.


And an answering cry sounded across the lagoon—thin, wailing, piteous. It came from Sangree's tent.


John Silence, however, was before us both, and his figure slipped past and blocked the doorway of the tent. And there was some quality in his voice next minute when he began to speak that brought our minds instantly to a state of calm obedience.


Relieved of the dominating presence, the clergyman thrust his face close into mine. "I don't much care for this waiting game," he whispered, "but Silence wouldn't hear of my sitting up with the others; he said it would prevent anything happening if I did."


I can now read into his behaviour a good deal that puzzled me at the time, for though I had dimly guessed the solution, I had no idea how he would deal with it.


He shoved a pocket Bible under my nose. At one time in his life it had been his inseparable companion.


There was no more question of undressing and going to bed than there was of undressing and going to bathe.


And some part of myself—something that was far more than the mere act of intense listening—went out with it, and for several minutes I lost consciousness of my surroundings and felt utterly absorbed in the pain of another stricken fellow creature.


The deeper knowledge had leaped across and transferred itself to her ordinary consciousness, and in that shock the collision of the personalities had shaken them to the depths and shown her the truth beyond all possibility of doubt.


"Walking in her sleep, you mean?" He nodded. "She's on her way to meet him. From the very beginning he must have drawn her—irresistibly."


There, in broad daylight, I saw Maloney deliberately creep closer to the fire and heap the wood on. We gathered in to the heat, and to each other, and listened to Dr. Silence's voice as it mingled with the swish and whirr of the wind about us, and the falling of the little waves.


In the abyss of her heart, too deep at first for recognition, the girl loved him, and had loved him from the very beginning. Once her normal waking consciousness recognised the fact they would leap together like twin flames, and his affliction would be at an end; his intense desire would be satisfied; he would be cured.


It was the head and face of an animal, and yet it was the face of Sangree: the face of a wild dog, a wolf, and yet his face.


"It's across the lagoon," Dr. Silence cried, but this time in full tones that paid no tribute to caution. "It's Joan! She's answering him!"


But I've taken steps to imprison it in the tent, and it can't get out till I permit it. Be on the watch for signs of movement." Then he looked hard at Maloney. "But no violence, or shooting, remember, Mr. Maloney, unless you want a murder on your hands.


It has been my endeavor to follow Dr. G. Stanley Hall's suggestions in his monograph, "How to Teach Reading," where he asks for "true child editions, made by testing many children with the work piece meal and cutting and adapting the material till it really and closely fitted the minds and hearts of the children."


XLI. For "IS" and "IS NOT" though with Rule and Line, And, "UP AND DOWN" without, I could define, I yet in all I only cared to know, Was never deep in anything but  Wine.


KUZA  NAMA. ("Book of Pots") LIX. Listen again. One Evening at the Close Of Ramazan, ere the better Moon arose, In that old Potter's Shop I stood alone With the clay Population round in Rows.


XXXIII. Then to the rolling Heav'n itself I cried, Asking, "What Lamp had Destiny to guide Her little Children stumbling in the Dark?" And  "A blind understanding!" Heav'n replied.