CHAPTER VI

There's something I must tell you, love,” said Agnes Huntington; “you would know all in time, and it is better that you learn it now from the lips of your Agnes.”

“What is it, beautiful one?” said Slippery Elm Benton, languidly.

The Congressional day, with its labours, had wearied our hero, and, although with the woman he loved, he still felt fatigued.

“Read this,” said Agnes, as she pushed a paper into her lover's hand, and shrank back as if frightened.

The paper made over one-half of the phosphate bed to Agnes Huntington.

“And it was for this you sold my vote in the House!” and Slippery Elm Benton laughed mockingly.

“Oh, say not so, love!” said Agnes Huntington, piteously. “Rather would I hear you curse than laugh like that!”

“And so the vote and influence of Slippery Elm Benton are basely bargained by the woman he loved for a one-half interest in a phosphate bed!”

Slippery Elm Benton strode up and down the apartment, tossing his arms like a Dutch windmill.

Agnes Huntington cowered before the wrath of her lover.

“What would you have?” she cried.

“What would I have!” repeated Slippery Elm Benton, with a sneer, which all but withered the weeping girl; “what would I have! I would have all--all! My vote and influence were worth the entire phosphate bed, and you basely accepted a paltry moiety! Go from my side, false woman; you who would put so low an estimate upon me! The Witch of Waco was right. I leave you. I leave you as one unfit to be the wife of a Congressman!”

And Slippery Elm Benton, while Agnes Huntington swooned on the rug, rushed into the night and the snow.

HENRY SPENY'S BENEVOLENCE

SUMMER was here and the day was warm. Henry Speny had been walking, and now stood at-the corner of Tenth Avenue and Twenty-eighth street, mopping his brow. Henry Speny was a Conservative; and, although Mrs. Speny had that morning gone almost to the frontiers of a fist fight to make him change his underwear for the lighter and more gauzy apparel proper to jocund August, Henry Speny refused. He was now paying the piper, and thinking how much more Mrs. Speny knew than he did, when the Tramp came up.

“Podner!” said the Tramp in a low, guttural whine, intended to escape the ear of the police and touch Henry Speny's heart at one and the same time; “podner! couldn't you assist a pore man a little?”

“Assist a poor man to what?” asked Henry Speny, returning his handkerchief to his pocket and looking scornfully at the Tramp.

He was a fat, healthy Tramp, in good condition. Henry Speny hardened his heart.

“Dime!” replied the Tramp; “dime to get somethin' to eat.”

“No,” said Henry Speny shortly; “I'm a half dozen meals behind the game myself.”

This last was only Henry Speny's humour. Mrs. Speny fed him twice a day. But Henry Speny knew that the Tramp wanted the dime for whiskey.

“Well! if you don't think I want it to chew on,” said the Tramp, “jest' take me to a bakery and buy me a loaf of bread. I'll get away with it right before you.”

“Say!” remarked Henry Speny, in a spirit of sarcastic irritation, “what's the use of your talking to me? There's the Charity Woodyard in this town, where, if you were really hungry, you would go and saw wood for something to eat. You can get two meals and a bed for sawing one-sixteenth of a cord of wood.”

“You can't saw wood with no such fin as this, podner!” said the Tramp; and pulling up his coat sleeve he displayed to Henry Speny an arm as withered as a dead tree. “The other's all right,” he continued, restoring his coat sleeve; “but wot's one arm in a catch-as-catch-can racket with a bucksaw?”

Henry Speny was conscience-stricken, but he would defeat the Tramp in his efforts to buy whiskey.

“I'll go down to the woodyard and saw your wood myself,” said Henry Speny.

He told Mrs. Speny afterward that he could not account for the making of this offer, unless it was his anxiety to keep the Tramp sober. All the Tramp wanted was ten cents, and for Henry Speny to propose to saw one-sixteenth of a cord of hard wood on a hot day, when a dime would have made all things even, was a conundrum too deep for Henry Speny, as he looked back over the transaction. But he did make the proposal; and the Tramp accepted with a grin of gratitude.

There were twenty sticks in that one-sixteenth of a cord--hard, knotty sticks, too. And each one had to be sawed three times; sixty cuts in all. It was a poor bucksaw. Before he had finished the third stick, Henry Speny declared that it was the most beastly bucksaw he ever handled in his life. The buck itself was a wretched buck, and wouldn't stand still while Henry Speny sawed. It had a habit of tipping over; and when Henry Speny put his knee on the stick to steady the refractory buck, the knots tore his trousers and made his legs black and blue. Then the perspiration got in his eyes and made them smart. When he wiped it away he saw two of his friends looking at him in a shocked, sober way from across the street. They passed on, and told everybody that Henry Speny was down at the Charity Woodyard sawing wood for his food. They said, too, that they had reason to believe he did this every day; that business had gone to pieces with him, and an assignment couldn't be staved off much longer.

Henry Speny would have thrown up the job with the second stick, but the Tramp was already half through his meal; Henry Speny could see him bolting his food like a glutton through the window, from where he stood.

It took Henry Speny two hours to saw those twenty sticks sixty times. His hands were a fretwork of blisters; his back and shoulders ached like a galley-slave's. Henry Speny hired a carriage to take him home; he couldn't stand the slam and jolt of a street car. He was laid up three days with the blisters on his hands, while Mrs. Speny rubbed his back and shoulders with Pond's Extract.

On the fourth day, as Henry Speny was limping painfully toward his office, he heard a voice he knew.

“Podner! can't you assist a pore m--Oh! beg pardon; you looked so different I didn't know you!” It was the fat Tramp with the withered arm. Without a word Henry Speny gave him ten cents and hobbled on.

JANE DOUGHERTY

(Annals of the Bend)

What's d' flossiest good t'ing I'm ever guilty of?” said Chucky. There was a pause. Chucky let his eye--somewhat softened for him--rove a bit abstractedly about the sordid bar. At last it came back to repose on the beer mug before him, as the most satisfying sight at easy hand.

“Now,” retorted Chucky, as he wet his lip, “that question is a corker. 'What's d' star good deed you does?' is d' way you slings it.

“Will I name it? In a secont--in a hully secont! It's d' story of a little goil I steals, an' sticks in for ever since. This kid's two years comin' t'ree, when I pinched it, so to speak; an' youse can bet your boots! she was reg'larly up ag'inst it. A fly old sport like Chucky would never have mingled wit' her destinies otherwise; not on your life! Between youse, an' me, an' d' bar-keep over there, I ain't got no more natural use for kids than I have for a wet dog. But never mind! we'll pass up that kink in me make-up an' get down to this abduction I prides meself on.

“It's nine spaces ago, an 'd' kid in dispoote is now goin' on twelve. I've been, as I states, stickin' in for her ever since, an' intends to play me string to a finish. But to go on wit' me romance.

“As I relates, d' play I boasts of is nine spaces in d' rear, see! In that day I has a dandy graft. I've got me hooks on as big a bundle as a hundred plunks, many an' many is d' week. I'd be woikin' it now only I lushes too free.

“Here's how in that day I sep'rated suckers from their stuff. It was simply fakin', of d' smoot' an' woidy sort, see! I'd make up like a Zulu, wit' burnt cork, an' feathers, an' queer duds; an' then I'd climb into an open carriage, drive to a good corner, do a bit of chin music, pull a crowd an' sell 'em brass jewellery.

“Me patter would run something like this: D' waggon would stop an' I'd stand up. Raisin' me lamps to d' heavens above, I'd cut loose d' remark at d' top of me valves:

“'It looks like rain! It don't look like a t'ing but rain!'

“Wit' me foist yell d' pop'lace would flock 'round, an' in two minutes there would be a hundred people there. In ten, there'd be a t'ousand, if d' cops didn't get in their woik. I'll give youse a tip d' great American public is d' star gezebos to come to a dead halt, an' look an' listen to t'ings. More'n onct I've seen some stiff who's sprintin' for a doctor, make a runnin' switch at d' sound of me voice an' side-track himself for t'irty minutes to hear me. Dey's a dead curious lot, d' public is; buy a French pool on that!

“W'en d' crowd is jammed all about me carriage w'eels, I'd cut loose some more. I'd quit d' rain question cold, an' holdin' up an armful of jimcrow jewellery, I'd t'row meself like this:

“'Loidies an' gents,' I'd say, 'I'm d' only orig'nal Coal Oil Johnny. An' I'm a soon mug at that, see! I don't get d' woist of it; not on your neckties. I gives away two hundred an' I takes in four hundred toadskins (dollars) an' I don't let no mob of hayseeds do me, so youse farmers needn't try.

“'Look at me! Cast your lamps over me! I'm one of Cetewayo's Zulu body-guard, an' I'm here from Africa on a furlough to saw off on suckers a lot of bum jewellery, an' down youse for your dough, see! I'm goin' to offer for sale four t'ings: I'm goin' to sell youse foist ten rings, then ten brooches, then ten chains, and then ten watches. An' when I gets down to d' watches, watch me dost; because, when I gets nex' to d' tickers I've reached d' point where I'm goin' to t'run youse down. I'm here to skin youse out of your money, an' leave youse lookin' like d' last run of shad.

“'But there's this pecoolarity about me sellin 'd' rings. Each ring is a dollar apiece, an' when I've shoved ten of 'em onto youse, every galoot who's paid me a dollar for one, gets his dollar back an' a dollar wit' it for luck.

“'Now here's d' rings, good folks an' all!'--here I*d flash d' rings; gilt, an' wort' t'ree dollars a ton!--'here's d' little crinklets! Who's goin' to take one at a dollar, an' at d' finish, when d' ten is sold, get two dollars back? Who'll be d' foist? Now don't rush me! don't crush me! but come one at a time. D' rings ain't wort' a dollar a ton: I only makes d' play for fun, an' because d' doctors who looks after me healt' says I'll croak if I don't travel. Who'll be d' early boid to nip a ring?

“'There you be!' I goes on, as some rustic gets to d' front an' hands up d' bill. 'Sold ag'in an' got d' tin, another farmer just sucked in!'

“So I goes, on,” continued Chucky, after reviving his voice--which his exertions had made a trifle raucous--with a swig at the tankard; “so I'd go on until d' ten rings would be sold. Then I'd go over d' outfit ag'in, take back d' rings, an' give 'em each a two-dollar willyum.”

Now push back into d' mob, you lucky guys,' I'd say, 'an' give your maddened competitors to d' rear of youse a chanct to woik d' racket. I'm goin' to sell ten brooches now for two dollars each, an' give back four dollars wit' every brooch. Then I'm goin' to dazzle youse wit' ten chains, at five cases per chain. An' then I'll get down to d' watches, at which crisis, me guileless come-ons, youse must be sure to watch me, for it's then I'll make a monkey of youse.'

“An' so I chins on, offerin' d' brooches at two dollars a t'row, an' at d' wind-up, when d' ten is gone, I gives back to each mucker who's got in, d' sum of four plunks, see!

“Be that time it's a knock-down an' drag-out around me cabrioley, to see who's goin' to transact business wit' me, an', wit'out as much cacklin' as a hen makes over an egg, I goes to d' chains an' floats ten of 'em at five a chain. As I sells d' last, I toins sharp on some duck who's dost be me w'eel an' says:

“'What's that? I'm a crook, am I! an' this ain't on d' level! Loidies an' gents, just for d' disparagin' remark of this hobo, who is no doubt funny in his topknot from drink, I'll go on an' sell ten more chains. After which I'll come down to d' watches, which is d' great commercial point where youse had better watch me, for it's there I'm goin' to lose you in a lope! An' that's for fair, see!'

“Ten more chains, at five a trip, goes off like circus lem'nade, an' I stows d' long an' beauteous green away in me keck. As d' last one of d' secont ten fades into d' hooks of d' last sucker, I stows d' five he's coughed up for it in me raiment, an' says:

“'An' now, loidies an' gents, we gets down to d' watches!'

“Wit' which bluff I lugs me ticker out an' takes a squint at it.

“'What th' 'ell!' I shouts. 'Here it's half-past t'ree, an' I was to be married at t'ree-fifteen! Hully gee! Excuse me, people, but I must fly to d' side of me beloved, or I'll get d' dead face; also d' frozen mit. I'll see youse dubs next year, if woikin' overtime wit' youse to-day ain't ruined me career.'

“As I'm singin' out d' last, I'm givin' me driver d' office to beat his dogs an' chase, see! An', bein' as he's on, an' is paid extra as his part of d' graft, he soaks d' horses wit' d' whip an' in twenty seconts d' crowd is left behint, an' is busy givin' each other d' laugh. No, there never was no row; no mug was ever mobbed for guyin'. Nit! I always comes away all right, an' youse can figure it, I'm sixty good bones in on d' racket.

“Naturally, youse would like to hear where d' kid breaks into d' play an' how I wins it. I'd ought to have told youse sooner, but, on d' level! when me old patter begins to flow off me tongue, I can't shut down until I've spieled it all.

“But about d' kid. One afternoon I'm goin' on--it's in Joisey City--wit' me Zulu war-paint an' me open carriage, givin 'd' usual mob d' usual jolly. T'ings is runnin' off d' reel like a fish new hooked, an' I'm down to me fift' chain. Just then I hears a woman say:

“'Fly's d' woid, Sallie! Here's your old man, an' he's got his load! He won't do a t'ing to youse! Screw out, Sal! screw out!”

“But Sallie, who's a tattered lookin' soubrette, wit' a kid in her arms, an' who's been standin' dost be one of me hind w'eels, don't get no chanct to skin out, see! There's a drunken hobo--as big an' as strong as a horse--who's right up to her when d' foist skirt puts her on. As she toins, he cops her one in d' neck wit'-out a woid. Down she goes like ninepins! As she lands, d' back of her cocoa don't do a t'ing but t'ump a stone horse-block wit' a whack! As d' blood flies, I'm lookin' down at her. I sees her map fade to a grey w'ite under d' dirt; she bats her lamps onct or twict; an' d' nex' moment I'm on wit'out tellin' that her light is out for good.

“As Sallie does d' fall, d' kid which she's holdin' rolls in d' gutter under d' carriage.

“'T'run d' kid in here!' I says to d' mark who picks it up.

“Me only idee at d' time is to keep d' youngone from gettin 'd' boots from d mob that's surgin' round, an' tryin' to mix it up wit' d' drunken bum who's soaked Sal. D' guy who gets d' kid fires it up to me like it's a football. I'm handy wit' me hooks, so I cops it off in midair, an' stows it away on d' seat.

“Be that time d' p'lice has collared d' fightin' bum all right, an' some folks is draggin' Sal, who's limp an' dead enough, into a drug shop.

“It's all up wit' me graft for that day, so after lookin' at d' youngone a secont, I goes curvin' off to d' hotel where I hangs out. While I'm takin' me Zulu make-up off, d' chambermaid stands good for d' kid. When I sees it ag'in, it's all washed up an' got some decent duds on. Say! on d' dead! it was a wonder!

“Well, to cut it short,” said Chucky, giving the order for another mug of ale, “I loins that night that d' mother is dead, an' d' drunken hobo's in d' holdover. As it s a cinch he'll do time for life, even if he misses bein' stretched, I looks d' game all over, an' for a wind-up I freezes to d' kid. Naw; I couldn't tell why, at that, see! only d' youngone acts like it's stuck on me.

“Nixie; I never keeps it wit' me. I've got it up to d' Sisters' school. Say! them nuns is gone on it. I makes a front to 'em as d' kid's uncle; an' while I've been shy meself on grub more'n onct since I asted d' Sisters to keep it, I makes good d' money for d' kid right along, an' I always will. What name does I give it? Jane--Jane Dougherty; it's me mudder's name. Nit; I don t know what I'll do wit' Jane for a finish. I was talkin' to me Rag only d' other day about it, an' she told me, in a week or so, she'd go an' take a fall out of a fortune-teller, who, me Rag says, is d' swiftest of d' whole fortune-tellin' push. Mebby we'll get a steer from her.”

MISTRESS KILLIFER

(Wolfville)

This is of a day prior to Dave Tutt's taking a wife, and a year before the nuptials of Benson Annie, as planned and executed by Old Man Enright, with one, French.

Wolfville is dissatisfied; what one might call peevish. A man has been picked up shot to death, no one can tell by whom; no one has hung for it. Any one familiar with the Western spirit and the Western way would note the discontent by merely walking through the single, sun-burned street. When two citizens of the place make casual meeting in store or causeway, they confine their salutations to gruff “how'd!” and pass on. Men are even seen to drink alone in a sullen, morbid way.

Clearly something is wrong with Wolfville. The popular discontent is so sufficiently pronounced as to merit the notice of leading citizens. Therefore it is no marvel that when Old Man Enright, who, by right of years--and with a brain as clear and as bright as a day in June--is the head man of the hamlet, meets Doc Peets at the bar of the Red Light, the discussion falls on affairs of public concern.

“Whatever do you reckon is the matter with this camp, Enright?” asks Doc Peets, as they tip their liquor into their throats without missing a drop.

Doc Peets is the medical practitioner of Wolfville, but his grammar, like that of many another man, has lost ground before his environment.

“Can't tell!” replied Enright, with a mien dubious yet thoughtful. “Looks like the whole outfit is somehow on a dead kyard. Mebby it's that Denver party gettin' downed last week an' no one lynched. Some folks says the Stranglers oughter have swung that Greaser.”

“Well!” retorts Doc Peets, “you as chief of the Stranglers, an' I as a member in full standin', knows thar's no more evidence ag'in that Mexican than ag'in my _pinto_ hoss.”

“Of course, I knows that too!” replies Enright, “but still I sorter thinks general sentiment lotted on a hangin'. You know, Doc, it ain't so important from a public stand that you stretches the right gent, as that you stretches somebody when it's looked for. Nacherally it would have been mighty mortifyin' to the Mexican who's swung off at the loop-end of the lariat for a killin' he ain't in on; but still I holds the belief it would have calmed the sperit of the camp. However, I may be 'way off to one side on that; it's jest my view. Set up the nosepaint ag'in, barkeep!”

While Doc Peets is slowly freighting his glass with a fair allowance, he is deep in meditation.

“I've an idee, Enright,” says Doc Peets at last. “The thing for us to do is to give the public some new direction of thought that'll hold 'em quiet. The games is all dead at this hour, an' the boys ain't doin' nothin'; s'pose we makes a round-up to consider my scheme. The mere exercise will soothe 'em.”

“Shall we have Jack Moore post a notice?” asks

Enright. “He's Kettle Tender to the Stranglers, an' I reckons what he does that a-way makes it legal.”

“No,” says Peets, “let's rustle 'em in an' hold the meetin' right now an' yere in the Red Light. Some of the boys is feelin' that petulant they're likely to get to chewin' each other's manes any minute. I'm tellin' you, Enright, onless somethin' is done mighty _poce tiempo_ to cheer 'em, an' convince 'em that Wolfville is lookin' up an' gettin' ahead on the correct trail, this outfit's liable to have a killin' any time at all. The recent decease of that Denver person won't be a marker!”

“All right!” says Enright, “if thar ain't no time for Moore an' a notice, a good, handy, quick way to focus public interest would be to step to the back door, an' shake the loads outen my six-shooter. That'll excite cur'osity, an' over they'll come all spraddled out.”

Thus it comes to pass that the afternoon peace of Wolfville is suddenly disparaged and broken down by six pistol shots. They follow each other like the rapid striking of a Yankee clock.

“Any one creased?” asks Jack Moore, by general consent a fashion of marshal and executive officer for the place, and who, followed by the population of Wolfville, rushes up the moment following the shooting.

“None whatever!” replies Doc Peets, cheerfully. “The shootin' you-alls hears is purely bloodless; an' Enright an' me indulges tharin onder what they calls the 'public welfare clause of the constitootion.' The intent which urges us to shake up the sereenity of the hour is to convene the camp, which said rite bein' now accomplished, the barkeep asks your beverages, an' the business proceeds in reg'lar order.”

Enright, who has finished replenishing the pistol from which he evicted the loads, draws a chair to a monte table and drums gently with his fingers.

“The meetin' will please bed itse'f down!” says Enright, with a sage dignity which has generous reflection in the faces around him. “Doc Peets, gents, who is a sport whom we all knows an' respects, will now state the object of this round-up. The barkeep meanwhile will please continue his rounds, the same not bein' deemed disturbin'; none whatever.”

“Gents, an' fellow townsmen!” says Doc Peets, rising at the call of Enright and stepping forward, “I avoids all harassin' mention of a yeretofore sort. Comin' down to the turn at once, I ventures the remark that thar's somethin' wrong with Wolfville. I would see no virtue in pursooin' this subject, which might well excite the resentment of all true citizens of the town, was it not that I feels a crowdin' necessity for a change of a radical sort. Somethin' must be proposed, an' somethin' must be did. I am well aware thar's gents yere to-day as holds a conviction that a bet is overlooked in not stringin' the Mexican last week on account of the party from Denver. That may or may not be true; but in any event, that hand's been played, an' that pot's been lost an' won. Whether on that occasion we diskyards an' draws for the best interests of the public, may well pass by onasked. At any rate we don't fill, an' the Greaser wins out with his neck. Lettin' the past, tharfore, drift for a moment, I would like to hear from any gent present somethin' in the line of a proposal for future action; one calc'lated to do Wolfville proud. As affairs stand our pride is goin' our brotherly love is goin', our public sperit is goin', an' the way we're p'intin' out, onless we comes squar' about on the trail, we won't be no improvement on an outfit of Digger Injuns in a month. Gents, I pauses at this p'int for su'gestions.”

As Doc Peets sits down a whispered buzz runs through the room. It is plain that what he has said finds sympathy in his audience.

“You've heard Peets,” observes Enright, beating softly. “Any party with views should not withhold 'em. I takes it we-all is anxious for the good of Wolfville. We should proceed with wisdom. Red Dog, our tinhorn rival, is a-watchin' of this camp, ready to detect an' take advantages of any weakenin' of sperit on the Wolfville part. So far Red Dog has been out-lucked, out-played, an' out-held. Wolfville has downed her on the deal, an' on the draw. But, to continue in the future as in the past, requires to-day that we acts promptly, an' in yoonison, an' give the sitooation, mentally speakin', the best turn in the box.”

“What for a play would it be?” asks Dan Boggs, doubtfully, as he rises and bows stiffly to Enright, who bows stiffly in return; “whatever for a play would it be to rope up one of these yere lecture sharps, which the same I goes ag'inst the other night in Tucson? He could stampede over an' put us up a talk in the warehouse of the New York Store; an' I'm right yere to say a lecture would look mighty meetropolitan, that a-way, an' lay over Red Dog like four kings an' an ace.”

“Whatever was this yere ghost dancer you adverts to lecturin' about?” asks Jack Moore.

“I never do hear the first of it,” replies Boggs. “Me an' Old Monte, the stage driver, is projectin' about Tucson at the time we strikes this lecture game, an* it's about half dealt out when he gets in on it. But as far as we keeps tabs, he's talkin' about Roosia an' Siberia, an' how they were pesterin' an' playin' it low on the Jews. He has a lay-out of maps an' sech, an' packs the whole racket with him from deal box to check-rack. Folks as _sabes_ lectures allows he turns as strong a game, with as high a limit, as any sport that ever charged four bits for a back seat. The lecture sharp's all right; the question is do you-alls deem highly of the scheme? If it's the sense of this yere town, it don't take two days to cut this short-horn out of the Tucson herd an' drive him over yere.

“Onder other, an' what one might call a more concrete condition of public feelin',” says Doc Peets, cutting rapidly and diplomatically into the talk, “the hint of our esteemed townsman would be accepted on the instant. But to my mind this yere camp ain't in no proper frame of mind for lectures on Roosia. It'll be full of trouble,--sech a talk. I _sabes_ Roosia as well as I does an ace. Thar's an old silver tip they calls the Czar, which is their language for a sort o' national chief of scouts, an' he's always trackin' 'round for trouble. Thar's bound to be no end of what you might call turmoil in a lecture on Roosia, and the sensibilities of Wolfville, already harrowed, ain't in no shape to bear it. Now, while friend Boggs has been talkin', my idees has followed off a different waggon track. What we-all needs, is not so much a lecture, which is for a day, but somethin' lastin', sech as the example of a refined an' elevated home life abidin' in our very midst. What Wolfville pines for is the mollifyin' inflooence of woman. Shorely we has Faro Nell! who is pleasantly present with us, a-settin' back thar alongside Cherokee Hall; an' that gent never makes a moccasin track in Wolfville who don't prize an' value Nell. Thar ain't a six-shooter in camp but what would bark itse'f hoarse in her behalf. But Nell's young; merely a yearlin' as it were. What we wants is the picture of a happy household where the feminine part tharof, in the triple capacity of woman, wife an' mother, while cherishin' an' carin' for her husband, sheds likewise a radiant inflooence for us.”

“Whoopee! for Doc Peets!” shouts Faro Nell, flourishing her broad sombrero over her young curls.

“Pausin' only to thank our fair young townswoman,” says Doc Peets, bowing gallantly to Faro Nell, who waves her hand in return, “for her endorsements, which the same is as flatterin' as it is priceless, I stampedes on to say that I learns from first sources, indeed from the gent himse'f, that one of the worthiest citizens of Wolfville, Mr. Killifer, who is on the map as blacksmith at the stage station, has a wife in the states. I would recommend that Mr. Killifer be requested to bring on this esteemable lady to keep camp for him. The O. K. Restaurant will lose a customer, the same bein' the joint where Kif gets his daily _con-carne_; but Rucker, the landlord, will not repine for that. What will be Rucker's loss will be general gain, an' for the welfare of Wolfville, Rucker makes a sacrifice. Mr. Chairman, my su'gestion takes the form of a motion.”

“Which said motion,” responds Enright, with such vigorous application of his fist to the purpose of a gavel that nervous spirits might well fear for the results, “which said motion, onless I hears a protest, goes as it lays. Thar bein' no objection the chair declares it to be the commands of Wolfville that Syd Killifer bring on his wife. What heaven has j'ined together, let no gent----”

“See yere, Mr. Chairman!” interposes Killifer, with a mixture of decision and diffidence, “I merely interferes to ask whether, as the he'pless victim of this on-looked for uprisin', do my feelin's count? Which if I ain't in this--if it's regarded as the correct caper to lay waste the future of a gent, who in his lowly way is doin' his best to make good his hand, why! I ain't got nothin' to say. I'm impugnin' no gent's motives, but I'm free to remark, these yere proceeding strikes me as the froote of reckless caprice.”

“I will say to our fellow gent,” says Enright with much dignity, “that thar's no disp'sition to force a play to which he seems averse. If from any knowledge we s'posed we entertained of the possession of a sperit on his part, which might rise to the aid of a general need--I shorely hopes I makes my meanin' plain--we over-deals the kyards, all we can do is to throw our hands in the diskyard an' shuffle an' deal ag'in.”

“Not at all, an' no offence given, took or meant!” hastily retorts Killifer, as he balances himself uneasily upon his feet, and surveys first, Enright and then Peets. “I has the highest regard for the chair, personal, an' takes frequent occasion to remark that I looks on Doc Peets as the best eddicated scientist I ever sees in my life. But this yere surge into my domestic arrangements needs to be considered. You-alls don't know the lady in question, which, bein' as it's my wife, I ain't assoomin' no airs when I says I does.”

“Does she look like me, Kif?” asks Faro Nell from her perch near Cherokee Hall.

“None whatever, Nell!” responds Killifer. “To be shore! I ain't basked none in her society for several years, an' my mem'ry is no doubt blurred by stampedes, an' prairie fires, an' cyclones, an' lynchin's, an' other features of a frontier career; but she puts me in mind, as I recalls the lady, of an Injun uprisin' more'n anythin' else. Still, she's as good a woman as ever founds a flap-jack. But she's haughty; that's what she is, she's haughty.

“I might add,” goes on Killifer, in a deprecatory way, “that inasmuch as I ain't jest lookin' for the camp yere to turn to me in its hour of need, this proposal to transplant the person onder discussion to Wolfville, is an honour as onexpected as a rattlesnake in a roll of blankets. But you-alls knows me!”--And here Killifer braces himself desperately.--“What the camp says, goes! I'm a _vox populi_ sort of sport, an' the last citizen to lay down on a duty. Still!”--here Killifer's courage begins to ebb a little--“I advises we go about this yere enterprise mighty conserv'tive. My wife has her notions, an' now I thinks of it she ain't likely to esteem none high neither of our Wolfville ways. All I can say, gents, is that if she takes a notion ag'in us, she's as liable to break even as any lady I knows.”

“Thar ain't a gent here but what honours Kif,” says the sanguine Peets, as he looks encouragingly at Killifer, who has resumed his seat and is gloomily shaking his head, “for bein' frank an' free in this.”

“Which I don't want you-alls to spread your blankets on no ant-hill, an' then blame me!” interrupts Killifer dejectedly.

“I believe, Mr. Chairman,” continues Doc Peets, “we fully onderstands the feelin's of our townsman in this matter. But I'm convinced of the correctness of my first view. Thar can shorely be nothin' in the daily life of Wolfville at which the lady could aim a criticism, an' we needs the beneficent example of a home. I would tharfore insist on my plan with perhaps a modification.”

“I rises to ask the Preesidin' Officer a question!” interrupts Dave Tutt.

“Let her roll!” retorts Enright.

“How would it be to invite Kif's wife to come yere on a visit?” queries Tutt. “Sorter take her on probation! That's the way an oncle of mine back in Missouri j'ines the Meth'dist Church. An' it's lucky the congregation takes them precautions; which they saves the trouble of cuttin' the old felon out of the herd later, when he falls from grace. Which last he shorely does!”

“Not waitin' for the chair to answer,” replies Doc Peets, “I holds the limitation of Tutt to be good. I tharfore pinches down my original resolootion to the effect that Kif bring his wife yere for a month. Let her stack up ag'inst our daily game, an' triumph through a deal or so, an' she'll never quit Wolfville nor Wolfville her. I shorely holds the present occasion the openin' of a new era.”

It is a month later, perhaps, when everybody assembles at the post-office to receive the lady on whom the local public has built so many hopes. Killifer has gone over to Tucson to act as her escort into Wolfville, and, as he said, “to sorter break the effect.”

She is an iron-visaged heroine. As Killifer hands her from the stage--a ceremony upon which he bestows that delicate care wherewith he would have aided the unloading of so much dynamite--Doc Peets steps gallantly forward, raising his hat. Doc Peets is the proprietor of the only stiff hat in town, and presumes on it.

[Illustration: 0253]

“Who is that insultin' drunkard, Mr. Killifer?” demands the lady, as she bends her eyes on the suave Peets, with such point-blank wrath that it silences the salutation on Peets' lips; “no friend of your'n I hope?”

“Which I says it in confidence,” remarks Old Monte, as an hour later he refreshes himself at the bar of the Red Light, “for I holds it onprofessional to go blowin' the private affairs of my passengers, but I shorely thinks the old grizzly gives Kif a clawin' on the way over. I hears him yell like a wolf back in Long's canyon. To be shore! he's inside an' I can't see, but I'm offerin' two to one up to $100 she was lickin' him; if I don't I'm a Siwash!”

It turns out as Killifer predicted. He read the lady aright. There is nothing in Wolfville to which she yields approval. It would be as impossible as it would be terrific, to repeat in print the conduct of this remarkable woman. She utterly abashes Enright; while such hare-hearts as Jack Moore, Cherokee Hall, Dave Tutt, Texas Thompson, Short Creek Dave and Dan Boggs, fly from her like quicksilver. Even Doc Peets acknowledges himself defeated and put to naught. The least of her feats is the invasion of a peaceful poker game to which Killifer is party, and the sweeping confiscation of every dollar in the bank on claim that it is money ravished from Killifer by venal practices. The mildest of her plans is one to assail the Red Light with an axe, should she ever detect the odour of whiskey about Killifer again.

“An' do you know, Doc!” observes Enright, a fortnight later, as they meet for their midday drink, “the boys sorter lays it on you. You know me, Doc! I'll stand up ag'in the iron for you; but as a squar' man, with a fairly balanced mind, I'm bound to admit the boys is right. Now I don't say they feels resentful; it's more like they was mournful over what used to be, an' a day of peace gone by. But you knows what people be whose burdens is more'n they can bear; an' if I was you, this yere lady or I would leave the camp. I'm the last gent to go dictatin' about the details of another gent's game; but you an' me, Doc, has been old friends, an' as a warnin' from a source which means you well, I gives it to you cold the camp is gettin' hostile.”

It is always a spectacle to inspire, to witness a great soul rise to an occasion. Doc Peets never so proves the power of his nature as now, when the tremendous shadow of “Kif's wife” has fallen across Wolfville like a blight. Peets, following Enright's forebodings, holds a long and secret conference with the unhappy Killifer. That night Peets rides to Tucson. The next day Old Monte, with his six horses a-foam, comes crashing into Wolfville two hours ahead of schedule. Before even a mail bag is thrown off, Old Monte unpouches a telegram received at the Tucson office for Mistress Killifer. Its earmark is Illinois; its contents moving. No matter what it tells, its news is cogent enough to decide the lady's mind.

The next morning this dread woman departs, leaving, as she came, with a withering look at all around. That night Killifer gets drunk. Wolfville not only pardons Killifer in his weakness; it joins him.

“But you suppresses the facts, Kif, when you says she's haughty,” observes Dan Boggs. “Haughty, as a deescription, ain't a six-spot!”

“It's with no purpose, Kif,” says Doc Peets, as he fills his glass, “to discourage you--whom I sympathises with as an onfortunate, an' respects as a dead game gent--that I yereby invites the pop'lation to join me in a drink of congratulation on Wolfville's escape from your wife. An' all informal though this assemblage be, I offers a resolootion that this, the 23d of August, the date when the lady in question pulls her freight, be an' remain forevermore a day of yearly thanksgivin' to Wolfville.”

“Which I libates to that myse'f!” says Killifer as he drains his cup to the last lingering drop. “Also I trusts this camp will proceed with caution the next time it turns in to play my domestic hand.”

BEARS

Bears are peaceful folk. They are a mild and lowly citizenry of the woods--I'm talking of the black sort--and shuffle modestly away the moment they hear you coming. We get many of our impressions of the ferocity of animals and the deadly poisons of reptiles from an unworthy sort of hearsay evidence. Much of it comes from Mexicans and Indians rather than from real experience. Now I wouldn't traduce either the Mexicans or the Indians, for their lot is one of hard, sodden ignorance; but it must be conceded that they're by no means careful historians, and run readily to tales of the marvellous and the tragic. I am going back to a bear story I have in mind before I get through; but I want to interject here, while I think of it, that though the centipede, the rattlesnake, the tarantula and the Gila monster, have bitter repute as able to deal death with their poisonous feet or fangs, I was never, in my years on the plains and in the mountains, able to secure proof of even the shallowest sort that a death, whether of man or animal, had ever resulted from the sting of any one of these. On the other hand, I have been with men who were bitten by rattlesnakes, or stung by tarantulas; or who while asleep had suffered as the inadvertent promenade of a centipede, with its hundred hooked, poison-exuding feet; but none of them died. They were sick in an out-of-sort, headache fashion for a day or two; the bitten place inflamed and was sore for a week or a month; that was all. I suppose I've known of fully one hundred horses, cows and sheep which were bitten by rattlesnakes; none died. They were invariably fanged in the nose, too, as they grazed towards my lord of the rattlers. On more than one occasion I kept the animal so bitten in sight to note results. Its head would swell and puff; it would lounge about with a sick listlessness for several days; then the poison would wear away in force, and back to its grass it would go with the wire-edge appetite of a sailor home from sea.

But about bears. I was remarking that my black, shaggy cousins of the woods were a peaceful folk. So much is this true, and so little do their neighbours apprehend violence at their clumsy hands, that they who live in regions which abound in bears evince not the least alarm about the safety of their children. The babies, some as young as five or six years, roam the same mountains with the bears; and, while the latter will swoop upon a pig and run dangers with wide-open eyes in doing it, never did I hear of one who disturbed a ringlet on a child's head. They had daily opportunities enough, for many are the households to live in the wide, pine-sown Rockies.

Our bears, too, are creatures of vast physical power. Often, as I rode the mountain for cattle, have I come across a dead and fallen pine tree, which would have defeated the best efforts of a horse to move, completely torn from its bed in the earth and leaves, and either overturned or thrown one side by the mighty arms of a bear. He was in search of a dinner cf grubs--those white, helpless worms which make their dull homes under rotten logs--and Sir Bear made no more ado of lifting and laying aside a pine tree in his grub-hunt than would you or I of a billet of firewood.

While in the mountains I marvelled over the fact that the bears and the mountain lions never assailed the young calves. The hills were rife with cattle, and every spring found the canyons and oak-bushed slopes a perfect nursery of calves. And yet neither the panthers nor the bears disturbed them. It was due, I think, more to the bellicose character of the old cow and her relatives, than any uprightness of character on the part of the bears, and the panthers. Let a calf raise but one yell of distress in those mountains--and I assure you he can make their walls and valleys ring with his youthful music when so disposed--and, out of canyons and off mesas, over logs and crashing through the oak bushes, will come plunging all the cattle within hearing. Not thirty seconds will elapse before as many cattle will be by the side of the threatened calf, lusting for battle. They make such a phalanx of sharp, threatening horns, coupled with their rolling, wrath-red eyes and ferocious breathings, that, I warrant you, they have so shocked the nerves of past bears and panthers, it has become instinct with these latter to give the whole horned, truculent brood a wide berth.

The Indians are very fond of the bear for his wisdom, and he divides their respect with the beaver as a personage of sagacity. The curiosity of my shaggy friend would shame any boy or girl of ten. You may be sure, were a bear to visit you for a week at your home, he would open every door, ransack every bureau, take every garment off every hook in every closet--and I had almost said “try it on”--before he had been with you an hour. Not a box nor a barrel, not a nook nor cranny, from cellar to ridge pole, would escape his investigation. His black nose would sniff at every crack, his black hand explore every crevice. Nor, beyond what he bestowed in his remorseless stomach, would he destroy anything. I have the black coat of a bear at my house, who might be wearing it himself to-day, were it not for his curiosity.

There was a salt spring near my camp on the upper Red River; perhaps two miles away, which is “near” in the mountains. This salt spring was popular with the deer. They repaired thither to lick the salt earth about the waters. I had, among the lumber at my camp, a big, two-spring trap of steel; I suppose it must have weighed sixty pounds. It occurred to me that a lazy way to kill a deer would be to set this wide-jawed engine near the spring and let one walk into it. I'm not proud of this plan as a method in deer-killing, and wouldn't do it now. On this occasion, however I was not particular. I “set” the trap at my camp--for I had to use a hand-spike to crush down the springs, and it all gave me a deal of work and trouble--and then, with its jaws wide open, but held so that it wouldn't nip me in case it did snap, I crept carefully aboard my pony and rode over to the spring. The next morning early I had to go again to remove the trap, as during the day the cattle would take the places of the deer at this delectable salt spring, and I didn't care to break the legs of a thirty-dollar steer with my trapping. I went over while it was yet dark, and found no deer in the trap. I took it and hid it, face downward--the jaws still spread and “set”--by the of a big yellow pine log, which stretched its decayed length along the slope of the canyon. There I left it, intending to return and rearrange it for deer at dusk.

It snowed that day, and as I grew lazy towards night, I left my trap where I'd hidden it by the yellow pine log. The deer would have one night of safety. What was safety for the deer proved otherwise for the bear.

The following day I rode over just as the canyons were getting dark and the cattle climbing out of them to pass the night on the hills. Behold! my trap was gone!

There was a great flourish of tracks in the snow; long plantigrade impressions like the bare footprints of some giant! I knew that a bear had somehow acquired my trap, or the trap, him; at that time I couldn't tell which. To make it short, however, it came to this: The bear, scouting in a loaferish way down the hill, and pausing no doubt to make an estimate of the probable grubs he would find beneath this particular yellow pine next summer, had chanced upon the trap. Here was a great find. Thoughts of grubs and common edible things at once deserted him. The mysterious novelty he had found took possession of his addle-pate like a new toy. A wolf or a fox would have smelled the odour of my handling, even off the cold steel of the trap, and been over the hills and far away in a twinkling. Your wolf is the canniest of timber folk; a grey Scotchman of the mountains. But my bear was reared on a different bottle. He sat down at once and actually took the new plaything in his lap. Then it would seem as if he deliberately thrust his paw into it and sprung its savage jaws on his forearm.

In his first wrathful surprise, my bear tore up the snow and bushes for twenty feet about; but at last he set off with the trap on his foot.

It was late. For half an hour I followed the broad track where his bearship had dragged the trap in the snow at a gallop. It was dark when at last I turned off for camp. Bright and betimes, I took the trail next day. It carried me over some ten miles of rough, close country. About midday I stood on the bluff edge of the Canyon Caliente, picking a pathway with my eyes along its steep, perilous side for my pony to get down. The bear had crossed here; but he was in the roughest of moods, and seemingly made no more of hurling himself over twenty-foot precipices--himself and my trap--or sublimely sliding down dangerous descents of hundreds of feet where foothold was impossible, than you would of eating buttered buns. So I had to pick out paths for myself; I couldn't trust to so reckless and uncivil an engineer as my bear.

As I sat in the saddle running a quick eye over the slope for a trail, I, of an instant, heard a most surprising noise. It was indeed a noble racket, and might have passed for a blacksmith shop. But I knew the hills too well. It was of a verity my bear; and from the riot he was making, it was plain I would have to get there soon if I wanted to save the trap.

This formidable uproar came from across the Caliente, perhaps half a mile. I slid from the saddle and went forward afoot. It didn't take long to cover the distance. I fell and tumbled down the first third, much as the bear had done a bit earlier.

Once on the other side, I came upon my rough gentleman cautiously, and found him sitting by the side of a round, boulder-like rock, something the size and contour of a load of hay. And he was smiting the enduring granite with my trap in a way which told more of his feelings than would have been possible with mere words. He would raise his arm clumsily, 60-pound trap and all, and then bring it against the rock with all the fervour of rage and giant strength.

He was so wrapt in the enterprise, he never heard me until a shot from my Winchester met him just under the ear. One shot did it; and I had trap and bear. He had ruined the trap; one spring was broken and the whole disparaged beyond my power to repair. Wherefore I stripped him of his black overcoat to pay for the damage he had done; and that and the grease I took from him covered all costs and damages.

THE BIG TOUCH

(Annals of The Bend)

Me fren', Mollie Matches,” observed Chucky.

That was our introduction. A moment later Chucky whispered in a hoarse aside:

“Matches is d' dip I chins youse about, who gets d' Hummin' Boid t'run into him.”

“Matches,” as Chucky called him, was a sad, grey, broken man. Years and a life of flight and anxious furtivity had told on him. His eye was dancing and birdlike; resting on nothing, roving always; the sure mark of one sort of criminal. Matches drank for an hour before he felt at ease. That time arrived, however, and I took advantage of it to feed my curiosity. It was no easy matter, but at last I won him by a deft blending of flattery and drink to talk of his crimes. And indeed I fear--for I suppose the expert thief does plume himself a bit on his art--that Matches took some sort of wretched pride in his illicit pocket searchings.

“D' biggest touch I ever makes,” said Matches, in response to a query, “was $36,000; quite a bunch of dough. Gettin' it was easy; gettin' away wit' it was d' squeak.

“We toins d' trick on d' train from Albany. D' tip comes straight to me in New York that a bloke is goin' to draw $36,000 from d' Albany bank on such a day. I makes up a mob; t'ree stalls an' meself;--all pretty fly we was--an' lands in Albany.

“We gets onto d' party who's to be woiked early in d' mornin', an' shadows him so dost he's never out of reach. Our play is to follow him to d' bank an' do him wit 'd' drop game. If that misses, we're to stay wit' him till d' bundle's ours be one racket or another.

“This sucker is pretty soon himself, see! He ain't such a mut as we figgers. His train starts at 1 o'clock, an' he takes in d' bank on his way to d' station.

“Of course we was wit' him; but he's dead leary an' never t'rows himself open to be woiked. D' stuff is in t'ousand-dollar willyums, an' as he just sinks it in his keck d' minute his hooks is onto it, an' never stops to count or run his lamps over it, we don't get no chanct to do d' drop. D' instant d' money's in his mits he plants it--all stretched out long in a big leather, it is--in his inside pocket, an' screws his nut for d' door. D' hack slams an' he's on his way to d' train.

“Yes; we starts for d' station be another street. D' bloke ain't onto us yet, an' we tries not to plant a scare into him. He's leary enough as it is; just havin' such a roll wit' him rattles him.

“So I makes up me mind to do d' job on d' train runnin' into New York. As he sinks d' stuff away, I notes how d' ends of d' bills sticks out over d' pocket-book. Me idee is to weed it--get d' dough an' leave d' leather in his pocket--if I can make d' play. Weedin' was d' way to do; you gets d' long green an 'd' sucker still has d' leather to feel of, an' it's some time before he tumbles he's been touched, see!

“D' guy wit 'd' stuff plants himself in a seat. Two of me stalls sits ahead of him, me an' me other pal is behint him. We only waits now for him to get up an' come along d' aisle of d' car to get in our hooks.

“Foist I goes d' len'th of d' train to see who's onto it. I always does that; I wants to see if any guy aboard knows Mollie Matches. You see, if there is, when d' holler comes, an' some duck declares himself shy his spark, or roll, or ticker, it's 40 to 1 Mr. Know-all, who's onto me for a crook, sends a tip to d' p'lice: 'Matches was on d' train!' an' I gets d' collar. No, I never woiks when one of me acquaintances is along be accident. D' cops, in such case, as I says, is put onto me an' spots me wit 'd' foist yell.

“I covers d' train an' comes back. There's no guy on me visiting list who's along. So I sits down wit' me pal to d' rear of d' sucker an' waits.

“It's not for long. D' leather's still in his inside keck, 'cause I can see him pressin' on it wit' his mit to make sure it's there. At last he gets up to go to d' watercooler. I sees d' move comin', an' is in d' aisle before him. So's me stalls. From start to finish no one bungles d' stunt. There's a tangle--all be accident, of course--every mug 'pologises, we break away, an' I've got d' blunt. But d' woist part is, I can't weed it. D' stuff won't come no other way, an' so I lifts leather an' all.

“There's due to be a roar in no time;--this mark's bound to be on he's frisked!--so I splits out each stall's bit in a hurry an' says: 'Every gent for himself! an' if youse is nipped, don't knock!' an' then I sherries me nibs for d' rear coach. It was great graft. Me bit was $9,000, an' I has me plan all set up to save it an' meself wit' it. This is d' racket I has in me cocoa.

“In d' last coach is an old w'ite choker--a pulpit t'umper, you understand. Wit' him is his daughter, an' wit' her is her kid. Mebby d' kid, say, is six years. I heads for 'em an' begins to give d' old skate a jolly. I was dead strong on patter in them days, an' puts it up I'm a gospel sharp from Hamilton. I saws it off on his nibs how me choich boins down, an' how I'm linin' out to New York to see if d' good folks down there won't spring their rolls--cough up be way of donations, you understand, an' help us slam up a new box--choich, I means--so we can go back to our graft.

“It's all right. Me razzle dazzle takes like spring water. In two minutes me an 'd' old party an 'd' loidy, an' for that matter d' kid, is t'ick as t'ieves. We was bunched together, singin' 'Jesus, Lover of me Soul,' to beat four of a kind, when d' galoot I skins for his bundle lifts d' shout he's been done, see!

“This dub who lose is t'ree coaches ahead. D' foist we knows of his troubles--all but me--d' Con' comes an' locks d' door. No one can get off d' train. Then he stops an' taps d' wires wit' a machine from d' baggage car an' sends d' story chasin' into New York.

“'Party t'run down for $36,000, says d' message; 'swag an' crooks still on me train. Send orders.'

“D' order comes to keep d' doors locked an' run to New York wit' no more stops. An' after puttin' a Brakey in each coach to see what goes on, that's what dey does. We go spinnin' into New York at forty-five miles an hour.

“Naturally, I'm in a steam. I goes all right wit 'd' Con', an' d' train crew, as a sky pilot, but how was I to make d' riffle wit' de fly cop of New York, who'd be waitin' for d' train--me mug in d' gallery, an' four out o' five of 'em twiggin' me be me foist name? But I t'ought it out.

“When d' train rumbles into d' Gran' Central, d' door is slammed open an' we all gets up to go. A fly-cop is comin' in just as we starts. I grabs up d' kid to carry him, see! bein' d' old preacher party nor d' skirt ain't so able as me.

“Say! it was a winner. I buries me map in d' kid's make-up, gets between d' goil an' d' old stumblin' mucker of a gran'dad, an' walks slap t'rough d' entire day-push of d' Central office. An' hard, sharp marks dey is to beat, see!

“Fly dey is, but not swift enough for Matches wit a scare on, see! Not a dub of 'em tumbles to me.

“In two moves an' ten seconts I'm in d' street. As I goes along I pulls a ring off one of me north hooks wit' me teet,' an' t'oins it over to d' kid as his bit for makin' d' good front for me. No; d' others don't catch on, but d' way he cinches it in his small mit shows me he's goin' to save it out for fair.

“When I hits d' street I drops d' youngone, who's still froze to his solitaire, an' grabs off a cab, an' in twenty minutes I'm buried where all d' p'lice in New York couldn't toin me up in a t'ousand years.

“No; me pals got d' collar, an' each does a stretch. But dey lays dead about me; never peached nor squealed. I win out.

“Who?--d' w'ite choker an' his party? Nit; never hears of 'em ag'in. For four days I gets one of d' fam'ly--he's a crook who's under cover for a bank trick, an' who's eddicted--to read me all d' poipers. I wants to see if d' preacher an' his goil gives up anyt'ing about d' ring I swaps to d' kid.

“Never hears a peep! Nixie; dey was on all right, you bet your life! when their lamps lights on that jewelry; but most likely dey needs d' ring in their graft. It was a spark wort' five hundred cases from any fence in d' land, an' so d' old guy an' his goil sort o' stan's for d' play, see!”

THE FATAL KEY

Young Jenkins prided himself on sharp eyes. He said he could “give a hawk cards and spades.” He could find four-leaf clovers where no one else could see them. He took in the smallest detail of the scenery all about him.

As a result, young Jenkins was a great finder of small trifles, and that he might miss nothing, lost, strayed or stolen, he went about during the little journeys of the day, with his eyes searching the ground. And he picked up many trinkets of a personal sort that other men had lost. Nothing of much value, perhaps, but it served to please young Jenkins, and it gave him a chance to boast of the sharp, devouring character of his eyes.

Even as a child, young Jenkins was prone to find things. He told how once his talents as a retriever made him the subject of parental suspicion. He was ten years old when he picked up a four-blade Barlow knife.

“Where did you get it?” queried old Jenkins, as young Jenkins displayed his treasure trove.

“Found it,” was the reply.

“Oh, you found it!” snorted old Jenkins. “Well, take it straight back, and put it where you found it, and don't 'find' any more. If you do, I'll lick you out of your knickerbockers!”

In spite of such discouragement, young Jenkins kept on finding all sorts of bric-à-brac. He does even to this day.

One evening young Jenkins had a disagreeable adventure, as the fruit of his talent, which for an hour or so made him wish he had weaker vision.

It was on Great Jones Street, and young Jenkins, hurrying along, noticed in the half moonlight a big store key, where the owner had dropped it just after locking up for the night. The hour was full midnight.

Young Jenkins possessed himself of the key. He looked at it as he held it in his hand, and wondered how the careless shopman would open up in the morning without it.

From where it lay it wasn't hard to infer the store to which the key belonged. Yet to make sure on that point it occurred to young Jenkins that he might better try the lock with it.

Young Jenkins had just fitted the big key to the lock when some one seized him by the wrist. It startled him so that he dropped the key and allowed it to go rattling along the sidewalk. As young Jenkins looked up he saw that the party who had got him was a member of the police.

“I was trying to unlock the door!” stammered young Jenkins.

“I saw what you were about,” said the officer with suspicious severity. “What were you monkeying with the door for? You aren't the owner of this store?”

“No, sir,” said young Jenkins, much impressed. “No, sir; I----”

“Nor one of the clerks?”

“No, sir,” replied young Jenkins again, “I have nothing to do with the store. I found the key, and thought I'd see if it opened this door.”

“What did you want to see if it would open the door for? Don't you think it is a little late for a joke of that sort?”

“It wasn't a joke,” said young Jenkins, beginning to perspire rather copiously; “it was an experiment. I found the key on the sidewalk, and wanted to see----”

“Yes!” interrupted the blue coat with a fine scorn; “you wanted to see if you could get into the store and rob it bare. That is what you wanted to see. You're a box-worker, if ever I met one, and if I hadn't come along you would have had this bin cracked and cleaned out in another ten minutes.”

“I told you I found the key,” protested young Jenkins.

“That's all right about your finding the key!” said the policeman in supreme contempt. “You found the key and I found you, and we'll both keep what we've found. That's square, ain't it?”

And in spite of all young Jenkins could say at that late hour of the twenty-four, the faithful officer dragged him to the station, where a faithful sergeant faithfully registered him, and a faithful turnkey locked him faithfully up.

As young Jenkins sat unhappy in his cell, while vermin sparred with him for an opening, he registered a vow that never again would he find anything.

Young Jenkins wouldn't pick up a twenty-dollar gold piece were he to meet one to-day in the street.

AN OCEAN ERROR

No; neither my name nor the name of my vessel can I give. Our navy has a way of courtmartialing its officers who wax garrulous.”

It was just as the Lieutenant called for the _creme de menthe_, that may properly succeed a dinner well ordered and well stowed.

“But you are welcome to the raw facts,” continued the Lieutenant. “It was during those anxious days that went before the penning in of Cervera at Santiago. We had been ordered on a ticklish service. Schley was over south of the island on a prowl for the Spanish fleet. Sampson was, or should have been, off the Windward Passage similarly employed. Cervera was last heard of two weeks before at Barbadoes. Then he disappeared like a ghost; no one knew where his smoke would be sighted next. The one sure thing, of which all were aware, was that with Sampson anywhere between the Mole and Cape Mazie, and Schley searching the wide seas south of Cuba, Cervera might easily with little luck and less seamanship dodge either and appear off Havana. There the cardboard fleet left on blockade wouldn't, with such heavy odds, last as long as a drink of whiskey.

“It stood thus when our orders came to my Captain to proceed to Bayou Hondu, some seventy miles west of Havana, and there stand off and on, like a policeman walking his beat, in what would be the path of Cervera should he work to the rear of Schley and to the north of Cuba by the way of St. Antonio.

“Our vessel was detailed on this duty because of her perfect order and speed of seventeen knots. Our heavy armament was eight 4-inch broadside guns, with a 6-inch rifle forward and another mounted aft. Our orders were: If Cervera came upon us to fight!--steam as slowly as might be for Havana and fight!--and to keep fighting until sunk or sure that the block-aders off Havana were warned, whether by our signals or our racket, of Cervera's coming.

“It was a grinding task, this lonely patrol off Bayou Hondu. The rains had just begun, the weather was a dripping hash of fog and squall and rain. If Cervera didn't come, it meant discomfort; and if he did, it meant death. Take it full and by, the outlook was depressing.

“At night no light burned and the ship was dark as a coffin. This, with the service, contributed to keep us all in a mood of alert nervousness. Cervera's ships would also be dark. We didn't care to be crept upon, and get our first notice of his advent from the broadside that sent us to the bottom like an anvil.

“We had been on this dreary duty some ten days. It was a dark, heavy night. I myself had the bridge, and the captain, whose anxiety kept him up, was seated in the starboard corner, dozing. His sea cloak was thrown over his head to keep out the weather. We were working to the eastward, with engines at quarter speed, and with a head sea running, were making perhaps three knots.

“The ship's bells were not being struck for the hours, and I had just looked at my watch by the light of the binnacle. It was half-past two in the morning.

“'How's your head?' I asked of the man at the wheel, as I put up my timepiece.

“'East by south, half south,' he replied.

“This was taking us too much inshore. 'Starboard for a point!' I said.

“As I turned from the wheel I saw that which sent a thrill over me and brought me up all standing. It was the murky loom of a great ship, black and dim and dark and silent as ourselves. She was off our port quarter and not five hundred yards away. It gave me a start, I confess. None of our ships should be that far to the west of Havana. It was a sword to a sheath knife she was one of Cervera's advance.

“Instantly I reached for the electric button; and instantly the red and white lights, which stood for the letter of that night, burned in our semaphore. The stranger replied with a red over two white lights. It was the wrong letter.

“With my first motion, the captain was on his feet; his hand gripped the lever that worked the engine bells.

“'Try her again!' he said.

“Again I flashed the proper letter, and again came a queer reply.

“The next moment the captain jammed the lever 'Full steam, ahead!' and a general call to quarters went singing through the ship.

“'Starboard!' shouted the captain to the man at the wheel; 'starboard! pull her over!'

“There was a vast churning from the propellers; the vessel leaped forward like a horse; the sailor climbed the wheel like a squirrel. We surged forward with a broad sheer to port. The next instant we opened on our dark visitor with every gun in the larboard battery. It wasn't ten seconds after she gave us the wrong signal when she got our broadside.

“The result was amazing. With the first crash of our guns the stranger went from utter darkness to the extreme of light. She flashed out all over like a Fall River steamer. Knowing who we were--for they bore orders for us--and realizing that there had been some mixing of signals, the officer on her bridge had the wit to turn on every light in his ship. It was an inspiration and saved them from a second broadside.

“Who was she? One of our own vessels. Cervera was locked in Santiago and she had come up to tell us the news. Her officer blundered in giving out the wrong letter for the night, and thereby sowed the seed of our misunderstanding.

“No, beyond peppering her a bit, our fire did no harm. We were so close that most of our shot went over her. Still, I don't believe that vessel will ever get her signals fouled again. And it's just as well that way. If she had made the wrong talk to some one of our heavy-weights, the Oregon, for instance, she would have gone down like so much pig-iron.”

SKINNY MIKE'S UNWISDOM

(Annals of The Bend)

CHUCKY was posed in his usual corner. As I came in he nodded sullenly as one whom the Fates ill-use. I craved of Chucky to name his drink; it was the surest way to thaw him.

“Make it beer,” said Chucky.

Now beer stood as a symbol of gloom with Chucky, as he himself had told me.

“It's always d' way wit' me,” said Chucky on that far occasion when he explained “Beer”, “when I'm dead sore an' been gettin' it in d' neck, to order beer. It's d' sorrowfulest kind of booze, beer is; there's a sob in every bottle of it, see!”

Realising Chucky's low spirits by virtue of present beer, I suavely made query of his unknown grief and tendered sympathy.

“I've been done for me dough,” replied Chucky, softening sulkily. “You minds d' races at d' Springs? That's it; I gets t'run down be d' horses. I get d' gaff for fifty plunks. Now, fifty plunks ain't all d' money in d' woild; but it was wit' me. It was me fortune.”

Chucky ruminated bitterly.

“Oh, I'm a good t'ing!” he ejaculated, as he tilted his chair against the wall with an air of decision. “I'll play d' jumpers agin, nit!

“W'at's d' use? I can't beat nothin'. Say! I couldn't beat a drum! I'm a mut to ever t'ink of it! I ought to give meself up to d' p'lice right now an' ast 'em to put me in Bloomin'dale or some other bug house. I'm nutty, that's what I am; an' that's for fair! Now, I'd as lief tell you. It's d' boss hard luck story, an' that ain't no vision!

“In d' foist place, I was a rank sucker to d' point of deemin' meself a wise guy about d' horses. An' it so follows, bein' stuck on meself about horses, as I says, that when Skinny Mike blows in wit 'd' idee that he can pick d' winner of d' big event, I falls to d' play, an easy mark.

“Mike is an oldtime tout; an' wit' me feelin', as I says, dead fly, it ain't a minute before I'm addin' me ignorance to Mike's, an' we're runnin' over d' dopes in d' papers seein' what d' horses has done. To make a long story short, we settles it for a finish that War Song's out to win. Which, after all, ain't such a sucker t'eory.

“'It's a cinch!' says Skinny Mike; 'War Song's got a pushover. Dey can't beat him; never in a t'ousand years!'

“It looks a sure tip to me, too; so I digs for me last dollar an' hocks me ticker besides, an' makes up d' fifty plunks I mentions. Mike sticks in fifty an' then takes d' whole roll an' screws his nut for d' Springs to get it up on War Song. Naw; I don't go. Mike's plenty to make d' play; an' besides I had me lamps on a sure t'ing for a tenner over on d' Bowery.

“Of course, while Mike's gone, I ain't doin' a t'ing but read d' poipers all to pieces. War Song's a 20-to-1 shot; I stan's to make a killin'--stan's to win a t'ousand plunks, see!

“An', say! War Song win! Mebby I don't give d' yell of d' year when I sees it in d' print.

“'W'at's eatin' youse, Chucky?' says me Rag, as I cuts loose me warwhoop.

“'O, I ain't got no nut!' I says, givin' meself d' gran' jolly. 'No! not at all! I has to ast some mark to tell me me name, I don't t'ink! I'm cooney enough to get onto War Song, all d' same! Say! I'm d' soonest galoot that ever comes down d' pike!'

“That's d' way I feels an' that's d' way I chins.

“At last I cools off me dampers an' sets in to wait for Mike. Meanwhile I begins to figger how I'll blow d' stuff, see! an' settle what I'll buy. It's a case of money to boin an' I was gettin' me matches ready before even Mike shows up.

“But Mike don't come. 'W'at th' 'ell!' I t'inks; 'Mike ain't crookt it; he ain't skipped wit' d' bundle?' An' say! you should a-seen me chew d' rag at d' idee.

“But I'm wrong on me lead. Mike hadn't welched, an' he hadn't been sandbagged. He comes creepin' along a day behint d' play, an' d' secont I gets me lamps on his mug I'm dead on we lose. I don't have to have me fortune told to tumble to that. Mike looks like five cents wort' of lard in a paper bag. An* here's d' song he sings.

“Mike says he goes to d' Springs all right, all right, an' is organised to get War Song for d' limit d' nex' day. It's that night, out be d' stables, when he chases up on a horsescraper--a sawed-off coon, he is--an 'd' horse-scraper breaks off a great yarn on Mike.

“'I ain't no tout, an' dis ain't no tip,' Mike says d' coon says; 'it's a rev'lation. On d' dead! it's a prophecy! It's las' night. I'm sleepin' in d' stall nex' to a little horse named Dancer. All at onct I wakes up an' listens. It's that Dancer horse in d' nex' stall talkin' to himself. Over an' over agin he says: “I'm goin' to win it! I'm goin' to win it!” just like that.'

“Well,” continued Chucky, “you know Skinny Mike. There's a ghost goes wit' Mike, an' he's that sooperstitious, d' nigger's story has him on a string in a hully secont. He can't shake it off. Away he wanders an' dumps d' entire wad on Dancer, an' never puts a splinter on War Song at all.

“W'at do you t'ink of it? On d' level! w'at d' youse really t'ink of it? That Mike's a woild-beater; that's right; a woild-beater an' a wonder to boot! I'd like to trade him for a yaller dawg, an' do d' dawg!”

“Did Dancer win?” I asked.

“Did Dancer win?” repeated Chucky; and his tones breathed guttural scorn; “d' old skate never even finished. Naw; he gets 'round on d' back stretch, stops, bites d' boy off his back, chases over be d' fence an' goes to eatin' grass; that's what Dancer does. He's a dandy race horse, or I don't want a cent! I'll bet me mudder-in-law on that Dancer some day. I tells Mike to take a run an' jump on himself. Naw,” concluded Chucky, with a great gulp, “Dancer don't win; War Song win.”

MOLLIE PRESCOTT

(Wolfville)

The Cactus” was the name bestowed upon her in Wolfville. Her signature, if she had written it, would probably have been Mollie Prescott, at least such was the declaration of Cherokee Hall.

“I sees this yere lady a year ago in Tombstone,” asserted that veracious chronicler, “where she cooks at the stage station; an' she gives it out she's Prescott--Mollie Prescott--an' most likely she knows her name, an' knows it a year ago.”

As Cherokee was a historian of known firmness of statement, no one cared to challenge either his facts or his conclusions. The true name of “The Cactus” was accepted by the Wolfville public as Prescott.

“The Cactus” was personable, and her advent into Wolfville society caused something of a flutter. Her mission was to cook, and in the fulfilment of her destiny she presided over the range at the stage station.

Being publicly hailed as “The Cactus” seemed in no wise to depress her. It was even possible she took a secret glow over an epithet, meant by the critical taste awarding it, to illustrate those thorns in her nature which repelled and held in check the amorous male of Wolfville.

Women were not frequent in Wolfville, and on her coming, “The Cactus” had many admirers. Every man in camp loved her the moment she stepped from the Tucson stage; that is, every man save Cherokee Hall. That scientist, given wholly to faro as a philosophy, had no time--in a day before he met Faro Nell--for so dulcet an affair as love. Also Cherokee had scruples born of his business.

“Life behind a deal box is a mighty sight too fantastic,” observed the thoughtful Cherokee, “for a fam'ly. It does well enough for single-footers, which it don't make much difference with when some gent they've mortified an' hurt, pulls his six-shooter an' sends them lopin' home to heaven all spraddled out. But a lady ain't got no business with a sport who turns kyards as a pursoot.”

As time unfurled, the train of lovers to sigh on the daily trail of “The Cactus” dwindled. There were those who grew dispirited.

“I'm clean-strain enough,” said Dan Boggs, in apologetic description of his failure to persevere, “but I knows when I've got through. I'll play a game to a finish, but when it's down to the turn an' my last chip's gone over to the dealer, why! I shoves my chair back an' quits. An' it's about that a-way of an' concernin' my yearnin's for this yere Cactus girl. I jest can't get her none, an' that settles it. I now drops out an' gives up my seat complete.”

“That's whatever!” said Texas Thompson, who was an interested listener to the defeated Boggs, “an' you can gamble I'm with you on them views! Seein' as how my wife in Laredo gets herse'f that divorce, I turns in an' loves this Cactus person myse'f to a frightful degree. Thar's times I simply goes about sobbin' them sentiments publicly. But yere awhile back I comes wanderin' 'round her kitchen, an' bing! arrives a skillet at my head. That lets me out! You bet! I don't pursoo them explorations 'round her no more. I has exper'ence with one, an' I don't aim to get any lariat onto a second female who is that callous as to go a-chunkin' of kitchen bric-a-brac at a heart which is merely pinin' for her smiles.”

There were two at the shrine of “The Cactus,” who were known to Wolfville, respectively, as Cottonwood Wasson and Cape Jinks. These were distinguished for the ardour wherewith they made siege to the affection of “The Cactus,” and the energy of their demands for her capitulation.

That virgin, however, paid neither heed to their court, nor took an interest in the comment of onlook-ing Wolfville. She pursued her path in life, even and unmoved. She set her tables, washed her dishes, and perfected her daily beefsteaks by the ingenious process, popular in the Southwest, of burning them on the griddles of the range, and all with a composure bordering hard on the stolid.

“All I'm afraid of,” said Old Man Enright, the head of the local vigilance committee, “is that some of these yere young bucks'll take to pawin' 'round for trouble with each other. As the upshot of sech doin's would most likely be the stringin' of the survivors by the committee, nuptials, which now looks plenty feasible, would be plumb busted an' alienated, an' the camp get a setback it would be hard to rally from. I wishes this maiden would tip her hand to some discreet gent, so a play could be made in advance to get the wrong parties over to Tucson or some'ers. Whatever do you think yourse'f, Cherokee?”

“It's a delicate deal,” replied that philosopher, “to go tamperin' 'round a lady for the secret of her soul. But I shorely deems the occasion a crisis, an* public interest demands somethin' is done. I wish Doc Peets was yere; he knows these skirted cattle like I does an ace. But Peets won't be back for a month; pendin' of which, onless we-alls interferes, it's my jedgment some of this yere amorousness 'll come off in the smoke.”

“Thar ought to be statoots,” observed Texas Thompson, with a fine air of wisdom, “ag'in love-makin' in the far West. The East should be kept for sech purposes speshul; same as reservations for Injuns. The Western climate's too exyooberant for love.”

“S'pose me an' you an' Thompson yere goes to this young person, an' all p'lite an' congenial like, we ups an' asks her intentions?” remarked Enright. This was offered to Cherokee.

“Excuse me, pards!” said Texas Thompson with eagerness, “but I don't reckon I wants kyards in this at all. 'The Cactus' is a mighty fine young bein', but you-alls recalls as how I've been ha'ntin' 'round her somewhat in the past myse'f. For which reason, with others, she might take my comin' on sech errants derisive, an' bust me over the forehead with a dipper, or some sech objectionable play. I allows I better keep out of this embroglio a whole lot. I ain't aiming to shirk nothin', but it'll be a heap more shore to win.”

“Thompson ain't onlikely to be plenty right about this,” said Cherokee, “an' I reckons, Enright, we-alls better take this trick ourse'ves.”

The mission was not a success. When the worthy pair of peace-preservers appeared in the presence of “The Cactus,” and made the inquiries noted, the scorn of that damsel was excited beyond the power of words to describe.

“What be you-alls doin' in my kitchen?” she cried, her face a-flush with rage and noonday cookery. “Who sends you-alls curvin' over to me, a-makin' of them insultin' bluffs? I demands to know!”

“An' yere,” said Cherokee Hall, relating the exploit in the Red Light immediately thereafter, “she stamps her foot like a buck antelope, an' lets fly a stovelifter at us; an' all with a proud, high air, which reminds me a mighty sight of a goddess.”

At the time, it would seem, the duo attempted to show popular cause for their presence, and made an effort to point out to “The Cactus” the crying public need of some decision on her part.

“You-all don't want the young male persons of this village to take to shootin' of each other all up none, do you?” asked Enright.

“I wants you two beasts to get outen my kitchen!” replied “The Cactus” vigorously; “an' I wants you to move some hurried, too. Don't never let me find your moccasin tracks 'round yere no more, or I'll turn in an' mark you up.”

[Illustration: 0287]

“Yere, you!” she continued as the ambassadors were about to leave, something cast down by the conference; “you-alls can tell the folks of this town, that if they're idiots enough to go makin' a gun play over me, to make it. They has shore pestered me enough!”

“Which I don't wonder none at Thompson bein' reluctant an' doobious about seein' this Cactus lady,” said Enright, as the two walked away.

“She's some fiery, an' that's a fact!” observed Cherokee in assent.

The result of the talk with “The Cactus” found its way about Wolfville, and in less than an hour bore its hateful fruit. The peaceful quiet of the Red Light, which, as a rule, was wounded by no harsher notes than the flutter of a stack of chips, was rudely broken.

“Gents who ain't interested, better hunt a lower limb!”

It was the voice of Cottonwood Wasson. The trained instincts of Wolfville at once grasped the trouble, and proceeded to hide its many heads behind barrels, tables, counters, and anything which promised refuge from the bullets.

All but one; Cape Jinks. He knew it meant him the moment Cottonwood Wasson uttered the first syllable, and his pistol came bluntly to the fore without a word. His rival's was already there, and the shooting set in like a hailstorm. As a result, Cottonwood Wasson received an injury that crippled his arm for days, while Cape Jinks was picked up with a hole in his side, which even the sanguine sentiment of Wolfville, inclined to a hardy optimism at all times, called dangerous.

“Well!” said Old Man Enright, drawing a deep, troubled breath, after the duellists were cared for at the O. K. House, “yere we be ag'in an' nothin' settled! Thar's all this shootin', an' this blood-lettin', an' the camp gets all torn up; an' thar's as many of these people now as thar is before, an' most likely the whole deal to go over ag'in.”

“I shore 'bominates things a-splittin' even that a-way!” said Cherokee.

The next day a new face was given the affair when “The Cactus” was observed, clothed in her best frock and with two violent red roses in her straw hat, to take the stage for Tucson. The stage company reported, in deference to the excited state of the Wolfville mind, that “The Cactus” would return in a week.

“Goin' for her weddin' trowsoo, most likely,” said Dan Boggs, as he gazed after the stage.

“Let's drink to the hope she wins out a red dress!” remarked Texas Thompson. “Set up the bottles, bar-keep, an' don't let no gent pass up the play. Which red is my fav'rite colour!”

No one seemed to know the intentions of “The Cactus.” The shooting would appear to have in nowise disturbed her. That may have been her obdurate heart, or it may have come from a familiarity with the evanescent tenure of human life, born of her years on the border. Be that as one will, she expressed not the least concern touching her brace of wounded lovers, and took the stage without saying good-bye to any one.

“An' some fools say women is talkers!” remarked Jack Moore, the Marshal, in high disgust.

Three days later Old Monte, the stage driver, came in with thrilling news. “The Cactus” had wedded a man in Tucson, and would bring him to Wolfville in a week.

“When I first hears of it,” went on Old Monte with a groan, “an' when I thinks of them two pore boys a-layin' in Wolfville, an' their claims bein' raffled off in that heartless way, I shore thinks I'll take my Winchester an' stop them marriage rites if I has to crease the preacher. But, pards, the Tucson marshal wouldn't have it. He stan's me off. So she nails him; an' the barkeep at the Oriental Saloon tells me over thar, how she's been organisin' to wed this yere prairie dog before she ever hops into Wolfville at all. I sees him afterwards; an', gents! for looks, he don't break even with horned toads!”

“Thar you be!” said Enright, making a deprecatory gesture, “another case of woman, lovely woman! However, even if this Cactus lady has done rung in a cold hand onto us, we must still prance 'round an' show her a good time when she trails in with her prey. Where the honour of the camp is concerned, we whoops it up! Of course the Cactus don't please us none with this deal; but most likely she pleases herse'f, which, after all, is the next best thing. Gents,” concluded Enright, after a pause, “the return of the new couple will be the signal of a general upheaval in their honour. It's to be hoped our young friends, Cottonwood an' Jinks, will by then be healthful enough to participate tharin. Barkeep! the liquor, please! Boys, the limit's off; wherefore drink hearty!”

“Which I has preemonitions from the first, this yere Cactus female is a brace game,” remarked Texas Thompson, as he filled his glass; “that's whatever!”

“Oh! I don't know!” replied Cherokee Hall thoughtfully. “She has her right to place her bets to please herse'f, an' win or lose, this camp should be proud to turn for her. Wolfville can't always make a killin'--can't always be on velvet; but as long as the Cactus an' her victim pitches camp yere, Wolfville can call herse'f ahead on the deal. I sees no room for cavil, an' I yereby freights my glass to the Cactus an' the shorthorn she's tied down.”

ANNA MARIE

Anna Marie was to be a new woman. She had decided that for herself. In the carrying out of her destinies, Anna Marie had cut her hair short. She also made a specialty of very mannish costumes, and, outwardly, at least, became as virile as a woman might be with a make-up the basis of which was bound to be a skirt.

Anna Marie was motherless, and at the age of nineteen, when she determined to become a new woman, had no advice save her father's to depend on. When she discussed an adoption of broader and more masculine methods on her girlish part with her father, the old gentleman looked puzzled, and said:

“Well, my dear! I have great confidence in your judgment. There is nothing like experience, so go ahead. You will find, however, before you have gone far, that you labour under many structural defects. The great Architect didn't lay you out for a man, Anna Marie; you were not intended for such a fate.” However, Anna Marie kept on. She was looking for a fuller liberty and a wider field. She was too delicately and too accurately determined in her tastes to be a fool to cigarettes, or swept down in a current of profanity. Bad language she would leave to the real man; in her career as a new woman nothing so vigorous was needed.

But men did other things, had other freedoms; and from that long male list of liberties Anna Marie proceeded to pick out a line of freedom for herself. She had had enough of that pent-up Utica which confines the conventional woman. What she wanted was more room: that is, of proper, decorous sort.

Of course, as Anna Marie proceeded up the long trail of masculinity, it was noted by critics that she still continued essentially feminine as to many common male accomplishments. She could not throw a stone, except in that vague, pawey, overhand fashion usual with ladies, and which confers on the missile neither direction nor force. And when Anna Marie essayed to run, she still put everybody in mind of a cow trying to keep an engagement.

While others noted those solemn truths, Anna Marie did not. She thought she was making strenuous progress, and combed her short hair as a man combs his, and walked with long, decided stride.

Anna Marie rode a bike, and decided to don bloomers for this ceremony. She came to the bloomer decision hesitatingly, but made up her mind at last. Secretly she regarded bloomers as the Rubicon. It was bloomers which flowed between herself and the new woman in full standing; and once Anna Marie had broken on the world in this ill-considered costume, she would feel herself graduated, and no longer at school to Destiny. Therefore, there dawned a day when Anna Marie came down the avenue on her bike, be-bloomered to heart's content. She had made the plunge; the Rubicon was crossed, and Anna Marie felt now like a female Cæsar who must conquer or die.

On the bike-bloomer occasion Anna Marie was weak enough to hurry. She put her unbridled steed to fullest speed, and flashed by the onlookers like unto some sweet meteor. She blamed herself afterward for being such a craven, but concluded that by sticking to her bloomers she would acquire heart and slacken speed in time.

The worst feature about the bloomer business was that Anna Marie wotted not how hideous she looked. She did not know that a printer on his way to his case, caught a fleeting impression of her as she sped by, and that he at once “put on a sub.,” took a night off, and became dejectedly yet fully drunk. Nor did she wist that a nervous person was so affected by the awful tout ensemble of herself, bike, and bloomers that he repaired to Bloomingdale and sternly demanded admission as a right.

No; Anna Marie rode all too frightened and too fast to reap these truths. Still, she might not have altered her system if she had known. For Anna Marie was resolute. Bent as Anna Marie was on her completion as a new woman, she resolved to inhabit bloomers and ride her two-wheeled vehicle even unto a grey old age. How else, indeed, could she be a new woman? A girl friend who had stood appalled at the vigour of Anna Marie asked her as to the bloomers.

“They are good things,” observed Anna Marie. “There's a comfort in bloomers which lurks not in the tangled wilderness of the ordinary skirt. Their fault is that in donning bloomers one does not put them on over one's head. It is a great defect. As it is, one never feels more than half-dressed.” Anna Marie declared that the great want of the day was bloomers, through which one thrust one's arms and head in the process of harnessing.

Anna Marie had a brother George. This youth was twelve years of age. George was essentially masculine. Anna Marie could see that, and it came to her as a thought that in the course of becoming a new woman of fullest feather, a good, ripe method would be to study George. Should she do as George did, young though he was, she was sure to succeed. George would do from instinct what she must do by imitation. Anna Marie felt these things without really and definitely thinking them. It so fell out that, without telling George, Anna Marie began to take him as guide, philosopher and friend. And all without really knowing it herself.

Unconsciously, George loved her all the better because of this, and, moved by a warm, ingenuous lack of years, began to take Anna Marie into his confidence like true comrade. Anna Marie encouraged his frankness.

“George,” said Anna Marie, one day, “whenever you are about to do anything peculiarly boyish and interesting, always tell me, so that I may join you in your sport.”

George said he would, and he did.

It so befell one day, as the fruit of this comradeship, that George changed the channel of Anna Marie's manly determination, and caused her to abandon the rôle of a new woman. This is the story, and it all taught Anna Marie, with the rush of a landslide, that, however industriously she might prune and train her habits to the trellis of the male, she would never be able to bring her nature to that state of icy, egotistical, cold-blooded hardihood absolutely necessary to the perfect man, and therefore indispensable to the new woman. But the story.

“Anna Marie,” said George, coming on her one day, “Anna Marie, me and Billy Sweet wants you.”

“What is it, George?” asked Anna Marie.

“We're going to hang a dog out back of the barn,” explained George. “Me and Billy are to be the jury, and we want you for judge. Hurry up, now! that's a good fellow!”

Anna Marie felt a shock at thought of taking the life of anything. Her first feeling was that George was a brute--a mere animal himself. But Anna Marie quickly reflected, that, whatever George might be, at least his hardened sex was the promontory the new woman must steer by. She put down the garment she was sewing and sought the scene of canine trial.

“You see, Anna Marie!” explained George, pointing to a saffron-coloured dog, which stood with dolorous tail between his legs and looked very repentant, “he murdered a kitten, and we are going to try to convict and hang him. You sit down there by the fence, and the trial won't take a minute. Billy and me have got our minds made up, and we won't take no time to decide. There's the rope, and we're going to hang him to the limb of that maple.”

Anna Marie felt worried. Still, she allowed herself to be installed, and the trial proceeded. It was very brief. George produced the defunct kitten,--which looked indeed, very dead,--with the remark, “Say, you yellow dog! you're charged with murdering this cat; have you got anything to say against being hung?”

The yellow cur feebly wagged his disreputable tail, and looked at Anna Marie in a fashion of sneaking appeal. He said as plain as words: “Save me!”

“I wouldn't hang the poor thing, George,” said Anna Marie, and she began to pat the felon yellow cur.

“You're a great judge!” remonstrated George, indignantly. “It ain't for you to decide; it's for me and Billy. We are the jury, and in favour of hanging him, ain't we, Billy?”

Billy nodded emphatically.

“But, George,” expostulated Anna Marie, “it is so cruel! so brutal!”

“Brutal!” scoffed George. “Don't they hang folks for murder every day? You wear bloomers and talk of being a new woman and having the rights of a man! I have heard you with that Sanford girl! And now you come out here and try to talk off a yellow dog who is guilty of murder, and admits it by his silence! You would act nice if it was a real man and a real murder case! Come on, Billy; let's string him up.”

Here George seized on the cowering victim of lynch law, and started for the maple, where the rope already dangled for its prey. Anna Marie became utterly feminine at this, and burst into tears. Her nineteen years and her progress toward a new womanhood did not save her. In her distress she turned to the other member of the jury.

Billy Sweet, at the age of thirteen, was an ardent admirer of George's sister, loved her dearly, if secretly, and meant to marry her in ten or fifteen years, when he grew up. At present he played with George and kept a loving eye on his future bride. Anna Marie knew of Billy's

## partiality, so she cunningly turned on this admirer, like a true

daughter of the olden woman.

“You think as I do, don't you, Billy?” And Anna Marie's tone had a caress in it which made Billy's ears a happy red.

“Yes, ma'am!” said Billy.

George was disgusted.

“You are the kind of a juryman,” said George, full of contempt, “that makes me tired. There, Anna Marie, take your yellow dog, and don't try to play with me no more. You are too soft!”

Anna Marie felt that some vast deposit of good, hard sense lay hidden in George's last remark. On her way to the house she did a good deal of thinking, as girls whose mothers are dead do now and then. The development of her cogitations was told in a remark to her girl friend:

“It's so tiresome, this being a new woman! I am going to give it up. I am afraid, as father says, I am 'not built right.'”

And thus it ended. Marie is exceedingly the olden woman now. She has beaten her sword into a pruning-hook, her bike into a spinning-wheel! She no longer walks with long, decided stride. She is a woman in all things, and will scream and chase a street car as if it were the last going that way for a week, like the tenderest and frailest of her kind. She has retracted as to bloomers. Anna Marie has returned to the agency, and forever abandoned the warpath of a new and manly womanhood.

THE PETERSENS

(Annals of The Bend)

WHEN Chucky came into the little doggery where we were wont to converse, there arrived with him an emphatic odour of kerosene. Also Chucky's face was worn and sad, and his hands were muffled with many bandages. To add to it all Chucky was not in spirits.

“What's the trouble?” I asked.

“We've been havin 'd' run in' of our lives,” replied Chucky, as he called to the barkeeper for his usual bracer, “an' our tenement is just standin' on its nut right now, an' that's for straight!”

“Tell me about it,” I urged.

“D' racket this time over to d' joint,” said Chucky, “is about a Swede skirt named Petersen who croaks herself be d' gas play last night. D' place is full of cops an' hobos an' all sorts of blokes, pipin' off d' play, while a corner mug is holdin' an inkwest over d' stiff, see! What you smells is d' coal oil on me mits. I soaks me hooks in it to take d' boin away. Me Rag gives me d' tip; an' say! it's a winner at that. D' boins ain't half so bad as dey was.”

“But I don't understand,” I replied. “How did you come to burn your hands? If the gas was burning, I don't see how the woman could have committed suicide.”

“Youse is gettin' away on d' wrong hoof,” said Chucky. “I don't boin me fins over d' Petersen moll croakin' herself. I cremates 'em puttin' out d' flames when d' Petersen kid takes fire d' day before. This inkwest which d' cor'oner guy is holdin' to-day, is d' secont one. He holds d' foist yesterday over d' kid.

“On d' level! I don't catch on to d' need of inkwests anyhow. If a mark's dead, he's dead. It don't need no sawbones an' a mob of snoozers to be 'panelled for a jury, see! to put youse on. It looks to me like a dead case of shakin' down d' public for d' fees; these inkwests do, Cor'ners, I s'spose, has to have some excuse for livin', so when some poor duck croaks, dey comes chasin' 'round wit' a inkwest to see if he's surely done up, an' to put a bit of dough in their kecks. Well! I figgers it's law all right, all right, an' mebby it's d' proper caper. Anyhow, I passes it up.

“What about this Petersen push? Well, if ever a household strikes it hard, I'm here to say it's d' Petersens. When it comes to d' boss hard luck story, I'll place me bets wit' that outfit every time.

“It's two spaces back when this Petersen gang comes ashore at Ellis Island. There's t'ree of 'em; husband, wife, an' kid, see! Dey comes in as steerage, an' naturally, d' Ellis Island gezebos collars 'em an' t'rows 'em into hock d' moment dey hits d' pier. Nit; dey ain't arrested. But youse is on, how dey puts d' clamps to emigrants. Dey 'detains' 'em, as it's called.

“Every mug who comes steerage has to spring his plant when he lands, an' if he ain't as strong as $30, dey--d' offishuls--don't do a t'ing but chase him back on d' nex' boat. He's a pauper, see! an' he gets d' razzle dazzle an 'd' gran' rinky dink. Back he goes where he hails from, like a bundle of old clothes. Paupers is barred at Ellis Island; dey don't go wit' these United States, not on your overshoes!

“So d' Petersens is stood up, like I tells youse, at Ellis Island to see be dey tramps. It toins out, nit. Dey ain't paupers. Petersen has more'n enough money to get be d' gate, see! Petersen has a hundred an' fifty plunks, an' bein' there's only t'ree, it's plenty to go 'round an' show $30 for each.

“Still them Ellis Island snoozers detains d' Petersens a week just d' same. D' place where dey stays is worse'n any holdover or station house I'm ever in; an', bein' d' weather's winter, an' this 'detention' pen is wet an' cold, Petersen himself cops off d' pneumonia an' out goes his light before ever he leaves Ellis Island at all. Dey plants him in d' graveyard dey has for emigrants, an 'd' wife an' kid comes over to d' city alone.

“That's d' foist I knows of d' Petersens. D' mother an' kid takes a back-room in our tenement; an' after dey gets 'quainted, she tells me Rag about her man dyin'. She ain't so old, this Petersen woman, an' only she's all broke up about her man croakin', she ain't a bad looker, see! wit' blue eyes an' a mop of gold hair. D' kid's name is Hilda, an,' except she's only seven years an' no bigger'n a drink of whiskey, she's a ringer for her mother.

“Well! like I says, d' Petersens--what's left of 'em after d' man quits livin'--organised in d' back room on our floor. An' because folks who wants to chew must woik, d' Petersen woman gets a curve on an' goes to doin' stunts wit' a tub. She chases 'round doin' washin', see!

“It's when d' old goil is away slingin' suds that I gets nex' wit 'd' kid. She's dropped her ragbaby down be a gratin' one day an' her heart is broke. She t'inks it's a cinch case of all over wit' d' poor ragbaby, an' she's cryin' to beat d' band.

“But she gets it ag'in. Me an' a big fat cop who comes waddlin' along, tears up d' gratin' an' fishes out Hilda's doll, an' after that me an' her gets to be dead chummy; what youse might call * pals.'

“Hilda's shy at foist, an' a bit leary of me--I ain't no bute at me best--but she gets used to seein' me about, an' as I stakes her to or'nges onct or twict, at last she gets stuck on me.

“D' Petersens, an' me, an' me Rag is neighbours on d' same floor for near two years. An' days when I comes home early, an' me breat' ain't smellin' of booze--for d' kid welches every time she sniffs d' lush on me, see!--I used to go in an' kiss Hilda same as she's me own. An' between youse an' me,” and here a drop gathered in Chucky's cold eye, “I ain't above tippin' it off on d' quiet, I t'inks a heap of this young-one, an' feels better every time I gets me lamps on her.

“D' finish comes t'ree days ago. D' old goil Petersen is away woikin', an' Hilda, for all it's so cold, is playin' in d' passage-way. There's one of them plumber hold-ups fixin 'd' water pipe where it's sprung a leak, an' he's got one of them dinky little fire pots which plumbers lug 'round wit' em.

“While this plumber stiff is busy wit' his graft, poor little Hilda t'inks she'll warm her dolly's mits be d' blaze. She's holdin' her ragbaby's hooks over d' plumber's fire as I comes up d' stairs; an' as she hears me foot, an' toins smilin' to make sure it's me, her frock catches, an' when she chases screechin' into me arms, she's a bundle of live flame. Say! I'd sooner ten to one it was me, an' that's no bluff!

“I wraps me coat over her, an' gives d' fire d' quick smother, see! An' I boins me dukes until it comes to bein' mighty near a case of stumps wit' Chucky d' balance of his joiney to d' tomb.

“But what th' 'ell! It all don't do no good. D' poor kid has swallered d' fire, an' she's d' deadest ever before even I takes her out of me coat.

“We lays Hilda out, me Rag an' me, on d' Petersens' bed; an' d' cor'ner sucker, as I says at d' be-ginnin', comes sprintin' over an' goes to holdin' his inkwests.

“Bimeby, d' mother gets home from her tubs, an' that's where d' hard play comes in. Me Rag tells her as easy as she can; but youse could see it was a centre shot all d' same. It soaked her where she lived.

“'Foist d' man, an' then d' baby!' says d' Petersen woman, as she sets on d' floor an' mourns; 'now I'll soon go hunt for 'em.'

“Me Rag tries to get her to come in wit' us, but she won't stan' for it. All t'rough d' night we hears her mournin' an' groanin' on d' floor be d' side of little Hilda's coffin.

“D' kid's fun'ral was yesterday, an' a pulpit sharp from one of d' Missions gets in on d' play, an' offishiates. Sure! it's a case of Potter's Field--for d' mother ain't got d' dough to make good for a grave--but me an' me Rag gets a car, an' takes d' mother out to see little Hilda planted. No, she don't cry much at that; but me Rag toins in an' don't do a t'ing but break d' record for tears. If Hilda was her own kid, she couldn't have made more of a row. When it comes to what youse might call 'd' outward evidences of grief,' me Rag simply lose d' Petersen mother.

“D' mother was feelin' it all d' same. She keeps whisperin' to herself: 'Soon I'll go find 'em!' like that; an' that's d' limit of what youse could get out of her.

“It's last night, after little Hilda's put away,--it's mebby, say, t'ree this mornin', when wit'out a woid of warnin' me Rag sets up straight in bed an' gives a sniff.

“'Be d' mother of d' Holy Mary! it's gas!' she says, an' nex' she makes a straight wake for d' Petersen door.

“An' me Rag guesses right d' very foist time, like d' kid in d' song. Gas it was; d' poor Petersen mother toins it on full blast. She's croaked an' cold as a wedge, hours before we tumbles to her game.

“That's d' finish. As I states d' foist dash out of d' box, it's d' dandy hard luck story of d' year. D' whole Petersen push is wiped out, same as that bar-keep would swab off his bar. On d' dead! it's all too many for me! What's d' use of folks bein' born at all, if dey's goin' to get yanked in like that--t'ree at a clatter, an' all young!

“Do dey have re-latiffs? Some in d' old country, I takes it. There's a note d' Petersen woman leaves for me Rag, astin' her to write d' hist'ry of d' last round an' wind-up to d' folks at home, an' givin' d' address. But me ownliest own says 'nit!' an* chucks d' note in d' stove.

“'Dey's better off not knowin',' says me Rag.”

BOWLDER'S BURGLAR

Bowlder's wife and offspring were away at the time; and the time was a night last summer. Mrs. B. was in Long Branch, and Bowlder, left lonely and forlorn, to look after the house and earn money, was having a sad, bad time, indeed.

Not that Bowlder really lacked anything; but he missed his wife and little ones. Where before the merry prattle of his children made the racket of a boiler shop, all was solemn peace and hush. The Bowlder mansion was like a graveyard.

Naturally Bowlder felt lonesome; and to avoid, as much as might be, having his loneliness thrust upon him by the empty desolation of the house, he made it a rule during his wife's absence not to go home until 3 o'clock A. M.

He was “dead on his legs” by that time, as he expressed it, and went at once to sleep, before the absence of Mrs. B. began to prey upon him.

On the night, or more properly morning, in question, Bowlder wended homeward at sharp 3. He had been missing Mrs. B. painfully all the evening, and, to uphold himself, subscribed to divers drinks. These last Bowlder put safely away within his belt, and they cherished him and taught him resignation, and he didn't miss his wife as much as he had.

The hoary truth is that as Bowlder drew near his home, he had so far conquered his sense of abandonment that he wasn't even thinking of his wife. He was plodding along in the middle of the street for fear of footpads, whom he fancied might be sauntering in the shadows on either side, and was really in quite a happy, fortunate frame of mind. As Bowlder turned in toward his door he was softly repeating the lines:

“'Tis sweet to hear the watch dog's honest bark,

Bay deep-mouthed welcome as we draw near home,

'Tis sweet to know there is an eye will mark

Our coming, and grow brighter when we come.”

Not that Bowlder had a watch dog, honest or otherwise, to bay him deep-mouthed welcome. And inasmuch as they had discharged the exile from Erin, who aforetime did service as the Bowlder maid-of-all-work, when Mrs. B. took flight for the summer, there was slight hope of an eye on the premises to grow brighter when he came.

No; it was not that Bowlder was really looking for deep-mouthed bays or brightening eyes; he was naturally musical and poetical, and the drinks he had corralled had unlocked his nature in that behalf. Bowlder was reciting the lines quoted for the pleasure he drew from their beauty; not from the prophecy they put forth of any meeting to which he looked forward. A remark which escaped Bowlder as he climbed his steps and dexterously fitted his night key to the day keyhole showed this.

“I ought to have stayed at a hotel,” said Bowlder. “There's nobody here to rake me over the coals for it, and I'm going to have a great head on me when I wake up.”

Bowlder at last by mistake got his latchkey into the keyhole to which it related, and the door swung inward. This was a distinct success and Bowlder heaved a breath of relief. This door, which had grown singularly obdurate since Mrs. B.'s departure, had been known to hold Bowlder at bay for twenty minutes.

Bowlder had just cast his hat on the hall floor--he intended to hang it up in the morning when he would have more time--and got as far on a journey to the second story as one step, when a noise in the basement dining-room enlisted Bowlder's attention. His curiosity rather than his fears was aroused; another happy effect of his libations.

Without one thought of burglars, Bowlder deferred his journey upstairs, and repaired instead to the dining-room below. Bowlder would investigate the untoward noises which, while soft and light, were still of such volume as might tell upon the ear.

“Wonder 'f the houshe is haunted?” observed Bowlder as he went deviously below.

It has already been noted that Bowlder not once bethought him of burglars. In truth he had often scoffed at burglars while conversing with Mrs. B. on this subject so interesting to ladies. Bowlder had said that no burglar could make day wages robbing the house.

It had all the thrill of perfect surprise then when, as Bowlder turned into his dining-room, he beheld a bull's-eye lantern shedding a malevolent stream of light in his face, and caught the shadowy outlines of a tall man behind it who seemed engaged in pointing a pistol at him.

“Hold up your hands!” said the tall man, “and don't come a step further, or out goes your light!”

[Illustration: 0307]

“Well! I like thish!” squeaked Bowlder, in a tone of querulous complaint, at the same time, however, clasping his hands above his head; “I like thish! What's the row here?”

The tall man made no reply, but came across and deftly ran his hands over Bowlder for possible arms. Bowlder had no gun. The tall man seemed satisfied, and stepping back, told Bowlder he might sit down on a chair and rest his hands in his lap. Bowlder took advantage of the permission.

“Any 'bjections to me lighting a shegar?” queried Bowlder.

“Not at all,” said the tall man.

Bowlder was soon puffing away. Being friendly, not to say polite by nature, Bowlder bestowed one on his visitor.

“Is it a mild cigar?” asked the burglar.

“Colorado claro,” said Bowlder.

“That's all right!” assented the other. “I don't like a strong smoke; it makes my head ache.”

As the visitor lighted the cigar, Bowlder noticed that he wore a black mask across his eyes, and that the latter shone through the apertures cut for their convenience like beads. The mask gave Bowlder a chill which the pistol had not evoked. Indeed, it came very near destroying the whole force of the drinks he had accumulated.

When the stranger had lighted his cigar, Bowlder and he puffed at each other a moment without a word.

“What are you doing in my houshe?” at last demanded Bowlder.

The stranger smiled and puffed on. Then he kicked a large sack with his foot. Bowlder had not observed this sack before. As the stranger touched it with his foot, it gave out a metallic clinking.

Bowlder's eyes roamed instinctively to the sideboard. There wasn't much light; enough, however, to show Bowlder that the sideboard's burden of silverware was gone. With such a start, Bowlder was able to infer a great deal.

“Made a clean shweep, eh?” remarked Bowlder.

The masked stranger nodded.

“If you've got all there is loose and little in the houshe,” said Bowlder--he was talking plainer every moment now--“you've got $1,500 worth. Been up-shtairs yet?”

Again the man of the mask nodded. Also he exhibited symptoms of being about to depart.

“Don't go yet!” remonstrated Bowlder. “Want to talk to you. Did you get the old lady's jewellery upstairs?”

Again the burglar nodded. He seemed disinclined to use his voice unless it was necessary.

“Thash's bad!” remarked Bowlder reflectively; referring to the conquest of his wife's jewellery. “The old lady won't do a thing but make me buy her some more. And the worst of it is, she'll put up the figures on what jimcracks you've got, and insisht they're worth four times their true value. I'm lucky if she don't put it higher than $1,000. And they ain't worth $200; you'll be lucky if you get that on 'em.”

The burglar looked hopeful as well as he could with a mask, but retorted nothing to Bowlder. The latter mused sorrowfully over his wife's jewels.

“You see it putsh me in the hole!” said Bowlder. “I get it going and coming. You come along and rob me; and then Mrs. B. comes home and robs me again. Don't you think that's a little rough?”

The stranger said it was rough. He didn't nod this time, but used his voice. Encouraged by the agreement with his views, Bowlder urged the return of his wife's jewellery.

“Just gimme back what's hers,” said Bowlder, “and you can keep the rest. That'll let me out with her, and I don't care for the balance.”

But the man of midnight stoutly objected. It would be a dead loss of $200, he said, and worse yet, it would be unprofessional.

Bowlder thought deeply a moment. Then he took a new tack.

“Any 'bjections to taking a drink with me?” he asked.

“None in the world!” said the burglar.

Bowlder explored his coat pocket for a bottle he'd brought home to restore him after his sleep. He proffered the bottle to the burglar.

“After you is manners!” said that person.

Bowlder drank and then the burglar did the same.

“You a Republican?” demanded Bowlder suddenly. “I s'pose even burglars have their politics!”

“Administration Republican!” said the burglar; “that's what I am. I believe in Imperialism and a sound currency.”

“I'm an Administration Republican, too,” remarked Bowlder. “I knew we'd find common ground at last. Now, as a member of the same party as yourself, I want to ask a favour of you. You've got about $1,500 worth of plunder there; and yet, you see yourself, there's a good deal of furniture you're leaving behind; piano upstairs and all that. I'll play you one game of ten-point seven-up to see whether you take all or nothing. Come, now, as a favour!”

The burglar hesitated. He feared there was a trap in it. Bowlder gave him his word as a goldbug that he made the proffer in all honesty.

“If you win,” said Bowlder, “you can cart the furniture away to-morrow. I'll order you a waggon as I go down, and you can sleep in the house and see that I don't carry off anything or hold out on you.”

“But it ain't worth as much as what I've got,” demurred the burglar.

“Well, see here!” said Bowlder--sober he was now--“to avoid spoiling sport I'll throw in my watch and $30. That's square!”

The burglar admitted that the proposal was fair, but stuck for seven points.

“I like straight seven-up,” he said. “Make it a seven-point game and I'll go you.”

Bowlder produced a deck of cards from the sewing-machine drawer. At the burglar's own suggestion they lighted one gas jet.

“Cut for deal!” said Bowlder.

The burglar cut a ten-spot, Bowlder a deuce. The burglar had the deal.

The king of diamonds was turned as trump.

“Beg!” said Bowlder.

“Take it!” remarked the burglar.

The hands were played. Bowlder had the queen and six-spot of diamonds; the marauder had the ten, nine, and seven of diamonds. Bowlder took high, low and the burglar counted game.

“No jack out!” remarked Bowlder.

“No,” said the other. And then in an abused tone; “Say! you don't beg nor nuthin', do you? The idee of a gent's beggin' in a two-hand game, a-holdin' of the queen and six.”

They played three hands; Jack had been out once. Bowlder was keeping score. It stood:

“Bowl, I I I I I I.”

“Burg, I I I I.”

It was Bowlder's deal. He riffled the cards with the deftness of one who plays often and well.

“Bound to settle it this time!” said the burglar. “The score stands 6 to 4. You bet your life! I'll stand on the bare jack if I get it.”

Bowlder threw the cards around and turned trump with a snap. It was the jack of clubs.

The burglar looked at it wistfully, even sadly.

“That's square, is it?” he said to Bowlder in a tone of half reproach. “You ain't the party to go and turn a jack on a poor crook from the bottom of the deck, and you only one to go?”

Bowlder assured him the transaction was perfectly honest.

“Yes, I guess it was,” said the burglar, rising. “I was watching you, and I guess it was straight. It's just my luck, that's all. Well! I must go; it's getting along towards 4: 30 o'clock.”

“Have a drink!” said Bowlder, “and take another cigar!”

The cracksman took a drink. Then he selected a cigar from Bowlder's proffered case.

“If it's all the same to youse,” said the burglar, “I'll smoke this later on--after breakfast.” And he put the cigar in his pocket.

“Here; let me show you out this way,” said Bowlder, leading the way to the front basement door.

“I hates to ask it of a stranger,” said the burglar, as he hesitated just outside the door, “but the Eight' Avenoo cars'll be runnin' in a little while now, and would you mind lendin' me a nickel? I lives down be the Desbrosses Ferry.”

Of course Bowlder would lend him car-fare. This somewhat raised the burglar's spirits, made sad by seven-up. As he closed the door behind him, the burglar looked back at Bowlder.

“Do you know, pard,” he said, “if it wasn't for my weakness for gamblin', I'd been a rich man a dozen times.”

ANGELINA McLAURIN

(By the Office Boy)

Angelina McLaurin's was a rare face; a beautiful face. It had but one defect: Angelina's nose was curved like the wing of a gull. This gave her an air of resolution and command that affected the onlooker like a sign which says: “Look out for the engine.”

Still, Angelina McLaurin was bewitchingly lovely, a result much aided in its coming about by a form so admirably upholstered that to look upon her would have made Diana tired.

It was a soft, sensuous September afternoon. Angelina McLaurin was impatiently holding down a richly cushioned chair in the library of the noble McLaurin mansion--one of those stately piles which are the pride of Washington Heights. She was awaiting the coming of her affianced husband, George Maurice St. John.

“Why does he prove so dilatory?” she murmured. “Methinks true love would not own such leaden feet!”

As Angelina McLaurin arose to gaze from the window she rocked on the tail of the ample Angora cat.

The cat made it a point to hang out in the library every afternoon. On this occasion, while Angelina McLaurin was dreaming of her lover, the cat had taken advantage of her abstraction to deftly bestow his tail beneath the rocker of her chair. When Angelina arose, as stated, the cat got the worst of it.

As the rocker came down on the cat's tail, the cat exploded into observations in Angorese that are unfit for these pages. Angelina was not only startled out of herself, but almost out of her frock. Angelina and the cat arose hastily, and stood there panting.

As the shrieks of the wronged exile from Angora were uplifted into space, the door of the library burst violently open.

“What is the matter, dearest? Are you injured? Why do you cry for help?”

It was George Maurice St. John who asked the question. As he did so, he caught Angelina McLaurin in his powerful arms, while the Angora cat, his worst fears now realised, chased himself down the hall with tail excited to lamp-cleaner size.

“What is it, love?” asked George Maurice St. John, as he tenderly unloaded his delicious burden onto a sofa, “Speak! it is the voice of your George who bids you. Has any one dared to insult the coming bride of a St. John?”

“Bear with me, George!” she whispered. “Believe me, I will be better anon!”

After a few moments she recovered, and was able to smile through her tears at the alarm of her dear one. Then she told George all: how the cat had been ass enough to leave his tail lying around loose while asleep; how, in the intensity of her waiting, she had put a crimp in it with the fell rocker of the chair; and how the cat had been drawn into statements, by sheer dint of agony, which it was impolitic as well as useless to repeat.

“So I was just in time, Angelina, to relieve both you and the cat of what was doubtless an awkward situation.” And George Maurice St. John laughed gaily.

Then he kissed her with a fervour that left nothing to be wished for, and Angelina took a brace and sat erect on the sofa.

“I feel better now!” she remarked.

George tried to get in another kiss, but she stood him off.

“Don't crowd your luck, dear!” she said, with a sweet softness. “I am yours for ever, and there is not the slightest need for any excess of osculatory zeal. You are to have me with you always, so set a brake or two and take the grades easy.”

Thus repulsed, George Maurice St. John sat abashed. A pained look seamed his features; he bit his lips and was silent.

*****

Daylight became twilight, and twilight retreated into the darkness of a new night. It struck eight o'clock in the adjoining tower, and George Maurice St John was a-hungered. His stomach was the first to tip it off to him.

“Don't we feed to-night?” asked George Maurice St. John.

The lovers for two hours had chattered aimlessly, as ones wandering in a wilderness of bliss. This was the first pointed remark.

“Anon! love; we will feed anon!” replied Angelina McLaurin dreamily. “But, George, before we get in our gustatory work, I would a word with you--indeed! sundry words.”

“Aim low, and send 'em along!” said George. “What is it my Queen would learn from her slave?”

In his ecstacy he achieved a “half Nelson” on the lovely girl, and caught her in the back of the neck with a kiss.

The Angora cat, who was stealthily threading the hall, intending to play a return game with the library rug, gave a great convulsive start, at the kiss, which carried him out of the mansion, and over the alley fence.

“They're a mark too high for me!” said the Angora to himself.

Then inflating his lungs to the last limit of expansion, the Angora sent a song of invitation down the line that set every Tabby in the block to washing her face and combing her ears.

“Your Queen wants a square heel-and-toe talk, George,” said the sweet girl, as she tucked up her silken locks, dishevelled by his caresses into querulous little rings. “And your Queen wants straight goods this time, and no guff! Oh, darling!” continued Angelina McLaurin in a passionate outburst, “be square with me, and make me those promises upon which my life's happiness depends!”

George Maurice St. John strained Angelina to his bosom.

“I'll promise anything!” he said. “What wouldst thou have me do? My life, my fortune, my honour--my all, I lay at your feet! Monkey with them as thou wilt.”

“Then listen!” said Angelina.

*****

“George, we are to be wedded in a month, are we not?”

“We are!” he cried exultantly; and again he essayed the “half Nelson,” and attempted to bury his nose in her mane.

“Don't get gay, George!” she said mournfully, as she broke George's lock, and gently but firmly pushed his bows off a point; “don't get funny! but hear me.”

“Go on,” said George, and his tones showed that his failure pierced him like a javelin. “We are to be wedded in a month. What then, lady?”

“George,” said Angelina McLaurin, and the tear-jewels shone in her eyes, “don't think me unwomanly, but you know how I am fixed;--father and mother both dead! I am an orphan, George, and must heel-and-handle myself.”

“Even so!” said George, and his face showed his sympathy.

“Then, George, before we take that step to the altar,” she went on steadily enough, but with a quaver in her voice which his ear, made sensitive by great love, did not fail to detect: “before we take that step, I say, from which there is no retreat, I must know certain things. You must make me certain promises.”

“Name them,” he whispered, and his deep voice overran her like a melody.

“Then, George,” she said, “is it too much to ask that $100,000 worth of property be settled upon me at this time?”

“My solicitors have already received my instructions to make it a million.” George Maurice St. John's voice dwelt fondly on the settlement. “It is but a beggarly ante in such a game of table-stakes as this!” This time Angelina McLaurin did not decline his endearments. When he let up, she continued:

“And it's dead sure I go to the Shore each summer?”

“It is a welded cinch,” he replied, as he drew her nearer to him. “You take in the coast from Bar Harbour to the Florida Keys.”

“And servants?”

“A mob shall minister unto thee,” he said.

“Then I have but one more boon, George,” she murmured, “grant that, and I am thine forever.”

“Board the card!” cried George; “I promise before you ask.”

“Say not so,” she said with a sweet sadness; “but muzzle your lips and listen. You must quit golf.”

“What!” shrieked George, with an energy that sent the Angora backward off a shed-roof of dubious repute, from which he was carolling to his low companions; “what!” he repeated. “Woman, think!”

“I have thought, George,” responded Angelina Mc-Laurin, with an air of sorrowful firmness. “There is but one alternative: saw short off,--saw short off on golf, or give me up forever!”

“Is this some horrid dream?” he hissed, as he strode up and down the library.

At last he paused before her.

“Woman,” he said sternly, “look on me! Is this some lightsome bluff, or does it go? Dost mean it, woman?”

“Ay! I mean it!” answered Angelina, while her cheek paled and her breath came quick and fast. “Don't make any mistake on that; I mean it. My talk goes. And my hand is off my chips.”

“Is this your love?” he sneered, bitterly.

“It is,” she faltered. “I have spoken, and I abide your answer.”

“Then, girl,” said George Maurice St. John, and his words were cold and hard, “all is over between us. You would drive me into a corner and take away my golf! I say No! No! a thousand times, No!”

At this outbreak the curve in Angelina's nose became more intense. She dried her eyes. Her features, too, became as flint. She even cut loose a low, mocking laugh.

“Be it so!” she said; “sirrah, take your ring!”

He seized the bauble and ground it beneath his heel. As he did so her strength failed her, and she sank to the floor.

“That knocked her out!” he muttered, and he started to count: “One!--Two!--Three--Four!-”

“Oh, not necessarily!” she said, struggling to her feet. “I'm still in it; and I say again, give up golf, or give up me!”

“The die is cast!” and as he spoke the fatal words, the eyes of George Maurice St. John took on the firm, irrevocable expression of a fish's set in death. “I wouldn't give up golf for the best woman that ever put a dress on over her head. Maiden, you ask too much; you come too high! Damsel, I quit you cold!”

*****

George Maurice St. John rushed from the scene. The ponderous door, as it slammed behind him, echoed and re-echoed through the vaulted apartments of the McLaurin mansion. Angelina McLaurin listened until his footsteps died away far up the street.

“He has flew the coop on me!” she wailed.

Then she gave way to a torrent of tears. In her distress Angelina McLaurin was more beautiful than ever. Two minutes! Five minutes! Ten minutes went by! Her tears still fell like rain.

“I have turned the hose on my hopes!” she said.

This was the thought that crossed her mind; but she desperately womanned (word coined since advent of new woman) herself to bear it.

Still afloat on the sad currents of her tears, her head bowed, a light sound beat upon the tympanum of Angelina McLaurin. She looked quickly up and squared herself to emit a glad cry, if one should be necessary.

What was it?

Something had come back.

True! it was the Angora cat.

As the Angora flung himself upon the rug with an air of reckless abandon, Angelina McLaurin gazed at him with a wistful fixedness. One eye was closed, his fur was torn, blood dripped from his lacerated ears. He was, in good sooth, but a tattered Angora! Angelina McLaurin laughed long and wildly.

“He, too,' has got it in the neck!”

DINKY PETE

(Annals of The Bend)

Do we have romances on t' East Side!” and Chucky's voice was vibrant with the scorn my doubts provoked. “Do we have romances! Well, I don't t'ink! Say! there's days when we don't have nothin' else.”

At this crisis Chucky called for another glass; did it without invitation. This last spoke of and betrayed a sense of injury.

“Let me tell youse,” continued Chucky, “an' d' yarn don't cost you a cent, see! how Dinky Pete sends Jimmy d' barkeep back to his wife. It's what I calls romantic for a hundred plunks.

“Not that Jimmy ever leaves her, for that matter; that is, he don't leave her for fair! But he's sort o' organisin' for d' play when Dinky Pete puts d' kybosh on d' notion, an' wit' that Jimmy don't chase at all, see!

“Jimmy d' barkeep is some soft in d' nut, see! Nit, he ain't really got w'eels; ain't bad enough for d' bug house; but he's a bit funny in his cocoa--mostly be way of bein' dead stuck on himself.

“An' bein' weak d' way I says, Jimmy is a high roller for clothes; always sports a w'ite t'ree-sheet, wit' a rock blazin' in d' centre, big enough to trip a dog. An' say! his necktie's a dream, an' his hat's d' limit!

“What's a t'ree-sheet? an' what's a rock? I don't want to give you no insultin' tips, but on d' square! youse ought to take a toim at night school. Why! a t'ree-sheet is his shirt, an' d' rock I names is Jimmy's spark! Of course, d' spark ain't d' real t'ing; only a rhinestone; but it goes in d' Bend all d' same for a 2-carat headlight.

“Jimmy makes a tidy bit of dough, see! He gets, mebby it's fifteen bones a week, an' I makes no doubt he shakes down d' bar for ten more, which is far from bad graft. So it ain't s'prisin' one day when Jimmy gets it stuck in his frizzes he'll be married.

“Jimmy's Bundle is all right at that. Her name's Annie, an' she's a proper straight chip. An' that ain't no song an' dance; square as a die she was. An' a bute! She was d' pick of d' Bowery crush, an' don't youse doubt it.

“Well, Jimmy an' Annie goes on wit' their courtships, I takes it, same as if dey lives on Fift' Avenoo. Annie's a mil'ner, an' while she don't have money to t'row to d' boids, she woiks for enough so it's as good as a stan'-off on livin', which is all her hand calls for an' all she asts. If she don't quit winner after trimmin' hats a week, at any rate she don't get in d' hole, see!

“Oh, yes; she an' Jimmy gets action on d' sights. Now an' then it's Coney Island; then ag'in it's a front seat at d' People's; or mebby if some of d' squeeze has a dance, dey pulls on their skates an' steps in on d' spiel. An' say! as a spieler Annie's a wonder, an' don't youse forget it. I has d' woid for it from me own Rag, an' when it comes to pickin' out a dancer, you can trust me Rag to be dead on in a minute. D' loidy can do a dizzy stunt or two on a wax floor herself when it comes to a show-down.

“But about me romance. Jimmy has chased around wit' Annie, say it's t'ree mont's. An' all this time his strong play is voylets, see! Annie is gone on voylets, so each evenin' Jimmy toins in on Dinky Pete, who sells poipers an' peanuts, an' some of this hard, bum candy you breaks your teet's on. Dinky also deals a little flower game, wit' about a 5-cent limit, an' that's what gets Jimmy. Just as I says, each evenin' Jimmy sticks in a nickel for a bunch of voylets at Dinky's an' sends some kid--Dinky's joint is a great hang-out for d' kids--to take 'em up to Annie.

“An' them voylets tickles Annie to death.

“At last all goes well, an' Jimmy an' Annie gets spliced. An' it's all right at that! Me Rag, who calls on 'em, says Jimmy an' Annie's d' happiest ever, an' gettin 'd' boss run for their money.

“It's about a year when Annie don't do a t'ing but have a kid. At foist Jimmy likes it, an' lets on it's d' racket of his career. But after a while Jimmy gets chilly--sort o' gets sore on d' kid. Me Rag gives me a pointer it's mostly Annie's fault. She stars d' kid too heavy, an' it makes Jimmy feel like a deuce in a bum deck; makes him t'ink he ain't so strong--ain't so warm as he was. An' it toins out' Annie, bein' always busy monkeyin' wit 'd' young-one, an' givin' Jimmy d' languid eye, d' nex' news you get, Jimmy is back on d' street when he is off watch, tryin' to pipe off some fun.

“I never knows where she catches on wit' Jimmy, but it ain't no time when one of them razzle-dazzle blondes has him on d' string. She's doin' d' grand at that, see! an' givin' him d' haughty stand-off.

“Mebby Jimmy met her on d' street onct or twict, when for d' foist time, Goldie--which is this blonde tart's name--says Jimmy can come an' see her.

“It's been mont's since Jimmy's done d' flower act at Dinkey Pete's. But d' sucker t'inks it's d' night of his life, an' so he chases in an' goes ag'inst Pete's counter for a bunch.

“This Dinky Pete's a dead queer little mug. He's a short, sawed-off mark, wit' a humpy back an' a bum lamp. But you can gamble your life Î Dinky Pete's heart is on straight, whether his back is or not.

“It's be chanct I'm in Dinky Pete's meself d' time Jimmy is out to meet this blonde mash. Now, at d* time I ain't onto Jimmy's curves; I don't tumble to d' play till a week later, when me Rag puts me on.

“W'at was I doin' in Dinky Pete's? Flowers? Nit; not on your life! Naw; I wants to change me luck. I'd got d' gaff at draw poker d' night before, an' I'm layin' for Dinky Pete for to rub his hump on d' sly. Sure! Youse'll have luck out of sight. Only you mustn't let d' humpback guy get on. If he notices you rubbin' his hump it'll give youse bad luck, see!

“Jimmy comes in, an' at foist, be force of habit, I s'spose, he's goin' to plunge on voylets. But he t'inks of Annie, an' he can't stand for it. Wit' that, Jimmy shifts his brush an' tells Dinky Pete to toin him out some roses.

“'An' make 'em d' reddest in d' joint, see!' says Jimmy.

“Dinky Pete's got his mits on some voylets, but when Jimmy says 'roses' Dinky comes to a stan' still.

“' W'at! roses?' says Dinky Pete, an' his ratty eyes--one of 'em on d' hog, as I states--looks dead sharp at Jimmy. 'Roses?' he repeats.

“'That's what I says!' is d' way Jimmy comes back.

“' Better take voylets,' says Dinky, an' he stops foolin' wit 'd' flowers an' gives Jimmy d' gimlet eye.

“'Nit,' declares Jimmy; * I'm dead onto me needs. Give me roses.'

“'But roses won't last,' says Dinky, an' his look is sharp an' soft an' sad all at onct. 'Roses won't last, an' that's for fair,' says Dinky, 'while voylets is stayers. Better take voylets, Jimmy!'

“But Jimmy gets sullen an' won't have no voylets, see! An' he swings an' rattles wit' Dinky that he wants roses--roses red as blood.

“'Roses has thorns,' goes on Dinky, still holdin' his lamps on Jimmy in d' same queer way; 'you don't want roses, Jimmy; you just t'inks you want roses! Be a square bloke, Jimmy; be yourself an' take voylets!'

“An' I'm damned!” declares Chucky, “if Jimmy don't begin to look like a whipped kid, an' d' foist t'ing I knows, he welches on roses, grabs off a bunch of voylets big enough to make a salad, an' goes chasin' home to Annie. Me Rag is there when Jimmy pours in.

“Say! It's d' finish of d' blonde! She ain't in it! Me rag, on d' quiet, gives Annie d' chin-chin of her existence, an' shows her Jimmy ain't gettin' a square deal. An' Annie--who, for all she's nutty about d' kid, is a dead wise fowl just d' same--takes a tumble, an' from that time she makes d' bettin' even money on* bot 'd' young-one an' Jimmy. D' last time I sees Jimmy he stops to tell me that Annie's a peach, an' d' kid's a wonder. An' he's lookin' like a nine-times winner himself. Now don't youse call that a romance for Dinky Pete to get onto Jimmy's game so quick, an' stickin' to him till he takes d' voylet steer? Ain't it a romance? Well! I should kiss a pig!”

CRIB OR COFFIN?

I

YOUNG Jones stood in the telegraph office--the one at Twenty-third Street and Broadway. There was an air of triumph about Jones, an atmosphere of insolent sagacity, which might belong to one who, by some sudden, skilful sleight had caught a starling. Yet Jones's victory was in nowise uncommon. Others had achieved it many a time and oft. It was simply a baby; young Jones had become a papa, and it was this that gave him those frills which we have chronicled. The presence of young Jones in the telegraph office might be explained by looking over his shoulder. This is the message he wrote:

New York City, Dec. 8, '99.

Colonel Stuyvesant Van Epps,

Albany, N. Y.

I still take it you are interested in the census of your family. Recent events in this city have altered the figures. Don't attempt to write a history of the tribe of Van Epps without consulting Sanford Jones.

“There!” said young Jones, “that ought to fetch him. He won't know whether I mean the birth of a baby or Mary's death. If he doesn't come to see her now, I will mark him off my list for good. I would as it stands, if it were not for Mary.”

“Won't father worry, dear?” asked Mary, when young Jones repeated the ambiguous message he had aimed at his up-the-State father-in-law.

“I expect him to shed apprehensive tears all the way to New York,” replied young Jones. “But don't fret, Mary; I am sure he will come; and a tear or two won't hurt him. They will help his eyes, even though they do his heart no good. I don't resent his treatment of me, but his neglect of you is not so easy to forgive.”

II

This was the story:

Back four years, Albany would have shown you young Jones opening his law office in that hamlet. Mary was “Mary Van Epps.” At that time seventeen years was all the family register allowed to her for age.

Her father, Colonel Stuyvesant Van Epps, was one of the leading citizens of Albany. While not a millionaire, he was of sufficient wealth to dazzle the local eye, and he was always mentioned by the denizens of his native place as “rich.”

Colonel Stuyvesant Van Epps had a weakness. He was slave to the pedigree habit. Never a day went by but he called somebody's attention to those celebrities who aforetime founded and set flowing the family of Van Epps; and he proposed at some hour in the future to write a history of that eminent house. With his wealth and his family pride to prompt him, it came easy one day for Colonel Stuyvesant Van Epps to object with decision and vigour to a match between young Jones and his daughter Mary.

“They were both fools!” he said.

Then he pointed out that the day would never dawn when a plebeian like unto Jones, without lineage or lucre, boasting nothing better than a law office vacant of practice, and on which the rent was in arrears three months, would wed a daughter of the Van Epps. Colonel Stuyvesant Van Epps, in elaboration of his objection, showed that beyond a taste to drink whiskey and a speculative bent toward draw poker, he knew of nothing which young Jones possessed. Colonel Stuyvesant Van Epps closed, as he began, with the emphatic announcement that no orange blossoms would ever blow for the nuptials of young Jones and Mary Van Epps.

Colonel Stuyvesant Van Epps in his attitude will have the indorsement of all good Christian people. He was right as a father. As a prophet touching orange blossoms, however, he was what vulgar souls call “off.” Of that anon.

III

YOUNG Jones more than half believed that Colonel Stuyvesant Van Epps was right. So far as whiskey and draw poker were concerned, he went with him; but with Colonel Stuyvesant Van Epps' objections to him, based on the lack of pedigree and a failure of pocket-book, he didn't sympathise.

“I may be poor, and my family tree may be a mullein stalk, but I am still a fitting mate for any member of the Van Epps tribe.”

Thus spake young Jones to Colonel Stuyvesant Van Epps. He then took the earliest private occasion to kiss Mary good-bye, give her his picture, and make her his promise to wed her within five years.

“Would she wait?”

“I would wait a century,” said Mary.

Young Jones kissed Mary again after that. The next day Albany was short one citizen, and that citizen was young Jones. Albany is short to this day.

IV

Let us drop details. Good luck came to young Jones, hard on the lonely heels of his evacuation of Albany. He was named a junior partner of a New York City law firm. His income equalled his hope. He dismissed whiskey and draw poker, and he wrote to Mary Van Epps:

“Could he claim her now?”

Colonel Stuyvesant Van Epps said “No” again. Young Jones still lacked ancestry, and a taste for whiskey and four aces still lurked in his blood. Colonel Stuyvesant Van Epps would not consent. This served for a time to abate the bridal preparations.

V

Two years deserted the future for the past. A great deal of water will run under a bridge in two years. Mary Van Epps was nineteen. She went on a visit to a Trenton relative. Young Jones became abundant in Trenton at that very time. They took in a parson while on a stroll one day, and when that experienced divine got through with them they were man and wife. They wired their entangled condition to Colonel Stuyvesant Van Epps. He sent them a message of wrath.

“I cast Mary off for ever! Never let me see her face again!”

“Very well!” remarked young Jones as he read the wire; “I shall need Mary myself, in New York. Casting her off, therefore, at Albany, cuts no great figure. As for Mary's face, I will look at it all the more to make up for her brutal dad's abatement of interest therein.”

Then he kissed Mary as if the feat were entirely fresh. And while Mary wept, she still felt very happy. Next they came to a modest home in the city.

VI

Two years more trailed the otners into history. Young Jones was held a fortunate man. His work was a success. Whiskey and poker were now so far astern as to be hull-down in the horizon. And he loved Mary better than ever. She was the triumph of his life, and he told her so every day.

“It is certainly wonderful,” he said, “how much more beautiful you become every day.”

This pleased Mary; and while her heart turned to her hard old father, she did not repent that episode at Trenton, which changed her name to Jones.

Once a month Mary faithfully addressed a letter, new and fresh each time with the love that fails and fades not, to “Colonel Stuyvesant Van Epps, Albany, N. Y.” And once a month Colonel Stuyvesant Van Epps read it, gulped a little, and made no reply.

“I will never see her again!” Colonel Stuyvesant

Van Epps remarked to himself on these letter occasions.

All the time he knew he lived for nothing else. But he thought of his family and mustered his pride, and of course became a limitless fool at once, as do those who give way to an attack of pedigree.

But the Jones baby was born; and young Jones concluded to try his hand on Colonel Stuyvesant Van Epps. Mary wanted him to come, and that settled the whole matter so far as young Jones was concerned. In his new victory as a successful father, he felt that he could look down on Colonel Stuyvesant Van Epps. He therefore wrote the message referred to in our first chapter with perfect confidence, that, turn as matters might, he had nothing to fear.

“The past, at least, is secure!” said young Jones; “and, come what may, I have Mary and the baby.” Both Mary and young Jones, however, awaited the returns from Albany with anxiety;--Mary, because she loved her father and mourned for his old face, and young Jones because he loved Mary. They were relieved when the bell rang at 7 P. M., and a bicycle boy handed in a yellow paper, which read: “Will be there to-morrow on the 8:30.--Stuyvesant Van Epps.”

Mary was all gladness. Young Jones was calm, but gave way sufficiently to say:

“Mary, we will call the cub 'Stuyvesant Van Epps Jones.'”

[Illustration: 0335]

VII

YOUNG Jones met Colonel Stuyvesant Van Epps at the Forty-Second Street station. The old gentleman had been torn by doubts and grievous misgivings all the way down. What did young Jones' ambiguous message mean? Was Mary dead? Was he bound to a funeral? or a christening? Colonel Stuyvesant Van Epps knew that something tremendous had happened. But what?

Colonel Stuyvesant Van Epps walked up to young Jones at the station, and without pausing to greet him, remarked:

“Crib or coffin?”

“Crib!” said young Jones.

[Illustration: 0335]

Then Colonel Stuyvesant Van Epps fell into a storm of tears, and began to shake young Jones by the hand for the first time in his life.

VIII

The three happiest people in the world that night were Colonel Stuyvesant Van Epps, Mary and young Jones. The baby was the one member of the family who did not give way to emotion. He received his grandfather with a stolid phlegm which became a Van Epps.

“And his name is Stuyvesant Van Epps Jones,” said Mary.

Colonel Stuyvesant Van Epps kissed Mary again at this cheering news, and shook hands with young Jones for the second time in his life.

That is all there is to a very true story. Colonel Stuyvesant Van Epps lives now in New York City, and Albany is shy a second citizen. Mary is happy, young Jones feels like a conqueror, and the infant, Stuyvesant Van Epps Jones, beneath the eye of his grandsire, waxes apace.

OHIO DAYS

I--AT THE LEES

Aunt Ann, be we goin' to the spellin' to-night at the Block schoolhouse?”

Jim Lee always called his wife “Aunt Ann.” So did everybody except her daughter Lydia. She called Aunt Ann “Mother.” But to Jim Lee and the other inhabitants of Stowe Township, she was “Aunt Ann Lee.”

As Jim Lee asked Aunt Ann the question, he threw down the armful of maple wood and retreated to the back door to stamp the snow off his boots.

“I want to know,” he said, “so's to do the chores in time.”

Aunt Ann was chopping mince-meat. She was a clean, beautiful woman of the buxom sort. Her eyes were very blue, while her hair was very black with not a strand of silver, for all her forty-seven years. Jim Lee held Aunt Ann in great respect. Aunt Ann on her part was a tender soul and true, although Jim Lee had found her quite firm at times.

“Now and then she's a morsel hard on the bit,” said Jim Lee, descriptively.

Perhaps the two old-maid Spranglers meant the same thing when they said: “There never was a body with blue eyes and black hair who didn't have the snap in 'em.”

“Yes,” replied Aunt Ann to Jim Lee's question “yes, of course we'll go. I've got to see Mrs. Au about some rag carpets she's weavin' for me, and she be there. Better get the Morgan colt and the cutter ready, father; we'll go in that.”

“That'll only hold two,” said Jim Lee. “How Lide goin' to go?”

“Lide's goin' with Ed Church. She's over to Jenn Ruple's now; she and Jen are goin' to choose up for the spellin' bee. But she'll be back in time, and Ed Church is comin' for her at half-past seven.”

Jim Lee's face showed that he didn't like Ed Church He said nothing for five minutes, and pulling off his kip-skin boots began to give them a coat of tallow.

“Where's Ezra?” at last he asked. Ezra was the heir of the house of Lee. His age was eleven; he was twenty.

“Ezra's down cellar sortin' over that bin of peach blows,” said Aunt Ann, busy with her mince-me; and chopping-bowl; “they'd started to rot.”

“I wanted to send him to the Corners for the mail,” suggested Jim Lee, as he kneaded the wax tallow into the instep of his boot to soften the leather.

[Illustration: 0341]

“You'd better hitch up the colt a mite early,” answered

Aunt Ann, “and go to the Corners before we start to the spellin'. Ezra's got to churn as soon; he's done the peachblows.”

There was another pause. Jim Lee softly drew on his freshly tallowed boots, and then stood up an tried them by raising his heels one after the other bending the boots at the toes as if testing a couple of Damascus sword blades.

“I don't like this here Ed Church sparkin' our Lide,” remarked Jim Lee at last; “bimeby they'll want to get married.”

“Father!” said Aunt Ann, raising her blue eyes with a look of cold criticism from the mince-meat she was massacring.

“Has he asked Lide yet?” said Jim Lee.

“No, he ain't,” replied Aunt Ann, “but he's goin' to.”

“How do you know?”

“How do I know?” repeated Aunt Ann, as she set the chopping-bowl on the kitchen table, and turned to put a few select sticks of maple into the oven to the end that they become kiln-dried and highly inflammable; “how do I know Ed Church is goin' to marry Lide? Humph! I can see it.”

“I'm goin' to put a stop to it,” said Jim Lee. “This Church boy is goin' to keep away from Lide.”

“Father, you're goin' to do nothing of the kind,” and Aunt Ann's eyes began to sparkle. “You can run the farm and Ezra, father; I'll run Lide and the house. The only person who's goin' to have a syllable to say about Lide's marryin' when the time comes, is Lide herself. If she wants Ed Church she's goin' to have him.”

“Aunt Ann, I'm s'prised at you upholdin' for this Church boy!” Jim Lee threw into his tone a strain of strong reproof. “Ed Church drinks.”

“Ed Church don't drink,” retorted Aunt Ann sharply.

“How about that time two years ago last summer? Waren't Ed Church drunk over at the Royalton Fair?”

“Yes, he was,” answered Aunt Ann, “and that's the only time. But so was my father drunk once at a barn-raisin' when he was a boy, for I've heerd him tell it; and I guess my father, William H. Pickering, was as good as any Lee who ever greased his boots. One swallow don't make a summer, and one drunk don't make a drunkard. Ed Church told me himself that he ain't took a drop since.”

“I'm goin' to break up this nonsense between him and Lide, at any rate,” said Jim Lee. His mood was dogged, and it served to irritate Aunt Ann.

“All you've got ag'inst Ed Church, father,” said Aunt Ann, “is that his father voted ag'in you for pathmaster, and I'm glad he did. What under the sun you ever wanted to be pathmaster for, and go about ploughin' up good roads to make 'em bad, was more'n I could see. I'm glad you was beat.”

“I'm goin' to stop this Church boy hangin' 'round Lide, jest the same,” was the closing remark of Jim Lee. At this point he went out to the barn to put some straw in the cutter and harness the Morgan colt. Aunt Ann turned again to her duties.

“Father is so exasperatin',” remarked Aunt Ann, as she poured some boiling water over a dozen slices of salt pork to “freshen it,” in the line of preparing them for the evening frying-pan. “He'll find out, though, that I'll have a tolerable lot to say about Lide's marriage.”

II--ED CHURCH AND LIDE

At half-past seven, Ed Church swung into Jim Lee's yard, with a horse all bells, and a cutter a billow of buffalo robes. He did not dare leave Grey Eagle, his pet colt, for Grey Eagle was restless with the wintry evening air and wanted to go. So Ed Church notified Lide of his coming by shouting, “House!” with a great voice.

Grey Eagle made a plunge at the sound, but was brought up by the bit.

“How'dy do, Ed,” said Lide, as she came out the side door. She looked rosy and pretty with her muskrat muff and cape.

“Hello, Lide,” said Ed. “You'll have to scramble in yourself. I can hardly hold the colt this weather, when he don't have nothin' to do but eat.”

Lide scrambled in. As Ed Church stood up in the cutter to allow Lide a chance to be seated, her face came close to his. Taking his eyes from Grey Eagle for the mere fraction of a second, he kissed her dexterously. Lide received the caress with the most admirable composure, and Ed Church himself did not act as if the idea was a discovery or the experiment new.

“Let him out, Ed!” said Lide, when they were well into the road.

There was a foot of snow on the ground. The fence corners showed great drifts, while each rail of the fence had a ruffle of its own of cold, white snow. As far as one could see in the moonlight, the fields to each side were like milk. In the background stood the grey woods laced against the sky. Here and there a lamp shone in a neighbour's window like an eye of fire.

Stowe Township was out that night. The steady beat of the bells could be heard ahead and behind. Ed Church sent Grey Eagle forward with long strides, the cutter following over the hard, packed snow with no more of resistance than a feather. Lide held her muff to her face, so that she might open her mouth to talk without catching any of the flying snowballs from Grey Eagle's nervous hoofs.

“It'll be a big spellin'-school to-night,” said Lide.

“Yes, I guess it will,” replied Ed. “I hear folks are comin' clear from Hammond Corners.”

“If that Gentry girl comes,” said Lide, “mind! you're not to speak to her, Ed. If you do, you can go home alone.”

Ed grinned with an air of pleased superiority.

“Get up,” he said to Grey Eagle. Then to Lide: “Go on! You're jealous!”

“No, I ain't!” said Lide, with a lofty intonation. “Speak to her if you want to! What do I care!”

“I won't speak to her, Lide.”

Ed looked at his sweetheart to see how she received his submission. As the road was level and straight at this point, and Grey Eagle had worn away the wire edge of his appetite to “go,” Ed put his face in behind the muskrat muff and kissed Lide again. The victim abetted the outrage.

“I saw ye!” yelled a happy voice behind. It was Ben Francis with Jennie Ruple. They also were enthroned in a cutter.

“What if you did?” retorted Lide with a toss.

“Do it again if I want to!” shouted Ed Church with much joyous hardihood.

“I never asked you to marry me yet, did I, Lide?” observed Ed Church, after two minutes of silence.

“No, you didn't,” said Lide from behind the muskrat muff. The words would have sounded hard, if it were not for the sudden soft sweetness of the voice, which was half a whisper.

“Well, I'll do it now,” said Ed, with much resolution, but a little shake in the tone. “You'll marry me, Lide, when we get ready?”

“Ed, what do you think father 'll say?”

Ed Church knew Lide's father found no joy in him. The next time his voice took on a moody, half-sullen sound.

“Don't care what he says! I ain't marryin' the hull Lee family.”

“But s'pose he says we can't?”

“If he does, I'll run away with you, Lide,” and Ed Church's tones were touched with storm. “I'm goin* to marry you even if all the Lees in the state stand in the way!”

Lide crowded a bit closer to Ed at this, and, holding the muskrat muff against her face to keep her nose from getting red, said nothing. Lide was thinking what a noble fellow Ed was, and how much she admired him.

III--THE SPELLING SCHOOL

The Block schoolhouse was crowded. Lide and Ed made their way toward the back benches. Jim Lee spoke to his daughter and growled gruffly at Ed.

The latter half growled back. Aunt Ann was all smiles and approval of Ed. At this, Ed thought her the best woman on earth except his own mother, and mentally put her next that excellent old lady in his heart.

It was a Mr. Parker who taught at the Block school-house. At 8 o'clock he rapped on the teacher's desk with a ruler, and everybody who was standing up hunted for a seat. Those who could find none--they were all young men and boys--crouched down along the walls of the big school-room and made seats of their heels. Mr. Parker came down from his desk and opened the stove door with the end of the ruler. The stove--a long-bodied air-tight--was raging red hot from the four-foot wood blazing in its interior. When the door was opened the heat almost singed Mr. Parker's eyebrows. At this he started back nervously, and Ben Weld and Will Jenkins, two very small boys, laughed. The stove on its part began to cool off and the cherry colour faded from its hot sides, leaving them brown and rusty.

“Lydia Lee and Jennie Ruple have been selected to choose sides for the spelling contest,” said Mr. Parker.

Lide and Jennie seated themselves side by side on the bench which ran along the rear of the room. It was Lide's first choice.

“Ed Church,” called Lide in a low voice.

Several young persons giggled, while Ed, blushing deeply to have his sweetheart's preference thus forced into prominence, blundered along the aisle and sat down by Lide. It was Jennie's choice. Jennie selected Ben Francis.

“Of course!” said Ada Farr in a loud whisper to

Myrtle Jones, “they'd choose their beaux first, so as to sit by 'em.”

There was no gainsaying the Farr girl's statement. The “choosing up,” however, went on. At last everybody, young and old, from the grey-headed grandpa to the five-year-old just sent to his first school that winter, had been chosen by Lide or Jennie. Then Mr. Parker began to give out the words.

Ed Church failed on the first word. It was “emphasis.” Ed thought there was an “f” in it. He straightway sat down and spelled no more that night. Lide made a better showing, and lasted through five words. She tripped on “suet” upon which she conferred an “i.” Lide then joined Ed among the silenced ones.

“Lide Lee missed on purpose,” whispered the Farr girl to her neighbour Myrtle Jones, “so she could sit and talk with Ed.”

Jim Lee spelled well, but fell a prey to “moustache.”

At last only three were left standing--Nellie Brad-dock, a girl from Hammond Corners, and Aunt Ann. Mr. Parker turned over to the back part of the spelling book where the hard words lived. Nellie Braddock fell before “umbrageous.”

The struggle between the girl from Hammond Corners and Aunt Ann was a battle of the giantesses. The girl from Hammond Corners was the champion speller of her region, and had spelled down every school so far that winter. The interest was intense, as first to Aunt Ann and then to the girl from Hammond Corners, Mr. Parker put out:

“Fantasy.”

“Autobiographer.”

“Thaumaturgie.”

“Cosmography.”

At last the girl from Hammond Corners tripped on:

“Sibylline.”

She made it “syb.” Mr. Parker had to show her the spelling book to convince the girl from Hammond Corners that she had missed. She glanced in the spelling book where Mr. Parker's finger pointed, and then burst into tears. At this an unknown young man, presumably from Hammond Corners, got up and excitedly declared the book to be wrong. Nobody took any notice of him, however, and Aunt Ann Lee was named the victor. She had spelled down the school.

IV--THE FIGHT

Ed CHURCH left Lide talking with the girls in the schoolhouse while he went back to the waggon shed to get Grey Eagle and bring him and the cutter to the door. As Ed was in the entry of the schoolhouse he was stopped by little Joe Barnes.

“Say! Fan Brown's out there waitin' for you.”

“What about Fan Brown?” asked Ed Church.

Fan Brown was the bully of Hinckley. He boasted that he could thrash any man between Bath Lakes and the Hinckley Ridge.

“He says he's goin' to wallop you for shootin' his dawg last summer,” said little Joe Barnes.

“Joe, will you do something for me?” asked Ed.

“Yep!”

“You go and tell Lide Lee in there that I'm goin' over to Square Chanler's to get a neck-yoke he borrowed and I'll be right back. Tell her to wait in the school-house till I come.”

“He's afraid of Fan Brown and is runnin' over to Square Chanler's to get the constable,” said little Joe Barnes to himself. For this he despised Ed Church very much, but went in and delivered the message.

“All right!” said Lide, and then went on gossiping with the girls.

Ed Church stepped out of the schoolhouse and started for the horse-sheds.

He noticed a knot of men standing at the rear corner of the building; among them he discerned the stocky, bull-necked bully of Hinckley, Fan Brown.

“Here he comes now!” said one, as Ed approached.

“Let him come!” gritted the bully; “I'll fix him! I'll show him whose dog he's been shootin! As fine a coon dog, boys, as ever went into a corn field. He shot him, and I ain't goin' back to Hinckley till I mash his face.”

“What's the row here?” said Ed Church, walking straight to the little huddle about Fan Brown. His tones were brittle and bold; a note of ready war ran through them. Not at all the voice in which he talked to Lide. “I understand somebody's lookin' for me. Who is it?”

“It's me, by G--d! You killed my dog last summer, and I'm goin'----”

“No, you ain't,” said Ed, interrupting; “you ain't goin' to do a thing. You may be the bully of Hinckley, Fan Brown, but you can't scare me. Your dog was killin' sheep; he was a good deal like you; but bein' a dog I could shoot him.”

“Yes, and I ain't goin' back to Hinckley until I maul you so you won't shoot another dog as long as you live.”

“Enough said!” replied Ed, “come right down in the hollow back of the horse sheds, where the folks won't see, and do it.”

Just then a small, meagre man approached. He walked with a lounging gait, and when he spoke he had a thin, mealy voice.

“What's the matter here?” piped the meagre little man.

His name was Dick Bond. He was renowned widely as a wrestler. Gladiators had come from far and near, and at town meetings and barn raisings, wrestled with little Dick Bond. Where a hundred tried not one succeeded.

He had not lost a “fall” for four years. His skill had given birth to a half proverb, and when somebody said he would do something, and somebody else doubted it, the latter would observe with laughing scorn: “Yes; you'll do it when somebody throws Dick Bond.”

Such was the fell repute of this invincible little man that when his shrill, light voice made the inquiry chronicled, a silence fell on the crowd and no one answered.

“Who's goin' to fight?” asked Dick Bond more pointedly.

“I'm goin' to fight Fan Brown,” said Ed.

There was a load of ferocity in the way he said it, which showed that Ed, himself, had a latent hunger for battle.

“I guess I'll go 'long and see it,” said Dick Bond pipingly.

“How do you want to fight?” asked Ed of Fan Brown when each had buttoned up his coat tight to the chin. “Stand up, or rough and tumble?”

“Rough and tumble,” said Fan Brown savagely.

“All right!”

“Now, boys,” said Dick Bond when all was ready, “I'll give the word and then you're goin' to fight until one of you says 'enough.' And remember! there's no bitin' no gougin', no scratchin'.”

“Bitin' goes?” declared Fan Brown, in a fashion of savage interrogatory.

“Bitin' don't go!” replied the lean little referee, “and if you offer to bite or gouge, Fan Brown, I'll break your neck. You'll never go back to Hinckley short of being carried in a blanket.”

[Illustration: 0353]

The battle was brief and bloody. It didn't last ten minutes. When it was over, Ed Church, bleeding, but victorious, walked back to the sheds to get Grey Eagle. Fan Brown was unable to rise from the snow without help. His face was beaten badly, and he was a thoroughly whipped person. Dick Bond expressed great satisfaction, and in his high voice said it was a splendid fight.

“But, Brown,” said Dick Bond to the beaten one, “I can't see how you got it into your head you could lick Ed Church. Why, man! he was all over you like a panther.”

The news of the fight ran like wildfire. Everybody knew of it before an hour passed. It was a source of general satisfaction that Ed Church had whipped Fan Brown, the Hinckley bully, yet no one failed to stamp the whole proceeding as disgraceful; that is, among the older men at least.

Lide, however, when she heard of the valour of her lover felt a great tenderness for him, and was never kinder than when they drove Grey Eagle back from the Block schoolhouse spelling-bee that crisp winter night.

V--JIM LEE INTERFERES

MOTHER,” sobbed Lide, as she threw herself down on the chintz lounge without pausing to take off her hat or cape, “father has just told Ed never to come to the house nor speak to me again.”

Jim Lee and Aunt Ann got home before the lovers. The news of the broil overtook them, however. Jim Lee declared it a scandal and a scorn.

“Now you see,” he said to Aunt Ann, “what sort of ruffian the Church boy is!”

“Well, I'm glad he whipped that miserable Fan Brown,” said Aunt Ann. “He's done nothin' for ten years but come over here to Stowe Township and raise a fuss. I'm glad somebody's at last spunked up and thrashed him. I'd done it years ago if I had been a man.”

“Aunt Ann Lee!” said Jim Lee, hitting the Morgan colt a blow with the whip which set that sprightly animal almost astride the thills--“Aunt Ann, do you tell me you approve of Ed Church lickin' Fan Brown?”

“Yes, I do,” retorted Aunt Ann, stoutly, “and so will Lide. If you imagine, father, a woman finds fault with a man because he'll fight other men you don't know the sex.”

Jim Lee moaned. Absolutely! for the first time in his life Aunt Ann had shocked him. Not another word was spoken by Jim Lee all the way home.

Aunt Ann went into the house when they arrived, while Jim Lee remained to put up the Morgan colt. He was busy in the barn when Ed and Lide drove into the yard.

“Father came up to Ed,” sobbed Lide, as she lay on the lounge, “and called him a brawler and a drunkard, and said he'd got to keep away from me.”

“What did Ed say?” asked Aunt Ann, as she sat down by her daughter and began, with kind hands, to take off her hat and cape. Every touch was full of motherly love and tenderness.

“Oh! Ed didn't say much,” said Lide, giving way to long-drawn sighs; a fashion of dead swell following the storm of sobs. “He said he'd marry me whether father was willing or not. Then he drove away.”

Aunt Ann smiled.

“I guess Ed Church is pretty high strung,” said Aunt Ann, “but that won't hurt him any.”

Jim Lee came in at that moment, looking a bit sheepish and guilty; but over it all an atmosphere of victory.

“That Church boy will stay away now, I guess!” said Jim Lee, as he got the bootjack and began pulling off his boots.

“Jim Lee, you're an awful fool!” observed Aunt Ann with the air of a sibyl settling all things. “You're the biggest numbskull in Stowe Township!”

“Why?” asked Jim Lee.

He was disturbed because Aunt Ann addressed him by his full name. Experience had taught him that defeat ever followed hard on the heels of his full name, when Aunt Ann made use of it.

“Never mind why!” said Aunt Ann.

And not another word could Jim Lee get from her.

VI--THEY DECORATE

It was a month after the spelling-school. Stowe Township was decorating the Church for Christmas. For time out of mind Stowe Township had had a Christmas tree at the Church, and everybody, rich or poor, high or low, young or old, great or small, got a present if it were nothing but a gauze stocking full of painted popcorn.

Aunt Ann, as usual, was at the head of the decorating committee. The Church was full of long strings of evergreen, which Aunt Ann's satellites were festooning about the walls, and to that end there was much climbing of step-ladders, much standing on tip-toe, much pounding of thumbs with caitiff tack-hammers, vilely wielded by girlish hands. Occasionally some fair step-ladder maid gave the public a glimpse of a well-filled woollen stocking as she went up and down, or stood on her toes on the top step. At this, the young men present always blushed, while the maidens tittered. Most people don't know it, but the male of our species is more modest, more easily embarrassed, than the female.

The Christmas tree had just arrived. It had been contributed by “Square” Chanler. The tree was a noble hemlock; thick and feathery of bough, perfect of general outline. Old Curl, the Rip Van Winkle of Stowe, had cut it down and hauled it to the church on “Square” Chanler's bob-sleds. All the smallfry of the Corners had gone with Old Curl after the Christmas tree, and were faithful to him to the last. Every one of them was clamorously forward in unloading the tree and getting it into the Church.

Then it was taken charge of by Aunt Ann, who put the smallfry to flight. They were to be beneficiaries of the tree, and it was held that their joy would be enhanced if they were not allowed to remain while the tree was decorated, and were debarred all sight thereof until Christmas Eve, when the presents would be cut from the boughs and bestowed upon their owners.

One little boy had a cold, and Aunt Ann let him remain in the Church. This little boy perched himself in a window where his fellows outside might see and envy him. There was a three-cornered hole in the window pane near him, and the little boy was wont every few moments to place his mouth to this crevice and say to the boys outside:

“My! but you ought to see what Aunt Ann's tyin' on the tree now!”

“What is it?” would chorus the outside boys.

“Can't tell you!”

The boy with the cold became the most unpopular child in Stowe Township, and several of his fellows outside in their agony threatened him with personal violence.

“I'll lick you when I ketch you!” shouted children in the rabble rout to the lucky child with the cold.

“I don't care!” said the child inside, “you just ought to see the tree now!”

Lide Lee was aiding the others to festoon the church. Under the maternal direction she was fitting tawdry little wax candles among the branches of the Christmas tree, and tying on Barlow knives for all the little boys, and “Housewives” for all the little girls.

Lide had not seen Ed save once since the spelling-school, and then she met him in the village drug-store by chance. But they wrote to each other, and some progress in this way had been made toward an elopement which was scheduled for the coming Spring. Aunt Ann in the depths of her sagacity, suspected the arrangement, but it gave her no alarm. As for Jim Lee, so fatuous was he that he believed he had ended all ties between his daughter and Ed Church.

While decorations were in progress in the church, Jim Lee suddenly drove up.

“Aunt Ann,” said Jim Lee, after pausing to admire the garish display, “Aunt Ann, I've just got a line from Ludlow, and there's goin' to be a special meetin' of the board of directors of our Ice Company, and I've got to mosey into the city.”

Jim Lee had an air of importance. He liked to appear before Aunt Ann in the attitude of a much-sought-for man of business.

“Pshaw! father, that's too bad!” said Aunt Ann. “Can't you be back by Christmas Eve?”

“No; Christmas Eve is only day after to-morrow, and the Ice Company business ought to last a week, so Ludlow says.”

“Well!” said Aunt Ann, “if you must go, you must. Ezra can do most of the chores while you're away, and I'll have Old Curl come and do the heaviest of 'em.”

So Jim Lee kissed Aunt Ann, and then kissed Lide. This latter caress was a trifle strained, for Jim Lee felt guilty when he looked at his daughter; and Lide hadn't half forgiven him his actions toward her idolised Ed. Since Ed had been forbidden her society, Lide loved him much better than before.

Thus started Jim Lee for the city on Ice Company matters, Tuesday afternoon. Christmas Eve was the following Thursday. Jim Lee would return on the Monday or Tuesday after. He was fated to find some startling changes on his coming back.

VII--AUNT ANN PLOTS

AUNT Ann found much to occupy her during the hours before Christmas Eve. There were forty-eight of these hours. Aunt Ann needed them all.

For one matter she made Ezra drive her over to the County Seat. She wanted to see her brother, Will Pickering, who was Probate Judge of the County. Aunt Ann also dispatched a letter by trusty messenger to her sister, Mary Newton, who lived at Eastern Crossroads, some seven miles from Stowe. As a last assignment, Aunt Ann told Ezra to go over and ask Ed to come up to the house.

“You'll be at the Christmas tree at the church tonight, won't you, Ed?” asked Aunt Ann, after making some excuse for sending for him. She put the question quite casually.

“Well! be sure and come, Ed,” said Aunt Ann. “And more'n that, be sure and dress yourself up. I think I'll need you to help me get things off the high limbs.”

Aunt Ann, as she led Lide to his side. “Now, Brother Crandall, if you will perform the ceremony--the short form, please, and leave out the word 'obey'--the distribution will be complete.”

“But the licence!” gasped the Rev. Crandall.

“There it is,” said Aunt Ann, “with my brother Will's seal and signature as Probate Judge on it. You don't s'pose I had Ezra drive me clear to the County Seat in the dead of winter for nothing?”

The ceremony was over. Ed and Lide were “Mr. and Mrs. Edwin Church;” and the entire population of Stowe, some in tears, all in earnest, were kissing the bride and shaking hearty hands with the groom. That latter young gentleman was dazed and happy, and looked both.

“Now, Ed,” said Aunt Ann, after kissing him and then kissing Lide, “I'm your mother; and I'll begin to tell you what to do. You put Lide in your cutter and head Grey Eagle for Eastern Cross-roads. I sent Mary word you were coming, and there's a trunk full of Lide's things gone over. Stay a week. If you need collars, or shirts or anything, Mary will give you some of John's. Stay a week and then come home. Father will be back from the Ice Company Tuesday, and by Thursday of next week, when you return, I'll have him fully convinced that all is ordered for the best, and whatever is, is right. So kiss your mother again, children, and start. I hear Grey Eagle's bells a-jingling, where Dick Bond's brought him to the door.”

THE END