A sheet of flame shot out from the wall before them, and half a dozen troopers fell lifeless to the ground, and half a dozen riderless horses galloped wildly down the road. The leader shouted a sharp command, and the whole troop retreated in confusion.

Betty drew back shuddering, and when she brought herself to look again the troopers had dismounted, had surrounded the meeting-house, and were pouring volley after volley at its doors and windows. Then for the first time Betty thought of the officer's message, and remembered that the safety of the Americans depended upon her alone, for her father was away, no neighbor within reach, and without powder she knew they could not resist long.

Could she save them? All her stern Quaker blood rose at the thought, and stealing softly to the paddock behind the barn, she saddled Daisy and led her through the bars into the wood road, which opened into the highway just around the bend. Could she but pass the pickets without discovery there would be little danger of pursuit; then there would be only the long ride of eight miles ahead of her.

Just before the narrow wood road joined the broader highway Betty mounted Daisy by means of a convenient stump, and starting off at a gallop, had just turned the corner when a voice shouted "Halt!" and a shot whistled past her head. Betty screamed with terror, and bending over, brought down her riding-whip with all her strength upon Daisy, then, turning for a moment, saw three troopers hurriedly mounting.

Her heart sank within her, but, beginning to feel the excitement of the chase, she leaned over and patting Daisy on the neck, encouraged her to do her best. Onward they sped. Betty, her curly hair streaming in the wind, the color now mounting to, now retreating from her cheeks, led by five hundred yards.

But Daisy had not been used for weeks, and already felt the unusual strain. Now they thundered over Naaman's Creek, now over Concord, with the nearest pursuer only four hundred yards behind; and now they raced beside the clear waters of Beaver Brook, and as Betty dashed through its shallow ford, the thud of horse's hoofs seemed just over her shoulder.

Betty, at first sure of success, now knew that unless in some way she could throw her pursuers off her track she was surely lost. Just then she saw ahead of her a fork in the road, the lower branch leading to the Brandywine, the upper to the Birmingham Meeting-house. Could she but get the troopers on the upper road while she took the lower, she would be safe; and, as if in answer to her wish, there flashed across her mind the remembrance of the old cross-road which, long disused, and with its entrance hidden by drooping boughs, led from a point in the upper road just out of sight of the fork down across the lower, and through the valley of the Brandywine. Could she gain this road unseen she still might reach Washington.

Urging Daisy forward, she broke just in time through the dense growth which hid the entrance, and sat trembling, hidden behind a dense growth of tangled vines, while she heard the troopers thunder by. Then, riding through the rustling woods, she came at last into the open, and saw spread out beneath her the beautiful valley of the Brandywine, dotted with the white tents of the Continental army.

Starting off at a gallop, she dashed around a bend in the road into the midst of a group of officers riding slowly up from the valley.

"Stop, little maiden, before you run us down," said one, who seemed to be in command. "Where are you going in such hot haste?"

"Oh, sir," said Betty, reining in Daisy, "can thee tell me where I can find General Washington?"

"Yes, little Quakeress," said the officer who had first spoken to her; "I am he. What do you wish?"

Betty, too exhausted to be surprised, poured forth her story in a few broken sentences, and (hearing as if in a dream the hasty commands for the rescue of the soldiers in Chichester Meeting-house) fell forward in her saddle, and, for the first time in her life, fainted, worn out by her noble ride.

A few days later, when recovering from the shock of her long and eventful ride, Betty, awaking from a deep sleep, found her mother kneeling beside her little bed, while her father talked with General Washington himself beside the fireplace; and it was the proudest and happiest moment of her life when Washington, coming forward and taking her by the hand, said, "You are the bravest little maid in America, and an honor to your country."

Still the peaceful meeting-house and the gambrel-roofed home stand unchanged, save that their time-beaten timbers and crumbling bricks have taken on a more sombre tinge, and under the broad walnut-tree another little Betty sits and sews.

If you ask it, she will take down the great key from its nail, and swinging back the new doors of the meeting-house, will show you the old worm-eaten ones inside, which, pierced through and through with bullet-holes, once served as a rampart against the enemy. And she will tell you, in the quaint Friend's language, how her great-great-grandmother carried, over a hundred years ago, the news of the danger of her countrymen to Washington, on the Brandywine, and at the risk of her own life saved theirs.



384

Some two decades ago thousands were reading about the highly romantic career of Charles Brandon in When Knighthood Was in Flower (1898), and other thousands were applauding Julia Marlowe's impersonation of the beautiful and fascinating Princess Mary in the dramatic version of that book. The author was Charles Major (1856-1913), an Indiana lawyer turned novelist, who wrote, also, the equally romantic story of Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall (1902). Between these two pieces of delightful romance, he wrote a series of sketches of pioneer life in Indiana under the title of The Bears of Blue River (1901). It is an account of boy life in the early days, full of dramatic interest, simply written, and entirely worthy of the high place which it has already taken among stories of its type. The first adventure in that book follows by special arrangement with the publishers. (Copyright. The Macmillan Company, New York.)

THE BIG BEAR

CHARLES MAJOR

Away back in the "twenties," when Indiana was a baby state, and great forests of tall trees and tangled underbrush darkened what are now her bright plains and sunny hills, there stood upon the east bank of Big Blue River, a mile or two north of the point where that stream crosses the Michigan road, a cozy log cabin of two rooms—one front and one back.

The house faced the west, and stretching off toward the river for a distance equal to twice the width of an ordinary street, was a blue-grass lawn, upon which stood a dozen or more elm and sycamore trees, with a few honey-locusts scattered here and there. Immediately at the water's edge was a steep slope of ten or twelve feet. Back of the house, mile upon mile, stretched the deep dark forest, inhabited by deer and bears, wolves and wildcats, squirrels and birds, without number.

In the river the fish were so numerous that they seemed to entreat the boys to catch them, and to take them out of their crowded quarters. There were bass and black suckers, sunfish and catfish, to say nothing of the sweetest of all, the big-mouthed redeye.

South of the house stood a log barn, with room in it for three horses and two cows; and enclosing this barn, together with a piece of ground, five or six acres in extent, was a palisade fence, eight or ten feet high, made by driving poles into the ground close together. In this enclosure the farmer kept his stock, consisting of a few sheep and cattle, and here also the chickens, geese, and ducks were driven at nightfall to save them from "varmints," as all prowling animals were called by the settlers.

The man who had built this log hut, and who lived in it and owned the adjoining land at the time of which I write, bore the name of Balser Brent. "Balser" is probably a corruption of Baltzer, but, however that may be, Balser was his name, and Balser was the hero of the bear stories which I am about to tell you.

Mr. Brent and his young wife had moved to the Blue River settlement from North Carolina, when young Balser was a little boy five or six years of age. They had purchased the "eighty" upon which they lived, from the United States, at a sale of public land held in the town of Brookville on Whitewater, and had paid for it what was then considered a good round sum—one dollar per acre. They had received a deed for their "eighty" from no less a person than James Monroe, then President of the United States. This deed, which is called a patent, was written on sheepskin, signed by the President's own hand, and is still preserved by the descendants of Mr. Brent as one of the title-deeds to the land it conveyed. The house, as I have told you, consisted of two large rooms, or buildings, separated by a passageway six or eight feet broad which was roofed over, but open at both ends—on the north and south. The back room was the kitchen, and the front room was parlor, bedroom, sitting room and library all in one.

At the time when my story opens Little Balser, as he was called to distinguish him from his father, was thirteen or fourteen years of age, and was the happy possessor of a younger brother, Jim, aged nine, and a little sister one year old, of whom he was very proud indeed.

On the south side of the front room was a large fireplace. The chimney was built of sticks, thickly covered with clay. The fireplace was almost as large as a small room in one of our cramped modern houses, and was broad and deep enough to take in backlogs which were so large and heavy that they could not be lifted, but were drawn in at the door and rolled over the floor to the fireplace.

The prudent father usually kept two extra backlogs, one on each side of the fireplace, ready to be rolled in as the blaze died down; and on these logs the children would sit at night, with a rough slate made from a flat stone, and do their "ciphering," as the study of arithmetic was then called. The fire usually furnished all the light they had, for candles and "dips," being expensive luxuries, were used only when company was present.

The fire, however, gave sufficient light, and its blaze upon a cold night extended halfway up the chimney, sending a ruddy, cozy glow to every nook and corner of the room.

The back room was the storehouse and kitchen; and from the beams and along the walls hung rich hams and juicy sidemeat, jerked venison, dried apples, onions, and other provisions for the winter. There was a glorious fireplace in this room also, and a crane upon which to hang pots and cooking utensils.

The floor of the front room was made of logs split in halves with the flat, hewn side up; but the floor of the kitchen was of clay, packed hard and smooth.

The settlers had no stoves, but did their cooking in round pots called Dutch ovens. They roasted their meats on a spit or steel bar like the ramrod of a gun. The spit was kept turning before the fire, presenting first one side of the meat and then the other, until it was thoroughly cooked. Turning the spit was the children's work.

South of the palisade enclosing the barn was the clearing—a tract of twenty or thirty acres of land, from which Mr. Brent had cut and burned the trees. On this clearing the stumps stood thick as the hair on an angry dog's back; but the hard-working farmer ploughed between and around them, and each year raised upon the fertile soil enough wheat and corn to supply the wants of his family and his stock, and still had a little grain left to take to Brookville, sixty miles away, where he had bought his land, there to exchange for such necessities of life as could not be grown upon the farm or found in the forests.

The daily food of the family all came from the farm, the forest, or the creek. Their sugar was obtained from the sap of the sugar-trees; their meat was supplied in the greatest abundance by a few hogs, and by the inexhaustible game of which the forests were full. In the woods were found deer just for the shooting; and squirrels, rabbits, wild turkeys, pheasants, and quails, so numerous that a few hours' hunting would supply the table for days. The fish in the river, as I told you, fairly longed to be caught.

One day Mrs. Brent took down the dinner horn and blew upon it two strong blasts. This was a signal that Little Balser, who was helping his father down in the clearing, should come to the house. Balser was glad enough to drop his hoe and to run home. When he reached the house his mother said:

"Balser, go up to the drift and catch a mess of fish for dinner. Your father is tired of deer meat three times a day, and I know he would like a nice dish of fried redeyes at noon."

"All right, mother," said Balser. And he immediately took down his fishing-pole and line, and got the spade to dig bait. When he had collected a small gourdful of angle-worms, his mother called to him:

"You had better take a gun. You may meet a bear; your father loaded the gun this morning, and you must be careful in handling it."

Balser took the gun, which was a heavy rifle considerably longer than himself, and started up the river toward the drift, about a quarter of a mile away.

There had been rain during the night and the ground near the drift was soft.

Here, Little Balser noticed fresh bear tracks, and his breath began to come quickly. You may be sure he peered closely into every dark thicket, and looked behind all the large trees and logs, and had his eyes wide open lest perchance "Mr. Bear" should step out and surprise him with an affectionate hug, and thereby put an end to Little Balser forever.

So he walked on cautiously, and, if the truth must be told, somewhat tremblingly, until he reached the drift.

Balser was but a little fellow, yet the stern necessities of a settler's life had compelled his father to teach him the use of a gun; and although Balser had never killed a bear, he had shot several deer, and upon one occasion had killed a wildcat, "almost as big as a cow," he said.

I have no doubt the wildcat seemed "almost as big as a cow" to Balser when he killed it, for it must have frightened him greatly, as wildcats were sometimes dangerous animals for children to encounter. Although Balser had never met a bear face to face and alone, yet he felt, and many a time had said, that there wasn't a bear in the world big enough to frighten him, if he but had his gun.

He had often imagined and minutely detailed to his parents and little brother just what he would do if he should meet a bear. He would wait calmly and quietly until his bearship should come within a few yards of him, and then he would slowly lift his gun. Bang! and Mr. Bear would be dead with a bullet in his heart.

But when he saw the fresh bear tracks, and began to realize that he would probably have an opportunity to put his theories about bear killing into practice, he began to wonder if, after all, he would become frightened and miss his aim. Then he thought of how the bear, in that case, would be calm and deliberate, and would put his theories into practice by walking very politely up to him, and making a very satisfactory dinner of a certain boy whom he could name. But as he walked on and no bear appeared, his courage grew stronger as the prospect of meeting the enemy grew less, and he again began saying to himself that no bear could frighten him, because he had his gun and he could and would kill it.

So Balser reached the drift; and having looked carefully about him, leaned his gun against a tree, unwound his fishing-line from the pole, and walked out to the end of a log which extended into the river some twenty or thirty feet.

Here he threw in his line, and soon was so busily engaged drawing out sunfish and redeyes, and now and then a bass, which was hungry enough to bite at a worm, that all thought of the bear went out of his mind.

After he had caught enough fish for a sumptuous dinner he bethought him of going home, and as he turned toward the shore, imagine, if you can, his consternation when he saw upon the bank, quietly watching him, a huge black bear.

If the wildcat had seemed as large as a cow to Balser, of what size do you suppose that bear appeared? A cow! An elephant, surely, was small compared with the huge black fellow standing upon the bank.

It is true Balser had never seen an elephant, but his father had, and so had his friend Tom Fox, who lived down the river; and they all agreed that an elephant was "purt nigh as big as all outdoors."

The bear had a peculiar, determined expression about him that seemed to say:

"That boy can't get away; he's out on the log where the water is deep, and if he jumps into the river I can easily jump in after him and catch him before he can swim a dozen strokes. He'll have to come off the log in a short time, and then I'll proceed to devour him."

About the same train of thought had also been rapidly passing through Balser's mind. His gun was on the bank where he had left it, and in order to reach it he would have to pass the bear. He dared not jump into the water, for any attempt to escape on his part would bring the bear upon him instantly. He was very much frightened, but, after all, was a cool-headed little fellow for his age; so he concluded that he would not press matters, as the bear did not seem inclined to do so, but so long as the bear remained watching him on the bank would stay upon the log where he was, and allow the enemy to eye him to his heart's content.

There they stood, the boy and the bear, each eyeing the other as though they were the best of friends, and would like to eat each other, which, in fact, was literally true.

Time sped very slowly for one of them, you may be sure; and it seemed to Balser that he had been standing almost an age in the middle of Blue River on that wretched shaking log, when he heard his mother's dinner horn, reminding him that it was time to go home.

Balser quite agreed with his mother and gladly would he have gone, I need not tell you; but there stood the bear, patient, determined, and fierce; and Little Balser soon was convinced in his mind that his time had come to die.

He hoped that when his father should go home to dinner and find him still absent, he would come up the river in search of him, and frighten away the bear. Hardly had this hope sprung up in his mind, when it seemed that the same thought had also occurred to the bear, for he began to move down toward the shore end of the log upon which Balser was standing.

Slowly came the bear until he reached the end of the log, which for a moment he examined suspiciously, and then, to Balser's great alarm, cautiously stepped out upon it and began to walk toward him.

Balser thought of the folks at home, and, above all, of his baby sister; and when he felt that he should never see them again, and that they would in all probability never know of his fate, he began to grow heavy-hearted and was almost paralyzed with fear.

On came the bear, putting one great paw in front of the other, and watching Balser intently with his little black eyes. His tongue hung out, and his great red mouth was open to its widest, showing the sharp, long, glittering teeth that would soon be feasting on a first-class boy dinner.

When the bear got within a few feet of Balser—so close he could almost feel the animal's hot breath as it slowly approached—the boy grew desperate with fear, and struck at the bear with the only weapon he had—his string of fish.

Now, bears love fish and blackberries above all other food; so when Balser's string of fish struck the bear in the mouth, he grabbed at them, and in doing so lost his foothold on the slippery log and fell into the water with a great splash and plunge.

This was Balser's chance for life, so he flung the fish to the bear, and ran for the bank with a speed worthy of the cause.

When he reached the bank his self-confidence returned, and he remembered all the things he had said he would do if he should meet a bear.

The bear had caught the fish, and again had climbed upon the log, where he was deliberately devouring them.

This was Little Balser's chance for death—to the bear. Quickly snatching up the gun, he rested it in the fork of a small tree near by, took deliberate aim at the bear, which was not five yards away, and shot him through the heart. The bear dropped into the water dead, and floated downstream a little way, where he lodged at a ripple a short distance below.

Balser, after he had killed the bear, became more frightened than he had been at any time during the adventure, and ran home screaming. That afternoon his father went to the scene of battle and took the bear out of the water. It was very fat and large, and weighed, so Mr. Brent said, over six hundred pounds.

Balser was firmly of the opinion that he himself was also very fat and large, and weighed at least as much as the bear. He was certainly entitled to feel "big"; for he had got himself out of an ugly scrape in a brave, manly, and cool-headed manner, and had achieved a victory of which a man might have been proud.

The news of Balser's adventure soon spread among the neighbors and he became quite a hero; for the bear he had killed was one of the largest that had ever been seen in that neighborhood, and, besides the gallons of rich bear oil it yielded, there were three or four hundred pounds of bear meat; and no other food is more strengthening for winter diet.

There was also the soft, furry skin, which Balser's mother tanned, and with it made a coverlid for Balser's bed, under which he and his little brother lay many a cold night, cozy and "snug as a bug in a rug."



385

The selection that follows may serve as an example of an effective Christmas story in the latest fashion. It was not written especially for young people, but neither were many of the books that now stand on the shelf that holds their favorites. It is not only one of the great short stories, but one of the shortest of great-stories. It is quite worthy of use in company with Dickens' Christmas Carol, Henry van Dyke's The Other Wise Man, and Thomas Nelson Page's Santa Claus's Partner, at the Christmas season, and it has the advantages of extreme brevity, a fresh breeziness of style, surprise in the plot, and romantic interest. The magi brought various gifts to the Child in the manger—gold, frankincense, myrrh—but only one gift, that of love. O. Henry does not often moralize, but no reader ever finds fault with his concluding paragraph. The author's real name was William Sidney Porter. He was born in Greensboro, N. C., in 1862, and died in New York City, in 1910, the most widely read of short-story writers. "The Gift of the Magi" is taken from the volume called The Four Million by special arrangement with the publishers. (Copyright, Doubleday, Page & Co. New York.)

THE GIFT OF THE MAGI

O. HENRY

One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one's cheeks burned with the silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied. Three times Della counted it. One dollar and eighty-seven cents. And the next day would be Christmas.

There was clearly nothing to do but flop down on the shabby little couch and howl. So Della did it. Which instigates the moral reflection that life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.

While the mistress of the home is gradually subsiding from the first stage to the second, take a look at the home. A furnished flat at $8.00 per week. It did not exactly beggar description, but it certainly had that word on the lookout for the mendicancy squad.

In the vestibule below was a letter-box into which no letter would go, and an electric button from which no mortal finger could coax a ring. Also appertaining thereunto was a card bearing the name "Mr. James Dillingham Young."

The "Dillingham" had been flung to the breeze during a former period of prosperity when its possessor was being paid $30 per week. Now, when the income was shrunk to $20, the letters of "Dillingham" looked blurred, as though they were thinking seriously of contracting to a modest and unassuming D. But whenever Mr. James Dillingham Young came home and reached his flat above he was called "Jim" and greatly hugged by Mrs. James Dillingham Young, already introduced to you as Della. Which is all very good.

Della finished her cry and attended to her cheeks with the powder rag. She stood by the window and looked out dully at a grey cat walking a grey fence in a grey backyard. Tomorrow would be Christmas Day, and she had only $1.87 with which to buy Jim a present. She had been saving every penny she could for months, with this result. Twenty dollars a week doesn't go far. Expenses had been greater than she had calculated. They always are. Only $1.87 to buy a present for Jim. Her Jim. Many a happy hour she had spent planning for something nice for him. Something fine and rare and sterling—something just a little bit near to being worthy of the honor of being owned by Jim.

There was a pier-glass between the windows of the room. Perhaps you have seen a pier-glass in an $8.00 flat. A very thin and very agile person may, by observing his reflection in a rapid sequence of longitudinal strips, obtain a fairly accurate conception of his looks. Della, being slender, had mastered the art.

Suddenly she whirled from the window and stood before the glass. Her eyes were shining brilliantly, but her face had lost its color within twenty seconds. Rapidly she pulled down her hair and let it fall to its full length.

Now, there were two possessions of the James Dillingham Youngs in which they both took a mighty pride. One was Jim's gold watch that had been his father's and his grandfather's. The other was Della's hair. Had the Queen of Sheba lived in the flat across the airshaft, Della would have let her hair hang out the window some day to dry just to depreciate Her Majesty's jewels and gifts. Had King Solomon been the janitor, with all his treasures piled up in the basement, Jim would have pulled out his watch every time he passed, just to see him pluck at his beard from envy.

So now Della's beautiful hair fell about her, rippling and shining like a cascade of brown waters. It reached below her knee and made itself almost a garment for her. And then she did it up again nervously and quickly. Once she faltered for a minute and stood still while a tear or two splashed on the worn red carpet.

On went her old brown jacket; on went her old brown hat. With a whirl of skirts and with the brilliant sparkle still in her eyes, she fluttered out the door and down the stairs to the street.

Where she stopped the sign read: "Mme. Sofronie. Hair Goods of All Kinds." One flight up Della ran, and collected herself, panting. Madame, large, too white, chilly, hardly looked the "Sofronie."

"Will you buy my hair?" asked Della.

"I buy hair," said Madame. "Take yer hat off and let's have a sight at the looks of it."

Down rippled the brown cascade.

"Twenty dollars," said Madame, lifting the mass with a practised hand.

"Give it to me quick," said Della.

Oh, and the next two hours tripped by on rosy wings. Forget the hashed metaphor. She was ransacking the stores for Jim's present.

She found it at last. It surely had been made for Jim and no one else. There was no other like it in any of the stores, and she had turned all of them inside out. It was a platinum fob chain simple and chaste in design, properly proclaiming its value by substance alone and not by meretricious ornamentation—as all good things should do. It was even worthy of The Watch. As soon as she saw it she knew that it must be Jim's. It was like him. Quietness and value—the description applied to both. Twenty-one dollars they took from her for it, and she hurried home with the 87 cents. With that chain on his watch Jim might be properly anxious about the time in any company. Grand as the watch was, he sometimes looked at it on the sly on account of the old leather strap that he used in place of a chain.

When Della reached home her intoxication gave way a little to prudence and reason. She got out her curling irons and lighted the gas and went to work repairing the ravages made by generosity added to love. Which is always a tremendous task, dear friends—a mammoth task.

Within forty minutes her head was covered with tiny, close-lying curls that made her look wonderfully like a truant schoolboy. She looked at her reflection in the mirror long, carefully, and critically.

"If Jim doesn't kill me," she said to herself, "before he takes a second look at me, he'll say I look like a Coney Island chorus girl. But what could I do—oh! what could I do with a dollar and eighty-seven cents?"

At 7 o'clock the coffee was made and the frying pan was on the back of the stove hot and ready to cook the chops.

Jim was never late. Della doubled the fob chain in her hand and sat on the corner of the table near the door that he always entered. Then she heard his step on the stair away down on the first flight, and she turned white for just a moment. She had a habit of saying little silent prayers about the simplest everyday things, and now she whispered; "Please God, make him think I am still pretty."

The door opened and Jim stepped in and closed it. He looked thin and very serious. Poor fellow, he was only twenty-two—and to be burdened with a family! He needed a new overcoat and he was without gloves.

Jim stopped inside the door, as immovable as a setter at the scent of quail. His eyes were fixed upon Della, and there was an expression in them that she could not read, and it terrified her. It was not anger, nor surprise, nor disapproval, nor horror, nor any of the sentiments that she had been prepared for. He simply stared at her fixedly with that peculiar expression on his face.

Della wriggled off the table and went for him.

"Jim, darling," she cried, "don't look at me that way. I had my hair cut off and sold it because I couldn't have lived through Christmas without giving you a present. It'll grow out again—you won't mind, will you? I just had to do it. My hair grows awfully fast. Say 'Merry Christmas!' Jim, and let's be happy. You don't know what a nice—what a beautiful, nice gift I've got for you."

"You've cut off your hair?" asked Jim, laboriously, as if he had not arrived at that patent fact yet even after the hardest mental labor.

"Cut it off and sold it," said Della. "Don't you like me just as well, anyhow? I'm me without my hair, ain't I?"

Jim looked about the room curiously.

"You say your hair is gone?" he said, with an air almost of idiocy.

"You needn't look for it," said Della. "It's sold, I tell you—sold and gone, too. It's Christmas Eve, boy. Be good to me, for it went for you. Maybe the hairs of my head were numbered," she went on with a sudden serious sweetness, "but nobody could ever count my love for you. Shall I put the chops on, Jim?"

Out of his trance Jim seemed quickly to wake. He enfolded his Della. For ten seconds let us regard with discreet scrutiny some inconsequential object in the other direction. Eight dollars a week or a million a year—what is the difference? A mathematician or a wit would give you the wrong answer. The magi brought valuable gifts, but that was not among them. This dark assertion will be illuminated later on.

Jim drew a package from his overcoat pocket and threw it upon the table.

"Don't make any mistake, Dell," he said, "about me. I don't think there's anything in the way of a haircut or a shave or a shampoo that could make me like my girl any less. But if you'll unwrap that package you may see why you had me going a while at first."

White fingers and nimble tore at the string and paper. And then an ecstatic scream of joy; and then, alas! a quick feminine change to hysterical tears and wails, necessitating the immediate employment of all the comforting powers of the lord of the flat.

For there lay The Combs—the set of combs, side and back, that Della had worshipped for long in a Broadway window. Beautiful combs, pure tortoise shell, with jewelled rims—just the shade to wear in the beautiful vanished hair. They were expensive combs, she knew, and her heart had simply craved and yearned over them without the least hope of possession. And now, they were hers, but the tresses that should have adorned the coveted adornments were gone.

But she hugged them to her bosom, and at length she was able to look up with dim eyes and a smile and say: "My hair grows so fast, Jim!"

And then Della leaped up like a little singed cat and cried, "Oh, oh!"

Jim had not yet seen his beautiful present. She held it out to him eagerly upon her open palm. The dull precious metal seemed to flash with a reflection of her bright and ardent spirit.

"Isn't it a dandy, Jim? I hunted all over town to find it. You'll have to look at the time a hundred times a day now. Give me your watch. I want to see how it looks on it."

Instead of obeying, Jim tumbled down on the couch and put his hands under the back of his head and smiled.

"Dell," said he, "let's put our Christmas presents away and keep 'em a while. They're too nice to use just at present. I sold the watch to get the money to buy your combs. And now suppose you put the chops on."

The magi, as you know, were wise men—wonderfully wise men—who brought gifts to the Babe in the manger. They invented the art of giving Christmas presents. Being wise, their gifts were no doubt wise ones, possibly bearing the privilege of exchange in case of duplication. And here I have lamely related to you the uneventful chronicle of two foolish children in a flat who most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house. But in a last word to the wise of these days let it be said that of all who give gifts these two were the wisest. Of all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi.



SECTION IX

NATURE LITERATURE



BIBLIOGRAPHY

Andrews, Jane, The Stories Mother Nature Told Her Children.

Atkinson, Eleanor S., Greyfriars Bobby.

Bertelli, Luigi, The Prince and His Ants.

Brown, Dr. John, Rab and His Friends.

Bullen, Frank, The Cruise of the Cachelot.

Burgess, Thornton W., Old Mother West Wind Stories.

Burroughs, John, Squirrels and Other Fur Bearers. Wake Robin.

Chapman, William G., Green-Timber Trails: Wild Animal Stories of the Upper Fur Country.

Ford, Sewell, Horses Nine.

Hawkes, Clarence, Shaggycoat.

Hudson, W. H., A Little Boy Lost.

Jordan, David Starr, Science Sketches.

Kellogg, Vernon L., Insect Stories. Nuova, the New Bee.

Kingsley, Charles, Madame How and Lady Why.

Kipling, Rudyard, Just-So Stories. The Jungle Book (Two Series).

London, Jack, The Call of the Wild.

Long, William J., Wood-Folk Comedies. A Little Brother to the Bear.

Miller, Joaquin, True Bear Stories.

Miller, Olive Thorne, The Children's Book of Birds.

Mills, Enos A., Scotch. The Thousand Year Old Pine.

Muir, John, Stickeen. Our National Parks.

Ollivant, Alfred, Bob, Son of Battle.

"Ouida" (Louisa de la Ramee), Moufflou. The Dog of Flanders.

Paine, Albert Bigelow, Hollow-Tree Nights and Days. Arkansaw Bear.

Potter, Beatrix, Peter Rabbit. Benjamin Bunny.

Roberts, Charles G. D., Kings in Exile. Children of the Wild.

Saunders, Marshall, Beautiful Joe.

Segur, Sophie, Comtesse de, The Story of a Donkey.

Seton, Ernest Thompson, Wild Animals at Home. The Biography of a Grizzly.

Sewell, Anna, Black Beauty.

Sharp, Dallas Lore, Beyond the Pasture Bars. A Watcher in the Woods.

Terhune, Albert Payson, Lad: A Dog.

Thoreau, Henry David, A Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers.

Walton, Izaak, The Compleat Angler.

White, Gilbert, The Natural History of Selborne.

The three books that stand at the end of this brief list are probably not ones that any teacher would recommend indiscriminately to pupils of the grades. They are the greatest of the classic books in nature literature and, in a way, constitute the goal of nature lovers.



SECTION IX. NATURE LITERATURE

INTRODUCTORY

What it is. In recent years teachers have heard much talk about "nature study" in the grades. The demand for this study has led publishers to print many so-called "nature books" that have neither scientific fact nor literary worth to justify their existence. Confusion may be avoided and time may be saved if teachers will remember that nature literature, as here defined, is a form of literature, and that its purpose therefore is primarily to present truth (not necessarily facts) in an entertaining way.

The selections in this section are not intended to furnish material for a scientific study of nature. They are nature literature. Some of them present scientific facts that add to the literary worth by making the stories more entertaining, but the selections are given because they illustrate various types of nature literature and the work of famous writers of nature literature, not because they present scientific facts.

Some types of nature literature. One of the oldest forms of nature literature is the beast tale in which animals are represented as talking and acting like human beings. Stories of this type entertain while they reveal the general nature of various kinds of animals. Fables should not be called nature literature, because their chief purpose is to criticize the follies of human beings. Some of the Negro folk tales that Joel Chandler Harris collected are nature literature of this type. Beast tales, however, are not all old. Stories by such modern authors as Thornton W. Burgess and Albert Bigelow Paine, who are represented in this section, may be called beast tales. They are popular in the primary grades.

Another type of nature literature, quite different from that just discussed, has been produced during the last century by students of nature who endeavor to hold strictly to facts in their writing. This may be called realistic nature literature. Henry Thoreau, John Burroughs, Olive Thorne Miller, and Dallas Lore Sharp may be mentioned as writers of this kind of literature. As we read their books, we usually feel that they are endeavoring to relate incidents as they actually occurred. Also we recognize that they are great students of nature, for they perceive details that we might not notice and they draw or suggest conclusions that we may accept as true, although we might never think of drawing the conclusions. Nature literature of this kind may be no less entertaining than fairy tales, for it may, in a pleasing way, reveal wonders in nature. The selections by Dallas Lore Sharp and Olive Thorne Miller in this section are of this kind. Most of the writings of Henry Thoreau and John Burroughs are in a style too difficult for pupils in the grades.

A third type may be called nature romance. Its purpose is both to entertain and to awaken sympathy and love for animals. Stories of this kind, like other romances, idealize the characters and may have a strong appeal to the emotions. Of the stories in this section, we may classify as nature romance Beatrix Potter's "Peter Rabbit," Sewell Ford's "Pasha, the Son of Selim," Ouida's "Moufflou," and Rudyard Kipling's "Moti Guj—Mutineer."

A fourth kind of nature literature, sometimes called nature fiction, has been developed within the last quarter of a century and is already recognized as excellent. The plot is created by the author, although it may be based on fact, and usually is simple and rambling. One purpose of these stories is to show truly how animals live and act, just as one purpose of a novel or typical short story is to show truly how people live and act. If the author is a skillful story-teller and a good student of nature, the story may make the reader feel that he has become acquainted with a particular kind of animal and even with an individual animal. For example, the story "Last Bull," by Charles G. D. Roberts, has an effect on the reader not entirely unlike that of one of Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales. Prominent among the authors of this very interesting and instructive form of literature may be mentioned Charles G. D. Roberts, Ernest Thompson Seton, William J. Long, and Dallas Lore Sharp.

Its place in the grades. Nature literature seems to have a place of increasing importance in schools, especially in grades above the third. Many excellent books of what we have called the fiction type and the realistic type have a charming spirit of outdoor life and adventure that makes them pleasing substitutes for the objectionable dime novel. One should not assume that these nature stories would be of less interest and value to the country child than to the city child. Too often country children have not been taught to think of animals as "little brothers of the field and the air." These nature stories, without any spirit of preaching or moralizing, show children how to enjoy nature, whether it be in the country or the city. They teach the child to form habits of observation that encourage healthful recreation. A boy who has understood the spirit of Roberts, Seton, and Sharp is not likely to find the village poolroom attractive. Nature literature, however, need not be taught merely for moral and practical purposes, for it has come to be literature of artistic worth, and as such it has earned a place among other kinds of literature for children.

SUGGESTIONS FOR READING

A good summary article is "The Rise of the Nature Writers," by F. W. Halsey, in Review of Reviews, Vol. XXVI, p. 567 (November, 1902). The most valuable critical article is "The Literary Treatment of Nature" in John Burroughs, Ways of Nature (also in Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XCIV, p. 38 [July, 1904]). In the violent controversy about "nature-faking" which raged some years ago, two articles will give clearly the positions of the contending parties: first, the attack by John Burroughs in "Real and Sham Natural History," Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XCI, p. 298 (March, 1903), and, second, the reply to Burroughs by William J. Long in "The School of Nature Study and Its Critics," North American Review, Vol. CLXXVI, p. 688 (May, 1903).



386

One of the most popular series for very young children is that known as the Peter Rabbit Books after the favorite hero of the early tales. The author is Beatrix Potter, an Englishwoman. In plan these little books resemble the "toy-books" of the eighteenth century in having a bit of text on the left-hand page face a picture on the right. The entire text of "The Tale of Peter Rabbit" is given, but of course text and pictures are so completely one that much is lost by separating them. Children should meet Peter Rabbit before their school days begin.

THE TALE OF PETER RABBIT

BEATRIX POTTER

Once upon a time there were four little Rabbits, and their names were Flopsy, Mopsy, Cotton-tail, and Peter.

They lived with their mother in a sand bank, underneath the root of a very big fir tree.

"Now, my dears," said old Mrs. Rabbit one morning, "you may go into the fields or down the lane, but don't go into Mr. McGregor's garden. Your father had an accident there; he was put in a pie by Mrs. McGregor. Now run along, and don't get into mischief. I am going out."

Then old Mrs. Rabbit took a basket and her umbrella, and went through the wood to the baker's. She bought a loaf of brown bread and five currant buns.

Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cotton-tail, who were good little bunnies, went down the lane to gather blackberries; but Peter, who was very naughty, ran straight to Mr. McGregor's garden, and squeezed under the gate.

First he ate some lettuces and some French beans; and then he ate some radishes; and then, feeling rather sick, he went to look for some parsley.

But round the end of a cucumber frame, whom should he meet but Mr. McGregor!

Mr. McGregor was on his hands and knees planting out young cabbages, but he jumped up and ran after Peter, waving a rake and calling out, "Stop thief!"

Peter was most dreadfully frightened; he rushed all over the garden, for he had forgotten the way back to the gate.

He lost one of his shoes amongst the cabbages, and the other shoe amongst the potatoes.

After losing them, he ran on four legs and went faster, so that I think he might have got away altogether if he had not unfortunately run into a gooseberry net, and got caught by the large buttons on his jacket. It was a blue jacket with brass buttons, quite new.

Peter gave himself up for lost, and shed big tears; but his sobs were overheard by some friendly sparrows, who flew to him in great excitement, and implored him to exert himself.

Mr. McGregor came up with a sieve, which he intended to pop upon the top of Peter; but Peter wriggled out just in time, leaving his jacket behind him, and rushed into the tool-shed, and jumped into a can. It would have been a beautiful thing to hide in, if it had not had so much water in it.

Mr. McGregor was quite sure that Peter was somewhere in the tool-shed, perhaps hidden underneath a flower-pot. He began to turn them over carefully, looking under each.

Presently Peter sneezed—"Kerty-schoo!" Mr. McGregor was after him in no time, and tried to put his foot upon Peter, who jumped out of a window, upsetting three plants. The window was too small for Mr. McGregor, and he was tired of running after Peter. He went back to his work.

Peter sat down to rest; he was out of breath and trembling with fright, and he had not the least idea which way to go. Also he was very damp with sitting in that can.

After a time he began to wander about, going lippity—lippity—not very fast, and looking all around.

He found a door in a wall; but it was locked, and there was no room for a fat little rabbit to squeeze underneath.

An old mouse was running in and out over the stone doorstep, carrying peas and beans to her family in the wood. Peter asked her the way to the gate, but she had such a large pea in her mouth that she could not answer. She only shook her head at him. Peter began to cry.

Then he tried to find his way straight across the garden, but he became more and more puzzled. Presently, he came to a pond where Mr. McGregor filled his water-cans. A white cat was staring at some goldfish; she sat very, very still, but now and then the tip of her tail twitched as if it were alive. Peter thought it best to go away without speaking to her; he had heard about cats from his cousin, little Benjamin Bunny.

He went back towards the tool-shed, but suddenly, quite close to him, he heard the noise of a hoe,—scr-r-ritch scratch, scratch, scritch. Peter scuttered underneath the bushes. But presently, as nothing happened, he came out, and climbed upon a wheelbarrow and peeped over. The first thing he saw was Mr. McGregor hoeing onions. His back was turned towards Peter, and beyond him was the gate!

Peter got down very quietly off the wheelbarrow, and started running as fast as he could go, along a straight walk behind some black currant-bushes.

Mr. McGregor caught sight of him at the corner, but Peter did not care. He slipped underneath the gate, and was safe at last in the wood outside the garden.

Mr. McGregor hung up the little jacket and the shoes for a scare-crow to frighten the blackbirds.

Peter never stopped running or looked behind him till he got home to the big fir-tree.

He was so tired that he flopped down upon the nice soft sand on the floor of the rabbit-hole, and shut his eyes. His mother was busy cooking; she wondered what he had done with his clothes. It was the second little jacket and a pair of shoes that Peter had lost in a fortnight!

I am sorry to say that Peter was not very well during the evening.

His mother put him to bed, and made some camomile tea; and she gave a doze of it to Peter!

"One table-spoonful to be taken at bed-time."

But Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cotton-tail had bread and milk and blackberries for supper.



387

The next selection illustrates well the kind of stories in the Bedtime Story series of twenty volumes by Thornton Waldo Burgess (1874—). The books of this series are entitled Adventures of Johnny Chuck, Adventures of Buster Bear, Adventures of Ol' Mistah Buzzard, etc. These books and the Old Mother West Wind series of eight volumes by the same author are enjoyed by children in the second and third grades. Mr. Burgess is an American author who has been editor of several American magazines. (The following selection is from Old Mother West Wind, by permission of the publishers, Little, Brown & Co., Boston.)

JOHNNY CHUCK FINDS THE BEST THING IN THE WORLD

THORNTON W. BURGESS

Old Mother West Wind had stopped to talk with the Slender Fir Tree.

"I've just come across the Green Meadows," said Old Mother West Wind, "and there I saw the Best Thing in the World."

Striped Chipmunk was sitting under the Slender Fir Tree and he couldn't help hearing what Old Mother West Wind said. "The Best Thing in the World—now what can that be?" thought Striped Chipmunk. "Why, it must be heaps and heaps of nuts and acorns! I'll go and find it."

So Striped Chipmunk started down the Lone Little Path through the wood as fast as he could run. Pretty soon he met Peter Rabbit.

"Where are you going in such a hurry, Striped Chipmunk?" asked Peter Rabbit.

"Down in the Green Meadows to find the Best Thing in the World," replied Striped Chipmunk, and ran faster.

"The Best Thing in the World," said Peter Rabbit, "why, that must be a great pile of carrots and cabbage! I think I'll go and find it."

So Peter Rabbit started down the Lone Little Path through the wood as fast as he could go after Striped Chipmunk.

As they passed the great hollow tree Bobby Coon put his head out. "Where are you going in such a hurry?" asked Bobby Coon.

"Down in the Green Meadows to find the Best Thing in the World!" shouted Striped Chipmunk and Peter Rabbit, and both began to run faster.

"The Best Thing in the World," said Bobby Coon to himself, "why, that must be a whole field of sweet milky corn! I think I'll go and find it."

So Bobby Coon climbed down out of the great hollow tree and started down the Lone Little Path through the wood as fast as he could go after Striped Chipmunk and Peter Rabbit, for there is nothing that Bobby Coon likes to eat so well as sweet milky corn.

At the edge of the wood they met Jimmy Skunk.

"Where are you going in such a hurry?" asked Jimmy Skunk.

"Down in the Green Meadows to find the Best Thing in the World!" shouted Striped Chipmunk and Peter Rabbit and Bobby Coon. Then they all tried to run faster.

"The Best Thing in the World," said Jimmy Skunk. "Why, that must be packs and packs of beetles!" And for once in his life Jimmy Skunk began to hurry down the Lone Little Path after Striped Chipmunk and Peter Rabbit and Bobby Coon.

They were all running so fast that they didn't see Reddy Fox until he jumped out of the long grass and asked:

"Where are you going in such a hurry?"

"To find the Best Thing in the World!" shouted Striped Chipmunk and Peter Rabbit and Bobby Coon and Jimmy Skunk, and each did his best to run faster.

"The Best Thing in the World," said Reddy Fox to himself. "Why, that must be a whole pen full of tender young chickens, and I must have them."

So away went Reddy Fox as fast as he could run down the Lone Little Path after Striped Chipmunk, Peter Rabbit, Bobby Coon and Jimmy Skunk.

By and by they all came to the house of Johnny Chuck.

"Where are you going in such a hurry?" asked Johnny Chuck.

"To find the Best Thing in the World," shouted Striped Chipmunk and Peter Rabbit and Bobby Coon and Jimmy Skunk and Reddy Fox.

"The Best Thing in the World," said Johnny Chuck. "Why I don't know of anything better than my own little home and the warm sunshine and the beautiful blue sky."

So Johnny Chuck stayed at home and played all day among the flowers with the Merry Little Breezes of Old Mother West Wind and was as happy as could be.

But all day long Striped Chipmunk and Peter Rabbit and Bobby Coon and Jimmy Skunk and Reddy Fox ran this way and ran that way over the Green Meadows trying to find the Best Thing in the World. The sun was very, very warm and they ran so far and they ran so fast that they were very, very hot and tired, and still they hadn't found the Best Thing in the World.

When the long day was over they started up the Lone Little Path past Johnny Chuck's house to their own homes. They didn't hurry now for they were so very, very tired! And they were cross—oh so cross! Striped Chipmunk hadn't found a single nut. Peter Rabbit hadn't found so much as the leaf of a cabbage. Bobby Coon hadn't found the tiniest bit of sweet milky corn. Jimmy Skunk hadn't seen a single beetle. Reddy Fox hadn't heard so much as the peep of a chicken. And all were as hungry as hungry could be.

Half way up the Lone Little Path they met Old Mother West Wind going to her home behind the hill. "Did you find the Best Thing in the World?" asked Old Mother West Wind.

"No!" shouted Striped Chipmunk and Peter Rabbit and Bobby Coon and Jimmy Skunk and Reddy Fox all together.

"Johnny Chuck has it," said Old Mother West Wind. "It is being happy with the things you have and not wanting things which some one else has. And it is called Con-tent-ment."



388

Albert Bigelow Paine (1861—), an American author at one time connected with the editorial department of St. Nicholas Magazine, has for more than twenty years been known as the biographer of Mark Twain. He is a popular writer of stories for children. Pupils in the fifth grade like his story The Arkansaw Bear. Some of his books suitable for the third and fourth grades are Hollow-Tree Nights and Days, The Hollow Tree, and The Deep Woods. ("Mr. 'Possum's Sick Spell" is from Hollow-Tree Nights and Days, and is used by permission of the publishers, Harper & Brothers, New York.)

MR. 'POSSUM'S SICK SPELL

ALBERT BIGELOW PAINE

Once upon a time, said the Story Teller, something very sad nearly happened in the Hollow Tree. It was Mr. 'Possum's turn, one night, to go out and borrow a chicken from Mr. Man's roost, and coming home he fell into an old well and lost his chicken. He nearly lost himself, too, for the water was icy cold and Mr. 'Possum thought he would freeze to death before he could climb out, because the rocks were slippery and he fell back several times.

As it was, he got home almost dead, and next morning was sicker than he had ever been before in his life. He had pains in his chest and other places, and was all stuffed up in his throat and very scared. The 'Coon and the Crow who lived in the Hollow Tree with him were scared, too. They put him to bed in the big room down-stairs, and said they thought they ought to send for somebody, and Mr. Crow said that Mr. Owl was a good hand with sick folks, because he looked so wise and didn't say much, which always made the patient think he knew something.

So Mr. Crow hurried over and brought Mr. Owl, who put on his glasses and looked at Mr. 'Possum's tongue, and felt of his pulse, and listened to his breathing, and said that the cold water seemed to have struck in and that the only thing to do was for Mr. 'Possum to stay in bed and drink hot herb tea and not eat anything, which was a very bad prescription for Mr. 'Possum, because he hated herb tea and was very partial to eating. He groaned when he heard it and said he didn't suppose he'd ever live to enjoy himself again, and that he might just as well have stayed in the well with the chicken, which was a great loss and doing no good to anybody. Then Mr. Owl went away, and told the Crow outside that Mr. 'Possum was a very sick man, and that at his time of life and in his state of flesh his trouble might go hard with him.

So Mr. Crow went back into the kitchen and made up a lot of herb tea and kept it hot on the stove, and Mr. 'Coon sat by Mr. 'Possum's bed and made him drink it almost constantly, which Mr. 'Possum said might cure him if he didn't die of it before the curing commenced.

He said if he just had that chicken, made up with a good platter of dumplings, he believed it would do him more good than anything, and he begged the 'Coon to go and fish it out, or to catch another one, and try it on him, and then if he did die he would at least have fewer regrets.

But the Crow and the 'Coon said they must do as Mr. Owl ordered, unless Mr. 'Possum wanted to change doctors, which was not a good plan until the case became hopeless, and that would probably not be before some time in the night. Mr. 'Coon said, though, there was no reason why that nice chicken should be wasted, and as it would still be fresh, he would rig up a hook and line and see if he couldn't save it. So he got out his fishing things and made a grab hook and left Mr. Crow to sit by Mr. 'Possum until he came back. He could follow Mr. 'Possum's track to the place, and in a little while he had the fine, fat chicken, and came home with it and showed it to the patient, who had a sinking spell when he looked at it, and turned his face to the wall and said he seemed to have lived in vain.

Mr. Crow, who always did the cooking, said he'd better put the chicken on right away, under the circumstances, and then he remembered a bottle of medicine he had once seen sitting on Mr. Man's window-sill outside, and he said while the chicken was cooking he'd just step over and get it, as it might do the patient good, and it didn't seem as if anything now could do him any harm.

So the Crow dressed the nice chicken and put it in the pot with the dumplings, and while Mr. 'Coon dosed Mr. 'Possum with the hot herb tea Mr. Crow slipped over to Mr. Man's house and watched a good chance when the folks were at dinner, and got the bottle and came back with it and found Mr. 'Possum taking a nap and the 'Coon setting the table; for the dinner was about done and there was a delicious smell of dumplings and chicken, which made Mr. 'Possum begin talking in his sleep about starving to death in the midst of plenty. Then he woke up and seemed to suffer a good deal, and the Crow gave him a dose of Mr. Man's medicine, and said that if Mr. 'Possum was still with them next morning they'd send for another doctor.

Mr. 'Possum took the medicine and choked on it, and when he could speak said he wouldn't be with them. He could tell by his feelings, he said, that he would never get through this day of torture, and he wanted to say some last words. Then he said that he wanted the 'Coon to have his Sunday suit, which was getting a little tight for him and would just about fit Mr. 'Coon, and that he wanted the Crow to have his pipe and toilet articles, to remember him by. He said he had tried to do well by them since they had all lived together in the Hollow Tree, and he supposed it would be hard for them to get along without him, but that they would have to do the best they could. Then he guessed he'd try to sleep a little, and closed his eyes. Mr. 'Coon looked at Mr. Crow and shook his head, and they didn't feel like sitting down to dinner right away, and pretty soon when they thought Mr. 'Possum was asleep they slipped softly up to his room to see how sad it would seem without him.

Well, they had only been gone a minute when Mr. 'Possum woke up, for the smell of that chicken and dumpling coming in from Mr. Crow's kitchen was too much for him. When he opened his eyes and found that Mr. 'Coon and Mr. Crow were not there, and that he felt a little better—perhaps because of Mr. Man's medicine—he thought he might as well step out and take one last look at chicken and dumpling, anyway.

It was quite warm, but, being all in a sweat, he put the bed-sheet around him to protect him from the draughts and went out to the stove and looked into the pot, and when he saw how good it looked he thought he might as well taste of it to see if it was done. So he did, and it tasted so good and seemed so done that he got out a little piece of dumpling on a fork, and blew on it to cool it, and ate it, and then another piece and then the whole dumpling, which he sopped around in the gravy after each bite. Then when the dumpling was gone he fished up a chicken leg and ate that and then a wing, and then the gizzard and felt better all the time, and pretty soon poured out a cup of coffee and drank that, all before he remembered that he was sick abed and not expected to recover. Then he happened to think and started back to bed, but on the way there he heard Mr. 'Coon and Mr. Crow talking softly in his room and he forgot again that he was so sick and went up to see about it.

Mr. 'Coon and Mr. Crow had been quite busy up in Mr. 'Possum's room. They had looked at all the things, and Mr. Crow remarked that there seemed to be a good many which Mr. 'Possum had not mentioned, and which they could divide afterward. Then he picked up Mr. 'Possum's pipe and tried it to see if it would draw well, as he had noticed, he said, that Mr. 'Possum sometimes had trouble with it, and the 'Coon went over to the closet and looked at Mr. 'Possum's Sunday suit, and pretty soon got it out and tried on the coat, which wouldn't need a thing done to it to make it fit exactly. He said he hoped Mr. 'Possum was resting well, after the medicine, which he supposed was something to make him sleep, as he had seemed drowsy so soon after taking it. He said it would be sad, of course, though it might seem almost a blessing, if Mr. 'Possum should pass away in his sleep, without knowing it, and he hoped Mr. 'Possum would rest in peace and not come back to distress people, as one of Mr. 'Coon's own ancestors had done, a good while ago. Mr. 'Coon said his mother used to tell them about it when she wanted to keep them at home nights, though he didn't really believe in such things much, any more, and he didn't think Mr. 'Possum would be apt to do it, anyway, because he was always quite a hand to rest well. Of course, any one was likely to think of such things, he said, and get a little nervous, especially at a time like this—and just then Mr. 'Coon looked toward the door that led down to the big room, and Mr. Crow he looked toward that door, too, and Mr. 'Coon gave a great jump, and said:

"Oh, my goodness!" and fell back over Mr. 'Possum's trunk.

And Mr. Crow he gave a great jump, too, and said:

"Oh, my gracious!" and fell back over Mr. 'Possum's chair.

For there in the door stood a figure shrouded all in white, all except the head, which was Mr. 'Possum's, though very solemn, its eyes looking straight at Mr. 'Coon, who still had on Mr. 'Possum's coat, though he was doing his best to get it off, and at Mr. Crow, who still had Mr. 'Possum's pipe, though he was trying every way to hide it, and both of them were scrabbling around on the floor and saying, "Oh, Mr. 'Possum, go away—please go away, Mr. 'Possum—we always loved you, Mr. 'Possum—we can prove it."

But Mr. 'Possum looked straight at Mr. 'Coon, and said in a deep voice:

"What were you doing with my Sunday coat on?"

And Mr. 'Coon tried to say something, but only made a few weak noises.

And Mr. 'Possum looked at Mr. Crow and said:

"What were you doing with my pipe?"

And a little sweat broke out on Mr. Crow's bill, and he opened his mouth as if he were going to say something, but couldn't make a sound.

Then Mr. 'Possum said, in a slow voice, so deep that it seemed to come from down in the ground:

"Give me my things!"

And Mr. 'Coon and Mr. Crow said, very shaky:

"Oh y-yes, Mr. 'Possum, w-we meant to, a-all the t-time."

And they tried to get up, but were so scared and weak they couldn't, and all at once Mr. 'Possum gave a great big laugh and threw off his sheet and sat down on a stool, and rocked and laughed, and Mr. 'Coon and Mr. Crow realized then that it was Mr. 'Possum himself, and not just his appearance, as they had thought. Then they sat up, and pretty soon began to laugh, too, though not very gaily at first, but feeling more cheerful every minute, because Mr. 'Possum himself seemed to enjoy it so much.

Then Mr. 'Possum told them about everything, and how Mr. Man's medicine must have made him well, for all his pains and sorrows had left him, and he invited them down to help finish up the chicken which had cost him so much suffering.

So then they all went down to the big room and the Crow brought in the big platter of dumplings, and a pan of biscuits and some molasses, and a pot of coffee, and they all sat down and celebrated Mr. 'Possum's recovery. And when they were through, and everything was put away, they smoked, and Mr. 'Possum said he was glad he was there to use his property a little more, and that probably his coat would fit him again now, as his sickness had caused him to lose flesh. He said that Mr. Man's medicine was certainly wonderful, but just then Mr. Rabbit dropped in, and when they told him about it, he said of course the medicine might have had some effect, but that the dumplings and chicken caused the real cure. He said there was an old adage to prove that—one that his thirty-fifth great-grandfather had made for just such a case of this kind. This, Mr. Rabbit said, was the adage:

"If you want to live forever Stuff a cold and starve a fever."

Mr. 'Possum's trouble had come from catching cold, he said, so the dumplings were probably just what he needed. Then Mr. Owl dropped in to see how his patient was, and when he saw him sitting up, and smoking, and well, he said it was wonderful how his treatment had worked, and the Hollow Tree people didn't tell him any different, for they didn't like to hurt Mr. Owl's feelings.



389

Prominent among writers of the new realistic nature literature is Dallas Lore Sharp (1870—), professor of English in Boston University. Mr. Sharp's stories and descriptive sketches of nature reveal charming details in out-of-door life that the ordinary observer overlooks, and they encourage the reader to seek entertainment in fields and woods. Most of his nature writings are suitable for pupils in grades from the fifth to the eighth. Some of his books are Beyond the Pasture Bars, A Watcher in the Woods, Roof and Meadow, and Where Rolls the Oregon. ("Wild Life in the Farm Yard," from Beyond the Pasture Bars, is used by permission of The Century Co., New York City.)

WILD LIFE IN THE FARM-YARD

DALLAS LORE SHARP

I want you to visit a farm where there are turkeys and geese and guineas. If you live in New York City or in Chicago you may not be able to do so for some time. Then take a trip to the market or to the zooelogical gardens. But most of you live close enough to the country, so that you could easily find a farmer who would invite you out to see his prize gobbler and his great hissing gander.

However, I shall not wait to send you for I am going to take you—now—out to an old farm that I loved as a boy where there are turkeys and geese and guineas and pigs and pigeons, cows and horses and mules, cats and dogs, chickens and bees and sheep, and a hornets' nest and a nest of flying squirrels in the same old grindstone apple-tree, and a pair of barn owls in the old wagon house, and—I don't know what else; for there was everything on the old farm when I was a boy, and I suppose we shall find everything there yet.

I want you to see the turkeys. I want you to follow an old hen turkey to her stolen nest. I want you to watch the old gobbler turkey take his family to bed—to roost, I mean. For unless you are a boy, and are living in the wild portions of Georgia and the southeastern states, you may never see a wild turkey. For that reason I want you to watch this tame turkey, because he is almost as wild as a wild turkey in everything except his fear of you. He has been tamed, we know, since the year 1526, yet not one of his wild habits has been changed.

So it is with the house cat. We have tamed the house cat, but we have not changed the wild, night-prowling hunter in him. You have to smooth a cat the right way, or the wild cat in him will scratch and bite you. Have you never seen his tail twitch, his eyes blaze, his claws work as he has crouched watching at a rat's hole, or crawled stealthily upon a bird in the meadow grass?

So, if you will watch, you shall see a real wild turkey in the tamest old gobbler on the farm.

Watch him go to roost. Watch him get ready to go to roost, I should say, for a turkey seems to begin to think of roosting about noon-time, especially in the winter; and it takes him from about noon till night to make up his mind that he really must go to roost.

He comes along under the apple-tree of a December afternoon and looks up at the leafless limbs where he has been roosting since summer. He stretches his long neck, lays his little brainless head over on one side, then over on the other. He takes a good long look at the limb. Then bobs his head—one-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight-nine-ten times, or perhaps twenty-two or -three times, and takes a still longer look at the limb, saying to himself—quint, quint, quint, quint! which means: "I think I'll go to roost! I think I'll go to roost! I think I'll go to roost! I think I'll go to roost! I think I'll go to roost! I think I'll go to roost!" He thinks he will, but he hasn't made up his mind quite.

Then he stretches his long neck again, lays his little witless head on the side again, bobs and bobs, looks and looks and looks, says quint, quint, quint, quint—"I think I'll go to roost," but is just as undecided as ever.

He does the performance over and over again and would never go to roost if the darkness did not come and compel him. He would stand under that tree stretching, turning, looking, bobbing, "squinting," thinking, until he thought his head off, saying all the while—

One for the money; two for the show; Three to get ready; and four to—get ready to go!

But after a while, along toward dusk (and awfully suddenly!)—flop! gobble! splutter! whoop!—and there he is, up on the limb, safe! Really safe! But it was an exceedingly close call.

And this is the very way the wild turkey acts. The naturalists who had a chance to study the great flocks of wild turkeys years ago describe these same absurd actions. This lack of snap and decision is not something the tame turkey has learned in the farm-yard. The fact is he does not seem to have learned anything during his 350 years in the barn-yard, nor does he seem to have forgotten anything that he knew as a wild turkey in the woods, except his fear of man.

Late in October the wild turkeys of a given neighborhood would get together in flocks of from ten to a hundred and travel on foot through the rich bottom lands in search of food. In these journeys the males would go ahead, apart from the females, and lead the way. The hens, each conducting her family in a more or less separate group, came straggling leisurely along in the rear. As they advanced, they would meet other flocks, thus swelling their numbers.

After a time they were sure to come to a river—a dreadful thing, for, like the river of the old song, it was a river to cross. Up and down the banks would stalk the gobblers, stretching their necks out over the water and making believe to start, as they do when going to roost in the apple-trees.

All day long, all the next day, all the third day, if the river was wide, they would strut and cluck along the shore, making up their minds.

The ridiculous creatures have wings; they can fly; but they are afraid! After all these days, however, the whole flock has mounted the tallest trees along the bank. One of the gobblers has come forward as leader in the emergency. Suddenly, from his perch, he utters a single cluck—the signal for the start,—and every turkey sails into the air. There is a great flapping—and the terrible river is crossed.

A few weak members fall on the way over, but not to drown. Drawing their wings close in against their sides, and spreading their round fan-like tails to the breeze, they strike out as if born to swim, and come quickly to land.

The tame turkey-hen is notorious for stealing her nest. The wild hen steals hers—not to plague her owner, of course, as is the common belief about the domestic turkey, but to get away from the gobbler, who, in order to prolong the honeymoon, will break the eggs as fast as they are laid. He has just enough brains to be sentimental, jealous, and boundlessly fond of himself. His wives, too, are foolish enough to worship him, until—there is an egg in the nest. That event makes them wise. They understand this strutting coxcomb, and quietly turning their backs on him, leave him to parade alone.

There are crows, also, and buzzards from whom the wild turkey hen must hide the eggs. Nor dare she forget her own danger while sitting, for there are foxes, owls, and prowling lynxes ready enough to pounce upon her. On the farm there are still many of these enemies besides the worst of them all, the farmer himself.

For a nest the wild hen, like the tame turkey of the pasture, scratches a slight depression in the ground, usually under a thick bush, sometimes in a hollow log, and there lays from twelve to twenty eggs, which are somewhat smaller and more elongated than the tame turkey's, but of the same color: dull cream, sprinkled with reddish dots.

I have often hunted for stolen turkey nests, and hunted in vain, because the cautious mother had covered her eggs when leaving them. This is one of the wild habits that has persisted. The wild hen, as the hatching approaches, will not trust even this precaution, however, but remains without food and drink upon the nest until the chicks can be led off. She can scarcely be driven from the nest, often allowing herself to be captured first.

Mother-love burns fierce in her. Such helpless things are her chicks! She hears them peeping in the shell and breaks it to help them out. She preens and dries them and keeps them close under her for days.

Not for a week after they are hatched does she allow them out in a rain. If, after that, they get a cold wetting, the wild mother, it is said, will feed the buds of the spice-bush to her brood, as our grandmothers used to administer mint tea to us.

The tame hen does seem to have lost something of this wild-mother skill, doubtless because for many generations she has been entirely freed of the larger part of the responsibility.

I never knew a tame mother turkey to doctor her infants for vermin. But the wild hen will. The woods are full of ticks and detestable vermin as deadly as cold rains. When her brood begins to lag and pine, the wild mother knows, and leading them to some old ant-hill, she gives them a sousing dust-bath. The vermin hate the odor of the ant-scented dust, and after a series of these baths disappear.

This is wise; and if this report be true, then the wild turkey is as wise and far-seeing a mother as the woods contain. One observer even tells of three hens that stole off together and fixed up a nest between themselves. Each put in her eggs—forty-two in all—and each took turns guarding, so that the nest was never left alone.

What special enemy caused this unique partnership the naturalist does not say. The three mothers built together, brooded together, and together guarded the nest. But how did those three mothers divide the babies?

I said I wanted you to visit a farm where there are turkeys. And you will have to if you would see the turkey at home. For, though I have traveled through the South, and been in the swamps and river "bottoms" there all along the Savannah, with wild turkeys around me, I have never seen a live one.

I was in a small steamboat on the Savannah River one night. We were tied up till morning along the river bank under the trees of the deep swamp. Twilight and the swamp silence had settled about us. The moon came up. A banjo had been twanging, but the breakdown was done, the shuffling feet quiet. The little cottonboat had become a part of the moonlit silence and the river swamp.

Two or three roustabouts were lounging upon some rosin-barrels near by, under the spell of the round autumnal moon. There was frost in the air, and fragrant odors, but not a sound, not a cry or call of beast or bird, until, suddenly, breaking through the silence with a jarring eery echo, was heard the hoot of the great horned owl.

One of the roustabouts dropped quickly to the deck and held up his hand for silence. We all listened. And again came the uncanny Whoo-hoo-hoo-whoo-you-oh-oh!

"Dat ol' King Owl," whispered the darky. "Him's lookin' fer turkey. Ol' gobbler done gone hid, I reckon. Listen! Ol' King Owl gwine make ol' gobbler talk back."

We listened, but there was no frightened "gobble" from the tree-tops. There were wild turkeys all around me in the swamp; but, though I sat up until the big southern moon rode high overhead, I heard no answer, no challenge to the echoing hoot of the great owl. The next day a colored boy brought aboard the boat a wild turkey which he had shot in the swamp; but I am still waiting to see and hear the great bronze bird alive in its native haunts.



390

Vernon L. Kellogg (1867—) is a professor in Leland Stanford Junior University whose writings have been chiefly scientific. His Insect Stories, from which the next selection is taken, is an interesting and instructive group of stories suitable for pupils in the third, fourth, or fifth grade. A later book is called Nuova, the New Bee. ("The Vendetta" is used by permission of the publishers, Henry Holt & Co., New York City.)

THE VENDETTA

VERNON L. KELLOGG

This is the story of a fight. In the first story of this book, I said that Mary and I had seen a remarkable fight one evening at sundown on the slopes of the bare brown foothills west of the campus. It was not a battle of armies—we have seen that, too, in the little world we watch,—but a combat of gladiators, a struggle between two champions born and bred for fighting, and particularly for fighting each other. One champion was Eurypelma, the great, black, hairy, eight-legged, strong-fanged tarantula of California, and the other was Pepsis, a mighty wasp in dull-blue mail, with rusty-red wings and a poisonous javelin of a sting that might well frighten either you or me. Do you have any wasp in your neighborhood of the ferocity and strength and size of Pepsis? If not, you can hardly realize what a terrible creature she is. With her strong hard-cased body an inch and a half long, borne on powerful wings that expand fully three inches, and her long and strong needle-pointed sting that darts in and out like a flash and is always full of virulent poison, Pepsis is certainly queen of all the wasp amazons. But if that is so, no less is Eurypelma greatest, most dreadful, and fiercest, and hence king, of all the spiders in this country. In South America and perhaps elsewhere in the tropics, live the fierce bird-spiders with thick legs extending three inches or more on each side of their ugly hairy bodies. Eurypelma, the California tarantula, is not quite so large as that, nor does he stalk, pounce on and kill little birds as his South American cousin is said to do, but he is nevertheless a tremendous and fear-inspiring creature among the small beasties of field and meadow.

But not all Eurypelmas are so ferocious; or at least are not ferocious all the time. There are individual differences among them. Perhaps it is a matter of age or health. Anyway, I had a pet tarantula which I kept in an open jar in my room for several weeks, and I could handle him with impunity. He would sit gently on my hand, or walk deliberately up my arm, with his eight, fixed, shining, little reddish eyes staring hard at me, and his long seven-jointed hairy legs swinging gently and rhythmically along, without a sign of hesitation or excitement. His hair was almost gray and perhaps this hoariness and general sedateness betokened a ripe old age. But his great fangs were unblunted, his supply of poison undiminished, and his skill in striking and killing his prey still perfect, as often proved at his feeding times. He is quite the largest Eurypelma I have ever seen. He measures—for I still have his body, carefully stuffed, and fastened on a block with legs all spread out—five inches from tip to tip of opposite legs.

At the same time that I had this hoary old tarantula, I had another smaller, coal-black fellow who went into a perfect ecstasy of anger and ferocity every time any one came near him. He would stand on his hind legs and paw wildly with fore legs and palpi, and lunge forward fiercely at my inquisitive pencil. I found him originally in the middle of an entry into a classroom, holding at bay an entire excited class of art students armed with mahl-sticks and paint-brushes. The students were mostly women, and I was hailed as deliverer and greatest dompteur of beasts when I scooped Eurypelma up in a bottle and walked off with him.

But this is not telling of the sundown fight that Mary and I saw together. We had been over to the sand-cut by the golf links, after mining-bees, and were coming home with a fine lot of their holes and some of the bees themselves, when Mary suddenly called to me to "see the nice tarantula."

Perhaps nice isn't the best word for him, but he certainly was an unusually imposing and fluffy-haired and fierce-looking brute of a tarantula. He had rather an owly way about him, as if he had come out from his hole too early and was dazed and half-blinded by the light. Tarantulas are night prowlers; they do all their hunting after dark, dig their holes and, indeed, carry on all the various businesses of their life in the night-time. The occasional one found walking about in daytime has made a mistake, someway, and he blunders around quite like an owl in the sunshine.

All of a sudden, while Mary and I were smiling at this too early bird of a tarantula, he went up on his hind legs in fighting attitude, and at the same instant down darted a great tarantula hawk, that is, a Pepsis wasp. Her armored body glinted cool and metallic in the red sunset light, and her great wings had a suggestive shining of dull fire about them. She checked her swoop just before reaching Eurypelma, and made a quick dart over him, and then a quick turn back, intending to catch the tarantula in the rear. But lethargic and owly as Eurypelma had been a moment before, he was now all alertness and agility. He had to be. He was defending his life. One full fair stab of the poisoned javelin, sheathed but ready at the tip of the flexible, blue-black body hovering over him, and it would be over with Eurypelma. And he knew it. Or perhaps he didn't. But he acted as if he did. He was going to do his best not to be stabbed; that was sure. And Pepsis was going to do her best to stab; that also was quickly certain.

At the same time Pepsis knew—or anyway acted as if she did—that to be struck by one or both of those terrible vertical, poison-filled fangs was sure death. It would be like a blow from a battle-axe, with the added horror of mortal poison poured into the wound.

So Eurypelma about-faced like a flash, and Pepsis was foiled in her strategy. She flew up and a yard away, then returned to the attack. She flew about in swift circles over his head, preparatory to darting in again. But Eurypelma was ready. As she swooped viciously down, he lunged up and forward with a half-leap, half-forward fall, and came within an ace of striking the trailing blue-black abdomen with his reaching fangs. Indeed it seemed to Mary and me as if they really grazed the metallic body. But evidently they had not pierced the smooth armor. Nor had Pepsis in that breathless moment of close quarters been able to plant her lance. She whirled, up high this time but immediately back, although a little more wary evidently, for she checked her downward plunge three or four inches from the dancing champion on the ground. And so for wild minute after minute it went on; Eurypelma always up and tip-toeing on those strong hind legs, with open, armed mouth always toward the point of attack, and Pepsis ever darting down, up, over, across, and in and out in dizzy dashes, but never quite closing.

Were Mary and I excited? Not a word could we utter; only now and then a swift intake of breath; a stifled "O" or "Ah" or "See." And then of a sudden came the end. Pepsis saw her chance. A lightning swoop carried her right on to the hairy champion. The quivering lance shot home. The poison coursed into the great soft body. But at the same moment the terrible fangs struck fair on the blue armor and crashed through it. Two awful wounds, and the wings of dull fire beat violently only to strike up a little cloud of dust and whirl the mangled body around and around. Fortunately Death was merciful, and the brave amazon made a quick end.

But what of Eurypelma, the killer? Was it well with him? The sting-made wound itself was of little moment; it closed as soon as the lancet withdrew. But not before the delicate poison sac at its base inside the wasp-body had contracted and squirted down the slender hollow of the sting a drop of liquid fire. And so it was not well with Eurypelma in his insides. Victor he seemed to be, but if he could think, he must have had grave doubts about the joys of victory.

For a curious drowsiness was coming over him. Perhaps, disquieting thought, it was the approaching stupor of the poison's working. His strong long legs became limp, they would not work regularly, they could not hold his heavy hairy body up from the ground. He would get into his hole and rest. But it was too late. And after a few uneven steps, victor Eurypelma settled heavily down beside his amazon victim, inert and forevermore beyond fighting. He was paralyzed.

And so Mary and I brought him home in our collecting box, together with the torn body of Pepsis with her wings of slow fire dulled by the dust of her last struggles. And though it is a whole month now since Eurypelma received his stab from the poisoned javelin of Pepsis, he has not recovered; nor will he ever. When you touch him, he draws up slowly one leg after another, or moves a palpus feebly. But it is living death; a hopeless paralytic is the king.

Dear reader, you are of course as bright as Mary, and so you have noticed, as she did right away, the close parallel between what happened to Eurypelma and what happened to the measuring-worms brought by Ammophila to her nest burrow as described in the first story in this book. And so, like Mary, you realize that the vendetta or life feud between the tarantula family and the family of Pepsis, the tarantula hawk, is based on reasons of domestic economy rather than on those of sentiment, which determine vendettas in Corsica and feuds in Kentucky.

To be quite plain, Pepsis fights Eurypelma to get his huge, juicy body for food for her young; and Eurypelma fights Pepsis to keep from becoming paralyzed provender. If Pepsis had escaped unhurt in the combat at which Mary and I "assisted," as the French say, as enthralled spectators, we should have seen her drag by mighty effort the limp, paralyzed, spider giant to her nest hole not far distant—a great hole twelve inches deep and with a side chamber at the bottom. There she would have thrust him down the throat of the burrow, and then crawled in and laid an egg on the helpless beast, from which in time would have hatched the carnivorous wasp grub. Pepsis has many close allies among the wasps, all black or steely blue with smoky or dull-bronze wings, and they all use spiders, stung and paralyzed, to store their nest holes with.

"Do the little black and blue wasps hunt the little spiders and the larger ones the big spiders?" asked Mary.

"Exactly," I respond, "and the giant wasp of them all, Pepsis, the queen of the wasp amazons, hunts only the biggest spider of them all, Eurypelma, the tarantula king, and we have seen her do it."

"Well," says Mary, "even if she wants him for her children to eat, it's a real vendetta, isn't it?"

"Indeed it is," I answer, "it's more real, and fiercer, and more relentless, and more persistent than any human vendetta that ever was. For every Pepsis mother in the world is always hunting for Eurypelmas to fight. And not all Corsicans have a vendetta on hand, nor all Kentuckians a feud."



391

Sewell Ford (1868-) is noted for his fine stories about horses, especially those in Horses Nine, from which the following story of "Pasha" is taken. (By permission of the publishers, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York.) Pasha plays a most important part in a human romance with war as a background, and the combination is very effective. Mr. Ford's Torchy stories are also very popular with young people.

PASHA, THE SON OF SELIM

SEWELL FORD

Long, far too long, has the story of Pasha, son of Selim, remained untold.

The great Selim, you know, was brought from far across the seas, where he had been sold for a heavy purse by a venerable sheik, who tore his beard during the bargain and swore by Allah that without Selim there would be for him no joy in life. Also he had wept quite convincingly on Selim's neck—but he finished by taking the heavy purse. That was how Selim, the great Selim, came to end his days in Fayette County, Kentucky. Of his many sons, Pasha was one.

In almost idyllic manner were spent the years of Pasha's coltdom. They were years of pasture roaming and blue grass cropping. When the time was ripe, began the hunting lessons. Pasha came to know the feel of the saddle and the voice of the hounds. He was taught the long, easy lope. He learned how to gather himself for a sail through the air over a hurdle or a water-jump. Then when he could take five bars clean, when he could clear an eight-foot ditch, when his wind was so sound that he could lead the chase from dawn until high noon, he was sent to the stables of a Virginia tobacco-planter who had need of a new hunter and who could afford Arab blood.

In the stalls at Gray Oaks stables were many good hunters, but none better than Pasha. Cream-white he was, from the tip of his splendid, yard-long tail to his pink-lipped muzzle. His coat was as silk plush, his neck as supple as a swan's, and out of his big, bright eyes there looked such intelligence that one half expected him to speak. His lines were all long, graceful curves, and when he danced daintily on his slender legs one could see the muscles flex under the delicate skin.

Miss Lou claimed Pasha for her very own at first sight. As no one at Gray Oaks denied Miss Lou anything at all, to her he belonged from that instant. Of Miss Lou, Pasha approved thoroughly. She knew that bridle-reins were for gentle guidance, not for sawing or jerking, and that a riding-crop was of no use whatever save to unlatch a gate or to cut at an unruly hound. She knew how to rise on the stirrup when Pasha lifted himself in his stride, and how to settle close to the pig-skin when his hoofs hit the ground. In other words, she had a good seat, which means as much to the horse as it does to the rider.

Besides all this, it was Miss Lou who insisted that Pasha should have the best of grooming, and she never forgot to bring the dainties which Pasha loved, an apple or a carrot or a sugarplum. It is something, too, to have your nose patted by a soft gloved hand and to have such a person as Miss Lou put her arm around your neck and whisper in your ear. From no other than Miss Lou would Pasha permit such intimacy.

No paragon, however, was Pasha. He had a temper, and his whims were as many as those of a school-girl. He was particular as to who put on his bridle. He had notions concerning the manner in which a currycomb should be used. A red ribbon or a bandanna handkerchief put him in a rage, while green, the holy color of the Mohammedan, soothed his nerves. A lively pair of heels he had, and he knew how to use his teeth. The black stable-boys found that out, and so did the stern-faced man who was known as "Mars" Clayton. This "Mars" Clayton had ridden Pasha once, had ridden him as he rode his big, ugly, hard-bitted roan hunter, and Pasha had not enjoyed the ride. Still, Miss Lou and Pasha often rode out with "Mars" Clayton and the parrot-nosed roan. That is, they did until the coming of Mr. Dave.

In Mr. Dave, Pasha found a new friend. From a far Northern State was Mr. Dave. He had come in a ship to buy tobacco, but after he had bought his cargo he still stayed at Gray Oaks, "to complete Pasha's education," so he said.

Many ways had Mr. Dave which Pasha liked. He had a gentle manner of talking to you, of smoothing your flanks and rubbing your ears, which gained your confidence and made you sure that he understood. He was firm and sure in giving command, yet so patient in teaching one tricks, that it was a pleasure to learn.

So, almost before Pasha knew it, he could stand on his hind legs, could step around in a circle in time to a tune which Mr. Dave whistled, and could do other things which few horses ever learn to do. His chief accomplishment, however, was to kneel on his forelegs in the attitude of prayer. A long time it took Pasha to learn this, but Mr. Dave told him over and over again, by word and sign, until at last the son of the great Selim could strike a pose such as would have done credit to a Mecca pilgrim.

"It's simply wonderful!" declared Miss Lou.

But it was nothing of the sort. Mr. Dave had been teaching tricks to horses ever since he was a small boy, and never had he found such an apt pupil as Pasha.

Many a glorious gallop did Pasha and Miss Lou have while Mr. Dave stayed at Gray Oaks, Dave riding the big bay gelding that Miss Lou, with all her daring, had never ventured to mount. It was not all galloping though, for Pasha and the big bay often walked for miles through the wood lanes, side by side and very close together, while Miss Lou and Mr. Dave talked, talked, talked. How they could ever find so much to say to each other Pasha wondered.

But at last Mr. Dave went away, and with his going ended good times for Pasha, at least for many months. There followed strange doings. There was much excitement among the stable-boys, much riding about, day and night, by the men of Gray Oaks, and no hunting at all. One day the stables were cleared of all horses save Pasha.

"Some time, if he is needed badly, you may have Pasha, but not now." Miss Lou had said. And then she had hidden her face in his cream-white mane and sobbed. Just what the trouble was Pasha did not understand, but he was certain "Mars" Clayton was at the bottom of it.

No longer did Miss Lou ride about the country. Occasionally she galloped up and down the highway, to the Pointdexters and back, just to let Pasha stretch his legs. Queer sights Pasha saw on these trips. Sometimes he would pass many men on horses riding close together in a pack, as the hounds run when they have the scent. They wore strange clothing, did these men, and they carried, instead of riding-crops, big shiny knives that swung at their sides. The sight of them set Pasha's nerves tingling. He would sniff curiously after them and then prick forward his ears and dance nervously.

Of course Pasha knew that something unusual was going on, but what it was he could not guess. There came a time, however, when he found out all about it. Months had passed when, late one night, a hard-breathing, foam-splotched, mud-covered horse was ridden into the yard and taken into the almost deserted stable. Pasha heard the harsh voice of "Mars" Clayton swearing at the stable-boy. Pasha heard his own name spoken, and guessed that it was he who was wanted. Next came Miss Lou to the stable.

"I'm very sorry," he heard "Mars" Clayton say, "but I've got to get out of this. The Yanks are not more than five miles behind."