From the very first Susan had determined not to tell her news until after Mr. Burton had left the house. She could not have explained it even to herself, but she had a feeling that it would be better to tell Keith when he was alone. She planned, also, to tell him casually, as it were, in the midst of other conversation—not as if it were the one thing on her mind. In accordance with this, therefore, she forced herself to finish her dishes and to set her kitchen in order before she sought Keith in the living-room.

But Keith was not in the living-room; neither was he on the porch or anywhere in the yard.

With a troubled frown on her face Susan climbed the stairs to the second floor. Keith's room was silent, and empty, so far as human presence was concerned. So, too, was the studio, and every other room on that floor.

At the front of the attic stairs Susan hesitated. The troubled frown on her face deepened as she glanced up the steep, narrow stairway.

She did not like to have Keith go off by himself to the attic, and already now twice before she had found him up there, poking in the drawers of an old desk that had been his father's. He had shut the drawers quickly and had laughingly turned aside her questions when she had asked him what in the world he was doing up there. And he had got up immediately and had gone downstairs with her. But she had not liked the look on his face. And to-day, as she hesitated at the foot of the stairs, she was remembering that look. But for only a moment. Resolutely then she lifted her chin, ran up the stairs, and opened the attic door.

Over at the desk by the window there was a swift movement—but not so swift that Susan did not see the revolver pushed under some loose papers.

"Is that you, Susan?" asked Keith sharply. "Yes, honey. I jest came up to get somethin'."

Susan's face was white like paper, and her hands were cold and shaking, but her voice, except for a certain breathlessness, was cheerfully steady. With more or less noise and with a running fire of inconsequent comment, she rummaged among the trunks and boxes, gradually working her way to, ward the desk where Keith still sat.

At the desk, with a sudden swift movement, she thrust the papers to one side and dropped her hand on the revolver. At the same moment Keith's arm shot out and his hand fell, covering hers.

She saw his young face flush and harden and his mouth set into stern lines.

"Susan, you'll be good enough, please, to take your hand off that," he said then sharply.

There was a moment's tense silence. Susan's eyes, agonized and pleading, were on his face. But Keith could not see that. He could only hear her words a moment later—light words, with a hidden laugh in them, yet spoken with that same curious breathlessness.

"Faith, honey, an' how can I, with your own hand holdin' mine so tight?"

Keith removed his hand instantly. His set face darkened.

"This is not a joke, Susan, and I shall have to depend on your honor to let that revolver stay where it is. Unfortunately I am unable to SEE whether I am obeyed or not."

It was Susan's turn to flush. She drew back at once, leaving the weapon uncovered on the desk between them.

"I'm not takin' the pistol, Keith." The laugh was all gone from Susan's voice now. So, too, was the breathlessness. The voice was steady, grave, but very gentle. "We take matches an' pizen an' knives away from CHILDREN—not from grown men, Keith. The pistol is right where you can reach it—if you want it."



She saw the fingers of Keith's hand twitch and tighten. Otherwise there was no answer. After a moment she went on speaking.

"But let me say jest this: 'tain't like you to be a—quitter, Keith." She saw him wince, but she did not wait for him to speak. "An' after you've done this thing, there ain't any one in the world goin' to be so sorry as you'll be. You mark my words."

It was like a sharp knife cutting a taut cord. The tense muscles relaxed and Keith gave a sudden laugh. True, it was a short laugh, and a bitter one; but it was a laugh.

"You forget, Susan. If—if I carried that out I wouldn't be in the world—to care."

"Shucks! You'd be in some world, Keith Burton, an' you know it. An' you'd feel nice lookin' down on the mess you'd made of THIS world, wouldn't you?"

"Well, if I was LOOKING, I'd be SEEING, wouldn't I?" cut in the youth grimly. "Don't forget, Susan, that I'd be SEEING, please."

"Seein' ain't everything, Keith Burton. Jest remember that. There is some things you'd rather be blind than see. An' that's one of 'em. Besides, seein' ain't the only sensible you've got, an' there's such a lot of things you can do, an'—"

"Oh, yes, I know," interrupted Keith fiercely, flinging out both his hands. "I can feel a book, and eat my dinner, and I can hear the shouts of the people cheering the boys that go marching by my door. But I'm tired of it all. I tell you I can't stand it—I CAN'T, Susan. Yes, I know that's a cheap way out of it," he went on, after a choking pause, with a wave of his hand toward the revolver on the desk;" and a cowardly one, too. I know all that. And maybe I wouldn't have—have done it to-day, even if you hadn't come. I found it last week, and it —fascinated me. It seemed such an easy way out of it. Since then I've been up here two or three times just to—to feel of it. Somehow I liked to know it was here, and that, if—if I just couldn't stand things another minute—

"But—I've tried to be decent, honest I have. But I'm tired of being amused and 'tended to like a ten-year-old boy. I don't want flowers and jellies and candies brought in to me. I don't want to read and play solitaire and checkers week in and week out. I want to be over there, doing a man's work. Look at Ted, and Tom, and Jack Green, and John McGuire!"

"John McGuire!" It was a faltering cry from Susan, but Keith did not even hear.

"What are they doing, and what am I doing? Yet you people expect me to sit here contented with a dice-box and a deck of playing-cards, and be GLAD I can do that much. Oh, well, I suppose I ought to be. But when I sit here alone day after day and think and think—"

"But, Keith, we don't want you to do that," interposed Susan feverishly. "Now there's Miss Dorothy—if you'd only let her—"

"But I tell you I don't want to be babied and pitied and 'tended to by young women who are SORRY for me. I want to do the helping part of the time. And if I see a girl I—I could care for, I want to be able to ask her like a man to marry me; and then if she says 'yes,' I want to be able to take care of her myself—not have her take care of me and marry me out of pity and feed me fudge and flowers! And there's— dad."

Keith's voice broke and stopped. Susan, watching his impassioned face, wet her lips and swallowed convulsively. Then Keith began again.

"Susan, do you know the one big thing that drives me up here every time, in spite of myself? It's the thought of—dad. How do you suppose I feel to think of dad peddling peas and beans and potatoes down to McGuire's grocery store?—dad!"

Susan lifted her head defiantly.

"Well, now look a-here, Keith Burton, let me tell you that peddlin' peas an' beans an' potatoes is jest as honorary as paintin' pictures, an'—"

"I'm not saying it isn't," cut in the boy incisively. "I'm merely saying that, as I happen to know, he prefers to paint pictures—and I prefer to have him. And he'd be doing it this minute—if it wasn't for his having to support me, and you know it, Susan."

"Well, what of it? It don't hurt him any."

"It hurts me, Susan. And when I think of all the things he hoped—of me. I was going to be Jerry and Ned and myself; and I was going to make him so proud, Susan, so proud! I was going to make up to him all that he had lost. All day under the trees up on the hill, I used to lie and dream of what I was going to be some day—the great pictures I was going to paint—for dad. The great fame that was going to come to me—for dad. The money I was going to earn—for dad: I saw dad, old and white-haired, leaning on me. I saw the old house restored—all the locks and keys and sagging blinds, the cracked ceilings and tattered wallpaper—all made fresh and new. And dad so proud and happy in it all—so proud and happy that perhaps he'd think I really had made up for Jerry and Ned, and his own lost hopes.

"And, now, look at me! Useless, worse than useless—all my life a burden to him and to everybody else. Susan, I can't stand it. I CAN'T. That's why I want to end it all. It would be so simple—such an easy way—out."

"Yes, 'twould—for quitters. Quitters always take easy ways out. But you ain't no quitter, Keith Burton. Besides, 't wouldn't end it. You know that. 'Twould jest be shuttin' the door of this room an' openin' the one to the next. You've had a good Christian bringin' up, Keith Burton, an' you know as well as I do that your eternal, immoral soul ain't goin' to be snuffled out of existence by no pistol shot, no matter how many times you pull the jigger."

Keith laughed—and with the laugh his tense muscles relaxed.

"All right, Susan," he shrugged a little grimly. "I'll concede your point. You made it—perhaps better than you know. But—well, it isn't so pleasant always to be the hook, you know," he finished bitterly.

"The—hook?" frowned Susan.

Keith laughed again grimly.

"Perhaps you've forgotten—but I haven't. I heard you talking to Mrs. McGuire one day. You said that everybody was either a hook or an eye, and that more than half the folks were hooks hanging on to somebody else. And that's why some eyes had more than their share of hooks hanging on to them. You see—I remembered. I knew then, when you said it, that I was a hook, and—"

"Keith Burton, I never thought of you when I said that," interrupted Susan agitatedly.

"Perhaps not; but I did. Why, Susan, of course I'm a hook—an old, bent, rusty hook. But I can hang on—oh, yes, I can hang on—to anybody that will let me! But, Susan, don't you see?—sometimes it seems as if I'd give the whole world if just for once I could feel that I—that some one was hanging on to me! that I was of some use somewhere."

"An' so you're goin' to be, honey. I know you be," urged Susan eagerly. "Just remember all them fellers that wrote books an' give lecturing an'—"

"Oh, yes, I know," interposed Keith, with a faint smile. "You were a good old soul, Susan, to read me all those charming tales, and I understood of course, what you were doing it for. You wanted me to go and do likewise. But I couldn't write a book to save my soul, Susan, and my voice would stick in my throat at the second word of a 'lecturing.'"

"But there'll be somethin', Keith, I know there'll be somethin'. God never locked up the doors of your eyes without givin' you the key to some other door. It's jest that you hain't found it yet."

"Perhaps. I certainly haven't found it—that's sure," retorted the lad bitterly. "And just why He saw fit to send me this blindness—"

"We don't have to know," interposed Susan quickly; "an' questionin' about it don't settle nothin', anyhow. If we've got it, we've got it, an' if it's somethin' we can't possibly help, the only questionin' worth anything then is how are we goin' to stand it. You see, there's more'n one way of standin' things."

"Yes, I know there is." Keith stirred restlessly in his seat.

"An' some ways is better than others."

"There, there, Susan, I know just what you're going to say, and it's all very true, of course," cried Keith, stirring still more restlessly. "But you see T don't happen to feel like hearing it just now. Oh, yes, I know I've got lots to be thankful for. I can hear, and feel, and taste, and walk; and I should be glad for all of them. And I am, of course. I should declare that all's well with the world, and that both sides of the street are sunny, and that there isn't any shadow anywhere. There, you see! I know all that you would say, Susan, and I've said it, so as to save you the trouble."

"Humph!" commented Susan, bridling a little; then suddenly, she gave a sly chuckle. "That's all very well an' good, Master Keith Burton, but there's one more thing I would have said if I was doin' the sayin'!"

"Well?"

"About that both sides of the street bein' sunny—it seems to me that the man what says, yes, he knows one side is shady an' troublous, but that he thinks it'll be healthier an' happier for him an' everybody else 'round him if he walks on the sunny side, an' then WALKS THERE— it seems to me he's got the spots all knocked off that feller what says there AIN'T no shady side!"

Keith gave a low laugh—a laugh more nearly normal than Susan had heard him give for several days.

"All right, Susan, I'll accept your amendment and—we'll let it go that one side is shady, and that I'm supposed to determinedly pick the sunny side. Anything more?"

"M-more?"

"That you came up to say to me—yes. You know I have just saved you the trouble of saying part of it."

"Oh!" Susan laughed light-heartedly. (This was Keith—her Keith that she knew.) "No that's all I—" She stopped short in dismay! All the color and lightness disappeared from her face, leaving it suddenly white and drawn. "That is," she faltered, "there was somethin' else—I was goin' to say, about—about John McGuire. He—"

"I don't care to hear it." Keith had frozen instantly into frigid aloofness. Stern lines had come to his boyish mouth.

"But—but, Keith, Mrs. McGuire came over to-"

"To read another of those precious letters, of course," cut in Keith angrily, "but I tell you I don't want to hear it. Do you suppose a caged bird likes to hear of the woods and fields and tree-tops while he's tied to a three-inch swing between two gilt bars? Well, hardly! There's lots that I do have to stand, Susan, but I don't have to stand that."

Susan caught her breath with a half sob.

"But, Keith, I wasn't going to tell you of—of woods an' fields an' tree-tops this time. You see—now he's in a cage himself."

"What do you mean?"

"He's coming home. He's—blind."

Keith leaped from his chair.

"BLIND? JOHN McGUIRE?"

"Yes."

"Oh-h-h!" Long years of past suffering and of future woe filled the short little word to bursting, as Keith dropped back into his chair. For a moment he sat silent, his whole self held rigid. Then, unsteadily he asked the question:

"What—happened?"

"They don't know. It was a dispatch that came this mornin'. He was blinded, an' is on his way home. That's all."

"That's—enough."

"Yes, I knew you'd—understand."

"Yes, I do—understand."

Susan hesitated. Keith still sat, with his unseeing gaze straight ahead, his body tense and motionless. On the desk within reach lay the revolver. Cautiously Susan half extended her hand toward it, then drew it back. She glanced again at Keith's absorbed face, then turned and made her way quietly down the stairs.

At the bottom of the attic flight she glanced back. "He won't touch it now, I'm sure," she breathed. "An', anyhow, we only take knives an' pizen away from children—not grown men!"



CHAPTER XXIV

AS SUSAN SAW IT

It was the town talk, of course—the home-coming of John McGuire. Men gathered on street corners and women clustered about back-yard fences and church doorways. Children besieged their parents with breathless questions, and repeated to each other in awe-struck whispers what they had heard. Everywhere was horror, sympathy, and interested speculation as to "how he'd take it."

Where explicit information was so lacking, imagination and surmise eagerly supplied the details; and Mrs. McGuire's news of the blinding of John McGuire was not three days old before a full account of the tragedy from beginning to end was flying from tongue to tongue—an account that would have surprised no one so greatly as it would have surprised John McGuire himself.

To Susan, Dorothy Parkman came one day with this story.

"Well, 't ain't true," disavowed Susan succinctly when the lurid details had been breathlessly repeated to her.

"You mean—he isn't blind?" demanded the young girl.

"Oh, yes, he's blind, all right, poor boy! But it's the rest I mean— about his killin' twenty-eight Germans single-handed, an' bein' all shot to pieces hisself, an' benighted for bravery."

"But what did happen?"

"We don't know. We just know he's blind an' comin' home. Mis' McGuire had two letters yesterday from John, but—"

"From John—himself?"

"Yes; but they was both writ long before the apostrophe, an' 'course they didn't say nothin' about it. He was well an' happy, he said. She had had only one letter before these for a long time. An' now to have —this!"

"Yes, I know. It's terrible. How does—Mr. Keith take it?"

Susan opened wide her eyes.

"Why, you've seen him—you see him yesterday yourself, Miss Dorothy."

"Oh, I saw him—in a way, but not the real him, Susan. He's miles away now, always."

"You mean he ain't civil an' polite?" demanded Susan.

"Oh, he's very civil—too civil, Susan. Every time I go I say I won't go again. Then, when I get to thinking of him sitting there alone all day, and of how he used to like to have me read to him and play with him, I—I just have to go and see if he won't be the same as he used to be. But he never is."

"I know." Susan shook her head mournfully. "An' he ain't the same, Miss Dorothy. He don't ever whistle nor sing now, nor play solitary, nor any of them things he used to do. Oh, when folks comes in he braces back an' talks an' laughs. YOU know that. But in the exclusion of his own home here he jest sits an' thinks an' thinks an' thinks. An', Miss Dorothy, I've found out now what he's thinkin' of."

"Yes?"

"It's John McGuire an' them other soldiers what's comin' back blind from the war. An' he talks an' talks about 'em, an' mourns an' takes on something dreadful. He says HE knows what it means, an' that nobody can know what hain't had it happen to 'em. An' he broods an' broods over it."

"I can—imagine it." The girl said it with a little catch in her voice.

"An'—an' there's somethin' else I want to tell you about. I've got to tell somebody. I want to know if you think I done right. An' you're the only one I can tell. I've thought it all out. Daniel Burton is too near, an' Mis' McGuire an' all them others is too far. You ain't a relation, an' yet you care. You do care, don't you?—about Mr. Keith?"

"Why, of—of course. I care a great deal, Susan." Miss Dorothy spoke very lightly, very impersonally; but there was a sudden flame of color in her face. Susan, however, was not noticing this. Furtively she was glancing one way and another over her shoulder.

"Yes. Well, the other day he—he tried to—that is, well, I—I found him with a pistol in his hand, an'—"

"Susan!" The girl had gone very white.

"Oh, he didn't do it. Well, that ain't a very sensitive statement, is it? For if he had done it, he wouldn't be alive now, would he?" broke off Susan, with a faint smile. "But what I mean is, he didn't do it, an' I don't think he's goin' to do it."

"But, oh, Susan," faltered the girl, "you didn't leave that—that awful thing with him, did you? Didn't you take it—away?"

"No." Susan's mouth set grimly. "An' that's what I wanted to ask you about—if I did right, you know."

"Oh, no, no, Susan! I'm afraid," shuddered the girl. "Can't you—get it away—now?"

"Maybe. I know where 'tis. I was up there yesterday an' see it. 'T was in the desk drawer in the attic, jest where it used to be."

"Then get it, Susan, get it. Oh, please get it," begged the girl. "I'm afraid to have it there—a single minute."

"But, Miss Dorothy, stop; wait jest a minute. Think. How's he goin' to get self-defiance an' make a strong man of hisself if we take things away from him like he was a little baby?"

"I know, Susan; but if he SHOULD be tempted—"

"He won't. He ain't no more. I'm sure of that. I talked with him. Besides, I hain't caught him up there once since that day last week. Oh, I'm free to confess I HAVE watched him," admitted Susan defensively, with a faint smile.

"But what did happen that day you—you found him?"

"Oh, he had it, handlin' it, an' when he heard me, he jumped a little, an' hid it under some papers. My, Miss Dorothy, 'twas awful. I was that scared an' frightened I thought I couldn't move. But I knew I'd got to, an' I knew I'd got to move RIGHT, too, or I'd spoil everything. This wa'n't no ten-cent melodydrama down to the movies, but I had a humane soul there before me, an' I knew maybe it's whole internal salvation might depend on what I said an' did."

"But what DID you say?"

"I don't know. I only know that somehow, when it was over, I had a feelin' that he wouldn't never do that thing again. That somehow the MAN in him was on top, an' would stay on top. An' I'm more sure than ever of it now. He ain't thinkin' of hisself these days. It's John McGuire and them others. An' ain't it better that he let that pistol alone of his own free will an' accordance, an' know he was a man an' no baby, than if I'd taken it away from him?"

"I suppose—it was, Susan; but I don't think I'd have been strong enough—to make him strong."

"Yes, you would, if you'd been there. I reckon we're all goin' to learn to do a lot of things we never did before, now that the war has come."

"Yes, I know." A quivering pain swept across the young girl's face.

"Somehow, the war never seemed real to me before. 'T was jest somethin' 'way off—a lot of Dagoes an' Dutchmen, like the men what dug up the McGuires' frozen water-pipes last spring, fightin'. Not our kind of folks what talked English. Even when I read the papers, an' the awful things they did over there—it didn't seem as if 't was folks on our earth. It was like somethin' you read about in them old histronic days, or somethin' happenin' up on the moon, or on that plantation of Mars. Oh, of course, I knew John McGuire had gone; but somehow I never thought of him as fightin'—not with guns an' bloody gore, in spite of them letters of his. Some way, in my mind's eyes I always see him marchin' with flags flyin' an' folks cheerin'; an' I thought the war'd be over, anyhow, by the time he got there.

"But, now—! Why, now they're all gone—our own Teddy Somers, an' Tom Spencer, an' little Jacky Green that I used to hold on my knee. Some of 'em in France, an' some of 'em in them army canteens down to Ayer an' Texas an' everywhere. An' poor Tom's died already of pneumonia right here in our own land. An' now poor John McGuire! I tell you, Miss Dorothy, it brings it right home now to your own heart, where it hurts."

"It certainly does, Susan."

"An' let me tell you. What do you s'pose, more 'n anything else, made me see how really big it all is?"

"I don't know, Susan,"

"Well, I'll tell you. 'Twas because I couldn't write a poem on it."

"Sure enough, Susan! I don't believe I've heard you make a rhyme to- day," smiled Miss Dorothy.

Susan sighed and shook her head.

"Yes, I know. I don't make 'em much now. Somehow they don't sing all the time in my heart, an' burst out natural-like, as they used to. I think them days when I tried so hard to sell my poems, an' couldn't, kinder took the jest out of poetizin' for me. Somehow, when you find out somethin' is invaluable to other folks, it gets so it's invaluable to you, I s'pose. Still, even now, when I set right down to it, I can 'most always write 'em right off 'most as quick as I used to. But I couldn't on this war. I tried it. But it jest wouldn't do. I begun it:

Oh, woe is me, said the bayonet, Oh, woe is me, said the sword.

Then the whole awful frightfulness of it an' the bigness of it seemed to swallow me up, an' I felt like a little pigment overtopped an' surrounded by great tall mountains of horror that were tumblin' down one after another on my head, an' bury in' me down so far an' deep that I couldn't say anything, only to moan, 'Oh, Lord, how long, oh, Lord, how long?' An' I knew then't was too big for me. I didn't try to write no more."

"I can see how you couldn't," faltered the girl, as she turned away. "I'm afraid—we're all going to find it—too big for us,"



CHAPTER XXV

KEITH TO THE RESCUE

John McGuire had not been home twenty-four hours before it was known that he "took it powerful hard."

To Keith Susan told what she had learned.

"They say he utterly refuses to see any one outside the family; an' that he'd rather not see even his own folks—that he's always askin' 'em to let him alone."

"Is he ill or wounded otherwise?" asked Keith.

"No, he ain't hurt outwardly or infernally, except his eyes, an' he says that's the worst of it, one woman told me. He's as sound as a nut, an' good for a hundred years yet. If he'd only been smashed up good an' solid, so's he'd have some hope of dyin' pretty quick, he wouldn't mind it, he says. But to live along like this—!—oh, he's in an awful state of mind, everybody says."

"I can—imagine it," sighed Keith. And by the way he turned away Susan knew that he did not care to talk any more.

An hour later Mrs. McGuire hurried into Susan's kitchen. Mrs. McGuire was looking thin and worn these days. From her half-buttoned shoes to her half-combed hair she was showing the results of strain and anxiety. With a long sigh she dropped into one of the kitchen chairs.

"Well, Mis' McGuire, if you ain't the stranger!" Susan greeted her cordially.

"Yes, I know," sighed Mrs. McGuire. "But, you see, I can't leave— him." As she spoke she looked anxiously through the window toward her own door. "Mr. McGuire's with him, now, so I got away."

"But there's Bess an' Harry," began Susan,

"We don't leave him with the children, ever," interposed Mrs. McGuire, with another hurried glance through the window. "We—don't dare to. You see, once we found—we found him with his father's old pistol. Oh, Susan, it—it was awful!"

"Yes, it—must have been." Susan, after one swift glance into her visitor's face, had turned her back suddenly. She was busy now with the dampers of her kitchen stove.

"Of course we took it right away," went on Mrs. McGuire, "an' put it where he'll never get it again. But we're always afraid there'll be somethin' somewhere that he WILL get hold of. You see, he's SO despondent—in such a terrible state!"

"Yes, I know," nodded Susan. Susan had abandoned her dampers, and had turned right about face again. "If only he'd see folks now."

"Yes, an' that's what I came over to talk to you about," cried Mrs. McGuire eagerly. "We haven't been able to get him to see anybody—not anybody. But I've been wonderin' if he wouldn't see Keith, if we could work it right. You see he says he just won't be stared at; an' Keith, poor boy, COULDN'T stare, an' John knows it. Oh, Susan, do you suppose we could manage it?"

"Why, of course. I'll tell him right away, an' he'll go over; I know he'll go!" exclaimed Susan, all interest at once.

"Oh, but that wouldn't do at all!" cried Mrs. McGuire. "Don't you see? John refuses, absolutely refuses, to see any one; an' he wouldn't see Keith, if I should ASK him to. But he's interested in Keith—I KNOW he's that, for once, when I was talkin' to Mr. McGuire about Keith, John broke in an' asked two or three questions, an' he's NEVER done that before, about anybody. An' so I was pretty sure it was because Keith was blind, you know, like himself."

"Yes, I see, I see."

"An' if I can only manage it so they'll meet without John's knowin' they're goin' to, I believe he'll get to talkin' with him before he knows it; an' that it'll do him a world of good. Anyway, somethin's got to be done, Susan—it's GOT to be—to get him out of this awful state he's in."

"Well, we'll do it. I know we can do it some way."

"You think Keith'll do his part?" Mrs. McGuire's eyes were anxious.

"I'm sure he will—when he understands."

"Then listen," proposed Mrs. McGuire eagerly. "I'll get my John out on to the back porch to-morrow mornin'. That's the only place outdoors I CAN get him—he can't be seen from the street there, you know. I'll get him there as near ten o'clock as I can. You be on the watch, an' as soon as I get him all nicely fixed, you get Keith to come out into your yard an' stroll over to the fence an' speak to him, an' then come up on to the porch an' sit down, just naturally. He can do that all right, can't he? It's just wonderful—the way he gets around everywhere, with that little cane of his!"

"Yes, oh, yes."

"Well, I thought he could. An' tell him to keep right on talkin' every minute so my John won't have a chance to get up an' go into the house. Of course, I shall be there myself, at first. We never leave him alone, you know. But as soon as Keith comes, I shall go. They'll get along better by themselves, I'm sure—only, of course, I shall be where I can keep watch out of the window. Now do you understand?"

"Yes, an' we can do it. I know we can do it."

"All right, then. I'm not so sure we can, but we'll try it, anyway," sighed Mrs. McGuire, rising to her feet, the old worry back on her face. "Well, I must be goin'. Mr. McGuire'll have a fit. He's as nervous as a witch when he's left alone with John. There! What did I tell you?" she broke off, with an expressive gesture and glance, as a careworn-looking man appeared in the doorway of the house across the two back yards, and peered anxiously over at the Burtons' kitchen door. "Now, don't forget—ten o'clock to-morrow mornin'."

"I won't forget," promised Susan cheerfully, "Now, do you go home an' set easy, Mis' McGuire, an' don't you fret no more. It's comin' out all right—all right, I tell you," she reiterated, as Mrs. McGuire hurried through the doorway.

But when Mrs. McGuire was gone Susan drew a dubious sigh; and her cheery smile had turned to a questioning frown as she went in search of Keith. Very evidently Susan was far from feeling quite so sure about Keith's cooperation as she would have Mrs. McGuire think.

Keith was in the living-room, his head bowed in his two hands, his elbows on the table before him. At the first sound of Susan's steps he lifted his head with a jerk.

"I was lookin' for you," began Susan the moment she had crossed the threshold. Susan had learned that Keith hated above all things to have to speak first, or to ask, "Who is it?" "Mis' McGuire's jest been here."

"Yes, I heard her voice," returned the boy indifferently.

"She was tellin' about her John."

"How is he getting along?"

"He's in a bad way. Oh, he's real well physicianally, but he's in a bad way in his mind."

"Well, you don't wonder, do you?"

"Oh, no, 'course not. Still, well, for one thing, he don't like to see folks."

"Strange! Now, I'd think he'd just dote on seeing folks, wouldn't you?"

Susan caught the full force of the sarcasm, but superbly she ignored it.

"Well, I don't know—maybe; but, anyhow, he don't, an' Mis' McGuire's that worried she don't know what to do. You see, she found him once with his daddy's pistol"—Susan was talking very fast now—"an' 'course that worked her up somethin' terrible. I'm afraid he hain't got much backbone. They don't dare to leave him alone a minute—not a minute. An' Mis' McGuire, she was wonderin' if—if you couldn't help 'em out some way."

"I?" The short ejaculation was full of amazement.

"Yes. That's what she come over for this mornin'."

"I? They forget." Keith fell back bitterly. "John McGuire might get hold of a dozen revolvers, and I wouldn't know it."

"Oh, 'twa'n't that. They didn't want you to WATCH him. They wanted you to—Well, it's jest this. Mis' McGuire thought as how if she could get her John out on the back porch, an' you happened to be in our back yard, an' should go over an' speak to him, maybe you'd get to talkin' with him, an' go up an' sit down. She thought maybe 'twould get him out of hisself that way. You see, he won't talk to—to most folks. He don't like to be stared at." (Susan threw a furtive glance into Keith's face, then looked quickly away.) "But she thought maybe he WOULD talk to you."

"Yes, I—see." Keith drew in his breath with a little catch.

"An' so she said there wa'n't anybody anywhere that could help so much as you—if you would."

"Why, of course, if I really could HELP—"

Susan did not need to look into Keith's face to catch the longing and heart-hunger and dawning hope in the word left suspended on his lips. She felt her own throat tighten; but in a moment she managed to speak with steady cheerfulness.

"Well, you can. You can help a whole lot. I'm sure you can. An' Mis' McGuire is, too. An' what's more, you're the only one what can help 'em, in this case. So we'll keep watch to-morrow mornin', an' when he comes out on the porch—well, we'll see what we will see." And Susan, just as if her own heart was not singing a triumphant echo of the song she knew was in his, turned away with an elaborate air of indifference.

Yet, when to-morrow came, and when Keith went out into the yard in response to the presence of John McGuire on his back porch, the result was most disappointing—to Susan. To Keith it did not seem to be so much so. But perhaps Keith had not expected quite what Susan had expected. At all events, Keith came back to the house with a glow on his face and a springiness in his step that Susan had not seen there for months. Yet all that had happened was that Keith had called out from the gate a pleasant "Good-morning!" to the blinded soldier, and had followed it with an inconsequential word or two about the weather. John McGuire had answered a crisp, cold something, and had risen at once to go into the house. Keith, at the first sound of his feet on the porch floor, had turned with a cheery "Well, I must be going back to the house." Whereupon John McGuire had sat down again, and Mrs. McGuire, who at Keith's first words, had started to her feet, dropped back into her chair.

Apparently not much accomplished, certainly; yet there was the glow on Keith's face and the springiness in Keith's step; and when he reached the kitchen, he said this to Susan:

"The next time John McGuire is on the back porch, please let me know."

And Susan let him know, both then and at subsequent times.

It was a pretty game and one well worth the watching. Certainly Susan and Mrs. McGuire thought it so. On the one side were persistence and perseverance and infinite tact. On the other were a distrustful antagonism and a palpable longing for an understanding companionship.

At first the intercourse between the two blind youths consisted of a mere word or two tossed by Keith to the other who gave a still shorter word in reply. And even this was not every day, for John McGuire was not out on the porch every day. But as the month passed, he came more and more frequently, and one evening Mrs. McGuire confided to Susan the fact that John seemed actually to fret now if a storm kept him indoors.

"An' he listens for Keith to come along the fence—I know he does," she still further declared. "Oh, I know he doesn't let him say much yet, but he hasn't jumped up to go into the house once since those first two or three times, an' that's somethin'. An' what's more, he let Keith stay a whole minute at the gate talkin' yesterday!" she finished in triumph.

"Yes, an' the best of it is," chimed in Susan, "it's helpin' Keith Burton hisself jest as much as 'tis John McGuire. Why, he ain't the same boy since he's took to tryin' to get your John to talkin'. An' he asks me a dozen times a mornin' if John's out on the porch yet. An' when he IS out there, he don't lose no time in goin' out hisself."

Yet it was the very next morning that Keith, after eagerly asking if John McGuire were on the back porch, did not go out. Instead he settled back in his chair and picked up one of his embossed books.

Susan frowned in amazed wonder, and opened her lips as if to speak. But after a glance at Keith's apparently absorbed face, she turned and went back to her work in the kitchen. Twice during the next ten minutes, however, she invented an excuse to pass again through the living-room, where Keith sat. Yet, though she said a pointed something each time about John McGuire on the back porch, Keith did not respond save with an indifferent word or two. And, greatly to her indignation, he was still sitting in his chair with his book when at noon John McGuire, on the porch across the back yard, rose from his seat and went into the house.

Susan was still more indignant when, the next morning, the same programme was repeated—except for the fact that Susan's reminders of John McGuire's presence on the back porch were even more pointed than they had been on the day before. Again the third morning it was the same. Susan resolved then to speak. She said to herself that "patience had ceased to be virtuous," and she lay awake half that night rehearsing a series of arguments and pleadings which she meant to present the next morning. She was the more incited to this owing to Mrs. McGuire's distracted reproaches the evening before.

"Why, John has asked for him, actually ASKED for him," Mrs. McGuire had wept. "An' it is cruel, the cruelest thing I ever saw, to get that poor boy all worked up to the point of really WANTIN' to talk with him, an' then stay away three whole days like this!"

On the fourth morning, therefore, when John McGuire appeared on the back porch, Susan went into the Burton living-room with the avowed determination of getting Keith out of the house and into the back yard, or of telling him exactly what she thought of him.

She had all of her elaborate scheming for nothing, however, for at her first terse announcement that John McGuire was on the back porch, Keith sprang to his feet with a cheery:

"So? Well, I guess I'll go out myself."

And Susan was left staring at him with open eyes and mouth—yet not too dazed to run to the open window and watch what happened.

And this is what Susan saw—and heard. Keith, with his almost uncannily skillful stick to guide him, sauntered down the path and called a cheery greeting to John McGuire—a John McGuire who, in his eagerness to respond, leaned away forward in his chair with a sudden flame of color in his face.

Keith still sauntered toward the dividing fence, pausing only to feel with his fingers and pick the one belated rose from the bush at the gate. He pushed the gate open then, still talking cheerfully, and the next moment Susan was holding her breath, for Keith had gone straight up the walk and up the steps, and had dropped himself into the vacant chair beside John McGuire—and John McGuire, after a faint start as if to rise, had fallen back in his seat, and had turned his face uncertainly, fearfully, yet with infinite longing, toward the blind youth at his side.

Susan looked then at Mrs. McGuire. Mrs. McGuire, too, was plainly holding her breath suspended. On her face, too, were uncertainty, fearfulness, and infinite longing. For a moment she watched the two boys intently. Then she rose and with cautious steps made her way into the house. After supper that night she came over and told Susan all about it. Her face was beaming.

"Did you see them?" she began breathlessly. "Wasn't it wonderful? A whole half-hour those two blessed boys sat there an' talked; an' John laughed twice, actually laughed."

"Yes, I know," nodded Susan, her own face no less beaming.

"An' to think how just last night I was scoldin' an' blamin' Keith because he didn't come over these last three days. An' I never saw at all what he was up to."

"Up to?" frowned Susan.

"Yes, yes! Don't you see? He did it on purpose—stayed away three whole days, so John would miss him an' WANT him. An' John DID miss him. Why, he listened for him all the time. I could just SEE he was listenin'. An' that's what made me so angry, because Keith didn't come. The idea!—My boy wantin' somebody, an' that somebody not there!

"But I know now. I understand. An' I love him for it. He did it to make him want him. An' it worked. Why, if he'd come before, every day, just as usual, John wouldn't have talked with him. I know he wouldn't. But now—oh, Susan, it was wonderful, wonderful! I watched 'em from the window. I HAD to watch. I was afraid—still. An' of course I heard some things. An', oh, Susan, it was wonderful, the way that boy understood."

"You mean—Keith?"

"Yes. You see, first John began to talk just as he talks to us—ravin' because he's so strong an' well, an' likely to live to be a hundred; an' of how he'll look, one of these days, with his little tin cup held out for pennies an' his sign, 'Please Help the Blind,' an' of what he's got to look forward to all his life. Oh, Susan, it—it's enough to break the heart of a stone, when he talks like that."

Susan drew in her breath.

"Don't you s'pose I know? Well, I guess I do! But what did Keith say to him?"

"Nothin'. An' that was the first wonderful thing. You see, we—we always talk an' try to comfort him when he talks like that. But Keith didn't. He just let him talk, with nothin' but just a sympathetic word now an' then. But it wasn't long before I noticed a wonderful thing was happenin'. Keith was beginnin' to talk—not about that awful tin cup an' the pennies an' the sign, but about other things; first about the rose in his hand. An' pretty quick John was talkin' about it, too. He had the rose an' was smellin' of it. Then Keith had a new knife, an' he passed that over, an' pretty quick I saw that John had that little link puzzle of Keith's, an' was havin' a great time tryin' to straighten it out. That's the first time I heard him laugh.

"I began to realize then what Keith was doin'. He was fillin' John's mind full of somethin' else beside himself, for just a minute, an' was showin' him that there were things he could call by name, like the rose an' the knife an' the puzzle, even if he couldn't SEE 'em. Oh, Keith didn't SAY anything like that to him—trust him for that. But before John knew it, he was DOIN' it—callin' things by name, I mean.

"An' Keith is comin' again to-morrow. John TOLD me so. An' if you could have seen his face when he said it! Oh, Susan, isn't it wonderful?" she finished fervently, as she turned to go.

"It is, indeed—wonderful," murmured Susan. But Susan's eyes were out the window on Keith's face—Keith and his father were coming up the walk talking; and on Keith's face was a light Susan had never seen there before.



CHAPTER XXVI

MAZIE AGAIN

It came to be the accepted thing almost at once, then, that Keith Burton and John McGuire should spend their mornings together on the McGuires' back porch. In less than a fortnight young McGuire even crossed the yard arm in arm with Keith to the Burtons' back porch and sat there one morning. After that it was only a question as to which porch it should be. That it would be one of them was a foregone conclusion.

Sometimes the two boys talked together. Sometimes they worked on one of Keith's raised picture puzzles. Sometimes Keith read aloud from one of his books. Whatever they did, their doing it was the source of great interest to the entire neighborhood. Not only did Mrs. McGuire and Susan breathlessly watch from their respective kitchens, but friends and neighbors fabricated excuses to come to the two houses in order to see for themselves; and children gathered along the divisional fence and gazed with round eyes of wonder. But they gazed silently. Everybody gazed silently. Even the children seemed to understand that the one unpardonable sin was to let the blind boys on the porch know that they were the objects of any sort of interest.

One day Mazie Sanborn came. She brought a new book for Mrs. McGuire to read—an attention she certainly had never before bestowed on John McGuire's mother. She talked one half-minute about the book—and five minutes about the beautiful new friendship between the two blind young men. She insisted on going into the kitchen where she could see the two boys on the porch. Then, before Mrs. McGuire could divine her purpose and stop her, she had slipped through the door and out on to the porch itself.

"How do you do, gentlemen," she began blithely. "I just—"

But the terrified Mrs. McGuire had her by the arm and was pulling her back into the kitchen before she could finish her sentence.

On the porch the two boys had leaped to their feet, John McGuire, in particular, looking distressed and angry.

"Who was that? Is anybody—there?" he demanded.

"No, dear, not now." In the doorway Mrs. McGuire was trying to nod assurance to the boys and frown banishment to Mazie Sanborn at one and the same moment.

"But there was—some one," insisted her son sharply.

"Just some one that brought a book to me, dearie, an' she's gone now." Frantically Mrs. McGuire was motioning Mazie to make her assertion the truth.

John McGuire sat down then. So, too, did Keith. But all the rest of the morning John was nervously alert for all sounds. And his ears were frequently turned toward the kitchen door. He began to talk again, too, bitterly, of the little tin cup for the pennies and the sign "Pity the Poor Blind." He lost all interest in Keith's books and puzzles, and when he was not railing at the tragedy of his fate, he was sitting in gloomy silence.

Keith told Susan that afternoon that if Mrs. McGuire did not keep people away from that porch when he was out there with John, he would not answer for the consequences. Susan told Mrs. McGuire, and Mrs. McGuire told Mazie Sanborn, at the same time returning the loaned book—all of which did not tend to smooth Miss Mazie's already ruffled feelings.

To Dorothy Mazie expressed her mind on the matter.

"I don't care! I'll never go there again—never!" she declared angrily; "nor speak to Mrs. McGuire, nor that precious son of hers, nor Keith Burton, either. So there!"

"Oh, Mazie, but poor Keith isn't to blame," remonstrated Dorothy earnestly, the color flaming into her face.

"He is, too. He's just as bad as John McGuire. He jumped up and looked just as cross as John McGuire did when I went out on to that porch. And he doesn't ever really want to see us. You know he doesn't. He just stands us because he thinks he's got to be polite."

"But, Mazie, dear, he's so sensitive, and he feels his affliction keenly, and—"

"Oh, yes, that's right—stand up for him! I knew you would," snapped Mazie crossly. "And everybody knows it, too—running after him the way you do."

"RUNNING AFTER HIM!" Dorothy's face was scarlet now.

"Yes, running after him," reiterated the other incisively; "and you always have—trotting over there all the time with books and puzzles and candy and flowers. And—"

"For shame, Mazie!" interrupted Dorothy, with hot indignation. "As if trying to help that poor blind boy to while away a few hours of his time were RUNNING AFTER HIM."

"But he doesn't WANT you to while away an hour or two of his time. And I should think you'd see he didn't. You could if you weren't so dead in love with him, and—"

"Mazie!" gasped Dorothy, aghast.

"Well, it's so. Anybody can see that—the way you color up every time his name is mentioned, and the way you look at him, with your heart in your eyes, and—"

"Mazie Sanborn!" gasped Dorothy again. Her face was not scarlet now. It had gone dead white. She was on her feet, horrified, dismayed, and very angry.

"Well, I don't care. It's so. Everybody knows it. And when a fellow shows so plainly that he'd rather be let alone, how you can keep thrusting yourself—"

But Dorothy had gone. With a proud lifting of her head, and a sharp "Nonsense, Mazie, you are wild! We'll not discuss it any longer, please," she had turned and left the room.

But she remembered. She must have remembered, for she did not go near the Burton homestead for a week. Neither did the next week nor the next see her there. Furthermore, though the little stand in her room had shown two new picture puzzles and a new game especially designed for the blind, it displayed them no longer after those remarks of Mazie Sanborn's. Not that Keith had them, however. Indeed, no. They were buried deep under a pile of clothing in the farther corner of Dorothy's bottom bureau drawer.

At the Burton homestead Susan wondered a little at her absence. She even said to Keith one day:

"Why, where's Dorothy? We haven't see her for two weeks."

"I don't know, I'm sure."

The way Keith's lips came together over the last word caused Susan to throw a keen glance into his face.

"Now, Keith, I hope you two haven't been quarreling again," she frowned anxiously.

"'Again'! Nonsense, Susan, we never did quarrel. Don't be silly." The youth shifted his position uneasily.

"I'm thinkin' tain't always me that's silly," observed Susan, with another keen glance. "That girl was gettin' so she come over jest natural-like again, every little while, bringin' in one thing or another, if 'twas nothin' more'n a funny story to make us laugh. An' what I want to know is why she stopped right off short like this, for—"

"Nonsense!" tossed Keith again, with a lift of his chin. Then, with an attempt at lightness that was very near a failure, he laughed: "I reckon we don't want her to come if she doesn't want to, do we, Susan?"

"Humph!" was Susan's only comment—outwardly. Inwardly she was vowing to see that young woman and have it out with her, once for all.

But Susan did not see her nor have it out with her; for, as it happened, something occurred that night so all-absorbing and exciting that even the unexplained absence of Dorothy Parkman became as nothing beside it.

With the abrupt suddenness that sometimes makes the long-waited-for event a real shock, came the news of the death of the poor old woman whose frail hand had held the wealth that Susan had coveted for Daniel Burton and his son.

The two men left the next morning on the four-hundred-mile journey that would take them to the town where Nancy Holworthy had lived.

Scarcely had they left the house before Susan began preparations for their home-coming, as befitted their new estate. Her first move was to get out all the best silver and china. She was busy cleaning it when Mrs. McGuire came in at the kitchen door.

"What's the matter?" she began breathlessly.

"Where's Keith? John's been askin' for him all the mornin'. Is Mr. Burton sick? They just telephoned from the store that Mr. Burton had sent word that he wouldn't be down for a few days. He isn't sick, is he?—or Keith? I couldn't make out quite all they said; but there was somethin' about Keith. They ain't either of 'em sick, are they?"

"Oh, no, they're both well—very well, thank you." There was an air, half elation, half superiority, about Susan that was vaguely irritating to Mrs. McGuire.

"Well, you needn't be so secret about it, Susan," she began a little haughtily. But Susan tossed her head with a light laugh.

"Secret! I guess 't won't be no secret long. Mr. Daniel Burton an' Master Keith have gone away, Mis' McGuire."

"Away! You mean—a—a vacation?" frowned Mrs. McGuire doubtfully.

Susan laughed again, still with that irritating air of superiority.

"Well, hardly. This ain't no pleasure exertion, Mis' McGuire. Still, on the other hand, Daniel Burton wouldn't be half humane if he didn't get some pleasure out of it, though he wouldn't so demean himself as to show it, of course. Mis' Nancy Holworthy is dead, Mis' McGuire. We had the signification last night."

"Not—you don't mean THE Nancy Holworthy—the one that's got the money!" The excited interest in Mrs. McGuire's face and voice was as great as even Susan herself could have desired.

Susan obviously swelled with the glory of the occasion, though she still spoke with cold loftiness.

"The one and the same, Mis' McGuire."

"My stars an' stockin's, you don't say! An' they've gone to the funeral?"

"They have."

"An' they'll get the money now, I s'pose."

"They will."

"But are you sure? You know sometimes when folks expect the money they don't get it. It's been willed away to some one else."

"Yes, I know. But't won't be here," spoke Susan with decision. "Mis' Holworthy couldn't if she'd wanted to. It's all foreordained an' fixed beforehand. Daniel Burton was to get jest the annual while she lived, an' then the whole in a plump sum when she died. Well, she's dead, an' now he gets it. An' a right tidy little sum it is, too."

"Was she awful rich, Susan?"

"More'n a hundred thousand. A hundred an' fifty, I've heard say."

"My gracious me! An' to think of Daniel Burton havin' a hundred and fifty thousand dollars! What in the world will he do with it?"

Susan's chin came up superbly.

"Well, I can tell you one thing he'll do, Mis' McGuire. He'll stop peddlin' peas an' beans over that counter down there, an' retire to a life of ease an' laxity with his paint-brushes, as he ought to. An' he'll have somethin' fit to eat an' wear, an' Keith will, too. An' furthermore an' likewise you'll see SOME difference in this place, or my name ain't Susan Betts. Them two men have got an awful lot to live up to, an' I mean they shall understand it right away."

"Which explains this array of china an' silver, I take it," observed Mrs. McGuire dryly.

"Eh? What?" frowned Susan doubtfully; then her face cleared. "Yes, that's jest it. They've got to have things now fitted up to their new estation. We shall get more, too. We need some new teaspoons an' forks. An' I want 'em to get some of them bunion spoons."

"BUNION spoons!"

"Yes—when you eat soup out of them two-handled cups, you know. Or maybe you don't know," she corrected herself, at the odd expression that had come to Mrs. McGuire's face. "But I do. Mrs. Professor Hinkley used to have 'em. They're awful pretty an' stylish, too. And we've got to have a lot of other things—new china, an' some cut- glass, an'—"

"Well, it strikes me," interrupted Mrs. McGuire severely, "that Daniel Burton had better be puttin' his money into Liberty Bonds an' Red Cross work, instead of silver spoons an' cut-glass, in these war- times. An'—"

"My lan', Mis' McGuire!" With the sudden exclamation Susan had dropped the spoon she was polishing. Her eyes, wild and incredulous, were staring straight into the startled eyes of the woman opposite. "Do you know? Since that yeller telegram came last night tellin' us Nancy Holworthy was dead, I hain't even once thought of—the war."

"Well, I guess you would think of it—if you had my John right before you all the time." With a bitter sigh Mrs. McGuire had relaxed in her chair. "You wouldn't need anything else."

"Humph! I don't need anything else with Daniel Burton 'round."

"What do you mean?"

"Why, I mean that that man don't do nothin' but read war an' talk war every minute he's in the house. An' what with them wheatless days an' meatless days, he fairly EATS war. You heard my poem on them meatless, wheatless days, didn't you?"

Mrs. McGuire shook her head listlessly. Her somber eyes were on the lonely figure of her son on the porch across the two back yards.

"You didn't? Well, I'll say it to you, then. 'Tain't much; still, it's kind of good, in a way. I hain't written hardly anything lately; but I did write this:

We've a wheatless day, An' a meatless day, An' a tasteless, wasteless, sweetless day.

But with never a pause, For the good of the cause, We'd even consent to an eatless day.

"An' we would, too, of course.

"An' as far as that's concerned, there's a good many other kinds of 'less days that I'm thinkin' wouldn't hurt none of us. How about a fretless day an' a worryless day? Wouldn't they be great? An' only think what a talkless day'd mean in some households I could mention. Oh, of course, present comp'ny always accentuated," she hastened to add with a sly chuckle, as Mrs. McGuire stirred into sudden resentment.

"Humph!" subsided Mrs. McGuire, still a little resentfully.

"An' I'm free to confess that there's some kinds of 'less days that we've already got plenty of," went on Susan, after a moment's thoughtful pause. "There is folks that take quite enough workless days, an' laughless days, an' pityless days, an' thankless days. My lan', there ain't no end to them kind, as any one can see. An' there was them heatless days last winter—I guess no one was hankerin' for more of THEM. Oh, 'course I understand that that was just preservation of coal, an' that 'twas necessary, an' all that. An' that's another thing, too—this preservation business. I'd like to add a few things to that, an' make 'em preserve in fault-findin', an' crossness, an' backbitin', an' gossip, as well as in coal, an' sugar, an' wheat, an' beef."

Mrs. McGuire gave a short laugh.

"My goodness, Susan Betts, if you ain't the limit, an' no mistake! I s'pose you mean CONservation."

"Heh? What's that? Well, CONservation, then. What's the difference, anyway?" she scoffed a bit testily. Then, abruptly, her face changed. "But, there! this ain't settlin' what I'm going to do with Daniel Burton," she finished with a profound sigh.

"Do with him?" puzzled Mrs. McGuire.

"Yes." Susan picked up the silver spoon and began indifferently to polish it. "'Tain't no use for me to be doin' all this. Daniel Burton won't know whether he's eatin' with a silver spoon or one made of pewter. No more will he retire to a life of ease an' laxity with his paint-brushes—unless they declarate peace to-morrow mornin'."

"You don't mean—he'll stay in the store?"

Susan made a despairing gesture.

"Goodness only knows what he'll do—I don't. I know what he does now. He's as uneasy as a fish out o' water, an' he roams the house from one end to the other every night, after he reads the paper. He's got one of them war maps on his wall, an' he keeps changin' the pins an' flags, an' I hear him mutterin' under his breath. You see, he has to keep it from Keith all he can, for Keith hisself feels so bad 'cause he can't be up an' doin'; an' if he thought he was keepin' his father back from helpin', I don't know what the poor boy would do. But I think if 'twa'n't for Keith, Daniel Burton would try to enlist an' go over. Oh, of course, he's beyond the malicious age, so far as bein' drafted is concerned, an' you wouldn't naturally think such a mild- tempered-lookin' man would go in much for killin'. But this war's stirred him up somethin' awful."

"Well, who wouldn't it?"

"Oh, I know that; an' I ain't sayin' as how it shouldn't. But that don't make it no easier for Daniel Burton to keep his feelin's hid from his son, particularly when it's that son that's made him have the feelin's, partly. There ain't no doubt but that one of the things that's made Daniel Burton so fidgety an' uneasy, an' ready to jest fling hisself into that ravin' conflict over there is his unhappiness an' disappointment over Keith. He had such big plans for that boy!"

"Yes, I know. We all have big plans for—our boys." Mrs. McGuire choked and turned away.

"An' girls, too, for that matter," hurried on Susan, with a quick glance into the other's face. "An' speakin' of girls, did you see Hattie Turner on the street last night?"

Dumbly Mrs. McGuire answered with a shake of her head. Her eyes had gone back to her son's face across the yard.

"Well, I did. Her Charlie's at Camp Devens, you know. They say he's invited to more places every Sunday than he can possibly accept; an' that he's petted an' praised an' made of everywhere he goes, an' tended right up to so's he won't get lonesome, or attend unquestionable entertainments. Well, that's all right an' good, of course, an' as it should be. But I wish somebody'd take up Charlie Turner's wife an' invite her to Sunday dinners an' take her to ride, an' see that she didn't attend unquestionable entertainments."

"Why, Susan Betts, what an idea!" protested Mrs. McGuire, suddenly sitting erect in her chair. "Hattie Turner isn't fightin' for her country."

"No, but her husband is," retorted Susan crisply. "An' she's fightin' for her honor an' her future peace an' happiness, an' she's doin' it all alone. She's pretty as a picture, an' nothin' but a child when he married her four months ago, an' we've took away her natural pervider an' entertainer, an' left her nothin' but her freedom for a ballast wheel. An' I say I wish some of the patriotic people who are jest showerin' every Charlie Turner with attentions would please sprinkle jest a few on Charlie's wife, to help keep her straight an' sweet an' honest for Charlie when he comes back."

"Hm-m, maybe," murmured Mrs. McGuire, rising wearily to her feet; "but there ain't many that thinks of that."

"There'll be more think of it by an' by—when it's too late," observed Susan succinctly, as she, too, rose from her chair.



CHAPTER XXVII

FOR THE SAKE OF JOHN

In due course Daniel Burton and his son Keith returned from the funeral of their kinswoman, Mrs. Nancy Holworthy.

The town, aware now of the stupendous change that had come to the fortunes of the Burton family, stared, gossiped, shook wise heads of prophecy, then passed on to the next sensation—which happened to be the return of four soldiers from across the seas; three crippled, one blinded.

At the Burton homestead the changes did not seem so stupendous, after all. True, Daniel Burton had abandoned the peddling of peas and beans across the counter, and had, at the earnest solicitation of his son, got out his easel and placed a fresh canvas upon it; but he obviously worked half-heartedly, and he still roamed the house after reading the evening paper, and spent even more time before the great war map on his studio wall.

True, also, disgruntled tradesmen no longer rang peremptory peals on the doorbell, and the postman's load of bills on the first of the month was perceptibly decreased. The dinner-table, too, bore evidence that a scanty purse no longer controlled the larder, but no new china or cut-glass graced the board, and Susan's longed-for bouillon spoons had never materialized. Locks and doors and sagging blinds had received prompt attention, and already the house was being prepared for a new coat of paint; but no startling alterations or improvements were promised by the evidence, and Keith was still to be seen almost daily on the McGuire back porch, as before, or on his own, with John McGuire.

It is no wonder, surely, that very soon the town ceased to stare and gossip, or even to shake wise heads of prophecy.

Nancy Holworthy's death was two months in the past when one day Keith came home from John McGuire's back porch in very evident excitement and agitation.

"Why, Keith, what's the matter? What IS the matter?" demanded Susan concernedly.

"Nothing. That is, I—I did not know I acted as if anything was the matter," stammered the youth.

"Well, you do. Now, tell me, what is it?"

"Nothing, nothing, Susan. Nothing you can help." Keith was pacing back and forth and up and down the living-room, not even using his cane to define the familiar limits of his pathway. Suddenly he turned and stopped short, his whole body quivering with emotion. "Susan, I can't! I can't—stand it," he moaned.

"I know, Keith. But, what is it—now?"

"John McGuire. He's been telling me how it is—over there. Why, Susan, I could see it—SEE it, I tell you, and, oh, I did so want to be there to help. He told me how they held it—the little clump of trees that meant so much to US, and how one by one they fell—those brave fellows with him. I could see it. I could hear it. I could hear the horrid din of the guns and shells, and the crash of falling trees about us; and the shouts and groans of the men at our side. And they needed men— more men—to take the place of those that had fallen. Even one man counted there—counted for, oh, so much!—for at the last there was just one man left—-John McGuire. And to hear him tell it—it was wonderful, wonderful!"

"I know, I know," nodded Susan. "It was like his letters—you could SEE things. He MADE you see 'em. An' that's what he always did—made you see things—even when he was a little boy. His mother told me. He wanted to write, you know. He was goin' to be a writer, before—this happened. An' now—-" The sentence trailed off into the silence unfinished.

"And to think of all that to-day being wasted on a blind baby tied to a picture puzzle," moaned Keith, resuming his nervous pacing of the room. "If only a man—a real man could have heard him—one that could go and do a man's work—! Why, Susan, that story, as he told it, would make a stone fight. I never heard anything like it. I never supposed there could be anything like that battle. He never talked like this, until to-day. Oh, he's told me a little, from time to time. But to- day, to-day, he just poured out his heart to me—ME!—and there are so many who need just that message to stir them from their smug complacency—men who could fight, and win: men who WOULD fight, and win, if only they could see and hear and know, as I saw and heard and knew this afternoon. And there it was, wasted, WASTED, worse than wasted on—me!"

Chokingly Keith turned away, but with a sudden cry Susan caught his arm.

"No, no, Keith, it wasn't wasted—you mustn't let it be wasted," she panted. "Listen! You want others to hear it—what you heard—don't you?"

"Why, y-yes, Susan; but—-"

"Then make 'em hear it," she interrupted. "You can—you can!"

"How?"

"Make him write it down, jest as he talks. He can—he wants to. He's always wanted to. Then publish it in a book, so everybody can see it and hear it, as you did."

"Oh, Susan, if we only could!" A dawning hope had come into Keith Burton's face, but almost at once it faded into gray disappointment. "We couldn't do it, though, Susan. He couldn't do it. You know he can't write at all. He's only begun to practice a little bit. He'd never get it down, with the fire and the vim in it, learning to write as he'd have to. What do you suppose Lincoln's Gettysburg Speech would have been if he'd had to stop to learn how to spell and to write each word before he could put it down?"

"I know, I know," nodded Susan. "It's that way with me in my poetry. I jest HAVE to get right ahead while the fuse burns, an' spell 'em somehow, anyhow, so's to get 'em down while I'm in the fit of it. He couldn't do it. I can see that now. But, Keith, couldn't YOU do it?— take it down, I mean, as he talked, like a stylographer?"

Keith shook his head.

"I wish I could. But I couldn't, I know I couldn't. I couldn't begin to do it fast enough to keep up with him, and 't would spoil it all to have to ask him to slow down. When a man's got a couple of Huns coming straight for him, and he knows he's got to get 'em both at once, you can't very well sing out: 'Here, wait—wait a minute till I get that last sentence down!'"

"I know, I know," nodded Susan again. She paused, drew a long sigh, and turned her eyes out the window. Up the walk was coming Daniel Burton. His step was slow, his head was bowed. He looked like anything but the happy possessor of new wealth. Susan frowned as she watched him.

"I wish your father—-" she began. Suddenly she stopped. A new light had leaped to her eyes. "Keith, Keith," she cried eagerly. "I have it! Your father—he could do it—I know he could!"

"Do what?"

"Take down John McGuire's story. Couldn't he do it?"

"Why, y-yes, he could, I think," hesitated Keith doubtfully. "He doesn't know shorthand, but he—he's got eyes" (Keith's voice broke a little) "and he could SEE what he was doing, and he could take down enough of it so he could patch it up afterwards, I'm sure. But Susan, John McGuire wouldn't TELL it to HIM. Don't you see? He won't even see anybody but me, and he didn't talk like this even to me until to-day. How's dad going to hear it to write it down? Tell me that?"

"But he could overhear it, Keith. No, no, don't look like that," she protested hurriedly, as Keith began to frown. "Jest listen a minute. It would be jest as easy. He could be over on the grass right close, where he could hear every word; an' you could get John to talkin', an' as soon as he got really started on a story your father could begin to write, an' John wouldn't know a thing about it; an'—"

"Yes, you're quite right—John wouldn't know a thing about it," broke in Keith, with a passion so sudden and bitter that Susan fell back in dismay.

"Why, Keith!" she exclaimed, her startled eyes on his quivering face.

"I wonder if you think I'd do it!" he demanded. "I wonder if you really think I'd cheat that poor fellow into talking to me just because he hadn't eyes to see that I wasn't the only one in his audience!"

"But, Keith, he wouldn't mind; he wouldn't mind a bit," urged Susan, "if he didn't know an'—"

"Oh, no, he wouldn't mind being cheated and deceived and made a fool of, just because he couldn't see!"

"No, he wouldn't mind," persisted Susan stoutly. "It wouldn't be a mean listenin', nor sneak listenin'. It wouldn't be listenin' to things he didn't want us to hear. He'd be glad, after it was all done, an'—"

"Would he!" choked Keith, still more bitterly. "Maybe you think I was glad after it was all done, and I found I'd been fooled and cheated into thinking the girl that was reading and talking to me and playing games with me was a girl I had never known before—a girl who was what she pretended to be, a new friend doing it all because she wanted to, because she liked to."

"But, Keith, I'm sure that Dorothy liked—"

"There, there, Susan," interposed Keith, with quickly uplifted hand. "We'll not discuss it, please, Yes, I know, I began the subject myself, and it was my fault; but when I heard you say John McGuire would be glad when he found out how we'd lied to his poor blind eyes, I—I just couldn't hold it in. I had to say something. But never mind that now, Susan; only you'll—you'll have to understand I mean what I say. There's no letting dad copy that story on the sly."

"But there's a way, there must be a way," argued Susan feverishly. "Only think what it would mean to that boy if we could get him started to writin' books—what he's wanted to do all his life. Oh, Keith, why, he'd even forget his eyes then."

"It would—help some." Keith drew in his breath and held it a moment suspended. "And he'd even be helping us to win out—over there; for if we could get that story of his on paper as he told it to me, the fellow that reads it wouldn't need any recruiting station to send him over there. If there was only a way that father could—"

"There is, an' we'll find it," interposed Susan eagerly. "I know we will. An' Keith, it's goin' to be 'most as good for him as it is for John McGuire. He's nervous as a witch since he quit his job."

"I know." A swift cloud crossed the boy's face. "But 'twasn't giving up his job that's made him nervous, Susan, as you and I both know very well. However, we'll see. And you may be sure if there is a way I'll find it, Susan," he finished a bit wearily, as he turned to go upstairs.



CHAPTER XXVIII

THE WAY

Keith was still looking for "the way," when October came, bringing crisp days and chilly winds. When not too cold, the boys still sat out of doors. When it was too cold, John McGuire did not appear at all on his back porch, and Keith did not have the courage to make a bold advance to the McGuire door and ask admittance. There came a day, however, when a cold east wind came up after they were well established in their porch chairs for the morning. They were on the Burton porch this time, and Keith suddenly determined to take the bull by the horns.

"Brrr! but it's cold this morning," he shivered blithely. "What say you? Let's go in. Come on." And without waiting for acquiescence, he caught John McGuire's arm in his own and half pulled him to his feet. Before John McGuire knew then quite what was happening, he found himself in the house.

"No, no!—that is, I—I think I'd better be going home," he stammered.

But Keith Burton did not seem even to hear.

"Say, just try your hand at this puzzle," he was saying gayly. "I gave it up, and I'll bet you'll have to," he finished, thrusting a pasteboard box into his visitor's hands and nicely adjudging the distance a small table must be pushed in order to bring it conveniently in front of John McGuire's chair.

The quick tightening of John McGuire's lips and the proud lifting of his chin told that Keith's challenge had been accepted even before the laconic answer came.

"Oh, you do, do you? Well, we'll see whether I'll have to give it up or not."

John McGuire loved picture puzzles, as Keith Burton well knew.

It was easy after that. Keith took it so unhesitatingly for granted that they were to go indoors when it was cold that John McGuire found it difficult to object; and it was not long before the two boys were going back and forth between the two houses with almost as much ease as if their feet had been guided by the eye instead of by the tap of a slender stick.

John McGuire was learning a great deal from Keith these days, though it is doubtful if he realized it. It is doubtful, also, if he realized how constantly he was being made to talk of the war and of his experience in it. But Keith realized it. Keith was not looking for "the way" now. He believed he had found it; and there came a day when he deemed the time had come to try to carry it out.

They were in his own home living-room. It had been a wonderful story that John McGuire had told that day of a daring excursion into No Man's Land, and what came of it. Upstairs in the studio Daniel Burton was sitting alone, as Keith knew. Keith drew a long breath and made the plunge. Springing to his feet he turned toward the door that led into the hall.

"McGuire, that was a bully story—a corking good story. I want dad to hear it. Wait, I'll get him." And he was out of the room with the door fast closed behind him before John McGuire could so much as draw a breath.

Upstairs, Daniel Burton, already in the secret, heard Keith's eager summons and came at once. For some days he had been expecting just such an urgent call from Keith's lips. He knew too much to delay. He was down the stairs and at Keith's side in an incredibly short time. Then together they pushed open the door and entered the living-room.

John McGuire was on his feet. Very plainly he was intending to go home, and at once. But Daniel Burton paid no attention to that. He came straight toward him and took his hand.

"I call this mighty good of you, McGuire," he said. "My boy here has been raving about your stories of the war until I'm fairly green with envy. Now I'm to hear a bit of them myself, he says. I wish you would tell me some of your experiences, my lad. You know a chance like this is a real god-send to us poor stay-at-homes. Now fire away! I'm ready."

But John McGuire was not ready. True, he sat down—but not until after a confused "No, no, I must go home—that is, really, they're not worth repeating—those stories." And he would not talk at all—at first.

Daniel Burton talked, however. He talked of wars in general and of the Civil War in particular; and he told the stories of Antietam and Gettysburg as they had been told to him by his father. Then from Gettysburg he jumped to Flanders, and talked of aeroplanes, and gas- masks, and tanks, and trenches, and dugouts.

Little by little then John McGuire began to talk—sometimes a whole sentence, sometimes only a word or two. But there was no fire, no enthusiasm, no impetuous rush of words that brought the very din of battle to their ears. And not once did Daniel Burton thrust his fingers into his pocket for his pencil and notebook. Yet, when it was all over, and John McGuire had gone home, Keith dropped into his chair with a happy sigh.

"It wasn't much, dad, I know," he admitted, "but it was something. It was a beginning, and a beginning is something—with John McGuire."

And it was something; for the next time Daniel Burton entered the room, John McGuire did not even start from his chair. He gave a faint smile of welcome, too, and he talked sooner, and talked more—though there was little of war talk; and for the second time Daniel Burton did not reach for his pencil.

But the third time he did. A question, a comment, a chance word— neither Keith nor his father could have told afterward what started it. They knew only that a sudden light as of a flame leaped into John McGuire's face—and he was back in the trenches of France and carrying them with him.

At the second sentence Daniel Burton's fingers were in his pocket, and at the third his pencil was racing over the paper at breakneck speed. There was no pause then, no time for thought, no time for careful forming of words and letters. There was only the breakneck race between a bit of lead and an impassioned tongue; and when it was all over, there were only a well-nigh hopeless-looking mass of hieroglyphics in Daniel Burton's notebook—and the sweat of spent excitement on the brows of two youths and a man.

"Gee! we got it that time!" breathed Keith, after John McGuire had gone home.

"Yes; only I was wondering if I had really—got it," murmured Daniel Burton, eyeing a bit ruefully the confused mass of words and letters in his notebook. "Still, I reckon I can dig it out all right—if I do it right away," he finished confidently. And he did dig it out before he slept that night.

If Daniel Burton and his son Keith thought the thing was done, and it was going to be easy sailing thereafter, they found themselves greatly mistaken. John McGuire scarcely said five sentences about the war the next time they were together, though Daniel Burton had his pencil poised expectantly from the start. He said only a little more the next time, and the next; and Daniel Burton pocketed his pencil in despair. Then came a day when a chance word about a new air raid reported in the morning paper acted like a match to gunpowder, and sent John McGuire off into a rapid-fire story that whipped Daniel Burton's pencil from his pocket and set it to racing again at breakneck speed to keep up with him.

It was easier after that. Still, every day it was like a game of hide- and-seek, with Daniel Burton and his pencil ever in pursuit, and with now and then a casual comment or a tactful question to lure the hiding story out into the open. Little by little, as the frank comradeship of Daniel Burton won its way, John McGuire was led to talk more and more freely; and by Christmas the eager scribe was in possession of a very complete record of John McGuire's war experiences, dating even from the early days of his enlistment.

Day by day, as he had taken down the rough notes, Daniel Burton had followed it up with a careful untangling and copying before he had had a chance to forget, or to lose the wonderful glow born of the impassioned telling. Then, from time to time he had sorted the notes and arranged them in proper sequence, until now he had a complete story, logical and well-rounded.

It was on Christmas Day that he read the manuscript to Keith. At its conclusion Keith drew a long, tremulous breath.

"Dad, it's wonderful!" he exclaimed. "How did you do it?"

"You know. You heard yourself."

"Yes; but to copy it like that—! Why, I could hear him tell it as you read it, dad. I could HEAR him."

"Could you, really? I'm glad. That makes me know I've succeeded. Now for a publisher!"

"You wouldn't publish it without his—knowing?"

"Certainly not. But I'm going to let a publisher see it, before he knows."

"Y-yes, perhaps."

"Why, Keith, I'd have to do that. Do you suppose I'd run the risk of its being turned down, and then have to tell that boy that he couldn't have the book, after all?"

"No, no, I suppose not. But—it isn't going to be turned down, dad. Such a wonderful thing can't be turned down."

"Hm-m; perhaps not." Daniel Burton's lips came together a bit grimly. "But—there ARE wonderful things that won't sell, you know. However," he finished with brisk cheerfulness, "this isn't one of my pictures, nor a bit of Susan's free verse; so there's some hope, I guess. Anyhow, we'll see—but we won't tell John until we do see."

"All right. I suppose that would be best," sighed Keith, still a little doubtfully.

They had not long to wait, after all. In a remarkably short time came back word from the publishers. Most emphatically they wanted the book, and they wanted it right away. Moreover, the royalty they offered was so good that it sent Daniel Burton down the stairs two steps at a time like a boy, in his eagerness to reach Keith with the good news.

"And now for John!" he cried excitedly, as soon as Keith's joyous exclamations over the news were uttered. "Come, let's go across now."

"But, dad, how—how are you going to tell him?" Keith was holding back a little.

"Tell him! I'm just going to tell him," laughed the man. "That's easy."

"I know; but—but—-" Keith wet his lips and started again. "You see, dad, he didn't know we were taking notes of his stories. He couldn't see us. We—we took advantage of—-"

But Daniel Burton would not even listen.

"Shucks and nonsense, Keith!" he cried. Then a little grimly he added: "I only wish somebody'd take advantage like that of me, and sell a picture or two when I'm not looking. Come, we're keeping John waiting." And he took firm hold of his son's arm.

Yet in the McGuire living-room, in the presence of John McGuire himself, he talked fully five minutes of nothing in particular, before he said:

"Well, John, I've got some good news for you."

"GOOD news?"

"That's what I'd call it. I—er—hear you're going to have a book out in the spring."

"I'm going to—WHAT?"

"Have a book out—war stories. They were too good to keep to ourselves, John, so I jotted them down as you told them, and last week I sent them off to a publisher."

"A—a real publisher?" The boy's voice shook. Every trace of color had drained from his face.

"You bet your life—and one of the biggest in the country." Daniel Burton's own voice was shaking. He had turned his eyes away from John McGuire's face.

"And they'll—print it?"

"Just as soon as ever you'll sign the contract. And, by the way, that contract happens to be a mighty good one, for a first book, my boy."

John McGuire drew a long breath. The color was slowly coming back to his face.

"But I can't seem to quite—believe it," he faltered.

"Nonsense! Simplest thing in the world," insisted Daniel Burton brusquely. "They saw the stories, liked them, and are going to publish them. That's all."

"All! ALL!" The blind boy was on his feet, his face working with emotion. "When all my life I've dreamed and dreamed and longed for—-" He stopped short and sat down. He had the embarrassed air the habitually reserved person usually displays when caught red-handed making a "scene." He gave a confused laugh. "I was only thinking—what a way. You see—I'd always wanted to be a writer, but I'd given it up long ago. I had my living to earn, and I knew I couldn't earn it—that way—not at first. I used to say I'd give anything if I could write a book; and I was just wondering if—if I'd been willing then to have given—my eyes!"



CHAPTER XXIX

DOROTHY TRIES HER HAND

It was on a mild day early in February that Susan met Dorothy Parkman on the street. She stopped her at once.

"Well, if I ain't glad to see you!" she cried. "I didn't know you'd got back."

"I haven't been back long, Susan."

"You hain't been over to see us once, Miss Dorothy," Susan reproached her.

"I—I have been very busy." Miss Dorothy seemed ill at ease, and anxious to get away.

"An' you didn't come for a long, long time when you was here last fall." Susan had laid a detaining hand on the girl's arm now.

"Didn't I?" Miss Dorothy smiled brightly. "Well, perhaps I didn't. But you didn't need me, anyway. I've heard all about it—the splendid work Mr. Burton and his son have done for John McGuire. And I'm so glad."

"Oh, yes, that's all right." Susan spoke without enthusiasm.

"And the book is going to be published?"

"Yes, oh, yes." Susan still spoke with a preoccupied frown.

"Why, Susan, what's the matter? I thought you'd be glad."

Susan drew a long sigh.

"I am glad, Miss Dorothy. I'm awful glad—for John McGuire. They say it's wonderful, the change in him already. He's so proud an' happy to think he's done it—not sinfully proud, you understand, but just humbly proud an' glad. An' his ma says he's writin' other things now— poems an' stories, an' he's as happy as a lark all day. An' I'm awful glad. But it's Keith hisself that I'm thinkin' of. You see, only yesterday I found him—cryin'."

"Crying!" Miss Dorothy seemed to have forgotten all about her haste to get away. She had Susan's arm in HER grasp now. She had pulled her to one side, too, where they could have a little sheltered place to talk, in the angle of two store windows.

"Yes, cryin'. You see, 't was like this," hurried on Susan. "Mis' McGuire was over, an' I'd been readin' a new poem to her an' him. 'T was a real pretty one, too, if I do say it as shouldn't—the best I ever done; all about how fame an' beauty an' pleasure didn't count nothin' beside workin'. I got the idea out of something I found in a magazine. 'T was jest grand; an' it give me the perspiration right away to turn it into a poem. An' I did. An' 't was that I was readin'. I'd jest got it done that mornin'."

"Yes, yes," nodded Miss Dorothy. "I see."

"Well, I never thought of its meanin' anything to Keith, or of his takin' it nohow wrong; but after Mis' McGuire had gone home (she came out an' set with me a spell first in the kitchen) I heard a queer little noise in the settin'-room, an' I went an' looked in. Keith was at the table, his arms flung straight out in front of him, an' his head bowed down. An', Miss Dorothy, he was cryin' like a baby."

"Oh, Susan, what did you do? What did you say?"

"Say? Nothin'!" Susan's eyes flashed her scorn. "Do you s'pose I'd let that poor lamb know I see him cryin'? Well, I guess not! I backed out as soft as a feather bed, an' I didn't go near that settin'-room for an hour, nor let any one else. I was a regular dragon-fly guardin' it. Well, by an' by Keith comes out. His face was white an' strained- lookin'. But he was smiling, an' he handed out my poem—I'd left it on the table when I come out with Mis' McGuire. 'I found this paper on the table, Susan. It's your poem, isn't it?' he says real cheerful- like. Then he turns kind of quick an' leaves the room without another word.

"Well, I didn't know then that't was the poem he'd been cryin' over. I didn't know—till this mornin'. Then somethin' he said made me see right off."

"Why, Susan, what was it?"

"It was somethin' about—work. But first you wouldn't understand it, unless you see the poem. An' I can show it to you, 'cause I've got it right here. I'm tryin' to memorialize it, so I keep it with me all the time, an' repeat one line over an' over till I get it. It's right here in my bag. You'll find it's the best I've wrote, Miss Dorothy; I'm sure you will," she went on a bit wistfully. "You see I used a lot of the words that was in the magazine—not that I pleasurized it any, of course. Mine's different, 'cause mine is poetry an' theirs is prosy. There! I guess maybe you can read it, even if't is my writin'," she finished, taking a sheet of note-paper from her bag and carefully spreading it out for Miss Dorothy to read.

And this is what Dorothy read:

CONTENTMENT

Wealth I asked for the earth—but when in my hands It shriveled and crumbled away; And the green of its trees and the blue of its skies Changed to a somber gray.

Beauty I asked for the moon—but the shimmering thing Was only reflected gold, And vanished away at my glance and touch, And was then but a tale that is told.

Pleasure I asked for the stars—and lots of them came, And twinkled and danced for me; But the whirling lights soon wearied my gaze— I squenched their flame in the sea.

Fame I asked for the sun!—but the fiery ball, Brought down from its home on high, Scorched and blistered my finger tips, As I swirled it back to the sky.

Labor I asked for a hoe, and I set me to work, And my red blood danced as I went: At night I rested, and looking back, I counted my day well spent.

"But, Susan, I don't see," began Miss Dorothy, lifting puzzled eyes from the last line of the poem, "I don't see what there is about that to make Mr. Keith—cry."

"No, I didn't, till this mornin'; an' then—Well, Keith came out into the kitchen an' begun one of them tramps of his up an' down the room. It always drives me nearly crazy when he does that, but I can't say anything, of course. I did begin this mornin' to talk about John McGuire an' how fine it was he'd got somethin' he could do. I thought't would take the poor boy's mind off hisself, if I could get him talkin' about John McGuire—-he's been SO interested in John all winter! An' so glad he could help him. You know he's always so wanted to HELP somebody hisself instead of always havin' somebody helpin' him. But, dear me, instead of its bein' a quieter now for him, it was a regular stirrup.

"'That's just it, that's just it, Susan,' he moans. 'You've got to have work or you die. There's nothin' in the whole world like work— YOUR WORK! John McGuire's got his work, an' I'm glad of it. But where's mine? Where's mine, I tell you?'

"An' I told him he'd jest been havin' his work, helpin' John McGuire. You know it was wonderful, perfectly wonderful, Miss Dorothy, the way them two men got hold of John McGuire. You know John wouldn't speak to anybody, not anybody, till Keith an' his father found some way to get on the inside of his shell. An' Keith's been so happy all winter doin' it; an' his father, too. So I tried to remind him that he'd been doin' his work.

"But it didn't do no good. Keith said that was all very well, an' he was glad, of course; but that was only a little bit of a thing, an' 't was all past an' gone, an' John didn't need 'em any more, an' there wasn't anything left for him now at all. Oh, Miss Dorothy, he talked awfully. I never heard him run on so. An' I knew, from a lot of it that he said, that he was thinkin' of that poem—he wouldn't ask for wealth or beauty or fame, or anything, an' that there didn't anything count but labor. You see?"

"Yes, I—see." Miss Dorothy's voice was very low. Her face was turned quite away, yet Susan was very sure that there were tears in her eyes.

"An' his father!—he's 'most as bad as Keith," sighed Susan. "They're both as nervous as witches, what with the war an' all, an' they not bein' able to do anything. Oh, they do give money—lots of it—Liberty Bonds an' Red Cross, an' drives, of course. You knew they'd got it now—their money, didn't you, Miss Dorothy?"

"Yes, I had heard so."

"Not that it seems to do 'em any particular good," complained Susan wistfully. "Oh, of course things ain't so—so ambiguous as they was, an' we have more to eat an' wear, an' don't have to worry about bills. But they ain't any happier, as I can see. If only Keith could find somethin'—"

"Yes, I know," sighed Miss Dorothy again, as she turned slowly away. "I wish he—could."

"Well, come to see us, won't you?" urged Susan anxiously. "That'll help some—it'll help a lot."

But Miss Dorothy did not seem to have heard. At least she did not answer. Yet not twenty-four hours later she was ringing the Burtons' doorbell.

"No, no—not there! I want to see YOU," she panted a little breathlessly, when Susan would have led the way to the living-room.

"But Keith would be so glad—" begged Susan.

"No, no! I particularly don't want him to know I am here," insisted Dorothy.

And without further ado, but with rebellious lips and eyes, Susan led the way to the kitchen.

"Susan, I have a scheme, I think, that may help out Mr. Keith," began the young girl abruptly. "I'll have to begin by telling you something of what I've seen during these last two or three months, while I've been away. A Mr. Wilson, an old college friend of my father's, has been taking a lot of interest in the blind—especially since the war. He got to thinking of the blinded soldiers and wishing he could help them. He had seen some of them in Canada, and talked with them. What he thought of first for them was brooms, and basket-weaving and chair- caning, same as everybody does. But he found they had a perfect horror of those things. They said nobody bought such things except out of pity—they'd rather have the machine-made kind. And these men didn't want things bought of them out of pity. You see, they were big, well, strong, young fellows, like John McGuire here; and they were groping around, trying to find a way to live all those long years of darkness that they knew were ahead of them. They didn't have any especial talent. But they wanted to work,—do something that was necessary—not be charity folks, as they called it."

"I know," responded Susan sympathetically.

"Well, this Mr. Wilson is at the head of a big electrical machinery manufacturing company near Chicago, like Mr. Sanborn's here, you know. And suddenly one day it came to him that he had the very thing right in his own shop—a necessary kind of work that the blind could be taught to do."

"My lan', what was it? Think of blind folks goin' to work in a big shop like Tom Sanborn's!"

"I know it. But there was something. It was wrapping the coils of wire with tape. Mr. Wilson said they used hundreds of thousands of these coils all the time, and they had to be wrapped to insulate them. It was this work that he believed the blind could learn to do. Anyhow, he determined to try it. And try it he did. He sent for those soldiers he had talked with in Canada, and he took two or three of father's patients, and opened a little winding-room with a good electrical engineer in charge. And, do you know? it was wonderful, the way those poor fellows took hold of that work! Why, they got really skillful in no time, and they learned to do it swiftly, too."

"My lan'!" breathed Susan again.

"They did. He took me in to see them one day. It was just a big room on the ground floor of an office building. He didn't put them in his shop. He said he wanted to keep them separate, for the present, anyway. It had two or three long tables, and the superintendent moved up and down the room overseeing their work, and helping where it was necessary. There was a new man that morning, and it was perfectly wonderful how he took hold of it. And they were all so happy, laughing and talking, and having the best time ever; but they sobered up real earnest when Mr. Wilson introduced one or two of them to me. One man in particular—he was one of the soldiers, a splendid, great, blond fellow six feet tall, and only twenty-one—told me what this work meant to them; how glad they were to feel of real use in the world. Then his face flushed, and his shoulders straightened a bit. 'And we're even helping a little to win the war,' he said, 'for these coils we are winding now are for some armatures to go in some big motors that are going to be used in making munitions. So you see, we are helping—a little.' Bless his heart! He didn't know how much he was helping every one, just by his big, brave courage.

"Well, Susan, all this gave me an idea, after what you said yesterday about Mr. Keith. And I wondered—why couldn't he wind coils, too? And maybe he'd get others to do it also. So I went to Mr. Sanborn, and he's perfectly willing to let us give it a trial. He's pleased and interested, and says he will furnish everything for the experiment, including a first-class engineer to superintend; only he can't spend any time over it himself, and we'll have to get somebody else to take charge and make arrangements, about the place, and the starting of it, and all that. And, Susan, now comes my second idea. Could we—do you suppose we could get Mr. Daniel Burton to take charge of it?"

"Oh, Miss Dorothy, if we only could!"

"It would be so fine for Mr. Keith, and for all the others. I've been hearing everywhere how wonderfully he got hold of John McGuire."

"He did, he did," cried Susan, "an' he was like a different man all the time he was doin' it. He hain't had no use for his paintin' lately, an' he's been so uneasy. I'm sure he'll do it, if you ask him."

"Good! Then I will. Is—is he at home to-day?"

"Yes, he's upstairs. I'll call him." Susan sprang to her feet with alacrity.

"But, Susan, just a minute!" Miss Dorothy had put out a detaining hand. "Is—is Mr. Keith here, too?"

"Yes, both of 'em. Keith is in the settin'-room an' I'll call his father down. 'T won't take but jest a minute." Susan was plainly chafing at the detaining hand.

"No, no, Susan!" Miss Dorothy, too, had sprung to her feet. "If—if Mr. Keith is here I'll wait. I want to see Mr. Daniel Burton first— er—alone: to—to tell him about it, you know," she added hastily, as Susan began to frown her disappointment.

"But I don't see why," argued Susan, her disapproving eyes on the girl's flushed cheeks. "I should think you'd want to talk it up with both of 'em."

"Yes, yes, of course; but not—not at first," stammered Miss Dorothy, plainly growing more and more embarrassed as she tried to appear less so. "I would rather—er—that is, I think it would be better to ask Mr. Daniel Burton first, and then after we get it well started let him tell his son. So I'll come to-morrow in the morning—at ten. Mr. Keith is with Mr. John McGuire, then, isn't he? And over at his house? I heard he was."

"Yes, he is, most generally."

"Then I'll come then. If—if you'll tell Mr. Daniel Burton, please," hurried on Miss Dorothy, "and ask him to see me. And please, PLEASE keep it from Mr. Keith, Susan. Truly, I don't want him to know a thing about it till his father and I have—have got it all fixed up," she finished.