From this one and that one, and now and then from her herself, I had heard something of Calliope's love story. Indeed, all Friendship knew it and spoke of it with no possibility of gossip or speculation, but with a kind of genius for consideration. I did not know, however, that it was of this that Liddy meant to speak, for she began her story far afield, with some talk of Oldmoxon house, in which I lived, and of its former tenants.

"Right here in this house is mixed up in it," she said; "I been thinkin' about it all the way up. Not very many have lived here in the Oldmoxon house, and the folks that lived here the year I mean come so quiet nobody knew it until they was here—an' that ain't easy to do in Friendship. First we knew they was in an' housekeepin'. Their accounts was in the name of a Mis' Morgan. We see her now an' then on the street—trim an' elderly an' no airs excep' she wouldn't open up a conversation an' she wouldn't return her calls. 'Most everybody called on her inside the two weeks, but the woman was never home an' she never paid any attention. She didn't seem to have no men folks, an' she settled her bills with checks, like she didn't have any ready money. Little by little we all dropped her, which she ought to of expected. Even when it got around that there was sickness in the house, nobody went near, we feelin' as if we knew as good as the best what dignity calls for.

"But Calliope didn't feel the same about it. Calliope hardly ever felt the same about anything. That is, if it meant feelin' mean. She was a woman that worked, like me, but yet she was wonderful differ'nt. That was when we had our shop together in the house where we lived with the boy—I'll come to him in a minute or two. Besides lace-makin', Calliope had a piano an' taught in the fittin'-room—that was the same as the dinin'-room. Six scholars took. Sometimes I think it was her knowin' music that made her differ'nt.

"We two was sittin' on our porch that night in the first dark. I know a full moon was up back o' the hollyhocks an' makin' its odd little shadows up an' down the yard, an' we could smell the savoury bed. 'Every time I breathe in, somethin' pleasant seems goin' on inside my head,' I rec'lect Calliope's sayin'. But most o' the time we was still an' set watchin' the house on the corner where the New People lived. They had a hard French name an' so we kep' on callin' 'em just the 'New People.' He was youngish an' she was younger an'—she wasn't goin' out anywheres that summer. She was settin' on the porch that night waitin' for him to come home. Before it got dark we'd noticed she had on a pretty white dress an' a flower or two. It seemed sort o' nice—that bein' so, an' her waitin' there dressed so pretty. An' we sort o' set there waitin' for him, too—like you will, you know.

"The boy was in the bed. He wa'n't no relation of Calliope's if you're as strict as some, but accordin' to my idea he was closer than that—closer than kin. He was the grandchild of the man Calliope had been goin' to marry forty-some years before, when she was twenty-odd. Calvert Oldmoxon he was—born an' bred up in this very house. He was quite well off an'—barrin' he was always heathen selfish—it was a splendid match for Calliope, but I never see a girl care so next to nothin' about that. She was sheer crazy about him, an' he seemed just as much so about her. An' then when everything was ready—Calliope's dress done an' layin' on their best-room bed, the minister stayin' home from conference to perform the ceremony, even the white cake made—off goes Calvert Oldmoxon with Martha Boughton, a little high-fly that had just moved to town. A new girl can marry anything she wants in Friendship if she does it quick. So Calliope had to put up from Martha Boughton with just what Jennie Crapwell had to take from Delia, more'n twenty-five years afterwards.

"It was near thirty years before we see either of 'em again. Then, just a little before I'm tellin' you about, a strange woman come here to town one night with a little boy; an' she goes to the hotel, sick, an' sends for Calliope. An' when Calliope gets to the hotel the woman was about breathin' her last. An' it was Mis' Oldmoxon—Martha Boughton, if you please, an' dyin' on the trip she'd made to ask Calliope to forgive her for what she done.

"An' Calliope forgive her, but I don't imagine Calliope was thinkin' much about her at the time. Hangin' round the bed was a little boy—the livin', breathin' image of Calvert Oldmoxon himself. Calliope was mad-daft over children anyway, though she was always kind o' shy o' showin' it, like a good many women are that ain't married. I've seen her pick one up an' gentle it close to her, but let anybody besides me come in the room an' see her an' she'd turn a regular guilt-red. Calliope never was one to let on. But I s'pose seein' that little boy there at the hotel look so much like him was kind o' unbalancin'. So what does she do when Mis' Oldmoxon was cryin' about forgiveness but up an' ask her what was goin' to be done with the boy after she was dead. Calliope would be one to bring the word 'dead' right out, too, an' let the room ring with it—though that ain't the custom in society. Now'days they lie everybody 'way into the grave, givin' 'em to understand that their recovery is certain, till there must be a lots o' dumfounded dead, shot into the next world—you might say unbeknownst. But Calliope wasn't mincin' matters. An' when it come out that the dyin' woman hadn't seen Calvert Oldmoxon for thirty years an' didn't know where he was, an' that the child was an orphan an' would go to collateral kin or some such folks, Calliope plumps out to her to give her the child. The forgiveness Calliope sort o' took for granted—like you will as you get older. An' Mis' Oldmoxon seemed real willin' she should have him. So when Calliope come home from the funeral—she'd rode alone with the little boy for mourners—she just went to work an' lived for that child.

"'"In the wilderness the cedar," Liddy,' she says to me. 'More than one of 'em. I've had 'em right along. My music scholars an' my lace-makin' customers an' all. An', Liddy,' she says to me sort o' shy, 'ain't you noticed,' she says, 'how many neighbours we've had move in an out that's had children? So many o' the little things right around us! Seems like they'd almost been born to me when they come acrost the street, so. An' I've always thought o' that—"In the wilderness the cedar"' she says, 'an' they's always somethin' to be a cedar for me, seems though.'

"'Well,' says I, sort o' sceptical, 'mebbe that's because you always plant 'em,' I says. 'I think it means that, too,' I told her. An' I knew well enough Calliope was one to plant her cedars herself. Cedars o' comfort, you know.

"I've seen a good many kinds o' mother-love—you do when you go round to houses like I do. But I never see anything like Calliope. Seems though she breathed that child for air. She always was one to pretend to herself, an' I knew well enough she'd figured it out as if this was their child that might 'a' been, long ago. She sort o' played mother—like you will; an' she lived her play. He was a real sweet little fellow, too. He was one o' them big-eyed kind that don't laugh easy, an' he was well-spoken, an' wonderful self-settled for a child o' seven. He was always findin' time for you when you thought he was doin' somethin' else—slidin' up to you an' puttin' up his hand in yours when you thought he was playin' or asleep. An' that was what he done that night when we set on the porch—comes slippin' out of his little bed an' sets down between us on the top step, in his little night-things.

"'Calvert, honey,' Calliope says, 'you must run back an' play dreams. Mother wants you to.'

"She'd taught him to call her mother—she'd had him about six months then—an' some thought that was queer to do, seein' Calliope was her age an' all. But I thought it was wonderful right.

"'I did play,' he says to her—he had a nice little way o' pressin' down hard with his voice on one word an' lettin' the next run off his tongue—'I did play dreams,' I rec'lect he says; 'I dreamed 'bout robbers. Ain't robbers distinct?' he says.

"I didn't know what he meant till Calliope laughs an' says, 'Oh, distinctly extinct!' I remembered it by the way the words kind o' crackled.

"By then he was lookin' up to the stars—his little mind always lit here an' there, like a grasshopper.

"'How can heaven begin,' he says, 'till everybody gets there?'

"Yes, he was a dear little chap. I like to think about him. An' I know when he says that, Calliope just put her arms around him, an' her head down, an' set sort o' rockin' back an' forth. An' she says:—

"'Oh, but I think it begins when we don't know.'

"After a while she took him back to bed, little round face lookin' over her shoulder an' big, wide-apart, lonesome eyes an' little sort o' crooked frown, for all the world like the other Calvert Oldmoxon. Just as she come out an' set down again, we heard the click o' the gate acrost at the corner house where the New People lived, an' it was the New Husband got home. We see his wife's white dress get up to meet him, an' they went in the house together, an' we see 'em standin' by the lamp, lookin' at things. Seems though the whole night was sort o'—gentle.

"All of a sudden Calliope unties her apron.

"'Let's dress up,' she says.

"'Dress up!' I says, laughin' some. 'Why, it must be goin' on half-past eight,' I told her.

"'I don't care if it is,' she says; 'I'm goin' to dress up. It seems as though I must.'

"She went inside, an' I followed her. Calliope an' I hadn't no men folks to dress for, but, bein' dressmakers an' lace folks, we had good things to wear. She put on the best thin dress she had—a gray book-muslin; an' I took down a black lawn o' mine. It was such a beautiful night that I 'most knew what she meant. Sometimes you can't do much but fit yourself in the scenery. But I always thought Calliope fit in no matter what she had on. She was so little an' rosy, an' she always kep' her head up like she was singin'.

"'Now what?' I says. For when you dress up, you can't set home. An' then she says slow—an' you could 'a' knocked me over while I listened:—

"'I've been thinkin',' she says, 'that we ought to go up to Oldmoxon house an see that sick person.'

"'Calliope!' I says, 'for the land. You don't want to be refused in!'

"'I don't know as I do an' I don't know but I do,' she answers me. 'I feel like I wanted to be doin' somethin'.'

"With that she out in the kitchen an' begins to fill a basket. Calliope's music didn't prevent her cookin' good, as it does some. She put in I don't know what all good, an' she had me pick some hollyhocks to take along. An' before I knew it, I was out on Daphne Street in the moonlight headin' for Oldmoxon house here that no foot in Friendship had stepped or set inside of in 'most six months.

"'They won't let us in,' I says, pos'tive.

"'Well,' Calliope says, 'seems though I'd like to walk up there a night like this, anyway.'

"An' I wasn't the one to stop her, bein' I sort o' guessed that what started her off was the New People. Those two livin' so near by—lookin' forward to what they was lookin' forward to—so soon after the boy had come to Calliope, an' all, had took hold of her terrible. She'd spent hours handmakin' the little baby-bonnet she was goin' to give 'em. An' then mebbe it was the night some, too, that made her want to come up around this house—because you could 'most 'a' cut the moonlight with a knife.

"They wa'n't any light in the big hall here when we rung the bell, but they lit up an' let us in. Yes, they actually let us in. Mis' Morgan come to the door herself.

"'Come right in,' she says, cordial. 'Come right upstairs.'

"Calliope says somethin' about our bein' glad they could see us.

"'Oh,' says Mis' Morgan, 'I had orders quite a while ago to let in whoever asked. An' you're the first,' she says. 'You're the first.'

"An' then it come to us that this Mis' Morgan we'd all been tryin' to call on was only what you might name the housekeeper. An' so it turned out she was.

"The whole upper hall was dark, like puttin' a black skirt on over your head. But the room we went in was cheerful, with a fire burnin' up. Only it was awful littered up—old newspapers layin' round, used glasses settin' here an' there, water-pitcher empty, an' the lamp-chimney was smoked up, even. The woman said somethin' about us an' went out an' left us with somebody settin' in a big chair by the fire, sick an' wrapped up. An' when we looked over there, Calliope an' I stopped still. It was a man.

"If it'd been me, I'd 'a' turned round an' got out. But Calliope was as brave as two, an' she spoke up.

"'This must be the invalid,' she says, cheerful. 'We hope we see you at the best.'

"The man stirs some an' looks over at us kind o' eager—he was oldish, an' the firelight bein' in his eyes, he couldn't see us.

"'It isn't anybody to see me, is it?' he asks.

"At that Calliope steps forward—I remember how she looked in her pretty gray dress with some light thing over her head, an' her starched white skirts was rustlin' along under, soundin' so genteel she seemed to me like strangers do. When he see her, the man made to get up, but he was too weak for it.

"'Why, yes,' she answers him, 'if you're well enough to see anybody.'

"An' at that the man put his hands on his knees an' leaned sort o' hunchin' forward.

"'Calliope!' he says.

"It was him, sure enough—Calvert Oldmoxon. Same big, wide-apart, lonesome eyes an' kind o' crooked frown. His hair was gray, an' so was his pointed beard, an' he was crool thin. But I'd 'a' known him anywheres.

"Calliope, she just stood still. But when he reached out his hand, his lips parted some like a child's an' his eyes lookin' up at her, she went an' stood near him, by the table, an' she set her basket there an' leaned down on the handle, like her strength was gone.

"'I never knew it was you here,' she says. 'Nobody knows,' she told him.

"'No,' he says, 'I've done my best they shouldn't know. Up till I got sick. Since then—I—wanted folks,' he says.

"I kep' back by the door, an' I couldn't take my eyes off of him. He was older than Calliope, but he had a young air. Like you don't have when you stay in Friendship. An' he seemed to know how to be easy, sick as he was. An' that ain't like Friendship, either. He an' Calliope had growed opposite ways, seems though.

"'I'll go now,' says Calliope, not lookin' at him. 'I brought up some things I baked. I didn't know but they'd taste good to whoever was sick here.'

"With that he covers one hand over his eyes.

"'No,' he says, 'no, no, Calliope—don't go yet. It's you I come here to Friendship to see,' he told her.

"'What could you have to say to me?' asks Calliope—dry as a bone in her voice, but I see her eyes wasn't so dry. Leastwise, it may not have been her eyes, but it was her look.

"Then he straightens up some. He was still good-lookin'. When you was with him it use' to be that you sort o' wanted to stay—an' it seemed the same way now. He was that kind.

"'Don't you think,' he says to her—an' it was like he was humble, but it was like he was proud, too—'don't you think,' he says, 'that I ever dreamed you could forgive me. I knew better than that,' he told her. 'It's what you must think o' me that's kep' me from sayin' to you what I come here to say. But I'll tell you now,' he says, 'I'm sick an' alone an' done for. An' what I come to see you about—is the boy.'

"'The boy,' Calliope says over, not understandin'; 'the boy.'

"'My God, yes,' says he. 'He's all I've got left in the world. Calliope—I need the boy. I need him!'

"I rec'lect Calliope puttin' back that light thing from her head like it smothered her. He laid back in his chair for a minute, white an' still. An' then he says—only of course his words didn't sound the way mine do:—

"'I robbed your life, Cally, an' I robbed my own. As soon as I knew it an' couldn't bear it any longer, I went away alone—an' I've lived alone all exceptin' since the little boy come. His mother, my son's wife, died; an' I all but brought him up. I loved him as I never loved anybody—but you,' he says, simple. 'But when his father died, of course I hadn't any claim on the little fellow, I felt, when I'd been away from the rest so long. She took him with her. An' when I knew she'd left him here I couldn't have kep' away,' he says, 'I couldn't. He's all I've got left in the world. I all but brought him up. I must have him, Cally—don't you see I must have him?' he says.

"Calliope looks down at him, wonderful calm an' still.

"'You've had your own child,' she told him slow; 'you've had a real life. I'm just gettin' to mine—since I had the boy.'

"'But, good God,' he says, starin' up at her, 'you're a woman. An' one child is the same as another to you, so be that it ain't your own.'

"Calliope looked almost as if he had struck at her, though he'd only spoke a kind o' general male idea, an' he couldn't help bein' a male. An' she says back at him:—

"'But you're a man. An' bein' alive is one thing to you an' another thing to me. Never let any man forget that,' she says, like I never heard her speak before.

"Then I see the tears shinin' on his face. He was terrible weak. He slips down in his chair an' sets starin' at the fire, his hands hangin' limp over the arms like there wasn't none of him left. His face looked tired to death, an' yet there was that somethin' about him like you didn't want to leave him. I see Calliope lookin' at him—an' all of a sudden it come to me that if I'd 'a' loved him as she use' to, I'd 'a' walked over there an' then, an' sort o' gentled his hair, no matter what.

"But Calliope, she turned sharp away from him an' begun lookin' around the room, like she see it for the first time—smoky lamp-chimney, old newspapers layin' 'round, used-up glasses, an' such like. The room was one o' the kind when they ain't no women or children. An' then, when she see all that, pretty soon she looked back at him, layin' sick in his chair, alone an' done for, like he said. An' I see her take her arms in her hands an' kind o' rock.

"'Ain't the little fellow a care to you, Cally?' he says then, wistful.

"She went over towards him, an' I see her pick up his pillow an' smooth it some an' make to fix it better.

"'Yes,' she says then, 'you're right. He is a care. An' he's your grandchild. You must take him with you just as soon as you're well enough,' she says.

"He broke clear down then, an' he caught her hands an' laid his face on 'em. She stood wonderful calm, lookin' down at him—an' lookin'. An' I laid the hollyhocks down on the rug or anywheres, an' somehow I got out o' the room an' down the stairs. An' I set there in the lower hall an' waited.

"She come herself in a minute. The big outside door was standin' open, an' when I heard her step on the stairs I went on ahead out to the porch, feelin' kind o' strange—like you will. But when Calliope come up to me she was just the same as she always was, an' I might 'a' known she would be. She isn't easy to understand—she's differ'nt—but when you once get to expectin' folks to be differ'nt, you can depend on 'em some that way, too.

"The moon was noon-high by then an' filterin' down through the leaves wonderful soft, an' things was still—I remember thinkin' it was like the hushin'-up before a bride comes in, but there wasn't any bride.

"When we come to our house—just as we begun to smell the savoury bed clear out there on the walk—we heard something ... a little bit of a noise that I couldn't put a name to, first. But, bless you, Calliope could. She stopped short by the gate an' stood lookin' acrost the road to the corner house where the New People lived. It was late for Friendship, but upstairs in that house a lamp was burnin'. An' that room was where the little noise come from—a little new cry.

"'Oh, Liddy,' Calliope says—her head up like she was singin'—'Oh, Liddy—the New People have got their little child.'

"An' I see, though of course she didn't anywheres near realize it then, that she was plantin' herself another cedar."



XIX

HERSELF

After all, it was as if I had first been told about refraction and then had been shown a rainbow. For presently Calliope herself said something to me of her having been twenty. One would as lief have broken the reticence of a rainbow as that of Calliope, but rainbows are not always reticent. I have known them suggest infinite things.

In June she spent a fortnight with me at Oldmoxon house, and I wanted never to let her go. Often our talk was as irrelevant to patency as are wings. That day I had been telling her some splendid inconsequent dream of mine. It had to do with an affair of a wheelbarrow of roses, which I was tying on my trees in the garden directly the original blossoms fell off.

Calliope nodded in entire acceptance.

"But that wasn't so queer as my dream," she said. "My dream about myself—I mean my rill, true regular self," she added, with a manner of testing me.

I think that we all dream our real, true, regular selves, only we do not dream us until we come true. I said something of this to Calliope; and then she told me.

"It was when I was twenty," she said, "an' it was a little while after—well, things wasn't so very happy for me. But first thing I must tell you about the picture. We didn't have so very many pictures. But in my room used to be an old steel engraving of a poet, a man walkin' 'round under some kind o' trees in blossom. He had a beautiful face an' a look on it like he see heaven. I use' to look at the picture an' look at it, an' when I did, it seemed almost like I was off somewheres else.

"Then one night I had my dream. I thought I was walkin' down a long road, green an' shady an' quite wide, an' fields around an' no folks. I know I was hurryin'—oh, I was in such a hurry to see somebody, seems though, somebody I was goin' to see when I got to the end o' the road. An' I was so happy—did you ever dream o' being happy, I mean if you wasn't so very happy in rill life? It puts you in mind o' havin' a pain in your side an' then gettin' in one big, deep breath when the pain don't hurt. In rill life I was lonesome, an' I hated Friendship an' I wanted to get away—to go to the City to take music, or go anywheres else. I never had any what you might call rill pleasure excep' walkin' in the Depot Woods. That was a gully grove beyond the railroad track, an' I use' to like to sit in there some, by myself. I wasn't ever rill happy, though, them days, but in the dream—oh, I was happy, like on a nice mornin', only more so."

Calliope looked at me fleetingly, as if she were measuring my ability to understand.

"The funny part of it was," she said, "that in the dream I wasn't me at all. Not me, as you know me. I thought somehow I was that poet in my picture, the man in the steel engravin' with a look like he see heaven. An' it didn't seem strange to me, but just like it had always been so. I thought I rilly was that poet that I'd looked at in the picture all my life. But then I guess after all that part wasn't so funny as the rest of it. For down at the end o' the road somebody was waitin' for me under trees all in blossom, like the picture, too. It was a girl, standin' there. An' I thought I looked at her—I, the poet, you know—an' I see that the girl was me, Calliope Marsh, lookin' just like I looked every day, natural as anything. Like you see yourself in the glass.

"I know I wasn't su'prised at all. We met like we was friends, both livin' here in the village, an' we walked down the road together like it had always been that way. An' we talked—like you do when you're with them you'd rather be with than anybody else. I thought we was goin' somewhere to see somebody, an' we talked about that:—

"'Will They be home, do you think?' I says.

"An' the girl that was me says: 'Oh, yes. They'll be home. They're always home,' she told me. An' we both felt pleased, like when you're sure.

"An' then—oh," Calliope cried, "I wish I could remember what we said. I wish I could remember. I know it was something that seemed beautiful, an' the words come all soft. It was like bein' born again, somewheres else. An' we knew just exactly what each other meant, an' that was best of all."

She hesitated, seeking to explain that to me.

"When I was twenty," she said, "I use' to want to talk about things that wasn't commonly mentioned here in Friendship—I mean, well, like little things I'd read about noted people an' what they said an' done—an' like that. But when you brought 'em up in the conversation, folks always thought you was tryin' to show off. An' if you quoted a verse o' poetry in company, my land, there was a hush like you'd swore. So gradually I'd got to keepin' still about such things. But in that dream we talked an' talked—said things about old noted folks right out an' told about 'em without beginnin' it 'I happened to read the other day.' An' I know I mentioned the sun on the leaves an' the way the clouds looked, right out, too, without bein' afraid the girl that was me would think I was affected. An' I said little things about—oh, like about goblins in the wood an' figgers in the smoke, without bein' scared that mothers would hear of it an' not let their children come to see me. An' then I made up things an' said—things I was always wantin' to say—like about expectin' to meet Summer walkin' down the road, an' so on: things that if I'd said so's they'd got out around Friendship, folks would 'a' thought I was queer an' not to be trusted to bring up their mail from town. I said all those kind o' things, like I was really born to talk what I thought about. An' the girl that was me understood what I meant. An' we laughed a good deal—oh, how we laughed together. That was 'most the best of all.

"Well, the dream dwindled off, like they will. An' when I woke up, I was nothin' but Calliope Marsh, livin' in Friendship where folks cut a loaf o' bread on a baker's headstone just because he was a baker. Rill life didn't get any better, an' I was more an' more lonesome in Friendship. Somehow, nobody here in town rilly matched me. They all knew what I said well enough, but when I spoke to 'em about what was rill interestin' to me, seemed like their minds didn't click, with that good little feelin' o' rilly takin' it in. My i-dees didn't seem to fit, quite ball an' socket, into nobody's mind, but just to slide along over. And as to their i-dees—I rec'lect thinkin' that the three R's meant to 'em Relations, Recipes, an' the Remains. Yes, all I did have, you might say, was my walks out in the Depot Woods. An' times like when Elder Jacob Sykes—that was Silas's father—said in church that God come down to be Moses's undertaker, I run off there to the woods feelin' all sick an' skinned in soul, an' it sort o' seemed like the gully understood. An' still, you can't be friends when they's only one of you. It's like tryin' to hold a dust-pan an' sweep the dirt in at the same time. It can't be done—not thorough. An' so settin' out there I used to take a book an' hunt up nice little things an' learn different verses, in the hopes that if that dream should come back, I could have 'em to tell—tell 'em, you know, to the girl that was me. Because it hed got so by then that it seemed to me I was actually more that poet than I was Calliope Marsh. An' so it went along till the day I met him—the man, the poet."

"The man!" I said. "But do you mean the man—the poet—the one that was you?"

Calliope nodded confidently.

"Yes," she said, in her delicate excitement, "I do. Oh, I'll tell you an' you'll see for yourself it must 'a' been him. It was one early afternoon towards the end o' summer, an' I knew him in a minute. I'd gone up to the depot to mail a postal on the Through, an' he got off the train an' went into the Telegraph Office. An' the train pulled out an' left him—it was down to the end o' the platform before he come out. He didn't act, though, as if the train's leavin' him was much of anything to notice. He just went up an' commenced talkin' to the baggageman, Bill. But Bill couldn't understand him—Bill was sort o' crusted over the mind—you had to say things over an' over again to him, an' even then he 'most always took it different from what you meant. So I suppose that was why the man left him an' come towards me.

"When I looked up in his face I stood still on the platform. He was young. An' he had soft hair, an' his face was beautiful, like he see heaven. It wasn't to say he was exactly like my picture," Calliope said slowly. "For instance, I think the man at the depot had a beard, an' the poet in my picture didn't. But it was more his look, you might say. It wasn't like any look I'd ever seen on anybody in Friendship. His hands were kind o' slim an' wanderin', an' he carried a book like it was his only baggage. An' he had a way—well, like what he happened to be doin' wasn't all day to him. Like he was partly there, but mostly somewheres else, where everything was better.

"'Perhaps this lady will know,' he says—an' it wasn't the way most of 'em talks here in Friendship, you understand—'I've been askin' the luggageman there,' he says, an' he was smilin' almost like a laugh at what he thought I was goin' to answer, 'I've been askin' the luggageman there, if he knows of a wood near the station that I shall be likely to find haunted at this hour. I've to wait for the 4.20, an' it's a bad time of day for a haunted wood, I'm afraid. The luggageman didn't seem to know.'

"An' then all at once I knew—I knew. Why, don't you see," Calliope cried, "I had to know! That was just the way we'd talked in my dream—kind of jokin' an' yet meanin' somethin', too—so's you felt all lifted up an' out o' the ordinary. An' then I knew who he was an' I see how everything was. Why, the girl that was me an' that was lonesome there in Friendship wasn't me, very much. Me bein' Calliope Marsh was the chance part, an' didn't count. But things was rilly the way I'd dreamed o' their bein.' Somehow, I had another self. An' I had dreamed o' bein' that self. An' there he stood, on the Friendship depot platform."

Calliope looked at me wistfully.

"You don't think I sound crazy, do you?" she asked.

And at my answer:—

"Well," she said, brightening, "that was how it was. An' it was like there hadn't been any first time an' like there wouldn't be any end. Like they was things bigger than time—an' lots nicer than life. An' I spoke up like I'd always known him.

"'Why, yes,' I says to him simple, 'you must mean the Depot Woods,' I said. 'They're always kind o' haunted to me. I guess the little folks that come in the en-gine smoke live in there,' I told him, smilin' because I was so glad.

"I remember how su'prised he looked an' how his face lit up, like he was hearin' English in a heathen land.

"'Upon my word,' he says, still only half believin' in me. 'An' do you go there often?' he ask' me. 'An' I daresay the little smoke folk talk to you, now?' he says.

"'I go 'most every day,' I told him, 'but we don't say very much. I guess they talk an' I listen,' I says.

"An' then the funny part about his askin' Bill for a haunted wood come over me.

"'Bill!' I says. 'Did you actually ask Bill that?'

"Oh, an' how we laughed—how we laughed. Just the way the dream had been. It seemed—it seemed such a sort o' special comical," Calliope said, "an' not like a Sodality laugh. 'Seems though I'd always laughed at one set o' things all my life—my everyday life. An' this was a new recipe for Laugh, flavoured different, an' baked in a quick oven, an' et hot.

"Well, we walked down the road together, like it had always been that way. An' we talked—like you do when you're with them you'd rather be with than anybody else. An' he ask' me, grave as grave, about the little smoke folks.

"'Will They be home, do you think?' he says.

"An' I says: 'Oh, yes. I know They will. They're always home.'

"An' we both felt pleased, like when you're sure.

"We went to walk in the Depot Woods. I remember how much he made me talk—more than I'd ever talked before, excep' in the dream. I know I told him the little stories I'd read about noted people, an' I said over some o' the verses I'd learned an' liked the sound of—I remembered 'em all for him, an' he listened an' heard 'em all just the way I'd said 'em. That was it—he heard it all just the way I said it. An' I mentioned the sun on the leaves an' the way the clouds looked, right out—an' I knew he didn't think I was affected. An' I made up things an' said, too—things that was always comin' in my head an' that I was always wantin' to say. An' he'd laugh almost before I was through—oh, it was like heaven to have him laugh an' not just say, 'What on earth are you talkin', Calliope Marsh?' like I'd heard. An' he kep' sayin', 'I know, I know,' like he knew what I meant better than anything else in the world. Then he read to me out o' the book he had an' he told me—beautiful things. Some of 'em I remember—I've remembered always. Some of 'em I forgot till I come on 'em, now an' then, in books—long afterwards; an' then it was like somebody dead spoke up. I'm always thankful to get hold o' other people's books an' see if mebbe I won't find somethin' else he said. But a good many o' the things I s'pose I clear forgot, an' I won't know 'em again till in the next life. Like I forgot what we said in the dream, till they're both all mixed up an' shinin'.

"We talked till 'most time for the 4.20 train. An' when it got towards four o'clock, I told him about my dream. It seemed like he ought to know, somehow. An' I told him how I dreamed I was him.

"'You don't look like the one I dreamed I was,' I told him, 'but, oh, you talk the same—an' you pretend, an' you laugh, an' you seem the same. An' your face looks different from folks here in Friendship, just like his, an' it seems somehow like you saw things besides with your eyes,' I told him, 'like the poet in my picture. So I know it's you—it must be you,' I says.

"He looked at me so queer an' sudden an' long.

"'I'm a poet, too,' he said, 'if it comes to that. A very bad one, you know—but a kind of poet.'

"An' then of course I was certain sure.

"When he understood all about it, I remember how he looked at me. An' he says:—

"'Well, an' who knows? Who knows?'

"He sat a long time without sayin' anything. But I wasn't unhappy, even when he seemed so sad. I couldn't be, because it was so much to know what I knew.

"'If I can,' he says to me on the depot platform, 'dead or alive, I'll come back some day to see you. But meanwhile you must forget me. Only the dream—keep the dream,' he says.

"I tried to dream it again," Calliope told me, "but I never could. An' dead or alive, he's never been back, all these years. I don't even know his name—an' I remembered afterwards he hadn't asked me mine. But I guess all that is the chance part, an' it don't really count. Out o' the dream I've been, you might say, caught, tied up an' couldn't get out,—just me, like you know me,—with a big unhappiness, an' like that. But in the dream I dreamed myself true. An' then God let me meet myself, just that once, there in the Depot Woods, to show me it's all right, an' that they's things that's bigger than time an' lots nicer than life."

Calliope sat silent, with her way of sighing and looking by; and it was as if she had suggested to me delicate things, as a rainbow will suggest them.



XX

THE HIDINGS OF POWER

I divined the birches, blurred gray and white against the fog-bound cedars. In the haze the airy trunks, because of their imminence, bore the reality of thought, but the sterner green sank in the distance to the faint avail of speech. It was well to be walking on the Plank Road toward seven o'clock of a June morning, in a mist which might yield fellowship in the same ease with which it breathed on distinctions.

Abel had told how, on that winter way of his among the hills, the sky has fallen in the fog and had surrendered to him a fellowship of dreams. But in Friendship Village, as I had often thought, there are dreams for every one; how should it be otherwise to us faring up and down Daphne Street (where Daphne's feet have been)? And yet that morning on the Plank Road where, if the fancy seized her to walk in beauty, our lady of the laurels might be met at any moment, her power seemed to me to be as frail as wings, and I thought that it would not greatly matter if I were to meet her.

As if my thought of Abel Halsey had brought him, the beat of hoofs won toward me from the village; and presently Major Mary overtook me, and there was Abel, driving with his eyes shut. I hailed him, laughed at him, let him pick me up, and we went on through door after door of the fog, with now a lintel of boughs and now a wall of wild roses.

"Abel," I remember saying abruptly, "dreams are not enough."

"No," he replied, as simply as if we had been talking of it, "dreams are just one of the sources of power ... but doing is enough."

I said weakly—perhaps because it was a morning of chill and fog, when a woman may feel her forlornest, look her plainest, know herself for dust: "But then—what about everybody's heart?"

"Don't you know?" Abel asked, and even after those months in Friendship Village I did not know.

"... use it up making some little corner better—better—better by the width of a hand..." said Abel. "As I could do," he added after a moment, "if I could get my chapel in the hills. Do you know, I've written to Mrs. Proudfit about it at last. I couldn't help it—I couldn't help it!"

We came to the rise of the hill, where, but for the fog, we might have looked back on the village, already long astir. To the left, within its line of field stone and whitewashed rails and wild roses, the cemetery lay, like another way of speech. A little before us the mist hid the tracks, but we heard the whistle of the Fast Mail, coming in from the end of the earth.

"Ah, well, I want some wild roses," said I—since a woman may always take certain refuges from life.

"I'm coming back about noon," Abel told me; "I'll bring you a thousand."

He drew up Major Mary, and we sat silent, watching for the train. And the Something which found in Abel its unfailing channel came companioning us, and caught me up so that I longed unspeakably to be about the Business which Abel and Calliope followed, and followed before all else.

But when I would have said more, I noted on Abel's face some surprise, and then I myself felt it. For the Fast Mail from the East, having as usual come roaring through Friendship station with but an instant's stop, was now slowing at the draw. Through the thick white we perceived it motionless for a breath, and then we heard it beat away again.

I wonder now, remembering, how I can have known with such singing confidence what was in store for me. It is certain that I did know, even though in the mist I saw no one alight. But as if at a summons I bade Abel let me descend, and somehow I gave him good-by; and I recall that I cried back to him:—

"Abel! You said the sky can fall and give one dreams."

"Yes," he answered. "Dreams to use in one's corner."

But I knew then and I know now that Abel's dreams flowed in his blood, and that when he gave them to his corner of the world he gave from his own veins; and I think that the world is the richer for that.

When he had gone I stood still in the road, waiting. I distinguished a lintel of elms, a wall of wild roses; I heard a brave little bird twittering impatient matins, and the sound of nearing footsteps in the road. And then a voice in the mist said my name.

There in the fog on the Plank Road we met as if there had come a clearness everywhere—we two, between whom lay that year since my coming to Friendship. Only, now that he was with me, I observed that the traitor year had slipped away as if it had never been, and had left us two alone in a place so sightly that at last I recognized my own happiness. And I understood—and this way of understanding leaves one a breathless being—that his happiness was there too.

And yet it was only: "You.... But what an adventure to meet you here!" And from him: "Me. Here. Please, may we go to your house? I haven't had an indication of breakfast." At which we laughed somewhat, with my, "How absurdly like you not to have had breakfast," and his, "How very shabby of you to feel superior because you happen to have had your coffee." So we moved back down the road with the clear little space in the fog following, following....

A kind of passion for detail seized on us both.

He said: "You're wearing brown. I've never seen you wear brown—I'm sure I haven't. Have I?"

"My fur coat was brown," I escaped into the subject, "but then that hardly counts."

"No," he agreed, "fur isn't a colour. Fur is just fur. No, I've never seen you in brown."

"How did they let you off at the draw? How did you know about getting off at the draw?" I demanded.

"You said something of your getting off there—in that one letter, you know...."

"Yes, yes...."

"You said something about getting off there on a night when you left the train with a girl who was coming home to the village—you know the letter?" he broke off, "I think it was that letter that finally gave me courage to come. Because in that I saw in you something new and—understanding. Well, and I remembered about the draw. I always meant to get off there, when I came."

"You always meant ... but then how did you make them stop?"

"I told the man I had to, and then he had to, too. There were four others who got off and went across the tracks, but we are not obliged to consider them."

"From that," I said, "I would think it is you, if I didn't know it couldn't possibly be!"

Then I hurried into some recital about the Topladys, whose big barn and little house were lined faintly out as if something were making them feel hushed; and about Friendship, hidden in the valley as if it were suddenly of lesser import—how strange that these things should be there as they were an hour ago. And so we came to Oldmoxon House and went up the walk in silence save that, at the steps, "How long shall I tell them to boil your eggs?" I asked desperately, to still the quite ridiculous singing of the known world. But then the singing took one voice, a voice whose firmness made it almost hard, save that deep within it something was beating....

"You know," said the voice simply, "if I come in now, I come to stay. You do know?"

"You come to breakfast...." I tried it.

"I come to stay."

"You mean—"

"I come to stay."

I rather hoped to affirm something gracious, and masterful of myself—not to say of him; but suddenly that whole lonely year was back again, most of it in my throat. And though I gave up saying anything at all, I cannot have been unintelligible. Indeed, I know that I was not unintelligible, for when, in a little while, Calliope, who was still with me, opened my front door and emerged briskly to the veranda, she seems to have understood in a minute.

"Well said!" Calliope cried, and made a little swoop down from the threshold and stood before us, one hand in mine and one outstretched for his; "I knew, as soon as I woke up this morning, I felt special. I thought it was my soul, sittin' up in my chest, an' wantin' me to spry round with it some, like it does. But I guess now it was this. Oh, this!" she said. "Oh, I sp'ose I'd rilly ought to hev an introduction before I jump up an' down, hadn't I?"

"No need in the world, Calliope," he told her; "come on. I'll jump, too."

And that was an added joy—that he had read and re-read that one Friendship letter of mine, written on the night of Delia More's return, until it was as if he, too, knew Calliope. But before all things was the wonder of the justice and the grace which had made the letter of that night, when I, too, "took stock," yield such return.

It was Calliope who led the way indoors at last, and he and I who followed like her guests. From the edges of consciousness I finally drew some discernment of the place of coffee and rolls in a beneficent universe, and presently we three sat at his breakfast table. And not until then did Calliope remember her other news.

"Land, land," she said, "I like to forgot. Who do you s'pose I had a telephone from just before you come? Delia. She'd just got home this morning on the Fast Mail. An' the Proudfits'll be here, noon train."

Delia indeed had come on the same glorified train that Abel and I had seen stop at the draw, only she had alighted at Friendship station and had hurried up to the Proudfits' to make ready for their home-coming. And since those whom we know best never come to Friendship without a welcome, it was instantly incumbent on us all to be what Calliope called "up in arms an' flyin' round."

As soon as we were alone:—

"I've planned noon lunch for 'em," Calliope told me; "I'm goin' to see to the meat—leg o' lamb, sissin' hot, an' a big bowl o' mint. Mis' Holcomb's got to freeze a freezer o' her lemon ice—she gets it smooth as a mud pie. Mis' Toplady, she'll come in on the baked stuff—raised rolls an' a big devil's food. An'—I'd kind o' meant to look to you for the salad, but I s'pose you won't want to bother now...." And when I had hastened to assume the salad, "Well, I am glad," she owned, with a relieved sigh. "The Proudfit salads they can't a soul tell what ingredients is in 'em, chew high though we may. I know you know about them queer organs an' canned sea reptiles they use now in cookin'. I've come to the solemn conclusion I ain't studied physiology an' the animal sciences close enough myself to make a rill up-to-date salad."

Before noon we were all at Proudfit House—to which I had taken care to leave word for Abel to follow me—and we were letting in the sun, making ready the table, filling the vases with garden roses; and in the library Calliope laid a fire "in case they get chilly, travellin' so," she said, but I think rather it was in longing somehow to summon a secret agency to that place where Linda Proudfit's portrait hung. For we had long been agreed that, as soon as she was at home again, Linda's mother must be told all that we knew of Linda. Thus, to Calliope and me, the time held a tragic meaning beneath the exterior of our simple cheer. But the time held many meanings, as a time will hold them; and the Voice of its new meaning said to me, as we all waited on the Proudfit veranda with its vines and its climbing rose and its canaries:—

"I marvel, I marvel at your bad taste. How can you leave the dear place and the dear people for me?"

I love to recall the bustle of that arriving and how, as the motor came up the drive, Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss and Mis' Amanda ran down on the gravel and waved their aprons; and how Mis' Postmaster Sykes and Mis' Mayor Uppers and Mis' Photographer Sturgis, having heard the machine pass their doors, had issued forth and followed it and arrived at the Proudfits' with:

"I was right in the midst of a basque, cuttin' over an old lining, but I told Liddy Ember: 'You rip on. I've got to run over.' Excuse my looks. Well said! Back!"

And, "Got here, did you? My, my, all tired out, I expect. Well, mebbe you think we won't feel relieved to see the house open again an' folks in it flyin' round. An' you look as natural as the first thunder-storm in the spring o' the year!"

And, "Every day for two weeks," Mis' Sturgis said, "I've said to Jimmy: 'Proudfits back?' 'No, sir,' s'he, 'not back yet.' An' so it went. Could you sleep any on the sleeper?"

Then Calliope and Mis' Toplady and Mis' Holcomb and the three newcomers hurried all but abreast to the kitchen to "see what they could find"; and when Mis' Proudfit and Miss Clementina and Delia More had taken their places at the burdened table, we all sat about the edge of the room—no one would share in the feast, every one having to "get right back"—and asked of the journey, and gave news of Friendship Village in the long absence. I love to remember it all, but I think that I love best to remember their delicate acceptance of what that day had brought to me. Of this no one said a word, nor did they ask me anything, or seem to observe, far less to wonder. But when they passed me, one and another and another squeezed my hand or patted my arm or gave me their unwonted "dear."

"What gentlefolk they are," my stranger said.

"Noon lunch" was finished, and I had seen Calliope go with Madame Proudfit to the library and close the door, and we were all gathered in the hall, where Miss Clementina had opened a trunk and was showing us some pretty things, when some one else crossed the veranda and appeared in the doorway. And there was Abel, come with my wild roses.

I do not think, however, that it can have occurred to Abel that I was in the room. Nor that any of the others were there, intent on the pretty things of Miss Clementina's trunk. But, his face shining, he went straight to Delia More; and he laid my roses in her arms, looking at her the while with a look which was like a passionate recognition of one not met for many years.

I have said nothing of Delia More as she seemed to me that day of her return, for indeed I do not well know how to tell of her. But as he looked at her, it was all in Abel's eyes. I do not know whether it was that her spirit having been long "packed down in her," as Calliope had said, was at last loosed by the mysterious ministry of distance and the touch of far places, or whether, over there nearer Tempe, she had held converse with Daphne herself, who, for the sake of the Friendship bond between them, had taken for her own all that was wild and strange in the girl's nature. But this I know: that Delia More had come back among us a new creature, simple, gentle, humble as before, and yet somehow quickened, invested with the dignity of personality which, long ago, she had lost. And now she stood looking at Abel as he was looking at her.

"Delia!" he said, and took her hand, and, "I brought you some wild roses to tell you we're glad you're back," said he, disposing of my hedge spoils as coolly as if I were not.

"That's nice of you, Abel," she replied simply, "but it's nicer to think you came."

"Why," Abel said, "you couldn't have kept me away. You couldn't have kept me away, Delia."

He could not have done looking at her. And even after we had closed in before them and had gone on with our talk about the tray of the trunk, I think that we were all conscious, as one is conscious of a light in the room, that to Delia and Abel had come again the immemorial wonder.

When the library door opened and Madame Proudfit and Calliope came out, a little hush fell upon us, even though none but I knew what that interval held for Linda's mother. Her face was tranquil—indeed, I think it was almost as if its ancient fear had forever left it and had given place to the blessed relief of mere sorrow. She stood for a moment—looking at them all, and looking, as if she were thankful for their presence. Then she saw Abel and held out both hands.

"Abel!" she said, "Abel! I had your letter in Lucerne. I meant to talk it over with you—but now I know, I know. You shall have your little chapel in the hills. We will build it together—you and I—for Linda."

But then, because Abel turned joyously and naturally to Delia to share with her the tidings, Madame Proudfit looked at Delia too, and saw her eyes. And,

"You and Delia and I," she added gently.

On which, with the kindliest intent, the happiness of us all overflowed in speech about the common-place, the trivial, the irrelevant, and we all fell talking at once there in the hall, and told one another things which we knew perfectly already, and we listened, nodding, and laughed a great deal at nothing in the world—save that life is good.

* * * * *

We three walked home together in the afternoon sunshine—the man who, through all this time in Friendship, had been dear, and Calliope and I. I thought that Daphne Street had never looked so beautiful. The tulip beds on the lawns had been re-filled for summer, a touch of bonfire smoke hung in the air, Eppleby Holcomb was mending his picket gate, and over many magic thresholds of the cool walks were lintels of the boughs. Down town Abigail Arnold was laying cream puffs in the home bakery window; at the Helmans' Mis' Doctor Helman, wound in a shawl and a fascinator, was training her matrimony vine; the Liberty sisters had let out their chickens and, posted in a great triangle, were keeping them well within Liberty lawn confines; Doctor June was working in his garden and he waved his hat at us like a boy. ("It's a year ago now they give him his benefit," Calliope remembered; "ice-cream an' strawberries an' cake. An' every soul that come in he treated, one after another. An' when they got hold of him an' told him what that was doin' to the benefit box, he wanted to know whose benefit it was, anyway. An' he kep' on treatin' folks up to the last spoonful o' cream. He said he never had such a good time since he was born. I donno but he showed us how to give a benefit, too.")

We were crossing the lawn to Oldmoxon House when I said to Calliope what it had been decided that day that I should say:—

"Calliope," I asked, "could you be ready in a month or two to leave Friendship for good, and come to us in town, and live with us for always?"

She looked up at one and the other of us, with her little embarrassed laugh.

"You're makin' fun o' me," she said.

But when we had explained that we were wholly serious, she stopped and leaned against one of the great trees before the house; and it was at Oldmoxon House rather than at us that she looked as she answered:—

"I couldn't," she said quickly, and with a manner of breathlessness, "I couldn't. You know how I've wanted to leave Friendship, too, you know that. An' I want to yet, as far as wantin' goes. But wantin' to mustn't be enough to make you do things."

She stood, her head held up as if she were singing, as Liddy Ember had said of her, her arms tightly folded, her cheeks flushing with her fear that we would not understand.

"Oh," she said, "you know—you know how I've always wanted nice things. Wanted 'em so it hurt. Not just from likin' 'em, either, but because some way I thought I could be more, do more, live up to my biggest best if I could only get where things was kind of educated an'—gentle. But every time I tried to go, somethin' come up—like it will, to shove you hard down into the place you was. Then I thought—you know 'bout that, I guess—I thought I was goin' to live here in Oldmoxon House, an' hev a life like other women hev. An' when that wasn't to be, I thought mebbe it was because God see I wasn't fit for it, an' I set to work on myself to make me as good as I knew—an' I worked an' worked, like life was nothin' but me, an' I was nothin' but a cake, to get a good bake on an' die without bein' too much dough to me. An' then all to once I see that couldn't be the only thing He meant. It didn't seem like He could 'a' made me sole in order to save me from hell. An' I begun to see He must 'a' made me to help in some great, big hid plan or other of His. An' quick as I knew that an' begun wantin' to help, He begun showin' me when to. That's how I mean what I said about the Bell. Times like Elspie, or 'Leven, or like that, I can hear it just as plain as plain—the Bell, callin' me to help Him."

She looked hard at us, and, "I donno if you know what I'm talkin' about——" she doubted; but, at our answer,

"Well," she added, "they's somethin' else. It's somethin' almost like what you've got—you two—an' like what Delia an' Abel have got. Lately, I don't need to hear the Bell any more. I know 'bout it without. It's almost like I am the Bell. Don't you see, it's come to be my power, just like love will be your power, if you rilly understand. An' here—here I know how. I've grown to Friendship, an' here I know what's what. An' if I went away now, where things is gentle an' like in books, I wouldn't know how to be any rill use. I can be the Bell here—here I can have my power. In town I expect I couldn't be anything but just cake again—bakin' myself rill good, or even gettin' frosted; but mebbe not helpin'. An' I couldn't risk that—I couldn't risk it. It looks to me like helpin' is what I'm for."

I think, as she said, Calliope was become the Bell; and at that moment she rang to us the call of sovereign clearness. This was the life that she and Abel followed, and followed before all else, and there lay the hiding of their power. "Just like love will be your power," she had said.

When she had gone before us into the house—that was to have been her house—we two stood looking along the sunny Plank Road toward Daphne Street. And in the light lifting of the bonfire smoke it seemed to me that there moved a spirit—not Daphne, but another; one who walks less in beauty than in service; not our lady of the laurels, but our lady of the thorns.



GROSSET & DUNLAP'S

DRAMATIZED NOVELS

A Few that are Making Theatrical History

MARY JANE'S PA. By Norman Way. Illustrated with scenes from the play.

Delightful, irresponsible "Mary Jane's Pa" awakes one morning to find himself famous, and, genius being ill adapted to domestic joys, he wanders from home to work out his own unique destiny. One of the most humorous bits of recent fiction.

CHERUB DEVINE. By Sewell Ford.

"Cherub," a good hearted but not over refined young man is brought in touch with the aristocracy. Of sprightly wit, he is sometimes a merciless analyst, but he proves in the end that manhood counts for more than ancient lineage by winning the love of the fairest girl in the flock.

A WOMAN'S WAY. By Charles Somerville. Illustrated with scenes from the play.

A story in which a woman's wit and self-sacrificing love save her husband from the toils of an adventuress, and change an apparently tragic situation into one of delicious comedy.

THE CLIMAX. By George C. Jenks.

With ambition luring her on, a young choir soprano leaves the little village where she was born and the limited audience of St. Judo's to train for the opera in New York. She leaves love behind her and meets love more ardent but not more sincere in her new environment. How she works, how she studies, how she suffers, are vividly portrayed.

A FOOL THERE WAS. By Porter Emerson Browne. Illustrated by Edmund Magrath and W. W. Fawcett.

A relentless portrayal of the career of a man who comes under the influence of a beautiful but evil woman; how she lures him on and on, how he struggles, falls and rises, only to fall again into her net, make a story of unflinching realism.

THE SQUAW MAN. By Julie Opp Faversham and Edwin Milton Royle. Illustrated with scenes from the play.

A glowing story, rapid in action, bright in dialogue with a fine courageous hero and a beautiful English heroine.

THE GIRL IN WAITING. By Archibald Eyre. Illustrated with scenes from the play.

A droll little comedy of misunderstandings, told with a light touch, a venturesome spirit and an eye for human oddities.

THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL. By Baroness Orczy. Illustrated with scenes from the play.

A realistic story of the days of the French Revolution, abounding in dramatic incident, with a young English soldier of fortune, daring, mysterious as the hero.

Grosset & Dunlap, 526 West 26th St., New York

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