"Stove to Serry, because she has the house, bureau to Emmy."

At this point Mrs. Gray said, "I guess that ain't quite even, Deacon; the bureau ain't worth much."

"Oh, no, no, that's all right! Let her have it," Emma protested nervously.

"Give her an extry tick, anyway," said Sarah, not to be outdone in magnanimity.

"Settle that between ye," said the Deacon.

He warmed to his work now, and towels, pans, crockery, brooms, mirrors, pillows, and bedticks were rapidly set aside in two groups on the soft soil. The poverty of the home could best be seen in the display of its pitiful furniture.

The two nieces looked on impassively, standing side by side. The men came to move the bureau and other heavy things and looked on, while the lighter things were being handed over by Mrs. Gray and the girls.

At noon they sat down in the empty kitchen and ate a cold snack—at least, the women took seats, the men stood around and lunched on hunks of boiled beef and slices of bread. There was an air of constraint upon the male portion of the party not shared by Mrs. Gray and the girls.

"Well, that settles things in the house," beamed the Deacon as he came out with the women trailing behind him; "an' now in about two jerks of a dead lamb's tail, we'll git at the things out in the barn."

"Wal, we don't know much about machines and things, but I guess we'd better go out and keep you men from fightin'," said Mrs. Gray, shaking with fun; "Ike didn't come because he didn't want to make any trouble, but I guess he might just as well 'a' come as send two such critters as Jim 'n' Hank."

The women laughed at her frankness, and in very good humor they all went out to the barn-yard.

"Now, these things can't be laid out fast as I call 'em off, but we'll do the best we can."

"Let's try the stawk first," said Jim.

The women stood around with shawls pinned over their heads while the division of the stock went forward. The young men came often within chaffing distance of the girls.

There were nine shotes nearly of a size, and the Deacon said, "I'll give Serry the odd shote."

"Why so?" asked Jim Harkey, a sullen-faced man of thirty.

"Because a shote is hard to carry off and I can balance—"

"Well, I guess you can balance f'r Em 'bout as well as f'r Serry."

The Deacon was willing to yield a point. "Any objection, Bill? If not, why—"

"Nope, let her go," said Bill.

"What 'ave you got to say 'bout it?" asked Jim, insolently.

Bill turned his slow bulk. "I guess I've a good 'eal to say—haven't I, Serry?"

Sarah reddened, but stood beside him bravely. "I guess you have, Bill, about as much as I have." There was a moment of dramatic tension and the girls tingled with sympathy.

"Let 'er go," said Bill, splitting a straw with his knife. He had not proposed to Sarah before and he felt an unusual exaltation to think it came so easy after all.

When they reached the cattle, Jim objected to striking a balance with a "farrer cow," and threw the Deacon's nice calculation all out of joint.

"Let it go, Jim," pleaded Emma.

"I won't do it," Ike said—"I mean I know he don't want no farrer cow, he's got two now."

The Deacon was a little nettled. "I guess that's going to stand," he said sharply.

Jim swore a little but gave in, and came back with an access of ill humor on a division of the horses.

"But I've give you the four heavy horses to balance the four others and the two-year-old," said the Deacon.

"I'll be damned if I stand that," said Jim.

"I guess you'll have to," said the Deacon.

Emma pleaded, "Let it go, Jim, don't make a fuss."

Jim raged on, "I'll be cawn-demmed if I'll stand it. I don't—Ike don't want them spavined old crows; they're all ring-boned and got the heaves." His long repressed ill-nature broke out.

"Toh, toh!" said the Deacon, "Don't kick over the traces now. We'll fix it up some way."

Emma tried to stop Jim, but he shook her off and continued to walk back and forth behind the horses munching on quietly, unconscious of any dispute about their value.

Bill sat on the oat box in his hulking way, his heels thumping a tune, his small gray eyes watching the angry man.

"Don't make a darn fool of yourself," he said placidly.

Jim turned, glad of the chance for a row, "You better keep out of this."

Bill continued to thump, the palms of his big hands resting on the edge of the box. "I'm in it," he said conclusively.

"Well, you git out of it! I ain't goin' to be bulldozed—that ain't what I come here for."

"No, I see it ain't," said Bill. "If you're after a row you can have it right here. You won't find a better place."

"There, there," urged the Deacon. "What's the use? Keep cool and don't tear your shirts."

Mrs. Gray went up to Jim and took him by the arm. "You need a good spankin' to make you good-natured," she said. "I think the Deacon has done first rate, and you ought 'o—"

"Let go o' me," he snarled, raising his hand as if to strike her.

Bill's big boot lunged out, catching Harkey in the ribs, and if the Deacon had not sprung to his assistance Jim would have been trampled to pieces by the scared horse under whose feet he found himself. He was wild with dizzy, breathless rage.

"Who hit me?" he demanded.

Bill's shapeless hulk straightened up and stood beside him as if his pink flesh had suddenly turned to oak. Out of his fat cheeks his gray eyes glared.

"I did. Want another?"

The Deacon and Jack came between and prevented the encounter which would have immediately followed. Bill went on:—

"They cain't no man lay a hand on my mother and live long after it." He was thoroughly awake now. There was no slouch to his action at that moment, and Jim was secretly pleased to have the encounter go by.

"You come here for a fuss and you can have it, both of you," Bill went on in unusual eloquence. "Deacon's tried to do the square thing, Emmy's tried to do the square thing, and Serry's kep' quiet, but you've been sour and ugly the whole time, and now it's goin' to stop."

"This ain't the last of this thing," said Jim.

"You never'll have a better time," said Bill.

Mrs. Gray and the Deacon turned in now to quiet Bill, and the settlement went on. Jim kept close watch on the proceedings, and muttered his dissent to his friends, but was careful not to provoke Bill further.

In dividing the harnesses they came upon a cow-bell hanging on a nail. The Deacon jingled it as he passed. "Goes with the bell-cow," he said, and nothing further was said of it. Jim apparently did not consider it worth quarrelling about.

At last the work was done, a terribly hard day's work. The machines and utensils were piled in separate places, the cattle separated, and the grain measured. As they were about to leave, the Deacon said finally:—

"If there's any complaint to make, let's have it right now. I want this settlement to be a settlement. Is everybody satisfied?"

"I am," said Emmy. "Ain't you, Serry?"

"Why, of course," said Sarah, who was a little slower of speech. "I think the Deacon has done first rate. I ain't a word of fault to find, have you, Bill?"

"Nope, not an ioty," said Bill, readily.

Jim did not agree in so many words, but, as he said nothing, the Deacon ended:—

"Well, that settles it. It ain't goin' to rain, so you can leave these things right here till Monday. I guess I'll be gettin' out for home. Good evening, everybody."

Emma drove away down the road with Jim, but Sarah remained to straighten up the house. Harkey's hired hand went home with Dade Walker who considered that walk the pleasant finish to a very interesting day's work. She sympathized for the time with the Harkey faction.

Sunday forenoon, when Bill and Sarah drove up to the farm to put things in order in the house, they found Ike Harkey walking around with that queer side glance he had, studying the piles of furniture, and mentally weighing the pigs.

He greeted them smoothly: "Yes, yes, I'm purrfickly satisfied, purrfickly! Not a word to say—better'n I expected," he added.

Bill was not quite keen enough to perceive the insult which lay in that final clause, and Sarah dared not inform him for fear of trouble.

As Harkey drove away, however, Bill had a dim feeling of dissatisfaction with him.

"He's too gol-dang polite, that feller is; I don't like such butter-mouth chaps—they'd steal the cents off'n a dead nigger's eyes."

III

The second Sunday after the partition of goods the entire Coolly turned out to church in spite of the muddy road. The men, after driving up to the door of the little white church and helping the women to alight, drove out to the sheds along the fence and gathered in knots beside their wagons in the warm spring sun. It was very pleasant there, and the men leaned with relaxed muscles upon the wagon-wheels, or sat on the fence with jack-knives in hand. The horses, weary with six days seeding, slept with closed eyes and drooping lips. Generally the talk was upon spring work, each man bragging of the number of acres he had sown during the week, but this morning the talk was all about the division which had come between the nieces of "deceased Williams." They discussed it slowly as one might eat a choice pudding in order to extract the flavor from each spoonful.

"What is it all about, anyhow?" asked Jim Cranby. "I ain't heard nothing about it." He had stood in open-mouthed perplexity trying to catch a clew. Coming late, he found it baffling.

"That shows where he lives; a man might as well live in a well as up in Molasses Gap," said one of the younger men, pointing up to the Coolly. "Why, Ike Harkey is kicking about the six shotes the Deacon put off on him."

"No, it wasn't the shotes, it was a farrer cow," put in Clint Stone.

"Well, I heard it was a shote."

"So did I," said another.

"Well, Bill Gray told Jinks Ike had stole a cow-bell that belonged to the black farrer cow," said another late comer.

"Stole a cow-bell," and they all drew closer together. This was really worth while!

"Yes, sir; Jinks told me he heard Bill say so yesterday. That's the way I heard it."

"Well, I'll be cussed, if that ain't small business for Ike Harkey!"

"How did it happen?" asked Cranby, with sharpened appetite.

"Well, I didn't hear no p'rtic'lars, but it seems the bell was hangin' on a peg in the barn, and when they got home from church it was gone, hide an' hair. Bill is dead sure Ike took it."

"Say, there'll be fun over that yet, won't they," said one of the fellows, with a grin.

"Well, Ike better keep out of Bill's way, that's all."

"Well—I ain't takin' sides. Some young'un may have took it."

"Well, let's go in, boys; I see the Elder's come. By gum, there's Harkey!" They all looked toward Harkey, who had just driven up to the door.

Harkey came into church holding his smooth, serious face a little one side, in his usual way, quiet and dignified, as if he were living up to his Sunday suit of clothes. He seemed to be unconscious of the attitude in which he stood toward most of his neighbors.

Bill and Sarah were not present, and that gave additional color to the story of trouble between the sisters.

After the sermon Deacon Harkey led the Sunday School, and the critics of his action were impressed more than usual with his smooth and quiet utterance. Emma seemed more than ordinarily worn and dispirited.

It was perfectly natural that Mrs. Gray should be the last person to know of the division which had slowly set in between the two sisters and their factions. Charitable and guileless herself, it was difficult for her to conceive of slander and envy.

Nevertheless, a division had come about, slowly, but decisively. The entire Coolly was involved in the discussion before Mrs. Gray gave it any serious attention, but one day, when Sarah came in upon her and poured out a mingled flood of sorrow and invective, the good soul was aghast.

"Well, well, I swan! There, there! I wouldn't make so much fuss over it!" she said, stripping her hands out of the biscuit dough in order to go over and pat Sarah on the shoulder. "After all that to-do gettin' settled, seems 's if you ought 'o stay settled. Good land! It ain't anything to have a fuss over, anyway!"

"But it is our cow-bell. It belonged on the black farrer cow, that Jim turned his nose up at, and he sneaked around and got it just to spite us."

"Oh, I guess not," she replied incredulously.

"Well, he did; and Emmy put him up to it, and I know she did," said Sarah in a lamentable voice.

"Sary Ann," said Mrs. Gray, as sharply as any one ever heard her speak, "that's a pretty way to talk about your sister, ain't it?"

"Well, Mrs. Jim Harkey said—"

"You never mind what Mrs. Jim Harkey said; she's a snoop and everybody knows it."

"But she wouldn't tell that, if it weren't so."

"Well, I tell you, I wouldn't pay no attention to what she said, and I wouldn't make such a fuss over an old cow-bell, anyway."

"But the cow-bell is only the starting point; she ain't been near the house since, and she says all kinds of mean, nasty things about us."

"All comes through Mrs. Jim, I suppose," said Mrs. Gray, with some sarcasm.

"No, it don't. She told Dade Walker that I got all the biggest flat-irons, when she knows I offered her the bureau. I did everything I could to make her feel satisfied."

"I know you did, and now you must just keep cool till I see Emmy myself."

When Mrs. Gray started out on her mission of pacification, she found it to be entirely out of her control. The Coolly was actively partisan. One party stood by the Harkeys, and another took Sarah's part, while the tertium quid said it was "all darn foolishness."

Mrs. Gray was appalled at the state of affairs, but struggled to maintain a neutral position. In May, when Bill and Sarah were married, things had reached such a stage that Emma was not invited to the wedding supper. Nothing could have cut deeper than this neglect, and thereafter adherents of the third remove declined to speak when passing; some even refused to nod. The Harkey faction also condemned the early marriage of Bill and Sarah as unseemly.

Soon after, Emma came again to see Mrs. Gray, salty with tears, and crushed with the slight Sarah had put upon her. She was a plain pale woman, anyway, and weeping made her pitiable. She explained the situation with her head on Mrs. Gray's lap:—

"She never has been to see me since that day, and—but I hoped she'd come and see me, but she never sent me any invitation to her wedding." She choked with sobs at the memory of it.

Mrs. Gray realized the enormity of the offence, and she could only put her arms around Emma's back and say, "There, there, I wouldn't take on so about it." As a matter of fact, she had striven to have Bill send an invitation to his brother-in-law, but Bill was inflexible on that point. With the sound of the stolen cow-bell ringing in his ears, he could not bring himself to ask Ike Harkey into his house.

After Emma grew a little calmer, Mrs. Gray tried again to bridge the chasm. "Now, I just believe if you would go to Sarah—"

"I can't do that! She'd slam the door in my face. Jim's wife says Sarah said I shouldn't pick a single currant out of the garden this year!"

"I don't go much on what Jim's wife says," put in Mrs. Gray, guardedly. She had begun to feel that Jim's wife was the main disturbing element.

The sisters really suffered from their separation. They had been so used to running in at all times of the day that each missed the other wofully. It had been their habit whenever they needed each other to help cook, or cut a dress, to hang a cloth out of the chamber window, a sign which was sure to bring help post-haste; but now nothing would induce either of them to make the first concession.

Two or three times when Emma, feeling especially lonely, was on the point of hanging out the signal, she was prevented by the thought of some cruel message Mrs. Jim had brought. Jim lived on Ike's farm in a small house that had been Emma's first home, and Mrs. Jim was almost as much in her house as in her own. She had no children, and was a mischief-maker, not so much from ill will as from a love of dramatic situations; it was her life, this dramatic play of loves and hates among her friends and neighbors.

Emma feared her husband, too; he was so self-contained, and so inexorably moral, at least in appearance. He sweetly said he bore no ill will toward the Grays, but he must insist that his wife should not visit them until they apologized. He took the matter very serenely, however.

The sound of the cow-bell was a constant daily irritation to Bill; he was slow to wrath, but the bell seemed to rasp on his tenderest nerve; it had a curiously exultant sound heard in the early morning—it seemed to voice Harkey's triumph. Bill's friends were astonished at the change in him. He grew dark and thunderous with wrath whenever Harkey's name was mentioned.

One day Ike's cattle broke out of the pasture into Bill's young oats, and though Ike hurried after them, it seemed to Bill he might have got them out a little quicker than he did. He said nothing then, however, but when a few days later they broke in again, he went over there in very bad humor.

"I want this thing stopped," he said.

Ike was mending the fence. He smiled in his sweet way, and said smoothly, "I'm sorry, but when they once git a taste of grain it's pretty hard to keep 'em—"

"Well, there ought to be a new fence here," said Bill. "That fence is as rotten as a pumpkin."

"I s'pose they had; yes, sir, that's so," Harkey assented quickly. "I'm ready to build my half, you know," he said, "any time—any time you are."

"Well, I'll build mine to-morrow," said Bill. "I can't have your cattle pasturing on my oats."

"All right, all right. I'll have mine done as quick as yourn."

"Well, see't you do; I don't want my grain all tramped into the ground and I ain't a-goin' to have it."

Harkey hastily gathered up his tools, saying, "Yes, yes, all right."

"You might send home that cow-bell of mine while you're about it," Bill called after him, but Harkey did not reply or turn around.

IV

The line fence ran up the bluff toward the summit of the ridge to the east. On each side it was set with smooth green slopes of pasture and pleasant squares of wheat, until it reached the woods and ran under the oaks and walnuts and birches to the cliffs of lichen-spotted stone which topped the summit.

Bill walked the full length of the fence to see how much of the old material could be used. He recognized the bell on one of Harkey's cattle, and he grew wrathful at the sight of another cow peacefully gnawing the fresh, green grass, with the bell, which belonged to the black cow, on her neck.

It was mid-spring. Everywhere was the vivid green of the Wisconsin landscape; the slopes were like carefully tended lawns, without stumps or stones; the groves rose up the hills, pink and gray and green in softly rounded billows of cherry bloom and tender oak and elm foliage. Here and there under the forest tender plants and flowers had sprung up, slender and succulent like all productions of a rich and shadowed soil.

Early the next morning Bill and his two hands began to work in the meadow, working toward the ridge; Harkey and his brother and their hands began at the ridge and worked down toward the meadow; each party could hear the axes of the other ringing in the still, beautiful spring air.

Bill's hired hand, on his way to the spring about the middle of the forenoon, met Jim Harkey, who said wickedly in answer to a jocular greeting:—

"Don't give me none of your lip now; we'll break your necks for two cents."

The hand came to Bill with the story. "Bill, they're on the fight."

"Oh, I guess not."

"Well, they be. We better not run up against them to-day if we don't want trouble."

"Well, I ain't goin' to dodge 'em," said Bill; "I ain't in that business; if they want fight, we'll accommodate 'em with the best we've got in the shop."

At noon, Harkey's gang went to dinner a little earlier, and, as they came down the path quite near, Jim said with a sneer:—

"You managed to git the easiest half of the fence, didn't yeh?"

"We took the half that belongs to us," said Bill. "We don't take what don't belong to us."

"Cow-bells, for instance," put in Bill's hired hand, with a provoking intonation.

Jim stopped and his face twisted with rage; Ike paused a little farther on down the path. Jim came closer.

"Say, I know what you're driving at and you're a liar, and for a leather cent I'd lick you like hell!"

"You can't do it. You don't weigh enough."

"Oh, shut up, Jack," called Bill. "Go about y'r business," he said to Jim, "or I'll take a hand."

Jim's face flamed into a wild wrath. His lips lifted at the corners like a wolf's as he leaped the fence with a wild spring and lunged against Bill's breast. The larger man went down, but his great arms closed about his assailant's neck with a bear-like grip. Jim could neither rise nor strike; with a fury no animal could equal he pressed his hands upon Bill's throat and thrust his elbow into his mouth in the attempt to strangle him. He meant murder.

Jack faced the other men, who came running up. Ike seized a stake, and was about to leap over, when Jack raised an axe in the air.

"Stand off!" he yelled, and his voice rang through the woods; he noticed how harsh and wild it sounded in the silence. He heard a grunting sound, and gave one glance at the two men writhing amid the ferns silent as grappling bull-dogs.

Bill had fallen in the brake and seemed wedged in. At last there came into his heart a terrible shiver, a blind desperation that uncoiled all the strength in his great bulk. Then he seemed to bound from the ground, as he twisted the other man under him, and shook himself free.

He dragged one great maul of a fist free and drove it at the face beneath him. Jim saw it coming and turned his head. The blow fell on his neck and his carnivorous grin smoothed out as if sleep had suddenly fallen upon him. He drew a long, shuddering breath, his muscles quivered, and his clenched hands fell open.

Bill rose upon his knees and looked at him. A deep awe fell upon him. In the pause he heard the robins rioting from the trees in the lower valley, and the woodpecker cried resoundingly.

"You've killed him!" cried Ike, as he climbed hastily over the fence.

Bill did not reply. The men faced each other in solemn silence, all wish for murder going out of their hearts. The sobbing cry of the mourning dove, which they had been hearing all day, suddenly assumed new meaning.

"Ah, woe, woe is me!" it cried.

"Bring water!" shouted Ike, kneeling beside his brother.

Bill knelt there with him, while the rest dashed water upon Jim's face.

At last he began to breathe like a fretful, waking child, and looking up into the scared faces above him, motioned the water away from him. The angry look came back into his face, but it was mixed with perplexity.

He touched his hand to his face and brought it down covered with blood. "How much am I hurt?" he said fiercely.

"Oh, nothing much," Ike hastened to say; "it's just a scratch."

Jim struggled to his elbow and looked around him. It all seemed to come back to him. "Did he do it fair?" he demanded of his companions.

"Oh, yes; it was fair enough," said Ike.

Jim looked at Jack. "That thing didn't hit me with his axe, did he?"

Jack grinned. "No, but I was just a-goin' to when Bill belted you one," was the frank and convincing reply.

Jim got up slowly and faced Bill. "Well, that settles it; it's all right! You're a better man than I am. That's all I've got to say."

He climbed back over the fence and led the way down to dinner without looking back.

"What give ye that lick on the side o' the head, Jim?" his wife asked, when he sat down at the dinner-table.

"Never you mind," he replied surlily, but he added, "Ike's axe come off, and give me a side-winder."

Bill carefully removed all marks of his struggle and walked into dinner shamefacedly, all muscle gone out of his bulk of fat. His sudden return to primeval savagery grew monstrous in the cheerful kitchen, with its noise of hearty children, sizzling meat, and the clatter of dishes.

The stove was not drawing well and Sarah did not notice anything out of the way with Bill.

"I never see such a hateful thing in all my life," she said, referring to the stove. "That rhubarb duff won't be fit for a hog to eat; the undercrust ain't baked the least bit yet, and I have had it in there since fifteen minutes after 'leven."

Bill said generously, "Oh, well, never mind, Serry; we'll worry it down some way."

V

All through July and August Mrs. Jim Harkey seemed to renew her endeavors to keep the sisters apart; she still carried spiteful tales to and fro, amplifying them with an irresistible histronic tendency. It had become a matter of self-exoneration with her then. She could not stop now without seeming to admit she had been mischief-making in the past. If the sisters should come together, her lies would instantly appear.

Emma grew morose, irritable, and melancholy; she was suffering for her sister's wholesome presence, and yet, being under the dominion of the mischief-maker, dared not send word or even mention the name of her sister in the presence of the Harkeys.

Mrs. Jim came up to the house to stay as Emma got too ill to work, and took charge of the house. The children hated her fiercely, and there were noisy battles in the kitchen constantly wearing upon the nerves of the sick woman who lay in the restricted gloom of the sitting room bed-chamber, within hearing of every squall.

There were moments of peace only when Ike was in the house. Smooth as he was, Jim's wife was afraid of him. There was something compelling in his low-toned voice; his presence subdued but did not remove strife.

His silencing of the tumult hardly arose out of any consideration for his wife, but rather from his inability to enjoy his paper while the clamor of war was going on about him.

He was not a tender man, and yet he prided himself on being a very calm and even-tempered man. He kept out of Bill's way, and considered himself entirely justified in his position regarding the cow-bell. It is doubtful if he would have accepted an apology.

Emma suffered acutely from Mrs. Harkey's visits. Something mean and wearying went out from her presence, and her sharp, bold face was a constant irritation. Sometimes when she thought herself alone, Emma crawled to the window which looked up the Coolly, toward Sarah's home, and sat there silently longing to send out a cry for help. But at the sound of Jane Harkey's step she fled back into bed like a frightened child.

She became more and more childish and more flighty in her thoughts as her time of trial drew near, and she became more subject to her jailer. She grew morbidly silent, and her large eyes were restless and full of pleading.

One day she heard Mrs. Smith talking out in the kitchen.

"How is Emmy to-day, Mrs. Jim?"

"Well, not extry. She ain't likely to come out as well as usual this time, I don't think," was the brutally incautious reply; "she's pretty well run down, and I wouldn't be surprised if she had some trouble."

"I suppose Sarah will be down to help you," said Mrs. Smith.

"Well, I guess not—not after what she's told."

"What has she told?" asked Mrs. Smith, in her sweet and friendly voice.

"Why, she said she wouldn't set foot in this house if we all died."

"I never heard her say that, and I don't believe she ever did say it," said Mrs. Smith, firmly.

Emma's heart glowed with a swift rush of affection toward her sister and Mrs. Smith; she wanted to cry out her faith in Sarah, but she dared not.

Mrs. Harkey slammed the oven door viciously. "Well, you can believe it or not, just as you like; I heard her say it."

"Well, I didn't, so I can't believe it."

When Mrs. Smith came in, Emma was ready to weep, so sweet and cheery was her visitor's face.

She found no chance to talk with her, however, for Mrs. Harkey kept near them during her visit. Once, while Mrs. Jim ran out to look at the pies, Mrs. Smith whispered: "Don't you believe what they say about Sarah. She's just as kind as can be—I know she is. She's looking down this way every day, and I know she'd come down instanter if you'd send for her. I'm going up that way, and—"

She found no further chance to say anything, but from that moment Emma began to think of letting Sarah know how much she needed her. She planned to hang out the cloth as she used to. She exaggerated its importance in the way of an invalid, until it attained the significance of an act of treason. She felt like a criminal even in thinking about it.

Several times in the night she dreamed she had put the cloth out and that Jim and his wife had seen it and torn it down. She awoke two or three times to find herself sitting up in bed staring out of the window, through which the moon shone and the multitudinous sounds of the mid-summer insects came sonorously.

Once her husband said, "What's the matter? It seems to me you'd rest better if you'd lay down and keep quiet." His voice was low enough, but it had a peculiar inflection, which made her sink back into bed by his side, shivering with fear and weeping silently.

The next day Jim and her husband both went off to town, and Jim's wife, after about ten o'clock, said:—

"Now, Emmy, I'm going down to Smith's to get a dress pattern, and I want you to keep quiet right here in bed. I'll be right back; I'll set some water here, and I guess you won't want anything else until I get back. I'll run right down and right back."

After hearing the door close, Emma lay for a few minutes listening, waiting until she felt sure Mrs. Harkey was well out of the yard, then she crept out of bed and crawled to the window. Mrs. Jim was far down the road; she could see her blue dress and her pink sunbonnet.

The sick woman seized the sheet and pulled it from the bed; the clothes came with it, but she did not mind that. She pulled herself painfully up the stairway and across the rough floor of the chamber to the window which looked toward her sister's house, and with a wild exultation flung the sheet far out and dropped on her knees beside the open window.

She moaned and cried wildly as she waved the sheet. The note of a scared child was in her voice.

"Oh, Serry, come quick! Oh, I need you, Serry! I didn't mean to be mean; I want to see you so! Oh, dear, oh, dear! Oh, Serry, come quick!"

Then space and the world slipped away, and she knew nothing of time again until she heard the anxious voice of Sarah below.

"Emmy, where are you, Emmy?"

"Here I be, Serry."

With swift, heavy tread Sarah hurried up the stairs, and the dear old face shone upon her again; those kind gray eyes full of anxiety and of love.

Emma looked up like a child entreating to be lifted. Her look so pitifully eager went to the younger sister's maternal heart.

"You poor, dear soul! Why didn't you send for me before?"

"Oh, Serry, don't leave me again, will you?"

When Mrs. Harkey returned she found Sarah sitting by Emma's side in the bed-chamber. Sarah looked at her with all the grimness her jolly fat face could express.

"You ain't needed here," she said coldly. "If you want to do anything, find a man and send him for the Doctor—quick. If she dies you'll be her murderer."

Mrs. Harkey was subdued by the bitterness of accusation in Sarah's face as well as by Emma's condition. She hurried down the Coolly and sent a boy wildly galloping toward the town. Then she went home and sat down by her own hearthstone feeling deeply injured.

When the Doctor came he found a poor little boy baby crying in Sarah's arms. It was Emma's seventh child, but the ever sufficing mother-love looked from her eyes undimmed, limitless as the air.

"Will it live, Doctor? It's so little," she said, with a sigh.

"Oh, yes, I suppose so!" said the Doctor, as if its living were not entirely a blessing to itself or others. "Yes, I've seen lots of lusty children begin life like that. But," he said to Sarah at the door, "she needs better care than the babe!"

"She'll git it," said Sarah, with deep solemnity, "if I have to move over here—and live."



A FAIR EXILE

The train was ambling across the hot, russet plain. The wind, strong and warm and dry, sweeping up from the south, carried with it the subtle odor of September grass and gathered harvests. Out of the unfenced roads the dust arose in long lines, like smoke from some hidden burning which the riven earth revealed. The fields were tenanted with thrashing crews, the men diminished by distance to pygmies, the long belt of the engine flapping and shining like a ribbon in the flaming sunlight.

The freight-cars on the accommodation train jostled and rocked about and heaved up laterally till they resembled a long line of awkward, frightened, galloping buffaloes. The one coach was scantily filled with passengers, mainly poorly clothed farmers and their families.

A young man seated well back in the coach was looking dreamily out of the window, and the conductor, a keen-eyed young fellow, after passing him several times, said, in a friendly way:

"Going up to Boomtown, I imagine."

"Yes—if we ever get there."

"Oh, we'll get there. We won't have much more switching. We've only got an empty car or two to throw in at the junction."

"Well, I'm glad of that. I'm a little impatient, because I've got a case coming up in court, and I'm not exactly fixed for it."

"Your name is Allen, I believe."

"Yes; J. H. Allen, of Sioux City."

"I thought so. I've heard you speak."

The young lawyer was a tall, slender, dark-eyed man, rather sombre in appearance. He did not respond to the invitation in the conductor's voice.

"When do you reach the junction?"

"Next stop. We're only a few minutes late. Expect to meet friends there?"

"No; thought I'd get a lunch, that's all."

At the junction the car became pretty well filled with people. Two or three Norwegian families came clattering in, the mothers clothed in heavy shawls and cheap straw hats, the flaxen-haired children in faded cottonade and blue denims. They filled nearly half the seats. Several drummers came in, laughing loudly, bearing heavy valises. Then Allen heard, above the noise, the shrill but sweet voice of a girl, and caught the odor of violets as two persons passed him and took a seat just before him.

The man he knew by sight and reputation as a very brilliant young lawyer—Edward Benson, of Heron Lake. The girl he knew instantly to be utterly alien to this land and people. She was like a tropic bird seen amid the scant foliage of northern hills. There was evidence of great care and taste in every fold of her modish dress. Her hat was simple but in the latest city fashion, and her gloves were spotless. She gave off an odor of cleanliness and beauty.

She was very young and slender. Her face was piquant but not intellectual, and scarcely beautiful. It pleased rather by its life and motion and oddity than by its beauty. She looked at her companion in a peculiar way—trustfully, almost reverently—and yet with a touch of coquetry which seemed perfectly native to every turn of her body or glance of her eyes.

Her companion was a fine Western type of self-made man. He was tall and broad-shouldered, but walked a little stooping, like a man of fifty. He wore a long Prince Albert frock-coat, hanging loosely from his rather square shoulders. His white vest was noticeably soiled by his watch chain, and his tie was disarranged.

His face was very fine and good. His eyes were gray-blue, deep and quiet, but slightly smiling, as were his lips, which his golden-brown mustache shaded but did not hide. He was kept smiling in this quizzical way by the nervous chatter of the girl beside him. His profile, which was the view Allen had of him, was striking. His strong, straight nose and abrupt forehead formed a marked contrast to the rather characterless nose and retreating forehead of the girl.

The first words that Allen distinguished out of the merry war in which they seemed engaged were spoken in the tone of pretty petulance such women use—a coquette's defence.

"You did! you did! you did! Now! You know you did! You told me that! You told me you despised girls like me!"

"I said I despised women who had no object in life but dress," he replied, rather soberly.

"But you were hopping on me; you meant me, now! You can't deny it! You despise me, I know you do!" She challenged his flattery in her pouting self-depreciation.

The young man tried to stop her in her course, to change her mood, which was descending to real feeling. His low words were lost in the rumble of the car.

"Yes, yes, try to smooth it over; but you can't fool me any more. But I don't want you to flatter me and lie to me the way Judge Stearns did," she added, with a sudden change of manner. "I like you because you're straight."

The phrase with which she ended seemed to take on a new meaning, uttered by those red lips in childish pout.

"Now, why are you down on the judge? I don't see," said the man, as if she had gone back to an old attack.

"Well, if you'd seen what I have, you'd understand." She turned away and looked out of the window. "Oh, this terrible country! I'd die out here in six weeks. I know I should."

The young lawyer was not to be turned aside.

"Of course, I'm pleased to have you throw the judge over and employ me, but, all the same, I think you do him an injustice. He's a good, square man."

"Square man!" she said, turning to him with a sudden fury in her eyes. "Do you call it square for a man—married, and gray-haired, too—to take up with a woman like Mrs. Shellberg? Say, do you, now?"

"Well, I don't quite believe—"

"Oh, I lie, do I?" she cried, with another swift change to reproach. "You can't take my word for Mrs. Shellberg's visits to his office."

"But he was her lawyer."

"But you know what kind of a woman she is! She didn't need to go there every day or two, did she? What did he always receive her in his private office for? Come, now, tell me that!"

"I don't know that he did," persisted the lawyer.

A sort of convulsion passed over her face, her little hands clinched, and the tears started into her eyes. Her voice was very quiet.

"You think I lie, then?"

"I think you are mistaken, just as other jealous women have—"

"You think I'm jealous, do you?"

"You act like a jeal—"

"Jealous of that gray-haired old wretch? No, sir! I—I—" She struggled to express herself. "I liked him, and I hated to lose all my faith in men. I thought he was good and honest when he prayed—Oh, I've seen him pray in church, the old hypocrite!" Her fury returned at the recollection.

Her companion's face grew grave. The smile went out of his eyes, leaving them dark and sorrowful.

"I understand you now," he said, at last. She turned to look at him. "My practice in the divorce business out here has almost destroyed my faith in women. If it weren't for my wife and sister—"

She broke in eagerly: "Now I know you know what I mean. Sometimes I think men are—devils!" She thrust this word forth, and her little face grew dark and strained. "But the judge kept me from thinking—I never loved my father; he didn't care for me; all he wanted to do was to make ten thousand barrels of beer a year and sell it; and the judge seemed like a father to me till she came and destroyed my faith in him."

"But—well, let Mrs. S. go. There are lots of good men and pure women in the world. It's dangerous to think there aren't—especially for a handsome young woman like you. You can't afford to keep in that kind of a mood long."

She looked at him curiously. "That's what I like about you," she said, soberly. "You talk to me as if I had some sense—as if I were a human being. If you were to flatter me, now, and make love to me, I never would believe in any man again."

He smiled again in his frank, good way, and drew a picture from his pocket. It was a picture of a woman bending down over a laughing, naked child, sprawling frogwise in her lap. The woman's face was broad and intellectual and handsome. The look of splendid maternity was in her eyes. They both looked at the picture in silence. The girl sighed.

"I wish I was as good as that woman looks."

"You can be if you try."

"Not with a big Chicago brewer for a father, and a husband that beats you whenever the mood takes him."

"I admit that's hard. I think the atmosphere of that Heron Lake hotel isn't any great help to you."

"Oh, they're a gay lot there! We fight like cats and dogs." A look of slyness and boldness came over her face. "Mrs. Shellberg hates me as hard as I do her. She used to go around telling: 'It's very peculiar, you know'"—she imitated her rival's voice—"'but no matter which end of the dining-room I sit, all the men look that way!'"

The young lawyer laughed at her in spite of himself.

And she went on: "But they don't, now. That's the reason she hates me," she said, in conclusion. "The men don't notice her when I'm around."

To hear her fresh young lips utter those words with their vile inflections was like taking a sudden glimpse into the underworld, where harlots dwell and the spirits of unrestrained lusts dance in the shadowy recesses of the human heart.

Allen, hearing this fragmentary conversation, fascinated yet uneasy, looked at the pair with wonder. They seemed quite unconscious of their public situation.

The young lawyer looked straight before him, while the girl, swept on by her ignoble rage, displayed still more of the moral ulceration which had been injected into her young life.

"I don't see what men find about her to like—unless it is her eyes. She's got beautiful eyes. But she's vulgar—ugh! The stories she tells—right before men, too! She'd kill any one that got ahead of her, that woman would! And yet she'll come into my room and cry and cry, and say: 'Don't take him away from me! Leave him to me!' Ugh! It makes me sick." She stamped her foot, then added, irrelevantly: "She wears a wig, too. I suppose that old fool of a judge thinks it's her own hair."

The lawyer sat in stony silence. His grave face was accusing in its set expression, and she felt it, and was spurred on to do still deeper injustice to herself—an insane perversity.

"Not that I care a cent—I'm not jealous of her. I ain't so bad off for company as she is. She can't take anybody away from me, but she must go and break down my faith in the judge."

She bit her lips to keep from crying out. She looked out of the window again, seeking control.

The "divorce colony" never appeared more sickening in its inner corruptions than when delineated by this dainty young girl. Allen could see the swarming men about the hotels; he could see their hot, leering eyes and smell their liquor-laden breaths as they named the latest addition to the colony or boasted of their associations with those already well known.

The girl turned suddenly to her companion.

"How do those people live out here on their farms?"

She pointed at a small shanty where the whole family stood to watch the train go by.

"By eating boiled potatoes and salt pork."

"Salt pork!" she echoed, as if salt pork were old boot-heels or bark or hay. "Why, it takes four hours for salt pork to digest!"

He laughed again at her childish irrelevancy. "So much the better for the poor. Where'd you learn all that, anyway?"

"At school. Oh, you needn't look so incredulous! I went to boarding-school. I learned a good deal more than you think."

"Well, so I see. Now, I should have said pork digested in three hours, speaking from experience."

"Well, it don't. What do the women do out here?"

"They work like the men, only more so."

"Do they have any new things?"

"Not very often, I'm afraid."

She sighed. After a pause, she said:

"You were raised on a farm?"

"Yes. In Minnesota."

"Did you do work like that?" She pointed at a thrashing-machine in the field.

"Yes, I ploughed and sowed and reaped and mowed. I wasn't on the farm for my health."

"You're very strong, aren't you?" she asked, admiringly.

"In a slab-sided kind of a way—yes."

Her eyes grew abstracted.

"I like strong men. Ollie was a little man, not any taller than I am, but when he was drunk he was what men call a—a holy terror. He struck me with the water-pitcher once—that was just before baby was born. I wish he'd killed me." She ended in a sudden reaction to hopeless bitterness. "It would have saved me all these months of life in this terrible country."

"It might have saved you from more than you think," he said, quietly, tenderly.

"What do you mean?"

"You've been brought up against women and men who have defiled you. They've made your future uncertain."

"Do you think it's so bad as that? Tell me!" she insisted, seeing his hesitation.

"You're on the road to hell!" he said, in a voice that was very low, but it reached her. It was full of pain and grave reprimand and gentleness. "You've been poisoned. You're in need of a good man's help. You need the companionship of good, earnest women instead of painted harlots."

Her voice shook painfully as she replied:

"You don't think I'm all bad?"

"You're not bad at all—you're simply reckless. You are not to blame. It depends upon yourself now, though, whether you keep a true woman or go to hell with Mrs. Shellberg."

The conductor eyed them, as he passed, with an unpleasant light in his eyes, and the drummers a few seats ahead turned to look at them. The tip had passed along from lip to lip. They were like wild beasts roused by the presence of prey. Their eyes gleamed with relentless lust. They eyed the little creature with ravening eyes. Her helplessness was their opportunity.

Allen, sitting there, entered into the terror and the tragedy of the girl's life. He imagined her reckless, prodigal girlhood; the coarse, rich father; the marriage, when a thoughtless girl, with a drunken, dissolute boy; the quarrels, brutal beatings; the haste to secure a divorce; the contamination of the crowded hotels in Heron Lake, where this slender young girl—naturally pure, alert, quick of impulse—was like a lamb among lustful wolves. His heart ached for her.

The deep, slow voice of the lawyer sounded on. His eyes, turned toward her, had no equivocal look. He was a brother speaking to a younger sister. The tears fell down her cheeks, upon her folded hands. Her widely opened eyes seemed to look out into a night of storms.

"Oh, what shall I do?" she moaned. "I wish I was dead—and baby, too!"

"Live for the baby—let him help you out."

"Oh, he can't! I don't care enough for him. I wish I was like other mothers, but I'm not. I can't shut myself up with a baby. I'm too young."

He saw that. She was seeking the love of a man, not the care of a child. She had the wifely passion, but not the mother's love. He was silent; the case baffled him.

"Oh, I wish you could help me! I wish I had you to help me all the time! I do! I don't care what you think—I do! I do!"

"Our home is open to you and baby, too," he said, slowly. "My wife knows about you, and—"

"Who told her—did you?" she flashed out again, angrily, jealously.

"Yes. My wife is my other self," he replied, quietly.

She stared at him, breathing heavily, then looked out of the window again. At last she turned to him. She seemed to refer to his invitation.

"Oh, this terrible land! Oh, I couldn't stay here! I'd go insane. Perhaps I'm going insane, anyway. Don't you think so?"

"No, I think you're a little nervous, that's all."

"Oh! Do you think I'll get my divorce?"

"Certainly, without question."

"Can I wait and go back with you?"

"I shall not return for several days. Perhaps you couldn't bear to wait in this little town; it's not much like the city."

"Oh, dear! But I can't go about alone. I hate these men, they stare at me so! I wish I was a man. It's awful to be a woman, don't you think so? Please don't laugh."

The young lawyer was far from laughing, but this was her only way of defending herself. These pert, bird-like ways formed her shield against ridicule and misprision.

He said, slowly, "Yes, it's an awful thing to be a woman, but then it's an awful responsibility to be a man."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that we are responsible, as the dominant sex, for every tragic, incomplete woman's life."

"Don't you blame Mrs. Shellberg?" she said, forcing him to a concrete example with savage swiftness.

"No. She had a poor father and a poor husband, and she must earn her own living some way."

"She could cook, or nurse, or something like that."

"It isn't easy to find opportunity to cook or nurse. If it were as easy to earn a living in a pure way as it is in a vicious way, all men would be rich and virtuous. But what had you planned to do after your divorce?"

"Oh, I'm going to travel for two years. Then I'll try to settle down."

"What you need is a good husband, and a little cottage where you'd have to cook your own food—and tend the baby."

"I wouldn't cook for any man living," she broke in, to express her bitterness that he could so coldly dispose of her future. "Oh, this terrible train! Can't it go faster? If I'd realized what a trip this was, I wouldn't have started."

"This is the route you all go," he replied, with grim humor, and his words pictured a ceaseless stream of divorcees.

She resented his classing her with the rest, but she simply said: "You despise me, don't you? But what can we do? You can't expect us to live with men we hate, can you? That would be worse than Mrs. Shellberg."

"No, I don't expect that of you. I'd issue a divorce coupon with every marriage certificate, and done with it," he said, in desperate disgust. "Then this whole cursed business would be done away with. It isn't a question of our laxity of divorce laws," he said, after a pause, "it's a question of the senseless severity of the laws in other States. That's what throws this demoralizing business into our hands here."

"It pays, don't it? I know I've paid for everything I've had."

"Yes, that's the demoralizing thing. It draws a gang of conscienceless attorneys here, and it draws us who belong here off into dirty work, and it brings us into contact with men and women—I'm sick of the whole business."

She had hardly followed him in his generalizations. She brought him back to the personal.

"You're sick of me, I know you are!" She leaned her head on the window-pane. Her eyes closed. "Oh, I wish my heart would stop beating!" she said, in a tense, profoundly significant tone.

Allen, sitting so close behind them, was forced to overhear, so piercingly sweet was her voice. He trembled for fear some one else might hear her. It seemed like profanation that any one but God should listen to this outcry of a quivering, writhing soul.

She faced her companion again. "You're the only man I know, now, that I respect, and you despise me."

"No, I don't; I pity you."

"That's worse. I want you to help me. Oh, if you could go with me, or if I could be with you!" Her gloved hands strained together in the agony of her desire.

His calm lips did not waver. He did not smile, even about the eyes. He knew her cry sprang from her need of a brother, not from the passion of a woman.

"Our home is yours just as long as you can bear the monotony of our simple lives," he said, in his quiet way, but it was deep-throated and unmistakable in its sincerity.

She laid her hand on his arm and clasped it hard, then turned away her head, and they rode in silence.

After they left the car Allen sat, with savage eyes and grimly set mouth, going over the problem again and again. He saw that young and helpless creature walking the gantlet between endless ranks of lustful, remorseless men, snatching at her in selfish, bestial desire.

It made him bitter and despairing to think that women should be helpless—that they should need some man to protect them against some other man. He cursed the laws and traditions that had kept women subordinate and trivial and deceptive and vacillating. He wished they could be raised to the level of the brutes till, like the tigress or she-wolf, they could not only defend themselves, but their young.

He tried to breathe a sigh of relief that she had gone out of his life, but he could not. It was not so easy to shake off the shadow of his responsibility. He followed her in imagination on her downward path till he saw her stretching out her hands in pitiful need to casual acquaintances—alone and without hope; still petite, still dainty in spite of all, still with flashes of wit, and then—

He shuddered. "O my God! Upon whom does the burden of guilt lie?"

* * * * *

On the night of his return he sat among his romping babes, debating whether he should tell the story to his wife or not. As the little ones grew weary the noise of the autumn wind—the lonely, woful, moaning prairie wind—came to his ears, and he shuddered. His wife observed it.

"What is it, Joe? Did you get a chill?"

"Oh no. The wind sounds a little lonesome to-night, that's all." But he took his little girl into his arms and held her close.



AN ALIEN IN THE PINES

I

A man and a woman were pacing up and down the wintry station platform, waiting for a train. On every side the snow lay a stained and crumpled blanket, with here and there a light or a chimney to show the village sleeping beneath.

The sky was a purple-black hemisphere, out of which the stars glittered almost white. The wind came out of the west, cold but amiable; the cracked bell of a switch-engine gurgled querulously at intervals, followed by the bumping of coupling freight-cars; roosters were crowing, and sleepy train-men were assembling in sullen silence.

The couple walked with arms locked like lovers, but the tones of their voices had the quality which comes after marriage. They were man and wife.

The woman's clear voice arose. "Oh, Ed, isn't this delicious? What one misses by not getting up early!"

"Sleep, for instance," laughed her husband.

"Don't drag me down. You know what I mean. Let's get up early every morning while we're up here in the woods."

"Shouldn't wonder if we had to. There'll be a lot to do, and I want to get back to Chicago by the 1st of February."

"This is an experience! Isn't it still? When is our train due?"

"Due now; I think that is our headlight up the track."

As he spoke an engine added its voice to the growing noise of the station, and drew solemnly down the frosty steel.

An eruption of shapeless forms of men from the depot filled the one general coach of the train. They nearly all were dressed in some sort of fur coat, and all had the look of men accustomed to out-door life—powerful, loud-voiced, unrefined. They were, in fact, travelling men, business men, the owners of mills or timber. The stolid or patient ox-like faces of some Norwegian workmen, dressed in gay Mackinac jackets, were sprinkled about.

The young wife was a fine type of woman anywhere, but these surroundings made her seem very dainty and startlingly beautiful. Her husband had the fair skin of a city man, but his powerful shoulders and firm step denoted health and wholesome living. They were both good to look at.

They soon felt the reaction to sleepiness which comes to those not accustomed to early rising, and the wife, soothed by the clank of the train, leaned her head on her husband's shoulder and dozed. He looked out upon the landscape, glad that his wife was not observing it. He did not know such desolation existed in Wisconsin.

On every side were the evidences of a ruined forest land. A landscape of flat wastes, of thinned and burned and uprooted trees. A desolate and apparently useless land.

Here and there a sawmill stood gray and sagging, surrounded by little cabins of unpainted wood, to testify to the time when great pines stood all about, and the ring of the swamper's axe was heard in the intervals of silence between the howls of a saw.

To the north the swells grew larger. Birch and tamarack swamps alternated with dry ridges on which an inferior pine still grew. The swamps were dense tangles of broken and uprooted trees. Slender pike-like stumps of fire-devastated firs rose here and there, black and grim skeletons of trees.

It was a land that had been sheared by the axe, torn by the winds, and blasted by fire.

Off to the west low blue ridges rose, marking the boundaries of the valley which had been washed out ages ago by water. After the floods pine forest had sprung up, and these in their turn had been sheared away by man. It lay now awaiting the plough and seeder of the intrepid pioneer.

Suddenly the wife awoke and sat up. "Why, we haven't had any breakfast!"

He smiled at her childish look of bewilderment. "I've been painfully aware of it for some time back. I've been suffering for food while you slept."

"Why didn't you get into the basket?"

"How could I, with you on my manly bosom?"

She colored up a little. They had not been married long, evidently. "How considerate you are!"

They were soon eating a breakfast with the spirit of picnickers. Occasionally she looked out of the window.

"What a wild country!" she said. He did not emphasize its qualities to her; rather, he distracted her attention from its desolation.

The train roared round its curves, conforming with the general course of the river. On every hand were thickening signs of active lumber industry. They flashed by freight trains loaded with logs or lumber or ties. Mills in operation grew thicker.

The car echoed with the talk of lumber. A brisk man with a red mustache was exhibiting a model of a machine to cut certain parts of machinery out of "two by fours." Another was describing a new shingle-mill he had just built.

A couple of elderly men, one a German, were discussing the tariff on lumber. The workmen mainly sat silent.

"It's all so strange!" the young wife said, again and again.

"Yes, it isn't exactly the Lake Shore Drive."

"I like it. I wish I could smell the pines."

"You'll have all the pines you can stand before we get back to Chicago."

"No, sir; I'm going to enjoy every moment of it; and you're going to let me help, you know—look over papers, and all that. I'm the heiress, you must remember," she added, wickedly.

"Well, we won't quarrel about that until we see how the legacy turns out. It may not be worth my time up here. I shall charge you roundly as your lawyer, depend on that."

The outlook grew more attractive as the train sped on. Old Mosinee rose, a fine rounded blue shape, on the left.

"Why, there's a mountain! I didn't know Wisconsin had such a mountain as that."

"Neither did I. This valley is fine. Now, if your uncle's estates only included that hill!"

The valley made off to the northwest with a bold, large, and dignified movement. The coloring, blue and silver, purple-brown and bronze-green, was harmonious with the grouping of lines. It was all fresh and vital, wholesome and very impressive.

From this point the land grew wilder—that is to say, more primeval. There was more of Nature and less of man. The scar of the axe was here and there, but the forest predominated. The ridges of pine foliages broke against the sky, miles and miles, in splendid sweep.

"This must be lovely in summer," the wife said, again and again, as they flashed by some lake set among the hills.

"It's fine now," he replied, feeling the thrill of the sportsman. "I'd like to shoulder a rifle and plunge into those snowy vistas. How it brings the wild spirit out in a man! Women never feel that delight."

"Oh, yes, we do," she replied, glad that something remained yet unexplained between them. "We feel just like men, only we haven't the strength of mind to demand a share of it with you."

"Yes, you feel it at this distance. You'd come back mighty quick the second night out."

She did not relish his laughter, and so looked away out of the window. "Just think of it—Uncle Edwin lived here thirty years!"

He forebore to notice her inconsistency. "Yes, the wilderness is all right for a vacation, but I prefer Chicago for the year round."

When they came upon Ridgeley, both cried out with delight.

"Oh, what a dear, picturesque little town!" she said.

"Well, well! I wonder how they came to build a town without a row of battlemented stores?"

It lay among and upon the sharp, low, stumpy pine ridges in haphazard fashion, like a Swiss village. A small brook ran through it, smothered here and there in snow. A sawmill was the largest figure of the town, and the railway station was the centre. There was not an inch of painted board in the village. Everywhere the clear yellow of the pine flamed unstained by time. Lumber piles filled all the lower levels near the creek. Evidently the town had been built along logging roads, and there was something grateful and admirable in its irregular arrangement. The houses, moreover, were all modifications of the logging camps; even the drug store stood with its side to the street. All about were stumps and fringes of pines, which the lumbermen, for some good reason, had passed by. Charred boles stood purple-black out of the snow.

It was all green and gray and blue and yellow-white and stern. The sky was not more illimitable than the rugged forest which extended on every hand.

"Oh, this is glorious—glorious!" said the wife. "Do I own some of this town?" she asked, as they rose to go out.

"I reckon you do."

"Oh, I'm so glad!"

As they stepped out on the platform, a large man in corduroy and wolf-skin faced them like a bandit.

"Hello, Ed!"

"Hello, Jack! Well, we've found you. My wife, Mr. Ridgeley. We've come up to find out how much you've embezzled," he said, as Ridgeley pulled off an immense glove to shake hands all round.

"Well, come right over to the hotel. It ain't the Auditorium, but then, again, it ain't like sleeping outdoors."

As they moved along they heard the train go off, and then the sound of the saw resumed its domination of the village noises.

"Was the town named after you, or you after the town?" asked Field.

"Named after me. Old man didn't want it named after him; would kill it," he said.

Mr. and Mrs. Field found the hotel quite comfortable and the dinner wholesome. They beamed upon each other.

"It's going to be delightful," they said.

Ridgeley was a bachelor, and made his home at the hotel also. That night he said: "Now we'll go over the papers and records of your uncle's property, and then we'll go out and see if the property is all there. I imagine this is to be a searching investigation."

"You may well think it. My wife is inexorable."

As night fell, the wife did not feel so safe and well pleased. The loud talking in the office below and the occasional whooping of a crowd of mill-hands going by made her draw her chair nearer and lay her fingers in her husband's palm.

He smiled indulgently. "Don't be frightened, my dear. These men are not half so bad as they sound."

II

Mrs. Field sat in the inner room of Ridgeley's office, waiting for the return of her husband with the team. They were going out for a drive.

Ridgeley was working at his books, and he had forgotten her presence.

She could not but feel a deep admiration for his powerful frame and his quick, absorbed action as he moved about from his safe to his desk. He was a man of great force and ready decision.

Suddenly the door opened and a stranger entered. He had a sullen and bitter look on his thin, dark face. Ridgeley's quick eyes measured him, and his hand softly turned the key in his money drawer, and as he faced about he swung shut the door of the safe.

The stranger saw all this with eyes as keen as Ridgeley's. A cheerless and strange smile came upon his face.

"Don't be alarmed," he said. "I'm low, but I ain't as low as that."

"Well, sir, what can I do for you?" asked Ridgeley. Mrs. Field half rose, feeling something tense and menacing in the attitude of the two men.

But the intruder quietly answered, "You can give me a job if you want to."

Ridgeley remained alert. His eyes ran over the man's tall frame. He looked strong and intelligent, although his eyes were fevered and dull.

"What kind of a job?"

"Any kind that will take me out into the woods and keep me there."

There was a self-accusing tone in his voice that Ridgeley felt.

"What's your object? You look like a man who could do something else. What brings you here?"

The man turned with a sudden resolution to punish himself. His voice expressed a terrible loathing.

"Whiskey, that's what. It's a hell of a thing to say, but I can't let liquor alone when I can smell it. I'm no common hand, or I wouldn't be if I—But let that go. I can swing an axe, and I'm ready to work. That's enough. Now the question is, can you find a place for me?"

Ridgeley mused a little. The young fellow stood there, statuesque, rebellious.

Then Ridgeley said, "I guess I can help you out that much." He picked up a card and a pencil. "What shall I call you?"

"Oh, call me Williams; that ain't my name, but it'll do."

"What you been doing?"

"Everything part of the time, drinking the rest. Was in a livery-stable down at Wausau last week. It came over me, when I woke yesterday, that I was gone to hell if I stayed in town. So I struck out; and I don't care for myself, but I've got a woman to look out for—" He stopped abruptly. His recklessness of mood had its limits, after all.

Ridgeley pencilled on a card. "Give this to the foreman of No. 6. The men over at the mill will show you the teams."

The man started toward the door with the card in his hand. He turned suddenly.

"One thing more. I want you to send ten dollars of my pay every two weeks to this address." He took an envelope out of his pocket. "It don't matter what I say or do after this, I want that money sent. The rest will keep me in tobacco and clothing. You understand?"

Ridgeley nodded. "Perfectly. I've seen such cases before."

The man went out and down the walk with a hurried, determined air, as if afraid to trust his own resolution.

As Ridgeley turned toward his desk he met Mrs. Field, who faced him with tears of fervent sympathy in her eyes.

"Isn't it awful?" she said, in a half whisper. "Poor fellow, what will become of him?"

"Oh, I don't know. He'll get along some way. Such fellows do. I've had 'em before. They try it awhile here; then they move. I can't worry about them."

Mrs. Field was not listening to his shifty words. "And then, think of his wife—how she must worry."

Ridgeley smiled. "Perhaps it's his mother or a sister."

"Anyway, it's awful. Can't something be done for him?"

"I guess we've done about all that can be done."

"Oh, I wish I could help him! I'll tell Ed about him."

"Don't worry about him, Mrs. Field; he ain't worth it."

"Oh yes, he is. I feel he's been a fine fellow, and then he's so self-accusing."

Her own happiness was so complete, she could not bear to think of others' misery. She told her husband about Williams, and ended by asking, "Can't we do something to help the poor fellow?"

Field was not deeply concerned. "No; he's probably past help. Such men are so set in their habits, nothing but a miracle or hypnotism can save them. He'll end up as a 'lumber Jack,' as the townsmen call the hands in the camps."

"But he isn't that, Edward. He's finer, some way. You feel he is. Ask Mr. Ridgeley."

Ridgeley merely said: "Yes, he seemed to me to be more than a common hand. But, all the same, it won't be two weeks before he'll be in here as drunk as a wild cat, wanting to shoot me for holding back his money."

In this way Williams came to be to Mrs. Field a very important figure in the landscape of that region. She often spoke of him, and on the following Saturday night, when Field came home, she anxiously asked, "Is Williams in town?"

"No, he hasn't shown up yet."

She clapped her hands in delight. "Good! good! He's going to win his fight."

Field laughed. "Don't bet on Williams too soon. We'll hear from him before the week is out."

"When are we going to visit the camp?" she asked, changing the subject.

"As soon as it warms up a little. It is too cold for you."

She had a laugh at him. "You were the one who wanted to 'plunge into the snowy vistas.'"

He evaded her joke on him by assuming a careless tone. "I'm not plunging as much as I was; the snow is too deep."

"When you go I want to go with you—I want to see Williams."

"Ha!" he snorted, melodramatically. "She scorns me faithful heart. She turns—"

Mrs. Field smiled faintly. "Don't joke about it, Ed. I can't get that wife out of my mind."

III

A few very cold gray days followed, and then the north wind cleared the sky; and, though it was still cold, it was pleasant. The sky had only a small white cloud here and there to make its blueness the more profound.

Ridgeley dashed up to the door with a hardy little pair of broncos hitched to a light pair of bobs, and Mrs. Field was tucked in like a babe in a cradle.

Almost the first thing she asked was, "How is Williams?"

"Oh, he's getting on nicely. He refused to sleep with his bunk-mate, and finally had to lick him, I understand, to shut him up. Challenged the whole camp, then, to let him alone or take a licking. They let him alone, Lawson says. G'lang there, you rats!"

Mrs. Field said no more, for the air was whizzing by her ears, and she hardly dared look out, so keen was the wind; but as soon as they entered the deeps of the forest it was profoundly still.

The ride that afternoon was a glory she never forgot. Everywhere yellow-greens and purple shadows. The sun in a burnished blue sky flooded the forests with light, striking down through even the thickest pines to lay in fleckings of radiant white and gold upon the snow.

The trail (it was not a road) ran like a graceful furrow over the hills, around little lakes covered deep with snow, through tamarack swamps where the tracks of wild things thickened, over ridges of tall pine clear of brush, and curving everywhere amid stumps, where dismantled old shanties marked the site of the older logging camps. Sometimes they met teams going to the store. Sometimes they crossed logging roads—wide, smooth tracks artificially iced, down which mountainous loads of logs were slipping, creaking, and groaning. Sometimes they heard the dry click-clock of the woodsmen's axes or the crash of falling trees deep in the wood. When they reached the first camp Ridgeley pulled up the steaming horses at the door and shouted, "Hello, the camp!"

A tall old man with a long red beard came out. He held one bare red arm above his eyes. He wore an apron.

"Hello, Sandy!"

"Hello, Mr. Ridgeley!"

"Ready for company?"

"Am always ready for company," he said, with a Scotch accent.

"Well, we're coming in to get warm."

"Vera weel."

As they went in, under the roofed shed between the cook's shanty and the other and larger shanty, Mrs. Field sniffed. Sandy led them past a large pyramid composed of the scraps of beef bones, egg-shells, cans, and tea grounds left over during the winter. In the shed itself hung great slabs of beef.

It was all as untidy and suggestive of slaughter as the nest of a brood of eagles.

Sandy was beginning dinner on a huge stove spotted with rust and pancake batter. All about was the litter of his preparation. Beef—beef on all sides, and tin dishes and bare benches and huge iron cooking-pans.

Mrs. Field was glad to get out into the sunlight again. "What a horrible place! Are they all like that?"

"No, my camps are not like that—or, I should say, our camps," Ridgeley added, with a smile.

"Not a gay place at all," said Field, in exaggerated reserve.

But Mrs. Field found her own camps not much better. True, the refuse was not raised in pyramidal shape before the front door, and the beef was a little more orderly, but the low log huts, the dim cold light, the dingy walls and floors, the lack of any womanly or home touch, the tin dishes, the wholesale cooking, all struck upon her with terrible force.

"Do human beings live here?" she asked Ridgeley, when he opened the door of the main shanty of No. 6.

"Forty creatures of the men kind sleep and house here," he replied.

"To which the socks and things give evidence," said Field, promptly, pointing toward the huge stove which sat like a rusty-red cheese in the centre of the room. Above it hung scores of ragged gray and red socks and Mackinac boots and jackets which had been washed by the men themselves.

Around were the grimy bunks where the forty men slept like tramps in a steamer's hold. The quilts were grimy, and the posts greasy and shining with the touch of hands. There were no chairs—only a kind of rude stool made of boards. There were benches near the stove, nailed to the rough floor. In each bunk, hanging to a peg, was the poor little imitation-leather hand-bag which contained the whole wardrobe of each man, exclusive of the tattered socks and shirts hanging over the stove.

The room was chill and cold and gray. It had only two small windows. Its doors were low. Even Mrs. Field was forced to stoop in entering. This helped to make it seem like a den. There were roller-towels in the corner and wash-basins, and a grindstone which made it seem like a barn. It was, in fact, more cheerless than a barn, and less wholesome.

"Doesn't that hay in the bunks get a—a—sometimes?" asked Field.

"Well, yes, I shouldn't wonder, though the men are pretty strict about that. They keep pretty free from bugs, I think. However, I shouldn't want to run no river chances on the thing myself." Ridgeley smiled at Mrs. Field's shudder of horror.

"Is this the place?" The men laughed. She had asked that question so many times before.

"Yes, this is where Mr. Williams hangs out. Say, Field, you'll need to make some new move to hold your end up against Williams."

Mrs. Field felt hurt and angry at his rough joke. In the dim corner a cough was heard, and as a yellow head raised itself over the bunk-board a man presented a ghastly face. His big blue eyes fixed themselves on the lovely woman with a look of childish wonder.

"Hello, Gus—didn't see you! What's the matter—sick?"

"Yah, ai baen hwick two days. Ai tank ai lack to hav doketer."

"All right, I'll send him up. What seems the matter?"

As they talked, Mrs. Field again chilled with the cold gray comfortlessness of it all: to be sick in such a place! The silent appearance of the man out of his grim corner was startling. She was glad when they drove out into the woods again, where the clear sunshine fell and the pines stood against the blazing winter sky motionless as iron trees. Her pleasure in the ride was growing less. To her delicate sense this life was sordid, not picturesque. She wondered how Williams endured it. They arrived at No. 8 just as the men were trailing down the road to work, after eating their dinner. Their gay-colored jackets of Mackinac wool stood out like trumpet notes in the prevailing white and blue and bronze-green.

The boss and the sealer came out and met them, and after introductions they went into the shanty to dinner. The cook was a deft young Norwegian—a clean, quick, gentlemanly fellow with a fine brown mustache. He cleared a place for them at one end of the long table, and they sat down.

It was a large camp, but much like the others. On the table were the same cheap iron forks, the tin plates, and the small tin basins (for tea) which made up the dinner-set. Basins of brown sugar stood about.

"Good gracious! Do people still eat brown sugar? Why, I haven't seen any of that for ages!" cried Mrs. Field.

The stew was good and savory, and the bread fair. The tea was not all clover, but it tasted of the tin. Mrs. Field said:

"Beef, beef—everywhere beef. One might suppose a menagerie of desert animals ate here. Edward, we must make things more comfortable for our men. They must have cups to drink out of; these basins are horrible."

It was humorous to the men, this housewifely suggestion.

"Oh, make it napkins, Allie!"

"You can laugh, but I sha'n't rest after seeing this. If you thought I was going to say, 'Oh, how picturesque!' you're mistaken. I think it's barbarous."

She was getting impatient of their patronizing laughter, as if she were a child. They changed their manner to one of acquiescence, but thought of her as a child just the same.

After dinner they all went out to see the crew working. It was the biggest crew anywhere in the neighborhood. Ridgeley got out and hitched the team to a tree, and took Field up to the skidway. Mrs. Field remained in the sleigh.

Near her "the swamping team," a span of big, deep-red oxen, came and went among the green tops of the fallen pines. They crawled along their trails in the snow like some strange machinery, and the boy in a blue jacket moved almost as listlessly. Somewhere in the tangle of refuse boughs the swampers' axes click-clocked, saws uttered their grating, rhythmic snarl, and great trees at intervals shivered, groaned, and fell with soft, rushing, cracking sweeps into the deep snow, and the swampers swarmed upon them like Lilliputians attacking a giant enemy.

There was something splendid (though tragic) in the work, but the thought of the homelessness of the men, their terrible beds, and their long hours of toil oppressed the delicate and refined woman. She began to take on culpability. She was partly in authority now, and this system must be changed. She was deep in plans for improvement, in shanties and in sleeping-places, when the men returned.

Ridgeley was saying: "No, we control about thirty thousand acres of pine as good as that. It ain't what it was twenty years ago, but it's worth money, after all."

It was getting near to dark as they reached No. 6 again, and Ridgeley drew up and helped them out and into the cook's shanty.

Mrs. Field was introduced to the cook, a short, rather sullen, but intelligent man. He stood over the red-hot stove, laying great slices of beef in a huge dripping-pan. He had a taffler, or assistant, in the person of a half-grown boy, at whom he jerked rough orders like hunks of stove wood. Some hit the boy and produced noticeable effects, others did not.

Meanwhile a triumphant sunset was making the west one splendor of purple and orange and crimson, which came over the cool green rim of the pines like the Valhalla March in Wagner.

Mrs. Field sat there in the dim room by the window, seeing that splendor flush and fade, and thinking how dangerous it was to ask where one's wealth comes from in the world. Outside, the voices of the men thickened; they were dropping in by twos and fours, with teams and on foot.

The assistant arranged the basins in rows, and put one of the iron forks and knives on either side of each plate, and filled the sugar-basins, and dumped in the cold beans, and split the bread into slabs, and put small pots of tea here and there ready for the hands of the men.

At last, when the big pans of toast, the big plates of beef, were placed steaming on the table, the cook called Field and Ridgeley, and said:

"Set right here at the end." He raised his arm to a ring which dangled on a wire. "Now look out; you'll see 'em come—sidewise." He jerked the ring, and disappeared into the kitchen.

A sudden tumult, shouts, trampling, laughter, and the door burst open and they streamed in: Norwegians, French, half-breeds—dark-skinned fellows, all of them, save the Norwegians. They came like a flood, but they fell silent at sight of a woman, so beautiful and strange to them.

All words ceased. They sank into place beside the table with the thump of falling sand-bags. They were all in their shirt-sleeves, but with faces cleanly washed, and the most of them had combed their hair; but they seemed very wild and hairy to Mrs. Field. She looked at her husband and Ridgeley with a grateful pleasure; it was so restful to have them close beside her.

The men ate like hungry dogs. They gorged in silence. Nothing was heard but the clank of knives on tin plates, the drop of heavy platters of food, and the occasional muttered words of some one asking for the bread or the gravy.

As they ate they furtively looked with great curiosity and admiration up at the dainty woman. Their eyes were bright and large, and gleamed out of the obscure brown of their dimly lighted faces with savage intensity—so it seemed to Mrs. Field, and she dropped her eyes before their glare.

Her husband and Ridgeley tried to enter into conversation with those sitting near. Ridgeley seemed on good terms with them all, and ventured a joke or word, at which they laughed with terrific energy, and fell as suddenly silent again.

As Mrs. Field looked up the second time she saw the dark, strange face of Williams a few places down, and opposite her. His eyes were fixed on her husband's hands with a singular intensity. Her eyes followed his, and the beauty of her husband's hands came to her again with new force. They were perfectly shaped, supple, warm-colored, and strong. Their color and deftness stood out in vivid contrast to the heavy, brown, cracked, and calloused, paw-like hands of the workmen.

Why should Williams study her husband's hands? If he had looked at her she would not have been surprised. The other men she could read. They expressed either frank, simple admiration or furtive desire. But this man looked at her husband, and his eyes fell often upon his own hands, which trembled with fatigue. He handled his knife clumsily, and yet she could see he, too, had a fine hand—a slender, powerful hand, like that people call an artist hand—a craftsman-like hand.

He saw her looking at him, and he flashed one enigmatical glance into her eyes, and rose to go out.

"How you getting on, Williams?" Ridgeley asked.

Williams resented his question. "Oh, I'm all right," he said, sullenly.

The meal was all over in an incredibly short time. One by one, two by two, they rose heavily and lumbered out with one last, wistful look at Mrs. Field. She will never know how seraphic she seemed sitting there amid those rough surroundings—the dim, red light of the kerosene lamp falling across her clear pallor, out of which her dark eyes shone with liquid softness, made deeper and darker by her half-sorrowful tenderness for these homeless fellows.

An hour later, as they were standing at the door, just ready to take to their sleigh, they heard the scraping of a fiddle.

"Oh, some one is going to play!" Mrs. Field cried, with visions of the rollicking good times she had heard so much about, and of which she had seen nothing so far. "Can't I look in?"

Ridgeley was dubious. "I'll go and see," he said, and entered the door. "Boys, Mrs. Field wants to look in a minute. Go on with your fiddling, Sam—only I wanted to see that you weren't sitting around in dishabill."

This seemed a good joke, and they all howled and haw-hawed gleefully.

"So go right ahead with your evening prayers. All but—you understand!"

"All right, captain," said Sam, the man with the fiddle.

When Mrs. Field looked in, two men were furiously grinding axes; several were sewing on ragged garments; all were smoking; some were dressing chapped or bruised fingers. The atmosphere was horrible. The socks and shirts were steaming above the huge stove; the smoke and stench for a moment were sickening, but Ridgeley pushed them just inside the door.

"It's better out of the draught."

Sam jigged away on the violin. The men kept time with the cranks of the grindstone, and all faces turned with bashful smiles and bold grins at Mrs. Field. Most of them shrank a little from her look, like shy animals.

Ridgeley threw open the window. "In the old days," he explained to Mrs. Field, "we used a fireplace, and that kept the air better."

As her sense of smell became deadened the air seemed a little more tolerable to Mrs. Field.

"Oh, we must change all this," she said. "It is horrible."

"Play us a tune," said Sam, extending the violin to Field. He did not think Field could play. It was merely a shot in the dark on his part.

Field took it and looked at it and sounded it. On every side the men turned face in eager expectancy.

"He can play, that feller."

"I'll bet he can. He handles her as if he knew her."

"You bet your life. Tune up, Cap."

Williams came from the obscurity somewhere, and looked over the shoulders of the men.

"Down in front!" somebody called, and the men took seats on the benches, leaving Field standing with the violin in hand. He smiled around upon them in a frank, pleased way, quite ready to show his skill. He played Annie Laurie, and a storm of applause broke out.

"Hoo-ray! Bully for you!"

"Sam, you're out of it!"

"Sam, your name is Mud!"

"Give us another, Cap!"

"It ain't the same fiddle!"

He played again some simple tune, and he played it with the touch which showed the skilled amateur. As he played, Mrs. Field noticed a growing restlessness on Williams' part. He moved about uneasily. He gnawed at his finger-nails. His eyes glowed with a singular fire. His hands drummed and fingered. At last he approached, and said, roughly:

"Let me take that fiddle a minute."

"Oh, cheese it, Williams!" the men cried. "Let the other man play."

"What do you want to do with the fiddle—think it's a music-box?" asked Sam, its owner.

"Go to hell!" said Williams. As Field gave the violin over to him, his hands seemed to tremble with eagerness.

He raised his bow, and struck into an imposing, brilliant strain, and the men fell back in astonishment.

"Well, I'll be damned!" gasped the owner of the violin.

"Keep quiet, Sam."

Mrs. Field looked at her husband. "Why, Ed, he is playing Sarasate!"

"That's what he is," he returned, slangily, too much astonished to do more than gaze. Williams played on.

There was a faint defect in the high notes, as if his fingers did not touch the strings properly, but his bow action showed cultivation and breadth of feeling. As he struck into one of those difficult octave-leaping movements his face became savage. On the E string a squeal broke forth; he flung the violin into Sam's lap with a ferocious curse, and then, extending his hands, hard, crooked to fit the axe-helve, calloused and chapped, he said to Field:

"Look at my hands! Lovely things to play with, aren't they?"

His voice trembled with passion. He turned and went outside. As he passed Mrs. Field his head was bowed, and he was uttering a groaning cry like one suffering physical pain.

"That's what drink does for a man," Ridgeley said, as they watched Williams disappear down the swampers' trail.

"That man has been a violinist," said Field. "What's he doing up here?"

"Came to get away from himself, I guess," Ridgeley replied.

"I'm afraid he's failed," said Field, as he put his arm about his wife and led her to the sleigh.

The ride home was made mainly in silence. "Oh, the splendid stillness!" the woman kept saying in her heart. "Oh, the splendid moonlight, the marvellous radiance!" Everywhere a heavenly serenity—not a footstep, not a bell, not a cry, not a cracking tree—nothing but vivid light, white snow dappled and lined with shadows, and trees etched against a starlit sky. Unutterable splendor of light and sheen and shadow. Wide wastes of snow so white the stumps stood like columns of charcoal. A night of Nature's making, when she is tired of noise and blare of color.

And in the midst of it stood the camp, with its reek of obscenity, foul odors, and tobacco smoke, to which a tortured soul must return.

IV

The following Saturday afternoon, as Ridgeley and Field entered the office, Williams rose to meet them. He looked different—finer some way, Field imagined. At any rate, he was perfectly sober. He was freshly shaven, and though his clothes were rough, he appeared the man of education he really was. His manner was cold and distant.

"I'd like to be paid off, Mr. Ridgeley," he said. "I guess what's left of my pay will take me out of this."

"Where do you propose to go?" Ridgeley asked, with kindly interest.

Williams must have perceived his kindliness, for he answered: "I'm going home to my wife, to my violin. I am going to try living once more."

After he had gone out, Field said, "I wonder if he'll do it?"

"Oh, I shouldn't wonder. I've seen men brace up just as mysteriously as that and stay right by their resolutions. I thought he didn't look like a common lumber Jack when he came in."

"Ed, your playing did it!" Mrs. Field cried, when she heard of Williams' resolution. "Oh, how happy his wife will be! She'll save him yet!"

"Well, I don't know; depends on what kind of a woman she is."



BEFORE THE LOW GREEN DOOR

Matilda Bent was dying; there was no doubt of that now, if there had been before. The gruff old physician—one of the many overworked and underpaid country doctors—shook his head and pushed by Joe Bent, her husband, as he passed through the room which served as dining-room, sitting-room, and parlor. The poor fellow slouched back to his chair by the stove as if dazed, and before he could speak again the doctor was gone.

Mrs. Ridings was just coming up the walk as the doctor stepped out of the door.

"Oh, doctor, how is she?"

"She is a dying woman, madam."

"Oh, don't say that, doctor! What's the matter?"

"Cancer."

"Then the news was true—"

"I don't know anything of the news, Mrs. Ridings, but Mrs. Bent is dying from the effects of a cancer primarily, which she has had for years—since her last child, which died in infancy, you remember."

"But, doctor, she never told me—"

"Neither did she tell me. But no matter now. I have done all I can for her. If you can make death any easier for her, go and do it. You will find some opiate powders there with directions. Keep the pain down at all hazards. Don't let her suffer; that is useless. She is likely to last a day or two; but if any change comes to-night, send for me."

When the good matron entered the dowdy, suffocating little room where Matilda Bent lay gasping for breath, she was sick for a moment with sympathetic pain. There the dying woman lay, her world narrowed to four close walls, propped up on the pillows near the one little window. Her eyes seemed very large and bright, and the brow, made prominent by the sinking away of the cheeks, gave evidence that it was an uncommon woman who lay there quietly waiting the death angel.

She smiled, and lifted her eyebrows in a ghastly way.

"Oh, Marthy!" she breathed.

"Matildy, I didn't know you was so bad or I'd 'a' come before. Why didn't you let me know?" said Mrs. Ridings, kneeling by the bed and taking the ghostly hands of the sufferer in her own warm and soft palms. She shuddered as she kissed the thin lips.

"I think you'll soon be around ag'in," she added, in the customary mockery of an attempt at cheer. The other woman started slightly, turned her head, and gazed on her old friend long and intently. The hollowness of her neighbor's words stung her.

"I hope not, Marthy—I'm ready to go. I want to go. I don't care to live."

The two women communed by looking for a long time in each other's eyes, as if to get at the very secretest desires and hopes of the heart. Tears fell from Martha's eyes upon the cold and nerveless hands of her friend—poor, faithful hands, hacked and knotted and worn by thirty years of ceaseless daily toil. They lay there motionless upon the coverlet, pathetic protest for all the world to see.

"Oh, Matildy, I wish I could do something for you! I want to help you so! I feel so bad that I didn't come before! Ain't they somethin'?"

"Yes, Marthy—jest set there—till I die—it won't be long," whispered the pale lips. The sufferer, as usual, was calmer than her visitor, and her eyes were thoughtful.