The Best Short Stories of 1915, and the Yearbook of the American Short Story

by Unknown

IV

The poker game was finished. Pigalle sauntered slowly over to my table.

“You know Handy?” he asked, slowly, in his broken English.

“Who’s that?”

“The hole man that ees just go out. ’Is name ees Handy Gor-don.” He rolled his great expressive eyes. “’E’s cra-zee man. Also wot you call loafer: ’e do not work wen ’e wish not to. But, mon Dieu, ’ow ’e can play, that man!” He made a suave, swelling gesture with his hands and arms and heaved up his great bulk gracefully. “’Ow ’e can play! ’Ow ’e can play!”

“He is Andy Gordon!” I exclaimed. “What is he? A weaver?”

“Comment?”

“A weaver? Makes cloth—like this?” I held up the corner of the tablespread.

“Corpo, no!” ejaculated the astonished Pigalle. “Handy ees violinist-a.”

[11] Copyright, 1915, by The Illustrated Sunday Magazine. Copyright, 1916, by Harris Merton Lyon.

HEART OF YOUTH[12]

By WALTER J. MUILENBURG
From The Midland

The boy on the cultivator straightened as the horses walked from the soft, spongy ground of the cornfield to the firmer turf at the side of the road. He spoke sharply to the plodding team and turned the cultivator around, lowering the blades for another row. Then, when the horses had fallen into a slow walk, he slouched down, and with bent head watched the hills of young corn pass beneath him.

He could not have been more than sixteen or seventeen, for his eager eyes looked out from under soft lashes, and his face showed the smooth, healthy tan of a boy. His brown hands were so small that he could barely keep a firm grasp on the heavy levers. When he raised the blades, his fingers became streaked with red and the corners of his mouth drew back and grew hard with concentrated effort. Occasionally he tugged at the reins knotted about his shoulders, but, except for his low, abrupt commands to the horses, he was silent. At the end of the row he raised the shovels, got off the cultivator stiffly, and stretched himself out in the new spring grass of a little rise by the roadside.

All around him the world was full of soft color and light. Close by, in the sun the corn-field was a sea of shimmering green, while the more distant fields of grain were dark against the light ash of plowed land. Above, the sun shone slanting from the blue of an early June sky. The air, clean and clear, was already pervaded with the drowsy lassitude of noon.

The boy looked listlessly out over the long rows of corn still to be cultivated. Near at hand the young stalks seemed strong enough to win in their struggle toward the sun, but the distant corn lay like a filmy shadow of green on the black soil. Behind the cultivator, a flock of blackbirds fed in the fresh-turned earth. The boy watched them with half-shut eyes. When one of the birds had fed, it would hop upon a lump of wet, black earth, and being satisfied that it could eat no more, would skim in rapid, undulating flight to the row of willows in the next pasture. On a fence-post, a meadow-lark filled the silence with a liquid flow of music. As it laid back its head in an abandon of joy, the boy noticed how the sun accentuated the vivid splash of black on its yellow throat.

The meadow-lark flew away. The boy got up and climbed listlessly into the cultivator seat. The tugs straightened and the horses walked again into the corn. One of the team, however, a heavy, powerful bay, lagged continually, at times almost stopping.

The cultivator slid sidewise, and the blades tore the corn out by the roots. The boy jerked the reins, slapping them over the horse’s back. “Get along there, Jim!” he called. Jim pulled evenly for a moment, then lagged again. In sudden violence of anger, the boy pulled cruelly at the horse’s mouth, cursing in low, abrupt sentences. The horse stopped, the blades slipped, again tearing up a hill of corn. From sheer rage the boy was silent, then he jumped from the cultivator, and gathering the slack of the reins, hit the horse about the head with all his might. His face was dry and white, his eyes blazing. As he continued to strike the horse, he found expression.

“You damn, lazy brute, you! I’ll show you who’s running this job—you or me!” His words came sharply, in gasps, between blows. Then he cursed again; cursed the work and the horse. Fine lines of fatigue showed in his face. At last he stopped. A slight color had come to his cheeks. For a moment he watched the horse, which stood with muscles moving in quivering ripples of pain and fear; then he walked soberly back and climbed upon the cultivator seat. The horses moved on. They walked evenly now, starting at any movement of the boy, who stared steadily at the swiftly moving ground, two red spots still burning through the tan of his cheeks.

They went once across the field. On the return, the boy stopped impetuously by the road and jumping down from the seat walked to the horse he had beaten. The horse quivered and shied toward its mate. The boy stroked its neck.

“Whoa, Jim! Whoa, boy!” he repeated.

He hesitated a moment, then went across the road to the meadow and picked an armful of young tufts of clover. He fed it to the horses, a handful at a time. They ate eagerly, all trace of fear gone as they reached out their necks for the young grass. Over the boy’s face passed a conflict of expressions. At one time the cheeks were soft, and a boyish look lay in his eyes. Then came a strange, dry expression, as of age, which formed tense lines about his mouth; but as he climbed up to the seat of the cultivator, the softer expression remained.

The horses were beginning to draw at the tugs when the boy heard a horse galloping on the road behind him. He looked back. One of the neighbor boys, Bill Symonds, was riding furiously down the hill. The boy turned quickly about in the seat as if he had not seen Bill and tried to hurry the horses. What did Bill want, anyway? It was like him to blunder along when he wasn’t wanted! His big, greasy face shaded by the long hair falling unkempt over his forehead had always made the boy dislike Bill. He tightened the reins.

“Hey, Frank, wait a minute!” Bill slid awkwardly from the colt’s back.

The boy twisted the reins about the levers and turned in the seat.

“How are you, Bill,” he answered without animation.

Bill tied the colt, a bay, to the willows.

“Well, what do you think of my new colt?” He came closer and lounged forward against the fence. “I broke him in myself—all alone, too! Now, that was a job, Lord! You ought t’ seen him buckin’ an’ standin’ on his hind legs!”

They were silent for a moment. Bill amused himself by flinging clods at the colt, which jumped wildly each time one struck him, his body quivering, his eyes white and distended.

After a few clods Bill turned to the boy.

“I guess maybe I’ll be leavin’ soon.”

The boy looked up quickly.

“Yep. I’m goin’ off to my brother’s ranch in Dakota. I’m gettin’ tired of the work here—it’s too hard. It’s work, work, work all the time with a little while for eatin’ and sleepin’. All summer you c’n work your head off and then in winter you can lay off for a couple of months and don’t know what to do.”

The boy looked out over the fields. Even Bill could go away. The heavy, flabby cheeks, from which the small eyes peered inquisitively, disgusted the boy. Bill picked up another bit of turf and threw it so that the colt jumped wildly, pulling the young willows almost to the ground.

The boy turned to Bill, his face flushed.

“Say—if you want to stay around here you got to cut out firing stones at that colt. You’ll never get ’im tame that way—you thick-headed fool!”

Bill stood quiet for a moment. The boy saw an expression of incredulous surprise on Bill’s face. Then it became brick-red. He did not wait for Bill to answer but started the horses.

When he looked back, Bill was riding away over the top of the hill, his body swaying with the rhythm of the gallop. The boy was glad that Bill was angry. He didn’t want people around. And besides, why did Bill have a chance to go away? His eyes grew hot.

The morning passed slowly. When finally the shadow of the cottonwood tree at the corner of the pasture pointed directly to the north, the boy unhitched, cleaned the cultivator shovels carefully with a handful of grass and placed them upon the hooks. With the reins about his back, he trudged up the long slope of the hill, through the warm dust, swinging his water-pail in cadence with his steps. They reached the top of the hill. The house was only a short distance from the road. He could see his father carrying a basket of wood to the house. He hoped that his father would not come and help him unharness the horses. He wanted to be alone; he dreaded facing their conversation at the dinner-table. His eyes grew hot again. Everything was so old to him! He always came home just at dinner time, his father always worked about the barn, finishing work a little before so that he might help unharness the horses. And dinner was always ready when they came in the house. The boy kicked a clod viciously.

At the water trough he stopped and the thirsty horses drank deeply. His father came out of the barn, a pitchfork in his hand, and sat down on the edge of the trough, fanning himself with his hat. The boy noticed that his father seemed more tired than usual. His brown hair was already mixed with gray and was damp where the hat had rested. His eyes seemed less cheerful than usual, and his face less red.

When the horses raised their heads from the trough, the boy led them to their stalls. His father followed him.

“How was cultivatin’, Frank?” he asked as he stepped into the barn.

“Oh, it wasn’t bad.”

“The ground was pretty hard, wasn’t it?”

“Not very.”

In silence they unharnessed the horses, which buried their heads in the newly-cut hay and blew the fragrant, spicy dust from their nostrils. As the boy unloosed the collar of his horse, it slipped and fell upon his foot. His face writhed in a flash of temper and he began cursing in a low tone, heavily and deliberately. Then he picked up the collar and struck the horse. Under lowered eyelashes he saw his father stand in the doorway, his face white with repressed anger. The boy stopped suddenly. He had never seen his father look like that before. He heard him turn in the doorway.

The horses fed, they walked through the hot, deserted farm-yard to the house. As they entered the shaded living-room, his mother came from the kitchen, humming a bit of tune. Her eyes lit up when she saw them. She talked cheerfully as she worked. The boy said nothing. He seemed to be looking out of the open window into the orchard; instead, through his lowered eyelashes, he followed his mother’s movements about the room as she set the small table for three, still humming as she worked. The boy saw that she stopped often to cough. This was not unusual, but once the cough became so strong that it left her face colorless. Uneasily sympathetic, he noted that after this she did not hum again. Whenever she looked his way, the boy turned his head, not so soon but that he could see and feel the half-fearful appeal that darkened her eyes.

After the glasses had been filled, the three drew up to the table. The dinner was eaten in silence. The eyes of the boy constantly returned to his mother’s face. Somehow she seemed different to-day. He wished that she didn’t wear that black dress, it made her face look too white and her eyes too large and bright. He ate rapidly. Why didn’t his father and mother talk? They used to tease him about one of the neighbor girls. But they had not for a long time now. He wondered why. Why didn’t they say something? It was too still.

As soon as he had finished his meal, he drank the water left in his glass and pushed back his chair. His mother looked quickly at his father. The boy watched them closely and uneasily. Both seemed to be shrinking from something. His father carefully folded and unfolded his newspaper. Then he laid it beside his plate and cleared his throat. He turned in his chair.

“Wait a minute, Frank,” he spoke with hesitation.

The boy turned, looked at his father a moment, and then sat down.

“I don’t think we’ll cultivate this afternoon, Frank,” his father commenced slowly.

“Why—” The boy started to speak but stopped. He saw the frightened grayness return to his mother’s face. His father, too, seemed restless. He crossed and recrossed his knees nervously.

“Well, Frank,” he continued, “it’s this way. Your Ma ain’t been feelin’ well for quite a while and we rode over to the doctor’s this morning to see what was the matter.”

His mother had gone back of his chair. He could feel her hand on his shoulders. He turned half-round, his hands grasping the chair tightly.

“You mustn’t be scared, Frank—the doctor said it wasn’t so very bad.”

He could feel her twining his hair about her fingers.

He turned, faced his mother silently, half afraid, as though some grim barrier stood between them. He saw fine lines about her gray eyes, and their color seemed heavy and faded. The boy sat staring at his mother with an intensity that made a color come to her cheeks, but he was not looking at her any more. Instead, he was wondering fiercely why he had never noticed the gray in her hair or the lines in her face, or the cough. The cough—surely he might have noticed that. His body lay limp against the back of the chair.

“The doctor said that Ma was pretty sick,” his father was speaking on, his voice devoid of life or feeling. “But he said that she ’ud be all right if she went some place where the air was drier.”

“What did he say it was?” he asked in a strained voice.

“It’s her lungs, he says.”

They were silent after this. He was looking out of the window at a far-away straw-stack which lay a mass of dull gold in the sombre setting of plowed land.

His mother still stood behind his chair. In the heavy silence of the room he could hear her uneven breathing. He heard his father turn in his chair.

“Well, Mother’s got to go west—we might all of us go,” he spoke with an attempt at cheerfulness. “Maybe we can work a small farm out there.”

“What will we do with the farm here?” As she spoke the boy felt his mother’s hand press more heavily on his shoulder. He turned from the window and caught his father’s eyes looking at him. He saw his face flush.

“I guess we got to sell it. I can get a fair price. Help is scarce and rent’s low since the dry years. We can’t afford to rent it.”

Again the boy caught his father’s glance resting hopefully on him.

“But we can’t sell the old place; we have worked it too long.”

The boy was uneasily conscious of the break in his mother’s voice. He sat up, his body stiffened. Did they expect him to stay on the farm? He wouldn’t—he could not do that! They had no right to ask this of him. But he remembered the quick hope in his father’s eyes.

He got up from his chair, walked past his mother without looking at her, picked up his hat and went outside, closing the screen-door noiselessly behind him.

The earth slept warm in the drowsiness of early afternoon. The freshness of the morning had passed and a languorous mist had fallen. The boy looked out to where earth and sky met in a haze of indefinable color. What a wonderful earth was beyond! He turned and walked heavily away. They hadn’t any right to expect that!

Half-unconsciously he went toward the grove north of the house where he had played when he was a little boy. The neighbor boys would collect in the grove on a quiet summer afternoon, dressed as Indians, and in heavy seriousness would plan a desperate attack on the little white house with its green trimmings. What happy times they used to have! But he wasn’t a boy any more, he had grown up; still he felt an expectant eagerness as he entered the cool shade of the trees.

He followed a path, indistinct now in the rank growth of gooseberry bushes, until he reached his destination. A tree, broken off a couple of feet from the ground, had left a high stump with some ragged splinters, serving as the back of a natural chair.

The boy sat for a while, leaning back with lowered eyelashes. The dim spaces of the grove brought old memories. As he brooded there, relaxed, the sunlight coming in broken fragments through the oak leaves softened his face into almost that of a child.

Suddenly he straightened in desperate rebellion. Why did things have to happen so? He didn’t want to grow older—he would rather be a boy. If he were, his father and mother would not expect him to stay on the farm. With his reflections came the picture of his mother, her dark eyes shining unnaturally out of the rigid paleness of her face. Then the black dress with its long folds—it was horrible. The boy’s thoughts blurred into a confusion of sharp emotions.

As he lay back again, with lowered eyelids, he was vaguely conscious of the life about him. Robins hopped from branch to branch, singing and chirping. A blue-jay, in a cracked crescendo, was attacking the established order of things among birds. A bee droned idly past. Occasionally all sounds ceased, and silence, deep and impenetrable, seemed to close in. After a moment, the confused murmur of the woods began again.

In the underbrush near him, the boy became aware of fluttering noise. At first he could see nothing; then he saw a snake—a blue racer—writhing along the ground, while above it, making queer little noises of distress, hovered a brown wood-thrush. He stiffened. His flesh always crawled at the sight of a snake! Yet, leaning forward, he watched intently. The thrush, its body a blur of brown feathers, rose and fell in continuous attack. Then he saw the reason. A few yards from the tree-stump lay a nest, hidden in a clump of gooseberry bushes. Above the rim showed a circle of hungry gaping beaks. The snake was crawling steadily toward the nest.

It was almost there. The thrush became wild in fear for its young. Again and again its body flashed in silent deadly attack. The snake, rearing its head from the ground, its jaws wide, struck back at the fluttering terror above it.

The snake reached the nest. It writhed over the edge. With a quick, sharp note the bird flung itself upon its enemy. A blur of brown feathers and a glimpse of a twisting, bluish body were all that the boy could see. A moment, and the snake writhed out from the nest. The thrush lay on the ground, blood crimsoning the speckled white of its breast. Its wings fluttered slightly, then the body was still.

The boy leaned back against the trunk and closed his eyes. He released his breath sharply. His throat contracted so that he almost choked. He had always had a horror of seeing a creature maimed or killed. He felt it doubly now, and he might have helped the bird,—no one else could. Yet it was only a bird; such things happened continually—they had to be: but he could not forget the flutterings of the dying thrush. Then, suddenly, he remembered his mother.

After a long time, he opened his eyes. The trees, the sky,—all the country was asleep; the absolute tranquillity of space lay lightly in the air and bathed the earth with a drowsy light. And the boy yielded himself to the silence. His eyes mirrored the mystic, reflective mood of the afternoon.

In the west, ragged clouds massed together and spread over the sky, their long streamers, black where they reached the sun, darkening the earth with the gray misty twilight of the storm. Then a cool breeze sprang up, the clouds receded, and the sun shone out.

The boy became conscious that it was late and jumped down from his seat. He felt strangely cheerful. The confused emotions which had raged in him all the afternoon had spent themselves, and he whistled as he walked on between the trees. When he turned into the lane near the house, he could see, in the west, a few black masses of cloud, vivid against the crimson flame of the sky—wandering spirits in an infinity of lonely space.

At the windmill he stopped and looked toward the house. The kitchen was lighted; the rest of the house was dark and shadowy. A thin spiral of smoke twisted up until it became lost in the gray light. How home-like it all was! The boy walked quickly toward the house, took the milk pails from the hooks on the porch and went into the barn. The horses did not raise their heads from the grain as he entered. The sound of their crunching, the sweet smell of the hay, seemed part of the pervading rest and content about him. His father came up from the gloom of the barn, carrying a pail of milk. He glanced at the boy.

“I thought I’d do the chores to-night, son. You don’t get a vacation very often. You ought to rest.”

“Oh!” The boy felt sudden embarrassment. He had a queer pity for his father. He almost wished that he could have done the chores himself.

It was dark as they walked slowly to the house. In the dusk of the east, the moon appeared red on the rim of the horizon. Everything seemed asleep, yet infinite life still vibrated through its sleep. Out of the oak-grove sounded the hopeless lament of the turtle-dove, voicing the mystery and sadness of the night. From the farm to the north came the faint cry of someone calling the cows, “Co-o, boss; co-o, boss!” A moment, the boy felt as though it were the wonder and music of the horizon that called. Then he smiled at the idea.

His father stopped on the porch. The boy knew what his father was thinking, knew with a wave of pity and understanding. It seemed to him there, in the darkness, that suddenly he was able to comprehend the shadows which he had not known before in his boyish dream of life.

He took off his hat. The night wind was cool. How intense the night was! Nature seemed a living and beautiful power, ever-veiled but always near. For a moment his father rested his hand upon the boy’s shoulder. The boy moved closer to him.

[12] Copyright, 1915, by John T. Frederick. Copyright, 1916, by Walter J. Muilenburg.

THE END OF THE PATH[13]

By NEWBOLD NOYES
From Every Week

Set far back in the hills that have thrown their wall of misty purple about the laughing blue of Lake Como, on a sheer cliff three thousand feet above the lake, stands a little weather-stained church. Beneath it lie the two villages of Cadenabbia and Menaggio; behind and up are rank on rank of shadowy mountains, sharply outlined against the sky,—the foothills leading back to the giant Alps.

The last tiny cream-colored house of the villages stands a full two miles this side of the tortuous path that winds up the face of the chrome-colored cliff. Once a year, in a creeping procession of black and white, the natives make a pilgrimage to the little church to pray for rain in the dry season. Otherwise it is rarely visited.

Blagden climbed slowly up the narrow path that stretched like a clean white ribbon from the little group of pastel-colored houses by the water. There was not a breath of wind, not a rustle in the gray-green olive trees that shimmered silver in the sunlight. Little lizards, sunning themselves on warm flat stones, watched him with brilliant eyes, and darted away to safety as he moved. The shadows of the cypress trees barred the white path like rungs of a ladder. And Blagden, drinking deep of the beauty of it all, climbed upward.

When he opened the low door of the little chapel the cold of the darkness within was as another barrier. He stepped inside, his footsteps echoing heavily through the shadows, though he walked on tiptoe. After the brilliant sunlight outside he could make out but little of the interior at first. At the far end four candles were burning, and he made his way toward them across the worn floor.

In a cheap, tarnished frame of gilt, above the four flickering pencils of light, hung a picture of the Virgin. Blagden stared at it in amazement. It had evidently been painted by a master hand. Blagden was no artist; but the face told him that. It was drawn with wonderful appreciation of the woman’s sweetness. Perhaps the eyes were what was most wonderful,—pitiful, trusting, a little sad perhaps.

The life-sized figure, draped in smoke-colored blue, blended softly with the dusky shadows, and the flickering candlelight lent a witchery to blurred outlines that half deceived him,—at moments the picture seemed alive. She was smiling a little wistful smile.

And the canvas over the heart of the Virgin was cut in a long, clean stroke—and opened in a disfiguring gash. Beneath it, on a little stand, lay a slim-bladed, vicious knife, covered with dust.

Blagden wonderingly stooped to pick it up—and a voice spoke out of the darkness behind him.

“I would not touch it, Signor,” it said, and Blagden wheeled guiltily.

A man was standing in the shadow, almost at his elbow.

He was old, the oldest man Blagden had ever seen, and he wore the long brown gown of a monk. His face was like a withered leaf, lined and yellow, and his hair was silver white.

Only the small, saurian eyes held Blagden with their strange brilliance. The rest of his face was like a death mask.

“Why not?” said Blagden.

The monk stepped forward into the dim light, crossing himself as he passed the picture. He looked hesitatingly at the younger man before him, searching his face with his wonderfully piercing eyes. He seemed to find there what he was searching for, and when he spoke Blagden wondered at the gentleness of his voice.

“There is a story. Would the Signor care to hear?”

Blagden nodded, and the two moved back in the shadows a short distance to the front line of little low chairs. Before them, over the dancing light of the four candles, stood the mutilated picture of Mary, beneath it the dust-covered dagger.

And then the withered monk began speaking, and Blagden listened, looking up at the picture.

“It all happened a great many years ago,” said the old man; “but I am old, so I remember.

“Rosa was the girl’s name. She lived with her father and mother in a little house above Menaggio. And every day in the warm sunlight of the open fields she sang as she watched the goats for the old people, and her voice was like cool water laughing in the shadows of a little brook.

“She was always singing, little Rosa; for she was young, and the sun had never stopped shining for her. People used to call her beautiful.

“And there was Giovanni. Each morning he would pass her home where the yellow roses with the pink hearts grew so sweetly, and always she would blow him a kiss from the little window.

“Then Giovanni would toil with all the strength of his youth, and he too would sing while he toiled; for was it not all for her?

“Often Rosa’s goats would stray toward Giovanni’s vineyard as dusk came, and they would drive them home together, always laughing, always singing, hand in hand, as the sun slipped golden over the top of the hills across the lake. Sometimes they would walk together in the afterglow, and Giovanni would weave a crown of the little flowers that grew about them, and his princess would wear it, laughing happily.

“They were like two children, Signor. There were nights spent together on the lake, when he told her of his dreams, while the gentlest of winds stirred her curls against his brown cheek, and the moon’s wake stretched like a golden pathway from shore to shore.

“They were to be married when the grapes were picked, people used to whisper.

“And then one day a new force came into the girl’s life. The Church, Signor!

“No one understands when or why this comes to a young girl, I think. She was torn with the idea that she should join her church, go into the little nunnery across the lake, and leave the sunshine.

“She did not want to go, and it was a strange yet a beautiful thing. This young, beautiful girl who seemed so much a part of the sunshine and the flowers was to close the door of the Church upon it all!

“You are thinking it was strange, Signor.

“Giovanni was frantic—you can understand.

“He had dreamed so happily of that which was to be, that now to have the cup snatched from his lips was torture. He took her little sun-kissed hands in his and begged on his knees with tears streaming down his cheeks. And Rosa wept also—but could not answer as he begged. I think she loved the boy, Signor. Yet there is something stronger than the love of a boy and a girl.

“She asked for one more night in which to decide. She would come up here to this little church and pray for Mary to guide her. He kissed her cold lips and came away.

“He was a boy, and he never doubted but that she would choose his strong young arms.

“The girl came here. All night she knelt on the rough stone floor, praying and—weeping; for she loved him. And the Virgin above the four candles looked down with the great, wistful eyes you see—and bound the girl’s soul faster and faster to her own.

“And when morning came she entered the white walls across the lake without seeing her lover again.

“Giovanni went mad, I think, when they told him. He screamed out his hate for the world and his God, and rushed up the little white path to where we are sitting now, Signor.

“Once here, he drew the dagger you see beneath the Virgin and stabbed with an oath on his lips. That is why I did not let you touch it.”

Blagden nodded, and the old monk was silent for a moment before he went on.

“Giovanni disappeared for two days. When he came back his face was that of a madman still. He was met by a white funeral winding up the little path. You understand, Signor,—a virgin’s funeral. Giovanni was hurrying blindly past when they stopped him.

“There was no reproach spoken for what he had done, no bitterness; only a kind of awe—and pity.

“Rosa had died on her knees in the nunnery at the exact time he stabbed yonder picture. And they told him months afterward that her face was strangely like that of the Virgin when they found her,—beautiful and pleading and sad. There was no given cause for her death—there are things we cannot understand. She was praying for strength, the sisters said.”

The monk ceased speaking, and for a long moment they sat silent, Blagden and the withered, white-haired man, staring mutely up at the beautiful face above them. It was Blagden who broke the silence.

“What do you think happened?” he asked slowly.

“I do not know,” said the monk.

There was another pause, then Blagden spoke again.

“Anyway,” he said, brushing his hand across his eyes, “she paid in part the debt Giovanni owed his God.”

“Yes?” said the monk softly. “I wonder, Signor! For I am Giovanni.”

[13] Copyright, 1915, by Every Week Corporation. Copyright, 1916, by Newbold Noyes.

THE WHALE AND THE GRASSHOPPER[14]

By SEUMAS O’BRIEN
From The Illustrated Sunday Magazine

When Standish McNeill started talking to his friend Felix O’Dowd as they walked at a leisurely pace towards the town of Castlegregory on a June morning, what he said was: “The world is a wonderful place when you come to think about it, an’ Ireland is a wonderful place an’ so is America, an’ though there are lots of places like each other there’s no place like Ballysantamalo. When there’s not sunshine there, there’s moonshine an’ the handsomest women in the world live there, an’ nowhere else except in Ireland or the churchyards could you find such decent people.”

“Decency,” said Felix, “when you’re poor is extravagance, and bad example when you’re rich.”

“And why?” said Standish.

“Well,” said Felix, “because the poor imitate the rich an’ the rich give to the poor an’ when the poor give to each other they have nothing of their own.”

“That’s communism you’re talking,” said Standish. “an’ that always comes from education an’ enlightenment. Sure if the poor weren’t dacent they’d be rich an’ if the rich were dacent they’d be poor an’ if everyone had a conscience they’d be less millionaires.”

“’Tis a poor bird that can’t pick for himself.”

“But suppose a bird had a broken wing an’ couldn’t fly to where the pickings were?” said Felix.

“Well, then bring the pickings to him. That would be charity.”

“But charity is decency and wisdom is holding your tongue when you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“If the people of Ballysantamalo are so decent, how is it that there are so many bachelors there? Do you think it right to have all the young women worrying their heads off reading trashy novels an’ doin’ all sorts of silly things like fixin’ their hair in a way that was never intended by nature an’ doin’ so for years an’ years an’ havin’ nothin’ in the end but the trouble of it all.”

“Well, ’tis hard blamin’ the young men because every young lady you meet looks better to you than the last until you meet the next an’ so you go on to another until you’re so old that no one would marry you at all unless you had lots of money, a bad liver, an’ a shaky heart.”

“An old man without any sense, lots of money, a bad liver, an’ a shaky heart can always get a young lady to marry him,” said Felix, “though rheumatics, gout, an’ a wooden leg are just as good in such a case.”

“Every bit,” said Standish, “but there’s nothin’ like a weak constitution, a cold climate, an’ a tendency to pneumonia.”

“Old men are quare,” said Felix.

“They are,” said Standish, “an’ if they were all only half as wise as they think they are then they’d be only young fools in the world. I don’t wonder a bit at the suffragettes. An’ a time will come when we won’t know men from women unless some one tells us so.”

“Wisha, ’tis my belief that there will be a great reaction some day, because women will never be able to stand the strain of doin’ what they please without encountering opposition. When a man falls in love he falls into trouble likewise, an’ when a woman isn’t in trouble you may be sure that there’s something wrong with her.”

“Well,” said Standish, “I think we will leave the women where the devil left St. Peter—”

“Where was that?” asked Felix.

“Alone,” answered Standish.

“That would be all very fine if they stayed there,” said Felix.

“Now,” said Standish, “as I was talking of me travels in foreign parts, I want to tell you about the morning I walked along the beach at Ballysantamalo, an’ a warm morning it was too. So I ses to meself, ‘Standish McNeill,’ ses I, ‘what kind of a fool of a man are you? Why don’t you take a swim for yourself?’ So I did take a swim, an’ I swam to the rocks where the seals goes to get their photograph’s taken an’ while I was havin’ a rest for meself I noticed a grasshopper sittin’ a short distance away an’ ’pon me word, but he was the most sorrowful lookin’ grasshopper I ever saw before or since. Then all of a sudden a monster whale comes up from the sea and lies down beside him an’ ses: ‘Well,’ ses he, ‘is that you? Who’d ever think of finding you here. Why, there’s nothing strange under the sun but the ways of woman.’

“‘’Tis me that’s here, then,’ said the grasshopper. ‘Me grandmother died last night an’ she wasn’t insured either.’

“‘The practice of negligence is the curse of mankind and the root of sorrow,’ ses the whale. ‘I suppose the poor old soul had her fill of days, an’ sure we all must die, an’ ’tis cheaper to be dead than alive at any time. A man never knows that he’s dead when he’s dead an’ he never knows he’s alive until he’s married.’

“‘You’re a great one to expatiate on things you know nothing about, like the barbers and the cobblers,’ said the grasshopper. ‘I only want to know if you’re coming to the funeral to-morrow?’

“‘I’m sorry I can’t,’ ses the whale. ‘Me grandfather is getting married, for the tenth time, an’ as I was in China on the last few occasions I must pay me respects by being present at to-morrow’s festivities,’ ses he.

“‘I’m sorry you can’t come,’ ses the grasshopper, ‘because you are heartily welcome an’ you’d add prestige to the ceremony besides.’

“‘I know that,’ ses the whale, ‘but America doesn’t care much about ceremony.’

“‘Who told you that?’ ses the grasshopper.

“‘Haven’t I me eyesight, an’ don’t I read the newspapers,’ ses the whale.

“‘You mustn’t read the society columns, then,’ ses the grasshopper.

“‘Wisha, for the love of St. Crispin,’ ses the whale ‘have they society columns in the American newspapers?’

“‘Indeed they have,’ ses the grasshopper, ‘and they oftentimes devote a few columns to other matters when the dressmakers don’t be busy.’

“‘America is a strange country surely, a wonderful country, not to say a word about the length and breadth of it. I swam around it twice last week without stoppin,’ to try an’ reduce me weight, an’ would you believe me that I was tired after the journey, but the change of air only added to me proportions.’

“‘That’s too bad,’ said the grasshopper.

“‘Are you an American?’ said the whale.

“‘Of course I am,’ ses the grasshopper. ‘You don’t think ’tis the way I’d be born at sea an’ no nationality at all like yourself. I’m proud of me country.’

“‘And why, might I ask?’

“‘Well don’t we produce distinguished Irishmen? Don’t we make Americans of the Europeans and Europeans of the Americans? Think of all the connoisseurs who wouldn’t buy a work of art in their own country when they could go to Europe and pay ten times its value for the pot-boilers that does be turned out in the studios of Paris and London.’

“‘There’s nothin’ like home industry,’ ses the whale, ‘in a foreign country, I mean.’

“‘After all, who knows anything about a work of art but the artist? and very little he knows about it, either. A work of art is like a flower, it grows, it happens. That’s all. An’ unless you charge the devil’s own price for it, people will think you are cheating them.’

“‘Wisha, I suppose the best anyone can do is to take all you can get an’ if you want to be a philanthropist, give away what you don’t want,’ ses the grasshopper.

“‘All worth missing I catches,’ ses the whale, ‘an’ all worth catchin’ I misses, like the fisherwoman who missed the fish and caught a crab. How’s things in Europe? I didn’t see the papers this morning.’

“‘Europe is in a bad way,’ ses the grasshopper. ‘She was preaching civilization for centuries so that she might be prepared when war came to annihilate herself.’

“‘It looks that way to me,’ ses the whale. ‘Is there anything else worth while going on in the world?’

“‘There’s the Irish question,’ ses the grasshopper.

“‘Where’s that, Ireland is?’ ses the whale. ‘Isn’t that an island to the west of England?’

“‘No,’ ses the grasshopper, ‘but England is an island to the east of Ireland.’

“‘Wisha,’ ses the whale, ‘it gives me indigestion to hear people talking about Ireland. Sure, I nearly swallowed it up be mistake while I was on a holiday in the Atlantic last year, an’ I’m sorry now that I didn’t.’

“‘An’ I’m sorry that you didn’t try,’ ses the grasshopper. ‘Then you’d know something about indigestion. The less you have to say about Ireland the less you’ll have to be sorry for. Remember that me father came from Cork.’

“‘Can’t I say what I like?’ ses the whale.

“‘You can think what you like,’ ses the grasshopper, ‘but say what other people like if you want to be a good politician.’

“‘There’s nothin’ so much abused as politics,’ ses the whale.

“‘Except politicians,’ ses the grasshopper. ‘Only for the Irish they’d be no one bothering about poetry and the drama to-day. Only for fools they’d be no wise people an’ only for sprats, hake, and mackerel there ’ud be no whales an’ a good job that would be, too.’

“‘What’s that you’re saying?’ ses the whale very sharply.

“‘Don’t have me to lose me temper with you,’ ses the grasshopper.

“‘Wisha, bad luck to your impudence an’ bad manners, you insignificant little spalpeen. How dare you insult your superiors?’ ses the whale.

“‘Who’s me superior?’ ses the grasshopper. ‘You, is it?’

“‘Yes, me then,’ ses the whale.

“‘Another word from you,’ ses the whale, ‘an’ I’ll put you where Napoleon put the oysters.’

“‘Well,’ ses the grasshopper, ‘there’s no doubt but vanity, ignorance and ambition are three wonderful things an’ you have them all.’

“‘Neither you nor Napoleon, nor the Kaiser himself an’ his hundred million men could do hurt or harm to me. You could have every soldier in the German Army, the French Army, an’ the Salvation Army lookin’ for me an’ I’d put the comether on them all.’

“‘I can’t stand this any longer,’ ses the whale, an’ then and there he hits the rock a whack of his tail an’ when I went to look for the grasshopper, there he was sitting on the whale’s nose as happy an’ contented as if nothing happened. An’ when he jumped back to the rock again he says: ‘A little exercise when ’tis tempered with discretion, never does any harm, but violent exertion is a very foolish thing if you value your health. But it is only people who have no sinse but think they have it all who make such errors.’

“‘If I could get a hold of you,’ ses the whale, ‘I’d knock some of the pride out of you.’

“‘That would be an ungentlemanly way of displaying your displeasure,’ ses the grasshopper.

“‘I’d scorn,’ ses he, ‘to use violent means with you, or do you physical injury of any kind. All you want is self-control and a little education. You should know that quantity without quality isn’t as good as quality without quantity.’

“‘Sure ’tis I’m the fool to be wasting me time listening to the likes of you,’ ses the whale. ‘If any of me family saw me now, I’d never hear the end of it.’

“‘Indeed,’ ses the grasshopper, ‘no one belonging to me would ever recognize me ever again if they thought I was trying to make a whale behave himself. There would be some excuse for one of my attainments feeling proud. But as for you!—’

“‘An’ what in the name of nonsense can you do except give old guff out of you?’

“‘I haven’t time to tell you all,’ ses the grasshopper. ‘But to commence with, I can travel all over the world an’ have the use of trains, steamers, sailing ships and automobiles and will never be asked to pay a cent, an’ I can live on dry land all me life if I choose, while you can’t live under water, or over water, on land or on sea, and while all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t catch me if they were trying till the crack of doom, you could be caught be a few poor, harmless sailors, who wouldn’t know a crow from a cormorant, and who’d sell your carcass to make oil for foolish wives to burn an’ write letters to other people’s husbands an’ fill the world with trouble.’”

An’ what about all the whalebone we supplies for ladies’ corsets an’ paper knives, and what about all the stories we make for the novelists an’ the moving pictures an’—’

“We’re at the Sprig of Holly now,” said Felix. “Is it a pint of porter or a bottle you’ll have?”

“I’ll have a pint, I think,” said Standish.

[14] Copyright, 1915, by The Illustrated Sunday Magazine. Copyright, 1916, by Seumas O’Brien.

IN BERLIN[15]

By MARY BOYLE O’REILLY
From The Boston Daily Advertiser

The train crawling out of Berlin was filled with women and children, hardly an able-bodied man. In one compartment a gray-haired Landsturm soldier sat beside an elderly woman who seemed weak and ill. Above the click-clack of the car wheels passengers could hear her counting: “One, two, three,” evidently absorbed in her own thoughts. Sometimes she repeated the words at short intervals. Two girls tittered, thoughtlessly exchanging vapid remarks about such extraordinary behavior. An elderly man scowled reproval. Silence fell.

“One, two, three,” repeated the obviously unconscious woman. Again the girls giggled stupidly. The gray Landsturm leaned forward.

“Fräulein,” he said gravely, “you will perhaps cease laughing when I tell you that this poor lady is my wife. We have just lost our three sons in battle. Before leaving for the front myself I must take their mother to an insane asylum.”

It became terribly quiet in the carriage.

[15] Copyright, 1915, by The Boston Daily Advertiser.

THE WAITING YEARS[16]

By KATHARINE METCALF ROOF
From The Century Magazine

The shadow on the sun-dial, blue upon its white-marble surface, marked four o’clock, but its edge was broken by the irregular silhouette of an encroaching rose-bush. The sun-dial in the midst of the wide, sunny garden, the old red-brick house among the elms—these were the most sharply defined elements of Mark Faraday’s picture of home. Born in Italy, for most of his young life a sojourner in foreign lands, he yet remembered being utterly happy at “Aunt Lucretia’s” when at seven he had made his first visit to his mother’s country. That memory had never faded. He had recalled and reclaimed each detail of its serene charm at his second visit ten years later, after his mother’s death. And now in America again, he had naturally gravitated toward the old place.

The young man gave a careless friendliness to his faded little aunt, and spent long hours with his dreams, creative and subjective, in her garden. For the most part they were dreams of unheard melodies, for Mark Faraday was a composer. So little of his life had been spent in his own country that outside the garden he felt less at home in America than in Florence or Vienna. Yet place mattered little to him. An artist and a creator, his kingdom was within. Of his environment he demanded only harmony and space.

A bee buzzed into the open heart of a rose, bending it with his weight. A little breeze wafted its perfume toward him. His eyes wandered over the delicate, riotous color of the sweet-pea hedge and rested in content upon the mignonette border. A circular path of white gravel surrounded the grass plot about the dial. From it as a center curved paths wandered outward dividing the flower-beds. The flowers were planted without much regularity except for the borders of four o’clock and mignonette. It was this spot that had inspired Mark’s song cycle, “The Sun-dial.” A certain quality of youth and freshness as natural as a spring in the woods had won for it quick recognition. Mark’s artistic tendency was not exotic. Although not retrogressive, he had drunk deep at the springs of Bach, Schubert, and Mozart, and the basis of his work was sound.

Alone in the fragrant silence, he began dreaming sounds. The notes of the bee’s drone, one high, one low, combining in uneven rhythm, had given him a suggestion for an accompaniment. His mind was far away, working out his pattern of harmony, when another sound, actual, familiar, broke into his reverie—the preliminary chords of one of the songs of his “Sun-dial” cycle, “Youth and Crabbéd Age.” Then a woman began to sing. It was Stella’s voice; he recognized it at once, pleasant, sufficiently trained. Stella was a fair musician and was fond of trying over new music, but to-day she was playing in a more musicianly manner than he had believed her capable of playing. He had expected that his aunt would ask her over for tea. He enjoyed the girl’s companionship. He had not known many of his own countrywomen. Their naturalness and freedom from the personal attitude of the Continental woman interested him. It was perhaps this quality in Stella that most appealed to him. He was aware that his Aunt Lucretia hoped for a romantic conclusion to the friendship. He himself had given the matter an occasional thought. Yet somehow Stella’s definiteness left no room for the imaginative element to become active. It was difficult for him to visualize her as an established factor in his life, either as the restful center of a home or the adaptable companion of his nomadic wanderings. The precise nature of her lack he had not felt the necessity to characterize.

The concluding chords of his song vibrated into silence. With the ceasing of the actual sounds, his imagined music began to move again along its interrupted course; then a crash of Brahms broke into his creative weavings, and he frowned, not only for the interruption: Stella should not attempt Brahms. The hazardous attempt broke off as abruptly as it had begun. There was something fragmentary, or perhaps more correctly, something unfinished about Stella. She never had just fulfilled the promise of their first meeting. The bee theme drifted into his mind again, and had progressed a few measures, when the evolving harmonic pattern was again invaded by an alien presence, a soft one of dim outline and faded voice, his Aunt Lucretia.

“You are coming in for tea, Mark.” She paused, characteristically tentative, wavering, fearful of intruding, a gentle, kindly, ineffectual presence. “And Stella is here,” she added.

“I heard her.” Mark rose to his excellent height and stood an instant looking down at the little old lady shading her eyes from the sunlight. They had been large and dark once; now the filmy rim of age was visible about the iris. Her white hair lay in neat ringlets upon her brow, which was wrinkled like a fine parchment. Her skin, bleached to a bloodless whiteness, retained still some of the soft texture of youth.

“And Allison Clyde,” she finished her announcement: “but you won’t mind her,” she added, recalling the restiveness of the present generation under boredom.

“Allison Clyde?” he repeated. He remembered the name vaguely as one of some old friend of the family. “An old lady.” He had not reckoned his indifferent label a question, but his aunt took it up.

“We never think of her as that. She is younger,” Lucretia Hall conceded, “than I am. Allison is universally admired. Mrs. Herrick”—she quoted the oracle of her circle in that last-generation manner that proclaims the accepted—“says that Allison is a personage.”

Miss Lucretia turned toward the house; her nephew followed her.

“Any relation to the historian, bane of my youth?” he asked.

“His daughter,” Lucretia gladly expounded; “and her brother, the poet, died young. Allison herself—very gifted musically.” The fragments came back to him as his aunt preceded him with her small, hesitating steps up the narrow path. The picture of an old lady playing the “Songs without Words” passed through Mark’s mind, and he began to plan flight. “But she was obliged to give up her music to care for her invalid father.”

“I heard Stella playing,” Mark commented.

His aunt rejoined after a moment:

“She doesn’t seem at all nervous. Young people aren’t in these days. At her age, if any one asked me to play, I was terrified.”

Her nephew smiled down at her, hooking her with an affectionate arm.

“What used you to play, Tante? The ‘Blue Alsatian Mountains’ and the ‘Stéphanie Gavotte’?”

Her faded smile held a faint surprise.

“How did you know?”

“I am a clairvoyant, and did you sing, ‘Then You’ll Remember Me?’”

“No, I never sang; but Mary—your mother—did.”

They reached the back porch and passed through the wide hall into the shaded spaciousness of the drawing-room. In that quiet interior light that rested softly upon the decorous portraits of his forebears, the mahogany, and the accumulated bric-à-brac of three generations, he became aware of the incongruous presence of Stella. He realized again her clean-cut, finished daintiness, the incisiveness of voice and feature. As he released her hand, still aware of its hard, boyish grip, he heard his aunt’s voice, light, wandering, non-arresting, as if continuing some conversational thread, “And Miss Allison Clyde, Mark—my old friend.” He had been vaguely aware of some one else in the room, but when he met the smile of the older woman who held out her hand to him, he wondered that he had not realized it more promptly; for Miss Allison Clyde, although far removed from the youth of years, had about her something immediately and quietly charming—something, it occurred to him, that suggested autumnal perfumes and the warmth of late sunlight. It was a face with a certain fine austerity belonging to a generation at once more natural and more reserved than ours.

“So this is Mary’s boy,” she said. “You have her eyes.” He looked at her and unconsciously glanced at Stella. The older woman belonged to the quiet old room. Stella, despite the same inheritance, did not.

Tea was brought in by a maid grown gray in his aunt’s service, and Miss Lucretia presided. Mark’s eyes again wandered from Miss Allison Clyde to Stella with involuntary comparison.

No one would have accused Stella of not being a well-bred young woman, yet she sat, Mark noted, carelessly and not quite gracefully. Miss Allison Clyde was taller than Stella, yet she was adjusted to her chair with a disciplined grace and dignity far removed from stiffness.

“Stella has promised to sing ‘Crabbéd Age’ for me again,” she announced when tea was finished.

“Shall I sing it now?” Stella rose with her promptness, and, going to the piano, plunged at once into the opening bars. Although the composer was not an egoist, he shuddered.

“I am making frightful hash of it, I know,” Stella confessed, unabashed, as her fingers stumbled. “I think Miss Allison had better play it.” Mark glanced quickly at the older woman.

“Then it was you I heard a moment ago.”

“I tried it,” she admitted, with a smile. “The title had a melancholy attraction for me. I had no idea the composer was overhearing, or I should have had stage-fright dreadfully.”

“Play something else,” Mark suggested. “It would give me so much pleasure. Something not Mark Faraday.”

Miss Allison rose decisively.

“No, I will play ‘Crabbed Age,’” she decided, “and youth shall sing it.” And then they ran through it together, the older woman playing it with a musician’s sense of its qualities, and Stella singing it through passably in her firm young voice.

In answer to Mark’s sincere, “Play more,” as she started to rise from the piano stool, Miss Allison let her fingers wander through passages of “Meistersinger” in a way that showed a musician’s knowledge of the score.

“How wonderful that you can play like that still!” exclaimed Stella. The gaucherie of that “still” struck upon Mark’s artistic sensibilities, trained in Italian habits of speech. “What a resource it must be!”

“For crabbed age,” Miss Allison finished. Her smile held a faint amusement. Stella, momentarily silenced, if not abashed, by this explicit voicing of her thought, did not contradict, and Miss Allison continued, “The technic of a Paderewski would be small compensation for lost youth, I fear.” She said it without sentimentality, but, as she spoke, lightly touched the delicate theme of the “Golden Apples” that brought eternal youth to the gods, passing into the sublimity of the Valhalla motive. Looking up, she met Mark’s comprehension and smiled, then, bringing her chord to a resolution, rose from the piano stool. Mark watched her as she paused to turn over the pages of his “Sun-dial,” noting the titles—Sunrise, Morning, High Noon, Afternoon, Evening, Night. “‘Youth and Crabbed Age’ is Evening, I see,” she commented. “Then what is this?” She held up a separate sheet loosely set in the book, reading the title, “Too Late for Love and Loving.”

“That was an attempt with words of my own before I resigned in favor of Shakespeare,” Mark explained. “I am not a poet. They are just words for music.”

She read them over:

“Sweet love, too late!
Life is Time’s prisoner,
Love’s hour has fled,
The flowers are dead,
Love has passed by.
Sweet love, too late!
Death stands at the gate.”

She sat down again without comment, and ran it through softly, then again more assuredly, with appreciation. The warm afternoon light from the open window fell upon her, revealing what the years had worn, what they had been powerless to touch. Her hair was half gray; but her eyes were as dark, vivid, and expectant as the eyes of youth—autumn pools shot through with the sun. The mouth was a generous one, finely molded by the experience of the years. He remembered that she was a spinster, yet there was about her none of the emptiness, the starved quality, of the woman with her destiny unfulfilled; nothing of the futility, the incompletion, of the celibate that causes the imagination to turn with relief to contemplation of the most bovine mother of a family. It must have been an impervious boor indeed who would venture to jest upon Miss Allison’s single state. It spoke of naught but dignity. Life, it would seem, had not deprived her.

It was that warm, alive, expectant quality, Mark reflected, that revealed that Allison Clyde was neither wife nor mother. She had turned, no doubt, to other interests with her unquenchable vividness, and so could still look out upon the world with young, hopeful eyes.

Yet what, at her age, could the years still bring her? It had been surely a vain waiting; yet, viewed as a picture, it had, he felt, an autumnal beauty of its own.

That night Miss Allison Clyde wrote a long letter to her lifelong friend, Miss Augusta Penfield:

I met Lucretia’s nephew, Mary’s boy, to-day. He is you know, a composer already on the road to fame. You remember that he was born abroad. There is for all his undiluted American ancestry a foreign touch about him, a something warm and ardent caught under the Italian skies that even our children seem to take on when born there. He is indeed a beautiful boy, a dreamer, yet manly. A boy I call him, yet he is twenty-nine. My dear father had four sons and a daughter at his age. Still he is a boy. It is strange in this generation, Augusta, that though in many ways they seem so advanced, so beyond us, in others they are further away from life’s responsibilities than we were at their age. There is a suggestion of his Uncle William about Mark, but he is somehow stronger, more imperative. I was drawn to him at once because of his music. And he has the charming manner, the almost excessive chivalry, toward our sex that we see so little of any more, or at least seldom encounter at our age. Lucretia had asked Stella in for tea. She is a dear child and quite alarmingly composed, but not altogether musical, despite her excellent musical opportunities. She played one of the boy’s songs, a delicious thing, rather dreadfully. I felt sorry for him. Lucretia insisted upon my playing his “Youth and Crabbed Age,” which every one has been singing, although he seems delightfully unaware of that fact. He was so courteous about insisting that I should play more, I ran through a bit of “Meistersinger,”—he seemed so truly a young Walther,—and then discovered another little song that he has not published, “Too Late for Love and Loving,” full of a kind of pathos that it seems impossible youth could understand. But I suppose that is where genius comes in.

The rest of the letter was made of messages and the mild, small daily occurrences that are of moment to such as Miss Augusta Penfield.

That night, searching in an old secretary in his room for some missing notes, Mark came upon a little daguerreotype in a drawer. It was of a young girl, taken apparently in the late sixties or early seventies. Something in the face, clear-eyed, warm-lipped, trusting, caught and held his attention. He turned it over to see if the girl’s name was on the back, but the only inscription was a date in his Uncle William’s writing, June, 1863. Poor Uncle William, who had been so full of promise, they said, but who had died from a bullet wound, a sacrifice to his country two years after the war!

Some girl that his uncle had loved, perhaps. The young man’s face, dark-eyed, romantic, familiar to him through the old picture in uniform always on his mother’s dressing-table, rose before his mind’s eye. Perhaps Uncle William had taken the little picture away with him to the war. The date must have been just about the time that he had enlisted and marched away. He had gone without telling her perhaps; she could have been little more than a child. Perhaps he had never told. Or they might have had their brief tragic happiness upon the edge of death, they two “embracing under death’s spread hand.”

He stared at the picture. It would have been easy to love a girl with those eyes, that mouth. A fancy came upon him to put Uncle William’s picture beside the girl’s, and impulsively he went back to the darkened drawing-room, groped for the framed picture that stood upon the mantel, found it, and carried it up to his room. Then side by side he studied the two faces.

His imagination began to reconstruct their story. He wished that he might learn more. He went back to the old desk. It might have been his uncle’s. He opened a drawer; it was empty. A second and a third; the last contained some valueless miscellany, an old glass knob a faded bit of worsted fringe, some papers. Poking under them, he actually found a package of letters. He picked it up, and with a little thrill of realization recognized his uncle’s writing. The paper was old and yellowed with time. It had no address, but was sealed with red wax. Scarcely expecting fulfillment of his romantic hope, he broke the seal and opened the package. There was no address on the first envelope. Some business memorandum, no doubt; yet nothing surely that at this late day he might not in honor examine. He drew out the closely written sheet and turned it over. After all the years his eyes were surely the first to read it. There was no name in the inscription. Uncle William’s fine writing was very legible.