The Knight in the Wood

BY E. LEICESTER WARREN.

(Lord de Tabley.)

The thing itself was rough and crudely done, Cut in coarse stone, spitefully placed aside As merest lumber, where the light was worst On a back staircase. Overlooked it lay In a great Roman palace crammed with art. It had no number in the list of gems Weeded away, long since pushed out and banished, Before insipid Guidos over-sweet And Dolce's rose sensationalities, And curly chirping angels, spruce as birds. And yet the motive of this thing ill-hewn And hardly seen did touch me. O, indeed, The skill-less hand that carved it had belonged To a most yearning and bewildered brain: There was such desolation in the work; And through its utter failure the thing spoke With more of human message, heart to heart, Than all these faultless, smirking, skin-deep saints, In artificial troubles picturesque, And martyred sweetly, not one curl awry.— Listen; a clumsy knight, who rode alone Upon a stumbling jade in a great wood Belated. The poor beast, with head low-bowed Snuffing the ground. The rider leant Forward to sound the marish with his lance. The wretched rider and the hide-bound steed, You saw the place was deadly; that doomed pair, Feared to advance, feared to return.—That's all.

"A Little Feminine Casabianca"[A]

BY GEORGE MADDEN MARTIN.

(Arranged by Maude Herndon and Grace Kellam.)

[By permission of the publishers and the author we reprint two cuttings from stories in "Emmy Lou." There are ten stories in the book, all of them excellent readings. McClure, Phillips & Co., New York.]

he Primer Class according to the degree of its precocity was divided in three sections. Emmy Lou belonged to the third section. It was the last section, and she was the last one in it, though she had no idea what a section meant nor why she was in it; and Emmy Lou went on wondering what it was all about, which never would have been the case had there been a mother among the elders of the house, for mothers have a way of understanding these things. But to Emmy Lou "mother" had come to mean but a memory which faded as it came, a vague consciousness of encircling arms, of a brooding tender face, of yearning eyes; and it was only because they told her that Emmy Lou remembered how mother had gone away South, one winter, to get well. That they afterward told her it was heaven, in nowise confused Emmy Lou, because, for aught she knew, South and heaven and much else might be included in these points of the compass. Ever since then Emmy Lou had lived with three aunties and an uncle; and papa had been coming a hundred miles once a month to see her.

But somehow the Primer year wore away; and the close of the first week of Emmy Lou's second year at a certain large public school found her round, chubby self, like a pink-cheeked period, ending the long line of intermingled little boys and girls making what was known, twenty-five years ago, as the First Reader Class.

Her heart grew still within her at the slow, awful enunciation of the Large Lady in black bombazine who reigned over the department of the First Reader, pointing her morals with a heavy forefinger, before which Emmy Lou's eyes lowered with every aspect of conscious guilt. Nor did Emmy Lou dream that the Large Lady, whose black bombazine was the visible sign of a loss by death that had made it necessary for her to enter the school-room to earn a living, was finding the duties incident to the First Reader almost as strange and perplexing as Emmy Lou herself.

Emmy Lou from the first day found herself descending steadily to the foot of the class; and there she remained until the awful day, at the close of the first week, when the Large Lady, realizing perhaps that she could no longer ignore such adherence to that lowly position, made discovery that while to Emmy Lou "d-o-g" might spell "dog" and "f-r-o-g" might spell "frog," Emmy Lou could not find either on a printed page, and further, could not tell wherein they differed when found for her; that, also, Emmy Lou made her figure 8's by adding one uncertain little o to the top of another uncertain little o; and that while Emmy Lou might copy, in smeary columns, certain cabalistic signs off the blackboard, she could not point them off in tens, hundreds, thousands, or read their numerical values, to save her little life. The Large Lady, sorely perplexed within herself as to the proper course to be pursued, in the sight of the fifty-nine other First Readers pointed a condemning forefinger at the miserable little object standing in front of her platform; and said, "You will stay after school, Emma Louise, that I may examine further into your qualifications for this grade."

Now Emmy Lou had no idea what it meant—"examine further into your qualifications for this grade." It might be the form of punishment in vogue for the chastisement of the members of the First Reader. But "stay after school" she did understand, and her heart sank, and her little breast heaved.

It was past the noon recess. At last the bell for dismissal had rung. The Large Lady, arms folded across her bombazine bosom, had faced the class, and with awesome solemnity had already enunciated, "Attention," and sixty little people had sat up straight, when the door opened, and a teacher from the floor above came in.

At her whispered confidence, the Large Lady left the room hastily,

while the strange teacher with a hurried "one-two-three, march out quietly, children," turned, and followed her. And Emmy Lou, left sitting at her desk, saw through gathering tears the line of First Readers wind around the room and file out the door, the sound of their departing footsteps along the bare corridors and down the echoing stairway coming back like a knell to her sinking heart. Then class after class from above marched past the door and on its clattering way, while voices from outside, shrill with the joy of the release, came up through the open windows in talk, in laughter, together with the patter of feet on the bricks. Then as these familiar sounds grew fewer, fainter, farther away, some belated footsteps went echoing through the building, a door slammed somewhere—then—silence.

Emmy Lou waited. She wondered how long it would be. There was watermelon at home for dinner; she had seen it borne in, a great, striped promise of ripe juicy lusciousness, on the marketman's shoulder before she came to school. And here a tear, long gathering, splashed down the pink cheek.

Still that awesome personage presiding over the fortunes of the First Reader failed to return. Perhaps this was "the examination into—into—" Emmy Lou could not remember what—to be left in this big, bare room with the flies droning and humming in lazy circles up near the ceiling. The forsaken desks, with a forgotten book or slate left here and there upon them, the pegs around the wall empty of hats and bonnets, the unoccupied chair upon the platform—Emmy Lou gazed at these with a sinking sensation of desolation, while tear followed tear down her chubby face. And listening to the flies and the silence, Emmy Lou began to long for even the Bombazine Presence, and dropping her quivering countenance upon her arms folded upon the desk she sobbed aloud. But the time was long, and the day was warm, and the sobs grew slower, and the breath began to come in long-drawn, quivering sighs, and the next Emmy Lou knew she was sitting upright, trembling in every limb, and some one coming up the stairs—she could hear the slow, heavy footfalls, and a moment after she saw the Man, the Recess Man, the low, black-bearded, black-browed, scowling Man, with the broom across his shoulder, reach the hallway, and make toward the open doorway of the First Reader room. Emmy Lou held her breath, stiffened her little body, and—waited. But the Man pausing to light his pipe, Emmy Lou, in the sudden

respite thus afforded slid in a trembling heap beneath the desk, and on hands and knees went crawling across the floor. And as Uncle Michael came in, a moment after, broom, pan, and feather-duster in hand, the last fluttering edge of a little pink dress was disappearing into the depths of the big, empty coal-box, and its sloping lid was lowering upon a flaxen head and cowering little figure crouched within. Uncle Michael having put the room to rights, sweeping and dusting, with many a rheumatic groan in accompaniment, closed the windows, and going out, drew the door after him, and, as was his custom, locked it.

Meanwhile, at Emmy Lou's home the elders wondered. But Emmy Lou did not come. And by half-past two Aunt Louise, the youngest auntie, started out to find her. But after searching the neighborhood in vain, returned home in despair. Then Aunt Cordelia sent the house boy down-town for Uncle Charlie. Just as Uncle Charlie arrived—and it was past five o'clock by then—some of the children of the neighborhood, having found a small boy living some squares off who confessed to being in the First Reader with Emmy Lou, arrived also, with the small boy in tow.

"She didn't know 'dog' from 'frog' when she saw 'em," stated the small boy, with derision of superior ability, "an' teacher, she told her to stay after school. She was settin' there in her desk when school let out, Emmy Lou was."

But a big girl of the neighborhood objected. "Her teacher went home the minute school was out," she declared. "Isn't the new lady, Mrs. Samuels, your teacher?" "Well, her daughter, Lettie, she's in my room, and she was sick, and her mother came up to our room and took her home. Our teacher she went down and dismissed the First Readers."

"I don't care if she did," retorted the small boy. "I reckon I saw Emmy Lou settin' there when we come away."

The three aunts grew pale and tearful, and wrung their hands in despair. The small boy from the First Reader, legs apart, hands in knickerbocker pockets, gazed at the crowd of irresolute elders with scornful wonder. "What you wanter do is find Uncle Michael; he keeps the keys. He went past my house a while ago, going home. He lives in Rose Lane Alley. 'Taint much outer my way, I'll take you there." And meekly they followed in his footsteps.

It was dark when a motley throng of uncles, aunties, visiting

lady, neighbors and children went climbing the cavernous, echoing stairway of the dark school building behind the toiling figure of the skeptical Uncle Michael, lantern in hand.

"Ain't I swept over every inch of this here schoolhouse myself and carried the trash outten a dust-pan?" grumbled Uncle Michael, with what inference nobody just then stopped to inquire. Then with the air of a mistreated, aggrieved person who feels himself a victim, he paused before a certain door on the second floor, and fitted a key in its lock. "Here it is then, No. 9, to satisfy the lady," and he flung open the door. The light of Uncle Michael's lantern fell full upon the wide-eyed, terror-smitten person of Emmy Lou, in her desk, awaiting, her miserable little heart knew not what horror.

"She—she told me to stay," sobbed Emmy Lou in Aunt Cordelia's arms, "and I stayed; and the Man came, and I hid in the coal-box!"

[A]