He took up the sentence she was unable to finish. “Fifty minutes before the dynamite explodes.”
Miss Breen sobbed, and, without the least warning, crumpled to the floor. Nash spoke to her, chafed her icelike arms, bathed her forehead with the dirty water from the floor; but she did not respond.
And then, as if to mock his helplessness, the candles he had propped against a rock toppled over, and, with a hiss, were extinguished by the water into which they had fallen, leaving Nash to stare through the utter, suffocating gloom.
TO BE CONTINUED.
A PET FOR THE CHILDREN.
By MAX ADELER.
Judge Pitman, a short time ago, bought a pet lamb for his little children to play with. It was a pretty good-sized lamb, and strong and vigorous; but the judge said he preferred that kind because the children would be less likely to hurt it. On the day that it came home they turned it out into the front yard, where it strayed about, nibbling the grass, while the judge tied up his geraniums. Mrs. Pitman had the children in the house, and she was reading to them from a book a description of the characteristics of lambs. The account said that: “The lamb is one of the most playful and innocent of animals. So kind and meek is it that its name has for centuries been the synonym of gentleness and sweetness of disposition. It never injures any one, and when it is attacked, it always suffers humbly and in silence. There is something so beautiful about the gentle little animal, that——”
Just at this point Mrs. Pitman was interrupted by the voice of the judge coming from the front yard. It sounded as if he were in distress of some kind. The whole family flew out upon the porch, and there they saw that pet lamb, whose name was the synonym of gentleness, engaged in butting the judge. It would butt him in the rear and knock him over, and then it would butt him on the legs, and batter him on the ribs, and plunge its head into his stomach, and jam its skull against his chest. When he rose, it butted his shins, and when he stooped over to rub them, it butted his head. Then it butted him generally wherever a chance presented itself; and when it had doubled the judge all up under the Norway maple, it butted down three rose bushes, butted a plaster garden vase to fragments, butted two palings off of the fence, and danced off down the street, butting at the tree boxes, the hitching posts, and the northwest wind.
Mr. Potter finally knocked it in the head with a club, and brought it home to the judge, and, subsequently, when they had the hind leg for dinner, the judge observed to Mrs. Pitman that, from the manner in which that lamb cut, he should believe that it was born during the War of 1812, and that it was, in fact, a terrific old ram. Then he said he should go down to see the man who sold it to him for a lamb, and bang him with a club. The Pitman children stick to kittens as regular pets.