| PAGE | |
| The Mute, Robert W. Sneddon | [1] |
| The Laughing Duchess, Virginia Woodward Cloud | [13] |
| Long, Long Ago, Frederick Orin Bartlett | [34] |
| The Right Whales Flukes, Ben Ames Williams | [45] |
| When Breathitt Went to Battle, Lewis H. Kilpatrick | [70] |
| The Forgiver, Marjorie L. C. Pickthall | [87] |
| Told to Parson, Eden Phillpotts | [100] |
| Iron, Randolph Edgar | [111] |
| The Perfect Interval, Margaret Adelaide Wilson | [113] |
| The Archbishop Of Rheims, Emily W. Scott | [132] |
| The Trawnbeighs, Charles Macomb Flandrau | [145] |
| The Life Belt, J. J. Bell | [157] |
| Amina, Edward Lucas White | [168] |
| The Silver Ring, Frank Swinnerton | [183] |
| The Surgeon, B. W. Mitchell | [193] |
| The ’Dopters, Aileen Cleveland Higgins | [201] |
| Prem Singh, John Amid | [216] |
| Even So, Charles Boardman Hawes | [223] |
| The Cask Ashore, Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch | [243] |
THE MUTE
Le Muet started as the cold steel of a rifle barrel touched his neck, and turning his head stumbled to his feet. Behind him stood four Bavarian soldiers grinning maliciously at his surprise. They spoke to him, and he made no attempt to answer.
“Have you seen the French?” they asked again.
He gaped at them with an empty expression. One of them seized him by the arm, and twisted it cruelly. A low, hoarse, guttural sound came from Le Muet’s lips, and his face was convulsed with effort. Shaking himself loose, he pointed to his ears and mouth, then let his chin sink upon his breast. He spread his hands in a gesture of despondency, and shook his head from side to side.
The soldiers looked at him angrily, then their leader, giving the peasant a push which sent him upon his knees among the turnips, issued an order in a low voice, and as silently as they had come the four men disappeared, with bodies bent low, among the trees of the plantation.
When Le Muet looked again they were out of sight. His heart was beating, he trembled, and it seemed as if there was no strength in his limbs and that the struggle he had made to utter intelligible sounds had left him exhausted. For a long time he knelt staring at the woods before he rose to his feet and shook his fist in the direction in which they had gone. Then he took to his heels, and ran as quickly as he could to the village.
When all the able-bodied men in the village had gone, there remained only two, Monsieur the curé and he whom they called Le Muet, a strapping big fellow with the strength of an ox, to whom, for no fault of his own, had been denied the gifts of speech and hearing.
Naturally Le Muet was not called upon to do his years in the army. His dumb deafness would have broken the heart of any drill sergeant as it did that of his schoolmaster who, having heard of lip-reading, experimented with him for a month and then broke his best ruler over the lad’s stupid head.
Not that Le Muet was stupid except in book learning. When one is dumb, one talks to beasts and birds in sounds that they can understand, and as for hearing, there is no need of that with a dog who speaks with his eyes, his tail, his body. And Le Muet had a dog, a shaggy, unkempt animal with vagabond habits, who disappeared for days at a time, and returned without explanation from marauding expeditions in the woods. It was said that the gamekeeper had sworn to riddle him with shot the first time he caught him in the act, but, after all, the gamekeeper was a merciful man, and there is no doubt that he missed many a good chance to rob Le Muet of his heel companion. The dog was harmless enough, although it may well be understood that he would not have hesitated to try his teeth upon those Bavarian invaders, had he not gone the day before upon a poaching quest.