BY MARIE L. VAN VORST.
Who are my playfellows?
Wait, you shall see;
Sometimes a little bird,
Sometimes a bee.
All through the summer world
Gayly we go.
Where is the greenest close,
Where is the sweetest rose,
Three of us know.
Bee seeks the rose's heart,
Bird seeks the tree,
I seek a little brook
Clear as can be.
It singeth all day long
Sweetly and low,
Ballad of sun and star.
What its song-secrets are
Three of us know.
Bee takes the honey home
To the Queen bee;
Bird seeks a nest that hides
High in the tree;
I seek a little house
Where sweet vines grow.
What in God's world is best—
Trees, flowers, home and rest—
Three of us know.
AN "OLD-FIELD" SCHOOL-GIRL.[1]
BY MARION HARLAND
CHAPTER VIII.
"Running for her life" is not too strong an expression to describe Flea's flight. She had had experience of the temper of the man she had injured to the extent of her ability. She believed that he would kill her, in his fury, if he overtook her. With the instinct of a hunted hare she made for the thickest part of the woods, tearing through matted jungles of cat-briers and saplings, redoubling her speed as she heard a shout behind her. She had run a mile when she stopped for breath. Her hat was gone, and the muslin spencer worn under a sleeveless jacket, because of the late warm weather, was torn into ribbons. Her arms and face were bleeding; her heart beat so loudly that she could hear nothing else distinctly; but she fancied, presently, that she distinguished from afar off the noise of somebody crashing through the undergrowth. She bethought herself instantly that her flight must have left a wide trail in the forest. Winged by terror, she dashed on, but she no longer ran straight. With an undefined idea, gained from reading Cooper's novels, of losing trail in the water, she directed her course toward the swamp lying on both sides of the creek near where it emptied into the river. She could wade for a mile there, if necessary. Once in the depths of the swamp, she could defy anybody to find her unless he had a blood-hound to guide him. She had read and heard of blood-hounds, but had never seen one.
In her blind haste she miscalculated distances and direction, becoming aware of the blunder as the woods grew lighter. Long level lines of light from the early sunsetting hit her like arrows shot from behind the leafless trees. Where was she going? If she kept on, where would she come out?
A new sound smote her ears. It was not the shout of the pursuer or the bay of the hound which her imagination had conjured up. As it arose and wailed upon the still air, she fancied something familiar in it. Creeping cautiously nearer the road, which she espied through the brushwood, she saw first the white top of a "tumbler-cart" crossing a bridge laid over an arm of the creek, then the long ears of a mule, lastly her father's one man-servant, Dick, walking alongside of the mule, his hand on the thill of the cart. As he walked he uplifted voice and soul in sacred song:
"An' mus' dis body die?
Dis martial frame de-cay?
An' mus' dese actyve lim's o' mine—"