Newt Spooner was gone a week, though he had only announced it as his
purpose to escort the girl as far as a near-by village.
In three days more, according to the articles of war, his name must be
dropped from the company roll, and his status become that of death or
desertion. Even if he came back at once, he must face the lesser charge
of absence beyond leave.
When the sergeant did return, he bore the marks of jungle travel, and as
he reported to his company commander, his face indicated that his
explanation would not be merely personal.
Yet Sergeant Spooner was secretive, and asked permission to guide a
small force into the hills. He said that he had come upon evidence which
would not wait, and he had, therefore, taken the liberty of following it
up independently. He believed he could lead a detachment to a place
where a party of insurgents were in hiding, and--at this his captain sat
up and took notice--although it was a small party, he had information
which led him to believe the renegade might be one of the number.
But for such an enterprise Newton Spooner's superiors required no
urging. The sergeant said that no considerable force could hope to reach
the place unheralded, so two picked squads stole out that same evening,
and before dawn of the third day (for they marched only at night and lay
hidden while the sun shone) were creeping through the long grass upon a
native farm where two nipa houses proclaimed the presence of humanity.
They crept cautiously, for though the place had all the seeming of
private and peaceful domiciles, they had learned to distrust appearances
and to trust Sergeant Newt Spooner's judgment. The spot was very wild
and desolate, lying remote from any village. In the gray mists between
night and morning it seemed a land of ghosts, with broken hills and
jungle closing about it.
As daylight crept to the east, soldiers stood silent and patient at each
door and window of each house. It was a strange disposition of troops
about thatched houses that lay soundless and wrapped in profound
slumber. The lieutenant who had come in command stood at the right of
the front door of the larger house, and over against him, on the left,
stood Newt Spooner. But each stood with back pressed to wall, so
flattened against the uprights that, in that dim light, one coming out
of the door would pass them by unseeing. And at each of the other
openings the watchers were likewise flattened as though they had been
figures in bas-relief fantastically wrought by the builder.
They stood without sound or movement, until, as the light strengthened a
little, the door opened and a _mestiza_ girl in slippered feet and
partial attire came out, carrying an earthen water-vessel. As she
crossed the threshold, looking neither to right nor left, New Spooner's
tight-pressed palm shot out and silenced her carmine lips. The officer
recognized the girl. He had himself recently turned away unable to watch
her sobs for her dead lover, and now he felt an impulse to resent this
rough indignity at the hands of the sergeant. But something in the
sergeant's face gave him pause, and at the same moment Newt Spooner
sternly whispered to his prisoner in Spanish:
"Call him--call him, I tell you!"
For an instant, the girl stood trembling from head to foot, with dumb
agony in her eyes. It was evident that she was facing the hardest crisis
of her life, and that terror was dominant. As Newt bent forward with
threatening hardness in his relentless face, she shrank back against the
wall, bowing her head in forced assent, and with the soldier's strong
hand still close enough to stifle any unwished-for outcry, she called in
quavering, heart-broken Spanish:
"Beloved, come to me. Come _pronto_!"
There followed, at once, a sound of bare feet from inside, and a
gigantic, half-clad figure appeared anxiously at the door. It was the
figure of a white man; and, as the lieutenant caught its shoulder, and
threw his revolver muzzle to its broad chest, he found himself looking
into the grave eyes of former Sergeant-Major Peter Spooner, late of the
26th Volunteers.
For an instant, the officer stood too dazed to credit the testimony of
his eyes, but, while the Deacon glanced down the barrel of Newt's
leveled rifle, and shrugged his shoulders with a low oath, the officer
realized that he had under his hand the mysterious renegade.
And then, as the deserter, still gazing into the flinty face of his
kinsman, raised his hands in surrender, he coolly turned toward the
house, and shouted back in excellent Spanish:
"General, we are captives. Resistance is useless."
In answer to that message, there shortly appeared, framed in the door,
the startled countenance of the notorious Rosario himself. Once too
often, he had trusted himself with those inconsiderable escorts which
had enabled him to pass from place to place without attracting
attention.
The detail made its march back to headquarters, taking its prisoners
with it, in a semi-dazed condition. Against Rosario they felt little
vindictiveness, now that he was captive to their arms. But this other,
this sergeant-major who had organized most of them into soldiery back
there in the Appalachian hills, with him there was a ghastly difference.
He had been a hero, mourned as lost. He had taken the pay of the service
and held its highest warrant--and he had been false to his salt, for
those tin bars which they roughly stripped from his shoulders.
But, if the command was struck sick with astonishment, Black Pete
himself treated them to no show of emotion. He had already considered
and weighed what it meant to desert to the enemy in time of war, and he
had been taken in attendance upon the enemy's district leader, wearing
the enemy's livery. He was already, in effect, dead, and he meant to
maintain the stolid silence of death.
And so the detachment marched into headquarters with the grim silence of
a funeral cortege, though as yet the corpse walked upright and on its
own feet.
No lips were tighter set, and no face more stonily expressionless than
that of Sergeant Newton Spooner. His was the capture, his the
credit--and, in part, the shame. Between himself and the man who must
hang existed the bond of one blood and one name. The smirch upon the
regiment was likewise a smirch upon that blood and name.
The struggle in himself had begun from the moment when he found the
print of a large boot in the mud, and the disgrace to the service and
the regiment had come home to him ... the one form of disgrace which he
had ever understood. But the mental sweat was not yet over. It must have
its ugly culmination at general court-martial, and when that time came
he, Newt Spooner, must say the words upon which conviction would
indubitably follow. He knew that in its hideous fulness, had known it
from the start, and yet, when the hour came and he took the stand to
testify, no voice could have been steadier, and no gaze more unflinching
than that with which he held the eyes of the accused.
But the gaze with which the Deacon met his was in no wise weaker. As
Black Pete listened to the proceedings in which his life-sands were
running out, his eyes were thoughtful and perhaps a shade wistful, but
undrooping, and unwavering.
The defendant testified that, when he was captured, they offered him
choice between death and a captain's commission. He had chosen the
latter. They took him north, and he had talked with Aguinaldo in person.
The "President" had received him as an officer and a dignitary. He had
beguiled him with hopes of foreign recognition and a filmy vision of
ultimate success. The Deacon had held during his life one goal and one
ideal. His dream was leadership. He had tired of the warrant of the
"non-com." He wished to sit in council with men of higher rank. The
experiment had failed. He made no plea.
The hearing before G.C.M. came after the regiment had left the town with
the church. It was on a larger parade ground that the united battalions
were drawn up at sunset, and the regimental adjutant stepped a pace
forward to the colonel's side and "published the order," which announced
that Peter Spooner was "to be hanged by his neck till dead."
The lines stood silent as the adjutant's words were read. Black Pete at
"the front and center," to be seen of all men, presented a picture quite
as uncompromising as he had ever presented before. His contemplative
gray eyes bore straight to the front as he stood at attention, and in
them slept a thoughtful expression, as though they were looking off
beyond horizons hidden to other men, and already piercing the opaque
things of life and death.
And Newt Spooner gave his company front a motionless, sternly impersonal
figure upon which to gaze. In neither condemned nor informer was there a
vestige of tremor as the officers came to the "front and center" and the
formation ended.
In the wet mists of a rainy morning, they escorted Black Pete to a
scaffold around which ranged, in hollow square, the regiment he had
betrayed--and there they hanged him high as Haman. Brooding hills looked
down, rain-shrouded, and to their crests at the last moment the
condemned man raised his eyes.
There was silence, save for the pelting of rain on iron roofs, until it
was broken by noise of the falling trap and the low whip-like snap of
the tautened rope. Then the burial detail went out and did its work.
Sergeant Newton Spooner returned to his routine duties with a grim
taciturnity which did not invite conversation.
* * * * *
It was at Manila, many months later, that Major Henry Falkins again
called Sergeant Spooner to battalion headquarters, and spoke with a
certain embarrassment:
"Spooner," he inquired slowly, "have you come to realize that one man
may bear testimony against another for reasons other than spite?"
A slow flush, brick-red and hot, spread over the bronzed face of the
non-commissioned officer.
"I've come to understand a good many things, sir," he replied gravely.
"And I've paid for learning them."
"We'll be mustered out before long," suggested Henry Falkins, "but I
won't be long out of uniform, I hope. I'm going to stay in the service.
Once I promised you a chance--"
Newt Spooner grinned.
"I reckon the uniform's good enough for me, too, sir," he interrupted.
Then he added, with a diffidence which all expression of deep feeling
brings to the mountaineer: "I reckon, sir, as long as I can serve under
you I'll go on reenlisting."
Falkins was a mountaineer, too. He hastily changed the subject.
"Commissions from the ranks are going to men less capable than you--but
examinations must be passed. If you'll study, Spooner, I'd like to get
behind you and help."
"I've never spoken of that to any man, sir, but I've been thinking about
it," announced the sergeant diffidently. "I've been studying for
eighteen months."
* * * * *
Not far from the corner of Main and Limestone Streets in Lexington,
Kentucky, and almost in the shadow of the Phoenix Hotel, a poster on the
sidewalk and a flag from an overhead window proclaimed that "Men were
wanted for the United States Army." Out of the door of the building so
decorated, one spring morning, when the trees were in delicate new
leafage, came a sergeant attached to the recruiting station. He was
selected, as many of these men are, for his soldierliness of appearance.
Such men are the best advertisement the service can use, and it uses
them.
The sergeant was not overly tall, and, though spare, he was by no means
lean. His shoulders swung back squarely, and his chest, rounded and
strong like a barrel, bore on its olive-drab blouse a sharp-shooter's
cross and the Medal of Honor, which must be bestowed by an Act of
Congress.
His face was clear-cut and bronzed by tropic sun and ocean winds. In
fine, as the sergeant walked to the corner, casting his eyes up and down
Limestone Street, he was an inspiriting figure of a man--and a soldier
man. He had for the time nothing better to do than to stroll, and as he
strolled a flicker of reminiscent amusement brought a pleasant grin to
his firm lips. Sergeant Newt Spooner was thinking of the black-clad,
lowering-faced boy who years ago hiked through this town, bent on
assassination.
As he went along the historic street, where every square held traditions
of ante-bellum days, he began to encounter other strollers, college lads
in sweaters and caps, and college girls with books. But his eyes finally
focused their gaze on a young woman who came out of a house and also
turned up the street, walking ahead of him. She was a slim girl in
simple gingham, but in her cheeks was an apple-blossom glow and
delicacy, and her movements were informed with the lithe grace of
out-of-doors. Newt wanted to overtake and accost her. He wanted to see
if she would recognize him, changed as he was, as quickly as he had
recognized her, who was even more changed.
For this girl looked like some splendid young blossom that had come to
flower in open woods, and the soldier saw, with mingled pride and
twinging jealousy, that all the boys and men who passed took off their
hats with frank ardor in their eyes. This was such a metamorphosed
Minerva that he fell into shyness and delayed announcing himself until
they had reached the stone gate-posts of the rolling campus, where,
under the maples, the macadam road wound up to the college buildings,
and the old field-gun of civil-war days looked out over the cadets'
drill-ground.
There he plucked up courage to call in a low voice, "M'nervy!" and at
the mountain pronunciation, coming unexpectedly from behind, the girl
wheeled and stood for a moment, confronting him in a pretty picture of
delight and astonishment, while a warm color stole into her cheeks.
"Newty!" she cried, as she held out both hands in greeting. "Where in
the world did you spring from?"
They stood there under the maples for a while, and the boy made her talk
of herself, and, while they talked, a man, wearing the uniform of a
lieutenant of infantry, came down the walk. He was a likeable-looking
fellow, well set-up and soldierly, but very young. From his campaign hat
to his polished puttees, he was new, new like the lately minted coin
that has not long circulated. Lieutenant March was not long from the
"Point," and he was at present stationed here as Commandant at the
University. The sergeant, with his back turned that way, was deep in
conversation with the girl, so that, as he heard a pleasant voice
saying, "How are you, Miss Rawlins," he turned just in time to see the
officer's lifted hat, and to catch the smile on his lips. But his
soldier instinct was now second nature, and in the same glance he saw
the "U.S.A." of the collar-ornaments.
At once, Sergeant Newt Spooner stood at attention, his heels together
and his hand at his hat-brim in salute. The officer, too, was taking in
those things which military men observe. He saw the service stripes and
the two medals on the breast, and his eyes brightened. As he returned
the salute he cheerily inquired:
"What command, sergeant?"
"Fifty-ninth Infantry, sir; late of the 26th Volunteers."
"Here on leave?"
"Recruiting detail, sir."
The officer's eyes were dwelling on the decorated breast.
"Medal of Honor man," he said. "What service was that, sergeant?"
The girl, whose less-trained eyes had not recognized the import of the
little metal disc, flushed with pleasure. Newt flushed, too. It irked
him to talk about himself; but the military ethics were ingrained, and
he still stood upright, and answered respectfully, but as briefly as
possible:
"The islands, sir. Province of Nueva Ecija." When the lieutenant had
gone, the sergeant looked down in an embarrassed fashion at the white
road.
"Minerva," he said, "I don't know whether it interests you, but I'm
studying pretty hard myself. That's why I asked for this detail. That
and one other reason. I'm only a non-commissioned officer, and you're
almost a school-teacher. I'm on the wrong side of the line, but I've
applied for an examination, and, when this term of enlistment is up I've
got a good chance of a commission." He saw her looking at his medal, and
heard her saying:
"I should think you would have, Newty."
"Oh," he hastened to tell her, "I mean that I've got an influential
friend, who's going to help me."
"Who is that, Newty?" she demanded; and, as he answered, the young
sergeant flushed.
"The best soldier in the service, Colonel Henry Falkins."
The girl looked down at the pavement and then up at the tender green of
the maples. Her only reply was a low, "Oh!" but her voice said more, and
presently she added a question:
"You said, Newty--" her eyes now held a challenging twinkle as she
spoke--"that there was one other reason why you asked for this--what do
you call it?--oh, yes, I know, this detail. What was that reason?"
The sergeant raised his face, and held her eyes with a steady gaze,
until her own eyes fell, and her cheeks grew more rosy.
"That reason," he announced boldly, "is that I want plenty of chance to
tell you what the reason is."
THE END
* * * * *
JOHN FOX, JR'S.
STORIES OF THE KENTUCKY MOUNTAINS
_THE TRAIL OF THE LONESOME PINE._
Illustrated by F. C. Yohn.
The "lonesome pine" from which the story takes its name was a tall tree
that stood in solitary splendor on a mountain top. The fame of the pine
lured a young engineer through Kentucky to catch the trail, and when he
finally climbed to its shelter he found not only the pine but the
_foot-prints of a girl_. And the girl proved to be lovely, piquant, and
the trail of these girlish foot-prints led the young engineer a madder
chase than "the trail of the lonesome pine."
_THE LITTLE SHEPHERD OF KINGDOM COME_
Illustrated by F. C. Yohn.
This is a story of Kentucky, in a settlement known as "Kingdom Come." It
is a life rude, semi-barbarous; but natural and honest, from which often
springs the flower of civilization.
"Chad." the "little shepherd" did not know who he was nor whence he
came--he had just wandered from door to door since early childhood,
seeking shelter with kindly mountaineers who gladly fathered and
mothered this waif about whom there was such a mystery--a charming waif,
by the way, who could play the banjo better that anyone else in the
mountains.
_A KNIGHT OF THE CUMBERLAND._
Illustrated by F. C. Yohn.
The scenes are laid along the waters of the Cumberland, the lair of
moonshiner and feudsman. The knight is a moonshiner's son, and the
heroine a beautiful girl perversely christened "The Blight." Two
impetuous young Southerners' fall under the spell of "The Blight's"
charms and she learns what a large part jealousy and pistols have in the
love making of the mountaineers.
Included in this volume is "Hell fer-Sartain" and other stories, some of
Mr. Fox's most entertaining Cumberland valley narratives.
* * * * *
GROSSET & DUNLAP'S DRAMATIZED NOVELS
THE KIND THAT ARE MAKING THEATRICAL HISTORY
_WITHIN THE LAW._ By Bayard Veiller & Marvin Dana.
Illustrated by Wm. Charles Cooke.
This is a novelization of the immensely successful play which ran for
two years in New York and Chicago.
The plot of this powerful novel is of a young woman's revenge directed
against her employer who allowed her to be sent to prison for three
years on a charge of theft, of which she was innocent.
_WHAT HAPPENED TO MARY._ By Robert Carlton Brown.
Illustrated with scenes from the play.
This is a narrative of a young and innocent country girl who is suddenly
thrown into the very heart of New York, "the land of her dreams," where
she is exposed to all sorts of temptations and dangers.
The story of Mary is being told in moving pictures and played in
theatres all over the world.
_THE RETURN OF PETER GRIMM._ By David Belasco.
Illustrated by John Rae.
This is a novelization of the popular play in which David Warfield, as
Old Peter Grimm, scored such a remarkable success.
The story is spectacular and extremely pathetic but withal, powerful,
both as a book and as a play.
_THE GARDEN OF ALLAH._ By Robert Hichens.
This novel is an intense, glowing epic of the great desert, sunlit
barbaric, with its marvelous atmosphere of vastness and loneliness.
It is a book of rapturous beauty, vivid in word painting. The play has
been staged with magnificent cast and gorgeous properties.
_BEN HUR._ A Tale of the Christ. By General Lew Wallace.
The whole world has placed this famous Religious-Historical Romance on a
height of pre-eminence which no other novel of its time has reached. The
clashing of rivalry and the deepest human passions, the perfect
reproduction of brilliant Roman life, and the tense, fierce atmosphere
of the arena have kept their deep fascination. A tremendous dramatic
success.
_BOUGHT AND PAID FOR._ By George Broadhurst and Arthur Hornblow.
Illustrated with scenes from the play.
A stupendous arraignment of modern marriage which has created an
interest on the stage that is almost unparalleled. The scenes are laid
in New York, and deal with conditions among both the rich and poor.
The interest of the story turns on the day-by-day developments which
show the young wife the price she has paid.
* * * * *
GROSSET & DUNLAP'S DRAMATIZED NOVELS
Original, sincere and courageous--often amusing--the kind that are
making theatrical history.
MADAME X. By Alexandre Bisson and J. W. McConaughy. Illustrated with
scenes from the play.
A beautiful Parisienne became an outcast because her husband would not
forgive an error of her youth. Her love for her son is the great final
influence in her career. A tremendous dramatic success.
THE GARDEN OF ALLAH. By Robert Hichens.
An unconventional English woman and an inscrutable stranger meet and
love in an oasis of the Sahara. Staged this season with magnificent cast
and gorgeous properties.
THE PRINCE OF INDIA. By Lew. Wallace.
A glowing romance of the Byzantine Empire, presenting with extraordinary
power the siege of Constantinople, and lighting its tragedy with the
warm underglow of an Oriental romance. As a play it is a great dramatic
spectacle.
TESS OF THE STORM COUNTRY. By Grace Miller White. Illust. by Howard
Chandler Christy.
A girl from the dregs of society, loves a young Cornell University
student, and it works startling changes in her life and the lives of
those about her. The dramatic version is one of the sensations of the
season.
YOUNG WALLINGFORD. By George Randolph Chester. Illust. by F. R. Gruger
and Henry Raleigh.
A series of clever swindles conducted by a cheerful young man, each of
which is just on the safe side of a State's prison offence. As
"Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford," it is probably the most amusing expose of
money manipulation ever seen on the stage.
THE INTRUSION OF JIMMY. By P. G. Wodehouse. Illustrations by Will Grefe.
Social and club life in London and New York, an amateur burglary
adventure and a love story. Dramatized under the title of "A Gentleman
of Leisure," it furnishes hours of laughter to the play-goers.
* * * * *
B. M. Bower's Novels
Thrilling Western Romances
Large 12 mos. Handsomely bound in cloth.
Illustrated
_CHIP, OF THE FLYING U_
A breezy wholesome tale, wherein the love affairs of Chip and Della
Whitman are charmingly and humorously told. Chip's jealousy of Dr. Cecil
Grantham, who turns out to be a big, blue eyed young woman is very
amusing. A clever, realistic story of the American Cow-puncher.
_THE HAPPY FAMILY_
A lively and amusing story, dealing with the adventures of eighteen
jovial, big hearted Montana cowboys. Foremost amongst them, we find
Ananias Green, known as Andy, whose imaginative powers cause many lively
and exciting adventures.
_HER PRAIRIE KNIGHT_
A realistic story of the plains, describing a gay party of Easterners
who exchange a cottage at Newport for the rough homeliness of a Montana
ranch-house. The merry-hearted cowboys, the fascinating Beatrice, and
the effusive Sir Redmond, become living, breathing personalities.
_THE RANGE DWELLERS_
Here are everyday, genuine cowboys, just as they really exist. Spirited
action, a range feud between two families, and a Romeo and Juliet
courtship make this a bright, jolly, entertaining story, without a dull
page.
_THE LURE OF DIM TRAILS_
A vivid portrayal of the experience of an Eastern author among the
cowboys of the West, in search of "local color" for a new novel. "Bud"
Thurston learns many a lesson while following "the lure of the dim
trails" but the hardest, and probably the most welcome, is that of love.
_THE LONESOME TRAIL_
"Weary" Davidson leaves the ranch for Portland, where conventional city
life palls on him. A little branch of sage brush, pungent with the
atmosphere of the prairie, and the recollection of a pair of large brown
eyes soon compel his return. A wholesome love story.
_THE LONG SHADOW_
A vigorous Western story, sparkling with the free, outdoor, life of a
mountain ranch. Its scenes shift rapidly and its actors play the game of
life fearlessly and like men. It is a fine love story from start to
finish.
* * * * *
THE NOVELS OF
STEWART EDWARD WHITE
_THE RULES OF THE GAME._ Illustrated by Lajaren A. Hiller
The romance of the son of "The Riverman." The young college hero goes
into the lumber camp, is antagonized by "graft" and comes into the
romance of his life.
_ARIZONA NIGHTS._ Illus. and cover inlay by N. C. Wyeth.
A series of spirited tales emphasizing some phases of the life of the
ranch, plains and desert. A masterpiece.
_THE BLAZED TRAIL._ With illustrations by Thomas Fogarty.
A wholesome story with gleams of humor, telling of a young man who
blazed his way to fortune through the heart of the Michigan pines.
_THE CLAIM JUMPERS._ A Romance.
The tenderfoot manager of a mine in a lonesome gulch of the Black Hills
has a hard time of it, but "wins out" in more ways than one.
_CONJUROR'S HOUSE._ Illustrated Theatrical Edition.
Dramatized under the title of "The Call of the North."
Conjuror's House is a Hudson Bay trading post where the head factor is
the absolute lord. A young fellow risked his life and won a bride on
this forbidden land.
_THE MAGIC FOREST._ A Modern Fairy Tale. Illustrated.
The sympathetic way in which the children of the wild and their life is
treated could only belong to one who is in love with the forest and open
air. Based on fact.
_THE RIVERMAN._ Illus. by N. C. Wyeth and C. Underwood.
The story of a man's fight against a river and of a struggle between
honesty and grit on the one side, and dishonesty and shrewdness on the
other.
_THE SILENT PLACES._ Illustrations by Philip R. Goodwin.
The wonders of the northern forests, the heights of feminine devotion,
and masculine power, the intelligence of the Caucasian and the instinct
of the Indian, are all finely drawn in this story.
_THE WESTERNERS._ A story of the Black Hills that is justly placed among
the best American novels. It portrays the life of the new West as no
other book has done in recent years.
_THE MYSTERY._ In collaboration with Samuel Hopkins Adams
With illustrations by Will Crawford.
The disappearance of three successive crews from the stout ship
"Laughing Lass" in mid-Pacific, is a mystery weird and inscrutable. In
the solution, there is a story of the most exciting voyage that man ever
undertook.
* * * * *
STORIES OF WESTERN LIFE
_RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE_, By Zane Grey.
Illustrated by Douglas Duer.
In this picturesque romance of Utah of some forty years ago, we are
permitted to see the unscrupulous methods employed by the invisible hand
of the Mormon Church to break the will of those refusing to conform to
its rule.
_FRIAR TUCK_, By Robert Alexander Wason.
Illustrated by Stanley L. Wood.
Happy Hawkins tells us, in his humorous way, how Friar Tuck lived among
the Cowboys, how he adjusted their quarrels and love affairs and how he
fought with them and for them when occasion required.
_THE SKY PILOT_, By Ralph Connor.
Illustrated by Louis Rhead.
There is no novel, dealing with the rough existence of cowboys, so
charming in the telling, abounding as it does with the freshest and the
truest pathos.
_THE EMIGRANT TRAIL_, By Geraldine Bonner.
Colored frontispiece by John Rae.
The book relates the adventures of a party on its overland pilgrimage,
and the birth and growth of the absorbing love of two strong men for a
charming heroine.
_THE BOSS OF WIND RIVER_, By A. M. Chisholm. Illustrated by Frank Tenney
Johnson.
This is a strong, virile novel with the lumber industry for its central
theme and a love story full of interest as a sort of subplot.
_A PRAIRIE COURTSHIP_, By Harold Bindloss.
A story of Canadian prairies in which the hero is stirred, through the
influence of his love for a woman, to settle down to the heroic business
of pioneer farming.
_JOYCE OF THE NORTH WOODS_, By Harriet T. Comstock. Illustrated by John
Cassel.
A story of the deep woods that shows the power of love at work among its
primitive dwellers. It is a tensely moving study of the human heart and
its aspirations that unfolds itself through thrilling situations and
dramatic developments.
* * * * *
CHARMING BOOKS FOR GIRLS
_WHEN PATTY WENT TO COLLEGE_, By Jean Webster.
Illustrated by C. D. Williams.
One of the best stories of life in a girl's college that has ever been
written. It is bright, whimsical and entertaining, lifelike, laughable
and thoroughly human.
_JUST PATTY_, By Jean Webster.
Illustrated by C. M. Relyea.
Patty is full of the joy of living, fun-loving, given to ingenious
mischief for its own sake, with a disregard for pretty convention which
is an unfailing source of joy to her fellows.
_THE POOR LITTLE RICH GIRL_, By Eleanor Gates.
With four full page illustrations.
This story relates the experience of one of those unfortunate children
whose early days are passed in the companionship of a governess, seldom
seeing either parent, and famishing for natural love and tenderness. A
charming play as dramatized by the author.
_REBECCA OF SUNNYBROOK FARM_, By Kate Douglas Wiggin.
One of the most beautiful studies of childhood--Rebecca's artistic,
unusual and quaintly charming qualities stand out midst a circle of
austere New Englanders. The stage version is making a phenomenal
dramatic record.
NEW CHRONICLES OF REBECCA, By Kate Douglas Wiggin.
Illustrated by F. C. Yohn.
Additional episodes in the girlhood of this delightful heroine that
carry Rebecca through various stages to her eighteenth birthday.
_REBECCA MARY_, By Annie Hamilton Donnell. Illustrated by Elizabeth
Shippen Green.
This author possesses the rare gift of portraying all the grotesque
little joys and sorrows and scruples of this very small girl with a
pathos that is peculiarly genuine and appealing.
_EMMY LOU_, Her Book and Heart, By George Madden Martin.
Illustrated by Charles Louis Hinton.
Emmy Lou is irresistibly lovable, because she is so absolutely real. She
is just a bewitchingly innocent, hugable little maid. The book is
wonderfully human.
* * * * *
STORIES OF RARE CHARM BY GENE STRATTON-PORTER
_THE HARVESTER_
Illustrated by W. L. Jacobs
"The Harvester," David Langston, is a man of the woods and fields, who
draws his living from the prodigal hand of Mother Nature herself. If the
book had nothing in it but the splendid figure of this man, with his
sure grip on life, his superb optimism, and his almost miraculous
knowledge of nature secrets, it would be notable. But when the Girl
comes to his "Medicine Woods," and the Harvester's whole sound, healthy,
large outdoor being realizes that this is the highest point of life
which has come to him--there begins a romance, troubled and interrupted,
yet of the rarest idyllic quality.
_FRECKLES._
Decorations by E. Stetson Crawford.
Freckles is a nameless waif when the tale opens, but the way in which he
takes hold of life; the nature friendships he forms in the great
Limberlost Swamp; the manner in which everyone who meets him succumbs to
the charm of his engaging personality; and his love-story with "The
Angel" are full of real sentiment.
_A GIRL OF THE LIMBERLOST._
Illustrated by Wladyslaw T. Brenda.
The story of a girl of the Michigan woods; a buoyant, lovable type of
the self-reliant American. Her philosophy is one of love and kindness
towards all things; her hope is never dimmed. And by the sheer beauty of
her soul, and the purity of her vision, she wins from barren and
unpromising surroundings those rewards of high courage.
It is an inspiring story of a life worth while and the rich beauties of
the out-of-doors are strewn through all its pages.
_AT THE FOOT OF THE RAINBOW._
Illustrations in colors by Oliver Kemp. Design and decorations by Ralph
Fletcher Seymour.
The scene of this charming, idyllic love story is laid in Central
Indiana. The story is one of devoted friendship, and tender
self-sacrificing love; the friendship that gives freely without return,
and the love that seeks first the happiness of the object. The novel is
brimful of the most beautiful word painting of nature, and its pathos
and tender sentiment will endear it to all.
* * * * *
MYRTLE REED'S NOVELS
_LAVENDER AND OLD LACE._
A charming story of a quaint corner of New England where bygone romance
finds a modern parallel. The story centers round the coming of love to
the young people on the staff of a newspaper--and it is one of the
prettiest, sweetest and quaintest of old fashioned love stories, * * * a
rare book, exquisite in spirit and conception, full of delicate fancy,
of tenderness, of delightful humor and spontaniety.
_A SPINNER IN THE SUN._
Miss Myrtle Reed may always be depended upon to write a story in which
poetry, charm, tenderness and humor are combined into a clever and
entertaining book. Her characters are delightful and she always displays
a quaint humor of expression and a quiet feeling of pathos which give a
touch of active realism to all her writings. In "A Spinner in the Sun"
she tells an old-fashioned love story, of a veiled lady who lives in
solitude and whose features her neighbors have never seen. There is a
mystery at the heart of the book that throws over it the glamour of
romance.
_THE MASTER'S VIOLIN._
A love story in a musical atmosphere. A picturesque, old German virtuoso
is the reverent possessor of a genuine "Cremona." He consents to take
for his pupil a handsome youth who proves to have an aptitude for
technique, but not the soul of an artist. The youth has led the happy,
careless life of a modern, well-to-do young American and he cannot, with
his meagre past, express the love, the passion and the tragedies of life
and all its happy phases as can the master who has lived life in all its
fulness. But a girl comes into his life--a beautiful bit of human
driftwood that his aunt had taken into her heart and home, and through
his passionate love for her, he learns the lessons that life has to
give--and his soul awakes.
Founded on a fact that all artists realize.
* * * * *
ZANE GREY'S NOVELS
_THE LIGHT OF WESTERN STARS_
Colored frontispiece by W. Herbert Dunton.
Most of the action of this story takes place near the turbulent Mexican
border of the present day. A New York society girl buys a ranch which
becomes the center of frontier warfare. Her loyal cowboys defend her
property from bandits, and her superintendent rescues her when she is
captured by them. A surprising climax brings the story to a delightful
close.
_DESERT GOLD_
Illustrated by Douglas Duer.
Another fascinating story of the Mexican border. Two men, lost in the
desert, discover gold when, overcome by weakness, they can go no
farther. The rest of the story describes the recent uprising along the
border, and ends with the finding of the gold which the two prospectors
had willed to the girl who is the story's heroine.
_RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE_
Illustrated by Douglas Duer.
A picturesque romance of Utah of some forty years ago when Mormon
authority ruled. In the persecution of Jane Withersteen, a rich ranch
owner, we are permitted to see the methods employed by the invisible
hand of the Mormon Church to break her will.
_THE LAST OF THE PLAINSMEN_
Illustrated with photograph reproductions.
This is the record of a trip which the author took with Buffalo Jones,
known as the preserver of the American bison, across the Arizona desert
and of a hunt in "that wonderful country of yellow crags, deep canons
and giant pines." It is a fascinating story.
_THE HERITAGE OF THE DESERT_
Jacket in color. Frontispiece.
This big human drama is played in the Painted Desert. A lovely girl, who
has been reared among Mormons, learns to love a young New Englander. The
Mormon religion, however, demands that the girl shall become the second
wife of one of the Mormons--
Well, that's the problem of this sensational, big selling story.
_BETTY ZANE_
Illustrated by Louis F. Grant.
This story tells of the bravery and heroism of Betty, the beautiful
young sister of old Colonel Zane, one of the bravest pioneers. Life
along the frontier, attacks by Indians, Betty's heroic defense of the
beleaguered garrison at Wheeling, the burning of the Fort, and Betty's
final race for life, make up this never-to-be-forgotten story.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Code of the Mountains, by Charles Neville Buck