CHAPTER VII.

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LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE

OF

_POPULAR LITERATURE AND SCIENCE._

SEPTEMBER, 1878.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1878, by J. B.

LIPPINCOTT & CO., in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at

Washington.

Transcriber's note: Minor typos have been corrected and footnotes

moved to the end of the article.

OUR VISIT TO THE DESERT.

[Illustration: CONSTANTINE.]

One of the most interesting and amusing episodes in our many

Mediterranean and North African wanderings was a visit to the Sahara.

Although we penetrated but a short distance into the Great Desert, we

were there introduced to aspects of Nature and to phases of life wholly

new and strange to us.

We had been spending the winter in Algiers, and were unwilling to return

to Europe without seeing something more of the African continent. When,

therefore, the sunny winter gave place to still more sunny spring, we

set out upon our travels--first, eastward by sea to Philippeville, and

then southward to the desert.

The French colony of Algeria, as every one knows, stretches along the

African coast from Morocco to Tunis, and from the Mediterranean

southward to the desert. It is divided into three provinces--Oran,

Algiers and Constantine, the central one being the most important and

that from which the whole country takes its name. From either of these

provinces it is possible to penetrate inland to the Sahara, but this is

done most easily from the eastern settlement, Constantine. We therefore

made choice of this route, and on a bright morning early in April

started from Algiers for Philippeville. The voyage along the coast

affords some glimpses of fine scenery. The Bay of Bougie especially,

surrounded as it is by lofty mountains, part of the Atlas range, is

extremely picturesque. As the steamers, however, only remain a few hours

at each of the stopping-places, there is scarcely time fully to enjoy

the varied and charming views. It seemed to us as if a vast diorama had

passed before us, leaving on the mind not an indelible picture, but a

mere shadowy outline of headlands and bays, rocky promontories and sunny

sloping shores. With the exception of the port of Algiers, there is,

properly speaking, no harbor on this part of the African coast: there

are only open roadsteads, where, exposed to the full roll of the sea,

vessels ride uncomfortably at anchor. The journey is in consequence

rather trying: nevertheless, we had not long reached terra firma before

we acknowledged ourselves amply compensated for the fatigues and little

unpleasant accompaniments of the sea-voyage.

Philippeville offers to the traveller no great attractions. Its

situation is pretty, and it possesses some Roman remains, the

examination of which may occupy pleasantly and profitably enough the

unavoidable interval between the landing and the start for the South.

After resting but one night, we set out for Constantine, the capital of

the province of that name. There is nothing whatever of interest between

the sea and the city--nothing till you arrive within sight of

Constantine itself. Then, indeed, when from the plain below you get your

first view of the town, perched like an eagle's nest upon its rocky

height, you can at once realize the appropriateness of its singular

name--"the City in the Air." It is so high above you it seems midway

between earth and heaven. Its situation is indeed unique and most

strangely picturesque. Security must have been the chief motive for the

selection of such a site, and certainly few cities present more

formidable barriers to the advance of a foe. The plateau of rock upon

which the town is built forms a kind of peninsula, inaccessible on all

sides except one, and there the ascent is long and steep, as we found to

our cost each time we descended to the level of the valley. This plateau

is joined to the rest of the table-land as by an isthmus: at all other

points it is surrounded by a profound chasm, through which flows the

river Roumel--a chasm so deep and narrow that it is only when quite near

it you become aware of its existence. For the sake of internal safety a

wall has been built round the top of the precipice, and at certain

points you may look over this parapet, sheer down some ten or twelve

hundred feet, into an abyss fit only to be the habitation of the owls,

bats, and birds of prey which frequent its solitudes. There seems no

resting-place for any wingless creature: thus the strange birds which

haunt the wild recesses of the rocks do so in perfect security, and

their varied cries, along with the roar of the water, are the only

sounds that issue from below. The mysterious gloom is indescribable, and

the look down into the depths fills one with awe; and yet this singular

view is obtained from the very town itself, from the courts and windows

of the houses.

If, however, you would see this wonderful gorge to perfection, you must

go down into it and find your way to the little path which skirts the

stream along a portion of its course. First, descend to the foot of the

rock, where the river rushes out of the ravine with a mighty leap,

forming a cascade some four hundred feet in height, and you are at once

overwhelmed by the grandeur of the scene, and all the poetry in your

nature is stirred. From this point you may proceed for some distance

along the water-side above the fall. Below you roars the foaming

cataract, thundering downward and filling the whole air with its white

spray. Above, on either side, are lofty, precipitous rocks, the crests

of which are crowned by buildings. This is the town as seen from

beneath. No wonder it is called "the City in the Air."

As you advance the chasm narrows. You must walk with caution, stepping

lightly from rock to rock, till presently you come in sight of a lofty

arch, which, spanning the river from side to side, forms a gigantic

natural bridge joining the opposite sides of the gorge. Nothing in

Nature ever moved me more than the first view of that magnificent arch.

With something of the proportions of a cathedral roof it rises above you

in massive grandeur, showing beyond, through the opening, a line of sky,

and then another cavern-like arch. We could not penetrate farther, and

no daylight issued from this second opening. It looked like the

mysterious entrance into an underground world, the portal of Hades, and

in the excitement produced by the novelty of the scene our surprise

could scarcely have been increased had some of the shades from the

realms of darkness glided out from amid the gloom, or if Charon's boat

had appeared to row us over the ferry. Overhead the hawks and eagles

circled round, and with hoarse cries appeared to express their anger at

the intrusion of man into these wilds sacred to them. Altogether, the

scene is full of strange, awe-inspiring beauty. In the Alps and

elsewhere we have, perhaps, beheld grander scenery, but never more

impressive.

The town of Constantine has not much to commend it as a place of

residence. It is neither clean nor well built, while sights and smells

the reverse of agreeable are constantly distressing the optic and

olfactory nerves. And yet there are perhaps few places where an artist

could find more charming subjects for his pencil--curious bits of

architecture mingling with Nature in its most beautiful and grandest

aspects, fine touches of brilliant color, and quaint winding streets and

bazaars,--everywhere the picturesque. Filth and confusion, indeed, but

still it is the very confusion that an artist loves.

The people are a mixture of French, Arabs and Jews. Of the first nothing

need be said: they are the same everywhere. The second are similar in

type to the Arabs and Moors of the capital; but the last, the Jews, do

not at all resemble the specimens of the favored race we have been

accustomed to meet with in Europe. They are mostly handsome, many of

them fair, the women being particularly gay and picturesque in costume,

wearing, when in gala-dress, bright-colored, gold-bespangled scarfs

hanging over their heads and shoulders. Altogether, we thought it the

brightest and most graceful female attire we had ever seen. But the most

charming of all are the children. We saw groups of a perfectly ideal

beauty playing upon the doorsteps and dust-heaps--little rosy-cheeked,

fair or auburn-haired things, a striking contrast to the sallow Arab

races. In thus seeing that fair and auburn hair is not at all uncommon

among the Jews of the East, we for the first time understood why the old

masters gave to Christ the complexion generally found in their

paintings. Certainly, the Jewish children of Constantine would make most

lovely studies for the genre painter, and we all regretted that we could

not carry away with us some enduring souvenir of that which had charmed

us so much.

But, however picturesque the country, and however interesting the town

and people, we cannot always linger here. Our destination is the desert.

Thus, therefore, after a few days spent in alternate wonder and

admiration, we once again set out on our southward course, resolved to

indemnify ourselves on our return journey by making a longer stay amidst

the beautiful and extremely singular scenery of the Roumel.

Our next resting-place was Batna, a small French town situated on the

elevated ground--nearly four thousand feet above the level of the

sea--between the Mediterranean and the Sahara. We had to make the

journey thither by diligence and by night, and we were surprised to find

how cold an African night can be even in April. There was a hard frost,

and just before entering Batna we passed under an aqueduct from which

hung down a fringe of enormous icicles. The following day, on the still

higher ground at the celebrated cedar forest, which forms an interesting

excursion from Batna, we found deep snow. During the day the sun shone

out bright and powerful, but the nights continued to hold the forest

frost-bound.

At Batna we met with a party of gentlemen, one of whom we had known

slightly in Algiers; and they, like ourselves, were bound for Biskra.

This complicated matters, as it was understood that the accommodation at

the oasis was of a somewhat scanty description. They were three, and we

were four--altogether, a party of six gentlemen and one lady. We

telegraphed from Batna to ascertain whether or not we could all get

rooms. Our despair may be imagined when we received the answer: one of

the little hotels was closed, and the other could only offer us two

rooms. Two rooms for seven people! What was to be done? We could not--or

rather would not--retrace our steps at this stage, and thus give up the

very object of our journey; so we resolved to go on at all risks and

take our chance.

The evening before we started on our somewhat adventurous journey, as we

sat chatting round the fire, I could not help giving vent to my

feelings. The desert! Was it possible? I felt myself on the eve of

something momentous. It was an event in my life, a something never to be

forgotten. A smile played upon the faces of my companions, and next day,

when, utterly worn and weary, I could with difficulty take an interest

in anything around me, they were very ready to banter me about "the

event in my life."

It was not without serious misgivings that we took our places in the

great lumbering vehicle which travels twice a week between Batna and the

oasis. Nothing but a heavy, strongly-built conveyance could stand the

jolting of such a journey; and in order to accomplish it at all within

the day it is necessary to start between two and three o'clock in the

morning. Now, if there is one thing more than another likely to damp

one's enthusiasm, it is turning out at such an untimely hour. We all

felt this as we wended our way through the cold, dark streets to the

diligence-office; and as we were trundled down the steep hill leading

out of the town, bumping from side to side, it was some time before we

could recover our spirits or stir up again an excitement worthy of the

occasion.

On the route between Batna and El Kantra--"the Mouth of the

Desert"--there is little of interest. It is a weary journey, over roads

either badly made or not made at all, through a bare, barren, bleak,

uncultivated country. One wonders, in passing through such an

inhospitable region, at finding so many remains of the Roman occupation.

What could have induced such a people to penetrate so far into the wilds

of Africa? There is no evidence of the land ever having been more

productive or more attractive than it is at present; and yet at

Lambessa, a few miles from Batna, you find the ruins of a once great and

magnificent Roman city, while even as far south as Biskra itself there

are still to be seen relics of this great conquering nation of

antiquity.

But to return to El Kantra. Here we found a little hotel kept by French

people, and here the diligence stopped for breakfast. It was about ten

o'clock, and what a change! The heat was broiling, and the dry, arid

rocks told of an approach to the desert. In effect, the Pass of El

Kantra is the entrance to what is called "the Little Desert;" hence its

name, "Mouth of the Desert."

At this point the valley seems completely shut in by a mountainous

barrier of rugged rock. On advancing, however, a few steps farther, the

great jagged rocks, which appeared a compact mass, divide, and, like the

transformation-scene in a pantomime, the oasis of El Kantra, which is

situated immediately south of the pass, lies before you. The opening is

so narrow that it affords but room for the road and the stream, which is

crossed by a bridge of Roman construction, restored by the late emperor

Napoleon. It is therefore only when close upon it, when actually within

the pass, that you become aware of the singularly beautiful scene

beyond.[A]

[Illustration: OASIS OF EL KANTRA.]

On each side the great mountain-masses rise, picturesque, even

fantastic, in outline. The heights are inaccessible to any foot but

those of the goat and goatherd. We were astonished at seeing a troop of

goats wending their way upward, for to our eyes there seemed not even

the remotest trace of vegetation upon the rocks; and indeed the poor

things looked as if with them existence were truly "a struggle," out of

which little could be gained by natural selection.

Hungry as we were on arriving at El Kantra after our long ride, we could

scarcely take time to breakfast, but hurried on in advance of the

diligence to get our first view of the mysterious land beyond the

mountain-range. The stream which here descends from the hills to the

plain causes the desert, if not "to blossom like a rose," to become at

this point a rich and beautiful oasis. Here, for the first time, we saw

the date-palm in full luxuriance. In the neighborhood of Algiers there

are many fine trees, but the fruit never thoroughly ripens there.

For upward of a mile after passing through the mountain-gorge we skirted

the oasis. It is surrounded by a mud-built wall, and half hidden among

the palms we could discern the mud-built cottages and mosque belonging

to the Arab village. On the other side of our route we observed a forest

of upright stones, rough and unhewn. This was the last resting-place of

the people of the desert, and a sad and lonely sight an Arab

burial-place is, dreary even amid the utter desolation around.

Now and then as we advanced we met troops of camels with their owners

going north ward to the Tell, or cultivated lands, carrying with them

their wives and other goods and chattels. Or, again, we would come upon

the huge bleached carcass of one of those all-important beasts of

burden, which had fallen on one of its weary journeys and left its bones

to whiten upon the sand. Or we would see in the distance a hyena or

jackal prowling about in search of more recent dead.

Everything was so novel and strange to us that for a long time pleasure

and excitement prevented our yielding to, or even feeling, fatigue. As,

however, the day advanced and the heat became more and more intolerable,

as the glare blinded us and the dust half smothered us, again our

spirits sank and the pleasure of "this event in life" assumed a doubtful

hue. Even when the spirit is willing the flesh is weak, and we were

beginning to feel thoroughly worn out when the diligence pulled up on

the top of the range of hills which divides the Little Desert from the

Sahara proper.

At last we beheld it--the Great Desert! "The sea! how like the sea!" we

all exclaimed; and indeed there it lay like a vast expanse of calm

ocean. The slopes of the hills upon which we stood appeared like the

shore, and those distant black-gray spots surrounded by a seeming blue,

so wonderfully like islands in the ocean, were the oases of the Ziban,

encircled by the great sea of sand, the desert. It is a view never to be

forgotten--such light! such color! such calm loveliness!

Fatigue, discomfort, difficulties, all alike were forgotten; self seemed

lost in the magic of the scene; and it was with straining eyes and

beating hearts that we rattled down the declivity to Biskra, the

largest, richest and most important of this group of oases. But here

again our troubles commenced. This journey seemed fated to be, like the

journey of life itself, a series of ups and downs, calculated to fully

exercise all our strength and philosophy. It was no joke to find

ourselves in the desert, after a drive of fifteen hours, without a

resting-place for our wearied bodies or a dinner to restore our failing

strength and spirits. One hotel, we found, was indeed shut up, and in

the other they had only two close, wretched-looking rooms to offer

us--one with two, and one with three, beds. We were very reluctant to

accept these; and, after all, how could seven persons, a lady and six

gentlemen, be thus accommodated? Mr. M---- and I determined to lay siege

to the closed hotel and try if we could not find an "open sesame" to

unclose its portals.

[Illustration: BISKRA.]

Monsieur and Madame Bourguignon, the landlord and landlady, were the

sole occupants of the hotel. It was impossible, they said: they dared

not admit us, as in consequence of a quarrel with the authorities their

license had been taken from them. At last our importunity triumphed. On

appealing to their humanity in our most pathetic and touching French,

they said if we could get a written permission from the

_commandant-superieur_ for them to open their hotel, they would do the

best they could for us. We had no resource but to beat up the officer's

quarters, which, under the conduct of an Arab guide, we soon reached.

The servant who answered our summons said, "Monsieur le Commandant was

at dinner." Politeness, however, was at this stage of the proceedings

out of the question; so we coolly replied that he must leave his dinner

and come to speak with a lady. We were not long kept waiting, and were

most kindly and pleasantly received, the commandant giving us at once a

note to M. Bourguignon requesting him, as a personal favor, to do all he

could to make us comfortable, adding, with true French politeness, that

he only regretted that in his bachelor quarters he had not himself

accommodation to offer us.

Thus, one more of our troubles was happily ended, and in a wonderfully

short space of time we found ourselves refreshing exhausted Nature with

an excellent dinner, waited upon by our jolly landlord, who constantly

assured us that we should be very comfortable, "car on mange tres bien a

Biskra."

It is only on becoming acquainted with scenes and people which we have

been in the habit of picturing to ourselves that we realize how feeble a

power is the imagination. We found here everything so different from the

creations of our fancy. My idea of an oasis, for example, had been a

clump of trees, a spring of water and a little verdure. Here we found

one several miles in length, and with sixty thousand palm trees, a

considerable population, a market and a fort. Biskra is, however, the

largest and finest of the group of oases which stud this part of the

desert. It is the place of residence of the caid and the chief seat of

Arab commerce.

By the time we had dined it was already too dark to commence

explorations. It was only the next morning, when we rose refreshed and

rested, that we began to take in the various details of the new and

singular life to which we were being introduced.

First, as to our hotel. It consisted of a row of small, self-contained

houses forming two sides of a square. One of these little dwellings was

the dining-room, another the kitchen, and the others respectively the

guests' sleeping-chambers, a separate house being allotted to each. In

the centre of the square there was a charming garden, where roses,

sweet-peas and most of our summer flowers were blooming in full

luxuriance. Then, in the early season, when the springs give out their

fertilizing moisture and the sun has not yet attained its full scorching

power, the garden is one mass of beauty and blossom: later in the year

everything becomes parched and dried up, scarcely a blade remaining. In

the middle of the garden there was a bower overgrown with creepers and

shaded by a thick matting. This formed our saloon and reception-room,

and here we took our coffee, the gentlemen smoked their cigars and we

chatted over our adventures and prospects. Our rooms, or little houses,

all opened on the garden; and never can we forget the charm of unclosing

our door in the early morning. What a flood of light and freshness and

fragrance rushed in upon us while we dressed and prepared for the

business of the day! Our apartment had a bare stone floor, its furniture

consisted of two beds, two chairs and a deal table--nothing could have

been more simple--yet this little nest in the desert appeared to us

about the nearest imaginable approach to an earthly paradise. How we

congratulated ourselves upon having had the courage to leave the dingy

rooms at the other hotel to our travelling companions, and to force an

entrance into this sweet spot! Our hosts, too, seemed delighted and most

happy at having guests in their house once more.

[Illustration: NEGRO VILLAGE AT BISKRA.]

Every morning we rose at five, took tea in our arbor before six, and

then sallied out to explore and photograph till ten, when we returned to

breakfast. Then we retired either to our own apartments, or, if not too

hot, to the shade of the garden, and did the _dolce far niente_ till the

sun had passed the zenith and had begun to sink in the west. Then,

again, on foot or donkey-back, we visited the different parts of the

oasis, returning in time for a six-o'clock dinner; after which, the room

usually becoming insufferably hot, we once more sought our open-air

drawing-room and took our evening coffee by the light of the stars.

Mere existence in such an atmosphere is bliss. One does not seem to

breathe, as at home, machine-like, just what is necessary for the

maintenance of life, but, exhilarated with the pureness and freshness,

one drinks in long breaths of pleasure. It would be difficult to give an

idea of the charm of our morning and evening rambles--the delicious

shade, the beautiful light and shadow, the sweet wafts of warm aromatic

fragrance, the refreshing murmur of the numberless runlets of

water--everything so calm, so full of dreamy beauty.

What the Nile is to Egypt, the stream which flows here is to Biskra. By

considerable labor it has been made to meander among the palms in

numerous tiny canals, thus by an elaborate system of irrigation causing

the barren soil of the desert to become fertile and bring forth fruit.

Everywhere the little runlets are led round the very roots of the trees,

for the palm, it is said, loves to have its head in the fire and its

feet in the water. Here and there even a few cereals are extracted from

the unwilling soil. At the time of our visit, in April, it was

harvest-time, and the husbandman was busy gathering in his little store.

The date-harvest, which constitutes the chief wealth of the district,

does not take place till October.

Besides the town proper and the fort, there is at Biskra a negro

village, while scattered throughout the oasis there are numerous

mud-built mosques and cottages, which contrast charmingly with the

tropical vegetation and add greatly to the picturesque beauty of the

scene. In addition to these abodes of the settled population, there are

also groups of real black Arab tents, which form the habitations of the

more nomadic races. These are here to-day and away to-morrow, carrying

all their possessions with them. The troops of Arabs we had met _en

route_ belonged to these wandering tribes, and were going to the Tell

country for summer pasturage. While we were at Biskra there was a

wedding in one of these dingy black tents, and a very queer place it

seemed to us to bring a bride to; nevertheless, she was conducted

thither in triumph, riding upon a mule, while the Arabs in front of the

tent fired _feu-de-joie_ amid the most noisy demonstrations of welcome

and rejoicing.

Within the town there are several streets, some large open places, and a

covered market-hall, where a brisk trade is daily carried on, large

quantities of dates, small quantities of grain, cutlery--knives and

daggers with roughly-hewn wooden sheaths--primitive musical instruments,

embroidered leather caps, straps, tobacco-pouches, etc., being exposed

in the various stalls. Altogether, a singular medley, and quite unlike

any European market.

The wild music of the tom-tom, a primitive Arab drum, seemed to us never

to cease at Biskra. At night, when we retired to rest, it was drumming

in our ears, and in the morning, when we awoke, its monotonous tones

still floated on the air. At all hours of the day and night the cafes

are frequented by pleasure-seekers. Hence the incessant drumming, as the

music of the tom-tom seems to be an indispensable adjunct to Arab

enjoyment.

Once or twice we made a round of the cafes, and very grim and solemn the

entertainment appeared to us. In one, for example, which was crowded

with tall grave men calmly puffing at their pipes and sipping their

coffee, we found a danseuse performing--a tall female figure, who glided

and swayed about in the mazes of a strange dance, while the musician sat

cross-legged in a corner of the room playing the inevitable tom-tom.

This Arab danseuse was as unlike our performers of the ballet as she

well could be. Her clothing was a loose flowing drapery, which fell from

her shoulders to her heels, while instead of agility of motion or

sprightliness there was nothing but a dreamy gliding, a kind of

somnambulistic movement, apparently without plan or purpose, but not

without a certain grace. In another cafe two children were pulling each

other about in a less graceful and equally meaningless dance; while in a

third we found a professional story-teller holding forth in earnest

tones to a group gathered closely round him. From the looks of the

spectators it was impossible to say whether or not they took pleasure in

the various performances. During the time we remained we beheld not a

movement of applause: not a smile relaxed the grave, stolid features;

there was but a calm gazing and a quiet puffing of smoke from mouth and

nostrils.

A day or two after our arrival we deemed it our duty to call upon the

commandant to thank him for his politeness, and to tell him how well

satisfied we were with our quarters at the Hotel Bourguignon. Seated

with him we found the great man of the district, the caid, making a

morning call. It was our first introduction to a real Arab gentleman,

and we regretted exceedingly that we could not converse with him in his

own language, the more especially as he was a travelled man. He had been

to Paris, had been received at the Tuileries by the emperor Napoleon,

and had made the grand Mohammedan pilgrimage to Mecca. But as a

conversation with Arabs, conducted as ours was through the medium of a

French interpreter, is necessarily restricted, we had little opportunity

of judging whether or not the mind of the caid corresponded with his

handsome exterior.

[Illustration: ARAB CAMP NEAR BISKRA.]

On my mentioning that I had a great desire to try a camel-ride, the caid

volunteered to send camels for our party, and to see that mine was

properly caparisoned for the comfort and accommodation of a lady; and

also to send his son to attend to my safety. Of course we accepted his

polite offer, and the afternoon of the same day was fixed for the

expedition. Never can we forget the sight which presented itself to our

astonished eyes when we went to our hotel-door at the appointed hour.

There was the lady's camel, with a howdah on its back hung with

curtains of damask and gold. There were the camels for the gentlemen,

each led by its swarthy driver, while alongside a young Arab gentleman

careered upon a white charger with crimson and gold saddle and

trappings, followed by a mounted attendant almost equally magnificent.

To crown the whole, or at least give it state, there were some two or

three hundred Arab spectators. Only once before had such a scene been

witnessed in Biskra, when some years previously the wife of a French

general had visited the oasis.

It was not without considerable difficulty that we got started. The

camels are made to kneel, and thus it is easy enough to mount, but then

begins the ordeal. While the huge beast raises itself on its

double-jointed limbs you undergo a series of painful jerks which nothing

but the most undaunted courage enables you to endure. Determination,

however, overcomes all difficulties, and at last our cortege was en

route. The mounted attendant acted as outrider to clear the way, while

he of the milk-white steed, the caid's son, rode gallantly by my side.

I could have fancied myself a queen of Sheba or some Eastern houri

screened by silken curtains from the vulgar gaze. What extravagances my

imagination in its pride might have led me into it is impossible to say,

but for the bodily discomfort. The camel is called the "ship of the

desert," but surely no ship ever pitched and rolled so unmercifully. The

howdah too, which was loosely slung upon the creature's back, only added

to the naturally uncomfortable motion. In fact, this cage-like erection

was only kept in its place by ropes attached to it which were held by

two men who walked one on each side. As the thing swung one way, the man

opposite pulled it back, and _vice versa_, altogether regardless of my

feelings in the matter.

We have since found out, by experience in Egypt, that these camels were

of what may be called the cart-horse breed, and there is about as much

difference in riding such a one and a properly-trained dromedary as

there is between a dray-horse and a thoroughbred. Thus, if we were proud

of our exaltation, we paid dearly for our pride, and when we returned

from our excursion it was with a feeling of every limb being out of

joint. It was days before we had completely recovered from the effects

of this our first and, as I devoutly hoped, our last camel-ride. From

this time forward the caid's son, who spoke French tolerably well, paid

us almost daily visits, and although he had never been beyond the bounds

of the desert, we have never met with more pleasing, gentlemanly manners

than those of this young Arab.

One afternoon he invited me to pay a visit to the ladies of his family.

These poor creatures are never allowed to go out except into their

high-walled garden, and no male eyes but those of near relatives are

ever allowed to gaze upon them. They do not even take their meals with

their husbands and sons, this being contrary to Arab ideas of propriety.

Thus, while they have no outdoor life, they have no indoor social life

either. There is nothing for them but to be drudges and mothers, to bear

and to bring up children. It is therefore not surprising that the first

question Arab women ask is, "Have you any children?" or that they should

entertain the profoundest pity for those of their sisterhood who are not

thus blessed. To them motherhood is the one thing worth living for: all

else is denied to them by the barbarous customs of their country.

In the course of our travels we have met with one educated Arab lady,

and, singular to say, both she and her husband objected to educating

their daughters. Probably she felt that in the life to which she was by

Arab custom condemned education did not add to her own happiness--that

it was fitted, indeed, only to raise aspirations and desires which could

never be realized.

The house of the caid was clean and airy, and characterized by a certain

barbaric taste. There were arms suspended upon the walls, Persian rugs

laid upon the floors and divans placed around the rooms. The large

garden was pleasant, being beautifully shaded by palms and orange and

lemon trees. In it there was a summer-house, where it was the custom of

the gentlemen of the family to dine and take their coffee. Everywhere

there was an air of wealth and comfort, but yet to an English eye there

was a want of neatness and trimness in all the arrangements, both of

house and garden.

I saw only one of the ladies, the wife of the caid, the last survivor

out of some five or six. She was elderly and not beautiful, her dress

gay rather than tasteful, and upon the whole less rich than I expected,

considering the immense wealth of her husband. We were assured he

possessed four thousand camels, besides boundless wealth in date-palms,

etc. Through my young Arab friend, who acted as interpreter, she told me

I was welcome, and then as soon as we were seated she began an

examination of my dress and ornaments. She seemed, indeed, in mind a

perfect child, incapable of taking an interest in anything higher than

dress and trinkets. To her, the great world without was a complete

blank, a sealed book: the field of her observations was bounded by the

four walls of her own abode, while books and society were alike

forbidden. Certainly, if the fruit of the tree of knowledge be evil,

then Arab women should be virtuous indeed, from them it is so well

guarded. Taking my cue from my hostess, and supposing it Arab

politeness, I also made an inspection of her dress, and especially of

her earrings, which had at once attracted my attention on account of

their great size. They were gold hoops of from two to three inches in

diameter, thick and heavy, and set with a mass of stones and pearls. It

seemed marvellous how any human ears could support such pendants. In

effect, I found that they did not do so. The earrings were only sham,

for in reality they were fixed to her head-dress, and were only so

arranged as to appear suspended from the ears.

As a contrast to this visit, Madame Bourguignon asked me if I should

like to see an Arab _menage_ of the humbler order. The family to whose

house she conducted me were neighbors and proteges of hers. From the

outside, this house, like most Arab houses, presented a dead wall broken

only by a doorway. Through this we entered into an unpaved court, where

the family was assembled. The owner or master of the establishment was

squatted upon the dry sandy ground, with three or four young children

sprawling round him, while his _four_ wives were occupied with their

respective duties. Two were suckling babies, one was weaving a kind of

coarse striped material in a primitive loom, while the fourth was

apparently attending to the business of housekeeping. In addition to

these, there were several older children playing among the sand: the

grown-up members of the family were out, I was informed, begging,

working, or perhaps stealing, as they might happen to find opportunity.

The man was not bad-looking, and one or two of the children were almost

pretty, notwithstanding the dirt and swarms of flies that half concealed

their features; but the women! Well, most men would have thought one

such wife enough. I certainly marvelled at any one choosing four, and

also that a man in such circumstances should be able to support so many.

On expressing my surprise to Madame Bourguignon, she exclaimed, "He does

not support them: it is they who support him." Thus the smaller a man's

means and the greater his wants the more wives he needs.

We had ample proof that these wretched women are often treated as little

better than beasts of burden. Nearer the "Mouth of the Desert" we saw

troops of women carrying enormous burdens of sticks upon their backs,

which they had collected somewhere north of the mountains, while their

lords and masters strutted along unencumbered at their sides, acting the

part of slave-drivers. Even among the wealthy Arabs it is common for the

wives to be employed in the most menial household work; and Madame

Bourguignon assured me that had I been behind the scenes I should

probably have found some of the ladies of the caid's family thus

engaged.

But to return to the house. The open court into which we entered, and

where we found the family assembled, was evidently their living-room

during the day. Four small apartments opened out of it. First, the

kitchen, the whole furnishing of which consisted of a few fire-bricks,

one or two vessels for cooking and a skin for holding water. The other

three apartments were respectively the sleeping-room of the master of

the house, that of the women and that of the elder children; and,

literally, the only furniture of these was a piece of boarding covered

with matting. There was no bedding, no bed-clothing, no attempt at

comfort of any kind. It is certainly not an expensive matter to set up

house at Biskra, the climate of the desert making one independent of

everything except a shade from the sun and a little food to sustain

life. From the court a stair led up to the flat roof which covered in

the four apartments, and this upper story formed the receptacle for all

the filth of the family. The scene was disgusting in the extreme. In any

other climate it must have bred a pestilence. Here, no doubt, this dire

result is prevented by the extreme dryness of the atmosphere. After this

visit I quite appreciated our good landlady's horror of the Arabs. "You

see now," said she, "how it is I cannot bear even to buy fowls fed by

such people."

During the time we remained at Biskra we only twice made excursions

beyond the limits of the oasis--once to some hot sulphur springs a few

miles out in the desert--springs of such wonderful efficacy in all

rheumatic affections that were they in Europe they would speedily make

the fortune of any watering-place. Here they are little known: however,

a bath has been formed and roofed in, and our gentlemen enjoyed a dip in

the warm water after their ride across the desert. From this bath one

of them dated the cure of a severe pain in the leg which had caused him

much inconvenience during the journey. Our other excursion was to the

neighboring oasis of Sidi Okba, the ecclesiastical, as Biskra is the

commercial, capital of the Ziban. Judging by appearances, one would say

that commerce must be a much more thriving thing than religion, for Sidi

Okba is in every way inferior to Biskra. The people are more squalid,

the houses more wretched: the very mosque itself is in a dirty,

tumble-down condition. Here we found no Arabs who could speak French;

and at one time, having lost our way among the palms, we were very much

at a loss to know what to do. For some time we tried in vain to catch a

glimpse of the mosque, thinking that it, beacon-like, would guide us

back to the town. Equally in vain we interrogated all the Arabs we met

in all the languages at our command, and it was only at last, inspired

by desperation, that we hit upon the expedient of signs. Assuming the

attitude of prayer, we called out, "Allah! Allah!" An Arab at once

answered "Marabout! marabout!" and then we remembered that this was the

name for mosque, and nodded, "Yes, marabout." He seemed delighted at

having understood us at last, and soon led us to the mosque, from whence

we knew our way to the place where we had left our luncheon. We had

crossed the desert in the early morning, and were obliged to seek a

resting-place in the shade during the hot hours of the day. This we

found in a house belonging to a son of the caid of Biskra. There we ate

the luncheon we had brought with us, and then we reclined upon the

Persian carpets and rested till the hour arrived when we could safely

undertake the return journey.

The day after our visit to Sidi Okba was our last at Biskra. We bade

adieu to it with regret, and we shall always remember the time spent in

this oasis of Sahara as among the white days in our calendar.

J.P.

FOOTNOTES:

[A] [For the use of the wood-cut presenting a view of the oasis of El

Kantra we are indebted to the kindness of Mr. John Murray of Albemarle

street, London.--ED.]

MODERN KASHMIR.

[Illustration: RUINS OF A TEMPLE OF MARTAND (OLD SRINAGAR).]

The topographically inclined among biblical commentators might select a

great many more unlikely spots for the Garden of Eden than Kashmir. The

four rivers are there--the Indus, the Jhelam, the Chenab and the Ravi.

Their banks present the widest possible variety of rock, soil,

vegetation and animal life. The palm and pomegranate are at home in the

valleys, and the dwarf willow and birch are frozen out a long way below

the summits of the mountains. The tiger and the ptarmigan are, measured

vertically, close neighbors, a mile or two apart, within easy calling

distance. Man is equally multiform. All his races are assembled save the

African. His extremes in physiognomy, dress, government and religion are

brought into close communion. Character, in this cosmopolitan district,

gives place to eclecticism. Its features and its occupants represent the

whole world, and might readily refurnish it were all the rest of its

surface laid desolate.

[Illustration: SUBURB OF SRINAGAR.]

Curiously enough, the idea of a garden has always associated itself with

Kashmir. Eastern poets and historians speak of it as a garden

collectively, and lavish their most brilliant powers of description on

the gardens which make it up in detail--the gardens of the terraced

hills, the gardens of the broad alluvial plain, and the floating gardens

of the lakes Wular and Dal. These last, more fortunate than those of

Babylon and Nineveh, have maintained their existence to our day, the

aquatic cultivator rowing among his parterres and gathering his melons

over the gunwale. Fertility has never failed. The permanence in beauty

and productiveness designed for Eden has here been sustained by the

harmoniously-acting forces of Nature, and Adam might, for all that the

explorers tell us to the contrary, have lived in Kashmir after his

primitive fashion till now. He would, however, have been compelled in

some degree to modify his taste in regard to clothing, unless he

confined himself the year through to the valley, ninety miles by twenty,

which strictly bears the name. A winter suit would have been

indispensable to his excursions among the bordering mountains, which

swell from an elevation of ten thousand feet above tide to twenty-two,

and even, on the extreme limits of the region now officially named

Kashmir, to twenty-eight thousand. As to antiquity, time is, like

everything else, on a grand scale in Kashmir. Her earliest dynasty, the

Pandu, runs far into the life of the first father, having come to an end

twenty-five hundred years before Christ, after a duration of thirteen

hundred years, if we are to believe Baron Huegel, an archaeologist of the

good old German type, who is daunted by no figures, and who simply

"reminds the reader," as he would of what he had for dinner yesterday,

of the stunning chronology here cited. To the epoch of that primeval

dynasty the baron assigns the building of the great temple of Martand,

the ruins of which delight all travellers and excite to the use of such

epithets as "wonderful" and "glorious" the impassive Wilson. He declares

that they are quite superior to anything architectural around them, and

"might yet vie with the finest remains of Greek and Roman architecture."

The temple stands solitary on a stretch of table-land four hundred feet

above the valley and ten leagues east of the capital. Tradition avers,

partly on the strength of several ancient beaches still distinctly

marked, that the whole valley was under water when the temple was built,

and that it originally stood upon the immediate shore. This generally

unreliable guide even goes into details and grows statistical,

mentioning the year 266 B.C.as the epoch of the sudden shrinking of the

waters to what--or nearly what, for desiccation is said to be still

going on--is seen of them now. This becomes less incredible in the light

of the extraordinary oscillations of level in the streams and lakes with

which the present inhabitants are familiar. In 1858 the Indus rose, at a

point below its exit from the mountains, one hundred and sixty feet in

twenty-four hours, its rise in the narrow defiles above having been of

course greater. A single pool, temporarily formed on the slopes of the

mighty Nanga Parbat by the melting of the snow in 1850, was a mile and a

half long by half a mile wide and three hundred feet deep--just so much

devastation "cocked and primed."

[Illustration: HARI PARBAT, CITADEL OF SRINAGAR.]

The modern state of Kashmir dates from 1846, when the Sikh empire, of

which it was a part, was overthrown by the British. Golab Singh, who had

made himself useful to the Indian government, was placed over it as

maharajah, with a show of independence, but real subordination. He fixed

his capital at Jummoo, in the extreme south of his dominions and within

easy reach of Lahore. The name _Jummoo_ is given by the natives to his

whole territory, although the province of that name is, so far as

geographical extent goes, a mere fragment of it. The provinces of Jummoo

and Kashmir, immediately north of it, comprise together about a third of

the aggregate of sixty-eight thousand square miles. Their share of the

population is infinitely greater in proportion. Out of a total, in 1873,

of 1,534,972 souls, the province of Jummoo contained 861,075--44,000 of

them in the city of that name, the political metropolis. The government

of Kashmir had 491,846, including 136,000 in the city of Srinagar. The

district of Punch, which boasts a rajah of its own, tributary to the

maharajah, had 77,566, and the outlying governments, as they are termed,

of Gilgit in the extreme north-east, Baltistan in the north, and Ladakh,

or Little Tibet, in the east, 104,485 together. In the province of

Kashmir the Mohammedans are in the large majority of six to one. In that

of Jummoo, on the contrary, the excess is slightly in favor of the

Hindus--a circumstance which accounts for the sovereign's choice of a

capital, he being a Hindu and showing in his political acts a preference

for his co-religionists and a corresponding distrust of his Moslem

subjects. In Ladakh, Budha is supreme, his worshippers numbering 20,254

to 260 followers of Islam and 107 adherents of the Vedas--hardly one to

the square mile of all religions.

[Illustration: KASHMIRI BOATMEN.]

The different creeds get on very comfortably side by side, the mosque

and the idol temple decorating the same street, and the praying-machines

of the Lamas grinding out perpetual bliss without let or hinderance from

those who believe in another way of reaching the ear of the Unknowable.

This Utopian scene of universal toleration has not failed to attract the

representatives of our own faith. The Moravians have long had an

establishment on the south-eastern mountains, and we read of the

conversion of the descendants of the last rajah of Kishtwar by an

American missionary--of what sect is not stated.

Generally speaking, the lines of race coincide but vaguely with those of

creed. The Hindus and Mohammedans are both of Aryan race, and Mohammedan

converts are found among the Mongolian--or rather Turanian--worshippers

of Budh. The latter process would have made more headway but for the

influence of the reigning dynasty, which discourages it on system. The

change implied in this proselytism is greater in respect of some social

practices than in the abstract principles of religious belief. The

polyandry of the Tibetans is in direct contrast with the polygamy of the

Moslems, and is far more strictly maintained. It is favored by the

circumstance that, contrary to what usually obtains in old countries,

the males in this region considerably outnumber the females; yet, while

that disproportion exists throughout the provinces, polyandry is

confined to the Tibetans. Their wretched lands, verging on the line of

perpetual snow, devoid of fuel, and in many places unable to ripen

grain, keep them poor; and they assign as a justification for the

practice the necessity of repressing population and retaining property

undivided. One mistress of the house and three or four masters, who are

almost always brothers, is their unique remedy for the hardships of

their lot, so lowly and yet (topographically) so elevated. Among their

Mohammedan and Hindu compatriots the "twin barbarism" of a plurality of

wives appears to be confined in practice to a few of the powerful and

wealthy. Until within the last few years its repulsive features were

wont to be brought into more hideous relief by the cruel custom of

suttee, or widow-burning. It is only within half a generation past that

British interference has succeeded in putting a stop to these horrible

immolations. When, in 1843, Suchet Singh, uncle of the present

maharajah, Ranbir Singh, died, his _home_ harem of a hundred and fifty

wives were burned with his body at Ramnagar, and the same execution was

inflicted on his branch establishment of twenty-five at Jummoo. Seven

years after the beginning of British sway the thirty-two widows of a

cousin of the maharajah were burned. This scene was witnessed by Mr.

Drew, an English engineer of eminence who was for ten years employed in

surveying and exploring the new state, and from whose narrative many of

the facts given in this article are drawn. Upon another occasion he saw

the forcible sacrifice of a single widow. The poor woman, shrieking

fearfully, sprang from the funeral pile as the flames surrounded her,

but was instantly seized and thrown back into it by the "scandalized"

priests.

[Illustration: KASHMIRIAN BRAHMANS.]

The guide-book and the locomotive have marked this romantic land for

their own, but their progress is far from complete. The advance of the

latter, indeed, has probably reached its limit, some twenty leagues

outside the extreme south-western corner. The former is still fain to

depend largely on Bernier, the Frenchman who visited Kashmir two

centuries ago in the train of the Mogul emperor Aurengzebe. Bernier kept

his eyes open, and left not only a good account of the manners and life

of the Great Mogul and his court, but a fair itinerary. His description

of Srinagar and its vicinity still holds good, and modern books point us

to the pass of the Pir Panjal so disastrous to the imperial ladies. The

foremost of fifteen elephants, each carrying four women, took fright in

a narrow part of the so-called road and backed the rest over a

precipice. Only three or four of the odalisques were killed by the fall,

but not one elephant was saved. Bernier passed the scene of the accident

two days after, and saw some of the animals still alive, but able only

to trumpet mournfully for assistance.

North of Jummoo the highest type of road accommodates no longer an

elephant, but at most a hill-pony. In the vale of Srinagar the chief

thoroughfares are sluggish rivers, lakes and canals, navigated by a

remarkably sturdy race of boatmen. The chief line of traffic to that

valley, the heart of Kashmir proper, from Jummoo, is hardly practicable

for horses. In its length of a hundred and seventy-seven miles it

crosses two ridges, each nine thousand feet above the sea, with a hollow

between five thousand feet deep. The starting-point, or southern end of

the path, is fifteen hundred feet above tide, and the valley of Srinagar

from fifty-two hundred to sixty-five hundred. These are all trifling

elevations compared to those of the Himaliya on the south-east and the

Karakoram chain, to which England has pushed the maharajah's boundary,

on the north; but they will do very well for Western tourists to "cut

their teeth on," especially as they are interspersed with minor hills of

every grade of height and surface. The varied assortment of climates

also supports the idea of a general training-ground for travellers.

Bernier thought the first summit he crossed, coming from the south, "the

dreadful rim of the world," but the descent of it plumped him, "as if by

enchantment, into the centre of France." In sheltered places with a

southern exposure the tropics reappear, but the vegetation of the

foothills and middle mountains is said to be, but for the deodara cedar

(_Pinus excelsa_) and a few other trees, European in character. The

resemblance of the undergrowth is less marked, and still less that of

the inhabitants, the costume of the mountaineers, notably the tribe

named Gaddis, reasserting Asia. These Oriental Swiss are as hardy as

their Western analogues, thanks to a continual struggle for existence

against Nature and a tolerably frequent one against man. Against the

latter foe they are at present guaranteed by the quiet of English rule,

but the avalanche and the torrent remain unquelled.

[Illustration: DOGRAS AND MUSSULMANS, JUMMOO.]

The famous vale is an emerald with a rough setting--a jewel always much

sought after, and which would have been carried away long ago had it

been portable. But its mightiest and most fortunate possessors were fain

to come to it by a long and painful path over crags and snows, and to

pass away, one after the other, and leave it in undimmed brightness,

clasped tightly as ever in its frame of rocks. At the beginning of the

fourteenth century its ruler was a Hindu rani, who stabbed herself

rather than marry her traitorous and usurping vizier. Then came the

sway of a Moslem dynasty, two of whose members stand out prominently by

reason of opposite traits. One earned the name of the Image-breaker by

his wanton destruction of the ancient architecture and sculpture. The

balance oscillated toward the good when, in the fifteenth century,

Zein-ul-Abdin introduced the Tibetan goat and the weavers of Turkestan,

and originated the manufacture of the famous shawls. In 1588 the country

was surrendered to the emperor Akbar, who, with the most noted of his

descendants, Jehangir, Shah Jehan and Aurengzebe, made it their favorite

summer-retreat and lavished upon it an expenditure the fruits of which

are yet conspicuous. The Afghans, from beyond the north-west mountains,

seized it in 1752, and were dispossessed by Ranjit Singh in 1819, who

thus restored the supremacy of the ancient religion after more than four

centuries of Moslem rule. The repose now enjoyed by it under the almost

entirely unseen but distinctly felt influence of the English promises to

reproduce something like the palmy days of the Moguls in the matter of

improvement and embellishment, with a security to life and property

under fixed and just laws quite unknown in their time.

[Illustration: FORT AT GILGIT.]

A visitor familiar with all the scenic features of the happy valley

would almost have us believe that artificial decoration has exhausted

itself, and that the art now in demand is simply the art of letting

Nature and antiquity alone:

"The valley of Kashmir, properly so called, remains, as in the

seventeenth century, the largest and the most beautiful bit of

landscape-gardening in the world, a park thirty leagues by ten or

twelve. Everything in it seems planned with supernatural ingenuity to

delight the eye--fields, orchards, dwellings, rivers and lakes sprinkled

with green and flowery islets and ploughed by boats of varied form and

size navigated by _hanjis_ (boatmen) whose intelligent countenances,

sculpturesque figures and graceful costumes harmonize admirably with the

enchanting scenery; innumerable brooks and canals curving capriciously

among lawns and rice-meadows and glittering in the sun like ribbons shot

with silver."

This portrait leaves out the temples and villas, ancient and modern, the

terraces and pavilions edged with the lotus and overhung with vines and

plane trees, the Shalmiar Bagh, or Garden of Delight, and the Mishat

Bagh, or Garden of Pleasure, where wine-loving Jehangir and his

beautiful consort Nur Jahan, the Light of the World, luxuriated in the

summers of long ago. This potentate declared that he would rather lose

all the rest of his vast and affluent empire than Kashmir. It furnished

a place of refreshing retreat for his energies and his conscience, the

load of the latter being fully up to the average of an Eastern

despot's. By these lulling waters and under this embowering verdure he

could shut out from the sight and memory such spectacles as that to

which he had treated his rebellious son Khosrou--a long row of seven

hundred of the latter's accomplices seated in solemn gravity, but not

returning his salute as he was led along, for the sufficient if not

immediately perceptible reason that they sat upon thorns, each upon one

thorn a foot or so long, of iron. We may suppose the father of Frederick

the Great to have had in mind this passage of Oriental life when he

forced the prince to witness the execution of his young friend Katte.

Wilson's preference is for the Garden of Pleasure, notwithstanding the

elegance of that of Delight. It looks out upon Lake Dal, the Golden

Island in front:

"Ten terraces, bounded by magnificent trees and with a stream of water

falling over them, lead up to the latticed pavilion at the end of this

garden. Between the double stories of this pavilion the stream flows

through a marble--or at least a limestone--tank, and the structure is

shaded by great _chunar_ trees, while through a vista of their splendid

foliage we look down the terraces and water-courses upon the lake

below."

A fit dreaming-place this for the lotus-eating monarch of a lotus-eating

people. The lake is so full of the lotus and other water-lilies that

more than sixty thousand tons of the edible nuts are gathered each year

and ground into flour, the root besides serving as a popular esculent.

What is an object of devotion with the Tibetans of the higher Himaliyas

a few days' journey distant, as formerly with the Egyptians, is to the

Kashmiris an article of food and trade. They might draw from the waters,

which cover a very small part of the fertile valley, fish enough to

support, with the nelumbium nuts, nearly the whole of the present

population; but then they are lotus-eaters, and as such improvident and

indolent by all rules of poetry and legend.

Srinagar has been likened to Venice. Standing a mile higher in the

world, water-communication is its dependence for movement of persons and

things almost as exclusively as with the Queen of the Adriatic. For

once, the lean, dry Oriental has his fill of water. Moisture prevails in

excess. The characteristic flat roof of his house gives place to one

with slope enough to shed any shower or number of showers; and that soon

becomes clad with a spontaneous growth of plants. The surplus rainfall,

however, is not so great as it would be were not the stormy south-west

monsoons cut off by the mountains. The English, water-dogs by nature,

and last from the blazing plains of the Panjab, do not complain of

dampness. One of them, indeed, declares that "the air is exceedingly

dry, notwithstanding the immense amount of water in the valley and the

frequent showers of rain."

Srinagar--as the city known for four centuries as Kashmir was anciently

and is again named under Hindu rule--is a little disappointing in the

material employed for most of its structures. Stone is not wanting, but

the deodar timber is more abundant, being floated down cheaply from the

mountains, where it forms immense forests, the carefully preserved

hunting-ground of the Mogul emperors. A Frenchman dubs it a city of

chalets, and recommends the architects of Paris to seek there the most

charming models for kiosks, verandas, turrets, cupolas, etc. The

humblest suburban and rural abodes he pronounces full of the

picturesque. They appear to be much in the Swiss style, so natural to an

alpine region. They, too, are mostly of wood, except on the high slopes,

where that material is scarce or wholly absent, and on the frontiers,

where each hut is a little rock-fort.

[Illustration: MEN OF DARDISTAN.]

Even the piers of the bridges over the Jhelam are, above the water at

least, formed of large logs, which overlap each other and approach with

their ends the middle of each span after the semblance of an arch.

Parasitic plants, and even considerable trees, take root in their

crevices and disguise the structure in an even more bizarre way than the

mediaeval buildings did Old London Bridge. There are seven of these

bridges within the city, about three hundred feet long, and between them

on either hand the houses overhang the water at the expense of all

visible shore, sometimes striding out upon stilt-like piles, their

multiform gables "fantastically set" with a total disregard of

uniformity and extent of facade that would have been the death of Baron

Haussmann or the builder of a Philadelphia block. Nevertheless, there is

a pervading tone and style which would identify a Kashmiri villa

transplanted into Christendom.

Two isolated hills overlooking the city, and visible afar off to the

weary wayfarer, are crowned and flanked with fortifications and temples

of one or the other religion. The list of the latter edifices included,

in Bernier's time, a Hindu pagoda claimed by the inhabitants to have

been built by Solomon, but it has now disappeared as completely as his

better-authenticated effort at Jerusalem. In return, as compensation, a

Mohammedan mosque has given place to a modern fort. The march of

improvement or of change shows itself in a yet more modern array of

cottages erected for the accommodation of English visitors. Here these

gentry hide themselves in an absolute forest of fruit trees of the kinds

familiar at home--apple, apricot, cherry, etc. The lovers of the apricot

may be interested to learn that it is _par excellence_ the fruit of this

soi-disant Eden, this glittering attic-window upon the Roof of the

World, and of all the slopes thereof up to the white-tiled roof-tree. It

flourishes up to ten thousand feet, only the stone-pine, of all edibles,

going higher; and dried apricots are a leading staple among the hillmen,

as dates are with the Arabs.

Upon the bazaars the English architect has laid his heavy hand, and

villas and shops like those of the Thames promise to mark the artistic

renaissance of Kashmir. The pleasure-houses of the emperors before

mentioned have so far escaped him, although it is to be feared he will

soon have the repairing of them. Their principal charms, the turf, the

great trees and the cascades, were never more beautiful, and have rather

gained by the softness with which age has enriched them. The trees have

been steadily growing under all flags and cults, swelling in pride and

strength as they looked contemptuously and calmly down on the storms of

human passion. They need no repairs, and their style, nobody knows how

much older than Thebes or Dendera, will endure no modification.

The level surface of this alluvion is illustrated by the very slight

descent of the Jhelam. From Ismailabad, near the head of the valley, and

fifty-four hundred feet above the level of the sea, the fall to

Srinagar, thirty miles, is seventy-five feet; and from the capital to

Lake Wular, twenty-four miles below, only fifty-five feet--declivities

in marked contrast with the fall of two thousand eight hundred feet in

eighty miles from the edge of the plateau at Baramula to the plain of

the Panjab. Besides the ancient beaches which indicate the origin of

this upland meadow, there are traceable other and more recent evidences

of a change of level in the waters, pointing to an elevation, as the

former do to subsidence. In the Manas-Bal, the smallest but deepest of

the Kashmirian lakes, submerged ruins, alleged to be those of a temple,

are clearly visible. At another point, fifteen miles below Srinagar,

ruins and fragments of pottery have been exhumed at a great depth. One

of these oscillations appears to be now, or to have been within two

centuries, in progress. Lake Wular has grown shallower, its present

average depth being forty feet.

Man, among these enormous mountains, presents not less notably than

inanimate Nature a singular compound of change and solidity, of the

catastrophic and the secular. The little state of Kashmir, overrun from

time immemorial, in peace or war, by hordes of many races and tongues,

preserves a language and a physiognomy of its own. About forty per cent.

of the words in Kashmiri are Persian, twenty-five Sanscrit, fifteen

Hindusthani, ten Arabic and fifteen Mongol. Its letters resemble those

of the Sanscrit, and are apparently the originals of the Tibetan

characters. They are not much used, the literary capabilities of the

Kashmiris remaining to be developed. Travellers say the men, especially

the upper classes who have maintained the purity of their blood, are the

finest, physically, to be found in the Himaliya. They are stout,

well-built, and pleasing in countenance, resembling Europeans, except in

having a darker complexion. They are more acute and intelligent than the

Sikhs and than the Dogras or Hindus of Jummoo, their present superiors

politically. They are industrious, manufacturing besides shawls other

stuffs and much fancy-work in wood. The beauty of the women is as much

remarked upon now as in the old days, and the late Mr. Moore cannot be

accused of overstepping poetic license on that point.

[Illustration: SKARDU FORT, BALTISTAN.]

The higher classes of the Kashmiris having held more firmly to their

religion during Mohammedan sway, most of the non-Moslem inhabitants are

Brahmans, and they live chiefly in the city. Unlike their

co-religionists of the province of Jummoo, many of whose high-caste men

cultivate the soil, the Kashmiri Brahmans contemn manual occupations.

They are largely employed in the offices of the state. The lowest

occupations are left to a class of pariahs called Batals, who are

considered by some to represent a wholly distinct race, a remnant of the

aborigines who were dispossessed by the first Aryan settlers. As it is

easier to procure photographs of individuals belonging to this degraded

class than of those above them, an unjust impression of the physical

traits of the Kashmiris is apt to reach the Western World. The

dancing-girls are Batals, and are pronounced by those who know very

unfavorable specimens of the Kashmiri fair. The Mohammedan women are

always veiled.

But ethnic science, whether based on linguistic, physical, social or

religious distinctions, is in a very unsatisfactory condition.

Surprising yet illusory resemblances are constantly cropping up in the

most unexpected ways and places. Wilson was struck with the Gaelic

traits of the Mongolian Budhists who inhabit the mountains of Zanskar,

south-east of the valley. "The sound of their language, the brooches

which fasten their plaids, the varieties of tartan which their woollen

clothes present, and even the features of the people (which are of an

Aryan rather than a Tartar type), strongly reminded me of the Scotch

Highlanders." He had the support, too, of one of those imaginative

savants who delight in Welsh, Erse and Gaelic philology, who insisted

"that the names of innumerable places in Tibet and Tartary are identical

with the local names of the Gaelic language." Add to this the fact that

a corps of the maharajah's army is uniformed in an almost critically

exact reproduction of "the garb of old Gaul," and the argument is a good

deal more complete than many on more practically momentous points which

have done service for centuries and are still accepted. We have the

Gauls of Galatia, Galatz, Galicia, Gallia proper and Gaeldoch (or

Caledonia), forming a continuous chain of Gallic settlements from the

Himaliya to the Ultima Thule. And now the circuit is complete. The

current sets back from the West. The slogan, heard so tellingly at

Lucknow, is swelling up the glaciers of the Asiatic fatherland to save

it from the Scythians! Monkbarns lived too soon.

The Mohammedans of Baltistan, on the opposite (or northern) side of

Kashmir, again surprise us by speaking a Tartar tongue. We are not told

that they are Scotch, endowed though they undoubtedly are with some of

the canny and thrifty characteristics of the dwellers ayont the Tweed.

They are inveterate tradesmen, and carry their small wares, including

hill-ponies, all through the mountains. Let us drop in upon them, if

such an expression be applicable to a climb of the most tremendous

description. It takes us up the steps of the steepest and loftiest slope

of the amphitheatre which forms the maharajah's dominions. First,

however, we begin by a gentle and pleasant descent down the Jhelam to

Lake Wular. Then begins the trouble. We turn northward, and find

ourselves at the end of the first stage four thousand feet above the

valley, on the brink of an artificial sheet of water surrounded by dense

evergreen woods. Next day we rise 2000 feet higher, and redescend 6500

feet to the banks of the Kischanganga, the chief affluent of the Jhelam,

running mostly parallel to the course of the latter stream. Then we

undulate--if so soft a term be applicable to a route so sharply,

abruptly and irregularly serrate--along the spurs which border the

river, now in the forest and now on a bleak plateau where careful

irrigation avails to grow nothing less hardy than millet, peas and

buckwheat. In crossing to the valley, or rather trench, of the upper

Indus, we have the choice of two passes, one 13,060 and the other 13,500

feet above tide. Having selected the least of these two evils, we swoop

nearly six thousand feet down upon the village of Astor and a new

language, the Dard. The temptation to stop and study either is small. If

we are insatiate of climbing or find the heat at Astor--only 7853 feet

above the sea--oppressive, we have the ice-cone of Nanga Parbat, 26,629

feet high, within ten miles to the west. We are within unpleasantly easy

reach of the western and north-western frontier now; for the opposite

slope of Nanga Parbat and the ridge to which it belongs is held by the

independent Mohammedan tribes of Yaghistan, born marauders since the

beginning of tradition. They have a republican form of government, one

of the fierce democracies numbering only seven houses. Life, liberty and

the pursuit of other people's property is a motto they act up to with a

persistency and consistency highly disagreeable to their neighbors over

the hill. The latter have, in self-defence, evinced a tendency to adopt

the same rule of action, and to steal from their friends by way of

reimbursement for what is stolen by their enemies--a disposition which

is discouraged by the maintenance of a considerable garrison at Astor.

[Illustration: A KAGANI, OR LAMA MONUMENT.]

The valley of Gilgit, continuous with that of Astor, inasmuch as the two

abut upon the Indus at nearly the same point, one falling and the other

rising, is the core of a tongue of territory projecting north-west into

the heart of Yaghistan, and nearly dividing that turbulent region into

two parts. The British in attaching this corner to Kashmir rather

strained established boundaries in their own favor, and will doubtless

continue the process till all Yaghistan is absorbed and the great

Karakoram range becomes the frontier from the Afghan territory to that

of Chinese Tibet.

At the town of Gilgit we have a reproduction in little of the valley of

Srinagar. Its level is somewhat lower, and, though farther north by two

degrees, it ripens such southern fruits as the pomegranate, etc. Its

attractions will not, however, have full sway so long as the peace of

the region remains precarious. The last attack from Yaghistan was

signally repulsed in 1866. The practice of going armed is still general,

and travellers need an escort. Some of the villages resemble the

casemates, mines and covered-ways of a fortress. The people are of the

same family and religion with those over the border, their foes,

although perhaps less hated by them than their nominal compatriots the

Kashmiris and Dogras. The Dards are an active and proud people, fond of

independence, with features distinctly Caucasian.

Continuing our exploration of the upper benches of the amphitheatre, we

turn to the right and skirt the upper Indus, which runs for several

hundred miles from south-east to north-west close along the southern

foot of the Karakoram, or rather upon a "hip" of the Roof of the World.

Skardu, on the left bank, was an independent capital down to 1840, and

its aspect is still stormy in a political as in a climatic sense. The

land looks like a petrified storm, the waves of granite and slate dotted

sporadically with huts and microscopic bits of culture. Only in a few of

the deep valleys is Nature less inhospitable. The glaciers descend to an

altitude of 13,500 feet, with an upward extent of twenty-five miles or

more; cultivation, after a fashion, existing at their lower edge, and

grass growing for a season of six or eight weeks much farther up. The

Baltoro glacier leads up to a stupendous peak, the second in height of

all known elevations, but not yet dignified with a name, being only

labelled in the Indian Survey "K. 2." Its height is 28,265 feet, or 687

less than Gaurisankar, the giant of mountains, a peak in the Eastern

Himaliya. The summits next to K.2 are from 25,000 to 27,000 feet. Among

them lies the pass of Mustagh, 18,300 feet above tide, up to 1863 a

high-road between India and Yarkand, practicable for but a few weeks of

summer. The brief interval left by the snow the brigands have

extinguished.

After the abandonment of this pass, that of Karakoram, forty leagues

east of it, became the principal route to Central Asia. The elevation is

exactly the same. Of the five hundred and fifteen miles, divided into

thirty-five marches, between Leh and Yarkand, a hundred and fifty

traverse ice, naked rocks and precipices, wholly devoid of grass or

fuel. Still farther east, in the extreme north-eastern angle of Ladakh

and the Kashmiri states, a third route to Turkestan has been opened. It

is longer than the others, but is practicable for near half the year,

and can be traversed by horses and two-humped camels instead of yaks and

ponies, as at the western crossings. On three stages only are wood and

grass absent. It ascends from the south over a plateau marked by salt or

brackish lakes. It is difficult to say which of the three contestant

empires, Russia, China and England, has easiest or least impracticable

access to the coveted core of Asia.

If the handful of Little Tibetans occupy the gallery of the Kashmiri

theatre, there are wells in it which go down to the level of the

dress-circle. These lower levels have traits of culture--trees, grass,

whitewashed brick or stone dwellings, and nunneries and religious

monuments on the roadside and sometimes arching the road. All, high and

low in rank and topography, are deeply pious, and devote the greater

part of their waking hours to muttering a supplicatory formula of six

syllables, so far translatable by Christians only to the extent of its

meaning something about the Deity and the lotus.

[Illustration: ROCK STATUE OF BUDH, LADAKH.]

The trip from New York to Jummoo is about as long in point of time as to

California twenty-five years ago. As many years hence the survivors of

us may be getting up Thanksgiving or Christmas reunions at the old

homestead of the Aryan family. It will never be a hackneyed spot. It

stands too much on end. Steep mountains are never hackneyed: Cook's

Personally Conducted will never permeate Kashmir.

EDWARD C. BRUCE.

"FOR PERCIVAL."

CHAPTER XXXIX.

SHORT RECKONINGS MAKE LONG FRIENDS.

It was the first of March, and a wild wind was hurrying fragments of

white cloud across the blue. Percival had taken his breakfast in

snatches, performing on his bell meanwhile. Emma had not brought his

boots, and would not so much as come to be told that he wanted them. At

last, despairing, he went out on the landing and shouted his request to

her as she shuffled on some errand below. Turning to go back, he met

Miss Lisle, who had just come down the stairs behind him.

[Illustration]

They stood for a moment exchanging trivial remarks. To them came a

stout, fresh-colored, peculiarly innocent-looking old man, who went by

with a beaming smile and a slight bow.

"That's Mr. Fordham," said Judith: "I don't think I ever saw him so

close before."

"No: one hardly meets him from one week's end to another. He is

unusually late this morning."

"He _looks_ a very quiet, steady--Really, one might take him for rather

a nice old man."

Percival stared blankly at her, and then began to laugh: "Well, Miss

Lisle, I never heard a reputation blighted so completely by a

complimentary sentence before."

Judith blushed a little: "But he isn't very nice, is he?"

"I don't know about _nice_. I should say he was as steady and harmless

an old fellow as ever lived. What _do_ you mean?"

"Well," Judith hesitated, "of course one has no business to judge any

one without really knowing; but his staying out so late at night--"

"'So late at night?'" Percival repeated.

"I suppose he has a latch-key generally. But one or two nights I am sure

Miss Bryant sat up to let him in. I heard them whispering: at least, I

heard her. I don't think that girl could even whisper quietly."

"But there must be some mistake. Fordham comes in quite early, and very

often he doesn't go out at all in the evening."

"He goes out later," said Judith.

"Indeed, no. I could time all his movements. His room is next to mine,

and the wall is not so thick as I could wish. He snores sometimes."

"But--" she persisted, looking scared and white, yet what was Fordham to

her?--"but I have heard him over and over again, Mr. Thorne. I can't be

mistaken."

Percival was disconcerted too. He looked at the carpet, at his slippered

feet--at anything but her face: "You have heard some one, I suppose: I

don't know who comes in late. Not poor old Fordham." He heard Emma on

the stairs, and hurried to meet her. Coming back with his boots in his

hand, he found Judith standing exactly as he had left her.

"I'm sure I beg Mr. Fordham's pardon," she said with a smile. "One does

make curious mistakes, certainly. That nice-looking old man!" And

nodding farewell to young Thorne, she went away.

He did not see her again for two days, though he watched anxiously for

her. Bertie came in and out, and was much as usual. On the third

evening, as Percival was going up stairs, she called after him: "Mr.

Thorne."

He turned eagerly.

"You lent Bertie some money a day or two since?"

Something in her voice or her look made Percival sure that Lisle had

borrowed and spent it without her knowledge, and that it was a trouble

to her. After all, what did it matter? He would sell his watch and pay

Mrs. Bryant. He could not deny Bertie's debt, since she had found it

out, but he could make light of it. So he nodded: "Yes, by the the way,

I believe I did: he hadn't his purse or something." This in a tone of

airy indifference.

"Tell me how much it was, please, and I'll pay it back." Then he saw

that her purse was open in her hand.

"Oh, it doesn't matter," Percival said: "don't pay me off in such a

quick, business-like way, Miss Lisle. I'm not the milkman, nor yet the

washing. Bertie will settle with me one of these days."

"Please tell me, Mr. Thorne. I mean to pay it: I must."

"Well, I'll ask him about it, then."

"_You_ know," with a look of reproach and pleading.

Percival could not deceive her, she looked so sorrowfully resolute. He

met the glance of her gray eyes. "Two pounds," he said; and was certain

that she was relieved at the answer.

"Bertie wasn't sure it wasn't two pounds ten."

"On my honor, no. He asked me for a couple of sovereigns, and I took it

literally."

"If you say so, I am sure. I didn't doubt you: I only told you that you

might understand why I asked." She put the money, a sovereign and two

halves, into his unwilling hand. Then he understood her relief, for,

looking down into the little sealskin purse, he saw that there was no

more gold in it. The last ten shillings must have been counted out in

silver, and he was not quite sure it would not have ended in a

threepenny piece and some halfpence.

"Now I am going to ask a favor," she said. "Don't lend Bertie any more,

please. He has been used to spend just what he liked, and he doesn't

think, poor boy! And it is only wasted. Don't let him have any more."

"But, Miss Lisle," said Percival, "if your brother asks me do you mean

that I am to say 'No'?"

"Please, if you would. He mustn't be extravagant: we can't afford it. He

can't pay you back, and if I lost any of my work--Mrs. Barton's lessons,

for instance--I couldn't either."

"_You_ work to pay _me_!" exclaimed Percival aghast: "I won't hear of

such a thing. Miss Lisle, you mustn't! It's between Bertie and myself,

and I shouldn't be ruined if he didn't pay me till his ship comes home

one of these days. Take it back, please, and he and I will arrange it."

She shook her head: "No: my brother's debts are mine."

"Ah!" said Percival, with a swift, eloquent glance. "Then let me be your

creditor a little longer: I hardly know what it feels like, yet."

"Since when has _your_ ship come home, Mr. Thorne, that you can afford

to be so generous?"

The blood mounted to his forehead at her question, but he answered

quickly: "My ship has not come home. Perhaps if it had I should not dare

to ask you to let me help you. I feel as if our poverty made us all

nearer together."

"It is not every one who would say so in your place," Judith replied. "I

_am_ your debtor for those words. But we Lisles have wronged you too

much already: you shouldn't try to make the load heavier."

"Wronged me?" he faltered.

"Did you think I did not know? My father had your money and ruined you:

deny it if you can! I suspected it, and lately I have been sure. Oh, if

Bertie and I could pay you back! But meanwhile he shall not borrow from

you and waste your earnings on his silly whims. If you lend him any more

you may try to hide it from me, but I shall find it out, and I will pay

it--every farthing. I will find some way, if I have to sit up every

night for a week and work my fingers to the bone."

"God forbid!" said Percival. "He shall have no more from me. But be

generous, and promise me that if you _should_ want help, such as my

poverty can give, you will forget old times and come to me."

"No, I won't promise that. I will remember them and come." She caught

his hand, pressed it one moment in her own, flung it from her and

escaped.

"Judith!" he called after her, but she was gone.

Percival went into his own room. The money had come just in time, for

his landlady's weekly account was lying on the table. He looked at the

three coins with lingering tenderness, and after a moment's hesitation

he took one of them and vowed that he would never part with it. Yet in

the midst of his ardent resolution he smiled rather bitterly to think

that it was not the sovereign, but one of the halves, he meant to keep

for ever. Poverty had taught him many lessons, and among them how to

combine economy and sentiment. "If she had given me the ten shillings'

worth of silver, I suppose I should have saved the threepenny bit!" he

said to himself as he locked his little remembrance in his desk.

A couple of days later, as he was walking home with Bertie, they passed

three or four men who were sauntering idly along, and Thorne felt sure

that his companion received and returned a silent glance of recognition.

He glanced over his shoulder at them, and disliked their look

exceedingly. "Do you know who those fellows were we passed just now?" he

said.

Bertie looked back: "One is the brother of a man in our choir."

"Hm! I wouldn't have one of them for my brother at any price," said

Percival. The matter dropped, but he could not forget it. He fancied

that there was a slight change in Bertie himself--that the boy's face

was keener and haggard, and there was an anxious expression in his eyes.

But he owned frankly that he was not at all sure that he should have

noticed anything if his suspicions had not been previously aroused.

"Come in this evening," said Bertie when they went up stairs. He leant

against the door of Percival's room, and as his friend hesitated he

called to his sister: "Here, Judith! tell Thorne to come and have some

tea with us: they've let his fire out, and his room is as warm and

cheerful as a sepulchre."

"Do you think I order other people about as I do you?" she

replied.--"Will you come, Mr. Thorne? I can, at any rate, promise you a

fire and a welcome."

When she met him she was quite calm, tranquil and clear-eyed. Do the

ripples of the summer sea recall that distant line, the supreme effort

of wind and tide some stormy night? Percival would have thought that it

had been all a dream but for the little coin which that wave had flung

at his feet for a remembrance. And he had called after her "Judith!" The

tide had ebbed, and he did not even think of her as other than Miss

Lisle. Had she heard him that evening? He would almost have hoped not,

but that twilight moment seemed so far away that it must be absurd to

link it with his every-day life.

Apparently, she and Bertie were on their usual footing. Did the young

fellow know of that absurd mistake about old Fordham? Did Percival

really detect a shade of dim apprehension on Judith Lisle's face, as if

she hid an unspoken fear? As Bertie leant forward and the lamplight

shone on his clearly-cut features, Percival was more than ever certain

of the change in him. Could his sister fail to see it?

"Bertie," she said when they had finished their tea and were standing

round the fire--"Bertie, I'm afraid you have lost one of your pupils."

He had his elbow on the chimney-piece, his hand hung loosely open, and

his eyes were fixed upon the leaping flames. When Judith spoke he looked

up inquiringly.

"Miss Nash--Emmeline Nash," said Judith.

Percival happened to be looking at the fire too, and he suddenly saw

Bertie's fingers drawn quickly up. But the young master spoke very

composedly indeed: "Emmeline Nash--why? Has anything happened?"

"No: only Mr. Nash has given in at last, and says she may go home at

Easter for good.--She is older than any of the other pupils, Mr. Thorne:

in fact, she is not treated as a pupil. But her father is--"

"An old fossil," said Bertie.

"Well!--interested in fossils and that sort of thing, and a widower; so

there has not been much of a home for her, and he always fancied she was

better at school. But school can't last for ever."

"Happiest time of one's life!" Bertie ejaculated.

"Oh! do you think so?" said Judith doubtfully.

"Not at all. But I believe it is the right thing to say."

"Stupid boy!--And as she will very soon be twenty, I really think she

ought not to be kept there any longer."

"Of course Miss Nash is delighted," said Percival.

"Yes, but hardly as much so as I expected. One's castles in the air

don't look quite the same when one is close to them. I am afraid, her

home-life won't be very bright."

"Perhaps she will make it brighter," said Thorne. "What is she like? Is

she pretty?"

"Yes," said Bertie.

Judith smiled: "One has to qualify all one's adjectives for her. She is

nice-ish, pretty-ish: I doubt if she is as much as clever-ish."

"No need for her to be any more," Bertie remarked. "Didn't Miss Crawford

say she would come in for a lot of money--some of her mother's--when she

was one-and-twenty?"

"Yes, five or six hundred a year."

"That's why he has kept her at school, I suppose--afraid she should take

up with a curate, very likely."

"Mr. Nash is very rich too, and she is an only child," said Judith,

ignoring Bertie's remark. "But I think it has been hard on Emmeline."

"Well, I'm sorry she is going," said Lisle--"_very_ sorry."

"Is she such a promising pupil?" Thorne inquired.

"She's a nice girl," said Bertie, "but a promising pupil--O Lord!" He

flew to the piano, played an air in a singularly wooden manner, and then

dragged it languidly, yet laboriously, up and down the keys.

"Variations, you perceive." After a little more of this treatment the

unfortunate melody grew very lame indeed, and finally died of

exhaustion. "That's Miss Emmeline Nash," said Bertie, spinning round on

the music-stool and confronting Percival.

"It is very like Emmeline's style of playing," Judith owned.

"Of course it is. Let's have something else for a change." And turning

back to the piano, he began to sing. Then he called Judith to come and

take her turn. She sang well, and Percival, by the fireside, noted the

young fellow's evident pride in her performance, and admired the pair.

(Any one else might have admired the three, for Thorne's grave,

foreign-looking face was just the fitting contrast to the Lisles' fair,

clear features. The morbid depression of a couple of months earlier had

passed, and left him far more like the Percival of Brackenhill. Poverty

surrounded the friends and dulled their lives, but as yet it was only a

burden, not a blight.)

"You sing," said Bertie, looking back. "I remember you were great at

some of those old songs. I'll play for you: what shall it be?"

"I'm sure I hardly know," said Percival, coming forward.

"Let's have 'Shall I, wasting in despair,'" Lisle suggested. "It has

been going in my head all this morning." He played a few notes.

"No, no!" the other exclaimed hurriedly--"not that." Too well he

remembered the tender devotion of more than a year before:

If she love me, this believe,

I will die ere she shall grieve.

Sissy and Brackenhill rose before him--the melancholy orchard-walk, the

little hands which lay in his on that November day. He felt a dull pain,

yet what could he do? what could he have done? There was a terrible

mistake somewhere, but he could not say where. If he had married Sissy,

would it not have been there? He woke up suddenly. Young Lisle was

speaking, and Judith was saying, "Let Mr. Thorne choose."

"Oh, I don't mind," said Percival. "Shall it be 'Drink to me only with

thine eyes'?"

He sang it well. His voice was strong and full, and the sweet

old-fashioned courtesy of compliment suited him exactly. The last word

had scarcely left his lips when the door opened, and Emma showed in Mr.

Clifton of St. Sylvester's.

The clergyman came forward, black-coated, smooth-shaven, with watchful

glances which seemed ever looking out for that lay co-operation we hear

so much of now. Lisle looked over his shoulder and sprang up to receive

him. The visitor tried to get his umbrella and two or three books into

the hand which already held his hat, and one little volume fell to the

floor. Percival picked it up and smoothed the pages. "Mr. Thorne--Mr.

Clifton," said the young organist as the book was restored to its owner.

Percival bowed gravely, and Mr. Clifton did not shake hands, as he would

have done if the young man's manner had been less reserved. He was

lavish of such greetings. A clergyman might shake hands with any one.

"I'll not detain you long, Lisle," he said. "But I wanted to speak to

you about the choir-practice to-morrow." And there ensued a little

business-talk between parson and organist. Judith took up a bit of work

and Percival leant against the chimney-piece. Presently Lisle went back

to the piano and tried over a hymn-tune which Mr. Clifton had brought.

The clergyman stood solemnly by. "I met Gordon a few minutes ago," he

said. "He was with his brother and some other men of the same stamp. If

he mixes himself up with that set, he must go."

"You'll miss him in the choir, Mr. Clifton," said Bertie.

"He must choose between such associates and the choir," the other

replied. The words were moderate enough, but the tone was austere.

"Especially at Easter," said Bertie, still playing.

"What of that?" demanded the other. "I would rather have no choir at St.

Sylvester's than have men in it whose way of life during the week made a

mockery of the praises they sang on Sundays."

He spoke in a low voice, and Bertie's playing partially covered the

conversation. "Perhaps, Mr. Clifton, if Gordon understood how much you

disapproved--" the young organist began.

"Gordon? Gordon? it isn't only Gordon who should understand. Every one

should understand my feeling on such a subject without my having to

explain it. But I won't keep you any longer now: it is getting late.

Remember, seven o'clock to-morrow evening." And with a polite remark or

two to the others Mr. Clifton bowed himself out, with Bertie in

attendance. The procession of two might have been more dignified if the

organist had not made a face at Judith and Percival as he went out at

the door, and if he had not danced a fantastic but noiseless dance on

the landing behind the incumbent of St. Sylvester's, who was feeling

feebly in the dim light for the top step of Mrs. Bryant's staircase.

"Is anything the matter with Mr. Clifton?" Judith asked when the boy

came back and executed another war-dance all round the room. "He didn't

seem pleased, I thought."

Bertie brought himself up with a grand flourish opposite the arm-chair,

and sank into it: "Bless you, no! there's nothing the matter with him.

Tumbled out of bed the wrong side this morning--that's all. He does

sometimes."

"Might have got over that by this time of night, one would think," said

Percival, looking at his watch.

"Hold hard! you aren't going yet?" exclaimed Bertie, bounding

up.--"Here, Judith, let's have another song to take the taste of old

Clifton out of our mouths. Whatever possessed him to come here

to-night?"

[Illustration: "DRINK TO ME ONLY WITH THINE EYES."--Page 298.]

They had two or three songs instead of one, and then Percival went off.

Judith put her work away, shut up the piano and laid Bertie's music

straight. He stood meanwhile with his back to the dying fire, idly

chinking some money which he had taken from his waistcoat-pocket, a

half-crown and two or three shillings. His brows were drawn down as if

he were lost in thought. Presently, his half-crown went spinning in the

air: he caught it dexterously--heads. Bertie half smiled to himself, as

who should say, "Well, if Destiny will have it so, what am I that I

should resist it?"

It is very well to toss up if you have already come to a decision which

you cannot quite justify. Should the verdict be adverse, it is no worse

than it was before, for if you have really made up your mind so trivial

an accident will not stop you. It may even be your duty to show that you

attach no superstitious importance to it. And, on the other hand, if

chance favors you, some of your burden of responsibility is transferred

to the shoulders of Fate.

So Bertie smiled, pocketed his half-crown, kissed his sister and went

off to his own room, whistling on his way thither with peculiar

distinctness and perseverance.

Nearly an hour later two figures stood by the dim light in the passage

and conversed in whispers:

"Now, my charming Lydia, how about that key?"

"I'll 'charming Lydia' you!" was the reply. "I like your impudence!"

"I know you do. You shall have some more when I've time to spare. But

now I must really be off. Get me the key, there's a dear girl."

"I can't, then. If you want a latch-key, why don't you go to ma and say

so like a man? There it is, and you'd have it directly."

"O most unreasonable Lydia! How many times must I explain to you that

that wouldn't do, because your ma, while she possesses many of the

charms, is not quite exempt from the weakness of her sex: in short,

Lydia, she talks."

"Well, what then? If I were a man I wouldn't be afraid of my sister. I'd

be my own master."

"So will I," said Bertie Lisle.

"And I'd say what I meant right out. I would!"

"If you knew there'd be a fuss, and people anxious about you, would

you?" He yawned. "No: I'll be my own master, but I like to do things

quietly."

"I don't care so much about that," said Lydia, whose feelings were less

delicate. To struggle openly for an avowed object seemed to her the

most natural thing in the world, and she would have preferred her

independence to be conspicuous. She did not understand that with men of

Bertie's stamp it is not the latch-key itself, but the unsuspected

latch-key, which confers the liberty they love.

"Well?" said he. "Am I to stay here all night?"

"That's just what you'd better do. You won't get any good out of that

lot; and so I tell you. You'll lose your money and get into nasty

drinking ways: don't you go there any more."

"Upon my word, Lydia, you preach as well as old Clifton does."

"And do you just as much good, I dare say."

"Just as much. You've hit it exactly."

"I thought so. You aren't the sort to take any heed. One may preach and

preach--"

"How well you understand me! No, as you say, I am not the sort to get

any good from preaching. You are quite right, Lydia: my character

requires kindness, sympathy and a latch-key--especially requires a

latch-key."

"Especially requires a fiddlestick!" said Lydia; and, disregarding his

smiling "Not at all," she went on in an injured tone: "There's ma

worrying over accounts, and likely to worry for the next hour. How am I

to get a key from under her very nose?"

Lisle seemed to reflect: "Old Fordham doesn't have one, I suppose."

"Gracious! No, not he! If you gave him one he'd drop it as if it was red

hot. He thinks they're wicked."

There was a pause, but after a few moments there stole through the

silence a sweetly insinuating voice: "Then, Lydia--"

Lydia half turned away and put up her left shoulder.

"Then, Lydia, I suppose you wouldn't--"

"You'd better keep on supposing I wouldn't."

"Can't suppose such cruelty for more than a moment--can't really. No,

listen to me"--this with a change of voice: "I must go out this evening.

Upon my soul, it's important. I'm in a fix, Lydia. I've not breathed a

word to any one else, and wouldn't for worlds, but you'll not let it

out, I know. If I'm lucky enough to get out of the scrape to-night, I'll

never get into it again, I can tell you."

"You will," said Lydia.

"I swear I won't. And if not--"

"Well? if not?"

"Why, I must try another plan to get free. I sha'n't like it, but I

must. But there'll be a row, and I shall have to go away. I'd a good

deal rather not."

"What sort of plan?" she asked curiously.

"Desperate," he answered, and shook his head.

"What is it?" Her eyes were widely opened in excitement and alarm. "You

ain't going to be driven to forge something, like people in novels?

Or--or--it isn't a big robbery, is it? Oh, you wouldn't!"

The face opposite looked so smiling and candid and innocent that it made

the words she had hazarded an obvious absurdity, even to herself, as

soon as she had uttered them.

"Why not a murder?" said Lisle. "I think it shall be a murder. Upon my

word, you're complimentary! No, no, I don't mean to try my hand at any

of them." She smiled, relieved. "But I must go out to-night. Lydia, will

you let me in once more?"

"Once more? You won't ask again?"

"Never again."

There was a pause: "Didn't you say that last time?"

"Lydia, you are the unkindest girl--"

"Well, then, I will."

"No, you are the kindest."

"Just this once more. Mind, you tap very gently, and I'll be awake. But

do be careful. It frightens me so!"

When the house was full of lodgers the Bryants stowed themselves away in

any odd corners. At this time Lydia occupied a large cupboard--by

courtesy called a small room--close to their stuffy little back parlor.

Lisle would go to the yard behind the house, which was common to two or

three besides No. 13, and with one foot on a projecting bit of

brick-work could get his hand on the sill and make his signal.

"Some day the police'll take you for a burglar," said Lydia

encouragingly. "Well, go and enjoy yourself."

"It _is_ a shame to keep you up so long, isn't it? What do you do all

the time, eh, Lydia?"

"Sit in the dark, mostly, and think what a fool I'm making of myself."

"Don't do that. Think how good you are to a poor fellow in trouble. That

will be better--won't it? But I must be off. Good-bye, you kind Lydia."

He stooped forward and kissed her, taking her hands in his. He found it

convenient to pay his debt in this coin, his creditor being passably

pretty. Not that Bertie had any taste for indiscriminate kissing. Had he

had five thousand a year, and had Lydia rendered him a service, he would

have recompensed her with some of his superfluous gold. But as he only

had his salary as organist and what he could make by giving

music-lessons, he paid her with kisses instead. He had no particular

objection, and was it not his duty to be economical, for Judith's sake

as well as his own?

"Go along with you!" said Lydia; and the young man, who had achieved his

purpose and had no reason for prolonging the interview, stole laughingly

down stairs, waving a farewell as he vanished round the corner. Lydia

stood as if she were rooted to the ground, listening intently. She heard

the door opened very gently and closed with infinite precautions. She

still stood till she had counted a hundred under her breath, and then,

judging that Mrs. Bryant had not been disturbed by his stealthy exit,

she went down to fasten it. She was prepared with an answer if she

should be caught in the act, but she was glad to get away undetected,

for an excuse which is perfectly satisfactory at the time may be very

unsatisfactory indeed when viewed by the light of later events. So Lydia

rejoiced when she found herself safe in her own room, though she pursued

her usual train of meditation in that refuge. She appraised Lisle's

gratitude and kisses pretty accurately, and was angry with herself that

she should care to have them, knowing that they were worthless. Yet as

she sat there she said his name to herself, "Bertie," as she had heard

his sister call him. And she knew well that it was pleasant to her to be

thrilled by Bertie's eyes and lips, pleasant to feel Bertie's soft palms

and slim strong fingers pressing those hands of hers, on which she had

just been trying experiments with a new wash. Lydia looked thoughtfully

into her looking-glass and took her reflection into her confidence.

"Ain't you a silly?" she said to the phantom which fingered its long

curl and silently moved its lips. "Oh, you are!" said the girl, "and

there's no denying it." She shook her head, and her _vis-a-vis_ shook

its head in the dim dusk, as much as to say, "No more a fool than you

are yourself, Lydia."--"Nobody could be," said Lydia moodily.

She did not deem it prudent to keep her light burning very late, and she

had a long vigil before the signal came, the three soft taps at her

window. She was prepared for it. Every sound had grown painfully

distinct to her anxious ears, and she had been almost certain that she

knew Lisle's hurried yet stealthy step as he turned into the yard. She

crept to the door and opened it, her practised hand recognizing the

fastenings in the dark. The light from the street-lamp just outside fell

on Bertie's white face. "What luck?" she asked in a whisper.

"Curse the luck!" he answered: "everything went against me from first to

last."

"I told you so," she whispered, closing the door. "Didn't I say that?"

"Don't! there's a good girl," said Bertie softly, somewhere in the

shadows.

Lydia was silent, and shot the bolts very skilfully. But the key made a

little grating noise as she turned it, and the two stood for a moment

holding their breath.

"All right," said Lisle after a pause.

"It's late," said Lydia. He could not deny it. "You must take your boots

off before you go up," she continued. "And do be careful."

He obeyed. "Good-night," he whispered. "You'll see that girl calls me

in good time to-morrow? I feel as if I should sleep for a century or

so." He yawned wearily: "I wish I could."

"_I_ ain't to be sleepy, I suppose: why should I be?" she answered, but

added hurriedly, "No, no, you shall be called all right."

"You good girl!" whispered Lisle, and he went noiselessly away. A dim

gaslight burned halfway up the stairs and guided him to his room. He had

only to softly open and close his door, and all was well. Judith had not

been awakened by the catlike steps of the man who was not old Fordham.

She had fallen asleep very happily, with a vague sense of hopefulness

and well-being. She had no idea that Bertie had just flung himself on

his bed to snatch a little rest, with a trouble on his mind which, had

she known it, would have effectually banished sleep from her eyes, and a

hope of escape which would have nearly broken her heart. Her burden had

been laid aside for a few hours, and through her dreams there ran a

golden thread of melody, the unconscious remembrance of that evening's

songs and music.

CHAPTER XL.

BERTIE AT THE ORGAN.

Bertie was duly called, and came down the next morning punctually

enough, but somewhat weary and pale. A slight headache was supposed to

account for his looks. Lydia complained of the same thing over her

breakfast of bacon down stairs. But Fate was partial, for Bertie's

marble pallor and the faint shadow beneath his eyes were utterly unlike

poor Lydia's dull complexion and heavy, red-rimmed eyelids. She was

conscious of this injustice, and felt in a dim way that she had proved

herself capable of one of those acts of self-devotion which are the more

admirable that they are sure not to be admired. But the longer she

thought of it the more she felt that this noble deed was not one to be

repeated. One must set bounds to one's heroism. "I can't go on losing my

beauty-sleep in this fashion," said Lydia to herself. "I do look such a

horrid fright the next day."

When Judith had gone to Standon Square, Bertie yawned, stretched

himself, got out his little writing-case and sat down to write a letter.

He spent some time over it, erasing and interlining, balancing himself

on two legs of his chair, while he looked for stray words on the ceiling

or murmured occasional sentences to judge of the effect. At last it was

finished, and, being copied in a dashing hand, looked very spontaneous

indeed. "I think that ought to do it," he said to himself as he smoked

his pipe, glancing over the pages: "I think it _will_ do it." He smiled,

in the pride of triumphant authorship, but presently there came a line

between his brows and a puzzled expression to his face: "I'll be shot if

I know how it is to be managed afterward. People do it, but how? I

wonder if Thorne knows? If law is at all catching, a year of that musty

office must have given him a touch of it." Lisle considered the matter

for a few minutes, and then shrugged his shoulders: "It won't do, I'm

afraid. I daren't try him. I'm never quite clear how much he sees and

understands, nor what he would do. And Gordon? No." There was another

reverie. Finally, he arose, knocked the ashes out of his pipe and

stretched himself once more: "I've got to depend on myself, it seems to

me. I must set my wits to work and astonish them all. But oh, if yawning

were but a lucrative employment, how easily I could make money and be

quit of the whole affair!"

Bertie took a great interest in his personal appearance, and was frank

and unaffected in his consciousness of his good looks. He caught a

glimpse of his reflection in the bottle-green mirror, and stopped short

in considerable anxiety. "Brain-work and these late hours don't suit

me," he said. "Good Heavens! I look quite careworn. Well, it may pass

for the effect of a gradually breaking heart: why not?"

A glance at his watch roused him to sudden activity. He carefully burnt

every scrap of his original manuscript, feeling sure that Lydia would

read his letter if she had the chance. He looked leniently on this

little weakness of hers. "Very happy to afford you what little amusement

I can in the general way," he soliloquized as he directed an envelope,

"but I really can't allow you to read this letter, Lydia my dear."

Apparently, he was in a distrustful mood, for, after hesitating a

moment, he got some wax and sealed it with a ring he wore. Then, putting

it carefully in his pocket, he tossed a few sheets of blotted

music-paper on the table, left his writing-case wide open, took his hat

and a roll of music, and went out in the direction of St. Sylvester's,

trying to work out his problem as he walked. He was not, however, so

deep in thought that he had no eyes for the passers-by, and his

attention was suddenly attracted by a servant-girl dawdling along the

opposite pavement. He watched her keenly, but furtively, as if to make

quite sure, and when she turned down a side street he followed, and

speedily overtook her.

"This is lucky!" he ejaculated. "I didn't expect to see you, Susan. What

are you doing here?"

She was a slight, plain girl, with a fairly intelligent face whose

expression was doubtful. Sometimes it showed a willingness to please,

oftener it was sullen, now and then merely thoughtful. Just at this

moment, as she looked up at the young organist, it was crafty and

greedy. "I'm taking a note," she said. "Miss Crawford's always a-sending

me with notes or something."

"You don't mind being sent with notes, do you?" said Bertie blandly.

"That's as may be," the girl answered.

"I should have thought it was pleasant work. At any rate, it's as easy

to take two as one, isn't it?"

"I have to take 'em, 'cause I'm paid to, you see, easy or not."

"Oh, of course you ought to be paid." His fingers were in his

waistcoat-pocket, and some coins that chinked agreeably were transferred

to her hand, together with the sealed letter. "You've saved me a walk to

Standon Square," he said.

The girl laughed, looking down at her money: "It wouldn't have hurt

you, I dare say. You oughtn't to make much of a walk there. How about an

answer?"

"Oh, I shall get an answer when I come to-morrow." He nodded a careless

farewell, and went a little out of his way to avoid Gordon's brother,

who was visible in the distance.

Susan turned the missive over in her hand. "It's sealed tight enough,"

she remarked to herself. "What did he want to do that for?" She eyed it

discontentedly: "I hate such suspicious ways. Wouldn't there be a

flare-up if I just handed it over to the old maid? I won't, though, for

she's give me warning, and he's a deal more free with his money than

she'd ever be--stingy old cat! But wouldn't there be a flare-up? My!"

And Susan, who had an ungratified taste for the sensational, looked at

the address and smiled to think of the power she possessed.

Before she slipped the letter into her pocket she sniffed doubtfully at

the envelope, and tossed her head in scorn: "I thought so! Smells of

tobacco." It was true, for Lisle, as we know, had smoked while he

revised his composition. "If I were a young man going a-courting I'd

scent my letters with rose or something nice, and I'd write 'em on pink

paper--I would!" Susan reflected. But Lisle was wiser. There is no

perfume for a young ladies' school like a whiff of cigar-smoke. To that

prim, half convent-like seclusion, where manners are being formed and

the proprieties are strictly observed, it comes as a pleasant suggestion

of something worldly and masculine, just a little wicked and altogether

delightful.

So Lisle went on his way to St. Sylvester's, lighter of heart for having

met Susan and got rid of the letter. While it was still in his pocket

nothing was absolutely settled, in spite of that half-crown which had

represented inexorable Destiny the night before. But now that it was

gone, further thought about it was happily unnecessary, and honor

forbade him to draw back. It was true, however, that he was still face

to face with the difficulty which had been in his mind when he met his

messenger so conveniently.

He caught a street Arab, and promised him twopence if he would come and

blow for him while he practised. But he began by playing absently and

carelessly, for since the letter had been despatched his problem had

become infinitely more urgent, and it thrust itself between him and the

music. His fingers roved dreamily over the keys, his eyes wandered, as

if in spite of himself, to the east end of the church. All at once he

came out with an impatient "How _do_ people manage it?" and he finished

the muttered question with a strong word and a big chord.

A moment more, and his face is illuminated with the inward light of a

sudden idea. He lets his hands lie where they happen to be, he sits

there with parted lips and startled eyes. The idea is almost too

wonderful, too simple, too obvious, and yet--"By Jove!" says Bertie,

under his breath.

His street Arab means to earn his twopence, and in spite of the silence

he pumps away in a cheerful and conscientious manner till he shall be

bidden to stop. The organ protests in a long and dolorous note, and

startles the musician from his reverie. Forthwith he begins to play a

stirring march, and the rejoicing chords arise and rush and crowd

beneath his fingers. Has he indeed found the solution of his great

perplexity? Apparently he thinks so. He seems absolutely hurried along

in triumph on these waves of jubilant harmony. A ray of pale March

sunlight falls on his forehead and shines on his hair as he tosses his

head in the quickening excitement of the moment. His headache is gone,

his weariness is gone. The notes seem to gather like bands of armed men

and rush victoriously through the aisles. But even as he plays he laughs

to himself, a boyish, happy laugh, for this great idea which is to help

him out of all his difficulties is not only a great idea, but a great

joke. And the march rings louder yet, for with every note he plays his

thought grows clearer to his mind, plainer and more feasible. There is

a gay audacity about the laugh which lingers in Bertie's eyes and on his

lips, as if Dan Cupid himself had just been there, whispering some

choice scheme of roguish knavery, some artful artlessness, into the

young man's ear. Bertie does not acknowledge that his inspiration has

come in such a questionable fashion. He says to himself, "It will do: I

feel it will do. Isn't it providential? Just when I was in despair!"

This is a more suitable sentiment for an organist, no doubt, for what

possible business can Dan Cupid have at St. Sylvester's? Louder and

louder yet pours the great stream of music; and that is a joke too, for

Lisle feels as if he were shouting his secret to the four winds, and yet

keeping it locked in his inmost soul, taking the passers-by into his

confidence in the most open-hearted fashion, and laughing at them in his

sleeve. But the musician is exhausted at last, and the end comes with a

thundering crash of chords.

"Here, boy--here's sixpence for you: you may be off. We've done enough

for to-day, and may go home to Bellevue street." But it seems to Bertie

Lisle, as he picks up his roll of music and comes down the aisle, that

Bellevue street too is only a joke now.

CHAPTER XLI.

WHERE THERE'S A WILL THERE'S A WAY.

April had come, and the best of the year was beginning with a yellow

dawn of daffodils. The trees stood stern and wintry, but there were

little leaves on the honeysuckles and the hawthorn hedges, glad

outbursts of song among the branches, and soft, shy caresses in the air.

Sissy Langton, riding into Fordborough, was delicately beautiful as

spring itself. She missed her squire of an earlier April, and his

absence made an underlying sadness in her radiant eyes which had the

April charm. That day her glance and smile had an especial brightness,

partly because spring had come, and, though countless springs have

passed away, each comes with the old yet ever-fresh assurance that it

will make all things new; partly because it was her birthday, and while

we are yet young there is a certain joy of royalty which marks our

birthday mornings; but most of all because that day gave her the power

to satisfy a desire which had lain hidden in her heart through the long

winter months.

It was the Fordborough market-day, and already, though it was but eleven

o'clock, the little town was waking up. Sissy, followed by Mrs.

Middleton's staid servant, rode straight to the principal street and

stopped at Mr. Hardwicke's office. Young Hardwicke, reading the paper in

his room, was surprised when a clerk announced that Miss Langton was at

the door asking for his father. He forgot the sporting intelligence in

an instant: "Well, isn't my father in?"

No: Mr. Hardwicke went out about twenty minutes earlier, and did not say

when he should be back. They had told Miss Langton, and she said,

"Perhaps Mr. Henry--"

Mr. Henry was off like a shot. He found Sissy on her horse at the door,

looking pensively along the street, as if she were studying the effect

of dusky red on palest blue--chimney-pots against the April sky.

"So Mr. Hardwicke is out?" she said when they had shaken hands. "I'm so

sorry! I wanted him so particularly."

"Is it important? Are you in a great hurry?" said Henry. "He won't be

long, or he would certainly have left word--on a market-day especially.

Could you come in and wait a little while?" he suggested. "I suppose I

shouldn't do as well?"

"I don't know," said Sissy, looking a little doubtfully at the tall,

fresh-colored young fellow, who smiled frankly in reply.

"Oh, it isn't at all likely," said Mr. Henry with delightful candor.

"The governor can't, for the life of him, understand how I make so many

blunders. I've a special talent that way, I suppose, but I don't know

how I came by it."

"Then perhaps it had better be Mr. Hardwicke. If it were a waltz,

now--" and she laughed. "But it isn't a waltz: it is something very

important. Do you know anything about wills?"

He looked up in sudden apprehension: "Is it about a will? Mrs.

Middleton's? Is anything the matter?"

"No, it isn't Aunt Middleton's: it's mine," was the composed reply. But

seeing relief, and almost amusement, on his face, she added hastily, "I

_can_ make a will, can't I? I'm twenty-one, you know: it's my birthday

to-day."

"Then I wish you many happy returns of the day."

"Thank you, but can I make a will?"

"Of course you can make a will."

"A will that will be good?" Sissy insisted, still speaking in the low

tone she had adopted when she began to explain the object of her visit.

"Can I make it here and now?"

"Not on horseback, I think," said Hardwicke with a smile. "You would be

tired of sitting here while we took down all your instructions. It isn't

very quick work making ladies' wills. They generally leave no end of

legacies. I suppose they are so good they don't forget anybody."

"Mine won't be like that: mine will be very short," Sissy said. "And I

suppose I am not good, for I shall forget almost everybody in it." She

laughed as she said it, yet something in her voice struck Hardwicke as

curiously earnest. "I will come in, I think, and tell you about it," she

went on. "I want to make it to-day."

"To-day?" he repeated as he helped her to dismount.

"Yes. I'll tell you," said Sissy, entering his room, "and you'll tell

Mr. Hardwicke, won't you? I'll get the Elliotts to give me some

luncheon, and then I can come here again between two and three. I shall

have to sign it, or something, sha'n't I? Do tell your father I want it

all to be finished to-day."

"I'll tell him."

"Tell him it's my birthday, so of course I must do just as I please and

have everything I want to-day. I don't know whether that's the law, but

I'm sure it ought to be."

"Of course it ought to be," Henry replied with fervor. "And I think we

can undertake to say that it shall be our law, anyhow."

"Thank you," said Sissy. "I shall be so very glad! And it can't take

long. I only want him to say that I wish all that I have to go to

Percival Thorne."

"To Percival?" Hardwicke repeated, with a sensation as if she had

suddenly stabbed him. "To Percival Thorne? Yes. Is that all I am to

say?"

"That's all. I want it all to be for Percival Thorne, to do just what he

likes with it. That can't take long, surely."

Hardwicke bit the end of a penholder that he had picked up, and looked

uneasily at her: "You're awfully anxious to get this done, Miss Langton:

you aren't ill, are you?"

"Oh, I'm well enough--much better than I was last year," said Sissy

lightly. "But there's no good in putting things of this sort off, you

know"--she dropped her voice--"as poor Mr. Thorne did. And your father

said once that if I didn't make a will when I came of age my money would

all go to Sir Charles Langton. He doesn't really want any more, I should

think, for they say he is very rich. And he is only a second cousin of

mine, and I have never seen him. It's funny, having so few relations,

isn't it?"

"Very," said Hardwicke.

"And some people have such a lot," said Sissy thoughtfully. "But I

always feel as if the Thornes were my relations."

"I suppose so. At any rate, I don't see that Sir Charles Langton has any

claim upon you." There was silence for a minute, Sissy drawing an

imaginary outline on Hardwicke's carpet with her riding-whip, he

following her every movement with his eyes.

"I shall have to sign both my Christian names, I suppose?" she said

abruptly.

"Have you two? I didn't know. What is the other?"

"Jane."

"Jane! I like that," said Henry. "Yes, sign them both."

"Thank you. I don't want to seem like an idiot to your father. I should

like it best if I could just write 'Sissy' and nothing else, as I do at

the end of my letters. When I see 'Cecilia Jane Langton' I feel inclined

to call out, 'This is none of I!' like the old woman."

She stood up to go: "You won't forget, will you?"

"No, I won't forget."

"Everything to Percival Thorne."

"Percival Thorne is an uncommonly lucky fellow," said the young man,

looking down.

Sissy stopped short, glanced at him and colored. In her anxiety she had

never considered the light in which the bequest might strike Henry

Hardwicke. In fact, she had not thought of him at all except as a

messenger. She was accustomed to take him for granted on any occasion.

She had known him all her life, and he was always, in her eyes, the big

friendly boy with whom she pulled crackers and played blindman's buff at

children's parties. She dreamed of no possible romance with Henry, and

did not imagine that he could have such a dream about her. He was as

harmless as a brother, without a brother's right to question and

criticise. It was precisely that feeling which had been at the root of

the friendliness which the Fordborough gossips took for a flirtation.

They could not have been more utterly mistaken. She liked Henry

Hardwicke--she knew that he was honest and honorable and good--but if

any one had said that he was a worthy young man, I believe she would

have assented. And that is the last adjective which a girl would apply

to her ideal.

Sissy's scheme had been in her mind through all the winter, but she had

always imagined herself stating her intentions in a business-like way to

old Mr. Hardwicke, who was a friend of the family. She had been so

thunder-struck when she found that he was out that she had taken Henry

into her confidence at a moment's warning. She dared not risk any delay.

It would be impossible to go home leaving Percival's future insecure.

Suppose she died that night--and she was struck with the fantastic

coincidence of Mr. Hardwicke's second absence at the critical

moment--suppose she felt herself dying, and knew that the only thing she

could have done for Percival was left undone! She could not face the

possibility of that agony. Indeed, she wondered how she had lived

through the long hours which had elapsed since the clock struck twelve

and the day began which made her twenty-one--not the girl Sissy any

longer, but the woman who held Percival's fortune in her hands. How

could she have gone away with her purpose unfulfilled?

When Henry said "Percival Thorne is an uncommonly lucky fellow," she

colored, but only that transient flush betrayed her, for she answered

readily: "Why, Mr. Hardwicke, what a dreadful thing to say to me! I hope

you don't have second-sight or anything horrible of that sort?"

"Second-sight!" Henry repeated doubtfully, looking down at a little

dangling eye-glass: "what's that?"

"Oh, you must know. Isn't it second-sight when you can tell if people

are going to die? You see them in their winding-sheets, and they are low

down if it will only be rather soon. But if it is to be quite directly

their shrouds are wrapped round them high up. What was mine like, that

you said Percival Thorne was so lucky? Up to here?" And, standing before

him, she smiled and touched her chin.

"God forbid!" said Henry. "How can you say such fearful things?"

"Oh, you didn't see it, then? I'm very glad."

"Good Heavens! no! And I don't believe it. I didn't mean that Thorne

would be lucky if you _died_!"

"I can't do him any good any other way," said Sissy with sweet

composure; "but I don't think I'm going to die, so I don't suppose I

shall do him any good at all. Do you think this is a strange fancy of

mine? The truth is, Aunt Middleton and I have been unhappy about

Percival ever since last May, because we know his grandfather meant to

have done something for him. He isn't rich, and he ought to have had

Brackenhill; so I should like him to have my money if I die. It is only

a chance, because I dare say I may live fifty years or so--only

fancy!--but I would rather Percival had the chance than Sir Charles.

That's all. You'll explain it to your father? It can't do any harm if it

does no good."

"Oh no: I see. It can't do any harm."

"And now I'll be off," laughed Sissy. "How dreadfully I have made you

waste your time! I dare say if I hadn't been here you would have written

ever so many things on parchment and tied them up with red tape."

"Oh yes, quantities!" Hardwicke replied as he escorted her to the door.

"A cartload at least. I'm glad you think I'm so industrious."

Standing outside, he said something about her horse. He did not like

Firefly's look, and he told her so. Moreover, he threatened to tell Mrs.

Middleton his bad opinion of Sissy's favorite.

"Nonsense!" she answered lightly. "There's nothing to be afraid of." But

suddenly she turned and looked at him. "Don't you really think Firefly

is safe?" she said. "Well, I must see about it.--William, I'm not going

back now, and I think I'll walk to Mrs. Elliott's. You had better meet

me here at half-past two."

And with a parting glance at Hardwicke she went away down the sunshiny

street, and he stood looking after her. He would have liked to be her

escort to the Elliotts' house, but he had her message to deliver to his

father, and he knew she would not permit it. Besides, to tell the truth,

she had taken him by surprise, and gone away before he thought of

anything of the kind. So he could only stand bareheaded on the

office-steps watching her as she went on her way. But suddenly his lips

parted to let out a word, which certainly would not have escaped him had

he been by Sissy's side. "There's that Fothergill fellow!" said Henry,

recognizing the captain's slim figure and black moustache. And he turned

on his heel and went in.

He was quite right. It was Fothergill who came sauntering along the

pavement, looking at the shop-windows, at the passers-by, at the

preparations for the market, with quick eyes and an interest which

conveyed the impression of his superiority to it all better than any

affectation of languid indifference. His glances seemed to say, "And

this is a country town--a market--these are farmers--people live here

all their lives!" But when he saw Sissy Langton he came forward eagerly.

And perhaps it was just as well that he was at hand to be her squire

through the busy little street, for the girl was seized with a new and

unaccountable nervousness. A bit of orange-peel lying in the road caused

her a sudden tremor. Two or three meek and wondering cows, which gazed

vacantly round in search of their familiar pasture, appeared to her as a

herd of savage brutes. She looked distrustfully up and down the road,

and waited at the pavement's edge for a donkey-cart to pass before she

dared attempt a crossing. It was just at this moment that the captain

appeared, quickening his pace and lifting his hat, only too ready to

guard her through all the perils of a Fordborough market-day.

Henry Hardwicke hated reading, and had no particular love for the law.

His father said he was a fool, and was inordinately fond of him

nevertheless. It might be that the old lawyer was right on both points.

And, dull as Henry was supposed to be, he was capable of delicate

feelings and perceptions as far as Sissy Langton was concerned. It

seemed to him that accident had revealed to him a hidden wound in her

heart; and the revelation pained him--not selfishly, for he had never

hoped for himself, but because of the secret suffering which it implied.

His one idea was to do her bidding, yet not betray her. He delivered her

message to his father with a tact of which he was himself unconscious.

On his lips it became no less urgent, but he dwelt especially on Sissy's

desire to see justice done to the man who had been accidentally

disinherited; on her feeling that she owed more to the Thornes, whose

home and love she had shared, than to the Langtons, with whom she

shared nothing but a name; and on her impatience of even an hour's

delay, because the squire's sudden death had made a deep impression on

her mind. All this, translated into Harry's blunt and simple speech, was

intelligible enough to Mr. Hardwicke. The girlish whim that all should

be done on her birthday made him smile, but the remembrance of Godfrey

Thorne was present in his mind as in hers. He did not attach much

importance to the whole affair, and felt that he should not be

overwhelmed with surprise should he hear a few months later that Sissy

was going to be married to some one else, and wanted to make some

compromise--perhaps to resign the squire's legacy to Percival. To his

eyes it looked more like an attempt at restitution than anything else.

"She is sorry for him, poor fellow!" thought Mr. Hardwicke. "She did not

know her own mind, and now she would like to atone to him somehow."

Sissy came back alone at the time she had fixed, looking white and

anxious. A client came out as she arrived, and five farmers were waiting

in the office to see Mr. Hardwicke: therefore, though she was ushered in

at once, the interview was brief. The old lawyer paid her a smiling

compliment on her promptitude. "We have to advise people to make their

wills sometimes," he said, "but you are beforehand with us." Sissy

expressed a fear that she had troubled him on a very busy day, and he

assured her that to blame her because her twenty-first birthday happened

to fall on a Friday would be the last thing he should think of doing.

Then the girl looked up at him, and said that old Mr. Thorne had always

been so good to her, and she thought that perhaps if he could see he

would be glad, so she could not put it off. She stopped abruptly, and

her eyes filled. Mr. Hardwicke bent his head in silent acquiescence, the

brief document was duly signed and witnessed, and Sissy went away,

riding home as if she had never known what fear meant. Suppose Firefly

threw her, what then? She had been to Mr. Hardwicke, and though her

"Cecilia Jane Langton" was not all she could have wished, because she

was nervous and Mr. Hardwicke's pen was so scratchy, still there it was.

And was not the paper, thus signed, a talisman against all dread of

death?

So her burden was lighter. But what could lighten the other load which

lay on her heart? She hardly knew whether it were love or fear that she

felt for Percival. The long days which had passed since she saw him had

only deepened the impression of that summer evening when they parted.

His reply to her entreaty that he would come back to her had been

exactly what she had feared--as gentle as he himself had been when they

stood face to face in the old drawing-room at Brackenhill, and as

inflexible. If she could forget him--if she could learn to care for

Captain Fothergill or Walter Latimer--what a bright, easy, sunshiny life

might yet be hers! No, ten thousand times, no! Better to suffer the

weariness of dread and doubt and longing for Percival.

But Percival would have been astonished if he could have seen the darkly

heroic guise in which he reigned over Sissy Langton's dreams.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

THE BOY ON A HILL-FARM.

There is nothing like a wide horizon to give a boy aspirations--nothing

like a hill-farm to give him hope--especially the hope of leaving it. In

spring, on a day of expectation, when the warm air has not yet brought

out the flowers, and carts go past with loads of young trees whose dry

roots and branches look like emblems of old hopes still unfulfilled, a

boy is working on the top of Ford Hill. The five-inch soil covering the

solid rock that forms the New York hill--the first of all, perhaps, to

show its head above the pristine waters--has nourished a lofty forest

which, battling with everlasting winds, resembles a body of men strong

from incessant toil: its elms and beeches are so tough they defy the

forester, and are fit only for water-wheel shafts. Working among these

adamantine timbers, the boy stops to look across the broad and deep

valley. Not at the old hill-quarries opposite, in whose depths snow lies

all summer, does he look, nor at the hanging woods above the new piece,

nor at the yellow farmhouse and barn; but higher, toward the west,

where, on a level with his eye, 'twixt hills like cloud-banks, he sees a

white streak, the distant lake. Storms are running down the Deerfield

hills. In one of the woody valleys rain-clouds have formed a mirage,

another seeming lake, and from its bosom rise to the clear, fine air of

the hills the muffled clangor and whistle of the New York Central train,

in the boy's mind a glittering image fleeing to splendid cities, and one

that he longs to follow.

A boy has no perception whatsoever of the poetry of farm-life: he

considers a woodman's work crabbed prose. The idea of making poetry out

of any part of it, or out of a herder's work either, is to him stark

idiocy. Sheep-washing, for instance, is simply working a whole spring

day in very chilly water, and sheep-shearing is a task at which he makes

"ridgy" work and endures the horror of seeing the gentle, thin-skinned

creatures bleed under his awkward shears. The boy cannot conceive what

poetry there is about oxen. From the moment a calf hides in the hay with

its mother's help, and makes believe there is no calf born yet, until it

becomes an ox, it cannot for an instant be considered poetic by a boy.

The calf is a creature that insists, whenever it drinks, on thrusting

its head to the bottom of the pail with a splash that deluges the boy

with milk: it drinks until it is out of breath, and then withdraws its

head with another splash and an explosion of milk-steam from its

nostrils--performances which cause the boy's friends to remark wherever

he goes, "You smell of sour milk." The boy likes well enough to feed the

oxen their full measures of meal; he likes to see them get down on their

knees to lick up morsels that roll into corners of the stable-floor; he

stretches his hand in before them for little balls of meal they cannot

reach with their long tongues, at which they draw back with a thwack

against the stanchion, breathing hard and gazing at him with their large

black eyes; and when the off ox tries to capture the nigh ox's portion,

the boy raps him back to his place. Quite a pastoral friendship exists

between the boy and the nigh ox, which, being continually bullied by the

off ox, needs the boy's protection, and is therefore placed next him at

work. But, for all that, he does not see the romance of such matters.

The yoking of oxen is decidedly not matter for a flying smile to a boy.

He lays one end of the yoke's beam on the ground, lifts the other end

with his right hand, and, waving one of the ox-bows in his left, cries

to the nigh ox, "Come under!" The "nigh" slowly obeys, bending its head

low to accommodate the boy's stature, and permitting itself to be

fastened by the ox-bow to the yoke. The boy now lifts the free end of

the yoke's beam as high as he can and calls the off ox to come under. It

also obeys, treading deliberately with its heavy feet, and waiting

patiently for the boy's small fingers to fasten the weighty bow with a

clumsy bow-key. Then the boy lifts the ponderous cart-neap and attaches

it to the ring in the yoke--a labor that causes his heart to "beat like

a tabor;" and thus the beasts are wedded to their daily toil.

Occasionally, however, the ox will not come under at all, but will

require the boy to follow it about the barnyard, dragging the jingling

yoke and waving the bow with infinite fatigue; and occasionally the boy

makes the mistake (no greater could be made) of yoking the off ox first.

The off ox, finding a yoke sans yokefellow dangling at its neck, is much

amazed, not being "broke" to that, and takes to whirling round and round

and galloping up and down the barnyard in a manner suggestive of

nightmare. This is a circumstance that makes a boy hopeful of going

somewhere else.

The yoking of oxen, though difficult, is nothing compared with the

working of oxen. The boy can direct his plough lightly along its

straight furrow, anticipating each movement of his oxen, and he can turn

a corner "straight as a bug's leg;" nevertheless, he would like those

persons who have a Wordsworthian idea of following the plough along the

mountain-side in glory and in joy to witness the struggles of a green

hand learning to plough--of a tramp hired man, say, one of the sort that

can't milk and don't know "haw" from "gee." This miserable being tires

himself out doing nothing. He cannot lay a furrow over sod downward: he

has to stop and turn it over with his hands. He leaves patches of turf.

He does not touch up his oxen scientifically, the "nigh" on the head,

the "off" on the rump: therefore they frequently do not move at all. His

plough-point hits the stones, and his plough-handles knock him in the

ribs and lay him out. If he is ploughing near the barn, which is the

home of the oxen, approaching it, they go like lightning, and he must

drop the plough and rush at their heads to keep them from running

straight into the barn: leaving it, they creep like snails, and perhaps

they take to "pulling"--that is, walking sidewise, with their bodies as

far apart as possible; or to "crowding"--leaning against each other over

the chain that holds the plough to the yoke, and one of them gets its

foot on the chain and proceeds on three feet. If the tramp hired man

goes between them to adjust the chain, the oxen squeeze him flat, and

one ox steps on his toe. The toe goes Pop! and what anguish! The ox

cannot be made to understand that it must step off. No use in saying

"Highst!" or anything else. Nothing but kicking the ox in the leg with

your free foot will stir it. In addition to these troubles of the

ox-driver, the oxen know how to "turn the yoke:" they can twist their

heads in the yoke after a fashion that enables them to stand facing the

plough and staring at the driver. If they "turn the yoke" while drawing

a cart down a side-hill, the cart, with the driver in it, slips about in

front of them, and drags them down the gulf face foremost. The noisiest

being on earth is a man ploughing with a pair of old bulls. At night,

when he comes home to supper, he is scarcely able to whisper, and the

parting blow he gives his beasts is no damage to them nor consolation to

him. A man ploughing green sward with two old plugs of horses is about

as miserable.

Cows, whether the fine old "line-backs" of the hills or scrawny,

beefless Alderneys or milkless Durhams, have one merit with a boy. It is

not that they enjoy fine weather, a good pasture and a green

landscape--have thoughts, notice the sprouting beanfields as they come

up to milking, and the new flag-staff on the green: it is that they are

good at fighting. In every herd there is a queen who can vanquish all

the rest, and a vice-queen who can vanquish all but the queen, and a

second vice-queen who can vanquish all but the first two, and so on down

to the weakest of the herd, who cannot withstand any of the others.

Sometimes there is one that can defeat the queen, but none of the rest;

and other complications occur that give diversity to the cow-fights. The

boy has comfort superintending these combats. He encourages the cowards

and helps the weak by drawing them forward by the horns to attack. When

the queen stops the way at the bars, and will not let the rest through,

or when she amuses herself running up and down the stanchions driving

away the other cows, the boy puts her down and relieves the drove of her

tyranny.

The boy oversees some fighting among the fowls of the hill-farm, where

they still keep the old hawk-colored breed--a breed that fights to the

death--not being over-partial as yet to Shanghais that won't lay and

Leghorns that won't sit. On a large farm, where there are several barns

and as many sets of hens, the boy cultivates the fighting qualities of

the cocks by keeping them around together, and not letting them forget

each other. The turkeys--strange birds! so tender in youth a spring rain

kills them, so tough in age they roost in the tree-tops in winter, and

come down o' mornings covered with frozen sleet and looking as if they

enjoyed it--are objects of no interest to the boy; but for the geese he

has a kindness, not because they fight each other, but because they

fight him. "Can't you let them geese alone?" is the frequent exclamation

of the hired man in the stable to the boy in the mow. The boy is always

perfectly willing to hunt goose-eggs: he has a battle with the biting,

shrieking, wing-flapping goose every time he takes an egg from her nest.

When she begins to sit on her empty nest, it is his business to bring

back a part of her eggs and place them under her, which leads to a

pitched battle. The pea-hen is a different creature: she keeps her nest

a secret even from the peacock, never leaving it save on the wing, and

approaching it with the greatest circumambulation. Nobody but the boy

knows where it is. Should he take up her egg, though he might lay it

down exactly as it was before, she would never lay another egg there.

This he knows. He is acquainted with many things other people have no

idea of. He knows how a roost of poultry looks at morning dusk, when, if

you enter the barn, the entire roost turns one eye at you, and then for

an unknown cause simultaneously shakes its head. He knows how hens catch

mice in the hay-mow--how they gnaw the sucking pigs' tails to the bone

(the hired man says they need the meat). He knows how to obtain

bumblebees' honey, paying for this information with an ear like a garnet

potato, one of the sort that "biles up meller;" and he knows how to find

mushrooms. Life for a boy on an upland farm is to labor, to abstain, to

sweat and to be grievously cold (see Horace); nevertheless, there comes

a soft spring dawn when on the rich spots of the sheep-pasture he finds

a bushel of mushrooms, snow-white on their tops and pink underneath,

crisp, tender, rising full grown from the moist earth, and lifting

bodily away the chips and leaves that overlay them. He brings this

treasure home. He inverts the mushroom-cups in a clean frying-pan, fills

each one with butter and a pinch of salt, cooks them gently a few

minutes--dishes them. Then he dashes more butter and some water from the

tea-kettle into the frying-pan--for he is as fond of gravy as "Todgers'

boarders"--pours this over the mushrooms, and sits down to a feast that

has some poetry about it.

The boy brings a sharp appetite to his few pleasures. All agreeable

thoughts float in his mind during his summer nooning doze when he lies

on the grass after dinner waiting for the sun to strike the west side of

the farmhouse chimneys, which, standing square north and south, serve

for sun-dials. And in haymaking, when he is "mowing away" far above the

"purline beam" in the barn as fast as a man in the hayrack can toss the

hay up to him, and the air is heated like a furnace by the hot haymaking

sun on the shingles close above his head, and his shirt is full of

timothy-seed, and he is almost dying with exhaustion, suddenly he hears

the sound of rain pattering on the roof. The hay in the meadow will be

spoiled, but down he slides to enjoy an hour's rest in the cool lower

world of the barn-floor. And when the Fourth of July comes, and the

farm-boys gather at The Corners and fire off old shot-guns, pistols, an

anvil, a cannon and empty thread-spools, then and there is the poetry of

the whole harvest-season for the boy. The harvest-moon, bringer of hot

days and "bammy" nights to glaze the corn, may be the admiration of

many, but is not so to the boy. It is accompanied by a special grievance

to him: at the end of days' works that take the tuck out of him to the

last fragment he has to go for the cows, and to come home late after

everybody else has washed up and is partly through supper. The hunter's

moon too, large, mild and beaming though it may be, is a thing of

disgust to the boy, for it marks the beginning of the season when, after

chores are finished and the men are sitting comfortably around the

kitchen fire, he has to split kindlings in the woodhouse for the hired

girl, and to fill the four wood-boxes with which the hill farmhouse

warms its kitchen, dining-room, nursery and parlor.

The hill-farmer's mind is rich in suggestions of work for a boy. After

haying, harvesting and everything else is done, you will find that lad

down cellar of a dark morning by the light of a tallow candle cutting

bushels and bushels of potatoes for the cows with a "slice"--one of

those antique long iron shovels used about a brick-oven. You will find

him foddering forty head of cattle before school-time in the morning,

rising at four o'clock for the purpose, and going over the work again

after school; and if he does not ride to the woods on Saturdays with the

choppers, the farmer calls him "dreadful slack." The boy would like to

get the work all finished some time, but on a hill-farm there is no hope

of being done save the hope of being done with it entirely. There is

always plenty of work for the boy. In the vast, dark, lofty,

cathedral-like orchard, whose untrimmed, mossy trees bear profusely on

their interlacing branches the small fair apples for countless barrels

of cider, there is work for him. There is plenty of work at the

cider-mill or in boiling down the sweet cider over the bonfire that

cheers the damp fall weather.

In fact, his tasks are endless. Perhaps it is raining like suds. The sun

for several weeks has reminded the hired man of a drop of hair-oil on a

basin of water. The only weather-sign that occurs to any one is the old

Indian one: "Cloudy all around, and pouring down in the middle." You

might suppose no work could be done in such weather. It is then the

farmer starts the boy off with five hundred dollars in his pocket to pay

various husbandmen for cattle, and with directions to make a detour on

his way back collecting moneys due for other cattle, stopping at the

Chittaninny Tavern to meet a man who will have a sum of cash ready for

him there. The Chittaninny Tavern is in a cutthroat neighborhood. The

man with the cash pays it at the bar in the presence of a crowd of

ruffians, the bartender looking over the boy's shoulder, and a loafer

follows him out to his horse, shows him a pistol and asks him if he

hasn't "one of them things." While the boy dashes homeward through the

rain and night, pursued in imagination by the man with the pistol, he

makes up his mind that a well-lighted city is the place for him to do

business in.

Should the rain lessen, the farmer and the boy set out for town with a

herd of cattle. Having disposed of the herd, on their homeward way,

toward nightfall, the boy, who has walked, as near as he can guess, four

hundred miles around the cattle in the November mud, is dismayed to see

the farmer stop at a house by the wayside. There are more cattle to be

bought and driven home. The master of the wayside house is in some

remote pasture, whither the boy runs to fetch him. After a long bargain

with this man the farmer pulls out a roll of bills, pays down a round

sum, a fresh creature is brought out to the road, and again they pursue

their homeward way. It is a young heifer this time--most difficult of

animals to drive. She runs like a deer: in a minute she is far ahead of

the boy. She takes the wrong road: the boy makes frightful efforts to

overtake her--enters the fields to follow her unseen, and cuts across

lots to head her off. She, being a bright creature, is aware of his

manoeuvres. She watches him over the fences, and contrives to keep

beyond his reach, spite of all he can do. To hold her on the homeward

route is a miracle: still, the trio of farmer, boy and heifer do manage

to reach the home village, where the farmer, who is riding in his

carriage, stops at the bank and tells the boy to be "boss and all hands"

and go on alone with the heifer. This is terrible. Night is at hand, the

demoniac beast is wilder than ever, and the boy knows that, though

palpitating with fatigue through all his frame, there are the chores at

home yet for him to do. Well, it is then he determines to go on a

whaling-voyage or to go and be a stoker for a steam-engine, or a

boiler-maker, or a tramp, or anything but a boy on a farm; and so hope

grows strong in his heart.

An old hill-farmer must be beloved of Hermes, he so understands the arts

of gain. If he wants to buy anything, he takes a sap-bucketful of eggs

to the village, and makes a point of bringing back a part of the money.

When in town he does not dine at a tavern, but on some crackers and

cheese: he says baker's bread tastes like wasps' nests, and city fare in

general is light and dry. He saves more picking up horseshoes when the

snow melts than many persons do in all their lives. He works all the

year round: he thrashes in midwinter with the thermometer below zero.

The hard times affect him no more than a fly would a rhinoceros. This is

perfectly exasperating to the poor spendthrift, good-for-nothing, lazy

part of the community. The tramp hired man is particularly mad about it;

he declares the old farmer wants him to work all day for a sheep's head

and pluck, and sleep under a cart at night. The tramp hired man

entertains inverted financial ideas, and a creed that would probably

read, "Strike a man on his right cheek, and if he don't turn his left,

boot him;" and the tramp hired man lies _en grand_--tells lies two days

long when he finds a listener.

The old hill-farmer never wastes nor wears out things. He has a coat for

butchering-days that belonged to his great-great-grandfather who fought

in the Revolution, and he has an ancient tin lantern that he considers

valuable. He almost quarrels with the young farmer about his corrugated

glass lantern and his large, brilliant, one-paned lantern with the

polished concave tin back, and his brass-mounted globe lantern: they

have resplendent lanterns on the hills. The old farmer says they will

blow up or smash up, whereas his ancient tin lantern is safe. The old

man does not see the boy shinning up a post in the horse-barn (there is

no staircase--nothing but a few pegs stuck over the horses' heads by

which to climb to the hay), the tin lantern swinging on his arm, its

door open and candle flaring. Nor does he see the boy attempt to

increase the lantern's light by filling it with dry leaves. "What has

that darned Irishman been up to now?" says the old farmer, finding it

unsoldered on its shelf.

"The mill-streams that turn the clappers of the world arise in solitary

places." The old hill-farmers are lovers of their country. Their

carefully-saved money and their patriotism sustained our great war.

Whoever was a boy on a hill-farm during the war remembers the neighbors

stumbling over the stony roads at twilight, when the day's work was

done, to hear the daily paper read at the farmhouse on The Corners,

eager to know the worst or the best every night. Hugh used to hold the

candle, while Mark read in a slow, understanding voice about the

marching, fighting, wavering, conquering of those days, now less

remembered than the _Iliad_, when we warmed our hearts at the blaze of

war. At every new local name, "Stop!" the old farmer used to say: "let's

see where that is. Get the map.--Hugh, hold the light.--There 'tis, by

that grease-spot--not the tallow-spot Hugh just dropped--the spot where

people have put their fingers around Washington." Such a prodigious

trampling of fingers on the map followed our armies to battle! What a

memory it is to have in the mind!

The old farmer of the hills, however frugal, fosters some luxuries: one

is horses. He has plenty of them, fat and slow from careful usage, and

for the most part spotless bays.

Four white feet and a white nose,

Skin him and give his body to the crows,

says the man of the hills. Melvine, a great horse-breeder, one day took

sides in a quarrel between a horse and its master, fought the man for

abusing his horse--fought him hard and long: 'twas "t'other and which"

with them for a while. "I wouldn't have done it," said his neighbor,

Squire Greffern: "I wouldn't have fought the man. I'd have reasoned with

him kindly. I'd have said, 'See here, now, this horse isn't to blame: he

ain't human,' says I, 'and you ought not to abuse him,' says I. And says

I, 'You ought to know better than to hurt a horse: it injures him,' says

I. 'He has more sense than you have' (getting excited). 'You deserve to

be licked yourself, by hoky! Why, Gosh Almighty! get out, or I'll thrash

the daylights out of your darned rotten hide!'" So ended the squire's

reproof.

The old hill-farmer has an old dog grown from indulgence, like his

horses, in the habit of going his own gait. He _will_ trot to church on

Sundays, and trot, trot, down the aisle after meeting has begun, or, if

he likes, up into the gallery. When two of these obstinate old dogs once

met before the pulpit they indulged in a whirlwind of fight. The

minister requested the sexton to put them out, but they showed him their

teeth and fought until satisfied. Then the minister administered a grave

rebuke to the farmers for desecrating the house of God by bringing dogs

to church. Whether the dogs understood it or not, one of them never went

to church again.

Another luxury of the hill-farmer is unabridged hospitality. He would

agree with Doctor Johnson that nothing promotes happiness so much as

conversation. Blazing fires--beacons of company--often flame up his

best rooms' chimney-stacks, pouring their blue wood-smoke high in the

clear air of the hills. Thanksgiving Day in the hills would do for a

festival in honor of Jupiter, the patron of friendship, 'tis a day of

such hospitality. It is the only day of the year when the boy has enough

to eat. Not that there is not plenty all the year round. It is always

_jam_ and never _satis_ with the boy, to borrow Tom Hood's joke. In

killing-time they put down hecatombs of beef in snow and of ham and

sausage in hot lard, and they have stores of cod-fish to be cooked with

cream, and of chickens for potpies, which are never made properly, for

some mysterious reason, save by a farmer's wife. A fearful fate, though,

has been known to befall a farmhouse among the wintry hills when the

farmer's wife has put too much sage in the sausage. Too much sage all

winter, ah! Nothing short of being "clyed," as the farmer's wife

pronounces it, will satisfy a boy who works on the hills; and that he is

on Thanksgiving. 'Tis a day of perfect bliss to him, when he sleeps

long, and after his morning's work is done goes to skate in his best

clothes on a very glary pond where a crowd of other boys are skating. He

skates until he is tired and hungry, and comes home late, stopping on

the way to climb the fences of the orchards in search of frozen apples,

delicious food to his famished lips. When he reaches home the turkey

smells away out to the gate, and in the kitchen everything is all

cluttered up and "t'other end to," and dinner is nowhere near ready yet.

'Tis a joyous hour for the boy when it is ready, and for the hired man

too. The hired man's pleasure is somewhat damped by hearing the hired

girl remark that his mouth is like a barn-door with a load of hay in it.

"I declare for it if 'taint," says she. He informs her that she is

always "bellerin'" about something, and she requests him not to be so

"putchy;" nor does that end the matter. Guests like the Melvines of

Melvine Farm, the Bligh boys of Bligh's Corners, the Plunkett girls and

Deacon Buckingham's hired girl, and Yem Finny and Sam Bab's folks, are

the kind to invite to a party. They are the kind to keep up a rumble of

talk in the parlor, and in the other rooms a rush of games--Hide the

Handkerchief, Hunt the Slipper, and so on: Achilles's troops did not

play Whirl the Platter on the sands of Troy with a greater gusto.

Very hospitable people are not particular as to who comes to see them,

if only some one comes: therefore, pack-peddlers, stove-peddlers,

drovers, the old crazy man and the old crazy woman, and other wanderers,

are welcome at the hill farmhouse. These vagabonds come from all

directions--up the Red Mill road, down from Windy Row, over from the

Huddle and the Hollow, and across from Ranger's Field Centre, sometimes

meeting two or three together. The boy is glad to see them, particularly

the peddlers, they bring such an uproar of talk with them. The brown

Bohemian or Hungarian receives a bombardment of questions at the

farmhouse that breaks all bounds to his loquacity: he tells everything

he knows of foreign lands, as well as news of what is going on in ten

counties round. Two only of the vagrant tribe the boy dislikes, the

colporteur and the travelling Spiritualist--two cold, shabby, sniffling

beings, each wrapped in a shawl and each driving an old horse afflicted

with poll-evil. Whenever the boy goes to put up one of these men's

horses he wants to break his wagon and whip, and he does give them a few

ferocious shakes in the solitude of the stable. The boy worships the

clockmaker, who comes once a year on a Saturday and stays over Sunday,

mending all the clocks in the house, the tall, timeworn wooden one up in

the boy's bedroom as well as the rest. This fellow has a taste for

pugilism. While working at the clocks he holds discussions with the

hired folks about Heenan, Sayers, Morrissey, dogs, cocks and horses, and

lets out secrets about mills coming off in London and New York next

week. This is delightful. But once let the horse-pitchfork man arrive,

and there is a regular sitting up at night, a grand debauch of talk on

politics, patent-rights, improved agricultural implements and other

themes, the whole interspersed with original jokes. The old farmer is

obtuse about jokes--

An owl might make him laugh, if only it would wink,

but nothing less could--yet the horse-pitchfork man's jokes penetrate

him.

The boy thinks it dull when there is no company at the farmhouse of a

winter evening. He then sets a pitcher of cider to warm by the fire, and

makes himself as comfortable as he can over a book. The few books he

reads are fastened minutely in his memory. He obtains _The Perfect

Gentleman_ from the district school library, and thenceforth knows what

is proper behavior for an Englishman under all circumstances. He reads

_The Vestiges of Creation_, and in afterlife is amazed to find half the

world fighting the ancient theory of evolution. His love of society

causes him to plunge into the vortex of the mite society and singing

school if he has anything decent to wear. Cheerfully he works in

pantaloons whose legs have been cut off and turned hind side before, in

order that the thin and faded places may come on the back of his legs

and the unfaded ones on his knees; contentedly he sustains them by one

suspender twisted from a solitary button in front around to another on

his right side: he knows the farmer's wife has no time to take care of

his clothes. But when old Mrs. Lyburn, a woman who can no more design a

suit of clothes than a theatre-ceiling fresco, is commissioned to make

him a coat out of an old goose-green overcoat, and a pair of trousers

out of some thick, old light cloth breeches, and when she cuts the legs

of those breeches off at top and bottom, leaving them broad enough for a

Turk, with pockets like large bags hanging down inside of them, then the

boy rebels and refuses to go anywhere. If he goes he takes his road

through Stone's Woods, and comes home the back way by the wagon-house.

The boy has grit, real grindstone grit: therefore he keeps this up, and

sooner or later he has it out with the old farmer about his clothes.

"Well, well, don't rare and pitch like a flax-break: we'll see about

it," says the old gentleman. The old farmer takes the boy to town and

buys him a sleek, shiny black suit--the coat is a long-waisted,

long-tailed frock--and he adds a pair of good "stubbid" shoes, having

strings made of leather.

"You're stuck, and stuck bad," says the hired man compassionately when

he sees the suit. A boy who is as keen as a brier and smart as a whip

cannot be expected to wear "humbly" clothes forever. A neat suit made by

the village tailor, and a necktie, hat and boots that put him into

positively ethereal spirits, are articles that he finally attains. In

these clothes he joins the debating society and the choir. Saul Lapham,

a friend of his, plays the cornet at the choir-rehearsals. Saul lays

down the dignity of a human being to puff out his cheeks, bulge his eyes

and grow red in the face blowing a brass horn. Saul is a tyro in the

business--can't blow softly, though he tries hard to do so, and

completely drowns the singers except when he breaks down, which occurs

rather often, to their extreme relief. The little spats and sensations

of the choir-rehearsals are entertainment for the sylvan boy. One

evening Miss Tway was so "worked up" about failing in a solo she was

trying to sing that she fainted twice, the first time with her mouth

shut, the second time with it open; and Saul, not knowing what else to

do, put a gum-drop into it, which offended Miss Tway, for she thought it

was his finger.

The lad is a gallant figure in his new suit galloping on horseback from

his highlands down to the village on the flats to attend some rustic

diversion. In the tavern ballroom there is a little stage with a curtain

hung across it, and on that stage the boy sees the most charming

performance he ever beholds. It consists of a regular play, with a

ballet between the acts, and a minstrel performance introducing the

celebrated scene of a negro teaching another negro to tune the banjo,

where the pupil climbs up the back of his chair while endeavoring to

ascend the scale; and all ending with a puppet-show, the whole being

done by three young fellows. "Why-ee! 'twas wonderful!" says the boy.

Balzac remarks: "People who are very happy are naturally stupid."

Perhaps it is because he is not stupid that the boy is unhappy on the

many-fountained hills. The longed-for evening soon appears--his last on

the farm. He sleeps no moment that night in his soft farmhouse bed under

homemade blankets hemmed with woollen thread. He does not know that he

will be homesick for his old bedroom--homesick for the Gothic chest, the

picture from _The Pirate and Three Cutters_, and the toilet-table

holding nothing but a hairbrush, which, with its half dozen bristles,

resembles a Captain Cook club. He will be homesick for the very closet

under the roof that makes his clothes smell of hops, wool and dried

apples. How glows the morn when he leaves! He goes to success, for he

carries power--power as great as Fate.

MARY DEAN.

THE VISION OF THE TARN.

Alone, in contemplation lost,

I stood upon a castled height,

Dark-beetling o'er a lurid tarn

That glassed the brow of night.

Between the icy flash of stars,

Above me sprinkled and beneath,

The silence of the listening air

Was counterfeit of death.

No cloud upon the naked sky,

No ripple on the lake below;

But o'er the sluggish waters hung

A phosphorescent glow,

That suddenly, all quivering wan,

As smitten with the throes of birth,

Upheaving, vanished, to reveal

A phantom not of earth--

A lily wonderful as light,

Unfolded on the balmy deep,

And, cradled in its bosom, lay

A presence lost in sleep.

And tenderly a star remote

Shed holy lustre o'er the place

Where innocence and peace displayed

Such unimagined grace

That e'en the calm celestial orb,

Enamored of the dream below,

With tremulous emotion pale

Diffused a milder glow.

And I beheld, in mystery,

The secret of my vision fair--

That of a relic sprung the flower

That bore its image there.

And from the watchful star above--

The dwelling of a spirit fled--

That faithful sentinel of love

Its vacant shrine surveyed,

And knew, through all transition seen,

Its place and habitation dear,

Still waiting, in the throb of hope,

Its resurrection here.

Long had I gazed; but, lo! a cloud,

Down-sweeping as a bird of night,

O'erwhelmed me, and the phantasy

Was blotted from my sight.

JOHN B. TABB.

THROUGH WINDING WAYS.

CHAPTER VII.

It was the tenth of November when my accident happened: it was late in

February before I again sat up and began to feel once more that I

belonged to the world of flesh and blood, and to take in slowly, with

unaccustomed mind and ear, sights and sounds outside the monotonous

world of pain where I had lived so long that I felt bitterly I had

earned the right to die. Few glimpses of light had enlivened the

terrible blackness of my cruel experience: they had all come from my

mother's smile. Occasionally, for a few moments when I lay with my head

upon her breast, I was reinspired with a desire to live; but at most

times a settled sense of suffering and gloom cut me off from every sweet

source of comfort in life. But after I had sat up once--once parted with

the dreary prospect of the chintz and lace which curtained my bed--I was

a little stronger. Deep was the silence of the icebound shore that day,

sparkling the blue waters across which the sun marked a glittering

track. My mother sat beside me, and Helen knelt by my reclining-chair

watching my face with eager, earnest eyes, divining every wish and

foreseeing all my needs. She served me with such an enthusiasm of

devotion that in my morbid state, with every nerve strained to its

highest tension, I suffered merely in looking at her. But Dr. Sharpe

himself had begged me to let her stay with me, because she fretted so

when away from me. I had but one wish in life, it seemed to me--to get

back to Belfield. The luxury with which I was surrounded was an

oppression to my every sense. I was fed from priceless porcelain, and

the markets were ransacked to find dainties for my taste; my room was

freshly decorated every day with flowers, both cut and growing in pots,

and the air was heavy with their scents; forced fruits from the

greenhouses, heaped in silver baskets on every table toward which I

turned, tempted my dull appetite. I wanted my old room at home: I wanted

to lie in my hard narrow bed and see the walls flush with the reflection

of the dawn in the east--to have Carlo lift the latch of my door, and

enter stealthily and stand at my bedside, wagging his tail and looking

up at me with his solemn brown eyes as he waited for me to stretch out

my hand, that he might lick it all over for his good-morning. There, in

those dear familiar places, I should be able to think over the evil that

had come upon me--might perhaps, out of all my broken threads, regather

one or two.

For from the first I had been told the trials I was to confront. My life

had been saved, although it was at first despaired of, but I must be

permanently lame. It had been a most unlucky fall for me, but a glorious

case for the surgeons--fractures and compound fractures, broken ribs and

dislocated shoulders. In old times, when I had planned out my future, I

had said that I would be a surgeon when I grew up; but now, although all

my doctors--and my experience of doctors had come to be as wide as most

people's--had been most patient, tender and untiring in their study and

treatment of my case, I resigned without one murmur my wish to enter the

profession.

One morning, while I was still absolutely helpless, a fierce gleam of

light reflected up from the sea shot athwart my face. Helen sprang up

and carefully adjusted shades and curtains.

"You are a kind little nurse, Helen," said I. "What does the new

governess think of the way you spend your time?"

"Oh, Mademoiselle Lenoir quite enjoys it," returned my mother, laughing:

"she sits about reading novels and eating bonbons. I will go and see

what she is doing now."

"Do, mother," said I, "and take a walk in the greenhouses

yourself.--Helen, you'll take good care of me, won't you?"

She flung her arm about my neck and pressed her quivering lips against

my hair.

"I wish I could do something for you," she cried plaintively.

"But you do a great deal, Helen. Of course my mother does everything

best of any one, but you come next."

She gave me a piteous little smile. "I wish I could do something better

than any one else," she whispered: "it was all my fault."

"Now, dear little girl, I shall send you away if you say that any more.

Nothing was your fault--nothing. Don't take up that weary strain again.

I want you to tell me all about that morning, though: I never heard yet

how you came to be on the cliff at all. Your grandfather had forbidden

you to go there."

Her lips still quivered. "I am afraid I shall cry," she said with a

little gasp.

"You must not cry: it does me harm to see anybody cry," I answered

imperiously. "Now tell me about it all."

She regained her self-command at once: "Georgy asked me about the cliff,

and I told her that grandpa said I was never to go there--never. But she

took me by the arm and pulled me: she pulled me hard--she is stronger

than I am," said the poor little mite. It was not difficult to guess the

remainder of the story from the child's disjointed words: she struggled

not to blame her cousin. Georgy, on reaching the brow of the precipice,

had amused herself by throwing stones down the ravine, that she might

enjoy their rumble and clatter. When this too mild pleasure shortly

palled upon her, she tried to induce Beppo, the delicate Italian

greyhound, to go down, and finally, vexed with him for not seeking such

a form of suicide, she flung him over--half in sport perhaps, for

Georgy's pastimes were sometimes rather savage. He regained his footing

before he was swallowed up in the abyss, and stood on the little shelf

of rock thirty feet below, whining at first in entreaty, then howling in

such abject terror that Helen, broken-hearted at such misery, slid

fearlessly after him, but found herself unable to retrace her steps.

"Did not Georgy try to help you?" I asked.

"I don't think she did," answered Helen, fixing her great eyes upon me.

"She kept calling to me at first not to be a coward and to come back.

Then she ran away, and I did not see her any more until--"

"How many times did you call me?" I asked.

"I don't know. I seemed to know you would come, but I felt afraid I

could not hold on any longer. Just when I was tired out I heard you

coming."

I had some stirrings of curiosity about my own fate.

"Did you send the people after me?"

"When I saw you going down," said she, growing pale even to her lips, "I

could not move at first. I was not sure what I ought to do. Then I

remembered, and ran as fast as I could to papa. I forget what came

afterward. I remember that grandpa was holding me in his arms and crying

very much, and that papa and Mills and all the men were bringing you

across the lawn."

"Don't tell me any more," said I quickly: "I can't quite bear it."

It was late in April when I finally went back to Belfield, and even by

that time I was so far from possessing strength or health that not only

Mr. Floyd accompanied me, but Dr. Sharpe and Mills as well. Jack Holt

and Harry Dart and Tony Thorpe came about me at once: all the good

people of Belfield thronged to bring me something--words of comfort and

cheer, jellies, Easter lilies, cakes and oranges--but the one I had most

longed to see did not come. Once more at home, I grew stronger both in

body and mind: the spring-time did me good, although welling up within

me all the time, so imperiously, so irresistibly, that I never entirely

lost the pain, was the thought that never before had I failed to watch

the first uncoilings of the fern-fronds beneath the dead leaves of the

former year; the willow catkins, the fragrant arbutus, all the signs of

inspiration from the earliest breaths of spring in the hedges and

meadows and woods about Belfield. But still, as I lay on my sofa and

tried four times a day the great feat of crossing our parlor from wall

to wall, I could guess all the beautiful things that were going on out

of doors, and I was happier for the coming summer-time, for is any state

so sombre, any grief so unquenchable, any burden of despondency so

oppressive, but that the divine gladness of the awakening earth stirs it

with its revivifying breath? My misfortune did not inspire me with

mystical, heavenly resignation, but I began to be able to look its

results in the face.

"Nothing so hampers us in life as the failure to accept our fate with

courage," my guardian said to me once. "Be as brave as you can. Do you

remember what Medea says in reply to that cruel reminder of her

losses?--'Husband, countrymen, riches, all gone from you: what remains?'

She answers, 'Medea remains.'"

It had become evident to me, without interrogations on my part, that my

mother and Mr. Floyd had resigned at least all present hopes of

marriage. All their thoughts seemed to be centred in me, and I felt

myself a hinderance in their plans of happiness. So, while I was still

holding my guardian's hand, I reminded him of our talk on the bluff that

far-off November morning.

"Do you think I would take your mother from you too, my dear boy?" said

he bluntly. "Do you think she would come to me if I wanted to take her?"

"But it seems too much of a sacrifice."

"Get well, then, at once," Mr. Floyd exclaimed, laughing. "As soon as

you can walk up the church-aisle all the Belfield wedding-bells shall

ring their loudest."

Jack Holt brought me some white roses one day in June, which I knew

could never have grown anywhere in Belfield except against the eaves of

a certain Gothic cottage. I asked him if Georgy sent them, and why she

never came to see me.

"I have wondered too why she never comes," he returned; "and I have

asked her, but she tells me her mother bids her stay away from you."

"Georgy was not used to be so obedient," said I. "Ask her to come. I

suppose she thinks I am frightful to behold, but I fancy I'm much the

same, unless I begin to look like a girl. I'm getting into the habit of

doing everything so languidly, so effeminately, Jack, that I wonder

sometimes if there is any masculine vigor left in me. What can I do to

try? I can never run any more: it will be a long time before I can pull

my old stroke with an oar. I might shoot at a mark, and if you and Harry

will come I will hobble out and try to-morrow."

"Floyd," began Jack with some hesitation, "from Georgy's reluctance to

see you I have sometimes thought she was concerned in the matter of your

accident."

"Not in the least," I cried stoutly: "never believe that for a moment.

It was my own affair entirely, and to this day I can't quite decide that

I was not both clumsy and stupid not in some way to keep myself from

falling."

I was sitting alone that evening, toward the late sunset, when Georgy

came. Showers had fallen all the afternoon, but now the clouds had risen

from the west, and, although now and then a few drops fell, the east was

spanned by a rainbow and the turbid masses of cloud above took on colors

of crimson and purple. I heard the gate click, and turning I saw Georgy

Lenox coming in, attended by both Jack Holt and Harry Dart. Each held an

umbrella over her--Jack in earnest, and Harry in joking solicitude for

her bright summer ribbons. It was evident enough that they were all in

high spirits, and I seemed to hear the sparkling impertinences which

issued from her laughing lips as she looked from one to the other of the

boys with many a toss of her yellow curls and shrug of her round

shoulders. They left her at the door, which stood wide open, and I

called to her to come in. She entered, but waited a moment on the

threshold, growing a little pale as she looked at me. Then rallying,

"How do you do, Floyd?" she exclaimed. "You see that I have come at

last?"

"I am glad to see you," I returned. "But come nearer: I want to shake

hands with you."

She approached, and I clasped her hand, looking up into her face. She

had grown more womanly in these last seven months, and far more

beautiful; and, looking in her face, I at first forgot to speak.

"How queer you are!" said she, pouting, but laughing. "Why do you look

at me so?"

I do not know whether I spoke or not, but she bent and kissed me, and

thus answered my feverish longing, the gratification of which

overpowered me with a sudden intoxication like that of wine.

"I only did it because you are ill," said she, putting her hands to her

face and peeping out at me from between her fingers. "You look so thin

and changed, Floyd! I knew you would, and I dreaded to see you: I am

afraid of sick people."

"I am harmless enough. Am I very horrible?"

"You are dreadfully white, and your eyes were not so large before you

were sick. Oh, how many times I have asked the boys how you were!"

"But you never came, Georgy."

"Oh, I am past sixteen now, and mamma will not let me go and see boys."

"I see," said I with an indefinable sigh, "that you are almost a woman.

And Jack is eighteen."

"The boys are so full of their examinations! Do you think Jack will

pass? He is such a stupid old dear! I always feel as if I knew the most,

yet I know nothing--actually nothing at all."

"Jack will pass. Whatever place in the world he tries for will always be

ready and waiting for him. I am more anxious about Harry: he cares so

little about his chances, and trusts always to inspiration and good

luck."

Georgy looked at me somewhat curiously: "Don't you feel badly, Floyd, to

have the boys go to college and leave you behind?"

We three had planned years ago how we were to enter college together,

yet no one of us had yet alluded to my disappointment, and it was

difficult for me to bear her question and answer it unflinchingly.

"This is one of my many hard things to bear, Georgy."

"'Tis dreadful for you," she exclaimed with energy. "To think what you

were, Floyd, a tall, handsome, dandified fellow, and now changed all at

once into a hopeless cripple!"

I even found the strength to endure this and give no sign. In my darkest

hours of dejection I had said these words to myself, but no one had

hitherto uttered them within my hearing.

"I wonder," she went on, "what you will do? Shall you try to be a

doctor, Floyd?"

"No, Georgy: I have given up that idea."

"It does seem wretched. What does Mr. Floyd say?"

"Everything that is most considerate. I have had a hard experience,

Georgy, but I have at last learned how tender and faithful many of my

friends are." I regarded her steadily, and she flushed crimson.

"I suppose you think," she retorted, "that I might have come to see you

oftener. But to tell you the truth, Floyd, I have been almost angry with

you, and so has mamma. Of course it was not your fault that you fell

down the cliff, and I almost felt as if I were to blame a little about

it, although not nearly so much as that silly Helen. To think of her

going after a miserable little dog! Oh, how I hated Mr. Raymond for what

he said to me! You cannot think how cruel he was, Floyd, when I went

back to the house, after hiding away all the morning. The doctors were

up stairs with you, and nobody knew if you were dead or alive. He laid

all the blame on me--all of it--and kissed and petted Helen, and cried

over her as if she had been brought back from the grave. And the

housekeeper went up and packed my things, and I was sent out of the

house as if I were a murderer or thief, or something dreadful. Mr. Floyd

came home with me: he came after your mother. He was in a dreadful state

of mind, and scarcely spoke all the way, except once to tell me that I

was very young, and that I must pray to God to give me a heart. Just as

if I were not crying and sobbing all the time! Then, when mamma saw me

and I had to tell her all about it, she burst out angrily against me,

telling me that I had lost all my chances of having any of Uncle

Raymond's money. I had not thought of that before, and it did seem worse

than anything else. Do you wonder I have felt half angry with you?"

"You teach me to wonder at nothing, Georgy. You must forgive me for

injuring your chances of inheriting Mr. Raymond's money;" and I laughed

with some bitterness. "But take heart," I went on: "little Helen loves

you, and told me to tell you she was sure you meant no harm, and that

she was sorry you were sent away."

"Little proud, stuck-up thing!" exclaimed Georgy. "It makes me so angry

to think of that child's having everything under her orders--all the

servants down on their knees before her, with 'Miss Floyd' this and

'Miss Floyd' that! And then how ridiculously both her father and Uncle

Raymond worship her!"

"She was very generous to you, Georgy."

"And why should she not be? There is no reason why, instead of putting

up with a few rings and chains and dresses, I should not have half of

everything at The Headlands. I am older than she is, and need things

more, and I am prettier than she is: don't you think me prettier,

Floyd?"

"Yes, I think you are," I rejoined quietly. "But everybody says Helen

will grow up to be very beautiful."

"I don't believe it," observed Georgy tartly. "She is too pale, and her

eyes are too big: then she is such a solemn little thing. Don't you like

golden hair best, Floyd?"

"Yes."

"And blue eyes?"

"Well, I don't know. But yes, I do," I added, meeting hers.

"Do you really think that Helen will grow up to be beautiful?" she

pleaded after her momentary triumph.

"Yes, I certainly do," I answered stubbornly.

"We shall see," she exclaimed, tossing her head.

"Don't think," said I, "that I believe that she will be more beautiful

than you, Georgy. I don't imagine any girl could be that, but--"

"Well, what else?" she asked, smiling and dimpling.

"But think of something besides beauty," I ventured humbly. "'Tis so

poor a preparation for a woman's life, Georgy, to care merely for

outside loveliness. I want you to pray for a sweet, loving, grateful

nature, Georgy--not to nurse bad, revengeful thoughts."

She stared at me in profound surprise, then burst out laughing. "I

didn't know you had grown pious," she observed with a shrug; and, seeing

the fruits and confectionery piled on the table at my side, begged me to

offer her some, and fell to eating them ravenously, despite the dignity

of her sixteen years, and after devouring all she could, carried the

rest of them away in her arms.

I sat quietly thinking about her after I was left alone. I smiled to

myself at the thought of her coquettish parting glance, for I was sure

she would have kissed me again had I asked her; but I wanted no more of

her kisses, although I had found them so sweet. I seemed to have

suddenly grown stronger and wiser where she was concerned; yet I suppose

the poor truth of the matter was, that she had stung my vanity keenly,

and said little to endear herself to me in our recent interview. Her

words, instead of harming me, had roused all the resentment of the

strong vital force within me. I felt curiously stirred, almost elated,

in remembering what she had said, and contrasting her prophecies of

impotence and failure with my growing sense of power. When the door-bell

rang presently I myself hobbled across the floor on my crutches and

opened it.

Jack Holt stood there. "Why, 'tis not really you, Floyd?" he exclaimed

in surprise; and taking away one of my crutches, he himself supported

me back to my chair. "I was afraid to come in," he went on, sitting down

by my side, "lest you should already be over-tired; but if you are well

enough to see me I have something to tell you."

"Oh, I am better to-night. In fact, all at once I feel that I am not

always going to be the good-for-nothing fellow I have been of late. I

begin to have a consciousness that somewhere within me life and energy

are stirring again."

"I am so glad!" said he with a voice of some constraint, and looked at

me fixedly. "Georgy was here," he observed presently.

"Yes."

"She did you good."

"I don't know," I returned with an effort at indifference: "she may have

roused me a little."

He started up, and began to pace the floor with a flurried air quite

unusual with him, now and then stopping abruptly and seeming to bend all

his energies to the arrangement of a book or mantel-ornament, as if

their displacement caused him annoyance--conduct so unlike his ordinary

phlegmatic demeanor that I suspected him of extreme embarrassment.

"Speak out, old fellow!" said I briefly. "What's the use of all this

hesitation?"

He turned squarely round and faced me, yet did not meet my eyes, but

looked over and beyond me. I have never forgotten his face as I saw it

then: the heavy features were all fixed in sombre lines; his eyes were

like my dog Carlo's, full of honesty and patience, but I knew that he

was suffering.

"I am older than you, Floyd--" he began.

I assented: "Yes, three years older."

"Old enough," he pursued, "to have thought a good deal about the time

when I shall be an independent man. As soon as I am through college I am

to take the pistol- and rifle-factories off my father's hands. The

papers are already made out, and will be signed on my twenty-first

birthday; so from that time I shall have an income which will entitle me

to marry and settle as early as I please."

I gazed at him in profound surprise.

"You are only fifteen," he went on. "I dare say you have not thought of

marrying anybody yet."

"No indeed!" I burst out petulantly.

"I have," said he dropping his eyes. "I am older, you know, and I have

thought a good deal about it. It has seemed to me for a long time now

that but one thing could possibly happen--that I shall marry Georgy as

soon as I leave college. Her mother will let her marry no one but a man

rich enough to make her life pleasant in the world: my secure prospects

seem to justify my reliance on my chances of winning her."

"I knew you liked her," I muttered hoarsely. His words and manner

overwhelmed me with wonder.

"Yes," he went on, his dull voice gaining softer modulations, "I love

her with all my heart. You know I do: there can be no use in concealing

it. I think of nothing for myself: 'tis all for her. She--" He broke

off, growing furiously red and shamefaced, then recovered his

self-composure. "But notwithstanding all this," said he with a sad,

patient, steady face and voice, "I have decided that I ought to give her

up. It was my intention to have everything settled before I went to

college, but this afternoon I made her tell me the truth about your

accident: since then I feel that you have the first claim upon her."

"I don't know what you mean."

He smiled and shook his head. "You have lost a great deal," he returned

with unwonted tenderness: "you need much happiness, much private,

individual contentment, to enable you to bear the troubles that have

come upon you. Georgy was in a measure concerned in causing them: she

ought to make full atonement for all the harm she has done. Ever since

you came back I have felt that if I could do you any good I would cut

off my right hand to serve you. At last I see a way. If you wish it,

Floyd, the dearest wish of your heart may come to pass."

"The--dearest--wish--of--my--heart?" I stuttered. "I don't know what you

mean."

He laughed quietly. "I suspect you know all about it," he said. "You are

a quiet fellow, but I am not so blind as not to have found out that you

are in love with Georgy. But in spite of that, I used to feel, although

you are handsomer than I, and a thousand times cleverer, that I had the

first claim upon her. You are younger than she is; she will be a grown

woman while you are still a boy: in fact, there were plenty of reasons

why I never hesitated to come before you. But now I feel bound in honor

to tell you that I give her up--that--that you can--"

He paused and looked at me, believing he had said enough, but I was

stupefied by my ignorance, shyness and doubt. "Do you mean," I blurted

out, "that you will give up marrying her--that I can have her in your

place?"

"That is precisely what I mean."

"You will do nothing of the sort," I cried roughly. "Even if she cared

for me--which she does not--nothing could induce me to marry anybody,

and least of all Georgy Lenox."

For she had wounded my pride and vanity to the quick, and even the kiss

she had given me seemed a very Judas kiss of falsehood and betrayal.