CHAPTER III.

Next morning, as usual, George was up and on horseback by sunrise. Until this year he had ridden five miles a day each way to Mr. Hobby's school; but now he was so far ahead of the schoolmaster's classes that he went only a few times a week, to study surveying and the higher mathematics, and to have the week's study at home marked out for him. Every morning, however, it was his duty to ride over the whole plantation before breakfast, and to report the condition of everything in it to his mother. Madam Washington was one of the best farmers in the colony, and it was her custom, after hearing George's account at breakfast, to mount her horse and ride over the place also, and give her orders for the day.

The first long lances of light were just tipping the woods and the river when George came out, and found his horse held by Billy Lee, a negro lad of about his own age, who was his body-servant and shadow.[1] Billy was a chocolate-colored youth, the son of Aunt Sukey, the cook, and Uncle Jasper, the butler. He had but one idea and one ideal on earth, and that was "Marse George." It was in vain that Madam Washington, the strictest of disciplinarians, might lay her commands on Billy. Until he had found out what "Marse George" wanted him to do, Billy seemed unconscious of having got any orders. Madam Washington, who could awe much older and wiser persons than Billy, had often sent for the boy, when he was regularly taken into the house, and after reasoning with him, kindly explaining to him that both "Marse George" and himself were merely boys, and under her authority, would give him a stern reproof, which Billy always received in an abstracted silence, as if he had not heard a word that was said to him. Finding that he acted throughout as if he had not heard, Madam Washington turned him over to Aunt Sukey, who, after the fashion of those days with white boys as well as with black, gave him a smart birching. Billy's roars were like the trumpeting of an elephant; but within a week he went back to his old way of forgetting there was anybody in the world except "Marse George." Then Madam Washington turned him over to Uncle Jasper, who "lay" that he would "meck dat little triflin' nigger min' missis." A second and much more vigorous birching followed at the hands of Uncle Jasper, who triumphed over Aunt Sukey when Billy for two days actually seemed to realize that he had something else to do besides following George about and never taking his eyes off him. Uncle Jasper's victory was short-lived, though. Within a week Billy was as good for nothing as ever, except to George. Madam Washington then saw that it was not a case of discipline--that the boy was simply dominated by his devotion to George, and could neither be forced nor reasoned out of it. Therefore it was arranged that the care of the young master's horse and everything pertaining to him should be confided to Billy, who would work all day with the utmost willingness for "Marse George." By this means Billy was made of use. Nobody touched George's clothes or books or belongings except Billy. He scrubbed and then dry-rubbed the door of his young master's room, scoured the windows, cut the wood and made the fires, attended to his horse, and when George was there personally to direct him Billy would do whatever work he was ordered. But the instant he was left to himself he returned to idleness, or to some perfectly useless work for his young master--polishing up windows that were already bright, dry-rubbing a floor that shone like a mirror, or brushing George's clothes, which were quite spotless. His young master loved him with the strong affection that commonly existed between the masters and the body-servants in those days.

[1] In Washington's will he mentions "my man William, calling himself William Lee," and gives him his freedom, along with the other slaves, and an annuity besides: "and this I give him as a testimony of my sense of his attachment to me, and for his faithful services during the Revolutionary war."

Like Madam Washington, George was a natural disciplinarian, and himself capable of great labor of mind and body, he exacted work from everybody. But Billy was an exception to this rule. It is not in the human heart to be altogether without weaknesses, and Billy was George's weakness. When his mother would declare the boy to be the idlest servant about the place, George could not deny it; but he always left the room when there were any animadversions on his favorite, and could never be brought to acknowledge that Billy was not a much-injured boy. Serene in the consciousness that "Marse George" would stand by him, Billy troubled himself not at all about Madam Washington's occasional cutting remarks as to his uselessness, nor his father's and mother's more outspoken complaints that he "warn't no good 'scusin' 'twas to walk arter Marse George, proud as a peacock ef he kin git a ole jacket or a p'yar o' Marse George's breeches fur ter go struttin' roun' in." Aunt Sukey was very pious, and Uncle Jasper was a preacher, and held forth Sunday nights, in a disused corn-house on the place, to a large congregation of negroes from the neighboring places. But Billy showed no fondness whatever for these meetings, preferring to go to the Established Church with his young master every Sunday, sitting in a corner of the gallery, and going to sleep with much comfort and regularity as soon as he got there. Madam Washington always exacted of every one who went to church from her house that he or she should repeat the clergyman's text on coming home, and Billy was no exception to the rule. On Sunday, therefore, instead of joining the gay procession of youths and young men, all handsomely mounted, who rode along the highway after church, George devoted his time on his way home to teaching Billy the text. The boy always repeated it very glibly when Madam Washington demanded it of him, and thereby won her favor, for a short time, once a week.

On this particular morning, as George took the reins from Billy and jumped on the back of his sorrel colt, and galloped down the lane towards the fodder-field, Billy, who was keen enough where his young master was concerned, saw that he was preoccupied. Contrary to custom, he would not take his dog Rattler with him, and Billy, dragging the whining dog by the neck, hauled him back into the house and up into George's room, where the two proceeded to lay themselves down before the fire and go to sleep. An hour later the indignant Aunt Sukey found them, and but for George's return just then it would have gone hard with Billy anyhow.

As George galloped briskly along in the crisp October morning he felt within him the full exhilaration of youth and health and hope. He had not been able to sleep all night for thinking of that promised visit to Greenway Court. He had heard of it--a strange combination of hunting-lodge and country-seat in the mountains, where Lord Fairfax lived, surrounded by dependents, like a feudal baron. George had never in his life been a hundred miles away from home. He had been over to Mount Vernon since his brother Laurence's marriage, and the visit had charmed him so that his ever-prudent mother had feared that the simpler and plainer life at Ferry Farm would be distasteful to him; for Mount Vernon was a fine, roomy country-house, where Laurence Washington and his handsome young wife, both rich, dispensed a splendid hospitality. There was a great stable full of saddle-horses and coach-horses, a retinue of servants, and a continual round of entertaining going on. Laurence Washington had only lately retired from the British army, and his house was the favorite resort for the officers of the British war-ships, that often came up the Potomac, as well as the officers of the military post at Alexandria. Although he enjoyed this gay and interesting life at Mount Vernon, George had left it without having his head turned, and came back quite willingly to the sober and industrious regularity of the home at Ferry Farm. He was the favorite over all his brothers with Laurence Washington and his wife, and it was a well-understood fact that, if they died without children, George was to inherit the splendid estate of Mount Vernon. Madam Washington had been a kind step-mother to Laurence Washington, and he repaid it by his affection for his half-brothers and young sister. In those days, when the eldest son was the heir, it seemed quite natural that George, as next eldest, should have preference, and should be the next person of consequence in the family to his brother Laurence.

He spent an hour riding over the place, seeing that the fodder had been properly stripped from the stalks in a field, looking after the ferry-boats, giving an eye to the feeding of the stock and a sharp investigation of the stables, and returned to the house by seven o'clock. Precisely at seven o'clock every morning all the children, servants, and whatever guests there were in the house, assembled in the sitting-room, where prayers were read. In his father's time the master of the house had read these prayers, and after his death Laurence, as the head of the family, had taken up this duty; but since his marriage and removal to Mount Vernon it had fallen upon George.

When he entered the room he found his mother waiting for him as usual, with little Mistress Betty and the three younger boys. The servants, including Billy, who had already been reported by Aunt Sukey, were standing around the wall. After an affectionate good-morning to his mother, George, with dignity and reverence, read the family prayers in the Book of Common Prayer. His mother was as calm and as collected as usual, but in the small velvet bag she carried over her arm lay an important letter, received between the time that George left the house in the morning and his return. Prayers over, breakfast was served, George sitting in his father's place at the head of the table, and Madam Washington talking calmly over every-day matters.

"I do not know what we are to do with that boy Billy," she said. "This morning, when he ought to have been picking up chips for the kitchen, he was lying in front of your fireplace with Rattler, both of them sound asleep."

George, instead of being scandalized at this, only smiled a little.

"I do not know which is the more useless," exclaimed Madam Washington, with energy, "the dog or that boy."

George ceased smiling at this; he did not like to have Billy too severely commented on, and deftly turned the conversation: "Lord Fairfax again asked me, when we were crossing the river last night, to visit him at Greenway Court. I should like very much to go, mother. I believe I would rather go even than to spend Christmas at Mount Vernon, for I have been to Mount Vernon, but I have never been to Greenway, or to any place like it."

"The Earl sent me a letter this morning on the subject before he left Fredericksburg," replied Madam Washington, quietly.

The blood flew into George's face, but he spoke no word. His mother was a person who did not like to be questioned.

"You may read it," she continued, handing it to him out of her bag.

It was sealed with the huge crest of the Fairfaxes, and was written in the beautiful penmanship of the period. It began:

"HONORED MADAM,--The promise you graciously made me, that your eldest son, Mr. George Washington, might visit me at Greenway Court, gave me both pride and pleasure; and will you not add to that pride and pleasure by permitting him to return with me when I pass through Fredericksburg again on my way home two days hence? Do not, honored madam, think that I am proposing that your son spend his whole time with me in sport and pleasure. While both have their place in the education of the young, I conceive, honored madam, that your son has more serious business in hand--namely, the improvement of his mind, and the acquiring of those noble qualities and graces which distinguish the gentleman from the lout.

"He would have at Greenway, at least, the advantage of the best minds in England, as far as they can be writ in books, and for myself, honored madam, I will be as kind to him as the tenderest father. If you can recall with any pleasure the days, so long ago, when we were both twenty years younger, and when your friendship, honored madam, was the chief pleasure, as it always will be the chief honor, of my life, I beg that you will not refuse my request. I am, madam, with sentiments of the highest esteem,

"Your obedient humble servant, FAIRFAX."

"Have you thought it over, mother?"

"Yes, my son; but, as you know, I am a person of deliberation; I will think it over yet more."

"I will give up Christmas at Mount Vernon, mother, if you will let me go."

"I have already promised your brother that you shall spend Christmas with him, and I cannot recall my word."

George said no more. He got up, and bowing respectfully to his mother, went out. He had that morning more than his usual number of tasks to do; but all day long he was in a dream. For all his steadiness and willingness to lead a quiet life with his mother and the younger children at Ferry Farm, he was by nature adventurous, and for more than a year he had chafed inwardly at the narrow and uneventful existence which he led. He had early announced that he wished to serve either in the army or in the navy, but, like all people, young or old, who have strong determination, he bided his time quietly, doing meanwhile what came to hand. He had been every whit as much fascinated with Lord Fairfax as the elder man had been with him; and the prospect of a visit to Greenway--of listening to his talk of the great men he had known; of seeing the mountains for the first time in his life, and of hunting and sporting in their wilds; of taking lessons in fencing from old Lance; of looking over Lord Fairfax's books--was altogether enchanting. He had a keen taste for social life, and his Christmas at Mount Vernon, with all its gayety and company, had been the happiest two weeks of his life. Suppose his mother should agree to let him go to Greenway with the Earl and then come back by way of Mount Vernon? Such a prospect seemed almost too dazzling. He brought his horse down to a walk along the cart-road through the woods he was traversing while he contemplated this delightful vision; and then, suddenly coming out of his day-dream, he pulled himself together, and striking into a sharp gallop, tried to dismiss the subject from his mind. This he could not do, but he could exert himself so that no one would guess what was going on in his mind, and in this he was successful.

Two o'clock was the dinner-hour at Ferry Farm, and a few minutes before that time George walked up from the stables to the house. Little Betty was on the watch, and ran down to the gate to meet him. Their mother, looking out of the window, saw them coming across the lawn, arm in arm, Betty chattering like a magpie, and George smiling as he listened. They were two of the handsomest and healthiest and brightest-eyed young creatures that could be imagined, and Madam Washington's heart glowed with a pride which she believed sinful, and strove unavailingly to smother.

At dinner Madam Washington and George and Betty talked, the three younger boys being made to observe silence, after the fashion of the day. Neither Madam Washington nor George brought up the subject of the Earl's visit, although it was a tremendous event in their quiet lives. But little Betty, who was the talkative member of the family, at once began on him. His coach and horses and outriders were grand, she admitted; but why an Earl, with bags of money, should choose to wear a plain brown suit, no better than any other gentleman, Mistress Betty vowed she could not understand. His knee-buckles were not half so fine as George's, and brother Laurence had a dozen suits finer than the Earl's.

"His sword-hilt is worth more than this plantation," remarked George, by way of mitigating Betty's scorn for the Earl's costume. Betty acknowledged that she had never seen so fine a sword-hilt in her life, and then innocently remarked that she wished she were going to visit at Greenway Court with George. George's face turned crimson, but he remained silent. He was a proud boy, and had never in his life begged for anything, but he wanted to go so badly that the temptation was strong in him to mount his horse, without asking anybody's leave, and taking Billy and Rattler with him, start off alone for the mountains.

Dinner was over presently, and as they rose, Madam Washington said, quietly:

"My son, I have determined to allow you to join Lord Fairfax, and I have sent an inquiry to him, an hour ago, asking at what time to-morrow you should meet him in Fredericksburg. You may remain with him until December; but the first mild spell in December I wish you to go down to Mount Vernon for Christmas, as I promised."

George's delight was so great that he grew pale with pleasure. He would have liked to catch his mother in his arms and kiss her, but mother and son were chary of showing emotion. Therefore he only took her hand and kissed it, saying, breathlessly:

"Thank you, mother. I hardly hoped for so much pleasure."

"But it is not for pleasure that I let you go," replied his mother, who, according to the spirit of the age, referred everything to duty. "'Tis because I think my Lord Fairfax's company will be of benefit to you; and as there is but little prospect of a school here this winter, and I have made no arrangements for a tutor, I must do something for your education, but that I cannot do until after Christmas. So, as I think you will be learning something of men as well as of books, I have thought it best, after reflecting upon it as well as I can, to let you go."

"I will promise you, mother, never to do or say anything while I am away from you that I would be ashamed for you to know," cried George.

Madam Washington smiled at this.

"Your promise is too extensive," she said. "Promise me only that you will _try_ not to do or say anything that will make me ashamed, and that will be enough."

George colored at these words, as he answered, quickly: "I dare say I promised too much, and so I will accept the change you make."

Here a wild howl burst upon the air. Billy, who had been standing behind George's chair, understood well enough what the conversation meant, and that he was to be separated until after Christmas from his beloved "Marse George." Madam Washington, who had little patience with such outbreaks of emotion, sharply spoke to him: "Be quiet, Billy!"

Billy's reply was a fresh burst of tears and wailing, which brought home to little Betty that George was about to leave them, and caused her to dissolve into tears and sobs, while Rattler, running about the room, and looking from one to the other, began to bark furiously.

Madam Washington, standing up, calm, but excessively annoyed at this commotion in her quiet house, brought her foot down with a light tap, which, however, meant volumes. Uncle Jasper too appeared, and was about to haul Billy off to condign punishment, when George intervened.

"Hold your tongue, Billy," he said; and Billy, digging his knuckles into his eyes, subsided as quietly as he had broken forth.

"Now go up to my room, and take the dog, and stay there until I come," continued George.

Billy obeyed promptly. Betty, however, having once let loose the floodgates, hung around George's neck and wept oceans of tears. George soothed her as best he could, but Betty would not be comforted, and was more distressed than ever when, in a little while, a note arrived from Lord Fairfax, saying he would leave Fredericksburg the next morning at sunrise, if it would be convenient to Mr. Washington to join him then.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

BY MARGARET SUTTON BRISCOE.

I.

The Right Rev. Bishop Hegan and his younger brother were holding a family conclave in the Bishop's library, one at each side of the sermon-strewn writing-table.

"I may be wrong," the younger man was saying, "but I see no better way out of my difficulty. My dear brother, you pray every Sunday for fatherless children and widows; why don't you mention widowers and motherless children; they are in far more need of help."

"It is hard," said the Bishop, sympathetically; "but I am afraid you are making your path harder by this last move."

Mr. Hegan made no effort to contradict his brother. "I see no better way," he repeated. "I went to Mildred's, and there found Tom, a boy of eighteen, eating his ten-o'clock breakfast--quail on toast. I picked Master Tom up with me and went on. At Jane's I found my four other young ones. But you have seen for yourself how I found them."

The Bishop laughed genially. "There was nothing to worry you in their training."

"No, for there was none. Perhaps I ought to have let their mother's sister bring them up as she offered."

"Whip them up, you mean," said the Bishop.

"Exactly; that's why I refused. It was good of my sisters to take my children for me; but they are not as their mother left them."

"No," said the Bishop, shaking his head; "they have lost what cannot be replaced. I suppose, Tom, you are not thinking of marrying again?" The brothers talked together with the utmost freedom, the younger answering the point-blank question as frankly as it was asked.

"I had thought of that, but the chances seemed to me as even that a step-mother would make the children unhappy as that my plan may. Joan is now--let me see--sixteen years old. She ought not to study this year; she is not as strong as she should be. She has been growing too fast and thinking too hard. The change to a year of home life and home cares will do her good."

"Is Joan to keep your house?"

"That was my idea. Jane has been filling her little head with romances, and letting her talk freely with the servants at the same time, until her conversation is a grotesque mixture of cultivation and picturesque terms culled from the servants' hall. Tom hears her in horror. But he needs to be shocked, so that's one good gained. I shall take Tom out to the furnaces with me, and start him with a crowbar in his hand to work his way up. It's the only chance for redeeming him. I haven't broken that piece of news to him yet. He thinks he is to go to college. I don't dare to send him there in his present trim. Milly has meant well, but she has almost ruined my boy with her money. Jane has done less harm to the others, but I must have my children with me for a year at least to straighten them out, and then I can decide what each one needs."

The Bishop looked grave. "It seems to me an awful experience ahead for you, and a pretty hard one for the young people, Tom. Aren't you just a little severe on them?"

"I don't think so; I know I don't mean to be. The truth is they have lost their dear mother, and life must be hard for us all at present. I think they ought to take their share of it. Shirking their burden, as I have been letting them, was certainly doing them harm. We are a motherless brood, and a motherless brood we will be, and work it out together."

The elder brother looked tenderly across the table at the younger. "You are a brave fellow, Tom. God bless you and your undertaking! I can't help feeling it's a wild experiment, but, as you have the courage to conceive it, you may have the character to bring it to a good end. Now that you have your little brood all collected here, let them roost in the garret as long as you like, and draw a free breath before you plunge in. Here come the youngsters now."

The study door was banged open, and three little children, two boys and a girl, hurtled into the room. The elder children were dragging the baby girl between them, and they were followed by Joan, who had plainly set out with the intention of quelling the riot, but forgot her errand by the way, and now wandered in dreamily after the procession. The Bishop's quiet study, kept always by his housekeeper as a half-sacred retreat, buzzed as if blue-bottle flies had flown in.

"Godfather, we can play here, can't we?"

The Bishop was godfather to all his brother's children.

"Play here? No, my dears," said the Bishop, promptly; "you cannot. See! I tied my manuscript scissors to my desk yesterday, because-- Well, you two boys know why; and now somebody has most impudently cut the string with those very same scissors, and they are off again. This will not do, gentlemen--it will not do."

The Bishop was afraid of no man, woman, or child either; for, strange to say, it is not uncommon to find those who are bold with grown people fearful with little folk.

Mr. Hegan laughed to see his two stormy boys stand staring solemnly and guiltily at their uncle. "I wish I had your royal talent," he said. "I never shall make myself loved yet respected as you do. Once, twenty years ago, you found me shoving about some of your papers on this very desk, and I took a long walk afterward, and crept in at the back door when I came home. I loved you just as dearly, but I never touched your desk papers again, any more than my boys will your scissors."

"Dear! dear! I must have a frightful temper," said the Bishop, easily. "Tom, suppose you wake Joan. But the child has a lovely face when she sleeps awake, hasn't she?"

"Joan!" called Mr. Hegan; "my child!"

Joan turned with a start. She had been standing gazing up at a picture that hung over the Bishop's head. The painting was a spiritual yet spirited conception of the manly Maid of Orleans, with a peculiarly delicate shading of her womanliness into the warlike pose.

"Father," said Joan, as she turned--her voice cooed like a wood-pigeon's--"did you ever see such a perfect picture? Can't the children go out now? They are getting so fritty in the house."

There was no break between the sentences, only a change of tone.

"Fritty?" asked her uncle. "What's fritty, pray?"

"I don't know. I always say that. Frightfully fretful, I suppose. They certainly are that. It's not really raining now, father." She walked to the window. "Just a kinder drizzle-drazzle, slightly drippy-drap."

The father and uncle exchanged glances and waited; but Joan, turning back, was again absorbed in the painting above them, and saw nothing.

"We are talking about the weather, my dear," said Mr. Hegan, dryly, and Joan flushed as she roused again. "Does their nurse think the children should go out?"

Joan laughed aloud. She had a child's laugh. "Lolly? Why, father, Lolly doesn't know anything. You wrote Aunt Jane you would rather the children had a stupid nurse than a bright one who would force them forward, so we chose out Lolly, and indeed, father, you've got your rather." She laughed out again--with no impertinence, but an open enjoyment that anything should be expected of Lolly.

"Is this the nurse you expect to keep?" asked the Bishop of his brother.

Mr. Hegan looked troubled. Joan watched him anxiously, and with a swift keenness of expression that surprised and pleased her uncle.

"Father," she said, seriously, "I haven't asked what your plans are, but whatever they may be, don't part with Lolly. She's half a fool, but she bathes the children beautifully, and keeps their clothes nice, and they love her just as the baby loves her cribby-house. She is so soft and kind and pleasant to them. I always--or Aunt Jane--decide things."

Again the brothers exchanged glances, as Joan stooped to extricate the baby, who had been tilted over into the scrap-basket.

"She looked a woman as she said that," whispered the Bishop, "and like a child the moment before."

"She is both," said the father. "Joan, sit here a moment, my dear. We want to talk with you. Your uncle does not approve what I am going to do, but I have decided, if you feel able to undertake it, to let you drop study for a year, and keep house for me and the children. What do you say? Could you 'decide things' without Aunt Jane?"

To the disappointment of those who were closely watching her on this test question, Joan's radiant delight rose as a screen before any latent capacity she might have shown.

"Oh dear father, is it true? Oh, godfather, I am so happy! Children, children, listen--"

"Let her alone," said the Bishop; "we can only tell by waiting. She is a sweet-hearted child, if she does use extraordinary language, and she still will be sweet if she should utterly fail you in housekeeping. Remember that, Tom."

"But she also shows a lovely and cultivated mind at times," insisted the father.

"Well, not to me as yet," denied the Bishop, laughingly. "'Fritty'--'Drippy-drap'--'drizzle-drazzle'! Nevertheless, you are right to forbid her to study for a time. She has sombre shadows under her eyes that add to her peculiar style of beauty, but they must be painted out by a good common rose-color. Now, Tom, take yourself and your children and your affairs out of my study and my head--out of my heart you never go--but this sermon must be written."

"Oh, just one minute," begged Joan, "Father, what about Tom?"

"He is to be with us. I shall take him on the furnace work with me. But don't mention that to him yet, Joan; I charge you carefully not to tell him."

Joan's face was a flushed joy. "Not for the world. How happy, happy, happy we shall all be together! Tom's coming is my last straw of joy."

"Godfather," pleaded the baby, with hands held up, "you tarry me up 'tairs."

Godfather flung the baby up to his tall broadcloth shoulder, and the whole cavalcade trooped to the stairs, the baby the centre of attraction. Joan, running on ahead, stood smiling from the upper landing, her arms held down for the crowing baby girl, whom she clasped and carried away to bed.

Presently from the highest landing, where the children were quartered, Joan's still sweet tones floated down as if remonstrating against some action of her brother's.

"Tom, Tom, you mustn't grab baby like that with a pin in your coat. Why, I wouldn't keep pins in my clothes any more than I would a hoppy-toad. Sure to scratch baby. Well, dear boy, if you don't like my ways, don't swing on my gate. When you strain my hinges, they creak."

"No lack of spirit, at any rate," laughed the Bishop. "Cheer up, Tom. I am more anxious now for your boy than for your girl. I think she'll do."

At that moment, in the garret nursery, temporarily fitted up for the children's use, Tom's boy was talking with Joan in a way momentous to both. He was a handsome, finely built young fellow, with the look of half-sulky defiance which marks the boy who, for one reason or another, has yet to earn his real manhood.

"So that's the plan for you and the kids, eh? I'm glad for you, Joan, if you like it. I wish I knew what college father will decide to send me to. I can't understand why he won't let me choose. And he was so odd at Aunt Milly's; he swept me away before I had really finished my breakfast, and sat watching me eat with his face like a thunder-cloud."

Joan's heart contracted with a quick fear of unhappy possibilities which had not before occurred to her. What had seemed ideal to her was not, she began to realize, Tom's ideal. She controlled herself to reply.

"What were you eating?" she asked, practically.

"Quail on toast; and there was no harm in that. You would have thought he had caught me picking a pocket. He was closeted for a long time with Aunt Milly, and she came out crying, and told me father meant to take me from her at once. Did you know Aunt Milly wanted to adopt me?"

Joan raised her eyes with the rare searching look her uncle had admired. "You would not like that?" she stated rather than asked.

Tom shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know. It would mean money to burn."

"It would mean hearts to burn," replied Joan, quickly. "Tom, _would_ you like it?" She looked in his face with pleading anxiety.

Tom melted. "No, I would hate it. I'm immensely proud of being my father's son. Do you happen to know how father got his first promotion? Uncle told me to-day. He wasn't very much older than I when he went to work. The furnace he was in charge of was cooling fast, and they couldn't control it. He had barrels of oil hoisted to the top of the furnace, and with his own hands he flung them down into the red-hot opening. It saved the company thousands; but what I liked was his doing it himself, and not sending some poor devil of a workman to do it for him."

Joan's dark cheek flushed. "Wasn't that fine? Tom, there are two things I do envy you the chance of doing. Poor me! I shall never be able to do anything fine like that, and I never can knock anybody down. I always wanted to be able to hit out from the shoulder if I needed to, and do deeds of valor like Joan of Arc. Uncle has the most perfect picture of her."

"Don't talk like that, Joan," said Tom, with a humorous look at her. He was at times strikingly like his uncle, with the same unconscious air of gentle breeding, quite different from the man-of-the-world manner he affected whenever he remembered it. "I want you to be like other girls. Fellows don't like peculiar women, and I want my sister to be a toast among my college friends. I suppose father will let me fill the house for the holidays. There's good shooting down there, isn't there?"

"I don't know," said Joan.

"Joan," said Tom, in a still voice, "what are you crying about? You know something you are not telling me, Joan. What is it?"

"Indeed, Tom--"

"Don't try to tell stories, Joan; you don't know how to. Father has some plan for me that I won't like, and you know what it is."

"Oh, Tom, why do you say that; what have I said?"

"Nothing. That's just the trouble. If you don't know anything, deny it." Another long and, to Joan, terrible stillness. "Does father want me to go to work half educated, as he did? There is no earthly necessity for it, as there was with him. If you don't answer, Joan, I shall know that's his plan."

Joan wrung her hands in speechless agony.

"It's a piece of rank tyranny," said Tom, between his teeth. "I won't submit to it, and I shall tell father so this minute. I won't be planned for over my head."

He had accepted the facts as if Joan had told him of them in so many words. Joan had a vague sense that she was being horribly wronged, or that she was wronging some one, her over-tender conscience leading her to settle in the latter conviction. She was trying to clasp Tom's arm and hold him back with sobbing entreaties, but he would not be held. The little baby sister, attracted half pleasurably by the emotion she saw between her elders, had drawn near, and was staring up at them round-eyed. Tom stubbed his toe over her as he made for the door, and did not stop for more than a hasty glance, which told him the baby was more angry than hurt. It was Joan who picked up the child, and the two sobbed together, with their faces tucked each into the other's soft neck.

"Oh," sobbed the elder sister, "don't cry, little sister, don't cry. Big sister wants to think!"

Tom meantime was allowed no preparation between his discovery and his interview with his father, for he stumbled against Mr. Hegan in the lower hall as he had on the baby in the nursery, with the difference that the father not only withstood the shock, but caught his son by the shoulder, steadying him. So the two came face to face and eye to eye in actual arm's-length of each other.

"What's the matter?" asked Mr. Hegan; and Tom knew he was not referring to their bodily encounter.

"Joan has been telling me--" he blurted out.

Mr. Hegan's hands dropped. He knew at once what was referred to. "Joan told you!" he exclaimed.

Tom recovered his wits and his generosity. "No, no! I mean I wormed it out of her. She did not mean to tell anything."

"Did you twist her arm or pinch her?"

"Father!"

"It amounts to the same thing. As you have succeeded in 'worming out' of Joan--I use your own terms--what I wanted to tell you myself, suppose we talk it all over now and settle it here."

Mr. Hegan moved to the hall window, leaning against one side of the frame. His tone of cold contempt stung like a whip, and matters did not mend as they progressed. To Tom it was as if the world were at stake, and Mr. Hegan, in a few terse matter-of-fact sentences, was making his will known. The boy broke in at last, unable to wait for a proper pause:

"You had not a college education yourself, sir, or you would realize why I feel it so important."

The tone was not respectful, and Mr. Hegan's brow reddened slightly, but his voice was as even as before: "Does the anticipation of a college education give so much experience? Perhaps I value what I lost more than if I had enjoyed it. You cannot possibly place more importance on education than I do, for you have not felt the handicap of its lack. But, though you will not now believe it, there are things more important. For my own reasons, and thoughtfully"--Mr. Hegan's voice grew warmer and his manner more fatherly--"I have decided, Tom, that you must just now begin as your father began."

Tom looked up steadily in his father's face.

"Had you considered that I might refuse, sir?"

Mr. Hegan did not again change color, though now the disrespect was marked. He looked at his son calmly, as he might at a stranger.

"No," he replied, quietly. "I had not considered that for a moment."

Tom strove in vain to render his own tones as quiet. "What is there to prevent my refusing? What is to prevent my acceptance of Aunt Milly's offer of adoption?"

"Nothing," answered Mr. Hegan, as quietly as before. "Your Aunt Milly would be glad to take you back on any terms, pleasant or offensive to me, and once back with her, I assure you I would not move a finger to dislodge you."

In spite of his resentment at fatherly control, this announced indifference cut the son to the quick. He flung back his head.

"I will go at once," he said.

"No," replied Mr. Hegan, "you will not."

"Why not?" asked Tom, and could have choked himself for the involuntary question.

"You will not go simply because I forbid it."

At the simple words Tom's heart stood still. A quick conviction seized him that he would for some unknown reason have to obey this calm command as absolutely as it was given. At the bare mental suggestion a great anger and defiance surged within him. He knew then that he had touched the crisis. It was then or never--freedom or bondage. Hot words that were to cut him loose from all authority were on his tongue, and he opened his lips to say them. Mr. Hegan's calm eyes were fixed on his face. To the boy's amazement, defiant words would not come. In their place, as he gasped in his effort, there was something else--a wordless, voiceless sound tearing its way through his throat and choking an outlet at his lips. Tom was leaning against the window opposite his father, sobbing like a beaten child. In the depths of his mortification, the confusion of his abrupt downfall, he heard his father's footsteps pass by him, leaving the hall. For the first time in his prosperous life Tom had been knocked down flat--in spirit. He was quivering in every nerve with the shock of failure, yet he felt a strange new sense of power. He had measured his strength for the first time against a more powerful nature, and, though beaten, he was stronger for the struggle, and he knew it. There was something in the experience that had developed while it humbled him.

In the Bishop's study Joan was also taking her first lesson in the new life, but she had a different teacher, and her lesson was shorter. He had always been easy for her to talk with, and a few questions drew forth the true state of the case.

"The young rascal!" said the Bishop.

"Do you," sobbed Joan--"do you think father will be harsh with him?"

"I don't doubt it for a moment," said the Bishop, cheerfully. "Tom will be treated to just enough punishment, and not a grain too much."

Her uncle laid his hand tenderly on her dark head. "See here, my little girl," he said, "I want you to take life less heroically. I am going to give you a token to remind you of this. You keep looking up at my Joan of Arc. Well, she is yours. No, you must accept it, for I can spare her easily. I don't care to own too many impediments in my walk through the world. You must hang the picture in your own room; and whenever you look at it I want you to say to yourself, not Joan of Arc, but--Joan of Home. You don't understand what I mean just yet, but some day as you say this you will understand suddenly, and better than if I had explained it. Now run away, my dear."

"Dear! dear!" thought the Bishop to himself, as he shut his study door, "Brother Tom has plainly been reading the riot act. I wonder if his boy will ever make him another declaration of independence?" His eye fell on the calendar on his desk, and he raised his eyebrows, smiling. "Why," he said, "what a man of peace I am! It's the great Fourth of July, and I never realized it. Well, Tom and his family have been Celebrating and Declaring enough for us all. I wonder how it will end?"

II.

"Now, Joan, I think the table looks as if a butler had set it," said Tom, as he arranged the napkins in little hillocks.

"You are awfully good to me, Tom. Indeed, I couldn't keep house without you. I hardly knew a carafe from a finger-bowl until you taught me. Aunt Jane never thought or cared for such things."

"Aunt Milly never thought or cared for anything else," said Tom. "If I've taught you some things, you've untaught me more, Joan. Anyhow, what good does it do a man to know how to serve a dinner? It doesn't help me to sledge."

"Perhaps it does. Father said yesterday that you were more accurate in sledging than any man on the works."

Tom glowed with pleasure. "Did he say that?" he said, eagerly; then he laughed. "Suppose a year ago any one had told me I should blush with pride at praise for sledging! By-the-way, I want to remind you, Joan, you mustn't yawn in his lordship's face this evening when you begin to get sleepy. If I know him, he wouldn't like it at all, and it's not polite. I've told you that so often, why don't you stop it?"

"I can't," said Joan, sorrowfully. "I have tried to close my mouth and let it go out at my ears, as you said, but I feel as if I were turning inside out like a popcorn."

"You had better turn inside out than be rude, Aunt Milly would tell you. Joan, do you know we have both changed in this year? Here we are, you sniffing at Aunt Jane's housekeeping, and I at Aunt Milly's eternal little fixings. I don't say that was nice of us, but it does mark a change. You know we have thought our respective aunts perfection."

Joan looked troubled, and was attempting an explanation--she could not think so fast as Tom--when the front door opened, and her father's voice announced the arrival of their expected guest. Joan paused to give a quick glance around the room. Everything was ready: the dinner, she knew, prepared to serve in a moment; the baby in bed; the little boys--externally--in perfect order. "Tom, do you think they'll behave decently?" she asked, with a young mother's anxious glance at the boys.

"I don't see why they should," Tom rejoined, cheerfully--"they never have."

"Indeed, Tom, Robert sometimes makes me doubt the efficacy of prayer. Every night he asks God to make him a good boy, but I don't see any improvement in him. Do you?"

Joan spoke earnestly, but Tom laughed. "Don't you worry, Joan. Uncle is a man of the world: he always understands everything."

If Bishop Hegan did not understand everything, he understood a great deal with no questions asked, and he nodded silent congratulations to his brother across the dinner table. When the meal was ended the Bishop said:

"I think I will go to bed with the chickens and the children," said Bishop Hegan. "I am a tired man to-night. Tom--young Tom, I mean--suppose you come help me to take off my apron. Lord Bishops wear aprons, Tom, don't they?" He looked at his nephew with a twinkle in his eye.

"I don't know, sir; I never unfrocked one before," retorted Tom, and then gasped at his own audacity. He would never have ventured so reckless a jest with his father. The Bishop was different somehow--more like himself, and in a degree like Aunt Milly. As he led his uncle to his room, Tom felt with a pleasurable excitement that it was to be a brief return to the world from his work-a-day life.

"Suppose we talk about Joan," said the Bishop. "She looks well--very well--quite like a little milkmaid."

"That's just the trouble," said Tom, plunging eagerly into the subject, as one near to his heart. "Why, uncle, she's a perfect tomboy. Do you know, Joan is seventeen years old, and there's not a romance in the house she hasn't read, and not a tree in the country round that she can't and don't climb. You heard her change the subject when father asked where the cherries came from that we had at dinner."

"No," answered the Bishop. "You see, I am not sufficiently a member of the family to take in all these shibboleths."

"They came from a tree she was ashamed to say she had climbed. Those cherries--I recognized them--are almost never gathered, because there's not a boy around here who likes to climb that tree. Do you think she ought to run wild like that? I don't mean she doesn't do finely at home, for she does--just as well as she can--that is--" Tom's truth forced the amendment. "Father's awfully good to her. He keeps a chair by his study desk for her, that she calls her thinking-chair, and when she's in any home trouble she slips in there and sits by him to think it over. Sometimes she consults father, but as often she doesn't say a word. She seems to get help from him without that. I suppose you have seen how very fond they are of each other."

The Bishop was winding his watch, and looking about the bedroom to which Tom had led him. "That's nice," he said. "Where's your thinking-chair?"

The question came so suddenly, and the look which went with it was so kindly searching, that Tom stammered out the truth with a rush: "Father and I are not confidential like that. But it's a mercy that Joan is his favorite. You see, she's so dreamy she's apt to blunder, and if she were not a favorite with him it would be frightfully hard for her."

"Is it frightfully hard for you?" asked the Bishop.

"Sometimes," said Tom, truthfully. He spoke candidly, but with a reserve which his uncle respected.

"Wouldn't you miss Joan sadly if she were to be sent away?" he asked. "You seem to depend on each other."

The older man noted the swift change in the young face near him.

"I can't think about that. No human being knows what Joan has done for me this year. She seemed always to divine just when I couldn't stand things any longer, and there she is by me. I suppose I shouldn't let her be around those rough furnaces so much, but I never can send her away. It made me ashamed the other day when I found she could stand as much of the furnace gas in her lungs as I. You see, she always comes at the worst times to bring me lemonade or something of that sort. The thirst in those gases is awful."

"Yet you think she ought to go elsewhere?"

The answer came unhesitatingly: "I know it. This is no way to bring up a girl."

"I'm not so sure," said the Bishop, easily. "It depends on the girl."

But Tom, his tongue once loosened, went on: "Now if she could spend one year with Aunt Milly--"

The Bishop's mouth twitched. "Well, now, it would be rather funny, wouldn't it, to have the life here curing what was bad for you in your Aunt Milly's training, and Aunt Milly's training curing what is bad for Joan in the life here; No, no; your Aunt Milly would suit for some girls, but not for Joan. She is a little oddity, and not very strong in body. She needs odd treatment. Your father sees that. Let her read and climb all she chooses, but a governess with no domestic authority might be an advisable addition to the family. I'll suggest that to your father; and tell him too that while Joan talks more carefully than a year ago, she has to-night informed me that the baby is the 'very spit of father.'" The Bishop smiled at the memory. "That won't do, of course. Why haven't you talked Joan over with your father?"

"I should as soon think of advising the Pope, uncle. My father," he added, with a little unconscious wistfulness that caught the listener's quick ear--"my father is the finest man I know, but he is not easy to talk with, as you are."

The unconscious comparison did not offend the Bishop. He sat thoughtful for a while before he replied. "I want to tell you something to remember," he said at last. "Some day you and your father will come together, and be all the closer for the momentum you get by being separate now. I know he is a silent man, but wait until you get at what is behind his silence, as I have. Did I ever show you any of his letters to me? I suppose he lets himself out in them as nowhere else, and some of them I have laid away for you children when you are older. Let me see; I think I can show you a part of one now. It struck me as so true I almost stole it for use in a sermon." He drew out some letters from his pocket, and choosing one, he turned it down between certain lines and handed it over to his nephew. Tom read with interest that grew intense as he went on.

"I am sure we both agree," the letter ran, "that the man who earns his education, and his right to eat bread and live, by the sweat of his own brow, has an enormous pull over the man whose education and buttered bread and honey are all paid for by somebody else. At the same time my boy has worked so finely, so manfully and earnestly, at the furnaces this year, I think, and you, my dear brother, will be glad to learn this, that by the coming fall I can venture to send him--"

"Where?" asked Tom, devouring the turned-down page with hungry eyes. His fingers trembled to lift the sheet.

"Dear! dear!" said the Bishop, innocently, taking the paper and folding it away. "Did I leave out something I ought to have folded down? Well, don't ask me any questions. Don't ask me. It's a very imprudent person who tells names and tales the same day. I don't think I left out the name of the college, did I? Now, my boy, be off, before my waistcoat is. How could you respect my cloth if you should see me in flannel? I must go to rest if I mean to climb that cherry-tree with Joan to-morrow, and I certainly mean to try."

Bishop Hegan was always as good as his word, generally a little better; therefore the next morning he and Joan and the little boys and Lolly and the baby were all established under the spreading branches of the cherry-tree--Joan half ashamed of the tree's proportions, but wholly happy.

"Do you always move in a caravan like this?" asked Bishop Hegan, "I felt like Father Abraham establishing a tribe as we trailed over the fields. I don't remember asking any one but you to accompany me, Joan."

"They always come too," said Joan, simply, "wherever I go. Do you really want to climb this tree, godfather? It would be a nice way for you to celebrate the Fourth of July, wouldn't it?"

"For me, as a kind of mild and clerical dissipation, I suppose," laughed the Bishop. "Bless my soul, I don't believe there is such an unpatriotic man in America as I! Last Fourth of July I forgot to celebrate at all, and here's another Fourth hours old before I realize its birth."

Joan looked at her uncle with round shocked eyes. "Why, godfather! I didn't know you'd think that a right way to feel. I make our children pray every night for our country and the President and our continued independence."

The Bishop could not restrain a smile. "My little Joan of Arc," he said, and the words struck a chord of memory with them both. "How is it with Joan of Home?"

Joan shook her head sorrowfully. "Not very well. But indeed I am trying. I keep your letters and read them over, and I say, 'Joan of Home' every time I look at my lovely Joan of Arc; but I don't see yet why you told me to do that, godfather."

"Yes, you do," said the Bishop; "at least your heart has seen, if your mind has not. What do you think as you look at the Maid?"

Joan's eyes kindled; her voice rang: "That I would love to buckle on my armor as she did, and fight for my country as she fought."

Again the Bishop had to hide a smile. "Well, don't you?"

Joan stared. "I am so stupid, godfather. I don't understand you."

"Why, sometimes I think every woman is a fighting patriot, all day and every day. Don't you buckle on your armor every morning and war with the butcher, the baker, and candlestick-maker to defend your little country in this direction and that? Every family is a small state to be governed. Don't you know that?"

Joan's face fell. "Godfather, I don't like that idea," she burst out. "There is nothing glorious in what I am doing. Of course I love helping father, but the dear children and the tradesfolk almost fray me out sometimes. I only war in the way you describe because I know I ought to."

"That's a good enough and glorious enough reason," said the Bishop. "Don't you fret, my little girl. If the chance of any kind of glory ever comes your way--and your cruel old godfather prays it never may--you won't find yourself ill prepared to meet it, if you take care of the peace duties and let the glory take care of itself."

"Yes," said Joan, humbly, "I will try. I am trying to talk better than I did, as you wrote to me I should. Do you think I have improved at all? I know I did sometimes talk to beat the band."

"Well, the last remark was not wholly guiltless," laughed the Bishop. "But never mind. You are doing very well in all ways. What a sweet-tempered child you are making of Teddy! Hear the boy now."

"Bumble-peg, bumble-peg," Teddy was calling to Robert. "Yeth, I want to play it. Oh, come an' leth play bumble-peg. What ith it?"

"He gets that from you, dear godfather," said Joan. "I don't believe there's another bishop in the world that would go out to climb trees with his niece."

"I haven't climbed yet," said the Bishop, looking up at the spreading branches and the huge bare hole of the old tree. "My dear, where do you get your first foothold?"

"Here," said Joan. "I'll show you, godfather. But you mustn't tell Tom. It was half mean of him to tell you on me about climbing this tree."

She had led her uncle to the back of the old tree, where the underbrush clustered thickly, hiding a set of heavy iron pegs, which she had driven into the trunk, one above the other, until they were like an irregular set of steps.

"I did that with a great iron hammer," said Joan. "It took a whole morning. I stood on one as I drove in the other, and I never felt so much like my Joan of Arc as then."

"I should think so," said the Bishop, looking up at the iron perches. "Personally I should think it would have been easier, and certainly more school-girlish, to content yourself with candy at home."

"I know," said Joan; "but then I never did care for candy. I always loved the works of nature better than the arts of man." She spoke so sweetly and simply that though he really started at the last words, Bishop Hegan could not find it in his heart to laugh at them. He set his foot on the first iron peg, which at once yielded under his weight.

"Dear! dear!" he said, drawing back; "my rotundity or the weight of my divinity is too much for your ladder, Joan. No wild celebrating for me to-day. By-the-way, why aren't you children blowing off your fingers and your heads on this glorious Fourth? You, of all people, Joan, should not have a toe or finger left."

"Father doesn't allow fireworks here," said Joan; "you see, he can't make any exceptions for us, as we live on the works. There are never holidays for furnaces, and he can't very well allow the furnace-men to be playing at fire-crackers. Somehow I like it quiet this way much better. We can _feel_ the day more solemnly than if we were playing all the time. I think if everybody would try to _do_ something patriotic on the Fourth of July it would be beautiful, and ever so much better than firing off shooting-crackers. But then it's awfully hard to find patriotic things to do. I've tried every year, and I have never found one yet."

"And then most of us find more satisfaction in shooting-cracker patriotism," said Bishop Hegan, dryly. "Now, little girl, up with you; let me see how you can climb."

He expected a pretty sight, but Joan's climbing was something more than that. She not only swayed from branch to branch, but fitted her slender body against limbs too large to grasp, crawling out on their limits as the tree-toad crawls. For the pure joy of motion, she worked her sinuous way to the tree-top, where no cherries grew, and back again to the limbs where they hung in clusters, which she flung down, laughing. It was not the fearless climbing of a hardy boy, but the poetry of climbing as a delicate girl might be expected to climb, but as the on-looker had never seen one venture to attempt. He felt that in a way it was scarcely human, and was glad when Joan, flushed but not breathless, dropped again at his side.

"Thank you," said the Bishop, as if he had witnessed a special benefit performance. He kept watching the young girl as she walked home quietly by his side.

"Aunt Milly!" he thought. "Fancy this bit of oddity shackled in her house! But she climbs entirely too well. Egad! it's a professional wood-nymph. She must have a governess. I wonder if she is all heroics, or if we have a mute inglorious Jeanne d'Arc in our midst. I almost wish we could prove the child."

"Come, children," said Joan, interrupting the thread of her uncle's thought. "Come, stir your little stumps. We are late for lunch, and I'm hungry. No, Lolly, it won't hurt Ted to run a little. You know, nothing ever hurts our boys. I declare, rattlesnakes run from 'em."

"She's just a little child, after all," decided the laughing Bishop, "Upon my word, I think I caught her heroics for the moment."

"Come on," said Joan, urging on the little ones. "Come on. Father must be at home by now."

She stopped short, suddenly listening, her eyes dilated. Across the fields, blown to them on the wind, came faintly the sound of a sharp shrill whistle, thrice repeated, then silence, and the same signal again.

"It's for father," said Joan, breathlessly. "Something has happened at the works."

All over the great iron-works men were hurriedly calling inquiries to one another as the shrill insistent whistle rang out with that note of alarm which danger signals seem to gain, or which the ear hears in them. The busy place roused as a humming beehive is roused by a sounded gong. All those who could, or who dared to leave their work, ran in the direction where they saw others running. Tom, dressed in his rough overalls, and with face and hands grimy from the great furnace stoves for which he was responsible, was by that responsibility tied to his post until he could leave everything in safe order. He was almost the last man free, and not until long after his patience was exhausted was he able to follow the straggling procession that led to the new fire-proof stock-house in process of erection. As he ran, Tom learned by snatches what had happened. Those dreaded poisonous gases that are the curse of the furnace-man had been insidiously leaking out from the neighboring furnace pipes, and creeping up under the iron roof of the stock-house. There they had collected as in an ether-cone, waiting to do their mischievous work. So slowly and so imperceptibly had they gathered, the men working in under the roof, riveting the huge iron girders, had labored on unconscious of the enemy surrounding them. They were not "iron-men" proper, and so less inured to the gases and less aware of their danger, the peculiarity of which is that the gases do their deadly work so swiftly when once taking hold that a man is unconscious before he knows he is actually attacked. Tom remembered one poor fellow who was sitting on a high wall eating his poor dinner-pail meal, when the gases found and caught him. It was Tom who had discovered him lying at the foot of the wall, a bit of bread still in his hand, and--Tom did not care to remember the rest, and he was glad when he reached the stock-house to see that a piece of tarpauling had been laid over a huddled something on the ground outside the house.

"Father is here," thought Tom, "or that would have been left out to gape at."

But it was not his father who was standing by the tarpauling. It was Bishop Hegan, who looked up at Tom as he would have hurried by, and beckoned to him. "Find Joan and the children," he said. "They outstripped me, and are here somewhere. Take them home. I must stay here by this poor thing. They say his wife is coming."

Bishop Hegan's face was white with pity. He took a step to the open building, and pointed up significantly. Tom lifted his eyes, and then ran forward where the crowd surged inside.

There had been three men working on the girders; now there were but two, still hanging, no one knew how, astride the great iron ribs sixty feet above the terrified eyes that watched them. They were both unconscious, as was yet another poor fellow who had tried to climb to his comrades' aid, and almost reached them, but turned back just in time, gasping and fainting. Half-way down the wall he was with difficulty rescued and lowered to safety. No one else was volunteering for the dangerous task. To climb those high sheer walls, mounting from ladder to brace, from brace to bracket, was no easy task at best for the coolest heads. The danger doubled when one climbed with nerves unhinged. Outside the building there were scaffoldings in place against the unfinished walls, but the braces on the steep roof had been removed, and to reach the unconscious men from there meant working unstayed on the verge of a precipice, and delving a way through iron plates. There seemed no choice but waiting in sickening suspense for a second tragedy, to be followed by a third.

Under the open windows and along the wall of the house Mr. Hegan was pacing up and down with an excitement which his son had never before seen. His men left a way for him, and watched him with a rude affection. Stern as he was, the safety of his men was dear to him, as they knew. He had vainly striven to raise a rescuing party, but the men hung back, he saw, in earnest. His helplessness seemed to hurt bodily.

"If I were only twenty years younger!" he was groaning as he walked.

"I am that, father. What shall I do?"

Mr. Hegan started and stood still, looking at his son in the first flush of his young manhood. He settled back against the window-frame with a deep breath.

"No," he said, hoarsely, uttering perhaps the first untruth of his manly life. "Any attempt is useless. It is throwing life away. I absolutely forbid it."

As if with a flash of memory, Tom's mind went back to that scene a year before, of which this seemed a repetition. Then, on this same historic July day, he had, with a curious appropriateness, made to his father his declaration of independence, but had met an inappropriate defeat. Then, too, they had stood, as now, by an open window, and, moved by an instinct of repetition, Tom turned to stand exactly as he had before stood, leaning against the opposite side of the frame. As he did so, he saw with what he knew was a foolish but uncontrollable flush of exultation that his eyes were on an exact level with his father's. One ambition he had achieved, but along with this growth had come another so much more important that Tom forgot all else in the exhilaration of its discovered possession.

"Father," he said, in a low tone that none the less rang with determination, "last year I didn't dare to disobey you, because I was afraid, but now--I'm not a bit afraid of you."

Mr. Hegan leaned quickly forward, and laid his hand on his boy's shoulder with a fatherly touch and an anxiety in his eyes that made Tom's heart beat high.

"I must try it, father," he said, gently, answering the questioning look. "There isn't a man here who can stand the gases as I can. I'm used to them."

Mr. Hegan bowed his head. He tried to reply quietly, but his voice broke. "You are a man," he said; "your own master. I haven't the right to say no if your courage says yes. God go with you!" He held out his hand, but turned away as if he could not see the boy's first step toward danger.

Tom grasped the hand, but did not move. "Father!" he cried, in a gasp. "Look! It is Joan!"

Mr. Hegan turned. Tom was pointing up, not at the endangered men, but to a spot on which every eye was now fixed, and to which all were pointing in turn. Further along the building and close under the roof was a small opening, left for some temporary purpose, and through this opening, by which no man could have entered, appeared the slight shoulders and the dark head they all recognized. With strong motions of her slender arms, Joan was dragging her lithe body into the building, until she lay at last flattened on the wide iron beam that separated wall from roof. From there she began to work her way along the beam towards the girder where the men still hung. Her progress, like that of a measuring-worm, was slow but sure. A light rope was coiled round and round her waist.

"She will tie them to the girders," shouted Tom. "Take courage, father; she can stand the gases as I can. Who goes up with me?"

"My goodness!" murmured the father. "Both my children!" But in a moment he was himself again--the master, the director. He stepped forward, as a captain reviewing his troops.

"Volunteers!" his commanding voice ordered, and from the mass of reluctant men sprang a dozen, stung to tardy courage. Mr. Hegan rapidly divided his forces. Half were to go with him to the outer walls and the roof, half to follow Tom, already on his way up the inner wall to Joan.

If Joan had stopped to ask herself how she came to be where she was, she could hardly have told. From the moment when she reached the stock-house and saw the poor souls dangling, as it were, between life and death, her brain had worked like a fire. She saw the small opening under the eaves, and remembering the scaffolding on the outside, realized that she could make the height of the walls in pure air. To her the gases were less terrifying because she had formed the habit of visiting Tom when the air was most foul, to carry him cooling draughts. Almost instinctively she caught up a rope, and winding it about her waist, ran to the outer wall, where she was quite alone. Never before in her childish life had she felt so little the need of advice and instruction. As each move occurred to her, she followed it instantly, and with a concise certainty as unusual to her as it was exhilarating. Never before had she climbed with such careful precision or so rapidly. Her whole soul was absorbed in the impulse of succor, which steadied while it inspired her. She did not stop to count the cost, because cost did not exist for her. Once only did she remember herself and her danger, and that was when some instinctive feeling drew her eyes down to the rescuing-band swarming up to her aid. After that one look she did not venture to measure with her eyes the dreadful distance below. She was soon on a level with those she came to reach, and breathing the same air they breathed. Used as she was to the gases, their poison was affecting her. Her breath began to come heavily, and her eyes were now and then playing her false. Joan grasped her dulling senses as with physical hands and forced them to her service until she reached the girder. To climb out upon it and to lash the men in place were all that remained for her to do. Then, if she had the strength left, she would also lash herself, and--she realized dully that she had reached the first victim.

He had fallen forward, and was caught by the breast and between the arms in the frame-work. Joan twined the rope about him and the bar, and with the loose end passed on, crawling to the next man, who lay less dangerously. He was supported astride the girder as by a miracle of balance, his back against an iron bar, his head dropped on his breast. A strange throbbing sound was troubling Joan's ears, and seemed to her to dim her powers, and make the knots her stiffened fingers tied yet more difficult. Her sight, too, was growing dimmer, as the throbbing entered into her brain with hard metallic crashings that increased in force and volume, paralyzing the will-power to which she now felt herself clinging but feebly. She tied the last knot about the unconscious man, and felt herself then stupidly trying to wind the rope's end about her own waist. The clashing in her brain grew terrible. It was like an acute suffering, than which a fall to the depths below was preferable. But, painfully forcing herself to what was now a mere duty of self-preservation, she feebly plucked at the rope, her body swaying back and forth on the girder. Suddenly she realized her swaying motion, and righted herself with a start that roused her to a full, if momentary, consciousness. She had no longer the power to even toy with the rope or stop this swaying, which she knew had begun again. The terrible crashing sound was an unbearable uproar in her ears and brain. Her head fell forward helplessly; she felt her body following, and with a great human cry of mortal fear she struggled desperately against the sinking impulse which was dragging her down, down--

A strong rough grasp was about her waist, catching her back. Tom's voice was crying her name in her ears, and a moment later the iron roof, yielding to the brave attacking of sledges and crowbars, opened above their heads. But to Joan's sick and giddy senses it was the heavens that were parting, with a tearing, rending sound, and a glory of inrushing sunlight told her that all was over. She closed her eyes, wondering vaguely at the painlessness of death, and while thus wondering lost consciousness.

When Joan awoke it was with a warm rain, dropping on her face, and she looked up into her uncle's eyes. He was kneeling by her side, bending over her. On her other side she recognized the physician of the works, and standing at her feet was Tom, his arm about his father's shoulders, supporting him. Mr. Hegan was trembling, and leaning on that support as gratefully and as naturally as if it had ever been his habit to cling to his son. A dry sob of relief broke from her father's lips as Joan opened her eyes.

"Hush!" whispered the doctor, as she looked around her amazed. A rope was knotted about her waist and the pulley block and ropes by which she had been lowered from the roof were still attached to her rope girdle.

"What is it?" she asked, in painful bewilderment. "Oh, what is all this?"

The doctor bent to speak to her soothingly, but Bishop Hegan motioned him back.

"It is your unbuckled armor, my little Joan," he said. "You have had your wish for glory, Joan."

Joan lay still, looking up at him, her eyes growing larger and deepening with intelligence as her memory returned. Suddenly she cried: "I remember now. Are the men safe?"

"They are recovering," Mr. Hegan tried to say, but his voice failed as he spoke.

"And who saved me?"

"Your brother," answered Bishop Hegan. "Six other men ran to your help, but four gave out, and Tom outstripped the other two by yards of climbing. He caught you just as you were falling, and handed you out to a rescue party on the roof."

Joan looked affectionately at her brother. "I'd have done the same for him," she said, simply. Her glance travelled on to her father's white face and shaking hands. She sat upright suddenly, anxious and inquiring. "Why, father dear, what ever's the matter? You are just as white and jumpity as you can be. I never saw you like this. You haven't had any lunch, have you? Well, I think we all had better go home to eat something. I'm awfully hungry myself. Help me up, Tom." The elders hung back as the two young people drew together.

Bishop Hegan held out his hand--the brothers stood clasping each other.

"God bless my boy!" said Mr. Hegan, feelingly. "He has earned his independence, if ever a man did." The Bishop was openly wiping his eyes.

"God bless my little girl! She may be as romantic as a milkmaid, and talk like a sailor-taught parrot if she chooses, with no more scoldings from me. My dear Tom, it's the Fourth of July. Do you remember how one year ago to-day you were laying down the law to the young rebels?"

"Yes, I remember, and to-day they are playing Washington to my King George."

"Well, not exactly," said the Bishop. "You see, you were imposing nothing unreasonable last year."

Mr. Hegan laughed. "Exactly what King George said, I have no doubt. Let me acknowledge it when my reign is justly over. Tom shall go to college in the fall, and Joan--she shall decide for herself on a governess. My two eldest are now a man and a woman, not my children after to-day. Shall we go to luncheon? When the heroine of the hour calls loudly for bread and beef we old folks needn't stop to be sentimental."

"I suppose," said the Bishop, "that Independent States and States of Independence are nearly the same thing. Are we to have a celebration?"

"Undoubtedly," laughed Mr. Hegan. "There are our conquerors calling us. Yes, children, we are coming."

FREDDY SOLILOQUIZES--JULY 4, 1896.

He's a very wise man, The Calendar Man; He fixes the year just right; He has a good plan, As every one can Discern at the very first sight.

He knows that the very best days of the year Are Christmas and Fourth of July, And it would have been very unpleasant and queer If he'd gone and arranged 'em close by.

But with one in December and the other one now, The calendar's all right for fun. There's time to recover from one, anyhow, Before the other's begun.

RICK DALE.

BY KIRK MUNROE,

AUTHOR OF "SNOW-SHOES AND SLEDGES," "THE FUR-SEAL'S TOOTH," "THE 'MATE' SERIES," "FLAMINGO FEATHER," ETC.