CHAPTER IV.

IN THE SHADOW OF THE GREAT WHITE MESA.

For many hours Todd Chalmers slept heavily and dreamlessly, like one who will never again awaken. He had wandered blindly with reeling steps for some time after losing a consciousness of his surroundings, and had thus unwittingly penetrated a deep cleft of the great white wall that was the last thing upon which his despairing gaze had rested. At the inner end of this recess he stumbled and fell over a fragment of rock. There he lay through the long night in what was, to all appearance, his last sleep.

That it was not was owing wholly to his youth and the wonderful vitality of a splendid constitution. Not more than one person in a thousand would have lived to see another daylight under the circumstances; but our lad was that one, and at length he began to show signs of returning life. He moaned, shivered, and finally opened his eyes. For many minutes he lay motionless, striving to remember what had happened and where he was.

At length he slowly and painfully sat up. His head ached as though it would split, his eyes were blurred, his lips and tongue were swollen, and his limbs were heavy as lead. Still, his long rest, together with the chill of the night just passed, had restored him to life and to a certain degree of strength.

Now, with the encouragement of even a slight amount of hope, he would be ready to renew his struggle against the death that had so nearly overpowered him.

Thus thinking, Todd withdrew his eyes from the picture of glistening desolation disclosed through the narrow entrance of the cavern, and began listlessly to examine his more immediate surroundings. Slowly his gaze roved over the hopeless walls of rock, that rose so high as to be lost in gloom, and it was not until he had turned so as to look squarely behind him that he found anything to arrest his attention. Then his curiosity was aroused by a gleam of reflected light coming from beyond and over a rocky barrier that formed a rear wall of the cavern. This barrier did not appear to be more than ten or twelve feet high, while above it was an open space of a few feet more, through which streamed the light that indicated an opening of some kind beyond.

Whatever might lie in that direction, it could not be worse than the desert over which he had come, and it might be better. Of course that was not at all likely, for he did not believe there was anything but desert in that country. Still, it was worth investigating, and as Todd did not feel strong enough to stand, he crawled painfully to the barrier and up its easy slope.

Arrived at the top, and looking through the opening, he was greeted by a sight so amazing that he gazed at it for nearly a minute in breathless incredulity before he could believe in its reality. Instead of the desert that he had expected, it seemed as though the very gates of heaven had been suddenly opened to him.

Outspread before his astonished eyes was one of the loveliest valleys in the world, filled with flowers, green grass, and waving trees. It was not more than half a mile in width, and was bounded on the further side by another lofty wall of white rock, similar to the one he had just penetrated. The same wall extended entirely around the upper end of the valley, which Todd could see on his left, though to the right it stretched away beyond his range of vision, still enclosed by parallel walls of sheer cliffs. Though most of it still lay in cool shadow, certain portions of the verdant landscape were already sparkling in the morning sunlight, and from all sides came the joyous song of birds. No smoke rose from any part of the valley that he could see, neither was there any sign of human habitation nor sound of voices. All was as fresh and peaceful as though it were a new creation; but even if he had been confronted by opposing ranks of enemies, Todd would not have hesitated to scramble down the opposite slope and enter what still seemed to him the vale of enchantment. Its abounding verdure indicated the presence of water, for which our poor lad was longing so desperately that he would have thrown away life itself in an effort to obtain it.

He had already regained the use of his limbs, and after a minute of gazing, amazed and incredulous, he started in search of the life-giving fluid, instantly forgetful of feebleness, aches, pains, and everything else save the awful thirst by which he was choked. So concentrated were his thoughts upon this one subject that he failed to realize that he was following a distinctly marked pathway. Such was the fact, however, and after a hundred yards it led him to the edge of that most beautiful thing in all the world, especially when found in a land of deserts, a spring of pure cool water. It bubbled up from a bed of exquisitely colored sand, and was neatly walled about with rock.

It was fortunate that Todd plunged his whole head into the spring in his frantic eagerness to drink of its water, for he was compelled to withdraw it, gasping for breath before he had drunk a tenth part of what he craved. Much as he longed to drink, and drink until he could hold no more, he had sense enough to realize the danger of such a proceeding, and the strength of will to restrain himself. So he only lay beside the delicious spring, bathing his face and dabbling his hands in it, taking moderate drinks at half-minute intervals, and feeling with each one a new life coursing through his veins.

For an hour he remained thus in perfect contentment, devoutly thankful for his wonderful deliverance from an awful death, and gaining strength with every minute. Then the sensation of thirst gave way to that of hunger. He had not thought of it before, but now he knew that he was starving, and must eat something, even if it were only grass. So he stood up and looked about him, recognizing for the first time that he had followed a trail which still extended beyond the spring, beside a stream that rippled merrily from it toward the centre of the valley. Looking in that direction, Todd caught glimpses through the trees of a pool or pond fed by the stream, and toward it he now made his way.

Although in the desperation of thirst he had rushed recklessly forward in search of water, he now proceeded with all the caution that his hunger would permit. The path that he was following and the artificial walling of the spring indicated so plainly the presence of human beings in the valley that he could not neglect the warning thus conveyed. "Of course," he argued to himself, "none but Indians could live in so isolated and out-of-the-world place as this, and while they might prove friendly, the chances are that they might shoot in the flurry of a sudden discovery. So I'll try and see them before giving them a chance to see me."

Advancing thus slowly, and peering eagerly ahead, he had gone but a short distance, when he was startled by the sight of a house, or rather a stone hut, only a short distance in front of him, and near the pool he had already noticed. For several minutes he stood motionless, regarding it closely; then, as it presented no sign of being occupied, he moved cautiously forward until he could command a view of its doorway, which was closed by a curtain of skins. The walls of the hut were low, and a stone chimney projected from its roof of coarse thatch.

It did not look to our lad exactly like an abode of Indians, nor yet like that of a white man, and he wondered what race of people would greet him when his presence should be discovered. He called twice, "Hello the house!" but receiving no answer, stepped softly to the door and looked in. The hut was empty, and Todd drew the curtain well back, so as to obtain plenty of light for an examination of its interior.

A fireplace, a rude table, two equally rude stools, a bunk filled with skins, and also a few earthenware vessels of crude design constituted its sole furniture. The young explorer examined these things carefully, in the hope of discovering something to eat; but, to his intense disappointment, he did not find so much as a kernel of corn. Nor could he learn anything concerning those to whom the hut belonged. Everything was sufficiently primitive to be the work of Indians, and yet he had seen equally rude furnishings in the cabins of certain white men whom he had remembered.

That the hut had been recently occupied was shown by fresh ashes in the fireplace, and by a jug of water that stood on the table. Who could its owners be? What had become of them? How would they treat him when they discovered his invasion of their premises? And where did they store all their provisions?--were questions that the boy asked himself over and over again. Above all, what was he to do for something to eat? For he was now suffering almost as much from hunger as he had from thirst an hour before. As he gazed moodily at the cold embers of the fireplace, deliberating these questions, he was startled by the sound of feet just outside the hut, and a voice, apparently that of a child, calling plaintively for its mother.

"The folks have come home," he said to himself, "and in another minute my fate will be decided." At the same time he stepped resolutely to the doorway and looked out.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

A few months ago one of the youngest of the group of eccentric writers who call themselves "Symbolists" was paying a visit to London. The conversation in a drawing-room happened to run on the province of the Franche-Comté, and the guest remarked, as a curious circumstance, that no poet had ever come from that part of France. Somebody ventured to murmur the name of Victor Hugo. "Ah! sir," replied the young Symbolist, with a charming air of deprecation, "but we don't consider Victor Hugo a poet!" It is obvious that, for the present at least, this particular expression of opinion will remain rare; it was conceived in the very foppery of paradox, of course. But it is quite conceivable that such a judgment might spread, might become common, might become authoritative and universal. To our generation, at all events, Victor Hugo has appeared to be the typical poet; he and Tennyson have been named side by side as the very types of the imaginative creator, as purveyors of inexhaustible poetic pleasure. That is what we have all thought; but suppose that our grandchildren determine to think the opposite, what is to be done? Manifestly we shall be too old to whip them and too weary to argue with them. If they decide that Victor Hugo was not a poet, that Dickens was not amusing, that Hawthorne wrote bad novels, we shall have to go, indignant, to our tombs, but our indignation will not convert the younger generation.

So far as the history of the world has yet proceeded, the standards in literature have not been overturned in this rapid and revolutionary manner. But nowadays, if things once begin to move, they move fast, and we must be prepared for changes. In the parallel art of painting we have seen the most violent and apparently the most final reversals of the standards. It is very difficult to believe that various schools of art which have enjoyed great popularity in the course of the present century, and have fallen, will ever be revived. I had an uncle who purchased the works of Mr. Frost, R.A., and a very bad bargain it has proved to his family. Nothing is so deathly cold as the public interest to-day in Frost; his brown satyrs and his wax-white nymphs, with floating pink scarfs insufficiently concealing them, are not worth sixpence now. We do not, as I have said, see these violent upheavals in literature yet. No author who was praised and valued when Hilton or Frost or George Jones were thought to be great masters of painting has passed so utterly out of repute as they have. Hitherto, if a man of letters has contrived to secure a certain amount of respect, the public interest in him may dwindle, but it never quite disappears. Every now and then somebody "revives" him, his poems are reprinted and praised, his correspondence is published, he is respectfully admitted to have been "somebody."

The first standard in literary matters is, obviously, excellence in execution. In other words, to write singularly well, and to be recognized as doing so, is to achieve fame, though not necessarily popularity. But in using the word "standard" we accept the idea, not merely of individual excellence, but of comparison with others. In coinage, for instance, that is called the standard which unites in what is practically found to be the most useful combination the elements of precise weight and fineness. Again, there is a technical sense in which a "standard" is a type of which all other measures or instruments of the same kind must be exact copies. In yet another signification a standard is an ensign or flag carried on high in front of a marching army for its encouragement and stimulus. We have to consider in what degree, and how, without forcing language, we can form a conception of a literary standard of excellence in style which shall unite these various definitions.

The precision of the eighteenth century offers us a very clear example of the way in which the first of these ideas can be adapted to literary illustration. When it was determined by universal consent to bind all poetical writing down to set laws, and what was supposed to be the precept of Aristotle, there was at first no modern standard of style. The great object was to emulate the Latin poets; but as these writers had used not merely another language, but other prosodical effects, a different order of moral ideas, and totally distinct imagery, it was necessary to find a modern substitute for imitation. Various English poets wrote with force, but they lacked delicacy; others had fineness, but with an insufficiency of weight. At length Pope came, who accepted the theories of style which were current in his day, and acted upon them with a more perfect balance of the qualities they demanded than any one had done before him or has done since. The best parts of Pope's writings, therefore, created a standard, and one which was of paramount influence for nearly a century.

Again, those who invent forms of writing which are accepted by the world of letters as valuable additions to what we may call the tools of the author's trade, create standards in the second sense of the word. There does not appear to be an indefinite degree to which these forms can be created, and when once perfected they often remain for centuries unaltered. For instance, when an early Tuscan poet, of the age of Dante, invented the sonnet as we now possess it, he made a thing which has been proved to be the best possible of its sort. Ingenious people, in various languages, for centuries past, have tried to alter the form of the sonnet, to add to it, to retrench it; all their suggestions have proved vain, and it remains, in the best hands, exactly what its old Italian maker devised it in a moment of inspiration. In a lesser degree, the forms of prose are the result of invention and adaptation, and can be referred back, more or less indefinitely, to a standard or type. Thus the short story has certain limitations of length and character which distinguish it from a novel or a play or a lecture, and in discussing the merits of an example of this species of literature, we unconsciously hold before our minds a norm or ideal of what a short story should be. If we speak of it as highly successful, we think of it as a close copy in form of a typical short story which should be universally acknowledged as the best in every technical respect.

The third definition of a standard is one which may without difficulty be applied to literature, but which is really a little more dangerous to deal with than the preceding. If the standard is to be an ensign or flag carried at the head of an army, we are confronted with an idea which is less durable than those which we have considered. For if the army marches with drums and trumpets, and all flags flying, it may not only march to defeat instead of victory, but it may alter its direction, and march back with no less pomp and noise than it marched forward. In these conditions, its ensigns, instead of representing a fixed purpose, may be the standards of irresolution and vacillation. We can find an exact literary parallel for this in European taste in the seventeenth century. The cleverness and fancy of writers, in prose and verse, and almost in every country, led them to adopt methods of writing which strained to the utmost the powers of language. Poetry, instead of being content to walk and run, turned somersaults on the trapeze. As long as this was done by very graceful and nimble intellectual athletes it gave great pleasure, and the world of letters seemed marching to victory under this ensign of imaginative acrobatism. But it speedily proved to have been a mistake; the graceful athletes gave place to grotesque contortionists, and the army of writers retreated in confusion, but slowly, doggedly, and under the same standards of taste. There was no other way back to health but to discard the existing ideals altogether; they were too obstinately fixed in men's minds to make it possible to modify them.

If we are to form any opinion with regard to that question of the literary standard, which democratic habits of thought tend to make every day a more dangerous one, it is manifest that we must regard it from these three points of view, or from a combination of them. The taste of the public is a floating, a vague impression of an amateur body with regard to a matter which is more precisely and sharply defined by a consensus of experts. But the experts themselves are not united, and the precision of their views only tends to darken counsel and reduce opinion to chaos. Unhappily a piece of literature cannot be assayed mechanically like a piece of coinage. Under the strictest rules that ever were enacted and a régime the most academic conceivable, there will never be anything like unanimity regarding the excellence of a literary product. All we can hope to reach is a general agreement of the best-trained minds, recurrent for so many generations as to become practically durable.

Even in the most ancient cases, where it would be supposed that opinion would finally have crystallized, we observe curious oscillations. Homer, it is true, is accepted by all critics, in all nations, as the final standard of what is admirable in heroic narrative poetry, and has for centuries been so accepted. But what is the standard of Greek tragedy? The study of classic criticism will show us that the standard has been incessantly shifting from Æschylus to Sophocles and on to Euripides and back again to Æschylus. If we wish to point to an authoritative type, we must consider this triad as one, since no two generations agree as to their comparative, though all to their positive merit. In like manner, the relative value of Virgil and Theocritus, of Horace and Catullus, is always shifting, according as the quality of the one or of the other happens to appeal to one or to another habit of modern thought. Yet antiquity obviously provides us with a standard of bucolic poetry, and another of subjective and semi-social lyric, each of them settled now beyond any probability of decay. People will go on preferring Theocritus to Virgil, or Virgil to Theocritus, but no rational person is likely to question again the excellence of the species of art of which these two are the leading exponents. So there are those who prefer Dryden to Pope, or Coleridge to Wordsworth, and to whom neither seem to present the complete practitioner of a system. Yet no one denies, and it grows increasingly probable that no one will ever deny, the authority of the Pope-Dryden or of the Wordsworth-Coleridge standard of excellence, final and unquestionable, in a particular department. Opinion, that is to say, wavers as to the individual long after it has irrevocably accepted the type.

In all consideration of the past we find ourselves securely guided by the test of technical excellence. Nothing else has preserved the principal writers of antiquity in esteem. Mr. Lowell called style "the great antiseptic"; good writing, in other words, is the only chemical product which can prevent literature from corrupting and fading away. In the days of Shakespeare there were a dozen writers who had a just right to consider themselves more "serious seekers after truth" than the playwright of Stratford, for they discussed graver subjects and brought forward a weightier array of facts. Their very names are now forgotten, while his pages grow more brilliantly vital as the years pass on. The fancy and tenderness of Shakespeare, the wit of Molière, the sublimity of Milton, the wisdom of Goethe, are revealed to us and preserved for us by their style, and without it would have sunk long ago in the ocean of oblivion. Such phrases as "the matter is the important thing, not the manner," "never mind how he says it, but find out what he has to say"--which are common enough on the tongues and pens of those who have secured no grace of delivery--are pure fallacies. Style is the atmosphere without which what is written cannot continue to breathe; it is the indispensable medium for rendering what a man has got to say continuously audible to the world. These are truths which we might suppose too obvious to need repetition, since the whole history of literature proclaims them, yet so great is the natural love of slovenly writing and vague thinking that this heresy about the matter being far more important than the manner is incessantly recurring. It is needful, once more, therefore, to say as plainly as possible that without a distinguished and appropriate manner, that is to say, without style, no "matter" will ever have the chance to reach posterity.

If once we resign this position as to the pre-eminent importance of style we lose all means of measuring the standards of literature. As long as excellence in writing is recognized as the main factor in the formation of judgment, we are not likely to go very far wrong. We have seen that those who permit themselves no other lamp than this may differ as to the relative value of figures in a single group, but they unite in their appreciation of that group itself. This is the case in the criticism of ancient writers, and what other means have we of forming a judgment about the moderns? As long as we are content to measure them as we do their noble predecessors, we may make mistakes, but they will be mistakes, not of principle, but only of detail. The moment that we allow ourselves to believe that modern writing, the authorship of to-day, is distinct in kind from that of the old masters, and can be measured by different standards, we have resigned ourselves to a heresy, and are in imminent peril of encouraging literary anarchy.

It is a mistake to be too yielding and shy in expressing a conviction which has been gravely formed on serious grounds. Those who love the more austere and splendid parts of literature will always find themselves in a minority in every collection of persons. It is probable that if the prestige of _Paradise Lost_ had to depend upon popular suffrage, no majority of citizens in any part of the English-speaking world would be willing honestly to admit that they admired it or could read it with pleasure. That does not prevent it from being one of the most glorious, most enviable and unique possessions of the race. On questions of the literary standard it is the majority which is always wrong. The majority likes a warm easy book, without pretension, unambitiously written, on a level with the experience of the vast semi-educated classes of our society. "One man, one vote," extended to the domain of literary taste, would mean the absolute and final extinction of all distinguished masterpieces.

But in every generation there is a remnant which occupies itself with beauty and distinction. The individuals of this little group fight among themselves about the details of excellence, but they guard, as in a pyx or shrine, the primal idea of that excellence and a general sense of its formal character. Outside this small class of experts there is a large body of the public which recognizes its authority and is docile to its directions. Again, outside is the vast concourse of persons competent to read and write, but no more capable of forming an opinion than is the dog that barks at their shadow or the discreeter cat that curls at their fireside and says nothing. It has often occurred to me as a grave speculation how long this vast dumb force of untrained readers will be content to be silent. How long will they have the good nature to pretend to respect the things which they cannot enjoy? Flattered as the average man or woman is in these days, accustomed to hear the voice of democracy praying for votes on every subject, how soon will the average reader pluck up courage to say to himself, "I do not like the novels of Thackeray nearly so much as I do those of E. P. Roe, and I do not intend to allow anybody to persuade me that they are better?" Questioning the standards of taste, refusing to bow to traditional canons of criticism--this is the Red Spectre which I dread to see arise in the midst of our millions of half-trained readers.

But the cure will probably come from the very nature of the disease. If we put a dangerous power in the hands of the crowd by the infinite facilities given nowadays to reading and the discussion of books, we support the traditions of literature by giving unprecedented opportunities to persons of native capacity to fortify themselves in the truth. No boy, nowadays, in the whole English-speaking world, can wholly refrain from indulgence in literary pleasures, if an appetite for such enjoyments have been born in him. In some newspaper, in some cheap reprint, that which is exquisite and final, that which is assimilated to the inviolable standards of excellence, must meet his eye and be accepted by him. The enemies of literature may become extremely numerous; they will remain languid and blundering; its friends will be always few, perhaps, but they will be ardent and active. That the good tradition may be swamped for a time in some Commune of the intellect seems to me very possible, but that it should be lost, that it should go down altogether into the deeps of anarchical vulgarity, that, happily, is not to be believed.

Meanwhile, every one who, however humbly, is devoted to what is nobly and purely said in prose and verse, may do his or her part to prevent even a temporary descent into barbarism. The only way to become sensitive to what literary excellence is, is to study and re-study those books which have stood the assaults of time, and are as fresh to-day as when they were written. It is not to be expected that to any one taste all these books, in their various classes, will appear equally delightful. But it is from a wide acquaintance with these, and a reverent and affectionate wish to discover their charm, that literary appreciation grows. If once we are convinced that there is a standard, that a well-written book is distinguishable from a dull and slovenly one, that style is not a vain ornament, but as essential to literary life as oxygen is to a human being, then, without affectation or priggishness, every man may become a sober lover of the best, and may feel that though certain specimens of literary work may go up and down in public esteem, the central standards are firm and the laws of intellectual beauty immutable.

THE LAUGHY-MAN.

Ho, for the Laughy-Man! laughing all day, Laughing the sunshiny hours away, Laughing and kicking his little pink heels Just to impress us with how good he feels! Hey, for the Laughy-Man! Ho, for his smiles! Hail to the angels who taught him such wiles!

Ho, for the Laughy-Man! waking to play, Waking to laugh at the first peep o' day, Waking to churn up the blanket and sheet, Like waves of the sea, with his fists and his feet! Hey, for the Laughy-Man! Ho, for his smiles! Hail to the angels who taught him such wiles!

Ho, for the Laughy-Man! lying abed, Lying there wagging his cherubin head, Lying there, merry, a bundle of love Sent to our home by the seraphs above! Hey, for the Laughy-Man! Ho, for his smiles! Hail to the angels who taught him such wiles!

There were seven kinds of Indians at the back of the largest hotel of the Western town--dirty and dirtier, which is two; young and old, which is four; male and female, making six; and one little clean pappoose. This latter tiny bit of aboriginal humanity was a chubby, round-faced, bright-eyed little tike, with the blackest of hair and the most bronze of complexions. He was playing around alone inside a close high board fence at the rear of the large hotel, his only shirt cut off at the knees, displaying a fat brownish pair of dimpled legs that were warm enough in spite of the fact of their bareness in the chilling air.

Presently around the corner came a trotting, smiling Chinaman, a vender of vegetables. A long slender pole, carved flat and tapering toward the ends, was balanced on his shoulder, and from either end, suspended by a bridle composed of four strings, hung a huge bamboo basket.

As he halted within the gate of the high board fence he lightly swung the receptacles to earth, rested his polished pole conveniently near, lifted a mat containing the day's supplies for the cook within, and carried it off to the kitchen.

Now it not very strangely befell that the vender of vegetables lingered a time in the kitchen, for that exceedingly tempting and savory seat of government was under the personal direction of another little yellow man, who called his countryman "Wong," and gave him to drink of tea. While the two engaged each other with inharmonious gutturals, a dusky cranium and equally dusky countenance came poking out from another door. Its owner was the negro porter, a grinning fellow, whose mania for jokes of the "practical" description was developed to a degree positively unhealthy. No sooner had he made himself certain that the yard was free of observers, and occupied alone by the wee pappoose, than he stealthily slipped from his place, and grabbed the scared little fellow by the tail of his wholly inadequate shirt.

The eyes of the miniature savage were apparently frozen wide open in an instant, while paralysis made him utterly stoic and dumb. The Chinaman's basket had a shallow tray in the top filled with beets; then an inside receptacle, also shallow, filled with celery. Below this last were cabbages, down in the bottom. These extra insides the negro quickly lifted out with his unemployed hand; then a couple of the cabbages, as large together as the wee pappoose, came forth with a jerk. In a second more the silent Indian baby had been dropped within the basket, the various trays had been properly replaced, and the darky had rapidly hopped through the open door with his cabbages, doubling himself like a nut-cracker and stretching his face in violent but silent laughter.

Out came Wong, beaming with the radiance of tea well swallowed. He rearranged his pole, bent his stout Mongolian back, straightened up, lifting his baskets, balanced them neatly, and trotted away with the frightened baby Indian, but quite oblivious that such a lively vegetable ever was grown.

Wong went singing up the street, or rather humming away about a "feast of lanterns," and he thought on how soon he would be enabled to purchase a wagon.

"Good-molling," he said, as he stopped at last at the rear of one of the most imposing houses. "Velly fine molling."

"Good-morning, Wong. It's a little bit chilly," said a gray-haired woman wearing glasses, rubbing her hands.

"Oh yeh, him feel lill bit chilly."

"What you got this morning?" she inquired.

"Oh, for callot, for cell'ly--velly nice for cell'ly--for turnip, for squash, any kine." Then, as she hesitated, "potatoe?--for ahple?--for cabbagee? Oh, lots um good kine, I tink."

She took a squash. "Did you say cabbage, Wong?"

"Oh yeh." He began at once to lift the tray. Next he hoisted forth the shallow inside basket and reached for a cabbage.

"Ki! yi!" he yelled. "Sumin--ah--got, yu nee mah! Kow long hop ti! Ha! What you call um? Hi! for Injun debbil!" And he lapsed again into awful Chinese exclamation points, and danced a fan-tan dango in a wonderful state of excitement. "Hi! What you call um? Sumin-ah-got, no belong for Wong! Huh!" Nerving himself for the fearful ordeal, he lifted the squirming baby forth and dropped it quickly to the ground. No sooner did the wild little thing find itself released than it scrambled to its feet and ran at the skirts of the elderly lady--the only thing it recognized--and clung there like a prickly burr.

"Mercy!" shrieked the lady. "Mercy! Where-- Wong, where did you get this child--this savage child?" she demanded.

"Sumin-ah-got, no sabbee," said the terrified Wong, gathering baskets and mats in a desperate haste. "Plitty click for whole lots um for Injun come for nis one. Wong no takee. No see some nis one for baby befloh. Somebody makee for tlick--you sabbee?--makee velly much tlouble. Kow long hop ti! Yu nee mah!"

"But, Wong, you must take it back! I don't know anything about the trick! I don't wan't the Indians coming here. Mercy!"

Wong, however, had rapidly fixed his pole in its place, and swung his baskets clear of the ground, still jabbering wildly in his native tongue, and trotted away with a double-quick motion.

"Wong! Wong!" called the agitated woman. "I can't throw him away! You must take him back! Wong!" But the vender of vegetables, thoroughly alarmed, had fled.

"Did yez call, Miss Hoobart?" said a voice from the door.

"Oh, Maggie! Oh dear! Oh! Oh! What shall we do?" cried the woman. She was trying to shake her skirts of the brown little Indian, but he merely clung the harder, and buried his face in the folds.

"Ach, wurra, wurra!" said Maggie. "Oi wudden't a t'o't ut. Phere did yez git um?"

"Hush, you silly girl. It's an Indian baby, and Wong brought him--and he ran away frightened--and somebody played it as a trick--and the wild, infuriated Indian population may be down upon us at any moment to recover the child!"

"Ach!" screamed the girl, jumping high in the air and glancing quickly about. "Phy don't yez l'ave um in the sthrate, the turrible varmint?"

"What, a tiny child, Maggie? Suppose it should freeze to death? It hasn't any clothing to speak of. Oh dear! I do wish Charles were home!"

"Phat yez goin' to do?" whispered Maggie.

"I don't know. Oh, I don't know! We've got to take him in, I suppose, and wait for Charles." Accordingly she walked very gingerly in, while the very diminutive savage continued to cling to the dress and hide his face. "I don't see," she said, breathing easier when the door was closed, "how I'm going to get him away from my skirt. Don't you think you could take him away, Maggie?"

"Oi wudden' touch um for tin dollars!" cried the girl.

"What shall we do? He will never let go."

"Yez c'u'd l'ave um the skirt--take ut aff, an' put an anither wan, ye moind."

"Yes, I can; that is just the thing." She slipped the outside garment in a jiffy, and the baby sat down on the floor in the midst of the pile.

The warrior sat perfectly still, his big brown eyes and his wee red mouth wide open, his chubby hands playing at random with the skirt.

"Oi moight go out an' infarm Misther Patrick Murphy, the gintleman policemon, mum," ventured Maggie at length.

"Don't you dare to go and leave me an instant," said the woman. "There is nothing in the whole wide world to do but to watch him every minute and lock all the doors and wait for Charles. Oh dear! that I should live to see such a terrible day!"

So the barricades were placed on the doors, and the women brought their chairs to sit and watch their very unwelcome prisoner. As the day grew old it occurred to the lady that perhaps the child was hungry. She prepared a piece of bread with molasses, and handed it out with the tongs. With this the child emulated his parents, for he painted his face from chin to eyes. This continued till the curtain lashes of the bright brown eyes came drooping down; his chubby little face, with molasses adornment, sank slowly to rest on the skirt. The women continued to watch.

As the evening came on Miss Hobart paced the room impatiently. "Charles! Charles, my brother!" she would say, "why don't you come? You ought to know what a terrible, terrible trial it is!"

But the sound of his knock on the door, when he came at his usual time, nearly made the women faint. A thin little man was Mr. Hobart, but sensible, and not to be alarmed. He declared that the morning would be time enough in which to clear the matter up.

"Oh, but it won't," said his elderly sister. "Suppose there should be a night attack? They are very, very frequent--it's the Indian way of proceeding!"

"Well," said he, "I'll go and tell the sheriff. He can hunt the parents up and settle the whole thing in a minute."

"But," she protested, "the Indians are gone to their tents--campoodies--out in the sage-brush long before this--that is, providing they are not lurking around this neighborhood. And just fancy a poor mother deprived of her child all night!"

"Well, what shall I do?"

"Suppose--suppose you take a lantern and go out to the wigwams. You are not afraid?"

"No, of course I'm not; but what's the use?"

In the end he found himself muffled, mittened, provided with the lantern, packing the child--all wrapped in a blanket and fastened loosely in with a shawl-strap--out in the sage-brush, floundering aimlessly about in search of the Indian campoodies. Mile after mile he trudged about in the night, shifting baby and lantern from hand to hand as his arms grew weary, and growing more and more disgusted as it dawned on his mind that all he knew of the way to find campoodies was to wander toward the west in the brush, he shouldered the sleeping warrior and made some lively tracks for home.

"There," said he, as he tossed the wee pappoose, blanket and all, on the lounge, "you can leave it to snooze where you please, for I am going right straight to bed."

His sister sat in a chair all night, dressed, and she waked a hundred times from a dream of hideous Indian depredations. She was wearily sleeping when her brother ate his breakfast and went. An hour later the head of an old and silently whistling Indian appeared at the open window.

"Ketchum pappoose?" said this awful warrior, and his voice was barely audible. She whirled around, saw the face, tried to scream, and failed.

"Injun Jim h-e-a-p sick," drawled the chieftain, who had satisfied himself that his son and heir was present, the youngster being seated on the floor--"h-e-a-p sick, heap likum biscuit-lah-pooh."

Miss Hobart rallied. "Perhaps," she thought, "Charles has pacified the tribe." Then she said, "Oh, Mr. Indian Jim--James, is this your son--your little boy?"

"Yesh, h-e-a-p my boy. Injun Jim heap likum biscuit-lah-pooh, h-e-a-p sick."

"Are you sick? Poor man! you shall have all the biscuit you want. Here," she said, in a timid voice, as he tucked away a package of food, "is your son--your nice little boy--very nice little boy; and I'm very sorry--"

"Yesh, h-e-a-p nice--all same Injun Jim. You like buy um? Two dollar hap, you buy um, h-e-a-p goot!"

"Mercy! Oh, oh!" she gasped. "He would sell it! Two dollars and a half--and after such a night! Oh no--no, Jim--James--take him to his yearning mother, please!"

As the warrior slowly shuffled away to the gate, leading his son and heir by the hand, the bright little face was turned toward the woman who was standing in the door.

"It is a beautiful child," she said. "I wish I had noticed before."

A LOYAL TRAITOR.

A STORY OF THE WAR OF 1812 BETWEEN AMERICA AND ENGLAND.

BY JAMES BARNES.