digs, black with smoke and grime, sweating grease. It is like a monstrous and misshapen beast into which the spirit of some wandering devil of destruction has entered, powerful and insatiable, submitting to chains and the torment of labor for the joy of rending and devouring the green bosom of the earth. The woman watching it had a look as if she were indeed gazing upon some such monster.

She stood in the midst of a garden, I noticed, or what had been a garden, for half of it had apparently tumbled into the steam-shovel pit. Rows of potatoes and cabbages and cucumbers still remained, and here and there along the sides of the pit a stalk of Indian corn drooped over the edge, as if gazing down in search of its vanished brothers in the huge grave that had been dug for them. And all the while I was wondering what there was about the woman that looked familiar.

Then, as I looked at her more closely, I remembered. She was old Bertha, the German woman who had sold my mother vegetables when we had lived in Blackwater, years before. The garden, of course, must be her garden. I went up and spoke to her, and after some time she knew me. Her voice trembled, and the tears came into her eyes as she shook my hand. Now, my mother had been good to Bertha, yet I had hardly expected so much feeling as that.

"What's the matter, Bertha?" I asked. "Are n't things going right with you?"

She waved her hand toward the steamshovel, and shook her head sadly.

"Ach, sehen Sie nicht?" said she. Then she pointed back up the slope.

I turned and saw at a little distance, in a hollow under the saddle of the bluff, a small log-house half hidden by lilacs and tall sunflowers. She led the way to it. Reaching the doorway, she paused, turned, and pointed down the hill.

I looked. Directly below us was the steam-shovel, pointed squarely at the house. In line with it, down the slope, extended the middle of the long, straight pit, the new railway cut, which it had dug, marked by a narrow-gage track, already laid; and beyond that, and in line with it, ran a light trestle, the backbone of the new railway embankment, its near end already complete, and little trains of dump-cars, loaded with fresh earth from

the pit, pushing it ever farther out. We stood squarely in the path of the steamshovel's advance. In another week the little house, unless removed, would be tumbling into the pit.

Tears were standing again in old Bertha's eyes. She looked at me with a childlike, despairing appeal.

"Can you not stop it?" she said. "Ach, lieber Gott! can you not stop it?"

What could a man say to such a question? An old white oak stood by the door, with a rude seat fashioned against it. I led her to this seat.

"Tell me all about it first," I said.

WELL, it began last summer, she said, soon after Wilhelm had died. Of course I remembered Wilhelm, her Mann? He was old and lame, and used to drive gray Gretchen with the cart, while she, Bertha, sold the vegetables from house to house. Ein so guter Mann!

Well, it began last summer just a month after he died. Mysterious men had come with queer little machines that stood up as tall as a man, only on three legs instead of two. Surveyors, they said they were-Land-messers. "They were measuring a line to the moon," one said when she had asked; and then the rest had laughed. That was all they would tell her. A line to the moon! She knew better than that. Why did they cover it up? It must be something bad. And they had measured right up through her garden. It made her uneasy.

But nothing happened till the autumn. Then other men came. They wanted to buy some of her land, they said; a strip, it seemed, just as wide as two streets. They showed it to her on a long blue paper which they unrolled on the kitchen table. Her house was there, a little square white patch on the blue ground, with an endless red line running through it. That red line, they said, marked the track of the new railroad, and it ran right through her front door!

She was bewildered. A railroad! And it was coming right through the house where she and Wilhelm had lived all the years! It was unbelievable. She did not know what to say. Wilhelm was gone. Now they wanted to take her house away, all that God had left her in the world. A railroad! She grew afraid. It seemed as

if she could see the locomotive already poking its cow-catcher in at the front door, shrieking at her with its whistle: "Get off the track! Get off the track!"

The men were very kind and polite. They told her how easy it would be to buy with the money a little place in town, near other German people. It would be much nicer than living so far in the country, where she had no German neighbors. But she shook her head. How could she leave her home? So long she had known it. She and Wilhelm had come there right from the Vaterland. She had grown into it as a garden-snail grows into its shell. No, no, they must run their railroad on one side.

They smiled at that. They explained to her. When she met a load of hay on her way to town in her little wagon, she turned out, did she not? She gave the big load the right of way. Of course. Well, just so her little house ought to turn out for the big railroad.

Still she shook her head. They could not move her. Then they grew grave. They explained to her that a railroad must have its way. The law gave it the right. She would have to sell her place to them whether she would or not. Better sell peaceably than be dragged into court.

Then old Bertha rose and stood before those men at her full height, for her spirit was not yet broken. Shame upon them to talk of dragging a poor old woman into court! It was not true, what they said— not true. This was America, the good land, where the strong one, Gott sei dank! was not permitted to rob a poor woman of her little home.

And so they went away. They ran, the cowards! They dared not stand before her, even an old weak woman like her, who told them the plain truth to their faces. But they came back, the rascals! with their smiles, their smooth words. They explained how it was. Her house was built in the notch, right in the saddle of the bluff. The railroad had to dig its way through this bluff. To go on one side of her house it would have to dig much deeper-much, much deeper. It would mean twenty thousand extra wagon-loads of dirt. Think of what it would cost to do that! Why, it would buy a dozen little homes like hers. what a fine price they were offering

And see

double the true value, so generous was the railway.

But old Bertha was immovable. Ach, Gott! could they not understand? This was her home; it was all she had left; this it was that she and Wilhelm had toiled for through the years side by sideshe and Wilhelm, who was now gone. She could not part with it. So they went away the second time.

But next day there drove up to the house a man whose face she knew-the city marshal of Blackwater. He had brought a paper-a "summons" he called it. She must go to the court-house at Staghorn in November, -the fifteenth it was,-when her land was to be "condemned"-that was what he called it— for the new railroad.

She was bewildered. She had not believed it at all, what those men had said; they were fooling her. And now they had sent the city marshal to drag her into court-her, an honest woman, who never had wronged one hair of any the least of God's creatures.

She protested, but the marshal would not stop. He thrust the paper into her hand and left her. She could do nothing but stand in the middle of the road and shake the summons at him as he drove away. She went into the house with fear falling upon her, shaken, not knowing what to do, turning the paper over and over helplessly in her hands. What trick was it they had got those lawyers to put upon her?

Ah, those lawyers! She knew them! Who better, since that lawsuit Wilhelm had had? Foxes they were, with pricked-up ears, and prying eyes that could find a hole in the tightest fence; setting traps for you of cunning words, leading you on and on into their net, as they had led Wilhelm that time.

But her cause was just. The Lord would help her. She would go to the Pfarrer, the good Pfarrer. Peering all day through his spectacles into those wise books of his, he knew everything. He would be a match for all the lawyers.

But would you believe it?-the Pfarrer could not help her! Those railroad fellows had told her the truth, he said. Where their surveyors had marked out the line, that row of stakes she told about, leading up through her garden,

there the railroad would be builded. Unglücklich war es, aber es muss sein. The great American Government itself had said it. Houses that stood in the way

must move.

But they must pay her full value, pressed down and running over. Better see a lawyer about that. Fox against fox. The Lord was indeed on her side, but there are times when you need a lawyer also.

Old Bertha listened with a heart that sank like lead. Could it be true, here in America, the good land? Was the home which she and Wilhelm had builded through the years of no more account than to be trodden underfoot by the great railway, as if it were only an ant-hill in a garden path?

She climbed the steep steps of the lawyer's office in dread, one hand clutching the stair-rail, the other gripped over the fold in her black dress that held her purse. Easy enough to get your pocket-book into a lawyer's office, but would you ever get it out again? Had they not robbed Wilhelm that time, ach, frightfully? They called it a "fee!"

But fox against fox, the Pfarrer had said. And this was a sharp one-sharp as a weasel's teeth, folks told her.

Yet he was a kind fox. He would surely get her big damages, at the worst, he said. And he might-yes, he might make them run the railroad on one side. There were such cases.

But he shook his head very gravely when he said that. A railroad was so big and strong. It could bend the law itself. Yes, it could bend even the great American Government, sometimes.

And the court-house at Staghorn, ach, lieber Gott! it made you-what is it you Americans say?-blue just to sit in it. The windows so tall and narrow, shutting out the good sun; and all about the walls pictures of men in frames looking down at you grausam and streng, judging you before you could say a word, with lips shut tight so no word of mercy could leak through. And the judge on a high platform, walled in away from you behind a thick desk, and a great fierce-looking woman painted upon the wall above him, with her eyes bandaged, and a big sword in one hand, and pair of balances, lifted up ready to throw, in the other. Mein

Himmel, what a woman! With her eyes blindfolded so, there was no telling who would get hit. It made you uncomfortable even though you knew it was just a picture.

Then they put her up in a big chair on a platform; not the one the judge sat on, but another, where all the people, ten thousand of them, it seemed, stared at her as cold as stones. And the judge sat up big and severe on one side of her, and twelve strange men behind a railing on the other, and in front of her those sharpeyed lawyers, clawing their papers and looking right through her, so that she made herself as small in the chair as she could. Ach, it was terrible! It was as if you were a mouse, squeezing yourself into the corner of a room, a big, bare room, with three or four big cats sitting up in front of you, with their sharp eyes and their sharp teeth and their sharp claws.

But she had prayed to God, as the Pfarrer had told her, for her cause was just, and He had put strength into her, so that as they asked her questions her heart came back. And her lawyer had made a fine speech; ja wohl, a grand speech. He spoke out big and bold, so that it lifted your heart right up, like one of the good Pfarrer's sermons on Sunday morning in the Kirche.

And at last she had stood right up herself, before them all, while he was questioning her. It was against the rules, he had told her; but she forgot that, with all those thoughts in her heart that had hurt her so through the weeks and months, as she had worked in her garden in the day and lain on her bed in the long night, and somehow no one stopped her once she had got started. And so she told them about Wilhelm, how good a man he had been to her, never a woman had a better man, and all the years they had lived together in the little house; and about little Karl, whom God had taken, just as he had grown to be a fine, big boy-so like his father! and how just a year ago Wilhelm had died, too, and she was left alone. But there was the home yet. God had left her that. He was still good. He had not forgotten her. And now they told her -yes, even the Pfarrer had told herthat the railroad could take her home away from her. But she had said no, no, it could not be so. How could it be,

here, in America, the good land, which God had made to be a refuge for the poor? Was not the railroad rich? Gerechter Himmel, rich as Pharaoh! And now these greedy great ones would swallow up her little farm. Would the great American Government permit that? Would the great American Government, so good and kind, that opened its doors so wide to the poor, and gave them land to make them homes for the asking, would it turn now and help the rich to rob them? Ach, Gott! it could not be! It could not be!

And all the people leaned forward to listen, the judge himself, and the twelve men, and the lawyers even, who had shot those sharp questions at her. And they all looked kindly at her, as if they had suddenly become her friends, so that the tears came into her eyes. And no one said anything for a moment.

Then her lawyer told her very gently that she might sit down. And he had helped her kindly down from the platform and out of the room, while the people clapped their hands until some man up in front rapped on a table and called out "Order! Order!" which seemed strange, for no one was disorderly at all.

And when they got outside, and she went to pay her lawyer, the matter being now done with, as she supposed, sehen Sie, he would take nothing at all! Not a pfennig! Not then, or at any other time, would he take one pfennig. It was wunderlich.

And after all that, they gave the railroad her land! Would you believe it? Ach, Gott! how could it be, here, in America? The judge and the lawyers and those twelve men they had seemed to understand. They had believed her. They had seen that she was right. It was so plain. But she lost. They had given her much money, the lawyer said, but she must sell her place.

She could not understand it. All the way home she was trying to think it out. Where had God been? He was good, but He had not helped her. She had fallen, and He had not lifted up her head. She passed the little white German church where she had sung so many times on Sunday morning "Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott," the brave old hymn-hymn of the mighty saint of God, Martin Luther, the great and good. But now there was

no singing, and the windows were dark, and the doors were shut, and in the little churchyard was Wilhelm, and the wind was mourning in the pines.

THUS, or in some such fashion, sitting on the rude seat beneath the dooryard oak, old Bertha told her story. And all the while, chained in its pit below the garden, the monstrous and beast-like shovel snorted and heaved and roared, and rattled its iron harness, as it tore its insatiable way on toward us up the slope; while now and then, rolling over the crest of the river bluff, came the sullen thunder of dynamite, telling that even the everlasting hills were yielding up their rock foundations to the engineer's resistless cannonade.

Then, as we sat under the oak, a man approached. The right-of-way agent was coming, he said, and wanted to see Bertha at the resident engineer's office, a little distance down the line. There was some irregularity, it seemed. A last payment was due; he wanted to settle it. Bertha's request, I went with her.

At

It took some time. On the way back we met a wagon coming down the slope. At sight of it Bertha gave a sharp cry. It was loaded with her household goods, a table or two, a bed, a stove, a few chairs, some crockery and kitchen stuff, and other small odds and ends. Thrown over all was a huge, old-fashioned German featherbed, bellying with its feathers like a balloon-jib in the wind.

The driver looked at Bertha with a shamefaced air.

"I could n't help it, Mother,” he said. "It was the boss's orders. The right of way has to be cleared to-day, you know. He said the Pfarrer was to come for you, and I supposed you 'd gone with him, findin' the house empty so. Queer, too, I thought, your leavin' the stuff that way.'

Old Bertha hurried away, beset with fear, as I supposed, lest some little thing had been left behind. As we approached the house, we heard the sound of axes, and then, as we stepped into the clearing, a shout.

We looked. The old oak under which we had sat was toppling. A man was dealing it the last blows with an ax. Even as we looked, it fell with a crash.

Old Bertha burst into tears. The old tree was gone. So long she had known it!

Little Karl, before God took him, had played under it. Wilhelm had smoked on the seat there his evening pipe. All the years, like a faithful friend, it had stood beside the door. Now it was gone.

now

Recovering, but more. nervous than ever, old Bertha hurried on toward the house. As we approached the door, it burst open, and men came running out. They waved us back with their arms.

"Back! Back!" they shouted, still-running toward us. "Do you want to be killed? Back!"

But Bertha, much excited, went on. "I must go in! I must go in!" she kept repeating.

One of the men seized her and dragged her away. "Don't you hear?" he cried.

"The dynamite! the dynamite! Back, I tell you! Are you crazy?"

Bertha struggled in his grasp. the money! the money!" she cried. in there. I must get it."

"But "It is

It was the money which the railroad had given her for the place, and which she had concealed under a loose board in the kitchen floor!

She did not comprehend. We had to

seize her and drag her by force down the hill. At a safe distance we turned. The log-house, with its chimney, was lifting bodily into the sky. It dissolved into a thousand fragments. A mighty smoke rolled up toward heaven, and a heavy, jarring boom, as of a deep-buried cannon, smote upon our ears. The air shook with it. The fragments fell showering into the tree-tops beside the right of way. Then came silence. The little log-house, and Bertha's little treasure with it, had vanished from the earth.

Old Bertha sat upon the ground and wept, while we stood awkwardly about, not knowing what to say to comfort her. The men were sorry, but it was not their fault. She had been warned, and they had found the house empty and dismantled. The place must be cleared; the old house was not worth moving; dynamite was just the easiest way.

Then the Pfarrer came, and we helped the old woman into the carriage. They drove away, old Bertha still weeping, looking back to the place that had been her home, but where now there was only a great hole in the ground.

بحریہ کمه

colony, but it was also the most picturesque. This dirty back yard was next to the Frenchman's, where all was neatness -red geraniums, morning-glories, canarybirds, sun-parlor, and the rest of it. There were no flowers in Kline's back yard. There was plenty of dirt, but vegetation did n't thrive there; the dogs would n't let it. If a blade of grass poked its head above the ground, one of the four-footed denizens pounced upon it instantly and

Surely dogs know how to hunt their own doctors.

This dirty back yard was full of rustycoated, lame, or otherwise disabled beasts. At times, individually or in chorus, these "stranger" dogs expressed themselves in yips, growls, howls, or sharp yelps of pain. There was one dog there that had a penchant for doing the solo. His howl was long, lugubrious, a suggestion of remote coyote ancestors. For a moment the solo