AT thirty, Poul Zellak was a boy. He had worked all night, and the March dawn was raw to flesh tempered to the even climate of the lower coal seams; nevertheless, when he came home to find his boarding place in cinders, he very coolly perched on the opposite fence, laughed once, and began to whistle.

"Matthias Obeloskie and his wife and the hired girl saved everything, everything!" Mrs. Proutas had announced to him in the street. "It caught from the house next door; they had plenty of time. Everything! The pieces of stove-pipe, even! The shelves and hooks out of cupboards! Also a few doors."

It was at this that Poul had laughed; doors made such ridiculous salvage from the wreck of a home. His own trunk and his clothing were of course safe with the other furnishings somewhere, and he did not worry about them. The fire company were in charge of the embers of two houses and needed no assistance from him. Doubtless one could find a place to eat and a place to wash and sleep when the necessity grew pressing; meantime, life was such a varied game!

Poul perched, therefore, and looked the crowd over with an appreciative eye. It was six o'clock, and the hue of rising day revealed some oddities. The Italian woman next door to the burned house knelt in her gate-space burning candles before a holy picture. There was a neigh

bor in trousers and shoes, and another sheltering bare legs under an overcoat; both of these men had instinctively clapped on miner's caps, and lighted the lamps to facilitate sight-seeing in the darkness of a four-o'clock alarm.

To Zellak, sitting thus at ease, knees drawn up, face and clothing sooty, cap shoved back revealing a line of forehead under straight hair redder than his lampflame, there appeared Mrs. Obeloskie. She was weeping. She addressed him between sobs.

"Our home, Poul! Seven years in that house! Our home is gone! Everything gone, perished!"

"Hardly that," spoke Poul, genially. "You only rented the house. People tell me you saved everything of ours.'

"Everything! Every stick, every dish. They are out in the street there. Oh, sorrow comes by night! — Veronika is up there sitting on them now, our trunks and our best clothes and the clock."

"That's a fine woman, Marta; oh, you did well, well! Stop crying. Nobody is hurt, nobody is dead. Nobody but the house-boss is any poorer. Why, it is no more for you than a moving. Thus, why trouble yourself?"

"The saints have forgotten me! Ah, ah!"

"They'll remember you by afternoon, though. The house-bosses will be in their offices by half-past eight, and you and

your man can go over to them and rent a house. I will stay and help keep the children and the things."

"Ah, the children! Five little mites, and no home!"

"Then you can hire a wagon and ride back in it. We will load in the things and move. It will be settled in no time."

"Ai, no, no, no!" screamed the matron in crescendo of mounting distress. "How little you know about it! There is no house!"

Poul laughed cheerfully. "Oh, but there are always houses."

"There is no house. That empty one next to ours, the one that burned down first, was the only house left. I know! I know! My cousin, Mary Darszas, tried to change houses Saturday, and could not. That was the only empty one. The bosses told her so."

“What a position!" cried Zellak. He laughed out, heartily and long. "I suppose, then, we shall have to live in a barn? Why did n't you think of that before you saved the beds and tables and the pork-barrel? God, we should be better off without them, should n't we?”

Mrs. Obeloskie wept on, mopping her eyes with the corner of her shawl.

“Ah, trouble comes by night! - Yes, the furniture will be put in the English baker's barn on the corner; he told Matthias he would hire him a place for a dollar a month. The boys will go with Matthias and board in some house near their work. I-oh, like a widow with orphans I go to my cousin's house down in Keckley. Five little children, and no home!" She sobbed again.

"There, Marta, do not give up to despair. Things will change, see. We'll be at home yet, just as we used to be.” "But it is necessary," pursued the matron, "for Veronika to go with you. You must get married with her now instead of later. There is no room at my cousin's. And nobody I can hear of wants a hired girl."

Poul's hands went deep into his pockets with a jerk. He laughed out blithely

once, then fell silent. He jumped to the sidewalk.

"I have arranged it all. Come, we must talk it over with her, see. She can stay at Agalaskie's house for the wedding, and then you two will board over at Alena Popko's cousin's house, on Corn Hill just by your mine. That is convenient, not?"

"She will ?" cried Poul Zellak. A thrill of more than gayety rang in his voice.

"This way," ordered Marta Obeloskie. She turned up the street. The tall fellow went behind her, shoulders swinging, red hair vivid in the flare of his mine lamp.

Veronika Boslas had been in America seven months, and her old-country clothes lasted with the endurance of homespun. Her small wages barely supplied a gala wardrobe, so that the Kovno dress, a dark brown woollen thing, plain, stiff, ugly, had to be her work-day uniform. She sat upon a large trunk, her feet braced on a smaller one, and braided her great rope of ash-brown hair. Comb and hairpins were in her lap.

Custom gives the "hired girl" almost a mother's authority over the children in a Lithuanian family. Veronika had all five of the Obeloskies with her, wellwrapped, sleepy, docile, though frightened; they sat or stood among the bundles, holding to her dress.

Veronika was nineteen, of medium height, slender, colorless, not pretty. There dwelt about her, nevertheless, a curious femininity, a rare appeal.

As Mrs. Obeloskie and Poul approached her through the crowd she saw them. Her hands let the thick braid fall on her shoulder and rested motionless with locked fingers across her breast. She met Poul's eyes and smiled. There was no timidity in her air, nor shyness, nor elation; she sat untroubled, the eternal type of women who wait passive upon destiny.

Poul's soot-masked face was blank of expression. Only his eyes in the uncertain gray of dawn held a dark brilliance,

distinct against the lighter iris as a dagger point shows black against the silvered glimmer of its blade.

"I have told him all about the plan," Mrs. Obeloskie cried, designating Zellak with a twist of the thumb as she penetrated through the outer defense of chairs and tables.

"You are willing, Veronika?"

Poul's breath caine short as if he had been running, and his voice rasped in his throat.

The girl smiled again, an age-old shadow of submissive melancholy touching her features for an instant. One of the Obeloskie twins, a sturdy toddler, rolled to his knees on the table and steadied himself by her hair in the effort to gain his feet. Veronika loosed the clutching baby hands and helped the boy upright.

Half of Carson's Hollow shared the spectacle with him, but Poul felt something tighten in his throat and in his breast, a need that in all his careless years had never stung before. Pretty girls, jolly girls, had come and gone, laughed and danced with him, and been forgotten. Now this pale lass had grown to stand for all that was clear womanly.

"You wish it?" he repeated huskily. "Oh, I suppose so. It would come sometime, and one day is much like another. Besides, the house is burned."

"To-day is Friday. She can stay at my house, and you can begin the wedding Monday," pronounced Mrs. Agalaskie. "You can get married at the squire's office on Tuesday; then there will be no waiting for the priest to read your names in church."

"How black your face is, Red Thatch," Veronika commented. "And where is there left to wash? We have soap and a tub, but no house nor hot water. What will you do?"

man is, Veronika," Mrs. Agalaskie affirmed, turning away.

Poul Zellak passed through the barricade and seated himself upon the kitchen table, close to the girl, half facing her. He restrained the active twin in the crook of his elbow while he talked.

"Some day, with luck, I'll give you a house of your own, girl."

"That will be years away, I think," Veronika said, smiling, lashes bent on her pale cheek.

"Oh, I don't know. Maybe. But I suppose you can save my pay better than I can."

"I have learned the American money, of course. But I understand no English."

"Oh, that is easy! You will learn. Why, if I talk it to you evenings, or afternoons, every day, when I come from work -"

His voice trembled oddly, and he stopped.

"I am very stupid, and I shall often make you angry," continued Veronika. "Not angry; not angry. There are other things than anger.'

The girl's wide gaze questioned a dim world, a world of black and gray, dreary under the March fog to its far horizons; a world untried, mysterious. She shivered a little in the raw air. Poul Zellak saw the look; and though in his heart he knew himself to be a part of that cold outer desolation upon which she strained her eyes he yearned to shelter her upon his breast.

"At home, in the old country, that is, my brother Jonas used to beat his wife with a stick and a strap from the harness. At the time he brought her to the house he did not; but it began later. When he was taken for a soldier she cursed him as he went out of the housedoor. But afterwards he came back from Pordarta so white and thin and eating nothing, and she wept bitterly, and kissed him many times those days before he died. I saw that myself. She hated him, but at the end the hate faded away."

Poul stared at the ground, gripping the table-edge hard with both hands. He laughed out shortly.

"You'll not hate me."

"Perhaps, yes; perhaps, no. How can one tell about strangers?"

"I will not beat you with choked upon the sacrilege.

"I hope not," cried Veronika, flashing a little wicked smile over his downcast sincerity. "How I shall cry, if you begin!"

"For one thing, I will not drink after the day of my own wedding. The less beer I have the better I shall know how to behave. It's a good time to stop, also, because after years one gets too fond of it to leave off."

"But a man has to do something that is wrong and wastes his money!" the girl protested. "It is necessary. Why, they all do! Else, see, they would be like women!"

"Oh, I always waste enough," he answered her. "No danger. And I can still smoke; tobacco is left."

“Right.”

"Veronika," he broke out, bending towards her, speaking low and very earnestly, "you do not hate me ?"

"No. Why should I? You are goodnatured; you never hurt me. When I had supper late, you laughed. When I burned your shirt with the iron you laughed again. Oh, no!"

“You like me? You like me well ?” "Why, yes. You are kind to me; you took me to balls and the show oftener than any of the others. And anyway, it seems I am to marry you. Marta Obeloskie arranged it."

"You like me better than the others, then ?"

"Maybe, Poul."

“Better than the Russian? Better than Vincas Juozapaitis too?"

"Well, no," admitted Veronika. The hidden coquetry of her nature came to the surface, as sometimes before when Poul had pressed her hard. "Just as those two, I like you just about as well!"

66

"Matthias and Marta say I had better take you."

Poul Zellak looked her full in the eyes. The day was brighter now, and unmistakably his lips were trembling.

"Tuesday," he told her, below his breath. "Tuesday."

"Poul!" cried Mrs. Agalaskie shrilly from the group of matrons just outside. "Hi, Poul! You will have to go tomorrow to buy the wedding dress. You may as well go to Cranston and get the license on the same trip."

"You can get a ready-made dress which will do; that is best, for there is no time to hire a dressmaker," a second neighbor advised.

"They will change the dress to fit the bride as if it was made for her."

"And she needs the veil, and shoes, and nice white gloves!" another cried.

"I will see to the dinner, Poul, and the beer," said Mrs. Agalaskie. "You can pay me out of the money that comes in at the wedding, for I know Veronika has none."

"A wedding dress, a silk one, and two wrappers to work in, will be enough for her," pronounced Mrs. Obeloskie, elbowing herself forward to a position of authority. "You listen to me! I know what she needs. You may as well save your money for furniture and children and house-rent and useful things. If a squire marries you, you do not really need a veil. Still, that can be got for two dollars, and it looks sweeter."

"It looks sweeter," Veronica echoed. Her love of soft fabrics and gay raiment was inborn and passionate, primitive as her charm itself. "Poul Zellak, how much money I shall cost you!"