ender, with soft canary under sides. When Mary was happy, they were of a vibrant blue that flashed like her eyes, and when she was intellectually stirred, they had ripples of brown and green, like a forest brook wimpling over golden sand and pebbles. Sometimes, as we walked or did errands or went to church together, Mary would point out to me what she called the "near-wing" people. There were persons who, she said, "almost had them." "What kept them from altogether having them?" I asked mischievously. "They are always afraid of the other people," returned Mary, soberly. She thought most librarians were wing candidates, and some teachers. "Don't you see, Mother, if they could trust themselves and not have to do what the trustees said-" "Don't trustees have wings?" I said. "Never," said little Mary, firmly. "Why, Mother, what a silly question!" "Nor politicians?" "Now you are making fun!" My little girl insisted that one or two colored people we saw were among the near-wingers. "You see, they have faith in the thing that lies under the skin." Once we passed a very wealthy woman in a formidably handsome automobile. "Funny," whispered little Mary, "but, in spite of everything, she has kept wing-places in her head!" She said that Professor Downby was a very near-winger. And when I asked her, jocosely, if her father and I were nearwingers, I was astonished at her passionate assertion. "Why, Mother, it is because you and father are near-wingers that I am a real winger." "Mary," I gently shook her,"Mary, where did you come from? How did you get on this earth? Don't you know?" The soft blue eyes of a graceful, growing little girl turned upward with their look that, plumbed, might lead back to the source of all life. "Why, Mother, I just came from you and father. Did n't you say so?" "But, darling, why are you able to fly higher than we?" For the first time I faltered it out. My daughter turned her charming head. "Did n't you tell me that you and father were never content to remain mentally just where you were; that you kept making more windows in your minds; that you never turned your backs on truth, on things as they are, no matter how painful they are; that you knew the spirit called God could do nothing to help the world unless He did it through you? And have n't you always said that, in spite of much sorrow and loneliness, because of this conviction, you always felt free, as if you were sun-treaders and walked the air? And would n't those things in parents make children winged?" I thrilled. I could only cling passionately to her. § 5 At last Mary became "popular." This was the hardest time of all. Moving-picture people and Christmas pageanters wanted her to "take" parts where wings, natural ones, were less expensive than the usual mechanical sliding down a beam. And her grace and beauty and mystical quality became so evident that sentimentalists haunted the house to make copy of her. John and I got worried and cross over it, for it did n't mean that people really cared for or believed in Mary; they only wanted to lick their sensation-loving chops over her. We fairly shivered when we got letters like this: "Dear Mrs. Farsight: The world is ringing with the wonder of your mysterious little winged girl. Won't you and Professor Farsight come to our community meetings to give talks on "The Sacredness of Possession' and bring along the dear little curio? We have heard so much about her!" For answer we took the "dear little curio" and escaped into the deep woods. And then at last came the thing Professor Downby had foretold. In our mail one morning was a letter from a young woman, a student in John's biology course, some one we had both known and liked: "Dear Trail-Blazers: "You two knew that I was married, of course. It seems incidental, but we both know that it was ordained in the beginning of things. Norman is the dearest, most unselfish, and wonderful man that ever lived, a naturalist and writer. Oh, how I wish he might meet Professor Farsight! He has made some discoveries in grafting and transfusion of pollen and he has written a book called 'Who Has the Keys?' It is a curious sort of thing, showing how the human mind has been locked for centuries in an empty cupboard of life by Old-Mother-Hubbard politicians, assisted by priests in medieval armor. This book has attracted a good deal of attention in the scientific world, and Norman lost his job because he is a so-called "radical," which, he says, means a man who tries to live and teach the laws of Christ in a Christian world. We had quite an awful time until we settled down in this community, where things are mostly run by young people who have been to places. "Our first little one has arrived, and, Oh, I wonder if you 'll care as we do. He has wings, beautiful, changeable little ones on his head and steady, strong ones of brilliant color on his feet! We remembered your little Mary. Did you succeed in keeping her wings on? We heard last week that out in Idaho a young collegebred woman, a social investigator (her husband is a psychologist), has brought into the world a little girl with shoulder-wings, just like your baby's, and they say that though the authorities are trying hard to conceal it, there are many such cases appearing in all parts of the world. All these children are perfect, have well developed bodies and features and lovely hair, and, except for their wings, are said to be what we are in the habit of calling 'normal.' "But we heard that the Idaho couple suffered a good deal. You see, they were so proud and sure that through them the human race might go on a step up, but they were immediately excommunicated by their church, and the clergy assured them that 'God did n't want winged children.' They were waited upon by a group of politicians who asked them to leave town. So we have asked them to come here, for, between you and me, we feel that if there are going to be many more winged children, we might as well have the honor of founding the first aërial community." I called Mary to me. "Dearest, you are n't alone in the world any more; there is a little winged boy born in Cincinnati, and a little girl like you in Idaho." Mary smiled, without surprise. My tall daughter came up to me, her wings a lovely suffused rose color. She slowly lifted them and covered us both while she said softly: "Mother darling, you did n't know I had a friend, a young East-Indiana man-a boy about eighteen. He has tawny gold wings like his eyes and his skin.” "Mary,"-I "-I clutched her,-"not wings like you, your age?" My girl was very calm. "Yes, Mother dear. Of course I would n't have been apt to meet my mate at the parties here, so I just flew around, looking for him. I used to fly out at sunset where I knew, if there was any him, he would be flying, too. And he was, Mumsey. I met him the earth side of a lovely golden cloud. We were so glad to see each other; he had been very lonely in India." "And he was looking for you? Even with wings!" I was silent; the soft rose arch trembled a little. "Mother, don't be hurt; we were made for each other. We have flown together much now, and we like the same cloud paths. Our wings measure almost the same, except that his are stronger; mine, he says, are finer. Mother darling, you are sure to like him. He is like father, only younger and even more confident and sweet and strong." I could only gasp: "From India!" "Oh," remarked Mary, casually, "he has a job in an American college. He's a sort of wizard in astronomy. What he has been finding out about the universe has been terribly unpopular. That's why he flies out to the sunset every night to drink color and distance. He says he 'd die of thirst in the average American university. One night when I was helping him make some measurements of an aëroplane path he 's doing to Mars he asked me to marry him. We shall live on the earth, though. God wants us to keep our feet on the earth.” "God?" "We have heard God speaking," said Mary, gravely. "He spoke to our minds." I was silent. Mary put her head in my lap. "I have told father and Professor Downby," she said softly. "They seemed more pleased than you. They said, "There might be a chance for ascent, after all."" My daughter folded her wings. "Do you suppose," she said dreamily, "that just because you and father have been so true and patient and unafraid and have stuck firmly to winged ideas and things that are progressive and forward moving that-that-" "That what?" I asked in an awed voice. "That some day that man from India and I will have winged children, and that the whole world will mount up as with wings?" I looked where she looked and I dreamed that general rising, and saw at last patronage, privilege, fear, greed, superstition, prejudice, and ignorance dead like toads in their slime. More of an Arabian Anabasis BY E. ALEXANDER POWELL DRAWINGS BY KERR EBY HE routine of a caravan on the alight, we would stride along as though I march is as changeless as the desert itself. Awakened by Achmet at three o'clock in the morning, we would crawl shivering from our blankets to dress in darkness and bitter cold. And the cold of early morning in the Hamad pierces one to the bone. By the time Sherin had got the Primus stoves going and had prepared breakfast, which consisted of tea, usually with a dash of rum, hard biscuits or the leathery Arab bread, scrambled eggs, and tinned sausages, the tent had been struck and, with our bedding and other camp equipment, packed on the camels. At four o'clock, just as the eastern sky was graying, Ghazi Mansour would mount his white hejin, and the march began. We made it a practice to walk for the first three or four hours, thus varying the monotony and sufficiently tiring ourselves, so that the long hours in the saddle were more easily endured. These pedestrian interludes in the cool fragrance of the early dawn were the pleasantest part of the day, for, save where the desert was strewn with flintlike volcanic rock, the walking was good and we could step out briskly-so briskly, in fact, that we usually kept well in advance of the main body of the caravan, for a draft camel, unless pushed, seldom averages over two and a half miles an hour. With pipes out for a tramp in the country, discussing politics, science, literature, art, religion, which, for some reason, was always a favorite topic-anything, in fact, which served to while the hours away. But, as the day advanced, it grew too hot for walking, and by eight o'clock we were usually glad to take to our saddles again. The great caravan routes, which have been used from time beyond reckoning, are usually well defined; not a single beaten road, of course, but a number of narrow, sinuous, more or less parallel trails made by the padded feet of untold generations of camels. Because of an injury to my back sustained during the war, I had not dared to depend on a camel alone and had insisted on Mohammed Bassam providing me with a horse, the only one in the caravan, which we used between us, turn and turn about. This horse was an Arab, it is true, but it was not the desert steed of fiction, curved of neck and long of pastern, but a rather dejected-looking sorrel pony which suffered from constitutional laziness; so that long before the journey was over my arm was lame from beating tattoos with a stick upon its bony sides. It takes a fast-walking horse to keep up with camels, and on more than one occasion I fell so far behind that the sheik sent to my rescue an Arab mounted on a fast hejin. He would take a turn of my halter-rope about the pommel of his saddle, cluck his animal into a sort of running walk, and drag the unwilling pony along in his wake, like a tugboat towing a lighter, until we overtook the caravan. I wish that my friends at home might have seen me when fully accoutred for the march. I looked like one of Sherman's bummers on the march to the sea, for slung across my shoulders or strapped to the saddle were my field-glasses, camera, pistol, rifle, bandoleer, water-bottle, raincoat, blankets, and a haversack bulging with odds and ends for which space could not be found elsewhere. As the heat increased, I substituted for my jacket a voluminous white abieh which I had bought in Damascus, and over my helmet draped a keffieh, which fell down over my shoulders, protecting my neck from the sun and producing an almost imperceptible current of air. When the sun approached its zenith, I unfurled a dilapidated umbrella loaned me by Fuad's mademoiselle. It was not picturesque, but it afforded considerable protection, and, with the mercury at 130, it is the part of wisdom to take no chances. Hutchings did take a chance, and was rewarded by a sunstroke which kept him in a Bagdad hospital for days. From our start at four in the morning until we pitched camp at sunset there was rarely a halt save occasionally about noon, when Ghazi Mansour sometimes broke the march long enough to permit the making of coffee. Nor would anything have been gained by a midday halt, as is the custom of expeditions in cooler latitudes, for there is no shade in the desert, and even had the tents been pitched, the heat beneath them would have been insufferable. Our noon meal, therefore, consisted only of tinned fruit, usually pineapple, and a handful of dried dates and figs, which we carried in our haversacks and ate as we rode. All day long, day in and day out, we rode across a burning, desolate waste, flatter and hotter than it is possible to imagine or describe. imagine or describe. One could see only a few miles in any direction. The whole of our world had become a flat, brown disk, reflecting the scorching sun-rays in quivering mirage. Though the Hamad is, for the most part, as level as a ball-room floor, one gets the impression that it is tilted and that he is forever riding uphill. The sun is pitiless, implacable, terrifying. It pursues one mercilessly, beating down upon one's head and shoulders with a vindictiveness which seems almost personal. The heat in the Hamad during the late spring and summer cannot be realized by one who has not experienced it. Fortunately, however, it is a dry heat, like that of Death Valley and the Colorado Desert, and one does not perspire; but it seems literally to shrivel one up. Every particle of moisture leaves the body until one feels like an orange that has been squeezed dry. The skin turns to blotting-paper; the lips and gums crack open; the tongue swells, and there is no saliva with which to moisten it. The eyeballs become inflamed; any exposed portion of the body is burned as though by fire. The dust stirred up by the camels rises in suffocating yellow clouds, filling nostrils, eyes, and ears. A mighty, invisible finger seems to be pressing intolerably upon one's head and spine; the brain reels. The heat-waves dance and flicker above the unending waste. What What appear to |