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fell in love, with prospects of next to nothing a year. Mother's family were furious. They had protested against her mission work; they drew the line at marrying a poor minister. She must choose between him and them. "How disgraceful!" said Winifred, flushing. "She did choose. They were married in the little mission chapel, and moved to New Hampshire, where father had been settled over a country parish; and there we childrenthree of us- were born. Will is at Yale, and Betty has just entered Wellesley."

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He took a little photograph-case from his pocket. They had come to where the street crossed Tumbledown Brook by an open bridge of single span. Richard opened the case. The moonlight fell unobstructed, but the small pictures showed but dimly.

"I wish it was lighter," he said, fumbling in his vest pocket. "Here is a match, luckily." He scratched the match upon the guardrail of the bridge, and, by its momentary flash and glare, the girl bent over the miniatures.

"Here are father and mother," said Richard. "What good faces, and how sweet your mother is," she said.

"Mother was very pretty when a girl, they say. If I had another match, I could have shown you Betty and Will. We are very proud of our collegians. They will make their mark yet, for they are both bright and both ambitious. They 've been such a comfort to father and mother."

She glanced at him archly, adding, "While the elder son must have been a continual disappointment."

He smiled appreciatively. "How good they are," he said, "not to twit me with it."

From the wooded heights on the left the brook descended, trickling from shelfy ledges and gurgling over the stones in its steep and rocky bed. Densely shaded, its course was for the most part unseen, but here and there a ripple glinted and gleamed in a patch of moonlight. Close to the bridge, indeed, a level shallow spread, through which a lowly sidetrack ran, for the convenience of watering horses, after the primitive fashion. Under the bridge the water ran smooth and still, as if abashed by the bridge's frowning shadow, but once beyond, and freed from restraint, it sped away, leaping and frisking along its wild course through Battleford Park, the narrow but pretty bit of wooded sward which slopes here from the street to the river.

Here on another July night more than a century ago, in the old French and Indian War, occurred the fight which gives name to the town. From where rises that slender shaft of granite, dimly seen through the trees, the wily redskins opened their deadly fusillade; and the ford,

whose level reach now glimmers white and still beneath the moon, answered angrily then to the patter of leaden hail, and was streaked with the red of patriot blood. That was long years ago, but public spirit had raised this monolith as a lasting memorial of the fight.

Village tales had it that belated travelers, by night, along this way, had sometimes seen, upon the anniversary of the battle, the shadowy reenactment of the tragedy in ghostly pantomime of surprise, conflict, and battlesmoke. However that may have been, the shaded park was a favorite resort on warm afternoons, when the wood might be filled with merry children, and the benches occupied by mothers knitting, or by white-capped nursemaids and their infant wards. In the evening it was usually deserted, and so far was it from the center of the town, which had clustered about the factories at the falls farther up, that the bridge had few passers at this hour.

As Richard and Winifred leaned upon the low parapet the only sounds beside their own voices were the babble of the brook and the incessant disputation of the katydids in the maple trees.

There had been Bartons in the old fight, so Winifred proudly said, as she told the story of the ambush, and the cruel attack which stubborn courage had at length repelled. She spoke in a hushed voice of the tales of ghostly reappearance, and he laughed at mankind's proneness to superstition, gently bantering her upon her own respect for the old traditions.

"My grandfather saw the vision once," said the girl, quietly, "and his grandfather was in the fight.'

"You are plainly in the line of succession, then," said Richard, "and if this were one of the muster-nights, your eyes could not fail to see the wonder; but mine are alien,"— he turned their laughing gaze upon her fondly,"and perhaps too unbelieving." Though he had laughed, she seemed to him only the gentler and more womanly that she had no jest for the supernatural.

In its sweet unfolding her girlhood had not been impoverished by being kept from the dear old fairy lore. Nymph and brownie, fay and water-sprite, had lived in her childish fancy. Old tales of Araby, which had delighted the ears of Haroun the Just, had done their part, and so had the weird Bible silhouette of the Witch of Endor, and even reverent thoughts of the risen Christ.

These all had stimulated her imagination, and wakened the poetry of her nature, in spite of the material environment of a factory town.

And yet she liked Richard none the less that, child though he was of the mysterious mountains, he did not believe in ghosts.

Dreamily she looked out upon the park. "How pretty," she said, "the flecks of moonlight are upon the grass."

"They remind me," said Richard," of Wiles's picture, Noon,' which I saw at one of the New York exhibitions. It was just a row of roughly drawn house fronts, and a pavement shaded by bordering trees. But one could feel the sultry noontide; the shade was palpable reality; while the vivid patches of sunlight on the paving fairly glowed and flickered before one's eyes. Walking close to see how such effects of light and shade could have been produced, I found that the sunlight was what do you think?-nothing but splashes of white, as flat as if they had been put on by a house-painter!"

"But how could such simple strokes produce such realistic effects?"

"Ah, that's the art! Rightly to put together the simple strokes and the flat white splashesis n't that the secret of all genius? Just think of poetry and literature: all the words are in the dictionary,-free to all,—but only—"

His preachment came to a sudden close. Winifred had laid a hand upon one of his, which grasped the bridge-rail. Looking down, he smiled whimsically at this reversal of his illreceived attention, and resisted an impulse to remind his companion that this was sometimes called flirting. As he turned instead for explanation, the girl was mutely pointing along the glade towards the ford.

Dimly seen across the river, where shallow and shore met, vaporous forms, white and indistinct, seemed entering the stream. The eyes of the watchers upon the bridge grew large and fixed. To the minds of both the old tales recurred. Were they true, then? Without taking her gaze from the river, Winifred moved closer to Richard's side. Not an audible splash in the stream such as living waders make, not a ripple disturbed its surface, yet steadily on, on, came the shadowy vanguard into midstream, and, indistinct behind, followed a straggling host.

In the awful hush louder sounded the tintinnabulation of the brook, shriller the harsh notes of the katydids. How the mind grasped at their tangible resonance, a welcome link to the world of the living, a lifeline of safety from the undertow of the supernatural.

The watching eyes were strained more clearly to define the lambent outlines; every alert sense was at its utmost tension. Suddenly the column wavered, as if their unsubstantial forms were shaken by the rising breeze. Did not one seem to stagger and to fall? And there another? Was that a puff of rifle-smoke? The scene grew cloudy and indistinct, as if with spreading smoke-wreaths. Suddenly, like the

VOL. XLII.-28.

final signal of a weird transformation scene, an unearthly cry rent the noisy quiet with reverberant clangor. Winifred's overwrought intensity found relief in a little startled scream. With great rustle of leaves and crashing of small branches, a great bird disengaged himself heavily from his leafy covert near the monument, and flapped his way over their heads into the denser woods beyond.

Their eyes had followed the feathered brawler until his disappearance in the wood; when then they turned again towards the spectacle at the ford, neither ghostly veterans nor river could be seen. Whether apparitional battle-smoke or sublunary fog, a soft white curtain had shut out the shore from sight, and with deliberate insistence was rolling up the slope through the trees.

The air had grown chill and damp, and Richard suddenly awoke to his responsibility. "I am not taking good care of you," he said.

Winifred suffered him to draw her light wrap more tightly about her. As she lifted her face to pin the soft folds at her throat her eyes burned clear and bright. Her bearing was that of a queen. It was not that she triumphed in the proof of the existence of the supernatural. She exulted that to her eyes had come this experience. She was a Barton, and Richard had said truer than he thought. She had been in the line of succession. She had seen; and this young man—was it not because of his love for her that he too should have seen the vision ? As they turned townward, she said:

"It vexes me that just because I am a woman I should cry out as I did. You do not think I was afraid?" She looked up at him almost defiantly, but his demeanor reassured her. "I think I should not have been afraid even if I had been alone," she added; and then, more gently, "and yet I was glad that you were with me."

Richard drew her arm closer. "I don't wonder that you were startled. One is excusable for having excited nerves after such a sight."

"Then you did see it, Richard?"

"Yes." His own mind was in perplexity. Against his will he had seemed to see what his reason said was impossible. "But what it was that we saw I am not sure. Perhaps it was only the rising fog. I can not fully explain it so, but I think that may be the explanation."

"At the last," said the girl," it did look like a mist, but before that how plain it was, even in its indistinctness - the travel-worn men, the wading passage, the waver of surprised attack, the answering volley." Her face was aglow. "I never saw a battle, but I think it must have happened so." To her the supernatural seemed the simplest explanation. "And remember,"

she added, "that others have seen the same thing before."

"Yes," replied Richard, gently; "whatever others saw, we must have seen. It may be that with just the right combination of circumstances-wind and water and air just right— the fog may first form and rise in such separate flamelike shapes. I should want to make some experiments before I testified as to what it was that we saw."

"I'll wait for your report," she said. She was not unwilling to put the subject aside. Although strangely wrought upon by the incident at the bridge, her mind had held tenaciously through all to a line of inquiry she purposed to resume. A thought had come to her as they had talked of his family and home affairs which she desired to have explained.

"You are to be a lawyer, Richard, are you not?" she now said. "I have heard that you were studying law out of hours at the factory." "I am a lawyer," he answered, with mock gravity," and have been for nearly three whole days-passed my examination on Thursday." She had planned her campaign.

"I should have thought that, choosing a profession, you would have gone to college. It seems to have been the family bent, too." Herfurtive scrutiny detected the shade which crossed his face, but he answered bravely: "I should have been glad of a college course, but it did not seem best."

"Your father seems to have been able to send the others," she rejoined relentlessly; "why did he not insist on your going?"

"Country parishes don't pay large salaries as a rule," he said patiently;" and besides,-I did not tell you, when I was ten years old my grandfather the Boston merchant, you know - failed in business. He had a son, my uncle, a harum-scarum fellow, always in some scrape or other. To keep him from disgrace, after some especial escapade, father indorsed his note for a large sum. The note was not paid, of course, and the holder looked to father. You can imagine how much money a country minister had to pay with. Father had only to say that he had no money, as was true, and there would have been no property on which the creditor could have levied to collect the debt. But that was not father's way. He said he would pay as fast as he could, and he has paid it, little by little, though it has been a long pull and a hard one."

"He must have been heavily taxed to raise so much extra money."

"Oh, he has been. But never a complaint! Mother has economized and managed, and Will and Betty have figured expenses close. It has kept them all poor."

Winifred faced him triumphantly. Richard,

with surprise, beheld her cheeks aflame and her eyes like stars.

"For how much sagacity, sir," she exclaimed," do you give me credit? Who else has been kept poor, to eke out a country minister's salary, to pay other people's debts, and to keep your brother and sister at college? And you would not tell me about your share in the work; but don't I see what you have been doing? you aggravating-unselfish-noble fellow!"

She had seized his hand in both of hers, and if the brown eyes had flashed as she turned towards him, they were suffused now and full of a tender light. Suddenly her clasp relaxed, and, dropping the hand she had held, she turned demurely to walk on again, her hand once more upon his arm.

"I came near being sentimental," she said, "over your faults !”

Richard had blushed as his self-sacrifice had been brought home to him; now he said:

"Praise from you is very sweet, but I've done no great thing. Father is the true hero. How could I do less-who have my life before me?"

She looked at him curiously.

"You 're a funny boy," she exclaimed. "Most young men claim great credit if they even pay their own way without help from their fathers."

Their eyes met. The girl's were full of a new and shy proprietorship in all his virtues.

"O Richard!" she said impulsively. Her eyes fell before his scrutiny as she continued, "It must seem very fickle in me, but I think I need wait no longer to know my own mind. I don't understand it, but it seems to me now as if I did love you, and had always loved you, even in those days of your boyhood, before I had ever even seen you." She was looking down now, as she uttered this confession, but she heard his quick “Thank God!" and she felt, rather than saw, his eager impulse as he turned towards her as if to clasp her to his heart.

She put up her free hand with a slight gesture of dissent. The impulses of her heart had indeed risen like a flood and broken bound, but already her mind was full of reactionary conflict.

After all her calm resolves, what had she done? Had she not surrendered the fortress without even waiting for the expiration of the truce? What had become of all those rules of prudent and judicial reserve which, in the meditation of her maidenhood, she had firmly decreed should govern her behavior when the "prince" should really come, and which should decide her consideration of his proposals when they should have been formally made?

Something like a pang of dismay seized her. Were her theories going all to pieces? And was she to prove as weakly sentimental as other engaged girls, whose folly had been her horror? "But, Richard," she said, " people are sometimes mistaken, and discover after a time that they do not love each other after all. I think we ought to be very, very sure. And it will be best that no one should know yet that we are engaged."

"For how long, do you mean?" "Oh, for some time. I can't tell. Maybe six months, maybe longer."

A cloud settled upon the young man's face. "But, Winifred, I am afraid your plan is not practicable. Awkward mistakes will occur, and, besides, people will find us out, we shall be so much together."

"Oh, but we must n't be," she answered; "we must be very careful about that. It will be best that you should not come often to see me, and when we are in company together we must not look at each other, nor pay each other any attention."

Richard's heart felt like a weight in his breast. In their sauntering they had come round again to the Bartons' house, and stood talking. Winifred's quiet voice went on gravely:

"There is a deal of foolishness, too, that goes on between engaged people in the way of-kissing and showing their affection. I could n't do it; I'm not demonstrative. and I don't come of a kissing family either. We girls shake hands, but we almost never kiss each other. When I came home from New York this spring father kissed me, but Sally only shook hands, while Meg simply said, Well, Winny, home again? Had a good time?'"

Richard looked ruefully at the girl across the gate now between them. Over his first exultant pride of conquest had come an undefined gloom of disappointment. He did not understand her. In vague search for precedent, his mind reverted to the heroines of romances he had read. Not a girl of them all had been so contradictory, not one had talked like this,

nor been such a model of Platonic propriety. If she maintained these reserves, what should he do? He might as well be engaged to her grandmother. How utterly unreasonable it all was! If, now, Winifred had been homely, he thought in his resentment of fate, he would not have cared so much.

The girl's face was upturned, so that the moon lighted up the fluffy hair about her white forehead. The clear deeps of the brown eyes looked calmly into his troubled, wistful face. How pretty she was! If he might win her for his own, a lover might serve a lifetime for the right to kiss her.

Through the moody mists of his discontent, the thought flashed a ray of light and warmth to his heart.

He could wait. And proudly he thought that he would never claim the right till she had given it to him freely.

Winifred had not fully read his thoughts, but a wave of womanly intuition seemed to sweep across her face as she perceived the dim trouble in his eyes. In vain her resolution summoned her attention to her code, so carefully formulated, so prudently adopted. Even now, in rapid retrospect, she could find no fault with her system. The law was good. But here, she reasoned, was an exigency for which her rules had not provided. This young man was in great trouble. She discovered in herself a curious impulse to proffer him comfort.

Surely, when it was to relieve the distress of another, the relaxation of her rule could not count against her as a breach of self-discipline.

Suddenly, standing upon tiptoe, and reaching forward across the picketed gate, she clasped his face in both her hands, and with a quick movement drew him towards her.

"You dear boy!" she said with tender eagerness.

Before he had recovered from the shock of his surprise she had kissed him full upon his lips, and with a quick "Good night!" had turned, and, flashing up the steps, had disappeared from his sight.

Eugene Bradford Ripley.

AD ASTRA.

(A. C. L. B.)

NTO the stars the light they lent returned. Be still such influence, though undiscerned, Swept onward with the white sidereal tide.

E. M. T.

HAROUN THE CALIPH, AND OTHERS.

I.

AROUN the Caliph, walking by night in Bagdad, saw one standing without the great closed doors of the bazar of the goldworkers with naught upon him but his frail khamees, and it was cold. "Whose son art

thou?" said the Caliph.

"I am a merchant of amulets," returned the man. "I am starving, and I sold my coverings one by one, as a tree in autumn letteth a fierce wind have its leaves, rather than fall a heap and die. I am a child of misery from my birth."

Then said the Caliph, "Take this, eat, drink, and be merry," and he gave the great ruby that men call the "Eye of Love," and went on his way in peace. The next night came again Haroun, and, finding the merchant of amulets about to die for need of food, cried, "Alas! why did not you sell my jewel, and live?"

Then answered the dying man: "Some said it was false, some said it was stolen, and none would buy. It is as when Allah gives a too great gift of soul to a lowly man-it getteth him only the food of mockery. But now I have the amulet called death, and I shall no more hunger or care."

Upon this the man died, and the Caliph took the "Eye of Love" from the clutch of death and went his way hand in hand with thought.

II.

A DERVISH, lazy and hungry, met a Sufi poet, and he begged of him alms; but the son of songs and the father of sayings said, "I have only the wisdom of God, the advice of the dead, and the songs of men."

"Will a song fill my paunch ?" cried the other. To whom made answer the poet: "Sing a song of sixpence, and that will fill your pocket with rye; and scatter the rye, and that will fetch silly blackbirds to make for you a pie- and any girl will cook it."

"Thanks," said the man.

III.

A SUFI DERVISH, the father of sorrow and the son of grief, sat at night by the sea. The waves like sleek serpents writhed at his feet,

and hissed forth, "Come, let us strangle thee and thy griefs, and make an end."

"Ah, welcome death!" he answered. Then a greater billow, rolling in, covered him, and went back, and the man was very wet. Thereupon he went home and dried his clothes.

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IV.

AT noon prayer, on a Friday, in Ramazan, the Caliph looked from the Maksurah and saw the Khateb exhorting the many who were poor or sad by reason of death, and who daily went to and fro from the house of weeping to the grave of loss, and found neither peace in one nor forgetfulness in the other. At last, seeing that none shed their sorrows or sought comfort, but still slept on the bed of grief and watered the pillows of lamentation, the Khateb descended from his seat, and sat himself by the fountain in the courtyard, and one by one repeated the Hundred Sacred Names, and murmured "the words light on the tongues of men and heavy in the balance of God." Then came one, a teller of tales, and the son of a teller of tales, and the father of all such as listen to a tale and love it. And as the Khateb murmured and mumbled, the teller of tales lifted his voice to the faithful and said:

"Once in a strange land a king took a city and, meaning to destroy it, bade each dweller therein to carry away with him what most he valued. Some took gold and some food, but one a great sack. Said the king, 'What is that you carry?' And the man replied, 'It is full of laughter.' To him returned the king, 'You are wise. I have forgotten how to laugh. Divide with me.' Whereon said the man, 'Allah teacheth charity. Take what you will.' And the king took, and grew gay with the wine of mirth, and said, 'This shall ransom the city.' As for him who bore the sack, he made him lord over all who cannot smile."

Such as heard this story were moved to merriment and forgot to weep. But the saint cried, "When death taketh thy city, canst thou carry away a sack of laughter?"

"I know not," said the teller of tales; "Allah, who maketh all, is maker of mirth as of grief. Some say, 'Who wins, laughs; but I, 'Who laughs, wins.' Therefore let us fill our mule bags with laughter and our camel bags with mirth, and wait for the king to destroy this city of earth."

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