and pride. He did not try to become master of others, but only of himself, and inexorably at that. Indeed, no master would have believed it possible to wring such effort from him by means of authority and terror. Again, Palissy had no self-pity, for, drawing from his weary bones all the energy that lies in the poor body of man, he exhausted himself almost to the point of death and yet never gave in. He ran against all odds, against poverty, jeers, and insult. He spent his wife's modest fortune, which meant all to her. How can a man live in peace with his wife when he thinks that every bit of the house, walls, floors, and furnishings, is fuel! The ceramist is anxious to obtain a temperature that will bake his glaze, and, alas! he has no more wood. Think of it! A little more heat, and that smooth surface so eagerly awaited will appear. This old chair can go into the fire, that door of the oaken cupboard, too. Quick! or the flame will dwindle, the glaze dull. What is more heartrending, to lack wood at such a crucial moment or to have to await fish for the Grand Condé's guests? Palissy does enduring piece of work, lasting centuries; Vatel attends to food gone in a moment. Where Vatel destroys himself, Palissy sticks obstinately to his purpose, not only in the face of his suffering, but also in the face of the common sense of his wife. For she is right. To a poor family everything in a house is useful. This old chair must not be burned. A day may come when some one will be glad to sit on it. And, if you please, for what folly is this destruction practised? Is it wise to allow one's little earthly goods to fade away in smoke? of pain when the glaze refused to bake while his last log was in the fire. Between the flaming devil of ceramics and the spirit of order in the household, the man continued his anxious, tortured existence the existence of the saint. Did Pasteur encounter as many obstacles in microbiology as Palissy in ceramics? However that may be, here are three professions diversely gaged by social standards, cooking, pottery, chemistry. Yet each has its saint who gives to humanity work of unequal usefulness, perhaps, but work, nevertheless, endowed with identical quality of the soul, identical value of faith in work, of self-sacrifice to the religion of deeds. When Pasteur's pupils surprised him at two o'clock in the morning, candle in hand, having risen from his bed to go down and examine his testtubes, they understood that it was the driving force of an idea which awakened this man as inevitably as the tap of a night-watchman on his shoulder. He who cannot be easy in bed has made the first step toward the misery of being a saint. Why is not the hagiography of work one of the outstanding illustrations of moral values? Great workers may be birds of prey, exploiting the energies of others out of lust for money or domination. Contrasted with those men for whom work spells conquest and oppression, how much more noble are human beings who regard work as a gift of self and a tribute to mankind! The day is gone when crowds follow the great mystics who speak words of comfort or of fierce passion. The hour is at hand when the essential holiness that lies in work will become one of Palissy, indeed, knew the meaning the greatest moral forces of civilization. mas. Will you keep Constance com Nafternoon just as the cutter with pany? She seems a trifle disappointed the two black ponies jingled round the driveway and stopped at the front door. Mrs. Forrester came out on the porch, dressed for a sleigh-ride. Ellinger followed her, buttoned up in a long fur-lined coat, showily befrogged down the front, with a glossy astrakhan collar. He looked even more powerful and bursting with vigor than last night. His highly colored, well visored countenance shone with a good opinion of himself and of the world. Mrs. Forrester called to Neil gaily: "We are going down to the Sweet Water to cut cedar boughs for Christ at being left behind, but we can't take the big sleigh; the pole is broken. Be nice to her, there's a good boy!" She pressed his hand, gave him a meaning, confidential smile, and stepped into the sleigh. Ellinger sprang in beside her, and they glided down the hill with a tinkle of sleigh-bells. Neil found Miss Ogden in the back parlor, playing solitaire by the fire. She was clearly out of humor. "Come in, Mr. Herbert. I think they might have taken us along, don't you? I want to see the river my own self. I hate bein' shut up in the house!" 1 Synopsis of Part I in "Among Our Contributors." "Let's go out, then. Would you like to see the town?" Constance seemed not to hear him. She was wrinkling and unwrinkling her short nose, and the restless lines about her mouth were fluttering. "What's to hinder us from getting a sleigh at the livery barn and going down to the Sweet Water? I don't suppose the river's private property?" She gave a nervous, angry laugh, and looked hopefully at Neil. "We could n't get anything at this hour. The livery teams are all out," he said with firmness. Constance glanced at him suspiciously, then sat down at the cardtable and leaned over it, drawing her plump shoulders together. Her fluffy yellow hair was wound round her head like a scarf and held in place by narrow bands of black velvet. The ponies had crossed the second creek and were trotting down the highroad toward the river. Mrs. Forrester expressed her feelings in a laugh full of mischief. "Is she running after us? Where did she get the idea that she was to come? What a relief to get away!" She lifted her chin and sniffed the air. The day was gray, without sun, and the air was still and dry, a warm cold. "Poor Mr. Ogden!" she went on. "How much livelier he is without his ladies! They almost extinguish him. Now are n't you glad you never married?" "I'm certainly glad I never married a homely woman. What does a man do it for, anyway? She had no money, and he 's always had it, or been on the way to it." "Well, they're off to-morrow. And Connie! You 've reduced her to a state of imbecility, really! What an afternoon Neil must be having!" She laughed as if the idea of his predicament delighted her. El "Who 's this kid, anyway?" linger asked her to take the reins for a moment while he drew a cigar from his pocket. "He's a trifle stiff. Does he make himself useful?" "Oh, he's a nice boy, stranded here like the rest of us. I'm going to train him to be very useful. He's devoted to Mr. Forrester. Handsome, don't you think?" "So-so." They turned into a byroad that wound along the Sweet Water. Ellinger held the ponies in a little and turned down his high astrakhan collar. "Let's have a look at you, Marian." Mrs. Forrester was holding her muff before her face to catch the flying particles of snow the ponies kicked up. From behind it she glanced at him sidewise. "Well?" she said teasingly. He put his arm through hers and settled himself low in the sleigh. "You ought to look at me better than that. It's been a devil of a long while since I 've seen you." "Perhaps it 's been too long," she murmured. The mocking spark in her eyes softened perceptibly under the long pressure of his arm. "Yes, it 's been long," she admitted lightly. "You did n't answer the letter I wrote you on the eleventh." "Did n't I? Well, at any rate, I answered your telegram." She drew her head away as his face came nearer. "You'll really have to watch the ponies, my dear, or they 'll tumble us out in the snow." "I don't care; I wish they would," he said between his teeth. "Why did n't you answer my letter?" "Oh, I don't remember. You don't the snow, one of the Blum boys, slip "So it is, and foolish. But now you need n't be so careful. Not too careful." She laughed softly. "When I'm off in the country for a whole winter, alone and growing older, I like to" she put her hand on his “to be reminded of pleasanter things." Ellinger took off his glove with his teeth. His eyes, sweeping the winding road and the low, snow-covered bluffs, had something wolfish in them. "Be careful, Frank! My rings! You hurt me!" "Then why did n't you take them off? You used to. Are these your cedars? Shall we stop here?" "No, not here." She spoke very low. "The best ones are farther on, in a deep ravine that winds back into the hills." Ellinger glanced at her averted head, and his heavy lips twitched in a smile at one corner. The quality of her voice had changed, and he knew the change. They went spinning along the curves of the winding road, saying not a word. Mrs. Forrester sat with her head bent forward, her face half hidden in her muff. At last she told him to stop. To the right of the road he saw a thicket. Behind it Behind it a dry water-course wound into the bluffs. The tops of the dark, still cedars, just visible from the road, indicated its windings. ping quietly along through the timber in search of rabbits, came upon the empty cutter standing in the brush, and near it the two ponies, stamping impatiently where they were tied. Adolph slid back into the thicket and lay down behind a fallen log to see what would happen. Not much ever happened to him but weather. Presently he heard low voices coming nearer from the ravine. The big stranger who was visiting at the Forresters' emerged, carrying the buffalo-robes on one arm; Mrs. Forrester herself was clinging to the other. They walked slowly, wholly absorbed by what they were saying to each other. When they came up to the sleigh, the man spread the robes on the seat and put his hands under Mrs. Forrester's arms to lift her in. But he did not lift her; he stood for a long while holding her crushed up against his breast, her face hidden in his black overcoat. "What about those damned cedar boughs?" he asked after he had put her in and covered her up. "Shall I go back and cut some?" "It does n't matter," she murmured. He reached under the seat for a hatchet, and went back to the ravine. Mrs. Forrester sat with her eyes closed, her cheek pillowed on her muff, a faint, soft smile on her lips. The air was still and blue; the Blum boy could almost hear her breathe. When the strokes of the hatchet rang out from the ravine, he could see her eyelids flutter; "Sit still," he said, "while I take out soft shivers went through her body. the horses." §2 When the blue shadows of approaching dusk were beginning to fall over The man came back, and threw the evergreens into the sleigh. When he got in beside her, she slipped her hand through his arm and settled softly against him. "Drive slowly," she murmured, as if she were talking in her sleep. "It does n't matter if we are late for dinner. Nothing matters." The ponies trotted off. He The pale Blum boy rose from behind his log and followed the tracks up the ravine. When the orange moon rose over the bluffs, he was still sitting under the cedars, his gun on his knee. While Mrs. Forrester had been waiting there in the sleigh, with her eyes closed, feeling so safe, he could almost have touched her with his hand. had never seen her before when her mocking eyes and lively manner were not between her and all the world. If it had been Thad Grimes who lay behind that log, now, or Ivy Peters? But with Adolph Blum her secrets were safe. His mind was feudal; the rich and fortunate were also the privileged. These warm-blooded, quick-breathing people took chances, followed impulses only dimly understandable to a boy who was wet and weather-chapped all the year, who waded in the mud fishing for cat, or lay in the marsh waiting for wild duck. Mrs. Forrester had never been too haughty to smile at him when he came to the back door with his fish. She never haggled about the price. She treated him like a human being. His little chats with her, her nod and smile when she passed him on the street, were among the pleasantest things he had to remember. bought game of him in the closed season and did n't give him away. § 3 She It was during that winter, the first Mrs. Forrester had ever spent in the house on the hill, that Neil came to know her very well. For the For resters that winter was a sort of isthmus between two estates; soon afterward came a change in their fortunes. And for Neil it was a natural turningpoint, since in the autumn he was nineteen and in the spring he was twenty, a very great difference. After the Christmas festivities were over, the whist-parties settled into a regular routine. Three evenings a week Judge Pomeroy and his nephew sat down to cards with the Forresters. Sometimes they went over early and dined there. dined there. Sometimes they stayed for a late supper after the last rubber. Neil, who had lived a bachelor's life since he was six years old and who had made up his mind that he would never live in a place that was under the control of women, found himself becoming attached to the comforts of a well conducted house, to the pleasures of the table, to the soft chairs and soft lights and agreeable human voices at the Forresters'. On bitter, windy nights, sitting in his favorite blue chair before the grate, he used to wonder how he could manage to tear himself away, to plunge into the outer darkness, and to run down the long frozen road and up the dead street of the town. Captain Forrester was experimenting with bulbs that winter, and had built a little glass conservatory for them on the south side of the house, off the back parlor. Through January and February the house was full of narcissus and Roman hyacinths, and their heavy springlike odor made a part of the enticing comfort of the fireside there. Where Mrs. Forrester was, dullness was impossible, Neil believed. The charm of her conversation was not so much in what she said, though she was often witty, but in the quick recognition of her eyes, in the living quality of |