Her lips met equably, with a faint suggestion of color.

'I'm so glad you came,' she said, when he was settled comfortably. 'I thought you would n't for a while.' 'I am afraid I was a little late,' he apologized. 'But it was such a heavenly day I could n't hurry.'

'If I had such a fine car for riding in as yours, I'd ride in it all day, without telling the chauffeur where I wanted to go, because it would n't be necessary.' 'No,' said Adams. "You don't have to tell him.'

They watched the firelight flowing across the hearth between them. Resting her chin on the heel of her right hand, the little girl stared through her fingers at the fire. Her slight body tensed perceptibly.

'My name's Maud,' she said, after a while; and then she caught her breath and waited.

'I wonder who she thinks I am,' Adams said to himself. He had n't a guess, so, rather than disappoint her, he was silent. But Maud was bent on learning his name. She looked up at him shyly not shyly, either; but she appeared to be embarrassed over an awkward lapse in memory.

'I don't remember when I saw you first, do you?'

'I don't think you ever saw me before.'

'I must have, somewhere, because you don't look strange. You didn't when you came into the room.'

'I can't remember when,' said Adams, seriously.

'At first I thought you might be Mr. Weller, but he always sees me wherever I am, the minute he comes in. And he always has tea in the kitchen; and I had told James to have tea for two people in the library. So you are n't Mr. Weller.'

'Impossible,' said Adams.

'No, because I expected you to tea.'

'I'm anything but Sam.' "Then I thought you might be Uncle Toby; but he comes so very seldom that when I remembered he had been here last Thursday I knew you were n't him. He's older, anyhow.' 'You must have a lot of visitors.'

'Yes, they're very good and come to tea whenever they can. It would be lonely here without them, with just James and Granny.'

'Granny?'

'She used to be my nurse, but now she's my maid.'

'Oh,' said Adams, more at ease. 'Yes, I should think it might be lonely, then, if you did n't have so many callers.'

'You see, James and Granny don't like these,' she sent a friendly glance round the shelves. 'And when I try to read them some, they go to sleep sitting up very stiff in their chairs. I don't read as well as Dada did.'

'But how long have you been by yourself?'

'It's three months since Dada died. He and I used to have lots of fun here. We'd read after dinner in the Arabian Nights and Boccaccio, though I like to read him best when it's sunny.'

'So do I,' nodded Adams.

'It's more like picnicking with him to feel the sun on your back.'

"Your mother went away long ago?' suggested Adams.

'Yes, before I can remember. She came back once, when Dada was dead, but then she was somebody else's mother. So I have been here instead.'

'It must have been hard work to take care of the house such a big one.'

'Oh no. You see, Mrs. Hopkins did that; and I only had to pour Dada's coffee in the morning and sit opposite him when we had dinner. Then we'd both come in here and read. Or, if there was company, I'd come in alone first and look at the Martyrs until they

came in to smoke and talk. Dada did not like ladies.

'He'd sit where you are,' she went on after a pause. 'His hair was white, and he smoked a yellow pipe with a long stem, not as nice as yours. He stayed upstairs all day, and wrote things.'

She reached for the bell pull. After a few moments' silence the butler appeared with the tea. He was coated, now, and lent a tone of solemnity to the proceedings. He took his place beside her chair, and when she put her hand to the kettle he reached across and took the weight in his own hand, like a venerable automaton, following her directions implicitly, and so impersonally that he might never have existed at all. Tea, to the two of them, was evidently a function of such long standing that they performed its graces with the dignity of perfect ease.

As her hands moved over the tray, the child's body assumed the poise of the experienced hostess.

'One lump?' she asked.
'Yes, please.'

'No lemon or cream?'
'No.'

'You see I remembered that,' she smiled, though I did n't know your name.'

When she had poured her own cup, she dismissed the butler. Adams stretched out his legs to the fire. The fragrance of tea always made him drowsy.

'I wonder who you are?' she asked. 'I'm sure,' he replied, 'that you've never seen me before. I don't go out often; and I came here by chance. Indeed, I did not know I was coming to this house until the driver left me at the door. I should n't know how to get here even now. And when he comes to take me away, I am afraid I shan't be able to remember the road.'

'How sad.'

'Yes. It is,' he said.

'But you know all my friends,' she said, glancing again at the shelves.

'Yes. You see I live with them. When people get tired of some of them, I find them a new place to stay.'

The child was indignant.

"They can't know them as well as I do if they get tired of them! They never have them to tea.'

'No,' said Adams. "They only ask them to show them to other people.'

'It's good of you to find them homes. Will you do that for mine?' 'Yes.'

'I'm glad. You see, I've got to leave them all. I wanted to take them with me; but my aunt who lives way out West is coming for me to-morrow, and she said there was n't room for them where she lived. I wanted to take Boccaccio and Uncle Toby with me, anyway; but she said they would not know what to do out there, and that I must forget them, because I was going to be a real girl.'

Adams winced.

'Do you know what that is?' she asked.

'I've lived with them for so long,' he said, looking in his turn toward the books, 'that I must have forgotten.'

'I wish I did not have to go; but my aunt says it will be better for me; but I don't think she knows.'

Adams could not speak.

"That's why I'm so glad you came. To-morrow it would have been too late; and I was afraid I should have to say good-bye to them by myself.'

She gazed out of the south window at the drive. The afternoon gray was beginning to accumulate the evening shadows, here and there, under the pines.

"The house will be lonely when there is n't anybody else to go away.' 'Yes,' said Adams, softly.

He tried to picture the room without her odd little tragical figure and her

grave gray eyes; and, failing that, he tried to visualize her as her aunt's finished product. And that also was too much for him. He could not get beyond the fact that on Monday morning, promptly at nine, he would begin selling books again. He would become a bookseller's assistant; the books would be brought to the mart for sale, Uncle Toby and the rest, no more than paper and ink and calf and morocco; and she who had poured them all tea would go down the drive to become flesh and blood under the pork-market guidance of her Western relatives. There would be only the house, waiting for the next inhabitant who could fit himself into its drowsy atmosphere. The house and the gray garden. . .

He knocked out his pipe, for he wanted to leave its ashes on the hearth. The firelight wavered delicately over the tea things. It is only firelight which makes ghosts.

The light in the open window had retreated beyond the glass. It was growing darker and darker. Now and then he could catch a glimmer of gold on the back of a book; but the corners of the room had faded. Only the chandelier, in the breathing glow of the flames, hung over him like Titania's web.

The black dress of the child had acquired invisibility in the shadow: there were only her pale face and hands, her long braid of wheat-colored hair, and her grave gray eyes.

She was looking at him earnestly. 'I wish I could remember your name.'

He swallowed convulsively. 'It was It is I have n't any name just now.'

'Perhaps, then, you feel like me. And I don't want to go. Oh, I don't! I don't!'

He was not sure she was crying.
All he heard was the ascending roar

of the truck. He could hear the tires clawing at the gravel.

'I don't want to go,' he said.

And then he found himself in the hall. There was no sign of the butler. Only the furniture in its moving-garb, and the bare floor, and his hat, coat, and gloves on the table. He put them on and closed the front door after him. No sign of the butler. Had he left the child alone?

Suddenly it occurred to him that he had not tasted his tea.

He tried the door, but it was locked.

IV

'Here I am,' said Corrigan, unnecessarily, as the truck snorted to a stop. 'Get aboard.'

Adams stared up at the silent windows.

'But the butler's gone.'

'Yesterday,' amended Corrigan, putting a smoke ring round the word.

"The little girl's all alone.'

'No, she ain't. That's what I brought ye for. She left two days ago, with her aunt, in a limysine as long as me tailboard.'

He exhaled pennons of smoke.

'Get aboard, sir. It's three hours to Boston with this load on.'

Reluctantly Adams complied. Corrigan released the brakes and they started coasting, silently, down the drive, past wide terraces of lawn and the gray garden.

'Look!' said Corrigan. drawing the clay pipe from his mouth, and the word was like crystal without the smoke.

Adams glanced along the stem and saw, in the middle of the gray garden, the bud of a white crocus, by itself.

They passed down through the gateposts, with the roosters atop, tiptoe for crowing.

"The creatures!' said Corrigan, as he juggled the gears into high.

[THE document which follows is somewhat freely translated from a Greek MS. written in uncials of a form that suggests the second century. Thirtyfour pages remain, but the last is a mere fragment, and the conclusion of the work is lost. These papyrus pages were discovered, along with other documents, far down in sand that filled the cellar of a ruined house. For reasons that may be easily guessed, the site of this house must remain a secret for some time to come. It may be said, however, that the discovery took place in a certain district of North Africa. All the papyri unearthed were carefully packed and forwarded to New York, where they arrived on June 7 of the past year.

Of the other documents found in the same cellar, only one is of general interest. It seems to be an account of the harbors of the eastern Mediterranean in the time of Vespasian. The rest are letters, accounts, recipes for cooking, and minutes of some guild meeting. These will be published later.

The present work purports to be a letter from a man of some little culture belonging to the Corinthian Church, addressed to the Apostle Paul at Rome. The tone is that of one genuinely desirous of spiritual light, though at certain points it sounds a little querulous. The writer seems most familiar with the Epistle known as First Corinthians in our New Testament, and gives no sign of having ever seen the Acts or the Pastoral Epistles.

Opinions are sure to differ on the

genuineness of this little treatise. Some will take it for what it claims to be, a work of a Christian scholar about the year 64 A.D. Others will confidently pronounce it an obvious forgery of the time of Justin Martyr or later in the second century. In either case it makes a definite contribution to the discussion of religious problems that have excited keen interest in certain quarters both in Europe and in America.

The letter has been divided into paragraphs, with headings inserted. Some references to the sources of quotations have been given here and there. For these headings and references the translator alone is responsible. As the writer makes no claim to be writing sacred instruction for the Church, no attempt has been made to render his language into Biblical English.

-TRANSLATOR]

KALLIKRATES, the son of Euphorbus, one of the faithful at Korinth, to Paul, the beloved apostle of our Lord Jesus Christ: grace and peace be yours always from the one true God who sent you to bring the word of life to Achaia.

It has ever been a sorrow to me that, living in a mountain village a day's journey south of Sikyon, I never saw you, Paul, or indeed heard of you when you were preaching the Gospel in Korinth. Three years after you left Korinth for the last time, I came here to study the books of some of our celebrated teachers, and here I met Stephanas, your brother in Christ, and now mine. He taught me the way of

salvation, which you had taught him. Through him I have been baptized and received into the number of the saints that are in Korinth. I live in the street that leads to the old harbor, the fourth house from the temple of Apollo.

Stephanas has been very kind to me, lending me your letters to the brethren in this city, and a copy of a letter you wrote to the brethren in Galatia and of another to the brethren at Rome. I have copied them all out and have read them again and again, thanking God our Father for the truth in Christ sent to me in my ignorance and unworthiness through your words, deep, eloquent, and persuasive. At many places in your works I feel as often as I read that the Lord Himself is speaking to me through you. I have fed at your hands, but am still hungry. I have drunk at your fountain, but I am thirsty still.

Besides all this, we your children in Korinth are in much anxiety about you. We hear you are again to be brought before Cæsar's tribunal. We earnestly pray God night and day for you that you may be acquitted and set at liberty. And I pray also that you may come back to Korinth and guide us, for some are in need of guidance, I myself most of all. Meanwhile, I write of my difficulties and doubts to you in this letter, hoping you may wish to know the present beliefs of the church in Korinth and may be permitted by your jailer to answer.

You are our most profitable and convincing teacher. From Silas and Loukas we have received sayings of our Lord Himself and many of His parables, and from Apollos many interpretations of the Hebrew writers. But you are our greatest teacher of all men now living. And yet, as you said, you do not 'lord it' over our faith. You 12 Cor. I. 24

reason with us when you write of the law courts, of the payment of apostles, of tongues in public worship, of the resurrection, and other subjects. But why reason with us, if we may not judge your argument? Surely you are implying that you wish us to use our own minds and judge what you say? Nay, at certain points you expressly invite us to form our own opinions. In discussing idolatry2 and again about unveiled women, and again about prophets' speaking to the church, you tell us plainly to think for ourselves. I am sure you will not blame us for taking you at your word. Permit me, then, beloved teacher, to tell you what my judgment is on some points of your teaching, praying you not to be offended, but to be patient with me if I disagree, and with brotherly kindness explain to me the right doctrine on these points more perfectly.

Education

First, then, I make mention of what you have written to the brethren here about human wisdom and knowledge. We all see quite clearly that by no cleverness or genius or learning do men enter the kingdom of God. We understand quite well that you rightly recommended the Gospel of Christ as an engine of power to change men's hearts and conduct, using this appeal to fact in simple language rather than subtle argument and flashy rhetoric and display of erudition. About all this there is no difficulty. But here and there you use language which to some of us seems to go much further. For instance you say, 'Sage, scribe, critic of this world, where are they all? Has not God stultified the wisdom of the world?' And again, 'Whoever of you imagines he is wise with this world's wisdom must become a fool, if he is 21 Cor. x. 14, 15

31 Cor. XI. 13

41 Cor. XIV. 29 5 1 Cor. 1. 20