Billy To-morrow

THE place Billy called the Fo’castle was a tiny room in the sloping windmill tower. It was level with the second floor of the house, and a narrow, railed bridge connected it with a door in his mother’s room. Under it was the above-ground cellar, overhead the big tank. Still higher whirled the great white wings that pumped the beauty-giving water to lawn and gardens.

The little room was rude and bare, but Billy loved it. He thought the massive beams like the ribs of a ship, and planned to hang between them all his ship pictures. Anything relating to the sea fired his imagination. It gave him a sense of manliness to sleep there alone; and when the heavier gusts of night wind rocked the tower, and each revolution of the big wheel splashed the water against the tank, as waves lap a ship’s side, he dreamed himself on the ocean, called himself “Captain.”

He woke early the next morning. This was rare for him; he usually slept like a bear in midwinter. Perhaps the creaking of the windmill all through the night made his slumber light. Another noise had disturbed him, the sewing machine. Its whirr had come up to him from the open window of the living-room. He knew mother and sister were sewing hard, that on the morrow the poor little stranger might be suitably clad. He had brought upon them this extra work! And this was only the beginning. If the child’s mother was not found they must buy clothes as well as food; and this would take a lot of his sister’s money.

“Jiminy! If they don’t let me work this vacation, I’ll have to run away,” he thought as, through the uncurtained window, he watched the evening star sink below the western hills. While he was wondering if people lived in the star he fell asleep; yet waked later to hear the busy machine.

“Golly! They’re working all night. I—ought to—help—to-morrow. I—” He slept again with his good resolution half made.

Yet the impression of the night had been deep enough to wake him before the sun rose. He dressed quickly, astonished the chickens with an early breakfast; put fresh sand in the coop; climbed the windmill tower to oil the bearings of the big wheel; and put the lawn mower in order, but remembered in time that to use it would wake the sleepers.

What more might he do to hasten the Saturday work? He could not chop the kindling or fill the wood boxes. The weeding! It was behind. Both mother and sister had reminded him repeatedly, but he had forgotten. Only yesterday his sister had made tidy the flower beds that flanked the house; but the melons, the vegetables,—they were not done, and that would make no noise.

The Bennetts’ was one of the oldest places in town, and the most beautiful. It was near the heart of the growing village ambitiously calling itself a city. Level lawns protected by high hedges and shaded by many trees, spread amply around the house and back to the first terrace, where a tangle of berry vines covered trellises that shut off a lower level devoted to vegetables. Beyond this was the chickens’ domain, rock-dotted acres that sloped sharply to where Runa Creek boiled over its stony bed. Here mother hens fluttered and scolded while web-footed broods paddled in the edges of the stream.

Once Billy’s attention was fixed he was as earnest at work as at play. He slaughtered the weeds rapidly, and had several clean beds behind him when his mother called him to breakfast.

“What happened to you, Billy?” she asked when he entered the kitchen. “For a second I was frightened when I went to wake you and found you gone.”

“Thought I’d eloped? I ought to when I’ve brought you an extra mouth to feed.” He was splashing and spluttering in the lavatory off the kitchen.

“Never mind, son; we expected to take some one.”

“Yes; but some one who could take care of himself. And you didn’t expect to open dressmaking parlors.”

“No matter, Billy. I think she was sent to us; and we shall find a way. Are the chickens fed?”

“Yes, long ago. And, mamma, you needn’t ask me that every morning; I’m going to remember. Truly!” he added, as he came toward her, rosy and shining, and saw her doubtful smile. “The vegetables are most weeded, too.”

Mrs. Bennett put down the pan of batter-cake dough and gave him his good-morning kiss. His head was level with hers. “Thank you, my big boy. Mother will soon have a man to look to. Go in and get your breakfast; you must be nearly famished.”

“Yes, I could eat a graven image.”

“I hope my breakfast won’t be quite so—”

“Rocky?” he interrupted. “You bet not. It’ll be just bully, that’s what!”

“Oh, Billy!” she said, despairingly; and he knew in spite of her smile that she disliked his words. “The little girl is looking for you. She is lonely; you must amuse her.”

Billy was suddenly overcome with bashfulness when the child, quite composed, came forward to meet him. A bath, a shampoo, and new clothes had transformed her from a tangled, smudged little girl to a lovely miss with a high-bred air foreign to the childish manners Billy understood. He recognized Edith’s gown in the pretty frock mother and daughter had sat late to make over; but the neat ties and hose, all the little things it takes to make a girl look pretty, where had they come from?

“Aren’t you going to say ‘Good-morning’ to me, Billy?” She put out the slenderest little white hand, and looked into his face appealingly.

“Of course I am,” he replied promptly, with a squeeze of her hand that made her wince. “At first I was scared; I thought you must be a fairy.”

“Oh, no, not a fairy; only Cinderella. Last night I was the poor little cinder girl; now my fairy godmothers, two, have touched me with their wands, needles, and I’m so fine even the Prince didn’t know me.”

“Well, the Prince will see that the glass slipper’s tied fast. He’s got no ‘Ho, minions!’ to hunt for you if you turn Cinderella again.” He stooped and fastened her tie.

She clapped her hands. “Oh, I’m glad you like fairies, too. Do you know about Bagdad and Semiramide and Good King Arthur and Ivanhoe, and all the other beautiful things in the world?” she asked, breathlessly.

“Dear me, mother,” Edith said when Mrs. Bennett came in with hot cakes, “what shall we do with two children in dreamland?” Edith had not touched her breakfast, but was waiting on the others.

“Three you should say. Don’t you live in the dreamland of music? Eat your own breakfast, or you’ll be late for the train.”

“Train? Is she going away?” The small girl’s face grew sorrowful.

“Only for a day, dear. I’ll be back to-night.”

“She has a music class in Loma; and it isn’t dreamland, either, teaching; but she has to earn grub for me, sister does.” The frank statement of a truth he had grown accustomed to this morning roused a feeling of shame, and he gazed steadily at his plate.

“Don’t look so, brother,” Edith said as she kissed him good-bye; “the ‘grub’ is making a fine boy, and I’m proud of him.” Yet as she tied her veil at the mirror she saw the cloud still lingering on his face.

“Let him play to-day, mother,” she pleaded, when the two stepped into the hall; “he can be a boy only once.”

“But you work hard, and he should do his part. You are spending your youth for us, and I’m glad he begins to see it.” They spoke softly, yet Billy knew partly what they said; and it made him still more thoughtful.

“You and Edith are fairies,” he said when his mother came again to the room, “to rustle such pretty togs for the new sister in a night.” His mother was piling his plate again with griddle cakes.

“My conscience! You can’t eat all—” May Nell stopped, conscious of an unkindness. But the boy only laughed; he was used to comments on his appetite.

“Good hearts need no fairy wings,” Mrs. Bennett replied to Billy while she smiled at the little girl. “Jean told her mother about our May Nell, and Mrs. Hammond came over with a generous lot of outgrown things.”

“But Jean’s two times as big as May Nell.”

“Yes, now. Once she must have been about the same size, you know.” She stood behind the child caressing her cheek.

“What is the matter with your hand?” May Nell asked as she drew the work-worn hand down and patted it. “It doesn’t feel like my mama’s. And you have only one ring, a plain one. Are your others in the bank? My mama has ever so many,—diamonds, rubies, and such a big sapphire, perfectly exquisite! And they look elegant on her hand,—she has a perfectly beautiful hand.”

“There are other things besides gems, little girl.” Mrs. Bennett smiled and began to clear the table.

“Her hand would be as pretty as any one’s if she didn’t have to work so hard,” Billy thought loyally; and promised himself again that the first money he earned should buy his mother a diamond ring.

“Take May Nell into the garden with you, Billy,” Mrs. Bennett said; “I shall be busy with the Saturday work, and she will be happier in the sunshine. And don’t speak of the earthquake,” she warned him aside; “she must forget that as fast as possible.”

Outside the spring warmth and fragrance enfolded the children as a mantle, opening their hearts to each other. Billy showed his flock of pigeons, his white chickens and the house where they roosted and brought forth their fluffy broods. Old Bouncer barked and capered about them; and the little girl tried to decide which cat was the prettiest, white Flash watching for gophers in the green alfalfa, or Sir Thomas Katzenstein, his yellow mate, basking in the sun. “He isn’t yellow like any other cat I ever saw; he’s shaded so beautifully.”

“Yes, sister says he’s rare, Persian or something; but I guess he’s only a plain cat. He’s a lazy thing.”

“Why doesn’t your mama have a man to take care of the grounds?” she questioned after she had told him something of her parents and home.

“She can’t, you know; she and sister have to work hard to make what we spend now. I don’t do half enough myself.”

“Giving music lessons isn’t work. I’d love to do that.”

“You bet it’s work! ’Specially when she gets hold of a cub like me.”

“‘You bet’ isn’t nice,” the child chid gently, and waited a moment before continuing. “My papa won’t let my mama work. He went to South America to get rich. When he comes back, he wrote in a letter to me, I shall be as rich as a princess.”

“My father didn’t let my mother work when he was alive; but he—he died.” Billy bent lower over his weeding, and both were quiet.

It was May Nell who first broke the silence. She had been thinking. “It isn’t so very bad to have to work, is it? Your mama looks happier than my mama does. She said she’d rather wear calico and work ever so hard, and have papa at home, than be the richest, richest without him. She cries a lot—my mama does. And now—she’s crying—for me.” The last word was a sob.

“Here, here! You mustn’t do that,” Billy gently coaxed, rising and taking her hand. “You’ll make me draw salt water, too. And it don’t help, you know. I’ll tell you what—you can work some, gather the flowers. I’ll show you how. Mother puts ’em fresh in all the rooms for Sunday.” He bustled her up the terrace steps, brought scissors and basket, and, starting her on her pleasant task, began to mow the lawn.

“All over the house does she put them?” the child asked after she had snipped a fragrant heap.

“Yes. You see, she rents some of the rooms, and she says they must look extra nice on Sunday so the men won’t mosey off to the saloons.”

“‘Mosey’? Does that mean ‘little Moses’?”

He had hardly recovered from his laugh when two little girls appeared at the gateway. “There’s Twinnies! Come in, Kiddies, and see my new sister,” he called, as they hesitated.

“We came—we came to bring these,” one ventured timidly, and lifted one end of the basket they carried between them.

Billy peeped under the cover, not heeding the little girls’ protest. “Golly, May Nell! The Queen of Sheba won’t be in it ’long side of you.”

Mrs. Bennett heard anxiety in the voices of the visitors, and came out.

“Mrs. Bennett, you must unpack it alone, mamma said.”

“Alone, mamma said,” came the second voice.

Mrs. Bennett seemed to know exactly what to do. She took out and displayed to May Nell some of the generous gift of child’s wear sent by Mrs. Dorr from the wardrobe of the twins, placed the basket within the door, and introduced the children. Billy wondered what else might be in the basket that made it “act so heavy; it couldn’t be shoes.” He looked critically at May Nell’s small feet.

“This is Evelyn Dorr, and Vilette, her sister,” Mrs. Bennett was saying.

Billy laughed. “Mixed again, mamma. This is Vilette,” he drew one bashful little girl nearer the stranger, “and this is Evelyn, Echo, we call her.”

Mrs. Bennett smiled at her mistake and went in, while Billy took up his mower. The girls looked at one another in the mute scrutiny children bestow on newcomers, May Nell the least embarrassed of the three.

“Are you as old as us? We’re seven,” Vilette said a bit loftily, as she discovered herself taller than May Nell.

“We’re seven,” came the echo.

“Last November.”

“Last November,” piped Evelyn.

“I was ten in January, the twelfth,” May Nell replied, with no pride in her tone; she was always older than those of her size. Yet she was not prepared for the gasps and backward movement of the twins.

“Ten? You won’t think of playing with us, then. Ma thought you’d be just our age.”

“Just our age.”

The little stranger girl smiled winningly. Her childish companions had not been numerous enough to justify her in drawing such close lines; and she liked the sweet, half timid faces that always looked so earnestly into her own. “Surely, I’ll play with you. I’ll come to see you some time when Mrs. Bennett says I may.”

A whoop startled her and she turned to see a handsome boy racing up on a brown pony, also carrying a basket.

“Hello, Billy To-morrow! Why didn’t you do that mowing last night? You said you were going to.” He dismounted, tied the pony to the post, and went inside; and one saw that in spite of jeers the boys were friends.

“Something my mother sent yours. You mustn’t touch it,” he warned, as Billy made a reach for it. “I was to land this safe in Mrs. Bennett’s hands; and here goes!” He sprang from Billy’s outreached arms, ran into the house and out again, before Billy had time to resume his mowing.

“Say, it’s a donation party, isn’t it?” Billy did not see Harold wink at the twins, but picked up his mower and started across the lawn at a trot.

“Here, let me do that,” Harold commanded; “you go and do the rest of your work. We won’t get to play in all day. The Gang coming?”

“Said so, but they’re late. We’ve got an addition, the little earthquake girl.” This last was a sibilant aside.

Harold turned and looked to where May Nell stood with the twins, sorting her flowers. “Isn’t she a daisy, though? Little—why, she’s only a baby.”

“Look out! She’s ten, an’ never been to school; but she’s read more things ’n you ’n me put together, Pretty. Knows ’em, too.” Billy introduced the two in characteristic fashion and went within.

“Mamma, Pretty’s finishing the lawn for me; can’t I rub the floors right now? The Gang’s coming and we want to do a lot to-day.”

“Never mind the floors, Billy. You’ve worked hard already; run off and have a good time.”

Another time he would have gone quickly enough, for he liked work as little as the average boy, often shirked it; though when he forgot himself in his task, the joy of doing it well held him to it. But May Nell’s coming and the added expense still troubled him; and it was a resolute face he turned to his mother. “No, mamma, you shan’t get down on your marrow bones to these old floors. It’s only me that needs to go on the knees, you know.” His eyes twinkled.

He knew it was he and his friends who were never denied “the run of the house,” that brought in most of the gray film that settled so quickly on the dark floors; it was not fair to leave this back-aching task to his mother. He hustled out the rugs, found dusting cloth, wax, and rubber, and set vigorously at it, working so fast that he was nearly finished when she returned to the room.

“That’s enough, Billy. Jimmy Dorr and George Packard are coming.” She was a sensible woman, yet she disliked to expose her boy to Jimmy’s caustic tongue. But Billy was equal to more than Jimmy.

“Let ’em come. What do I care for Sour ’n Shifty? I’ll never desert Micawber this near success.” He rubbed on calmly, and the two boys came in at the open door.

“Hello, Billy! You washin’ floors?” There was a sneer in Jimmy’s voice.

“Sure.” Billy looked up from all fours and grinned. “I haven’t got two able-bodied sisters like Vilette an’ Echo to work for me; and you wouldn’t have me see my mother do it, would you?”

Mrs. Bennett did not know, as her son did, that the retort touched a sore fact. Jimmy’s eyes darkened with the look that had earned for him the name of “Sour.” Yet in spite of this he had a fine, strong face.

Billy went on with his rubbing, and his next words were comically resigned. “Besides, I suppose I’ll have to get married some day; of course she’ll be a new woman; might as well learn housework now.”

Jimmy’s face lost its scorn. Someway the sting of his sarcasm never seemed to touch Billy, who could always strike back a surer if less venomous blow. Perhaps that was the very reason why Jimmy, though larger and older, sought Billy and heeded him as he did no other save his own stern father.

“You don’t catch Billy asleep,” said George, siding with the victorious.

“We must go right back,” Jimmy declared, turning to the door of the kitchen and thrusting a package within.

“Tremendous long visit,” Billy taunted; “what’d you come for? Another donation for my new sister?”

George nudged Jimmy. “Hit again, Sour. Come on.” The two boys went out, mysteriously embarrassed.

Billy went to the door and looked after them. No one was in sight. Harold, the twins, and May Nell, too, were gone. What could it mean? He looked back at the clock. Nearly ten. Usually the Gang gathered earlier than this, hung around and hurried him with his work, many putting in lusty strokes, that Billy, the favorite, might the sooner be released. But now even Jean, his stanch second in all the fun going, was late. He had expected to be late himself; he always was. But he, who planned most of the sport in spite of doing more work than any of them, had this day expected his schemes to be well launched before he could join in them.

He was standing disconsolate, looking up the street for stragglers, when his mother came in again.

“What’s the matter, Billy? Why don’t you go and play? You surely deserve a fine holiday, my big, big son.” She put her arm around him tenderly; and he saw that she remembered. He would be thirteen to-morrow. He had been counting the days; but he thought mother and sister had been too busy to think of it. It was coming—to-morrow, Sunday! If he didn’t have a good time to-day it wouldn’t be any birthday at all.

“What’s the matter with Billy To-morrow?”

“Why doesn’t the Gang come, mamma?” he asked, returning the kiss he knew was one ahead for his natal day.

“Suppose you go down to the creek,” she replied with a peculiar smile. “May Nell and the twins went there some time ago. Harold, too.”

Billy ran off full of vague expectation born of his mother’s smile. No one in all the country round, not even Harold Prettyman, whose father had the finest farm in Vine County, had such a splendid place to play as the Bennetts’ back lot that sloped down to Runa Creek. As Billy slammed the gate and bounded out on a huge boulder that hung over the creek, a sounding cheer greeted him from below.

“Hooray, Billy! Thirteen to-morrow! But this is the day we celebrate!”

There they all were; those who had come first to the house, and many others: Jean, Bess Carter, Charley Strong, Max Krieber, Jackson Carter, the little colored boy, standing aloof, and others, large and small. All in a line they stood, and shouted up at him:

“What’s the matter with Billy To-morrow? He’s thirteen! Three and ten! Most a man! He’s all right!”

For a minute Billy stood, dazed, his heart thumping hard. Then he threw his cap in the air, sang out, “Bully for the Gang! This time it’s Billy To-day!” and raced down the hill to join them.

---

“WELL, what do you want to play?” Billy asked, after the hubbub had a little subsided.

“Let’s go to the park and play football,” Jimmy responded quickly.

“But the girls and small fry can’t come in on that. Besides, that little city kid’ll be lonesome if I leave her.”

“Well I’m not going to stay an’ play kid games,” Jimmy retorted loftily, and turned away.

“Me neither,” George endorsed.

“All right,” Billy acquiesced with a nonchalant tact; “I thought Sour’n Shifty’d make good surveyors, Pretty; but I guess you can do that an’ your own job too, can’t you?” Billy turned to Harold, while George watched to see what Jimmy did.

“Surveyors? What’s your scheme?” Jimmy was quickly interested.

“Why, I’d planned a big stock concern, like business men. We’ll build a railroad, telegraph line—that comes first, though; we’ll have gold and copper mines, and a wharf. And next we’ll launch the steamer we’ve been making.”

“If she steams,” Harold put in sagely.

“That big sand pile the kids made last week for a fort can be the Sierras, and we’ll tunnel, and have a loop, and—”

“But where does our fun come in? Girls don’t build railroads,” Bess complained.

“No; but you can ask concessions, and buy stocks, and keep hotel in the shack, an’ board us men. Make more money ’n we do. They always do, you know; not the fellers that works, but the smart ones that work them. I’m hungry enough to eat May Nell right now!” He snapped his teeth together with a ferocious grin as the little girl came near; and she laughed back at him more joyously than her mother would have believed possible could she have known; for this wholesome out-of-door frolic was a boon to the child, white from life within brick walls.

They were a happy lot. Each held some high-sounding position, the name coined in Billy’s busy brain. His box of abused tools came forth; the much mended wheelbarrow, picks, shovels wobbly from use as well as abuse, improvised things that only an imagination as large as Billy’s could have named tools,—something for each one there.

Along the ridge of soft sand left by receding waters Billy let his first contract to Harold, who immediately marshalled the “kindergarten” with their broken fire shovels, kitchen spoons, what not, and set them to digging briskly. “Straight to the line, mind you,” he sang out from time to time, as he set his pins along the line the “engineers had run.” Max was superintendent of telegraph construction; and Charley Strong, “the Strong Man,” and Jackson contracted for the tunnel. They were to start from each side, meet exactly in the middle in sixty days,—a minute stood for a day,—or pay five million dollars fine. And over all Billy kept a watchful eye, cast the glamour of his eager spirit.

What matter if the telegraph poles that were to be just twelve feet—that is, twelve inches—fell short or long sometimes.

“Their knifes bin too dull, and she must quick be done,” Max apologized to Billy on his inspection trips.

“We’ll play there’s a strike in the saw-mills, Dutchy, and this is scab labor,” Billy excused amiably. And for a fact the white cotton string carried the messages quite safely from the “Front,” where Jimmy and George laid out the “line” over wonderful grades, across impossible gorges; and “wired” back for further orders. Harry Potter was the operator at the “Front,” and Vilette,—“Women do operate, you know,” she said,—Vilette was the proud holder of “the key” at Headquarters, where Clarence Hammond strutted around as Messenger; and because he was the “son of the Boss,” bullied his Cousin Harry unmercifully.

“Geegustibus! You kids are doin’ a fine job,” Billy encouraged, as he walked by the line of little bending, sweating backs. “There never was a railroad built on the square like this. Contractors on time; men a-workin’ that’s got brains an’ ain’t afraid to use ’em. Jiminy crickets, it’s fine!”

Every back bent a little lower. Every face flushed a little rosier under its coat of grime. Praise from Billy was all they asked.

“Well, I must get at my job, too. That’s thinking up things. You fellers do your work an’ get your money; but I got to rustle that money or bust.”

“O Billy, it hurts the ears of my mind to hear you say those vulgar words.” May Nell, playing “man” for the first time in her life, looked up from the “rod of grade” that she was piling deftly with a broken shingle. The color from sun and exercise added much to her beauty. She was neither blowsy nor smudged like the other children, and her lawn frock was as spotless as in the morning.

Billy looked at her thoughtfully, wondering why her fearless criticism did not displease him; lifted his battered hat and mussed again his tousled hair. “All right, Fair Ellen, I’ll try to obey the—”

“Lady of the Lake?” she finished quickly in a question. “Do you know that, too? I love it.”

she quoted glibly. “I know a lot more of it. Do you?”

A scream from “the shack” stopped further quotations. Billy ran up the hill to learn the trouble. Only Evelyn was there in the little house built, half of boards, half of willow twigs woven lattice-wise, against a huge smooth rock. Beside this rock also ascended a cobble chimney; and the fireplace, roughly plastered, served its purpose well. Billy had made it all, and Edith wished the house fireplace would draw as well.

He found Evelyn on her knees before a hot fire, bravely trying to hold level one of the several pots that were sizzling there. Her drooping hair smothered her small hot face, and perspiration stood like dew on her anxious little upper lip.

“What’s the matter, Kiddie? Gee! Those big girls ought not to leave you alone with that fire; you’ll be cooked before the grub!” he grumbled while he mended the fire and propped the kettle. “Yum, yum! Things a-doin’ here. Makes a feller’s stomach feel like just before Thanksgiving dinner.”

Evelyn relieved of her fear of the tottering kettle, roused to her charge. “Go ’way, Billy! Thank you, Billy. You mustn’t stay here! They’ll scold me. They said for me not to let you come; an’—”

“Why not, I’d like to know? Isn’t this my shack? And shall I let a kid burn up?”

“But it’s a secret,” she whispered in smothered distress. “Please to go!”

And Billy seeing sweet potatoes sticking out of hot ashes, and other luxuries in evidence, concluded that some business was “doin’ among the girls,” where he wouldn’t be welcome. He went back to the “Front,” where some of the contractors were having a violent altercation over the meaning of certain specifications. The Boss soon arbitrated successfully, and things moved “lively” for a short time, when the banging of a dishpan announced dinner at “the hotel.”

“Right this way, ladies and gentlemen,” Bess called from the edge of the far terrace. “A dinner fit for the gods, ambrosia and nectar; gifts from Flora and Fornax! Come up to the garden of the gods and goddesses and feast together!”

Bess, though not quite twelve, was a striking girl, larger than most women; with a mind as unusual as her body. Poetry, music, mythology, she fed upon these as a plant upon the sunshine. She was not satisfied with ordinary speech, but continually wove into the most commonplace events the glamour of romance and poetic words. A wise mother had stood between her and the jeers of the thoughtless, that she might have a normal girlhood; and Billy’s mother and sister helped to make it possible for her to play comfortably with those of her own age. Yet it was a surprise to the stranger to see this dark-eyed, magnificent woman-creature in short skirts romping with children.

To-day she was happy. It had fallen to her to general this great feast that Billy’s mates had planned for the celebration of his birthday. All had contributed. Not only the girls had cooked—Jean had baked a big cake, Jackson had made the candy, and Jimmy and George had sneaked up from the “Front,” and set up the long table in the arbor.

According to plan, Billy’s mother had called and detained him while the score of laughing youngsters gathered and stood silently around the table. When he was running across the lawn again, his face washed and hair combed, matters he thought might well have been omitted when time was so precious, he was struck by the strange stillness. What had happened to stop every tongue at once? He ran on faster, through the trellis gate, and halted, transfixed. A shout greeted him. Each one waved a small flag, and sang lustily—

He looked at the beaming faces, at the beautiful table with Jean’s great pagoda cake in the centre, the dates, 1893-1906, in evergreen; at the flowers everywhere; at the dishes,—they usually ate from vine leaves at their out-of-door feasts,—at the paper napkins folded fantastically and hovering over the table like gay butterflies. His eloquent face told his surprise, his gratitude, his delight. He opened his mouth to speak some fitting word, but it wouldn’t come. He tried again, for he felt the occasion called for something formally appreciative. But only a whimsical idea flitted into his mind; and he sang back—

A gleeful yell greeted his paraphrase. While they ate it all came out, how they had planned and executed. Harold had peas and strawberries hidden in his mysterious basket, freshly gathered by his own hands that morning. George and Jimmy had furnished and dressed the chickens, and the girls had roasted them—with a little supervision from Mrs. Bennett—in the Yukon camping stove that belonged to Harry’s mother. Bess had given the dishes, blue and white enamel, strong as well as good to the eye, and ready for many another frolic.

Max furnished the milk. “I haf gif mine cow much sugar to make dot milk sweet for Pilly to-day,” he explained happily to Mrs. Bennett.

And so the story went on. All the wholesome things of the country that children like had come from one and another. And each had been as happy in giving as Billy could possibly be in receiving.

Bess, an only child, was usually present at the frequent entertainments her parents gave, and was familiar with some of the more formal table customs. She wished Billy’s dinner to have every dignity, and to this end rose and proposed a toast to him. They drank it standing, with cheers. And Billy, accustomed to having the largest voice in every noise, stood and joined lustily; till Jackson, who helped his father at the catering for lodge banquets, and knew a thing or two, reached behind Jean and pulled the back of Billy’s coat violently. “Pst! Set down!” he hissed, tragically.

And Billy, suddenly remembering who was being cheered, slid to his seat sheepishly, a cold feeling down his back, uncomfortable heat in his cheeks.

Jean changed the situation by proposing a toast to Billy’s new sister.

“Half-sister, step-sister, persister, or sister-in-law—” Jimmy began, when Billy’s frown stopped him, and Bess interrupted with, “He thinks he’s saying something witty: laugh everybody.”

But Jean spoke at once and heartily. “Here’s to our latest addition. May she never be subtracted from us. Already she’s multiplied our joys, yet we hope she’ll not have to divide our woes.”

Jimmy was the first to stand and cheer.

May Nell sat still and smiled modestly. Billy stared at her, feeling still more foolish over his own mistake.

Presently Jimmy and George slipped away and quickly returned bearing a huge freezer, Mrs. Bennett following. Now Billy knew what she had done with the cream.

“It’s only your notion, Billy, that mother’s cream is best; but I’ve been very happy making it for you.” She began at once to serve it.

“Billy, you’re a wise guy. This beats Maskey’s,” Harold declared.

“There isn’t any Maskey’s any more,” May Nell mourned; “just ashes and old irons where used to be such oceans of goodies in such beautiful boxes and dishes.”

All were silent for a little. Most of them had been more than once to San Francisco’s celebrated dealer in sweets.

“Do you know how ice cream is made, May Nell?” Jimmy asked to break the oppression.

“No; will you tell me?”

“First they feed the cow a barrel of sugar, then they freeze her, after that milk her; and there you have your ice cream.”

May Nell looked incredulous. “And they feed her strawberries and vanilla beans and chocolate for flavors, I suppose; but how do you separate them when you milk? Will you show me the next time you fill that big bucket?” She nodded her head toward the freezer, and was so demure that not even Bess, still less Jimmy, knew whether she was deceived or poking fun.

May Nell was astonished at the country appetites, astonished at her own; yet the cream also disappeared; after which Bess, the magnificent, rose, waved her hand theatrically toward Mrs. Bennett, and declaimed,

Just then mischief took possession of Harry Potter. He dropped a paper parcel behind Vilette, and a little green snake wriggled out and ran under the table. Vilette only grinned, but May Nell saw it, screamed and grew white.

“Oh, oh! It ran—across my—foot!” she gasped, and fell over.

Confusion followed. Harry was struck with a great fear. Was she dead? He had never seen a girl do so before. Would they hang him?

But May Nell recovered almost before Mrs. Bennett had time to lift her. “I often do—do—faint,” she apologized, “it isn’t—isn’t ’t all dangerous.” She smiled at Mrs. Bennett, and the smile, the sweet, pale little face with her hair a shining golden halo around it, made of her an ethereal being almost unreal to the awestricken children. Yet she was soon merry again, apparently as well as ever.

The hours passed in an uproar of fun. The table was dismantled, toys, tools, and dishes put away, and the feast had sped into the past.

“It’s been the best ever,” Jean said, happily.

“A perfectly gorgeous occasion,” Bess supplemented.

“The bulliest time yet!” shouted Charley from the street.

“Mine stomach ist so full mine head cannot t’ink,” Max stammered to Mrs. Bennett; “but it vas bravo!”

They all went off, a merry, noisy troop. And the disappearing sun was the last to say to Billy “Good-night.”

---

SUNDAY brought rain, and Mrs. Bennett decided that May Nell must remain quietly in the house. The only apparent result of her exciting day, and the faint, was a languor that made her willing to obey, to curl up by the fire, with Sir Thomas by her side. He was a tremendous cat, who accepted lazily all the caresses bestowed upon him, while Flash, his white mate, was shy, and unless forced, would not appear before strangers.

“They’re great frauds, those aristocratic cats of sister’s,” Billy explained; “not a bit of use. They won’t fight, and—”

“O Billy, think how many gophers Flash catches, and what gentlemen they are in the house,” Edith defended. She was chorister for one of the churches, and was now gathering her music.

“You never give my cats a chance,” Billy complained.

“Yes, we have, Billy,” Mrs. Bennett corrected. “Bring them in now. Let May Nell see our entire cat family.” She followed him out, and presently returned with a plate of cut meat which she placed on a newspaper on the hearth.

“A cat tablecloth!” the little girl laughed.

“That’s for Billy’s cats; mine need none,” Edith declared.

The child reared without pets was delighted with the animal life about her; the cats, old Bouncer, the white chickens, and pigeons cooing in the loft.

Mrs. Bennett called. The cats walked leisurely to the hearth, sat down, one on either side, and began to eat, each from his own side of the plate. They were as deliberate and dainty as well-bred children.

Billy entered with a cat under each arm. “Geewhillikins,” he introduced, “the best fighter in town,” and put down a stub-tailed, gray cat, half as large as the house pets, with “tom-cat” speaking from every hair of him. “I think mamma’s partial,—she lets sister’s cats come in the house, but not mine.”

Geewhillikins did not wait for four feet to be on the floor to spring at the plate. He put his paws on one pile of meat, and began to gobble the other, growling savagely. The house cats drew back, curled their tails around their forefeet, and looked at the gorger in calm disdain.

“You haven’t noticed Jerusalem Crickets, yet,” Billy said impressively, anxious to distract attention from the little drama at the plate. He placed his second cat on the floor, a gaunt creature, brindled in many colors, with great scared-looking eyes. “She’s afraid of everybody. She never had any home till I brought her here, poor thing! Just kicked from door to door. And Geewhillikins, too—he was a tiny kitten put in a sack to drown out in the creek. And he was so plucky he just wiggled to shallow water and hollered for a deliverer. Of course that kind of cats don’t have manners. How could they?” Billy was a fine special pleader.

“He was a real little cat Moses, wasn’t he? And you—you must be Pharaoh’s son instead of daughter.” The child laughed and clapped her hands.

Meantime Jerusalem Crickets, escaped from Billy’s arm and eye, was sneaking about for prey; and a clinking sound from the pantry warned them that she had found it.

“Run, Billy! You left the door open—she’ll get the dinner!” Mrs. Bennett cautioned, hurrying out herself to reckon the loss.

“It’s only a chop left from yesterday,” he excused on his return.

“It might have been to-day’s roast,” Edith protested, as she took the snarling Geewhillikins from his feast. “You see why Billy’s cats don’t come in the house, May Nell.”

“Did you forget their breakfast, Billy?” the child questioned earnestly.

“No, Billy never forgets his cats,” his sister answered for him; “though the chickens might sometimes suffer but for mamma. Take your ill-bred felines out, Billy.”

He obeyed, talking whimsically to his pets as he went.

“Flash and Tom wouldn’t touch meat left on the table alone with them for a day,” Edith said as she replenished the plate, shook and folded away the paper, and called her cats.

They walked up as before, and ate slowly, piece by piece, neither touching a morsel on the opposite side of the division line. Sir Thomas finished first, and looked on while Flash minced more daintily. He did not eat all, but walked off to the plush-cushioned chair they claimed as their own. Sir Thomas watched him curl up and rest his nose on his white forepaws, then quickly finished the rest of the meat and joined him. And now such a toilet began. Each groomed the other; yet, as always, Tom tired first while Flash worked on till they both shone like silk, when he put his long arms about Tom, nestled his head close down, and both slept.

The little girl forgot herself in watching them, till Billy came in, smart and almost handsome in his best suit.

“Are your going to church?” she asked, disappointment drawing her lips to a tremulous curve.

“I have to help sister, you know.”

“But it isn’t ten o’clock.”

“Sunday School comes first.”

“Sunday School, too? How long you’ll be away!”

Billy made no reply. He wondered if he ought to stay at home.

“Do you like it, Sunday School, I mean? I don’t. I like church, though,—the great booming organ, the beautiful singing. And when the minister speaks I just float away into fairy-land and never come back till he says, ‘The-Lord-make-his-face-to-shine-upon-us-amen.’”

“I like Sunday School best ’cause I do things there.”

“What things?”

“I’m sec’etary; and I pass the books, and sing; and I’m—I’m giggle squelcher.”

“What a funny word! What do you mean?”

“Why, you see,” Billy hesitated, for he was modest, “sister has a class of us heathen boys, and—well, you see, it’s this way; sister says,—she’s partial, you know,—she says I have influence; if I don’t giggle the others won’t, and she gets on O. K.”

“How splendid! You must go, Billy. Do all the boys mind you?”

“All but Sour; an’ sister’s fixed him. He’s crazy over music, and she got his father to let him take lessons, and that kid’s her slave ever since. But it isn’t minding, Ladybird; the guys take my cue, and we tell things we’ve hunted up in the week about the lesson; and sister tells things, and we’re so busy we forget to be silly.”

May Nell looked at him a minute before speaking. “You like doing things, but you don’t like work. Isn’t work doing things?”

Billy stooped to tie shoestrings already tidy; he was gaining time for thinking. “I reckon doing things you don’t like is work, and doing things you do like is play,” he explained, doubtfully.

“But some people like their work, don’t they?” May Nell persisted. She was exploring strange country.

“I guess so. Teacher says every live thing that’s happy works; birds, flowers, children; that those that won’t work shouldn’t eat. He says the greatest joy is to do the work you like best as well as you can.”

“I’ve never worked,” May Nell said reminiscently; “but there’s one hard thing I’ve done—I’ve kept very still when mama has her headaches.”

“Gee whack! That’s the hardest work of all,” Billy complimented.

Edith came in dressed for church.

“My conscience! How lovely and stylish you look!” The child, accustomed to elegant dress, praised with discriminating eyes.

When brother and sister left her, strange thoughts flitted through her head. She heard Mrs. Bennett beating eggs in the kitchen; saw the logs Billy had piled in the wood-box. On the wall above the piano hung Edith’s schedule—time table, Billy called it. May Nell had already studied it, had seen the fifty or more lessons set for each week; and needlework on the music table, and books there the child had discovered were for music study,—these told her what a busy woman Billy’s sister must be.

Yet it was very strange, they were all happy! Happier, she felt, than her own mother with maids and money, gems, rich gowns, and her motor car at command. Why was it? “Those that won’t work shouldn’t eat.” Could that be true? Then she should not eat, for she never worked. She wondered how it would seem to work.

Full of her thought she slipped from the couch, and went to the kitchen. “Mrs. Bennett, haven’t you some work a little girl could do?”

The divining woman looked into May Nell’s beautiful eyes, too deep and thoughtful for her slender body; drew her close and kissed her. “Yes, dear, just the nicest sort of work for a little girl. You may hull these strawberries; and if you eat some for toll I shan’t be looking.”

The child seeing the twinkle in the older eyes, laughed aloud; and, wrapped in a voluminous apron, began the first task that had ever left its stain on her pretty fingers.

Her questions brought long and wonderful tales of Billy’s younger life; of Edith when she, too, was a little girl. The child helped to set the table, carried in bread, salad plates, and jelly. “It shakes like the fat woman at the circus when she laughed. How do you make jelly?”

“Next month when currants are ripe you shall see.”

“And help?” May Nell asked, eagerly.

“If you wish to do so.”

Why, it was going to be fine to work! Why had she not known it before?

Services were over before she found time to be lonely. Dinner passed happily. The cats stayed quietly in their chair till dessert, when they came, one on either side of Edith, and stood with their forepaws on the table, their heads and shoulders above it.

“Flash has cake, Sir Thomas cheese,” Edith explained, giving each his coveted bit. They took the morsels from her fingers, ate them delicately, and mewed once. “That’s ‘Thank you,’” Edith interpreted.

“It’s a hurry-up order for more,” Billy amended.

“No more, kitties; that’s all that is good for you. Go back to your chair.”

They looked at her a minute, dropped reluctantly to the floor, and retired.

“Why, they know what you say—mind!” May Nell exclaimed, admiringly.

“Obedience, thy name is cats,” Billy preached solemnly.

It had stopped raining, but was still cloudy. This was the hour when Billy usually wheeled long miles by himself, dreaming dreams no one but a boy knows how to dream. Nothing short of a downpour ever hindered him; thus mother and sister knew it was genuine self-sacrifice that kept him beside the little girl through the long afternoon.

All his treasures, pictures, marbles, mineral specimens, what not, were displayed and explained. And finally came the books, when Billy discovered that she knew most of his favorites, loved them as he did, and could introduce him to new ones that promised delight.

So the hours passed. The two women had their quiet rest till five o’clock when they came down for the usual singing. May Nell had a sweet voice, surprisingly strong for a child; and when she asked to play her own accompaniment to a little song unknown to Edith, the latter was surprised by the child’s skill, and still more by her rare feeling and expression.

“I can dance, too,” she said with childish pride.

“Sister, she’ll be hunkey for the fairy queen in your Spring Festival, won’t she? She’s a regular progidy, isn’t she?” Billy’s eyes shone.

“Can he mean ‘prodigy,’ do you think, May Nell?” Edith’s eyes were mischievous.

“I mix up words that way sometimes, too,” the child excused.

“Bully for you, Ladybird. I’ve got a backer you see, sister.”

“I like ‘Ladybird,’ but not ‘bully,’” the little girl returned shyly.

Supper passed. Edith went to church, Billy to keep an appointment with his teacher; and the spring twilight settled down over the room. Mrs. Bennett knew this would be a trying hour, and hastened her work, inventing some light task for May Nell; hastened also the errand to her own room. Yet though she was gone but a moment, on returning a sob greeted her from the cuddled heap on the couch.

She took the child in her comforting arms. “Don’t cry, little one! We shall find her, never fear.”

“But this is the time my mama needs me,” May Nell sobbed; “Sunday night in the two-light time, before the stars come out, really, and when the shadow people creep from the corners and blink at you.”

“We won’t have any shadow people to-night, darling.” Mrs. Bennett rose and turned on the lights, though it was not yet dark; drew the curtains, and punched the fire till a storm of sparks sputtered up the chimney.

“My papa told me to be a very brave little girl, and no matter what happened to take care of my mama. And now—I’ve l-lost her; and my braveness is all leaking away.” She covered her face with her hands and sobbed bitterly.

Mrs. Bennett hugged her closer and patted her cheek softly, but let the passion of tears spend itself a little before trying the comfort of words. Then she questioned of the child’s parents, her past life, and the events just preceding the catastrophe in San Francisco, that she herself might better understand how to shield and make happy the little waif that a terrible, heaving earth had cast into her home, her arms.

“Papa went away to South America when I was eight. He told me I must be very wise and help mama to do what was right,—sometimes she does take my advice, you know. I’ve tried to be brave so God would bring her back to me; but my braveness isn’t very strong yet, or I wouldn’t cry so, would I?” she questioned, with a teary little smile.

Not all at once but slowly, with mother’s tact, Mrs. Bennett won the little heart to partial peace; and when the gate clicked, and Billy’s voice was heard, she was almost gay. “I must be laughing when they come in,” she whispered, “so they won’t see the tears in my eyes and think I am unthankful.”

The door opened on a smiling little face, though she tried to keep in the shadow. Still when Billy kissed his mother good-night, caught his sister in his arms and raced up and down with her, singing extravagantly a snatch from some opera, May Nell hid her face and cried again.

Watchful Mrs. Bennett was not far away. She stopped the boy’s noise, and cuddled the bereft one once more. “What is it, child? You are to be brave, you know.”

“Y-yes, b-but how can I when I have no one to say ‘mama’ to, only a Mrs.”

“You have, you have, dear baby! I’ll be your mother, and you can call me ‘mamma’ as Billy does.”

“And you’re my Ladybird sister,” Billy said, very softly for him, and threw his arm about them both.

“And, darling, I know how to find your mother,” Edith encouraged, brushing her own moist eyes, and clasping them all in her round young arms. “I’ll have your picture taken, and get it in all the papers—”

“Just like a football champion,” Billy interrupted.

“No, like a prima donna,” his sister retorted.

“Rather like a dear little girl, that so will find her mother,” Mrs. Bennett reassured.

Amid the wealth of love how could the little heart refuse comfort? Billy tossed her to his shoulder and carried her to his mother’s room, where both women coddled her and Edith sang her into a sweet sleep.

---

LITTLE by little they learned something of May Nell’s story. Her mother had intended to start for New York on the morning of the earthquake, having been called there by her own mother’s illness. Mrs. Smith, though held to the last by household business, had let her little daughter go to visit a widowed aunt and cousin, who lived in a down-town hotel, and who were to bring May Nell to meet her mother at the Ferry Building the next morning. But where at night had stood the hotel with its many human lives housed within, the next morning’s sunshine fell upon a heap of ruins burning fiercely. A stranger rescued May Nell, though her aunt and cousin had to be left behind, pinned to their fiery death.

All that dreadful day the man searched for the little girl’s mother, but their house was early prey to the flames, and he could get no trace of her. He was only passing through the city; and having fortunately saved his money and tickets, was anxious to be on his way across the Pacific. Consequently nothing better offered than to send the child with other refugees to the kind hospitality of the country.

Edith had quickly put her plan in execution, aided by the willing newspapers; but so far nothing had come of it, and mother and daughter feared their charge had lost more than aunt and cousin. South America, a very definite spot in the child’s mind, was still too vague a postoffice address for even Uncle Sam’s marvellous mail-carrying; and so, while encouraging May Nell, the two women tacitly adopted her into their hearts and discussed her future as if she were their own.

It was a blessing that even her loyal soul must yield to nature’s balm of passing time; in wholesome companionship and the fragrant warmth of a country spring she somewhat forgot the grief that would otherwise have worn to death her frail little body.

“My mama doesn’t believe in public school,” she had announced that first Monday morning; but had gone obediently when Mrs. Bennett decided it best. And the new life, the stimulation of study, the competition in class, her knowledge of books, and the prestige of her story,—these made school a delight, brought a happy light to her eye, a tinge of color to her too fair cheek.

Her wardrobe was a heavy drain on Edith’s purse, yet the young teacher delighted almost as a mother in the dainty garments that won her to extravagance.

Billy also undertook to do his share. A generous sum of money had been offered to the best student in the graduating class of the grammar school; and he decided to try for it. And when Billy made up his mind to anything connected with books, it was as good as done. For if he had to study a little harder than some, his perseverance, added to an unusual facility in telling what he knew, helped him to success.

Mrs. Bennett wished May Nell to be in the open air as much as possible; and this meant a new experience for Billy, which he accepted with tolerable grace.

“A girl under foot all the time,” Shifty complained. He had no sister.

“Well, you know the other thing to do if you don’t like it,” Billy retorted, bluntly. “She’s my sister till her folks are found, and that isn’t likely.”

“But if your steamer works you don’t want its secrets peddled round; and girls always blab.”

“You’re the only girl I’m afraid of in that line. Isn’t that so, Pretty?”

“You bet!” Pretty endorsed, inelegantly.

This conversation took place in Billy’s shop, a room adjoining the wood-house and given over to his use. Nothing short of the world in the second verse of Genesis was equal to the chaos of that place. Every conceivable scrap and job lot of “truck” was there in a jumbled heap; and Billy was never happier than when mussing it over in search of “material”; in greasy overalls and crownless hat, whistling merrily, bringing forth to substance and form the inventions of his busy brain.

The blandishments of soda water fountains, candy stores, and other boyish temptations, found no victim in Billy. But if Mr. Cooper, the tinshop man, had driven hard bargains he would have bankrupted the boy. As it was his weekly allowance suffered in spite of Mr. Cooper’s generosity and Billy’s free access to a rich scrap heap at the rear of the big shop where everything, one would say, in tin and iron was made, from well pipe, tanks, and boilers, to tin wings for Edith’s fairies in the opera.

Now a steamboat was on hand. At odd times for weeks, Billy, Harold, and one or two other boys, under secrecy of lock and key, had been slowly bringing to completion a wonderful structure.

Billy had intended naming it The Jean, but Charley had stood for Queen Bess, Harold didn’t like either name, and George and Jimmy had objected to “girl kid names, anyway.” They had, however, unanimously compromised on The Edith, for Billy’s sister was adored privately by all of his older friends, adored openly and “tagged” by the little ones. Edith, since May Nell’s coming, suggested her name. The little girl agreed if it could be Ellen; Billy added “Fair” with her permission; and this name he painted over each paddle wheel with no opposition from the others.

All was now ready for firing. “She” was to be run by oil. They took her out through the double doors, both swung wide for the first time in many weeks. It was all the boys could do to carry the heavy thing, though they went quite steadily across the vegetable garden, not without some damage to spring lettuce and summer corn, however; but on the steep, uneven slope below, the Fair Ellen came almost to grief.

“Bear up aft there!” Billy commanded; and “Ay, ay, sir,” came back in equally nautical language.

“Easy, mates. Kids, belay there, till we launch her!” This to the gaping youngsters always in the way.

“Wharfmaster, ahoy!” Billy hailed, as they came near the water’s edge. “Is all ship-shape?”

“Ay, ay, sir,” came this time from two boys who had charge of some logs lashed together and crossed and recrossed by a hash-like lot of refuse lumber, and moored with a dog chain.

“Mother, do come and look at the procession,” Edith called cautiously from the trellises, where she was slyly watching.

Billy heard her, though. “Come on, sister, mamma, too, and see the fun,” he called, not unwillingly, for he was a bit proud of their work now that it was out in the light of day. He had reason; it was really an imposing craft for boys to build from scraps.

A crowd of smaller children momentarily increasing, capered about the sweating five. Max bounded over the high fence, breathless, fearing he would be late. Jean and Bess hurried down the hill, each telling the other she couldn’t spare the time for “just boys’ foolishness.” Jackson appeared on top of the south stone abutment, halting there till Billy’s hearty invitation brought him flying down into the inclosure.

Bouncer barked at Billy’s heels. Geewhillikins chased an imaginary foe down the hill, and Jerusalem Crickets crept stealthily along the upper support of the side picket fence, trailing a venturesome sparrow.

Even the white chickens followed in a cackling bunch as they always did when Billy appeared at this hour, for it was almost feeding time. And the pigeons wheeled and whirred, lighting almost under foot only to be up and off again, a flash of white and gray.

Behind the two women trotted a chubby baby. “I see Billy boat,” he cried, shrilly, stumbled, fell, scrambled up again, and repeated his refrain.

“Why, Buzz Lancaster, how did you get here?” Edith went back and steadied him over the uneven ground. “Phew! He smells of gasoline! Where has he been, do you suppose, mother?”

“I comed,” he said, calmly, “I see Billy boat.”

“Hurry up, Buzz!” Billy called as he raced by from the shop, where he had been for the oil can to fill the boat’s reservoir.

“Shan’t we defer the ceremonies till we can get Charley’s little sister and Jackson’s two weeks’ old brother?” Jimmy asked, disagreeably.

“Hold your grouch, Sour,” Harold expostulated.

“Please don’t call Jimmy ‘Sour,’” May Nell pleaded. “He’s big and dark and splendid; and his other name is going to be Roderick Dhu; and he’ll be kind to all weak things, and fight for the Douglases, and for the Fair Ellen.” She waved her hand toward the steamboat.

Jimmy tried not to look pleased, but failed. Something about May Nell attracted him, whether it was her beauty, her fearlessness, or her air of distinction he did not know. It was really her recognition of something fine in him that his cold and irascible father had almost whipped out of him.

“All ready?” cried Captain Billy. “Are you ready, Ladybird?”

“Yes, Captain,” she answered, her eyes aglow while she smoothed refractory frills. She wore a wonderful trailing robe of tissue paper, “ruffled to the guards,” Billy said. On her head was a towering cap of the same; and a light wind bellied out her wide angel sleeves like sails before a spanking breeze.

She stood at the end of the creaking wharf, and one little bare arm was lifted high. She held a small fruit jar filled with water and beet juice. It was awkward, but Billy had insisted on the fruit jar,—“So’s it will be sure to break; it’s the only kind of a bottle that always will break.”

They fired up. An ominous sizz and clatter began. Five pairs of hands shoved the smart boat into the water at May Nell’s feet. The children shouted. The dog barked and the chickens cackled. And above all the din May Nell’s sweet voice rang out, “I christen thee, O wondrous vessel, The Fair Ellen.” She improvised hastily; for no one had thought to prepare a speech for the occasion.

The bottle went crash, and a furious yell informed the neighborhood that the Gang was “up to some new deviltry.”

But another and unexpected crash followed, and a shower of burning oil shot up and caught May Nell’s flimsy paper frock.

Yet before one could think, almost before the paper had time to burn, Jimmy sprang to her, seized her in his arms, tearing at the shrivelling paper, and jumped far out over the flaming boat into a deep pool.

For a horror-stricken moment no one spoke. Even the dumb creatures were still; and Buzz, thinking it all for his benefit, watched open-mouthed for the next act in the play.

But Mrs. Bennett, fleet though speechless, was at the water’s edge by the time Jimmy had risen with May Nell quite safe. She spluttered and choked a little; but Jimmy had been so quick there was not even a red spot on her flesh to show the touch of fire.

She was a queer draggled little creature, with her soaked and tattered dress, and her yellow curls all stringlets. Timidly she touched Jimmy’s blistered hands, realized what he had saved her from, and when she looked her gratitude into his dark eyes something awoke in his heart that never slept again.

“You had very soon to fight for the Douglases, didn’t you, Roderick Dhu?” she said, as Mrs. Bennett covered her with an apron, and Billy took her up and went toward the house.

“I thank you, Roderick Dhu,” she called out over Billy’s shoulder with another little choke, for Jimmy had refused Mrs. Bennett’s offer of dry clothes and was starting home alone.

Jimmy sprang for her

So imminent had catastrophe been, that no one thought of the poor small steamer burning unchecked to the water’s edge while the procession climbed the hill; no one knew till days afterward that busy Buzz had entered the open shop and mixed Billy’s cans so that it was gasoline instead of kerosene that he fed that fated craft. But gratitude for Jimmy’s bravery and May Nell’s safety supplanted even in the youngest heart all regret for the boat.

All but May Nell; when Edith and Mrs. Bennett rubbed and warmed her she declared she didn’t need it, and was so absorbed in lamenting the loss of the Fair Ellen, she could think of nothing else.

“So long as it isn’t you, Ladybird, it’s all right,” Billy consoled; “we can make more boats.”

But May Nell was not to be comforted, till that evening when she composed a wonderful ode to “The Wreck of the Fair Ellen.”

---

AFTER the disaster of the Fair Ellen, Billy promised his mother to bar explosives from his play, a promise made readily, for “Betsey has been giving it to me good an’ plenty for leaving that door open,” he explained to her. Thus the Alaska trade which the boys intended the Fair Ellen to wrest from Seattle, thereby transferring some of her prosperity to California’s stricken seaport, remained with the northern metropolis; and they sought other outlet for their energies.

Billy organized a real estate syndicate, and sold lots to the Gang, “with or without liability to assessment, as the purchaser prefers.” A Board of Trade was organized to which all promised to defer, except Jimmy, who smiled in disdain. He leased the railroad and did a thriving carrying trade, timber for fencing and warehouses, dirt for filling, and so on; and was fast becoming “the millionaire of the crowd,” when the “Board” met and decided he should cut his tariff in half or leave the syndicate; and as Jimmy was heartily interested in the game, he accepted their decision and no longer smiled at the Board of Trade.

Max, whose father was a gardener, knew wizard’s tricks with seeds and soils; and as Farmer and Forester to the syndicate, gave his knowledge right and left with happy importance. He taught the girls how to plan and plant their flower beds, and started the boys on a career of vegetable-raising that made them feel rich before they began; talked trees to Harold and other farmer boys, and astonished his father by the questions he asked and the work he did.

“I haf learn for gifing avay already, but I feel more as rich dan if they haf gif to me. How ist dat?” Max asked himself, not knowing, this little German lad so lately come to America, that he had discovered one of the profoundest secrets of the universe.

To his mother and sister Billy seemed changed. He stuck closer to his books. His teacher told them the boy stood at the head of his class. “Jimmy Dorr may be a rival if he feels like work, which isn’t probable. Jean’s accident last year put her behind, otherwise the boys would have to work much harder if either excelled her.” Yet even these welcome words did not account for some things the mother quietly observed; Billy’s growing promptness, better attention, and memory for matters outside of play. He was more silent, too; and there was less hammering and whistling in the shop.

“Billy, I don’t like the look of your eyes; you’re reading too much at night,” his mother said one evening when he was helping with the dishes. “You must go to bed earlier.”

May Nell had learned to use the towel; and the two children usually “did” the dishes at night; but now she was away with Edith at the Opera House, and mother and son were alone in the kitchen.

Billy had been reeling off stanzas of his favorite “Lady of the Lake,”—“by the yard,” Mrs. Bennett said, acting it as he recited, somewhat retarding the work and endangering the dishes. Now he dropped his towel, caught up his mother and raced with her around the room. He was so strong that she was almost helpless in his grasp.

“You little bit of a woman! Do you think I’ll mind you? I’m Roderick Dhu of Benvenue, the bravest chief of all the crew! I’m Captain Kidd, the pirate bold, whose treasure, hid, lies yet in mould. I’m the strong man, the bad—”

A lot more nonsense he rattled off, squeezing and kissing her till she was breathless with laughter.

“Now you’re Fair Ellen and I’m defending you at Goblin Cave!” He thrust her behind him, held her tight with one arm, while he flourished the carving knife and called on Clan Alpine’s foes to appear.

But the moment of frolic passed, and he turned to her with shining face. “You’re the only mother I ever had—so far as I know—” his eyes danced; “anyway, you’re the only one in sight, an’ a heap too good for this guy; I guess—I’ll—I’ll mind.”

His mood grew more thoughtful. He put the dishes away quietly, and neither spoke again till the work was finished. Then he went and kissed her on the cheek. “It’s good to have you all to myself, little mother; to be just chums once more.”

She put back his tumbled hair, looked long into his eyes, realizing with a shock that she was looking up. Her little boy was gone.

“But I don’t wish May Nell away, mother, do you?”

“No, my son.” The answer was more sincere than a few weeks before she could have believed possible. The coming of the child had taken from her life many hours of association with Billy, sweet as only mothers know; yet May Nell’s influence had softened and refined Billy, enlarged his vision.

He tidied himself, bade his mother good-bye, and followed the girls to rehearsal.

Sometimes all the small meanness of everyday life is swept away by a great calamity, and the world forgets to hate, and opens its great heart of love. Such an event came through the catastrophe in San Francisco. It inclined every ear, moistened every eye. From all the world’s pocketbook came the golden dollars; from every soul the longing to do; and when it was done, disappointment because it was so little.

Vina was no exception. Ball games, church collections, children’s mite societies, girls sewing, boys running errands, each and all helped with the relief work.

When Edith planned to turn her pupils’ recital into a great Spring Festival, for the benefit of the sufferers, all the town applauded, and asked how it could help.

Edith worked very hard. She called her operetta “The Triumph of Flora.” The words were her own, written hurriedly and set to familiar though classic airs. Yet many of the daintiest, most tripping melodies she wrote herself. The sorrows of humanity had winged her brain and dipped her pen in harmonies, that she might assuage them.

All went well with the preparation; and on a glorious spring night in the full moon, the town and countryside jammed the Opera House “to its eyebrows,” Billy said, looking through the peephole in the curtain to the high window seats crowded with boys.

The operetta opened with a weird winter scene, when the Sower (Harold) sowed his grain, and the gnomes and elves set upon him; and evoked Storm King (Jimmy), Wind (Bess), and Frost (Jackson). He was the comedy of the little drama; and dressed all in black, covered with silver spangles and diamond dust, he made a joke that the wine-growers appreciated, for it is the black frosts of April they fear.

After these followed Jean as Rain. Wherever she passed the singers bowed their heads and sang more softly, and Frost retreated in haste.

Billy was the sun, dressed in a pale yellow tunic, and crowned with a fillet of sun-bursts cut from gilt paper. He came but a little way on the stage from the south for each of his short solos; and the others pelted him back. Especially did he hide from Rain behind Cloud, a tall girl in a small ocean of gray tulle.

At the close of the act, in the far, high distance, the Goddess, Flora, appeared on a hill-crest. This was Edith herself, arrayed in a filmy gown of pale green, garlanded with snow-drops and buttercups. High, far, and faint came her song of the dawn of Spring. But the gnomes and the elves, Storm, Wind, Frost, and Rain, roared and howled; and Flora, affrighted, fled from view.

The curtain fell on the first act and the house rocked with the noise. It is probable the audience, predetermined to be pleased, would have approved anything offered; but so far it was more beautiful than had been expected.

The second act brought a conflict between elves and gnomes, and the fairies, when first the earth sprites were victorious, but at last the fairies. May Nell was the Fairy Queen, and enchanted all with her beauty, her dancing and singing, and her acting, which was sweetly childish as well as clever.

Flora came into view, clad in palest pink, and wreathed with almond blossoms. Wherever she stepped the ground was white with almond snow. Gnomes and elves peeped from behind gray rocks and tree-trunks, but fled as she came near, following the ever-beckoning fairies.

Sun, dressed this time in bright yellow satin, and crowned with yellow gems, was surrounded by fairies, and came more and more boldly forward. He beckoned to Flora, menaced the earth sprites, and threatened Storm, Wind, and Frost; and at the close was rewarded by Flora’s rejoicing cry,

The curtain fell a second time to still heartier applause; and the long wait between the acts was forgotten in discussion and approval. The richest people in town had aided Edith with her costuming and properties, that thus every penny of the receipts might be saved for the great purpose. They had brought out all their stores of rich fabric, fine lace, jewels, and ornaments, for the small mummers; and the effect was entrancing.

The last act exhausted the possibilities of the theatre in light effects and sylvan scenery; and the curtain rose on a gorgeous scene. But oh, horror! In the middle of the stage the scene-shifters had left the ugly truck that moved Storm King’s reservoir of ice and snow. When used in previous acts, bed and wheels had been hidden by moss, the tank had been covered by his mantle, and the entire mechanism, moving as he moved, had seemed a part of himself. Now its secret was disclosed and it was ridiculous.

Edith in white, half smothered in blush roses, with the fairies and their Queen, stood ready in the wings. Billy was also waiting his cue. This time he was to be pulled swiftly in on invisible wheels. Over his satin tunic was a network of glittering mock gems that must have included every yellow bead and spangle in Vine County. From his shoulders floated a cloud of yellow, diamond-dusted tulle; and the crown of gems surrounded a cluster of small lights, a device Billy himself had figured out with the aid of the electric light man.

“Oh, Billy, Billy! My beautiful opera is ruined!” Edith wailed, as she heard the jeers of the small boys in the audience.

“No, it isn’t, sister! I’ve thought of a way out. Keep the kids straight here—I’ll be back in a minute.”

This act opened with a hidden chorus that lasted two or three moments, the fairies on the one hand inviting the elves and gnomes to join them; the others responding. While this was in progress Billy rushed to the boys’ dressing room and talked furiously but straight to the purpose.

“Say, fellows, business now, and no questions asked. There’s a hitch on the stage. Storm, wrap that cloak round you—don’t wait for fixings—and get to your place in the wings, quick! When I say ‘Go,’ take Rain’s hand, crouch low, run to the centre, and between you yank that snow tank off the stage. Sabe?”

Across to the girls’ side he flew. He knew Jean. She would manage somehow, no matter what the difficulty. And he did not trust her without reason. She was already in her shining misty robe that was to change her from Rain to Dew; but she caught the gray mantle, covered herself with it as she ran, and was in the wings almost as soon as Billy.

He placed them before him, Rain and Storm, took his great golden horn of plenty under his arm, stepped on the wheeled board, signalled the super, and rolled on, driving the crouching pair in front of him with pelting showers’ of rose leaves, and landing at his station just as the chorus filed in. The gray pair threw their shrouding mantles over the truck, and still crouching pushed it out of sight; and the spectators, believing they had laughed in the wrong place, cheered vociferously, and never knew the difference.

Rain dropped her gray mantle behind a tree, and reappeared with her chalice of diamond-dust dew, to touch the fairy chorus to shimmering beauty. The gnomes, their queer masks and hunched shoulders showing grotesquely under their gray garb, joined the fairies’ dance. Wind came floating in as Summer Breeze. Storm was transformed to the Slave of the Sower; while Black Frost was perched high up at the rear, grinning from the top of the mountain.

The Sun called to Flora, and she appeared by his side. In front of them knelt the Sower, crowned with leaves. The Sun bestowed upon him a cornucopia overflowing with cherries; Flora laid on his other arm long sprays of roses.

The fairies, gnomes, and elves, danced, sang, and retired; elves and gnomes crouching close against trees and rocks, the fairies withdrawing only to reappear one by one as the music went on, here and there, high in the trees; and each had a tiny light on her brow. But just over Flora and Sun, poised and upheld by invisible wires, stood the Queen of the Fairies, crown, wand, and shoulders fire-tipped, her arms waving, her filmy draperies continually fluttering, fanned by an artificial breeze. Over all fell a rain of rose leaves.

The scene ended in a crash of music; the curtain fell to a house wild with cheering. Edith and the principal performers were called again and again before the curtain. It was a generous, appreciative audience, giving its heartiest approval by rising.

Late that night when Billy’s mother followed him to the Fo’castle, he asked, “Are you pleased with it, little mother?”

“It was all splendid; and, Billy, I never dreamed it was in you! Sister’s operetta would have been a failure if it hadn’t been for you.”

“And Jean and Jimmy, too.”

She stooped and kissed him.

“That’s good enough for me, then,” he said, sleepily. And no one ever heard him mention again his unexpected addition to the scene.

---

IT was a gray, cold day, unusual for May, the kind of day that accords with ill-nature. It reminded Billy of the incident of the opera when Rain and Storm, driven by his own insistence, had blown in on the stage quite out of season, and dragged off with them the remnants of winter. For the first Sunday since May Nell’s coming he took his wheel after dinner and went off alone. He was in accord with the sullen sky and air. In the morning he had answered his mother angrily; because Bouncer wished to play instead of coming through the gate when called, Billy had slammed it on his tail, knowing well that in a happier mood he would have been more careful.

Now he flew off down the county road at a speed that made passers turn; but he saw no one. He neither slackened nor looked back till he found himself at the river where the little island rose, flower-crowned. The poppies were fewer; and where a month before the flame-flower had triumphed, to-day wild roses perfumed the air.

Billy halted and looked up into the threatening sky. His eyes twitched, and he noticed wonderingly that his breath was short and his hand shook on the handle-bar. He dismounted and propped his wheel against the fence; climbed down to the river and sat on a projecting rock, with his feet dangling near the water.

There was a strange weight in his left side, like lead. He felt as if the whole world was against him; and the future looked dark and terrible. Three days ago life had reached out, a white shining road to success. Only three days! He looked north to where clouds were shutting down over the Mountain, gray to-day, not blue. The Mountain, every one called it, for it closed the valley and towered, a sentinel, far above all other mountains in view. Billy thought that stood for him; he was to be chained to this narrow valley all his life; struggle as he might he should never be free.

If he had been older he would have said he had “the blues.” Yet probably he would not have known that his mental—and physical—condition was a natural result of the long strain of previous weeks. All the children felt it. That morning the cousins, Clarence and Harry, who loved each other dearly, had come to blows in the Sunday School room before the teachers arrived, over the question of which one of them should marry Miss Edith. Clarence received a bloody scratch the full length of his palm from Harry’s Band of Mercy pin; while the careful parting disappeared from his own hair, and a red splotch marred the whiteness of his wide collar. No one can tell what further calamity might have happened had not the Twins opportunely arrived and questioned of the quarrel.

“You needn’t fight any more,” Vilette said, loftily; “we shall marry her ourselves.”

“Yes, we shall marry her ourselves,” Evelyn echoed; while both girls made childish efforts to rehabilitate the depressed cousins.

The unstinted praise of the children in the operetta, the aftermath of buzz about the “show” at school,—this excitement lasted for a day or so; but on this lowering Sunday tired nature put in a claim for her own; and relaxed nerves were irritably near the surface.

Billy had the excitable musical temperament. He spent his forces lavishly, and it was because of this that he was a leader; could think and act quickly in emergencies, as when he saved the operetta from failure. Edith and her mother knew that he had lived hard through the past few weeks, that next to Edith herself he had carried the entertainment, though Jean had been a host also. So it pleased Mrs. Bennett that afternoon to see Billy start off alone for the country.

Now in the silence and fragrance his tightened springs began to relax. Presently he found himself in a dream of possibilities of the island,—Ellen’s Isle, he always called it; of what might be done with the smooth places in the river, the hills, Sunol Creek not far away, boiling and tumbling in boisterous beauty; of hidden nooks, piled boulders, and tiny meadows, vine-enclosed and flower-fragrant.

Had he but dreamed on for an hour or so he would have returned, rested, refreshed, the cheery boy that helped to make the Bennett house a home. But a voice in the road above startled him. Only a word was spoken, a greeting; but it was surly and foreign, Italian.

Billy sprang up. The dark man of the sinister house was passing on his way to town; had answered a horseman’s salute. The boy could not see the house; but on the high hill above it he saw the other brother, regardless of the Sabbath, hoeing his vineyard.

Now was Billy’s chance! The place was alone! He waited till each traveller was out of view on the curving road, then climbed up, crossed the dusty wheel tracks, and crept into the brush on the other side. Once hidden he “snooped” silently through the tangled chaparral, coming shortly to the mystery-house, so close to it that he could have looked in at the windows had they been clean enough.

A faint sound caught his ear, as of clinking coins and soft voices. People there! He had thought it before, now he was certain. Were not both brothers away?

Billy cuddled down in the low-growing manzanitas, whose screen was further thickened by a tangle of wild pea vines all a-bloom. Placing himself so that he could watch both the house and the man on the hill, he settled to await further disclosures.

All the excited nerves in his body that had been resting were tingling again. He could feel his temples throb, count the beats of his heart. For a time nothing happened. He heard no different sounds, though he strained his ears nervously. The moments passed and seemed hours. He crouched motionless, but his stillness was not repose.

What if they should find him? Gee! Couldn’t a boy run faster than a man? Another sound banished these thoughts; wheels on the road, whose thick coat of dust almost hushed the ring of metal tires. A horseman before, and now a wagon; this was an unusual amount of travel for that lonely road.

A faint sound caught his ear

Billy looked up at the Italian, saw him take a pistol from his pocket, discharge it in the air, replace it, and go calmly on with his work. What could that be for? A warning? Yes; for he realized suddenly that every sound in the house had ceased. The wagon passed from sight. He could hear the voices of the men as they drove by, see the driver pointing to the house with his whip; and one of the women on the rear seat looked back as long as the house could be seen. Then the soft mysterious sounds began again.

Billy took no heed of time till he saw the man above shoulder his hoe, pick up his wine jug, and start down the hill. At that Billy’s heels grew swift. He scurried out of his hiding place, slipped rapidly through the brush, found his wheel, and bowled off. No languor or heaviness now in body or mind. Every atom of him was alert as on the night of the opera, yet not so normally alert; for the evil atmosphere of the place was in his soul, filling his teeming brain with imaginings of many crimes.

In this mood he turned into the main road and came upon Jackson limping, bloody, and crying.

“Jiminy crickets! What’s happened, kid?” Billy asked, slowing up beside him.

“Sour’s licked me ’cause I’m a n-nigger, ’n gave T-Twinnies some f-flowers an’ walked with ’em. He’s back there now l-lickin’ the T-Twins.”

Billy didn’t wait. Like all generous natures that are slow to anger, the passion once aroused possessed him to madness. He raced down the turnpike, his face aflame. Ahead he could see the Dorrs’ horse and buggy standing near the fence. Jimmy was on the ground beside the Twins; and Billy saw the whip descend more than once before he arrived. Had he known it the blows were make-believe, for moral effect alone. Jimmy was giving a lesson that his Southern breeding made him think necessary, if painful.

Billy heard the pitiful cries of the children, Evelyn’s the loudest, though Vilette was receiving the blows. Every drop of blood in his veins was a spark of fire. An unsuspected power came from somewhere, mysteriously. He felt himself lift, expand, grow strong enough to battle with an ox. He dropped his wheel, sprang upon Jimmy from behind, and bore him down. In an instant he had snatched the whip, broken it, and tossed the pieces into the field beyond. “You bully! You skunk! To horsewhip girls! Why don’t you take one of your own size?”

Jimmy was taken by surprise. Billy was his favorite play-mate, and the whip had disappeared before he realized the import of the attack, and he thus lost any advantage he might have gained while Billy’s hands were busy. But the words roused Jimmy’s anger. No boy had a right to interfere between him and his sisters; and he struggled to his feet and launched some telling blows.

Billy heeded no prize-ring rules, no boys’ traditions of fair play. Every savage instinct inherited from far-distant ancestors and sleeping till to-day, rose, conquered the human in him, for the moment made him brutish. And the sobs of the little girls were as whips of fire.

The struggle was short. When Jimmy resisted no longer, but, after a fall against the fence with his arm doubled under and back, did not try to rise, Billy came to his senses. He cleared the dust from his eyes a little and turned to see why Jimmy didn’t speak. He lay with closed eyes, motionless!

A chill as from an ice field swept over Billy. His heart seemed to fall down, down, as far as his shoes. He noticed that things looked darker, and his head felt light and queer. Another fear assailed him; would he, too, collapse, leave the little girls alone with the terror of two senseless boys?

He roused himself sharply; found his handkerchief and rubbed his eyes a little clearer; bent swiftly over Jimmy, who stirred when touched, and, to Billy’s intense relief, spoke.

“I think you’ve broke my neck, kid,” he said, feebly, as quaking Billy helped him to his feet.

“Jimmy, can you stand?”

He winced with pain, reeled, and would have fallen but for the other’s sustaining hand.

“Here! Sit down on the bank.” Billy himself was trembling so he felt it safer to see Jimmy sitting. “I’ll get—Twinnies, run, run to the tank and wet your handkerchief. Quick!”

They were at the dripping roadside tank and back in a trice. Gently where a moment before he had been ferocious with anger, Billy wiped his play-mate’s face, or rather, changed the mud from one spot to another, got him to his feet again, and finally into the buggy with the little girls by his side.

“Can you drive?” he asked, anxiously, as he unhitched the horse. He noticed with a second sinking feeling that Jimmy’s face twitched with pain, that his right arm hung limp.

“If I can’t Vilette can. Old Bob goes by himself, anyway.” He made a brave though unsuccessful effort to appear as usual.

“Are—are you hurt bad, Jimmy?” came in a quaking voice.

“No worse ’n you, I reckon,” was the rueful response. Billy’s appearance justified Jimmy’s speech; for freckles were standing out large and ghastly from one or two very white spots on the younger boy’s battered face. “Can you get home alone?”

“Yes—go on quick! Here come folks!”

He watched the three drive away, the brother holding the reins in his left hand; the other he did not attempt to lift; and Billy’s heart thumped faster as fear grew to a certainty. He brushed himself weakly, turning his back as a surrey-load of people passed.

“Had a fall, Billy?” Every one knew the boy.

“Yes, Mr. Brown,” he answered, keeping his face from sight.

“Hurt?”

“My clothes mostly,” he replied, hoping he had told the truth, though a dreadful, big feeling in his head, the humming in his ears, and the pain in his eyes, made him guess he had told a lie.

The travellers passed on; he righted his wheel and began his slow, painful way home. It was still cloudy and the welcome darkness setting in early, shrouded him as he slipped down the least public streets and alleys to his own side gate. He put his wheel away, fed his chickens,—though they had gone to roost,—went to the cellar and brought meat and milk for dog and cats, and reconnoitred the way to the Fo’castle.

Visitors! He saw them through the window. Every step was growing more painful,—he must get to his room. The space from the woodshed roof to the tower room, before so easily surmounted by a swinging jump, looked now as high and far as Mount Whitney. Back to the window he turned. The firelight was dancing on the walls. Sister Edith was talking gayly to neighbors who were standing near the door, and May Nell was snuggled beside his mother on the couch, the great yellow cat, or a part of him, sprawling on her small lap.

How sweet and dear they all were! How peaceful it looked in there,—too peaceful, clean, for a dirty, fighting brute like himself. What could he do? He shivered in the cold, and the pain in his eyes increased. Would he fall? Would they find him, have Doctor Carter, learn the disgraceful truth? If the world had looked dark that afternoon, it was now Egyptian blackness.

There was a stir in the room. His mother stood—May Nell, too—and the cat stretched lazily on the couch. Sister Edith followed the guests to the porch, as did his mother and the little girl—the room was empty! He opened the kitchen door, tried to hasten noiselessly, yet thought he clattered like a threshing machine. Into the living-room he crept, and lumbered softly up the stairs that seemed a mile long.

“It’s time Billy was at home,” he heard his mother say as he opened her room door; and he stumbled on more hurriedly, across the bridge—at last, the Fo’castle!

He threw himself on the bed and wept the bitterest tears he had ever shed in his life, tears of shame. There he lay—hours, he thought—determined to bear his pain and disgrace alone. Yet it was only minutes when he heard his mother in her room, coming!

---

BILLY did not lift his face from the pillow; he was striving to steady throat and voice.

“Billy,” she called.

“Don’t, mother! Mother, don’t come in here! Don’t come in the same room with me,—I’m not fit for— O mother, I’ve hurt Jimmy for life!”

Mrs. Bennett caught the despair in his words, and knew this could be no ordinary trouble to be petted away with a few caresses. Some crisis had come that must be wisely met. She entered, knelt by the bed, and put her arms around him. The spring starlight dimly outlined his head on the pillow but gave no hint of its bruises. “Billy, dear, nothing you can ever do will be bad enough to keep your mother away from you. What is it, my son?”

The gentle words, the tender touch, the comfort and hope in her words, unlocked his lips and he told what he had thought to keep forever untold.

He kept his hands from hers, and begged her not to touch the handkerchief he had bound around his head; but before his story was finished, a growing stain on the pillow had oozed into sight.

“Billy! You said you weren’t hurt, but you are!” Alarmed, she rose and switched on the light, pulled off the bandage, and turned faint at the wreck of the bright, clean boy who had left her that afternoon. “My boy! You’re dreadfully hurt! I must send for Doctor Carter, and—”

“No, no! Don’t, mother! I’ll run away! I’ll—” He groaned and left his sentence unfinished.

“But you may have broken bones—be seriously injured.”

She took a step, but he caught her hand. “I don’t care if I am, he mustn’t see—no one must,—I didn’t mean you should. Besides, I walked home and brought my wheel; I’ll live, I guess,—I’m too mean to kill.” He put his stiff, swollen hand over his face. “It’s Jimmy that’s in danger.” A new note of terror came into his voice as he remembered the pale face and limp arm; he had never seen a fighting boy look so before. “I’m afraid Jimmy’s hurt inside, mother. What if he should die?”

Mrs. Bennett knew better than Billy how much thumping a boy could live through; and reassured him while she took off his soiled garments, and started below for hot water and remedies.

“Don’t tell—must Edith and May Nell know?” he called after her. “Oh, all the town will—mother!” The anguish in his words halted her. “Mother, this wasn’t a boys’ scrap at all. I didn’t think of you or—or anything; an’ something must have squelched Betsey, she never peeped. Mother, I felt—I felt mad enough to kill him!” He whispered the awesome words.

“But you don’t feel so now, my son. Jimmy will soon be well; you, too. Then you can talk with him about it. Rest, now; that is your first duty,” she comforted, and left him.

Hot water, lotions, a mother’s tender hands, best of all, a mother’s comprehending heart,—it is wonderful what cures these can make. In an hour Billy was comparatively at ease. His sore body still ached, and his eyes “felt like red fire on the Fourth,” he said; but the world seemed less dark, and he was glad his mother had not taken him at his word and left him to bear his trouble alone.

Yet he could not long keep his mind from the struggle. “Mother, won’t you find out soon about Jimmy, how bad he’s hurt? An’ I wish I knew if Vilette ’n Evelyn ’re all right; it looked awful to see ’em hit with a horsewhip.”

“I’ll get word from them in the morning. Don’t worry any more, but rest; sleep if you can. You can’t help them till you have helped yourself.”

Still, since Billy had broken his resolution of silence, he was feverishly eager to talk. His thoughts were erratic, now in the present, again flying back to the past. “O mother, you should be lickin’ me ’nstead of petting me!” he broke out passionately.

“Why, Billy? I don’t believe in whipping unless all else fails.”

“Well, papa did. If he was alive he’d be giving it to me about now, good and plenty.”

“Why do you think he would have whipped you?”

“Don’t you remember the first day I went to school, he took me between his knees,—I was a little kid then,—and said, ‘Billy, if I know that you ever jump on a boy first to fight him, I’ll lick you. And if another boy jumps on you first, and you don’t fight back, no matter how big he is, I’ll lick you then.’”

“I guess he didn’t say ‘lick,’ Billy.”

“Yes, he did. And he said, awfully solemn, ‘Remember, Billy, no one but a coward strikes his foe in the back. A boy of mine who could do that,—I don’t think I should wish him to wear this.’ And he pointed to his Loyal Legion button. O mother, I hit Jimmy first, I hit him in the back, and I—I kicked him in the stomach! I’ve disgraced papa’s button forever!” His last words were a groan, and he hid his face.

Mrs. Bennett leaned over him without speaking for a minute, but stroked his hair softly. “Remember, with One there is no ‘forever.’ As long as we live we have a chance to retrieve. Rest on that, my child. Now you must sleep.” She kissed him and was silent, for a drop glistened on his cheek she knew he would not wish her to notice.

She thought he should be in a warmer room, but he begged so hard to stay that she yielded. She put a bell near, that he might call her, and went to him several times before she slept, finding him somewhat restless, yet too profoundly asleep to be wakened by her light touch. Outraged nature was in charge now.

It must have been hours past midnight when Billy’s chattering voice startled his mother. She had heard no bell; the boy himself stood by her bedside; she could see him dimly against the window.

“I don’t know what’s the matter,—I’m drowned, I guess.” His teeth rattled, and the hand he put out to her was icy cold.

“Billy! You’re freezing!” She sprang up and turned on the light.

He was a queer figure with his bandaged head, one eye peering out, and a long, dripping red quilt trailing behind him. “I found the bed flooded, and put the comfort round me; but someway that’s wet, too.” He could hardly speak for shivering.

She clapped him into her own warm bed, and incredibly soon things were sizzling over the alcohol lamp.

“The tank must have run over, Billy. You forgot to shut it off.”

“No, I didn’t forget; the water was low, and I left it running on purpose. But it’s that west wind; she’s a hummer. She can pump faster ’n the old waste pipe can discharge.”

Friction and mustard, hot water bags without and hot tea within soon set Billy’s teeth at rest.

“How in the world did you ever sleep through it, Billy?” his mother asked, coming in from the tank-room where she had been to investigate. “There is a small flood there. I should think the first drop would have wakened you.”

“It came to me feet foremost, I guess, and soaked the quilt in instalments. I had a tough dream, too; couldn’t wake up in the middle. I dreamed I was on a ship in a bang-up storm, and the vessel lunged like a bucking horse.”

“Yes, I can see that the wind, the shaking tower, the creaking mill, would bring such dreams,” his mother said. “Hear the wind howl now!”

“And I thought all the crew were washed overboard like chips,” he went on; “and I was left alone. And she shipped water in mountains. And I was cold as the North Pole. And at last she foundered, and I went down with her. And when I couldn’t choke any more I woke up.”

“Poor little Billy! You’ve had a hard night of it.”

“Kinder rocky.”

He smiled wanly, and her heart ached for him; but she knew sympathy was unsafe just then. “If you could see that comical, crooked eye of yours blinking at me, like a chicken asking your intentions, you’d laugh, Billy.”

He did laugh, yet was sober again. She was tucking the clothes close about him, preparing to lie down by his side. But he reached his arms out suddenly and flung them around her neck. “O mamma, the awfullest thing in the world next to doing a crime, must be not to have a mother. I must jolly May Nell more. And, mamma—mother, I don’t know why,—” his voice was very low and shy, “why God’s looked out for me so good; but anyway, you’re—you’re the whole bunch!”

She pressed him closer and kissed him. And soon he slept.

But his mother watched out the night.

---

THE next morning Billy had a “temperature.” His mother decided against school for that day. At first he was glad. He didn’t care if he had forty temperatures. He thought almost anything in the way of fever was cooler than he would feel if the boys—and the girls—should see his face. Not that this was the first time he had been scratched in a fight; before he had not cared who knew. To-day it was different,—there were things about this fight he wished he could forget, even though he knew Jimmy was not likely to die.

But a second idea came that made him fidget about the room, lift his bandage and watch the children on their way to school. His record for attendance for the year had so far been perfect. He knew that he owed it partly to his mother’s tireless watch of the clock, and wondered why he had not realized this before. Now it was to be broken; she would be as sorry as he could be; and it would have counted well toward the prize. He tried to calculate how many days he could be absent and still have left some chance of it. The work was all reviewing, he almost knew it, anyway. If he only had his books,—but no, they wouldn’t let him use his eyes.

A gentle rap halted his reflections, a sweet voice asked to come in; and in a moment there was a rose-leaf touch on his cheek.

“Your mamma said I was to ask no questions, and I shall obey; but I do wish I knew how I could help you.” She touched the bandage that bound his head. “Does it hurt you awfully much, Billy? I’m so sorry. My eyes ache me, too, for looking at you.”

He was pleased with her sympathy; but being a boy, he didn’t like to show it. “I’ll tell you,” he said, eagerly, and without further acknowledgment of her kindness, “ask Mr. Brown to give you my books. Perhaps to-night I can see to study.”

But not that night nor for days after did Billy look at his books. The second morning the fever was still present, and he told his mother he was “all over red goose flesh.”

“Measles,” Mrs. Bennett pronounced; and though it was a light case, and in a day or so Billy felt as well as ever except his eyes, they were sentenced to a dark room.

May Nell plays teacher

May Nell had been “through the measles,” yet she shared the quarantine. Billy resented this at first. It was “no fair.” Afterward he was grateful; for aside from the cheer of her presence she did him a fine service. It was her clever brain that proposed to read his lessons aloud to him; and though he didn’t think much of it at first, he soon saw that this would make a chance for the prize which in his heart he had resigned.

She made a quaint picture curled in a big chair under the window, where a lifted corner of the curtain gave light to the book, but left the rest of the room dark. It pleased her to play teacher. She asked Billy numberless questions, coaxed him to explain what she did not understand. And he soon learned that one must know a thing very well before he can tell it. He dictated some of the written work, and she transcribed it in her prim little script.

Yet Billy despaired when he thought of the mathematics; Jimmy— With the thought of Jimmy the hot blood rose to Billy’s cheek, and he was glad the room was dark. It was Jimmy’s right arm that was broken.

But May Nell’s ambition was boundless. “We can do mathematics work, too. I can multiply, and divide, and other things beside, I can do; I’ll just be your paper and pencil.”

Billy was skeptical, yet soon convinced, as the little girl slowly and carefully read the problems, followed his directions, and obtained correct results. A few problems were too complicated; these the boy had her mark for attack with recovered sight.

Yet only a part of the long day went to study. They spent delightful hours rehearsing the stories of favorite books, and otherwise amused themselves by improvising tales of marvellous adventure. The school children sent notes, the latest school jokes, and original pictures, interesting if sometimes not quite clear as to meaning. Clarence indited his first letter. Here it is:

The best of all was a letter from Jimmy, scrawled with his left hand.

“Dear Billy,” it read; “Shifty seen the fight. He says it was something fierce. He says you looked like a mad bull. He was hiding behind the fence. He says he bet on me; but he was glad he didn’t bet with nobody, because you whipped. Shifty’s doing some of my written work—I’m telling him how, of course. And I’m studying right smart. Say, Bill, I don’t lay no grudge. My arm’s getting on fine.

“Yours truly,
“Jimmy.”

Billy read the note several times. He knew that Jimmy meant much more than the words said; it was his offer of the “olive branch.” And Billy, thinking over that miserable afternoon, wondered again how it had been possible for him to feel such murderous hate for anything living. And for Jimmy! His mate at school, in play! The picture came to him of Jackson crying, of Vilette,—yes, it was not strange he had been angry. But it was not his duty to punish; even if it had been, he knew he had forgotten Jackson and Vilette, forgotten everything except the rage of the fight. Why was it? Older heads than Billy’s have asked in sorrow that same question after the madness of some angry deed has passed to leave in its wake sleepless remorse.

The best amusement of the hours of imprisonment was planning for the performance of “The Lady of the Lake.” Nothing definite, except that it was to be out of doors, had unfolded till now, when irksome leisure and May Nell’s quick mind together bore fruit.

“We can play the first canto, ‘The Chase,’ across the river in the Sunol Creek canyon,” Billy explained, eagerly.

“But there aren’t any deer,” the little girl objected. “What will you do for

“There ’re deer up there, all right; but of course we can’t get ’em. We’ll have to catch a jack rabbit beforehand and let him loose.”

“O Billy, the poor rabbit will surely be caught; and you know the stag hid in ‘Trosach’s wildest nook.’”

“Oh, the kids’—boys’ dogs are mostly old or else too fat to run, like Bouncer. I guess the rabbit can get away,—too soon, perhaps. We’ll have you for Fair Ellen.”

“Oh, no; she must be Jean.”

“She won’t do it; she said so before. She wants to be Alan-bane.”

“But she’s a girl.”

“That’s the reason. She says a boy will spoil the part; won’t get the shivers like she will. She thinks a minstrel can’t—can’t minstrelize properly without the shivers.”

“Yes, that’s true,” May Nell replied, with conviction. “And Queen will be Lady Margaret; and you are Malcolm Graeme; and who is Fitz-James?”

“Pretty; and Charley will be Douglas, and—”

“And Jimmy is already Roderick Dhu.”

“But Roderick Dhu died from fighting Fitz-James; I hate to give Jimmy a dying part.”

“Oh, my conscience! That isn’t any matter. All the grandest actors have the dying parts; and they die gloriously; and the audience claps and claps and claps; and the curtain goes up, and they all come out alive again and bow and smile; and you eat some candy and don’t cry any more.”

“That’s bul—dandy.”

“But I don’t like them to do that, Billy. They ought to stay dead till the play is done. When I see them smiling I feel as if—just as I would if you made fun of me when I cried for my mama,—it takes all the true out of the play.”

“As soon as I get out of this,” Billy went on, after a short silence, “I’ll go over and fix up Ellen’s Isle for you and Lady Margaret. We can have

‘—a lodge of ample size,’

with

‘The lighter pine trees overhead,’

but not the strong log house where——” He hesitated, and May Nell quoted on glibly,

“‘The sturdy oak and ash unite’;

but I can

If I only had an Idean vine; what is it, Billy?”

“You can search me.” Billy was about to remark further, when a commotion arose among the school children just passing on their way home.

May Nell needed no second request to “catch the racket and bring it in.” She flew downstairs, and presently up again, arriving with a breathless story. “O Billy, the circus train’s wrecked! There won’t be any circus next week! Some of the animals are all dead, and the fire burned some— Oh, I can hear them scream now, can’t you?” She put her hands over her face and shivered.

“Don’t feel so bad, Chick,” he comforted; “it won’t bring them to life, and it hurts you. That’s why you don’t grow faster; your feelings eats up all your blood.”

She smiled faintly. “Then my feelings must be bloodthirsty, Billy. How dreadful!”

“Did the little kids take it hard?”

“Awfully hard, Billy. Some of them had ‘grief swimming in their eyes.’”

“Poor little chaps! They’ve been talking circus for a month.”

“Billy! I’ll tell you what let’s do; we’ll make a circus ourselves!”

“Heavens to Betsey! We’ll do it!”

The “Lady of the Lake” was that moment deserted.

---

“BILLY, Flash is the cleverest cat ever!” May Nell exclaimed as she bounded in some days later.

The quarantine had been raised, and at night Billy had “the run of the house”; though his days were still spent in “the prison cell” as he called the dark room. It seemed to him that light came in with the little girl, and all the sparkle and fragrance of the young summer without.

“What new trick has Flash been up to?”

“You know that bad, old, half-tailed Tom that whips every cat in town but Geewhillikins and Flash and Sir Thomas—”

“Yes; he’d lick him too, if Flash wasn’t Tom’s body-guard.”

“Well, just listen! This morning your mama set out the meat for their breakfast. I had Geewhillikins and Jerusalem Crickets in the pound—the woodshed, you know. Oh, they had a big breakfast before,” she added quickly, feeling rather than seeing Billy’s disapproval.

“I forgive you,” he condoned.

“In a minute I heard the teentiest little mew. I looked and there was Tom crouched against the side of the house. He was shivering with fright, and that old tramp cat was eating up his breakfast.”

“The darned old robber!” Billy started up and walked restlessly toward the door.

“I took a stick of kindling from the kitchen and crept out to chase the thief away; but just then Flash trotted around the corner of the house. He’s been on the front lawn all the morning watching for gophers; wouldn’t come when we called him.”

“That’s Flash; he always works for his breakfast,” Billy pompously approved.

“He ran up and touched noses with Tom like a Feegee Islander,—are they the people that touch noses for ‘How do you do?’”

“I guess so. What else?”

“And Flash mewed just once, very softly. He couldn’t see the tramp cat, for the big oak tree hid him. But the second Tom answered his mew, Flash flew like a lightning streak, around the tree and up to that old, stealing feline cat. And he ran— O Billy, you’d have laughed an ache in your side if you could have seen him run,—over the fence, he ran again, across the street, down the sidewalk,—he never stopped till he came to the tip top of Mr. Potter’s big locust tree.”

“By heck! Flash is all right.”

“Then he walked back as slowly and dignifiedly as a minister,—isn’t ‘dignifiedly’ an awkward word? I wonder if it is right?”

“Never mind grammar, or spelling, whichever it is; what did Flash do?”

“He went up to Tom—he was still crouching against the house—”

“Like the lazy coward he is,” Billy tartly interrupted.

“O Billy, he’s so beautiful and so clever; and he put his nose up to Flash so gratefully. Flash just mewed again, low as before, and walked off round the house. And Tom went and ate his breakfast.”

“Well, old Tom’ll have to be cleverer than I ever saw him to pay for that.”

“You don’t like Sir Thomas because he’s a little indolent.”

“It’s plain lazy. He won’t even wash himself.”

“Yet he has more mind than Flash.”

“Mind? What do you mean by that? Anyway, you can’t prove it.”

“Yes, I can, right now!” The little girl, full of enthusiasm for her beloved yellow cat, went over and laid her hand impressively on Billy’s arm. “You know the dining-room window screen hung from the top, that has the broken catch on one side?”

“Uh huh.”

“Well, Tom jumps up from the outside, hangs on the sill with one forefoot, and pulls out the edge of the screen with the other till he gets his nose in, when he can pry out the screen and slip through easily.”

“Yes, he can do that; I’ve seen him myself.”

“Well, Flash can’t do that.”

“How do you know?”

“I’ve watched, and called to him from the inside; but he only stands and mews. Did you ever see him climb up and open the screen?”

Billy could not remember that he had.

“But, Billy, Tom opens it for him! He climbs up, gets his nose in, and the largest part of himself; then he crowds along as hard as he can, and calls to Flash, ‘The way is clear; come’;—you needn’t laugh; he says it just as plain as words,” she protested. “And Flash springs up, creeps through, and jumps to the floor, with Tom after him; and the screen slaps to with a big noise. I’ve seen them do it three times this week. Isn’t that a wonder?”

“Sure!” Billy assented, heartily. “I take it back about old Sir Thomas; I guess they’re equal partners, after all.”

“They’re a regular Damon and Pythias, aren’t they? And we’ll have Flash for the Polar Bear, in the circus, and Tom for the Royal Bengal Tiger, the baby tiger, you know.”

“Yes; and we’ll have to train the dogs,— Whoopee! Only four weeks of school. We’ll have to hurry if we do the circus and “Lady of the Lake” both before vacation.”

“Before vacation? Why, they’ll be just the things to do in vacation.”

“They’ll have to be done before vacation or not at all,” he answered, so seriously that May Nell wondered a little; wondered still more as the moments passed and the dark room grew very quiet. She did not know what purpose was growing in Billy’s mind, a purpose that largely concerned herself.

---

THE silence was broken a little later by merry voices on the stairway. For several nights the girls had been gathering in May Nell’s room. Billy knew “things were doing” there by the sounds; the tap, tap of the tack hammer, added to much chatter and rustling. Now May Nell caught him by the hand and pulled him across the hall. A strange pungent fragrance like burning spice, yet not familiar, met them at the door. And inside, the dark hangings full of lurking shadows gave the room a foreign air.

The Queen of Sheba in gypsy dress, and her harum-scarum train buzzing with gossip and exclamation, flocked in. Bess looked magnificent in a mass of draperies that included every Oriental thing to be found in several families.

“Jiminy whiz! Your royal splendor dazzles me!” Billy chaffed.

“I’m the Royal Egyptian Fortune Teller!” Bess announced, in a deep voice. “This is my desert tent. I shall reveal the past, present, and future to those only whom my favor shall designate. Slaves, the lamps!”

Clarence and Harry, much wrapped in white about the head, but with bare little white arms and bare little brown legs, came in solemnly and placed some red lanterns on the table. Bess posed in a chair decorated for the occasion, arranged her draperies, pulled nearer the “incense lamp,” which was her father’s Turkish cigar lighter, laid out her cards, and bent over them in grave silence.

Her absorption hypnotized the others to wondering stillness. In a moment her attitude and intensity had transported them to the mysterious East, and put upon them the spell of ancient superstitions.

At last she looked up and pointed a startling finger at May Nell. “Mary Ellen Smith, my familiars, who guard the portals of futurity, declare that you shall be the first honored. Minions, depart! Slaves, guard the door!”

Jean and the twins, Charley, George and some others, rattled down the stairs; while Clarence and Harry stood rigid, with wooden scymitars drawn, one on each side of the door.

Billy hesitated a minute. The dim room, the wicked-looking red lights, Bess so stern and mysterious,—this might frighten the little girl. He ought to wait.

“Avaunt, hesitating noddy! The angel child is quite safe!” Bess waved an arm, partly bare and brown in spots.

“Yes, go away, Billy; I’m not afraid.” May Nell laughed happily. Her quick mind was delighted with the masquerading.

Yet it was a very quiet little child that crept down to the others a few minutes later; when asked of her fortune she burst into tears.

Mrs. Bennett came in and tried to learn the trouble; but it was some time before May Nell could be induced to tell.

“She said, the Queen of Sheba did, that I’d be in danger, and some one would save me. And I’d have a s’prise, and a hus—husband, and fi-five c-chil— children!” She wailed again and hid her face on Mrs. Bennett’s shoulder.

“Golly! There’s nothing skewgee about that fortune,” Billy commented, encouragingly.

“Oh, yes; yes, there is, Billy.” May Nell lifted a teary face. “Five children! If it had been two, or perhaps I could possibly bring up three; but f-five, o-o-oh!” she wailed again, heedless of the laughter around her.

Several others were summoned and returned with remarkable reports. At last two high-pitched little voices called in concert down the stair: “The Royal Seeress will rend the veil of futurity for William Bennett.”

“That’s you, papa,” Clarence piped, as an anxious post warning.

Artful Bess! Billy had treated it all as a huge joke; but now May Nell’s depression, the unfamiliar sound of his right name, the dim room with its shadows and half-suffocating odors,—all conspired to send a sober Billy into the circle of lurid light that came from the two lamps gleaming on either side of dark Bess like angry eyes.

A few minutes later the entire Egyptian fortune-telling outfit came down stairs at Billy’s heels. The hubbub was a riot of fun, and no one noticed that Billy said nothing about the revelations of destiny made to him; though later Jean recalled that in the zig-zag journey around the park that was Billy’s evening exercise, he spoke very little to the chatterers with him, even forgot to “jolly.”

That night when Mrs. Bennett went into the Fo’castle there was an unusual note in Billy’s voice.

“Stop and chin with me just a little, won’t you, marmsey?”

“And what’s the ‘chinning’ to be about?” she questioned, sitting on the bedside; “the fortune?”

Billy looked at her wonderingly for an instant. “You guess everything that troubles a fellow, don’t you? How do you do it?” He sighed deeply.

“Was it as bad as that?” She smiled, and smoothed back the thick, tumbled hair.

“Worse! She said soon I’d have to be very brave—that ain’t bad—but I’m goin’ to be—to be a minister—a preacher!” The last word came with a woe-begone vehemence that made his mother laugh.

“Why do you think that’s so dreadful?”

“O mother,” he began, excitedly, and stopped. Only lately had he called her “mother” in his serious moments, and the name gave her pain as well as pleasure, for it was one more announcement of the coming man.

“Mother,” he resumed, “I know I must freeze to some sort of business, and that mighty soon, too. But a preacher—why, he can’t be like anybody. He never has any fun.”

“Do you think fun the first business of the world?”

“Oh, no,” he sighed; “I suppose duty is the first business; but duty is such a narrow, knock-you-down little word.” His voice was tense and hard.

Mrs. Bennett continued her gentle, even strokes; bent and kissed him softly before replying. “Duty looks narrow only when it opposes inclination, my child. Selfish people hate duty; but those who live the longest and best lives could tell you that every victory duty wins brings an ever-increasing joy.”

“O mother, how can there be joy if life is all work and never any fun?” He took her hand and pressed it against his cheek.

“There’s a little secret about work; with grown-ups it is often their play; and they like it.”

“Do you like to work?” His tone was insistent; and he lifted his head and looked hard at her, as if to challenge the tiniest bit of insincerity that might be lurking back of the words. “Like to work?” he repeated with added emphasis.

“Billy, I don’t think you could possibly have been happier on your birthday than I was; yet I was so tired that night that I could not sleep. The work of that day was play to me.”

Billy threw both arms around her and hugged her.

“And there are many times when the duty itself is disagreeable, yet doing it brings a finer joy than shirking it ever could bring.”

“Then I’ll be a—a preacher if I ought to. But gee! it’s rocky!”

“O Billy,” his mother laughed, “you need not decide to-night. Besides, it was all Bess’s nonsense. I can’t quite imagine my heedless boy in a pulpit.”

Billy thought he detected a touch of resigned disappointment in her words, and looked up with a sudden wonder widening his eyes, making them shine even in the dim light of the shaded lamp. “Do you want me to preach, mamma?”

“Not unless you wish to so much that you will not do anything else, Billy. The world needs preachers of the right kind sadly; and the right kind take up the calling reverently, though they know it will bring them small worldly return and much toil.”

The boy was very still for a little, but burst out presently: “I’m going to work, mother; as soon as school closes I’ll start.”

He felt his mother start. “You’re too young for hard work, Billy; you do enough as it is.”

“Yes, when you and sister turn gray getting it out of me. No, I’m going to do real work that will earn money; and I’m going to take this never-get-enough grub-basket of mine to a table where my own hands have earned the grub.”

“Billy! My—boy!” Mrs. Bennett bent over him; and he felt a tear where her cheek touched his.

“Feel that muscle,” he said a moment later; bending his arm, and pressing her fingers to it. “That’s got to grow by a broom or hoe, something besides football!”

His words had a new ring, and his mother was wise enough to respect the young independence in them. “What brought you to this decision, Billy?”

“You remember that story about a man who died for love of a girl because he knew he ought not to marry her? I thought that sort kind of noble, but you said there was nobler. Do you remember?”

“No; I can’t recall what I said.”

“You said, ‘Death is easy. It is much braver to live without the love one craves, to do one’s duty each day, and smile as the world goes by. That’s the finest love I know,’ you said.”

“Well?” she questioned.

“I couldn’t understand it then. Now I do. My own sister is that bravest of lovers.” His words rang with pride as well as love.

“Why, Billy, what has happened to make you think so?”

“Last night I heard something on the Q. T. I didn’t mean to, but I’m glad I did. I was in the pantry chuckin’ some bread an’ butter under my solar plexus when I heard Mr. Wright tell sister in the sitting-room—I guess some door was open a crack—that his law business was growing a little. I didn’t hear the next words, but there was ‘please’ in italics in his voice. But sister said, an’ I heard her plain enough, ‘No, Hal, not till I’ve saved enough to take Billy through school.’ ‘I’ll help—’ Mr. Wright got as far as that when this guy waked up,—knew he’d snuck information not intended for him. So I made a noise; I scatted the cat—no cat there—slammed the door, and kicked up a racket generally so’s they’d know I was there.”

Mrs. Bennett smiled. She thought they could have had no trouble in locating Billy.

“Then I went in an’ spoke to ’em ’s though I hadn’t heard a word, and hustled off to bed. I thought ’most all night, and decided that sister shan’t wait a day longer for me to grow up. I’m going to hustle for myself, so she can get married.”

“Billy, my little, little boy!” She lifted the tousled head and pressed her cheek close against his.

“I’m going to work as soon ’s school’s out; it’s for you and May Nell, too, you know.”

“But your school, my child! You must be educated; you—”

“Yes, yes, marmsey; but there’s night shops where a fellow can gobble education by the hunk, you know, and—” He paused. Even his own mother didn’t know the pang in his heart when he thought of Jean and Jimmy, and the others, going on together through the high school, perhaps the university.

Mrs. Bennett rose and tucked him in snugly. “Let us drop it till school closes, Billy. Then we’ll talk it over.”

“All but finding the job, mother. Jobs don’t hunt boys; and mine’s going to be waiting for me when the school house door shuts: that is, if I can persuade any man in the town or county that he needs a boy my size.”

Mrs. Bennett bade him good-night, and left him to the stars and the quiet night. Her heart was still sore for the little boy of the past, yet a strange joy came to her; the thoughtful, observant, earnest man had heralded his coming. She should be very proud of him.

---

THE day was fine. Billy, not long released from his green shade, wondered if the world was ever so lovely before; the flowers so sweet, the birds so joyous. Could it be only a few short weeks since that gray Sunday? Billy’s confinement had quickened him, introduced him to himself; now he looked on life with wider eyes, with a more understanding heart.

He was out early wheeling from house to house, where various parts of the “show” were receiving last touches. One by one he gathered each “attraction,” and herded them all to Jimmy’s big barn, where the procession was to form. Some were late, Bess for one; but Billy was not anxious about her.

It had been hard to persuade her, though her heart was aching to join the fun. “Huh! Do you suppose I’d be a common snake-charmer?”

“Common?” Billy retorted, “they can’t be common. They have to have power more’n anybody. And snake charmers ’most always are Egyptian Princesses, or royalty of some kind,” he added hastily, lest exact Bess should call on him for a genealogy of his princesses.

The magic name won the day. Bess was ever dreaming of the land of mystery, whose pictured daughters of old she resembled; and the chance to masquerade in its atmosphere lured her.

Max was the first to be quite ready with his exhibit. It was a queer creature that one gradually discovered to be some sort of a bird; though such a one had never before been seen on land or sea. Max had arrayed his mother’s big white gander for the occasion. A turkey-tail fan made a huge breastplate, if one can imagine a breastplate of feathers. All the long-tailed roosters that had been killed in town for months, one would guess, had contributed to the coat of sprawling feathers that was tied over the body of the bird. And no one knew by what magic the boy had coaxed some one to lend him the magnificent peacock plumes that rose high above the little wiggling goose tail.

In a cage of wire netting bearing the legend, “The Roc—The Egg,” the uncomfortable gander swayed and craned his neck; and all but his voice was satisfactory. In the bottom of the cage a whitewashed stone the size of a small pumpkin did duty as the egg.

A three-legged rooster appeared. And Sir Thomas Katzenstein, according to schedule, roamed his box in great agitation, though in fine form, impressively carrying out the label on his cage, “Baby Royal Bengal Tiger.”

Lying in silent disdain on his familiar cushion, Flash, as the “Polar Bear,” did equally well; while Bouncer fretted between the fills of the home-made, bunting-draped chariot that served as “The Polar Bear’s Snowy Lair of the North.”

There was a half-grown calf with an artificial hump for the “Water Buffalo”; and Harry and Clarence were cunningly strapped together for the Siamese Twins.

“But they are dead,” Jimmy protested.

“But couldn’t another pair have been born in Siam?” May Nell questioned; and as no one felt sufficiently informed to deny it, Harry and Clarence continued their strained relations.

The Prettymans’ white cow was ingeniously shaped and caparisoned to represent “India’s Sacred White Elephant”; and Jackson was the Hindoo leader. This exhibit caused much controversy. The attendant should ride on the neck of the elephant, all agreed to that; but the cow objected; so they compromised by having Jackson walk. The matter of costume for Jackson was not so easily settled, as the differing pictures of sacred elephants presented a variation in the attendants’ garb. May Nell,—who was to be the “Fair Princess of Bombay,”—as soon as she could get a hearing, ended the dispute amicably by suggesting that Jackson be allowed his choice in the matter of dress, an alternative that permitted each disputant to withdraw from the argument with honor.

Jimmy had the trick ponies and the trained dogs. Teaching them was the chief joy of his life. What if there were only two ponies, and their spots were painted on? And what if the children had seen all the tricks over and over again? They were good as new each time. Besides, the ponies’ one brand-new trick, when at the crack of a whip they stood on their hind feet in unison, was so effective that it frightened May Nell. She saw it first in the barn; and when their shod hoofs came down she thought they would crash right through the floor.

Jean was the Goddess of Liberty; Shifty and another larger boy the steeds that pulled her car. But boys and box wagon were so smothered in bunting that only the Goddess was conspicuous, standing, well-balanced, stately, and fair.

One tall, ambitious girl contributed a unique float called, “Lot’s Wife Looking Backward.” She had not been certain of the color for the desert, consequently had made the whole thing, including the wagon, the boys, and herself snowy white. She had copied an old Bible picture, carrying out the idea with sheets, and such liberal doses of flour, that only a heavy dew was needed to turn the float to dough instead of salt. However, the sun shone, and the addition of diamond dust over all made a very realistic picture that Billy praised heartily.

Guinea pigs, pigeons, and other and larger live stock, normal or otherwise, masqueraded as marvellous creatures from foreign lands.

Bess arrived at last. A gorgeous affair was her chariot, the foundation being Mr. Prettyman’s spring wagon. Bess, with some borrowings, Charley’s help, and her own quick invention, had made a very good imitation of a circus wagon. Charley, the Strong Man, held the reins over old Dom Pedro, the horse she loved, that had once been a racer. She had discovered some very real looking, jointed snakes that wriggled and curved in a manner startlingly serpentine; while tremendous boa constrictors, cut from old circus posters, were disposed about the cage in alarmingly lifelike positions.

Bess’s coming launched the procession. People in the vicinity who had not before known of the presence of a circus, knew it now. Everybody talked at once, and every living thing made its own kind of a noise. Billy as Master of Ceremonies had his hands full, his voice full too, one might say.

But at last they got under way and proceeded as quietly as possible down the back street to the home of Mrs. Lancaster, where Buzz, as the “Prize Baby of Vine County,” awaited them in his car, which was very handsome,—one would never have dreamed it was only a large wash-tub strapped to a coaster; flowers and cloth do make such wonderful changes if handled with art!

That preliminary march was not without adventure. The “howdah” on the White Elephant where May Nell rode as the Fair Princess of Bombay, became loose and threatened to spill its small bit of royalty. And when Harold cinched the thing tighter the old cow bellowed so the smaller children broke and ran. However, they were soon back, and the procession halted at Mrs. Lancaster’s front gate in fair order. But when she saw the imposing string of wagons, children, and animals, known and unknown, she was afraid to trust her precious Buzz to them.

“Billy Boy, it’s fine! It’s splendid! But it’s so big I’m afraid Buzz will be scared.”

“Well, why don’t you go along, Mrs. Lancaster? Don’t prize babies have attendants?”

“Surely; but—”

“Oh, please, Mrs. Lancaster,” Billy coaxed. “The circus won’t be any circus at all without Buzz. We’re to have him for a side show after the performance. We’ve advertised him,” Billy pleaded well.

“Well, the lack of Buzz shall not damage your show; I’ll go,” Mrs. Lancaster yielded.

And Billy did not think of it as strange till Buzz’s grandmother called from behind the window curtain, “Delia, you surely won’t traipse through town with that crowd! How you will look!”

“Why, ma, the children are quite respectable; I know all their mothers.” Buzz’s mamma looked a little mischievous.

“You romp!” came the disgusted voice once more. “You’d better cut your hair, and your skirts, and be a child again.”

“I’d love to, Billy,” Mrs. Lancaster whispered; “I’ve never liked being grown up.”

Billy beamed upon her. He adored her, as did every child in town.

Now the band came up, a troop of boys in gorgeous uniforms made of red calico and tinsel paper. A drum and fife kept tolerable time; but the wheezy harmonicas and paper-covered combs, the tin horns and clanging triangles, quite “covered” any tune the fife attempted. Yet what matter? It was a joyful noise; and even the horses kept step to the valiant drum.

Flags waved. In spite of Billy all shouted orders at once. The line was as serpentine as Bess’s snakes that she held high and wriggling above her snake-entwined head. Oh, she was a very realistic snake charmer! Buzz crowed and clapped his pudgy little hands; and the Lancasters’ small Chinese boy who pulled the baby’s car almost fell over himself laughing.

Before they turned into Main Street, however, the procession was in fair alignment, and the solemnity of the moment hushed all chatter. Billy’s most personal disappointment was Bouncer, who, unhappy because he could not caper in freedom at Billy’s heels, let his lovely, bushy tail, that usually waved above his back in a graceful curve, hang limp and dusty between his legs; while from drooping head and sad eyes, he looked reproachfully at Billy every time the latter ran past.

But on the whole Billy was proud. “The kids showed their pluck and stuck to their jobs,” he told his mother afterward. The White Elephant bellowed impressively in front of the postoffice; and Jimmy’s ponies never reared so gracefully as in front of the bank.

All the people came out of their shops and offices and clapped generously. A light breeze floated out the flags, and made the gold fringe on the Snake Charmer’s cage wave and look rich and foreign. The band outdid itself; and as the forward end of the procession turned out of the street, a great cheer began behind them, grew and swelled, till even the youngest child knew “folks liked the circus.”

“To the park!” Billy shouted, his heart thumping with joy.

“The children will get too tired,” the Snake Charmer warned.

“No, we won’t!” came a dozen voices.

“Yes, yes; take us to the park, papa,” piped one half of the Siamese Twins.

“Of course they won’t be too tired! The kids have pluck.”

The Snake Charmer was silenced; for if the children had before this been tired, not one of them now but swelled with pride and fortitude at this praise from Billy.

All went well for some blocks. There was a flattering audience at each front door; a few honored the pageant by following. These were mostly mothers of the younger children, who knew the possibilities of such an aggregation of animals and boys.

But just before they were to enter the park Bouncer had his innings. A rabbit, startled, sprang from under the roadside bushes and ran down the street toward the open country. Bouncer’s tail went up. He dashed out of line, overturned the Polar Bear’s cage, and was off after his quarry, barking wildly, with the fast disrupting cage dangling at his heels. The Polar Bear, liberated, flew home like a streak of white light. The trained dogs broke from their struggling boy leaders, carrying with them gleaming bits of red paper uniform.

The two steeds attached to the car of the Goddess of Liberty, also deserted their task, and marked their path with bright bits of paper and bunting.

Old Dom Pedro, scenting fresh excitement, snorted and bolted. The Strong Man was not strong enough to hold him to line, though he guided the horse safely to the Carter stable, where Bess appeared suddenly, swaying alarmingly in her flimsy snake cage.

Half an hour later Charley went back to the disappointed remnants of the show gathered in Jimmy’s barn, and told them Mrs. Carter had said, “no more circus this day for Bess.” Buzz and his laughing Chinese had been hurried to safety. The Roc had shed a part of his false feathers, and was fast giving himself away as plain gander. The White Elephant had also become restive, and it was thought best to transfer the Fair Princess of Bombay from her howdah to terra firma. And the Goddess of Liberty, minus her car, and a part of her draperies, and plus a big smooch on her cheek, was somehow not very imposing. Various other livestock became weary or rebellious, and the Siamese Twins had to be severed to prevent their coming to blows.

It was too bad! There could be no show in the barn. But the band was still lusty, the trick ponies remained, the boys and girls were eager to talk it over, and—the procession had been a success!

Presently the little Chinese boy returned, his grin resumed, and a large basket on his arm.

“Missee Lancastler, she say you heap good show. Now you heap hungly. You catchee him plenty glub.” With that he uncovered a treat that made them forget the circus. They munched the sandwiches, the luscious fruit, candy, and cake, and other good things from Mrs. Lancaster’s generous pantry, and discussed the procession; voted Mrs. Lancaster a trump; and decided to have a circus every year.

And the shouts that greeted this fiat shook the old barn and made the hens in the hay cackle with fright.

---

THE last week of school arrived. It was almost as good as a holiday, for those who had made the required percentage during the year were excused from examinations, and after roll call, released from attendance; and these included Billy and most of his cronies.

Mrs. Bennett spoke frequently of the change in Billy. He was growing more thoughtful, observant. He remembered small duties, noticed if mother or sister looked tired or ill, and volunteered help where formerly he would not have known help was needed. Perhaps none of them knew, least of all May Nell herself, how lastingly her example of watchful kindness had impressed itself on Billy’s heart.

If he was more thoughtful, quiet, at home, his hours of play were more keenly enjoyed as they grew daily fewer. He had found a “dandy job” that would not take him away from home; he could still mow the lawn, and do the chores. He was glad now that he had learned various parts of the housework, for he was to be janitor and messenger at one of the banks, a fact to be told his mother as a surprise on the last day of school.

He went home after the engagement, walking on air and talking aloud to himself. “Gee! I don’t suppose there’s a squinch-eyed ghost of a chance for me to win that prize money; but twenty-five a month’ll pay mamma for what I eat,—and break, I guess.”

Billy didn’t see Doctor Carter passing in his buggy, nor hear his greeting; neither did he see the understanding smile; the Doctor easily guessed that Billy was planning fun. And he was; this last week of school should be the happiest ever. Didn’t work begin next Monday? Real work! He couldn’t catch up the bankers in his arms, like his mother, and cajole them into favors. No; it would be all day and every day for a hundred years! Only Sundays, and they didn’t count; for wouldn’t he have to go to church just the same? Mother and sister would be hurt if he “put out to the woods” Sunday mornings. And the bank people, too, would expect him to go to church; hadn’t they said none but steady, well-behaved people could remain in their employ?

“Jiminy whiz! This is my very last week of boy; next week I’ll have to be a man,” he said gloomily.

He was soon at the “lodge of ample size” made the week before, not of “strong logs” but of old fence-rails and willow twigs. He wondered if the girls would be able to imagine it a “lodge,” or if May Nell and Jean, who were to come a little later, could fix it according to the poem.

He decided to go first on the mountain and set his traps for rabbits; also to mark the bounds for the “chase,” so that they could gather on time at the island and go on with the second canto. If they didn’t “do” two cantos a day they wouldn’t finish; for Friday must be given to school. As it was some of them had to be at the school house each day at three to rehearse for the “last day” exercises.

Billy hid his wheel in the same tangle of rose vine, now all pink and fragrant with bloom, that had sheltered it that earlier Spring afternoon,—was it years ago? It seemed so. As he crept out of the brush and turned to the steep tangled mountain, he saw the haunted house, with the bare space in front. There were the two brothers fighting fiercely!

Billy slipped quickly to cover again where he could watch unseen. The men’s faces were black with passion, and their low, intense words seemed all the more deadly because strange, foreign. A coat split down the back with a ripping report, and the boy saw the flash of a knife, and turned away feeling sick.

Was there to be another murder? Ought he to call? If he did wouldn’t they turn on him—kill him? No matter. Some one might be on the road and hear. And he could run pretty fast. Anyway he must risk it.

“Murder! Murder!” he shouted with all his strength; and his boy’s voice reached far up and down the lonely distances.

He saw the men stop, draw apart, and look around. They discovered no one, but delayed their quarrel and hurried in the direction of the sound, exchanging short angry speeches as they ran.

With a boy’s cunning and swiftness Billy made a running creep through the underbrush up the steep mountain side. From a peephole higher up he stopped, breathless, and watched them beat the chaparral round about where he had stood; saw them go down into the road, look each way, turn and scan the mountain; and at last slink off, one to the house, the other to the vineyard.

Relieved, yet with his nerves quivering Billy plunged into the deep woods of the higher altitudes. The air was unusually hot and stifling, and his eyes watered. “Fire in the woods somewhere,” he murmured, recognizing the odor of smoke.

He had left his traps,—the fight had sent all else flying out of his mind. No matter. He could set them in some vineyard. Already the short grass on the hills was brown, and many of the wild flowers were past their blooming. The rabbits would be seeking the tender green of the vines, the purpling alfalfa, standing lush and sweet, ready for mowing.

Up, up Billy climbed. On the bare spaces, or balanced on the point of some slender rock, he stopped frequently to look down on the beautiful valley below; on little farms laid out checker-board fashion, dark green squares for orchards, lighter green for vineyards, with tree-lined lanes running between. Overhead fleecy clouds chased one another like freshly washed, woolly sheep across the blue pasture of the heavens. In the north the great blue mountain loomed, all its opalescent tints and shadows hidden till the setting of the sun should light them forth.

Billy breathed deep. How he loved this opulent valley which was his birthplace and home! He longed to see all the world, yet he thought no other place could be as beautiful.

As he crashed again through the close-grown brush he almost forgot the ugly scene just enacted below. He had been sorry to leave Bouncer to come with the girls; now he was glad. It was good to be quite alone up there with Nature in her less familiar places. A dark ravine lured him. Well as he knew the mountain he had never explored this gorge. The delicate fragrance of wild azaleas greeted him; he could see their pale pink bloom tipping the tall trees that rose out of the chaparral forty or fifty feet above the stream that tinkled beneath them.

As he climbed down, reaching from branch to branch, very cautiously, he knew not why, he was suddenly halted by the sound of low voices. Carefully he crept nearer. A tiny hut came in view, with an open door, and the glint of fire within. A man was standing outside, smoking a pipe, yet wearing hat, coat, and gloves, as if about to set off. He was very large. His clothes were new and showy, too bright in color, too large of check. His watch chain was massive; the big diamond out of place with his colored shirt; and the soft silk handkerchief he drew from his pocket was a brilliant red, and the largest Billy had ever seen. Another man, in the doorway, was smaller and bareheaded. His sleeves were rolled up, and his hands were stained.

Billy heard the hatted one say “So long!” saw him start down a path that followed close beside the stream, perfectly hidden from any one who might be walking the crests above. The other man brought a pail and started up the hill.

Billy knew that the man was going to the spring for water; knew where it was hidden, far in the woods, big and round, deep and clear! It was more than a hundred yards away at least. He waited and listened till the noise of snapping twigs was hushed, then crept down and peered into the hut. The place was so small there was no need of entering; he could see all the interior from the sill.

What he saw there lent wings to his feet.

He climbed cat-like to the crest again, slid through the brush, dashed across bare spots, jumped from rocks that jutted in his way, struck stones but righted himself before falling, truly “hit only the high places,” as he breathlessly told the girls waiting for him at Ellen’s Isle.

“No ‘chase’ to-day, girls. I’ve got business in town.”

“Oh, chuck the business,” Jean said impatiently. “Can’t it wait till noon? I must go home then.”

“No, it can’t wait one minute longer’n it’ll take me to get to town. Maybe I can come back though.”

“You’ll have to break the record if you get here before noon.”

“Billy, let me plan,” May Nell interposed. “We’ll work hard to fix up the Lodge before Jean has to go home. I’ll stay and wait for you, and Bouncer with me; and I’ll search for my Idean vine. I must have something that will do for that. I wish I could find a real one.”

“I hate to have you stay without Jean,” Billy objected.

“What’s the harm? She’s on Mr. Potter’s land, and the road’s near.”

“And Bouncer’s here,” May Nell added, hugging the dog affectionately.

“All right. I’m off!”

“But you haven’t told us what hurries you so,” Jean called, while Billy was already sprinting away.

“Can’t stop. It’s private anyway.” He waved his hand, ran across the foot-bridge and down the road, dodged into the brush for his wheel; and in a moment they heard his shout as he sped by toward town.

---

THE girls worked hard to bower the interior of the Lodge with evergreen; to spread and hang the rugs they had brought; but before their task was finished distant whistles warned Jean. She took Bouncer’s face between her hands and charged him with May Nell’s protection as if he were human. And Bouncer wagged his tail, and in a short, sharp bark pledged himself as if he were human.

“Don’t go off Mr. Potter’s land, will you, May Nell? The fenced part, I mean. Eat some lunch soon; Billy may be gone an hour longer. Good-bye. Don’t get too tired. I’ll send Clarence if I can find him.”

Jean, too, crossed the little bridge, climbed the fence, mounted her wheel, and rolled off down the dusty road.

May Nell watched the flying figure turn out of sight around the mountain; and for a minute the forest grew absolutely still, and the child began to tremble. But a meadow lark, almost from under her feet it seemed, sent forth a rippling song; across the river her mate replied. A flock of white ducks came waddling and quacking from the opposite field, plunged into the water, and swam about noisily, tipping their little tails up and their big bills down as they reached for submerged morsels. Bouncer made a swift circuit of the Lodge, sniffing now and then questioningly; but came soon and sat down in front of May Nell; put his paw on her knee and gave her another short bark.

“Good dog! I understand you, Bouncer, and I’m not lonesome any more.”

She opened the lunch pail and gave him a scrap from it; ate a sandwich herself; and in a moment started off to find the Idean vine. Nothing appeared that fitted her mind’s picture of that creeper; but she found a great sheet of delicate wild clematis, covering the tangled roots of a fallen oak with its pale green tendrils. The earth was soft, the roots easily lifted; and shortly she had masses of it uprooted and trailing after her to the Lodge.

Many times she had seen Mrs. Bennett transplant the garden flowers, had helped; now she put all her lore to use. Patiently she toiled with brittle sticks and pointed stones till the vine was replanted against the rude walls; emptied the dinner pail and trudged back and forth to the river several times for water, to wet the earth above the roots; and patted it down with muddy little hands.

She was happy and the time passed unnoticed till she had finished, and put the food back in the pail, when a queer, dizzy feeling came upon her and she sank down on one of the rugs.

“Why doesn’t Billy come?” she asked of Bouncer; and the dog ran out of the door and stood on three legs, one forefoot lifted, his eyes fixed on the spot where Billy had disappeared. But no master was to be seen, and he went back to May Nell, whined, and put his nose on her knee.

“My stomach’s crying so I’ll have to eat one more sandwich, Bouncer. It’s a shame when Billy isn’t here. I’ll give you half, old dog.”

She put out her hand for the pail but stopped suddenly, for the dog growled; and the next instant the room darkened, and a man stood in the doorway.

May Nell looked at him with wide eyes. She saw that he was not a vineyard workman, his clothes were too fine. She did not see them in detail, the large checked trousers, the shiny gloves, and the big diamond, but she felt instinctively that one who could dress so was different from the men she knew. And the look in his face made her cold.

“Well, Miss Smith, are you alone here?”

How did he know her name, she wondered, yet answered more bravely than she felt. “Yes, sir.” She thought it best to be as polite as possible. “I’m alone now, but the boys are expected every minute.” She would say “boys” even if Clarence didn’t come; it sounded more protecting.

“You’re George Rideout Smith’s kid, ain’t you?”

“You’re George Rideout Smith’s kid, ain’t you?”

“Yes; but I’m afraid my papa’s dead, he’s been gone so long.” How she hated that word “kid.”

“Well, he ain’t dead; he’s alive and bully, with a wad that bulges. I’m going to take you to him.”

“Right—now—are you?” The arm that was around Bouncer tightened, and she thought her “heart would fly right up into her throat.”

“Yes, right now.” He stepped nearer, and Bouncer growled and bristled.

The man swore and looked for a cudgel.

“Oh, please, mister, sir, don’t hurt Bouncer. I’d rather you’d hit me. He’s the best dog ever lived, and I won’t let you hurt him.” Her courage grew as she spoke, and he stopped his search and glanced her way. She looked up, bravely pleading for the dog she hugged harder.

“You’re a plucky kid, all right,” he replied, touched more than he would have admitted. “I won’t hurt the dog if you do as I tell you.” He looked for a cord or rope, but found none, and pulled from his pocket a red handkerchief. “Tie this around his neck; let one end hang down.”

The child obeyed, but her fingers trembled; and Bouncer whined and licked her hand.

“Pull it tighter.”

That was not difficult, for the soft silk slipped into a knot as strong as if tied in hemp.

“Bring him here.” The man stepped out and laid his hand on a sapling that grew beside the Lodge. May Nell followed with the dog.

“Now hold his head between your hands and tell him not to touch me.”

The child was “boiling inside,” yet she believed Bouncer’s life depended on her obedience. And anyway, Billy would come in a minute. Oh, why wasn’t he there now!

The big hands in spite of the shiny gloves tied the dog fast and very close to the tree. “Now give me that dinky ribbon from your hair,” he commanded, and tied the growling dog’s forefeet together. And May Nell knew the man’s voice was gruffer when Bouncer was helpless. He gazed at her reproachfully from eyes that moved though his head could not. She would never forget those sad eyes that followed her when she was ordered away.

She glanced down the road, and swiftly around. Not a soul in sight. Obedience was inevitable.

He held out his hand, but the little girl put hers behind her. “I’ll come by myself,” she said with dignity. Whatever happened that dreadful man should not touch her.

He laughed coarsely. “George Smith’s kid, all right. You’ve got the same high way with you.”

“Where are you going to take me?” she asked, trying to equal his long stride.

“Where you’ll be safe till I let your father know I’ve got you.”

“But you said you would take me to him. I thought you knew where he is.”

Again he laughed, and patted May Nell roughly but not unkindly. “I do; but there’s preliminaries before I get you two together. Sabe?”

May Nell didn’t understand, but thought it best to answer in the affirmative. Beyond that she said nothing, but trudged along by his side till they came to the road and turned toward the haunted house, when he took her suddenly in his arms and walked on in the deepest of the dusty ruts.

“I can walk,” she said, struggling to be put down.

“So you can, but I’ll carry you just the same.” His smothering hold warned her to quiescence; and she did not stir till he set her within the rear door.

“Do you live here?” she questioned with an irrepressible shudder.

“No; but I stop here sometimes. Are you afraid of ghosts?”

“Oh, no; there aren’t any. Billy says so, and he knows. He knows, too, that there are other people here beside the Italians.”

The man faced her abruptly. “The devil he knows!”

“Does he?” May Nell stared innocently into the darkening eyes. “I should think that would make you awfully agitated.”

For an instant he looked as if he would beat her. Then his face broke into a smile that held no fear for her. “Say, kid, you’re up to the limit; and I’m on the square with you. In three days, if you obey me, you’ll jump into your dad’s arms. I’ve got to lock you up now; but nothing’s going to hurt you, and I’ll see that you’re comfortable.”

Locked up! The child’s heart beat stiflingly; yet she did not cry out; she thought self-control would win her more favor than tears.

“This isn’t so bad,” he continued, as he led her into a sunny upper chamber that looked on the mountain in the rear. “And it’ll be all over in a day or so; you’ll see your father,—on the square you will, little kid. Do you think you’ll scream? You’d better not.” He put his hand under her chin to lift her face, and she was glad he wore gloves.

“I’ll not make a noise, and I’ll—I’ll try not to cry; but I’m afraid I’ll ha-have t-to,” she faltered, struggling to hide her eyes that grew moist in spite of herself.

Again he patted her shoulder, and this time his voice was more kind. “You’re a brave little girl, and if I was your dad I’d be dead stuck on you. Just you don’t be afraid. I’ll bring your supper by and by.”

He went out. May Nell stared after him, dazed and trembling. When the key turned in the lock she looked around wildly; ran to the window and tried it. It was nailed down. For a second she stood quite still, gazing straight before her. Then the horror of her plight swept over her; she threw herself on the bed, a crumpled little heap, buried her face in the pillow, and sobbed piteously.

---

DOCTOR CARTER was not in when Billy arrived at his office breathless and hatless. He had not foreseen this. All the way to town his thoughts had raced with his wheel. He had planned how he could tell his story the quickest; had thought of no other ear for his confidence than Doctor Carter’s, the kind, all-understanding physician who had fought valiantly if losingly to save Billy’s father; who had ever since been the most thoughtful of friends as well as the best of physicians. He seemed to Billy the only man to trust with his secret. This was something that could not be told to the best mother in the world, even not considering the fright it would give her; it was quite out of a woman’s world.

The boy went into the street again, mounted and rode rapidly round the corner. His own home was across the way; his mother might see him at the office and call him. But once out of sight he stopped to consider what came next. Who was the right man to tell after the Doctor? The Sheriff!

A shiver chased up and down Billy’s spine. He knew the Sheriff by sight only; and he was so inseparable from the handcuffs the boy had seen protruding from a pocket, that Billy felt it would “almost fasten suspicion on a fellow just to be seen speaking to the officer.”

But a familiar sound came to his ear, and he turned to see the Doctor’s splendid bays pounding down the street, pulling the buggy almost by the taut reins. Billy followed quickly and was soon closeted with the man, who listened, first with a smile, afterward with grave attention.

“My boy, you have done a wonderful thing!” he said when Billy had finished. “You must come with me and tell your story again. If it comes out as I think, you’ll earn at least a thousand dollars.”

Half paralyzed with astonishment Billy went with the Doctor to the Sheriff’s office; but he was out and the deputy didn’t know when he would return; thought it might be within an hour or so. There was nothing to do but wait. Billy’s perplexed, baffled face touched the Doctor. His temples were already gray, but he had not forgotten how a boy feels.

“You don’t want to see your mother now, do you, boy? No more do you feel like jabbering with Bess at our table. Come over to the hotel, and we’ll lunch together.”

“But Mrs. Carter’ll expect—” Billy began, yet stopped, for the physician was laughing.

“A doctor’s wife gets over ‘expecting’ very young, Billy. They won’t think I’m dead if I don’t come home to lunch. But your mother?” His inflection finished the question.

“She’ll be all right. May Nell and me—I—we took our lunch and went over to Potter’s pasture. Shoot! She’s waiting now! I hope the poor little kiddie—little girl—eats, don’t wait for me,—she an’ Bouncer.”

“Oh, she’ll eat when she gets hungry, never fear.”

But Billy thought with pride that May Nell was one person he knew better than the Doctor.

They turned into the town’s finest hotel, just opened.

“I didn’t—I haven’t washed. I’m—” All at once as Billy walked through the tiled entrance, and felt himself in the midst of splendors he had viewed only from without, he was overcome with the suspicion that he looked rather queer beside the immaculate Doctor. He knew his hair “stood up all ways for Sunday”; and his face must be dirty. “But they won’t know how dirty,” he reflected; “this is the time them plaguey freckles’ll get in an’ hide the dust.” Freckles were Billy’s sorest point.

“Come with me, Billy; I must wash up. I’ve had a dusty drive up Spring Mountain; you know the roads aren’t watered up there.”

Billy looked the Doctor over and wondered. He was not subtle enough to suspect the Doctor’s purpose. “Golly! I’d hate to have to wash as much as a doctor,” he exclaimed, as they stepped into the exquisitely appointed lavatory. “You look now like you’d just had a Turkish bath. But I’m glad of the chance for myself.” He surely did look better when the two came out and crossed to the big dining-room; though there was a tell-tale streak around his neck, and his crown lock stood stiff and divided.

At first he could not eat with relish, his mind was so distracted with admiration of the magnificent room, and impatient to get his worrying secret off his heart and conscience. But his wise host ordered so artfully, and filled the intervals of waiting with such delightful stories and anecdotes, explanations of the decorations, funny facts or conjectures concerning the hotel and guests, that before he knew it, Billy had, he told his mother afterward, referring to his stomach, “loaded her up to the guards, ’nough to make you ’shamed of me, mother.”

When they entered the Sheriff’s office again it was two o’clock. He was there, and gave Billy a private audience far more graciously than he would have done had not Doctor Carter’s presence been voucher for the importance of the matter. When the boy repeated his story, less confidently, less dramatically than before, yet not needing the Doctor’s comment to prove its value, the Sheriff drew a long breath and emphasized it with a blow of his fist on the table.

“That’s the gang we’ve been hunting through five counties. Boy, you’ve done what the State’s been trying a long time to do. The reward’s a good lump; if we bag the game you shall have your share.”

Billy looked on wide-eyed, as the Doctor said with a puzzling smile, “And, Sheriff, if I don’t think you divide fair with my friend here, you’ve got me to deal with next election. See?”

“All right, Doc,” the other replied a bit gruffly; “suppose we catch ’em before we fight about the divvy.”

It took a very short time to gather the posse, instruct it, and set out for the mountain. The Sheriff gave Billy an old hat and bade him to a seat behind the swift horses; and Billy obeyed, feeling a strange elation as they set out. It was just like a story. Could it be he, plain Billy Bennett, that was assisting the State to find long-sought-for criminals? The horses flew, yet Billy thought they would never arrive at the turn in the road where they would leave them. He felt as if in some unknown way the man at the hut would surely know of their coming, would hide, destroy, perhaps carry off all that would convict him, and the other, the big man,— Oh, would they never be there?

But a different and sudden fear leaped in both hearts as they rounded the shoulder of the mountain. The air had rapidly grown more oppressive; now they knew the cause, the forest was on fire!

June had been unusually warm and dry, and careless early campers had already started their annual conflagrations. Now high over the crest of the mountain the flames came sweeping down; came with the wind from the valley on the other side where they had raged till fuel was exhausted.

“Great Scott, boy! We’ll have to hurry. We must get up there before the fire gets down. Do you know the shortest way?”

“Yes,” Billy answered breathlessly as he leaped from the buggy; “but we’ll have to go in the way I did if you want to catch ’em sure. We can come out by the trail.”

They tied the horses, and once hidden from the road, shed every superfluous garment. Billy was quite ashamed of the chill he could not help when he saw the handcuffs, pistols, and cartridges disposed neatly and conveniently about the Sheriff’s waist. They looked so vicious, “disrespectable.”

The heat and smoke increased alarmingly as they went on, the man puffing at the boy’s pace. In and out, occasionally doubling and returning but never losing altitude, Billy crashed on. His slender body slipped through underbrush by way of small apertures that would not admit the man’s greater bulk; he had to break his way. The boy, also accustomed to running, climbing, had the advantage of better breath; though the other could not, Billy still held his mouth shut against the suffocating smoke, kept his smarting eyes partly closed.

The roar of the flames came dreadfully near. Trees cracked, crashed and fell, sending up columns of sparks and cinders that dropped about the panting climbers. Billy began to wonder if he would hold out to the end of his task. His boy’s agility had easily outdone the man’s; but he had made the trip once before that day, had ridden from town at a killing speed; and now his endurance was almost at an end, while the Sheriff was getting his “second wind.”

They came to the crest of the gorge. “We’ll have to slow up and zig-zag down carefully or they’ll hear us an’ get away,” Billy suggested.

“They won’t be watching for visitors,” the man answered; “they’ll be hiding the plant and skinning out of here,—if they haven’t already,” he added apprehensively. He stood back to the wind and scanned the opposite bank. “There they are, two of our fellows; the chaps haven’t escaped in that direction.”

As ordered two of the posse were closing in from the west toward the rendezvous. A few more steps and the four met. Those who had been ordered to beat the mountain about the spring were waiting below; the fire had perfectly policed that territory.

As the four descended the air in the gorge became clearer. They approached the hut stealthily; and when in full view of the closed door, the Sheriff told Billy his part of the work was done, and ordered him home out of the fire.

“Oh, Mr. Sheriff, you won’t send me off now, will you, when the business is just beginning?”

In spite of the grave situation, the officer smiled at Billy’s entreating words, remembered suddenly the danger from both fire and possible lurking desperadoes. “All right. Get behind that tree, and stay out of the reach of stray shot.”

The three men lined up in front of the closed door, and one of the deputies quickly threw it open. For an instant the officers stood motionless with weapons drawn. Billy watched with fascinated eyes; the moment the door opened forgot orders, ran and crouched behind the Sheriff, peering under his uplifted arm. There in the lurid firelight that streamed through the closed window, stood the two men he had seen before, hands up, rigid, staring into pistol barrels. Floor boards were torn up; strange vessels, scales, various paraphernalia Billy could not understand, lay about them; while in a deep hole they had dug, a small, iron-bound chest was partially covered with earth. The men’s faces were smutched, streaming with perspiration, and pale with terror.

“Just in time, I reckon,” the Sheriff said facetiously; “pull up that chest and come along to our party.”

Fight gleamed in the big man’s eye, and for the breath of an instant he hesitated.

“Come, come! We can’t be cremated while we wait. Mush!”

The Sheriff was a small man with fair, curly hair like a girl’s; but there was that in his eye that reinforced his pistol, made the big fellow quail, the other mutter a low warning. The two lifted the chest by its strong handles and stepped out.

In the short moments that had passed since their coming the Sheriff saw that the fire had gained perilously. Instead of sparks great flaming brands dropped all around them; the crests of the ravine were sheets of fire that swept downward, wrapping every tree and shrub in their path, making of the pines huge towers of flame.

“There’s a better way,” Billy called, when the deputy leading started to climb back as he had come. “Follow the creek; there’s a trail.”

“That’s good news. Run ahead, boy, and show us the way. Fly, fly!”

Billy needed no hurrying. He dashed off along a well defined path, free from hindering branches. It hugged the brawling stream, crossed it more than once by way of stepping stones, and led on past the already shriveling azaleas. It must have been long used to be so clear.

Billy ducked his head into the cooling water, filled his mouth, and ran on. He could hear the painful breathing of the prisoners bearing the chest. It looked heavy, and he knew it was hard to carry, walking single file down the steep trail. How awfully they must feel, Billy thought. It was like the children in the fiery furnace. Did the men see that this was a tragic beginning of the just penalty for their sins? Cheats! Robbers! No, not robbers, boldly risking life for booty, but cunning thieves, stealing from their fellow men, from widows, orphans, perhaps from his own mother; she had taken a counterfeit piece only a little while before.

The heat was awful; yet it was growing less, for the fire was nearly spent, but Billy was so exhausted he did not perceive it. He began to stumble, to see double. Everything seemed to be on fire,—trees, rocks, even the water gleaming from overhead flames. His blood felt hot in his veins; and long afterward he saw red in his sleep. At length his foot caught in a root, and he fell heavily.

They came upon him a second later, insensible, his head bleeding from a scalp wound. Hurriedly the Sheriff lifted him close to the brook, dashed water over his face, washed out the cut a little, and bound it with his handkerchief, not untenderly if in haste; for Billy had won something more than his approval.

“Oh, don’t wait for me,” Billy exclaimed, opening his eyes suddenly; “you won’t catch ’em! The fire’ll get there first! Hurry! Leave me alone, I tell you!”

The Sheriff smiled at the note of command in the boy’s incoherence. “Not on your life, sonny,” and his voice softened; “we’ve got to have you in our business. Help him along,” he said to one of the deputies, as they came a moment later to where the path broadened; while he walked behind covering the panting prisoners.

Presently they came to others of the posse, and after that to a long line of farmers and other citizens, fighting desperately but successfully against the dying flames.

The clearer air revived Billy, and he was soon walking without help, coming shortly to the road where the wagons waited; coming in sight of Ellen’s Isle.

May Nell! Where was she? He had forgotten her! It must be three—four— Oh, how late was it? Was she safe? Or had she fainted from fright; and was she lying there now, helpless? He looked across the plashing river to the green, blossoming isle, grateful for water and grass and green shrub, and the sheltering Lodge that would keep her safe from the fire. Yet the terror of being there alone, of seeing that awful sheet of flame sweep down the mountain to her very feet,—perhaps a fainting spell,—that surely must have followed,—with no one there to revive her, it might be—fatal!

“Oh, Betsey, give it to me!” he whispered in agony of soul. “Don’t let up’s long’s I live! Maybe I’ve killed her!”

But even as he looked he saw two people coming; his mother and Jean, crossing the foot-bridge that led to the pasture side of the river. The throbbing in his head, the stifled lungs, interest in the capture of the prisoners,—all faded before this terrible dread.

“Let me go, please!” he pleaded. “There’s a little girl, our refugee, over there, fainted, I think, perhaps—dead.”

The Sheriff wondered at the boy’s vehemence, yet was too busy loading the wagon to pay much attention to him. “Think you’re fit, sonny? You look all in. Better ride to town—we’ll send some one for the little girl.”

“Oh, no, no! I’m fit—I must find her myself—right now!”

The man gave him an affectionate slap. “Go, then. You’re a right game kid, sure.”

Billy was off, fear lending fleetness to feet that a moment before had been leaden. He overtook his mother and Jean in the path to the Lodge. “Have you come for her?” he panted. “Do you think she’s alone still?”

“What has happened to you, Billy?” his mother questioned sharply as she turned at his voice and saw his damaged head. “You’re hurt, Billy!”

“Not a bit!” His words were strangely impatient. “I’ve got to find her!” He started past them.

“Wait, Billy! You are hurt, badly. Let me see.” She put out a detaining hand.

But he was not to be hindered. “It’s only a scratch, mother; you can fuss it up all you want to later; but you mustn’t stop me now!” He pulled away from her and bounded up the path.

“It’s my fault, too, Mrs. Bennett; don’t put the blame all on Billy,” Jean half sobbed; and hurried after him.

But Mrs. Bennett wasn’t blaming any one; she didn’t really know what the excitement was all about.

Before he emerged from the leafy path Billy heard well-known whining, and wondered why the dog didn’t come to meet him. The next instant he saw him straining against his bonds.

Bouncer tied? That red handkerchief! The boy went cold and pale. Before he looked he knew that May Nell was not there. He turned his white face to the others as they came up.

“She’s been stolen, mother! But I’ll find her—I know where to look. Don’t be afraid, mother, I will find her!” he repeated with grave emphasis, as he whipped out his knife and cut the dog loose.

“Billy! Who could steal our little girl? I cannot think it. She’s gone with some of the children to watch the fire.” Mrs. Bennett’s words were braver than her face, for in her heart she felt Billy was right, though she wondered why.

“They’ve stolen her, all right. I don’t know why, but I know who,—it’s the Ha’nt people!” Billy panted, coming out of the Lodge.

“O Billy!” Jean gasped, fear for the little, delicate girl in that eery place lending sympathy to her voice.

“Are you sure, my boy? I’ll go with you—”

“No, no, mother! This is business for only Bouncer and me.” He caught up the cut handkerchief and called the dog before his mother could hinder. “Find her, Bouncer! Find May Nell! Sic ’em!” he shouted, and set off heedless of his mother’s continued protestations, after the bounding dog.

“You can send some one after us, a man—not you, not either of you,” he called back over his shoulder, and was soon out of sight.

Jean was for following in spite of Billy’s commands; but Mrs. Bennett, full of apprehension, insisted that the girl should go with her; and the two set out in search of help.

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NEITHER boy nor dog paused till they came to the dusty road. There Bouncer stopped and ran excitedly about the spot where the big man had taken May Nell in his arms; doubled back on his track, stopped again, and looked up at Billy, perplexity written all over his face. Billy encouraged him with word and caress; but he came at last, put his nose against Billy’s knee, and whined apologetically.

“Never mind, Bouncer. I’ve another card up my sleeve!” He patted and hugged the old dog till his tail waved once more gracefully over his back. “Here! Try this. Sic ’em!” Billy thrust the scraps of red silk under his nose; and in an instant Bouncer was off after the new scent.

“I knew it!” Billy panted feverishly. “The Ha’nt!” Heedless of the dog running with his nose close to the ground, Billy rushed on. His shirt was torn, his trousers hanging by one suspender, his shoes cut and one tap turned back. Ashes whitened his hair; though at the back a dark mat was still damp from oozing blood,—the handkerchief that had bound it had been torn off by a twitching twig. His smarting eyes watered so that he could hardly see his way. Yet of all this he was unconscious. Weariness, pain, his cracked and bleeding lips,—he knew nothing of them, felt nothing.

It was as if some tremendous force had taken possession of his tired, stricken body, and carried it on with no volition of his own. Afterward he remembered, understood; knew it was his own will that rose and ruled every bodily faculty; knew, and was glad, for that day he stepped into a realm of power he should never lose as long as he lived.

In front of the stone steps that led up to the barred door he hesitated; but the dog raced round to the rear. Instantly Billy followed.

What if the Italians should be there? Impossible. Surely they would be on the mountain fighting fire. What if the door should be locked? The thought made him tremble, yet he hurried on and softly tried the handle. It would not open!

Baffled, yet knowing he had expected it, he ran this way and that, peering round each corner, scanning the bare, high walls to see if by chance some window had been left unbarred. Not one less than a dozen feet from the ground! He ran back to the door, was almost tempted to shake it, yet knew that would be a foolish trick; some one might be within guarding May Nell; might at the first noise still more securely hide her,—they said there were fearfully deep and dark cellars under that house! She might come to—to some dreadful harm!

In desperation he stood still, gazing at the windows above; reprimanding the dog sharply when he whined, though his fingers unconsciously patted away the sting of the rebuke.

The solid rock of the mountain had been cut away from the rear of the house to form a natural, paved court. At the top was a small chicken coop, its wall flush with the wall of rock; and near it grew an oak sapling not larger than Billy’s arm.

It quickly occurred to him to run around and climb up there by the coop. Perhaps he could see into the windows—perhaps see— He didn’t wait to finish his thought, but scrambled frantically up the steep and came around to the top of the wall. The window opposite and level with him was bare but not as dirty as the others; and against it he saw a bed-post. Anyway that room was used by some one besides ghosts, he thought; and wondered what to do next. Just then Bouncer sprang up and gave a single short bark, his bark of greeting.

“She’s there, old dog!” Billy caught Bouncer’s nose tight in his hand to prevent a repetition; and at that instant May Nell herself appeared at the window!

It took two hands to hold the dog’s mouth shut now; and for a minute that Billy thought much longer, it seemed as if he never would be able to make him keep quiet. But he succeeded at last, and turned again to see May Nell standing in full view with her finger on her lips.

“Are you hurt?” Billy spelled with the hand alphabet every boy and girl knows.

“No; well,” came the answer.

“Alone?”

“Not in the house; in this room, yes.”

“Who?”

“One of the brothers, hurt.”

“Any one else?”

“I don’t know.”

“Open window.”

“I can’t. Nailed.”

“Break it,—not now; when I tell you.”

“No, no! They’ll kill us!”

From where he stood Billy could see the distress in her face. He must think of a way to get her, and he must, must hurry!

He ran back a few steps and found a loose board he had climbed over when coming up. This he carried to the edge of the wall. “When I call,” he spelled out, “break window, use chair, come across on board.”

She shook her head.

Just then he saw a wagon in the distance rounding the curve of the mountain. This was his minute. He must get her before that team passed. Then if any one attempted to prevent him he would have help. He turned back to May Nell.

“You must do it,” he spelled. His stiffened fingers must have carried authority, for she nodded; and he saw her get a chair and stand with it, ready to do his bidding.

He lifted the board, trying its weight. Could he ever get it safely placed? Higher he lifted it, and began to let it drop; but he saw that if the other end missed the window sill, it would pull him down to the court below. Frantic, he stared about for help, for inspiration. He dared not wait till the passers came in hearing; the sound of his voice calling might too soon rouse men inside, make them shoot perhaps. As it was he expected every minute to see a swarthy face appear, a hand with a knife or pistol. It was not for himself he feared, but for May Nell, the little girl who for some strange reason was worth something to these desperadoes, and whose life would be on his soul if he did not save her.

His boyish knowledge and imagination, equal to many pictures of danger for the girl, did not extend to her captors. He never stopped to consider, nor would he have understood if he had, the plight of the criminals. He knew that two had been captured, one of whom before that had carried off May Nell; but his small newspaper reading of “gangs” of counterfeiters had given him visions of dozens of desperate criminals, terrorizing communities, and equal to any bold crime. Now in his mind’s eye he could see men skulking in the brush, listening in rooms below, only waiting to pounce on May Nell the moment she smashed the window. Oh, yes, he must hurry—hurry!

In his distress his wandering eye discovered a bunch of vine ties, short pieces of soft hemp rope for fastening vines to their supporting stakes. They were hanging against the rear of the coop, and a gust of wind had blown them into view. Like a flash he sprang and caught them; tied several together in quick, strong knots, and lashed himself to the little tree. Then he took up the board again, poised it at a perpendicular, calculated the angle, and slowly dropped it. Would the end reach the sill? No, it was too short!

He tried to hold it from falling, but could not. It seemed as if his arms would be pulled out of their sockets. It would fall short—he must hold on to it, not let it strike below, for the noise would betray them too soon; and—the men in the wagon were passing!

With a supreme effort he straightened his arms just as the board reached the level of the sill, pushed it forward with all his might; and—it caught! Caught by an inch or less!

“Stop!” his upheld warning hand said to May Nell. He found his knife, cut his lashings, and beckoned to her vehemently. He waited only for the crash of glass and sash, when he threw himself outstretched on the ground, and pushed the board hard against the lower edge of the window frame.

She scudded across the bending board

“It’s up to you now, my girl,” he panted under his breath. “The board will bend—you mustn’t be frightened. Fix your eyes on the tree—come fast.”

Gee! It was a scaly trick for a little girl, he thought; and felt sick. Would the plank bend too much? Slip? She was such a little thing—if only she could be a truly fairy for a minute!

“Oh, God, walk with her!” he prayed silently when he felt her weight first touch the board; prayed as he never had before. It seemed as if something strange and strong was going out of him right to May Nell.

Yet almost before the prayer was breathed the child with incredible swiftness scudded across the bending board and stood safe by his side!

He sprang up, caught her hand, and raced with her down the rocky steep, calling wildly to the men in the wagon as he ran. Bouncer, no longer watched, vented his pent-up excitement in noisy yelps; and above the din Billy heard loud angry words in a foreign tongue that he knew were execrations, commands to return.

It seemed to him that his voice made no sound; that May Nell never ran so slowly; that the travellers would surely not hear him, not stop. How could they hear in all the noise?

Yet they had already stopped, turned, and driven quickly to the house, hurried by the frenzy in the boy’s tones.

“Take her in,” Billy gasped. “They stole her; they’re after—save her—hurry—” He could say no more, but suddenly collapsed and sank to the ground; and the last sight he remembered was the dark Italian at the house corner, talking fast, with one hand in a sling, the other waving a knife threateningly.

Yes, Billy had fainted for the first time in his life. The two men, heedless of the Italian, took the boy up gently. One sat in the bed of the wagon and held Billy as easily as possible, while the other lifted May Nell to the seat, mounted beside her, and drove rapidly back to town.

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THINGS happened very fast the next few days. “Something doing every minute,” Billy put it. Billy had neither been ill nor injured,—only exhausted. The wound on his scalp had been worse in appearance than in fact; and a couple of long nights in sleep, and easy days at home mended him completely.

Was not May Nell safe? Almost recovered from her fright and hours of imprisonment? Was not the town ringing with her courage and quaint sayings? For she had told her story more than once; and when she came to the place where she said, “And I thought, ‘God can see me all the time; if He means for me to suffer awfully I must have an awful lot of courage; I must ask Him for it.’ So I did, and I said ‘Now I lay me,’ and lay down on the bed so I could hear God speak—you know you can hear better lying down—and I waited—”

When she came to this point all her listeners looked for their handkerchiefs. And May Nell stopped suddenly, smiled, and finished, “And God heard me; and Billy rescued me.”

May Nell was not taken to her father; he came to her. Edith’s pictures of the little girl fulfilled their mission; they met him as soon as he landed from South America. He had been a busy man during those few days; had found not only his child but his wife, ill in a country sanitarium; where, for weeks after the earthquake and fire had, she supposed, swallowed her little daughter, she lingered, praying only to die. Now with husband and child both saved to her, she was fast growing well; needed only their presence to complete her recovery.

It was on the first of these busy days in San Francisco that the big counterfeiter saw at a distance May Nell’s father; saw the child’s pictures posted in the galleries, hurried back to the “Ha’nt,” and planned the kidnapping as a chance for “getting even” with Mr. Smith, who had discharged him years before for dishonesty. But Billy had thwarted him, brought him safely to justice for all of his crimes.

“I always knew that house had something to do with me,” Billy declared to Mr. Smith. “The kids call it a wicked house, but it’s only the people living in it that’s wicked. It’s a splendid old place; and when I’m a man and have money enough, I’m going to buy it and fix it up fine, and give it a fair chance.”

Friday came; and May Nell delighted her father with her part in the exercises. Billy was very proud of her as she stood on the platform, lovely in her white frock and her fair, curling hair, reciting her “piece.”

“She’s the swellest looking one in the whole school,” he whispered to his smiling mother.

“The prize is equally divided between James Dorr and William Bennett,” the judges announced.

And that night after school, when May Nell’s little wardrobe was all packed,—not without a slight baptism of Edith’s tears,—and waiting for the morning train, Mr. Smith came in and put a ceremonious looking document into Billy’s hand.

“The Sheriff tells me a thousand dollars will be paid to your account as soon as the State settles, Billy. Here’s something else for you.”

Billy turned the bulky papers over and over as if to gather some hint of their meaning from fold and stiffness. “What is it, Mr. Smith?” he asked wonderingly.

“A deed to the stone house, the Ha’nt, May Nell calls it. I was glad to know of something you wanted; and I’ll furnish the money to redeem the place to your idea of the beauty it deserves. It is a splendid location. And Mrs. Bennett,” he turned to Billy’s mother, “you must let me see Billy through college.”

“Oh, no! It’s too much. We only did what all—”

“Too much?” he interrupted; “is anything I have in this world too much to give for the life of my wife and child? Didn’t your son save them both? Save May Nell from—” He turned away and did not attempt to finish his sentence.

May Nell ran and hugged Mrs. Bennett, and Edith and Billy in turn, nestling afterward in her father’s arms.

“Surely Billy has earned it, Mrs. Bennett,” Mr. Smith urged.

“And I’m always going to be your little girl, too,” the child pleaded; “so Billy must be my papa’s little boy.”

Mrs. Bennett looked fondly at Billy, then back to Mr. Smith. “Thank you,” she said slowly, trying to gather courage for what she was to say. “Billy must not be paid for doing his duty. With the money he has earned from the State I am sure we shall be able to help him through a good schooling; for the rest my husband’s son must win his own way.”

Billy felt his head lift a little higher at his mother’s words; felt a new standard of honor and independence leap into being. The house was too small for him. He ran out into the summer evening, down the hill to the big rock that overhangs Runa Creek. The stars were beginning to shine, and he could hear the tinkle of the water below. Bouncer rubbed against him, and Billy hugged him to the peril of the old dog’s breath.

“They shan’t ever again call me Billy To-morrow. It’s Billy To-day, Bouncer. It shall always be Billy To-day!”

THE END

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