Chapter II (2)

He wandered about restlessly that afternoon, and finally, with a queer, light feeling in his head, that he associated dimly with the long walk on the hill road the day before, he turned out of the yard and struck off across the street in the direction of the railroad station. He wanted to inquire about trains and the station was near. Besides, he knew the station-master, and he would tell him just what he wanted to know.

To be sure! The station-master was both alert and intelligent.

'A pony from New York?' he echoed. 'You’re expecting a pony from New York? Well, now I hope you aren’t going to be disappointed about it! You say it was to leave New York to-day? Well, there’s a New York-Boston train that gets in here at half-past six. That’s the last one there is. So if there’s any pony coming, she’ll be on that train, won’t she? Yes, if she’s coming at all, she’ll be on that train.'

'Half-past six? What time is it--now?' questioned Crosby.

'It’s just half-past four. Now, you don’t want to hang round here for two hours. No, you run home and make yourself easy. I pass your place on my way home to supper, and if you’re outside I’ll let you know whether there’s anything for you. But I wouldn’t get my hopes up too high.'

Crosby looked up gratefully. He had not even heard the last sentence. He was already making his way out of the station and back home again, wondering just how he could spend all that time.

Two hours later, his father came swinging up the walk. Crosby, sitting on the grass close to the sidewalk, hardly saw him. He thought he saw some one else--away down the walk--moving slowly towards him.

'Hullo, Crosby,' began his father cheerfully. 'What you doing? Looking at the view?'

Crosby smiled faintly, but his eyes were straining away down the walk.

'You look pale, son; what’s the matter? You’d better come in to supper.'

'No, it isn’t going to be ready--quite yet, mother said.'

His father gave him another questioning look and went on into the house.

'What’s the matter with Crosby?' he asked inside. 'He looks as if he’d been frightened half to death.'

'Oh, he’s worrying himself to pieces about that pony. He’s been fussing round in the barn all day long. He really thinks he’s going to get it, I suppose.'

'Pony? What pony? Has he been working himself to death over _that_ business? What’s he been doing in the barn?'

He walked through the house and down the back steps and crossed the yard. Then he opened the door which led directly into the old stall and stopped.

'Oh, Lord above us!' he whispered.

Never, since he was a child, a child like the one who had just looked up at him from the grass, had such an over-mastering desire swept over him to sit down, right where he was, and drop his head down into his hands--and cry.

'Oh, Lord above us!' he whispered again faintly, pushing his hand up to his eyes.

It was all just as it had been left, the old walls and floor with great splinters scoured out of them everywhere; the manger with its shining, crooked front of clean, brown paper; the little hanging row of grooming implements: the small brush, the worn whisk-broom, the comb, the little old glove, the pile of grass in the manger, and the three ginger-cakes, the saucer of milk in the corner--and the jaunty bunch of goldenrod nodding down upon it all from the beam just opposite the door.

He pushed his hands blindly to his eyes again; then he went out, closed the door, and walked down the yard where Crosby was sitting--no, he was standing, standing and looking dumbly after a man who was walking away and blowing his nose.

'Crosby,' began his father huskily, 'Crosby,--come into the house, come in to supper,--I want to see you.'

Crosby looked up with dry, hunted-looking eyes, and his chin trembled just perceptibly.

'I’m coming--in just a minute,' he began, with a quivering appeal in the dry, hunted eyes to be left--to be left alone--just for a minute!

His father turned and went up the steps, while Crosby’s gaze shifted mechanically back to the man who was going on up the street. But he turned, too, slowly, and crossed the yard to the barn and opened the door and went in. He hoped no one had seen it, and he pulled off the brown paper from the manger and wrapped it round the pile of ginger-cakes. Then he reached up for the little row of grooming implements and took them down one by one.

When Crosby was three, he had tumbled down on a brick walk one day, and had sat up winking vaguely while drops of blood ran down his face--and tried to smile at his mother. It had never been just natural for Crosby to cry when he was hurt; but as he came slowly back into the old stall and stooped down to take up the saucer of milk, something dropped with a splashing sound into the milk, making rings away out to the edge. He raised his arm and dragged his hand across his eyes, and then he reached up for the jaunty bunch of flowers on the beam. But that strange, light feeling in his head, dimly associated with the hill road, seemed to confuse him again--and he could not just remember what he was going to do next. As he pushed open the door, he tripped over some scattered goldenrod, and then went stumbling along to the house.

'He said--I could have her--if I got started right off--he said--I could have her--if I got started right off--he said--he said--he said I could have her--if I got started--'

His mother met him at the door.

'Come in--Crosby--' she began brokenly, 'come in--'

'He said--_I could have her--if I got started right off!_' he shrieked out in a high, quivering, babyish wail, 'and--I _did_--get started--right--off--'

'Hush--hush! You have worked--so hard! You are so tired!' She looked, with frightened eyes, at his dully burning cheeks.

'Take him up to bed--let me take him up,' came a husky voice behind them; and he was lifted in his father’s arms and carried upstairs.

As they undid the straining buttons of the well-filled little waist, some papers dropped down to the floor and the man stooped and picked them up. He looked at them and put them in his pocket.

'I’m going to call up the doctor,' he whispered.

But after the doctor had come and gone, he went upstairs again and sat down by the bed, while his shocked eyes sought the small, still upturned face. It was so characteristic of the boy that, in a high fever, he should not chatter in delirium, that he should not scream wild things about a pony, that he should only lie there quietly, with his eyes closed and his face turned upwards. For a long time the watcher by the bed looked down in the flickering half-light, and then he went downstairs to his study and shut the door. When he had read the papers, which he took from his pocket, from beginning to end, he placed a clean sheet sharply on the desk before him, and with his mouth closed into a taut, straight line which relaxed into no curve of compromise as his pen marched down the sheet, Mr. Henry Tarbell wrote a letter to the Pony Man.

He sealed and directed it--and walked out of the house, with long strides, to the post-box.

It was many days later that he hung over the bed where a child lay tired out with fever, and gently said something that he thought might bring a little light back into the white face.

'They did send you a prize, Crosby, after all! A first-class little prize that has just come this morning! Look!' And he held up a small but crisply ticking watch upon a cheaply shining chain.

Crosby reached up his hand. 'I don’t believe--it would keep the--right time--would it?' he asked slowly, with a suspiciousness quite new. And his unwavering eyes sought his father’s.

'_Why_ did they--write such a--lie to me--about the pony?' he challenged faintly.

'Forget it, boy!' returned his father gayly. 'We’ll have a pony yet! We’ll have to have one to get the color back into your face, I’m thinking! Say, sonny, I’m glad you got the old stall fixed up for it, aren’t you?'

The unwavering eyes were still upon his father, and the first entirely unresisted tears that any one had ever seen in them since he stepped out of his baby’s dresses and marched forth to life, with brave but unaccustomed feet, and steadying pauses, slipped quietly down the white cheeks.

'_You--you_ wouldn’t--talk that way--unless you meant it!' whispered Crosby.

THE SQUIRE

BY ELSIE SINGMASTER

THE squire was a bachelor, and lived alone in his house; therefore he was able to use the parlor and dining-room for offices. The parlor contained only a pine desk, a map, hanging 'at' the wall, as Millerstown would have said, and a dozen or so plain pine chairs. The law was administered with scant ceremony in Millerstown.

The squire sat now in the twilight in his 'back' office, which was furnished with another pine table, two chairs, and a large old-fashioned iron safe. He was clearly of a geographical turn of mind, for table, safe, and floor were littered with railroad maps and folders. The squire was about sixty years old; he had all the grave beauty which the Gaumer men acquired. Their hair did not thin as it turned gray, their smooth-shaven faces did not wrinkle. They all looked stern, but their faces brightened readily at sight of a little child or an old friend, or with amusement over some untold thought.

The squire’s face glowed. He was going--his age, his inexperience, the certain disapproval of Millerstown notwithstanding--he was going round the world! He would start in a month, and thus far he had told no one but Edwin Seem, an adventurous young Millerstonian who was to leave that night for a ranch in Kansas, and whom the squire was to visit on his own journey. For thirty years he had kept Millerstown straight; there was no possible case for which his substitute would not find a precedent. Fortunately there were no trusts to be investigated and reproved, and no vote-buyers or bribers to be imprisoned or fined. There were disputes of all kinds, dozens of them. There was one waiting for the squire now in the outer office; he shook his head solemnly at thought of it, as he gathered up his maps and thrust them back into the safe, that precious old safe which held the money for his journey. He had been thirty years gathering the money together.

The law might be administered in Millerstown without formality, but it was not administered without the eager attention of the citizens. Every one in the village was on hand when simple-minded Venus Stuber was indicted for stealing, or when the various dramatic scenes of the Miller-Weitzel feud were enacted. This evening’s case, Sula Myers vs. Adam Myers for non-support, might be considered part of the Miller-Weitzel feud, since the two real principals, Sula’s mother and Adam’s mother, had been respectively Sally Miller and Maria Weitzel.

The air was sultry, and rain threatened. The clouds seemed to rest on the tops of the maple trees; it was only because the Millerstonians knew the rough brick pavements as they knew the palms of their hands that there were no serious falls in the darkness. They laughed as they hurried to the hearing: it was seldom that a dispute promised so richly. There was almost no one in the village who could not have been subpœnaed as a witness, so thorough was every one’s knowledge of the case.

Already the real principals faced each other, glaring, under the blinding light of the squire’s hanging lamp. It made no difference that Millerstown listened and chuckled or that the squire had taken his seat behind the pine desk.

'When it don’t give any religion, it don’t give any decent behaving. But God trieth the hearts of the righteous,' said Mrs. Myers meaningly.

She was a large, commanding woman, who had been converted in middle life to the fervent sect of the new Mennonites, and young Adam had been brought up in that persuasion. Except for his marriage, young Adam had been thus far his mother’s creature, body and soul.

Sula’s mother, Mrs. Hill, was large also. She took off her sunbonnet, and folded her arms as tightly as possible across her broad bosom.

'There is sometimes too much religion' she said.

'Not in your family, Sally,' rejoined Mrs. Myers, her glance including not only Mrs. Hill and Sula, but all their sympathizers, and even Caleb Stemmel, who was supposed to be neutral.

Caleb Stemmel belonged in the same generation with the squire; his interest could be only general. Caleb did not see Mrs. Myers’s scornful glance; he was watching pretty Sula, who sat close by her mother’s side.

Sula looked at nobody, neither at her angry mother beside her, nor at her angry mother-in-law opposite, nor even at Adam her husband, sitting close by his mother. She wore her best clothes, her pretty summer hat, the white dress in which she had been married a year before. Even her wedding handkerchief was tucked into her belt.

Sula had been strangely excited when she dressed in the bedroom of her girlhood for the hearing. There was the prospect of getting even with her mother-in-law, with whom she had lived for a year and whom she hated; there was the prospect of seeing Adam’s embarrassment; there was another reason, soothing to her pride, and as yet almost unacknowledged, even to herself.

Now, however, the glow had begun to fade, and she felt uncomfortable and distressed. She heard only dimly Mrs. Myers’s attack and her mother’s response. Immediately Mrs. Myers told Mrs. Hill to be quiet, and Mrs. Hill replied with equal elegance.

'You will both be quiet' said the squire sternly. 'The court will come to order. Now, Sula, you are the one that complains; you will tell us what you want.'

Sula did not answer; she was tugging at her handkerchief. The handkerchief had been pinned fast, its loosening took time.

'It was this way,' began Mrs. Myers and Mrs. Hill, together.

The squire lifted his hand. 'We will wait for Sula.' He looked sternly at Mrs. Hill. 'No whispering, Sally!'

Sula’s complaint came out with a burst of tears.

'He won’t support me. For three months already I didn’t have a cent.'

'All this time I supported her,' said her mother.

'She had a good home and wouldn’t stay in it,' said Mrs. Myers.

The squire commanded silence again.

'Sula, you were willing to live with Adam’s mother when you were married. Why aren’t you now?'

'She--she wouldn’t give me no peace. She wouldn’t let him take me for a wedding-trip, not even to the Fair.' She repeated it as though it were the worst of all her grievances: 'Not even a wedding-trip to the Fair would he dare to take.'

Mrs. Hill burst forth again. She would have spoken if decapitation had followed.

'He gave all his money to his mom.'

'He is yet under age,' said Mrs. Myers.

Again Mrs. Hill burst forth:--

'She wanted that Sula should convert herself to the Mennonites.'

'I wanted to save her soul,' declared Mrs. Myers.

'You needn’t to worry yourself about her soul,' answered Mrs. Hill. 'When you behave as well as Sula when you’re young, you needn’t to worry yourself about other people’s souls when you get old.'

Mrs. Myers’s youth had not been as strait-laced as her middle age; there was a depth of reminiscent innuendo in Mrs. Hill’s remark. Millerstown laughed. It was one of the delights of these hearings that no allusion failed to be appreciated.

'Besides, I did give her money,' Mrs. Myers hastened to say.

'Yes; five cents once in a while, and I had to ask for it every time,' said Sula. 'I might as well stayed at home with my mom as get married like that.' Sula’s eyes wandered about the room, and suddenly her face brightened. Her voice hardened as though some one had waved her an encouraging sign. 'I want him to support me right. I must have four dollars a week. I can’t live off my mom.'

The squire turned for the first time to the defendant.

'Well, Adam, what have you to say?'

Adam had not glanced toward his wife. He sat with bent head, staring at the floor, his face crimson. He was a slender fellow, he looked even younger than his nineteen years.

'I did my best,' he said miserably.

'Can’t you make a home for her alone, Adam?'

'No.'

'How much do you earn?'

'About seven dollars a week. Sometimes ten.'

'Other people in Millerstown live on that.'

'But I have nothing to start, no furniture or anything.'

'Your mother will surely give you something, and Sula’s mother.' The squire looked commandingly at Mrs. Myers and Mrs. Hill. 'It is better for young ones to begin alone.'

'I have nothing to spare,' said Mrs. Myers stiffly.

'I wouldn’t take any of your things,' blazed Sula. 'I wouldn’t use any of your things, or have any of your things.'

'You knew how much he had when you married him,' said Mrs. Myers calmly. 'You needn’t have run after him.'

'Run after him!' cried Sula.

It was the climax of sordid insult. They had been two irresponsible children mating as birds mate, with no thought for the future. It was not true that she had run after him. She burst into loud crying.

'If you and your son begged me on your knees to come back, I wouldn’t.'

'Run after him!' echoed Sula’s mother. 'I had almost to take the broom to him at ten o’clock to get him to go home!'

Adam looked up quickly. For the moment he was a man. He spoke as hotly as his mother; his warmth startled even his pretty wife.

'It isn’t true; she--never ran after me.'

He looked down again; he could not quarrel, he had heard nothing but quarreling for months. It made no difference to him what happened. A plan was slowly forming in his mind. Edwin Seem was going West; he would go too, away from mother and wife alike.

'She can come and live in the home I can give her or she can stay away,' he said sullenly, knowing that Sula would never enter his mother’s house.

The squire turned to Sula once more. He had been staring at the back of the room, where Cabel Stemmel’s keen, selfish face moved now into the light, now back into the shadow. On it was a strange expression, a hungry gleam of the eyes, a tightening of the lips, an eager watching of the girlish figure in the white dress. The squire knew all the gossip of Millerstown, and he knew many things which Millerstown did not know. He had known Caleb Stemmel for fifty years. But it was incredible that Caleb Stemmel with all his wickedness should have any hand in this.

The squire bent forward.

'Sula, look at me. You are Adam’s wife. You must live with him. Won’t you go back?'

Sula looked about the room once more. Sula would do nothing wrong--yet. It was with Caleb Stemmel that her mother advised, it was Caleb Stemmel who came evening after evening to sit on the porch. Caleb Stemmel was a rich man even if he was old enough to be her father, and it was many months since any one else had told Sula that her hat was pretty or her dress becoming.

Now, with Caleb’s eyes upon her, she said the little speech which had been taught her, the speech which set Millerstown gasping, and sent the squire leaping to his feet, furious anger on his face. Neither Millerstown nor the squire, English as they had become, was yet entirely of the world.

'I will not go back,' said pretty Sula lightly. 'If he wants to apply for a divorce, he can.'

'Sula!' cried the squire.

He looked about once more. On the faces of Sula’s mother and Caleb Stemmel was complacency, on the face of Mrs. Myers astonished approval, on the faces of the citizens of Millerstown--except the very oldest--there was amazement, but no dismay. There had never been a divorce in Millerstown; persons quarreled, sometimes they separated, sometimes they lived in the same house without speaking to each other for months and years, but they were not divorced. Was this the beginning of a new order?

If there were to be a new order, it would not come during the two months before the squire started on his long journey! He shook his fist, his eyes blazing.

'There is to be no such threatening in this court,' he cried; 'and no talking about divorce while I am here. Sula! Maria! Sally! Are you out of your heads?'

'There are higher courts,' said Mrs. Hill.

Millerstown gasped visibly at her defiance. To its further amazement, the squire made no direct reply. Instead he went toward the door of the back office.

'Adam,' he commanded, 'come here.'

Adam rose without a word, to obey. He had some respect for the majesty of the law.

'Sula, you come, too.'

For an instant Sula held back.

'Don’t you do it, Sula,' said her mother.

'Sula!' said the squire; and Sula, too, rose.

'Don’t you give up,' commanded her mother. Then she got to her feet. 'I’m going in there, too.'

Again the squire did not answer. He presented instead the effectual response of a closed and locked door.

The back office was as dark as a pocket. The squire took a match from the safe, and lit the lamp. Behind them the voices of Mrs. Myers and Mrs. Hill answered each other with antiphonal regularity. Adam stood by the window; Sula advanced no farther than the door. The squire spoke sharply.

'Adam!'

Adam turned from the window.

'Sula!'

Sula looked up. She had always held the squire in awe; now, without the support of her mother’s elbow and Caleb Stemmel’s eyes, she was badly frightened. Moreover, it seemed to her suddenly that the thing she had said was monstrous. The squire frightened her no further. He was now gentleness itself.

'Sula,' he said, 'you didn’t mean what you said in there, did you?'

Sula burst into tears, not of anger but of wretchedness.

'You’d say anything, too, if you had to stand the things I did.'

'Sit down, both of you,' commanded the squire. 'Now, Adam, what are you going to do?'

Adam hid his face in his hands. The other room had been a torture-chamber. 'I don’t know.' Then, at the squire’s next question, he lifted his head suddenly. It seemed as if the squire had read his soul.

'When is Edwin Seem going West?'

'To-night.'

'How would you like to go with him?'

'He wanted me to. He could get me a place with good wages. But I couldn’t save even the fare in half a year.'

'Suppose,'--the squire hesitated, then stopped, then went on again,--'suppose I should give you the money?'

'Give me the money!'

'Yes, lend it to you?'

A red glow came into Adam’s face. 'I would go to-night.'

'And Sula?' said the squire.

'I would--' The boy was young, too young to have learned despair from only one bitter experience. Besides, he had not seen Caleb Stemmel’s eyes. 'I would send for her when I could.'

The squire made a rapid reckoning. He did not dare to send the boy away with less than a hundred dollars, and it would take a long while to replace it. He could not, could not send Sula, too, no matter how much he hated divorce, no matter how much he feared Caleb Stemmel’s influence over her, no matter how much he loved Millerstown and every man, woman, and child in it. If he sent Sula, it would mean that he might never start on his own journey. He looked down at her, as she sat drooping in her chair.

'What do you say, Sula?'

Sula looked up at him. It might have been the thought of parting which terrified her, or the recollection of Caleb Stemmel.

'Oh, I would try,' she said faintly; 'I would try to do what is right. But they are after me all the time--and--and--' Her voice failed, and she began to cry.

The squire swung open the door of the old safe.

'You have ten minutes to catch the train,' he said gruffly. 'You must hurry.'

Adam laid a shaking hand on the girl’s shoulder. It was the first time he had been near her for weeks.

'Sula,' he began wretchedly.

The squire straightened up. He had pulled out from the safe a roll of bills. With it came a mass of brightly colored pamphlets which drifted about on the floor.

'Here,' he said, 'I mean both of you, of course.'

'I am to go, too?' cried Sula.

'Of course,' said the squire. 'Edwin will look after you.'

'In this dress?' said Sula.

'Yes, now run.'

For at least ten minutes more the eager company in the next room heard the squire’s voice go on angrily. Each mother was complacently certain that he was having no effect on her child.

'He is telling her she ought to be ashamed of herself,' said Mrs. Myers.

'He is telling him he is such a mother-baby,' responded Mrs. Hill. 'She will not go back to him while the world stands.'

'The righteous shall be justified, and the wicked shall be condemned,' said Mrs. Myers.

Suddenly the squire’s monologue ended with a louder burst of oratory. The silence which followed frightened Mrs. Hill.

'Let me in!' she demanded, rapping on the door.

'This court shall be public, not private,' cried Mrs. Myers.

She thrust Mrs. Hill aside and knocked more loudly, at which imperative summons the squire appeared. He stood for an instant with his back to the door, the bright light shining on his handsome face. Seeing him appear alone, the two women stood still and stared.

'Where is he?' asked Mrs. Myers.

'Where is she?' demanded Mrs. Hill.

The squire’s voice shook.

'There is to be no divorcing in Millerstown yet awhile,' he announced.

'Where is he?' cried Mrs. Myers.

'Where is she?' shrieked Mrs. Hill.

The squire smiled. The parting blast of the train whistle, screaming as if in triumph, echoed across the little town. They had had abundance of time to get aboard.

'He is with her, where he should be,' he answered Mrs. Myers, 'and she is with him, where she should be,' he said to Mrs. Hill, 'and both are together.' This time it seemed that he was addressing all of Millerstown. In reality he was looking straight at Caleb Stemmel.

'You m-m-mean that--' stammered Mrs. Myers.

'What _do_ you mean?' demanded Mrs. Hill.

'I mean,'--and now the squire was grinning broadly,--'I mean they are taking a wedding-trip.'

GREGORY AND THE SCUTTLE

BY CHARLES HASKINS TOWNSEND

THIS is a tale of the warm sea-tides that daily and nightly flood the channels among the Bermuda Islands. I had almost written it 'The Scuttle and Gregory,' but it was Gregory who carried on the campaign aggressively and finally triumphed with the trap-net, so that the sea-monster was dragged away into captivity.

At our first meeting, when I described the creature whose subjection I wished to accomplish, Gregory said, 'That’s the scuttle.' I suggested the word cuttle, as, perhaps, more appropriate, but it was not appreciated. The scuttle by any other name could never be satisfactory to him. Quibbling over a mere title seemed unnecessary, so I made an effort to get down to essentials and adopted Gregory’s word. As a result of our conference, Gregory took certain implements of capture and sailed out of the bay; only to return, after a considerable absence, with an empty boat.

He had, however, matured certain plans which it seemed reasonable to follow out. It appeared that a combination of forces was desirable, so I contracted for the services of both Gregory and his boat, and we set about the circumvention of the scuttle by fair measure or foul.

As we sailed away in the light morning breeze, Gregory expatiated upon the subtlety of the scuttle and the labors of the black toilers of the sea, who had sought to capture him.

'How big is he?' I inquired.

'Not too big, sir,' said Gregory, holding up a short oar by way of suggesting dimensions.

I was interested, for I had read, in a book by one Hugo, how a man had once entered a sea-cave, and had had a fearful struggle with the creature. Respecting the truth of this, however, there is reasonable doubt, although I know of the capture of an octopus of the seas about Vancouver Island, which actually measured several oars' lengths across its outspread arms. But all this is not telling the story of Gregory’s search.

The scuttle eluded us for many days, artfully removing choice foods from the snares we set for him; but we sometimes caught faint glimpses of him down under the over-hanging borders of coral reefs, where he sat in shadowy caverns, thrusting forth his horrifying arms to seize the unwary sea-people.

While Gregory with great caution moved the boat close by the rocks, I peered constantly through the water-glass into the grayish depths where the fierce-jawed moray has his hunting-grounds, and where the sharp-stinging medusa drifts along, moving out of the way of no creature whatsoever. It was an enchanted world that lay beneath us, and I saw many strange things which cannot be described here.

But I must explain about the water-glass, an article with which all fishermen of the Bermudas are familiar. Like many another indispensable thing, it is of simple construction, being nothing more than a wooden bucket with a bottom of glass. By placing it on the surface of the water and inserting one’s face in the open top, it is possible to see distinctly whatever may be beneath.

We worked our way at times into small bays where green sea-lettuce lay in the shallow water in masses. These we overturned with our oar and boat-hook, hoping to come upon the wily object of our pursuit.

The lair of the scuttle, according to Gregory, may be discovered by certain unmistakable signs. It is the accustomed way of the creature to drag his prey to his hiding-place, there to devour it at leisure. Crafty in the capture of his victims, and wily in the concealment of himself from observation, he makes no attempt to hide the débris of his feasts. He thrusts his garbage forth from his stronghold, unconcerned as to where it fall, provided the entrance be clear for his own movements. If he has feasted high on lobster or oyster, crab or clam, a mountain of shells proclaims his lair. The heap may grow until it would fill a basket as large as a man could lift.

Knowing his weakness for these dainties, Gregory gathered a supply, hoping to lure the scuttle into his power. He did, in fact, nearly succeed on one occasion by lowering a tempting morsel near where the creature lay concealed. A long arm snatched and held the bait until the sharp, hidden hook tore loose, and Gregory almost fell over as he jerked the stout line.

This method might have succeeded if I had not been anxious to take my departure from the islands and so urged haste. Whereupon Gregory, who was big and powerful and did not fear a personal encounter with the scuttle, became more aggressive.

On the following day, when the tide was motionless and the water glassy, he saw the scuttle disappear under a narrow ledge a couple of fathoms down in the clear, greenish channel. He was overboard in an instant, and with a few quick strokes reached the bottom. Looking down through the water-glass I could see the whitish soles of his bare feet as he made tremendous upward thrusts with his legs.

The scuttle was disturbed by the suddenness of the attack, and as he had not selected a favorable place for concealment, decided to make off, and lost no time in doing so. He may have caught sight of the whites of Gregory’s determined eyes. He was barely quicker, however, than the quick arm of the man, and might have been seized had he not played a scurvy trick: the water suddenly turned black--black as Gregory’s own face.

It appears that the creature always bears a sac of inky fluid ready in an instant to darken the water all about him, and can dart away under an impenetrable cloud of his own conjuring. This characteristic, which I had hitherto read of, I now saw verified. By magic the scuttle had disappeared, and a moment later there was a porpoise-like snort as Gregory’s head popped above the surface.

Later, we had proof also of the scuttle’s mysterious power of suddenly changing his color. Like the chameleon, he may appear conspicuously dark at one moment and inconspicuously pale at another, against the grayish, ragged wall of the coral reef. This I made sure of as our boat came close to another of his hiding-places. Although he was in full sight, it took me some minutes to realize that the ghostly outlines pointed out to me were not a part of the gray background of jagged rock. He can, moreover, instantly turn brown or become spotted, as I later saw with my own eyes after we had got him into our power.

It was clear that there was nothing more to be done in that locality; so Gregory clambered aboard and we held counsel together as the boat drifted broadside up the channel with the tide; and the earnestness of the black man made so profound an impression on me that when we parted in the evening I was not without hope that my mission would eventually be crowned with success.

But the next day we were again disappointed. Gregory dived and had the scuttle in his arms almost before I could brush from my eyes the salt water his splash threw over me. As he came up alongside, however, trouble began, for the scuttle got a grip on the bottom of the boat with his many sucker-covered arms, and, while Gregory was getting his breath, his hold slipped, and again the creature was off. Just how he managed to disappear so suddenly remains a mystery; neither Gregory, who went under again, nor I, who promptly reached for the water-glass, got the faintest glimpse of him. Doubtless he shot away body foremost, after the manner of his kind, every one of his eight arms contributing to the haste of his departure.

Failing in all these manœuvres, I began to scout among lonely pools under the cliffs, where, if cautious, one may see strange sea-folk when the tide is out. Gregory, left alone with his stratagems, disappeared for a few days. The last glimpse I had of him was of a very black man with a very earnest face, loading a huge wicker contrivance into a boat. I had considerable faith in his resourcefulness, for he knew the reefs and caves as well as did the scuttle himself.

But my solitary patrol of the rocky shore proved fruitless, and I was glad, two days later, to find Gregory sitting on a stone wall down by the little dock, swinging his bare feet and enjoying the hot sunshine, but not much inclined to talk. He told me that he had gone to a distant island village in search of a large trap-device used for catching fish. This, with the help of another fisherman, he had lowered into a deep cleft among the reefs two or three miles to the westward. I was to go with him the next day to see if by any possibility the scuttle had been deluded into entering it, for it was baited with something which the always hungry monster was pretty sure to investigate.

We were off early in the morning, but made slow progress, as there was little wind. It was fully three hours before we arrived at the sunken trap, which Gregory located by the bearings of certain distant cliffs, for there were few portions of the reef showing at high tide. The breeze being light, the stone killick with line attached was thrown overboard without lowering the sail. Through the water-glass we made out the framework of the big trap on the bottom. I let out more anchor-line, the sloop drifting astern until we were nearly over the trap, when Gregory yelled that the scuttle was ours.

He let down a grapple, and after some heaving and hauling we dragged the cumbersome contrivance on board. The hatch over the water-filled well of the sloop was shoved back to make ready for the entrance of our captive. I kept a firm grip on the trap while Gregory, all the while shouting instructions to me and abuse at the scuttle, undid the fastenings at one corner. It took a deal of punching with an oar to dislodge the creature, whose eight arms were reaching in all directions. When one of them thrust through an opening and took a turn around Gregory’s bare arm, the whites of the man’s eyes were even more conspicuous than his white teeth. There was a ripping sound as he tore the arm away from that sucker-covered arm of the scuttle, but no harm was done to either combatant.

What with the lurching of the sloop, the rocking of the big unsteady trap, the resistance of our captive, and Gregory’s shouting, there was considerable turmoil for so limited an area as that we occupied on our small craft. The scuttle was gradually crowded down, and was presently forced to take refuge in the well to escape the black man’s oar. In the bottom of the trap lay the empty shell of the great crayfish which had tempted the creature to his undoing. With the hatch back in place, and the trap lashed against the windward side of the mast, our work was done.

After a pull on the sheet, I took the tiller and my companion rested from his labors; but his tongue was loosened, and by the time we came to anchor in the twilight, he had said more about the scuttle than I have been able to recall, and a good deal that I am not hopeful of being able to verify. Nevertheless, he had earned his reward, and as the lights were beginning to glimmer around the harbor, he went to his home with a comfortable jingle of coins in his pocket.

When the steamer sailed away to the north, the scuttle was a captive on board, staring with unwinking eyes at the passengers who came to gaze at him. He escaped from confinement twice during the voyage, and we had no small difficulty in getting him properly secured. We learned that a large prisoner, if he is persistent enough, may take flight through a comparatively small hole, and we were therefore unremitting in our watchfulness until the captive was landed securely within the walls of the ancient fortress at the Battery.

And that is how the octopus came to the Aquarium.

IN NOVEMBER

BY EDITH WYATT

THEY had pitched camp in the shelter of a great buff-colored dune, with two up-turned canoes, and a small tent with a flap staked over it.

Lake Michigan, all green and mist-blown, banded the whole north horizon, to break along the curving beach in little hoary crowns of foam and bubbles. Southwest, southeast, and south, the broad, full contours of the dunes purled far away, beneath the gray and purple sky of the late autumn. They were grown with red-oak and yellow poplar-brush toward the west. Toward the southeast and south their long pure curves, low-swooping like a swallow’s flight, ran nude and pale, in shadows exquisitely changing in the rising afternoon.

Beside a smoky fire, between the tent and the lake, a sunburned young woman with roughly blown hair, in corduroy skirt and a boy’s overcoat, dark and shabby, now hid her eyes from the smoke, in the crook of her arm, and now rubbed vaseline on a stiff shoe in her lap.

These occupations so closely engaged her attention that she did not at first observe, across the beach, the approach of a little sandy woman between fifty and sixty, in a short walking-skirt and a felt walking-hat tied down with a veil. Her shoes looked damp. She glanced rather shyly, but with a sort of liking and friendliness, at the tent and the fire.

'Come and dry your shoes,' said the girl hospitably, lifting her eyes. She was a rather pretty blonde girl, with a good-humored, quiet expression.

'Are you folks camping out here?' said the visitor, still looking with an air of satisfaction and pleasure at the camp. 'You’re from Chicago, relatives to Mrs. Horick in South Laketown, ain’t you? So I heard. I’ve sewed some for her. Oh, I just wisht I was you. Few cares enough for camping to do it this time of year. Your folks come here to fish?'

'No,' said the girl quietly. 'One of my cousins was taken sick this fall, and told to live outdoors. So he decided to come out here and camp with his wife and little boy and me. For a while.'

'You have a nice place for it.'

'My cousins have gone to the station on some errands,' said the girl reflectively, polishing her shoe. She could not very well say to her relative’s dressmaker, that the camp had feared the visit of Mrs. Horick on that very afternoon.

Mrs. Horick was a pretty, competent, hard-edged young woman, who enjoyed such things in life as tight face-veils, high traps, and docked horses. The adult campers had drawn lots to select her victim for the afternoon. The lot had fallen to Jim Paine. But Jim took so unbridled a pleasure in displeasing Mrs. Horick that it was decided such a fate would be too cruel to her. The lots were drawn again. This time the lot fell to Alice Paine. But Mrs. Horick depressed Alice, sometimes for several hours after her departure. The lots were drawn again. This time the lot fell to Elsie Norris. With whoops, it was determined Elsie must remain. She would not care a fig what Mrs. Horick said or thought, would be entirely amiable with her, and, besides, had no shoes to walk to the station in. One pair was wet. The other was too stiff to put on. After dressing Elsie in the most handsome garments the camp afforded, the others had left her, early in the afternoon, with Shep, Rabbie’s collie, wandering around within call, and occasionally barking at imaginary wolves in the brush.

'Perhaps you met my cousins on your way,' said Elsie.

'No. I didn’t come from that direction. I came from Gary. It ain’t much of a place to live. But I got a real good airy room, with a back-porch of my own, in a carpenter’s family there. Miss Brackett’s my name. I’m about the only dressmaker in the place, so’s I get plenty of custom, more 'n all that I can do; and well-paid, too, you can say in a way,' she added with a sigh; 'and in a way, not; because I hate sewing. But then I walk a good deal around here. There’s some fine walks through the oaks and in the dunes; just as fine as any one could wish,' she said with a look of content. 'It makes me just about homesick to see your camp. I was camping myself six years ago.'

'Were you? Here?'

'No,' said Miss Brackett, with a little hesitation. In response to Elsie’s invitation, she had seated herself on a log, near the fire. There was evidently something very stirring in their little camp to her. For a moment she even looked as if she were going to cry. 'It was on the plains,' she said finally, with a certain pride. 'A long wagon-trip, a whole year long.'

'How fine!'

'Yes,' said Miss Brackett, looking at the dunes and the surging lake. 'It was, as you might say, a great experience. You hardly would believe me, but before that time, why, I hardly knew there was such a place as outdoors; not till I was forty-six years old; and that’s a fact.'

Elsie glanced up at her inquiringly. She had heard of persons who acquired Spanish at ninety, or who experienced a passionate personal infatuation for the first time at sixty, but never of an adult creature, devoted to an indoor existence, who suddenly felt in middle age a real response to the great inarticulate voices of the earth.

'Up to then, I lived on the West Side, in Chicago, with my married sister. My father left the place to her and to me. Most of the rest of the property went to my young half-brother Kip. But when Nettie’s children were nearly grown, it seemed as though there wasn’t any room left in the house for me; and yet they needed me, you see, to sew for them, right straight along. I used to sew, sew, sew till midnight and past, often, tucking on the girls' summer dresses, especially that last spring when I was at home; and I began to cough then and get so dreadful tired. That winter Nettie thought each of the girls ought to have their own room. It was no more than right, either. Nettie and me, we each had our own room when we was young girls. So I used to sleep just on two chairs with quilts in the back parlor, and couldn’t seem to rest very good, and, besides, had to get up and get dressed and the room fixed, real early, so Will could come there and read his morning paper. Well, I used to keep all my things in shoe-boxes, up in the attic, so they’d be out of the way. They used to laugh, and laugh, about those boxes; and one night we was all sitting on the steps, and they were laughing, and my youngest niece, Baby, she got real mad. She 's so warm-hearted and she never wanted to take my room, and only did because it provoked Nettie so, for her not to. Babe turned real white, and she said all of a sudden, "The reason why Aunt Min hasn’t anything but shoe-boxes to keep her things in is just because we’ve turned her out of everything," she said. "You ought to be ashamed of yourselves." And she jumped up and ran into the house.

'That night my brother Kip happened to be there. He’d been West ever since he was fifteen. He’s a lot younger than Nettie and me--only twenty-five, then. We thought Kip was an awful wild, queer sort of fellow, then; we didn’t know him at all. I felt just like the rest. He’d run through all that was left him long ago; and he’d married an actress and was separated from her. He was a sort of a Socialist too, and even had tramped some. But he seemed to be real kind in some ways. When Babe said that, he looked at me quite hard. When he went home he says to me, "You look sick, Min," he says, and he took hold of my hand. "You’ve got fever. Why don’t you see a doctor?"

'Well, I don’t know what got into me. After they was all gone that night, I just broke down, and cried and cried. I did feel dreadful sick and feverish, and I hadn’t no money of my own to see a doctor, and felt just all gone really. I managed to get up and fix the room before any of them come down. But then I had to lie on the sofa, and couldn’t get to breakfast. And after breakfast--would you believe it?--a doctor come. Kip sent him, himself. But he frightened Nettie to death. I felt dreadfully sorry for her.'

'He told your sister how ill you were,' said Elsie gravely.

'Oh, yes. But it wasn’t so much that, as she was so afraid some of the children might catch my trouble. She was all right though as soon as they got me to the hospital, though she was provoked too, because it took so much of her time to come there to see me. She come twice before I went away. The doctor said that going away was my only chance. For all that I was up and around, he thought I couldn’t live a year.'

Neither of them spoke for a moment, looking away at the dunes.

'Then--what do you think--Kip had an intimate friend, quite a rich young man, Will Bronson, who was sick the same way I was. That’s how Kip come to notice my sickness so. The doctors wanted him kept out of doors, and he and Kip was going on this wagon-trip. But his mother was nearly crazy worrying over it, and worrying the young man and crying all day and night. She thought Kip never could take care of him. Well, those boys wanted me to go off with them on the wagon-trip. They said I could cook for them, and it would relieve the mother. And it did. They took me to see her. And she thought if a person like me could go on a wagon-trip it couldn’t be so awful after all. Well, the short and the long of it was, we went to Fort Leavenworth, and the boys got a wagon and provisions and blankets and thick shoes and things for me, and they got two good mules from the government post, and we started off.'

Miss Brackett sat erect. A look of elation burned in her violet eyes.

Elsie drew a deep breath and laughed.

'Yes. I didn’t like the idea at first: all the rough clothes, and our being alone on the plains, and after a while going to be right in the desert--it seemed to me terrible. But it was the only thing there was for me to do. I just kep' my mouth shut tight through all that time. And then, I don’t know, more and more, oh, I just come to love it!'

After a moment Elsie said, 'And did you really have any hardships?'

'What do you call hardship? The rainy reason was bad. But I’ve been lots wetter longer at a time, through whole winters, when I’d lend my rubbers to the children. Sometimes it was terrible cold. But then we always had a good fire. I’ve been lots colder in the back parlor and on crowded street-car platforms, and lots and lots more uncomfortable. Once we got off the trail. Once we had a bad time about finding water. One night, after the mules was hobbled they jumped along so far, even hobbled, that we couldn’t get them for hours. Kip and Will Bronson was gone six hours in different directions; and I was afraid they was lost. But I’ve had more hardship, you might say, and not that I want to complain either, in one week on the West Side at home, than in a whole year of what they called roughing it. And for hard feelings, and real mean bad ways of acting, I’ve seen more of them over getting out one shirt-waist in a dressmaker’s shop, than in that whole time on the wagon-trip. Even though once we had a man in our camp that we heard afterwards was a criminal and fugitive from justice,' she added with a laugh.

'What sort of a man was he?'

'A very considerate, pleasant sort of man. He was a short, thick-set fellow from Missouri, with a hard sort of chin. He come riding up near the Baton Pass, and asked to stay the night and get supper and breakfast with us. Well, it so happened I had caught cold and wasn’t feeling extra. The boys was worried and sort of mad,--that was the worst trouble we had,--because I would mend and cook just the same. The boys cooked terrible, and it seemed as though I couldn’t have no peace of mind, unless I did it. It made me feel so as though I was no use to them and not paying my share by what I did, you know. Well, this man from Missouri was a fine cook. He stayed with us three days, and by the time he went I was all right again. He was real helpful. They never got him. When we come to Trinidad, we was good and surprised to find he was a cattle thief that shot a sheriff that tried to arrest him.'