Chapter VIII: Part 8

Yes, Eloise, believe me or not, but then I knew I would not faint again. I crawled further under the rock, lying flat, face up, and drew both my Colts....

My belt still held the shells. The fight I had with myself must have been long, for they found forty-three empty shells at my side next day.... I don't remember distinctly what happened, for my head would spin every now and then and I had to close my eyes.

Then I fired twice, thrice... A fool was starting down to see where I was, a fool, and he met a fool's fate at my feet... So for hours I shot that way and none dared to try to come down again, none but one who suddenly dropped upon me from the left like a tiger from a cliff, the last of the red painted things who sought death in order to gain Paradise.

He died literally on me; and he died quickly. He did not know that having killed his companions with my right, I was on my back with a Colt also in my left. So died the last of the _Juramentados_....

I knew this would end it, and I was glad, for I was beginning to forget, with the fever flame licking amid the fagots of my brain. I had strange deliriums.... AEons passed with me wallowing in the water beneath me, thrusting my burning head into it and not knowing it.... And then came the end of the delirium in the great joy of the volley of shots above me and the cheers of the First Tennessee. I heard our General telling me I was all right, and then the dreams returned, for I saw you on Satan, in _khaki_, riding with the firing line; and then my head was in your lap, and you were crying over me and kissing me, before all the boys. And like one in a nightmare, when strange things happen, I told them it was not real, that I was touched of a _borang_ in my head, and was a double weakling for dreaming and then being such a fool as to weep over a dream. But they only cheered me and laughed.

* * * * *

I remember very distinctly when I awoke in the hospital at Cebu. It was night and the tropic moon lay half masted in the sea. I saw the gunboats out in the bay and Old Glory floating from fort and mast head. But I did not see the Indiana. I knew I was feverish and yet so sane, so sane that it hurt as does all great saneness which follows a great sleep. Then a sea-gull cried as it swept past my window, and that lone sea-gull's cry quite overcame me: for then I remembered my first dream, and you, and now I awoke and you were not there.... I turned my face to the wall. Then I felt someone kneeling by me, her arms around me, her kisses on my cheek. I heard someone saying, "Jack, Jack, be still, and be very calm, for it is I, Eloise, your Eloise. I have nursed you a month--I have slept by your side, darling, right here by your side, your own Eloise. And now it is all right and so sweet that--hold my hands--Jack--tight--tight Jack--we are going to say again our little prayer, thanking God together as of old...."

Then the next day when I was stronger and the danger had passed, we spent the morning alone in the little hospital ward holding hands sillily, talking always, and kissing when we could. And you told me how it had all been: how Elsie and her father had found you and taken you home with them to the great English surgeon who had cured you: how, knowing I was here in the Philippines you had come as a trained nurse to be near me: and how it had been fixed between the General and you that we were to meet the very day that came so near being my last. And you told of the strange dream you had that night, of my call that seemed to come to you, and how, mounting a pony and dressed in _khaki_ that you might pass the line as a soldier, you rode to our camp alone through the night, following the army's path over the mountain, reaching our last line at daylight, to find the battalion gone since midnight, to our rescue. Taking Satan you followed: and it was Satan and you who found me: for they had rescued Ross and Billings and found the bodies of poor Davis and Moriarty, but they could not find me. All day they had ridden and searched; and all day, delirious and fever stricken, I had lain in the fissure under the boulder: and in the still of the evening, when the boys had all but despaired, and you, heart-wrung and broken, had rested a moment in the General's fly, suddenly there came a strange whistling up the canyon, and Satan had broken loose going to it, the boys following: and they had found me in wild delirium, but dreaming of home and blowing the call of old for Satan with the whistle I had forgotten was in my pocket. Even as you told me all this, old Hawthorne came in with the familiar twinkle in his eye and bending over me stroked my forehead as my dead sire would have done, saying, "Well, Colonel Ballington, how do you feel to-day?

"Jack," you cried, "he shall not tell you first! I hadn't got to that, General. Please let me tell it all to him, my own self."

The General laughed and nodded, enjoying our happiness as if it were his own.

"It is all too good, Jack," you went on, "but the President himself has appointed you a Colonel in the regular army. And see--we have saved it till you wakened--our dear old General and I--here is the message President McKinley sent when he heard you had led them from the Indiana's deck to the rescue of the Regulars."

Then you read the message yourself, with tremor and tears:

"No more splendid exhibition of patriotism was ever shown than was shown a few days ago in the Philippines. That gallant Tennessee Regiment from our Southern border, that had been absent from home and family and friends for more than a year, and was embarked on the good ship _Indiana_ homeward bound--when the enemy attacked our forces remaining near Cebu, these magnificent soldiers disembarked from their ship, joined their comrades on the firing line and achieved a glorious triumph for American arms. That is an example of patriotism that should be an inspiration to duty to all of us in every part of our common country."

"It is good of him," I said, "God bless him--the sweetest, gentlest man who ever sat in that chair. But if I get well I am going home and to my trees."

But still the old General stood smiling, and I knew there was more to come. And, seeing it, you came over, smiling funnily yourself, and with little tears, too; and kneeling, you laid your face against mine. "Jack, forgive us, it was a mean thing to do, but you have been married a month to-day and don't know it! But when we brought you here, you talked all right--though you were a little flighty--and begged so hard for me to marry you then--and--and--somebody had to sleep right here with you, nursing you day and night, for the surgeon said it would all be in the nursing and a mighty poor little chance at that--Jack--for it was a terrible blow, cutting to your brain--and you begged so--and--I didn't want ever to leave you again while you lived, and after the Chaplain married us holding your hands in mine and kneeling here just as I am now--it looked as if marrying had killed you, Jack--you went down so quickly and deeply into the valley--and now to see you well--"

You were crying in my arms. I could only kiss you, calling you wife.

Then your old fun came back as of old. "It wasn't a square deal, Jack--to take advantage of a sick man like that, and so, well--well, if you are willing we will call it all off and wait till we get back home where we will have a grand wedding at The Home Stretch; for I have been cheated out of my _trousseau_, and my honeymoon, my new shoes and the rice that ought to be in my back."

"I have had make-believe enough," I said, kissing you again. "That marriage holds and is good enough for me."

Then the home going, overtaking the regiment at San Francisco and the thunder of guns and welcoming whistles as we reached our native Tennessee. And there, amid the great hubbub, and the welcoming committee as our train rolled in, stood the old General, my grandsire, holding back the crowd with his crutch that he might get to me first, and rattling around on his wooden leg, shouting to my great embarrassment:--"_By God, there he is--Jack--my grandson, Jack! I raised him--He's my daughter's son--a game cock--the old blue hen's chicken!..._"

We have it framed now, Eloise, that telegram from the President.

"EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON. NOVEMBER 21, 1899.

On the Nation's roll of honor is the First Tennessee Regiment U.S. Volunteers, and nobly has the distinction been won. Their country's gratitude awaits the homecoming of these brave men.

WILLIAM McKINLEY."

* * * * *

Home again, Eloise, Home and June. Born of the same May mother, but differing so, this and that other June! How un-of-kin they seem to be! That last dance, the death ride over the bars, homeless, the despair of that June a year ago.

And now home again and The Home Stretch mine!

June, and writing this to you as I sit in the old sweet place under the old sweet trees, under the hickories we loved so, and afar off is the flush of old gold above the violet of the western hills.

And the same June sounds come over to me: the call of an ewe to an errant lamb; the neigh of a mare and the answering whinny of her colt; the distant staccato clatter of binders amid the wheat.

And a wood-thrush deep in our laurel thicket rinsing clear the air around with her liquid notes....

Since Christmas I have seen it all, for it was Christmas when the boys came marching home, seen it again and again, never tiring of seeing it, life as it shuttles across the loom of the Middle Basin. If the canvas were a meadow backgrounded in green, this is how the picture would be: a patch of red-bud now and then for early spring; and later, a green sheen creeping like a high-tide over the hills. But later still, after the wheat is harvested it were a stubblefield canvassed to cleanness; there would run a riot of passion flowers and morning glories in brave, bold colors of beauty. And the picture would be June in the Middle Basin.

I have sat this afternoon watching the trees on the round breast of the hill across the way, a shield of green on the round shoulder of the hill; and as I looked I had a strange upliftingness which I knew was of poetry and that it was the melting of my heart because it was June again and home and because of the love of you.

Why should I potter and make excuse of it? If there be love there is a poem.

Take mine as it is--this voice of the trees--as the sweetness of it all came over me, listening, listening and loving you, Eloise.

WHAT SAY THE BEECHES?

What say the beeches, heart of my heart?
(Comrades we three!)
Wise in their canopied gallery of art--
Clear-visioned, true, in their cloisters apart
From the life which dwarfs when the soul is the mart
Of passions set free.
Write it, dear beeches--historian tree--
Write it for me.

My heart, it hath doubted; my soul, it hath slept.
Alone with the trees and the stars it hath wept,
Not knowing the mystery, not seeing the end--
Oh, be to it, beeches--calm beeches--its friend!
For part of the Infinite--you and the stars--
Sing it the Truth with your infinite bars.

The little leaves whisper'd, baby-voiced, low;
The finger-limbs wrote it 'mid starlighted glow:
"_Love and believe, and be kind as you go!_"
(O Heart, it is so!)

Why should you care for me to write of war and that last bloody fight, now that I am at home again, and my heart in the melting? Is it because it takes it all to make life, the melting, the June days, and the fight?

And why have I written all this, here, at The Home Stretch, months after it has happened, with you coming, even as I write it, down the old sweet path to me, in the old sweet way? Coming to see if I have finished my letter to you. And I wrote it because but yesterday you said, "Jack, dear, I want you to finish that letter you wrote me in the Philippines, the one you wrote to _your love that was lost_. Finish it, Jack, this one here at home for me, in our own home, _ours_, and _for your love that was found!_"

And so I have done it, sweetheart.

*IV*

*THE BURGEONING*

"Now burgeons every maze of quick
About the flowering squares, and thick
By ashen roots the violets blow."
--Tennyson.

*CHAPTER I*

*TWO OF A KIND*

As I said at the beginning, this is my story, and the telling of it must be in my own way. It does not satisfy me to end it with our home-coming, and I hold that no story is complete unless it satisfies, first of all, him who tells it.

Why should love stories end at the altar? For there is that in life which surpasses the altar in sweetness. It is the hearth. And there is that which is greater than love making. It is the home making. And there are those in every marriage that is a marriage, of far greater worth to the world--since only through them may the world's work go on--than the two who joined their lives at the altar, and they are the children who come of the marriage.

If my love for Eloise was great before, it is greater now, for in the sweet years that have passed have I not proved it a thousand times, as hath she, in the little things of life, the knight-errantries of love, the battle and the gauge that tests us all daily? And are not the still, calm depths in the eyes of the wife more satisfying to the soul than the merry frothy shoals that gleam so riotously in the eyes of the sweetheart?

No man has truly loved a woman until she has borne him children; not for the child alone, uplifting as is the first sight of this tiny sweet seed of the blossoming of their doubly growing souls, but as an evidence that there is nothing worth while in the world except love, since not only does it create every great, beautiful, sweet dream that has been given to the world, but even the dreamer himself!

No man has loved until he has seen the child of his love. It is not the row-boat of the calm waters that the sailor loves as his very life, but the good ship of the mid-seas that holds fast and true, even in the throes of the tempest, bringing him to port and to joy in the morning.

And so I have small respect, and a wholesome contempt for those story-tellers who make of married love a marred love; who paint its ending with the coming of children; and who would leave the wife at the last page waiting for a lover's love lost in the husband's love.

I did not know at first what it was that made Eloise change that first year, from the brilliant, riding, hunting, dancing Eloise of old to this thoughtful, beautiful creature who wanted always to slip off and read Keats by herself, and was slyly making what I thought were doll clothes for Little Sister; and when I was most happy with her to see now and then, through the day, little strange, unnatural flashes of sadness come into her deep, thoughtful eyes, and little, queer, unsatisfying doubts that would creep in. Unknowing, I would see her watching me; and it would end at night in our own room with her in my lap in tears and her arms around me.

"Jack! Jack!" she cried. "Oh, I am so foolish; but are you sure that you will never love anybody better than you do me, not even your own child?"

How well I remember that day of my greatest agony and blessing, and the long, long hours in which her life hung in the balance. I remember the good old doctor who came first, and then, as the day wore on, the graveness that settled in his eyes and the hurried sending to the city for another one. I walked sorrowfully among the trees, a coward, a weakling, for the first time in my life.

Aunt Lucretia was my only comforter, and a stern, unflinching, rude comforter she was. "Jack, _Colonel_ Ballington, actually wilted, a weakling, ruined by matrimony and too much love, as I always said you'd be, if you didn't look out. Jack, you make me tired; born on this stock farm, seeing my crop of colts and calves, my spring lambs, too, and whatnots; the finest and most high-bred matrons of my paddock, bringing in their first borns and not a fool doctor in ten miles to meddle with them and Nature and her ways! And now Eloise, the gamiest, nerviest, bravest thoroughbred of them all! You make me tired! Come, I want to make a man of you."

She seized my arm and led me into the house. In the library she took down her huge silver goblet, an international trophy won in France, her prize for the best merino wool, and then she led me down into the cellar.

I had never been in it but once before. It was cool and damp, its sleepers lined with cobwebs. She lit a lantern and led me into the farthest, darkest, cobwebbiest corner. She stood before a small ten-gallon cask, and said with some show of grim humor, "Jack, it was fifteen years ago to-day--Did you know this was an anniversary? Well, fifteen years ago to-day I brought Eloise here, adopted her and gave her to you; and that day I told my old friend, Jack Daniel, to send me this ten-gallon cask of pure whiskey, to be put away, and to get good and mellow for just what I knew would one day happen--the first colt! And now we are going to tap it in his honor!"

"_His_ honor, Aunt Lucretia?" I said shamedly. "I had set my heart on her being a--a--why, we are going to name her Lucretia," I added timidly and with some confusion.

"Jack, you were always a fool; a bigger one since you married, just as I knew you'd be, all of 'em are. Why, of course he'll be a good lusty chap; and I have already named him _Andrew Jackson_, and that's what he'll be, name and all. I am going to give his daddy a drink; he needs it, weak-kneeing around here like an old run-down selling-plater in the home stretch."

In the dining-room she took down a cut-glass goblet and pottered around in the side-board till she had found her old-time loaf sugar. This she broke into bits, and, putting a piece in the goblet, she held it up to the light and eyed me queerly.

I knew Aunt Lucretia, and that this ceremony was her way of playing for time and a kindly way of diverting my mind from Eloise.

"Very few people, Jack," she went on, "know how to make a toddy. Now you pour a little water over this sugar and let it melt; if you crush it with the spoon it spoils the whole thing, and then pour the whiskey in slowly, stirring it all the time. The nutmeg; ah--"

We took one each, and Aunt Lucretia smiled. "Feel better? Well, you'd better stop at that! Another one might make you see double--directly--and that would be horrible--twins! Why, Jack, I've known men to be driving along, single, and after taking two of these to swear they were driving a span! One more makes them think they are holding a four-in-hand! Now, that boy of yours," she began, "why, Jack, I wouldn't have him divided up into twins for anything."

We stopped and looked quickly up. The old doctor was smiling at us. He had slipped into the room while we were talking.

"You have missed it, Miss Lucretia," he said, pouring out a half-glass for himself and taking it straight. "Phew! But I need a bracer myself after all that! It's a girl, Jack, a most beautiful, bloodlike little girl."

"Jack!" cried my Aunt, throwing up both hands, "Jack, get out of my sight! But we'll drink to her," she added gamely.

And we did.

"Two of them!" cried the doctor, warmly shaking my hand. "Two beautiful little girls, Jack! My boy, I congratulate you! And the mother is doing fine, just tickled to death and begging me to let you come in at once!"

"Heaven help us!" cried my Aunt Lucretia, with feigned anger, but real exultation shining in her eyes. "Twin colts never amount to a hill of beans. We'll go in directly, Doctor, and drown one of them; it will give the other a chance in life."

I turned quickly. "Hand me that glass, Doctor," I said firmly. "I am never going to be partial to my little ones. We've drunk to the first one, here's to the second!"

"Yes, even in our disappointment let us be just," said my Aunt, joining me.

And we drank to the second one, my Aunt laughing, pleased for all her seeming anger.

But my own heart was pounding under me with the same gripping in my throat that I had felt as I stood on the deck of the Indiana and, looking up, beheld Old Glory above me....

They were lying together by their mother, pink and white little creatures, with heads quite hairless, and blue eyes that were already smiling as plain as could be, twinkling, fun-loving eyes, which said, then, as they have always said, "_It's a joke on Daddy we've played!_"

Eloise, lying smiling by them, was holding out her arms to me. "I am quite comfortable, and oh, so happy, Jack!" she whispered as I kissed her again and again. "You can't love them both better than you do me! And please don't inspect them too closely, Daddy," she went on, "for you know what old Josh Billings said: '_There is two things no man is ever prepared for--twins!_' So we've had to dress up one of them in Aunt Lucretia's old flannel skirt and a crash towel, but she's just as sweet as the other one and so like her own, sweet daddy!"

"That Jack Daniel whiskey, sweetheart," I said, choking up sillily,--"but I am so thankful, now that you are safe--and--and--I was so proud and happy that I drank to each of their healths, till, Eloise, really are you sure, but I'll swear I am seeing four little heads here under the cover--and if there are--of course, if it is, it's all right with me--and--and--Eloise, aren't they holding hands already?"

Eloise broke out into her old laugh. "Of course they are," she cried happily, "and there aren't but two of them, Jack; honest, just two--on my word of honor, none of them have got away; but that's the funniest part of it all--they clasped hands as soon as they were placed together--just two sweet for anything! Such devotion to each other! Look! And oh, Jack, you must never, never show any partiality, or love one more than the other, or either of them more than me. And don't take any more of Aunt Lucretia's Jack Daniel, for it makes me afraid to have you see double this way! Don't now, for if you took two more of those old drinks you might see triplets--oh,--the thought of it! Now kiss us all goodnight; we want to sleep. And here--your hands, Jack, and our little prayer."

*CHAPTER II*

*HOW AUNT LUCRETIA RAN AWAY*

There never was a fall like Aunt Lucretia's when she did fall in love. It is historic at The Home Stretch to this day, and the record is as Aunt Lucretia wrote it to me after she had married Dr. Gottlieb.

"Ran away!" exclaimed Eloise, after she had read the letter; "and everybody on the place has been trying to marry them off to each other for twenty years. But of course Aunt Lucretia had to do something different!"

"Of course, I knew, Jack," wrote Aunt Lucretia from Dr. Gottlieb's old home in Germany, where they were spending their honeymoon, "that old Gott,--bless the dear heart of him!--had been loving me all these years. Women folks have a kind of a dog nose for the man that really loves them--they know it by instinct. There are some men who court women naturally, but there are lots of them every sensible woman has to court a little herself. Old Gott was one of these. I knew if I ever married him I'd have to court him myself, although he was crazy about me. But I didn't love him then; he was so silly and made me so mad the way he did it--always hinting around that I was that great red flower he was trying to find, and writing me silly letters, begging me to kiss the postage stamp when I replied, so he might kiss it also! Of course I was proud of Gott and awfully fond of him. I knew he had a great mind and an international reputation as a botanist, but as a lover, Jack, he was very poor.

"He courted me every way but the right way. Now there is only one way to court a woman and that is to kiss her. You can get some of them to marry you the other way--that is, by making them think they are little tin goddesses, or stars 'way up above you, and all that, or by writing them poetry and not daring to look at them except through a long-distance telescope!

"After five or six years and an innumerable number of family prayers and pink teas you can get that kind to wed you. But she isn't worth much after you win her; for you get a little pink-tea wife who presents you, in the course of the first ten years, with one little offspring, and devotes the rest of her time to pills and hospital operations for appendicitis. Instead of going in for addition they go in for subtraction, Jack."

"Well, Jack, after you and Eloise married, I began to feel lonesome, and I felt sorry for poor old Gott, pottering around out there among his books and flowers, with nobody to take care of him. I used to ride by to see him every day, thinking maybe he'd have sense enough to court me in a decent way; but every time he would act worse, until it got so that the poor man couldn't talk at all in my presence; he could only fold his hands and sigh.

"I knew the disease was running its course, and I became very uneasy. In this stage the patient, in addition to all the previous symptoms, has a steady rising temperature and becomes mentally unbalanced. This is shown in intense jealousy, a disease of mind produced by nothing else in the world but this malady. This hallucination takes violent possession of the mind, so that he is ready to shoot, kill or stab anyone whom he thinks stands in the way of his one great love; or, failing in that, to kill himself on the slightest provocation. It makes them do all kinds of queer things.

"And he rapidly developed into the last stage, which is complete imbecility.

"There was nothing for me to do, Jack; I must save poor Gott's life and mind. It would be hard on me, I knew, but for thirty years I had taken care of him, even giving him a home; and I could not bear to see the poor man, in his old age, become an imbecile and a suicide for want of a little help from me.

"As he was practically an imbecile already I decided to treat him as such; to cajole him, to entrap him, to lead him into matrimony by making him think it was something beautiful, and enchanting, 'up a winding stair,' so to speak; a hot house at the end of a rainbow!

"And this is the way it happened: I first hunted up that old red flower and pinned it over my heart. Then I took a flask of Tennessee whiskey in my saddle-bag and rode over to his house.

"I caught him just right. He had been up all night, writing a thesis for the University of Berlin on the 'Propagation of Pollen by Differentiation,' and having finished that, he was beginning to tell his pet parrot how much I resembled that great, red flower he was so fond of, and talking about the evening star which he said was just rising. It was ten o'clock in the morning and I knew at once what had happened. He had begun his thesis the afternoon before, and had become so absorbed that he had worked all night without knowing it, and now thought it was tea time!

"I was greatly distressed at the inroads the disease had made in his mind, and I knew I must act with the greatest tact and foresight. He was just telling the parrot all the beautiful things about me and my resemblance to the red flower when I walked in, wearing the flower over my heart.

"He gave one look at me and the flower, and that was almost too much for him. He began to mumble something, and then became speechless in his chair.

"I was almost heartbroken to see the swift inroads the disease had made on him, poor dear.

"'Gott,' I said gently, sitting down by him, 'you must take a little of this,' and I made him drink a good stiff toddy.

"He drank it, looking bewilderingly around, like the poor inmates of the insane asylum I have seen, and every now and then looking at the red lily and sighing as if in great pain.

"At last he spoke. 'Er--Miss--Miss--er'--

"'Lucretia,' I said, smiling encouragingly at him; 'just Lucretia always, dear Gott, between you and me!'

"This would have landed any sensible man, but thirty years of the disease had made Gott abnormal.

"Again I saw the color leave his cheek, and his face turn pale. Another good bracer, and he was better.

"'As I was just going to remark,' he said, turning pale again, 'Lu--Lu--Lu--ere--' he stammered.

"'Lucretia,' I said. 'Of course, Gott, dear heart, dear heart, that is my name--your name for me.'

"He tried to faint again, but the Tennessee whiskey stood staunch. So he threw up his hands with a little happy, pitiful gesture, and again lost his voice!

"After awhile I said to him: 'I am going to scold you, dear Gott; I am going to take better care of you. You have been sitting up all night writing and you are tired.'

"'Oh, no,' he said; 'oh, no. I began to write a few hours ago. It is now tea time. Won't you take tea with me?'

"Jack, it was pitiful. I thought I'd take him in my arms and kiss him then and there--just make him my own--only I was afraid the shock might kill him! I must do it gradually. So I went on humoring him. 'Sure, Gott, dear, old, precious Gott,' I said. 'Sure, it is just tea time, and I'm going to sit out on the little porch under the wisteria vine and the stars. Won't you come with me, precious?'

"Jack, it proved near being fatal. He tried to speak, but had only a kind of a gurgling spasm of a breath, panted violently, and turned red.

"I let that soak in and got up and got busy. I thought if anything in the world would fetch him, or any man, it would be to see a good-looking woman, in a white apron, with rosy cheeks and eyes full of fun, buzzing around in his old bachelor's den getting him a meal that was worth while.

"Poor old Gott! The disease of thirty years' standing had nearly ruined him!

"I cooked him one of my famous steaks, Jack; you know how. Skillet red hot, a little butter on it, then drop the steak on, and, as quick as it sears on that side, over it goes on the other, and quick again back, and so on, holding the juice in rich and sweet. And the tea, Jack, the rare old china I had brought in my saddle-bags, too; and the omelet; if anything in the world would put heart into a man!

"Eat it? You should have seen the dear old sweetheart. It almost made me cry. God only knows when he'd had a meal before. I found out afterwards that he had been writing two days, Jack, and then thought every day was to-morrow!

"He was so near gone, you may judge of it yourself. After those two toddies and that good meal he--he--well, he didn't seem to catch on yet! His mind didn't seem to be any clearer. But it helped him, for he had courage enough to take my hand in his, and say, 'Lucretia, shall we sit out under the wisteria--and--and--look at the moon?'

"'I said _spoon_,' I replied firmly, for I saw then, Jack, that I must be very gentle and firm with Gott, he was so badly afflicted!

"I felt his hand quiver beneath mine. He tried to faint, but very firmly I led him out into the full daylight under the wisteria vine. And then very gently but firmly I began to woo him; poor dear, he was nearly gone!

"He looked so killing, too, Jack; the little fellow with his gray hair, his handsome, red face, the fine turn of his large, intellectual head! Oh, that horrid disease! For he sat there in broad daylight mistaking the sun for the moon, and the little white jasmine blossoms above us for stars! I thought the best way to win him would be through the red lily he had worshipped so long. So, after sitting by him and taking his hand in mine, I said, 'Dear heart, do you notice what flower I am wearing to-day?'

"Imagine my exasperation when he stammered, shook all over, and began mechanically, 'Yes, madam, it is the _Lilium Philadelphium_, the red, wood, flame, or Philadelphia Lily. Flowers: erect, tawny, or red-tinted, outside: vermilion or sometimes reddish orange, and spotted with madder brown within; one to five on separate peduncles, borne at the summit. Periant of six distincts, spreading spatulate segments, each narrowing into a claw and with a nectar groove at the base: six stamens: one style; the club-shaped stigma three-lobed. Stem: one to three feet tall, from a bulb composed of narrow jointed fleshy scales. Leaves: in whorls of threes to eights, lance-shaped, sealed at intervals on the stem. Preferred habitat: dry-woods, sandy soil, borders and thickets; flower season, June and July; distribution, Northern border United States and westward to Ontario, south to the Carolinas and Virginia!'

"He said it all like a parrot, looking up at the wisteria vine. Jack, I saw that I must fight hard to save him. 'Dear heart,' I said, holding his hand, 'don't you think you need someone always with you to take care of you, cook your meals, nurse you? I fear you are sick now, darling,' I added, laying my head on his bosom.

"I could feel his heart panting like a trip-hammer. I saw him wince, struggle, grit his teeth, as one who tries to overcome a terrible thing, fighting for mastery of his mind; and then, Jack--I was so mad I could have choked him! That terrible disease!

"'Yes--Lucretia--dear--Miss--er--Miss Lucretia, I mean--do you think I could hire some good old woman who--ah--whom would you suggest?'

"'I could suggest a great many, Gott, I said, my arm around him; 'but I will suggest only one. _I_ need a husband for my old age, and _you_,' I said, 'darling,' and I put one arm around his neck.

"He shivered, paled, and I thought he was dying; but I went on, 'Gott--you dear, old Gott--I have loved you a long time, but I've been too busy to tell you so; but now, dear sweetheart, I want to make you my wife--I mean, Gott, my husband, of course, and--and--kiss me, Gott; kiss me, dearie!'

"Oh, Jack, the divinity of it! I am ashamed of all I have said before! Tear down that pedigree from your wall! Forget all I've said about marrying people off like animals--about improving the breed--about anything but love--love--love. For, when my lips touched his, life grew different! I had never felt it before! From that moment I was in love--divinely, gloriously in love!

"He keeled over, of course. It all but killed him. It was the crisis of the disease of thirty years' standing, but I had my nerve with me, and when he came to he was so bashful and happy, Jack. He said shyly, 'But, darling Lucretia, don't you think our parents might object; wouldn't it be romantic if we ran away?'

"And we did, Jack, that very night. I had him put a ladder up to his bed room window, and that night I slipped out, brought him down the ladder, and we ran off to town and were married!

"Oh, it was so romantic, such a sweet dream! And here we are in his old home in Germany and so happy!

"Forgive and forget all that I have ever said about people falling in love, for mine at last was the hardest fall!"

*CHAPTER III*

*A NIGHT WITH CAPTAIN SKIPPER*

Blessed is that man who is born with the saving grace of humor! Blessings on the memory of my Celtic sires!

One night when Eloise and the twins were away, I rode over to spend the night with my brother Ned. He had been elected to Congress from the Hermitage District, and together we were to frame a Forestry Bill--the first of that series of acts which have steadily legislated toward the Conservation of our national resources, and which will yet lead on to greater things; first and foremost of which, and most vital, will be the taking over for preservation by the national Government of the entire Appalachian mountain range, the forests of which are at the headwaters of nearly all the Eastern half of our country.

My brother was not home, but the others were, and to my great delight a girl baby as much like her mother as two turquoise shells. Little Sister had grown into a slim, pretty girl, and Captain Skipper, more positive than ever, began early begging his mother, since his father was away, to let him sleep with his Uncle Jack that night.

"Oh, do, Thesis," I said, after supper. "Let him have his way."

"And that's where you'll drop your candy," said Little Sister in her serio-quaint way.

Thesis, who is so good that she says only what she thinks and is so honest that she never suspects others of diplomatic pretenses, took me at my word. Captain Skipper should sleep with his dear Uncle Jack that night!

You who read this, did you ever sleep with a boy? I don't mean one of those good boys that you read of in Sunday-school books--the impossible kind--who lives like a saint every day and says his prayers and retires like a gentleman at night: but one of those lusty, growing young devils, born with a spring in his back, who howls out the first year, sleeps out the second, and by the time of the third is ready to chase the cat around and fight brave battles with the hen folks. At four he is ready for the birds' nests and tin cans for the dogs' tails, and a little later he breaks every colt that tries to keep the Sabbath in the meadow by the still waters.

When night comes--ay, there is the rub! He howls away the twilight hours and spends the night kicking, coughing, rolling out of bed or having fits, and yet sleeping through it all like a cub in winter quarters.

The weather that night was warm, one of those hot April nights that lies humid and close. "The dear little fellow will be so proud to sleep with his Uncle Jack," said his fond mother, when she kissed him good night; "and he does sleep so sound and quietly."

Never having owned a boy, I believed all of this. Did you ever try to undress a lad of four that had chased the cat around until he was hot? His clothes stick to him like a plaster. Being a novice, I got everything unbuttoned and then skinned him, peeled them off. To my surprise--and I found later that there were all kinds of surprises in that boy--in fact, that he was made out of surprises--he insisted upon saying his prayers! But I never saw anything go more promptly to sleep at his devotions. I had to derrick him up into the bed.

One of the strange things about a boy is that when he starts to wiggle around over the bed in his sleep he does it diagonally. I pulled him back on his own side of the bed five times within the next hour. Then I would hear him scuffling and flopping about, always ending in a long-drawn, dismal and dreary sigh, that would have made his fortune as Romeo. It always ended in his rounding up against the footboard in the opposite corner, flat on his back, each limb and arm pointing to its own cardinal point of the compass, his nightgown rolled up in a wad under his neck, and his body looking like that of a young bull frog in a Kentucky horse-pond.

If there is anything more absurd than a boy in this attitude I have never seen it. I tried to awaken him and get him back, but he only sighed one of those long sighs, unlimbered and slept on. I went back to my window and began to work on my bill, but my thoughts were soon dispelled with a start. I heard a choking, gasping, frightfully suffocating sound, mingled with a dolorous wheezing: "_O-woo,--oo--oo--wow--O-woo--oo!_"

I was at his side in an instant, this time frightened. He was sitting stolidly up in bed, a strange gaze in his wide-open eyes, his face beaded with a clammy moisture, his face drawn in a spasm. I had seen a boy have a fit before and I went upstairs after his mother, two jumps at a time.

"Quick," I cried, "hurry down! He'll not live until we can get the doctor!"

She was rocking the baby to sleep. She did not become excited, but smiled and whispered, "He isn't dying, Jack, it is just poor circulation. Don't notice him at all."

This made me cynical, bitter.

"Poor circulation?" I said in disgust. "He has the best circulation I ever saw; he has circulated all over that bed three times already. Not notice him? It would take the mental aberration of a stone man to do it."

I fear I was a bit satirical, for it is not pleasant to be made a laughing stock of by a boy who was not even awake. I was not assured, however, and half expected to find him dead when I got back. But I was disappointed. He had flopped across his pillow on his back, his arms and legs curled up. And sleeping! No ground-hog in mid-winter ever surpassed it.

I spent the next hour planning how I would like to fix him so as to keep him on his side of the bed and let me go to sleep. In fact, I quit everything else and thought. If there is anything I like to do it is to sleep when the time comes. These are some of the stunts that boy did in that hour: Fits, three;--very distinct and prolonged: snorts,--one every ten minutes: choking spells, at intervals: kicked the pitcher off of the table near the bed twice: jumped up and talked perfectly naturally--so naturally that I felt that he was awake,--but he was not. More snorts; and then: "_Catch him! There he goes in that hole--hooray!_"

I would have sworn then that he was awake, and examined him closely, cuffing and shaking him. But he was not. He sighed and slept on....

The brilliant plan I finally settled on was to put the pillows between us. It was nearly midnight before I had courage enough to retire at all. I pulled him up on his side, straightened him out and put the barrier between us, and then crept gingerly in. I lay still for a while listening. My success was so complete I wanted to stay awake a while and enjoy it. He would start out on his journey across the bed, but would wind up suddenly against my barricade. There he would lie a while, and I could feel his thumps against it.

In my vanity I chuckled.

I had dozed off in this state of self-conceit when I felt something rammed into my mouth. I thought at first that burglars had entered and that I had been chloroformed and gagged. It was not so. That boy had shot his foot through under the pillow and popped me square in the mouth. I had been told that it was not well to sleep with one's mouth open--now I knew it.

When people treat me that way, asleep or awake, I resent it. I fight. I boxed that boy's ears. I pounded his head against the headboard so that I would awaken him. I shook him, kicked him, and used words I should not have wished his mother to hear. When I had finished, he quietly sighed another of his long, peaceful, happy sighs, and slept on.

Sleep was not for me after that, and I spent the next hour lying awake and cataloguing the different things he would do. These were only a few of them:--Another fit; seeing cats, and wolves and dragons around his bed; chasing rabbits; talking in his sleep; telling of seeing a bear ride a bicycle down the pike; breaking a colt; swimming in the creek; fighting another boy; wheezing and thumping and making strange noises; dreaming he was an infant again and imbibing from an imaginary bottle; smacking his lips so loud that the noise could be heard all over the house.

It was three o'clock before a bright idea entered into my head. I remembered that the only request that his mother had made of me was to see that he did not fall out of bed. I remembered that in all his circulations and maneuverings, this was the one thing that he never did, like a runaway mule he knew how to take care of himself even in his sleep. I began to anticipate him. I determined to humor some of his little whims. I put a pitcher of ice water by the bed. I got a link of the garden hose that felt clammy and looked like a snake. I doubled up my pillow so I could strike hard with it. Then I sat up and waited. I would make him realize all he dreamed.

I did not have long to wait. This time he was falling from a tree or down an endless precipice, for he sat on the edge of the bed, yelling: "Catch me--catch me--I'm falling!"

I let him fall. In fact I helped him along. I put a lot of force into that pillow and it caught him squarely under the ear. He went out of the bed, hitting the floor in a heap. It wakened him. "Where am I, mamma? O, mamma?" he called.

"Come to your mamma," I said softly; "dear little boy, you have fallen out of the bed. Be careful how you roll."

He was asleep before he touched the pillow. But in the next half hour he did not roll any more, and so I learned that a boy may be taught things even in his sleep if only the proper implements are used.

But he was not yet cured of swimming in his sleep, for, just as I began to doze off, thinking that he was properly broken, he began to splash around in the bed, lamming me on the head and stomach, and shouting: "Look out! There's a snake--pull for the shore!"

This gave me my cue. Seizing a water pitcher I turned it over on him, at the same time wrapping the clumsy hose around his leg.

"Snakes," I cried in his ear, "dive for the shore!"

He gave a wide-awake yell that time, and rolled backward out of bed. One jump and he had cleared the room, going up stairs yelling: "Snakes, mamma, s-n-a-k-e-s!"

I let him go. Nay, I locked the door behind him and went to sleep.

The breakfast bell rang twice, but I did not hear it. Little Sister had to come to awaken me. They were all at breakfast when I came down, Thesis, the baby, and the boy.

"How soundly you must have slept!" she said, smiling. "I forgot to tell you that the dear little fellow sometimes walks in his sleep; and do you know, this morning I found him fast asleep on the first stair landing?"

Little Sister, however, was wiser. She looked at me in her quaint way and said, funnily: "Uncle Jack, you look real tired; like you'd dropped your candy last night, sure enough."

*CHAPTER IV*

*MY FIRST AUTOMOBILE*

It was one of those beautiful December mornings when the frost had hung his laces everywhere, and a hunting fever fairly burned within me. It comes over me at times, and then--well--I run away and obey it.

As though through mental telepathy my telephone rang. "Hello! Is that you, Jack? This is Horace Raymond, your old neighbor. I'm in town to-day. Ever see such a pretty day? Let's take a quail hunt."

"Glad to hear your voice again, Horace. No, I never did. I am ready for a quail hunt any day except Sunday. Never had any luck on Sunday at all."

"I have just bought a new automobile," he went on, "and I want to try it out to-day. I will be right out in a hurry."

"Oh, say, Horace, now that's another thing. I have never ridden in one of those things; they aren't bred right, don't like their gait; and loving horses as I do, confound them, I've got religious scruples on the subject. Now you come out here in the thing and I will have the little mare and the buggy hooked up, a good lunch and the setters in, and--"

I heard him laugh derisively. "Nonsense! Why, man, we're going way out beyond you on the Lebanon pike--ten miles--and we want to go in a hurry. I'll have you there in thirty minutes. Now the little mare would be fully an hour making it, and then dead tired for a long drive back, with a pointer and two setters crowding us out of the buggy. I'll be at your place in twenty minutes with two dogs--have that champion pointer of yours ready." And he rang off.

I hung up the receiver. "I guess I'm up against it," I said, as I went off to put on my hunting clothes, "but if it gets out on me I can prove I didn't want to do it. Besides, this new hunting cap I've just bought would make Moses look like a Turk in Hades; nobody would recognize me."

"Jack, I'm ashamed of you," said Eloise with becoming scorn. "What would Satan say? But of course, if you are going in that thing, and happen to bag any birds--which I know you'll never do--please remember the luncheon I am going to give to-morrow, dear. But you'll never get them, going back on your raising like that--see if you do!"

"No, see if you do," said one of the twins, now aged four.

And the other added, "No, see if you do!"

For which I kissed them both, because they were so femininely consistent.