"Give me the basket, and keep what you've stolen."

"Oh, I hain't a-scared of your spells. Keep 'em for the old women.

"The basket, I say-quick," said Christ

mas.

"Ah! who cares for you?" said Heintz, proving much slower in anger with a man than he had shown himself with a tipsy woman on the previous day. "There! I'll hand it to her-see? And I'll do more'n that; I'll walk along with her, as I've a right to do."

Heintz started towards Laura, but Christmas commanded him so threateningly not to go another step nearer her that he dropped the basket in the road and allowed Christmas to pick it up, while he stood by completely cowed.

66

'Walk where you please," said Christmas, "but come within reach of this stick, and I'll beat you like a carpet. Now the young lady and I will be going along." Heintz followed at a gradually widening distance, occasionally shying a stone after the girl and her deliverer, aiming each one to fall short of the mark, but to let its click be heard in the road behind them. Between these declarations of his harmlessness he fumbled in his pocket the thing he had filched from the basket. It was a small package. He did not know that it contained nothing but old letters; nothing else to him, but to Laura Balm the most important of her possessions.

CHAPTER IV.

AGAIN WITH THE ETHERIANS.

CHRISTMAS walked a step behind Laura, and, to further show his respect for her— and for himself-spoke only when she addressed him, nearly always with a "yes, ma'am," or "of course, miss." Heintz slunk, wolflike, well behind the strange pair.

When they neared the outskirts of Powellton the old man bought some cake and a bottle of milk, and, at a gateway to a tree-edged field, he asked if she would not go in out of the public view to rest and refresh herself. She assented trustingly, and he waited upon her, opening the bottle and teaching her how to drink out of it, and handing her the paper bag of cakes. All the while he chuckled and grinned like a man who recollects a funny story.

66 What amuses you so, Christmas?" Laura asked.

"You don't think what you've gone and done, miss," he answered.

"Why, what have I done?" she asked. "You've been fed by a beggar," said he. "And may the day be soon coming when you'll think it so wonderful you'll hardly believe it yourself; but you'll never see the joke as I do, at the time of it."

"There! I've done wrong," said she. "I am so ignorant. I never have had to think or to do for myself, Christmas. All my life I have scarcely had a thought that I did not take from my mother or share with her. I was hungry and tired, and, selfishly, I did not give heed to anything else."

"Young ladies oughtn't to worry about anything. You've only taken your own, after all. I had a piece of silver that was yours, you know - besides several more of my own; and you've only taken half of it, so far. If you think of me at all, think how proud I am to be helping you. You don't despise old Christmas, do you? Well, I'm afraid most folks do, miss."

As she sat at the foot of a great elm, resting after she had eaten, Christmas asked her what she knew of the fairy charm that had touched her; "because," he said, "I know you've met with a fairy. What shape had it? Don't you know? Well, then, did ever, a rabbit leap into your lap, or a sparrow light on your shoulder or brush your hair when flying over you; or maybe, now, it was just a lame dog that licked your hand? No? Well, it's sure to have been something, and you should remember, because you would have been kind to it-fed it, or stroked it, or something. You can't remember, ma'am? That's very strange. I knew a little boy at the Mill. Johnny Guard, I mean. You didn't know him? Well, his parents (ignorant people, narrow's pins) they found a little frog in his bed three mornings in succession. Twice they flung it out doors, and the third time Mrs. Guard took it in her apron and tossed it in the kitchen fire. Oh, what terrible things is done in ignorance! The fire would never burn after that, not if they poured a gallon of kerosene onto it. All 'twould do was to smoke and smoke and drive 'em all out of the house. They come a-hunting for me, and laid the matter before me, as not being so narrow as themselves. I never

had the heart to tell them what they'd done. All I said was 'bad business, bad business, and worse to come.' They had to hire workmen, who found that the bricks had fallen in and choked the chimbly, and, being very poor, they thought the bill they had to pay was what I meant. They came to me again, and I daresn't tell them the truth. That poor little froggie was a fairy-a good fairy, of course-because it took the shape of something that couldn't hurt nobody, and so was bringing good fortune. No, I hadn't the courage to tell 'em, so all I did was to say again, 'bad business, and worse to come. They knew what I meant in nine days from the day they tried to kill the fairy, for 'twas on the ninth day that Johnny Guard was burned up a-playing with the very kitchen fire where they threw the poor frog."

"You are famous for your stories, Christmas," said Laura.

For my stories, ma'am, but not for any lies; 'cause them I never tell," said Christmas. "And now may I ask what have the fairies to do with you? Your fortune's come to a turning-point-but how? What are you and old Christmas doing here under the bare sky on the public road, without a roof to either of us? Why are you leaving Mrs. Turley's, ma'am? Don't mind telling me, 'cause I'll keep a close mouth, as well as guard you on your way. But which is your way? Where are your people; and why are you with old Christmas?"

With complete frankness Laura told of her utter friendlessness-a story which old Christmas, with his inborn fancy for the mysterious and the uncommon, absorbed without a murmur of surprise. She said that her father's business held him in Europe; but where he lived her mother never told her. She had lately begun to think her mother did not hear from him, because the only letters she left behind were from a firm of lawyers in New York, and these merely enclosed the money she received once a fort night. Her mother was the only sister of a bachelor who was believed to have been long since dead. Laura thought they lived in grand style-this bachelor and her mother. She judged this from various remarks her mother had made at odd times. Her mother had differed with this brother, and left home years and years ago; but where that home was, and what

relatives were left there, or anywhere, she had never told her daughter, though she had often said she intended doing so at some later day.

66

"Ah, well. Keep heart, miss," said the old man, with the words and tone the poor so quickly learn to adopt towards one another. "A brave heart is all one needs when the clouds are black, with never a star showing, and the road is dark, with never a house upon it, and the way is long, with never a turning. Keep heart in such a case, I say, and all's sure to be well. But now we must be up and moving, in order to get where we'll be going before dark. I know a kind heart in a calico gown that won't never turn you away."

The heart which inhabited that modest gown proved to animate a very robust body too large for the gown, and straining at its buttons as if they would at any instant fly from their threads like bullets from a gun. She presided over the stove of the kitchen of the Powellton Hotel, and she possessed, in addition to the heart and the threatening buttons, a tongue which gave the lie to every promise suggested by her rosy face and round body.

"Hello! What do you want here, Mr. Tramp?" said the woman, Mrs. Newbold by name. "I'ain't got nothing for you, so you may as well be off about your business, if tramps have any business. In times like these, with the whole country prosterated, and nobody able to buy food or drink, or even to pay for what they have eat and drunk, ain't it likely that I'm going to throw good food away on an able-bodied old vaggerbone that could work but won't do it so long as others 'll work for him and give him what they've earned? Well? Think I want to stand screamin' what I've got to say? Come in-if you must have the truth told you-and sit down, so I can say my say easy like, 'stead of tirin' out my lungs hollerin' before I've said the half of it. Bless my bonnet! What's the matter with the man? Here, Christmas, back with you, I say. Let me have none of your nonsense."

The matter with Christmas-to make him "so long a-coming," like his namesake-was that Laura had retreated at the sound of the cook's voice, and he had gone after her to assure her that no bite accompanied the noisy bark.

"Oh, back you've come, eh? I reckon ed you would," Mrs. Newbold said. "And what have you got with you, in patience' name?"

"A lady, ma'am," said Christmas, whose sense of humor, at announcing the conjunction of himself with a lady, must have troubled him.

"Well, mind she wipes her feet, if she's a lady, instead of dister-ibuting the whole dirt of the stable-yard over my kitchin, as you've done, for me to clean up after you. A lady, eh? Well, she looks more the lady than to be vaggerboning about with you, I will say. Now, then, miss, if you venture in my kitchin, you'll have to hear plain speech. What have you got to say for yourself?"

66

66

Beg your pardon, ma'am; she-' "Who asked you about her?" Mrs. Newbold exclaimed. 'Is she such a monsterosity as to be a woman without powers of speech? Then I'll hear her-comin' in other people's houses and expecting I don't know what! Was there ever another such a magnet-like as I am, drawin' in everything off the road, as if they was moths and I was a lamp?"

"I expect nothing of you," said Laura, with no note of dependence or apology in her voice. "I'm here because I was asked to come. I want nothing of any one except what I am able to earn."

"Well, sit down - sit down, both of you. Was there no chairs where you come from, Christmas; or did they bite, so you was afraid of 'em? I'll make you a cup of coffee, miss, and no trouble at all. You're not interuding here, I'm sure. You, Christmas, shall have what you know very well you always get; though, 'pon my word, you've come upon me just as I am rushed with the evening's orders for steaks and chops, and Lord knows what all; at least there's been no orders at all yet, but little you'd care. And what can you do, miss, to earn your living?"

"I can teach French and German," Laura said, "and the piano; or, if I had a room and very little money to begin with, I could paint in water-colors—a little."

The tornado of ridicule or scorn which the reader might well expect to be let loose by this extraordinary announcement to a cook in a country kitchen was also anticipated by Christmas, but it did not rage. Instead, Mrs. Newbold stared at Laura, gasped, choked something down,

and-began to mop her eyes with her apron. When she spoke it was with a broken voice. She wore all her feelings outside, and they were even more insecure than her threatening buttons.

"Christmas," she asked, "did you ever hear such cruelty? It's a thing I never could stand, is cruelty. Such a lady, and so young; and right here in my kitchin, of all places! Oh, the cruelty, the exteriordinary cruelty! Here, Christmas, come out with me a moment. I want a word with you."

She hurried the hobbling old man outside the door, and there fell upon him, saying: "Whatever cloud did that poor bit of china drop from? Tell me every mortal thing about her, for I'm burnin' with curosity and drenched with pity for her at the same time."

The result of the little that Christmas could tell her was that she shook out her apron as if to empty and dust it of all responsibility for Laura Balm. She declared there was no use; her husband's bed would not hold three-but the young lady should have a good dinner and a chair to rest ' upon. More could not be wrung from possibility. And she went back into the kitchen with both hands upraised in helplessness, as if the greatest of all highwaymen, Fate, had ordered them up, and there was no recourse but to obey. Christmas lumbered away; and soon after, Bill Heintz crept around the back of the hotel, and flattening his face against the kitchen window, espied Laura. Then he crept back, and entering the bar-room, waited for his cronies from Lingard's Mill to come along.

The day that was drawing to its close had been busy and fateful, yet it had not emptied half the happenings it held. Archibald Paton had gone, in the morning, to the old Colonel's bedside, to bid him farewell, and to express contrition for having lost his temper. Care and trouble rode him lightly, and time had already dulled the words that had stung him the day before.

"Come, uncle," said he, "let's be good friends. I'm going back to my work to-day. I'm sorry to upset your plans, but I'm better off as I am than playing the country gentleman; besides, I couldn't change my name. No, really, I couldn't-though I'd do almost anything to oblige you."

"You won't be asked a second time,"