brought fabulous prices is well remembered, and likewise when the genuine Rocky Ford, Colorado, cantaloupe was in reach only of the rich. So it will be with the apple of the Pacific Northwest, handsome to perfection though that fruit is.

But the New England Baldwin will endure. It is a staple, tried in many markets not only of England, but of all Continental Europe. Its fame even extends to South America. Each autumn a Christmas ship sails from Boston with a cargo of Massachusetts apples for the people of far-away Argentine.

Last fall the writer went up to one of the hill towns and picked the apples of his orchard which was set out by his grandfather when the writer was a boy. Well he remembers the time those trees were set, for he held the slender saplings and squinted down

the rows to see that they were in line while the men shovelled in the loam about them.

If you would enjoy a mellow October day to the full, go where the Baldwins are growing thickly. Get a ladder and a basket with an iron hook to hang it by. From a rung high up among the branches see how the sunlight radiates from the rosy-checked fruit.

But if you cannot do this, step around the corner to the fruit store and buy a dozen Mackintosh Reds or Northern Spies. If when you pare them you fail to discern your sweetheart's initials formed by the spiral links of the parings,-the sweetheart days, mayhap, having gone by,-you will at least taste one of the most luscious fruits of the earth. To paraphrase a well known saying, "God might have made a better fruit-but He never did!"

Y

ES, they were talking English. Howard had not heard the sound for nearly two months, and that last time he had promptly gotten out of its neighborhood without being discovered. His first impulse now was of flight, his next of resignation, since he could hardly expect immunity from tourists within a mile or so of Nice. Perhaps, even, it was some unacknowledged tug of homesickness for the speech and sight of his kind that had drawn him thither. Moreover, one of the girls had a pleasant voice-American, obviously, but neither shrill nor nasal, and he felt a vague curiosity to know whether her face matched it. This reconciled him to the otherwise annoying fact that the whole gang seemed to be approaching his retreat, which he had picked out for the double virtue of the view it commanded and its seclusion from the highroad. It was on the very backbone ridge of Mont Boron.

He intended to have a look at all these worldlinesses and then go back into the unspoiled mediaeval Provence he had discovered.

Ah, here came the walking party! In the van were two English girls with their Mamma. They wore their front hair in a "fringe" to their eyebrows, covered with a net, and their back hair in a coil, also covered with a net. Their teeth were too profuse, but their complexions were lovely, and they looked healthy and wholesome. There were two French girls also, dressed exactly alike, chic rather than pretty,but, Lord, how they rolled their eyes! No, they weren't Howard's style. His compatriot came last. He hadn't seen a girl in a white shirt-waist and a tailor skirt for a long time, and the sight was really rather pleasant. Her trim,

American shoes set something vibrating, too. The French girls were teetering along on high heels and pointed toes-the most absurd outfit for clambering over rocks-and the English contingent, going in for comfort and solidity, outraged the esthetic sensibilities of the beholder. What a funny collection of imitation men they had along with them! There were a couple of sissy American boys-just the kind one would expect to find loafing around Europe with their mothers and sisters instead of hustling with their fathers at home-and several young Frenchmen wearing the most ultra-English clothes and talking a wonderful hybrid jargon full of English sporting terms hardly recognizable through their French pronunciation. There was one Frenchman, though, who was different. His clothes were not in the least English. They were obviously local and worn in a sort of picturesque disorder. He wore a turnover collar and a carelessly knotted necktie with floating ends. He had a closely trimmed, pointed, black beard, black eyes full of animation, rich, opulent coloring, and red, red lips showing full under his moustache. "A good Provencal type, all right, but I'll wager ten to one his collar isn't clean on the inside," commented Howard to himself, which shows that he was not emancipated from Anglo-Saxon prejudices. One of the sissy boys now approached, lifting his hat with an imitation French manner and beginning "Pardon, Monsieur, mais

"I still understand English," observed Howard, with uncalled-for severity.

"Oh, yes, to be sure," stammered the boy. "We wanted to know if we can find a good road down to Nice from the

go back the way we came?" "Can't say, replied Howard. "Haven't been to Nice yet by any road. You can look at this if you like."

He took a road map from his breast pocket and handed it to the youth, who spread it out and became, with several other members of the party, absorbed in arguing over possible routes.

"What is the old fort?" asked Howard, idly, glancing along the ridge at the picturesque structure which occupied its highest point beyond where the pine trees stopped.

"Chateau Mont Alban."

"What period does it date from?" The answer was a polite shrug, indicating indifference as well as ignorance. Evidently these were not people who interested themselves in history.

"I wonder if it was a Saracen stronghold, or if some old Count of Anjou or Toulouse built it to keep the Saracens off?" Howard mused aloud.

"It is very old," the young man nearest him replied with obliging vagueness.

"Monsieur understands French?" asked the man with the pointed beard. Howard bowed assent.

"It dates only from the reign of Louis XIV." he said. "It was one of a chain of forts built along this coast by the illustrious engineer, Vauban. If Monsieur is interested in antiquities, I can show him relics of the Saracen period, of the Roman, the Greek and the Phoenician. The whole human race first and last have passed along this enchanted azure coast."

"Thank you," said Howard. "I am interested, and it is a pleasure to talk with one so well informed."

"Ah, these others are all strangers like yourself," he replied, courteously exculpating his friends from any implied charge of ignorance.

"Why didn't you ever tell me about your Romans and Greeks and Saracens, Monsieur Brun?" asked the American girl. "Somehow one never thinks of history in connection with Nice."

"Ah, Mademoiselle," he cried dramatically, "neither does one think of

young lady. To you Nice is-is she not?-a city of gaiety, of flowers, of blue skies, of cosmopolitan society, of dances, theatres, tennis, races, a mise-enscene seduisante where you break the hearts of your many unhappy admirers. Nice is for you a mondaine elegante et coquette. She belongs to the present— all-all to the very present moment. What have you to do with mouldy, longdead Greeks? But to me, a Nicois, an artist, a poet, a man of letters, a browser among library shelves, reconstructing in my imagination the past— the many pasts-of my beloved city is my most cherished pastime. When the present looks vapid and frivolous, I have only to put on my historic spectacles and I see that wooded promontory between the port and the new_city crowned with a Greek acropolis. I see the Phoenician traders hauling their triremes up on the beach as the fishermen do with their boats to-day. I see them trying to persuade the simple aboriginal Ligurians to do all their business with them and avoid those perfidious Phoenicians who have erected a temple to their god, Hercules, on the rock where the Prince of Monaco now takes tribute from the rich and foolish. I see the legions of Rome marching from Italy along the march Aurelian way-to conquer Gaul, to conquer Spain, to conquer Britain. You know where the road ran? Past La Turbie up yonder where Augustus built his big monument to celebrate his victories over those poor devils of natives, past Eze, then back of the hills by the same route as the Corniche now follows, to Cimiez, which was an important place in those days,-seat of a Roman governor with baths and circus and luxurious villas. And there were mondaines elegantes then, the same as now, and foolish poets who broke their hearts for them."

He sighed, placed his hand over his cardiac region, looked unutterable things at the feminine part of his audience, and went on with the greatest animation pointing out objects of historic interest, skimming over the events

which had most affected the immortal city which bears to this day its Greek name of Victory.

Yonder, back in the valley, did they see that old convent with the tower? Not very interesting architecturally, but it was built by the brother of Charlemagne for one of the earliest communities of Benedictines. It was built on the spot where the first bishop of Nice, Saint Pone, was beheaded by order of the Emperor Claudius in the third century. And now it has been bought by the city to be turned into a hospital for contagious diseases. Autre temps, autres moeurs, but it's still working for the good of humanity. . Yonder, in the opposite direction, that third promontory, the faint one, is Cape Saint Martin. The Empress Eugenie has her villa down there. That in itself is interesting. Surely no century ever produced a more touchingly poetic personage with a more appealingly tragic history? There used to be a convent on the point in the days when the Saracens roved the seas and made descents on Christian coasts. The abbess was afraid of Saracens and got the villagers of Roquebrune on the hillside to promise that they would come down to her aid if she rang the convent bell. But she was a nervous soul and kept wondering whether they would really come. So she rang the bell one night to test them. Down they rushed pell-mell, brandishing their weapons to save the holy maidens from the wicked Saracens. The abbess made her excuses and sent them back. But now she worried more than ever, fearing they would. not come because she had fooled them once. So she rang again, and again they came, and again she blessed them and sent them home. And now she worried for fear they would no longer come because she had fooled them twice. So she rang again, and they came again—but not quite so many of them, nor were they quite so goodnatured about the blessing and the excuses. The fourth time the convent bell rang they all turned over in their beds with a grin and went to sleep again, and the next morning they saw

the smoke curling up from the ruins of the pillaged convent and far off on the horizon the tiny sails of the Saracen fleet carrying away the abbess and her nuns to grace the Kaliph's harem.

"Oh," said the girl, "it seems to have served the abbess rather right for being such a goose. But I'm sorry for the poor nuns."

"Perhaps they didn't mind," suggested the narrator with a leery twinkle in his eye that made Howard, who had been keenly enjoying his fervid oration hitherto, suddenly ache to seize him by the collar and shake him.

The girl said nothing, but turned. away sharply.

At that moment the rest of the party, after indescribable confusion and argument, had decided on their route and came up to return the map to Howard. "You are wheeling?" said one of them, glancing at his recumbent bicycle.

"I am."

"Don't you find it tiresome?” "Not at all."

"Are you just over from Mentone or all the way from Italy?"

He

"Neither. From back there." waved his hand towards the hills piled up inland. "Really?" "Indeed?"

The announcement made quite a sensation.

"We have very few visitors arriving from that side," observed the self-accused poet. "What route did you follow ?"

"Just now I come from the shrine of our Lady of Laghet, which I reached by a wild little path from the most picturesque eagle's nest of a fortified village I ever saw-Peillon."

"Ah, ah, ah, I see I have discovered a brother poet!"

"Not at all," said Howard, repentant of his momentary expansion. "Your eloquence, Monsieur, was contagious.

But it is true that I like your hilltop villages and miracle-working virgins better than I expect to like the casinos and cafes of Nice."

"Yes, yes," said the Frenchman.