and something had wiped the smile from the kindly mouth.

One of the men who had taken An

gelo out came back presently and spoke to Peppina.

'Your husband wants to see you, Mrs. Martini,' he said. "They've arranged to send him off by the early train to-morrow. He thinks you better say good-bye now.'

'Good-bye?' Peppina cried. 'Che cosa? What is it? Aggie! Oh, somebody have put the evil eye on her. No good-bye! No!'

Mrs. Harrigan turned her face to the messenger, and the sweat broke out suddenly on her forehead and the backs of her hands.

"They're takin' him off to state's prison early to-morrow,' the man murmured hurriedly. "You tell her.'

'Listen, darlin',' explained Aggie. 'He wants to say good-bye. Just for a little while it is. Don't cry now, don't you. Come then, Aggie'll go with you if you're scared.?

And when she had put the two frightened, babbling little creatures into each other's arms, she waited within the door, wrapped in the pall of her heart-breaking thoughts. The Latin tears and cries, the raging torrent of Italian words, flowed round and over her, but she sat as one bespelled in the midst of a strange silence, all her grotesque ornaments emphasizing her tragedy. Once, a loud cry woke her for a moment, and Peppina had flung herself at Angelo's feet and was pouring forth a wild, unintelligible prayer. Again, she heard her name, 'Aggie!' and when she looked, Angelo had clapped his hand over Peppina's mouth.

'She want to go state's prison in my place,' he explained. 'Ain't she love me, yes? But I tell her who will take care of those bambini? You kind woman, Mrs. Harrigan; you take my Peppina home.'

'Oh, my God, Mr. Martini!' Aggie cried. 'You to call me a kind woman!' 'Kind woman, yes,' he repeated; and kissing Peppina, he pushed them both to the door.

In the Harrigan kitchen, when they had had a comforting hot drink of tea and were sitting drooped over by the stove, Aggie put out her hand suddenly, exclaiming,

'I have to open my mouth this much, if I die for it. Listen, dearie, you need n't to think I think he done it. I know it was n't him, for I know the one that did.'

'You know?' cried Peppina.

'Yes, poor darlin', don't you be worryin'; I know.'

'Oh, how you know?' Peppina marveled. 'You see me make that fire? You see me? W'ere was you?'

'Seen you make that fire?' Aggie fell back in her chair. "Whatever are you sayin'?'

'Ah, you hear me tell my Angelo I make that fire, yes! He think, but he not know. I tell him yes, I make it. You un'nerstan' Italian, I am glad.' Peppina beamed her relief.

'Peppina,' Aggie's voice was very carefully gentle. 'Did you set fire to your shop?'

'Sure!'

Into the stillness that followed this announcement, Officer Harrigan's loud boots came tramping cheerfully, and at sight of him his wife leaped from her chair.

'Jim! Jim!' she cried. 'It was n't you set the shop afire! It was n't you!'

"Tell me somethin' I did n't know,' he retorted. 'Say, Aggie, are you crazy?'

'It's her,' was the lucid reply. 'She done it.'

'Done what?'

'Fired that shanty.'

'Lord!' Officer Harrigan gaped at Peppina.

'We go to the parade,' she explained, 'yes. Ebbene, I say to Angelo I go to make a prayer in San Giuseppi, and I go in San Giuseppi, and Angelo he have the bambini on the avenue. And I buy candle, beata,-holy- and I will light to Madonna by my - how you call? - my leetle Madonna in my house. Also, I put kerosene, a leetle; and my candle is light and I make - in that dump in the alley.'

Officer Harrigan regarded the incendiary with something very like admiration. 'Well, she sure had us fooled, now did n't she?' he said to his wife; and then the broad grin faded from his face. 'God! Aggie!' he cried. "You thought it was me!'

'And why would n't I?' she asked him, quietly. 'You goin' out of here with a rag soaked in karosene.'

'I was goin' to scare him,' he stammered. 'I was goin' to light it under the garbage and bring him to it and tell him I knew he done it.'

'And where's the difference?' "The difference! When I'd stamp it out under my foot and no harm done?' 'I can't see no difference.'

He stared at her helplessly. 'You mean you think I'd go to set fire to a house? Why, that's bein' a criminal, Aggie. That's arson.'

'You don't report old man Nolan to the Board of Health; and there's that bad house up street; and you did n't run in the barkeeper to the corner saloon that time

"Will you shut your mouth!' he threatened. "Tellin' all you know right out in front of this Guinea. I wonder you're willin' to live with me, the way you talk.'

'Oh, Jim,' she said gently, 'for two hours I been thinkin' you was lettin' another man go to state's prison in your place.'

She covered her face with her hands, and stood silent in the middle of the kitchen. It seemed a long time that she stood there with her face hidden.

When he spoke, his bluster had died out and his voice was husky. 'I wonder if I would?' he said. And presently, 'Nor he never done it, neither. Would n't that jar you! But the boys'll be glad to make up a purse for the kids; I can do that much.'

'You'll do more,' said Aggie, lifting her head with returning energy. 'You 'll go to the Governor for a pardon, that's what you'll do. You can tell him the truth of it for once, and if he don't believe you, take Peppina along. Now get busy.'

'I will that,' Harrigan cried. 'I'll begin to pull the wires to-morrow. Sure, Mrs. Martini, we'll have Angelo out inside of six months.'

'And those insurance?' asked Peppina. "Those t'ree hun' doll'?'

With uplifted eye and arm and voice, Officer Harrigan apostrophized the ceiling. 'Say, how you goin' to make a woman understand? - I give it up.'

I

ONE by one in recent years various new theories of literary practice have been put before us, all wearing a brave air as of triumphing revolutionists, and filled with prophecy of art marching on to new conquests. But yesterday that which was called realism in drama and fiction carried the banner; to-day it is the new poetry. Minor thistledown creeds of the last few years, such as futurism, it is hardly necessary to mention; the great winds of life have already blown them away. In following all this progress one cannot help being struck by a certain boldness of critical claim and manifesto, a certain timidity, usually, in the art product. This verse which casts off shackles of old form and claims for itself a new freedom; fiction which confines itself to putting down without bias that which the novelist has actually observed in life; drama which presents flashes of that which the dramatist has seen and felt, without the binding relationship of inevitability and the renunciation of the irrelevant, characteristic of great drama of old, are, after all, but negatively bold, daring only in the matter of externals, and almost pusillanimous in regard to the sterner demands of art.

We who watch and wait and listen for the interpreters to speak are conscious of a deeper need, a deeper lack. Looking at the new poetry in its whimsical fragmentariness; at the fiction which, in its dreary succession of meaningless details, too often borrows the

great misleading name of realism, one is forced to confess that the great lack of the literary art of to-day and of the nearer yesterdays is lack of imagination, of the divining power of imagination, piercing to profound significances; of the shaping power of imagination, that gift whereby genius shows to the world its ability to clothe in outer terms of reality its inner vision of reality. Where among all the singers, most welcome singers, of to-day shall we find one with the great accent, the great penetration? Born in an age of analysis, of severing, pulling apart, they lack — perhaps it could not be otherwise constructive idealism, faith, vision. Their art is an art of flickers of insight, flashes of suggestion, question, recording momentary impression, denying us that guiding thread of interpretation of existence which is the artist's chief task.

This furtive and questioning art, halting, apologetic, of what is it afraid? Afraid of the new knowledge and half knowledge of to-day, of discoveries made by our age in the physical world; afraid of the limitations of knowledge by which science is bound; awed by methods of investigation of those who count as truth but that delivered to them by eye and ear; afraid of asserting something that microscope or telescope will not confirm; terrorized, paralyzed by discoveries in the physical world which, after all, remain discoveries in the physical world! When before in earth's history have the poets, the diviners and seers, been so cowed