Front matter (continued 5)

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.

The truth is, I wanted to go hunting. It was in my blood that morning, and these beautiful December days with a hazy glow on the blue hills and that stillness that comes like a dropping nut in a forest would put it into anybody's blood, anybody who had it. And when the infection hits you there is only one antidote, a dog, a gun, a tramp over the hills, and—whir! bang! bang!

And to-day was ideal. I had felt it all morning; the cool, bracing air with that little frosty aroma of leaves curling to crispness under the first blight of things, and that other delightful odor of pungent woodland damp with frost-biting dew. And the hills blue and beautiful are alone worth going to meet, and the trees crimson in the hectic flush of the dying year.

Dick, my pointer, was jumping all over me and turning dogsprings of delight.

"Down, Dick! Heigh ho, old boy; that machine is against my religion, but I'd go hunting in a negro hearse to-day. Besides," I said, with a twinge of conscience, "he'll get us to the field in forty minutes, and the little mare is getting old and we've got a late start."

I sighed and felt better. I had fought so long and said so much for the horse, and now—now—it was inexorable; they were being driven to their fate; they had to go before the relentless wheel of progress. I was virtually admitting it, I, who had said I'd never—

I shouldered my gun. Somehow it didn't seem like the old, joyous hunt.

At the front gate the automobile stood, a pretty thing, to be sure. Its owner was smiling, goggle-eyed and all aglow, his hand on the wheel, or whatever you call the steering end of it.

"Jump in, Jack, old man; we must be in a hurry. Slap Dick in there behind with my two setters. Be in a hurry! By George! I know where there are a dozen coveys, and we'll be there in forty minutes. Hi, Dick! What's the matter? Get in! Confound him, what's the matter with that old dog?"

I was lugging Dick and trying to get him in. He was kicking like a half-roped steer. He had always jumped to his place in the little buggy, but now—

I knew what was the matter. Even Dick, dog that he was, had his principles, and he was man enough to say so. While I—

I turned crimson.

"Get in, old boy," I begged. "We'll be there in a jiffy. Dead bird—good doggie."

I got him in, with his head down and his tail between his legs. To all intents he was going to a funeral. I turned quickly away, for I could not stand the scorn and dumb reproach of his eyes. Right then I would have quit and gone back, but I didn't want to hurt my friend's feelings.

"Jump in, jump in, let's be going," he shouted, in his nervous, business way. "Oh, just a minute! There—you're on the ground. Say, here, take this and give that starting crank a turn. I'm not very expert myself," he went on, "and I sometimes forget; but you're on the ground—there—right there!"

I gave her a whirl, several of them. I whirled her like blue blazes. I kept on whirling, while her owner grasped the wheel and his eyes danced nervously, as he expected her to flash into the throb that said steam was on.

But she didn't fire, and I kept cranking.

"Faster, Jack, harder!" he cried.

I whirled and whirled. I began to get warm. The sweat began to pour off.

"Say," I said, gasping for breath, "this beats turning a grindstone. What the devil—"

"Why, I canth—thee," he lisped, "turnth again—quick—a tharp, sthnappy onth!"

I turned her again, quick, sharp and snappy. The thing pulled heavy and felt like an unoiled grindstone, just out of the store. My arms ached, the sweat poured off, and my back was nearly broken.

I gave her a final desperate twist, and—there she was! Dead as a log wagon.

"Confound it," I said, mopping my forehead and staggering up; "I could have curried the mare and hitched her up six times. Why, something's wrong with your old gas wagon," I went on, getting hot. "I'll not turn this crank any more," I said; "I'll be so sore in my arms I couldn't hold my gun straight to-day."

He looked puzzled, annoyed.

"Why, I can't thee—" he began to lisp again.

"What's that you've got in your mouth?" I jerked out. "You don't lisp that way naturally."

A smile broke over his face. He took out a little, black peg, and roared. It was too funny—to him.

"Beg yo' pardon, old boy—beg yo' pardon—ha-ha-ha! Good joke. That's the switch plug. You take it out when the machine's idle, and I forgot to put it back in the little hole. Here," he said, sticking it in, "it connects the current—ha-ha—good joke—now give her a whirl." I gave the whirl, but in no manner to enjoy the joke. I heard her fire up and begin to throb. We moved off beautifully. We began to fly up the smooth pike, my hand back in Dick's collar, for fear he'd jump out and commit suicide. I dared not turn round to look the honest dog in the eyes.

"Fine, fine—ain't this fine, old man?" cried my friend enthusiastically, as he buzzed up the road. "Look at your watch—nine-twenty. Ah, now we'll be in the field at ten sharp—sharp—two good hours for hunting before we eat our pocket lunch.

"Now your little old mare," he laughed, "would take up those fifteen miles by now? Say, ha! ha!—acknowledge the corn, old man—the decree has gone forth—it's all over with the old pacers."

I growled and said nothing. So did Dick. It was good, though, the way we were eating up space and getting nearer to the birds, those game, nervy, whirring birds that dart like winged flashes of thunder before your gun. We whirled over the bridge at the river at lightning speed. I saw the sign up about the fine for going faster than a walk, but how—

"How can an automobile walk—ha! ha!" he shouted, for he had read it also and divined my thoughts and winked knowingly at me. "That applies to horses and jackasses and such," he laughed—"things that walk. But this don't walk, eh?"

Honk! Honk!

He was blowing for a stray mule to get out of his way.

The mule got, tail up, and settled into a barbed wire fence, which he tried to jump, but only succeeded in cutting up his countenance.

Honk! Honk! "Get out of the way, if that's all the sense, you've got. My! but ain't we buzzing?"

I nodded, beginning to become exhilarated myself.

"This is pretty good," I admitted. "I begin to see how you people soon become speed-crazy. We'll get the birds to-day," I warmed up, "and I thank you for—look out! Stop!"

He stopped, but not in time. It was a nervous-looking, old, fleabitten, gray mare, full of Stackpole, Traveler, Dan Rice and Boston blood. I had seen it so often that I knew the very turn of its tail. In the buckboard she was pulling were three country girls, fat, solid, happy, their lines wabbling around anywhere, and the old mare going where she listeth. They were the kind of girls I knew and loved in my sappy days. I used to commence to kiss 'em about Christmas, knowing they'd wake up and respond about the Fourth of July. Two of them amply filled up the buckboard, but, as usual, a third one had piled on top of the others somewhere, and—

"Great heaven, Horace!" I shouted. "Stop—that one there on top is holding a baby!"

I sprang out, for I saw the old mare begin to squat, her old, scared, brown eyes blazing in her white face like holes in a big lard can. I heard her snort like a scared bear and saw her feet pattering jigs all over the pike. Then she whirled, running into a fence, where, between the overturned buckboard, the shafts and the rail fence, she stood wedged upon her hind legs, pawing the air.

But the girls surprised me. Without a change in their fat, immutable, expressionless faces, they simply rolled out on the pike in a bunch, the baby on top, like snow folks tilted over by a boy.

They got up, dusting their frocks. They had taken it for granted. It was all right. There was not a squawk, not even from the baby, as one of them picked it up and I grabbed the bits and straightened out the old mare.

"I hope you ladies aren't hurt," said my friend from the roadside, in his machine.

"Sally, is you hurt?" asked the fattest one.

"Naw," she grunted.

"Mamie, is you?"

Mamie merely wiggled.

"Is Tootsy hurt?"

Tootsy was eating an apple, with unblinking eyes fixed on the wonderful machine.

Nothing was hurt but the harness.

That was hurt before they started, but I had to spend the next twenty minutes patching it up. Finally we got them all in, Tootsy on top. No word had they spoken, but I could see they were eyeing me, with that country suspicion that makes every maid of them rate every man she meets in the road as Lothario, Jr., or a prince in disguise.

"Now, ladies, you are all right," I said, trying to keep cheerful. "And I am so glad none of you was hurt."

Then one of them drawled, but looking over toward the distant horizon, "Ain't you named Mister Jack?"

I turned red and pleaded guilty.

"After all you've writ, I don't think you had oughter done this," she said, and then they all drove sedately off, still looking toward the horizon.

"Now that's the worst thing about automobiles," said Horace, after we started again, "these fool country horses. Why, I waited till this time of day, thinking they'd all be in town by now, for they get up with the chickens. Anyway, we're not likely to meet any more of them."

"I hope not," I sighed, pulling out a cigar and a match, as I'd always done in the buggy. It was blown out before the sulphur burned.

"You can't do that in an automobile," he yelled, "we're going too fast. Like to stop for you, but we're fairly humming—be there in half an hour, old man." Honk! Honk!

We had turned a bend in the road.

"Great Cæsar!" I shouted. "Nobody going to town! Look!"

His jaws dropped. There they were. We could see for half a mile, and so help me heaven, but this was the procession that passed as we pulled out of the narrow pike on the roadside, consumed with impatience to get to the field, the machine throbbing beneath us like a loft over a barn dance:

First an old sorrel mare, a worn-out buggy of the vintage of 1874, and two old ladies.

The whole thing approached gingerly, creeping up like a yellow cat. It was a toss-up as to which of the two's eyes popped the biggest, or which had her mouth shut tightest. The old mare was game, and sidled up, and just as I saw the wheels begin to form in her head the occupants threw down the lines and began to pop two pairs of country-yarned legs out of the two sides of the buggy, exclaiming, "Fur ther Lord's sake thar, Mister, ketch 'er!"

I jumped out and had her by the bits.

One of them relieved herself by spitting snuff over the dashboard, while the other took it out on me, deprecating the day when "Sech folks an' things blocks up ther public trail—an' so help me, ain't that thar Mister Jack, an' my old man bred this mar' by his say so! Jack,—Ananias," she sniffed, as she drove off.

The next were right on us, two slick, three-year-old sugar-mules, hauling a load of darkies. They came on at a rattling clip, making more noise than a freight train, jollying, laughing and cackling. The men were on plank seats across the wagon, the women in high-back hickory chairs, squatting low and feeling as good as Senegambians usually do in a white man's country, where he does all the worrying and thinking and they do all the loafing and eating.

They passed us without a wabble. I expected that, for a mule, like a negro, never sees anything until he has passed it. I saw the gate of the wagon had been taken out in the rear to let the damsels in: also the chickens, the coop of ducks, a bundle of coon-skins, pumpkins, a sack of unwashed wool, some spare ribs and a tub of only such nice chitlings as a country mammy can prepare. They passed, and then the scare got into those three-year-old corn feds good by way of their tails. For I saw these straighten out first, then their ears. I saw the big driver fall back on the lines, and—

"Whoa, dar!"

They jumped twenty feet in the first jump, and ran half a mile in spite of his lugging and sawing. But the first jump was enough. The damage was done then, for everything in it but the driver, who held on to the reins, came boiling out of the rear. Up the road for half a mile was a telegraph line of chitlings, the rest were mixed up. They all rose but one damsel, weighing close to 468 pounds. She sat still. A young buck went to help her up.

"G'way f'm heah, nigger, wait till I see ef my condiments is busted," she cried, feeling her sides and her chest. "'Sides, I wants Brer Simon to hope me up."

Brother Simon helped her and she was all right.

We gave her a dollar and the others a quarter each. It was expensive, but I deemed it just.

The following then passed with more or less hesitancy, shying and plunging: a surrey and team; a boy and his best girl; a log wagon and four mules, the leaders rushing by in terror, pulling the wheelers by the neck, as they were trying to go the other way.

Then came Old 'Squire Jones on his roan Hal pacer. The horse got half-way by before he decided that the goggle eyes on the roadside had him. Well—no goggle eyes had ever caught any of his tribe—not yet! In bucking to wheel, he tapped the old 'Squire in the mouth with his poll. The old man had been raised a Presbyterian, with Baptist propensities, and he made the ozone sulphuric. He brought his horse back to the scratch, spurring and swearing. It was all right this time, till the old horse looked into the back of the machine. True to the fool in his pedigree, he knew what the machine was, because he had never seen one before; but the dogs—they were things he had seen all his life, and he bolted backward again, jamming the old 'Squire's stomach against the pommel and his back against the cantle. It was the time to go, and we shot out, leaving the old horse waltzing into town on his hind legs.

"I didn't hear his last remarks," I said, as we went along. "They seemed to be rather personal."

"Let 'em go," said Horace. "You wouldn't want to put them in your scrap-book."

"I don't think the mare and buggy would have made us all these enemies," I remarked, "and we would have been there by now. Do you know it's eleven o'clock?"

"We've got a fine run, now," he apologized. "We'll be there in thirty minutes."

"We'll be there by night," I snarled. "Say, we'll just call it a possum hunt, eh?"

This made him mad, and he did not speak till he got to the big hill.

Here at the foot we stopped and sat, throbbing.

Horace fumbled with a side brake a moment, touched a pedal and looked wise.

"What's all this for?" I said.

"I'm resting for a little headway before taking that steep hill. And say, while we're at it, you ought to know something about a machine, you might be called on to help me in an emergency."

I turned pale. Up to this time I had felt secure. Now I understood something of the feelings of that pair of mules that never saw danger until they had passed it.

"Why, I thought you knew all about it," I began.

"Of course I do, but something might happen to me. You might be thrown on your own resources. Now here," he went on. "This little lever on the wheel is the spark-control—it quickens things—the next one is the throttle; that means more power. This is the switch-plug here: this is the clutch, and this the brake. Now, remember, and watch me start."

He did, the thing starting slowly up the hill and then beginning to go in little jumps, exactly like a horse galloping.

"Pull him down," I growled, "he's broken his gait." For I felt every moment as if it would soon wabble and quit. But he kept galloping and I settled down and began unconsciously to wabble my body as I would in motion to a galloping horse. I couldn't help it. I glanced at Horace, he was doing the same, but hitching at the side lever all the time, and we were bobbing like two Muscovy ducks over a mud hole.

It was uncomfortable, it was uncanny.

"Confound you," I growled, "I tell you the thing's galloping—he's all tangled up; bring him down."

Snap went something, and Horace breathed easy.

"All right now," he said, as we began to climb the hill beautifully. Over the top we went, and then—down—down! How she did fly! My heart jumped into my throat! I held my breath and felt that same feeling I used to feel pumping in a swing when I'd soar up to the top and start down again, the same when I started down the elevator from the 19th story of the Masonic Temple and felt my legs give way and threw my arms around the neck of the elevator boy and begged him for heaven's sake to stop until I got my breath and my legs in speaking distance of each other, and collected the rest of myself.

"Stop her," I cried, "down-this-hill-I'm-feeling-queer-Lord-I'm-stop, I tell you!"

"It's easy," he laughed. "Do it yourself—on that brake—there—just to teach you—there!"

Gasping for breath and pale with fright, I kicked up a little pedal.

The thing jumped twenty feet!

"Don't!" I heard him yell, "Good Lord, that's the throttle!"

I saw a big ditch on the other side of us. I saw his hand dart quickly to his side.

Like all man and woman-kind, in emergencies with a horse, I do the fool thing, grab at the reins. This instinct overpowered me. I grabbed the brakes to help him. I over-did it. It stopped too quickly; it actually kicked up behind. It stopped like a twelve-inch ball striking armor plate. I went over clear across the ditch. The three dogs were faithful and they followed.

Horace tried it, but the steering wheel stopped him.

"It was my fault," I said, as I limped up, after the dogs got off of me. "I grabbed at your reins, I guess—thought you were running away."

But the sudden stop had sprung something, and Horace was out fixing it. He had pulled off his cap and got under the machine, and I saw the beaded sweat begin to rise on the crown of his bald head, like bubbles on a mill pond.

This did me a world of good. I lighted a cigar, propped up and began to smoke.

For half an hour he tinkered and tinkered. I smoked and gave him such bits of sarcastic encouragement as happened into my head. I reminded him that Tempus was fugiting, and that it was already quite 9:50 and we were still ten miles from nowhere; that the little mare would have been there by now, and we would still have some friends left on the pike.

"Consider the lilies that ride in automobiles," I quoted, "they toil not, neither do they spin, and yet I say unto you that old gray mare, in all her glory, never worked as hard as you are working now."

It was my time, and Dick and I enjoyed it, sensible dog that he was. After every bit of such talk he'd wink and fairly guffaw.

Horace was working hard. He was groveling in the dirt to do it, too, and that suited me also. I could gauge his efforts by the sweat drops that arose on his bald spot, growing and then bursting like soap bubbles, to roll down his collar.

"Plague it!" he said at last, rising, "I can't see very well without my glasses. Say, stop your guying, now, and look under here and see if you can see what's wrong."

I got out as leisurely as a lord; all I could see was a small coil of wire, red hot. "I see it," I said, solemnly. "The thing's appendix is red hot. Give me an axe and I'll open it up."

Dick howled with delight. I thought he'd die. Horace smiled grimly, but it was a smile that said, "I'll even this up yet."

"Put in your shells; we'll hunt around toward that farm house, and up there I'll 'phone to town and have Smith come out and fix it."

Thus he spoke, and I agreed. In fact, there was nothing else to do. We rolled the machine aside, the dogs were let out, and we were soon quartering a field toward a farm house.

"Whose place is this?" I asked, as the dogs began to hunt down the wind.

"Old Bogair's, a French Canadian. He came here three years ago from Canada; ticklish old fellow, but he knows me, and it's all right."

I felt secure, for while the game law is very strict, requiring written permission to hunt on one's premises, intended as a guard against pot hunters, no gentleman ever objected to another hunting on his farm.

We started through a cedar wood in a gladey spot and I saw Dick beginning to nose the wind and to throw up his head for quail. Then I heard my companion calling lustily for me to come. I rushed up, Dick at my heels.

"What is it?" I asked.

"A coon—a big coon—up in that cedar tree. Get on the other side, quick!"

I ran around, and, sure enough, up among the branches, trying to hide, but showing the end of a brindled and streaked tail, was the coon.

In a trice I let him have it, and he came crashing through the branches. Dick ran up and seized it, shaking. I saw yellow eyes, ears laid back, and the coon spitting and fighting for life. It was dying, but struck out, tearing Dick's nose to threads. I ran up and planted the heel of my hunting boot on its neck, while Dick howled with his lacerated nose.

"That's a funny looking coon," I said, as I eyed the thing suspiciously. I heard Horace laugh and saw him turn and make a break for the road. I looked up. Old Bogair had run up, red-faced and breathless.

"By gar," he yelled, as soon as he saw what I'd done, "vut fur you keeled ze house cat fur? Vut fur?"

It was true; but never had I seen a tomcat look more like a coon. On a distant hillside I could see my deserting friend rolling on the grass and shouting.

In vain I apologized. Old Bogair kept dancing around and shouting, "Vut fur you keel ze house cat fur? Vut fur?"

"What are you damaged?" I said at last, with disgust.

"Ah, en passant—dees one from T'ronto, I breeng. Hee's registraire—fife taller, an' fife fur treespaire."

I paid it like a man. Old Bogair smiled and bowed, with his hand on his stomach.

"Eet vus all right now."

I took up the cat by the tail.

"Vut fur? You don't vant heem?" he gasped.

"Yes, I do," I said, hotly. "He's mine. I've paid for him and I want to take him over yonder and rub him under the nose of that villain that induced me to go hunting in an automobile and steered me on the premises of a damned Dago who keeps registered cats that look exactly like coons when up a tree."

He thought I was complimenting him.

"Voilà—I t'ank you," he said, bowing again, with his hand on his stomach.

I hunted around an hour before I went to the machine. I waited to cool off. Dick found a fine covey, and I missed them right and left. I had lost my nerve and my luck.

When I reached the machine, Horace was in, blinking, and we said not a word. It was my time to freeze. Smith had run out from town and fixed it. A little wire the size of a pencil-point had got an inch out of place, and it had been as dead as a log wagon on us.

It was now exactly 3:30, but we decided we still had a chance to get a covey. We made the next three miles in beautiful time, meeting only one man driving a game, high-headed horse that swept by us without giving us the least notice.

"If they were all bred like that one," I said, "a man in a machine might think he had some rights on the road."

"Glad you are beginning to see the other side," said Horace.

"We'll be there by four," he said; "just the time the birds begin to feed good. Oh, we'll get a few yet. It's a long lane, you know. Our luck is turning."

"This is fun," I said, as we flew along the newly-graveled road parallel with the creek, "fine, give it to her."

The scenery was beautiful; the bluffs were draped in clustering red berries, and the woods old gold and crimson. The water foamed over the lime rocks, glowing iridescent in the sun, and the air was bracing as we buzzed along.

Honk! Honk! "Let her out!" I cried, as a touch of speed mania got into me. "Say, I see how it is," I said, "why a man soon gets the speed mania in him. Horsemen can't blame you, for they have got it, too."

"Oh, we're riding," he cried. "You have an hour yet."

We were indeed riding, along a narrow path of the road rising to a rather abrupt hill. Rising and peeping over, I saw a long procession of creeping things, their ears just shining above the hill we were both ascending.

"Halt! Stop!" I cried.

It was too late, everlastingly too late! We were meeting a negro funeral procession, that of good old Uncle Thomas, as good an old time darky as ever lived. I had known him well, a fellow of infinite jest. But I did not recognize him promptly now.

I hate to write what followed. I felt faint and sick.

Be it known that every negro loves to be buried behind white mules. It is his glory and his religion. This kind was hauling Uncle Thomas. Now, a white mule is an old mule, and the older the mule, the bigger the fool, and when they peeped over the top of that hill, only to butt into a goggle-eyed demon, they did what mules always do. When I first saw them I was looking at the north end of that negro hearse. The next instant I was looking at the south end. And as the thing turned over once to adjust itself to different direction, a venerable old darkey shot out of the rear end of that hearse, followed by a two-dollar coffin, and everything in that two miles of vehicles turned tail at the same time.

I jumped out, grabbing my hunting coat, which I knew held a flask of whiskey, and rushed pell-mell through the woods for the creek bank. All I wanted was a little water in that whiskey.

After satisfying myself I would not faint, I went back in time to see that everything had been fixed and the procession headed north again.

"No, sah, it didn't hurt Brer Thomas," the preacher was explaining to Horace; "but it did upsot some of the sisterin, an' they fainted when he come outer the back end of that kerridge so nachul an' briefly. No, sah; nobody's hurt, sah; it wuz jes' a sivigerus accerdent."

"How much money have you, Horace? I've spent all mine on dead and registered cats," I said, bitterly.

He had plenty, and tipped the whole two miles of them, as they passed by, singing: "Jordan is a hard road to travel."

Never had that old song seemed so real to me!

"I stop right here," I said, after assuring myself that I would not faint again. "The sun is setting; we've been out all day, and found nothing but a cat and a corpse."

Our experience had taken our nerve, and we waited two hours by the roadside, way after dark, until we'd seen everything we met in the morning go back home.

Then we lit up, and reached home at ten o'clock.

Eloise and the twins met me at the gate, scared to death.

"So glad you're safe," she cried, kissing me. "I know you've got a full bag, you've never failed, and, oh, dearie, I've invited a dozen ladies over to-morrow for lunch, promising quail on toast, so I hope nothing has happened."

By this time one of the twins was climbing over me, shouting, "Daddy, show me old Bob White—show me old Brer Rabbit." And the other echoed, "Daddy, show me old Bob White—show me old Brer Rabbit."

The bitterness of it went into me.

"Quail on toast?" I cried with sarcasm. "Change it now, my dear; write them all a note at once and tell them tomcat is better, for that's all I've killed to-day! Just make it tomcat on toast!"

Eloise looked at me curiously. "Jack, I believe you have taken one of those cheap drinks."

"One?" I said. "I drank a flask of it. I had to or faint when I saw poor old Uncle Thomas come out of the rear end of that hearse as natural as life."

"Oh!" said Eloise, putting her fingers in her ears. "Come in, dearie, and I'll give you another, poor dear!"

But it was rubbed in on me that night. It was midnight when Eloise came to my room. I heard one of the twins crying. "Come here, Jack," she said laughing. "One of them wants you, has waked up crying for you."

She was sitting up in bed and her lamentations were loud. At sight of me she broke out, "Daddy—you brought sister a dead cat and—and—wouldn't—bring me—me—one!"

To jolly her into good humor, as I often did, I picked her up and turned her a somersault in the bed: I was unfortunate again—that accursed cat and automobile!

Accidentally her head was bumped.

In blazing indignation, she sat up and spat upon me!

I retreated as best I could: "Your mother will spank you for that"—I said.

She quieted—ashamed: but almost instantly the other one sat up in bed, crying lustily.

"What do you want?" I said. "I thought you were asleep."

"Tum back here," she wailed heart-brokenly, "and let me spit on you too!"

I heard Eloise laugh.

"Hang an automobile and a dead cat," I said, as I went out—"they are two Jonahs that will always smell alike to me hereafter!"

CHAPTER V

THE SICK TREE

The going of my old grandsire was pathetic, for towards the last he lost interest in the living, in everything except the great elm he had always loved because his mother had nursed him under it.

"And it is dying, Jack, just as I am going; but I do so want it to live until I am gone!"

"It shall, Grandfather," I said, "it is sick, but with a little surgery I can save it. It shall live twenty years longer."

The old tree, tall and beautiful even in death, was half rotted as it stood. Any violent wind was likely to snap it off. Any great storm would beat it to the earth.

Every morning the old man would rise and look first of all to see if his tree was still standing.

He was greatly interested in the way I cured it. I cut away the dead rot up the entire trunk; and when I had finished, little, except a shell, remained. Into this I drove a section of iron railing from a railway track, fully fifteen feet high, driven five feet into the ground, down among the old roots of the tree. Around this and entirely filling the hollow to the top of the iron rail, I poured cement, casing it in to fit the old body that was gone, tucking sheets of zinc under the edges of the bark whose layers carry the sap up and down.

When this was painted and treated to a coating of tar, it looked like the great tree in its youth, and under a strong wind it swayed, supported by the cement and its rod of steel, with all the strength of its younger days.

There one evening, clasping it in the twilight, we found the old General asleep. It was the last sleep of a second childhood, and having no mother for the lullaby, he had slept, his arms around the tree she had loved.

The sun had set; the twilight had come; the great trees shadowed the eternal hills.

The old warrior had died a tree-lover; the young tree-lover had been forced, of God, to fight.

We plan, and, like the rough ashlar, we cut and hew; but the Sculptor is God....

I do not know why Eloise should have risked it, but she did; and though I would not have her try it again for The Home Stretch nor feel again that memory-pang of horror when, for one brief second, I saw what she meant to do, yet when it was done my heart beat fiercely with pride and love for her. How blessed are those children who have a mother both brave and beautiful!

We had ridden to town one day, as we often did when the weather was fit. And for a pretense she had me ride out to the Fair Grounds to see a new colt in training. I suspect she had fixed it all before; for I had seen her practicing Satan on nearly every little ride, at jumps, stone walls, mainly, and old rail fences up to four feet.

"Oh, it's just to see if age and the campaigns of honorable war," she laughed, "have stiffened the old fellow's muscles or softened his heart"; and she would reach over and pat his great neck.

At the track the old bars stood across.

I sickened at the sight of them, remembering. But Eloise, pretending not to notice, glanced quickly at me.

"Who's put them back there?" I asked, paling with fear of my own suspicion. "I'll tear them down now and burn them," I said, dismounting quickly.

But Eloise was too quick for me. Even Satan knew her thought and at the sound of her bantering laugh and the old sideway flash of the whip above his ears, he flew like a winged horse at the bars.

I did not breathe, when, for one short, awful moment, I saw them mount straight up toward the sky. Then, realizing that age and service had hampered his driving power behind, the game horse threw his front easily over, and like a great see-saw swung across, bringing his rear limbs, not straight, to tap the bars and be tangled, but sidewise and parallel, barely saving his neck!

"Well, I did it!" She rode up laughing, Satan trembling so with excitement and the effort I could see his knees quivering, his flank fluttering wildly. And in Eloise's face there was the white flag of peril yet lingering before the red of victory.

She rode up close to me, her eyes lit with the tenderness of love's light, and bedewed with its tears: "Kiss me, Jack, dearest—for that is what I had sworn all the time I would do. If—if they had only let me break the world's record that first time."

THE END