and so would you, if you had heard how it creaked under the load, how they piled in great straw panniers of apples: black apples with yellow hearts, scarlet veined, golden pippin apples, that held the warmth and light longest, — russet apples with a hot blush on their rough brown skins,plums shining coldly in their delicate purple bloom, - peaches with the crimson velvet of their cheeks aglow with the prisoned heat of a hundred summer days.

I wish with all my heart some artist would paint me Lois and her cart! Mr. Kitts, the artist in the city then, used to see it going past his room out by the coal-pits every day, and thought about it seriously. But he had his grand battlepiece on hand then,-and after that he went the way of all geniuses, and died down into colorer for a photographer. He met them, that day, out by the stone quarry, and touched his hat as he returned Lois's "Good-morning," and took a couple of great papaws from her. She was a

woman, you see, and he had some of the schoolmaster's old-fashioned notions about women. He was a sickly-looking soul. One day Lois had heard him say that there were papaws on his mother's place in Ohio; so after that she always brought him some every day. She was one of those people who must give, if it is nothing better than a Kentucky banana.

After they passed the stone quarry, they left the country behind them, going down the stubble-covered hills that fenced in the town. Even in the narrow streets, and through the warehouses, the strong, dewy air had quite blown down and off the fog and dust. Morning (town morning, to be sure, but still morning) was shining in the red window-panes, in the tossing smoke up in the frosty air, in the very glowing faces of people hurrying from market with their noses nipped blue and their eyes watering with cold. Lois and her cart, fresh with country breath hanging about them, were not so out of place, after all. House-maids left the steps half-scrubbed, and helped her measure out the corn and becas,

gossiping eagerly; the newsboys "Hi-d!” at her in a friendly, patronizing way; women in rusty black, with sharp, pale faces, hoisted their baskets, in which usually lay a scraggy bit of flitch, on to the wheel, their whispered bargaining ending oftenest in a low "Thank ye, Lois!"-for she sold cheaper to some people than they did in the market.

Lois was Lois in town or country. Some subtile power lay in the coarse, distorted body, in the pleading child's face, to rouse, wherever they went, the same curious, kindly smile. Not, I think, that dumb, pathetic eye, common to deformity, that cries, "Have mercy upon me, O my friend, for the hand of God hath touched me!"-a deeper, mightier charm, rather: a trust down in the fouled fragments of her brain, even in the bitterest hour of her bare, wretched life,—a faith, faith in God, faith in her fellow-man, faith in herself. No human soul refused to answer its summons. Down in the dark alleys, in the very vilest of the black and white wretches that crowded sometimes about her cart, there was an undefined sense of pride in protecting this wretch whose portion of life was more meagre and low than theirs. Something in them struggled up to meet the trust in the pitiful eyes, something which scorned to betray the trust,—some Christ-like power, smothered, dying, under the filth of their life and the terror of hell. Not lost. If the Great Spirit of love and trust lives, not lost!

Even in the cold and quiet of the woman walking by her side the homely power of the poor huckster was not weak to warm or to strengthen. Margaret left her, turning into the crowded street leading to the part of the town where the factories lay. The throng of anxious-faced men and women jostled and pushed, but she passed through them with a different heart from yesterday's. Somehow, the morbid fancies were gone; she was keenly alive; the homely real life of this huckster had fired her, touched her blood with a more vital stimulus than any tale of crusader. As she went down the crooked maze of dingy lanes, she could hear Lois's little

-

cracked bell far off: it sounded like a Christmas song to her. She half smiled, remembering how sometimes in her distempered brain the world had seemed a gray, dismal Dance of Death. How actual it was to-day, hearty, vigorous, alive with honest work and tears and pleasure! A broad, good world to live and work in, to suffer or die, if God so willed it, God, the good! She entered the vast, dingy factory; the woollen dust, the clammy air of copperas were easier to breathe in; the cramped, sordid office, the work, mere trifles to laugh at; and she bent over the ledger with its hard lines in earnest good-will, through the slow creeping hours of the long day. She noticed that the unfortunate chicken was making its heart glad over a piece of fresh earth covered with damp moss. Dr. Knowles stopped to look at it when he came, passing her with a surly nod.

"So your master 's not forgotten you," he snarled, while the blind old hen cocked her one eye up at him.

ment, then resumed its quick, cool movement over the page. He was not baf

fled.

"If there were such a reality as mastership, that man was born to rule. Pike will find him harder to cheat than me, when he takes possession here."

She looked up now, attentive.

"He came here to take my place in the mills, buy me out, articles will be signed in a day or two. I know what you think,-no,- not worth a dollar. Only brains and a soul, and he's sold them at a high figure,- threw his heart in,the purchaser being a lady. It was light, I fancy,-starved out, long ago."

The old man's words were spurted out in the bitterness of scorn. The girl listened with a cool incredulity in her eyes, and went back to her work.

"Miss Herne is the lady, -my partner's daughter. Herne and Holmes they 'll call the firm. He is here every day, counting future profit."

"Who's its master?" he said, curiously, stopping by the door.

"Holmes, he feeds it every morning."

The Doctor drawled out the words with a covert sneer, watching the quiet, cold face bending over the desk, meantime. Pike laughed.

"Bah! it's the first thing he ever fed, then, besides himself. Chickens must lie nearer his heart than men."

Knowles scowled at him; he had no fancy for Pike's scurrilous gossip. The quiet face was unmoved. When he heard the manager's foot on the ladder without, he tested it again. He had a vague suspicion which he was determined to verify.

men who put themselves up at auction,

worse than Orleans slaves. Margaret laughed to herself at his passion; as for the story he hinted, it was absurd. She forgot it in a moment.

Two or three gentlemen down in one of the counting-rooms, just then, looked at the story from another point of view. They were talking low, out of hearing from the clerks.

"It's a good thing for Holmes,” said one, a burly, farmer-like man, who was choosing specimens of wool.

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Cheap. And long credit. Just half the concern he takes."

"There is a lady in the case?" suggested a young doctor, who, by virtue of having spent six months in the South, dropped his r-s, and talked of "niggahs" in a way to make a Georgian's hair stand on end.

"A lady in the case ?"

"O-f course. Only child of Herne's. He comes down with the dust as dowry. Good thing for Holmes. 'Stonishin' how he 's made his way up. If money 's what

"Do you think money is what he wants?" said a quiet little man, sitting lazily on a barrel, — a clergyman, whom his clerical brothers shook their heads when they named, but never argued with, and bowed to with uncommon deference. The wool-buyer hesitated with a puzzled look.

"No," he said, slowly; "Stephen Holmes is not miserly. I've knowed him since a boy. To buy place, power, perhaps, eh? Yet not that, neither," he added, hastily. "We think a sight of him out our way, (self-made, you see,) and would have had him the best office in the State before this, only he was so cursedly indifferent."

"Indifferent, yes. No man cares much for stepping-stones in themselves," said the clergyman, half to himself.

"Great fault of American society, especially in West," said the young aristocrat. "Stepping-stones lie low, as my reverend friend suggests; impudence ascends; merit and refinement scorn such dirty paths," with a mournful remembrance of the last dime in his waistcoat-pocket.

"But do you," exclaimed the farmer, with sudden solemnity, "do you understand this scheme of Knowles's? Every dollar he owns is in this mill, and every dollar of it is going into some castle in the air that no sane man can comprehend." "Mad as a March hare," contemptu ously muttered the doctor.

His reverend friend gave him a look, -after which he was silent.

"I wish to the Lord some one would persuade him out of it," persisted the wool-man, earnestly looking at the quiet face of his listener. "We can't spare old Knowles's brain or heart while he ruins himself. It's something of a Communist fraternity: I don't know the name, but I know the thing."

Very hard common-sense shone out of his eyes just then at the clergyman, whom he suspected of being one of Knowles's abettors.

"There's two ways for 'em to end. If they're made out of the top of society, they get so refined, so idealized, that every particle flies off on its own special path to the sun, and the Community's broke; and if they 're made of the lower mud, they keep going down, down together,-they live to drink and eat, and make themselves as near the brutes as they can. It is n't easy to believe, Sir, but it's true. I have seen it. I've seen every one of them the United States can produce. It's facts, Sir; and facts, as Lord Bacon says, are the basis of every sound speculation.""

เ

The last sentence was slowly brought out, as quotations were not exactly his forte, but, as he said afterwards, -"You see, that nailed the parson."

The parson nodded gravely. "You'll find no such experiment in the Bible," threw in the young doctor, alluding to "serious things" as a peaceoffering to his reverend friend.

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One, I believe," dryly.

"Well," broke in the farmer, folding up his wool, "that's neither here nor there. This experiment of Knowles's is like nothing known since the Creation. Plan of his own. He spends his days now hunting out the gallows-birds out of the dens in town here, and they 're all to be transported into the country to start a new Arcadia. A few men and women like himself, but the bulk is from the dens, I tell you. All start fair, level ground, perpetual celibacy, mutual trust, honor, rise according to the stuff that 's in them, pah! it makes me sick!"

"Knowles's inclination to that sort of people is easily explained," spitefully lisped the doctor. "Blood, Sir. His mother was a half-breed Creek, with all the propensities of the redskins to fire-water and itching palms.' Blood will out."

"Here he is," maliciously whispered the wool-man. "No, it's Holmes," he added, after the doctor had started into

a more respectful posture, and glanced around frightened.

He, the doctor, rose to meet Holmes's coming footstep, - a low fellah, but always sure to be the upper dog in the fight, goin' to marry the best catch," etc., etc. The others, on the contrary, put on their hats and sauntered away into the street.

So the day broadened hotly; the shadows of the Lombardy poplars curdling up into a sluggish pool of black at their roots along the dry gutters. The old schoolmaster in the shade of the great horse-chestnuts (brought from the homestead in the Piedmont country, every one) husked corn for his wife, composing, meanwhile, a page of his essay on the "Sirventes de Bertrand de Born." The day passed for him as did his life, half in simple-hearted deed, half in vague visions of a dead world, never to be real again. Joel, up in the barn by himself, worked through the long day in the old fashion,- pondering gravely (be ing of a religious turn) upon a sermon by the Reverend Mr. Clinche, reported in the "Gazette "; wherein that disciple of the meek Teacher invoked, as he did once a week, the curses of the law upon his political opponents, praying the Lord to sweep them immediately from the face of the earth. Which rendering of Christian doctrine was so much relished by Joel, and the other leading members of Mr. Clinche's church, that they hinted to him it might be as well to continue choosing his texts from Moses and the Prophets until the excitement of the day was over. The New Testament was,-well,-hardly suited for the emergency; did not, somehow, chime in with the lesson of the hour. I may remark, in passing, that this course of conduct so disgusted the HighChurch rector of the parish, that he not only ignored all new devils, (as Mr. Carlyle might have called them,) but talked as if the millennium were un fait accompli, and he had leisure to go and hammer at the poor dead old troubles of Luther's time. One thing, though, about Joel: while he was joining in Mr. Clinche's prayer for the "wiping out" of some few thousands, he was using up all the frag

ments of the hot day in fixing a stall for a half-dead old horse he had found by the road-side. Let us hope, that, even if the listening angel did not grant the prayer, he marked down the stall at least, as a something done for eternity.

Margaret, through the heat and stifling air, worked steadily alone in the dusty office, the cold, homely face bent over the books, never changing but once. It was a trifle then; yet, when she looked back afterwards, the trifle was all that gave the day a name. The room shook, as I said, with the thunderous, incessant sound of the engines and the looms; she scarcely heard it, being used to it. Once, however, another sound came between, - a slow, quiet tread, passing through the long wooden corridor, -so firm and measured that it sounded like the monotonous beatings of a clock. She heard it through the noise in the far distance; it came slowly nearer, up to the door without,— passed it, going down the echoing plank walk. The girl sat quietly, looking out at the dead brick wall. The slow step fell on her brain like the sceptre of her master; if Knowles had looked in her face then, he would have seen bared the secret of her life. Holmes had gone by, unconscious of who was within the door. She had not seen him; it was nothing but a step she heard. Yet a power, the power of the girl's life, shook off all outward masks, all surface cloudy fancies, and stood up in her with a terrible passion at the sound; her blood burned fiercely; her soul looked out from her face, her soul as it was, as God knew it,- God and this man. No longer a cold, clear face; you would have thought, looking at it, what a strong spirit the soul of this woman would be, if set free in heaven or in hell. The man who held it in his power went on carelessly, not knowing that the mere sound of his step had raised it as from the dead. She, and her right, and her pain, were nothing to him now, she remembered, staring out at the taunting hot sky. Yet so vacant was the sudden life opened before her when he was gone, that, in the desperation of her weakness, her mad longing