up the rabbit and patallos. "See what I got fer yuh? We're gonna put on some dog to-night. Bring my gun in, please, daddy."

Coyote passed into the house and Dennis McAll followed with the guna small forty-four-forty carbine that had been his present to her on her fifteenth birthday, exactly a year ago. He smiled as he thought of the gift he had for her to-night.

"I knows yuh be tired, daddy." And Coyote dragged a rawhide-bottom chair nearer the door. "Yuh just sit yourself down here, and hit won't be no time afore I'll have the grub ready." "I'll be a-cleaning' yer gun," said the foreman.

"And I'll be a-cleanin' the rabbit," laughed Coyote.

A half hour later, McAll and his daughter sat down to eat. Their supper consisted of sausage meat, biscuits, milk and a bowl of patallos and sugar.

The two bowed their heads and the foreman said grace in his deep, strong voice:

"Dear Lord, we offer up thanks to yuh fer this grub. We asks yuh to bless us, and show us the right trails from the wrong 'uns. Amen."

After the prayer, the foreman turned his tin plate and glanced furtively at Coyote.

She looked up at him frankly. "Wall, daddy," she began. "I seen two big bucks and-" She stopped her eyes upon a small, neat package

before her.

Suddenly she was out of her chair with a bound, and into her father's lap, her slender arms about his sturdy neck, her lips to his. Another instant and she was back in her place again.

"Hit's my birthday present!" she cried. "I were a-forgettin' hit. Oh, daddy, yuh be the dearest old pap a gal ever had!"

Hurriedly she unwrapped the package, disclosing to view a small, gilt edged, leather-bound bible.

"Oh, hit's a lil' Bible! Ain't hit purty!"

Dennis McAll's big right hand closed over one of Coyote's little ones. There

was a suspicion of moisture in the foreman's eyes.

"Thet lil' Bible were yer mother's a-fore yuh, Coyote," he said huskily. "Yer daddy's kept hit these sixteen years fuh yur, and now he wants yuh to read hit and bide by hit. Yuh will, won't yuh, lil' gal?"

"I will, daddy. I'll read hit tonight."

After another appreciative kiss Coyote laid the present aside and the meal began. The two ate in silence for some time. Presently the father spoke.

"Honey, I got some news fer yuh." "I hopes hit be good news, daddy." "Hit be good news, lil' gal. John and Kit Carlton's comin' home to-morrie." "Oh, Jimminy! Ain't I glad!" And Coyote clapped her hands excitedly, while her blue eyes danced in anticipation of future frolics.

Dennis McAll chuckled.

"I knowed yuh'd be glad," he said. "Hit be goin' nigh onto eight years since they left fer thet high-ferlutin' school in Boston, and I guess as how they'll be glad to see yuh. Come ag'in with them patallos. They'll be ramp good 'uns."

Coyotte passed the bowl, but her mind was elsewhere.

"Be they a-comin' alone," she said, pointedly.

"Naw. Thar's a hull band o' 'em aheadin' this a-way from Boston. Thet is what the Captain's havin' the corrals and shacks white-washed fer. He were in mighty low spirits to-night' 'cause his ole woman's a-comin' with 'em. I can't blame him much, seein' as how she allers was an ole cat and never did like yuh, lil' gal."

"Poor ole Sadie'll have enough to cook fer up yonder in the Capitol," sympathized Coyote. "Wonder if Kit'll pitch in and help her?"

McAll drained his cup of milk.

"Guess we'll all be primpin' up some with them Bostonians about," he prophesied. "Yuh'd better wear yed lil' white dress, to-morrie, Coyote. I don't want Kit and John to be ashamed o' yuh. John's a good boy, and I am hoping he'll marry yuh, some day,

HEY were two quite small maidies, aged respectively four and six years with some odd months

in each case. They are older now, and have probably forgotten the stranger to whom they gave their unsophisticated little hearts, who presently left their country never to return, for all this happened a long time agoI think about three years. In a way they were rivals, yet had never seen one another, perhaps never will, since they inhabit two villages more than a dozen miles apart in a wild, desolate, hilly district of west Cornwall.

Let me first speak of Millicent, the elder. I knew Millicent well, having at various times spent several weeks with her in her parents' house, and she, an only child, was naturally regarded as the most important person in it. In Cornwall it is always so. Tall for her six years, straight and slim, with no red color on her cheeks; she had brown hair and large serious grey eyes; those eyes and her general air of gravity, and her forehead, which was too broad for perfect beauty, made me a little shy of her, and we were not too intimate. And, indeed, that feeling on my part, which made me a little careful and ceremonious in our intercourse, seemed to be only what she expected of me. One day in a forgetful or expansive moment I happened to call her "Millie," which caused her to look at me in surprise. "Don't you like me to call you Millie-for short?" I questioned apologetically. "No," she returned gravely: "it is not my name-my name is Millicent." And so it had to be to the end of the chapter.

Then there was her speech-I wondered how she got it! For it was un

like that of the people she lived among of her own class. No word-clipping and slurring, no "naughty English" and sing-song intonation with her! She spoke with an almost startling distinctness, giving every syllable its proper value, and her words were as if they had been read out of a nicely written book.

Nevertheless, we got on fairly well together, meeting on most days at teatime in the kitchen, when we would have nice little talks and look at her lessons and books and pictures, sometimes unbending so far as to draw little pigs on her slate with our eyes shut, and laughing at the result just like ordinary persons.

It was during my last visit, after an absence of some months from that part of the country, that one evening on coming in I was told by her mother that Millicent had gone for the milk, and that I would have to wait for my tea till she came back. Now the farm where the milk was got was away at the other end of the village, quite half a mile, and I went to meet her, but did not see her until I had walked the whole distance, when just as I arrived she came out of the farm house burdened with a basket of things in one hand and a can of milk in the other. She graciously allowed me to relieve her of both, and taking basket and can with one hand I gave her the other, and so, hand in hand, very friendly, we set off down the long, bleak, windy road just when it was growing dark.

"I'm afraid you are rather thinly clad for this bleak December evening," I remarked. "Your little hands feel cold as ice."

She smiled sweetly and said she was not feeling cold, after which there

was a long interval of silence. From time to time we met a villager, a fisherman in his ponderous sea-boots, or a farm-laborer homeward plodding in his weary way. But though heavyfooted after his day's labor, he is never so stolid as an English ploughman is apt to be; invariably when giving us a good-night in passing the man would smile and look at Millicent very directly, with a meaning twinkle in his Cornish eye. He might have been congratulating her on having a male companion to pay her all these little attentions, and perhaps signaling the hope that something would come of it. Grave little Millicent, I was pleased to observe, took no notice of this foolishness. At length when we had walked half the distance home in perfect silence she said, impressively: "Mr. Goodenough"-Here I must make a break to explain that "Mr. Goodenough" is one of the aliases I think it prudent to use during my occasional visits to the Rocky Land of Strangers, owing to the friendly warnings (and unfriendly intimations) I am accustomed to receive describing what would happen to me should I be recognized, as well, as the author of a book in praise of this same Rocky Land in which I have ventured to express the opinion that Cornishmen are lacking in a sense of humor.

"Mr. Goodenough," said Millicent, "I have something I want to tell you very much."

I begged her to speak, pressing her cold little hand.

She proceeded: "I shall never forget that morning when you went away the last time. You said you were going to Truro: but I'm not sure-perhaps it was to London, I only know that it was very far away, and you were going for a very long time. It was early in the morning and I was in bed. I heard you calling me to come down and say good-bye; so I jumped up and came down in my nightdress and saw you standing waiting for me at the foot of the stairs. Then, when I got down, you took me up in your arms and kissed me. I shall never forget it!"

"Why?" I said, rather lamely, just because it was necessary to say something. And after a little pause she returned, "Because I shall never forget it."

Then, as I said nothing, she resumed: "That day after school I saw Uncle Charlie and told him, and he said: 'What! you allowed that tramp to kiss you! Then I don't want to take you on my knee any more—you've lowered yourself too much.""

"Did he dare say that?" I returned.

"Yes, that's what Uncle Charlie said -but it makes no difference. I told him you were not a tramp but Mr. Goodenough, and he said you could call yourself Mr. What-you-liked, but you were a tramp all the same, nothing but a common tramp, and that I ought to be ashamed of myself. 'You've disgraced the family,' that's what he said, but I don't care-I shall never forget it, the morning you went away and took me up in your arms and kissed me."

Here was a revelation! It saddened me, and I made no reply although I think she expected one. And so, after a minute or two of uncomfortable silence she repeated that she would never forget it. For all the time I was thinking of another and sweeter one, who was also a person of importance in her own home and village over a dozen miles away.

In thoughtful silence we finished our walk; then there were lights and tea and general conversation; and if Millicent had intended returning to the subject she found no opportunity then or afterwards.

It was better so, seeing that the other charmer possessed my whole heart.

II. MAB.

She was not intellectual: no one would have said of her, for example, that she would one day blossom into a second Emily Bronte; that to future generations her wild moorland village would be the Haworth of the West. She was perhaps something better-a child of earth and sun, exquisite, with

her hair a shining chestnut gold, her eyes like the bugloss, her whole face like a flower, or rather like a ripe peach in bloom and color; we are apt to associate these delicious little ones with flavors as well as fragrances. But I am not going to be so foolish as to attempt to describe her.

Our first meeting was at the village spring, where the women came with pails and pitchers for water; she came, and sitting on the stone rim regarded me smiling with questioning eyes. I started a conversation, but though smiling she was shy. Luckily, I had my luncheon, which consisted of fruit, in my satchel, and telling her about it she grew interested and confessed to me that of all good things fruit was what she loved most. I then opened my stores, and selecting the brightest yellow and richest purple fruits told her that they were for her-on one condition that she would love me and give me a kiss. O that kiss! And what more can I find to say of it? Why, nothing, unless one of the poets, Crawshaw for preference, can tell me. "My song," I might say with that mystic, after an angel had kissed him—

community and would always be where others were, especially when any gathering took place. Thus, long before I knew her at the age of four, she made the discovery that the village children, or most of them, passed much of their time in school, and to school she accordingly resolved to go. Her parents opposed, and talked seriously to her and used force to restrain her, but she overcame them in the end, and to the school they had to take her, where she was refused admission on account of her tender years. But she had resolved to go, and go she would; she laid siege to the schoolmistress, to the vicar, to others, and in the end, because of her importunity or sweetness, they had to admit her.

When I went, during school hours, to give a talk to the children, there I found Mab, one of the forty, sitting with her book, which told her nothing, in her little hands. She listened to the talk with an appearance of interest, although understanding nothing, her bugloss eyes on me, encouraging me with a very sweet smile, whenever I looked her way.

It was the same about attending church. Her parents went to one ser

From that time we got on swimmingly, and were much in company, for soon, just to be near her, I went to stay at her village. I then made the discovery that Mab, for that is what they called her, although so unlike, so much softer and sweeter than Millicent, was yet like her in being a child of character and of an indomitable will. She never cried, never argued or listened to arguments, never demonstrated after the fashion of wilful children generally, by throwing herself down screaming and kicking; she simply very gently insisted on having her own way and living her own life. In the end she always got it, and the beautiful thing was that she never wanted to be naughty or do anything really wrong! She took a quite wonderful interest in the life of the little

ing to all three, and would sit and stand and kneel, book in hand, as if taking part in it all, but always when you looked her way, her eyes would meet yours and the sweet smile would come to her lips.

I had been told by her mother that Mab would not have dolls and toys, and this fact, recalled at an opportune moment, revealed to me her secret mind-her baby philosophy. We, the inhabitants of the village, grown-ups and children as well as the domestic animals, were her playmates and playthings, so that she was independent of sham blue-eyed babies made of wood and inanimate fluffy Teddy-bears: she was in possession of the real thing! The cottages, streets, the church and school, the fields and rocks and hills and sea and sky were all contained in her nursery or playground; and we, her fellow-beings, were all occupied