her feet, "I must hurry and go up before it's too late."

"I don't think you understand, dear," said her father gently.

"I do," said Miss Margery. She was a child of few words. "But there's something I have to tend to for him."

"Oh, the garden," said her father; for the bee-man had made sure of his purpose.

"And the bees," said Miss Margery, fussing at a refractory button. "I almost forgot them when you-when you told me."

In a few minutes she was plodding, a sturdy, serious little figure, up to the garden of Bee-Man John.

The bee-man's cabin stood with wideswung door above the hoary boulders of the glen. Miss Margery would not look at that, for she had a feeling that the sight of its emptiness might snatch away the comfort of her mission. Instead she climbed carefully down to the terrace. where the beehives hung like a Swiss hamlet above the bubbling spring. It was very still, except for a regular humming sound, so faint as to be almost inaudible. But Miss Margery heard and her face brightened. She was not too late!

At the end of the terrace stood a large hive a little apart from the rest. It had good reason for its exclusiveness, for BeeMan John had often retailed to Miss Margery the proud Italian lineage of its queen. These bees were the gentlest of all, and she put her lips quite fearlessly to the fragrant door.

"Bee-Man John has gone away," she whispered. "He's gone to Jean, who lives in the gardens of God. There are bees there, I think, so he wants you to stay and make honey for us. I'd like you to stay, too," she added wistfully. "It'll be lonely if you don't."

A brown bee slipped through the narrow opening, circled above Miss Margery's head, then returned within its dusky house.

"That means they understand," she said contentedly; and she went on down the line, making sure of each hive, even to the fierce little native bees that had taken up their abode in an old fruit box against the hill.

"Though they're so cross, it didn't

really matter about them staying," she said to herself as she got up from her knees.

Miss Margery's father accepted with amused tolerance her jealous appropriation of the little garden in the upper glen.

"I must take care of it myself," she announced, "for he told me what to do, and he's depending on me."

"But what are you going to do with the things when they're grown?"

"The hollyhocks and roses are for the bees. And the vegittibles"-she accomplished the word with difficulty, then repeated it to show how naturally it came— 'the vegittibles are for the things that were his friends before we came, the " She broke off sharply as she caught sight of a clumsy, box-like thing on the ground beside her father. "Oh," she cried, "you're not making it to catch my rabbits!"

"Run along," said her father with guilty haste. He had meant to keep the trap hidden.

"But they're such little rabbits," pleaded Miss Margery; "and I'll feed them, truly I will, so they won't go into your garden. I'll give them my lettuces that I don't like, anyway."

"Unfortunately, their taste runs to young squash plants," murmured her father with a rueful smile.

"But I can't have them hurt!" wailed Miss Margery. "Oh, don't set the trap there!" She sprang passionately forward, only to meet her father's restraining arm. The expression on the handsome, care-worn face of the man was oddly reproduced on the defiant brow of his little daughter.

"Run along, Miss Margery," he said curtly. "I wouldn't do it if I didn't have to."

She turned away with a little choking sound and began to climb the hill, the broken shovel that she had appropriated as her special gardening tool trailing disconsolately after. She could not know how hard it was for the man not to follow and try to comfort her. The struggle for livelihood for himself and her was harrying him to this seeming cruelty, but that, too, was beyond her understanding. All she knew was that her father, pitiful even

of a scratched finger upon his little daughter, was planning to kill the shy, soft-eyed creatures that had been her greatest joy since Bee-Man John's going.

"If only they lived in his garden," she thought bitterly, "not even Daddy could have touched them there!"

She looked across the canyon to where the giant boulder that was the rabbits' home slept under the warm sun. Each morning as she climbed the hill she had looked across at the boulder with a glow in her heart to think of the bright-eyed family of cottontails cuddled underneath. Sometimes she had made a détour across the canyon and, lying flat, had wriggled her way into the hollow, so that her face was thrillingly close to the watchful furry balls pressed against the rock. The mother cottontail had grown so used to her visits that she would even tolerate a gentle caress.

"Maybe they would let me take them up to his garden!" thought Miss Margery with sudden hope. She dropped her shovel and, scrambling down through the tangle of wild lilac and manzanita bushes, sped across the canyon. "A place where the hunted," the old bee-man's words rang through her memory like a refrain, "a place where the hunted may find peace!" The mother rabbit was just hopping out of her underground hallway, but the sight of Miss Margery's head at the entrance sent her scuttling back again. Provokingly enough, she seemed to scent something unusual in the wind and made her benefactress's task one of difficulty. By a deft sweep of her hand, however, Miss Margery at last captured her and tucked her securely inside her blue sailor suit.

"Though you don't deserve to be saved," she said severely as she picked up the two palpitating babies and started to back carefully out of the hole. "You ought to have known I wouldn't hurt you."

She climbed the trail with deliberation, thrilling deliciously to feel the wild little hearts against her side. The glen looked unusually beautiful to her happy eyes, with its clump of wild hollyhocks catching the mellow afternoon light and its ancient elder by the spring flaunting a glorious second youth in the embrace of a crimson honeysuckle. Even the crisp rows of let

tuce and blood-red beets had borrowed loveliness from the hour.

"And you shall live under this big rock here," crooned Miss Margery as she knelt with her burden, "and there will be no traps or anything to hurt you. And it'll be most convenient to the vegittibles," she added with a sudden drop to the practical.

"Is this Bee-Man John's place?" asked a low voice above her. Miss Margery, startled, let go her hold upon the mother rabbit. Fortunately, the frightened creature sought refuge in the very hole that had been selected as her future home.

"But she might have gone somewhere else," said Miss Margery, looking up reproachfully, "and it's important for her to stay where she's safe. Oh," with sudden recognition, "it's the dark lady from Squaw Creek!"

"How did you know me?" asked the stranger, a faint accent of surprise piercing the tired listlessness of her voice. Miss Margery paused as if gathering her associations with the face whose rare beauty was marred now by lines of weariness and spent emotion.

"We stopped at your ranch when Daddy was bringing me here to live," she said, "and I was thirsty, and a very nice man gave me water in a tall glass. And his hand shook so he dropped the glass, and then you were angry

She applied herself to the task of reminiscence with zeal until she became aware that these details were terrible to the dark lady. She had hidden her face in her hands.

"Even the child noticed it," Miss Margery heard her mutter. "Oh, I did right to leave him!"

"What did I notice?" asked Miss Margery with puzzled brows.

Instead of answering, the visitor raised her head and, sweeping back her hair with a passionate gesture, disclosed an angry welt across the whiteness of her forehead. "Well?" she demanded harshly. "You've hurt yourself!" cried Miss Margery in distress.

"My husband struck me. The very nice man whose hands shook." Her laugh was not pleasant to hear.

"Oh," protested Miss Margery. "He didn't mean to! He was a kind man!"

"Very kind, kind and charming when he's what he calls 'himself.' But that's very seldom lately, and this morning something I said made him angry and he did this. He can die alone like any drunkard now, but I'll not go back to him!"

Miss Margery was silent before a tragedy too deep for her understanding; yet her tenacious little heart made excuses for the blue-eyed man, even in the face of his terrible deed. The woman's jarring scorn when she named him dimly suggested a provocation.

"But I don't know why I told you this," murmured her visitor, sinking into apathy again. "I must find Bee-Man John. He helped me once before."

"Bee-Man John isn't here. He's gone to God," said Miss Margery.

"You mean he's dead?" asked the dark lady in a startled voice. Miss Margery winced at the baldness of the question. She had never put it to herself that way. "What shall I do, then?" asked the stranger helplessly. "I'm so tired, I can't go back!"

One of the baby cottontails began to scramble about inside Miss Margery's blouse, and she drew out her two charges quickly. "I'd almost forgotten them," she explained. "These are some of the hunted, so I'm bringing them here. BeeMan John said this was a place for the hunted to have peace."

"For the hunted to have peace," repeated her visitor with a curious softening of her voice.

"They were eating my Daddy's garden," nodded Miss Margery. "He-he felt he must set a trap for them. He had to," she added with some vague instinct of loyalty; "he said he was driven to it." "A familiar excuse," murmured the dark lady with curling lip. The tone rather than the words roused Miss Margery to sudden anger.

"You mustn't say anything about my Daddy," she cried, stamping her foot. "It isn't nice of you! I-I wish you would go away!"

"But what if I were too tired to go away? Child, what if I were one of the hunted, too?" And all at once Miss Margery's extraordinary visitor sank down among the boulders, her face gone white as ashes. Stricken with remorse, the lit

tle girl dropped the baby rabbits into the hole and scrambled up beside her.

"Is it your head?" she asked, leaning over her anxiously.

"I'm just tired," said her visitor with a wan smile. "I don't know what you'll do with me, I'm sure!"

"There's Daddy," suggested Miss Margery.

"No, don't bother him," said the dark lady, struggling to her feet. "If I could get up to the cabin and rest a little❞—she swayed as she spoke, and Miss Margery put a small but sturdy shoulder under her hand. "That'll do nicely," murmured the woman with a faint gleam of amusement in her tragic eyes. "I'm afraid I'm giving more trouble than your rabbits."

The climb was accomplished with difficulty, but at last Miss Margery had the satisfaction of seeing her patient safe in the worn old rocker by the door. She fetched a dipper of cool water from the spring, and the stranger drank it greedily.

"How good it tastes," she sighed. "I thought coming over that hot trail I'd never see water again."

"I know," assented Miss Margery. "That was the way I felt when he the man you called Jerry-" She floundered helplessly as she remembered what the man called Jerry had done. The dark lady's face flamed.

"Will you never cease reminding me of him?" she cried. "Oh, go away!”

With a look of level, wordless reproach Miss Margery turned and went out the door.

"This isn't a nice world," she confided to the universe at large as she picked up the decrepit shovel and began to dig with fierce industry at a neglected corner of the garden. "She's hurt and she must stay. But she shouldn't have talked that way about Mr. Jerry. He was hurt, too. His hands shook."

A tear trickled down her nose at the thought of the dark lady's ingratitude, but she dashed it away and went on with her digging. The sun had left the glen, though on the jutting rocks above the hives a golden light still lingered. Little breaths of coolness began wandering up and down. Shy fragrances crept forth from tiny plants, from the deerweed and southernwood that clothed the wild hills

allow sufficiently for the inability of the mass, through lack of opportunity, to cope with temptation. The doctrine that it is undemocratic and hence unchristian to be hard on anybody was in the air, with the result that many standards of conduct were relaxed and various points of view embraced which hitherto would not have been given house-room. There was never a more well-meaning period. Social uplift with an utter disrelish for precedents was its keynote, and if the leaders were women even more conspicuously than men it was because it seemed for a while as though the millennium was in sight by reason of the fervent impulse to eradicate those evils most obnoxious to feminine sensibilities-poverty, sexual vice, and the rule of physical force. The hope was cherished that the day was not far off when the creed of the brotherhood of man and sisterhood of woman as promulgated by American democracy would provide a living wage for everybody, abolish the double standard of sexual morals, and put an end to war. Not a few believed that they might live to see a world or at least a nation eternally at peace, safeguarded from intoxicants and debauchery, and with not a fly in a shopwindow where food was exposed for sale. No wonder the vision was alluring, even though the cynical murmured that life would become an interminable afternoon tea; we all of us fell more or less under its glamour, and were ready to admit that remarkable progress had been made in a very short time. And then out of a clear sky-or now that we look back a very murky one came the dynamic European tragedy deluging the world with blood, a contest unparalleled in the numbers engaged, the deadliness of the projectiles, and the inhumanity of at least one of the participants. In the twinkling of an eye we have gone back a hundred years; then Europe was an armed camp, yet scarcely so ruthless; our vision seems the very stuff of which dreams are made, for the golden youth of the world except our own is in the trenches, and all the energies, latterly so restless, of womankind are focussed on the old-fashioned duties of mothering, nursing, comforting, and bearing her load of sorrow. Force -brute masculine force-is in the saddle

again, and the hushed statistics of this carnival of blood and fire attest the price which women as usual have had to pay as inhabitants of an invaded country.

Although our souls are racked, some day there will be peace and society will be taking up where it dropped them the problems which only the other day seemed to the sanguine nearly solved. Yet in the light of what has occurred, should not woman, and especially the American woman, feel sobered and a little less positive that she has discovered the path to the millennium? At least it is an appropriate time for her to pause and think: to summarize the progress she has made, to examine the grievances of which she still complains, and to define her real hopes for the future.

One must assume a certain amount of sympathy. The point of view of those to whom the word "feminism" is chronically irritating because they are satisfied with woman as she used to be, and as they choose to believe she still is, rivals in futility that of the malcontents who would cure the shortcomings of democracy by reimposing a property test. The repugnance in either case comes too late. The position of the modern woman is parallel to that of the automobile; we meet her at every turn and, whether we like her or not, if we get in the way we are likely to be run over. Sexagenarians can remember when it was the first duty of a marriageable woman to sit at home and do fancy-work until she was asked. Now even the conservative take for granted her right to make the most of her own life, as the phrase is. It would be trite to enumerate the bread-winning callings open to women. Indeed, the pendulum has swung so far that the daughter who stays at home to tend the old folk is apt to think she makes a sacrifice.

As to the wrongs which have not been redressed and the rights, if we except the power to vote, which woman does not enjoy, what are they? I speak of equality before the statute laws. In my native State, Massachusetts at least, she stands on a complete parity with man as regards her person, her property, and her children. Under the law as it read when I came to the bar the father was the natural guardian of the minor children; now very