Cupid of Campion

his career as a gypsy, and mak

e were twenty ways of doing a thing, Pete invariably chose the least honest. His range as a thief went from chickens to horses. In this, as in all other things, he was ably abetted by his shrewish wife. That remarkable woman had a gift for fortune-telling which was uncanny. It was not

Dora noticed these things and pointed them out to Clarence. But she did not tell him, for she did not know it, that it was her pre

mely human. Ben seemed to worship the ground she trod upon; his wife was a no less ardent devotee, and the little children vied with each other in winning her word or smile. Even Pete’s two graceless sons put aside their coarseness and what they could of their evil manners in her winning and dainty presence. Wherever she moved, she seemed to evoke from those she met undreamed-of acts of gentleness and sweetness and love. And indeed before the day was spent, the child unwittingly won a new devotee—Master Clarence himself. Clarence, be it known, was in most respects a normal boy. He was also unusually clean in thought a

an age and development when the normal boy is little interested in the girl. But to him Dora was something apart. She was s

ceived something in the boy of which he himself was scarcely aware—a knightliness, a gallantry that went with high ideals, a serene and lovely purity of he

d for an hour. Before it was ended, each member knew how to make the sign of the cross, and Master Clarence himself, who had asked many questions and put many obje

icularly so. The leader, afraid to wreak vengeance on Dora, singled out Clarence as t

g tent. Clarence happened to remark how two nights previously he

it about?”

ant me to

en’t read a story or heard o

said Dorcas, Ben’s wi

Island,” begged on

ry memory with a flow of vivid language. The story was in its first quarter when Pete returned and, to the disappointment of all, announced bedtime. The guitar was brought, Gounod’s Ave Maria sung, and when sleep visited the eyes of Clar