The Boss of Little Arcady

e things not taught in the faded brick schoolhouse. It was six years before I came back; six years that I lived in a crowded place

in the law, and with the right sort of laugh in my heart fo

way. She stood where the pink-blossomed climber streamed up the columns of the little porch, and her arm was twined among the strands to draw them to her face. She was leaving,-but she had stayed too long; not the child with yellow braids, humorously preserved in my memory, but a blossomed, a fruiting Eve, with whilom braids massed high in a coronet, their gold a little tarnished. Later i

uced me to my ancient schoolboy clumsiness. She was a woman, but, I was again an awkward, stammering boy, rebelliously declining to believe that a state she

unable to make known my excellencies of rank. It was as in a dream wh

d again, she was a sherbet-sweet, fragrant, cold

of me. She spoke of my having a kind f

of putting it. And of course that made it hopeless, since

n the schoolboy to gloom and rage afar in his passion for her. She had no word of mine for it then, nor had she now, and I believe she felt rather certain there never would be any. She seemed to be grateful for this and

ously, of the depth and pureness of her friendship for me. Who knows? I am older now, and things once hidden are revealed. Sometimes I think that a certain new respect for me grew withi

nspoken pledge, and not even Solon Denney,

ched ease of his victory. But we were men, so I thrust one of those rebellious arms in among the strands of the creeper, where her own arm had once been, and laid the other on his shoulder in all friendliness. This, while he rambled on of t

In the fulness of his heart he even brought out the latest Argus and read parts from his obit

ur school days. "Stephen A. Douglas is dead. The voice that so

uely hear that one was gone who had warned his fellows against the pitfalls of political jealousy, and bade all who

e my resolve. Douglas was d

rleston Harbor had crumbled under fire from a score of rebel

nd good-by-I'm goin

, "that will be over before

over though he was, the editor of the Li

obtained deviously. She smiled in it, a little questioning, inciting smile, that seemed to lurk back in h

miling but grave, even fearful, as if she had faced the camera full of apprehension. But

or those dying thus, Held waited in her chill prison-house below, with hunger her dish, starvation her knife, care her bed, and anguish her curtains. To survive for easy death, long deferred, perhaps, I should have my empty dish and bed of care at once. Lacking the battle death, I could at least mimic it, as they did of old, that Odin's choosers of the slain might lead me to Valhalla. Ther

lty of that vacant, spacious feeling on my left side-wondering if I could shave now wi

ched the field surgeons gather about a young line officer brought in with a shot through his neck. For the better probing of the wound they removed his head and gave it to me to hold. Seeing that it was Solon Denney's head, I was seized with a mood of jest-I would hide it and make Solon search. I advanced craftily down an endless corridor, but came to the edge of a wood, where there was a wicked spitting of shots. I cried out again, and once more they gave me the drug. Then I dreamed more qu

n time of need, and a father to Solon Denney and his two children. Solon could direct

the first day that I came home-to

had once embraced, bringing her cheek intrepidly against the blossoms of that year, and saw him com

Solon and was confr

our arm off in th

in the

leeve, and his eyes b

sleeve rolled up for w

im the mystery of

n. "She seemed to think you would l

d into the house. I heard her shouts from my bedroom.

Maje-lovely candy-a

led that which she had clutched and eaten of,-a thin

y," said the dejected father. "I

wiping the tooth-powder from her f

en, as if with intention to indicate delicately that the family affor

-in a hand so plump that it seemed to have been quilted. A moment she held it, then set it free, perhaps for its lack of spirit. It crawled and fluttered up the vine, trailing a crumpled wing most sadly, and I took it for my lesson. Assuredly they were not to be caught wi

olon's best style. It said that I had come back to take up the practice

s of Little Arcady-even to the extent of a casual Potts, and those blessed contingencie