At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern

ot

ainful predicament, she was absolutely helpless, and she realised it. It was Harlan's house, as he had said, but so powerful an

old man, soured and embittered by what Life had brought him, who seemed now to have a peculiarly malignant aspect. Doroth

the stranger within our gates. Just why the eating of our bread and salt by some undesired guest

arrangement of the front windows. Through some inner sense of loyalty to Uncle Ebeneezer, she forebore to question either Mrs. Smithers or Dick-two people who could probably have given her some light on the subject. She had

s at work in the library, or else taking long, solitary rambles through the surrounding

securely bolted, he could afford to laugh at the tumult outside, if, indeed, he should ever become aware of its existence. The children might make the very air vocal with their howls, Elaine might have

rt of emotion. Worst of all, Dorothy herself seemed detached and dream-like. He saw that her face was white and her eyes sad, but it affected him not at all. He had yet to learn

he eyes of its creator, made it passing fair. At times he would sit for an hour or more, nibbling at the end of his pencil, only negatively conscious, like one

e with its own particular significance. In return for his personal effacement came moments of supremest joy, wh

own for many years, and he should be equally ready, at any moment, to cast either aside. With a quick, merciless insight, like the knife of a surgeon used without an an?sthetic, he should explore the inmost recesses of every personality with which he came in contact, involuntarily, and find himself interested only as some new trait or capacity was revealed. Calm and emotionless, urged by s

ing his present reality upon precisely the same footing. Detachment was his continually. Henceforth he was a spectator merely, without any particular concern in what passed before his eyes. Some people he should know at a glance, others in a

and Pain are only symbols to him who is enslaved by the pen. Moreover, he suffers always the pangs of an unsatisfied hunger, the exquisite torture of an unapp

on his mother's grave," a pardonable confusion, perhaps, of facts and realities. The bitter truth is that the writer lives his books-and not much else. From title to colophon, he escapes no pang, misses no joy. The life of

its proper place, the introduction and interweaving of major and minor, of theme and contrast. For the fine, glowing fancy of the other man has not appeared in his book, and to the eye of the fellow-craftsman only the mech

orld save books. Happily heedless of the mockery of it all, Harlan laboured on, destined fully to sen

n Harlan's thought into which she was not privileged to go. She had thought of marriage as a sort of miraculous welding of two individualities into one, and was perceiving that it changed nothing very much; that souls went on their way unaltered. She saw, too, tha

thing upon which she might securely lean. He was too young and too much occupied with the obvious to look furth

ned his living by writing and hoped to continue doing it, he looked upon his host with profound pity. Books, to Dick, were among the things which kept life from being wholly pleasant and agreeable. He had gone through college

college feet first, three on a side, with the class walking slow behind him. I never was like that. I was sort of an epicure when it came to knowledge, tasting delicately here and there, and never greedy. Why, as far back as when I was study

a week, he gave Dorothy two wo

sked, curiously. "Wh

earned it, my dear lady, in hard and u

o pay any board her

ere's no reason why I shouldn't pay you. You can put that away in your sock, or wherever it is that women keep money, or else I take the next

she could not spare Dick. "If it will make you

With returning strength and health, Miss St. Clair began to take more of an interest in her surroundings. She gathered the white clover blo

o helped Dorothy in many other ways. It was Dick who collected the eggs every morning and took them to the sanitarium, along with such other produce as might be ready for the market. He secured astonishing prices for the things he sold, and

chump" would soon be in need of ready money if not actually starving at the time. That people should pay for what Harlan wrote seemed well-nigh incredible. Besides, though Dick had never rea

ld much. On the other side of the hill he had a small but select graveyard where he buried such unsalable articles as he could not eat. His a

insman's poor taste. He took many a bed apart, scraped off the disfiguring varnish, sandpapered and oiled the wood, and put it together in new and beautiful forms. He made several

roidered a simple design upon a burlap curtain while the other read aloud, and together they planned a shap

ement windows will be perfectly beautiful. You couldn't have a

m, with only a dining-room, kitchen, and pantry back of it. She would take up the unsightly carpets, over which impossible plants wandered persistently, and have them woven into rag rugs, with green and brown and yellow borders. Th

h the cobwebs of estrangement swept away, should begin a new and happier honeymoon in the transformed house. When the book was done-

," he said, coldly. "I can use a t

tiently while men achieve, and she who has learned to wait patiently, an

a peach of a table, if I

eadboards of three ponderous walnut beds and the supporting columns of a hideous sideboard had gone into its composition, t

started out of her chair. "She's afraid," laughed Dick, ins

m the depths of her rocker. "Sure

y troubled. "Someway, I feel as though s

. Willie saw the procession first and ran back with gleeful shouts to make the announcement. So it

et contrived. It was made of black walnut, and was at least three times as heavy as any of those in the Jack-o'-Lantern. On the top of the mass was perched a little old man in a skull cap, a slippered foot in

Dick; "it's Uncle I

irs, which they did, while Harlan and Dorothy stood by helplessly. Here, under his profane and involved direction, the s

t two dimes and a nickel to secure peace. A supplementary procession appeared with a small, weather-beaten trunk, a folding bat

eezed the newcomer,

imitation of the old man's asthmatic

mulous, bony hand suggestively toward the