On

and the mountains that shut all in. the other she looked down to the mysterious pool. It was dark and still, and people said it had no bottom. At Sewanee she had heard this idea laughed at.

Sewanee she bowed her head on her hands. Her grandmother did not want her, need she stay here? The talk would grow in the valleys, but at Sewanee it would soon die; then Miss Agnes could marry Mr. Dudley, and all be well. She would be left desolate-but she was only one. Trampled in the dust - left for dead! who cared?

A noise startled her, and she rose quickly, to find Dock standing before her. "Does Granny want me?" she asked.

Dock stood silent, with one hand grasping a young maple until it shivered and dropped its scarlet leaves about him; while the girl watched and trembled as the young maple did. At last Dock raised his head, and his eyes were full of pain and fire.

"Lizer says thet you need not a-been so beggitty last night to Si, kase Si only done what he done kase youun's Granny axed him to do hit to save the two families. An' there worn't no other man would tuck youun's now." A fresh shower of scarlet leaves fluttered down about him. "I didn't knock her, kase I ain't never knocked a woman yit. I told her she were a-lyin', an' she knowed hit, an' I were one man thet would lay down an' be chopped to pieces fur you-body an' soul. An hit's true, Hannah ;" and his eyes were filled with a light that would have glorified any face on earth. "Hit's God's truth; but I never would have told hit, 'ceppen fur everybody a-turning 'gainst you. I ain't nobody, an' I knows hit; an' I don't 'llow thet you hev come down to me-thar ain't no sich foolishness in me. But all is atalkin', Hannah-" shaking his head sadly —“ an' I kin give you a honest name, an' I kin work fur you, and shoot fur youan' I would. An' no pusson would dar' to tuck Hannah Wilson's name 'twixt tongue an' teeth to spit hit out, kase I'd kill 'em. An' if you wants to go 'way, I'll go, an' if you wants to stay, I'll stay. An' I'll never cast nothin' in youun's teeth, ner sot up to be no ekal o' yourn. Don't gimme no word now," he added, swaying the little maple-tree back and forth, “but

keep it in youun's mind fur sumpen to hold on to." Then he went away.

Nothing could have shown Hannah the depth of her fall as completely as this offer did. Nothing could have proved as cruelly the hopelessness of her position. That Dock Wilson should dare such a proposition! She sat down again, casting her apron over her head, and rocking herself back and forth. The strength of the man's love had not touched her yet. Hannah Wilson! He had coupled the names. Hannah Wilson! what better than Lizer Wilson? To Agnes Welling and her friends, all were 'Covites' together. Was there a true difference? Between herself and Agnes Welling there was a wide difference, but between herself and Dock? And between Dock and the much admired Si Durket? This last difference was plain enough, and Dock's kind face, glorified by his love, rose up before her. Soul and body he would die for her—he would work and fight for her, and never think she had descended to his level! She remembered how he had worked for her and watched over her in the spring-asking no return.

The swaying motion ceased, and her apron fell from over her face. Now he offered to stand between her and the world; and he knew that Si, who made the talk, would keep it alive.

What was the difference between her and Dock? Somehow or other he seemed above her now. Marry Dock, then Miss Agnes would know that the talk was not true, and would marry Mr. Dudley. With the thought of Sewanee there came a vision of her leaden lined future.

Suddenly the sound of the horn came to her. She looked at the sun; it was not supper-time; what could it mean? Again the sound, and this time more sharp, and some one was waving to her down in the field. Quickly she went, and saw her grandfather beckoning. Before she reached him she heard the words—“ Mr. Dudley's to the house-" and her heart seemed to stop. Had Agnes sent for her to come back, and give the talk the lie? She laid hold on the old man's arm to steady herself. The joy shook her as no pain had done.

"Mr. Dudley!"

"Thet's hit. He's come to tuck you

you for hit all." And while she spoke soul looked into soul, the distance between them was bridged, and the strength of her beauty struck Max as it had never done before. She was superb. You hev been mighty good to me, Mr. Dudley, but thar's a fur way 'twixt you an' me; -thar's a diffrunce as wide as all this valley," with a little, sweeping gesture. "An' you ain't fur folks like me. But thar's one o' my own folks, Mr. Dudley, hev offered me his honest name, an' please God all will hap out right. But all the same, God bless you, Mr. Dudley."

"Hannah! Gal!" a sharp voice cried, and all turned quickly, "Is you crazy— crazy! Si'll never come agin-never!" There was a moment's pause, and Hannah looked down into the old woman's face, pityingly. How gray and drawn it looked; and she said, soothingly, "Num mine, Granny, hit's all right-hit's a better man 'an Si Durket, Granny."

"True, Hannah ?" And Max laid his hand on Hannah's shoulder.

"As true as God's daylight, Mr. Dudley," turning her beautiful face up to his. "An' yander he stands-Dock Wilson

ing him in the dusk, and he had much to tell him. It was a long way he had come to meet his friend, but what he had to say was not for others to hear, and the long walk back would give Dudley time to recover himself.

Presently he heard him coming, and Melville shrank from the task he had set himself. How could he tell Dudley what had happened! But Max was upon him by this, and started, as if from a dream. "What has happened?" he asked, and laid his hand on Melville's shoulder.

"I was anxious," Melville faltered, "What has happened?"

"Nothing. The girl refused me. A princess could not have done it more grandly; and the old grandmother died in a fit. But what ails you?"

"Cartright"

"Well, Cartright ?" and leaning against a tree, Dudley took off his cap and passed his hand wearily across his brow and eyes. The scenes in the Cove had tired him more than he had realized until now, and now he felt almost too weary to go farther. "What about Cartright? He knew where I was gone; has he posted me for a fool?"

"Worse than that."

Dudley started forward, taking hold of Melville. "What has he dared to say!"

"About you? Nothing. It is—it is Miss Welling." The grasp on Melville's shoulder became almost unbearable. "Oh,

Dudley, Cartright is engaged to Miss Welling! Asked her at noon-announced it at once, and Mrs. Skinner says that Professor Welling is 'immensely pleased.' I told you Cartright was working for his own ends; and I thought that you would like to have a walk after hearing. So I slipped away; nobody knows I am come."

There was a moment's silence, then Dudley turned homeward, walking slowly.

20

A Questionable Type.

The Westerner of recent fiction is an entirely different character. His home has been changed, for one thing, and instead of the Rockies or the Great Plains he now affects what might be called in semi-nautical phrase the West-middle - west. He has lost his naïvely reckless ways in the removal, and his chief purpose in life now seems to be to set forth the iniquity of existing social conditions. Octave Thanet's missionary sheriff, it is true, is a lineal descendant of the old type, as engaging if perhaps as improbable as the gentlemanly and high-minded gamblers or the simplehearted desperadoes in whom Bret Harte revelled; but turn to the characters of that self-proclaimed prophet of the Northwest, Mr. Hamlin Garland, and what a falling off we find! His people do not live; they work. Life, as he sees it, is a ceaseless round of fierce toil performed angrily and rebelliously by men who lack the force to make their rebellion effective. They complain, and sometimes they grow brutal toward their womankind, but their revolt carries them no farther. They have altogether lost the fighting spirit. They shrink and cower before the winter's cold; they shudder and wince at the pain of husking corn with worn fingers; they swear and rage over the discomforts of heavy work

One

in hot weather. They do the thing they hate because they cannot get away from it. looks in vain for any trace of that gay courage and defiance of hardships which animated, for instance, the men who “dammed the Sacramento," or inspired the little band of outcasts from Poker Flats. Equally wanting is any remnant of that stern delight in the conflict with an unwilling and grudging nature which made the life of many a New England farmer a heroic epic. For them the hardships and discomforts of life loom large, and its courage and inspiration do not exist.

Worse still, this state of affairs is looked upon not as due to peculiarly adverse circumstances or individual incapacity, but as the common lot of Western farmers, imposed upon them by social forces against which it is vain to contend. "Social conditions," Mr. Garland assures us, are such “that only men of exceptional endowments, and willing and able to master many of the best and deepest and most sacred of their impulses, could succeed." Men might start out hopefully and ambitiously enough, but to no purpose. "Conditions were too adverse; they simply weakened, slipped slowly back into an ox-like or else a fretful patience." Fate," says Mr. Dick Swiveller, contemplating his unpleasant predicament, fate has brought me to this. Very well; I wash my hands of it. Fate may get me out again—and I wish her joy of the job." That is the attitude of Mr. Garland's farmers, except that they lack the cheerful philosophy of Dickens's light-hearted scamp.

Surveying these things, the disinterested reader cannot refrain from questioning whether Mr. Garland is less true to life than he thinks, or whether there has really been a sudden and unfortunate change in the character of our Western citizens. In the nature of things, "The many fail: the one

succeeds," whether they live in the East or the West; and when, as is the case with most of Mr. Garland's heroes, success means a political career ending in an election to Congress, perhaps this is not greatly to be regretted. But it is cause for regret if the majority of Western farmers, being disappointed in this or some other ambition, really take the helpless, invertebrate attitude so frequently portrayed by Mr. Garland. The miners and cowboys of the early writers were not model citizens, but they were far more hopeful material for the upbuilding of an ideal commonwealth than are these weaklings. A man may gamble and drink and use his revolver with an abandon untempered by any scruples regarding the sacredness of human life, and yet have heroic possibilities; but the man who, when confronted by difficulties, "simply weakens and slips back," the man who, finding himself in a thoroughly distasteful environment, querulously protests that society has put him there, and who, instead of striving with might and main to get out of it, settles down to wait with a fretful patience" until society shall be ready to remove him, devoting himself, meanwhile, to ineffective railings against those conditions which he has not the courage to fight, has lost the very fibre of manhood. It is a new attitude for Americans to take, and it is singular enough that it should appear on the fertile plains of the great West. Can it be that a real deterioration of character has taken place there? or has Mr. Garland mistaken individual cases for a type?

I

cussion of

T is a fact, and whether or not we grieve over it does not change it, that there is usually a difference between what we say of our friends to others and what we say about them to themselves. Persons for whom we have a real regard, we look upon as part On the Dis- of our lives and feeling a certain property in them, we often wonder Friends. how they are getting on, and what sort of a business they are making of life. When we see them we take notice, and we remember what we hear about them, and speculate a good deal about them at odd moments when they happen to come into our minds. Unless we happen to be confessors to them, or to have surer sources of information than we usually do have, our knowledge of them is apt to be inaccurate, and our conclusions, being based on it, are liable to error. Yet, because we think about them, we are likely,

on occasion, to talk about them, and the occasion is when we come across someone who knows them well and is interested in them as we are. Now, of course, when we talk about our friends to people who don't know them well, and who perhaps are not especially sympathetic to us, we talk commonplaces, and use that discretion in our utterances which people of prudence are expected to use at all times. But when we are with people who know our friends, and are interested in them, and whose minds excite our minds, and who seem to us worth talking to, then is the time of our danger; for then we reach down and bring out our thoughts, and put our brooding hypotheses into words, and show our acumen and the searching quality of our discernment by shaping our conclusions and offering them to be examined. Talk of this sort does not consist of sworn statements, and of course among honorable people involves no betrayal of confidences and no disclosures of things that ought to be hid. It is not testimony, but merely a conversation, where fact is scarce and opinion abundant, and where one sentence so hangs by another, and every opinion is so related to its context that a single sentence singled out for repetition is almost sure to misrepresent the person who spoke it.

I confess that when I get to discussing my friends, even those to whom I am greatly attached, on such occasions as these, I am liable to put into words the impressions which happen to be strongest in my mind at the time. I trust that I can hide a friend's infirmities with anyone; if I happen to know facts which ought not to be disclosed, I am under no temptation to disclose them; but in the exchange of speculations and impressions, I practise more latitude. And, of course, latitude involves risks, and risks involve occasional penalties. Sometimes things that I have said in bursts of fluency finally work around back to me through the very persons of whom I have said them. and give me bad dreams and distressing sensations. People who are talked about show so little consideration for those who have discussed them! They hear that you or I have said thus and so about them; and if they have reason to believe the report, if the “thus and so " was not pleasant to them, they accept it as the sure evidence of our true and permanent attitude toward them, and credit us sometimes with hostility or jealousy or