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brought upon him. Every spare moment he tussled heroically with the few knotty problems on which he had determined to stake his all. The fighting blood of his soldier ancestry was stirred at last, and leaped gallantly to the call of a hopeless charge. He had worked hard the evening before the examination, to the cruel accompaniment of the far-away music of the hop room, and when "Army Blue" sounded the approach of "Taps," he closed victoriously the pages on waste-weirs, master at least of that darling of Granny Ellery's heart. When "Tubs" Richards after the dance looked in to deliver a note to him, Hearne had already blanketed his transom, placed his candle beneath the bed, and was lying flat under it himself, prepared for a final night's vigil with engineering. He crawled back to read his small missive whose dear familiar handwriting had already set his blood dancing. A moment later he emerged with a white, determined face and began to throw on his dress-jacket. The Worm gazed at him incredulously.

"Good Heavens, His'n, you can't mean you 're going to 'run it out'-three days before graduation and with your record! You'll be fired double quick if they 'hive' you."

His'n did not stop for answer. He was buckling his belt as he made for the door. The Worm caught him by the shoulder.

"His'n, listen to me-I won't let you do so mad a thing. Throw away every chance of graduation for a girl!-shows what kind she is to ask such a thing when she knows what it may mean to you," bungled the poor Worm.

His'n wrenched himself loose. "You will please remember that you are speaking of the girl I'm to marry, Hastings," he said, dropping for the first time in their acquaintance the old affectionate, bantering nickname. "She is in trouble and needs me. I've got to go!"

A moment later he was outside in the darkness, his shoes in his hand, peering cautiously toward the broad shaft of moonlight staining the stairs. No spying tactical officer with his hated bull's-eye lantern seemed in sight, however, so he shot down them lightly, skirted the shadows of the hall below, and found himself out in the area with the sentry pacing measuredly across his exit. Clinging close to the en

compassing darkness of the wall, Hearne made his stealthy way to within a few yards of the unsuspecting private. At the first turn of his broad back the cadet, a swift streak of gray and white, sped through the forbidden gates and stood panting without, the first dangerous stage of his journey past.

In the hostile moonlight it was hard work making from one to another of the bulwarks of shadowed tree and hedge. Sometimes the fatal uniform of blue would flash into sight, and Hearne would crouch low, his heart pounding betrayal to his ears. All the time he was thinking of Faith "in trouble." Could she be ill? Every moment conjured distressing reasons for her urgent summons. Her cousin lived far up the road past Grant Hall, and when at length Hearne reached the house he was shaking with an exhaustion miles of swift running could not have caused.

At the sight of him the little figure in white upon the steps flew down to meet him, and Gordon caught her in his arms in a passionate relief. Faith herself was clinging to him with a happy abandonment she had never shown before.

"You poor darling," she cried at the sight of his pale face. "Did you worry about me? I'm so sorry, but I could n't write you the truth, and I had to say that I was in trouble so you would be sure to It 's good news I have for you, dear-just look at this."

come.

She thrust a roll of papers into his hand excitedly. Hearne stared down at them. stupidly. The moonlight had illumined the last page, and the question of the waste-weirs which lately had been his companion day and night, was clearly revealed.

He wondered for a moment whether he was losing his reason and the thing had become an obsession to him. His dazed senses tried to grasp what Faith was saying.

"Did you ever know such luck?" she was asking triumphantly. "I was in Cousin Edward's study this afternoon when he was putting these papers away, and he said, 'Those questions decide the fate of more than one poor fellow in the graduating class.' And right away it flashed into my mind what I could do. I watched where he put the key to his desk, and then I rushed right home from the hop-they 're at an officers' bridge party and won't be home

for an hour yet-and got them out for you. Here's a pencil and paper, so you can copy them.”

She looked up at him happily, her face aglow with her triumph. Something in Hearne's eyes made her falter.

"My God, Faith," he said in a voice she had never heard before. "Do you mean to say you stole those papers?" Involuntarily he recoiled a step.

She cried out at that in a rush of indignation and wounded love. "How can you say such a thing? I took them for you, Gordon. There is n't anything I would n't do for you," she added piteously, and took a little trembling propitiatory step toward him.

But he made no move to meet her. He stood staring at her in a helpless horror against which she hid her eyes.

"You thought I would cheat to pass?" he demanded, still in a strained, unnatural voice, and then choking suddenly, he wheeled and went blindly down the road.

It must have been a merciful Providence which directed his steps home, for he himself looked neither to the right nor to the left-indeed did not even remember having reached there. He only knew he spent an endless night looking into darkness, and rose to a dawn which found his world in ruins.

The Worm, cursing silently and deeply the ways of women in general, watched him miserably as he sat during the morning in a stupor of suffering. As the fatal hour drew near, it was the Worm again who got him into his dress uniform; he himself would not have even made a move to go. He did not rouse from his lethargy until his room-mate pulled him back at the last moment.

"His'n, I know something has hit you. pretty hard," he said, sympathetically. "But you can't give up the fight this way, old fellow. There's your father, you know and me. Graduation can't mean anything to me without you-you know that."

The words started Hearne into sudden alertness; nothing could matter any more to him: his life was over and done with; but a man could n't think of just himself. And he put before him the lined, careworn face of his father and the Worm's dear ugliness as he waited for the examination. He felt no trace of nervousness, no faintest qualm of either hope or dread. When

at length he stood in the section-room before the formidable tribunal, the instructor impressive in full-dress uniform and sword, the distinguished Board of Visitors on the platform, and the curious faces of friends and strangers looking down from the gallery above, he still felt nothing but a quiet determination to do his best. Even a glint of golden hair beneath a pinktrimmed leghorn in the corner failed to move him from his curious passivity.

The first question came within the range of his limited accomplishment. Of the second he had only a hazy idea, but he found himself to his own amazement with a preternatural mental keenness working it to a triumphant finish. The third and fourth he could not answer, but the fifth the Worm had gone over with him only the day before. His fate hung trembling on the outcome of the sixth.

With the first words of Captain Ellery, his mind, trained to that attack, marshaled in perfect array its disciplined facts on the waste-weirs. He began with a quiet assurance, "I am required to discuss" - and then stopped short.

A sudden hush of anxiety fell over the section-room. The visitors leaned over the railing in silent encouragement, and even the Members of the Board cast human glances toward the gallant young figure whose shoulder-straps were hanging in the balance.

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"Yes, Mr. Hearne," the instructor. prompted helpfully.

But Hearne did not hear him. He was standing in a moon-lit garden with the girl he loved in his arms, and between them flamed the fateful question whose answer trembled on his lips. He had not realized before what that meant. He had known the answer. already, to be sure; he had not looked since within his book. But there had been treachery and fraud; even if innocently he had looked upon that paper; and by the stern ethics of the corps it was for him to pay the price of that dishonor.

He drew a long breath and laid his pointer down. "I can't answer that question, sir," he said clearly, and the examination was over.

He had gotten through at last the final good-bys of the men with whom he had marched and studied and played for four years, and had borne up steadfastly under

their clumsy sympathy and real regret. That torpor which had enchained him for the last twenty hours had mercilessly left him, and each insignificant little act possessed an undreamed-of power to stab his heart. It hurt with an almost physical suffering as he looked his last upon the wide grassy plain, sentineled by the white and gray of its splendid buildings, and its faithful outer guard of emerald hills and stately river. He had hated it fiercely enough in his plebe year; he had thought he felt merely a tolerance in the three which followed; now it seemed wrenching his very heartstrings as he swung sharply away from it down the hill.

The Worm went with him to the edge of cadet limits. Their parting was unemotional and offhand in the extreme.

"Try not to spend all your time with the 'fems,'" His'n had urged quite jauntily, looking fixedly at a clump of wild flowers in the road. "Don't trifle with all their young affections."

"I'll do my best not to," the Worm had answered gaily, with a lump in his throat. "Good-by, old chap, and take care of yourself."

Then somehow Hearne had found himself alone upon the ferry, and the Hudson creeping between himself and his Alma Mater. A note from Faith and the class

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He knew instinctively that he could kiss away her anger and hurt pride, but while all his heart was crying out for her loveliness, he knew too that she had killed something she could never make live again. He leaned over and dropped the ring into the river.

With that manhood which had sprung to life in a night he strove to face resolutely his bitter thoughts-the sweetheart he had lost and the father he had yet to face, the past he had ruined and the future not yet born. But when the sunset gun thundered among the hills, his brave composure broke. He straightened unconsciously and gave the old familiar salute to the flag-the flag he had proved unworthy to serve. There was no one to see him as he put his head down upon his arms on the side of the boat.

He did not know that he had passed with flying colors his real examination in the honor of the corps.

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MOTHERING ON PERILOUS

(KENTUCKY MOUNTAIN SKETCHES)
VII. NUCKY MARRS, HERO

BY LUCY FURMAN

Author of "Stories of a Sanctified Town "

[UCKY, otherwise Enoch, Marrs was one of the ten boys who ran away from the Settlement School on Perilous the first week in August, on account of homesickness. Two days after Miss Loring came over to the small boys' cottage to live, he was returned by his father; but before the latter was out of sight, he calmly announced that he did n't aim to stay, and that neither his paw nor anybody else was able to make him. Miss Loring believed this, one glance at his vivid face and combative eyes convinced her. "Very well," she said, "if you find you cannot be satisfied, of course you must go. But it will hurt my feelings a good deal; however, don't think of them."

"What difference is it to you?" he demanded, with a piercing look.

"Only this, I have come over here to the cottage to be happy with you boys I am lonely and need you-and if you can't like me well enough to stay, life will seem a failure."

Nucky pondered a long time, with large gray eyes fixed on Miss Loring's face. "I don't know as I'll go right off," he said, after a while.

"Oh, thank you," she replied, gratefully. Nucky was eleven, and his home was on Trigger Branch of Powderhorn, eighteen miles distant from the school, in Boyne County. Mr. Marrs had said before leaving that Nucky was a master scholar when he could leave off fighting long enough to learn his books. This, and like remarks dropped by other parents, led Miss Loring to anticipate a strenuous life at the cottage. But, to her surprise, the

remaining days of that, week passed off smoothly, confirming her theory that the wild and martial traits are likely to be atrophied in an atmosphere of love and gentleness.

True, there were a few straws, especially in Nucky's case, to show which way the wind might blow if it listed. On Thursday at breakfast, when Geordie Yonts undertook to instruct the new boys in table manners, and informed Nucky that it was not proper to eat with his knife, he was silenced by a jab of the knife in his direction, and a threat to cut out his liver; at dinner the same day, when Philip Floyd snatched a sweet-potato from Nucky's plate, he received a spoonful of sop (gravy) full in the face; the next morning when Miss Loring had the boys back in the barn shelling corn for mill, and Taulbee Bolling made a disparaging remark about Trigger Branch and "Bloody Boyne," the pitchfork sailed over his head, grazing it slightly but painfully. Saturday being combined wash- and cleaningday at the school, and a breathless time for everybody (Hen Salyer had to be punished that night for calling it a day), there was little chance to get into trouble.

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Sunday morning, however, there was in the cottage air a noticeable restlessness, which worked itself off to some extent in excitement over new Sunday clothes, and in a good deal of squirming and shuffling in church. The Heads had requested that the boys be kept as quiet as possible all day; and Miss Loring, realizing that the afternoon, with its large leisure, might

prove difficult, planned to thrill her flock and speed the flight of time by reading Robinson Crusoe, never having heard of a boy who was not fascinated by it. She began in the thick of the story, where Crusoe is actually in sight of his island, and read with judicious skippings. What was her chagrin to see one pair after another of bright, roving eyes dull and close, one head after another roll over on the grass (they were out in the cottage yard), Nucky holding out longest, and murmuring wearily, as his head settled back against a tree, "Did n't he never get into no fights, or kill nobody?"

Miss Loring sat for a long time in deep discouragement, gazing at the twelve sleepers, and wondering what would be the proper literary milk for her babes. When they awoke, she gave them permission to play mumble-peg, very, very quietly; and they made a tremendous effort, but it was the last straw. After supper, when they were gathered around the sitting-room table, for ten minutes of Sunday-school lesson, the storm broke. Nucky kicked Keats on the shin; Keats called him a smotch-eyed polecat; the two grappled. Hen flew to his big brother's assistance, and Iry and Joab Atkins to Nucky's; Philip rushed in on the Salyer side, followed by Taulbee; Geordie and Absalom joined the Marrs faction, Killis and Hosea the Salyer; while little Jason Wyatt, eight, and just arrived that day, flew joyously into the fray, impartially attacking both sides. It all happened in a flash, and before Miss Loring could catch her breath, the table was overturned, chairs were flying, and Bedlam had broken loose. In vain she implored, commanded, threatened, she might as well have called to the raging sea.

Dreadful moments followed, during which she could only dodge chairs, and wring her hands wildly. Worse was to come, however, for in another instant-she saw Keats grab the tongs, Killis the shovel, Geordie the poker, Nucky a hatchet, while Philip calmly wrested off a table-leg, and the others either smashed chairs to pieces for weapons, or seized remaining tablelegs. Then indeed she felt that death was imminent for all concerned, and running to the door, shrieked loudly for Granville Dudley and the other big boys who roomed over the workshop. Returning, she plucked

the broom from Iry's hands, and rushed with it, straw-end foremost, into the thick of the fight. She was hit on the head by a shovel, on the shoulder by a table-leg, on the elbow by something, but her broom received the worst of the blows. It is not safe to say what might have been the outcome had not Granville opportunely arrived, snatched the broom from Miss Loring and turned the handle-end on the boys, beating and whacking them mercilessly until they finally surrendered their weapons, and retired, bloody but happy, from the encounter.

That night Miss Loring lay long awake, nursing bruises and reconstructing theories. She sadly admitted that love and gentleness needed to be backed up by good muscle, and that, to be a success in her undertaking as cottage mother, she required, not the weak bodily presence which, like Paul, she actually possessed, but the strength of an Amazon. Next morning, while she was making a visit to the loom-house, inspiration came. She asked and received from the Heads permission for Cleo Royce, the head-weavinggirl, a splendid, large, handsome young woman, to come over and live with her at the cottage.

Of course the boys were punished for that fight, losing several days' playtime. Miss Loring also talked to them most earnestly on the subject. "Why, it's just an accident you did n't kill one another or me," she said, "and then how would you have felt?"

"I'd hate right smart to have kilt a woman," replied Nucky, "but gee, I would n't mind layin' out a few boys! I got to begin somewheres-a man hain't nobody till he 's kilt a few-and I can tell them boys right now they aim to die when they name me names, or make me mad. Same as Blant and Ezry,-all Trigger knows it can't fool with them."

The following Sunday afternoon, as soon as dinner was over, Miss Loring promptly started with her boys for the open, taking them several miles up Perilous, to a beautiful, retired glen where they could shout, play, fight (without weapons), and make all the noise they pleased; a safety-valve that then and afterward proved of much value.

That second Sunday night, also, she happened upon acceptable literary food.

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