separate them. Well, it was up to her to decide.

"I can't noways leave him when he 's having such a hard time!" she whispered to her hot pillow. "Everything an' everybody has turned against him, looks like, and his wife ought t' stand by him. I'll stick!"

When Bessie started to get breakfast she realized that there was nothing in the cupboard but a little flour, enough perhaps to make biscuit a couple of times. She had avoided telling Ed just how things were, but now the pinch of hunger was acute.

She watched him till he had scraped the syrup from his plate with the last morsel of biscuit, and then she faltered:

"We we have n't got anything to eat, Eddie. Had n't you better go to town an' get some groceries to-day?"

A tormented look came into his eyes. "I ain't got the face to ask Bill Adams for no more credit.",

She held one hand on the edge of the table to steady herself as the heat waves danced and blurred before her eyes. "But we got to have something to

eat!" she cried. "Think of the baby!" He threw his hands up passionately. "Ain't I thinkin' about it all the time? Ain't I fair' driv crazy thinkin' about it? Thoughts don't get you nowhere if you have n't got no money!"

Nevertheless, he rose and made ready to walk the five miles to town.

"Maybe you can get a lift part ways, coming or going," she drearily encouraged him as he stooped to kiss her. "Maybe."

She sat on the edge of the bed waiting his return. The pillow was too hot for her to rest her cheek against it, so she slumped forward, swaying from weakness, losing all sense of time. She watched the road, but there was little passing. It was as if life had been suspended for a time because of the heat.

It was mid-afternoon when she saw Ed come dragging up the road as if he could hardly lift one foot ahead of the other, his head sunk forward, his arms hanging limp. His hands were empty!

"You so tired, honey?" she murmured, laying her tear-wet cheek against his as he came in.

"Dog-tired," he panted, sinking into a chair. "My head hurts," he went on, putting his hands to his temples. "Feel funny, like an iron kettle full o' live coals."

"This heat has been too much for you." She passed caressing fingers across his burning forehead. “And you -did n't-get anything?"

"No." He shook his head as if the effort were an agony, and his voice was thick and lifeless, as though a corpse were speaking. "Bill Adams said he 'd be ruint, with all he 'd let out to farmers, if cotton did n't make. Said, if it went on like this a couple of days longer, nobody 'd make anything. Said to come back if it rained in a couple o' days. But it ain't ever goin' to rain no more!" She stood beside him, helpless for a moment, unable to speak; but at thought of his need she roused herself.

"Come on back an' sit in the kitchen with me, honey, while I get you some supper." She felt a need to have him near her, and her love reached out pitiful hands to his in the face of menacing future.

He staggered after her into the shedkitchen.

"I'll make the fire for you," he said, picking up a stick of wood, but holding it in uncertain hands.

Bessie shook the last flour from the bag into the pan and began making up biscuit dough, working it with her fingers.

"Maybe you can get something tomorrow from one o' the other stores," she suggested, with an effort at an encouraging smile.

His look contradicted her.

"I tried 'em. They 're all in the same box. I dunno what we 're goin' to do!" His voice rose sharply, and his eyes were unnatural in their stare.

And then she seemed to hear from some far distance a little child crying, its thin, poignant wail piercing her soul. Some force seemed to tear her heart out of her body, crush it with iron force, and then thrust it back.

"Ed," she cried, with heartbreak in her voice, "O Ed, I guess I'd better go back to pappy, darling!"

He shook his head. "He would n't let you." Tears were rolling down her cheeks. "Yes, he wrote for me to come." He lifted his head with a jerk. "When 'd you hear from him?" "Some time back. I did n't say nothing to you about it, because I did n't want to go." She looked at him fearfully, to see how he would take it.

He sat in silence for a moment, as if his disturbed brain was attempting to . comprehend this new thought, his nervous fingers balancing the stick of wood. Finally he dragged out his words.

"Maybe it would be better for you to go home for a little visit, to pick up an' get strong. I can come for you after cotton-pickin', an' maybe we can find a new place an' start over again. Surely there won't be a drought next year, and we can get on better. I'd feel easier to have you taken right care of in September."

She held clenched hands on the rim of the bread-pan. How unselfish he was in his thought for her, and how she loved him! But she could n't lie to him just as she was leaving him!

"No, Ed honey," she cried piercingly, "pappy said I could n't come 'less it was to stay!"

His bloodshot eyes held a bewildered

look.

"But he don't want me to stay there?" "No." Her whole body trembled, as if her joints were water. "He saysif I come-I 've got to leave you!"

His look of bewilderment deepened. "Leave me, Bess girl? Why, we 're married!"

"Yes, that 's what I say. It's near 'bout killing me to even think of it!" Her tears dripped down on her hands.

"You would n't leave me?" His voice had an acute ring like that of a child who sees his mother abandoning him. She gave a great sob.

I'm

"What can I do, Ed darling? half starved, though I would n't mind that for myself. I'd honestly rather die than be separated from you; but the baby, Eddie-"

"You 'd leave me when I 'm havin' such a hard deal from all creation? You'd turn your back on me when it looks like God and man has forsaken me, an' the elements was makin' sport of me?" His eyes were wild.

She leaned against the table, sobbing convulsively.

"O God, why is life so hard for us? There ain't nobody nigh for me to turn to, forty miles away from all the folks I ever knew! I 've got to leave you, Eddie, when I'd rather be cut into little bits an' burned in the fire!"

"When you aimin' to go?" His tone was deadly still.

As he sprang after her, she jerked the table between them, the dishes crashing to the floor.

"O Ed, don't hit me!" she shrieked, and crumpled to the floor.

EVEN while they had talked a wisp of cloud as filmy as raveled cotton-wool had floated idly up the sky. Other wisps had stolen from nowhere to join it, till it had hung like a great open cottonboll high in the blue. Presently darker clouds had piled themselves on the horizon, massed and ponderous, like bales of cotton in their brown wrappings. A jagged streak of lightning had slit the face of the sky like a cruel smile.

In a little while a few hesitant drops came down, then more scurried faster from the clouds, until a slow and searching downpour followed. At last

it 's got to be."

He laughed queerly.

"You can't go.

money."

You ain't got any

She nodded her wretched head. "Yes, pappy sent me the money for my ticket."

"How much?" he demanded.
"Fifty dollars."

"When?" He sprang to his feet. "Some time back," she faltered. "And so you 've had money all this time when I was eatin' my soul out! When I could n't sleep nights for thinkin' how I could get somethin' for you to eat, you had fifty dollars hid' away! So that's the kind of wife you are, is it?"

His face was livid, and his eyes glared ike a madman's.

Bess shrank from him in terror. "O Ed, you don't understand!" He came a step nearer her, his muscles tense.

"By God, you think you'll leave me to live as if you'd never known me! No, damn you, I'll kill you first!"

She saw the leaping light of madness in his eyes, and knew that the heat and his distress had crazed him.

He lunged forward, the stick of wood lifted in his grasp.

"O Eddie, don't! don't!" she cried, stumbling backward and around the table, her hands thrown out in appeal.

before the landscape, fell on the cracked earth, which drank it thirstily, on the wilted cotton plants, which lifted grateful leaves, on the roof of the little house on the edge of the field. But the two in the shed-kitchen paid no heed to it.

Until the gathering dusk Ed crouched beside the still figure on the floor. His hands frantically chafed her wrists, his kisses rained on her white face, and his cries implored her to speak to him.

"O Bess girl! I did n't mean it! I was n't myself!"

When he strained his ears to listen for an answer, he heard only the rain.

Suddenly the wind shifted, bringing a swirl of rain through the window upon that quiet form and unresponsive face. With a swift impulse to shield her, Ed put his arms about the helpless body and dragged it to one side. As he did so, her eyes opened, and looked into his, with dazed questioning at first and then with leaping fear.

When Ed saw his wife look at him in terror, he struck his hands against his head, with one wordless cry.

The sight of his anguish swept the fear from her eyes, and only love was left. Her weak hands groped toward him, to draw his head against her breast, to hold it there with tenderness, before she gathered strength to speak.

"I'm not hurt, Eddie darling. I understand. And, see, it 's raining!"

HE name caco first appears in Haitian history in 1867. The men who took the field in the insurrection against President Salnave adopted that pseudonym, and nicknamed zandolite those who supported the Government. The insurrectionists were the Haitian birds who flitted freely everywhere, feeding on the helpless "caterpillars." The two terms have persisted to this day.

Haiti has never since been entirely free from cacos, though there have been occasional short periods when the country has been spared their ravages. Let a new president lose his popularity, however, or some ambitious rascal raise the cry of revolt, and the bandit-revolutionists were quick to flock together again, beginning their operations as soon as the mangos were ripe enough to furnish them subsistence. Ragged, penniless, illiterate fellows in the mass, they gather in bands varying from a score to thousands in numbers, depending on the reputation, persuasiveness, or power of compulsion of the selfappointed leaders. The latter are, in some cases, men of a certain education by Haitian standards, though often as illiterate as their followers. Now and again one of them, usually with a certain admixture of Caucasian blood in

his veins, has personal ambitions either of making himself President of Haiti in the long-approved manner, or at least of becoming powerful enough to force the Government to appoint him the ruler of a province or a smaller district. Others are merely the mouthpieces of disgruntled politicians or influential "respectable citizens" of Portau-Prince or several others of the larger cities, who secretly supply funds to the active insurrectionists.

The backwardness and poverty of Haiti are due chiefly to the more or less constant menace of these roving outlaws. Travel has often entirely disappeared from many a trail; more than one fertile region has been left wholly uncultivated and virtually uninhabited because of the bands of marauding cacos. Cattle, once plentiful throughout the republic, have almost entirely disappeared, thanks to the fact that their meat furnishes the chief means of livelihood, and their hides the one source of income for the bandits. Their depredations have cost the Black Republic most of its wealth and the greater share of its worldly troubles.

Some two years after American occupation cacoism took on a new life. In perfect frankness it must be admitted that this was partly the fault of the Americans. In their eagerness to fur

nish the country with the first obvious step to advancement, roads, the forces of occupation carried matters with somewhat too energetic a hand. The natives were not particularly fond of the resurrected law of corvée, but they would probably have endured it had it been applied in strict legality, requiring each man to labor a few days a year at road-building in his own locality. When they were driven from their huts at the point of a gendarme rifle, transported, on their own bare feet, to distant parts of the island, and forced to labor for weeks, under armed guards both day and night, it is natural that they should have concluded the white man was planning to reduce them again to the slavery they had thrown off more than a century before. All this has been corrected. The American Chef de la Gendarmerie d'Haiti who countenanced, if he did not sanction, these methods has gone on to new honors in other fields of battle; the young American gendarme officers whose absolute power over their districts made it possible to apply their orders to build roads too sternly have returned to the ranks, and the corvée has been abolished. That forced labor was not the cause of cacoism, which has not yet been entirely wiped out in Haiti, for it is in the Haitian blood to turn caco; but it made a fertile field of ignorant, disgruntled negroes from which the bandit leaders were able to harvest most of their followers, and gave strength to the chief weapon of the rascally chiefs -the assertion that the Americans had come to take possession of Haiti and reestablish slavery. To this day even the foreign companies who have no trouble in recruiting labor for other purposes cannot hire the workmen needed to build roads. The thick-skulled native countrymen see in that particular task the direct route to becoming slaves.

For two years or more courageous young Americans have been chasing cacos through the hills of central and northern Haiti, with no more ulterior motive than that of giving the Black Republic the internal peace it has long lacked and sadly needed. All of them are members of our Marine Corps, though many of them are in addition

officers of the Gendarmerie of Haiti, with increased rank and pay. Take care not to confuse these two divisions of pacifiers, for the gendarmerie has a strong esprit de corps of its own, and a just pride in its own achievements, despite being still marines at heart. Though the world has heard little of it, these caco-hunters have performed feats that compare with anything done by their fellows in France. In fact, their work has often required more sustained courage and individual initiative, and has brought with it greater hardships. In the trenches at their worst the warrior had the support and the sense of companionship of his fellows and a more or less certain commissary at the rear; if his opponents were sometimes brutal, they clung to some of the rules of civilized warfare. In Haiti many a young American gendarme officer has set forth on an expedition of long duration. through the mountainous wilderness, often wholly alone, except for three or four native gendarmes, cousins to the cacos themselves, sleeping on the bare ground when he dared to sleep at all, subsisting on the scanty products of the jungle, his life entirely dependent on his own wits, and his nerves always taut with the knowledge that to be wounded or captured means savage torture and mutilation, to be followed by certain death. Bit by bit the native gendarmes have been trained to fight the cacos unassisted, and three or four of them have now reached commissioned rank; but the best of them still require the moral support of a white leader, and the energetic American youths scattered through the "brush" of Haiti have the future peace of the country in their keeping.

It must be admitted that the cacos do not constitute a dangerous army in the modern sense of the word. Their discipline is less than embryonic, their weapons seldom better than dangerous playthings. One rifle to five men is the average equipment, and many of these are antiquated pieces captured from the French expeditionary force under Leclerc that was driven from the island more than a century ago.

The cacos have a mortal fear of white soldiers. Scores of times a single marine or gendarme officer has routed