It

obscured the land and blotted the sky. It turned the sun to the round red-paper sun of an astrologer's weird garment. brimmed the cup of the hills with a universe of bluish, faintly irradiated particles. Minnie Bee and Roddy were as solitary as two persons in a dream. They were closed in by a dimness that might. for aught they could see to the contrary, stretch away to the farthest reaches of space and time. Wandering thus, as in an enchantment, they came on a forest of stickweed.

"Did you ever," asked Roddy, "do this?"

He broke a lance of stickweed stalk, nicked it just so far from one end, broke another slighter lance, and fitted an end of that into the nick. Holding these two lances high in air, he bent together their free ends, and with some adroit turn of wrist swiftly hurled the slighter one from him.

Minnie Bee exclaimed in delight and astonishment. It seemed impossible that the serpent of velvet black simulating Hogarth's line of beauty far above them could be the stickweed stalk hurled by Roddy the second before. It darted higher still. It did not turn in descent until it had flung itself, blazing, across the unreal face of the sun. It fell very slowly, while Minnie Bee held her breath. It was lost in the haze-brimmed cup of the hills. "Look! look!" cried Minnie Bee in a joyous tone.

A second serpent was hurling itself from the rim of the opposite hill. It strove to outdo Roddy's serpent. It outdid it.

"I'll not take that," said Roddy.

He flung a second lance. The serpent it immediately became darted viciously toward the zenith, far, far above the unreal face of the sun. Minnie Bee's eyes sparkled. She might have fancied herself a legendary princess beholding the encounter of rival magicians. Evidently the unseen magician was not going to stand that either. A fourth serpent rose; but through some default of magic sank ignominiously into the deeper blue haze that marked the hills along the horizon. In

stantly a fifth serpent hurled itself on the tail of the fourth.

"He 's mad," laughed Roddy, who had just sent his answer.

The unknown's serpent suffered from no default of magic this time. The two met in mid-air, and strove for supremacy. It was toss up between them straight above Minnie Bee's upturned face when they incredibly touched and fell slowly together, like enemies who had warily made.

truce.

"Bravo!" shouted Roddy in his ferrycall tremolo.

A return call echoed faintly, and was drowned, as the serpents had been drowned, in blue haze.

"Wonder who that was," said Roddy. "Show me how!" pleaded Minnie Bee. She did not learn the trick readily. Her stickweed lance remained a stickweed lance, falling stiffly close by, and never turning into a magic serpent at all.

"You have to begin doing it when you are a little tad," said Roddy, exploring a pocket. "Here, I'll show where I learned to throw stickweed." He took out a pack of kodak pictures. "Let us sit down." He made a place for her in the edge of the stickweed forest, and stood for a moment gazing at her. Pale brown of November grasses, vague blue of forest smoke, dim gold of withering, but still flaunting. autumn weeds, were all about them. With these Minnie Bee's vaguely blue dress and shining head made a harmony which even an untrained eye could appreciate.

He flung himself beside her, resting on his elbow, and arranging the pictures in order on the grass. He indicated one.

"On those old hills there," said Roddy, "right along the river. Mary and I used to see how far down it we could throw." "Mary?"

"My sister; her name is Mary, too." He pronounced it "Murry." He smiled. on Minnie Bee, "I'd like you two to meet."

Minnie Bee asked hurriedly:
"And who 's this?"

"My father," Roddy told her, pride in his voice.

"He looks clever and kind," said Minnie Bee.

Roddy nodded agreement.

"And what do you think of this pretty girl?"

The pretty girl laughed out at Minnie Bee from a loophole in a vine-hung lattice. Minnie Bee kept on looking until she discovered the girl to be rather mature, after all.

"It's your mother," she guessed at a

venture.

"Right-o," applauded Roddy. He looked at the picture for a good while himself. "You 'd love her," said Roddy, at last.

"And this?" asked Minnie Bee, again rather hurriedly.

"Oh, that is Bina, my cousin who is to be a trained nurse. I'll tell you all about I'll tell you all about Bina some day."

"And this beautiful, beautiful creature?"

"That," said Roddy, in a thoughtful, but matter-of-fact, tone-"that 's Susy, Breck's wife, you know." He looked reflectively at the ground before him for a brief moment. "I dare say Wirt has told you a lot of nonsense?" He put it to her suddenly. She colored, and Roddy went on: "I was fearfully in love with Susy more than a year back, but old Breck came home and cut me out. They ran away together this summer and got married.

Now they live at Cedarcliff with the rest of us. I'm very fond of Susy, but I'm not the least in love with her any more, of course. I'm not in love with any one. Being friends is good enough for me," said Roddy. "And, by the way, I've a poem about being friends which I 've been saving up in my head for you."

He began to recite, sitting up and clasping his knees, his eyes on the absurd red-paper sun.

"The one thing changes do not change, The one thing mine quite to the end,

Time may not alter or estrange
Your heart, my little friend."

He gave her a calm, affectionate glance and continued:

"We do not love as lovers may;

Someway one gets diviner good From this serene companionship And surety of mood.

"That says it," commented Roddy, with superb certitude.

Minnie Bee had a quaint, tender feeling for Roddy just then. She thought there could n't be much to a girl, however beautiful, who could give up a splendid boy like Roddy for that slight, sneering. gambling, drinking Breck Ivor. She cast her scornfully face down, and turned to Roddy, who had taken up another picture. It was a lovely view of Cedarcliff, and it was the house and grounds of Minnie Bee's despairing dreams. She could not keep the slow tears of longing from welling. It looked so old and quiet and big and lived in and loved! She contemplated it so long that Roddy glanced at her curiously.

"Why, Minnie Bee!" he cried in

amazement.

"I want to be born and grow up in a house like that," said Minnie Bee, ridiculously. "I hate little houses. I hate little yards. I hate little towns."

"Why, honey," said Roddy, "what 's it all about?"

His tone was distressed and thoughtful and more. It confessed to Minnie Bee's attuned ear that Roddy knew very well what it was all about.

"Is n't that a persimmon-tree, over there?" she asked, blinking her tears away.

"Looks as if it might be," said Roddy, cautiously following her lead.

"Please see," said Minnie Bee, calmly, as if she had not been making an idiot of herself a moment earlier. "I'm very fond of persimmons-once a year."

"And surety of mood," quoted Roddy all to himself, going off to throw sticks at dangling, amber bunches of fruit. The persimmons came tapping down on the dry, brown grasses.

"Poor little kid!" murmured Roddy, tenderly.

Not many had fallen, so he flung more
A lavish shower resulted, and,

sticks.

"I don't believe they 've had their three frosts yet," said Minnie Bee. She made a childish face over a persimmon, and tossed away the rest. They sank like bright-colored stones in the blue haze which filled the cup of the hills.

Continuing around the crest they encountered a remotely gazing figure. It was Seaton, also making a round of the hilltops. He glanced at Roddy.

"Was it your stickweed?" he asked. Roddy made a gesture of assent, and Seaton turned to Minnie Bee, who stood looking off into the distance with a detached air.

"Well," said Seaton, smiling down on her, "it did n't get the better of mine, did it ?"

He lifted his hat to Minnie Bee, and lounged off into the ubiquitous haze.

Roddy watched him from sight. "He looks rather old to be here," he said, turning to Minnie Bee.

She answered carelessly:

"Oh, he finished here ages ago. He came back to take a graduate course in civil law, so as to be able to manage his property intelligently, he says. His father left him a sugar plantation in Louisiana."

"And you can see," said Roddy, “that he looks down on everybody except Adam and Beauregard. What's wrong?"

"This thorn vine; it 's got my hem." "We'll make it let go, then," said Roddy, getting to a knee.

But it was a tenacious wretch of a thorn vine, and held to Minnie Bee's hem so effectually that the soft fabric was pulled and slightly rent before the vine. was cut and coaxed away.

"I'm afraid I 've been a clumsy duffer over it," said Roddy, straightening up.

"It's not your fault," said Minnie Bee; "you did the best you could."

RODDY stood by Minnie Bee's bookcase, looking over a recent number of "The Fixed Star," their college magazine.

"The winter lies before like an endless sorrow,"

quoted Roddy again. "And I came to take you sleigh-riding this morning. Here, I'll have this out with you presently. Go get on your things, and wrap up well."

When she came back, though well wrapped up, she did n't seem to suit him. "Where are your furs?" asked Roddy. "Oh, I don't need furs," said Minnie Bee. Gradually faint color overspread her face from brow to chin in a warm pinkness. How was she to tell him that if she could n't have good furs she would n't have any? "This," added Minnie Bee, flippantly, "is the South, Roddy, where we pick flowers the year round."

Roddy smiled back at her.

"I guess the snow made me forget. Stupid of me." He forgave himself many more serious blunders, but he never forgave himself for asking Minnie Bee why she did not wear her furs on that nipping January morning.

"How," he asked as they drove under an arch of enchantingly improbable white boughs, "did you ever come to write for 'The Fixed Star'?"

"Why," said Minnie Bee, "I was always good in English in high school. The boys knew it. I began giving them stuff for the 'Star' ages ago." She laughed. She laughed. "Sometimes I used to write nearly all of it except the ball news, and I could have written that."

"I like their nerve," said Roddy in tones of the deepest disgust. "A lot of lazy loafers letting a girl do all the work, and the college get all the credit."

"I did n't know you thought there was any," mocked Minnie Bee.

"I did n't say it was n't good enough; but your Heathcliffe is a perfect demon at a feast of woe. You'd think he lived in a cage, and had all the pleasures of life. spread before him and could n't get at any of them. And here are you, a beautiful girl whom every one loves, daring to tell me that you are Heathcliffe, confound him! Why, honestly, Minnie Bee, every time I read a 'Fixed Star'-and it seems to me the least a fellow can do is to take that much interest in his magazine-I have a fit of the blues. I have to come to see you before I can feel that anything is worth going on with. Think of that, if you please."

Minnie Bee threw back her delightful golden head, and laughed as if she would never stop.

"Oh, Roddy, Roddy," she gurgled, "some day I'll put you in a story for 'The Fixed Star.'"

"Me?" said Roddy. He considered over it, seeing at once, as nearly every one does see, what an interesting and original character he would make. But he shook his head regretfully. "I'd be no good to you. I'm too cheerful." Then he added, "But you have n't told me yet why you do it."

"Oh," said Minnie Bee, casually, "according to you, I put all my blues in "The Fixed Star.'

A light stole in on Roddy.

"Still," said he, reflectively, "does n't it all seem rather silly-out here?" He was using the candor of the true friend.

Minnie Bee looked about her. They were sliding through a Christmas post

card as large as life. Above them an azure sky soared in purest radiance. A snowy road sparkled beneath them. On each hand were white hills, crusted with snow as a birthday cake is crusted with frosting, and trimmed with diamond-dusted pines. It did seem rather silly out there.

"I'd let "The Fixed Star' go hang," said Roddy, relentlessly. "If I had your talent, I'd write for something worth while. And while we 're deep in, I'll just go on and say that I think precious little of those books I look into sometimes while I'm waiting on you to decide whether you want it v or square. I could n't think where you got hold of such a lot of atonic -I got that word out of a preface to one of them-stuff. I suppose the fellows who call themselves literary editors unload it on you when they finally deprive the town of the honor of their presence, eh ?"

Minnie Bee admitted this to be a good bit of deductive work.

"I'll tell you what you need, Minnie Bee," said Roddy; "you need a set of Louisa M. Alcott."

A wistful look came to Minnie Bee's face. Laurie had been her earliest love.

"I did n't know she wrote anything else," said Minnie Bee.

Roddy seemed to understand. He said, smiling at this odd ignorance in one whose shelves showed many recondite names: "Why, yes, a whole row." He held his hands apart to show her.

At this careless trick the hired team shied sharply.

"Watch out there!" called a roadside wayfarer.

Roddy, looking thoroughly vexed with himself, touched his hat-brim as they sped by, and Minnie Bee flashed a radiant smile.

"That was a fool break of mine," said Roddy, turning his attention to a small boy riding straight into them on a homemade sled, red scarf-ends flying.

"Right of way," said Roddy. He gave it good-humoredly.

"I'd like to be a boy," said Minnie Bee. Roddy did not ask why. Any girl