why don't you take him into a higher altitude, away from our swamps? If you give him mountain air, if you watch his diet

'Diet?' and Ivanoff cursed. 'I am telling you of the thing which burns me night and day, and only the doctor in you is listening! If you had seen what I saw this afternoon

"They were looting a sinking ship. Your Fedik was in command; I'd cast away my soul for such a son! My own fists went tight, I was so afraid that they could not get all the treasure before the waves took the hull away. There was the waterlogged old rowboat and the pebbles which filled the bags, but I swear I saw the sinking galleon and heard the clinking of the gold doubloons. And Stasya! Never had I seen him so. Hair tousled, shoes drenched, the cutlass swinging in his hand once he swore and, at the word, I forgave his mother everything. Already I saw him, square-shouldered and reckless, playing wild games and climbing trees; heard him laughing and shouting through my house, slamming doors as he went. Already I was teaching him to shoot, to swim, to row, to sail. And then, just then, he bumped into Fedik, head on and Fedik's fault. He should have knocked him down, or tried to, he was a pirate fighting for his loot. But he stopped still, dead still, his cutlass hanging, the begging smile back on his lips. "Pardon," he said, "pardon." And, man, he clicked his heels! Her cousins used to click their heels just so,—and how I loathed them for it!-when they bowed among the gilt-legged chairs of her father's house. But no one had taught Stasya. I questioned Mademoiselle. She was pleased: it's in the blood, she said. But man-made things such as that do not get into the blood. It is the dead mother over him. And I am helpless, helpless.'

He was pacing the floor now. I could hear his feet when he came to the space between the rugs. And his voice was very tired.

'So, I have made my decision. It came to me the thought which I had driven from me a thousand times — as he stood bowing there, ankle-deep in water, the heels of his soaked shoes close together. One cannot win a fight against the dead. I shall take them to Odessa, him and Mademoiselle, and put them on a Warsaw train. It is queer, after the longings for this country, that the only wish which is left me is the wish that I too could go with them. I should hate it as of old for myself, and, for Stasya, I should die a new death each day. But I could see him. And even that I cannot do. She will be kinder if he is away from me. For, when he is gone, I shall begin my prayer to her, an endless prayer, for the lifting of the curse. And his aunt will give him everything-everything that goes with gilt chairs and pretty speeches and cups which break in the hands of a man! You have more wine?'

'But how,' said father after a time, 'how will you live without him?'

Ivanoff laughed unhappily. 'It is better than building another cross on my cliff.'

He went away soon after that; or it may be that I fell asleep. The last words which I heard that night seemed, just then, of no especial moment.

'One condition shall I impose upon her, the aunt. Stasya shall go into the army. We shall see whether even the curse of a dead mother can keep him from fighting there.'

III

We awoke, next morning, to a brandnew world, a world of dazzling sunshine, of shreds of white clouds tearing across the sky, of a glistening forest

still dripping with rain, of a gray-green sea gone mad. The dogs whined impatiently under our windows; in the kitchen Ali the Kurd was imploring the good hakim to find some means whereby that sea could be held from cutting into the field which he had planted to corn.

Shaking with the thrill of all that lay before us, our fingers fumbled over buttons and straps. To swing on the branches of uprooted chestnut trees, to count the tiles blown from the house and barn, to race to where the pebbly beach was wide enough for quick retreat and snatch at the delightful wreckage before the breakers caught it back, to stand and shake our heads with Ali at the foam-tipped tongues which reached over the bank and far into the soft earth, mercilessly crumbling row after row of young green shoots that morning held no minute for either the future or the past. It was only when, with the sun high overhead, we were going home, walking backward lest we lose sight of the tumbling sea, that we looked at the cross, black and very still against the flying clouds, -and, all in a flash, remembered Ivanoff's story.

we

We talked it over excitedly, had dropped asleep at different points of it, - but even then there remained much that was neither clear nor convincing, and we went to sister with it: she was thirteen and knew everything. But, as usual, sister was very busy deciding whether to devote her life to the uplifting of the poor or to the breaking of a prince's heart, and, as usual, we got nothing at all from her. And soon another problem was added to our everlengthening list.

Father had taken us to Batum next day, and we were returning in the same car with Ivanoff. I should not have

dared address him, so formidable did his profile show against the window, but but bold with the boldness of the favorite - Fedik ran gayly after him when we had jumped down at our halfstation.

"Zdravstvuitye!' he called.

Ivanoff turned and saw him, saw father, turned again, and walked away with great uneven strides.

'Father!' Fedik whispered, aghast; 'what is it? Is he angry with you?'

'Very angry'-father's voice was strangely quiet. 'You see, my son, he has told his secret to me. Some day, perhaps, I shall tell you.'

So Stasya came no more to play with us, and, because he had miraculously regained all the prestige which our dreams once gave to him, we missed him unbelievably. Yet on the morning on which he was to leave us, Ivanoff's Turk came to ask us to run down to the railroad in time for the early train.

With Stasya glad and excited, with the radiant Mademoiselle calling to the one in the torn trousers to come and kiss her, with Ivanoff's face turned away from us, it should not have been a sad occasion, to us who still measured sorrow by the attending tears. Yet sad it was, and final, and very much like death- the departure of the little boy who was going away because we could not make a vandal of him. We were glad when the train crept from out the tunnel and we had done with shaking Stasya's limp hand, glad when the three had climbed aboard the rear platform and the train puffed heavily away.

Stasya and Mademoiselle disappeared in the car, but Ivanoff stood at the railing, his eyes raised to his cliff, and, as he looked, he slowly bared his head. And we knew that he had begun his endless prayer.

IN Mr. Scully's interesting article on the life of the African ostrich, he states that, as regards 'the habits of the wild birds, nearly every extant account bristles with inaccuracies.'

In the next paragraph, he states that 'to an unprotected man in the open an infuriated ostrich is as dangerous as a lion.' This sentence is itself a 'bristling inaccuracy.' If, when assailed by the ostrich, the man stands erect, he is in great danger. But by the simple expedient of lying down, he escapes all danger. In such case, the bird may step on him, or sit on him; his clothes will be rumpled and his feelings injured; but he will suffer no bodily harm. I know various, men — including Mr. William Beebe who have had this experience. Does Mr. Scully imagine that an infuriated lion will merely sit on a man who lies down?

Mr. Scully says that the ostrich is the only animal man has domesticated because of sheer loveliness, as distinguished from utility.' Surely Mr. Scully has forgotten that the peacock has been domesticated for a far longer time than the ostrich. His statement that the ostrich plumes are 'probably the most perfect decorative items in Nature's storehouse,' ought, like any such statement, to be put in the form of an expression of personal taste; various storks, cranes, and herons, not to speak of birds of paradise and argus pheasants, carry plumes which to a multitude of persons with equally good taste seem even more beautiful.

Mr. Scully's description of the rav

ages of the jackal among the ostrich eggs is of moment. In the course of the description he says that 'the whitenecked raven coöperates with the jackal. He will carry a small heavy stone up into the air and drop it into the nest. Jackal and raven then share amicably the contents of the smashed egg.'

This is most interesting, and it is so important, that Mr. Scully ought to have described in detail the particular observations which warrant the various features of the statement- the cooperation, the use of the stone as a tool, the amity in sharing the result. Similar statements are frequently made, usually about vultures. But I wish that we could get the testimony of trained eye-witnesses. It is not in the least impossible: in the same regions in Africa the alliance between the big honey-badger and the queer honey-bird, is much more remarkable. Moreover, many birds drop shells on rocks or pebbly beaches, to break them; last week I saw gulls doing this. But the wielding of a stone as a tool marks an effort of intelligence akin to that of the higher primates, and of man himself at about the opening of the Pleistocene; so that it would be interesting to have real evidence of it. The incident of a raven and a jackal sharing the egg is also of special interest — entirely possible, of course, but as unexpected as a similar friendly alliance between a fox and a crow; so that it ought to be a subject for first-hand testimony.

In one paragraph Mr. Scully says