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ground. "I will take Drouot," he said. "It was a very great honor, madame," wrote our friend, in the letter informing his commander's widow of his heroic death. Drouot was most deserving of such an honor.

'He had been proposed for the military medal, and as the suggestion was not adopted, he wrote me a few days ago: "As for the medal, you alone, knowing me so well, can understand me when I say that I am glad that the suggestion did not get beyond the army corps, and was changed to a citation' in the order of the day. It was much wiser, much more suitable for me, and much fairer. Think of all that one must needs have done to earn the medal! I thank God from the bottom of my heart for permitting me to Ido what I did for our wonderful and dear Major Madelin." And he added, "May He continue to bestow his favor on me; I ask it every instant for my mother's sake!"

'Alas! he has followed his chief, and has rejoined him among the pure in heart, among the noblest whose sacrifice is of still greater worth than their merits.

'It was with absolute resignation, I am sure, that he consummated his sacrifice. Although he loved life with a delightful enthusiasm, he took a serious, almost tragic, view of it a view which was in full accord with his Christian belief. The experience of pain that is what especially impressed him in the lives of his fellow mortals, and only the great mystery of Providence seemed to him capable of accounting for it. Did he not request me, when I returned to the battalion, to bring back with me Blanc de

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What a letter! What sublime young men! to what regions are we transported!

You remarked, did you not, that touching scene in the letter I have put before you? Two young soldiers kneel on the straw of their garret to pray according to the precepts of the Church, and to associate themselves in spirit with the young engineers, Psichari and Péguy, who died piously for their country! This carries us beyond the reaches of our vision. These young men, leaving Foustel de Coulanges and us who struggle far behind them, have in religion a living force, a sure 'support life itself. Here, you will notice, we are witnessing something very different from those men - excellent men, no doubt-who, on coming out of the trenches, seek absolution. To the Psicharis, the Péguys, the Paul Drouots, death is nothing; they pray because it is a joy to them to pray, because their profoundly sensitive souls expand in that communion with the invisible.

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These are matters of which we have hardly the right to speak, yet which we ought to say. Is it not well for us to call attention to whatever there may be of sweetness and beauty mingled with all the ghastliness of this war? We press aside the overhanging branches and reveal the spring of pure water beneath.

THE BLACK PEARL

A GOSSAMER TALE

BY KATHARINE BUTLER

A YOUNG girl of seventeen ran downstairs at four o'clock on a summer morning. The house was noiseless, for her mother was lying asleep in bed, and her father was ten weeks out at sea. Jane had suddenly lifted her head from her pillow in the dark of daybreak, disturbed by the sound of footsteps in the street and men's thick voices. A lantern flashed its light across her ceiling. She leaned out of her bed, and heard one voice say, "The Black Pearl.'

The familiar excitement of knowing that a ship had arrived, caused her to shake off sleep, and the beauty of daybreak lifted her up like music. As she descended the stairs half an hour later. the sun was beginning to color the sky, and Jane was wide awake, her skin as cool and fresh as the petals that were then unfolding in the garden.

She went through the airless, rigid little rooms below and opened the windows wide. She opened the door toward the west, and saw the garden as it lay in lovely morning shadow. On either side of the doorway was a large pink shell, brought from some tropical island, each wet with frosty dew.

The sleepy cat, Cleopatra, came out of the parlor, rubbing against Jane's legs, and went arching past, lifting her feet high among the wet grass-blades. Cleopatra had gone to sea in days past as the ship's cat. Seven times she had sailed round the Horn with Jane's father in the Queen of the Seas. Now she was large and old, and was spending

her last years ashore in comfort and safety.

Over the fence at the back of the garden, Jane could see the masts of ships at anchor, and she could hear men shouting on the wharves, and the rumble of barrels rolling over the gangplank. She followed Cleopatra down the little brick path that was laid in the grass. The smell of the box hedge was sharp and strong, distilled by the moist night. The pear trees had dropped their blossoms on the grass. The lilac bush had opened heavy purple plumes, giving out their heavy aroma. And more pervasive and richer still than the smell of box or lilac or pear blossoms, was the smell of the sea that filled the garden.

The narrow brick path turned at an angle and led to the wicket-gate that opened on the street. Beside the path grew a hawthorn tree. And hanging from one of the branches of the hawthorn tree was a large wooden birdcage. Jane, standing beside the cage, could look up and down the street, and be hidden by the tree. She looked into the cage, and saw her bird still half asleep, its feathers ruffled.

'Good morning, Scheherazade!' Jane said coaxingly. 'Wake up! Wake up, you sleepy beauty!'

Jane's father had got the bird from a peddler in Singapore who said he had brought it from Arabia. And Scheherazade had never sung, as the peddler had promised. She had never uttered

before had she set her eyes on a native of the Eastern world.

a sound. For two years her melan- to her, and the wares of the East, never choly had been unbroken. She brooded heavily for hours on end, eating nothing, and responding to no endearments. Or, for hours, she swept tirelessly up and down the cage, stopping only to peck bitterly at her prison bars. Jane had tried in vain to pet and win her, and now she wished with all her heart that she might be sent back to Arabia. One could scarcely be happy in one's garden, in the presence of an unhappy stranger. The bird was a blight in the peaceful garden, a constant reproach.

Two young men came down the street toward the wharves. Jane went to the gate.

'Is there a ship in, Martin?' she asked one of them.

'Yes, the Black Pearl - William Gregory is her third mate.'

This was said with friendly significance, and Jane annoyed herself by blushing.

They disappeared round the corner and Jane gazed after them, wondering what treasures were being rolled out of the depths of the Black Pearl. Also she gave a moment's consideration to William Gregory, who would doubtless soon appear. She glowed serenely with the prospect of his coming, although she was not quite sure whether she was pleased, or only a little interested.

She stared musingly down the empty street, watching the early sunlight on the cobblestones, and with William Gregory's image in her mind. Suddenly her musing gaze was caught and sharpened by a figure coming from the wharves. Round the corner came, or rather flashed, a solitary figure, yielded up by the Black Pearl. His feet were brown and sandaled. His body was covered with a tunic of lemon-yellow cloth, and he wore a turban of faded red. Names familiar, yet exotic, ran through Jane's mind - Tunis, Algiers, Arabia. Familiar as these names were

She watched him as he slowly advanced, sombre and proud. Every now and then he stopped and looked about him with deep, solemn curiosity, slowly observing the shuttered houses and garden fences. Then he looked toward the top of the street where it wound into the town. He came nearer, and Jane stood stock-still, hidden behind the hawthorn tree.

Her eyes followed every inch of his progress as he crossed her narrow horizon. She saw the fine stitches of colored embroidery on the flowing edge of his tunic. She saw his long brown hands, and the golden bracelets on his wrists. She saw his aristocratic chin, his finely curved Egyptian nose, his thin nostrils. his heavy straight black brows, and the eyes beneath, glowing black. His beauty thrilled and startled her.

She thought that, as he passed so near, he would hear her breathing. If she stirred a hair's breadth, he must surely turn and see her through the leaves. Her blood leaped at the thought of his turning and catching sight of her. In that dark, burning face, that lithe step, there was romance for Jane, romance which made her tingle, romance which her instinct seized immediately for its own.

An unconsidered impulsive word was rising to her lips, and she had taken a step forward, when from the cage above her came a sharp cry. She turned her head, and saw Scheherazade stirring uneasily. She turned again, and started toward the gate, and found to her amazement that she was unable to lift her feet from the ground. She stood, rooted like a flower, and watched the stately, sombre head pass by, and the last flutter of the lemon-yellow tunic disappear in the direction of the Square.

When he was gone, her power of moving returned. She went back into the garden, full of surprise. She gazed for a long time at Scheherazade. The exotic bird swept up and down the cage. For what purpose had her dumbness been broken? What was the meaning of her cry? Jane wished more than ever that Scheherazade were back with the peddler in Singapore. She wandered round the garden, musing. A potent face was stamped on her mind. She was so deeply absorbed that she did not even hear a voice that spoke to her

from the gate.

The opened box revealed many small feminine implements, carved out of ivory: needle-cases, bobbins, stilettos, spools- the work-box of a Chinese princess. William kept looking from. the box to Jane's face, as she picked up and admired each piece of carving in turn, and he blushed with pleasure in the long-anticipated moment.

The more eagerly he watched her, and waited to be repaid by her glowing delight, the more difficult it was for her to find any words. Over and over she fingered the ivory rose-petals, the deeply wrought flowers. She tried to bring

'Good morning, Jane!' the gentle her attention to them, and respond. voice repeated.

She started quickly, and saw a tall yellow-haired youth standing at the gate, his sailor's cap in one hand, and a small wooden box in the other. His blue eyes were looking at her happily.

‘William!' she exclaimed.

She went toward him, and he pushed open the gate. His eyes held her with gentle eagerness. Long absences gave boldness to this shy soul, and he took her hand and held it fervently. Then he looked down at the wooden box he held, and her eyes rested on it also.

'Here is something that I got for you in Hong Kong,' he said in his soft voice.

She took the box. It was inlaid along the edge with ivory, and it had a silver lock and key.

'Let's sit down on the steps while you open it,' he said.

She sat down passively, and leaned forward, her fingers lightly holding the box that lay on her knees. He sat watching her face, and smiling with simple triumph. He could not see how far away she was. Her entire being was wrapped in an enchantment. The image of the exotic stranger filled her brain, and as she opened the box her fingers trembled, because her mind's eye was dwelling upon that dark face.

VOL. 121 - NO. 6

But there was no glow in her for William, only a sharp rush of blood to her heart as she returned again and again to the thought of the stranger.

'It took me a long time to pick it out. I went back to the bazaar three times before I chose this one. There are more pieces in it than there were in the others. I don't know what all these funny little things are for, but I suppose you know. Ever since we left Hong Kong I've been wondering if you would have liked something else better,

there were silk slippers.' She scarcely heard him.

'I knew you had come,' she said. 'I heard the men on the wharf, and Martin Rowe told me it was the Black Pearl. Then I saw the strangest man. He must have come with you.'

'Oh, did you see him?' William said amusedly, his eyes still drinking her in. 'Who is he?'

'We picked him up at Singapore; or rather, he picked us up. Why he wanted to come so badly, nobody could make out. He told the captain he was looking for somebody in this port.'

'Who could it be?' Jane breathed.

'We told him none of his kind had ever come here. We tried to discourage him, but we could n't turn him off his track.'

William paused. The stranger interested him but faintly. He stood up, and turning toward her, he took her hand, undenied. He drew her up from the doorstep.

'O Jane!' he said with emotion. His face changed suddenly, became gravely pleading. 'It's fine to be at home. Be sweet to me.'

She drew away, but he would not drop her hand. He was the sailor, demanding his share of happiness after long, vigilant exile.

'I've got to go South as soon as we're unloaded here, and then round the world again. I've only got two or three days here if we get a wind. I say, may we have a dead calm! I'll come and see you this evening. Every moment I have is for you, Jane.'

'I'm not in any hurry to eat with William,' she said.

Her mother's large, wise face was not given to sudden flashes of change like Jane's. Her mother's blue eyes followed her exit, and smiled a comprehending smile at surface passions.

In the late midsummer twilight, mother, daughter, and lover sat eating together. William was wonderfully happy in his promotion to a family meal. Jane's crisp white ruffles, her sweet odor, her ingenuous, graceful head — these in the beauty and intimacy of candle-light were heaven enough to the sailor. He leaned constantly toward her, while she, erect, gave him looks that were lovely but remote. Her mother was placidly observant.

When supper was nearly over, Jane

He gave her hand a sharp press, and paused for a second, in the midst of went out of the yard.

By noon every doorway in the Square and along Front Street had exchanged gossip about the astonishing Eastern gentleman with bare ankles. Jane's mother came home from the market, saying,

'He's a religious man, a kind of priest, some say. The second mate, Jim Teazle, told Mr. Peabody in the grocer's that he got down on his face. whenever the sun was rising or setting, and got up with a very strange look in his eyes. There's something he's praying for, something he's after, and nobody can find out what it is. And he would sit for hours and hours on the deck, on top of his own bundles, and never move or speak.'

'Yes, I've heard.'

'You didn't hear much, I fancy, from William Gregory. He had plenty to talk to you about, without telling you about the Eastern gentleman. I met William in the Square, and I've asked him to have supper with us tonight. He seemed very much pleased.' Jane tossed her head.

chatting, as if listening to a far-off sound. A quick blush mounted to her forehead.

'I forgot to bring in the fresh cake, mother.'

She jumped up and disappeared from the room.

'She's gone out to the dairy. She'll be back in a second,' said Jane's mother to William, suddenly bereft.

Jane flew past the dairy into the garden. She had heard children shouting in the street, and had guessed at the object of their shouting. The approach of the stranger had drawn her forth, headlong and careless.

He was there! He came down the street, and he appeared unconscious of his mercurial train of children. On his face had deepened the look of passionate search. The evening breezes ruffled his tunic, as he walked erect and slow.

Jane's young heart set up a clamor. 'I understand him!' it cried within her. 'I must speak to him. Oh, look this way! Look at me! I will greet you!'

She ran forward. Her hand was on

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