with Gladys, with the demobilized man and the donkey, are the offsprings of the war who may some day become the derelicts of future time. Not due to lack of work, but to the war itself. It was not significant to me at first that Mrs. Hacking marketed generally at the noon-hour, and if there was no marketing to do, she would go out when the clock struck twelve to change a shilling into pence for the gas-meter at the corner pub. I had pennies, but my housekeeper did not like to disturb me. Sometimes she came back with a headache, but she always served me decently, although maddening the landlady, who lived on the upper floors, by taking a hot bath in company with our "geyser" in the afternoon. By the dinner-hour she was quite all right again, going out at six-thirty for more pennies sometimes, but staying far into the evening that she might leave her kitchen clean or prepare a dish for my late supper.

She seldom went about at night, although her brother, the inventor, would urge her not to "grouse," and would occasionally take her to the town hall. She told me once that it was a soirée at the town hall, a regular one, as several songs were sung. Yet it was the night of one of these soirées that her purse was stolen, containing two pounds of my money and her own wages. She told me this immediately on bringing up the morning coffee, her true-blue eyes, the kind you read about, looking at me squarely. She had been "grizzling" all night over it, she said, as she would arsk herself 'ow she was going to pay her lady back. Her brother, the inventor, had not derived any profits from his geysers yet, and, "indeed, madam, you carn't blame me for grizzling; husband gone, piano gone, mangle gone, and now your money."

I did not blame her for grizzling. What surprised me was that I did not grizzle myself-grizzle over the perfidy of Mrs. Hacking. Nor did I grouse when I certainly had occasion for being annoyed over her carelessness at the soirée, all of it going to prove that you cannot be too careful among singers. I feared-it came to me now-that Mrs. Hacking might be an inventor of greater profit to herself than her

brother would ever be. In Mrs. Hacking's case. I was the geyser from which money was to be made. But at that I rose from my bed to look over her accounts, with never a nine shillings substituted for ninepence-worth of cocoa, and I upbraided myself for my suspicions.

Or was it "the advent of spring," as the clerk trying on my shoes very elegantly expressed it, which rendered me lax? For by the first of April we had been unmistakably apprised that there would be a spring-a spring which just showed itself by an appearance of buds in low sheltered bushes in the square; yet, upon close examination, there was no bud whatever, just a swelling of the twigs. Then there was that wonderful, but chilly, morning when the oil-stove and I, upon making our little promenade to meet the bath-tub, did not immediately close the door giving upon the garden, for peeping in was a waving branch of a bush climbed from over the neighbor's brick wall, and strung along it were palest green buds like jade beads on a fairy wand.

Two days after that I saw, but did not see, a red furriness softening the stark branches of trees in distant squares.

Here the green things come out before the rains have ceased to chill. Sniff as I might, I could get no scent of the earth sending up its heart-stirring fragrance after the first warm rain, such as we have at home. And I think this sturdy growth despite the bitter winds stands more perfectly for the English people than any other simile that comes to my mind. It is time to smile; they do smile. It is time to be gay; they are gay. The lip must be kept stiffened; it is kept stiffened. They flourish despite the oppressions of mean social conditions and cruel economic complications. They have got into the swing of the English seasons. They are the English

seasons.

Since God created the spring, He surely must allow each mortal one spring-time indiscretion, and does not enter it against him in His judgmentbook. It may be a hat, a lover, or a Spanish chair. It may be stealing other people's crocuses, or running away from

school. It may be, as in my case it was, the continuation of Mrs. Hacking, that I might grapple no further with servants and enjoy every opening daffodil in Hyde Park, every lilac in our little square.

It was probably a particularly foolish indiscretion. As I write now, knowing that I should be landing Mrs. Hacking behind the bars instead of likening her to a spring-time kicking-up of the heels, I can hear the judge on the bench, with me in the witness-box and Mrs. Hacking in the dock, asking me what caused me to retain the woman Hacking's ser. vices when I had become suspicious of her. And I could hear my reply, and how I would be asked immediately to step down. For I would have embarrassed the judge by suddenly ejaculating, after the manner of a gymnastic teacher:

"Spring, your Lordship! Spring!"

For that reason it was not until a glad May morning that I parted with Mrs. Hacking and my maisonnette, and went down to Mayfair to live at a woman's club. The plane-trees were out to wink me farewell, and the garden was at its best, especially as Mrs. Hacking had now taken from the line all those coarse garments of repentance which my landlady always had been troubled over her insistently hanging out.

Mrs. Hacking took leave of me shortly before Beechey and I took temporary leave of each other. My working-housekeeper had almost worked out the four pounds she owed me, and I really could n't afford to keep her on any longer, as the cost of having her remain with me while she paid me back was becoming too great. She went away at noon, dressed in fresh crape, to take up her new position as barmaid. She said her "dad" advised her to go into the bar, so that

she might enjoy more cheerful surroundings. She left a roll of receipted bills, and that I found later they were earlier bills, and that the last week's ones had not been paid at all, is of no great moment; it was my own fault, and my last tribute to spring madness.

Yet I had no sooner settled at the club than the business American in me began to assert itself. To the amazement of my English friends, who in the first place would not have been bilked by Mrs. Hacking, but, granting that they could have been, would have called it "tiresome," and dropped the matter, I sought out a solicitor, and he went after Mrs. Hacking. And, mark you, what I had failed to do by generosity and the exercise of the consideration I feel is due to those we employ, this man effected immediately by the drafting of a letter.

The British lower classes fear the law not only because it is the law, with its heavy penalties, but for the reason that it stands for control and ordered sway and set regulations, which keep them happily, or unhappily, disciplined. I have never seen her since, but she has paid into the attorney's office such sums as we could prove that she had taken. It was a pitiful ending of an effort to introduce comfortable innovations into a circumscribed life. It was more pitiful for Mrs. Hacking than for me. I knew myself all along, and I knew Mrs. Hacking; but I can imagine the confusion that is going on in her mind, as she draws beer at the taps, and sends a weekly postal-order to my firmly importuning (well-named) "solicitor." She met an employer who was at once amiable and terrible; one with loose, lavish inclinations, who suddenly showed the cloven hoof of commercialism; in short, an American.

T

HE moment we had entered the barn, I regretted the rash good nature which prompted me to consent to the plans of those vivacious young students. Miss Anstell and Miss Royce and one or two others, often leaders in student mischief, I suspect, were the first to enter, and they amused themselves by hiding in the darkness and greeting the rest of our party as we entered with sundry shrieks and moans such as are commonly attributed to ghosts. My wife and I brought up the rear, carrying the two farm lanterns. She had selected the place after an amused consideration of the question, and I confess I hardly approved her judgment. But she is native to this part of the country, and she had assured us that there were some vague traditions hanging about the building that made it most suitable for our purposes.

It oc

It was a musty old place, without even as much tidiness as is usually found in barns, and there was a dank smell about it, as though generations of haymows had decayed there. There were holes in the floor, and in the dusk of early evening it was necessary for us to pick our way with the greatest care. curred to me then, in a premonitory sort of way, that if some young woman student sprained her ankle in this absurd environment, I should be most embarrassed to explain it. Apparently it was a hay barn, whose vague dimensions were lost in shadow. Rafters crossed its width about twenty feet above our heads, and here and there a few boards lay across the rafters, furnishing foothold for any one who might wish to

operate the ancient pulley that was doubtless once used for lifting bales. The northern half of the floor was covered with hay to a depth of two or three feet. How long it had actually been there I cannot imagine. It was extremely dusty, and I feared a recurrence of my old enemy, hay-fever; but it was too late to offer objection on such grounds, and my wife and I followed our chattering guides, who disposed themselves here and there on this ancient bed of hay, and insisted that we should find places in the center of their circle.

At my suggestion, the two farm lanterns had been left at a suitable distance, in fact, quite at the other side of the barn, and our only light came from the rapidly falling twilight of outdoors, which found its way through a little window and sundry cracks high in the eaves above the rafters.

There was something about the place, now that we were settled and no longer occupied with adjustments for comfort, that subdued our spirits, and it was with much less hilarity that the young people united in demanding a story. I looked across at my wife, whose face was faintly visible within the circle. I thought that even in the half-light I glimpsed the same expression of amused incredulity which she had worn earlier in the day when I had yielded to the importunities of a deputation of my students for this ghost-story party on the eve of a holiday.

"There is no reason," I thought to myself, repeating the phrases I had used then "there is no reason why I should not tell a ghost-story. True, I had never done so before, but the literary attain

ments which have enabled me to perfect my recent treatise upon the 'Disuse of the Comma' are quite equal to impromptu experimentation in the field of psychic phenomena." I was aware that the young people themselves hardly expected serious acquiescence, and that, too, stimulated me. I cleared my throat in a prefatory manner, and silence fell upon the group. A light breeze had risen outside, and the timbers of the barn creaked persistently. From the shadows almost directly overhead there came a faint clanking. It was evidently caused by the rusty pulley-wheel which I had observed there as we entered. An iron hook at the end of an ancient rope still depended from it, and swung in the lightly stirring air several feet above our heads, directly over the center of our circle.

Some curious combination of influences-perhaps the atmosphere of the place, added to the stimulation of the faintly discernible faces around me, and my impulse to prove my own ability in this untried field of narration-gave me a sudden sense of being inspired. I found myself voicing fancies as though they were facts, and readily including imaginary names and data which certainly were not in any way premeditated.

"This barn stands on the old Creed place," I began. "Peter Creed was its last owner, but I suppose that it has always been and always will be known as the Turner barn. A few yards away to the south you will find the crumbling brickwork and gaping hollows of an old foundation, now overgrown with weeds that almost conceal a few charred timbers. That is all that is left of the old Ashley Turner house."

I cleared my throat again, not through any effort to gain time for my thoughts, but to feel for a moment the satisfaction arising from the intent attitude of my audience, particularly my wife, who had leaned forward and was looking at me with an expression of startled surprise.

"Ashley Turner must have had a pretty fine-looking farm here thirty years or so ago," I continued, “when he brought his wife to it. This barn was new then. But he was a ne'er-do-well,

with nothing to be said in his favor, unless you admit his fame as a practical joker. Strange how the ne'er-do-well is often equipped with an extravagant sense of humor! Turner had a considerable retinue among the riffraff boys of the neighborhood, who made this barn a noisy rendezvous and followed his hints in much whimsical mischief. But he committed most of his practical jokes when drunk, and in his sober moments he abused his family and let his wife struggle to keep up the acres, assisted only by a half-competent man of all work. Finally he took to roving. No one knew how he got pocket-money; his wife could not have given him any. Then some one discovered that he was going over to Creed's now and then, and everything was explained."

This concise data of mine was evidently not holding the close attention of my youthful audience. They annoyed me by frequent pranks and whisperings. No one could have been more surprised at my glibness than I myself, except perhaps my wife, whose attitude of strained attention had not relaxed. I resumed my story.

"Peter Creed was a good old-fashioned usurer of the worst type. He went to church regularly one day in the week and gouged his neighbors-any that he could not get into his clutches-on the other six. He must have been lending Turner drinking money, and every one knew what the security must be.

"At last there came a day when the long-suffering wife revolted. Turner had come home extra drunk and in his most maudlin humor. Probably he attempted some drunken prank upon his overtaxed helpmate. Old Ike, the hired man, said that he thought Turner had rigged up some scare for her in the barn and that he had never heard anything so much like straight talking from his mistress, either before or since, and he was working in the woodshed at the time, with the door shut. Shortly after that tirade Ashley Turner disappeared, and no one saw or heard of him or thought about him for a couple of years except when the sight of his tired-looking wife and scrawny children revived the recollection.

"At last, on a certain autumn day, old