Hungarians, he believed that it was as essential for the emancipated Rumanians as for their former masters that the two races should make without delay the effort to establish friendly relations. He was sure that the Clemenceau-Lloyd George-Orlando-Wilson attitude toward enemies and neutrals and small allies was as impracticable as that of the wildest idealists; for they did not command the armed forces sufficient to keep Germany down and crush the Russian Bolshevists. Premier Vaida will not entertain the proposal of the Supreme Council that Rumania aid against the Bolshevists unless they contribute forces in proportion and at the same time recognize the union of Bessarabia with Rumania.

Once the peasants are emancipated from practical serfdom to great landowners, Premier Vaida is sure that universal suffrage will bring about a complete change in the political, economic, and social life of Rumania. The state must assume the indebtedness of the peasants to the landowners. The purchase instalments will be paid to the state, and the indemnities by the state. Thus the hold of the proprietors on the farmers will be broken immediately. Since the people of the Kingdom of Rumania are not so far advanced as those of Transylvania, much attention must be given to education.

The Transylvanian Nationalists cherish great hope of the rapid industrial development of their country. Looking to the future, they ask for the immediate enactment of industrial legislation giving miners and foresters, factory-hands and railwaymen, "the same rights and advantages that are given them by law in the most advanced Occidental industrial states" (see the resolution of the National Assembly of Alba-Julia, Article III, 6). This legislation, of course, they want to have uniform with that of the Kingdom of Rumania, which will mean a revolution in the lives of workers in the oil-fields.

Every nationalist movement has as its corollary the effort to oust foreigners from concessions and economic privileges secured in the days of absolutism and weakness. The Rumanians are not waiting to begin this fight. We have seen above how, from bitter experience, they refused to agree to Article 60 of the Treaty of St.-Germain and its annex concerning the protection of minorities. M. Vaida and his associates realize that the moment is favorable to rid their country of economic servitude to great powers. Germany has lost all her treaty privileges, and German and Austro-Hungarian subjects have had their concessions and contracts canceled.

There is no desire to exclude foreign capital or to do harm to foreign concerns established in Rumania. MM. Bratianu and Vaida have both assured me that they welcome American capitalists as well as French and British capitalists to aid in the development of Greater Rumania. But Rumania is determined to put a stop to the old practice of foreign enterprises protected by diplomatic treaties. In the future, Rumania intends to assert her right to be on a footing of equality in international relations. When Rumanians go to Great Britain or France to do business, they establish their companies in accordance with the laws of the country and enjoy no diplomatic protection and backing. Why should not Englishmen and Frenchmen carry on their business in Rumania under the Rumanian laws, without looking for their investments to be a matter of international politics?

These are the problems and tendencies of Greater Rumania at the moment of her birth. During the troubled year of 1919 the Rumanians made great progress. In 1920 they expect to secure recognition of their unity and of their right to be treated as an independent and sovereign nation, on a footing of equality with their neighbors and their large allies.

A

LOW sun still touched the western slopes of the Berkshires with color, but darkness was creeping into one of the deepest valleys among the foot-hills, where crouched a ramshackle cabin. This dilapidated house half hidden in the trees at the farther end of a ravine was the place that Dennis Throop called home, and it was here that Agnes, his wife, was standing, her thin figure just discernible in its open doorway. She was watching with brilliant, anxious eyes for Dennis's trolley-car to shoulder its way across the face of the opposite hill. There would then be but half an hour to wait. Already a chill was creeping into the air, and Agnes Throop shivered beneath the thin shawl that she had drawn around her shoulders and over her head.

As she stood gazing across the valley a man appeared, coming up the path from the trolley road. She was evidently startled at his approach, for no one but Dennis came that way now that Dr. Larabee's lodge up the mountain was closed. That it was the doctor himself she failed to see until he emerged from the shadowy path and halted almost before her door. Then she cried out, and the cry was a mixture of surprise and relief.

"Is it yourself, Dr. Larabee? Oh, but I'm glad to see you back, though the lodge is in no shape at all, I'm thinking."

He took her thin hand within a genial clasp.

"I walked from the junction. Well, Agnes, I'm glad to be back. Who cares about the lodge? I 've never found

fault with Dennis or his father before him in all the time they have cared for the old place. To tell the truth, I wanted to surprise everybody. My discharge just came this week."

He did not add that he had refrained from putting any additional burden upon the shoulders of Dennis Throop and his wife. From all accounts they had had things pretty hard for the last year. Even now his professional gaze was scanning Agnes's white face in the encircling shawl. He had not liked the look of those scared and staring eyes, and he had not liked, either, the touch of her feverish hand. Her eyes were wandering now, away from his face, and turning toward the hill.

"Is Dennis still running on this line?" he asked cheerfully.

She dragged her eyes back to the doctor's kind, friendly face. Suddenly warmed by his friendliness, she became eager and appealing. She appeared about to speak impulsively when in the distance a thin, high car whistle sounded across the valley, and as the doctor turned his head a light wriggled swiftly into view and slid along between the trees like a fiery serpent. Agnes drew in her breath audibly. When he looked back at her she was wan, but her eyes had lost temporarily that eager stare that had looked out of them before.

"That was his car," she said quite naturally. "He has had his hours changed from morning to afternoon and evening. He gets in about nine."

"What's the trouble, Agnes?" The doctor's tone was gentle. "Is anything wrong with Dennis?"

"Don't worry, Agnes. I told you last year before I went away that you were to take life easy."

"I have been doing just that, Doctor, for sure somebody must, and Dennis is flyin' around both day and night. I think your fires are all ready but the lighting, and there's a good stock of canned goods on hand."

"There will be more than enough. I'm only back for a few days."

"Is that to be all? Only a few days?" She looked unaccountably disappointed.

"I only stopped for the key," he went on, seeming not to be looking at her too intently.

"The lodge key, to be sure, Doctor. Will you just step inside while I 'm gettin' it? The nights are cold, and this valley gets the chill first of all."

He followed her into the dark, warm kitchen, which smelled of pine boughs and pitch, and faintly, too, of the warm supper that she had placed for her husband on the back of the stove. The room, even in the faint yellow glimmer of the kerosene lamp that she lighted, was immaculate. A scrubbed floor shone underfoot, and the kitchen chairs, ranged stiffly against the wall, were bright with fresh paint. All that Agnes herself could do had been done to make the tiny place habitable. Dr. Larabee followed the slight figure into the sittingroom, which was equally neat, from a quilt-covered bed in one corner, to the home-made reading-table on which she set her lamp. The hand that showed for a moment under the cheap yellow shade was so emaciated that it gave the doctor a start. Dr. Larabee always noticed hands. Sick hands, he now thought fleetingly, should have a wellcared-for, protected look, as if their owner forgave and indulged their weakness, but Agnes's hands were pitifully work-worn and unlovely. He noticed, too, her flushed cheeks, the long eyelashes that lay like penciled shadows when she dropped her eyes, and the

strange, almost shining smoothness of her skin.

She did not stand still for him to look at her, however. She took off the little shawl and folded it neatly, laying it across the foot of the bed. Then she made a shy, yet hospitable, move toward the two chairs that stood by the table.

"Are you feeling any better, Agnes?" he asked, sitting down in the big square arm-chair that he himself had sent down from the lodge for Dennis Throop's wife. She had pulled her chair back toward the corner away from the light. He thought he heard her catch her breath, and then he noticed that her deep eyes were not on him any longer, but turned toward two pictures that stood leaning against the wall on the wooden mantel.

"Yes, I'm well, Doctor, as well as can be expected," she said after a pause.

Dr. Larabee hesitated. He hardly knew how to refer to the death of the two little children at whose pictures Agnes was looking so hungrily, but she made the first reference to it herself.

"It 's maybe a little thing to you, takin' those pictures when you came the time before, but, oh, the comfort they have been to Dennis and me, Doctor!" Then her words came faster.

It was as

if she had waited over-long to unburden her mind.

"Dr. Larabee, Dennis is n't well at all. You saw the house? It 's not one bit of painting nor fixing that he is willing to do. It was never any too good, but when we took it Dennis used to say that, if we kept at it, the house would be a fine one by the time I was well."

She spoke the last words bravely, but the doctor did not meet her eyes. He remembered Dennis's first attempts at gaiety when he was told that he must live away from his beloved city for the sake of the woman he had married. Illness had never come into Dennis's life before, before, and Dr. Larabee had been heartlessly frank in his insistence upon mountain air for Agnes. Dennis had been too obvious in his optimism, too easily sacrificial. With an Irishman's love of the dramatic, he had bowed and scraped before the first dim shadow of Death, but its constant presence had unnerved him. Then had come the

unexpected blow during the winter, when, instead of the frail mother, the children had been taken. Dr. Larabee had caught himself wondering many a time what effect this would have upon Dennis. His silence now proved the very stimulus that Agnes needed to encourage her to further confidences.

"He just comes home and sits and sits, and never a word does he read, and he does n't whistle, either, the old way he used. By the lamp-there where you are now he sits and thinks and he hardly moves the evening long. It's terrible."

Dr. Larabee knew that Agnes was visualizing her husband's presence as she had described it, for her hollow eyes took on the expression they had worn when he had first encountered her watching for Dennis's car. He knew that he must make light of this change in her husband at least until it could be explained. Agnes must not be allowed to go on in such a fashion. Her peace of mind was of too much importance.

"Don't let Dennis's thinking disturb you," he said lightly. "He was never a reader, as you were. And perhaps he 's too tired to work. You 've both had a hard time this winter." His voice softened on these last words.

"It was that made him worse,' she said, her eyes dry and very bright, while her thin hands groped at the buttons on the front of her dress, "but he was started long before that, Doctor."

A gust of wind swept suddenly through the room, and the yellow light of the kerosene lamp flared and flickered wildly. Agnes did not appear to notice it.

"Could you tell me a little more clearly what you mean?" The doctor's voice was calm and even. The light gasped once and then readjusted itself, but the soft, fragrant breeze still lifted and sucked the curtains at the window. The vibrant, palpitating mountain darkness looked in upon them curiously from under the lifted curtains. The pine-trees drew one long sighing breath all together, and seemed to bend toward the house, and then the wind came, and the light, without warning, went out.

The doctor half rose to his feet, but Agnes's voice stayed him like an outstretched hand.

"We can wait a minute. The chimney 's too hot to touch, and I have n't another." She paused, but not long enough for him to answer her. "It's a strange kind of night, and I 'm thinking Dennis will be all upset with this weather. He has a terrible fear of the wind, and it 's queer, but you don't know how the wind blew that night the children-left us. Both of them the same night, Doctor."

Her face

"I know," he said gently. was wan in the dimness, and he could faintly distinguish her white, clutching hands, busy with her dress.

"That night Dennis was the worst. He almost forgot that we both had the right to take it hard, and one of the things he said was, 'I'll never travel that cursed road again.' He never did. He made them give him another run, and now I can see his car each night as he comes around the hill. He always seems to know if I 'm watching him."

"You mean he never made his old run after that night last winter when you lost the children?"

"Never again. And he will not tell me why. That's the worst of it, Doctor. I 'm out of it all. He won't talk, and he 's that restless in the night that I can't sleep for thinking of him, and always when his eyes are open, there's the awful waitin' look in them." She rose suddenly to her feet. "The chimney's cold," she said in a different voice. "I should not be telling you this. I hope you 'll find the lodge to suit you, Doctor, although it's little care the place has had of late.”

He took his cue from her and rose, too. She struck a match, and the light came sullenly up, breathing out obnoxious fumes, which pushed their way through the fragrance of the pines and filled the little room.

"I'll come down again to-morrow. Tell Dennis for me to be of good cheer. I can fix him up."

She leaned her head against the wall, without moving from where she stood. "Thank you, Doctor," she said.

Feeling pitifully helpless and inadequate, he stepped out on the soft, pinestrewn path. There was a line between his eyes and a tightening of his lips as he strode off toward the lodge. Agnes

Throop was dying. There was no doubt of that, and all the medical skill in the world could not save her. He found himself wondering if the village doctor had carefully followed all his directions even while he acknowledged that nothing could have been done.

The fact that all was not well with Dennis troubled the doctor, too. Old Dennis, Throop's father, had been caretaker for the lodge since Jack Larabee could remember, and the two boys had played together long before the city called them both. Dennis, true to his class, had been the first to marry, bringing his frail, city-bred wife to the hills for their honeymoon. After that Larabee had gone to the war and lost track of both of them. A year before Jack had come back, and had looked in on the little city flat where Dennis and his wife were established. It was then that he had sent them up into the pines in Dennis's own boyhood hills, with a warning to Throop to watch over his wife with special care. She had been too proud to take the lodge, for which

they could not pay, she had claimed, and they had settled in the little house in the valley. Agnes had been quite content, saying fondly that Dennis would fix it all up till it was like a story-book cottage, and they would n't be there long, anyhow. The valley was conveniently near the car-barn where Dennis must go each day, for he had taken a position as motorman on the "Twenty Mile Circuit" Berkshire trolley road. The house was also near enough to the pine-grove on the side, hill, so that it was no task for Agnes, having sent the children off to school, to climb the gentle slope to Castle Mountain, where she rested and read through the long balmy days.

Larabee shook his head as he reflected that Agnes could not climb Castle Mountain now or any of the other hills that marched boldly down to the glen where she and Dennis lived. Something must be done.

He reproached himself that he had not watched her lately, but his travels had taken him far from New England,