paid for; the mortgage foreclosing; the crop freezing; Selig walking off with the ebony mirror, among other things; and Roycroft writing a love letter to England. "But it is particularly suited to the charming pathos of your voice, Annie Laurie.”

“All right,” she said miserably, using a form of assent that never failed to curl the old gentleman's lips into puckers of dislike.

But the song soon turned the pucker into something suspiciously like a tremble. For she sang it most appealingly and sweetly. And surely never was there a melody more sad and haunting than that slow minor chant! Into it is packed all the despair and heartache of the lost Stuart cause, with words that are pathetically commonplace and simple.

Charlie is my darling, my darling, my darling!
Charlie is my darling, that bonnie cavalier!

Finished, it still throbbed on the air, a poignantly plaintive memory, seeming to stir even the tendrils of the drooping porch vines into restless quivers of melancholy and regret. As for The McAllister's metronomic finger, that was petrified into motionlessness.

Roycroft broke the ensuing silence, saying in a voice that was less resonant and certain than usual,

“That was—well, thank you. Good evening." With this, he raised his hat and abruptly turned on his heel, striding off the porch and trooping stolidly forward to the gate where his horse was tied, giving Andrew absolutely no opportunity in which to ask his regular pleasantry "Charles, am I to understand that you rowed over, or rode over?"

Laurie had come to the point where she waited for this pleasantry with a wince, wanting it out and over

with, like a decayed tooth. But Roycroft never failed to give it his agreeable, spontaneous laugh-the laugh of a joyous young fellow nearly knocked over by the newness of an unexpected piece of wit. No wonder the keeper of the joke now gazed after his retreating form with glowering astonishment.

"God forever bless my soul, what ails the lad?”

Pivoting around her post, Laurie also gazed amazedly at the vanishing guest.

"What made him go off as if he had a flea in his ear?" she exclaimed.

"Pardon me if my hearing is poor, but repeat if you please the expression you applied to our young friend's celerity!" commanded Andrew, awfully.

"Celerity! That's the word I wanted," she soothed. “Thank you, Grandpa, thank you!"

"Tch!"

While he busied his outraged self putting the chessmen back into their box where they had to lie just so or not at all, blacks on one side, whites on the other, all carefully head to tail like imported sardines, Laurie, mechanically kissing the kitten from time to time, still stared dreamily after the vanishing visitor who by now had nearly reached the road-fence, setting the bay to curvetting and whinnying. Then she noticed that visitor halt suddenly in front of a young orange tree as if struck forcibly and unpleasantly by some phenomenon that it presented.

"Wozzle bug?" she called out to him, satirically.

But he was too far off or too preoccupied to hear, being now busy scrutinizing a leaf through a magnifying glass. His pockets were seldom guiltless of soiltesters, distilled water, anther-nippers, litmus paper and such things. But his next performance was a little

out of the ordinary; he picked a leaf, put it into his handkerchief, knotted the handkerchief into a hammock, and rode off with it swinging carefully from his wrist.

"We'll hear about it tomorrow," she told the kitten. However, tomorrow came and went, bringing its usual duties but no Roycroft. Still another morrow wore away without him, but the yams were so entertaining that Laurie forgot about the leaf until forcibly reminded by a new circumstance. This occurred on a hot forenoon when she had temporarily left Osceola to work alone in the sea-green furrows and had gone to the house to watch for the mailman. In the country, one has a sort of an idea that unless one watches for the mailman sharply, he won't bring a letter. If he thus goes by, the whole day is ruined.

Seated in a willow rocking chair (but unable to rock for the reason that Little Eva, like all others of her kind, never saw such a chair begin to move without immediately lying down under the rockers) Laurie looked for Balaam, thinking at the same time that she would not mind seeing a bay horse, either. In regard to seeing a horseman, she presently had her wish. The man was a rough-looking stranger, due to ride right past, but instead he drew rein and stared, apparently spellbound, at the same little orange tree. After staring, he dropped from his horse, vaulted the fence, appropriated a branch, and rode away with it, his face wearing a more or less dismayed expression.

"Well, I never!" ejaculated the girl. Then she got up and drawled in deep imitation of the absentee, "Bah Jove, I fancy I will take a look at that tree myself, don't you know!"

So saying, she wandered down to it and gave it an

examination, unable to discover much amiss with it, except that it was covered, stem, leaf and fruit, with small brown blotches that certainly had not been visible a few days before. A peculiarity of the spots was that they deepened in color towards the center.

"Sickening for measles, baby?" she asked the tree, kindly. Still thinking it over, "I wonder why his British nibs doesn't come and tell me about it?" Finally, "I'll go interview Peter."

For that faithful laborer had been intermittently in sight all morning, at work across the road in his young master's outlying fields, bobbing up and down in attendance on row after row of budded stock-little wisps of trees about the size of lead pencils and just about as leafless.

Laurie walked over to him, making the short trip with exceeding difficulty, for it entailed the climbing of two wire fences and a scrambling plunge through a cover crop of beggarweed and cowpeas.

"At home, Peter?" she asked affably, standing over him while he knelt in the sand, scooping it up in conelike mounds around each tiny tree-this to protect the bud from possible frost later on.

"Why, no, Miss Laurie, I's here wukkin in dis field," he answered, pained at her lack of sight, and rising stiffly to stand before her, his one hand rubbing the small of his back, the other rubbing his heart.

"Not as young as you were, Peter?"

"Deed no, Miss Laurie. Miss Laurie, yo' aint happen to have a hawg's tooth about yo', has yo'?”

"Hog's tooth? Well, no, Peter. How careless of me! I'm generally dripping with hog's teeth, but am all out of them this morning. What do you want

one for?"

"Dey's powerful curative for floodin' of the heart, Miss Laurie, ef yo' tie 'em togedder with a one-cent piece and hang 'em around de neck.”

"I can give you the penny, Peter."

"But it has to be a injun penny, not a Lincum, Miss Laurie."

"I probably have a injun among my Lincums, Peter, and if so I'll sort it out and keep it for you."

"Thank yo', Miss Laurie."

"Yurelkum, Peter. Maybe Mr. Roycroft has a hog's tooth in his set and will give it to you."

"How can he when he don' live here no more?”

"Don't live here?" she echoed.

"Din yo' know Mr. Rake-off he's gone away?" asked Peter, sadly.

“No, I didn't, Peter," she answered in a low tone. "But aren't you mistaken? He never would leave without saying good-by."

"Did say it," cried Peter. "He even shuk my hand, ole black hand, an' tell me, 'Look atter ev'yt'ing good, Peter, while I's away to college." "

"College? Mr. Roycroft's too old for college!"

"Mr. Charles Colin Rake-off ent too old for anyt'ing he set his mind on," announced Peter profoundly. "When yo' study him, yo' find dat out." After thinking over her criticism and liking it less and less, he said reprovingly, "Too old? Why, he ain't even begun to be too young yet."

"Did he send

send Grandpa any word, Peter?"

"If so, I ain't hear it, Miss Laurie."

"Do you know what college, Peter?"

"Yes, he done specify it to me, but I forget."

Afraid of committing that indefensible act known pictorially as "pumping," and thinking that the mail