The Schoolma'am of Squaw Peak. Ii

I

THERE came a cold Friday morning when Clyde and I thought ourselves half-frozen all the way to school. A strong wind rose and rose all day, and by night was sweeping down icily out of the north. We fought our way home for two miles against it that afternoon, and all the evening after we got home we shivered and hugged the stove and could not get warm. Clyde was sick that night and the next day and Sunday. As for me, I was oddly weak and stiff. I would not quite call myself sick.

On Monday morning I set out to school alone. Clyde was still not well, and the morning was very sharp. I dreaded the long walk in the cold, and for once realization was quite equal to anticipation. I was thoroughly chilled by the time I reached the schoolhouse; and there Nemesis met me boldly. I had been cowardly about dismissing a negligent janitor. Now I was to pay the penalty. There was no fire this morning. I had to go out, cold as I was, to gather up frosty wood to build one. And when the wood was gathered, I found that the stove was too choked with ashes to receive it.

I went out again and lugged in a heavy wooden bucket, weighted with remnants of the cement that had once been mixed in it. This was our ashbucket. I filled it three times before I considered that the stove would do. And when I finally made the damp wood burn, I was feeling, not cold only, but very queer.

Queer and more queer I felt all day. By noon I knew that I was sick; but I had an idea that perhaps I could struggle through the afternoon session somehow.

I tried it. By two o’clock I seemed to be looking at my geography class through a dense haze; and I realized foggily that I wasn’t quite sure of what I was saying to them, and that I cared very little what they should say to me. At about this time I suddenly sat down in one of the children’s seats and admitted that I was not feeling so very well.

There was an immediate, still, awed confusion in the schoolroom. I dimly saw a small girl’s terrified face and felt that I probably looked rather white and odd.

Then, ‘I’ll get my horse for you,’ Edward Lancaster was saying. He always thought of something practical! ‘You can ride home—’

‘I ’d never stick on a horse,’ I owned mournfully, ‘You would n’t?’

Edward was looking at me regretfully. I hated to disappoint him, he wanted so to help.

I put my head down upon my arms and let the world go as black as it wanted to for a minute. Then, because I knew from the hush how frightened the children were, I sat up again and tried to look intelligent.

It was then that Rosie Dennen spoke. ‘Walter, you go an’ hitch up Dolly to the buggy,’ she said to her big brother. And to me she said, ‘ Waiter’ll take you home.’

He did. In a surprisingly short time — considering how time dragged just then — Walter was back with the ramshackle surrey, on the back seat of which was spread out generously a gorgeous ‘ comfort ’ from the Dennen beds. Mamma had sent word that I was to be wrapped in it; but even in the numbness of the moment, I shuddered at the thought.

‘I’m all right. I don’t need to be wrapped up,’ said I, feebly dropping down on the seat.

But when we reached the Dennen house, there was Mamma herself ready to go with me to the Wests’, and she pulled that comfort about me with a firm hand.

‘I’m not much cold,’ I protested faintly — in spite of the chill I was having! ‘ And don’t take the trouble to go with me. I’ll be all right.’

‘I’m a-goin’,’ she replied cheerfully. ‘You look as white as death. Are you troubled with heart trouble?’

I denied it. And she began to cheer me up — if I remember correctly what I did n’t much notice at the time — with some accounts of illnesses that she had had in her family.

When I had once reached the Wests’, and been put to bed with hot things about me, I began to revive. And when I had revived, I slept. And after I had slept, I decided that I was not in for a fit of sickness at all. I should be all right to-morrow. During the night I revised this opinion; and indeed I did not get to school again for a week.

Of course, that was an illness hardly worth mentioning; but have you ever been away from home and teaching your first school far out in the country? It was a short illness — but oh! the length of the crawling days when I lay in bed and gazed at the faded wallpaper in that narrow room that did not look like home! I could read very little. I was alone. It was terrible — especially after the sky clouded over and it began to rain. And after I got up, the days seemed longer than ever. I could not even sleep while sitting in a straight-backed chair at my little study table.

All this is not saying that Mrs. West was not good to me. She was an angel of mercy. The trouble was with me, who did not need anybody but home folks.

Two things stand out clearly from this experience. One is the call of Mrs. Dennen, who came heavily in on the day when I felt worst. I could not help a decided surging out of gratitude in her direction. Her ideas of sanitation were exceedingly meagre; but — bless her! — she was, after all, interested in the teacher. I wished even then that she had a better schoolma’am to be interested in.

The other little incident of my sickness was my terrible struggle with the oil-stove. It was after I had got better. It was on Friday, I remember. I had been trying to do something to the wick of the thing, and in my ignorance of oil-stoves, I had managed matters so that neither I nor any one else could turn it either up or down.

Mrs. West and I both labored valiantly over the wreck of my comfort. I, especially, worked with frantic zeal, but more and more despairingly. I had always rather despised my oil-stove, which was never a satisfactory means of heating my room; but how much better than nothing it seemed now!

It was a raw, bleak day of drizzling cold rain. Mr. West and Bert were out riding to bring in some poor cattle to shelter and food. I could n’t tell when they would be back. Besides, it stood to reason that they could n’t fix a ruined stove when they did arrive. In my despair —it was despair, though it was only over an oil-stove — I hysterically half resolved to harness Bally and try to reach the Post myself, where there might be oil-stoves on sale. I could not sit idly by and see myself freeze. I knew that I must, in all reason, be sick again, if I tried anything so rash now; but I could not feel that I cared much. I wanted my stove! — I must be warm — a little warm!

Mr. West and Bert got back in time to prevent my going out in the storm. They set to with noble energy, and, after an hour or two, restored my stove to me. Its newness had forever departed; it could never again be what it was before I tampered with it; but it could be used! It would burn! When I carried the mutilated thing back into my own room, I felt a great thankfulness for the priceless boon of the oil-stove.

My sickness had called my attention to two blessings. The oil-stove was one. The friendliness of the Dcnnens was the other. I knew now that they were friendly, though they were dull and not clean.

The schoolma’am, you see, was learning, whether or not the pupils were.

II

The one definite thing that was making my whole year hard, and that made my little sickness seem so long and so woeful, was the fact that at Squaw Peak I never knew when I was going to get my mail. During the early part of my sojourn on the Verde, the situation had not been so painful. Then it was possible to send my sister into town to the post-office, whence she could arrive almost as soon as I was home from school; or it was possible for us to ride to the Post together after my work was over. But after she left, when I very much needed mail, I could not often go for it myself in the evenings. The days were too short and cold now. And when I knew that I could not get it myself, the mail became an obsession with me.

I used to think about it at school. There were days when I could hardly wait for four o’clock, when I could set out in hot haste down the long road to the Wests’, to see if, perhaps, somebody had not gone to Camp Verde to-day. And when I found that nobody had, — for the Verde-ites are a contented lot, not much excited over conditions outside of the Valley, — what a terrible feeling of desolation used to settle down over me! I would go savagely at my work on those nights, filling my pitchers and my lamp and my oil-stove in a spirit of animated gloom. I would look off desperately over the long, cold, brown stretches of country, feeling myself a very little prisoner in its bigness — little and helpless and hopeless and very young! As I have said, I was really older by several years than most girls who teach their first schools; but I could not remember it, surrounded by these very old, very relentless mountains.

Now I am newly impressed with the fact that I am not making myself out to be anything of a heroine. I was not a heroine; but I was human, and I suppose that human, homesick girls have tried before to teach, and that they will try again. Let me go on frankly with my shameful story.

The mail was an obsession. I lost no chance to get it; and many were the adventures for which it was responsible. There was, for instance, the time when I ‘rode around’ for it on Sunday with Ethel Baker.

There had been a rain-storm which had sent the river booming. Nobody could cross for the mail. Nobody had been able to cross for days. The situation was growing intolerable. And then Ethel suggested that she and I ‘ride around’ on Sunday. We sent word to her sister in Camp Verde to get our mail from the office on Saturday, and on Sunday morning we set out.

We could do this because we were really on the same side of the river as Camp Verde, but across a great bend from it. Normally we would ride about three miles each way, fording the river twice. Now we must ride more than twice the usual distance; and we must, besides, open a dozen gates going and the same number coming back. Since almost all of these gates were of the famous barbed-wire-and-pole variety, and since the roads were very muddy, this was no small task.

I was not a good rider: on the slippery roads I hardly dared go out of a walk; so we moped along monotonously for something more than two hours, I suppose, before we reached Camp Verde. The hope that was set before us buoyed us up. For myself, I was tired, of course, when we got to the Post; but I should soon have my mail now!

We hastened to Ethel’s sister — and found that, although she had taken Ethel’s mail from the office, she had not got mine.

Did you ever have a great disappointment? Grown person, school-ma’am though I was, I greatly desired, for a few minutes, to weep openly in the face of several strangers! I just managed not to disgrace myself; but my woe must have been evident. The strangers made a vigorous effort to get hold of a man who had the keys of the office. They failed, and I went wearily back over the miles of mud and gates, mailless and melancholy.

Sometimes I had real adventures when on my quests. Once, when the river had been up but was falling, I decided that I must get to the post-office after school. They told me that it would be safe if I crossed carefully and at the right spot. To impress upon me how very unsafe it might be to cross Rio Verde at the wrong spot, they had before told me various gruesome tales of happenings along the river. There was the story of a young soldier who, before the Post was the Post only in name, had tried to cross the Verde during high water and had been seen no more. There was the story of a young cowboy who, only a few years before this, had been lost just below the Wests’ house, in the sight of the Wests and of several other people. He had gone down suddenly into the quicksand. Some of those who watched him were unable to swim; others lost their heads for a minute or two. He was gone when help tried to reach him. His body was never found.

These stories I had heard; but I was told now that I could cross the river without danger, if only I would be careful and take the Old Crossing. They insisted strongly upon that. I must take the Old Crossing right here below the house. There would be no danger then.

I rode forth a very trifle timorously in spite of the reassurances of the family; but I must have the mail. Also, I must put in the office my own important letters. Down the lane I went, and across the tiny bridge to the little hollow at the foot of the bluff. The mud was black and deep and shiny. Beyond, the wet sand lay quite unmarred except in one narrow track. It gave the country a very lonely look, somehow, as if it were uninhabited — newly washed up from the waters. The river tumbled by, black and angry.

To take the Old Crossing I must turn from the one narrow track, and that very act gave me a feeling of greater loneliness. I seemed now to be blazing my way through a new country and I did not much like being a pioneer. Still, I was fully determined to obey instructions!

Brownie liked being a pioneer no better than I did; but we traveled obediently across the smooth, wet sand into a bog of the shiny black mud I had noticed before, and on to the ford. A white cottonwood log marked the beginning of this ford— a bleached skeleton of a log that lay now half-drowned in the muddy water, like a dead body washed ashore. I did n’t like the look of the crossing — the water was so still and mysterious there. Neither did Brownie like it; but we were both docile. We followed instructions and waded bravely in.

I pulled my skirts up and up and curled my feet higher and higher on Brownie’s sides. The water was much nearer wetting me than I liked to have it; but we were out of the deep place at last, where Brownie stepped so gingerly, and were splashing over a long stretch of shallow water with a hard, stony bottom. And then we were on the wet, unruffled sand again, and finally on the muddy road, where I saw once more a few tracks that proved that somebody besides myself was alive in the Valley.

We hurried as well as we could to the Post. The river had to be crossed again just before we entered Camp Verde; but it was broader and shallower here, and the bottom was known to be stony all the way across. We splashed over, — a long way it seemed, — and as soon as I could finish my brief business and reach it again, we splashed back. Three crossings were made! Only one more remained, and I should know myself to be safe! I hurried. I needed to hurry to reach the last ford before dark. In spite of all my haste, I failed.

The damp twilight had faded into night as Brownie and I drew near again to the long stretch of fresh, wet sand that lay between us and the last crossing. The stars were not very bright up in heaven, and they weirdly lighted the river waters that glimmered a dull silver under them. There seemed to me something sinister in that shimmering silver. It looked too peaceful. I heard the river’s ugly voice gurgling hungrily as if demanding something. I remembered the cowboy and the poor young soldier.

It was very dark. I strained my eyes, when I had reached the water’s edge, and only dimly made out the bleached skeleton log that I must head for. Then — fearfully, I confess — I urged the unwilling Brownie into the water. It was a long, long way across. I drew farther up on Brownie’s back, away and away from the water, and held my breath.

We were across at last.

The next morning at the breakfasttable I told them how hard it had been to see the white log when I had crossed the evening before.

Three men stopped eating and gazed, gasping, at me.

‘You crossed at the white log?’ they demanded.

‘Why, yes! — You told me the Old Crossing — ’ I began, puzzled, feeling guilty, somehow.

‘But — that’s not the Old Crossing!’ they denied excitedly. ‘You —you crossed at the white log! ’ They seemed stupefied by the knowledge.

‘Why, yes. That’s the crossing we always have used. It’s what I call the Old Crossing — ’

‘No! no!’ they hurried to inform me. ‘The Old Crossing—You crossed at the white log! Have n’t you heard about the cowboy who was drowned there? Don’t you know the river-bottom changes there with every storm? You did n’t see any tracks leading down to that crossing, did you?’

Oh, there were plenty of questions they had to ask me! I could hardly remember ever having caused so much perturbation among my acquaintances. ‘Sonny,’ especially, — who had given me most of my instructions for crossing, — kept repeating over and over, ‘ But I told you — I’m sure I must have told you!’ And the ‘white log’ kept coming in like a refrain from them all.

At last they were convinced that I should never again try to use the whitelog crossing in bad weather. Then they grew calm — ready to let the matter drop.

‘You crossed where no man would ’a’ dared cross,’ said Bert then, serenely once more. ‘You were brave —'

’I was not brave. I was ignorant,’ I had the grace to admit instantly.

But now that I was ignorant no more, I had a great fear of the river when it was at all muddy and high; and not even for the mail would I try crossing it when it was called rather dangerous by those who knew. Yet my obsession did lead me into real danger at least one other time. It was nearing the end of my year. Mrs. West had brought Bally and the buggy to the schoolhouse for me that afternoon; and with their help, I was to return our borrowed books to the school across the river. Then, in spite of a blackening sky and a gusty wind, I was going to risk continuing to the Post for the mail!

To do myself justice, Mrs. West actually advised my going this time. ‘ Why, certainly I ’d go on for it, if I really wanted it,’ said she. ‘It’s too late in the season for storms on the Verde. If it should rain, it would n’t amount to much.’

That was enough for me, of course! I took the books home and then went on, down a not very familiar road, toward Camp Verde and the post-office.

The country here was rather more desert-like than on our side of the river. It was flatter, more monotonous; and I was traveling through an uncultivated section, too. There was a fence on one side for a way, but it seemed to be only a pasture fence. Inside and outside, the almost level land was dotted with a scattering growth of thin mesquite. It was all dreary enough under the darkening sky.

It was indeed a darkening sky. The clouds that rolled about old Squaw Peak were taking on a hue more and more inky every minute. And the wind was blowing ever more gustily.

I was watching the sky with an increasing nervousness now. Mrs. West had assured me that it could n’t rain in the Valley at this time of year. If I had been anywhere else, I should certainly have expected rain — or something. As it was, I began to expect something.

Now a few icy blasts came cutting down from the mountain, and with them a great stinging drop or two of rain. I decided to trust no longer to Mrs. West, but to act for myself; and I dived under the seat for the old umbrella she kept there and hoisted it in the teeth of the wind. Since I was still driving Bally, who evidently did not like the wind or the occasional lashing raindrops, this was no small task.

I had hardly got the umbrella up and its handle tucked firmly under my arm, when I began to perceive that it. was going to be entirely insufficient. The cutting gusts were increasing to a gale; the occasional drops to a clatter of pelting rain, spiced now and then with a touch of hail. I struggled down with the umbrella, and hauled out an old slicker which providentially reposed under the seat. A large square had been torn from one corner of its tail, but its shoulders were intact. The wind got inside of it, puffed it out like a sail, and tried to carry it bodily out of my hands.

I was decidedly nervous now. How to get into the slicker and under the umbrella — how to keep Bally from running away?

I managed it somehow. I was inside the slicker. I had the handle of the open umbrella tightly clasped under my arm again. The umbrella itself rested low, almost on my hat. I was again sitting on the seat of the buggy with the reins in my resolute hands. Harder and harder blew the wind. Faster and faster fell the rain. More and more hail came hurtling down with it — larger and larger stones. They battered on to my umbrella; they whacked poor Bally’s sides like a cannonade of great marbles. For a little I was half-blind with the storm and with sheer fright. Then, in my desperate need to act, t he terror cleared away a little.

The buggy was filling with ice and ice-water. Bally was shivering, balking, leaping ahead in sudden spurts when the larger stones pelted her. At last she got her back to the tempest as nearly as she could, and, forsaking the road, set. off galloping unsteadily through t he mesquite. I would jerk at her — almost stop her. An extra pelting of hail would set her off again. I saw the end of it in a swift vision — the wheels of our chariot tangled in some clump of mesquite — the buggy upset — I, lying stiff, crumpled, in the icewater, with the hailstones pounding me. Somehow I had got to stop Bally!

For a second I did get her stopped, huddled together in the raging storm. And then I hurled myself out over the wheel on to the plain —a shallow lake, now, with hailstones floating in it. I was instantly wet to the knees, gasping with cold; but I could not stop. I sprang to Bally’s bridle and caught it and held on. Somehow I kept the umbrella, too.

I had a wild notion of leading my horse to the shelter of some clump of mesquite; but she had wild notions of her own. We dragged each other back and forth for a time. Once in a while I got her near some worthless bush and saw that it was worthless. Now and then she grew crazy with the beating of the stones and set off, pulling me after her. At last — it seemed long, but I suppose it was only a short while — we both realized the hopelessness of trying to better ourselves, and then we huddled close together and took what was coming. That lasted only a few minutes, too, I am sure. The gale swept the black clouds and the lashing storm over us. The flood of driving rain became a drizzle and then a sprinkle. The pelting stones grew fewer and fewer, and ceased.

I stood there hanging to Bally’s bridle and to the umbrella, and wondered how I had escaped alive. Any one of those stones might have stunned me if it had struck me squarely. The shallow lake of the plain was afloat with them everywhere. I climbed into the buggy — its body several inches deep in icewater — and headed Bally in what I thought was the direction of the road. I happened to be right. We reached the road. We were near Camp Verde, I saw.

Now I was very wet. My shoulders, protected by the yellow slicker, were dry; but my shoes were soaked, my skirts, to far above my knees, were wringing wet. In spite of the umbrella, my hat was wet. It hung in a dripping straw ruffle about my face, and from its two bunches of lovely pink roses fell rosy drops of ice-water. Damp strings of hair lay against my cold cheeks. I probably looked even worse than I felt, but my spirit was up. I was not going to be downed by such trifles as my appearance and the atmospheric conditions. I had set out to Camp Verde for the mail, and to Camp Verde for the mail I went.

They made rather a fuss over me in the post-office. I might have been killed, they said. It was a marvel I had n’t been killed! And my nerve —!

‘Nerve!’ I cried half impatiently. ‘It wasn’t nerve! I was in it and I could n’t get out! I had to stand it somehow! ’

To this day I am very glad I did n’t ‘ collapse after it was all over,’ or desert Bally, as they suggested I might have done; but also to this day I do wonder whether I did display much courage in this little experience? As I said then, I was in it, and I could not get out.

I borrowed some dry clothes in Camp Verde and went home after the dark had fallen. It was barely light enough, I remember, for me to see white foam and floating hailstones in the water at the first crossing. I was a little afraid, but I reminded myself that I was now a rural schoolteacher and that I’d better get over some of my weaknesses.

I never got over the weakness that led me into the trouble. The mail continued my obsession to the very last. When I think of it the old passion of loneliness comes back over me. I can imagine myself again out on the windswept mesas, bright with strange cactus blooms, hunting for Bally, who is somewhere in the Big Pasture — only three miles across! Again I can feel my throat tighten, choking me as it did on the night when I went to the barnyard for a horse that I knew was there, and found that Mr. West had turned all the creatures out. I can even pityingly see myself, a slim girl dragging a bridle in her hand and hurrying in the gathering dark through the thick mesquite of the pasture, knowing all the while that it is useless, feeling all the while that she is ridiculous, and yet suffering all the while that hideous agony of longing that we call homesickness.

Poor new rural schoolteachers! I suppose many of them have known the disease — and have taught somehow in spite of it.

III

The mail was my obsession while I was at Squaw Peak; but it was not the only one of my cares outside of the schoolroom. The oil-stove, which I have mentioned before, was another trouble. In the first place, it was seldom satisfactory as a heater for my quarters; but since there was no chimney connected with the room, it had to do its best to fill a void. On cold mornings it was very exasperating to try to keep half-warm by the thing. I fancied the icy breeze blowing up between the cracks in the floor through the thin carpet, wafting upward the slender heat of the stove, to filter through the muslin ceiling and freeze against the cold of the iron roof just beyond. Then I realized so keenly the inadequacy of my own heating plant that I could not help feeling also a positive grudge against oil-stoves in general. I detested the things, I was sure, until that day when I thought that I had ruined mine. Then I discovered an amazing fondness for it; and ever afterward I cherished for it what might be called a sort of contemptuous affection, as for a poor weak creature, but one that was willing to do its best.

Sometimes that oil-stove’s best was not to be despised. Sometimes, late in the evening, my room grew to be really warm. I would have my large lamp lighted to aid the stove. The curtains would be drawn closely. A pan of water would stand steaming on top of the heater. Gradually I would find myself relaxing in a luxurious, blissful comfort.

There was only one disadvantage connected with this delight. The same warmth that was so agreeable to me seemed equally pleasing to a family of yellow-jackets that must have lived in some loose door-or window-frame, or in the wall behind the paper. It did not add to my peace of mind when they used to come crawling or fluttering out as soon as the atmosphere grew balmy. I was afraid of them. I was afraid even to try to kill them — until one night I stretched out my hand for some halfhidden object, and jerked it back again with a feeling of confusion and disaster. I felt for a minute as if I had been struck by lightning; but I finally recovered enough to perceive that I had merely been stung on the little finger by a yellow-jacket. Him I killed; and thereafter I slew as many as I could of his relatives. I used often to kill several of them in my room in a single evening. I wish I had kept a record of the whole number I disposed of during my year at Squaw Peak.

Yes, indeed, there were drawbacks connected with my oil-stove! I have mentioned that it had to be filled. It con sumed oil unbelievably. In the coldest weather a five-gallon can would not last me more than ten days, though I was at school, or on the way to or from school, all of five days out of seven. I was continually getting out of oil and having to borrow from the Wests. Sometimes, when the river was high, they used to get out, too — and then I was in dire straits.

One day I remember particularly. It was the first of May and presumably delightfully warm and summery in the Valley. But the year of my sojourn was an unusual one, they say. It was cold — really cold. It rained an icy rain at the river-side, and Squaw Peak was covered white with snow. I was very satirical regarding my May Day in the ever-balmy Verde. It was Saturday. Trusting to the lateness of the season, I had allowed my supply of oil to run low. Now it was stormy, very chilly; the river was up. I was in great anguish of spirit. It seemed to me a pity to freeze to death within about three weeks of the end of my term. Had I kept alive all the year for this?

At about noon Mrs. West and I decided that it was clearing. A chill breeze swept down from Squaw Peak and parted the clouds. Doubtless they would disappear after a while; but doubtless, also, it would still be cold. I had a letter that should be posted. I wanted the mail. I needed fuel for my precious stove. Therefore, after much gazing upward and many hesitations and changes of mind, I finally did visit the barnyard, catch the faithful, peevish Bally, saddle and bridle her, and set out, wrapped in two woolen sweaters.

It had rained so much that traveling was rather hard. The roads were slippery to Bally’s feet and very disagreeable to mine when I had to dismount and struggle with gates. I had hardly started before I realized that my ride around would be less pleasant than usual. The wind continued to blow from Squaw Peak; but instead of clearing the clouds away, it now seemed to be bringing in more of them. When I was about half a mile from the house, Squaw Peak began to be shrouded in mist. Then I could see racing streamers of mist moving over the mountains, down onto the mesas — nearer and nearer to me. They reached me presently. It was a fine, cold mist, varied with dashes of lively, frozen snow that pelted right merrily down. I had a feeling that the sensible thing might be to turn back; but I had put my hand to the plough. A certain spiteful stubbornness in me forbade my returning; and I kept on, laughing grimly at myself from time to time and really enjoying myself in my usual inconsistent manner. Why was it that I always got so much fun out of the perfectly horrid situations? Tamer hardship bored me to death.

I arrived in Camp Verde exceedingly cold and damp in spite of the two sweaters. My curious habits were becoming known. People had not yet stopped talking about my hailstorm experience. Now — as I learned afterward — one of the Post ladies looked from her window into the drizzle. ‘ I guess we ’re going to have a good, smart showier after all,’ she remarked to her husband. ‘There goes Miss Kent.’

At the post-office and general store I told my troubles and asked advice on the weather. The clerk told me that in his opinion the storm had only begun.

I should get soaking wet going home, unless — And he departed and returned with a beautiful yellow slicker, large man’s size. It had been hanging in a stable for months and might have rats’ nests in the sleeves, he said; but I was welcome to it. It was certainly welcome to me, as were the four quart bottles of coal-oil which the same obliging clerk loaded carefully on to my horse.

I dried out a bit at the house of a friend and set out for the ranch against a wind that cut like a knife. It did not rain on the way home, but I kept thinking over and over that I must certainly have frozen stiff had it not been for the yellow slicker. I had always detested the very sight of a yellow slicker before I went to Squaw Peak. Now I love them dearly still!

IV

In telling the story of my year at Squaw Peak, I have dwelt most upon my experiences outside the schoolroom. That, I am afraid, is because my experiences outside the schoolroom most interested me. Perhaps it is also because the experiences outside were more varied than those within. I hope this is part of the reason! I do not like to believe that I had nothing of the teacher in me. I should like to believe now, as I wanted to believe then, that, somehow, it had been good, on the whole, for the young Squaw Peakers that I had spent a year among them. It had been good for me, I knew. I did not want to have all the good to myself.

My experiences in the schoolroom had been very instructive. For one thing, I had utterly revised my views of the Little Teacher as pictured by my Institute Orator. She did need to be rather a wonderful young woman — that rural schoolma’am whom I had once thought of so lightly.

I went back over my own days at Squaw Peak and remembered the meagre first equipment that had helped to set me off wrong. Before the windows had been put into their frames, the wind had scattered papers over the house. I had allowed the pupils to scurry noisily over the floor after those papers. The habit of being noisy in my room was one of which I never broke my pupils. In t hat regard I had allowed myself to be wrecked at the outset by a mere external. The Little Teacher would not have done this — and I knew it.

I had tried to be adaptable that year. Before the term began, some men had evidently had a spitting match in the old schoolhouse. Mrs. Dennen told me that she had removed some of the results of the contest; but I remember vividly that after I arrived I mounted a chair and scrubbed tobacco juice from the walls above the door and between the high windows. This I tried to do with a good grace; but I think I did not succeed in feeling very cheerful over my labor.

I washed windows at the Squaw Peak School; I struggled with a long, rusty, refractory stovepipe which had a periodic passion for coming disjointed; I often acted as janitor in the janitor’s absence, — and sometimes in his presence, — carrying in loads of frosty wood, lugging out ashes, building fires, sweeping. I gave a few free music-lessons; I acted, as well as I could, as a physician and surgeon in cases of accident; I attended school faithfully, regularly, myself, in spite of furious storms and the two-mile journey through the mud; I really tried to teach the children something when I had got there — and yet I was not at all the speaker’s Little Teacher!

I seemed to miss the things that count. I failed to discipline children who had not been disciplined at home, and thereby left a lack in their backbones, I suppose, — as in mine, — at the end of the year. I loathed the filth of the Dennen youngsters, and sometimes almost loathed them because of it, instead of teaching them to be clean. How I could have done that, though, I have no idea even yet. The Little Teacher would have found means to accomplish it. Often and often I lost chances through my inertia, through my own self-centred ness. I was numb with homesickness. In school this should not so have been. Since it was so, the sympathy which should have existed between those country children and myself was often gone.

And as to book-learning! — I was proud of a very few of the little tots — and very proud. But from older children, in final examinations, after a year of my training, I got such answers as these. A member of the history class informed me that General Lee was the commander on ‘ our ’ (the Northern) side during the great Civil War; and that Cornwallis Jackson commanded on the other side. Another member of the same class suggested the name of ‘General Wolves’ — apparently for both positions. A great statesman’s career was thus epitomized: ‘Benjamin Franklin was a poor boy. He went barefooted. He got married to Dora.’

I was informed that Maschuttes was the first settlement in North America and that Captain Cabbot helped the town. And when I requested a little information regarding General Sherman, I found out simply that he had once ‘ taken a walk to the ocean.’ In geography Urazy and Yourp were mentioned as continents, and Virginia was named as ‘an important western city.’ From the language-class I gathered that a ‘ nown is a table or a chair or a house,’ and I also learned that, while the subject of a sentence is what you are talking about, the predicate is what you are not talking about!

Yes, I know! ‘These things are nothing,’ cries a whole chorus of teachers’ voices. ‘We all have those experiences, sometimes. Why do you waste your time in commonplaces?’

Commonplaces! Indeed, indeed that is my own criticism of all I have written. I have told commonly the story of a common country schoolteacher’s experience in the Verde Valley of Arizona. Once I thought my adventures rather unique and picturesque. Their fancied picturesqueness and uniqueness alone made them tolerable during the year I lived at Squaw Peak. Now I know them to have been only the usual thing. It is entirely usual that country schoolma’ams should have inadequate equipment at school, fierce struggles with the elements outside, and loneliness and homesickness always. I had a good boarding-place with a family who are still my dear friends. I could easily have missed that. As the commonness of my story is my own criticism of it, so is it also, in my mind, its best defense. I endured nothing that every rural teacher does not, in some measure, endure. And many teachers succeed gloriously in spite of every hindrance.

There are many of them. The little blue-eyed, golden-haired Miss Manchester, who taught across the river from me, is one who stayed, and only one. And any girl, it seems to me, has something of the heroic in her, if she can stay, joyously, helpfully, with her task of being a rural schoolteacher.

I honor them. They seem to me a fine, upstanding sisterhood. What are those words again that came to me as the Institute Orator held forth? ‘The goodly fellowship of the prophets’ — ‘ the noble army of martyrs.’ In serious earnestness I want to describe just so this growing band! They are so to me now — those who teach themselves to belong in the country schools. For what do they not need? Adaptability, sympathy unbounded, resourcefulness, courage, knowledge — and such knowledge ! Not the course of study and the texts are sufficient. They need to know practical sanitation and medicine, music, household arts, sewing; and they need the gift of imparting what they know. And they need hearts that will not go straying home in school-hours!

Are they not truly a goodly fellowship — those who are succeeding? To me they are.

You will observe that I say ‘they’ and not ‘ we.’ Nothing would I give for what I learned during my Squaw Peak year. All that I taught might very cheaply go.

DILEMMA

BY FLORENCE CONVERSE

BABANCHIK

BY CHRISTINA KRYSTO

I

IT was ray smallest brother who called him that, because, at the time of their meeting, he could not manage the whole of his very long name. But his friends took it up presently, liking the ridiculous yet oddly caressing sound of it, until all who knew him well knew him only as Babanchik.

I remember him first as a chance guest in my father’s house by the side of the Black Sea — a big, deep-chested man in a badly wrinkled pongee suit, who missed his train because we children had drawn him into a game of hide-and-seek. I can still hear his laughter-filled voice demanding fiercely, ‘Where are they? Where are they?’ as he flung himself about the room, making wide detours to avoid our feet, which protruded from under the clothhung table, while the train, with his car attached, paused a moment at the ‘half station’ at the far end of the pasture and went roaring on along the shore. He stayed the night with us, and our child-world changed forthwith.

During the two years which followed, the play-times of Babanchik and his children were inextricably bound with ours, and the distance between our homes grew very short. At Christmas we danced around the scintillating tree in his spacious Tiflis house; at Easter he helped us with the beating of the unnumbered eggs which go into the Easter bread of Russia, spattering the kitchen wall most dreadfully.

Business brought him often to Batum, which lay just over the hill from us — so often that we fell into the habit of racing down to the pasture-bars every Saturday to wait for the afternoon train. It was long and wearying, that walk back, on the days when the train clattered by without pausing. But on other days, when, just this side of the cliff, the engine whistled to announce the stop, — when we listened, breathless, for the setting of the brakes, when we saw his huge figure swing lightly from the steps, coat-pockets bulging with mysteries, and heard the gay voice shouting that his own car would not come by until Monday, — the walk home was a march of triumph. Two summers we spent together in a half-starved Georgian village high in the Caucasian mountains, where we lived on bread and eggs, both reeking with the wild garlic which grew thick among the wheat; ran, bare of head and foot, over the pine-grown canyons; and loved every moment of it.

It was in those two summers that we came to know Babanchik best and to adore him accordingly. We might emulate the manners of Manya, his younglady daughter of twelve; we might acknowledge the leadership of his harum-scarum son Kolya; but it was Babanchik who really counted. It was he who led our marvelous expeditions to the neighboring peaks, his clothes steaming with the effort of that leadership, — he who showed us where to look for mushrooms, and later fried those mushrooms for us, surreptitiously, lest mother begrudge us the butter where no new supply was to be had. His mind it was which settled, wisely and fairly, all our momentous quarrels, and invented countless new and fascinating games when we had tired of the everlasting croquet. But for him we should never have bathed in the yellow water of the mad Kura, water so muddy that it left great streaks across the bath-towels; but for him we should never have been forgiven for robbing the little forest church of candles with which to rub the porch floor whenever we wanted to dance.

That the merry existence of his vacations was but a small part of his life, we knew, even as we guessed that the man who frolicked with us lived only in the hours of play. For often at tea-time on the porch we came upon the other Babanchik, a bitter and fearsome man who talked to father in a voice which, to us, was the voice of a stranger. They made us very wretched, those teatimes, when from an obscure porch corner we watched him striding up and down along the railing, the smile gone from his eyes, his cheeks flushed, his arms waving wildly. For we could never understand why the man who taught us that it was cruel to step on ants seemed so ready and eager, at those times, to throttle some one, we knew not whom, unless it were the terrible creature he called the Russian government. It all hurt us inexpressibly. Yet hour after hour we watched him and listened to his long, involved denunciations of oppression and dishonesty and selfishness and class-distinction and many other long words which we could not grasp. And most difficult to fathom was his oft-repeated assertion that he was doing all that talking in behalf of us.

‘It is for the children that I fight!’ he would shout, stamping feverishly up and down the long porch; ‘for my Manya and Kolya, and for your boys and girls and all the countless thousands of others whose lot has been cast with this accursed country! I must fight, for I know what will come to them! Their souls will be dwarfed and crippled by our stupid schools and our stupid laws, and their minds poisoned and embittered by suspicion and hatred and the damning sense of their impotence, as long as conditions here remain what they are! Our lives are behind us, yours and mine. But we must make theirs different for them, must keep them away from straight-jacket regulations, must keep them happy and trustful and brave! It is for this that I fight! And I would fight if I knew that I could not change a word of our laws and our statutes!’

He did fight. Unceasingly, along with his routine work, —he was one of the managers of a Caucasian railroad, — went the bigger work of making his corner of the world a better place for those who came behind him. He fought in the ranks of his employees, that the least of these might claim justice and equality; pleaded with school boards and schoolmasters for patience and generosity toward their charges; and fought — and this was the most bitter fight of all — against those who held in their hands the destinies of his city.

In all this he was severely handicapped. An Armenian by birth, which in itself matters even in cosmopolitan Caucasus, he had inherited the ungovernable temper and unbridled tongue of his people, and this, coupled with his love for truth, worked him unceasing woe among the hidebound conservatism of his associates.

All this Babanchik knew. And yet, in spite of the knowledge, he had a dream of becoming a member of the city Duma, that he might have a real voice in the direction of the city’s fortunes. It should not have been a thing so difficult of attainment. Time after time his name was proposed for the city ballot; time after time hordes of enthusiastic friends made his election a certainty; and, time after time, as the deciding day drew near, his candidature was suppressed, his name withheld from the ballot, his adherents silenced — and the dream remained a dream. No one knew just when it happened, or just how: — he was an Armenian and a revolutionist, a freethinker and an enemy of the government, marked ‘neblagonadejny’ (not to be depended upon) in the police-books of the city — and no country knows so well as does Russia how best to curtail the activities of such men.

What he could do in spite of these drawbacks, he did. Was he not our undauntable Babanchik? If he could not insure fair play for the men of his railroad, he could give them of his advice and sympathy, and they forgot to ask for more. If additional factory windows did not come into being at his command, he could still lend his money to those of the workers who fell victims to the foul air; and how beautifully he lost his temper when a borrower spoke of interest! And if school boards and schoolmasters remained unyielding in their demands upon the children he loved, at least the holidays were his, when he could take those children on long walks in the open and teach them to respect their souls and not to step on ants.

All of which we learned much later. At the time, he was merely our Babanchik, without whom the world could no longer be imagined; who came in the evening to blow out our candles because he had guessed that the memory of his good-night laugh cheated the dark of its dangers; whose rumbling shout awakened us in the morning and opened up for us a new day of unsuspected possibilities.

II

The third summer we did not go to the mountains. Some one else was sharing Babanchik’s cottage in the Georgian village; he was leading a band of new children in search of mushrooms and adventure. But we were too excited to care, even in the face of this.

A new unrest hung over our house. All the day long father was showing strangers about the place, pointing out to them the value of the untouched forest, the richness of the pasture land, the clearness of the drinking water, the glories of the mountains and the sea. In the sun-filled glass room which served as library mother was superintending the sorting and packing of books. And a placid-faced woman with the patience of a saint was fitting our squirming bodies into trim, tight-fitting clothes which, after the loose, shapeless things we had always worn, vexed us endlessly. We were going to America.

Babanchik came to us often in those last weeks, inexpressibly saddened by our impending departure; and his discussions, to which father listened a bit abstractedly now, grew ever more violent. Though their invariable ending filled us with an unexpected hope: —

‘When my work is done here, I will come to you, in the United States. I cannot, now — there is still so much to be done for my weaker friends. But when I am very tired, so tired that I can no longer endure it, I shall take my children and come to you — to forget the Russia that I hate.’

So we parted. We leaned over the rail of an Odessa steamer, our arms overflowing with the packages he had brought us; and he stood on the edge of the wharf, waving his hat and smiling. But tears were running down his brown cheeks and losing themselves in his beard.

The new life, the new language, new interests, caught us. From the first Russia seemed very far behind. Several letters followed us, Kolya wrote three or four in his uneven round hand — funny little letters which began, ‘We have two ducks and two puppies. How many dogs have you?’ and which were properly answered in kind. After that, we forgot very quickly.

But Babanchik did not forget. Once every month we found in our mail-box a fat, square, carelessly addressed envelope which held a letter for father and a folded note for each of us. The notes were full of gay nonsense, stories and rhymes and caricatures; but father grew very thoughtful over the letters.

Life was pressing Babanchik hard. He was still without thought of defeat. But his enemies were bringing more stringent methods into the combat; he was now being constantly watched. Other troubles were even harder to bear. The government was consciously setting the hot-headed Georgians and Armenians at each other’s throats, that neither might have time to think of greater issues. And Babanchik could but stand by and watch the suffering of his people. Manya was in school, in the hands of narrow and incompetent teachers, teachers selected for their political views. Kolya’s turn would soon come. After that, so ran the letters, his children would have the choice between becoming power-seeking sycophants of the government, and going, as he had gone, into battle with it, knowing beforehand of their certain defeat. He could not take them away from it — yet. But he realized, he said, that each day, besides giving to him its measure of sorrow, brought a little nearer the fulfillment of his new dream. He was beginning to study English.

The years marched on. The square envelopes came less often, but they came still full of their old-time warmth for us — full, too, of increasing enmity toward the country which we had left. Manya had gone to Petrograd to attend women’s ‘courses.’ Two years later Kolya followed her, and entered the University in the same city at the time that I was enrolled in mine. And when, a care-free sophomore, I was working off surplus energy in basketball and dramatics, a new alarm crept into Babanchik’s letters. Manya and Kolya were becoming involved in the revolutionary movement.

It is hard, in these clean war days, to remember the murky chaos of the Russia of 1904-06. If a revolution could have come at all it would have come in those years, and it would have been led by students. The younger minds were afire with visions of freedom, — irrepressible combinations of deep conviction and the ardor of youth, — visions which took no cognizance of the wide and weary space which lies between desire and accomplishment. Class-rooms were hotbeds of revolutionary plots,

— mad, illogical, glorious plots, — for which their authors, usually still in their teens, paid so heavily. Too heavily, for the government, alarmed, was losing its head a bit.

The heart of Babanchik beat fearfully. ‘ I am proud of the trend of their convictions,’ he wrote, ‘but sometimes I am a little afraid. They can so easily be led into a spectacular prank, a bit of mischief for which the government might take it into its head to punish them too harshly. And though we have all become accustomed to that sort of thing, it would hurt me sorely to have them spend two or three months in prison.’

He conjectured mildly. There was news one day, in our American newspapers, of the attempted assassination of a Petrograd official. We passed it by

— attempted assassinations were no rare events just then — until the next letter came from Babanchik, a letter of two brief paragraphs. Both Manya and Kolya were implicated in the crime. Manya had waved her handkerchief from a window which commanded a view of the official’s residence; Kolya had passed the signal to twenty fellow conspirators. All had been caught and all had confessed. The official was unhurt and there was hope of a light sentence. Still — the two or three months of prison lengthened into a prospective two or three years.

Once more he conjectured mildly. Manya was sentenced to be hanged. Kolya, because of extreme youth, was punished by life imprisonment. We read the story of it, scarce believing, page after anguished page in a handwriting we did not recognize. We never knew — no one ever did know, save Babanchik himself — all that went after that. His letters no longer came regularly and, when they did come, were so incoherent with rage and despair that we gathered little information from them. We learned, however, that by some superhuman means he had obtained a stay in the execution of the sentence, had taken a leave of absence from his office in Tiflis, had called in all the money which he had loaned, borrowed what additional money he could, and had gone to Petrograd. At the end of eighteen months there was a new trial, and we were left to guess of much that went between.

It was not difficult to guess, in part. His way to that new trial had lain along the ways of personal influence, and the men who possessed that influence were the officials whom all his life he had hated and who knew him only as one ‘not to be depended upon.’ Could he have abandoned to their fate the twenty whom he did not even know, and worked for his children alone, his task would have been less difficult; but then he would not have been Babanchik.

So for eighteen months he worked; seeking audience in the studies of his enemies, humbling himself before their insolent eyes, accepting from them what taunts they chose to give, holding in calm control the hot temper which was hourly made less manageable by the strain under which he lived, pleading where he longed to curse, smiling where he would kill — and knowing, with a knowledge which made all these things possible, that a careless word on his part would take forever from twenty-two youngsters the one hope to which they clung. And so he accomplished the inconceivable. Somehow the new trial was held, somehow the twenty-two sentences were made lighter, unbelievably lighter. For Manya was sent into a far province and given hard labor for life, and Kolya would be free in ten years. But what those eighteen months did to the loving big soul of Babanchik can best be told in the barely legible words of the letter which brought us the news.

‘ It has finished us at last, this country! It has strangled my children and torn my heart to shreds! I burn with shame at the thought of being its subject, and there is no wretchedness which I hold too great for it, no plague which I would not send upon it if I could! I long to take the first steamer away from it.’

But he had his lost fortune to recover before he could go. There were his debts, too, and the children needed money, even in prison. He went back to his work with redoubled energy. But as he fought for the money which would bring him to America, he found himself fighting against a new enemy. The splendid body had not been able to withstand the ravages upon his mind; he remembered suddenly that he was nearly seventy. He spoke little of this, — perhaps he would not believe it, quite, — but there was dejection in every word he wrote. And we began to wonder whether we should ever see our Babanchik again.

Yet in the winter of 1913 he came to us, a tired and feeble old man. There was a burned-out look in his eyes and his wrinkled pongee suit hung limp from stooping shoulders. The journey across Siberia had been hard, that across the Pacific still more trying; there had been an alarming wireless from the nurse who accompanied him. But he reached us, and as I remember the sound of his laugh on that first day twenty years ago, so shall I never forget the ineffable happiness in his face when he stood, a few days after his coming, and looked out over our sunlit valley.

‘Peace,’ he said, ‘and joy. And the end of Russia forever. God has been good.’

He built for himself a tiny bungalow in a corner of our garden, one that could be moved when Kolya should have come to him, and was soon deeply engrossed in the simple tasks in which erstwhile busy men sometimes find such keen delight. All day long he spaded and raked and planted, wrote letters home, and went on ever-lengthening walks; but evening brought him to our living-room where, beside the humming samovar, we swung the conversation around to his wild Caucasian tales.

The stories he told were not new; we had heard them all many times before. Accounts of his own trips in pathless mountains, adventures of the dangerloving Georgians, legends of his own people, the Armenians — they had lost not a shade of their interest in the years which had gone since those other winter evenings, when the sea raged just beyond the pasture-bars and made us crowd close to the fireplace and to him. Often, too, he talked of his children, but always it was of their life before Manya had waved her handkerchief from a window. Only of Russia itself he would not speak, nor would he read our Russian newspapers.

‘Let her be,’ he once said, ‘the vampire! I ask only to forget.’

And we thought that he did forget, for the months brought to him an everdeepening contentment. His shoulders were squaring themselves into old accustomed lines, the illness which had menaced gave no sign. Spring found him searching for a plot of land which would be his own, for Kolya had but two more years to serve.

III

And then, in the summer, came the war.

We translated the news to Babanchik — he had never finished learning his English. A smile twisted his mouth.

‘Retribution!’ he said; and there was something very dreadful in his uplifted hand. ‘I pray that Germany will destroy all Russia.’

We turned upon him in indignation. Under our accusing eyes his arm came down and hung limp by his side. He swung on his heel and left us, muttering as he went, —

‘Nothing but German shells will ever break down her prisons.’

There followed the weeks and months of tense living. The Russian papers were filled with opportunities for the new work, names of old friends appeared in committee lists. As for us, we could but talk of it endlessly, and dream of it, wait for the morning paper, and talk again. We still saw Babanchik every day, but, every day, he mattered less. We could, and did, accept without comment his attitude toward the country which still held our affection, but, somehow, we had lost interest in his stories.

The war went on. The enemy was halted before Paris; the Russians swarmed over Prussia and were promptly driven back, far over their own boundary. Riga began to figure in the dispatches, and life seemed a solemn thing — so solemn that we had no time at all for noticing that something was very much amiss with Babanchik, until he said one evening, diffidently,—

‘If you could ask your doctor to stop in — some day.’

We stared at him curiously. Why did he have that ghastly look about him? He was perfectly well only the day before — or was it last week — or was it a month ago? or when was it that we had really looked at him? What had checked so suddenly the straightening of his shoulders? We could not say. But we were vaguely ashamed.

The doctor was terse and explicit.

‘There is nothing wrong, chronically, save a general hardening of the arteries and a very high blood-pressure. He must have had bad news recently, a sorrow of some sort.’

‘Nothing new,’ I contradicted. ‘He was perfectly happy until now.’

‘The war perhaps? or Russian reverses ? ’

‘Oh,’ I answered lightly, ‘he cares nothing for the war, and Russian reverses would cause him no sorrow.’

The doctor left no medicine.

‘Keep him amused,’ he ordered, ‘and don’t let him grow excited. That is the only remedy.’

Keep him amused! With no thought in our minds, no word on our tongues which did not deal with the war, the war of which he never spoke, with which he had no concern!

It was the youngest brother who broke through our quandary.

‘ I think we have all been blind — and stupid! Babanchik never asks for war news. But why does he always happen to be about when the paper comes in the morning? Why does he never change the subject as long as we talk of the battles? Have n’t you seen the embarrassed look on his face when Germany claims victory? And why did n’t he need the doctor until Warsaw was endangered?’

Thus did we chance upon the truth. Though even then we were not certain — not until a letter, six months delayed, came to him from Kolya. Babanchik’s hands shook when he laid it down.

‘The little rat! What do you think he has done? He has sent a petition to the Tsar, the Tsar himself! To beg to be released from prison that he may join the army. He promises to go to the most dangerous position, to do the hardest work, if the Tsar will only set him free and let him fight. The blessed little rat!’

‘Fight?’ I asked, and looked Babanchik straight in the face, ‘fight for Russia?’

The embarrassed look came into his eyes. But, even then, he did not at once capitulate.

‘Oh, my dear,’ he replied, ‘youth forgets so easily.’

After that it was not difficult to keep him amused. But to keep him from growing excited was not a task for human minds. Already he was fighting with Kolya. At night he lay awake, gleefully devising a thousand sly schemes whereby, single-handed, Kolya should take captive a hundred Germans; the days he spent in filling his letters to the boy with a detailed description of these schemes. Each morning we were introduced to marvels of unheard-of strategy, and called upon to translate from the newspaper every word of the long and conflicting dispatches. He was forgetting to eat, he had no time for exercise. An alarming shortness of breath followed, and we sent for the doctor again. The latter’s visit was short, his opinion no less so: —

‘If he continues to live at this tension he will not last until winter. Keep him quiet.’

And he left some pills.

And then came another letter from Kolya. I stepped into Babanchik’s room a few minutes after he had read it and found him at his open window, staring out at the sky. He brushed his hands across his eyes before he turned and held out the letter to me.

‘Read it, my dear.’

The uneven round handwriting was pathetically reminiscent of the letters which used to deal with ducks and puppies, and there was boyish heartbreak in every word of the curt, matter-offact sentences. Kolya’s petition had not been granted.

‘And now, father,’ the letter ran on, ‘you will have to come back. We are the men of our family. And, since the Tsar has decided that I must not help, the honor of that family rests with you. For, if you fail, I also fail.’

I looked up over the page. What could he do, a sick old man, in a country which was calling forth the finest of its young strength? He answered my unspoken question hastily.

‘There is much for me. The wounded are coming home; I could read to them in the hospitals, and tell stories — you know how well I tell stories. And I can count cars — that is the logical work for one who had been so long with the road. Right in Tiflis I can count them, — supply-trains go out from there, — and release a younger man for the front. Will you get me a schedule of the sailings of Japanese steamers, my dear?’

So came his decision. At dinnertime he could not eat. Morning found him with a newspaper in his hand. Out of his meagre knowledge of English he was trying to decipher the flaming headlines. He waved away the suggestion of breakfast. Food interfered with his breathing, he said; but would we not bring in his trunks and suitcases? By afternoon he was shivering, and the tea I made for him failed to warm his hands. And once more we called the doctor.

He fought with all the strength which was left him, our gentle Babanchik, fought with tears of helpless fury coursing down his face, when we took him from the chaos of his packing and put him to bed. And a hard three months began for all of us.

It was a cold and cheerless autumn of early rains. The doctor came every day. And every day I sat at the bedside, translating to him Babanchik’s entreaties and commands. I had procured for him the schedule of Japanese steamers and he had marked the dates of their sailing with red ink.

‘Tell him,’ he would say, his unsteady forefinger on the first of these, ‘that I must be fit for travel by this date. Tell him to give me more medicine, — I shall take two pills every half hour. Tell him I cannot wait.’

And again, two or three days later, his finger back on the page, —

‘There is no use in trying to catch this boat now. But tell him that the next one goes two weeks later. Surely he can cure me in two weeks; tell him that that’s fourteen days.’

The weeks crept by and, one after another, the Japanese steamers sailed without him; but in his mind, which was slowly losing its clearness, a new hope dawned each day. I began to dread the hours beside his bed. It was hard to listen to the plans for his work which, under the stress of mounting fever, often trailed off to incoherent muttering, and to watch the thin profile of his face showing an ever sharper line against the pillow; hard to follow the doctor to his car and hear his passionless, hopeless words; harder still to go back and face the crazily bright eyes of Babanchik and, in response to his questions, lie cheerfully and so extravagantly that it seemed that only a madman could believe.

Yet he believed. For, one morning, I found him ruling a sheet of paper on a lapboard — he had fumed until the nurse had given him his pen. The vertical lines cut unsteadily across the page, and at the top of the columns he had written, —

‘Date.’ — ‘Car Number.’ — ‘Destination.’ — ‘Cargo.’

‘You see, my dear,’ he explained eagerly, ‘there will be a great deal of purely mechanical work, such as this, to be done, and much of it I can do beforehand. For I shall be too busy, in Tiflis, and I cannot expect an assistant at this time.’

On that day I did not go back to his room. The doctor’s words had been fewer than usual, and there are times when one does not lie.

But, before bedtime, seeing his light burning, I tiptoed in. He stared dully.

‘You have been talking long — I fell asleep waiting. And I wanted you to tell your doctor that I am losing all patience. If he cannot make me well enough to go at once, I shall find some other way to go — without his help. Keeping me in a warm room, the rain shut out, while my boys are lying in trenches! When I could be counting cars —’ His breath failed him and he closed his eyes. Only when I looked back at him, with my hand on the door-knob, did he finish the sentence, — ‘for Russia.’

When again I saw him he was neither old nor feeble nor ill. By some untold magic he had become the undauntable Babanchik of twenty years ago. Only, his pongee suit had been very carefully pressed, and this, together with his unsmiling mouth, made him look strange — strange and a little forbidding, as if the way for which he had been searching was one with which we could have no concern. And, presently, one of the Japanese steamers was taking him back to Russia.