Yet did she kiss that little maid,
Who should no longer roam—

When lo! the dear dream flashed away,
And there she was at home!

"Make this thy home, thou Piping Will,"

The Burgomaster cried.

"Thou hast restored our little maid!

I tell thee, thou must bide."

'Make this thy home, thou Piping

Will,"

The bustling mother said.

Come, warm thyself before the hearth And eat the good white bread."

But Piping Will would only smile:

Good friends, I cannot wait!"

(Who could have thought that tat

tered coat

Had been a robe of state!)

So forth he fared into the night,

And piping, went his way.

How strange," they said, "a lad so

poor

Can have a heart so gay!"

Only the little maid that sat

Upon her father's knee

Remembered how they two had fared That night right pleasantly.

And as she ate her bread and milk,
So close and safe and warm,
She wondered what strange, lovely
lands

He wrought of wind and storm.

For he that plays a fairy pipe
Is lord of everything!

She laughed to think that Piping Will
Should be so great a king.

TWENTY or twenty-five years ago, the little towns straggling along the lowlands or perched on the high bluffs where the Ohio deeply scallops Indiana's southern boundary were very far away from the active world, the world of books and deeds. Their only means of communication with the world outside was the great steamboats that ran from Cincinnati and Louisville down the Mississippi to New Orleans. In times of freshet, in extremely cold winters. when the river was frozen, or when the water was low in summer, communication with other towns was often shut off, and the people were almost as isolated as was Robinson Crusoe on his island.

last her father came, and drew from his pocket the little green volume of Longfellow's Poems, "Diamond Edition," with the gilt diamond on the cover. Then the "legends and traditions" of "Hiawatha" sang themselves into her memory, and gave new meaning to the arrowheads and stone hatchets dug from the many ancient Indian mounds that were found along the river. Whittier's Snow-bound" came next to the young reader.

A little set of book-shelves had been strung up in the chimneycorner, the edges trimmed with fir-cones from the trees in the garden, laboriously glued on by patient fingers, its cords strung with spools. Slowly the books gathered there-and when "Snowbound" came another winter was at hand, the fir-boughs wore ermine too dear for an earl" (that poem brightened another Christmas season), and the little reader shivered in mock terror while "outside the witches were making tea."

To a little girl who lived in a big white house encircled with tall fir-trees, and having an upper veranda from which could be caught, across the bluff, a tiny glimpse of the beautiful river, blue and sparkling in the morning, and silver in the moonlight, the outside world was known only through the head-lines in the weekly papers, and the never-to-be-forgotten stories in ST. NICHOLAS. Her books were so few and so worn with much reading that the announcement of a new book for her collection was hailed with as much joy as the arrival of a long-expected friend; the day of its coming was marked with a white stone in her record, and all its incidents still stand out clearly in her memory.

The summer brought the promise of a new book, "about a little Indian boy." The little girl waited many a noon and evening before at

The child-heart has its own tastes and likings. None could have foretold that in all that little collection a small, brown, gilt-topped volume should have become her best beloved; that she would turn with equal pleasure from "The Wonderful One-hoss Shay" to "The Opening of the Piano"; or that her little soul would be thrilled with the slow music of

Till thou at length art free, Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea.

But so it was; and she asked so many questions about the kindly gentleman whose picture