second in his wishes to an abundant entrance into heaven, and it might be said that it was second only on Sunday.

When Anastasia's first baby came, and she was so very ill that Jabez feared she would die and leave him alone with the little one, in her weakness and partial delirium she told him faintly that she could get well if she only had a garnet ring. He supposed that she did not know what she was saying, but as the doctor said she must not be fretted, he brought her a garnet ring from the store and slipped it on her finger. She looked at it, sighed blissfully and slept. She recovered fast, but as soon as she was able to sit up she saw that the ring was of the cheapest pinchbeck, with a glass setting. When she was able to go out again she dug a little hole in the back yard and buried it—she could not have told why.

The years went on. Two other children were born to them, but one lived only a year. The first boy and his sister grew up and were married. Elizabeth, a pretty girl, who looked as her mother did when she was young, had for her engagement ring a very small diamond, and when John became engaged to Drusilla Hicks he gave her an emerald with pearls. Their mother said nothing as to her views on jewelry, and it would not have occurred to either of the children that she could wear any other ornament than the plain gold band, now growing a little thin.

But today, as she sat getting the peas ready to cook, she wore on the third finger of her right hand a heavy gold ring, rather ornate, and set with a large, wellcut garnet. She had had it for more than a week, and had worn it whenever she was alone. She had tried to tell Jabez about it, and to show it to him. Each day her courage failed her, and she determined to tell him that night. Each night she concluded that morning would be a more favorable time. She had planned various ways of telling him. one time she thought she would wear the ring until he noticed it, and then explain. At another she planned to tell him. first, and then show it to him. Several times she almost began to speak of it, but a queer little chill would creep over her and her tongue felt stiff.

At

It was not that she was afraid of her

husband. In his way he was a kind man, but, although few had ever suspected the fact, Anastasia was extremely sensitive to blame or ridicule, and the dread of his saying that such ornaments were out of place on a woman of her age, and of his ridiculing her to the children, froze her resolutions before she could carry them out.

Anastasia had been a "woman of her age" ever since her first baby was born, so she could not tell just what number of years was most reprehensible, but it was safe to fear that she had reached it. At one time she wanted a pink wrapper, but Jabez said he should think a woman of her age would look better in brown or grey and his wife never spoke of pink to him again.

The first year after they went to California Anastasia was miserably homesick. She wanted her own people, the old familiar surroundings. The fact that Jabez was making money faster than he could have done in New England made no difference in her loneliness. The hill vineyards never, she was convinced, could look as beautiful to her as a field of clover, and the long, dry summer, with never a shower, and the equally long rainy winter, were separate and unforgivable offenses in her eyes. Long after she had become a good Californian and thought with pity of the victims of sunstroke and freezing "back home," she remembered Jabez's scornful remark that he should think a "woman of her age" was too old to cry like a baby just because she was homesick.

She remembered with painful distinctness little slights and ness little slights and reproaches-not vindictively, but simply because she was powerless to forget. Once, when the first baby was about a year old, she and Jabez went to a small party given by one of the neighbors. Old-fashioned games were played, and Anastasia joined in "hunting the slipper," and was enjoying it with all her cheerful soul until she suddenly saw her husband frowning at her. As they went home he said he was surprised to see a woman of her age acting so foolish. Her face grew hot for years afterwards whenever she thought of the occurrence.

Quite likely Jabez Frisbee had never had the remotest idea of the system of re

pression under which his wife had lived for thirty years. He supposed that he loved her (only, like most New England persons, he would have said "liked," rather than "loved," which tender verb seems to impress them as being indelicate) but it was as a possession of his own, not as an individual, separate and distinct from himself.

But it was not altogether because Jabez would disapprove of the ring that she dreaded to tell him. It was more because of the way in which she had obtained it. The ring was the symbol of a yielding to temptation that was almost unknown in a long and austere life. To it she had sacrificed her convictions and given the lie to a hundred of her own statements. For it she had done what she believed to be wrong, and the certainty that Jabez would find it out, even if she did not tell him, and the dread of the moment when the blow would fall had in a week changed her from a cheerful, talkative woman to a silent, worried-looking one, who had puzzled her husband for days.

So for more than a week, Anastasia had tried and failed to tell her husband the mighty secret, and, as usually happens, today when she least expected it, discovery overtook her. She had prepared a dinner fit for the proverbial king, and when it was almost cooked went to her bedroom to put her ring lovingly away in its velvet lined box. She stopped a few minutes to turn it back and forth to catch the light, rejoicing in the color that represented all she knew of beauty for its own sake, and then went back to the kitchen.

Jabez came in to dinner as usual. He had been to town and brought home the Gilson Courier, which he unfolded and began to read while his wife dished up the dinner.

"Zounds a'most to the nation!" he he shouted suddenly, causing Anastasia to nearly drop the plate of corned-beef she was holding. "What does this mean, I want to know?" he went on, holding out the paper with a shaking hand, his face red and his eyes glaring at her in a way that made his wife feel faint.

There on the last page of the paper was her own picture, and beneath it in staring type, she read, as if in a dream: "Mrs. Jabez Frisbee, wife of a prominent farmer

and bank director of Gilson, recommends Curena." Curena." Below this was a mass of small type, which she had no time to decipher before the flood of her husband's wrath was upon her.

"What on airth does this mean anyway, I ask ye? What possessed ye to go and git yerself into public print and disgrace? Why don't ye answer me, hey?"

And then the courage that lay dormant in her sensitive soul came to her aid, and she felt a stiffening of moral fibre as she said, with such dignity that Jabez was unconsciously calmed:

He

"I'll tell you, Jabez Frisbee, all there is to it, and you don't need to holler enough to raise the dead. About a month back a proper appearing young man came here one day on a bicycle and asked me for a drink of water. While he was drinking it he said he had dyspepsy a good deal, and he asked me if that Curena (that he see advertised on your own barn roof, Jabez) was good for it. I told him I never took any myself, but some folks said it was. He wanted to know if I ever knew of it doing anybody any hurt, and I said no. kept on talking till I finally told him about Mis' Pettis saying it cured her of neuraligy. Then he asked if I would be willing to recommend it; if I would, the medicine folks would give me ten dollars. I said I believed it done Mis' Pettis good, but I couldn't say no more. wrote out what I said and asked me to sign it, and I did, and he give me the 1 money. I didn't know he was going to print it, and I never give him the picture. I don't know where he got it, unless it was out of that county history that you went and paid 'em to put your and my picture in when I begged you not to. When I went to Sacramento the last time I got me a ring with the ten dollars. I'll show it to you."

He

She came back from their room presently and handed him the ring, which he took and turned about awkwardly in his big, horny fingers, still silent, looking alternately at the picture and his wife, and after a moment's hesitation, she went on, in a lower tone:

"I guess you don't realize that it's pretty hard to work all your life for your board and clothes, and that's what I've done. Till I got that ten dollars, you

know, as well as I do, that I never had a cent to spend as I was a mind to. I never had anything that was pretty when I was a girl, and I've never had anything sense I was married only what you thought was necessary. And 'tain't fair. I've worked as hard as I could all my life, and I never had even the butter and egg money to spend without being told what to git with it. Ever sense I was a mite of a girl I've wanted a garnet ring more'n anything in the world, seem's if, and I couldn't have it. I asked you for one once, and mebbe you recollect what you give me."

She swallowed a little sob, and then, encouraged by his seeming stupefaction, went on boldly: "I'm glad I've got it. It's a comfort to me, and as far as the piece in the paper goes, all it says is true, for what I know, and anyway it's no worse to say it there than to put it on your barn roof for all creation to see. You git money for that, and you spend it as you're a mind to, and that's what I've done, and I ain't sorry for it."

He reached out the ring to her, still without speaking, and she took it and put it on her finger as if she was throwing down the gauntlet to fate, saying quietly, "There's no call to let dinner git cold, as I know of."

Jabez went out to the pump to wash his hands, as if dazed. He looked at his big barn roof, across which in monstrous letters was emblazoned the legend of the

Curena Company, about which he and his wife had so often argued, and a great light shone in on his mind, but he only said, softly, "Well, I snum!"

Dinner was eaten in silence. Anastasia apparently had no more to say. Her ring caught the light as she moved, and glowed cheerfully in the otherwise gloomy atmosphere. Just as she was taking off her apron after the dishes were washed, Jabez came to the door. He looked a trifle sheepish-"meachin," his wife would have said and remarked casually, "I might hitch up and take you down to 'Lizbeth's. I s'pose she'd like to see yer new ring. And say, 'Stasia," stooping to pick up a pin that he seemed to have difficulty in locating, "I guess I might's well give ye back yer ten dollars to do whatever yer a might to with, and we'll call it the ring's a present from me."

On the way to Elizabeth's, he said, deprecatingly, "I dunno's I'll have them signs painted agin. I don't much like the looks of 'em, anyway." After a period of rumination, during which his wife sat silent. he continued: "Don't ye worry none about that piece in the paper. I'll see the editor, and I guess he'll print some other testimony after this. There ain't no harm done anyway, and I'm glad ye've got the ring, 'Stasia. I didn't rightly know how bad ve wanted it." And then Anastasia kissed him, without even looking to see if any one saw her.

MASTE

that it has not been thought of before.

The principle lies in the varying rates of transmission of electric waves through the air and of sound waves through water.

The practical application is found in a simple combination of the wireless telegraph and the submarine telephone, both of which devices are now being installed upon ship-board to constantly increasing extent for general uses. Professor McAdie proposes to substitute the messages sent by them in combination for the sound signals now in vogue.

Bells, syrens, guns, whistles, gongs and other sound signals transmitted through the air are notoriously unreliable, as the Hydrographic office of the U. S. Navy has announced. The aberration of sound in

fog, indeed in clear weather, is such that not only the distance, but the bearing of the sound, cannot be determined with any confidence whatsoever. Numberless marine disasters have been attributable to the erratic behavior of sound in air. Even with the best apparatus a signal may be heard distinctly at a distance of four miles, and be inaudible at half a mile. There may be zones or patches of audibility and of inaudibility over a large area.

This phenomenon is due to the varying densities of the atmosphere, diverting or altering the sound waves. Professor Tyndall thus describes the conditions:

"By streams of air differently heated, or saturated in different degrees with aqueous vapor, the atmosphere is rendered