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They looked at each other, an unspoken question in their eyes.

"There is another thing," pursued Beatrice. "That boy who has been helping Tim is Christina's son Olaf. I had thought so before, but to-day I am certain."

"I had been suspecting that, too," said Nancy. "One day I asked her if she did n't want us to write another letter for her, and she laughed and said, 'Not just yet."

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The door from the bedroom opened softly and Aunt Anna came in. Her cheeks were pink from the fresh air outside, her fair hair was ruffled, and she was wrapped in the dark robe that the girls had laid over her bed. She looked very pretty as she sat in the big chair that they pulled out for her, the glow of the fire lighting her face.

"I heard your voices," she said, "and, though it is glorious out there with the sound of the water and with the tops of the trees showing against the stars, I was not able to sleep, so I thought I would come in and talk to you a little.' She leaned back in her chair and sighed blissfully. "What good care you take of me and how well I feel! do not seem to be the same person."

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The girls laughed in unison, it was so like what they had been saying.

"Beatrice," her aunt went on suddenly, "Dr. Minturn told me about your falling over the cliff when you went to fetch him for me.” "It was not much of a cliff,' " returned Beatrice, sheepishly, involuntarily rubbing the bruised elbow that was now the one memento of her misadventure. She had thought to keep that incident from Aunt Anna's knowledge.

"It frightened me," her aunt said, "but it opened my eyes to what you were willing to do for me. We are all of us changed and we are all beginning to understand one another better. At home, with your rounds of shopping and motoring and dancing, I used to think we were not much more than casually acquainted. And there was something about which I always wanted to talk to you, but I wondered if a day would ever come when you would have time to listen and to understand. I did not want you to hear unless you could see it all as clearly as I did."

"And do you think," asked Beatrice, earnestly, "that the time has come now?"

"Yes," was the answer, "I think the time has come now. It is right that you should hear at last what has been hanging heavy on my heart for these ten years, about why I came here about my brother."

(To be continued)

NIGHT AND MORNING

By A. H. FOLWELL

THE hardest part of being ill is waking up at night

And wondering what time it is and when it will be light.

A night-lamp on the dresser, though it 's s'posed to break the gloom,

Makes the darkness all the blacker in the corners of the room;

And you think you 'll call your mother-then you guess you'd better not,

'Cause it is n't easy sleeping on that little springless cot;

And you know she 's pretty tired, what with 'tending you all day,

Being doctor, reading stories, thinking things for you to play.

So you just keep still and let her sleep and never make a sound,
And then-oh, joy!-you hear at last the milkman coming round!

There's a rattle of a wagon and the thud of horse's feet;
Then a clatter and a jingle, as of bottles, in the street.
There's the flashing of a lantern for a moment on the wall,

And you know it is the milkman just as though you 'd heard him call.

It is still as black as midnight, but you feel the dark is past,

That the lonely time is over, and to-morrow 's come at last!
The clock whose tick was dreadful just a little while ago

Now seems to tick, "Good morning!" with a brisk, "I-told-you-so!"
Oh, there is n't any medicine, none ever has been found,

That makes you feel as good as when the milkman comes around!

IN a city of India, there lived a money-lender whose greed and trickiness were a byword among all the people. When any one borrowed from him, he charged interest at a rate that soon doubled the principal; and if the unfortunate borrower failed to repay when due, he took him to court, seized his property, and sold him and his family into slavery. By such means he became the richest, and yet the most hated, man in the whole city.

It

In this same city there also lived a Brahman, honest, kind, and trustful, but poor; and one night he had a marvelous dream. seemed that he borrowed a hundred thousand rupees from the money-lender, bought himself a fine house and garden, where he lived happily with his family on the best the land afforded, and then, by a number of successful business ventures, increased his wealth until he was the richest man in the kingdom. At last, after months of prosperity, taking a hundred thousand rupees, he set out for the money-lender's office, meaning to repay the loan; but strangely, just as he reached his creditor's door, he was suddenly awakened. Thus the debt remained unpaid.

His dream was over; his life of poverty was before him again; but the memory of his happiness could not be taken away. So he told his wife about the loan and the good-fortune, and he and she told others, until before long the affair was known to all the city.

The money-lender, too, heard of it, and at once his wakeful avarice saw a chance for profit. Summoning the police, he went to the Brahman's house.

"My friend," he said to the surprised man, "I have come to collect the money you owe me."

"What money?" asked the Brahman. "The hundred thousand rupees you borrowed the other night!"

The Brahman argued, but in vain. The money-lender had him dragged to court. There he proved, by the defendant's own admission, that he had lent him the hundred thousand rupees, that the defendant had lived on them in luxury, and had even increased them, but that the loan had never been repaid. Then he begged for justice and the return of his money.

The judge listened gravely to the argument, seemed to weigh the matter most carefully, and then rendered his decision.

"It is clear," he said, "that the Brahman borrowed the money and failed to repay it. Borrowers must repay! Therefore the Brahman must return the hundred thousand rupees to the money-lender or be sold into slavery."

Impressed with the wisdom of the judge's reasoning, the audience burst into applause, for the case had been looked upon as very difficult; but when the applause died out, a laugh was heard at the rear of the room.

The audience looked around in astonishment to see who was so disrespectful, and saw the boy Raman, whose clever solution of several puzzling cases had been the talk of the town.

The judge flushed. "How dare you," he said to Raman, "show such contempt of court? Why do you laugh?"

"Because of your foolish decision!" was the reply.

"Then how would you decide the case?" "Let me show you!" answered Raman; and in a moment he was seated on the bench. "Sir," he said to the bailiff, "fetch me a hundred thousand rupees from the city treasury!"

In a trice they were brought.

Again he commanded the bailiff, "Bring me a tub of water!"

In a moment it was there.

"Now," said Raman to the money-lender, "stand beside the tub and look into the water!"

The mystified money-lender obeyed.

"And you," he said to the Brahman, “take the money in your hands and stand on the other side of the tub!"

The Brahman, equally mystified, took his place.

"Money-lender," said Raman, "what do you see in the water?"

"The Brahman holding out a hundred thousand rupees to me!" he answered, gazing at the reflection.

"Then," pronounced Raman, "reach into the tub and take your pay; for thus should money be repaid that was borrowed in a dream."

Hereupon he dismissed the case, released the prisoner, happy to have escaped slavery, and returned the money to the treasury. But from that day the money-lender was the target for the people's jokes.

W. Norman Brown.

IT was difficult, in Washington, to find out the hours for visiting Mt. Vernon in the winter.

One said that it was closed to the public during that season, another said that it was open only on Sundays and holidays; and yet another, that Sunday was the only day when it was not opened to the public throughout the entire year. This last one spoke the truth, I 'm quite sure-though I did n't go on a Sunday to make sure if it was closed then. In the summer, the grounds are closed later than in the winter, but it was early winter when I went, and a week-day afternoon.

And somehow I'd advise you, when dreaming your dreams of the places you will sometime visit, along with the Nile and the trip to Venice and the shores of the Mediterranean, -to put Mt. Vernon on the list-if not first. There it is, the white colonial house in its lovely, old-fashioned grounds, on the banks of the Potomac, as we all know, some little distance out of the city of Washington.

The house itself we 've seen reproduced very often on picture post-cards, but these

do not give an animate idea of it all. You'd recognize the house from the post-cards, of course, but when you really see it, it is almost as though you saw a very wonderful person -the house has so much personality. Almost you can see those who once lived in it. The old-time furniture and simple rooms, the many adjoining sections, such as the kitchen and the gardener's house and the servants' quarters, all look so real, that the Father of his Country no longer seems a mighty figurehead, but a real person, very human, although he had risen to such heights.

There are the lovely lawns, the terraces, the trees, the sloping banks, the garden, the old school-house, and there, too, is Washington's tomb.

But as the sun shines over those grounds where once Washington lived and walked and thought and dreamed his dreams of the country which he loved, it seems as though, when one begins to yield to the wanderlust, the first place on the list to visit should be Mt. Vernon. Mary Graham Bonner.

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VIEW FROM ANAKTUVAK PASS, ALASKAN ROCKIES, SHOWING UNIFORM HEIGHT OF MOUNTAINS

A PATHFINDER OF THE YUKON

"Uncle Sam's" Adventurers

By ROBERT FORREST WILSON

It was in the spring of 1900. The eyes of the adventurous of the world were then turned toward Alaska and its newly discovered gold. The Government was doing everything in its power to increase men's knowledge of that vast, then almost unknown, region. Its secrets were being revealed in official publications, its riches charted, its trails and rivers mapped.

Yet there still remained one tremendous, forbidding spread of Alaskan wilderness which had defied the white man's daring. A broad belt of territory between the Yukon River and the coast of the Arctic Ocean, an area roughly 250 miles across and 500 long from east to west, was entirely unexplored. This was Alaska's mystery land. No savage tribe lived in it, and only the most courageous of red hunters had ventured to penetrate the interior.

The district stood as a challenge to the Geographical Survey, dedicated as was and is to the task of uncovering and appraising Uncle Sam's natural resources. What were these mountains that had been observed by prospectors and explorers making their way up the rushing currents of the northern tributaries of the Yukon? What natural wonders,

what riches did they hold? What streams and what other natural trade routes were there? What were the possibilities of development? In short, it was proposed to send Frank C. Schrader, an explorer in the service of the Survey, to find out; to send him across the most northern mountain pass in the world to discover the route from the Yukon to the Arctic Ocean, a journey beset with unknown terrors and from whose perils he might never return.

Even in 1900, Schrader was a veteran of Alaska. Long before the first gold rush, he was there, far in the interior, picking away at the rocks with his geologist's hammer and securing the data which have since been of so much aid in Alaska's development.

He responded to his chief's summons, accepted his assignment as calmly as if called upon to visit one of Washington's suburbs, and left the capital in December, 1900, taking a single assistant with him. Traveling by way of Seattle and the Pacific, in February he found himself in Skagway, which is the town at the head of ocean navigation at the end of one of the fiords of southeastern Alaska. Here Schrader hired one or two men as helpers and took the railroad over the pass to Whitehorse, where

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he recruited more picked mushers, as the Alaskan sledgemen are called, and bought sleds and dogs.

Then he began a remarkable twelve-hundred-mile trip in dog-sleds down the Yukon River in the dead of the northern winter, an exploit that would have been the great adventure in most men's lives, but which for Schrader was commonplace. Down the Yukon, in this region, means down-stream, but northward in direction; for until the Yukon makes the great bend at the arctic circle, it runs for hundreds of miles almost due northeast. Through the Canadian Klondike the party sped, the snow-bound miningcamps turning out to a man to cheer them as they passed.

At Dawson, in the Klondike, Schrader rested his men and dogs for a few days. Here, too, he hired two expert dog-drivers and canoeists, bringing his party up to eight in number. Then he hurried on. Already the days were lengthening perceptibly; the sun was daily gaining power. Schrader had to be within striking distance of the great unknown northland before the spring breakup should overtake him. He crossed the Alaskan border at Fort Egbert, went on through Charlieville, passed Circle, and then reached Fort Yukon, at the junction of the Porcupine River.

It was late in April now and he could not

pause. The Yukon below this point is an immense river, miles wide in places. Fort Yukon is exactly under the arctic circle. The river goes no farther north, but runs westward along the circle for some fifty miles, then turns southwest toward the Bering Sea. Just at the southwest turn, Schrader and his party bade good-by to the Yukon and turned into the Chandlar River, which flows in from the northwest. He followed up this stream to the settlement at Caro, then struck across country for a drive of ninety miles over deep snow to Coldfoot on the upper Koyukuk. Here he found his canoes and supplies waiting for him.

Coldfoot is well inside of the circle, and this means that in June the sun shines at midnight. midnight. Already the nights were becoming but brief periods of twilight. To the north rolled out the mystery region. Here nature is in her most savage mood. Wild life of air, earth, and water holds undisputed dominion over a tangled wilderness of primeval forest, foaming, icy streams, glaciers, mountains, and, north of them, the moss plains of the Arctic.

As Schrader saw it then, the region was still gripped in the steel embrace of the long dark winter. The earth was buried in snow, lakes were frozen to their bottoms, the rushing streams were stilled, the teeming game up in dens for the annual hiber

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RAPIDS ON THE JOHN RIVER, A STREAM TOO SWIFT FOR TRAVEL BY CANOE

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