upon the bed and tell a story.

So it happened the current of ruin was turned aside—the heat-oppressed brain diverted from its purpose. For as the man lay beside his children he began to think of them and less of himself. "I cannot leave them," he concluded. "When I go I shall take them with me."

In the long, still hours he lay thinking.

The south wind began to stir the pines, and cool air from out of the wild country came through an open window. Fathoms of dusty, dead air which had hung for weeks over the valley, growing hotter and more oppressive in the burning sunlight, moved away. A cloud passing northward flung a sprinkle of rain upon the broad, smoky flats and was drained before it reached the great river. All who were sick and weary felt the ineffable healing of the woodland breeze. It soothed the aching brain of the mill-owner and slackened the ruinous toil of his thoughts.

Gordon slept soundly for the first time in almost a month.

II

NEXT morning Gordon felt better. He began even to consider what he could do to mend his life. The children got ready for Sunday-school and were on their way to church an hour ahead of time. Sue, in her white dress and pretty bonnet, walked with a self-conscious, don't-touch-me air. Socky, in his little sailor suit, had the downward eye of meditation. Each carried a Testament and looked neither to right nor left. They hurried as if eager for spiritual refreshment. They were, however, like the veriest barbarians setting out with spears and arrows in quest of revenge. They were thinking of Lizzie Cornell and that boy of the red head and the doomed uncle. Socky's lips moved silently as he hurried. One might have inferred that he was repeating his golden text. Such an inference would have been far from the truth. He was, in fact, tightening the grasp of memory on those inspiring words: "an' Uncle Sile fetched him a cuff with his fist an' broke the bear's neck, an' then he brought him home on his back an' et him for dinner." They joined a group of children who were sitting on the steps of the old church. Their hearts beat fast when they saw Lizzie coming with her cousin, the red-headed boy.

A number went forth to meet the two.

"Tell us the badger story," said they to the red-headed boy.

"Pooh! that ain't much," he answered, modestly.

"Please tell us," they insisted.

"Wal, one day my Uncle Mose see a side-hill badger—"

"What's a side-hill badger?" a voice interrupted.

"An animal what lives on a hill, an' has legs longer on one side than on t 'other, so 't he can run round the side of it," said he, glibly, and with a look of pity for such ignorance.

"Go on with the story," said another voice.

"My Uncle Mose sat an' watched one day up in the limb of a tree above the hole of a badger. By-an'-by an ol' he badger come out, an' my uncle dropped onto his back, an' rode him round an' round the hill 'til he was jes' tuckered out.

Then Uncle Mose put a rope on his neck an' tied him to a tree, an' the ol' badger dug an' dug until they was a hole in the ground so big you could put a house in it. An' my uncle he got an idee, an' so one day he fetched him out to South Colton an' learnt him how to dig wells an' cellars, an' bym-by the ol' badger could earn more money than a hired man."

"Shucks!" said Socky, turning upon his adversary with sneering, studied scorn. "That's nothing!"

Then proudly stepping forward, he flung the latest exploit of his Uncle Silas into the freckled face of the red-headed boy. It stunned the able advocate of old Moses Leonard—a mighty hunter in his time—and there fell a moment of silence followed by murmurs of applause.

The little barbarian—Lizzie Cornell—had begun to scent the battle and stood sharpening an arrow.

"It's a lie," said the red-headed boy, recovering