slave-person who went around behind her with a pea-cock-feathery fan, all green and gold and beautiful; and he waved the fan over her to keep her cool. Meanwhile, the king would be coming in at one of the gates of the city. They were huge, enormous brass gates, and they shone like the sun, bright, and the sun winked on the king's golden chariot, too, and on the soldiers' spears.

"He was just coming home from a lion-hunt, and was very much pleased because he'd killed a lot of lions. He was really a rather horrid man,--quite ferocious, and all,--but he wore most wonderful purple and red embroidered clothes, the sort you like to hear about. He had a tiara on, and golden crescents and rosettes blazed all over him, and he wore a mystic, sacred ornament on his chest, round and covered all over with queer emblems. He rode past the temple, where the walls were painted in different colors, one for each of the planets and such, because the Babylonish people worshipped those--orange for Jupiter, and blue for Mercury, and silver for the moon. And the king got out of his chariot and climbed up to where the queen was waiting for him in the toppest gar--"

"Don't you tell me they were so domestic and all," Felicia objected. "They probably--"

"Who's seeing this story?" Ken retorted. "You let me be. I say, the queen was waiting for him, and she gave him a lotus and a ripe pomegranate, and the slaves ran and got wine, and the people with harps played them, and she said--Here's Mother!"

Kirk looked quite taken aback for a moment at this apparently irrelevant remark of the Babylonian queen, till a faint rustle at the doorway told him that it was his own mother who had come in.

She stood at the door, a slight, tired little person, dressed in one of the black gowns she had worn ever since the children's father had died.

"Don't stop, Ken," she smiled. "What did she say?"

But either invention flagged, or self-consciousness intervened, for Kenelm said:

"Blessed if I know what she did say! But at any rate, you'll agree that it was quite a garden, Kirky. I'll also bet a hat that you haven't done your lesson for to-morrow. It's not your Easter vacation, if it is ours. Miss Bolton will hop you."

"Think of doing silly reading-book things, after hearing all that," Kirk sighed.

"Suppose you had to do cuneiform writing on a dab of clay, like the Babylonish king," Ken said; "all spikey and cut in, instead of sticking out; much worse than Braille. Go to it, and let Mother sit here, laziness."

Kirk sighed again, a tremendous, pathetic sigh, designed to rouse sympathy in the breasts of his hearers. It roused none, and he wandered across the room and dragged an enormous book out upon the floor. He sprawled over it in a dim corner, his eyes apparently studying the fireplace, and his fingers following across the page the raised dots which spelled his morrow's lesson. What nice hands he had, Felicia thought, watching from her seat, and how delicately yet strongly he used them! She wondered what he could do with them in later years. "They mustn't be wasted," she thought. She glanced across at Ken. He too was looking at Kirk, with an oddly sober expression, and when she caught his eye he grew somewhat red and stared out at the rain.

"Better, Mother dear?" Felicia asked, curling down on a footstool at Mrs. Sturgis's feet.

"Rather, thank you," said her mother, and fell silent, patting the arm of the chair as though she were considering whether or not to say something more. She said nothing, however, and they sat quietly in the falling dusk, Felicia stroking her mother's white hand, and Ken humming softly to himself at the window. Kirk and his book were almost lost in the corner--just a pale hint of the page, shadowed by the hand which moved hesitantly across it. The hand paused, finally, and Kirk demanded, "What's 'u-g-h' spell?"

"It spells 'Ugh'!" Ken grunted. "What on earth are you reading? Is that what Miss Bolton gives you!"

"It's not my lesson," Kirk said; "it's much further along. But I can read it."

"You'll get a wigging. You'd better stick to 'The cat can catch the mouse,' et cetera."

"I finished that years ago," said Kirk, loftily. "This is a different book, even. Listen to this: 'Ugh! There--sat--the dog with eyes--as--big as--as--'"

"Tea-cups," said Felicia.

"'T-e-a-c-' yes, it is tea-cups," Kirk conceded; "how did you know, Phil?--'as big as tea-cups,--staring--at--him. "You're a nice--fellow," said the soldier, and he--sat him--on--the witch's ap-ron, and took as many cop--copper shillings--as his--pockets would hold.'"

"So that's it, is it?" Ken said. "Begin at the beginning, and let's hear it all."

"Ken," said his mother, "that's in the back of the book. You shouldn't encourage him to read things Miss Bolton hasn't given him."

"It'll do him just as much good to read that, as that silly stuff at the beginning. Phil and I always read things we weren't supposed to have reached."

"But for him--"Mrs. Sturgis murmured; "you and Phil were different, Ken. Oh, well,--"

For Kirk had turned back several broad pages, and began:

"There came a soldier marching along the highroad--one, two! one, two!..."

Little by little the March twilight settled deeper over the room. There was only a flicker on the brass andirons, a blur of pale blossoms where the potted azalea stood. The rain drummed steadily, and as steadily came the gentle modulations of Kirk's voice, as the tale of "The Tinder-Box" progressed.

It was the first time that he had ever read aloud anything so ambitious, and his hearers sat listening with some emotion--his mother filled with thankfulness that he had at last the key to a vast world which he now might open at a touch; Ken, with a sort of half-amazed pride in the achievements of a little brother who was surmounting such an obstacle. Felicia sat gazing across the dim room.

"He's reading us a story!" she thought, over and over; "Kirk 's reading to us, without very many mistakes!" She reflected that the book, for her, might as well be written in Sanskrit. "I ought to know something about it," she mused; "enough to help him! It's selfish and stupid not to! I'll ask Miss Bolton."

The soldier had gone only as far as the second dog's treasure-room, when Maggie came to the door to say that supper was ready. From between the dining-room curtains came the soft glow of the candles and the inviting clink of dishes. "'He threw--away all the copper--money he had, and filled his--knapsack with silver,'" Kirk finished in a hurry, and shut the book with a bang.

"I wouldn't have done that," he said, as Felicia took the hand he held out for some one to take; "I should think all the money he could possibly get would have been useful."

"You've said it!" Ken laughed.

"Yes," Mrs. Sturgis murmured with a sigh, "all the money one can get is useful. You read it very beautifully, darling--thank you."

She kissed his forehead, and took her place at the head of the table, where the candles lit her gentle face and her brown eyes--filled now, with a sudden brimming tenderness.

CHAPTER II

HAVOC

The town ran, in its lower part, to the grimy water-front, where there was ever a noise of the unloading of ships, the shouts of teamsters, and the clatter of dray-horses' big hoofs on bare cobblestones. Ken liked to walk there, even on such a dreary March day as this, when the horses splashed through puddles, and the funnels of the steamers dripped sootily black. He had left Felicia in the garden, investigating the first promise of green under the leaf-coverlet of the perennial bed. Kirk was with her, questing joyously down the brick path, and breathing the warm, wet smell of the waking earth.

Ken struck down to the docks; even before he reached the last dingy street he could see the tall