love the good old trade. Did Gasperone meddle with State affairs? Yet, who like Gasperone? Send us plenty on the roads that we can skin, and let politics go to the great devil!"

"The five thousand!" repeated Tiberio. "See, the moon is down; why do we stand prating? Eh, mio cuore, know you not the house dog must be fed? Feed me-if not-"

This sudden aposiopesis, or rhetorical pause, seemed to have in it the weight of a cavalry charge. Santa Fiora groaned like a man whose throat is getting cut; and the reckoning began again. Carluccio, motionless and attentive hitherto, signed that we most creep further away, which we did with infinite precautions. There was a choking sense of malaria in my mouth, a nausea that I could hardly keep down. Our clothes were wet with the night dews, our limbs benumbed and heavy. The sky was opening out in small gleams of dawn, spectral above this melancholy region, where masses of irregular and fantastic outline began to appear more solidly through the accursed air. We crouched and waited. In half an hour we saw, leaping out of the ruined columbarium, on the side nearest us, Santa Fiora, alone.

He

seemed to carry no weapon, but as he strode within a yard of our hiding-place I could see a brace of pistols showing their noses from under his dark-blue vest. He kept a sharp lookout in front, and soon vanished in the direction of Cecila Metalla's round tomb.

"Where does he prowl mostly?" I inquired of Carluccia. To which the lad answered, "Anywhere between Rome and the Montagna del Mattese" -above Cassino-"but when there is nothing doing, the lads stanno a casa; they wait till they get a signal from the capobanda. It is not as in the old days, when once a brigand, always a brigand. Then they lived in the open and enjoyed themselves. Now they must expect the manutengolo to send them business."

"And Tiberio-Liverno, as you call him-is the manutengolo?"

"But surely! who else? Without him Santa Fiora could do no stroke. He says true. Have you seen how we catch birds with a looking-glass and a net in the fields? Liverno is the man that holds glass and net. So he takes the fat breasts of the birds, and we eat their thin legs. Ma pazienza! Will he always have the breasts?"

One day, about three weeks after the announcement of the strike in Mr. Watson's shops, Jeanie Casey came to Agnes, and said:

"I have been grieving to tell you, and the sinful pride would not let me speak. But now I will. But you mustn't be thinking how that I wouldn't do the same to morrow if it was to do for I would.

*The Burden of Christopher. By Florence Converse. Copyright, 1900, by Houghton, Mifflin & Co. Price, $1.50.

But I

There is no repentance in me. must be telling somebody. I must." Agnes put her into an easy chair and took away her hat and jacket and kissed her. Jeanie had grown thin; the large simplicity of her gaze was gone; she looked at Agnes straight and square, but with sternness, and there was a curious rigidity about her mouth. "She is like the pictures of the old covenanters," thought Agnes, "and perhaps I am to blame." Aloud, she

said: "I've tried to see you, Jeanie, ever since the strike began, but you were always in town, or away somewhere getting money; and this week we thought Christopher was going to have the measles, but he didn't."

"I left little Jean with him in the garden," said Jeanie; and then she folded her hands and sat still in the great chair, and lost herself in her thoughts.

"Tell me how you ever persuaded them to organize," said Agnes, after a few seconds of silence. "It seemed such an impossible task."

"For a long time I'd no hope," Jeanie replied. "They were but staring loons in the beginning; but-there were some with husbands, and these got into the way of talking with them, and of a sudden, whether I would have it or no, the thing spread; and after a bit it rolled up like a snowball, verra fast -too fast. And out of my hand it was; and I, there, feeling it to slip and could not stop it. Here in Kenyon a woman will have a bit time of her own for the thinking-but there!-And if there's no thinking there'll be no doing;-or there'll be just blind, crazy doing.."

"How do you mean?" said Agnes, uneasily; "don't you approve of this strike?"

"Ay!-of this strike; but that's a verra different matter."

"I don't understand."

"There was a cut-down; and the stitchers were fierce to go out for a rise. The terrible thing it is, Mrs. Kenyon, to feel the people slip out from the power of you, and take their own way. To hold your hand out in a torrent and think to hold the water back, and feel it over-slip the grasp of you, and never stop for you, nor take notice of you that your hand is there. That is it! But the Lord had an eye to His poor. He turned the torrent another

sinful woman that I am-verra sinful."

She fell into a reverie again, and said nothing for a long while. At last Agnes touched her hand.

"You said you were going to tell me, Jeanie."

"Yes! I must be telling somebody." The voices of the children came up from the garden. There was shouting, and then:

"Stop, Chrissie!-you hurt! Stop!"

Agnes went to the window and threw it open. Her son was hauling an unwilling little maiden across the untrodden snow.

Chris!-Chris!-What are you doing? Don't be rude! Remember she is a little girl."

"We're playing strike, mother, and she's a scab, and I'm just giving it to her. Come away, you mean, old traitor you, I'll teach you to take the bread out of my children's mouths!"

"Don't you think you would better play something that isn't quite so rough?" suggested Agnes.

"I don't want to be a 'cab all the time," protested little Jeanie; "it's your turn now."

"I'm not going to be a scab ever, even playing," Christopher cried; and Agnes closed the window and left them to settle the matter as best they could.

Jeanie did not seem to have heard the controversy, but when their hostess came and sat down beside her, she gathered her thoughts together with an evident effort, and began:

"It's neither here nor there with this strike, what I'm telling you now; it can mak' no difference one way or another to that. It's just for my own self, and that I'm sore wanting a friend."

Agnes felt a sense of relief, for which she reproached herself. She had been dreading some revelation which should

be it fra' such a weak vessel as I to detract fra' her. They lie in that shop, Mrs. Kenyon, and they tak' what does not belong to them, and they're aye at strife one with another. A heart-breaking place it is. The forewoman took notice of me that day for my good, quick work, and so she saw the other women, how they cam' talking to me, for they were angry with the cut-down -and she did but rub them on the raw places, so they were mad against her, and crazy for the strike. There was not a woman cam' by my chair but did not stop to complain, railing against Annie Curry, the forewoman, and demanding the strike. Then Annie Curry cam' beside me and said, 'Where is it that I've seen you?' and I said, 'I don't know;'-it was true-I didn't know. Then she said to me, 'Have you ever worked in the Kenyon shops?' and I said, 'No, I never have.'"

"Jeanie!"

The Scotchwoman lifted her head and looked sternly for a while at her friend.

"For four months I had worked among these women, Mrs. Kenyon, early and late, to lead them out of the land of Egypt, to learn them the only way to stand out for their bit bread,when the master cuts and cuts and cuts into the wages. And they were beginning to understand. If I'd left them then,-all that I'd been at would have gone for naught. They'd have rioted a bit, and been brought low, and crowded under to worse blackness and worse hunger. They weren't fit to stand alone, and do you think I'd

leave them then, just to the saving of my one soul? I'm thinking any way the Lord wouldn't have great need of a soul that could desert his poor, downtrodden ones in their straits. I'm thinking the Lord will not be hard on me for that lie, Mrs. Kenyon."

Agnes realized what a pale, untried morality was hers, in her sheltered life. To remonstrate with this burdened sister semed impertinence.

"But if the people who are trying to help this strike should find that the strikers were-did-that sometimes they said what wasn't quite straight," she faltered, "I am afraid they might lose sympathy."

"And how many times, tell me, Mrs. Kenyon, has that old man lied to his workers, or made his superintendent lie to them, or made Annie Curry lie to them? Ah, if the people beänt brought up on lies by the ones that pretend to be standing for a model to them, do you think they wouldn't be ashamed to lie? But it's give a lie and tak' a lie, till the truth's overlaid so deep, there's no man can come at it even with a pickaxe."

"I know, it is our fault," said Agnes, sadly.

"But don't go to fash yourself about this lie, now, Mrs. Kenyon. It has not a thing to do with the strike. The Lord turned the torrent. These women with their overweaning recklessness made Annie Curry suspicious of trade union talk; and you'll be knowing as how that Mr. Watson boasts him that he always had a free shop. And he put up the notices,-and we all cam' out. The women are doing bravely. They'll stick to it better than the men, now they have come to it."

"You think, then, that a lie is justifiable, sometimes?" questioned Agnes. She was troubled.

"I don't know that. But this I know, that the Lord will be waiting to the Judgment Day to say to me, 'Jeanie,'

will He say, 'Jeanie, I thank you verra kindly for that lie.'"

Agnes gasped.

Her friend's eyes blazed.

"If that woman had cam' to you," she cried, "and asked of you in my place the question, and all those poor things with but you to look to, and only half way to knowing how to get out from their slavery, would you have said yes, and let them turn you out? Could you?"

"No," said Agnes, slowly. "No,-Ioh, I know I should have told the lie. But it's wrong. We don't know the ways of God, Jeanie; they are not our ways. He could bring success, you know, even if we could not see how it was to come."

"But if it's a mistake I've made, oh, Mrs. Kenyon! The Lord could have

showed me another way, if it had been His will so to do. And if it was all to be done over again, I'd be saying the same words. There's no helping it." "I know-I understand," Agnes whispered soothingly.

"I couldn't tell Jimmie, Mrs. Kenyon. And the nights I lie awake with thinking on it, till my thoughts go a-ring-around dizzy. And it's sickened I am to the sight of food. I had to come to speak with you, to share it. But don't be troubled for the strikethis strike there is nothing the lie would have to do with that."

"I hope not," Agnes said. But she thought of her father, with his passion for accuracy, for moral purity, his instinctive distrust of the workingman, and her heart sank.

heroine of Robert Hichens' latest roImance, "The Slave." The mysterious influence exercised over her by an emerald of fabulous value is described with a variety of incident and a brilliancy of style which leave it to each reader to determine whether the book is a sensational novel or a psychological study. The sympathetic delineation of life among the young acrobats of the London stage forms a striking contrast to the rest of the story, and is perhaps its most notable feature. Herbert S. Stone & Co.

The volume by Mr. Macpherson, originally announced as "Herbert Spencer's Life and Works," has been changed to "Spencer and Spencerism." This was at Mr. Spencer's wish, as he was apprehensive that the book would be regarded as a biography. The book, however, has Mr. Spencer's sanction.

According to the London Publishers' Circular, nothing has recently been more remarkable than the public neglect of war-books. The production has far outrun the demand. At the beginning of the war extravagant calculations were made. This volume of reprinted letters was said to be worth so many thousands sterling, and others so many thousands more, but in most cases the profits are not to be reckoned even in hundreds sterling. Scores of bright young correspondents, who have counted on a revenue from this source, are doomed to disappointment, as publishers are receiving with coldness their propositions.

The anxiety felt by grown-up sons and daughters for the seemly walk and conversation of their parents is entertainingly set forth in Katharine Tynan Hinkson's "Oh, What a Plague is Love," which A. C. McClurg & Co. publish. The story is saved from being pure farce by unexpected touches of

sympathy in the character drawing, and the elderly gentleman who is the cause of solicitude in his matrimonial quests proves himself after all to be not only more courtly and winning, but more deeply kind and simple-hearted than his guardian children. There are several pretty love stories in the book, and it is full of brightness and fun.

The three young Hungarian noblemen who are the heroes of Maurus Jokai's "The Baron's Sons," are men of strikingly unlike temperaments, and their experiences at the time of the revolution of 1848 are followed with interest. But it is the mother of these sons, the dauntless woman who dares to brave her husband's dying wishes, and who bends all her noble energy toward making her boys the diametrical opposites of what their "stony-hearted" father planned, who is the most absorbingly interesting person in the book. The story is crowded with incident and adventure, is vigorous in style, and gives an exciting account of life at St. Petersburg and Vienna. L. C. Page &

Co.

An intensely exciting novel, based upon a Mexican uprising of fifty years ago, is "A Dream of a Throne," by Charles Fleming Embree, which Little, Brown & Co. publish. The leader of the rising is the last representative of a royal house, and a young American soldier in the employ of the Mexican government is the man who hunts him down. Excellent foils as these two men are for each other, quite as striking a pair are the two girls, Pepa and Clarita, who give unlike allegiance to the two men. It is the equally ardent loyalty or treachery of one of these heroines which harrowingly complicates an already dramatic plot. The descriptions of a manner of life wholly foreign to us, the realness of the minor characters, a vigorous picturesqueness,