The sun beat upon his head, the air was heavy with
fragrance, laden with moisture. Old Daniel wiped his forehead. He was
heated, but so happy that he was not aware of it. He saw wonderful new
lights over everything. He had wielded love, the one invincible weapon
of the whole earth, and had conquered his intangible and dreadful enemy.
When, for the sake of that little beloved life, his own life had become
as nothing, old Daniel found himself superior to it. He sat there in the
tumultuous heat of the May day, watching the child picking violets and
gathering strength with every breath of the young air of the year, and
he realized that the fear of his whole life was overcome for ever.
He realized that never again, though they might bring suffering, even
death, would he dread the summers with their torrid winds and their
burning lights, since, through love, he had become under-lord of all the
conditions of his life upon earth.

BIG SISTER SOLLY

IT did seem strange that Sally Patterson, who, according to her own
self-estimation, was the least adapted of any woman in the village,
should have been the one chosen by a theoretically selective providence
to deal with a psychological problem.

It was conceded that little Content Adams was a psychological problem.
She was the orphan child of very distant relatives of the rector.
When her parents died she had been cared for by a widowed aunt on her
mother's side, and this aunt had also borne the reputation of being a
creature apart. When the aunt died, in a small village in the indefinite
"Out West," the presiding clergyman had notified Edward Patterson of
little Content's lonely and helpless estate. The aunt had subsisted
upon an annuity which had died with her. The child had inherited nothing
except personal property. The aunt's house had been bequeathed to the
church over which the clergyman presided, and after her aunt's death he
took her to his own home until she could be sent to her relatives, and
he and his wife were exceedingly punctilious about every jot and tittle
of the aunt's personal belongings. They even purchased two extra trunks
for them, which they charged to the rector.

Little Content, traveling in the care of a lady who had known her aunt
and happened to be coming East, had six large trunks, besides a hat-box
and two suit-cases and a nailed-up wooden box containing odds and ends.
Content made quite a sensation when she arrived and her baggage was
piled