ad happened no one ever
knew, least of all Cap and the Butcher, who had gone from Foundation
House that night in settled despair.

To add to Butcher's mystification, the Doctor, in announcing his
reprieve, had added:

"I've decided to make a change, Stevens. I'm going to put Tibbetts in to
room with you. I place him in your charge. I'm going to try a little
responsibility on you."

FOOTNOTES:

[A] Reprinted by special permission from "The Prodigious Hickey."
Copyright, 1908, by Little, Brown and Company.

[B] The "shell" is the lowest class.

[Illustration]

II.--A Twilight Adventure[C]

_By Melville Davisson Post_

_A good many boys are fortunate in their "aunts"
and "uncles." Such a one was Martin with his
"Uncle Abner." The experiences they had together
down in the mountains of Virginia were very
remarkable, and often most desperate, as in the
case of the following story, but one of the many
set down by Martin, grown to be a man, in the book
from which this was taken. But, it's enough to
make you boys wish you, too, lived with an "Uncle
Abner" in a similar early Virginia settlement,
with the wild forests so near at hand._--THE
EDITOR.

IT was a strange scene that we approached. Before a crossroad leading
into a grove of beech trees, a man sat on his horse with a rifle across
his saddle. He did not speak until we were before him in the road, and
then his words were sinister.

"Ride on!" he said.

But my Uncle Abner did not ride on. He pulled up his big chestnut and
looked calmly at the man.

"You speak like one having authority," he said.

The man answered with an oath.

"Ride on, or you'll get into trouble!"

Abner's eyes traveled over the speaker with a deliberate scrutiny; then
he answered: "Are the roads of Virginia held by arms?"

"This one is," replied the man.

"I think not," replied my Uncle Abner, and, touching his horse with his
heel, he turned into the crossroad.

The man seized his weapon, and I heard the hammer click under his thumb.
Abner must have heard it, too, but he did not turn his broad back. He
only called to me in his usual matter-of-fact voice:

"Go on, Martin; I will overtake you."

The man brought his gun up to his middle, but he did not shoot. He was
like all those who undertake to command obedience without having first
determined prec