ed sobbing.

"THE MARTYRDOM OF MAN"

With a shrill whistle of recognition, Jack Cody ran down the hill to
meet Split toiling up.

The air is like ethereal champagne in Virginia City, and on a late
summer's evening, after the sun's honeyed freshness has been strained
through miles of it, it has a quality that makes playing outdoors
intoxicating.

Split, though, had not been playing. There was business on hand and she
had been downtown to buy eggs for the picnic, with the usual result. She
had never yet succeeded in bringing home an unbroken dozen, nor did she
ever hope to; but she was really out of temper at the extraordinary
dampness of the paper bag, to which her two hands adhered stickily. She
walked slowly upward, holding the eggs far in front of her like a votive
offering to the culinary gods, unconscious of the betraying yellow
streaks that beaded her blue gingham apron.

"Where you been, Split?" asked Cody, by way of an easy opening.

"Down to the grocery. Mrs. Pemberton's not laying decently these days."

"Mrs. Pemberton!"

"Sissy's gray hen, you know. Sissy called her that 'cause she's so
stuck-up and thinks she's better than any other hen in the yard.
Besides, she's got only one chicken, and bosses him for all the world
like Crosby."

Cody nodded. "What time you going to start in the morning? Six?"

"Uh-huh." Split dared not lift her eyes from the sticky trail that
exuded from her.

"Sure?" the boy demanded.

"Sure--if only father don't keep us so long to-night that we can't get
ready. We've got to be martyred to-night," she added gloomily.

Cody looked his resentment and sympathy. Delicacy and the fear of
betraying some social disability on his own part of which he was
unaware--some neglect of training which might be considered essential in
well-regulated families--forbade his inquiring precisely what the
process was. To him "martyring" meant some queer rite whose main and
malicious purpose it was to keep Split indoors of an evening when the
high mountain twilight was going to be long, long; and when the moon
that followed it would be so brilliant that one might read by its
light--if he weren't too wise, and too fond of hide-and-seek--out in the
silver-flooded streets made vocal by childish cries.

"But it can't last the whole evening?" he asked appealingly, as she
prepared to mount the steps, always accompanied by the silent yellow
witness of her passing.

She shook her head hopele