andoned lot filled with stumps
joined the area by the brook. She made her swift way among these stumps,
Anthony following, his hope rising as he noted the directness of his
wife's aim. At the biggest stump she came to a standstill, carefully swung
out-ward like a door a great slab of bark, and disclosed a hollow. The
sunlight streamed in upon a little heap of blue, and a tangled brown mass
of hair. Anthony Robeson, Junior, lay fast asleep in his cunningly devised
retreat.

Without a word his father stood looking down at the boy's flushed cheeks.
Then he turned to Juliet, standing beside him, smiling through the tears
which had not come until the anxiety was past. His own eyes were wet.

"That was a bad scare," he said softly. "Thank God it's over."

Then he stooped and gently lifted the fire chief and carried him home
without waking him. Twenty children flocked joyfully from all about to
see, and hushed their shouts of congratulation at Juliet's smiling
warning.

Anthony went alone down the garden to the place where the hook-and-ladder
cart had stood. It was still there. He stood and looked at it, his eyes
very tender but his lips firm. "The little chap didn't give in," he said
to himself. "It's going to be hard to make him, but for the sake of the
Robeson will I think we'll have to take up the job where we left it. I'd
mightily like to flunk the whole business now, but I should be a pretty
weak sort of a beggar if I did."

When little Tony had wakened from his nap, and had been washed and brushed
and fed, and made fresh in a clean frock, his mother brought him to his
father.

"Is this Tony Robeson?" Anthony asked soberly. Tony considered for a
moment, then shook his head.

"I's ve fire chief," he said, with polite stubbornness.

"Have your men put away the hook-and-ladder cart?"

"No, favver."

"Are they going to do it?"

"I didn't tell vem to."

"Why not?"

"Didn't want to."

"Listen, son," said Anthony. "I could make the fire chief put away the
cart. I'm stronger than he is, you know. I could make him walk out to
where it lies in the garden, and I could make his hands pick it up and
carry it into the house, and then it would be done.--Don't you think I
could?"

Tony considered. "Es, I fink 'ou could," he admitted. Evidently the
question was one he could reflect upon from the standpoint of the
outsider.

"But I don't want to do that. I want Tony Robeson to put the cart away
because his father as