sent a penny. He wrote once;
Danny showed me the letter, worn with many rapt readings,--a silly,
flowing hand which looks as if it had been done up in curl papers
over night--and explained that he'd been sick, and had to buy
clothes, but next month, _sure_! And Dan'l was a sport and true
blue and a little old pal, and he'd never forget him.

Dan'l's "bein' so puny" saved him the whole brunt of his father's
rage, but this sneering scorn has been harder to bear,--and the
amazing part of it is that the boy doesn't really care about the
money,--lean little Islander though he is. That is merely the symbol
of his friend's good faith. "Ef only he'd jest write 'n tell me
things," he sighed, "th' money c'd wait. He needs it worse'n I do."

Meanwhile, with eternal-springing hope in his little flat chest he
trots down to the graveyard corner every day, and every day Uncle
Robert says, with a cheery chirp in italics, "Wall, not
_to-day_, Dan'l!"

The child is getting thinner and paler, now the sharp weather is
coming. His father wrote a laborious letter by the lamp, one evening,
and a week later a good gruff old doctor came over from the mainland
and chaffed Danny about his pup and told him to play in the sun and
drink plenty of milk and not to fret about school this year. I
waylaid him privately and asked if there was anything I could get or
do--a tonic, a change. He patted my shoulder and said, "Land
t'goodness, no! That youngun's been a-dying ever since I borned him,
fourteen years ago. He warn't meant for old bones."

Oh, Michael Daragh, I can't stand it--poor little Daniel in a Lion's
Den of broken faith, and scorn, and creeping death! What can I
_do_?

J. V.

CHAPTER X

But it was well into October before the Irishman got the letter which he
had been waiting for--the one which sent the color mounting gladly in his
lean cheeks. It was not long, but it fairly sang with jubilance and the
feel of it in his hand was warm.

_On a Gold and Scarlet Afternoon._

Michael Daragh, I'm at work! Steadily, sanely, surely, at work again!

Long ago, before I began to run after strange gods, I got a story
back from the _New England Monthly_--that Dean of Magazines in
her sober brown frock with no jewels or adornments at all,--with a
quite wonderful personal no