ent of a man whom one has never seen? If Lily
could console herself, it seemed probable that Ehrhardt too had "got
along."

AT THE SIGN OF THE SAVAGE.

As they bowled along in the deliberate German express train through the
Black Forest, Colonel Kenton said he had only two things against the
region: it was not black, and it was not a forest. He had all his life
heard of the Black Forest, and he hoped he knew what it was. The
inhabitants burned charcoal, high up the mountains, and carved toys in
the winter when shut in by the heavy snows; they had Easter eggs all the
year round, with overshot mill-wheels in the valleys, and cherry-trees
all about, always full of blossoms or ripe fruit, just as you liked to
think. They were very poor people, but very devout, and lived in little
villages on a friendly intimacy with their cattle. The young women of
these hamlets had each a long braid of yellow hair down her back, blue
eyes, and a white bodice with a cat's-cradle lacing behind; the men had
bell-crowned hats and spindle-legs: they buttoned the breath out of
their bodies with round pewter buttons on tight, short crimson
waistcoats.

"Now, here," said the colonel, breathing on the window of the car and
rubbing a little space clear of the frost, "I see nothing of the sort.
Either I have been imposed upon by what I have heard of the Black
Forest, or this is not the Black Forest. I'm inclined to believe that
there is no Black Forest, and never was. There isn't," he added, looking
again, so as not to speak hastily, "a charcoal-burner, or an Easter egg,
or a cherry blossom, or a yellow braid, or a red waistcoat, to enliven
the whole desolate landscape. What are we to think of it, Bessie?"

Mrs. Kenton, who sat opposite, huddled in speechless comfort under her
wraps and rugs, and was just trying to decide in her own mind whether it
was more delicious to let her feet, now that they were thoroughly warm,
rest upon the carpet-covered cylinder of hot water, or hover just a
hair's breadth above it without touching it, answered a little
impatiently that she did not know. In ordinary circumstances she would
not have been so short with the colonel's nonsense. She thought that was
the way all men talked when they got well acquainted with you; and, as
coming from a sex incapable of seriousness, she could have excused it if
it had not interrupted her in her solution of so nice a problem.
Colonel Kenton, however, did not mind. He at