XX. PILGRIMS AND PATRIOTS 234
XXI. AN INTERLUDE 249
XXII. MOSTLY ABOUT MONEY 261
XXIII. IN WHICH A MOUSE HELPS A LION 271
XXIV. GRANBY INTRUDES AGAIN 282
XXV. AN HOUR OF EMOTION 292
XXVI. "ONLY AN OLD JOKE" 296
XXVII. A DOMESTIC DISCORD 306
XXVIII. UNDER A CRAYON PORTRAIT 314
XXIX. A LETTER FROM THE DEAD 327
XXX. A PHILOSOPHER RUDELY INTERRUPTED 333
XXXI. HARVEY SAYLER, SWINEHERD 345
XXXII. A GLANCE BEHIND THE MASK OF GRANDEUR 365
XXXIII. A "SPASM OF VIRTUE" 380
XXXIV. "LET US HELP EACH OTHER" 387

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THE PLUM TREE

I

HOW IT ALL BEGAN

"We can hold out six months longer,--at least six months." My mother's
tone made the six months stretch encouragingly into six long years.

I see her now, vividly as if it were only yesterday. We were at our
scant breakfast, I as blue as was ever even twenty-five, she brave and
confident. And hers was no mere pretense to reassure me, no cheerless
optimism of ignorance, but the through-and-through courage and strength
of those who flinch for no bogey that life or death can conjure. Her
tone lifted me; I glanced at her, and what shone from her eyes set me on
my feet, face to the foe. The table-cloth was darned in many places, but
so skilfully that you could have looked closely without detecting it.
Not a lump of sugar, not a slice of bread, went to waste in that house;
yet even I had to think twice to realize that we were poor, desperately
poor. She did not hide our poverty; she beautified it, she dignified it
into Spartan simplicity. I know it is not the glamour over the past that
makes me believe there are no women now like those of the race to which
she belonged. The world, to-day, yields comfort too easily to the
capable; hardship is the only mould for such character, and in those
days, in this middle-western country, even the capable were not
strangers to hardship.

"When I was young," she went on, "and things looked black, as they have
a habit of looking to the young and