stream sent over the house from the street fell upon his upturned
face. It beat back the smoke. Strength and hope returned. He took
another grip on the rafter just as he would have let go.

"Oh, that I might be reached yet and saved from this awful death!" he
prayed. "Help, O God, help!"

An answering cry came over the adjoining roof. He had been heard, and
the firemen, who did not dream that any one was in the burning
building, had him in a minute. He had been asleep in the store when
the fire aroused him and drove him, blinded and bewildered, to the
attic, where he was trapped.

Safe in the street, the old man fell upon his knees.

"I prayed for water, and it came; I prayed for freedom, and was saved.
The God of my fathers be praised!" he said, and bowed his head in
thanksgiving.

A DREAM OF THE WOODS

Something came over Police Headquarters in the middle of the summer
night. It was like the sighing of the north wind in the branches of
the tall firs and in the reeds along lonely river-banks where the
otter dips from the brink for its prey. The doorman, who yawned in the
hall, and to whom reed-grown river banks have been strangers so long
that he has forgotten they ever were, shivered and thought of
pneumonia.

The Sergeant behind the desk shouted for some one to close the door;
it was getting as cold as January. The little messenger boy on the
lowest step of the oaken stairs nodded and dreamed in his sleep of
Uncas and Chingachgook and the great woods. The cunning old beaver was
there in his hut, and he heard the crack of Deerslayer's rifle.

He knew all the time he was dreaming, sitting on the steps of Police
Headquarters, and yet it was all as real to him as if he were there,
with the Mingoes creeping up to him in ambush all about and reaching
for his scalp.

While he slept, a light step had passed, and the moccasin of the
woods left its trail in his dream. In with the gust through the
Mulberry Street door had come a strange pair, an old woman and a
bright-eyed child, led by a policeman, and had passed up to Matron
Travers's quarters on the top floor.

Strangely different, they were yet alike, both children of the woods.
The woman was a squaw typical in looks and bearing, with the straight,
black hair, dark skin, and stolid look of her race. She climbed the
steps wearily, holding the child by the hand. The little one skipped
eagerly, two steps at a time. There was the faintest tinge of brown in