f the little one's mother pacing back and
forth in front of the shack, her hair hanging in strings, her
clothing drenched with rain and clinging to her body, her eyes
upturned, and her face expressing the most poignant agony. When they
left she had thus been pacing to and fro for seven hours and was, no
doubt, doing so yet. The mother-heart of the woman could not
withstand such an appeal, and soon she was busy in the difficult task
of trying to get the little arms into the sleeves of dress and apron.
Meanwhile, the two bedraggled men were on their knees striving with
that acme of awkwardness of which only men are capable, to ensconce
the little feet in stockings and shoes. The dressing of that child
was worthy the brush of Raphael or the smile of angels. At three
o'clock in the morning the schoolmaster stepped from the buggy and
placed the sleeping baby in the mother's arms, and only the heavenly
Father knows the language she spoke as she crooned over her little
one. As the schoolmaster wended his way homeward, cold, hungry, and
worn he was buoyant in spirit to the point of ecstasy. But he was
chastened, for he had stood upon the Mount of Transfiguration and
knew as never before that the mission of the schoolmaster is to find
and restore the lost child.

CHAPTER XXIX

LONGEVITY

I'm quite in the notion of playing a practical joke on Atropos, and,
perhaps, on Methuselah, while I'm about it. I'm not partial to
Atropos at the best. She's such a reckless, uppish, heedless sort of
tyrant. She rushes into huts, palaces, and even into the grand
stand, and lays about her with her scissors, snipping off threads
with the utmost abandon. She wields her shears without any sort of
apology or by your leave. Not even a check-book can stay her
ravages. Her devastation knows neither ruth nor gentleness. I don't
like her, and have no compunction about playing a joke at her
expense. I don't imagine it will daunt her, in the least, but I can
have my fun, at any rate.

It is now just seven o'clock in the evening, and I shall not retire
before ten o'clock at the earliest. So here are three good hours for
me to dispose of; and I am the sole arbiter in the matter of
disposing of them. My neighbor John has a cow, and he is applying
the efficiency test to her. He charges her with every pound of corn,
bran, fodder, and hay that she eats, and doctor's bills, too, I
suppose, if there are any. Then he credits her with a