and sticks of
striped candy, and a limber jack, and a gold ring, and a wax doll with
a silk dress on that could open and shut its eyes--"

"Huh!" said the captious Cozy. "You can't buy a wax doll for a dollar.
My littlest, littlest one cost three, and she didn't have a stitch to
her back!"

"Shut up!" said Rickey briefly. "Dolls were cheaper then." She looked at
the row of little negroes, goggle-eyed at the vision of such largess.
"What do you think little Mary did with _her_ gold dollar? She loved
dolls and candy, too, but she had heard about the poo-oo-r heathen.
There was a tear in her eye, but she took the dollar home, and next day
when she went to Sunday-school, she dropped it in the missionary-box.

"Little children, what do you reckon became of that dollar? It bought a
big satchelful of tracts for a missionary. He had been a poor man with
six children and a wife with a bone-felon on her right hand--not a child
old enough to wash dishes and all of them young enough to fall in the
fire--so he had to go and be a missionary. He was going to Alabam--to a
cannibal island, and he took the tracts and sailed away in a ship that
landed him on the shore. And when the heathen cannibals saw him they
were ve-e-ery glad, for there hadn't been any shipwrecked sailors for a
long time, and they were ve-e-ery hungry. So they tied up the missionary
and gathered a lot of wood to make a fire and cook him.

"But it had rained and rained and rained for so long that the wood was
all wet, and it wouldn't burn, and they all cried because they were so
hungry. And then they happened to find the satchelful of tracts, and the
tracts were ve-e-ery _dry_. They took them and stuck them under the wet
wood, and the tracts burned and the wood caught fire and they _cooked_
the missionary and ATE him.

"Now, little children, which do you think did the most good with her
dollar--little Susy or little Mary?"

The front row sniggered, and a sigh came from the colored ranks. "Dem
ar' can'bals," gasped a dusky infant breathlessly, "--dey done eat up
all dat candy en dem goober-peas, too?"

The inquiry was drowned in a shriek from several children in unison.
They scrambled to their feet, casting fearful glances over their
shoulders. The man who had been lying behind the bush had risen and was
coming toward them at a slouching amble, one foot dragging slightly. His
appearance, indeed, was enough to cause panic. With his savage face,
set now in a gri