nd the epitome
of humanity which filled the room held its breath--the old with a wonder
upon their life-scarred faces, the young half frightened to feel the
stir of the great wings soaring so near them.

Then it was all over. 'Niram and Ev'leen Ann were married, and the rest
of us were bustling about to serve the hot biscuit and coffee and
chicken salad, and to dish up the ice-cream. Afterward there were no
citified refinements of cramming rice down the necks of the departing
pair or tying placards to the carriage in which they went away. Some of
the men went out to the barn and hitched up for 'Niram, and we all went
down to the gate to see them drive off. They might have been going for
one of their Sunday afternoon "buggy-rides" except for the wet eyes of
the foolish women and girls who stood waving their hands in answer to
the flutter of Ev'leen Ann's handkerchief as the carriage went down the
hill.

We had nothing to say to one another after they left, and began soberly
to disperse to our respective vehicles. But as I was getting into our
car a new thought suddenly struck me.

"Why," I cried, "I never thought of it before! However in the world did
old Mrs. Purdon know about Ev'leen Ann--that night?"

Horace was pulling at the door, which was badly adjusted and shut hard.
He closed it with a vicious slam "_I_ told her," he said crossly.

HOW "FLINT AND FIRE" STARTED AND GREW

BY

DOROTHY CANFIELD

I feel very dubious about the wisdom or usefulness of publishing the
following statement of how one of my stories came into existence. This
is not on account of the obvious danger of seeming to have illusions
about the value of my work, as though I imagined one of my stories was
inherently worth in itself a careful public analysis of its growth; the
chance, remote as it might be, of usefulness to students, would outweigh
this personal consideration. What is more important is the danger that
some student may take the explanation as a recipe or rule for the
construction of other stories, and I totally disbelieve in such rules or
recipes.

As a rule, when a story is finished, and certainly always by the time it
is published, I have no recollection of the various phases of its
development. In the case of "Flint and Fire", an old friend chanced to
ask me, shortly after the tale was completed, to write out for his
English classes, the stages of the construction of a short story. I set
them down, hastily, formle