er head.

"Good sakes alive! Mary Mason! I hardly knowed you. What you got on? I
thought you was one o' them scarecrows out o' the fall wheat. Mis'
Mason moved to Californy three days ago. Didn't she take you with her?"

"No, mawm."

"So it 'pears. Wal, she hadn't any call to, I s'pose. You aint none o'
hers."

By this time they were in the kitchen of the farmhouse, Mrs. Morgan
rubbing her hands above the stove, and Mary Mason also venturing near,
stretching out her thin arms to the heat, for the adopted jacket was
somewhat short in the sleeves.

"What's that mark on yer wrist?"

"Bruise--but it don't hurt now."

"Who done it?"

"Ma--Mis' Mason. I've lots worse'n that on me," said the small girl with
some vanity.

"There, now! I jest knew that Mis' Mason was a hard case, though my man
would never hear to it. What you going to do now?"

"I dunno." The accent implied that to be a matter of small moment.

"I don't s'pose we can turn you out to-night. There's room in the attic
for you to sleep, but don't you go near one o' my girls' beds with that
head o' yourn."

As a hostess, Mrs. Morgan was a slight improvement upon Mrs. Mason. She
never took stick or strap to the foundling, and if she occasionally gave
her a cuff on the ear it was never strong enough to knock the girl down.
But the Morgan children bullied Mary Mason, the Morgan father grumbled
at an extra mouth to feed, and when she had been about a month in the
house the mistress of it told her she must move on.

"There's an old dress of Ellie's you can have, an' a pair of Sue's
cast-off boots, and Tom's old cap."

"Where am I to go, mawm?"

"You jest go on from one farmhouse to another, till you find a place
where they'll keep you all winter. It's comin' on to Christmas, an'
people won't be hard on ye. Tell 'em you aint got no folks."

* * * * *

The forlorn little pilgrim took up her march down the snow-covered road.

THE MAKING OF MARY.

CHAPTER I.

MY wife is a theosophist. This fact may account for her numerous
eccentricities or be simply one of them. I incline to the latter
opinion, because she preferred the unbeaten to the beaten track, both in
walk and conversation, long before Modern Buddhism was ever heard of in
the small Western town of whose chief newspaper (circulation largest in
Michigan) I have the honor to be editor and proprietor.

How such a hot-house plant as Theosophy ever took