e and vacillating. He wished they
could be raised to the level of the brutes till, like the tigress or
she-wolf, they could not only defend themselves, but their young.

He tried to breathe a sigh of relief that she had gone out of his life,
but he could not. It was not so easy to shake off the shadow of his
responsibility. He followed her in imagination on her downward path till
he saw her stretching out her hands in pitiful need to casual
acquaintances--alone and without hope; still petite, still dainty in
spite of all, still with flashes of wit, and then--

He shuddered. "O my God! Upon whom does the burden of guilt lie?"

* * * * *

On the night of his return he sat among his romping babes, debating
whether he should tell the story to his wife or not. As the little ones
grew weary the noise of the autumn wind--the lonely, woful, moaning
prairie wind--came to his ears, and he shuddered. His wife observed it.

"What is it, Joe? Did you get a chill?"

"Oh no. The wind sounds a little lonesome to-night, that's all." But he
took his little girl into his arms and held her close.

AN ALIEN IN THE PINES

I

A man and a woman were pacing up and down the wintry station platform,
waiting for a train. On every side the snow lay a stained and crumpled
blanket, with here and there a light or a chimney to show the village
sleeping beneath.

The sky was a purple-black hemisphere, out of which the stars glittered
almost white. The wind came out of the west, cold but amiable; the
cracked bell of a switch-engine gurgled querulously at intervals,
followed by the bumping of coupling freight-cars; roosters were crowing,
and sleepy train-men were assembling in sullen silence.

The couple walked with arms locked like lovers, but the tones of their
voices had the quality which comes after marriage. They were man and
wife.

The woman's clear voice arose. "Oh, Ed, isn't this delicious? What one
misses by not getting up early!"

"Sleep, for instance," laughed her husband.

"Don't drag me down. You know what I mean. Let's get up early every
morning while we're up here in the woods."

"Shouldn't wonder if we had to. There'll be a lot to do, and I want to
get back to Chicago by the 1st of February."

"This is an experience! Isn't it still? When is our train due?"

"Due now; I think that is our headlight up the track."

As he spoke an engine added its voice to the growing noise of the
s