nd prodigal luncheon revealed
one lone, last peach that had escaped the epicurean jaws of the
followers of chance. Into the Kid's pocket it went, and that
indefatigable forager departed immediately with his prize. With
scarcely a glance at the scene on the sidewalk below, where the
officers were loading their prisoners into the patrol wagons, he
moved homeward with long, swift strides.

His heart was light as he went. So rode the knights back to Camelot
after perils and high deeds done for their ladies fair. The Kid's
lady had commanded him and he had obeyed. True, it was but a peach
that she had craved; but it had been no small deed to glean a peach
at midnight from that wintry city where yet the February snows lay
like iron. She had asked for a peach; she was his bride; in his
pocket the peach was warming in his hand that held it for fear that
it might fall out and be lost.

On the way the Kid turned in at an all-night drug store and said to
the spectacled clerk:

"Say, sport, I wish you'd size up this rib of mine and see if it's
broke. I was in a little scrap and bumped down a flight or two of
stairs."

The druggist made an examination. "It isn't broken," was his
diagnosis, "but you have a bruise there that looks like you'd fallen
off the Flatiron twice."

"That's all right," said the Kid. "Let's have your clothesbrush,
please."

The bride waited in the rosy glow of the pink lamp shade. The
miracles were not all passed away. By breathing a desire for some
slight thing--a flower, a pomegranate, a--oh, yes, a peach--she could
send forth her man into the night, into the world which could not
withstand him, and he would do her bidding.

And now he stood by her chair and laid the peach in her hand.

"Naughty boy!" she said, fondly. "Did I say a peach? I think I would
much rather have had an orange."

Blest be the bride.

VI

THE HARBINGER

Long before the springtide is felt in the dull bosom of the yokel
does the city man know that the grass-green goddess is upon her
throne. He sits at his breakfast eggs and toast, begirt by stone
walls, opens his morning paper and sees journalism leave vernalism
at the post.

For, whereas, spring's couriers were once the evidence of our finer
senses, now the Associated Press does the trick.

The warble of the first robin in Hackensack, the stirring of the
maple sap in Bennington, the budding of the pussy willows along Main
Street in Syracuse, the first chirp