Contrast with this the demands we make upon our own gardens. Like the Japanese garden, they must never be barren, or at least never while we have to look at them; but, unlike the Japanese garden, their features must pursue one another with never-failing succession. Crocuses and snowdrops must come as soon as winter has gone, and the hosts of bulbs and spring flowering shrubs must follow on their heels until midsummer reigns; she in turn gives place to autumn's final burst of glory, and we resign ourselves again to the evergreenbackgrounded, red-berried, green, red,

and yellow twigged picturings of winter. Then we wonder a little, sometimes, why our gardens at times fail in repose, and forthwith, in all probability, we hasten to plan some new distraction to supplement the already over-active circus of our gardening.

And what is the conclusion? We too often practise merely a horticultural system with results enjoyed purely as horticultural achievements; the Japanese practise a pictorial art, enjoyed for its subtleties and for its insidious charmcharm which is discovered by contemplation in solitude.

OU are to try to imagine that the story is being told by Uncle Kaspar: grizzled, austere, old. He sits surrounded by the home circle and maybe a neighbor or two. What player-folk call business he introduces by means of his pipe; he fills it, he lights it, he puffs on it, he presses the tobacco down in the bowl. You can do a great deal with a pipe when you wish to emphasize the points of your story. There was that memorable scene in the old English comedy, Caste, for example.

For my part, I always think of the story as the story of the cowboy and the baby. I used to think of it so even during Uncle Kaspar's lifetime. The psychological interest, as the critics used to call it, always appealed to me more than the action, the drama. But it isn't my story, and I have decided to let Uncle Kaspar's title stand. When all the conditions were right I used to say: "Uncle Kaspar, won't you tell us the story about the cowboy and the baby?" And the excellent old man would bring his attention around to me slowly, and frown as if he were somewhat in doubt as to what I meant, and at length he would say: "Oh-you mean the story of Wilder's ride!" And then he would begin that fascinating business with his pipe, and a silence would fall in the room. You might hear Aunt Anna's knittingneedles clicking steadily, or she might still be putting the supper things away, or maybe looking after the lamp or the fire. But she wasn't a disturbing element. She simply played the part of chorus, and the story was a great deal better because of her being there.

I ought to say, finally, that by the time I had heard the story for the last time it had become a sort of play, in which different individuals, including myself, took minor parts. You will see what I mean a little later on. Well, then.

Trooper Wilder (here the story begins) made his first appearance at Fort Sill in the garb of a cowboy, and said he wanted to enlist for the troop. He was sent to the post-hospital steward, and then to the doctor, and then to the adjutant, and finally to the quartermaster's store (to get his equipment); and so he became a trooper.

The adjutant may have heard something about his antecedents, but certainly the enlisted men did not-at least, not until a long time afterward. He was merely a silent, determined-looking young fellow who had come mysteriously out of a far horizon which still bounded a strange existence in those days: semidesert wastes, and headstrong red wards of the government, and occasional herds of wild buffalo.

There was an immense cattle-ranch not far from Sill-the Hood Brothers'-and it was generally believed that Wilder had been working for the Hoods, and had gotten tired of cow-ponies and round-ups and branding-irons and such things. But this was perhaps mere speculation.

From the very first he was what the officers would have called a model recruit. He was alertly attentive. He wanted to get at the heart of the thing he had undertaken to do. When his carbine was issued to him and a sergeant took it apart and put it back for him, he watched with shrewd, penetrating eyes; and then he repeated the process himself-with more strength than dexterity at first, and then again and again, with increasing dexterity. He took possession of his bunk in the squad-room as if it were a kingdom. You would never have suspected for a moment that he might finally decide not to stay, after all. He noted how the other troopers arranged their things, and then he surpassed them all in precision and devotion to the task.

And his horse . . . when he had gotten his horse, a fine dark bay, it was as if he

had received his sceptre and crown. If it had been permitted he would have slept with his horse at nights, it might have seemed, and adorned it gayly: with ribbons braided into its mane, perhaps, and with shining ornaments. But of course all this was out of the question.

There was one thing the regulations did not forbid, however: Wilder speedily got on such intimate terms with his horse, in the matter of mutual comprehension and affection, that even the troop commander, a keen-eyed veteran, had never seen anything like it.

Nevertheless (let me recall Uncle Kaspar's exact words for the moment): "From the day he appeared on the reservation it was clear that he had been rightly named. For he was wilder than any other man in the troop."

(This was the first point to be emphasized in the story; and just here the narrator would pause and finish filling his pipe slowly and with exactness. And I would know that my first cue had been given me, and would repeat the word in a perfectly audible murmur-"wilder!" Calling attention to it, you see. And everybody would look at everybody else, smiling amiably. By this time the pipe would be filled, and Uncle Kaspar would clear his throat so formidably that I would shrink into the least possible space in my chair and look down at anything or nothing.)

The man's wildness was not, however, to be taken for viciousness, or anything of that sort. It was something like the wildness of a deer. He seemed to know nothing of any kind of community life. He moved among the other fellows with a kind of fierce shyness. He had learned to be sufficient unto himself. Perhaps he had herded cattle thousands of days and nights, with only the winds and the stars for companions. That might seem to account for a certain isolation in his nature. He wanted to be alone as much as possible. He would never come within the radius of that feeling of informal good fellowship which characterizes the typical group of soldiers.

You might have supposed that the other troopers about him were invisible, inaudible. Yet he was not moody. He was in love with his work. He would sit

apart for half an hour shining a buckle or doing something of the sort while the other fellows were exchanging those backhome reminiscences which hallow even the crudest frontier garrisons. He would steal off to the corral every chance he got, to be with his horse.

"There used to be a joke among the fellows" (I recall Uncle Kaspar's exact words again) "about Wilder taking a saddle to bed with him at night, so he could sleep well; though of course there wasn't any truth in that."

(Here I was expected to come to the surface again, so to speak. "Take a saddle to bed with him!" I would repeat derisively; and everybody would smile at such an absurd suggestion, while the narrator would thrust his thumb into the bowl of his pipe two or three times, pressing down the tobacco. After which there would be again that ominous clearing of his throat.)

"And then Brigit came back." (Having made this statement, putting into it a strong intimation of strange things to follow, the old soldier would stop short and begin an absent-minded search for a match, rummaging through this pocket and that. And here my line was always precisely the same, no matter how many times I had heard the story told: "Brigit? Who was Brigit, Uncle Kaspar? There would be no response until the match was found and the pipe lighted to the sound of short, sharp puffs.)

Brigit was a child of the army; a mere baby whose mother, Mrs. McGee, was the widow of a trooper. Trooper McGee had obtained permission to marry-it was common report that he had done this after the marriage had actually taken placeand had moved his bride into a little house just off the reservation. There he had played his part in bringing three little McGees into the world, in addition to performing all his duties as a soldier in an expert manner; and then it had developed that there was something wrong with his heart.

This malady of McGee's was made the subject of a brief battle between the postdoctor and the local climate, and then the doctor had to admit that he was defeated. The invalid was sent away to a general hospital somewhere, and Mrs. McGee had

packed up her simple belongings and had taken the children-they were all still babes in arms and had gone away with her husband, on the ground that she could manage somehow to be near him.

A less rarefied atmosphere had seemed to help at first; but after a time-quite a long time there was a turn for the worse; and . . . well, Mrs. McGee came back to Sill again. The poor little girlish creature was dressed in black; and when she drove up to the reservation, and across it, in the post carryall, she was clutching her three babies to her as if they were a sort of miniature Three Graces, and her hour of sorest need had come.

Wilder had come to the reservation after the McGees had gone away, and so he had no way of knowing how the troop felt toward Mrs. McGee and her children -particularly Brigit. If he had been friendlier with the fellows he would have heard their names mentioned every day; but we have seen that he seldom talked to any one.

But he could not help catching something of the rapturous excitement that prevailed when the family, without the head of it, returned. The dullest fellows in the lot showed smiling, eager faces. They greeted one another with the good news. Mrs. McGee had come back! Or -much oftener-"Have you seen little Brigit yet?" It seemed really a dramatic event that this poor little widow and her babies had come to be with them again.

Brigit was the oldest of the children. She was four when her mother brought her back to Sill. The troopers had always regarded her as a jewel above price. She had had the freedom of the reservation quite as much as if she had been a bird. Her attitude toward all the fellows had been that of a gracious princess toward faithful subjects. She loved them all; yet with a sort of seriousness and aloofness. It was not the custom to lay hands on her overmuch. She had a way of putting a certain distance between herself and any trooper who sought to pet her, yet without seeming conscious of what it was he wanted to do. She liked to walk by your side and talk to you, much as if she were some matchless little old woman. She had rather dark hair, "and blue eyes to it," to give you Uncle

Kaspar's words. She had small features. She was rather delicately built, though she possessed a great deal of energy.

Mrs. McGee's household effects came back to Sill a few days after her arrival, and certain members of the troop set her house to rights for her, under her direction, and then there was a period during which she was permitted to be by herself. Within a few weeks, however, small parties of two or three sauntered over from the barracks to the widow's cottage of an evening, and there were nervous efforts to ascertain the proper key in which to talk and behave in the house of a widow who had just lost her husband.

But it speedily developed that Mrs. McGee did not purpose to nurse her grief. She promptly resumed her old, crisply dominating manner; as if she were the wise sister to a lot of rather stupid boys. In brief, she was quite herself-and the troopers thanked their stars that she was back again.

She announced that she intended to remain in the cottage outside the reservation. She said she would be able to get along very well. She would do washing and mending for the troop. No, it would not be very easy, but the men were to remember to bring their things to her. And they did.

It seemed like old times. There was Brigit, appearing now and again out on the parade-ground, chasing something or other in the sparse, short grass or sitting down, singing to herself. There she was, approaching a trooper and talking to him seriously and wisely.

"The Irish you know how they are. (I am quoting Uncle Kaspar.) "When they're little, there's a sort of mystery about them-as if they were as old as the hills; and when they are old they sometimes behave as if they were born yesterday. You understand."

Unfortunately, little Brigit developed the bad habit of asking a certain question which covered the troopers with confusion. She asked it out of a fell silence, holding you with her eyes: "Do you know where my daddy is?" She went from one to another, stopping midway to ponder darkly. "Do you know where my daddy is?"

She wandered about alone, looking here