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Then I was specially favored in the minister. He was fat and bald and married, a very good sort of man, only a little daft on the bird subject, at any rate, not at all dangerous as a rival. In all that region, indeed, I had no rivals but the birds. Oh, the irony of "buts"!

Best of all, there was Hester, whom I saw daily, and loved the better for every day. So long as she stayed, Arcadia was still Arcadia, even in the face of a thousand drawbacks to bliss, and so long as she stayed, I knew I should stay too.

The second week of my vacation my trial took a new form. Hester conceived the brilliant scheme of enlightening my ignorance. Poor Hester! I was a hopeless pupil, though I honestly tried to like it all for her sake. Given a pair of very nearsighted eyes, eyes, moreover, trained for years to see nothing but Hester when she was within sight, and the result is not all that can be desired in bird study.

She was very patient with me at first, and labored with me industriously, gave me great books to read, and carefully instructed me in the rudiments of bird-lore. At last, however, my stupidity exhausted even her patience and she exiled me from her presence as not worthy of her teaching. Those were awful days. I wandered in fields and forest, but everywhere saw only Hester, heard only Hester. My vacation was almost at an end and I had not been restored to favor.

Then came the day when my canoe tipped over and as a result I prolonged my vacation by an attack of rheumatic fever. Through it all, Hester nursed me and watched over me. seemed to have forgotten the birds and to remember only that I was sick and alone, that we were very old friends and that I needed her. Somehow, during those blessed September days. when she used to sit by me and read or talk to me, she learned at last to identify me too,-a great, awkward, wingless biped, with very little to recommend him except a heart full of love for her.

When at last I went back to the city, Arcadia went along

with me-and Hester.

MARGARET REBECCA PIPER.

CONTRIBUTORS' CLUB

THE SHADOW OF THE END

The winding road, the air like wine,
And smiling fields on either hand-
A joyous lot was yours and mine

To fare together through the land.
The robin's song, the sun that thrills,
The breeze that makes the grasses bend,—

And far away among the hills

The shadow of the end.

Enough it was from day to day

To fare together side by side,

And summer magic charmed away

The thought of where our roads divide.

Now dearer grows the breezy dawn,

The twilight with its drowsy calls,-
And forward, where our eyes are drawn,
The shadow darkling falls.

To-day, a stillness on the wheat,

The sweetest, saddest golden weather,
And here, before our lagging feet,

The last fair slope we climb together.
Already we have passed the brow;

Then lay your hand in mine, dear friend.
It falls about us even now,-

The shadow of the end.

ETHEL WALLACE HAWKINS.

It happened on a day in brown October. In the early morning the sky was clear and blue, and a white frost silvered the russet fields. The elf who lived in The Story of an Elf the chestnut tree unrolled himself from the brown leaf where he had lain curled up all night and stood upon a twig, watching the

frost stars twinkle in the sun, and shivering a little in the crisp air. He was a very small elf. The sharpest eyes could not have spied him balanced on his twig, for he was not so large as a good sized leaf and everything about him from his pointed cap to his long-toed shoes showed the color of a ripe chestnut. But though he was small and sombre in his dress, this was a valiant elf. He was a summer sprite, thriving best in his own season, and when his suit was new and of a lusty green as at midsummer, not brown and frayed on the edges, he was merry as an elf could be.

But on this fair October morning, he was for once low spirited, and no wonder. He was alone. His comrades were all gone southward with the birds as elves and summer fairies do when the cold weather draws near. It is a mistake to suppose they sleep all winter in cracks and crevices or under dead leaves. With the birds they fly away to the South, nestled warm under downy feathers, and so return when winter is over. Yet here was the elf in the chestnut tree left behind; surely not for want of a conveyance nor friends to bear him company. Why then? Was it from caprice he stayed? Perhaps elfin curiosity and foolhardiness kept him behind to watch the terrible winter creeping nearer in the footsteps of mellow summer and bright transient autumn. But an elf is seldom found brave enough to face the terror of frost and bitter cold unless forced to do so by mishap. No, it was something more than pluck which kept the dweller in the chestnut tree flitting about from day to day in his little shabby coat, hungry and cold and lonely. The keen wind nipped his fingers and toes and the tips of his small pointed ears. On the chilliest days he was obliged to skip and hop about constantly and to run races (with himself) up and down the long branches of his tree to keep himself from freezing. And when it rained he was most forlorn. There was simply nothing to do then but to wrap oneself in a leaf and sit huddled in a miserable, dripping, shivering little bunch as close to the tree as possible. Elves, being delicately constituted, suffer extremely from heat and cold. In case of excessive heat they are always in danger of shriveling up like scorched paper and often at the touch of frost they shiver themselves to bits.

The elf in the chestnut tree knew well enough the risk he ran, yet there was something that made him linger by the tree, something in his minute heart that kept him warm. And this

was his affection for a child who used to come and play in the chestnut grove. There is nothing strange in the love of a little airy creature of the woods for a small human thing, who plays by himself day after day under the trees. A child and an elf may be the warmest of friends. And all the elves loved this child, for no one had taught him to believe that the grove was other than it seemed to him, a wonderful rapturous place, filled with pleasures and delightful mysteries.

On the day when he had first come wandering through the fields and into the shade of the great trees, this elf had been the first to spy him and to give the alarm to all the others. For a while there had been great excitement and from behind every leaf and tuft of grass little elfish eyes peered anxiously at the intruder. But soon they saw that this was a child after their own hearts. They watched him with delight, and when, after a time, he began to feel at home in their grove and to amuse himself with what he found there, they drew nearer and nearer him to see the queer and quaint little games he played.

Then one and all they joined in the sport and began to play with the child as only elves can. They showed him the treasures that lie hidden under fern-leaf and moss. They pointed out to him the place where ripe partridge berries hide under their glossy leaves, where the white waxen Indian pipes spring out of the black earth. They showed him the fairy ring and the pale star flowers that elves and fairies weave into garlands for their festivals. With them he found the royal red mushroom throne of the fairy queen. He saw the white lily bells that ring the call for elves to come and frolic under the midsummer moon. And all these things he knew for what they were because the elves taught him, and he knew his small playmates, too, though he never saw them.

The denizen of the chestnut tree by right of first discovery, assumed the guardianship of the child. The others served him in turn, but this elf was with him constantly. And he grew so fond of the child that when the end of summer came and the time for departure, he saw his comrades fly away one by one while he remained behind with the boy who still came daily to play in the grove. It did not occur to him that when the weather grew colder and more stormy the child would not come. He simply took joy in the pleasure of the present after the manner of elves.

This morning after he had made a light breakfast off a chestnut and two barberries, he flew up to the tip top twig of his tree and looked across the meadows for the child. Up there the wind was keen and so brisk that it would have swept him away had he not held fast to the twig. From his place he saw a dim line of cloud above the horizon which rose slowly and grew darker as it came. "Another of those dreadful storms," thought the elf with a shudder, but he still watched and waited for the child. In the afternoon the wind blew so that he was forced to leave the tree top for the shelter of the lower branches. Here he nestled in a crotch where he felt a little warmer and was just falling into a doze when the sound of children's voices under the tree roused him. They were the boy and a girl somewhat older.

"Elves live here," the boy was saying.

"You little goose," the girl answered. "That's all silly talk about really live fairies and things living in woods."

"They live here," the child insisted. But the girl laughed cruelly.

"Think of a great boy like you believing in those baby things!" she said. "Come on, let's play."

"Here's my little secret house," said the boy, showing an arched hollow at the foot of a great tree. "And let's play—” "Oh, your games aren't much fun," broke in his companion. "We'll keep house here. I'll be the mother at home and you be the father who chops wood all day."

The elf flitted down from the chestnut bough and hovered about the boy like a tiny, wan ghost. His heart was cold with dread.

"Go on, now," said the girl, "you run off somewhere and get a lot of sticks, and I'll stay here and clean the house." She knelt down by the tree, and peering into the hollow saw there the little horde of treasures which the boy had stowed away. Quickly she pulled them out and looked them over curiously. "How did these get here?" she demanded.

"I found them; they're mine," said the boy. "They aren't much use to play with," she commented coldly, "only stones and acorns and old dried-up moss. You go along and get the wood and I'll show you some fun."

The elf followed the child as he trudged away to do her bidding, and came back with him when he brought the sticks. He

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