The House stood back from the street in the shadow of the trees, tall, dark, and gloomy. The sunbeams dancing through the leaves tried in vain to penetrate The Garden of Sleep the heavy tapestries that curtained the windows. A brooding silence filled the halls like a cold mist. It would be almost impossible to imagine that a child lived there; that a child's feet ever ran across the thick carpets, or that a child's hands ever tugged aside the heavy curtains to catch a glimpse of the sunlight.

Yet there on the landing of the broad stairway, with her small face pressed against the window, stood the child. She was chilled by the cold grandeur within and longed to play with the sunbeams, to chase them as they flitted about under the trees whenever the wind stirred the leaves. Out beyond was the orchard with the high stone wall at the farther end. Beyond that lay the Unknwn Land.

To-day the infinite possibilities of that unknown land drew her outward, over the lawn, through the garden gate, throwing happy kisses to the sunbeams as she sped along the path through the orchard. Then came the difficulty. The stone wall, as cold and ugly as the house she had just left, confronted her. She shivered and her footsteps lagged. Who would open the gate for her? It was too heavy for her tiny hands. She pushed it with all her small might. Ah! Someone had left it ajar and a faint red light came through the crack. She pushed it again. It creaked a little, but yielded enough for the small white figure to slip through.

Then what did she see? A field of little green people with broad red caps on their heads, swaying to and fro, waving their little heads to her, and beckoning her to come in.

Eagerly she stole in. The tiny folk swayed faster and faster till the whole field was whirling round and round in a mad dance of delight, and they nodded and beckoned to her until she crept up to one of them and kissed the laughing face.

In a heaven of delight she moved slowly through them, touching one with a lingering, loving touch, kissing another, then laughing aloud from pure joy. They were playmates and she was not lonely now.

She walked on through their midst until she came to a tiny, rippling brook. There she sat down and pressed her face close again to the little red-capped ones. A soft, sweet odor rose up around her. Her head nodded, nodded, and the little people nodded their red caps with her, and then a tall, shadowy, misty figure floated up from the brook in front of her holding in its wraith-like hands millions of shadowy green figures with red caps too, and a sweet voice sang :

"I have brought poppies for thee, dear heart,
Sweet poppies steeped in sleep."

The child was about to lift her head to see more clearly the beautiful vision, but the little figures so close to her held her down, and small, silvery voices, faint at first as if far away, then clearer and more distinct, until she could hear her own name fall now and again from the lips of the chatterers. Then a hush came, and with one accord the little people bowed low, sweeping the velvety turf with their caps. A clear voice rose upon the air :—

"We greet the Queen of Poppy Land,
Queen of our Kingdom of Sleep,

Where the castles are built of Forgetfulness
And Fairies the portals keep."

Then the tiny folk gathered closer and closer about her, and the child felt herself borne up swiftly and lightly through the air, while all around her was the sweetest, heaviest odor, like incense of the gods.

Faster and faster they carried her until she saw far in the distance a white cloud which took the shape of a castle with high towers, tall pillars, and broad steps as she came nearer. Yet all the time the cloud-like castle kept shifting and changingnow showing glimpses of red light-now deep purple-changing from buff to pink, and back to buff again deepening into orange.

Just at sunset they missed the child from the house. They searched the garden and the orchard, but found no trace of her until someone discovered the open garden gate. "She has fallen asleep among the poppies," they said, and hurrying through, they found her on the bank of a singing stream, her head buried in the poppies. Gently they lifted her and carried her home, but not as gently as the poppies had borne her.

"Let her sleep. When she wakes she will feel better," they said.

But when she awoke she wept, for they had taken her away from her kingdom and the flower in her hand had faded. BESSIE PENDLETON BENSON.

"ABOVE THE HEIGHTS THERE IS REST"

"Above the heights there is rest."

So say they, to my soul,

Who have toiled and striven as thou,

And attained the far-off goal.

What then though the storm-clouds lower

To hide the radiant peaks,

And the way be steep and narrow,

And faint the spirit that seeks?

A broad verandah faced a tropic garden which burned with color under the noonday sun. The intermittent shrilling calls of coolies at work in distant

The Perversion of Elizabeth rice fields intensified the stillness of the hour of sleep. A long drawn wail suddenly rang across the verandah; and in a corner by the wall a heap of curly hair and tumbled clothing stirred, and resolved itself into a little maid, who rocked back and forth in an ecstacy of grief. The wailing awoke two smaller babies who watched their sister for a minute, then broke into sympathetic moans. An ayah appeared on the verandah, and scolded vigorously.

"Little bad spirits, cease this disturbance or the eyer (missionary) will spank. The hour of sleep is but half finished!" she exclaimed in Tamil patois. The sobbing continued till the ayah caught up the youngest and dandled her on the left hip.

"What disturbed thy sleep, Drasathee (little queen)? Hadst thou bad dreams?" The child stopped crying and looked at her, round eyed.

"Elizabeth cried," she exclaimed, "and we cried too."

Another child had stopped, and was peacefully sucking her thumb, but the original disturber sobbed on. The ayah turned on her fiercely.

"Bad one, to frighten thy sisters! Is it stomach ache?" Elizabeth shook her head and held out her hand. On the palm lay a dead chicken. "I have killed my coongu, my little chicken," she wailed in a torrent of tears. "I squeezed it in my sleep, and it is dead!"

In an instant the fond old ayah's wrath had changed to pity. She caught her up in sympathetic arms.

"Do not cry, little one," she crooned. "Thy old nurse Archie will get another beautiful coongu, all white like this, but larger and better.

"I want no other coongu," moaned Elizabeth, "This was my coongu, and it is-dead!" Then with sudden self repres

sion she stopped crying and wriggled out of the ayah's arms. "I will make funeral for it," she announced, "just like the missionary amah's (lady missionary) that died. Get a coffin, Archie."

With characteristic Eastern impetuosity, the ayah was all interest. She brought Elizabeth a pasteboard box, and the dead one lay in state on the verandah steps until the cool of the day.

In that short hour of comfort which comes just before the sun sets to leave the world in instant darkness, the children. formed a melancholy procession. In the garden center a huge antigonon vine flung high into the air long sprays of brilliant carmine-pink blossoms, each shaped like a pentagonal lily of the valley, and crowded so thickly upon the racemes that they gave the effect of light and shade in massed pure color. Under its shade the devoted ayah had dug a grave, and the children cast handfuls of dust over the departed coongu to Elizabeth's monotone, "Dust unto dust, ashes unto ashes," broken by gurgles of grief.

Three days had passed. Elizabeth was at family prayers. It was Easter morning, and the missionary read the beautiful story of the Resurrection. Elizabeth rocked in her little chair by the open door, revelling in the brilliance of the garden beyond, with a child's love of intense color. Suddenly her father's voice broke in on her consciousness,

"And very early in the morning, the first day of the week-" Elizabeth listened spell bound, and the voice swept on with tense dramatic feeling :

"He is risen, He is not here."

The joyful conviction grew in her believing little soul. Her father knew! There was one torturing thought. Perhaps the chicken could not get out of the box. She could bear the

suspense no longer, and there was a flash of black legs across the verandah and into the garden. The grave was still undisturbed.

Her face radiant with joy and hope, Elizabeth picked away the dirt which covered her pet. She would help resurrect coongu. She come to the little box and with trembling fingers drew off the cover. Here was not life, but death made hideous through decay.