yet to him they were difficult, because they were so new and sad. He had always hoped to go through life in the happiest way there is of it, with simply doing common work, and heeding daily business, and letting other people think the higher class of thought for him. To live as Nature, cultivated quite enough for her own content, enjoys the round of months and years, the changes of the earth and sky, and gentle slope of time subsiding to softer shadows and milder tones. And, most of all, to see his children, dutiful, good, and loving, able and ready to take his place-when he should be carried from farm to church-to work the land he loved so well, and to walk in his ways, and praise him. Meaning all this, Stephen Anerley, | thoughts were not very deep or subtle; however, carried it out in a style at variance with such reckless vigor. Instead of marching boldly in at his own door, and throwing himself upon a bench, and waiting to be waited upon, he left the narrow gravel-walk (which led from the horse gate to the front door) and craftily fetched a compass through the pleasure beds and little shrubs, upon the sward, | and in the dusk, so that none might see or hear him. Then, priding himself upon his stealth, as a man with whom it is rare may do, yet knowing all the time that he was more than half ashamed of it, he began to peep in at his own windows, as if he were planning how to rob his own house. This thought struck him, but instead of smiling, he sighed very sadly; for his object was to learn whether house and home had been robbed of that which he loved so fondly. There was no Mary in the kitchen, seeing to his supper; the fire was bright, and the pot was there, but only shadows round it. No Mary in the little parlor; only Willie half asleep, with a stupid book upon his lap, and a wretched candle guttering. Then, as a last hope, he peered into the dairy, where she often went at fall of night, to see things safe, and sang to keep the ghosts away. She would not be singing now of course, because he was so cross with her; but if she were there, it would be better than the merriest song for him. But no, the place was dark and cold; tub and pan, and wooden skimmer, and the pails hung up to drain, all were left to themselves, and the depth of want of life was over them. "She hathn't been there for an hour," thought he; "a reek o' milk, and not my lassie." Very few human beings have such fragrance of good-will as milk. The farmer knew that he had gone too far in speaking coarsely of the cow, whose children first forego their food for the benefit of ours, and then become veal to please us. "My little maid is gone," said the lord of many cows, and who had robbed some thousand of their dear calves. "I trow I must make up my mind to see my little maid no more." Without compunction for any mortal cow (though one was bellowing sadly in the distance, that had lost her calf that day), and without even dreaming of a grievance there, Master Anerley sat down to think upon a little bench hard by. His But now he thought, like Job in his sorrow, "All these things are against me." The air was laden with the scents of autumn, rich and ripe and soothing— the sweet fulfillment of the year. The mellow odor of stacked wheat, the stronger perfume of clover, the brisk smell of apples newly gathered, the distant hint of onions roped, and the luscious waft of honey, spread and hung upon the evening breeze. "What is the good of all this," he muttered, "when my little lassie is gone away, as if she had no father?" "Father, I am not gone away. father, I never will go away, if you will love me as you did.” Oh, Here Mary stopped; for the short breath of a sob was threatening to catch her words; and her nature was too like her father's to let him triumph over her. The sense of wrong was in her heart, as firm and deep as in his own, and her love of justice quite as strong; only they differed as to what it was. Therefore Mary would not sob until she was invited. stood in the arch of trimmed yew-tree, almost within reach of his arms; and though it was dark, he knew her face as if the sun was on it. She "Dearie, sit down here," he said; "there used to be room for you and me, without two chairs, when you was my child." "Father, I am still your child," she answered, softly, sitting by him. "Were you looking for me just now? Say it was me you were looking for," "There is such a lot of rogues to look for; they skulk about so, and they fire the stacks-" "Now, father, you never could tell a fib," she answered, sidling closer up, and preparing for his repentance. "I say that I was looking for a rogue. If the cap fits-" here he smiled a little, as much as to say, "I had you there;" and then, without meaning it, from simple force of habit, he did a thing equal to utter surrender. He stroked his chin, as he always used to do when going to kiss Mary, that the bristles might lie down for her. 66 "The cap doesn't fit; nothing fits but you; you-you-you, my own dear father," she cried, as she kissed him again and again, and put her arms round to protect him. And nobody fits you, but your own Mary. I knew you were sorry. You needn't say it. You are too stubborn, and I will let you off. Now don't say a word, father, I can do without it. I don't want to humble you, but only to make you good; and you are the very best of all people, when you please. And you never must be cross again with your darling Mary. Promise me immediately; or you shall have no supper." "Well," said the farmer, "I used to think that I was gifted with the gift of argument. Not like a woman, perhaps; but still pretty well for a man, as can't spare time for speechifying, and hath to earn bread for self and young 'uns." "Father, it is that arguing spirit that has done you so much harm. You must take things as Heaven sends them; and not go arguing about them. For instance, Heaven has sent you me." "So a' might," Master Anerley replied; "but without a voice from the belly of a fish, I wunna' believe that He sent Bob Lyth.” YES MR. KEESLER'S HORSE-CAR. YES, Mr. Keesler told me the story, virtually in confession. It is a queer story, and I was somewhat at loss as to the counsel I was to give him. So I take the gentle reader into my confidence and his. I may as well say, as I begin, that it was not in Boston, or in Brooklyn, or in New York, that this happened. The place was a sea-board town, where most of the people lived in a pretty suburb, but came into the old compact city for their work and for their amusements. VOL. LX.-No. 357.-28 66 CHAPTER I. THE PAINT-SHOP. "It all began with the paint-shop," he said. I knew that "the dumb man's borders still increase," so I asked no question what the paint-shop was, and by listening I | learned. "The paint-shop was in the garden of the little house Bertha and I had hired just after Elaine was born. When the agent gave me the keys, he said, 'There is a paint-shop in the garden, but you can make that useful for something." So, indeed, it proved. Max Keesler and Bertha Keesler did make the paint-shop good for something, as you shall see, if you dare keep on with the story. But he never thought of it at the beginning. Max had married Bertha, prudently or imprudently, as you may think-prudently I think-just because he loved her and she loved him. They were not quite penniless; they were not at all penniless. He had two or three thousand dollars in the savings-bank, and she had rather more in bonds. Max had a good berth, the day he was married, in a piano-forte factory. He earned his twenty-five dollars a week, with a good chance to earn more. I do not think they were imprudent at all. But while they were on their wedding journey a panic began. Max always remembered afterward that he read of the first gust of misfortune in a Tribune which he bought in the train as they came from Niagara. That was the first gust, but by no means the last. The last? I should think not. Gusts, blasts, hurricanes, and typhoons came. Half the business establishments of the country went to the bottom of the oceans they were cruising on, and among the rest poor Max's own piano-forte factory. Nay, it seemed to Max that every other piano factory he ever heard of had gone under, or was likely to. So that when the little Elaine was born, and they wanted to leave the boardinghouse, which they hated, Max was out of work, and they were as economical as they could be. Still they determined that they would hire rooms somewhere, and keep house. Bertha knew she could manage better than that odious Mrs. Odonto, who polished their teeth so with her horrid steaks. And it ended in their hiring -dog-cheap, because times were so badthis tumble-down old house on the corner of Madison Avenue and Sprigg Court, which, as you know, had a paint-shop in the garden. "The truth is," said the agent, "that the Cosmopolitan Railway Company, when they began, hired the barn and fitted it up for a paint-shop. They would leave their cars there to dry. But that was long ago. And no one has wanted to hire these premises till now. You don't happen to know a painter you could underlet the shop to?" No. Max knew no such painter. But he figured to himself better times, when they would fit up the paint-shop as a sort of summer music-room. And it was pleasant to know that they had something to let, if only any one wanted to hire. All the same, as he said to me when he began his confession, all his guilt, if it were guilt, all the crime, where there was crime, was "along of the paint-shop," as the reader, if he be patient, shall see. CHAPTER II. THE WOMAN BEGAN IT. “DID you ever notice," said Bertha, at tea one night, "that the rails still run into the paint-shop, just as when the railway people painted their cars there?" "Why, of course I have," said Max, surprised. "They took up the frog in the avenue, but the old rails were not worth taking." "I suppose so," said Bertha, meekly. "I have been thinking," she said "I have been wondering whether-don't you think we might—just while business is so dull, you know-have a car of our own ?" "Have a car of our own!" screamed Max, dropping knife and fork this time. "What do we want of a car?" "We don't want it," said Bertha, "of course, unless other people want it." But then she went on to explain that, no matter how hard were the times, she observed that the street cars were always full. People had to stand in them at night coming out from the theatre, although that did not seem right or fair. Bertha had measured the paint-shop, and had found that there was room enough in it not only for a car, but for two horses. The old loft of its early days, when it served for a stable, was left as it was made, big enough for a ton or two of hay. It had occurred to Bertha that, as Max had nothing else to do, he might buy two horses and a street car, and earn a penny or two for Elaine's milk and oatmeal by running an opposition to the Cosmopolitan Company. Max loved Bertha, and he greatly respected her judgment. But he was human, and therefore he pooh-poohed her plan as absurd-really because it was hers. All the same, after supper he went out and looked at the paint-shop. And the next morning he climbed into the loft and measured it. Poor Max, he had little enough else to do. He sawed and split all the wood. He made the fire. He would fain have cooked the dinner and set the table, but Bertha would not let him. He had nothing else to do. Not a piano-forte hammer was there to cover between the Penobscot and the Pacific, and the panic seemed more frightened and more frightful than ever. So Max did not waste any valuable time, though he did spend an hour in the old hay-loft. And at dinner it was he who took up the subject. "Who did you suppose would drive the horse-car, Bertha ?" "Why, I had thought you would. knew you were on their list for a driver's place at the Cosmopolitan office. And I thought, if you had your own car, you could be your own driver.” "And who was to be conductor ?" Then Bertha shut the window, for fear the little birds should hear. And she said that it had made so much fun at Christmas, when she dressed up in Floyd's Ulster, and that even Max's father had not known her; that she had been thinking that if they only made evening trips, when it was dark, if Max always drove, she should not be afraid to be conductor herself. Oh, how Max screamed! He laughed, and he laughed, as if he had never laughed before. Then he stopped for a minute for breath, and then he laughed again. At first Bertha laughed, and then she was frightened, and then she was provoked. "Why should I not be conductor? If you laugh any more, I shall offer myself to the company to-morrow, and I will wear a crimson satin frock, and a hat with an ostrich feather. Then we will see which car is the fullest. Can not I hand a gentleman in quite as well as this assiduous squinting man who hands me in? Can't I make change as fast as that man who gave you a fifteen-cent bill for a quarter? I will not be laughed at, though I am a woman." So Max stopped laughing for a minute. But he had laughed so much that they discussed no more details that day. Any allusion to fares, or platforms, or the rail, was enough to make his face redden, and to compel him to crowd his handkerchief into his mouth. And Bertha would not encourage him by laughing when he did. CHAPTER III. A LODGMENT MADE. found from what factories the Cosmopolitan was supplied. When a man thus plans out a course of life, though he thinks he does it only for fun, it becomes all the more easy to step into it. If he has learned the part, he is much more likely to play it than he would be if he had it still to learn. And as times grew harder and harder, when at last Max had to make a second hole in his bank deposit, and a pretty large one too, tired with enforced idleness, as he had never been by cheerful work, Max took one of those steps which can not be retraced. He wrote, what he used to call afterward, "the fatal letter" on which all this story hangs. But this was not till he had had a careful and loving talk with Bertha. He loved her more than ever, and he valued her more than ever, after this year and a half of married life. And Bertha could have said the like of Max. There was nothing she would not do for him, and she knew that there was nothing he would not do for her. ALL the same, a lodgment had been made. The idea had been suggested to Max, and the little seed Bertha had planted did not die. Poor fellow! his name was on the lists of all the railway companies, and so were the names of five thousand other fellows out of work. His name was also on the postmaster's list of applicants for the next vacancy among Max told her at last that he felt discourclerks or carriers. The postmaster was aged. Everybody said, "Go West;" but amazingly civil; asked Max to write the what could he do at the West? He did name himself, so that there need be no not know how to plough, and she did not mistake. So Max observed that his name know how to make cheese. No. He said came at the bottom of the seventh long he had laughed at her plan of the street column of K's, there being so many men car at first, but he believed there was whose name began with K who needed "money in it." They would have to employment. He calculated roughly, spend most of their little capital in the from the size of the book, that about sev- outfit. A span of horses and a car could en thousand men had applied before him. not be had for nothing. But once bought, Then he went to the Mayor to see if he they were property. He did not think could not be a policeman, or a messenger they had better try to run all day. That at the City Hall. He had first-rate intro- would tire Bertha, and the horses could ductions. The Mayor's clerk was very not stand it. But if she were serious, he civil, but he said that they had about would try. He would write to Newcaseight thousand people waiting there. So tle, to a firm of builders whom the CosMax's chances of serving the public seem-mopolitan had sometimes employed. He ed but poor. And thus it was that he haunted the paint-shop more and more. At first he had no thought, of course, of anything 30 absurd as Bertha's plan; still, all the same, it would do no harm to think it over, and the thinking part he did, and he did it carefully and well. He went through all the experiences of driver and of conductor in his imagination. He made it his duty to ride on the front platform always as he went to town or returned, that he might catch the trick of the brakes, and be sure of the grades. Nay, he learned the price of cars, and would look out for a span of horses and proper harness. If she would have her dress ready, they could at least try, when the car arrived. If she did not like it, he would make some appeal to the builders to take the car off his hands. But, in short, he said, if she did not really, in her heart, favour the plan, he would never speak of it nor think of it again. money, and, for that matter, to serve man- | hundred passengers by screaming, "Next car-next car!" as he had driven up through the city into the more sequestered avenue. kind too, where they could work together. True, the custom had been to carry on this business by large companies. But she saw no reason why a man and his wife should not carry it on as well as forty thousand share-holders. If it took her away from the baby, it would be different. But if they only went out evenings, after the little girl had gone to sleep, why, she always slept soundly till her father and mother came to bed, and Bertha would feel quite brave about leaving her. So, as I said, the lodgment was made. After this serious talk Max wrote the fatal letter to the car-builders. It was in these words; "351 MADISON AVENUE, April 1, 1875. 'DEAR SIR,-Can you furnish one more car, same pattern and style as the last furnished for the Cosmopolitan Company? The sooner the better. You will be expected to deliver on the Delaware Bay Line of steamers for this port, and forward invoice to this address. "Respectfully yours, "MAX KEESLER." To which came an answer that fortunately they had on hand such a car as he described, and that as soon as the last coat of paint and lettering could be put on, it should be shipped. Max wrote by return mail to order the words "Madison Avenue Line" painted on each side, to direct that the color should be the same as that of the Madison Avenue Line, and he inclosed a banker's draft for the amount. Never had the Newcastle builders been better pleased with the promptness of the pay. And everything happened, as Max told me afterward, to favor his plans. The Richard Penn steamer chose to arrive just before seven o'clock in the afternoon. Max was waiting at the pier with his span of horses. The car could be seen prominent in the deck cargo. The clerks and agents were only too glad to be rid of her at once. Quarter of an hour did not pass before some sturdy Irishmen had run her upon the branch rails which went down the pier. The horses behaved better than he dared expect. When he brought his new treasure in triumph into the paintshop, and found Bertha, eager with excitement, waiting for him there, he told her that he had rejected, he believed, a It was too late to go back, had they doubted. But they did not doubt. CHAPTER IV. AN EXPERIMENT. BERTHA heard with delight, listened eagerly, and sympathized heartily. When Max had told his tale, he went round to his handsome span of horses to take off their collars and headstalls. "Stop a minute, Max," said Bertha, who held his lantern; "stop a minuteif you are not too tired. We shall do nothing else to night. Suppose we just try one trip-just for fun.” are. But you are not ready." "I? I will be ready as soon as you See;" and she vanished into the harness-room. Max hardly believed her; but he did unfasten his horses—a little clumsily-led them round to the other end of the car, and hooked on the heavy cross-bar; ran open the sliding-door of the shop, and looked out upon the stars; went to the back platform and loosened the brake there; and then, as he stepped down, he met a spruce, wide-awake young fellow, who said, "Hurry up, driver; time's up; can't wait all night here." "Bertha! my child!" cried Max; "your own mother would not know you." "As to that, we'll see," said the young man. "All aboard!" and she struck the bell above her head with the most knowing air. The trouble was, as Max said afterward, to run the wheels into the street rails when no one was passing. But he had, with a good deal of care, wedged in some bits of iron, which made an inclined plane on the outside of the outer rail, and as the car was always light when he started, the horses and he together soon caught the knack. A minute, and they were free of the road, bowling along at the regulation pace of seven miles an hour. For their trip down and back they were quite free from official criticism. The office was at the upper end of Madison Avenue-a mile or more above them. |