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it, but there is little cause of wonder. Not until one government takes a stronger and broader attitude, can. our citizens, as individuals, do business with foreign countries of un

settled governments, with becoming straight forwardness and generosity, and at the same time with security. The mistake of Mexico may have farreaching results.

FELICIDAD

The Romantic Adventures of an Enthusiastic Young Pessimist

By ROWLAND THOMAS

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I had no liking for firing that rifle broadside to that ticklish canoe. But once more that was all I could do. So I aimed hurriedly at the back of the King's tongue and fired.

He stopped short in his rush, and the canoe tilted away from him, while I sat motionless and watched and thought. One can think much and see a great deal while a canoe is tipping over.

I

The King quivered convulsively, and his great tail rose, glittering with water-drops, and swept toward the canoe swift as a sword-blade. I wondered if the tilting craft would turn over before the tail reached it. I thought about the tired man. thought, for some reason or other, of Pepita. I even wondered if Mateo Besa was present somewhere, at a sufficient distance, and if he quite appreciated the honor of looking on. The only thing I did not think of was rolling overboard. I just sat with the rifle in my hands and watched.

In the fraction of a second the water was roaring in my ears and I was kicking desperately to come to the surface. But something heavy dragged me down and down.

"It will take you to many places where you'll wish you hadn't gone,"

something said to me. "It will take—” At that I let the rifle go and rose gasping. When I had shaken the water from my eyes, I saw some pieces of the canoe floating near. I swam to a large one and floated with it.

The King was going down the river very quietly, with his white belly gleaming in the sun and his four misshapen feet pointing stiffly up to the sky. That stroke of the tail which had splintered the overturned canoe had been his death flurry.

Then I saw Pedro, clinging precariously to another bit of the canoe. "Ho! Ho!" he shouted. "The King is dead. It is a very strong boom-boom. Ho! Ho!" He looked at me. "I'm sorry he smashed that good canoe," said he. "And where is the boom-boom?"

"The boom-boom," said I, "made itself go away. I hope it is never coming back. Shout for a canoe, There may be other caymans in this river."

We drifted down opposite Felicidad, and a man put out with a banca and took us ashore. A crowd was waiting at the landing, ready with vociferous admiration. All the Pillars of Happiness were trying to grasp my hands and pat me on the back at once. "If you could only have seen yourself!" Mateo Besa cried regretfully.

But I was sick of the spectacular.

I turned to Don Feliciano, who was standing quietly behind the crowd. "There is no fool quite like a young one," I told him.

His eyes twinkled on me, but there was something in them not amusement. I could not make it out. "Will you come home?" he asked.

"Home?" said I.

"That," said he, "is what we think you should call it now."

And as we turned, a hush fell on the excitement of the crowd. We passed out through a little lane they opened, somewhat, I have fancied since, as some new-made Roman citizen may have passed out between the groups of watchers in the Forum, at his sponsor's side.

Let him laugh who will; some such thing as that may after all have been implied in the little, unpremeditated ceremony. I know only two things about it all. I had entirely forgotten my intention of shaking the dust of Felicidad from my feet. And I had never felt so shrinkingly modest in all my life before.

I only wanted to get somewhere out of sight.

S

CHAPTER XIV

PRAYERS

O strong a hold had that creditable emotion, I mean modesty, taken on me, that after dinner that night-several of the Pillars of Happiness were present with their women-folk, making the occasion festal-after dinner, when the company began to speak of the heroic way in which I had destroyed the King, I felt almost uncomfortable.

The realistic manner in which Besa recreated the scene at which he

had been present distantly; the speechless admiration in bright eyes of numerous goddaughters; a certain quiet interest with which Don Feliciano sat and looked at me; all these confused me. As soon as occasion offered I went down-stairs

with my cigar, and out on the riverbank I took to walking up and down in the fragrant night. river rippled coolly beside me.

The

"They make so much fuss about it," 1 complained. "It was a piece of the sheerest bravado. I was for all the world a very small boy showing off for the benefit of a lot of other children. As for shooting the King, it was nothing at all, of course. It's no great exploit to blow a defenseless cayman to pieces with explosive bullets. plosive bullets. I rather doubt the sportsmanship of taking it out of him just because a girl was-girlish. He had no chance at all."

"Didn't he!" said I. Didn't he? That's easy to say now, but any one who'd been in the canoe when that tail of his "

"After all," said I to myself, "this is a question of fact and not of silly modesty. I said it took no courage, and yet I'd wager that disinterested people, like Besa or Pepita of the Saints-"

At that moment, as if I had evoked her, a girl came up through the dimness with light steps. She caught my hand. "Oh!" she cried. "I am so glad you are safe. I was so afraid."

I warmed to the appreciation. "You see," said I, over my shoulder, "this girl was afraid without being in a canoe at all. So," I said to the girl, "you were afraid for me?"

"Yes," she said. "I was afraid. And so I prayed that you might not be hurt."

"For how long?" I demanded quickly.

"Ten minutes," said she.

"That is really a long time," said I, with a remembrance of having heard the phrase before.

"Yes, it is a long time," she said. "One's knees tire themselves. And I prayed very fast, too. And now you are safe, and I am so glad. So very, very glad."

She stooped, a graceful shadow of a girl under the dim light of the

warm

stairs. Something soft and touched my hand, just as it had once, on a day I had not wholly forgotten. And once again, just as on that former occasion, a tingling thrill went through me.

"I can't be dreaming now," I muttered, looking at the sky and listening to the river. "I surely am awake, and this girl is strangely like Come," I said masterfully, and I drew the girl into the hollow of my arm till she was close to me. Then I puffed up my cigar.

It was not a particularly romantic thing to do just then. But, like most unromantic things, it served a purpose. It created a glowing circle of light in the darkness. And that revealed a face.

It was all aglow with something more than light. The soft eyes were mistily bright, and the soft bow of a mouth was all aquiver. But as I looked down, the eyes were hidden under their long lashes. The girl struggled a little in the hollow of my arm.

"Let me go now," she whispered. "Why," I said, "I believe I know

you.

Yet how can I be sure? I thought there was only one girl in the world-in the wide world," said I, holding her fast, "who would be afraid for me, afraid enough to pray for my safety. That is a dear little

friend of mine who came to see me once when I was hurt. I have never seen her since. Her name was Pepita of the Saints, and if she had been just a little prettier, she'd have looked like you. Do you know that girl?"

"But I," cried the girl, "am Pepita myself, Senor!"

"Really?" said I. "No," said I, "I'm sure you can't be Pepita of the Saints. She doesn't call me 'Senor.'"

"Don D-jon," the girl lisped shyly. "That's it," I cried. “You must be Pepita of the Saints, after all. You look just like her, and you talk like her. Are you?"

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"Then the puzzle is solved," I said. "There's just one Pepita, after all. And she's not an elf-girl, as I feared, only visible for once, but a flesh-and-blood person who lives in the same world with me. To think," said I, "that you are really that same Pepita of the Saints who came to see me when I was hurt, and was so sorry for my poor ankle that sheWhy do you tremble? Are you afraid?"

"I am never afraid of anything," said the girl, with a flash of defiance.

"I am very glad, indeed," said I, "to discover that you are not just an elf-girl. Now I shall hope to see you sometimes when I'm awake. You will be down here in the mornings, won't you, like a bit of the morning yourself? morning yourself? And the first thing I see to start my days with will be- What are you afraid of? I hope you don't think I would hurt

you?"

"I know you wouldn't," she said simply. "I don't think I'm afraid. I'm just so happy that I can't keep still."

"Happy as that just because I'm safe?" said I, laughing at her. But I had the grace to be ashamed of myself. Here was this girl whose very existence I had many times forgotten-yes, I'm afraid I had-and my mere safety made her so happy that she trembled. I felt properly ashamed of myself at that.

But I carried it off. "That's not very much to be so happy about," I said. "I'm safe more often than not."

"But the cayman might have killed you," said said the girl, and shivered again to think of it.

"Now I really believe you are my friend," said I, sobering. "Though if you are as unkind as you have been sometimes, and never let me see you, and leave me to worry about your health-"

"But I think of you always," she said earnestly. Suddenly she yield

ed to the pressure of my arm and nestled close against me, unconscious as a little child. "You've no idea how much I think of you, Don D-jon. All the long days while I am working-"

"And what do you think then?" I asked.

"Oh," she said happily, "I think of how you saved my life, and how brave you are "

"You really think I'm brave, then?" I asked.

"Of course," she said. "Brave and big and strong. And then,"-her voice broke tenderly, and a strangely motherly cadence came in it-"I think so often how sorry I am that you have to be all alone, because you are so poor that you can't even have me to take care of you."

"Poor?" said I, a little haughtily perhaps. "Why do you think I am so poor?"

"Because you told me so," she answered. Suddenly she nestled closer still and put her face up very earnestly to mine.

I

"Don D-jon," she whispered pleadingly, "what does it matter how poor you are? Let me come. have clothes enough. And I won't eat anything at all, and you won't be alone any more, and I can take care of you when-when-" she could not seem to say whatever it was she had in mind.

"When what?" I prompted.

"When-when your poor head-" "My poor head!" I echoed. "What's wrong with my poor head?"

"Sometimes," said Pepita, very nervously and hesitantly, "it-it forgets things. Sometimes you don't even seem to know who I am! And sometimes when you're awake, you wonder if you're dreaming, and you talk of dreams as if they were real. That isn't good for you. And you say things that no one can understand. And-"

"And so," said I, vastly amused, "you think I'm crazy, Pepita of the Saints?"

"No!" she said, horrified. "No! Never say that again! Only sometimes when your head is-is tired, if you'd only let me take care of it—” her confusion was pitiable.

"Pepita," said I, moved I suppose by the cadence of her voice, "you are quite the dearest, most unselfish But Mother-Mind that ever was. what you ask would never do. I'm -I'm so poor, you see, and all that."

She drew away a little, disappointed, and I had to comfort her. "But you're going to be a dear little sister of mine all the same, and-"

"Why," she cried delightedly, "that's just what I want. I want to belong to you, Don D-jon, and to take care of you, and-" she snuggled close to me once again, and she put her hands up and drew her face close up to mine. "Don D-jon," she whispered, "I wish-Why, you are trembling, too!"

Before the sweet, primal ignorance of her, the best that had stirred "Run in me slunk away abashed. into the house now, pretty one," I bade her. "There may be other caymans about that I haven't killed yet."

"I'm not afraid of caymans," said Pepita, "I'm not afraid of anything. Don D-jon, if you knew how I wished-"

"I'm afraid for you, then," said I, and pushed her from me almost roughly. She went away through the darkness, a dejected little figure, and left me pacing up and down the river-bank and smoking furiously.

"A town that brings one a friend like that," said I enthusiastically and very briskly, "well deserves to be called Felicidad. She was so happy. that she was trembling. And she prayed for me."

"But if there's efficacy in prayer," said I, "that removes completely any element of danger from my small act of Derring-Do. With Heaven and that old rifle both on my side-"

And so I laughed.

But before I went to sleep I think

I came nearer to praying myself than I ever had before. And what I asked for inarticulately was that I might have a clean heart.

If there be any who find that wish quite laughable and priggish, I have no great eagerness for that person's further company.

(To be continued)

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WAR'S AFTERMATH

AS SEEN BY A GREAT SCOTTISH HISTORIAN

YOU may well imagine, my dear child, that during those long and terrible wars which were waged, when castles were defended and taken, prisoners made, many battles fought and numbers of men wounded and slain, the state of the country of Scotland was most miserable. There was no finding refuge or protection in the law, at a time when everything was determined by the strongest arm and the largest sword. There was no use in raising crops when the man who sowed them was not, in all probability, permitted to reap the grain. There was little religious devotion where so much violence prevailed; and the hearts of the people became

so much inclined to blood and fury, that all laws of humanity and charity were transgressed without scruple. People were found starved to death in the woods with their families, while the country was so depopulated and void of cultivation that the wild deer came out of the remote forests, and approached near to cities and the dwellings of men. Whole families were reduced to eat grass, and others, it is said, found a more horrible aliment in the flesh of their fellow creatures. One wretch used to set traps for human beings as if for wild beasts, and subsisted on their flesh. This cannibal was called Christian of the Cleek, from the cleek, or hook, which he used in his horrid traps."

(From "Tales of a Grandfather," by Sir Walter Scott)

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