day, and gradually I began to wonder about that look in the blue eyes that sometimes held such an unutterable sadness in their depths.

One day I sat down on a bench in the Common and waited for Fritz Puffer, whom I heard in the distance. From the vantage ground of the Park Street church he saw me and came toward me. Trouble

pattered beside him. A diminutive bright pink parasol fastened to her collar shaded her little brown head, with its drooping ears fringed with hair like floss silk.

"Good morning, Mr. Puffer," I said.

"Good morning," responded Fritz, with a brightness which did not seem altogether assumed, while Trouble leaped up on the bench and laid her paw on my arm. "You ain't looking so lively as you did a bit back," he remarked, as he proceeded to adjust his papers. it the weather?"

"Is

"N-o, not altogether," I admitted, with a sigh I could not stifle.

The keen, blue eyes were fixed upon me inquiringly. "Ain't got sickness in the family?" I shook my head.

"I hope I ain't making free, but for more'n a year you've always had a kind word for Trouble of a mornin' when you passed, an' she and me both regards you as well, you may say-as friends, so to speak." Mr. Puffer adjusted his crutch under his arm in some embarrassment as he declared his sentiments, and Trouble snuggled her little damp nose into the curve of my arm as though to ratify her master's words.

"I'm very glad you do," I responded. "It's very nice to have people feel friendly, and Trouble is

the dearest dog I ever knew. How long have you had her, Mr. Puffer?"

Fritz looked up and down the mall before answering; certainly it seemed as if traffic and bustle had ceased for the moment.

"Nigh ten years," he replied at last. "It seems a long time, though. You see I got her when I lost this " he glanced down at the empty trousers leg pinned up halfway above the knee with two large safety pins.

"Ah! I see," I said quickly, regretting that I had reverted to his misfortune.

"Yes, she was given to make up for my leg, and that's how I look at it."

"Then why do you call her Trouble'? I should think you would call her Comfort."

"Well, you see, 'twas that time I began training her for to be a news dog, and it was such a sight of trouble, I just naturally named her 'Trouble' because that's what she was, wasn't you, girl?"

Trouble lifted her soft brown eyes as though the accusation was a compliment.

"You see, training a dog to sell papers is a big contract, when you do the job without ever givin' a lick from start to finish, and that's what I done." Mr. Puffer hobbled over, sat down beside me and, pushing his cap back, wiped his brow vigorously in memory perhaps of his labors.

"That was quite wonderful," I remarked appreciatively.

"You bet it was and no mistake, and she's the equal to-day of any dog in Paris and the superior of any in America, because she is the only dog in North America, South America and Canada included, that earns

a livin' selling papers, ain't you, Trouble?" Trouble's tail beat a tattoo on the slats in the bench in response to this panegyric.

"Does she make much money for you?"

"Does she?" quoth Fritz. "Does she? I call thirty a week a pretty fine sum for a fellow, let alone a dog." I gave him to understand that I also considered this a most munificent sum.

"But what's the use of it?" he asked suddenly. "After all, no matter what's said and done, I'm a pegleg." There was no note of bitterness in the voice, but the blue eyes were wistful beneath their steely brilliancy.

"You can buy a cartload of cork legs on Trouble's earnings," I suggested with tactless sympathy.

"Cork leg! Good Lord, I don't want no cork leg! Why I'd feel just like I was one of them things standing in Shuman's windows with clothes on if I was to go around with a sham leg. No, sir, one leg was took from me and I've got to stand-so to speak-on the other, with this here crutch to help out, and not go whining and snivelling along neither. That's the ticket I go on. Besides, my leg was took but this dog was give me to sort o' take its place, I guess, and I call it a bargain; not altogether fair bargain, mark you, but a bargain—and me and Trouble 'll stump it through to the end."

"Have you a family, Mr. Puffer?" "Who, me? Me with a family?" He whacked his crutch against the bench with a disdainful gesture, affected, I fancied, to cover some embarrassment.

"You don't think, honest now, that a man that's not all on deck,

so to speak, as to-as to—well, as to legs, to come down plain, haď ought to have a family, do you?" Mr. Puffer eyed me searchingly as he propounded this direct and rather personal question.

"Yes, I do," I replied, after a moment's consideration. "Any honest, straightforward man has a right to have a family, if he can take care of one."

He shook his head. "Maybe you're right, but I don't agree to it!" he said positively. "I can get on all right without my leg, but I couldn't stand to have-have-well -say, a wife"-here Mr. Puffer's tanned cheeks cheeks flushed ever SO slightly-"walking along side of me and thinking every time she passed a fine-looking, active fellow on two legs, what a pity it was I had only one. No, sir, ma'am, I should say women are all sorter queer, and some of 'em are extra queer. They'll coddle and nurse and pet anythin' as is in trouble or sick, like pugs or cats, or a canary bird, or a child, but the man they want for keeps they want to be all there, with plenty of fight in him and plenty of good looks. Whether they know it or not, they all go in considerable for good looks, and a peg-leg ain't what you call an inspirin' figure." Fritz laughed, but there was a note of discord in the laugh.

"I used to think different onct," he added, "but I learned better. No, I don't want to injure nobody nor to meddle with nobody, but she's all I've got and I'd kill for her." The boyish face was stern and the voice was full of restrained passion as he spoke. So changed was he for a moment that I scarcely recognized him. He must have

realized that he had. spoken more of his innermost soul than he intended, for he got up and began sorting his papers.

"And is Trouble the only thing you trust?"

"That's about the size of it, I guess."

"Aren't you a little bit sweeping, a little bit unjust?"

"Oh, there's plenty of true women in the world, I guess-no offense to you on account of your sex, I hope,-only I ain't run across them. Before I lost my leg I thought there was one woman in the world who'd stick to a man as loved her and she loved, no matter how things went, but 'twas all moonshine. I was a fool and found it out. Then for a spell I didn't believe in God nor man, much less woman. Then there came a time I found out I had been a fool again the other way round. Why, I'd lost my grip on believin' in folks altogether when I reasoned it out that if God made a dog so faithful and true and lovin' he must have done better by men and womenleastways men-I don't take much stock in a woman's downright faithfulness when the pinch comes."

"Maybe you were mistaken about her-about women in general," I ventured.

everlastingness of it gets into a man and his thoughts and feelings, like the waves,-no matter how far out they go they are bound to come back to the shore they started from. Well, just about the time I got my leg crushed in the sawmill, there was a fellow came to our town from Porto Rico. A fine-looking, curly-haired Spaniard, who could play like the devil on the guitar, and flashed his black eyes and white teeth around till all the women was half crazy over him. I didn't take to him, but the first time I seen the dog I hankered after her. I used to crawl out to the door and watch of mornin's to see him come down the road with her a-pattering at his heels, and Lord, how I wanted that dog! Next to my sweetheart I thought more of that there animal than any other living thing. One morning when she was sitting on the bench beside me, he came swinging down the road. He walked up to the door and his big black eyes must have flashed a kinder spell on her as he looked at her, for she was changed somehow to me from that moment.

"Every day she used to come to help mother a bit (she and mother was chums) and sorter to liven me up, and nobody thought anything of it, for we'd been keeping steady company for more'n a year and she'd promised to-marry-me." Fritz paused a moment.

guess she understood the words from the looks in his eyes-and at last I saw how it stood between 'em. I had got my crutch and she and I was sitting on the beach when he come up in his dory.

"Will you try my craft?' he says in that soft even voice of his, that sounded like a mother talking to her baby. Her face turned red and then white. She looked at me and I knew then she'd follow wherever those eyes beckoned.

"Go,' I said; 'you needn't mind me; Trouble's enough company for me.'

""I knew it,' she says.

"Then he says with that flashing smile on his face, 'Then we make fair ex-change. If you have the dog I have her. Come!' And he held out his long brown hand and took her little trembling fingers in his and pushed off. It seemed to me that all the earth was in a red glare; all the blood in my body. seemed to flood my brain and eyes.

"A dog's faithful, at least,' I said, and my voice didn't sound like itself. The swap is for keeps, if you choose.' I turned my back, for I didn't want 'em to see my face, and I heard a laugh from the dory: a laugh that seemed mixed up with the sobbing of the waves, and I seem to hear it yet whenever I hear the ocean, and I'll hear it till I die, I guess. The next day I got a little box with the ring I had given her; in the inside was a scrap of paper, and the writing on it was just my own words-The swap's for keeps, I guess. Good-by.'" Again Fritz paused.

"As soon as I was able, I come up to Boston with Trouble; and here we are and here we will be till or both of us passes in our

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