There was something wrong; but never a word, never a look in his eyes

Told what he thought, as in kindly way he talked to Joe and me.

He was come from a thriving city firm, and they'd sent him here to say

That one of Joe's inventions was a great, successful thing; And which do you think? His window-catch that he'd tinkered up one day;

And we were to have a good per cent on the sum that each would bring.

And then the pleasant stranger went, and we wakened as from a dream.

My man bent down his head and said, "Little woman, you've saved my life!"

The worn look gone from his dear gray eyes, and in its place, a gleam

From the sun that has shone so brightly since, on Joe and his happy wife!

WITHIN THE FOLD.

Funerals were not an exciting novelty in L-; fortyseven souls slept in the little graveyard over the hill. Fully half of them died by violence, and were buried with scraping of violins and firing of Winchesters. Men had been "planted" with as little ceremony as potatoes; professional descendants of Delilah were laid away amid the blare of brass instruments and breaking of champagne bottles.

"But," said Buckskin Bill, with grave, unconscious profanity, "that sort of a round-up won't go this time. The Gospel brand has got to be put on, and who is to do it?"

The fair-haired idol of the camp had gone out into the great silence without a struggle. Saturday afternoon she deigned to ride up-town with Bob Stedman and exhibit the bisque marvel imported by her worshipers from Chicago, whereupon the leading citizens united with Kentucky Smitty in drinking "the health of the fairest child and the finest doll-baby west of the Missouri." In

the gray darkness of Monday morning her soul slipped over the divide and the town was desolate.

Down at Marvin's the young mother looked at the floor and rocked mechanically. Her morals were above suspicion. Beyond that she was what cow-camps had made her, a vain and careless woman: Concerning spiritual things she knew nothing. Religion did not flourish in a town with a brewery, fourteen saloons, nine gambling houses, two dance halls, and neither church nor clergyman. The Sunday diversions were dancing, faro, poker, and "irrigation" of an alcoholic nature.

When she looked into the face of her little dead child a longing for something better was born in Mrs. Marvin's soul. She spoke fiercely to the men who talked of a procession and music at the hall: "You sha'n't bury my baby like that-you sha'n't! I won't have her buried like a sheep or a gambler. Somebody's got to pray or do something! She sha'n't be buried that way!"

"That's straight," said Tom Gibson. "The pious is the thing. We must find somebody to do that praying."

As men seek for a lost lead, so they searched, with no result save Buckskin Bill's despairing query of Monday night. The nearest clergyman was four days' journey across the mountains, and hence out of the question.

Tuesday morning dawned. Personal appeal had been made to every man in the town. Wheeler, popularly known as Parson Jim because he once was a local preacher among the Methodists of Ohio, was urged and pressed to officiate. "No, boys," he answered, "most of you don't know any better, but I do. I am mean, but I am not insulting the Almighty; I am not mean enough for that yet. I have made a hell' for you-and myself. The fellow who keeps hell," he smiled bitterly, was never known to lead in prayer; and I will not begin."

There were no facilities for embalming or preserving bodies; funerals were usually held within twenty-four hours after death. Tuesday morning was the time fixed for the baby's burial. An embarrassed delegation ex

plained the cause of delay to the bewildered father and mother. Mrs. Marvin rose, looked wildly at the self-constituted committee, and said, shrilly: "Nobody to pray over my baby! O God, will nobody pray over my baby? She was so little and so sweet. She never hurt anybody."

Swiftly she took the little body from the bed, wrapped a shawl about it, ran through the door and down the street. To gambler, cow-puncher and harlot everyone she met―she held out the dead child, and said beseechingly: "Pray over my baby; for God's sake pray over my baby!" Blind to tearful appeals, deaf to persua sions and entreaties, she wandered on, repeating the cry. At nightfall her husband led her home; but through the long darkness she shrieked continuously: "Pray over my baby!

Just before daybreak she quieted, and the exhausted watchers slept. While they slumbered she slipped out; and all day Wednesday she wandered and wailed her sentence of entreaty. Words were unheeded and unheard. The ravages of death, so plain to the men and women who pleaded with her, seemed unnoticed by the crazed mother. It was an impossibility to get the child from her. She held her three-year-old darling in a grip no man could loose without rough handling; and no man had heart for violence. The town was sick of soul. It was ten at night before they got her back to the cabin. Then Buckskin Bill wiped the cold sweat from head and hand, and said to his mates; If some thing aint done quick we shall all be as crazy as she is." Thursday morning, about eight o'clock, Jim Settle came on the group at Wheeler's corner. He was excited and eager. "Say, boys, I've got it. You remember Scotch Ike?"

"Yes. Quit sheep-herdin' and went over to South Pass to work his claim," Bob Stedman answered listlessly. "Well, you know, he left the old woman-his mother --behind. Too freezing cold over there. She lives out here five miles, by the creek."

"Yes. Saw her in town last month getting grub How is that going to help this lay-out?"

Jim shouted in his exhilaration of spirit: "Why, she's pious, don't you see? Got a Bible-a big one. Saw her reading it in the door last summer. She can do the praying racket."

Mrs. Marvin came while they were getting their horses. The news had reached her, and there was a gleam of reason in her wild eyes.

"She can't go," said Jim.

"I will," she wailed; "they are going to pray over my baby. Let me go?

"She shall go. Hitch up, Marvin !"

Bob spoke as having authority, and no man demurred.

The Scotch grandam sat in her doorway, rocking to and fro in the late spring sunshine. She was short and slender, with a seamed face and faded blue eyes, shaded by square-bowed spectacles. Her shabby black print gown brought out her slight figure in sharp relief. The men hung back; not so the mother. Her black hair had loosened in the wind, and hung about her in an unkempt, tangled mass, as she ran forward. She dropped on her knees in front of the old matron, laid the shawlwrapped child on her lap, and reiterated the plaintive appeal: "Pray over my baby; for God's sake, pray over my baby!"

Scotch Ike's mother looked puzzled. The men came forward and explained, Jo Marvin referring brokenly to his wife's disturbed mental condition. As they talked the older woman cried softly and stroked the mother's hair. "Puir lass! Puir dear lassie!" she quavered. "All ye hae! Yer first-born!"

She kissed and caressed the half-crazed creature, babbling on in her soothing way. After awhile she spoke

gently to the men: “But I couldna do that, ye ken. It wadna be richt. I'm a Covenanter, and the dominies said: 'Let the women keep silent.'"

Mrs. Marvin looked up at the wrinkled, tear-stained face with sane, anxious yearning. "I don't care what the ministers said," she asserted. "You are a woman. You've had children. Perhaps you have buried some. Would

you want them put under the ground like dogs, without anybody praying over them? I never prayed. Nobody taught me. My mother"-she sobbed and her voice broke- 66 my mother died when I was little. You pray. Won't you, for God's sake, won't you pray over my baby, as somebody prayed over yours?"

Memories of three bonnie yellow heads sleeping in the far away kirkyard stirred the old mother. Her lips quivered and shook; the tears came in a soft shower before her broken answer: "I am an ignorant auld woman, a puir simple body; if it be wrong, may God forgie me. But I wadna hae wanted them to be buried without a bit o' prayer and Scripture; I'll gae wi' ye."

In town the funeral preparations were soon made. At the head went the small Scotchwoman with her big Bible on her arm, and tall Bob Stedman with the little coffin on his shoulder. Behind the father and mother came the crowd, two by two, in orderly rank. None had stayed away.

After the people had massed themselves at the grave there was an awkward pause.

The ordinary method of procedure was, "Dump him in. Now blaze away, boys." Plainly that was out of order, and Bob held the coffin with an air of embarrassed defiance. Wheeler's whisper relieved the silence:

"Lay her in, Bob; then Mrs. Muir can read the Bible.” The thin, high-pitched voice began, "Thy daughter is dead, why troublest thou the Master," and read Mark's tender, dramatic story of the little daughter of Jairus, to whom the Nazarene said: "Talitha cumi" (My little darling, come to Me). She stumbled over the Aramaic words, then went evenly on to the end of the chapter. She closed the Book, folded it within her arm, and faltered timidly, "We'll hae the bit o' prayer."