was so soft you'd suppose rational folks would keep off of it.

This path was a path of slow formation. It was a path that was never destined to become a road. It is only in mathematics that a straight line is the shortest distance between two points. The grade through the Jacobus woods was so steep that no wagon could have been hauled up it over the mud roads of that day and generation. Lumber, groceries, and all heavy truck were taken around by the road, that made a clean sweep around the hill, and was connected with the Dodd and Turnbull farms by a steep but short lane which the workmen had made when they built the Dodd house. The road was six miles to the path's three, but the drive was shorter than the walk.

There was a time when it looked as though the path might really develop into a road. That was the time when the township, having outgrown the county roads, began to build roads for itself. But, curiously enough, two subjects of Great Britain settled the fate of that New Jersey path. The controversy between Telford and Macadam was settled so long ago in Macadam's favor, that few remember the point of difference between those two noted engineers. Briefly stated, it was this: Mr. Telford said it was, and Mr. Macadam said it was not, necessary to put a foundation of large flat stones, set on end, under a broken - stone road. Reuben Levi's township, like many other New Jersey townships, sided with Mr. Telford, and made a mistake that cost thousands of dollars directly, and millions indirectly. To-day New Jersey can show the way to all her sister States in road-building and road-keeping. But the money she wasted on costly Telford pavements is only just beginning to come back to her, as she spreads out mile after mile of the economical Macadam. Reuben Levi's township squandered money on a few miles of Telford, raised the tax-rate higher than it had ever been before, and opened not one inch of new road for fifteen years thereafter. And within that fifteen years the canal came up on one side, opening a way to the great manufacturing town, ten miles down

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the river; and then the town at the end of the path was no longer the sole base of supplies. Then the railroad came around on the other side of the hill, and put a flag-station just at the bottom of what had come to be known as Dodd's Lane. And thus by the magic of nineteenth-century science New York and Newark were brought nearer to the hill-side farm than the town three miles away.

But year by year new feet trod the path. The laborers who cut the canal found it and took it when they left their shanty camp to go to town for Saturday-night frolics. Then William Turnbull, who had enlarged his own farm as far as he found it paid, took to buying land and building houses in the valley beyond. Reub Levi laughed at him, but he prospered after a way he had, and built up a thriving little settlement just over the canal. The people of this little settlement soon made a path that connected with Reuben Levi's, by way of William Turnbull's, and whenever business or old association took them to town they helped to make the path longer and broader.

By and by the regular wayfarers found it out-the pedlers, the colporteurs, the wandering portrait-painters, the tinkers and clock - menders, the runaway apprentices, and all the rest of the old-time gentry of the road. And they carried the path on still fartherdown the river to Newark.

It is not wholly to be told, "The Story of the Path." So many people had to do with its making in so many ways that no chronicle could tell all the meanings of its twists and turns and straight lines. There is one little jog in its course to-day, where it went around a tree, the stump of which rotted down into the ground a quarter of a century ago. Why do we walk around that useless bend to-day? Because it is a path, and because we walk in the way of human nature.

The life of a tree may be a hundred years or two hundred years and yet be long life. But the days of the age of a man are threescore and ten, and though some be so strong that they come to fourscore, yet the strong man may be stricken down in the flower

of his strength, if it be the will of the Lord.

When William Turnbull came to die he was but twoscore years and five, but for all he was so young the people of the township gathered from far and near, for he had been a helpful man all his days, and those whom he had helped remembered that he would help them no more. Four men and four women sat up with the dead, twice as many as the old custom called for. One of the men was a Judge, two had been Chosen Freeholders, and the fourth was his hired man. There was no cemetery in the township, and his tomb had been built at the bottom of the hill, looking out on the meadows which he had just made his own-the last purchase of his life.

There were two other pall-bearers to carry him on their shoulders to the place beyond which no man goes. These two, when they left the house on the night before the funeral, walked slowly and thoughtfully down the path together. They looked over every step of the way with to-morrow's slow and toilsome march in their minds. When they came to the turn by Pelatiah's mound they paused.

"We can't never get him round that bend," said one. "That ain't no way to start down the hill. Best is I come here first thing in the morning and cut a way through this bull-brier straight across the angle, then we can see ahead where we're going. Put them two light men behind, and you and me at the head, and we can manage it. My! what a man he was, though! Why, I seen him take the head of a coffin all by himself once."

This man was a near neighbor of the

Turnbulls, for now they had a number of neighbors; Reuben Levi Dodd had been selling small farms off his big farm-somehow he had never made the big farm a success. There are many services of men to man that country neighbors make little of, though to the dwellers in great cities they might seem strange burdens. At five o'clock the next morning Warren Freeman, the pall-bearer, went out and mowed and hacked a path through the tangled field from midway of old Pelatiah's trail down to a short-cut made by the doctor's charity-boy, who was to-day a Judge. This Judge came out of the silent house, released by the waking hour, from his vigil with the dead. He watched his fellow pall-bearer at work.

"I used to go down that path on the dead run twenty years ago," said he, "when I was working for Dr. Van Wagener and he used to send me up here gathering herbs."

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You'll go down it on the dead walk to-morrow, Jedge," said the other, pausing in his work, "and you want to step mighty careful, or one fun'l will breed another."

Life, death, wedlock, the lingering of lovers, the waywardness of childish feet, the tread of weary toil, the slow, swaying walk of the mother, with her babe in her arms, the measured steps of the bearer of the dead, the light march of youth and strength and health

all, all have helped to beat out the strange, wandering line of the old path; and to me, who love to find and to tread its turns, the current of their human life flows still along its course, in the dim spaces under the trees, or out where the sunshine and the wind are at play upon the broad, bright meadows.

S

HE came out on the porch of the small, trim-looking house, and stood restlessly fumbling with the broad gold band on her fore-finger. Her middle-aged face exhibited a sort of stolid distress. The lips were purple and puckered. The wide, pale cheeks were streaked with dull red. In her cold blue eyes, as they took acrimonious stock of the medium's poor, weatherbeaten house over the way, a perturbed spark flickered.

"I guess they won't hev much of a crowd to-night," she muttered; "it looks like rain was blowing up." Then she turned about and, lifting her voice, said, "Jane! aw Jane! you ain't thinking of going across the way to-night, are you? I wouldn't feel safe about you if a storm came."

There was a step in the small, neat hallway. Another woman, tall and lean, with a sallow, nervous face, appeared in the doorway. She wore a black alpaca gown with a deep fall of crocheted lace about the neck. Her hair was screwed back in a grayish knob. It was amazingly sleek, but the crop of tiny curls, which displayed their lace foundation over the woman's shining, yellowish forehead, was strangely crinkled, like gray

moss.

"The paper never spoke of rain," she demurred, glancing critically out.

It was almost dark, and from every street-corner long strands of natural gas were already flaming high. Sometimes the sweeping redness flaunted low, turbanning the iron standard heads in silky vermilion. Again the fiery masses were spun out in long threads which twisted about the heavy rod like gay ribbons about a May-pole. Mill-stacks and the skeleton outworks of several gas-wells lifted blackly upon the horizon. Everywhere were little dwellings, new, insufficient of build, mere

shells hastily put together for the occupancy of those whom the gas had so suddenly drawn to the old Indiana town.

The house of the Werner girls was the only house on the square which had a look of respectable age and use. Lilac bushes made rich flecks of verdancy in the front yard. An appletree bent a gnarled hand of blessing over the porch end. Through the open door a precise, small parlor revealed itself, with fading Brussels carpeting, hair-cloth chairs of an antique fashion of frame, marble centre-table, and a corner what-not.

"You can't always go by them weather reports," declared the elder Miss Werner, surveying her sister. “I say there's a storm coming. You best stay right home, Jane." She gave the younger woman an anxious glance. Jane's lips drew together.

"I'm thinking of looking in at Mrs. Furber's," she said, simply.

Her sister drew a gasping breath.

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You're killing me," she broke forth; "that's what you're doing, Jane Werner! Only us two and our family always as much looked up to as any in town! I'm glad that mother ain't alive to witness your doin's-you that was sent to Sunday-school before you could talk plain! Oh, my goodness me!"

Jane wheeled round, with an air of impatience.

"Liza," she said, "you better be reasonable. I'm old enough to know what I'm doing. There's no harm in my going to Mrs. Furber's of Tuesday nights. I ain't a believer; I'm only investigatin'."

"They all say that!" moaned Liza; "they're all investigatin'!" Her voice rang out with a hysterical note. Some people passing looked over the fence. Little throngs of twos and threes were coming up the badly paved street, under the lurid pulsing of the numerous gas-jets. They slackened pace at the

gate of the rickety cottage of the medium. As they mounted the single door-step the inner light disclosed them generally as elderly persons in common attire.

A slight, childish figure in a frock of some light color stood in the embrasure of the door. The folk who entered seemed to touch lightly the slimwristed hand this little figure held motionlessly toward them. In the variance of the streaming gas a silver coin, slipping into the palm of the girl on the threshold, caught a transient flash of white. She seemed to be taking an admission fee. The Werners could see her small, pale face, her spare ankles, her serious expression, the fluff of light hair on her forehead.

Then the door was shut rather suddenly. A man's arm, reaching from the window, drew the shutters close. Presently a quavering voice lifted up the rhythm of a familiar hymn. A stranger passing might have thought that the slant roof of the medium's house sheltered a meeting of devout souls at prayer and praise.

With a checked shawl about her shoulders, the younger Miss Werner reappeared in the doorway. Her sister, huddling on the step, lifted a face of interdiction.

"All I hope is that lightnin' won't strike that house yonder," she said. "Though I ain't sure but I as lief see you laid out in your grave fixin's as sitting alive onder Mrs. Furber's hoodooin'. Don't tell me! She hain't no more power to summon dead folks to talk through a trumpet than I hev, so she ain't. Pore Mr. Furber! Id' know

but I pity him more than anyone. He's the worst deceived of the hull lot -thinks his wife's got a gift from heaven-pore old soul! Well, he'll soon find out what a evil creature he's been trusting, for he's not long for this world. He's pointedly dying day by day-got the rale old style consumption, if ever I see it. Oh, law me! and the only sister I got in the world a-payin' out money to mix in with folks that lets theirselves be befooled and bewheedled!”

Jane's face wore a look of resigned exasperation. Across the street they

had begun the second stanza of the hymn. She lifted her skirts and went resolutely down the steps.

The knob of the medium's door turned easily in her hand, disclosing a poor room, spectrally lighted by a lamp with a green shade. Numbers of men and women, with knees rigidly squared, sat in a circle, in the centre of which a woman stood arranging on a small table a bowl of red geraniums and a tall tin trumpet.

She was thin and worn, with lightish hair twisting back from her high cheekbones. Her lips were set close, but her gray eyes had a furtive sort of uneasiness as she glanced round the room. Her eyes lingered an instant on a welldressed young man hard by.

You are a stranger?" she asked, with a certain suspicious accent. The man nodded.

"Yes'm. I paid, same as the rest," he remarked, with a sharp note in his voice. The medium regarded him with cold dignity. Then her gaze ranged again about the gathering, resting for an instant on that part of the circle where her daughter sat, holding the hand of an old man whose face, even in the dim light, wore a look of eager expectancy. He was tall, with a bent frame, the joints of which were sadly evident in the threadbare clothes he had on. His long silvery beard shelved alertly over his narrow breast. Locks of gray hair bestrung his ears and fringed over a wide, benevolent brow, in which, from deep hollows, shone a pair of great, credulous, enthusiastic

pered Miss Werner, in an explanatory tone, to the strange man by whom she sat. Someone rose and blew out the light. A stifling sort of darkness fell upon the place. The lack of air, the absolute gloom, perhaps some physical force transmitted through the clasped hands of those who sat about-these conditions always gave Miss Jane a strangeness of feeling which made her credulous of occult forces, and more than at other times inclined to put confidence in the wan woman sitting so silently in the centre of the room.

Miss Jane was not sure as to the veracity of the manifestations which Mrs. Furber evoked. The queerness, however, fascinated the younger Miss Werner, and she assured herself that, even if she were being deceived, she was acting a worthy part in contributing to the support of the Furber family. For though Mrs. Furber might be a woman of iniquitous devices, there was no doubt that she was a good wife and mother. Everyone knew how hard she had worked to support the feeble old husband and delicate little daughter. Everyone knew, also, that her health had failed under the stress of doing tailor's work on a heavy machine. It was along in winter that she herself realized definitely her inability to go on. It was winter and bleak. Things went hard in the Furber house. One morning a neighbor woman observed an odd feature in the landscape opposite her window. From the chimney of the Werner house a half-scared-looking thread of smoke rose, veining the sky with tremulous blue. Not another chimney in sight but was breathless in indication of gas used for fuel.

"They're burning wood," said the woman. 'I reckon the town's cut off their gas. Things must be at a low ebb with the Furbers."

This judgment had scarcely been detailed in the neighborhood when it was ousted by a more thrilling bit of intelligence. It was whispered that Mrs. Furber had a gift for "foreseein'." The wives of the workmen in the various factories about began to go to her for what they called "settings." These trysts with the esoteric took place in a dark corner of Mrs. Furber's front

room. The awed searcher for fatewithheld knowledge, sitting in the shadows of the improvised cabinet, would observe the face of the medium convulsed in the initiatory stages of "going off." The trance condition following these alarming spasms was presided over by an entity speaking from Mrs. Furber's lips in a dialect that was of German suggestiveness, interlarded with such idioms as a half-breed Indian might be supposed to use.

"The pale-faced squaw" would be greeted to the wigwam of Minnehaha, the Indian maiden who was Mrs. Furber's control. Any questions the palefaced squaw might ask would be cheerfully, if not definitely, answered, for Minnehaha was as obliging as she was incoherent. Her replies were absolutely Delphic in their ambiguity, and however the questioner's affairs turned out, it could never be said that Minnehaha had prophesied falsely.

In addition to private "settings," Minnehaha engagingly exhibited her powers in what Mrs. Furber's clientèle called dark circles. These were held once a week and excited deep interest from believers," amiable curiosity from "investigators," and scoffing ridicule from those who were neither. The frequenters of the mysterious rites which Mrs. Furber celebrated were not given to criticism. They had not even an elementary belief in the biological law that no human being can possibly possess any quality different in nature from those which belong to the race in general. They went blind in a mist of credulity, grasping at the dark skirts of any vision which seemed to float above the common, wholesome facts of life.

By these simple folk Mrs. Furber came to be regarded with veneration. She held converse with their lost Willy and Maria, could see these blessed children amusing themselves with celestial toys on the steps of the temple, and even bring badly constructed messages of good-will from their angelic lips.

But of all those who believed Mrs. Furber miraculously endowed, none regarded her with a confidence so implicit as her husband felt. All the simple faith of his nature concentrated itself