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 his emotion or imbibe its contents, we cannot distinctly affirm. We only know that he paused suddenly, drew a long and deep breath, and looked anxiously on, as two of the principal members of the Dingley Dell club approached Mr. Pickwick, and said—

"We are about to partake of a plain dinner at the Blue Lion, sir; we hope you and your friends will join us."

"Of course," said Mr. Wardle, said Mr. Wardle, "among our friends we include Mr. ;" and he looked towards the stranger.

"Jingle," said that versatile gentleman, taking the hint at once "Jingle—Alfred Jingle, Esq., of No Hall, Nowhere."

"I shall be very happy, I am sure," said Mr. Pickwick.

"So shall I," said Mr. Alfred Jingle, drawing one arm through Mr. Pickwick's, and another through Mr. Wardle's, as he whispered confidentially in the ear of the former gentleman:—

"Devilish good dinner—cold, but capital—peeped into the room this morning—fowls and pies, and all that sort of thing—pleasant fellows these—well behaved, too—very."

99 There being no further preliminaries to arrange, the company straggled into the town in little knots of twos and threes; and within a quarter of an hour were all seated in the great room of the Blue Lion Inn, Muggleton—Mr. Dumkins acting as chairman, and Mr. Luffey officiating as vice.

There was a vast deal of talking and rattling of knives and forks, and plates: a great running about of three ponderous headed waiters, and a rapid disappearance of the substantial viands on the table; to each and every of which item of confusion, the facetious Mr. Jingle lent the aid of half-a-dozen ordinary men at least. When everybody had eaten as much as possible, the cloth was removed, bottles, glasses, and dessert were placed on the table; and the waiters withdrew to "clear away," or in other words, to appropriate to their own private use and emolument whatever remnants of the eatables and and drinkables they could contrive to lay their hands on.


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 Amidst the general hum of mirth and conversation that ensued, there was a little man with a puffy Say-nothing-tome,-or-I'll-contradict-you sort of countenance, who remained very quiet; occasionally looking round him when the conversation slackened, as if he contemplated putting in something very weighty; and now and then bursting into a short cough of inexpressible grandeur. At length, during a moment of comparative silence, the little man called out in a very loud, solemn voice—

"Mr. Luffey!"

Everybody was hushed into a profound stillness as the individual addressed, replied—

"Sir!"

"I wish to address a few words to you, sir, if you will entreat the gentlemen to fill their glasses."

Mr. Jingle uttered a patronising "hear, hear," which was responded to by the remainder of the company and the glasses having been filled the Vice-President assumed an air of wisdom in a state of profound attention; and said—

"Mr. Staple."

"Sir," said the little man, rising, "I wish to address what I have to say to you and not to our worthy chairman, because our worthy chairman is in some measure—I may say in a great degree—the subject of what I have to say, or I may say—to—"

"State," suggested Mr. Jingle.

—"Yes, to state," said the little man, "I thank my honourable friend, if he will allow me to call him so—(four hears, and one certainly from Mr. Jingle)—for the suggestion. Sir, I am a Deller—a Dingley Deller (cheers). I cannot lay claim to the honour of forming an item in the population of Muggleton; nor, sir, I will frankly admit, do I covet that honour: and I will tell you why, sir—(hear); to Muggleton I will readily concede all those honours and distinctions to which it can fairly lay claim—they are too numerous and too well known to require aid or recapitulation from me.

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 But, sir, while we remember that Muggleton has given birth to a Dumkins and a Podder, let us never forget that Dingley Dell can boast a Luffey and a Struggles. (Vociferous cheering.) Let me not be considered as wishing to detract from the merits of the former gentlemen. Sir, I envy them the luxury of their own feelings on this occasion. (Cheers). Every gentleman who hears me, is probably acquainted with the reply made by an individual, who—to use an ordinary figure of speech—'hung out' in a tub, to the emperor Alexander:—'If I were not Diogenes,' said he, I would be Alexander.' I can well imagine these gentlemen to say, 'If I were not Dumkins I would be Luffey; if I were not Podder I would be Struggles.' (Enthusiasm.) But, gentlemen of Muggleton, is it in cricket alone that your fellow-townsmen stand preeminent? Have you never heard of Dumkins and determination? Have you never been taught to associate Podder with property? (Great applause.) Have you never, when struggling for your rights, your liberties, and your privileges, been reduced, if only for an instant, to misgiving and despair? And when you have been thus depressed, has not the name of Dumkins laid afresh within your breast the fire which had just gone out; and has not a word from that man, lighted it again as brightly as if it had never expired? (Great cheering.) Gentlemen, I beg to surround with a rich halo of enthusiastic cheering the united names of 'Dumkins and Podder.

Here the little man ceased, and here the company commenced a raising of voices, and thumping of tables, which lasted with little intermission during the remainder of the evening. Other toasts were drunk. Mr. Luffey and Mr. Struggles, Mr. Pickwick and Mr. Jingle, were, each in his turn, the subject of unqualified eulogium; and each in due course returned thanks for the honour.

Enthusiastic as we are in the noble cause to which we have devoted ourselves, we should have felt a sensation of pride which we cannot express, and a consciousness of having


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 woman usually has a 'love-margin' you know, and, besides, there s always so much more impetus in a woman,s love. Even though she's hurt, even though she's heartbroken, even though, worst of all, she's a tiny bit bored, all her little, natural love courtesies go on just the same of their own mo- mentum, for a day or a week, or a month, or half a lifetime, till the love-flame kindles again or else goes out altogether. Love has to be like that. But if I were a man, Drew, I'd be awfully careful that that love-margin did n't ever get utterly exhausted. Aleck, though, does n't understand about such things. I smoothed his headaches just as well, and listened to his music just as well, so he shiftlessly took it for granted that I loved him just as well. What nonsense ! Love ?' " Her voice rose almost shrilly. " 'Love ? Bah ! What's love, anyway, but a wicked sort of hypnotism in the way that a mouth slants, or a cheek curves, or a lock of hair colors? Listen to me. If Aleck Reese were a woman and I were a man, I certainly would n't choose his type for a sweetheart irritable, undo- mestic, wild for excitement. How's that for a test? And if Aleck Reese and I were both women, I certainly should n't want him for my friend. Oughtn t that to decide it? Not a vital taste in common, not a vital interest, not a vital ideal !" She began to laugh hysterically. " And I can't

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 sleep at night for remembering the droll little way that his hair curls over his forehead, or the hurt, sur- prised look in his eyes when he ever really did get sorry about anything. My God! Drew, look at me !" she cried, and rolled up her sleeves to her elbow. The flesh was gone from her as though a fever had wasted her.

The muscles in Drew's throat began to twitch un- pleasantly. "Was Aleck Reese mean to you?" he persisted doggedly.

A little faint, defiant smile flickered across her lips. "Never mind, Drew," she said, "whether Aleck Reese was mean to me or not. It really does n't matter. It does n't really matter at all just exactly what a man does or does n't do to a woman as long as, by one route or another, before her wedding day, he brings her to the place where she can honestly say in her heart, This man that I want is not the kind of man that I want. Honor, loyalty, strength, gentleness why, Drew, the man I marry has got to be the kind of man I want.

"I've tried to be fair to Aleck," she mused al most tenderly. "I've tried to remember always that men are different from women, and that Aleck perhaps is different from most men. I've tried to remember always that he is a musician a real, real musician with all the ghastly, agonizing ex-

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 tremes of temperament. I've tried to remember always that he did n't grow up here with us in our little town with all our fierce, little-town standards, but that he was educated abroad, that his whole moral, mental, and social ideals are different, that the admiration and adulation of new women is like the breath of life to him that he simply could n't live without it any more than I could live without the love of animals, or the friendship of children, or the wonderfulness of outdoors, all of which bore him to distraction.

"Oh, I've reasoned it all out, night after night after night, fought it out, torn it out, that he prob ably really and truly did love me quite a good deal in his own way when there was n't anything else to do. But how can it possibly content a woman to have a man love her as well as he knows how - if it is n't as well as she knows how? We won't talk about Aleck Reese's morals," she finished abruptly. "Fickleness, selfishness, neglect, even in fidelity itself, are such purely minor, incidental data of the one big, incurably rotten and distasteful fact that such and such a man is stupid in the affec tions.

With growing weakness she sank back in her chair and closed her eyes.

For an anxious moment Drew sat and watched her. "Is that all?" he asked at last.

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 She opened her eyes in surprise."Why, yes," she said, "that's all that is, it's all if you under stand. I'm not complaining because Aleck Reese did n't love me, but because, loving me, he was n't intelligent enough to be true to me. You do un- derstand, don't you? You understand that it was n't because he did n't pay his love bills, but be cause he did n't know enough to pay them. He took my loyalty without paying for it with his; he took my devotion, my tenderness, my patience, with out ever, ever making any adequate return. Any girl ought to be able to tell in six months whether her lover is using her affection rightly, whether he is taking her affection and investing it with his toward their mutual happiness and home. Aleck invested nothing. He just took all my love that he could grab and squandered it on himself al ways and forever on himself. A girl, I say, ought to be able to tell in six months. But I am very stupid. It has taken me three years."

"Well, what do you want me to do?" Drew asked a bit quizzically.

"I want you to advise me," she said.

"Advise you-what?" persisted Drew.

The first real flicker of comedy flamed in the girl's face. Her white cheeks pinked and dimpled. "Why, advise me to marry you!" she an-

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 She shook her head. "No," she protested, "I wanted to come here. What I've got to talk about is very awkward, and if things get too awkward why, an embarrassed guest has so much better chance to escape than an embarrassed host." She struggled desperately to smile, but her lips twittered instead into a frightened quiver. With narrowing eyes the young man drew out his big leather chair for her. Then he perched himself on the corner of his desk and waited for her to speak.

"Ruthy dear," he smiled,"what's the trouble? Come, tell your old chum all about it."

The girl scrunched her eyes up tight, like a per son who starts to jump and does n't care where he lands. Twice her lips opened and shut without a sound. Then suddenly she braced herself with an intense effort.

"Drew," she blurted out, "do you remember- three years ago you asked me to marry you?"

"Do I remember it ?" gasped Drew. The edgy sharpness of his tone made the girl open her eyes and stare at him. "Yes" he acknowledged, "I remember it."

The girl began to smooth her white skirts with excessive precision across her knees."What made you ask me?" she whispered.

"What made me ask you?" cried the man.

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 nounced. "WELL, WHY NOT?" She fairly hurled the three-word bridge across the sudden, awful chasm of silence that yawned before her.

Drew's addled mind caught the phrase dully and turned it over and over without attempting to cross on it. "Well, why not? Well, why not?" he kept repeating. His discomfiture filled the girl with hysterical delight, and she came and perched herself opposite him on the farther end of his desk and smiled at him.

"It seems to me perfectly simple," she argued. "Without any doubt or question you certainly are the kind of man whom I should like to marry. You are true and loyal and generous and rugged about things. And you like the things that I like. And I like the people that you like. And, most of anything in the world, you are clever in the affec tions. You are heart-wise as well as head-wise. Why, even in the very littlest, silliest thing that could possibly matter, you would n't for instance remember George Washington's birthday and forget mine. And you would n't go away on a lark and leave me if I was sick, any more than you d blow out the gas. And you would n't hurt me about other women any more than you d eat with your knife." Impulsively she reached over and patted his hand with the tips of

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40 himself a skald, gathered round him the most famous poets of his time, and in his great deeds they found ample materials for their songs. The most celebrated among them are and. From the former we have, besides an important historical-genealogical poem, the so-called "Ynglingatal," which furnished the basis of the Ynglingasaga in Snorre's Heimskringla, also fragments of a mythic drapa called "Haustlöng," which treats of the god Thor. In him we find the preference for obscure metaphors, and also that complicated and heavy versification already fully developed. From the latter, Thorbjorn, we have a few important fragments and some songs on Harald Fairhair's achievements, and on the life at his court. These songs give evidence of genuine poetic talent; one of them is especially noteworthy on account of its poetical arrangement and for breathing a spirit not unlike that of the poems in the Elder Edda. Of still greater importance was, called Skaldapillir (obscurer of skalds), unquestionably one of the most excellent Norwegian skalds, who lived in the time of King Hakon, the foster son of King Athelstane, of England. The poet celebrated Hakon's memory in his lay called Hakonar-mal, one of the finest songs handed down from the past. In it he describes the last battle of the valiant king, his death and reception in Valhal, in glowing yet simple and noble passages. It is composed in the simple form of the old poetry, in which both the Fornyrðalag and Ljoðaháttr alternate in harmony with the thought with splendid effect. In the same simple and elevated style is composed the somewhat older Eiriksmál, which at the request of queen Gunhild was chanted at the funeral of her husband, Erik Bloodaxe, and which Eyvind seems to have taken as a model for his lay on Hakon.


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 her fingers. " As far as I can see," she teased, "there's absolutely no fault in you that matters to me except that I don't happen to love you."

Quick as her laugh the tears came scalding back to her eyes.

"Why, Drew," she hurried on desperately, "people seem to think it's a dreadful thing to marry a man whom you don't love; but nobody questions your marrying any kind of a man if you do love him. As far as I can make out, then, it's the love that matters, not the man. Then why not love the right man?" She began to smile again. "So here and now, sir, I deliberately choose to love you."

But Drew's fingers did not even tighten over hers.

"I want to be a happy woman," she pleaded. "Why, I'm only twenty -two. I can't let my life be ruined now. There's got to be some way out. And I'm going to find that way out if I have to crawl on my hands and knees for a hundred years. I'm luckier than some girls. I've got such a shin ing light to aim for."

Almost roughly Drew pulled his hand away, the color surging angrily into his cheeks. "I'm no shining light," he protested hotly, "and you shall never, never come crawling on your hands and knees to me."

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 "Yes, I shall,"; whispered the girl. "I shall come creeping very humbly, if you want me. And you do want me, don't you? Oh, please advise me. Oh, please play you are my Father or my Big Brother and advise me to marry you." Drew laughed in spite of himself. "Play I was your Father or your Big Brother?" Mimicry was his one talent. "Play I was your Father or your Big Brother and advise you to marry me?"

Instantly his fine, straight brows came beetling down across his eyes in a fierce paternal scrutiny. Then, quick as a wink, he had rumpled his hair and stuck out his chest in a really startling imita tion of Big Brother's precious, pompous impor tance. But before Ruth could clap her hands his face flashed back again into its usual keen, sad gravity, and he shook his head. "Yes," he de liberated, "perhaps if I truly were your Father or your Brother, I really should advise you to marry me not because I amount to anything and am worth it, but because I honestly believe that I should be good to you and I know that Aleck Reese would n't be. But if I'm to advise you in my own personal capacity no, Ruthy, I don't want to marry you !"

"What? What?" Staggering from the desk, she turned and faced him, white as her dress, blanched to her quivering lips.

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Rh All the skalds hitherto mentioned were Norwegians; but henceforth the poetic calling was transferred to the Icelanders, who also sang in the halls of the Norwegian kings. From this time the Norwegians produced only short unimportant lays, and even some of their kings like St. Olaf and Harald the Severe occupied themselves with writing little songs. One of the most celebrated Icelandic poets was. He came from a family that, on account of the troubles with Harald Fairhair, had found it necessary to emigrate to Iceland, where they soon became very eminent. Egil was himself the most prominent Icelander of his time, a magnificent type, not less of the intellectual vigor than of the indomitable spirit which characterized the life of the viking. He was a great poet, and, in truth, a mighty warrior. One of the best Icelandic sagas treats of him, and gives a most interesting picture of his restless life at home and abroad, now sailing from shore to shore on viking-expeditions, or visiting kings and princes, and taking part in their wars and feuds, now enthroned as a king on his gard, never recognizing any other law than his own sweet will. Besides a number of songs, we have from Egil three long poems, or at least important fragments of them. By one of them "Höfudlausn" (The Redemption of the Head), a splendid, exceedingly pompous drapa, composed in honor of Erik Bloodaxe, he saved his life, when circumstances had brought him into the power of this marked enemy of his whom he had deeply insulted. The second is a drapa composed in honor of his friend Arinbjorn (Arinbjarnardrápa). Both poems are very characteristic, and especially the former was widely celebrated. But the best evidence of his great talent as a poet he furnished by his magnificent, strange poem "Sonartorrek" (The Loss of the Son), which he produced, when in his old age he lost his youngest and most beloved son, who


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42 drowned in the Borgarfjord. Bowed down by grief, the father was about to put an end to his life by hunger, but his daughter persuaded him to give up this purpose, representing to him that no lay would be composed to commemorate his son unless it was done by the father himself. Thus Egil was induced to compose his famous poem, which glows through and through with fierceness and ungovernable defiance, but is at the same time tuned to the tenderest tones of genuine poetry. The sorrow of this poet does not resemble the sorrow of other people. There is no trace of weakness, but it contains a defiant expression of wrath and indignation that his proud race is approaching its extinction, and a bitter regret that he is not able to revenge himself on the gods as he would have done on men, had they caused him this loss. It is not so much paternal love as it is family pride that finds expression in this poem, and intimately connected therewith, and forming as it were the background to the whole poem, we see Egil's consciousness of his strength and his determination to vindicate his own personality. The latter is especially apparent in his words on Odin, whom he looks upon as the real cause of his affliction. Toward this god he assumes the attitude of one freeman toward another. Heretofore their mutual relations have been friendly; henceforth they are hostile; but when he remembers that Odin, how much so ever he has taken from him, still has bestowed on him a choice gift, that of poetry, the most magnificent of all human blessings, "and a mind with which I am able quietly to turn a false friend into an open enemy," he is reconciled; he resolves to live, and proudly takes the high seat again.

Among the Icelandic poets should also be mentioned and  (Serpent-tongue, so called on account of his stinging satire). We have the lives of both told in sagas, in which a large number of their poems are preserved, especially of Kormak's love songs, a kind of poetry which has a very strange look when presented in the rigid versification of the skalds, and loaded down with the meta-


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Rh phoric garments of that age. , nicknamed (the troublesome poet), who sang at the court of the Norwegian ruler Jarl Hakon and of King Olaf Trygvason (toward the end of the tenth century), is of particular interest on account of the struggle between heathendom and Christianity, which continues through his whole life, and is reflected in many of his poems. At the request of Olaf he was baptized, and his acceptance of the Christian religion seems to have been a serious matter with him, and yet he frequently returns in his memory to the old heathen gods in whose faith he was really happy and content. His last poem is, however, the genuine Christian prayer of a dying man, and his "Uppreistardrápa" (Poem of Resurrection), which is now wholly lost, became widely celebrated.

Of St. Olaf's skalds, deserves special mention. The king preferred him to all others, and in consequence the poet was attached to him with a tender love and devotion, which are frequently expressed in a dignified manner in his poems. His poems are also written in the usual style of the skalds, still they are less loaded down with artificial metaphors than the most of the skaldic lays, and hence they contain more genuine poetic sentiment. There is nothing strikingly original to be found in his poetry, but he possessed a decided talent for grasping the poetic thought in an act or scene, and for expressing it in a vivid and descriptive manner, though he did not always succeed in rising above a certain common, dull style. His technical skill was so great, that it is said of him that he could express his thoughts in verse more readily than in prose, and we have from his muse a very considerable number of poems. He served King Olaf fifteen years, and took part in nearly all his expeditions and battles. In Olaf's last decisive struggle, the battle of Stiklestad, in the year 1030, where the king found his death, Sighvat was, however, not present, as he was then on a pilgrimage to Rome. Among the finest and most original of Sighvat's lays belong the songs in which he gives utterance to


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As illustrator

 * Quinby and Son (1925) by William Heyliger

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Rh his grief at the death of the beloved king, and expresses his regret that he was not permitted to die at his side. There is in these songs a tenderness which is seldom found in the many similar ones by other skalds. After his return from Rome he entered the service of Magnus, the son of St. Olaf, whose chief counsellor he became, and to this epoch of his career belong the celebrated "Bersöglisvisur" (songs of free speech), which he composed when the king began to be tyrannical toward the peasants, and in which he in powerful strains brings the complaints of the people to the ears of the king. Another of the many Icelandic skalds who gathered around St. Olaf was, so called because he composed a laudatory poem on Thorbjorg Kolbrun (the lady with the black eye-brows). He was also one of those who were particularly intimate with the king, but unlike Sighvat, he was a man of firm and unyielding temperament. He was present at the battles of Stiklestad, where the king had appointed a place for him and a few other skalds near his standard, in order that they might have a good opportunity of watching the progress of the battle, and afterward describe the events faithfully in their songs. But Thormod fell in the battle. We have no long poems from him, but only a few short lays produced on various occasions. One of the most beautiful and spirited ones he sang on the evening before the battle, when each one of the king's skalds composed a song for the encouragement of the army. The wild enthusiasm for the battle finds a peculiarly strong expression in Thormod's verses, and the clashing of the swords is heard throughout the song in spite of the rigid form to which he was limited. (Earl-skald) was so called because he had lived with the jarls on the Orkneys, before he came to Norway, where he entered the service of Magnus the Good and Harald the Stern (Hardraði). The numerous poems by him which have been preserved give evidence of considerable talent, and are especially remarkable for easy style, for a more sparing and judicious use of metaphors, for


text: Poems (Nora May French)/San Francisco, New Year's, 1907


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PRING lay gently and softly over Springham. The town was fresh with green and fragrant grass, and the scent of early flowers filled the air. The season meant the beginning of warm and settled weather—bare-footed time. But Springham, having passed out of the era of dirt sidewalks, had at the same time grown away from bare feet; and Bill Harrison, squirming hot toes within their confines of hot leather, leaned forlornly across a picket gate.

Lo, Herbie," he called.

Herbert Quinby, his back propped against the support of a porch pillar, raised one hand to his mouth and went through the motions of swallowing something from a glass.

Bill brightened. Nother party?"

Herbert nodded, and Bill pushed open the gate and came up the cinder walk. Whenever the Woman's Improvement Association gathered at Mrs. Quinby's home, there were always lemonade and cake left over. Bill dropped down upon the porch.

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 "What kind of cake?"

"Almond."

"Last time we had two pieces each. Think we'll get two pieces to-day?"

Herbert rose, leaned across the porch railing and peered through the curtained window. "One piece and a half, anyway," he said, and came back to his place. "Mrs. Busher's inside."

Bill Harrison sighed. A spider hung from a thread at one corner of the porch, and he fished through his pockets, found the stump of a pencil, and began to sketch the dangling insect on the porch floor. "She more than likes almond cake, doesn't she?"

"I don't know why you're always trying to draw bugs," Herbert complained.

A murmur of voices, a low laugh, came from the house.

"Pretty babies," said Mrs. Quinby with mock gravity in her voice, "always make me think of the time when people used to stop me on the street, and look inside the carriage at Herbie and tell me what a pretty baby he was."

A grin spread across Bill Harrison's face. "Herbie," he drawled, "they'd have a hard time proving that on you now."

Herbie shrugged his shoulders against the pillar. At fourteen his face ran mostly to freckles. His hair, thick and clustering, was honestly red, and his neck seemed to have stretched out a little

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 too fast for his body, so that his head looked like a great, flaming knob stuck upon a spindle.

"Can you imagine Herbie as a pretty baby?" Mrs. Quinby said with amusement.

"Ah, let's take a walk," Herbie said sulkily.

It was not that his mother's talk bothered him. He had all of a fourteen-year-old boy's contempt for looks. But the name "Herbie" had begun to rankle. It sometimes sent a shadow to his eyes and a droop to his mouth. More than once, of late, he had found himself picturing his companions addressing him as "Red." That would have had a manly, real-fellow sound. But Herbie. . . . He kicked a pebble from his path and trudged down the walk.

They walked through the warm spring sunshine, turning corners aimlessly, until their wandering steps carried them to Washington Avenue, the main street of the town. A burst of laughter drew their attention to a group of boys clustered halfway up the block. Bill's eyes lighted.

"Something's up," he said with satisfaction, "and we're just in time to see it."

They pushed forward, reached the fringe of the crowd and craned their necks.

A great, tawny man, his beard and head a wild tangle of hair, sat in a chair that was tilted back against the wall of a building. A crutch lay across his lap, and a stump—all that was left of his left leg—stood out stiff and straight.

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 "How about the time, Peg," one of the boys cried, "that you put the kerosene down Mr. Perriwinkle's well?"

Peg Scudder threw back his head and the thick muscles of his neck shook with his mirth. His rough bursts of merriment, the uncertain qualities of his temper, had more than once been told in Herbie's hearing; and so, though Bill Harrison pressed forward through the gathering, he himself held back.

"Blast me, but that was a lark," Peg cried. "Perriwinkle hopped about like a sparrow. 'You're a rowdy,' he said. 'And, mark me, you'll come to no good end.' 'Go on, you,' I said, 'or I'll drop you down the well, too.' He went tearing around to my house and told my Old Man."

"Did you get a hiding, Peg?"

"Oh, he was a hard one, was my Old Man," Peg answered in accents of admiration. "He lambasted me with the buckle end of a strap. That was the night before he got killed, and he lammed me good. 'That will hold you until I get back in the morning,' he said, but he never came back. Blast me, but that was a joke on the Old Man. And this Perriwinkle—his name was Herbie—stopped me on the street and said, 'Well, I suppose you'll go to the devil now.' Oh, he was a sweet one, this Herbie Perriwinkle. All he needed was a petticoat and ribbons in his hair. Regular little ninny."

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 Bill Harrison and the others were laughing, but Herbie drew back with a shudder. The brutality of the man's speech chilled his blood. He walked away. "Bill," he called once; but his chum did not hear him. He moved on. Another thought had taken possession of his mind. Herbie! Petticoats! Ribbons! His walk became a dispirited slouch.

A group of girls of his class, coming toward him on the other side of the street surveyed his slow progress and the patent dissatisfaction that sat upon him. Moved by some imp of mischief they began to chant in chorus:

"Herbie, Herbie—o! Herbie, Herbie—o!"

The treble of their united voices galled him. Cried thus aloud in the streets his name sounded unmistakably girlish. He quickened his steps; the shameful sing-song followed him. He ran, timing his steps and making each one a leap, as though this were some new game.

On fire with mortification he at last reached home. The visitors were gone. Evidently Mrs. Busher's appetite had failed her; there was more cake left than he had anticipated.

"Herbie," his mother called from the kitchen, "there's cake and lemonade there for you and Bill Harrison."

Herbie stared gloomily at the pitcher and the platter. His silence, with such a treat at hand, was unusual. Mrs. Quinby came to the doorway.

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 "Why, Herbie, what is the matter?"

"I hate it."

"You hate what?"

"My name."

"Herbie! What has happened to you? You were named after your uncle, and he was governor. . . ."

"Why wasn't I named after somebody who had a decent name?" he demanded recklessly.

The good humor left Mrs. Quinby's face. "Herbie Quinby, I don't know what in the world has been coming over you of late. You had better attend to the garden until your father comes home. We'll see what he has to say about this."

Gone was the prospect of lemonade and cake. Even while he was taking the gardening tools from the cellar he heard Bill Harrison whistling at the front gate, but gave no sign that the sound reached his ears. Through the hours that were left of the afternoon he hoed among the vegetables, working doggedly, not because the labor held a charm, but because the exercise gave an outlet to his tumult of emotions. The sun went down behind Camel-back Hill. The shadows of the growing crops lengthened toward the east. And then a step sounded behind him, and a longer, broader shadow stood beside his own.

"What's this Mother's been telling me, Herbie?"

Bitterness welled into his voice as he answered

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 and passionately recited his wrongs. Yet even as he spoke he felt that his father would say, "Nonsense, nonsense; there must be no more of this."

There was an interval of silence after he had finished.

"About those girls calling after you . . ." Mr. Quinby began.

The tone caused him to lift his head.

"I wouldn't give it a thought, Bert. That's just girl stuff. A fellow never pays any attention to girls."

"Bert!" The sound of it was sweet. There and then his father became a gorgeous personage, a king among men, and the seeds of hero worship were sown in the boy's soul.

In the days that followed a rich and fine intimacy sprang up between them. He learned things that were new, strange and romantic. His father had once been a baseball pitcher of great skill; there were newspaper clippings, yellow with age, in a scrapbook to proye it. Bert read these clippings time and again, and then took them out to Bill Harrison and to Dolf Muller.

"Your father was some pitcher," Dolf said admiringly, and found a remnant of a cracker in his pocket and ate it.

Bert's heart was filled with a glowing pride. When school reopened in September and he entered the eighth grade, a new world seemed at the same time to open to him. As soon as the study

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 lamp was lighted and his father would open the evening newspaper, he would bring his books to the same table. Together they would sit there, and often the paper would be laid aside so that the man could help him through his problems—mostly problems in arithmetic.

That winter some miracle of transformation worked its spell upon him. Suddenly his shoulders broadened, and he shot up a good two inches and graduated into long trousers. Yet, for the most part, he was unmindful of his growth; nor was he aware that the little town of Springham was spreading out and stretching its limbs. The weekly newspaper was sold by its aged proprietor to younger men, and blossomed as a four-page daily. The trolley line, long promised, at last came through from the big city twenty miles to the west. A power plant lifted a high, sooty smokestack over by the swift rush of the Springham River. The feeble street lamps at the corners gave place to electric lights. The railroad established a junction point and a roundhouse on the Camel-back Hill plateau. A contractor bought a block of ground on Washington Avenue and began to build brick stores.

And then came a time when the stretching growth of the town reached out and touched the boy's own hearthstone. No longer now did his father relax and scan the evening newspaper. The evenings were given over to letter writing, and

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 each day the mail man left letters and packages at the door. Bert felt obscurely that some change was impending. Night after night he went to sleep lulled by the indistinct murmur of his father's and his mother's voices from downstairs; and twice, in the morning, he found the dining-room table littered with papers closely covered with figures. Once he studied one of the sheets. Here and there, all over it, were dollar signs.

"Mother?" he asked, "what's this?"

His mother took the papers and informed him, jestingly, that curiosity had once killed a cat. But he noticed that she put the papers away carefully. Something was afoot, and he was being barred from the secret. He resented it.

That night a problem in algebra baffled him. He appealed to his father for help.

"I'm busy," Mr. Quinby said absently. "You'll have to paddle your own canoe to-night, Bert."

There was no reason for him to be hurt; yet this was the first time he had come for help and had failed to find it. First, secrets from which he was barred, and now—this. A stubborn line formed around his mouth. He went back to his chair, closed his book and pushed it aside. The man, frowning over a letter he was writing, did not observe what the boy had done. Bert went sullenly to bed.

For two days the sullen mood marked him for its own. Then at the breakfast table, he found

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 that his father was to go into business for himself.

The boy sat up straight. "Going to open a store, Dad?"

"Yes. I've leased one of those new Washington Avenue places; I'll open as a men's furnisher. I've sold goods for other people long enough. I'm going to try my hand at selling for myself."

The announcement had an important sound, and the boy forgot the hurt he had been nursing. He had always envied boys whose fathers owned stores. Dolf Muller's father conducted a bakery, and Dolf's crumby pockets were always filled with cakes that he dispensed lavishly. Bill Harrison's father ran a grocery, and Bill never lacked for apples, and raisins, and prunes. Once they had all looked at a raw prune through a magnifying glass, and the glass had revealed walking things hidden from the naked eye. They had eaten prunes that day with the feeling that they were doing a desperate and hazardous deed. He remembered, too, the respect that had gone out to Bill the day he had taken them behind the counter and had let them dip their hands into the brine of the pickle barrel and fish about for the largest pickles. These things had the mark of power and affluence.

And now his own father was to open a store! He gave the news to Bill and to Dolf.

"I wish my father had a clothing store," Dolf

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 said enviously. "Then I would always have new ties, and new shirts, and new suits."

Bill Harrison grinned. "Wouldn't make much difference in you, Dolf. You'd still look like a bursting barrel."

"I don't look like a half-starved chicken," Dolf cried indignantly.

Bill's smile broadened. "Neither do I. I lack the feathers."

Bert experienced a greater sense of the importance of the undertaking. Washington Avenue began to see more of him than it had ever seen before. Flanked by Dolf and Bill he critically inspected the workmanship of the sign-painter who lettered "H. V. Quinby, Men's Outfitter," on the store windows.' He counted the boards the carpenters built into shelves, and saw them fashion the chestnut rods for the clothes hangers. And he saw, too, through a window across the street, the moonish, inscrutable face of Old Man Clud surveying every step of the progress that was made.

"What's he so interested in?" Bert wanted to know.

Bill Harrison glanced at the window. "Who? Old Man Clud? Maybe he thinks your father'll be coming to him for money sometime."

The remark made no impression on Bert; he was absorbed in watching expressmen carry in the glass-topped show cases. In fact, he knew nothing of the man across the street save that people

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 said he slept in his office so that he would save the rent of lodgings and that sometimes, for weeks at a time, he was not seen at all.

He was still watching the expressmen when, out of the corner of his eye, he saw Dolf and Bill nudge each other and draw away a step. A panting, asthmatic voice spoke at his elbow.

"Hello, boys. I see you're watching the creation of a new enterprise. That is good. Always be interested in business. The more business, the more prosperity. Everybody wants prosperity."

Bert looked around and saw Old Man Clud—it was the only name the town as a whole gave him. He was short and amazingly fat, and his skin had the sick yellow color that one sees on sour cream. His face was a tremendously smooth circle of smooth flesh—no mustache, no sign of a beard, no eyebrows; and though the day was chilly and raw, he was sweating an unhealthy sweat.

"Your father's business, is it not?" he asked.

"Yes, sir."

The man wheezed an exclamation of pleasure. "I like to see a lad 'sir' his elders. It's a sign of politeness. Show me a polite lad and I'll show you one who will go far. It is easy seen that your manners have been taken care of. And might I inquire when this store will be opened?"

"In about ten days."

"Business," he panted, "is the life blood of a community. It is good to see it flowing so ener-

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 getically. No business, no money; no money, no progress. Let me see churches and business. Then you know that everything is all right. Men's souls and men's pocketbooks are being taken care of."

As abruptly as he had begun the conversation he ended it, and waddled across the roadway to the other side of the street. Bert saw him pass into the doorway of a frame building. A few minutes later he appeared at one of the windows. One fat hand reached out and drew down the shade.

"I wonder what he wanted?" Bert asked suspiciously.

"He gives me the creeps," Dolf shivered. "My father says that he's seen him on the coldest winter days and that he's always sweating. I guess he's got a lot of money."

"What business is he in?" Bert demanded. "There's no sign on his window."

"He lends money," Bill answered.

"My father says that people who lend money never need signs," Dolf said wisely. "There's always a lot of people trying to borrow."

Next day stock began to arrive in bewildering array, and Bert forgot Old Man Clud in the excitement of showing the treasure to his friends. They clambered about the store prying into boxes, cases and bales. His father, forever sorting, checking and counting, more than once had to

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 order them out of the way. And then Bill Harrison, stumbling, lurched into a carefully dressed dummy destined for one of the windows and sent it crashing to the floor.

"Bert," his father said sharply, "I'll have to ask you to do your playing in the street."

Bert reddened, and after a moment walked out of the store with Dolf at his heels. Bill, before following them, brushed the dummy with a whisk broom.

"I don't blame your father for getting sore," he told Bert.

"Your father doesn't get sore when we're in his store."

"N—no," Bill admitted honestly; "but we don't go running around knocking things over."

Bert's sensitive nature was not salved. He had been censured before his friends. He went home. At supper that night his father said:

"You'll have to stop fooling around the store, Bert. It doesn't look businesslike."

Fooling! And he had been so proud to display its wonders to Dolf and to Bill. He scowled down at his plate. Later, when his father had gone back to business, his mother tried to soothe him.

"Dad is having unaccustomed worries just now, Bert. You should be more considerate."

"He needn't have any worries about me," the boy said sourly. "I'll keep away. I know when I'm not wanted."

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 His mother tousled his hair. "Don't be a mule, Bert," she counseled.

Nevertheless, he did not go back; and Mr. Quinby, absorbed in the work, did not seem to miss him. The days passed and finally came the time when the store was to open. Leather souvenirs were to be given away that night, and Bert had promised Dolf and Bill that they should each have one. Early in the evening they came looking for him.

"Going down to Washington Avenue?" Dolf asked.

"No," Bert said shortly. He hoped they would not mention the souvenirs and was relieved when they avoided the subject. Yet, after they were gone, he felt that he had been belittled intheir eyes.

Night came, and he rebelliously choked his natural desire to see the store in the glory of its new lights. Long after he should have been in bed he sat up in his darkened room, waiting. Between 10 and 11 o'clock his father came in.

"How was business?" his mother asked anxiously.

"Not what I expected." His father's voice was tired. "I wonder if I opened this store before the town was ready for it?"

The boy experienced a queer, baffling sense of satisfaction. "That's what he gets for chasing me," he told himself, and went to bed.

He was young, and moody—and he did not understand.

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IME moves rapidly and changes many conceptions—even in so small a place as Springham. Before two months had passed Bert was aware that he had suffered no personal tragedy because his friends could not make a lounging place of his father's store. The business did not hold the romantic possibilities of a grocery shop or a bakery. It could offer neither crackers nor pickles, cake nor cheese. The men's furnishing trade was bleak and barren to youngand glowing imaginations. It was devoid of savory odors and barren to perpetually empty stomachs. There was something monotonous and prosaic, after the first novelty had worn off, in collars, and socks, and garters. Dolf and Bill soon lost interest, and he did not have to hold them off from coming to the place. Thus was his pride salved and saved.

He had vowed, with impetuous anger, that he would have nothing more to do with the store—but that, too, was subject to revision. The store had not disowned him. Now and then people would buy while on their way to the trains, and ask to have the packages sent home. His father

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 called upon him to make these deliveries. He felt awkward and cheap carrying small parcels through the streets.

"I don't see why we can't have an automobile delivery wagon," he grumbled.

"I can't afford it," his father explained. "I must watch pennies. There's enough worry to putting a business on its feet without adding the worry of paying for a car."

The boy was glum. "It takes a long time to walk around with packages."

"How about your bicycle? Say, Bert, why didn't we think of this before? I'll have a carrying tray fitted to the frame. That will help a lot."

Bert was sorry he had spoken. The bicycle had been his very own. Now the tray, to his mind, heralded it as no longer his, but part of a business that was advertising its cheapness. And then he saw the old town cobbler pedaling a bicycle and delivering his jobs, the shoes tied together by their laces and hanging over his shoulders. He took the tray from the bicycle.

"What's the matter?" his father demanded. "Are you ashamed to carry goods for me? You never come near the store unless I ask you to."

His father had noticed—at last. Contentment spread genially through Bert's veins. So he had made his father miss his presence. He felt that he had scored a triumph. His sky brightened. In the satisfaction of the moment he put the carrier

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 back on the bicycle and whistled as he tightened the nuts.

His father went back into the house. "I guess I was a bit rough on him," he said uncomfortably, "but he has been avoiding the place."

Mrs. Quinby's mind dwelt, for an instant, on the evening Bert had been told to stop fooling around the store. She had tried to smooth out the situation then; she said nothing about it now. Instead:

"Why don't you try paying him a dollar a week for making his deliveries?" she asked.

Mr. Quinby turned quickly. "Pay my own son for—"

Her hand fell with soft pressure on his arm. "Not in that spirit—just to make him feel that he has an interest in the business, that he's part of it. When I was a girl dad always gave the boys so much a month for their chores. He said it was part of the farm profits that they had earned. It gave them a feeling that the farm was theirs. Perhaps that is the reason why, with so many country boys going to the city, they have stuck to the old place and made it pay."

"Well," Mr. Quinby said doubtfully, "we'll try it—though there won't be any profits to speak of along Washington Avenue for a while."

Next morning Bert learned of the arrangement. He had a shrewd idea that his mother had had a hand in it; but this thought was swallowed up in

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Rh rare euphony, and for their truly poetic sentiment. , who belonged to the followers of King Eystein, made himself particularly famous by his great religious poem, "Geisli" (The Sunbeam) or Olafsdrapa, which he composed in honor of St. Olaf, and declaimed in the Christ Church at Nidaros (Throndhjem). It celebrated the merits of the king and the saints in behalf of Christianity, and especially the miracles worked by Olaf after his death. The saga very characteristically tells "that the church during the declamation of the poem was filled with the most exquisite fragrance, a token that the poem had received the approval of the saint." It is the oldest religious drapa which has been preserved in perfect condition. Finally we must mention the celebrated historian, who besides other poems composed the above-mentioned Háttatal, and his nephews (sons of his brother), , and. Sturla is the last poet who is known to have composed drapas in honor of Norwegian kings.

That drapas celebrating kings and princes ceased to be produced was a natural result of the change of the times. A more peaceful political and social life had taken the place of continual warfare, and consequently there was no more use for the rigid forms in which the productions of the skalds were moulded. Poetry therefore sought another field, that of religion, for its materials. To be sure religious poems had already been written in the preceding epoch by some of the skalds. Such a poem is extant, namely, the Sólarljóð (Song of the Sun), which is written in the Ljoðháttr style, and is largely based on the heathen myths. It belongs unmistakably to the oldest Christian age, and Halfred Vandrædaskald's drapa on the resurrection is perhaps still older. But yet the epoch of the religious drapa cannot properly be said to begin before the close of the heroic age. The most celebrated of the religious poems is the Lilja (The Lily) by the monk, a kind of Messiad, written in an original metre which henceforth was called the Lily metre. It


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 the contemplation of one whole dollar a week. Under the inspiration of this good news, his interest in the store was suddenly and rapturously quickened. He saw himself, after a time, receiving two dollars a week, then five dollars, then ten dollars. He built castles in the air with all the reckless ardor of an imaginative boy.

But he learned, before another week was out, that it was one thing to plan a reawakening of interest, and another thing to live it. By the time his first dollar had been earned and paid, the store had again become an uninspiring and dry exhibit of ties on their racks, shirts under polished glass cases, and collars in neatly stacked wooden boxes. The day the dummy had been knocked over something spontaneous had gone from him and could not be called back. He had grown accustomed to being out of the place, and the old charm of family possession could not be revived.

And he had grown accustomed to spending his evenings with Dolf and Bill, and no longer missed his father. Nights when there was nothing to deliver he and his friends would roam the town, speaking boastfully of the things that they would do when they were men, keeping to the dark or the lighted streets as the spirit moved them. Sometimes they went out to Camel-back Hill and saw the construction gangs, the pick and shovel men, rushing the work of laying the network of tracks that would form the spider web of a rail-

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 road junction yard. Under the white glare and the black shadows of the are lights, the workmen seemed gigantic and unreal. Work cars, behind puffing engines, rolled up and down the grade, and brakemen, waving their lanterns, lightly swung on and off while the wheels were in motion.

"I'll bet we could do that," Bert said suddenly.

Dolf was doubtful. "Getting on might not be so hard, but how about swinging off?"

"The engine always slows down before it gets to the top of the hill. It scarcely crawls. That's the time to swing off."

Bill Harrison cocked his head to one side and surveyed the scene. "I'm going to try that some night," he drawled.

They knew that he was fooling. And yet, as the days passed, they began to speak about it, conjuring up the sensation of swinging aboard, feeling the air sweep past them as they clung to the step and the hand rods, imagining themselves dropping off with the ease of the trainmen. The risk began to wear the garb of enticing adventure.

Snow came about this time, sixteen inches of it in one fall. The spreading railroad yard was buried under a soggy blanket, and the boys ceased to go there and ceased to talk about the prospect of riding the cars. The weather left little to do, and Bert turned to his school books. In truth, they had been neglected of late and the monthly report he brought home that same week ran

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 mostly to 70's and 75's. His father studied it and was frankly displeased.

"This is bad," he said without preamble.

The boy thought that the wisest course was to say nothing.

"You had been getting around go in everything. Now you're just missing the line of failure. What's the trouble?"

Bert saw that he would have to make a defense. "Well, you used to help. . . ."

"That's a poor excuse," his father interrupted. "It's a sign of weakness. If I were the richest man in the world I could buy you houses, motor cars, yachts, jewelry, clothes, the watchful care of servants, but there would be one thing my money could not get you—knowledge. You've got to dig that out for yourself. Don't tell me you failed because I did not help you. You haven't been studying. Isn't that right?"

"I. . . . Yes," said the boy. He had suddenly decided to tell the truth about studying, anyway. Yet he felt that there was another angle over which he had had no control. If the evenings around the reading lamp had continued. . ..

"Why couldn't Bert bring his books to the store now and then?" his mother asked.

He flashed her a glance and knew, instinctively, that she understood.

"No reason in the world why he can't," said his father.

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 Yet other interests called—Bill Harrison was erecting a wireless—and four nights passed before he took some of his books down to Washington Avenue. His father, intently reading a trade paper, lifted absorbed eyes as the door opened, nodded a greeting as he saw who entered, and promptly went back to the printed page. Bert waited. By and by a customer came in, and on his heels a second. They held his father in conversation until almost nine o'clock. After that Mr. Quinby busied himself with checking up the day's sales.

Bert walked down to the door and stood there staring out moodily at the street. Across the way a light was burning in Old Man Clud's office, and a huge figure was blackly outlined on the drawn shade. But Bert was not thinking of the lender of money. His father had forgotten the nature of his errand. He might have reasoned that his father's mind had been centered on something else; it would have been simple to have called his attention to the lapse. Instead, with a sort of hurt obstinacy common to boys, Bert elected to remain silent and to view himself as one who had been wronged.

"Time to close up," said his father's voice.

They walked home together. The man was still held by some sober problem of his business and did not notice his son's silence. In the house Mrs. Quinby asked in a low voice:

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 "Did your father find time to help you?"

Bert gave her a glance and went up to his room.

He still held to his impression of martyrdom. Half undressed, he suddenly paused and got out his books, stubbornly resolved to fight his way without help. "I'll show them," he vowed, and plunged into the work. It gave him a sort of perverse satisfaction, a sorrow for himself, to think that he had to labor thus. It was long after eleven o'clock when he finished and went to bed.

That night's work gave him a sense of independence that was new and intoxicating. The winter was on in earnest, there was cold comfort in roaming the streets, and he turned to his own room as a haven. He deserted the family quarters downstairs. With the door closed the place was his castle and he was its king, even though its possessions of bed, chair, dresser, table and wall pictures were scarcely regal. Here he studied alone. The four walls took on a glamour and a personality he had never noticed before and began to reflect his moods and his humors. If he were gay, the place seemed to enclose happiness. Were he morose, the room grew gray. He reveled in its isolation and its impregnability.

From the start he had saved most of his dollar a week. The time came when he walked into the Springham Savings Bank and opened an account, duly impressed by the importance of the

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 moment. It was characteristic that he should display the bank book to Dolf and to Bill, but should show it to nobody at home.

The day he made his second deposit, Old Man Clud was just ahead of him in the line that ran to the receiving teller's window. The lender's overcoat was buttoned about him, he seemed cold, and yet an almost imperceptible dew of perspiration was faintly beaded on his fat cheeks. He handed in his pass book, and Bert saw the bills on top of it were many. The man's eyes never left the money while the teller counted it. Afterwards he walked as far as the bank lobby, paused, and drew a red memorandum book from his pocket. Into this he copied something from his bank record. It was as though he did not entirely trust the bank, but must have some private reckoning of his own. He was slipping the bank book into a pocket when Bert came along on his way to the street.

"Good afternoon, my young friend," Old Man Clud wheezed. "I see you are following the path of wisdom. The man with money ahead can snap his fingers at the world. He does not go to his bed at night worrying about what will happen in the morning. You may have heard people call me a miser?" Old Man Clud's glance was shrewd.

Bert shook his head. "No, sir."

The man laughed a silent laugh that shook his

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 rolls of soft flesh. "You'll hear it in time. I've noticed that those who call me names are usually the first to come around and whine for loans. The thrifty man is always held up to ridicule, but I have noticed that he has bread in his cupboard when others go hungry. Think of that every time you put away a dollar. And how is your good father's business progressing?"

"All right, sir."

"I rejoice to see industry win its reward. Work brings money; money brings security; security brings respect. People may not want to give you their respect, but they have to. You hold the whip hand. And may I ask how long you have been saving money?"

"Since my father began to pay me for delivering orders."

"Wise youth. He starts to save money the moment he begins to earn. You will go far. I said it the day I spoke to you in front of your father's store. I say it again. Believe me, my young friend, it is a wise course to pay proper respect to a dollar. Good day to you," and the money lender waddled away, all wrapped up in his greatcoat.

Bert was subtly flattered by the attention that had been paid him. Old Man Clud was a rich man—that, to the boy's idea, was established by the greenbacks that had gone through the teller's window. To be treated on terms of equality by a rich man was an experience not calculated to

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 make a boy think any the less of himself. Bert began to picture his fortune growing until in time it would compare favorably with the hoard of the lender. Nevertheless he was not above a boy's penchant for the odds and ends of attractive bargains. When he heard that a school companion had an accordion that could be bought for seventy-five cents, he set out to find the treasure, and viewed it with envious eyes. His fingers itched to hold it and play along its keys. In the end he bought it and took it home, and carried it up to his room. There, with the door closed and locked, he sat with a chair tilted back against the wall and surrendered himself blissfully to the instrument, and made the night hideous with tortured sounds.

By springtime he was able to play the accordion passably well. Then, as abruptly as it had ensnared his interest, its charm was gone. The nights were once more warm, and he, and Dolf, and Bill Harrison resumed their walks and turned their steps toward the railroad yard. It had grown tremendously in size over the winter. Long strings of freight cars ran up to, and down from, Camel-back Hill, and brakemen's lanterns made mysterious signals in the darkness.

"I said last fall that I'd have a go at those trains," Bill drawled. "I've been thinking it over. The last step of the last car is the place to make your try. If you miss there's no car behind to give you fits."

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 Dolf moved away a step. "Let's get back to town."

"Lets try it," Bill said suddenly. The lazy drawl was gone from his voice.

The challenge sent a thrill along Bert's spine. His blood quickened, and even the hesitating Dolf was stirred. Yet they both held back, eager to try the adventure, lured by the element of danger, daunted by the unaccustomed risk.

"Who'll do it second if I do it first?" Bill demanded.

The challenge could not be ignored. "I will," Bert said recklessly.

Dolf felt that they were looking at him and weighing his courage. His heart sank. "I will, too," he said, and wondered if they guessed how much he was afraid.

The headlight of an advancing locomotive sent silver ribbons of light ahead of it along the steel rails.

"Here comes my chariot," said Bill. He stepped out across the intervening tracks. They saw the engine pass him, saw his body lost in the darker background of the trains, saw the last car of the string approach—and then saw a form swaying on the step and holding to the handrails as the car went past.

"He did it," cried Dolf.

The hazard had been conquered and made to seem easy. Their fears were swept away and they

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 were eager to do the trick themselves, to stand squarely on accomplishment with their companion. Impatiently they waited for another train and for Bill. Bill came first, looming up out of the dark with quick strides.

"Shucks!" he said; "that was easy. You just catch the hand rods, reach for the step with your foot and swing up with the motion of the train. It's no trouble getting off at the top—the train almost comes to a stop. You're next, Bert. I'll ride up with you."

"There's only one last step," said Bert.

"I'm an experienced rider," Bill said whimsically. "I'll grab one of the middle cars. You get the car after me, Bert, and give Dolf the end. Here comes another chariot. We're off. No bumping into each other."

Bert was conscious of Bill above him and Dolf below. The clatter of the train appalled him of a sudden; the speed was greater than he had expected. Yet, as Bill began to run with the train, he ran, too. Acar end overtook him. His hands found their grips. His foot got the step. For one dizzy instant he hung suspended; then he was up, hanging on with a desperate clutch, conscious that he was bumping and swaying, in danger of falling off, and conscious also of the intoxicating sweep of night wind across his face.

He got a firmer grip, a firmer foothold. His heart had ceased to thump. He looked ahead and

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 saw Bill riding on his perch. Behind, Dolf was hanging on and his coat was flapping. They had all made it. Bert gave a shout of exultation and rode up Camel-back like a voyager come to his own.

Bill had told them the truth—at the top the train's speed was down to a crawl. They dropped off and gathered in an eager group. Bert was the first to speak.

"That's what I call sport." His voice shook with excitement. "Are we going to do it again to-morrow night?"

"I am," said Bill. "Some day when I'm president of this railroad you fellows can write a book about how I got my start hanging on to freight cars up Camel-back Hill."

"We want to be quiet about this," Dolf cautioned. "If my father knew about this he'd hammer the tar out of me."

Bill grinned. "I guess I'd get dusted off a bit myself. Make it half-past seven to-morrow night."

They came down the hill and across the tracks. At the yard limits a bulky form blocked their path. Bert caught a faint gleam of brass buttons.

"What you fellows been up to?" demanded a voice of authority.

They had run foul of Patrolman Glynn of the Springham police. Dolf tried to melt into the

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 night and get away, but the same stern voice bid him halt. A flashlight snapped and shot forth a shaft of radiance. The gleam went across their hands, stained with the rust that gathers on iron and steel left exposed to the weather—hand rods, for instance.

"Hooking train rides," said the policeman. They made no denial. The light moved to their faces. They knew that he was identifying them; marking them for future notice. Bert shivered with the dread of possible arrest.

"What's the matter with you kids?" Policeman Glynn demanded. "Lost your senses? Want to get shipped to the undertaker's? Let me catch you down here again and I'll run you in."

So he wasn't going to arrest them, at any rate. Bert swallowed the lump that had tightened his throat and edged away. The light snapped out. He took to his heels and heard the patter of Bill's and Dolf's feet in his rear.

Not until they were safely back in town did they check their pace. For a block or two they walked in silence.

"I guess that ends our rides," Dolf said at last.

"I guess it doesn't," Bill Harrison retorted.

"But he said he'd lock us. . . ."

"Sure; if he catches us. How about going into the yard at a different place and coming out at that place? Shucks, he can't be everywhere at once, can he? He's got only two feet. We don't

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 want to stop just when we've learned how to do this, do we? We'll go down there to-morrow night, and if everything is all right we'll have some more fun."

"Suits me," said Bert, fortified by Bill's logic; and Dolf, after a moment of hesitation, threw in his lot with the others.

Somehow, in the light of another day, Bert found that his faith in Bill Harrison's reasoning was not so strong. Policeman Glynn's brass buttons had an ally known as "The Law." Bert's knowledge of this partnership was vague; but he knew that the law had a long, mysterious, far-reaching arm that nipped evildoers and lodged them in prison cells. He remembered hearing his father say that the law never slept. The more he pondered this the more disturbed he became. He had plenty of time to ponder for this was the day for his mother to entertain the Woman's Improvement Association, and he was glued to the porch with the uncertainty of how much of the layer cake Mrs. Busher might leave uneaten. Even apprehension could not disturb his healthy appetite.

Gladly, now, would he have postponed the night's adventure until sure that Policeman Glynn had ceased to keep a watchful eye on the railroad yards. Yet, in his boyish pride, he would have suffered martyrdom rather than admit that he feared to run the risk. The day shortened; the

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 women left the house. Moodily, after they were gone, he ate almond cake and swallowed lemonade.

"Bert," his mother asked, as the third slice disappeared, "where do you put it all? You'll be so stuffed that you'll have to swallow your supper with the aid of a shoehorn."

Nevertheless, he did ample justice to the evening meal. After his father had gone back to the store he climbed the stairs to his room, took down the accordion, and played it aimlessly with one ear cocked to catch the chime of the parlor clock downstairs. Presently the gong sounded half-past seven, and he put the accordion away.

"I'm going out, Mom," he called.

"Be in by nine," his mother called from the kitchen.

"Yes'm." Out on the porch he adjusted his cap; his hands were cold. And then he saw his father coming hurriedly down the street. One look at his father's face and he was seized with forebodings.

"Where are you going?" Mr. Quinby demanded.

"Out," Bert answered vaguely.

"Out where?"

"With the fellows."

"With the same fellows, I guess, that Officer Glynn saw you with last night. Were you going to the railroad yards? I thought so. Well,

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 you're going in and you're going to stay there." His voice suddenly changed. "Have you gone crazy? Do you want to get killed? Are you trying to worry your mother and me to death?"

Bert squeezed his way back through the door and made for the sanctuary of his room. Downstairs he heard the pitch of his father's voice, his mother's one cry of alarm, and his father's exasperated: "I don't know what's got into the boy. He was never like this before. I ought to flog it out of him." What his mother said in reply to this he could not catch. After an interval his father's step sounded in the lower hall. He held his breath. But the step went on to the porch, creaked on the wooden steps, and died in the distance of the street. So intently did he listen that he did not catch a lighter step behind him. His mother's voice startled him.

"Why did you do it, Bert? Didn't you know the danger?"

He tried to explain how easy it had been, but the look on his mother's face halted him.

"If it is so easy, Bert, why are so many railroad brakemen killed? Didn't you stop to realize how much this might worry us? Why did you do it?"

"I guess we just wanted to have some fun."

"Fun! Bert! Did you think it would be fun for us if anything happened to you?"

Her voice stabbed him with a realization of the folly of his escapade. "I . . . I won't do it

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 again," he said huskily. "Honest, Mom; I won't, I won't even go down to the yards."

He was a chastened boy when his mother left him. Outdoors a gentle spring rain had begun to fall, and he sat at the window and listened to its soft drumming on the porch roof. Almost imperceptibly, a melancholy mood settled over him. He reached for the accordion again, and from its stops drew forth a succession of weird and mournful notes.

A long time he played these aimless whimperings, and then the patter of the rain was drowned by a harsher sound. Somebody was running along the street. A sense of intuition told him that this was a call for him. Before he could reach the stairs his mother, with a catch in her voice, was calling up to him:

"Bert! Bert!"

He took the stairs by twos and by threes. Dolf, his clothing glistening with rain, stood in the hall. He was shivering and his hat quivered in his hands. Suddenly he began to cry.

"Run over, run over," he sobbed. "I was right there and I couldn't do a thing for him. Right over one leg. He lay there alongside the track and didn't say a word."

Twice Bert's lips moved before words came. "How did it happen?"

"The rain. The step was slippery. He was just pulling himself up when . . . when he fell.

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 Then I began to shout, and railroad men came, and they picked him up."

"Where is he now?" Mrs. Quinby asked. She was holding a handkerchief to her mouth, and shaking her head, and murmuring broken words.

"They sent for Dr. Elman, and when the doctor came Bill was put on a flat car, and the doctor got up with him, and then they started for the hospital in the city."

Run over! Those two words kept pounding through Bert's stunned mind. Maybe Bill might die. He knew that Dolf was going, still crying, still shivering, and that his mother had put his raincoat about the wet, miserable boy. But these things made little impressions upon him. Run over! His shocked mind tried to straighten out the confusion of a horrified thought. Then his mother, having piloted Dolf on his way, came back from the door.

"You see it now, Bert?" she asked.

He could only nod.

"Who first suggested this train riding?"

His face went white. "I don't know."

But he did know. He had been the first to suggest the possibility. When he got to his room he threw himself across the bed, and gripped the coverlet with his hands, and stared, wide-eyed, across the room. Bill Harrison with one leg, hobbling through life on a crutch.

"Just like Peg Scudder," Bert whispered hoarsely; "just like Peg Scudder."

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SUALLY Mr. Quinby came home from the store by half-past nine. To-night the clock was almost at eleven before his latchkey sounded in the lock. Mrs. Quinby, who had been waiting in the dining room, went forward to meet him.

There were tired lines about the man's face, and stern lines about his mouth. "Does Bert know about Bill Harrison?" he asked.

"Yes. Dolf Muller came here. Dolf was almost hysterical."

"Humph! Too late for that now. I waited until Dr. Elman got back. Bill's leg is off above the knee. Elman says he stood the shock well. And if Glynn hadn't told me to-night what was going on, it might just as well have been Bert instead of Bill. I'm going to talk to that young man."

"Harry." Her hand stayed him. "Don't be harsh with Bert. He's promised me that he'll never go to the yards again."

"Humph! Ready to promise anything after the damage is done."

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 "No," said Mrs. Quinby. "He promised me before he knew that Bill had been hurt."

"That changes things a bit," Mr. Quinby said after a moment. The lines about his mouth had lost their iron. "That's the worst of kids; they never see the next minute or the next hour. That boy in the hospital is handicapped for life. Is Bert still up?"

"I don't know."

"I'll see."

Bert, still lying across the bed, started upright as the door opened and his father came into the room. His eyes asked a bleak question: "What are you going to do to me?" Something deep in the man softened at the boy's stricken attitude.

"Bert," he said gently, "I'm not going to scold. I guess you've learned your lesson. Thank God, you didn't have to learn it as Bill learned his."

The worry that had weighed down the boy for hours broke from him in confession, drawn out by his father's unexpected sympathy.

"It's my fault," he choked, "that Bill's leg is gone. I was the one to talk of jumping trains. He'd never have thought of it if it wasn't for me."

In an instant Mr. Quinby had his hand on the boy's knee. "You, mustn't let this prey on your mind. Blaming yourself won't give Bill back his leg. None of you stopped to count the cost—and Bill paid. It might just as well have been you or

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 Dolf. After this, whenever you start on a new adventure, ask yourself: 'Is this wise, and would I tell about it at home?' That sort of questioning will keep you out of a lot of trouble."

Yet the boy's face remained glum. The man saw that he must rouse him from his depression. The accordion was where Bert had laid it at Dolf's coming. Mr. Quinby picked it up and inserted his hands in the straps.

"I used to be able to tease one of these things," he announced. "Didn't know that, did you? What will you have? Call your tune."

Bert showed a spark of interest. "Can you play 'Turkey in the Straw?

"I could—once," said the man, and began to pick out the melody.

"Must have been a long time ago," said Bert, and gave a half-hearted grin.

Mr. Quinby settled back and warmed up to his work. His fingers began to find the keys. Mrs. Quinby came upstairs and stood in the doorway.

"It's late," she reminded him. "You'll have the neighbors throwing shoes in the window."

"Not if they know good music," Mr. Quinby chuckled.

"Huh!" said Bert. "Call that music?"

Mr. Quinby gave the accordion an extra flourish. "How's that?"

"Fierce," said the boy.

His father threw back his head and sang:

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"It sounds better when you just play the music," Bert said, and laughed at his father's look of comic dismay. As for Mr. Quinby, he had succeeded in arousing the boy's spirits and he put the instrument down. Bert walked over to the window. The rain had ceased, the stars were out, and the night seemed to hold a greater peace.

All the boy's interests for the next five days centered on a doctor's house set down among towering maple trees in the heart of the town. He found that each morning Dr. Elman motored to the hospital. Leaning against the trunk of one of the trees he would watch the road and wait; sometimes on a rising tide of hope, sometimes in the cold clutch of a great fear. Usually, about noon, the doctor's dusty car would roll up to the curb and stop. Bert, edging away from the tree, would grip his courage as the man came up the walk.

"How's Bill?" he would ask.

"He's holding his own," the doctor would answer. He was a gruff man, not given to wasting words.

On the sixth day the report varied.

"He'll pull through," Dr. Elman said. "Youth—good constitution."

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 "He'll pull through!" Then all those other reports had meant that there was danger that Bill, the whimsical, the droll, would sink away into the Great Silence. Bert stood there motionless near the tree for many minutes.

A week later his father brought home momentous news.

"If you and Dolf want to see Bill, Dr. Elman will take you to the hospital to-morrow. Be at his office no later than nine o'clock."

Bert was waiting at his old tree twenty minutes before the time, and Dolf arrived shortly afterwards, looking as though he had been squeezed and pushed into his carefully brushed clothes. They stood around and watched the house. By and by Dr. Elman appeared, opened the garage doors, and backed the car down toward them.

"Rear seat," he said. "Don't touch that bag on the floor. Valuable instruments."

On any other occasion they would have enjoyed this ride through a fair country blooming under the touch of spring. They talked in hushed tones until they came to the city, and then their voices ceased entirely. Through a traffic maze of lurching trucks, clanging trolleys and speeding automobiles Dr. Elman wormed his car until at last it swung up a wide concrete driveway to a cool-looking building of gray stone.

"The hospital," Dolf said in an awed whisper.

They followed the doctor inside, walking close

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 together as though seeking mutual courage. Their nostrils quivered to a combined odor of ether and iodoform—an odor that, once inhaled, is forever afterwards known as the hospital smell. Nurses in crisp, starched uniforms swished past them on noiseless feet. An attendant wheeled a stretcher bed down a corridor. They looked about them with apprehensive attention and kept at Dr. Elman's heels, up to the second floor and into a room.

"Hello, Bill," said the doctor; and now, all at once, his voice was gentle as a woman's.

A head moved on a pillow. Tired eyes lighted with a spark of interest.

"Hello, fellows," said a wan voice.

So this was Bill—this white, pinched face. Bert stared at the bed in fearsome fascination. The coverlet showed the outline of one full leg, and another outline that ended with awful suddenness.

"Come," said Dr. Elman; "let Bill get a good look at you. Sit down."

"Better not do it, Dolf," Bill said with just a trace of the old drawl. "You'll burst something sure."

Dolf grinned sheepishly. Bert felt the doctor's elbow in his ribs, saw the man's exasperated frown, and tore his eyes away from the bed and its mute story.

The conversation ran in spurts. Bill did not

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 say much; he seemed too weary for the effort of sustained talk. But he was enjoying their visit. Shadows of smiles ran across his mouth at some of Dolf's recitals of what was going on in Springham. When Bert spoke of their class in the school, and of the coming graduation, he looked at him but did not seem to see him. A nurse came in, busied herself with his pulse and temperature, called him "Old Warrior," smoothed his pillow and departed. Dr. Elman looked at his watch.

"Got to go, Bill," he said, with the same gentleness. "You're not the only chap in the world calling for a doctor."

They stood up to leave. Dolf and the man went through the doorway, and Bert took a quick step back toward the bed.

"I didn't quit that night," he said. "Policeman Glynn told my father. I was kept in."

Bill stared steadily up at the ceiling. "I wish I had been," he answered.

Bert went away with the feeling that, at the last moment, he had said the wrong thing.

The ride back to Springham was as silent as the ride out had been. Dr. Elman had some town visits to make, and they left his car on a Washington Avenue corner. Peg Scudder, sunning himself in his sidewalk chair, stuck a crutch under one armpit, pulled himself erect, and hobbled toward them.

"Hey, you!" he roared. "Blast your hides,

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 what's your hurry? Been up to the hospital to see that fellow that got clipped?"

Bert was a year older and had lost much of his fear of that powerful body and tawny head. Yet he shrank away as the man came too close.

"We just got back," said Dolf.

"When you go back again, just pass him the word to come and see Peg Scudder. Us one-leggers ought to stick together."

"I'll tell him, Mr. Scudder," said Dolf, and Peg leered through his tangle of hair. It wasn't every day in the week that some one honored him with the title of mister.

A month later Bill Harrison came back to Springham. Bert had prepared himself for the crutch; but the sight of his friend pegging along the street was a hard shock. Examination days came and went, and Bert learned that he had passed and had qualified for the Springham High School. The afternoon of graduation day he spent with Bill.

"I'll have to take my eighth grade over again," Bill said listlessly, and moved his stump of leg. "That's one year this thing has cost me already."

All during the graduation exercises Bert sat on the auditorium platform and thought of a boy who should have been there. But next day and in the days that followed, this thought was dulled. There was much to be done that summer. His father's business, after a disappointing start, and

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 months of uncertainty, was at last coming into its own. This dawn of prosperity was reflected in many ways. More stock came in; there were orders to deliver. He was kept, it seemed, in a ferment of industry—polishing the glass of the show cases, dusting the shelves, and from day to day unpacking shipments and putting them away. Every so often he went to the bank, and the sum of his money on deposit grew. From time to time he caught glimpses of Old Man Clud, but their paths did not cross and they held no speech.

After a month the work began to pall on him, and he chafed at the periods that confined him to the store. Dolf Muller worked only on Saturdays in his father's shop. Bill Harrison, with his one leg, was loafing away the summer. Bert began to feel cheated out of good times. Turning his complaint in his mind, he decided that his weekly allowance was too small.

"One dollar doesn't seem so much when you've worked all week for it," he told his father the next Saturday.

Mr. Quinby, busy, missed the shot, and the boy went home with the dollar in his pocket. For the first time it seemed an insignificant sum.

The incident lingered in his mind. He took to muttering to himself, and his thoughts grew sulky and obstinate. And then the same accordion that had brought him and his father so close the night

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 of Bill's accident, sent them as far apart as they had been before.

Why Bert brought the instrument to the store he did not know. Perhaps he had some random feeling that it would soothe tedious hours; perhaps an unconscious wish for some of the glamour he had found at home behind the locked door of his room. Mr. Quinby, with a note falling due, went across the street to the bank, and Bert was left alone.

His father's absence grew prolonged; no customers came, and the boy began to yawn. In this idle moment he took the instrument out from under a counter and began to toy with its keys. At first the melody he essayed was subdued. Gradually, under the spell of enchantment, he lost all sense of time and of place. The notes grew clearer, louder. He closed one eye, cocked his head to one side, and surrendered himself to rhythm and played with happy abandon.

A voice of steel brought him back to earth.

"Bert!"

His father, striding into the store through a knot of small boys who blocked the entrance, brought the music to an abrupt end. The small boys lingered, hoping the entertainment would be renewed.

"I thought I could step out for a moment without having you turn the place into a side show," Mr. Quinby said abruptly. "How do you think

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 it looks to have a boy sawing away on an accordion in a first-class store and congregating a crowd of dirty-faced children? Do you think it's businesslike?"

Bert had reddened. "I . . . I just got playing, and then I forgot."

"Forgetting doesn't help a business. Put that thing away. I'll take it home to-night."

"I'll take it home now," Bert said. He ate a moody supper. He did not tell his mother what had happened, but she, accustomed to his mercurial spells of good temper and bad, knew that something had gone amiss. That night she questioned her husband.

"Bert has a bee buzzing him," she said, "and by all the signs I think it's stinging. Did anything happen at the store?"

Mr. Quinby explained the transgression and was surprised to find that, after a few hours, it had lost a bit of its heinous aspect. Mrs. Quinby looked thoughtful.

"Of course he didn't think," she said. "You can't put an old head on fifteen-year-old shoulders. When Bert explained that he had forgotten, it was his way of saying he was sorry. You know Bert. If he thinks he's making amends and is rebuffed, up bobs that distressing pig-headedness and you can't move him."

"I guess you're right," the man said ruefully. "I seem to have a genius for rubbing that lad the

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 wrong way. I was angry. You'd have been angry, too."

"I know." She was silent a moment. "He's worked hard this summer."

Mr. Quinby nodded. "Maybe I ought to jump his allowance. That would cheer him up."

"Perhaps. . . ." Mrs. Quinby hesitated. "Perhaps it would be better if you gave him a hint that you didn't mean to be so sharp. . . ."

"Good Heavens! Do I have to apologize to my own son? It isn't as bad as that, is it?" Mr. Quinby laughed. "He'll be the happiest kid in Springham when he gets two dollars next Saturday instead of the one he expects."

But Bert showed no particular emotion. He counted the money, counted it again to make sure he had not made a mistake, said a short "Thank you," and was gone. A week ago the increase would have fluttered his heart.

"I can't make head nor tail of that boy," Mr. Quinby complained to his wife that night. "At his age I'd have thought twenty-five cents a fortune. He took the two dollars as casually as though he could pick notes off the sidewalk any time he wanted to bend his head. What's getting into the boys of to-day?"

Mrs. Quinby said nothing. She felt that a word of regret would have accomplished more. She knew the boy.

And so the summer ran to its end, and the

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 school reopened, and Bert went off with Dolf one fine morning to begin his life at Springham High. Bill Harrison, so expert now that he needed only one crutch, tapped his way to the grammar school to once more begin the eighth grade.

For Bert high school opened the doors to a new and a wondrous world. Study periods wore the gloss of novelty and had an enticing appeal, particularly as they promised to shorten the hours he would need to spend with his books at home. Reporting to different rooms for different periods gave him a sense of importance and a feeling of maturity; nor was this new dignity lessened by the first mass meeting of students in the auditorium where the faculty coach and the captains of the baseball, football and basket ball teams all made speeches. He joined the Athletic Association and found that there were many school clubs and societies that promised companionship and diversion. High school, he decided, was going to be distinctly worth while.

And then it occurred to him that, though he might enroll himself with many school organizations, he could never be sure of free time in which to attend the meetings. He still had his tasks at the store, and his hours were uncertain. Some afternoons there was much to do; some afternoons there was nothing. As a matter of fact scarcely one of the societies interested him—high school life was too new for him to have yet se-

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 lected avenues of fancy—but he figured himself barred and was correspondingly resentful. He grew to hate the sight of bundles and packages.

"I'm a slave," he confided darkly to Bill Harrison.

"Oh, rats!" Bill said impatiently. "You've got two legs and Peg Scudder doesn't pester you every time he meets you."

Bert had football, too, had he stopped to count his assets. Not that he turned out for the football team—he was too young and too light. But here time was elastic. If he came to the field at three-thirty o'clock, practice or game was ready to start. If he did not arrive until four o'clock or later, practice or game was still here. In spite of his gloomy view of his situation he enjoyed many rousing afternoons, and even achieved two trips with the eleven to see it play out-of-town games.

Winter came, held Springham in bonds of ice, and by and by began to release the cold strangle of its grip. On a day of thaw when melting ice dripped steadily from every tree and bush and house roof, and when running snow water slushed in the street gutters, Dolf met Bert in the main corridor of the school.

"The moving picture screen is up in the auditorium," he announced.

Bert made a wry face. "Another lecture. Don't they ever get tired having a lot of old windbags tell us how to clean our teeth, and how to

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 cross the street safely, and how to stand straight?"

"This fellow's going to talk about butterflies."

Butterflies! It couldn't be worse. Bert threw up his hands in a gesture of tragic resignation and went along the corridor to his first period room.

An hour later an alarm of bells in the halls summoned the students to the auditorium. Bert went in with his class, settled into his seat, and gazed at the stage with an air that said, "You can't make me like this talk." In front of the screen a man whom he had never seen before sat talking to the principal. He was a tall man, loosely hung together, and he wore heavy, prominent, shellrimmed glasses.

"I know that kind," Bert decided. "He talks through his nose."

The last of the students entered, the doors were closed, the orchestra leader tapped twice with his baton, and the music ceased. The principal stood up, and began to talk, but Bert paid no heed. He heard the name "Thomas Woods," a burst of applause, and then the stranger was on his feet walking down to the footlights, looking even more awkward now than when he had been seated.

"They call me," he said, the Butterfly Man.' Some of you may be wondering why a fellow as big as I am doesn't tackle somebody his size, and not be pestering a little butterfly. Well, that goes to show that you don't know much about butter-

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