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 "She has been studying with Firenzo in Rome. He says she's got a tip-top voice and plenty of execution. Sketches, too,—not particularly well, though. Her things look right enough, but somehow they don't say much. Firenzo thinks that's the trouble with her singing. Good voice, you know, but it doesn't speak. Young, I suppose! That's it; eh?"

"Twenty years old, you say? Yes, I should call that young! And the other one? Tell me about her."

"Well, Polly hasn't much ambition. Nice contralto voice, not much cultivated. Rather a contralto little woman, don't you know? The kind that somehow warms the cockles of your heart. Lots of character, too. There's nothing weak about Polly. You'll like her."

"I'm sure I shall. And what has she been about all these years? Twenty-seven, did you say?"

"Well, family matters mostly. They've kept her pretty busy. She's the eldest,

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106 "I think," said Varia, "that you had better get on to the tray yourself, little mother, and show the countess how to do it; for she is very stupid, and will never be able to get into the stove unless you show her the way."

The witch jumped up into the stove and lay down in the middle of the tray. No sooner had she done this than Varia shut the stove-door, while Tania poked the fire up. After that they ran out of the hut, taking with them a red silk handkerchief, which belonged to the witch.

They ran on and on, for a very long time, when Tania, suddenly looking back, beheld the dreadful old witch coming after them. When Varia heard this, she threw down the handkerchief, and in another moment there appeared a sea of fire.

This was too much for the old witch. She tried hard two or three times to fly over, but in vain; the flames caught her, and she fell into the sea and died.

As to the girls, they went on and on, until they came to a garden, where they sat down to rest. There was a very pretty house in it, which seemed rather familiar to Tania, but she was much too tired to look at it properly. The servants of the house, on seeing them, ran to their master, saying,—

"There are two very beautiful girls in your garden, sir, and we think that one of them must be your sister, the Countess Tania; but which is she it is impossible to say, as they are so exactly alike."

Count Daniel Nathaniel—for it was he—ordered them to be brought before him. When they came,

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 you know. She has married off three of them already."

"Three sisters?"

"No; two sisters and a father. There's nobody left now, but these two."

It was all very like that trip on the lagoons yesterday; only, in the one case, he had seen the lagoons through the eyes of his Pollys, while to-day he seemed to be seeing his Pollys through the eyes of the woman he loved. And he found that gracious sharing of his interest a balm to the old wound, and he was soothed and beguiled into a strange new acquiescence. It would come again, the importunate trouble. He should, in a very few minutes, bring down upon himself that gentle refusal, more poignant in its kindness than scorn or misprision would have been.

As he sat there touching upon one characteristic and another of his Pollys, in the direct, soldierly fashion that cuts through ordinary modes of speech, clean and incisive as a sword-point, he vaguely felt that this was only a postponement, a

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 respite. It could not last, this extraordinary, unaccountable resignation. He was not sure that he should approve of it if it did. But, meantime, he had not told her how the girls had enjoyed riding on the Campagna, and how they had followed the hunt one day, and not a bone broken! Nor how they had got to know their way about Rome like a book and how—really, the subject was quite inexhaustible!

The sun was shining like mad upon the palaces opposite, and as he looked across the flower-boxes in the window, he felt quite in sympathy with this high noon of light and color. A steamboat shrieked beneath the window, and the discordant sound hardly seemed an intrusion. And then, suddenly, taking him quite at unawares, a firm step resounded upon the hard, smooth conglomerate of the broad passage-way, and—"Here is Geof!" his mother announced. "You would hardly know him, Colonel!"

The Colonel rose to his feet and turned

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 toward the door, guiltily conscious that he had evaded the subject of Geof. As his eye fell upon the lithe, vigorous figure coming toward him, he recognized the fact that evasion was no longer possible. An instant later he had recognized the young architect of Western proclivities whom he had taken such a liking to an hour ago.

"So you are Geof," the Colonel exclaimed. "I might have known it, too, though I had quite forgotten that you were grown up."

"And you are Colonel Steele! Why, this is great! You used to be first-rate to me when I was a little chap. Were those your daughters in the gallery?"

"No; my nieces," said the Colonel, and his spirits went up like a cork. He knew the Signora was great friends with her son, but she evidently understood where to draw the line!

"And I may bring them to see you, Signora?"

"The sooner the better. Why not this

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 afternoon? We can have tea early and get a couple of hours on the lagoon in the pretty light. I'm afraid you have an engagement, haven't you, Geof?"

"Oh, I don't mind throwing Kenwick over. He'll keep," and the young man stepped to the other window and flung it open.

Geoffry Daymond went down to the door with his mother's old friend, but he had the tact not to offer him a hand across the plank to the gondola; an act of forbearance which was not lost upon the Colonel.

"Not a bit like his mother," the Colonel was saying to himself. "Not a bit. Wonder if he takes after his father. The kind of man that would stick in a woman's memory, I should say."

And then, just as the gondola was passing the house where the little stone girls keep their uncomprehending outlook upon the world, a sharp pang took him, followed by a strange—was it a disloyal?—sense of relief, and he exclaimed, under his breath—"I never asked her!"

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OU didn't tell us what a beauty Mrs. Daymond was, Uncle Dan," said May, as they sat at dinner that evening.

They had a small table to themselves, close by one of the long glass doors opening out into the garden. It was a warm evening, and sweet, vagrant perfumes came straying in at the open door, and in the momentary hush which sometimes falls upon the noisiest table d'hôte, pretty plashing sounds could be heard in the Canal beyond the garden.

"Not a very easy thing to do," said Uncle Dan, setting down his glass of

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 claret, with a wry face. He felt sure that the wine had been kept on ice. Ugh!

"Have you known her a long time?"

"Yes, Polly; since before you were born."

"What an age!" cried May. "And you never told us a word about her!"

"Fact is," Uncle Dan explained, "I haven't seen her more than once in five or six years, and then only over here. You'll find people don't want to hear about your travels."

Really quite an ingenious turn, the Colonel flattered himself,—to account for the passion of a life-time as an incident of travel! He was so exhilarated over this feat that he was emboldened to pursue the subject. Besides, big Polly had not spoken, and he could not suffer any tribute to the lady of his allegiance to go by default.

"What did you think of her, Polly?" he asked.

"I can only say," Pauline declared, with an earnestness of conviction that

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 was even more expressive than her sister's encomiums, "that if she had not invited us girls to go in her gondola it would have spoiled the afternoon."

"But the son is very nice; didn't you think so?" asked May, seized, in her turn, with the spirit of investigation. "He didn't even seem conceited, which clever people usually are."

"Yes, indeed! he is very nice; how did you like him, Uncle Dan?"

"Geof?" Uncle Dan repeated, rather absently; "How did I like Geof? Oh, I should say he was turning out very well. But I thought you girls had the best of it;" whence it may be gathered that Mrs. Daymond had not only borrowed the two girls, but had offered her son as compensation to the Colonel.

"How pretty the two gondolas will look going about together when we get our new flags," said May. "It will be a regular little flotilla."

"Aren't you expecting a good deal of Mrs. Daymond?" Pauline demurred.

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 "Why of course we shall go about together. She said she hoped to see a great deal of us while we were here."

The Colonel emptied his claret-glass, while a sense of warmth and well-being stole through his veins, that made him think he must have been mistaken about that ice.

"Are you going to fly the Stars and Stripes?" he asked. He had never considered the prow of a gondola a very fitting situation for the flag he had fought for,—but perhaps the Pollys knew best.

"No, indeed," said May. "We are going to have something ever so much prettier than that."

"Ah, Polly! There's nothing prettier than the Stars and Stripes," the Colonel protested.

"May means more original," said Pauline. "She has had one of her happy thoughts."

"You see, Uncle Dan," May explained, "there are such a lot of national flags on the gondolas, and it seems so stupid

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 not to have something different. So Mr. Daymond and I have concocted quite a new scheme,—or rather the idea was mine and he is going to paint them. We are going to have a sea-horse painted on red bunting, in tawny colors, golds and browns; and Mr. Daymond thinks he shall make one for their gondola on a dark blue ground. Shan't you feel proud to sail the Venetian lagoons with a sea-horse at the mast-head?"

"Proud as a peacock! And the young man is going to paint it for you?"

"Yes; isn't that good of him? And shan't we look pretty?"

"Never saw the time you didn't," Uncle Dan was tempted to say. But he flattered himself that he never spoiled his nieces, and so he remarked instead, with his most crafty grimace: "No, you'll probably look like frights;" which, if the girls had not been quite case-hardened against his thinly disguised compliments, might have had just the disastrous effect he wished to avoid.

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 Truth to tell, they were neither of them very susceptible to flattery, for neither of them was in the least self-centred. Even May, who was far from sharing her sister's mellow warmth of interest in other people,—even May, with all the crudities and shortcomings of youth still in the ascendant, was too much occupied with her rapidly acquired views of the phenomena about her, to pay much attention to the perhaps equally interesting phenomenon of her own personality. The impression left upon the two girls by their half hour's talk with Geoffry Daymond was characteristic of each. May approved of him because he had been interested in her ideas; and Pauline liked him because he had been interested in her sister.

Whatever the young man's impressions may have been, it may as well be stated at once, that in the course of that tea-drinking he made up his mind that his mother really had a right to expect him to stay with her for the next week or two,

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 and that he should tell Oliver Kenwick to-morrow, that he would have to get somebody else for that tramp through the Titian country. What did he care about the Titian country anyway? Here was Titian himself here in Venice, and lots besides. He would pitch into those flags to-morrow. That was really a very happy thought of the talkative one. He wondered if the quiet one would say more if she got a chance; she did not look stupid. And that reflection had struck him as so preposterous, that he had almost interrupted her sister in her expression of opinion on the subject of the famous bronze chargers that seem always on the point of plunging down from the front of San Marco into the Piazza, to the destruction of the babies and pigeons there assembled, to ask: "Miss Beverly what do you like best in Venice?"

"The gondola," said Pauline, after an instant's reflection,—a little pause which proved to be one of her idiosyncrasies.

"The gondola?" he repeated, doubt-

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 fully. "The gondola isn't very much by itself."

"But the gondola never is by itself. It's the centre of everything. It's all Venice and a living creature besides,—something like a person's heart. Of course I don't mean the gondolas on the souvenir spoons!" she added, with the little ripple, that was so much prettier than a definite smile. Decidedly, Miss Beverly was not stupid.

"You row, of course?" May had considered her question to be quite in line with the conversation. "Is it very difficult?"

"Not after you get the knack. That is, the forward oar gets going after a while. I rather think you would have to begin almost in long clothes as these gondoliers do to get anything like their skill in really handling the boat."

And now, in reply to Uncle Dan's artful substitute for a compliment, one of the prospective frights remarked: "Mr. Daymond says they have a lighter oar

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Rh he was certain that one of them was his sister; but which one? As Tania would make no sign, the count tried the diamond ring; but it fitted both girls.

"Let us do this," said he, at last, in a low voice, to one of his servants. "Let us take a pair of sheep's bladders, put them on my arm, while you thrust a knife into them. The blood will flow, and my sister, who will think I am being killed, is sure to make herself known."

This was done. The blood flowed, and the brother fell as though dead into the arms of his servants, who stood round in readiness to receive him; while Tania, thinking her brother was really dead, threw her arms round his neck, exclaiming,—

"Oh, my dear, dear brother!"

The count jumped up, embraced her, and welcomed her new friend.

Next day the count gave his sister in marriage to a very handsome young prince, while he himself married her friend Varia, who, it turned out, was the daughter of a king, but had been stolen when quite a child by the wicked old witch who had died in the fiery sea.

Count Daniel Nathaniel made his sister wear a red ribbon round her neck with her name on it, and his wife, the Princess Varia, a blue one with her name, so that he and his friends might know which was which.


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 that he used to row with when he was a boy. He is going to get it out for us to-morrow, and then we must all learn to row."

"I think I should prefer to learn by observation," Uncle Dan demurred, as he pulled his stiff leg out from under the table. Upon which, dinner being over, the girls went off in search of their wraps, while the Colonel stepped out between the glass doors, and strolled down to the bottom of the garden, where the water lapped the stone parapet.

The dusk had gathered and the stars were coming out. The water was dotted with gondola-lights that twinkled here and there, like detached will-o'-the wisps, the black hulls of the boats not being clearly distinguishable in the shadow. Every gondola was out, excepting the few unlucky ones that were detained for ferry service; for there was to be a festa this evening, and the forestieri,—by which pretty woodsy name the tourist is designated in the most poetic of tongues,

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 —could be counted upon to pay fancy prices.

The Colonel, secure in his possession of Vittorio, took no part in the bargaining that was going on at the hotel steps, a few yards away, and all along the line of the garden wall. He was standing beside the iron railing, pulling at a contemplative cigar, and listening, with considerable relish, to the wrangling of the gondoliers, when he heard a voice just under the wall, saying: "Buona sera, Signore! It's Nanni."

The Colonel had not observed that one of the shadowy barks had glided close in under the wall at his feet.

"Why, Nanni!" he exclaimed; and reaching down over the railing he clasped a strong brown hand.

The man was standing at the stern of the gondola, steadying the oar with one hand. He had flung his hat to the floor of the boat, and as he stood there, bare-headed, the garden lights shining full upon his upturned face, he made a strik-

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 ing picture. His hair was absolutely black, and his face was of the pure Italian type, very dark, and cast in noble lines. About the mouth and eyes, a touch of austere melancholy was discernible, even now, in the animation of the moment. He was like his brother, though his face lacked the sunlit quality which was his brother's chief charm of countenance. On the other hand, the intelligence of his brother's face was here developed into something higher and more serious,—higher and sadder, the Colonel thought, in the moment's pause that followed. He had not seen this protegèprotégé [sic] of his for ten years, and the years had left their impress upon him.

"Vittorio has met with a slight accident," Nanni was saying. "He has twisted his wrist, and if he rows this evening it will get worse. Will the Signore permit me to act as substitute?"

The Signore looked disturbed.

"I don't know, Nanni, how that would work," he said. "My nieces, you know. I'm afraid they would find you out."

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 "No fear of that, Signore. I'm as good a gondolier as ever I was, and I can hold my tongue."

The Colonel looked at him critically. To the initiated, there was a good deal both in the man's speech and bearing to rouse suspicion. A subtle difference that would hardly be defined as superiority; was it not rather something contradictory, not quite homogeneous, and in so far disadvantageous? The Colonel was not addicted to careful analysis of his impressions, and he felt himself cornered.

"I hope you won't misunderstand me, Nanni," he said, apologetically. "I'm immensely proud of you;—it isn't that. But,—well, it's not my way to talk about things. I suppose it's crochety, but somehow, I like to keep things separate, you know. If you talk about a thing it usually spoils it."

It did not once occur to the Colonel that the man of education, and presumably of some social standing, would feel any aversion to a temporary relinquishment of these advantages. To the padrone,

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 the skilled physician who owed to him his education, was still, first and foremost, the son of his old gondolier, in whom, when a bright boy of fifteen, a week in hospital with a broken arm had aroused a consuming ambition to be a doctor. The education, the profession, seemed to the Colonel—perhaps because it was primarily due to him,—accidental and extraneous. Fundamentally he was still the gondolier's son, the member of a caste too imperative and enduring in character to yield to circumstances.

And the really noteworthy feature of the situation was the fact that the gondolier's son fully shared the view of the padrone. Once in Venice, among his own people, Giovanni Scuro felt as thoroughly at home in the character of gondolier, as if he had never learned the meaning of the word science. Hence he could answer, with perfect sincerity: "Si, Signore; I understand. But you may trust me. And you will go out with me this evening?"

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 "Why, yes; I suppose we had better," said the Colonel, somewhat reassured.

"And to-morrow, if Vittorio is not able to row? Of course that is as the Signore wishes. Another gondolier can be had to-morrow for the asking; but to-night, the prices are appalling. They have no consciences, these men."

"We'll see how it works to-night. Ah! there are my nieces. We will meet you at the door. And, by the way, Nanni, have you picked up any English?"

"No, Signore; only French."

As the gondola came up to the landing the party stepped aboard as quickly as might be, to clear the way for others who were waiting their turn, and it occurred to Uncle Dan that the girls might, after all, not notice the new man at the oar. But he had reckoned without May's observant eyes. The moment the boat was free of the crowd, she turned sharp about and looked at the gondolier.

"Why, Uncle Dan," she cried.

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 "We've got a new man! Did you know it?"

"Yes; Vittorio has twisted his hand, and his brother has come to take his place."

"His brother? Oh, yes; he does look like him. We were lucky to get him, were we not?"

"What a pity Vittorio should have hurt his hand!" said Pauline. "I hope it's nothing serious. He was such a nice man."

"No," said the Colonel, incautiously. "His brother says it's nothing serious."

"But he can't know much about it," Pauline urged. "Don't you think he ought to see a doctor?"

"I rather think he will, to-morrow, unless it's all right again."

"If it's a sprain he can't be too careful with it," she insisted.

"What is Italian for sprain?" asked May. "I want to tell the man to have a doctor."

"I'm sure I don't know," said Uncle

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 Dan, trembling for his guilty secret. "I'll tell him."

"How can you tell him, if you don't know how?" May argued. Then, turning abruptly, and glancing up into the intent, forward-looking face, just visible in the uncertain lights of the Canal: "Hasn't your brother seen a doctor?" she asked.

"Si, Signorina," Nanni replied, without an instant's hesitation.

"And what does he think is the trouble?"

"A slight sprain," said Nanni; "he hopes it is nothing serious!"

"That was very sensible of you," said May; "to send for a doctor at once. There, Uncle Dan, now we know the Italian for sprain. I believe in always trying to say everything!" in which startling statement the young girl admitted more than she had intended.

They were just passing the Palazzo Darino, where a gondola lurked in the shadow.

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 "We shall hardly see them in the crowd," Uncle Dan remarked. "What's your idea, Nanni? Think you can keep us out of the jam?"

"Si, Signore; I know a place where they won't crowd us."

"What a funny name that is for a man," May exclaimed.

"It's short for Giovanni. I got in the way of calling him that when he was a little shaver and used to row me about with his father."

The Canal was twinkling with gondola lights, and as they approached the broad arch of the Rialto the crowd became greater, obliging them to pause now and then, while the dip of multitudinous oars made itself heard, a delicious undertone to the shouts and execrations of excited gondoliers. Presently, however, they had cleared the bridge, and a few strokes of the oar brought them into a quiet little haven formed by two big boats moored alongside the fish-market. As they came to a stop they could already

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 hear the music floating round the great bend of the Canal. The hulls of the two fishing-boats loomed tall and dark at either end of the gondola, while the rays of a lamp in the arcade over yonder fell athwart the yellow-brown sail of one of them, reefed loosely about the mast. There were a good many people on the quay, but they were a quiet gathering. The more aggressive members of the Venetian populace are pretty sure to get afloat on such an occasion, and a dozen different kinds of irresponsible craft were being propelled, with more or less skill, and a distracting absence of etiquette, among the decorous gondolas, whose long-suffering masters shouted themselves hoarse in their efforts to enforce the conventional rules of the highway.

Presently one of the gondolas glided in alongside the Colonel's, and almost before their respective occupants could recognize one another the gunwales of the two boats had been securely lashed together.

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 "We're just in time," said Geoffry. "We could see the reflection of the lights around the bend, when we were in midstream. Ah, there it comes!"

As he spoke, a brilliant, variegated light fell upon the mass of gondolas a few rods up the Canal, and a moment later the huge structure of red, white, and green lamps, came drifting down-stream. It represented a great temple with dome-like roof topped by a crown of lights, glittering against the dark background of the night. As it drew nearer, the throng of boats in its path thinned a little, and broken reflections of the gleaming lights danced between the gondolas, and sparkled in the oar-drops.

"What do you think of the architecture of it?" May asked, in her fresh young voice, that seemed to dissipate illusion, like a ray of plain daylight let in upon a stage scene.

Daymond laughed.

"I don't perceive any," he said. "Do you?"

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 "Well, I don't know; I supposed it was meant for a building."

"Oh, no!" said Pauline. "It's meant for a dream. Don't wake us up, May! See; they're stopping in front of the Ca' Doro."

The movement of the great barge had been so slow, that it had halted almost unawares in front of the beautiful palace, and straightway a rosy bengal light lit up the carvings of the fairy-like façade with a magical effect. The band, lurking melodramatically under the gleaming arches of the barge, struck up a prelude, and presently a soprano voice rose high and strong above the wind and stringed instruments, ringing superbly out across the water. The fantastic impression of the scene was so strong that it seemed as if the visible brilliance of the shining lights had entered into the voice itself, giving it a weird and uncanny splendor. The vast floating audience listened, motionless and silent, until the last note went out like a light suddenly extin-

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 guished. Then, after a gust of hand-clapping had subsided, the glittering barge moved forward once more, the dip of a hundred oars plashing softly in its wake.

When the mass of the attendant flotilla had passed the mouth of their little haven, the two friendly gondolas glided out amid-stream, in time to see the crown of light lowered within the dome, for the passage under the bridge. The reflections played upon the face of the arch until the massive granite seemed hardly more real than the fairy-like temple of light itself; and then suddenly, the flickering colors vanished from the face of the bridge, and were shining upon the broad under-span of the arch. An instant later it was past and over, and May and Geoffry were comparing impressions with great earnestness on her part and undisguised relish on his.

"How pretty the light must be on the Virgin and the Angel on the other side of the bridge," said Pauline.

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 "Yes," Mrs. Daymond answered; "I was thinking of that."

Then came a mysterious gliding of the two gondolas, Indian-file, down dark, narrow canals, where were glimpses, through low passage-ways into dimly lighted squares. On one of the bridges, as they passed beneath it, a hollow footstep sounded, and as they looked back they could see a cloaked figure leaning upon the stone parapet. Now and then a chance gas-lamp cast upon the wall beside them the shadow of the gondolier's swaying figure, vanishing then in the black water like a stealthy suicide. Pauline looked round once or twice, involuntarily, to make sure that the man was still there, and once May said: "Nanni, could we get past if we were to meet any one?"

"Si, Signorina," the grave voice made answer; and Uncle Dan felt agreeably confirmed in his impression that Nanni was to be trusted.

Nearly two hours later, the girls were

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 awakened from their first sleep by the soft plashing sound of myriad oars. In a moment they were standing on the balcony in their pretty cashmere wrappers, leaning on the cushions of the stone balustrade. On came the gleaming colors of Italy, not a single light extinguished during the long, slow passage down the Canal; nor did the floating escort seem diminished by so much as a single boat.

A crimson bengal light was flushing the face of the Salute, as the luminous apparition halted before it, and a burst of music rose from the barge. Over yonder, beyond the long, low line of the Giudecca, a pensive old moon was coming up, slow and mist-obscured, as if reluctant to rise upon a world so well able to dispense with its light.

"The old moon always goes to your heart," said Pauline.

"Yes; but it will be young again in a week or two," May observed, consol-

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108

upon a time there lived an old man and his wife, but the man becoming a widower soon married again. It so happened that the first wife had left a daughter, whom the second wife, of course, hated and wanted to get rid of in some way or other.

One day the father went out on business, leaving his little girl with her step-mother. Scarcely had he left the house when the woman said to the girl,—

"Go to your aunt, my sister, and ask her for a needle and thread to make you a dress."

Now this step-mother's sister was a wicked old witch. The little girl not being at all stupid, and knowing this, went first to her real aunt, her mother's sister, to ask her advice.

"Good-day, aunty!" said she.

"Good-day, my dear. What brings you here?"

"My step-mother has told me to go to her sister, the witch, to ask for a needle and thread to sew me a dress, but I thought I had better come to you first, for your advice."

"When you want to get away from the witch," began the aunt, "the trees will wave their branches in your face to prevent you from passing, but you must tie them up with the silk ribbons, which I shall give you. Then the gates will creak and shut with


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 ingly; and at that instant an emerald light struck full upon the white façade of San Giorgio, and straightway the poor old moon was consigned to the oblivion it clearly coveted.

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HIS is Vittorio's gondola, is it not, Nanni?" asked May, who had an eye for details and had instantly identified the boat.

"Si, Signorina."

They had spent the morning sight-seeing, and now they were, according to Uncle Dan, having their reward, coasting along the outer shore of the Giudecca, in the heavenly afternoon light. The Colonel much preferred the easy social conditions of the gondola to the restraint, not to say chill, of church and chapel, where a man must not wear his hat nor speak above a whisper.

May was sitting, as she liked to do, in the little gondola chair, whence she com-

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 manded every point of the compass; a position which had the further advantage of facilitating communication with the gondolier.

"Why don't you use your own gondola?" she persisted.

For an instant Uncle Dan's loyalty wavered, and he wondered whether Polly were not perhaps a trifle forward for so young a girl. He had not been struck by it before, and even now he would have challenged such a heresy in another; but, really,—

"Because this is the better gondola," Nanni replied, in the grave, impersonal tone which was in such marked contrast with his brother's eager alacrity.

"I wish Vittorio would get well," May exclaimed, impatiently; "this man isn't half as nice."

"Don't you think so?" Pauline queried. "He is a perfect gondolier."

"Yes; but he is so unapproachable. One could never get confidential with him; one would never ask him about

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 his wife and children, and think how delighted Vittorio was to tell us about each individual bambino!"

"It would not be of much use to ask him," Uncle Dan interposed hastily. "For he hasn't any."

"I have an idea he is poor," said Pauline. "Even poorer than the rest of them. I wonder what is the reason."

"So do I," said May. "Nanni, is your gondola a very old one?"

"Si, Signorina; very old."

"What a pity! It must be very bad for you. Which is your ferry?"

"I don't belong to any."

"But I thought every gondolier belonged to a ferry."

There was no reply.

"Isn't that so?" May insisted.

"Si, Signorina, but I am no longer a gondolier."

"Why, what are you?"

At this juncture Uncle Dan felt it imperatively necessary to interpose again.

"That's San ClementiClemente [sic]," he observed,

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 indicating an island half-a-mile away, composed, apparently, of red brick and window-glass.

"How lovely!" May exclaimed; and the indiscriminating response betrayed inattention.

"What are you?" she asked again.

"I do not live in Venice, Signorina; my home is in Milan."

"In Milan? What do you do there?"

"I am attached to a hospital."

There was something peculiarly provocative of curiosity in the laconic replies of the man. May wondered whether his reticence was due to modesty or to moroseness. Perhaps she could find out.

"What do you do at the hospital?" she asked.

For the first time his eyes met hers directly, as he said, with something almost like a challenge in his voice: "I am one of its servants, Signorina."

Yes, May thought, it was moroseness; he was unhappy, and no wonder.

"What a pity!" she cried, with very

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 genuine compassion in her voice. "It can't be half so nice as being a gondolier."

But Nanni was again intent upon his work, rowing with long, steady strokes, his eyes fixed upon the course of the gondola.

"Do you like it as well?" she asked, with a quite inexplicable sense of temerity. She felt herself on the verge of being overawed by the stately reticence of this hospital servant.

"It is my work," said Nanni, in a gentler tone. "A man's work is his life."

"But if you had a good gondola and a place at a traghetto, wouldn't you rather come back to Venice?"

"No, Signorina; I love my work."

"Polly, you ought to have been a lawyer," Uncle Dan remarked, highly amused at the insuccess of her catechizing, which he by this time perceived to be harmless.

They had turned in to one of the canals

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 of the Giudecca, that great crescent island whose curve follows the southern line of the city, as the outer arc of a rainbow follows the inner. Not a breath stirred the water of the canal, upon which theirs was the only moving craft. Moored close to the low, brick coping of the quay, which bordered one side of the rio, were two or three fishing-boats, their broad hulls black, their rudder arms rudely carved and gaily decorated. Here, a gorgeous red sail hung loose in the still air; there, a voluminous brown net, bordered with rings and bobbers, was stretched between two stout masts, drying in the sun. Curious great bulging baskets, dingy brown in color and shaped like giant sea-urchins, depended from the gunwales, half immersed in water, the mortal remains of small, crab-like creatures sticking to their sides. All this picturesqueness, and more besides, was reflected in the placid water. On the one hand was the quay, with its irregular row of houses done in delicious sun-baked

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 colors, in front of which women in sulphur shawls and children in variegated rags were sunning themselves and passing the time of day. On the other side, a tumble-down wall of brick, that once was red, rose out of the water in such formless dilapidation that one could not tell where the reality merged into the reflection; while masses of verdure from a hidden garden tossed their heads above it, or tumbled over it as if enchanted to get a glimpse of themselves in the dark, cool water below. A wooden bridge spanned the canal, glassed perfectly in the still water, and somebody's wash, hung out to dry at one end of the rustic railing, blended acceptably in the quaint harmony of the picture.

Nanni had been rowing slowly, and just there, perceiving that the attention of his passengers was arrested, he stayed his oar. A bird, hidden somewhere among the foliage, in the garden, chose that moment for making a melodious observation to his mate, while a some-

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 what timid and tentative baby-voice from the quay lisped: "Un soldino," not with any business intention but merely by way of practice. The whole thing was so incredibly pretty that there was nothing to be said about it, and for a number of seconds no one spoke.

Then May exclaimed: "I'm so afraid somebody will say something!" upon which the others laughed, and instantly the oar was put in motion again, the gondola gliding forward under the bridge and past other ruinous, verdure-crowned walls.

"What a shame this man should not be a gondolier," May cried, returning to the charge, with unabated interest. "It does seem as if we might perhaps do something about it."

She glanced up at the grave face, half inclined to press the subject further. The man was gazing straight over the prow of the gondola, not more intent than his brother often was, yet the young girl felt abashed and deterred from her purpose.

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 If it were Vittorio, she told herself, she might be sure that the dark features would break into a flashing smile when she spoke to him. But this man could not be depended upon to look pleased at any casual notice bestowed upon him. She wondered why; she wondered why he was so different. Had he always been like that, or was it his life of exile and servitude? Nothing could convince her that he really liked his work in the hospital, far away from his beautiful Venice. There was some mystery about it, and she hated to be baffled.

"Yes, I always like poking about in the Giudecca," Uncle Dan was saying. "It's chock full of pretty bits, and then you keep coming out on the lagoon again, and like as not there are marsh-birds or people wading about after shell-fish. There's always something going on on the lagoons."

"Why, I should have said that the lagoon was the quietest place in the world," Pauline remarked.

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 "It is," Uncle Dan admitted. "That's why you are so sure to notice any little thing that happens to be going on!"

Meanwhile the gondolier had unconsciously suited his action to their word, and they had come out upon the lagoon again, and now they were skirting the pretty green Giudecca shore, where scarlet poppies stood bright and motionless in the still sunshine.

"Oh, I want some of those poppies," cried May. "Nanni, could we go ashore and get some of those flowers? How do you call them?"

"They are papaveri, Signorina," he answered; "I will get you some."

"But I want to get them myself."

"That would not be possible, Signorina; it is difficult to land."

He rowed slowly for a few seconds more, and then he backed water and brought the gondola in toward the shore which rose several feet above the water and was formed of loose earth and stones. May, forced to admit that she

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 could not herself land, seated herself on the gondola steps whence she could watch the proceedings. The gondola was creeping closer and closer to the shore, sidling in, for it was only here and there that the water was deep enough to carry the boat. Presently Nanni laid the blade of the oar flat upon the grass and so drew the boat gently in. Then, still keeping his hold upon the shore with the blade of the oar, he laid the other end across the stern, and, assuring himself that the balance was perfect, he found a foothold in the loose earth, and, with one long step, gained the top of the embankment. The gondola gave somewhat beneath his foot, and the stern rose as it righted itself, but the oar-blade did not yield its curiously tenacious hold.

"How nice of him, not to tell us to sit still," May exclaimed. "One does like to be treated like an intelligent being!"

She watched the tall figure moving here and there, stooping to pick half-a-dozen

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 blossoms, giving an occasional glance at the gondola meanwhile, to make sure that all was well. Presently the figure disappeared in the hollow.

"One feels quite abandoned," Pauline remarked. "What would become of us if the boat were to glide off?"

"We could wade ashore," May suggested. "It doesn't appear to be more than a foot deep anywhere."

"I rather think Nanni would have to do the wading," said Uncle Dan.

The tide was going out, slipping so quietly to the sea that here, at this remote anchorage, the receding of the water was imperceptible. The marsh had not yet begun to prick through the sinking tide, and as the eye wandered across the wide, unbroken stretches of the lagoon, it seemed like a vast sea of glass. The day was so clear and so still that the distant spires of Malamocco and Poveglia were mirrored in the lagoon. To the young eyes of the girls, the twin pictures, against their respective backgrounds of

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 sky and water, were as clear-cut as an etching held in the hand.

"Are those real islands, Uncle Dan?" asked Pauline.

But before Uncle Dan could make a fitting rejoinder, May exclaimed: "Oh, look at the poppies!" and all eyes were turned to the shore.

Nanni had suddenly appeared, close above them, a perfect glory of scarlet poppies in his hand. The sun shone full upon them, till they fairly blazed with color against the background of his dark figure. He dropped on one knee, reaching down to place the flowers in the Signorina's outstretched hand, and as she looked up brightly to thank him, the two figures, with their sharply contrasted coloring, made a startlingly pretty picture in the exquisite setting of water and sky.

"Lungo!"

The voice rang out musically, as most sounds do, across the water, and, turning, May saw another gondola com-

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 ing up astern. The curve of the shore had hidden it from view until that moment.

"Do stay just as you are for a minute," cried the same voice, descending to English. "We are out after effects, and we want those poppies."

"Of course you do," said May, "but you can't have them."

"Yes, we can, if you'll only hold them in your hand and let us pilfer with our brushes. You won't lose a single poppy and we shall have them all."

"If you had any artistic sense you would rather have those tilting about on the shore," said May; "but if you prefer an indiscriminate mass of color you are welcome."

Geoffry Daymond's companion meanwhile was paying his respects to Pauline and the Colonel, who were old acquaintances.

"May, you have never met Mr. Kenwick, I think," said Pauline.

"Oh, yes, I have," May declared; "but

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 it was ages ago and he never would take any notice of me."

"Do let me make up for it now," Kenwick begged, rapidly setting his palette, by way of elucidating his request.

"How long ago is ages ago?" asked Daymond.

"Four years ago last winter," was the unhesitating reply. "It was when I was fifteen and Mr. Kenwick used to come to see my sisters."

"My memory does not go back as far as that," said Kenwick. "I'm a child of the hour."

He was a man well on in the thirties, who looked as if he had lived hard; and since there was nothing in his chosen calling to account for such an impression, the observer was led to seek its origin in the realm of speculation. He had, to be sure, painted several good pictures, but that was ten years ago. Since then he had lived on his reputation, materially reinforced by a not inconsiderable income. As Pauline watched his face, it struck

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 her that his smile, which she had always objected to, had grown positively glittering in its intensity. Uncle Dan, for his part, thought the young man seemed amusing, but he wished he had not happened to be old Stephen Kenwick's grandson.

"Then we may have you?" Geoffry was asking.

"I thought it was the poppies you wanted," said May, suspiciously.

"It is! it is!" cried Kenwick with fervor.

"But you make such a pretty setting," Daymond explained; "your dress, you know, and the general color-scheme."

"What fun to be a color-scheme," cried May. "Uncle Dan, do you think I might be a color-scheme?"

"I don't know that you can help it," was Uncle Dan's rejoinder, intended to express a proper resignation, but betraying, quite unconsciously, an appreciation of more than the pale blue gown as a background.

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 Then Nanni, having returned to his post, was directed to row out a little from shore, and presently the two artists were at work, rapidly sketching in the bright figure with the slim black prow for a foil, and the silvery reaches of the lagoon beyond.

Uncle Dan was sitting in the chair where he could watch the faces of the young men. There was something in Kenwick's manner that antagonized him; it was, somehow, too appreciative.

"I make a condition," the Colonel exclaimed abruptly, in his voice of martinet. "If there's a likeness the sketch is forfeited."

"I'm safe," Geoffry laughed. "I never got a likeness in my life."

"I will be as evasive as possible," said Kenwick, somewhat nettled; "but it's rather late to impose conditions."

"Am I holding the poppies right?" asked May, after what seemed to her a long interval of silence. "I'm afraid they will begin to droop pretty soon."

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 "The poppies are all right," Geoffry assured her.

"Does that mean the rest of it isn't? I posed for the girls in a studio once, and they said I did it very well."

"Girls usually pose well," Kenwick observed; upon which May concluded, most illogically, that he was conceited.

Pauline, meanwhile, had not turned toward the other gondola which lay astern of theirs. She was watching her sister and wishing she could sketch. She thought, if she could, she would rather do her as she received the poppies from the hands of the gondolier. She had one of her prettiest looks then, and the little touch of action was more characteristic. There was something conventional, and therefore not quite natural in this passive pose; May was not in the habit of sitting still to be looked at.

"Would you like to see, Miss Beverly?"

The other gondola had glided up close alongside, and Daymond held out his

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 sketch. Faithful to his bond, and to his professed disabilities, he had scarcely hinted at the face, but the pose was charmingly successful, and the scheme of color was all he had promised. Bright as the poppies were, and well as they were indicated, without being individualized, in the sketchy handling, the really high light of the picture was caught in the golden hair, which gleamed against the silvery blending of water and sky, and was thrown into still brighter relief by the graceful black prow curving beyond it, but a little off the line.

"It is lovely," said Pauline, as she handed it to May.

"How pretty!" cried May; and then, recovering her presence of mind: "I don't see how you got such a good red."

Uncle Dan, meanwhile, was examining Kenwick's sketch.

"How the devil did you get that likeness?" he exclaimed, forgetting, for an instant, the condition he had made.

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 "Then the thing is forfeited," Kenwick remarked.

"That's a fact," the Colonel answered, turning up on the artist a glance of quick distrust. "What's to be done about it?"

"That is for you to say," Kenwick replied. "The sketch is yours."

The Colonel's face flushed. He had a very lively appreciation of a graceful act, and he was really delighted with the picture.

"Why, bless my soul!" he cried; "that's a present worth having! Eh, Polly?"

"Indeed it is!" Pauline agreed, cordially, taking the picture from her uncle's hand and studying it attentively.

"All the same," she said, as they were rowing towards home, half-an-hour later; "I should much rather have had Mr. Daymond's sketch. It is not a likeness, yet there's twice as much of May in it."

"Do you think so?" May queried,

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 doubtfully. "Seems to me he didn't give me any nose."

"Oh, yes, he did; there was a little dot that did very well for a nose. And, besides, there isn't very much of you in your nose."

"I wish you had told me that my hat was tipped up on one side," May continued, reproachfully. She was examining Kenwick's sketch with much interest.

"It would have spoiled it if it hadn't been; your hair wouldn't have showed half as well."

"Perhaps not; and the hair does look pretty," May admitted. "Do you remember how pretty Mamma's hair was, Uncle Dan?"

"Of course I do. It was prettier than yours," the Colonel declared, cheerfully perjuring his soul in the cause of discipline.

"So I thought," said May. "There's always something better than ours. I wonder how it would seem to have anything really superlative."

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 As the gondola came up to the steps of the Venezia, May turned, and looking back at the gondolier, said: "The papaveri are beautiful, Nanni."

She was delighted with her acquisition of a new word, and still more so with the flash of pleasure her thanks called forth.

"No, he is not morose," she assured herself, as she stood on the balcony, a few minutes later, and watched the gondola gliding away in the golden afternoon light. The man was rowing slowly, against the tide, but presently the long, slim boat, with the long, slim figure at the stern, rounded the bend of the Canal and vanished.

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Y the end of another week the life in Venice had come to seem the only life in the world, and even May admitted that there was something mythical about wheels and tram-ways and such prosaic devices for getting about on dry land. Both she and Pauline had acquired some little skill with the forward oar, for, as Uncle Dan justly observed, now that they sometimes succeeded in keeping the oar in the row-lock for twenty consecutive strokes, they were really very little hindrance to the progress of the boat! May declared that no person of a practical turn would ever take naturally to so unpractical an arrangement as that short

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 lipped makeshift, designed to eject an oar at the first stroke. Geoffry Daymond agreed with her in this, as in most of her opinions. He declared in confidence to his mother that her views must either be accepted or flatly contradicted, for they possessed no atmosphere, and they consequently afforded no debatable ground.

Kenwick, on the other hand, very rarely saw fit to agree with the positive young person who looked so pretty when she was crossed, or with any one else, for the matter of that. He told May that she would row better if she were not so wool-gathering, merely for the pleasure of hearing her scornful disclaimer; and when Pauline pointed out that she was herself the wool-gatherer, although her oar was quite as tractable as her sister's, he assured her that she was as much a child of the fleeting hour as himself.

It was Kenwick's method to talk to people about themselves, with a judicious linking together of his own peculiarities and theirs. He imagined that that sort

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 of thing lent a piquancy to conversation. The aim of Oliver Kenwick's life was to be effective; his art had suffered from it, and even in social matters he sometimes had the misfortune to overshoot the mark.

"Uncle Dan," Pauline had asked, one day, after an hour spent in Kenwick's society, "what is the reason Mr. Kenwick makes so little impression?"

"Because he doesn't tally," May put in.

"Well," said Uncle Dan, scowling perplexedly; "I don't quite make him out. But we've always had a feeling in our family that some of the Kenwicks were not quite our own kind;"—an expression of opinion on Uncle Dan's part which owed its careful moderation to the fact that he had accepted and still treasured the poppy sketch. For there was one thing that the Colonel deferred to even more than to his prejudices, and that was his sense of obligation.

He therefore submitted, with a very good grace, to seeing a good deal of the

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 young man, and if it occasionally irked him to have Stephen Kenwick's grandson about, he found his account in the spirit and ease with which his two Pollys dealt with the situation.

Kenwick, of course, attached himself ostensibly to the Daymond party. He seemed to bear Geof no grudge because of his defection in the matter of the tramp among the Dolomites, which he himself, indeed, had appeared ready enough to relinquish. Without any preconcerted plan it usually happened that the two gondolas fell in with each other in the course of the afternoon, an arrangement which was much facilitated by the brilliant-hued banners floating at the respective prows.

"There's the flag-ship over by San Servolo," Geof would exclaim, seizing an oar and giving immediate chase; or they would cruise about in an aimless way until Kenwick dropped the remark that the Colonel had said something about a trip to Murano that day.

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 The casual nature of Kenwick's allusions to the Colonel's party afforded Geof no little amusement. His pleasure in Oliver's society had always partaken somewhat of the admiring sentiment a plain man entertains for a clever comedian. Being himself incapable of dissimulation, even in a good cause, he was the more disposed to condone any harmless exercise of a gift which he could never hope to acquire.

"I'm afraid they won't catch up with us any more, now that we have two oars," said May, one afternoon, as the red banner sped swiftly past the Riva, bound for the Porto del Lido. The day was bright and warm, and the pretty linen awning with its crimson lining was spread above their heads, somewhat obstructing their view. "I wish I could see whether they were coming," she added, with outspoken solicitude. "It's so much more fun to be a flotilla!"

"I think they will find us," said Pauline, smiling to herself, as if she had

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 pleasant thoughts. She would trust Geoffry Daymond to overtake them. Pauline was no matchmaker, but, as she told herself, it was the sort of thing that was always happening in the family, and Geof's liking for May was as obvious as it was natural.

"Do you think, Vittorio, that we can really go out on the Adriatic?" May asked.

Vittorio had been at the forward oar for a day or two, and to-morrow his brother was to be dismissed and he was to return to his post.

"Hardly out upon the Adriatic," he said, and, turning, he laid his oar flat across between the two gunwales and balanced himself upon it in order to look under the flaps of the awning into the face of the Signorina. Vittorio was of a pre-eminently social disposition, and he liked to be in visible touch with his listeners. It was indeed refreshing to see his handsome face and brilliant smile once more. It quite flashed in upon them,

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 being in full sunshine, as they looked out upon it from their shady covert.

"The new break-water runs out a very long distance into the open sea on either side," he explained; "and we shall hardly get to the end of it. But we can see over it, and there will be the bright sails such as the Signorina likes."

"How nice he is!" said May; "Now the other one would have said: 'No, Signorina,' and that would have been the end of it."

Yet, even as she spoke, a quick compunction seized her. She had never been able to rid her mind of a disquieting conviction that all was not well with this grave, taciturn being, whose personality was not less haunting than his bearing was unobtrusive. She did not remember that she had ever before felt so much concern for an indifferent person, and, being of an active temperament, she could not be content with a passive solicitude. It seemed to her that something must be done about it, and that

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 it devolved upon her to solve the problem. Perhaps if she were to offer to give the man a gondola he would admit that he was miserable in that dreary hospital, and that he longed for the free life of the lagoons. The project appealed, indeed, so strongly, both to her imagination and to her judgment, that she had already made a mental readjustment of her finances to that end. There was a certain white silk trimmed with pale green miroir velvet that she had once dreamed of, which had somehow transformed itself in her mind into a slim black bark, fitted out in the most approved style with cushions and sea-horses, and tufted cords.

"I ought to be willing to dance in my tennis dress the rest of my days," she told herself; "for the sake of changing the whole course of a poor man's life!"

"Lungo!"

The familiar call took her quite by surprise, and looking out from under the awning, she espied the Daymond sea

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 horse on its blue ground, already close upon them. Geof was at the oar and Kenwick was sitting beside Mrs. Daymond.

"What do you say to our making an exchange of prisoners, Colonel Steele?" asked Mrs. Daymond. "You shall have one of my young men if you will give me one of your girls."

"Oh, may I come to you?" Pauline begged, mindful of her little air-castle;—for the Colonel always managed, when he could, to get Geoffry into his own boat, and the young man was already engaged in an animated conversation with her sister.

"Do come," said Mrs. Daymond. "And Mr. Kenwick, I shall have to give you up, for I can't spare an oar."

"Doesn't Mr. Kenwick row?" asked May, lifting a pair of satirical eye-brows.

"Not for other people," Kenwick laughed. "I keep my strength for paddling my own canoe." And, having seen Pauline safely established beside Mrs.

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 Daymond, he stepped into the Colonel's boat, quite unconscious of the scarcity of encouragement he had received.

The Colonel welcomed him the more hospitably perhaps, for a consciousness of having been somewhat remiss at the outset. He need have had no misgivings, however, for Kenwick was so happily constituted as to consider a slight to himself quite inconceivable.

"It was very sweet of you to come to us," said Mrs. Daymond, as the gondolas glided away from each other. "We particularly wanted you this afternoon."

"I am glad of that," said Pauline, with one of her still smiles that seemed to give out as much warmth as brightness.

They had passed the island of Santa Elena, and were upon the broad path of the sea-going vessels, which was deserted to-day, save for one yellow sail, yet a long way off, that stood out in full sunshine against the quiet northern sky. The tide was coming in, though

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 not yet strongly, and they were avoiding the current by keeping in toward the shore of the Lido.

Geof was rowing, with power and precision, as his habit was. It struck Pauline that he would have been a capital gondolier; and then she remembered that when he got her Uncle Dan talking about the war the other day,—a feat, by the way, which few succeeded in accomplishing,—she had thought to herself, what a superb soldier he would have made. Presently her eye wandered from the rhythmically swaying figure at the oar to the wide reaches of the seaward path, where the yellow sail showed, clear and remote as a golden bugle-note, its reflection dropping like an echo, far, far down into the depths. The other gondola had fallen back a few lengths, as was apt to be the case.

"Did you ever wonder why your men give us the right of way?" Mrs. Daymond asked. Her voice fell in so naturally with the dip of the oars and the

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 lapping of the tide against the prow, that Pauline suddenly became aware of those pleasant sounds, which had escaped her notice till then.

"I should suppose of course your gondola ought to go first," she answered.

"Oh, no," Mrs. Daymond laughed; "it is not out of deference to me. It is only because Pietro is an old man, and they don't like to hurry him. Isn't that a pretty trait?"

"Yes, indeed! Is Pietro very old?"

"He is sixty-four. He rows as well as ever, only he hasn't quite the endurance he used to have. He was my husband's gondolier."

"And you have had him all these years?"

"Yes; since before Geof was born. Geof is twenty-nine," she added thoughtfully; "just the age of his father when we first met. He is like his father, only happier."

"Happier?" Pauline repeated, wonderingly.

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 "Yes; my husband had peculiar sorrows."

They were close upon the bright sail now, and they found that it was striped with red and tipped with purple. The slight breeze had dropped and the sail hung loose, glowing in the sunshine as the boat floated homeward with the tide. Two men lay asleep in the shadow of the sail, and the man at the rudder had let his pipe go out. As the gondola came alongside the boat, a small yellow dog sprang up and barked sharply at them, his body, from tip to tail, violently agitated with the whirr of the internal machinery. The helmsman, thus roused, pulled out a match and lighted his pipe; the sunshine was so bright that the light of the match was obliterated. Mrs. Daymond and Pauline watched the little drama rather absently.

"There are more sails," Geof remarked, nodding his head toward the mouth of the port, where brilliant bits of color hovered like butterflies in the sun.

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 Pauline did not say how pretty they were, but Geof, stooping to look under the awning into her face, did not feel that she was unresponsive. He had discovered before this that she had other means of expression than audible speech.

They had come about the end of the Lido, and were following the line of the break-water, and presently Mrs. Daymond broke the silence:

"My husband was a Southern Unionist," she said. "The war was an inevitable tragedy to him."

Pauline felt instinctively that it was not often that Mrs. Daymond spoke in this way of her husband to one who had not known him. She listened with a sense of being singled out for a great honor.

"He would have given his life for his country," Mrs. Daymond was saying: "He would have given his life for the Union,—but he was bound hand and foot, and he came away."

They were far, far out now, still row-

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text:
Oregon

 * (1875-1889)
 * "Oregon" (Russian: "Орегон"), in the Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary (Russian: "Энциклопедический словарь"), Volume XXII (1897)
 * "Oregon" (Russian: "Орегон"), in the Small Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary (Russian: "Малый энциклопедический словарь Брокгауза и Ефрона") (1899-1902)
 * "Oregon" (Russian: "Орегон"), in the Jewish Encyclopedia of Brockhaus and Efron (Russian: "Еврейская энциклопедия") (1906-1913)
 * (1911)
 * "Oregon" (Russian: "Орегон"), in the New Encyclopedic Dictionary (Russian: "Новый энциклопедический словарь") (1911-1916)
 * (1914)
 * Oregon: Her history, her great men, her literature, a historical work by Johan Baptiste Horner (1919)
 * Oregon, My Oregon, the official state song of Oregon, by John Andrew Buchanan, music by Henry Bernard Murtagh (1920)
 * (1921)
 * (1922)
 * Oregon, End of the Trail, a book on the state of Oregon compiled by the Writers' Program of the Work Projects Administration (1940)

title: Oregon


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 ing toward the open sea. As Mrs. Daymond paused, they could hear the voice of the Colonel, speaking to Vittorio, in his peculiar Italian, only a shade less English than his own tongue.

"And your husband came to Venice?"

"Yes; it was here that we met. He had been gathering material in many places for a history of Venice, and he had come; here to write. We spent three years here, summer and winter. He was fond of rough weather, and we get plenty of that here. And he was fond of work."

She paused again, watching the measured stroke of her son's oar.

"One summer we went into the Tyrol for a few weeks, and while we were away there was a fire, and all my husband's notes and manuscripts were burnt."

"Burnt?" Pauline repeated, with a catch of consternation in her voice.

There was not a trace of bitterness in the speaker's face; on the contrary, its usual clear serenity seemed touched to something higher and deeper.

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 "Then it was," she said, "that my husband had his great opportunity. He began his work again from the beginning. His courage did not flag for a single instant."

"He was a brave soldier after all," said Pauline.

"Yes; and he fell on the field. There was a terrible epidemic of fever, and he went about among the people doing them inestimable service in many ways. I could not go with him because of Geof, and,—I saw the end from the beginning. As I was saying, Pietro used to row us as long ago as that. He has carried Geof in his arms many a time. Ah! Now we feel the swell!"

As she spoke, the long, slow roll of the sea lifted their light bark like a piece of drift-wood upon its sweeping crest, letting it sink again in a strange and solemn rhythm. The actual rise and fall of the water was so slight that it was scarcely apparent to the eye; yet it had the reach and significance of an elemental

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 force, and the gondola rose and sank with a certain tremor, foreign to its usual graceful motion.

"Perhaps we had better turn back, Geof," said Mrs. Daymond.

"Very well; but not until Miss Beverly has seen the sails outside."

Pauline went forward and stood upon the upper step, steadying herself by the oarsman's proffered shoulder. The motion seemed stronger, now that she was on her feet.

"Hold harder," said Geof; "you won't enjoy it if you don't feel safe. There! That's right."

Over the line of the jetty was the deep blue Adriatic, sweeping to the horizon, its nearer reaches dotted with brilliant sails, shining in every shade of red and yellow and ruddy brown. The long, outer shore of the Lido, stretching far away to the tower of Malamocco, was edged with white, as the gentle curve of the waves broke with a toss of spray upon the sand.

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 "You like it?" Geof inquired, looking up into her face.

"It's as pretty as a tune," she said. "A tune with a lot of harmony to make it really sing. Do you know what I mean?"

"Perfectly," he answered.

Then, as she stepped down and went back to her seat: "I'm going home as passenger," he announced. "We shall have the tide with us and Pietro won't need my help."

"That's right," said Mrs. Daymond. "We want you over here."

The sun had got low enough to shine in under the flaps of the awning, and Geof lifted the canvas from its iron rods, and handed it over to Pietro, who stowed it away, rods and all, in the stern of the gondola. The world seemed to open up immensely bright and big, and the sky struck them with the force of a revelation.

"There, I call this grand!" Geof cried, taking possession of the chair.

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 "I've been feeling like an outcast or a galley-slave, or some such unlucky wretch, laboring away at the oar, with you two having the pick of everything inside."

"You seemed depressed!" his mother said, with amused appreciation of his lament.

They had turned toward home, and were just coming up with the Colonel's gondola. The men were resting on their oars, while the passengers stood up to survey the view beyond the jetty.

"You didn't come out far enough to get the swell," said Pauline.

"Yes, we did," May answered. "But we didn't like it; so we came back."

"Miss May was pretty badly frightened," Kenwick observed, with his most brilliant smile.

"Nonsense!" cried May; "I was no more frightened than anybody else! But I didn't like it. It felt so horribly big, and made us seem so little."

"And you were perfectly right, Polly,"

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 said Uncle Dan, placing his hand upon the small, gloveless one that lay on his arm. "The sea is no place for a gondola. I am sure Mrs. Daymond agrees with us."

"I think we both sympathize with May," she answered, glancing with interest at the charming young face, which was not quite clear of a certain puzzled disturbance.

Half-an-hour later they rounded the end of the Lido and came in full sight of the city, its domes and towers grouping themselves in ever changing perspective against the western sky. They overtook two or three of the brilliant sails they had passed on their outward way, still drifting city-ward with the tide. The men had taken to their oars and were helping the boats along.

As they drew near the poor, denuded island of Santa Elena, where only the vine-grown Abbey remains, of all its ancient loveliness, a cascade of lark-notes came pouring down from the sky. They

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 strained their eyes to catch a glimpse of the birds, lost to sight in the dazzling ether, and as they looked, one tiny creature, with wings outspread, came singing down to earth.

The gondolas were nearing home, when Geof asked abruptly: "How did you like it, Miss Beverly,—being caught in the ocean swell?"

"I agree with May that it was rather solemn and awful," she answered; and then, with a slightly deepening color: "but—I liked it."

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SAY, Geof; isn't that Colonel Steele's gondola over there?"

"Why, yes!" Geof cried, with mock surprise; "how clever of you to see it! And, I say, Oliver, don't you think that looks a little like the tower of San Giorgio? Red, you know; rather marked, eh?"

The two young men were coming home from an early sketching-bout, as was evident from a glance at the gondola, which was distinctly in undress. Old Pietro knew better than to carry his best cushions and brasses on such occasions; nor did he display the long, black broad-

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 cloth,—the strassino—which gives such distinction to a gondola, falling in ample folds from the carved back of the seat, and hiding the rougher finish of the stern. Under the awning, on the very rusty and dilapidated cushions, sat Kenwick, and beside him, face up, was an oil-sketch of a half-grown boy, sitting at the prow of a fishing-boat, dangling his bare brown legs over the water, which gave back a broken reflection of the bony members. A red sail, standing out in full sunshine, furnished the background to the figure, but somehow, the interest centred in the thin legs, which the boy himself was regarding with studious approval. The legs were so extremely well drawn that one did not wonder at their owner's satisfaction in them.

"Pity you can't paint as well as you can chaff," the artist observed, glancing from his own clever sketch to his friend's block, which was leaning, face inward, against the side of the boat.

Geof was lolling on the steps, his legs

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 somewhat entangled among the easels, paint-boxes, and the like that cumbered the floor of the boat, one arm resting on the deck of the prow. Like many athletic men, he had a gift for looking outrageously lazy. At Kenwick's retort, he turned from the contemplation of San Giorgio, knocked the ashes out of his pipe, and folding his hands behind his head, bestowed an amiable grin upon his astute friend. He wondered just why Kenwick found it worth while to dissemble.

"The best thing you ever did was that poppy sketch," he remarked, regarding his companion with half-closed, indolent eyes. "But then, you haven't often the wit to choose such a good subject. I wish you were not so confoundedly afraid of doing anything pretty."

"My dear fellow," Kenwick retorted, "you may be a very decent architect, but I'll be hanged if you have the first inkling of what art means."

From which interchange of amenities,

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 the average listener might not have inferred, what was nevertheless true, that the two men had a high opinion of each other's talents. Happily, there was no one to be misled, for Pietro, with all his advantages, had not yet mastered a word of English. The only feature of the situation intelligible to him, was, that Kenwick, too, discarded his pipe at this juncture, and the gondolier was, accordingly, obliged to stow away his own half-finished cigarette,—4th quality,—in the cavernous recesses of the stern. He had been counting upon smoking it out before arriving at the Palazzo Darino, though he had scented danger from the moment his eye fell upon Vittorio's gondola. A gondolier, however, is early schooled to study any whim rather than his own, and presently Pietro observed, rather than inquired: "To San Giorgio, Signore?"

"Sicuro!"

The red banner was hanging limp in the lee of the island, the prow of the boat

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 being tied to a ring in the masonry, while Vittorio sat at the forward end, holding her off, lest a passing steamboat or outward bound coaster should drive her against the wall. Under the awning was a glimpse of light draperies, and, as Pietro's gondola drew near, the young men could hear a fresh, girlish voice reading aloud.

"We're not in visiting trim," Geof called, gathering himself together, as they came up; "but we must know what you are improving your minds upon."

"We are reading Ruskin," May replied, in her most edifying tone of voice.

"Oh, St. Mark's Rest," said Kenwick. "You're getting enlightened about the pillars."

"It's very interesting," Pauline declared. "You know he tells us to have our gondola moored over here, and read what he has to say. Doesn't everybody do it?"

"Well, I don't think you'll ever find San Giorgio fringed with gondolas,"

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 One morning we were bathing as usual at the pond, and Kâsim the younger was in attendance carrying the towels, &c.

The bath was over, and we were all three standing on the bank, when my friend said to Kâsim: "Mâri, kita tèrjun" (come, let us jump in), at the same time feigning to jump. Kâsim instantly jumped into the pond, disappeared, came up spluttering, and having scrambled out, said: "Itu tîdak baik, Tûan" (that is not good of you, sir).

My friend said, "Why, I did nothing, I only said let us jump in and went like this," repeating his previous action, when Kâsim immediately repeated his plunge, and we dragged him from the water looking like a retriever.

When I was first ordered to Selangor, I thought it possible that some sort of furniture might be useful, and I took up a few chairs and other things, including a large roll of what is known as Calcutta matting. The things were useless in a place where the mud floor was often under water twice during twenty-four hours, and they lay piled in a corner of the stockade, and whenever a Malay of distinction came to see me for whom it was necessary to find a chair, it was advisable to see that the seat was not already occupied by a snake. The roll of matting,

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 Kenwick mocked; "but I'm sure it shows a beautiful spirit in those who do come. I recognize Miss May's docility."

"You are quite right," said May, with dignity. "It was I who proposed it. Do you read Ruskin, Mr. Daymond?"

"Of course I do. One would be lost without him, here in Venice."

"We almost got lost with him the other day," she rejoined. "We poked about in the rain in search of a San Giorgio on the wall of a house, who was described as 'vigorous in disciplined career of accustomed conquest.' We found the right bridge, with an unpronounceable name, and we turned and looked back, just as we were bid, and never a San Giorgio did we find. Imagine our disappointment when a shop-keeper told us that San Giorgio was partito!"

"He was probably partito on his 'career of accustomed conquest, Pauline observed. "Is that what you two artists have been about?"

"We have been making a couple of

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 daubs and abusing each other," said Geof.

"Yes," Kenwick declared; "Daymond spends his time washing in sails and clouds and watery wastes, and won't take the trouble to draw a figure."

"Oh, well," said Daymond, philosophically, "I know that if I should ever want to exhibit, which Heaven forbid! Kenwick could well afford to put in the figures at ten francs the dozen. I don't suppose you mind being interrupted," he added, tentatively.

"No, indeed," said May. "Our scene was in need of figures, too. Even Uncle Dan failed us. He hates to be read to, and he wouldn't come and moor."

"Besides," said Pauline; "he wanted to go and sit at Florian's and watch the children feeding the pigeons. He says he shouldn't grow old if he lived in Venice."

"He had better, then," said Daymond. "Venice is very becoming to old things. Don't you want to come and see some of

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 those Madonnas we were telling you about, with parasols over their heads?"

"Good," May agreed, promptly giving Ruskin the go-by. "And why don't you come in our gondola? You don't want all that clutter going about with you."

"I'm afraid if we don't go home and brush up, we shall have the appearance of a clutter in your boat," said Geof.

"Speak for yourself," Kenwick protested. He flattered himself that he was as well dressed in painting rig as under any other circumstances; and quite right he was, too. For Oliver Kenwick had no mannish contempt for appearances. He could not have done justice to the ragged shirt and begrimed legs of a model, if he had been wearing such a superannuated coat as Geoffry Daymond elected to paint in. Yet, as the two men stepped into Vittorio's gondola, it was he of the shabby apparel who seemed to give character to the group, while Oliver Kenwick would have made very little impression, if he

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 had chosen to refrain from conversation. This he rarely did, however, and he lost no time in engaging May's attention.

"It's a pity we haven't time this morning to row out to St. George in the Seaweed," he said. "There's a Madonna there, on the angle of the wall, that's worth seeing. When we do go, you will have to guess whom it is like."

"Probably Pauline," May ventured. "One keeps seeing her in the Madonnas and saints."

"No, it's not your sister," said Kenwick, with unmistakable meaning.

"You don't mean me!" May exclaimed. "No mortal artist could make a Madonna of me!"

"This may not have been done by a mortal artist. At any rate nobody knows who did it. But it's a lovely thing;" and Kenwick paused, with a view to doing full justice to the implication.

"Have you never painted Pietro?" Pauline was asking, as she watched the striking figure of the old gondolier, row-

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 ing homeward. He had rescued his cigarette, which he was smoking, with a dandified air, as he made leisurely progress across the basin. Pietro had been a handsome young blade in his day, and there were moments when he recalled the fact.

"Oh, no; I'm not up to that kind of thing," Geof answered; "you know I don't pretend to paint. My business is with bricks and mortar. It's only when I'm loafing that I dabble in colors."

"Yet I liked your sketch of my sister, particularly."

"You don't mean it," Geof exclaimed; "why, that's worth knowing!"

He looked thoughtfully at the graceful young creature in question, once more engaged in animated conversation. She was pretty,—no doubt of it,—preposterously pretty! The coloring of face and head was delicious, and there was nothing slip-shod about the modelling, either. All bright and clear and significant. She made him think of a perfectly cut jewel.

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 It was rather odd that it should have been possible to hit off anything so definite, so almost matter-of-fact, in a mere sketch.

"I suppose it was because I didn't try for too much," he said aloud. "The sketch was only a hint."

As he turned his eyes from May's face to that of her sister, it was hardly more than a glance he bestowed upon the latter. He was impressed with the fact that it was impossible to subject the nevertheless perfectly unconscious countenance, whose eyes met his so frankly, to the candid scrutiny he had given her sister.

"I'm afraid I shouldn't succeed as well with you," he remarked.

"I wouldn't try, if I were you," Pauline laughed; "I can't get even a photograph that my friends will accept. Have you any good portrait of your mother?"

"No; Kenwick tried her two years ago, but it wasn't a go."

"Of course not."

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 "Why, of course not?"

"Yes; why, of course not?" Kenwick demanded. The sound of his name had naturally attracted his attention, and, quite as naturally he was piqued by what he heard.

Pauline hesitated a moment, not disconcerted, but reflecting.

"Perhaps only because you're not an old master," she said; "Mrs. Daymond ought to have been painted three or four hundred years ago."

"And whom should you have chosen to do it?" Geoffry asked. It struck him that this was quite his own view, only he had never thought it out before.

"Let me think," said Pauline. "Not any of the great Venetians. They were too,—well, too gorgeous."

"Raphael?" May suggested.

"No, not Raphael. Ah! Now I know! Sodoma could have done it."

"That's true," said Geoffry. "It ought to have been Sodoma." Then, "I believe you feel about my mother

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 something as I do," he added, as May and Kenwick entered upon a lively discussion of their views upon the Siennese painter, in which they seemed able to discover nothing in common beyond a great decision of opinion.

The gondola was making its way down narrow canals, whose placid water found the loveliest Gothic windows and hanging balconies to reflect, and under innumerable bridges, each more delectable than the last. Now and then they stopped at some doorway opening upon the water, where they landed, and, passing through a ware-room golden with heaps of polenta, or dusky with bronzes and wrought iron, they came out into a court-yard embellished by an exquisite old stone staircase, with quaint carved balustrade and leisurely landings, where beauteous dames of bygone centuries may have paused, as they descended, decked in rich brocades and costly jewels. Or again, an antique well-head, half-concealed by tools and lumber, kept its le-

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 gend in faithful bronze or marble. The Madonnas, under their iron canopies looked down, serene and beneficent, standing, here, above a little frequented court; there, over the gateway of an old palace. There was one which Pauline was the first to espy, as they approached it under the arch of a bridge. The figure was upon the angle of a wall, glassed just where two canals met at her feet. Above her head was a square canopy, over the edge of which delicate green vines and tendrils waved, while in and out among them, tiny birds fluttered and chirped.

As Vittorio rested on his oar, Kenwick took pains to assure May that there were no longer any lights burned before these Madonnas, and Vittorio was called upon to account for the omission. While he eagerly claimed that the Madonna at his ferry was never left without a light, between sundown and sunrise;—mai, mai!—Pauline replied to a remark that Geoffry had made an hour previous.

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 "The feeling one has about your mother," she said, "almost makes a Catholic of one. You can see how natural it is for these poor fellows to worship the Madonna, and how much better it must make them."

"It is humanizing," Geoffry admitted. "There's no doubt of it;" and thereupon it struck him, for the first time, that there was a look of his mother in Pauline Beverly's face. Perhaps that accounted for something that had perplexed him of late.

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HE thing that had perplexed Geoffry Daymond was nothing less inexplicable than the persistency with which the face of Pauline Beverly had come to insinuate itself into his thoughts. When in her society, to be sure, he was not aware of regarding her with an exclusive interest. Indeed it was, more particularly, May who amused and occupied him, as often as Kenwick gave her the chance. The individuality of that surprisingly pretty young person was so sharp-cut and incisive that it fixed attention. It not infrequently happened that everybody present desisted from conversation, merely for the pleasure of a placid contemplation of her mental processes. These were simple, and to the

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 point, and usually played about visible objects. The vital matter with May, in each and every experience, was to formulate a judgment and to compare it with that of other people. If others differed from her, all the better. Opposition is a sharpener of the wits; and she found Kenwick invaluable in his character of universal sceptic.

No one but Uncle Dan ever really took her down, and that he did so neatly, that she was never seriously disconcerted by it. Had it been otherwise, Uncle Dan would have held his peace, for he prized the exuberance and unconsciousness of her egotism, which he recognized as the all too fleeting prerogative of youth, and he would not, for worlds, have really checked it.

When she informed him that the heroic age was past, and that this was a mercantile era, the old soldier, remembering the '60's, told her she had better look up era in the dictionary. When she announced, with all the zest of discovery,

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 that Titian could not draw, it was Uncle Dan who observed that he could paint pretty well, which was the main thing.

Yes; she caught the attention, as the most distinct sound, the most obvious sight is pretty sure to do, when people are taking life easily, and seeking only amusement, and she was so refreshingly unconscious that one could look and listen one's fill, and no harm done.

Yet Geoffry Daymond discovered that when he was making believe paint pictures, in the first freshness of early morning, or when he was smoking his after-dinner cigar, in the lingering June twilight, the face that interfered with the one occupation and lent charm to the other, was not framed in golden hair, nor animated with the lively and bird-like intelligence which he found so amusing. And not only was it Pauline Beverly's face, with its softly blending colors, and its quiet, indwelling light, that floated before his mental vision, but he found that he remembered her words and even

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 the tones of her voice, when the gay and occasionally witty talk of the others had gone the way of mortal breath. He somehow came to associate certain inflections of her voice with the sweet sounds that make the undertone of Venetian life; the plash of the oar, the cooing of doves about the Salute, the bells of Murano, softened in the distance, the sound of the surf beating outside the Lido of a still evening, when one floats far out on the lagoon, and the familiar, every-day world seems farther away than those other worlds, shining overhead. He speculated a good deal over this new preoccupation, and more still over the sense of passive content that had come to be associated with it.

For Geof was of an active temperament and possessed of but scant talent for repose. This was his first real vacation in seven years, yet, in spite of his good resolve to idle away a month in Venice for his mother's sake, he had been on the point of finding an outlet for

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 his surplus energies in that tramp in the Cadore, when,—just what was it that had deterred him from carrying out the plan? He believed, at the time, that it was merely the prospect of better acquaintance with the prettiest and brightest girl it had yet been vouchsafed him to meet. As he had since heard May remark,—for having once adopted an opinion, she was fond of testing it in more than one direction,—it is such a comfort to get hold of anything superlative! He was not aware that the elder sister, who certainly could not claim a single superlative quality, had played any part at all in that first impression; yet the thought of her had gradually come to be the hourly companion of his solitude. And now, for the first time in his life he found himself luxuriating, not only in solitude, but in idleness.

When he had been making a desultory sketch, away out toward Malamocco, or in among the vignoli in the northern lagoon, pausing perhaps, for a good five

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 minutes, between grassy banks, to listen to the whistle of the black-bird in the hedge, he felt no imperative call to seize an oar and double the rate of speed on the homeward way. On the contrary, he found it a perfectly congenial occupation to lounge among the cushions of the gondola and let Pietro row him home at his own leisurely rate, while the two good comrades had a meditative smoke.

It was because Geof was aware that this state of things was abnormal, that he found it perplexing, and because, much as he enjoyed the experience itself, he did not relish the sense of having somewhat lost his bearings, that he was glad to seize upon the clue which he had got hold of there at the foot of the stone Madonna. Miss Beverly was like his mother; that was all there was about it. Such a resemblance as that would make any face linger agreeably in his thoughts.

It had got to be the middle of June, when parish processions are the order

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 of the day. They were rowing up the Grand Canal, one Sunday afternoon, Geof and his mother, on their way to the festa, which was timed for the latter part of the day. Pietro and the gondola were in gala costume, snow-white as to Pietro, and, as to the gondola, the new brussels carpet of dark blue, to match Pietro's sash and hat-ribbon and the sea-horse banner floating at the bow. As they passed under the Rialto, and swung round the great bend of the Canal, Geof observed, in an unconsciously weighty tone: "Mother, I have made a discovery."

"And that is?"

"Miss Beverly looks like you."

At this simple statement of fact, the face of Geof's listener underwent one of those subtle changes of expression which the Colonel, in an inspired moment, had likened to the play of light upon the waters of the lagoon. For, being gifted with intuition, unhampered by the more laborious processes of the manly intel-

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 lect, Mrs. Daymond instantly perceived that Geof had confessed more than he was himself aware.

She did not reply at once; to her, too, appeared the face of Pauline Beverly, as unlike her own, she thought, as well might be, and infinitely more attractive to her for that. Yes, there was only one thing that could possibly make them seem alike to Geof. She glanced at the face beside her, so sound, so vigorous, so magnanimous, as it seemed to her partial eyes. He was gazing straight ahead, with the direct look that his mother liked. He did not seem impatient for an answer; he had rather the appearance of being pleasantly absorbed in his own thoughts. It had evidently never once occurred to him to consider, in this connection, how often he had declared that he should never lose his heart until he had found a girl who was like his mother.

For a moment she was tempted to remind him of it,—but only for a moment.

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 For Geof's mother was not the woman to take unfair advantage of a defenceless position, even where her own son was concerned. So she only said, after an interval of silence that Geof had scarcely noticed: "I am glad you think us alike, for I have never met a young girl who was as sympathetic to me as Pauline Beverly."

"Sympathetic! That's it; that hits her off exactly!" Geof declared; and then, with an accession of spirits which rendered him suddenly loquacious, "And I say, Mother!" he exclaimed, "what a jolly old boy the Colonel is! I just wish you could have heard him fire up the other day, when Kenwick got off one of his cynicisms at the expense of Abraham Lincoln. Tell you what, the sparks flew! Oliver was up a tree like a cat!—Hullo! There's the flag-ship!" he interrupted his flow of words to announce, as they came in sight of San Geremia.

The procession, or the component parts of it, not yet reduced to order, was just

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 issuing from the church; priests and choristers in their gay vestments, huge candles, flaring bravely in the face of the sun, brilliant banners and gaudy images, all in a confused mass, and the people crowding on the flagged campo before the church. Vittorio's gondola was disappearing down the broad Canareggio Canal, and Pietro needed no bidding to follow after. The crowd of boats of every kind, gondolas,, barchettas, batteias, and the score of floating things that only your true Venetian knows by name, became so closely packed in the more restricted limits of the Canareggio, that it was impossible for Pietro to get near the sea-horse on the red ground, floating so conspicuous, yet so aggravatingly unapproachable a few rods ahead. He did succeed, however, in forcing a passage after it, and he made his way to the three-arched bridge which spans the Canareggio, and under which he passed to a good point of view. Here they were obliged to tie to a totally un-

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