A STUDY IN PIRACY

It might not have occurred to you to find the Head Captain terrible to look upon, had you seen him first without his uniform. There seems to be something essentially pacific in the effect of a broad turn-over gingham collar, a blue neck-ribbon, and a wide straw hat; and you might be pardoned for thinking him a rather mild person. But could you have encountered him in a black cambric mask with pinked edges, a broad sash of Turkey red wound tightly about his waist, and that wide collarturned upabove his ears—the tie conspicuous for its absence—you might have sung another tune. His appearance was at such a time nothing short of menacing.

The Lieutenant was distinctly less impressive. His sash, though not so long as the Head Captain’s, was forever coming untied and trailing behind him, and as he often retreated rapidly, hestumbled and fell over it twice out of three times. This gave it a draggled and spiritless look. Moreover, he was not allowed to turn his collar up except on Saturdays, and the one his sister had made him from wrapping paper had an exotic, not to say amateur theatrical, effect that was far from convincing. The eye-holes in his mask, too, were much too large—showing, indeed, the greater part of both cheeks, each of which was provided with a deep dimple. Seen in the daytime, he was not—to speak confidentially—very awesome.

As for the Vicar—well, there were obstacles in the way of her presenting such an appearance as she would have liked. In the first place, there was not enough Turkey red to go evenly round, and to her disgust she had been obliged to put up with a scant three-quarters of a yard—not a wide strip at that. What was by courtesy called the Vicar’s waist was not far from three-quarters of a yard in circumference, which fact compelled her to strain her sash tightly in order to be able to make even a small hard knot, tosay nothing of bows and ends. She had no collar of any kind—her frocks were gathered into bands at the neck—and she was not allowed to imitate the Lieutenant’s; who, though generally speaking a mush of concession, held out very strongly for this outward and visible sign of a presumable inward and spiritual superiority. So the Vicar, in a wild attempt at masculinity, had privately borrowed a high linen collar of her uncle. The shirts in her uncle’s drawer had printed inside them, “wear a seventeen-and-a-half collar with this shirt,” so you will not be surprised to learn that the Vicar occasionally fell into the collar, so to speak, and found herself most effectually muzzled.

The Vicar.

But the worst was her mask. Her hair came down in a heavy bang almost to her straight brown eyebrows; her round, brown eyes were somewhat shortsighted; her eye-holes were too small. In consequence of these facts, whenever it was desirableor necessary to see an inch before her nose she was obliged to push the mask up over her bang, when it waved straight out and up, and looked like some high priest’s mitre.

Her title was due to her uncle, who, to do him justice, was as innocent of his influence in the matter as of the loss of his collar.

“When a person isn’t the head of the Pirates, but is an officer just the same, and has some say about things, what do you call that?” she asked him abruptly one day. He was reading at the time, and not unnaturally understood her to say “the head of the parish.”

“Why, that’s called a vicar, I suppose you mean,” he answered.

“A vicker! Does he have some say?”

“Somesay?”

“Yes”—impatiently—“some say. He hasn’t got to do the way the others tell himallthe time, has he?”

“Oh, dear, no. Don’t you know Mr. Wright, down at the chapel? He’s called the vicar. Hereally manages it, I think. Of course it’s not like being the rector——”

“Chapel? Is that the only kind of vicker, like Mr. Wright?”

“Why, of course not, silly! There are lots of different kinds.”

“Oh!” and she retired, practising the word. The others were much impressed by her cleverness in discovering such a fascinating title. It savored ofwickedandvillain, to begin with; and pursuing the advantage of their previous ignorance of it, she invented several privileges and perquisites of the office, which to deny would argue their lack of information on the subject, a thing she knew they would never own.

One of these was the right to summon the band, when the Head Captain had decided on an expedition, to any meeting-place she saw fit; and though in a great many ways her superiors found her a nuisance, the Lieutenant in particular objecting in a nagging, useless sort of way to most of her suggestions, they could not but admitthat her selection of mysterious, unsuspectedrendezvouswas often brilliantly original.

“Crouching along beneath the perches.”

On one especial occasion, a warm afternoon late in June, when the houses and yards were all quiet, and the very dogs lay still in the shade, the Vicar led them softly to the chicken yard, mystified them by crawling through a broken glass frame into the covered roost, crouching along beneath the perches, and going out again by the legitimate door without stopping to speak. This effectually silenced the Lieutenant—the chicken house seemed an old ruse to him, and he was sniffing in preparation for the expression of his opinion. Out across the yard and twice around an enormous hogshead they walked solemnly.Such a prelude must mean a greatfinale, and the Head Captain felt decidedly curious. The Vicar paused, made a short detour for the purpose of getting two empty boxes, piled them one on the other, and lightly swung herself into the cask. A loud thud announced her safe arrival at the bottom, and flushed with delight at the incomparable secrecy of the thing, the Head Captain followed her. The Lieutenant, grumbling as usual, and very nearly hanging himself in his sash, which caught on the edge, tumbled after, and standing close together in the great barrel they grinned consciously at each other.

The Head Captain broke the silence.

“Are we all here?” he demanded, his voice waking strange and hollow echoes.

“Yes!” replied the Vicar delightedly, bursting with pride.

“Aye, aye!” said the Lieutenant with careful formality.

“Then listen here!” the Head Captain spoke in a hoarse whisper. “This’ll be a diff’rentway. This is going to be the real thing. To-daywe’re going to steal!”

The Vicar gasped. “Really steal?” she whispered.

“Steal what?” said the Lieutenant with a non-committal gruffness.

“I don’t know till I get there,” replied the Head Captain grandly. “Gold, I suppose, or treasures or something like that. Of course, if we’re caught——”

The Lieutenant sucked in his breath with a peculiar whistling noise—one of his most envied accomplishments—and ran his finger-nail with a grating sound around his side of the barrel.

“Jim Elder stole some apples from my father’s barn, and my father licked him good,” he suggested.

“Apples! Apples!” The Head Captain frowned terribly, adding with biting irony: “I s’pose Jim Elder’s a Pirate! I s’pose he wears a uniform! I s’pose he knows the ways this gang knows! I s’pose he meets in a barrel like this! Huh?”

There was no answer, and the Head Captain settled his mask more firmly. “Come on!” he said.

They looked at the sharp edge of the hogshead; it was far away. They looked inquiringly at the Vicar; she dropped her eyes. Oh, Woman, in your hours of ease you can devise fine secret places, you can lead us to them, but can you bring us back to the outer world and the reality you seduced us from? There was an embarrassing pause. The seconds seemed hours. Would they die in this old, smelly barrel?

The Head Captain smiled to himself.

“I guess you kids never’d git out o’ here unless I showed you how!” he remarked cheerfully.

“Forward! March!” He took the one step possible, and scowled because they did not follow him.

“Don’t you see?” he said irritably. “When I say ‘three,’ fall over. Now, one—two—three!”

He pushed the Lieutenant and the Vicar against the side of the barrel, and precipitated himself against them. The barrel wavered, tottered,and fell with a bang on its side, the subordinate officers jouncing and gasping, unhappy cushions for their Head Captain, who crawled out over them, adjusted his collar, and strode off across the chicken yard. At the gate they caught up with him.

“’Now, one—two—three!’”

“Lieutenant!”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

“Go straight ahead and watch out for us.Whistle three times if the coast is clear. Beware of—of anything you see!”

“A peculiar caution in the slope of his shoulders.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

The Lieutenant slunk off, a peculiar caution in the slope of his shoulders and his long, noiseless stride. He rounded the barn and disappeared from sight. There was a moment of suspense. Suddenly he appeared again, his hand raised warningly.

“Sst, sst!” he hissed.

Promptly they skipped behind the woodhouse door. In a moment a man’s footsteps were audible; somebody was swinging by the barn, whistling as he went. He called out to the cook as he went by: “Pretty hot, ain’t it? Hey! I say it’s pretty hot!”

He was gone. He had absolutely no idea of their presence. The first of the delicious thrills had begun. The Lieutenant, from his post behind the barn door, could have leaned out and touched him, but he had no idea. From that moment the scenery changed. The yard was enchanted ground, the buildings strange and doubtful, the stretches between haven and haven full of dangers.

Presently three soft whistles broke the silence. They glided out around the barn, and scaled the first fence. The Head Captain stopped to caution, the Lieutenant became hopelessly complicated in his sash, so the Vicar got over first. Though plump, she was light on her feet, and had been known to push the others over in her nervous haste; she threw herself upon a solid board fence in an utterly reckless way, striking the top flat on her stomach, and sliding, slipping down the other side. Her method, thoroughly ridiculous and unscientific as it was, invariably succeeded, and she usually waited a few seconds for them after picking herself up. When one climbs after themost approved fashion, employing as few separate motions as possible, making every one tell, the result of such slippery, panting scrambles as the Vicar’s is particularly irritating. The success of the amateur is never pardonable.

“She threw herself over a solid board fence in an utterly reckless way.”

“Which way, Head Captain?”

A dusty forefinger indicated the neighboring barn.

“Secret way or door?”

“Secret way.”

They cast hurried glances about them: nobodywas in sight. At the corner of the barn the Lieutenant again performed scout duty, and his three whistles brought them to a back entrance hardly noticeable to the chance explorer of stable yards—a low door into a disused cow-house.

Softly they stole in, softly peeped into the barn. It lay placid and empty, smelling of leather and hay and horses, with barrels of grain all about, odd bits of harness, and tins of wagon grease, wisps of straw, and broken tools scattered over the floor. Broad bands of sunlight streaked everything. They crept through a lane of barrels, and mounted a rickety stair, heart in mouth. Who might be at the top?

A moment’s pause, and then the Head Captain nodded.

“All right, men,” he breathed.

They went carefully through the thick hay that strewed the upper floor, avoiding the cracks and pits that loosened boards and decayed planking offered the unwary foot. With unconscious directness the Lieutenant turned to the great pile of hay that usually marked the end of this expedition,but the Head Captain frowned and passed by the short ladder that led to the summit. He pushed through an avenue of old machinery, crawled over two old sleighs and under a grindstone frame, and emerged into a dim, almost empty corner.

The heat of the hay was intense. The stuffy, dry smell of it filled their nostrils. Where the bright, wide ray of sunlight fell from the little window in the apex, the air was seen to be dancing and palpitating with millions of tiny particles that kept up a continuous churning motion. The perspiration dripped from the Vicar’s round cheeks; she panted with the heat.

Walking on his tiptoes, the Head Captain sought the darkest depths of the corner, stumbling over an old covered chest. He stopped, he put his hand on the lid. The two attendant officers gasped. The Head Captain, with infinite caution, lifted that lid.

Suddenly a dull, echoing crash shook the floor. The Vicar squeaked in nervous terror. I say squeaked, because with grand presence of mindthe Lieutenant smothered her certain scream in the folds of his ever-ready sash, and only a faint chirp disturbed the deathly silence that followed the crash. The Head Captain’s hand trembled, but he held the cover of the chest and waited. Again that hollow boom, followed by a rustling, as of hay being dragged down, and a champing, swallowing, gurgling sound.

“Smothered her certain scream in the folds of his ever-ready sash.”

“Nothin’ but the horses,” whispered the Lieutenant, removing his sash. “Shut up, now!”

The Vicar breathed again. The Head Captain bent over the chest.

“Oh! Oh! Oh, fellows! Look a-here!” His voice shook. His eyes stared wide. They crept nearer and caught big breaths.

There in the old chest, carelessly thrown together, uncovered, unprotected, lay a glittering wealth of strange gold and silver treasures. Knobs, cups, odd pierced, shallow saucers, countless rings as big as small cookies, plain bars of metal, heavy rods.

The Head Captain’s eyes shone feverishly, he breathed quick.

“Here, here, here!” he whispered, and thrust his hands into the box. He ladled out a handful to the Vicar. For a moment she shrank away; and then, as a shallow, carved gold-colored thing touched her hand, her cheeks heated red, she seized it and hid it in her pocket.

“Gimme another,” she begged softly, “gimme that shiny, little cup!”

If there had been any doubt as to the heavenly reality of the thing, it was all over now. Nomore need the Head Captain’s swelling words fill out the bare gaps of the actual state of the case. Here were the things—this was no pretend-game. Here was danger, here was crime, here was glittering wealth all unguarded, and no one knew but them!

They gloated over the chest; their hot fingers handled eagerly every ring and big chain. Only the Lieutenant, sucking in his breath, excitedly broke the ecstatic silence.

The Head Captain first mastered himself.

“Hm, that’s enough—from here!” he commanded with dreadful implication. “Come on. They’ll kill us if they catch us! Soft, now. Don’t breathe so loud, Vicar!”

Off in a different direction he led them, having closed the box softly, and instead of making for the stairs, stopped before three square openings in the floor. He lay flat on his stomach and peered down one. It opened directly above the manger, and when he had cast down two armfuls of hay and measured the distance with his eye, they saw that he meant to drop through,and realized that his blood was up, and heaven knew where he would stop that day.

The Vicar caught the idea before the Lieutenant, and with characteristic impatience, was through the second hole before the third member of the band had thrown down his first armful. Light as a cat she dropped, scrambled out of the manger, and as a step sounded in the outer barn, dragged the Lieutenant through in an agony of apprehension, stumbled across the great heap of stable refuse, and crouched, palpitating, behind the cow-house door.

The Head Captain, whom crises calmed and immediate danger heartened, himself crept back into the stable to gather from the sound of the steps the direction taken by the intruder.

He was talking to the horse.

“Want some dinner? I’ll bet you do. Stealing hay, was you? That’ll never do.”

It was enough. Soon he would go upstairs to count over the treasures—who would ever have supposed that this simple-looking stableman had known for years of such a trove?—and then woe to the Pirates!

“Come on, you! Run for your life!” he shot at them, and they tore across the yard, over a back fence, and across a vacant lot, panting, stumbling, muttering to each other, the Vicar crying with excitement. The Lieutenant caught his foot in his sash and fell miserably, mistaking them for arms of the law, as they loyally turned back to pick him up, and fighting them with feeble punches. They dragged him through a hedge and took refuge in an old tool-house.

Slowly they got back breath. The delicious horror of pursuit was lifted from them. It appeared that they were safe.

“You goin’ home, now?” said the Lieutenant huskily.

Home? Home? Was the fellow mad? The Head Captain vouchsafed no answer.

“Forward! March!”

He strode out of the tool-house and made for the barn. A large dog barked, and a voice called:

“Down, Danny, down!”

They returned hastily, and climbed laboriouslyout of a little window on the other side of the tool-house, striking a bee-line for the adjoining property. The treasure jingled in their pockets as they ran stealthily into this barn. The last restraint was cast away, they were on new territory. A succession of back-yard cuts had resulted in their turning a corner, and had they gone openly and in the light of day out into the street, they would have found themselves in another part of the town. The Head Captain crept in through a low window. He was entirely wrapped up in his dreadful character. Blind to consequences, hardly looking to see if the others followed him, he worked his way over the sill and stared about him. Imagination was no longer necessary. No fine-spun trickery was needed to turn the too-familiar places into weird dens, the well-known barns into menacing danger-traps. Here all was new, untried, of endless possibilities.

It was a clean, spacious spot. Great shadowy, white-draped carriages stood along the sides; a smell of varnish and new leather prevailed. On the walls hung fascinating garden tools: quaint-nosedwatering-pots, coils of hose, a lawn fountain. All was still. The Head Captain strode across the floor, extending his hand with a majestic sweep.

“’Anything we want we can take!’”

“All these things—all of ’em—anything we want, we can take!” he muttered, but not to them. They could plainly see he was talking to himself. Rapt in wild dreams of unchecked depredation he stamped about, fingering the garden hose, prying behind the carriages, tossing his head and breathing hard.

Suddenly came a step as of a man walking on gravel. It drew nearer, nearer. For one awful moment the Lieutenant seemed in danger of thinking himself a frightened little boy in a strange barn; he plucked at his sash nervously. The next instant two hands fell from opposite directions on his shoulders.

“Get into a carriage—quick, quick, quick!” hissed the HeadCaptain, and he heard the Vicar panting as she shoved him under the flap of the sheet that draped a high-swung victoria. She was with him, huddled close beside him on the floor of the carriage, and it seemed hardly credible that the clatter of the Head Captain’s hasty dive into the neighboring surrey could have failed to catch the ear of the man who entered the barn. But he heard nothing. He walked by them lazily, he paused and struck a match on the wheel of the victoria, and the smell of tobacco crept in under the sheet. It seemed to the Vicar that the thumping of her heart must shake the carriage. She dared not gasp for breath, but she knew she should burst if that man stood there much longer. It could not be possible that he wouldn’t find them. Ah, how little he knew! Right under his very pipe lay those who could take away everything in his old barn if they chose. Perhaps the very surrey that now held that terrible Head Captain might be gone ere morning, he had such ambitions, such vaulting dreams.

Thump! thump! thump! went her heart, and the Lieutenant’s breath whistled through his teeth. Never in their lives had such straining excitement possessed their every nerve. Oh, go on, go on, or we shall scream!

He sauntered by, he opened some door at the rear. The latch all but clicked, when a hollow but unmistakable sneeze burst from the Head Captain’s surrey. Immediately the door opened again. The man took a step back. All was deathly still, the echoes of their leader’s fateful sneeze alone thrilled the hearts of his anguished followers.

“She knew she should burst if that man stood there much longer.”

“Humph!”muttered a deep voice, “that’s queer. Anybody out there?”

Silence. Silence that buzzed and hummed and roared in the Vicar’s ears.

“Queer—I thought I heard.... Damn queer!” muttered the man. The Lieutenant shuddered. That was a word whose possibilities he hesitated to consider. Piracy is bad enough, heaven knows, but profanity is surely worse.

Again the latch clicked. After an artful pause the nose of the Head Captain appeared, inserted at an inquiring angle between the two sheets that draped the surrey. Cautiouslyhe swung himself down, cautiously he tiptoed toward the others.

“Sst! Sst!All safe!” he whispered. They scrambled out, and a glance at his reserved frown taught them that the recent sneeze must not be mentioned.

Like cats they crept up the stairs, and only the Head Captain’s great presence of mind prevented their falling backward down the flight, for there on the hay before them lay a man stretched at full length, breathing heavily. His face was a deep red in color, and a strong, sweetish odor filled the loft. They turned about at the Head Captain’s warning gesture, and waited while he stole fearfully up and examined the man. When he rejoined them there was a new triumph in his eyes, a greater exaltation in his hurried speech.

“Come here, Lieutenant!”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

“This is a dead pirate. He died defending—defending his life. He will be discovered if we leave him here.”

This seemed eminently probable. The Lieutenantlooked alarmed. He took a step or two on the loft floor and returned, relieved.

“No, he ain’t dead, either,” he announced, “he’s only as——”

“He is dead,” repeated the Head Captain firmly. “Dead, I say. You shut up, will you? And we must bury him.”

The Lieutenant looked sulky and chewed the end of his sash. To be so put down before the Vicar! It was hardly decent. And she, in her usual and irritating way, grasped the situation immediately.

“We must bury him right off,” she whispered excitedly, “before that man gets up here.”

“That man,” added the Head Captain, “is a dreadful bad fellow, I tell you. If he was to catch us up here, I don’t know—I don’t know but he’d—here, come back, Lieutenant! Come back, I say!”

They stole up to the dead pirate, who had not the appearance attributed by popular imagination to those who have died nobly. The Lieutenant was frankly in the dark as to his superior officer’s intentions.

“If you take him off to bury him he’ll wake——”

“Hush your noise!” interrupted the Head Captain angrily.

The Vicar could not wait for any one else’s initiative, but began feverishly pulling up handfuls of hay and piling them lightly over the dead pirate’s boots. The Head Captain covered the man’s body with two hastily snatched armfuls, and as the Vicar’s courage gave out at this point, coolly laid a thin wisp directly over the red face. The pirate was buried. It gave one a thrill to see hardly a dim outline of his figure.

“Hats off, my men,” whispered the Head Captain, hoarse with emotion, “and we will say a prayer. Lieutenant,” with a noble renunciation in his expression, “youmay say the prayer!”

The Lieutenant was touched, and melted from his sulky scorn.

“What’ll I say? What’ll I say?” he muttered excitedly. “Not ‘Hollow be thy Name’? That’s a long one.”

“Now I lay——” suggested the Vicar tremulously.

“Pshaw, no!” interrupted the Head Captain.

“Not a baby thing like that! If you don’t know one, Lieutenant, I’ll make one up.”

“No, I’ll say one,” urged the Lieutenant hastily. “I’ll say one, Captain. I’ll say my colick that I had yesterday. Wait up a second, till I remember it.”

The heavy, regular breathing continued to come out from under the hay, where lay the martyred pirate. The hens in a near-by henyard cackled shrilly, the trilling of an indefatigable canary in the coachman’s rooms rose and fell through the hot June air. Red and dripping with the heat, dusty and sprinkled with the hay, the outlaws stood, solemn and tense, starting at the least fancied sound from below.

The Lieutenant cleared his throat, shut his eyes tight to assist his memory, and began his burial service:

“Almighty ’n’ everlastin’ God, who’s given unto us, Thy servants, grace by the c’nfession of atrue faith t’ acknowledge th’ glory of th’ Eternal Trinity, and—and——”

“And in the power of the Divine Majesty——” prompted the Vicar ostentatiously.

“Willyou keep still, Miss?Majesty to worship the Unity, we beseech Thee that Thou wouldst keep ’s—keep ’s steadfast, er, wouldst keep ’s steadfast——”

“’Almighty ’n everlastin’ God.’”

The Lieutenant paused helplessly.

“In this faith,” added the Vicar with triumph, dashing on with almost unintelligible rapidity, “and evermore defend ’s from all ’dversities,who livest ’n’ reignest one God, world ’thout end. Amen!”

She took a necessary breath, and pushed back her mask still further from her tumbled bang.

The Head Captain was visibly impressed. It had never occurred to him to say a collect. The Lieutenant was not such a poor stick, after all.

Gravely he led the way down-stairs and climbed abstractedly through the little window. Something was evidently on his mind.

“The last time I saw that pirate,” he began.

The Lieutenant tripped, and sat down abruptly.

“The—the last time you saw him?” he stammered.

“That’s what I said,” responded the Head Captain shortly. “The last time I saw him I didn’t s’pose I’d have to bury him. He’d just got a lot of treasure and stuff and—Sst! Sst!For your lives!”

They scuttled off desperately. The ground was new to them, and had it not been for providential garbage barrels and outhouses, they could hardly have hoped to conceal themselves from the manwho was raking up the yard. To avoid him they dashed straight through his barn, and rounded a summer-house without perceiving a small tea-party going on there, till they ran through it, to their own sick terror, and the abject amazement of the tea-party. They tore through a hedge, panted a doubtful moment in a woodhouse, then took up their headlong flight with the vague, straining pace of crowded dreams. On, on, on. Slip behind that lilac clump—wait!Sst! Sst!Then get along! Oh, hurry, hurry! Pick up your sash! Whoseisthis yard? Never mind! hurry!

“Then took up their headlong flight.”

They dropped exhausted under their own pear tree.

“My, but that was a close shave! I thought they’d got us sure!” breathed the Head Captain.

“Wh-who were they?” asked the Lieutenant, round-eyed.

“Who were they? Who were they?” the Head Captain repeated scornfully. “The idea! I guess you’d find out who they were if they caught you once!”

The Lieutenant shot a sly glance at the Vicar. Did she know? You never could tell, she pretended so. She shivered at the Head Captain’s implication.

“Yes, sirree, I guess you’d find out then,” she assured him.

Suddenly the Head Captain’s face fell. “The treasure!” he gasped. “It’s gone!”

In dismay they turned out their pockets. All those vessels of gold and vessels of silver were lost—lost in that last mad rush. All but the shallow, gold-colored saucer in the Vicar’s hand. They looked at it enviously, but honor kept them silent. To the Vicar belonged the spoils.

“I don’t see what good they were, anyhow,” began the Lieutenant morosely.

“’Good’?” mimicked the Head Captain, enraged. “’Good’? Why, didn’t westeal’em?”

Slowly they took off their uniforms and hid them under the back piazza. Slowly the occasion faded into the light of common day; objects lost their mystery, the barn and the tool-house imperceptibly divested themselves of all glamour. It was only the back yard.

The Head Captain and the Lieutenant threw themselves down under the pear tree again and fell into a doze. The Vicar, grasping her treasure, stumbled up the back stairs and took an informal nap on the landing. It must have been at this time that the gold-colored saucer slipped from her hand, for when she woke on the sofa in the upper hall, it was nowhere about.

The same hands that had transferred her to that more conventional resting-place, bathed and attired her for supper, and though two hours ago she would, as a pirate, have exulted in her guilty possession, somehow as a neat, small person in pink ribbons she felt shy at approaching the subject, and ate her custard in silence.

“A neat small person in pink ribbons.”

Some time during the hours of the next long morning, as she played quietly on the piazza, she caught her mother’s voice, slightly raised to reach the cook’s ear:

“Why, I suppose it is. I shouldn’t wonder, Maggie. I suppose the child picked it up somewhere. Did you hear that, Fred, about Mr. Van Tuyl’s best harness? All scattered through half the back yards on Winter Street. All those brass ornaments, and parts of the very side-lamps, too. Fortunately they found it all. Take that piece, Maggie, and give it to the man when you see him.”

The Vicar sighed. Just then she felt, with the poet, that home-keeping hearts are happiest.

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