human face, a smooth, round, hairless head pointed with horns, claw feet, and wide-spreading, skinny-looking wings that seemed designed, not to soar into the empyrean, but to drop to the bottomless pit, add to all this, that, from horned head to claw foot, it was all of a brilliant, malign scarlet. This being, luridly visible day and night, whether an emissary of hell, or the devil himself, consorted with Matthew Ballantyne present, and guarded the grave from the tree above during his absence.

Menace as it was to the community, it is acknowledged that the matter was not brought to the ears of the magistrates until the end was already at hand, - also that, though more than one was ready with glib account after the matter was once launched in the gossip-stirred waters of public discussion, Matthew Ballantyne himself set the bark afloat. Returning to his cottage one misty twilight, he encountered on the beach the portly person of a visiting clergyman who was famed throughout the colony for his attainments as a scholar. And, though divine lore was his chosen and favorite field, there was scarce a secular byway of science into which he had not wandered.

Ballantyne remembered the kindly face it was now too dark to discern. Halting, he bowed lowly and reverently before the old man.

"A good-evening to you, sir, in whom I think to meet the painter who so skillfully limned the portrait of my granddaughter, Mistress Dorcas Elliot," returned the old man graciously. "Will you walk with me along the sounding shore?"

The young man acquiesced in silence. As they fell into step, the elder noted that his companion wanted not only the springing gait that should have belonged to his youth, but even the slight strength of his own old age. He laid his hand gently on the painter's shoulder, and would have chided him kindly for overworking.

But the youth suddenly raised his head

high, and his burning eyes penetrated the gloom with a fire that seemed no grosser than that of the stars gathering above their heads.

"Tell me," he cried, "reverend sir, you who know all things, 't is said, and that without losing hold on the greatest good, charity, answer me one question. Is there in all this world, — hast thou ever seen aught "

"Fear not to disburthen thy mind," said the other mildly; "distress not thy self with doubt."

Still Matthew Ballantyne paused. But again, encouraged by the good old man, he spoke out.

"Tell me, then, is there, in all God's created universe, such a creature as a scarlet bat?"

The remainder of the interview is unhappily lost. We may guess, however, that, if the old minister felt constrained solemnly to warn the misguided youth, he acted the part in the gentle, fatherly way that was his one manner. Returning to the manse where he was a guest, he laid the matter solicitously before the Rev. Thomas Lee. The latter, in his turn, directly after the departure of his guest, brought the affair before the minds of the magistrates in, perchance, a less sympathetic manner. The following day the town buzzed with the tale of Matthew Ballantyne and the scarlet bat. The excitement continued unceasingly, while for three days the villagers awaited the return of the mysterious painter from the forest.

On the fourth day, his floating cloak was descried from afar by a group gathered in the market-place, for what purpose we are not informed. A crowd collected with mysterious alacrity to watch his approach. The long, swinging gait of six months earlier was become a spiritless, perchance painful, toiling; but the youth's straight form was not bent, nor his fever-bright eyes downcast. Mention is made of the fact that he flaunted as boldly as ever the brave lining of his cloak, and that his thin cheeks were hec

tically marked with the baleful hue; yet naught is directly said of the expression of Matthew Ballantyne's face upon this his last appearance among his fellowmen. Nothing is said, yet much may be inferred. We know, though the village urchins hooted and gibed at first, that on his approach they ceased suddenly, while all the people fell back, making broad way for him; and even the magistrates, who were to have challenged the offender, and in good probability to have seized upon him, stood motionless and tonguetied as he passed. Nay, more, the spectators were speechless with apprehension and terror to see a little maid, the child of the young matron alluded to, slip from her mother's restraining grasp, and, running unabashed to Matthew Ballantyne's side, seize his hand in both her little ones, and touch it lovingly and reverently with her baby lips.

He smiled upon the little maid, and, looking upon his portrait, one fancies that the child must have borne that smile in memory all her life. Then he passed silently on, disappearing in the thicket. that led to his cottage on the shore.

Thenceforth he did not emerge from his dwelling. Watch was set upon the place by order of the magistrates, who had so strangely forgotten their duty, but who now determined to apprehend him so soon as he should stir forth from a roof believed to shelter unholy secrets.

Again they waited three days, days of more feverish excitement, for it was reported that each night, as darkness fell, a fiery, winged creature circled helixwise about the cottage chimney, before dropping down through it. The watch was kept from the windows of the house which stood highest in town; none ventured even to the shore, - with a single exception. The gentle young matron who had been Alice Lee's friend, even while she shuddered at thought of the scarlet bat, and could not but have fear for her little maid, still felt some womanly pity for the strange youth, and went twice, alone and stealthily, tremblingly to place

food and a bottle of wine upon his window-sill.

Finally, the popular excitement becoming dangerously tense, the magistrates felt forced to take decisive action. Accordingly, upon the Friday night of that week, ten prominent men, including the minister, surrounded the cottage on the shore. Before entering, they made the three windows fast from the outside, and sent a nimble lad, who feared his errand, perchance, quite as much as the threatened rod, up to the roof-tree to secure the top of the chimney by means of a contrivance prepared for the purpose.

They marched in very quietly, the ten men, yet so profound was the silence within that their footfalls seemed the iron tramp of a mighty host. The minister pushed open the inner door, and with beating hearts the others followed him across the threshold. There they halted suddenly, and, forgetful of all, each bared his head.

One thing alone they saw, in all the fantastic litter of the little room. Matthew Ballantyne lay upon a couch drawn close to the shoreward-looking window, his face just turned to the water and the stars. He was clad in a rich robe of brilliant scarlet stuff,-doubtless a part of that paraphernalia all artists have,and his cloak, flung gracefully back from the shoulders, draped itself picturesquely about it. Over the scarlet cushion, his hair, silky and beautiful as a woman's, spread softly from his face, — his white, white face, upon which only two tiny spots of that hectic color lingered.

They had not disturbed his sleep, though he lay so near the window. Matthew Ballantyne was without their jurisdiction. He was gone overseas in very truth, and his face said that the going was not exile, but freedom. And mild as that brow was, and sweet as the expression, and ineffably peaceful, remote from them and theirs as utterly as only the look of the dead may be,― nevertheless it rebuked those ten men sternly, humbling them until they could not look into one

1

EARLY in her straitened youth, Ellen Stearns had determined to secure three things: an education, a home, and congenial companionship. Before she had worked her way through school and college, her slender hands and her indomitable will had grappled with many phases of self-help. Tutoring in term-time, waiting on table at summer hotels, and two years of teaching, carried her through her college course in six years. During the last year she was able to give her entire time to the college work and life; that year decided the president to recommend her for a position that had been above her most ambitious dream. "In force, in ability to use her scholarship, and in contagious idealism, she is unique," the president wrote; "and this year has given her leisure to develop a latent good-comradeship that will insure her an important influence over growing girls."

She was surprised by an appreciation which extravagantly repaid efforts that had been their own recompense. She could not understand how the work of a teacher could ever have been called drudgery. Once the principal cautioned her. "Save yourself a little," she suggested. "You need not give yourself so absolutely to the girls. Be a little selfish, if you can."

Ellen wondered. It was easier to give than to withhold; it was only in the act of giving that she seemed to feel her grasp upon her own. The girls came to her with their confidences, their perplexities and enthusiasms. The youth she had never known was restored to her through her interest in them. As she caught the contagion of their buoyancy, she hoped that they might learn from her the lessons of VOL. 97-NO. 6

her pilgrimage, without needing to tread the way that now, in the retrospect, seemed heartrendingly solitary.

The summer found her unaccountably weary; it was fortunate that it was no longer necessary to work. She discovered a nook on the Maine coast, a meetingplace of woods and sea, where she luxuriated in the summer and in the opening chapters of a novel that had flashed its outline into her mind in the early weeks of her school work; writing it was not a task, but recreation. During the following year, though the school life lost something of its ideal homelikeness, the work something of its first exhilaration, her opportunity retained its dream-like aspect. The girls and their development were still her first interest; her novel was an occasional private indulgence. The offer of an instructorship in her college surprised only herself. "I knew it was inevitable," her principal told her. should like to keep you always, but there are inherent reasons why it is impossible. Keep your expenditure of energy within your income, and you may reach almost any height."

"I

She could not account for her good fortune. To deal with subjects of fascinating interest, and to transform her enthusiasm into service, in a setting of well-ordered beauty, seemed an ideal happiness. She gradually learned that ideal conditions do not exist in mundane institutions, but her contentment was not disturbed. De

spite her age and experience, she was still young and ignorant when she met Lawrence Percival Shaw.

Reverend Lawrence Percival Shaw was the descendant of eight generations of clergymen, and the parallelism of his case and Emerson's had not escaped his notice. From his boyhood he had written

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poems and kept journals, recording the growth of his mind. No culture had been spared to insure the efflorescence of genius upon the gray old branches of the family tree. He believed in himself in spite of contemporary skepticism, and in time many of his contemporaries admitted their mistake. His instructors in college had advised him not to devote himself entirely to literature, so he had studied for the ministry. At a flatteringly early age, he had found himself the pastor of the Bloomfield church, where his distinction of appearance, his clear-cut enunciation, his literary taste, and his originality of expression, made him the pride of his people and of the town. After a time his long literary labors were rewarded; at one bound he leaped into fame; for a season no select table of contents was properly arranged without a poem or an essay by Lawrence Percival Shaw. He was also in demand as a lecturer; his lecture on "The Joy of Living" won him many disciples. Early in his success, his name attracted Ellen. His enthusiasm for literature and for life supplied a voice for her own inarticulate spirit. When she met him, his face seemed even more eloquent than his words. He found in her what had not hitherto been combined in a satisfying measure, — enthusiasm, appreciation, and intelligence. He felt in her also a capacity for loyalty, for self-abnegation, that held for him the promise of new life. He told her that he loved her and needed her; and he had never spoken more sincerely.

By that time she had finished the novel, to which she had given four summers, the spare time of four teaching seasons, and the results of twenty-nine years of life. She sent it to a publisher without showing it to her lover, for she wanted to feel that she had rounded out something tangible, however humble, before her separate existence ceased. It must stand or fall by its own merits, her first and last novel, for she divined that marriage with Lawrence Percival Shaw would be an allabsorbing career.

Through the six months of their engagement she worked with renewed energy. Her novel was published in May, and they were married in June. Shaw's first collection of poems also appeared in May; a slender volume with wide margins and many fly-leaves. His wedding present to her was a beautifully bound presentation copy, which she unwrapped with a thrill of rapturous self-reproach. It had never occurred to her to have her novel bound for him; she had given him a pearl scarf-pin, as if they had been ordinary lovers. She exulted in his superior thoughtfulness, as in all his other superiorities; she would learn to be like him in fine considerateness; with all her disadvantages, she had always been quick at learning.

His spare time that summer was given to revising a volume of essays that had been announced for publication in November; he was scrupulously painstaking. Ellen's novel had succeeded; it had been crowned with the commendation of those who know, and with popular approval; the financial returns were surprisingly out of proportion to her expectations. She felt like an Aladdin as she wrote, in November, the check that transformed her savings and the returns from her book into the ownership of an ideally complete little house, which stood in a generous yard, surrounded by trees and a stretch of lawn, with a strip of garden in the rear. How had it happened? she asked herself wonderingly. Everything that she had longed for had come to her through the sheer force of her desire; and more that she had not dreamed of; no poet's pen could reproduce the color, the music, the promise, of life. Her publishers were urging upon her the writing of a new novel; the idea was ready, but the substance must be curiously wrought in the depths of her spirit while her everyday work went on; before the actual labor of brain and pen could begin, there were many things that demanded her energies.

They were settled in their new home in time for a worthy keeping of Christmas,