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A tall ship lifted her wings to the wind and flew with them fast and far,
Till the Sea-girt Green Space sank from sight like a faint and a failing star.
The white foam flowered along their path to fade on the distant swells,
Till the ship came fluttering down to rest on the shores of the Land of Bells.

There was the little shining town,

And there was the market-place;
But never a footfall in the streets,

In the windows, never a face;

There were the little homes left wide,

Where no more the masters come;

There were the towers and sweet-tongued bells,

But every belfry dumb.

Gay little land, so still! so still!-They stood in the hollow street

And feared to step lest the silence wake at the sound of their stranger feet.
The Boy looked up at the Gloomy Knight and forgot his hidden fears,

For the faery light was a moment dimmed and his eyes were filled with tears.

Then: "Ring!" cried the Knight, "Ring! Ring the bells,

That the lost folk hear and find

The homeward path, tho' their ears be dulled

And their eyes with weeping blind."

Swift up to the belfry towers they sped

And smote every bell to song.

The faery winds blew out of the west
And carried the sounds along.

Far in the dread Lost Lands they toiled

At the Wizard's dark behest,

The white-capped folk of the Land of Bells,
And they knew no night of rest,

Sowing the seed in the wide Waste Lands,
Ploughing the alien loam;

When faintly, faintly, as in a dream,
Came calling the bells of home.

The Wizard twisted and blocked their ways,
And covered the roads from sight:
They closed their eyes to the mazy paths
And followed the bells aright.

The Wizard hurtled his thunder-balls;

But their hearts heard, clear and low,

The call of the bells o'er those darkened lands

Where nothing again shall grow.

Oh, wild rang the bells in the Land of Bells when the streets were thronged once more! When the white-capped neighbors smiled through the pane or called from the open door! Peal and ripple and carillon, tinkle and trill and chime,

Ringing the whole green world around to tell of that happy time!

The mother turned to her pleasant task,

The little son at her gown;

The grandsire out on the garden bench
Peacefully sat him down.

Peal and ripple and carillon,

The bells went ringing wild.

The Knight of the Gloomy Countenance looked down at the Boy and smiled.

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"SWIFT UP TO THE BELFRY TOWERS THEY SPED AND SMOTE EVERY BELL TO SONG. THE FAERY WINDS BLEW OUT OF THE WEST AND CARRIED THE SOUNDS ALONG"

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(Prunier Tells Another Story)

By T. MORRIS LONGSTRETH

WE were indisputably off on our long-considered journey, Essex Lad, Prunier, and I. Indeed, this was the third night since we had shut the shutters of Wilderness House a bit sadly, and without any gaiety whatever turned our backs on the blue and tranquil June of Wildyrie's ranges. It's a long, long way to Peribonka from Placid; and no wonder, when you consider that from the backdoor step of the last house in Peribonka, there is no habitation between you and the arctic circle except a Hudson Bay post, a scattering of wigwams and tents, and perhaps an igloo or two. Peribonka was the tiny village where Prunier had been born, and the three of us had set out to visit his old home.

We were in the smoke-and-wash room of the sleeping-car, we and Prunier's old pipe, which made a lusty fourth, and it was nearly bedtime. Rrrumpety-bumpty-bumpty-bump went the irregular song and chorus of the equally irregular wheels on the medieval train. Clickety-click-click-click chirruped the glass in the nickel holder by the spigot as it, and we, spun around the curves. Rrrumpetybumpty-clickety-click-clangle-clank. The train was very loose-jointed. I remember that Prunier had rolled up his sleeves to wash his hands as clean of railroad as was possible, and I remember noticing the long scar down his arm about which he had always hinted a story, but had never told it, when Bangetygathump-boom-boom! and the so-called express crawled, stalled, and, with a last shiver, halted.

As was our custom, E. L. and I leaned from the sooty platform and gazed out over the usual wilderness which crowds close to Canadian railroads and consists of blackened stumps and stunted second growths. A half-moon threw pale chills of homesickness over the waste. If it was this lonely to look at, how lonely must it be to live in! And our thoughts flew, simultaneously, back to Prunier's youth.

your bush and you 've got to tell us a story about it." The bush, I ought to say, is the Canadian habitant's word for forest. No matter if you 're lost in a wilderness of woods as large as Texas, it is only the bush.

"A story of when you were young," added E. L.

"There was no such time," said Prunier, a bit sadly. And to look at his dry-tanned face, the wrinkles about his eyes, you might have believed it for the instant. But the moment the eyes twinkled, the moment he spoke with a voice that fifty winters had not made harsh, you knew better.

"All right," said Prunier, "about a hundred years ago when I was young." And he resolved into silence and a cloud of smoke. "Is it going to be true?" asked E. L. "Certainement."

"And exciting?"

"The truth is always exciting to those who can listen," he said. "I will tell you about the time when I learned nearly how to swim."

Another silence; another cloud of smoke. "Don't you really know yet, Prunier?"

He shook his head, adding: "But I almost learned once. It was up the Tail-o'-Rat Rivière."

Here E. L. snickered out, "What a name! Rat-tail River!"

"A good name," continued Prunier, "for the river was not too wide, and it marched along-how do you say it?-winding. And it ended in a rat!"

At this I laughed; the name did seem reasonable, now.

"C'est vrai. The rivière ends in Lac aux Rats, which is a large lake up the Mistassini, where there were many castor-beavair you call them. And mon frère and I had gone there with a canoe-load of traps while yet there was no ice, because it was an easy trip by canoe. Later we would go with all our stores on our shoulders, which we could do easily without the traps.

"The afternoon on the which I was so

"Let's make him tell us a story," said nearly learned to swim was hot for SeptemE. L.

"About that scar on his arm," I added. "We may be here for hours."

We went back to him. "You can't get out of it, now, Prunier. We 're caught in

ber, and mon frère stayed down by the Lac aux Rats to put a finish to some things, while I took the canoe up the little Tail-o'-Rat, looking for beavair sign. I had had one grand portage about a long rapid which I call

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"'I HAD ONE GRAND PORTAGE ABOUT A LONG RAPID WHICH I CALL JUMPING RAT' "'
Jumping Rat. Above it was an island about
the length of five canoes, with little rapids on
each side, which I call Les Bébés; and above
that, many miles of still water, with the
shores close together and trees leaning out
and much place for the little fur-bearers. I
see that mon frère and I have good trapping
all the winter.

am disappointed and turn back late. But I
had told mon frère not to expect me till after
he see me and there was no hurry. It is nice
not to be in a hurry."
"Especially on this railroad," said E. L.,
"Continuez, Monsieur."

"I go up far, because I see no beavair, and

"Well, I had to turn my voyage sometime, so I turned and began to put some strength into going down. There was a current, too,

and I flew along without effort. All of an instant, I see myself approaching a great dead birch hanging over the river, and on the birch, a bear. He was a little bear, but big for a cub. He must have been born early in the spring and grown fast, with much care. He was of a size remarkable and of an energy also, for he was tearing off the bark of the birch and licking up the ants, I suppose, with all vivacity. And it was so funny that I do not shoot from far. But all at once I remember my good gun. I have to lean up far in the canoe to get it, and must do so quietly so that I do not scare my prey. I get very close before I fire.

"I fire. Perhaps I do not hit, perhaps so -anyway, not badly. But the bear is so frightened that he upsets a moment, catches, slips, clutches at the shiny bark. It tears with him, he loses his balance, and, as evil chance has it, falls at the moment that I pass underneath. He falls on my canoe!

"I was young, you know. I had only eighteen years. I would never have done so foolish a thing now. But then I was excited, for a bear was good to begin the season of hunting, and I had not thought to have a bear sitting for a moment of surprise in the bow of my canoe. But I should have thought of that. For the next moment it enters his head that it is not a very good place for him.

"It enters his head, I say, and there is room only for one thing in a bear's head. He determines to quit the boat. And with one roll, we are all in the water. I could not help it, though it is shame to a voyageur to be upset from his canoe.

"There we were; a grown cub of a bear hanging to the bow of a canoe, and a grown fool of a man hanging to the stern, and both afraid to let go. Bears can swim-the lumpier and more wallopy they are, the better. But this one did not like the idée. Perhaps, like me and mon frère and all the men I know, he had n't made good use for his opportunities. Anyway, the current was going fast, and I heard his claws going swish-tear through the bark of the canoe-we had birchbark canoes in those days, just like the Indians and immédiatement there strikes upon my ear a new sound, the sound of rapids. I remember Les Bébés, and I raise myself upon the stern and look over; and believe me, as E. L. says, they do not look like bébés now. Au contraire, in three minutes, at the rate we were going, these bébés would have swallowed us down their white throats and

gone on laughing, the way a hen laughs when she gulps down a fly.

"Friend Bear hears the rapids, too, and whines. We are a minute nearer. I push with my feet frantically, for I hope that the canoe will seek the border of the river. But some current swings us out. So I make for the island that is between Les Bébés and ply my legs to propel the canoe there. It is a pleasure to see us approach; it is not a pleasure to hear Les Bébés roaring in our ears, and Friend Bear claws more than frantically on the rending canoe. We near, and I prepare

to leave Friend Bear.

"It is a shame to think he is going to be drowned, but I have just a moment, as my end of the canoe swings toward the island, to leap for a big rock. I leap, I clutch it, I hold, I scramble ashore, I look. I had forgotten. Of course, when I let go, the end of the canoe shoots up and Friend Bear goes to the bottom énergiquement. The next I see is a dripping bear crawling up on my island with me, and a tattered canoe flying down Les Bébés toward the Jumping Rat.

"Au revoir, mon canot,' I think; ‘au revoir, mon frère.' There is but one future for melife on this island shared mutuellement with a bear, until one eats the other of us up. I regretted that I had not told mon frère to expect me until afterward, for when would he now make a search? And when would the bear's appetite begin? These were not useless questions.

"Nature, or le bon Dieu, had indeed placed upon our island a few bushes for blueberries, and these I allowed the bear to have. He was, I hated to learn, a very hungry bear; and not minding his wet fur so much as did I my wet clothes, he began to dine at once, gathering in not only the berries, but the bushes as well in gulpfuls prodigieuses. As he advanced along the slender island I retreated to the end, in order to think, and to count my weapons. I found that one pocketknife and two fish-hooks in my hatband were the only implements of sharpness on my personage. And of what use were they? I did not need to fish for the bear; I had already caught him too securely; and I could not carve him until he was dead, and there was no way of deadening him with just a knife. My thoughts were not very expeditious.

"However, despair never hatched eggs, as we habitants say, and while the bear was devouring all his fare at one meal, with incessant gruntings, I cut one of the tiny birch saplings and began to whittle with my knife.

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