off nine strokes, Mrs. Spellman rose, kissed her daughter, silently pressing her fingers on the light folds of her hair, and went upstairs to her room. Another half hour went by; then, as the clock struck the hour, the doorbell rang. Helen, recollecting that the servants had probably left the kitchen, put down her book and stepped into the hall. She waited a moment there, but when the bell rang a second time she went resolutely to the door and opened it.

"Oh!" she exclaimed. "Jackson! I thought it might be a tramp." "You are n't so far wrong," the architect answered with a laugh. "Is it too late to come in?"

For answer she held the door wide open.

"I have been dining with Mrs. Phillips; she has asked me to draw some plans for her," Hart explained. "I thought I would tell you and your mother about it."

"Mother has gone upstairs, but come in. You know I read late. And I am so glad to hear about the plans."

The strong night wind brushed boisterously through the open door, ruffling the girl's loosely coiled hair. She put her hands to her head to tighten the hairpins here and there. If the man could have read colors in the dark hall, he would have seen that the girl's face, usually too pale, had flushed. His ears were quick enough to detect the tremulous note in her voice, the touch of surprise and sudden feeling. It answered something electric in himself, something that had driven him across the city straightway from Mrs. Phillips's house.

He followed her into the circle of lamplight, and sat down heavily in the chair that she had been occupying.

"What's this thing you are reading?" he asked in his usual tone of authority, picking up the bulky volume beneath the lamp. "Hobson's Social Problem. Where did you get hold of that? It's a queer thing for a girl, is n't it?"

His tolerantly amused tone indicated the value he put on women's education. "Professor Sturges recommended it." "Um," he commented, turning over the leaves critically.

"But tell me about Mrs. Phillips and the plans."

There was an awkward constraint between them, not that the hour or the circumstance of their being alone made them self-conscious. There was nothing unusual in his coming late like this. But many things had happened since they had been together alone: the old man's death, the funeral, the will, – most of all the will!

He told her of the new house in Forest Park. It had been decided upon that evening, his plans having been received enthusiastically. But he lacked all interest in it. He was thinking how the week had changed everything between them. Because of that he had not been to see her before, and he felt guilty in being here now.

"Mother and I have just been talking of you. We haven't seen you since the funeral," Helen said, speaking what was in her mind.

Her words carried no reproach. Yet at once he felt that he was put on the defensive; he did not care to explain why he had avoided the Maple Street house.

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"A lot has happened," he replied vaguely. Things have changed pretty completely for me!"

A tone of bitterness crept into his voice in spite of himself. He wanted sympathy; for that, in part, he had come to her. At the same time he felt that it was a weak thing to do, that he should have gone almost anywhere but to her.

"It takes a man a few days to catch his breath," he continued, "when he finds he's been cut off with a shilling, as they say in the play."

Her eyes dropped from his face, and her hands began to move restlessly over the folds of her skirt.

- to

"I've had a lot to think about look at the future in a new way. There's no hope now of leaving this place, thanks to uncle !

"Oh!" she exclaimed in a low voice. The coldness of her tone was not lost

upon the man. He saw suddenly that it would not do to admit to her that he contemplated contesting his uncle's will.

"Of course," he hastened to add magnanimously, "uncle had a perfect right to do as he liked. It was his money. But what could he have had against me?"

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'Yes, I know all that," he hastened to say. "But the world is n't running on just the same lines it was when uncle Powers was working at the forge. It's a longer road up these days."

"Is it?" the girl asked vaguely. Then they were silent once more.

There was nothing of reproof in her words, yet he felt the strange difference in the atmosphere of this faded little Maple Street house from the world he had been living in. He had told himself for the last ten days that now he could not marry this woman, that a great and perfectly obvious barrier had been raised by his disinheritance. It had all been so clear to him that he had not questioned the idea.

That very evening he had had more talk about the will with the clever Mrs. Phillips, and he had come away from her resolved to contest the instrument.

On the morrow he intended to notify his cousin and take the preliminary steps. Yet, on the very heels of that decision, there had come an irresistible desire to see this other woman, the longing for the antithesis which so often besets the

feeble human will. Nothing was more unlike Mrs. Phillips in his horizon than this direct, inexperienced girl, full of pure enthusiasms.

Now he saw very clearly that nothing would remove him farther from Helen than the act he was contemplating. If she but knew his intention, she would scorn him forever! He had lost her somehow, either way, he kept saying to himself, as he sat there trying to think calmly. He put another black mark against his uncle's memory!

He had never cared to be near her so much as now. Every soreness and weakness of his spirit seemed to call out for her strong, capable hand. Even the sensuous Mrs. Phillips, by some subtle crossing of the psychological wires, had driven him to this plain girl, with the honest eyes and unimpassioned bosom. So also had the contractor and the men at his club. In fact, his world had conspired to set him down here, before the one who alone knew nothing of its logic!

"You haven't said anything about the school," Helen remarked after a time. "Aren't you glad!" she exclaimed, in the need of her spirit to know him to be as generous as she thought him. "It was so big, so large-hearted of him! Especially after all the bitter things the papers had said about him,—to give everything he had made, the whole work of his life, to help the people and the very ones who had so often misunderstood him and tried to hurt him. He was great enough to forget the strikes and the riots, and their shooting at him! He forgave them. He saw why they erred, and he wanted to lift them out of their hate and their ignorance. He wanted to make their lives happier and better! Were n't

you glad? Was n't it a splendid answer to his enemies?"

The warmth of her feeling lent her quiet face glow and beauty. She spoke fast, but in a distinct, low voice. It had a note of appeal in it, coming from her desire to rouse the man. For the moment she succeeded. He was ashamed to be unworthy in her eyes.

"Why, yes," he admitted; "as you put it, it seems fine. But I don't feel sure that I admire an old man's philanthropies, though. He does n't want the money any longer, that's a sure thing! So he chucks it into one big scheme or another that's likely to bring him a lot of fame. Uncle Powers was sharp enough in gathering his dollars, and in keeping 'em too"

"Oh! How can you say that! Don't," the girl implored, looking at him with troubled eyes.

If she had had much experience of men and things, she would have understood the architect's attitude long before this. But added to her inexperience was her persistent need of soul to see those she loved large and generous.

"Well," Hart resumed, less confidently, "I did n't mean any disrespect to the old man. It's only the oldest law of life that he lived up to. And I guess he

meant to have me learn that law as fast as I can. You've got to fight for what you want in this world, and fight hard, and fight all the time. And there is n't much room for sentiment and fine ideas and philanthropy until you are old, and have earned your pile, and done your neighbor out of his in the process."

She was silent, and he continued, willing to let her see some of the harder, baser reaches of his mind:

some big commissions, and put up a lot of skyscrapers or mills, why, I shall have won out. What does any one care for the kind of work you do? It's the price it brings every time!

"Don't say that! Please, please don't talk that way, so bitterly."

There was real pain in her voice, and her eyes were filmed with incipient tears. He leaned forward in his low chair and asked impetuously, "Why do you say that? Why do you care what I say ?"

Her lips trembled; she looked at him piteously for a moment, as if to beg him not to force her to confess more openly how he had hurt her, how much she could be hurt by seeing in him the least touch of baseness. She rose, without knowing what she did, with an unconscious instinct of flight. She twisted her hands nervously, facing him, as he rose, too, with her misty, honest eyes. “Tell me!” he whispered. "Do you

He drew her to him and kissed her. She murmured in the same weak, defenseless tone as before, "Don't, not yet."

But she gave herself quite unreservedly to his strong arms. She gave herself with all the perfect self-forgetfulness of an absolutely pure woman who loves and is glad. The little thoughts of self were forgotten, the preconceptions of her training. She was glad to give, to give all in the joy of giving to him!

The man, having thus done what his reason had counseled him for the past

week not to do, what he would have said an hour before was impossible for him to do, came out of the great whelming wave of feeling, and found himself alone upon the dark city street under the tranquil canopy of the city smoke. His whole being was at rest with the purification of strong passion, at rest and at peace, with that wonderful sense of poise, of rightness about one's self, which comes when passion is perfect and touches the whole soul. The fret about his affairs and his uncle's will, in which he had lived for the past week, had vanished with the touch of her lips.

He had committed himself to a very difficult future by engaging himself to a poor woman and struggling upwards in real poverty, instead of taking the decencies of a comfortable bachelorhood. But there was something inspiring in what had happened, something strangely electrifying to his nerves. He had stooped and caught the masculine burden of the race, but he felt his feet a-tingle for the road before him. And, best of all, in his heart there was reverence for that unknown woman who had kissed him and taken him to her - for always.

Robert Herrick.

Arthur Ketchum.

IN the season when trees are bare and grass is brown the varied blossoms and bird songs are but a memory, or, if the mind be prophetic rather than retrospective, an anticipation. True, a few days of unusual mildness may induce a modest chickweed or veronica to open a sleepy eye here and there, particularly in the more protected park or lawn of the city, or a song sparrow or Carolina wren, or perhaps a tufted titmouse, meadow lark, or even a cardinal, to try its voice; but these are straggling and incidental occurrences that merely serve to accentuate the general emptiness of winter.

Still, though the musical spirit may be dormant or fled to another clime, the woods and fields are not absolutely silent. For the birds are not limited vocally to those æsthetic utterances that bring us so much delight. Many are the notes at their command, expressive of other emotions than the pure love of music, which so palpably governs them in their singing. Surprise, anxiety, alarm, contentment, happiness,—these and other states, doubtless, have their appropriate utterances. Mere chattering, for companionship's sake, may be heard, too. Often, as it seems, a mere habit - as though a human were to hum unconsciously to himself without reference to mental state or occupation is the only cause of some of the little notes or phrases that thinly clothe the wintry woods.

It is, therefore, worth while sometimes to take a winter's walk and gather a few of these "chips," as most of them are called. They may be drier and colder than the full-clad tree of song from which they are cut, but they have much power for warmth to the spirit, and the pursuit is full of interest.

Strictly speaking, such birds as kinglets, chickadees, and wrens do not chip;

but then, very strictly speaking, neither do sparrows, not even chipping sparrows, so we need not balk at the term.

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It must be confessed, too, that if we listen very closely, the chickadee1 does not utter his name as he roves singly or in a merry band through the trees, gleaning such sustenance as the season permits. His common phrase, which has been thus anglicized, consists of two kinds of utterances, a high note of a somewhat thick soprano quality, and a series of low notes, often very musical in tone. These low notes are very peculiar. They vary in pitch, apparently with the varying stress with which they are uttered, but by breaks, instead of gradually. The first I ever listened to attentively were confined to the three notes of the first inversion of the chord of D minor,

passing irregularly from each to the next above or below. For a while I heard these same notes in the dee part of each chick-a-dee that I noted closely, and concluded that it was likely that all the dee notes were similarly constructed, and that this probably accounted for the mournful tinge that attaches to this utterance despite its sprightliness. But I subsequently heard tones of other pitch that upset my supposed fact and its corollary, the major triad of F

being among the chords represented.

Chickadee has also a very high, fine note, which he has, perhaps, borrowed from, or lent to, the kinglet, and which

1 The chickadee referred to in this article is the Carolina chickadee, which is very abundant about Washington, particularly in winter.