The Seeker

Better than protecting Nancy did he love to report the Gratcher's immediate presence to Allan, daring him to stay on that spot until it put its dreadful head around the corner and shook one of its crutches at them. In low throbbing tones he would report its fearful approach, stride by stride, on the crutches. This he could do by means of the Gratcher-eye, with which he claimed to be endowed. One having a Gratcher-eye can see around any corner when a Gratcher happens to be coming—yet only then, not at any other time, as Allan had proved by experiment on the first disclosure of this phenomenon. He of the Gratcher-eye could positively not see around a corner, if, for example, Allan himself was there; the Gratcher-eye could not tell if his hat was on his head or off. But this by no means proved that the Gratcher-eye did not exercise its magic function when a Gratcher actually approached, and Allan knew it. He would stand staunchly, with a fine incredulity, while the little boy called off the strides, perhaps, until he announced "Now he's just passed the well-curb—now he's——" but here, scoffing over an anxious shoulder, Allan would go in where Clytie was baking, feigning a sudden great hunger.

Nancy would stay, because she believed the little boy's protestations that he could save her, and the little boy himself often believed them.

"I love Allan best, because he is so comfortable, but I think you are the most admirable," she would say to him at such times; and he thought well of her if she had seemed very, very frightened.

So life had become a hardy sport with him. No longer was he moved to wish for early dissolution when Clytie's song floated to him:

This Willie had once seemed sweet and noble to him, but the words now made him avid of new life by reminding him that his own dear father would soon come to be with him one week, as he had promised when last they parted, and as a letter written with magnificent flourishes now announced.

Late in August this perfect father came—a fine laughing, rollicking, big gentleman, with a great, loud voice, and beautiful long curls that touched his velvet coat-collar. His sweeping golden moustache, wide-brimmed white hat, the choice rings on his fingers, his magnificently ponderous gold watch-chain and a watch of the finest silver, all proclaimed him a being of such flawless elegance both in person and attire that the little boy never grew tired of showing him to the village people and to Clytie. He did not stay at the big house, for some reason, but at the Eagle Hotel, whence he came to see his boys each day, or met them hurrying to see him. And for a further reason which the little boys did not understand, their grandfather continued to be too busy to see this perfect father once during the week he stayed in the village.

Deeming it a pity that two such choice spirits should not be brought together, the little boy urged his father to bring his fiddle to the big house and play and sing some of his fine songs, so that his grandfather could have a chance to hear some good music. He knew well enough that if the old man once heard this music he would have to give in and enjoy it, even if he was too busy to come down. And if only his father would tune up the fiddle and sing that very, very good song about,

if only his grandfather could hear this, one of the funniest and noisiest songs in the world, perhaps he would come right down stairs. But his father laughed away the suggestion, saying that the old gentleman had no ear for music; which, of course, was a joke, for he had two, like any person.

Clytemnestra, too, was at first strangely cool to the incomparable father, though at last she proved not wholly insensible to his charm, providing for his refection her very choicest cake and the last tumbler of crab-apple jelly. She began to suspect that a man of manners so engaging must have good in him, and she gave him at parting the tracts of "The Dying Drummer Boy" and "Sinner, what if You Die To-day?" for which he professed warm gratitude.

The little boy afterward saw his perfect father hand these very tracts to Milo Barrus, when they met him on the street, saying, "Here, Barrus, get your soul saved while you wait!" Then they laughed together.

The little boy wondered if this meant that Milo Barrus had come to the Feet, or been born again, or something. Or if it meant that his father also spelled God with a little g. He did not think of it, however, until it was too late to ask.

The flawless father went away at the end of the week, "over the County Fair circuit, selling Chief White Cloud's Great Indian Remedy," the little boy heard him tell Clytie. Also he heard his grandfather say to Clytie, "Thank God, not for another year!"

The little boy liked Nancy better than ever after that, because she had liked his father so much, saying he was exactly like a prince, giving pennies and nickels to everybody and being so handsome and big and grand. She wished her own Uncle Doctor could be as beautiful and great; and the little boy was generous enough to wish that his own plain grandfather might be almost as fine.

CHAPTER VII

The Superlative Cousin Bill J.

A splendid new interest had now come into the household in the person of one whom Clytemnestra had so often named as Cousin Bill J. Grandfather Delcher having been ordered south for the winter by Dr. Crealock, Cousin Bill J., upon Clytie's recommendation, was imported from up Fredonia way to look after the cow and be a man about the place. Clytie assured Grandfather Delcher that Cousin Bill J. had "never uttered an oath, though he's been around horses all his life!" This made him at once an object of interest to the little boy, though doubtless he failed to appraise the restraint at anything like its true value. It had sufficed Grandfather Delcher, however, and Cousin Bill J., securing leave of absence from the livery-stable in Fredonia, arrived the day the old man left, making a double excitement for the household.

He proved to be a fascinating person; handsome, affable, a ready talker upon all matters of interest— though sarcastic, withal—and fond of boys. True, he had not long hair like the little boy's father. Indeed, he had not much hair at all, except a sort of curtain of black curls extending from ear to ear at the back of his bare, pink head. But the little boy had to admit that Cousin Bill J.'s moustache was even grander than his father's. It fell in two graceful festoons far below his chin, with a little eyelet curled into each tip, and, like the ringlets, it showed the blue-black lustre of the crow's wing. In the full sunlight, at times, it became almost a royal purple.

Later observation taught the little boy that this splendid hue was applied at intervals by Cousin Bill J. himself. He did it daintily with a small brush, every time the moustache began to show a bit rusty at the roots; Bernal never failed to be present at this ceremony; nor to resolve that his own moustache, when it came, should be as scrupulously cared for—not left, like Dr. Crealock's, for example, to become speckled and gray.

Cousin Bill J.'s garments were as splendid as his character. He had an overcoat and cap made from a buffalo hide; his high-heeled boots had maroon tops set with purple crescents; his watch-charm was a large gold horse in full gallop; his cravat was an extensive area of scarlet satin in the midst of which was caught a precious stone as large as a robin's egg; and in smoking, which his physician had prescribed, he used a superb meerschaum cigar-holder, all tinted a golden brown, upon which lightly perched a carven angel dressed like those that ride the big white horse in the circus.

But aside from these mere matters of form, Cousin Bill J. was a man with a history. Some years before he had sprained his back, since which time he had been unable to perform hard labour; but prior to that mishap he had been a perfect specimen of physical manhood— one whose prowess had been the marvel of an extensive territory. He had split and laid up his three hundred and fifty rails many a day, when strong men beside him had blushingly to stop with three hundred or thereabouts; he had also cradled his four acres of grain in a day, and he could break the wildest horse ever known. Even the great Budd Doble, whom he personally knew, had said more than once, and in the presence of unimpeachable witnesses, that in some ways he, Budd Doble, knew less about a horse than Cousin Bill J. did. The little boy was wrought to enthusiasm by this tribute, resolving always to remember to say "hoss" for horse; and, though he had not heard of Budd Doble before, the name was magnetic for him. After you said it over several times he thought it made you feel as if you had a cold in your head.

Still further, Cousin Bill J. could throw his thumbs out of joint, sing tenor in the choir, charm away warts, recite "Roger and I" and "The Death of Little Nell," and he knew all the things that would make boys grow fast, like bringing in wood, splitting kindling, putting down hay for the cow, and other out-of-door exercises that had made him the demon of strength he once was. The little boy was not only glad to perform these acts for his own sake, but for the sake of lightening the labours of his hero, who wrenched his back anew nearly every time he tried to do anything, and was always having to take a medicine for it which he called "peach-and-honey." The little boy thought the name attractive, though his heart bled for the sufferer each time he was obliged to take it; for after every swallow of the stuff he made a face that told eloquently how nauseous it must be.

As for the satire and wit of Cousin Bill J., they were of the dry sort. He would say to one he met on the street when the mud was deep, "Fine weather overhead"— then adding dryly, after a significant pause— "but few going that way!" Or he would exclaim with feigned admiration, when the little boy shot at a bird with his bow and arrow, "My! you made the feathers fly that time!"—then, after his terrible pause—"only, the bird flew with them." Also he could call it "Fourth of Ju-New-Years" without ever cracking a smile, though it cramped the little boy in helpless laughter.

Altogether, Cousin Bill J. was a winning and lovely character of merits both spiritual and spectacular, and he brought to the big house an exotic atmosphere that was spicy with delights. The little boy prayed that this hero might be made again the man he once was; not because of any flaw that he could see in him—but only because the sufferer appeared somewhat less than perfect to himself. To Bernal's mind, indeed, nothing could have been superior to the noble melancholy with which Cousin Bill J. looked back upon his splendid past. There was a perfect dignity in it. Surely no mere electric belt could bring to him an attraction surpassing this—though Cousin Bill J. insisted that he never expected any real improvement until he could save up enough money to buy one. He showed the little boy a picture cut from a newspaper—the picture of a strong, proud-looking man with plenteous black whiskers, girded about with a wide belt that was projecting a great volume of electricity into the air in every direction. It was interesting enough, but the little boy thought this person by no means so beautiful as Cousin Bill J., and said so. He believed, too, though this he did not say, from tactful motives, that it would detract from the dignity of Cousin Bill J. to go about clad only in an electric belt, like the proud-looking gentleman in the picture—even if the belt did send out a lot of electric wiggles all the time. But, of course, Cousin Bill J. knew best. He looked forward to having his father meet this new hero—feeling that each was perfect in his own way.

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

On Surviving the Idols We Build

It is the way of life to be forever building new idols in place of the old. Into the fabric of these the most of us put so much of ourselves that a little of us dies each time a cherished image crumbles from age or is shattered by some lightning-stroke of truth from a cloud electric with doubt. This is why we fade and wither as the leaf. Could we but sweep aside the wreck without dismay and raise a new idol from the overflowing certainty of youth, then indeed should we have eaten from that other tree in Eden, for the defence of which is set the angel with the flaming sword. But this may not be. Fatuously we stake our souls on each new creation—deeming that here, in sooth, is one that shall endure beyond the end of time. To the last we are dull to the truth that our idols are meant to be broken, to give way to other idols still to be broken.

And so we lose a little of ourselves each time an idol falls; and, learning thus to doubt, wistfully, stoically we learn to die, leaving some last idol triumphantly surviving us. For—and this is the third lesson from that tree of Truth—we learn to doubt, not the perfection of our idols, but the divinity of their creator. And it would seem that this is quite as it should be. So long as the idol-maker will be a slave to his creatures, so long should the idol survive and the maker go back to useful dust. Whereas, did he doubt his idols and never himself—but this is mostly a secret, for not many common idolmongers will cross that last fence to the west, beyond the second field, where the cattle are strange and the hour so late that one must turn back for bed and supper.

To one who accepts the simple truth thus put down precisely, it will be apparent that the little boy was destined to see more than one idol blasted before his eyes; yet, also, that he was not come to the foolish caution of the wise, whom failure leads to doubt their own powers—as if we were not meant to fail in our idols forever! Being, then, not come to this spiritual decrepitude, fitted still to exercise a blessed contempt for the Wisdom of the Ages, it is plain that he could as yet see an idol go to bits without dismay, conscious only of the need for a new and a better one.

Not all one's idols are shattered in a day. This were a catastrophe that might wrench even youth's divine credulity.

Not until another year had gone, with its heavy-gaited school-months and its galloping vacation-days, did the little boy come to understand that Santa Claus was not a real presence. And instead of wailing over the ruins of this idol, he brought a sturdy faith to bear, building in its place something unseen and unheard of any save himself—an idol discernible only by him, but none the less real for that.

The Imp with the hammer being no respecter of dignities, the idol of the Front Room fell next, increasing the heap of ruins that was gathering about his feet. Tragically came a day one spring, a cold, cloudy, rational day, it seemed, when the Front Room went down; for the little boy saw all its sanctities violated, its mysteries laid bare. And the Front Room became a mere front room. Its shutters were opened and its windows raised to let in light and common fresh air; its carpet was on the line outside to be scourged of dust; the black, formidable furniture was out on the wide porch to be re-varnished, like any common furniture, plainly needing it; the vases of dyed grass might be handled without risk; and the dark spirit that had seemed to be in and over all was vanished. Even the majestic Ark of the Covenant, which the sinful Uzza once died for so much as touching reverently, was now seen to be an ordinary stove for the burning of anthracite coal, to be rattled profanely and polished for an extra quarter by Sherman Tranquillity Tyler after he had finished whitewashing the cellar. Fearlessly the little boy, grown somewhat bigger now, walked among the débris of this idol, stamping the floor, sounding the walls, detecting cracks in the ceiling, spots on the wall-paper and cobwebs in the corners. Yet serene amid the ruins towered his valiant spirit, conscious under the catastrophe of its power to build other and yet stauncher idols.

Thus was it one day to stretch itself with new power amid the base ruins of Cousin Bill J., though the time was mercifully deferred—that his soul might gain strength in worship to put away even that which it worshipped when the day of new truth dawned.

When Cousin Bill J., in the waning of that first winter, began actually to refine his own superlative elegance by spraying his superior garments with perfume, by munching tiny confections reputed to scent the breath desirably, by a more diligent grooming of the always superb moustache, the little boy suspected no motive. He saw these works only as the outward signs of an inward grace that must be ever increasing. So it came that his amazement was above that of all other persons when, at Spring's first breath of honeyed fragrance, Cousin Bill J. went to be the husband of Miss Alvira Abney. He had not failed to observe that Miss Alvira sang alto, in the choir, out of the same book from which Cousin Bill J. produced his exquisite tenor. But he had reasoned nothing from this, beyond, perhaps, the thought that Miss Alvira made a poor figure beside her magnificent companion, even if her bonnet was always the gayest bonnet in church, trembling through every season with the blossoms of some ageless springtime. For the rest, Miss Alvira's face and hair and eyes seemed to be all one colour, very pale, and her hands were long and thin, with far too many bones in them for human hands, the little boy thought.

Yet when he learned that the woman was not without merit in the sight of his clear-eyed hero, he, too, gave her his favour. At the marriage he felt in his heart a certain high, pure joy that must have been akin to that in the bride's own heart, for their faces seemed to speak much alike.

Tensely the little boy listened to the words that united these two, understanding perfectly from questions that his hero endowed the woman at his side with all his worldly goods. Even a less practicable person than Miss Alvira would have acquired distinction in this light—being endowed with the gold horse, to say nothing of the carven cigar-holder or the precious jewel in the scarlet cravat. Probably now she would be able to throw her thumbs out of joint, too!

But to the little boy chiefly the thing meant that Cousin Bill J. would stay close at hand, to be a joy forever in his sight and lend importance to the town of Edom. For his hero was to go and live in the neat rooms of Miss Alvira over her millinery and dressmaking shop, and never return to the scenes of his early prowess.

After the wedding the little boy, on his way to school of a morning, would watch for Cousin Bill J. to wheel out on the sidewalk the high glass case in which Miss Alvira had arranged her pretty display of flowered bonnets. And slowly it came to life in his understanding that between the not irksome task of wheeling out this case in the morning and wheeling it back at night, Cousin Bill J. now enjoyed the liberty that a man of his parts deserved. He was free at last to sit about in the stores of the village, or to enthrone himself publicly before them in clement weather, at which time his opinion upon a horse, or any other matter whatsoever, could be had for the asking. Nor would he be invincibly reticent upon the subject of those early exploits which had once set all of Chautauqua County marvelling at his strength.

At first the little boy was stung with jealousy at this. Later he came to rejoice in the very circumstance that had brought him pain. If his hero could not be all his, at least the world would have to blink even as he had blinked, in the dazzling light of his excellences—yes, and smart under the lash of his unequalled sarcasm.

It should, perhaps, be said that dissolution by slow poison is not infrequently the fate of an idol.

Doubtless there was never a certain day of which the little boy could have said "that was the first time Cousin Bill J. began to seem different." Yet there came a moment when all was changed—a time of question, doubt, conviction; a terrible hour, in short, when, face to face with his hero, he suffered the deep hurt of knowing that mentally, morally, and even esthetically, he himself was the superior of Cousin Bill J.

He could remember that first he had heard a caller say to Clytie of Miss Alvira, "Why, they do say the poor thing has to go down those back stairs and actually split her own kindlings—with that healthy loafer setting around in the good clothes she buys him, in the back room of that drug-store from morning till night. And what's worse, he's been seen with that eldest——"

Here the caller's eyes had briefly shifted sidewise at the small listener, whereupon Clytie had urged him to run along and play like a good boy. He pondered at length that which he had overheard and then he went to Miss Alvira's wood-pile at the foot of her back stairs, reached by turning up the alley from Main Street. He split a large pile of kindling for her. He would have been glad to do this each day, had not Miss Alvira proved to be lacking in delicacy. Instead of ignoring him, when she saw him from her back window, where she was second-fitting Samantha Rexford's pink waist, she came out with her mouth full of pins and gave him five cents and tried to kiss him. Of course, he never went back again. If that was the kind she was she could go on doing the work herself. He was no Ralph Overton or Ben Holt, to be shamed that way and made to feel that he had been Doing Good, and be spoken of all the time as "our Hero."

As for Cousin Bill J., of course he was a loafer! Who wouldn't be if he had the chance? But it was false and cruel to say that he was a healthy loafer. When Cousin Bill J. was healthy he had been able to fell an ox with one blow of his fist.

Nor was he disturbed seriously by rumours that his hero was a "come-outer"; that instead of attending church with Miss Alvira he could be heard at the barber-shop of a Sabbath morning, agreeing with Milo Barrus that God might have made the world in six days and rested on the seventh; but he couldn't have made the whale swallow Jonah, because it was against reason and nature; and, if you found one part of the Bible wasn't so, how could you tell the rest of it wasn't a lot of grandmother's tales?

Nor did he feel anything but sympathy for a helpless man imposed upon when he heard Mrs. Squire Cumpston say to Clytie, "Do you know that lazy brute has her worked to a mere shadow; she just sits in that shop all day long and lets tears fall every minute or so on her work. She spoiled five-eighths of a yard of three-inch lavender satin ribbon that way, that was going on to Mrs. Beasley's second-mourning bonnet. And she's had to cut him down to twenty-five cents a day for spending-money, and order the stores not to trust him one cent on her account."

He was sorry to have Miss Alvira crying so much. It must be a sloppy business, making her hats and things. But what did the woman expect of a man like Cousin Bill J., anyway?

Yet somehow it came after a few years—the new light upon his old idol. One day he found that he neither resented nor questioned a thing he heard Clytie herself say about Cousin Bill J.: "Why, he don't know as much as a goat." Here she reconsidered, with an air of wanting to be entirely fair:—"Well, not as much as a goat really ought to know!" And when he overheard old Squire Cumpston saying on the street, a few days later, "Of all God's mean creatures, the meanest is a male human that can keep his health on the money a woman earns!" it was no shock, though he knew that Cousin Bill J. was meant.

Departed then was the glory of his hero, his splendid dimensions shrunk, his effective lustre dulled, his perfect moustache rusted and scraggly, his chin weakened, his pale blue eyes seen to be in force like those of a china doll.

He heard with interest that Squire Cumpston had urged Miss Alvira to divorce her husband, that she had refused, declaring God had joined her to Cousin Bill J. and that no man might put them asunder; that marriage had been raised by Christ to the dignity of a sacrament and was now indissoluble—an emblem, indeed, of Christ's union with His Church; and that, as she had made her bed, so would she lie upon it.

Nor was the boy alone in regarding as a direct manifestation of Providence the sudden removal of Cousin Bill J. from this life by means of pneumonia. For Miss Alvira had ever been esteemed and respected even by those who considered that she sang alto half a note off, while her husband had gradually acquired the disesteem of almost the entire village of Edom. Many, indeed, went so far as to consider him a reproach to his sex.

Yet there were a few who said that even a pretended observance of the decencies would have been better. Miss Alvira disagreed with them, however, and after all, as the village wag, Elias Cuthbert, said in the post-office next day, "It was her funeral." For Miss Alvira had made no pretense to God; and, what is infinitely harder, she would make none to the world. She rode to the last resting-place of her husband— Elias also made a funny joke about his having merely changed resting-places—decked in a bonnet on which were many blossoms. She had worn it through years when her heart mourned and life was bitter, when it seemed that God from His infinity had chosen her to suffer the cruellest hurts a woman may know—and now that He had set her free she was not the one to pretend grief with some lying pall of crêpe. And on the new bonnet she wore to church, the first Sabbath after, there still flowered above her somewhat drawn face the blossoms of an endless girlhood, as if they were rooted in her very heart. Beneath these blossoms she sang her alto—such as it was—with just a hint of tossing defiance. Yet there was no need for that. Edom thought well of her.

No one was known to have mourned the departed save an inferior dog he had made his own and been kind to; but this creature had little sympathy or notice, though he was said to have waited three days and three nights on the new earth that topped the grave of Cousin Bill J. For, quite aside from his unfortunate connection, he had not been thought well of as a dog.

CHAPTER X

The Passing of the Gratcher; and Another

From year to year the perfect father came to Edom to be a week with his children. And though from visit to visit there were external variations in him, his genial and refreshing spirit was changeless. When his garments were appreciably less regal, even to the kind eye of his younger son; when his hat was not all one might wish; the boots less than excellent; the priceless watch-chain absent, or moored to a mere bunch of aimless keys, though the bounty from his pockets was an irregular and minute trickle of copper exclusively, the little boy strutted as proudly by his side, worshipping him as loyally, as when these outer affairs were quite the reverse. Yet he could not avoid being sensible of the fluctuations.

One year the parent would come with the long hair of one who, having been brother to the red Indian for years, has wormed from his medicine man the choicest secret of his mysterious pharmacopæia, and who would out of love for suffering humanity place this within the reach of all for a nominal consideration.

Another year he would be shorn of the sweeping moustache and much of the tawny hair, and the little boy would understand that he had travelled extensively with a Mr. Haverly, singing his songs each evening in large cities, and being spoken of as "the phenomenal California baritone." His admiring son envied the fortunate people of those cities.

Again he would be touring the world of cities with some simple article of household use which, from his luxurious barouche, he was merely introducing for the manufacturers—perhaps a rare cleaning-fluid, a silver-polish, or that ingenious tool which will sharpen knives and cut glass, this being, indeed, one of his prized staples. It appeared—so the little boy heard him tell Milo Barrus—that few men could resist buying a tool with which he actually cut a pane of glass into strips before their eyes; that one beholding the sea of hands waving frantically up to him with quarters in them, after his demonstration, would have reason to believe that all men had occasion to slice off a strip of glass every day or so. Instead of this, as an observer of domestic and professional life, he believed that out of the thousands to whom he had sold this tool, not ten had ever needed to cut glass, nor ever would.

There was another who continued indifferent to the personal estate of this father. This was Grandfather Delcher, who had never seen him since that bleak day when he had tried to bury the memory of his daughter. When the perfect father came to Edom the grandfather went to his room and kept there so closely that neither ever beheld the other. The little boy was much puzzled by this apparently intentional avoidance of each other by two men of such rare distinction, and during the early visits of his father he was fruitful of suggestion for bringing them together. But when he came to understand that they remained apart by wish of the elder man, he was troubled. He ceased then all efforts to arrange a meeting to which he had looked forward with pride in his office of exhibiting each personage to the other. But he was grieved toward his grandfather, becoming sharp and even disdainful to the queer, silent old man, at those times when the father was in the village. He could have no love and but little friendliness for one who slighted his dear father. And so a breach widened between them from year to year, as the child grew stouter fibre into his sentiments of loyalty and justice.

Meantime, age crept upon the little boy, relentlessly depriving him of this or that beloved idol, yet not unkindly leaving with him the pliant vitality that could fashion others to be still more warmly cherished.

With Nancy, on afternoons when cool shadows lay across the lawn between their houses, he often discussed these matters of life. Nancy herself had not been spared the common fate. Being now a mere graceless rudiment of humanity, all spindling arms and legs, save for a puckered, freckled face, she was past the witless time of expecting to pick up a bird with a broken wing and find it a fairy godmother who would give her three wishes. It was more plausible now that a prince, "all dressed up in shiny Prince Clothes," would come riding up on a creamy white horse, lift her to the saddle in front of him and gallop off, calling her "My beautiful darling!" while Madmasel, her uncle, and Betsy, the cook, danced up and down on the front piazza impotently shouting "Help!" She suspected then, when it was too late, that certain people would bitterly wish they had acted in a different manner. If this did not happen soon, she meant to go into a convent where she would not be forever told things for her own good by those arrogantly pretending to know better, and where she could devote a quiet life to the bringing up of her children.

The little boy sympathised with her. He knew what it was to be disappointed in one's family. The family he would have chosen for his own was that of which two excellent views were given on the circus bills. In one picture they stood in line, maddeningly beautiful in their pink tights, ranging from the tall father and mother down through four children to a small boy that always looked much like himself. In the other picture these meritorious persons were flying dizzily through the air at the very top of the great tent, from trapeze to trapeze, with the littlest boy happily in the greatest danger, midway in the air between the two proud parents, who were hurling him back and forth.

It was absurd to think of anything like this in connection with a family of which only one member had either courage or ambition. One had only to study Clytie or Grandfather Delcher a few moments to see how hopeless it all was.

The next best life to be aspired to was that of a house-painter, who could climb about unchided on the frailest of high scaffolds, swing from the dizziest cupola, or sway jauntily at the top of the longest ladder—always without the least concern whether he spilled paint on his clothes or not.

Then, all in a half-hour, one afternoon, both he and Nancy seemed to cross a chasm of growth so wide that one thrilled to look back to the farther side where all objects showed little and all interests were juvenile. And this phenomenon, signalised by the passing of the Gratcher, came in this wise. As they rested from play—this being a time when the Gratcher was most likely to be seen approaching by him of the Gratcher-eye, the usual alarm was given, followed by the usual unbreathing silence. The little boy fixedly bent his magic eye around the corner of the house, the little girl scrambling to him over the grass to clutch one of his arms, to listen fearfully for the setting of the monster's crutches at the end of each stride, to feel if the earth trembled, as it often distinctly did, under his awful tread.

Wider grew the eyes of both at each "Now he's nearer still!" of the little boy, until at last the girl must hide her head lest she see that awful face leering past the corner. For, once the Gratcher's eye met yours fairly, he caught you in an instant and worked his will. This was to pick you up and look at you on all sides at once with the eyes in his finger-ends, which tickled you so that you lost your mind.

But now, at the shrillest and tensest report of progress from the gifted watcher, all in a wondrous second of realisation, they turned to look into each other's eyes— and their ecstasy of terror was gone in the quick little self-conscious laughs they gave. It was all at once as if two grown-ups had in a flash divined that they had been playing at a childish game under some spell. The moment was not without embarrassment, because of their having caught themselves in the very act and frenzy of showing terror of this clumsy fiction. Foolishly they averted their glances, after that first little laugh of sudden realisation; but again their eyes met, and this time they laughed loud and long with a joy that took away not only all fears of the Gratcher forever, but their first embarrassment of themselves. Then, with no word of the matter whatsoever, each knowing that the other understood, they began to talk of life again, feeling older and wiser, which truly they were.

For, though many in time wax brave to beard their Gratcher even in his lair, only the very wise learn this— that the best way to be rid of him is to laugh him away —that no Gratcher ever fashioned by the ingenuity of terror-loving humans can keep his evil power over one to whom he has become funny.

The passing of the Gratcher had left no pedestal crying for another idol. In its stead, for his own chastening and with all reverence, the little boy erected the spirit of that God which the Bible tells of, who is all-wise and loving, yet no sentimentalist, as witness his sudden devastations among the first-born of all things, from white rabbits to men.

But an idol next went down that not only left a wretched vacancy in the boy's pantheon, but fell against his heart and made an ugly wound. It was as if he had become suddenly clear-seeing on that day when the Gratcher shrivelled in the blast of his laugh.

A little later came the father on his annual visit, and the dire thing was done. The most ancient and honoured of all the idols fell with a crash. A perfect father was lost in some common, swaggering, loud-voiced, street-mannered creature, grotesquely self-satisfied, of a cheap, shabby smartness, who came flaunting those things he should not have flaunted, and proclaiming in every turn of his showy head his lack of those things without which the little boy now saw no one could be a gentleman.

He cried in his bed that night, after futile efforts to believe that some fearful change had been wrought in his father. But his memory of former visits was scrupulously photographic—phonographic even. He recalled from the past certain effects once keenly joyed in that now made his cheeks burn. The things rioted brutally before him, until it seemed that something inside of him strove to suppress them—as if a shamed hand reached out from his heart to brush the whole offense into decent hiding with one quick sweep.

This time he took care that Nancy should not meet his father. Yet he walked the streets with him as before—walking defiantly and with shame those streets through which he had once led the perfect father in festal parade, to receive the applause of a respectful populace. Now he went forth awkwardly, doggedly, keen for signs that others saw what he did, and quick to burn with bitter, unreasoning resentment, when he detected that they did so. Once his father rallied him upon his "grumpiness"; then he grew sullen—though trying to smile—thinking with mortification of his grandfather. He understood the old man now.

He was glad when the week came to an end. Bruised, bewildered, shamed, but loyal still and resentful toward others who might see as he did, he was glad when his father went—this time as Professor Alfiretti, doing a twenty-minute turn of hypnotism and mind-reading with the Gus Levy All-Star Shamrock Vaudeville, playing the "ten-twenty-thirties," whatever they were!