Euola! You've saw me pretty mild; but don't you be mistook by that, like
that feller Dickert was mistook. Don't you lie to me an' try to fool me
'bout her. One o' them fellers I shot had me half-way to Garyville, tellin'
me she was thar--sick--an' sont him fer me."

Kerry laughed aloud. "Me foolin' you!" he jeered. "'Tis a child I've been
in your hands, ye black, big, still, solemn rascal! Here's money a-plenty,
an' you that knows these mountains--the fur side--an' me that knows the
ropes. You'll lend me a stake f'r the West. We'll go together--all four of
us. Oh Lord!" and again tears were on the sanguine cheeks.




The Level of Fortune


BY ABBY MEGUIRE ROACH

She was the ambition of the younger girls and the envy of the less
fortunate. Bessie Hall had _everything_, they said.

Her prettiness, indeed, was chiefly in slender plumpness and bloom. But it
served her purpose as no classic mould would have done. She did not
overestimate it. But she was probably better satisfied with it than with
most of those conditions of her life that people were always telling her
were ideal. They spoke of her as the only child in a way that implied
congratulations on the undivided inheritance--and that reminded her how she
had always wanted a sister. They talked of her idyllic life on a blue-grass
stock-farm--when she was wheedling from her father a winter in Washington.