Genre Short Story. Page - 4

s be'n ter Noo Orleens, an' Atlanty, an'Charleston, an' Richmon'; an' w'en I 'd be'n all ober de Souf I come terde Norf. Fer I knows I 'll fin' 'im some er dese days," she addedsoftly, "er he 'll fin' me, an' den we 'll bofe be as happy in freedomas we wuz in de ole days befo' de wah." A smile stole over her witheredcountenance as she paused a moment, and her bright eyes softened into afar-away look.

This was the substance of the old woman's story. She had wandered alittle here and there. Mr. Ryder was looking at her curiously when shefinished.

"How have you lived all these years?" he asked.

"Cookin', suh. I 's a good cook. Does you know anybody w'at needs a goodcook, suh? I 's stoppin' wid a cullud fam'ly roun' de corner yonder 'telI kin git a place."

"Do you really expect to find your husband? He may be dead long ago."

She shook her head emphatically. "Oh no, he ain' dead. De signs an' detokens tells me. I dremp three nights runnin' on'y dis las' week dat Ifoun' him."

"He may h

our eighth landing, all that passed. For R-14 was old again, older than any of the others.

And then, on October sixteenth, Mason opened the door of the locked cabin. It happened quite by accident. One of the arelium-thaxide conduits broke in the Marie Galante's central passageway, and the resulting explosion grounded the central feed line of the instrument equipment. In a trice the passageway was a sheet of flame, rapidly filling with smoke from burning insulation.

Norris, of course, was in the bridge cuddy with locked doors between us and him, and now with the wiring burned through there was no way of signalling him he was wanted for an emergency. In his absence Mason took command.

That passageway ran the full length of the ship. Midway down it was the door leading to the women's lounge. The explosion had jammed that door shut, and smoke was pouring forth from under the sill. All at once one of the women rushed forward to announce hysterically that Mason's wife, Estell

r a moment Bill stood over him, nostrils flaring, his whole body tense and waiting. But Tom was too groggy to get up.

"Oh, Bill, how could you!" Christy cried out, dropping to her knees beside Tom.

Bill strode with measured step to the door. There he turned, and looking back with a sneer, said, "Sweet dreams, Dream Boy!"

* * * * *

In a luxurious office of Asteroid Mining Corporation on the twenty-third floor of a Manhattan skyscraper a furious official of the corporation faced an uncomfortable underling.

"I've heard of some pretty crude tricks in my time, Heilman, but breaking into the Staker Company's office like a common house thief takes the tin medal for low grade brains!" the official ranted, pounding his desk. "I suppose you thought that was an excellent way to advance yourself in the corporation, eh? Finesse, Heilman, finesse. That's what it takes in matters like this. Asteroid Mining, before it got the monopoly, stopped competition, but not by common housebreaking--"

bunch grass in the miles of red shaggy prairie that stretched before his cabin. He knew it in all the deceitful loveliness of its early summer, in all the bitter barrenness of its autumn. He had seen it smitten by all the plagues of Egypt. He had seen it parched by drought, and sogged by rain, beaten by hail, and swept by fire, and in the grasshopper years he had seen it eaten as bare and clean as bones that the vultures have left. After the great fires he had seen it stretch for miles and miles, black and smoking as the floor of hell.

He rose slowly and crossed the room, dragging his big feet heavily as though they were burdens to him. He looked out of the window into the hog corral and saw the pigs burying themselves in the straw before the shed. The leaden gray clouds were beginning to spill themselves, and the snow flakes were settling down over the white leprous patches of frozen earth where the hogs had gnawed even the sod away. He shuddered and began to walk, trampling heavily with his ungainly

the powers of nature as were the plants or the animals. When the sun shone they were open-hearted and merry, at evening they became silent, and the night, which seemed to them so all-powerful, robbed them of their strength. And now the green light that fell through the reeds and drew out from the water strips of gold, brown, and black-green, smoothed them into a sort of magic mood. They were completely shut out from the outer world. The reeds swayed gently in the soft wind, the rushes murmured, and the long, ribbon-like leaves struck them lightly in the face. They sat on the gray stones in their gray leather garments, and the shaded tones of the leather melted into the shades of the stones. Each saw his comrade sitting opposite him as quietly as a stone statue. And among the reeds they saw giant fish swimming, gleaming and glittering in all colors of the rainbow. When the men threw out their lines and watched the rings on the water widen amid the reeds, it seemed to them that the motion grew and grew until t

z, as he walked in, throwing his umbrella in Gluck's face.

"Aye! what for, indeed, you little vagabond?" said Hans, administering an educational box on the ear as he followed his brother into the kitchen.

"Bless my soul!" said Schwartz when he opened the door.

"Amen," said the little gentleman, who had taken his cap off and was standing in the middle of the kitchen, bowing with the utmost possible velocity.

"Who's that?" said Schwartz, catching up a rolling-pin and turning to Gluck with a fierce frown.

"I don't know, indeed, brother," said Gluck in great terror.

"How did he get in?" roared Schwartz.

"My dear brother," said Gluck deprecatingly, "he was so VERY wet!"

The rolling-pin was descending on Gluck's head, but, at the instant, the old gentleman interposed his conical cap, on which it crashed with a shock that shook the water out of it all over the room. What was very odd, the rolling-pin no sooner touched the cap than it flew out of Schwartz's hand

r. It came to me suddenly that I had the kind of feeling one has in the aisle of a large cathedral. There was a sort of echo in the night--an incredibly faint reduplicating of the noise of our oars.

"Hark!" I said, audibly; not realizing at first that I was speaking aloud. "There's an echo--"

"That's it!" the Captain cut in, sharply. "I thought I heard something rummy!"

. . . "I thought I heard something rummy," said a thin ghostly echo, out of the night. . . "thought I heard something rummy" . . . "heard something rummy." The words went muttering and whispering to and fro in the night about us, in a rather a horrible fashion.

"Good Lord!" said the Old Man, in a whisper.

We had all stopped rowing, and were staring about us into the thin mist that filled the night. The Skipper was standing with the bull's-eye lamp held over his head, circling the beam of light round from port to starboard, and back again.

Abruptly, as he did so, it came to me that the mist was thinner.

They walked toward a house of colored rocks.

"Miss Daphne Trilling's," said Mr. Greypoole, gesturing. "They threw it up in a day, though it's solid enough."

When they had passed an elderly woman on a bicycle, Captain Webber stopped walking.

"Mr. Greypoole, we've got to have a talk."

Mr. Greypoole shrugged and pointed and they went into an office building which was crowded with motionless men, women and children.

"Since I'm so mixed up myself," the captain said, "maybe I'd better ask--just who do you think we are?"

"I'd thought you to be the men from the Glades of course."

"I don't have the slightest idea what you're talking about. We're from the planet Earth. They were going to have another war, the 'Last War' they said, and we escaped in that rocket and started off for Mars. But something went wrong--fellow named Appleton pulled a gun, others just didn't like the Martians--we needn't go into it; they wouldn't have us so Mars didn't work out.

of him was as near murder as Wearycould come. Glory had been belabored with worse things than hatsduring his eventful career; he laid back his ears, shut his eyes tightand took it meekly.

There came a gasping gurgle from the hammock, and Weary's hand stoppedin mid-air. The girl's head was burrowed in a pillow and her slipperstapped the floor while she laughed and laughed.

Weary delivered a parting whack, put on his hat and looked at heruncertainly; grinned sheepishly when the humor of the thing came to himslowly, and finally sat down upon the porch steps and laughed with her.

"Oh, gee! It was too funny," gasped the girl, sitting up and wipingher eyes.

Weary gasped also, though it was a small matter--a common little wordof three letters. In all the messages sent him by the schoolma'am, itwas the precise, school-grammar wording of them which had irritated himmost and impressed him insensibly with the belief that she was too primto be quite human. The Happy Family had felt all along