tion, and that this must be taken into account. It was settled, therefore, that they were to come in the morning prepared to stay all day and for the party in the evening. The Professor demurred somewhat at this, but Mr. Fraser said he would be simply nowhere if he didn't have Tom to help him light the tree, and, besides, he felt that they ought to have another boy the Bobbin's age at the party, and, if it wasn't Tom, who would it be? This brought to light the curious fact that Mr. Fraser hadn't any friends in Colchester less than around half a century old-a miserable state of affairs, certainly. It so excited the compassion of Tom and the Professor that they readily consented to come early in the morning, prepared to stay all day, and then probably make a night of it. But of course they couldn't think of taking any money for helping with the decorations. It wouldn't do. This was purely a social contract, and the firm of Gilliken, Bunting & Hank-Honk could assuredly not take a penny for giving themselves so much pleasure. Even a blind man could see that, observed the Professor with a smile. And Mr. Fraser replied that he wouldn't quarrel about it, for he had often noticed that blind people often had finer powers of perception than anybody else.

Thus the arrangement was concluded, and, putting on his gloves and hat, Mr. Fraser departed in his automobile.

IMM

VII

MMEDIATELY upon finishing an unusually early breakfast, next morning, John Fraser telephoned his secretary at the factory that he would not be there that day. Having thus dismissed the Fraser Forge and Foundry from his mind, he and Tom set out blithely, in a large and luxurious limousine, to buy Christmas presents for Robin the Bobbin.

All day, after their return, Tom and Marcus worked over the Christmas tree, draping and red raping festoons of tinsel, hanging gaudy glass balls from the tips of slender boughs, twining electric wires about the trunk so they wouldn't show, putting the glass cat and the glass canary-bird on opposite branches so as

not to excite the carnal appetite of the one or endanger the existence of the other. They worked hard, too. The Professor and Mr. Fraser sat in comfortable chairs most of the time and directed Tom where to hang the baubles. When necessary, Mr. Fraser steadied the step-ladder for him. And everybody was as gay and as jolly as could be, with the possible exception of the Professor, who had been wrapped in unaccustomed gloom all day. Then the telephone-bell rang. It was Sam Paley, back in Colchester, and he said he had some bad

news.

Half an hour later he recounted his melancholy tidings in John Fraser's parlor. He had, after all, been unable to find Robin the Bobbin. In Akron still lived the lady with whom Sally Brown and her husband had boarded twelve years ago, and it was she who had told Paley that the child was still in Akron. She understood that the wife of a certain teacher of the violin, formerly in an orchestra with which Mrs. Brown had been connected, had taken charge of the baby when Sally and her husband went to Florida, and that the boy was still in their possession. Paley sought out the violinist. He said he remembered Şara Brown very well, but had never seen her child. There had been a pianist in the orchestra, at one time, who had been more intimate with the Browns than he had, but he had forgotten his name. He must have left Akron long ago, for he could not remember to have seen him in years. It was his impression that the baby had been left with this pianist and his wife or sister.

The effect of this sad narrative upon John Fraser's Christmas party was most deplorable. The gaiety of the occasion vanished in a twinkling. Mr. Fraser sighed. The Professor became so silent and abstracted that he was really no better than a skeleton at the feast to which they presently sat down in the back parlor. Sam Paley, at the end of the table next the fireplace, perspired and berated his luck; Mr. Fraser, at the opposite end, carved the big turkey, sadly remarking that they would never be able to eat the half of it without the assistance of the Bobbin. Tom promised to do his best to help out, and

thought he might be able to finish three plates of the "stuffing," but that was all. The disappointment had taken his appetite almost entirely away.

Marcus pulled back the heavy curtains while they finished the dessert, and illuminated the tree. There were no shouts of joy; they hardly looked at it. Then Sam Paley filled his glass and got upon his feet.

"I fill this cup

To one made up

Of loveliness alone," said he, lugubriously. "And I can see her now as plainly as if she stood right over there with one hand on John Fraser's shoulder and an arm around Tom's neck-which is just where she'd put it, for she was always fond of children. Most beautiful woman I ever knew. Her hair was a little reddish and she had a few freckles that showed up because her skin was so white. And her voiceAnd her voiceDon't you remember her voice, John? That was music. I can hear it yet. Funny thing, John, that you didn't fall in love with her."

"I was too busy, Sam," interrupted Mr. Fraser; "and, besides, you know, I never saw her. Now that I have, in a sense, made Sally Marboro's acquaintance, and since I have, in these latter days, much greater leisure than formerly, perhaps "

"Exactly. I knew you couldn't long resist. Why, John, every young fellow about Colchester twenty-five years ago was in love with her. 'Twas as natural to love her as to breathe the fragrant air of a June morning."

Sam Paley sighed over the hopelessness of expressing the charm and worth of the mother of Robin the Bobbin, and raised his cup. Mr. Fraser arose and they were about to drink, when the Professor upset his glass on the tablecloth and Marcus had to jump forward to refill it. Now they drank the toastthat is, they all drank it but Professor Gilliken, whose trembling hand once more overturned the cup. He was staring with sightless, blinking eyes toward the lighted tree in the front parlor, leaning with unsteady hands upon the table. Then he began to speak, in a queer, quivering voice:

"I know I have no right to keep him, but I can't bear to let him go now. Í I can't, I can't. You-you wouldn't ask it. You couldn't be so cruel as that, after-after leaving him with me so long. He was all the light I had. Now it will be all dark-all dark!"

The Professor dropped down, half on his chair, half on the table. Tom and Mr. Fraser ran to his side and lifted him. up. Sam Paley, speechless, mopped his perspiring brow with a napkin.

Marcus, who seemed to feel that if some of the punch could actually be conveyed safely to the old piano-tuner's mouth the effect would be beneficial, started forward with a fresh cup, the other having rolled to the floor. Mr. Fraser motioned him aside.

"You may go now, Marcus," said he, "and put a good fire in the guest bedroom. Professor Gilliken and Tom are staying with us to-night, Marcus. They will be staying-indefinitely."

an

EAL men and women are not the only people. Our minds are inhabited as truly as any other country. Every child has his invisible playmate, to whom he talks more freely than to his parents, and with whom he goes upon strange adventures - a tiny Columbus with whom he embarks upon the waters of the bath-tub to discover a new land, or a roving De Soto with whom he slips through the garden gate, unattended and unafraid, always before he is three years old, bent upon excursion into the wilderness which lies across the brook in the field or in the woods. If you are the father or mother of this child you never can understand that-how the timid baby who was never before out of your sight could have gone so far alone. Why, when you found him, stained with his travels, very tired, almost nodding, he was still confident, preoccupied, and bent upon a farther pilgrimage into the unknown. It is because he was not alone. He was accompanied by another whom he knows better than he will ever know father or mother-one of those companions of his own fancy, about whom he never tells you or any one else.

These people grow up like other people. The little child has his familiar, and the young man has his "ideal," always a woman-not the one he marries, nor even the one he might have married, but one whom he never saw in the flesh: a veiled and inscrutable presence who never forsakes him. And when he grows old, and the wife he did marry grows old, she remains young, fairer than the lilies, sweeter than honey-dew upon the leaves in June.

It is the same with women. Every one of them knows a man she never saw, a nameless lover of whom she has never spoken, who is not her husband nor the

father of her children. But she is more faithful to him than to any other-since he has never forsaken her, since she holds him a willing prisoner against her fate which the years bring.

There are thousands of these people: robbers who never really came, but who are always there; heroes who never do a great deed, but who are always ready to perform it; men who accomplish the things that are never really accomplished; women of the mists of the soul who appear and disappear, only to arrive again for some purpose beyond the reach of women you see and know; little children that have never been born and never will be, who look at you from between lilies in the garden at evening, not accusingly or beseechingly, with the eyes of your own children, but with the serene faith of a young innocence which you have never betrayed.

In the very old geographies there are maps wherein certain portions are made dark, with only this written in Latin, "Here dwell Lions." It is the same with the mind of men and women. Much of it is still a dangerous wilderness. Out of it stalk our criminals-not the murderers and highwaymen we really take and condemn, but those others beyond the reach of law, the terrible ones whom a priest cannot exorcise from his consciousness with prayers or fasting; masked faces that we all know, who belong to us.

And the others-good beyond the power of us to be good-ever present, who inspire those legends of faith. They are the only immortals whom we know well enough to believe in. They are the angels of our covenants, the cloud of witnesses that encompass us about. It is not they who die, but only the creeds with which we clothe them for purposes of worship.

Most men and women live, are. destroyed, or upheld by these people of the mind more than they are by their fel