No name

Sample Pages from [em]Leave it to Beany[/em] by Lenora Mattingly Weber

Chapter One

Welcome the Coming!

This was the day! This was the day Beany Malone had been anticipating for weeks. Beany was down in the basement making peppermint- stick ice cream. Other folks might make small dabs of ice cream in electric iceboxes but Beany' s brother, Johnny, could, at one sitting, eat more than any icebox tray could hold. And besides, there was usually company dropping in, and someone would say, "Gather round, folks - we're about to uncork the ice-cream freezer."

So the Malones still clung to this old freezer which could make a gallon at a time. The clamps at the top had long since become loose and had been reinforced with nails which worked out and up and had to be pounded in again and again. But to Beany there was the very essence of celebration and holiday mood in the slushy, gritty sound of a turning ice-cream freezer crank. And on this Saturday in February when, outside, a meager sun shone over crusted snow, its very creak seemed to say, "Sheila McBride is coming today - Sheila McBride is coming to stay."

None of the Malones had met their distant cousin Sheila, or even seen a picture of her, but the very cadence of the name - Sheila McBride - conjured up to Beany a poetic and appealing image. How could a girl with a name like that be anything but romantically lovely? Beany Malone was the youngest of the four Malone children in the wide-bosomed ten-room home of the Malones on Barberry Street. Sixteen years ago she had been christened Catherine Cecilia, but her ears had long since become so attuned to "Beany" that when a teacher at Harkness High, where Beany was a sophomore, called on "Catherine" to recite, it took Beany a startled moment to identify herself.

There now - the turning was harder. It must be about time to remove the dasher and pack the cream down in ice and salt. She'd have to find the new bag of coarse salt. And some of the chunky pieces of ice would need mashing. Why hadn't Johnny found the mallet they used to pound the ice? If Johnny were only half as good at helping to make ice cream as he was at devouring it!

Beany stepped back and drew a panting breath. She pushed her stubby, light-brown braids back from her flushed face and wiped her wet, chilled hands on the tail of her plaid shirt that hung outside her rolled-up levis. She trudged up the basement steps, through the back hall, the front hall and climbed the wide stairs to the second floor, calling out as she went, "Johnny, hey! - why didn't you bring down the mallet - you know, the ice-smasher-"

A tall, lanky boy with a shock of hair like black feathers and dark, absorbed eyes came to the head of the stairs. He was shuffling a sheaf of typewritten pages in his hand. "The ice-smasher? Oh yes - I started on the trail of it and then the trail got cold. You don' t need a mallet, precious. You can use one of Mary Fred's riding boots or the potato masher."

"Push the hair out of your eyes, Johnny. Why didn't you get it cut? My goodness, you'll be down at the station to meet Sheila and your hair all drake's tails on your neck. A first impression is important."

"But, my pet, I want to impress her as being the long- haired genius of the family. What's a family without a screwball genius !"

Beany turned away to call out, "Mary Fred, have you seen the ice-smasher?"

An absent voice, a room away, answered, "No - no, not since we used it to mash some lumps out of the brown sugar-"

Beany walked into the upstairs living room from where the voice came. This was the room Sheila McBride would be sharing with Beany's older sister, Mary Fred. Off the room was a glassed-in porch which served as a sleeping room, while the warmer inside room was for dressing and studying and lounging - though there was little lounging in the Malone house.

Beany's eyes rested on the dressing table, which stood in almost brazen nakedness, since they had ripped off its old pink-checked skirt. Mary Fred and Beany had sewed . together widths of green and white polka-dotted chintz to brighten it up for their cousin, Sheila - "our cousin, much-removed," as Johnny described her.

Mary Fred was sitting cross-legged on the floor after thumb-tacking up about a foot and a half of pleated skirt; her lap was full of polka -dotted chintz, but Mary Fred's eyes were on the morning paper and its news of the mid winter Horse Show.

Her brown, curly hair was caught back by a blue tie and her eyes had taken on its blueness; if the tie had been green, her eyes would just as obligingly have turned green. Johnny Malone always described Mary Fred as "old bubble and bounce."

"You'd better hurry with that, Mary Fred. The telegram said Sheila's train would be here at four forty- five and it's almost one now."

"Um-hmm," Mary Fred muttered, without lifting her eyes from the paper. "Blue Boy is to be in the four-gaited finals today-"

"Do you have to read every word about the Horse Show? Look at all we have to do before we go to the train! You said you' d do the skirt while I made the ice cream."

"Beany, you're such a slave driver! What kind of ice cream?"

"Peppermint-stick. "

"Peppermint-stick! Hmm, sounds as though there'd be an extra place at the table for Norbett Rhodes." Mary Fred began to sing, fitting her words lumpily to "Springtime in the Rockies"

When it's pink ice cream at the Ma-lo-hones I'll be
com-homing back to you-hoo ...

The sprinkling of freckles across Beany's nose were momentarily lost in a blushing wave, for the turn of the ice-cream freezer had kept time to more than "Sheila McBride is coming today ." Another chant had kept up a deeper accompaniment, like the chording by the left hand, "Norbett will come for dinner, too. .." Norbett Rhodes was the tall, red-headed boy with dark, nervous eyes, who occupied a very special corner in Beany's heart. Peppermint-stick ice cream was Norbett's favorite. ...

Mary Fred was saying, "Beany, I can't let go of my gathering thread, or needle, or all this goods. When I lift my carcass, see if that lump I'm sitting on is a thimble. Only for someone named Sheila McBride would I pucker this half-mile of chintz that's as stiff as oilcloth."

The lump was a thimble.

"Just think," Beany mused, "if Father's Uncle Matthew hadn't come to Denver to that educational convention we would never have known about Sheila."

Great-uncle Matthew taught high-school Latin in a small Pennsylvania town. He had sat at the Malone dinner table during his convention trip - this scholarly, throat-clearing old teacher - and given a boring recital of a trip to England and Ireland. What a lot of ruined castles, poets' graves, and historical monuments he had visited!

And then the conversation took a sudden exciting lift. While he was in Dublin he had traced down a relative, an orphaned girl named Sheila McBride. "And so I was appointed her guardian and brought her back with me in order to educate her."

"How old is she?" Beany had asked quickly.

"She'll be eighteen her next -birthday. I've been tutoring her for college. I planned to have her major in Romance languages but -" he added, with the sorrow of a man who sees his own idols ignored, "I am meeting with great reluctance from her."

"What is she like?" Mary Fred had asked. Mary Fred had entered the university the previous fall and viewed certain subjects with great reluctance herself.

"Well-like all young girls, I suppose. I've wished that I weren't so out of touch - socially, that is - with the younger generation."

Everyone was asking questions about Sheila and he told them that she hadn't made many young friends. "No doubt she feels shy and strange - and lonely, perhaps - what with living with an old codger like me."

Those three words - shy, strange, lonely - had immediately unlocked the collective heart of the Malones. Beany couldn't remember which one of them had said it first, "Why couldn't she come and stay with us?" For it was promptly echoed by everyone at the dinner table.

Martie Malone, father of the motherless household, had spoken promptly through a cloud of pipe smoke, "Why not? We need a cousin or two around the place."

Mary Fred said, "I could take her under my wing and get her acquainted at the university. She could start mid- term and be just a semester behind me. She can even use my books-and I can introduce her to all her profs-" her voice took on a romantic lilt, "My cousin, Sheila Mc- Bride, from Dublin."

Johnny's wide smile flashed around the table. There was a rare something about Johnny Malone's smile that gave everyone within its radius a warm and delightful uplift. "Sheila McBride from down Dublin way! Sounds like something out of an old Irish ballad. Maybe she can teach Dad the tune to 'Kathleen Mavourneen' that he's been whistling at for lo, these many years."

Beany's generous heart had lifted at the thought of the orphaned Sheila McBride finding life strange and lonely with her pedantic and elderly Uncle Matthew.

Beany always sat in the "mother's place" at the end of the table behind the coffee or tea pot. The Malones often called her Little Mom. For Beany was the most efficient, the most practical, of the Malones.

To be sure, she knew occasional stabs of envy that she hadn' t the magazine-cover loveliness that her oldest sister Elizabeth had. Or the impulsive, bubble-and-bounce charm that was Mary Fred's. And, of course, Johnny was the impractical, writing genius of the family for whom a great future was predicted. Beany was the helper, the doer, the adviser, the scolder. Her prettiness was the soap-and-water, bright-eyed, firm-cheeked variety with a dusting of freckles for annoyance. She was loyal and honest and intense.

She said earnestly, "Why yes, Uncle Matthew, Sheila could have the bed Elizabeth slept in."

Elizabeth, the oldest of the three Malone girls, had married Lieutenant Don MacCallin during the war, had come back with her new baby, little Martie, to await Don's return from overseas. Don had returned with a leg injury which had led to an amputation below the knee. He and Elizabeth and their little boy had gone to an Arizona ranch where Don was recuperating. But now here was this heaven-sent, - or rather, Ireland sent - Sheila McBride to fill Elizabeth's empty bed and chair at the table, as well as the empty spot in their hearts.

Instantly, Beany began envisioning the unknown Sheila. She would be wistful and starry-eyed-yes, and shabby in a picturesque, old-world way. She would be like Beany's little-girl impression of "Peg 0' My Heart," which Beany had read three years ago when she was recuperating from the measles. Sheila, like Peg 0' My Heart, would be starved for love and understanding. And right then Beany started laying plans for Sheila's welcome. The Malones wouldn't blunder the way the relatives had in "Peg 0' My Heart." No indeed; they would all be at the station to meet her. She would never feel lonely, never feel unwanted.

Uncle Matthew told them Sheila had known a hard and cheerless life. They would make it up to her by giving her an easy and gay one. They would never expect her to help with the onerous chores the young Malones did in order to keep their easily ruffled housekeeper unruffled. They would see to it that Sheila had gay clothes and went to parties ...and Sheila would be forever grateful, forever loyal.

So on this cold and gloomy Saturday, Beany prodded, "Hurry up, Mary Fred, and put on your skirt - I mean the dressing table's skirt."

The back door's slam announced the arrival of their part-time housekeeper. Their housekeeper's name was Mrs. Adams, but the Malones always called her Mrs. No- complaint behind her back, because her constant boast was that she had worked out for over seventeen years, without ever a complaint from her employers.

Yet Mrs. Adams, herself, had innumerable complaints regarding her life in the Malone household. Her chief one was that their father, Martie Malone, had often to absent himself from home in order to write feature stories for his paper. Mrs. No-complaint always muttered, "Dear, dear! Things are always at sixes and sevens when your father's away."

And, simultaneously with the door's slamming, there was a scrabbling on the stairs as Mike, a raggletail of a pup with legs which hadn't quite enough starch in them to carry his roly-poly body, sought the safer haven of the upstairs. Mrs. No-complaint didn't take kindly to dogs. Mike was the offspring of a black-and-white stray, by name Rosie O'Grady, that the Malones had taken in. The Malones always excused Mike's more serious derelictions - such as gnawing a buckle off an overshoe or dragging a neighbor's porch mat onto their own steps-with a regretful, "He's had no mother to guide him." For, just two days before Christmas, and while Mike still depended on her for nourishment, Rosie O'Grady had met instant death under the wheels of a coal truck.

Red, Johnny's big setter, had too much dignity to make such a scrambling exodus. Even though he knew what the housekeeper's spiteful glance at the broom portended, he would walk slowly and sedately into the front hall and, after careful deliberation, mount the stairs to Johnny's room. Today Johnny patted his red head, said, "Hi, fella, don't let the womenfolks get you down."

Beany said, "I'll go down and tell Mrs. No-complaint about dinner tonight. We want it to be particularly nice on account of Sheila."

"Don't lay it on too thick, lamb. Remember we Malones are just on sufferance with Mrs. No-complaint."

In the kitchen, Beany took the rib roast out of the electric icebox. Mrs. No-complaint was muttering about the icy chill of the wind and the slipperiness of the sidewalks as she slid her feet into the gray felt slippers that were easy on her corns.

Beany enjoined, "Now don't put any water on the roast-and don't put the cover on the roaster-"

Mrs. No-complaint's grunt paid belittling tribute to Beany's ideas acquired in Home Ec at Harkness High. Beany continued, " And could you make a Yorkshire pudding to serve with it, Mrs. No -- Mrs. Adams?" It required a certain dexerity of tongue to call their housekeeper Mrs. Adams to her face, when she was always Mrs. No-complaint among themselves.

"Yorkshire pudding!" the woman discounted. "I don't go much on Yorkshire puddings. My mother used to make them - and you never can tell how they'll turn out. Might be they're puffy and light. Might be they'll be flat and soggy as wom-out half-soles. I shouldn't think a girl fresh from Ireland would go for an English dish like Yorkshire-"

"She's not fresh from Ireland. She's been here two years. And Ireland and England are so close together. And men I thought it'd be nice to have macaroons to go with the ice cream."

"Macaroons are a touchy business - what with cracking nuts and beating egg-white. Yes, and you get a little bit of yolk in the egg-whites they don't stand up stiff. And you know how that oven slants, so that things bake lopsided. You have to put your whole mind to something like macaroons and that's hard of a Saturday when you're all underfoot-"

"We won't be underfoot," Beany promised swiftly.

"We'll stay out of your way. And then we're all going to meet me train. Have you seen that heavy mallet we use for mashing ice?"

No, Mrs. No-complaint couldn't keep track of things when no one ever put anything back where it belonged. Beany hunted unsuccessfully through cupboards and under the sink. She looked through the little room between kitchen and dining room, which was always called the "butler's pantry" though, as Johnny said, no butler had ever sanctified it by his presence. And then, not daring to prolong her being underfoot longer, she grabbed up the wooden potato masher for a substitute, and went back to the packing of the ice cream.

You wouldn't think you could have such a time just mashing up ice with a potato masher. But that one stubborn chunk, shaped like a pointed iceberg, slipped out of her grasp and the potato masher came down hard on her thumb. You wouldn't think you'd have such a time unweaving the string on the cloth sack of coarse salt when just one throbbing thumb couldn't take part. The string wouldn't unweave neatly so she jabbed an opening in it with an ice pick.

The freezer could now sit in dark solitude in the fruit room until dinner time. Beany was staggering under its dripping weight when she heard the muffled jingling of the telephone bell in the hall above.

That could be Norbert, calling to ask her what time Sheila's train got in. She wanted to answer it herself because if Johnny or Mary Fred did, they'd yell out, "For you, Beany!" and then hum loudly, "Beany's got a fellah! Beany's got a fellah!"

She set the freezer down with a thump in the dark room and, with her banged thumb and heart throbbing, raced up the basement steps.

Sample Pages from [em]Little Folk's Number Practice[/em] by Nancy Nicholson

Excerpted from Little Folks' Number Practice by Nancy Nicholson 1997, Catholic Heritage Curricula, Used with permission.

Sample Pages from [em]Little Folks' Letter Practice[/em] by Nancy Nicholson

Sample Pages from [em]Little Therese[/em] by Pere Carbonel, S.J.

Chapter One

Birth of Therese
Saint Therese of the Child Jesus was born at Alencon, in Normandy, on January 2, 1873.

Normandy is a beautiful province in the northwest of France, a land of woods and streams and green pastures. On the night of Therese's birth the whole countryside was covered with snow. It seemed to be an image of her soul, which was never to lose the whiteness of its baptismal innocence.

The parents of Therese, Monsieur and Madame Martin, were fervent Catholics, and they welcomed this ninth child as a precious gift from God. There were already four girls in the family, and four other little ones had died when they were babies.

The children were all in bed and asleep when Therese was born, but their father himself went to wake up the two elder girls to tell them the joyful news. Marie, aged thirteen, sat up in bed, but Pauline, who was eleven, jumped out at once to run and see the baby. However, Monsieur Martin told them both to go to sleep again, promising that they should see her the first thing in the morning. He did not wake Leonie, who was nine, and still less Celine, who was only three, as he feared they would be too excited.

When he went back to Madame Martin, he found her praying earnestly. "I have been asking the same grace for this child as for the others," she said: "that God will choose her for Himself, and above all that her soul may never be spoiled by mortal sin. Rather than this, I begged He would take her from us at once, as He took the other children."

Very early next morning the four little girls were clustering round their baby sister. They spoke in whispers for fear of waking her, but Celine could not long keep quiet. She climbed on a chair, clapping her hands with little cries of joy and finally gave the baby a resounding kiss, which, of course, woke her up. This was greeted with exclamations of delight from the others.

"Oh, Mamma," said one, "how pretty she is! Her eyes are just like bits of sky."

"Oh, she's smiling," said another' "do come and look, Mamma! She's smiling!"

And a third went into raptures over her tiny hands.

The parents of little Therese wished to have her baptized on the day of her birth, as all her brothers and sisters had been, but to their great regret they had to wait for the arrival of the godfather. Even one day seemed a long delay to the pious mother as she watched her child with anxious eyes.

At last, on the morning of January 4, Therese was baptized in the Church of Notre-Dame. Her eldest sister, Marie, was her godmother, and she received the names of Marie Francoise Therese.

Sample Pages from [em]Make a Wish for Me[/em] by Lenora Mattingly Weber

1

BEANY MALONE sat in front of her dressing table with its yellow plaid skirt, which she had made herself, and extracted bobby pins from tight little snails of hair. On this Saturday mormng in mid-January, an early sun slanted through the yellow plaid curtains - also made by Beany.

Strange, she thought, how a certain tingly excitement seemed to go with yanking bobby pins out of one's hair. It seemed the right prelude to dressing up and going places and doing things.

A whisk of the comb through the flat little curls transformed them into a fluff of bangs. She wished momentarily that her hair were either brunette or blond, not "roan." She pinned her two stubby braids across the top of her head.

Every once in a while she thought of cutting her hair-and then she thought of Andy Kern wno sat across from her in her French class and ate lunch with her every flrst-hour lunch period at Harkness High. Whenever she mentioned cutting off her braids, Andy said, "No, child, no! Beany without braids would be like a hot dog without mustard - or a band without a drum."

Carefully she pulled on her best nylons, and stepped into her black ballet slippers. Now for the new print blouse which her friend Kay had given her for Christmas, and which she had saved for this very special Saturday. In her small room at the head of the stairs, she could hear the family stirring through the house in the usual Saturday morning hubbub. The uneven rat-a-tat of a typewriter meant that her older brother Johnny was getting out a paper on early-day events for his history professor at the university. Johnny earned his tuition by helping him. The occasional mumble of voices told her that Carlton Buell, the boy next door and Johnny' s inseparable, was with him.

Thc smell of oil paints filtering through the house and up to Beany's room announced that Adair was already at her easel. The new and youngish stepmother of the Malones was a portrait painter .

The double clunk in the room next to Beany's meant that her sister Mary Fred was stamping her feet into jodhpur boots as she made ready to go out to Hilltop Stables and teach a children's class how to ride. "How to jounce properly," Mary Fred put it. Sure enough, just as Beany reached for her skirt, Mary Fred came in to have Beany fasten the studs in the stiff French cuffs of her white shirt.

Mary Fred was almost three years older than Beany, and a sophomore at the university. Her short curly hair was a dark, glinting brown. They both had the same blue-gray eyes with a dark fringing of lashes - "Blue eyes put in with a dirty frnger ," the Irish described it. It seemed to a regretful Beany that the dirty finger had also been shaken over her own nose, leaving a sprinkling of freckles. The time and money Beany had spent on freckle creams and lotions!

Mary Fred's eyes rested on Beany's print blouse above the gray-checked skirt she was zipping. "Kind of a gruesome combination, chum," she commented, holding out a wrist with its gaping cuff. "I'm just wearing it as far as the House of Hollywood on the Boul, and then-"

"You are in the upper brackets. Buying clothes at the Hollywood."

"Just a skirt." Beany grinned, working the round stud through a stiff buttonhole. She and Mary Fred had often admired a sweater combination or a formal at the smart little shop, only to be jolted back to reality by one glance at the price tag. "It's a moss-green wool - lush is the word for it - and it's already paid for. Simone, who runs the Hollywood, said she' d have one in my size this morning-"

"That Simone with her airs and graces," Mary Fred inserted. "Her right name is Simmons."

"- and so I'll wear the new green skirt on to work, and then to the luncheon at the University Club." --

"The University Club yet.!"

"I told you about it. This is the annual luncheon our nice old principal, Mr .Dexter, gives for the staff of Hark Ye."

"Oh, of course. And Beany Malone, feature writer, should come in for her share of laurels. No one works any harder on that school raper than you do, little Beaver." Mary Fred lifted her other cuff for Beany to fasten.

Beany asked suddenly, "Mary Fred, did you ever want something so bad that you couldn't even think about it without getting goose pimples?"

"Of course I have. What are you goose-pimply about?"

"You know what the Quill and Scroll is?"

"Yessum. It's what all school papers are members of."

Beany said breathlessly, "It's like this. There's to be a Quill and Scroll convention in Cherry Springs next month-"

"And you have your heart set on going? But won't the editor and a senior boy on the staff be the natural delegates? You're just a junior, hon."

"Jenniifer Reed is the editor," Beany explained, "but her brother is getting married in Los Angeles that week end, so she and her folks are flying out for it. She told Mrs. Brierly, our sponsor, about it - and you know how easy-going Brierly is? - she just told Jennifer to name someone on the staff to go in her place."

"What's Jennifer like?"

"She's a love," Beany said warmly. "Even though the Reeds have lots of money-"

"Is that the Christopher Reed Realty Company? I'll say they have," Mary Fred put in.

"-yet it doesn't make any difference to Jennifer." She wears simple dark things-"

"From Simone's, no doubt," Mary Fred muttered ruefully.

Beany had an instant mental picture of the girl. Slender, brown-eyed, with close-cropped dark hair. Jennifer Reed had poise. Only occasionally was there a hint of arrogance about her. She was a good executive, as though she were used to giving orders and having them carried out.

"Everybody at school looks up to Jennifer," Beany mused. "She has her own column in every issue of the Hark Ye - 'Between You and Me,' it's called - and it's so witty that all she has to do is make some wisecrack and everyone in school picks it up. Do you know Jag Wilson, a freshman at the U?"

"Who doesn't?"

"He was Morley Wilson last year when Jennifer made some crack about his new Jaguar. From then on he was Jag." Beany laughed. "I guess there are times when she wishes she hadn't been so bright. Because now she and Jag date each other."

"I hope your Jennifer is the long-suffering, forgiving type. Because Jag is definitely on the prowl for any pretty girl who looks his way. Has she intimated that she'll pick you to go to the Press Convention?"

"Just kind of. She's always telling me she couldn't get out the paper without my fIlling in whenever someone else on the staff lets her down-"

She paused, and then burst out wistfully, "Gee, Mary Fred, here I am, a junior at Harkness, and I'm the only one of my crowd - and the only one of the Malones- that isn't an OH. [OH meant "Outstanding Harknessite."] Johnny was one because he was such a genius in writing plays for the school to put on. You were one because you were always winning ribbons in horse shows - and chosen Prom Queen. Kay is one because she's good in Art and won the city-wide poster contest. I ran her picture and a swell write-up about her-"

"And your Andy Kern is one because of his charm, I suppose," Mary Fred said.

"Andy always gets things done when he's on a committee," Beany defended. She added thinly, "Do you realize, Mary Fred, my picture has never been in the Hark Ye that I work so hard on? I draw squares on our dummy where other girls' pix are to go. I'm just the handy man."

Mary Fred said sympathetically, "And you can't even get credit for your Saturday job."

Their father, Martie Malone, was a columnist on the rooming paper, the Call. He always said the young Malones had cut their teeth on his typewriter eraser . The Morning Call ran a half-page of letters to and answers by a mythical Eve Baxter. These letters about love and family problems, signed "Neglected Wife," "Desperate," "Please Help Me," were read at thousands of breakfast tables, along with Eve Baxter's salty, sympathetic, sometimes scolding answers.

During the week, Eve Baxter dictated her letters to a typist at the Call office. But partly because she liked to stay home on Saturdays, partly because she was fond of Beany, she dictated to her on those days. Beany drove to her residence in her brother's jalopy, took down Eve Baxter's answers. Then at the Call, she typed both letters and answers and turned them in to the Copy Desk.

The Malones all knew that Eve Baxter was, in reality, a seasoned newspaper woman named Evelyn Bartlett. But because the Call wanted her identity kept secret, Beany answered any questions at Harkness about her job with an evasive, "I do typing for the Call."

Mary Fred was saying, "Beany, couldn't you sit yourself next to Jennifer at Dexter's luncheon this noon? And couldn't you very adroitly lead up to the Quill and Scroll convention?"

A small shiver of hope and fright passed through Beany - "I could try,"

She was wriggling into her coat and Mary Fred was reminding her, "Gloves, too, you hillbilly, if you're lunching at the University Club," when the telephone rang.

Beany caught it on its third ring. Her hello was answered by the roguish voice of Andy Kern. "Hi, Beany. Is the luck of the Irish with you today?"

"Uh-huh."

"Don't say uh-huh to me, say sir."

"Uh-yes, sir. What do you need Irish luck for?"

"That, knucklehead, is a secret until our date tonight. I want to bowl you over ."

"Andy, is it something you're going to tell me - some news?"

"No, it's a something I'm going to give you. That is, if your luck and mine holds out."

"A something for me!" she squealed. "Just tell me this much - is it big or litde?"

"Never mind the dimensions. It's not my heart, but it has one thing in common with it."

"You mean it's shaped like a heart?"

She heard his low chuckle. She could picture him lounging at the phone, even as he lounged carelessly across from her in their French class. She could picture his eyes crinkling.

"Never mind the shape," he said. "And it has something in common with your dog, Mike-"

"Oh, is it alive? Does it move?"

"We-ell, it moves if you work on it."

"Is it animal, mineral, or vegetable?"

"Hey, this is no Twenty Questions program. Get on with you. I got to polish my shoes for my ushering job at the Pantages."

"Andy, give me another clue - just one more." "O.K. It has something in common with a fat lady's girdle."

"A fat lady's girdle! I can't wait till tonight."

"Good. I like gals that can't wait for a date with Andy. If you've got a shamrock, pin it on for luck--,"

"I've got dozens of 'em on. I'm wearing my new blouse with shamrocks in it."

, "Bye now, doll."

"Andy, does it make a noise?"

He hung up on another chuckle.

She replaced the receiver, laughing excitedly herself. Madame, who taught them French, always spoke of Andy's Joie de vivre. He not only got joy out of living, but passed it on to his girl, Beany. Not that they were steadies as many of the couples were at Harkness. It was more an easy and delightful camaraderie.

Beany's thoughts flashed back to a year ago when she had been Norbett Rhodes's girl. There was nothing easy - though it was often delightful - about their relationship. Last fall when Norbett had written that he was staying back in Ohio to attend college there, Beany's world had shaken under her.

But then her world had been shaky when Norbett was close at hand. Mary Fred always said, "When bigger and better fights are had, Beany and Norbett will have them." I was so crazy about him, Beany mused. He took up all the room in my heart. Nothing else mattered. He could be so dear - and so mean. ...No, Andy Kern was less demanding, less distracting. You could be Andy's girl and still have room in your heart for other dreams. Mary Fred came down the stairs and reached for her bright red jacket in the hall closet. "Dating Andy tonight, I suppose, from the purring look on your face?" she asked. "The usual foursome?"

Beany nodded. The usual gay, free-and-easy foursome of her friend Kay with her brother Johnny, herself and Andy. Andy ushered every evening, except Saturday, at the Pantages movie house. Andy could and did get his three friends in free several times a week.

"Andy's got a present for me," Beany said. "Can you think of anything that's like Andy's heart, and our dog Mike, and a fat lady's girdle?"

Mary Fred smiled knowingly, as though she might be in on the surprise. "Maybe," she said.

The front door pealed and Mary Fred said, "That's one of my mothers." She meant that it was the mother of one of her riding pupils who would drive her out to Hilltop Stables. She was buttoning her red jacket as she hurried out.

Beany glanced at the hall clock. Ten minutes to nine, and she was due at Eve Baxter's at nine. She called up the stairs to Johnny to throw down his car keys. He couldn't hear her over the rumble of his typewriter, and she raced up the stairs.

"Johnny, give. Your car keys."

The rat-a-tat of t}pewriter ceased. Johnny leaned back in his swivel chair which was the kind that tipped back scaringly if you relaxed wholly in it. Johnny alone knew just how far to tempt providence.

Strange, Beany thought, how certain pictures of certain people seem to etch themselves on your mind. She always pictured Mary Fred in riding togs, her cheek wind-reddened, hurrying up or down stairs. When she thought of her father, Martie Malone, she always saw a tall, thoughtful man, fiddling with his pipe, and smiling at her over or through the nice smelly veil of smoke. She always pictured Johnny as looking up at her from that swivel chair, his dark absorbed eyes taking a minute to focus on her and the present. Miss Hewlitt, the Lit teacher at Harkness, said Johnny was a writing genius because he had such powers of concentration, of forgetting the world about him.

-- Johnny was six feet tall, with dark hair that looked like wet feathers and always seemed to need cutting. His smile was warm and beguiling.

"My car keys?" he repeated: "Oh forevermore, Beany - I was going to dean out the fuel line, but I started pounding out a paper on Indiana Sopris who started the fIrst school here in a blacksmith shop and-"

"Johnny, you ghoul. I've got to go."

Carlton Buell, who was sitting on Johnny's bed, said promptly, "Take my car, Beany. I won't be needing it till late this aft."

"You're a lifesaver, Carl." Beany said gratefully. "I'd a lot rather drive your three-year-old than Johnny's relic. Yours runs."

Johnny gave her a down-twisted grin.

"Come on," Carlton said.

Carlton wasn't the kind to toss her his car keys and let it go at that. He was the kind who would walk out to his car with her. Nice old Carlton, Beany thought. She couldn't remember when he hadn't been Johnny's shadow. The two had worn a path between the widespread Malone home and the more severe red brick house of Judge Buell's to the north.

Carlton was not so tall as Johnny. He was broader of shoulder, and hadn't Johnny's light-footed grace. Carlton's crew-cut blond hair was never in need of cutting. "This way I can comb it with a towel," he admitted.

The Buell family was wealthy and moved in a sophisticated and successful circle, and Carlton was their only son. Yet he went through his days with shy modesty. Last summer when his parents toured Europe they had been irked because Carlton preferred to stay home and teach swimming and athletics at a community center out in the stockyard district.
As Beany and Carlton went out the side door, there was the small but vociferous Mike ready to hurl himself upon Beany. She cried out in alarm, "Grab him, Carl- I've got on nylons."

Carlton obligingly scooped the tornado into his arrns and thrust him back into the house. They were always either shutting Mike in the house or shutting him out.

"Hold it," Carlton said, "while I clean all the basketball debris off my front seat."

Beany stood a moment, blinking in the bright January sun. Her stepmother was standing in the yard at the foot of the stairs which led up to the room over the garage. And beside her stood a heavy-set man in a sheep-lined coat. Oh yes, Beany remembered, Adair had said she was going to have a carpenter replace those worn steps.

Adair was saying reproachfully to the workman, "But you promised me that you would build the new steps for us right after the first of the year."

"Yes, missus, but some urgent business came up down in the south of the state. I figure I better look into it. I'll be back - now don't you worry. I'll take care of those steps for you."

Beany sensed in the man a fidgety eagerness to-be off. There was something boyish about the amiable smile he turned to Beany and to her stepmother, and with another, "I'll be back," he went hurrying to his car.

Adair gave an exasperated tch-tch-tch. "That man. Judge Buell recommended him. He said he was the best carpenter he ever had work for him. He remodeled their upstairs back porch into a room. But, just as the Judge said, 'Now you see him, and now you don't.'"

Beany listened with only half her mind, for she was thinking of Andy Kern and his surprise for her. Something in common with his heart, and their dog Mike, and a fat lady's girdle? What in the world could it be?

She climbed into Carlton's car and started toward the Boulevard and the House of Hollywood. What a full and exciting day loomed ahead. First, the acquiring of a new green skirt. Then on to Eve Baxter's, and from there to the Call editorial rooms. She would have to hurry with her typing of the Eve Baxter column so as not to be late at the staff luncheon at the University Club.

She was glad she had Carlton's smooth-running car. If Jennifer wasn't driving the car she shared with her mother, Beany would offer her a ride home, and surely-oh, surely, Jennifer Would say, "Beany, how would you like to go to the Press Convention in my place?"

Sample Pages from [em]Meet the Malones[/em] by Lenora Mattingly Weber

1

Hello, Mr. Chips!

Mary Fred Malone had just bought a horse. He was black and his name was Mr. Chips and Mary Fred was riding him home. The January wind had the moist breath of snow as it rippled the bridle reins, flapped the green scarf over Mary Fred's unruly dark hair, tugged at the end knotted under her tanned squarish chin. She thought, "I've bought a horse." The thought could still startle her. For certainly she had not had the slightest intention of buying a horse with the money which had been sent her to buy a formal for the spring prom at school.

Mary Fred rode down the sandy road that led from the Hilltop Stables toward the outskirts of Denver, and the very rhythm of Mr. Chips' trot, the very flapping of her scarf in the wind kept time to an excited singsong inside her, "Mr. Chips is mine--all mine. He's nobody else's but mine!" And Mr. Chips' ear kept twitching back, as though he didn't want to miss a word of it. She reached over and patted his warm, black, sinewy shoulder.

Mary Fred Malone was sixteen now. She had been riding at the Hilltop Stables since she was eleven and had come out in a school club to learn to ride. All that time she had loved the black horse, Mr. Chips, with his two white forefeet and the splash of white in his forehead that someone said had started out to be a star and then fell. He was a wise and gentle horse. Their whole class had learned to ride on him, and then, later, to take the hurdles.

From the Hilltop Riding Stables to Mary Fred's home was four and a half miles. She knew because she often drove out with her chum, Lila Sears, when Lila's mother let her take her car. Lila's mother was the kind who charted every quarter-hour in Lila's life for her. "It's four and a half miles between here and the stables," she would say firmly, "so you girls can ride for an hour and then leave there promptly at five-thirty. That will give you time, Lila, to drop Mary Fred off" (for Mary Fred lived only a block from Lila), "and be home in time to change for dinner at six." And since the Japanese had fired on Pearl Harbor in early December, she always added, "Remember, our country is at war, so don't waste gasoline."

Just as Mary Fred and Mr. Chips reached the bridge which crossed the sand creek, a car's honking sounded behind them, and she pulled Mr. Chips to one side. It was Lila in her mother's roadster. If Mary Fred hadn't been riding her new purchase she would have been there in the seat beside her, dividing a candy bar.

Lila sat a moment regarding Mary Fred and her newly bought black horse, and her expression of anxiety and admiration was typical of Lila. Since they were four years old, Lila had tagged at Mary Fred's heels every minute she could escape her mother's jurisidiction, and because she was so dominated herself she worshiped Mary Fred for her unhampered initiative.

But now she said worriedly, "Honest, Mary Fred, you better change your mind and take Mr. Chips back."

"I can't," Mary Fred said with an overbright smile. "Mack said I couldn't bring him back. He said as long as I had spoiled his sale of Mr. Chips to the farmer, I'd have to stick to my bargain."

"Did you pay for him?" Lila asked.

"I paid for him that fifteen dollars I had with me--you know I brought it along because we were going to shop for our formals. And I promised to finish paying Mack the other fifteen for Mr. Chips just as soon as I could."

Mary Fred and Lila had planned to meet Lila's mother at a dress shop on Colfax Avenue after their ride and start hunting for dresses to wear to the big Spring Formal in March. Lila often said that her mother stalked dress bargains with the same zest that a hunter stalked his prey.

"If only you hadn't had that fifteen dollars with you!" Lila lamented. "My grandad always said that money or a gun in your jeans could get the best-intentioned fellow into trouble. If only those doggoned old new boots of mine hadn't pinched my feet so I had to go change them and leave you there with Mr. Chips."

For it had been in those brief moments while Lila was changing out of her stiff new boots that Mary Fred had drifted over to the stall where a black head looked out wistfully.

Mack, the owner of Hilltop Stables, had explained to them that he would have to sell the horse for a low price because of a strained tendon in his right foreleg. Mack, who was a kind owner, had sighed. He hated to part with Mr. Chips; he'd never had a horse as sweet-tempered, as generous, as understanding. The leg would be all right if it were humored for a few months, but, because Mack had so many clubs taking military riding, he had to fill every stall with an active rentable, horse. He was selling Mr. Chips cheap to a neighboring farmer.

"Why didn't you let the farmer buy him?" Lila wanted to know.

Mary Fred took a long breath. "Well, I was standing there by Mr. Chips' stall and he was kind of nuzzling at my shoulder--"

"He's always been crazy about you, Mary Fred," Lila said.

"--and this farmer came in and he was dirty and smelly and mean--you know the kind who wouldn't even give his kids or his wife a kind word--and he reached up and yanked Mr. Chips' head down and started to pry open his mouth to look at his teeth and Mr. Chips reared his head back and the fellow cuffed him hard right on his nose and--and, honestly, it made me sick. Sweet old Chips!"

"I know," Lila said soberly, remembering back to when she, a scared little beginner, had climbed up on his steady back. "I never could have taken my first hurdle if Mr. Chips hadn't - oh, kind of promised me he'd see me through."

A few heavy flakes of snow came sifting down. Mary Fred stared at the fragile perfection of a frosty star on her green-gloved hand. "You'd better go on, Lila," she said, "and meet your mother. It's going to snow."

Lila reached for the starter, shook her head sadly. "It worries me for you to be taking that horse home. Even though you're a Malone. My folks would just hit the ceiling--and I can't even imagine what would happen to me when they came down."

Mary Fred watched after Lila's car as Mr. Chips jogged on. Nor could she, Mary Fred, imagine what would happen to Lila if she ever did anything not previously sanctioned by her mother. Lila couldn't buy a pair of stockings without her mother at her elbow choosing the shade, deciding on the price. Lila's whole life was bordered by the phrase, "But Mother thinks--" Mary Fred remembered one time when they had been at the neighborhood store and Lila had lamb chops on her list. The butcher had no lamb chops and Mary Fred said, "Why don't you get ham?" But Lila didn't dare. She had to telephone her mother and ask what she should substitute for the lamb chops.

It had never been that way in the Malone home. The young Malones made their own decisions about lamb chops and life. "Dictators only make you soft inside," Mother used to say, and then she'd look at Father and smile, "I married in a hurry to escape dictatorship."

Mary Fred's mother had been dead three years now, but her father had the same ideas about young people making their own decisions. He wouldn't hit the ceiling when she told him she had bought a black horse. He would only say soberly, "Well, Mary Fred, if you've bought a horse, then that's your responsibility. You'll have to take care of him no matter what hardship it works upon you." She could feel his very gentle gravity; it reached through the excitement of buying Mr. Chips and riding him home.

Mr. Chips' limping became more pronounced as the miles grew. Mary Fred's happy exultancy had slowed down, too. Now the chant inside her seemed to keep time to that querulous tune, "What you goin' to do when the rent comes 'round?" Only the words were, "What you goin' to do when you get your horse home? What you goin' to say? How you goin' to pay?"

That was it! How was she going to pay? Fifteen dollars to Mack besides the steady output for hay and oats for Mr. Chips. She hadn't thought of that when she had said so impulsively, "I'll buy Mr. Chips."

She was almost at the city limits now, though the snow was swirling down so heavily she could see neither the university buildings nor the myriad of cozy homes she usually saw from this rise. She hated to ride a limping horse. She slid out of the saddle and walked along, leading him.

The snow kept balling up on the heels of her riding boots. Deliberately she shifted from her worried thoughts to some that were more pleasant. She remembered that this was the day her brother Johnny was to trade in his old typewriter for a newer one. She tried to walk fast for she had promised him that she'd be home in time to clean off his big old desk, which had started life as a mission table and which Johnny and she, hoping to dandy it up, had once painted blue. Yes, today was the day Johnny was to turn in his old high-busted typewriter and pay down his savings--not for a brand-new typewriter, but for one that would not skip two spaces or none at all when you hit the space bar, and would not write all the s's, m's and u's as capitals.

In short, Johnny's old typewriter was as unpredictable as Johnny himself. Mary Fred's fond smile became a chuckle at the thought of him. He was fifteen, a year younger than Mary Fred, and the genius of the Malone family. He could be handsome if he ever settled down to it, with his soft black eyes and endearing flash of smile. But his hair was always too long and a lank swoop of its blackness never stayed put, so that his younger and more practical sister Beany was always saying, "Johnny, push your hair out of your eyes."

Johnny was a sophomore at Harkness High were Lila and Mary Fred were juniors. Johnny could write. Whenever there was an essay contest on "What America Means to Me," or "Radio in Education," other contestants grumbled, "No use us entering if Johnny Malone does." He was the delight of his English Lit teacher, gray-haired, gray-eyed, gray-garbed Miss Hewlitt. This year the school had put on a gay-nineties farce and a Christmas play, both of which Johnny had written on his space-jumping, capital-writing machine.

Again and again Johnny had been delayed in his acquiring of a better typewriter because of his half ownership in an eleven-year-old red car that was always needing a new fuel pump, or gasket, or headlight. Johnny and his friend Carlton Buell, who lived next door to the Malones, had purchased this bright red jalopy together. Although Johnny was half owner of the car, he wasn't old enough to procure a driver's license. It was often torture for him to keep his hand off the wheel and to get Carlton or Mary Fred to drive him places.

Johnny had one other trait which was a constant exasperation to his thirteen-year-old sister, Beany. He had such large-scale ideas. He could never buy a little bit of anything. If they sent him to the store for ham to fry, he would return with a whole ham. Beany never took down the pint bottle of almond extract without muttering, "That Johnny! We'll have almond extract the rest of our life, just because I asked him to get a little to flavor some icing."

The snow was coming down in great wet flurries by the time Mary Fred reached the edge of town. There was not much farther to go. She stopped and thumped her cold hands together, squirmed her foot on which the boot had rubbed a blister. Mack had given her a gunny sack half full of oats, to lats Mr. Chips until she could buy some for him, and it hung with its weight divided over Mr. Chips' shoulders. She shook the clinging snow off it, too.

Mary Fred took a few steps, stopped again to reach inside her boot and pull her stocking smooth over her rubbed heel. She was leaning over with her weight against Mr. Chips' foreleg and shoulder, when through the heavy air came the screech of brakes, a woman's startled "Oh! Oh-h-h!--" and then the thudding, scraping impact of two cars coming together.

Mr. Chips' startled lurch sent Mary Fred sprawling in the snow. Scrambling up quickly, she blinked the snow off her eyelashes and looked in the direction of the sounds. She gave a shocked and frightened cry. She pulled hard at the unwilling horse as she ran forward.

Sample Pages from [em]Men of Iron[/em] by Howard Pyle

INTRODUCTION

THE year 1400 opened with more than usual peacefulness in England. Only a few months before, Richard II. - weak, wicked, and treacherous - had been dethroned, and Henry IV. declared King in his stead. But it was only a seeming peacefulness, lasting but for a little while; for though King Henry proved himself a just and a merciful man - as justice and mercy went with the men of iron of those days - and though he did not care to shed blood needlessly, there were many noble families who had been benefited by King Richard during his reign, and who had lost somewhat of their power and prestige from the coming in of the new King. Among these were a number of great lords - the Dukes of Albemarle, Surrey, and Exeter, the Marquis of Dorset, the Earl of Gloucester, and others - who had been degraded to their former titles and estates, from which King Richard had lifted them. These and others brewed a secret plot to take King Henry's life, which plot might have succeeded had not one of their own number betrayed them.

Their plan had been to fall upon the King and his adherents, and to massacre them during a great tournament, to be held at Oxford. But Henry did not appear at the lists; whereupon, knowing that he had been lodging at Windsor with only a few attendants, the conspirators marched thither against him. In the mean time the King had been warned of the plot, so that, instead of finding him in the royal castle, they discovered through their scouts that he had hurried to London, whence he was even then marching against them at the head of a considerable army. So nothing was left them but flight.

Some betook themselves one way, some another; some sought sanctuary here, some there; but one and another, they were all of them caught and killed.

The Earl of Kent - one time Duke of Surrey - and the Earl of Salisbury were beheaded in the market-place at Cirencester; Lord Le Despencer - once the Earl of Gloucester - and Lord Lumley met the same fate at Bristol ; the Earl of Huntingdon was taken in the Essex fens, carried to the castle of the Duke of Gloucester, whom he had betrayed to his death in King Richard's time, and was there killed by the castle people.

Those few who found friends faithful and bold enough to afford them shelter, dragged those friends down in their own ruin.

Just such a case was that of the father of the boy hero of this story, the blind Lord Gilbert Reginald Falworth, Baron of Falworth and Easterbridge, who, though having no part in the plot, suffered through it ruin, utter and complete.

He had been a faithful counsellor and adviser to King Richard, and perhaps it was this, as much and more than his roundabout connection with the plot, that brought upon him the punishment he suffered

CHAPTER I

MYLES FALWORTH was but eight years of age at that time, and it was only afterwards, and when, he grew old enough to know more of the ins and outs of the matter, that he could remember by bits and pieces the things that afterwards happened; how one evening a knight came clattering into the court-yard upon a horse, red-nostrilled and smeared with the sweat and foam of a desperate ride - Sir John Dale, a dear friend of the blind Lord.

Even though so young, Myles knew that something very serious had happened to make Sir John so pale and haggard, and he dimly remembered leaning against the knight's iron-covered knees, looking up into his gloomy face, and asking him if he was sick to look so strange. Thereupon those who had been too troubled before to notice him, bethought themselves of him, and sent him to bed, rebellious at having to go so early.

He remembered how the next morning, looking out of a window high up under the eaves, he saw a great troop of horsemen come riding into the court-yard beneath, where a powdering of snow had whitened everything, and of how the leader, a knight clad in black armor, dismounted and entered the great hall door-way below, followed by several of the band.

He remembered how some of the castle women were standing in a frightened group upon the landing of the stairs, talking together in low voices about a matter he did not understand, excepting that the armed men who had ridden into the court-yard had come for Sir John Dale.

None of the women paid any attention to him ; so, shunning their notice, he ran off down the winding stairs, expecting every moment to be called back again by some one of them. A crowd of castle people, all very serious and quiet, were gathered in the hall, where a number of strange men-at-arms lounged upon the benches, while two billmen in steel caps and leathern jacks stood guarding the great door, the butts of their weapons resting upon the ground, and the staves crossed, barring the door-way. In the anteroom was the knight in black armor whom Myles had seen from the window. He was sitting at the table, his great helmet lying upon the bench beside him, and a quart beaker of spiced wine at his elbow. A clerk sat at the other end of the same table, with inkhorn in one hand and pen in the other, and a parchment spread in front of him.

Master Robert, the castle steward, stood before the knight. who every now and then put to him a question, which the other would answer, and the clerk write the answer down upon the parchment. His father stood with his back to the fireplace, looking down upon the floor with his blind eyes, his brows drawn moodily together, and the scar of the great wound that he had received at the tournament at York - the wound that had made him blind - showing red across his forehead, as it always did when he was angered or troubled.

There was something about it all that frightened Myles, who crept to his father's side, and slid his little hand into the palm that hung limp and inert. In answer to the touch, his father grasped the hand tightly, but did not seem otherwise to notice that he was there. Neither did the black knight pay any attention to him, but continued putting his questions to Master Robert.

Then, suddenly, there was a commotion in the hall without, loud voices, and a hurrying here and there. The black knight half arose, grasping a heavy iron mace that lay upon the bench, himself, as Sir John, pale as death, walked into the ante-chamber. He stopped in the very middle of the room. " I yield me to my Lord's grace and mercy," said he to the black knight, and they were the last words he ever uttered in this world.

The black knight shouted out some words of command, and swinging up the iron mace in his hand, strode forward clanking towards Sir John who raised his arm as though to shield himself from the blow. Two or three of those who stood in the hall without came running into the room with drawn swords and bills, and little Myles, crying out with terror, hid his face in his father's long gown.

The next instant came the sound of a heavy blow and of a groan, then another blow and the sound of one falling upon the ground. Then the clashing of steel, and in the midst Lord Falworth crying, in a dreadful voice, " Thou traitor! thou coward! thou murdererl"

Master Robert snatched Myles away from his father, and bore him out of the room in spite of his screams and struggles, and he remembered just one instant's sight of Sir John lying still and silent upon his face, and of the black knight standing above him, with the terrible mace in his hand stained a dreadful red. ...

It was the next day that Lord and Lady Falworth and little Myles, together with three of the more faithful of their people, left the castle. His memory of past things held a picture for Myles of old Diccon Bowman standing over him in the silence of midnight with a lighted lamp in his hand, and with it a recollection of being bidden to hush when he would have spoken, and of being dressed by Diccon and one of the women, bewildered with sleep, shuddering and chattering with cold. He remembered being wrapped in the sheepskin that lay at the foot of his bed, and of being carried in Diccon Bowman's arms down the silent darkness of the winding stair-way, with the great black giant shadows swaying and flickering upon the stone wall as the dull flame of the lamp swayed and flickered in the cold breathing of the night air.

Below were his father and mother and two or three others. A stranger stood warming his hands at a newly-made fire, and little Myles, as he peeped from out the warm sheepskin, saw that he was in riding.boots and was covered with mud. He did not know till long years afterwards that the stranger was a messenger sent by a friend at the King's court, bidding his father fly for safety.

They who stood there by the red blaze of the fire were all very still, talking in whispers and walking on tiptoes, and Myles's mother hugged him in her arms, sheepskin and all, kissing him, with the tears streaming down her cheeks, and whispering to him, as though he could understand their trouble, that they were about to leave their home forever.

Then Diccon Bowman carried him out into the strangeness of the winter midnight. Outside, beyond the frozen moat, where the osiers stood stark and stiff in their winter nakedness, was a group of dark figures waiting for them with horses. In the pallid moonlight Myles recognized the well.known face of Father Edward, the Prior of St. Mary's.

After that came a long ride through that silent night upon the saddle-bow in front of Diccon Bowman; then a deep, heavy sleep, that fell upon him in spite of the galloping of the horses.

When next he woke the sun was shining, and his home and his whole life were changed.