Chapter One

This windy Saturday in October had started with such a gusty happiness. But then all Saturdays in the big Malone home were a hectic, happy hullabaloo with young folks coming and going, with bath water running, with someone standing at the top of the stairs yelling to someone in the kitchen, with the telephone in the back hall ringing - forever ringing.

Sixteen-year-old Catherine Cecelia Malone - known as Beany to family and friends - had started the day with nothing more weighty on her mind than whether they should make chocolate or peppermint-stick ice cream for the party she was putting on this afternoon (and whether the freckle cream she was secretly buying at the drugstore would dim the marching formation of freckles across her nose). She had no idea that she would be a different Beany by the time the day ended. She had no idea that the Malone way which had seemed so right that morning would seem to wrong by nightfall.

Beany was in the kitchen now, making seven-minute icing for the cake her older brother Johnny was watching int he oven. The cake had been delayed by Johnny's frequent dashes to the telephone. On the kitchen table, the drainboards, even the stove's top, was the floury spilled-sugar, egg-shell clutter that always accompanied this creative feat of Johnny's

The sprinkling of freckles across Beany's nose was almost lost int he warm flush of her square-chinned face as she vigorously wihpped the icing in the double boiler. Her stubby brown braids, which she wore pinned up now that she was a high-school sophomore, kept higgling time the egg beater. "They o ught to call this seventeen-minute icing." she grumbled with her eye on the clock, which said five after one; and the party was to be at two.

At first Johnny's Lady Eleanor cake had soared to such beautiful heights. "Look at that," Johnny bragged with the oven door open a crack. "It takes creative genius to make a cake like that. Light as a snowflake in spring."

"It takes fifteen egg whites," Beany reminded him practically.

But on the next peek Lady Eleanor wasn't doing so well. She was falling in the middle, and about that Johnny waxed philosophical. "Just like life. Your hopes lift so high and then somehow there comes a sag...Beany, do you suppose you could fill in that depression with icing?"

"Oh sure," Beany said.

Johnny pulled out a broom straw to test it. Johnny was eighteen. He was tall and thin, with a light-footed grace and a shock of curly black hair. Beany, the most practical of all the Malones, was always scolding him about not getting his hair cut. To which Johnny always retorted, "Beany, my pigeon, a genius is supposed to be long-haired."

But it was Johnny's smile that set him apart from his fellow men. It wasn't only that it revealed such a perfect set of teeth that the Malone dentist said once he'd like to hire Johnny to sit in his waiting room and smile. His smile had that rare and heart-warming quality of making you one with his plans; it was appealing and gently apologetic. At Harkness High, where Beany was a sophomore and Johnny a senior, other students said it was Johnny's smile, as much as his ability for writing, that melted the grumpiest teacher.

Even Mrs. No-complaint Adams, who gave the Malones the last half of every day to "wash, iron and cook them," was never grim about ten minutes extra if she was ironing Johnny's sport shirts. But then Mrs. Adams was partial to the mentolks in the motherless Malone household. Little Martie she referred to fondly as "the little mister." And as for Martie Malone, father of the Malones! Mrs. Adams was sure that if the president at Washington would just read Martie Malone's editorials in the Morning Call, he would be entirely fit to cope with all the world's problems.

This Saturday noon Mrs. Adams' iron thumped rhythmically in what the family called the butler's pantry though, as Johnny said, no butler had ever sanctified it by his presence. They called their housekeeper Mrs. No-complaint Adams because it was her proud boast that she had "worked out" for seventeen years and had never had a complaint. The next-door neighbor to the south was also a Mrs. Adams. The Malones differentiated by calling her Mrs. Socially-prominent Adams. The society page never misised mentioning one of her teas, luncheons, or committee meetings.

Out on the back porch Elizabeth, Beany's oldest sister, was turning the ice-cream freezer. She came in, her hands clammy and cold from working with ice and salt. "Beany, see if it turns hard enough to take out the dasher. Oh, Beany, warm my hands." Beany chafed them between her warm ones....Oh Elizabeth, Beany thought, I wish I could warm your heart that's so empty and waiting for word from Don...

Elizabeth Malone McCallin was a war bride. It was her three-year-old Martie - the little mister - who was hanging on to Johnny's leg as he reached to a high cupboard shelf for the glass cake plate. Little Martie's hair was three shades lighter than his mother's, and curled about his face like an angel's on a Christmas card. Ever so often the Malone family would gird themselves to get those curls cut off. After all, they didn't want to make a sissy out of him! Once Johnny had even got him as far as Charlie's barber shop on the boulevard. But Johnny brought him back, his fair fluff of curls intact. "Charlie, himself, wasn't there," Johnny excused. "And little Martie and I didn't vibrate to those slap-dash helpers."

Before Elizabeth married she had gone a year to the university. She had been strenuously rushed by ever sorority and pledged by the "prominent" Delts. She had been chosen freshman escort for the Homecoming queen. And, before the year was out, she had been married under crossed swords to Lieutenant Donald McCallin. But now the war was over. Soldiers were returning. But Elizabeth was still waiting for Don to return from overseas.

Elizabeth was lovable and loving - and so lovely! Oh, why couldn't I, Beany often thought, have hair that makes a shining aureole about my face (as they say in books)? Why couldn't boys send me violets and say they were pale compared to my eyes? "Beany is so capable," everyone said... But doggonit, when you were a high-school sophomore and your heart's eyes always followed one certain boy down the hall, it wasn't enough to be tagged as capable...

Johnny found the box with the dozen pink candles and the fullblown rose candle holders. "Good thing Jock isn't thirteen," he said, laying them on the table.

"He's twelve," Beany said, "and he never had a birthday party."

"He'll be here any minute, "Johnny said. "Him and Lorna. Bet they've had Miss Hewlitt up since the break of day."

"I know," Beany laughed, and her spirits lifted. What was more fun than all this making ice cream and cake for a little boy, shunted for safekeeping out of his own country to a rheumatic old uncle Charley? A little boy, who had never had a birthday party and who had been counting the days until this first Saturday in October.

Jock and Lorna were two English children who had been sent over to a great-uncle when England's bombing threatened their safety. The great-uncle was the gardener and handy man for Miss Hewlitt, English Lit teacher at Harkness High and long-time friend of the Malones. In their young loneliness Jock and Lorna had made the Malone home their second home - their preferred home. Never a weekend passed without Jock tagging garrulously after Beany, without Lorna bobbing in and out of the house, paying court with carrots and lettuce leaves to Beany's big white rabbit, Frank. Beany had got in the habit of saving every piece of ribbon to tie on Lorna's hair. Great-uncle Charley or the busy Miss Hewlitt thought a rubber band or piece of string was sufficient to hold a little girl's hair in place.

So Beany vigorously beat the icing until it "formed a peak," visualizing as she did Jock's happy swagger when he saw the cake. Beany's capable fingers slivered off the high part on Johnny's cake and filled in the sunken spot. She slid a newspaper under the cake plate to catch any dripping icing. It was the Morning Call for which her father wrote editorials.

As she iced the cake her eyes noted that the paper was open at one of his sizzling editorials about unfit cars, careless drivers, and the mounting rate of traffic injuries and fatalities. Her knife scooped up a dab of icing off a line that read, "When is our safety maanger, N.J. Rhodes, going to waken from his long nap and do something about this?"

Beany knew an unhappy squirming. It was the irony of fate that her crusading father should be nipping at the heels of the lax N.J. Rhodes while Beany was secretly ordering freckl cream for the benefit of his nephew, Norbett Rhodes, who sat next to her in typing. All other classes at Harkness were just classes - but fith hour her typewriter was next to the one on which Norbett's restless fingers pounded. "What is it two of in occasion - two c's or two s's?" he had asked her. Oh, thank goodness, she could spell! Maybe he hadn't noticed the freckles, or her hair, which Beany, in her pessimistic moments, called "roan." Just yesterday he had asked her, "How would you write the possessive of Haas?"

There, the cake was beautifully iced.

Beany reached for the candle holders and discovered a minor tragedy. Little Martie had chewed on four - no, five - of the rose holders until they resembled worm-eaten rosebuds.

It was always surprising that anyone with as beatific an expression as Little Martie's could get in as much trouble as he did. It was always surprising, too, when little Martie spoke. He didn't talk a baby-talk jumble, but with a slow, feeling-his-way accuracy. "I - like - these," he said slowly, reproachfully, when Beany pried the demolished roses out of his fingers.

Johnny offered to run up to Downey's drugstore for more, but Beany said firmly, "Not you. I'll go." As though Johnny could buy a few candle holders. He'd come back with five dozen. Wasn't Beany still using the pint bottle of almond extract he had bought over three years ago when a recipe had called for a few drops of almond extract?

Beany grabbed Johnny's khaki jacked from the back of a chair and started down the back steps for the drugstore, five blocks away. If the freckle cream was there she'd pick it up, too.

She entered the drugstore breathlessly, with her mind entirely on the candle holders, and hoping that if the icing dripped Johnny would knife it up and put it back onto the cake. Then her heart did a hollow hop, skip, and jump. Norbett Rhodes was standing at the magazine rack, thumbing through a magazine.

Instinctively Beany's two hands reached out and caught her short flappy braids under her combs. Oh, why did she have to meet Norbett Rhodes, wearing this messy plaid seersucker under Johnny's faded, shapeless jacket!

Norbett said, "Hi, Beany!" and she said, "Hi, Norbett!" and stood so he wouldn't see the dab of icing on her skirt.

But the fountain mirror, with its pasted-on patches telling of sundaes and sandwiches, showed a girl with cheeks as pink as the peppermint-stick ice cream that she had mixed earlier. Her eyes weren't the violet blue of Elizabeth's, but a gray-blue shadowed by short but very thick eyelashes. Her "roan" hair hadn't the golden high lights of Elizabeth's, but it had a soap-and-water, a well-brushed shine. Beany's prettiness was of the honest, hardy variety.

The druggist, behind the fountain, called out, "Beany, the freckle cream I ordered for you came. Want to take it?"

"No - no -" she faltered. "I just want some pink candle holders." If only Norbett was too preoccupied with his magazine to notice.

Last year, when Norbett Rhodes was a senior and Beany was in Junior High, she had gone to the Harkness Spring Opera in which Norbett sang the lead. A Viking prince in blue velvet cape with a scarlet lining and a clanking sword, always ready to loose the shackles of the oppressed. Beany, in Harkness parlance, had "fallen on her face" for the senior with his reddish hair, his intense hazel eyes, his stirring Nelson Eddy voice.

She always saw him as cape-and-sword Norbett, even when he sat hunched overh is typewriter until Miss Meigs, their typing teacher, reminded him, "Watch your posture, Norbett." And yet her dream of being Norbett's girl was so hopelessly gummed up. For Beany was realist enough to know that Norbett liked her sister, Mary Fred, and yet disliked Mary Fred because she wouldn't date him. And, even worse, she, Beany, was Martie Malone's daughter. And Martie Malone was viciously berating Norbett's uncle - N.J. Rhodes, safety manager - for his indifferent enforcement of traffic laws. It was this uncle and his wife with whom Norbett madeh is home at the big Park Gate Hotel.

Norbett was still at Harkness High and was vindictively bitter and resentful about being there. Norbett's enemies - and unlike Johnny he had a goodly number - said he had been so busy being a big shot his senior year that he had overshot himself and failed to graduate. Norbett was school reporter for the Tribune, rival paper of Martie Malone's Call. During the winter, when he had covered a ski meet and had been overanxious for a good picture shot, he had climbed a high ledge and slipped and torn a ligament in his ankle. He had missed many chemistry classes because the chem lab was on third floor.

But even so, Norbett was a good enough student, so that all the school was startled when the chemistry professor announced two days before graduation that he was failing Norbett Rhodes. Old stand-pat Professor Bagley! Old Baggy, the students said, thought no boy or girl was equipped to enter the wider realm of life until he or she had mastered the "Nitrogen Cycle."

Norbett opened the heavy drugstore door for Beany, held it against the dusty wind, which promptly ballooned out Beany's jacked and tugged at her braids. "How about a lift home?" he asked. "My wagon's got a new paint job. Shade your eyes when you look at it."

The new paint job was as brightly red as Superman's famous cloak as front-paged on the comic books in the store. "Almost hides all the dents in the fenders," Norbett said, as he swung behind the wheel beside Beany. He asked too casually, "What's Mary Fred doing today?"

"She's going to a Delt tea," Beany said. She thought wretchedly, he' s just taking me home, hoping he'll see Mary Fred - or at least show off the new paint job on his car. ("Old show-off Norbett," Mary Fred always said. "Old hot-stuff himself!")

In the drugstore Norbett had been just a moody, studious, too-thin boy of eighteen or nineteen in a loud sport jacket. But in his red flash of car he took on a reckless, man-about-town swagger. He shot out from the curb. He jabbed a perilous fender-grazing course through the traffic headed for the football game.

"Be careful, Norbett," Beany cried out once, as he barely missed an elderly woman, carrying two bulging sacks of groceries.

"Pedestrians have eyes and legs," he said. "What's to hinder them from being careful?"

"Old people and children can't," she argued.

"Listen at her! Martie Malone's daughter. Brake-and-light Malone, we call him. Impound-the-cars Malone! Him, and his screaming editorials. All the young folks in town would like to strangle him. Old Killjoy Malone! He's slowed traffic on the Boulevard here to twenty-five an hour. What does he want - a funeral procession?"

Beany defended, "He wants to cut down accidents."

Norbett swung onto Barberry street. The white-pillared colonial home of Mrs. Socially-prominent Adams occupied a spacious corner. Its snow-white pillars made its red brick even redder. It had a starched and preening dressiness with its shutters, its ruffled curtains looped back from every window, its window-boxes, brightly splotched now with purple asters. Like a woman dressed for a party in necklace, earrings - even a corsage.

On the far corner was the dark-brick, unadorned home of Judge Buell. Its solid front and massive door had a grim, dignified, even judicial facade. Even the ivy, now a copper red, climbed with watchful decorum up the side. The hedge was squarely trimmed in a "thus far and no farther shalt thou go" manner.

In between sat the wide-bosomed, gray stone Malone home, with its winding driveway at the side. Sitting between these two carefully planned, well-tended homes, the Malone home had neither a starched preeningness nor a grim dignity but rather a scuffed, "come in as you are" friendliness. The Malone barberry hedge, given its own way, was bright with red berries. Their ivy had reached the windows in Father's room and spread protectingly across them.

The mother of the Malones had been the enthusiastic gardener of the family, and though she had been dead give years now, each spring brought glad and surprising remembrances of her. A few little crocuses pushing up in an unexpected corner; a flowering almond bursting into pink glory where they thought bridal wreath held sway. "Mary must have set that out," Father would say. And each time it was like an extra warm smile from her.

Folks driving to the Malone home always whirled into the driveway, for the Malone entrance was on the side, the steps flanked by two sentinel conifer trees. But Norbett Rhodes, as though the Malone driveway was too intimate for a Rhodes, stopped in the street outside with a screech and scream of brakes.

"Well, well," he mocked. "Only two children in the Malone yard!"

"Oh, Jock and Lorna are here already! And the candles aren't on the cake yet!"

"Your place used to look like an orphan asylum when I'd drive past."

Beany said flatly, "Those were the three Biddinger children. Their parents were killed at Pearl Harbor and so Father sent them home to us. They lived with us two years and then - then their uncle down in Santa Fe took them. Marcella - she was just ten when she came -" Beany's flushed face clouded, her voiced choked, "I - missed Marcella - so. Our house seemed so - empty after they left."

Norbett's eyes flicked over the woe in her face. He said, "You Malones certainly stick your neck out for trouble. Didn't you know those orphans from Hawaii wouldn't be with you for keeps? You're a funny kid, Beany. You're so doggoned honest. But you care too much about things. Don't you know there's no percentage in that?"

Beany said impulsively, "Look, Norbett, we've got peppermint-stick ice cream and a birthday cake. I wish you'd come to the party."

He looked at her mockingly. "Don't you know I'm the Malone enemy? All up and down the line. Your father is out tooth and nail after my uncle Norbett. Your sister Mary Fred told me once I had a mean disposition - she said I ought to eat more carrots. And Johnny - well, your genius Johnny and I have always locked horns."

"You mean about all those prize essays and class plays at school?"

"I've never once got the best of Johnny Malone. Last year when I was a senior and he was a junior he always outsmarted me. And this year I've got a swell idea for a senior play, but I suppose if Johnny Malone gets up with some half-baked idea of his, he'll have them all eating out of his hand. I lie awake at night, dreaming of the time when I'll have revenge on the Malones. Shakespeare said a mouthful when he said,

If I can catch him once upon the hip
I will feed fat the ancient grudge I bear him.

Oh yes, and another thing. If you think my uncle Norbett is easy to live with since Martie Malone started nipping at his heels, you're crazy."

What could Beany say? She was tom between loyalty for the Malones and her own secret longing to reach out to him and say, "I'm not your enemy, Norbett."

Norbett said, "I'm covering the football game for the Tribune this aft. How about you dashing out there with me? We can get in on my Press pass. I might need you on the spelling."

Beany's heart lifted high under Johnny's faded jacket. He was asking her. He wasn't thinking of her as Mary Fred's sister. Mentally she was scurrying up the stairs and squirming into her red slipover sweater - and if Mary Fred hadn't worn her navy-blue Chesterfield with the sheepskin lining she'd wear it. Mentally she was feeling Norbett's hand under her elbow, guiding her through the crowded stadium. All the world would see that she was Norbett's girl.

Lorna came to the gate - a little nine-year-old girl with hair that needed Beany's fingers to straighten the part and anchor with a ribbon the curl that was blowing every which way. Lorna said wistfully, proddingly, "Jock says the candles burn on the cake and you blow at them."

Beany reached reluctantly for the car door. "Oh, I'd love to, Norbett, but I - we promised Jock a party. He's never had a party - or a birthday cake -"

"It won't take all afternoon, will it?" Norbett asked impatiently. "It isn't everybody I'd give a second chance to, but I'll telephone you between halves from the Press box. You get this birthday fiddle-faddle off your hands and I'll run down from the stadium and pick you up. Okay?"

"Okay," Beany said.

His red car went careening down Barberry street. Okay? - Beany questioned herself, tremulously and apprehenslvely. Just like playing with fire is okay.

CHAPTER ONE

THE SUDDEN BREEZE before the dawn stirred the rushes round the island, rocking the small boat which lay among them. In the bottom of the boat a girl moved and woke, confused first at where she found herself. Then she remembered clearly and all the happenings of the previous day came back to her as in a dream of terror. She lay still, looking backwards to the moment yesterday when she had crept happily among these same rushes on the other side of the island. Thigh-deep in water, she had searched for the nests of wildfowl, to surprise her mother with the brown, strong-flavoured eggs which she so valued for the table.

The monastery bell had startled her, clanging violently in the quiet air, but she was not yet frightened—perhaps it was a fire among the island huts or a pack of wolves marauding from the forest by the abbey on the lake shore. Idly, she had parted the tall rushes and peered out between them, only to see great white and scarlet sails spaced all across the lower lake, billowing above long-boats which bore down upon the islands in speed and silence, like huge and brilliant birds of death.

She had not been able to get back to the village in the centre of the island. She had splashed and clawed her way in panic to shallower water, only to realize that the mighty ships were closing even faster than she upon the shore. There had been nothing left to do but hide among the rushes and watch in helplessness as the dark invaders swarmed from their beached ships and poured yelling up the shore to fall upon her father’s village.

Now she could no longer bear her thoughts and sat up abruptly in the boat. Only then did she see the boy, a few feet from her at the water’s edge. He had not seen her and she stared at him in silence; he was one of the invaders and she knew well who they were. She had often heard her father tell of how they had been raiding Ireland now for many years; of how they had come to the homestead when he was a youth in our Lord’s year of 826. That time, however, the people had had warning of their coming and fled to the forests, taking all they could carry, leaving only their crops and homesteads to the pillaging invaders. They came from a far land beyond the sea to the north; the Dubh Gaills they were called. The Black Strangers.

The boy was not tall, but vigorously built, standing braced on his strong brown legs as his eyes followed a flight of duck across the paling sky. She could not see his face but his skin seemed darker than she had ever known, and the hair falling to his shoulders was straight and black. He wore a tunic of grey linen, long-sleeved, and striped with blue and scarlet at the hem. In the leather belt around his waist was the sheath of a long knife.

"But I am not afraid," she told herself. "He is only a boy, about twelve years old like me. He is like one of my brothers."

At the thought of her brothers and the death of her family she stirred again restlessly and this time the boy heard her.

The speed of his movement was like an animal. In one bound he was beside her, reaching for the little wicker boat and drawing it to him through the rushes, staring at her fiercely with wide-open dark-blue eyes.

"Who are you?" he demanded.

She stared at him astonished and did not answer.

"Who are you?" he said again. "My father thought to leave no one alive on these islands. Who are you and how are you here?"

Still she stared at him, amazed green eyes on the demanding blue ones. "But you are a Black Stranger —a Viking," she managed to say at last, "and yet you speak my tongue."

"Yes, yes." The dark face creased with impatience. "My father came on viking here before, and took himself a slave. She reared me when my mother died. My father grew to have much regard for her and we speak your tongue often, my father, my cousin and myself. Also my lord Ragnar and others of the older men have landed here before and passed a winter living among your people. But who are you that I should tell you this! Tell me at once who you are and how you come here. I am Beorn, the Sea King’s son, and I would know."

Life flared back into the frightened and exhausted girl. "And I am Ness, daughter of a chief, and I will tell you only if I please!"

She knelt in the boat, her face only a space away from his, and they glared fiercely, anger risen in them both. Slowly the boy moved his hand to the hilt of the long knife. "I am Beorn," he said again, "the son of Anlaf the Sea King, and you will tell me now!"

Her eyes followed his hand, and then dropped, although her breath still came quick and angry. "Very well, I will tell you."

"It is good," said the boy. He crouched at the bow of the little curragh, never moving while she told him how she had hidden in the rushes and escaped the sacking and burning of the village.

"And then? That was the other side of the island. How did you get here?"

She went on to tell him how she had waited patiently for darkness, almost to her waist in water. Then, when the Vikings had started their feasting on the shore and were gathered rejoicing and unheeding round their fires, she had crept round the island to the little bay on the far side where the curraghs lay in shelter. She had thought to row to the monastery and seek safety with the monks in their tall tower but the Vikings were there before her. It was only the shelter of darkness in a familiar place that had let her escape again to row back, terrified and without thought, to her own island. Here she had lodged the boat deep in the reeds, with no idea of what to do next, and finally in the late night had fallen asleep.

The boy made no comment. He stood up, holding the boat with his foot. "You will get out," he said.

A hot answer rose once more to Ness’s lips, but again the boy laid a casual hand on the long knife, and, her mouth tight with anger, she got out.

As she stood up the boy looked at her. Her tunic was stained and crumpled, her dark-red hair a knotted tangle down to her waist, but her eyes were fierce and her head, he was pleased to find, very nearly as high as his own.

"I like you," he said. "I think you are brave. I will ask my father and you shall be mine."

This time Ness could not hold her temper. "I shall be yours!" she flamed at him. "I shall be yours! I am myself and I shall belong to nobody! Nobody! Least of all to... "

The boy rocked gently on the balls of his feet. The blue eyes mocked her. "Least of all to me," he finished for her. "Very well," he went on, his voice indifferent, "very well. You shall not belong to me. We will tell that to my father Anlaf. Come. Will you then die slowly or quickly, he will surely let me choose? I should say quickly were best. Come. Let us go to my father."

Ness thought of the day before. She thought of the horde of warriors rushing over her father’s almost defenceless village. She heard again the thin, frantic screaming of the women and children, smelt the bitter smell as the smoke and flames rose above the dry thatch of the huts, and heard above everything else the blood-crazy yelling of the plundering Danes. Her anger faded into hopelessness as she looked at the boy—he was only a boy, but he was a Viking like the others.

"I will be yours," she said tonelessly, and for the first time the young Viking smiled.

"It is good. Now come to my father." He set off so suddenly across the short turf that for a brief moment she was alone. She looked at the boat, but before she could think to move he was beside her again. "This is the way to my father." He stood still, close to her, until she turned and went before him along the path which crossed the island.

It was now clear daylight, an early morning in late summer. The small fields above the lake shore had been harvested and the rising sun gilded the stubble above the glitter of the morning lake. In the wood of silver birches in the middle of the island the leaves whispered and rustled with the dryness of the late season. Ness’s steps began to lag.

The boy prodded her from behind. "What?" he said mockingly. "Can you not keep the speed of Viking legs?"

Her chin went up and her steps quickened. She would not tell this hateful boy that she could not bear to see the ruins of her family home on the other side of the wood and, when they passed it, she glanced only once and not again.

The quiet fields above the lake, where her father’s cattle had browsed only yesterday and where the children had wandered down to play around the water, were alive with men. The huge boats, their masts stepped and their striped sails furled, were drawn up on the narrow strip of shore and the morning life of the Vikings was beginning. Aboard the ships some were working. On the shore and in the fields many still slept beside their dead fires, wrapped in their big grey cloaks, the remnants of last night’s feasting still strewn round them. Others sat in groups of three or four round fresh-lit fires, intent on their morning meal.

Numbers of them got up and crowded round the boy and girl as they came out of the wood and down the fields, some laughing, some threatening, all talking noisily. Ness hesitated and drew back nervously. The blue eyes derided her again, but without speaking the boy took her hand in his and led her down the crowded shore until they stood beneath the carved serpent-head which crowned the tall prow of the largest ship.

"What have you there, Beorn? Has one escaped us? Surely you do not come to ask what to do with her?"

The voice, speaking in Ness’s tongue, came from above, and with hardly a glance upwards the boy answered. "You will see, my cousin, both what I have and what I mean to do. Is my father awake?" As he spoke, he scrambled up over the shallow side of the boat, turning to pull Ness after him but without much care, so that she stumbled over the rowers’ benches and fell into a heap in the well of the boat.

There was a loud laugh and the same voice spoke again. "These Irish, they are not people of the sea. Throw her out and let her try again!"

Bruised and resentful, Ness glared upwards. The young man who straddled the high foredeck was tall and broad, handsome, and as fair as Beorn was dark. He laughed uproariously with a couple of men who had drawn close to him, jeering at the girl.

"Throw her back!" the fair young man shouted again to Beorn. "Throw her back and let her try again. That was no way to get into a boat!"

But Beorn dragged her from the well deck and up on to the foredeck, his face dark and angry. "She is mine," he said briefly. "I found her."

"She is yours?" answered the tall one. "Indeed? I would not mind an Irish slave myself, but your father forbade we take them on this raid. Especially I would like one whose hair has tangled with the setting sun. Maybe I will take her." He stretched out a hand and pulled sharply at Ness’s hair.

Beorn jerked her aside, and she glanced from the boy to the fair young man. He still smiled at Beorn, but close to him his face was hard and cruel and there was no smile in his fierce light eyes. The boy’s face was flushed with open hate and he hustled Ness on towards an awning under the curved prow, his flush deepening at the noisy laughter which followed them.

"I will teach him," he muttered. "When I am older, by the great Hammer of Thor, I will show him what it means to be the son of Anlaf!"

But Anlaf the Sea King, when they reached him, was hardly yet awake, and drowsily uninterested in his son’s captive. "Indeed, my son?" He hunched the grey cloak higher around his long form. "You found her? Then you may keep her. What? Oh, pay no heed to your cousin’s teasing. Now leave me. I feasted late and the night watch is not yet over. Go, boy, go, and let me sleep."

For all her sadness and her anger and resentment at being treated like a piece of merchandise, Ness by now was very hungry. When the boy told her to follow him for the morning meal she did so for the first time almost willingly. As they splashed into the shallow water she looked up again and saw the fair young Viking watching them in silence from above.

"I do not like that man," she said. "Who is he?"

The boy glanced sideways at her as if wondering whether he should speak. "He is Helge. I call him cousin, but he is not in truth my cousin, only the son of my father’s foster brother, whom he loved. Helge’s father was killed and Helge driven away, so my father kept him. He is a great fighter, a great Viking and second to my father in command of the fleet, keeping the night watch. He would rule the fleet should anything happen to my father. I am too young to command." His voice was short and resentful. He paused a moment and then burst out: "I do not like him either. I do not trust him. And I do not think my father trusts him; he watches him carefully."

"Why is he so fair, when all the other men are dark or brown?"

"He is no true Dane. He is from Scania, across the water in the country they call Sweden." Beorn remembered suddenly that he was Anlaf’s son and she a captured slave. "I should not talk to you like this! You are my slave, my father said so. Now we shall eat and you shall wait on me."

Ness remembered, too, that she was a chieftain’s daughter. "Wait on you I will not! I am used to having my mother’s servants wait on me. In this country we do not have the meanness of slavery, for we are Christians, and blessed Patrick, who was himself a slave, taught us that no man should own another. And also my father says... said... " Her words and her rage faltered together, and her mouth trembled as she looked piteously across at the ruined village, unable to go on.

The boy watched her a long moment in silence. "A Viking does not drive a woman," he said, then. "Come, we will eat together."

While they ate, the watches changed on the longships. She saw Beorn’s father emerge from the canopy on the Great Serpent, stretching his great length up to the morning sky and shouting for his captains. Never had she seen a man so tall, thin but heavy-shouldered, and moving with the same speed and neatness that marked his son.

The meal over, Ness paused to finger the horn from which she had drunk. She marvelled at the carving on the silver bands which bound it. She had not thought to see barbarians own such a thing of beauty.

The boy got up and left her. "Do not try to run away while I am gone. I have you well watched and you would have no success," he said. "And think, what if Helge caught you!" The blue eyes widened in mockery, and with a laugh at her rising anger he was gone.

She sat on the familiar short turf, where the fields broke on to the lake shore, and tried to think what she might do. She paid no attention to the Vikings, mustering to the ships in their companies for the day’s orders. Her back turned resolutely on her ruined home, she stared down the lake towards the sea. It looked as it had always looked on peaceful summer days; the woods crowding to the edge of the still blue water; the silver birches idling on the small scattered islands and the wildfowl plaintive in the clear air. She was helpless. Her only chance might come at night if she could escape again and reach a boat. Once on the mainland she might be able to find a way through the forests to the fort of her father’s brother, who was a lesser King. A shiver of fear struck her; there were wolves in the forest, sometimes even bears. Defiantly her head went up. Far better wolves and bears than Vikings, she told herself, for she would never belong to any arrogant infuriating Danish boy.

As she brooded, her eyes on the water, she did not notice that the warriors had begun to gather all together on the lake shore. Their talk and laughter roused her in the end and she turned to watch them. They were excited, laughing, shouting and jostling each other round something on the ground. Curiosity made Ness move closer, peering as best she could, for she would not go too close.

For seconds she gazed speechless at what she saw on the ground in the middle of their circle. Then fury took her. She hurled herself screaming through the astonished Vikings, clawing them aside in her blind rage until she stood shaking above the things which they had heaped on the sandy shore.

"You shall not have them!" she screamed. "You shall not have them! They are ours! That was my father’s and this my mother’s! The chalice was the Abbot’s pride... it is priceless! It is not yours! You are thieves, villains, robbers!"

Frantically she struck out at the nearest man, struggling to grab his huge sword from its scabbard. Large hands seized her, and there was laughter above her head and some shouts of anger.

A voice cried, in her tongue: "By the Father of Peoples, my uncle, your son has trapped a wildcat! Take her, Beorn, lest we forget that she is yours—our swords may slip!"

Blind with tears and rage, she allowed the boy to drag her out of the crowd, who at once forgot her, intent on their loot.

Still she beat her fists against Beorn. "It is ours! I saw my mother’s chain of gold, her Cross, it was my father’s precious gift to her! I saw——!"

His strong brown hands grasped her wrists. "Peace, girl, peace! By all the gods, have peace! It is all taken in the raid. It is ours now, each man a share according to his rank. My father is only angry that in their excitement they burned the grain store. This also we would take as is our custom. But on this raid, no slaves, but you."

Anger gave way suddenly in Ness to bitter grief. For the first time since she had seen the great striped sails across the lake she collapsed in desperate knowledge of her loss. She laid her head down upon her knees and sobbed with loneliness and misery. The pathetic heap of goods which the Vikings wrangled over seemed suddenly to stand for all that had been taken—father, mother, five brothers and sisters, her home and all her happy childhood.

"I saw my mother’s Cross," she moaned over and over and over again, never noticing when the boy left her. She sobbed herself at length into an exhausted sleep, worn out with her grief and her long terrifying night.

It was afternoon when she woke, and the soft late sun was creeping westwards towards the sea. Beside her, the boy Beorn sat sharpening his long knife carefully on a stone. She shivered and sat up, aware that the scene before her had changed, but unable to think for a few moments what was different. Then she realized the shore was empty. The great longships were no longer beached. They stood off a little in the water, held by their banks of oars. Only the serpent boat of the Sea King still lay high up upon the shore. She could not help, even in that moment, but see them beautiful; long, narrow and graceful, tapering in perfection to their high sterns and to the carved heads which topped their bows.

She turned to the boy. "What are they doing?"

"They make ready to sail," Beorn answered.

"But where?"

The boy looked at her. "On the next raid. Where else? There is nothing to keep us here. We have eaten your father’s cattle and salted his pigs. We go on to greater treasure now for there was not much here." He breathed lovingly along the gleaming blade of his knife.

Ness stared at him in horror. "And I?"

"You? You will come also. Do you not understand yet that you are mine? You should be proud to belong to Beorn the Sea King’s son. I am proud to be Beorn."

"Well, I am not proud!" she shouted at him. "Not proud! And I will not come to see more of my people slaughtered. You are butchers and robbers and I will not come. I hate you and I will not come!"

Beorn hardly appeared to have heard. He went on sharpening his knife, gazing quietly and critically along the edge of the long blade, brilliant with the light of the setting sun. "Not many will be slaughtered," he said at last, as though it did not much interest him. "Only a few monks. And you will come."

"I will not! I will not!"

"You will come. And you may keep this." Without taking his eyes from his knife, he tossed something at her feet. It was her mother’s chain and Cross.

Dumbly she picked it up and held it, running her fingers over the fine carved links, coming in the end to the Cross itself and its small crowned figure. As long as she could remember her mother, she had fingered it thus, warm about her neck. She looked up at the boy, at a loss for words, too grateful to be angry, and yet still too angry to be properly grateful.

She still had found no words, when, in answer to a signal from his father’s ship, Beorn stood up and sheathed his knife. "You will come," he said.

She slipped the chain over her head and looked in baffled fury at his back. In silence, she followed him.

ONE

Moving

PETER and Patsy Mitchell stood on the front lawn of their home in Washington, D.C. They watched the furniture being carried out of the house into a big moving van, a much larger one than the neighbors had used when they had moved. But then the neighbors had only one child and the Mitchells had six, not counting pets. At present only Peter and Patsy could really enjoy the move; Joan was rocking Baby Catherine to sleep and Angela and Timmy had been foisted onto neighbors, for fear they'd manage to get themselves packed up with the furniture.

Peter and Patsy, nine and eleven respectively, could be trusted to take care of themselves, yet they just escaped being old enough to be always pressed into service, like poor Joan. Of course Joan didn't really mind, she liked to help and she adored Baby Catherine.

The moving men were straining and puffing. They had ropes and small carts to help them carry the heavy furniture. Now they were lifting the piano down the steps. Sweat streamed down their faces as they cried out to one another in French. They spoke French because they came from Montreal. They spoke it so quickly it was hard to understand them even when you knew French. One of the men had said something to Grannie but Grannie had kept shaking her head.

"Plus lentement," she'd begged, which means "slower."

So the man had talked very, very slowly and Grannie had understood but it hadn't been worth the trouble. He had only been saying that it was hot, as if everyone didn't know that.

The men were packing the furniture into the van. They put sacks over it for protection. They fitted everything in like a jigsaw puzzle. There went Timmy's tricycle and Angela's doll carriage, but not her dolls, Surshy and Traincrack. Mother had wanted to pack them in a trunk but Angela had forbidden it.

"You don't pack us in a trunk, do you?" she had said indignantly. "My children want to go in the train and look out of the window too." So Surshy and Traincrack were waiting somewhere on a window sill, all dressed up to go. There went Grannie's radio.

"I hope it doesn't break," said Peter. "What will Grannie do if she can't hear the 'Mayor of the Town'?"

"Or 'Information Please,' " agreed Patsy.

There went Catherine's crib and high chair. They used to be Timmy's, the marks of his teeth were still on them. Catherine didn't bite things; she was very dainty.

Peter wiped his forehead on his sleeve. "It sure is hot," he said. "Maybe it will be cooler in Canada."

"Of course, because it's farther north there," Patsy instructed him.

"Yes, but that's what I don't understand," said Peter, frowning. "North is only nearer to the North Pole and if you go all the way up, right slap bang into the middle of the North Pole, then where is north? There isn't any."

Patsy hadn't thought of that. "There must be," she said.

"No, there isn't," crowed Peter. "Up in the middle of the North Pole there's only south. I must go there some day."

"Let's go inside and look at the house now," proposed Patsy.

They wandered through the dusty, empty rooms. Neither of them could remember ever having lived anywhere else. This house was as much a part of them as their teeth or noses. It disturbed them to see it so bare and friendless now.

"Do you like going away?" asked Patsy softly.

Peter ruffied his hair with one hand. He remembered how he had looked forward to Canada. When Daddy came home from the war his position in Washington was still available, but prices had gone up so much that Daddy preferred to look around for abetter one. Through a Canadian soldier friend of his he finally got a very good offer, a permanent job as hydraulic supervisor in Montreal. He jumped at it, but when the contract was signed he discovered that there wasn't a house for rent in the whole of Montreal. For a year he had hunted without results, and all that time his family had to stay in Washington. Even the children at school had finally ceased to admire the Mitchells for going to Canada.

But just when the summer holidays started Daddy wrote to say he had found a house. "It's only for the summer, though. After that we'll have to find something else."

"And what if we don't?" Grannie ventured to murmur, but the children thought it quite safe. ..what all couldn't happen in three months!

And now it was true for sure. The moving men had come and would put the Mitchells' furniture in Storage for them in Montreal until they found a permanent house. It was all very adventurous and delightful. Yet, when Patsy asked, "Do you like going away?" Peter felt a queer tightening of his throat. He suddenly realized that he loved this house, old and shabby though it might be.

"Let's go through all the rooms once more," he suggested.

They walked on tiptoes because their steps sounded so hollow. They knew every spot and crack and creak in the house; everything had its history. Peter had shot that hole in the hall window with his arrow. Mother had given him the bow and arrows at Christmas and she had been so proud that they shot well until that hole. After that she wasn't so proud any more.

And that spot of ink on the hall floor was left from the day when Angela had poured the ink bottIe over Snow White in the hope of changing the poor kitten's color. And the tear in the screen wire of the porch had been the work of Blinkie, the pet squirrel. And the hole right through the wall of the lit tIe front bedroom dated from the time that Patsy had been quarantined there for scarlet fever. Peter and she had worked at it from both ends until they could talk together, but it had been a secret; a picture had covered it. Now it stood bare and naked, for everyone to see.

"Do you remember how you used to buy me popsicles with your pocket money and stick them through that hole, and one was so big it wouldn't go through?" said Patsy dreamily. "I don't think I'll ever get over this house."

She sat down on the hall steps and Peter sat down beside her. "Do you remember the Christmas with Mr. Spencer and Eunice?"

"I was only six then," said Peter. "But I do remember when they went back to England and we waved good-by to them. It was a very big boat, wasn't it? And they took Snow White with them, and Bertha the bunny. I wonder how they like England."

"So many Christmases," Patsy went on. "So many Easters, so many birthdays. Do you think they have Christmas and Easter in Canada?"

"Well, anyway, they can't take away our birthdays," Peter consoled her.

Suddenly the stillness of the house was broken by a scream from Joan, and a few seconds later she flung open the door of what used to be Mother's bedroom and ran into the passage, clutching a surprised but placid Catherine.

Joan had grown very tall the last year or so and was developing what Mother called a "pretty figure." People nowadays remarked on Joan's improved looks. She was taller and thinner than she used to be, her eyes seemed larger, with long, coal-black lashes and quirky eyebrows, and her hair had begun to curl around her forehead. But people admired her expression most.

"She must be a sweet girl," they said. "A real help to her mother. "

And she was. She had taken over the care of Catherine from the day she was born. Catherine was born at home because there was no place in the hospital. It had been difficult to get help; Gwendolyn dared not touch a newborn baby, so Mother had kept Joan at home and taught her to wash and dress Catherine. Joan said it was much more fun than taking care of a dog. Joan was only two years older than Patsy but Patsy was beginning to feel as if there were six years between them, at least. Joan could look so sedate and understanding, listening to Mother's and Daddy's talk and voicing a calm opinion which no one snubbed. Patsy felt downright ashamed of her at those moments and would mutter fiercely to herself: "She acts like a grownup!" But at present Joan was her own age and very excited.

"Do you know what happened?" she cried. "Catherine was almost electrocuted!"

"How? How?" cried Peter and Patsy, jumping up. Grannie opened the door of her room. "What's the matter?" she asked.

Joan turned to her. "The baby. .." she gasped. "She had waked up and I was minding her and you know that big electric cord in Mother's room! It plugs in and then it has a gadget at the end for two extension cords. The moving men took away the lamp and the clock but they didn't unplug the cord and left the gadget on the floor and I just caught Catherine as she was trying to put it into her mouth!"

"My goodness, that was terribly dangerous," cried Grannie, startled. "What a clever girl you are, Joan, to think of that. It wouldn't look dangerous at all!"

"Would she have died?" asked Peter, awed.

"Not necessarily," said Grannie. "I know of a little toddler who did just that, but she didn't die. She was knocked unconscious and her lower lip was burned away. Her parents had a terrible time taking her to skin specialists who more or less fixed her up again. You are a clever girl, Joan. ..that poor baby. .." and Grannie held her arms out to Catherine, but Catherine only clung more tightly to Joan.

At that moment the moving men came up the stairs to fetch Grannie's bed. Grannie had with many French words persuaded them to leave her bed till the last. For some reason the beds were the first things they had wanted to pack when they had started the day before. So the other Mitchells had been sleeping on the floor, but Grannie was too old for that and they left her her bed. Now they came to fetch it. Grannie might look as pathetic as she pleased, the bed was carried downstairs.

"Where'll I sit? " cried Grannie helplessly.

There wasn't anywhere for her to sit except on the stairs and everyone knew that Grannie couldn't sit long on anything hard.

So Peter went down to where the telephone still wobbled on the top of the radiator and dialed a number. He was worried about Grannie. It was now about twelve o'clock and the train didn't go till four. She couldn't be without a chair all that time! Mother didn't matter so much, she was rushing around anyway, supervising the moving men, because she said if she didn't they were sure to pack all the empty bottles and garbage cans with holes and seatless chairs and maybe leave behind the icebox. It was quite a spectacle to see them pack; they just snatched any object they could reach, without looking at it, rolled it in newspapers, and dropped it in a barrel. Gwendolyn, the maid, had rescued her coat and hat and hung them in the garage or they would have packed those, too.

But Grannie could not help and now she wandered around miserably, hesitating between the fatigue of standing and the agony of sitting. So Peter dialed the number of Mrs. Duquesne, Grannie's best friend, and said:

"Hello, is this Mrs. Duquesne? This is Peter. You know we are leaving today, the moving men are here and they took all our chairs and Grannie has nowhere to sit and the train only goes at four. ...Oh yes, that would be lovely, thank you." Peter quickly dropped the receiver.

"Grannie, Grannie," he shouted. "Mrs. Duquesne is coming with her car to fetch you! You're going to have lunch there and a nap. But be sure now that you are at the station at four. Please don't miss the train, that would be dreadful!"

Grannie was delighted. Her cheeks grew pink with pleasure as she put on her hat, hoping it looked right, for there were no mirrors. Soon Mrs. Duquesne arrived. It was time, too. Grannie was already stiff with sitting on the stairs.

"Be sure to bring her to the station before four," said Peter anxiously as he helped Grannie into the car. "Yes, yes, we'll take good care of her," promised Mrs. Duquesne, smiling.

When the car left, Peter inspected the moving van. It was quite full, yet there were still heaps of things in the house. The two men seemed worried. They kept shaking their heads and saying French words. They went to Mother and made motions with their hands. Mother looked scared. She said something and the men shrugged their shoulders.

"Goodness," cried Mother. "I must phone my husband - mon mari. "

The men spat gloomily into the yard. Mother rang long distance. "I want to speak to John Mitchell, Elwood 3771, Montreal, Canada." It was some time before she got him.

"Listen, John, they can't get all our furniture in, they say. Into the van, of course. Oh, lots and lots. In the basement. ..trunks and the baby carriage and that nice sofa. ..they say they'll have to leave them. But all our clothes, John. ..and the new people won't come in until Monday. ..and you know you can't really lock up this house. ...Yes, they say there is another van going day after tomorrow. I put red labels on all the things we'd need in the country and I did tell them to keep them apart but I don't think they understood. Oh dear, I'm so worried. ...No, I know you can't help it. ...Phone the police to keep an eye on the house? All right. ..all right, dear, I won't keep you." Mother put down the phone.

"What is it, Mommy?" asked Joan, but Mother brushed her off like a fly.

"Be quiet," she snapped. "C'est bien," she told the moving men. " Mon mari ...agrees, il consent. Oui, you can leave the stuff in the basement. ..what is basement in French? Where is Grannie? Grannie, what is basement? Gone? To Mrs. Duquesne's? Why? Oui, oui, descendez bas. ..laissez lo-bas, oui. "

Mother looked around for something to sink onto. She felt weak in the legs. But the radiator was too high and the floor too low so she leaned against the wall instead.

"All our trunks. .." she murmured. "And I asked them to pack those first but they didn't listen. And anyone can break into this house. ..."

"Oh, I'll ask Dickie and Butch to keep watch," offered Peter. "They're training to be detectives and they'll love it."

He flew off to enlist the help of his friends. Mother held her throbbing forehead with both hands and tried not to cry. She had been on her feet since five that morning, as the moving men had daylight saving time and preferred to work while it was still cool. She had planned so carefully and worked so hard and now all threatened to go wrong because the van was too small. It wasn't fair. Who would have thought that all the shabby little odds and ends that made up their furniture would take up so much space? If only the trunks could have gone. ..it takes a lot to dress six children. ...

"Mother, do you know that Baby was almost killed?" asked Joan.

"What?" With a shock Mother stood upright. "Killed? How?"

Joan told her what had happened and Mother grabbed Catherine and buried her nose in the baby's wispy hair, feeling a passionate gratitude. What did it matter about the trunks as long as her children were alive and well and didn't have to be left in a basement? They were her treasures and they were going with her. So with a singing heart she rushed off to supervise the final cramming of the van. When it left at last it had furniture tied outside with ropes. It looked as if one more chair would make everything collapse, but the men said it would be all right. The van slowly groaned into motion, watched after by most of the children in the street.

"When are we going to eat, Mother?" asked Peter when he returned from his mission.

Gwendolyn had been sweeping the empty rooms and now sat on the sink in the kitchen looking helpless. It is hard to prepare a meal when there is only a stove and a sink and even the can opener has been taken away. Besides, Gwendolyn was melancholy. She had been with the Mitchells since just before Catherine's birth and she loved them all. She couldn't get over the fact that they were leaving, and added to the general confusion by loudly weeping into her apron from time to time. It was no use expecting a meal from her.

Luckily Timmy trudged up the steps presently and announced that the lady who was taking care of him and Angela now invited Patsy and Peter to lunch, too. Mother then decided that she and Joan would have a snack at the drugstore and leave Catherine to be fed by Gwendolyn. There were still some cans of baby foods and a beer-can opener.

But just at that moment several of Mother's dearest friends came to say good-by, and then the phone rang, another friend wanting to know how everything was get- ting along, and another phone call to ask about the maid: "Was she free to work somewhere else now?"

Finally Mother had to feed Catherine while Gwendolyn made arrangements for another position. At last Joan said she'd go to the drugstore alone and fetch Mother a sandwich, and as she left, another batch of friends were mounting the front steps to say good-by.

Then Angela and Timmy had to be fetched back and dressed in clean clothes, which had been painstakingly kept out of the clutches of the moving men. But Angela wasn't satisfied with Traincrack's appearance and had to wash her at the last minute, wetting her own dress. Then Timmy was lost, and everyone looked allover the house until he was found in the cellar, inside the baby buggy, fast asleep.

Trusty, the dog, and Mr. Jenkins, the parrot, had to be packed into baskets, to their disgust. Especially Mr. Jenkins, who cried loudly: "What a shame, what a shame!" The fishes had been donated to neighbors; their habits were too moist for a train journey.

At last all was ready and Mother telephoned for a taxi, only to find to her dismay that there was none to be got there was a taxi strike on. She had been too busy moving to know about it, as she hadn't read a paper or listened to the radio. So there she was, at three-thirty, hot and weary, with six children, a dog, a parrot, and two dolls, with no way of getting to the station. Luckily a friend saved the situation by offering to drive them over in his car.

And so they cast a last look at their house, so dreary and bereaved without its curtains, gave a last handshake to the group of mournful friends, and off they went in Mr. Dowling's large car.

A feeling of peace settled over the family. It was done now, the cables were cut, they were launched. Before them spread the Unknown.

Mother had bought tickets and reserved compartments a month beforehand, so they were in plenty of time and even had to wait for the gates to open. It was hard to keep the little ones from running around. Luckily the dog and the parrot were going in the baggage car, so they were off Mother's hands. They had food and drink with them, and it was probable that they would survive the trip. Both were dear to the Mitchells, Trusty because he had helped to save Daddy when he was shipwrecked and Mr. Jenkins because he had been a present from dear, darling Uncle Jim who had never returned from the war.

The large hands of the station clock moved forward, but Grannie hadn't arrived yet. Peter worried. Grannie was his special friend; he felt responsible for her. Besides, it had been his idea to send her to Mrs. Duquesne's. "Don't you think Grannie ought to be here?" he asked of Mother.

Mother glanced at the clock.

"Goodness, yes, it's ten to four," she cried. "Where is Grannie? I have her ticket, too!"

The gates were opening now and a porter was urging Mother to go on. Angela was already back from doing gymnastics on the railing, and Timmy had fallen asleep again, half on and half off a suitcase.

"We'd better get them settled first, Mother," advised Peter. "Then we can always go back to find Grannie." So Mother explained to the man at the gate about the ticket and the missing Grannie and then they all trooped behind the porter, Joan carrying Catherine, Peter half dragging Timmy, and Patsy helping Angela to carry her dolls.

Mother had engaged three compartments, little private rooms in the train. Two, connecting ones, were for herself, the girls, and Timmy; Grannie and Peter had a smaller one in another car. The children were wildly excited, and all seemed to want to sit in the same place. Mother had a hard time settling them, and so she didn't notice how Peter slipped away.

At last peace returned. Catherine sat in her auto seat, nibbling a biscuit, Timmy and Angela took out their coloring books and crayons, and Joan and Patsy hung up their coats and hats like thoughtful young ladies. But where was Petet?

Joan and Mother ran from one compartment to another, trying to locate him and merely bumping into a lot of passengers intent on getting to their seats and not a bit interested in Peter. It was two minutes to four and Mother became frantic. It was bad enough having Grannie late, but now Peter, too!

Patsy thought she had an idea what Peter had been up to, so she leaned out of the platform door, very much in everybody's way, and scanned the clock and the passen- gers in turn.

One minute to four. ..half a minute. ..fifteen seconds. ...And then Patsy let out a shout of joy, for she had caught sight of Peter, who was running like mad and dragging Grannie after him. Poor Grannie had lost her hat and looked completely exhausted, but what with Patsy pulling and Peter pushing they managed to get her into the train just as the whistle blew and the wheels started to move.

"Oh, dears," panted Grannie, when Peter deposited her beside Catherine in one of Mother's compartments, "I made it, thanks to Peter I made it!"

"What happened?" asked Mother, who felt so relieved that she had all her chickens together that it was as if there had been no trouble at all that day.

"Wait till I get my breath and I'll tell you," gasped Grannie.

So they all waited in suspense while Grannie examined her bag, snapped it shut, wiped her nose, and straightened her hair.

"The Duquesnes' car got a flat tire," she explained at last. " And there was no taxi. And putting on a new wheel would take too long, I thought, so I took a trolley, but it went in the wrong direction. And then I had to run and I lost my hat, but I hadn't time to go back, and as I entered the station and saw it was four o'clock I thought I was too late and would have gone back if Peter hadn't come like a whirlwind and pulled me into the train!"

"Well, thank goodness," said Mother, leaning back on the soft seat. "We're all here and now I don't have to do a thing until tomorrow morning." And closing her eyes she gave herself up to the train's rhythm, while the children, relieved of their fears about Grannie, settled down to enjoy their first overnight trip in a train.