deed to the valley farm, and a string of pink corals for Joan. Already he could see the lights of Plittsville. Behind him the pines rose dark; before him the river stretched a white ribbon of foam, and the morning would break upon Easter!

He turned glad eyes to the driver. "Do you know Melissa?" he asked.

The man stared. "Well, rather!" he chuckled. "I married her two years ago come fall!"

moon went

For Demming the dark; the road billowed; the river rushed in his ears.

"You-married her?" he faltered. "I don't understand!"

The driver smiled. "Well, you would," he said, "if you could see her a-watchin' for my stage! Why, she knows when them leaders strike Main street! She'll be out there a-waitin' at the gate, as bloomin' as the lowlands in May! And sing! Whew! A brood of young orioles rolled into one can't touch her when- Whoa!" He suddenly set the breaks and leaned towards the passenger. "Say, you'd better get down and crawl inside. Yes, you had!" he insisted. “I know when a man's gettin' 'stage struck!' Why, I had a Cornishman up here last week, and he got as flabbergasted as a trout hung to a tamarac! It's the altitude and the joggle of the seat.

re

Persuasion was useless; he leased the break. "When we get in town," he said hospitably, "you'd better come up to the house, along with me. My wife'll knowStop at the turn? Why, there ain't anything there but the graveyard." Night still brooded over the mountains, and the tamaracs, and Plittsville, but her face was with the coming birth of day, and the star-points in her diadem were pale and uncertain. In the burying ground the sleepers faced towards the sunrise, and Demming had stretched himself among them in like direction. His overcoat was

pale

wet with dew, but he scarcely knew

it.

At length a drowsy twitter told of an awakening bird. Another answered. A quail whistled in the brush. A lark warbled a voluntary. Demming sat up, gazing with hot eyes ahead of him. To the east was a band of crimson on the forehead of morning. He turned his back upon it. He saw the snowy crowns of the buttes grow pink in reflected glory. A million tiny crystals caught the light and tossed it on to another. The sun had rolled the stone from the sepulcher; the world vibrated with Easter.

The man buried his face in the grass. Lying so, heart to heart with the earth, he felt a material something against his side. It was the case containing the corals for Joan. Demming groaned. The child belonged to him. He wanted her, he needed her, but the trail of duty lay narrow, clear-cut, ahead. The sin was Lisa's; the sacrifice must be his.

Suddenly, as if by the signal of a great leader, a myriad of birdvoices broke into an anthem; the air throbbed with its music, and through it broke the mellow tones of the church bell.

The anthem was sung; the final echo of the beli melted into the spill of sunshine, and a hush fell on the burying-ground. Then it was that a solo became audible. It was a human voice, a child's voice that quavered on the high notes and flatted a little, and it was very near to him. Demming sat upright. A clump of "Judas tree" held its shield of magenta bloom not fifty feet away, screening a chancel where a quaint service was being conducted. The words of the singer came to him, distinctly:

"Shall we gather by the river,

Where bright angels' feet have trod,

Gather with the saints at the river That flows by the throne of God?" Demming rose to his feet. There dhe voice Tintoe

٧٠ cape to an

was a familiar ti in spite of its im.. ing to the brush. abrupt stop behind it. Between its arms of bloom he could see a plain wooden shaft, painted white, and on it, in bold, black lettering, he read:

"In Memory of Mark Demming. "Though thy sins be as scarlet, they

shall be as white as snow."

Before it stretched a mound of stones and clumps of clay, half-hidden in dog-wood stars. It was evidently the laborious effort of childish hands. A little girl stood by it. Her frock was outgrown; her straight, dark hair hung elfishly about a face from which peered fathomless eyes. Her whole lithe body swayed in a sort of religious ecstasy.

"Yes, we'll gather by the river," she continued.

"The beautiful, the beautiful" A twig snapped under Demming's foot, and the child wheeled upon him.

"Oh," she gasped, with an indrawing of the breath. 'I-didn't s'pose there'd be a-congregation!"

The father heart in Demming cried out for recognition. This was his baby, his Joan! Emerging from behind the Judas tree, he stood looking at her; the pile of earth was between them.

Her eyes faltered under his gaze. "I-I didn't s'pose ther'd be but one of us," she shyly continued, "but" recovering herself, "I reckon he'd be glad, don't you?"

"Who?" Demming's tones were uncertain.

"Why, dad," pointing to the mound. "I made it," she went on. "It looks pretty good, don't it? It took buckets and buckets of stones! Did you know him?" she suddenly

asked.

Demming nodded; he could not speak.

"Well, he isn't under there," she said, worry puckering her brows, "and I don't know how the Resur

rection Angel's ever going to find him, but I s'pose he's got a way."

Dropping on her knees, she began tracing some freshly carved characters with the end of a stubby forefinger. The new letters were directly below the old ones. Demming noticing them for the first time, read: "I am the Life."

The child glanced proudly up at him. "That's the motto mother's fixed in the church," she volunteered, "only I didn't put 'resurrection' in 'cause there wasn't room." Suddenly she sprang to her feet; her eyes were passionate, "And it does mean convicts," she cried, "don't it? It means convicts, and poor sick animals, and You aren'tcrying?" She leaned concernedly across the little mound. "My! I thought you was! Let's go on with the singing!"

In flood-tide of a child's confidence she reached out her hands to him. Her father groped for them; he could not see her for the moisture in his eyes.

"We might do the second verse," she suggested. "Are you ready?

"'On the margin of that river," " The shrill, childish treble pierced him; he steadied himself by the little hands he held.

"Washing up its silver spray, We shall walk and worship ever, All" Her clasp tightened. "Will saxifrage grow by that river?" she questioned. "Dad liked saxifrage. Mother said so once."

"Yes," Demming answered. He did not know his own voice, but he spoke as one with authority.

"And will there be blue-winged cranes? And spotted lilies in June?"

The father bowed his head. The clinging clasp had strengthened the demand for what was his own. Lisa had her husband; the child was his! He must have her! He would have her!

"Joan! Joan!" he cried. "Joan!" Springing across the little mound, he caught her to him. He covered her face with kisses, brewed in tears.

F

AR up the mountains the moonlight was falling in bright spots in the scattered openings. The dense clumps of ohias threw big black patches of shadow. Near the ground, where ferns and guava bushes almost hid the narrow trail, all was darkness. The sheriff of the district and another man were lying behind a couple of big gray bowlders, shadowed by a clump of tree-ferns. Nothing in their plain dress of khaki riding trousers and dark sweaters indicated that they belonged to the police; only the big revolver holsters in their belts showed their business. A delayed hawk soared slowly up towards the mountain from the ponds below. The chirruping of crickets in the grass and the wind in the trees were the only sounds. The two men in the shadow lay quiet, watching.

One man carefully changed into a new position. "Beastly long wait, Billy!"

"Hoomanawanui (patience.) This is our chance. This is a go, sure, I think."

"What is the game, anyhow?" The sheriff laughed. "Do you know, Jack, when a man is too slick to be caught any other way, watch his wahine (woman, girl.) I know that Keawe is making okolehao (Hawaiian "moonshine.)" He is making it near here, but I have watched and spied for months and I can't find the still. He is too slick. He stays here in the mountain, and never comes makai, so I can't follow him. Then I get the idea-who is his sweetheart? And I talk with the girls. Kamala is his sweetheart. Pretty girl, too. Lives down makai. You may have seen her. Well,

I find out that she comes up in the night to see him. She can't go on the side of the mountain like a fly. She can't fly like a bird. She must come on this trail, and I think he meets her near here. Then he takes her up to his hut. That must be near the still, for it is hidden. I haven't been able to find it. But we can follow the two, and then-pau ka pilikia."

"Well, seems like a good plan. However, I don't fancy this mixing up a girl in this sort of thing. I've had enough of it."

"Do you mean the time you shot that girl by mistake, somewhere over in Hawaii? You couldn't help that, as far as I've heard. By the way, I never heard the ins and outs of that racket. You might while away time, old man."

"Deuced poor story to while away time with, Billy, to tell the truth. But you are one of my friends, so I suppose I might as well do it. Well, you see, this was about five years ago. I was in Honolulu doing nothing in particular, so the old man sent me to Hawaii on this job. You see, there was all sorts of okolehao all over the district. The sheriff there coudn't make out who made it. Once or twice in the mountain he stumbled upon caches with twenty or thirty gallons of the stuff. He found them by watching people who came to take away the ololehao, but who made the stuff he couldn't make out. Then this fellow up in the mountain began to shoot cattle. When the ranchers tumbled to that they raised a roar, so the old man sent me over to see what I could do.

"I had rather a nice time to start with. I put up at Ah Chu's 'hotel.' You know the place-double-decker house with big lanai? Old Ah Chu. sells a little liquor on the sly, and makes the best alligator pear salad in the land. Well, I played the capitalist and just loafed around, spent a bit in gin to the natives, and was thick as thieves with the population.

"With all this, time hung heavily on my hands. You see, I could not do much but knock around and keep my eyes open, so I went and made an ass of myself, you would say. I fell in love. The only time I really was in love in my life, and, by God, the last time, too. The girl was half-white. Pretty as God ever made a woman. Tall, with a figure and carriage like a queen. Eyes like a mountain pool at night, and a braid thick as your arm down to her waist. Yes, Billy, I don't think you can imagine me really in love, but, so help me God, if ever a man loved a woman I loved that girl. When I think back of the time then, I begin to understand that such happiness couldn't last. We would sit on the veranda evenings and watch the lights all over the valley. And the sea would be murmuring down below, and the palm trees stood out black in the moonlight, and Keola would play the guitar and sing, and we thought of nothing but the moment. Like fools, we were happy in our own little Paradise, thinking that it would last forever."

a

"Ssst!" whispered the sheriff. From a bend in the trail a dark figure showed dimly against the biack ferns. He came forward, and passed close by the two watchers. The man was young native. Around his neck he wore fern aylei (wreath) he had made. He walked erect and lightly, singing softly to himself a bit of native love song. The two men behind the stones watched silently until the figure disappeared farther down the trail.

"That's him, Keawe," said the sheriff. "The fool! All he's thinking of now is Kamala. Well, they'll come back this way pretty soon,

and then we'll give them a surprise. See the lei he has made? He isn't worrying a deuce of a lot."

"Poor chap!" said Jack. "This is beastly business, anyhow. The more I have of this, the less I like it. But I guess it has to be done. Well, I was talking of my little only love story. That ended badly, too, as you'll know. Now, after I had been there about six weeks, knocking about all over the mountains, I at last found the place. I had decided pretty well whereabout it was

where a couple of small gulches ran up into the mountain ridges, and I used to lie and watch the places with a field glass. One day I saw the thin blue smoke rise in a faint streak through the trees. I put in two more days and got everything pat. The still was in a little gulch high up by the ridge. The ridge was a narrow hog-back. Near it was a cave with quite a space in front of it. There the beggar lived.

"When I found these things out, all there was left was to make the arrest. I told the native officers to be ready at midnight, so we could sneak up in the darkness and make the haul just at daybreak. Of course I'd have to go back to Honolulu when the business was pau; so in the evening I went over to Keola's house to talk things over with her.

"It was a fine night. Keola played the guitar and sang as usual. Then, as it grew late, I began to tell her that I must go away, and asked her would she go with me, and then

well, something I said made her ask me, or I really don't know how it came about. Anyhow, before I knew it, I had told her all about the okolehao raid and my plans, and all that. The little girl seemed awfully agitated about it. 'What will you do if he shoots?' she asked. I told her in that case all we could do was to shoot back. 'But he never hurt you. How can you be wicked?' she said. And then she began to cry and beg me not to go, or at all events to put off the

SO