There were rocks at my right hand, and rocks at my left. There was the sky overhead. I was in the Gray Goth!

There was no going any farther that night, that was clear: so I put about into the hut, and got my fire going; and Bess and Beauty and I, we slept together.

It was an outlandish name to give it, seems to me, anyway. I don't know what a Goth is, Johnny; maybe you do. There was a great figure up on the rock, about eight feet high: some folks thought it looked like a man. I never thought so before, but that night it did kind of stare in through the door as natural as life.

When I woke up in the morning I thought I was on fire. I stirred and turned over, and I was ice. My tongue was swollen up so I couldn't swallow without strangling. I crawled up to my feet, and every bone in me was stiff as a shingle.

Bess was looking hard at me, whinnying for her breakfast. "Bess," says I, very slow, Iwe must get home-to-night-any how."

I pushed open the door. It creaked out into a great drift, and slammed back. I squeezed through and limped out. The shanty stood up a little, in the highest part of the Goth. I went down a little, I went as far as I could go. There was a pole lying there, blown down in the night; it came about up to my head. I sunk it into the snow, and drew it up.

Just six feet.

I went back to Bess and Beauty, and I shut the door. I told them I couldn't help it, something ailed my arms, - I couldn't shovel them out to-day. I must lie down and wait till

to-morrow.

I waited till to-morrow. night. It was snowing when I pushed the door out again into the drift. I went back and lay down. I didn't seem to care.

It snowed all day, and it snowed all

The third day the sun came out, and I thought about Nannie. I was going to surprise her. She would jump up and run and put her arms about my neck. I took the shovel, and crawled out on my hands and knees. I dug it down, and fell over on it like a baby.

After that I understood.

I'd never had a fever in my life,

and it's not strange that I shouldn't have known before.

It came all over me in a minute, I think. I couldn't shovel I might call, and I might shout.

through. Nobody could hear.

By-and-by the fire would go out. Nancy would not come. Nancy did not know. Nancy and I should never kiss and make

up now.

I struck my arm out into the air, and shouted out her name, and yelled it out. Then I crawled out once more into the drift. I tell you, Johnny, I was a stout-hearted man, who'd never known a fear. I could freeze. I could burn up there alone in the horrid place with fever. I could starve. It wasn't death nor awfulness I couldn't face,- not that, not that; but I loved her true, I say, I loved her true, and I'd spoken my last words. to her, my very last; I had left her those to remember, day in and day out, and year upon year, as long as she remembered her husband, as long as she remembered anything.

I think I must have gone pretty nearly mad with the fever and the thinking. I fell down there like a log, and lay groaning "God Almighty! God Almighty!" over and over, not knowing what it was that I was saying, till the words strangled in my throat.

Next day, I was too weak so much as to push open the door. I crawled around the hut on my knees, with my hands up over my head, shouting out as I did before, and fell, a helpless heap, into the corner; after that I never stirred.

How many days had gone, or how many nights, I had no more notion than the dead. I knew afterwards; when I knew how they waited and expected and talked and grew anxious, and sent down home to see if I was there, and how she But no matter, no matter about that.

Then the

I used to scoop up a little snow when I woke up from the stupors. The bread was the other side of the fire; I couldn't reach round. Beauty eat it up one day; I saw her. wood was used up. I clawed out chips with my nails from the old rotten logs the shanty was made of, and kept up a little blaze. By-and-by I couldn't pull any more. Then there were only some coals, then a little spark. I blew at that spark a long while,-I hadn't much breath. One night it went out, and the wind blew in. One day I opened my eyes, and Bess had fallen down in the corner, dead and stiff. Beauty had pushed out of the door somehow and gone.

Sometimes I thought Nancy was there in the plaid shawl, walking round the ashes where the spark went out. Then again I thought Mary Ann was there, and Isaac, and the baby. But

they never were. I used to wonder if I wasn't dead, and hadn't made a mistake about the place that I was going to.

One day there was a noise. I had heard a great many noises, so I didn't take much notice. It came up crunching on the snow, and I didn't know but it was Gabriel or somebody with his chariot. Then I thought more likely it was a wolf.

Pretty soon I looked up, and the door was open; some men were coming in, and a woman. She was ahead of them all, she was; she came in with a great spring, and had my head against her neck, and her arm holding me up, and her cheek down to mine, with her dear, sweet, warm breath all over me: and that was all I knew.

Well, there was brandy, and there was a fire, and there were blankets, and there was hot water, and I don't know what; but warmer than all the rest I felt her breath against my cheek, and her arms about my neck, and her long hair, which she had wrapped all in, about my hands.

So by-and-by my voice came.

"Nannie!" said I.

"Oh, don't!" said she, and first I knew she was crying. "But I will," says I, "for I'm sorry."

"Well, so am I," says she.

Said I, "I thought I was dead, and hadn't made up, Nannie.” "O dear!" said she; and down fell a great hot splash right on my face.

Says I, "It was all me, for I ought to have gone back and kissed you."

"No, it was me," said she, "for I wasn't asleep, not any such thing. I peeked out this way, through my lashes, to see if you wouldn't come back. I meant to wake up then. Dear me!" says she, "to think what a couple of fools we were, now!"

to!"

"Nannie," says I, "you can let the lamp smoke all you want

"Aaron" she began, just as she had begun that other night, "Aaron » but she didn't finish, and - Well, well, no matter: I guess you don't want to hear any more, do you?

MRS. HUMPHRY WARD

(1851-)

HE history of the growth of English fiction, from Richardson and Fielding to the present day, is the history of the increasing attention given to character. The modern novel studies personality, and depends for its interest mostly upon the inter-relations of men and women in the social complex, subjectively viewed. The main stream of story-telling has set stronger and stronger in this direction for a hundred and fifty years; although cross-currents, even counter-currents at times, have seemed to deflect it from its due course. The adventure tale, caring more for incident and action and for the objective handling of character than for the subjective analysis of motive, has had since Robinson Crusoe a vigorous if sporadic life. Romantic fiction has had always its makers and its wide public. Some of the extreme developments of the analytic school, too, have been such that the parent is hardly to be recognized in the children. One such offspring is the kind of realistic fiction, which errs in laying over-emphasis upon relatively unimportant detail, and in forgetting that life is no more all-sour than it is all-sweet. And much of what is known as naturalism shows how much the analytic method may be abused in the hands of those who divorce theory from life, and have a penchant for the merely physical.

MRS. H. WARD

But the higher and nobler conception of fictional art, recognizing the heart and soul of man as the most tremendous possible stage for the playing out of social dramas, has been held and illustrated by a line of gifted modern writers, among whom Thackeray, Dickens, George Meredith, Hardy, and George Eliot are major stars. In this literary genealogy Mrs. Humphry Ward belongs by taste, sympathy, and birthright of power. She is one of the few contemporaneous novel-writers whose work is in a sound tradition, and has enough of lofty purpose and artistic conscientiousness to call for careful consideration. Had Mrs. Ward failed, she would deserve respect for her

high aim, in a day when tyros turn off pseudo-fiction as easily as they do business letters.

Mrs. Ward's first story, 'Miss Bretherton,' which appeared in 1884, made no great stir; but it was a charming and thoroughly welldone piece of fiction, revealing marked ability in character study, and a comprehension of English society. The theme chosen, the slowly generating love between a brilliant young actress and a middle-aged man of letters, is developed with delicate idealism, with sympathy and imagination. The writer of the later and greater novels is foreshadowed if not fully confessed in the tale; which in its pleasant ending, and its absence of definite special pleading, declares itself a younger book. To some, the fact that 'Miss Bretherton' is a straightaway love story will make it all the better. But to one who understands Mrs. Ward's intellectual and artistic growth, the book will be seen to be tentative.

By the publication of 'Robert Elsmere' four years later, in 1888, its writer defined her position and gave a clear idea of her quality. The book made a deep impression. The fact that it dealt with the religious problem, tracing in the person of the hero the intellectual change undergone by a mind open to modern scholarship and thought, gave it for many the glamour of the dangerous, and no doubt helped its vogue. It was a story which people took sides for or against, and fought over. But Robert Elsmere would never have achieved more than a critical success if it had been nothing but an able polemic against orthodox views. It was far more: a vital story full of human nature, intensely felt, strong in its characterization, and in some of its scenes finely dramatic,- this last implied in the fact that the novel was dramatized. Elsmere is not a lay figure to carry a thesis, but an honest human brother, yearning for the truth. His wife is an admirable picture of the sweet, strong, restricted conservatism of a certain type of nature. And Rose and Langham-to mention only two more personages of the drama. are real and attractive creations. The nobility of intention in this, the first of Mrs. Ward's full-length social studies depicting the tragedy of the inner life, must be felt by every receptive reader. The charge of didacticism commonly preferred against this novel has some justification, though the artistic impulse was present in large measure,- indeed prevailed in the work. And in the next book, 'The History of David Grieve,' given to the public after another four years had intervened (1892), the human elements are broader, the life limned more varied, and hence the impression that the author has a nut to crack is not so strong. Yet David's experience, like Robert's. with all its difference of birth, position, training, and influences, is one of the soul: the evolution of personal faith may be said to be the main motive of the tale. The