"Did Cy's break this afternoon bother you much? Don't let it." He had changed the subject abruptly, stretching lazily in the chair Harriet indicated. "It's

his only way of showing he knows what's been happening to you.'

'What has been happening to me?" she could not but ask.

And she realized uncomfortably that Cole Dickinson, with his penchant for people, their emotions and reactions, probably knew exactly what had happened to her.

"Just the usual thing." He was feeling for his cigarette case. "Mind if I smoke? It hits us all somewhere along in our thirties. A sort of taking stock and starting fresh. By the time you've got the thing you thought you wanted at twenty, you realize that the rest of life's got to have an aim, and you go hunting around for a new one. The happily married woman goes in for politics, and the unhappy one for a new lover perhaps. It doesn't matter really, so long as you go in for something."

Harriet considered him gravely. Cole always understood. She liked the way he sat in his chair. It wasn't the relaxation of the lazy man, but the ease of perfect muscular control.

"Now you and I," he added, "are going in for each other."

A sense of warmth and comfort was stealing over Harriet. June had said not to seek love.

H

WITCH MARY *

BY GENEVIEVE LARSSON

AS any one of you seen Witch Mary of late?"
Wise Olaf, keeper of the country store,

asked the question of the farmers gathered in a group on the "grocery side." A curious, vivid silence followed. They had been rejoicing over their fields of grain, which stood, as one man had exultantly proclaimed, high as a man's arms, and were heavy with promise. Some made as if to speak, shifted uneasily, sucked back the half-formed words.

"Well?" questioned Wise Olaf.

Through the summer stillness a wind swept up from the river, came sighing in through the open door, and rattled the loose papers about. There was something eerie, electric, about it, as though it carried with it an unseen presence.

"Hush! The women will hear you!" cautioned one, glancing across the room.

"Not seen a sign of her all summer; but that's a good sign," nervously ventured a gnarled, bent, old man, stooping over the counter to pick up a stray coffee-bean. He rubbed it between his horny palms, and then fell to munching it, his long chin nearly meeting his nose in the process. Assuming an attitude of cheerfulness, he glanced around carelessly, and then slumped back into a chair.

* From Pictorial Review. Copyright, 1923, by Pictorial Review Company.

The women across the room were busy examining the rolls of blue and brown denim that Wise Olaf's Kaisa displayed upon the counter, and had been chattering together busily. The summer was a good one, and they could buy extra yards. Underlying their Northern speech, in which were represented various provincial dialects of Sweden, was an undercurrent of wistful melancholy, as though they feared to be too joyous, lest some unforeseen disaster come upon them in the midst of their plenty. Now, quick to note a change of feeling in the men's talk, they stopped, broken sentences suspended in the air, reluctantly left the goods upon the counter, and crossed to the other side. "But what is it?" asked Kaisa, looking around at the guilty faces.

"We were just talking about Witch Mary,” answered Wise Olaf.

"We agreed, long ago, not to talk of her." Kaisa's voice was high-pitched, nervous. Her keen, rather hard-featured face lit up with a curious, avid expression. "As long's you've started, has any one seen her?"

"Not one time during the whole summer,' answered Olga, a fair, comely matron. "Though from my place I can see the top of the hill. Sometimes I run out, when the sun is high, thinking to catch a glimpse of her. The trees must have grown up about the hut. Every day, I remember, the year of the drought, I could see her standing there, waving her cane with one hand, and the other held to her brow, looking out over the valley."

"The river, you mean," put in Wise Olaf, carefully tying a package with his knotted hands.

A tremor passed over the crowd.

"I doubt not it was the river," said Olga, rebuked. The men, some standing, others seated on chairs placed conveniently about, puffed more heavily at their long corn-cob pipes.

"Sometimes," Olga continued shamefacedly, "she looked so lonely standing there. Just as if she were turned to a statue of grief. I wanted to run up and comfort her. But I never dared. Besides, Sven would not permit me. And there is no road, only this path, leading down to the river."

"A good thing for you that you didn't didn't go," said the gnarled old man, trying to speak lightly. "Silent Sven would have been left a widower." The men laughed relievedly, and the shy young giant standing beside the counter flushed to the roots of his yellow hair.

"Oh, I don't know," finished Olga, weakly. “I— I am sorry for her, poor old soul!"

"Some say she was seen the day Black Eric left," Kaisa's shrill voice broke in. "She stepped in front of him on the road, and the horses stopped dead. She cursed him as usual. 'So you are going away,' she screamed; 'but I will follow you-I will follow you!' He struck at her with his whip, but she avoided him. 'I hope you die!' he shouted at her, and she screamed back, 'Aye, though I were dead a thousand years, my hate for you would bring me back!'"

"Ja, kära Gud!" sighed a wrinkled old crone. "Let us stop talking of this and finish our buying." She turned to cross the store; nobody heeded her, and, as though reluctant to miss anything she stayed.

"Perhaps Black Eric took her with him"-the man who spoke laughed hollowly-"for not once since, as near as I can figure, has she been seen."

"That's likely!" retorted Wise Olaf. "She's the only thing he was ever afraid of."

"I didn't think he'd stay away this long," said the old man. "He loved his power over us too much. And now he's gone since last November."

"Oh, he'll be back soon enough," answered Wise Olaf. "I saw young Eric the other day. He's expecting him any time."

"I was having a good time," grumbled the old crone, puffing away at her pipe, "and you've made me ill with your talk!"

"Always in the winters before," continued Kaisa, "I have seen her coming down the path on her skis. At night, thinking no one would see her. There she'd come, swiftly, her skirts flying behind her, and straight down she would go, over the bank, and out to the spot where her daughter was drowned. You should have heard her moaning, and wringing her hands! And she would cry something terrible. Many times I've asked Olaf to build us a house elsewhere, and not live here in the store like heathen folk, where we had to see such a sight and listen to such things. 'Tis not good for the children."

"I've heard," said Olga, her voice soft and pitying, "that she was just like other people before she lost the girl. That they were very happy, even though they were so poor, with their little garden and their hut. Perhaps she is like others still, only we are afraid of her, and that makes her queer. Perhaps we should go up and see if anything has happened to her?" She