first. She stooped and picked up a rusty pan lying beside the stove, and hung it on a bent nail, as though in this small act she found consolation.

"What-what is that-over there?" She pointed to a curtain drawn over an object on one side.

There was a gasp. "Maybe maybe she is dead -behind

"Dead! You fools!" shrieked Black Eric. "Didn't we just see her?" He staggered to the curtain, grasped it roughly. It fell, a crumpled mass of dust and decayed cloth, disclosing the two built-in bunks, now empty, where Mary and her daughter had slept.

"There, you see! She must be living in the outhouse, the barn. She-she kept the cow there. Let's look for her there—" And he passed over what had been the door, the rest following.

"The grave!" cried the old man. "I remember where it was. Let us look for the grave!"

"Leave the grave alone!" choked Black Eric, his face twitching horribly. "She is out in the barn, I tell you! See, I think she is there!" He pointed a shaking finger to another broken-down hut between the

trees.

"We will find the grave," said Silent Sven. "You said it was between the oaks."

"I won't go there!" gasped Black Eric. "Let us look

"You'll come with us!" Silent Sven commanded, grasping Black Eric by the shoulder and dragging him along. Silent and awed, the crowd proceeded through the tangle of weeds and young trees to the side of the hut between the two oaks. Some of the men began to poke around with their sticks, but Olga stopped them.

The old man motioned silently to a depression in the ground. "It is long ago," he whispered. "The grave-is sunken."

Olga fell on her knees, sobbing convulsively. She reached out her hands, and reverently brushed aside the leaves that lay upon the grave, then started up, a cry of terror on her lips.

Within the depression, where she had scraped the leaves away, a human skeleton lay bleaching, stained almost to the color of brown twigs. As they bent over they saw a skull, through the sockets of which rose the slender spires of a plant, covering it mercifully with clusters of purplish-blue flowers. A rusty iron cross lay beside it.

"That is—that is where she lay-when we came up," quavered the old man. "She lay there

The women began to sob unrestrainedly, Kaisa's voice wailing above the others. The men turned upon Black Eric, their sticks raised high, terror forgotten in a mighty wave of revenge that swept its fire over them.

"It isn't true!" he gasped, his teeth clicking together. "It isn't, I tell you! Haven't we seen her— all these years? Didn't we-see her-this

Before the look in their faces he slunk away. He stumbled past the hut, the thorny branches reaching out their hands, catching him, tearing his clothes. On down the path, his terrified flight impeded by the gnarled roots.

Behind him followed a human avalanche, great cries issuing from their throats, sticks raised, ready to strike. Silent Sven fought his way to the front, called them to silence. "Let him go!" His voice rang out.

"Let him go!

His fear will punish him, far, far more than we could punish him! It will follow him, as it has followed him all these years. But never again

will it affect us, and she is at rest!"

Before him, in the gap left by the branches, lay the river, coiling and twisting in the sun, a waiting, hungry look upon its face.

T

BUTTERFLIES *

BY ROSE SIDNEY

HE wind rose in a sharp gust, rattling the insecure windows and sighing forlornly about

the corners of the house. The door unlatched itself, swung inward hesitatingly, and hung wavering for a moment on its sagging hinges. A formless cloud of gray fog blew into the warm, steamy room. But whatever ghostly visitant had paused upon the threshold, he had evidently decided not to enter, for the catch snapped shut with a quick, passionate vigor. The echo of the slamming door rang eerily through the house.

Mart Brenner's wife laid down the ladle with which she had been stirring the contents of a pot that was simmering on the big, black stove, and, dragging her crippled foot behind her, she hobbled heavily to the door.

As she opened it a new horde of fog-wraiths blew in. The world was a gray, wet blanket. Not a light from the village below pierced the mist, and the lonely army of tall cedars on the black hill back of the house was hidden completely.

"Who's there?" Mrs. voice fell flat and muffled.

Brenner hailed.

But her

Far off on the beach she

could dimly hear the long wail of a fog-horn.

The faint throb of hope stilled in her breast. She

* From Pictorial Review. Copyright, 1920, by Pictorial Review Company.

had not really expected to find any one at the door unless perhaps it should be a stranger who had missed his way at the cross-roads. There had been one earlier in the afternoon when the fog first came. But

her husband had been at home then and his surly manner quickly cut short the stranger's attempts at friendliness. This ugly way of Mart's had isolated them from all village intercourse early in their life on Cedar Hill.

Like a buzzard's nest their home hung over the village on the unfriendly sides of the bleak slope. Visitors were few and always reluctant, even strangers, for the village told weird tales of Mart Brenner and his kin. The village said that he—and all those who belonged to him as well-were marked for evil and disaster. Disaster had truly written itself throughout their history. His mother was mad, a tragic madness of bloody prophecies and dim fears; his only son a witless creature of eighteen, who, for all his height and bulk, spent his days catching butterflies in the woods on the hill, and his nights in laboriously pinning them, wings outspread, upon the bare walls of the house.

The room where the Brenner family lived its queer, taciturn life was tapestried in gold, the glowing tapestry of swarms of outspread yellow butterflies sweeping in gilded tides from the rough floors to the black rafters overhead.

Olga Brenner herself was no less tragic than her family. On her face, written in the acid of pain, was the history of the blows and cruelty that had warped her active body. Because of her crippled foot, her entire left side sagged hopelessly and her arm swung away, above it, like a branch from a decayed tree.