"Esther, we are all weak sinners, and we can forgive each other to seventy times seven. We are bidden to do so. Let us try to forget this sad story. You are a good woman."

Esther knelt by the couch. "It's the goodness in you that says so," she whispered.

"No," Mary McLuke replied, "there is none that doeth good, no, not one. Esther, the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth us from all sin. Do you believe that?"

"Why, no, Mrs. McLuke, not exactly. I believe in the great Good, only one Good that is God, that is in all of us, and in all beauty, — the Great Indivisible. Jesus was good, too, the best, but the same good is in us in less degree."

"But there is no other name given among men whereby you must be saved.' Mary McLuke's voice was full of distress.

"I guess it's just the same," Esther spoke soothingly. "You see, I lived for a while with the colony in California that taught me Mystic Science. I guess it's the same. We talk a different language, but we mean the same. I knew just what the 'Voice' meant, the first day, I did, you know," she said it as she spoke to Terry sometimes. "And you yourself have just said I could be forgiven for my great sin. You said I was good a good woman."

"Believe and thou shalt be saved."

"Mrs. McLuke, listen to Esther just a wee minute and think. All the verses you're sayin' are grand verses, but who can say all there is in them? And

listen to Esther. The 'Voice' isn't speakin' as you say them. You don't speak clear.'

Mary McLuke's intent look did not waver from Esther's face.

"I will go," she said, "and read. Then I will know."

Esther sat by the lake window in the twilight in a low rocker, her hands folded in her lap. Outside, Terry and Barty called to each other and to Tiger. From the open door of the stairway came the tones of Mary McLuke. It was an hour before she came down again.

"The Voice has spoken," she said. "These were the words: 'Be not unequally yoked together with unbelievers.'"'

The next morning, as the Plow-Boy made its way around the point and out of sight, Mary McLuke stood by her window and watched it; she watched until there was only a wisp of smoke.

Then Mrs. Bates came in. "I've just heard how poorly you are," she spoke with honest feeling. "The doctor's wife told me. Oh, Mrs. McLuke, what about Barty?"

Mary's eyes came to rest on Mrs. Bates' face with a kind of rigid earnestness.

"When I named him Bartimeus," she said, "he was just a tiny baby and now he's only twenty-one. I had faith to believe then that he could be healed, and I believe it now. Every time I speak his name, it is a sign of that faith. Before I go Beyond, that faith may be rewarded.'

The Wild Rose

By IRVING N. BRANT

Oh weave the wild rose in my hair
And call my true love home!

Oh weave the wild rose in my hair,
Where doth my true love roam!

They tell me that my love is dead,
And lies upon the plain,
Where winter gales caress his head
And sing a sad refrain.

But no, he only wanders far,
In lands beyond the sea;
Were he beyond the palest star
He'd still return to me.

"Twas here he left me at the hour
When soft the twilight glows.
He called me his sweet prairie flower,
He took away my rose.

I'll deck my brow with garlands fair, For my true love to see;

I'll weave the wild rose in my hair, And call my love to me.

Uprooted

By RUTH SUCKOW

Hat had brought "the relationship" together at the old home this summer. She had written that the old folks were getting pretty feeble, especially Ma, ever since that fall she had had in the winter, and that it was time something was being done. Everyone had felt that it could not be put off much longer.

They were all in the parlor now. They had come there with one accord after dinner, as if there had been a secret compact among them. There was a general conviction that the time had come to "settle something". The sense of conspiracy that attends family conclaves lay heavy upon them. The air was thick with undercurrents of feeling, schemes, secret alliances and antipathies. They had all eaten too much and they sat with the discomfort of middle age in the stiff oldfashioned chairs. The three men were making a pretense that the whole affair amounted to nothing. They refused to meet the meaning glances, full of dire warning and portent, which their wives cast at them from time to time. Whenever, in a pause of the furious squeaking of Jen's rocking chair, the clatter of dishes and shrill children's voices sounded loud from the kitchen, they were suddenly stricken, condemned with an obscure sense of guilt.

This was their chance. The old people and the children, who were "not supposed to know", were

out of the way. Ma had been persuaded to lie down in her bedroom. Pa had been sent to show the chickens and the cow to Hat's little Benny. Jen's Margaret and Hat's Allie had been bribed and commanded to wash the dinner dishes. Jen's Herbert had been the worst to dispose of. Just when they thought they were rid of him, he would be discovered in the doorway, staring at them through the big tortoise shell spectacles that he had just begun to wear, solemn and uncannily disconcerting. Finally Sam had sent him down town with fifty cents to consume chocolate sodas in Vielle's Ice Cream Parlor.

But it was hard to make use of the chance they had tried so long to get. The little parlor was suddenly and overwhelmingly eloquent of the life that had been in it. The close musty air, thick with the smell of the carpet, told that it had not been opened for months. It had a dank chill, even in the clear warmth of the September afternoon. The enlarged pictures on the walls looked as if they had frozen into their silver frames. The closed organ, with its insertions of faded silk, was a tomb of wheezy melodies. The big illustrated Bible with its steel clasp lay beside the Life of Abraham Lincoln — which Art had peddled once on the knitted lace doily of the stand. Knitted tidies were fastened with ribbons to the backs of chairs. A black memorial card on one of the little balconies of the organ stated in gold that John Luther Shafer had died at the age of thirty-two "The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh