always so kind and good to me, and so thoughtful. And I know that you often come home tired and worried."

He kissed her, and went on:

"I don't mean to say and do these wrong things, but they come out almost before I am aware of it; and then I am thoroughly ashamed of myself, and I resolve that I will be more careful in future. But no: a day or two afterwards I find myself in the same old path I have traveled since my earliest recollection. Why was I not trained to self-control and business sense in those years when it would have been so easy? Oh, what a fearful thing it is for a man to have wife and children, to love them, to love the right, to know the right, to want to live it, to mean to live it—and to be weak!

He sat a moment in thought, while she stroked his hand and kissed his cheek once or twice, soft, delicate kisses.

And yet," he went on, "I don't know that it is any stranger that I should hobble along in this way than that a cripple should limp. In the one case it is a deformed body, in the other a deformed mind. But, dearest"—with one of those sudden, impulsive outbursts characteristic of him"I know that I am making some progress, and that you are the best influence that has ever come into my life to help me."

"And you are so devoted," she murmured, "so loving, so unselfish

"There, my angel," interrupted Paul; "please never again do me the injustice to call me unselfish. Whatever vices or crimes or virtues I may be guilty of, I am happy to say that I'm afraid unselfishness is not one of them.'

Paul Granger, what crazy jumble of words are you throwing together now for my delectation?"

"What special merit is there," he went on, “in a man's doing what he likes to do, or what he ought to do as a matter of course, just as he ought to keep his face clean? Don't I find never-ending joy in home life and duties? And alas! I'm afraid I like to hit something-something that deserves hitting, of course-a good sound rap with the pencil just for the fun of hitting; just as a muscular young fellow likes to pull an oar or breast a wave; or as a millionaire finds keen delight, first in accumulating his millions, and afterwards in spending them in worthy-and self-gratifyingbenefactions. O, yes! We're all unselfish-as unselfish as

the lover who kisses his sweetheart, from sense of duty, you know, because he knows she wants him to."

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A practical application always enforces a maxim,” said the wife, when with eyes sparkling and cheeks all abloom she had partially rescued herself. "Now I am willing to make an agreement with you: I will never again call you unselfish, on condition that you shall never again call me an angel. I am content to be a woman—and your wife."

This time it was she who made the practical application, doubtless also from purely unselfish considerations.

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"Agreed," replied Paul. And, come to think of it, I don't want you to be an angel anyhow. How 'exaspewating' it would be to be all the time tangling my fingers in a lot of feathers and quills and things."

Gradually Paul gave up all idea of changing his location. The few trips that he made to other cities and the information that he gathered in regard to openings and advantages elsewhere, decided him to stay where he was till he could be sure of something a good deal better. His salary grew slowly until, with some outside gleanings, it made a fairly satisfactory income. He had not, however, a large fund of surplus strength to draw upon, and as he always worked at high pressure he was constantly in danger of breaking down; a fact that caused Thalia no little anxiety and kept her and Dr. Gardner always on the watch for signs of physical trouble in him.

So time ran on, till it was seven years that Paul had been with the Journal. He had come to regard himself, and was generally regarded, as a fixture in the office. He and Mr. Gray were now not merely co-laborers but warm friends, each ready to do all in his power to advance the interests of the other. He was Mr. Gray's right-hand man, next to him in authority and responsibility for the literary part of the paper. With the business end of the establishment he neither had nor cared to have anything to do, farther than to receive therefrom the yellow envelope and contents every Saturday night. Occasionally he had entire charge of the paper for a day or two in Mr. Gray's absence; but such absence was rare. Thus Paul worked on and bided his time, with no idea how long things would continue as they were, or what would be his next step. He was simply doing

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what seemed best for to-day, hoping to be ready for any change that the morrow might bring.

The change came, suddenly and unexpectedly, a day of gloom and sorrow in the Journal office. One morning Mr. Gray was not at his desk. The next day Paul, in a column of the Journal, told the sad story-the story all too familiar in these boiling, seething times-apoplexy, paralysis, death; a man of iron constitution, of vast physical and mental strength, cut off in his prime, the best half of his life blotted out forever; fifteen years of incessant, self-regardless toil that, with a little more moderation, might have been fifty.

Granger went ahead with the paper for a couple of days, and then was regularly employed to take Mr. Gray's editorial place, though with nothing said as to how long he should fill it. He realized that this was his first great opportunity. And for the first time in his professional work he felt the full weight of personal responsibility that could not be shifted on somebody else, as he had formerly cast it on Mr. Gray. He knew now as never before the power for good and for evil that rests in the hands of a man who controls an influential newspaper. Although nominally his editorial responsibility was limited to carrying out the general policy laid down for him by others, Paul knew that actually his responsibility had no limit but that set by his own sense of the obligation resting on a newspapermaker to be truthful, just, and sincere.

CHAPTER 42

LOVE THAT IS LIFE-OSSIE WAVER AND HIS FATE

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"CAN we not go up in the country to-morrow, dear?' said Thalia to Paul one afternoon in October. 'I want to see the autumn leaves again with you."

"If you think," replied Paul, as she seated herself upon his knee, "that they will be as beautiful now as when we first looked upon them there together from the old 'roundhead' rock back of Deacon Willett's, we'll go."

"Yes, Paul, dearest," she replied after a little, her head upon his shoulder and her voice almost tremulous with the emotions that his words and tones had stirred within her, "they will be not only as beautiful now, but as much more

beautiful as our hearts are deeper and larger for the love that has fed them all these years.'

He raised her face between his hands and looked into

her eyes.

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They ought to be at least twice as beautiful now, because we shall look upon them with twice as many eyes, little mother," he said, with a smiling glance at the two sturdy boys digging a well of prodigious dimensions in their sandbank in a corner of the yard.

Her eyes fell before his, and she buried her face again upon his shoulder.

"Lovely, lovely womanhood!" exclaimed the husband, clasping her to him. "My precious one, why do your eyes still go down before mine, and your cheeks flame out, after these many years of wifehood and motherhood, even as when I first pressed your hand and gave you the first lover's look?" Her bosom heaved, and her muscles relaxed.

"O, my husband," she at last replied, "I do not know. Nor can I find answer when I ask myself, why does your touch, your voice, your look thrill me till I have no thought, no wish, but to sink away in your arms and lose myself in your large heart. It is such joy to give myself up to you, wholly. Nor does it disturb me that you thus absorb my strength, my very life, for the time. It is enough for me that my heart bids me yield to you, and glories in the surrender, and tells me that we are but fulfilling the law of our being." And O," he responded with the fervor of a lover," what rapture to receive such sweet surrender, to be so loved by such a woman in the ripeness of her womanhood, her wifehood, her motherhood! What could add to the supreme joy of these moments?"

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Nothing, my husband, nothing. My joy is complete, my heart, my life, is full-husband, children, home!

For many minutes no word was spoken.

"If it could but last forever!" said Paul at length, in a tone of yearning tinged with sadness.

"O, do not talk of the future-do not break the spell of the present," she pleaded. "Let us be happy. These moments are ours-ours to use as we are using them. We have earned them. And our hearts, our whole natures, cry out for such food and rest and inspiration. I grow stronger, braver, more hopeful and cheerful, in the atmosphere of your love. Your love is my life; and I feel so sure and so glad

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A SUPEWIOH

WOMAN

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that in this love of ours life for us two is reaching its highest and best."

The next afternoon found the four members of the Granger family at the railroad station in L- —, waiting to take the five o'clock train for The Forks; that rural hamlet having reached the dignity of a railroad town, with all the appurtenances thereunto belonging. True, it was not a magnificently equipped railroad; the gauge was narrow, the trains short and few; and the line was crooked and bumptious, and ran up hill and down with astonishing disregard for the law of gravitation. Nevertheless it brought to The Forks the luxury of a mail twice a day, with sundry other pleasing and not less important innovations. Best of all, though less conspicuous to those not directly interested, the railroad freed the farmer-not to mention the farmer's horse-from the necessity of hauling surplus farm products for long distances, up hill and down, over-in wet spells more properly under-roads of exceeding irregularity, uncertainty, and viscosity.

While the Grangers were waiting, a train on one of the through lines pulled in and stopped. Paul and Thalia stood at a window, watching the passengers alight, when suddenly Paul started, gave a prolonged whistle, and followed it up with a serious of ejaculations crescendo:

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Is it?--no, it cannot be!—yes, it must be!-for it is! Thalia looked with astonishment, first at him and then in the direction in which he was looking. Then as a broad

smile overspread his face she blandly asked:

"Now that Reason in the guise of Mirth appears to be reasserting herself, will you kindly inform me what this prodigy is that isn't because it can't be, and yet must be because it is?

"What is it! Why, don't you see? Don't you recognize that little overburdened piece of paternity over there?

"I see a small man with a large wife and four children, if that is what you mean; but I do not know that I have the honor of their acquaintance.

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No; but I have—at least I once had the honor of the acquaintance of the 'pwotecting ahm' of the party. Don't you remember Ossie Waver, our little Ossie at the University?" "Certainly; yes, now I recognize him. But did you not tell me

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