the trench, with the burning summer sun beating down upon him, day after day, during the long summer. Certainly poor Giovanni was not a romantic looking figure these days. Dirty and dusty and ragged, this poor alien in a strange land might not easily arouse the feeling of envy in any man. Yet, as I listened to him repeat again and again his intention of going home for Christmas, and as I saw the light that transfigured his face. on such occasions, I came-thinking of my own uninspired and uninspiring existence to half envy him. Giovanni, I felt, had some splendid secret, some animating influence, unseen by others, which made him the superior of all his fellow toilers on the Riverdale Dam.

Naturally I wondered what this secret might be; and naturally, again, with all a young man's fancy, which as saith the poet, "lightly turns to thoughts of love," I said to myself, slyly but surely, that Giovanni must have some dark-eyed sweetheart back there in that little town in the province of Terano, whence he came. I was certain of it. In fact, I constructed a nice little romance about it, which I promised myself I should write-some time. I remember I thought out a very dramatic climax: Giovanni, returning home on Christmas. Eve, is delayed by a breakdown on the railroad, and does not arrive at his native village until almost midnight. Knowing that the whole population will be at midnight Mass, he hastens to the village church, and there, about to enter, beholds his sweetheart. They embrace amid the plaudits of the populace. I had a fear that this might not be according to Italian custom, but I put it by. I did not want to spoil my climax. The climax of poor Giovanni's story, however, was more dramatic than the pinchbeck romance of my boyish brain.

As the summer merged into fall, and the time drew near for discontinuing work on the Dam, I began to be con

43

scious of a change in Giovanni. He was not of the short, stockily-built type of Italian laborer, so that he never impressed me as particularly robust. Yet there was strength in his lithe frame, as he testified on many an occasion during the construction of the Riverdale Dam. No herculean Swede or stalwart Irishman could rush Giovanni when it came to feats of strength or tests of endurance. The spirit of the Caesars was in him. He would not be beaten by Goth or Vandal.

Still, as I said, I began to notice a change in him. change in him. He seemed to grow slimmer; and, one day, working beside him, I noticed him trying to smother a cough. Some time before, we had had a week's steady rain, and most of us on the work had been wet to the skin almost the whole time. Luckily I escaped any ill consequences, but Giovanni must have contracted a severe cold, though he made no complaint, and toiled on steadily. But the cough betrayed him.

That night, when we "knocked off" work, I advised him to take a day off and see a doctor. But he only smiled and shrugged his shoulders. He would be all right. He was not sick. It was the American climate. He would get used to it. It was nothing. A cough? Often he had a cough in Italy. The job would not last much longer, and he would stick it out. Anyway, it did not make much difference-he was going home for Christmas.

Going home for Christmas! There it was again the same refrain which ran through all his thoughts; the same conclusion to every plan and scheme; the same phrase with which he comforted. himself in all the hardships and trials of the day! I said no more; but I had my forebodings.

The job lasted longer than we thought it would. The contract called for its finish the first of October, but here it was the first of November, and still there

was much to be done. Once in a while, we were within ear-shot of the contractor when his language to the foreman was strong; and when the foreman passed said language to us, it was by no means diluted. But that's neither here nor there. The job would last till Thanksgiving-that's all that interested us.

Giovanni had calculated on going home on the first of November; but, I suppose, the prospect of making a little extra money was too much for him. He put off his home-going until the job was done at Thanksgiving. With dogged determination he had kept on working when I felt that he was steadily failing from day to day. I had grown so interested in him, and his home-going, and his secret (whatever it was), that I lost sight almost completely of my own weariness, my own hardship, my own disgust with myself and my lowly lot, so different from the high career which I had once planned out. Anxiously I watched him, noting the wasting process which every day made his cheek more hollow and his eye more sunken. Several times I hinted so strongly at his giving up and going home that I feared he might be offended, for, despite our friendship, he never lost a certain dignity and reticence, and he insisted that he was not sick.

Well, Thanksgiving drew near, and, strange to say, Giovanni seemed to improve. A change for the better was plainly noticeable to me, who watched him as no physician ever watched a rich patient. His form grew more erect, his cheeks seemed to fill out, he had not the appearance, doing his work, of a man. running a race with death. He began to be more like the Giovanni who came in the spring to make some money, and who was going home for Christmas.

I think this going home for Christmas was the secret of his betterment. The thought that the long struggle with the rude soil, the unfriendly elements,

the rough and often insulting companions, was at last almost over-that he was soon to return with his little hoard of hard-earned money-this thought stirred him, and cheered him, and braced him, as if it were some strong life-giving draught. He grew almost well before my eyes; and my heart was glad. "Thank heaven," said I to myself, "Giovanni will soon be on his way back to his native town and his Dulcinea, or whatever her name is"-for I still felt certain that a love-affair in Italy was Giovanni's secret. A love-affair was indeed his secret, but not the kind I had imagined.

The day before Thanksgiving the job was finished, the gang was paid off, and we all went our separate ways; but before we parted, Giovanni made me promise that I would be at the dock to bid him good-bye when he sailed to Italy on the second day of December. He would take passage on the "Palermo," he told me, sailing from Boston, and would be home in time for Christmas. This latter phrase he added with the same old light in his eyes that I had noticed when he first said it to me back in the springtime. He would stay in Boston a few days with some fellow-countrymen, buying some few things in readiness for his journey; he would see one of the good padres at the Italian church to make his confession before venturing on the treacherous ocean; and then he would be ready to sail. But would I not be sure to come and say good-bye to him?

I promised him again; and, true to my word, on December 2 I was on the dock of the Boston and Naples Steamship Company, amid a crowd of Italians of all ages, sizes, and degrees of relationship, some going aboard the big liner, some waving good-byes, some laughing, some weeping, and all talking, talking rapidly in that liquid language of which I knew so little. I was looking around, completely lost amid the crowd,

when my hand was grasped by none other than Giovanni himself, all "fixed up" for his voyage in a brand-new, ready-made American suit, whose sombre hue was lightened with sundry touches of color in necktie, handkerchief, and hatband. Several other Italians were with him, but they conversed among themselves, and left Giovanni and me to talk as best we could, each with such a little knowledge of the other's language. We had grown so accustomed to this during the summer, however, that it was easier for us to understand each other than it would otherwise have been.

Giovanni invited me on board; and there, in the rush and uproar of the crowded deck, he told me more of himself than he had done during our whole long summer together. Instead of being, as I had thought, a wandering Romeo, with a Juliet waiting for him Juliet waiting for him in Italy, he was a married man with a devoted little wife and two beautiful children, one three years old, the other only twelve months. The love he bore them was evident in the very tones of his voice, as he spoke of them. It was for them he had come in the springtime to this strange land. It was for them he had toiled so faithfully all summer, enduring all fatigue, all hardship, all abuse, with resignation. It was the thought of them waiting for him at home which lightened his labor, and made bearable conditions which otherwise he could not have endured. It was the love of them which made him battle against disease, and kept him at work in the trench when he should have been in the hospital. It was the firm expectation that he should. see them again at Christmas which made all things possible to the poor Italian laborer on the Riverdale Dam.

They had some sort of a little place at home which required a few hundred dollars to put in good working order (this, or something like this, I gathered from Giovanni's story), and he had decided

to leave the family, and come to America to earn the money. It was hard, hard to leave them, he said. There never was a sadder heart than his in all Italy, on the morning he left. But now it was all over. He had worked hard, the money was in his purse-and he would be with them again at Christmas!

Giovanni coughed once or twice during the recital of his story, and, looking at him, I found his dark face strangely pallid, save that on his cheek-bones burned a hectic flush. I set it down to the excitement caused by his nearness to the object for which he had toiled so hard, yet I was glad that he had not delayed going home any longer. A few more weeks in this climate, thought I, and there would be an end of Giovanni Trabucco.

We had been sitting on a hatchway, and, as the time came for the steamer to sail, we arose. Our hands met in a warm clasp; and then I said good-bye. hurriedly, and turned away quickly, for I was strangely stirred at parting from this foreigner whom I had known but a few months, whose path of life had only crossed mine by chance, as we say, and whom I should in all probability never meet again. My foot was on the gang-plank to go ashore, and I was about to turn around once more to wave my hand to him, when I heard, amid the confusion, a cry which did not sound like any other of the many noises of the crowd. I immediately turned, to see a movement of people on the deck toward the place where I had just left Giovanni. Him I could not see. An indescribable, unaccountable fear clutched my heart. I hurried back, pushed my way through the crowd-and there lay Giovanni, with a thin stream of blood issuing from his mouth and the unmistakable glaze of death settling over his eyes.

Poor Giovanni had gone home-aye, truly he had gone home-home for Christmas!

C

III.

ORA GLEN was the orphan niece of Mrs. Geoffrey Allison, with whom she made her home, that worthy relative entertaining for her an affection only second to her maternal love for her daughters, Alice and Ray. Mrs. Allison was acknowledged to be a clever woman. Inheriting an encumbered estate from her father, she had exercised such shrewdness in its management that it was soon free from all debt. She married considerable wealth, but her husband's lack of commercial ability made it necessary for her to continue to hold the financial reins. Her two children inherited her beauty. While they were mere babes, she planned their futures, and, so far, there was not the slightest indication that they would fail of realization. They had left school with a creditable record for scholarship and good behavior, and on entering society they had, as by right divine, become its queens. Alice, at the end of her second year of social leadership, was engaged to the son and heir of one of the first families of the state; Ray, who was even a greater favorite than her sister, would, the mother felt confident, make a brilliant marriage. Soon she might have been able to retire from the arduous position of the fashionable mother, if it were not for Cora. Cora was the one flaw in her perfect machination-a very dear and beautiful flaw, however.

But why, of all girls, should she be the one to get the notion into her head that Art was the only thing worth while in this world? Bitterly Mrs. Allison regretted that she had permitted a young local sculptor to make a bust of her

niece. She had consented at the earnest solicitation of the girl, who was interested in the efforts of the young man. His parents had made innumerable sacrifices to give him an education in the schools of Cincinnati and New York; he possessed talent amounting almost to genius, but was handicapped by poverty. During a vacation at home he had met Miss Glen, and the faultless beauty of the girl had filled him with artistic madness. He knew that he must set those features in marble, or miss a part of the joy of life. Artists do not abound in this Kentucky Paris, and the Bohemianism that followed the young sculptor from New York, and pervaded, like a rich aroma, the studio which he had set up, was something both interesting and novel. The most exclusive of Bourbon society might be found among his frequent visitors, and many an indulgent father had parted with substantial checks to gratify his daughter's fancy for a piece of the artist's work. But while the young man found all this agreeable, the artist was dissatisfied until Cora received her aunt's consent and work on the head was begun. As he moulded, with artist's love, the plastic clay, he talked with boyish enthusiasm of his life. He spread over it the glory of Bohemia. Poverty-who could think of its pinches, under the rose-light of Art? Failure-how could it be called failure that brought its own reward? The glimpses he gave of the artistic life in the great commercial city, appealed to her. That was living! When she voiced that opinion, he sung the sweeter its praises, made the brighter its glory, and threw all the india ink of his thoughts on the existence of the ordinary mortal. His artistic fire communicated itself to her. She knew that

she had talent, for her drawings and paintings, at school, were pronounced better than those of other pupils. She carried some sketches to the sculptor, and he praised them eloquently. They were not bad, yet if they had been, his intense admiration for her beauty, and gratitude to her, would have defeated the cause of truth; but when she began to speak of her desire to study art, there was a noticeable diminution in his enthusiasm regarding things artistic. He knew too well that the light is gray and murky when we are climbing; it is only from the base or the summit that we behold the glory of the ideal. The fire kindled, however, was not to be extinguished, and the girl began to dream of a future career; not of fame-she knew her limitations-but ordinary success and, what she really coveted, the charm and freedom of Bohemia. To her, at that period of her heart's history, the life she led was unsupportable. To rise in the morning with no other object than to try to extract some social enjoyment from the day-she felt that she would rather be a gypsy, travelling from town to town. The object of all the girls of her acquaintance, so she thought, was to be charming, have a good time, and marry well. Once she, too, had looked on that as the "summa bonum" of existence; now her life demanded a wider horizon. So she decided to study art. Her fortune was her own to use as she chose. On that first Saturday of September, while her cousins were visiting the big stores in Cincinnati, she had gone to the Art Academy to make arrangements for entering the School of Design, in October.

Her family was dumbfounded when she announced her intention, but their prayers and entreaties could not move the girl. It was a star in Mrs. Allison's inky sky when she heard from Ray that Judge Howe would be one of her guests, on Thursday afternoon. She would

talk to him about Cora. Once he and her niece had been on terms of friendship, and it was then that Mrs. Allison had indulged in a dream of splendid triumph. Howe had been the despair of far-sighted mothers and the disappointment of many admiring daughters. He was, evidently, not a marrying man, so they had come to leave him out in their count of the eligibles. The Judge had no reasonable excuse for his unmarried state; there was no early love in her grave or another man's home; he had simply been too occupied with matters of the head to give attention to the demands of the heart. Then suddenly he awoke to the knowledge that he was growing old, and about that time he began to notice the beauty of Mrs. Allison's niece. In thinking of that possible future wife, he had ever decided that she should be young and possess beauty. It was a dictum of his race that a man owed it to posterity to give his children comeliness of reature as well as an honorable name. He knew that he would seek far before finding one fairer than Cora Glen. The attentions he paid to her were not marked, and long before they had reached the point where their withdrawal could not be honorably effected, he had discovered that her ideas were not such as would perfectly harmonize with his own. She was not his affinity, and a marriage of convenience was repulsive to his high man hood. He had discovered this from her reception of the story of his boyhood. He perceived that she would have preferred that he had had a different youth, or, having it, could conveniently forget it, and he knew that he could not have for wife a woman who would be ashamed of that little boy. Yet, while it set her apart from him, he never blamed her. Her education and social training had given her a view of life at a wrong focus. It was not her fault. But let her marry one whose view was