It was once held (and may still be held) that dreams are of such instantaneousness that they might be said to take no time at all in their lapse; but if the psychologists no longer contend for this I may say that I have spent a large part of my life in the conscious cerebration of sleep. There have been nights of mine almost as busy as my days, in even more varied experiences, among persons from the other world as well as this; and it is so yet, but I think that I do not dream so much as formerly, though less than a week before this writing I dreamed of occurrences where my father and mother, dead for near twenty and fifty years, figured no more nor less lovingly than certain entire strangers.

A few paragraphs back I treated of failing memory, especially in the reluctance of this or that word to come when we wanted it, though it was ready enough when not wanted; and now I should like to inquire of other old men whether they are equally forgetful in other matters. Of course we all forget where we have put things, and are astounded to find them in places where we would like to be sworn we never put them. I have not happened to see dotards of my acquaintance going about crowned with the spectacles which they were ransacking the house for, and almost cursing and swearing in their failure to find, though I have heard of them often; and I have myself wandered in parallel oblivion till I had to abandon the search in despair. Yet if I have been charged by myself or others with duties, I never forget them, and I should like to think that no fellowdotard of mine has failed in the like point. I should like to know also whether women who increase in years, but who age no more than the angels, are equally subject to forgetfulness with old men. Do they so infallibly fail of the word they want? Let no trifler enter here with "a fool-born jest" to the effect that this would be impossible

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seen some of them carry their lost spectacles on top of their caps; but I doubt if they ever forget the burden of their errands, for otherwise how should they so confidently charge us men with them, and so justly inculpate us if we fail in them?

In the rashness which I have never paid dearly enough for yet, I am here, at the end of my sheet, as the old-time letter-writer used to say, tempted to hold that the first failure of memory to give us the name of the person who has lost it, is the first token of death, the first falling leaf of autumn, the first flake of the winter's snow. But who knows? Whence is death, and out of what awful void or whither? All along the line of living, from the moment of birth, when we first catch our breath and cry out in terror of life, death has set his signals, beckoning us the way which we must go. Kind Science knows

them, but will not let us believe they are what they are, and Nature laughs them to scorn, because she is our fond mother. "Oh, that is nothing, is it, Science?" she cries at our alarm, and Science echoes, "Nothing at all, Nature; or if it is anything it is proof of superabounding vigor, of idiosyncratic vitality." Very likely; but quite the same, all the men born of women must die in a destined course; every man of eighty and after must die as certainly as the new-born babe, or often sooner, or if not, certainly in the event. It will not avail against the fact whether we pray and praise, or whether we eat and drink; the merciless morrow is coming. But why call it merciless? No one knows whether it is merciless or not. not. We know that somewhere there is love, the love that welcomed us here, the love that draws us together in our pairing, that our children may live, the love in our children which shall see that their fathers and mothers do not die before their time, even if their time shall be delayed till eighty and after.

MAR

ARGARET POWERS was the only person in Freeport to invite the horse into the house. And, stranger than asking the horse in, was the reason for doing so. If any other Freeport woman encouraged the horse to come into the house she would have a reason fairly commensurate with the extraordinary proceeding. All Margaret said was that horses must wonder what houses were like. Margaret was queer. Things that other people thought astounding were to her quite simple, and much which was quite simple to others was astounding to her.

They said she was impertinent. This was because she said things to her elders which had never been said to them before. One day a neighbor came and found Margaret sitting out by the hencoop. She said this was a nervous hen who thought something was going to take her chicks.

"She knows me, so if I sit here she feels easier in her mind. And why shouldn't I sit here as well as anywhere else?" Then she looked at her neighbor in that way they called hard. "I suppose you'd feel nervous, too, if you thought something was going to swoop down and take your children. Or would you?" she added, with interest.

"You aren't really hard, Margaret," Ellen Ogilvie, her best friend, said to her after Margaret had said she hated to see old people sitting around and wished they'd all go and live somewhere by themselves.

"Oh, of course not!" rallied Margaret. "A heart of gold 'neath a hard exterior!"

It was hard to be sure of a thing after Margaret had scoffed at it, so Ellen stopped thinking about what Margaret

really was, and just accepted the fact that she loved her.

People wondered at Ellen loving Margaret, for Ellen herself was so tender, and Margaret would even banter about this tenderness. Though there was never a sting in her scoffing at Ellen-the sort of sting she had for Mrs. Stemp, who humanely adopted a nine-year-old girl from the orphan-asylum and then, to make her feel perfectly at home, let her do most of the housework. Margaret had a good deal to say about the motherliness of Mrs. Stemp-and most of it you would just as soon not have said about you. But, "Come, Ellen dear," Margaret would say, "while I get little brother's ears washed. That is, if you think you can bear it to see him get his ears washed." And Ellen, though protesting against being looked upon as a fool, would stand by and admonish, "Now, Margaret, don't hurt him."

Once Margaret got in the police court. It was for knocking a woman down. She and Ellen were coming along as this woman ran out of her house, came up behind her child-delightedly watching a squirrel swinging on a limb-and slapped the joy right out of the child's face. Whereupon Margaret, rushing in from a side gate, came up behind and hauled off with a blow that knocked the woman down-which the Freeport ladies thought unladylike of Margaret. In the police court she said she knocked the woman down because if she didn't do something her friend Ellen Ogilvie would probably have killed the woman. The justice, much embarrassed-for Margaret Powers was not what police courts were for-fined Margaret and told her she must have more restraint, which

seemed to amuse her. On the way home she said:

"Now, Ellen, you see what you have got me into."

And Ellen could only weep at the wreck that had been made of propriety and, though, as it happened, she had not even seen the child loving the squirrel. didn't attempt to discredit her share of the blame.

Throughout the town Ellen Ogilvie was known as a lover of animals. Margaret was not known as a lover of animals; she was known as having an outlandish way with them. She rallied them much as if they were humans. She would

say:

"Betsy doesn't feel like staying in her stall this morning," when told the horse was eating up the front yard. "She's not in the mood for it. How would you like to stay in your stall if you didn't feel like it?" This she would put in her thrusting way to the seemly person who had notified her that her horse was in the front yard. Then, "Betsy," she would say, "would you mind eating in the back yard? You are outraging the neighbors. It's too bad we have to think of the neighbors-but we do. If they think you are not the right kind of a horse there will grow up against you a community feeling which may extend even to your colt's colt. You don't care what anybody thinks? You'll go to the back yard when you get ready? Oh, very well, then-but don't say I didn't try to explain the world to you."

She let the abandoned cat Ellen tearfully presented to her have kittens in the writing-desk-for a cat certainly ought to know where she wanted to have her own kittens, and she was peculiarly acquainted with bugs and toads and spiders, always listening politely to what she said they said about where they wanted to go and what they had it in mind to do when they got there. She spent considerable time taking little toads out of a cellar-window where, she explained to them, they had absolutely no chance of a career.

"Well, why were you such a fool as to hop down here again?" she would demand. Or, "Are you the toad I took out this morning? Do you think I have nothing to do but rescue you? This is the day I take my music lesson. And my mother is putting up jelly. Heavens! How I hate an inconsiderate toad!”

So while Ellen cuddled the "dear little things" of one race or another, Margaret made these eccentric attempts to give them a place in civilization. Ellen made a great fuss over the adorable little calves, but Margaret would stay home from a picnic with a lonesome cow whose calf had been taken-though saying she did so because if she didn't Mrs. Rutch, who lived across the street, would say, "My! How your cow does bawl!” She was willing to miss the picnic if that would let her miss the way Mrs. Rutch's voice would come down on bawl.

Margaret had a queer look in her eye at times. She seemed to stop. You can't say much more about it than that. It would come when people laughed about sick pups, or jerked a child by the arm when the little fellow had stopped to look at something.

When Margaret was seventeen she went to visit people she knew in the West. She did not stay as long as she had meant to stay and the only comment she made on this shortened visit was that the woman was not a good woman and she couldn't stay under her roof. This stirred up no little commotion, for it was a woman who had once lived in Freeport-and was good to the exclusion of almost everything else.

"You must stop saying that!” cried Margaret's mother.

"It's true," said Margaret, like flint. "But what do you mean by it, Margaret? Can you mean—”

"I couldn't stay in her house," was all she could get out of Margaret.

When she spoke of this visit, which she never did unless asked about it, she had that strange look, as if an instant she stopped. She did not hold so many conversations with animals. She was

what you would call gayer unless you were a person who would stop and consider whether it really was gay. A couple of winters later she and Ellen went to New York. Margaret looked tired when she came home. She said she didn't care to go again at least not right away. Ellen loved it, though she tender-heartedly talked about the cruel things. One day she was telling how she hated to see the horses falling on the icy streets. After this had gone on for some time Margaret broke in:

"Oh, I don't know. I suppose it furnishes them a little excitement. Their lives are so monotonous." She seemed to flip falling horses off her mind as you'd flip a bug from your sleeve.

Her amused manner about things which other people thought very sad would make her friends decide anew that Margaret was really pretty hard.

"There is certainly something wrong with a person who jeers at feeling," Mrs. Rutch said, after Margaret had abruptly left the tea-party the day they were telling about taking old Mr. March to the insane-asylum. He liked to ride in the automobile, so they told him he was going to have a nice long ride-then left him at the asylum, which Mrs. Rutch thought touching.

"Touching?" said Margaret, in her sprightly way. "Dear, dear! what a sentimental world it is getting to be!" "Fancy loving loving Margaret,' Mrs. Stemp said she was the one who got the adopted orphan to feel perfectly at home by letting her clean the cellar. "You'd as soon think of loving a laughing iceberg."

The subject of loving Margaret came up in discussion of Margaret's beaus. She had her share of beaus-and then some, for she was fresh and keen and vital-looking, and it was only when a certain sort of thing was talked about that her badinage made people wish she was somewhere else. Her eyes would be lovely if they weren't so stand-offish. Apparently a number of young men had cherished the hope she wasn't going to

be stand-offish to them, picturing her as she would be if just a little different. The town wondered at Margaret's being so much with Will Thurber. He was a little lame, and Margaret was notoriously opposed to deformities. Kindness looked from his eyes. He was good to everything and everybody in such a simple, matter-of-course way. Margaret was quieter those days, and when you met her you didn't have the uncomfortable feeling that she was having her real fun by thinking something about you she wasn't saying. Then Margaret's mother died-she had never seemed to be flipping her mother off her sleeve. They had thought Will would be just the one to be a comfort to her then, but suddenly she began treating him in that stand-offish way, and they weren't seen around together any more. Next it was Harry Lord. Here was a match for her, said Freeport. She wouldn't break his heart. Indeed, no-he'd see to that! He was as gay as Margaret, and in something her way-only his bantering never left you puzzled or uncomfortable. But while they were wondering how soon this lively couple would be married, they stopped going about together, and that was the closest Margaret ever came to getting married.

Ellen married, of course, and Margaret was much amused by Ellen's children. She paid considerable attention to them for she was one who liked to be entertained. She had a crisp, swift way with them. She didn't cuddle and cooit was like a friendly surface of humor over a heart which did not give itself. The first baby was named Powers, after Margaret. But after she had played with him awhile, Margaret, for some reason of her own, renamed him Buffer, and everybody took that up. Ellen devotedly taught him to say Aunt Margaret, but Aunt Margaret was more like a big brother than an enslaved auntie.

"Now what's the good of crying?" she would say in cool, give-and-take fashion. "It wastes an awful lot of time. Do you suppose there would be any use in my

throwing this ball at you? No, I suppose not. You would probably just go out of your way to let it hit you in the nose."

But Buffer liked his aunt Margaret better than he did the ladies who fussed over “the little darling.”

Margaret's father died, and she was alone now at the Powers place. That is, she would have been alone if it hadn't been for her dog. One day Ellen and Buffer brought a collie pup over to Margaret for a birthday present.

"We thought he would make the house less lonely for Aunt Margaret, didn't we, Buffer?" Ellen said, tenderly.

"Make house less lonely for Aunt Margaret," repeated Buffer, arms full of fuzzy pup.

Margaret stood looking at him-white and yellow, wiggling and licking with delight and affection.

"I guess I don't want him," she said, abruptly.

"But, Aunt Margaret, he's yours,' cried Buffer, in distress, holding the puppy up to her. "He's company."

To keep the dog from falling, she had to take him. Once she had him, of course the puppy won.

So Company lived with Margaret for ten years-much of the time her only company, always eager to go walking with her, home watching for her when she was out without him. You couldn't feel you were coming home to a lonely house when you were so boundingly welcomed. Then one summer Company got sick, and the doctor for animals said he wouldn't get well. This Margaret wouldn't believe, and took care of him for two weeks, in which he grew all the time thinner, but would look up at her with those trusting dog eyes and wag his tail when she tried to help him. Then Company began to suffer there was pain in his eyes. So again Margaret sent for the doctor, who said he would suffer more, and then die. The humane thing was to "have him destroyed." So Margaret had that decision to make.

The man told how white and pulled her face was when, after a few minutes,

she said, “Go ahead.” But first she kneeled down and patted his head and said, "Company?" His kind eyes had blurred, but faintly he wagged his tail. "You were that, dear dog. I shall-" But she couldn't say it. The doctor suggested that she go away, but she did not, and the last thing Company knew was her hand on his head.

The first time Margaret went out after that, as about to turn into her gate on the way home, she met Mrs. Rutch. "Well, Margaret, I expect you're real lonesome without your dog, aren't you?”

Margaret just stood and looked at her; it was as if she was trying to smile in that way she smiled when people amused her.

"I was saying to Edgar, a dog is lots of company."

Margaret looked ahead at the house where Company had been company for ten years, looked ahead at the door which she would open now- -to silence. Then her eyes came back to Mrs. Rutch, and faintly and very strangely she did smile.

"I declare," Mrs. Rutch told it, "I was afraid. While she was still smiling like that she suddenly says, 'Get out of my way!' and she marches along into her own gate and up the walk, not looking to right or left, then opens and shuts her door. I was so taken back I just had to stand looking at her."

The week after Company died Margaret made a sudden decision to shut up her house and go away. Freeport did not see her again for two years. She went to different places in Europe. She wrote Ellen gay letters, which Ellen read to the interested town. Then one day came word: "I'm coming home. Freeport is no worse than any place else." This Ellen did not read aloud.

So the shutters of the Powers place were opened, mattresses hung on the side fence, and soon there were once more lighted windows in the evening.

As she walked home from her first visit with Margaret, Ellen was thinking that Margaret had not changed. Sud