THE LONGEST DAY IN THE YEAR.

BY EMILY HUNTINGTON MILLER.

I don't know, what the almanac man said about it, but Dan said it was the longest; and Dan was certainly the one who understood the matter best.

It began pretty much like other days, only that there was a heavy fog, and Dan knew that it was bad weather for haying, and tip-top for fishing. He made up his mind to go fishing. Perhaps if his mind had not been already made up, he would not have minded it so much when his father said at the breakfast table:

"We must get the scythes in good order, so's to take a fair start at the lower meadow to-morrow. Don't let me have to waste time hunting after you, Daniel, when I'm ready to go at it."

Daniel's appetite was gone at once. How he hated to turn that heavy creaking old grindstone! and how sure his father was to find a dozen things to do first, and keep him waiting all the morning! He went around by the sink drain, and dug his bait; he examined his fishing-pole; he put up his lunch; he even tried a worm on the hook; and then he wandered disconsolately around, wishing grindstones had never been invented.

He went to the end of the garden, and leaned sulkily over the low stone wall, eating the half-ripe harvest apples, and throwing the cores spitefully away. Down the road a few rods lay the mill-pond, and in the middle of the road nearby stood Deacon Skinner's horse and chaise.

Old Whitey had his nose down, and one leg crooked in a meditative fashion. The Deacon was over in the field, making a bargain with Solomon Murray for some young cattle. What fun it would be to start the old horse up, and set him trotting home! Dan could almost hit him with an apple core. He tried two or three, just to see, and then he picked a smooth round stone from the wall, and sent it singing through the air.

Old Whitey brought up his nose with a jerk, straightened his fore-leg, and started off at a brisk trot, the chaise top tilting and pitching back and forth.

Dan laughed—at least the laugh began to grow, when he caught one glimpse of a frightened little face at the chaise window, and knew that Nanny Dane, the Deacon's little lame grandchild, was in the chaise.

It was only a glimpse, and then the bank of gray fog swallowed Whitey and the chaise, and it seemed to Dan that they had gone straight into the mill-pond.

"Daniel! Daniel! Come on now, and be spry about it!" called his father, as he moved toward the grindstone; and Dan obeyed, though he felt as if his feet had all at once turned to lead.

Round and round and round; his tough little hands were blistered on the handle, but he did not know it; his mouth and throat were as dry as the stone, but he did not think of it. "Crrr-crrr-crrr," rang the rough, wearisome noise, until his ears were so deafened he did not even hear it. For he was perfectly sure he had killed little Nanny Dane. What would people say? What would they do to him? Hang him, of course; and Dan felt in his heart that he deserved it, and that it would be almost a satisfaction.

"There," said his father at last, "I reckon that'll do, Daniel. You've been faithful and stiddy at your work, and now you may go fishing."

Dan never knew how he got to Long Pond, or how he passed the slow hours of that dismal day. The misery seemed intolerable, and before evening he had made up his mind that he could bear it no longer. He would go home and tell his father, he would tell everybody. They might hang him, they might do anything they pleased.

Tramping desperately home with his empty basket in his hand, he heard the sound of wheels behind him, dragging slowly through the deep sand. Perhaps that was the Sheriff coming to arrest him. Dan's heart beat harder, but he did not look around. The wheels came nearer; they stopped, and some one said:

"Hullo, Daniel! been fishin'? Fisherman's luck, hey? Well, jump in here, and I'll give ye a lift."

Before Dan knew it he was over the wheel and sitting beside Deacon Skinner in the old chaise, with Whitey switching his tail right and left as he plodded along.

"Git up, Whitey," urged the Deacon; "it's getting along toward chore-time. Whitey ain't so spry as he used to be, but he's amazin' smart. This mornin' I left little Nanny in the shay while I was making a dicker with Solomon Murray, and a keerless thing it was to do, but I'd as soon expected the meetin'-house to run away as Whitey. I reckon something must have scart him; but he just trotted off home as stiddy as if I'd been driving, and waited at the door for mother to come and get Nanny before he went to the barn."

"Oh, Deacon Skinner," burst out Dan, "it was me; I scart Whitey."

"Did ye now, sonny? Well, there wuzn't any harm done, and I know ye didn't mean to."

"I did, I did," said Dan, sobbing violently from the long strain of excitement. "I didn't know Nanny was in the chaise, and I threw a stone at him."

"Well, well," said the Deacon, rubbing his stubbly chin, and looking curiously at Dan. "Beats all what freaks boys will take, but I know ye won't do it agin."

"I never will," said Dan, solemnly. "This has been the awfulest longest day that ever was in the world."

ABOUT CROTCHETS AND QUAVERS.

BY MRS. JOHN LILLIE.

I well remember the first morning I ever spent in a foreign Conservatory of Music. I arrived just as the Harmony Class had assembled. Beside me sat a slim little girl, with a very pretty pale face and a tired, anxious look. When we had all opened our books, she whispered to me, "May I look over you?"

The expression in her eyes was so piteous that it went to my heart to answer, "You may if you like, dear; only it won't help you. I don't know much of anything myself."

I never shall forget her look as she burst into a silent fit of crying, which for ten minutes stopped the lesson.

Often since I have thought of my little worried companion, who struggled on through the winter, always declaring she could not learn because she could not like it, and I have wondered if there were not a great many young students who feel in the same way.

It is so stupid to hear of semibreves and crotchets and quavers and minims and scales and clefs and scores, and all sorts of terms like "allegro" and "andante" and "con moto" and "adagio," and, indeed, whole Italian sentences, that used to look to me when I was a child like impertinent intrusions into English music.

But have you ever thought whether this system of music which we have to-day may not have had a story—a far-off story almost as entrancing as a fairy tale?

I think had some one told my little friend the story of the system she was toiling to understand, it would all have looked very different, and the study would have been tinged with a real delight.

Now what I propose to tell you is the history of the notes we use. This is really an introduction to the study of thorough-bass, or harmony; and if you make yourself complete master of the first simple rules or ideas, you will find later that many seemingly difficult things come almost instinctively.

You know, of course, how music is written to-day—the five lines; the division of bars; the arrangement of time; the value of notes. Of course you can easily understand that such a perfect system did not come without years of trial of various methods, and centuries of experiment, and a very crude sort of music.

Away back in early Oriental times there was music at festivities, triumphs, or times of mourning, and from the Greeks came the first ideas of harmony. You see, directly music came to be written down, it was evident that some sort of a system had to be established.

In very early ages musical sounds were represented by the letters of the alphabet. These were the days when good St. Gregory had singing-schools in ancient Rome. The singers chanted psalms and other church music, which must have been very solemn and beautiful.

This system came to an end, however, and was replaced by the use of a series of characters. These were called neumæ, and each character had a different name. The first was known as the virga, and it was a long single note; the bivirga represented two notes; the trivirga, three; the punctus was a short note, etc.

Now I have culled out of an old volume some illustrations showing how music was written in ancient times, and I want you to study them, and see how curious the methods were which preceded our present perfect system.

Fig. 1 shows the neumæ. There are ten here, but authorities differ as to the number that were really in use. These neumæ were placed over the words, as shown in Fig. 2. We are not quite certain what melody they here represent, but the solution given underneath is the probable one:

The first idea of making lines occurred in the year 900. But for a long time only one red line was used, and on this the F note was written; the grave sounds were placed below this line, the acute ones above it. How this music looked when written you will see in Fig. 3.

Early in the tenth century a monk in Flanders named Hucbaldus introduced a stave, as we call it, consisting of a great number of lines. At first these lines were not occupied by notes, but by the syllables to be sung, as shown in Fig. 4. In order to show whether the voice was to proceed by a tone or a semi-tone, the letters T and S were introduced. One advantage attending this system was that it could be applied to a scale of any extent, and even used for a number of voices singing at the same time.

In the Bodleian Library at Oxford, England, is a very precious old book, once used in the cathedral at Winchester. It is MS., of course, and is believed to have been written during the reign of King Ethelred II., who died in 1016. In it we find music written in two different fashions, as shown in Fig. 5. This, then, was the period of change. We have the simple neumæ above the words, and we have actually a four-line stave with notes instead of words.

But up to this time all the notes were the same; no difference in length was indicated, and no one who had not heard the melody could sing it from them. Presently the breve, semibreve, and dot, as shown in Fig. 6, began to appear, and thus, little by little, our own system of notation was approached. In 1600 an Italian named Franco de Colonia established a system of time, and in or about 1600 the first idea of a score originated.

Do you know what a score is? I was at a concert rehearsal in Paris one day, when a very knowing-looking young person of about fourteen, with a great deal of fur and velvet on, and a large roll of music, came in with her governess, and sat down near me. The orchestra were going to give part of Faust, with some singing, and this pert young lady turned to her governess, saying,

"Don't you want the score, Miss ——," and forthwith she handed her the programme.

Now I think it would have been much wiser for this small person to have first been sure what a score was before she talked of it. The origin of the score was in 1600. A composer named Peri published his Euridice, and he put the instrumental accompaniment below the vocal part. Then he scored bars through the stave, connecting the words and music. Hence we call the music and words together the score of the work.

As music began to progress—as oratorios, masses, and operas were written—it became necessary to establish a definite system of time. It was done gradually; but at last, in Bach's day, it was a carefully arranged science; so many beats to the bar, so much value to each note.

Here we have finally a whole well-disciplined little army of crotchets and quavers and minims and semibreves, and all the big and little notes.

A grand science has come from those first queer little attempts at written music, which we find it so hard to understand to-day, and yet how grateful we ought to be to the patient people of the seventh and tenth centuries who tried to record some of their musical feelings!

When you sit down to your first harmony lesson, try to remember what a wonderful story those little black notes could tell. It is not dull or colorless work. Listen to the word "allegro," which comes in your first piece, I am sure. What does it make you think of? Some long-ago Christmas-tide, when all music was written to glorify God, when out upon the night in the dim cathedral aisles were poured forth the praises of the Infant Lord.

A DEER HUNT IN THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS.

BY J. M. MURPHY.

The hero of the following adventure was a middle-aged hunter who trapped in the Bighorn Mountains. He knew as much about the habits of Indians and wild animals as any man I ever met. I had accepted an invitation to visit his camp, and thus found myself many a mile from civilization on the third day after leaving the line of the Union Pacific Railroad. He received me with all the cordiality of a Western hunter, and after he had hobbled my mustang and turned him loose to graze, he told me that he would start for the foot-hills in two hours, if I were not too tired to travel further that day. I replied that I was not, and in five hours from that time we were safely lodged in a brush hut on one of the long spurs of the Snowy Range. Having taken the precaution to look for Indian signs, we retired to bed at an early hour. But our sleep was disturbed so much by the weird howling of packs of hungry coyotes that we might as well have sat up all night.

We breakfasted, long before dawn, by the light of the camp fire. The morning being exceedingly chilly, we started out as soon as it was light enough to enable us to see the ground distinctly; but though we walked rapidly, I found my teeth chattering despite all my efforts to stop them, while my breath curled slowly upward in the air as if it were a miniature Russian bath.

Our route led us through a dark chasm, so terrible in its cavernous gloom that I believe my teeth chattered a little more, while the silence was so oppressive that I felt as if I had the nightmare.

We finally reached the summit of the chasm, and entered a pine forest, where the antlered monarchs of the mountains were supposed to reign; but after walking for half an hour, we failed to find any of them. Meanwhile the clouds poured down a shower that wet us to the skin, and as it froze as it fell, we were almost benumbed with cold. We trudged onward, however, and trod as lightly on the crackling bushes as if they were eggs, and deer were concealed in every leaf.

Walking as carefully as we could, we peered into every bush for the large black eyes of our intended victims. When we reached a coppice of trees that skirted a thread-like brook, my companion stopped suddenly, and pointed ahead. Looking in the direction indicated, I saw a group of deer partially hidden in dense shrubbery. The leader of the party, a magnificent stag, held his head proudly erect, and listened attentively for the footsteps of a foe, while the dear little ladies of his family daintily nibbled at some tender leaves, feeling safe under his powerful protection.

The hunter fired at the stag so quickly that the whole band had disappeared amid a shower of leaves before I thought of lifting my rifle.

"Hit," was all my companion said as he dashed after the fugitives. I followed him, but I was soon left so far in the rear that I could neither see nor hear him.

Not liking the idea of being left alone, I kept running aimlessly on. I wanted to shout for him, but dared not; so I wandered hither and thither. I crossed one cañon, and was about to recross it, when I heard a shot on the opposite side. Looking in that direction, I saw the hunter, rifle in hand, standing over the prostrate form of the stag. I was about to join him, when I was astounded by seeing the apparently dead animal spring to its feet, charge the hunter in the most desperate manner, knock him down, and stamp on him. The assailed man responded to this challenge by drawing his knife, and plunging it into the neck of his assailant. I was so stupefied at the attack that I looked on for some time before I realized the danger of the situation; but when I recovered my wits I hastened to my friend's assistance. It took me some time to reach him, and when I did, I found him and the deer lying on the ground close together. The latter was dead, and the hunter seemed to be, for his clothes were badly torn, he was covered with blood, and the ground for a radius of several yards was trampled as if a band of gladiators had been using it for a battle-ground.

On examining my friend I found that he was wounded in the chest, arms, and legs, and completely exhausted by the struggle. I gave him a drink of water, which so revived him that he was soon able to sit up and tell me of his terrible struggle for life. It was, it seems, up to the last moment a question which would prove the victor, for whatever advantage his knife gave the hunter was more than counterbalanced by the powerful antlers of his assailant, which were used in the most effective manner. The hunter was about giving up the struggle, from exhaustion, when, by a lucky blow, he cut the jugular vein of his adversary, and both fell almost together.

When he finished his description of the contest, I led him to the stream, where his wounds were washed. Finding after a while that he was strong enough to walk, we returned to camp, leaving the slain animal as food for carnivorous birds and beasts. We staid in camp that night, and returned to his home the next day, where he received such primitive treatment as his half-breed wife could give him. From the nearest railway station I sent him bandages and medicines by a messenger. I have since learned that he was confined to the house for several months, and that it was only his splendid constitution which enabled him to recover. But he is only a wreck of what he was, and is totally unfit to follow his former arduous profession. Such are some of the pleasures of the chase.

THE TALKING LEAVES.[1]

An Indian Story.

BY WILLIAM O. STODDARD.

Chapter XVII.

ad To-la-go-to-de and his Lipans moved forward a little earlier that morning, they might have been in time to witness the departure of Captain Skinner and his men on their ill-advised expedition. As it was, they were astonished enough by what they saw.

"Pale-faces!"

"Big wagons."

"Much horse. Much mule."

"No Tongue leave that behind him for Lipans to take, and go on after Apaches."

They believed they had solved one of their puzzles, but a good deal harder one was the question, "Who are those pale-faces, and where do they come from?"

No such party had ever been known or heard of in that vicinity, and To-la-go-to-de instantly came to the decision that this one should never be heard of again.

"Not many," he said. "Ride straight down valley, and eat 'em up. Plenty plunder. Carry back big present for squaw to look at."

His eager warriors answered him with whoops and yells of approval, and he led them swiftly down the pass and out into the valley.

It looked as if Murray had been right when he sent word to Captain Skinner by Bill that there was "danger behind him."

Bill himself was thinking of it at that very moment, and saying to one of his mates, "I'd about as lief see the sheriff and his posse all the way from Denver."

"Well, yes, I'd a good deal rather be arrested than scalped any day."

"Thar's a big swarm of 'em. No use for us to fight. I can't even lift my rifle."

"Try a little friendship. Maybe old Skinner'll tell ye you've been showin' good sense agin."

"May save our scalps, boys, but I don't reckon it'll save us much of anything else."

"They're comin' right down onto us. If Skinner and all the boys were here, we could stop 'em, though."

If To-la-go-to-de's keen eyes had told him there were two dozen sharp-shooting white men in that camp, instead of three, he and his Lipans would never have dreamed of charging in as they now did.

"Our time's come, Bill."

"It is if we anger them. Keep a steady eye, boys. Say 'How.'"

Those three miners were men of great courage, and their nerves must have been in the best of order, for they steadily walked out to the border of the camp, and met the Lipans as if they had invited them to breakfast, and were expecting them to come.

There was just this difference, however, between their greeting of the Lipans and Murray's encounter with the Apaches: Bill and his two friends had sent no act of kindness and good-will ahead of them, while Murray and Steve were already firmly established and well known as "friends of the Apaches, ready to fight for friends."

It was a very wide difference, but the three miners had acted wisely.

The Lipan warriors in front of them lowered their lances, and the chief himself responded grimly to their "How."

He did not offer to shake hands with them, and he did not check his braves in their rush through the camp and all over it.

"Don't tell 'em too much, Bill. The Captain and the boys won't be gone long. We can't warn 'em nuther."

That was just before old Two Knives gathered all the English he knew to question his prisoners. He saw at a glance that the men before him were only a part of a large party. The fires and the signs left of the breakfast which had been eaten were quite enough for that, not to speak of the size of the outfit.

"How many?" he asked.

Bill held up both hands, with the fingers spread, twice, and then one hand.

"Ugh! How hurt arm?"

"Fight with Apaches."

"Ugh! Good. Where gone? All pale-face braves?"

"Hunt Apaches. Out there."

"Ugh! Hope find 'em. Kill half. Lipans kill rest. Kill pale-face too. Put down gun. Prisoner, this time. Shut mouth."

Bill had never in his life seen an uglier expression on the face of a man than was worn by that of the Lipan chief at that moment.

There was no use in resistance. Silently the three miners permitted themselves to be deprived of all their weapons, but the "stripping" stopped there. A brave who reached out his hand for the battered hat on the head of Bill was checked by To-la-go-to-de.

"Ugh! No want him. Let pale-face wear him. Take off scalp by-and-by."

There was nothing very cheering in that, but Bill's head did feel a little safer with the hat on.

"Tell ye what, boys," he afterward said to his mates, "when that red-skin's hand tetched the brim of that hat, it felt as if the hull top o' my head was comin' loose."

It did not take those sixty Lipans long to find out all there was to be found in that camp. Their first and keenest interest was in the horses and mules, and the quality and number of these drew from them shouts of approval. The mules alone were worth any number of mustang ponies in a trade either with other Indians or with the border pale-faces.

Their first attempt at ransacking the wagons was sternly checked by old Two Knives.

"Maybe pale-faces got fire-water. To-la-go-to-de not want braves drunk now. Big fight, maybe."

Every brave among them knew the good sense of that, but they felt better satisfied a little later. The chief himself superintended a careful inspection of the wagons by two of his oldest sub-chiefs.

"He won't find a drop of any kind of liquor," growled Bill. "But I wish thar was some, and I could pisen it for him. They're a bad lot."

"Thar's too many on 'em for the boys to handle, I'm afraid."

"Captain Skinner's jest the man to try it and find out. Thar'll be a hot time, thar will."

Two Knives probably had some such idea in his head, for his next orders, when carried out, left Bill and his two mates firmly bound to separate trees, so that no braves need be compelled to waste their precious time as "guards" over them.

The fate of the three prisoners was a matter to be thought over. To-la-go-to-de was by no means sure he had no further use for them. He could wait until his braves should return from the examination he had ordered of the plain below the valley. It was less than an hour before they came back, and in a remarkable hurry, with the news of the approach of the main body of the pale-faces.

Old Two Knives merely nodded his head. His captives had told him the truth. But that number of white men would not be likely to attack at once so strong a band as his own. A full company of regular cavalry would hardly have been enough to scare him, for the Lipans are second to no other tribe in their fighting qualities, and these were picked and chosen warriors.

"Pale-face come. Laugh at him."

Captain Skinner and his men saw nothing to laugh at when they rode near enough to understand the condition of affairs in their camp. The blow had fallen upon them so suddenly that for some moments after they halted on the plain, half a mile away, not a man could say a word.

"It's our fault. Cap. We ort to have follered your advice."

"Ort not to have left the camp."

"You was right."

"It's too late for that kind of talk, boys. The question for us is, what had we best do. Anybody got anything to say?"

There was another moment of glum, sulky silence, and then a perfect storm of angry outcries.

"Charge in on 'em."

"Kill every soul of 'em."

"Fight right away."

"We won't lose all that's in them wagons."

"That'll do, boys. I know you've got all the grit for a fight," said Captain Skinner; "but suppose they're too much for us, and wipe us all out, what then?"

"Then that's what it'll have to be, Cap. We're ready."

"All right, boys. But no matter what comes, not a man of you must run. Not for a yard."

"We'll stand by ye, Cap."

"Most likely thar ain't no use talking of Bill and the boys."

"Not much, I reckon. They had no kind of show."

There was no time to do any mourning for their comrades, but the way in which that line of white horsemen now rode forward made the Lipans open their eyes in astonishment.

"Keep about a rod apart," said the Captain. "Walk your horses. Don't fire a shot unless you've got a good aim at something. We'll draw them nigh enough to teach 'em a thing or two."

For once even old Two Knives, with all his cunning, was led into making a mistake. He was unwise enough to try and scare those miners, when there was not a man among them who knew how to be afraid, and they had all agreed to be killed rather than not whip those Lipans and get back what was in the wagons.

It was a bad mistake for those Indians to make even a threat of a charge, when it brought them, in a pretty compact mass, just as they were about to wheel, instead of "charging," less than two hundred yards from the steady line of pale-faces.

"Now, boys, save every shot."

It was not a volley. The rifles cracked rapidly, one after another, but all were fired in a very few seconds, and the Lipans recoiled in dismay, firing wildly as they went, and carrying off their dead and wounded.

"Keep it up, boys. Steady. Take a pony if you can't hit a red-skin."

The "rally" of the Lipans was quickly made, and their own firing grew hotter, but it had little of the cool accuracy that Captain Skinner insisted on from his own men. All the while, too, he was moving steadily forward, and To-la-go-to-de began to understand what kind of men he had to deal with.

A sharp, deep-throated order to three of his braves was rapidly obeyed, and in a few minutes more the miners heard their Captain's voice, excitedly,

"Halt! They've brought out the boys. They've stopped firing."

It was precisely so. There were Bill and his two mates, on foot, with their arms tied behind them, and before each stood a Lipan with his lance levelled, ready to strike at a moment's warning.

"That's plain, boys. They've got their lesson. Don't want any more. Want a talk. They'll kill those three if we don't hold up."

"We've only lost two, Cap, and we've laid out more'n a dozen of them."

"Save the boys."

"No fault of their'n."

"Have a talk, Cap."

"We'll have to give up something if we do," said the Captain, in a dubious tone. "They'll never give us back the outfit, you know."

"You know what we want. We're close to the border now."

"All right. I'll ride out. I reckon their chief'll come to meet me."

The meaning of the Lipans had been plain enough. The sudden firing of the miners upon their superior force had had all the effect of a surprise.

They were furiously angry over their losses, but their wise leader saw that he must give them a breathing spell. No troops in the world could stand a fire so withering as that which came from the repeating rifles of the desperadoes. Quite as many ponies as men had gone down, and their morning's plunder had already cost them more than it was worth. Therefore it must not be permitted to cost them any more, if they could help it by threats and talking.

[to be continued.]

A COMPLICATED PREDICAMENT.

BY F. B. STANFORD.

Josephus Jones was his name in full, but he was called Seph by familiar acquaintances, and usually designated as "Potter's colored boy." In his stockings he stood about four feet five, was black as ebony, and had an inclination to grin more or less. When in full costume he wore his employer's discarded cowhide boots, a blue flannel shirt, a frock-coat ornamented with brass buttons, and a faded felt hat that had a ragged vent-hole in the crown. Trouble usually slipped from his mind and memory like water from a duck's back; but at the time about to be mentioned he was considerably disturbed because he was not white "like other folks."

The white boys and girls in the Potter neighborhood had been planning several weeks to have a masquerade party in the old red school-house, and Seph desired above all things to have a share in the fun and eatables of the occasion. His color and scanty wardrobe, however, were likely to debar him the privilege.

"It do'n' make no dif'rence nohow," he said to himself, after mature deliberation. "I's gwine to hab a show in dat party one way or nudder."

When the expected day at last arrived, he watched the preparations anxiously all the morning and afternoon. The inside of the school-house was first abundantly trimmed with evergreen, then a stage was erected in one corner for a fiddler, and next a long table was arranged at the back of the room for the refreshments, which were brought in baskets by several of the boys and girls from time to time. Finally the table-cloths were spread, and the girls drew from the mysterious baskets frosted cakes wrapped in tissue-paper, great bloated pies, nuts and raisins, oranges and big bunches of grapes, paper bags filled with candy, and, in fact, a quantity of good things that made Seph's mouth water while he looked in through one of the windows.

At home, late in the afternoon, Job Potter secretly led him up to an unfinished room over the wood-shed, and showed him his mask and outfit, which were hidden away in a barrel. He made Seph try on the mask, the old beaver hat, and the coat, just to see how they were going to look.

"Father is mighty sot on not lettin' me go," said Job, "but I'm a-goin', now, you better believe. Don't say anything, though. Mum's the word."

Seph said that he would take care. But an hour afterward, when he saw the Deacon, as Job's father was familiarly called, come down from the shed chamber, and carry Job's mask and costume to a hiding-place in the barn, he had to lie down behind the wood-pile, and hold both hands over his mouth to keep his laughter from being heard.

At the supper table Deacon Potter announced to the whole family that he did not approve of masquerade parties anyway, and certainly not for young people. Job must just make up his mind to stay at home.

Seph was bringing in the kindling-wood for the morning, and heard the Deacon's command. A few minutes later a great thought took complete possession of him. If Job couldn't go, why shouldn't he go in his place?

"Dar's no reason in de world why I habn't jes' as good a right to go as he hab, an' I's gwine to, sure's my name's Josephus."

He hurried through all the chores, swallowed his supper hastily, and took advantage of the first opportunity to slip away to the barn. After hunting all over the hay-mow, and in every hole and corner he could think of, for the concealed articles, he found them under a basket in the corn crib.

Luckily the moon was just coming up, and the cracks in the barn admitted glimmer enough for him to see where he was, and what he was doing. He very soon exchanged his own garments piece by piece for Job's Sunday suit, which, with the exception of the pantaloons, fitted him very well.

While his teeth chattered, and his whole body trembled with nervous excitement, he put on the mask and the beaver hat. These, together with the coat collar turned up, completely concealed his face, head, and neck; and tucked away in a pocket of the coat there happened to be an old pair of brown cotton gloves Job sometimes wore to meeting, that supplied the last necessity to the disguise. Should it be found out that he wasn't Job, Seph knew very well what his fate would be, and he took care to have every part of his black skin and woolly head thoroughly covered before he ventured forth.

In a very short time he arrived in sight of the school-house lights, and heard the fiddle already under way. Heads were bobbing past the windows in rapid succession, as though all were dancing, and the sounds of mirth and revelling that floated out toward him gave his blood a stimulating tingle.

Not a minute was to be wasted; it was "time already to be in dar 'mong de victuals, an' circ'latin' wid de crowd," he thought, walking up boldly to the door, where a dozen or more boys were watching the arrival of each new-comer.

"Now, then, here we have him!" said one, and for an instant Seph hesitated.

"It's Billy Tarbox," cried another.

"No, 'tain't," said somebody else; "it's Job Potter. Hey, Job, you've got on your go-to-meetin' clothes; you can't fool us."

Seph felt a laugh tickle him clear down to the soles of Job's boots; but he was a trifle nervous also, and consequently suppressed it quickly. Without saying anything, he pushed by them, and entered.