than were the Judge's words and manner; yet I felt as if I had been asked if my husband was an ex-convict. When I got back to the house Aristarchus stood at the front door with his coat on, and asked me why I had been running down the street after Judge Leland. I didn't tell him.

Not long after this adventure a worse one happened. Aristarchus had occasion to go down into the basement, and as he went was loudly declaiming:

"Come out, you old speckled hypocrite, from that deep, dark den, overhung with alders, on the evil deeds of which no sunbeam ever shone. Nay, I have thee fast. Plunge not, wriggle not, jump not. It is all in vain. There-now I stretch thee on the stones!"

Meanwhile, I noticed a couple of laboring men standing at our gate evidently listening, and I ran to the cellar door to beg Aristarchus not to rave so loudly, but just as I reached the door his voice ceased, a loud noise, as of a falling body, succeeded, followed by an ominous silence.

"What is the trouble, Aristarchus ?" I cried, in a fright.

Mur-r-der, most foul and unnatural mur-r-der,” replied my husband, in tones of deepest tragedy.

"Oh dear! Why will you carry on so!" I exclaimed, impatiently.

66

I assure you I was not at all to blame," he replied, apologetically. "It was a mouse; he ran directly under my boot; my boot is heavy, the mouse was small; therefore the mouse is dead and my boot is entirely unharmed."

There was no use in expostulating with him, and I went back to my sewing. Presently I was startled

by a loud and violent ringing of the bell. Going to the door, I was confronted by a policeman and the two laboring men whom I had seen at our gate during Aristarchus' harangue. The three were puffing like so many locomotives, having evidently been running.

"We must come in, madam,” announced the policeman, "and investigate the murder that has just been committed here."

"There has been none," said I, stiffly, and not moving aside to give them entrance.

But at that movement the voice of Aristarchus behind me said, solemnly:

"Do not attempt to deny it, Cordelia. Walk this way, gentlemen, and view the body."

I fell into a chair, nearly convulsed with laughter at this unlooked-for turn of events, and, burying my face in my handkerchief, exclaimed, in smothered tones, “Oh! you will kill me, Aristarchus !”

"Don't be frightened, madam, he shall not harm you," said the policeman, reassuringly, while he grasped his billy firmly, and, holding it alarmingly near Aristarchus' head, followed that eccentric person to the cellar, accompanied also by Leander, who had just come in from play.

"Behold the remains," said Aristarchus, solemnly, as they entered the wash-room.

"Where? There's nobody here," said the policeman. "Here he is," said Aristarchus, touching with a stick the small, furry body of a dead mouse that lay on the floor, "and this is the weapon that did the bloody deed," he added, turning up to view the sole of his right boot.

"Good land! what a sell!" exclaimed the deluded policeman.

Leander picked the mouse up gently by the tip of its tail and held it up before the three men for their closet inspection, saying,

"Take it up tenderly,

Lift it with care,

Fashioned so slenderly,
Young and so fair.'"

And Aristarchus added,

"Nothing in his life

Became him like leaving it; he died

As one that had been studied in his death,
To throw away the dearest thing he owed
As 'twere a careless trifle.'

and you would agree with me, gentlemen, if you had seen how recklessly he ran under my boot."

"Are you a couple of lunatics?" exclaimed the policeman, looking wrathfully at father and son.

"You might ask my wife about that," suggested Aristarchus, serenely.

Three disgusted-looking men left our premises by the basement door and the rear gate. Aristarchus joined me in the sitting-room looking as innocent as a lamb. I hoped however, that the occurrence would be a lesson to him. And it was. Moreover, he dropped elocution— so did Leander and Dorothea. I never picked it up. SUSAN A. BISBEE.

IN THE SIGNAL BOX: A STATION MASTER'S

YES,

STORY.

ES, it's-a quiet station, but it suits me well enough, I want a bit of the smooth now, for I've had my share o' rough.

This berth that the company gave me, they gave as the work was light;

I was never fit for the signals after one awful night. I'd been in the box from a youngster, and I never felt the strain

Of the lives at my right hand's mercy in every passing

train.

One day there was something happened, and it made my nerves go queer,

And it's all through that as you find me the station master here.

I was on the box down yonder-that's where we turn the mails,

And specials, and fast expresses on to the centre rails; The side's for the other traffic-the luggage and local

slows;

It was rare hard work at Christmas when double the traffic grows.

I've been in the box down yonder nigh sixteen hours a

day,

Till my eyes grew dim and heavy, and my thoughts were all astray;

But I've worked the points half-sleeping--and once I slept outright,

Till the roar of the Limited woke me, and I nearly died with fright.

Then I thought of the lives in peril and what might have been their fate

Had I sprung to the points that evening a tenth of a tick too late;

And a cold and ghastly shiver ran icily through my frame

As I fancied the public clamor, the trial and bitter

shame.

I could see the bloody wreckage-I could see the mangled slain

And the picture was seared forever, blood-red, on my heated brain.

That moment my nerve was shattered, for I couldn't shut out the thought

Of the lives I held in my keeping and the ruin that might be wrought.

That night in our little cottage, as I kissed our sleeping

child,

My wife looked up from her sewing and told me, as she

smiled,

That Johnny had made his mind up-he'd be a points

man, too.

"He says when he's big like father, he'll work in the box with you."

I frowned, for my heart was heavy, and my wife she saw the look;

Why, bless you, my little Alice could read me like a

book.

I'd to tell her of what had happened, and I said that I must leave,

For a pointsman's arm ain't trusty when terror lurks in his sleeve.