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IN CHARRINGTON PLACE.

HARRINGTON PLACE is pretentious only in name. It is one block of dull brick boarding-houses, monotonous, gloomy. Ill-paid clerks, men and women to whom contentment means three meals a day and a place to sleep, are most of the boarders in Charrington Place. Now and again there comes among them one who is not of them. In 1893 a defaulting cashier from Boston was dragged bodily out of the second floor hallroom of No. 2929, and Charrington Place still talks interestedly of the incident. But most of the boarders are as monotonously dull as the brick houses that are the background of their lives.

Mrs. Delant lives in No. 2913. When she first moved in, the house discussed her for three days. Then the house went its dull way, and Mrs. Delant went hers. She interests them little, except that they are passively sorry for her as an invalid which shows the sheer ignorance of No. 2913. They pity her for her poor body's sake, and cannot see the world of sorrow in her eyes.

Mrs. Delant talks little at the long table, where a babble of shop and of gossip swings round and again. And yet if she should some day tell them of her life, perhaps even No. 2913 Charrington Place might be interested. Perhaps No. 2913 Charrington Place might even gasp between mouthfuls, if she should tell them of the day that Billy Delant died—of how the Swiss guide slipped and slid into the crevasse, jerking Billy Delant off his feet as a man cracks a whip,—and of the long torturing day that followed, when she braced her frail racked body against the weight of two helpless men. But Mrs. Delant talks little now. The real Mrs. Delant died when Billy cut the rope and went down to death with the shrieking guide. She dragged her poor strained body down three miles of perilous mountainside to safety. But she left all that made life with the mangled body of Billy Delant, and came back, a broken

Some

woman, to the dead world of Charrington Place. times she thinks of the woman she was, and gives a little laugh that is half a sob. It is not pretty to hear.

Last spring two women came to board next door, at No. 2915, and all unknowingly to brighten for a little while the living death of Mrs. Delant. She never spoke to them, or of them, but she heard and listened to the gossip that buzzed about the table. They were the wife and daughter of an army officer- He had just died, somewhere out in the West- No, he was killed in the Philippines, their landlady said- They came of an old southern family, poor as church mice, but real proud— The girl was pretty.

Mrs. Delant saw them through the blinds of her window. The girl was pretty, with her scornful little nose, firm little chin, wavy hair. The young freshness of her snatched Mrs. Delant back to her own youth. She sat silent, thinking, thinking until the supper bell rang.

But

She liked the mother, too. She knew on the instant that these were her people, of her caste; they fitted in so awkwardly with Charrington Place. She used to sit by her shuttered window for hours, waiting for them to pass in or out. It gave her a sense of companionship. Her heart sank a little when the girl went away, and was gone for one, two weeks. She had come to love that confident little nose that was ever turned up at dull Charrington Place. the girl came back, a little fresher, a little rosier, and Mrs. Delant was glad, although she could not quite say why. The next day a man came to call, tall, broad-shouldered, smiling, a very Billy Delant. And Mrs. Delant heard with patient disgust the comments that went about the table that night. The girl had been to a house-party, in Virginia— cousins of hers-he had been there, too-he was a swell, a big catch-she knew which side her bread was buttered on.

The man was constant. He took the girl and her mother out occasionally, and he called almost nightly. He and the girl would sit out on the wrought-iron steps of No. 2915, just under Mrs. Delant's window, far into the hot June

nights. There was a touch of happiness in these days for Mrs. Delant, a touch of the happiness that had made the old days, the spring days of Billy Delant and her young self. And sometimes she found that she could forget that they were only a bitter-sweet memory. She used to sit at her window, just above them-watching them, the dainty young girl, and the clean built man that was so like Billy Delantlistening to the indistinct murmur of their speech in a reverie that took her around a happy world, and around again, far from Charrington Place.

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She was sitting at her window one sultry June night, when they came out. Their young voices soothed her wonderfully, and she drifted, as she sometimes could, out of the racking of mind and body that was her heavy cross. A broken little laugh aroused her, and she caught the man's voice, "My own little girl." "My own little girl!" She could almost hear Billy Delant's mellow voice. A sobbing clutched her, great dry sobs wrenched her very heart out. "What was that?" she heard the girl say. She caught her breath and looked down. The man had drawn the girl to him, tenderly, protectingly. Mrs. Delant went away, to cry the sleepless night out on her bed.

After that night Mrs. Delant did not keep her windowwatch again. "It is their's," she told herself, when young voices came through the window, "their youth, and love, and life. Why should I want to share it with them? I have had them all, and they are gone, and I want only death."

She came down to the breakfast table a few days later, to learn the news again. The women boarders were grouped about the morning paper. A millionaireA millionaire Who'd have thought it And that little girl- They'll move now.

They did move the next month, and with them romance passed out of Charrington Place. Her doctor says that Mrs. Delant has grown steadily weaker since. And he, who loves her for the patientest of women, says that she will not live the year out, and that he is glad of it.

J. N. Greely.

AS BEFITTED A VIKING.

To his jarls spake Sigurd the Norseman, a Viking fain of strife: "In truth I have waxen weary, old age now grips at my life, And I fear, who ne'er feared foe, the shame of a peaceful death

To die as the tame beasts die—to shudder, to gasp for breath 'Neath the weight of a smoky roof; I fear lest, perforce, I

shall go

To the gloomy abode of Hela, whose halls are leanness and woe.
So fit out my longest warship, as a kingly funeral pyre,
That I may fare to Valhalla, with wind-flung pennons of fire,—
For so it befitteth a Viking,-and lade it with treasure untold,
With vessels of pallid silver, with chains of ruddy gold,
With pile upon pile of armor, and weapons of gleaming steel,
That so I may win to Asgard, nor doubt nor shame may feel
When I sit beside the chosen in Odin's feasting hall;
And arm me as for battle, for I hear the Valkyrie call,
And place me amid my treasure, my hand on the steering oar,
With my battle-axe beside me, a blazing torch before;
So will I sail to my death, as my fathers sailed of yore,
-And die as a Viking. This do!" And his jarls in sadness
obeyed.

They heaped his ship with treasure from many a Danish raid, And they bare old Sigurd aboard, placed his shield and his axe at his knee,

Then they haled the ship from the fiord's straight mouth to the open sea,

Till the land wind bellied the sail. Then they let the hausers

run;

And he steers down the pathway of flame that leads to the settling sun.

But his jarls turn back to the land; the sun-fires slowly die, And the sparks of Muspelheim gleam faint in the eastern sky.

Now Svend the Dane was merry, good fortune had smoothed his way,

Both wind and oars had been urging his fleet to the north all day;

He smiled to think of the vengeance his deep-laid scheme would

afford,

For his wrongs at the hands of Sigurd-a vengeance of fire and sword,

That would blot out the sleeping village; and Svend laughed loud as he thought

"If my cunning prevail o'er his valor, the fame of the deeds he has wrought

And his prowess, all shall be mine, and his riches as spoils of the fight,"

So he sailed through the waning day, on into the glimmering

night.

And when the darkness had fallen, the low-lying coast grown

dim,

He was ware of a single ship, steering out to the west toward him.

And he knew that the ship was Norse, by the sweep of her bulwarks low,

And he deemed that she came from the fiord, where dwelt his Norseman foe.

And larger she looms through the dusk, till the foam at her bow shows grey.

Then they rush in a body upon her, as a pack of lean wolves

on their prey,

With tumult of arms and shouting; with grapnels and hausers they close;

But they check their mad rush in wonder; no desperate line of

their foes

Met them with close-flung shield-wall; no fierce-eyed axe-men were there,

Save for one, a Jotun he seemed, with clanging armor, who bare A torch in his hand, and a war-axe; he swung the great axe

o'er his head,

And cast down the blazing torch, as he thundered the war-cry dread.

And awe-struck, they paused for a moment; then seeing that he was alone,

They swarmed o'er the bulwarks upon him, an army against the one.

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