Part 82

When Basilio came to himself, he found his mother without consciousness. He called her, lavished tender names on her, and seeing she did not wake, ran for water and sprinkled her pale face. But the eyes remained closed. In terror, Basilio put his ear to her heart, but her heart no longer beat. The poor child embraced the dead body of his mother, weeping bitterly.

On this night of joy for so many children, who, by the warm hearth, celebrate the feast which recalls the first loving look Heaven gave to earth; on this night when all good Christian families eat, laugh, and dance, 'mid love and kisses; on this night which, for the children of cold countries, is magical with its Christmas trees, Basilio sits in solitude and grief. Who knows? Perhaps around the hearth of the silent Father Salvi are children playing; perhaps they are singing:

"Christmas comes, And Christmas goes."

The child was sobbing. When he raised his head, a man was looking silently down at him.

"You are her son?" he asked.

Basilio nodded his head.

"What are you going to do?"

"Bury her."

"In the cemetery?"

"I have no money--if you would help me----"

"I am too weak," said the man, sinking gradually to the ground. "I am wounded. For two days I have not eaten or slept. Has no one been here to-night?" And the man sat still, watching the child's attractive face.

"Listen," said he, in a voice growing feebler, "I too shall be dead before morning. Twenty paces from here, beyond the spring, is a pile of wood; put our two bodies on it, and light the fire."

Basilio listened.

"Then, if nobody comes, you are to dig here; you will find a lot of gold, and it will be all yours. Study!"

The voice of the unknown man sank lower and lower. Then he turned his head toward the east, and said softly, as though praying:

"I die without seeing the light of dawn on my country. You who shall see it and greet it, do not forget those who fell in the night!"

The Archbishop and the Lady

By Mrs. Schuyler Crowninshield

A story of modern society which only a writer of very wide and very exceptional social experience could have written. It is cosmopolitan, yet full of romance; modern, yet informed with a delicate old-world charm. The characters are put before us with a consummate knowledge of the world and a penetrating insight into human nature.

Cloth. 12mo; 5-1/8 × 7-3/4. About $1.50.

April's Sowing

By GERTRUDE HALL

Miss Gertrude Hall is known to the world as a poet and as a teller of tales, but with her first novel she reveals new gifts, for it is a modern story tuned to a note of light comedy that she has never struck before. "April's Sowing" is that most widely appreciated thing in letters, a young love story.

Illustrated by Orson Lowell. With decorative cover, frontispiece, title page in color, and ornamental head and tail pieces. Cloth. 12mo; 5-1/8 × 7-3/4. $1.50.

The Darlingtons

By ELMORE ELLIOTT PEAKE

A novel of American life in the middle West which deals principally with the fortunes of a family whose members are the social and financial leaders of their section. The heroine is a girl whose education is broad enough to enable her to assist her father in managing a railroad. The hero is a Methodist minister of liberal tendencies. The story is told with remarkable fidelity and unusual dramatic interest.

Cloth. 12mo; 5-1/8 × 7-3/4. About $1.50.