lemnly assured by their elders that the fairy folk--the witches,
ghosts, and so on--had already gone to their beds under the earth, not
being permitted, even on such a night as Halloween, to sit up any
longer.

[Begun in No. 46 of HARPER'S YOUNG PEOPLE, September 14.]

WHO WAS PAUL GRAYSON?

BY JOHN HABBERTON,

AUTHOR OF "HELEN'S BABIES."

CHAPTER VII.

A BEAUTIFUL THEORY RUINED.

When Benny Mallow went to bed at night, after the great exhibition, he
suddenly remembered that he had forgotten to ask what the grand total of
the receipts for the Beantassel family had been. Under ordinary
circumstances he would have got out of bed, dressed himself, and scoured
the town for full information before he slept. On this particular night,
however, he did not give the subject more than a moment of thought, for
his mind was full of greater things. Paul Grayson an Indian? Why, of
course: how had he been so stupid as not to think of it before? Paul was
only dark, while Indians were red, but then it was easy enough for him
to have been a half-breed; Paul was very straight, as Indians always
were in books; Paul was a splendid shot with a rifle, as all Indians
are; Paul had no parents--well, the tableau made by Paul's own friend
Mr. Morton, who knew all about him, explained plainly enough how Indian
boys came to be without fathers and mothers.

Even going to sleep did not rid Benny of these thoughts. He saw Paul in
all sorts of places all through the night, and always as an Indian. At
one time he was on a wild horse, galloping madly at a wilder buffalo;
then he was practicing with bow and arrow at a genuine archery target;
then he stood in the opening of a tent made of skins; then he lay in the
tall grass, rifle in hand, awaiting some deer that were slowly moving
toward him. He even saw Paul tomahawk and scalp a white boy of his own
size, and although the face of the victim was that of Joe Appleby, the
hair somehow was long enough to tie around the belt which Paul, like all
Indians in picture-books, wore for the express purpose of providing
properly for the scalps he took.

So fully did Benny's dreams take possession of him, that although he had
been awake for two hours the next morning before he met Paul, he was
rather startled and considerably disappointed to find his friend in
ordinary dress, without a sign of belt, scalp, or tomahawk about him.
Still, of course Paul was an Indian, and Benny promptly determined that