is silver, but to-night Emma McChesney Buck had unlocked it
with finer metal. Gold. Pure gold. For William drew aside the curtain
with a gesture such as one of his slave ancestors might have used before
a queen of Egypt. He carefully brushed a cinder from the sheet with one
gray-black hand. Then he bowed like any courtier.

Emma sank down on the edge of the couch with a little sigh of weariness.
Gratefulness was in it, too. She looked up at him--at the wrinkled,
kindly, ape-like face, and he looked down at her.

"William," she said, "war is a filthy, evil, vile thing, but it bears
wonderful white flowers."

"Yas'm!" agreed William, genially, and smiled all over his rubbery,
gray-black countenance. "_Yas'm!_"

And who shall say he did not understand?

FARMER IN THE DELL

Old Ben Westerveld was taking it easy. Every muscle taut, every nerve
tense, his keen eyes vainly straining to pierce the blackness of the
stuffy room--there lay Ben Westerveld in bed, taking it easy. And it was
hard. Hard. He wanted to get up. He wanted so intensely to get up that
the mere effort of lying there made him ache all over. His toes were
curled with the effort. His fingers were clenched with it. His breath
came short, and his thighs felt cramped. Nerves. But old Ben Westerveld
didn't know that. What should a retired and well-to-do farmer of
fifty-eight know of nerves, especially when he has moved to the city and
is taking it easy?

If only he knew what time it was. Here in Chicago you couldn't tell
whether it was four o'clock or seven unless you looked at your watch. To
do that it was necessary to turn on the light. And to turn on the light
meant that he would turn on, too, a flood of querulous protest from his
wife, Bella, who lay asleep beside him.

When for forty-five years of your life you have risen at four-thirty
daily, it is difficult to learn to loll. To do it successfully you must
be a natural-born loller to begin with, and revert. Bella Westerveld was
and had. So there she lay, asleep. Old Ben wasn't and hadn't. So there
he lay, terribly wide-awake, wondering what made his heart thump so fast
when he was lying so still. If It had been light, you could have seen
the lines of strained resignation in the sagging muscles of his patient
face.

They had lived in the city for almost a year, but it was the same every
morning. He would open his eyes, start up with one hand already reaching
for the limp, drab, work-worn gar