ed for its particular picture and returned to seats in
the audience to enjoy the remainder of the performance. At last only
three people were left in the tea-house, and Miss Allison sent Keith,
Rob, Phil, and Lieutenant Logan before the curtain, with instructions to
sing one of the longest songs they knew and two encores, while Gibbs
repaired the prow of the funeral barge. Some one had used it for a
step-ladder, and had broken it.

Mary, waiting in the audience till the quartette had finished its first
song, did not appear on the scene behind the curtain until Malcolm was
dressed in his black robe and long white beard and wig, and Lloyd was
laid out on the black bier.

"Stay just as you are," whispered Miss Allison. "It's perfect. I'm
going out into the audience to enjoy the effect as the curtain rises."

As she passed Miss Casey, the elocutionist, she felt some one catch her
sleeve. "I've left that copy of Tennyson at the house," she gasped.
"What shall I do?"

"I'll run and get it," volunteered Elise in a whisper, and promptly
started off. Mary, standing back in the shadow of a tall lilac bush,
clasped her hands in silent admiration of the picture. It was wonderful
how the moonlight transformed everything. Here was the living, breathing
poem itself before her. She forgot it was Lloyd and Malcolm posing in
makeshift costumes on a calico-covered dry goods box. It seemed the
barge itself, draped all in blackest samite, going upward with the
flood, that day that there was dole in Astolat. While she gazed like one
in a dream, Lloyd half-opened her eyes, to peep at the old boatman.

"I wish they'd hurry," she said, in a low tone. "I never felt so foolish
in my whole life."

"And never looked more beautiful," Malcolm answered, trying to get
another glimpse of her without changing his pose.

"Sh," she whispered back, saucily. "You forget that you are dumb. You
mustn't say a word."

"I will," he answered, in a loud whisper. "For even if I were really
dumb I think I should find my voice to tell you that with your hair
rippling down on that cloth of gold in the moonlight, and all in white,
with that lily in your hand, you look like an angel, and I'm in the
seventh heaven to be here with you in this boat."

"And with you in that white hair and beard I feel as if it were Fathah
Time paying me compliments," said Lloyd, her cheeks dimpling with
amusement. "Hush! It's time for me to look dead," she warned, as the
applause