ockton.

_Rudder Grange_, Frank R. Stockton.

_A Tale of Negative Gravity_, Frank R. Stockton.

_The Remarkable Wreck of the Thomas Hyde_, Frank R. Stockton.

_His Wife's Deceased Sister_, Frank R. Stockton.

_Legend of Sleepy Hollow_, Washington Irving.

_Monsieur du Miroir_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.

_At the End of the Passage_, Rudyard Kipling.

_The Vacant Lot_, Mary Wilkins Freeman.

_The Princess Pourquoi_, Margaret Sherwood.

_What Was It? A Mystery_, Fitz-James O'Brien.

_Wandering Willie's Tale_, Walter Scott.

THE PIECE OF STRING[1]

_By Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893)_

On all the roads about Goderville the peasants and their wives were
coming toward the town, for it was market day. The men walked at an
easy gait, the whole body thrown forward with every movement of their
long, crooked legs, misshapen by hard work, by the bearing down on the
plough which at the same time causes the left shoulder to rise and the
figure to slant; by the mowing of the grain, which makes one hold his
knees apart in order to obtain a firm footing; by all the slow and
laborious tasks of the fields. Their starched blue blouses, glossy as
if varnished, adorned at the neck and wrists with a bit of white
stitchwork, puffed out about their bony chests like balloons on the
point of taking flight, from which protrude a head, two arms, and two
feet.

Some of them led a cow or a calf at the end of a rope. And their
wives, walking behind the beast, lashed it with a branch still covered
with leaves, to hasten its pace. They carried on their arms great
baskets, from which heads of chickens or of ducks were thrust forth.
And they walked with a shorter and quicker step than their men, their
stiff, lean figures wrapped in scanty shawls pinned over their flat
breasts, their heads enveloped in a white linen cloth close to the
hair, with a cap over all.

Then a _char-a-bancs[2]_ passed, drawn by a jerky-paced nag, with two
men seated side by side shaking like jelly, and a woman behind, who
clung to the side of the vehicle to lessen the rough jolting.

On the square at Goderville there was a crowd, a medley of men and
beasts. The horns of the cattle, the high hats, with a long, hairy
nap, of the wealthy peasants, and the head dresses of the peasant
women, appeared on the surface of the throng. And the sharp, shrill,
high-pitched voices formed an incessant, uncivilized uproar, over
which soared at times a roar of laughter from th