sacrifice of autumn leaves to the calm-eyed goddess of changing
hues and chill forebodings who was moving slowly about the land

that golden afternoon. Harold was up and off in a moment,
forgetting Nelson, forgetting the pig, the mole, the Larkin

betrayal, and Selina's strange fever of conscience. Here was
fire, real fire, to play with, and that was even better than

messing with water, or remodelling the plastic surface of the
earth. Of all the toys the world provides for right-minded

persons, the original elements rank easily the first.
But Selina sat on where she was, her chin on her fists; and

her fancies whirled and drifted, here and there, in curls and
eddies, along with the smoke she was watching. As the quick-

footed dusk of the short October day stepped lightly over the
garden, little red tongues of fire might be seen to leap and

vanish in the smoke. Harold, anon staggering under armfuls of
leaves, anon stoking vigorously, was discernible only at fitful

intervals. It was another sort of smoke that the inner eye of
Selina was looking upon,--a smoke that hung in sullen banks round

the masts and the hulls of the fighting ships; a smoke from
beneath which came thunder and the crash and the splinter-rip,

the shout of the boarding party, the choking sob of the gunner
stretched by his gun; a smoke from out of which at last she saw,

as through a riven pall, the radiant spirit of the Victor,
crowned with the coronal of a perfect death, leap in full

assurance up into the ether that Immortals breathe. The dusk was
glooming towards darkness when she rose and moved slowly down

towards the beckoning fire; something of the priestess in her
stride, something of the devotee in the set purpose of her eye.

The leaves were well alight by this time, and Harold had just
added an old furze bush, which flamed and crackled stirringly.

"Go 'n' get some more sticks," ordered Selina, "and shavings, 'n'
chunks of wood, 'n' anything you can find. Look here--in the

kitchen-garden there's a pile of old pea-sticks. Fetch as many
as you can carry, and then go back and bring some more!"

"But I say,--" began Harold, amazedly, scarceknowing his sister,
and with a vision of a frenzied gardener, pea-stickless and

threatening retribution.
"Go and fetch 'em quick! " shouted Selina, stamping with

impatience.
Harold ran off at once, true to the stern system of discipline in

which he had been nurtured. But his eyes were like round O's,
and as he ran he talked fast to himself, in evidentdisorder of

mind.
The pea-sticks made a rare blaze, and the fire, no longer

smouldering sullenly, leapt up and began to assume the appearance
of a genuine bonfire. Harold, awed into silence at first, began

to jump round it with shouts of triumph. Selina looked on
grimly, with knitted brow; she was not yet fully satisfied.

"Can't you get any more sticks?" she said presently. "Go and
hunt about. Get some old hampers and matting and things out of

the tool-house. Smash up that old cucumber frame Edward shoved
you into, the day we were playing scouts and Mohicans. Stop

a bit! Hooray! I know. You come along with me."
Hard by there was a hot-house, Aunt Eliza's special pride and

joy, and even grimly approved of by the gardener. At one end, in
an out-house adjoining, the necessary firing was stored; and to

this sacred fuel, of which we were strictlyforbidden to touch a
stick, Selina went straight. Harold followed obediently,

prepared for any crime after that of the pea-sticks, but pinching
himself to see if he were really awake.

"You bring some coals," said Selina briefly, without any palaver
or pro-and-con discussion. "Here's a basket. I'LL manage the

faggots!"
In a very few minutes there was little doubt about its being a

genuine bonfire and no paltry makeshift. Selina, a Maenad now,
hatless and tossing disordered locks, all the dross of the young

lady purged out of her, stalked around the pyre of her own
purloining, or prodded it with a pea-stick. And as she prodded

she murmured at intervals, "I KNEW there was something we
could do! It isn't much--but still it's SOMETHING!"

The gardener had gone home to his tea. Aunt Eliza had driven out
for hers a long way off, and was not expected back till quite

late; and this far end of the garden was not overlooked by any
windows. So the Tribute blazed on merrily unchecked. Villagers

far away, catching sight of the flare, muttered something about
"them young devils at their tricks again," and trudged on beer-

wards. Never a thought of what day it was, never a thought for
Nelson, who preserved their honest pint-pots, to be paid for in

honest pence, and saved them from litres and decimal coinage.
Nearer at hand, frightened rabbits popped up and vanished with a

flick of white tails; scared birds fluttered among the
branches, or sped across the glade to quieter sleeping-quarters;

but never a bird nor a beast gave a thought to the hero to whom
they owed it that each year their little homes of horsehair,

wool, or moss, were safe stablished 'neath the flap of the
British flag; and that Game Laws, quietly permanent, made la

chasse a terror only to their betters. No one seemed to know,
nor to care, nor to sympathise. In all the ecstasy of her burnt-

offering and sacrifice, Selina stood alone.
And yet--not quite alone! For, as the fire was roaring at its

best, certain stars stepped delicately forth on the surface of
the immensity above, and peered down doubtfully--with wonder at

first, then with interest, then with recognition, with a start of
glad surprise. THEY at least knew all about it, THEY

understood. Among THEM the Name was a daily familiar
word; his story was a part of the music to which they swung,

himself was their fellow and their mate and comrade. So they
peeped, and winked, and peeped again, and called to their laggard

brothers to come quick and see.
. . . . . . .

"The best of life is but intoxication;" and Selina, who during
her brief inebriation had lived in an ecstasy as golden as our

drab existence affords, had to experience the inevitable
bitterness of awakening sobriety, when the dying down of the

flames into sullen embers coincided with the frenzied entrance of
Aunt Eliza on the scene. It was not so much that she was at once

and forever disrated, broke, sent before the mast, and branded as
one on whom no reliance could be placed, even with Edward safe at

school, and myself under the distant vigilance of an aunt; that
her pocket money was stopped indefinitely, and her new Church

Service, the pride of her last birthday, removed from her own
custody and placed under the control of a Trust. She sorrowed

rather because she had dragged poor Harold, against his better
judgment, into a most horriblescrape, and moreover because, when

the reaction had fairly set in, when the exaltation had fizzled
away and the young-lady portion of her had crept timorously back

to its wonted lodging, she could only see herself as a plain
fool, unjustified, undeniable, without a shadow of an excuse or

explanation.
As for Harold, youth and a short memory made his case less

pitiful than it seemed to his more sensitive sister. True, he
started upstairs to his lonely cot bellowing dismally, before him

a dreary future of pains and penalties, sufficient to last to the
crack of doom. Outside his door, however, he tumbled over

Augustus the cat, and made capture of him; and at once his
mourning was changed into a song of triumph, as he conveyed his

prize into port. For Augustus, who detested above all things
going to bed with little boys, was ever more knave than fool, and

the trapper who was wily enough to ensnare him had achieved
something notable. Augustus, when he realized that his fate was

sealed, and his night's lodging settled, wisely made the best of
things, and listened, with a languorous air of complete

comprehension, to the incoherent babbleconcerning pigs and
heroes, moles and bonfires, which served Harold for a self-sung