"Mr. Asa Holmes died this morning," he said. "The funeral is set for to-morrow afternoon at four, and you can announce to the children that there won't be any school. The trustees thought it would be only proper to close out of respect for him, as he was on the school board over thirty years, and has done so much for the community. He's one of the old landmarks, you might say, about the last of the old pioneers, and everybody will want to go."

Before she could recover from the suddenness of the announcement the rider was gone, and she was left looking out across the October fields with a lonely sense of personal loss, although her acquaintance with the old miller had extended over only two short school terms.

A few minutes later the measured tramp of feet over the worn door-sill began, and forty children passed out into the mellow sunshine of the late autumn afternoon. They went quietly at first, awed by the tender, reverent words in which the little schoolmistress had given them the message to carry home. But once outside, the pent-up enthusiasm over their unexpected holiday, and the mere joy of being alive and free on such a day sent them rushing down the road pell-mell, shouting and swinging their dinner-pails as they ran.

A shade of annoyance crossed the teacher's face as she stood watching from the doorstep. She wished she had cautioned them not to be so noisy, for she knew that their shouts could be plainly heard in the old house whose gables she could see through a clump of cedars, farther down the road. It was standing with closed blinds now, and she had a feeling that the laughing voices floating across to it must strike harshly across its profound silence.

But presently her face brightened as she watched the children running on in the sunshine, in the joy of their emancipation. Part of a poem she had read that morning came to her. She had thought when she read it that it was a beautiful way to look upon death, and now it bore a new significance, and she whispered it to herself:

"That's the way the old miller has gone," she said, softly. "His lessons all learned and his tasks all done—so well done, too, that he has nothing to regret. I'm glad that I didn't stop the children. I am sure that's the way he would want them to go. Dear old man! He was always a boy at heart."

She turned the key in the door behind her presently, and started down the road to Mrs. Powers's, where she boarded. In every fence corner the sumachs flamed blood-red, and across the fields, where purple shadows trailed their royal lengths behind every shock of corn, the autumn woodlands massed their gold and crimson against the sunset sky. She walked slowly, loath to reach the place where she must go indoors.

The Perkins home lay in her way, and as she passed, Mrs. Perkins with a baby on her hip, and a child clinging to her skirts, leaned over the gate to speak to her.

"Isn't it sad," the woman exclaimed, grasping eagerly at this chance to discuss every incident of the death and illness, with that love for detail always to be found in country districts where happenings are few and interests are strong.

"They sent for the family Tuesday when he had the stroke, but he couldn't speak to them when they got here. They said he seemed to recognise Miss Polly, and smiled when she took his hand. She seemed to be his favourite, and they say she's taking it mighty hard—harder than any of the rest. It's a pity he couldn't have left 'em all some last message. I think it's always a comfort to remember one's dying words when as good a person as Mr. Holmes goes. And it's always so nice when they happen to be appropriate, so's they can be put on the tombstone afterward. I remember my Aunt Maria worked my grandfather's last words into a sampler, with an urn and weeping-willow-tree. She had it framed in black and hung in the parlour, and everybody who came to the house admired it. It's a pity that the miller couldn't have left some last word to each of 'em."

"I don't think it was necessary," said the girl, turning away with a choke in her voice, as the eloquent face of the old man seemed to rise up before her. "His whole life speaks for him."

Mrs. Perkins looked after the retreating figure regretfully, as the jaunty sailor hat disappeared behind a tall hedge. "I wish she hadn't been in such a hurry," she sighed, shifting the baby to the other hip. "I would have liked to ask her if she's heard who the pall-bearers are to be."

At the turn in the road the little schoolmistress looked up to see Miss Anastasia Dill leaning over her gate. She had just heard the news, and there were tears in her pale blue eyes.

"And Polly's wedding cards were to have been sent out this next week!" she exclaimed after their first words of greeting. "The poor child told me so herself when she was here in August on a visit. 'Miss Anastasia,' she said to me, 'I'm not going abroad for my honeymoon, as all my family want me to do. I'm going to bring Jack back here to the old homestead where grandfather's married life began. Somehow it was so ideal, so nearly perfect, that I have a feeling that maybe the mantle of that old romance will fall on our shoulders. Besides, Jack has never seen grandfather, and I tell him it's as much of an education to know such a grand old man as it is to go through Yale. So we're coming in October. The woods will have on all their gala colours then, and I'll be the happiest bride the sun ever shone on, unless it was my grandmother Polly.' And now to think," added Miss Anastasia, tearfully, "none of those plans can come to pass. It's bad luck to put off a wedding. Oh, I feel so sorry for her!"

There is an undefined note of pathos in a country funeral that is never reached in any other. The little schoolmistress felt it as she walked up the path to the old house behind the cedars. The front porch was full of men, who, dressed in their unaccustomed best, had the uneasy appearance of having come upon a Sunday in the middle of the week. Their heavy boots tiptoed clumsily through the hall, with a painful effort to go silently, as one by one the neighbours passed into the old sitting-room and out again. The room across the hall had been filled with rows of chairs, and the women who came first were sitting there in a deep silence, broken only by a cough now and then, a hoarse whisper or a rustle, as some one moved to make room for a newcomer.

It was a sombre assembly, for every one wore whatever black her wardrobe afforded, and many funeral occasions had left an accumulation of mourning millinery in every house in the neighbourhood. But the limp crape veils and black gloves and pall-like cashmere shawls were all congregated in the dimly lighted parlour. In the old sitting-room it was as cheerful and homelike as ever, save for the still form in the centre.

Through an open window the western sun streamed into the big, hospitable room, across the bright home-made rag carpet. The old clock in the corner ticked with the placid, steady stroke that had never failed or faltered, in any vicissitude of the generations for which it had marked the changes. No fire blazed on the old hearthstone that had warmed the hearts as well as the hands of the whole countryside on many a cheerful occasion. But a great bough of dogwood, laid across the shining andirons, filled the space with coral berries that glowed like live embers as the sun stole athwart them.

"Oh, if the old room could only speak!" thought Miss Anastasia, when her turn came to pass reverently in for a last look at the peaceful face. "There would be no need of man's eulogy."

But man's eulogy was added presently, when the old minister came in and took his place beside the coffin of his lifelong friend and neighbour. The men outside the porch closed in around the windows to listen. The women in the back rows of chairs in the adjoining room leaned forward eagerly. Those farthest away caught only a faltering sentence now and then.

"A hospitality as warm as his own hearthstone, as wide as his broad acres.... No man can point to him and say he ever knowingly hurt or hindered a fellow creature.... He never measured out to any man a scant bushel. Be it grain or good-will, it was ever an overflowing measure...." But those who could not hear all that was said could make the silent places eloquent with their own recollections, for he had taken a father's interest in them all, and manifested it by a score of kindly deeds, too kindly to ever be forgotten.

It was a perfect autumn day, sunny and golden and still, save for the patter of dropping nuts and the dry rustle of fallen leaves. A purple haze rested on the distant horizon like the bloom on a ripened grape. Down through the orchard, when the simple service was over, they carried their old friend to the family burying-ground, and, although voices had choked, and eyes overflowed before, there was neither sob nor tear, when the light of the sunset struck across the low mound, heaped with its covering of glowing autumn leaves. For if grief has no part in the sunset glory that ends the day, or in the perfect fulness of the autumn time, then it must indeed stand hushed, when a life comes both to its sunset and its harvest, in such royal fashion.

That evening at the Cross-Roads, Bowser lighted the first fire of the season in the rusty old stove, for the night was chilly. One by one the men accustomed to gather around it dropped in and took their usual places. The event of the day was all that was spoken of.

"Do you remember what he said last Thanksgiving, nearly a year ago?" asked Bowser. "It came back to me as I stood and looked at him to-day, and if I'd never believed in immortality before, I'd 'a' had to have believed in it then. The words seemed to fairly shine out of his face. He said 'The best comes after the harvest, when the wheat goes to make up blood and muscle and brain; when it's raised to a higher order of life in man. And it's the same with me. At eighty-five, when it looks as if I'd about reached the end, I've come to believe that "the best is yet to be."'"

There was a long pause, and Cy Akers said, slowly, "Somehow I can't feel that he is dead. Seems as if he'd just gone away a while. But Lord! how we're going to miss him here at the store."

"No, don't say that!" exclaimed Bud Hines, with more emotion than he had ever been known to show before. "Say, how we're going to feel him! I can't get him out of my mind. Every time I turn around, most, seems to me I can hear him laugh, and say, 'Don't cross your bridge till you come to it, Bud.' That saying of his rings in my ears every time I get in the dumps. Seems like he could set the calendar straight for us, all the year around. The winters wasn't so cold or the summers so hard to pull through, looking at life through his eyes."

Perkins's oldest crept up unnoticed. He added no word, but deep in his heart lay an impression that all the years to come could never erase; the remembrance of a kindly old man who had given him a new gospel, in that one phrase, "A brother to Santa Claus;" who had taught him to go out against his Philistines with simple directness of aim and whatever lay at hand; who had left behind him the philosophy of a cheerful optimist, and the example of a sweet simple life, unswerving in its loyalty to duty and to truth.

Over in the old homestead, Polly, standing in the firelight, fair and slender in her black gown, looked up at the tall young fellow beside her, and placed two little books in his hands. The old house was not her only heritage. The little atlas of the heavens was hers also. Standing there in the room where the beloved presence seemed to have left its benediction, Polly told the story of the love that had outlived Death. Then across the yellowed page of the old grammar where the faded violets lay, two hands met in the same sure clasp that had joined the souls of those older lovers, who somewhere beyond the stars were still repeating the old conjugation—"we love—for ever!"

The stories in Mr. Roberts's new collection are the strongest and best he has ever written.

He has largely taken for his subjects those animals rarely met with in books, whose lives are spent "In the Silences," where they are the supreme rulers. Mr. Roberts has written of them sympathetically, as always, but with fine regard for the scientific truth.

"As a writer about animals, Mr. Roberts occupies an enviable place. He is the most literary, as well as the most imaginative and vivid of all the nature writers."—Brooklyn Eagle.

"His animal stories are marvels of sympathetic science and literary exactness."—New York World.

The Lady of the Blue Motor is an audacious heroine who drove her mysterious car at breakneck speed. Her plea for assistance in an adventure promising more than a spice of danger could not of course be disregarded by any gallant fellow motorist. Mr. Paternoster's hero rose promptly to the occasion. Across France they tore and across the English Channel. There, the escapade past, he lost her.

Mr. Paternoster, however, is generous, and allows the reader to follow their separate adventures until the Lady of the Blue Motor is found again and properly vindicated of all save womanly courage and affection. A unique romance, one continuous exciting series of adventure.

Mr. Stephens has put into his new book, "Clementina's Highwayman," the finest qualities of plot, construction, and literary finish.

The story is laid in the mid-Georgian period. It is a dashing, sparkling, vivacious comedy, with a heroine as lovely and changeable as an April day, and a hero all ardor and daring.

The exquisite quality of Mr. Stephens's literary style clothes the story in a rich but delicate word-fabric; and never before have his setting and atmosphere been so perfect.

The love-story of Otto III., the boy emperor, and Stephania, wife of the Senator Crescentius of Rome, has already been made the basis of various German poems and plays.

Mr. Gallizier has used it for the main theme of "The Sorceress of Rome," the second book of his trilogy of romances on the mediÆval life of Italy. In detail and finish the book is a brilliant piece of work, describing clearly an exciting and strenuous period. It possesses the same qualities as "Castel del Monte," of which the Chicago Record Herald said: "There is color, there is sumptuous word-painting in these pages; the action is terrific at times; vividness and life are in every part; brilliant descriptions entertain the reader; mystic scenes and prophecies give a singular fascination to the tale, which is strong and forceful in its portrayal."

"Hester of the Hills" has a motif unusual in life, and new in fiction. Its hero, who has only acquired his own strength and resourcefulness by a lifelong struggle against constitutional frailty, has come to make the question of bodily soundness his dominant thought. He resolves to ensure strong constitutions to his children by marrying a physically perfect woman. After long search, he finds this ideal in Hester, the daughter of a "cracker squatter," of the Ozark Mountains of Missouri. But,—he forgot to take into consideration that very vital emotion, love, which played havoc with his well-laid plans.

It is an ingenious combination of practical realism and imaginative fiction worked out to a thoroughly delightful and satisfying climax.

The period of Mr. Smith's story is the beginning of the eighteenth century, when the shores of the American colonies were harassed and the seas patrolled by pirates and buccaneers. These robbed and spoiled, and often seized and put to death, the sailors and fishers and other humbler folk, while their leaders claimed friendship alike with Southern planters and New England merchants,—with whom it is said they frequently divided their spoils.

The times were stern and the colonists were hardy, but they loved as truly and tenderly as in more peaceful days. Thus, while the hero's adventures with pirates and his search for their hidden treasure is a record of desperate encounters and daring deeds, his love-story and his winning of sweet Mary Vane is in delightful contrast.

A mysterious murder on a flying express train, a wily Italian, a charming woman caught in the meshes of circumstantial evidence, a chivalrous Englishman, and a police force with a keen nose for the wrong clue, are the ingredients from which Major Griffiths has concocted a clever, up-to-date detective story. The book is bright and spirited, with rapid action, and consistent development which brings the story to a logical and dramatic ending.

The doings of the Morning Glory Club will furnish genuine amusement to the reader. Originally formed to "elevate" the village, it quickly develops into an exchange for town gossip. It has a saving grace, however, in the person of motherly Mrs. Stout, the uncultured but sweet-natured and pure-minded village philosopher, who pours the oil of her saneness and charity on the troubled waters of discussion and condemnation.

It is a series of clear and interesting pictures of the humor of village life.

The success of Mr. Morrison's recent books, "The Green Diamond" and "The Red Triangle," has led to an imperative demand for the reissue of "The Chronicles of Martin Hewitt," which has been out of print for a number of years.

It will be remembered that Martin Hewitt is the detective in "The Red Triangle," of whom the New York Tribune said: "Better than Sherlock Holmes." His adventures in the London slums were of such a nature that the Philadelphia North American said: "The reader who has a grain of fancy or imagination may be defied to lay this book down once he has begun it until the last word is reached."

A hunting camp on a swampy island in the Florida Everglades furnishes the background for this present-day tale.

By the murder of one of their number, the secret of egress from the island is lost, and the campers find themselves marooned.

Cut off from civilization, conventional veneer soon wears away. Love, hate, and revenge spring up, and after the sterner passions have had their sway the man and the woman are left alone to fulfil their own destiny.

While there is much that is unusual in the plot and its development, Mr. Hurst has handled his subject with fine delicacy, and the tale of their love on the beautiful little island is told with deep sympathy and feeling.

Mr. Roberts's new book is much more than a ripping good sea story such as might be expected from the author of "The Promotion of the Admiral." In "The Flying Cloud" the waters and the winds are gods personified. Their every mood and phase are described in words of telling force. There is no world but the waste of waters.

Mr. Roberts glories and exults in the mystery, the passion, the strength of the elements, as did the Viking chroniclers of old. He understands them and loves them and interprets them as no other writer has heretofore done. The book is too big for conventional phrases. It needs Mr. Roberts's own richness of imagery and masterly expression to describe adequately the word-pictures in this epic of wind and waves.

A Romance of the Days of the Young Pretender. Illustrated by H. C. Edwards.

Being an account of some adventures of Henri de Launay, son of the Sieur de la Tournoire. Illustrated by H. C. Edwards.

"Mr. Stephens has fairly outdone himself. We thank him heartily. The story is nothing if not spirited and entertaining, rational and convincing."—Boston Transcript.

(40th thousand.)

Or, The Maid of Cheapside. (52d thousand.) A romance of Elizabethan London. Illustrations by Howard Pyle and other artists.

Not since the absorbing adventures of D'Artagnan have we had anything so good in the blended vein of romance and comedy.

A Romance of Philipse Manor House in 1778. (53d thousand.) Illustrated by H. C. Edwards.

A stirring romance of the Revolution, with its scene laid on neutral territory.

(70th thousand.) A Sketch of the Domestic History of an American Captain in the War of Independence, embracing events that occurred between and during the years 1763 and 1785 in New York and London. Illustrated by E. W. D. Hamilton.

(70th thousand.) From the "Recently Discovered Memoirs of the Sieur de la Tournoire." Illustrated by H. De M. Young.

An historical romance of the sixteenth century, describing the adventures of a young French nobleman at the court of Henry III., and on the field with Henry IV.

A Story of Adventure. (35th thousand.) Illustrated by H. C. Edwards.

An historical romance of the eighteenth century, being an account of the life of an American gentleman adventurer of Jacobite ancestry.

His Adventures on a Secret Mission for Queen Elizabeth. (48th thousand.) Illustrated by Frank T. Merrill.

The story of a young gentleman who joins Shakespeare's company of players, and becomes a friend and protÉgÉ of the great poet.