noticed the name, and I will show you to her house.'

'Just how is she related to you?' the stranger asked.

'That,' the man replied, ‘is a matter of protection. I have given her the protection of my name.'

miles from the town where we left the angry drummer we met Johnny.

One of our horses had snow-balled up on his foot, so Mrs. O'Shaughnessy asked Johnny to knock it off for her. He was not so tongue-tied with us; he told us the north-bound train was

'You must be a stranger in this country,' the man evaded. 'What is your name?'

But the stranger did n't seem to hear, and just then we came opposite the residence of the Bishop, and the man we had picked up in the road said, "That is my home, won't you get out and warm? My wife will be glad to get acquainted with you ladies.'

We declined as it was only a short distance to the house of the man Mrs. O'Shaughnessy had come to see, so he stayed in the sleigh to show the stranger to the house of Mrs. Maria Bunker. I can't say much for it as a house, and I was glad I did n't have to go in. The stranger and Bunker got out and entered the house, and we drove away. Next morning as we returned through the little village, it was all excitement. Bishop Bunker had been shot the night before, just as he had left the house of Mrs. Maria Bunker, for what reason or by whom no one knew; and if the Bishop knew he had not told, for he either would not or could not talk.

They were going to start with him that day to the hospital, but they had no hopes of him living.

When we came to Mrs. Maria's house, Mrs. O'Shaughnessy got out of the sleigh and went into the house. I could hear her soothing voice, and I was mighty glad the poor forlorn woman had such a comforter. After a while Mrs. O'Shaughnessy came out and the woman followed. As soon as I saw her face I knew who the stranger was, although I don't know his name. A few

wind the night before had drifted the snow across the track; he said he had started home to the ranch that night but a few miles out had met a stranger staggering along almost frozen. He had taken the stranger behind him on his horse and had started back to town, but when they had come in sight of the snow-bound train he had deserted him and joined the crowd around the train and he, Johnny, had gone back to town and was just now getting toward home again.

And did you tell any one about your quare adventure?' asked Mrs. O'Shaughnessy.

'No,' he said, 'there was n't any one up at the hotel and this morning I slept so late I saw no one but Hattie and and we talked all the time about homesteading.'

'Well,' she said, 'don't say anything about it to any one and I'll bake your wedding cake when Hattie says yes, and I'll see to it that your cabin is not bare besides.'

Johnny blushed and promised, so we resumed our journey. Mrs. O'Shaughnessy drove and was unusually silent. Just once she spoke.

'I'd kill a man, too, if he wronged my sister and her children that way.' I was so very glad to get home. How good it all looked to me! 'Poop o' Roome'1 has a calf, and as we drove up to the corral Clyde was trying to get it into the stall with the rest. It is

1 Mr. Stewart being a Presbyterian and his wife a Catholic, their cattle are named in accordance with their individual prejudices. THE EDITORS.

'Poop's' first calf and she is very proud of it, and objected to its being put away from her, so she bunted at Clyde and as he dodged her the calf ran between his feet and he sat down suddenly in the snow. I laughed at him, but I am powerfully glad he is no follower of old Joseph Smith.

Mrs. Louderer was enjoying herself immensely, she loves children so much. She and Clyde hired the "Tackler,' so called because he will tackle any kind of a job whether he knows anything about it or not, to paper the room. He thinks he is a great judge of the fitness of things and of beauty. The paper has a stripe of roses, so Tackler reversed every other strip so that some of my roses are standing on their heads. Roses don't all grow one way, he claims, and so his method 'makes 'em look more nachul like.'

A little thing like wall-paper put on upside down don't bother me; but what would I do if I were a 'second'?

Your loving friend,
ELINORE RUPERT STEWART.

[The present series of completely ingenuous letters should close with a brief note written quite recently, after the writer knew that the Atlantic was printing her letters. Mrs. Stewart had been gravely ill owing to the conditions of her life and the absence of medical attention.]

BURNT FORK, Wyo., January 23. To the Editor of the Atlantic:

DEAR MR. EDITOR, I sent you a letter the other day, and when the man came back he brought me yours dated January 10 which I was powerfully glad to get. I am just up from a long and serious illness. That is why you have not heard from me, and as I could not send you the letters in time

for continuation I thought you would not care for any more and I was mighty blue. I felt so unworthy and so negligent to have let such an opportunity slip by even though I had been bedfast. But I don't feel so badly now.

Indeed you are right about my getting letters and cards from many people on account of my Atlantic articles. It makes me wish I could deserve all the good things they say. One dear old lady eighty-four years old wrote me that she had always wanted to live the life I am living, but could not, and that the Letters satisfied her every wish. She said she had only to shut her eyes to see it all, to smell the pines and the sage, and she said many more nice things that I wish were true of me. Then I had a letter from a little crippled boy whose mother also wrote, both saying how the Letters had cheered them and eased the pain of the poor young flickering life. The mother said she wanted to thank one who had brought so much of the clean, bright outdoors into her helpless little son's life. I wrote her it was you who ought to be thanked and not I. It wrings my heart to think of so many so hungry for what there is such an abundance of. There is so much to love in people that I can never think how there can be anything else but love between all the world. Jerrine tells me she has already written you. I am sorry I knew nothing of it. I was ill for so long that I suppose she got tired of waiting. She writes and spells so poorly that I should not have let her take up your time had I known.

Some women and myself went on an elk-hunt not long since, and I shall shortly send you an account of it.

Hoping I may not disappoint you, I

am,

Sincerely your friend ELINORE RUPERT STEWART.

I

On the afternoon of October 8, 1797, three Americans sat in the office of the Minister for Foreign Affairs at Paris awaiting their reception as Envoys Extraordinary to the Republic of France. The official anteroom into which they had been ushered was a comfortable apartment, but they were obviously ill pleased with their surroundings, and there was ample justification for the silent dissatisfaction they displayed. Once before, earlier in the day, they had attended by special appointment to present their credentials, only to be told that their official host had been unfortunately called away and could not receive them until three o'clock. But now at the appointed hour they were informed that the citizen official was engaged with the Portuguese Minister, and though the request to enter the waiting room was couched in the most courtly phrases, it was in no very amiable spirit that the envoys accepted the invitation.

Minute after minute passed and the secretaries and clerks who drifted in and out of the official sanctum exchanged amused glances as they noted the rustic garb of the strangers and observed their air of stiff and solemn resentment. This was not the first embassy that had been forced to cool its heels at the door of the Foreign Minister, for that dignitary was Citizen

Talleyrand, late Bishop of Autun, but now, by grace of the Directory, the dominant factor in international affairs. In the ashes of the Revolution France had tempered a sword of war that had enabled her to dictate terms to almost half the world, and her representative did not underestimate his power.

It was therefore somewhat droll to see these American parvenus in the diplomatic world waxing impatient at their delayed reception. Poor fledglings! They did not appear to be overburdened with feathers, but had they many or few, an hour with the former Bishop of Autun would leave them without a single plume. And the cream of the joke was that every one knew this except the victims who chafed, ma foi, because their plucking was postponed! It was droll; it was certainly very droll.

Meanwhile, the unconscious subjects of these diverting reflections were growing less and less pleased with their situation. To all of them it was embarassing, but to one of them it was exasperating in the extreme, for he had already experienced a grave humiliation at the hands of the French Government and every second of waiting now increased the injury to his pride. This was Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, who had been sent to succeed Monroe as Minister to France, but had departed from Paris with more speed than ceremony, on being informed that

the Directory would recognize no minister from the United States until it righted certain alleged grievances, and that the law required strangers to obtain a 'Card of Hospitality' from the police if they wished to tarry more than thirty days upon the soil of France.

This insult was not, of course, personal to the individual American to whom it was addressed, but was aimed at the United States in general for its ingratitude, if not perfidy, in having negotiated a treaty with Great Britain, the one irreconcilable enemy of France. Nevertheless the full force of the affront fell on the rejected diplomat, and Pinckney's florid countenance grew well-nigh purple as he nursed his wrath outside Monsieur Talleyrand's door.

Only ten minutes elapsed before that door opened to admit the special envoys whose mission it was to restore the friendly relations between America and France, but the delay was not auspicious, and it was a very grave trio that was finally ushered into the presence of the man to whom Europe bent the knee. To Talleyrand the advent of these Americans was at once a personal triumph and an opportunity to wipe out an old and rankling score. It was not so long since he, an exile, if not a refugee, from France, had visited the United States and had sought an audience with Washington, who had declined to receive him on the ground that his official reception would give offense to France. This, in itself, might have been interpreted into something of a distinction; but Washington, disliking the reputation of the visitor, had evinced no desire to meet him unofficially, and the shrewd ex-priest had not been slow to comprehend the slight.

These and other grievances were not forgotten when the representatives of the upstart nation which had ignored him in his hour of adversity stood before him, and the faint smile which

habitually hovered about his mouth boded ill for the success of their mission. His quiet blue-gray eyes, half hidden behind bushy eyebrows, sought his visitors' faces, watching them with the keenness that had penetrated many a diplomatic mask; and, as he gazed, a suggestion of contempt was added to the insolent uptilt of his nose and the haughtiness of his protruding lower lip. From his point of view the visitors were, at best, but provincial Englishmen, two of whom represented the political faction most hostile to the interest of France in the United States, while all of them evidenced the selfimportance and crudity of the people by whom they were accredited. In the field of diplomacy they were, of course, mere innocents abroad.

There was certainly nothing in the outward appearance of the delegation to cause the wordly-wise and cynical Frenchman to distrust the success of the programme he was maturing for their initiation. Perhaps the most notable figure in the group was that of a man about forty years of age, whose great height and athletic proportions well-nigh dwarfed his associates. But though his stature and physique rendered him conspicuous, they imparted neither distinction nor grace, for his body was ill-proportioned and his huge limbs were ungainly to the point of dislocation. These defects might possibly have disappeared under the touch of a skillful tailor, but the man was clothed in rusty, ill-fitting, and not over-clean garments which would have disfigured Apollo himself, and every article of his attire accentuated his physical peculiarities. Had his head and face been as ill-formed as his body, he might have been ogreish, but he would have been interesting. As it was, he was commonplace, for his clean-shaven face was not particularly strong and his low forehead, dark complexion and thick

Altogether this envoy from the New World was as unprepossessing a countryman as Talleyrand had encountered anywhere in the States, and the fact that his name was John Marshall did not convey any particular meaning to the Foreign Secretary or cause him to revise his plans. There were those in France who were competent to advise him that the outward appearance of his uncouth visitor was deceitful, and that he had best be on his guard against the leader of the American Bar whose practice and reputation were so great that Washington had successively offered him a United States districtattorneyship, the Attorney-Generalship of the United States, and even the Ministry to France - all of which he had declined. But the warning was not uttered, and had it been it would probably have fallen on dull ears, for Citizen Talleyrand had little to fear in the familiar realm of diplomacy from the intrusion of any provincial lawyer, no matter how highly he might be esteemed at home.

Possibly he regarded the man who stood at Marshall's elbow as the more dangerous of the two, for Pinckney had conducted himself with no little skill in his last encounter with the French Republic. He was certainly much more presentable in figure, face, and dress than his confrère. Indeed, his whole appearance was agreeable, his pleasant, clean-shaven face, clear eyes and erect carriage betokening a man of intelligence in the prime of life. His great reputation as a lawyer was, of course, like Marshall's, more local than international, but his education had been obtained at Oxford where he had studied under Blackstone himself, and in point of culture and breadth of reading he had few peers in his profession. The third member of the group was

for Elbridge Gerry was one of the ardent Republicans who had welcomed him to America with outstretched arms. Indeed, Gerry's appointment on the embassy had been a concession to the party whose well-nigh hysterical enthusiasm for France had encouraged the French Government to believe that it could take extraordinary liberties with the United States.

There was, in truth, good ground for that belief. Not only in Massachusetts, but throughout New England and New York, adulation of everything French had become, for a time, the public rage. French cockades were mounted on every hat; French flags adorned public and private buildings; civic feasts were held with absurd imitations of Parisian mummeries; orators vied with one another in eulogizing France and damning Jay's treaty with the mother country, while applauding thousands burned its negotiator in effigy and stoned Hamilton for daring to defend it. Even the title 'Citizen' was substituted for the ordinary modes of address, and all sorts of unutterable follies were tolerated, until Citizen Genet, the French Minister, demanded unheard-of privileges for his country in her pending conflict with Great Britain, and, failing to shake Washington's policy of neutrality, threatened to appeal to the people over his head. Then a reaction set in.

Nevertheless, the United States was not yet a nation, in the highest sense of the word, when its peace envoys sought an audience with the Foreign Secretary at Paris. It was, at best, but an aggregation of colonials divided among themselves under foreign banners, and destined, in the opinion of Europe, to become a dependency of either England or France.

Talleyrand had good reason, therefore, to remember so stout a champion