As Mrs. Jones heard the boy’s step on the porch, she said to his father, “Now, pa, that boy has been punished enough to-day.  Don’t you say a word to him.”  Harold walked by his father with averted face.  At supper the boy did not look at his father, and when the dishes were put away, Mr. Jones, who sat in the kitchen smoking, heard his wife and the child in a front room, chatting cheerily.  The lonesome father smoked his pipe and recalled his youth.  The boy’s voice brought back his own shrill treble, and he coughed nervously.  After Mrs. Jones had put the lad to bed, and was in the pantry arranging for breakfast, the father knocked the ashes from his briar into the stove, and, humming an old tune, went to the boy’s bedroom door.  He paused awkwardly on the threshold.  The boy turned his face toward the wall.  The action cut the father to the quick.  He walked to the bed and bent over the child, touching a father’s rough-bearded face to the soft cheek.  He found the soft hand—­with a father’s large hand—­under the sheet, and he held the little hand tightly as he said: 

“Well, Harold”—­there he paused for a second.  But he continued, “Do you think you’d a-licked that boy—­if—­if—­I hadn’t a-come?”

Then the two laughed, and a little throb of joyous pain tingled in their throats—­such as only boys may feel.

A RECENT CONFEDERATE VICTORY

A LITTLE DREAM-BOY

  Little Boy Blue, come blow your horn,
  And wake up a little man lying forlorn,
  Asleep where his life wanders out of the morn.

  Little Boy Blue, blow a merry, sweet note,
  Over the pool where the white lilies float,—­
  Fill out the sails of a little toy boat.

  Blow on my dream of a little boy there,—­
  Blow thro’ his little bark-whistle, and snare
  Your breath in a tangle of curly brown hair.

  Blow and O blow from your fairy land far,
  Blow while my little boy wears a tin star,
  And rides a stick-horse to a little boy’s war.

  Blow for the brave man my dream-boy would be,
  Blow back his tears when he wakes up to see
  His knight errant gone and instead—­only me.

  Little Boy Blue, come blow your horn,
  Blow for a little boy lying forlorn,
  Asleep where his life wanders out of the morn.

[Illustration]

A RECENT CONFEDERATE VICTORY

In a small town, every man who has been in the community long enough to become thoroughly known to the townsmen has a place in the human mosaic; that place seldom changes.  Occasionally a man is a year in finding his place.  The town of Willow Creek located Calhoun Perkins in two days.  Wednesday he arrived in town with his son, whom he called “Bud;” Thursday night it was reported that he had been fishing the second time.  That settled it.  After that the boasting of Perkins about his family in Tennessee