Today's Stichomancy for Tyra Banks

gathered themselves up and surged against his soul. His squalid daily life, the brutal coarseness eating into his brain, as the ashes into his skin: before, these things had been a dull aching into his consciousness; to-night, they were reality. He griped the filthy red shirt that clung, stiff with soot, about him, and tore it savagely from his arm. The flesh beneath was muddy with grease and ashes,--and the heart beneath that! And the soul? God knows.

Then flashed before his vivid poetic sense the man who had left him,--the pure face, the delicate, sinewy limbs, in harmony with all he knew of beauty or truth. In his cloudy fancy he had

Life in the Iron-Mills

He waited for me to speak, but I could not; the balance of my mind was gone. Why should this have happened to me--a slave? As it had happened, why did I not feel exultant in the sense of power which the chance for freedom with him should give?

"What is it, Margaret? your face is as sad as death."

"How do you call me 'Margaret?'"

"As I would call my wife--Margaret."

He rose and stood before me to screen my face from observation. I supposed so, and endeavored to stifle my agitation.

"You are better," he said, presently. "Come go with me and get some refreshment." And he beckoned to Mrs. Bliss, who was down the

speaking his mind on the subject, but some unusual quality of innocence in the lad tied his tongue.

"Blame it all, I'm getting to be a regular old granny. What Master Frank needs is a first-class dressing-down, and here the little cuss has got me bluffed to a fare-you-well so that I'm mum as a hooter on the nest," he admitted to himself ruefully. "Just when something comes up that needs a good round damn I catch that big brown Sunday school eye of his, and it's Bucky back to Webster's unabridged. I've got to quit trailing with him, or I'll be joining the church first thing I know. He makes me feel like I want to be good, confound the little swindle."