always good to start with. Miss Latham continued to come out on the young people's side, and the minister kept his promise in letter and in spirit.

Before autumn laid her cool fingers on the chestnut burs and conjured forth their treasures, the Pure Fun Club had converted the whole neighborhood.

It had come to be a welcome sight to the farmers to see a bevy of boys and girls riding across country on a holiday afternoon in a triumphing chase after health and happiness.

They had all enjoyed the performance of "The Sleeping Beauty," too, and had been more pleased than they would acknowledge with the splendid stage that the young people had built and equipped at the schoolhouse.

The grown people had also come to enjoy the Saturday night meetings of the club, and had proved very handy as judges of debates, awarders of prizes, etc.

A new piano had been installed by virtue of farmer Winthrop's making the cash payment for the club and promising to stand for whatever monthly installment the club might be unable to meet. The piano had been hardly settled in its new surroundings when it developed that there was a good deal of musical talent in the neighborhood, and before the year had passed into the "sear and yellow leaf" an orchestra and a choral class had been formed, that ultimately afforded pleasure to old and young alike.

The honor pupil of the fifth grade of the previous year, as librarian of the club, never rested till she had in the library corner of the school a bookcase full of interesting books, and a good-sized table covered with

papers and magazines.

Here again the grown-ups

profited, for that small nucleus gradually developed into a neighborhood library.

That fall, also, was held the first of a long series of neighborhood fairs. It was arranged at the schoolhouse and lasted a week, and such another exhibit of young folks' handiwork was never yet seen as was displayed in those tastefully arranged booths every afternoon. It is to be chronicled here that at least eight girls learned how to make pickles and preserves and jelly that fall.

And then, when the sound of falling chestnuts broke the silence of the autumn woods, Farmer Winthrop and his good wife, assisted by Miss Latham, took the collected youth of the countryside on a week-end camping trip to the distant hills.

They pitched their tents beside a bold mountain spring, spreading cots for the girls, and swinging homemade hammocks under the trees for the boys. When it developed that there was one hammock missing, Dick, as host, looked with dismay at his father.

"And where am I to sleep?" he asked.

"Roll up in a blanket on the ground, you scamp,' retorted the old man. "Your grandfather slept that way for four years, and no manlier man ever died for his country." And Dick rolled.

They built a rock furnace for cooking, and never since the accidental roasting of the first pig was there anything quite so delicious as the bacon that was fried upon it. If the hoecakes that the girls improvised were any less delightful than those that their mothers made at home, those boys never suspected it, and when it came to

fresh fish, fried with the bacon, and partridges, roasted before the glowing coals, the fare simply couldn't have been better.

Then something happened on the very first afternoon of that camp which was looked back to ever after as an event in the history of the Pure Fun Club. While supper was yet in course of preparation, and after Dick had chosen and laid aside the blanket in which he was to demonstrate that he was a worthy descendant of his soldier grandfather, he and Miss Latham and Fanny deserted the others to follow the course of the bold spring branch. Not a quarter of a mile below, they knew, it widened to a lake; and it pleased them now to go on a reconnoitering trip against the morrow's fishing.

After a short but invigorating walk, the three came out on the bank and stood entranced. An Indian summer sunset lighted the parti-colored woods around, and Miss Latham was just calling attention to the reflected tints in the water, when, suddenly, on the bright surface, there shone the stark white face of a drowning

man.

The soldier's grandson plunged after it in the same instant. There was a sharp struggle, for the smiling water turned treacherous. Dick had the fight of his life on his hands. For a few interminable moments it looked to the desperate watchers on the bank, as if he must lose out and go down with the burden he would not release.

With a last tremendous struggle, however, he reached the girl's hand that was being held out to him. Fanny was standing breast high in the water, holding to Miss

Latham with her left hand while she stretched out her right to her heroic comrade.

The next moment the three were leaning over the unconscious young man who had been saved.

"Dick," whispered Fanny, "did you know that it was Seth?"

"No," he panted. "I only saw that it was some fellow's last chance."

It was not until the half-drowned boy had been rubbed to life and had been comfortably placed before the great camp fire, that they all learned just how it had happened. It seems that the penniless prodigal, making his footsore way across-country to his father's house and nearly fainting with thirst and fatigue, had knelt down beside the treacherous waters to drink, and had lost his foothold. His strength already spent, he was soon dragged under by the greedy current, and must, perforce, have gone down for the last time, had not the searchers after pure fun been ready for the purely heroic as well.

And this is how Farmer Winthrop's prodigal son returned, grave-eyed and chastened, to his father's house, thereafter to become the most dutiful of sons. And this is why the Pure Fun Club has had the hearty support of old and young from the time when the sound of falling chestnuts broke the silence of the autumn woods that year down to this day.

FRANCES NIMMO GREENE.