That the hut had been recently occupied was shown by fresh ashes in the fireplace, and by a jug of water that stood on the table. Who could its owners be? What had become of them? How would they treat him when they discovered his invasion of their premises? And where did they store all their provisions?--were questions that the boy asked himself over and over again. Above all, what was he to do for something to eat? For he was now suffering almost as much from hunger as he had from thirst an hour before. As he gazed moodily at the cold embers of the fireplace, deliberating these questions, he was startled by the sound of feet just outside the hut, and a voice, apparently that of a child, calling plaintively for its mother. "The folks have come home," he said to himself, "and in another minute my fate will be decided." At the same time he stepped resolutely to the doorway and looked out. [TO BE CONTINUED.] [Illustration: STANDARDS IN MODERN LITERATURE EDMUND GOSSE] A few months ago one of the youngest of the group of eccentric writers who call themselves "Symbolists" was paying a visit to London. The conversation in a drawing-room happened to run on the province of the Franche-Comté, and the guest remarked, as a curious circumstance, that no poet had ever come from that part of France. Somebody ventured to murmur the name of Victor Hugo. "Ah! sir," replied the young Symbolist, with a charming air of deprecation, "but we don't consider Victor Hugo a poet!" It is obvious that, for the present at least, this particular expression of opinion will remain rare; it was conceived in the very foppery of paradox, of course. But it is quite conceivable that such a judgment might spread, might become common, might become authoritative and universal. To our generation, at all events, Victor Hugo has appeared to be the typical poet; he and Tennyson have been named side by side as the very types of the imaginative creator, as purveyors of inexhaustible poetic pleasure. That is what we have all thought; but suppose that our grandchildren determine to think the opposite, what is to be done? Manifestly we shall be too old to whip them and too weary to argue with them. If they decide that Victor Hugo was not a poet, that Dickens was not amusing, that Hawthorne wrote bad novels, we shall have to go, indignant, to our tombs, but our indignation will not convert the younger generation.