Dirck still looked suspicious as he took the weeping child, but Halford smiled grimly, thoughtfully and sadly, as he put his hand in his pocket and said: "I guess it's all right, boys, but I think you'd better get away for the present. Take this and get over the river and out of the county. The people have been searching for this baby all day, and I don't know whether they'll listen to my friend and me." * * * * * The level red light had left the valleys and low places, and lit alone the hilltop where the mother was watching, when a great shout came out of the darkness, spreading from voice to voice through the great expanse below, and echoed wildly from above, thrilling men's blood and making hearts stand still; and as it rose and swelled and grew toward her out of the darkness, the mother knew that her lost child was found. A LETTER TO TOWN FERNSEED STATION. ATLANTIS CO., NEW ---- _February 30, 189-._ MY DEAR MODESTUS:--You write me that circumstances have decided you to move your household from New York to some inexpensively pleasant town, village, or hamlet in the immediate neighborhood, and you ask me the old, old innocent question: "Shall I like suburban life?" This question I can answer most frankly and positively: "No, certainly not. You will not like it at all." There is no such thing as _liking_ a country life--for I take it that you mean to remove to the real suburban countryside, and not to one of those abominable and abhorrent deserts of paved streets laid out at right angles, and all supplied with sewers and electric light wires and water-mains before the first lonely house escapes from the house-pattern books to tempt the city dweller out to that dreary, soulless waste which has all the modern improvements and not one tree. I take it, I say, that you are going to no such cheap back-extension of a great city, but that you are really going among the trees and the water-courses, severing all ties with the town, save the railway's glittering lines of steel--or, since I have thought of it, I might as well say the railway ties. If that is what your intent is, and you carry it out firmly, you are going to a life which you can never like, but which you may learn to love.