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Show temper. "Get .you gone!" she cried angrily. "Is it not enough that you have eaten all the good man' supper when he toiled all day and you Lave been asleep, it Is likely, like-ly, in the sun beside some haystack, but In return you must stay, and flout me tar my silly good nature. A pretty return, re-turn, good sooth, for the food I have given you ! Get you gone while I can still keep oiy honest hands off your lazy carcass." The vagabond scrambled up from hii Wat upon tho doorstep, and stood looking look-ing into her angry face with an unpleasant unpleas-ant iaugh. "May I not come in and warm myself by the Are first?' he UBked saucily. "Come in and warm yourself!" echoed the' dame angrily. "Let your supper warm you, beggar!" And with that she .pushed him off of Hie step into tde sanuy wait. "May you be colder the more you put on," said the red beggar as Dame Bar-barer Bar-barer closed her cottage door upon hjtu wiili a push not very gentle. The dame did not heed him or his words, but set to work with all speed to get something ready for her husband's supper. "Slavery shakery!" said Dame Bar-barer Bar-barer to Goodman Paul when he came, "I am very cold." "Put more clothes on," he answered. So he gave her his coat, and she put that on and her thickest cloak, and her hood and a pair of mittens, and two pairs of stockings. "Shivery shakeryl Shakery shivery!" cried the old woman; "I am colder than ever." "Put more clothes on," said Paul. So she put on a veil and her husband's boots and his Sunday cravat and a pair of earrings and a walking stick, "Shivery shakeryl Shakery shivery I shiver and shake!" she cried. "I arc colder than before." "Put more clothes on," said her husband. hus-band. So she put on a blanket and a bosom pin, and a necklace that she had not worn since she was a young girl, and a collar and her husband's watch chain. "Shivery shakery! Shakery shivery 1 I shiver and shake! I shake and shiver!" she cried. "I am colder than ever." "Put more clothes on," once more said her husband. "Here, take my thick waistcoat." She took the waistcoat, but in order to get it on it was necessary to take off some of the many things she was already wearing; and, as fast as she took off the things in which she was wrapped, she began at once to get warmer, and she remembered re-membered the words of the red beggar, THE BED BEGGAR. Once upon a time there was a pretty little cottage by the side of the road to the town. It was humble, but all about it , everything, was always neat and trig, so it was evident thatit was not the dwelling of either sloth or want. A honeysuckle climbed up over the door, and gay flowers bloomed in beds before it; while on the south was the stand for the bees, where in straw thatched hives they stored honey all day long in sunny i weather. In the cottage lived an old man named Paul and his wife Barbarer. They were very fond of each other, and had it not been that they had no children they would hawt been as happy as the day was long. As it was, they tried not to miss too much the prattle of little ones which the storks would not bring to thein, but went on their way in life, thrifty and kind to the poor, and doing good when it offered. In the morning Paul would go afield to his work, whilo Puir.e Barbarer would remain at home to do whatever household house-hold tasks needed attention and afterward after-ward to spin smooth threads of flax with her distaff, to be sold in the market of the town or to be woven into cloth from which she made clothing for herself and her husband, or, what quite as often happened, for some poor and unfortunate neighbor. Dame Barbarer was always kind to the beggars who came her way. They seemed seem-ed to her so unfortunate in not having a home that she could not help giving them at least food and now and then an article of clothing, and she was almost always patient even when their requests, s sometimes happened, took almost the m m . - and how he had wished that she might grow colder the more she put on; and Dame Barbarer knew that a spell had been laid upon her because she had, spoken harshly to the vagabond when he wished to come in and warm himself by her Are. She therefore mado herself warm by taking off her wrappings until she had as little on as it was at all respectable re-spectable to wear, and thereafter she went in cold weather so thinly clad that her neighbors declared that she had lost her wits. It was well nigh a year that this state of things continued, and one day just as the sun was near setting, and the dame was every moment expecting her husband hus-band home from the field where he had been at work all day, when a strange old woman came puttering along the road. The poor old creature was bent well nigb doublo, and one could see that her back was not straight, a hump standing out where her shoulders were stooped over. The old woman, indeed, was so bent over that it was not possible to see her face, and it was only by her dress that one could have known her again. But it was this dress which made Dame Barbarer stare; for it was all of faded red, tattered and stained and weather beaten, and patched here and there, but despite the fact that it was the dress of a woman and not of a man, there was something about it that brought the red beggar of the year before up so vividly to the dame that she began, all of a tremble, to put a supper on a plate for the newcomer without even waiting to be asked. The old red woman sat down on the doorstep, panting and chuckling. "You are dressed strangely, Dame," she said, "for the time of year." "The time of year has nothing to do with what I wear," answered poor Dame Barbarer; "the colder it gets the less I wear, and in summer I have to put on the thickest things I have to keep cool," The old red woman chuckled, "Perhaps my brother has been here," she observed, eating away with a hearty appetite. "Is ho your brother?" asked Barbarer pileously; "oh, if you would only rbIc him to undo the charm and make me like other people, there isn't anything I wouldn't do for you." "Humph! Perhaps you weren't polite to him. He is very particular about that." "I am sure," the Dame answered, "I tried to be kind to him until he was aucy to me." The red woman chuckled more than ever. "Well," she said, finishing her supper, and rising with more agility than one would have expected of her; "you are on the whole a good sort, and I dare say on the whole you have been punished mOgh." "Oh, iudeed I have," poor Barbarer answered, with tears iu her eyes. "More than enough." "Well, then," the old woman said, "it shall not be said that I have not made amends for what my brother did more than you deserved, i.ud you shall have your heart's desire." She looked into Barbarer's face, and the dame would' have sworn, for her life that it was the red beggar who cursed her into whose face she was gazing. The& she bent over again with one of her sinister sin-ister chuckles, and went hobbling down the road. And before the summer came around again the storks had brought a little son to the cottage. Quincy Townaendin Boston Bos-ton Courier, 1U1 ill ul tuiuuiauun, ' -"The poor creatures know no better," he would say. "They have nothing; rot even sense enough to know how to be grateful; but that does not matter. I clo not help them because they beg prettily, but because they need." But or.ce upon a time there came a 'beggar who tried the patience of Dame Barbarer quite beyond even her endurance. endur-ance. It was one afternoon when it was aJmoet time for her husband to return from tbt field, and Barbarer was hastening hasten-ing to get his evening meal ready for him. She had been to the town to soli some thread, and had been detained, so that she had not time on her return to bake a wheaten cake for his supper, as she had intended. She had only a very little bread in the house, and when a beggar came along and rather impudently demanded a bit of bread and cheese she was loth to give it to him. The beggar was by no means a prepossessing prepos-sessing looking individual. Hisdresswas all of icd, although it was so faded and wasther beaten, so tattered and torn that it was hard to tell what it looked like in Its best days. The remains of a red cook's feather was stuck jauntily in his cap and jagged ends of faded red ribbon fastened his doublet. Long black hair dangled in tangled locks over his forehead, fore-head, and, with his shaggy black eyebrows, eye-brows, half hid his piercing eyes. His nose was sharp and thin, and there was to his nostrils a strange curve which made his face one not at all prepossessing. prepossess-ing. Add to all this that he was lame of one foot and that he had somciHng of a hump between his shoulders, and he w as not at all the sort of man one would wish to meet on a lonely road. Dame Barbarer heaved a sigh as she looked, at him, and hesitated, while the strange red figure leered at her in a manner man-ner that sent a cold chill down her spine. She did not wish to share the little bread there was for Paul's supper with this fantastic looking creature, but she was too charitable to turn him away without a morsel So she made the beggar sit down upon the doorstep, and then she brought him a small piece of bread and a big . piece of cheese, hoping that the site of the one would make up for the smallness of the other. The red beggar fell to eating with the appetite of a hoard of locusts and as if he had eaten nothing for a month, and it was hardly the twinkling of an eye before be-fore he had finished the bit of bread completely. com-pletely. 1 "Please, mistress," he said beseechingly, beseeching-ly, "please, mistress, could you not give me just a little wee bit of bread to eat with the rest of my cheese?" ' The dame, although this was exactly what she did not wi.sh to do, cut him a slice of bread and gave it to him with the beat grace she could manage. The ragged rascal fell to eating even faster than before, and almost before he had laid down the bread knife he had made an end to his cheese. "Please, kind mistress," he said more humbly than before, "please, kind mistress, mis-tress, couldn't you give me a morsel of cheese to go with my bread?" This also was Dame Barbarer fain to do; and hungrily as the fire devouring a field of ripe grain did the varlet make way with his bread. "Please, good, kind mistress," he said, "please, good, kind mistress, could you not give mo a very little, wee morsel of bread to eat with my cheese?" And to cut short a story which though it would be long ia the telling was not long in the doing, the red beggar would contrive first to make an end to his bread and then to make a a end to his cheese, begging with ever increasing iusistance for more of one and then of the other, until he had managed to beg from Dauie Barbarer every morsel of bread there was in the house, and the hour of tho S,ood man's return already striking. And when all was gone the impudent and ungrateful un-grateful red varlet threw back his hair from his deep set and piercing eyes and laughed in her face. "Many t hunks, sweet mistress," he said' saucily. "If the good man scold for lack of his supper, teach him the way I get mine, ami it may s?rv him iu good stead if he will but take to the highway and seek out some soul as charitable char-itable as his wife." -Then it was that for almost the only time in her life Dame Barbarer lost her |