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 Gilead, even as the Baby itself, soon palled on his newly stirred and brackish spirit, where all the marsh-gas of his stagnant young soul seemed to add more and more to the latent explosibility of his cramped and soured little life.

When the sudden yet inevitable change came, it came from a quarter least expected.

Em'ly Bird and Lulu Bird, having quarreled with Jappie Barrison and Nora Eby as to the true meaning of the familiar "N or M" of the elementary catechism, indignantly absented themselves from Sunday School and decided to hold independent religious service each Sunday afternoon in the sand-pit, down by the river, just above the ice-house.

Here Em'ly Bird read a chapter from Revelation to Annie McWilliams and Peewee Steiner, and then solemnly called on Lulu Bird for prayer. After this a hymn was sung in the dragging, high-pitched, childish voices, and Em'ly, surrounded by her following, tearfully recounted her persecutions, after the fashion of that sombre Sunday School library heroine who for the moment held sway over her shifting affection, telling of her hapless