_A Solitary_, Mary Wilkins Freeman.

_The Lady or the Tiger_, Frank R. Stockton.

_The Strange Ride_, Rudyard Kipling.

_Rikki-Tikki-Tavi_, Rudyard Kipling.

_They_, Rudyard Kipling.

_The Twelfth Guest_, Mary Wilkins Freeman.

_The Shadows on the Wall_, Mary Wilkins Freeman.



ETHAN BRAND[1]

A Chapter From An Abortive Romance

_By Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)_


Bartram the lime-burner, a rough, heavy-looking man, begrimed with
charcoal, sat watching his kiln, at nightfall, while his little son
played at building houses with the scattered fragments of marble,
when, on the hillside below them, they heard a roar of laughter, not
mirthful, but slow, and even solemn, like a wind shaking the boughs of
the forest.