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By Root 970 0

—he’d have to go. They took him down to the river, and put him in a canoe, and pushed him out for shore; and then they ran along the bank and wouldn’t let him land, until at last the current carried the canoe out into the middle, and then on down to the ocean, and he never got back. They didn’t want him back, of course, and if he’d been able to manage it, they’d have put him in another canoe and shoved him out into the river again. But still, they didn’t elect another chief in his place. Other tribes thought that was curious, and wondered about it a lot, but finally they came to the conclusion that the beech grove people were afraid a new chief might turn out to be a bad Indian, too, and wear iron shoes like Vendonah. But they were wrong, because the real reason was that the tribe had led such an exciting life under Vendonah that they couldn’t settle down to anything tamer. He was awful, but he always kept things happening—terrible things, of course. They hated him, but they weren’t able to discover any other warrior that they wanted to make chief in his place. I suppose it was a little like drinking a glass of too strong wine and then trying to take the taste out of your mouth with barley water. They couldn’t help feeling that way.”

“I see,” said Eugene. “So that’s why they named the place ‘They-Couldn’t-Help-It’!”

“It must have been.”

“And so you’re going to stay here in your garden,” he said musingly. “You think it’s better to keep on walking these sunshiny gravel paths between your flower-beds, and growing to look like a pensive garden lady in a Victorian engraving.”

“I suppose I’m like the tribe that lived here, papa. I had too much unpleasant excitement. It was unpleasant—but it was excitement. I don’t want any more; in fact, I don’t want anything but you.”

“You don’t?” He looked at her keenly, and she laughed and shook her head; but he seemed perplexed, rather doubtful. “What was the name of the grove?” he asked. “The Indian name, I mean.”

“Mola-Haha.”

“No, it wasn’t; that wasn’t the name you said.”

“I’ve forgotten.”

“I see you have,” he said, his look of perplexity remaining. “Perhaps you remember the chief’s name better.”

She shook her head again. “I don’t!”

At this he laughed, but not very heartily, and walked slowly to the house, leaving her bending over a rose-bush, and a shade more pensive than the most pensive garden lady in any Victorian engraving. . . . Next day, it happened that this same “Vendonah” or “Rides-Down-Everything” became the subject of a chance conversation between Eugene and his old friend Kinney, father of the fire-topped Fred. The two gentlemen found themselves smoking in neighbouring leather chairs beside a broad window at the club, after lunch.

Mr. Kinney had remarked that he expected to get his family established at the seashore by the Fourth of July, and, following a train of thought, he paused and chuckled. “Fourth of July reminds me,” he said. “Have you heard what that Georgie Minafer is doing?”

“No, I haven’t,” said Eugene, and his friend failed to notice the crispness of the utterance.

“Well, sir,” Kinney chuckled again, “it beats the devil! My boy Fred told me about it yesterday. He’s a friend of this young Henry Akers, son of F. P. Akers of the Akers Chemical Company. It seems this young Akers asked Fred if he knew a fellow named Minafer, because he knew Fred had always lived here, and young Akers had heard some way that Minafer used to be an old family name here, and was sort of curious about it. Well, sir, you remember this young Georgie sort of disappeared, after his grandfather’s death, and nobody seemed to know much what had become of him—though I did hear, once or twice, that he was still around somewhere. Well, sir, he’s working for the Akers Chemical Company, out at their plant on the Thomasville Road.”

He paused, seeming to reserve something to be delivered only upon inquiry, and Eugene offered him the expected question, but only after a cold glance through the nose-glasses he had lately found it necessary to adopt. “What does he do?”

Kinney laughed and slapped