Up the hill under which Wee Willie Winkie’s Bad Men were discussing the wisdom of carrying off the child and the girl, a look-out fired two shots.

“What have I said?” shouted Din Mahommed.  “There is the warning!  The pulton are out already and are coming across the plain!  Get away!  Let us not be seen with the boy!”

The men waited for an instant, and then, as another shot was fired, withdrew into the hills, silently as they had appeared.

“The wegiment is coming,” said Wee Willie Winkie confidently to Miss Allardyce, “and it’s all wight.  Don’t cwy!”

He needed the advice himself, for ten minutes later, when his father came up, he was weeping bitterly with his head in Miss Allardyce’s lap.

And the men of the 195th carried him home with shouts and rejoicings; and Coppy, who had ridden a horse into a lather, met him, and, to his intense disgust, kissed him openly in the presence of the men.

But there was balm for his dignity.  His father assured him that not only would the breaking of arrest be condoned, but that the good-conduct badge would be restored as soon as his mother could sew it on his blouse-sleeve.  Miss Allardyce had told the Colonel a story that made him proud of his son.

“She belonged to you, Coppy,” said Wee Willie Winkie, indicating Miss Allardyce with a grimy fore-finger.  “I knew she didn’t ought to go acwoss ve wiver, and I knew ve wegiment would come to me if I sent Jack home.”

“You’re a hero, Winkie,” said Coppy—­“a pukka hero!”

“I don’t know what vat means,” said Wee Willie Winkie, “but you mustn’t call me Winkie any no more.  I’m Percival Will’am Will’ams.”

And in this manner did Wee Willie Winkie enter into his manhood.

THE GOLD BUG

BY EDGAR ALLAN POE

Poe was the first American short-story writer.  Others had written stories that were short, but he was the first to recognize the short-story as having a form and an aim all its own.  Moreover, he was willing to admit the public to his laboratory and to explain his process, for he discounted inspiration and emphasized craftsmanship.  In “The Philosophy of Composition” he declares that every plot “must be elaborated to its denouement before anything is attempted with the pen.  It is only with the denouement constantly in view that we can give a plot its indispensable air of consequence, or causation, by making the incidents and especially the tone, at all points, tend to the development of the intention.”  He also tells us that he prefers beginning with an effect.  Having chosen, in the first place, an effect that is both novel and vivid, he decides “whether it can be best wrought by incident or tone,” and afterward looks about “for such combinations of events, or tone, as shall best aid ... in the construction of the effect.”