on, but not fast enough to stop any Germans. They were steadily advancing, preceded by hot lead of weight 207. Well, there was plenty of that sort in Missouri, and he concluded that America ought to do more than sell it to the Allies. She ought to project a little of it, hardened with antimony, herself.

Chapter 9. Fluorine

The Riches began the winter cozily, in blissful lack of chemical consciousness. It would not greatly have interested Dr. Rich to be told that his teeth contained fluorine, or that the steel of his ax had been smelted by fluorspar, or even that fluorspar had revealed a world beyond the violet rays.

He had a chemistry which answered all his purposes. He got it from a person named Democritus, who, four centuries before Christ, had been so heretical as to believe that all things are made of atoms. Dr. Rich secretly regarded himself as pretty liberal not to wish that the books of Democritus had been burned up. He courageously admitted the general atomicity of things, though of course all atoms were massy, hard, and round. Only one thing did the old doctor reserve from granularity, and that was souls.

At Thanksgiving the Riches were grateful that Horatio, now in the trenches, was alive and had received his box. With them dined their Indian friends, the Red Leaf and the Black Hawk, sister and brother. Their name for Dr. Rich was Mainutung, the Far Hearer, and the friendship dated back half a century. They never questioned him, and he never questioned them. Nevertheless Mainutung often wondered if the Red Leaf had lost a lover in her youth, and she in turn wondered why he had waited till forty-six before marrying Winifred.

Christmas came, and all reflected with satisfaction that Horatio must have received his second box. Horatio bore a charmed life, and a letter from one of his comrades made out that he bore a charming life as well. The letter told a tale on Horatio. The writer had been with him in a charge, at a time when respirators were still few. Horatio had handed his own mask to his buddie and dashed ahead to a point where the gas was thin and Germans were thick.

In January, 1916, Jean went often on snowshoes to see Ojeeg, the nominal head of the Crane totem, whose little girl was struggling with tuberculosis. In vain she pleaded that he build a separate lodge for Penaycee and give her some air. Ojeeg always shook his head and piled more wood into the stove.

February, and Penaycee was so much 

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