[begin page 179]

I must begin, in order to make him do the like, according to his promise. His name is George Louisiana Purchase Harrison;* I am Alison, his wife. I was married at 18, and am 26 now; he is 33. We are to write our small history, so that the children may have it when they grow up; a thing which has long been my dearest desire, and now it is really going to be fulfilled at last. I want it written for the children's sake, but I have one other reason for wishing it: I think he is literary in his make, indeed I feel sure of it. Why, the letters which he wrote to me while we were engaged—oh, there were never such letters! But he has never had to work for his living, and so he is easy-going and indolent, and has never had any troubles or sorrows or calamities to rouse up the literary fires that are slumbering in him and make them burst their bonds and find expression; therefore they can't seem to get started, lacking that impulse, do what I may to push him and pester him and persuade him to a trial of his gift. He only laughs, and says “fetch on your calamities, and I'm your man;” which piques me and I promise them, and he pinches my ear or kisses me and says I am a little fool and says a woman's exaggerating idolatries are always

---

*It is a curious name, but in its way is patriotic. He was born on the date of the signing of the Purchase-treaty, and at first was named George only, but by and by when the slow news arrived the other names were added. His father, who is still with us, and hale and hearty at 60, has a patriotic name, too—Andrew Independence Harrison. He was born during the Revolutionary War. A. H. [begin page 180] finding talents in her husband where none exist. And there it all ends for the time, in chaff and nonsense.

But he has promised, now—promised that he will begin this night, if I will excuse him from the birthday party—so I am satisfied and happy; oh, happier than I can find words to put it in! By the terms, I am to begin on my share to-day, and do something at it every day until it is finished. And it is real work for me, for I only know long-hand; whereas he knows short-hand, and can dash off 8,000 words an hour, like nothing.

This beginning of mine is more a pretence than anything else; I am doing it to keep my contract, and partly to get my bearings—get my hand in, get into the current and limber-up my fins for my excursion, he calls it. I have been driven hard all day with the birthday preparations, and my head and hands are full of what is still to be done and suffered between now and midnight; but to-morrow will see me take up my end of the history seriously.

It is a children's party—Alison's birthday. That is the blonde—6 years old, the dearest little fairy! all sweetness and sunshine and affection, and the deepest and wisest and cunningest little mind, that's always thinking and thinking, and putting this and that together, and dropping her small dredge into the awful depths of the mystery of life and bringing up the most astonishing results! Margery is the brunette—5 years old, dear and sweet and loving, like her sister, but oh, dear, what a steam-engine, what a tireless volcanic eruption of fun and frolic and gladness! and what an unutterable blessing they both are to this house! And how useful they are to me! When I can't persuade George, I send him those little rascals—he is their slave. After begging him a year to write, it occurred to me to send them—this morning. That settled it. And now while our children are the subject I will go on to the next—

II..

The party is nearly over, and all has gone well. I must make a note, while I rest a moment, privately. This sumptuous great [begin page 181] house was never so beautiful before, never so glorious with light and color and spendthrift richness and charm! It is the fine colonial Old Virginia of my girlhood transplanted to this remote and primitive Indiantown. There are thirty children, rich and poor together; all good, respectable and well-mannered, and happy beyond description. Such games, such romps, such racket and laughter! there was never anything so lovely to see. What a boon and a blessing is life! what a joy it is! There are old people here, living their happy youth over again; and there are young grownups, also: Sidney Phillips, among others—a handsome creature, good-hearted, and a most winning and courteous gentleman; he is attracted by that sweet Agnes Burley, and she by him—I see it quite plainly. And am glad, too; it would be—will be—a lovely match. And Frances Osgood and her husband are here, the handsomest pair in the town—very dear friends of ours. Their bewitching twins are with them—charming lads! Our slaves—and nearly everybody's, I think—are helping; mainly of their own accord, so as to have a chance in the fun and the refreshments; of course they are having a good time, it's their nature.

At eight o'clock I carried my small first chapter to George and gave it him in his study and required him to take up his pen and keep his word! Poor boy, he was lazy and drowsy and didn't want to, but he pulled himself together, like an honorable man, and arranged his paper and sat down to his task. I bound a damp towel around his head, because he says writing makes his brain feverish, then I left him nodding over my manuscript. I waited outside a minute or two, with the door a-crack, to see if he would really begin; but down went his nose on the desk, and he was sound asleep! I thought I would go and wake him, but I hadn't the heart. However, after the least little while he raised his head briskly up like one finely refreshed, put my poor screed reverently to his lips and kissed it—it made the tears spring to my eyes, I was so proud and happy!—then he fell briskly to work with his pen.

Half past eleven. The party is breaking up, joyous and noisy; I must go and do the good-bying. In half an hour they'll all be gone, then we'll romp along up to the study and break into papa's work and tell him all about it.

[begin page 182]

after an interval of fifteen years .

I am looking again upon her closing words—the last she ever wrote in this life:

“After begging him a year to write, it occurred to me to send them—this morning. That settled it. And now while our children are the subject I will go on to the next—”

That is our Tom. She was going to speak of him; but it was not to be. More than fifteen black years have dragged over my head since then. I can see her yet, just as she was, her young grace and loveliness all radiant with the excitements and anticipations of the occasion. She gave me what she had written, and bound the towel about my head—the last touch of her dear hand I was ever to know—and went to her death!

I do not know at what hour the disaster happened. I was intending to begin to write, according to my promise, and I think I did begin; but I was very drowsy and I fell asleep. I woke suddenly in the midst of fire and smoke, and heard a babel of frightful sounds: crashings, the roaring of flames, despairing cries, the tumultuous rush of feet. I seized her precious manuscript and floundered down the murky stairs, shouting the names that were so dear to me; then the smoke strangled me and I lost consciousness. I was found and dragged out into the open; and when I came to, the great house was a billowy mass of flame and I was a bereft and broken-hearted man. My little Tom was all that was left to me; my wife and my little girls I was never to see again in this life. Others had perished, so it was told me, but not more than two, God be thanked. One of them was little Harry Osgood; poor Frances, the years have softened that blow but little; she mourns still, and cannot be comforted. And I have mourned with her all these years, and know what she feels. Hers is a peculiarly hard case, for while [begin page 183] the death of one of her twins was a sufficiently heavy calamity, the survival of the other was perhaps a heavier one.

My life, before my disaster, was wholly happy. It was tranquil and eventless, and there was not much in it to exercise a pen upon; still, I would have written it if my wife had lived, since that was her wish; but I have had no heart for it since, and I shall never do it, now. Yet I am moved to write my very recent life, my life of the past months, skipping and ignoring the past fifteen years. And that I will do, for the easement it may give me to look myself in the face and confess whither I have lately drifted, and what I am become!

But I cannot do it in the first person; I must spare myself that shame; must is the right word; I could not say in the first person the things I ought to say, even if I tried. I could not say “I did such and such things;” it would revolt me, and the pen would refuse. No, I will write as if it were a literary tale, a history, a romance—a tale I am telling about another man, a man who is nothing to me, and whose weak and capricious character I may freely turn inside out and expose, without the sense of being personally under the knife. I will make of myself a stranger, and say “George Harrison did so and so.”

In the hope and belief that by the protection of this device I shall be enabled to frankly tell everything just as it happened, I will now begin.

george louisiana purchase harrison.

Indiantown was a village of twelve or fifteen hundred inhabitants. It was away out of the world, and sleepy and peaceful, and had no newspaper, and was comfortable and content. Its climate was a pleasant one; sometimes there was a winter, but this did not happen every year. It was a corn-growing country, and from [begin page 184] the village-edges the great fields stretched mile upon mile to the north and to the south up the valley and down it, each with its family house in a big yard; the cluster of slave cabins a hundred yards behind it; around and beyond the cabins, the orchards and gardens and melon patches. Indiantown's Christianity was of the usual Southern breeds—Methodist, Presbyterian, Baptist—and each sect had a church which was commodious but not architectural. There was a court house; also a jail; for this was the county seat. There were two foreigners, a German and an Irishwoman, and they were man and wife. The people put the precedence the other way—wife and man; and they said that in the distribution of the sexes between them a mistake had been made.

Indian river ran by the town. It was not a great stream, but it was clear and clean and bright, and its banks were beautiful in summer with overhanging willows and with curving meadow-vacancies cushioned with grass and sprinkled as with fire-coals when the prairie-pink was in bloom. The stage road ran along the river, and one of these meadow-stretches occurred at the northern edge of the village. In the middle of it was the mill, on the bank; close to it, on the south side, was the dwelling of the salaried mill-hand—that German, Jake Bleeker; close to the mill on its northern side was the house of its owner, the venerable Andrew Independence Harrison, with garden and orchard behind it. Harrison was a widower; so also was his son George Louisiana Purchase Harrison, (now 48 years old), who lived with him. George's son Thomas had his home there, too, but he was away just now. He was a budding lawyer of promise, twenty-two years old, and had been in training a good while—without salary—with Gilbert, head of the profession in the village. Gilbert had sent him down to New Orleans on a piece of slow but important business, and he had now been absent more than three months.

In an earlier day the Harrisons had stood next to the Fairfaxes4 [begin page 185] by the public rating, because of their wealth and high character. They would have ranked as the equals of the Fairfaxes but for the fact that they were not blue-blooded, (not “quality,” as the phrase went,) while the Fairfaxes were. But the Harrison property was gone, now. Andrew Independence Harrison had nothing left but the mill, and had been a poor man for ten years. Poor, struggling, worried, in debt, and the bitterness of wounded pride poisoning his peace in the day and his sleep in the night all these years.

Just at the time that he lost his property, (which was five years after the burning of the stately Harrison mansion), he lost his best friend, also—the “Squire” Fairfax of that generation, his comrade and crony from boyhood up. The son, the inheriting Squire, he and his son George hardly knew. He had always kept to himself, as boy and youth—“proud and stuck-up because he was quality,” was his reputation; and when he came back from a four-years' course in a Virginian college he had developed a drinking-habit and a fighting temper which easily enabled him to keep to himself as much as he liked—and more, possibly. He returned to Virginia and soon brought back a bride. From that moment he dropped drink and set an iron grip upon his temper. One child was born—a girl—and thenceforth the wife was an invalid, and never left the house. Her young husband devoted himself to her, served her like a slave, lived in the light of her eyes. Both were fond of books; of that company they had plenty; of any other they had little, and seemed quite satisfied to have it so. As the child Helen grew along they educated her themselves. She did not find the house a solitude; there were a dozen black domestics, the dearest and loveliest company in the world for a white child; there was an idolizing grandfather, (till death took him,) and as the years came and went Helen gathered friends in the village and further enriched her life.

At the time that this story opens the Fairfax home had been for a year and more a house of mourning once more. She who had for twenty years made its life beautiful by the graces of her mind and the ministry of her love had passed to her rest. For the daughter the puissant magician Youth was working his enchantments, and the clouds were beginning to break, now, but for the father this help [begin page 186] was wanting; the pain of his loss did not diminish with time, but grew.

The Fairfax house, which was a spacious old-fashioned mansion, stood fifty or sixty yards back from the river road, and was nearly hidden from sight among shade-trees. Behind it its fields stretched a mile to the hills, and in their midst was the hamlet of white-washed log cabins called the “nigger-quarter.” The mansion was a short mile northward from the mill; between was the country blacksmith shop, on the river bank. It stood under the vast spread of an ancient live-oak, and was the intelligence-centre of the northward-lying farming region. It did the horse-shoeing and wagon-mending for fifteen or twenty farms, and under the tree in summer and in the shop in winter was usually to be found a company of waiting gossips.

To return to the Fairfax house. On entering, one passed a couple of rooms on the right-hand side of the hall; then came a third, on the same side,—the Squire's work-room—and it is with this one that we have to do, now that we are ready to begin. There is a grand wood fire flaming there in a spacious fireplace, for it is cold weather and a blustering day. The date is Saturday, November the third.

Two men sat in that room. One of them was Andrew Independence Harrison. He was seventy-five, and looked even older. He was lean and sallow and shrunken and tall, and his bony long fingers looked like talons, and he had a sickly aspect, and coughed a good deal. He wore a coarse linen shirt, sagging open at the neck and exposing the stringy throat and something of the breast; cowhide boots which had not been recently greased; a battered slouch hat; and his body was clothed in an old blue-jeans suit whose seams showed whitish, from wear. The other man was perhaps forty-five years old. His dress was plain and simple, but of [begin page 187] fine material and perfect in fit, and he had a grave, intelligent face and the port and bearing of a gentleman. This was the Squire. Just at this moment he was saying—

“Mr. Harrison, I suppose you know why I sent for you?”

The old man winced, but did not look up. He said morosely—

“Say your say—I reckon I can stand it. I've got to.”

“I gave you back your note for the four thousand dollars and interest—the only evidence of the indebtedness.”

“Yes”—impatiently.

“I suppose you knew the money you paid me was counterfeit?”

Harrison fidgeted in his chair; took off his hat and twirled it nervously in his hands; his face worked, but he found nothing to say, and gave it up.

“You knew it was counterfeit?”

After another struggle—doggedly—

“I was in a tight place—you know that.”

“Not in a tight enough place for you to return a kindness with a swindle. In what way were you in a tight place?”

Harrison evidently found an explanation difficult, for the moment. Then he began an effort—

“You could have come down on me and taken the mill. And then—well, it's everything; I haven't got anything else.”

“The excuse is not well conceived. I lent you the money to save the mill. From your creditors. The debt was two years and a half old—had I ever asked you to pay?”

“Well—er—you could have done it. It was always hanging over me. It was a tight place.”

“Harrison, I'm ashamed of you.”

“Oh, go on—pile it on. I'm down; walk over me. I reckon you never lent it to me for love, anyway.”

“For love of you—no, I didn't. Nor out of love for George your son, who was my schoolmate, who mistook my natural shyness for ‘quality’ airs—they all did—and has never liked me, though as I knew him to be in error as to the cause, I have not held it against him. No, I did it because my father and you were close friends all his life till he died, ten years ago. It was for my father's sake—that was all. He respected you and believed in you. You have deteriorated [begin page 188] since—in several ways; and at last, your honesty is gone. George is a reproduction of your old former and excellent self—there is not much left of you but a caricature of it. To look at you now, and remember what you were in those days!”

“Oh, go it!” snorted the old man; then, rather irrelevantly, “Those days! If you only go back far enough you warn't just a model, yourself. You used to drink and fight, and had a devil's temper—it's not for you to talk, Squire Fairfax.”

“Maybe so, maybe so,” said the Squire, his eye lighting angrily for a moment. “I was that person; it is twenty years ago. It is ancient history and does not interest me; come back to the other subject.”

“All right,” said Harrison, with an insolent air, “you've sent for me—I'm here—now what do you want?”

“Your note again, for four thousand and interest, payable one day after date, and secured by a mortgage on the mill.”

“Oh, you do? And supposing you don't get it?”

“I'll send you up for twenty years!”

The old man crumpled together in a sudden collapse, and sat ghastly white and trembling, during more than a minute, a pathetic object; then humbly, and in a voice shaky with fright and distress, he said—

“Lord, I never thought of that. Oh, I'll do it—I'll do anything you say. Twen-ty years! It's for life, at my time! I'll do it; I will, on honor. But don't tell on me, don't! I'm a poor old fool, and down in the world; you won't tell on me, will you?”

An expression, partly of pity, partly of disgust, passed over the Squire's features, and he said—

“Drop that; I am not that sort. Now, then, you will never pay this money, nor any of it—I know that quite well, and I shan't ask you; but George is made of better stuff, and some day, if he is ever able, he will pay. Until he is able he will not be asked; I am not a squeezer of the helpless. Whatever is mine is my daughter's. If I die with the debt unpaid, the mortgage is an asset; she will do with it as she pleases—that is her affair.”

And so the interview ended, and Harrison went his way.

[begin page 189]

Squire Fairfax sat a while, thinking. “I wonder if he is quite straight in his brain,” he mused; “he was always honest and honorable, and now all of a sudden . . . hm . . . very strange—can't be natural . . . and that harassed look in his eyes . . . his cares and troubles . . . on top of these, some visits from Deathshead Phillips, if rumor is right, a thing well calculated to dangerously disturb a distressed and superstitious mind. . . .” He took from his pocket the counterfeit money, a fat roll of bills, and reached out to put it on the fire, but paused. . . . “No—to merely tell him these witnesses are burnt—he would always be in doubt—the terror of the uncertainty would be an awful thing for that broken old creature to bear. . . . I'll give them to him when he brings the note.” He put them on the table and went on with his thinkings. Presently he was aware that he was not alone. He glanced up and said—

“Oh, it's you, Bridget.” He tossed the notes into the drawer of the table, and closed it. “Well, what is it?”

“If you please, sir, I've finished the sewing, and Miss Helen don't need me now, and my husband's not willing for me to work here anny more, so I've come to go.”

“Not willing? What's the trouble?”

“Well, your 'anner will remember you called him a hard name, sir, and he can't get over it. It's got around, and they keep nagging him and pestering him and joking him about it and saying it's true—and that's the worrst of it.”

“I called him a hard name? Impossible. What was it?”

“Your 'anner said he was an ill-mannered, muddle-headed, over-sentimental German jackass.”

“Oh, that. I had forgotten it.”

“Well, he don't forget it; and they don't let him, annyway. It just makes him boil, so it does.”

Her eyes snapped, and she was evidently about to warm up, but the Squire interrupted her. He said gravely—meditatively—

“It is a pity. Many would consider it a compliment.”

The young woman's jaw dropped, in surprise, and she stood gazing at the Squire as if trying to make out just how the remark [begin page 190] ought to be taken. But she got no information there—the face remained grave. She was nonplussed; the stream of talk that was about to flow was apparently dammed at its source. She made a futile attempt to start it, then gave it up and said—

“It's four dollars, sir.”

The Squire paid her, answered her curtsy with a bow, and she went her way muttering, “A compliment, is it? I wonder would he give thanks to God if he was flatthered so?”

She was not in a pleasant humor. She had expected the Squire to make a sort of constructive apology for the hard name and ask her to go on sewing for his daughter; and she had been badly disappointed. She hadn't at bottom cared for that “compliment,” for it was rather weak and incompetent compared with some she had paid her husband herself from time to time, and she wished now that she hadn't said anything, but had told her husband to mind his own business and leave her to take care of her own commercial affairs; but it was too late, now; the mischief was done, she had lost an easy and well-paid three days' sewing per week and a gossipy and comfortable time with the Squire's “niggers” thrown in, and nobody's fault but her own. And so, naturally, she put the blame on the Squire, and began to hate him and to approve her husband's hatred of him, and said she would pay him off, one of these days. But at the same time she would put the blame on her husband, too—there could be no sense in wasting opportunities and throwing away God's good gifts. She began on him as soon as he came to supper, that evening.

“He let me go—without a worrd—just the same as dischairged me! And who's to blame? You, you Dutch pirate!”

“Ah, now den, Pridget, don't talk like dot. It spoil de supper again; always it spoil de supper when you talk like dot; I didn't know you would lose de place.”

“You didn't! Didn't you tell me to quit work there? Didn't you?”

“Well, you see, I didn't expect you would do it, and so—”

“Well, I did, and I was a fool, too. And I told him what he called you—you'd never have spirit enough—and he said it was a compliment; and it was, too.”

[begin page 191]

“Gompliment? Du lieber Gott!”

“Don't squirt that Dutch loblolly on me, Jake Bleeker, I hate the very sound of it. He said it was a compliment; and if you had even the rags of a man in you, you'd—but law, you'll never do anything. You're always talking about the big things you're going to do, but I never see you do anny of them, and talking's cheap. A man can call you annything he wants to.”

“Now you'll see, Pridget, you'll see; you yoost wait till I get a chance—you'll see!” and he brought his fist down on the table and made the dishes jump.

“Oh, shut up, you make me sick. Look here, have you spoke to old Harrison about raising your wages, which he said he would when he got the Squire's debt paid off?”

“Well, you see, it's like dis. He—”

“So he hasn't raised them. What's the raison? Why hasn't he?”

“You see, Vorgestern—”

“Say it in a Christian tongue, you thingumbob!”

“Well, it was before yesterday he has said he will begin tomorrow; but to-day—well, to-day he has said I can hunt another blace if I want to, he don't raise no wages.”

“Another place? there ain't anny other place. Jake Bleeker! you don't mean to tell me you took him up? It's just like you, I never saw such a mudhead. Now what are we going to do?”

“But Pridget, you go so quick. You don't let me tell you. I didn't take him up.”

“Oh! All right, then. But it's an accident: it's only because you didn't think of it.”

“But Pridget, even if I had thought of it—”

“Oh, don't worry, you weren't in anny danger. You think! Oh, dear me, what would you do it with?”

“Do it with, Pridget? Why, I—”

“Don't. Don't explain; I can't stand your explanations, they fuddle me so. And so we've got to go on hobbling along on sixteen dollars a month again, just the same as ever. And I've lost my sewing! Oh, you're done at last, are you? Then clear out—I want to wash up the dishes.”

[begin page 192]

That talk was in the cabin, by the mill. About the same time, or somewhat later, perhaps, another one was going on in the neighboring house, on the other side of the mill, occupied by the mill's owner. It was between old Mr. Harrison and his son George. The two sat before a hickory fire in the sitting room, a tidy and homelike place, with a rag carpet on the floor, splint chairs, books on a shelf, on the mantelpiece and on the table, tallow candles in polished brass candlesticks; on the table a jug of cider and glasses, a plate of apples and a plate of cracked hickory nuts; on the walls some sufficiently primitive pictures and a humble engraving of Washington.

George was forty-eight years old, as has been already remarked. He was tall, and strongly and symmetrically built; his dress was the common blue jeans, but it was neat and shapely and becoming, and a good fit. The face was refined and intellectual; it had some decision and much kindliness in it, and anyone would concede that it was a face to be trusted.

“Father, is it true that you told Jake to-day that you had changed your mind and—”

“Warn't going to raise his wages? Yes.”

The son waited for him to go on, but he didn't.

“But why? He had the promise.”

“So he had. On a condition.”

“A condition? I didn't know of any.”

“I reckon you did.”

“I don't call any to mind. I thought it was understood that as soon as the Squire was paid—”

“That was the condition.”

The son looked puzzled. Then—

“Well, that condition being fulfilled—”

“Which it isn't!”

George was startled.

“Why, father, you said you had paid the debt, and got back your note.”

“The money turned out to be counterfeit!” and the old man rose and began to stride up and down excitedly.

The son's eyes followed him with an amazed fascination. The [begin page 193] money spurious! How was this? What could be the explanation of it? After a little—

“But father, how—”

“Don't ask me any questions!”

“But—”

“I tell you don't ask me any questions—then you'll be a mighty sight better off.”

It was a confession! The son was silent. Here was matter merely for shame, not talk. He bowed his head. The father noticed this attitude, and came near and stood looking down upon him.

“Oh, yes, whine about it—do! I don't care, I'd do it again! Wait till you're ground down into the earth with trouble and debt and bad luck and everything, and temptation comes along! You wait till then—that's all. Some people can be almighty high-toned and pure and goody-goody and all that, when there's nothing to hinder; you wait—that's all; see how many gilt-edged airs you'll put on then!”

“Ah, but father—”

“Don't talk to me—I won't hear it. Curse him, he could have passed the counterfeits along; twouldn't have hurt him, and it would have saved me, and he wouldn't do it, and I so old and poor. Oh, I'll get even with him some day, you mark my words. He made me give him a new note payable one day after date and back it up with a mortgage on the mill—”

“This is aw—”

“Shut up and let me talk! Swore he'd jail me for life if I didn't do it. So I've sent it to him. I reckon he thought I'd fetch it myself, the hound—yes, take another dose of his medicine, eat some more dirt! Promised he wouldn't tell on me, and said he would burn the bogus money as soon as he got the note and mortgage, but sho!—”

“It was splendidly generous, father! I'm unspeakably thankful. A harder man would have kept that money by him, so that some day in case—”

“Believe him, don't you?”

“Certainly I do; his word's gold.”

“All right; I wish I had him in the same place; if I wouldn't make it sultry for him—”

[begin page 194]

“I'm glad you haven't; and I'm glad he's got the new note and the mortgage. If I live I'll see to it that—”

“He's paid? Oh, of course—oh, certainly; and you can take it out in paying him—hang the copper he'll ever get out of me, and I told him so. Said he wouldn't ever crowd me, and I told him to go to hell—”

“Oh—”

“Said he wouldn't ever crowd you, and I told him to go to hell again—”

“O, I do think—”

“Think away—think what you like!”

“I'll go and thank him tomorrow, and say—”

“You will, will you? He hates you, and said so; and said if you ever spoke to him, even to say God bless you, he'd smash down with the mortgage on the spot. Oh, yes, I would go and thank him, by all means—I wouldn't lose any time about it—oh, yes, it would be such a noble good thing to see your old father bundled out of house and home before dark. Look here!”

“Well?”

“Promise you'll never speak to him till the day that debt's paid.”

“Why, I can't see why I—”

“Promise!”

“But what good—”

“He'll never speak to you in the world—he told me so; and if you speak to him he'll insult you—he told me that. Promise, I tell you!”

“Very well, if nothing else can satisfy you.”

“All right. Glad you can be reasonable for once in a while—it's not your habit.”

The old man mashed his hat down on his head and went frothing and foaming out of the place. The son got up and walked the floor in miserable distress, thinking bitter thoughts and putting them into muttered and mumbled words.

“He has gone steadily down hill ever since he lost his property; within the week he has made a sudden drop to profanity, but that he would or could ever sink to swindling—it was unthinkable! [begin page 195] . . . I could as easily have imagined him telling a lie. There must be something fearfully disintegrating to character in the loss of money. Men suffer other bereavements and keep up; but when they lose their money, straightway the structure which we call character, and are so proud of, and have such placid confidence in, and think is granite, begins to crumble and waste away, and then . . . the granite that had been sand once is sand again! He—why, God bless me, he warned me! . . . Could debt, and trouble, and loss of people's deference—and the humiliation of it—and impending poverty and want—and the humiliation of that—could they make me do a dishonorable thing under temptation? It seems impossible—it is impossible! No, no, it is preposterous—even grotesquely preposterous. . . . and yet, see what he was.”

His walk came to a sudden stop. Something had risen in his mind—a memory.

“It must have been as much as fourteen years ago,” he muttered; “yet I remember it clearly, although I am not sure that I have thought of it since. He argued with Rev. Mr. Bailey about temptations, and said a character that hadn't been exposed to them and solidified by fighting them and losing the fight was a flabby poor thing and couldn't be depended on in an emergency. He said a temptation successfully resisted was good, but a fall was better. He said he wouldn't go so far as to put temptations in the way of a child of his, but had always been willing to see them come; and said a person wouldn't ever be safe until he had been tried and had fallen. Mr. Bailey was amazed; and grieved, too; and said the wisest men of all lands and ages had taught that the only safe way was to flee temptation, shun it, avoid it, keep out of its way; and that they were right. Ah, I would God my father had laid that lesson to heart! Then this miserable business would not have happened.”

His thoughts drifted to another detail, and his face flushed. “And so Walter Fairfax hates me, and said so. I wonder at his saying so. It is not like his dignity. Still, he was hot-tempered in bygone times, and father could have provoked it out of him—he would be competent for that in these strange latter times. . . . Well, there is not much love lost; although I always wanted to like him I never could and never did; even at school he couldn't seem to forget that [begin page 196] his family was ‘quality.’ And now—ah, well, now he wouldn't wipe his aristocratic boots on a Harrison! . . . Come in! In this time of trouble I suppose a thoughtful Providence has sent me that intolerable Paul Pry. Come in! Of course I've got to open the door, or he'll knock there till he hears himself do it.”

Dug Hapgood entered. He was twenty-five years old, but had no beard—at least not the letter but only the spirit of it: a silky faint yellowish fuzz which was not visible in all lights. His complexion was fresh and rosy; he was five feet ten and sturdily and compactly built; he had smart bright eyes that were full of friendliness and interest and good-humored zeal; on his head and down over his ears was crowded a partly bald dog-skin cap; around his neck was wound a red yarn comforter whose tasseled ends hung down his back; on his hands were red yarn mittens; his overcoat hung down to the middle of his boot-leg, had bone buttons of great size, and was made of coarse white blanketing and had a very broad and conspicuous green stripe running round its skirts low down.

He had had scarlet fever when he was a boy, and it had injured his ear-machinery; the defect had increased with the years until at last he couldn't hear himself talk, and didn't believe anybody else could. His people were all dead; he lived by odd jobs, which were infrequent and he did not regret it; he was a sociable animal, and knew everybody, including the “niggers,” and everybody knew him.

He came in stamping and flapping, pulling off his mitts, unwinding his comforter, tugging off his cap—which released his spiky hair and gave it a chance to stand up and stretch its legs, and it looked grateful for that—and lifted up a stupendous voice and shouted—

“Snowing like Sam Hill!” Stepped a stride nearer his host, put up his big hands trumpet-fashion, and thundered, “I said it's snowing like Sam Hill!”

“Yes, I heard you. Don't yell so.”

“Hey?”

“I heard you.”

“Oh, you did!” He sat down and spread his legs and hands before [begin page 197] the fire. “It's awful comfortable here.” Then louder—“I said it's awful comfortable here—hey?”

“I didn't say anything.”

“Louder, George, I'm a little hard of hearing, lately.”

“I said—I—didn't—say—anything.”

Dug began to help himself to the eatables. Sipping cider and munching an apple, he went cheerfully on with his whoopings and shoutings.

“Say! Where's the gov'ner?”

“Just gone out. Gone to bed I reckon; he is not very well, these days.”

This was repeated, and Dug got it.

“Say! What's up, George? I've just come from Jake Bleeker's. Stopped in, a minute, to see how things are going, there.”

“Very kind of you. And customary.”

“Hey?”

“Very kind of you!”

“Oh—that's all right. I don't mind it, I like it. I got plenty time. Say! the gov'ner didn't raise his wages. Had the promise, you know, when the Squire's paid off. Well, he got paid. What's the hitch?”

George yelled coldly—

“That's my father's affair.” (Repeated.)

“Oh—just so. And the Squire's got a new note—to-day; and a mortgage. How does that come?”

“What is that to you? And what the devil do you know about it?” shrieked George, angrily.

Dug yelled in his most friendly and placating and soothing tone—

“Oh, that's all right, George. The gov'ner and the lawyer sent the things to the Squire by the old auction-bell nigger and gave him a quarter, and I run across him; and it happened that the Squire's was on my road, so I offered to do the delivery for nothing; but the nigger couldn't tell me what was done up in the red tape; so as I went along I reckoned there wasn't any hurry, and set down to rest at the blacksmith shop and undone the tape—”

“You meddling scoundrel!”

[begin page 198]

“Who? Me? Why, George, where's the harm?—you know it's perfectly safe with me.”

“Safe with you—the idea! You've told a hundred people, and you know it.”

“Why George, I haven't done any such thing; and you oughtn't to talk to an orphan like that, that hasn't got any relations left in the world, even distant ones, except himself; and as for—”

“Oh, stuff! every time you do a piece of calamitous stupidity you think it's sufficient palliation that you are an orphan. Great guns! you're enough to drive a man—look here, how many people did you tell?”

“George, I can lay my hand on my heart and give you my word of honor that I never told a soul but Rube Haskins, and Ben Thurlow, and the Bleekers, and Burt Higgins, and—”

“The blacksmith! Burt Higgins! Oh, my goodness, why didn't you tell him first, and save yourself the trouble of telling the rest of the human race?”

“It wasn't any trouble, George, I only done it because—”

“Oh, never mind, let it go—it's a cursèd world we live in, and a person's got to stand it. Look here, I thought the Squire told you a while ago that if you came yelling gossip around his house any more he'd break your back; how did you dare to venture there again?”

Dug roared out, with dignity—

“It was my duty, George. I had to take him the papers, hadn't I? Of course. A person that hasn't got any principles won't take any risks; but a person that has, has got to. He can't shirk, he knows the All-seeing Eye is upon him. And then—” He looked cautiously around the room, as if to note if there were any possible listeners, then leaned far over and thundered into George's ear, “Say! he's drinking again!”

“No!”

“Yes!”

“Ah, that is pitiful—that is too pitiful. I hope it isn't so.”

“Hey?”

“I—hope—it isn't—so!”

“Oh! Well, but it is. Not much, but a little—and regular.” He [begin page 199] took another cautious look around the room, then bent over and screamed, “Don't let it go any further, but it's true. I know it. I smelt his breath. And you know, he was irritable—I noticed that. He said something, and I said hey? and he said something again, and I said hey, and he said something again, and I said hey again, and then he appeared to lose his tranquillity, as you may say, and put his mouth close and raised on his tip-toes and said ‘If you say hey again I'll strangle you.’ His very words. Yes, sir, he's been drinking; and it affects his serenity. You can see it. I offered to sit down, and he gave me that kind of a glance, you know, and that little wag of the head that you give a nigger when you're ready for him to go, so I thought I wouldn't sit down then, but wait till he might change his mind; and then I started to ask him how it come that he got paid the other day and now here was this new note—but you know that big cane he carries?—cane he calls it, club I call it—you could knock a bull down with it—well, it was laying on a chair—this was in the back room, ground floor, where he has his desk, you know—and he begun to edge towards it and his fingers begun to work, and so I didn't wait but promised to call again. Oh, yes, he's been drinking, George, I've got other evidence. He's been—at it—three—weeks—do you hear?”

“Oh, impossible!”

“You listen. As I was coming away, as luck would have it I saw one of the niggers striking up back towards the fields, and I struck out after him. I let him get about a quarter of a mile from anywheres, then I closed up on him. It was young Ben—not a very smart Aleck, for a house servant—not one of the kind that sets the river afire, you know—and I got at the particulars. He didn't want to tell, but I hung on, and at last I milked him. George!”

“Well?”

“He was mournful and melancholy all the year, but he kept the cheerfulest outside he could for Helen's sake, and stayed by her like a mother, and put in the bulk of his time diverting her mind and shoring up her spirits—oh, he's a man, George, these people don't know him, but I do, because I know his niggers—but here lately he has got his reward all of a sudden and she's as happy as a bird; and now it's all the other way, and she's putting in all her [begin page 200] time, nearly, trying to keep him up; but you see, the minute she was happy and his job off his hands, he begun to get melancholy again, and then melancholier, and at last I reckon he thought he would take just one little drop—dangerous, after going dry twenty years, George—and he was a goner! He's been at it three weeks, George. Not heavy, but regular—and increasing; that's the worst of it. And do you know how he kept it dark from everybody? Did it all after ten at night—up stairs in his room, Helen5 and the niggers all in bed, away back in the other end of the house. Next day, cloves and coffee-grains, and the other breath-extinguishers.”

“It is pitiful; it's too pitiful for anything.”

“If he hadn't lost his wife—”

“Yes, I know. He worshiped her, and she deserved it. Anything she wanted him to do, it was no trouble for him to do it, but a pleasure. I've been told it by Gilbert and the doctor. They said she only had to ask him, on the marriage day, to stop drinking and learn to master his temper, and she never had to mention it to him again. They said she was his moral stay and support.”

“Just revolutionized him, George! My, but he was a fighter, they say! Give him a toddy, and start his temper, and furnish him a subject, and land, but he would make the fur fly! That's what they say. It is a pity, George.”

“Oh, yes, it's an unspeakable pity. Poor Helen!”

“She don't know it, George, good luck! Nobody knows it but the niggers, and they'd lie about it—the same as Ben did with me. Swore it wasn't so; and stuck to it as long as he could. Say, George, I hear it's four days since you've been out of the house; but you're looking all right. Not sick?”

“No,” and George colored slightly. “I haven't seemed to feel like it. I haven't had a holiday for a good while, and this is good weather for one. I think I shall stay in a few days longer, and smoke and read and rest up.”

“You couldn't do a better thing, George. Hearing the talk that's around wouldn't do you any good; I don't listen, myself, half the [begin page 201] time. You lay low, and be comfortable, and let this thing blow over—that's my advice, and I reckon you know me for a friend. Well, I must be going, but I'll look in from time to time.” He was getting into his things, now, and there was peace for a pair of minutes, for he had sunk his teeth into the last apple, and couldn't yell. He started toward the door but turned back and shouted, “Say—Tom's back!” Harrison started. “You warn't expecting him, I know; but he's back. Got back safternoon late and is making his report to old Gilbert; one of Gilbert's niggers told me. Good-bye—so-long—any time you want me, send for me, George.”

He passed out into the wheezing storm, and left a sore-hearted man behind him.

Harrison chunked the fire and sat down before it with a tired and dejected air.

“Poor Dug, he never means any harm, and so he goes on doing it all day long. He doesn't know what trouble is, and yet goes distributing it around, all his waking hours. Send for him when I want him! If anything could make me smile, that would. There was a time when I loved to hear his mill go, but every remark he makes seems to bite like a fang, now, and squirt poison. Dear me, why didn't the Squire quiet him with the club when he had the idea? . . . Drinking again! what a pity that poor woman died. Everybody will know, now. It's Dug's secret—consequently the world's.”

After a pause: “And so my Tom's back. I'd rather see his face than anything in this world, but it will be a pain, too; for he knows, by this time, that the splendid news I sent him about the debt was false—Dug's diligence has made that certain. He thought he was coming back to a house of joy, a house that was holding its head up again, a proud house—and that is all spoiled, spoiled, spoiled! Lord, it's bitter hard! Of course he came with his head in the clouds, too, poor boy, and now he knows we are down in the dirt again, and the whole town talking! I don't know how I am to look him in the face; I don't know how to say any comforting thing, any hopeful thing—we are down on our backs! he will want to know what it all means, he is entitled to know, and what am I going to say? I can't explain—we have to leave him in the dark,—he were better dead than to [begin page 202] know that crime! . . . I ought to be impatient to see him, and I am; and yet if he didn't get through with Gilbert till midnight, God knows I could endure to wait! Ah, what am I going to say to him!”

He did not need to be so troubled about Tom, but he did not know that. If he had a secret, Tom also had one, and it was one of a pleasant sort. It is a matter of small interest to us; we need not enlarge upon it; an outline of it will answer our purpose. In the previous year Helen Fairfax had engaged herself to Tom, but a misunderstanding had broken off the match; Tom was the party in fault, but he could not bring himself to acknowledge it—nor, in fact, believe it. At his time of life one gets a kind of melancholy pleasure out of pouting over an imaginary wrong, and for long he indulged himself with this romatic pain; but that was while the wronger was in sight. His three months' absence in New Orleans on Mr. Gilbert's business took the pride out of him and he wrote and made confession and asked forgiveness. Helen answered promptly, and to his full content, and her letter reached him just as he was starting home.

It was on the third of November that old Mr. Harrison had been charged with fraud in the Squire's study and been required to furnish a new note; that the Squire's interview with Bridget Bleeker had taken place in the same room, and afterward Dug's delivery to the Squire of Harrison's new note. It was still on the same date that Bridget and her Jake had discussed the Squire's compliment; that old Mr. Harrison had indirectly confessed his criminal conduct to George; that Dug had revealed to George the fact that the Squire was drinking again; also that Tom was back. A pretty full bill for a day, yet the record is not finished yet.

Toward eight in the evening Helen's mulatto maid, Emly, appeared in the kitchen greatly impressed, and reported that she [begin page 203] hadn't had such a job of combing and brushing and dressing-up and decorating her young mistress since she could remember. What could the meaning of it be?

“Liza, if she's tried on one gown, I'm blamed if she hain't tried on fourteen; en dey don't none of 'em suit her. Dey's sum'n de matter; dey's sum'n de matter, shore; she hain't ever acted like dat befo'. Allays I say, ‘What you gwyne to put on to-day, Miss Helen?’ en allays she 'spon, ‘Any'll do, don't make no diffence.’ Allays I say, ‘Which julery, Miss Helen?’ en mostly she say, ‘don't want none.’ Allays I start to 'vestigate some mo' 'bout de 'rangements, en gen'ally she say, ‘Oh, jist dress me de way you want to’; but tonight, my lan'! Why, dey ain't noth'n good enough. Dis one's too red, dat one's too blue, 'tother one's too yaller, en none of 'em don't suit her complexion no mo'; en look at all dem silks en satins en velvets en one thing er another jist fitten for de queen to wah, en blame my cats dey ain't none of 'em fine enough. En it's all so owdacious sudden—dat's what bangs me, Liza.”

“Why, it's awful, Emly; her pa ought to know 'bout dis, so he kin sen' for de doctor befo' it's too late. What do you reckon's de matter, chile?”

“Goodness knows—I don't. If I've got her 'ranged once, I've got her ranged nine times, I do b'lieve; en every time she can't hold still no how till I jam in de las' hairpin, but 'way she goes a hoppin' en a skippin' to de lookin' glass, en tucks her head down so—en den roun' so—en den roun' tother way—en her cheeks a burnin' en her eyes a sparklin' all de time, en my, she do look pooty! en den she pulls all de roses out en sticks 'em in again en takes another look, en next she jerks 'm all out en thows 'm down en s'lecks some mo'—”

“Yes,” interrupted Jasper, the gardener, “en she's done robbed de greenhouse till it look like one er dese-yer cyclones—”

—“en every little while she reach 'roun' en haul her gown aroun' den kick it outen de way en march off fum de glass a lookin' back over her shoulder for to notice de effecks; en right away she ain't no mo' satisfied dan she was in de fust place, en sho' 'nough I got to pull her all down again en buil' her up a diffunt way; en trouble enough it is, too, for she can't no more hold still dan if she was on [begin page 204] sum'n hot; but 'course I ain't a mindin', becase somehow she do suttenly come out mo' lovelier every time, I got to 'nowledge dat, anyway. En den—”

“Emly,” interjected old Liza, with apprehension in her tones and a quiver in her voice, “I has nuss'd dat chile fum de day she was bawn, en dey put her in my arms en her mother say to me, ‘Liza, if anything ever happens to me—’ ” She broke down and sobbed, and all the black company joined in and sobbed, too, with the ready sympathy of that lovable race. Liza rose, now, wiping her eyes with her check apron, and said, moving toward the door, “I's gwyne to her; I's gwyne to comfort her. Her mother's a lookin' down on me dis minute outen de skies, en she know' ole Liza ain't gwyne desert de chile. Dey's sum'n de matter wid her mind, dey sholy is, I know it by de way she act. I's gwyne to ast her to lemme sen' for de doctor, dey ain't noth'n he can't k'yore—”

Chorus of “Dat's it! dat's de very thing!”

“Yes, I's gwyne to ast her to lemme. He'll take 'n give her some er his truck dat'll soothe her down, en take it outen her—whatever 'tis—en in de mawnin' it's gone, en she won't ever know dey's anything de matter wid her.”

When she reached Helen's dressing room it was vacant. A glance at the wreckage strewn about this place which before had always been so trim and orderly, gave her a turn which made her old legs tremble under her, and confirmed all her fears: certainly something was the matter with the girl. She moved, troubled and anxious, through the bedchamber, and stopped suddenly in its open door, with her eyes fixed and her heart standing still. For before her sat her young mistress with her face bowed in her hands, sobbing. The black woman tottered forward and gathered her to her breast and began to pour forth her distress.

“O, my Gawd, honey, what is de matter, what is happen' to my darlin'? Tell yo' ole Lize, honey, her heart's a breakin' for you. Lemme sen' for de doctor, den you git well, chile, you git well right away.”

The girl lay contentedly in her arms, smiling up through moist eyes, and said—

“The matter with me? Oh, I'm so happy I can't endure it!”

[begin page 205]

Liza was frightened.

“What—en cryin' 'bout it?”

“Yes—it's that kind, you know. I've been on such a strain for two days and nights, mammy; and I had worn out all the other ways of expressing joy, and there was nothing left but to cry.”

“Goodness knows it's a funny way, but if dey ain't no mistake en you's dead certain you's happy—”

“Happy? Look at my face!”

It was a convincing witness; none could doubt its testimony.

“You mos' sholy is, honey—I kin see it. Thank Gawd for it; I's satisfied; I don't want no better news 'n dat. En I was a huggin' you for to comfort you!”

“But now—”

“Oh I's huggin' you now 'caze I's so glad. You ain't been happy sence sich a long time; en when Emly come down a minute ago a talkin' de way she done, we was dat scairt! So I says I's gwyne straight up en find out what's de trouble, en sen' for de doctor.”

“But you don't ask what is the trouble, you dear old aggravating thing! Why don't you ask? Haven't I as good as asked you to ask, a dozen times? Can't you see that I'm dying to tell?”

“Why, bless yo' soul, honey, I didn't know. How was I to know? You see—”

“Ask!”

“Well, what is de trouble, if—”

The girl pulled the old head down and whispered.

“My goodness gracious sakes alive, Miss Helen!”

“It's true, mammy. I shan't need the doctor, think?”

“Doctor!” and she broke into the free-hearted African laugh; “thanks to goodness, dey ain't no doctor kin k'yore dat complaint!”

“Remember, it's a secret for the present, but you can tell the servants by and by when—well, I'll tell you when.”

“Miss Helen, I's gwyne to hold in if I bust.”

“I know it isn't going to be easy.”

“'Deed it ain't, honey; it's de bigges' secret was ever stuffed into me sence I was bawn. Fust-hands, too—even befo' ole marster. But you kin pen' 'pon me, honey; I's gwyne to hold in if I bust.”

[begin page 206]

“They suspect something down stairs, don't they?”

“Oh, bless yo' soul, yes! Dey 'magines. . . . dey 'magines. . . .” A laugh was trying to get a chance. She stopped and waited until it had emptied itself, then got out the fact that the servants supposed her mind was affected, and that they were much alarmed in consequence.

“You must go down and tell them it's all a mistake, nothing's the matter; invent something that'll satisfy them, and . . . 'sh! it's a footstep—fly!”

Tom, trim and fine in New Orleans clothes, entered, closed the door behind him and stood, drunk with the vision before him; but only for a moment, then Helen was in his arms and his kisses on her lips.

This is getting private; let us skip half an hour. The couple are seated on a short sofa in front of the fire, now, the head of one of the pair on the breast of the other, and the talk is proceeding. The hysterical stage is already safely passed, the planning stage is arriving.

“Helen, what do you think! We shan't have to wait till I get started in business.”

“Why, Tom?”

“Because I'm already started.”

“Oh, tell me all about it!”

“I'm Mr. Gilbert's partner—it happened to-day. Mainly, it's my reward for my New Orleans success. I was hoping, but not expecting—it was a splendid surprise. I can help my people, now; their troubles are ended.”

“It's perfectly lovely, Tom. Go on—I'm listening.”

“It's a secret, yet. Nobody knows it but you and Mr. Gilbert, and I asked him to keep it quiet. Day after tomorrow I appear in court in all my new grandeur, to represent the firm of Gilbert and Harrison, Attorneys and Counselors at Law, for the first time. How does that sound, dear?”

“Why, it's poetry, Tom! Say it again.”

“Gilbert and Harrison, Attorneys and Counselors at Law. And Mr. Gilbert is going to manage so that my father and grandfather [begin page 207] shall be there, on some pretext or other, and it will be a paralyzing surprise for them when the clerk calls the firm and I rise up.”

“O, I wish I could be there!”

“I wish so too, dear-heart. I think they'll want to shout for joy and pride. It will strain me to keep the secret when I go home, presently, but I mean to do it or die. What are you laughing at?”

“Because it's almost what Liza said. But you mustn't die, you must do as she is going to do.”

“What is that?”

“Bust. That is, if she can't hold in she's going to bust. That's what she says.”

Then the incident was related, and the pair had a cackling and silly and care-free and charming time over it. They were so young, and youth is so beautiful, and they couldn't know that there was any trouble hanging over them. They wouldn't have known how to believe it. Not at their time of life.

Then Tom thought of another surprise. Instead of telling his father to-night of the renewal of his engagement, he would save that also for day after tomorrow; he would spring it on the heels of the first surprise and get large effects out of it. It was agreed that this was a good idea.

“You know, Helen,” said Tom, “it is just the lucky time for these surprises. There's a mystery somewhere; something has been going wrong, I don't know the explanation of it; but there was an old debt due your father from my grandfather, and it was paid the other day, and for some reason or other the consummation wasn't perfect, and by the town gossip I learned that a new note was made to-day and secured by a mortgage on the mill. Of course my people are in trouble, now—oh, yes, it's cloudy weather at home, I know it—but if I can hold in till day after tomorrow! Helen, it's a romance! it's good to be alive and in it. I'll sit and listen to them worry, and they'll wonder how I can be so calm—”

“Tom, you'll never be able.”

“O, yes I shall. I'll keep day after tomorrow steadily in mind. The more worry the finer the effects when the sunburst comes. Your father won't tell about the re-engagement, will he?”

[begin page 208]

“No, it isn't his way. He will rejoice with us, as he did before; but not with the public—he left that to us before.”

Meantime Stevens, the doctor, had dropped in, down stairs, to warm himself, and had found the Squire looking troubled. He didn't ask the Squire what was troubling him—it was not the custom—and the Squire did not volunteer an explanation: that was not his custom. Two things were disquieting him: Andrew Harrison had sent the new note instead of bringing it himself—therefore he had not been able to give him back the false money; also, he was disturbed by the strange light which he had noticed in Harrison's eyes. Presently he brought the talk around to the Harrisons, in a general way, and the doctor said—

“Speaking of the Harrisons, Squire, I will tell you, confidentially, that the old man's mind is affected by his troubles.” He was reaching for a fire-coal for his pipe, and did not notice the start the Squire gave. “Nobody knows it, not even George, but it's so, I know it. In my opinion he hasn't been responsible for his actions here lately. And to-day—well, to-day he has developed an entirely new thing, for a Harrison—lying.”

“Lying?”

“Yes. Of course I wouldn't state this publicly, but I know it to be so. It's his troubles, poor old fellow; and if they are not relieved before long he will be worse.”

The Squire moved uneasily in his chair, and changed the subject. The doctor soon perceived that he was absent-minded and not giving heed to the talk; so he took himself away. The Squire sat troubled and brooding. The counterfeit-money swindle, then, was the act of an irresponsible man, and was not criminal. If he could have known this earlier! “It is his troubles that are wrecking him—well, and I have my share in them. He must have his new note back at once, and the false money. I will carry them myself—and now.” After some further musing: “No—I must have a private and undisturbed talk with him, and get all his confidence, and wholly undo my part of this work—promise to stand by him and see him through; and convince him. He must come here. I will send him the note and mortgage, canceled, and say I have something for him—he will understand it is the false money, and he will come.”

[begin page 209]

He canceled the note and mortgage, then went musing up and down the room with the papers in his hand. He was interrupted by a knock, and Liza entered, her face beaming with the pleasantness of her secret and with the happy surprise in store for the master, and said young missis was waiting to kiss him good-night.

“Why, is it so late as that?”

“'Deed it is, Marse Walter. Ten o'clock.”

“So it is. Send up my hot water.”

When he arrived in Helen's parlor he found the pair standing in the middle of the floor, and holding hands. There was something expectant in the attitude.

“Dear me!” said the Squire, astonished. “Is it you, Tom? What's all this?”

“Guess,” said Helen, joyously.

“I don't need to, dear; it guesses itself.”

“Are you satisfied, papa?”

“Take my blessing—both! And a kiss for you, and a hand-shake for Tom.” Then to himself, “This helps me undo my share of that work—in fact obliterates it! it comes at a lucky time.”

He lingered a while, finding the talk and the society very agreeable; then he noticed the papers in his hand and said to his daughter—

“Here is some property of yours; what shall be done with it?”

Helen took the papers, noticed that they were canceled, and said—

“That is very nice of you, papa. What is mine is Tom's, now,” and she passed the papers along.

“Another jolly surprise for Wednesday,” said Tom; “it's going to be a grand day, and nobly theatrical!”

The Squire inquired, and got the program of surprises. He was disappointed; he had wanted his share of the undoing of “that work” to begin to-night. But he said nothing, not wishing to spoil the young people's scheme of dramatics. However, here was his opportunity to send for Andrew Harrison, at any rate, and return to him the false money; so, in taking his leave he said to Tom—

“Ask your grandfather to come and see me—and tell him I've got something for him.”

[begin page 210]

But Tom was in too excited a condition, and too anxious to be obliging to this house, to wait and hear the whole remark, but broke into the middle of it to say with fervor that he should “be so glad,” and so he didn't hear the important and suggestive and significant half of it at all. That was unfortunate.

It was difficult for Tom to get away, but Helen got him started at last—about eleven or a little later.

He reached home frozen without but glowing within, and found his father waiting up for him. There was a surprise for Tom, who was doing so large a trade in that commerce just now; but it was a surprise with a sharp pang in it. Could this haggard man be his father! How could a strong man, a cheery man, be pulled down and saddened to this degree in so short a while? And could mere financial worry do this? It seemed impossible; but then he didn't know his father's bottom secret; he didn't know that disgrace was hanging over the house.

Tom's letters had shown that he was proud of the success he was achieving in New Orleans, and that he was coming home feeling the exultation which conquerors feel, therefore it grieved his father to have to blight all this, and he did his best to make a cheerful face and not spoil the lad's home-coming in its first moments. He made a pathetic effort to be gay, and hearty, and cordially praiseful of Tom's little triumphs abroad—and overdid it; and broke down in the midst, and leaned his head in his arms on the table and sobbed.

It wrung Tom's heart to see it; and he laid his hand caressingly on his father's shoulder, and begged him not to grieve so, (and could hardly keep his struggling secrets in his breast), and added—

“You are trying to save me sorrow, father, and you mustn't, and you needn't—I know all.”

Harrison's face came up white with consternation.

[begin page 211]

“All?” he gasped. “What do you know?”

Tom was astonished, and said wonderingly—

“Why, that there was a hitch somewhere and the old debt is on, again.”

“Oh,” ejaculated his father, in a tone that was eloquent of relief. Tom noticed that tone, and was puzzled by it—not much, still, enough to move him to ask casually—

“Why, father, is there something more?”

The result astonished him again—

“More?” exclaimed his father with a heat and energy which seemed to Tom quite out of proportion to the occasion, “More? No! Of course not! Why should there be more? What put that into your head? More? Why should there be more?

Tom was bewildered; he hardly knew what to say; it hardly seemed safe to say anything at all. Since a couple of quite innocent remarks had touched off a pair of such explosions as these, his father must surely be honeycombed with mines, and dangerous from all points of approach. He presently ventured to say, soothingly—

“Father, you are not well; you are not your natural self. These money troubles have harassed you to this, and you mustn't worry about them so—everything is going to come right, I'm sure of it,” and he took his father's hand and began to pet it and fondle it. “I'm not worrying, and you mustn't. I am at your side again, I am young, I am getting a start, I am going to be a help—you'll see.”

Harrison raised a grateful look to his son's face, and said—

“It lifts me up to hear you say that—keep that spirit and stand by me, Tom. For these are black days—awful days—”

“Cheer up, the clouds may pass at any moment, father.” Then to himself, “if he only knew what I know!”

“No, Tom, the clouds will not pass soon; there is no hope of that. You know, we don't stand to-day where we stood yesterday, and long before. This new note is collectable at a day's notice—and why is it made like that? Because the Squire has turned against us, and means us harm, Tom. That blow can fall at any moment; and it means ruin. He hates me—I did not suspect that; I didn't, really.”

[begin page 212]

“Hates you? Oh, come!”

“It's true. He told your grandfather so to-day.”

“Told him so? Are you sure? It isn't like him to say his feelings, it's only his habit to have them.”

“Yes, I know; but this time he said them.”

A light seemed to break, in Tom's head. His re-engagement to Helen had modified the Squire's feelings, and he wanted to see Andrew Harrison and take that hard word back.

“Father,” he said, “that reminds me of something. When I was done work to-day—” He colored, and altered the remark a little: “When I was through with all I had to do, I mean, I happened to meet the Squire, and he told me to tell grandfather he would like to see him, and would he please call around.”

“What!”

“Yes. I shall be gone to work before he gets up. Will you tell him for me?”

“What does he want to see him for?”

“He didn't say.”

“Hm.” Harrison's fears began to rise. He worded them to himself, thus: “What can he want to see him for? It has a bad look. He means to give him notice that the note must be met at once!” The thought made him shudder. He said, with a sigh—

“I will tell your grandfather.”

“Why do you sigh, father?”

“Oh, well, we're in the ditch. I know what he wants to see him for. He wants to tell him he must settle that note in twenty-four hours, or he will foreclose and sell the mill. Nothing can save us, Tom. It's a little thing, that scrap of paper, that note; but it weighs a ton on my heart.”

The note burnt Tom's pocket. His fingers itched to take it out, and show the cancellation, and—

“Tom?”

The interruption brought him to himself, and he left the note where it was. And that was a pity.

“Sir?”

“Whatever happens, my boy, let us keep our honor whole. We will, Tom—won't we?” He said it pleadingly, anxiously.

[begin page 213]

“Indeed, yes.”

“We'll let no temptation beguile us from that, Tom. That is understood between us?”

“Why, certainly, father. What temptation could do it? What has turned you into this strange mood?”

The father was silent in thought for a while, then he said—

“Ah, well, I don't know—I don't know. I have been thinking over the things which strong, fine men have done, under the blight of money-difficulties, and I have wondered—” He stopped, and turned a glassy gaze upon his son. “Tom, what should you say if you found that the most honorable man you ever knew, and the firmest and sternest in his principles, had been caught cheating? What should you say to that?”

Tom was bewildered again. What could be carrying his father off into such strange by-paths?

“Why, I don't know. It does not seem to me that it could happen.”

“Tom, it has happened! I know of an in—I mean, I know of a dozen instances. It makes a man feel as if the foundations of things were falling out. But Tom, they were not educated men! It palliates it, Tom; it palliates it, doesn't it? it even excuses it—doesn't it? Don't you think it does?”

His burning eyes were fixed upon Tom's face, eager, wistful, almost as if life and death depended upon the answer. Tom replied, confusedly—

“I—well, yes—I suppose that it—”

“But we have no such excuse, Tom—remember it—remember it! My father educated me; I have educated you. We have the support of training, teaching, admonition—puissant safeguards that some have lacked, poor souls. Nothing could excuse us, Tom. Oh, no, nothing—nothing. For myself I am not afraid, Tom, let come what may; and you—Tom, you will never disgrace your training?—say it, Tom.”

“Why, father, I don't believe I ever could—I cannot imagine such a thing.”

“Thank God—it's all I want. I am satisfied. Keep to it. These are awful times. Watch yourself—watch yourself. I have seen things— [begin page 214] when men were in money-troubles—things which—which—” He rose and went fumbling his way toward the door like one in a daze; then turned and put out his hand in good-night salutation. “Ah, let nothing tempt us, Tom; let us watch ourselves—oh, every hour, every minute!”

He passed out, with his candle in his hand, and Tom dropped into a chair, with his brain spinning.

“It's all dark,” he said to himself, “I can't understand it. Somebody has committed a crime under strong temptation—somebody whom ruin was threatening—somebody of whom such an act was not to be expected—and it has frightened him, and he doesn't know who will fall next. He generalizes it, and makes a dozen out of it, but I reckon it's an individual, and recent. Does he know the man personally? No—or he would have named him. He has read about it or heard about it, and in his distressed condition it has taken hold of his nerves. And what an irrational fright it is—he thinks I'm going to fall! Why next, if this goes on, he'll be getting afraid on his own account, if he doesn't look out!”

He went off to bed, still cogitating, but he could not get to sleep, for the muffled sound of a footstep kept coming to his ear, and he knew who was walking the floor. Thoughts of his father's misery haunted him, accused him, and would not down; would not even allow him to think of Helen. The burden of these thoughts was a persistent and pleading reproach: how can you be so cruel? how can you be so selfish? he is enduring a year's suffering in a day, and you could stop it in a moment; you could stop it in a moment, and yet to satisfy a foolish and theatrical vanity, you meanly leave him in his misery! even one of your so treasured vanities could heal his heart and make it sing, and you miserly withhold it; give him the canceled papers!

Human nature cannot stand everything, and Tom surrendered at last. It was now three in the morning. He listened—the floor-walking had ceased. A pity! why hadn't his conversion come a little sooner! Remorsefully he took the papers and went and listened at his father's door—hoping. But there was no sound; sleep, the compassionate, was come. Tom went back eased in mind, for he had a plan for the tranquilizing of his conscience. When he [begin page 215] went down to his breakfast in the morning, he was prepared to carry it out. He laid the papers by his father's plate, when his meal was finished, and left them there. But they did not stay. When Martha, the old colored cook, came in by and by to arrange for the two other breakfasts she took them up and inspected them, and said—

“I wonder what dem is?”

She carried them to the window to get a better light, but she was interrupted; a log rolled down from the fire, scattering coals, and she ran to set the matter right, laying the papers on the mantelpiece, which was the first place that came handy. They were out of her mind, now, and remained out.

Toward ten o'clock old Martha gave up waiting for George Harrison to come down to breakfast—something must be the matter, she thought—and went up and called him. He said he wanted no breakfast, and should not get up; he was tired, and not well.

“'Deed you look it, Marse George; I hain't ever seen you lookin' so dreadful. Does you want de doctor?”

“No, Martha, I only want rest—rest—rest. You've felt like that, Martha?”

“O, yes indeedy, Marse George—many's de time. But niggers is more used to it 'n what white folks is. Better lemme fetch you up sump'n, Marse George; might do you good.”

“No, I don't care for it, Martha. Ask my father to come up; I've got a message for him.”

“O, he done gone to town, long 'go, Marse George.”

“Why—is it so late?”

“Ten o'clock, Marse George; you's overslep' considerable, dis mornin'.”

“Well, If I had seen him—But it's no matter; tell him when he comes in.”

“Yes, seh.”

When she was gone, he said to himself: “Maybe it gives us another day. But what is another day? Better to have it over and done with, maybe. I half wish I had gotten the word to him.”

At two in the afternoon a gossiping pair of groups was present at [begin page 216] the blacksmith shop. They were gathered in circles around a couple of wagon tyres that lay on the ground undergoing the process of being made red-hot under blazing heaps of chips and shavings; and while these men held out their hands over the grateful warmth they entertained themselves with chaffing and teasing Jake Bleeker over Squire Fairfax's characterization of him as an over-sentimental German jackass. His wife's reproaches and sarcasms of the night before over the same matter were still scorching him; and now, in an access of indiscretion brought on by these new torments, he forgot himself and swore roundly that he was going to settle with the Squire the first time he caught sight of him. This was received with vast hilarity; and just at that unlucky moment the Squire hove in sight, riding out from town. Poor Bleeker paled, but he had said the word—there was no way out of the difficulty. Taunts broke out, all around:

“There he comes, now, Bleeker!”

“Now let's see you do it!”

“You talk big, Jakey, what're you going to do!”

“I'm going to insult him—that's what I'm going to do!”

This brought a burst of laughter.—

The Squire was slowly approaching.

“Oh, you are, are you? Then why don't you start along—who's a-hendering you?”

“I told you what I will do, didn't I?”

Jake started toward the road. The crowd were astonished, and stopped laughing. Jake moved steadily forward.

“Boys, do you believe he will?”

“Blamed if it don't look like it.”

“Well, then,” said Burt Higgins, the blacksmith, “all I've got to say, is, we've carried this thing too far.”

“Right you are,” said Park Robinson; “but I didn't believe he—”

“Why, nobody could believe he would,” said a chorus of voices.

The men were sorry; they hadn't wanted their joke to go this length—at least they thought, now, that they hadn't.

“Look—he's put up his hand.”

“Yes, and the Squire has stopped.”

[begin page 217]

They saw the German range up and apparently begin to speak. Apparently there was a reply. Then they saw the German step close and look up in the Squire's face and apparently speak again. Straightway they saw the Squire reach down and collar him and begin to fiercely lay his cowhide over his head and shoulders. Six sounding blows were struck, then the German broke away and came flying back to the witnesses, and the Squire rode slowly off, homeward.

The men crowded around poor Bleeker, who was sobbing, and wiping his eyes on his sleeve, and pouring out threats against the Squire in fervid English mixed with German words and phrases.

“What did you do, Jake? what did you say?”

“You never mind, he knows what I said, and I'll fix him for this, and I told him so—you'll see.”

“But what made him hit you? What was it you said? can't you tell a body what you said?”

“Never you mind, I tell you—he knows, and he ain't going to forget. Oh, I'll fix him! I told him so. Yoost you wait—you'll see.”

“What are you going to do, Jake?”

“I'm going to play a trick on him, that's what!”

A trick! This sad descent from such a heroic height brought a burst of laughter, and the crowd's budding respect for Jake withered to disgust. Soon the news of the cowhiding was all over the village, and it made a great sensation. Half an hour later, old Andrew Harrison arrived at home with it, and went up to his son's room and told it. Then his distempered imagination began to work. His excitement passed away, and his air became grave. He drew a chair to the bedside, sat down in it, and made one or two unsuccessful attempts to get a start upon something which he evidently wanted to talk about, then he said, very gently—

“George, can you bear some bad news?”

The manner and the words together gave George a sickening sinking of the heart, and he answered almost inaudibly—

“I can divine it. You have seen—him.”

“I have.”

“I feared it. I had a message for you, but you were gone. He wanted to see you.”

[begin page 218]

This was news to the old man, but he didn't know it. He added it calmly to his imaginary tale, and went on—slowly and impressively:

“Yes, he told me so. He overtook me just a few rods out of the village, and said he expected me to call this morning, because he had something to say to me, and he would say it now. And then, George—you can bear it?”

“Go on, father—God help me!”

“He gave me one day's notice.”

George covered his face with his hands and groaned. He said—

“Oh, I knew it! The note—payable one day after date—I knew, too well, what that meant. But I can't seem to realize how a man can be so cruel!”

The old man drew a deep sigh, and said—

“I'm to blame for it, George. He's bitter about the counterfeits.”

George could say nothing to that.

“Yes, he's bitter, George. He can't get over it, he can't forgive it. And George, his mind was on Jake Bleeker, and it made him worse. He said he was hunting for him and was going to cowhide him.”

“What for?”

“He didn't say, but he was terribly stirred up—I never saw him so,—at least not inside of these twenty years.” He dropped his voice a tone lower and added, “George, I haven't told you the worst. Can you bear it?”

George raised himself to a sitting posture, gasping.

“Go on, for God's sake—don't torture me so!”

“George, if the money's not in his hands by three o'clock tomorrow afternoon, he'll not only foreclose, but—”

“But what!”

“Tell about the counterfeit money!”

George fell back as if he had been struck down by a blow.

“Oh, infamous! Father, he told you he wouldn't do it.”

“Yes,” said the old man scornfully, “and who said his word was gold? Hey? Who said that? I didn't!”

“O, disgrace, disgrace! The rest was hard enough—but it was nothing to this. Father, do you understand? we shall be the talk of the countryside—of the State! Oh, I can't have it! I can't endure it! [begin page 219] There must be some way out. Leave me, please; leave me, and let me think. And let no one come here till I send.”

At the end of three hours of wasting and wearing thought—grisly plannings that early got upon a descending grade and continued to drift lower and lower—he said to himself, despairingly: “No, there is no way out—but one: another crime! Oh, I am amazed to see how far I have come in this little time! Yesterday I despised my father in my private heart, because his honor had a limit; and so soon as this I am finding that mine has one also. He would commit a crime to save the house from poverty; I am on the imminent verge of committing one to hide a disgrace. How trifling the difference is—if there is a difference! And last night I implored the boy to watch himself—watch himself!” He broke into a ghastly laugh. “Oh, I yield; I drag my self-righteousness in the mud and spit upon it. I was proud of my invincible uprightness—mine! and all the time was rotten to the soul, and needed only the test of my limit to find it out! I am an exposed sham; I have found myself out.” After a long pause: “I will do it; no man will ever suspect me, with my reputation.” He laughed again—in scorn of himself; and took the candle and went to the glass. “How many times I have looked in it before—and thought I knew the man.” He sat down feeling better—refreshed, almost contented. He said it was a satisfaction to be in the society of an honest rascal, after having been deceived so long into keeping company with a dishonest one. Then he began to hunt for palliatives of his proposed crime. He found one: his father had paid insurance on the mill for more than a generation; if the mill got burned now, the companies would still be ahead, and the insurance-money would pay his father's debt and save his good name. And besides, they should have the money back in time—he would see to that. Tom was coming along; Tom was going to prosper; Tom would let him have money from time to time and wouldn't ask questions nor care what he did with it; and he would save it up, every cent, and the companies would get it all—with interest. Why, looked at rationally, instead of sentimentally, what becomes of the crime? Why, it's nothing but a loan!

It cheered him up considerably; in fact made him almost happy. It was very pleasant, and he thought he would examine the matter [begin page 220] further. But that was a mistake; the ice began to get thin; for the thought intruded itself that to borrow money without the owner's knowledge is—

No, it was best not to pursue the inquiry too far; to let well enough alone was wisest. He changed the subject.

Now, what course should he adopt, by way of a plan? He must wait until after nine before going on his nefarious errand. Nine was Bleeker's hour for looking the mill over to see that everything was right before going to bed. That was also old Andrew's usual hour for going to rest. Tom would still be out at his work, Martha would be out of the way in the kitchen; the night would be dark; he could get out unperceived, fire the mill, and be back in his room and in bed, all inside of twenty minutes, and no one would ever know or suspect that he had been out of the house.

At a quarter past nine he put on his heavy winter wraps, blew out his light, took his boots in his hand, closed his door softly behind him and crept to the head of the stairs in the dark and listened. Within there was no sound; outside only the wailing of the winter wind. He crept down the stairs, trying not to breathe hard, and halting often, for the dry old wooden steps creaked horribly in the stillness. At the bottom he put on his boots, and stood a moment, breathing fast and swallowing repeatedly to moisten his dry throat; then he groped his way to the back door, fumbled for the latch, raised it cautiously, and as cautiously opened the door. The cold wind blew into his feverish face, refreshing it, and he stepped out, closed the door, and found himself in the pitchy darkness he was hoping for and expecting.

Arrived at the mill, he unlocked it with his pass-key, stepped inside, shut the door, and stooped with a match in his quaking hand, to rake it on the floor. Hark! A noise outside—feet on the steps which he had just ascended! He scrambled behind some meal [begin page 221] barrels, threw himself on the floor, and lay trembling. A key rasped in the lock, footsteps passed grating in, and gleaming flecks of light from the piercings of an old-fashioned tin lantern went dancing over the beams and stanchions. George was aware, now, that he had come too early, and had preceded the mill-inspection. Bridget Bleeker's voice said—

“Now then, sit down and finish; and then I'll have something to say, myself.”

Then Bleeker's voice—

“I'll yoost do the inspection first, and then—”

“Let it wait. I'm in a wicked mood, I'm telling you, with these gangs coming and gawking and asking questions ever since the middle of the afternoon, and I a burning to get at this thing and settle it—looked as if they weren't ever going to let us inspect at all. Sit down—there's a box, and here's another. Mind, now, I'm not hard of hearing. Go on.”

Jake began, in a low voice—

“He lashed me like I was a dog. Donnerwetter! I'd hardly got the words out of my mouth till—”

“Never mind that! Haven't I heard it the whole afternoon, till I'm that boiling—oh, if I had my hands on him! What are you going to do?”

“I'm going to burn his house down over his head this night! He lashed me like I was—”

“Lave it! Go on.”

“That is all, Pridget. I'll be at his back door yoost at midnight—ah-h! no, maybe that won't do.”

“Why?”

“It could be locked.”

“You're a fool. You're not in Germany. They don't lock dwelling houses here.”

“It's all right, then, Pridget. I'll be there when it strikes twelve and I'll burn him out, I don't care what happen.”

“Now then, are you done?”

“Yes, that is all.”

“Very well—listen to me, and I'll give you an errand worth a dozen of it. Revenge is what I want, and revenge is what I'm going [begin page 222] to have. But I'll have profit, too, along with it. Jake, you'll not burn the house, you'll rob it.”

“Rob it?”

“Yes. Anny objections to that?”

“Me? Why, Pridget, I'd love to do it.”

“Very well—let me think a minute.”

A ghastly stillness followed, whose impressiveness deepened to solemnity as the moments passed; and presently when George Harrison heard his watch ticking in his pocket he wished the hush might end; these people might hear that ticking, otherwise. The wind rose and moaned outside; then a rat scuttled across the floor, giving all present a start. Bridget resumed at last:

“Yes, it's the thing to do. It's a heap better than the other. Do you know that room where the Squire works?”

“Back on the ground floor?”

“Yes.”

“There's a table in it.”

“There's two, Pridget.”

“I'm meaning the one he writes at. It's a considerable bit to the left of the door as you go in.”

“I know.”

“Jake, he keeps his money in the drawer of it!”

“No—does he?”

“That he does. And it's not locked.”

“But Pridget, he wouldn't keep enough there to—”

“He wouldn't, wouldn't he? He keeps it there by the handfuls! I've seen it—seen it with my own eyes. He's the carelessest man that ever was!”

Silence, and the moaning wind and the ticking watch again. Was the slow and not bright—but not extinct—German mind finding a defect in the situation? After a little the man's thinkings reached his tongue and found expression—

“Pridget, it don't look reasonable dot a man would treat much money like dot. He might do it with a little, sometimes, when—”

“Don't I tell you it's handfuls? Handfuls, don't you understand? enough to make poor scum like us rich!”

The strenuous eagerness in her voice showed that all her heart [begin page 223] was in this matter, and that hunger for the money was getting precedence over thirst for revenge—if, possibly, it hadn't been the real motive from the beginning, with revenge doing duty as a pretext-salve for her conscience's protesting dignity.

“Is dot so? . . . Handfuls. . . . But you see, Pridget, he might do it once, when he is thinking about something else—”

Bridget broke in with passionate earnestness—

“Jake, I give you my word I have seen him do it dozens of times—dozens, I tell you.” Her voice was husky with excitement. “And he has left it there days and days together. I have handled it many a time—thousands of dollars in a wad!”

This was not true; Bridget's anxiety to persuade her husband was carrying her away. But her effort told.

“Why, of course, if dot is so—”

“It is so, Jake, I give you my word. Now if you'll only—”

“I tell you what I will do, Pridget. I'll go for the money. If I get it, all right; if I don't get it I will burn the house down.”

For once in his life Bleeker laid his wife's admiration under contribution—

“Why, Jake, that is well thought; you have a better head than anyone would think. Many that look down on you wouldn't have had the wit to double-string the bow that way.” She rose. “Let's move along, now, I'm frosted through. If we think of annything more to arrange about the business, we can talk it as we prowl around the mill.”

“It's a rotten world!” said George to himself; “we are all rotten together, and the most of us don't suspect it. The worst that anybody has said of that woman is that she has a temper, and is spiteful, and sunk to the eyebrows in her popish superstitions; no one has ever impeached her honesty. Of course she has never impeached it herself, nor thought of such a thing. Poor as she is, she has fondled that careless man's hoards time and again without ever a thought that her probity could be in any danger—and now, see! The moment a good plausible pretext creeps in the back way among her principles, they go to ruin. She thinks she's after revenge; and I—well, I'm after a loan. We are a pair. The others haven't discovered themselves yet—the rest of the world. Their [begin page 224] pretext hasn't arrived—the one out of a million that each of them, in his turn, can't stand out against: when it comes—well, when it comes they will join us; they will look in the glass and bow to a new acquaintance.”

Meantime the pair had started on their inspecting tour, talking low and earnestly, the spots of light dancing on the beams and rafters as they receded. At the other end of the place the sparks vanished in darkness; the inspectors had started aloft. The next moment Harrison was out of the mill; five minutes later he was in his room, and had seen nothing, heard nothing, on the way. The house was dark and still.

He made no light; he was merely going to think, and the kind of thoughts he would be exercising his mind upon would not be specially helped by light; plenty for all needs was being cast by the little tongues of flame that flickered about the fire-logs, rising, falling, winking fitfully to the flurries of wind that came with hollow rumblings down the chimney from time to time, puffing the ashes out on the hearth and causing weird lights and shadows to play over near objects, but leaving the rearward depths of the room permanently shrouded in gloom. His thoughts would be in harmony with these uncanny conditions.

He sat with his feet on the low fender and munched with relish a “cold snack” which he had cribbed below and brought up with him, and thought his thoughts—somewhat to this effect:

“I must do it, there is no other way. . . . And it is better than the other, and more excusable; far more, indeed. The insurance companies have done me no harm, they are not enemies, they have nothing against me, but this man hates me, and has said so; hates me without any cause; I have not harmed him in any way. If the circumstances have so placed me—by no fault of my own—let me [begin page 225] keep that in mind, no fault of my own—that I am forced to save myself at another's expense, surely I ought to choose an enemy for a victim rather than one in whom I have no cause of offence. It is plain; I see it more and more clearly. . . . And then the money shall be paid back in time; every penny of it; and with interest—yes, interest—I pledge myself to it. Not even an enemy shall permanently suffer by me.” The thought made him feel virtuous—almost fine. “Yes, interest shall be paid—interest to the last farthing; if anything, more than is due, rather than less. And at twelve per cent—for I will pay twelve—the investment is by two per cent better than any he could possibly put the money into in these times.” He was feeling better still, at this stage; he was beginning to have a sense of putting the man under obligations to him. “It is plain that this is much better than the other. The other could result in real crime; because the fire could extend to Bleeker's house and cause loss of life. That would be horrible! By luck I have had a narrow escape; the present scheme endangers no one's person; it was most fortunate that the mill-inspection got delayed. . . . Bleeker is going at midnight. . . . Eleven? . . . Eleven should be safe. . . . Yes,—yes; if I go at eleven. . . .”

He made a mask; by cutting eye-holes in a handkerchief. Then he saw that it bore his initials, and made another—this time out of an unmarked one. Presently a noise startled him, and he thrust one of them in his pocket and the other under his mattrass.

Meantime Tom was at the Squire's, having a pleasant time. He reached there at eight; and when he described to Helen the tortures he had seen his father suffering, and the torture it had cost himself to keep back the tidings that would transmute his father's miseries into joy and thanksgiving in a moment, her pleasure in the anticipation of Wednesday's arranged surprises fell dead. Her lips quivered, and the tears came.

“Oh, Tom,” she said, “you didn't let him go from you without telling him? oh, you couldn't. You are only pretending; no one could be so cruel as that. Tell me you didn't, Tom.”

He could not resist the temptation to work up her distress a little [begin page 226] higher and a little higher, as an effective preparation for the happy climax he would finish with, and so he went on confessing one cruel detail after another until she knew that he had left his father uninformed the whole night through; then, through her tears she looked up aghast and said—

“Oh, Tom! And so you went to your work and he doesn't know yet!”

It was time for the climax.

“Why, what am I thinking of?—I forgot one detail, Helen; a perfectly awful one, too; it turns me cold, now, to think of it.”

“Oh, Tom, don't say it! What was it?”

“I left the canceled papers by his plate; and if he didn't jump for joy when he saw them, then—”

But her arms were about him and his mouth was obstructed before he could finish.

About half past nine the Squire came up to say good-night, and when he was going away after a quarter-hour visit, he said to Tom—

“I expected your grandfather to-day; did you give him the message?”

“Yes, sir. That is, I gave it to father.”

“That was sufficient; what your father undertakes to do he can be depended on to do—even when it's a small thing; and we all know that that is an uncommon virtue.”

Tom flushed with pleasure, and meant to report this speech to his father and ask him if he thought he could find anything in it that suggested hate.

“Your grandfather didn't come,” the Squire added. “I'd like him reminded that I've got something for him.”

There was nothing about the words to strike Tom, but there was something about the way in which the Squire said them that attracted his attention. Was this perhaps an important message?

“I didn't know you told me to say that, sir. I said you wanted to see him.”

“It was doing very well, Tom—you gathered-in half of the message; you can carry the other half now.”

Tom colored and said—

[begin page 227]

“I will, sir. I—well, I suppose I am not as good as my father is, in the little things.”

The Squire indicated his daughter with a gesture and said—

“There was a disturbing element; it wasn't a fair test, lad. Goodnight again,” and he went his way.

“Isn't he lovely!” said Helen. “Don't you think he is?”

“Lovely? I never knew what he was before! And this community doesn't know him; nor my father and grandfather; but I mean they shall, before I go to bed.”

A few minutes later the Squire was saying to himself while he stirred the sugar in a steaming toddy, “It is a pity Harrison didn't get the important end of the message; he would have understood, then, and would have come, and his mind would be at peace, now.” He sighed. “And my spirit would be healed of the hurt it gave itself in wounding that irresponsible old man. But he will come tomorrow.”

At eleven o'clock Tom came proudly out at the front door while his father was sneaking in at the back one; sneaking in, noiseless, his feet muffled in rubbers, the white curtain of his mask hanging from under his hat and hiding his face. He groped his way cautiously in the dark, feeling his route along the walls with his hands. He found the Squire's work-room door, tried it, it yielded, and he entered and closed it softly behind him. He struck a match and held it up: yonder was the table, down the wall to the left; he moved toward it, and just as he reached it his match went out. In reaching for the wall, to strike another, he knocked something from the Squire's chair, and the object struck the floor with a heavy dull noise which made his heart stand still with fright. He stood a while, quaking on his limp legs, listening, straining his ear for any sound; then, nothing happening, he drew a deep and thankful breath, and reached for the wall again. His brimstone locofoco burned blue and dim, and sputtered and stunk, then brightened to a steady flame. The thing that had fallen was the Squire's heavy oaken cane which Dug Hapgood had called a “club” for accuracy's sake; he noticed it, but was not interested in it, his mind was on the drawer. It was not fastened, and came open easily.

[begin page 228]

“The woman said the truth!” he muttered; for there indeed lay a roll of bills. He thrust them into his pocket, and just then his match went out.

Hark!—was that a noise? His heart stood still again; someone was fumbling at the door.

“It's Jake—come an hour before his time. Ah, my God, what shall I do! I am no match for him; if he catches me, there's no escape; he will alarm the house and say he tracked me here, taking me for a common burglar.” He stooped down, fumbled about for the club, and closed his trembling fingers upon it. “I shall get but one blow; if it should miss, or fail to stun—” He listened—listened; the stillness was perfect. “Can he be in the room? I didn't hear the door open. . . . There—I heard a sigh! . . . Another—and nearer! . . . there's something creeping about here!” At this moment a match was raked on the wall! and not down by the door, but near by, not six feet away—for Jake was shod with rubber, too. The match came up, and the two men stood revealed to each other. Jake saw the white mask and the lifted club, and with a loud and anguished “Um Gottes willen!” he plunged at the apparition. But Harrison struck him a staggering welt; as the blow descended, Bleeker uttered a piercing shriek, then went reeling toward the door and fell, an inert bulk, in front of it. Harrison threw the club from him and felt his way swiftly along the wall to the door, which he found open, and a few seconds later he was out of the house and flying southward over the frozen fields in its rear. “I had to do it,” he said remorsefully to himself, “but Bleeker shan't lose anything by it—I will see to that.”

Meantime Tom was swinging gaily down the road unaware that for a minute or two he had his father for company—with some space and a good deal of darkness between. But the father was making the better time, and would beat him home.

Behind them now, there was bustle and excitement in the Fairfax house. Three men of Indiantown, passing by the place, heard Jake's piercing shriek and ran through the grounds and into the house, and plunged into two rooms without finding anybody, and then into a third—where by the light of their lantern they found Squire Fairfax, crimsoned with blood, standing over a [begin page 229] prostrate man who mumbled something not comprehensible, then gasped out his life and was still. The body lay in a lake of blood, and near it lay an oaken staff which the men recognised.

George harrison entered his house by the back way, chunked up the fire in the dining room, lit the candles, threw off his wraps and sat down, panting from his long flight but many degrees nearer to being happy than had been his case for many a month. He said to himself—

“It will not be wholesome to allow myself to look upon any but the pleasant side of this matter; it would be folly, and worse than folly; I will purge my mind of the perilous stuff, and keep it sane and healthy. I will think of only the pleasant side of it, the sane side, the right and best side: the good name of the house was in awful danger, and I have saved it—saved it!—let me be grateful for that; we can hold up our heads again—how good the words sound! Something had to be done, and it's done. Nobody shall lose by it, least of all Jake Bleeker. He shall have his raise. Raise? We will not stop at that; his wage shall be doubled—trebled!”

He had taken out his roll of bank notes, and was caressingly smoothing them on his knee, face-side down, and lifting their corners and counting them.

“Five thousand dollars—they are life for us, salvation, honor!”

He turned the pile over. An expression of terror flared up in his eyes, and he sat staring and motionless, like one who had been turned to stone. Written in a bold hand across the face of the note that was uppermost were the words: “Counterfeit. W. Fairfax.”

After a little he took that note up in his trembling fingers, loosed it and it fluttered to the floor. The words appeared upon the next one. That note followed the first one. One by one the others followed these, exposing always the fatal words. Then in his anguish he moaned like one who is in physical pain, and said—

[begin page 230]

“O, my God, why cannot I die!”

He got up and walked the floor, wringing his hands and uttering despairing ejaculations. Presently he noticed those papers on the mantelpiece, where Martha had left them. He took them absently up, not conscious of what he was doing, and went upon his weary tramp again, now and then emphasizing a bitter thought with a gesture. One of these gestures finally brought the papers into collision with something, and he stopped and said, “What are these? where did I get them?” He glanced at them and sank, like one smitten mortally, into his chair. “Canceled—God pity me! O! O! O! how can a man bear this! . . . I am a thief—stealer of my father's false money—thief to no purpose—thief to save the house's honor, and it was already saved—through what mystery and by whose heaven-sent compassion there is no divining! Oh, if—”

There was a sound of approaching steps. He gathered up the bank bills and threw them on the fire; then, by a strenuous effort of will, he assumed, as nearly as he could, the look and bearing of a man whose affairs have taken a new and favorable turn, and whose business it is to look comfortable, and even smile upon occasion; for the house's honor was saved, the fact would soon be known, and all comers must be made to see that the house was proud of it and happy in it. Tom entered. The father stepped briskly to meet him, with both hands out. Tom wrung them cordially, and the response was as cordial.

“Oho!” Tom said, “the clouds are gone, are they? Well, I was expecting it;” and throwing off his wraps he placed chairs in snug juxtaposition before the fire, and said, “Sit down, now, and I'll make my confession and tell you all about it, and get my forgiveness. You see, I happened to run across the Squire, and he gave me the canceled papers—”

“He did?”

“Yes, and told me to give them to you—”

“When?”

“Yesterday—er—late—”

The father gasped—

“Water—give me water!”

Tom sprang to obey, and when his father was revived he was [begin page 231] about to ask what the matter was, but was saved the trouble—

“There, Tom—I'm all right, now. This generosity from a man who hates me rather upset me. I was not looking for it from that quarter.”

“Father, it's all a mistake!” said Tom, joyfully. “It's a misunderstanding, entirely, and I know it. When he gave me the papers” (Tom was antedating a little,) “he said a very handsome thing about you, and said it in a most friendly way, too. He said that when you engaged to do a thing you could be depended on to do it; and not merely the large things but the little ones; and that there was the merit—for, to be faithful in the little things was a most rare quality. Oh, he is a noble man! these people don't know him; and to hear him say that—oh, it made me proud to have such a father!”

He accompanied this speech with some of his customary caressings and pettings. They burnt, but he didn't know it; and the father groaned inwardly, and said to himself, “I was that kind of a man; and now my own boy's praises sting me.”

“Well, when I got through, last night, I brought the papers home, but I had a little scheme for a pleasant surprise for you, so I thought I would keep them back a day—”

“Oh, the pity of it, the pity of it!” moaned the father to himself.

“—but away in the night I heard you walking the floor and I couldn't bear it. So by and by I gave up trying, and got up and took the papers and went to your room—”

“And what did you do—what did you do!” the father broke in, excitedly.

“But you were asleep and I hadn't the heart to disturb you.”

The father turned away his head to hide the grief that was in his heart and must show in his face.

“But I left the papers by your plate this morning and went away walking on air, for I had got in my little surprise at last, and all day I've been so happy, picturing to myself how you looked when you came down to breakfast and recognised that the clouds were gone! And there's one surprise more—I'm a partner in the firm! And another yet, and the noblest of all—Helen and I are engaged again!”

[begin page 232]

George Harrison rose unsteadily, and groping with his hands like one who is in a vertigo—and just then came a thundering at the door that shook the house, and Dug Hapgood thrust in his face and shouted—

“Say! Somebody's killed Jake Bleeker in Squire Fairfax's house!”

George Harrison staggered to the door and said—

“Not dead? Don't say he's dead!”

“Dead as a smelt! Why, the way you look, you'll do for his ghost! Just fish-belly white, slack-lime white—why, a body'd say Deathshead Phillips has been here and—” He was out and away on his errand without finishing.

Harrison tottered to the fire and steadied himself with a hand on the mantelpiece, keeping his back to Tom to hide the agony in his face from him. But Tom was not heeding him, his thoughts were with Helen, he must fly to her. Article by article he flung on his winter-wear without stopping to bother with buttons or buckles, and just as he was springing for the door it burst open and Helen flung herself on his breast.

“Oh, my darling, all our happy to-morrow's surprises are fallen to ruins; our betrothal, your new-made membership in the firm, our plans for—oh, come with me, my father is arrested for murder!”

A moment later Harrison was alone, bowed and haggard and white, torturing himself with vain upbraidings, breaking his heart with vain remorse.

“And to think—I could have been spared it! If I had only waited—only waited a day!—one day! Ah, if my father hadn't told me notice had been served upon him. . . . Why, there was nothing in that! How did he come to tell it me? . . . Yes, that is a mystery—I cannot make it out. . . . This whole day we have been swimming in prosperity, and I didn't know it! The note canceled; Tom a partner in the firm; and they betrothed—our good name saved, our fortunes made—oh, Tom, one little word could have saved me, and now I am a thief and an assassin. And oh, my God, an innocent man is seized for my crime—and he the man that could have destroyed us, name and all, but put forth his good kind hand and saved us whole! . . . If I were a man I would go and take his place. And I will do it, by God I will!” He got up and [begin page 233] strode with energetic step across the room and threw on his overcoat and began to button it. With the third button his zeal began to waver a little; he buttoned the fourth with hesitation; with the fifth in his fingers he stopped and began to reflect. He stood so, during several moments; then he sighed and began to slowly unbutton. The process finished, he stood thinking once more. Presently he resumed the buttoning; but not with alacrity, this time; it was an effort, and had but little life in it; he got no further than the third button; then he undid his work. After a little he pulled himself together and made one struggle more. But it ended with the first button. He took off the coat and went wearily back to his place at the fire and sat down to grind the grist of his bitter thoughts again. “I am not a man,” he said.

The door opened and the gaunt figure of his father entered, in night-clothes.

“Why, lad, aren't you up a little late?” said the old man, sociably.

For answer the son pushed toward him the canceled papers, with a look which was a reproach, and which said, “How do you reconcile this with what you told me?”

The old man examined the papers indifferently, and said in a matter-of-course way—

“Canceled. Yes, that is all right. I went to him after supper this evening, and told him to cancel them on the spot or I'd kill him. And I would have done it, too. And I made him give me back the counterfeits; and I've got them hid away safe.” Noticing an expression of horror and astonishment in his son's face, he added, appealingly, “Don't look at me like that, George; it had to be done; he would have ruined us tomorrow, and blighted our good name besides. But we are safe, now, George, and I take all the blame—if there is any.”

The son said to himself, “I see it all, now. It only needed this to make the disasters complete—he is mad!” Then, gently, “It is late and cold, father; you need rest; you will be better in bed.”

He led the old man away, both of them walking feebly and neither of them saying anything more. George returned, after a little, and sat down to wait for Tom; he had no desire to go to bed, sleep was out of the question.

[begin page 234]

He began to think over the happenings of the previous fortnight, and now his father's madness threw light upon certain of them which had been dark before. For instance, his father had reported that the Squire had required him to pay up his indebtedness; manifestly this had not happened, his father had only imagined it. His father had proposed to appeal to his rich bachelor brother in Memphis for help—a strange idea, it had seemed to George, for that had been tried several times before, with no result; not a penny would his uncle lend or give. But no matter, let it be tried again. This time, to George's surprise, it succeeded: his father reported that his brother had sent the money—grumblingly and ungraciously—and that he had paid it to Squire Fairfax on the 27th of October and had extinguished the debt. It was plain, now, that that was another output of an insane imagination. Without question his father had bought the counterfeit money somewhere and paid the debt with it.

Nobody to talk to! In all his life he had not known a time before when he could not pour his troubles into some friendly ear and get something of solace and assuagement for them, but now when he needed this help as he had never needed it before, he must seal up his tongue though his heart burst: there was no one with whom he could share his kind of secrets.

What an avalanche of calamities had swept down upon him!—and how had it all happened? what was the source? He took from the fire a charred stick and went to the whitewashed wall and began to make a rude drawing there; meanwhile muttering to himself:

“The genealogy of a lapse. The fruit of a temptation. What was the seed—the source—the root whence the tree of disaster sprang? False pride.” He drew the root and the trunk, and labeled them. He hung the fruits upon the branches, and gave each one a number, soliloquising as he went along. “A false shame, springing from a false pride, makes me dread poverty and loss of the common herd's consideration, and under this stress my principles turn out to be showy shams, I yield to the first specious temptation that offers, and burn the mill. I did not commit the crime in fact, but in spirit and intention I did, which is the same thing.

[begin page 235]

“That crime is Fruit No. 1.

“Next, I commit the crime of robbery: Fruit No. 2.

“Then the crime of murder: Fruit No. 3.

“Upon a innocent man's head this crime falls: Fruit No. 4.

“By this same crime I have made a widow, and taken away her support: Fruit No. 5.

“By this same crime I have smitten to the heart the innocent man's daughter: Fruit No. 6.

“By this same crime I have made my own son a sharer in the daughter's shame and grief: Fruit No. 7.”

He surveyed his work dismally.

“After a reproachless life, a single lapse and all this array of horrors is bred of it—a calamity per hour almost! It seems [begin page 236] incredible—and so unfair, so out of proportion to the size of the transgression. Ah, Moral Law, you are a hard trader; Shylock of the Shylocks, you exact your pound of flesh a hundred fold!”

The night wind bore to him out of the distance a sound which he recognized, and he hastily rubbed out the words “False Pride” and “Disaster” from the roots and trunk of his tree, and waited upon that approaching sound with a quickened pulse. Soon Dug Hapgood burst in, eager and excited.

“Say, George, there's been a riot. I say there's been a riot—you hear?—a riot!”

“Yes, yes, I hear—don't shout so. What was it about?”

“By gracious, they tried to lynch him!”

“Lynch who?”

“Squire.”

It made George reel in his tracks. The human newspaper went briskly on, while he warmed his red hands at the fire.

“Yes, sir, they got him to the calaboose all right and got him in, but by that time the news was around and here comes the whole village flocking, men, women and children, putting on the rest of their clothes as they come, and just buzzing, they were so mad. Then comes the sher'ff a-tearing, and had his double-barrelled gun, and only just in time, too, for here comes Bridget Bleeker, and she had a Fourth of July torch, and begun to shout ‘Lynch him, lynch the bloody assassin!’ and the crowd raised a yell and made a surge for the calaboose, but the sher'ff was there, you see, and he put his back against the door, and whilst he made a speech to them constable Catlin smuggled the Squire out the back way and around the alley and into the county jail, and by that time Tom and Helen were on hand, and Helen went in with her father, and Tom stayed outside to help the sher'ff; and in about a minute here come the mob just a booming, and Bridget she mounted onto a dray and waved her torch and yelled, ‘Lynch him, lynch him!’ and the sher'ff called on all good citizens to come and stand by him, and a lot done it; and then the crowd went for that pile of brickbats that's there by the jail, and begun to rain them, and Tom was by the sher'ff's side, and a brick fetched him—”

“Oh, my God!”

[begin page 237]

“Sit down, sit down! Where you going?”

“To Tom, of course!”

“The more fool, you—sit down, I tell you. You can't do any good. He's all right. He's got a bad knock, but that's nothing. I'll tell you why, in a minute. Lemme light a pipe.” While he was doing it George wrung his hands in silent distress, and muttered to himself, “Fruit No. 8, to be added.” Then Dug went on. “They crowded the sher'ff and his people pretty lively, but he clubbed his gun and laid out several, and you bet you they won't 'tend any more riots this week—”

“Fruit No. 9,” muttered George.

“—and Doc Stevens, he was by the sher'ff with his stick and laying into the mob like a little man, and then the thing happened that stopped the riot.”

“Ah, thank God—what was it?”

“Somebody fired a shot and it took Doc Stevens in the heart and killed him dead.”

George plowed his hands through his hair, and moaned “Fruit No. 10—a good man gone, and the fault all mine—how am I to endure all this?”

That man's death was a heavier calamity for George Harrison than he suspected at the time.

“Well, as soon as that happened the mob stopped carrying on, and it was as still as a graveyard; and they took their hats off and gathered around the corpse and you could a heard a pin drop; and while they were standing so, there were some wild shrieks, and here come the widow Stevens—”

“Oh, God pity me!—”

“—and her two daughters, and flung themselves on the body—”

“I shall go mad—I know it!”

“—and hugged it and kissed it and cried over it—”

“Fruit No. 11—oh, it is awful!”

“—and it was so pitiful to see, that the people couldn't stand it, and turned away. Then they begun to break apart and go off talking low, two and two. And Tom was laying there insensible—”

“Lord, Lord, if I could only die!—”

“—and when they were gathering him up, out of the jail comes [begin page 238] Helen Fairfax with her hair flying, and flung herself at Tom and put her arms around him and she was crying, and said, ‘Oh, is he dead? don't say he is dead—he is mine, mine, mine!’ That's what she said, and everybody wondered, and said, ‘Why, it's been made up between them—that's good.’ That's what they said. And Tom come to, and she was that glad, poor thing, you never see anything like it; and she said help her get him to the widow Wilkinson's, she was going to 'tend him herself till he got well. And they helped her, and there they are, and don't need you, I can tell you. And she wants her old Liza and Emly, and I'm on the way to send them, and distribute the news. Hel-lo, is that clock right?—three in the morning!—I must be moving along. How's the gov'ner?”

“Not well. He came down here a while ago, very imprudently dressed, and got chilled.”

“That's bad. I said that's bad—for a man as old as he is. Say—I'll go for Doc Ste—oh, I forgot.”

“Oh, dear, dear, these are awful times!”

“Inquest at half past eight in the morning—only about five hours from now. It'll be mighty interesting. I'll come by for you, George—we'll go together.”

George shook as if he had been smitten with an ague. For the moment he couldn't speak, but he indicated with a gesture that he did not wish to go.

“What! You don't mean to say you're not going? Why, what in the world's the matter with you? George, you ain't right in your mind; I never heard of such a thing.”

“I'm not well, Dug; I'm far from well these days, you know—I'm staying in the house.”

“Yes, I forgot. Yes, that's so. But my! that was all trouble, it wasn't sickness. Tom and Helen's make-up—why, man, he's rich! You're out of all your troubles now—ain't that so?”

“Ye-s.”

“B'gracious you ought to be the gayest of the gay. Don't you feel so?”

George tried to say yes, but the word stuck in his throat.

“Blame it, George, you don't look it—hang it, I don't understand it at all. You haven't anything on your mind yet, have you?”

[begin page 239]

“Oh, he is torturing the guilty soul out of me—why doesn't he go!” wailed George, to himself.

“Say, George, chirk up. We'll go to the inquest. That'll brighten you up; it'll make another man of you. All you want's a change. It's going to be mighty interesting. Everybody'll be there, and you'll see poor old harmless Jake laying there in his blood—”

“Oh, for God's sake—don't!”

“Why, what is the matter with you, George? I never saw a man act so. I tell you, man, I'm troubled about you. This ain't any common sickness. I'm going straight for Doc Ste—I forgot again, poor old Doc—ah, dear, we shan't ever see him any more, and a great loss he is to this town, I can say that for him. I hope to goodness the man that was the cause of his death'll swing for it; don't you, George?”

“Oh, I know he ought to—oh, yes, he ought to.”

“And will, I hope. Put it there—shake!”

George lent his hand, but Dug did the shaking.

“You're kind of weak, George; you get to bed and get some sleep and brisken up; I'll be here for you at eight sharp, and—”

“Damnation, I'm not going to the inquest!”

Dug was so startled that his mouth dropped open and his pipe fell out.

“Goodness, George, what a start you did give me! Well, all right, stay away if you like, but when I come to tell you about it you'll wish you'd been there, and then it'll be too late. Hel-lo! what's this? Family tree?”

“Ye-s.”

“Hm. On account of Tom going to marry into the quality—hey? Got to skirmish around and rake up some ancestors? Bully good idea, too. Who's No. 1?—Adam?”

“Yes—name it to suit yourself.”

“And then comes Moses and Deuteronomy. No, Abel and Cain. Cain's No. 3, ain't it? Knocked his brother out with a club—same as the Squire done with poor Jakey to-night; blamed good coincidence, ain't it, George? Say, ain't it striking, don't you think?”

“Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes!—are you done?”

“But you let the Squire have this one, George, and you build [begin page 240] another. Just fits his case to a dot; but you—oh, you build another, and leave out the clubs and murders. Say, I must be going, and start them servants along; Helen'll be getting impatient—said she wanted them right away.” He got as far as the door, George anxiously following; then he paused, and surveyed George with a compassionate eye. “But you're lonesome, and ain't got anybody to cheer you up, George, and so, if you'd druther I'd stay—”

“No—no—no!” shouted George, aghast, “send the servants—hurry them along—she needs them—and I must get some sleep;” and before Dug could protest he was gently pushed outside and the door closed against him.

“He was here only half an hour,” mourned George, “and yet in that little time he added four disasters of my manufacture to this tree's dismal burden”—and he took his charred stick and drew the four fruits and numbered them.

[begin page 241] [begin page 242]

George dragged himself to bed, and during several hours he slept the sleep of the troubled in spirit. When the process of waking began, his developing consciousness found him a grateful and happy man—a man with a vague sense of having passed through a desolating dream, which has melted away and gone from him like a cloud—

Then followed that ghastly sinking at the heart which comes when we realize that the horror which seemed a dream was not a dream but reality. It is an overwhelming moment, the last perfection of human misery, it is death in life; we do not know how to take up our burden again, the world is empty, the zest of existence is gone. The time dragged drearily along, and it seemed to Harrison that his spirit would nevermore rise up out of this darkness and gloom; then a thought drifted into his mind which brought the relief of a passing interest in the practical concerns of life and the world: what had he done with the mask which he had worn? He must have put it in his pocket, of course, but he could not remember when he did it, nor where. He got up and examined his pockets; the mask was missing. Very well, in the excitements of the tragedy and his flight, he must have dropped it without noticing it. No matter—it could not be identified as his, it could furnish no consequential evidence; it could not betray him. There was comfort in that, and he needed any crumbs of comfort he could find in these harassing days. He took the other mask out of its concealment, now, purposing to destroy it, which was a natural impulse. He held it up and glanced at it, then made a wild catch at the bedpost, missed it and sunk limp to the floor. It was the wrong mask—it had no marks on it!

An awful fear came upon him, a wave of despair swept over him; he realized that a vast disaster had befallen him. Hardly conscious of what he was about, he sat thinking, thinking, and tearing the [begin page 243] mask to shreds, his body trembling and the cold sweat gathering on his forehead.

What should he do? Oh, there was but one thing to do: he must go to the inquest; he must learn his fate and quickly, an hour's suspense would kill him. He gathered himself up and began to throw on his clothes. There was a knock, and Martha bustled in, bursting with news.

“Marse George, Dug Hapgood, dat dey calls de Yeller Press 'caze he yell so and carry de news aroun' when anything happen, he's been here, en Squire Fairfax has killed our Jake, en somebody killed doctor Stevens, en oh, my lordy, Marse Tom he's—”

“Never mind it! I know all about it. Rush—get my breakfast!”

“She's all ready, seh. En do please hurry en go en see Marse Tom—”

“Tom's all right—never mind Tom; I'm going to the inquest. How is father?”

“I been watchin' de do', but he ain't awake yet, seh.”

“Get along, then; pour the coffee. Fly!”

Seven minutes later, George was swallowing his coffee, and a few minutes afterward was striding up the river road in the frosty morning air. A belated citizen—Bowles, the tavern keeper—came lashing along in an open wagon, and took him in, glad to do a favor to so important and influential a man, and worried him all the way with talk about the murder, the riot, the killing of Stevens, the wounding of Tom and the others, and with congratulations; for all the village knew of Tom's re-engagement, now, and had a proper appreciation of the great financial uplift it meant for the Harrisons. But George hardly heard what the man said—his mind was elsewhere and busy with terrors.

When he entered the fatal room and began to work his way through the pack and jam, the people divided and let him pass as soon as they saw who it was, and coroner Evans most courteously insisted upon his coming forward and sitting by his side; and had a chair brought, and wiped it off with his coat tails, and put George in it, whispering “now you can see him good, and hear everything.”

George was obliged to accept these undesired courtesies; obliged [begin page 244] also to look at the dreadful object on the floor—stretched there by his hand; the thought and the spectacle together made him sick and he could feel the blood leave his face.

“I don't wonder it makes you turn pale,” mumbled the coroner, “it is an awful sight, ain't it? one of the dirtiest deeds that was ever done—though of course you understand I ain't saying who done it. Of course I don't know; I only know I don't want the man's conscience inside of my hide that done it.”

Then came a roof-shaking bellow. Dug Hapgood was whispering in a friend's ear and pointing:

“Say! it's begun to bleed fresh—the murderer's in the house, according to the old saying!” and he laughed.

It gave George a grisly shock; also, it set the people to wondering and whispering.

One after the other the witnesses testified, and George, hardly breathing, hung upon their words, listening for mention of the mask, waiting for its production, and wildly trying to invent a plausible and hopeful tale to tell when that terrible exposure should be made. At the end of an hour, in the midst of an impressive stillness, the coroner announced the result of the inquest:

“It is found that deceased fell by the hand of Walter Fairfax—under what circumstances the jury have not been able to determine. The inquest is finished—let the place be closed.”

And no mention of the mask! George was cold to the heart. It seemed to him that he could not bear this: it would have been better to see the mask produced, and know the worst and be done with it. The mask was in existence, sure. Some person had it; why had he kept it back? Why had he not testified? The mystery of it! Why hadn't he testified? With this persecuting question beating upon his brain he left the place like one lost in a dream.

Bowles was watching for him, and captured him before some others who would have liked the honor of driving him got a chance to apply. The journey townward began, and again the fat, good-natured tavern-keeper's tongue was loosed.

“It's great times, sir, great! I don't know when we've had the like. [begin page 245] A cold-blooded murder, a riot, our best doctor killed, young Mr. Tom and others wounded, two inquests in one forenoon, two big funerals getting ready, and one of our most principal citizens, head of a grand old blue-blood family, locked up in the common jail! Why, sir, my house is going to do four weeks' business in the next three days. I've ordered—now how many barrels of whisky should you say I've ordered?—and only for three days. How many should you say?” and the sandy man beamed a look of glorified expectancy out of his watery blue eyes.

The pallid figure at his side twitched impatiently, and the reply came with a weary accent—

“I don't know. I have not thought of the matter.”

“But give a guess, sir, only just a guess,” said the landlord, supplicatingly, “How many barrels should you say?”

Out of a mind that was far away and which now performed its function automatically, unconsciously, without interest, and with no purpose but to discharge a duty of courtesy, came the dreamy answer—

“I—well—perhaps—fifteen hundred thousand?”

Bowles's beefy face flushed purple and he flung an indignant glance at his guest; but the guest was not aware of it; the guest had already forgotten the answer and had taken no note of its dimensions when it was furnished; his half-closed eyes, with the lines of pain above them, showed that his mind was absorbed in matters of grave and earnest import, and was not accessible to a village tavern's sordid trivialities. Bowles sensed the situation, and realized that no jest had been intended; his resentment melted away, and gave place to a creditable feeling of regret that he had intruded his small matters upon the great citizen at this ill-chosen time. He hauled his wind and went off on a proper tack.

“Well, it's a time for us all to grieve, I'm free to say that, sir. When such things happen, it hits us all—can't any of us escape; it lowers the whole community a peg. Now a way-up man like the Squire—think of it!” and he touched up his horse with the tip of his whip, as if he were setting an exclamation point to his remark. “I reckon there ain't any doubt but the Squire done it?” He turned, [begin page 246] expecting the perfunctory reply, but he did not get it; George had hardly heard him—he was thinking of the lost mask. “There ain't any doubt, is there, sir?”

“I—I haven't heard any expressed.” Then to himself, “Why must my life be made bitterer than it already is, by these infernal unconsciously-accusing questions! This creature looks at me as if he half suspects—something. I wonder—oh, no, he can't; it is impossible. Why doesn't he look the other way? why must he look at me all the time?—and in that prying, searching way!”

His guilty soul was doing the landlord a wrong; the landlord was not prying, he was merely doing a natural thing: when he addressed his guest he turned toward him.

“Gum! but character's a grand thing—ruputation! You see, the Squire has always turned a kind of a cold shoulder to folks, and that ain't a wise thing for the quality to do—it makes them unpopular; and it makes people sort of privately satisfied when anything happens to them, and ready to look on the worst side of it instead of the favorable one. But it ain't so with the Harrisons—their ruputation's different. Lord, just change it around, and see! Suppose you'd been found standing over that murdered man and you all bloody, that way—”

“Oh, curse the pitiless idiot!” muttered the sufferer.

“Just suppose it. What would everybody have said? Why, they'd a said ‘Sho! he never killed him; some low-down blackguard done it, and turned tail and run when the dead man let go that yell.’ Now sir, I put it to you: if you had been found like that—”

Here with the idea of blowing his nose, which was one of his ways of punctuating preparatorily a coming climax, he drew out his handkerchief and flourished it, exposing by a glimpse a couple of holes in it. George fell up against him an inert and half lifeless mass.

“Good land, sir! What's the trouble?” exclaimed the landlord, thrusting the handkerchief into his pocket and putting his arm around George to steady him in his place.

“Ah, I am far from well—far from well—”

“I can see it, sir; you gasp like a fish—”

“I have been obliged to keep my room for days—”

[begin page 247]

“I heard of it, sir—”

“—and the exertion of this outing has been too much for me, and—”

“Good luck, here's your house—”

“No, drive on, I shall be all right in a minute. Drop me at the widow Wilkinson's—”

“In three shakes of a sheep's tail, sir, as the saying is. G'lang—spread yourself, Meg! Your Tom's there—in just the charmingest hands, too! He'll be wanting to see you, sir—they will!”

They soon reached the Wilkinson gate, and Bowles tenderly helped George out, then drove away with a cheery

“Don't forget the other inquest, sir!” During the day he told of his adventure to many a friend, and always wound up with “Now there's a man. Chock full of noble emotion—most fainted, as I told you, over this awful thing. Yes, sir, he's a man, every inch of him; he ain't any Squire; if he had killed Jake, he would come right out and say so, he wouldn't give a damn for the consequences. Because why? He's a Harrison—that's why. They don't know how to shirk.”

If Harrison had heard him, his private comment would have been, “He is describing a man that did exist.” As he passed up through the yard he said to himself, “I am weak from the fright it gave me; but it was not my mask. If it had been, he would have produced it in court, of course. What has become of that mask! Am I to go on like this—frightened stiff every time I see a white handkerchief with holes in it?” He entered the parlor and sat down to wait while the announcement of his visit was made. His mind went back, and back, step by step over the ground; at last he sprang from his chair as if he had been fired out of it, and began to walk the floor in a consuming excitement, clinching his hair in his hands and muttering in anguish, “Oh, oh, oh, now I remember, God help me! as I was slipping out at the back door, insane with terror, I came near sneezing, and seized my nose in an iron grip to prevent it—and there was no mask in the way! It is horrible—horrible! It means that the mask was dropped inside the building—along the hall somewhere?—in that room itself? Was there some one else hiding there to steal that money? Did that some one find the mask? [begin page 248] Then why didn't he produce it at the inquest and ward suspicion from himself? . . . No—that wouldn't do. They would ask, ‘How did you come to be there? and are you sure you didn't kill the man?’ ”

He was a natural conclusion-jumper, and his spirits came up at a bound. Everything was perfectly plain to him, now: there was another person there, on an evil errand; in the very room itself, maybe; hidden behind the furniture; witnessed the tragedy, no doubt. “And yet there's nothing to fear from him; even if he saw my face there's nothing to fear from him. Ah, yes, let him keep the mask—it is in safe hands.” He was feeling very much relieved, now. Then came a thought which spoiled the whole scheme: why should the man carry the accusing mask away? “Oh, dear, dear, of course he wouldn't; he would naturally leave it there, and let it tell its fatal tale.” He was down in the abyss again. “But someone did take it away—that is absolutely certain; and didn't produce it at the inquest. Why? what is the mystery of it? . . . That mask is in no friend's hands, or he would not have left me in misery all these hours. Handkerchiefs with holes in them!—I shall see them at every turn, they will flap along in endless procession through my nightmare dreams.” It made him groan to think of it.

The door flew open, and Helen tripped in and welcomed him with an affectionate embrace.

“He is doing very well; come and see him—papa; my new papa, my dear papa,” and she kissed him on both cheeks. It almost shamed him into going and taking her abused father's place; but not quite. He smiled down upon the upturned face that lay against his breast, and said—

“You dear and beautiful creature! I am so glad that all of the sunshine has not gone out of your young life, and so sorry that your poor father—”

“O, tell me the verdict! It isn't bad? say it isn't bad; for—”

From a block or two away the clarion voice of the Yeller Press rose upon the air—

“Verdict unanimous—Squire found guilty!”

George hastened to support Helen, but she disdained it. “Oh, the lie!” she said, and straightened herself up, the indignant blood [begin page 249] mounting to her face. “It is like those unreasoning clods; they might as well accuse you of such a thing.” Which made George wince. “But I am not troubled: I should be ashamed to be troubled—bearing the name I bear. The Grand Jury is to be heard from, yet; and before that, the miscreant who did that cowardly murder upon a poor unarmed wretch will be found; I know it—I feel it!” and there was a confidence, a certainty, a conviction in her tone and manner which made the goose-pimples rise on Harrison's skin. “You will hunt him down! it is a sacred commission—I put it in your hands, with full trust; my second father's hands, my good and noble second father! and all my days I shall be so grateful to you, and so proud of you. You will not let that base thing escape, of that I am sure. But remember! you must not denounce him—that must be my prerogative, my pleasure, for the shame he has brought upon us. I will stand before him, so—and I will look him in the face, so—and I will say, ‘I am looking into a murderer's eyes; I’—but look at me, don't turn away—”

“But you—you—do it so terribly!”

“Do I? Oh, that pleases me. And I ought to do it well, because I feel it so. But it is nothing to the way I shall do it when I am looking into the real assassin's eyes. You shall be there to see; I will not do it till you are there to see. Does that make you happy, dear?”

“Oh—yes—immeasurably.”

“I am so glad. I'm going to practice. Wouldn't you practice?”

“Well—yes—yes, I think so.”

“Dear papa; I will practice on you—every day.”

“I shall be—be—I shall be delighted.”

“It cheers me up and makes me happy and hopeful and confident, just the thought of it. Come, now, let us go and tell Tom all about it; it will do him good.”

She put an arm around his waist, he put an arm across her back and under her arm, and they moved away upon their errand.

About this time Martha was passing the house upon a momentous quest. She found the District Attorney, and gave him a note. It read—

“Come. Lose no time. Bring a notary. andrew harrison.”

[begin page 250]

He turned, with the question on his lips, “What—is your old master ill?” but thought better of it, and said instead, “Tell him it's all right,” and Martha went her way. Then he called his clerk, and went with him to Harrison's house—a twelve or fifteen minutes' walk.

They found the old gentleman tranquil, composed, but bearing the look of a very sick man.

“Draw up a chair here, Randall,” he said, in a weak voice, “and don't ask me questions and don't interrupt me; for I am a dying man, my time is short, and I wish to say what I have to say before my mind shall lose anything of its clearness. I have a solemn duty to perform; I cannot die, I must not die until it is discharged and justice done. Martha has just told me about the inquest. I had no intention to give evidence in that case, it was my purpose to hide in my heart what I knew. For this wickedness my offended God has meted out just and swift punishment to me. Write!”

When Randall and his clerk left the room, half an hour later, they were very pale; and the one was saying to the other, “It is a dismal secret to have to carry around until the Grand Jury meets.” They found Martha below, and advised her to call in a neighboring woman or two to help nurse the patient, and they said they would send a doctor, and also George Harrison.

George found Tom with his head turbaned with bandages, but pleasantly situated, for besides Helen's society he had that of the widow Wilkinson and several of her neighbors. However, it was not a comfortable place for George; he was soon in distress and anxious to get away; in fact obliged to get away, for these people not only said the unkindest things about the murderer, but they also required of him the details of the inquest, which was the equivalent of asking him to walk through fire for their accommo- [begin page 251] dation . He had a pair of good excuses for cutting his visit short, and he used them and was grateful that he had them in stock. He said he could not even bear to think of the inquest, let alone talk about it—Helen and Tom would understand this, and he believed the others would, also. This delicacy and sensitiveness scored a point for him, and the point was strengthened rather than weakened by the fact that its genuineness could not be questioned, since it was a recognised trait of his character. His other excuse was that the true friends of Squire Fairfax should not be tardy, at this sad time, in going to him and by their presence make known to the world where their sympathies lay. This sentiment scored another point for him, and was applauded. Helen was touched, as indeed they all were, and she hurried him away on his good mission, and gave him many loving messages for her father, whom she had not seen for two hours and would not see again for a couple more.

The Squire had the warder's room in the jail and was as comfortable as a prisoner might well be, for the chamber was well furnished and there was a good fire. He and Harrison were left together by the warder, and they shook hands and sat down, the Squire courteously thanking Harrison for coming, and taking blame that they had not met oftener since their school days and become better acquainted with each other. George said he had always supposed that the Squire did not like him, and this had made him shy about making advances. The Squire said it was a misconception; and a pity, too, for no doubt much had been lost by it, for both; for his part he was sincerely sorry, and hoped that thenceforth they might be good friends—adding, with a wan smile, “that is, if you care for the friendship of a man in my position.”

George assured him that he did care for it. The ice was broken, now; the men understood each other; and after that their talk proceeded without restraint. But George was soon in distress once more, for now he had to tell about the inquest—there was no escape; each phrase of the evidence fell upon the innocent listener with something of the effect of a blow; and when the tale was finished Fairfax said gloomily—

“It is as I supposed it would be—in fact, as I knew it would be. [begin page 252] There is no way out; the evidence leaves no door, no loophole. It means a manslaughter term in the State Prison for me—ten years, at least. It will break my pride—and my child's heart.”

George said to himself, “It cuts me to the quick to see him so, and I the cause. If I were a man, I . . . . But I am not a man—I am not equal to it.” Then he said aloud, with a show of confidence which he felt was a poor counterfeit, “You must not allow yourself to feel that way; we must clear you; we must find a way.”

“Clear me?” said Fairfax, looking up reproachfully. “Talk that to Helen; talk it to her constantly; I shall be grateful for all the words of the sort that you can say to her. But we are men, you and I, and can do without that; and must—for we know better. I know I didn't touch the man, but that is of no value—that is no evidence; but there is strong and abundant evidence that I did. We need not fatigue ourselves with discussing a clearance; we know what is going to happen.” Then he turned suddenly upon his new friend and said with energy, “It does credit to your heart, and I honor you for it; but I am a man, Harrison, and I know quite well how this matter stands, and so do you. You don't believe me innocent, you haven't any right to believe me innocent in face of this evidence; and I don't blame you in the least—I am far from blaming you. I should blame you if you knew me, but you have had no opportunity to know me. In the circumstances I should have a small opinion of your intelligence if you were able to say with all your heart, or half of it, that you believed me guiltless.” He looked Harrison steadily in the eyes, as if to keep him from shirking or paltering, and continued, “I know you to be intelligent, and as we are to be friends, I want you to do a friend's part by me: be frank and square with me; let us be masculine, not feminine; and don't, I pray, have any mistaken tenderness for my feelings at the expense of candor and truth. You are necessarily obliged to believe me guilty; now then, say it, then I shall put full confidence in you and thenceforth have what I particularly need and strongly desire in these days—a manly and rational friend to talk with who won't insult my dignity with soft words and silver-gilt phrases, but will speak the blunt truth all the time, and so make conversation a refreshment and worth the trouble.”

[begin page 253]

Harrison hesitated, and a faint color rose slowly into his face. It was a difficult place; there seemed a sort of incongruity about setting out to establish a reputation for blunt truth by beginning with a lie.

“Say it!”

It was plain that there was no escape; so, with as good an appearance of blunt truth as he could give to the words, Harrison said—

“It hurts me—it hurts me to say it; but in view of the evidence I am obliged to believe you guilty.”

Fairfax reached for his hand and shook it, and said—

“That is sane and right; I hate a weakling and I love a man. Now we shall go on well together. And we can discuss my side of this tragedy. Not that discussing it can affect the case in any way, for it can't; yet it will be of value to me to discuss it, for I should like to have one good man believe me innocent; I should prize that—prize it supremely—it is a natural feeling; we are all made in that way; if we know that one good man believes in us we can rest serene in that solace and support, and let the common herd believe as it likes. I shall not be able straightway to convince you that I never touched the man, but in time you will believe; in time you will come to know me and then you will not doubt.”

Then, detail by detail, he furnished his version of the tragedy, beginning with the shout which had startled him, followed by an agonised cry and a heavy fall, and ending with his discovery and arrest by the three villagers; Harrison listening, all the way through, with a suffering interest and a sore conscience.

“Now, then,” said Fairfax, “I come to a queer mystery—a thing which I have puzzled over to weariness, to no purpose: I can't understand it.”

“What is it?” asked Harrison, with a vague apprehension.

“That shout that startled me. The form of the phrase.”

The phrase flashed through Harrison's memory: “Um Gottes willen!” His mind was a diligent factory of fanciful and irrational fears in these days, and for a moment he was alarmed; but only for a moment. He had picked up a good deal of German from Jake Bleeker, and had supposed he was the only man in the region, [begin page 254] except Jake, who understood the language; but apparently here was another one. However, a relieving thought quieted his mind at once: it was a natural exclamation for Jake to make, in the circumstances,—the court would perceive that. Then he asked,—

“What was the phrase?”

“It was this: You godless villain!”

Harrison said to himself, “He doesn't know German, after all,” and the thought gave him comfort, though he would not have been able to explain why, even to himself.

“I thought it was Jake's voice, but I had been drinking a little, and my wits were not as clear as they should have been. I see now, that it was the other man's.”

“Well then, where is the mystery?”

“Where is it? Why, in the form of the phrase.”

“Its form?” said Harrison, dubiously; “I don't quite get your idea.”

“Why man, see how literary it is, how formal, how stately, how dramatic, how bookish! It could have come out of a novel or a play.”

“It's true; I hadn't noticed it, but I see it now. It certainly is a very uncommon form.”

“Here in this region? Indeed I should say so! Can you name the man in this community that can put his language together in that large style?”

After seeming to run over his list of acquaintances, Harrison conceded the point.

“No,” he said, “upon reflection I do not call to mind anyone who—”

Fairfax cut in with a gesture, accompanied by a genial smile, and said innocently—

“Why, Harrison, you are the only man in the community that talks like that! What makes you start so!”

“Did I?” said Harrison, mopping his forehead with his handkerchief to hide the pallor which he felt was overspreading his face; “I am a bundle of nerves, these days, and—”

“Take some whisky. There—that will set you right. Don't you feel better, now? It's the best remedy there is. Allow me—I'll take some myself; for you gave me a start: I thought you thought I was [begin page 255] hinting that you were the assassin—I honestly did; but you won't hold that against me,” and he stroked Harrison's hand, which rested upon the chair-arm; “I was trying to compliment you; it's a good compliment, too, and deserved; many a felicitous phrase of yours has traveled the town and reached my ear. Now, then, do you know what I get out of that stately remark? In the first place, when you come to know me you will believe I didn't invent it or imagine it, but heard it, and that will convince you that there was another man there, since Jake could not frame that phrase; and as soon as you arrive at that you will be on your way to believe that it was that other man and not I who used that club. That is one of the things which I get out of that remark.”

“And the other?”

“That the man who employed it was a stranger here.”

“Well argued!—and correct,” said Harrison, much comforted to see matters taking this new direction.

“The man was a stranger, sure; an educated stranger, a reader of books; a man who has been up in the world, and is down in it, now; a man whose needs are great, who probably grew up serenely confident that his training would always be an iron protection for him against temptation—”

Harrison darted a suspicious look at Fairfax—was Fairfax reading him? But Fairfax went tranquilly on, unconscious of the glance—

“—and as likely as not this burglarious entry of my house was his first attempt at crime, poor devil—who knows? A man to be pitied, if that was the case. Wouldn't you pity him?”

“Oh, with all my heart,” said Harrison, and a blind man would have known that he was sincere this time, by the mere testimony of his tones.

There was a pause, and both men sat thinking. Presently Fairfax said with animation—

“Harrison, that man might be found! He would be detectible in a moment by his stylish language. There was never a better clue in the world. There were not two strangers like that in this village last night. Isn't that so?”

“Necessarily. There couldn't be two.”

The futile hopefulness in the Squire's face sent a pang to [begin page 256] Harrison's heart, and he wished he could have been spared the sight of it. The Squire got up and walked the floor, cogitating, and the spring in his step showed that the clouds in his sky were lifting. He stopped presently and put his hand on Harrison's shoulder and said almost affectionately—

“Thank the good fate that sent me you! and to think I might have had you for a friend all these years! I see a hope, Harrison, I really do—don't you?”

“I—yes, I—believe I do.”

“I know it, Harrison! It may not save me—that is not to be expected; but there's a chance to cast into the world's mind a large doubt that I was alone with Jake—a doubt worth a gold mine, for it would carry with it the powerful suggestion that that third person might have struck the blow, and not I. Harrison! if that stranger can be found, it is possible that people saw him near my house or pointed in its direction. Think of the force that that would have with a jury!” He was excited, and his eyes glowed. “It might not save me, but it would remove half of my disgrace; everybody would say I went to the State Prison upon an uncertainty. Think how that would lighten the burden for Helen and me!”

A ray of gladness burst into Harrison's clouded soul, and he forgot that there was no such stranger, and cried out fervently—

“Splendid—the Governor would pardon you out in twenty-four hours!”

The Squire straightened in his tracks, and the pride of seven generations of Fairfaxes rose crimson in his face.

“Pardon me—when I am innocent? I wouldn't accept it!”

Harrison was ashamed of his mistake, and stammered out—

“I only meant—meant—why, no, of course you couldn't.”

Fairfax's eyes were snapping.

“I would rot in prison a century first!” Then observing Harrison's humble distress and shame, his brow cleared and his manner changed at once and he said, “Oh, you must forgive me, Harrison, I've been brutal; it was your good heart speaking, not your head—and for me; and I have thanked you with an arrogance. Don't hold it against me.”

“Don't say a word, Fairfax, I can't stand it!” said Harrison, with [begin page 257] honest emotion; “I can bear your rebukes, but your generosities kill me. Hold it? I can't hold anything against you.”

The Squire was touched, and said this was the right friendship and must be consecrated—it was entitled to that honor. They consecrated it.

“Now then,” said the Squire, putting away his glass, “find that stranger, Harrison, find the Shaksperean stranger, and come and we'll consecrate again.”

Once more the stranger was real to Harrison for a moment, and he said fervently—

“I will!” Then he sighed, remembering that there was no such person.

“You will have no difficulty; there isn't two of him, and whoever has heard him talk will remember him. He stopped with Bowles, no doubt, and he can tell you about him. Meantime I have not asked after your father. He—well, I saw him a day or two ago, and I thought he did not seem quite well.”

Fairfax remembered with a pang that in that interview he had been severe with the old man, not suspecting that his mind was disordered and that he was not responsible for the strange fraud which he had committed. The remark reminded George, too, of that sorrowful episode, and his heart sank, for he feared that the Squire was now going to speak of the counterfeit money—and what could he say in return? That he was not implicated? But how explain his father's act—tell him his father was mad? How could he do that? He resolved that he wouldn't. There would be no need; the secret would get out before many days, then the Squire would understand, and forgive.

“My father has not been very well, lately,” said Harrison, and waited for Fairfax to go on. Fairfax did not find it easy to go on. He said hesitatingly, and watching George's face—

“I sent and asked him to come and see me, and—but—he did not come.”

He paused. George said, with the manner of one who is not attaching importance to the matter—

“He ought to have gone. I will remind him, and he will come here.”

[begin page 258]

Still watching George's face, the Squire said, tentatively—

“I—well, what I meant to convey to him was, that I had something for him.”

“Oh,” said George, with gratitude in his voice, “the canceled note! We got it, and I haven't said a word of how thankful we were, and how—”

The Squire put up his hand, and George stopped. Fairfax said to himself, with a sense of relief, “He knows nothing about it; it is easy sailing, now.” Then aloud—

“No, that's a trifle—never mind about that. It was something else.”

George shrunk in his clothes. “It is coming, now,” he said to himself.

“It is another matter, Harrison, and”—seeing that Harrison was about to speak, he put up his hand again, and added with an appearance of indifference—“one which is of no consequence, and which you are not acquainted with.” The words were a gracious surprise, and they came as a reviving breath to Harrison's troubled spirit; he hoped he had heard aright; the tidings seemed too good to be true. “The matter is private between your father and me, and I sent for him because there was no need that you or others should know about it; and so, if he can come to me here—”

The warder put his head in at the door and said—

“Mr. Harrison, there's a message to say your father is sick and Doctor Bradshaw can't be found.”

The door closed, and Harrison began to put on his overcoat. Fairfax hesitated a moment, then said—

“This makes a change of plan necessary. He can't come, and I shall feel better to have the thing arranged to-day; therefore I must put it into your hands. As soon as you have found the doctor, go to my house and look in a certain drawer”—he described it—“and there you will find a roll of bank bills; they belong to your father, and he ought to have had them before this. But you can tell him the delay was not intentional, and he will be satisfied.”

“I will attend to it—” and while he struggled into his overcoat he tried to think of something more to say, but nothing occurred to him, for he was in a new trouble: those counterfeits were marked [begin page 259] —they revealed the secret—was Fairfax forgetting that? He paused, to give Fairfax a chance to take him out of this dilemma. His suspicions were fired at once, and a thought came that made him sick: “Maybe he doesn't intend to take me out of it—maybe he means me to know!” He was in a condition where any remark or act which was not crystal clear to him was as scary as a white handkerchief with holes in it. The silence was awkward. Fairfax seemed to want to say something, but apparently he found the framing of it difficult. Presently he got it out. He laid his hand on Harrison's arm and said—

“You mustn't mind—but this matter—well, it is a little bit delicate, and I am going to ask you to put that money in your pocket without looking at it, and hand it to your father. I give you my word that there is nothing improper about this—your father will tell you so himself.” He laughed an embarrassed laugh and said, “You are tongue-tied with surprise to see a grown-up man so secretive about a trivial matter, but never mind, we can't help the way we are made, you know, and I am made in that way.”

Harrison said to himself, “I am tongue-tied with self-reproach for suspecting a man like you of being as obnoxious to mean suspicions as I am myself, and tongue-tied furthermore with gratitude for the generosity which would save a son from knowing of his father's disgrace.” Then he said aloud, with heartiness, “I will carry out your instructions exactly to the letter, and—”

“Good. Go on. What is it?”

“Why, come to think, the money is not there.”

“Not there? Why?” and the Squire's manner showed anxiety.

“Because an inventory of the room's contents was made and the place locked up and put under guard, and that inventory was produced at the inquest. There was no mention of money in it.”

“The damned assassin got it!” and the Squire seemed aghast at the idea. “Harrison, I swear to you that the money was there. Nobody could have gotten it but the man that killed Jake Bleeker. Don't you believe that?” Without waiting for an answer he went on, excitedly, “You must find that stranger; it is of the utmost consequence that that money shall reach your father.”

“I will do my very best, Squire; but you must not be troubled [begin page 260] about this. I know by what you said a while ago that the amount is so small as to be inconsequential, and I am sure that when my father learns—”

“Oh, it isn't the amount—he must have that money, and no other.”

“But I assure you he will not care. You can pay him in any kind of money you—”

“Harrison, don't—don't—don't! You don't understand the case, you don't know anything about it. Why didn't I get it to him in time! perhaps he wouldn't be ill, now. He must have that money, I tell you, and no other. Find the stranger; hunt him down! I can never cease to reproach myself if—”

The door opened a crack and the confidential roar of the Yeller Press abolished the rest of the speech—

“Say, George, get home! They think the gov'ner's dying. He's been laying speechless ever since ten o'clock, and they can't find that cuss of a doctor. They think it's congestive chill. Hear? I said they think it's congestive chill!” And he was gone, to spread the news.

“It is too late, now,” said the Squire, miserably. “Too late—and I could have saved him. Go, Harrison. I was a brute; but before God I didn't know it and never meant it.”

Harrison went away sick at heart, and saying to himself: “Oh, I foresee it, and there is no help; just for that one departure from rectitude I am to swim chin-deep in shames and sorrows the rest of my days. If I could only change places with my father, and die—or had the commonplace courage to change with that clean man yonder!”6

[begin page 261]

When harrison reached home he found a sentry at the door, in the person of old Martha—she was waiting there to prepare him for the worst. His father had had the third chill “on'y a little while ago,” she said, and of course there was no hope now.

“He's in a doze, Marse George; he don't speak; he ain't gwyne to speak no mo' in dis life; jist breaks a body's heart to see him layin' dah so still, en don't reconnize nobody. Doctor's come, a minute ago.”

In the sick room the doctor sat holding the dying man's wrist; neighbor-women sat in couples about the room, softly whispering; one elderly lady was already removing the medicines and spoons and putting them out of sight, another was doing the same with hot-water bottles and mustard plasters. All the women came on tiptoe to meet George and say words of tenderness and sympathy; and they went with him and stood by the bed, and wept silently while he gazed upon the old father's white face; and when his own tears began to flow down his cheeks, and his lips to quiver, pictures of bygone bereavements of their own rose before them and they said to themselves they knew what he was feeling; then they were strongly moved by this communion of sorrow and suffering, and they murmured pitying things and sobbed aloud.

They really thought they knew what he felt, and all he felt, but it was not so. He was busy with miseries and pangs and self-reproaches which were outside the pale of their guesses. While they were praising him for a good son who had never cost his father a grief or a regret, he was mentally adding another bitter “fruit” to his tree of crimes and labeling it “patricide.” They could not know this, poor souls; so they went innocently on with their deadly compliments—each in its turn a knife in his heart—and when at [begin page 262] last one said “He couldn't do a dishonorable thing, and has left behind him a son that can't even think one,” he felt the knife turn in the wound.

Two days later. They had all the funerals booked for this day, and Bowles said it was going to be the greatest day Indiantown had ever seen. “Three at a whack,” he said with satisfaction, “and all aces; there ain't any community in these regions that can call that hand. Say, Allen, Deathshead Phillips has lost his grip, don't you reckon?—quit a-prophecying, hey?”

“How?”

“Well, here's three deaths in a lump, and he didn't appear to any of these folks to warn them. At least not to Doc Stevens and Jake Bleeker.”

The dissipated-looking young fellow to whom these remarks were addressed—Allen Osgood—considered a moment while he gnawed a corner off a black slab of tobacco, then said—

“Niggers know more than whites about these things, you'll allow, I reckon?”

“Yes, it's so. Well, then?”

“Well, then, Fairfax's Jasper7 says it don't always mean death when Crazy Phillips appears to a person; often it means worse luck.”

“Worse luck than death?”

“It's what he says.”

“Gosh, what an idea! Why, there ain't any worse. It's foolishness. Come—didn't he appear to Mahaly Robinson?—she died in a week. And Ben Chapman? died in ten days. And Sally Furniss?—died in a month; and Billy Fletcher; and there's others, if I could think of them; why, you know there's a lot of them. How does Jasper get around that?”

“I don't know; but it's what he says. He says if you could get at the secret facts you'd know it was a warning of worse luck, in [begin page 263] some of the cases; particularly if he appears to a person several times.”

“Land, that's easy to say, but how's he going to prove it? It's foolishness, I tell you. Why, lookyhere, he appeared to old Mr. Harrison three times in the last two or three weeks; you know it; everybody knows it. Why, it nearly scared him crazy. So there, now. I reckon you won't say he was in for any bad luck, considering what's come to the family. No, sir, it was just death—that was the warning. That's what he took it for; and so did George Harrison; he said so, himself, and Buck Thompson was by, and heard him.”

“Well, then, all I've got to say is, he's changed his superstitions, for it's only two years ago that he was talking the other way, the time that Hank Frisbee got four warnings in four months and then it got found out that he'd been falsifying his books and robbing the county treasury for ten years. George said if Deathshead Phillips ever appeared to him he hoped it would be only once, and let him get ready for the funeral—didn't want him to come four times and intimate he could get himself ready for worse luck. Just his words. My mother heard him. He was laughing when he said it, but she said it was the kind of a laugh a person laughs when he's superstitious and is a little ashamed of it and wants to let on he's only funning. And she knows George; they were children together, and great friends; greater friends than ever, since that fire a long time ago that hit both of them so hard.”

Bowles had dropped into a brown study, and was not listening. He was excitedly chewing a straw and mentally heaping up the profits this great day would bring to his tavern. There was a moment or two of silence. This woke him up, and he said briskly—

“Procession'll be moving pretty soon, now. So-long, lad—I've got to hustle; talk about Sidney Phillips's doings another time.”

Everybody turned out, the secret societies in full regalia: the Masons following the mourners; then the Odd Fellows; then the Sons of Temperance; then the Cadets of Temperance; then the three Sabbath schools; then the militia company in uniform—all these organizations bearing banners muffled in crêpe—and last of all came the general public. It was the longest procession that had marched to the village graveyard in fifteen years—a thought which [begin page 264] occurred to many, and awoke in their minds recollections of that long-vanished day which had brought such grief to the Harrison home and to two or three other households.

When the procession took up its homeward march it was noted that George Harrison had forsaken it; he had remained by the grave of his father. He stood there motionless, with bowed head and bare, a lonely figure among the tombs, and the receding column passed from sight and left him so. The day was bleak, and this reverent piety was remarked upon to his credit. Many said there were few such sons.

But Harrison was only waiting to be alone. His thoughts were not with his lost father, but with his long lost wife and children. He turned to their graves, now, and knelt there, and read their dimming names upon their grave-stones through a mist of tears, and felt again the heart-break which he had felt so many times before in this place. An elderly woman in black appeared, and greeted him, and he her, and she was crying; and he rose and they talked of their sorrows together, using the language of old friends and calling each other by their first names, as they had done from the cradle. The woman said—

“It is fifteen years, George, since the fire robbed you and me. I am not reconciled, I cannot be reconciled. What has time done for you?”

“Nothing. If it has not helped you, Frances Osgood, how could it help me? You lost one, I three.”

“God pity you—as I do! But my loss . . . George, it was heavier than yours.”

“Heavier than mine?”

“Ah, a hundred times, a hundred times,” said the woman, bitterly. “To others my twin boys had no advantages, no attractions or merits one above the other—but what did they know! Nine years old, beautiful to look upon, and to the ignorant eye just alike; but they were no more alike than . . . think! death took my Harry, with his fine mind and his sound good heart—my Harry, that would have been a blessing to me and the pride of my life—and left me my poor Allen, my poor soft temptation-ridden irreclaimable lost sheep, to make his life and mine a burden and a [begin page 265] shame! My God, what is your loss to mine, George? You know only grief; ah, wait till you know shame!—then you will know that there is a bitterness beyond the bitterness of death.”

George glanced uncomfortably at her—always watchful, always suspicious, these days—but perceived that her shot had been a random one; then he worried out a remark, since he must say something:

“But Allen is not so bad, Frances. The fact that he drinks more than is good for him, and is idle, and is by many held to be a—that is to say—a—a not good example for—”

“And isn't that enough! What is left, but crime? Do you want me to go the whole pulpit-spread of pious servility and thank heaven that he isn't down to that, yet? Why, of course he's not an actual reptile—I'm not claiming that. He wouldn't burn a house, he wouldn't cheat, he wouldn't steal, he wouldn't murder—even a poor thing like Jake Bleeker; but what does all that amount to? Nothing, except that he isn't a dog. Well I never said he was a dog.”

Harrison could hardly keep back a groan; her words tore him like a saw. He was in such a panic, for a moment, that he believed she had all his fearful secrets shut up in her heart and was trying to trap him into an exposure. Burn, cheat, steal—could she happen upon these initial steps of his criminal progress by accident? How could she? they were known to none but himself. Was she a clairvoyant? Or—the thought made him shudder—had he been talking in his sleep? He could feel himself turn white!

He shot a searching glance at the woman. But already her thoughts were far away—he could see it, and he felt a vast relief. Presently she said gently—

“Do you know how often we've met here since that day we buried them, George?”

“No, but it is many times.”

“Yes, three or four times every year. And always we talked about how old they would be now, if they had lived—oh, my God, the sweetness of it, and the bitterness! George, we have watched them grow up, like that, so to speak, just as if they had been with us and not in the grave. Those little, little creatures—and now they would [begin page 266] be men and women! . . . It makes you groan, poor man, and well it may. Those dear little girls; Alison, the blonde—”

“She was the picture of her mother, Frances, you remember it; beautiful as the morning. She would be twenty-one, now, if she had lived. And the little noisy one, a year younger, that was all fire and energy, after the way of brunettes—how still, all these long years! How dear they were—and their mother!”

“And my lost boy! Oh, my God, if they could only come back!”

The words, in earlier times so pleasant and so welcome, struck a horror to the man's heart, now: they had the seeming of a profane prayer; a dreadful prayer that might be answered.

“God forbid!” he said, in a quaking low voice.

The woman gazed at him, shocked and wondering.

“Do you mean that?”

“I do—God knows I do.”

“I—I—George, I cannot understand this. Always before, you have said that if our dear lost ones could only come back to us—”

“I was younger, then.”

“Why, only last year—”

“I was younger then. And a fool.”

The woman seemed dazed, and for a time she could not find words for her thoughts; then she said, with strong feeling:

“It is wicked. I mean it—wicked. I have never heard such language before—and to think that it should come from you, of all men! you, the honored, the envied, the pet of fortune, a man esteemed, beloved, a man without a care, if these graves could but give up their dead. The wife and the children—have you no sorrow for what they are losing?”

Harrison answered dreamily, and almost as if he were talking to himself:

“She was beautiful and good, she was precious beyond words; and they—they were the light of our life, the joy of it. They were all young, they saw all of life that was worth the living. In their innocence they took it for a boon and a reality, and never suspected it for what it is, a treachery and a sham. They died at a happy time, they were worthy of that grace; and though my heart should break [begin page 267] with longing for them, I would still pray for strength to say God send they may come no more out of the blessed refuge of the grave!”

The pair moved away, thinking but not speaking, and said goodbye and separated. For long the woman continued to muse, then she said—

“By what I have suffered I know that he is right. But how can they who have not suffered have this insight?”

As he sat thinking in his lonely home that night and listening to the dirges of the wintry wind, George Harrison reviewed his troubles and checked them off and put them behind him one by one, hoping to “close the account” if he might, and take up life again from a new base, if a new base were discoverable.

The result was not good. His troubles would not stay put back; they flocked to the front as fast as they were banished, and with every return they seemed to come refreshed and reinforced for their bitter work upon his conscience, and more sharply competent than they had been before.

His ghastly secrets were safe—that was all, that was the whole! Safe—in what way? Safe from the world! It made him sick. He couldn't rid himself of them, and that was the main misery. They gangreened the very heart and soul of him. And that man Fairfax's innocent trust and friendship and gratitude—the thought of it burnt like fire! How could he go on enduring it? He rose and walked the floor, moaning in his misery.

Presently, still walking, still muttering and ejaculating, he took up his situation and examined it on all sides, to see if he could invent any plan to improve it. But at the end of an hour he slumped into his chair exhausted and defeated. There was no way out—matters must remain as they were.

What attitude to take, then? There was but one sane one: keep [begin page 268] his deadly secrets, drive the thought of them out of his mind, brace up and be a man!—for once. In time they would lose their devilish force, their sting would cease from persecuting, the tragedy would pass from men's memories, and remain but as a vague and doubtful dream in his own, perhaps; then his soul would have peace, and he could hold up his head again. . . . Why, these were wholesome thoughts, reviving thoughts!—why couldn't he have thought them sooner? He felt better already; life was not so black, after all. Now, a cheery little drop of whisky—

A rap at the front door startled him. He put down bottle and glass.

“Come in,” he said.

The door swung open, and a ghastly figure appeared in it. Harrison shrunk together paralysed, and a name rose to his lips but died there for lack of strength in his tongue to utter it—

“Deathshead Phillips!”

The figure was tall and slender, and clothed from skull-cap to stockings in dead and lustreless black, the hands included. It stood motionless—a statue made of charcoal, as it were. The cut of the raiment was not modern, but ancient and mephistophelian. Save for a short cape that hung from the shoulders, it fitted the contours of the long body as tightly as a skin. It absorbed light and quenched it, reflecting none; not a glint showed upon its gloomy surface anywhere.

Without speaking, and without sound of footfall, the sombre apparition glided slowly past the master of the house and seated itself in a chair; not in a negligent attitude, but upright and rigid, like a piece of sculpture. And now the light fell full upon its face; Harrison shuddered, and turned away. It was the face of a ghost; a strenuous white, a ghastly white, dead and lustreless; a white artificially produced, with powdered chalk or some such thing, thickly laid on. A faint crease marked the place of the mouth; the eyes were like burnt holes in a sheet; they were fixed steadily upon Harrison; at intervals they closed for a moment, then the mask was wholly white and horrible; even more so than when they were open, if such a thing might be possible.

The slow minutes dragged on and on, the dismal guest sat [begin page 269] motionless and mute; the mournful baying of a dog floated down out of the distance, the wind rose and rumbled in the chimney, the mice came out and played on the floor, thinking there was no life present, the place was so still. This for a century, a hideous and heart-straining century—though marked by the clock as only half an hour.

Then Dug Hapgood burst in, immensely excited, evidently loaded with great news—took one glance, said

“Jesus!” and was gone again.

The apparition gave no sign, uttered no word, relaxed no muscle of its rigid frame, but sat as before, ominously gazing. Harrison groaned inwardly, and his weary head drooped and sank upon his breast. When he lifted it again, he was alone.

“Thank God, if it means death!” he said. “There is nothing for me to live for. . . . They are at peace yonder. Lord, how fortunate are they that die in their youth! . . . Surely I have suffered enough, it must mean death.”

Mechanically he rose and opened the door; evidently a weight had been pressing against it, for it yielded with unusual suddenness—and Dug Hapgood fell into his arms with a shriek. Then he plunged free, and stood trembling and gasping and staring, for a moment.

“Land!” he said, recovering himself, “I thought it was him!”

He flung off his wraps, tossed off a taste of whisky, smacked his lips with satisfaction, sat down and stretched his feet to the fire, and yelled—

“Say, George, set down and let's be cosy—I've got news for you. You get it? Said I've got news for you.”

“Yes, I heard—don't yell so.”

“Who, me?”—in a hurt tone. “I reckon I don't smell any worse than others, when you come down to that.”

George shouted—

“I never said anything about smelling; I said don't yell so.”

“Oh, all right, then; I didn't understand. Gee-whiz—nearly nine! Say, that old clock's got the jim-jams. What's that you say? She's right, you think? Well, it don't matter, anyway—no occasion to hurry, I got plenty of time. Say, George, I got just one look at his [begin page 270] mug, and it gimme the blind staggers. Why, I was fifty yards up the road before I could pull up, I was that scared. And it took me one while to work up strength enough to come back and listen. And then, by gracious, he was gone. What did he tell you, George?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing at all?”

“No.”

“What? Didn't even speak?”

“No.”

“The idea! Well, then, how do you know who's going to die?”

“I don't.”

“Goodness gracious, why it's a perfectly hell of an idea! It might be you, it might be Martha, it might be Tom. Why, he's no good—scaring a whole tribe to death thataway, when he's only after one of them. Which do you think it is, George?”

“Hang it, how should I know!”

“Well, anyway you needn't get huffy about it, I ain't asking for any selfish reason—you know that, George—but only out of sympathy.”

“Oh, well, I'm not denying it, but the subject's offensive to me.”

“All right, then, let her slide, but blamed if I can see what's offensive about it. Say, George, I reckon you know what drove him crazy? He put on a sheet and a dough-face, so as to represent a ghost or a corpse, one night late, and slipped up behind his sweetheart where she was reading by a candle all alone, and poked his face around in hern; and she screamed, scream after scream, and fell down, clear out of her senses; and next week, 'stead of they two getting married she was in the madhouse and been there ever since—over fourteen years—moaning and crooning and crying, and going into spasms at every sudden noise she hears; and he went mad, too, before she'd been there a month—and lucky for him, I say, for it's better to be mad and forget such a thing than have it on your mind a-scorching your heart all the time; and poor devil, he such good stock, and so rich and gay and breezy, and in for everything that's going—just the life of the wake, as the saying is [begin page 271] —and fairly worshiped the ground she walked on, and they all say she did have the sweetest, gentlest face that ever was, and they'd have been awful happy, George, if that mistake hadn't been made—just that poor little two-minute mistake! and here's fourteen years squandered into that hole trying to pay for it and settle up and satisfy Nature, who's just a hog when she's got an account against you; yes, sir, the hog of hogs, that's what Nature is, you can't owe her two cents and square up for less than fourteen thousand dollars; I wish I had her where the hair's short, just once—if I didn't take it out of her I wish I—say, George, I never seen him in his war-paint before; my, but ain't he just hark from the tomb to look at! Not many's seen him in it, they say; and they didn't live long to brag about it. Do you begin to feel anything, George?—anything different from common, I mean?—'s if you warn't feeling as hearty as—”

“Oh, cram a pillow down that crater of yours! give a suffering man some peace. Have you no reserves, no refinement? I do not see how you can have the heart to ask such atrocious questions.”

Dug was deeply wounded, and said in thunder-blasts mellowed by emotion—

“I never expected this from you, George. If a poor forsaken humble friend's friendly interest and sympathy for a friend who's in trouble and needing a true friend's sympathy and consolement, though an orphan and consumptive, and considered not long for this world, is a crime—”

His eyes filled, his lips quivered, his voice broke; and George hastened to say—

“There, there—don't, old chap, I didn't mean it. Here, take another drink, and let bygones be bygones. Go on with your ancient histories, but don't be pathetic, I can't stand it.”

“Now that's like you, George,” shouted the soft-hearted and easily appeased orphan, wiping his eyes with one sleeve and his lips with the other; “I said, that's like you. Your heart's in the right place—I know that—but your nerves is raw on account of that corpse-face, and no wonder. If he was to appear to me, derned if I wouldn't jump out of my skin and leave it a-quivering on the floor, same as if it was jelly. . . . By Jackson! lucky I wasn't here [begin page 272] beforehand—he'd have appeared to both of us, then, and we'd be booked for the cemet'ry in the same hearse; but he didn't appear to me, I appeared to him, so there's only one of us. No occasion for me to worry, don't you think, George?” he added, a little anxiously.

George said he thought there was none, and Dug's face brightened and he was at once his cheery self again.

“It's as I think, myself, so I ain't a-going to worry. There's plenty to worry about in this world without hunting around, that's what I always say. Now I reckon—say, George, he don't ever put on his war-gear except when there's business in his line and he has to turn out and notify somebody to settle up with this world and get measured for his last suit; and he don't stay shut up in his tall walls all the time in the intervals; no, he comes out now and then, dressed like anybody, and looking gentle and sad, and not really old—why, he ain't quite forty yet; he don't talk much, just moons around, kind of dreamy, motioning soft with his hands, and muttering to himself; my, it's the pitifulest sight—I've seen him, George. You have, too? Yes, of course you have. But I've seen her!”

“Why, Dug!—come, you are dreaming. Are you sure? When was it? where was it? Tell me about it. Poor child—why, I knew her when she was a dear little creature with plaited tails down her back.”

“Yes, sir, I saw her. It was last summer. She'd escaped; and away up yonder on the river bank where they used to play in old school-times they came together all of a sudden and unexpected, and there they stopped, and stood stock still, looking at each other thisaway—with their heads forward and bent, and looking out intense from under their eye-brows, sort of scared, and wondering, and thankful, you know, and just as if each one thought the other was dead and a spirit—stood so, for a minute, maybe as much as two, and never a word, and the tears running down their faces; then she turned and went away crying, with her head drooping, and he stood watching her till she was out of sight; and his face was as if he'd seen the glory of God and the heaven everlasting.”

A deep silence followed. Both men sat absorbed in thought, busy with memories and dreams, unconscious of the drift of time. When [begin page 273] at last the master of the house raised his head he perceived that he had two guests; his gaze met the gaze of that black statue with the snow-white face. It was standing behind the other guest's chair. While Harrison muttered miserably to himself, “Oh, it was not death—that charity is not for me,” it moved without sound to the rear door and passed out.

The latch of the closing door rattled slightly, disturbing Dug's revery, and he glanced up.

“What was that, George?”

“The wind.” The words sounded like a moan.

“Lord, you needn't be so sad about it! And you needn't look so sad, either. And I can tell you why, George. Didn't I say I've got news for you? Well, I just have. You listen; and if I don't make you jump for joy I wish I—are you ready?”

“Go on.” It sounded like a sigh.

“I was right from Gilbert's when I first struck in here a little bit ago to tell you about it. He'd got a letter that minute, with the biggest news in it!—from Memphis. George, that old uncle of yourn has dropped off the hooks at last, and b'gosh you're rich enough to buy this county and everybody in it! Shake!”

Harrison sprang to his feet with the fury of a maniac flaming in his eyes, and plunged at Hapgood, shouting—

“Take it back! Take it back, I tell you! Say it's a lie!”

“Oh, George, keep away, keep away!—don't look at me like that! What have I done? It's the God's truth, as sure as I'm a-standing here—you ask Gilbert if it ain't.”

Harrison, frightened to think how his words and his conduct might seem to the public if reported without modifying explanations, promptly changed his manner and said, sadly—

“Oh, don't mind me, old friend; the thought maddened me: it seemed such a cruel fate, that my poor old father couldn't have lived to have his share of this great joy, and he so poor and so downcast and hard pressed so long. Laid in his grave this very day! and these happy tidings speeding to him—to arrive too late, too late! I cannot have pleasure in them, now—oh, not yet; it would be brutal. Forgive me, Dug; anger carried me away; I was not myself.”

[begin page 274]

Tears stood in the impressionable orphan's eyes; he wrung Harrison's hand fervently and said—

“George Harrison, I think you're the noblest white man that ever walked—and the unselfishest, by God! There ain't another man in this township but would be thinking of himself; but you—you only think of others when luck jumps your way. Shake again, and God bless you. Now I'm happy, and I'm a-going.”

He went his way, and Harrison took up that dreary march, up and down the floor, which is the only relief which captive bears and persecuted and despairing men can find for their miseries. He kept turning a single thought over and over in his mind—over and over, over and over, plowing a furrow through his tired brain with it:

“If I could have known!—if he could have known!—such a little while ago! Ah, dear, we should have been saved, we should have been saved.”

Next morning there was a stream of visitors. The principal citizens came—all of them. First, to condole about the departed father; next, to congratulate about the inherited great fortune. These were fairly easy tasks, and were achieved creditably, but when the visitors tried to lead up to the subject of next importance and interest—Deathshead Phillips's warning—few were able to do it. Most of the people had been trained from the cradle in superstitions by their negro nurses; to them, ghosts, dream-warnings and such things were matters of course; Phillips's reputation was well established, and when, officially costumed for his dread office, he appeared to a man, hardly any—if any at all—doubted that that act was as authentic as the death-rattle. A visitor got along very well as long as he was condoling and congratulating, but when he came up against the third subject his talk became disjointed and scrappy; in spite of him his gaze fixed itself with an awed and [begin page 275] absorbed fascination upon the doomed man, and a single thought set its clutch upon his imagination and would not let go: “Just to think! there he sits alive, and so soon he will be in his shroud, poor fellow.” These people could not know that the object of this shuddery thought was at this moment envying Charley Axtell the consumptive, who sat apart, silent and sorrowfully brooding, with sunken cheeks and protruding eyes, and coat and trousers dinted and caved in, everywhere, and seeming to contain nothing—a really doomed man but not believing it, as is the way of consumptives.

Among the chief citizens present were General Landry, Mr. Gilbert, Rev. Mr. Bailey, and Sol Bailey8 his brother—privately called Ham-fat Bailey the Idiot Philosopher, by the public. General Landry was a grand figure and majestic, seventy-three years old, suave, erect, perfect in health, clothed in the fashion of a forgotten past, with ruffled wristbands, ruffled bosom, long vest, black velvet coat with broad tails, black velvet knee breeches, low-quarter shoes with silver buckles—the very image of Benjamin Franklin, broad benignant face and all—including gold-headed cane: the only man in the region so dressed since old Squire Fairfax passed away ten years before. As first lieutenant this military relic had been in the fight at Lundy's Lane; and in the succeeding forty years had gradually climbed up through all the grades to General—a notable proof of his popularity, for these promotions had been conferred, each in its turn as it was seen to be deserved; and not by the War Department but by the citizens of Indiantown, by spontaneous inspiration and common consent, and without consultation or collusion. He was orthodox.

Mr. Gilbert, fifty, clean shaven, with short iron gray hair which was upright and stiff, like Andrew Jackson's; severely trim and correct in dress, no fleck of dust upon him anywhere; dignified in bearing; austere, unsmiling, untalkative, the acknowledged head of the bar—he was the citizen of next importance. He never went to church. If he had a religion, it was private. Persons who had [begin page 276] inquired about it once had not felt like inquiring again. He had come to report the news from Memphis, but said he would come again—at a more private time.

“Any time will do,” said Harrison, drearily; “it would interest me if my father were still here; it comes like a mockery, now. Tell me one detail—let the rest go: how much ready cash is there?”

The lawyer hesitated a moment, not much liking to talk business privacies in public, a most irregular procedure, then answered—

“Forty-five thousand dollars.”

It was an incredible sum, an unheard-of sum, and made every heart bound, except Harrison's. It struck a pang to his, and he grieved to himself, “The misery of it, the irony of it! it was there, and ours—in our very pockets, so to speak—when he and I were swindling, burning, stealing, murdering, for the poor sake of a ninth of it. Everlasting curses on the malicious fate that devised that brutal trap! curse Nature and all her cruel ways!”

Hamfat's mouth watered over those enchanting figures, his eye wandered over his shabby clothes, and he sighed. For Hamfat was a failure from the cradle; one of those pathetic creatures who get into this world by accident, let us hope, not design; unstable as water; who try everything—at other people's expense—are fitted for nothing, and never succeed in a single instance. If they could only be born hopeless! then they would sit down and keep still and eat the bread of charity in peace, and be a sort of endurable burden. But no, their devilish mission would be unachievable, then; therefore they are born loaded to the eyes with hopefulness, and with nothing else; nothing else but caprice, and fickleness, and confidence in themselves, and grand ideals, and inflated enthusiasms, and destitution of the sense of shame, and—to say it in a word,—they are loaded to the eyes with every worthless quality (worthless when misplaced,) that can be named; that is to say, they are loaded with emptiness, and they don't know it.

Hamfat was fifty-three, and could have carried in his vest pocket all the money he had ever really earned. He had partly learned the carpenter's trade, but wouldn't work at it, because it was not high-toned enough for him. All his life he had been living on his brother the soft and persuadable Presbyterian clergyman, who had married [begin page 277] a woman dowered with some property; had lived on him by “borrowing,” as he called it, though why he should name it so when the borrowings had been persistently permanent, was his own secret. However, to be fair to him, there was really a sort of tin-plated justification of the term; for when he borrowed a sum he always instantly took from it enough to pay three months' interest on it, and sent it back, with a receipt to be signed; and it was always his intention to continue to pay interest and to eventually return the principal, but he always found that God had willed otherwise, and he submitted with such resignation as he could command. He had tuckered out a wife or two as he went along, and distributed children around wherever they would be handy to his brother's pocket; and meantime he had drifted from place to place in three States, and been lawyer without clients, preacher without congregation, lecturer without audience, political candidate without nomination or following, village newspaper owner and editor without subscribers, promoter of speculations that went promptly to the devil, fervent disciple and advocate of every frantic “ism” that had ever come his way, everlasting purchaser of humble homes triple-shingled with mortgages for his brother to nurse—and meantime, also, he had skirmished under the banner of every religion known to history, including Mormonism, infidelity and the Voodoo, and was now “due to be an Atheist, next revolution of his spiritual bowels,” as Dug Hapgood said.

He regarded these insanities as bricks in what he called his “edifice of experience,” and really believed that as he had traveled more than any other man in Indiantown and had personally tested more different kinds of life than any other Indiantowner, he was for these reasons the best qualified man there to debate high questions of morals, religion, politics, business and philosophy, and settle them. This serene and immense conceit of himself was impervious to ridicule, contempt, sarcasm, and even frank abuse and insult. He rose tranquilly superior to these things, and looked pityingly down upon their utterers as being poor innocent irresponsibles who hadn't been anywhere and didn't know anything, and so were not to blame. He was above hating them; indeed he loved them, “in a large, Supreme-Being kind of a way,” as Dug Hapgood [begin page 278] phrased it; and the orphan was right, bar himself. “Hamfat” and “Idiot Philosopher” were inventions of his, and these courtesies had not won for him the favor of the man thus labeled. In fact Hamfat could not bear the sight of him, and often said so. Hamfat was here to condole and congratulate, like the rest; and also to caress and beguile and persuade the new capitalist to a good deed, in case opportunity should offer, for he had an appetising scheme or two in mind which lacked nothing but capital to be perfect and fruitful; and if these did not “take,” no matter: he always had an emergency-card up his sleeve which was sure to win in those regions. This was the Oriental Missions of the Presbyterian Church. With him, religions came and religions went, but to that charity he was always steadfast, always loyal, whatever spiritual flag he might be flying. It always brought money, regardless of the condition of the financial weather. For thirteen years, now, he had been working it in the interest of Turkey, and in that time had saved one Turk and part of another. With the American Board he was a pet, and he kept its lurid praises framed. He sometimes did questionable things; things which in the case of other men would have been sins, but in his case were not, for his Moral Sense was feeble, dubious, erratic and cross-eyed, and could seldom tell right from wrong with any kind of certainty. He had a smart intellect, but it was of small use to him, for it was under no mastership, and it capered around everywhere and generally landed him nowhere in particular. He had a conscience that could bite him, and it did it; but he could soothe it and satisfy it with impromptu remedies of his own invention which would have made another man's sea-sick.

Meantime the condolements were proceeding. General Landry spoke feelingly of the departed veteran, and said, in his courtly large way—in his Johnsonian way, for he was an admirer of that great man and his imposing diction—

“It was my privilege, sir, to enjoy the confidence and esteem of your lamented father during a period of forty years, and I mourn him, sir, I mourn him with sincerity. His was a character without spot, a character of noble integrity. He was, sir, in a word, a Moral Gibraltar. It is matter to be grateful for, that in you, sir, we have his perfect duplicate. In you, sir, resides the same nobility of character, [begin page 279] the same purity, the same unshakable integrity, the same devotion to high principles; in a word, in you, sir, it is this community's privilege to possess another Moral Gibraltar. Remain a beacon and a guide to the weak! what you are, may all who come in contact with you become!”

“God grant it!” said several, with unction. What George said, he said to himself, with a nipping pang; and with a blush which was taken for an output of modesty, and got him credit.

“Like his son,” said the aged clergyman, Mr. Bailey, with an affectionate tone in his voice, “he did not know what a baseness was, nor a selfish impulse. He had a lucid mind and a healthy judgment; and if I may say it without seeming to compliment myself, his opinions and mine were the same on all great subjects. No, there was one exception. There we disagreed. He believed that a character could not become firm and safe upon mere mouth-teaching and the shunning of temptation; he said it was best and securest when tried by fire: it must confront temptation—and fall! Then it would be safe after that; it would be grounded on a rock, and the winds and waves of temptation would beat upon it in vain. I disputed his position many times with him, but he always stuck to it.”

“He was right,” said the Idiot Philosopher, with easy confidence. “I have had a large experience of the world and of life, and I know he was right. I have been tempted, in my time, I have also fallen. I do not regret it. It established my character, it made me what I am. To it I owe everything.”

There was opportunity for compliment, but there was an awkward silence instead. No one seemed to know how to get the talk started again, and the awkwardness increased. But the Philosopher was not disturbed, he was only lost in weighty reflections. He came to, now, and furnished the start himself.

“For instance, consider this fact—these related facts. Almost every man in the world has temper. It follows that almost every man in the world is a murderer. Am I right?” (He indicated this, that and the other guest with a nod). “Are you a murderer? Are you? And you, and you?” Each in his turn stared, amused. “Aren't you a murderer, George Harrison, and don't you know it?”

[begin page 280]

Harrison gasped and turned white. It was supposed that his sensitive nature rose against the insult; and so his sensitive make got unworded compliments from the guests. The Philosopher went placidly on.

“Sometime or other, when in a rage, all men of masculine temper and force have been murderers—in their hearts, I mean. But there was no weapon at hand, and the man did not get murdered—just for that reason, and no other. Or, the weapon was there, but the offending man wasn't—and that is why he escaped. If weapon, offender, and the moment of supremest rage had all happened to come together at once, there had been murder, sure. To be a murderer in your heart, and only saved from committing it by an accident of circumstance, what is that? It is murder just the same, isn't it? Of course. It is no merit of yours that you didn't do the deed. You are all murderers here, every one. And not one of you is safe from committing an actual homicide between here and the grave. If ever the three circumstances shall fall together, you will commit murder, to an absolute certainty. But if either of you here shall ever have that experience and kill a man, that lesson will stick and stay; you can never be caught out again by the passion of hate; grief and remorse will protect you, never again will you shed blood.”

Harrison sighed to himself, in an agony of misery, “God knows he is saying the truth.”

The Philosopher placidly continued:

“Take it in the littlest little things. In times when I have been a preacher of some denomination or other, and had to wear collars, they would not button because they had shrunk in the wash; and in struggling with them, and frothing and raging against the man that invented collars, I have wished, deep down in my heart, that he was present and I had an axe. See how little a thing that is—but the hate and the rage were not little; they were sufficient, and I should have killed him. Killed him, and been full of remorse the next moment. Don't you people believe that? Don't you believe it, George Harrison? Don't you believe there have been times when you could have killed a man? when not even the thought of the heart-break and the sorrow and the mourning—and perhaps the [begin page 281] hunger and privation—you would bring upon his unoffending wife and children would stay your hand—perhaps not even enter your mind?”

Harrison murmured an indistinct “yes,” and said to himself, “Oh, why does he torture me so? is there no other subject to talk about?”

Several granted that if you look at it that way, there is a rich abundance of murderers—and stopped with that; and all the company dropped into musings, with noddings of the head, and wrinkling of brows, and seemed to be recalling incidents in their lives which had suddenly taken on a new aspect and a new and grave meaning. Then the old clergyman spoke up and said:

“Why, really this is curious, and reminds me of something which our lamented late friend said to me several times when we were disputing. He had a most strange delusion; just a plain, straight, manifest delusion, you understand, and I used to tell him it was that, and laugh at him; but he had entertained it so long that he had come at last to believe in it, and to soberly regard it as a reality. According to him, he lived in its protection. He said that as long as he should keep in his right mind he would be safe from committing a crime, because—because why? What do you think was his reason?”

Nobody was able to guess.

“Because he had already committed one!” Mr. Bailey laughed, and the others joined in.

“Think of it!” said the amused minister. “That dear soul, that beautiful nature, that gracious spirit—try to conceive of it! But there it is; he believed in it. And so it is as I have always said and believed, since then: if delusions can enslave a strong and healthy mind like that, how can we justly criticise weaker people for having them?”

He began to branch off, now, on another topic, this one being exhausted, as he judged, but Hamfat interrupted, and asked him to state what the delusion was. The faces of the other guests showed interest, too, for curiosity is a human trait, and is not confined to any particular sex. Mr. Bailey was disappointed; his heart was in his new topic; however—

[begin page 282]

“Well,” he said, “if dream-stuff can interest you, you can have it; but it will lose by my telling, for I can't put into it the deep air of truth and conviction and sincerity that made it so moving and impressive when he told it; and all that, of course, was just the life of it. I remember the first time he spoke of it. It was in my study, and we were alone. We had been having one of those debates. Of course I had been maintaining that the candidate should be carefully kept out of the way of temptation until his principles should be in a condition to defy it, and he had been trying to convince me that my position was unsound and perilous. I said again, as I had said more than once before, that it was a new and most strange and shocking doctrine; but he insisted that there was argument on his side, and asked how old I was. I said I was forty-six. Then he asked—

“ ‘Have you ever been under very strong temptation?’9

“ ‘No, sir,’ I said, ‘my parents protected me from it in their time, and since then I have always kept out of the way of it myself.’

“ ‘Then you are not safe. If you live to be a hundred you will always be unsafe. You see, one may successfully resist a thousand temptations—everybody does it—and still not be sure his principles are absolutely and unassailably established.’

“ ‘Why?’

“ ‘Because—well, overcoming temptations is good, is excellent; but ten thousand of them are not as valuable as one fall.’

“ ‘A fall! You call that valuable, sir?’

“ ‘More than valuable—invaluable. There is nothing teaches like a fall. The man that gets a fall realizes things.’ ” (Harrison's eyes were glassy, and he was breathing short and nervously wetting his dry lips with his tongue.) “ ‘He recognizes that he was moral in theory before; he is likely to be moral in fact after that rude experience. He was walking on precept and sentiment before—he is likely to walk on the ground afterward. You are not safe, sir. I am not jesting. Until a man falls, once or twice, he isn't safe, I tell you! His virtues have not been tested in the fire; until they have been [begin page 283] hardened in the fire they are not to be depended on.’ He paused, a moment; then continued, in a voice and manner that were deeply earnest and impressive. ‘Mr. Bailey, is there a stain of any kind on my name?’

“ ‘No, sir.’

“ ‘Am I considered a man wholly beyond the reach of temptation?’

“ ‘Yes, sir.’

“ ‘Mr. Bailey, I think I am beyond the reach of it. I may say I know it. For I've been through the fire.’

“ ‘You, sir?’

“ ‘Before I was twenty-five I committed a crime—a grave one.’

“ ‘Impossible!’

“ ‘If I had had my deserts I should have spent as many as ten years in prison.’

“ ‘Why, it seems abso—’

“ ‘I was not found out. I was not even suspected. And yet I lived in hell for three years.’

“ ‘For fear that you would be suspected?’

“ ‘No; secret worry and distress because another man was suspected. Four times he came near being arrested; and each time, by desperate effort and the influence of our family name and standing I prevented it. For two years I sweated blood! If that man had ever come before a court the circumstantial evidence would have convicted him.’ ” (George Harrison was straining at his collar and gasping for breath.) “ ‘I saved him from prison, but that was all; he was a ruined man in character and estate. I could not endure the sight of his piteous face, and I left that region and never returned.’ The tears were in his eyes; and his voice broke when he added, ‘I had him on my conscience till he died—died of his misery. I have been through the fire, Mr. Bailey. The man who has had my experience does not commit a second crime. Not while he keeps his reason.’ For the moment it sounded absolutely true—so true and so real that I said in all seriousness,

“ ‘Mr. Harrison, you had a plain duty: when he was suspected you should have come forward and confessed.’ He bent a steady gaze upon me for a few moments, then he asked—

[begin page 284]

“ ‘Would you have done it?’

“Without hesitancy I answered—

“ ‘Yes, sir, I would.’ Dear, dear, it was so strange and funny! and many a time since, when I think of it—”

“Good God! What is the matter with him?” This from the General. He was gazing at Harrison, who, limp and ghastly, was sinking out of his chair to the floor. Half a dozen cried out, “Help! bring water—he has fainted!” There was bustle and tumult for a few minutes; then Harrison lay in his bed, weak and pallid, with pitying women about him, ministering to him—among them Bridget Bleeker, in her poor and coarse widow's weeds. The guests were gone, talking among themselves as they walked, and saying it was like George Harrison, with his sensitive and fine-strung nature and his wasting grief for his father's loss, to be overcome by a weird and fantastic story so dramatically and impressively told as that one had been.

For some little time Harrison lay with closed eyes, and probably unconscious of the faint swishing of gowns, the women's whispered consultations, and the other vague and seemingly distant sounds that customarily wander spectrally through the dreamy stillness of a sick-room and deepen it rather than disturb it; then his lids parted and he saw Bridget's compassionate Irish face hovering over him. It lighted friendly, his eyes responded gratefully; and she, seeing that he wanted to speak, put her head down close, and he said, in a feeble voice—

“Good girl—and kind. I am a sick man. Stay by me, Bridget.”

“God knows I will, sir. You always stood by us, sir, and it's not the likes of me that'll forget it.”

“Thank you, Bridget. Go and thank these good neighbors for me, and send them away; say I am better, and will sleep, now.”

“Yes, sir.”

[begin page 285]

“Thank Mrs. Frances Osgood particularly.”

“Yes, sir.”

She did her errand and returned for orders. But he had a weight upon his mind, and was feverishly eager to free it of its burden.

“Let the orders wait, Bridget, I want to talk about a matter. My father was in deep trouble, in his last days—”

“God rest his soul, he was! there's not anny, now, but knows it, by token that Dug Hapgood—”

“—and being in trouble and worried, he—well, he did one or two things which were not natural to him—that is, I mean—I mean—Bridget, you know how it is when a person is distressed and worried, that way?”

“Ah, and don't we all, sir! it's the truth you are saying, sir; and if—”

“And so he. . . . Bridget, if he were here now, you know he would make his word good about the wages.”

“He would, sir, he would indeed; I've thought hard thoughts of him, sir, being in trouble meself, but all the same I know, and none knows better—”

“Bridget, he would make his word good, if he were back. He would raise the wages, as he said he would. And more. Because of the wrong he did, he would double them. More still: he would treble them. And so they are now trebled—to you—for life. It is himself, speaking from the grave, by my mouth. Forgive him, Bridget.”

She could not find the words; but her flowing eyes and her eloquent face said it all. From poverty to independence—in a breath! She sank to her knees and sent her heart's gratitude streaming up to her saints for it—who had probably had nothing to do with it. Into Harrison's wan soul stole a healing peace and comfort and solace which it had not known for an age, as it seemed to him.

Dr. Bradshaw had been sent for. He arrived now, and made an elaborate examination of the patient and asked a multitude of questions, on a medical basis of a couple of generations earlier, science and the fashions being about that far behind, out West. He questioned Harrison for small-pox; for measles; for phthisis; for [begin page 286] liver complaint; for whooping-cough; for cholera morbus; for fits; for “yaller janders,” for bots, heaves, scrofula, blind staggers, gravel, hydrophobia—for every ailment mentioned in the books, in fact—and never got a responsive symptom. He was puzzled. Here was a very sick man; he could see that; yet there was nothing the matter with him. Not a thing, so far as he could see. Very well, in such cases there was but one thing to do: so he treated him for suppressed itch.

Bridget held the bowl, and he bled the patient in the foot and arm; cupped him in the back; hung a fringe of leeches on his temples; ordered a raiment of mustard-plasters for him; gave him a purge and a vomit, timed to go off together; then devised a soothing draught, which Bridget was to compound on the premises, boil down, distil, concentrate to a “compromise with hell-fire” as Dug Hapgood afterward described it, and wake him up and give him a shovelful every three-quarters of an hour until he got better or died. He wrote the tranquilizer down.

It took him fifteen minutes to do it. It contained a bushel of assorted and chaotic ingredients; among them all the forest weeds and herbs in the neighborhood, along with cloves, lunar caustic, castor oil, cinnamon, horse-dung, aqua fortis, sugar, dried lizards, turpentine, blue vitriol, molasses, and so on; and he was about to add another—a paper of tacks, probably—when he became conscious that some one was looking over his shoulder. It was Dug Hapgood. He yelled, cheerfully—

“Good-bye, George! I said good-bye,—understand? Better to have him than Deathshead—hey? Quicker, you know—and certainer; I said certainer—get it?”

“How did you get in here?” shouted the doctor, with asperity. “I told Martha to let no one in. This man needs quiet. Quiet—you hear?”

“Well, I like that,” responded Dug, deeply injured; “do you reckon I'm going to disturb him?”

“You—indeed! You would disturb the dead.”

“Sho! you wait till you're done with him, and see.”

The doctor gathered up his assassination-tools, and bustled out, muttering that he would not stay to be insulted. Bridget tried to [begin page 287] persuade Dug to go, but he took a chair and said, in reassuring thunder-tones—

“Don't you worry about me, Bridget; and don't you worry about him, either; you go 'long and prepare him for the grave—I'll tend him like he was your own baby till you get his pison mixed, I ain't in any hurry, got plenty time.”

So Bridget gave it up, and left for the kitchen with the prescription. Dug resumed:

“Of course you ain't going to mind me, George, I'm your friend, you know that. Do you reckon I would leave you to die lonesome and solitary and needing the last consolements of a friend? You know I ain't made that way, George. The minute I heard you was in the grips according to Deathshead's arrangements, I just laid down everything and come on the jump. It's the way I'm made, George, I don't claim any merit for it. Always stand by your friend—that's my motto, and I reckon you know whether I live up to it or not. Martha didn't want to let me in, but I knew that meant others, and was only intended to keep troublesome people out that would disturb you; I said people that would disturb you—get it? But I ain't agoing to—I'm always careful about things like that. Born so, I reckon.

“Say, George, you didn't need them both; I said you didn't need them both. Get it? Deathshead and the doctor, you know. Either'll do, though of course if there was a bet on, I'd put my money on the doctor. Deathshead's good—I ain't meaning to disparage Deaths-head, George—but he's only an amature, when all's said and done, whereas old Bradshaw's been in the business since creation, I reckon; and besides he's got science back of him, and it makes an awful difference, George, don't you know.”

Dug was doing the sick man good, without knowing it. He was starting a reaction. His screaming and shouting were splitting Harrison's head, and inducing a simmer under his temper which could rise to a boil, with proper encouragement. Dug proceeded to furnish the encouragement. It seemed to him that the best way to be helpful to a dying man should be to lighten the boding glooms which gather about his spirit as the night of life closes down and upon his failing senses falls the muffled surf-beat of the shoreless [begin page 288] dark ocean over whose uncharted wastes his soul must soon be wandering: beguile the glooms away, yes, that was it; light-up the journey, make it sunny with hope and promise. And so, with the best intentions he went to work upon this benevolent enterprise.

“Say, George, it ain't so bad, after all, death ain't, when you come to look at it right. You see, we've all got to go, some time or other anyway, and so, what is the odds whether we go now or another time, so long's we are prepared? Prepared—that's the main thing; main, why, it's the whole thing. And you are that, George, if ever a man was, I reckon you know that; everybody knows it, everybody'll say it. I only wish I was half as well prepared, myself—and that's honest. I reckon I'm prepared what you may call well enough, as far as that goes, but that's really all; there ain't any margin over, to speak of. I could pull through—it's about all I can claim; but you! why, blame my cats—say! if I was up on your spiritual level, if I wouldn't take a chance in that prescription and pull out with you, I wish I may be—ouch! there's a pin in this chair. No, there t'is, it's a tack. Yes, sir, I'd pull out with you; I would, b'gosh. Prepared! That's the thing, George, and the whole thing. You're that. George, it'll be grand. You'll see how you'll be received. They'll all come—come a-flocking: Isaac, and Exodus, and all the boys. Torch-light p'cession, too—I can just see it. It's because you're prepared, George. Preparation's everything. You've led a square life, everybody respects you, everybody loves you, you've never done a mean thing, nor a wrong thing, nor a low-down thing, nor a treachery, nor—”

A tortured groan which was almost a shriek burst a passage through the comforter's din; and the sick man, his eyes blazing, flung himself to a sitting posture and shouted—

“Damnation, will you be quiet!”

The reaction was accomplished, the perishing man was saved.

Dug sat petrified in body, bewildered in mind. Such an explosion as this from a person with both feet in the grave—there it was; it had happened; he had witnessed it, there was no mistake about it, yet it seemed clearly impossible. He sat gazing, wondering; at last a grateful expression lighted his face, and he rose and patted Harrison on the head and said—

[begin page 289]

“Lay down, George, it's all right, p'cession's postponed for to-day, sure, and thanks to goodness for it.”

“Postponed! confound you, it's never been appointed.”

“George Harrison!”

“I tell you it's never been appointed. Can't you believe me?”

Dug said, reproachfully—

“George, you know I saw him myself.”

“What of it, you idiot? he came twice!”

Dug's face glowed and worked with joyful excitement and surprise, and his words came like explosions from a gun—

“Oh, George, it's too good to be true. Say it again—honor bright!”

“Twice. Honor bright.”

“Lemme hug you, George, lemme hug you. There, now, lay down, everything's all right, for sure. Another blanket? No? Too warm, as it is? All right, and a good sign, too; your machine's a-starting up again. By Jackson, I wouldn't missed this for—appeared twice! Ain't that good—ain't it just noble!”

“Why?”

“Because it means good luck.”

“Who told you so?”

“Sho—everybody knows it; everybody says so.”

“Not everybody, Dug.”

“Oh, well, there's a few says different, but it's mighty few, I can tell you; all the rest says it means good luck.”

Harrison wanted to believe it—longed to believe it. His superstitions were promptly at work; for the moment he was almost hopeful. He said—wistfully, hesitatingly—

“Dug, he—he appeared to my father three times.”

He waited for the response with a yearning anxiety which he would have been ashamed to confess in words. Dug answered triumphantly—

“I know it—and look at what happened. No. 1: taken to his reward in his honored old age before infirmities got a-holt of him. No. 2: taken before he had to see his best friend's son jailed and the old family name disgraced by a bloody murder. No. 3: thish-yer splendid fortune, and you spared to enjoy it. Luck? Well, I should [begin page 290] say! And now he's been twice just on your own personal account: luck? Cheer up, old friend, there's more a-coming! By gravy, it's just grand—you're born to it, George!”

Harrison's half-reviving hope perished and his spirits went down—these evidences were not convincing. He sighed, and said nothing. Dug did not notice; he was busy tearing up some rude drawings which he had painfully scrawled at home the night before—after his chance glimpse of the apparition. Designs for tombs.

Then he went below and ransacked for an apple. He returned presently, munching it, and found Bridget at the bedside and the medicine at Harrison's lips. He plunged forward with a vehement “Say—drop that!” and snatched the dose away. He surveyed the patient reproachfully, and said—

“George Harrison, I can't see what in the nation you—thank goodness I was in time, you'd ‘a’ been in hell in two minutes.”

Harrison retorted, petulantly—

“A while ago you said I would be in—”

“Say, George—there ain't any sense in provoking Providence thisaway and Him a-doing His level best to keep you out of trouble. You've just got shut of one appointment, yet the minute a person turns their back—lookyhere, Bridget, there ain't any use for this slush now, it's all been arranged different since you was in here.”

Bridget thought he was referring to the reaction, and she said she could see, herself, that there was a wonderful change, and maybe the medicine was not needed; but what about the doctor? Who was to take the risk? Suppose there was a relapse—what then. The orders were positive; the doctor said the medicine must be taken. Dug thought the situation over a while, then said—

“No names named. Only somebody's got to take it. All right, then.”

He took it himself.

“George, you've seen me do it. I reckon you'll know me for a friend, yet. There ain't many that'll risk their life for a friend. But you've seen me do it—and Bridget, too. I'm young, I'm strong, and there's hope—I ain't giving up, not by a long shot; but if anything does happen, all I ask is, that you won't forget poor old Dug, [begin page 291] but think of him sometimes. . . . There—it's a-working. . . . George, it's tying things up in sailor-knots and pulling them taut—my! Don't you mind me a-squirming around and twisting up this-away—gimme room, gimme room! . . . George, old Savvanarola—gee! they only just burnt him; why, it's pie to being chawed.”

By help of imagination the orphan's fancied pains became quickly real; and not only real but sharply so, excruciatingly so, intolerably so, and his groans and shrieks and retchings momentarily augmented in violence and grew steadily more and more dreadful to witness. Soon he was wallowing and floundering all about the floor in his anguish and fright, and now he began to beg and implore and beseech that a preacher be sent for. Bridget and Harrison were seriously alarmed; Harrison forgot his own illness and left his bed, and he and Bridget plunged in amongst the thrashing limbs of the young Hercules and bore them down with their weight, and were flung off sprawling; and charged bravely again and still again, and at last won the victory and tumbled the creature into the bed, and climbed up and sat on him and held him down, they two panting and perspiring, and Dug struggling and scrambling under them, and sobbing, crying, groaning, retching, and still wailing for the preacher.

Then the doctor entered and stood looking, astonished and perplexed; behind him old Martha, ash-tinted with consternation. Dug saw the doctor, and a great fear came upon him which stilled his utterance and paralysed him where he lay. The doctor rasped out sternly—

“What is the meaning of this? Come down out of that!”

The victors shame-facedly obeyed. The doctor contemplated Harrison a moment or two, and was manifestly pleased—and perhaps privately surprised.

“Next thing to a miracle!” he said. “It's a grand medicine—grand! But you don't need any more of it, Harrison, you are all right again. What is the matter with this slab?” and he approached Dug.

“G'way from here! Don't you put your hands on me!” and Dug sat up and looked fright and battle mixed. “If you touch me dern'd if I—”

[begin page 292]

“Shut up—will you!” and the doctor halted and stood. “What's the matter with you?”

“Nothing, so help me!”

“Then what are you doing in that bed?”

“I—I had a pain; but it's gone, now.”

“Put out your tongue.”

Dug obeyed.

“Well—well. Healthy as a cow's.”

He applied to the others for a history of the case. They described the circus; and told him every detail except one—the part the medicine had in it.

“It's remarkable, most remarkable. His tongue shows he's normal, perfectly normal—to all appearance.” Then, after a reflective pause, “Hmp. Very strange, very strange indeed: suppressed itch again—right here in the same house. A discovery, too, a notable discovery: shows it's contagious. Will make a stir in the medical world when reported—as you will soon see.” He took his leave, oozing pride and joy from every pore, and pausing in the door to say—

“Give him one dose now, and if the pains come on again send for me.”

Dug did not hear, but Harrison tendered the medicine, and reported the speech. Dug put it from him sorrowfully, and said in thunder-tones of gentle rebuke—

“George, I risked my life to save yourn—and done it. You know I wouldn't done it for myself. Now, then, how you can be so low-down and unfeeling as to offer me, with your own hands, thish-yer hellfire and be willing—be willing, George—to see me suffer like I done before, when you seen, yourself, it was like I had my bowels full of cats—”

His voice broke and he turned away whimpering, and wiping his eyes with his sleeve. It took the funniness out of it for Harrison, over whose blasted and arid and desolate system the divine refreshment of a breath of humor had been blowing a moment before for the first time since he couldn't remember when; and he was touched and ashamed, and said so; and said he had been thoughtless and unkind, and was sorry; sorry, and grateful for [begin page 293] Dug's friendly devotion, and would rather hurt almost any other friend than him; and as these delicious words went crashing into the orphan's ear at close range the hurt look wasted away out of his face and a proud and happy one stole by visible stages into its place and beamed there like the morning. Such words! and from this source! they won the humble orphan as the master's caresses and praises win a worshiping dog, and he wrung Harrison's hand and said—

“George, I wasn't in my right mind when I refused. Gimme the slush. Say the word and I'll gullup the whole of it—I will, honest.”

Martha put her head in and said—

“Here's de preacher, sir; I couldn't git him no sooner.”

“Tell him to go to—”

Dug did not finish, for Bridget put her hand on his mouth and said—

“Shame on you! haven't you got anny manners?”

The minister was Hamfat. It was near sunset, now, and he had gone over to the Presbyterians during the afternoon, and had resumed the clerical coat which he had worn a year earlier when he was in business in one of the theological lines. He was disappointed to find he was not needed, but was reconciled when Harrison asked him to stay to supper. Dug was invited, also.

The supper passed off pleasantly, with oracular philosophisings from Hamfat and frank deridings of them from Dug Hapgood; and as a result Harrison had a rest from brooding over his miseries, and his spirits rose healthily under the stirring influence of this wordy war; his tired soul was refreshed, and he was almost a happy man once more. Helen Fairfax flitted in, presently, charmingly distressed over the town-talk that he was a dying man; a distress which profoundly pleased him; her grateful surprise at finding him well [begin page 294] was another pleasure for him; and when she impulsively kissed him and put her thankfulness into petting and affectionate words, and added the tidings that Tom's hurts were doing well, his cup was about full. Bridget was a little chilly toward her at first, but Helen did not seem to be aware of it, nor conscious that there was any reason why Bridget should have any hostile feeling against her—as indeed there wasn't, as Bridget perceived after a moment's reflection—so the chilliness dissolved away under the young girl's friendly interest in her and her affairs, and ceased to be. Harrison noticed this, and it added another satisfaction to his growing store.

The young women departed for their homes, but other company soon began to arrive, in order to look, and wonder and recongratulate; for Dr. Bradshaw was spreading the news of his medical miracle, and the friends of this strangely and persistently fortunate house wanted to come and see for themselves. Over and over again, as friend after friend arrived, Harrison had to re-tell the story, and read the formidable prescription, and by implication give the prescription the glory; and was austerely reminded, each time, by the Rev. Mr. Bailey, that the glory belonged “elsewhere—which was a fact, and Harrison very well knew it, but he and Dug kept their secret. By and by Hamfat said, with a touch of irritation in manner and voice—

“Now then, brother, suppose you leave that detail alone. We all know the glory belongs to God, but why keep at it so? It was foreordained from the beginning of time that it should happen just the way it did. There is glory in it, true, but nothing special; at least not the particular glory you find in it: God could have cured him without the medicine; indeed, as any sane person can see, the real miracle was that He didn't kill him with it—and therein lies the glory.”

“Yes, but—”

“Never mind—drop it. Predestination covers the whole ground. It was ordained from the beginning of time, that this man should commit suicide with that remedy and survive it.”

“So it's all predestination, now. Only last week you said that so far from there being any such thing as pre—”

“I wasn't a Presbyterian last week.”

[begin page 295]

That blocked the wheels of discussion. There was no way to turn the position, and the subject had to be changed. The talk went glibly on, and the company did not break up until nine. All said they had had a most pleasant evening; said it over the parting glass, and Harrison was able to say in sincerity that he had had the same and was grateful for this amelioration of his sorrow in the loss of his father.

Hamfat did not go with the rest, but lingered a while, chatting in a general way about what a blessing it was for a good man to have large means in a world where there was so much suffering, and so much true happiness to be got out of relieving it. After drifting about for a time without developing any definite object or appearing to have one, he finally got into his overcoat and said his good-night; but halted, on his way to the door, and said—

“By the way—did you know the Memphis uncle personally?”

“No.”

“Had he a family?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Well, I suppose he hadn't. I have never heard of any. Why?”

“Nothing. The thought occurred to me. I knew him a little.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes, I met him; it was some years ago—about fifteen, I think. He had a plantation six miles out of Memphis, and he lived there—nights, at least. I was doctor for an adjoining plantation a few weeks, and was in his house several times. I doctored him for a few days once. A tough customer. There was a woman there—with a little child—a boy.”

“Yes, that was his housekeeper. She was with him several years, I think, but has been gone a long time. You are thinking of Mrs. Milliken.”

“Ah, yes—yes, I remember, now. They called her that—it comes back to me, now. A matronly and rather pleasing person—about thirty, I should say. Ah, yes, he was a tough customer. You know, he owned Jasper once.”

“Colonel Fairfax's Jasper?”

“Yes.”

“I didn't know it.”

[begin page 296]

“Yes, Jasper was a slave in those days. A valuable nigger, too—mulatto, I mean; twenty, athletic, and a devil to work. Smart, too. When he was sixteen he bought himself, on time, from your uncle, and learned the carpenter's trade in no time, and was a free man inside of three years.”

“At nineteen? And a slave again at twenty? How could that be?”

But Hamfat was musing, and did not answer.

“Mm . . . mm,” dreamily nodding his head; “ye-s, he was a damned tough man. Oh, I beg pardon; my mind was far back in the past, for the moment—when I was a barkeeper—the remark was reminiscent, and not intentional. Good-night—good-bye, I've had a delightful evening, and thank you ever so much.”

He was gone. Harrison was feeling uncomfortable, now, he did not know why. Had Hamfat's random and pointless talk produced the feeling? Why, no, it could hardly be that; there was nothing in his talk. His manner, then? Possibly; he could not say, for sure; and yet, on the whole—

Well, he was uncomfortable, anyway; he realized that much, and his pleasant evening was in a manner spoiled. He went to his bed saying petulantly—

“Oh, well, when a man's down and badgered and worried, his imagination hunts up something to get in a sweat about, out of every trivial thing that comes along. Lord, I get so tired of it all!”

Presently he did what all troubled souls have done, from the beginning of time: by a supreme effort he drove the disquieting matter out of his mind, and set a watch to keep it out. The customary result of this scheme followed: by pleasant degrees his protected brain sank deeper and deeper toward a soft and sweet and blissful unconsciousness, and soon he was dozing. But of course, the watch was now dozing, too, and this brought still another customary result: the gates parted, and a new enemy sprang in. Harrison groaned and came wide awake in a moment, saying—

“Bailey called it a ‘delusion,’ but lord, lord, was it? It could have been a fact. A fact, and prophetic. If there was no peace for him, with his strong make, what is the outlook for me?”

He knew there was no more sleep for him that night.

[begin page 297]

Hamfat struck down toward the village, pondering deeply. An idea had been born to him some hours before, out of a chance memory of the past, and the more he turned it over the more he was impressed by it and pleased with it. At first it had meant nothing to him, and he had given it but little attention; but it stayed by him and insisted on being considered; with the result that he was at last getting quite full of it. At the edge of the village he met Park Robinson, and asked him if he had seen Allen Osgood.

“No. What do you want of him?”

“Nothing in particular. I thought I'd—”

“I don't know where he is, because I don't know whether he's dry or not. If he's dry, he's at Bowles's; if he ain't, he's at the ice cream parlors, because I saw Asphyxia Perry pointed for there half an hour ago with some other spring chickens and chaps.”

“Thanks. Good-night.”

“So-long.”

The girl owed her singular name to her mother, who was ignorant and romantic, and afflicted her children with any chance name she found in a book, if it had a pretty sound, without stopping to inquire into its pedigree or relationships. She had a son named Solar Plexus, and other children with similarly over-conventional names; but this is a matter which does not concern us.

The ice cream parlors consisted of a single room, which was gay with cheap and inharmonious splendors, and was the pride of the village. Notched and perforated pink paper-lace (tissue), blue paper-lace, crimson paper-lace, yellow paper-lace decorated everything that would stand decorating; the mirror-frame, the shelf-edges, the sconces, the lamps in the chandelier; even the pasteboard man who was impaled on a crooked wire on the drum of the wood-stove, and miserably and maddeningly whirled and spun there day and night in the torture of the ascending heat, eternally waved a flag of it. All of these gauds were freckled with fly-specks, but that was matter-of-course in Indiantown, and not objectionable. The stenciled window-shades displayed Swiss pictures, with snowy Alps in the background, and chalets and milk-maids and remarkable [begin page 298] cows in the front. In the wall paper a press of fast-spurring knights with lance in rest and visor down was issuing from under the frowning gateway of a medieval castle, and this same thing was happening in unreposeful repetition in every six-inch space all over the whole place. If the forces had been concentrated they could have taken the Holy Land. And done it easily. Some of the framed pictures were the old stand-bys—American classics: such as Washington bulling his way across the Delaware, Tecumseh at the battle of the Thames, the Signing of the Declaration, Warren falling at Bunker Hill, and so on; the others were recent: Kossuth, Jenny Lind, the J. M. White tearing along on her record trip up the Mississippi, and the like. The latest of all, and also the choicest, was the Western favorite of the time, a lithograph, delicately colored by hand, representing a sweet young girl pensively bowed over a large open book, presumably the Bible, with a rose in her fingers, the dainty rose and the dainty hand resting upon the sacred page. It was having a run, and could be found tilted above the barkeeper's back and his bottles on every steamboat in the Orleans trade, let her hail from whence she might. The little ice cream tables had pictured oil-cloth covers—the American eagle with bunches of flags and cannons in his grip and a scroll in his beak bearing the E Pluribus Unum motto. He had a fiery eye. Each table had cruets on it containing vinegar and flies and such-like condiments, for the parlors furnished oyster stews—a recent thing and all the go, as the leaders of fashion said. The oysters were small and could have been mistaken for tonsils which had been removed to put a stop to throat diseases. That is, before stewing, for then they were soft and rounded and elusive; but after stewing they were wrinkled, like raisins, and had character, and in a struggle would resist to the death. They came in cans, from Baltimore, and had cloves floating in their juice, and were called pickled oysters, and were in all respects damnable. When a person had drunk up his stew, he lolled back with a look of contentment, and chewed his oyster. At such times he did not talk, but attended to business, tilting his head first to one side and then the other and bearing down on his subject earnestly, and getting new leverages by [begin page 299] shifting it alternately from the tired jaw to the rested one. When both jaws were disabled and threw up the job, he gave it to the dog, who got an hour's practice out of it, and passed it on to his friends. Sometimes a crank planted his oyster, dreaming of India rubber and wealth, but the soil or the climate was not suitable, and nothing came of it.

The proprietor of the parlors was a spruce and natty young fellow, the dandy of the town—Templeton Gunning; handsome, brisk, easy, elegant, a lady-killer; wearing the tightest boots in the village and the tallest collars; proud of the front end of his name, which he believed had come down to him from an aristocratic source somewhere. He was much envied for the winning freedom of his manners, and for the gay and pretty and unembarrassed way in which he could—and did—accost all comers with his “Now then, ladies, gents,—don't all speak at once!—what's it goin' to be this time?” When on duty he wore no coat, winter or summer, but moved sociably about from table to table, in his vest and with his shirt-sleeves drawn up and restrained with pink elastics—moved about in a sparkling way, re-animating failing conversation, rallying shy people to put them at their ease, joking sweethearts and forcing them to laugh for appearance' sake when one of them would have preferred to swear and the other to cry; always busy, he was, distributing charm and superintending his negro waiters and seeing to everything with his own eye. A prosperous young man was Templeton Gunning, and very popular and much respected. A diligent flirt, too, and sang tenderly, and played the guitar, and led the serenaders.

Most of the tables were full, to-night; nearly all the smart young journeyman-mechanics and dry-goods clerks were there with their young ladies, and there was a great din of chaffing, joking, and boisterous laughter. The talk was not on cold and lofty planes, but was strictly light and personal. Snatches of it were catchable everywhere:

“Leggo me, Jim Gatewood; if you muss my hair again, I lay I'll break something over your red head!”

“Oh, you will, will you?” (A sound of strenuous scuffling ensues, [begin page 300] accompanied by pantings and by gleeful cacklings from all the table-mates, in which the girl joins.) “There, now, it's done—why don't you break something? You said you would.”

“You didn't do it, plague take you, I done it myself.”

“Oh, but didn't I, though?”

“No, you didn't.”

“I did.”

“You didn't.”

“Did.”

“Didn't.”

He plunges for her, she squirms out of reach and makes a mouth at him; whereat they all laugh, she as gaily as any.

The one sample will do. All over the place the like was going on. There was no harm in it. They were clean-minded young people; their ways and language were silly and vulgar, but in their hearts was no evil and no impurity.

Not all the groups were noisy; there was one exception. At a table apart, in a corner, sat Allen Osgood and Asphyxia Perry. These two communed quietly and earnestly. They had been engaged for a couple of years, but the parents of Asphyxia, who had favored the match in the beginning, had early changed their minds, and had opposed it since. The change had occurred when Allen had been discharged from his dry-goods clerkship for indolence and for losing his membership in the Sons of Temperance by breaking his pledge. For a while he had tried to get another place, but had soon ceased from efforts of that kind and turned his attention to idleness and dissipation—at his mother's expense, who could ill afford it. Asphyxia had reasoned with him many times, and was reasoning with him now.

“But you don't try, Allen. If you would straighten up and be a man—”

“Shaw, that's what you're always saying—you and everybody—and I'm tired of it.”

The girl colored, and said, with dignity—

“We have at least said it for your good, Allen.”

“There, now, you're hurt again. I don't want to hurt you, and I'm sorry. But lord, you can't think what it is to—to—Asphyxia, [begin page 301] everybody avoids me—I can see it—everybody despises me. If I—”

“Allen, you are dear to me, I do not avoid you, and you know I don't want to despise you—”

“But you can't help it. Oh, say it—you might as well.”

“Don't speak so loud. Allen, I would do anything in this world to help you, to lift you up, to—”

“Lord, life is so tough, so tough!”

“Try an oyster for a change,” suggested the genial proprietor, passing by on his rounds.

“Listen at that,” growled Allen, under his breath. “That's a specimen. I owe him money and can't pay. And can't resent.”

“Oh, Allen, I pity you so. I do wish I could think of an opening for you. Listen to that clatter—everybody is happy but you and me. You would work, if you had an opening, wouldn't you, Allen?”

“Yes, I would, I give you my honor I would. For your sake. You are so good to me, and so forgiving, in spite of all I do and say to distress you. I give you my word I will make a try tomorrow—honor bright, I will.”

The clouds in the girl's face lifted, and in warm and earnest words she expressed her content. Then she revealed a secret:

“I can go home happy, now, Allen, for you have given your promise, and father said I must bring it or the engagement must be broken off.”

The young fellow burst out with “I'll keep it, on honor I will! You will tell him so—and you will plead for me—don't let him break it off—I've nothing left but you—you are my life—I couldn't live without you!”

She was happy, and her heart spoke through her eyes.

Five minutes later the couple rose and moved toward the door; as they passed out, Templeton Gunning whispered in Allen's ear, “I'm letting you off again. Say—you ain't even the little pasteboard man's equal: he earns his living and pays his way.”

Hamfat was shivering in the dark recess of a doorway near by and communing with his uneasy mind: “I hope it's honorable; I hope it's what ought to be done . . . . Suppose I was in her place—wouldn't I think it ought to be done? wouldn't I know it? . . . [begin page 302] Anyway, it's not a crime, that I know. I've done foolish things, questionable things, but I've never committed a crime. I'm very poor, and this—this—well, this temptation is very strong; I've not been tempted to this degree before. Is that why I've held out? We all have our limit—we all know it. We ought to pray Lead us not into temptation beyond our limit. Is this mine? . . . Lord, I hope the motive is good!”

A double rank of young people filed by, plaintively singing “Sweet Ellen Bayne,” and a minute later Allen and Asphyxia appeared. Hamfat gave them good-evening, and asked Allen to return presently—he would wait for him.

While Hamfat waited, he went on arranging his mind—arranging it to fit the new circumstances. He had had much practice in this, and could depend upon fetching it around. After some reflection, he retired from the ministry. After further reflection he dropped back to an earlier condition of his, and became a freethinker. The decks being now cleared for action, he began to consider that other embarrassment, the “motive.” This presently landed him on good firm ground in another former position of his—that all motives are selfish. All motives being selfish, a man needs only to choose between selfish high motives and selfish low ones. What was the nature of this present motive? As it affected “her,” it promised justice, and was high; selfish too, of course, because it promised to profit himself. What then? Leave poor Mrs. Milliken injured because he could not right her without advantaging himself? That would indeed be a crime! No, the motive was all right—and plenty high enough on the one side to even up the other and make the general average good. If he got a little tangled in his reasonings he was not aware of it, and he came out of them ready for business and gay. When Allen returned, Hamfat said—

“I want to have an important talk. I've got a good thing for you.”

The young fellow's face brightened pleasantly.

“Do you mean it?” he asked.

“Yes, I do. Come in here and we'll talk it over and have a stew.”

The newly brightened face was swiftly overclouded.

[begin page 303]

“No—you'll excuse me. I owe money there, and I'll not go in that place again till I can do it with my head up.”

Hamfat was gratified, and said to himself, “Things are happening just right.” Then aloud, bringing out a wad of State bills, “Very good, you can do it now. I collected this for a charity, but that's all right, take what you want; I'll make it good. Come along.”

Allen put out his hand eagerly, then drew it reluctantly back.

“No,” he said, “I'm turning over a new leaf. Borrowing's not a good beginning.”

“Borrowing? It's not borrowing. It's on account.”

“How do you mean?”

“In a few weeks you'll have a plenty. Don't you worry—you'll see.”

Allen still hesitated. He sighed, and said—

“Good news don't stir me the way it used to. But maybe luck's turned; I don't know. I'll take five dollars.”

They entered the parlors and sat down remote from the small company which still tarried in the place. A winter storm was brewing, and the parlors were becoming a solitude in consequence of it. Templeton came airily forward with his usual “Now, then, gents—don't all—”

“Send stews and the change. Square up the account—you understand?” and Allen handed over the banknote.

Templeton observed, indolently, “They told me 'twas snowing, but they didn't say what,” and sauntered away with the order.

Hamfat began earnestly.

“Allen, you are as poor as I am. And as tired of it, too—isn't that so?”

“Speak of something cheerfuler, Bailey,” said Allen, gloomily.

“It's just what I'm coming to. For instance. How would you like to pick up a hundred thousand dollars in the next month or two?”

It was an electric awakening for the sluggish young fellow.

“Great Scott, what do you mean, Bailey! Don't joke—I can't bear it—is there anything in it? Tell me what you are driving at.”

“Now then, I will. I've good reason to believe George Harrison's old Memphis uncle left a private wife and a son behind him [begin page 304] somewhere. Disappeared, you understand—say fifteen years ago.”

“Well?”

“Suppose they could be hunted out and found?”

“Well—what then?”

“Suppose we find them—you and me?”

“Do you mean—”

“Don't you see? They'd own the estate, and it's worth more than four hundred thousand. We'd charge them half for discovering them. It requires us both: you go up there and search around and get on their track, I stay here and raise money for your expenses, from week to week.”

For a while young Osgood was dazzled—bewildered—intoxicated with the splendid dream; then be began to have misgivings, and said, wistfully—

“But George Harrison—it would ruin him.”

“Ye-s,” hesitatingly, “but then, you know, we'd be working for justice—justice for that poor abused woman. That ennobles it. What right has he to be living in luxury on her property, and she no doubt suffering for bread? I just ask you that. Where's the fairness of it? And I'll ask you another thing: now that you know she's probably the rightful owner and suffering in poverty and want, what is your duty? You've got a duty, as an honorable man; and everybody will concede that you are that, Allen, at the same time that they call you frivolous and a no-account. Very well; as an honorable man are you going to meanly keep still and let her go on suffering—a poor soul like that, who has never done you any harm? When you didn't know, it was another matter, and you were free, and nothing required of you; but it's different, now. Now that you know, you can't sit quiet and let her be robbed, without being a plain and self-confessed accessory to that wrong, and guilty down to the bottom of your conscience!”

The young fellow tried to get away from this aspect of the case, but Bailey held him to it and kept it remorselessly before him. He was obliged to concede, finally, that a right-feeling person would not and could not in fairness desert a wronged woman when he could help her and save her; and certainly it was such a person's [begin page 305] duty to at least try, and do the best he could, in the present hard case.

An important stage was won. Bailey rubbed his hands with satisfaction, and hastened to fortify the captured position. He said—

“Here's thirty dollars—enough for three or four weeks. Keep me posted on your whereabouts, and I'll raise more and send it as it's needed.”

Osgood contemplated the money a little while, dreamily, then put it in his pocket, still dreaming, still thinking, with Bailey's eye on him, alert and watching. At length came this remark:

“Bailey, we mean well by the woman, and that's all right. And so we ought to feel good and clean, but somehow I can't. There's something that spoils it. Don't you see that at bottom our motive is mainly selfish?”

The second stage was reached. But Hamfat was ready. He answered indifferently—

“That's all right. There aren't any motives but selfish ones.”

“Bailey! What a rotten statement!”

“It's true, all the same.”

“Ah, but come, now, you're not serious.”

“But I am serious, I tell you.”

Young Osgood turned the immense proposition over several times in his mind in a groping and helpless way, then ejaculated—

“No motives but selfish ones!”

“Allen, I've never encountered one of another sort in my life, little or big. Did you ever take a motive apart, piece by piece, and examine it?”

“Well, no, I don't think I ever did.”

“I know you never did.”

“How do you know it?”

“Because you're like the rest of the community—you don't know how to think.”

“Oh, I like that!”

“All people think they think, but there's not two in a million that ever do it. They never think out a question for themselves; they get [begin page 306] it at second-hand, from somebody else; and that somebody else gets it at second-hand from some other somebody else—and so on. The whole world has believed from Creation down that there are motives that are not selfish ones. It shows that there have been billions and billions of people who never thought, but took their ideas—as they call their foolishnesses—at second hand without ever examining them. The very finest intellects the human race has produced have done very little thinking.”

“The very finest? Oh, come! Prove it.”

“It's perfectly easy. For instance. For thousands of years the entire world believed in witches—the Shakspeares, the Sir Thomas Brownes, the Sir Matthew Hales, Luther, Calvin, and all. You see, they took their opinions at second hand, and did no thinking and no examining. But the minute a few people—and not the brightest—sat down and calmly and coldly and without prejudice took the evidence apart and intelligently examined it, the witch-humbug went to the devil. Why, Allen, all of that evidence—every detail of it—had been before the world's master-minds for ages and ages. In all that time it had never occurred to one of those gifted conservatives to coldly and dispassionately examine it. Now by reason of this age-long negligent habit there's a good many Truths with a capital T running at large and dressed as gentlemen, that would lose their liberty if they were arrested and sharply cross-questioned.”

He paused, and waited for this position to be attacked. But it was a short pause—nothing really more than a courtesy-pause, in fact—then he broke it and moved on toward his object:

“Why, if people really thought, instead of only thinking they think, somebody would have taken a motive to pieces ages ago and found out that there was never a one that had its origin anywhere but in selfishness.”

“Why, Bailey, there are certainly some motives—”

“That are not selfish? Allen, it would trouble you to find an instance.”

“I don't think so. I can find you one in that St. Louis paper there—a good one, too; I read it this evening when I was waiting for— [begin page 307] here it is. It's an incident connected with those new-fangled cars in New York—horse-cars.”

He read it, while Hamfat kept sharp watch upon the details. Osgood laid the paper down and said:

“There you have it—as straight as a string, and not an attackable place in it. Summarized, it stands thus—to-wit: The man lives three miles up town. It is bitter cold, blowing hard, snowing hard, midnight. He is about to enter the car when a gray and ragged old woman, a touching picture of misery, puts out her lean hand and begs for rescue from hunger and death. The man finds that he has but a quarter in his pocket, but he does not hesitate: he gives it her and trudges home through the storm. There—it is noble, it is beautiful: its grace is marred by no fleck or blemish or suggestion of self.”

“What makes you think that, Allen?”

The victory had seemed easy and complete. The question was a surprise. A surprise and an annoyance mixed.

“What else could I think, Bailey? Do you imagine that there is some other way of looking at it?”

“Why, yes. Can you put yourself in the man's place and tell me what he felt and what he thought?”

“Easily. The sight of that suffering old face pierced his generous heart with a sharp pain. He could not bear it. He could endure the three-mile walk in the storm, but he could not endure the tortures his conscience would suffer if he turned his back and left that poor old creature to perish. He would not have been able to sleep, for thinking of it.”

“What was his state of mind on his way home, Allen?”

“It was a state of joy which only the unselfish know. His heart sang, he was unconscious of the storm.”

“He slept well?”

“One cannot doubt it.”

Allen had recovered. His spirits were up again. His case seemed to be invulnerable, and he felt pleased with his performance, and not anxious about results. He said to himself, “Let him chew on that oyster a while, and see what he can make out of it.”

[begin page 308]

Hamfat considered the situation a moment or two, then said:

“Now then, let's take it apart and examine it—a thing which people never do, as I have been telling you, and so they don't get at a truth, but only at a falsity. Let us coldly add up the details and see how much this man got for his twenty-five cents. Let us try to find out the real why of his making the investment. In the first place he couldn't bear the pain which the suffering old face gave him. He couldn't bear it, you see. So he was thinking of his pain—this unselfish man. He must buy a salve for it. In the second place, if he did not succor the old woman his conscience would torture him all the way home. Torture him, you see. Thinking of his pain again. He must buy relief from that. In the third place, if he did not relieve the old woman he would not get any sleep. He wouldn't, you notice. He must buy some sleep. Still thinking of himself, you see. Thus, to sum up, he bought himself free of a sharp pain in his heart, he bought himself free of the tortures of a waiting conscience, he bought a whole night's sleep all for twenty-five cents. It should make the sharpest nigger-trader on the river ashamed of himself. On his way home his heart was joyful and it sang—profit on top of profit! usury! Allen, the impulse which moved the man to succor the old woman was wholly selfish, utterly selfish. But there was nothing base about it, nothing ignoble. You have the idea that all selfish motives are base. I think you must grant that this case is an exception to your rule.”

Young Osgood made several efforts to reply, but he was not practised in the argumentative arts, and Hamfat headed him off each time. Osgood furnished instance after instance in support of his position, but Hamfat took them coldly to pieces, one by one, and finished each in turn with the remark—

“It's always just so—the seed-impulse is selfishness, every time; there aren't any exceptions. What a body needs to do, is to train himself to prefer high selfishnesses, not low ones. Why, Allen, look at that divine thing, a mother's love—the very selfishest of all. She will starve herself to death, that her child may have food. Why? Because she can't bear to see the child suffer. She could manage to bear it if it were another person's child, but—

“Damn such a philosophy!”

[begin page 309]

“It isn't a philosophy, it's a fact.”

“I don't care what you call it, it's just loathsome.”

“I'm not saying it isn't.”

“Well, then, why do you think about it, and fuss at it, and propagate it in your mind? What good can it do? If the world believed as you do, it would lose heart, and be ashamed of itself, and never do a fine and noble thing, because the impulse back of it would be selfish—and being selfish, ignoble.”

Hamfat was waiting for that.

“Well, Allen,” he said, musingly, “I may be all wrong, and you may be right, but really I don't feel that I am the worse for these notions. There was that man that gave the old woman the quarter. His act was not the outcome of his opinions, but of his feelings. Feelings are inborn and permanent; opinions change. Let that man think as he might, he would rescue that helpless old woman just the same. Don't you believe it?”

“Yes, perhaps so. Yes, of course he would.”

“You would, yourself. Isn't it so?”

“I think so.”

“Don't you know it?”

“Yes.”

“Even if you believed your impulse was selfish you would save her from her trouble—you couldn't help it.”

“What's the use of nagging me so! I couldn't see her suffer, and I wouldn't try—I'd help her if I could.”

Without emphasis—and in a manner casually, so to speak—Bailey remarked—

“There's another poor old woman that's suffering—and unjustly. We can help her.”

He dropped that seed and left it to grow, and do its work; and straightway changed the subject. He chatted sociably along, about one thing and then another, without halting for responses, and without seeming to care for them or to desire anything better than to hear himself talk. But he kept a side-glance on Allen all the while, and was contented; for Allen was thinking, or thought he was thinking, and Bailey did not doubt that the result would be satisfactory. He wandered pleasantly on and on with his talk, and [begin page 310] enjoying it all by himself, and finally he took a chance at the little pasteboard man as a text.

“Look at him spin,” he said. “Thinks he thinks. They all do. Thinks it was his idea to whirl like that. Thinks he does the whirling. Whereas he is nothing but a puppet, worked by an exterior influence—that heat: that surrounding and enveloping and brain-stifling public opinion, which he's the slave of and doesn't know it. He'll wear out, and they'll put another in his place, and another and another—a hundred, in time; and they'll all think they think. They'll all think they are spinning out wisdoms which the parlors couldn't do without. But the spring will come and the fire will go out while the last one is whirling; then the cold air of truth will blow on him and he'll perceive that his trade is pl—”

“Bailey!”

“Well?”

“I believe it's right, and I'm ready.”

“Good. I knew—”

“But there's one thing I've got to be satisfied about, first. I don't want to seethe a kid in its mother's milk.”

“What do you mean?”

“Who is contributing to that charity you are borrowing from? George Harrison?”

“Not a cent.”

This was a mistake. Possibly a lie.

“Very well, then. Come along; it's midnight.”

They passed out into the storm, leaving the parlors empty of guests. A dog was asleep on the floor, Templeton Gunning was asleep in a chair, the knights were cavorting along the wall, the J. M. White was flying up the river, the lithographed girl was absorbed in her lesson, the pasteboard man was disseminating the truth as he understood it.

There was a guest in George Harrison's house—in his bedroom, in fact: a vague and almost invisible figure which sat remote from the night-taper and enveloped in glooms and shadows, but surmounted by a face which Harrison could have seen if he had looked in that direction—a face which seemed to emit a pale glow and to float in the murky air unsupported.

[begin page 311]

As the two benevolent conspirators stepped out into the black night and the driving snow and closed the door of the ice cream parlors behind them, a tall and stalwart man brushed by them with his slouch hat pulled down over his face. He stopped beyond the range of the show-window lights, the only ones now visible in the street, and waited until the pair had disappeared in the storm; then he returned, warily and with an eye out for passers-by, and knocked vigorously on the Templeton door—three sounding raps, and after a pause, two more—after which he slipped into the darkness again. There was no result for a minute or two, then one by one the parlor lights went out. All but one, which was behind the high screen which protected the delivery-wicket where the waiters did their traffic with the kitchen from public view. Being only a humble tallow candle its rays were effective in the sheltered corner only; they were not able to carry beyond the screen.

The skulker entered, now, and locked the door behind him. The darkness of the parlors did not trouble him; he went straight to the screen and behind it without colliding with the table. It could be guessed that he had made the trip before, in like circumstances. He found Templeton standing at ease behind the screen, but looking only indifferently glad, if even that much. The guest shook off a cloud of snow, tossed his hat on the floor, and seated himself. He proved to be a darkish mulatto.

“Whah's yo' servants?” he asked.

“Gone to bed.”

“How long?”

“Half an hour.”

“Well, den, set down.” Templeton did it. “I've come for de straight o' de news de Fairfax niggers is talkin' so much about. About Jawge Harrison a-comin' into de property o' dat ole uncle up [begin page 312] to Memphis.” He got out a cob pipe, packed the remains of its charge home with his finger, and motioned for the candle; Templeton passed it to him, he got his light, and passed the candle back. The young white man looked humiliated, but made no comment. “Say—it's so, ain't it?”

“Yes, of course; there wasn't any other heir, Jasper.”

“I hear say dey's rafts o' cash, besides de lan' en de niggers—mos' fifty thousand. Is dat so, too?”

“Yes—forty-five.”

A gratified light flashed in the mulatto's eye. Templeton noticed it, and said, with a timid attempt at his usual light manner—

“That seems to interest you. How?”

The light changed—changed to an unpleasant gleam; and a surly growl followed:

“I reckon it ain't any o' yo' business.” After a cogitating silence of some moments, impressively broken by the booming of the storm-blast outside and the muffled slamming and banging of distant shutters, “Gimme a dram.”

Templeton provided rye whisky and a glass, and the guest tossed off four fingers neat. He smacked his lips and said—

“It's warmin' and good! Say—whah is she?”

“Up stairs—asleep.”

“Healthy? Sperits good?”

“Healthy?—yes. As to the rest, middling.”

Another pause. Then—

“You seen anybody dat's been to de jail?”

“Yes, several.”

“How do ole marster take it?”

“Keeps his head up, they say.”

“I reckon he killed Jake, didn't he?”

“I reckon so. Of course he did; everybody says so, even Harrison, they say, though Tom's as good as a member of the family; and Harrison is a man that wouldn't condemn a dog if he didn't think he knew the dog was guilty.”

“Miss Helen don't believe he done it. But o' cose she'd say dat anyway.”

“Have you seen her, Jasper?”

[begin page 313]

“I has. On'y jist a minute.”

“How's Tom?”

“Gitt'n along right smartly, she say.”

“They say Colonel Fairfax is drinking again.”

“On'y jist lately. I been on de place ever sence we come, en I knows. Say—you's done pretty well in dis town.”

Templeton involuntarily put his hand in his pocket. The remark was not followed up, and he left it there, and said, not with any perceptible eagerness—

“Well—perhaps well enough for a two-year go in a little place like this.”

“It ain't two years yit. We hain't been here two years till Janiwary. You've done prime.”

“Yes, for such a town; but if I could go down to Orleans, with my experience—”

“Looky here,” interrupted the mulatto, roughly, “dat's de second time you've said it. Don't I always move dis fambly when I's ready? Well, den, you wait. Hit suit me fur you to stay whah you is. Dat settle' it. You unerstan'?”

The young white face flushed deeply, but no words came.

“'D you heah me?”

“I wasn't suggesting anything, I only just made the remark.”

Jasper was silent for some little time, now, and his knitted brow suggested that he was probably arranging something in his mind with special care. A scheme, Templeton thought, and was not happy; Jasper's schemes usually included him as a detail, and seldom in a desirable way. Finally Jasper asked—

“Whah was you, 'long 'bout de time Jake was killed, dat night?”

Templeton was relieved.

“Midnight? I was coming home from superintending the refreshment-end of Mrs. Batterson's party.”

“Den you was passin' behine Cunnel Fairfax's 'bout de time Jake scream' out.”

“No, it wasn't just at that time. And I didn't pass behind the house, but in front.”

The mulatto looked him gravely in the eyes and said—

[begin page 314]

“I said behine. You was passin' behine de house—un'stan'?”

Templeton's feeling of relief lost something of its repose. What might these questions be leading up to? He answered, resignedly—

“Yes, behind. I was passing behind the house.”

“Dat's all right. Keep it in yo' mine, en don't fogit it. Now, den: fust, you h'yerd de scream—”

“Why, no, Jasper, I—”

“'Tend to what I says, will you! Fust, you h'yerd de scream—”

A waiting silence for a moment or two, then Templeton dropped his eyes and his voice, and said his lesson:

“First, I heard the scream—”

“Den a man rush' outen de back do' en whiz pas' you—”

“Then a man burst out of the back door and rushed past me—”

“I reconnize' de man en he reconnize' me—”

The victim lifted his eyes pleadingly to his torturer's face and hesitated, a sickly pallor stealing over his cheeks—

“Say it!”

“I—I recognized the man and he recognized me—”

“Den Jasper busted outen de back do' en reconnize' me en tole me Jake Bleeker is killed, en ast me to ketch de man, en I rush' arter him, en he beg off en say if I don't say nuth'n he'll gimme a pile o' money. Say dat over, now, en don't leave none of it out.”

The lesson was recited.

“Now, den, you ain't gwyne to be no witness, onless dat man act contrary wid me. Well, dat ain't gwyne to happen. But all de same, you keep dem facks in yo' head, so's you kin be ready if it do happen.”

The youth, moved by deep anxiety, innocently inquired—

“What man is it, Jasper?”

The colored man gave him a sharp look and answered—

“You mine yo' own business. I'll tell you when de time come for you to go en swah in de cote.”

After a little, Templeton made another venture:

“Will one witness do, without anybody to back up what he says?”

“I's gwyne to 'ten to dat.”

Templeton was puzzled, and said, a little timidly—

[begin page 315]

“But you know—well, you forget that they won't take your evidence.”

Jasper snapped out an oath and retorted—

“Who said dey would? D'you reckon I's a fool?”

This left Templeton in the dark. He was afraid to ask for further light on the matter, but after a pause he shifted his ground and ventured this remark—

“You know they would ask me why I come at such a late day and never said anything before.”

The frank guest responded, despairingly—

“Hit do seem to me I never see sich a chucklehead befo'. Why, it's 'case you couldn't sleep no mo', Gawd was a-pullin' en a-haulin' at you so.” Then he rose to his full height, yawned cavernously, and stretched—upward and still upward, luxuriously, prodigiously; helped himself to another glass, refilled his pipe and lit it, indicated his hat with a nod, and as Templeton picked it up and handed it to him, opened out his brawny hand and stood with it projected to the front, palm up. Templeton laid in it the five dollar bill recently the property of Allen Osgood and of Hamfat and of the ravished charity, and of George Harrison. The guest pocketed it and moved away, Templeton following. The pair parted without a good-night, and the proprietor of the parlors locked the door, grinding his teeth and muttering—

“I wish he may land in hell before breakfast! He's got no pass, of course, and I hope Catlin will catch him and calaboose him and give him thirty-nine.”

His first prayer miscarried, for some reason, but all three of the specifications particularized in the second one arrived and found favor. Jasper had not gone two blocks before Catlin the constable, who was the entire police department of Indiantown, had him. He spent the rest of the night in cold and forlorn captivity, and in the early morning was stripped and given his “forty-save-one,” frightfully laid on. Then, in the gray dawn, with his swollen back streaming blood and caking his clothes to his body, he staggered his way homeward through the fleecy snowdrifts, brooding vengeance and cursing all the white race without reserve, out of the deepest deeps of his heart, and rejoicing that in fifteen years he had spared [begin page 316] no member of it a pain or a shame when he could safely inflict it; and finishing with—

“I's sweated two of 'm good, dese two years, en dey dasn't open dey mouf; en I's stacked de k'yards on another one, now, en I lay I'll make him sup sorrow, you see if I don't. He won't das't to open his mouth, nuther. You wait ontel I kin git around agin—Gawd, I'll s'rivel him up!”

Next morning at the late hour of eight, Templeton was still in bed, and that was a most strange thing; it was his custom to rise with the sun. His breakfast was on a table close by, but he had not touched it nor felt any interest in it. He was pale and languid, and profoundly low-spirited. The appointments of the room were bright and cheerful, and a hospitable fire was roaring in the stove and showing flamboyantly through its teeth, but the aspects outside the window were dreary and saddening. It was a windless morning, the snow lay deep upon the houses and the street, there was no traffic, no sound of wagon or footfall, a white desolation spread everywhere, the stillness was uncanny, oppressive, mournful. Templeton drew down the blind; he could not endure the picture, in the mood that possessed him.

The door opened and closed, and his mother was with him. One could recognize the relationship at a glance. She was about forty-five, and still comely, albeit pathetically careworn, and the signs were present that she had been very pretty in her younger days. She had an intelligent face, normally reposeful and contemplative, and her eyes were warrant that she possessed feeling and imagination. In her dress she was neat and trim, and she carried herself well and with a sedate dignity. By nature she was good and kindly—one could see that—but she was not a very strong character; one could see that, also. She bent over her son and caressed his forehead and his hair a while, affectionately, then sat down by him and took [begin page 317] his hand and held it, stroking it and petting it with her other hand and saying tender and sympathetic things to him; and no doubt she would have liked to kiss him, but that was not the Southern way among mothers of the middle rank and below. Templeton responded gratefully with his eyes and by pressure for pressure with his hand; and presently his memories of the night flared up in his mind, and he said bitterly—

“Mother, he has been here again.”

“Ah, poor boy, I know it. I heard his signal, and slipped down to be near you and suffer with you.”

“Then you heard him.”

“I heard it all, from behind the screen.”

“I'm glad, for now you must see, yourself, that something's got to be done; we can't stand this any longer.”

The mother showed apprehension, and said:

“Oh, don't think any rash thoughts, my son! Don't, for my sake, and for your own. There's nothing in the world we can do, but endure and wait.”

“Wait! It's been wait, wait, wait, all these years. I'm so tired of it. And nothing ever comes of it, mother. Lord, to be talked to like that, by a nigger, and have to stand it!” The thought of it tortured him, and made him writhe. “And now—why, it's a hundred times worse than ever!” He suddenly sat up in bed, and his breath came and went in gasps. “Think! Every time it crosses my mind it frightens me cold: I've got to go and swear some innocent man's life away—God only knows whose. I can't do it, I'll never do it—how can I do it!” He fell back upon the pillow and thrashed about with his hands in wordless despair.

His mother pleaded with him, wept over him, put all her heart into her persuasions, the burden of her reasonings being that Jasper might never require it and had said as much—“Wait and see, wait and see; oh, be patient and wait!” She made an impression, she gained ground; her words did their share of the work, her tears the most of it. The son was at last tranquilized, but not persuaded. He said—

“I love you, mother, and I have proved it by living in this sort of hell ten years without knowing why. I am not a boy any longer, I [begin page 318] have passed the blabbing age, I am twenty-one, and I've a right to know. I have begged, you have said wait a little longer; so I have waited a little longer, and a little longer, and again a little longer. But now I must know.”

“Oh, my boy, don't require it—don't! I can't bear that you should be ashamed of me.”

The son looked astonished.

“Ashamed?” he said. “I knew it must be something dreadful, but I did not think of that. I supposed that this devil had got you under his heel in some unfair way, and that if we only waited, in patience, everything would clear up, and then—”

The woman was sobbing out her heart in a welter of tears. The youth was moved with pity, and said—

“Look up, mother, and take heart. Do not be afraid of me. I will stand by you through everything.”

“Through shame!” and she looked up surprised, through her tears.

“Yes, through everything. Who am I, to be ashamed of you?”

She gathered him to her heart and said—

“I never knew you! Why, I have burned to tell you—burned! but I was afraid. I will tell you gladly, gladly. I—” She hesitated, and looked down; then added, appealingly, “You know you have promised me—”

“To stand by you—and I will; to share the shame with you—and I will do that, too, whatever it is. Aren't you my mother, and have I ever—”

“No you never have! You have been the best son a mother ever had, and I wish now, that—that—but never mind, you shall know it all, now.”

She took up her history and carried it down, step by step, and by and by arrived at marriage, then three years of wedded happiness, then sudden widowhood and poverty.

“You were two years old. There were no friends or relatives who were able to receive me and support me, so I hid myself behind a fictitious name and wandered from place to place and got such work as I could,—often menial—and supported myself. This during two years; two years of hard work, hard usage, miserable [begin page 319] wages, often hungry—oh, often!—hungry and cold, and always friendless and forlorn; a hideous life, an odious life, and filled to the lips with bitterness and humiliation—it comes to me in my dreams, yet, and I live it again, and curse it.

“Two years of it. Templeton, in such cases one learns to long for money—for therein lie comfort, peace, the world's respect, one's own respect, every precious thing nameable in language. That is what I thought. The poor and the miserable worship money. I worshiped it. To get it—that was my dream, asleep and awake. At last I drifted to Memphis, bringing nothing in the world I valued but you; you, my comfort, my solace, my heart's stay and support. I had earned my crusts in all ways; I could do anything. I got a place as housekeeper, and I was competent. The man's name was Harrison, whom we are hearing much about, here, in these days.”

“Land! You knew him?”

“Knew him, and served him. Two years. He was a bachelor and rich—and just a devil; uncle to George Harrison, and sixty when he died the other day. It was odd luck that forced us to come right into daily contact with that blood again.”

“Luck—yes, we may call it that, mother, but it wasn't accident. That mulatto devil gave the order—that black-hearted scoundrel, that inf—”

“Let me go on, dear—you are breaking my thread. Harrison was a hard man in every way: hard on his subordinates, and stingy and unfair; hard and grasping with everybody he dealt with, ready and glad to take any mean advantage he could, and merciless with a creditor when he got him down; and he was the cruelest master that ever owned a nigger. He owned Jasper—”

“Out of my heart I'm thankful for that! And if he—”

“But you are interrupting again. How cruel he was! Jasper was not then what he is now; not idle and shiftless, not sour and vengeful and ungentle—no, just the opposite. He would do anything for you he could; and many's the kindness he did me when it was a brave thing to venture it, and many's the comfort he gave me in my need when no other would have risked it.”

“Do you mean to tell me that this—this—”

[begin page 320]

“I am telling you just the truth. Jasper was in his second slavery, then. Several years before, he had bought himself and his time of Harrison on credit, and had worked out the debt by the most prodigious and unremitting energy and industry—talent, too, for he was full of it—and was a free man at last and was soon prospering. He worked on Harrison's principal plantation, out back of Memphis, and was the best hand Harrison had; he had learned a trade, and was as good at it as the best; and now he was learning fancy gardening, and had a passion for it. One night his cabin burned down, and with it his bill of sale. In his simplicity he went to Harrison and asked for a new bill. Harrison coolly repudiated the sale.”

“Well, of all the low-down—”

“Repudiated the sale. He ordered Jasper back to his work, and said if he heard any more about this nonsense he would sell him down the river.”

“Didn't Jasper sue him?”

“Sue? In a white man's court, and no writings, and no white man's testimony on his side? What good would that do?”

“Yes—I see.”

“Jasper did a wiser thing. He bought himself and his time again, on credit, and went straight to work to earn the money.”

“Mother, it was brave,” said the youth, touched.

“He had just begun on his task when I came. A very hard task, this time; before, he had started without a trade, but he had two, now, and between them he could employ the whole of his time, winter and summer. His value had increased four-fold. He was worth two thousand dollars—and that is what Harrison charged him.”

Templeton opened his mouth for an outburst. His mother closed it with her hand, and went on:

“Jasper was the cheerfulest soul, and the gayest, on the place, and the most indomitable worker. And he had need of all his energies and all his native buoyancy, for he had a bitter long job before him. I never saw a sign that he hated anyone but Harrison. But he hated him enough to make up. He concealed this from [begin page 321] others, but not from me. He talked it freely to me, and I welcomed it.

“Harrison treated me about as he treated his other house servants. They were slaves, and could bear his brutal speeches, his injustices and his conscienceless requirements in the matter of work—I mean they could bear these things better than I could. I had to bear them with outward meekness, and I did, but it was a most bitter and degrading life that I led there, and I longed to quit it and go away; but would that improve my case? No. Without money I was as well there as anywhere.

“In the last half of the second year I saw that I must give it up and go. I was worked to the bone, my humiliations and resentments kept me in a smouldering rage all the time, they invaded my sleep and spoiled it, life was not worth living, on those terms, and I made up my mind to quit my anchorage and drift at large again.

“There were a few old books in the house, and sometimes when I foresaw that I was going to have a particularly bad night I carried one to bed with me and did what I could to divert my mind with it. One night I took one that was made up of curious little narratives which professed to be inventions, but were told with such good art that they had all the look of verities. One of these narratives took a sudden and powerful hold upon me and I read it with a devouring avidity. It told how a man in France—”

Without knock or notice the door opened a little way and a turbaned young negress thrust her head in and shouted—

“Miss Charlotte, ole Miz. Hopkins she wanter know kin she borry our wush-bo'd fo' jist a—”

“Clear out!” interrupted Templeton. “Let her have it; and don't you come here again till you're sent for.”

The wench ducked her head in acceptance of the order, then dropped her voice to a confidential key and said—

“Marse Temp, dey's a farmer down stahs got a load o' prime hick'ry he wanter sell cheap 'case he kin fetch it on de sleigh ef he kin sell it right off whilst de snow las'. Kin I tell yo' mother?”

“No. Tell him she'll take it. Now clear out, will you!—and shut the door.”

[begin page 322]

“You ought to have asked the price, Templeton.”

Without other comment she resumed her story.

“It told how a man in France made a large fortune in a month or two on a capital of two thousand francs. He advertised to invest money for people and guarantee to return ten per cent profit every week.”

“Upon my word! The writer made such a piece of nonsense as that look plausible, mother? I reckon your harassed condition helped out his art a good deal, don't you think?”

“Maybe; but what helped it the most was that I had had four years of close contact with worried and anguished poor people hungry for large money easily gotten. I believed I knew one class of the human race down to the bottom. The man's advertisement was quoted; I copied it, and changed it to fit American conditions.

“I spent the rest of the night in frenzied castle-building. I counted my gains, I saw them pile up higher and higher and higher, till in effect I was submerged in bank notes. Now and then the cold thought invaded the furnace of my brain that I was projecting a crime. I fiercely banished it. Every time it came I drove it resolutely out before its influence could get a chance at my conscience. Its attempts diminished by degrees in strength and frequency, and by and by ceased altogether and I was free for good. I had always been honest, serenely and perfectly honest, and I was astonished at myself. But I am not astonished now. I am older, now, and I understand. You see, I had my limit; we all have our limit; I was tempted beyond mine. That is always fatal; I am aware of that now.

“It's what the Idiot Philosopher has said about four thousand times.”

“It will still be true when he has said it ten thousand,” said the mother, placidly. “My mind was made up; I would try that swindle. Then came the thought, I haven't any money, where is the capital to come from? The answer came of itself: Jasper is saving money to buy his freedom with; he has several hundred dollars hidden away. So I told him I was going to leave, and that if he could let me have some money I would pay it back within three months; I said I had a good business plan, and should set up in Memphis; and I reminded [begin page 323] him that I was held to be a good business woman. He was quite willing. I said I was going into a business not practised by ladies, but only by gentlemen, and I shouldn't want to be known in it; therefore I should disguise myself and change my name—which was Mrs. Milliken at that time—to Miss Lucy Wallace, and have an imaginary widowed sick brother with one child, and carry on my affair under shelter of his name.

“Jasper gave me all he had, which was three hundred dollars, and said he would keep my secret. When I was ready I went away without notice to Mr. Harrison, and told the house servants that if he took the trouble to ask any questions they could say I was tired of the work and was going far away. In a few days I was established in Memphis. I took a cheap little cottage overlooking the river, on the bluff, at its northern end, and I did my own work. I had no very near neighbors. Over the front door I put a very inconspicuous sign: ‘Joseph B. Wallace, Teacher of Oriental Languages by Correspondence.’ I wore colors, now, instead of widow's weeds, but my chief disguise was the universal green veil of the period. I hired post office drawer No. 37, explaining that it was for my brother, ‘Joseph B. Wallace, Teacher of Oriental Languages by Correspondence.’ The smarty young clerk smiled, and said Mr. Wallace probably wouldn't disable himself running to the office for his mail—that kind of a mail!—in a small place like Memphis. I said my brother had the whole Union as a field to glean customers from, and had been successful in the North, but the climate was too hard on invalids; and I added, rebukingly, that whether his mail was small or large he would not need to disable himself more than he already was, so long as he had a sister to fetch it for him. That brought a very genuine and right-hearted apology out of the thoughtless young chap; made him blush, too.

“I bought a rubber alphabet, and printed my own circulars. They were rude and inartistic, but I knew the customers I was after. I wrote (in the name of Joseph, teacher, etc.), and asked the postmasters of Cincinnati, Indianapolis and Harrisburg for lists of the newspapers of their States, and got them. Then I sent my advertisement to a dozen papers, widely scattered, in each of the three—country papers, not a single city one. It read like this:

[begin page 324]

TEN PER CENT PROFIT A WEEK.

“I ordered a single insertion only. I did not want to attract too much attention. Three weeks had been swallowed up, now. I had a very private office off my small sitting-room, and I pains-takingly habituated myself to lock it and pocket the key whenever I left it. I did not even allow you in it. You were an energetic busybody of four years, then.

“I had spent a hundred dollars, now. My trap was set, there was nothing to do but sit down and wait. As long as I had been at work I was excited and happy; but this empty idleness! Oh, how drearily the time dragged! Four days—five—six, and not a letter. My scheme was a failure, then! I was in a panic; I couldn't sleep; what could I say to Jasper, who knew where I was, and might look in, any night? And that is what he did, the very next night. But instead of getting scared himself, and losing his head, he only tried to comfort and encourage me. I was so grateful that I said I would help buy his freedom if I succeeded, and I told him what my scheme was.”

“You did?”

“Well, I told him a scheme, at any rate, and said it was done by mail, and if ever the letters began to come they would bring money. It put him in great spirits, and he said the letters were sure to come, and said he could see his freedom rushing towards him right now! and Templeton, he was half beside himself for joy, on such a thin basis of hope as that, and he couldn't seem to find words enough to thank me with, poor thing.

“He wanted to come once a fortnight and see how the thing was going, but that might be risky, I thought, so we arranged that he should wait a little longer than that, in case the business remained unpromising, but that if in the meantime if it prospered, or if it failed and had to be given up, I was to send for him—by a messenger who would merely hand him a bundle of ‘Cuba sixes’—and he would understand.

[begin page 325]

“Sure enough, letters came the next day,—ten—asking for circulars. I sent them. More came the following day; and after that, they came right along, and increasingly. In ten days I had mailed two hundred circulars.

“And now the tragedy began! The poor little ragged and dirty bank notes began to pour in for investment. They came from pauper widows; from despairing poor clergymen with big families; from sempstresses with bedridden mothers and hungry small brothers and sisters; from all God's forlorn and forsaken creatures; and to me they held out their supplicating hands, and in moving phrases flung hap-hazard out of thankful hearts they called me benefactor, and blessed me!”

“Ah, mother—”

“Hush! Can you put yourself in my place? Have you been through what I had been through? No. Then you are barred from criticising—you and all the breed of comfortable professional moralists! I broke my heart over a dozen of those letters, and came near to breaking my purpose and abandoning my scheme; then I read no more of them—for a time, but took the signature and address and stopped there.

“In a register I wrote the names and addresses, and with each name I entered the date of the reception of the money, and the amount. With my rubber alphabet I printed a bale of blanks—two sets of them—worded thus:

“Inasmuch as I stamped the name, there were but three blanks in each to fill with the pen, and usually fewer than that; for the investments were in the great majority of cases $5 and $10, and I used stamps for them and for the corresponding interest-blanks. Certainly my labors were light enough. At first, at any rate.

“The first time a bank note fell out of a letter. . . .” She paused, her bosom began to rise and fall, a sort of ecstasy rose and [begin page 326] burned in her eyes, then she burst out with “What a moment that was! Lord, if I could live it again! Ransom!—emancipation!—the gates of heaven flung open to the damned!—that is what it was to me. That money—that worn and foul and mangy bill, blurred and dimmed by the grime and sweat of ten thousand dirty fingers—how beautiful it was, how divine and worshipful, how aureoled with promise; first of the cloud of angels commissioned—I knew it, I felt it!—to set me free of the hell of poverty, that hell in whose presence the flames of the other one are goblin stuff and make-believe to such as have been through the real one and weltered in it and are seamed and splotched with its scars and blisters. The bill represented a crime. What did I care for that? What does a life-prisoner care for the shot or the stab that murders a warder but sets himself free? Avarice rises to a madness when its opportunity comes after long and bitter waiting. And so—”

Without notice the wench put her head in again, and shouted—

“Miss Charlotte, dey's a dog done been en gone en gobble up most a pint uv eyesters en got away wid 'em. De dog b'long to—”

Templeton broke in upon her speech:

“Charge them to him, you fool! And—”

“To de dog, Marse Temp?”

“No, to his owner—idiot! Shut the door; and if you open it again I'll break your back.”

“Yes, marster,” responded the wench tranquilly, and was gone.

“If ever a creature needed killing, that is the one!”

The mother said, gently—

“They have a hard fate, poor things. And they are ignorant. One must make allowances.”

The youth said, impatiently—

“You are always saying that, mother. It is getting pretty old. If you would punish that girl sometimes, she could learn.”

A faint flush rose in the mother's cheek in response to the speech's sarcastic clause, but only this mute notice was taken of it. Her mind was mainly on the concluding clause. With a soft reproach in her tone, she said—

“How can I punish her? Sold from her home twelve hundred miles away; not a friend here, and she so lonesome. She has a [begin page 327] mother, and will never see her again. I am a mother; how can I punish her?”

The young fellow, disabled for the moment by this projectile, searched for some way to counter it. He fidgeted a minute, then did the best he could in the circumstances—

“Well, anyway, if she wouldn't sing! Two or three times a week that racket of hers breaks out, and it's enough to drive a person distracted: ‘Goin’ home! goin' home! I's done wid tears and sorrow!' And you never say a word; I swear I don't know how you can stand it.”

“Stand it? I could take that poor forlorn thing to my breast for pure thankfulness when her burden lifts and lets those joy-bells ring out of her heart. Stand it? That friendless child! Lord, if she can sing, God knows, I—”

The song burst out paean-like from below, at this moment, and interrupted her. The listeners heard it through to the end, then after a pause Templeton, evidently touched, said—

“I see. I hadn't looked at it in that way before. . . . Go on, mother.”

“Very well. Let me see. I was talking about my work. The money began to flow in fast. The average was as much as ten dollars a letter; some contained considerably less, but many contained fifteen and twenty. Before that first bill had been in my hands a week I had a thousand dollars.”

“Caesar!”

“I put aside the first three hundred of that thousand for Jasper—the sum I owed him—and added two hundred to it, for a happy surprise; and I resolved to make him a half partner in all the profits that should come.”

Templeton pressed her hand, and said—

“I judged you would do that, mother; a body could foresee it.”

[begin page 328]

The woman put his hand gently away, and said appealingly—

“Don't—oh, don't, my son, you kill me!”

“Kill you?” said the youth, puzzled, “how?”

“I am coming to it. Spare me now, judge me later; pity me, I mean.”

“Ah, mother, you can't mean that you. . . . But never mind; go on.”

“I—I—it shames me so! and you can't understand it—only the desperately poor can. Within an hour I had repented a little. I reflected that I was giving him more than his share. A dividend had to come out of the extra two hundred—twenty dollars, you know. Why should that come out of me? Oughtn't he to pay it? Twice I removed it, twice I returned it. I tried hard to leave it, then, and put it out of my mind. But I was not strong enough. I took it the third time, and did not return it any more.”

She paused—a pause which was a supplication—but there was no comment, for she had unconsciously fired a train of surprising thoughts in her boy, and he was absorbed in examining them and marveling over them; so she sighed and dolorously took up her tale again.

“I went out and got the Cuba sixes, and for a moment I was eager to find a messenger and send this sign of happy tidings. But the feeling quickly began to fade. Why send so soon? There was no hurry. Why not wait until—well, until I could better spare the money? So I did not send the cigars. I kept on reflecting and reflecting, my avarice kept on persecuting me. At last, to get peace, I postponed all payment for the present, and returned the bills to my general hoard.”

Suddenly Templeton's perplexed face cleared, and he said with the astonished air of one who has discovered America—

“Why, I've had an experience like that! I supposed it was abnormal, and couldn't happen to another. I was ashamed of myself, and hid it. Maybe it's only just human nature; do you reckon it is, mother? By George, it's immensely curious—interesting, too! It was the time they had the public meeting in Slaterville and took up a collection for the poor Hodgsons, that lost everything in a fire and hadn't a rag nor a penny left, and the appeal of the [begin page 329] first speaker was so moving that I pulled out fourteen dollars, which was every cent I had, and—and—but go on, mother, it makes me half sick, yet, to think about it. Go on—consider that I haven't interrupted.”

“Very well,” said the mother; and there was a something in her tone or her manner that seemed to indicate that a sore place in her had been salved; “I feel as you felt; and I will not dwell upon that part of my record, but will cut it very short. The plain, odious truth is, that the more money I got, the more I couldn't bear the thought of parting with any of it; and so, before long I had entirely renounced the idea of making Jasper a partner—”

“I reckon it was bound to happen! I wonder if we aren't all made like that?—if we get a chance to postpone. That Idiot Philosopher says that if your left hand wants to find out what your right hand doeth the right hand has got to hump itself or there won't be anything for the left hand to find out. It doesn't seem to sound so foolish, now, as it did before. Go on, mother.”

“Pretty soon I indefinitely postponed sending for Jasper. Next, I concluded not to send for him at all, but let him come when he should get tired waiting—then I would give him his three hundred dollars; meantime it would be a consolation to me and a solace, to have it and hold it and be able to look at it. It came to be to me as a dying child, dear and beautiful, whom I must presently caress for the last time and see no more. I put it away, in a place by itself, and watched over it with a sorrowful solicitude.”

“Good!” said the young man; and added with a playful pretence of immense relief, “by gracious I was afraid you were going to hog that, too!”

His mother blushed, but he did not see it. After a reflective pause her sober face began to brighten with pleasant memories, and she resumed her tale with cheery animation.

“As fast as an investment was seven days old I mailed its ten per cent dividend promptly. The weeks sparkled gaily along, and my daily mail soon required a basket. Young Simon Bunker, post-office clerk, was astonished, and asked me how much my brother got for a lesson. I was expecting this dangerous question, and was prepared for it. And that was well, for there was a meditated proposal [begin page 330] lurking in his eye. I could see it. I told him two dollars for three months; half payable in the middle of the term and the other half at the end of it; that most of the pupils were poor youths studying for the ministry and took Hebrew, and often could not pay, and that often the other pupils got tired in a month and dropped out and forgot to send any money; but, that taking good and bad together my brother could always depend upon a large and steady cash income—never less than fifteen hundred dollars in a year, and once it had risen to nearly two thousand. I said it ostentatiously, and gave my head a grand toss. The proposal faded out of his eye. I saw it out of the corner of my own. He was always as courteous to me afterward as ever, but indifferent to my affairs; and he never asked after my poor brother's health any more. We dropped into the nickname stage of friendliness, and on that pleasant and harmless footing we continued.”

“The nickname stage of friendliness, mother? Oh, yes, I know what you mean; but it isn't always a friendly stage, for Dug's pet name for Sol Bailey—”

“I know; but with Simon Bunker and me it was friendly.”

“What were the nicknames?”

“That isn't important, and my tale is more interesting. Let me go on. In the second week I took more than two thousand dollars—and promptly paid the dividends out of it. The third week brought me five thousand, the fourth week fifteen. And then such jubilant letters began to arrive from customers who had received three dividends! Their gratitude was deep, sincere, outspoken, and was poured out in the most eloquent of all speech, the quaint and odd and unconventional centre-driving language of the poor—that marvelous phrasing which is above all art, beyond the reach of all art, and goes straight to the heart—and sometimes breaks it!

“There was one very noticeable thing; a thing which I was expecting, however, for I knew the poor. It was this: the twenty-dollar customer kept his rich ‘find’ to himself, but the very poor told their neighbors of their good fortune and sent me new customers. Poverty and misery soften the heart and make their victims good to each other. The widow's mite has gone yearly out in mountains of [begin page 331] pennies in all the ages. But for the poor, what would become of the poor?

“I say, the fifth week brought me fifteen thousand dollars. What with registering new customers, acknowledging the receipt of investments and mailing dividends, I was writing as much as 3,000 words a day, possibly 4,000, and the work growing by leaps and bounds. Six hours of hard labor daily. What would it be in another week? Eighteen! I should have to employ clerks. Could I venture that? It was a time for reflection.

“I tossed about in my bed half the night—reflecting. Must I give up and fly? Must I? when in two or three weeks more I could go away with a hundred thousand dollars? I was wild to have it; avarice is a pitiless master when one has been through the vile miseries of poverty, humility and subjection. I couldn't bear the thought of losing that fortune, and I ended by resolving to dare the worst and stay. Maybe I could get safe clerks—oh, surely I could; surely I could get through, somehow. It was settled, and I went to sleep.

“But alas! the very next day, along with more than five thousand dollars in bank bills, came a couple of checks in my basket of mail matter. That would never do! To handle checks—well, that would be handling fire. Put a tale-bearing check through a bank? Oh, no, I was not mad enough for that. In fact I was quite sober by now. Very well, I must go; and not tomorrow, but to-day, if I would secure a good start. It had taken one of the checks four days to come, the other a day longer. I returned them to their envelops, put them aside, and sent no acknowledgments. The four-day man would expect an acknowledgment in four or five days; then he would get uneasy and begin to inquire. I must be far away by the time this should happen.

“I was prepared. I was ready, disguises and all; for I had foreseen from the beginning that when fleeing-time should come, delay could be disastrous. I had bought an old skiff, and I kept it chained at the foot of the bluff, and on pleasant nights I had given you outings in it, and myself exercise while I educated myself in the management of it. My last act every night at bedtime had been to put the day's receipts into a rusty old carpet-sack, under some old [begin page 332] Marseilles jackets, and lock it. It was always ready for removal. In a similar bag I kept changes of underwear for you and me, some soap and other toilet things of a cheap sort, and a ration or two of crackers and cheese. That was all. It, also, was always ready. For you and for myself I had a suit each, of old and coarse clothing such as only the poor wear. These I kept where they would be always handy. It was my purpose to carry nothing out of the house but these old clothes and the carpet-sacks. In a closet I kept a little pile of shavings, with several of my ordinary gowns loosely heaped upon them, my idea being a smouldering fire that would give me time to get a good way down the river before it made an exposure of itself.

“That last day was a long and cruelly exciting one, but it came to an end at last; we donned our disguises, and at nine o'clock I locked the house and soon you and I and the odds-and-ends bag were under the bluff—the bag in the boat, in the bow-locker, and you and I snug at our ease in the cool shelter of one of its caved indentations, a play-house you were used to and at home in. I had chosen your bed-time, and you presently drowsed off to sleep, as I was expecting. Then I went back. According to habit, I had left the day's receipts to be put in the cash-bag with their brethren the last thing. I was trembling like a thief, and starting at every sound; but I thrust them in, put a match to my incendiary shavings, and hurried away. I was so glad when I reached you and found you safe and still sleeping peacefully! It made a revulsion and brought me to myself, my cool and normal self. And then, of course! My first thought was—Jasper's three hundred dollars. Also, of course I began to reason about it. What a pity it should be wasted! Yes, yes, what a pity. With this start, the next stages of thought were inevitable: Ought it to be wasted? was it morally right to throw it away? Surely it were better that I should have it than that it should be burned up. As ashes it could do him no good, nor anyone. I had faithfully kept it for him; he could have come and gotten it; why hadn't he? Was I in any way to blame? Well—true, I could have sent him word, according to agreement, but had I time? Now, really, had I? How could I think of everything, in such an exciting day, and I not knowing what I was about, half the time? I was [begin page 333] hurrying back to the house, steeped in these dreams, by this time. Before I had reached it I had put all the blame on Jasper, and was saying his loss would be good for him—perhaps the very making of him—because it would teach him to be more careful. By the time I had the money in my hands I was feeling that I was putting him under an obligation to me.”

“By gracious! Mother, if I hadn't thought of that Hodgson business, I couldn't believe it.”

“Avarice is a remorseless master! I was its servile slave. A rag-smoke stench was creeping through the house; I locked the door, and ran. My conscience was trying to trouble me, but I pacified it easily. How? The memory of a generous action did it: necessarily those checks were from trustees of poor widows and orphans, who had proposed to themselves to gamble with the fiduciary money in their charge and keep the winnings—nobody living on a bank-check level of commercial intelligence would risk his own money in such an insane gamble as a ten-per-cent-a-week scheme put forward by an unaccredited stranger. I knew much about widows' and orphans' trustees, I knew the ear-marks of the tribe, and I knew I had saved a little batch of their victims by not cashing those checks. The thought cheered me, uplifted me, made me feel almost noble, and I raised my depressed head and was thankful that I had had that good impulse and had obeyed it.”

The son spared his mother an ungracious interruption, but the thought passed through his mind: “Why, she knows that the reason she didn't collect the checks was because she dasn't; has she forgotten that? I reckon this confusion of mind comes of what Sol Bailey calls ‘the habit of misapplying facts: making counterfeit coin out of them to deceive other people with, and then passing it on yourself.’ She didn't save the orphans, they saved her.”

“So I ran along comforted and content. When I arrived under the bluff I found you outside our shelter and awake. The fright of it took my breath away. You could have wandered into the river, poor little tot, and been drowned. I hugged you to my breast in unspeakable thankfulness—then I heard a sound of approaching voices; in another moment I had cast off; flung the bag into the boat, scrambled in after it with you, and we were away. I pulled [begin page 334] noiselessly out a quarter of a mile and then stopped rowing; the current would do my work for me now. We were safe! A storm was threatening; no matter, we were safe; the storm could only hide us and make us safer. It began to sprinkle, the thunder began to mutter. You were troubled, I was not. I snuggled you to my bosom and was content; safety was the great thing, the only important thing, and we were safe.

“I fixed my gaze upon the receding bluff, now looming dull and massive in the growing darkness, and waited with serenity for my fire to burst up and consume my witnesses and obliterate me and my peril-laden history. Waited so, five minutes. My serenity began to ooze out, then. Five more, and the remains of it vanished. The rain was increasing; I could hardly make out the outlines of the bluff through it. Plague take the fire, what was the matter with it? A steady downpour began, now, and pretty soon we were under an old-fashioned Southern summer deluge, and couldn't see anything at all. Was it putting out my fire and rescuing my deadly witnesses? There was no answer to that question. I was in deep anxiety for a while, then I thought, ‘What does it matter? we are safe, we are free, we shall hide far away and never be caught.’ Two hours later the storm ceased and the stars came out. We were drenched, but it was a hot night and we did not mind it—and neither did our shabby clothes. You slept through a good part of it. When you waked I taught you my new name—'Mrs. Sarah Lynch'—and your own—'Johnny Lynch'; and urged you to forget you had ever been ‘Franky Wallace’; just as I had taught you a few weeks earlier to call me ‘aunt Lucy Wallace’ and forget you had been ‘Tony Milliken.’

“It was peaceful and pleasant under the blinking stars, and you learned very well until you got weary and then hungry. Do you remember that night?”

“A suggestion of the storm remains—a rather dim one; nothing else.”

“Think.”

“Well, let me see. Mm. . . . Somehow it seems to me that you. . . . Mm. . . . No, I believe. . . . Didn't something frighten you, and didn't you scream, or fall, or—”

[begin page 335]

“Yes, both. You were hungry, and I crept forward to get the bag out of the locker. It was gone! It was then that I screamed—and fell in a faint, too. When I came to, you were petting my face and crying, poor thing. The carpet-sacks were alike, and were always kept hidden under the bed; in my worry and excitement and flightiness that night, I had carried down the wrong sack and stowed it in the bow-locker. It had twenty thousand dollars and more in it, and was gone. All we had now, counting in Jasper's three hundred, fell a little short of six thousand.

“That was a bitter hour, a horrible hour! Then of course all the devils that are lodged in a person to persecute him when a chance comes, rose against me and mocked me, reviled me, scorched me with reproaches. What a fool I had been to go back after that paltry three hundred when I already had what to me was immeasurable wealth! If I had only not gone back, if I had only been satisfied, the disaster would not have happened, and I should be rich, now, instead of being a half-pauper and unutterably miserable! I know I can say honestly, even at this distant day, that I would rather die five common deaths and one at the stake than live that wretched hour over again.”

“How had the sack disappeared, mother?”

“I got the tale out of you, delivered in your prattling nursery-English; a guileless little tale, told with happy interest in dear little stumbling words—and every word a blade in my heart, though you couldn't know it. A dog followed our track into our shelter and sniffed you over and woke you up; a man followed the dog, and questioned you and asked if you were lost, and where was your mother. You said I was coming soon, I was not gone far. He said he would wait; he was very hungry, and maybe I would be kind and give him something, for he was very, very hungry. That seemed dreadful, and you said you knew where our food was; and went outside with him and told him about the locker, and then you went to playing with the dog, which was a friendly creature, and you did not think of the man any more; and after a little there was a whistle in the distance and the dog bounded away.”

There was a long silence. Then Templeton said:

“Did the house burn down, mother? Did you ever hear?”

[begin page 336]

“Not for a year or more. Not until we had wandered hundreds of miles through the South and were at last established, prospering and respected, in the town of Baker's Mills. Then by chance I learned—it was an old and nearly forgotten story there—that the house had not burned; that my mail-matter accumulated so prodigiously during three or fours days after our flight as to cause amazement and then inquiry. That clerk went to the house to see what was the matter. My witnesses were all present: record-book, circulars, every accusing thing you can think of. Harrison identified my handwriting without any trouble, of course, and the machinery of the law was set in motion. Descriptions of ‘Mrs. Milliken’ and her little boy ‘Tony,’ also of ‘Miss Lucy Wallace’ and her little nephew ‘Franky’ were published and heavy rewards offered. That three or four days' mail contained a total of upwards of sixty thousand dollars in bank notes, and seven thousand in checks—trustees' checks, there's not a doubt of it.”

She sighed profoundly. After a little, she said—

“I learned another thing: my sentence to ten years in the penitentiary.”

“My God!”

“It is hanging over me yet. Now you know why I would never tell you my history. Can you forgive me? Do you forgive me?”

The answer was prompt and earnest:

“For letting me be happy and light-hearted all these years when I should not have been strong enough to bear up under the worry and the terror of the facts? You chose wisely, and I thank you for sparing me at such heavy cost to yourself. I can help you bear your burden, now, and I will. You are a criminal, but I am your son, and my place is by your side, let come what may. Mothers do not desert their sons when they transgress, they stand by them against the world; then why shouldn't a son do by his mother what she would do by him if the—”

“Oh, you are the best and dearest son that ever—”

“No, you are not to say a word, not a single word. Whatever comes, we are going to face it together. I am older now than I was when I woke this morning—years older; and you will see that I shall be a help to you—a real help, mother; you will see. Now [begin page 337] cheer up and let's take a new start. What is done can't be helped; we are living an honest life, and will continue it. Where you fell many would have fallen—good people, too, and primarily sound at heart. Bitter poverty and misery, then stupendous temptation and opportunity—why, if Sol Bailey is right, the fall was substantially certain. He says it's Circumstances, Temptation and Opportunity—this tremendous trinity—that make criminals, not native wickedness. He says we all have our limit, and he wouldn't even trust George Harrison if circumstances, temptation and opportunity fell together and caught him beyond his limit.”

“Ah, well, I don't know. Possibly it might be so, but one can't quite imagine it, Templeton.”

“Yes, I know; it's one of Sol's extravagances, but take humanity by and large and the rule will hold good I reckon. Mother, I remember the first time Jasper dropped down upon us. There in Braxton. I was fourteen or fifteen, then. By the new light this talk of ours has thrown, I infer that he was hunting for us then. Is that so?”

“Yes. He had been on that hunt for three or four years. With revenge for his object. With the loss of his three hundred, ill luck began for him. For two years, when I was housekeeper, he had stood my friend when others were afraid of that office, and it did him an ill service now. He was questioned, and they got out of him the fact that he had been privy to my disappearance, and had visited me in my house. He said we had had no money-transactions together, but this was doubted, and he was jailed on suspicion, to wait for evidence which might prove him to have been a confederate of mine. He was confined a year; then he was set free, but the thirst for revenge had largely taken the place of interest in his work. He nursed his hate, and brooded. He labored himself free at last and got his papers, but it had taken him six years after he got out of jail. Then he began his hunt for me. When he found us at Braxton he had been patiently tracking us down for three or four years.

“Twice he had been notified to leave towns or be sold into slavery, in accordance with the six-months law, and this and his former troubles together had embittered him against the whole white [begin page 338] race. That hate has grown in vindictiveness since, year by year.

“When he found us at last in Braxton, he told me he would live on me the rest of his life, and would do the best he could to make that life a curse to me. He has kept his word. He said our secrets were dangerous ones, and he warned me to keep you in ignorance of them—which I of course meant to do anyway as long as I could. From the beginning of the Braxton days you perceived that there was something between us and that he caused me suffering—which of course angered you and made you wretched—but I made you keep still and leave the matter alone. Jasper said that when you were old enough he would visit you as well as me, and thus double his persecutions and his satisfactions. So he has now begun it at last, here in this village. I could endure all he did and said, for my liberty depended upon it; but you have endured him without a reason except my prayers and supplications, and my assurances that a heavy calamity would befal me if you should rouse the fiend that is in him. I cannot tell you how grateful I am.”

“You have borne this hell six years, mother, I six weeks. But I am not to be complimented on my fidelity and fortitude, for I have been anything but patient, in my heart, meantime, but just the reverse. I shall do better now—now that I know everything. If he will continue to let you alone and give all his attentions to me, I will swallow my pride and content him. I always wondered why we left prosperous businesses, now and again, in the past six years, and changed our names and moved to a distance, but I begin to understand, now.”

“Yes, it was I that made the flight the first time. It was to escape from Jasper. He made me repent it. The other flights were by his order. Twice he was threatened with enslavement, and we went elsewhere on that account. On the other occasions we fled because I got uneasy, believing I was in danger of being found out and identified; but it was he who chose the new places of refuge. It was he that devised my disguises, sometimes. It was he that made me play blind woman in one place, play cripple in another, and so on. He is the reason why I am as deaf as an adder here.”

“There's one compliment I can pay you, mother: you've acted your parts well.”

[begin page 339]

“He practised me. He is a smart creature. And he had a good pupil. No one can trick me into hearing a sound which I don't choose to hear, I don't care how carefully the project has been devised.”

“You've vain of it, little mother! but that's all right, you have said the truth, and you have a right to your compliment. It is a marvelous accomplishment, and there are very few who could acquire it. Tell me, mother—for I have a small vanity of my own: I know that Gunning is a fictitious name, also Franky and Tony and a lot more, but how about Templeton?”

“You have borne it twice, my son: when you were born, and up to the time that your father died and we had to go wandering in poverty and white servitude; and I gave it you again a couple of years ago when we had to fly to this region.”

“Then it's not fictitious, but real!”

“Yes.”

“Thank heaven—fervently! The Frankys and Tonys and Millikens and Lynches and Gunnings and so-on are plebeian, but Templeton isn't. Templeton is lordly; the very sound of it harks you back to castles and broad lands and noble blood and titles.”

“It was your father's.”

“Mother, it's splendid! What was his surname?”

She hesitated, colored, then dropped the name in a low voice:

“Ashes.”

“Ashes?”

“Ashes.”

“Tem—pleton——Ashes! . . .” Then, under his breath, “Dam—nation!”

Ten days poked along by, in the little town. A thaw came early and swept away the snow, and the village life resumed its course under the customary conditions. Young Tom Harrison had been up and about the house for a day, but was down again, with a backset, [begin page 340] and Helen was nursing him, as before, and both were happy, there being no danger. George Harrison visited them daily for a moment, then visited Fairfax in the jail for another moment, and in both cases tried to be at ease and cheerful, but he was glad when the visits were over, for Helen lavished innocent caresses upon him and praises of his noble constancy to her father in his trouble which filled him with shame and self-contempt, and Fairfax praised him for his patient and devoted efforts to find that elusive and mysterious stranger, and kept him inventing difficult and painful lies about these devoted efforts all the time, a thing which wearied his head and polluted his heart and wounded his self-respect. And then Fairfax always welcomed him so heartily and so gratefully with his eloquent eyes and his cordial voice; and called him “the best friend and the bravest and faithfulest a forsaken and detested unfortunate ever had in this cowardly world!” and these cruel compliments did cut and carve and mutilate so unendurably! And often Fairfax said, “You've got to condemn me now—you can't help it in the circumstances, and I shouldn't respect you if you tried; but you will have your reward, for all in good time you will come to know me, and then in all sincerity you will take my hand and say ‘There is no blood on it, it's as clean as my own.’ ” Harrison always went from the place feeling like a cur.

But in his own house his wilted spirits revived in some degree—for a little while at a time, at least; for the friends came nightly and sat with him, and smoked and drank hot whiskies, and talked politics, religion, agriculture and gossip—thus paying the homage always paid to money and persistent and indestructible good luck by the majority of our race and to high and blemishless character by the rest of it. Sometimes the talk would continue an hour or two without dripping any vitriol into his sore places; he was a grateful man, then, and in a vague dull way happy—something as one's foot is when it is asleep. Then came the chance drop of vitriol and the answering shrivel. Some random and purposeless remark was sure to administer it now and then give Harrison a turn and make him wince, but the intervals between were sweet; sweet as the heavenly numbness that follows a hypodermic injection, and he was deeply thankful for the reprieves from pain they brought him.

[begin page 341]

He had a new worry in these days, and his hard-worked and half-demented imagination made the most it could of it. That Milliken woman—what did Sol Bailey's curious references to her mean? Might she have been privately married to his uncle Harrison?—might she? And might she and her son be still alive, somewhere, and findable by meddling persons and producible before the world? He worked the idea up until it became the next thing to a certainty. Oh, yes, there was no good luck possible for him, ever again: those heirs would be found, and he would know the biting shames and miseries of poverty once more—God send death instead!

He came to regard the Idiot Philosopher as the possessor of his fate—the man whose silence could save him, and whose speech could take his bread from his mouth and his roof from over his head. He would placate him, he would move his pity, he would make him kind—then Bailey would keep the terrible secret shut up in his breast. Fired with this hope, this dream, he astonished the Philosopher by the effusiveness of the welcomes he began to get at Harrison's house and the manifold attentions Harrison showered upon him. He was astonished, but gratified; moreover, he was early emboldened by this improved condition of the atmosphere to try for another little contribution to the missionary industry. Twenty-five dollars? Harrison doubled it, without a remonstrance; and was so eager about it that one might have thought he regarded the chance as a favor done him. He wanted Bailey to be his friend, and said so; and wanted him to come often, and said that also; and wanted to know whenever the missionaries needed help—he should only be too glad, and all that. Bailey, child of poverty and privation, lifelong sport of evil fortune, listened with charmed ears to this strange and sweet and miraculous music, and was grateful. The wind-tossed and weather-worn derelict had found a haven at last, and he felt all that derelicts feel—if derelicts can feel—when this blessed thing happens and their rusty anchors go down, a-stem and a-stern, and take a holding-grip on the firm bottom.

Anyone who knew Bailey could have told you what he would do with his fifty dollars. Anyone who knew the Bailey kind—which is a wide-spread breed, and often findable in commonplace families [begin page 342] and always in families which number a genius as an offset, among its members—could have told you. The Sol Baileys are by nature honest—vainly so, sentimentally so, deliriously so. They are the most conscientious devils in the world. Their conscience is not anchored, and it goes floating around; but wherever they happen to find it they are loyal to it and obey it. If it is in an inconvenient place they move it to a better position—but not ruthlessly, not arbitrarily: they reason with it, they show it the right place, they convince it. But not until it is convinced will they act; not until it approve will they swerve from its desire by a hair's-breadth. Their minds are ill balanced, and they reason curiously, often fantastically, but always sincerely. Often their reasonings would seem absurd to a practical person and would stand no chance of deceiving him; but they deceive the Baileys and the Bailey conscience—and they do it well and thoroughly, too.

Yes, anyone familiar with the Bailey type could have told you what Sol Bailey would do with the fifty dollars which Harrison had given him as a contribution to the Presbyterian Oriental Missionary Fund. He paid twenty-two of it into that fund—the sum he had borrowed of it to equip Allen—added 5 cents for 5 days interest—and felt the glad uplift and the warm heart-glow which an honorable man always feels when he has discharged a just debt and can stand before his conscience with clean hands and his head up.

His credit and his trustworthiness being established by this upright and straightforward conduct, he borrowed the rest of the fifty for present use. In doing this he had that applauding heart-glow again, for he recognized that he was doing the Fund a very real favor in finding a safe investment for its money which paid 38 per cent above legal interest—a rate which he was determined to continue, burdensome as it was.

These things have a curious and impossible look on paper, and the fact that they are true, and not only true but common, does not relieve them of that look. The Sol Baileys are a quaint and interesting breed. Judged by the ordinary standards, they commit crimes, little or big, every day, yet there is seldom a conscious criminal among them, seldom a consciously and purposely bad [begin page 343] man. They have beliefs, principles, convictions; and while they have them they are ready and willing to suffer for them. But there is nothing permanent about them, they change with every chance thought of their owners and with every vagrant wind of opinion that blows upon them from the outside. It seems a strange and wonderful thing to claim and insist upon, yet one may claim with confidence and insist upon it as a certainty: that these people have one great big special and commanding virtue—sincerity. They may hold a principle only a week or a month—maybe only a day—but while they hold it their belief in it is sincere and their championship of it enthusiastic. Often they are lovable creatures, but there was never one yet who was not a sorrow and a vexation to his kin and friends. One never knows where to find them, one never knows what they will do next. When they have a new conviction in stock they are a peril; to themselves and to all who hold them in affection; for while they may be physical cowards, and generally are, perhaps, in moral intrepidity they know no fear and no discretion: they will thunder that conviction out, let the consequences be what they may.

Once, during one of those times when Sol Bailey was temporarily serving in the ministry, his life was for a while an actual success. During four Sundays the anxieties of his friends had a rest. He was preaching a series of sermons upon the Fatherhood of God, his whole heart was in his theme, and he poured out his wonder and worship in reverent and beautiful words. But by next Sunday his spiritual perceptions had got a new focus and new light, and he said so; and then went blandly on and knocked the brains out of everything he had said in the four preceding discourses. His brief triumph lay in ruins about him and he was a wanderer again.

One morning, in the heat of a political campaign and while he was for the moment a vindictive and uncompromising democrat, a committee applied to him for mottoes and sentiments to paint upon the transparencies which were to be used in the torchlight procession that night. He promptly furnished them, and made them red-hot. Before mid-afternoon he had talked with half a dozen able and instructed whigs; and in the evening, when the democratic boys marched huzzaing by the whig mass-meeting with [begin page 344] his abusive mottoes gaily flaring, he was up there on the platform compelling thunders of applause with a scathing and libelous and enthusiastic whig speech.

After squaring up with the Missionary Fund and lending the rest of its fifty dollars to himself at 38 per cent above legal interest, Sol Bailey sat down with a disburdened conscience and a contented spirit to consider the mystery of Harrison's new attitude toward him and what might be the reason of it, the source of it. This did not occupy him many minutes. It was hardly doubtful that the source of it was the conversation about the Milliken woman.

If that was it, Harrison was alarmed! that was certain. Bailey's imagination-machinery was in motion, now, just with that handful of fuel, and it could be trusted to do some gallant work. If Harrison was alarmed, why was he alarmed? Because the Milliken woman was the old uncle's wife and Harrison knew it! Wasn't that plain? Nothing could be plainer.

So that was settled: that woman was actually the old uncle's wife. Bailey was entirely convinced of it, now. Within fifteen minutes he had deceived himself into the belief that he had harbored this conviction for fifteen years; quite forgetting that when he had had that talk with Harrison the notion had just been born to him, and was a mere random thought picked up by chance in his mind and inflated into a half-suspicion on the spot by his nimble imagination; then expanded to a probability within the next hour; and to a large charitable duty toward the wronged woman half an hour later. We know the result: the dispatching of Allen to hunt up the maltreated heirs.

Bailey now went around and had a private conversation with Harrison. It began with constraints, shynesses and small alarms on Harrison's part, but ended in a frank and open heart-to-heart talk, stripped of subterfuge and concealment on both sides. Toward the last, poor Harrison broke down several times, in view of the privations and miseries that would come upon him in his growing age if the heirs should be found and should be pitiless and turn him out destitute and forlorn to beg his bread, and the result was what anyone who knows the Sol Bailey type has already foreseen: Bailey turned clear around in his tracks and became this poor man's [begin page 345] cordial shield and champion—with his whole impulsive good heart in his new rôle, and swearing, with strong hand-grip and with the tears of a generous and genuine sympathy and compassion flowing down his cheeks to stand by his imperiled friend to the last, and to devote all his time and energy to saving him; a pleasant task and a holy duty which he would certainly bring to a successful issue if mortal sagacity and a wide and seasoned experience could do it. For the Sol Baileys have hearts that are as soft as jelly; the pains and sorrows of the distressed find instant refuge there and boundless welcome; and if the occupying sorrower is in the way, out he goes, without a thought, to make room for the new one!

Harrison put his arms about his spirit-uplifting friend and hugged him—he couldn't help it; and with grateful tears in his eyes he called him benefactor. Then he put his hands on his shoulders and looked lovingly into his face and added—

“God bless you, Bailey, God bless you! for I never can, adequately. You have made a new man of me, you have saved me from despair, you have filled me with hope and cheer. How good you are!”

“No, I am not good, Harrison, but I am just, and that is better. That wife disappeared—for what? Idle caprice? Oh, never, never. For what, then? For cause. What cause? Because she had done wrong. It is perfectly plain; the logic of it is remorseless. Why did she remain away? Because she dared not return while that embittered man was alive, and she knew it. The argument is unanswerable. She will come mincing back, now, with a lie in her mouth—”

“Oh, dear, I know she will, I know it!”

“But she will find me there—and ready!”

“I know it, I feel it, Bailey, and I am a child to give way to these foolish terrors, with you standing between me and harm. How brave you are, and how noble—I never knew you before, and these people do not know you.”

“They'll know me yet, give yourself no concern.”

“Indeed they will, I am sure of that. How shall you proceed when she comes?”

“To begin with, I'll never let her come!”

[begin page 346]

“Ah, that is best of all! There is reason in that, wisdom in it. How will you manage, Bailey?”

Sol Bailey's imagination was white-hot, now, and making 250 revolutions a minute; it was ready and competent to supply him all the appliances he might need for the embarrassment and obstruction of that disloyal woman at half a minute's notice. It began to expand Allen Osgood straight off.

“Easily. I've got two of the best and most experienced professional detectives in the world shadowing her already!”

“What! You've already begun your generous work without even waiting for me to get a chance to thank you?”

“The grass never grows under my feet! I turned the matter over in my mind; in ten minutes I knew her for what she was and had been; in ten more I saw what game she was going to play, and in ten more I had telegraphed the detectives to pack up and start.”

Harrison was lost in admiration. All he could say was—

“We never knew you, Bailey, we never knew you. These marvelous intuitions—this astonishing penetration—this promptness, this swiftness, this energy! In my life I have encountered nothing that approached it.”

“Well, it's my way; I was born to it, I suppose. When a thing is to be done, some people are content to cipher on the hours. I can't; the seconds are the servants I am after.”

“I see. I understand, now. It's the difference between efficiency and half-efficiency. In the present instance, if you will allow me to say it, it's the difference between the mail and the telegraph; between the lightning-bug and the lightning.”

“I make no pretensions, Harrison, and it may be that you are over-esti—”

“No, I am only just—nothing more. And to think that you have gone right ahead and done this generous thing for me, advancing the money out of your own pocket—”

Bailey laid his hand affectionately on Harrison's shoulder, and said with a benignant smile—

“Ah, well, when my friend's welfare is at stake my pocket is his, not mine.”

[begin page 347]

“Ah, let me shake you by the hand, best friend and truest a man ever had. And let me take a partial example by you: let me be at least just, where you are generous; do not let me be helped at cost of your hurt. This will be an expensive matter; also, your own time and talents are valuable beyond price—draw upon me freely, draw upon me for everything. Let me give you something now.”

“No, not now. It is true that the matter is difficult and will become costly as it goes along, but I do not need any money yet, I still have a little left. I will tell you when there is occasion.”

“But you must take some; I insist.”

It turned out to be difficult to persuade Bailey. He was in debt sixty or eighty dollars to the Fund, but was not able to realize it—at least not the whole of it. He knew he had borrowed twenty-two dollars from the first contribution, but as he had paid it back out of the second it seemed wiped out. As to the rest it was well invested and paying high interest, and therefore hardly seemed a debt at all. He was used to being in harder circumstances than these, he was quite comfortable, and not disposed to accept of expense-money until the expense should have been incurred and become a concrete fact. After the manner of his breed he had quite forgotten that a part of his scheme in rescuing and righting the Milliken heirs had been the securing of a commission amounting to the half of the estate for himself and Osgood the rescuers. A member of the Sol Bailey tribe can seldom keep the details of an old scheme in mind after a new one has evicted it from the premises.

However, Harrison forced a hundred dollars upon him, and said it was not a loan and not a part of the outside expenses—no, it was salary, his first fortnight's salary. In all his life Bailey had never earned such a mammoth sum before, even in treble the time. He was dazzled, bewildered, overcome, almost breathless. It was riches, and he was not able to put his thankfulness into words; and said so. Harrison was happy, and said—

“My good friend, my best friend, it is nothing. You are going to save me, I know it, I feel it. You are going to find those people and buy their rights, for half or for less, and I tell you this: of what is left, you shall have half.”

[begin page 348]

Words failed poor Bailey again, and he left the presence drunk with gratitude, and steeped in love and veneration for his benefactor, and unshakeably resolved to labor with all his heart and all his mind in his interest; and to this good and pure and righteous work he solemnly dedicated himself with the gushing enthusiasm of his tribe.

Whenever a true Sol Baliey does a thing, whether good or evil, his next act, usually, is to repent of it; and not mildly and moderately, but in sackcloth and ashes. A true Sol Bailey is the most impressionable of men; and in some ways the most sensitive. He is made up mainly of feeling—gushy, impulsive, unordered and systemless feeling. A happy feeling will transport him to the clouds, but nothing can keep him there; a revulsion is sure to come, and will as surely plunge him Satan's nine-days' flight to perdition and despair. He is a volcano, and is usually in eruption: discharging fire and radiance one day and mud and ashes the next. Or, he is consolidated twins, one inside of the other: when one of them is awake, all is joy; when it is the other's turn, all is black despondency, and misery of mind. One of our Idiot Philosopher's maxims was, “Do your duty to-day and repent to-morrow.” He thought that this was the law of our race, and that men can do hardly any act, even the finest and highest, without getting flayed for it by their insane consciences pretty soon afterward. He was subject to frightful fits of despondency, and while he was in them he suffered like a damned soul, and lamented the lack of physical courage which stayed his hand from ending his life and his distress. When most men have decided upon a thing and done it, they are able to drop it out of their minds and leave it alone, saying, “If it was a mistake, let it go—fussing over it will not mend it”; but the Sol Baileys can't do that. The moment they have done a thing they go to taking it to pieces and examining it; and not with an eye to fortifying their judgment and solidifying the resultant structure, but to hunting out all the doubtful things that may be in it and supplying it with a lot of imaginary ones.

And so Sol Bailey went part of the way home in the clouds and [begin page 349] the rest of it down in the mire. Through the window his wife caught sight of him and said with peppery impatience—

“There he comes, with his heart in his socks; what good thing has happened to him now to repent of?”

She was a plain woman and practical, she had common sense but nothing above it, and she knew it and made no moan. She considered him a splendid genius, and was proud of him and worshiped him, and believed he would have been a celebrity if he had had a field proper to his size—like London, or some other place where geniuses accumulate and by their superior penetration discover and advertise each other. She admired him without limit, but he was a sore trial to her with his freaks and eccentricities and his sudden and astonishing changes of weather in the matter of moods. She modified his conditions when she could, and comforted him to the best of her ability when she couldn't. She loved him out of a despondency or scolded him out of it, according to circumstances; and in return he was grateful for these helps, and loved her, and valued her above all his other possessions when he had any. She relieved him of his hat and overcoat, now, and his boots; brought his slippers, made him comfortable in his rocking chair by the stove, sat down by him, laid a hand on his knee, and set an alert eye upon those tracts and features of his face where expressions which disagreed with his statements were accustomed to ambush themselves and give him away. He had no secrets from her. He sometimes imagined he had, but found out presently that it was an error; she could read him like a book. Her first remark, now, showed that Sol's projects with Harrison had been communicated to her previously and talked over.

“Now, then, Sol, you are down in the dumps again, and of course there's no occasion for it and no sense in it. You look like all your folks are dead. I know the sign; it means that you have struck splendid good luck and are hunting up some sort of fool excuse to knock it in the head. Go on, now—tell me the whole thing.”

Sol began his tale, and got a little way, then she interrupted him: “Wait. You told him you had long been certain that the Milliken woman was his uncle's lawful wife by a secret marriage? [begin page 350] Why, man, when you went out of this house you only suspected it—nothing more.”

Sol was embarrassed.

“We-ll—yes. Yes, now I remember, that is so; I had forgotten that.”

“Very well—what changed your mind? What put that certainty into your head?”

Sol recovered his confidence.

“It was perfectly natural, Ann. Reasoning it over brought the conviction. And—”

“Who did the reasoning?”

Sol's animation lost some of its sparkle, and he said diffidently—

“I did it.”

“Huh! Go on.”

“I—well, I put this and that together—known odds and ends and details of the woman's conduct, you know—and it was wonderful the light they threw, and the way they hitched together, link by link; just a perfect chain, not a link missing: straight, lucid, logical, convincing; and there she stood revealed, a legal wife, a disloyal wife, a fugitive from that justice which she dared not face! Ann, I was astonished, myself.”

Ann said drily—

“Very likely. Tell me the process. Put the links together again.”

Sol did it with animation, and with a pride which he did not try to conceal. Then his wife gazed placidly and compassionately into his face until his eyes drooped and fell.

“Sol Bailey,” she said, soberly, almost mournfully, “if I had a tomcat that could be turned against a suspected sowcat by such wandering and pointless drivel as that, I would take him out and drown him. Do you mean to tell me that George Harrison was convinced by—by—Sol!”

“Well?”

“Had he been drinking?”

“N-no, I—”

“I mean, was he drunk?”

“Oh, no—most certainly not.”

“Sober—and was convinced?”

[begin page 351]

“We-ll—yes, he was, Ann; I know it.”

“Then he is an idiot. An idiot, or something's the matter with him. Has anything happened to him, do you know? Is something disturbing him? I don't mean his father's death—that couldn't do this. Has he any secret worries, do you reckon?”

“No, not that I know of. Oh, yes—you know Deathshead Phillips has been appearing to him.”

“Fudge! I didn't ask you if he was a baby, I'm asking you if you think he has any secret worries such as would trouble a grown person; for upon my word it looks like it. Surely that incredible and impossible private wife couldn't turn his reason upside down like this; it's silly!”

It was an uncomfortable time for Bailey. But he pulled himself together and said—

“Why, Ann, if you'll look at it just from one point of view, you'll see that this wife business is enough to worry him sharply without hunting further.”

“What point of view is that?”

“That he believes in that wife. I'll tell you how much that means for him, then you will see that it is competent matter for worry for him, whether it looks silly to another person or not.”

He told her of the depths of despair the dread of the poverty threatened by this woman's existence and discovery had cast Harrison into. Then Ann said—

“Well, I see. His fear is built on a phantom and is silly, but I pity him just the same. Misery is misery, it don't make any difference whether God sends it or you dig it out of your own imagination. Well, did you try to comfort him? Did you tell him you had sent that ass of yours to hunt up the woman and quiet her down and strike up a compromise with her?”

Sol colored slightly, and said—

“I didn't name names, but I told him.”

“Thanks to goodness you had judgment that time! Allen Osgood—the idea!”

Bailey bridled a little, and said—

“It doesn't become you to disparage him, Ann. He is one of the best detectives that in all my experience I—”

[begin page 352]

His wife shouted with laughter.

“Detective! Good land, listen at the man. Why, Sol, you know he couldn't follow the telegraph wire and find the office. He's lost, by this time—oh, days and days ago!—and you'll have to send out another search-party, the way they do when they're finding the north pole and losing themselves. Sol!”

“Well?”

“Who pays the freight?”

“Expenses, do you mean?”

“Yes.”

“Harrison.”

“Good—it will give him employment and save the relics of his mind. Is it arranged?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I'm glad of that. With all your genius you've got no real business capacity. It was just like you to borrow money out of that missionary fund and start those expenses yourself without ever stopping to think how you—Sol!”

“Yes, Ann!”

“You gave me your word you would pay that loan back, straight off and no fooling. Look me in the eye: have you done it?”

“I have.”

She kept her gaze on him.

“Sure?”

“Yes, sure.”

She was removing her gaze, gradually, doubtfully—now she stopped, then slowly turned it back upon him and fastened it there. Presently the man began to wilt.

“There—I just knew it. Where'd you get the money?”

“B-borrowed it.”

“I know, but where'd you borrow it?”

“F-from the Fund.”

“Borrowed it from the Fund to pay the Fund—we-ll, if that ain't Sol Bailey all over! Con-sound you, I never saw such a man!”

“Now don't act like that, Ann—be reasonable; I'm going to pay the whole thing—I am, I give you my word.”

“Oh, shucks! don't I know you? I lay you've borrowed from the [begin page 353] Fund to pay the Fund till there isn't any Fund left, and consequently no place left to pay the rest with? You know it's so; I can see it as plain—look me in the eye! Isn't it so?”

“Well, er, anyway, I—”

“O-o, my goodness—to have to live with a meandering-minded coot who—Sol!”

“Well, what!”

“You just march right along this minute and take everything that's saleable in this house, shingles and all, and pay that debt to the last cent—to the last cent, understand, if it takes the clothes off our backs—and don't you what me like that again, or I'll give you a talking-to that'll—”

“Ann, do give me a chance to get in half a word, can't you? I swear I'm going to pay the entire thing off this very day, to the last red cent, and sell nothing—there, now!”

Ann's eyes snapped derision.

“You will! Lawks! Where'll you get the money?”

Sol drew out his batch of bills and laid it in her hand—exteriorly without emotion, interiorly with consuming exultation. His wife was dumb. She laid the notes out one by one on her lap, absently mumbling and counting: “Five—fifteen—twenty—forty—forty-five”—and so on, till she had piled and smoothed and caressed the last one; then she pulled a profound and impressive sigh, and said, reverently—

“A whole hundred. I have never had so much in my hand at one time before.” She counted again, and said, “It's not believable—but it's there. Where'd you get it?”

Bailey answered, with a mask of indifference thinly concealing some more exultation—artificially yawning and stretching, meantime, like a cat that has caught an elephant and would let on that it is merely an incident, nothing more—

“It's my salary.”

“Salary!” There was disappointment in the tone.

“Salary”—with another yawn.

“Huh! For a year, I reckon.”

“For a fortnight.”

“Sol Bailey!” The wife's eyes danced—sparkled—flamed—and [begin page 354] she gripped his arm with a trembling hand. “Oh, how splendid! Salary! All that! Salary for what?”

“To run Harrison's detective work and find that woman and compromise with her and save him from poverty.”

“Oh, Sol, it's beautiful; and we so need the money. We'll lay up every cent we can. Ah, we were so poor, but now—” Her eyes filled, her voice failed her for a moment, then she went on. “I always believed somebody would find out how great you are and capable, and now it has come at last, thank God, and my pride is justified—my love was that before, dear old idol of my youth! Ah, how dear you are to me, Sol—am I to you?”

“You know it, sweetheart. Don't you know it?”

She kissed him with a passion which age had not modified, and said she knew it. Which was true; and he had willingly and veraciously said it every day for thirty-three years upon demand; for she had always explained that although she knew it and never doubted it, she also wanted him to say it. And say it every day; that she loved the sound of it, and the day was not complete without it.

They held hands and made love a while, recalling hard times patiently borne for each other's sake, and comparing and contrasting them with this gorgeously-salaried moment. Then the wife said—

“We'll save every cent we can, while it lasts. How long will it last, Sol?”

“The salary? Several weeks—or months. One can't tell.”

“We'll call it weeks, then, so as to be safe; and if you succeed—but I know you will—it will give you a great name and plenty of work, and we shan't ever know sharp privations and wretchednesses and people's compassion—that's the worst!—again.”

Bailey patted her on the cheek and said—

“Shall I tell you a little secret, old lady?”

She snuggled to him, alive with interest.

“Oh, do, Sol! What is it? Tell me quick—what is it?”

“Ann, the salary isn't the half of it!”

“What, Sol—there's more?”

“Oceans more!”

[begin page 355]

She was eager to know. He told her everything; and finished with—

“So that is how we stand. Salary right along. Expenses right along. Draw on him whenever I want to. And when the compromise is made with the heirs, half of what's left of the fortune comes to me—that is, to Allen and me.”

It took the woman's breath away for half a minute. Then she said—

“It's a grand estate isn't it, Sol? The village says it's worth—”

“Ann, it's worth more than four hundred thousand. At least a quarter more than that, I believe.”

“Why, Sol—but I can't realize it, it's too immense—the riches we'll have, I mean.” She fell into a feverish reverie, and clasped and unclasped her hands, nervously and unconsciously, occasionally murmuring, “I hope it's fair to take so much. . . . I hope it is. . . . I wonder if it is?” Presently when she came out of it and her glance fell upon her husband, he sat there with his head bowed upon his breast, the picture of irremediable despair. Her eyes shot out a baleful flash and she said with wrathful energy, “Now what's the matter with you!”

The cloud that had settled upon him on his way home had shut down on him again, precipitated by his wife's soliloquy. The thoughts that had waylaid him and harried him then were all back and clawing him and tearing him once more. Their reproachful arguments were as moving as ever, as unanswerable as ever. His conscience was calling him ingrate, blood-sucker, heartless devourer of a generous friend caught at a disadvantage and helpless. The lash presently drove him to speech. The fountains of his great deep were broken up, and he poured out his remorse, bitter, fierce, unsparing, in a torrent that burst along scornful of obstacles, if any there might be; and his wife sat as one under a spell, and listened: at first angrily; then curiously and amusedly; then respectfully; then admiringly; then wonderingly; then reverently; then adoringly; and now in impulsive and unconditional surrender she flung her arms about him and spoke out her feelings—

“Oh, you marvelous creature with the golden tongue and the best [begin page 356] heart that ever beat! How right you are, Sol—it would be extortion; and he so good and generous. Have it your way; I wanted to take less, myself, but I was too selfish, and kept the thought down and wanted to kill it. How much will it be right for you and Allen to take, Sol?”

His conscience was content and purring, now, and he was floating in tranquil seas of dreamy happiness, his eyes closed, his breast rising and falling to the subsiding storm of his emotions. After many minutes his excitement passed wholly away and he was his normal self again and in condition to consider earthly matters and deliver opinions and judgments concerning them. Ann repeated her question. He deliberated upon it a while, then said—

“Ann, I think a fifth of what remains to Harrison after he gets through will be a plenty, and all that by any fair argument could be required of him or accepted.”

She was pleased with this view.

“I think so, too, Sol. In fact I know it; for if what's left is large, the fifth will be riches, and if it's small a fifth cuts it down all he could spare—almost more than he could well spare, maybe. You'll write Allen and tell him you're not going to let it be over a fifth?”

“Right away. And if it isn't satisfactory he can draw out.”

“He draw out! I think I see him! Expenses paid, whisky and billiards and all—that poor ornery thing, that poor half-done doughnut? You couldn't drive him out with a club.”

“I'll draw fifty and send it to him in the letter; and I'll tell him my arrangement about expenses; the two items together will reconcile him, I reckon.”

“Don't you doubt it. Less would do it. Look here, Sol, you want to send somebody to superintend that creature—it'll be an economy. Otherwise he'll idle around and spend the money and nothing will come of it.”

Bailey was hard to convince, but his wife did not give the contention up until he was convinced. Then he asked—

“Could a competent person be persuaded to leave his affairs and take the post?”

“If you promised him a little of our share of the estate he could. There isn't any doubt about that.”

[begin page 357]

“That's true—of course. But Ann, we've got to make a confidant of him; and suppose after we had told him everything he should refuse?—refuse and then talk. What then?”

Ann considered this, then said—

“Sol, I can fix it so it will be safe and all right. I'll put before him a suppositious case—”

“Supposititious.”

“Dang the difference!—supposititious, then; and I'll say, Suppose there was such-and-such an estate, up in Illinois, and so-and-so had such-and-such a chance for a share of it if so-and-so found the lost heirs, and so on: would he go in with so-and-so for such-and-such a share of so-and-so's share, and how much of it would he require?—as a correspondent of ours has asked us to look up a likely person, and all that.”

“That's good—that will answer, first rate. You've got a head yourself, Ann.”

She answered, placidly—

“I knew that before you did, Sol.”

The next problem in due order of succession now offered itself:

“Where are we going to find the right person, Ann?”

That was a serious difficulty. For ten minutes Bailey walked the floor plowing his hair with his fingers, and Ann sat with her chin in her hands and her supporting elbows on her knees. Thus far, there had been no result. Then, from some point a mile away came floating a remark of Dug Hapgood's, privately addressed to a passing friend—

“Say, Billy, going to the sayence to-night? Eleven, sharp!”

Simultaneously Bailey and his wife glanced up at a printed bill on the wall; then at each other and nodded and smiled, as who should say, “That settles it; the very ticket!”

The little placard was nearly two years old, and it said—

Mrs. Charlotte Gunning, Trance-Medium. Late professional assistant of the Fox sisters. Communications from spirits of departed friends. Conveyed through her in the Chinese tongue by the revered sage, Confucius, and translated by her son, in trance, by spirit-inspiration, he knowing no word of that language when in his normal state. The past described, the future foretold. Advice [begin page 358] given, problems solved, perplexities removed. Public seances at intervals, at the Ice Cream Parlors, by subscription—entrance 25 cents. Private seances, Two Dollars.

In four seconds Bailey was re-converted to Spiritualism. He had been Charlotte Gunning's first convert when she arrived, nearly two years before, but had soon lapsed, attracted by some other evanescently-inviting way of getting himself saved or damned.

“She's wonderful, Ann, wonderful! The things which that dead Chinaman reveals through her—”

“Oh, don't I know! He's good on the future, and just amazing on a person's past. He'll pick out the right man for us, and don't you doubt it. Sol, we can have them here, say—”

“To-night, Ann, to-night—the sooner the better. Say at nine—a good two hours before the public seance, and while the Chinaman is fresh and not tired.”

“That's it! And we'll put before him the supposi—si—”

“—ti—”

“—tious case—”

“—and call game!”

“It's splendid, Sol; go 'long and pay the debt and write the letter and book the Chinaman for business.”

And so that matter was settled. Ann was quite right as regarded the Chinaman's surprising knowledge concerning Tom, Dick and Harry's past. His reputation for hindsight was great in the village, and solid. Mrs. Gunning was often able to assist him considerably, for she was always hovering around tables where low-voiced privacies were being retailed in the ice cream parlors. When other people hovered, those talks stopped; but when she hovered they went unrestrainedly on, for her reputation for deafness was as solid as was the Chinaman's for reversed prophecy.

Bailey squared up with the Fund, wrote to Allen Osgood, hired the spiritualists, posted his letter, got one out of the office from Allen, and went back home pleasantly expectant.

In cosy privacy Bailey read Allen's letter aloud to his eager wife:

“Lu—cy Wallace!” exclaimed Bailey. “Why Ann, she was the Milliken woman—I had clean forgotten it. Don't you remember it?”

“We—ll, no, I believe I don't. I remember the grand noise over her swindle—most do, I reckon—and I remember her name well enough, but if I ever knew she was the Milliken woman—”

“Why, certainly she was! Don't you re—”

“No, I don't! It's fifteen years or more; and it don't signify, anyway. Go on with the letter.”

“Now, then, Ann, what do you say to that! You didn't think much of that detective, you know.”

“And I don't yet”—with a sniff. “Go on with his truck.”

“Allen's just a fool—I always told you so, Sol. It's forty to one the man was in love with that woman, and she shook him and he [begin page 360] hates her because he couldn't get her and her swag. Go on with his twaddle.”

“Sol!” This with a suggestion of anxiety in her tone.

“Well, Ann?”

“Have you mailed the letter?”

“Yes. Why?”

“You couldn't get it back, think?”

“No, the mail's gone. Why?”

“Oh, don't you see why?”

“N-no—no, I don't.”

She said, dismally—

“Oh, well, it's done, and can't be helped. Go on.”

“Why, what—”

“Go on, I tell you!”

“There, old lady, I reckon you'll confess now that our matters are looking pretty bright, and that poor Allen is something more than a half-done doughnut, after all.”

There was no reply; Ann was moving slowly toward the kitchen, deeply pondering, with her fingers nervously gripping and ungripping each other behind her back. Sol moved gaily to the wood-shed to gather chips and split kindlings for her.

Arrived in the kitchen, Ann stood lost in thought a while, cracking and snapping her finger-joints absently, and muttering. “The letter's gone. . . . The man is to get an eighth of a fifth. . . . When Allen shows him that, in the letter. . . . Offering him an eight of half was chuckleheaded enough, after giving away the whole scheme to him, and him the usefulest person in the [begin page 361] gang; but when it turns out to be an eighth of a fifth! . . . Oh, well”—with a sigh—”it's done, and can't be helped; let it go. That doughnut!”

She had quite forgotten that she had ridiculed the reasonings the scheme was built upon, and wouldn't have respected a cat that could be beguiled by them. She was poor, she had drunk of poverty down to the dregs, poor lady; and to such as she, even the most chimerical and impossible impending money, when diligently dwelt upon and dreamed over, will presently come to look solid and attainable.

We will now go to Memphis.

After Simon Bunker had accepted Allen's proposition, he suggested that the two should now have a frank and free talk. He built up his hickory fire, set his kettle to boil on the hob, brought out his cigars, pulled down the blinds, lit an extra candle or two, and brewed some steaming punches. By this time his desolate little parlor was looking quite cosy and pleasant. He remarked upon this—stopping in the middle of his sentence to listen to the distant and gust-broken boom of the town-clock beating out eleven—then he sat down, handed a punch to Allen, touched glasses with him, passed him a cigar and held the candle while he lit it, then he set a pair of sharp and observant eyes upon his face, and said—

“Now, then, we need to know our people. Tell me all you know about Mr. Bailey.”

When he was through, Bunker said—

“He is variegated, it seems.”

“Yes. Yes, one may say that, but he has a good head.”

“He seems to have a roving and adulterous passion for all breeds of religions and isms and so-on.”

“Yes. Yes, he is that way, one must confess.”

“What is he at present—religiously?”

“Ah, God knows!”

“Are you sure?”

“Sure of what?”

“Ah, well, it's no matter.” He made a mental note: “Waste no jokes on this one.” Aloud: “He's pretty weak, isn't he?”

[begin page 362]

“Weak? Oh, no, I should say not. No, I should say he is anything but that.”

Mental note: “His judgment is not mature yet—this one's.” Aloud: “Will he be able to keep us in money?”

“Oh, yes, I think so.”

“How does he get it?”

“Collects for charities,” said Allen, innocently.

“Charities?”

“Yes, missionaries, and that kind. Borrows from the Fund. Anyway, he did this time. He told me so.”

“But how do they come to let him? Who keeps the Fund?”

“He does.”

“Oh, I see.” Mental note: “It's a hell of an idea!” Aloud: “Now, then, about Harrison.”

Allen told him all he knew. Bunker studied over the details a while in silence, then said—

“Harrison had never seen his uncle in life? Are you sure?”

“Quite so. He told Bailey so himself.”

“Knew him only by correspondence, you say?”

“Yes. He wrote letters to his brother, Harrison's father, sometimes.”

Mental note: “That is valuable.” Aloud: “You say Harrison showed nervousness when Bailey hinted that perhaps the Milliken woman was the uncle's wife by a private marriage. Was Bailey sure of that?”

“Oh, quite. And a little while after I got here Bailey wrote me he had been visiting him several times since and had found him more and more nervous, and really worried; and Bailey was feeling pretty certain that it was about the Milliken heirs.”

“Isn't Harrison a rather weak man?—or a little broken, perhaps?”

“Oh, mercy no! He is a very strong character. I know him myself—know him personally.”

Bunker, drily: “That settles it.”

Allen, pleased: “I'm sure it's very kind of you to think so.”

Allen went away comfortable and mellow at midnight. Bunker resumed his seat and held a conversation with himself:

[begin page 363]

“It's not a bad scheme at all—if the Milliken ‘heirs’ are still alive. If they are, I know how to draft an advertisement that will produce them. Also, I know how to establish the secret marriage, and how to make Lucy Wallace divide the estate with me. And not just a part of it, but the whole of it—alas for Harrison! . . . Do I need any outsiders in this business? this young innocent, for instance? or the singular person whom his deaf village-mate, it seems, picturesquely calls ‘The Idiot Philosopher’—that whirligig, that weather-vane, that spiritual harlot, that abandoned speculator in religions and isms! . . . Why, yes—yes, for the present I do, at least. Yes, I do—for they furnish the money. Yes, and I can make the young chap useful—I see several ways.”

He wrote out the following advertisement, which he had no present intention of showing to Allen or any other interested person; then he went to bed, satisfied and comfortable:

a vast fortune

In bed he continued his soliloquy a while: “The burnt-records nonsense will not deceive her, and isn't expected to, but she's sharp enough to know there's something back of it, and she'll write from a false address and inquire. Write? No, she'll do no writing—at first, before I explain; she'll print her letter in capitals, like a child; or she'll telegraph, and dictate her dispatch to the operator, under some pretext or other. Anyway, I shall hear from her if she's alive. The rest will be swift and simple. . . . The thing grows! If it shall turn out that that weakling, Harrison, is really frightened, his fortune is gettable, sure, whether those particular ‘heirs’ are living or not. . . . The advertising is going to be cheap—also universal. One insertion—in one paper—anywhere in the United States—and the thing's done! All the other papers will copy it, and comment on it editorially, and be gay over it, and make lubberly back-settlement fun of it, and gambol around it elephantinely—all free gratis for nothing—and it'll sweep the continent like a prairie [begin page 364] fire! Will it find her—if alive? Well, I should say! . . . It's late. Good night, Harrison; sleep well, if you can.”

Let us attend the private seance at Bailey's house.

The Gunnings arrived promptly at nine, and were received with the lively and familiar welcome due to old friends—for they were that. They were in a happy mood, and Templeton was very nearly his old gay and sportive normal self once more, for the subscription-seance had listed close upon a hundred names and was therefore a fine success and lucrative. Mrs. Gunning, from her earliest days in Indiantown, had wisely husbanded and fed the popular interest in her public appearances by putting pretty wide intervals between them.

When the friendly shoutings at Mrs. Gunning concerning her health were over and Templeton had popped off the best of the pleasantries he had brought along for the occasion, the seance-table was placed and the seats occupied. The mediums sat side by side, so that they could hold hands, under the table, and talk the deaf and dumb language together unperceived; Sol and Ann sat opposite them. Silence was now requested. It followed; it deepened; it became solemn, impressive, weird, uncanny. At last Mrs. Gunning made some slow and quivering passes about her head and face with her hands, and finished each pass with a snipping of her fingers in the air, as if she were flirting an invisible fluid from them. Then she made the passes over and about her son's head and face. After an interval of some minutes both performers began to nod and sway, and soon the mother's head drooped upon her breast, where it remained for a little while, the son's head following suit. Presently the heads came up; the eyes opened; the expression in them was dreamy and far away. The mother said, in a hollow voice—

“The Sage is present. Speak to him.”

Templeton responded, in a low and reverent tone, and bowing slowly and solemnly—

“Hong ting woo—si-washy! We salute you, august master!”

The mother answered, with grave dignity—

“Oomtong hopsing hoangho.”

[begin page 365]

Templeton, with like gravity and dignity, translated: “Approval and thanks.”

Ann, speaking with animation in her ordinary voice, said—

“Sol, the more I've seen it the more I can't get over the wonder of it—that when she is in a trance she can hear the faintest word that's said.”

“Ann, haven't I told you a dozen times that she can't hear, it's the Chinaman that hears.”

“Yes, it seems like it must be so, and I know it must be so, because it's the only rational way to account for it, but that makes it all the more wonderful if it is so—”

“If it's so! What do you say if for? Where's any if? Don't we know it's so?”

“How do we know it?”

“I told you once.”

“No you didn't.”

“I bet I did—but I'll tell you again. We know it because she doesn't hear English, low-spoken, but only Chinese.”

That struck Ann.

“Isn't that amazing! Sol—are you funning? Are you trying to fool me?”

He answered, with easy confidence—

“Hmp! you needn't take my word: just pass her a little English and see what she does.”

“Plagued if I don't. Er—Charlotte, can I ask you a question or two?”

There was no response. Sol was happy in his triumph, and said teasingly—

“Oh, of course she can hear! Say it louder, Ann.”

Ann said it louder, then repeated it a little louder still. Charlotte sat unmoved and unresponsive. Ann was charmed and astonished, and gave it up. Then to make the test perfect and splendid, she slipped around and asked Templeton to whisper an easy Chinese word or two in her ear. He did it; she returned to her seat and uttered them very softly—

“Tsung-li yamen!”

Confucius replied promptly—

[begin page 366]

“Singsong tai-ping yangtzekiang!”

“My land, Sol, doesn't that just beat the band! Talk of miracles—raising the dead with a jab of a saint's jaw-bone ain't a circumstance to it! Say, Templeton, what was it I said to him?”

“You said all is not gold that glitters.”

“And what did he say?”

“He said he would make a note of it.”

Ann had a suspicion that she had been snubbed. She said—

“Make a note of it. Consound him it's older than he is, and he knows it. Sol, I don't know that old carcase, and I don't want any of his familiarities. I'll never speak to him again. He'll make a note of it! I lay I'll make a note of him if I ever get my hands on him, the dried-up old superannuated pagan ash-cat! and I'll just say, right here—”

“Shantung wai-hei-wei-whooplong!”—solemnly, from the Sage's spirit.

The translation followed at once:

“The noble lady is destined to great riches and a long life, with deserved happiness and honor.”

Templeton got through it safely, by covering his face with his hands and bowing low to hide the laughter that was struggling to get free.

“Does he mean that for me, Templeton?” asked Ann, mollified and visibly pleased.

“Yes, for you.”

Ann blushed a little, and was embarrassed as to what return to make to that gracious and handsomely-endowed speech, then she said, timidly—

“I am ashamed of myself for mistaking his character so, Templeton. Introduce me to him, please, and thank him for me, and say we'll always be glad and flattered to have him come whenever he can, and make himself at home.”

Templeton put it into Chinese, and Ann got up at what she judged to be the right place and gravely made the formal old-fashioned curtsy of the days of her youth to the invisible new acquaintance and guest of her hearthstone.

Bailey was impatient to get to business by this time, and said so; [begin page 367] so the subject was changed. Both mediums were glad, for straight faces are required in their profession, and they were finding it difficult to keep them. Ann said—

“Templeton, the matter stands about like this. A friend of ours has written us and wants advice about a most urgent case, where immense money is involved. There's a long-lost widow and child to be hunted up—private marriage, you know, and all that; it's all a secret—keep it close. This friend wants to find these heirs—the son's about of age, now—”

“And both of them disappeared about—” broke in Sol.

“You wait, Sol. I'm a-talking, and I reckon I'm competent. He wants to find the heirs and work their case through for a little part of their fortune, and he's got one detective on their track already, and wants a smart, bright, trustworthy person to go and help him—and spy on him, too, because he's of the sort that'll bear watching. The idea is, to have Confucius pick out such a person.”

Templeton fingered out a sarcastic suggestion on his mother's hand under the table:

“Get Confucius to appoint Dug Hapgood, mother.”

She fingered a response:

“Don't joke, I can't stand it; you'll make me laugh and spoil everything; I'm on the point of it all the time. There's immense fun here, but we must save it for home and privacy—then we'll have grand times over it.”

Ann continued:

“We are in it a little with this friend, but of course that is to be kept quiet. Our friend is willing to give the man that's picked out a small part of his small part, when he gets it—”

Templeton fingered again—

“When he gets it, mother—not any earlier, you know, because if—”

The mother fingered back—

“Do be quiet! These are the quaintest, innocentest, foolishest good people that ever—”

Ann, continuing—

“And he would like to settle terms with him—find out what he would require, you see—before he's admitted to the secrets. Of [begin page 368] course we are expecting to make you acquainted with any details you need to know, so that you can deal with Confucius understandingly, but we don't want you to tell him any more than you're obliged to, because we haven't any way to keep him quiet, of course, if he chooses to go and spread it all over America and Kingdom Come and goodness knows where.”

Templeton fingered—

“Mother, if you go and let Confucius find out anything he oughtn't to know about this most important and—”

She fingered an interruption—

“Don't bother me so! do let her get through with her wearisome rubbish.”

Ann, dribbling composedly along—

“You see, it's best to get his terms first and bind him up tight and fast. Well—to tell you a little about it, so you'll understand: the disappeared widow's name was Milliken—dear me, what's the matter!”

“Nothing,” said Templeton, faintly, “it's a nervous affection; she often jumps that way.”

“You jumped too,” observed Sol, innocently.

“Yes. When we are in the trance state whatever affects one of us affects the other.”

“Now ain't that int'resting!—ain't it, Sol!” exclaimed Ann, with admiration. “It's like everything about them—just miraculous and like nobody else.” She faced Templeton again, and sailed placidly along with her tale: “Well, as I was saying, she was privately married to George Harrison's old uncle in Memphis, and had a child, and she did something wrong, and her husband would have killed her if he had got his hands on her, but she escaped and changed her name to Lucy Wallace and got up the smartest swindle that ever was, and robbed people of loads and loads of money and got away with it; and neither hide nor hair has ever been seen of her since. There's ten years in the penitentiary hanging over her, and she'll sell out cheap when she's found—and Sol here is going to find her, to a dead certainty. It's as sure as if she was in this room!”

[begin page 369]

The mediums were calm, now; calm, and grave, even to solemnity. The funniness had disappeared from the scheme, and they were feeling troubled, distressed, burdened with vague forebodings and terrors. For a while the chief medium's mind was a chaos of flying and confused and colliding thoughts. What was to be done to meet this danger and thwart it? If left alone these idiots would start a hue and cry that might end by lodging her in the penitentiary. Templeton's mind was not functioning at all, it was paralysed.

His mother presently conquered her bewilderment and became her clear-headed natural self and competent. She rose to the situation and knew what to do—at least the first move. She fingered out this message—

“Describe to Confucius the kind of spy they require. He will appoint you. Go ahead.”

Templeton exclaimed to himself fervently, “She's always wonderful when she's in a tight place”—then swiftly fingered his admiration—

“Mother, you're just a brick!” Then he let fly in Chinese: “Shang-haitientsin hongwo-wallahwallah chin-chow!” Then he translated the substance of the remark: “I have informed the sage that you good friends of ours want a bright, watchful, and perfectly trustworthy person for a secret and delicate service, and asked him to pick out the very best man he knows of, anywhere.”

The mother straightened up and set her features for deep reflection—to represent Confucius working out the problem on the inside of her.

“Look at her!” whispered Ann; “Sol, you can just see him think, in her. And look at Templeton—ain't it wonderful the way he can jabber out that heathen stuff without knowing a word of it in his natural state.”

“Yes, it is, Ann; and what is just as wonderful is the way he can crowd a whole history into hardly more words than it takes to say ‘scat.’ Hold still—Confucius is going to speak.”

The mother murmured—

“Chong-hi chop-chop Templum Gunniwup!”

[begin page 370]

Templeton translated, without emotion:

“Young, able, perfectest of the perfect, he that is chosen sits with you, and his honorable name is Templeton Gunning.”

Bailey was so carried away with delight over this choice that he couldn't keep still, but plunged his hands across the table and wrung Templeton's with enthusiasm, crying out—

“Will you? will you do it? 'George, it's too splendid for anything! You will, won't you? Say it, Templeton—say the words, clinch the bargain!”

There was no response. The mediums sat dreamy, tranquil, lost to the world and its concerns, like a couple of Buddhas on duty in a temple. Ann was frightened, and said in a low voice—

“Sol, they're dead!”

“No they're not. I know what's the matter. I'd forgotten. They're loaded for bear—spiritually speaking, you understand—and they're not themselves as long as they're in a trance; but they'll wake right up when Confucius leaves. Watch, now, and see: I remember what to do. Templeton, dismiss the Sage!”

Templeton discharged a flowing Chinese remark; then he and his mother came immediately to life and inquired with great interest if they had had an interview with Confucius, and if it had been satisfactory.

“Oh yes indeed,” said Sol; “and it will interest you to know you are personally interested in the result—both of you.”

“We?” said mother and son, simultaneously, and apparently a good deal surprised.

Bailey rubbed his hands with the jejune delight the average human being feels when he is first in the field with exclusive news, and said—

“Listen! you'll see.”

Then he and Ann, constantly interrupting and correcting each other, eagerly laid bare every detail of the interview, charmed all along with the astonished ejaculations their narrative evoked; and when the end was reached and Templeton's appointment announced, Sol closed with an anxious supplication that the Sage's choice be ratified.

[begin page 371]

The mediums lost their vivacity, now, and looked grave. Bailey saw this and lost heart. He put his mouth to Charlotte's ear—

“Ah, I was afraid you wouldn't,” he yelled, mournfully.

“Wouldn't what?”

“Wouldn't ratify the appointment.”

Charlotte smiled a resigned and “It's-pretty-evident-you-are-not-abreast-of-the-situation” kind of smile, and said, placidly—

“Why, dear man, we've got to. If I want to keep in with Confucius, the ablest percipient in hell, I'm not going to accomplish it by running counter to his wishes, am I? I'll manage the parlors all right. Templeton will go.”

To get all the words necessary to fully portray Bailey's happiness would disembowel the dictionary; it is cheaper to leave it to be imagined. Ann now confessed some uneasiness on a certain point: did Confucius get hold of anything that he could tell to improper people and baulk the scheme? and was he leaky? Charlotte explained:

“There's no fear. I've had him in my employ four years, and have never known him to leak a drop. And he couldn't, in this case, even if he wanted to; because he belongs to the Fox sisters and I've bought territory from them and pay them a royalty, and it comes under the patent laws the same as a patent, and if they should work him on my territory I could sue in the Supreme Court and get heavy damages. Well, I've got him for all the Southern States except Texas, and you can make up your mind to it the Foxes are not going down there as long as they can work the Northern States and England.”

“Not much!” said Templeton.

Ann was almost satisfied. She hesitated a moment, then ventured to ask—

“Do you think he—does he—ever strike?”

“Why, Ann Bailey, with his character and his reputation he would no more think of it than you would think of doing the most dishonorable thing you could ever imagine.”

Ann was content, now, and at peace.

Terms were then discussed. Bailey was surprised and gratified to [begin page 372] see how reasonable and unexacting the Gunnings turned out to be, in this matter. Charlotte stipulated for twenty-five dollars a week and expenses for Templeton and such portion of Bailey's apocryphal “friend's” share of the estate—when acquired—as said friend should think fair to give him.

It was now half past ten, and guests and hosts shook hands heartily and parted.

For a time Bailey's mood-mercury remained at 92 in the shade, then the usual revulsion set in and it began to drop. It went steadily down till it struck the frost-line. Meantime Ann was absent in the kitchen setting her dough to rise, and attending to other small duties there. When she had left Sol, he was tramping the floor in jubilant excitement and building air-castles two or three hundred feet high; she was gone fifteen minutes, and when she returned he was slouching wilted in a chair, with his chin on his breast, his joy all dead and gone. She stood erect in the door and gazed long at him, her feelings rising and the clouds gathering in her face. Then she let fly:

“Sol Bailey!”

He moaned, and lifted a haggard countenance.

“Well of all the chicken-hearted, white-livered, chuckle-headed nincompoops in this world, you do take the rag! What in the nation's come over you now!”

In grieved and lifeless accents he explained:

“Ah, Ann, it's the same old thing—'Do your duty to-day and repent to-morrow.' I'm always ruining everything by impulsiveness.”

“What have your ruined now?”

“We're going to get the estate—it's perfectly plain—and we could just as well have had half as not, and of course I had to go and write that fatal letter and cut our share down to a fifth; and not only to a fifth, but a fifth of what's left, instead of a fifth of the whole. It's the most brutal stupidity that ever a—oh, I want to die!”

“T'would do you good, too! Not but what a fifth of what's left is all right, and a plenty for a Christian—and you're sometimes that, [begin page 373] when there's nothing fresh going—but because it cuts Allen's share and his pal's down to where it don't amount to enough to keep them from going back on you if they see a tempting good chance. And besides—”

“Oh, don't, Ann, don't; I never thought of that, and it kills me to think what a gushing girl-hearted fool I've been.”

“Well, I thought of it.” She forgot to add “after I had helped you do it, and it was all done and too late.” “I thought of it, but of course you had rushed the letter off, the way you always do, without giving a person a chance to turn a thing over and examine it good.”

“Oh, I know it, I know it—only too well I know it, and I wish, now—Oh, dear, dear, isn't there something we can do? do try to think of something, Ann—oh, I'm so miserable!”

He had reached her pity, and she couldn't scold him any more. She softened, and went about a task she was familiar with from of old—the comforting of her stricken and sorrowing old baby. She sat down on the settee and made him stretch out on it and rest his head in her lap; and while she caressed his hair and his forehead she restored by earnest and patient reasoning his conviction that a fifth of the leavings of the estate was the right and honorable figure, and then persuaded him to hope and believe that Templeton would be able to defeat any games that Allen and Simon Bunker might try to play, and thus secure the fifth undamaged—”and that's a plenty, Sol, and more than we'll ever need, I'll be bound.”

Sol was happy again and satisfied, and called her his ever-faithful and capable good angel—which indeed she was. He said he would go right off and report progress to Harrison and brighten him up. He departed in high spirits upon this pleasant errand.

Ann closed the door behind him and observed musingly to herself, “It's just the thing—for Dug says poor Harrison is just regularly infested by that crazy corpse-face these nights, and is deep down in the dumps again. . . . If some other maggot don't get into Sol's head before he gets there. . . . but goodness knows!”

She sighed; which seemed to imply lack of confidence.

[begin page 374]

The mediums had a low-voiced and earnest talk as they groped down the murky lanes and alleys on their way home. It resulted in this decision—delivered by Charlotte:

“So, as you see, the thing is not so perilous as it looked. Simon Bunker is probably moved by spite against me, for of course he must have been a chief witness in the trial, and it follows that the lawyers cross-questioned him to death, and made fun of him and a public spectacle of him for letting a woman receive a barrel of letters every day from people proposing to learn Sanscrit and Hebrew (!) and he so witless as to be taken in by such fool nonsense as that and never suspect. Of course he would like to fry me over a slow fire; but he's not a fool, and as soon as he searches into this thing and finds there was no marriage he will drop it. But Allen is a fool, and he won't drop it. Why, Templeton, he may go to advertising for me! That came very near catching me, four different times in the old days, and I can't stand it to go through that misery and terror again. Get in with Allen and prevent the advertising, and there's no penitentiary for me. I shall suffer, suffer, suffer, till I hear from you that you have beguiled him out of advertising. I'll pack your things to-night; you'll start to-morrow.”

“Good—I'm ready. But I say, mother, won't the Baileys think it strange if I go away without going to them for final instructions?”

“Go if you have time after I've finished with you myself—after sleeping on the matter; waking on it, I mean, for it isn't soporific in its nature.”

“And if I don't have time?”

“What of it? Can't I get their instructions every day in the week, if they've got them in stock, and tell them I'll have them in your possession in fifteen minutes? Won't that satisfy them?”

“Why, ye-s—but telegraphing's expensive.”

“Hmp—what's the matter with Confucius?”

“Land, I never thought of that! Oh, you are a brick, mother!”

Meantime Sol's brother the Rev. Swinton Bailey was standing a comforter's watch at Harrison's bedside. While, at Sol's house, the private seance was going on, the clergyman, more sanely employed, [begin page 375] was adroitly lifting Harrison's mind little by little out of its wearing and degrading absorption in material and sordid cares and interests, and breathing upon it the refreshing snow-summit breath of loftier themes. He beguiled it to the contemplation of beautiful and exalting abstractions: the Universal Brotherhood of Man; Unselfishness; Self-Sacrifice; Man's God-given Supremacy over the Beasts that Perish; the Wonder and Mystery of his Construction; the Nobility of his Character; his final and crowning endowment, the Moral Sense—granted to him alone of Created Beings. Carried above and beyond himself by the grandeur of his subjects and by the sweet and gracious humanity of his object, the clergyman spoke as one inspired; and as his flowing and impassioned periods fell from his tongue he could see the mental glooms that shadowed Harrison's face melt gradually away and the light of a happier spirit steal into their place. Harrison listened like one entranced. It seemed to him that he had not known man before, and was seeing him for the first time in the imposing majesty of his supremacy in God's mighty universe. As pictured now, how nobly endowed he was, with sweetness, love for his enemy, compassion, forgiveness of injuries; in the golden grace of unselfishness how imperially enriched!

In bidding good-night to his benefactor Harrison clung to his hand and repeatedly pressed it and caressed it, saying—

“God bless you for coming; you have flooded my soul with sunshine, you have borne it an eagle's flight above the sordid concerns of life, I know my race as I never knew it before—God bless you, Bailey, you have made a new man of me!”

Meantime Sol had arrived below-stairs finely exalted by the thought of the kindly errand he had come upon; but on the parlor table lay a new book which his brother had just acquired and had deposited there to wait his return from Harrison's chamber, and Sol picked it up to see what it was. He was soon cutting its leaves and devouring its contents. Presently, recollecting his mission, he thrust it into his pocket and started upstairs. He met his brother on the way, and said—

“I've got your book, but I'll return it to-morrow. How is Harrison?”

[begin page 376]

In a tone of self-complimentary satisfaction which was quite pardonable, the brother replied—

“I found him in the blackest deeps of depression. I'd like you to notice what he's like now, Sol.”

Sol was not listening; he was brimming with something else. A moment later he burst in upon Harrison and was breezily talking before he was fairly at anchor in a chair.

“How splendid you're looking!” he said, shaking hands cordially. “I say, George, I want to read you something. It's brand new—just come—belongs to Swinton. Dear me, but it's interesting. Listen to this:

Sol laid the book aside, remarking—

“That's Man, all over! I haven't seen anything as typical as that since—” He glanced up, and said to himself, “Why, he's down in the depths again. I wonder what's happened?”

Harrison moaned, and said—

“Bailey, it's all pitiful—so pitiful! And so unnatural, too, so out of character. Look at man, in his right and proper estate: how nobly gifted, intellectually, how graciously endowed with—”

And so forth and so on. This kind of thing was just in Sol's line. Arguing on stately and foggy abstractions was meat and drink to him, and his appetite was always ready and sharp for any meal of the kind that might fall in its way. He sailed gaily and gratefully into the subject of Man “in his right and proper estate,” now, and he and Harrison were soon deep in it and each sparring away the best he knew how. They threshed out the detail of man's mentality to the bottom of the stack, both granting his supremacy in that matter, but Sol denying that the other animals were altogether destitute of the reasoning faculty, and maintaining that as far as the [begin page 377] ant and his brethren were able to reason at all their processes were the same as man's. Finally Harrison said—

“We have come a good way, Bailey. As a result—as I understand you—I am required to concede that there is absolutely no fence separating man and the beasts that perish.”

“Yes, that is it. There is no such fence—there is no way to get around that. Man has a finer and more capable machine in him than those others, but it's the same machine and works the same way.”

Harrison said impatiently—

“Then man and the other animals are all alike, as to mental machinery, and there isn't any difference of any stupendous magnitude between them, except in quality, not in kind.”

“Yes, that is about the state of it—intellectually. There are pronounced limitations on both sides. We can't learn to understand much of their language, but the dog, the elephant, etc., learn to understand a great deal of ours. To that extent they are our superiors. Not our mere equals, you see, but our superiors. Come, grant that large fact. You know it's perfectly true, Harrison.” Harrison made no answer. “On the other hand they can't learn reading, writing, etc., nor any of our fine and high things, and there we have a large advantage over them.”

Harrison spoke up with heat—

“Very well, then, let them have what they've got, and welcome; there is still a wall, and a lofty one: they haven't the Moral Sense. We have it, and it lifts us immeasurably above them.”

“What makes you think that?”

Harrison flushed, and an angry light shone in his eye. Evidently the new comforter was knocking the other comforter's work to rags, but he was adorably unheedful of it and guilelessly blind to it. Harrison said, hotly—

“What makes me think it! What else could I think? Now look here—let us call a halt. I have stood the other infamies and insanities, and that is enough: I am not going to have man and the brutes put upon the same level morally.”

“I wasn't going to do that, Harrison.”

The gentleness of the response made Harrison a little ashamed [begin page 378] of his warmth, and he said with a repentant touch in his tone—

“Oh, very well, then, go on.”

Bailey's eyes beamed gentle acceptance of the unarticulated apology, and he resumed:

“No, it would not be right to put them on the same level morally. Lacking the Moral Sense, the brutes don't know right from wrong, and consequently they can't do wrong. We can. Well, then, of course an animal that can't do wrong is as much better and higher and nobler than an animal that can, as an angel is better and higher and nobler than a Pawnee Indian. The angels didn't fall, you know, so they haven't got the Moral Sense yet. So, as I was saying, it would not be right to put brutes and humans on the same level morally. Well, then—”

An explosion of wrath from Harrison made Bailey jump out of his clothes almost.

“Stop where you are! It's enough to drive a healthy-minded person mad, to lie helpless and have to listen to these inane stupidities.”

“Why, Harrison,” said Sol, wounded, “I wasn't meaning any harm; I couldn't mean any, you know that, and—”

“Oh, I know it, I know it, Bailey; and I ought to remember that, and keep my temper down”; and he reached out and repentantly patted the Philosopher on the arm, manfully struggling, at the same time—without possibility of success—against another upheaval that was climbing up in him. “But—but—without your knowing, half the time, what you are driving at nor where you are traveling to, you do manage to say the damdest exasperatingest things!—you know that, Bailey.”

Sol answered earnestly and humbly—

“It isn't intentional, Harrison, I know you'll grant that. What I am trying to do is to comfort you and tranquilize you, not disturb you and aggravate you; and when I was saying that about the Moral Sense and how it has pulled us down, I wasn't arguing—I was careful about that, because arguing to a sick man is unsettling—I was only just stating the facts, and—”

“Facts! Oh, great guns, change the subject and give us a rest!”

Poor Bailey was deeply troubled to see his kindly-meant endeav- [begin page 379] ors to bring healing peace and serenity to his friend's harassed spirit so dolorously miscarry, and he wished he could think of something to talk about that would not be so incendiary. He fished around in his mind for a sedative, a pacifying subject, and was guilelessly happy when he presently caught what he was sure was just the thing—Man's Sole and Only Originating Impulse, Selfishness. He had pretty fully argued his doctrine with Harrison a few days before, and he remembered that Harrison had shown interest in it; also, so far as he could recollect, Harrison had not given way to violence in combating it. So, with good hope, he proceeded to break ground upon that topic, with the inquiry—

“Harrison, have you given thought to the Gospel of Self, since the talk we had?”10

“Yes, I've been considering that proposition of yours that no act is ever born of any but a selfish impulse—primarily. And meantime I have looked around a little for instances to slay it with.”

“Well?”

“Oh, I shall find them, I shall find them. In time, plenty of them.”

“Harrison, that's a confession that—”

“Oh, you can call it that if you want to—I don't mind. Along at first I didn't have the luck to look in the right places—but that's nothing, and doesn't prove anything. I examined fine and apparently unselfish deeds in romances and biographies, but—”

“That's it! Under searching analysis the ostensible unselfishness disappeared? It'll do it every time, Harrison, every time; there aren't any exceptions.”

Harrison was not disturbed.

“I beg your pardon—not every time,” he said. “I've got one here in this book that will demolish that detail.”

“It won't; I know it beforehand. State it.”

“Very well, this is the way of it. In the Adirondack woods is a wage-earner who is an untrained and self-appointed lay preacher in the lumber-camps. He is of noble character, and deeply religious. [begin page 380] By and by there comes to his region, on vacation, an earnest and practical laborer in the New York slums who is a great merchant and is also a leader of a section of the great Unsectarian Union. Holme, the lumberman, is fired with a desire to throw away his excellent worldly prospects and go down and save souls on the East Side. He counts it happiness to make this sacrifice for the glory of God and for the cause of Christ. He resigns his place, makes the sacrifice cheerfully, and goes to the East Side and preaches Christ and Him crucified every day and every night to little groups of half-civilized foreign paupers who scoff at him. But he rejoices in the scoffings, since he is suffering them in the cause of Christ. Bailey, you have so filled my mind with suspicions that I was constantly expecting to find a hidden selfish impulse back of all this, but I am thankful to say I have failed. This man saw his duty, and for duty's sake and no other sake he sacrificed self and assumed the burden it imposed. There, now! What do you say to that?”

“Harrison, is that as far as you have read?”

“Yes.”

“Well, we must read further, presently. Meantime, in sacrificing himself—not for the glory of God primarily, as he imagined, but primarily to content that imperious master, Self, within him—did he sacrifice anybody else?”

“How do you mean?”

“He relinquished a very lucrative post, and got mere food and lodging in place of it?”

“He did that very thing,” said Harrison, with reverent admiration.

“Had he any dependants?”

“Well—yes.”

“Mm. In what way and to what extent did his so-called self-sacrifice affect them?”

“Well, he was the support of a superannuated father, and—”

“That's one. Go on.”

“—he had a young sister with a remarkable voice—he was giving her a musical education, so that her longing to be self-supporting might be gratified—”

“That's two. Go on.”

[begin page 381]

“He was furnishing the money to put a young brother through a polytechnic school and satisfy his desire to become a civil engineer. That's the list.”

“Three dependents upon his rich earnings. A helpless old father, a helpless young sister, a helpless young brother. The old father's comforts were curtailed?”

Harrison—a little impatiently:

“Certainly, certainly—of course. It follows necessarily.”

“The sister's music-lessons had to stop?”

More impatiently:

“Confound you, you know they did!”

A little of Harrison's patience was beginning to ooze out.

“The young brother's education—well, an extinguishing blight fell upon that happy dream, and he had to go to sawing wood, or screening gravel, or shoveling snow, or tending hogs, to feed the old father and the young sister?”

“Oh, go on; and don't be so damned tedious!”

“Now Harrison, what a handsome job of self-sacrificing he did do! It seems to me that he sacrificed everybody except himself. Haven't I told you that no man ever sacrifices himself; that there is no instance of it upon record anywhere; and that when the master, Self, requires a thing of its slave for either its momentary or its permanent contentment, that thing must and will be furnished and that command obeyed, no matter who may stand in the way and suffer disaster by it? That man ruined his family to please and content his Self—”

“And help Christ's cause.”

“Yes—secondly. Not firstly. Though he thought it was firstly.”

“Oh, all right, have it so if you want to. But it could be that he argued that if he saved a hundred souls in New York—”

“The sacrifice of the family would be justified by that great profit upon the—the—what shall we call it?”

“Investment?”

“Hardly. How would Speculation do? how would Gamble do? Not a single soul-capture was sure. He played for a possible thirty-three hundred per cent profit. It was gambling—with his family for ‘chips.’ However, what we are mainly interested to get on the track [begin page 382] of, is, the secret original impulse that moved him to so nobly sacrifice his family in the Savior's cause under the delusion that he was sacrificing himself. What is your guess, Harrison?”

“Never mind my guess. The man's act may have been a mistake, in the circumstances, but if you will read along and find the original impulse that was back of it—since you are not satisfied that the one already furnished was the real one—it may be that you will have to concede that it was a noble and beautiful one.”

“It may be, you think? Well, it won't be, Harrison; I know that, beforehand. . . . I've found it—it was bound to expose itself sooner or later.”

“Go on, then. What was it?”

“Here are the facts: and they lead up to the exposure. He preached to the East Side rabble a season, then went back to his dull and obscure life in the northern wilderness hurt to the heart, his pride humbled. Why? Were not his efforts acceptable to the Savior, for Whom alone (ostensibly) they were made? Harrison, I give you my word, that detail is lost sight of, and is not even mentioned—the fact that it started out as a motive is entirely forgotten!”

“Well, then, what was the trouble?”

The exultation and exaltation of the orator who sees victory in sight came upon Bailey, and he rose and walked the floor with measured strides, impressively driving and clinching his argumentative nails one by one and climbing step by step toward a climax which he intended should be the prize effort of his life.

“You ask,” he began, “what the trouble was. You shall immediately see—for the authoress quite innocently and unconsciously gives the whole business away. The trouble was this: Holme merely preached to the poor; that is not the Unsectarian Union's way: it deals in (to the poor), more immediately imperative things than that, and it did not enthuse over that crude and windy stump-oratory. It was courteous to Holme—but cool. It did not pet him, did not take him to its bosom. Now, then, give sharp attention to this wail from the book, and see if it doesn't point straight at that man's original—and self-seeking—motive: ‘Perished were all his dreams of distinction, the praise and grateful approval of—’ Of [begin page 383] whom? The Savior? No, the Savior is not mentioned. Of whom, then? Why, Harrison, ‘of his fellow-workers!’ That is to say, the Unsectarian Union. Why did he want that? Because the Self inside of him wanted it, and would not be content without it. That emphasized sentence reveals the secret we have been seeking, the original impulse which moved the obscure and unappreciated Adirondack lumberman to sacrifice his family and go on that crusade to the East Side—which said original impulse was this, to-wit: without knowing it he went there to show a neglectful world the large oratorical talent that was in him, and rise to distinction.” Absorbed in his theme, he went on with accumulating energy and fire:

“As I have warned you before, no act springs from any but a selfish motive. Whenever you read of an unselfish act, or of an act of self-sacrifice, or of a duty done for duty's sake, take it to pieces and look for the selfish motive. Pretty soon you will get so you can't help doing it, it's so horribly interesting—fascinating is the word. The minute you come across a noble deed in a book you will have to stop and take it apart and examine it; the whole interest of the tale fades out at once, and you excitedly get out your vivisection-tools and—”

A long-drawn, peaceful snore broke upon his ear. He glanced up—Harrison was asleep. For a moment he was ashamed and hurt, and a faint blush mounted to his cheek. Then his resentment passed, and he muttered, with the pleased air of one who had started out for a victory and has won it:

“That fetched him, anyway!”

It is hard to defeat a man who doesn't know it when it has happened. Bailey sat down and contemplated his conquest with grateful and naïve satisfaction, and pleasantly planned future campaigns for the comforting and tranquilizing of his friend. He believed that if he could come every day and read to him chapters out of what he called The Baylianic Philosophy of Life and which Dug Hapgood had nick-named The Black Gospels, he could soon have him as gay and happy as ever he was in his life. He mentally set down certain of these chapters by title, and resolved to administer them to the perturbed patient:

[begin page 384]

1. The Mind of Man, merely a machine; working automatically; getting its materials from the outside, never from the inside; incapable of originating a thought of any kind; always a weaver of half-breed originals out of exterior suggestions; controlled and commanded by exterior influences alone, and not subject to the man's authority, nor ever even receiving suggestions from him.

2. Personal Merit. It is non-existent and impossible. A man's qualities are born in him, he does not make them. If he is born an idiot he can't help it, and is not open to contempt for it; if he is born a poet he can't help it and is entitled to no praise for it. If he is born with a rabbit's heart his cowardice is as respectworthy as is the bravery of the man born with a lion's heart; if it is right to despise the one it is right to despise the other.

3. Man, the Creature who never Thinks. Product of circumstances and outside influences solely, never of reasoned intention. Presbyterian merely because he lives among Presbyterians; Catholic because he lives among Catholics; Mormon because he lives among Mormons; Mohammedan because he lives among Mohammedans; monarchist because he lives among monarchists; democrat or republican because his papa was one.

4. Man, the Creature that believes the Truth is Mighty and Will Prevail, and All That. With Instances as above to Prove it By.

5. Man, Sole Proprietor of the Moral Sense, and Similar Assets.

6. Man, the Supreme Achievement—And All That.

Bailey, gently lulled toward slumber by charmed visions of his depressed friend going through an inspiriting course of his Philosophy and coming out of it healed and sparkling and frisky, presently fell asleep. After half an hour he awoke; and being loth to mar the soothing work his humane late labors had accomplished upon his host, he forebore to awake him, but wrote a note briefly reporting the progress made in the Memphis business and the enlarged outlay it would involve, and placed it where Harrison would find it; then he took his way homeward serene in his mind and contented; for he had given blessed sleep to a harassed sufferer, and the thought of this good deed laid upon his spirit a great peace.

[begin page 385]

Sol bailey's letter reached Allen in Memphis. Meantime he had had nightly talks and hot punches with Simon Bunker, and had had the happiness of being able to report to headquarters that Bunker's heart was with the wronged woman and that his desire to find her and secure to her her rights amounted now to a holy passion. (Allen was young, and in things sentimental the vision of youth sees its object through a prism.) Let the expense-money be supplied liberally and promptly, and success would be certain—in Allen's opinion.

Bailey's letter, coming at this juncture, was a wet blanket. Contemplated soberly, observed practically and without a prism, what might its effect be upon that holy passion? How would Bunker take it? Would he be disgusted with its unfaithfulness to the original arrangement, with its large block of the estate as commission? Would he be affronted by this mean reduction to a trifling fraction of an indefinite remnant of the estate and indignantly retire from the case?

However, he said to himself, this music must be faced: he must go to Bunker and reveal the new conditions and put up with the consequences, howsoever sorrowful and humiliating they might be. He went upon his errand sufficiently heavy-hearted and ashamed.

Bunker listened to his mournful tale without comment, and with a countenance which told poor Allen nothing. Allen's hopes faded gradually and steadily away, and finally disappeared with the conclusion of his story. Fortune and Asphyxia disappeared with them.

Bunker sat thinking—thinking. Allen sat suffering; and it seemed to him that he had not known so deep a silence before in his life, nor such a dismally long one.

At last Bunker brewed the punches, distributed them, and settled himself in his chair. Then, instead of breaking out with the storm of anger and contempt which Allen had supposed was [begin page 386] gathering and swelling all this time, Bunker astonished him with a commonplace question uttered in a colorless tone:

“The proposed new arrangement is for you and me the eighth part of an unconcreted and indeterminate fifth—and such money as we shall need for expenses—is that it?”

Allen dropped his eyes and answered:

“Yes.”

“Write him and say we accept.”

All the clouds flew away, and Allen could have posed acceptably as a statue of Joy. He could hardly believe his ears, the words sounded so good and were such a surprise. His eyes grew moist, and he said with grateful and admiring emotion—

“It is lovely of you, and noble. I can't understand it. I thought you would feel cheated and insulted, and would have nothing more to do with the scheme.”

“Oh, no. And there is nothing noble about it—”

“Nor unselfish?”

“No.”

“Nor self-sacrificing?”

“No. None of these things. Just the opposite. It is a business move. I do not like a man to play with me when I have been trusting him. And when he does it, and in doing it heedlessly and stupidly relinquishs the advantage of the game to me, I take my revenge. In this case I shall do it with a quite tranquil conscience.”

Allen was not able to understand.

“Advantage?” he said. “I believe I do not comprehend. To have our profit cut down to a fractional part of nothing—so to speak—is that an advantage?”

Bunker proceeded to explain.

“Yes. You will presently perceive that it is. But first, we will examine into the morals of the situation. In matters of business, as in all things else, it is best to start from a sound moral basis if we wish to go a course which will leave us no regrets—isn't it so?”

Bunker was proceeding in the right and judicious way; for he had found out that Allen was theoretically a moralist, from early training, whatever he might be in practice. He was persuadable [begin page 387] from his theoretical moral side, and it was Bunker's intention to persuade him. Allen promptly agreed with the proposition to get the morals correctly arranged as a beginning; and the proposition itself raised Bunker a peg in his good opinion.

“Very well,” said Bunker. “You told me the other night that Mr. Bailey had been teaching you that all impulses are selfish; that some are high and fine, others low; and that of two impulses, one fine and the other base, we should be careful to choose the fine one, and thus train ourselves constantly upward toward higher and higher ideals. It seems sound. Let us accept it and guide ourselves by it.”

“Gladly! I believe it is the very rightest way there is, Mr. Bunker.”

“Very well. Mr. Bailey examined his impulses in this Milliken matter, and found two—a high selfish one and a low selfish one. The high one was, to rescue this wronged woman's fortune and take half of it for the service performed; the low one was, to serve the usurper and conceal his robbery because the robber was his friend; and the selfishness that is the basis of friendship urged him to stand by the friend when he knew it was a crime to do it. But he nobly chose the high impulse and elected to do battle in the wronged woman's cause. He was right. Wasn't he right?”

“He certainly was, Mr. Bunker; and I had to admire him for it.”

“One easily sees that he was right. There is not a flaw in his position.”

There was a pause. Allen looked up inquiringly. Bunker added, laying a hand impressively upon Allen's knee, “You perceive what has happened?”

“Er—what is it?”

“He has gone over to the enemy and deserted the friendless woman. He has done the thing which he knew was a crime.”

“Why—he has, by George! Upon my word, it is just what he has done. It didn't occur to me, but I see it now.”

“He means to beguile the woman out of almost the whole of the estate and turn what he chooses of it over to Harrison, and out of that remnant give you and me a beggarly trifle—we who do the [begin page 388] work. Come—shall we desert the poor woman too, because our pay is small—”

“No, sir—never!”

“—or shall we keep to the right moral basis, and see her through—”

“Yes!”

“—and be in at the death, and arrange the terms ourselves, and personally see to it that she gets her rights and the whole of them?”

“We'll stand by her to the end, Mr. Bunker! I'm with you!”

They clinked glasses and drank to the honor of the right moral basis. Then Bunker said—

“Now, then, we must go carefully. That man Bailey is shrewd and watchful. We must use diplomacy—understand?”

“How do you mean?”

“Suppose we should veraciously report to him every step we take? What then?”

“Well?”

“We find the woman, and report that.”

“Yes?”

“He will arrive on deck straight off, and claim authority to make the terms with her,—privately and without our help, to the destruction of her fair rights—on the ground that we are merely paid subordinates, who did our work with money furnished by him, as the other side's representative and agent.”

Allen was alarmed, and said—

“That won't do, it won't do at all. I get your idea: we must find money somewhere else—”

“While apparently working for him—on the terms of this letter of his? Decline his money? Why, he would be suspicious at once, and put somebody else on the case. We could continue, on our own hook, but competition in such a matter is not desirable. No, we must take his money, even if, in order to be perfectly fair, we should insist upon refunding it afterward.”

Allen caught at that, and his doubting conscience rose up and approved.

“Yes, we'll take it, and pay it back. That will be right. Yes, and more than right; it will be fine.”

[begin page 389]

“It seems so to me,” assented Bunker, smiling on his inside. “Now, as I have said, we must use diplomacy with that man Bailey, for whether he is deep or not, he is sharp and alert. We don't want him following our track, we don't want him to know what our movements are. We'll hunt for the Milliken woman, but we'll not tell him so. We'll put him on a wrong scent.”

He expected that proposition to trouble Allen, and it did. Allen fidgeted uncomfortably a moment, then said—

“Is—is that necessary?”

Bunker responded, gently and persuasively—

“I won't insist upon it, but if we look into the thing we shall probably find it wise. Our main, chief, overshadowing purpose—our sole purpose, almost—is to right that wronged woman. Isn't it so?”

The question startled Allen, and shamed him. He had been unconsciously losing sight of that large part of the project and allowing his yearnings to dwell upon the minor part, the profit to be fished out of it. But the question brought him back to his bearings, and he said—

“Yes, that is so.”

“Very well. When Bailey comes to reflect upon his letter he will be frightened. He will say to himself that he has made a mistake; that he ought to have kept still about the new and shabby terms until his game was secure; that you and I will feel cheated and insulted; that we are merely human, and consequently selfish; that we are in this scheme for the sordid profit we can get out of it; that in our anger we will return his treachery to us with treachery to him, and go on and work the scheme in our own interest while pretending to work it in his. Doesn't that strike you as being about what will pass through his mind?”

“Now that you have mapped it out, I think I see clearly that that is what will happen. Why, certainly. I might have thought of that myself.”

“Well, then, what will be the most natural thing for him to do, do you think?”

No obvious procedure occurred to Allen. After puzzling over the matter a little he confessed it, and asked—

“What do you think he will do?”

[begin page 390]

“Why, there's only one rational thing for him to do: he'll send a spy here—to help us!”

“And—watch us?”

“That's it. And report to him every move we make.”

“I see—and have Bailey on hand when we find the woman.”

“Exactly.”

“Of course that would be—”

“Fatal. Necessarily.”

Said Allen, anxiously—

“We must do something! What can we do?”

“Throw sand in the spy's eyes. And in his.”

Allen was converted; converted, and vastly relieved. Bunker saw it in his face, and was content. Allen was now eager to have the proper protective measures taken, and said so.

“And help take them?” asked Bunker.

“Yes, sir, and help take them.”

“Then we'll lay the first brick now. There's the desk. Sit down and answer Bailey's letter. I will dictate.”

“I'm ready. Go on.”

“Begin, then—to-wit:”

“Dear me, Mr. Bunker, is it really true, or is it only—”

“Never you mind. Go on with your writing. To-wit:”

“But, Mr. Bunker, that is really inviting the spy, you see.”

“Of course. And it's sound business. It's a good suspicion-queller. [begin page 391] If Bailey is meditating a spy this may restore his confidence and put the notion out of his head; and in any case it is better politics to invite him than have him flung at our heads. Sign the letter and send it.”

Allen said with admiration—

“I shouldn't ever have thought of those things, I know I never should. You are deeper than I am, Mr. Bunker.”

“Thank you for the compliment,” said Bunker, blandly; and to himself, “Such as it is.”

No one spoke for a while, now. Both men were waiting. Allen was waiting, with a razor-edged curiosity, for Bunker to unfold the new development mentioned in the letter, and name the new heirs, and detail their romantic history, and say whether it was fact or only thrilling and appetising fiction, and plan out the new campaign; Bunker was waiting for Allen to go.

At last Allen felt obliged to say something about it's being late—which it wasn't—and that he thought perhaps he ought to be getting home—which he didn't; and was sorrowfully disappointed when Bunker took these damaged assets at par and rose and shook hands good-night without even a shadow of protest.

While he was departing the spy was arriving; and when he reached his cheap little tavern he found him there and soon learned his errand from his own lips—to-wit, that Bailey had sent him “to help.”

Allen made a remark to himself which was sodden with homage for Bunker:

“I'd rather have that man's brains than Stephen Girard's millions!”

Bunker, meantime, was walking the floor and doing some deep and perplexed thinking. It took him an hour or two to tunnel his way through his problem and reach daylight at the other end. Then he snapped his fingers with satisfaction, and said—

“It will answer. Sally Archer's the ticket!”

[begin page 392]

Next day Allen got word to Bunker that the spy was come, and in the evening he brought Templeton around and introduced him. Bunker was able to seem handsomely surprised at his advent and glad of his coming; and remarked that there was a new development, and capable and trustworthy help would almost surely be needed.

“In fact,” he said, “we felt so sure of it that we have already ventured to ask Mr. Bailey for it by letter.”

Templeton could hardly conceal his delight at this lucky accident, and said to himself, “But for this, I should have been suspected, almost to a certainty. Why, if Confucius himself had engineered it I couldn't be better fixed. Tra la la—I'm on velvet!” He resolved to laugh the incident over with his mother in a letter before he slept.

The three chatted pleasantly together for an hour or two about the discarded campaign and the prospects of the new one, then Bunker said—

“If I have made myself clear, Mr. Gunning, the Milliken case was quite impossible, promising as it looked in the beginning.”

“Yes,” answered Templeton, “it was a wrong scent—one realizes it, now.”

“I am glad you see it in that light. As a principal, that adventuress is out of the scheme—that is settled; but it is possible that she could be of some value as a witness.”

“As a witness?—in a court?—with her record?”

“Hardly!” and Bunker was almost delivered of a laugh. “With a ten-year sentence hanging over her she would decline, with thanks—and right enough. I meant, as a private witness—in our behalf. You see, Sally Archer was hardly gone from Harrison's when the Milliken woman arrived. They would still be talking about Sally there—the house servants would. Well, the Milliken was a servant—you get the idea?”

[begin page 393]

“Yes—she would gather a good deal about Sally.”

“Just so. She might give us points which could help us a good deal in getting on Sally's track, if we could make it worth her while. The Milliken would sell her soul for a dollar and a half,” he added in a matter-of-course way which jolted Templeton considerably. “My deputy, Floyd Parker, was a young fellow on the plantation in those days, and thinks he and Milliken are the only whites now alive who know much about Sally and her history out there.” He paused, and began to bait a hook for Templeton. When he had gotten it baited to suit him he concluded to ward off suspicion by pretending to fish for Allen with it. He now cast it. “If we could divide forces, now that we are strong, and one of us exclusively devote himself to hunting up the Milliken—” (Templeton's hopes bounded up several feet)—“the other two would not need to bother about her at all, but could concentrate their whole activities upon Sally—Sally the important, Sally the essential! Osgood, you are the man” (Templeton's hopes fell back to the earth)—“will you hunt the Milliken?”

Osgood showed disappointment; he could not have better done the thing desired by Bunker if he had been an old hand in duplicity and was working his art, instead of being a new hand, untrained in tricks, and merely working his sincerities. Templeton saw his disappointment and (as he wrote his mother later) took brilliant advantage of the situation. He spoke up and said:

“Turn her over to me, Mr. Bunker.”

In his letter to his mother, that night, he said: “You ought to have been there! He couldn't get out of that hole, there wasn't any way. He not only had to take me up, but pretend to like it. Of course he had wanted to have me on the ‘important’ division of the hunt, for poor Allen isn't bright and can't be much help to him, and his idea had been to shove him out of the way and keep him obliterated and harmlessly amused while he and I prosecuted the division of the chase which he imagines is the ‘essential’ division—but I saw my chance and played that great card, and he had to pocket his disappointment. I said I was a beginner and a late-comer, and in all fairness must take a modest place. What could he say to that? Nothing. I had him where he couldn't budge. Yet of course [begin page 394] he never suspected the immense size of the card I played in that quiet and unostentatious way; he thought it merely crippled his game, whereas it utterly destroyed it, so far as you and I are concerned. You are permanently safe, mother! All alone I shall hunt you—all solitary and alone. Look sharp, for I'm a wonderful hunter when I get started.”

Bunker said to Templeton:

“You've the easiest part of the work, Mr. Gunning. You'll find the Milliken woman in ten days.”

Templeton felt himself turn pale, but said as indifferently as he could—

“Is that so?”

“Yes. If she's alive, that is.”

Templeton felt relieved. The preceding remark had made him fear that Bunker had some suspicion of his mother's whereabouts and knew she was alive. He said to himself, comfortably, “She'll not be alive to you, dear sir.” Then Bunker gave him another little shock without being aware of it:

“I'll put you on her track, and if she is alive you'll have her in ten days, sure.”

He opened a drawer of his desk and produced his advertisement in which the “Supplementary U.S. Mail” was invited to correspond with the “Swamp Angel,” and handed it to the spy.

“Put that in just one newspaper,” he said, “a Vicksburg paper, for instance, and you will hear from the Milliken woman inside of ten days. If she's alive.”

The spy read it, and was relieved again. He said to himself, “Those are the nicknames my mother referred to, I guess. No harm; it will be a riddle to all but her.” Then aloud—

“Why, Mr. Bunker, it doesn't mention the Milliken woman, and so how—”

“Don't you trouble about that. Put it in print and wait—you'll see.”

“Just as you say. I'll attend to it.”

He allowed Allen to puzzle over it a while, then pocketed it and said he would go and write a letter and send it to the Vicksburg [begin page 395] paper. Bunker complimented him on his promptness and energy, and he went away well pleased with his evening and with the way luck was running in his direction. He sent the advertisement, then wrote his mother and enclosed a copy, remarking—

“We've scored again! It's too funny for anything. Everything comes my way, and nobody suspects. It's lovely to be on the inside, this way, and have it all to oneself. I wouldn't be anywhere but here for the world. Ten days! I reckon it will be longer than that before you respond. Then he will think you are dead—you and your poor child. A pity, too, because they so need your private information concerning Sally Archer.”

He told her about the Sally Archer scheme and the great confidence Bunker had in it. He closed with—

“I'm on velvet, you see—nothing to do but sit around and draw my pay and watch the game and wait for the Supplementary U.S. Mail to respond. If not dead.”

Bunker and Allen chatted together a while over the prospect, then Deputy Floyd Parker dropped in, by appointment, and Bunker said—

“What I wanted was, to have you talk with Mr. Osgood, here, about Sally Archer, and the best way to get on her track. As I have already told you, confidentially, he and I—however, you can take him to your room and discuss the whole matter and plan out the search. Have you been mulling it over any?”

“Yes, I've made a start. If you'd like to come with us—”

“I'll come presently. No—you come to me when you are through. Did you find any letters of about that date?”

“Yes, here are eight, and I can get more if you want them.”

“No, these will do, no doubt.”

Parker and Allen moved down the hall and entered a room; Bunker stood listening. He heard a door close, then he closed his own and eagerly took up the letters, and began to glance through them.

“They will answer,” he said. “Yes, they will answer. A good, firm, business-like hand. Harrison was at his best in those days.”

He sat down and took a pen and began to carefully copy one of [begin page 396] them. He finished his work and compared it with the original, nodding approvingly, and saying, “It's no trick at all; even a novice could counterfeit a hand like that.”

The letters were written on foolscap, with a red line down the left-hand side of the page. Bunker now forged a couple, dated them back seventeen and sixteen years, and signed the late Harrison's name to them. They began with “Dear Bro.,” and consisted mainly of colorless commonplaces; they had the air of “duty” letters. That kind lack juice. These lacked it, except that there was one drop in each. This—in one:

This—in the other:

“Come in!”

It was Floyd Parker.

“Sit down. Go on. Tell me.”

“Well, I've mapped it out for him, and made it sufficiently difficult to keep him busy and entertained—and harmless.”

“Right.”

“He has the several places where Sally tarried after she left, and twice as many where she didn't tarry—”

“That's the idea, exactly! But you left out New York and the pest house?”

[begin page 397]

“Certainly. He can trace her three years, but not the fourth; I have arranged for that.”

“Very good. They've been dead—how long is it?”

“About eleven years. I say, Simon, that's a good boy—dreadfully simple, but he hasn't the least harm in him, except what other people put there.”

“Why, hang it, Floyd, that describes the most of us—don't you know that? Was there any harm in you and me when we were boys together? Did we take to crookednesses of our own volition, or wasn't it by the devilish training of resentments nursed and mulled over for wrongs done us?”

A cynical smile flitted across Parker's face, but he said nothing.

“Where would you be, now, but for this old scoundrel that's dead?” Bunker got up and began to walk the floor and gesticulate. “Yes, where would you be? Why, you'd be in your father's shoes—rich, and president of the bank he left behind him.”

Parker made no response.

“And where would I be? Wasn't I prospering until he got his fangs into me? And didn't he strip me bare? Why, even to my poor swamp paradise, which he hadn't any use for! And isn't he the reason that for five years you were a sot, and that the girl that should have been your wife died of a broken heart?”

He paused, but Parker said nothing. Bunker resumed, still walking, still punctuating and italicising with his hands:

“And wasn't he the reason that every time the people might have promoted me a grade or two the old shame of my post-office stupidity was resurrected and laughed about and my chance spoiled? But for him my life would not be the half-success it is—I should be away up! Isn't it so?”

Another pause, and no response. Bunker—raising his voice:

“Floyd! I have done things, and you have done things, which, if anybody besides you and I knew them—Why, if we had the money he robbed us of—Floyd, every cent of it has got to come out of that estate, let the means and methods be what they may—Why don't you say something!”

Parker's hard face cracked slightly in several directions and let [begin page 398] out an ironical laugh; a laugh of the sort that blows a chill upon sentiment. It was followed by words in keeping with it, chaffingly uttered:

“Sit down, Simon, and cool-off your soul.”

Bunker's face flushed, and he seemed on the point of saying something hot; then he jerked his chair into position and flung himself into it, saying, in a tone of disgust—

“Oh, well, I'm a fool, of course. Go on, I know what you're going to say.”

Parker responded with mocking urbanity—

“No, I should not put it as strong as that; I should not say ‘of course’—no, not quite that; I think the most I should say—Look here, Bunker, let's be serious. Come—are you willing to talk on that basis?”

“Am I willing! Have I been otherwise?”

“Very well, for the sake of argument, let us suppose you haven't. Shall I be serious?”

“Yes, go on.”

“All right, then. Drop sentiment, and come down to business. Now, you know me, and I know you. It's all right for you to hatch out a lot of excuses to rob the estate—it's your nature; it's my nature to rob it without any. It's your nature to want to humbug yourself when you are starting out on an indiscretion, you were born so and you can't help it; it's my nature to go right ahead and commit the indiscretion and not worry about reasons for it. Born so. Why, man, if we hadn't been born with a predisposition to rascality, those little cheatings and overreachings and ill-usings couldn't make rascals of us. Sho! all you wanted was a chance! Chance to develop and be your predestined self. The same with me. We've had it. The result is before you. Now then, let's be honest, just this once, dear, dear old friend and pal, and recognize this plain unadorned fact: we wish to rob that estate, we mean to rob that estate, we don't care what the means are nor who it hurts, old Harrison's treatment of us isn't our inspiration, sentiment is clean away outside of it, we'd skin it, by God, if it belonged to an orphan asylum, and you know it; come out and say it, like a man!”

[begin page 399]

Bunker broke into a laugh, and Parker followed suit. Then Bunker said—

“Well, the truth is, it's as you say; but somehow I never could seem to go into an impropriety without shoring myself up with a kind of a justification, you know.”

“That's all right, it's your nature. But you've confessed; sentiment has had its innings; the atmosphere is purged of humbug, now, the decks are cleared for action, our spirits are up, we're ready for business. Satisfied?”

“I am.”

“All right—play ball!”

Bunker drained his glass, smacked his lips, and said—

“Very well. Now, then, listen to the scheme—I didn't half fill it out last night—I might say I didn't even skeletonize it. I've made Osgood and the spy believe that Sally is the wronged wife and the person we really want—”

“Yes, I got that from Osgood.”

“—whereas, of course—”

“Yes, I know. We want the Millikens. Allen told me about the enigmatical advertisement that is to fetch them. He was miserably sorry you didn't explain it.”

“Yes, no doubt. Now then, we shall hear from them inside of ten days—”

“If—”

“Oh, yes, I know: if they're alive. Confound that if, it is a most troublesome one. But anyway—”

“Go on—leave the if out.”

“In that case I'll have a talk with her, and establish the marriage, and the estate is hers, sure—subject to our lien on it. See it?”

Parker wrinkled his brows in thought, a while, then said—

“Well, no. I don't quite see it. With that ten years hanging over her, how is she going to venture before a court and—”

“Oh, no, no, there'll be nothing of that kind. This isn't a matter for courts.”

“What, then?”

“It's only for that Indiantown heir, George Harrison.”

[begin page 400]

“How do you mean?”

“Prove the marriage to him privately.”

“Good. But by whose evidence?”

“Hers.”

“Good again. But he will carry it into court, of course.”

“Not if he is the man I take him to be. I have pumped young Allen pretty thoroughly, and I conclude that Harrison is a most strangely and unaccountably scarable man—for a grown person. Afraid of shadows—a man with a lofty and blameless reputation, a sort of idol and model of all the moralities and virtues, in the eyes of the community, and would rather lose a leg than come down a peg from that high place. Prove the marriage, and that is the kind of a man to step down and out without a word.”

Parker did some more thinking; then said—

“Has the man no protectors?”

“A young son, and the son's law-partner; but he doesn't seem to have business-confidences with anybody but a flighty nondescript with a rather suggestive nick-name—the Idiot Philosopher.”

“Yes. Curious bird. Osgood threw in a word or two about him. Go on with the scheme. Tell me—how are you going to prove the marriage to Harrison? That done, how are you going to prove to him, to his entire satisfaction, that this woman is the right one, and not a substitute?”

“Why, if she's dead, we've got to get a substitute; but in either case the identification is easy and sure. Read these.”

He handed the new letters to Parker, whose face, for the first time since his arrival in the room, broke up in a smile of a genial and undevilish sort.

“Forgeries!”

“That's it.”

“Good enough, too; but the paper and ink—however, that's all right; you know how to take the freshness out of them.”

“I do.”

“Well, they'll do for private exploitation with Harrison and the woman, I reckon—they don't have to be perfect for that.”

“They'll do; and if—”

Parker cut him short with a burst of admiration:

[begin page 401]

“O come, this is great! why, this is a master-stroke!”

“What—the brand?”

“Yes.”

“A pretty unassailable sort of an identifier, isn't it?”

“Well, I—should—say! It's grand! How did you find out she was branded?”

“I didn't.”

Parker glanced up wonderingly, admiringly—

“Do you mean to say—”

“I just do. Invented the idea myself.”

“By George!” Parker reached for his hat, put it on, then took it off ceremoniously. “I uncover to you. It would have been a pity if you had entered the ministry, because—”

“Thanks. These flatteries—”

“O, opulently endowed! O, incomparable rascal! Why, Bunker, it's genius; that's what it is, it's genius. You can put the brand on any woman you please, and there she is!—old Harrison's widow, and no way to get around it.”

“That's the idea,” said Bunker, well pleased.

“Well—well—well—it does beat anything that ever—But look here, you don't say where she was branded.”

“Because women are so various in the matter of taste—in brands. It is best to let them choose the part of their person they prefer to have it on.”

“Another stroke of genius! Upon my word, Bunker, there's not two men in a million that could have thought of a delicate shade like that. Why, you know, it's just immense!”

“Glad you like it, Floyd. It did seem to me it was rather neat.”

“Neat! it isn't syllables enough by fourteen. Shakspeare himself couldn't discount it, the best day he ever saw. Come—here's success to the conspiracy; drink hearty. Now a word more, and then I'll go. What's my part to play?”

“A quiet trip to Indiantown.”

“To look the ground over and study the situation and Harrison?”

“That's it. Have you ever been there?”

“No.”

[begin page 402]

“Good. Know anybody there?”

“No.”

“Good again. You'll have to go disguised; like enough the spy and Allen have described us casually in their letters home. Where'll you hail from, and what will you be?”

“Mm—let me see. Specially I need to know Harrison—”

“Yes.”

“Well, I'll think up something that will answer; something of a simple and quiet sort. Fortune-teller is my best card, perhaps—I'm used to it. How does it strike you?”

“Just the thing, it seems to me, for you can find out the past of the principal villagers from Gunning and Osgood.”

“Very well, I will pump them a day or two and then disappear.”

A week later. Ann Bailey had been out slumming around among the very poor. Formerly she had been able to contribute only sympathy and affection and encouragement, and sick-nursing, and help in the kitchen and at the wash-tub—it was all she had to contribute; but in these latter days she was having prouder and happier times, for now she could spend a little money on these people, and she got great satisfaction out of this. Her clothes were plain and cheap, but they were new, and that novelty was precious to her, and a happiness. Her heart was singing. She entered her house by the back way and the kitchen, and stopped in the door that opened into her parlor. Stopped and began to gaze. Her husband sat by the stove, with an open letter in his hand and misery in his face. He was lost to the world, he was not conscious of Ann's presence. She still gazed, and gazed, while the waters of her wrath rose; presently the dam burst:

“Sol Bailey!”

It brought him to, with a wrench.

[begin page 403]

“Gracious, Ann, why do you—”

“Never you mind the why's of it; what I want to know is, what new streak of good luck has gone and happened, to make you look like that?”

“I don't know why you should think good luck could have such a—”

“Because it always does. There wasn't ever such a misconstructed man in the world, I do believe. If ever you're set up and gay, it's over something for a sane person to cry about, and if ever you're—come, out with it, Sol Bailey, what's happened?”

She flung off her things and came and sat down by him.

“Now then,” she said, “go on. Tell me about it.”

“It's this letter, Ann,” said Bailey, with a dreary sigh. “All our dreams are gone to ruin—it's from Allen.”

Ann's face grew grave.

“Ah,” she said; and then “ah,” again, after a pause; and fell to nervously clasping and unclasping her hands, a sign that she was troubled. Presently she said, not very resignedly—

“Oh, well, it was to be expected.”

“What was, Ann?”

“Why, that the one-eighth of a fifth, and the fifth a fifth of an uncertain remnant at that, would knock the whole thing into flinders and they wouldn't accept. Oh, hang it, I just knew it, I felt it! why did we ever go and do that fool thing!” and she was near to crying.

“Yes, but Ann, they do accept.”

“No!—you don't mean it!” and she flung her arms around Sol and gave him a passionate hug. The next moment she burst out on him and said, “Then what in the nation are you sweating about, you turnip?”

Sol said, reproachfully—

“Ann, you always go off like that, and you don't give a person a chance. If you would wait and hear it all, then you would see it's as I said.”

“Ruined?”

“Yes.”

“Well, then, go on. Prosperity's new, it ain't a habit yet—a body [begin page 404] can break it, I guess.” Then she added, mournfully, “Go on; I'm used to trouble, I reckon I can stand it.”

“Poor old girl, I'm just as sorry; I love you, dear,” and he patted her head.

“Say it again, Sol, it heals all a body's sores—life can't ever get quite dreary as long as that music's in it.” Sol said it again, with another love-pat, and Ann said—

“I can hear the bad news now, and not turn a hair. Take hold of my hand. Now go on, Sol.”

“Well, it's like this, Ann. There's two letters. Here's the other one. One accepts, and wants help. That's good luck, as long as we were sending it anyway; and it says they were after the wrong pair, but they're after the right pair now—and that's all right; but the other letter is later, and says that the fresh pair have been gone eleven years, and Allen says it may take two or three years to run them down, and maybe they'll never find them at all, and if they do, they may find them dead. And so, you see, it's just a wild-goose chase, Ann—we'll never never find them, and everything's gone to smash, I just know it. Oh, dear, it was only a dream, just a beautiful dream, and it's a wreck.”

“Thank goodness!” Ann said it with fervor.

“Thank goodness, Ann?” said Sol, with surprise. “What about?”

Evidently Ann's troubles were all gone.

“Let me get a drink; land, my throat is that dry!” She got her drink and returned. “Now then,” she said, “I was right, in the first place. Whenever you are hit with the dumps, Sol, it means good luck. What are those expenses yonder in Memphis?”

“Four or five thousand dollars a year.”

“Your salary is half as much?”

“Yes.”

“What is prob'ly George Harrison's income from the estate?”

“At ten per cent, which is about right, forty thousand a year.”

“Now then, Sol Bailey, you listen to me, and have some sense. Are these expenses going to crush George Harrison?”

“Sho! of course not.”

“Suppose we should find the heirs next week, and they should [begin page 405] stand out for nine-tenths, and just would have it, spite of anything we could do? Is there anything to hender it?”

“Why—no, I reckon not.”

“Well, then, where'd we be, with our one-eighth of a one-fifth of what's left? What is one-eighth of nothing, Sol Bailey?”

“Well, the fact is—”

“And what is one-eighth of one-fifth of nothing, when we don't get the nothing, but have to divide it, and subdivide it, and split it up and—and—Sol Bailey, don't you see?”

Bailey was in a whirl of half-comprehension, half-bewilderment.

“See—see what, Ann?”

“Why, this. If they take years to find those people, it's good luck for George Harrison—his income goes on—and your salary goes on, and that is good enough luck for us. I hope they'll never be found, for that good soul's sake!”

“So do I! So do I, Ann, I see it now—what a head you've got!”

“I was born with it,” said Ann, giving it an appreciative toss. “Now then, go straight and cheer that man up. Tell him the search has got to go on, now that it's started and other parties interested in it and bargained with, but there isn't the least likelihood that that pair's ever going to be found—not inside of five years anyway, maybe ten.”

“I'll do it! It will make him the happiest man in the world. Ann, you are the most wonderful woman to dig through a cloud and find the sunshine on the other side that ever was—give me a kiss.”

He found Harrison melancholy, despondent, miserable, and for fifteen minutes he rained upon him the refreshing shower of his news; then in a passion of gratitude Harrison shook him by both hands and said—

“I was dead, and you have brought me to life again—what a friend you are, Bailey! I don't know how to thank you.”

“Oh, never mind about—”

“Bailey! found or not found, your salary goes right on just the same, as long as I've got the money to pay it with. No, no, no, not a [begin page 406] word, I won't hear it. I will have it so, and it's a contract. Tell your wife so, from me—a good woman, if ever there was one. Going? Don't. Stop to supper—do; there'll be others.”

Bailey was persuadable, for he liked talk and company, and the Harrison table was good. The evening passed off happily. The conversation was of a cheerful sort, and for once there were no chance remarks about murders and murderers to send cold chills down Harrison's back. When he found himself alone at half past ten, he looked so restful and at peace that old Martha noticed it and said it did her good to see it. Then she went on talking while she set things to rights.

“I been down to de village safternoon, en I seen Marse Tom en Miss Helen, en dey couldn't come up to-day; but Marse George, dey's a-thinkin' 'bout you all de time, en a-praisin' you up, en dey ain't nobody got no mo' lovin' chillern den what dem is. Marse George, you orter be mighty happy.”

“I know it, Martha, I know it; and to-night I am.”

“Well, suh, you looks it—hit do jist do a body's heart good to see it. I wisht it was mo' oftener. But nemmine, hit gwyne to come, don't you be 'fraid 'bout dat. En ain't dey happy! oh, it's jist pooty to see 'em. En Miss Helen—lawsy me, de way she look in Marse Tom's eyes an wusshup—dat's it, wusshup—dat's de right name of it. En Marse Tom he's jist de same 'bout her—plumb crazy. Oh, yes indeedy, if dey's anybody in de worl' got a right to be happy thoo en thoo, hit's you, Marse George—en thank Gawd you is; it make yo' face fa'rly shine!”

She gossiped cheerily along at her work, dropping in a word about this and that and the other villager and his small affairs and working up the effects with an eye to George's further uplifting and refreshment; and when at last her tasks were finished and she took her leave she recognized that his spirits were many points higher than they had ever registered since the old master's death, and she was proud of her share in bringing about that result.

“She's a good old soul,” Harrison said to himself. “If I could only feel like this, all the time! And why shouldn't I? Troubles are only mental; it is the mind that manufactures them, and the mind can forget them, banish them, abolish them. Mine shall do it. Nothing [begin page 407] is needed but resolution, firmness, determination. I will exert it. It is the only wisdom. I will put all these goblins, these unrealities behind me, I have been their slave long enough; if I have done wrong I have atoned for it, I have paid the cost and more, I have sweated blood, I have earned my freedom, I have earned peace and a redeemed and contented spirit, and why should I not have them? I will lift up my head, it is my right. I am honored and esteemed by all. Yes, by all. I can say it truly. There is not a person in the community who does not look up to me and—”

There was a knock on the front door. Harrison stepped to it and opened it, and found Jasper standing there in the humble attitude of his caste, with his ancient slouch hat in his hand.

“Kin I see you a minute, seh?” he asked.

Harrison said, with ruffled dignity—

“Where are your manners, you dog? Take yourself to the back door.”

He closed the front one in Jasper's face and returned to his seat. Presently Jasper entered by the back one, without knocking, came forward, and began:

“I wanted to ast you, seh—”

“Take your hat off!”

“I begs yo' pahdon, seh—I fo'got, deed I did, seh, I's in sich trouble en so worrited.”

“Now then, go on. And cut it short. What is it you want? Wait—put that stick on the fire.”

Jasper dropped his hat on the floor and obeyed. But the stick slipped from his hands, and scattered the coals in every direction. While he brushed them up George scolded his clumsiness and superintended his work, correcting, fussing, finding fault, and giving new orders before the mulatto could finish the old ones. At last there was an end, and George said—

“I think I never saw such an awkward brute.”

Jasper explained.

“I ain't allays so, Marse Hahson, but I been laid up in de bed considable many days, en I's stiff en ain't got de full use er myseff.”

“What laid you up?”

“De constable, he done it. He gimme thutty-nine.”

[begin page 408]

“You needed it, I reckon. Step out back and fetch in an armful of wood, then tell me what your business is, here—and be quick about it, you hear? it's getting late.”

This all seems harsh, coming from so kind-hearted a man as Harrison was, but it was merely custom, the habit of the time, in dealing with the colored man, and had less depth to it and feeling in it than a stranger to the country would have supposed. The whites imagined that the negroes did not mind it. They judged by the negro's outside, and forgot to inquire within. Jasper brought the wood and piled it, and Harrison said—

“You were out without a pass—was that it?”

“Yes, seh.”

“How was that?”

“You know, seh, I's de Squiah's g'yardener, en so now dey ain't nobody to gimme a pass.”

“Then you're here without one! Speak up—is that so?”

Jasper—humbly:

“Yes, seh. I ain't got no fren's, en—”

“I'll have you jailed to-morrow! Upon my word, the impudence of a free nigger beats anything that ever—look here, my man, what's your business here? Come, speak out—speak out.”

Jasper dropped on his knees and put up his hands and began to plead.

“Oh, marse Hahson, if I can't git nobody to he'p me I doan' know what gwyneter become er me. Workin' in de greenhouse ain't gwynter save me if I ain't got no pass. Dey'll drive me outen de State, en if I's to try to stay dey'd take en sell me, en if I resis' dey'll lynch me, caze I ain't got no fren's en nobody to stan' by me. Won't you, marse Hahson?—won't you stan' by me?”

“What!”

“You's de mos' pow'ful genlman in de whole deestrick, now; you's de only one dey dasn't stan' out agin, de only one dat kin say ‘You keep yo’ han's off'n him' and dey dasn't say a word. Don't you reckon, seh—”

“No—I don't. I don't like the law that sells and banishes free niggers, but if the people wish to enforce it it is their right, and as a Christian citizen it is my duty to bow to their will and not obstruct the law in its course.”

[begin page 409]

Jasper rose slowly up, and stood on his feet. Harrison turned his eyes away, and stroked his jaw nervously and uncomfortably with his hand; he was not proud of himself. There was a pause, then the negro said—

“Ain't dey noth'n better'n bein' a Christian, seh?”

“You blasphemous scoundrel! You—”

“I means, dat kind of a Christian, seh.”

Harrison turned an outraged eye upon him and motioned toward the door with his hand, saying sharply—

“I've had enough of this—quite enough; I don't like your tone; there's the door; move along!”

Jasper picked up his hat and stood fumbling it, with his head bowed, Harrison watching him with rising choler. After a moment or two the drooping head came up—and the hat was on it! Harrison could not speak. He could only stare, and wonder if this miracle of insolence was real, or only a fantastic delusion. Jasper turned slowly away, saying, absently—

“Po' Jake Bleeker. If de law would let a nigger testify in a cote—”

Any reference to the tragedy which had wrecked Harrison's life was enough—it took the man all out of him, it filled his imagination with formless shapes and ghastly terrors. He rose up sick and trembling, steadying himself with his hand on his chair-back, and said, with a weak counterfeit of mere curiosity—

“Wait a moment. What's that?”

Jasper moved a step, saying—

“ 'Tain't no matter, seh.” Still moving: “ 'Course de law—”

“Wait, I tell you,” said Harrison. “This is a matter of interest to every public-spirited citizen; nothing concerning it—however seemingly trivial it may seem—is unimportant. What are you hinting at? Suppose niggers could testify—what then?”

Jasper's hat was still on. Harrison ignored it. Jasper turned toward him, and said—

“Marse Hahson, you reckon dey's any doubt dat de Squiah done it?”

Harrison answered with as easy a confidence as he was able to assume—

“Oh, no, there seems to be none. No, none at all, I am afraid.”

[begin page 410]

He wished the mulatto would not keep his eyes bent on him so steadily; the effect was uncomfortable.

“Dey say de Squiah tole Miss Helen he never done it; dey say he tole her dat de man 'at done it was a stranger in de place. Does you reckon dat could happen, seh?”

“Why, yes. Why, certainly, it could happen.”

Jasper was silent a moment, then he said—

“I hearn a man say he reckon it could a been a stranger, en said he b'lieve it was, en said he wisht he could find dat man.”

Harrison could not say anything; the remark made him shiver. The silence that followed oppressed him; it seemed to bear down on him like a weight. Presently Jasper said, in an indifferent tone—

“I reckon marse Tom would, too, becaze he's gwyne to marry in de fambly.”

Harrison—relieved:

“Ah, yes, yes, indeed he would!”

“'Course—hit stan' to reason. En you'd like to find de man, too.”

“Ye-s.”

In an instant Jasper snatched him by the shoulders and whirled him in front of the mirror.

“Dah he is!“

Harrison's terror paralysed his voice for a moment, then it freed itself in a passion of fright and indignation mixed, and he broke away, panting, and stood at bay and began to pour out a torrent of threats and curses and insults upon the mulatto, who listened with the look of one who is hearing pleasant music; listened intently, tranquilly, contentedly: then, in the midst of it all, he fished around in his coat pocket in a leisurely way and got out a white handkerchief with two holes in it and blood stains upon it, and shook it out and held it up by two corners!

The tornado stopped, and Harrison sank into a chair, white and breathless, and dumbly staring. Jasper folded the handkerchief carefully, slowly, elaborately, and returned it to his pocket. Then he nodded toward Harrison and said—

“You is my meat.”

Harrison moaned in his misery, but no words came. He realized [begin page 411] that a formidable disaster had befallen him. How formidable it might be he could not estimate, it was but matter for guesswork as yet, and his brain was too much stunned to work capably, now, upon the materials at hand. It tried to guess, of course, but its efforts were so dominated by fright that they were the opposite of tranquilizing. Presently these thought-processes suffered an interruption which changed their drift and raised the temperature of Harrison's blood by several degrees: the negro coolly sat down in his presence! This was too much. For a moment Harrison forgot all other things in the indignation bred in him by this monstrous insult, and he straightened up and said—

“How dare you? Get up!”

For all reply the negro got out the red-stained mask again, and spread it upon his knees. In an instant Harrison had snatched it and sprung toward the fire with it; but in the next moment his wrists were prisoners in the vise-like grip of the yellow athlete's brawny hands. He struggled, and raged, and wept—a vain waste of wind and strength, it was but a case of rabbit and wolf; Jasper held him, waited, and said nothing. When he saw that his prey was exhausted, he crushed him into his chair, freed him, and said, picking up the fallen mask and pocketing it—

“Set dah en pant whilst I talks to you, Hahson.”

Harrison allowed this fresh affront to pass; there could be no profit in discussing it, in the circumstances.

“Now den, in de fust place, some niggers is fools. De mos' of 'em is. Well, I ain' no fool. You gwyneter fine it out 'fo' I's done wid you. I's gwyneter ast you some questions. Answer 'em right out squah en plain—I ain' gwyneter 'low no foolin'. You knowed de hankcher was missin'?”

“Yes.”

“Didn't you reckon it was cur'us it didn't turn up at de inques'?”

“Yes.”

“'Course! What did you reckon was de reason?”

“Thought an enemy had it.”

“White enemy?”

“Yes.”

[begin page 412]

The negro chuckled.

“You ain' got none! Hain't it so?”

“Well—yes. I believe it is.”

“Den it was a dam fool reason. He'd a brung it to de inques', so's he kin git revenge. But I never brung it to de inques'. Does you know de reason?”

“No.”

“Becaze I warn't ready. Does you know why I brung it now?”

“No.”

“Becaze I is ready.”

“I don't know how you are more ready now than you were on the fourth of November. I don't see any reason for it.”

“Den I's gwyneter tell you. Nigger evidence ain't no good in cote?”

“N-no.” Harrison felt a sinking sensation at the pit of his stomach.

“I had to rummage out de white witness, en I done it!”

Harrison sank back with a gasp, and a half-smothered “Ah, my God!” He looked so ghastly that Jasper jumped for water and sprinkled some in his face, thinking he would die if help was not promptly afforded. He watched his patient with absorbing interest and solicitude until he saw him revive, then he resumed his talk and his tortures.

“Does you know, Hahson, if I couldn't make dat white man tell what he seen en what he hearn dat night, he wouldn't go a step to de cote? Becaze—well, I knows why. You's pow'ful strong en 'spectable en looked up to, Hahson, you's got a mighty good name in dis town.”

The persecutor chuckled again.

“But he knows I kin fetch de white folks dat'll jail him down dah in de Souf any time I says de word, en so if I tell him to go to de cote en swah agin you, he got to.”

Harrison was about to pluck up a little imitation spirit and cast contempt upon this possibly imaginary witness, when Jasper added, in an indifferent tone—

“But I ain' gwyneter sen' him to no cote.”

Joyful words! So joyful that Harrison was half afraid, for a [begin page 413] moment, that he had mis-heard. But before he could reassure himself and utter his gratification, Jasper was speaking again. What he said dismissed the fickle sunshine and brought the clouds once more.

“Dat man ain' gwyne to no cote, Hahson—not if I knows it. You b'longs to me, now. You's my proppity, same as a nigger, en I ain' gwyneter was'e you. By God, I kin hang you any minute I wanter! Git up en fetch yo' marster a dram!”

Through Harrison's half-paralysed brain flitted the shameful reflection, “Slave of an ex-slave! it is the final degradation; there is nothing below this.” It is win or lose, now—this moment will never come again; he must act a man's part, now—resist, free himself, risk his life on it, or remain a slave! He said in his heart he would, and bravely raised his eyes; they met the stern gaze of the master, wavered there a moment, then fell. He was conquered, and knew it. He rose, and passed unsteadily by his tamer, and at the other end of the room began his menial labors.

“Make it strong—you heah? En put sugar in it.”

Harrison's eye fell upon the gun—double-barrelled—loaded for robbers. He glanced cautiously around, hopeful, excited, trembling from his hair to his heels: Jasper's back was to him! stirring the toddy noisily with one hand, he reached for the gun with the other, got it and faced about, cocking it. Jasper heard the clicks, turned, and looked down the barrels. Harrison pulled the triggers. Jasper burst into an unfeeling laugh.

“I never see sich a fool,” he said; “didn't you reckon I knowed de gun was dah—right whah anybody kin see it? I done fix' dat gun befo' de constable laid me up. Been yo' ole father, he'd a foun' it out, but I could 'pen' 'pon you, you doan' take notice er noth'n. I drove pins in de nipples en filed 'em down. Stan' her up in de cornder. When I's done wid you you kin have some mo' guns if you want 'em—dey ain't gwyne to worry me none. You's gwyne to p'oteck me, yo' own seff—you'll see; yes, en you's gwyneter be mighty k'yerful uv me, too, dat you is. Fetch de dram!”

He tasted it. “Put in some mo' sugar.” He tasted again. “Put in mo'—dah, dat's enough.” He had his feet in Harrison's chair. “Whah is yo' paper en pen? Git 'em. Git a cheer. Now, den, you [begin page 414] write what I tells you. En don't you try to come no games, er I'll make you sorry.”

George wrote from Jasper's dictation, doctoring the English as he went along:

Jasper folded the pass and put it in his pocket.

“Now den,” he said, “write agin.” He furnished the words. The pen dropped from Harrison's paralysed fingers.

“Write that? Oh, my God,” he cried, “I can't—I can't!”

“You can't?” said Jasper, dispassionately.

“How can I? Have some mercy! What are you going to do with it?”

“Gwyne to make you safe—dat's de idear. Hit'll go to dat witness—alonger dish-yer hankcher dat I's got. If anything happen' to me, he'll know what to do wid it. If noth'n don't happen to me, he on'y jist hide it en wait, en keep mum. Well, dey ain't noth'n gwyne to happen to me. You's gwyneter take pow'ful good k'yer o' dat, I bet you!”

“Yes, I will, with my hand on my heart I promise I will and—”

“I doan' want none o' yo' promises,” said Jasper, scornfully, “I wouldn't give a dern for 'em.”

“I'll do anything you say—anything, everything you tell me to—”

“Mp! Dey ain't no 'casion for you to tell me dat, I 'low to make you.”

“—but spare me this—I can't, oh, I can't write it!”

Jasper got up and moved lazily away, remarking in a careless tone—

“Dat's all right—dat's all right.”

“Wait!” cried Harrison in a panic; “oh, don't go! Where are you going?”

“Whah is I gwyne? You knows mighty well whah I's a gwyne, Jawge Hahson.”

“Stop, for God's sake, don't go! I'll write it—I will, I will!”

[begin page 415]

“Well, den, do it. En I can tell you dis: if I starts agin—”

“There it is! it's written. Now be kind, be merciful; I've signed away my life, my good name, my liberty, all my spiritual riches—”

“En you's a slave!—dat's what you is; en I lay I'll learn you de paces! I been one, en I know 'em; slave to de meanest white man dat ever walked—en he 'uz my father; en I bought my freedom fum him en paid him for it, en he took 'vantage of me en stole it back; en he sold my mother down de river, po' young thing, en she a cryin' en a beggin' him to let her hug me jist once mo', en he wouldn't; en she say ‘cruel, cruel,’ en he hit her on de mouf, God damn his soul!—but it's my turn, now; dey's a long bill agin de low-down ornery white race, en you's a-gwyneter settle it.”

He held up the fateful paper and contemplated it a long minute, his nostrils faintly dilating; and when at last he ceased from this contemplation he was visibly a changed man. The meek slouch of the slave was gone from him, and he stood straight, the exultation of victory burning in his eyes; and not even his rags and tatters could rob his great figure of a certain state and dignity born in this moment to it of the pride of mastership and command that was rising in his heart. He looked the master; but that which had gone from him was not lost, for his discarded droop and humble mien had passed to his white serf, and already they seemed not out of place there, but fit, and congruous, and pathetically proper and at home.

He resumed his chair and sat dreaming, musing, and unconsciously fondling and caressing the puissant bit of paper that had lifted him so high and brought that other man so low. Harrison was submerged in thinkings, too. Presently he stirred, and something like a moan escaped him. It roused Jasper, who said—

“Hahson?”

Harrison—wearily, sadly:

“Yes?”

“Yes?” (mimicking him). “Is dat yo' manners?”

Harrison looked up, inquiringly.

“I—I don't understand.”

“You don't? Well, den, I'll learn you. Does servants say Yes, to dey marster, and stop dah?”

[begin page 416]

The word stuck in Harrison's throat; it refused to come.

“Hahson!”

By this help he got it out:

“Yes . . . sir?”

“Now den, don't you fo'git again. I lay if you do I'll make you sorry. You's a servant—you unnerstan'?—en I's gwyneter make you know yo' place en keep it. Say it agin!”

“Yes, sir.”

“Dat's all right. Practice! You heah?”

“Yes, sir.”

The mulatto's eyes spat fire for a while, filling Harrison's soul with nameless fears and discomforts, and he wished he could forecast this exacting master's requirements and save himself sorrow by meeting them before the orders came. He was alert, now, and pitifully anxious to do almost anything that could protect him from the pain and shame of uttered insults.

“Hahson?”

Harrison—with a timorous eagerness:

“Yes, sir?”

“Hain't I a talkin' to you?”

“Yes, sir.”

A pause—with a penetrating look of inquiry and disapproval. Then—

“Well den!”

“I—I'm afraid I don't understand, sir. I—”

“Does servants set down when dey marsters is talkin' to 'em?”

Harrison rose and stood, with the red sign of humiliation stealing into his gray and tired face. Jasper contemplated his serf's misery with deep and healing satisfaction: studying it, weighing it, measuring it, so to speak, his mind traveling back over bitter years and comparing it with the thousand instances wherein he himself had been the unoffending victim and had looked like that, suffered like that. Then he began to speak.

“Hahson, hit do me good to look at you like dat. My father serve' me so, many's de time, en I not doin' any harm, no mo' dan what you is. En him a white man, en treat my po' little mother so, en rob' me like a thief—I hope he's a-roastin' in hell! Hahson?”

[begin page 417]

“Yes, sir.”

“You's white, en I's gwyneter take it outer you. You en de res'. Ev'ry time I gits a chance. Now den, I done made my plans, en I's gwyneter tell you. I been run outer two States, or dey'd a sold me to de nigger-traders or lynch' me. Some folks hint aroun' dey gwyneter drive me outer dis one. Lemme see 'em try it!—it'll cost you heavy. Dey hints if I don't go, dey gwyneter put me on de block en sell me. Lemme see 'em try it!—it'll cost you heavy. Dey hints if I resis' dey gwyneter lynch me. Lemme see 'em try it! Let 'em try jist one un um—en straight off dish-yer paper goes to Miss Helen!”

“Oh, for God's sake! Oh—”

“Shet up! Git up off'n de flo'!—a-clawin' en a-wallerin' aroun' like a cat in a fit; you oughter be 'shame' er yoseff, en you a grown pusson. Dah, now, set on de flo' if you can't stan' up—dad burn you, you ain' got no mo' grit 'n a rabbit. I reckon you's a right down coward, Hahson. Fac' I knows you is; for I knows you—knows you by de back, same as de gamblers knows de k'yards. Stop dat whinin' en blubberin', Hahson; stop it! you heah me?”

Jasper sat looking down at him in measureless contempt. Presently he took up his discourse again.

“Hahson, made de way you is, you ain't in no danger—not de least.”

“Oh, I am so thankful for—”

“Thank yo'seff! Dat's whah it b'longs. You ain't gwyneter git yo'seff in no danger—lawd, I knows you. Becaze you knows better'n to let anybody do me any harm, bless yo' soul you does! Now, den, you listen. Hahson, I can't stay wid you to-night, caze I got to go en give de white witness de hankcher en de paper en 'splain to him what to do case any harm come to me whilst I's in dis deestrick; but I's a-comin' back in de mawnin', en den I's gwyneter stay wid you all yo' life. When dey's anybody aroun', I's yo' servant, en pow'ful polite, en waits on you, en waits on de table, en wah's good clo'es, en runs arrants, en sleeps over yo' stable, en gits ten dollars a week; en when dey ain't nobody aroun' but me en you, you's my servant, en if I don't sweat you!—well, nemmine 'bout dat, I'll show you! Hahson?”

[begin page 418]

“Yes, sir.”

“You ain' got no manners.”

“I know, but I can soon—”

“Learn? You better bet you kin—if you knows what's good for you. Hahson?”

“Yes, sir.”

“When I's a waitin' on de quality, you keep yo' eye on me, en notice de way I does, en de way I 'spress myseff, en de way I bows, en all dat; den you study it by yo'seff, en practice. You ain't fitten for shucks de way you is, becase you ain't had no breedin', but I's gwyneter make you wuth two dollars a week befo' I's done wid you. Does you unnerstan' de whole plan, now?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Gimme de fust week. Ten dollars. Don't you fo'git 'bout de clo'es, ner 'bout de stable—you heah? Git up en open de do' for me.”

When he was gone Harrison put his face in his hands and sobbed, moaning and muttering, and saying, “Oh, my God, I cannot bear it, the burden is too heavy; why was I born with a man's form and a rabbit's heart? why haven't I the courage to kill myself? who but I would keep a life that is become an agony?”

At dawn in the morning Jasper arrived at Harrison's kitchen with a banjo, a jewsharp, a mouth-harp, and not much other baggage. He uncovered the fire, built it up, brought in a load of wood, fetched a bucket of water from the well, filled the kettle, hung it on the hook, found the breakfast coffee in the mill, and was beginning to grind it when old Martha entered from her room to see who was making the noise. She threw up her hands in astonishment, and said—

[begin page 419]

“Well, fo' de lan' sake if it ain't you! What brung you heah, Jasper?”

“What brung me? Bless yo' soul, honey, I's de new servant.”

“No!—you don't say!”

“True for a fac', my darlin'. Marse Hahson done hire me las' night.”

“Well—well—well—is dat so? Now ain't you in luck, sho' nuff?”

“Deed I is, en so is you. Caze you ain' got no sweetheart, en I's gwyneter cote you—dat I is, honey. You's de gal for me!”

“Shet up yo' impudence, er I'll take en bat you over de head, you long-laigged yaller-jacket! I's ole enough to be yo' mother.”

Then they broke out and laughed a rollicking laugh in cordial admiration of their powers of repartee, and Jasper plunged at Martha saying he was just “honing” for a kiss, and a three-minute struggling and scuffling and laughing followed, which ended in Jasper's getting the kiss and a sounding cuff; then Martha wiped her eyes on her apron and said—

“Allays a humbuggin' en a carryin' on, I never see sich a nigger; hain't you ever serious no time?”

“What I gwyneter be serious 'bout? I ain't only thutty-five; what I got to be serious 'bout?”

“Nemmine, nemmine, Jasper, you wait ontel you's fifty, de way I is—”

“Den I'll be serious de way you is, you ole cat!”

“Jasper, what you needs is some trouble; I lay dat'll take de friskies outen you when it come—you'll see.”

“G'long wid you! Trouble! didn't dat constable take de hide off'n me?”

Martha set her hands on her hips and gave him a look that was full of pity of his ignorance.

“Took de hide off'n you! What's dat! 'Tain't nothin'. Who gwyneter mind a little thing like dat? You doan' know nothin' 'bout real trouble; you wait ontel you has some real trouble, den you'll know!”

“Well, den, what you call real trouble?”

“A heart dat's broke! dat's what's real trouble. If you'd a had a [begin page 420] father to lose, er a mother to lose. . . . Look at marse George. Dah's trouble! Jasper, mo'n half de time he jist can't res', on accounts er ole marster a-dyin.”

It seemed to impress Jasper, and he said—

“Well, I reckon it is turrible hard. But Martha, he was sich a ole man. I's pow'ful sorry for marse Hahson, but if he ain't got no troubles but dat—”

“Can't you see, yo'seff, dat it's enough? He couldn't stan' no mo' if he had 'em, you yaller fool!”

“Well, I ain't sayin' he could, I 'uz on'y jist sayin' he—”

“Shet up, you doan' know nothin' what you talkin' 'bout. You wait tell you's had trouble; up to den you can't talk nothin' 'bout it but foolishness.”

“Martha, how kin you say dat? Hain't I seen people dat's had it? Look at Bridget; look at de Squiah—my, dat's trouble, sho-nuff trouble. You see, if marse Hahson had troubles like dem—”

It went to Martha's compassionate old heart, and she said—

“Oh, yes, Gawd knows he ain't had no troubles like dem po' creturs has. 'Twould kill marse George, he got sich a good heart en so sof'. Why Jasper, jist hearin' 'bout what de Squiah done 'most killed him. Laws, it make me feel turrible down, talkin' like dis. Wake up de banjo.”

“Camptown Races?”

“Dat's it. Go it!”

Pul-lunky plunk-plunk plunk-plunk. Jasper poured out the gay song in great style, and when the chorus came round, Martha, all enthusiasm, added the rich voice that is the birthright of her race.

“I's boun' to run all night,
I's boun' to run all day,
I bet my money on de bobtail nag,
If somebody bet on de bay.”

Other songs followed, and rattling dance-tunes, and light-hearted laughter; and Harrison recognized the voices, and one of them carried dread and misery to his heart. An hour passed, and [begin page 421] Martha said she must carry up the shaving-water now, and set the table; but Jasper said—

“What you talkin' 'bout? What is I for?”

“Why, bless you, Jasper, I clean fo'got you's hired. Ain't dat good! 'Tain't gwyneter be lonesome en mo'nful in dis kitchen no mo', now. I's pow'ful glad, Jasper. Heah—take de hot water. You got a good marster, now—jist as kind. He'll cuff you roun' a little when he's cross, but don't you mind, 'tain't much, en he don't mean nothin' by it.”

Jasper answered bravely—

“I doan' k'yer noth'n for cuffin', I kin stan' all he'll gimme.”

He departed with the water. Martha liked that reply of his; it showed the right spirit, the spirit of a slave, and made her doubt if free niggers were quite as black as they had been commonly painted—for certainly here was one that was rational, and worthily constructed. She felt sure that Jasper's sunny spirit would have a good influence upon the master, and that the importing it into the shadowed homestead would turn out to have been a fortunate idea on the master's part. She recognized, too, that there was profit for herself in the arrangement—her labor-burdens eased, and lively company at hand in place of loneliness. Jasper was gone ten minutes.

“What kep' you so long?” she asked, when he returned.

Jasper's white teeth radiated a gleaming smile, and he answered—

“Well, he's feelin' prime, smawnin', en hatter jist let go en talk, he couldn't he'p it, he feelin' so gay.”

“Dah, now!” exclaimed Martha, “hit's jist as I's a-sayin' no longer ago 'n dis minute. Las' night he was a feelin' jesso, en I turn' in en cher'd him up good, en I says to myseff, hit ain't takin' all dis time to tote up dat shavin' water, I lay Jasper's a cherin' him up some mo'—warn't I right, hey, warn't I?”

“Dat you wuz, sho's you bawn; he's jist gay, now, I tell you!”

This was not true. However, Martha, innocently taking it at par, laughed out her happy thankfulness over it, and said—

“I jist know'd how 'twould be. Jasper, I do b'lieve befo' you's [begin page 422] done wid marse George he's gwyneter be a diff'nt man to what he was.”

He responded, with modest confidence—

“I bet you!”

She rewarded him with a buttered biscuit hot from the reflector. His eye chanced to fall upon the breakfast dishes, and he felt a sense of disappointment. He said—

“Martha, is dat all?”

She chuckled, and answered—

“Bless yo' soul, honey, hit shows you doan' know what sorrer is. He doan' eat nothin'. My, if a body could git him to!”

Jasper—argumentatively, persuasively—and with a watering mouth:

“Martha, hit's diff'nt, smawnin', you know. He's a feelin' like a bird. Hain't dat gwyneter raise his appertite, don't you reckon?”

“Well, well, well, what is de matter of me! gracious I never thought. 'Course it will! Jasper, how much you reckon you kin 'suade him to eat?” and she began to load up her pans and ovens again, in great excitement and joy, Jasper helping, without invitation.

“Pile 'em in, pile 'em in,” he said, with fervor, “doan' you 'feered, Martha, you ain' gwyneter see 'em no mo'.”

“We-ll, if dat ain't de bes' news I ever—Lan', Jasper, why dis is enough for a hoss!”

“His very words! Martha, he said he could eat a hoss!”

“Dem's blessed words, Jasper, jist blessed—I doan' wanter heah no mo' blesseder ones. Laws, if he kin on'y git away wid dis stack it'll be de makin' of him.”

Jasper—with placid conviction:

“Look yo' las' on it, honey—look yo' las'.”

Some little time afterward Jasper was sitting solitary in the dining room—at the head of Harrison's table. The snowy tablecloth was almost hidden under its prodigal freightage of hot and appetising good things; the coffee pot was steaming, and a generous hickory fire was sending a sheet of flame up the chimney. Jasper was listening—listening with evil satisfaction to a descending step on the stair, a slow and lifeless step, a weary and halting [begin page 423] step. And now Harrison appeared. Wan, old, gaunt, broken, humble—he seemed rather a spectre than a man. Jasper's mind slipped back over long years, and he saw the duplicate of this apparition: himself. It was when he went to his father to ask for a new bill of sale in place of the one which had burned up with his cabin, and his father mocked him, laughed in his face and said, “Out of my presence, you bastard, and keep mum, or I'll sell you South, as I did your sniveling mother!”

The mulatto sat studying the meek apparition, and musing, with a hardening heart. This was a Harrison, that was a Harrison—the hated blood was in his own veins! The thought stung him, galled him. He spoke up sharply—

“Hahson!”

Harrison—timidly:

“Yes, sir.”

“You's makin' a po' start. You's kep' me a waitin'. I ain' gwyneter have it!”

“I—”

“Shet up, when I's a talkin'. Got no mo' manners 'n a animal. You wait till somebody asts you to mix in.” He paused, to see if Harrison's judgment would fail him again, but it didn't. “Now den, git to work. En doan' you wait for me to give you de orders; you watch en 'scover what I wants befo' I tells you.”

Harrison poured the coffee, then furnished beefsteak, spare-ribs, home-made sausages, corn-pone, biscuits, winter-stored vegetables—one after the other, with encores, and in generous quantity—and kept a sharp lookout, as commanded, saying nothing, and moving constantly and with his best briskness, for this devourer was more than a mere man, he was a mill. When about half of the food had been devoured there was a light knock on the door, and by force of habit Harrison called out before he had had time to think—

“Come in!”

Jasper scowled darkly upon him and said—

“Has anybody ast you to make yo'seff so dam brash?”

“Oh, I beg pardon, sir.”

“De do's bolted. I done it.” He got up with deliberation and said, “Hit's Martha. She's comin' in wid de batter-cakes.” He had risen [begin page 424] from his chair. He pointed to it, and added: “Set down here. I's servant, now—you is marster; you un'stan'? Doan' you fo'git yo'seff, less'n you wanter be sorry. Look cherful! you heah?”

Harrison took the seat, and Jasper went to the door. Martha, entering, said, reprovingly—

“What you fasten de do' for?”

Jasper chuckled, in what seemed to be a sort of embarrassed but pleasant confusion, and explained.

“Nev' you mine 'bout de do', honey: marse Hahson feelin' prime, smawnin', en tellin' 'bout de times when he's young; en he say shet de do', 'tain't suitable for ladies to heah. Bless you, he's feelin' dat gay—look at him laugh!”

Harrison, obeying a threatening side look, delivered himself of a ghastly travesty of a laugh which sent a shudder through Martha, and would have made her drop her platter of cakes but that it was already reaching the refuge of Jasper's hands. Martha soliloquised audibly, and unconsciously—

“De Lawd God!” and stood staring, rather vacantly yet admiringly, while Jasper, all smiling servility, most politely helped the master to one cake and purposely dropped another in his lap, at the same time whispering, “Raise hell 'bout it! you heah?”

“Curse your lumbering awkwardness, now look what you've done!” responded the obedient master.

Jasper mimicked the proper consternation while he nervously and clumsily repaired the mishap, meanwhile whispering “ 'Buse me, 'buse me, Hahson—keep it up!” and Harrison, obeying, poured out severities the best he could, and trembled to his marrow in apprehension of what he might have to pay for them. Martha chimed in—

“Give it to him good, marse George, hit boun' to do you good, stirrin' yo'seff up like dat; tain't gwyneter do him no harm, en he 'zerve it, anyway.”

Privately she was puzzled at Harrison's haggard appearance, and could not understand why he should look like that, now when he was so gay—so unnaturally gay that he was even obliged to break out in tales not proper for ladies to hear, to get relief, an extravagance of high spirits which he surely had never risen to [begin page 425] before. She was minded to speak of this curious thing, and inquire if the gayety was solid and real; but she glanced at the table and held her peace. She remarked to herself:

“I reckon he's all right. He's et enough to bust a tavern.”

She passed out, and master and servant changed places again.

“Pass 'em, pass 'em along!” cried Jasper, indicating the tower of hot batter-cakes, “en de m'lasses; I's pow'ful hongry, yit; I ain't had no sich breakfus' as dis sence de cows come home.”

But there was a brisk stamping of feet at the front door, now, and Jasper jumped from his seat and thrust Harrison into it just in time. Dug Hapgood burst in with an eager shout—

“Say, George, there's a stranger at the tavern. Get it? stranger, I said. Been there a couple of days. How he managed it without me finding it out, blamed if I know.” He was busy shedding his wraps, and quite unaware that Jasper was obsequiously receiving them and hanging them up. But he noticed the mulatto now, and shouted in great surprise, “Why, what in the nation are you doing here?” Jasper grinned in a flattered and thankful way and answered,

“Marse Hahson done hire me, Misto Dug.”

“Well, by gracious if that ain't just like you, George Harrison! There ain't anybody too low down for you to come up to the rack and give him a lift when he's in trouble, even a free nigger! I just honor you, George Harrison, I do, that's the fact.” He went forward blinking the sympathetic water out of his eyes, and wrung Harrison's hand cordially. “George derned if I don't think you are just a brevet angel, that's what I think—just a noble generous tadpole-angel, as you may say, and likely to sprout legs any time and feather-out and jine the choir. Shake again!” He turned to Jasper: “Looky here, yaller-belly, do you know you've had a mighty close shave? You bet you! Why, George, it was all put up yesterday to run him out of the State to-night—sho! what am I talkin' about; you found it out and that's why he's here. Now how in the nation did you, and you shut up in the house all the time?”

Jasper cut in, and saved Harrison the necessity of answering:

“I foun' it out myseff, Misto Dug, en come en tole him, en he up 'n say 'You's my nigger, now—jist let 'em tetch you!' he says.”

[begin page 426]

“Well, George, I'll say it again, you're the bravest devil that ever was, when you want to be. You're the only man in the whole deestrict that could a saved this cuss, and the only one that's good-hearted enough. Jasper!”

“Yes, seh.”

“Are you grateful?”

“'Deed I is, Misto Dug.”

“All right, then; some niggers ain't.” His eye fell on the table, and his mouth watered. “That looks good. Pity to let that go to waste. George, I'll see what I can do, if you don't mind,” and he sat down and began an assault on the remaining half of the breakfast that meant victory and annihilation, Jasper serving him with zeal and exterior eagerness accompanied by a running fire of curses inside his breast. “Say, George, he's a whole team and a yeller dog under the wagon, when it comes to telling fortunes. Bowles says he lays over Confucius, oh, to hell and gone! Says he told him things in his life he hadn't thought of for so long he'd about forgotten them. And he told my fortune, too, and it's plumb wonderful the way he does it. It's a new way: just looks in your hand, and there it's all wrote out and he can read it like print—everything you've ever done or going to do. Say, George, he told Frances Osgood's fortune, and in one place he looked awful sorrowful, and says ‘You've had a dreadful calamity in your life, poor lady,’ and put her hand away and didn't want to go on; but she made him, and then he started in and told her all about the fire where she lost her twin and you lost your house and family, just as straight as if he'd been there and seen the whole thing himself—ain't it wonderful!” A potatoe, impaled on a fork, was approaching his mouth, which was falling open in welcome and anticipation. It stopped where it was, and the mouth began to close. These were signs that a vast idea had been born to Dug. He laid the potatoe down and said impressively—

“George!”

“Well?”

“He's the very man!”

“How the very man?” said Harrison, wearily.

“To root out the bottom facts of Jake Bleeker's murder.”

[begin page 427]

It made Harrison gasp, it hit him with such power and suddenness.

“Bottom facts?” he said, as indifferently as he could, “what bottom facts?”

“Well, I'll tell you. You see, he could get right down into the details. There ain't any details, up to now. This cuss could lay it all just as bare as your hand. By gracious, it's a grand idea!” He sprang from the devastated table and began to throw on his things. Harrison shouted—

“Stop! what are you going to do?”

“Going to have him come here tomorrow afternoon and—”

“Oh, stop, stop, I tell you!”

But Dug was gone. Harrison plunged toward the door, but Jasper stepped in his way and said—

“Stay whah you is. Hain't you ever gwyneter git any sense? S'pose you stop dat deef jackass—how you gwyneter 'splain it? Does you want to raise a lot er s'picions? Let de man come. I's gwyneter be in dat closet dah, en notice what he say. He ain't gwyneter jail you en spile yo' good name en yo' power, not if I knows it—I can't 'ford it. If he gits down to de bottom facks, I's gwyneter buy his mouf shet, en you's gwyneter pay de bill. Cler up de table—hustle! Stack up de dishes; I's gwyneter tote 'em to de kitchen en git some mo' grub, dad burn dat greedy gut!”

Dug spread the news of Jasper's redemption, and it made a sensation in the village, which had had nothing to buzz about and get excited over for some little time. It was diligently discussed. Harrison's judgment was discounted, and his conduct in some degree censured; but his courage was frankly admired and extolled, and there was none but had a fervent word of praise for the nobility of his nature and the never-failing goodness of his heart. His act would have heavily damaged any other citizen, but it raised Harrison a shade in the public reverence and affection, and was recognized as a natural and proper thing for him to do. When some persons did things, the public customarily hunted for a doubtful motive, and generally believed it had found it; in Harrison's case it always premised a good motive, and of course it always found it. [begin page 428] What one expects to find and wants to find is easy to find, as a rule. Reputation is a formidable force in this world.

People flocked to Harrison's house all day; partly to recognize his pluck and praise it, and partly out of curiosity to see Jasper, gardener, perform as a house servant. Their praises were vinegar to Harrison's wounds, and the pain was the greater for that Jasper was there to see and enjoy the sufferings the others did not suspect and could not see. Everybody was surprised and a little disappointed to find that Jasper did not seem very much out of place in his new office, and many were candid enough to say so, and fling him a compliment as well. Tom and Helen were of these. Tom said, heartily—

“You are performing really well, Jasper, and I mean what I say. All you've got to do is to behave yourself, and show yourself worthy of what my father has done for you, and you'll have in him a protector that is not afraid to stand by you against the whole town.”

Jasper was so moved, and so grateful for these gracious words that Tom was quite touched, and gave him a dime, which he gave to Harrison that night, at the same time mimicking the son's manner and paraphrasing his speech:

“You's p'fawmin' real good, Hahson, en I means what I says. All you got to do is to behave, en show yo'seff wuthy of what I's went en done for you, en I's gwyneter be a p'tector dat'll—yah-yah-yah! I couldn't scasely keep fum laughin' to heah dat goslin' talk 'bout you p'tectin' me!”

Frances Osgood was there in the afternoon, and shook George by the hand, and said—

“George, you are so different from other people! Happiness, good fortune and an applauding conscience make some persons hard or indifferent, but they only furnish you new impulses toward—”

“No, Frances, no, you—”

“There, I will spare you, but I had to say it, because I feel it. If Alison and the children could come back now from the grave, how proud they would be of you, and what love and worship they—”

Jasper was hearing all this and storing it up for sarcastic use. He was always hovering in Harrison's neighborhood when it was [begin page 429] handy to do it; partly to listen, but mainly because his listening sharpened his slave's miseries.

Ann Bailey cordially endorsed Frances Osgood's remarks, and so did Sol and his brother the minister; the widow Wilkinson and Axtell the consumptive joined the group and added their praises, and General Landry and Asphyxia Perry did likewise while Tom and Helen listened in charmed contentment and pride, all unaware that these compliments which were heaven to them were hell to Harrison; unaware, too, that he would have to hear them again, toward midnight, with Jasper to serve them up, in a new edition revised and improved.